FIC: While You Were Sleeping
Sorry for the wait, Sara! Heh, late for my own ficathon... yeah, that's classy. ;)
Title: While You Were Sleeping
Author: MegTDJ
Category: Drama, humour, weirdness
Rating: PG/K+
Pairing: Daniel/Janet
Spoilers: Anything up to Rite of Passage (set in season 5). Also a mild Raiders of the Lost Ark spoiler. Don't ask.
Warnings: Mucho weirdness. Seriously.
Summary: My contribution to the 2008 danjanficathon. My prompt came from lexsara, who wanted "some mention/reference to Doctor Who, a MacGyverism, leather jacket," and did NOT want "heavy angst, depressing ending." Just remember... you asked for it!
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, its universe and its characters are not mine. The story itself is, however, so please don’t archive without my permission.
Author's notes: I blatantly stole this idea from an episode of Supernatural and the title from one of my favourite movies, but the weirdness that ensues from there is completely mine. And yes, I based the wackiest part of this fic on a dream I actually had. Shut up.
Thanks to Kerri and Misty, who convinced me to write and post this thing even though I'm pretty sure I would rather have died. Can I go hide in embarrassment now? *slinks off*
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
While You Were Sleeping
"I told him not to touch the damn thing."
"Well, you know Daniel, sir."
Janet tore her gaze away from her patient as Colonel O'Neill and Sam entered the infirmary.
"How's he doing, Doc?" Colonel O'Neill asked the second he saw her.
Janet sighed and shook her head. "Not very well, I'm afraid, Colonel."
A look of confusion and worry passed over Sam's face. "What?" she said. "I thought he was just asleep?"
Janet sighed and glanced at the monitors hooked up to Daniel's sleeping form. "He is for now," she said, "but his vitals are getting more and more erratic. I'm afraid that if whatever is happening to him continues for much longer, he'll slip into a coma and..."
"But I don't understand," Sam interrupted before Janet could say the dreaded words. "I was just talking to the people on that planet, and they say all the device was designed to do was help their ancient shamans interpret their dreams. They've never heard of anyone being affected by it like this."
"Well, I don't know what to tell you, Sam," Janet said with an impatient sigh. "Maybe there's something different about their brain chemistry, or maybe there's some trick to activating it that only the shamans knew. Whatever the reason..." She paused to take a breath when she could feel her voice begin to break. "Daniel is dying," she finished wearily. "There doesn't seem to be much I can do to stop it."
"Maybe the thing's just... broken," Colonel O'Neill said. "I'm sure Carter can fix it. Right, Carter?"
Sam didn't look very convinced, but she nodded and turned for the door anyway. "I'll get right on that, sir."
"Let us know the second the translation team figures out any of that writing," Janet called after her.
"I will," Sam replied before turning the corner and disappearing from view.
"Actually, I think Teal'c has that well under control," Colonel O'Neill said as he approached Daniel's infirmary bed. "He's watching them like a hawk. I'd never seen a room full of linguists simultaneously break out in a cold sweat like they did when he walked into the room."
Janet managed to force a smile, but she really wasn't in the mood for the colonel's sense of humour. She looked down at Daniel and laid a hand on his wrist under the pretense of checking his pulse. She hated seeing him like this, especially so soon after she came within a hairsbreadth of losing Cassie. Daniel had come to mean a lot to her over the past few months, and she would give anything not to lose him now.
That was why she didn't hesitate to volunteer when Sam presented her crazy idea.
"The linguistics team has discovered that the device was designed to be used simultaneously by two people - the shaman and the 'dreamer,' as they're referred to in the text," Sam explained to Janet, General Hammond, Colonel O'Neill, and Teal'c when they gathered in the briefing room an hour later. "Daniel is essentially lost in his dreams because nobody is there to guide him through them."
"So... what?" Colonel O'Neill said. "We need one of these shaman guys to come and dig him out?"
"I wish it could be as easy as that, sir," Sam said, shaking her head. "The 'mysteries of the ancient shaman' died decades or even centuries ago. No one on the planet knows how to use it. Not to mention that the part of the console the shaman used appears to be damaged."
"Then how do we do it?" Janet asked. "There has to be a way."
"Well..." Sam said hesitantly. "There might be. It's a long shot, but... I may be able to MacGyver a way to hook up the device to the virtual reality chair we brought back from the Gamekeeper's planet."
"The one that's stored at Area 51," General Hammond said.
"Yes, sir."
"But if there's no shaman guy..." Colonel O'Neill said doubtfully.
"Well, from what little has been translated of the text so far," Sam said, "it looks as though all the shaman really did was follow the 'dreamer' through their dream, observing from the sidelines until the dream played itself out, and then appeared to the 'dreamer' and told them to wake themselves up. We're fairly sure this means that the 'dreamer' has it in their power to wake up without any kind of outside intervention, they just... need to know that they're asleep."
