Stargate SG1: Beloved (4/5)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Beloved
Chapter Seven
It didn't take Daniel long to cry himself out.
If anyone had told Jack that thirty-six hours after an Egyptian goddess walked into the SGC he'd be sitting on the infirmary floor, holding a thirty year old man who'd just cried himself to sleep in his arms, he'd have told them they were nuts. But nothing could change the fact that he was doing exactly that, and if he had his way, he wouldn't be stopping any time soon.
He'd settled himself on the floor and leaned back against the wall, just to relieve the pressure on his knees, but he absolutely refused to let go of Daniel; the sudden fear churning his gut wouldn't allow him to. There was no logical reason for it, and he knew that, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that if he let go, he'd lose Daniel forever. No matter how slight the risk might have been, it was one that he wasn't willing to take.
Sam had been called to the Gate Room only minutes after Daniel had given up fighting to stay awake. She'd gone reluctantly, and Jack had made note of the fact that it was only after he himself had ordered her to. She'd also knelt down beside them and squeezed Daniel's hand lightly before she'd gone. "Take care of him, sir," she'd said.
He hadn't felt the need to tell her that he would.
So with Sam gone to help clean up the enormous physical mess that Hathor had left behind, Jack and Teal'c were left to deal with the emotional one - the one whose sleep was still punctuated by broken, sobbing breaths.
Jack heaved a deep breath of his own and looked up at Teal'c, who was kneeling across from him, standing silent guard between Daniel and the door. He knew that he needed to share his own emotional turmoil if he had any hope of helping Daniel with his, and he wasn't feeling particularly enthused about talking to the man who'd apparently just triggered Daniel to within an inch of his life - literally. And if there was anyone who might understand what he'd done, what he'd promised, and why he'd done it …
"I told him that I'd kill him."
He hadn't been expecting the words to come out quite so easily, but once they'd started, he couldn't stop them. He closed his eyes, because he knew that if he had to look anyone in the eye while he said it, he'd lose control completely. He planted his left foot firmly on the floor and shifted Daniel in his arms so that the sleeping man's shoulders rested more solidly against his upright thigh. "If she came back for him. He couldn't do it again, he … We thought it was the only way out. I tried to protect him from her, tried to stop her, but I …" He leaned his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes more tightly closed against the memory. "I couldn't. I couldn't even stand up. And after she left, he made me promise. That if we couldn't get out, I'd kill him." He shook his head and drew in another shuddering breath. "I'd have been right behind him, and he knew it."
The moments of silence that followed, to Jack's mind, were a condemnation of his failure. Of course Teal'c wouldn't understand what he'd done. No one would understand what he'd done. Because no normal person would promise to murder their own best friend, no matter what was going on.
"You would have sacrificed his life to save his soul?"
Jack nodded wordlessly.
"It would have been a worthwhile trade."
He finally dredged up the courage to open his eyes, and he looked directly into Teal'c's. "Who does that, Teal'c? How could I promise that?"
"It is as you say, O'Neill. Neither you nor Daniel Jackson could foresee any other way to save yourselves. Would you have preferred to leave him in that situation, to force him to live the life that Hathor wished for him as her unwilling consort?"
"No." The answer came without hesitation. "Never."
"And Daniel Jackson could not have lived with the knowledge that you had been forced into a life of servitude to the Goa'uld."
"None of it ever should have happened," Jack said, giving voice to yet another thought that he hadn't been able to admit, even to himself. "The whole damn thing was my fault."
"How so?"
"She walked into the mountain and started talking about the Stargate, claiming it called to her, said she was a goddess, asked about Ra." He leaned his head against the wall again, but didn't take his eyes off of Teal'c's. "Why did I dismiss her threat potential?"
"You had no reason to believe that any Goa'uld still existed on Earth," Teal'c said. "I was similarly confused by her presence here."
"She had him the minute she kissed his hand." He looked down at Daniel's face, still pinched and tense even in his sleep, and brushed the hair away from his eyes gently. "Which was about ten seconds after I let him walk over there." Jack huffed at his own stupidity. "He asked my permission, and I gave it to him. If I'd said no, if I'd made him stay behind me, if I'd just kept him away from her …"
"You cannot take the blame upon your shoulders, O'Neill."
"Why the hell not?"
"Daniel Jackson will need your strength to supplement his own," Teal'c said. "You will not have enough to give him if you believe yourself to be responsible for what transpired here."
"Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room," came the voice over the PA system. "Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room."
He shook his head in disbelief and smirked at Teal'c. "How much you wanna bet that's big Mack's way of saying hello?"
"Any wager would be unwise," Teal'c replied. "Dr. Mackenzie informed Captain Carter and myself of his intention to seek out General Hammond. Dr. Fraiser was attempting to dissuade him, but I doubt that she was successful."
"Yeah, I thought as much." He rolled his eyes and let out yet another sigh. "Gonna need some help here, Teal'c. Knees aren't what they used to be."
"Of course."
It only took them a minute to decide that the best way to get Daniel back into his bed without waking him was for Teal'c to simply pick him up and carry him.
"That's sweet, Teal'c," Jack said, his half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood painfully obvious to both of them. "Who'd have guessed you're such a big softy?"
"Should you ever speak of this moment, O'Neill, I will deny it."
Jack couldn't help the smile that crossed his face.
Teal'c laid Daniel down gently on the mattress, and Jack lifted the blankets from the foot of the bed to pull them up and across him. "Make you a deal, Teal'c. I won't tell anyone you carried him to bed if you don't tell anyone I tucked him in."
"I agree to these terms." Jack was smoothing the blankets down when Teal'c spoke again. "Have your emotions returned to normal, O'Neill? Or is the control drug still adversely affecting them?"
Jack snorted in reluctant amusement as he pulled the bedrail into place. "I just spent the last half hour sitting on the floor, holding a grown damn man in my lap like he's a little kid. What do you think?"
Teal'c's only answer was a silent nod of his head.
Daniel was muttering into the pillow, so Jack leaned close enough to hear him.
"Have to go. Chulak. Have to go."
"You're not going anywhere, big guy." Jack ruffled his hair fondly, gently, as he stood straight again. "Staying right where you are."
He started to walk away, but he stopped halfway to the door and turned around again. That feeling was back, the roiling in his gut that told him not to leave, but he had no choice. He could only imagine what Mackenzie was telling Hammond, and he had to get to the Briefing Room so he could stop them from doing something they'd all regret. Since he wasn't able to stay with Daniel himself, he settled on the next best thing.
"Stay here, Teal'c. Stay with him. Don't leave his side until you hear it from me, got it?"
"I do, and I will." He took up a position at the foot of Daniel's bed, hands clasped behind his back, looking down on him, keeping watch.
Jack left the room, allowing himself only one more quick glance at Daniel across his shoulder on his way out the door. He'd have to deal with whatever was going on upstairs as fast as he could, because he couldn't shake the feeling of dread, no matter how hard he tried. The only way to get rid of it was to get back to Daniel's side, where he could watch him like a hawk.
He saw four SFs walking down the hallway, with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, obviously on their way out. "Hey, you there! Airmen!" he called out to them. They turned back and walked over.
"Yes, sir?" one of them said.
"Dr. Jackson is in this infirmary," he explained quickly. "Teal'c's in there with him. I need you four to stand an extra guard out here, is that understood? No questions asked, but under no circumstances is Dr. Jackson to walk out this door."
"Of course, sir." They arranged themselves in a loose formation around the door immediately.
Jack nodded briefly, both satisfied with the extra security he'd arranged and nervous about it. He didn't know any of the four men, but new personnel were coming in on a regular basis, so he shouldn't have been surprised at that.
"I'll be back soon," he said, then he turned down the corridor and headed for the elevator. As the elevator door closed, it occurred to him to wonder what those airmen had been smiling about.
He knew he was going to hate what Mackenzie had to say from the minute he walked through the door of the Briefing Room. He hated clichés, but the tension in the room really was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the looks on the faces of the three people seated at the table left absolutely no doubt what - who - they'd been talking about.
He took a deep breath and walked toward his usual chair, but he didn't pull it out to sit down. He was high strung enough that standing was definitely the better option and besides, if he didn't sit down, then leaving would be faster.
"Okay," he said as he crossed the room. "Tell me what Dr. Mackenzie wants to do so I can talk you out of it."
"Colonel O'Neill …," Mackenzie began, but Jack cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"I heard what you were saying in the infirmary. Violently unstable, threat to himself and others, requires constant supervision and medication … Am I getting warm?"
"Surely you don't mean to stand there and say that Dr. Jackson isn't any of those things, Colonel."
Jack nodded his head briskly. "Actually, I am going to stand here and say he isn't any of them."
"Colonel …"
"He's got some sort of alien drug in his system that's throwing his emotional center off balance. Doc Fraiser can tell you all about it, if she hasn't already."
"I have," she said softly from her chair at Mackenzie's side.
"There ya go," Jack said, pointing at her for emphasis. "So, that's it. Case closed. He's not thinking straight right now, he's overreacting, it's not his fault, and once that drug stops messing with his head, he'll be fine." He turned to face General Hammond at the head of the table. "Can I go now, sir?"
Hammond shook his head slowly, so Jack tried another tact quickly.
"He's not the only one still under the effects of that drug. How are you feeling, General? Not worried about anything, not panicking?" Hammond flinched, and Jack felt a flash of sympathy for the man, but he moved past it quickly. "You can't really be making any decisions about the welfare of your people with an alien drug still in your system, can you?"
