Chapter Text
Jack O’Neill knew a thing or two about strange. He’d been one of the first to use a Gate to cross the galaxy after all, and since then he encountered a fuck-load of strange things. Still, occasionally, sometimes, every other Friday, he would love to show up to his shift and have it be normal.
Just sometimes, you know?
But the universe hated him, and nothing ever went according to plan, so when Jack showed up in the gate-room for the final debrief before his team could venture through the Gate to P7X-724 the iris protecting the portal opened five minutes before it should. That alone would be worrisome but not yet disastrous, but as Jack and his team stood there, confusion and panic written on their faces, it became evident that someone else hadn’t just opened their iris – no, someone was dialing in.
“Unscheduled off-world activation. All military personnel prepare for hostile engagement!”
General Hammond’s voice came from the intercom, the soldiers guarding the Gate ready for action even before the general had stopped speaking. None of them were newbies – they all had the look of seasoned veterans how only the Stargate could produce them. Jack grabbed his own weapon, only to see Captain Carter and Teal’c do the same. Daniel was the only one who hesitated, but even he appeared prepared for active battle.
Over two years of constant disasters and even the ever-optimistic Dr. Daniel Jackson had finally understood that sometimes it was best to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Teal’c, take my right side. Captain Carter? My left. Daniel… stay behind one of us at any given point.” Jack didn’t have the time to give his team more in-depth instructions, considering the Gate finished dialing in that second, the telltale energy vortex erupting from the controlled wormhole. With military precision every armed person in the room raised their weapon, pointing it at the portal, knowing that this might be the moment their luck finally ran out.
Working with SG-1 truly was a fun and engaging employment, death a daily and constant companion.
They didn’t have to wait long. The portal rippled and warped and then it spit out two… kids? Jack didn’t get a good look at the two figures before they crashed against the metal gateway. All he could see was a touch of blond hair and a wooden cane that deponently rolled away from its owners until it touched Jack’s boots.
At least twenty guns and riffles were pointed at the two prone figures, while Jack tried to decide what to do next. He was the highest ranking officer in the gateroom, and as this was considered active duty, his orders ranked even higher than those of the general. Moments before he’d been ready to shoot first, ask questions later, but back then he anticipated a frontal assault. The two aliens in front of him barely looked conscious.
It felt somewhat wrong to simply shoot them. For all he knew, they could have been locals from one of those worlds they’ve made friends with. Then again, in their line of work and with the threat of the Goa’uld hanging over them, they could just as well be spies, or soul-sucking insects or something. You never know.
Carefully, Jack stepped over the wooden cane, his hand raised to signal his team to follow him, and the soldiers positioned near the walls and exits to stand down. First, he had to get a better grasp of the situation. One of the strangers moaned in pain, just as Jack stopped three feet in front of them, his left hand still resting on his riffle. It was one thing to refrain from shooting them outright, but Jack refused to be stupid about this.
“They’re kids!”, Sam exclaimed, and Jack could feel her shock reverberate through him as well.
She was right.
The two figures in front of him couldn’t be older than fifteen, sixteen. They both had blond hair, though one of them wore it long, golden locks spilling down their shoulders, obscuring their face, while the other wore it short, a haircut Jack had seen on at least ten teenage boys just last week. A boy and a girl then? Their clothes didn’t really answer that question – they both wore heavy boots, dark slacks, and big coats, though the girl’s coat was an appalling shade of red, while the boy had stuck to a more sensible brown.
“What do you think we should do, Colonel?”
Sam’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but Jack had no trouble understanding her in the tense stillness of the gateroom. Teal’c was a silent sentinel to his right, and Daniel… the archeologist was currently busy peeking over Jack’s shoulder in an attempt to satisfy his academic curiosity.
“I think-“
The golden-haired girl chose that moment to wake up in a flurry of movement. She must have been awake for a bit now, because there was no confusion visible on her – his? Now Jack was even less sure of the gender of their surprise guest – face when she noticed Jack and his team in front of her. Instead, golden eyes – and Jack hadn’t even known eyes could be that color – scanned the room with quick efficiency before they fell on the prone body of the second stranger.
“Alphonse!”, a distinctly male voice cried out, and the stranger was crouching next to his companion. Something was wrong with his left leg and right arm, Jack noted, but that was the only thing he could tell before the stranger forced him to react once more.
Jack jerked his weapon up, answering instinctively to the new threat without even processing the sudden sound the newcomer made with his hands.
Because of a knife.
Because suddenly Mister Red Coat had a wicked blade in his left hand, his upper body curled over ‘Alphonse’ protectively, the knife brandished in Jack’s direction with a snarl that showed off an impressive amount of white teeth.
Jack could hear how twenty soldiers simultaneously released the safety catch. Never a good sign. All of them were trained to shoot, and nothing was more dangerous than a soldier with their finger already on the trigger.
Jack never liked being predictable, so, as everyone else got ready to kill the two strangers, Jack pried his hands away from his own riffle and instead raised them in a universal gesture of peace. Then again, as Daniel always told him, nothing was universal in the entire universe.
“Hey-“ Jack said, only to be interrupted by another feral growl.
“What did you do to Alphonse?”
The boy spoke English – only Jack was pretty sure that wasn’t actually the case. It was probably some sort of gate mumbo-jumbo again, something Daniel and Sam could geek out over once their shift was finished and Jack wasn’t forced to listen to them talk.
Apparently, nobody wanted to let Jack talk today because before he could answer the boy – the alien – Daniel pushed past him with a smile on his face and his hands open and vulnerable in front of him.
“Is Alphonse the name of your friend?” Daniel asked.
“Brother. He’s my brother.”
Jack hadn’t known it was possible to sound so angry and loving at the same time. There was no doubt that the kid loved his brother – just as Jack didn’t doubt, he would use the knife to keep any threat (them, in this case) away from Alphonse. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who noticed the danger in the kid’s voice. Teal’c’s presence at his side grew heavier, and Jack could basically taste how trigger-happy the soldiers were getting.
They had to defuse the situation. Quickly.
Luckily, Daniel was already trying his best.
“And what’s your name?”
“The fick do you care?”
“Well, I want to call you something. My name, for one, is Daniel Jackson, but just Daniel is fine. Behind me, the man with the golden sigil on his head, that’s Teal’c and to his left, the man with the hat is Jack O’Neill. To my right is Captain Samantha Carter – Sam for short.”
