a Stargate SG-1 story
by
Destina Fortunato
Author's notes are at the end of the story.
Jack set out for the lift at a lazy jog, which became a relaxed run when he exited on Level 28 to the announcement of unscheduled gate activation. Guaranteed adrenaline rush. He loved it way more than was healthy.
He took the stairs two at a time and nearly collided with Teal'c, who nodded to him. "What's goin' on?" Jack asked.
"Archaeological expedition IDC, sir," Harriman said. "No voice contact."
"Open the iris," Jack said. Beside him, Teal'c's body tensed. The iris opened in a graceful swirl, revealing the shimmering event horizon beneath. They waited. And waited. No one emerged.
"Try to make voice contact," Jack said, as Hammond drew up behind him. "Daniel's team, sir," he said, by way of brief explanation. Nothing more required, everything else inferred.
"SG-Alpha, this is Stargate Command, please respond. Dr. Jackson, do you read?"
Silence. Jack stared at the event horizon, willing Daniel through it. He glanced over at Hammond, whose jaw had drawn tight. Jack had been against the three-quarters civilian expedition, and had said so - to Hammond, to Teal'c, to passing airmen, to Carter while he loitered in her lab, and most of all to Daniel, whose packing he had interrupted to attempt persuasive sex, though Daniel wouldn't have any of it. I'm going, Jack. It's fine. He had thrown extra socks in his pack; Jack had slipped him extra clips.
"Sir?" Harriman looked up at Hammond, then over at Jack. Gate protocols; there was always a chance it was a trick, applied at the cost of pain, to get the gate open. There was a limit to the length of time they would leave it open before manually shutting it down, and they were fast running out the clock.
"Try them again," Hammond said.
"SG-Alpha, please respond."
Just then, a hand passed through the event horizon, landed on the hard metal of the ramp. Dr. Metz's head appeared a moment later, his face covered with blood as he crawled through. "Dear God," Hammond said, but Jack was already running, Teal'c just behind him. Down the stairs, around the corner, past the airmen with drawn weapons poised to eradicate all enemies, up the ramp.
"Metz," Jack said urgently, and bent down to help him up. Metz turned his face up, moaning low in his throat, and Jack's stomach turned over. A dark bloody space remained where his left eye had been.
"Christ," Jack muttered, as the wormhole sputtered out, having discharged its lone passenger. "Metz, what the hell happened? Where's the rest of your team? Where's Daniel?"
In answer, Metz moaned again, an agonized sound that raised the hair on Jack's arms, and Teal'c reached out, gripped Jack's arm. "He cannot answer," Teal'c said, his other hand gently cradling Metz's head. "O'Neill. His tongue is gone."
Mission destination: P10-T42
Date of initial embarkation: August 11, 2000
Excerpt from the mission report of Doctor Daniel Jackson
Initial contact with the people of P10-T42 was made by SG-12. At the time contact was established, it became immediately clear to the team's anthropologist that the people worshipped a version of Quetzalcoatl, a god of the ancient Mesoamerican cultures on Earth, who assumed the form of a feathered serpent. This image is in keeping with similar Goa'uld worship totems from other worlds. All indications were that the Goa'uld who assumed the identity of Quetzalcoatl had not visited this world in some time, and in fact had abandoned these people. However, their practices of worship had remained intact, and this gave us an opportunity to observe what appeared to be, by all indications, a fully-functioning Olmec culture, the Earthside remnants of which have been extensively studied, though very little of the Olmec civilization or mythology has survived into the modern era. Previously there has been much speculation among Earth's scholars re whether this deity evolved from early Olmec representations of the Jaguar god, but there has been nothing discovered in the archaeological record through which scientists may make any definitive conclusions.
It was agreed that this would be a perfect trial run of the proposed archaeological unit. I was selected as primary member, and for the team, I chose Dr. Metz, whose specialty was anthropology, and Dr. Devlin, whose specialty was in the area of South American languages. Colonel Hibbard was given command of the expedition. It was to be a one week intensive offworld research project, after which time I would rejoin SG-1 and the others would be assigned to SG teams as slots became available. We had hoped to advance Mesoamerican cultural research through our efforts.
In hindsight, everything that happened was predictable; four years of field experience should have made me much more cautious. I was the senior member of the team, and I take full responsibility for what occurred.
They stepped through the gate into the tropical heat of P10-T42, the primary sun blazing directly overhead, while a more distant star languished pale on its heels. Tropical jungle spread out before them, extending wild and untamed, away from the clearing where the gate was located. Above the tree line, the tops of massive structures jutted out from the thick growth, showing the way. For confirmation, Jack glanced over at Colonel Hopkins from SG-12; he'd been here before. "Where to?"
Hopkins pointed toward the structures. "About five klicks that direction."
Jack turned to the assembled group: Carter, Teal'c, SG-22, and the Marines of SG-12. No time to bother with a briefing, he'd told Hammond; he'd been saving what he wanted to say for out of the general's earshot. "Listen up, people. We've got two civilians and one Air Force colonel out there, and chances are they're hurt. Maybe dead. Either way, they're coming back with us. Whatever's happened here, these people are not innocent bystanders. Remember that. If something needs shooting, then shoot." He watched Carter's expression harden, saw her dismay reflected in her eyes, so he looked away. She'd shoot to kill. She was a soldier.
"Teal'c. Take point. Hopkins, you and your Marines take up the rear. Simkins, Watson - hold the gate." Before they had time to nod their understanding, Teal'c was off, moving at a pace not quite a run, but close, with Jack at his side. It took only a few steps for Jack's body to remember what it was like to move in stealth mode, heartbeat slow and even, conserving energy, skin crawling with awareness of everything around him. Deep focus gave him perspective, sharpened his hearing. This was what it was like to have a mission objective, a target; this was what he'd loved about special operations. It was behind him now, like the remnants of another life, but that mode of being was still a part of him, easily pulled to the surface in crisis.
He and Teal'c made their way across the tropical terrain cautiously, but at a pace that caused the rest to lag behind. Two hours in, Jack stopped and made a curt, furious gesture to the group - move it. Carter's face was a set mask; she was in the zone as she moved past him, the place where pain and heat and fatigue don't matter. Sweat had saturated Jack's undershirt and the sleeves of his jacket. Wiping his face only produced a sensation of drowning in the folds of damp towels. He blinked the salt sting away from his eyes, saw sweat on Carter's lashes, beneath her frown.
On and on, without a rest. No one asked for one. They knew what the answer would be, and Jack knew their limits. He'd stop if he had to. That time hadn't come. Besides, they knew the stakes. A small part of Jack, the pessimistic, practical part, knew what they were likely to find, but he'd seen Daniel Jackson survive impossible injuries. In that corner of his mind where the probabilities lurked, he heard the words Hammond hadn't said, the imperative that launched them here, curling through his mind like dark smoke: we don't leave our dead behind.
"What've you got?" he asked Teal'c, who had signaled a stop. Jack took in the snapped branches indicating a rough path, noticed the scant traces of trampled leaves. A moment later, they were on their way across those leaves.
Not long now.
The people of P10-T42 took us into their homes, invited us to witness their rituals. I was completely fascinated by the evidence of ceremonial sacrifice. There was no evidence that the Olmec ever engaged in human sacrifice requiring blood-letting, and this was proven out by the ritualistic enactments we observed. (See attached field notes for a more comprehensive description of these rituals.)
