In The Land Of Hope, There Is No Winter 6

Turning The Pages Of The Season

by Bethany

URL: http://www.stargateslash.com/asb/bethany6/inthel06.php
Summary: Daniel and Jack discuss more stuff about the people and the planet that made Daniel pregnant, while they wait for, and wonder over, the birth of his baby

Daniel, keeper of books, protector, care-taker of books, who treated books as though they were Holy, because some of them were, actually through this book down on the floor.

Jack brought him a glass of water at that moment.

"Like I really need that stuff!" Daniel said. "I should live in the bathroom as it is!"

Jack frowned. "I could bring you coffee, but that's a diuretic, too!"

"And it's bad for the baby!" Daniel grudgingly took the water.

"Still can't find a name you like?" Jack bent down to pick up the book, and flicked through it.

"Everything seems to have a double meaning!!" Daniel said, frustrated. "I'm just thinking of giving him my surname, and yours, as a full name. That'd be appropriate 'cos Jackson actually means Jack's son, and I'd rather him be your son than anyone else's."

Jack looked to Daniel, trying to keep his emotions in check. "Thank you." He said, "But... Though nothing will stop me from being this baby's dad,"

"Isn't Jackson O'Neill thrown out for the same reasons Jadan was? I know! I've already thought about it... I'm just not sure! And," Daniel sat down heavily, with Jack's help, "could still be a girl, y'know!"

"I know..." Jack said, tending to Daniel, and sitting beside him.

"We shouldn't spend too much time thinking all this over..." Daniel announced. "The bigwigs probably have a plan to eliminate the threat they think my baby poses, and anyway, how do we know the team working with... with... those people, won't give my secret away?"

"Daniel, those scientists have already said that they won't be interested in picking up any of the babies that have been brought to term outside of the range of the lab..." Jack replied.

"So, what the hell were they doing with the children born there?" Daniel shivered, fearing the bigwigs might be right still...

"They say the children were never augmented; it's simply that they don't trust that any abnormalities will have been properly detected." Jack said, with a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Great! We're helping an Arian race!" Daniel fumed.

Jack suppressed a shiver, thinking how close they'd come to doing that years back, when he and Daniel almost fell out for real that time... He looked at Daniel's face in the hear and now, loving the man who always seemed to bring him to his senses. His conscience."Daniel, I don't think they are. I swear to you. I think they're just paranoid, over-protective, and arrogant..."

"I know a bit about those first, too... I just hope I don't ever become the third!" Daniel answered.

"Never!" Jack assured him, brushing Daniel's cheekbone with his finger.

"If they're just paranoid, over-protective, and arrogant, how come they seem to have accepted help?" Daniel mused. "What do they consider an abnormality? What are they capable of?" Daniel knew why the bigwigs were scared.

"Because they need it, and because they figure we might be of help, knowing all the technologically advanced races we do..." Jack said, answering Daniel's first question because that was the one he could. "The rest, Daniel, I honestly don't know... As much as I can tell, that's not why the team are out there..."

"Maybe, they want to know them, too; I mean the scientists want to know the advanced races we do!" Daniel stated, alarmed.

Jack had thought about that, too. "I just don't ever want what happened to you to ever be able to happen to anyone again, man or woman... Some people know its wrong, Maybe even, the scientists do."

"So, you want to protect the women, huh?" Daniel asked. He hated that part of his mind thatl worried about this, and the of it that, some days, resented the women who could not have babies, and made these scientists do this to him. He was so scared of the birth, and the possibilities of life afterward...

"And the men!" Jack repeated firmly, yet calmly.

"If the scientists know it was wrong, that makes it worse..." Daniel sighed. "I wonder if any other men kept their babies?" He asked, aloud. "What the hell must those from less advanced races be facing..?" He felt a pang of panic on their behalf, and prayed that his own situation would never get that bad..!"

"I don't think, " Jack told him honestly, "that any other man would have the guts to do what you're doing, Daniel..."

"Oh, we all have the guts, all of us in that Lab... They made sure of that!" Daniel responded.

"I'm sorry, Danny..!" Jack said.

"My parents used to call me Danny!" Daniel almost chastised. "I wonder what they would think of all this!??"

"They'd think you were damned brave because you are, Daniel..." Jack told him, correcting his naming mistake. He figured it might sound a bit odd to Daniel at this time, with all these worries and memories, and unknowns, going through his head, especially since he was obsessively flicking through name books, being a little paranoid, and the name Jackson meant 'Jack's son'... From day one of when they'd met, somehow, Daniel brought out the protective side of Jack, but it was not the left over protectiveness of a father without a son who saw a younger man without a father... It was protectiveness, because Daniel had helped Jack to find the capacity to live again... It was protectiveness because Jack wanted to guard what he could recognise as a very special soul... He had come to love that soul; that younger man, and the age gap between them, which remarkably, despite Daniel's almost ageless appearance, was not that big anyway, over the years had become less and less, because of time, because of events, because of life... Not that Daniel had not been tried in life before the Stargate Program! But Jack had always been in awe of the fact that the man didn't seem to lose his energy for life, and for good causes. Now, these days, Jack seriously feared, that this latest trauma had been to much, had seriously extinguished Daniel's spirit. But Jack was still trying to have faith that Daniel would come back from it... And, even if he didn't, completely, Jack knew Daniel would always be a special soul, one to be protected, guarded, and cherished... And so, Jack prayed again, would his child also be..!

The End

Next: Love In The Winter