Renewal

“Well kids, it is now a lovely early morning on P4X-778! Home of the ever-present trees, mineral samples, lots and lots of ruins to play with and ... huh, Easter eggs?” Hell, they were everywhere! Whereever there was shelter there was at least one… ball. Jack took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. Under the closest shrub, just in front of him were a bunch of pastel-coloured spheres. He bent down to take a closer look and guessed that the smallest one was roughly thirty centimeters in diameter, with the largest one he saw to be about forty-five. There was a pink, blue and purple one under this plant, but looking around he could see that they also came in yellow, green and orange.

He could hear Daniel asking Carter, “Sam? Were they picked up by the MALP? What are the chances of these being the source of the mineral deposits?”

Seeing as these little babies were everywhere, Jack was more than welcoming that idea. It’d be easier to harvest rather than mine, and was about to say so when he turned around.

“Daniel! Carter!”

Both were about ten meters away, each holding a sphere in their hand. They gave one another a quick look of irritation and then zeroed in on his direction. Both were looking at him with identical expressions of annoyance.

“What’s the problem, Jack?”

“You know, Daniel… We keep coming to the same conversation about not touching anything, least of all the unusual kind, until every single blade of grass has been cleared. Yet here you and Carter are holding these… things.” His hand did a little dance while pointing towards the ball that was in Daniel’s grasp. He had no idea what to call them, except for balls… or spheres. “Could you tell us what they are, Carter?”

“Um, they’re balls, Sir.”

That’s it. He had officially broke his Second. The once duty bound officer was making sarcastic remarks to him. He was so proud… not that he was going to let her in on that.

“Balls, Major? What scientific theory did you have to break in order to come to this conclusion?”

And it was evident that she was ready and willing with a reply, “Aht! Don’t want to hear it, Carter. But please, for the sake of my sanity…”

“Sanity, Jack?” Daniel couldn’t help it. How could he not ask the obvious, especially when it was served to him on a silver platter.

Giving Daniel what he had hoped was the evil eye, he continued to say, “For the sake of my sanity and the few strands of my hair that have fought the good fight from turning into a nice shade of grey, please just put those… spheres down, till you know what they really are. OK?”

“For cryin' out loud, Jack!”

Did… did he just say…? “Daniel?”

“Jack!”

“Daniel?” Was he pissed off? Or had something gone horribly wrong already? If something did, would that be a new record? He checked his watch to see that fourteen minutes had gone by since they had arrived through the ‘gate. Nope. Their first mission to Cimmeria still held the title, as everything went to hell in a hand-basket in all of eight minutes. He walked up to where Daniel was to see what was bothering the archeologist.

Daniel took in a deep breath and released it slowly while keeping steady eye contact with the leader of SG-1, “Jack?” he said in a mockingly calm manner, “We’re wearing gloves.”

Um, “What?”

“Gloves, Jack!” And he proved his point by holding up one latex encased hand and began to wave… with only one finger.

Oh.

“Jack, I’ve been meaning to ask this for a long time now. How old do you really think Sam and I are? Cause I was wondering, if I finished off all my veggies at lunch this time, could Sammy and I go out to play in the backyard afterwards? Please? We’ll be good, I promise.”

“Smartass.” Jack decided it was a good time to do a tactical retreat, “Teal’c? I think it’s a good time to walk the perimeter. Don’t want the Wondertwins to be caught unawares by… any dangerous Easter Bunnies. Hell, there has to be more than one to lay this much! You stay here; I’ll go out for the first check.” Teal’c was loosing his touch lately in concealing any emotions, and judging by the smirk he was sporting at the moment, Jack could easily read “Coward” all over his face.

Jack just didn’t get any respect these days.

He was five minutes into the assessment of the area, when Daniel radioed in, “Um, Jack?”

He sounded timid. He hardly ever heard Daniel sound that way… except for a few rare cases when they were in trouble. And those times they were in BIG trouble. Jack stopped walking and radioed back, “Daniel? Is everything alright?”

