Stargate SG1: Beloved (2/5)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Beloved
Chapter Three
"Teal'c, get Carter and get down here. Level 31, storeroom 3126. ASAP. Bring the doc."
Jack let his hand fall away from his radio and stepped forward slowly. His first instinct was to yell at Daniel to drop the knife or to simply run up, grab and shake him. But he knew that instinct was wrong. Daniel wasn't on the most stable of emotional ground at that moment, and his own mental state wasn't much better. With the way things had ended between them an hour earlier, Daniel would be as likely to run from him as to listen to him.
Probably more, if he were being completely honest with himself.
The way Daniel was holding that knife - pressed tightly against his arm, perpendicular to his wrist - had him worried. If Daniel so much as flinched, he'd slice through both his skin and at least one very large vein. He had to get that knife out of Daniel's hand, and he had to do it without startling him.
"Daniel?" He moved as close as he dared, and he did his best to keep his voice soft and reassuring.
If Daniel had heard him, he gave no sign. Jack knelt on the floor, brought himself down to Daniel's level and assumed as non-threatening a stance as he possibly could. He put the flashlight down on the floor, freeing his hands and casting a diffuse light across the scene in front of him.
"Danny?"
Daniel turned his head slowly toward him, and Jack decided that he preferred the empty expression Daniel had worn in the locker room to what he saw in his eyes - pain, guilt, fear, shame, and so much self-loathing that it was all he could do just to look at him.
The urge to grab Daniel reasserted itself, but he fought it down again. Talking wasn't really his thing, but even in his current state of mind, he knew that he had to do it. The alternative could have disastrous consequences.
"Put the knife down, Daniel," he said gently.
Daniel looked down at the dagger in his hand, almost as though he was seeing it for the first time, and tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Why?"
"Because you don't want to do this." He could hear the pleading tone in his voice, but he didn't care. "Please."
"I think I ... no, I do. I really do."
"This isn't you, Daniel," Jack said urgently, slowly crawling forward. If he could just get a little closer, he could grab the knife away himself. "It's that drug. It's making you think you want this, but you don't."
"Have to stop her," Daniel replied with a slight shake of his head. "Can't let her."
He swallowed hard. The words Daniel was speaking had no real relevance to what Jack was saying, but if they were in answer to a memory, they made more sense than he wanted to admit.
"How is this going to stop her?" he forced himself to ask. He lifted his hand from the ground slowly, moving it toward the handle of the dagger. He froze in place when Daniel shifted the blade, pressed the tip of it against his skin, and drew a bead of blood that quickly began trickling down over the curve of his bruised right wrist.
"Daniel!"
"She wants me to ... wants me." The matter-of-fact way the words were spoken made Jack's skin crawl, and the sight of Daniel pressing down on the blade and dragging it across his own arm, so slow and deliberate, was almost more than he could handle. "But I can't ... not strong enough."
"Stop!"
The first drops of blood hit the floor, and he was getting desperate to break through. "You would never do this, Daniel," Jack insisted. He could hear his voice rising in pitch, could hear the words speeding up, almost to match the pounding of his heart and the rapid pace of his breaths. "I know you."
"You ... hate me."
"No," he insisted as he moved forward again. Just another few inches ... "I was wrong, what I said to you was wrong. I was pissed off, and I took it out in you, but it's not your fault. I don't hate you. Please, you've gotta stop."
"You should hate me," Daniel whispered. "I do."
He ignored the words, and the lack of emotion in the voice that spoke them, and focused instead on finding an opportunity to get that blade the hell away from Daniel's wrist. When Daniel closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, Jack shot his hand out. He grabbed Daniel's right wrist, pulled it up and away, and was just about to make a grab for the handle when Daniel's fingers suddenly opened. The dagger clattered to the floor. Jack smacked it away with the back of his hand, sending it sliding across the floor and into the darkness, to be found and dealt with later.
"It's all right, Daniel," he said as he wrapped his hand around Daniel's wrist to staunch the flow of blood. "It's gonna be okay now."
"Let go of me," Daniel whispered. "Please."
Jack lifted his hand slightly and looked down at the wound on Daniel's wrist. It was a couple of inches long at most, and to his untrained eye, it looked deep. But it was bleeding sluggishly, not gushing or pouring. That gave him hope that Daniel hadn't done any major damage to himself, but he was reluctant to stop the pressure on it.
"Let go!"
The panic in Daniel's voice might have been enough to convince Jack to do as he was asked, even if Daniel hadn't shoved him so hard with his left hand as he said it that Jack fell back and landed on his ass on the floor. As he pushed himself back up, the overhead lights in the room flickered to life, and for the first time since he'd entered the storeroom, he could see just how distraught and battered Daniel really looked.
There were bruises coming out on his face, along his right cheekbone and jaw, and Jack could have kicked himself for not noticing them before. As guilty as he felt about the explosion in the locker room, he also knew that if it hadn't happened, they'd have lost Daniel forever. He'd have continued to play it off like he wasn't hurt, like nothing was wrong, like he was just fine, and he'd have made it out of the mountain. And if he'd gotten away from them …
"It's okay, Daniel," he said gently. "You're confused, and you're hurting, and you're feeling what you're feeling, and you don't know why ... but it's okay. It's all that damned drug of hers, that stupid pink mist. Doc'll tell you all about it when she sees you. But you're bleeding, and I really need you to let me help you."
Daniel's head fell forward against his knees and he wrapped his arms tightly around his legs. Jack pretended not to see the red smears left behind everywhere Daniel's wrist brushed against his pants. "No ... it's useless," he declared quietly. "She's going to win."
"No, she isn't," Jack argued. "It's over. She's gone; she can't win."
"Not as gone as you think," Daniel countered softly.
He took a deep breath; he was beginning to doubt that Daniel was even hearing him. "I know this is bad, but I promise you it's going to be okay."
"You don't know anything," Daniel whispered, keeping his arms around his knees and his head down.
Jack heard a slight shuffling of feet behind him and knew without turning around that Carter and Teal'c had arrived; it had to have been one of them that had turned the lights on. He felt Carter kneel down beside him and Teal'c hovering protectively above them. He glanced at them both before turning his attention back to Daniel.
"I know that you're going to get through this." He gestured at Carter and Teal'c without looking at them. "We're going to get you through this."
Daniel shook his head slowly, rolling his head back and forth on his knees. "You don't know," he whispered. "You can't know." He took a deep breath. "You don't know what I ... saw or what I ... did ..." Daniel's shoulders started shaking, and he lifted his head quickly. He pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes as if by doing so he could push the memories away again. The trembling had moved into his arms and legs, and when he spoke again, his voice was shaking just as badly. "What she did ... what I let her do ..."
"No, Daniel," Sam put in quickly but gently. "You didn't let her do anything. You fought her. You tried to stop her."
"Can't stop her," Daniel answered. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he pressed harder against his eyes. "Can't save Jack. Can't save the others. Can't save me."
Sam and Jack looked at each other in despair as Teal'c's voice floated softly from behind them.
"What others, Daniel Jackson?"
"Them," Daniel answered simply. "They're still here. They're going to take me back."
"Nobody's taking you anywhere, Daniel," Jack said.
"They will."
"Who are they?" Sam asked.
"The Jaffa."
Jack shook his head vigorously, pushed himself straight up on his knees only inches from Daniel, and pulled his shirt up. "There are no more Jaffa. Look. Look at me." When Daniel didn't move, Jack reached out, grabbed his arms, and pulled his hands away from his face. "Daniel, look at me," he repeated. He released his hold as quickly as he'd taken it, not wanting to give Daniel another reason to shove him away, and pulled his shirt up again. "This is me. Just me. The Jaffa are gone."
Daniel leaned his head back against the wall, finally looking at Jack through half-open red-rimmed eyes, and shook his head slowly. "Not the only one," he whispered.
His eyes widened with a question that his voice couldn't find the words to ask. Sam crawled close to Daniel beside him, and Teal'c followed her closely.
"Not the only one?" Sam repeated. "What do you mean?"
A small, defeated smile played at the corners of Daniel's lips, but his eyes never left Jack's face. "Not the only one," he repeated. "Just the first."
Intense pain, and fear, staggering back into the wall ... Hathor's voice echoing in his ears and his mind, ‘Hathor's first new Jaffa' ...
He blinked the memory away. "I'm not the only one?"
Daniel shook his head slowly. "The first of five."
The deep blue and gold of the VIP room, sliding down the wall, falling toward the floor, his eyes darting around the room as he fell ... Daniel sitting on the floor behind the bed, his head down, fingers tangled tightly in his hair, his arms covering his ears ...
He jerked back quickly, pushing away from Daniel with such force that his head snapped back and his shoulders slammed into the wall. Jack heard a gasp, but he was too wrapped up in the images flashing through his mind to pay attention to it.
"Daniel?"
He heard Sam's slightly panicked call from behind him, and he forced himself to push the thoughts aside. Whatever they were - memories, visions, imaginings - he'd have to deal with them later. Because directly in front of him was Daniel, his eyes squeezed shut in pain and white as a sheet, wrapping his arms around his lower left side, pitching forward and curling in on himself.
