Okay, I have a new story! It's a crossover with Stargate, with Jack O'Neill and MacGyver as cousins and descendents of the Ancients. If you haven't read any of my Stargate/MacGyver crossovers, just keep in mind that I have played with the timeline a little, keeping Mac the younger cousin and Jack O'Neill the older cousin.
Anyway...enjoy!
The Queen’s Best Part One
Rated: PG
Hathor stood high above her loyal subjects, surrounded by Jaffa and Serpent Guards, dressed lavishly in gold robes that accentuated her curvaceous figure. A headdress crowned her auburn hair shining vibrantly beneath the bright palace lights. Her worshippers were dressed similarly, covered in extravagant gold robes. They kneeled before her presence in awe—or in fear—as her eyes flashed and she smirked seductively, revealing her power over them.
“We have long awaited this day,” she said. “At last, my temple and my domain have been restored.”
Several cheers erupted among her throngs of admirers, and her smile deepened, satisfied with their approbation. Torches were lit in the palace hall by some of her Jaffa, brightening the already well-lit area, giving the masses of gold-robed subjects the beautiful yet haunting glow of a garish nightmare, much like the Goa’uld queen herself—dazzlingly exquisite to look at, but also terrifying and deadly. Hathor admired the splendor of her realm stretched out before her, always appreciative of beauty. At long last, she possessed what was rightfully hers.
“Since that vile name of Ra has been destroyed,” Hathor said, showing her relief with an even wider grin, “I have had to find a replacement to share my kingdom with me.”
She turned and snapped her fingers to several of her Jaffa. They left her platform and returned shortly, escorting a tall man also clothed in gold robes. As they approached the platform where she stood, the tall man leading the way, surrounded by Jaffa, his face became more recognizable. His handsome, rugged features, his deep brown eyes, his graying hair—it was Jack O’Neill. He remained expressionless as he stood by Hathor and listened to the cheers from the multitudes, even though inside his mind was screaming, trying to force his uncooperative body inhabited by a Goa’uld to strangle her.
‘Come on, Jack,’ he said in his mind. ‘All you need to do is move one arm…one arm…you can do it! Kill this snakehead!’
‘Silence!’ The Goa’uld inside him shouted, forcing itself deep into his mind, shutting his thoughts off, even though he fought it, struggling and groaning.
‘Get out of my head!’ Jack screamed inside his mind.
‘You cannot win,’ the Goa’uld said, pushing itself further into his mind, essentially raping his identity. ‘I own you now. Your body belongs to me.’
‘NO!’ Jack screamed inside his mind.
Soon, his thoughts were muted. He could say or do nothing. He was a silenced prisoner inside his own body, trapped and locked away inside a tiny portion of his brain. The Goa’uld’s persistent efforts to overtake his mind had prevailed. Hathor noticed the slight wince in pain on Jack’s face that soon faded, replaced by his dark brown eyes glowing and a gorgeous smile on his face that she longed to wake up to each morning for eternity. It pleased her to see Jack lose the fight to maintain control over his body, to see him suffer. He was hers now. He reached out and took her hand, clasping it tightly with affection. She squeezed back, staring into those tormented brown orbs as the soul of Jack O’Neill slowly withered, surrendering to the superiority of the Goa’uld inside him, flashing once again as he looked at her. She smiled and touched the side of his face, caressing it gently. Then, she returned to her subjects.
“We present to you your new king!” She said.
Loud cheers erupted in the palace.
***
“O’Neill has been taken prisoner by Hathor,” Teal’c said in the SGC briefing room. Even though on the surface he remained as calm as usual, he felt deeply troubled by the implications of what he had just told General Hammond. “She wishes to install him as her new husband and king now that Ra is dead.”
A pained expression crossed Daniel Jackson’s face, remembering how his wife had been forced to be the queen of Apophis. “Jack would never allow that to happen to him,” he said.
“Daniel, we were there,” Sam said, her voice filled with sadness. “We witnessed it. She implanted him with a Goa’uld.”
“Still, he could fight it,” Daniel said. “He’s strong, stronger than Shar’e.” His looked down at the table, fighting the feelings he still felt for his wife. “She managed to silence the Goa’uld within her several times. I know Jack could do the same. He can come back to us.”
Sam closed her eyes, holding back tears that threatened to emerge for everyone in the briefing room to see. She couldn’t allow them to see the intense emotions she felt for her C.O. At the head of the table, General Hammond noticed her concern and understood that it went beyond caring for a missing teammate. He chose to keep her grief private and not draw attention to it, speaking instead to the team as a whole.
“Still, the issue is how to rescue him,” he said. “When you returned from the world where Hathor has installed herself as queen, you barely escaped yourselves.”
“Hathor’s palace is almost impenetrable,” Teal’c said. “It is heavily guarded by both Horus and Serpent Guards as well as many Jaffa. It would be a formidable mission to attempt to rescue O’Neill from such a place.”
“It’s worth doing, though, isn’t it? I mean, this is Jack we’re talking about,” Daniel said. “We can’t just leave him there.”
Teal’c nodded. “I also concur that despite the difficulties, we must attempt to remove O’Neill from the palace.”
“Even if you do go, or if I send several SG teams in a rescue mission as backup, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever get Colonel O’Neill back to us the way he used to be,” Hammond said. “Remember what happened to Kawalski.”