I befriended one of the elders, Tecanal, and we had some lengthy cosmological discussions - these people are incredibly in touch with the sky and star patterns above their planets. This is not unusual; the ancient Mesoamericans, like many other ancient Earth cultures, paid particular attention to the machinations of the heavens. I ran through the gamut of deities with Tecanal, including Gukumatz and Kukulcan, and discovered that although the names were not familiar to them, the variants of those deities have been adapted into various incarnations of lesser deities worshipped by these descendants of the Olmec. Tecanal's son, a boy named Caloatl, was privy to most of our discussions. He had an ambition to become a priest one day, and was helpful in escorting us around to other villages. He made the introductions.
On our second day in the village, we entered the adjunct temple for the first time. I was amazed by the rich detail in the carvings and reliefs, and this is where I spent the majority of my time.
Late in the day there was some kind of disturbance in the village; I heard shouts and screams, and could not raise any of my teammates on the radio. I had no idea what had occurred, but I left my work and began the journey through the jungle back through the village. I intended to circle around and monitor the village from the edge of the woods to assess the danger.
I didn't make it back.
The sun was setting on the horizon, its heat cooling to a shimmer across the sky, when they heard the gunshots. Two of them, in rapid succession, and the thin, reedy trail of a child's scream. The sound of a staff blast followed. In unison, Teal'c and Jack turned toward the sound and were running, impossibly fast in the deadly heat, branches and leaves crashing into them, ignored. They broke side by side through the brush into the clearing seconds later, Carter and the Marines close behind. Jack hit the ground and rolled, seeking cover, as the barrage of staff blasts sizzled past them. To his left, a shout of pain -- one of the Marines. He'd deal with it when he could.
On her belly, Carter crawled toward a clump of low rocks, what might have been the ruins of something grand and important. Propped up against them, she sighted her P-90 and began picking off Jaffa, methodically, one by one. Jack took aim and began firing, less discriminate; the Jaffa were interspersed with villagers, some of whom were shouting angrily in their direction. Nice to know he'd been right. It'd save him some internal twinges, later. He scanned the vicinity for Daniel, but didn't see him. Too much chaos, villagers running in all directions.
He looked for the silver armor and cut the wearers down wherever he found them.
It took only a few minutes to thin out the resistance, and by then the villagers had dropped to the ground, or found cover. Teal'c took out the last of the Jaffa with a well-placed staff blast, and then he and Jack rose, running as one toward the hulking temple in the background. Sounds drifted Jack's direction: pitiful crying, moans of pain.
At the base of the temple steps, he looked up and realized the top of the temple wasn't stone at all, but a scaled-down mothership, the likes of which he hadn't seen before. "Teal'c," he called sharply, to give the warning - more snakes in the vicinity - but Teal'c shouted for him at the same time, and he was running again, pulling up short at the corner of the temple.
Daniel, his glasses gone, was on the ground, holding his right arm at the elbow with his left hand. Above his white-knuckled grip, a nasty staff weapon wound glistened with blood - one practiced glance told Jack it was ugly, but it could be much worse. He'd live, if this and the bruises on his face were the worst of it. A child lay dead on the ground in front of Daniel.
One of the villagers had collapsed to the ground in an agony of grief, his small muffled sobs going into the ground where his face was tightly pressed. He wailed once, something that might have been a name, and went quiet, a boneless heap of blue cloth puddled in the grass.
"Daniel?" Jack said, a demand for information. Already the Marines were herding the villagers away from Daniel, enclosing them in a wall of firepower too great to be ignored, despite their cries of protest. Jack dropped to one knee beside Daniel, resisting the wrongheaded impulse to drop his P-90 and use his hands to comfort him. "You all right?"
It seemed like a long, long time before Daniel answered, "I'm fine." His voice was faint, filtered through a closed throat. Tears shone in his eyes. Without looking at Jack, Daniel struggled onto his knees, then leaned forward to touch the dead boy's face. Jack could see the bullet wounds that had killed the boy, two of them, delivered with enviable precision: one to the head, one through the throat.
A moment later, Daniel laid his Beretta gently in the dirt. Slowly, Jack reached out and moved the gun out of his reach.
The Goa'uld took Colonel Hibbard by surprise. I don't know exactly what happened, but I assume the Jaffa killed him quickly. He was the only real threat among us, and I'd assume he tried to put up some kind of fight. As for the others, they were restrained by the Jaffa and set aside. I was captured in the woods on my way back. The Jaffa surrounded me - I had no opportunity to resist; I would have been instantly killed - and brought me before the Goa'uld, who had ensconced himself in one of the other temples, not far from the village. It was the only temple large enough to accommodate his mothership. I should have realized. I don't know why it didn't register. Perhaps it was because the village was so peaceful.
They dragged me before Quetzalcoatl, who was in the host body of a young boy. He knew who I was; he said SG-1 was a band of criminals, who must be punished. I had no idea what he planned to do, but judging by my encounters with previous Goa'uld, I knew he would be as cruel as possible. He spoke with me as though I was a curiosity, condescending to me the entire time. Dr. Metz was too frightened to attempt any sort of conversation. Quetzalcoatl turned his fear against him, of course.
It soon became clear that this particular Goa'uld was not interested in getting his hands dirty. He had his Jaffa do this for him. They knocked around Dr. Metz, torturing him intermittently, until the man was crying. There was nothing I could do.
Hammond closed the briefing folder over the last page of Daniel's report. This was the first time Jack could remember Hammond reading through a report and asking questions directly from the text; it wasn't by choice. Daniel sat next to Jack, quiet, as if the space inside him was hollow. He'd been answering Hammond's pointed questions for an hour, the same way a witness might testify in court - the facts only, and even then, a version open to interpretation. Jack wanted to shake him, wake him up, see him raise his eyes.
"Dr. Jackson, am I to assume that this report contains everything you have to say about the particulars of this mission?" Hammond's tone was kind, but brisk.
Daniel seemed to rouse himself with a great deal of effort. "Sir, I really can't remember anything else. I believe I captured it all...there."
Jack slid his unopened folder away across the table, where it bumped into Teal'c's. "Daniel. What happened out there was not your fault. You weren't technically in charge of that mission, and you did everything right, under the circumstances, once you were captured."
"Colonel O'Neill is right," Hammond began, but Jack shook his head; he wasn't done. He was watching Daniel's face, the way his jaw tightened at the words of reassurance. It wasn't what he wanted to hear. Good, then; he'd take the rest of it as it was intended.
"The fact that you're not responsible for what happened to Devlin and Metz doesn't excuse you losing all perspective about what you know when you were given the chance to explore those ruins. All your alarm bells should have been ringing. The rest of them were inexperienced." He could feel Carter's stare burning a hole right through his face, but he ignored her. "You had the field experience. But experience is only good for something if you learn from it and use it when it's needed."
"Sir," Carter began, and he heard the entirety of what she wasn't going to say: don't you think you're being a little hard on him, there was no way he could have predicted this, excuses that didn't come close to excising the cancerous self-condemnation he could already see eating at Daniel's guts.
"Carter," he said, and the tone in his voice cut her throat, bleeding her argument dry.
Daniel looked up at him then, his eyes full of shadows, the kind Jack had seen in his own mirror. "You're right. It won't happen again." And that was it. No cringing or turning inward, no back against the wall, just a calm acceptance that turned Jack's stomach. He looked at Daniel's body, wrapped in two layers of clothing because shock had left him cold, looked at his pale face, at the scratches on his throat, and didn't want to be in the room any longer.