Jack and Sam both crawled toward him, but Teal'c was faster. He was on his knees at Daniel's side in time to catch him, to wrap his arms around him and keep him from collapsing face-first onto the floor.
Jack reached out a hand to help. As he did, Daniel's shirt, still unbuttoned from Sam loosening it in the locker room, fell slightly more open, revealing more of his chest than any of them had seen before, more bruises and scratches and bite marks ...
Hathor grabbing the front of Daniel's shirt with both hands, breathing more of the pink mist in his face, pulling him forward to kiss him ... Daniel yelling, fighting, pushing her away so forcefully that his shirt ripped ...
Daniel struggled and fought to get away from them. Teal'c was having a hard time holding him still, and Sam was trying to help.
"Let go of me!" Daniel shoved Sam's hands away and tried to push himself backwards across the floor. "Don't touch me!"
Hathor backhanding Daniel, the sound of a fist striking flesh ... Daniel flying across the room, slamming into the dresser and falling to the floor ...
"Stop!" Jack said sharply, shaking his head to clear it once more. "He's hurt. His back ..."
At that moment, Daniel's shirt, pulled loose as his struggles continued, rode up over his left hip, leaving the entire left side of his abdomen, his ribcage, and part of his back exposed. The large, deep bruise that circled Daniel's lower left side was evidence of just how brutal Hathor had been.
Sam and Teal'c pulled away from Daniel and stared at Jack in shock.
Jack closed his eyes as the implications of what he'd just said hit him. It was becoming clear that he knew a lot more about what had happened to Daniel than he should have, and if the short 'previews' he'd already gotten were anything to go by, the memories were only going to get worse. He was going to have to deal with that at some point, and he knew it, but first he was going to have to come up with some sort of explanation for Sam and Teal'c.
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, shrugged, and said the first thing that came to mind.
"Don't ask me how I knew that."
Janet chose that moment to enter the room. She walked toward them quickly, leaving the orderlies she'd brought with her standing in the corridor with the gurney. Sam and Teal'c stood quickly, moving aside to give Janet the room she needed to assess Daniel's condition.
She seemed to take it all in at once, her eyes scanning him from the head down as she knelt beside him. The pallor of his skin, the bruises on his face, the barely-visible edges of the marks on his chest, the bruised wrists, the bloody two-inch gash in his arm. When she caught sight of the massive discoloration on his lower left side, her lips narrowed and she motioned for the orderlies to enter the room with the gurney.
"Daniel, does your side hurt? Or your back?" she asked. She hadn't touched him yet, and to Jack it looked as though she was actually going out of her way to avoid doing so.
Daniel only nodded his head in response as he watched Janet through eyes narrowed in suspicion. Even as she was leaning forward to inspect the damage more closely, he was pushing himself away, inching toward the wall.
"Anything else?" Janet was pointedly ignoring the fact that her patient was trying to escape, but she knew there was nowhere he could go. "What about your shoulder? Does your shoulder hurt?"
Jack wondered why Janet was more concerned about Daniel's side than about the fact that he'd just tried to kill himself, but he trusted her. If she thought that bruise was more important than his sliced open arm, then obviously it was.
Daniel's only answer was another rapid nod. He was still trying to back away, trying to distance himself from Janet even as she worked out in her mind exactly what was wrong with him.
Sam, Teal'c, and Janet's attention was solely on Daniel, and Daniel was watching Janet too closely to notice anyone else, so Jack was the only one who saw the orderlies moving closer. They pulled the gurney to a stop at Daniel's side and kicked the wheels to engage the brakes, then reached down for Daniel's ankles and shoulders so they could lift him from the floor. Daniel stiffened the second he felt their hands on him.
Hathor crying out in anger, "You dare defy us!" ... Daniel trying to crawl away, pushing himself backwards across the floor … Hathor grabbing Daniel by the hair, pulling him to his feet, pushing him into the wall ... "You belong to us!"
Jack blinked again. Janet was attempting to calm Daniel down as the orderlies placed him on the gurney. She was talking to him calmly, smoothly, even as they held his arms down at his side and reached for the straps.
Hathor wrapping her long fingers around Daniel's throat, digging her nails in cruelly, tossing him across the room like a broken doll … Daniel landing on his back on the bed ... Hathor straddling his hips, grabbing his wrists and pinning his arms down ... Daniel closing his eyes, throwing his head back, screaming ..."No!"
"No!"
"Get away from him!"
Jack jerked himself out of the memory with a sharp gasp and grabbed the orderly nearest to him. He'd pulled the man away from Daniel and thrown him face-first into the wall before he even realized he was moving.
"Leave him alone!"
He spun back to Daniel's side and stretched his arms out across him, holding both the orderlies and Dr. Fraiser at bay. Teal'c and Sam, acting more on instinct than logic, he supposed, had taken up positions beside him. Fraiser was alternating between dressing-down the orderlies and shooting almost panicked glances across at Jack.
And Daniel ... Daniel was still screaming.
"I'm here, Daniel … If she comes back … I'll end this … you won't be alone ..."
Leaving Teal'c, Sam, and Janet to deal with the orderlies, should they decide to get too close too quickly again, Jack turned his full attention back to Daniel.
"Daniel," he said gently, keeping his hands where Daniel could see them and purposely not touching him. "Daniel, look at me."
The screaming stopped immediately after Jack said his name, but it took several seconds after that for Daniel's eyes to focus on him.
"I'm here," Jack said, repeating the words that he'd heard himself speaking in his most recent returned memory. "Do you hear me? You're not alone."
Daniel nodded his head slowly as silent tears tracked down his cheeks. "You promised."
"I did," Jack answered. "And I'm going to keep it." He paused long enough for Daniel to nod his head again, to confirm that he'd heard and understood. "You're hurt. You need to go to the infirmary with Doc Fraiser."
Daniel was scared, that much was painfully obvious to everyone in the room - scared, confused and trapped in memories of a hell that none of them could even begin to understand.
But Jack understood. Jack more than understood; he knew. He knew exactly what Daniel had been through and exactly what he was so scared of. The wide eyes that stared up at him from that gurney were the same ones that had begged him for help in the VIP room.
"I can't do this again … Please, Jack ... I can't …"
"I won't let anyone hurt you," he said softly, and he couldn't stop himself from laying his hand on Daniel's forehead gently. "I promise."
Daniel nodded once more and closed his eyes. Jack watched him for a few seconds before looking up at Janet.
"You can take him now," he said. "He won't fight anymore."
Janet's expression was somewhere between extreme confusion and awe, but Jack ignored it and turned his attention to the two orderlies that followed behind her. "If either one of you touches him or tries to tie him down again, I'll do a hell of a lot more than push you into a wall. Is that clear?"
"Colonel." It was Janet's voice - tight, controlled, and asserting her authority over the situation. "Alien drugs or not, sir, don't threaten my people."
Jack narrowed his eyes when he looked at her again. "Alien drugs have nothing to do with it. Stop letting yours threaten mine."
Chapter Four
Jack supposed there were other places he could have been, instead of sitting in Janet's office waiting for an update on Daniel, but he couldn't think of any that would have been any more important to him. He'd sent Carter and Teal'c off to close down the search mission almost immediately after they'd arrived at the infirmary, and he felt mildly guilty about having done that. They were the only people who'd known what happened to Daniel, after all, and the ones who'd had to smack him upside the head with the undeniable truth of it. They were both every bit as much Daniel's friends as he himself was; in recent hours, it could even be argued that they were more.
But they didn't know what Jack knew, hadn't seen what he'd seen, couldn't possibly understand what he understood. His memories hadn't yet returned in full, but the small snippets he'd seen in the storeroom had told him more than enough. He'd been witness to something terrible, something much worse than Hathor knocking Daniel across the room, and he knew that. He didn't have to remember every detail in full, because the memory of her pinning Daniel to the bed was more than enough to give him a good indication of what was coming.
And Jack couldn't deny that Daniel had seen him stripped of everything that made him who he was, made weak and vulnerable, and left dependent on the one thing he hated most for his very survival.
They'd both been through hell in the past twenty-four hours, and they'd spent at least part of that time together. Jack didn't know if it would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, if it would drive them apart or hold them together, but he wouldn't even try to deny that he felt more responsible for Daniel than he ever had.
He'd made him a promise, after all, and he intended to keep it.
Janet's entrance into her office pulled Jack from his thoughts, and he looked up at her.
"So, tell me, Doc," he began, "How exactly do you go about treating a patient that doesn't want to be touched?"
Janet sighed deeply as she settled down in her chair. "You sedate them and do it anyway."
He recognized the feeling now, the rising tide of anger that swelled up from nowhere, and he did his best to push it back down. He couldn't stop the emotional reactions entirely, but he was finding them easier to control. He hadn't felt the urge to throw anyone into a wall in almost an hour.
"So he's drugged up again," he said as casually as he could manage. "That's great."
"Colonel ..." There was an audible warning in her voice. Obviously Janet was becoming almost as adept at reading Jack's moods as he was.
"I know," he answered, pushing himself to his feet. He walked across the room toward the open door but stopped himself short of walking through it. Instead, he closed it before turning back to face her and leaning against the wall. "I know, Doc, and I'm sorry. I just … I'm having a hard time seeing drugging him and forcing him to do something - anything - as a good idea."
