[Daniel] Captive

Jan 23, 2007 22:28

Who: Daniel
Where: ebil!DHARMA
When: Day 24?
Invited: ebil!Ami, ebil!Daniel (invitees to change in the future)
Status: Incomplete

Daniel forced his eyes open and then wished that he hadn't. Daggers of light stabbed his eyes and pain carved its way through his head. His body reacted involuntarily and eyelids fell like shields against the luminous enemy. The darkness was but a faint refuge. Damage done, the sharp piercing in his brain and just behind his eyes continued. Adding insult to injury, his stomach rebelled and with little consideration for his feelings, his dinner exited his body with unnecessary and cruel force which left him coughing, sweating and panting when it was over.

(Kill me now.) Daniel slumped against something soft.

Not yet.

The voice in his head renewed the sharp edges of pain. Daniel groaned, wrestled with a new round of stomach upheaval and then blissfully embraced the encroaching darkness that swallowed him whole.

When he next clawed his way to something resembling consciousness, Daniel opted to not open his eyes immediately. The pain in his head had receded to but a dull throbbing, but he wasn't prepared to take chances just yet. With his eyes closed, Daniel relied on his other senses to tell him where he was and what was going on.

It took only a minute or two to recall the raid on the DHARMA facility and the people -- Clones? Robot duplicates? Dopplegangers? - in the control room. During that minute Daniel processed the softness of the surface that he lie on his stomach on: homespun blankets and mattresses stuffed with fibers and wild grasses, he could even smell the freshness of the grasses and the arid dry desert smell.

(Abydos.)

Daniel immediately jerked his eyes open and half lifted himself. He also immediately regretted it. The room - tent shelter? - rotated to the right and slanted downward at a forty-five degree angle. The light daggers returned, if only for a few stabs instead of a million of them, but it was enough to leave their mark. His stomach twisted and heaved, and he slumped forward, resting his head between his knees.

"You'll want to take it a bit easy," a female voice said. It was familiar - accented - but the percussion band in his head made it difficult for Daniel to focus. "That's a nasty cocktail of drugs you've in your system."

The desert bed shifted and Daniel felt someone sit beside him. "Here," Something round and cool pressed into his hands, "Drink this."

Daniel hesitated and his companion - and Daniel did use the term loosely - tsked. "Really, Daniel, don't you think that if it were poison, you'd be dead by now? It's water fortified with electrolytes and your body needs it."

The voice clicked. Daniel sat up - slowly this time - and turned his head to the woman at his side. "Ami," he croaked. It was her, except that it wasn't. The hair was too short and something about her just felt off in his gut. Then he remembered the last and final duplicate in the control room.

"You're not Ami."

Ami gave him a half smile. "Of course I am. Have been since the day I was born. I'm simply not the one that you're familiar with." She reached out and lifted the cup and his hands toward his mouth, "Drink it or you'll feel like crap for a good long while.

"Besides," the smile grew and something in it unsettled Daniel, "if we wanted you dead, you would be."

Daniel opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. Having been in this position too many times, he didn't have a good argument. Ami - this Ami - spoke the truth. They'd been cocky and then they'd been captured. If DHARMA wanted them dead, there had been ample opportunity.

He drank a few swallows of the water, forcing himself to drink slowly. Daniel knew that imbibing too quickly would only upset his stomach and put him right back where he started. While he drank, he slowly and quietly took in his surroundings. The heavy cloth walls of the tent, the blankets and mats on the floor, the grinding stone, the clay water jugs and the clay mugs, including the one he drank from. It was Abydos.

Except that he wasn't stupid enough to believe that it really was. It was a damn good facsimile though, right down to the smells and the feeling of the blankets against his skin. The entire time Daniel explored with his eyes, he felt Ami's eyes on him. He imagined that he could feel her looking through him and then wondered if it was his imagination at all. If she was some duplicate of the Ami Jackson he knew, then she had to have Ami's powers.

"Where am I?" Daniel asked once the cup was empty. He frowned at it, disappointed. He was already beginning to feel better. (Ami wasn't lying about that. I really did need what was in there.)

Ami smirked and refilled the cup. "Where do you think you are?"

Daniel took a shorter draught than he would have liked and frowned at her. "Not on Abydos, that's for certain."

"Are you so sure about that, Daniel?"

"Yes, I am." Daniel didn't add that Abydos was pretty much a barren waste. "I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not," Ami agreed. "Overconfident and too soft, but not stupid."

Daniel rolled his eyes and muttered, "Thanks." He took another drink and decided he was tired of playing the happy prisoner game. "Where are my people?"

"Alive. Safe. For now."

"That's not an answer."

"And you're not exactly in a position to demand answers, are you, then?" A slender dark hand reached out and raked lightly through his hair.

Though about as far from hurtful as a touch could be, it was personal and unsettling and far too intimate. Daniel instinctively tried to dodge her touch, but only succeeded in pin wheeling off of the bed and onto the floor, half-pulling the blankets with him. The cup tumbled from his hand, but hovered in mid-air, caught right before it spilled.

Daniel spared a moment to stare it in surprise before he realized something about the part of the blanket that just barely pooled in his lap. He felt his temperature skyrocket as every square inch of his body blushed and he squeezed his eyes closed. Drawing a deep breath, Daniel released it slowly.

He clipped out, quietly and carefully. "Where are my clothes?"

day 24, daniel

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