"You'll need to be cleared by Dr. MacKenzie before returning to duty," Hammond was saying. Daniel gave a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch. No one in the room enjoyed MacKenzie's kind but patronizing examinations, Daniel least of all. "How is the shoulder feeling?"
"Numb," Daniel answered, shifting the arm slightly to the side.
Hammond nodded. "Better than the alternative, I'd imagine. Dr. Fraiser says you may return to desk duty when you feel able, with the Colonel's approval."
"Thank you, sir." Daniel's gaze had dropped out of focus again, and he was gone, somewhere in the recent past. Hammond stood, they all stood, and saw him out of the room before Daniel sank slowly back down into the chair, as if pressed by invisible weights.
Carter came around the table, her intentions clear: Jack had seen her in comfort mode before. But Daniel roused himself, pushed back from the table, and stood, moving away from her so subtly it seemed accidental. Jack took a step closer, then stopped himself. Not here. Carter stopped too, smiled her thousand-watt smile, and offered, "Daniel, can I take you home?"
"No, thanks, Sam. I have...a few things to do here. I can get home. Thanks."
"Okay." She reached out, though he was arm's length from her, and laid the tips of her fingers on his sleeve. "Call if you need anything."
He returned her smile, but it faded quickly when she turned away. Teal'c was still standing silent on the other side of the table, looking not at Daniel, but at Jack. Jack met his stare until Teal'c inclined his head. Not approval, not by a longshot, but acceptance. Teal'c had long ago stopped trying to mediate between them.
Then it was just the two of them. Jack stepped close, right into Daniel's space, and felt him sway. Only willpower was keeping him on his feet, it seemed. "Whatever you need to do, bring it with you."
On the way to Jack's house, Daniel fell asleep. One minute he was awake, talking vaguely about the stress of typing mission reports, and the next his head had fallen gently against the window, his glasses tilted sideways on his face. The lines of fatigue eased a little, though not enough; Daniel's sleep was too light to remove all traces of the last week from his skin. It would take much more than this. Jack reached out, laid his hand briefly over Daniel's where it rested against the seat, then withdrew it.
If he worked a little at it, Jack could picture Daniel the way he had been when they first met, full of intellectual curiosity and courage and not at all intimidated by the military. Jack had never been sure if it was because he was too naïve to know better, or if he just didn't care, but either way, it made any interaction with Daniel refreshing. He'd never doubted Daniel would get the gate open on Abydos. It's just that getting home hadn't mattered to Jack, at the time.
A lot of things mattered now that hadn't, before.
He hadn't misjudged Daniel, but Daniel had always assumed Jack never quite got where he was coming from. No idea if Daniel still felt that way, since they didn't talk about it. They never talked about much of anything, in fact. The same old mistake, made in the same way Jack had killed his marriage to Sara; talk about anything at all, anything but what's really at stake. Once, Jack had thought he and Daniel didn't need to talk.
Maybe he really was doomed to repeat every mistake he'd ever made. Sara would find some irony in that; she'd worked pretty hard to make sure he got exactly why they divorced, even if there was nothing he could do about it then.
After a while, Quetzalcoatl sent for Teconal, and for Caloatl, and had them brought before him. His interaction with the boy reminded me of Ra; I would imagine this particular Goa'uld was at least as old as Ra, and perhaps older. He had the boy kneel before him, and then he left the host body he was in, and took Caloatl's body. A new host. I tried to break away from the guards, but they beat me down, and I wasn't in any position to help the boy. As the host transfer took place, the priests and elders began to chant, including Teconal.
Apparently this was the sacrifice Quetzalcoatl demands - new hosts, boys that have been groomed to host his divine godliness. He returns once a generation. Our timing was bad.
In the driveway, Jack shook Daniel's good shoulder gently, rousing Daniel without words. Daniel pushed his glasses up, maneuvered himself out of the truck, and snagged his laptop from the floorboards. Neatly-swept steps, well-cared-for lawn, cozy house, the faint smell of antiseptic and blood from Daniel's bandages, Daniel moving slow with exhaustion. Just another night in paradise.
They had established an evening routine early on, such as it was. Daniel would take a shower, Jack would make coffee; Daniel would then make dinner, perhaps sandwiches, while Jack took a shower. This time, and not for the first time, there were other considerations: bandages to be removed, dressings to be re-wrapped, pain pills Daniel wasn't going to take. Jack briefly considered dropping the bottle in the kitchen trash, but Daniel would have to do that himself, or stack them with Jack's collection in the master bathroom. Daniel walked into the house with purpose, set the laptop down beside the door, and then wandered into the living room as if he had never visited the place before.
To keep up his end of the deal, Jack made the coffee anyway.
He handed a cup to Daniel, who was sitting on the edge of the couch, shoes and jacket still on, face still and serious. Jack's sense of Daniel as a visitor in his space was long since disabused. He was used to Daniel inhabiting his space, owning a piece of it, but now he was struck by the strangeness of this. It was as though Daniel appeared to be sitting on Jack's couch, in Jack's house, but he wasn't really there; it was illusion, or a trick of the light.
With one more long look at Daniel, Jack set his own mug down on the coffee table, then set about lowering and closing the shades.
"Aren't you going to ask me?"
Jack froze mid-motion, blinds halfway down. He untensed and released the pull, let the shade fall gracefully to the floor. When he turned to face Daniel, Daniel seemed engaged with the world again, but distantly. "What?"
"You never asked me," Daniel said, more distinctly, his lips shaping the words like a lesson in elocution. "How I feel."
Jack used the seconds it took to walk to the big chair to shove back his first response. It doesn't matter how you feel, because it was the right thing to do. You're alive. I wanted you alive. Fuck the rest of it. Once he was seated, settled, he said, "I thought...you'd tell me. If you wanted to."
"Your usual idea of comforting conversation," Daniel said. There was no ice, no bite, to the words, just a resigned fatigue. "I wasn't sure how you'd take it."
"Take what?" At Daniel's 'please, you are not this obtuse' look, Jack sat forward, a little irritated. "Look, Daniel. Say what's on your mind."
"As if it's just that easy." Daniel leaned over, set his mug beside Jack's on the table, and began unlacing his boots. Then, as each lace slipped out, looping back into itself and threading through again: "I murdered a child."
From Daniel's lips, it seemed shocking. In Daniel's voice, so matter-of-fact, so calm. Jack's body reacted to it before his mind caught up - nausea, tension, a stiffening of the shoulders. Daniel said it as if it were true; he was a convincing narrator. "No. You killed a Goa'uld who had already murdered a child. He was wearing what was left, and he was planning to do it again. There's a difference."
Daniel kicked off one boot, then the other. He took them by the tops, lined them up neatly, and scooted them under the table, side by side. "There might be. If I were you."
"If...what?" Jack had been down this road before, into Daniel-thought-process-territory, where lions and tigers and big black nonsense bears lurked. The military was permanently barred from that place, but Jack got a special pass, which he usually would have been content to skip. This time, however, there was something extra-nasty lurking in there. Jack could sense it, but he couldn't see it, yet.
"How do you do it?" Daniel asked, looking at him with something that passed for genuine curiosity. "Maybe once you show me how, I can do it, too."
Something in Jack rebelled at the prospect of hashing this out. Whatever was driving the question, and whatever Daniel was looking for, this wasn't the time. Daniel was hurt, and Jack wanted nothing more than to go to bed and sleep for a few quiet hours in reassuring proximity to Daniel's warm, live body. He cleared his throat. "Daniel. Can we maybe talk about this in the morning?"