Janet took a deep breath as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desk. "Under normal circumstances, Colonel, you're absolutely right. I should be doing everything in my power to give him back some sense of control. But when allowing him that would negatively impact his health? I can't let that happen."
"That bad, huh?"
Janet nodded slowly. "He was bleeding internally, and I had to find out from where and how badly. If I hadn't, he could have bled to death. His mental state is important, Colonel, but it's not as important as his life."
Jack closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "So, what was it? What'd she do to him?"
Janet took a deep breath before answering him. "That bruise on his side is a bruised spleen and a very badly bruised kidney."
"Surgery?" he asked with a wince.
"No. The bleeding is significant, but not life threatening. I'm going to manage him non-surgically and see how it goes. If I can keep him in bed and immobile, there's very little chance of complications and a very good chance that he'll heal on his own. I'll be keeping him here for at least a week, possibly two. But that's all."
Jack nodded his head, grateful for at least that small mercy. "What else?"
"I'm wondering if I shouldn't run a ra …"
"No need," he interrupted. He knew that he'd have to let the word be said at some point, for Daniel's sake if nothing else, but he wasn't ready to hear her say it. "We know it happened, and we know who did it. He's taken at least three showers since she left, and besides, what are you going to do with it? You gonna have her arrested?"
Janet leaned back in her chair and nodded. "I was actually thinking that I might be able to get some DNA that hasn't been turned to ash. If he's really taken three showers, though …"
"At least," he said.
"It would probably be pointless to do one, then. And I don't know if he could handle it right now, anyway." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "I've got him on an IV already, broad spectrum antibiotics, and I've taken samples to run some tests. I need to make sure she didn't give him anything."
Jack rolled his shoulders forward before leaning back against the wall again. "She's been locked in a sarcophagus in a temple in Mexico for a few thousand years. What could she possibly have?"
"I'm doing the tests," she answered. "Better safe than sorry."
He swallowed hard before asking his next question.
"His, um … his wrist?"
"Worrisome," she answered. "But not for the physical damage. It's a little over two inches long, and he's got eleven stitches in it, but that's only because I'm trying to spare him a scar. It wasn't deep enough to do any harm. Which is, all things considered, probably a good sign."
"How?" Jack asked, incredulous. "He was bleeding all over the floor."
"At the risk of sounding insensitive, Colonel, Daniel's a smart man. If he'd really wanted to kill himself, he'd have done it. He didn't do any damage to the tendons, and he missed all the major vessels. It's almost like he did it wrong on purpose."
"One of those cry for help things," Jack muttered. He turned away from her before adding, "Or a scream."
"Or him resisting the influence of an alien drug that he didn't know was controlling him." Janet smiled tightly and shrugged. "Whatever the reason, it means he doesn't want to die, sir. That's a good sign."
Jack huffed out a breath between his teeth. "So, anything else?"
"Minor concussion. Three broken and two cracked ribs on the middle and lower left side. They'll hurt like hell, but since I'm keeping him in bed anyway, they should heal just fine. Numerous bruises, contusions, scratches and …" Janet took a deep breath and pushed forward. "… bite marks all over, mostly on his back, chest and arms. He's got quite a few fingerprints on his neck, so I'm watching for any swelling there. His throat's going to be sore."
"And now we know why he didn't want to come down for that physical," he pointed out. "He knew you'd find all that, and start asking questions he didn't want to answer."
Janet nodded sadly. "It makes sense now, doesn't it? To be completely honest, sir, I'm amazed that he managed to hide that much damage at all, let alone as well as he did. He must have been running on adrenaline all that time, which might mean that even he wasn't aware of how badly hurt he was until it ran out. His fight or flight response would have been in high gear."
"Well, he didn't run, but he put up one hell of a fight," Jack remarked. "More than any of the rest of us, that's for sure."
He was being careful with what he said, and he was sure that he hadn't made any statements that couldn't be inferred from Daniel's injuries. He'd meant it when he'd told Carter and Teal'c not to ask him how he knew about Daniel's back, and thankfully they hadn't. He had no illusions that Fraiser would do the same. She would jump to her feet and demand answers. If she knew he'd been present for even part of what had happened to Daniel, she either starting pumping him for information that wasn't his to give or bundle him off to Mental Health for help 'dealing with' what he'd seen.
What Janet wouldn't understand was that he didn't need to 'deal with' anything; he needed none of it to have happened in the first place. He needed Hathor to have never come into the mountain, he needed her to have never turned him into a Jaffa, he needed Daniel to have never caught her eye the way he had. He really needed to not have been present for any of it. Since none of those things were even remotely possible, what Jack needed was to focus on getting past it all and getting on with his life.
Emotions weren't any more his thing than talking was, so he dealt in the physical as much as possible. Daniel was injured and needed medical attention - that was much easier to 'deal with' than what had really happened. He couldn't fool himself into believing that emotions would never come into it; Daniel had been suicidal only an hour before, after all, and odds were good that he still would be when he woke up. But for the moment, Daniel was unconscious and healing, and Jack could postpone dealing with the emotional fallout for at least a little while longer.
He didn't realize that he was staring at the blank infirmary wall through Fraiser's office window until her soft voice brought him back out of his thoughts.
"How did you know, Colonel?"
Jack blinked. He'd been hoping that neither Sam nor Teal'c had told Fraiser that he'd known about Daniel's injury. He'd also been hoping for more time to come up with a reasonable explanation for it. Obviously, he wasn't getting off that easy. He took only a second to think it through before deciding how to play it.
"How'd I know what?"
Janet shook her head at him, obviously not buying what he was selling. She leaned forward on her elbows and steepled her fingers in front of her. "Captain Carter told me that you knew about Dr. Jackson's back before you saw the bruise. I'm asking how you did that."
"I didn't …" he stammered. "I mean, I saw …"
Janet shook her head again, and Jack sighed. He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his left hand against his forehead.
"Okay. I think that maybe … I mean, I might have possibly … remembered it."
Janet pushed herself to her feet, and Jack congratulated himself on being right about her reaction to his admission. If he hadn't been so dead-set on avoiding the conversation she was about to make him have, he might have laughed out loud at her predictability.
"You saw what happened to Dr. Jackson?" she asked hurriedly. "You were there?"
Jack held his hands up in front of himself in both surrender and placation. "Don't get all excited, Doc," he said. "I think it might be possible that I remember him flying across the room and slamming into a dresser. That's it."
He was lying, and he knew it. He just hoped that she didn't.
"Why would you think that unless you remembered something? A lot of the men told me that they were having problems remembering exactly what happened while Hathor was here, and it definitely seems to be more prevalent among the men who spent more time with her. I know that General Hammond doesn't remember everything, because he's admitted as much. Do you have gaps in your memory, Colonel? Are you remembering more as time goes by? You're remembering things about Dr. Jackson?"
Jack simply blinked at her again, at once amazed and baffled by how many questions she had managed to fit into those few sentences.
"You want to know if I have stuff missing?" he asked, choosing his words very carefully. "Yeah, I do. And yeah, I'm remembering random stuff every now and then. Maybe I'll remember it all eventually, and maybe I won't. I really don't know."
"What about Dr. Jackson?"
Jack took a bit longer to think about that. He knew what she was asking - she wanted to know what he remembered about Daniel. But there was no way he was going to answer that one.
"His seems to come and go," he finally said. "Right after she left, he didn't remember anything. By the time we got to the locker room and to get cleaned up, I think he might have remembered a whole lot of it. The two extra showers he managed to fit in there make me think that he'd remembered all of it before we left. Then he passed out, and when he woke up, he'd forgotten it again. I'm pretty sure he had a flashback not long after he woke up, then he freaked on Siler in the corridor. I don't know what'll happen when he wakes up this time."
He got another head shake in response. "That's not what I …"
"Look, if I remember anything that's relevant to his health, I'll let ya know." He didn't think he'd meant that to come out quite as confrontational as it did, but once it was out there, he just didn't see any reason to take it back.
Fraiser, on the other hand, decided to take a different approach. "And his mental health, sir? And yours?"
Jack shrugged. "You mean my little anger problem? It'll go away when that drug does, right? Isn't that what you said?" Janet nodded almost reluctantly. "I'd imagine everyone else's emotional stuff will do the same."
Jack was getting really tired of Janet shaking her head at him. He pushed the swell of anger away again as she settled back into her chair. "Not Dr. Jackson's," she said softly. "And I think you know that."
"Know what?" he demanded.
"He's suicidal," she explained patiently. Jack flinched at the word and looked away. "That doesn't just go away."
"But it's not him," Jack insisted as he stepped forward. He pointed out the window and into the infirmary as he continued. "You just said it isn't. It's the drug making him like that. When it's gone, he'll be …"
"It doesn't create emotions, Colonel," Fraiser interrupted, leaning toward him and putting her elbows on her desk again. "It amplifies them. General Hammond's concern for his people becomes panic. Your irritation becomes fury. Dr. Jackson couldn't possibly become suicidal unless there was already an existing …"
"Wait," he said. His anger flashed once more, but it was mixed with a sense of incredulity that Dr. Fraiser had never even considered what he was about to say. "You're saying he was depressed to start with, right?" When she nodded, Jack almost laughed. "And how the hell did you not realize that before now?"
