Chapter Text
One minute, Jack was sitting in the commissary at the SGC with his team, happily eating his lasagne. The next, he and Carter – who was seated across from him – were engulfed in a flash of bright light.
When the light faded, they were standing on the bridge of one of the Asgard's ships.
"What the hell?" Jack cried, fork still hovering in front of his face.
He deposited the bite of lasagne on his fork into his mouth. He didn't know what to do with it after that, so he set it down on the nearest flat surface.
He exchanged a bewildered glance with Carter as they both tried to get their bearings. Looking around, he spotted Thor over at the controls.
"Thor, buddy, you wanna tell us what's going on here?" he asked him.
"Colonel O'Neill. Major Carter," Thor greeted them. "Thank you both for coming." As if he'd given them a choice. "There is something you must see."
Whatever it was, it didn't appear to be that much of an emergency.
"It couldn't've waited until we were finished eating?" Jack complained. "It's Lasagne Day."
He'd been looking forward to it all morning.
Carter shot him a reproachful look that warned him he was being rude.
But he wasn't the one who'd interrupted their lunch break for Show and Tell. He gave her a 'What? It's true' shrug that only made her frown deepen.
"I'm afraid it could not," Thor told them, either oblivious to or ignoring this silent exchange. "Come with me and you'll understand."
He led them through the corridors of the ship. As they were walking, he explained that the Asgard thought they'd shut down all of Loki's unsanctioned experiments. But, during a thorough sweep of his ship to gather evidence for his upcoming trial, they'd discovered one more. That was what he wanted to show them.
When they reached their destination, Thor pushed on a camouflaged door in the wall, revealing a hidden chamber. It was set up as some kind of lab. There was a low column at the centre with a translucent pod, shaped like an egg, sitting on top of it. The pod was filled with murky, pinkish fluid. Floating, curled up in the fluid was a tiny, humanoid creature, tethered to the column by what looked like an umbilical cord.
"Is that ... a baby?" Jack asked, peering at it in amazement through the glass.
"Looks like it, sir," Carter agreed.
She kept walking, deeper into the room, stopping a few feet beyond Jack.
"There's another one over here, sir," she pointed out.
Jack followed her trajectory with his eyes to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a second column behind the first, with another pod on top. Inside was another baby.
"So there is, Carter," he agreed.
He scanned the rest of the room for more, but it looked like there was only the two.
Even curled up inside the pods, neither of the babies looked like Asgard. Their heads were too small, their limbs too fleshed out. They also weren't grey. It was hard to tell through the goo, but their skin appeared to be the same colour as his and Carter's.
Adding to Jack's doubt was the fact that – to the best of his limited understanding of Asgard reproduction, and, quite frankly, he didn't want to know any more than he already did – they couldn't actually have babies. Wasn't that why they had to keep cloning themselves?
"Are they human?" he asked Thor.
"Yes," Thor told them. He pointed to the baby closest to Jack. "This one is male. The other is female."
"Where are their parents?" Carter asked Thor, her brow furrowing with concern. "Are they here too? Did Loki abduct them?"
"Our DNA scans indicate that they are your genetic offspring," Thor informed them.
If Jack hadn't already swallowed his lasagne, he probably would have choked.
"Excuse me?" he asked, not sure he'd heard him right. "Did you just say they're mine?"
He wondered if Loki could have made more secret clones of him. Was this what the other one had looked like before he'd developed into a scrawny, pimple-faced teen? Although why would one be a girl?
"Yours and Major Carter's," Thor clarified.
"What?!" they both cried in unison, staring at Thor, then each other, in shock.
"Is this some kind of prank?" Jack demanded, searching the room like he expected to see a hidden camera somewhere.
That would make more sense than the next words out of Thor's mouth.
"Both of these children carry genetic markers from each of you," he told them. "As you already know, Loki believed Colonel O'Neill was the next step forward in human evolution."
"But that doesn't explain why he would want to experiment on me," Carter pointed out.
Who wouldn't? Jack found himself musing.
A quick glance at Carter to make sure she was still focused on Thor assured him that he hadn't accidentally blurted that out.
"Loki has not been entirely forthcoming about his motives," Thor admitted. "We can only assume he also considered your genetic code to be superior, Major Carter – perhaps due to the naquadah infused in your cells. We believe Loki combined your DNA in an attempt to create an even more physiologically advanced human than Colonel O'Neill – the missing link the Asgard have been searching for."
"He did what now?" Jack roared.
If he ever got his hands on that little grey bastard again, he was going to kill him.