Janet studied her hands thoughtfully through Sam's explanation, but she looked up when she realized the implications of this statement. "So what you're saying is, all Daniel needs to do is take control of his dream," she said.
"I can't say for sure, but... yes, it looks that way," Sam said.
"And this shaman... could it be that his ability was actually just... dream control?" Janet continued.
Sam paused for a moment as she considered this. "It's possible," she said. "From what we can gather, the shaman falls asleep just as the dreamer does, it's just that he's in the dreamer's dream instead of his own."
"This entire conversation is confusing the hell out of me," Colonel O'Neill said, leaning his elbows on the table and cradling his head in his hands.
"Perhaps I should be the one to attempt this rescue," Teal'c said. "If I were to enter a deep state of kel'nor'eem..."
"I'm sorry, Teal'c, but I don't think that would work," Sam said gently. "We really don't know what would happen if we hooked someone with a Jaffa physiology up to this device, and kel'nor'eem might not be compatible with Daniel's REM sleep state."
"I'll do it," Janet said.
All eyes immediately turned on her.
"I... studied lucid dreaming for a short time back in college," she said, somewhat embarrassed by the weird looks she was getting. "Once I realize I'm dreaming, I can take control and take the dream wherever I want it to go."
Colonel O'Neill raised his eyebrows. "Cool."
"I'm not sure we can risk it, Doctor," General Hammond said. "You could end up trapped in there along with Dr. Jackson, and he's relying on you right now to keep him alive."
"With all due respect, sir," Janet said firmly, "there is nothing I can do out here towards keeping Daniel alive that Dr. Warner cannot do. If I can save his life by doing this, then I feel it's worth the risk."
General Hammond sighed and paused for a moment before making his decision. "Alright. Major? Call Area 51 and have the chair shipped to the base as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir," Sam said, jumping out of her chair and hurrying from the room.
Colonel O'Neill looked back and forth between Hammond, Teal'c, and Janet in the silent pause that followed. "Well," he said, laying his palms down flat on the table. "This should be interesting."
Janet took a deep breath and let it out slowly as the reality of what she was about to do sank into her mind. Interesting? That was the understatement of the century.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"I think we're all set," Sam said as she jiggled the wires attaching the Gamekeeper's chair to the alien device. "You sure you want to do this, Janet?"
Janet squirmed uncomfortably in her bindings. "I'm ready when you are," she said.
Sam picked up the weird headgear she had assembled for the occasion, but paused for a moment before placing it on Janet's head. "Just to warn you," she said, "from what I can gather from the translations, it seems the device recalls your most frequently recurring dreams and makes them ten times as intense and realistic as a regular dream. Daniel has confided a few of his recurring nightmares to me, and some of them are pretty violent, so... just try not to be too overwhelmed with whatever's going on in there."
Janet steeled herself and nodded. She couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Sure Daniel doesn't need to be hooked up to this stuff, too?" Colonel O'Neill asked from his spot on the sidelines.
"Fairly sure, sir," Sam said as she hooked Janet up to the machine. "We haven't been able to shut down the device since Daniel activated it, so we're pretty sure it's essentially recording his dreams. Janet should be able to interact with them through the device itself."
Colonel O'Neill grunted, but Janet wasn't sure whether it was one of understanding or disapproval.
"Okay," Sam said, moving back over to the device. "Here goes nothing."
She pressed a button on the side of the device and...
The phone rang.
Sam stopped what she was doing and turned to Colonel O'Neill as he took the receiver from the wall and put it to his ear.
Janet breathed a restless sigh. She wished they could just get this over with already.
"We'll be right there," Colonel O'Neill said before hanging up the phone and hurrying across the room. "It's Daniel. Get her outta that thing."
"What?" Janet said, her stomach dropping down to her toes. "What about Daniel?"
"Can't be good," Sam said as she pulled the headgear off Janet's head and loosened her straps. "We'd better go find out."
They hurried through the halls to Daniel's infirmary room, where a small crowd of medical personnel had gathered. Janet pushed her way past them until she was at Daniel's bedside.
"What's his status?" she asked Dr. Warner, who was hovering over him with a grave look on his face.
Warner looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "I... I'm sorry, Dr. Fraiser," he said. "As soon as you left he just started deteriorating so quickly, I..."
"What is his status?" she repeated, not willing to believe what she knew he was about to say.
"I... I'm afraid he's dead."
The room seemed to swim as Janet stared down at Daniel's lifeless body. No... this couldn't be happening... it couldn't be real...
Of course it wasn't real.
Janet shook her head sharply. She was just dreaming... she had to be dreaming. Daniel's condition had been stable just moments before she had been hooked up to the device. There was no way he could have deteriorated so quickly.
Besides, she'd had this nightmare many times before.
