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magibrainOld meme. "Post a bunch of excerpts from whatever you're currently working on." Except I'm going to post a bunch of random bits of scene jotted down in my braintic scrap file that showed up in my head and refuse to coalesce into anything fic-able.
All scenelets are SG-1 and free for the spinning-off-of.
.
1. The one where Jack has relaxed standards for winning, and is probably to blame for something.
"It's revenge," Jack says.
Daniel's eyebrows scrunch together. "For what?"
"For–" ...hm. He hadn't thought of that. Daniel hasn't actually been that difficult to deal with, lately. "That... thing. That you're going to do. Tomorrow."
By now, Daniel's cottoned on. He folds his arms across his chest, and his tone turns from somewhat confused and exasperated to the sort of too-patient, understanding voice people usually use with children. "And what am I going to do tomorrow, Jack?"
Jack gives him an annoyed wave of his hand. "I don't know. I'm sure we'll find out tomorrow, though, won't we?"
The next day Daniel manages to navigate rickety rope bridges, dilapidated pontoons, a session of swamp politics that has Carter quoting The Lion In Winter and a trade negotiation that has the SGC trading antibiotics for crops which could be hybridized with something to something something Jack has stopped paying attention at this point, and it looks like he's not going to give Jack a chance to seem prophetic until he accidentally knocks a giant alien pitcher plant over, covering Jack's boots in about three gallons of slime.
Carter and Teal'c can't figure out why it's Daniel who looks annoyed and Jack who looks smug, the entire way back to the 'gate.
.
2. The one where Sam may be decrying the best laid plans.
"You know, there was a quote by someone who said that making a five-year plan was throwing a gauntlet in the face of God," Daniel said. "My point is, if you'd asked me in the first year of the Program where I saw myself in five years, I don't think 'ascended to a higher plane of being' would have been on my list of predictions. And yet..."
"Wow, Daniel," Sam said. "When you put it like that, it really does sound like I haven't been doing anything with my life."
.
3. The thing where Colonel Reynolds is probably in some trouble or something and the team apparently comes through for him.
SG-1 will fight for anyone in the mountain, and that's been proved time and time again – it's why they rose to the position of the base's bona fide heroes instead of just go-to guys. Carter and Jackson are practically revered for their willingness to stay odd hours and come in on weekends to lend their brainpower to whatever challenges crop up in their fields, and it's taken as writ that the Colonel, even if he can't remember your name, will generally lend a helping hand and a friendly word if he's in the area and sees you in trouble. Though his definition of "trouble" has been known to range from an overstocked storeroom shelf teetering with intent to fall over on you to Colonel Samuels saying "Hello."
But the mountain also knows that this is nothing compared to the things they'll pull for their friends.
The rumored pardon of a man arrested for treason, blackmailing of a US Senator, and reinstatement of a man who'd sworn up and down that he'd been voluntarily retiring up until the point where he was sitting at his desk again kinda underscored that.
...and that wasn't even mentioning the fact that while the Colonel had gone on his little planetside tour of covert operations, Major Carter had been blowing up a planet. A month or so later a Tok'ra shuttle had flown out to the system and returned with the news that the planet was sill burning; so, really, best not to mess with her either.
The point was, they looked after their own, and "their own" wasn't entirely restricted to the four of them that went offworld. General Hammond was in that number. So was Doc Fraiser, and Doc Fraiser's kid. It was heartwarming, really. Great to point out to the newer blood around the place.
Reynolds was still not entirely sure when the number had swelled to include him.
.
4. The one where Sam actually asks Jack what his preoccupation with fishing is, sorta.
"We spend days, once or twice a week, walking through one untouched paradise after another," she said. "I guess I don't..." She stopped, grimaced, shifted her weight. Tried another phrasing. "How do you still find it attractive?"
He blinked. Then he stared at her, probably just long enough for her to reconsider using the word attractive in that context, or indeed in any context at all. The tips of her ears were beginning to turn pink. He still found it slightly absurd that he had someone on his team whose ears actually did that. "Carter, you spend your down time on base, building reactors," he pointed out. "I really don't think I'm the one taking my work on vacation."
She frowned. "With all due respect, sir," she said, "I spend most of my time performing reconnaissance, in combat engagements, or analyzing alien technology for strategic importance or scientific significance. This–" she gestured at her lab. "–is a chance to work on my own projects."