"If I can't," Hammond said, a vaguely uncertain edge to his voice, "then neither can you."
Jack's heart plummeted into his feet.
"I'm institutionalizing him, Colonel."
He spun toward Mackenzie with a glare that was designed to strike fear into the heart of the strongest Marine. "You're doing what?"
"It's the only logical step to take at the present time."
Jack turned back to Hammond again. "General, this isn't …"
"Dr. Mackenzie told me what happened in the infirmary." He sounded sad, and Jack got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one who didn't want to be having that conversation. Any doubt of that was eliminated by the next words out of his mouth. "I'm sorry, Jack."
"Don't apologize to me, General," he said hotly. "I'm not the one you're thinking about shipping off to the loony bin for having the same problems every other man on this damn base is having right now."
"No one else on this base has tried to kill themselves," Hammond pointed out.
"No one else on this base fought her hard enough to get dosed as bad as he did, either." It was an odd situation, Jack having the upper hand in the Briefing Room and General Hammond backing down, and he wasn't entirely sure that he liked it, but he'd press any advantage he could get. "That's why it's as bad as it is for him. Ask the doc. Hundreds of trained soldiers in this place, and we lined up for her, went down without an argument. But Daniel fought her every step of the way, and she made him pay for it. You're gonna make him pay for it, too?"
Mackenzie leaned his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and spoke again. "This is for his own protection and for the protection of everyone on the base."
Jack turned toward him in absolute disbelief. "You think he's a threat to other people?" He stared back at Mackenzie with naked fury. "No one bothered to warn you that I've got a small anger management issue right now, did they?"
"He is volatile, Colonel," Mackenzie insisted. "Look at what just happened. Look at how easily triggered he is, how quickly he becomes violent, how …"
"You want volatile, you sanctimonious prick?" Jack slammed his fists into the table, making everyone in the room jump. "You're the one that set him off!"
"Colonel." There was a warning in Hammond's tone, but it was nowhere near as strong as it should have been.
"He attempted to seriously injure Dr. Fraiser."
Jack shook his head vehemently. He doubted that Mackenzie was trying to push him into losing control, but that didn't change the fact that he was about to do it. "No, he didn't. He was having a flashback. You know how those work, right? He thought she was Hathor. He thought was defending himself."
"That part was my fault, Dr. Mackenzie," Fraiser put in. "I've already told you that. I know better than to walk up behind someone in that state of panic, and I should have known better than to talk to him the way I did. I was concerned about his injuries and trying to prevent him from hurting himself, but the way I went about it was a recipe for disaster."
Mackenzie either dismissed or ignored what she'd said, looked Jack straight in the eye, and pushed forward. "He tried to kill you."
Jack's arm started to sting, and he looked down at it. He'd forgotten about the gash there, halfway between his shoulder and elbow. It wasn't deep, barely a scratch beneath the torn sleeve of his uniform, and it had stopped bleeding at some point, though he had no idea when. He'd been too concerned with Daniel to pay it any mind. He shook his head again without looking up.
"He was trying to save me."
"By burying a scalpel in your chest?"
"By sending me somewhere she couldn't hurt me!" All pretense of minding his temper was gone. Apparently Daniel wasn't the only one whose emotional responses could be triggered beyond his ability to control them. "You don't have to understand, hell, you can't understand, because you weren't there! You have no idea what we went through!"
"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond's voice thundered through the Briefing Room, shocking everyone in it into silence. He softened his voice again, and the uncertainty started to creep back into it. "Jack, you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that Dr. Jackson doesn't need intensive therapy and medication to deal with what happened. If anything, you're doing a damn good job of convincing me that you do."
"I'm not accepting any treatment from this incompetent asshole," Jack shot back.
Mackenzie had the audacity to look offended at that. "Incompetent? Colonel O'Neill …"
"You set him off," Jack repeated. "You knew he had a trigger, you swore you'd go out of your way to avoid it, but you went in there and you hit it dead-on. How long were you in there before you hit it? Two minutes? Three?"
"I assure you that I did nothing of the sort," Mackenzie said. "I had asked him only basic questions up until that point. I'd said nothing about either the rape or the suicide attempt. I wasn't even in the room when he started."
"You weren't even …?" He blinked in confusion; he couldn't have heard that right. "You weren't in the room with him?"
"You left him alone?" Janet asked at the same time.
"For a few seconds," Mackenzie answered. "We spoke briefly, introductions and pleasantries only. I laid my notebook down and went to get the chair that I'd left in your …"
"You laid your notebook down?" Janet was horrified. Jack didn't understand why until she asked her next question. "Where, exactly, did you put it?"
"On the table near the head of …"
"You stupid son of a bitch!" Jack lunged forward, reaching across the table in an effort to grab Mackenzie's jacket. Hammond was out of his chair in an instant, and his hand flat against Jack's chest was the only thing that stopped him from bodily dragging the psychiatrist across the table.
"You might be right about the colonel requiring medical intervention as well, General. And you can see, as I told you, there was no reason for Dr. Jackson to have …"
"He read it!" Jack and Janet said in unison.
Mackenzie looked surprised by the declaration. "You can't be certain of that."
"Of course we can!" Jack shouted. "It's Daniel. He's got enough curiosity to kill a dozen cats on a good day. He had no idea what happened to him, and he was already mad that I wasn't telling him. You left the answers to every question he had just sitting there, and you walked away. That's like putting a plate of cookies in front of a four year old."
Mackenzie shook his head and turned his attention back to Hammond.
"I will apologize if my actions resulted in him being triggered, General. But what triggered him isn't as important as what he did once he was," he said. "He became violent immediately. He tried to strike me …"
"I understand the feeling," Jack muttered, earning a hard warning look from Hammond.
"He tried to strike and stab Dr. Fraiser. He tried to kill Colonel O'Neill. He made another suicide attempt …"
"God damn you!" Jack grabbed the back of his chair, his fingers biting into the leather as he squeezed. It took every ounce of self control he had not to throw it out of the way and lunge for Mackenzie again. "We've been over this. That's not him. It's that damn drug making him that way."
"Colonel O'Neill, calm down!" Hammond ordered. Quieter, only to Jack, he said, "I'm on your side, Jack, but you're not helping him right now. You're not doing yourself any favors, either."
"You want to help him, General? Really?"
"Of course I do." There was real injury in Hammond's voice, and Jack made a mental note to apologize for causing it. Later. After he'd stopped what was about to happen.
"Then leave him here. Let us take care of him."
"That's impossible," Mackenzie put in. "He requires much more specialized care than he can ever receive here."
Jack turned on him again. "I promised that I wouldn't leave him! And I am not going to stand by and let you mess that up."
"His health is far more important than your desire to keep a promise."
"Right now, a big part of his health depends on whether or not I keep that promise. Do you want to make sure he never gets over this? Take him away from us. Take him away from the only family he's got and stick him in a rubber room somewhere. Because that'll help him so much."
"I'm only thinking of what's best for him, Colonel O'Neill."
"You're going to destroy him," Jack said hotly. "You do understand that, don't you?"
"O'Neill."
Jack spun around.
"Teal'c?"
Everything going on in the Briefing Room was forgotten. None of it would matter if something had happened to Daniel, and the fact that Teal'c was there, standing in the door of the Briefing Room when he should have been standing at the foot of Daniel's bed, almost guaranteed that something had happened. He shook off Hammond's hand on his chest, turned, and walked across the room and out into the corridor without a single backward glance.
"What's wrong? Where's Daniel?"
"Daniel Jackson is in the infirmary," Teal'c answered simply.
"Then why are you here? What happened?"
"You summoned me."
Jack's heart jumped again, that time into his throat. "No." He shook his head quickly and started jogging down the hallway. "No, Teal'c, I didn't. I wanted you to stay with Daniel. Who told you I sent for you?"
"One of the four airmen you left to guard the door."
"Why would they …"
"Colonel!"
Jack slid to a stop as an obviously upset Sam Carter came up behind them. "Carter?"
"It's Daniel ..."
He hadn't thought it was possible for his heart to sink any further. "God, what now?"
"I went down to the infirmary to see him, and he's not there. He's gone, sir."
"Gone!" Jack's eyes darted around as he checked to make certain that no one had heard his outburst. "What do you mean 'gone'? Gone where?"
"That's the problem. No one knows where he is."
"How can no one know where he is?" Jack threw his hands in the air in frustration. He noticed the looks he, Carter and Teal'c were getting from the people walking past, and he lowered his voice. "He's not exactly hard to spot. How many long-haired geeks with glasses have we got stationed here?"
"Only one, sir." Sam said, unnecessarily. "But at the moment, he's the one we can't find."
"Damn it!" Jack turned on his heel and started running toward the infirmary; Sam and Teal'c stayed right behind him. "I told him to stay put. I put extra guards outside the door."
"Yes, sir," Sam agreed.
"How many SFs does it take to keep one wounded archeologist in bed anyway?"
"How many did you have posted?"
"Four," Teal'c answered for him.
Sam nodded her head. "Well then, sir, I'd guess that it takes more than that."
Jack gave his second-in-command a sideways glare. "Oh, thank you so much, Carter. That helps so much."
Alarm klaxons blared through the corridor and red lights began flashing above their heads. Jack, Sam and Teal'c all stopped dead in the hallway, the same question in each of their eyes as they looked at each other in silence.
"Unauthorized Gate activation!" Sergeant Davis' voice announced. "Colonel O'Neill to the Control Room!"