"Sir …"
"Think about everything he's been through in the past six months! Why does it take something like this to make you think that he might be a little depressed?"
Janet raised her hand and rested her forehead against it. "If that's true, sir, then he shouldn't be in the field in the first place."
Jack snorted. "All things considered, Doc, I'd be more worried about him if he wasn't." Janet looked up at him. "It doesn't affect his work. He's not a threat to himself or anyone else. Not under normal circumstances, anyway. He just … damn it, how could he not be?" He expected her to interrupt him after that, with some sort of medical or psychological mumbo-jumbo. When she didn't, he continued. "He'll wake up, that drug'll fade, and he'll be fine. When that happens, we'll all put it behind us and get back to normal."
Fraiser looked at him for a few seconds after his speech, as though she were considering how to answer him. He watched her face for some hint of what was coming, his mind swirling with all sorts of things he hadn't said. He knew he hadn't gone too far, knew he'd been careful. This was about defending Daniel from a human threat; this was about fighting to keep Daniel on SG1. This was something he was used to, something he could handle just fine.
"And what if you remember something else?" Janet pushed herself up from her chair again, and suddenly she seemed mad at him. He didn't understand the sudden change in her demeanor, but it was obvious from the way she stalked around the end of her desk and walked right up to him that he'd done something to make her angry. "What if you remember seeing something that Dr. Jackson doesn't remember happening? Or that he does remember but he doesn't want you to know? Do you honestly think either one of you can go back to 'normal' after that?"
Jack made a face at that. "What? I saw him get knocked around by a Goa'uld. Not the first time that's happened and sure as hell won't be the last."
"And if you saw more than that?" She was really pushing him, her words were hard-edged, and he found himself actually taking a step back away from her. Those amplified emotional reactions weren't really working in his favor. "What if you saw what she did to him, Colonel? Were you in the room when he got those bruises on his wrists? The bites on his collarbone? Were you there when she raped him?"
"Stop."
"What if you watched her do it, but didn't stop her? He's supposed to forget that? Forgive you for it?"
"Stop!"
"He saw everything that happened in that room, didn't he, Colonel? And he didn't stop any of it. Did he fight? Did he hide? Or did he just stand there and watch? Did he even try to stop her when she went after you?"
"No, he didn't!"
Jack froze the second the words crossed his lips, and he understood immediately why Janet had been pushing him the way she had; the sad smile of victory on her face confirmed it. She'd used his irrational emotions against him, had pushed him with anger in the hopes that he'd get mad and snap right back at her. She'd wanted him off-kilter on the chance that he'd let something slip.
And he had.
He scrambled to come up with something to say, something that would soften the impact of what he'd said. He would never admit to his certainty that he'd seen Daniel at one of the lowest moments of his life, but he had just been tricked into admitting that he knew for a fact that Daniel had seen him at one of his.
But worse than that, the words he'd used made it sound like he blamed Daniel for all of it.
"Doc, it's not … I mean, I don't know if he …"
A knock on the door interrupted him, and by the time it had been opened, both Jack and Janet had schooled their expressions. Janet's smile was gone, as was Jack's nervous irritation.
"Dr. Fraiser?" Jack recognized the nurse that leaned around the door as one that had been assisting Janet with Daniel when he'd arrived in the infirmary. "Dr. Jackson is starting to come around, ma'am."
Janet gave her a quick smile. "Thank you, Debra. I'll be right there."
Debra nodded at Janet, then at Jack, before backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.
Jack stared at the closed door silently. He could feel Janet waiting beside him, but he had no idea what to say. He'd already said more than he'd meant to and way more than he should have. He was trying to think of a graceful way to leave the office, but his mind was drawing a blank on that, too.
Janet sighed and stepped away from him, walking back to her desk and sitting on the corner of it. She sighed and folded her hands in her lap before she spoke again.
"Call it whatever you want, Colonel. Call it torture, or brainwashing, or 'knocked around by a Goa'uld.' It still is what it is. There's no denying that you and Daniel were both severely traumatized by this particular …"
Jack shot a sideways glance at her.
"… Goa'uld. You were together for at least part of it. If you took strength from each other while it was happening, helped each other survive it, then that's good. But now that it's over, you both need to move past just surviving and start dealing with it. And it won't just magically go away when the drug leaves your system."
Jack rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand again, but didn't reply.
"And yes, sir, I did know that Daniel has been mildly depressed these past few months. Just like you, I'd have been more worried about him if he weren't. And you're right about him; it wasn't affecting his job performance, and he wasn't a danger to anyone, let alone himself. But now?"
Jack closed his eyes and let his head fall forward as the last of his anger at having been tricked fled from his system, leaving him feeling empty and tired.
"He can't just jump right back into normal, Colonel. No matter how much he wants to. And neither can you." Silence fell around them as the seconds dragged on, Janet waiting to see if Jack was going to answer her. When he didn't, she went on. "I'm grounding SG1 until Dr. Jackson has been declared fit to return to active duty. I'm estimating that his physical injuries will keep him sidelined or on light duty for at least a month. If the emotional and psychological effects haven't been resolved by then ..."
Jack lifted his head, opened his eyes, and looked directly into hers. "You already called Mackenzie, didn't you?"
Janet simply nodded again, and the look on her face was neither smug nor apologetic. It was what it was, exactly like she'd said. "A psych consult is standard practice, for both rape and attempted suicide."
"So the point of this whole little … thing?" he asked, gesturing back and forth between Janet and himself with an open hand.
"To make you understand why it was necessary. He'll be more willing to cooperate if you're not fighting it on his behalf."
Jack nodded and sighed in resignation. "Great. He's gonna love this."
"He's not the only one."
"What, me, too?" he asked in exasperation.
Janet's answer was a soft, knowing smile.
"Fine," he muttered. "Whatever."
And just like that, the conversation was over.
He'd already started going through everything that Daniel had said in the storeroom, trying to come up with some sort of plan for how to react to Mackenzie finding out about them. He played them over and over again in his mind, like a record on repeat. Just as he lifted his hand toward the door, one of those things jumped to the front of his mind, and he turned back around.
"Daniel said something earlier about there being more Jaffa," he said. "Do you think that maybe you should …"
"Captain Carter told me about that, too," she interrupted. "And I don't know why he's saying that. I've done physicals on every man who is assigned to and was on duty in the mountain at any time in the past thirty-six hours. None of them show any signs of having been made into Jaffa."
"Are you sure?" He knew that he should trust her, because there was no one more qualified to answer, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, and for the first time since he'd found out the messed up emotions, he wasn't going to chalk this one up to them. There was too much at stake if Daniel was right. "He was absolutely positive about it, Doc. He's convinced that I wasn't the only one, just the first. He said there's four more, and he's scared of them."
Janet shrugged. "Maybe he overheard her talking about creating others and just assumed she'd done it. Maybe he thought that the men protecting her had already been turned." She paused to take a deep breath. "It's also entirely possible, Colonel, that he hallucinated the whole thing. Sergeant Siler did say he looked like he was fighting something in the hallway, but there was nothing there. If he was hallucinating that badly, it's not impossible for him to believe in four Jaffa that don't exist."
"And you're really sure?"
"Positive, sir. There are no Jaffa in this mountain. That's one thing we don't have to worry about."
He nodded quickly and let out a long, slow breath. He'd take her word for it, because honestly, it was all he had, and it was good enough for him. But he wished he could shake the feeling that there was something he was missing. He sighed again as he turned away. "Well, I'm gonna go sit with him," he said as he reached for the doorknob. "Whether he remembers what happened or not, he hates waking up alone in the infirmary."
As he pulled the door open, Janet asked one last question.
"What was the promise you made, Colonel? If you don't mind my asking?"
Jack stopped and tilted his head slightly, considering whether or not to answer her. He'd already said more than he'd ever intended to say, and talked himself into at least one session with a shrink while he was at it. What else could he have to lose?
"That I'd take care of him," he answered, his voice so soft that didn't know if Janet could even hear it. "That I'd protect him."
"Do you think you did?" There was no recrimination or accusation in her voice, only curiosity. She was asking a question that he'd been asking himself over and over since he'd first had that memory flash of Daniel flying across the room.
Did I protect him from her? Did I even try?
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "But I'm sure as hell going to do it now." There was a beat of silence as they both allowed his words to sink in. "Are you coming?" Jack looked back over his shoulder at her, his hand on the doorknob.
"Yes," she said. "I'll give you a few minutes with him, then I'll be out."
Jack closed the door behind him as he walked out.
He was doing all he could to keep that promise. He was protecting Daniel the only way he knew how, and the way he would have protected him from Hathor if he could have. He hadn't been close to crying as he closed Janet's door; those weren't tears he'd wiped out of his eyes. Daniel wasn't lying in that bed - unconscious, suffering from internal injuries and recovering from a suicide attempt - because of his failures as a friend and protector. It was all the drug; it was still playing with his emotions, making him say and think and feel things that he really didn't mean.
And by the time he'd reached the chair at Daniel's bedside, he'd almost managed to make himself believe every word.
