brainofck: (DanielJackson)
[personal profile] brainofck
This is for [livejournal.com profile] spyderqueen and [livejournal.com profile] whisper99, who wanted to know what happened after Adjustments B.

A word of warning. The idea came to me, so a wrote it as a story, but this is the original draft, written in about 90 minutes, with no re-read and no edit. RL these days doesn't allow for the kind of care I'd prefer to put into every piece, but I figure some fic is better than no fic, so, here's fic!

Title: Adjustments: Children
Author: [livejournal.com profile] muck_a_luck, posting in [livejournal.com profile] brainofck
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: G
Summary: Life is full of surprises.
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only. [livejournal.com profile] muck_a_luck and [livejournal.com profile] brainofck
The Matrix: The Matrix is located here. This one is Children.

Previously, on Adjustments... Don't forget, boys and girls, that in this story, Daniel has been changed into a woman!






"You're mad at me," Claire said quietly.

Jack had fallen asleep on Daniel's shoulder while watching some hockey game or other. Daniel refused to pay attention, so that Jack couldn't try to have hockey conversations with him. This was because Daniel had secretly loved the Hurricanes for years, ever since they won the 2006 Stanley Cup and Daniel had won the pool, much to Jack's complete disgust, and he was afraid Jack might actually divorce him if he ever found out.

"No. I'm more than a little annoyed with Sam Carter and that damned clone, though," Daniel said, then instantly regretted it at Claire's reproving look. Daniel sighed. The kids loved Jon. Daniel couldn't help it that he found him so unsettling. "I'm sorry. But they shouldn't have let you loose in the declassified mission files without warning me first."

Josh looked up from where he was reading on the couch.

"What? Sammy and Jon let Claire see the files and didn't mention it to me?" Claire stuck her tongue out at him and he threw a highlighter at her.

"You've been doing research forever with Thor. When were you going to go down to the Cheyenne Mountain archives to read?"

"They were just trying to recruit you, you know," Jack muttered drowsily from Daniel's shoulder. "The files were a bribe."

Daniel snorted.

"Claire's not going to join the Planetary Defense Force."

Josh cleared his throat and dove back into his reading a little too quickly.

Jack sat up, looking guilty.

"Um," he said, eyes shifting from his wife to his daughter and back.

"OK. Now I might be about to get mad," Daniel said warningly.

"What were you 'not mad' about before," Mel asked as she came back into the room with her ice cream. "Oh! Score!"

"What?" Jack said, turning and peering at the screen. "Damn. Stupid Hurricanes. What the hell is a hockey team doing in North Carolina anyway?!"

"Oh, give it a rest, Jack, they've been there for decades," said Daniel tersely, drawing a sidelong look from his husband. Josh slid even lower behind his tome, highlighting like crazy. Josh was the only one of the household who knew Daniel's dark secret.

"So? What's Claire been up to now, besides applying to the PDF Academy behind you back?" Mel persisted, flopping on the couch next to her father and grinning at her sister wickedly. The highlighter flew across the room again, beaning Mel right in the middle of her forehead and dropping into her ice cream sundae.

"Good shot," said Jack approvingly, absently picking the pen out of the bowl and sucking the chocolate sauce off as he watched the game with renewed interest.

"Nothing," Daniel said shortly. He turned to his youngest daughter. "Have you accepted yet?" he asked.

Claire lifted her chin stubbornly. She had her father's intelligent, dark eyes. And more than any of their children, she also had Jack's wary caution, his tendency to evaluate and threat-assess almost instinctively. Daniel wondered what it said about them as parents that it was this one child they had both tried the most to influence, somehow creating a tangled hybrid creature that had so much in common with both of them. Daniel couldn't believe he would be sending her off as a cadet in a few months. He stood suddenly and left the room.

He went through the kitchen to the patio. They had a flower garden now, where the old dig site had been. He could still see Mel and Josh walking through the site, swinging their shrieking little sister between them. It couldn't have been more than a few months ago, but now Claire was seventeen and Mel was defending her second PhD in a couple of weeks and Josh's research on Asgard space engineering was going to be the basis of his first.