"He wouldn't ..." Jack looked at Carter and Teal'c in horror. "... would he?"
"Daniel Jackson would not be so foolish," Teal'c declared
Sam shook her head vehemently. "No, he wouldn't. There's no way."
They turned in unison and dashed for the Control Room. They flew down the stairs and into the room just as the blast doors cleared the window, giving a clear view of what was happening in the Gate Room below.
"He would," Jack groaned. He leaned forward, slamming his hand down on the intercom button. "Daniel!"
Daniel turned his head slowly, and Jack couldn't believe the difference that ten minutes had made.
Daniel was standing halfway up the ramp, ten feet from the event horizon. Gone were the scrub bottoms he'd worn in the infirmary, and in their place was an offworld field uniform at least one size too big. The bruises and marks on his body were hidden, and the sleeves were long enough that even the bandage on his wrist didn't show. Jack doubted that anyone seeing him walk down the hallway would have recognized him, because his long hair was pushed up under a baseball cap, and he wasn't wearing his glasses.
He looked down at his own chest, at the name patch above the left front pocket, and Jack knew why the uniform looked so big on him. That patch didn't say JACKSON, as it should have. It said O'NEILL.
Daniel locked eyes with Jack through the window. The look on his face flashed from determination to fear and back again. Then he blinked, and suddenly there was no expression, no emotion, nothing. He'd wiped everything away. He shook his head slowly, peeled the name patch off, and held it out in front of him before opening his hand and letting it fall to the floor.
"Daniel, for God's sake, don't do this!" Jack watched in horror as Daniel turned back to the Gate and began moving toward it. "Daniel! Airmen, what are you doing? Stop him!"
The four uniformed SFs at the bottom of the ramp moved forward slowly.
"Close the iris!" Sam shouted.
"I can't," Davis protested. "I tried. It won't close. I don't even know how he got the gate open. We have the entire dialing system offline for repairs."
"Boot it up!"
"I already started it, ma'am."
"Then turn the iris controls back on."
"They are on. We cleared them first, and switched them back on an hour ago. They should be functioning. They just aren't."
"Stop him!" Jack yelled at the SFs again. "Daniel, stop!"
Jack saw Daniel's shoulders rise once more, and then he disappeared into the wormhole.
"No!" Jack and Sam cried in unison.
"Damn it, why didn't you stop him?" Jack yelled at the motionless SFs on the ramp.
All four men turned back to the Control Room. Three turned away quickly and resumed their walk up the ramp. The fourth looked Jack straight in the eyes and smiled.
"We return to our queen what is hers."
It took less than a second for the meaning behind the man's word to sink in. Jack spun to face Sam as Teal'c growled behind them.
"Jaffa!"
The four men on the ramp bolted forward just as Sam's hand slammed down on the iris control in one last ditch effort to close it. It started to rotate into position immediately - obviously whatever had been stopping it wasn't interfering anymore. The first three men ran into the wormhole with no difficulty, and the one that had spoken to Jack jumped the closing iris easily. It clanged shut behind him.
Jack, Teal'c, and Sam looked at each other in horror as the sound of the deactivating wormhole echoed through the Control Room.
Chapter Eight
Ten minutes.
Only ten minutes before, Daniel had been safe in the infirmary, sleeping, healing, under the protection of Teal'c's watchful eye and four extra guards. Somehow, in the span of those ten minutes, Teal'c had been convinced to leave, those four guards had mutated into four Jaffa, and Daniel had been dressed up in Jack's uniform and kidnapped through the Stargate.
He'd ignored the feeling in his gut that told him Daniel was still in danger. He'd let himself be pulled away from the one place he'd really needed to be. He'd convinced himself that the threat he was worried about didn't exist. He'd walked out despite the fact that every instinct he had was screaming at him that if he did, he'd never see Daniel again.
He'd left him alone. And he'd lost him.
"God damn it!"
The only reason the fist he threw didn't connect with the monitor in front of him was the realization, at the last second, that he was about to break the dialing computer. He pulled his arm back and used the momentum to spin around to face Hammond, who was standing in dumbfounded silence behind him.
"General, permission to …?"
"Granted!" Hammond answered.
"Colonel …"
"Carter, Teal'c, grab your gear. The second we get a MALP through that Gate, we're leaving."
"Colonel, listen to me."
"We don't have very long. He's got four Jaffa guarding him, and he's not exactly popular on Chulak on a good day. We'll have to do it fast."
"Colonel."
"I'm thinking we'll need some more of those robes, like we wore last time. Teal'c, you'll need your armor."
"Colonel!"
He blinked at Carter, surprised by her raised tone of voice. He didn't know how many times she'd said his name, but the look on her face said she'd been doing it for a while. He shook his head in frustration and pointed at her.
"Whatever it is, Carter, it can wait. Getting Daniel back is priority one right now."
"I know that, sir," she shot back. "I'm trying to tell you that we can't."
"What do you mean 'we can't'?" He couldn't believe that she would waste time arguing with him when they had so little time to get Daniel back safely. "We've got clearance to go, and we're going. He didn't go alone, and I don't know if you saw the look on his face or not, but he was scared. He did not go willingly."
"I know, Colonel." Her voice had softened considerably. "But we can't dial the Gate."
He blinked at her in open confusion. "What?"
"The dialing computer is still offline for repairs. It'll take at least an hour to get the system rebooted and running again."
He closed his eyes and shook his head; what she was saying didn't make any sense. "We can't dial out?"
"No, sir." Once he let himself really look at her, he could see the emotion in her eyes, the upset. She was telling him the truth, and it was obvious that she didn't like it any better than he did.
"Then how the hell did they do it?"
Sam shook her head in open bewilderment. "I have no idea."
Jack cast his eyes around the Control Room, locking his gaze with Teal'c, then General Hammond, then Sam. None of them were going to be any help, and he knew it, but that didn't stop him from seeking answers from people who had none to give.
"If I may, Colonel?" Sergeant Davis' voice interrupted his thoughts and pulled his attention back to the bank of computers in front of the window.
"What?"
"I've started reviewing the video from the Stargate Room, sir, from before the blast doors went up. There's something that I think you need to see."
Sam turned to face the monitor directly in front of her, and Jack leaned down over the back of Davis' chair. Hammond and Teal'c watched over Jack's shoulder. He didn't know where Mackenzie and Janet had gotten off to, but he really wasn't worried about them. Daniel wasn't on Earth anymore; there was nothing either of them could do for or to him. Jack narrowed his focus to the scene playing on the monitor in front of him and shut everything else out.
The Gate Room doors were opening. Daniel walked in first, uncertainly, looking around nervously, though Jack had to wonder just what he expected to see without his glasses on. As he moved forward, closer to the camera, the four Jaffa filed in behind him.
One of them - the one that had spoken on the ramp - grabbed Daniel by the shoulder and spun him around roughly. Jack narrowed his eyes in hatred. Any remaining doubt that Daniel might have gone to Chulak willingly ceased to exist with that one motion. The Jaffa shoved something into Daniel's hand, and then pushed him toward the Gate.
Daniel took a deep breath, looked around the room once more, then pressed on the device the Jaffa had given him. The Stargate started to spin, and the first chevron engaged.
Jack jumped back from the screen in shock. "What the hell is that thing?" He looked around the room again, then back at the monitor, at the frozen image of Daniel, eyes locked on the dialing Gate, holding the alien device in his hand. "A remote control?"
Sam shrugged beside him. "That's what it looks like, sir."
"Where did he get it?"
"Perhaps Hathor left it …"
Jack snapped his head around.
"… with her Jaffa," Teal'c finished. "So that they could one day rejoin her."
"Have you ever seen one of those, Teal'c?" Sam asked.
"I have," he answered. "They were given to the most honored and important among the Jaffa, to insure that they always had the means to return to their home, should they become separated from the Goa'uld they serve."
"And Hathor had one?" Jack asked.
"Probably more than one, sir," Sam said. "We weren't quite sure how she dialed the Gate herself."
The phone on the wall of the Control Room rang, and Davis jumped up to answer it. The three remaining members of SG1 stared at each other mutely.
"General," Davis said, holding the phone out to Hammond. "It's NORAD, sir."
Janet chose that moment to make her continued presence in the Control Room known.
"Colonel?" she said, walking up to him carefully.
"What?"
"Sir, if it's going to be a while before you can leave, I should take a look at that arm."
"What arm?" Jack blinked at her, confused.
"Your arm, sir," she clarified, pointing at it as she did. "It doesn't look deep, but I should clean and bandage it."
Jack huffed and flopped down in the chair behind him. "Do whatever you want," he said. "But do it here, because I'm not going anywhere."
She nodded, walked across the room quickly, and retrieved the first aid kit from the wall. Jack watched her. He had the distinct feeling that he was supposed to be mad at her about something, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Once she'd returned to his side and was spreading the medical supplies out on the table beside him that he remembered what that thing was. He pulled his arm out of her hands angrily.
"You said there weren't any Jaffa," he growled. "You said he was imagining the whole thing." Janet lowered her head. "Those were not hallucinations!"
"I know, Colonel." She kept her voice low as she tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, pulling it down low enough to get it out of her way. "I don't know how … I checked everyone. Every man who'd been in the mountain the past thirty-six hours. None of them were Jaffa."
"Then where the hell did those four come from?"
"I know the answer to that, Colonel," Hammond said. He hung the phone up with a heavy sigh and turned to face the people gathered in the Control Room. "That was NORAD. The four guards they sent to escort Hathor down haven't returned yet. They want to know if we've seen them."
