Diplomacy (2/27)
Title: Diplomacy ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5a-- 5b Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11a-- 11b Chapter12 Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b Chapter16 Chapter17a-- 17b Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26 Epilogue
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Duty and Deception, Part II
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12 June 1998; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs
"Yeah, Carter's awake. I can't believe she didn't..." Jack started, then glanced at Daniel and stopped.
"That she didn't kill Cassandra and me yesterday?" Daniel guessed unhappily, leaning back in the chair set outside Sam's holding cell and watching Teal'c come down the hall toward them, ready to interrogate their Goa'uld prisoner. He could still remember the feel of Sam's steel against his throat, and he could only imagine what Cassandra must be remembering herself. "It said it was against Ra and not our enemy."
Jack was standing rigidly with his back braced against the wall, his expression hidden. "'Against Ra?' Over fifteen years too late for that."
Daniel shrugged. "Those were the only words it said in Goa'uld. Said it was 'tok Ra.'"
Teal'c stopped with his ID card halfway through the reader. "Tok'ra?" he repeated. "Those were the exact words she used?"
Teal'c said it differently, though, shifting the emphasis from the second syllable to the first, as if the entire prepositional phrase functioned as a separate noun, and Daniel realized that the Goa'uld in Sam had said it that way, too. He simply hadn't thought anything of it at the time because of the widely varying pronunciation of languages like Goa'uld. There were a whole universe and millennia of phonetic drift to account for, after all.
"Yes, those words," Daniel confirmed, curious now. "That's what it means, isn't it? Against Ra? Why, is there another meaning?"
The Jaffa stepped away from the door and faced both of them. "It is said that the Tok'ra are a faction of Goa'uld who oppose the System Lords. Their legend is forbidden to be told among Jaffa."
"Well, then how do you know about them?"
"The more a story is forbidden, Daniel Jackson, the more it will be told," Teal'c said. "I thought the Tok'ra to be no more than a legend; I have never met one."
Daniel turned toward the door to the cell, as if he could see Sam's face through it. "Well, I think...maybe now we have."
"I'm not trusting that thing," Jack said firmly.
"Do you think I want to trust one of those...those orak?" Daniel snapped back, pushing agitatedly to his feet. "She's my friend, too, Jack. But we have to talk to it--her--it if we want any chance of getting Sam back."
Jack scowled. "We don't negotiate with Goa'uld, Daniel."
Daniel stared at him for a moment. "I'll talk to it, if you won't," he finally declared, walking toward the cell.
"No, you won't."
"You can't stop me, Jack," he said, though a part of him knew that wasn't true at all.
"The door will stop you," Jack said irritably. "Your ID doesn't give you access to holding cells."
Daniel stopped. "Yi shay! You can't just leave her--"
Jack straightened angrily. "Don't talk to me about leaving anyone anywhere--"
"It's Sam, Jack!"
"I know it's Sam! No one on my team--"
"Then we have to do something!"
"I will speak with the Goa'uld," Teal'c said loudly, easily overriding both of them. There was an angry glint in his eye when he looked toward the cell door, but Daniel had to admit he still looked a lot more composed than either he or Jack was. "I will determine whether she speaks the truth."
Jack glared at the cell. "Fine. I'll go with you to question her."
"It," Daniel muttered obstinately.
"A symbiote assumes the gender of its host," Teal'c told him. Daniel's stomach twisted at the thought of a Goa'uld taking anything at all from Sam, even if it was just a pronoun. Those pronouns were called 'personal,' after all.
"Oy," Jack said, still scowling, though his voice was calmer now. "By the way, we've figured out how a Goa'uld got into her. The last host it was in? He's dead, Daniel, and so are a hell of a lot of Nasyans. So I'm having a hard time trusting this thing."
Despair threatened to rise up again, so he pushed it down with, "Do you know who it was? The previous host?"
"One of the refugees ID'd him, yeah."
"No one I talked to mentioned anything about someone who was acting differently."
"Well, the one person who'd know best is his wife. She was taken to the hospital early on, so you didn't get her statement."
Daniel looked up sharply. "Not yet," he said.
"What part about 'Goa'uld' aren't you getting, Daniel?" Jack said. "This isn't a safe zone anymore, and it's not--"
"What? It's not an emergency? It's not more dangerous for everyone if we don't fix this?" he said heatedly. "I have explicit permission to work in these situations."
