Journeys (2d/5)
Title: Journeys (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Part I a b Part II a b c
"Tired of watching your friends?" Oma said.
Daniel shrugged, staring at the now-inactive Ancient repository of knowledge on P3R-272. "I was watching," he said absently. "They were rescuing Thor from a computer in a Goa'uld mothership. Even Jacob and Lantash, Major Davis, and Jonas got to play."
"I must not have been paying attention to that part," she said. "A Goa'uld mothership?"
"Mm-hm. I didn't realize how much time Major Davis must spend studying Goa'uld technology, because he's pretty good." She raised her eyebrow, and he added, "Jonas isn't bad, either. He's quick." He'd gotten a little anxious when they'd first found signs of Jaffa guarding the ship, but he'd handled himself decently without getting in the way of the action. "I think even Jack's warming to him."
"Perhaps that's because Jonas Quinn doesn't argue when he's given an order."
"He'll learn," Daniel assured her. "They're doing okay for now."
"How is that friend of yours, the former Tok'ra host?"
Surprised, he said, "Martouf? You... Exactly how much attention do you pay the SGC?"
"I watched you die," she reminded him. "He and his symbiote were involved in those events, if indirectly. You rarely mention him when you talk to me."
"Oh," he said. He looked away from the repository he had been studying just long enough to check and see that Martouf's condition was still unchanged. "I guess...there's not a lot to mention. To be honest, I think that five years ago he would have chosen death over some...some suspended life in which he's had too much brain trauma to remember the last two years and is starting to suffer from a lot of other physical problems, too."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Oma said.
Daniel turned to her. "Why does that happen, anyway? Having a symbiote would have prevented him from most illnesses, but why is he getting so much sicker so quickly?"
She started to answer, then gestured with a hand. "Can you see for yourself? Everything in a human's body is matter and energy. If he is struggling with memories, even those are also simply the result of certain material configurations that allow for correct passage of signals."
Focusing, Daniel dropped onto Earth again and looked more closely at Martouf as the man slept. Then he looked closer, and closer, and closer until--
"There are...tangles in his brain," Daniel said, intrigued. "It's like...like his brain's not as full as it should be." Oma nodded. "And most of his organs aren't as strong as they need to be."
"That can come with age as extreme as his," she told him. "Some of it is because his body has undergone a lot of trauma that he has always been able to rely on a symbiote to hold at bay."
"He's sad," Daniel said, peeking into the man's confused dreams. "Can I fix him?"
Oma touched his arm, and suddenly, they were back on the Ancient planet where she had met him minutes ago.
"You could, yes," she said. "The science of the mind is one that even the Tok'ra have not mastered, but reforming connections, restoring or removing or altering memories...that is relatively easy for us."
Daniel touched a finger to the Ancient repository and sighed. "But if I did...what makes him more deserving of being cured, yes? Even his age isn't artificial; he's naturally that old."
"So what will you do?" she said.
"Yi shay." Daniel stepped back and determinedly refocused on the technology of the Ancient repository of knowledge again. "I won't do it. Do I pass your test?"
"I wish I could help," Oma said, sounding sincere, but her tone said, 'yes.'
"Anyway. I guess my friends don't need me haunting every step. That's what I was doing here."
There was a short silence, and then, "Something caught your attention and made you stop moping about on Earth? Quick now, tell me--I have to remember it for next time."
"I wasn't moping," he retorted.
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"This was made for humans," he said, examining the device in the wall.
"Yes, Daniel, it was," she said, in a tone that strongly implied she would have been rolling her eyes behind his back if she hadn't been incorporeal and lacking in actual eyes.
"But why?" he said.
"So foolish colonels could have their heads sucked," she said.
It didn't surprise him anymore--or even bother him much, honestly--that she knew so much about him. That was the way of things here.
"It was sort of the opposite of sucking," Daniel said, remembering something Robert had said about it once. "Un-sucking. Downloading."
"Is there a point to this latest trip of yours?" Oma said.
"I don't know," he said. She sighed. "I didn't make you come, Oma," he pointed out.
"Why are you so interested in the Ancients these days?" she asked.
He tried looking into the viewer again, and again, nothing happened. "Something about Anubis's weapon just reminded me of..." ...Ancient technology, he almost said, but stopped. It was a ridiculous thing to say, given that he wasn't any sort of expert on Ancient technology, but he was sure that was right, anyway. There was something about Ancient work that tingled at the back of his mind, like the answer to a puzzle he couldn't put together just yet.
"You spent so much time flitting from planet to planet in every universe I could find," she said, "and suddenly you only care about ones where the Ancients left traces behind?"
"Well, that's not very hard," he said. "The Ancients left bits of stuff everywhere--configured, by the way, for humans to stumble on and accidentally get their brains scrambled. But there's no trace of them," he went on, building steam. "Bodies, anecdotal--or written--evidence of descendants, uh, uh...no people who know how to use their technology, no way to trace any sort of logical evolution of their writing system to modern writing, despite the fact that their language is clearly a precursor to the Tau'ri reconstruction of Proto-Italic and the fact that, if my theories were right, they interacted with Tau'ri humans in the form of gods long after they disappeared everywhere else. They're just...gone."
When he turned around, Oma raised her eyebrows. "Ah," she said. "Is that all?"
"Also," Daniel said, pointing to the circular inscription on the ground, "I can read that."
"Congratulations," she said dryly. "I know how you've always longed to be literate."
"It's Ancient," he said, determined to be as unfazed by her as she was by him. "I know what it says. And it's not just because Jack once...told me what it says."
"You studied Ancient for years," she pointed out.
"It's more than that. I wasn't fluent in Ancient. But this...it's like... See, a simple translation, like the kind I used to churn out for Ancient, will give you one meaning of a word or a phrase, and even that doesn't often cover it fully. But now, I know all the secondary meanings, the connotations, the implications...just by looking. It feels easy. I feel like I've been speaking Ancient all my life." He grinned. "I love being able to understand so much."
"Hm," Oma said.
"Well?" he said.
"What," she said, "you can't figure it out on your own?"
"Yes I can," he said quickly, then, "What?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I could tell you everything I know about the Ancients," she said.
"Wait, wait...no," Daniel said, excited at the idea of an intellectual challenge that he could actually figure out on his own, this time, with a combination of study, research, observations, and thinking. "I'll figure it out."
Oma shrugged. "Okay," she said. "Besides, even if you did want me to tell you--and even if I wanted to--I suspect the Others don't want that."
"Why wouldn't the Others want me to know about the Ancients?" Daniel said, confused and not a bit indignant.
"Think about what the SGC has found left behind by the Ancients," Oma said. "Do you want someone with impure intentions understanding so much about such a powerful people?"
"I don't have impure intentions," he said.
"Think of this as your probation period," she said, kindly not mentioning Kelowna or the shouting matches they'd had in the past.
"How long will that last?" he said.
"How long do you have?" she said. "Oh, that's right--an eternity."
"Wh--well, but, wait--"
"Don't worry," she said. "I'm sure the Others will start trusting you before you hit infinity...that is, if you show yourself capable of a modicum self-control between now and then."
...x...
Despite being among a collective of energy-beings who apparently knew everything, as far as Daniel could tell, he found very little information about the Ancients, which seemed to confirm Oma's words that the Others didn't want him to know.
Somehow, Daniel found himself constantly diverted when he tried to slip into a world that might have been dominated by Ancients, and there wasn't much on the Ancients that Daniel could find in his room of books that never ended. Rather, there was a lot of vague history, and all of it stopped before the Ancients disappeared off the face of the galaxy.
And then, he took a peek on Earth, only to find that SG-1 had discovered an Ancient--a real, live Ancient called Ayiana--where the Antarctica 'gate had been buried. That was when he learned that Ancients were human, or at least very humanoid.
"I guess that explains why their technology all seems to have been made for humans," he said to Shifu, who had come along to watch with him.
And then, Jack got sick with some Ancient illness that no one could heal.
"I could heal him," Daniel said.
"No," Shifu said, and even though he still appeared to Daniel as a small boy, there was no mistaking which of them had more authority and more power here.
Of course not. Daniel knew it, too. "But it's Jack," he still said.
But Shifu only turned to him with eyes that looked like Oma's, even though they were the color of Sha'uri's, and said, "No, Daniel. Do not ask to do what you already know is wrong."
It wasn't fair, Daniel thought, that he'd lost his life but the thought of his friends' dying could still make him feel as if he still had a heart pounding mercilessly in his chest. "Then Jack's going to die," he said.
"If he dies," Shifu says, "it is only the beginning of another journey."
A thought struck him. "Could I Ascend him?" Daniel said. "He's a good person, Shifu. He's done so many good things--he has a good soul."
"He also has the right predisposition."
Daniel frowned. "He has what?"
Shifu tilted his head. "Physically. Genetically. It is not necessary, but it brings him closer to the first step."
"What..."
"If Jack O'Neill possesses the willingness to Ascend," Shifu said, "then I myself will help you to help him. But be certain, my brother, that you are offering this for the sake of Jack O'Neill, and not because you long for his company again."
"I wouldn't want him to die just so I won't be lonely," he said defensively, except there was a piece of him that would have called that a silver lining to the cloud of Jack's death.
"I know that," Shifu said. "And Daniel...look."
So Daniel turned back to the scene. "He...he's taking a Tok'ra symbiote so it'll heal him," he said, stunned. "What? Jack?"
Shifu nodded. "Have faith in them, brother. Their problems are theirs to solve, but they are well able to solve them without help from above."
Daniel was still staring, though, disturbed. "Do you think he's okay?" he asked.
"He will be healed," Shifu said simply. "He is taking the symbiote."
"That's my point--he's actually taking a symbiote," Daniel said, reminded that being wise didn't mean a person was all-knowing. Shifu didn't know Jack.
"That is good, is it not?" Shifu said. He looked up. "Come. We have lingered here quite long already."
Staying alive was good, Daniel told himself, and it wasn't like they were talking about implantation with a random Goa'uld; it was a Tok'ra. Jack would be fine.
XXXXX
There was no way to match a myth to Ayiana, since Daniel didn't know her real name. The first name of an Ancient he stumbled across in a book, in fact, wasn't Ayiana but rather Myrddin. Finding in a second book that Myrddin had been a madman who might have had the power of prophecy, though, was not particularly helpful.
It took an embarrassing amount of time--and another name that had later been conflated with Myrddin's--to link the name to Tau'ri legend. Camelot had been relatively late in Earth's history compared to what Daniel usually expected from aliens, so it wasn't something he had studied extensively, but he could hardly have lived on Earth for five years without having at least heard a little of the stories, especially when he'd spent so much time in libraries of ancient texts.
It was also through studies of Camelot that he began to meet some of the Others.
For a long time, Oma and Shifu had been the only ones who sought him out. But once he had started reading quietly instead of constantly sticking his glowing nose into mortals' business, he found himself occasionally looking up to see one or two Others sitting near the corner of his room, reading quietly and never so much as acknowledging his presence. Daniel suspected they were still watching him to make sure he behaved.
"She wasn't a fairy, you know," someone said one day.
Daniel looked up and found a woman with dark hair watching him from where she sat at another desk. "What?" he said, surprised that someone was talking to him.
She nodded at the book he was reading. "Morgan. Morgan Le Fay, according to that book you're reading. And Merlin wasn't a wizard, either, except metaphorically."
A little bemused but not bothering to wonder how the woman knew what he was doing, he said, "No, I...didn't think Merlin was an actual, magical wizard, or that Morgan was a fairy, 'le fay' or not. It was probably a convenient explanation for the things they did, though."
The woman folded her hands on the desk and turned toward him. "Such as...?"
He looked around, wondering if there was someone else there--Oma, maybe, or even one of the Others--then shrugged. "Well, Merlin was an Ancient, as far as I can tell, and I'd guess that Morgan was one, too. I just found out that the Ancients were essentially human, and while I don't understand everything about them and their race, it seems they worked most of their 'magic' through technology."
"Not an inaccurate assessment," the woman said.
When she only continued to stare at him, Daniel said, "Sorry--who are you?"
The woman smiled and stood up, making her way to join him at the table where he sat. "My name is Ganos Lal. I know who you are, Daniel Jackson," she added when he started to introduce himself.
Daniel was feeling impulsive after a very long time of speaking to no one but Oma and Shifu and knowing no one else wanted to speak to him, so he answered, "You know, when I was alive, I could never figure out whether it was a good or bad thing when people said that, but now, I'm pretty sure people mostly know me because they're annoyed at me."
Perhaps Ganos Lal found his frustration as funny as he found it frustrating, because her smile seemed to grow warmer. "And here you are," she said, "reading about Morgan, of all people."
He shrugged. "Morgan's interesting. Besides, I'm having some trouble, but I've been trying to pick out names of people who might have been Ancients."
Ganos Lal tilted her head. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"I think the Others aren't letting me see everything I'm trying to see," he explained, "which means I have search through Tau'ri legends that they don't have any reason to stop me from seeing since I'm sort of Tau'ri by adoption and could've read those in life--"
"I meant about Morgan, child," she said.
"That's another thing," Daniel said. "Do you know how long I worked to stop people from calling me 'child?'"
"Only a child could call a handful of years a long time," Ganos Lal countered.
Daniel snorted. "This is what happens when I get stuck with a plane full of very old people."
Then he froze, and if he had had a flesh-and-blood tongue, he would have bitten it. Ganos Lal smiled even wider.
"Uh," he coughed. "Not that you're...well, chronologically, you are old. Which is a...a good thing, in your case, being...incorporeal and wise and all, and not senile."
Ganos Lal stood, still amused. "You have a right to your opinions, Daniel Jackson," she said. "Good day, and good fortune to you in your studies. Perhaps," she added, pulling a book from the shelf that he was sure he'd never seen before, "this will help you."
"Are the Others okay with your giving me information?" Daniel said, both itching to take it and also reluctant to get someone else on the Others' bad side.
"It's simply another account of Morgan's time," Ganos Lal said, still holding out the book. "There are no great secrets in here, but you may find her stories--and those of Merlin--very interesting."
Daniel accepted it. "Thank you," he said sincerely.
...x...
"I don't want you talking to her," Oma said as soon as Ganos Lal had disappeared.
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "You're...kidding, right?"
"Ganos Lal is one of the Others," she insisted. "Do you know the first thing about her?"
"She was just talking about Morgan le Fay," he said.
"Morgan," Oma said, shaking her head. "She would."
"Uh...why?" Daniel said.
"Daniel, this wouldn't be the first time the Others have sent her to watch someone whom they think might be causing trouble," she said.
"Wh...I...I was reading a book," he said, annoyed because he had finally met someone else who seemed interesting and interested in talking to him, and she might turn out to have been pretending. "I'm not doing anything for once, and you think the Others picked now to send a spy to watch me? The Others have spies?"
"Just remember that you're not the only one at risk if they catch you doing anything," she said.
"Look," he said, "I'm not exactly eager to be punished by the Others. I won't do anything you wouldn't do."
"That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard since the last time I talked to you."
"Oh, come on. Now what is it you think I'm going to do?" he said, and as soon as he saw her slight hesitation, he said, "What? What happened?"
She glanced at a nearby table, where one memo's urgent words caught his attention.
"Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-1 has been captured by Ba'al," he read with a sinking feeling of dread as he plucked the sheet up and stared at it. "Location unknown...status of symbiote Kanan unknown...motive unknown..."
"Read on," she said.
Surprised at her encouragement but needing no further prodding, Daniel skimmed the neatly-worded report until he saw the words 'torture' and 'sarcophagus.'
"Do you understand what that sarcophagus will do?" Oma said, ripping his attention away and back to her. "You understand what happens to a man when he's tortured to death over and over, only to be revived each time in a device that slowly poisons his soul?"
"Yes," he said, and the feeling of apprehension began to blossom into something much, much worse. "Oma..."
"What?" she said, but with an intensity that meant she had an idea of what he was going to say but she wanted him to say it.
"Ba'al," he said. "I could--"
"No," she said. "You won't touch him."
"But--"
"Find another way," she said.
Daniel resisted the temptation to kick his desk. "I could... SG-1 doesn't know where he is," he said, staring at the report. "'Location unknown.' If I told them--"
"No," she said. "Look at where he's being kept."
It only took a moment to see that the place was impenetrable. There was no way SG-1--or even two, or five, or all the SG teams--could get in, much less achieve their objective and come out alive. He thought he might have risked it, and so would Sam and Teal'c, and maybe even Jonas, but the general would never approve that kind of mission. "If I told them where he is," he said, "and then helped them--"
"No," Oma repeated.
"Then he's going to die!" Daniel said.
"Yes," she said, making him fall silent. "Barring some fate that I cannot see at this moment--and which neither of us has the right to force--he will die."
"I don't accept that," he said.
She turned her coolest look upon him. "Why not? Because you'll--"
"Because he's Jack," Daniel snapped. "Because there's always another way, and I'm not talking about intervention from people like us."
"How?" she said.
He scanned over the information he had one more time. "I don't know," he admitted. "Yet."
"I don't see another way," Oma said. "Jack O'Neill will be killed. And then he will be revived and killed again, until there is nothing left to revive." It would destroy his mind and everything that made Jack who he was outside the boundaries of flesh. And this time, there was nothing Daniel could do about it.
Except...
"Why?" he asked. "What does Ba'al want with him?"
But Oma shook her head. "I don't know. Do you have any idea?"
Daniel shook his head, too. "Maybe Jack knows. Maybe...I could help him figure out why? Just guide him through his thoughts."
She studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Do not touch Ba'al, do not tell the SGC where he is, and do not leave any physical trace of your presence, or the Others will stop you and Jack O'Neill will be left to suffer. They will use his suffering as your punishment, Daniel, and I will not intervene, do you understand me?"
"Talking," Daniel promised quickly. "That's it. I won't touch him, I won't fight Ba'al, I won't do anything but...but offer a friend some comfort."
"Go," she said.
XXXXX
There were rules to this. Oma had laid them out for him very clearly, and the ultimate message seemed to be that the more he wanted to interfere, the more he needed to handicap himself to limits approaching those of humans so that the interference seemed less like interference. He could slip into the cell to see Jack, but under no circumstances could he slip Jack out. He could talk to Jack and make suggestions, but he couldn't take any direct action to affect Jack's state of existence, whether it was to be death or otherwise.
So Daniel was waiting impatiently inside Ba'al's cell instead of doing something useful when Jack was tossed back inside.
"Oy," Jack said hoarsely when he'd landed.
"Jack," Daniel said, and couldn't believe how good it felt to say it and know that Jack heard him.
As it turned out, Jack was still a little unsteady--and fighting a bit of a high from the sarcophagus, if the look in his eyes was anything to go by--so he nearly overbalanced when he whirled around. "Daniel?" he breathed.
Daniel managed a smile. "Hi, Jack."
This didn't seem to explain anything, and Jack repeated, "Daniel?"
"I go away, and look what happens," he said, amazed that he didn't sound as excited or maybe horrified as he actually was.
Jack gave him a suspicious look and, without taking his eyes away, sat down across from him.
Calm. That was a rule, too. Daniel had thought that was some stupid thing Oma and the Others insisted on to make themselves look enlightened and unflustered, but he could see, too, that it was necessary. Now was not the time to be panicking or angry or frustrated; someone needed to be calm for Jack.
"It's good to see you," Daniel said.
"Yeah...you too," Jack said. "It's a shame you're part of a delusion."
"Jack," Daniel chastened, and wished that Jack weren't in the process of being repeatedly tortured to death, because he missed this kind of stupid, circular conversation they had had all the time. "I'm really here. Actually, I'd have thought it would be easier to convince you, after all the things we've seen that--"
Jack threw a shoe at him.
Daniel watched the shoe tumble to the ground. "You could've just told me to shut up," he said.
"I just tossed my shoe through you," Jack said, with the deliberateness of someone trying very hard to stay focused and in control of his own mind.
"Well, it's not like we've never been immaterial before," Daniel pointed out. "And that was before I became energy and Ascended to another plane of existence, so..."
Jack's dulled eyes lit up very slightly. "Oh..." he said, looking torn between hope that this was real and fear that he was making it up after all. "Oh."
"It's really me, Jack," he said. "You know. Without the body, but still me."
The first thing Jack said was, "Are you okay?"
"I'm, uh. I'm good," Daniel said, nodding determinedly. "Fine. But I'm not here for me--how are you?"
Shrugging, Jack said, "Well, you know. Getting killed and brought back to life...takes time for the color to come back."
Bravado. Daniel had hidden his fear behind a screen of curiosity and frantic thoughts, and Jack always did this. "You don't have to pretend with me," he said. "About anything. I know this has been...uh...terrible."
"All right," Jack said, with the air of someone who only cared a little bit, because he wasn't sure that he wasn't insane. "So since you're really here, do your thing--bust me outta here."
"Well...I can't," Daniel said.
"Darn," Jack said, snapping his fingers. "I was hoping I'd make up a better excuse."
"Jack, I'm really not a hallucination--"
"Then why can't you?" Jack said.
"I'm not allowed to interfere," he said.
He was so used to that concept these days that, while it still chafed, it didn't feel quite so ridiculous anymore. The expression on Jack's face--like he wanted to scoff but was too tired to do so--reminded him of the part he hated about Ascension. "You're interfering now," Jack said.
"No, I'm not," Daniel said quickly.
"Yes, you are," Jack said.
"No, I'm...I'm sitting with a friend," he said.
"Interfering," Jack pointed out.
"There are, uh...sort of like loopholes," Daniel said, feeling stupid. "But they're really small holes, and the Others...watch the...you know...loopholes. Really closely."
"You are so not enlightened," Jack informed him.
"That's...it's...it's complicated," he said.
The look Jack gave him in return was scornful and a bit incredulous, with just enough betrayal and resignation that it hurt, too. "Can't you...zap all of these guys? Like that thing on Kheb? What good's all that if you can't spring an old friend out of jail?"
"I can't," he repeated. "I mean...I can, technically, but I...can't."
Jack looked like he was about to say something else--something brave and caustic and self-sacrificing--and then deflated. "Why are you here, Daniel?" he asked.
"I saw you with Ba'al," he said, "and the...you know..."
"Torture by acid," Jack filled in, caustically flippant. "Sharp objects. Et cetera."
Daniel didn't flinch. He supposed he should be thankful for his lack of physical existence for that. "Well, I couldn't just not do anything."
"And yet," Jack said pointedly, "here you are. And here I am."
Calm, Oma had warned him. Comforting.
But Jack wouldn't respond to comfort, not now; he needed someone to be direct, to lay out what they had and what they needed and what had to be done to finish the mission. He needed to know what the mission was, because, as of this moment, he still thought it was escape, through force or stealth, and nothing that simple would ever work. "Ba'al is going to keep doing this to you," Daniel said evenly, "until you tell him what he wants to know."
After that, Jack would be killed. A deeply embedded part of Daniel rebelled at the idea of pushing Jack toward that under any circumstance, but when the alternative was eternal torture and the destruction of his soul...in any case, a little more knowledge might make some sort of escape plan more viable.
"Well, that's not gonna happen," Jack said, "because I don't know what he wants me to know."
"Nothing?" Daniel said. There was a Tok'ra symbiote, he knew, and it had done something, but that was all. "There was a symbiote..." he prompted.
For a moment, Jack looked about to laugh hysterically. "Yeah," he said instead, mostly calm, though the mad (angry, Daniel thought, not...mad) glint in his eyes didn't completely disappear. "I let them put one of those things in me. I didn't even let them put one in you, and that was when it was Lantash."
"That was different," Daniel said. "I would've been Goa'ulded and crippled for life, which means Lantash would've been, too, because he couldn't be unimplanted, and then Jacob wouldn't have a symbiote. You were only supposed to have Kanan for...a few days, right? Or however long it took for Ayiana's plague to be cured and another host to be found."
Jack narrowed his eyes. "You have been watching," he said, but it was accusing, because if Daniel had been watching and had known about this and hadn't done anything...
"I couldn't do anything," Daniel said. "There are too many consequences I can't predict." Jack rolled his eyes, so Daniel insisted, "The worst part about the way I am now is that I can see all of it happening, and I know how to help you, but I can't."
"Can," Jack countered. "Won't."
"Jack," Daniel said, then stopped and refocused. "Okay. So. You really don't know what the Tok'ra symbiote was trying to do? You couldn't tell just from being blended?"
"I don't know!" Jack said, but a second later, he thought about it again and said, "Uh...something to do with one of Ba'al's slaves. I got a visual, but I've never met her before."
"Which means Kanan must have known her," Daniel said, thinking through the possibilities. "'Her.' Female, then. Old, young? Human? Lo'taur? Do you have a name?"
"What the hell is a lo'taur?" Jack said blankly, because he never remembered foreign words he didn't have to as long as he had people on his team to remember them instead.
"It's the slave...the... Remember me with Yu?"
"You with me what?" Jack said.
"The rank of slave I was dressed as when I died!" he said, impatient. Jack froze with his mouth open. Daniel winced. That certainly broke the calm rule. "Sorry. I mean. It could tell us something about what she was doing, or what she might know or might have revealed. Is this person Ba'al's personal, favored slave, or one of many lower-ranked slaves?"
"I don't know," Jack said.
"What about..."
"Look, Daniel, just zip through there and do some recon for me," Jack said, as close to wheedling as he ever got. "That's all I need."
"I. Can't," he repeated, mostly because he already knew what was out there and it wouldn't help to have confirmation that it was hopeless.
"Why. Not?" Jack said again, stiffly.
Instead of answering, Daniel said, "Jack, no one knows you're here. The Tok'ra sent a guy to the SGC, and he doesn't know where you are, so Sam and Teal'c have no idea where they should even start looking. Now, General Hammond's--"
A sensation shivered through him and made him think of being pinched everywhere at once, but it was chased by a sense of dread and warning. There was a fine line between interfering and not, and Daniel was starting to step off it by giving Jack information that Jack had no place knowing. If he stepped wrong, Oma would stop him herself and Jack would be lost.
"Hammond's what?" Jack said.
"Well, you know the general," Daniel said, instead of what he had been about to say, which would have been leaked information about what was happening at the SGC. "You're in a fortress. The entire SGC couldn't take this place without massive casualties, and even then, they might not be enough, not against Goa'uld technology. You can't fight your way out this time."
"I could if you'd help me!" Jack yelled, waving an arm in the air, desperately uncontrolled the way he never got even in his angriest times. "You know what Ba'al is doing to me! Take him out! For cryin' out loud, make him stop!"
"The Others would stop me first," Daniel said. "And...and I don't have the right to manipulate people any more than someone like Ba'al does."
"Then go away and let me be tortured in peace!" Jack spat.
"I won't let Ba'al keep doing this until there's nothing left of you," Daniel said. But if Jack really didn't know, then that was what would happen. Unless...
"Yes, you would," Jack was saying. "You are!"
Unless he Ascended.
Daniel could Ascend him.
"I can't get you out of here," Daniel said, "just like Oma couldn't heal me when I was wounded. But...I can help you Ascend."
Jack sat back against the wall of his cell.
There was a long moment in which Daniel thought that Jack might have just decided he was talking to a hallucination, after all, because no answer came for an awfully long time. "Jack?" he said. "Did you hear me?"
"You want to be my Oma," Jack said.
"Uh...well," Daniel said, his mind twisting as he tried to deal with the imagery that conjured up. "I suppose you could think of it that way. I mean, I wouldn't, because, uh..."
"Daniel," Jack said.
"Let me help you," Daniel said. "Jack. I can help you."
Jack eyed the shoe lying on the floor in front of Daniel, as if he were considering picking it up and throwing it again, because it might prove once and for all that Daniel was merely a hallucination. He left it alone, though, and said, with the air of someone collecting all the intelligence he could before starting out on a risky campaign, "And then what happens?"
"And then...I don't know," Daniel said.
"If I'm catching the first plane of existence out of here," Jack pointed out, "I'm going to need a little more than that."
"Well, I'm not all-knowing," Daniel said. "I really don't know. All I can tell you is that it'll be...incredible. Your journey is your own to take as you will, and everyone's path is different. But first, you have to release your...burdens."
Daniel barely managed not to wince. He was actually starting to sound a bit like Oma.
"You sound like Oma," Jack said.
"No," he said defensively. "No, Oma would've said, uh...something like, uh...if you know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked long ago."
"Why?" Jack said.
"To open your mind," Daniel said, wanting to explain that he couldn't just tell Jack what the end result was. The point was the journey, and knowing the end before exploring it wasn't the same. Jack had to be willing to take the journey, not use it as a means to an end, or this wouldn't work. The burden they all bore was life and their instinctive need to hold onto it and all the troubles that came with it. It was hard to decide willingly to let go of it, but it was necessary.
"Though a candle burns in my house," Jack said, mocking, "no one's home."
"Okay," Daniel said determinedly, "let's...take this one step at a time."
"One at a time," Jack repeated. His eyes had dulled, perhaps from despair or from that odd, temporary focus that came with the sarcophagus and then faded away again.
"Jack," Daniel said sharply. Jack looked at him again. "This can all be over. You can't get out the way you want--"
"A distraction," Jack said. "Give me a distraction."
A sound made Daniel look up to see the sealed doorway above them start to open. "They're coming," he said.
"They'll see you," Jack said, his voice lowering in volume but becoming more panicked. "We can use that!"
They needed another plan, that was all. He should have remembered that plan A almost never worked; he needed a plan B or C, just in case this went wrong. It was something about a slave woman the Tok'ra symbiote had known. Even that was more than the SGC knew. They had to look for something else--something about a female slave. "I'll be back," he promised.
"A distraction, Daniel," Jack said, almost begging, turning to look up at the opening doorway that meant he would be tortured to death yet again. "That's all I'm asking for!"
Daniel determinedly slipped back out of the cell before anyone else could see him. The last thing he heard before he left the plane entirely was Jack's voice, calling, "Daniel?"
...x...
Oma was waiting for him. "You're treading a very fine--" she started.
Daniel hurried away from her, too.
...x...
"--motive has to be personal," Jonas was saying. SG-1 had migrated to his office soon after he'd volunteered to join the search, since there were more references, translation materials, and empty space there. Daniel settled himself in the corner of his office, watching Jonas read over something on his computer, Teal'c looking over his shoulder, while Sam stared hard at another computer on the other desk.
"For what reason?" Teal'c said.
Nyan looked up. "He's right. If all of Kanan's missions were really a success--"
"Exactly," Jonas said, nodding. "He went back to that planet for something, and if it wasn't because of a mission..."
Daniel stopped listening as they continued to talk. He looked around the office, taking note of what everyone was doing and what they hadn't begun to look at yet.
By the time Jonas finished talking, he had spotted something.
"Looking at schematics won't solve your problem," Daniel said in Sam's ear.
"Hm," she said.
The others stopped what they were doing. "Major Carter?" Teal'c asked.
"What?" Sam said.
"Did you say something?" Nyan answered.
"Uh...nothing." She shook her head. "Just thinking." A moment later, she said, "You're right. It was something personal to the symbiote, not a...a mission failure on the part of the Tok'ra."
"Not sure what good that does us, though," Jonas said.
"I don't think looking over this stuff again is going to solve our problem," she declared. "It won't be in the schematics and mission reports. What else did the Tok'ra send us?"
"Uh...Kanan's history...his notebook..." Nyan said, sifting through the materials.
"His personal notebook?" Jonas said. "Not a...a mission log?"
Pushing away from Robert's desk, she said, "Hand me that one. Maybe I'll find something in there--something that would tell us why he'd walk out with Colonel O'Neill."
Teal'c nodded. "If we knew Kanan's reasoning," he agreed, handing the notebook to her, "we might be able to find where he ultimately went."
Daniel slipped back out.
...x...
This time, Oma stopped him when he tried to rejoin Jack in his cell. "Daniel..." she warned.
"What? What did I do?" he said. "You think they needed help from me to brainstorm?"
"You're speaking to them," she said.
"Sometimes I talk to myself when I'm on the plane, you've seen me do it," Daniel said stubbornly, knowing she knew exactly what his intentions had been. "If I'd shown myself to them, someone would've mentioned it, don't you think?"
Not Sam, though. If she'd heard his voice, her reflexive response would be to explain it as a normal thought that something else must have triggered. Even if he'd shown himself to her briefly by accident, she wouldn't have believed she'd actually seen him, so nothing in her reaction would confirm it to the Others. Her skepticism was his shield.
"I know what you're doing," Oma said.
"I'm encouraging certain thoughts that they would have had on their own anyway, and you know perfectly well they would," he retorted. "Maybe no one even heard me. Anyone who knows anything about them knows they come up with this kind of thing on their own all the time."
"What matters in this case is what the Others will think," she said.
"Why would the Others think SG-1 needed help?" he said. "Sam decided to pick up a notebook. I didn't make her. I didn't even push it toward her or anything. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
"Ascension is not something to take lightly," she said.
"I don't care," he snapped. "It's better than the alternative. Let me offer it to him--like you offered it to me, Oma, just like you've been teaching me." A thought occurred to him. "Wait. The way you showed up and told me about Jack... You...you want me to do this, don't you?"
"What you do now is your decision," Oma said.
"But this is what you do. You help people Ascend. You've been teaching me the difference between interfering in life and interfering at the moment of death--this is why I'm here, isn't it?"
"You are here because you sought enlightenment and because I thought you deserved to seek it," she corrected. "I walk my path, and if you so choose of your own free will, you may take the same course."
"Then I'd be helping in your cause by helping Jack," Daniel said. "Nothing more."
"Nothing more," she repeated. "It has to be his choice. Anyone can make the journey, but it has to be his choice."
"I know," he said.
Oma studied at him closely. "All right," she finally said. "Daniel--"
He stopped, impatient. "What?"
"If you begin on this path, the Others will see you as one of mine, committing the same crimes that I commit," she said. "I brought you here, but how far you follow me is your choice alone. I will never condemn you if you choose something else, but once you take this first step, you cannot turn back from it in the Others' eyes."
Daniel paused, but there was no question. If there was anyone for whom he was willing to spend his eternity under a veil of suspicion, it was Jack. "Fine," he said.
"I'll be watching," she said. He couldn't decide whether it was meant to be an encouragement or a warning, but he decided he didn't really care.
Continued in Part III: Enlightenment