She looked at the heart monitor beside Daniel's bed and willed it to start beeping. She smiled victoriously when it obeyed.
"I don't believe it!" Warner cried. "It's a mir..."
Janet snapped her fingers, making Dr. Warner and the rest of the people in the room disappear. "Well, what do you know?" she said as she surveyed the now empty infirmary room. "I might actually enjoy this."
There was no time for that now, though, she scolded herself. She had to figure out how to get into Daniel's head.
She looked around for some kind of clue, but the infirmary was still and silent. "Should have known it wouldn't be easy," she mumbled as she made her way to the door. She stopped in the doorway and peered out into the corridor. Everything looked and felt so real that she was starting to understand why Daniel hadn't realized he was asleep.
Janet sighed. "How am I supposed to do this?" she wondered aloud. If only there had been more detailed instructions on the device. Should she wander through the corridors until she magically entered his dream? Was there a password she needed to say, or some sort of ritual she should perform?
She slapped her forehead when a thought occurred to her - she was controlling this dream. She didn't need to wait for something to happen, she could simply will Daniel's dream to appear in front of her.
"NO!"
The sudden cry startled Janet, but a moment later she was running down the hall towards the sound of weapons' fire. She wasn't sure what she should expect when she turned the corner up ahead, but what she saw would never have been on her list of possibilities.
An army of Daleks were rolling down the corridor towards her.
"STOP! NO!"
Janet spun around when she heard Daniel's desperate cry coming from a few yards ahead of the Daleks. "Daniel?" she shouted. Thick, black, swirling smoke was blocking her view down that end of the corridor, and even though she tried as hard as she could to will it away, this dream seemed to be beyond her control.
'Who knew Daniel was a Doctor Who fan?' she thought with annoyance and apprehension as she started running away from the Daleks and into the black smoke.
"DANGER! NO! DON'T GO THIS WAY!"
Daniel's voice was getting louder as she ran, so Janet knew she must be gaining on him. "Daniel?" she called again. "Where are you?"
She ducked and lunged for the wall as the Daleks opened fire. She was fairly sure that she couldn't be physically killed in Daniel's dream, but she didn't want getting shot to wake her up and sever their connection before she had even spoken to him.
"DANIEL!" she screamed as loud as she could.
Unfortunately, no matter how loud she screamed, the Daleks and their stereotypical chant of, "Exterminate!" drowned her out. She was about to will herself a zat gun and disintegrate every last one of them when the smoke began to clear and a movement to her left caught her eye.
She could swear she was looking at... an Ewok?
"No, please! You're in danger!"
She could see Daniel now, clinging to a long handle on the opposite wall as Ewoks swarmed all around him. They appeared to be running away from the Daleks, but Daniel and Janet could see what they couldn't - a black hole at the end of the corridor that was sucking them in one by one.
"Daniel!" she called as the Daleks charged right past her. "It's me! It's Janet! Daniel, it's a dream! Can you hear me?!"
He seemed to hesitate for a moment as though he'd heard her voice, but the sight of Ewoks and Daleks being sucked into the abyss soon regained his full attention. "NO!" he cried.
Janet could feel the pull of the black hole now, but she broke away from the wall and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as she made her way over to Daniel. "Can you hear me?" she shouted. "Can you see me?"
Daniel did a double take as she approached, looking her up and down as though seeing her there was even more shocking to him than the rest of the dream. "Janet?"
"Oh, thank God," she said. Finally, she had made contact. Now to wake him up...
Before she could get out another word, their surroundings suddenly morphed from the familiar halls of the SGC into some kind of underground tunnel or cave. Janet looked around in surprise, and was about to be glad that the Ewoks and Daleks were gone when Daniel grabbed her by the sleeve and cried, "Janet, run!"
She looked back as Daniel started dragging her along, only to see that they were being followed by a giant ball of rock.
A giant ball of rock that looked extremely familiar.
One glance at Daniel told her everything she needed to know about this dream - khaki pants, leather jacket, fedora... and was that a bullwhip and pistol strapped to his belt?
"Oh my God."
If the stakes hadn't been life or death, Janet might have actually been turned on by Indiana Jackson. The fact that she needed to wake Daniel up before the intensity of these dreams killed him was enough to keep her in check.
"Daniel, we really need to talk!" she said as they ran, getting a mouthful of cobwebs for her trouble.
"What, now?!" Daniel grabbed her with one arm around her waist and pulled her tightly to his side as he took a rolling dive through a nearby hole in the cave wall.
Janet grunted as they rolled down a slight hill and found themselves lying on the ground in the jungle. The boulder was too big to pass through the hole, so it appeared they were safe for the moment.
That was when she noticed that Daniel was lying on top of her.
"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly, running his hand lightly over her face and hair to brush away the cobwebs.
