I know you wanna leave.
Got to go farther than you see.
Though his physical hunger was satisfied, O'Neill knew he would still need a weekend alone and a few beers to get over this mission. Sighing, he turned the radio on in hopes of filling the truck's silence so Teal'c would refrain from asking any revealing questions. Jack flipped the radio from an annoying country station that came up to a station with a great beat and a wonderful guitar solo, but as soon as the words began, he flipped back.
Teal'c, sitting in the passenger's seat, cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, still cautious of his friend's strange behavior. "What is the matter, O'Neill?"
He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. "Don't like that kind of rock," he answered simply, glad he rode with an alien who might not pick up on music preferences as much. The downfall was, of course, that he could not ask Teal'c to turn on his favorite radio station. After living in the base for three years, he might not even realize what a radio was!
To Jack's dismay, the Jaffa leaned forward and flipped back to the rock. After a couple minutes of listening and several of the colonel's attempts to flip the station, Teal'c finally allowed him to adjust the dial. "Who is this Jesus? I would much like to talk to him."
"Teal'c, he's dead," Jack replied flatly.
"You are incorrect, O'Neill; the singers said he is alive."
Jack rolled his eyes. Now was definitely not a good time for Teal'c's literal thinking. "Yeah, well, the guy's not on this planet or any other."
"Are you certain, O'Neill? Perhaps he possesses a sarcophagus."
"Don't think so, Teal'c." He shook his head, tired of it all, tired of things persistently screaming at him, reminding him of the faith he had started to have but lost. "Look, maybe you should ask Daniel." That should be right up his alley!
The Jaffa nodded, noting that his friend seemed more short-tempered than usual, and made a mental reminder to asked the archeologist about this man named Jesus.
Dr. Jackson looked up from his translation of an artifact stored at Area 51 at the motion he saw out of the corner of his eyes. "Hey, Teal'c. Can I help you with something?" he wondered, infinitely glad the Jaffa had come to pay a visit instead of the colonel. He was trying to get a few more words translated before the general gave the go-ahead for their return to '118.
The Jaffa nodded. "Indeed. During the car ride back to the base after lunch, Colonel O'Neill did not wish to listen to a specific station."
Daniel smiled, glad that Teal'c's question wasn't one of the hard ones to answer. "Jack doesn't really like country music."
"It was not country music, Daniel Jackson; it was, in fact, what he has referred to as 'rock'."
Daniel's eyebrows dropped together. As far as he knew, Jack's favorite genre of music was rock. Had somebody taken the colonel's identity again? No, not this soon after the latest quantum mirror run-in… "Well, what was the song? What did it say?"
"It talked about a man named Jesus," Teal'c informed him, stopping beside Dr. Jackson's work area.
"Oh." The archeologist turned back to his translation as he thought back to the Abydos mission and what Catherine had told him beforehand. "Jack has a bit of a problem with religion."
"Do you believe this Jesus to be a Goa'uld?" Teal'c wondered. His voice held a bit of an edge; the very thought of the Goa'uld seemed to make his hair (what little there was) stand on end.
"No," he replied. To the best of his knowledge, none of the Goa'uld had ever gained such widespread acceptance on twentieth-century Earth. "I don't know what I believe."
"What is so different about this man that you don't think he could be a Goa'uld?"
Daniel shrugged, still not looking up at Apophis's former first prime. "I've never heard of a Goa'uld dying on a cross," he explained. Something about that struck him as odd. Certainly a Goa'uld would not allow himself to be put to death in such a shameful way. Besides, the Goa'uld were gone for the most part by that point in time.
"Tell me more about this Jesus."
The linguist finally looked up, unsure of what to say. "According to the Christians, he was a generally good guy. They say that he then died on a cross and rose again after three days in a tomb."
"You do not believe this," Teal'c stated.
"Like I said, I don't know what I believe."
Teal'c nodded respectfully and backed out of Daniel's lab, sure of one thing: he needed time to think over this.
I was lying on my bed, listening to Plus 1 when I got inspired for this, though I'd been playing around with the idea of writing a Christian fic for a long time. Like I said last chapter, reviews and prayers are helpful!