“Uh, yeah Jack. There was just something I wanted to ask…”

He could still see his team-mates through the trees and bushes, and everything looked fine. Daniel was by the obelisk just a little north of the 'Gate, Carter was taking soil samples from various spots around the immediate area and Teal’c was his usual stoic self… there was nothing to indicate that they were in some kind of trouble, so why was...

“What is it, Daniel?”

“I was just wondering if Sammy and I could have dessert after dinner tonight? You think Teal’c could go ‘round to the store and pick us up some ice cream? Chocolate Chip Mint would be really good, I think. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind going, would ya, Teal’c?”

“DanielJackson.” Teal’c said in a voice that could only be described as severe.

Ha! His plan didn’t work. Instead of following Daniel’s lead, the big guy was gonna give him shit. You took the joke a little too far this time, my friend. He could see the Jaffa walking up to Daniel, no doubt letting the parental guidance inside of him out for a good exercise of verbal discipline.

His radio turned back to life moments later, this time with Teal’c on the other end. “O’Neill.”

“Yeah, Teal’c? What’s up?”

“I would ask that you cease your patronizing of DanielJackson and MajorCarter, it is detrimental to their research.”

Yes, Dad.

“Is that understood, O’Neill?”

What the…? The big guy must really be missing his son right now.

“Sure, Teal’c. Whatever you say,” but he started it!

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“Mmmm, chicken.”

“It’s supposed to be meat loaf, Sam.” The unimpressed, recently-descended archeologist deduced by reading the MRE wrapper.

Sam took another bite of her dinner and had let the taste savor in her mouth for a short while, only to conclude with, “Mmmm, chicken.”

Jack couldn’t help but snort, receiving big grins from his two scientists and the trademarked raise of one eyebrow response from Teal’c. He looked around their campsite. This was turning out to be a quiet mission, though he wasn’t stupid enough to admit it out loud. The SGC wasn’t keeping tabs on the death toll for each member of SG-1 for nothing. There was a philosophical question roaming around the base, “If SG-1 was a bunch of felines, what feline would each of them be?” And then the follow up question, “How many of their nine lives have yet to be used?” So there was a good reason why Jack was always on alert, even while he slept.

And while there didn’t seem to be a threat lurking in the shadows, those… spheres, balls, whatever, were still noticeably all over the place.

“So, Carter? Have you found out what these things are yet?” He held one up for everyone to see. Carter must have swallowed wrong if her sudden choking was any indication.

“Ah, Jack.”

“Yes, Daniel.”

“You’d probably want to put that down.”

Ah, shit. He was sure that Daniel wasn’t going to let this one down. That twinkle in his eye was telling Jack all he needed to know about how many times lay in wait for the future discussions of pastel balls.

“R-right. So,” trying to revert the topic back to the balls instead of his faux pas, “did you do any readings. Figure out what they are? Where they come from? Yadda.”

Since Carter seemed to still be trying to find relief in the water bottle that Teal’c had handed to her, Daniel piped up instead. “Actually, Teal’c is the one who had figured out what they are while you were doing the perimeter check this morning.”

“Oh? And what are they, Master Teal’c?” He was still ticked by being told off this morning by the hundred-plus year old, doesn’t look a day over forty, Jaffa.

“It is excrement from a local creature, which I had later concluded to be herbivorous in nature.”

“It’s what?” He had to have heard wrong. No way that this was…

“It’s shit, Jack.” Daniel said, while being kind enough to give him a hand-wipe.

“Yuck.”

“Yeah. But it’s also what’s been setting off the naquadah indicators on the MALP scanners, too.”

“Oh, you’re full of--- uh, you're kidding me. Right?”

Getting her act together, Carter finally contributed to the conversation, “No sir. These spheres have trace amounts of naquadah. There’s hopefully a big deposit somewhere close by for the local flora and fauna to be ingesting some of it…”

“Wouldn’t the MALP have picked it up?”