"Ohh, I think so, yeah," she said, trying very hard to stay on mission. "But Daniel, you..."
"Uh oh," he said, looking up at something a few feet away from them.
Janet followed his gaze and saw a band of natives closing in on them, spears drawn and pointed in their direction.
"We really don't have time for this," she said with a resigned sigh. Before she could second-guess herself, she took Daniel's face in her hands and kissed him, long and hard.
Her impromptu plan worked - the dream shifted yet again, the jungle and the natives giving way to a peaceful, shady park with the sound of children playing in the background. Janet quickly ended the kiss as soon as she realized they were safe, and looked around to find that they were lying on a soft blanket with a full picnic spread out around them. "That's better," she said, relieved.
"Mmm," Daniel agreed, taking the opportunity while her head was turned to nibble on her ear.
"Daniel!" Janet pushed him away impatiently. "Listen to me... this is not real."
Daniel laughed and kissed her cheek. "Sure feels real to me," he said.
"I'm not kidding around," she said, trying to squirm out from under him. "You're asleep, Daniel. None of this is real. You're dreaming, and it's very important that you wake up."
Daniel furrowed his brow and stared at her like she had just dropped out of the sky. "What are you talking about?"
Janet sighed in frustration. "Daleks? Ewoks? For God's sake, Daniel, you just reenacted an Indiana Jones movie! You touched something while you were off-world today, and now you're trapped in your own mind until you force yourself to wake up!"
Daniel was silent for a moment as he seemed to absorb what she had said. "I'm dreaming," he said doubtfully.
"Yes!"
"And... you are..."
"Sam found a way to use the device to let me enter your dreams so that I could wake you up," Janet said. "It's really important, Daniel. Please. You... you're dying."
Daniel sat up slowly, a thousand thoughts and emotions passing over his face. "Wait," he said nervously, "you're actually in my head? You're... you're dreaming this, too?"
Janet nodded.
"Oh God," Daniel groaned, hiding his face in his hands. "And I... oh God, this is humiliating..."
Janet stifled a laugh and patted his shoulder. "It's okay, Daniel," she said. "We can deal with all of that when you wake up."
Daniel peered out at her with pleading eyes. "Just don't tell Jack, okay?"
"I won't tell a soul. You have my word."
Daniel sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "Thank you. Cause, you know, the Dalek thing... I was just a kid, and my foster parents were scifi geeks..."
"You don't have to explain, Daniel. Really, I'm... I'm not one to judge. I've had some pretty weird nightmares myself. This dream, on the other hand..." She looked around at their serene, picturesque surroundings and back at Daniel with an amused twinkle in her eyes.
Daniel groaned again and flopped down onto the blanket like he'd been shot.
Janet finally had to laugh. "We don't ever have to talk about it again if it makes you uncomfortable," she said. "Though I wouldn't mind trying it out in reality once we find our way back there..."
Daniel snapped his head up to look at her, a look of surprise and hope on his face. "Really?"
Janet smiled and shrugged. "But first... you really need to wake up," she said.
"Right." Daniel sat up and took a deep breath. "Okay, so... how do I do this?" he asked.
Before Janet had a chance to answer, Daniel and the park disappeared.
The next thing she knew, her eyes snapped open and she was back in the Gamekeeper's chair.
"Whoa," Colonel O'Neill said, darting forward as if to catch her. "That was fast. What happened in there?"
"I..."
The phone rang.
Janet motioned to Sam to help untie her as Colonel O'Neill hurried across the room to answer it. "I think it worked," she said.
"What did you see?" Sam asked as she began loosening the straps holding Janet in place.
Thankfully, Colonel O'Neill hung up the phone at that moment and started for the door. "Daniel's awake," he called back over his shoulder.
Janet and Sam were close behind him, and even though Janet had just seen Daniel moments before, she was anxious to make sure that no damage had been done to his physical body by the device. To her relief, she could see as soon as she entered the room that he was going to be fine - he was struggling to sit up in his bed against the insistence of Teal'c. An ornery Daniel was always a good sign.
"Welcome back to the land of the conscious," Colonel O'Neill said, grinning and slapping Daniel on the shoulder.
"How long was I... dreaming?" Daniel asked, still looking confused and slightly groggy from his long nap.
"Over ten hours," Sam said. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine, I... I guess." He swallowed uncomfortably and nodded at Janet when she approached the bed. "Hey, Janet."
"Hey, Daniel," she said, feigning nonchalance. "Nice to see you back."
A mischievous look appeared on Colonel O'Neill's face as he glanced back and forth between the two of them. "You know," he said, "a thought occurred to me a minute ago while the Doc was in your head... you do realize you guys just slept together, right?"
Janet wasn't sure whether to be amused or horrified, and when she looked at Daniel she could see that he was feeling the same way. But despite their embarrassment, when their eyes met they shared a brief, significant glance filled with the promise of many more shared sleeps to come.