Jack scowled. "You have permission if and when someone gives it to you."
"She's the wife of a victim, Jack, not the enemy," Daniel pointed out. "Someone has to talk to her, and you know it will be either me or Teal'c. And the sooner the better. Teal'c can talk to the wife, or he can interrogate Sa--the...her. Which do you think is the safer option for me?"
Eventually, Jack exhaled sharply and nodded once. "Catch a ride with Fraiser when she goes over there today," he said, dropping the tone he normally used to argue with Daniel and making it clear that this was an order from an officer, "and no questioning anyone without her or an SF present. Understood?"
Caught off-guard by the acquiescence (though he shouldn't have been; Jack erred on the side of being overprotective of Daniel, but the logic was sound and this was Sam), Daniel nodded. "Understood."
"Call me as soon as you're done," he ordered, and followed Teal'c into Sam's cell.
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12 June 1998; SGC, Earth; 1500 hrs
"No, I haven't talked to her since this morning," Daniel's voice said over the phone from Dr. Fraiser's office at the hospital. "Talia noticed the entry scar, but she said it was four moon cycles ago when she first saw it."
Jack paced in the hallway outside Carter's cell. "And a 'moon cycle' is..."
"Uh, I don't know how long Nasyan months are, but it sounded like a long time. I mean, she made it sound like it was a pretty long time since she saw it."
"And she never noticed her husband was a Goa'uld for...months," Jack said skeptically.
"No."
"Oh, come on!"
"I'm just telling you what she said!" Daniel insisted. "And I really don't think she was hiding anything; she looked confused more than anything. I can talk to her again later, but there's a doctor with her now. Jack, maybe the Goa'uld inside Sam is telling the truth. Did she tell you and Teal'c anything?"
"Said she's Tok'ra, we have to let her go, we Tau'ri don't know what we're doing, she has information that can help us but doesn't want to tell us what it is, yadda," Jack said. "Says her name is Jolinar. We did convince her to tell us that there's an ash...something after her." Supposedly--unless that was just some yarn she was spinning.
"An...a what?" Daniel asked.
"A Goa'uld assassin, apparently. That's why she was on Nasya to begin with: she was hiding." Or so she said.
"Then--" There was a pause. "That's why the planet was destroyed? Because she needed a place to hide?"
Jack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know, Daniel. Look, don't bother trying to get more info--there's probably nothing more to dig out. You might as well come back to base."
"Janet said she'll drive me back when she's done here--"
"That might not be for a while yet. She's staying until the last group of refugees leaves today."
"Well, I just helped them bring some of the first group to the transport trucks," Daniel said, which Jack had certainly not told him to do, but Daniel tended to interpret his orders broadly. At least he was sure to have been supervised for this. "They've already left the hospital and should be on their way to the SGC. The next group isn't leaving for a couple of hours."
"Join one of the trucks with the next group, then."
But Daniel couldn't just say 'okay' and leave it there, of course, because he was Daniel. "And did...did the Tok'ra say anything about Sam?"
Oh, had she ever--but there was no point in raising hopes that might come crashing down later. "We're still trying to figure out whether we should trust what she says," Jack hedged. He waited a few moments, expecting an exasperated sigh and insistence for the whole truth, Jack, come on, but nothing came. "Daniel?" No one answered. He stopped pacing. "Are you still there, kid? Daniel!"
Over the line, he could suddenly hear a woman's voice in the background saying, "...need to call the SGC..."
And then Daniel's voice, "Here, it's already...it's Jack."
"What the hell's going on over there?" Jack said, but then the phone was apparently handed off to someone else.
"Colonel O'Neill, this is Dr. Fraiser. We've got a problem. One of the wounded Nasyans was actually a Goa'uld."
Bad day.
"Doctor, we think...I guess we know now that there's an elite Goa'uld assassin coming after the symbiote inside Carter," he told her, moving toward the briefing room and the general's office. "Where's the patient now? You have him under guard?"
"No, sir. He's male, but we don't know what he looks like..."
"What?"
"He was burned so badly that his face was completely covered in bandages. By the time we discovered what was happening, he had been impersonating a doctor, probably for a few hours."
No one would have questioned what someone dressed like a doctor was doing walking around a hospital, especially if he was being subtle about it. "Then he could be anyone, and he's probably already healed."
"Yes, sir. He could have changed by now, too."
