Beyond the Iris: A Stargate Story

Chapter 20

Jack's eyes seemed to catch the small motion and the corner of his mouth twitched up before shrugging. "Your loss, Eleanor?" The levity in his eyes was a final confirmation I had somehow made it in his good graces and I mirrored it back.

"Thank you Colonel O'Neill but I also have plans that will keep me busy all weekend." I felt the brush from Daniel's fingers against mine at my admission. "But, some other time would be lovely."

"Jack is fine. I don't need formalities." He gave a small wink and started back to the hall.

"I'm free," McKay called out and Jack ignored him heading out. "What are your plans Eleanor?" He turned back to me.

My eyes widened at his remembering of my name. He had so often called me variations of E names like Emily or Edna that it was startling to hear my actual name from him. I softened putting my computer away. "We're flying to Seattle for the long weekend, their new museum of pop culture has an exhibit on Wormhole X-treme we're dying to check out."

"You've got to stop telling people that's why we're going. We're not seeing that." Daniel took my bag for me and slung it over his free shoulder.

"Why else would we be going? I'm very excited, do you think they'll have a cardboard cutout of Dr. Levant I can pose next to?" I bat my eyes at him.

"You're both going to Seattle together?" McKay's eyes shifted again between us finally connecting the pieces.

"Have a nice weekend Rodney," I chuckled and followed Daniel out the door to his car.

The following Tuesday I walked into Dr. Lee's office and set up shop. I noticed McKay wasn't in yet, but Bill was busy plugging away at his own projects.

"I brought you back something," I tossed a bucket of sour candies to him with the World of Warcraft logo on it. "The guy at the Pop Culture Museum said this was funny. I don't know why but," I shrugged, "now we're even for the Tardis chocolate bars from that comic-com."

He beamed back at me, "this is perfect."

McKay walked in seeming grumpier than usual, setting a mug of coffee down on the desk and muttering something under his breath.

"Good morning sunshine, have a nice weekend?" I dug around my bag and slid a box of maple candies down the table to him.

"What's this?" He looked down and back at me.

"I took the liberty of guessing what you'd want. It's authentically Canadian. Like you." I blinked back trying to maintain my look of innocence. He picked up the back of the package and checked the ingredients list. "Not even citric acid. Just in case."

"Thank you, I don't really like maple, but I appreciate the joke behind it," he nodded awkwardly and opened up his computer. "We have a bigger problem though," he turned to Bill who had already opened up the can of sour candies, mouth puckering. "Over the weekend I came in and managed to finally get the crystal stabilized on the remote, however it needs a compatible conductor. Specifically a quartz trinium hybrid would work, but I can't find anything remotely similar to work with. So, we are out of options for furthering the time remote."

"Quartz trinium? Like the healing bracelet?" I began opening my emails to check on what I had missed this past weekend and there was silence in the room. I looked back up, "right?"

"What bracelet?" McKay squinted at me and I heard Bill choke on his hard candy.

"It's in the database. Maybe you don't see it because it's off limits for checking out of my office." I replied casually and went back to my emails.

McKay came over and snapped my laptop shut, "what bracelet?"

"Eleanor almost died bringing Jackson back to life with an Ancient made cuff she inherited from an old professor of hers." Bill responded in between coughs.