The kid didn’t seem all that impressed with Daniel’s attempts at small talk, not that Jack could blame him. For all they knew, the kid had no idea what the hell was going on, and his brother was unconscious in the middle of enemy territory. Jack might just have brandished his own knife if their roles were reversed. Didn’t make the situation any less tense.
“Captain Carter?” The boy stumbled over the word as if it was foreign – and it probably was. Daniel had once explained to Jack that the Gate only instilled a baseline vocabulary in those that traversed between two worlds. That’s what they had the linguist (and archeologist) for, after all.
“Yes”, Daniel said, “Captain is a military rank. Above Lieutenant but below Major or Colonel.”
This was getting ridiculous.
“Daniel, please do something actually useful before-“
Once again, Jack wasn’t allowed to finish.
“Military rank? Like ‘Owptmahn or Obarlutnant? You’re military?”
The foreign words didn’t manage to cover the distain in the boy’s voice as he verbally spit on everyone in a uniform currently present in the room. Jack had his own history with the US military, and even he couldn’t quite quell the displeasure and anger growing in his gut at the boy’s obvious disregard for the military complex.
“Yes. And we want to help you and your brother.” Captain Carter had joined Daniel by pushing past Jack – apparently neither he nor the chain of command really mattered anymore. God, he sounded like General Hammond, whenever Jack’s team disobeyed a direct order so they could save the galaxy instead.
“As if.” The little blond devil spit.
“I know you have no reason to trust us, but I promise you, we can help you. You haven’t hurt us yet, and as long as that is true, we will treat you as a friend and not an enemy. We will make sure your brother is okay.”
For a long moment there was only silence, the kid’s golden gaze glued to Captain Carter’s face. Something complicated happened behind those bright eyes, something Jack and the rest of SG-1 weren’t privy to. And then…
“Okay. You can help Alphonse. And you can explain to me what tzum fick is going on here.”
Daniel wasn’t the only one who noticed that the kid obviously knew how to disengage from a hostile situation – Jack and Teal’c watched with raised eyebrows as the kid carefully placed the knife on the gateway next to him, before pushing it away from him and his friend with the tip of his right boot. His hands mirrored Jack’s earlier gesture – raised, open, non-threatening.
Behind him Jack could feel as twenty soldiers lowered their guns and pushed the safety back on. One less thing to worry about.
“Medical unit to the gateroom. I repeat, medical unit to the gateroom.”
General Hammond’s voice echoed through the room, the guards making space at the bottom of the gateway for Janet and her team. SG-1 made no move to step away from the kids just yet though. Once Janet was actually here, sure, Jack would let her do her work, but right now it felt crucial to remain as a physical barrier between the two teenagers and the armed army personnel.
“So, kid, what’s your name?” Jack asked, and for once he was actually allowed to finish his question. Small mercies.
Another glare was sent in his direction, and Jack got the vague feeling that the kid had a problem with authority – and yet, he answered: “Edward Elric, but people usually call me Ed.”
“Would you say that is a typical name in your homeworld? Do all the people there have anglicized names and a first name-last name naming system?”
Daniel’s excitement was a force to be reconned with, and almost instinctively Edward seemed to grow more protective of his little brother. He might have given up his knife, but he still didn’t trust them. At least he was clever enough to realize that he didn’t have a chance against SG-1 and twenty trained soldiers – most of the threats invading their base thought they could take them out singlehandedly. Jack had to hand it to the kid – that move was smarter than Jack had given him credit for.
“Homeworld? Angl- angle- what?”
Edward – very obviously – had no idea what Daniel was talking about.
Jack knew the feeling.
“Daniel, later. Right now, I think it is more important to established how the boy and his brother ended up here.”
Captain Carter glanced in his direction as if she was asking a question, even though they both knew her priorities were straight, and this was the only logical next step. At least someone on his team respected his authority. Sometimes.
“Right now” – a new voice interrupted them; apparently Dr. Fraser had finally made it to the gateroom – “our priority should be the physical health of our guests.”
The petite woman appeared next to Jack with an authority not even he could ignore. Dutifully he stepped out of her way, unwilling to accidentally provoke her wrath.
“Can you stand?”
The doctor sounded stern and yet caring – Jack had seen that voice work on frightened aliens and deadly wounded Stargate soldiers, and now he saw it work on their current newcomers as well. The boy – Edward – nodded carefully, before taking the offered hand – he used his left hand – to pull himself up.
He swayed.
“Careful!” Janet was immediately by his side, steadying him.
Jack did his best to keep his grin hidden, but there was something unfortunately hilarious about the feral boy with his golden eyes and animalistic snarl being barely an inch taller than Dr. Fraser. Maybe later he would make a joke about it.
“I’m alright. I’m fine. Check on Al. He- why hasn’t he woken up yet?”
Edward was still swaying precariously, but it became quickly evident that he wouldn’t let anyone help him – not as long as his brother was still laying on the floor of the gateway, out cold. The kid agreed to lean against the railing, clutching the metal like a lifeline, while he watched Dr. Fraser kneel next to Alphonse.
“He’s breathing, and his pulse is steady. If I had to guess, I mean, he is rather thin… I’d say the shock of the wormhole was too much for his system, so he lost consciousness.”
“What- what does that mean?”
Whenever he talked about his brother, Edward suddenly lost quite a lot of his feral edge. He appeared young – younger maybe even than his fifteen or sixteen years of age – when he asked after his brother’s health.
It reminded Jack of- No. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t go down that road. Not in the middle of a mission, not in the middle of yet another intergalactic incident.
Janet smiled at Edward and said, “I’m sure he’ll be fine. His body simply needs some rest”.
Reassured that Dr. Fraser had the situation under control, Jack finally stepped away from the gateway. His team followed. They watched – from a few feet away – as two members of the medical staff carried Alphonse down the gateway and onto a gurney, Edward hot on their heels. Now that he was walking, Jack saw that his first assessment had been right: something was wrong with Edward’s left leg and right arm.
The boy was limping horribly, his left leg completely stiff and unyielding. His right arm was pressed against his stomach, and yet he still refused every offer of help Janet threw his way.
Stubborn bastard.
Jack recognized a likeminded idiot when he saw one.
“So, campers, what is your take-away from this informative morning spent not using the Stargate for its intended mission?”
Jack’s question fulfilled its intended purpose: his team’s focus immediately switched to him, all of them ready to report what they had observed.
“I do not think it is wise to underestimate them, O’Neill. There is much we do not know about them. Their arrival was brought by a malfunction on our side of the Gate. It would be unwise to forget that.”