"Dammit." He knocked on Hammond's closed office door. "Doc, tell Daniel to get to the transport trucks and over here now," he said, knowing Daniel was probably still standing there and listening to what he could hear of the conversation. The general's voice answered his knock, and he opened the door. "And Cassie, too, if it'll be safer here. We'll start putting a team together to send over your way."
General Hammond looked up at the words 'safer here' and 'putting a team together.'
Jack put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "Sir, it's Dr. Fraiser. The Goa'uld assassin is in a Nasyan man at the hospital," he told the general. "They don't know who or where he is."
Over the line, Fraiser's muffled voice was saying, "Hurry, join one of the transports outside and tell them to take you back to base right away. No, Cass--Cass, stay with Daniel; don't get separated."
Hammond stood. "I'll get a team together. Take care of the refugees' relocation, Colonel; the first group just arrived on base. And see if you can't get any more information from Dr. Fraiser."
"Yes, sir." Into the phone, he asked, "Dr. Fraiser, you still there?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who knows about this? How d'you find out?"
"I found the attending physician unconscious in the patient's bed, covered in bandages so no one would know they had switched places. You're the first person I've told, but soon someone will notice that Dr. Jacobs was admitted by me with no explanation."
"No other suspicious activities there?" He made his way down the corridor to the SG-1 ready room. Jack waved at Teal'c to catch his attention, then covered the mouthpiece and said, "The Nasyans are arriving. Go to the 'gate room and make sure they all get sent through." The Jaffa nodded and left without question.
"Not that I know of, Colonel," Fraiser was saying, sounding frustrated, "but we have no idea just what he's doing."
"He can't know that the Tok'ra is here at the SGC," Jack said, thinking furiously. "You think he knows it was in one of the Nasyans and he's trying to figure out which one?"
"Possibly," she said. "He might have some way to figure out which patient's body is hosting a symbiote. And even without any special technology, we know from Teal'c and Cassandra that one symbiote can sense the presence of another."
"I forgot about that. Great." A thought struck him. "I just sent Teal'c to the Stargate, but someone else can handle relocation. I'll send him to you. Maybe he can sense it if someone's walking around with a snake--"
A crashing sound came over the line, distinctly like that of a door bursting violently open.
"Doc?" Jack barked into the phone. "Talk to me. Dr. Fraiser!"
"Guys, we don't have time for..." he heard her start to say, and then there were two other voices, one high-pitched and one lower, talking rapidly over each other. Then one dropped off, and Jack recognized Daniel's voice before he stopped, too. A silence followed.
"What the hell--"
"I need to get back to base, Colonel," Fraiser interrupted him. "The kids found an airman dead in one of the transport trucks, stripped of his fatigues and his tags. The Goa'uld assassin may be impersonating him in the first group of refugees."
"Ah, geez." He turned back, heading for the 'gate room. "The first group's just arrived. They've already passed the security checkpoint."
"What?" she said, sounding as close to panicked as he had ever heard her. "Then the assassin is probably already at the SGC, sir."
"Mom?" Cassie's scared voice asked. "What's going on?"
"It's...complicated," Jack heard Fraiser say. "Cass, stay here, okay? Don't argue, Daniel! Lock the door and look after Cassandra, don't let anyone in without my word. Colonel O'Neill, I'm on my way back now."
"Good. Check in when you're here." He shut off the phone. "Teal'c!" he called as he arrived through the blast doors, ignoring the curious stares of Nasyans and thankful for once that they wouldn't understand what he was saying. "The assassin is on base, possibly dressed like one of our men. He'll probably try to get out through the Stargate, so get your zat ready--stun anyone who looks suspicious and we'll sort it out later."
The Jaffa placed a hand over the zat gun at his side. "He is looking for Jolinar of Malkshur, O'Neill."
"Y'think?" Jack was already on his way out, heading for the armory and wishing he had his own zat or sidearm on him. "Stay here--I'm going to look for him!"
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13 June 1998; SGC, Earth; 2100 hrs
By the time it ended, Jack didn't know how many of their security force had been killed, collateral damage for a Goa'uld assassin looking for its target. He really didn't know how he was supposed to feel about the fact that Jolinar had been killed, too.
Or sacrificed herself. Or something. Jack decided not to think about that. Better to think about Carter.