Sam's closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. Teal'c dropped his arms to his side and straightened his back. Jack relaxed his posture slightly, looked back through the window at the Stargate, and allowed Janet free access to his arm.
"Oh, that's gonna be fun to explain."
The Briefing Room had become a staging area, one which Dr. Mackenzie had wisely vacated. Sam had stayed in the Control Room, working her magic, doing everything she could to speed up the process of getting the dialing computer up and running again. Teal'c had gone to his quarters to change into his armor. Hammond had gone into his office to start the task of reviewing the security tapes from Hathor's time in the mountain.
Jack was inspecting the weapons that he'd laid out on the table. He hadn't had much time to plan the mission and was having to rush through a lot of things, but he was paying particular attention to their weapons. They were taking more than they'd taken the time before, and hiding them under their costumes would be a bit more difficult than it had been then.
Janet had finished bandaging Jack's arm and taken her leave shortly thereafter. He flexed his hand slightly when he thought about the wound that he'd received during Daniel's episode in the infirmary. It wasn't much more than a scratch; he'd been right about that. It did sting a bit, but only when he thought about it, and he hadn't needed stitches.
Sam and Teal'c came up the stairs together. "Only fifteen more minutes, Colonel," Sam said.
In his arms, Teal'c carried two robes almost identical to the ones SG1 had worn on their last trip to Chulak. Sam had a silver paint marker, and she held it out to him. He took it from her and opened it, intending to draw the snake symbol that denoted a follower of Apophis on her forehead. Teal'c touched his arm before he started, and Jack turned toward him.
"I do not believe it would be wise to wear the symbol of Apophis."
"What? Why?" Jack asked.
Teal'c put the robes down on the table and handed Jack a piece of paper. On it, Teal'c had drawn a different symbol, two curved horns that connected to each other at their base with a disk floating between them. Jack had never seen it before, but he had a sinking suspicion that he knew whose symbol it was.
"Teal'c?"
"The symbol of Hathor."
"No." Jack slammed the paper down on the table and walked away.
"Only weeks ago, three scholars from the Court of Apophis came to Chulak. They killed a priest. They kidnapped a young boy. They destroyed the prim'ta at the temple. They attacked the guards at the Chappa'ai." Teal'c's voice was calm and certain. "Traveling under the same disguise so soon would be foolish."
Jack turned back toward him. "Scholars from Apophis' court would be suspicious, but scholars from the court of a goddess who's been dead for two thousand years won't be?"
"Not scholars," Teal'c said. "Priests."
Jack turned his back on him and looked out the window at the Stargate far below. "No."
"All Goa'uld, even those long-since believed or known dead by the System Lords, have cults, O'Neill. And word of the resurrection of a queen will have spread quickly. The message will have reached several Goa'uld planets before now, and priests in Hathor's service will have begun arriving not long after she herself did. You will simply be two among many."
"With Hathor's …" Jack shook his head vehemently. "No. We are not putting that bitch's symbol on our heads. Come up with another way."
"Colonel, I think Teal'c is right," Sam said. "It makes sense. And it's not like we'll actually belong to her, sir. It's just camouflage. We can wipe it off as soon as we get through the Gate."
Of course, it would be Sam who'd not only understand his resistance to the idea but speak it out loud.
He shook his head and walked back to the table again. They were both right, and he knew it. He was being ridiculous, and he knew that, too. But there was a principle to the thing. Everything she'd almost cost them, everything she'd tried to do to them, everything she'd taken from them … to go walking around with her symbol on them, like they were her property … it would be like saying that Daniel was her property. It would be like giving up. But at the same time, if what Teal'c said was right - and it was - it just might be the only way they could get through the Stargate without being gunned down by angry Jaffa.
He sighed and flopped down in one of the chairs. The he picked up the marker and paper and handed them to Sam.
As she reached for his forehead, he held up one finger for attention.
"Don't connect the horns at the bottom," he said. "Not a big gap, just … make sure there is one, okay? It doesn't have to be noticeable to anyone but me."
She nodded in understanding and leaned toward him.
He felt the tip of the marker touch his skin, and he closed his eyes.
Their arrival on Chulak was spectacularly uneventful.
There were still guards around the Stargate, but not as many as there had been a few weeks before. And Teal'c had been right about their arrival garnering no attention if they wore Hathor's symbol. The Jaffa didn't so much as ask them to identify themselves. One of them just waved them down from the dais, said something to Teal'c in their native language, and then they waved them on.
"What'd he say?" Jack asked under his breath as they walked down the path toward the forest.
"He said that the queen we seek has arrived," Teal'c explained. "She has taken up residence at the palace."
He pushed down the anger that the mention of Hathor caused; he'd deal with it later, when they had Daniel back, when they were home. "Where we met you?"
"Yes. But there is more."
Don't let it be about Daniel. Don't let it be about Daniel.
"He delivered a warning. There is a growing discontent on Chulak, and a confrontation is brewing between the Jaffa that have defected to Hathor's service and those still loyal to Apophis."
"How long have we got?" Sam asked.
"I am uncertain. However, we must do our best to retrieve Daniel Jackson and return home with him as quickly as possible. Hostilities will result from the current situation."
"Yeah," Jack agreed. He glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see the Stargate open again, and another set of Hathor acolytes step through. "Don't really want to be stuck on Chulak in the middle of a Jaffa throwdown."
"This would be unwise, O'Neill," Teal'c said.
They crossed from the open plain into the forest without incident, then quickened their pace and headed back to the same place they'd stashed their costumes before. Jack pulled out the bandanna he'd brought along and was wiping Hathor's symbol off of his forehead before they'd even come to a complete stop. He knew that it was just silver paint, and it wasn't actually burning his skin, but he couldn't help feeling like it was. Every second that symbol was on him, marking him, seemed to burn it in deeper, and he was almost afraid that it would never come off.
They were far away from the path, deep in the forest, and the odds of anyone finding them there were remote. So remote, in fact, that when they heard the voice calling to them from the trees, they all spun around with their weapons raised.
"Teal'c."
"Master Bra'tac."
There was a collective sigh of relief as Teal'c's old teacher, their tentative ally on Chulak, stepped out from between the trees. Jack and Sam continued removing their robes while Teal'c stepped forward to greet his mentor.
Bra'tac grasped Teal'c's arm briefly, but stepped around him without speaking and walked directly up to Jack.
"Human," he said.
"Bra'tac," Jack returned. He rolled his robe up and shoved it under the branches of a low bush. "What can I do for you?"
"You come seeking the young scholar, do you not? The queen's beloved?"
Jack didn't know how badly those words would upset him until he heard them, and he didn't know how close he still was to the edge until he jumped off the metaphorical cliff head-first. In seconds, Bra'tac was face-down in the dirt, though Jack had no memory of how it had happened. He had one knee pressed into the Jaffa's spine, and his elbow pinned the man's neck to the ground.
"O'Neill."
"Colonel!"
Jack ignored both Sam and Teal'c and bent down over Bra'tac. "Daniel," he hissed. "His name is Daniel Jackson. You will not call him anything else. Is that clear?"
Bra'tac nodded quickly. Jack released him and pushed himself to standing. He thought about reaching down and helping him stand up, but decided against it. He did take two steps back and gave him enough room to get to his feet without interference, which Bra'tac did, quickly.
"My apologies, human," Bra'tac said, bowing his head briefly. "But I am right. You do come in search of him?"
"We do," Teal'c said.
"Have you seen him?" Sam asked.
"I have more than seen him," Bra'tac answered. "I convinced him to allow me to accompany him through the forest."
"Where is he?" Jack asked frantically. "Where'd you take him?"
"I took him nowhere," Bra'tac said. "When he arrived on Chulak, he was exhausted. I promised him my protection while he rested."
He jumped forward. "Where is he?"
"He sleeps still," Bra'tac said. He turned away from them and gestured toward the hill that rose behind them. "Just on the other side of that rise."
Jack didn't wait to hear any more. He took off at a dead run, jumping fallen branches and weaving around the enormous trees. He didn't care if anyone was following him. He didn't care if anyone heard him. Daniel was only feet away from him, alone, unguarded, but safe. They'd have him back in the SGC where he belonged in minutes.
He crested the rise and slid to a stop. The signs of the camp that had been made there were obvious. It was early morning on Chulak, and the sun still hung low in the sky. The remnants of the fire that Bra'tac had kept burning through the night still glowed. Two sets of blankets were spread out on the ground next to the coals.
Both were alarmingly empty.
"Daniel?" Jack cast his eyes around the campsite, down the side of the hill, deeper into the trees. "Daniel!" He still held on to hope that Daniel would come walking up to him, tell him how relieved he was to see him, and they could all go home.
He managed to keep believing it would happen until he walked to the other side of the fire and looked down at the ground.
"Colonel?"
He hadn't even heard Sam and Teal'c coming up behind him, and he knew that he should have been upset at himself about his lack of attention, but as was becoming the case with almost everything, he didn't really care.
"Daniel Jackson is not present," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, Teal'c. I know. But he was."
"You know that for sure?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," he answered with an ironic smile. "Bra'tac said he was here, right? And besides, who else would have written that?"
He gestured angrily at the ground, then turned and walked back down the hill. He didn't wait for Sam and Teal'c to read the message carved in the dirt, and he half hoped that one of them would wipe it away, because he never wanted to see it again.