Daniel raised his head then, smiling sadly. "No."
The villagers killed Dr. Devlin and dragged his body across the steps of the temple, but Quetzalcoatl wouldn't let them touch me. The Goa'uld taunted me, informing me that he could kill this boy any time he wished, and he knew I would not do anything to jeopardize his safety. He had me taken into the ship and secured.
I know now that after I was taken from the site, the villagers attacked Dr. Metz and left him for dead. I'm not sure if he is lucky to have survived, or not. It's my understanding that six of his fingers were severed, and he has lost an eye and his tongue. I think perhaps it would have been kinder if they had simply killed him, but mercy isn't something the Goa'uld value. The mythological Quetzalcoatl did not permit human sacrifice, but perhaps this version of him sees us as nothing more than animals. Cattle, for the slaughter. It may not be a uniquely Goa'uld point of view, where humans are concerned.
The Goa'uld had me brought down at sunrise. I wasn't sure if I was meant to be a guest, or a plaything, or the day's entertainment. Clearly I was not considered a threat.
Daniel woke from a light sleep at 4AM. He sat up, winced, twisted around in the bed to find Jack beside him, snoring lightly. Ambient light in the room was limited to the moonlight drifting in through the crack in the curtains, and the wedge of yellow from the half-open bathroom door. Jack had a tendency to leave the light on when he was tired, or when one of them was nursing an injury.
Slowly, Daniel swung his legs out of bed. His whole body was pins and needles, a torment of fleeting aches and pains. He eased into the chair by the door, where once he would neatly fold and place his clothes, for easy access the following morning. Gradually, Jack had begun moving them into dresser drawers, then hanging them in the closet; finally, Daniel had begun leaving clothes there. More than one set. They'd never talked about it. They never would.
Daniel let his head fall back against the padded chairback and closed his eyes. He'd been dreaming of Charlie O'Neill. Not a face he knew from experience, but from close acquaintance with the tokens of memory throughout Jack's house. Pictures of his son adorned nearly every room of Jack's house, his locker, his car, his wallet. Daniel had always been touched by it, the way Jack quietly refused to let his child's face become indistinct in his mind's eye. At one time, Daniel had thought constant reminders of death would only depress him, or serve to call up sadness, but now he understood. Sha're's picture still stood on his desk and by his bedside. He wondered if Jack had ever looked at Sha're's soft features and felt the same pang of recognition Daniel felt for those photographs of Charlie.
He bent forward, easing the tension on his shoulder. Charlie's face had replaced the face of the boy, Caloatl. He shivered. It seemed a strange representation of something deep inside his subconscious, a visual incorporation of his many regrets, but he had no idea how something so personal to Jack had crept into his own dreams. No doubt his treacherous, tired brain was trying to tell him something, but he'd passed the point of truly understanding hours ago. Now he just wanted a dark, dreamless sleep, the one thing he wasn't likely to get tonight.
As if Jack could hear him, he stirred, then turned on his side, one arm flung over the space where Daniel should be sleeping. Daniel knew that within minutes, something would wake Jack, some sense of Daniel's absence, his missing warmth. There was a switch inside Jack's brain, some buried instinct feeding him information about his surroundings, even in sleep. Daniel still had time to crawl back beneath Jack's arm before it kicked in.
Jack's fingers were extended, relaxed; his hand curved gently up and over the sheet. Daniel knew the strength of those hands, their skill; they had touched him in grief, mapped his injuries, held him still in the throes of orgasm. There were other things Jack could do with his hands, things Daniel hadn't seen. He looked at the long fingers, thought of their tenderness, and wondered how many men Jack had killed, if he even kept count anymore. Did Jaffa count? Were they on the roster of efficiently dispatched dead? Jack must have a preferred method of killing. Knowing Jack, it was something clean, simple; a shot to the head and throat, perhaps. The same shots he had taught Daniel while standing beside him on the range, urging him to shoot for the largest target - the chest - and then showing him how to ensure a quick death.
Or perhaps Jack preferred something more personal, something up close. He knew Jack could snap a neck with his bare hands. He'd seen it happen, once. He couldn't remember the precipitating incident; that had been wiped out in the aftermath of watching Jack sink an arm around a Jaffa's barely-exposed neck, reach, pull, apply pressure, and twist. There had been an audible crack. The Jaffa's eyes hadn't closed, just stayed open and fixed in a slack, perpetual stare of rage and futile determination.
Jack had stepped over the body and moved on, but Daniel hadn't. Now he wondered how a man learned a thing like that. How often he had practiced it. Whether or not he heard the sound.
Head back against the soft leather upholstery, Daniel took a few deep breaths. So many things were part of the complete Jack O'Neill package, and some of them were things Daniel lived with, rather than for.
"Daniel?" Jack's voice was soft, but clear; he was fully awake, Daniel could tell. He turned to look at Jack, half in and half out of the sheets, fully entangled. "You hurting?"
Daniel groped for an answer. There were truths, and then there were truths. By way of a reply, he went back to bed and crawled in, between the sheets Jack lifted for him, and scooted closer, until he was able to press his face into the curve of Jack's shoulder. The first time he'd done it, he'd felt like the world was opening up beneath him, ready to swallow him whole, but Jack's arm had gone around him, relaxed. Ready.
"You need anything for the pain?" Jack said, and this time, his hand smoothed over Daniel's back, carefully avoiding Daniel's shoulder, a caress filled with worry.
Daniel lifted his head, brushed his lips against Jack's. The hand on his skin pressed firm against him as Jack stretched out and fitted the length of his body against Daniel's, without losing the soft touch of his lips against Daniel's.
He let Jack kiss him gently into sleep.
For a few hours, he bantered back and forth with me. He allowed me to ask questions. Mostly, I looked at him and thought of the boy whose life he had usurped, the body he was holding hostage. It infuriated me. I tried to hold those feelings back, but he provoked me over and over, taunting me with the knowledge that there was nothing I could do. His point was easily made; he told me these people were all his property, that they sacrificed their children freely to him. He explained that the beauty and innocence of children appealed to him, and he could not imagine taking an adult host. He said human bodies smell of decay, and this repulsed him.
I asked him why he did not simply keep the young bodies alive with the sarcophagus instead of taking victim after victim, and he laughed at me, told me he had no wish to remain in the same body. He said he tired of them. This can only mean he grew tired of their thoughts, of suppressing them, while he held them hostage. He told me he does it because he can, and he would prove it to me; he would show me his power. I knew then I had made a fatal mistake; he planned to leave Caloatl's body and take another child. It was stupid of me. I should never have engaged him in dialogue, but for some reason I thought I could influence him. He seemed willing to listen.
Jack had a habit of leaving the locker room with some item not quite secured - jacket in hand, only one glove on, weapons unholstered. It had become almost superstition, though he wouldn't go that far in naming it. It also gave him a purposeful excuse, something external to devote his attention to, in case he was waylaid in conversation by anyone on the way to the gateroom.
With MacKenzie, however, that never worked.
"A word, Colonel," the psychiatrist said, smiling his most pleasant and thoroughly businesslike smile, as he stood aside to let two airmen pass. Somehow, though, he managed to vacate the center of the corridor and still be in Jack's way. Jack looked around the corridor. The rest of SG-1 was loitering in the locker room, chatting away. No help there. With a sigh, he followed MacKenzie's gesturing hand and stepped into an alcove at the end of the hall.
"What can I do for you, doc?"