"And a weekend in Minnesota is a chance to fish my own pond, in my own damn cabin," he said. "Where's the confusion here?" ...he didn't let her answer that. "Besides, I'm off duty. You do know what that means, don't you?"
Carter looked, for a moment, like she was deciding whether or not he was expecting an answer. "I–"
He hadn't really been looking for one. "It means beer, Carter," he said. "Civilian clothing. No life-or-death situations, no keeping track of everything because everything is on the record, no hauling a forty-pound pack across hill or dale. Relaxation. You are familiar with the concept, aren't you?"
She gave him a drawn look. "Yes, sir. I am."
.
5. The one where Sam manages to fail so hard wrt talking about her personal problems that Jack has to break into her house for a personal conversation, yes, I know.
The lock had been forced.
She only paused for a moment before putting her keys away and pulling a pistol out of her bag. Some people had no sense of style – almost convenient, that, as it gave her more than enough warning to thumb the safety off, slip back down into a field mindset, and scope her way into her own house.
[...]
Colonel O'Neill was sitting on her couch, with a half-finished bottle of beer in one hand, looking evenly toward the door. "Major," he said.
Well, she reflected, after a second and a half, it was a good thing he wasn't there to attack her. Because she'd quite neatly frozen up in a way you weren't supposed to, in these sorts of situations.
"I wasn't expecting you," she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded flat.
"Well, no, you wouldn't have been, would you," the Colonel said, and his voice was just dark of edged. "Being as you've been doing your damnedest not to cross paths with any of us as much as you can help it."
She blinked, at that, one half of her brain trying to work out whether that statement made any logical syntactic sense and half of her brain commenting dryly, Colonel O'Neill here to have a personal conversation. I've finally and officially broken the universe. Eventually, both halves of her brain got together long enough to provide her with something to do, though the first thing they came up with was to put the safety of her gun back on and return it to the holster attached to the inside of her bag.
[...]
"What's eating you?"
She pulled open the fridge door. "Nothing."
"You know," he said, and she could hear the slight creak of the couch as he stood from it. "You're even less convincing than Daniel when you say that."
That's interesting, she thought. I think I would have remembered buying two six-packs of Heineken.
She bypassed the beer entirely and pulled out a can of Diet Coke, and then straightened up to find that Colonel O'Neill had his hand on the top of the door. She raised an eyebrow at him, silently asking if he was really going to stand there and prevent her from closing it, and he took his hand away.
[...]
"We get by by being ten times better than anyone expects us to be," he said, and jabbed his beer at her. "And you should know; you're part of that. Always have been."
Ordinarily she might have said something to acknowledge or deflect that, but not this time. Colonel O'Neill's tone made it clear he wasn't delivering a compliment.
"Being that good is the only thing that keeps us alive, in the sort of shit we get sent into."
And that was supposed to mean... what? "Colonel, you know I would never do anything which would interfere with my professional duties."
"Oh, I don't think you're going to start sniping with Daniel in the middle of a firefight," he said. "I think you're going to bring us back down to average. And that's what's going to get us killed."
6. The one where you don't want to piss off Carter, apparently.
And that was the way it was. The civilians muttered about the military, the military grumbled about the civilians, the scientists gossiped like old wives and the marines and airmen played pranks like college sophomores, but things never went anywhere beyond that because the scientists were all aware that the military types could kill them half a dozen ways with common office objects, and for everyone on the Armed Forces side, there were rules.
Rules like: you never pissed off your Commanding Officer, because even above and beyond the Uniform Code there were ways your CO could make your life a living hell. You never pissed off the doctors or medics, because when you were in a drugged stupor or screaming your lungs out on a battlefield and they were coming at you with sutures and knives and needles you sure as hell wanted them on your side. And in the SGC, you never, never pissed off any scientist who might in any way have your ass on anything, because there was screwed, there was screwed, and there was taking a gizmo into the field that had only been tested by people who despised you.
And what you really, really didn't want to do was piss off a scientist who also happened to be in the US Air Force.
.
7. The one where... uh, where... ...where... ...look, just make something up, okay?
At this stage in the game, all Jack could really do was stand there and keep up a running internal commentary about Zipacna and his stupid outfit and his stupid hat and his stupid way of talking out of one side of his stupid mouth.