GO HOME JACK
Part Five
Chapter Seven
It didn't take Daniel long to cry himself out.
If anyone had told Jack that thirty-six hours after an Egyptian goddess walked into the SGC he'd be sitting on the infirmary floor, holding a thirty year old man who'd just cried himself to sleep in his arms, he'd have told them they were nuts. But nothing could change the fact that he was doing exactly that, and if he had his way, he wouldn't be stopping any time soon.
He'd settled himself on the floor and leaned back against the wall, just to relieve the pressure on his knees, but he absolutely refused to let go of Daniel; the sudden fear churning his gut wouldn't allow him to. There was no logical reason for it, and he knew that, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that if he let go, he'd lose Daniel forever. No matter how slight the risk might have been, it was one that he wasn't willing to take.
Sam had been called to the Gate Room only minutes after Daniel had given up fighting to stay awake. She'd gone reluctantly, and Jack had made note of the fact that it was only after he himself had ordered her to. She'd also knelt down beside them and squeezed Daniel's hand lightly before she'd gone. "Take care of him, sir," she'd said.
He hadn't felt the need to tell her that he would.
So with Sam gone to help clean up the enormous physical mess that Hathor had left behind, Jack and Teal'c were left to deal with the emotional one - the one whose sleep was still punctuated by broken, sobbing breaths.
Jack heaved a deep breath of his own and looked up at Teal'c, who was kneeling across from him, standing silent guard between Daniel and the door. He knew that he needed to share his own emotional turmoil if he had any hope of helping Daniel with his, and he wasn't feeling particularly enthused about talking to the man who'd apparently just triggered Daniel to within an inch of his life - literally. And if there was anyone who might understand what he'd done, what he'd promised, and why he'd done it …
"I told him that I'd kill him."
He hadn't been expecting the words to come out quite so easily, but once they'd started, he couldn't stop them. He closed his eyes, because he knew that if he had to look anyone in the eye while he said it, he'd lose control completely. He planted his left foot firmly on the floor and shifted Daniel in his arms so that the sleeping man's shoulders rested more solidly against his upright thigh. "If she came back for him. He couldn't do it again, he … We thought it was the only way out. I tried to protect him from her, tried to stop her, but I …" He leaned his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes more tightly closed against the memory. "I couldn't. I couldn't even stand up. And after she left, he made me promise. That if we couldn't get out, I'd kill him." He shook his head and drew in another shuddering breath. "I'd have been right behind him, and he knew it."
The moments of silence that followed, to Jack's mind, were a condemnation of his failure. Of course Teal'c wouldn't understand what he'd done. No one would understand what he'd done. Because no normal person would promise to murder their own best friend, no matter what was going on.
"You would have sacrificed his life to save his soul?"
Jack nodded wordlessly.
"It would have been a worthwhile trade."
He finally dredged up the courage to open his eyes, and he looked directly into Teal'c's. "Who does that, Teal'c? How could I promise that?"
"It is as you say, O'Neill. Neither you nor Daniel Jackson could foresee any other way to save yourselves. Would you have preferred to leave him in that situation, to force him to live the life that Hathor wished for him as her unwilling consort?"
"No." The answer came without hesitation. "Never."
"And Daniel Jackson could not have lived with the knowledge that you had been forced into a life of servitude to the Goa'uld."
"None of it ever should have happened," Jack said, giving voice to yet another thought that he hadn't been able to admit, even to himself. "The whole damn thing was my fault."
"How so?"
"She walked into the mountain and started talking about the Stargate, claiming it called to her, said she was a goddess, asked about Ra." He leaned his head against the wall again, but didn't take his eyes off of Teal'c's. "Why did I dismiss her threat potential?"
"You had no reason to believe that any Goa'uld still existed on Earth," Teal'c said. "I was similarly confused by her presence here."
"She had him the minute she kissed his hand." He looked down at Daniel's face, still pinched and tense even in his sleep, and brushed the hair away from his eyes gently. "Which was about ten seconds after I let him walk over there." Jack huffed at his own stupidity. "He asked my permission, and I gave it to him. If I'd said no, if I'd made him stay behind me, if I'd just kept him away from her …"
"You cannot take the blame upon your shoulders, O'Neill."
"Why the hell not?"
"Daniel Jackson will need your strength to supplement his own," Teal'c said. "You will not have enough to give him if you believe yourself to be responsible for what transpired here."
"Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room," came the voice over the PA system. "Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room."
He shook his head in disbelief and smirked at Teal'c. "How much you wanna bet that's big Mack's way of saying hello?"
"Any wager would be unwise," Teal'c replied. "Dr. Mackenzie informed Captain Carter and myself of his intention to seek out General Hammond. Dr. Fraiser was attempting to dissuade him, but I doubt that she was successful."
"Yeah, I thought as much." He rolled his eyes and let out yet another sigh. "Gonna need some help here, Teal'c. Knees aren't what they used to be."
"Of course."
It only took them a minute to decide that the best way to get Daniel back into his bed without waking him was for Teal'c to simply pick him up and carry him.
"That's sweet, Teal'c," Jack said, his half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood painfully obvious to both of them. "Who'd have guessed you're such a big softy?"
"Should you ever speak of this moment, O'Neill, I will deny it."
Jack couldn't help the smile that crossed his face.
Teal'c laid Daniel down gently on the mattress, and Jack lifted the blankets from the foot of the bed to pull them up and across him. "Make you a deal, Teal'c. I won't tell anyone you carried him to bed if you don't tell anyone I tucked him in."
"I agree to these terms." Jack was smoothing the blankets down when Teal'c spoke again. "Have your emotions returned to normal, O'Neill? Or is the control drug still adversely affecting them?"
Jack snorted in reluctant amusement as he pulled the bedrail into place. "I just spent the last half hour sitting on the floor, holding a grown damn man in my lap like he's a little kid. What do you think?"
Teal'c's only answer was a silent nod of his head.
Daniel was muttering into the pillow, so Jack leaned close enough to hear him.
"Have to go. Chulak. Have to go."
"You're not going anywhere, big guy." Jack ruffled his hair fondly, gently, as he stood straight again. "Staying right where you are."
He started to walk away, but he stopped halfway to the door and turned around again. That feeling was back, the roiling in his gut that told him not to leave, but he had no choice. He could only imagine what Mackenzie was telling Hammond, and he had to get to the Briefing Room so he could stop them from doing something they'd all regret. Since he wasn't able to stay with Daniel himself, he settled on the next best thing.
"Stay here, Teal'c. Stay with him. Don't leave his side until you hear it from me, got it?"
"I do, and I will." He took up a position at the foot of Daniel's bed, hands clasped behind his back, looking down on him, keeping watch.
Jack left the room, allowing himself only one more quick glance at Daniel across his shoulder on his way out the door. He'd have to deal with whatever was going on upstairs as fast as he could, because he couldn't shake the feeling of dread, no matter how hard he tried. The only way to get rid of it was to get back to Daniel's side, where he could watch him like a hawk.
He saw four SFs walking down the hallway, with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, obviously on their way out. "Hey, you there! Airmen!" he called out to them. They turned back and walked over.
"Yes, sir?" one of them said.
"Dr. Jackson is in this infirmary," he explained quickly. "Teal'c's in there with him. I need you four to stand an extra guard out here, is that understood? No questions asked, but under no circumstances is Dr. Jackson to walk out this door."
"Of course, sir." They arranged themselves in a loose formation around the door immediately.
Jack nodded briefly, both satisfied with the extra security he'd arranged and nervous about it. He didn't know any of the four men, but new personnel were coming in on a regular basis, so he shouldn't have been surprised at that.
"I'll be back soon," he said, then he turned down the corridor and headed for the elevator. As the elevator door closed, it occurred to him to wonder what those airmen had been smiling about.
He knew he was going to hate what Mackenzie had to say from the minute he walked through the door of the Briefing Room. He hated clichés, but the tension in the room really was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the looks on the faces of the three people seated at the table left absolutely no doubt what - who - they'd been talking about.
He took a deep breath and walked toward his usual chair, but he didn't pull it out to sit down. He was high strung enough that standing was definitely the better option and besides, if he didn't sit down, then leaving would be faster.
"Okay," he said as he crossed the room. "Tell me what Dr. Mackenzie wants to do so I can talk you out of it."
"Colonel O'Neill …," Mackenzie began, but Jack cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"I heard what you were saying in the infirmary. Violently unstable, threat to himself and others, requires constant supervision and medication … Am I getting warm?"
"Surely you don't mean to stand there and say that Dr. Jackson isn't any of those things, Colonel."
Jack nodded his head briskly. "Actually, I am going to stand here and say he isn't any of them."
"Colonel …"
"He's got some sort of alien drug in his system that's throwing his emotional center off balance. Doc Fraiser can tell you all about it, if she hasn't already."
"I have," she said softly from her chair at Mackenzie's side.
"There ya go," Jack said, pointing at her for emphasis. "So, that's it. Case closed. He's not thinking straight right now, he's overreacting, it's not his fault, and once that drug stops messing with his head, he'll be fine." He turned to face General Hammond at the head of the table. "Can I go now, sir?"
Hammond shook his head slowly, so Jack tried another tact quickly.
"He's not the only one still under the effects of that drug. How are you feeling, General? Not worried about anything, not panicking?" Hammond flinched, and Jack felt a flash of sympathy for the man, but he moved past it quickly. "You can't really be making any decisions about the welfare of your people with an alien drug still in your system, can you?"