"It's about Doctor Jackson. I've been attempting to conference with you since my examination of him, but you've been unavailable." MacKenzie said 'unavailable' like a condemnation.
"Yeah, well," Jack said, with a thin smile. As if MacKenzie didn't know the do not disturb sign only applied to shrinks. "Duty calls. Besides, Hammond said you cleared Daniel for full duty."
"So I did. But I wanted to discuss my evaluation with you." The serious crease across MacKenzie's forehead, the one that carried a thousand unvoiced worries, made Jack actually start listening. "There's really no time, now, but the gist of it is that Daniel is undergoing some sort of priority shift."
"A what?"
"He only shared as much as was necessary for me to clear him, and that's fine, but I have a strong feeling he's struggling with some personal issues which could greatly impact his performance. They may or may not be related to his guilt about the incident on P10-T42. At this point, there's no concrete reason for me to pull him out of the field, but I believe as his commanding officer, you have a responsibility to watch for signs of internal conflict."
"Such as?"
"Freezing under pressure. That kind of thing."
Jack was already shaking his head. "Doc, that's not Daniel."
"Colonel," MacKenzie said, "that's my point."
"Sure." Jack attached his P-90 to his vest, then yanked on his left glove. "Anything else?"
"No." MacKenzie smiled briefly. "Thank you for your time."
Jack let the thin smile resurface to see MacKenzie off. Not like MacKenzie had any clue what made Daniel tick. Then again, Jack had been working with Daniel for four years and change, and sometimes he didn't, either. Sometimes Daniel was opaque, a thick piece of glass with a reflective surface, where Jack thought he could see in, but it was a trick of the light. He'd touched Daniel's sealed skin, cracked open the silences with techniques designed to make Daniel stop thinking and start feeling, and even then, he wasn't sure he ever got all the way inside.
Not a good time to be thinking about that, though. Carter and Daniel rounded the corner, talking about relics made of raw naquada. Jack felt his eyes virtually glaze over at the mere suggestion of geek talk. When they stopped, Daniel turned a clear, direct gaze on Jack and asked, "Was that MacKenzie you were talking to?"
Jack's eyebrows lifted. "You can see around corners now?"
"He's the only guy on the base who still wears the white lab coat everywhere he goes," Daniel said, pointing down the hall.
"Ah. Yes, MacKenzie. And no, not important." He let Daniel look into his eyes until he'd satisfied himself of the truth of Jack's words; a tiny nod, and that was dispensed with. "Teal'c?"
"Right behind us," Carter said. Jack turned back toward the gate room; they swung in beside him, nearly in step.
M66-109 was a pleasant little world, with vast chilly savannah and weird-looking long-necked things that might have been giraffes on steroids. Daniel took a couple of pictures, which Teal'c supplemented with stories of the worlds where he'd seen those particular animals before. Things proceeded as expected, until they approached the settlement the UAV had picked up about seven klicks out from the gate.
"Heads up," Jack said, as he'd said a thousand times. A few villagers were creeping out from their hiding places, rising from tall grasses in wheat-colored clothing and making their way toward the team in a wavering line. Even after all these years, Jack was sometimes surprised to see that look of wary terror that crossed every face at the sight of Teal'c's tattoo. Pretty much any planet with a stargate was a planet where Teal'c wasn't welcome.
Village elders. Another constant. This one was a young elder, not grey around the temples yet; his clothes were too tight, as though he had outgrown them, and reminded Jack of the Tok'ra's functional combination of skins and synthetics. "You have come through the chappai' ai?"
Jack waited, and only after the silence became noticeable did he realize - Daniel wasn't doing the talking. He shot Daniel a surprised look, but Daniel seemed intent on the approaching visitors. His eyes were obscured by his glasses, so Jack couldn't get a read, but incredibly, Daniel seemed...disengaged. "Yes," Jack said, not really focused on the man.
"I am Eleth," the young-elder said. "Why have you come?" The question was for Jack, but his gaze flicked nervously toward Teal'c.
"We mean you no harm," Teal'c said. In Jack's head, the well-worn refrain continued. We're peaceful travelers. Daniel's line. But not today; Daniel was silent.
Carter filled the noticeable void. "We come from a place called Earth. I'm Samantha Carter, this is Colonel O'Neill, this is Daniel, and this is Teal'c."
Eleth nodded without taking his eyes off Teal'c. "Please, join us for our morning meal."
"You don't have any stray Goa'uld lurking around, do you?" Jack said casually, one hand moving to cover his weapon.
Eleth frowned. "Are you of the gods?"
"No," Jack said. "Uh, no."
"Then no," Eleth said, his smile widening. "We have none of their kind here."
Next to him, Daniel frowned, but said nothing.
The meal passed slowly. They sat, along with Eleth's family and a few favored guests, around a large rectangular table in the common room of Eleth's dark stone house, beside a low-banked fire in a squat fireplace running the length of the room. Not an efficient design, Jack noted, though it did provide plenty of warmth, and an equal amount of stray smoke. As a result, the room was almost blue with it.
Eleth, engaged in the business of being polite but wary, was matched in his wariness by Jack, who refused most of the food he was offered in favor of casual people-watching. Carter sat on his left, next to a pen housing a hairy goat-like thing which snuffled at her arm, nudging for food like the family dog. Her friendly questions were met with polite answers, easing into genuine exchange of information before the meal was over.
Daniel, seated between Teal'c and Eleth like a human buffer, ate a few token bites of the meal without commentary, his chair pushed farther back from the table than the others. Eleth's two sons were gazing at Daniel with something very like excited hero-worship, though Jack was at a loss to figure out why Daniel, and not Teal'c. No accounting for kid-idolatry on other planets, but still. Daniel smiled briefly at them, but made no effort to draw them out, and offered no stories, no tidbits, not even a vague demonstration of his charm.
Every so often, Jack glanced over at him, expecting to see him loosen up and chat with Eleth. Instead, Daniel pulled out his field journal mid-meal and began writing notes, head down over the book, pen moving about as fast as it was possible for Daniel's hand to move. Eleth made a few half-hearted attempts at starting a conversation, but after a few polite one-sentence replies from Daniel, he gave up, turning his attention back to his wife, who eyed them all with barely repressed disdain.
Outside the open windows, a vague murmuring - the entire village had turned out to wait for something exciting to happen, and maybe catch a glimpse of their most recent tourist attraction. They were jostling one another for a better view, but it wasn't once-in-a-lifetime curiosity; it was most-recent-visitor curiosity, Jack was fairly certain. He was getting a stronger sense of it now.
"Daniel," Jack said, with a nod to Eleth, "a word, please?"
Daniel tilted his head in Jack's direction, but finished the sentence he was writing. Without so much as a glance at Jack, he closed the journal with the pen stashed inside, then tucked the small volume into his pocket and stood up. Jack stepped to the back of the room, out of earshot and into the shadows; Daniel followed.
"Daniel, have you noticed anything odd?"
"Odd?" Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. "No...no, not really."
"Nothing strange about this situation?"
Daniel squinted a little at him, as if Jack were obscured by fuzzy static. "I don't know what you mean."
Jack waited a beat. He'd noticed a few things himself. He was no Daniel, and definitely no scientist, but sometimes, it was so obvious it was hard to miss. "Anything to share about these people, Daniel?"
"Not much," Daniel answered. "It's a very simple society, a throwback to a European village; there are some Ancient inscriptions scattered around, but nothing unusual or...strange."
"So tell me. If this place used to be an Ancient hideout, how'd the Goa'uld get involved here?"