Teal’c was right, of course. Jack nodded. He would make sure not to forget the potential danger – especially since their outward appearance didn’t automatically mean that they were actually kids. Age and appearance were factors the Goa’uld had manipulated more than once in the time Jack had traversed the universe with the help of the Stargate.
Jack couldn’t let himself be fooled. Not again.
“Captain Carter?”
“I don’t think they ended up on our site of the Gate on purpose, sir. I can tell they are not Goa’ulds, and the confusion on Edward’s face was genuine, as was his fear for his brother. Though I agree with Teal’c on the potential dangers – we really need to figure out why the iris opened up on its own. They didn’t have a Stargate clearance code, not if General Hammond could immediately identify them as hostiles.”
“They might only appear to be children. For all we know, they might be sixty years of age.” Teal’c’s words echoed Jack’s thoughts, even if his heart didn’t believe them.
But nevertheless, he nodded. He had heard her, and he would respect her opinion. That only left… Daniel appeared to be lost in thought, his eyes tense as they always were when he tried to figure out an idea.
“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh, I think this is fascinating.”
“Why? And what? Share your big brain thoughts with the rest of the class, please.”
“Oh, of course.” Slowly a smile bloomed on the linguist’s face, “You see… the fact that their names sound Anglican is a fascinating detail. Most cultures we encounter through the Gate are influenced by Ancient Egyptian languages and proto-European linguistic traces. Which means their names are based on ancient naming practices and don’t follow modern Western naming conventions. Especially since Egyptian cultures – from what we can tell – didn’t have surnames. But Edward and Alphonse do have last names – now, some scholars think that the Chinese used surnames in 2000 BCE to create family classes, and even in middle eastern regions we can attest to last names being used in 1800 BCE. But the first proto-last names used in the regions the Ancients first settled in were based on the ‘son of’, ‘daughter of’ system still used in many countries today, Scandinavia being one example. Last names how Edward and Alphonse have them-“
“Get to the point, Daniel!”
“I don’t think they were placed on their homeworld by the Goa’uld. I’m not even sure they are of human-descend at all.”
Daniel fell silent, and with him did the rest of SG-1. That was a monumental revelation, if it turned out to be true. There were other factors at hand, of course. Maybe the Ancients had been the ones to first displace Edward and Alphonse’s people, or they had once again a parallel world situation at their hands.
Jack really hoped it wasn’t the latter.
The parallel world thingy had sucked.
As if to proof Daniel’s point, the intercom once again demanded their attention:
“Colonel O’Neill report to the medical unit. Colonel O’Neill report to the medical unit.”
Jack didn’t have to look behind him to know his team was following him out of the room and towards another mystery.
Janet greeted them with a tired smile, and an exhausted slump to her shoulders, “Hey, can one of you try to talk to Edward? He won’t let me take a look at his leg. He agreed to the bloodwork once I explained that it’s a standard procedure, and everything seems fine so far, no traces of nano-machines or naquadah. But I need to do a physical to make sure he’s really OK”.
“Does that mean he knows what bloodwork is? Vaccines? Intravenous medication? Oh my, this is truly-“ Daniel piped in.
Jack chose to ignore him – Janet was already giving him that look that said ‘Jackson, keep your priorities straight!’.
Instead, Jack turned around to look at Sam. The captain only raised a quizzical eyebrow, no doubt ready to complain about the assumption that care-work frequently ended up in her hands, but before she should speak, Teal’c said:
“Captain Carter managed to elicit a positive response from the boy far easier than Daniel Jackson did. It might be worth a try.”
“What he said.” Jack agreed.
Not that it really mattered in the end – all five of them followed Dr. Fraser into the examination room. There were two beds. One of them was inhabited by Alphonse, the boy still deeply asleep, now with an IV connecting him to a saline solution. The other bed was empty – Jack could see where Dr. Fraser had attempted to coax the boy into bed, but from the way Edward was perched on the chair next to his brother’s bed, it had been a useless endeavor.
While Alphonse had lost the overcoat and the boots, his thin chest visible through the white shirt clinging to his chest, Edward was still huddled in the red monstrosity, a glare etched deeply into his face. He didn’t appear to be happy to see them.
“Hello Edward.” Sam said.
The boy’s gaze softened somewhat when his eyes fell on the captain. Hah, so they’d made the right call! In his head, Jack padded Teal’c on the back. Good intuition, that man.
“Hello, ‘Owptmahn Carter.”
Huh.
Now that was unexpected.
Apparently, the boy had reacted well to Carter’s rank – and that even though his distain for the military had been visible from a hundred feet away.
“What do you want?”
Ah, there was the distrust Jack had come to expect.
“Janet – Dr. Fraser told us you won’t let her take a look at your leg. We can’t help you, if you won’t show us.”
Sam smiled at Edward, the same way she usually smiled at Cassandra – unguarded, friendly, and full of respect. Maybe that’s why kids liked her so much: she never treated them like inferior people. Or maybe they liked her because it was impossible not to like Sam Carter.
“There is nothing to help.”, came the short answer.
“You don’t know that until you give us a chance to prove you wrong.”
Edward had started to turn away, but at Sam’s words he snapped around to stare at them in genuine bafflement. It wasn’t hope that Jack could see in his giant eyes – no, it was amusement.
“Oh, do you have a ‘Owtomailrepara’teur at hand? Is one of you a Mahgyr? Or a Prot’esanbower? I didn’t think so.”
Lots of words the Gate hadn’t translated. Jack didn’t have to turn around to know that Daniel was already working through every possible language he spoke in order to find a common linguistic root. Right now, whatever was happening between Sam and Edward was more interesting either way.
The boy sounded angry when he answered, but Jack knew he wasn’t imagining the dark humor shining bright in his golden gaze.
“Do you need a special doctor for you leg, Edward? We have many specialists here at base. I am sure we can find someone who can help you.”
“Spe- spechalists?”
“People who are very good at one specific thing.”
“Huh.”
Mirth had been replaced by contemplation. Jack could watch as the boy weighted his options, before he shrugged and said, “Okay”.
He then continued to do something extremely unexpected. Edward leaned forward in his chair, until his hands could reach the inner seam of his dark pants – were they leather pants? Oh my! The boy wore leather pants! Jack was delighted – where he… apparently hid a zipper? Jack wasn’t quite sure what was happening right now.
“You don’t-! You can just show Dr. Fraser, really!” Sam tried to stop the teenager from whatever the hell it was he was doing.
Too late.