Jack grimaced. He'd be worried that spending so much time with Jayartha's weird children was beginning to have some kind of effect on him, but he'd thought pretty much the same thing when he'd first seen Zipacna on Tollanna.
"–a demonstration to a world which does not fear their gods as they should," ol' Zippy was saying, and he smiled. "Of course, there is the slight matter of a punishment befitting such insolence as yours, Colonel."
"Well," Jack said, "I'm sure you could nip down to one of the schoolhouses, pick up a ruler – you know, quick slap on the wrist, we could be on our way.
Zipacna looked him over. "I think not." He turned to his First Prime, then jerked his chin at Mina. "Kill her."
"No!"
Zipacna's First Prime didn't hesitate, but neither did Jack. The Jaffa lifted his staff weapon and fired in a single motion–
–and Jack put the girl behind him and took the blast straight to his stomach in the next.
Mina screamed.
He felt everything in the wrong order – first his body hitting the floor, then the blast, then the pain. Mina had gone to her knees and was still screaming, trying to hide behind him, and he couldn't even get his elbows under him, let alone his legs. Something was stealing over him, pinching away his senses one by one as he lost focus to shock, and then the world seemed to stop.
Mina stopped screaming. His senses stopped fading, and stopped registering pain. Even the First Prime didn't shoot again. But Zipacna was coming back down the stairs from his throne, pausing at the last one, staring down with a look of disgust and – if Jack was reading it right – a hearty helping of fear.
It might have looked stupid on him, but for a variety of reasons, Jack wasn't inclined to care.
"What is this?" Zippy asked.
Something wet touched the back of Jack's head, and he turned to look at the floor he was lying on.
What he saw was blood. Lots of blood. Too much blood, spreading way too fast, even for a good solid hit and a heavy bleeder – he and several of his best friends would be dead long before donating that much to the room's decor. Zipacna was staring at it as though entranced – it was a veritable ocean, rolling across the floor like a carpet and bringing vertigo with it.
"What's happening?" Jack heard himself ask, and Mina's hand threaded back through his hair. Like she'd seen any of the women of the village do, for any number of scraped knees or bruised elbows. She was calm now, not even looking at Zipacna, kneeling in the blood that lapped around her knees yet left her white dress pristine.
"Mother is coming," she said. "He made her very, very angry."
All scenelets are SG-1 and free for the spinning-off-of.
.
1. The one where Jack has relaxed standards for winning, and is probably to blame for something.
"It's revenge," Jack says.
Daniel's eyebrows scrunch together. "For what?"
"For–" ...hm. He hadn't thought of that. Daniel hasn't actually been that difficult to deal with, lately. "That... thing. That you're going to do. Tomorrow."
By now, Daniel's cottoned on. He folds his arms across his chest, and his tone turns from somewhat confused and exasperated to the sort of too-patient, understanding voice people usually use with children. "And what am I going to do tomorrow, Jack?"
Jack gives him an annoyed wave of his hand. "I don't know. I'm sure we'll find out tomorrow, though, won't we?"
The next day Daniel manages to navigate rickety rope bridges, dilapidated pontoons, a session of swamp politics that has Carter quoting The Lion In Winter and a trade negotiation that has the SGC trading antibiotics for crops which could be hybridized with something to something something Jack has stopped paying attention at this point, and it looks like he's not going to give Jack a chance to seem prophetic until he accidentally knocks a giant alien pitcher plant over, covering Jack's boots in about three gallons of slime.
Carter and Teal'c can't figure out why it's Daniel who looks annoyed and Jack who looks smug, the entire way back to the 'gate.
.
2. The one where Sam may be decrying the best laid plans.
"You know, there was a quote by someone who said that making a five-year plan was throwing a gauntlet in the face of God," Daniel said. "My point is, if you'd asked me in the first year of the Program where I saw myself in five years, I don't think 'ascended to a higher plane of being' would have been on my list of predictions. And yet..."
"Wow, Daniel," Sam said. "When you put it like that, it really does sound like I haven't been doing anything with my life."
.
3. The thing where Colonel Reynolds is probably in some trouble or something and the team apparently comes through for him.