Part Three
Chapter Three
"Teal'c, get Carter and get down here. Level 31, storeroom 3126. ASAP. Bring the doc."
Jack let his hand fall away from his radio and stepped forward slowly. His first instinct was to yell at Daniel to drop the knife or to simply run up, grab and shake him. But he knew that instinct was wrong. Daniel wasn't on the most stable of emotional ground at that moment, and his own mental state wasn't much better. With the way things had ended between them an hour earlier, Daniel would be as likely to run from him as to listen to him.
Probably more, if he were being completely honest with himself.
The way Daniel was holding that knife - pressed tightly against his arm, perpendicular to his wrist - had him worried. If Daniel so much as flinched, he'd slice through both his skin and at least one very large vein. He had to get that knife out of Daniel's hand, and he had to do it without startling him.
"Daniel?" He moved as close as he dared, and he did his best to keep his voice soft and reassuring.
If Daniel had heard him, he gave no sign. Jack knelt on the floor, brought himself down to Daniel's level and assumed as non-threatening a stance as he possibly could. He put the flashlight down on the floor, freeing his hands and casting a diffuse light across the scene in front of him.
"Danny?"
Daniel turned his head slowly toward him, and Jack decided that he preferred the empty expression Daniel had worn in the locker room to what he saw in his eyes - pain, guilt, fear, shame, and so much self-loathing that it was all he could do just to look at him.
The urge to grab Daniel reasserted itself, but he fought it down again. Talking wasn't really his thing, but even in his current state of mind, he knew that he had to do it. The alternative could have disastrous consequences.
"Put the knife down, Daniel," he said gently.
Daniel looked down at the dagger in his hand, almost as though he was seeing it for the first time, and tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Why?"
"Because you don't want to do this." He could hear the pleading tone in his voice, but he didn't care. "Please."
"I think I ... no, I do. I really do."
"This isn't you, Daniel," Jack said urgently, slowly crawling forward. If he could just get a little closer, he could grab the knife away himself. "It's that drug. It's making you think you want this, but you don't."
"Have to stop her," Daniel replied with a slight shake of his head. "Can't let her."
He swallowed hard. The words Daniel was speaking had no real relevance to what Jack was saying, but if they were in answer to a memory, they made more sense than he wanted to admit.
"How is this going to stop her?" he forced himself to ask. He lifted his hand from the ground slowly, moving it toward the handle of the dagger. He froze in place when Daniel shifted the blade, pressed the tip of it against his skin, and drew a bead of blood that quickly began trickling down over the curve of his bruised right wrist.
"Daniel!"
"She wants me to ... wants me." The matter-of-fact way the words were spoken made Jack's skin crawl, and the sight of Daniel pressing down on the blade and dragging it across his own arm, so slow and deliberate, was almost more than he could handle. "But I can't ... not strong enough."
"Stop!"
The first drops of blood hit the floor, and he was getting desperate to break through. "You would never do this, Daniel," Jack insisted. He could hear his voice rising in pitch, could hear the words speeding up, almost to match the pounding of his heart and the rapid pace of his breaths. "I know you."
"You ... hate me."
"No," he insisted as he moved forward again. Just another few inches ... "I was wrong, what I said to you was wrong. I was pissed off, and I took it out in you, but it's not your fault. I don't hate you. Please, you've gotta stop."
"You should hate me," Daniel whispered. "I do."
He ignored the words, and the lack of emotion in the voice that spoke them, and focused instead on finding an opportunity to get that blade the hell away from Daniel's wrist. When Daniel closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, Jack shot his hand out. He grabbed Daniel's right wrist, pulled it up and away, and was just about to make a grab for the handle when Daniel's fingers suddenly opened. The dagger clattered to the floor. Jack smacked it away with the back of his hand, sending it sliding across the floor and into the darkness, to be found and dealt with later.
"It's all right, Daniel," he said as he wrapped his hand around Daniel's wrist to staunch the flow of blood. "It's gonna be okay now."
"Let go of me," Daniel whispered. "Please."
Jack lifted his hand slightly and looked down at the wound on Daniel's wrist. It was a couple of inches long at most, and to his untrained eye, it looked deep. But it was bleeding sluggishly, not gushing or pouring. That gave him hope that Daniel hadn't done any major damage to himself, but he was reluctant to stop the pressure on it.
"Let go!"
The panic in Daniel's voice might have been enough to convince Jack to do as he was asked, even if Daniel hadn't shoved him so hard with his left hand as he said it that Jack fell back and landed on his ass on the floor. As he pushed himself back up, the overhead lights in the room flickered to life, and for the first time since he'd entered the storeroom, he could see just how distraught and battered Daniel really looked.
There were bruises coming out on his face, along his right cheekbone and jaw, and Jack could have kicked himself for not noticing them before. As guilty as he felt about the explosion in the locker room, he also knew that if it hadn't happened, they'd have lost Daniel forever. He'd have continued to play it off like he wasn't hurt, like nothing was wrong, like he was just fine, and he'd have made it out of the mountain. And if he'd gotten away from them …
"It's okay, Daniel," he said gently. "You're confused, and you're hurting, and you're feeling what you're feeling, and you don't know why ... but it's okay. It's all that damned drug of hers, that stupid pink mist. Doc'll tell you all about it when she sees you. But you're bleeding, and I really need you to let me help you."
Daniel's head fell forward against his knees and he wrapped his arms tightly around his legs. Jack pretended not to see the red smears left behind everywhere Daniel's wrist brushed against his pants. "No ... it's useless," he declared quietly. "She's going to win."
"No, she isn't," Jack argued. "It's over. She's gone; she can't win."
"Not as gone as you think," Daniel countered softly.
He took a deep breath; he was beginning to doubt that Daniel was even hearing him. "I know this is bad, but I promise you it's going to be okay."
"You don't know anything," Daniel whispered, keeping his arms around his knees and his head down.
Jack heard a slight shuffling of feet behind him and knew without turning around that Carter and Teal'c had arrived; it had to have been one of them that had turned the lights on. He felt Carter kneel down beside him and Teal'c hovering protectively above them. He glanced at them both before turning his attention back to Daniel.
"I know that you're going to get through this." He gestured at Carter and Teal'c without looking at them. "We're going to get you through this."
Daniel shook his head slowly, rolling his head back and forth on his knees. "You don't know," he whispered. "You can't know." He took a deep breath. "You don't know what I ... saw or what I ... did ..." Daniel's shoulders started shaking, and he lifted his head quickly. He pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes as if by doing so he could push the memories away again. The trembling had moved into his arms and legs, and when he spoke again, his voice was shaking just as badly. "What she did ... what I let her do ..."
"No, Daniel," Sam put in quickly but gently. "You didn't let her do anything. You fought her. You tried to stop her."
"Can't stop her," Daniel answered. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he pressed harder against his eyes. "Can't save Jack. Can't save the others. Can't save me."
Sam and Jack looked at each other in despair as Teal'c's voice floated softly from behind them.
"What others, Daniel Jackson?"
"Them," Daniel answered simply. "They're still here. They're going to take me back."
"Nobody's taking you anywhere, Daniel," Jack said.
"They will."
"Who are they?" Sam asked.
"The Jaffa."
Jack shook his head vigorously, pushed himself straight up on his knees only inches from Daniel, and pulled his shirt up. "There are no more Jaffa. Look. Look at me." When Daniel didn't move, Jack reached out, grabbed his arms, and pulled his hands away from his face. "Daniel, look at me," he repeated. He released his hold as quickly as he'd taken it, not wanting to give Daniel another reason to shove him away, and pulled his shirt up again. "This is me. Just me. The Jaffa are gone."
Daniel leaned his head back against the wall, finally looking at Jack through half-open red-rimmed eyes, and shook his head slowly. "Not the only one," he whispered.
His eyes widened with a question that his voice couldn't find the words to ask. Sam crawled close to Daniel beside him, and Teal'c followed her closely.
"Not the only one?" Sam repeated. "What do you mean?"
A small, defeated smile played at the corners of Daniel's lips, but his eyes never left Jack's face. "Not the only one," he repeated. "Just the first."
Intense pain, and fear, staggering back into the wall ... Hathor's voice echoing in his ears and his mind, ‘Hathor's first new Jaffa' ...
He blinked the memory away. "I'm not the only one?"
Daniel shook his head slowly. "The first of five."
The deep blue and gold of the VIP room, sliding down the wall, falling toward the floor, his eyes darting around the room as he fell ... Daniel sitting on the floor behind the bed, his head down, fingers tangled tightly in his hair, his arms covering his ears ...
He jerked back quickly, pushing away from Daniel with such force that his head snapped back and his shoulders slammed into the wall. Jack heard a gasp, but he was too wrapped up in the images flashing through his mind to pay attention to it.
"Daniel?"
He heard Sam's slightly panicked call from behind him, and he forced himself to push the thoughts aside. Whatever they were - memories, visions, imaginings - he'd have to deal with them later. Because directly in front of him was Daniel, his eyes squeezed shut in pain and white as a sheet, wrapping his arms around his lower left side, pitching forward and curling in on himself.