Edward unzipped his pants up to his mid-thigh, before reaching below the fabric. There was a soft click audible and then… and then he was holding most of his left leg in his hands. Gleaming metal and an elegant design greeted them, when Ed pulled off what could only be a prosthetic leg. Jack wasn’t a mechanic and had no eye for technical things, but even he could see that this was a thing of beauty. The knee joint was delicately crafted, the shin protected by multiple plates of what looked like steel. The foot was hidden by Edward’s boot, but there was no doubt it was just as well done.
They were staring.
All five of them.
Edward looked deeply unimpressed.
“What? Never seen an amputee before?”
Of course, the Gate translated that perfectly.
“I take you don’t have a ‘Owtomailrepara’teur here? I think the Circle destroyed some of the internal mechanisms.”
Edward said ‘the Circle’ the exact same way they said ‘the Gate’. Jack had no idea what to do with that information, but he filed it in case they needed it later.
Dr. Fraser was the first to recover. She looked at Edward as if he hadn’t just pulled one of his legs off his body, her fierce gaze firmly trained on the boy’s face.
“Is your prosthetic the only thing that got hurt during the transfer? Is your stump okay? I’ll admit, I am not a surgeon and I rarely deal with amputations or prosthetics, but if there is something you need, I’d rather you tell me now.”
“Well, since I doubt you have a Arsat’sbain, I would really appreciate it if someone gave me a crutch. And if you idiots could stop staring at me.”
Edward’s piercing glare was directed at Jack. The boy seemed to have a problem with him – though Jack had the strong suspicion it was more his rank and authority, than his actual personality that stepped on Edward’s toes.
Toes of which he had only five because he was missing a leg.
Well, maybe Edward knew where he lost it, in which case it would be simply gone and not truly missing.
Jack stopped his train of thought before he accidentally said something out loud.
“I fear the boy is right. Thank you for your help, Samantha. Jack. I can handle the rest myself – especially now that Edward is actually talking to me.” The last bit of Janet’s speech was directed at Edward, and Jack winced in sympathy as the doctor’s reprimand hit.
Edward nodded reluctantly.
“I am sure General Hammond would like to be debriefed as well.”
Now that was a dismissal if Jack had ever heard one.
“Sure. We’ll get going, then. And thanks again, Janet. Keep an eye on them. Daniel? Get to work on their language. Teal’c and Captain Carter? With me.”
They left the medical unit just as Edward started cursing behind them. Jack didn’t know just what Janet had asked Edward to do, or what exactly the English versions of all of these curses where, but there was one thing Jack was sure off:
Janet had her work cut out for her.
General Hammond listened to them debrief as if he hadn’t watched all of it unfold from the control room in real time. The man sat behind his desk, hands folded on the faded wood varnish, a frown on his face, as if this was an everyday occurrence.
Well, in a way it was.
No mission ever went according to plan.
At least it wasn’t flesh-eating microbe aliens. Yet.
“So?” he asked, as if he was inquiring about the weather.
Jack was tempted to tell him that the clouds hadn’t dispersed quite yet, but there was a high probability of sun and temperatures in the low 80s.
Instead of this genius display of his wit though, Jack simply said, “It’s unlikely they are hostiles, sir. They appear to be around sixteen years of age and show age-appropriate behavior. Edward has a physical disability, something the Goa’uld have only ever shown distain for, and his brother – from what little I could see – doesn’t appear all that healthy, either”.
“Could it be another virus?”
“Unlikely, sir.” Now it was Sam who had taken the reigns from him. “Edward’s and Alphonse’s symptoms are very different, and the preliminary screening Dr. Fraser did showed no such anomalies. There is, of course, always a chance that it is something we have simply never encountered before, but as of right now, I don’t think a virus poses another threat.”
“So, you would classify them as harmless? What about their homeworld?”
With a sigh the general leaned back, as if he couldn’t wait for them to sway him with their argumentation. Jack knew most of that was for show. The general was deeply invested in the happenings inside the base, especially its security.
“Personally, I don’t think they’re a threat. We know very little about their homeworld yet, but for our purposes they might really just be teenagers with a lot of bad luck.” Jack said.
“What about the iris opening?”
“Might be unrelated or unintentional. Captain?”
“I would be more concerned with the fact that we were unable the redial the coordinates the two boys came from.”
Sam had left shortly to check up on the control room when they’d made their way to the general’s office, and now she was frowning, recalling a truly troubling tidbit of information.
“Isn’t that a sign of probable hostile action?” Hammond raised a very unimpressed eyebrow. Maybe the man had taken lessons from Teal’c on how to use minimal mimic for maximum effect.
“I don’t think so. It’s more likely their Gate was simply broken or malfunctioning – Daniel theorized that they might come from a colony not founded by the Goa’uld… maybe even something a lot older than any of the other earth-based societies we’ve met so far. Remember that second Stargate in Antarctica? We managed to fall through that one, but we couldn’t dial back out and you guys couldn’t dial in.”
Jack wasn’t quite sure why he decided to play the devil’s advocate for these kids. Edward had been nothing but rude to him so far, and his brother was a sleeping figure without a voice or a personality. And yet… maybe it was because they reminded him of his son, or it was because there was some shred of human decency still left in his soul, but Jack couldn’t just treat them like the enemy. Slightly annoying pests? Yeah, that’s how Jack dealt with Daniel, and he called the man one of his best friends.
“Very well.”
General Hammond was smiling, and not for the first time Jack realized how lucky they’d gotten with the commander of Cheyenne mountain. While he could be a hard-ass and a stickler for the rules, more often than not the general knew to trust his people. And in turn, Jack respected him.
“I still want all of you to be on guard. We can’t afford another incident; our funding is up in the air as it is. Treat them like civilian evacuees – maybe we can see about rehoming them, if we can’t get their Gate to work.”
While Hammond had been speaking, the door to his office opened. Through stepped Dr. Fraser, a frown starkly visible on her face. The woman wasn’t happy, Jack could tell that much.
Damn.
He could have really used a day without an incident.
“Yes? Dr. Fraser?” General Hammond said.
“Sir!” Janet saluted. “I don’t think they’re civilians. Or at least… I don’t think Edward is.”
“Why? He’s a kid!” Jack couldn’t help himself; the exclamation had left his mouth before he could push his incredulity back down.
“After you left, Jack, the boy allowed me to examine him. His shoulder was obviously still bothering him, so I asked him to undress. It was… there is heavy scarring all over his body. His right shoulder looks as if someone tried to saw off his arm and very nearly succeeded.”
Jack grimaced – that sounded horrific.
