Title: Small Favors 2: Returning the Favor

Authors: Eve8 and Kate McCaye

Rating: K/PG

Summary: Set about five years after 'Small Favors.' Jack and Sam's daughter is of special interest to Thor's oldest enemy. When she disappears it will take SG-1 and all its allies to try to get her back.

A/N: Well, it's been quite some time since I finished Small Favors, and as reviews continue to trickle in, I'm going to assume people are still somewhat interested in it. My sister and I have been e-mailing back and forth about a sequel for some time, and this is the beginning of what we've come up with. Between the two of us, we're hopeful we can get out one or two chapters per month, but to make up for the slowness we promise to make them fairly long chapters.

Ch 1 - Just Another Day

Jack O'Neill awoke early in the morning, as he usually did, well before the alarm clock that was really only set in case of an emergency. He had always been a morning person, which was good, because his wife certainly wasn't. He got out of bed, took care of some 'personal business' in the bathroom, and went downstairs, deftly stepping over the fire truck at the top of the stairs and remembering to avoid the creaky step halfway down.

He could hear the television in the living room blaring cartoons - Power Puff girls from the sound of it. He grimaced as he realized that his ability to distinguish between all of the shows on the Cartoon network just by a few snippets of sound was truly terrifying.

He glanced at his watch. It was just past six thirty, and judging by the bowl of milk with a few lonely Froot Loops floating in it on the coffee table, the slightly flattened pillows lying in the middle of the living room floor, and the mess of video tapes in front of the television, his daughter had already been up for some time, and already wreaked an appropriate amount of havoc. But she wasn't in the room.

He turned down the television, trying to hear sounds from the rest of the house, but there was nothing. Maybe she went back to bed, he thought hopefully. He laughed out loud. Yeah right. She was even more of a morning person than he was. He went into the kitchen, intending to grab a cup of coffee before turning the house upside down looking for her, but there was no need.

She was sitting on the counter, precisely as she'd been instructed NOT to do on several previous occasions. The drawer underneath her was sticking open, an obvious indication of how she'd climbed up that high. Her mother was fond of saying she had got her father's appetite and stubbornness, although he knew for a fact his wife was pretty stubborn herself, so he figured that one was a toss-up.

However, there was no doubt where she got her intense concentration from, and it certainly wasn't him. From the angle where he stood, he couldn't make out what she was doing. Her back was to him and she was leaning over something, sitting sideways and cross-legged on the counter, so that all he could see of her was the back of her flowered nightgown and her head of very messy, very long, wavy blonde hair.

Hoping for the thousandth time that she didn't get his early-greying gene, he smiled and decided to announce his presence. "So, my little Morning Monster, what are you up to?"

She jumped at the noise and turned around quickly, looking at him guiltily. "Whatcha doin?" he asked her, coming over to hug her and pull her off the counter.

"Er… morning, Daddy, I was just umm…" she started to explain. He froze as he saw what she was doing. She had completely dismembered the toaster. She shrugged and gave him an innocent look and he stared back at her, a mixture of shock, amusement, frustration, and concern.

"You could have been seriously hurt!" was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

"No I couldn't. I unplugged it, it's dead," she said reasonably.

"Obviously," he said, gesturing at the mess of parts. She was giving him a look that was so familiar (he just wasn't used to seeing it on her face quite yet) that he let out a frustrated cry. "You don't have any idea why this bothers me, do you?" he asked, looking at her closely.

"No."

"Oh for crying out loud, Jo. Wait here."

"Daddy?"

"What?"

"Are you going to wake up Mommy?"

"Yes, I am."

"She's not going to be happy!" his daughter called after him.

He groaned as he headed back up the stairs, not bothering to avoid the creaky step this time. "FIVE years old fercryinoutloud," he said to himself as he went back into the bedroom, where his wife was still completely oblivious to the rest of the world.

"Carter!" he said sharply, standing next to the bed. No time for nice, sweet, husband-like wake-ups this morning.

She jumped and looked up at him quickly, blinking and bewildered.

Smugly satisfied that his CO voice still worked occasionally, (okay, so only on her subconscious, but still…) he ignored her questioning look and said, "There's something I'd like to show you in the kitchen."

"It's so early," she moaned, shielding her eyes from the light filtering through the closed blinds.

"Maybe. But there's something you should see. Something that is entirely your fault, I'd like to add," he said, pulling the covers off of her.

"Why are you so grumpy?" she asked, rolling out of the bed and grabbing her pajama pants to pull on over her underwear. It was chilly in just the pants and her camisole, but she didn't plan on being out of that bed for very long anyway, no matter WHAT was in the kitchen.

"I'm trying to show you why I'm so grumpy. Come on." She followed him downstairs and into the kitchen and gestured at their daughter, who was still studying the inner workings of the toaster as if they contained the meaning of life.

"Oh," Sam said quietly, trying very hard not to smile at the serious look on his face.

"OH?" he repeated.

"Her first appliance!" Sam suddenly gushed, hugging his arm and pressing her cheek into his shoulder. "Oh, I'm so proud! Where's Daniel with his camera when you need it?"

He looked down at her in complete shock and then caught the teasing look in her eye and let out a strangled cry that got their daughter's attention again. "Hi, Mommy," she said. "I told Daddy he shouldn't wake you up so early but he pretended not to hear me."

"Hi, sweetie. Thanks for trying." She tucked her daughter's hair back away from her face, cupped her chin in her hands, and said, "We need to have a little talk. And neither of us is going to like it."

Jack smiled smugly at both of them and went over to get some coffee for himself and Sam, while Sam picked their little girl up off the counter. "Geez, you're getting so big," she said melodramatically, carrying her over to the kitchen table. "I guess I should have seen this coming, Jordan."

"Seen what coming?" she asked innocently.

"Well… can you explain for Daddy why you took apart the toaster?" she asked.

Jordan looked back and forth between them, biting her lip. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, what were you thinking at the time? What were you feeling?"

"I just… wanted to see what was inside of it. What it was made up of. To see how it makes the bread turn into toast. I can put it back together."

"No way," Jack put in, sitting down at the table and setting a cup of coffee in front of his wife.

"Yes, I can I know where all the parts go," she insisted, getting the stubborn look on her face they both blamed each other for.

"Jordan, sweetie, I'm sure you could put it back together, but the thing that is worrying Daddy, and me, is that sometimes even when you put things like this back together the right way, if you plug them back in, they might hurt you. It would be like sticking your finger in the socket. We don't want you to get hurt."

"But…"

"Trust me, I've been shocked lots of times and it is not fun."

"But if you've been shocked lots of times it must not be so bad, I mean, you're okay now, Mommy…" she argued.

"Well, I've been lucky enough not to be shocked too severely. And the smaller you are the worse it would be. So. No more fiddling with the kitchen appliances, okay? At least until you're seven."

Jack resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Sam."

"All right, eight."

"Ten."

Jordan looked back and forth between them both, still unable to understand why they were making such a big deal out of it. Shrugging, she said, "Okay. Can I have breakfast now?"

"Sure, but toast is definitely off the menu," Jack said, making both of them laugh.

While Jack was busy scrambling eggs, Sam was working her way through her second cup of coffee, trying to keep up with her five year-old daughter's constant chattering while her brain was still slowly waking up. Breakfast was eaten quickly, as it always was during the week. The dishes were left soaking in the sink and everyone hurried to get ready for school and work.

xxxxx

Jordan O'Neill fidgeted in her seat and looked up at the clock again. Only ten more minutes to go. Ten minutes until recess. She could hardly wait. It was so hard, sitting still at her desk. Especially when they did Math right before recess. The stuff Ms. May was teaching them was so easy. She would have laughed, but she would have just got into trouble for it. The teacher turned and started writing on the chalkboard. People started taking notes, so she picked up her pencil as well, but didn't write. She drew a picture of Thor instead.

At recess, she ran to the swingset as fast as her little legs would take her so she could get the best swing, the one that didn't squeak at all or pinch your fingers in the chain. Her friend Alex got the swing next to her.

Alex was bigger than her, but smaller than most of the other kids in the class – he turned seven last month and already lost two baby teeth, both on the bottom. Most of the other kids were seven too. Some were even eight!

Jordan was only five and a half, so even though her Aunt Janet (who would know because she was a doctor) told her she was tall for her age, she was still the smallest in her class. It only bothered her at recess, because the kids who played baseball every day wouldn't let her play. Her dad was way more fun to play baseball with anyway.

"Jordan, I bet I can jump farther than you today!" Alex challenged.

"Bet you can't!" she replied, pumping her legs extra hard to build up speed.