"Like they do everywhere else," Daniel said. "Possession is nine tenths of galactic law, or...something."
"Something," Jack echoed. "Daniel. Have you noticed that these people don't like Jaffa? And if they don't like Jaffa, there's a reason for it. Which might signal potential danger. Wouldn't you agree?"
Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Risk assessment is your department, isn't it?"
"Is it? Shouldn't you be giving me any information you think is pertinent to this team's safety?"
All the color drained from Daniel's face, but he said nothing. Jack met his eyes, and they stared at each other for a moment. The angry glint in Daniel's eyes told Jack he understood what Jack was getting at, but he'd be damned if he'd acknowledge it. Not that it mattered. Jack would be damned if he let Daniel get away with it. Compartmentalization had its uses, but sometimes it also had unintended consequences, and in this case, those consequences were not going to include the loss of another team.
"I've been taking comprehensive notes," Daniel said quietly.
"Which do me no good if I only hear about them at a post-mission briefing. Dammit, Daniel." Jack gave his head a little shake, then turned to look at the villagers, who were still watching them avidly through the windows and whispering among themselves. "Do you see those people watching us?"
"Of course I do."
"That's called active curiosity. A trait you seem to be sorely lacking, at the moment." Daniel's silence, the absence of information, was for Jack the same as losing his hearing, or his left eye - still enough left to do the job, but awkward. Amazing that he'd once thought it a nuisance.
Daniel's voice was getting progressively softer. Not a sign of acquiescence, as Jack had once assumed; for Daniel, it was a sign of rising anger. "I haven't seen anything here to worry about, Jack."
"Like there was nothing to worry about on T42?"
Daniel's arms fell slowly to his sides, and then his hands slid into his pockets. "No. Not like T42."
"And one other thing. Why you aren't properly outfitted? Because I'd hate to think the quartermaster is falling down on the job." Jack gestured toward Daniel's leg, where his Beretta should be strapped. No gun, no holster. No zat. No weapon, in fact, of any kind, other than a simple knife.
"Jack," Daniel began, his jaw tightly squared, but Jack held up one finger, as solid as a concrete roadblock.
"You endanger your safety, and the safety of members of this team, on your own time, Dr. Jackson. When you're on the clock, you play by the rules. And the rules say, toys for everyone."
"Your condescension is really something," Daniel said softly. "Colonel."
"Nice," Jack said, working his own jaw, where tension had settled like an iron wire. "At least you got that part right. About who the hell is in charge here. But this is still a team." Without taking his gaze from Daniel's, he raised his voice. "Carter. Teal'c."
"Sir?" Carter drew up beside him, Teal'c just behind.
"Unfortunately, we'll have to cut this party short. Our resident cultural expert has shared with me, finally, that there's not much to see here. So let's leave before he's proven wrong, shall we? Make our excuses to Eleth. We'll meet you outside."
"Yes sir," Carter said, her voice low. He'd seen that look on her face before, the deep embarrassment. It had happened before, on Euronda. It would probably happen again at some future point, if Jack didn't kill Daniel in the next ten minutes. Jack gritted his teeth. There were roles for each of them, all the off-duty crap aside. They'd talked about that. Daniel was out of line.
On the walk back to the gate, no one spoke. Daniel walked with Jack, but several feet to his left, far enough away to make conversation impossible, even if Jack had wanted to talk. Which he didn't. The idea of talking with Daniel at that moment made him think of punching Daniel right in the mouth, which he would never do while he was lucid and himself. But it was tempting. He'd never seen Daniel not act as a part of a team, never seen him refuse to provide backup. Daniel could handle himself more effectively than some of the SG regular military.
Carter stepped up, dialed the gate. Daniel hung back with Jack. "Go on," Jack said to Teal'c, to Carter. He didn't like the look they gave each other, but they went through. Jack turned to Daniel. "What's it going to be, when we get back? Is this just one of those days, Daniel? Or do I need to put you on stand-down and send you back for head-shrinking?"
Daniel began climbing the steps to the gate. At the cusp of the event horizon, he turned. "Do what you have to do, Jack," he said, and stepped through.
Though I begged him not to, Quetzalcoatl had a child brought up from the village, a boy a little older than Caloatl. I know the Goa'uld protocol for changing hosts. They don't leave the host alive. Two children were about to die.
I was kneeling next to Colonel Hibbard's body. They'd left him where he fell, all his gear with him, no doubt as a vivid demonstration of Quetzalcoatl's power. His P-90 was out of my reach, but his body was close enough, if I was quick. His gun was still in its holster. I had nothing to lose. I lunged to the side, scrambled over the ground right between the two Jaffa, and threw myself over Hibbard's body. I pulled the Beretta from his thigh holster, rolled to my back, and shot Caloatl twice, once in the throat, once in the head. It was the only way to save the rest of the children. The Jaffa retaliated immediately, firing a staff blast directly toward me. I rolled to the side, but the blast caught my shoulder. The pain was excruciating, but I have experienced this kind of pain before, and I had done all I could do. I didn't expect to survive. I expected them to finish the job.
It was a surprise to me to realize, some time later, that Colonel O'Neill was there with me. I don't remember his arrival, though I vaguely recall the sounds of gunfire. I later learned there had been a firefight with the Jaffa, which SG-1 and their backup won quickly. I surrendered my weapon to Colonel O'Neill, and attempted to walk with the extraction team to the gate, but I lost consciousness halfway there. I am informed that Teal'c carried me the rest of the way.
Daniel stood at his patio doors and watched early autumn rain mist down, humid and sparse, barely enough to wet the railing. The sky was cycling through ominous dark and innocent blue, as if unable to make up its mind which to inflict on the Springs.
Below, Jack's truck pulled into the parking lot. Daniel watched him park, watched him get out and straighten his light jacket, retrieve a brown paper bag and a gym bag from the front passenger seat. He glanced up toward Daniel's balcony, but Daniel was inside, a perfect vantage point, where he could see and not be seen. Jack slung the bag over his shoulder and headed for the building entrance.
Jack hadn't been invited, which wasn't the same as not being wanted, but in this case, it might be a semantic difference. Daniel hadn't quite made up his mind yet.
With a push, he closed the double doors, leaving them open just a crack for the fresh air. In the kitchen, the kettle sang a siren call, promising soothing tea. He went to answer it, since there was no need to wait for the doorbell. Jack had a key.
Mug, teabag, two teaspoons sugar. And a knock at the door. Daniel sighed.
Jack stood a foot away from the door, his expression bland and pleasant, but his state of mind was entirely revealed by his refusal to use the key. Daniel leaned back and said, "Lose your key?"
"No," Jack said. "Just thought it'd be better if I knocked. You know."
"Oh, I know," Daniel said. He backed up a step, holding the door open with one hand. Jack nodded and stepped in past him, then dropped the bag on the carpet next to the door. He handed Daniel the mysterious brown-paper item. It was the wrong shape for beer.
"Scotch?" Daniel guessed.
"Didn't seem like a beer night." Jack stood awkwardly at the edge of the room, not quite in, not really out, as if he was ready for his instructions. Daniel pointed to the couch, then took the bottle to the kitchen. He emptied out the tea and replaced it with the good liquor, then took Jack a glass of his own. The space next to Jack on the couch filled comfortably when he sank down into it, a pillow on his lap to rest the cup on.
"I'm surprised to see you," Daniel said truthfully.