"If I can't," Hammond said, a vaguely uncertain edge to his voice, "then neither can you."
Jack's heart plummeted into his feet.
"I'm institutionalizing him, Colonel."
He spun toward Mackenzie with a glare that was designed to strike fear into the heart of the strongest Marine. "You're doing what?"
"It's the only logical step to take at the present time."
Jack turned back to Hammond again. "General, this isn't …"
"Dr. Mackenzie told me what happened in the infirmary." He sounded sad, and Jack got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one who didn't want to be having that conversation. Any doubt of that was eliminated by the next words out of his mouth. "I'm sorry, Jack."
"Don't apologize to me, General," he said hotly. "I'm not the one you're thinking about shipping off to the loony bin for having the same problems every other man on this damn base is having right now."
"No one else on this base has tried to kill themselves," Hammond pointed out.
"No one else on this base fought her hard enough to get dosed as bad as he did, either." It was an odd situation, Jack having the upper hand in the Briefing Room and General Hammond backing down, and he wasn't entirely sure that he liked it, but he'd press any advantage he could get. "That's why it's as bad as it is for him. Ask the doc. Hundreds of trained soldiers in this place, and we lined up for her, went down without an argument. But Daniel fought her every step of the way, and she made him pay for it. You're gonna make him pay for it, too?"
Mackenzie leaned his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and spoke again. "This is for his own protection and for the protection of everyone on the base."
Jack turned toward him in absolute disbelief. "You think he's a threat to other people?" He stared back at Mackenzie with naked fury. "No one bothered to warn you that I've got a small anger management issue right now, did they?"
"He is volatile, Colonel," Mackenzie insisted. "Look at what just happened. Look at how easily triggered he is, how quickly he becomes violent, how …"
"You want volatile, you sanctimonious prick?" Jack slammed his fists into the table, making everyone in the room jump. "You're the one that set him off!"
"Colonel." There was a warning in Hammond's tone, but it was nowhere near as strong as it should have been.
"He attempted to seriously injure Dr. Fraiser."
Jack shook his head vehemently. He doubted that Mackenzie was trying to push him into losing control, but that didn't change the fact that he was about to do it. "No, he didn't. He was having a flashback. You know how those work, right? He thought she was Hathor. He thought was defending himself."
"That part was my fault, Dr. Mackenzie," Fraiser put in. "I've already told you that. I know better than to walk up behind someone in that state of panic, and I should have known better than to talk to him the way I did. I was concerned about his injuries and trying to prevent him from hurting himself, but the way I went about it was a recipe for disaster."
Mackenzie either dismissed or ignored what she'd said, looked Jack straight in the eye, and pushed forward. "He tried to kill you."
Jack's arm started to sting, and he looked down at it. He'd forgotten about the gash there, halfway between his shoulder and elbow. It wasn't deep, barely a scratch beneath the torn sleeve of his uniform, and it had stopped bleeding at some point, though he had no idea when. He'd been too concerned with Daniel to pay it any mind. He shook his head again without looking up.
"He was trying to save me."
"By burying a scalpel in your chest?"
"By sending me somewhere she couldn't hurt me!" All pretense of minding his temper was gone. Apparently Daniel wasn't the only one whose emotional responses could be triggered beyond his ability to control them. "You don't have to understand, hell, you can't understand, because you weren't there! You have no idea what we went through!"
"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond's voice thundered through the Briefing Room, shocking everyone in it into silence. He softened his voice again, and the uncertainty started to creep back into it. "Jack, you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that Dr. Jackson doesn't need intensive therapy and medication to deal with what happened. If anything, you're doing a damn good job of convincing me that you do."
"I'm not accepting any treatment from this incompetent asshole," Jack shot back.
Mackenzie had the audacity to look offended at that. "Incompetent? Colonel O'Neill …"
"You set him off," Jack repeated. "You knew he had a trigger, you swore you'd go out of your way to avoid it, but you went in there and you hit it dead-on. How long were you in there before you hit it? Two minutes? Three?"
"I assure you that I did nothing of the sort," Mackenzie said. "I had asked him only basic questions up until that point. I'd said nothing about either the rape or the suicide attempt. I wasn't even in the room when he started."
"You weren't even …?" He blinked in confusion; he couldn't have heard that right. "You weren't in the room with him?"
"You left him alone?" Janet asked at the same time.
"For a few seconds," Mackenzie answered. "We spoke briefly, introductions and pleasantries only. I laid my notebook down and went to get the chair that I'd left in your …"
"You laid your notebook down?" Janet was horrified. Jack didn't understand why until she asked her next question. "Where, exactly, did you put it?"
"On the table near the head of …"
"You stupid son of a bitch!" Jack lunged forward, reaching across the table in an effort to grab Mackenzie's jacket. Hammond was out of his chair in an instant, and his hand flat against Jack's chest was the only thing that stopped him from bodily dragging the psychiatrist across the table.
"You might be right about the colonel requiring medical intervention as well, General. And you can see, as I told you, there was no reason for Dr. Jackson to have …"
"He read it!" Jack and Janet said in unison.
Mackenzie looked surprised by the declaration. "You can't be certain of that."
"Of course we can!" Jack shouted. "It's Daniel. He's got enough curiosity to kill a dozen cats on a good day. He had no idea what happened to him, and he was already mad that I wasn't telling him. You left the answers to every question he had just sitting there, and you walked away. That's like putting a plate of cookies in front of a four year old."
Mackenzie shook his head and turned his attention back to Hammond.
"I will apologize if my actions resulted in him being triggered, General. But what triggered him isn't as important as what he did once he was," he said. "He became violent immediately. He tried to strike me …"
"I understand the feeling," Jack muttered, earning a hard warning look from Hammond.
"He tried to strike and stab Dr. Fraiser. He tried to kill Colonel O'Neill. He made another suicide attempt …"
"God damn you!" Jack grabbed the back of his chair, his fingers biting into the leather as he squeezed. It took every ounce of self control he had not to throw it out of the way and lunge for Mackenzie again. "We've been over this. That's not him. It's that damn drug making him that way."
"Colonel O'Neill, calm down!" Hammond ordered. Quieter, only to Jack, he said, "I'm on your side, Jack, but you're not helping him right now. You're not doing yourself any favors, either."
"You want to help him, General? Really?"
"Of course I do." There was real injury in Hammond's voice, and Jack made a mental note to apologize for causing it. Later. After he'd stopped what was about to happen.
"Then leave him here. Let us take care of him."
"That's impossible," Mackenzie put in. "He requires much more specialized care than he can ever receive here."
Jack turned on him again. "I promised that I wouldn't leave him! And I am not going to stand by and let you mess that up."
"His health is far more important than your desire to keep a promise."
"Right now, a big part of his health depends on whether or not I keep that promise. Do you want to make sure he never gets over this? Take him away from us. Take him away from the only family he's got and stick him in a rubber room somewhere. Because that'll help him so much."
"I'm only thinking of what's best for him, Colonel O'Neill."
"You're going to destroy him," Jack said hotly. "You do understand that, don't you?"
"O'Neill."
Jack spun around.
"Teal'c?"
Everything going on in the Briefing Room was forgotten. None of it would matter if something had happened to Daniel, and the fact that Teal'c was there, standing in the door of the Briefing Room when he should have been standing at the foot of Daniel's bed, almost guaranteed that something had happened. He shook off Hammond's hand on his chest, turned, and walked across the room and out into the corridor without a single backward glance.
"What's wrong? Where's Daniel?"
"Daniel Jackson is in the infirmary," Teal'c answered simply.
"Then why are you here? What happened?"
"You summoned me."
Jack's heart jumped again, that time into his throat. "No." He shook his head quickly and started jogging down the hallway. "No, Teal'c, I didn't. I wanted you to stay with Daniel. Who told you I sent for you?"
"One of the four airmen you left to guard the door."
"Why would they …"
"Colonel!"
Jack slid to a stop as an obviously upset Sam Carter came up behind them. "Carter?"
"It's Daniel ..."
He hadn't thought it was possible for his heart to sink any further. "God, what now?"
"I went down to the infirmary to see him, and he's not there. He's gone, sir."
"Gone!" Jack's eyes darted around as he checked to make certain that no one had heard his outburst. "What do you mean 'gone'? Gone where?"
"That's the problem. No one knows where he is."
"How can no one know where he is?" Jack threw his hands in the air in frustration. He noticed the looks he, Carter and Teal'c were getting from the people walking past, and he lowered his voice. "He's not exactly hard to spot. How many long-haired geeks with glasses have we got stationed here?"
"Only one, sir." Sam said, unnecessarily. "But at the moment, he's the one we can't find."
"Damn it!" Jack turned on his heel and started running toward the infirmary; Sam and Teal'c stayed right behind him. "I told him to stay put. I put extra guards outside the door."
"Yes, sir," Sam agreed.
"How many SFs does it take to keep one wounded archeologist in bed anyway?"
"How many did you have posted?"
"Four," Teal'c answered for him.
Sam nodded her head. "Well then, sir, I'd guess that it takes more than that."
Jack gave his second-in-command a sideways glare. "Oh, thank you so much, Carter. That helps so much."
Alarm klaxons blared through the corridor and red lights began flashing above their heads. Jack, Sam and Teal'c all stopped dead in the hallway, the same question in each of their eyes as they looked at each other in silence.
"Unauthorized Gate activation!" Sergeant Davis' voice announced. "Colonel O'Neill to the Control Room!"