Jack and Sam both crawled toward him, but Teal'c was faster. He was on his knees at Daniel's side in time to catch him, to wrap his arms around him and keep him from collapsing face-first onto the floor.
Jack reached out a hand to help. As he did, Daniel's shirt, still unbuttoned from Sam loosening it in the locker room, fell slightly more open, revealing more of his chest than any of them had seen before, more bruises and scratches and bite marks ...
Hathor grabbing the front of Daniel's shirt with both hands, breathing more of the pink mist in his face, pulling him forward to kiss him ... Daniel yelling, fighting, pushing her away so forcefully that his shirt ripped ...
Daniel struggled and fought to get away from them. Teal'c was having a hard time holding him still, and Sam was trying to help.
"Let go of me!" Daniel shoved Sam's hands away and tried to push himself backwards across the floor. "Don't touch me!"
Hathor backhanding Daniel, the sound of a fist striking flesh ... Daniel flying across the room, slamming into the dresser and falling to the floor ...
"Stop!" Jack said sharply, shaking his head to clear it once more. "He's hurt. His back ..."
At that moment, Daniel's shirt, pulled loose as his struggles continued, rode up over his left hip, leaving the entire left side of his abdomen, his ribcage, and part of his back exposed. The large, deep bruise that circled Daniel's lower left side was evidence of just how brutal Hathor had been.
Sam and Teal'c pulled away from Daniel and stared at Jack in shock.
Jack closed his eyes as the implications of what he'd just said hit him. It was becoming clear that he knew a lot more about what had happened to Daniel than he should have, and if the short 'previews' he'd already gotten were anything to go by, the memories were only going to get worse. He was going to have to deal with that at some point, and he knew it, but first he was going to have to come up with some sort of explanation for Sam and Teal'c.
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, shrugged, and said the first thing that came to mind.
"Don't ask me how I knew that."
Janet chose that moment to enter the room. She walked toward them quickly, leaving the orderlies she'd brought with her standing in the corridor with the gurney. Sam and Teal'c stood quickly, moving aside to give Janet the room she needed to assess Daniel's condition.
She seemed to take it all in at once, her eyes scanning him from the head down as she knelt beside him. The pallor of his skin, the bruises on his face, the barely-visible edges of the marks on his chest, the bruised wrists, the bloody two-inch gash in his arm. When she caught sight of the massive discoloration on his lower left side, her lips narrowed and she motioned for the orderlies to enter the room with the gurney.
"Daniel, does your side hurt? Or your back?" she asked. She hadn't touched him yet, and to Jack it looked as though she was actually going out of her way to avoid doing so.
Daniel only nodded his head in response as he watched Janet through eyes narrowed in suspicion. Even as she was leaning forward to inspect the damage more closely, he was pushing himself away, inching toward the wall.
"Anything else?" Janet was pointedly ignoring the fact that her patient was trying to escape, but she knew there was nowhere he could go. "What about your shoulder? Does your shoulder hurt?"
Jack wondered why Janet was more concerned about Daniel's side than about the fact that he'd just tried to kill himself, but he trusted her. If she thought that bruise was more important than his sliced open arm, then obviously it was.
Daniel's only answer was another rapid nod. He was still trying to back away, trying to distance himself from Janet even as she worked out in her mind exactly what was wrong with him.
Sam, Teal'c, and Janet's attention was solely on Daniel, and Daniel was watching Janet too closely to notice anyone else, so Jack was the only one who saw the orderlies moving closer. They pulled the gurney to a stop at Daniel's side and kicked the wheels to engage the brakes, then reached down for Daniel's ankles and shoulders so they could lift him from the floor. Daniel stiffened the second he felt their hands on him.
Hathor crying out in anger, "You dare defy us!" ... Daniel trying to crawl away, pushing himself backwards across the floor … Hathor grabbing Daniel by the hair, pulling him to his feet, pushing him into the wall ... "You belong to us!"
Jack blinked again. Janet was attempting to calm Daniel down as the orderlies placed him on the gurney. She was talking to him calmly, smoothly, even as they held his arms down at his side and reached for the straps.
Hathor wrapping her long fingers around Daniel's throat, digging her nails in cruelly, tossing him across the room like a broken doll … Daniel landing on his back on the bed ... Hathor straddling his hips, grabbing his wrists and pinning his arms down ... Daniel closing his eyes, throwing his head back, screaming ..."No!"
"No!"
"Get away from him!"
Jack jerked himself out of the memory with a sharp gasp and grabbed the orderly nearest to him. He'd pulled the man away from Daniel and thrown him face-first into the wall before he even realized he was moving.
"Leave him alone!"
He spun back to Daniel's side and stretched his arms out across him, holding both the orderlies and Dr. Fraiser at bay. Teal'c and Sam, acting more on instinct than logic, he supposed, had taken up positions beside him. Fraiser was alternating between dressing-down the orderlies and shooting almost panicked glances across at Jack.
And Daniel ... Daniel was still screaming.
"I'm here, Daniel … If she comes back … I'll end this … you won't be alone ..."
Leaving Teal'c, Sam, and Janet to deal with the orderlies, should they decide to get too close too quickly again, Jack turned his full attention back to Daniel.
"Daniel," he said gently, keeping his hands where Daniel could see them and purposely not touching him. "Daniel, look at me."
The screaming stopped immediately after Jack said his name, but it took several seconds after that for Daniel's eyes to focus on him.
"I'm here," Jack said, repeating the words that he'd heard himself speaking in his most recent returned memory. "Do you hear me? You're not alone."
Daniel nodded his head slowly as silent tears tracked down his cheeks. "You promised."
"I did," Jack answered. "And I'm going to keep it." He paused long enough for Daniel to nod his head again, to confirm that he'd heard and understood. "You're hurt. You need to go to the infirmary with Doc Fraiser."
Daniel was scared, that much was painfully obvious to everyone in the room - scared, confused and trapped in memories of a hell that none of them could even begin to understand.
But Jack understood. Jack more than understood; he knew. He knew exactly what Daniel had been through and exactly what he was so scared of. The wide eyes that stared up at him from that gurney were the same ones that had begged him for help in the VIP room.
"I can't do this again … Please, Jack ... I can't …"
"I won't let anyone hurt you," he said softly, and he couldn't stop himself from laying his hand on Daniel's forehead gently. "I promise."
Daniel nodded once more and closed his eyes. Jack watched him for a few seconds before looking up at Janet.
"You can take him now," he said. "He won't fight anymore."
Janet's expression was somewhere between extreme confusion and awe, but Jack ignored it and turned his attention to the two orderlies that followed behind her. "If either one of you touches him or tries to tie him down again, I'll do a hell of a lot more than push you into a wall. Is that clear?"
"Colonel." It was Janet's voice - tight, controlled, and asserting her authority over the situation. "Alien drugs or not, sir, don't threaten my people."
Jack narrowed his eyes when he looked at her again. "Alien drugs have nothing to do with it. Stop letting yours threaten mine."
Chapter Four
Jack supposed there were other places he could have been, instead of sitting in Janet's office waiting for an update on Daniel, but he couldn't think of any that would have been any more important to him. He'd sent Carter and Teal'c off to close down the search mission almost immediately after they'd arrived at the infirmary, and he felt mildly guilty about having done that. They were the only people who'd known what happened to Daniel, after all, and the ones who'd had to smack him upside the head with the undeniable truth of it. They were both every bit as much Daniel's friends as he himself was; in recent hours, it could even be argued that they were more.
But they didn't know what Jack knew, hadn't seen what he'd seen, couldn't possibly understand what he understood. His memories hadn't yet returned in full, but the small snippets he'd seen in the storeroom had told him more than enough. He'd been witness to something terrible, something much worse than Hathor knocking Daniel across the room, and he knew that. He didn't have to remember every detail in full, because the memory of her pinning Daniel to the bed was more than enough to give him a good indication of what was coming.
And Jack couldn't deny that Daniel had seen him stripped of everything that made him who he was, made weak and vulnerable, and left dependent on the one thing he hated most for his very survival.
They'd both been through hell in the past twenty-four hours, and they'd spent at least part of that time together. Jack didn't know if it would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, if it would drive them apart or hold them together, but he wouldn't even try to deny that he felt more responsible for Daniel than he ever had.
He'd made him a promise, after all, and he intended to keep it.
Janet's entrance into her office pulled Jack from his thoughts, and he looked up at her.
"So, tell me, Doc," he began, "How exactly do you go about treating a patient that doesn't want to be touched?"
Janet sighed deeply as she settled down in her chair. "You sedate them and do it anyway."
He recognized the feeling now, the rising tide of anger that swelled up from nowhere, and he did his best to push it back down. He couldn't stop the emotional reactions entirely, but he was finding them easier to control. He hadn't felt the urge to throw anyone into a wall in almost an hour.
"So he's drugged up again," he said as casually as he could manage. "That's great."
"Colonel ..." There was an audible warning in her voice. Obviously Janet was becoming almost as adept at reading Jack's moods as he was.
"I know," he answered, pushing himself to his feet. He walked across the room toward the open door but stopped himself short of walking through it. Instead, he closed it before turning back to face her and leaning against the wall. "I know, Doc, and I'm sorry. I just … I'm having a hard time seeing drugging him and forcing him to do something - anything - as a good idea."