The End
Title: While You Were Sleeping
Author: MegTDJ
Category: Drama, humour, weirdness
Rating: PG/K+
Pairing: Daniel/Janet
Spoilers: Anything up to Rite of Passage (set in season 5). Also a mild Raiders of the Lost Ark spoiler. Don't ask.
Warnings: Mucho weirdness. Seriously.
Summary: My contribution to the 2008 danjanficathon. My prompt came from lexsara, who wanted "some mention/reference to Doctor Who, a MacGyverism, leather jacket," and did NOT want "heavy angst, depressing ending." Just remember... you asked for it!
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, its universe and its characters are not mine. The story itself is, however, so please don’t archive without my permission.
Author's notes: I blatantly stole this idea from an episode of Supernatural and the title from one of my favourite movies, but the weirdness that ensues from there is completely mine. And yes, I based the wackiest part of this fic on a dream I actually had. Shut up.
Thanks to Kerri and Misty, who convinced me to write and post this thing even though I'm pretty sure I would rather have died. Can I go hide in embarrassment now? *slinks off*
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
While You Were Sleeping
"I told him not to touch the damn thing."
"Well, you know Daniel, sir."
Janet tore her gaze away from her patient as Colonel O'Neill and Sam entered the infirmary.
"How's he doing, Doc?" Colonel O'Neill asked the second he saw her.
Janet sighed and shook her head. "Not very well, I'm afraid, Colonel."
A look of confusion and worry passed over Sam's face. "What?" she said. "I thought he was just asleep?"
Janet sighed and glanced at the monitors hooked up to Daniel's sleeping form. "He is for now," she said, "but his vitals are getting more and more erratic. I'm afraid that if whatever is happening to him continues for much longer, he'll slip into a coma and..."
"But I don't understand," Sam interrupted before Janet could say the dreaded words. "I was just talking to the people on that planet, and they say all the device was designed to do was help their ancient shamans interpret their dreams. They've never heard of anyone being affected by it like this."
"Well, I don't know what to tell you, Sam," Janet said with an impatient sigh. "Maybe there's something different about their brain chemistry, or maybe there's some trick to activating it that only the shamans knew. Whatever the reason..." She paused to take a breath when she could feel her voice begin to break. "Daniel is dying," she finished wearily. "There doesn't seem to be much I can do to stop it."
"Maybe the thing's just... broken," Colonel O'Neill said. "I'm sure Carter can fix it. Right, Carter?"
Sam didn't look very convinced, but she nodded and turned for the door anyway. "I'll get right on that, sir."
"Let us know the second the translation team figures out any of that writing," Janet called after her.
"I will," Sam replied before turning the corner and disappearing from view.
"Actually, I think Teal'c has that well under control," Colonel O'Neill said as he approached Daniel's infirmary bed. "He's watching them like a hawk. I'd never seen a room full of linguists simultaneously break out in a cold sweat like they did when he walked into the room."
Janet managed to force a smile, but she really wasn't in the mood for the colonel's sense of humour. She looked down at Daniel and laid a hand on his wrist under the pretense of checking his pulse. She hated seeing him like this, especially so soon after she came within a hairsbreadth of losing Cassie. Daniel had come to mean a lot to her over the past few months, and she would give anything not to lose him now.
That was why she didn't hesitate to volunteer when Sam presented her crazy idea.
"The linguistics team has discovered that the device was designed to be used simultaneously by two people - the shaman and the 'dreamer,' as they're referred to in the text," Sam explained to Janet, General Hammond, Colonel O'Neill, and Teal'c when they gathered in the briefing room an hour later. "Daniel is essentially lost in his dreams because nobody is there to guide him through them."
"So... what?" Colonel O'Neill said. "We need one of these shaman guys to come and dig him out?"
"I wish it could be as easy as that, sir," Sam said, shaking her head. "The 'mysteries of the ancient shaman' died decades or even centuries ago. No one on the planet knows how to use it. Not to mention that the part of the console the shaman used appears to be damaged."
"Then how do we do it?" Janet asked. "There has to be a way."
"Well..." Sam said hesitantly. "There might be. It's a long shot, but... I may be able to MacGyver a way to hook up the device to the virtual reality chair we brought back from the Gamekeeper's planet."
"The one that's stored at Area 51," General Hammond said.
"Yes, sir."
"But if there's no shaman guy..." Colonel O'Neill said doubtfully.
"Well, from what little has been translated of the text so far," Sam said, "it looks as though all the shaman really did was follow the 'dreamer' through their dream, observing from the sidelines until the dream played itself out, and then appeared to the 'dreamer' and told them to wake themselves up. We're fairly sure this means that the 'dreamer' has it in their power to wake up without any kind of outside intervention, they just... need to know that they're asleep."