"Sam--ah, Carter," Jack said, his hands in his pockets as he walked toward the woman on the hospital bed. He could tell she was awake again--her open eyes kind of gave that away--but she didn't answer.
She's alive, he thought firmly. As far as first steps went, that seemed pretty good. It was further than Charlie Kawalsky had gotten. She'd talked the night before, a little--just to say that the Tok'ra had saved her life, sure, but that she'd said anything at all meant she wasn't permanently brain-damaged or something. He was pretty sure.
"I just called Cassie and Daniel at the hospital. They're fine. On their way back here to see you," he tried. When she still didn't react, he bent and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. "Doc says you're gonna be okay. Glad... You know. Glad you're...back. Captain." Mostly back, anyway. He straightened, suppressing a frustrated sigh, and walked back out into the hallway.
"Jack?"
He looked up to see Daniel standing there, Cassie partially hiding behind him with a hand wrapped around his arm.
"You two okay?" Jack asked.
"We're okay," Daniel answered, one finger tapping nervously on his leg, glancing once at Cassie. "But no one would tell us anything on the way from the hospital. What happened? Is...is Sam...?"
Jack looked at Cassie to include her in his answer. "Dr. Fraiser's just doing some last checks, but Sam's almost completely healed."
Daniel's eyebrows rose at the word 'healed,' making Jack realize that they really didn't know anything about what had just happened.
"Is the Goa'uld gone?" Cassie asked, cutting to the part that mattered most.
"Yes, sweetie," Fraiser said, stepping out. "The symbiote that was inside Sam died, but it saved her life at the same time."
"So she's fine," Cassie said.
Fraiser exchanged a look with Jack. "She's uninjured, nothing a few days of rest won't cure. She's the same old Samantha Carter that she was before."
Daniel looked between them with a frown, no doubt noticing the evasiveness of the answer. Cassie must have noticed, too, or seen her mom's hesitation, because she asked in frustration, "Then what's wrong?"
"Well," Jack said, lowering himself to a crouch to bring himself closer to eye level with her, though this meant that Daniel was disconcertingly looking down at him. "She's just a little sad right now. Do you want to visit her? I'll bet she cheers up when she sees you."
She nodded, and Jack stood, taking her hand to lead her toward the door. Daniel hovered anxiously behind both of them, as if unsure whether to go in or stay outside; Jack caught his eye and gestured slightly with his head to remain outside. Daniel looked reluctant but stayed obediently in the hallway with them, watching from the doorway as Cassandra walked in and tugged on Sam's shoulder until the woman turned and lay flat on her back to look back up at the girl.
"You're going to be okay," they heard from where they stood outside the room. Sam turned away slightly. Cassie moved back into her line of sight and plopped down next to her on the bed, curling up and staring until Sam reached out and pulled her close.
Fraiser smiled a little and gave Jack a relieved nod that Sam was at least acknowledging Cassie's presence the way she hadn't been responding to anyone else since the Goa'uld--Tok'ra, Jolinar, whatever--had died yesterday. He took one more long look at where Sam--Captain Carter--lay on the bed, then backed out of the infirmary. Daniel was still staring at them with an odd look on his face, so Jack put a hand on his shoulder to catch his attention.
"Let's give them some time," he said quietly, jerking his head back out at the hall. "Look, sorry we left you two at the hospital, but we had to be sure it was safe here, first."
Daniel was slow in drawing his eyes away from the doorway to the infirmary but said, "It's okay. There was someone guarding the door the whole time, and they brought a cot into Janet's office for the night and everything. You could have told us what was happening, though," he added, his tone reproving, though the relief was still strong enough to overpower it for the most part.
"We had to be sure, first," Jack repeated. It would've been worse if they'd thought Sam was back, and then something had gone wrong. "But I can tell you now if you still want to know."
"Of course I want to know," Daniel said, because he always wanted to know. "All we knew was that there was an assassin trying to kill the Goa--the Tok'ra, and he got here with the Nasyans, but--"
"Teal'c stopped him," Jack said. "He was helping to get the refugees through the Stargate, so he sensed the guy's snake when he tried to escape. Zatted him." Well, and zatted one of the refugees, too, a woman the assassin had taken hostage, but zats were handy that way--first shot didn't kill.
"But something happened to Sam," Daniel pressed. "You said she was 'healed.' And the Tok'ra died, so something must have..."