She jumped out of the swing and landed hard, looking over at Alex. He was a foot behind her. She grinned at him as she got to her feet, brushed the grass off her hands, and tightened her ponytail, which was coming loose.

"You'll never go farther than me, Alex. I'm too small and fast."

"No, I'll beat you tomorrow!" Alex said cheerfully, dusting off his knees.

Matthew came up to Jordan and Alex then, with his friends Parker and Ethan. These were some of the baseball boys. They were big and mean, and Jordan really didn't like them one bit. Neither did Alex.

"You dropped this, Jordan," Matthew told her, waving her picture of Thor around.

She crossed her arms. "So?"

"So, who is it? Your real dad or something? Do you miss him? Maybe he'll come pick you up in his space ship."

Jordan swallowed the first response that came into her head – the one that was part of The Big Secret and she could never, ever tell. "My dad doesn't need a spaceship!" she replied instead. "He flies airplanes! Big fast ones."

"So?" Matthew challenged. "My dad is HUGE! He could beat up your dad."

"You wish!"

"I KNOW!"

"Not-uh!"

"Yeah-huh!"

"Not-uh!" Jordan's temper flared. "My MOMMY could beat the crap out of your dad, and my DADDY could snap him in half like a twig!" she yelled.

Matthew took this to be the ultimate insult. It didn't help that they'd gathered the attention of half the second grade class, as well as many of the first and third graders. "If they're so big and tough how come they've got such a scrawny little girl for a kid?" Matthew finally countered, pushing her.

Jordan stumbled backwards a bit, but quickly tightened her little hands into fists, and punched him squarely on the nose.

xxxxx

Jack O'Neill knocked on the open door of his wife's lab and poked his head inside. She was in the middle of some project that had her (and her three little helper-scientists) completely absorbed. "Sam?" he called to get her attention.

She turned to him in surprise - he always called her Carter at work. "Is it lunch time already?"

"Almost, actually, but that's not why I'm here – the school just called. I'm gonna go pick up Jordan."

"Uh-oh – is she sick?"

"No. It's the other thing."

"Oh." Sam watched him go and sighed. She had been no stranger to the principal's office in her own day, but her daughter was quickly making a career out of it.

xxxxx

Jack signed in at the school and showed them his ID – the security was his favorite thing about this school. He then made his way to the principal's office.

A kid was waiting with the principal's secretary, his formerly white shirt and navy sweater vest dotted with blood, his nose bright red. Jack's suspicions that his scrappy little daughter might have had something to do with that were confirmed as he saw the kid slowly eyeing his USAF uniform.

"General O'Neill?" the secretary (a woman whose name Jack should really know by now) asked.

"Yeah, hi."

"Hello. You can go on in, Jordan is already inside. She is so cute."

"Thank you."

He knocked once, opening the door as he did. The principal, a very stern old woman named Mrs. (although Jack had a hard time picturing a Mr.) McKeel, greeted him with a curt nod. He smiled and gave a little wave, looking around for his daughter.

He finally spotted a familiar pair of swinging legs dangling from one of the two chairs that faced the principal's overly large (probably to be intimidating to poor little kids) desk. Jordan was so small he couldn't even see the top of her head, just two skinny little dangling legs with grey knee socks that badly needed to be pulled up and slightly dusty black Mary Janes. Playground dust, probably, which meant playground fighting – again.

He lowered himself into the chair next to his daughter's and smiled at the surprised look on her face when she saw him. "Hey, Jo. You okay?"

She swallowed hard, nodded, and said, "Hi, Daddy."

"General O'Neill, thank you for joining us," Mrs. McKeel said tersely. "Jordan, please tell your father what happened."

"Matthew pushed me!"

Any sympathy Jack may have been cultivating for the bloody-nosed brat in the outer office vanished instantly. "That kid out there pushed you? He's got at least twenty pounds on you!"

"General O'Neill, as you can see, your daughter is unharmed. I assure you she did much more damage to poor Mr. Reed than he did to her, but he will be punished accordingly as well."

Jack opened his mouth to retort and his wife's half-teasing, half-serious warning of 'Play nice' filled his head. He cleared his throat and said, "All right, what now?"

"Jordan is suspended until Monday, effective immediately."

"What? Who the hell suspends a five year old?"

"Our agreement stipulates that Jordan is to be treated based on her grade, not her age. I believe you and your wife were just as insistent on that point as I was when she enrolled here, were you not?"

"Yeah, sure, but still..."