Janet studied her hands thoughtfully through Sam's explanation, but she looked up when she realized the implications of this statement. "So what you're saying is, all Daniel needs to do is take control of his dream," she said.
"I can't say for sure, but... yes, it looks that way," Sam said.
"And this shaman... could it be that his ability was actually just... dream control?" Janet continued.
Sam paused for a moment as she considered this. "It's possible," she said. "From what we can gather, the shaman falls asleep just as the dreamer does, it's just that he's in the dreamer's dream instead of his own."
"This entire conversation is confusing the hell out of me," Colonel O'Neill said, leaning his elbows on the table and cradling his head in his hands.
"Perhaps I should be the one to attempt this rescue," Teal'c said. "If I were to enter a deep state of kel'nor'eem..."
"I'm sorry, Teal'c, but I don't think that would work," Sam said gently. "We really don't know what would happen if we hooked someone with a Jaffa physiology up to this device, and kel'nor'eem might not be compatible with Daniel's REM sleep state."
"I'll do it," Janet said.
All eyes immediately turned on her.
"I... studied lucid dreaming for a short time back in college," she said, somewhat embarrassed by the weird looks she was getting. "Once I realize I'm dreaming, I can take control and take the dream wherever I want it to go."
Colonel O'Neill raised his eyebrows. "Cool."
"I'm not sure we can risk it, Doctor," General Hammond said. "You could end up trapped in there along with Dr. Jackson, and he's relying on you right now to keep him alive."
"With all due respect, sir," Janet said firmly, "there is nothing I can do out here towards keeping Daniel alive that Dr. Warner cannot do. If I can save his life by doing this, then I feel it's worth the risk."
General Hammond sighed and paused for a moment before making his decision. "Alright. Major? Call Area 51 and have the chair shipped to the base as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir," Sam said, jumping out of her chair and hurrying from the room.
Colonel O'Neill looked back and forth between Hammond, Teal'c, and Janet in the silent pause that followed. "Well," he said, laying his palms down flat on the table. "This should be interesting."
Janet took a deep breath and let it out slowly as the reality of what she was about to do sank into her mind. Interesting? That was the understatement of the century.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"I think we're all set," Sam said as she jiggled the wires attaching the Gamekeeper's chair to the alien device. "You sure you want to do this, Janet?"
Janet squirmed uncomfortably in her bindings. "I'm ready when you are," she said.
Sam picked up the weird headgear she had assembled for the occasion, but paused for a moment before placing it on Janet's head. "Just to warn you," she said, "from what I can gather from the translations, it seems the device recalls your most frequently recurring dreams and makes them ten times as intense and realistic as a regular dream. Daniel has confided a few of his recurring nightmares to me, and some of them are pretty violent, so... just try not to be too overwhelmed with whatever's going on in there."
Janet steeled herself and nodded. She couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Sure Daniel doesn't need to be hooked up to this stuff, too?" Colonel O'Neill asked from his spot on the sidelines.
"Fairly sure, sir," Sam said as she hooked Janet up to the machine. "We haven't been able to shut down the device since Daniel activated it, so we're pretty sure it's essentially recording his dreams. Janet should be able to interact with them through the device itself."
Colonel O'Neill grunted, but Janet wasn't sure whether it was one of understanding or disapproval.
"Okay," Sam said, moving back over to the device. "Here goes nothing."
She pressed a button on the side of the device and...
The phone rang.
Sam stopped what she was doing and turned to Colonel O'Neill as he took the receiver from the wall and put it to his ear.
Janet breathed a restless sigh. She wished they could just get this over with already.
"We'll be right there," Colonel O'Neill said before hanging up the phone and hurrying across the room. "It's Daniel. Get her outta that thing."
"What?" Janet said, her stomach dropping down to her toes. "What about Daniel?"
"Can't be good," Sam said as she pulled the headgear off Janet's head and loosened her straps. "We'd better go find out."
They hurried through the halls to Daniel's infirmary room, where a small crowd of medical personnel had gathered. Janet pushed her way past them until she was at Daniel's bedside.
"What's his status?" she asked Dr. Warner, who was hovering over him with a grave look on his face.
Warner looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "I... I'm sorry, Dr. Fraiser," he said. "As soon as you left he just started deteriorating so quickly, I..."
"What is his status?" she repeated, not willing to believe what she knew he was about to say.
"I... I'm afraid he's dead."
The room seemed to swim as Janet stared down at Daniel's lifeless body. No... this couldn't be happening... it couldn't be real...
Of course it wasn't real.
Janet shook her head sharply. She was just dreaming... she had to be dreaming. Daniel's condition had been stable just moments before she had been hooked up to the device. There was no way he could have deteriorated so quickly.
Besides, she'd had this nightmare many times before.
She looked at the heart monitor beside Daniel's bed and willed it to start beeping. She smiled victoriously when it obeyed.
