"So here we are again," Jack said as he put the rental car into park and turned off the engine.
"Yeah we are," Harry eyed the crime scene tape across the front door of the cabin warily.
"Nervous?" Jack asked noticing the unease in Harry’s voice.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "I’m thinking of some of the horror movies my cousin Dudley likes to watch. Isolated place. Some kids from town come out to party. One of the girl's drags their boyfriend out to the woods to have sex, and hiding in the building is some type of monster or a really creepy guy with a big knife. Thus begins the bloodshed."
Jack chuckled at Harry. "I wouldn’t worry about that. We’re completely safe here."
"Really?" There was a sarcastic hint to Harry’s voice.
"Yeap. There isn’t a big chested blond on hand to be the first to die. Also we’re missing the traditional nerdy virgin who will be the sole survivor," Jack replied as he opened his door and climbed out.
"That’s only for slasher movies," Harry countered. "In monster movies, it’s the older male character gets eaten first and it’s the handsome younger male character who survives."
Jack looked over at the car roof at Harry. "Love you too," he snarled teasingly.
"Now that’s a totally different type of movie and we won’t get into those," Harry said with a smirk before grabbing the plastic bags out of the back seat.
"Just for that I’m going to find the worst movie ever made and have you watch it," Jack threatened.
"And here I thought you kidnapped me to protect me, not torture me," Harry countered.
"If I wanted to torture you I would have you eat Carter’s cooking or have Daniel tell you all about his rocks,"
Harry let out a snort. "I’ll keep that in mind," he said before looking at the forest surrounding the cabin. "Jack? Are you sure we’re safe here?"
Jack looked up from where he was examining his mangle up Jeep. "Yeah, we are. No one in England knows that I have you and the name I used will have them on a wild goose chase long enough for us to get everything straightened out."
Harry inhales nervously; the teasing and joking air vanished. "So why did you kidnap me? How did you know my parents and… and Sirius?" he whispered.
"It’s kind of complicated," Jack said as he ran a hand through his hair. "Look, let’s get everything straightened up and then I’ll explain everything to you."
Harry eyed Jack with distrust.
"Look, it’s complicated. I hardly know where to begin and as it is, I have trouble believing half of it myself," Jack said. "I’m not going to lie to you or tell you half truths or keep things from you because I don’t think you’re old enough. I promise you that!"
"You'd better not!" Harry threatened, angrily, before turning and striding toward the cabin, the bags in his hands swaying dangerously, in perfect juxtaposition to how afraid he actually was.
Jack stood there and watched as Harry disappeared into the cabin. "Damn."
~*~
"I said the Colonel is back sir," Ferretti said as he held a set of binoculars to his eyes with one hand and made sure the bluetooth headset volume was loud enough so he could hear everything coming through the other phone, "along with a friend."
Lou focused the binoculars on the Colonel’s friend. "No, sir, the Colonel appears to be free and mobile," he replied to General Hammond's question.
A smirk came to his face at the sound of SG-1's obvious relief reached his ears.
When Daniel's question of whether or not Jack was 'ok' was spoken, Lou immediately turned his focus onto O'Neill. "Yeah Dr J. He looks good, tired but good," he replied.
"What can you tell us about his companion, Major?" Hammond voice came over the headset.
Lou located O'Neill's guest and adjusted the binoculars focus. "Caucasian male. Early to mid teens. Dark hair, possibly black."
Ferretti continue to focus on the teen as Jack walked the kid walk around. "No sir, the kid appears to be fine. They appear to be kidding around right now," he replied. Pulling his eyes from the binoculars, Major Ferretti looked at the scene before him. "However, the kid appears to be nervous about something… And so is the Colonel."
"Any indications about what they might be nervous about?"
Lou raised the binoculars to his eyes once again to study the area beyond O’Neill’s cabin then returned to Jack and the kid. "No sir, but I don't think the kid trusts the Colonel completely."
"What makes you say that, MajorFerretti?" Teal’c’s voice came over the headset.
"From what I can see the kid is on edge and looks ready either to fight the Colonel or run." Lou replied as he watched the kid threaten Jack before marching off towards the cabin leaving a dejected O'Neill behind.
Lou nodded his head at what the General said next before saying, "Yes sir," and disconnected the call.
Focusing the binoculars solely on Jack, Lou said, "What the fuck are you mixed up in this time, Jack?"
~*~
Jack and Harry settled down on the front porch of the cabin, cold cut sandwiches and drink in hand.
"Thanks for helping clean up," Jack said between bites.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "I’m used to it."
Jack glanced over at him. "Yeah I imagine so."
"So…" Harry said glancing inquiringly at Jack.
"So…" Jack replied before taking a drink.
Harry raised a single eyebrow at Jack’s avoidance of Harry’s unspoken question.
"Right," Jack said with a glum smile. "I guess you want to know what this is all about."
"It would be nice," Harry said before take a bite of his sandwich.
"Well I guess you could say it all started with my job," Jack said. "If you haven’t figured it out I’m in the US military, the United States Air Force, to be exact and most of what I do is classified so I can't go into too much detail."
Harry nodded his head, accepting the condition of what he's going to be told.
"Well," Jack began, waving a hand around, "I was in an incident with this highly technical thingamabob that… well it downloaded all the knowledge of a long dead civilization into my head," Jack explained.
"Was it magic?" Harry asked. "This thingamabob? Was it a magical creation? I mean, you know that magic exists. So was it?"
"No…Yeah… maybe. It's was beyond what we, I mean non-magic people can make and magical people can make." Jack took a bite of his sandwich while he gathered his thoughts. "It might be a combination of the two, magic and technology."
"So what happened?"
"Well, I had all this stuff in my head and it was killing me. My brain wasn't made to be crammed full of information. Luckily for me the information included how to contact a race that could help," Jack said.
"Goblins, High Elves, vampires?" Harry asked.
"None of the above," Jack replied with a smirk. "It's a race that has been pretty much forgotten about. I mean they're still around but they're so good at hiding that almost no one remembers them and any that claim to have met them are look upon as crazy."
"Luna might have met them," Harry said around the bit of sandwich he was chewing.
"The blond?"
Harry nodded his head. "Yeah she's always looking for this or that creature." Harry let out a snort. "Maybe she's not as crazy as everyone thinks she is."
"With everything I've seen I wouldn't doubt that she's seen something," Jack commented.
"So since you're still alive, I'm assuming you were able to contact your mysterious race?"
"Right," Jack said. "So they were about to un-cram my brain and send me home but well… they seem to have unlocked something in my brain."
"They unlocked something in your brain," Harry said with a smirk. "What did that do?"
"Well it seems to let me remember things. Things I wasn't meant to ever remember," the nervousness he was feeling suddenly evident in his voice.
"Remember what?" Harry asked as he set his half-eaten sandwich down.
"My past life," Jack said quietly. "I remember everything of my past life."
"So who were you?"
Jack took a deep breath and look Harry directly in the eyes. "Sirius Black."