“Edward said it’s an old injury from a bombing in his hometown. The same bombing during which he apparently lost his leg.” Janet continued.
“That doesn’t necessarily make them anything besides civilians, Dr. Fraser.”
“I know, sir. It’s just… those aren’t Edward’s only injuries. While the scarring around his leg port and his mangled shoulder appears to be at least five years old, the scarring on his torso is fresher. It looks as if he’s been impaled. When I asked he wouldn’t tell me where he got it, but he knew what vaccines were when I told him I had to give him a few shots to make sure earth diseases wouldn’t wreak havoc on his immune system.”
Teal’c had wandered away from their little group to stare out of the window in Hammond’s office, seemingly uninterested in their inane debate. At Dr. Fraser’s words, however, the Jaffa looked up.
“The knowledge of such medical intricacies is not something the Goa’uld share freely with their subjects. Only high-ranking officers or researchers are ever allowed to know about such advanced technology.”
“Still not proof that they’re military, especially if they’re not from a Goa’uld world.” Sam countered.
“I know. And I would have dropped the topic, if I hadn’t noticed the countless defensive scars on Edward’s left arm – and the heavy scarring on his knuckles. I asked him if he fought a lot, and his only response was to throw his head back and laugh. Then he said something I am pretty sure is a swear word in his native tongue. Something about doing someone else’s dirty work.”
“And why didn’t you lead with that?” The smile had vanished from General Hammond’s face. Now the man was once again leaning back in his heavy leather chair, a frown on his face.
Dr. Fraser had an answer, alright.
“I didn’t want to create the wrong image. Alphonse has no such scars anywhere on his body, even if he appears to be recovering from extreme emaciation. Edward said his little brother just turned sixteen and he’s seventeen. They’re kids – even if… even if Edward has seen combat, if he was a soldier or a Jaffa or a mercenary… it was clearly traumatizing and it left its scars on him.”
“And yet it is information we should have been immediately made aware off. Where is the boy now?”
“I left him with Dr. Jackson. Edward appeared to recognize one of the artifacts from P3W-924 as a cipher – Daniel was delighted.” Janet said it with a distinct air of defiance.
She liked Edward, Jack noted. She was just as amused by the boy’s antics and weird behavior as Jack was trying not to be. Hell, it would be a mess, if the boy truly turned out to be one of the bad guys. Jack had already lost enough kids – it would be painful to face yet another innocent life lost to this insane war of theirs.
Even if Edward’s innocence was currently the thing being questioned.
Jack could see the need to say something on General Hammond’s face, but before the man in question could utter a single word, a surprising voice broke through the tension in the room:
“Is there a way to access the security footage of the strangers’ arrival?” Teal’c was still standing by the window – the window overseeing the gateroom – staring intently at something no one else had noticed.
“Um, yes. Why?” Sam’s voice was cautious, as if she wasn’t sure she truly wanted to know what it was Teal’c had to say.
Jack could understand the feeling.
“Because I want to verify whether or not Edward had his knife when he first arrived or if he somehow created it at a later point in time.”
“What? What do you mean, Teal’c?” Jack said, his jaw aching from how hard he was grinding his teeth.
Teal’c turned around to look at them, his eyes all-knowing and secretive all at once. Jack had no idea what the expression on his face was supposed to tell him, he just knew he wasn’t going to like it.
“Something warped the metal of the gateway, and I have the suspicion that it was Edward Elric, who did this.”
Yeah, Jack hated it.
Jack couldn’t shake the afterimages from the grainy security footage video Harriman had shown then earlier. In it Teal’c’s suspicions had been proven right: not only had Edward and Alphonse been without a weapon when they first fell through the Stargate, Edward had created the knife out of nothing – well, that wasn’t quite right.
Captain Carter – and she was truly Captain Carter right now – had taken a look at the gateway, and she saw what Teal’c had first noticed: the exact spot where Edward had knelt, there was a dent in the metal. It looked grainy and as if someone had clawed the metal out of its frame to then reform it. The knife Edward had created had similar marks – only they didn’t look as if they’d been formed by hand. If anything, they reminded Jack of this game, Tetris, that was quite the hype around base right now.
It was like nothing Jack had ever seen before – even worse, it was like nothing Teal’c had ever seen before.
So much for treating them like civilian evacuees, Jack thought as they marched down the long hallways towards the medical unit. Now not even General Hammond’s good-natured ignorance would allow them to ignore the potential threat to their base.
Edward had created a weapon out of nothing, and they had no idea how he did it. They didn’t even know if he could do it again – worse, if he could create larger, more dangerous weapons as well.
Jack was flanked by both Teal’c and Sam, a group of soldiers following them at a distance in case this situation turned hostile. Dr. Fraser was walking in front of them, her shoulders squared. Jack knew she hated her part in this – Jack couldn’t even blame her. He would hate himself a little too, if he was forced to go against his profession’s integrity like this.
She was the one who opened the doors to the medical unit – and the examination room currently inhabited by two teenagers. Maybe she did it to keep them from barging in like a freight train – or maybe she did it so the first face Edward would see was that of a friend.
Jack didn’t really care.
He mostly just wanted to get this situation over with.
He hated the missions where it was kids. He fucking hated them.
Edward looked up from his place next to Alphonse’s bed – a crutch was leaning against the bedframe, his metal leg still placed on top of the unused mattress on the other side of the room. Daniel was on that side as well, furiously writing something in his notebook, an artifact – some stone or another, Jack wasn’t really sure, and he really didn’t care – in his hands. Why the thing had been laying around here, he didn’t even want to know.
The true surprise, however, came in the form of Alphonse Elric, who had apparently woken up. And was now staring at them with intelligent and curious eyes (just as cat-like as those of his brother).
Jack didn’t even get a chance to speak before the younger boy turned around to address Edward:
“What did you do now, Brother?”
“Hey! Nothing! I am unschuldig! An Innocent! I have never done anything wrong in my life!”
“Sure…” Alphonse wielded sarcasm like the best army generals Jack had encountered during the gulf war. Didn’t solve their problem though, even if Jack immediately found him congenial.
“We have some questions for you. Important questions. Questions that might have consequences if we find out you lied to us.” Jack’s words were harsh, but he didn’t know how else to push forward. They were kids. Funny, arrogant, lost kids. Potential weapons. Potential danger.
Sometimes he really hated his job.
“Ah, you are military, I see.” Alphonse said with a small smile on his face.
“I told you so.”
Edward crossed his arms like petulant child and rolled his eyes.