"I don't believe it!" Warner cried. "It's a mir..."
Janet snapped her fingers, making Dr. Warner and the rest of the people in the room disappear. "Well, what do you know?" she said as she surveyed the now empty infirmary room. "I might actually enjoy this."
There was no time for that now, though, she scolded herself. She had to figure out how to get into Daniel's head.
She looked around for some kind of clue, but the infirmary was still and silent. "Should have known it wouldn't be easy," she mumbled as she made her way to the door. She stopped in the doorway and peered out into the corridor. Everything looked and felt so real that she was starting to understand why Daniel hadn't realized he was asleep.
Janet sighed. "How am I supposed to do this?" she wondered aloud. If only there had been more detailed instructions on the device. Should she wander through the corridors until she magically entered his dream? Was there a password she needed to say, or some sort of ritual she should perform?
She slapped her forehead when a thought occurred to her - she was controlling this dream. She didn't need to wait for something to happen, she could simply will Daniel's dream to appear in front of her.
"NO!"
The sudden cry startled Janet, but a moment later she was running down the hall towards the sound of weapons' fire. She wasn't sure what she should expect when she turned the corner up ahead, but what she saw would never have been on her list of possibilities.
An army of Daleks were rolling down the corridor towards her.
"STOP! NO!"
Janet spun around when she heard Daniel's desperate cry coming from a few yards ahead of the Daleks. "Daniel?" she shouted. Thick, black, swirling smoke was blocking her view down that end of the corridor, and even though she tried as hard as she could to will it away, this dream seemed to be beyond her control.
'Who knew Daniel was a Doctor Who fan?' she thought with annoyance and apprehension as she started running away from the Daleks and into the black smoke.
"DANGER! NO! DON'T GO THIS WAY!"
Daniel's voice was getting louder as she ran, so Janet knew she must be gaining on him. "Daniel?" she called again. "Where are you?"
She ducked and lunged for the wall as the Daleks opened fire. She was fairly sure that she couldn't be physically killed in Daniel's dream, but she didn't want getting shot to wake her up and sever their connection before she had even spoken to him.
"DANIEL!" she screamed as loud as she could.
Unfortunately, no matter how loud she screamed, the Daleks and their stereotypical chant of, "Exterminate!" drowned her out. She was about to will herself a zat gun and disintegrate every last one of them when the smoke began to clear and a movement to her left caught her eye.
She could swear she was looking at... an Ewok?
"No, please! You're in danger!"
She could see Daniel now, clinging to a long handle on the opposite wall as Ewoks swarmed all around him. They appeared to be running away from the Daleks, but Daniel and Janet could see what they couldn't - a black hole at the end of the corridor that was sucking them in one by one.
"Daniel!" she called as the Daleks charged right past her. "It's me! It's Janet! Daniel, it's a dream! Can you hear me?!"
He seemed to hesitate for a moment as though he'd heard her voice, but the sight of Ewoks and Daleks being sucked into the abyss soon regained his full attention. "NO!" he cried.
Janet could feel the pull of the black hole now, but she broke away from the wall and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as she made her way over to Daniel. "Can you hear me?" she shouted. "Can you see me?"
Daniel did a double take as she approached, looking her up and down as though seeing her there was even more shocking to him than the rest of the dream. "Janet?"
"Oh, thank God," she said. Finally, she had made contact. Now to wake him up...
Before she could get out another word, their surroundings suddenly morphed from the familiar halls of the SGC into some kind of underground tunnel or cave. Janet looked around in surprise, and was about to be glad that the Ewoks and Daleks were gone when Daniel grabbed her by the sleeve and cried, "Janet, run!"
She looked back as Daniel started dragging her along, only to see that they were being followed by a giant ball of rock.
A giant ball of rock that looked extremely familiar.
One glance at Daniel told her everything she needed to know about this dream - khaki pants, leather jacket, fedora... and was that a bullwhip and pistol strapped to his belt?
"Oh my God."
If the stakes hadn't been life or death, Janet might have actually been turned on by Indiana Jackson. The fact that she needed to wake Daniel up before the intensity of these dreams killed him was enough to keep her in check.
"Daniel, we really need to talk!" she said as they ran, getting a mouthful of cobwebs for her trouble.
"What, now?!" Daniel grabbed her with one arm around her waist and pulled her tightly to his side as he took a rolling dive through a nearby hole in the cave wall.
Janet grunted as they rolled down a slight hill and found themselves lying on the ground in the jungle. The boulder was too big to pass through the hole, so it appeared they were safe for the moment.
That was when she noticed that Daniel was lying on top of her.
"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly, running his hand lightly over her face and hair to brush away the cobwebs.
"Ohh, I think so, yeah," she said, trying very hard to stay on mission. "But Daniel, you..."