Claire came out and stood beside him.

"I always thought you would be our social scientist," Daniel said to her, breaking the strained silence between them. "I figured I'd start handing projects off to you as soon as you got through your academic work."

Claire poked him in the arm. It annoyed him that she was tall like her father. It was just wrong for his daughter to be nearly a foot taller than he was.

"Coursework would be an exercise in redundancy – we both know I could teach the undergraduate classes as easily as you could. And I've published original PhD level research in three different fields. What's the point?"

"Linguistics Today took the Unas paper?" Daniel asked, smiling despite himself.

"Yeah," Claire said.

They lapsed into silence again. Daniel wanted to tell her that she couldn't go to the Academy. Thanks to her father and her 'Sammy,' she already had more hours in an X-302 than she needed to qualify to fly it. She had brains. She had the Ancient gene. She could write her own ticket as a civilian consultant, as a member of the new Earth Diplomatic Corps, go to Atlantis, anything. She didn't need to follow in her military father's footsteps. The thought of his little girl reconnoitering hostile alien landscapes made Daniel's heart constrict painfully in his chest.

But it was her road to choose, not his. So he stood there beside her and tried not to hear her lisping little girl voice somewhere out in the garden.

"When were you going to tell us?" Claire asked, changing the subject.

Caught up in the revelation that his child was enlisting, he had forgotten Claire's little excursion into the Cheyenne Museum's deepest, darkest, dustiest file rooms.

"Never?" Daniel replied wryly.

"I always wondered why Daddy and Sammy and Uncle Teal'c always called you Daniel. I figured it was some old SG-1 joke."

Daniel shrugged.

"It wasn't funny at the time," he said.

"You were handsome," Claire said, almost accusingly. "Josh looks like you. There were pictures in some of the files. And one report mentioned that you lived on Abydos for a year and had a wife there."

"Shau're," Daniel said, feeling a surprising spike of grief speaking a name he rarely thought about anymore. The memory of Abydos stung as well. Anubis, Apophis, Replicators, Ori...

"No wonder your goa'uld is so fluent," Claire said, with a tinge of envy.

"Well, your Unas is much better than mine will ever be," Daniel replied softly, offering a salve to his daughter's professional jealousy, trying to dismiss the ghosts of years of galactic warfare, raising Jack's family and waiting for the mission when he finally didn't come home. The Antarctica year...

"You're taking this very matter-of-factly," he said, forcibly turning his thoughts away.

She leaned against him, a sturdy, comforting warmth in the evening cool.

"I have one word to say to that: Jon. When your Daddy has a clone that remembers changing your diapers and hearing your first words, there's not a lot that is going to freak you out anymore."

"You have a point there," Daniel agreed.

"If you could, would you go back?" Claire asked.

Daniel turned to look at her.

He thought about the question she was asking him. He realized that no one else had ever asked him that. Not Sam. Not Janet. Not Jack. He had hardly ever asked it of himself, even. At the beginning, of course the answer would have been yes, and later, the answer just stopped mattering, until one day, he had watched his young tribe of O'Neills traipsing through the dig site that was their backyard and he couldn't tell anymore what his answer would be.

"I don't know," he finally answered honestly. "I can say that now, after all this time, I wouldn't change what happened. My life has been full of surprises, since I met Catherine and went through the Stargate. I've done things I never expected to do. I've walked on a hundred different planets. I've met alien races and found my own history among the stars. I've fallen in love and given birth and nursed my own children."

He trailed off and looked out into the night again. Jack was behind them now. In the kitchen doorway, just inside the screen door. It was funny, after all these years, he could still sneak up on the children, but Daniel had developed a kind of sixth sense – a knowing of Jack's presence. Jack was standing behind them, listening.

"But if someone came to you and said, 'Dani Jackson O'Neill, would you like to be Daniel Jackson again?' What would you do?" To Daniel's surprise, her voice cracked a little as she rephrased the question. He turned to her and hugged her tightly, until she hugged him back, then he let her go to reach up and take her precious face between his hands.