Sam shuddered. She couldn’t imagine never seeing Jack as himself again. If he had a Tok’ra inside him instead, as she had when Jolinar invaded her body, he might have a chance. Instead, recovering Jack’s personality would be next to impossible. She knew that General Hammond was right. He would be a prisoner, both inside his mind and in the SGC. Even if they could coerce the Goa’uld inside him to reveal important intelligence, she didn’t want to see him tortured or imprisoned. She didn’t want to see glowing eyes glaring at her instead of soft, pleasant brown eyes. She didn’t want to see Jack strike her, even though it wasn’t really Jack.
“Still, we have to try, Sir,” she said finally, unwilling to torment herself with more despairing thoughts.
Hammond gave her a look of sympathy, noticing how her blue eyes glistened with tears. “I understand how all of you feel,” he said. “I care about Colonel O’Neill as much as you do, but we can’t go in there. It’s too dangerous. I’m afraid I can’t sanction a rescue operation.”
“General!” Daniel cried, pounding his fist angrily on the table.
“Officially,” Hammond continued, his eyes sparkling, revealing that he had another idea in mind. “I’ll authorize a rescue, but we’ll keep it secret so that no one at the NID or anyone else in the government knows about it. I don’t want them learning that Colonel O’Neill has a Goa’uld inside him or there would be chaos. All of them would be clambering to study it and probably kill the Colonel in the process. Also, we need to have as few people on the team as possible so as not to alert the Goa’uld of our intentions. That said, we need to assemble the best covert team possible.”
“I’ll go, Sir,” Sam said.
“I will, too,” Daniel said.
“I will join them,” Teal’c said.
Hammond smiled. “I knew all of you would volunteer,” he said.
“Sir, there’s a possibility that we could add one more to the mission,” Sam said.
Teal’c and Daniel looked at her quizzically.
“Who do you have in mind, Captain?” Hammond asked, also curious.
***
Lately, distressing and vivid nightmares haunted MacGyver. They felt so real and kept occurring until he wondered if the horrifying situations in the dreams were actually happening. They all involved his older cousin, Jack O’Neill. In some of them, a Goa’uld snaked its way to his brain as he lay completely helpless and restrained, a fearful expression on his face. The Goa’uld eventually bored into the back of his head, causing him to scream and writhe in deep pain. A woman MacGyver had never seen before stood over Jack, laughing as he suffered. She had the appearance of some of the Goa’uld he had encountered when on missions with Jack, wearing the gaudy, elaborate clothing of an ancient Egyptian goddess or queen. In other dreams, Jack looked directly at him, his eyes flashing. As disturbing as those nightmares were to MacGyver, the one that bothered him the most was hearing his cousin’s voice through all the images.
‘Help me, Mac, please,’ Jack’s voice would echo in his mind. ‘Help me.’
MacGyver always shot up in bed after hearing those haunting words, sweat pouring down his skin. He had never completely become accustomed to the idea that he could communicate telepathically with his cousin since they were both descendents of the Ancients. A part of him still wondered and worried over whether what he saw in his dreams was real. Even though he wasn’t an official member of the SGC, SG-1 had an agreement with him that they would contact him anytime his cousin had been captured or killed. He was family, after all, and an important family member at that. If something had happened to Jack, MacGyver reasoned, they would have called him or paid a visit already, wouldn’t they? Still, the images in his dreams and Jack’s voice were too powerful to ignore.
As he stumbled downstairs after waking from another nightmare, hoping to recover by drinking some water, he saw several uninvited guests waiting for him in his living room. Pausing on the last step of his spiral staircase and adjusting his blurry eyes, he recognized what at first to him appeared to be three strangers. Sam, Daniel, and Teal’c (with a hat to cover his tattoo) sat waiting for him as if they had announced they were coming. Dread filled him when he realized that what he had been dreaming must be true. He almost didn’t want to move except to return to his room and go back to sleep, hoping to make this nightmare disappear, too, but it was all too real, and he knew it. He couldn’t avoid it. Something had happened to Jack.
“Haven’t you guys heard of knocking?” MacGyver asked, smiling slightly and desperately trying to cover his feelings of unease with a poor excuse for humor and charm. He realized he was a lot like Jack that way.
“We in fact did, several times,” Teal’c said.
“We’re sorry to intrude like this,” Daniel said. “It’s just that…well, it’s important.”
“Something happened to Jack, didn’t it?” MacGyver asked.
Sam, Daniel and Jack exchanged glances. “I’m afraid so,” Sam said. “He’s been taken prisoner by a Goa’uld named Hathor. She…” Sam almost choked on her words. “She…implanted your cousin with a Goa’uld.”
MacGyver sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “I knew it,” he said. “I’ve been having very realistic dreams about him. I’ve heard him ask for my help.”
Daniel looked astonished. “From your Ancient abilities to communicate telepathically,” he said.
Even though MacGyver still considered telepathy absurd and unbelievable, he nodded.
“Do you know what this means?” Daniel asked the others, growing excited. “Jack isn’t entirely lost to us. If he can still reach out to his cousin…” he gestured towards MacGyver. “If he can do that, then that means he’s still fighting. He’s still inside his mind somewhere. Maybe being an Ancient with those abilities helps him. There might be a better chance of extracting the Goa’uld from Jack than there would be from other humans because he has the Ancient gene.”
“All right, let’s slow down,” Sam said. “I agree that’s an excellent theory, but until we rescue the Colonel, that’s all mere speculation.” She looked pleadingly up at MacGyver. “We need your help,” she said. “We think because of your relationship with Jack, and your ability to communicate with him telepathically, that you can help lead us to him. We need you, MacGyver. We need you on our rescue team.”
“You didn’t even need to ask me,” MacGyver said, thinking of the horrible torture his cousin must be suffering from, his mind hijacked by a Goa’uld. “I’ll go.”
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver