Crossover: HL/SG-1 (roughly series 6 SG-1!verse, end series 3 HL!verse)

Characters: Daniel, O’Neill, Methos, Sam, Teal’c, Jacob Carter, OFC

For prompt: Enemies

Summary: The enemy is sometimes closer than you think

Disclaimer: I own neither Highlander nor SG-1 - I just smoosh them together for fun.

“ee, ki, shi, chi, ni…I knew it! But that doesn’t help…”

“Problem?”

Adam looked up to see Macha fluttering her eyelashes coyly at him from the doorway. She was a lovely girl even if she was an alien, with another alien sharing her head.

“Daniel asked me to look at this translation for him since eastern languages aren’t really his speciality, though I’m starting to realise they’re not mine either.” He looked at the script in front of him, Macha’s prescence all but forgotten. “On the surface it looks like Japanese but some of the symbols seem to have been modified to allow for a greater phonetic range. The only problem is that it puts the meaning of all the other characters out as well…”

“Perhaps I could help?”

“I thought the Tok’ra had a mostly Egyptian heritage like the Goa’uld. Do you know Japanese?”

Macha blushed prettily. “I do not know what…Japanese is, but the Tok’ra have visited many worlds. Perhaps the planet this is from is one that it familiar to us.”

“Well you’re welcome to have a look if you think you can help.”

She really was very beautiful, he thought as she sashayed closer, leaning over his shoulder so close he could have sworn her breasts brushed his arm. He tried not to think about it; though he had been with stranger people over the years…there had been that hermaphrodite in Prague a few hundred years ago…and that midget in Vienna…

A sharp pain in the back of his neck quickly brought him back to himself. He could feel the Goa’uld as it slithered into his head, stretching itself throughout his brain in less than a second. His body suddenly burned with power, too much to contain easily and he felt his eyes glow as the excess left him in a rush. A wave of dizziness went through Methos as his body began moving of its own volition, or rather of the Goa’uld’s volition, but he made himself comfortable in the small area of his brain he had been allowed to view the world from and settled in to see what would happen next.

The first thing that happened was a loud and rather annoying noise began chiming throughout the complex and Methos’ new captor swung round to see Macha slipping to the floor, blood dripping from her mouth, a bloody handprint left square on the big red alarm button.

Good girl, Methos thought to himself.

“You shall pay for that Tok’ra scum!” his voice said for him in the tones of the Goa’uld. It didn’t feel like he had been expecting it would at all…it kinda tickled.

But he didn’t have time to wonder about that as the Goa’uld moved towards Macha’s terrified form.

I think you’ve had enough fun, Methos thought pointedly at the presence in his head, fighting for control for a moment before the Goa’uld screamed in pain, mentally and physically, deafening its host.

Suddenly the thing was squirming frantically in his head, panicked and in pain, though Methos was just left a little nauseous by its thrashing. Before he knew it he had control of his body again and almost fell flat on his face with the suddenness of it. On hands and knees on the floor of his office he retched as the Goa’uld fought its way out to land in a bloody heap on the floor, keening pitifully.

The sound of heavily booted feet in the hallway preceded the appearance of Jack with a couple of well armed airmen.

“I’m me…” Methos gasped, putting his hands up from where he knelt on the floor, before his coughing sprayed blood everywhere and he moved to wipe the drips off his chin, trying not to think about the blood he’d just coughed up his nose.

The Goa’uld screeched again.

“Someone zat that thing!” Jack ordered, waiting until it was stunned before coming into the room, other people arriving to peer round the airmen in the doorway.

“Holy Hannah! Maroset!”

“Carter get Macha to the infirmary. Teal’c, Jacob see what you can do with that thing.”

“She’s Tok’ra Jack, she comes under our laws.”

Jacob wasn’t talking about Macha, but the now quiescent Maroset on the floor.

“Yeah, yeah Jacob, we’ll sort that out later. Adam? Can you stand?”

“Sure,” Adam replied, doing just that, “though that was not anything I needed to do today.”

Jack did not respond so flippantly. “These guys are gonna take you to Doc Fraser, just to make sure everyone’s who they say they are, you know? You going to make trouble?”

“Are you kidding?” At Jack’s serious look Adam elaborated. “I’m not going to make trouble Jack. Though I’m going to need a breath mint – stat!”

Jack looked at the thing floating in the electrified solution they had used to keep Junior alive before and felt his skin crawl. It was definitely all there though – nothing missing that could have been left in Adam at least. Teal’c and Jacob were stood with him, two airmen on the door just in case.

“You’ve gotta stop having all these Goa’uld spies Jacob, it makes you look bad.”

“She’s not Goa’uld,” Selmak answered sternly. “Maroset has been with us from the time she was born. She may have coveted the power the Goa’uld wield, but she was not there spy.”

“Wait, you knew that she was a Guld groupie and so you brought her here?”

“In retrospect it may have been a mistake.”

“Ya think?”

Selmak smirked with Jacob’s lips.

Jack turned back to the tank, studying the Goa’uld within. “What’s with all the burns on her?”

Selmak shook his head. “We do not know how a Goa’uld could have sustained such injuries from within a host and yet she does not seem to have been outside of a host long enough to sustain them either. It is a mystery.”

“And how the hell did Adam get her out?”

“I have never heard of such a thing happening,” Teal’c offered.

“She left on her own. She would have died if she’d stayed in me any longer.”

The group around the tank turned to see Adam and Sam walk in. Jack raised his eyebrows in question and Sam answered. “100 human sir. Adam and Macha both, well as human as they were before anyway.”

“Ok, so you wanna explain why this thing just decided to up and leave your big old brain?”

Adam looked meaningfully at the airmen at the door.

“Guys, why don’t you guard from outside?” Jack offered, “And shut the door on your way out.”

As soon as the doors were shut everyone looked expectantly at Adam.

“It was the Quickening. Immortals live so long because the Quickening heals us, rejecting anything that isn’t a part of us. Bullets, knives, they all get forced out eventually and I guess the same goes for Goa’uld. It would explain the burns as well – the Quickening is pretty much pure energy, like electricity almost. Well you know, you saw it when I took that guy’s head outside O’Mally’s.”

“That?” Jack asked. “That big lightning storm thing…that’s inside you all the time, zipping around getting rid of all the stuff that shouldn’t be there? Cool, where can I get one?”

The doors clattered open.

“Hey I heard that there was Guld? Ooh…” Daniel put his glasses on as he approached the tank, peering in at the contents. “Quickening burns. I haven’t seen them since Roy Marshal thought he was saving me from a storm.”

Jack looked between the two Immortals, considering. “This could be interesting.”