"I thought you said the Asgard put a marker in Colonel O'Neill's DNA to stop anyone from experimenting on him," Carter – who seemed more rational about the whole thing – reminded Thor. "Wouldn't that also stop them from experimenting on his descendents?"
"The marker prevented Loki from successfully manipulating Colonel O'Neill's genes," Thor agreed. "But the same limitation would not apply to any offspring. The existence of these children would have allowed Loki to continue his experiments unimpeded."
Carter looked horrified.
Jack was more than a little horrified himself. Experimenting on kids was never okay. Even if those kids themselves were an experiment.
"Then it's a good thing we stopped him when we did," Carter told Thor. "And that you found them before anything happened to them."
"Our concern for these children's welfare is why I brought you both here," Thor explained. "Since they are your progeny, it is only right that we make amends for Loki's actions by returning them to you."
Return, Jack thought, like they were property they'd reported stolen and not two brand new humans neither of them had even known existed until a few minutes ago.
"Are they even fully cooked?" he asked Thor, wondering how long they'd been in there.
Did pod babies develop at the same rate as they did inside their mothers' wombs? He doubted even Carter the alien tech genius understood how these pod things worked.
"We conducted a number of tests after they were discovered, and we have concluded that both are healthy full-term fetuses, no different to any others of your species," Thor assured them.
As bizarre and confusing as this whole turn of events was, Jack was relieved to hear that both babies seemed healthy. At least Loki had gotten that right this time.
"So, then how do we get them out?" Carter asked Thor.
He showed her which buttons to press on the console to shut down the first pod. The faint hum it emitted stopped and it went dark. Then a lid popped open in the top. Some of the fluid leaked out around the edges.
Jack rolled up his sleeves and reached into the pod. He carefully disconnected the cord from the baby's belly button, then lifted him out. As soon as the cold air touched his damp skin, the baby let out a startled cry.
"Carter, give me your jacket," Jack ordered her.
She hastily unbuttoned her BDU jacket and shrugged out of it.
He took it from her and swaddled the baby in it, bouncing him lightly in his arms to soothe him. He hadn't had to settle a baby in years, but it was just like riding a bike.
Once the baby stopped crying and was calm, he moved to hand him over to Carter so he could free the other one from her pod.
"What's wrong?" he asked her when, instead of taking him, she froze.
"It's just ... I've never actually held a baby before, sir," she confessed sheepishly.
Her revelation caught him by surprise. How was that even possible for a woman her age?
"Never?" he asked her incredulously. "Not even your niece or nephew?"
She shook her head. "Mark and I were still estranged when they were born," she admitted. "And I was in Washington, working around the clock trying to figure out how to operate the Stargate ..."
"Well, there's a first time for everything," he told her. "Put your arms out."
She did as he instructed, sticking them out like she was reaching for a sandbag.
He moved them closer together, tapping her elbows to get her to relax them.
As he eased the baby into her arms, she admitted, "I always thought when I held my own baby, I'd just instinctively know what to do."
"You're overthinking it," he told her, because of course she was. That was Carter for you. "Here." He helped her arrange her hands so that the baby was properly supported. "Got him?"
She nodded. "Yes, sir."
Once he was confident the baby was secure and she wasn't going to drop him, he slowly withdrew his hands.
"There you go. Look at you. You're doing it."
She glanced down at the little bundle in her arms and, despite her initial fear, the ghost of a smile touched her lips.
Jack couldn't help but smile himself at the sight of her looking so sweetly maternal.
But there was no time for them to dwell on it because they still had another baby to get out.
Carter shifted the first baby into the crook of her elbow to free up her hand so she could push some more buttons on the console.
The second pod disengaged. Jack took off his own jacket. Then he reached into the pod, disconnected the baby and lifted her out. Unlike the first baby, she didn't cry. Instead, she was eerily silent like she was shellshocked at being out in the world. But he could see her little chest rising and falling steadily, so he knew she must be breathing.
"This might be the weirdest birth ever," he remarked as he wrapped her in his jacket, glancing from her up at Carter.
"Tell me about it, sir," she agreed.
"Once again, I must apologise for any harm Loki has caused," Thor – who had been so quiet Jack had almost forgotten he was still in the room with them – said. "The Asgard High Council will ensure he is penalised for taking this liberty, along with his other crimes. Good luck to you all."
Before either of them knew what was happening, Thor had beamed them back down to the base with the babies still in their arms.
They rematerialised in the infirmary, in front of Fraiser, who was writing on a patient chart. She stopped mid-scribble, her mouth falling open in surprise when she saw what they were holding.
"Whose babies are those?" she asked them.
"Apparently, they're ours," Jack told her.