Janet took a deep breath as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desk. "Under normal circumstances, Colonel, you're absolutely right. I should be doing everything in my power to give him back some sense of control. But when allowing him that would negatively impact his health? I can't let that happen."
"That bad, huh?"
Janet nodded slowly. "He was bleeding internally, and I had to find out from where and how badly. If I hadn't, he could have bled to death. His mental state is important, Colonel, but it's not as important as his life."
Jack closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "So, what was it? What'd she do to him?"
Janet took a deep breath before answering him. "That bruise on his side is a bruised spleen and a very badly bruised kidney."
"Surgery?" he asked with a wince.
"No. The bleeding is significant, but not life threatening. I'm going to manage him non-surgically and see how it goes. If I can keep him in bed and immobile, there's very little chance of complications and a very good chance that he'll heal on his own. I'll be keeping him here for at least a week, possibly two. But that's all."
Jack nodded his head, grateful for at least that small mercy. "What else?"
"I'm wondering if I shouldn't run a ra …"
"No need," he interrupted. He knew that he'd have to let the word be said at some point, for Daniel's sake if nothing else, but he wasn't ready to hear her say it. "We know it happened, and we know who did it. He's taken at least three showers since she left, and besides, what are you going to do with it? You gonna have her arrested?"
Janet leaned back in her chair and nodded. "I was actually thinking that I might be able to get some DNA that hasn't been turned to ash. If he's really taken three showers, though …"
"At least," he said.
"It would probably be pointless to do one, then. And I don't know if he could handle it right now, anyway." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "I've got him on an IV already, broad spectrum antibiotics, and I've taken samples to run some tests. I need to make sure she didn't give him anything."
Jack rolled his shoulders forward before leaning back against the wall again. "She's been locked in a sarcophagus in a temple in Mexico for a few thousand years. What could she possibly have?"
"I'm doing the tests," she answered. "Better safe than sorry."
He swallowed hard before asking his next question.
"His, um … his wrist?"
"Worrisome," she answered. "But not for the physical damage. It's a little over two inches long, and he's got eleven stitches in it, but that's only because I'm trying to spare him a scar. It wasn't deep enough to do any harm. Which is, all things considered, probably a good sign."
"How?" Jack asked, incredulous. "He was bleeding all over the floor."
"At the risk of sounding insensitive, Colonel, Daniel's a smart man. If he'd really wanted to kill himself, he'd have done it. He didn't do any damage to the tendons, and he missed all the major vessels. It's almost like he did it wrong on purpose."
"One of those cry for help things," Jack muttered. He turned away from her before adding, "Or a scream."
"Or him resisting the influence of an alien drug that he didn't know was controlling him." Janet smiled tightly and shrugged. "Whatever the reason, it means he doesn't want to die, sir. That's a good sign."
Jack huffed out a breath between his teeth. "So, anything else?"
"Minor concussion. Three broken and two cracked ribs on the middle and lower left side. They'll hurt like hell, but since I'm keeping him in bed anyway, they should heal just fine. Numerous bruises, contusions, scratches and …" Janet took a deep breath and pushed forward. "… bite marks all over, mostly on his back, chest and arms. He's got quite a few fingerprints on his neck, so I'm watching for any swelling there. His throat's going to be sore."
"And now we know why he didn't want to come down for that physical," he pointed out. "He knew you'd find all that, and start asking questions he didn't want to answer."
Janet nodded sadly. "It makes sense now, doesn't it? To be completely honest, sir, I'm amazed that he managed to hide that much damage at all, let alone as well as he did. He must have been running on adrenaline all that time, which might mean that even he wasn't aware of how badly hurt he was until it ran out. His fight or flight response would have been in high gear."
"Well, he didn't run, but he put up one hell of a fight," Jack remarked. "More than any of the rest of us, that's for sure."
He was being careful with what he said, and he was sure that he hadn't made any statements that couldn't be inferred from Daniel's injuries. He'd meant it when he'd told Carter and Teal'c not to ask him how he knew about Daniel's back, and thankfully they hadn't. He had no illusions that Fraiser would do the same. She would jump to her feet and demand answers. If she knew he'd been present for even part of what had happened to Daniel, she either starting pumping him for information that wasn't his to give or bundle him off to Mental Health for help 'dealing with' what he'd seen.
What Janet wouldn't understand was that he didn't need to 'deal with' anything; he needed none of it to have happened in the first place. He needed Hathor to have never come into the mountain, he needed her to have never turned him into a Jaffa, he needed Daniel to have never caught her eye the way he had. He really needed to not have been present for any of it. Since none of those things were even remotely possible, what Jack needed was to focus on getting past it all and getting on with his life.
Emotions weren't any more his thing than talking was, so he dealt in the physical as much as possible. Daniel was injured and needed medical attention - that was much easier to 'deal with' than what had really happened. He couldn't fool himself into believing that emotions would never come into it; Daniel had been suicidal only an hour before, after all, and odds were good that he still would be when he woke up. But for the moment, Daniel was unconscious and healing, and Jack could postpone dealing with the emotional fallout for at least a little while longer.
He didn't realize that he was staring at the blank infirmary wall through Fraiser's office window until her soft voice brought him back out of his thoughts.
"How did you know, Colonel?"
Jack blinked. He'd been hoping that neither Sam nor Teal'c had told Fraiser that he'd known about Daniel's injury. He'd also been hoping for more time to come up with a reasonable explanation for it. Obviously, he wasn't getting off that easy. He took only a second to think it through before deciding how to play it.
"How'd I know what?"
Janet shook her head at him, obviously not buying what he was selling. She leaned forward on her elbows and steepled her fingers in front of her. "Captain Carter told me that you knew about Dr. Jackson's back before you saw the bruise. I'm asking how you did that."
"I didn't …" he stammered. "I mean, I saw …"
Janet shook her head again, and Jack sighed. He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his left hand against his forehead.
"Okay. I think that maybe … I mean, I might have possibly … remembered it."
Janet pushed herself to her feet, and Jack congratulated himself on being right about her reaction to his admission. If he hadn't been so dead-set on avoiding the conversation she was about to make him have, he might have laughed out loud at her predictability.
"You saw what happened to Dr. Jackson?" she asked hurriedly. "You were there?"
Jack held his hands up in front of himself in both surrender and placation. "Don't get all excited, Doc," he said. "I think it might be possible that I remember him flying across the room and slamming into a dresser. That's it."
He was lying, and he knew it. He just hoped that she didn't.
"Why would you think that unless you remembered something? A lot of the men told me that they were having problems remembering exactly what happened while Hathor was here, and it definitely seems to be more prevalent among the men who spent more time with her. I know that General Hammond doesn't remember everything, because he's admitted as much. Do you have gaps in your memory, Colonel? Are you remembering more as time goes by? You're remembering things about Dr. Jackson?"
Jack simply blinked at her again, at once amazed and baffled by how many questions she had managed to fit into those few sentences.
"You want to know if I have stuff missing?" he asked, choosing his words very carefully. "Yeah, I do. And yeah, I'm remembering random stuff every now and then. Maybe I'll remember it all eventually, and maybe I won't. I really don't know."
"What about Dr. Jackson?"
Jack took a bit longer to think about that. He knew what she was asking - she wanted to know what he remembered about Daniel. But there was no way he was going to answer that one.
"His seems to come and go," he finally said. "Right after she left, he didn't remember anything. By the time we got to the locker room and to get cleaned up, I think he might have remembered a whole lot of it. The two extra showers he managed to fit in there make me think that he'd remembered all of it before we left. Then he passed out, and when he woke up, he'd forgotten it again. I'm pretty sure he had a flashback not long after he woke up, then he freaked on Siler in the corridor. I don't know what'll happen when he wakes up this time."
He got another head shake in response. "That's not what I …"
"Look, if I remember anything that's relevant to his health, I'll let ya know." He didn't think he'd meant that to come out quite as confrontational as it did, but once it was out there, he just didn't see any reason to take it back.
Fraiser, on the other hand, decided to take a different approach. "And his mental health, sir? And yours?"
Jack shrugged. "You mean my little anger problem? It'll go away when that drug does, right? Isn't that what you said?" Janet nodded almost reluctantly. "I'd imagine everyone else's emotional stuff will do the same."
Jack was getting really tired of Janet shaking her head at him. He pushed the swell of anger away again as she settled back into her chair. "Not Dr. Jackson's," she said softly. "And I think you know that."
"Know what?" he demanded.
"He's suicidal," she explained patiently. Jack flinched at the word and looked away. "That doesn't just go away."
"But it's not him," Jack insisted as he stepped forward. He pointed out the window and into the infirmary as he continued. "You just said it isn't. It's the drug making him like that. When it's gone, he'll be …"
"It doesn't create emotions, Colonel," Fraiser interrupted, leaning toward him and putting her elbows on her desk again. "It amplifies them. General Hammond's concern for his people becomes panic. Your irritation becomes fury. Dr. Jackson couldn't possibly become suicidal unless there was already an existing …"
"Wait," he said. His anger flashed once more, but it was mixed with a sense of incredulity that Dr. Fraiser had never even considered what he was about to say. "You're saying he was depressed to start with, right?" When she nodded, Jack almost laughed. "And how the hell did you not realize that before now?"