Neither seemed to be impressed with Jack’s Colonel O’Neill posture. Well, it’d been worth a try.
“Who are you and how did you come through the Gate? Why did you come through the Gate? And how did you get the iris to open?” Jack asked.
Behind him Daniel had abandoned his research in order to ask Sam what the hell was going on. His subordinates knew how to be quiet, so Jack didn’t let their inaudible whispers distract him. Teal’c was his trusted shadow – and Dr. Fraser was leaning against the wall as if to make sure Jack behaved.
Damn it, woman.
He wasn’t about to use excessive force on a bunch of kids.
“The Gate? Is that what you call the Circle?” Alphonse asked.
“Most likely, yes! Which is an interesting linguistic distinction, don’t you think? Circles and gateways aren’t usually linked in most Western iconographies – that is more of an Eastern imagery.”
It was quite obvious that neither Edward nor Alphonse had understood much of what Daniel had just said, but apparently, they’d grasped the baseline information: their Circle was the Stargate.
“Ow’f de G’fahr hin, that you don’t believe us… but we don’t know. How we got here. Wherever the fick here is. Because none of you have answered our questions either.”
Edward’s glare was truly a force to be reconned with – but Jack has served in a war. Hell, he’d seen more horrors beyond human comprehension than just about anyone. Except maybe Daniel and Teal’c.
“You came through the Stargate. Unauthorized – that means without us allowing you to do so. A Stargate is a gate between two different ends of a wormhole. It crosses large distances in space between different planets and worlds. An ancient civilization built these gates many, many years ago and then colonized the galaxy. You are from one of these colonies and somehow, you’ve come here.” Sam managed to dumb the explanation down without making it sound as if she was talking to a couple of idiots – once again Jack was almost painfully grateful for his team.
Nothing he could have said, would have sounded so sincere and yet understandable.
Maybe he should try and be less sarcastic.
Nah, where would be the fun in that?
“So, we’re on another planet?” Alphonse said carefully.
“Yes.”
“This is no longer Amestris? Or no… we were in Xerxes when- huh. This might just be the weirdest thing that ever happened to us, Brother.”
“And I thought I knew what laid on the other side of the Tore der Wahrheit.”
Both Edward and Alphonse appeared to be shocked – but not as shaken or outraged as Jack had expected them to be. After all, they were in a different world! Maybe they were really enemy spies and slowly their masks were slipping. He didn’t really want to entertain that option.
“Hey, back on track, kiddos! Why and how did you end up here? You clearly know what the Stargate looks like, hell, I bet you remember the events leading to your departure from Xer-something, even if you don’t understand just what happened. So, tell us.”
Edward might glare like a feral tomcat, but Jack had bullheaded his way to a promotion to Colonel. He knew how to intimidate, and he knew how to get what he wanted – even if a couple of extraterrestrial teenagers made it harder than it should be.
The brothers shared a long look – they were close, almost painfully so – before Edward squared his shoulders and spoke:
“Okay. I am only telling you this because we want information as well. Equivalent Exchange. You give some, I give some.”
“Sure. Yes, let’s do this.”
Jack didn’t have to turn around to know that Daniel had gotten hold of his notebook once more, undoubtedly jotting down ever word the weird Gate magic hadn’t automatically translated by phonetics alone.
“We were recovering at home from- well, from freeing Alphonse from the prison that is at fault for his current state-“
“Hey!” Alphonse’s indignant cry wasn’t loud or angry enough to actually stop Edward’s explanation.
“When Ohbears’t Mustang contacted us. He told us that someone had found a weird stone thing in the desert. In Xerxes. He wanted us to know because our Forvähter are from there. And Al and I… we were recovering, getting better. We were ready to travel again. So, we thought: nothing dangerous about looking at a few old stone ruins, right? Well, we were verdammt wrong.”
“The excavation site was deep underground. Deeper even than the oldest buildings of Xerxes. A stone ring, a lot like the Circle you have here. Brother and I, we observed it, wrote down our findings, our interpretations of the symbols on the circle. They were nothing like the arcane symbols we knew. We thought- well, we thought we might have found an ancient form of the K’oonst der Alkemy.”
“We thought wrong.”
It was creepy how well the brothers worked together, Jack thought, even as his mind was examining their words. There was a lot missing – but Jack had the distinct impression that they wouldn’t react well to him prying. Not that the information they had offered, wasn’t extremely interesting.
Multiple cultures.
No, even better: enough time had passed since this colony had settled there that people had forgotten about the Gate.
“The ruins of Xerxes?” Daniel interrupted the silence. “So, there was a culture build on top of the Gate, and even that culture has since gone extinct… but that means… at least three thousand years of no Goa’uld contact. If we can even apply our standards for the rise and fall of empires, I mean-“
“What Daniel means to say, is that that might be the reason you found the Gate but that doesn’t explain how you ended up here?” Jack cut of the linguist before he could get too deep into the topic at hand.
The brothers shared another look, something complicated happening between them. Jack was sure they were discussing just what level of trust they wanted to offer the SG-1 solely with a twitch of their eyebrows. In the end it was Alphonse who answered:
“We were looking at the symbols, when Brother had a rather… stupid idea. Well, I agreed, so I guess we were both being stupid. We tried to use a simple Transmutationsmatrix to figure out what the symbols meant – only our K’oonst der Alkemy backfired… It wasn’t a rebound, instead of hitting us, it activated the Circle – blue light, weird energy field… you know the rest.”
Edward only rolled his eyes when his brother called him stupid. Jack knew enough about siblings to know that that was truly rather typical behavior. This time around, Jack was pretty sure they had told them everything – not that it answered any of Jack’s questions.
One look over his shoulder and he could tell Sam and Daniel were thinking along the same lines. Even Teal’c seemed contemplative.
“What is this Koons’t der Alkemy? You’ve said it twice now – no, you even linked it to the Gate. Is it a religion? A philosophy? A tradition?”
Daniel had butchered whatever word Alphonse had used so badly; it took Jack a second to understand what he was saying – the Elric brothers were seemingly just as confused. That is, until Edward suddenly scowled, something fiercely decisive in his gaze.
“It’s a science.”
“What?”
“It’s a science. The art of understanding, deconstructing and reconstructing matter. It’s not some stupid belief and it most certainly isn’t magic. It’s a science.”
“A science? Like chemistry, physics? Biology?”
Sam’s question was answered by a couple of careful nods.
“Is that how you created your knife, Edward Elric?” Teal’c’s grave voice cut through the room, until everyone was staring at him.