"I don't think it's something you have to worry about, Bug," he said, smiling at her. "Two Daddies are plenty. You don't need three."

She scowled at him and huffed, obviously feeling patronized.

"Fine. Just be sure you call me the day you wake up and are suddenly a man again," she said querulously. She let her mother go and turned away to head down the veranda to the door to her room.

"Claire," he called to her quietly.

"Hmmm?" she replied over her shoulder.

"You'll make us proud," he said and she pirouetted on her heel to beam at him, before sauntering off around the corner of the house to her room.

Jack stepped out through the kitchen door, scooping his wife up into his arms.

"I'd like to say, before you kill me with that blunt knife on the kitchen counter, that I didn't know anything about this til yesterday, and she promised me she would tell you this weekend."

Daniel grunted and settled into Jack's arms.

"They'll put her on first contact teams, you realize, as well as tech retrieval. It's a nightmare."

"Hmmmm," Jack said, rubbing soothing circles on his back. "Don't think too far ahead. There's four years of Academy before we have to worry about that."

They stood there so long that Daniel was lulled into thinking the other shoe wasn't going to drop. Until it did.

"What would you do?" Jack asked. Daniel sighed.

"If somebody gave me an option? I don't really know. I used to be so afraid when I was pregnant, that I would suddenly wake up and be back the way I was. What would happen to the baby?"

Jack tipped his chin up.

"Really? If I could go to the Asgard right now? Or that weird new place, PX7-984, with all that genetic engineering stuff that had Carter so wound up? Would you do it?"

His eyes searched Daniel's.

"The other thing I used to think..." said Daniel slowly. "The other thing that used to frighten me to death... was what I would do if you didn't want me anymore." The last came out as a whisper. He blamed his emotional reaction on Claire's news and thinking about topics that he had thought closed years ago.

And Jack crushed him against his chest, pressing kisses to the top of his head. He had clearly taken Daniel's reply as a 'no,' and Daniel thought it was best to leave it at that.






If you're interested, all my stories, in order, from one page. Also, my fiction recommendations.



For my loyal [livejournal.com profile] rugbytacklers, I have done a Stargate crash course located here.

Date: 2007-01-24 04:38 am (UTC)
seleneheart: (Default)
From: [personal profile] seleneheart
This fic is so twisty, you've done a brilliant job of keeping the pronouns consistent with the mood of the person. (If that makes any sense.)

Nice to see Jack and Daniel together, alive, and at peace.

Date: 2007-01-24 03:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Ha! I went back to check the pronoun thing, because while I was writing I caught myself slipping twice into referring to Daniel by feminine pronouns. He remains a he throughout this piece, though it feminizes him more to be referring to him as wife and mother, doesn't it?

I like the idea of a happy ending for them, no matter how much of a fairytale that might be.

Date: 2007-01-24 04:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] melayneseahawk.livejournal.com
Whee, I like this so much.

(What about the other one?)

Date: 2007-01-24 03:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Brooding on it now, and hopefully will have something of similar length to this posted by Friay. It seems to want to be darker. But then, that is a darker version of the story, isn't it?

Date: 2007-01-24 03:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] green-grrl.livejournal.com
This is lovely and moody and bittersweet! I love their kids, and I love the way the history of the SGC spun out with Dani Jackson O'Neill and kids (Antarctica, clone). And Hurricanes fan -- hee!!!

Date: 2007-01-24 08:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Thanks! It made me all sad, for some reason. Must be hormones. And I chose not to think too hard about the fact that Jack must be seventy-something, or at least pushing it, even if we assume he was in his late forties in Season 4, when I imagine Adjustments to start, that plot took about 18 months to play out, then they didn't get preggers til after that. So he must have been almost 50 by that time. If Mel's on PHD #2 she's a bit older than 20. Someday we are going to have CK's Aging Jack Sobfest. Just not this day.