"Sir …"
"Think about everything he's been through in the past six months! Why does it take something like this to make you think that he might be a little depressed?"
Janet raised her hand and rested her forehead against it. "If that's true, sir, then he shouldn't be in the field in the first place."
Jack snorted. "All things considered, Doc, I'd be more worried about him if he wasn't." Janet looked up at him. "It doesn't affect his work. He's not a threat to himself or anyone else. Not under normal circumstances, anyway. He just … damn it, how could he not be?" He expected her to interrupt him after that, with some sort of medical or psychological mumbo-jumbo. When she didn't, he continued. "He'll wake up, that drug'll fade, and he'll be fine. When that happens, we'll all put it behind us and get back to normal."
Fraiser looked at him for a few seconds after his speech, as though she were considering how to answer him. He watched her face for some hint of what was coming, his mind swirling with all sorts of things he hadn't said. He knew he hadn't gone too far, knew he'd been careful. This was about defending Daniel from a human threat; this was about fighting to keep Daniel on SG1. This was something he was used to, something he could handle just fine.
"And what if you remember something else?" Janet pushed herself up from her chair again, and suddenly she seemed mad at him. He didn't understand the sudden change in her demeanor, but it was obvious from the way she stalked around the end of her desk and walked right up to him that he'd done something to make her angry. "What if you remember seeing something that Dr. Jackson doesn't remember happening? Or that he does remember but he doesn't want you to know? Do you honestly think either one of you can go back to 'normal' after that?"
Jack made a face at that. "What? I saw him get knocked around by a Goa'uld. Not the first time that's happened and sure as hell won't be the last."
"And if you saw more than that?" She was really pushing him, her words were hard-edged, and he found himself actually taking a step back away from her. Those amplified emotional reactions weren't really working in his favor. "What if you saw what she did to him, Colonel? Were you in the room when he got those bruises on his wrists? The bites on his collarbone? Were you there when she raped him?"
"Stop."
"What if you watched her do it, but didn't stop her? He's supposed to forget that? Forgive you for it?"
"Stop!"
"He saw everything that happened in that room, didn't he, Colonel? And he didn't stop any of it. Did he fight? Did he hide? Or did he just stand there and watch? Did he even try to stop her when she went after you?"
"No, he didn't!"
Jack froze the second the words crossed his lips, and he understood immediately why Janet had been pushing him the way she had; the sad smile of victory on her face confirmed it. She'd used his irrational emotions against him, had pushed him with anger in the hopes that he'd get mad and snap right back at her. She'd wanted him off-kilter on the chance that he'd let something slip.
And he had.
He scrambled to come up with something to say, something that would soften the impact of what he'd said. He would never admit to his certainty that he'd seen Daniel at one of the lowest moments of his life, but he had just been tricked into admitting that he knew for a fact that Daniel had seen him at one of his.
But worse than that, the words he'd used made it sound like he blamed Daniel for all of it.
"Doc, it's not … I mean, I don't know if he …"
A knock on the door interrupted him, and by the time it had been opened, both Jack and Janet had schooled their expressions. Janet's smile was gone, as was Jack's nervous irritation.
"Dr. Fraiser?" Jack recognized the nurse that leaned around the door as one that had been assisting Janet with Daniel when he'd arrived in the infirmary. "Dr. Jackson is starting to come around, ma'am."
Janet gave her a quick smile. "Thank you, Debra. I'll be right there."
Debra nodded at Janet, then at Jack, before backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.
Jack stared at the closed door silently. He could feel Janet waiting beside him, but he had no idea what to say. He'd already said more than he'd meant to and way more than he should have. He was trying to think of a graceful way to leave the office, but his mind was drawing a blank on that, too.
Janet sighed and stepped away from him, walking back to her desk and sitting on the corner of it. She sighed and folded her hands in her lap before she spoke again.
"Call it whatever you want, Colonel. Call it torture, or brainwashing, or 'knocked around by a Goa'uld.' It still is what it is. There's no denying that you and Daniel were both severely traumatized by this particular …"
Jack shot a sideways glance at her.
"… Goa'uld. You were together for at least part of it. If you took strength from each other while it was happening, helped each other survive it, then that's good. But now that it's over, you both need to move past just surviving and start dealing with it. And it won't just magically go away when the drug leaves your system."
Jack rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand again, but didn't reply.
"And yes, sir, I did know that Daniel has been mildly depressed these past few months. Just like you, I'd have been more worried about him if he weren't. And you're right about him; it wasn't affecting his job performance, and he wasn't a danger to anyone, let alone himself. But now?"
Jack closed his eyes and let his head fall forward as the last of his anger at having been tricked fled from his system, leaving him feeling empty and tired.
"He can't just jump right back into normal, Colonel. No matter how much he wants to. And neither can you." Silence fell around them as the seconds dragged on, Janet waiting to see if Jack was going to answer her. When he didn't, she went on. "I'm grounding SG1 until Dr. Jackson has been declared fit to return to active duty. I'm estimating that his physical injuries will keep him sidelined or on light duty for at least a month. If the emotional and psychological effects haven't been resolved by then ..."
Jack lifted his head, opened his eyes, and looked directly into hers. "You already called Mackenzie, didn't you?"
Janet simply nodded again, and the look on her face was neither smug nor apologetic. It was what it was, exactly like she'd said. "A psych consult is standard practice, for both rape and attempted suicide."
"So the point of this whole little … thing?" he asked, gesturing back and forth between Janet and himself with an open hand.
"To make you understand why it was necessary. He'll be more willing to cooperate if you're not fighting it on his behalf."
Jack nodded and sighed in resignation. "Great. He's gonna love this."
"He's not the only one."
"What, me, too?" he asked in exasperation.
Janet's answer was a soft, knowing smile.
"Fine," he muttered. "Whatever."
And just like that, the conversation was over.
He'd already started going through everything that Daniel had said in the storeroom, trying to come up with some sort of plan for how to react to Mackenzie finding out about them. He played them over and over again in his mind, like a record on repeat. Just as he lifted his hand toward the door, one of those things jumped to the front of his mind, and he turned back around.
"Daniel said something earlier about there being more Jaffa," he said. "Do you think that maybe you should …"
"Captain Carter told me about that, too," she interrupted. "And I don't know why he's saying that. I've done physicals on every man who is assigned to and was on duty in the mountain at any time in the past thirty-six hours. None of them show any signs of having been made into Jaffa."
"Are you sure?" He knew that he should trust her, because there was no one more qualified to answer, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, and for the first time since he'd found out the messed up emotions, he wasn't going to chalk this one up to them. There was too much at stake if Daniel was right. "He was absolutely positive about it, Doc. He's convinced that I wasn't the only one, just the first. He said there's four more, and he's scared of them."
Janet shrugged. "Maybe he overheard her talking about creating others and just assumed she'd done it. Maybe he thought that the men protecting her had already been turned." She paused to take a deep breath. "It's also entirely possible, Colonel, that he hallucinated the whole thing. Sergeant Siler did say he looked like he was fighting something in the hallway, but there was nothing there. If he was hallucinating that badly, it's not impossible for him to believe in four Jaffa that don't exist."
"And you're really sure?"
"Positive, sir. There are no Jaffa in this mountain. That's one thing we don't have to worry about."
He nodded quickly and let out a long, slow breath. He'd take her word for it, because honestly, it was all he had, and it was good enough for him. But he wished he could shake the feeling that there was something he was missing. He sighed again as he turned away. "Well, I'm gonna go sit with him," he said as he reached for the doorknob. "Whether he remembers what happened or not, he hates waking up alone in the infirmary."
As he pulled the door open, Janet asked one last question.
"What was the promise you made, Colonel? If you don't mind my asking?"
Jack stopped and tilted his head slightly, considering whether or not to answer her. He'd already said more than he'd ever intended to say, and talked himself into at least one session with a shrink while he was at it. What else could he have to lose?
"That I'd take care of him," he answered, his voice so soft that didn't know if Janet could even hear it. "That I'd protect him."
"Do you think you did?" There was no recrimination or accusation in her voice, only curiosity. She was asking a question that he'd been asking himself over and over since he'd first had that memory flash of Daniel flying across the room.
Did I protect him from her? Did I even try?
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "But I'm sure as hell going to do it now." There was a beat of silence as they both allowed his words to sink in. "Are you coming?" Jack looked back over his shoulder at her, his hand on the doorknob.
"Yes," she said. "I'll give you a few minutes with him, then I'll be out."
Jack closed the door behind him as he walked out.
He was doing all he could to keep that promise. He was protecting Daniel the only way he knew how, and the way he would have protected him from Hathor if he could have. He hadn't been close to crying as he closed Janet's door; those weren't tears he'd wiped out of his eyes. Daniel wasn't lying in that bed - unconscious, suffering from internal injuries and recovering from a suicide attempt - because of his failures as a friend and protector. It was all the drug; it was still playing with his emotions, making him say and think and feel things that he really didn't mean.
And by the time he'd reached the chair at Daniel's bedside, he'd almost managed to make himself believe every word.
Part Three