"Yeah." Jack drew his fingers down the glass, turned it, drew down again, turned it, until he'd made his way around the whole glass. Then he started again, in a fixed rhythm. "Listen, Daniel. I can't be your friend and your commanding officer at the same time. Tonight I choose friend, so...friends bring booze."
"Good choice," Daniel said, though there were other things he didn't say. Too little, too late. 'Friend' doesn't even come close. It was as much his fault as it was Jack's. He lifted his mug, clacked it into Jack's glass, and had a long sip.
"Why are you trying to get me to kick you off my team?" Jack was ever direct.
Daniel snorted a surprised laugh, and then discovered he had no answer. I'm not. Except, maybe he was. He scrambled for a moment to organize his thoughts, but they were flying off in different directions.
If I could have explained it to you, I already would have.
Jack nodded slowly. "You're about to tell me you can't do this anymore, aren't you?"
Yes.
"No...no." Daniel paused, then said, "What do you mean by 'this'?"
"This." Jack stretched out a hand, made a motion between them.
"Oh." Daniel shook his head. "No." He glanced at Jack. "Is that why you're here?" The familiar humming ellipsis of their conversation was comforting.
As if it had just occurred to him, and was now the most important thing on his mind, Jack said, "I still have my jacket on." He sat up, pulled it off, folded it; when he slipped it over the arm of the sofa, he gave it a brisk pat, smoothing out wrinkles. Then he said, "It's creating conflicts for me. Serious conflicts."
"Because we're fucking?"
Jack's sharp intake of breath made Daniel want to touch him, soothe him, but he didn't. "Because we're fucking up," Jack said.
"So you see a difference there," Daniel said.
"You don't?"
"I see the pressure on you," Daniel said. "Treat me with kindness, and you feel like you're favoring me. Treat me harshly, and you might even persuade yourself you're doing it because you have to. Because it's for my own good."
"Maybe it is."
"Maybe." It was small enough concession to make, given that Daniel believed it wholly. "Which, in point of fact, isn't the same as you having to do it."
Jack polished off his drink, then began playing with the ice cubes. The collar of his navy polo shirt was twisted, half up, half down. His hair was a little too long; he was overdue for a haircut. "There are times, Daniel."
"I know." Daniel reached into Jack's glass, fished out an icecube, and placed it in his mouth. Strangely, he was thirsty; the cool water melted onto his tongue, easing the dry feeling just enough. "There used to be lines. I drew them, I knew what they were, how to keep myself from crossing them. Now I don't know, anymore."
"You mean..." Jack glanced at him.
Daniel shook his head. "Not us. The program. Me." He thought about it a moment, then added, "Well, yes. Us, too. Just...not us. That way."
"You might want to explain that," Jack said. "Or, not. I think I'm getting used to the confusion."
The joke was small, quiet, but it did provoke a smile. Deep breath, then Daniel said, "I can't co-exist in two worlds, and I can't reconcile them."
"And this is a problem now because...?"
Daniel knew Jack would never understand. In Jack's world, such things were never problems; they were choices. For Daniel once, too, but no longer. Now there were compromises. He changed tracks, diverting over to the part of the conversation he felt was more important, the part Jack might use as the path into the rest. "After what happened, I wasn't sure how you'd react. What you'd think."
Jack waited a long moment, then said quietly, "What did you think? That I was going to condemn you for it? Because it was a child?"
Daniel turned his head away. Not what he'd thought, but close.
"Daniel...that thing counted on you being who you are. It counted on your compassion. It underestimated you. Not a mistake anyone who knows you would make. That snake couldn't see the bigger picture here; it thought you'd give up on the host to save the kid's life, but there was more to it."
Daniel knew what he was getting at. Profit and loss, a complicated set of calculations involving the worth of one life, weighed against the hundreds of others he might save. Not that it mattered. He slid down on the couch and turned pale eyes to Jack. "So I've come that far, Jack? I've swung so far that compassion isn't my primary value any longer?"
"I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth."
"I don't have to. I'm one thing, or I'm the other: I'm a soldier, who had the right and responsibility to kill a child, or I'm a scientist, who lost his scientific objectivity, his compassion, his humanity. Here's the thing, though: I don't want to be either. That's what I can't deal with right now."
"You aren't--" Jack started, but Daniel jerked forward, kicked the table.
"Don't," he said, his voice ringing clear. It was an echo of the voice Jack had used a thousand times, for a thousand orders. "It's like drowning," Daniel said, so softly. "In a deep well. I can't fight it anymore. I just want to breathe. I can't get out."
"Okay," Jack said, easily, the tone of someone who wants to console, an entirely reasonable, rational response to complete insanity. "Just so you know, that feeling passes."
Daniel's curiosity stirred, a brief flare of sparks. Jack was opening a door to things Daniel had rarely dared touch on, much less ask about, partly because Jack was not open to it, and partly because Daniel didn't want to know too much about it. "Did you ever really want out?" he asked, the question sincere. He couldn't imagine it, but then again, he hadn't known Jack when Charlie was alive.
"A long time ago," Jack said. "I spent a lot of time in enemy territory. Once, when I was trapped after a chute accident in Iran, a boy helped me. Little kid, maybe ten, twelve." Jack stopped there, as if he'd reached the end of the story. He tapped Daniel's cup. "You going to drink that?" Daniel offered him the cup silently; Jack took it, drank the contents, and handed it back. "He led me out for the money I had in my pockets, which was maybe ten bucks and change. Nice kid. Smart." Jack's posture was changing; he was sinking in on himself, hunching down, tense. "His own people blew his head off not ten feet from me. I walked out of that stinking country with his brains all over me."
It was tempting to say it wasn't Jack's fault, but it also wasn't quite the truth. Aside from that automatic oversimplification, Daniel knew damn well that the minimal parallel was for his benefit, and he would paint himself with any brush he used on Jack. Even so, he let himself have a moment of misery for Jack, separate and apart from his own aching sense of failure.
Jack cleared his throat and sat back, straightening his spine. "I didn't shoot him, but I killed him. I had to live with that. I had to live, period."
"But you wouldn't do it again, if you could do it over." Daniel ran his fingers over the crease of Jack's khakis, up, then down, from his knee to mid-thigh. "You'd find another way, without putting that kid in danger. You wouldn't put your survival over his."
"Wouldn't I?" Jack was watching Daniel's fingers, their slow glide over the fabric.
"No."
"Daniel," Jack said. So much exasperation in his tone, no longer careful. "There's a lot you don't get about me."
"I know." Daniel pulled his hand back. After a moment, he stood, then collected Jack's glass and went to the kitchen. Something about the story made him feel isolated, as if Jack had just built a wall around himself, unbreachable. There was no way to articulate that to Jack; the act of sharing was damned hard for him, and Daniel had no desire to undo that impulse forever.
It was disconcerting to know Jack had felt what he felt, that he knew what Daniel knew. Different context, but that didn't matter. For Daniel, it was as though Jack had thrown a lifeline around him and towed him straight into the deep quicksand, with promises of mutual experience. His hands shook as he poured out another shot, a triple for Jack this time, less ice.
Whether Jack would do it again or not wasn't the point. Sometimes, there were choices; sometimes not; sometimes it was about survival, sometimes not. Daniel had killed, but it hadn't been a choice, there hadn't been options, and someday he might have to do it again, just the same way he'd done it on T42, and that deepened the quicksand, made it murky and foul.