“Not if it was covered somehow, Colonel. We’ve found numerous amounts of these spheres inside some of the ruins. Daniel had remembered that there wasn’t any indication on the MALP of any naquadah inside the structures, yet a lot of them were full of it. We took samples of the building material, but it's not something that we’ve seen before. Though, it does have blocking capabilities to hide whatever may be contained within. Which in this case was… um…”

“Shit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gr-reat! “Well, I for one can’t wait to write up this report for Hammond.” That had actually made Daniel snicker. As far as quiet missions went, this one was going to be right up there.

“What a way to be reminded of Easter.” It had been celebrated over the previous weekend. He wondered what Hammond would say, if he was to ever find out that Jack had posted a notice at the front of their ‘gate, for any Goa’uld invasionists that might happen by. He played with the imaging software on Daniel’s computer that afternoon to create a sign which read, ‘Sorry we’re closed for Easter, please leave a message and we’ll be sure to kick your sorry ass on Monday.’ After taking a look at Jack’s clever work, he heard Daniel mumble something about regretting having taught him how to use Photoshop. He wasn’t put off by the remark though, cause Siler liked it and that man had good taste.

Jack had wound up staying at the SGC on Easter Sunday last weekend so Hammond could have dinner with his granddaughters. Carter had gone to visit her brother and his family, while Teal’c went to the Alpha site to visit Rya’c and Bra’tac. And Daniel had stayed with him that evening for a ‘nice’ meal in the commissary. As nice as commissary food was going to get, that is.

There was something that he had wondered about for years though and the colourful balls of… Well, they had reminded him about what had bothered him for some time now, “Daniel? I just bet you know the answer to this.”

“To what, Jack?”

“Why bunnies?”

“Um, pardon?”

“You know, the Easter Bunny. What the heck do bunnies have to do with the Christian Resurrection of Christ?” It wasn’t that he was all out religious or anything. Especially after his son had died and his career at the SGC began. But, like all the other kids on the block, Charlie had started every Easter Sunday morning with an egg hunt. He truly loved the search. Some years, he wanted his father to act out the role of a military commander, and give him a mission to find that one special egg hidden within the backyard. And if he found it, which he always did, he’d be rewarded with a bag of hyper-inducing jelly beans.

“Actually Jack, the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs are kind of a mangled twist of a Pagan celebration. You see, there was this Anglo-Saxon Goddess name Eostre, but also known as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra--”

“Daniel.”

“Right. Anyhow, to convert Pagans to the Christian faith, the head of the church would try to incorporate Pagan celebrations into their own. The Resurrection fell around the same time as the Pagan’s spring festival, to celebrate rebirth. In fact, many cultures had a similar Goddess of fertility that would celebrate soon after the Spring Equinox; there was Kali from India, Aphrodite from Cyprus…”

“Hathor?” Damn! Why did Sam have to bring her up?

Looking a little green, Daniel nodded his head, “Yeah, Hathor too.” Was nothing sacred? It seemed everywhere that Jack turned, the Goa’uld had stuck their fingers in where they didn’t belong yet again. The younger man sitting beside him would never get over what she had done to him, not that Jack could blame him. Every time he thought of the bitch himself, he had to stop his involuntary reaction of checking his stomach to make sure that there wasn’t a little Junior swimming inside.

He needed to take Daniel’s mind off of that dead red-haired whore, “And these women have to do with bunnies in what way?” Only thing that came to mind were of the Playboy variety.

“For Eostre specifically, the animal that represented her being was the hare.”

“Because they…” he twirled his finger in the air as if that would explain everything.

“Yeah.” The Easter Bunny was supposed to be there for the children’s amusement damn it!

“Ah.” Peachy.

Jack looked up to see that the sun had nearly finished its decent. “Ok kids, time for bed. Carter? You can take first, Daniel you’ll take the second. I’ll take third, and that leaves Teal’c with the final watch. Everyone good?”

Three heads nodded in agreement.

“Good. See ya in the morning then.” Jack got up and made his way for the tent that he shared with Daniel. He would consider himself lucky tonight if they both had a good rest void of dreams consisting of pastel balls with red hair.

The End