"He wouldn't ..." Jack looked at Carter and Teal'c in horror. "... would he?"
"Daniel Jackson would not be so foolish," Teal'c declared
Sam shook her head vehemently. "No, he wouldn't. There's no way."
They turned in unison and dashed for the Control Room. They flew down the stairs and into the room just as the blast doors cleared the window, giving a clear view of what was happening in the Gate Room below.
"He would," Jack groaned. He leaned forward, slamming his hand down on the intercom button. "Daniel!"
Daniel turned his head slowly, and Jack couldn't believe the difference that ten minutes had made.
Daniel was standing halfway up the ramp, ten feet from the event horizon. Gone were the scrub bottoms he'd worn in the infirmary, and in their place was an offworld field uniform at least one size too big. The bruises and marks on his body were hidden, and the sleeves were long enough that even the bandage on his wrist didn't show. Jack doubted that anyone seeing him walk down the hallway would have recognized him, because his long hair was pushed up under a baseball cap, and he wasn't wearing his glasses.
He looked down at his own chest, at the name patch above the left front pocket, and Jack knew why the uniform looked so big on him. That patch didn't say JACKSON, as it should have. It said O'NEILL.
Daniel locked eyes with Jack through the window. The look on his face flashed from determination to fear and back again. Then he blinked, and suddenly there was no expression, no emotion, nothing. He'd wiped everything away. He shook his head slowly, peeled the name patch off, and held it out in front of him before opening his hand and letting it fall to the floor.
"Daniel, for God's sake, don't do this!" Jack watched in horror as Daniel turned back to the Gate and began moving toward it. "Daniel! Airmen, what are you doing? Stop him!"
The four uniformed SFs at the bottom of the ramp moved forward slowly.
"Close the iris!" Sam shouted.
"I can't," Davis protested. "I tried. It won't close. I don't even know how he got the gate open. We have the entire dialing system offline for repairs."
"Boot it up!"
"I already started it, ma'am."
"Then turn the iris controls back on."
"They are on. We cleared them first, and switched them back on an hour ago. They should be functioning. They just aren't."
"Stop him!" Jack yelled at the SFs again. "Daniel, stop!"
Jack saw Daniel's shoulders rise once more, and then he disappeared into the wormhole.
"No!" Jack and Sam cried in unison.
"Damn it, why didn't you stop him?" Jack yelled at the motionless SFs on the ramp.
All four men turned back to the Control Room. Three turned away quickly and resumed their walk up the ramp. The fourth looked Jack straight in the eyes and smiled.
"We return to our queen what is hers."
It took less than a second for the meaning behind the man's word to sink in. Jack spun to face Sam as Teal'c growled behind them.
"Jaffa!"
The four men on the ramp bolted forward just as Sam's hand slammed down on the iris control in one last ditch effort to close it. It started to rotate into position immediately - obviously whatever had been stopping it wasn't interfering anymore. The first three men ran into the wormhole with no difficulty, and the one that had spoken to Jack jumped the closing iris easily. It clanged shut behind him.
Jack, Teal'c, and Sam looked at each other in horror as the sound of the deactivating wormhole echoed through the Control Room.
Chapter Eight
Ten minutes.
Only ten minutes before, Daniel had been safe in the infirmary, sleeping, healing, under the protection of Teal'c's watchful eye and four extra guards. Somehow, in the span of those ten minutes, Teal'c had been convinced to leave, those four guards had mutated into four Jaffa, and Daniel had been dressed up in Jack's uniform and kidnapped through the Stargate.
He'd ignored the feeling in his gut that told him Daniel was still in danger. He'd let himself be pulled away from the one place he'd really needed to be. He'd convinced himself that the threat he was worried about didn't exist. He'd walked out despite the fact that every instinct he had was screaming at him that if he did, he'd never see Daniel again.
He'd left him alone. And he'd lost him.
"God damn it!"
The only reason the fist he threw didn't connect with the monitor in front of him was the realization, at the last second, that he was about to break the dialing computer. He pulled his arm back and used the momentum to spin around to face Hammond, who was standing in dumbfounded silence behind him.
"General, permission to …?"
"Granted!" Hammond answered.
"Colonel …"
"Carter, Teal'c, grab your gear. The second we get a MALP through that Gate, we're leaving."
"Colonel, listen to me."
"We don't have very long. He's got four Jaffa guarding him, and he's not exactly popular on Chulak on a good day. We'll have to do it fast."
"Colonel."
"I'm thinking we'll need some more of those robes, like we wore last time. Teal'c, you'll need your armor."
"Colonel!"
He blinked at Carter, surprised by her raised tone of voice. He didn't know how many times she'd said his name, but the look on her face said she'd been doing it for a while. He shook his head in frustration and pointed at her.
"Whatever it is, Carter, it can wait. Getting Daniel back is priority one right now."
"I know that, sir," she shot back. "I'm trying to tell you that we can't."
"What do you mean 'we can't'?" He couldn't believe that she would waste time arguing with him when they had so little time to get Daniel back safely. "We've got clearance to go, and we're going. He didn't go alone, and I don't know if you saw the look on his face or not, but he was scared. He did not go willingly."
"I know, Colonel." Her voice had softened considerably. "But we can't dial the Gate."
He blinked at her in open confusion. "What?"
"The dialing computer is still offline for repairs. It'll take at least an hour to get the system rebooted and running again."
He closed his eyes and shook his head; what she was saying didn't make any sense. "We can't dial out?"
"No, sir." Once he let himself really look at her, he could see the emotion in her eyes, the upset. She was telling him the truth, and it was obvious that she didn't like it any better than he did.
"Then how the hell did they do it?"
Sam shook her head in open bewilderment. "I have no idea."
Jack cast his eyes around the Control Room, locking his gaze with Teal'c, then General Hammond, then Sam. None of them were going to be any help, and he knew it, but that didn't stop him from seeking answers from people who had none to give.
"If I may, Colonel?" Sergeant Davis' voice interrupted his thoughts and pulled his attention back to the bank of computers in front of the window.
"What?"
"I've started reviewing the video from the Stargate Room, sir, from before the blast doors went up. There's something that I think you need to see."
Sam turned to face the monitor directly in front of her, and Jack leaned down over the back of Davis' chair. Hammond and Teal'c watched over Jack's shoulder. He didn't know where Mackenzie and Janet had gotten off to, but he really wasn't worried about them. Daniel wasn't on Earth anymore; there was nothing either of them could do for or to him. Jack narrowed his focus to the scene playing on the monitor in front of him and shut everything else out.
The Gate Room doors were opening. Daniel walked in first, uncertainly, looking around nervously, though Jack had to wonder just what he expected to see without his glasses on. As he moved forward, closer to the camera, the four Jaffa filed in behind him.
One of them - the one that had spoken on the ramp - grabbed Daniel by the shoulder and spun him around roughly. Jack narrowed his eyes in hatred. Any remaining doubt that Daniel might have gone to Chulak willingly ceased to exist with that one motion. The Jaffa shoved something into Daniel's hand, and then pushed him toward the Gate.
Daniel took a deep breath, looked around the room once more, then pressed on the device the Jaffa had given him. The Stargate started to spin, and the first chevron engaged.
Jack jumped back from the screen in shock. "What the hell is that thing?" He looked around the room again, then back at the monitor, at the frozen image of Daniel, eyes locked on the dialing Gate, holding the alien device in his hand. "A remote control?"
Sam shrugged beside him. "That's what it looks like, sir."
"Where did he get it?"
"Perhaps Hathor left it …"
Jack snapped his head around.
"… with her Jaffa," Teal'c finished. "So that they could one day rejoin her."
"Have you ever seen one of those, Teal'c?" Sam asked.
"I have," he answered. "They were given to the most honored and important among the Jaffa, to insure that they always had the means to return to their home, should they become separated from the Goa'uld they serve."
"And Hathor had one?" Jack asked.
"Probably more than one, sir," Sam said. "We weren't quite sure how she dialed the Gate herself."
The phone on the wall of the Control Room rang, and Davis jumped up to answer it. The three remaining members of SG1 stared at each other mutely.
"General," Davis said, holding the phone out to Hammond. "It's NORAD, sir."
Janet chose that moment to make her continued presence in the Control Room known.
"Colonel?" she said, walking up to him carefully.
"What?"
"Sir, if it's going to be a while before you can leave, I should take a look at that arm."
"What arm?" Jack blinked at her, confused.
"Your arm, sir," she clarified, pointing at it as she did. "It doesn't look deep, but I should clean and bandage it."
Jack huffed and flopped down in the chair behind him. "Do whatever you want," he said. "But do it here, because I'm not going anywhere."
She nodded, walked across the room quickly, and retrieved the first aid kit from the wall. Jack watched her. He had the distinct feeling that he was supposed to be mad at her about something, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Once she'd returned to his side and was spreading the medical supplies out on the table beside him that he remembered what that thing was. He pulled his arm out of her hands angrily.
"You said there weren't any Jaffa," he growled. "You said he was imagining the whole thing." Janet lowered her head. "Those were not hallucinations!"
"I know, Colonel." She kept her voice low as she tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, pulling it down low enough to get it out of her way. "I don't know how … I checked everyone. Every man who'd been in the mountain the past thirty-six hours. None of them were Jaffa."
"Then where the hell did those four come from?"
"I know the answer to that, Colonel," Hammond said. He hung the phone up with a heavy sigh and turned to face the people gathered in the Control Room. "That was NORAD. The four guards they sent to escort Hathor down haven't returned yet. They want to know if we've seen them."