"We...didn't exactly see that part. The assassin got to her before we could, but she's okay now." Jack looked at his watch, then said, reluctantly, "You, ah...you want to go home tonight?"
Daniel glanced again at the infirmary door. "Not really," he said.
"Good," Jack said, relieved. "Me neither."
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14 June 1998; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs
Fraiser met Jack as he tried to enter the infirmary in the morning. "When did Cassie end up leaving?" he asked her.
The doctor raised an eyebrow. "Leaving? I don't know what you mean, Colonel." She gestured toward the door.
Jack peeked in and immediately wondered which of the three people on the narrow hospital bed would fall off first. He decided it would probably be Daniel, since Cassie didn't take up too much space, and Carter was pretty safe in the middle of the bed.
Carter was lying on her side with her cheek resting in Cassie's hair, while the girl curled up under her chin like a life-sized teddy bear. Sam's other hand was entwined with Daniel's; he was asleep on his back, his head next to her pillow and one leg dangling awkwardly over the side, as if he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed and simply conked out on the spot.
"One of them's gonna end up on the floor," he said aloud, though he didn't move to try to separate them. "Cassie's been here since last night? When'd Daniel come in?" Jack had checked in on the captain occasionally until early this morning, when she seemed to have fallen asleep.
"He's been wandering past here every once in a while for most of the night. Not unlike you and Teal'c," Fraiser pointed out. "Sam woke up about an hour ago, saw him standing at the door, and wanted to talk to him, so..." She held out a hand toward the three people. "I didn't want to disturb her--she seems comfortable with them there."
Jack eyed Daniel's sprawled and twisted form, thinking he might not be particularly comfortable when he woke up, but only said, "Okay."
"Do you want to put that down, sir?" Fraiser added.
With a start, Jack remembered that he was holding a laptop in his hands. "Ah...I...don't want to wake her. I can come back later. I just figured...she'll be staying here for a few days, right?"
"I'd like her to, yes. But unless you want to carry that around the base for the next few hours, Colonel, I'd leave it, or you can just wait here for her to wake up," Fraiser suggested. "And I should take Cassie home once they wake up, too. Physically, Sam's almost completely fine, presumably from the symbiote that gave its life for her."
He exhaled heavily. "It's just getting...sucked into her? That can't be normal."
"Absorbed," she corrected, then conceded, "Normal? Not by our standards. But it doesn't seem to be leaving anything behind, other than some residual naquadah. I've identified a few marker proteins in her plasma that don't seem to have any adverse effect, but we'll do a comprehensive genetic screen, too. It's a little like the way Cassandra still has naquadah in her bloodstream. Of course, I can't really say, but it seems unlikely that it'll harm her. Physically."
"And other than physically?"
Fraiser hesitated. "She seems to have relaxed a bit with the kids there," she said in answer.
"Yeah." Jack looked over the doctor's head again at his second-in-command. "I'll just leave this in there for her," he said.
Carter stirred when he approached the bed, but she didn't wake. Daniel's eyes blinked open, though, and he shifted slightly, then froze when he realized where he was. His still-groggy gaze flicked to Jack, who put a finger to his lips and carefully set the laptop on the bedside table, then leaned over both of them to check on Cassie. She still slept on contentedly.
He wavered for a moment between letting Daniel stay there--it had been a long few days for everyone, after all--and motioning him to get up. Cassie was still small, but Daniel's latest growth spurt made him almost as tall as Sam now. In fact, at the moment, he looked more imposing than she did, fully dressed in his usual military BDUs next to her in a hospital gown, and if Jack hadn't known who they were, he would have been the first to drag Daniel away from her bed.
The decision was made for him, however, when Daniel squirmed uncomfortably, winced, and carefully shifted his booted feet on the floor, painstakingly extracting his arm from Sam's grasp. Once he was free, he backed quietly away from the bed, watching warily to make sure he hadn't disturbed her, then looked at Jack, as if for instruction.
Jack took a last look at Carter, almost wishing she would wake up and show him this wasn't the same near-catatonia he had seen after Jolinar's death, but she was actually sleeping, this time, not staring at a wall. That was a good sign, right? Right.
Without a word, he hooked an arm around Daniel's shoulders and drew him out into the hallway, yawning.