I have clone on the brain, obviously. And assuming the basic story of Stargate played out similarly, just without Daniel, then they would have had one or maybe two kids by the time Jack got cloned. I imagine that he would have fought harder to stay in touch under those circumstances - none of that "clean break" crap.

Date: 2007-01-24 09:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
I want to see clone!jack wake up in bed with Dani, all hot and randy with 16 year old homemones and Dani screaching at finding a teen feeling her up out of a sound nights sleep *snicker* No wonder he's got issues!!!

Date: 2007-01-25 01:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
*snickers*

Date: 2007-01-24 09:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
and since I can't spell for shit...it's hormones...*sigh and wonders what the hell a homemones is*

Date: 2007-01-25 01:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
It looks like some sort of Spanglish ganster word or something. *peers at homemones*

Date: 2007-01-25 01:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
Need to use that word in a fic wherein Daniel uses it to confuse Jack. Or something. ;)

Date: 2007-01-26 01:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
AG33 thinks homemones is a sauce for a sandwich. Go ahead. Pronounce it like you would if it were a real Spanish word.

Also, just because I'm thinking of AG33 and kitchen words, don't forget your favorite blood sucking cooking implemnt.

SPAtulaaaaa. He's Dracula's flatter cousin.

Date: 2007-01-26 02:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
*snerk* You make me laugh!!

Date: 2007-01-24 09:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] green-grrl.livejournal.com
Well, empty nest syndrome is a sad thing to face, especially when Dani's daughter's chosen future will put her in the line of fire. (How can anyone watch their child join the military? I have no idea.)

OMG PLEASE DO NOT WRITE the Aging Jack Sobfest! I won't be able to take it. I've read a couple of J/D fics that show them in their twilight years and dealng with death, and oh god, no.

I like your clone so much better than the recent version written! But yeah, I cannont imagine that they would tell a second Jack that he would have to give up his flesh-and-blood family.

Date: 2007-01-25 01:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Heh. I see him as kind of the subversive, wiseass uncle that all kids love the best, and they crave and vie for his attention and he gets to do all the bad things that parents have to be responsible and not do. I toyed having him hooked up with Sam, actually, but it didn't fit into this piece.

I need to put out a finder on a death fic - the one where Daniel is living at the cabin and Jack died long ago and the story is the dream Daniel has as he is dying in his sleep - where Jack comes down to the dock looking like Jack in his prime and makes Daniel come back up to the cabin with him. It makes me cry writing this pathetic little summary, but it's one of those stories that lurks around in my brain. When I've forgotten all of this fanfic nonsense, I think I'll probably remember that one.

Date: 2007-01-25 01:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] green-grrl.livejournal.com
Oh, yeah, Jack without the responsibilities -- danger! (And I really can't see Jack who was married to Dani splitting off a clone who hooks up with Sam. Hey, in this universe, she might actually marry Pete!)

Gah! Deathfics just rip me apart! And the "naturally after a long life" ones are just as bad as the sudden injury ones!

Date: 2007-01-24 04:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] starting-gate.livejournal.com
You did a wonderful job on this. I absolutely love the way you finished with Daniel's thoughts and fears.

*sigh*

Date: 2007-01-24 08:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Thanks. I think Daniel doesn't want to have to make the choice. He's happy to live with the hand he's been dealt without thinking about it too hard.

Date: 2007-01-24 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
Aw! So fun! And lots of children! Yay!! I liked how you ended it without Daniel really saying what he would do. Leaving it open ended, especially with him assuming Jack thinks he wouldn't do it really brings out his fear of losing Jack if he ever *did* change back. Well done.