Sam's closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. Teal'c dropped his arms to his side and straightened his back. Jack relaxed his posture slightly, looked back through the window at the Stargate, and allowed Janet free access to his arm.
"Oh, that's gonna be fun to explain."
The Briefing Room had become a staging area, one which Dr. Mackenzie had wisely vacated. Sam had stayed in the Control Room, working her magic, doing everything she could to speed up the process of getting the dialing computer up and running again. Teal'c had gone to his quarters to change into his armor. Hammond had gone into his office to start the task of reviewing the security tapes from Hathor's time in the mountain.
Jack was inspecting the weapons that he'd laid out on the table. He hadn't had much time to plan the mission and was having to rush through a lot of things, but he was paying particular attention to their weapons. They were taking more than they'd taken the time before, and hiding them under their costumes would be a bit more difficult than it had been then.
Janet had finished bandaging Jack's arm and taken her leave shortly thereafter. He flexed his hand slightly when he thought about the wound that he'd received during Daniel's episode in the infirmary. It wasn't much more than a scratch; he'd been right about that. It did sting a bit, but only when he thought about it, and he hadn't needed stitches.
Sam and Teal'c came up the stairs together. "Only fifteen more minutes, Colonel," Sam said.
In his arms, Teal'c carried two robes almost identical to the ones SG1 had worn on their last trip to Chulak. Sam had a silver paint marker, and she held it out to him. He took it from her and opened it, intending to draw the snake symbol that denoted a follower of Apophis on her forehead. Teal'c touched his arm before he started, and Jack turned toward him.
"I do not believe it would be wise to wear the symbol of Apophis."
"What? Why?" Jack asked.
Teal'c put the robes down on the table and handed Jack a piece of paper. On it, Teal'c had drawn a different symbol, two curved horns that connected to each other at their base with a disk floating between them. Jack had never seen it before, but he had a sinking suspicion that he knew whose symbol it was.
"Teal'c?"
"The symbol of Hathor."
"No." Jack slammed the paper down on the table and walked away.
"Only weeks ago, three scholars from the Court of Apophis came to Chulak. They killed a priest. They kidnapped a young boy. They destroyed the prim'ta at the temple. They attacked the guards at the Chappa'ai." Teal'c's voice was calm and certain. "Traveling under the same disguise so soon would be foolish."
Jack turned back toward him. "Scholars from Apophis' court would be suspicious, but scholars from the court of a goddess who's been dead for two thousand years won't be?"
"Not scholars," Teal'c said. "Priests."
Jack turned his back on him and looked out the window at the Stargate far below. "No."
"All Goa'uld, even those long-since believed or known dead by the System Lords, have cults, O'Neill. And word of the resurrection of a queen will have spread quickly. The message will have reached several Goa'uld planets before now, and priests in Hathor's service will have begun arriving not long after she herself did. You will simply be two among many."
"With Hathor's …" Jack shook his head vehemently. "No. We are not putting that bitch's symbol on our heads. Come up with another way."
"Colonel, I think Teal'c is right," Sam said. "It makes sense. And it's not like we'll actually belong to her, sir. It's just camouflage. We can wipe it off as soon as we get through the Gate."
Of course, it would be Sam who'd not only understand his resistance to the idea but speak it out loud.
He shook his head and walked back to the table again. They were both right, and he knew it. He was being ridiculous, and he knew that, too. But there was a principle to the thing. Everything she'd almost cost them, everything she'd tried to do to them, everything she'd taken from them … to go walking around with her symbol on them, like they were her property … it would be like saying that Daniel was her property. It would be like giving up. But at the same time, if what Teal'c said was right - and it was - it just might be the only way they could get through the Stargate without being gunned down by angry Jaffa.
He sighed and flopped down in one of the chairs. The he picked up the marker and paper and handed them to Sam.
As she reached for his forehead, he held up one finger for attention.
"Don't connect the horns at the bottom," he said. "Not a big gap, just … make sure there is one, okay? It doesn't have to be noticeable to anyone but me."
She nodded in understanding and leaned toward him.
He felt the tip of the marker touch his skin, and he closed his eyes.
Their arrival on Chulak was spectacularly uneventful.
There were still guards around the Stargate, but not as many as there had been a few weeks before. And Teal'c had been right about their arrival garnering no attention if they wore Hathor's symbol. The Jaffa didn't so much as ask them to identify themselves. One of them just waved them down from the dais, said something to Teal'c in their native language, and then they waved them on.
"What'd he say?" Jack asked under his breath as they walked down the path toward the forest.
"He said that the queen we seek has arrived," Teal'c explained. "She has taken up residence at the palace."
He pushed down the anger that the mention of Hathor caused; he'd deal with it later, when they had Daniel back, when they were home. "Where we met you?"
"Yes. But there is more."
Don't let it be about Daniel. Don't let it be about Daniel.
"He delivered a warning. There is a growing discontent on Chulak, and a confrontation is brewing between the Jaffa that have defected to Hathor's service and those still loyal to Apophis."
"How long have we got?" Sam asked.
"I am uncertain. However, we must do our best to retrieve Daniel Jackson and return home with him as quickly as possible. Hostilities will result from the current situation."
"Yeah," Jack agreed. He glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see the Stargate open again, and another set of Hathor acolytes step through. "Don't really want to be stuck on Chulak in the middle of a Jaffa throwdown."
"This would be unwise, O'Neill," Teal'c said.
They crossed from the open plain into the forest without incident, then quickened their pace and headed back to the same place they'd stashed their costumes before. Jack pulled out the bandanna he'd brought along and was wiping Hathor's symbol off of his forehead before they'd even come to a complete stop. He knew that it was just silver paint, and it wasn't actually burning his skin, but he couldn't help feeling like it was. Every second that symbol was on him, marking him, seemed to burn it in deeper, and he was almost afraid that it would never come off.
They were far away from the path, deep in the forest, and the odds of anyone finding them there were remote. So remote, in fact, that when they heard the voice calling to them from the trees, they all spun around with their weapons raised.
"Teal'c."
"Master Bra'tac."
There was a collective sigh of relief as Teal'c's old teacher, their tentative ally on Chulak, stepped out from between the trees. Jack and Sam continued removing their robes while Teal'c stepped forward to greet his mentor.
Bra'tac grasped Teal'c's arm briefly, but stepped around him without speaking and walked directly up to Jack.
"Human," he said.
"Bra'tac," Jack returned. He rolled his robe up and shoved it under the branches of a low bush. "What can I do for you?"
"You come seeking the young scholar, do you not? The queen's beloved?"
Jack didn't know how badly those words would upset him until he heard them, and he didn't know how close he still was to the edge until he jumped off the metaphorical cliff head-first. In seconds, Bra'tac was face-down in the dirt, though Jack had no memory of how it had happened. He had one knee pressed into the Jaffa's spine, and his elbow pinned the man's neck to the ground.
"O'Neill."
"Colonel!"
Jack ignored both Sam and Teal'c and bent down over Bra'tac. "Daniel," he hissed. "His name is Daniel Jackson. You will not call him anything else. Is that clear?"
Bra'tac nodded quickly. Jack released him and pushed himself to standing. He thought about reaching down and helping him stand up, but decided against it. He did take two steps back and gave him enough room to get to his feet without interference, which Bra'tac did, quickly.
"My apologies, human," Bra'tac said, bowing his head briefly. "But I am right. You do come in search of him?"
"We do," Teal'c said.
"Have you seen him?" Sam asked.
"I have more than seen him," Bra'tac answered. "I convinced him to allow me to accompany him through the forest."
"Where is he?" Jack asked frantically. "Where'd you take him?"
"I took him nowhere," Bra'tac said. "When he arrived on Chulak, he was exhausted. I promised him my protection while he rested."
He jumped forward. "Where is he?"
"He sleeps still," Bra'tac said. He turned away from them and gestured toward the hill that rose behind them. "Just on the other side of that rise."
Jack didn't wait to hear any more. He took off at a dead run, jumping fallen branches and weaving around the enormous trees. He didn't care if anyone was following him. He didn't care if anyone heard him. Daniel was only feet away from him, alone, unguarded, but safe. They'd have him back in the SGC where he belonged in minutes.
He crested the rise and slid to a stop. The signs of the camp that had been made there were obvious. It was early morning on Chulak, and the sun still hung low in the sky. The remnants of the fire that Bra'tac had kept burning through the night still glowed. Two sets of blankets were spread out on the ground next to the coals.
Both were alarmingly empty.
"Daniel?" Jack cast his eyes around the campsite, down the side of the hill, deeper into the trees. "Daniel!" He still held on to hope that Daniel would come walking up to him, tell him how relieved he was to see him, and they could all go home.
He managed to keep believing it would happen until he walked to the other side of the fire and looked down at the ground.
"Colonel?"
He hadn't even heard Sam and Teal'c coming up behind him, and he knew that he should have been upset at himself about his lack of attention, but as was becoming the case with almost everything, he didn't really care.
"Daniel Jackson is not present," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, Teal'c. I know. But he was."
"You know that for sure?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," he answered with an ironic smile. "Bra'tac said he was here, right? And besides, who else would have written that?"
He gestured angrily at the ground, then turned and walked back down the hill. He didn't wait for Sam and Teal'c to read the message carved in the dirt, and he half hoped that one of them would wipe it away, because he never wanted to see it again.
GO HOME JACK
Part Five