"Sorry," Daniel said, embarrassed, as soon as they were out of hearing range, ducking away to stand with his back against the wall. "I didn't mean to fall asleep there, but we were talking, and Sam had my arm, and then Cassie fell asleep, and Sam didn't let go, and..." He flapped a hand vaguely, hunching self-consciously in the way of someone who was growing faster than his coordination could keep up.
But Sam had been talking more--that was a good thing.
"Just don't make a habit of it, or people'll talk," Jack quipped, prompting a momentary blank look that quickly turned into a flush when the meaning sank in. "Long day," he said with a sense of déjà vu.
"Zz," Daniel said. Jack gave him a look, wondering which one of them was more tired than he'd thought. "Days, plural," Daniel clarified. "You said that three...four days ago, too."
"Guess I did," he said, remembering the nightmare of wounded refugees piling up in their understaffed and uncomprehending facility, with only a few people who could tell them anything more than 'friend' and 'safe.' "Hey, look, the whole thing...that wasn't an easy situation," he said. "Any of it. High pressure and all...you did okay. Better than okay."
"Everything just started happening all at once, when the Nasyans first came through," Daniel said. "I guess I stopped thinking. And afterward, there was Cassandra, and we were both...unsettled."
Unsettled, hell. Cassie's first experience with a Goa'uld had been the complete genocide of her people and nearly her own death; Daniel's experiences with them had included the murder of his parents and his own actual (though temporary) death at the hands of someone wearing his brother's face. With Sam as a host, the two of them must have been scared shitless, and Jack was grateful they'd kept their heads, literally and metaphorically.
"Well, you didn't panic," Jack told him. "That's something no one can teach."
There was no pretending anymore that anyone could keep Daniel away from this, unless Kasuf refused to give him permission when he went back to Abydos. He'd made himself valuable here, as the refugee situation had shown, and he worked with the sort of intensity that made it clear he was either born for this sort of work or had become too obsessed with it to back away. It was probably both. The only thing Jack could do now was to make sure he was trained right and didn't get himself killed. (Again.)
"But there's a difference between being able to think straight and completely turning everything off," Jack added. "A little fear can be a good thing. You get careless otherwise." Like deciding to stroll in to interrogate a Goa'uld prisoner.
Daniel smiled a little and joked, "I'm not usually that reckless. Unless someone puts me in a sarcophagus, anyway."
Too soon. Jack twitched a little. "Don't joke about that."
The smile died, and Daniel ducked his head. "Sorry. Ay," he said suddenly. "Gods--I can't believe I didn't even ask--the Nasyans...?"
"All sent to a safe planet. All two-hundred and thirty-seven of them."
"Oh. I was hoping to talk to Talia again before they left."
"Talk to...who?"
"Quinta's wife," Daniel explained, which meant approximately nothing to Jack. "Quinta was the...well, Jolinar's previous host, the man who died on Nasya. I..." He grimaced. "I felt bad for Talia. I promised her we would help her find her husband."
"Well...we did, sort of."
"That's not funny."
"I wasn't trying to be. At least she's not left wondering now," Jack said. That might have been kinder, though, in some ways.
"I suppose you're right," Daniel conceded uncertainly. "Jack, when you said two-hundred and thirty-seven Nasyans saved, was that counting the ashrak?"
"Thirty-six, then," Jack admitted, then noticed the new Goa'uld vocabulary. "You've talked to Teal'c since last night?"
"Yes," Daniel said. "I can sense his symbiote, did you know that?"
Jack blinked at the non sequitur. "Ah...no. I didn't. Did you?"
Daniel shook his head. "It must be the residual naquadah in my blood. I never did before, but I kind of did with Jolinar, and Cassandra can feel Teal'c's symbiote, so I wanted to see if I could, too. It's weaker with his larval Goa'uld, since Teal'c says it doesn't actually release naquadah into the rest of his body like mature symbiotes do into a host, so I can't feel it unless I have my hand literally on his prim'ta pouch, but it's there. And with Sam, too, even now, if I'm close enough and thinking about it. It's fascinating."
"It's...fascinating, you say," Jack echoed.
"Well, I probably would never know it unless I was looking for it," he admitted. "It's not nearly as strong a feeling for me as it is for Cassandra. And probably for Sam now. But it could be useful, right?" A flicker of curiosity passed through his eyes. "I wonder if I could sense things like the Stargate if I were thinking about it. I'll bet Sam could, even if I can't--"
"You're not going to ask her," Jack told him sharply.
