Wipe Clean Children

Title: Wipe Clean Children

Author: livlovesyou

Summary: "Five minutes of peace. She just wants five minutes of peace"

Disclaimer: Gekko and the other guys, yeah. Spoilers: D&C, and I think that's all. 

Wipe Clean Children

The second sun of PX3-392 falls lazily across the already darkening sky. Beautifully slow in its descent the smaller star bathes the stone ledge with amber rich luminosity, soaking this strange new world in buttermilk flows of light and lengthening shadows.

Silence, miles and miles of golden silence.

“I spy with my little eye”

It’s one of those instances when she wishes she had a gag handy. Maybe, she could improvise; she has Daniel’s bandana somewhere. Five minutes of peace. She just wants five minutes of peace. Of course, gagging him would mean she’d have to wrestle him first…

“Well, talk about ruining the moment”

“The moment, Carter?” An amused eyebrow arches as he turns his head to look at her propped up next to him on the ledge. Not for the first time she wishes he had a mute button.

“Yes Sir” She coughs, “you know, the setting sun, the-”

“Suns”

“-Suns, the heat, the silence”

She has this whole pained look thing going on, the my-CO-has-the-mental-age-of-a-seven-year-old look, like she almost expects a whiny “Are we there yet?” every time they ‘gate. She’d like to tell him he has the attention span of goldfish but she suspects that not only does he already know this, but is in fact pathetically proud of it. Not unlike the bored seven-year-old shoving a pencil up his sister’s nose and then smiling a lot.

“Forgive an old man being bored”

“You’re bored and you want to play “I spy”?” She was the type of child who’d rather poke herself in the eye than play board games. She’d still rather battle a roomful of PMSy Hathors. Armed only with a pair of tweezers. Naked. Than play “Snakes and Ladders”.

“Don’t make me order you to play, Major”

She groans.

“Look, you’ve tried this before, sir, and it didn’t work then either”

“I sp-”

“When are Daniel and Teal’c due to return?”

“Changing the subject is the move of a desperate woman, Carter. Now, I spy with my little eye…” He pauses.

“Yes?” 

“…Something beginning with the letter T”

“Tree”

“Oh”

She wonders occasionally if he’s deliberately predictable for laughs or just really, really thick. The extent of which she suspects the latter worries her greatly. She selects her object. “I spy with my little eye something beginning with M”.

A frown appears on O’Neill’s forehead.

“Urm…Mountains?”

She shakes her head.

“MREs?”

“Nope”

“Urm…”

He thinks. Hard. And then… Smug is a colonel called Jack O’Neill. He has her all figured. She thinks she’s so smart with her PhDs and her quantum cannon fodder and really she’s just crap at “I Spy”.

 “Moss!” He points triumphantly.

“Nope”

Oh.

“Macaroni?”

Now, she knows he’s not quite as young as he used to be but clearly there is no macaroni on this mountaintop. Pasta depravation induced hallucinations? Granted, a first. The MREs aren’t that bad… Senile? Already? God, and she was so looking forward to retirement.

“Monkey, money, monument, motorbike…Carter? You know it has to be something we can actually see, yeah? None of this…” He stops, coughs and puts on a girly voice… “Imaginary I Spy…Carter” His voice bordering on the whiny, “I give up. I'm bored. You’re boring. Tell me what it was.”

“A mouse”, she points in the direction of a small animal, hunched into a crevice on the wall. It’s definitely a mouse. It is not a rat. Or a hamster. She’d mutter something about hamsters lacking personality but decides against it. He doesn’t need to know that she’s named it.

“A mouse?” He mimics. He is not amused. “Impressively inaccurate, Carter. Were you deprived of mice as a child?”

“Oh, you think you’re so funny, sir”

“Well, I am known for being a dazzling fountain of wit.” He deadpans, and it makes her smile a little.

“But of course, sir”

“Major? Are you mocking me?”

“Yes sir.”

“But that is a rat and you’ve named it haven’t you?” He smirks “Carter, You’re such a girl.”

If he says it’s a rat, it’s a rat. “Anise, and, wow” She quietens, vaguely sarcastic. “You noticed”

“What?”

“Nothing”

“I heard you”

“I know”

And then she gets her silence; it’s not so golden. She bites her nails and watches the metaphorical tumbleweed roll past.

He flicks a stone off the ledge and she hears it hit the ground. She’s still chewing her nails.

“I chose not to hear the “Anise” bit though”

“I know”

They sit for a while. She decides she’ll let him win if he asks her to play again, but he doesn’t this time.

It’s after Daniel and Teal’c arrive back, after food, after “Carter, you take first watch”, after sitting on a cold log for an hour and half, waving pieces of protein bar at the rodent, after thinking about pasta, about board games, long car journeys, that she hears a voice behind her.

“Hey Carter? Am I animal, vegetable or mineral?”

  ---

-fin-

[livlovesyou] [the inspirational fridge magnet] [keep me a secret]