When he went back to the couch, Jack's shoes were off, and he had his sock-clad feet propped up on the table. Daniel handed him his glass, but didn't sit down. "What you said," he began, then stopped. "There was a time when I didn't know anything about you. It was...easier, then. Now I have a choice, to know, or not know. I choose to know, but what it means is - I love you in spite of it, not because of it. I don't pretend like those parts of you don't exist, anymore."
"But you don't have the same luxury with yourself - ignoring, I mean."
"No." Jack took Daniel's hand, wrapping his warm fingers around Daniel's. Tension bled out of Daniel, passing through Jack's touch. Daniel said, "But now I feel complicit in all the things I used to resist. It was your world, Jack. I was an accepting observer. Everything has changed."
"Maybe," Jack said. He put down the glass and gave a gentle tug to Daniel's hand, a signal. Daniel allowed it. The need to be touched by Jack was exquisitely sharp. He moved to sit down, to straddle Jack's legs, but Jack twisted, pushed, and Daniel was on his back on the couch, felled gently by Jack's transparent technique. Jack repositioned himself so that he was between Daniel's legs, taking the weight of his upper body on his forearms. Daniel wrapped his arms around Jack, then began moving his hands up and down Jack's back. Beneath the shirt, his body radiated heat, an internal furnace that never failed.
Jack lifted Daniel's glasses off his face and deposited them on the coffee table, unfolded. "I hate to break this to you," he said, smoothing a thumb over Daniel's left eyebrow, "but there can be an element of compassion in acts of destruction. You're familiar with the phrase 'the lesser of two evils', right?"
"Now we're back to square one," Daniel murmured, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Jack was looking at him intently, as if all the details of Daniel's indecision could be seen and measured on his skin. "This is where you came in."
"Nice to see we're making progress." Jack's lips touched Daniel's temple, then lower, the corner of his mouth. Then the spot, just below Daniel's ear, that made his body stir, respond, demand. Jack pressed his hips into Daniel's pelvis; Daniel kissed him then, slowly. Not the end of the conversation, just a momentary respite.
They disentangled themselves from each other and pushed up awkwardly from the couch, and Daniel paused long enough to snick the balcony doors closed. Then he followed Jack into the darkened bedroom, to the neatly made bed, where Jack proceeded to flip down the comforter and toss it out of his way. Daniel shed his shirt, pants, briefs, flicked on the bedside lamp, and climbed in beside Jack, who had stripped off all but his dog tags.
Once Daniel had imagined Jack as rigid, bones like iron, his body reflective of his work. He wondered, sometimes, what Jack must have expected him to be, how he'd measured up when everything else was stripped away. The sheets were cold, but when he settled in next to Jack's warmth, it wouldn't matter much. Jack's arms went around him, and they lay quietly a moment, adjusting to each other. The sweet intense desire Daniel felt for Jack never waned, never completely retreated; now it flooded into him, clouding the importance of other issues. Jack stroked a hand over his shoulder, down the curve of his arm, and settled on his hip.
"Perspective," Jack said. "Sometimes you have to act. But it doesn't mean you don't feel."
"Live with it, in other words," Daniel said, translating from an incomplete text. Jack nestled his face in the curve of Daniel's shoulder for a moment, lips ghosting over the pulse in his neck, before he pulled back.
"Reconcile it. It's not either-or. It's either, or, and, if, but, except, when, yes, no..." Jack's lips quirked into a smile, validating the joke and the cushioned truth beneath the simple example.
"The price is too high," Daniel said, touching his fingertips to that smile, watching it fade beneath his touch as Jack's eyes darkened.
"Everything costs, Daniel. That's the business we're in."
Daniel nodded. He'd known it going in; it was just that he'd thought he'd eventually shift the paradigm. Foolish, perhaps; he'd never imagined himself as the thing that must shift.
"You were going to explain about lines...crossing lines," Jack said, moving back to the topic Daniel had done an end run around. Daniel loved him like this, focused, attentive, even if it seemed as though he was trying to change the subject, or end the conversation. It was a distraction, but not away from the topic; instead, it was a diversion for Daniel's thousand-track mind, something to settle him into one place, pull him back into his skin.
Daniel sometimes thought that Jack had known these things about him from the moment they met, though being known hadn't mattered to either of them, back then. Daniel had wanted to be believed, understood, useful. Jack had only wanted the universe to bend to his will on the important stuff.
"Every time I lose perspective, I move a little further into your world," Daniel said.
Jack's gaze shifted sideways, then returned to Daniel's face, direct, searching. "I take it you think that's a bad thing?"
There was no true answer for that, and Jack's eyes told Daniel that he knew it, understood Daniel's hesitation. Which explained why he kissed Daniel then, his mouth possessive, direct, tired of question and answer. Daniel pressed his hands against the offering of fragile skin. They were both primed, ready; Jack slid his leg over Daniel's, hooked him in closer, wrapped his hand around Daniel's cock. Daniel gave himself over to it, let Jack's experienced, incredibly deft touch pull him away from the exhausting universal questions. He could feel himself shutting down, giving in to the fast-approaching moment where the world narrowed to just this, just Jack, just the two of them. He put his hand on Jack's, then around Jack's cock, and matched Jack's rhythm, like a stuttering, crashing heartbeat, too powerful to control.
Jack came first, mouth against Daniel's, a flicker of tongue before his body seized on the heels of a sharp grunting moan, and then silence. After a moment, he gathered himself, pushed Daniel on his back, and quickened the pace. Daniel grabbed for the sheets, a reflex, just as Jack cupped his balls with his free hand, then slid a finger down and inside Daniel. Daniel threw his head back and lost it, eyes squeezed tightly shut against the blinding white-hot flash, the shock of Jack's tongue on him, finishing him off.
The world slowly came back: soft lamplight casting a dim brightness against his eyelids; the rain, falling harder, hitting the windows now; his harsh breathing, and Jack's, easing off. He blinked his eyes open, looked at Jack, who was watching him with an intensity that would have taken Daniel's breath away, if his entire body wasn't already caught up in the race to restore air to his lungs. It wasn't always so urgent. They'd learned some patience, since the first time, in Jack's bed, barely a touch of fingertips and lips, a rough crushing need that pushed them quickly into bliss. This was something else entirely.
Daniel reached for words, found them out of service. Not surprising. Jack crawled up his body, kissed him deeply, a message of its own kind. He reared up and leaned over Daniel to switch off the light. No more answers needed tonight. The questions would still be there, in the morning.
In summary, until a comprehensive review and evaluation of my actions, and further review of the protocols and purpose of a scientific expeditionary unit, I cannot recommend sending a unit composed primary of scientific personnel back into the field without significant military escort. It is my recommendation that there be an even balance of scientific and military personnel on each team. If this is not possible, I recommend continuing the present model of three-quarters military, one civilian specialist. It seems the only safe and reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. Under no circumstances do I recommend elimination of civilian specialists. Their perspective and information is far too valuable to the program as a whole.
Further, I recommend incorporation of stringent military training for all civilian personnel. They will need to adapt to the environment presented to them, as what we do is very different from what they have previously experienced. I believe that with the proper preparation, most can quickly integrate into our ranks.
~end~
June 2006
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Notes: Written for Komos in the 2006 Jack/Daniel ficathon. Komos's requirements: 1) established relationship 2) One of them finding out something he never knew about the other. Her additional requests: 1) dangerous/specialOps!Jack 2) powerful, morally ambiguous Daniel-to-be-reckoned-with. Special thanks to Salieri and Brighid for their amazing, wonderfully helpful betas. Thanks also to Barkley, for cheerleading.
All comments are welcomed. destina@ix.netcom.com
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