Daniel looked surprised for an instant, then chagrined. "No, of course not," he said, more quietly. "I won't. But I could ask Teal'c," he decided, looking toward Teal'c's quarters. "His symbiote reacts to naquadah more than I do."
Jack couldn't stop his lips from twisting at the comparison of Daniel to a symbiote, not to mention the thought of purposely wanting to feel Junior squirm against his hand for any reason. The things Daniel found fascinating would never cease to amaze him. "This is what you were doing? Playing with Teal'c's larval Goa'uld?"
Daniel made a face. "No. He just let me test. Mostly, we were playing asebe."
"Playing what?"
"Um, Robert calls it 'twenty-squares.'" When Jack still looked blank, he explained, "It's a game played on Abydos, like a...a simulation of a battle. I drew a board, and we play together sometimes, while we talk."
What with this new group of rebel snakes and everything that had happened with the assassin, Jack could guess what they had been talking about, so he didn't ask for elaboration. "Board games, huh. You know how to play chess?" Daniel shook his head. "Remind me to teach you sometime. And Teal'c."
"Okay," he said distractedly. "You know, I should go to the office and see if Robert wants me to do anything. I have some things that I never finished."
"For cryin' out loud, Daniel, it's Sunday morning," Jack said tiredly.
"The SGC doesn't stop on Sundays, Jack."
He rolled his eyes. "No, but a lot of us are on stand-down, and when there's nothing going on, most of the civilians don't spend their lives here. Present company excluded. I mean, is Rothman even coming in today?"
"Um. I don't think so," Daniel admitted after a moment. "I just...want to do something."
"I just want to do nothing for a while," Jack said. "And I don't want to catch you working on SGC business until tomorrow, either." He waited for a protest, but none came.
Daniel had a pensive look on his face. "Sam's going to be okay." It wasn't a question, this time, but a fact. "She said she felt guilty about--well, a lot of things, but especially almost hurting us when Cassandra and I were at the Academy hospital. I think it made her feel better when she found out we weren't afraid of her or anything."
"Because it wasn't her fault."
"Well, we know that. And Sam does, too, I know she does, but..." Daniel shrugged, then continued with an edge of excitement in his voice. "And you know what else, Jack?"
"Yeah, I do," Jack answered, which made Daniel give him a surprised look. "Now we know for sure that hosts aren't gone when they're Goa'ulded." It wasn't hard to guess the Abydon was thinking of Skaara and his sister.
"Goa'uld...ed? We're, uh...verbifying nouns now?" Daniel repeated, a hint of a smile appearing at his lips. Jack shrugged. "But that's not all I was going to say," he continued, more seriously. "Now we know the Goa'uld are more complicated than we thought. As a society, I mean. They can be swayed by different points of view and...and moralities, or there wouldn't be a rebel faction like these Tok'ra."
"Right, well, I don't know that I want to call these rebel Goa'uld the good guys," Jack said. "We have no idea what their agenda is, and I've got a little problem or two with the way they work."
"Yes, but it still means we have to change our assumptions. According to Jaffa legends, the Tok'ra have done a lot to hurt the Systems Lords."
"And they can keep doing it as long as they leave us alone," Jack grumbled.
"I know what you mean," Daniel conceded. "Sam was Goa'ulded against her will, and it was because of them that almost all of Nasya was--" He drew in a sharp breath--he still hadn't quite wrapped his head around the idea of losing most of a planet because of one rebel's misstep--but went on. "But it's not that simple. Jolinar could have hurt Cassandra and me, or even killed us. Easily. And she didn't, even when she was desperate. And in the end...well, Sam's alive, so..."
"So they're less bad than the Goa'uld. That's all I'm gonna give them." No one who burrowed into his teammate's head without permission would be rating anything better than a 'less bad' in Jack's book. Discussion over. "Hey, Fraiser said you've been wandering the halls all night, kid. Crisis over--you want to go catch some sleep in your quarters?"
Daniel shrugged indifferently. "It takes a surprisingly long time to stop being used to thirty-six hour days. I'm okay."
"That's not an answer, and it wasn't actually meant as a question, Daniel." When he saw the hesitation, he added, "Don't worry. I'll be checking in on Carter."
"And Cassie, too."
"Yeah, Cassie, too," Jack confirmed. "Go to bed. I'll make it an order if you want."