"Uh oh," he said, looking up at something a few feet away from them.
Janet followed his gaze and saw a band of natives closing in on them, spears drawn and pointed in their direction.
"We really don't have time for this," she said with a resigned sigh. Before she could second-guess herself, she took Daniel's face in her hands and kissed him, long and hard.
Her impromptu plan worked - the dream shifted yet again, the jungle and the natives giving way to a peaceful, shady park with the sound of children playing in the background. Janet quickly ended the kiss as soon as she realized they were safe, and looked around to find that they were lying on a soft blanket with a full picnic spread out around them. "That's better," she said, relieved.
"Mmm," Daniel agreed, taking the opportunity while her head was turned to nibble on her ear.
"Daniel!" Janet pushed him away impatiently. "Listen to me... this is not real."
Daniel laughed and kissed her cheek. "Sure feels real to me," he said.
"I'm not kidding around," she said, trying to squirm out from under him. "You're asleep, Daniel. None of this is real. You're dreaming, and it's very important that you wake up."
Daniel furrowed his brow and stared at her like she had just dropped out of the sky. "What are you talking about?"
Janet sighed in frustration. "Daleks? Ewoks? For God's sake, Daniel, you just reenacted an Indiana Jones movie! You touched something while you were off-world today, and now you're trapped in your own mind until you force yourself to wake up!"
Daniel was silent for a moment as he seemed to absorb what she had said. "I'm dreaming," he said doubtfully.
"Yes!"
"And... you are..."
"Sam found a way to use the device to let me enter your dreams so that I could wake you up," Janet said. "It's really important, Daniel. Please. You... you're dying."
Daniel sat up slowly, a thousand thoughts and emotions passing over his face. "Wait," he said nervously, "you're actually in my head? You're... you're dreaming this, too?"
Janet nodded.
"Oh God," Daniel groaned, hiding his face in his hands. "And I... oh God, this is humiliating..."
Janet stifled a laugh and patted his shoulder. "It's okay, Daniel," she said. "We can deal with all of that when you wake up."
Daniel peered out at her with pleading eyes. "Just don't tell Jack, okay?"
"I won't tell a soul. You have my word."
Daniel sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "Thank you. Cause, you know, the Dalek thing... I was just a kid, and my foster parents were scifi geeks..."
"You don't have to explain, Daniel. Really, I'm... I'm not one to judge. I've had some pretty weird nightmares myself. This dream, on the other hand..." She looked around at their serene, picturesque surroundings and back at Daniel with an amused twinkle in her eyes.
Daniel groaned again and flopped down onto the blanket like he'd been shot.
Janet finally had to laugh. "We don't ever have to talk about it again if it makes you uncomfortable," she said. "Though I wouldn't mind trying it out in reality once we find our way back there..."
Daniel snapped his head up to look at her, a look of surprise and hope on his face. "Really?"
Janet smiled and shrugged. "But first... you really need to wake up," she said.
"Right." Daniel sat up and took a deep breath. "Okay, so... how do I do this?" he asked.
Before Janet had a chance to answer, Daniel and the park disappeared.
The next thing she knew, her eyes snapped open and she was back in the Gamekeeper's chair.
"Whoa," Colonel O'Neill said, darting forward as if to catch her. "That was fast. What happened in there?"
"I..."
The phone rang.
Janet motioned to Sam to help untie her as Colonel O'Neill hurried across the room to answer it. "I think it worked," she said.
"What did you see?" Sam asked as she began loosening the straps holding Janet in place.
Thankfully, Colonel O'Neill hung up the phone at that moment and started for the door. "Daniel's awake," he called back over his shoulder.
Janet and Sam were close behind him, and even though Janet had just seen Daniel moments before, she was anxious to make sure that no damage had been done to his physical body by the device. To her relief, she could see as soon as she entered the room that he was going to be fine - he was struggling to sit up in his bed against the insistence of Teal'c. An ornery Daniel was always a good sign.
"Welcome back to the land of the conscious," Colonel O'Neill said, grinning and slapping Daniel on the shoulder.
"How long was I... dreaming?" Daniel asked, still looking confused and slightly groggy from his long nap.
"Over ten hours," Sam said. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine, I... I guess." He swallowed uncomfortably and nodded at Janet when she approached the bed. "Hey, Janet."
"Hey, Daniel," she said, feigning nonchalance. "Nice to see you back."
A mischievous look appeared on Colonel O'Neill's face as he glanced back and forth between the two of them. "You know," he said, "a thought occurred to me a minute ago while the Doc was in your head... you do realize you guys just slept together, right?"
Janet wasn't sure whether to be amused or horrified, and when she looked at Daniel she could see that he was feeling the same way. But despite their embarrassment, when their eyes met they shared a brief, significant glance filled with the promise of many more shared sleeps to come.
The End