“You saw that?” the boy answered.
“The video cameras captured your stealthy creation.”
“The what? You know what? Doesn’t matter. Yes, that was K’oonst der Alkemy.“
Edward said it like a battle cry. His brother next to him looked mostly exasperated, but Jack wouldn’t let himself be fooled. Alphonse was ready to defend his brother at a moment’s notice, even if he looked like a strong gust of wind could knock him out. There was something steely in Alphonse’s eyes. Something unyielding and strong.
“Can you show us?” Sam carefully requested.
This was dangerous. The boy could be dangerous. They both could be.
And yet Jack did nothing to stop them.
Alphonse and Edward shared another look, and then Edward nodded, grabbing the second chair next to his brother’s bed with both hands. His eyes found each person in the room, one after the other, to make sure they were all looking at him. That they were watching.
Jack had the distinct feeling that he was about to see something really unique.
“I am only doing it like this because you people don’t know about the K’oonst der Alkemy, but normally I would calculate all of this in my head.” Edward’s hands ghosted over the chair. “Chromium, cellulose, sulfuric acid, lime, chromium sulphate, salt, ammonium chloride, magnesium oxide, ammonium sulphate – transmute.”
Edward clapped his hands together and touched them to the chair once more. Blue electric light filled the small examination room, and after Jack finally managed to blink the static from his sight, the hospital chair was gone. Instead, there was a steal prosthetic on the floor, leather stripes creating a harness at the end connecting to the thigh. It was a simple construction, nothing compared to the leg Edward had unlatched earlier, and yet it was one of the most fantastical things Jack had ever seen: because two minutes ago it hadn’t existed!
“What-?”
There was a lot more he wanted to say, but he simply couldn’t find the words. What the hell had just happened?
“Brother, that wasn’t a very clean transmutation now, was it.” Alphonse didn’t seem to share their shock, especially not with the clear disappointment visible on his face as he pointed at the pieces of fabric and scrap metal decorating the floor next to the brand-new prosthetic.
“I had excess material. Shit like that happens. You know it.”
Edward leaned forward to grab the leg as if he hadn’t just completely turned their world on its head. Jack could see the self-satisfactory smile on Edward’s face, even as the boy acted as if this had been a piece of cake. Maybe it had been. Who was he to say? Because this should be impossible. Was it technology? Some sort of nanodevice? Something the Ancients had created and then forgotten about? Or maybe another alien race?
“How did you do that?” Sam sounded almost angry.
“I told you. The art of understanding, deconstructing and reconstructing matter. A science. Not easy, I’ll admit, but not impossible either.”
“Can everyone in your homeworld do that? Is this- how?” Daniel didn’t seem any better off than Sam. There was wonder and horror and curiosity battling for dominance on his face. It was a look Jack knew too well.
Sometimes it frightened him.
“Not everyone. People have better things to do than spend their life studying a small fraction of science that is only useful if you’re very good at it. But theoretically everyone can learn it. Many people know a simple transmutation or two. Something they can calculate at will.”
Alphonse said this as if it was a fact of life, as if it was normal to turn a chair into a crude – but working – prosthetic.
“So, everyone can do it?” Jack asked again.
“As long as you have a gate.” Edward answered. “But everyone has a gate, so everyone can do it.”
A gate.
Now if that didn’t sound ominous.
“You called the Stargate a circle, and yet you claim the key to this science is a gate?” Daniel’s eyes were piercing daggers of intellectual hunger.
“The circle is the matrix in which an alkemist’ische calculation takes place. The symbols in the matrix represent the chemical variables present in the transmutation. It’s math, but with a more complex understanding of the variables within the equation. That’s what your Stargate looks like. Like a circle with a matrix that conveys specific information and calculates an energy transfer that allows for specific things to happen – in this case the travel between worlds.”
Jack was almost too busy collecting his jaw from the floor, to hear Edward’s self-satisfied “Oh, didn’t I tell you? We’re geniuses” in the face of Alphonse’s scarily accurate observation. Not that he was the only one completely baffled: Daniel and Sam had the same shocked expression as Dr. Fraser and Teal’c had raised one of his very expressive eyebrows in surprise.
“A gate, on the other hand-“ Edward continued. “Is the connection between a men’schleche soul and the universe. The everything. The nothing. The All and the One. You and also me. This gate allows us to connect to the universe, to understand its flow and to change it – as long as we understand it, we may deconstruct and reconstruct it. That’s what the K’oonst of Alkemy is. The inherit understanding of the flow of the universe and our place within it. Alkemist sei doo für da’s Volke.”
All of this sounded a lot like esoteric bullshit to Jack, but a look at Daniel – and Sam – told him that there might be more to the topic than he could grasp. The tension was once again raising in the room, Edward’s gaze heavy and stifling.
He looked ancient, just now, his bright golden eyes shadowed by a knowledge Jack couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
So, he didn’t even try.
Instead, he simply said, “Wow, that was a lot of big words for a shrimp like you”.
Alphonse’s “uh oh” was drowned by his brother’s yelling.
“I will kill you! I will rip your head straight off your shoulders and feed it to the crows in front of the Zentralkommission!”
Jack barely had the time to react before Edward jumped up from his chair and stepped into Jack’s personal space. The boy was a good eight inches smaller than him, and it should have been comical, instead it was vaguely threatening.
Not that Jack had a lot of time to contemplate the situation he’d found himself in – Teal’c had acted immediately, stepping in front of Jack and raising his hands in a defense stance to protect him from Edward. Alphonse on the other hand had reached out in a senseless effort to calm his brother down. The long-suffering expression on his face told Jack everything he needed to know – this was a frequent occurrence.
“Edward Elric! Stand down!” Teal’c was a force to be reconned with and yet it barely did anything to dissuade Edward from his assault on Jack – the boy had drawn back his left arm as if he was planning on punching Jack.
“Brother! Stop it! They are military – and they aren’t like the Ob’bears’t! You could get court-martialed – and then think what Winry would say. Or our Lehrmeisterin!”
Edward seemed to contemplate his brother’s words, before lowering his arm and stepping away from the unified front Jack and Teal’ had just presented. He was still scowling, and he showed all his teeth when he spit “Don’t call me short, Arschgeige!”.
“Brother!” came Alphonse’s quick reprimand. “I am so sorry for him. He grew up in the military and sometimes I fear it shows.”
He shrugged in the universal gesture of ‘what can you do’.