SG-1 will fight for anyone in the mountain, and that's been proved time and time again – it's why they rose to the position of the base's bona fide heroes instead of just go-to guys. Carter and Jackson are practically revered for their willingness to stay odd hours and come in on weekends to lend their brainpower to whatever challenges crop up in their fields, and it's taken as writ that the Colonel, even if he can't remember your name, will generally lend a helping hand and a friendly word if he's in the area and sees you in trouble. Though his definition of "trouble" has been known to range from an overstocked storeroom shelf teetering with intent to fall over on you to Colonel Samuels saying "Hello."
But the mountain also knows that this is nothing compared to the things they'll pull for their friends.
The rumored pardon of a man arrested for treason, blackmailing of a US Senator, and reinstatement of a man who'd sworn up and down that he'd been voluntarily retiring up until the point where he was sitting at his desk again kinda underscored that.
...and that wasn't even mentioning the fact that while the Colonel had gone on his little planetside tour of covert operations, Major Carter had been blowing up a planet. A month or so later a Tok'ra shuttle had flown out to the system and returned with the news that the planet was sill burning; so, really, best not to mess with her either.
The point was, they looked after their own, and "their own" wasn't entirely restricted to the four of them that went offworld. General Hammond was in that number. So was Doc Fraiser, and Doc Fraiser's kid. It was heartwarming, really. Great to point out to the newer blood around the place.
Reynolds was still not entirely sure when the number had swelled to include him.
.
4. The one where Sam actually asks Jack what his preoccupation with fishing is, sorta.
"We spend days, once or twice a week, walking through one untouched paradise after another," she said. "I guess I don't..." She stopped, grimaced, shifted her weight. Tried another phrasing. "How do you still find it attractive?"
He blinked. Then he stared at her, probably just long enough for her to reconsider using the word attractive in that context, or indeed in any context at all. The tips of her ears were beginning to turn pink. He still found it slightly absurd that he had someone on his team whose ears actually did that. "Carter, you spend your down time on base, building reactors," he pointed out. "I really don't think I'm the one taking my work on vacation."
She frowned. "With all due respect, sir," she said, "I spend most of my time performing reconnaissance, in combat engagements, or analyzing alien technology for strategic importance or scientific significance. This–" she gestured at her lab. "–is a chance to work on my own projects."
"And a weekend in Minnesota is a chance to fish my own pond, in my own damn cabin," he said. "Where's the confusion here?" ...he didn't let her answer that. "Besides, I'm off duty. You do know what that means, don't you?"
Carter looked, for a moment, like she was deciding whether or not he was expecting an answer. "I–"
He hadn't really been looking for one. "It means beer, Carter," he said. "Civilian clothing. No life-or-death situations, no keeping track of everything because everything is on the record, no hauling a forty-pound pack across hill or dale. Relaxation. You are familiar with the concept, aren't you?"
She gave him a drawn look. "Yes, sir. I am."
.
5. The one where Sam manages to fail so hard wrt talking about her personal problems that Jack has to break into her house for a personal conversation, yes, I know.
The lock had been forced.
She only paused for a moment before putting her keys away and pulling a pistol out of her bag. Some people had no sense of style – almost convenient, that, as it gave her more than enough warning to thumb the safety off, slip back down into a field mindset, and scope her way into her own house.
[...]
Colonel O'Neill was sitting on her couch, with a half-finished bottle of beer in one hand, looking evenly toward the door. "Major," he said.
Well, she reflected, after a second and a half, it was a good thing he wasn't there to attack her. Because she'd quite neatly frozen up in a way you weren't supposed to, in these sorts of situations.
"I wasn't expecting you," she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded flat.
"Well, no, you wouldn't have been, would you," the Colonel said, and his voice was just dark of edged. "Being as you've been doing your damnedest not to cross paths with any of us as much as you can help it."
She blinked, at that, one half of her brain trying to work out whether that statement made any logical syntactic sense and half of her brain commenting dryly, Colonel O'Neill here to have a personal conversation. I've finally and officially broken the universe. Eventually, both halves of her brain got together long enough to provide her with something to do, though the first thing they came up with was to put the safety of her gun back on and return it to the holster attached to the inside of her bag.
[...]
"What's eating you?"
She pulled open the fridge door. "Nothing."
"You know," he said, and she could hear the slight creak of the couch as he stood from it. "You're even less convincing than Daniel when you say that."
That's interesting, she thought. I think I would have remembered buying two six-packs of Heineken.