Date: 2007-01-24 08:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Thanks! Like I said to [livejournal.com profile] starting_gate, I think Daniel doesn't want to make the choice at this point in his life. He is who he is and he's not going to go looking to be something else. Thinking about that makes me wonder if I have actually failed to capture Daniel's character properly. Would he passively accept something like this? Or would he decide? Or does it really matter, since he doesn't really have a way to act on any "decision" he makes to become a man again? *ponders*

Date: 2007-01-24 09:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whisper99.livejournal.com
Well, that's an interetsing question, aint it? I suppose Daniel is a survivor. He'll take most anything and stride and continue onwards and upwards. I suppose it's a question of how much does he really miss his dick? LOL! How much does he miss being with girls? It's been what, over 20 years now, he's certainly not only accepted the change, but enjoys it. I mean, it doesn't look like he's the aggressive type wanting to get a strap on and ride Jack (or is he?) *ahem* Anyway, if given the choice, with Jack still in the picture, I don't think he'd accept the change. Though I don't know what he'd do if Jack wasn't in the picture anymore.

I'd be almost as curious to find out what Jack and the children's opinion on it would be. Is it safe to say it's almost a given that Jack prefers Dani over Daniel?

Date: 2007-01-25 01:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
It's been what, over 20 years now

Exactly. In this story, he's been a woman for almost as long as he was a man.

The question about Jack is the other thing I think about. He definitely loves Jack and he doesn't know what would happen if he became a man again. Would Jack love him? Would he still love Jack? I think I agree that as long as he cared about the answers to those questions, he probably would choose to stay as he is.

I toyed with doing more reactions from the family. Maybe for another ficlet. :)

Date: 2007-01-25 12:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cocoajava.livejournal.com
Awww. I like this piece. It's got me feeling all warm and mooshy now. It's really got a great mood to it - loving, nurturing, worried, surprising, all rolled up together! Very very good!

Date: 2007-01-25 01:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Ha! I see you found it! :) Thanks!

Date: 2007-01-25 01:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cocoajava.livejournal.com
Hee! Yeppers, I came to a screeching halt when I hit this entry! :D

Date: 2007-01-25 05:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ms-3m.livejournal.com
Ahhhh. I LOVE this story/series/all the versions. I never cease to be amazed on how you were able to keep all the pronouns in order. The character voices were always so true...regardless of the gender.

I saw one teeny typo: What's Claire been up to now, besides applying to the PDF Academy behind you back?"

Fab job! Looking forward to whatever your brain and your muse comes up with.

Date: 2007-01-30 01:37 am (UTC)
sid: (Default)
From: [personal profile] sid
Daniel Jackson, peaceful wife and mother. Has an interesting ring to it.
;-)

(and sekrit hockey lover!)

Date: 2007-09-27 02:18 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
The last few lines blew me away. Powerful emotions. Great story. Thanks.

WOW!

Date: 2007-11-02 12:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meneathiel.livejournal.com
This was excellent. You have done a fantastic job with a storyline that can so go to hell if not handled with skill. Bravo.

I must admit my weepy little heart was crying all over Jack and his issues with Dani. It was hard to see them not connecting. Hard to understand why and harder still to watch Daniel risk it all for a chance to get Jack back. My heart was in my throat for Daniel at the BBQ. I was so afraid someone would say or do something that would humiliate him. Well done.

I can't decide which ending I liked better I think the Harlequin romance part of me likes Dani and Jack and kids ever after best. That said the Daniel/Jack ending seemed more real...if you can say a guy turned into a girl then back into a guy is ever realistic.

Great read thanks so much for offering it up.

Re: WOW!

Date: 2007-11-02 01:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brainofck.livejournal.com
Thank you so much!

This was a lot of fun to write. I particularly enjoyed doing their domestic future, but I was actually shamed into the het ending when I stumbled across a couple of people talking about it in someone else's journal, essentially predicting exactly what I planned to do - turn him back after one sex act - and hoping I wouldn't do anything so cliche... :)

Maybe that's why the slash ending seems more "real." Because that's where the whole thing was headed originally.

Adjustments - children

Date: 2007-11-10 01:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] burbler.livejournal.com
This is so very thoughtful.

>>"I always wondered why Daddy and Sammy and Uncle Teal'c always called you Daniel. I figured it was some old SG-1 joke."<<

Oh yes, and what a whopper! The kids are great *goes all nostalgic over Claire and Mel*

Why would Daniel want to change back? He has everything! I think I love this ending best. Thanks!

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