“Grew up in the military?” Jack really wished his ears had suddenly stopped functioning. Maybe he had misheard. It must be a misunderstanding, right? The translation mumbo-jumbo was certainly not up to much this time round. And yet…
“Oh, yes. Brother is the youngest Staa’tsalkemist of the Amestrian military. What is your official title?” Alphonse sounded as if he wasn’t sure if he should be bragging or crying.
Jack was right there with him. He had no idea what a Schtahtsalkemyst was, but he had certainly understood the implications. He really wished he didn’t.
“Vollmetal? Duh?” Edward said with a nod in the direction of his prosthetic leg.
“No, you idiot! I don’t mean your alkemisten title, I mean your rank.”
“Oh, Major. Major Edward Elric, though if the Ohbears’t calls me that one more time just to get his promotion to general faster, I’ll transmute the mustache off his stupid verficktem face.”
“Major. You are a Major. As the military rank above Captain. As the military rank directly below Colonel?” Jack’s outrage felt like a physical thing. He was caught somewhere between disbelief (this arrogant, annoying, witty child was somehow of a higher rank than Captain Sam Carter?) and horror (if he was a Major at seventeen when had he joined the military? Why had nobody stopped him? What the hell was going on in that homeworld of theirs?).
“Um, Jack… there is a distinct possibility the Gate is mistranslating here. It is very unlikely that their military ranks and ours directly correlate – most likely the Gate is simply taking similar concepts and translating them in ways that both our groups can understand. While, yes, it is very likely that Edward was in a military-like organization with a strictly hierarchal structure, there is nothing to indicate that it is anything like the US military complex. Or that their rank system even works the same way.”
Daniel’s voice was a balm for his fraying nerves – now if the linguist only managed to look as if he believed the words falling from his lips.
“What does it matter?” Edward asked, real confusion written on his face.
“What does what matter?”
“If I have a military rank or not? Al only told you to brag, to make you take us more seriously, but the only thing I want to know is how we can get back home.”
“Well, it matters to us if the world we’re sending you back to is using child soldiers to do their dirty work!”
Jack really tried to get his anger back under control, his nails biting into the palm of his hands because he was clenching them so hard. And yet, his voice shook from the force of his barely controlled outrage. His son hadn’t died because of someone else’s gun – and yet Jack never stopped feeling as if that had been the case.
He couldn’t stand by and let a couple of kids walk back towards their death.
“I joined the military to make up for a mistake I made when I was young and stupid. I am still part of the military because it is surprisingly hard to resign as a Staa’tsalkemist after a coup. I only ever did it to protect those I love. You do not get to invalidate my choices and my decisions. Many of them weren’t good – but they were always mine to make.”
Edward held steady eye contact with Jack as he spoke. Not once did his voice waver, his resolve soften. He spoke like an adult – Jack wanted to grieve for his lost childhood.
“Brother and I aren’t blind to the faults of the military, O’Neill. We have seen the death and the destruction they can bring. But we are not defenseless to their whims either. We do not endorse their actions. For most of our time – of Brother’s time with the military, it was an equivalent exchange of resources and manpower, if you will. And now? Now, we’re waiting for the Ohbears’t to become general, so Ed can resign peacefully without some maniac following us home.” Alphonse’s voice was cool silver, where Edward’s had been burning gold.
Jack wanted to shake some sense into the brothers, but their eyes were hard coins of polished metal. There would be no convincing them – they’d made up their minds years ago, and Jack wanted nothing more than strangle whoever had told them that the military was their only option.
Even if it was a mistranslation from the Gate.
“Speaking off… we tried dialing your Gate earlier and it wouldn’t work. I don’t understand your- your science well enough to make even an educated guess, but from what I can tell whatever brought you here – it has never happened before.”
Sam pushed past Jack, as if she thought his anger was undeserving. Or maybe she simply did it because she thought the boys deserved to hear the news from someone who knew what they were talking about.
“Are you saying you don’t know if you can send us back home?” It was Alphonse who put it together first, but it was Edward who reacted with a sharp gasp and a horrified shake of his head.
“No. That can’t be- if we found our way here, we should be able to make our way back, right? That’s how your Stargate works?”
“You know, Brother, that not every transmutation is reversible.”
There was a lot of history behind Alphonse’s words – a history Jack couldn’t even dare to understand.
“But we’ve never let that stop us.” Edward answered.
“And we’ve never let that stop us.” Echoed Alphonse.
“And it’s not even written in stone!” Sam forced her way back into the conversation. “There is a very real chance we try again, and it works! Or we find a new method and then we can send you back home – this is just… a small setback. Something to keep in mind. If you want to go home – and if you don’t pose a threat to the SG-1 and our planet – we’ll stop at nothing to get you back through the Gate to where you belong.”
“And until then-“ Jack hadn’t even noticed Daniel crossing the room. The linguist was smiling, even if everyone could see just how strained it was, “Until then, see this as a unique scientific experience! You’re both researchers, right? This can be a learning experience – you traveled across the universe! You stepped foot on another planet! I am sure there is some valuable scientific exchange to be won from all this!”
His team was trying to comfort the boys the best way they knew how to: by being their scientific nerdy selves. It was only then that the weight of the situation finally hit Jack.
His anger at the idea of child soldiers had been so all-consuming, it hadn’t really registered until now… but the Elric brothers might truly be stuck on this side of the Gate. If they didn’t succeed in dialing their home address through (un)conventional means, they would probably never see their homeworld again. And it appeared as if they had some people on the other side that they’d miss if they failed to come home.
Damn.
Shit.
Stranded on a different planet wasn’t really a fate Jack wished on anyone.
“Yes.” He said, the anger drained out of him until only exhaustion was left. “We’ll help you. We’ll do everything in our power to get you back home.”
(and if he had to beat up some military asshats when they did that was nobody’s business but Jack’s)
The Elric brothers greeted his declaration with faces carved out of steel. They were an interesting pair, Jack contemplated. Both golden and bright, and yet so vastly different. One was made from hot coals and tarnished steel, while the other was a pressed diamond hidden behind soft smiles. Only their resolve was the same – nothing short of the end of the world could stop them from reaching their goal.
Unfortunately – or maybe quite fortunately – the world threatened to end every other Friday here at SG-1.
“We will find a way back home.” Alphonse promised.
“Our loved ones are waiting for us after all. I can’t make Winry cry again – and I still owe the Ohbears’t some money.” Edward said those words with a smile, as if this was truly just a short diversion and not the end of their life as they knew it.
Just this once, Jack chose to believe them.
“Well, then let’s get to work.”