She bypassed the beer entirely and pulled out a can of Diet Coke, and then straightened up to find that Colonel O'Neill had his hand on the top of the door. She raised an eyebrow at him, silently asking if he was really going to stand there and prevent her from closing it, and he took his hand away.
[...]
"We get by by being ten times better than anyone expects us to be," he said, and jabbed his beer at her. "And you should know; you're part of that. Always have been."
Ordinarily she might have said something to acknowledge or deflect that, but not this time. Colonel O'Neill's tone made it clear he wasn't delivering a compliment.
"Being that good is the only thing that keeps us alive, in the sort of shit we get sent into."
And that was supposed to mean... what? "Colonel, you know I would never do anything which would interfere with my professional duties."
"Oh, I don't think you're going to start sniping with Daniel in the middle of a firefight," he said. "I think you're going to bring us back down to average. And that's what's going to get us killed."
6. The one where you don't want to piss off Carter, apparently.
And that was the way it was. The civilians muttered about the military, the military grumbled about the civilians, the scientists gossiped like old wives and the marines and airmen played pranks like college sophomores, but things never went anywhere beyond that because the scientists were all aware that the military types could kill them half a dozen ways with common office objects, and for everyone on the Armed Forces side, there were rules.
Rules like: you never pissed off your Commanding Officer, because even above and beyond the Uniform Code there were ways your CO could make your life a living hell. You never pissed off the doctors or medics, because when you were in a drugged stupor or screaming your lungs out on a battlefield and they were coming at you with sutures and knives and needles you sure as hell wanted them on your side. And in the SGC, you never, never pissed off any scientist who might in any way have your ass on anything, because there was screwed, there was screwed, and there was taking a gizmo into the field that had only been tested by people who despised you.
And what you really, really didn't want to do was piss off a scientist who also happened to be in the US Air Force.
.
7. The one where... uh, where... ...where... ...look, just make something up, okay?
At this stage in the game, all Jack could really do was stand there and keep up a running internal commentary about Zipacna and his stupid outfit and his stupid hat and his stupid way of talking out of one side of his stupid mouth.
Jack grimaced. He'd be worried that spending so much time with Jayartha's weird children was beginning to have some kind of effect on him, but he'd thought pretty much the same thing when he'd first seen Zipacna on Tollanna.
"–a demonstration to a world which does not fear their gods as they should," ol' Zippy was saying, and he smiled. "Of course, there is the slight matter of a punishment befitting such insolence as yours, Colonel."
"Well," Jack said, "I'm sure you could nip down to one of the schoolhouses, pick up a ruler – you know, quick slap on the wrist, we could be on our way.
Zipacna looked him over. "I think not." He turned to his First Prime, then jerked his chin at Mina. "Kill her."
"No!"
Zipacna's First Prime didn't hesitate, but neither did Jack. The Jaffa lifted his staff weapon and fired in a single motion–
–and Jack put the girl behind him and took the blast straight to his stomach in the next.
Mina screamed.
He felt everything in the wrong order – first his body hitting the floor, then the blast, then the pain. Mina had gone to her knees and was still screaming, trying to hide behind him, and he couldn't even get his elbows under him, let alone his legs. Something was stealing over him, pinching away his senses one by one as he lost focus to shock, and then the world seemed to stop.
Mina stopped screaming. His senses stopped fading, and stopped registering pain. Even the First Prime didn't shoot again. But Zipacna was coming back down the stairs from his throne, pausing at the last one, staring down with a look of disgust and – if Jack was reading it right – a hearty helping of fear.
It might have looked stupid on him, but for a variety of reasons, Jack wasn't inclined to care.
"What is this?" Zippy asked.
Something wet touched the back of Jack's head, and he turned to look at the floor he was lying on.
What he saw was blood. Lots of blood. Too much blood, spreading way too fast, even for a good solid hit and a heavy bleeder – he and several of his best friends would be dead long before donating that much to the room's decor. Zipacna was staring at it as though entranced – it was a veritable ocean, rolling across the floor like a carpet and bringing vertigo with it.
"What's happening?" Jack heard himself ask, and Mina's hand threaded back through his hair. Like she'd seen any of the women of the village do, for any number of scraped knees or bruised elbows. She was calm now, not even looking at Zipacna, kneeling in the blood that lapped around her knees yet left her white dress pristine.
"Mother is coming," she said. "He made her very, very angry."