Daniel made a face that said very clearly what he thought of that order and pushed away from the wall, moving toward the elevator. "I'll come back later to visit, then."
"Bring your homework," Jack added. Daniel stopped and looked at him like he was nuts. "What?"
Daniel rolled his eyes but smiled a little and admitted, "Sam left me some problems I never got to finish."
"Well, there you go."
After Daniel had disappeared toward his room, Jack turned back to the infirmary, checking that Fraiser was still in her back office. When he turned to Carter's bed this time, she was awake and gently combing her fingers through Cassandra's hair. Her eyes flicked to him as he approached, and then to the laptop at her bedside.
Cassie chose that moment to wake up, as well, and she sat up to look down at Carter. "Morning, Cassandra," Sam said to her, clearing her throat and adding to Jack, "Uh, sir."
"How're you doing?" Jack replied.
"Good," she said, spots of red appearing on her cheeks. "I'm...I'm feeling better, sir." She looked at a point behind him. Jack looked over his shoulder to where Fraiser was watching them from her office. "Cassandra," Carter said, "um, you should probably be heading home, too. Thanks for coming to see me."
"Okay, Sam," Cassie said agreeably, starting to slide off her bed and down to the floor. "You'll visit?"
"Real soon," Carter told her. "Even if it gets busy. I'll make sure, this time, promise."
Fraiser's heels clicked as she walked toward them as well, her lab coat draped over one arm. "Cass?" Cassie bent down for one more hug, then went to her mother. "Sam, Dr. Warner will be here in a few minutes if you need anything, and I'll be back later, too. You need to take it easy for the next few days, but you'll be just fine."
"Thanks, Janet," she said, looking unsure where to direct her gaze. Fraiser hesitated, then nodded to the two of them and led her daughter out.
"So," Jack said when they were gone.
Carter stared at him for a minute. "Is...I mean, Jolinar's...dead. I didn't imagine that, sir?"
"No. Your MRI was clean," Jack said, not missing the brief flash of grief across her face before she regained control of her expression. What was there about a Goa'uld to sympathize with, exactly? But, since the snake's death meant something to her, for whatever reason, he added, "The doctor tried to save the Goa'uld. There was nothing we could do."
"He...I think Jolinar was just trying to help his people. He was just desperate, that's all."
Jack bit back the 'snakes, not people,' that tried to emerge. Instead, he corrected, "She. Ask Teal'c," he added when she looked startled. "I don't really know how that works."
She nodded and sat up a little self-consciously, then looked around the room. "Where's...um, Daniel came in here earlier. Did he...?"
"Sent him off to bed," Jack told her, sliding his hands into his pockets.
She reddened again slightly. "Sir, I apologize for--"
"Listen, thanks for watching over Cassie and Daniel," he interrupted her, prompting a startled look.
"I wasn't--"
"They were pretty scared, whether or not they wanted to admit it. Not of you, Captain," he said when she looked down again. "Just by the whole...assassin trying to infiltrate the base and...Nasya...thing. So. I'm glad you looked after them."
"I understand what you're doing, Colonel, and I appreciate it, but..." She lifted her chin. "What's the Nasyan situation, sir?"
"All taken care of," he assured her. "Relocated to a safe planet."
"Was there something you needed, then?" She nodded toward the laptop and started to reach for it. "I can pull up whatever you--"
Jack snatched it away. "Ah! No one needs anything right now, Carter. This is just in case you're bored before Fraiser springs you."
She eyed the computer. "That's thoughtful of you, sir. Um, I don't suppose you brought the AC adaptor, too?" She glanced at the outlet next to the bed.
"Nope. It's got batteries."
"Sir, the batteries won't last for--"
"Good thing you're off-duty for the next few days, then, huh?"
Carter scowled at him, and he had to work at keeping his triumph off his face. "If you say so, sir."
"I do." He fell silent, then, not sure what else to say. Finally, when the silence stretched a little too long, he settled on, "You're gonna be fine, Captain."
This time, though Carter looked away and clenched a fist in the sheet, she nodded determinedly. "Yes, sir. That's what they tell me."
From the next chapter (" Civilians"):
"You get recruited right out of high school?" Griff asked him finally. "How old are you, anyway?"
"Uh...almost eighteen years old?" Daniel tried. The rest of SG-2 had been in the program since either the second Abydos mission or Chulak, and one of them scoffed at his answer. "It depends on how you count the years," he amended.