"I do not suspend many second graders, General O'Neill, but I warned you both this would happen after the last incident, did I not?"

"Yes," they both said quietly.

"Very well. Jordan, you may go collect your things and meet your father back here."

She slid out of her chair and gave Jack a very pitiful look that, as usual, completely melted his heart. He winked at her to show he wasn't really mad, and watched her let herself out of the office, putting all her slight weight into tugging the big heavy door open.

"General O'Neill, please make an appointment with my secretary for a time both you and your wife can meet with me to discuss this further."

"But..."

"Thank you, General. Have a nice day."

Jack nodded and went back out to the secretary. She eyed him and guessed, "Appointment, sir?"

"Yes, please," he said flatly.

She started flipping through a calendar on her desk and told the punk kid who had shoved Jack's daughter that he could go in. The kid practically ran into the principal's office, looking positively terrified of Jack. The secretary - Jack glanced at her nameplate - Ms. Nelson, then - suggested three available meeting times. Jack picked one randomly - their schedules were such that they'd probably have to reschedule several times anyway.

Jordan came back in with her backpack on. The huge thing dwarfed her. "All right, my little Rocky, have you got everything?"

Jordan nodded and tucked the wavy blonde curls that always escaped from her long, low ponytail back behind her ears. Jack crouched down in front of her and pulled up her socks, dabbing the tip of her nose as he got back to his feet. "Come on, let's get out of here."

She wrapped her tiny hand around two of his fingers and squeezed hard. Jack took the appointment card Mrs. Nelson was so keen on giving him, slipped it into a pocket, said goodbye to her, and led his daughter out to his truck. He waited while she buckled herself into her booster seat in the back before pulling out of the parking space.

"Daddy, are we going to work?" she called at the first red light.

He smiled at the way she was clearly trying to hide the hopeful quality of her voice. "Yeah, Jo. Did you miss lunch?"

"Yes. Daddy?"

"Yeah, Jo?" he repeated.

"What's suspended?"

He smiled. "It means you're not allowed to go back to school until Monday."

She thought about that for a while and finally asked, "Daddy?"

"Yeah, Jo?" After five years (well, okay, only about three where she could actually speak) he was used to one question after another.

"How is that a punishment?"

He laughed and admitted, "I don't know, kiddo. Kids have been trying to figure that one out for generations. Now, tell me what happened already, will ya?"

As he parked at the SGC, got out, and starting helping his (still talking) daughter out of her car seat, he chuckled. "What?" Jordan demanded.

"You tell a story like your Uncle Daniel. Come on, wrap it up before we get inside." He carried her, and she let him, which she usually didn't allow anymore unless she was sleepy.

As they got on the elevator, she finished her story. He had to smile when she repeated what she had said to Matthew. "You know Mommy doesn't like it when you say 'crap,'" he reminded gently.

"Yeah," she agreed. "But you said 'hell' to Mrs. McKeel."

Since Jack had been waiting for her to point that out since it had happened, he wasn't surprised. They went straight to his office, but it still took a while, as nearly everyone they passed wanted to say hi to Jordan, who was no longer as frequent a visitor to the SGC as she had been when she was a baby.

Finally in his office, Jack set her down and went to his desk. Immediately, Jordan began digging through her backpack for something or other. He sat down and watched her. He had no idea what to do. He knew full-well bringing her to work and having the entire base fawning all over her was most definitely not a punishment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to punish her for something he probably would have done too.

She pulled one of his old, worn baseball caps out of her bag triumphantly, put it on backwards over her messy low ponytail, climbed up in the chair opposite his desk, and looked at him calmly as if to say, 'Your move, Dad. Just try to punish me now.'

Jack shook his head in defeat and picked up the phone, punched in an extension, and waited.

"Carter."

"We're back. Lunch?"

"Absolutely, but I need about fifteen minutes."

"We'll save you a seat." He hung up, dialed Daniel, and said, "Uncle Danny, we have a surprise visitor who requests your presence in the commissary in ten minutes."

"Jordan's here?" Daniel asked in surprise. "Why?"

"Long story. Tell T and the Doc, would you?"

"Sure. See you in ten." Jack hung up the phone and looked at his daughter, swinging her legs and trying to contain her excitement – with about as much success as her mother had when she had a new doohickey to play with.

"What am I going to do with you?" he asked in an exaggerated voice with a big sigh.

She shrugged and replied, "I dunno."

xxxxx