Presume Nothing
A. Rhea King
Chapter 1He was surrounded by total chaos and life seemed to have become meaningless to all the humans around him. A mortar exploded to his left and he ducked, but couldn't escape the shower of soil, body parts, and blood. Still he charged on with his rifle hoisted at hip level, the bayonet ready to spear into him. A soldier came around a burning tank. The uniform was familiar – brown colored with ornate buttons and a black rounded helmet that shined. He was German, and by the look in his eyes, the soldier was prepared to kill him. But he moved faster and ran the German through with his bayonet before squeezing off a round.
'Behind you!' a voice screamed in his head.
He turned and without looking fired on another German charging him. He looked to his left and then right; Germans were running toward him from all directions. The Allied trench was overtaken; they had lost this battle. Around him fellow soldiers that didn't immediately drop their weapons were shot on sight. He dropped his rifle as the butt of a rifle was slammed against his temple He fell into the mud as German's surrounded him and roughly drug him back to his feet. They grabbed his rank badge and he knew right then he was in trouble. They would take him alive, and rumors had it that being taken alive was close to hell. He tried to fight and something struck him over the head. The fighting and the war blurred as he fell into the mud of Poland.
It was cold that brought them to their senses. No. No that wasn't it. It was... Pain. It was sharpest in their left thigh, and dull down his leg and across their lower left ribs. It didn't bring him sharply back to consciousness; that was a slow process like waking from a Sunday afternoon nap.
'What happened?' a voice asked in his head. No. Their head.
Daniel opened his eyes. Very dim light shone from somewhere above, filtering through the still settling dust. He started to move and that made the pain worse.
'Ah fuck! Hold still! Do not move, Danny,' the voice in his head told him. It was the same voice that had been with Carson in the dream he had been having.
Daniel blinked. He remembered the voice now. Frank. A goa'uld that saved his life. How? He had a virus. No. Daniel had the virus and it was contagious only if he died, and Frank was keeping him alive, a dam that held back the changes the virus would have otherwise made in his brain, eventually killing him. But where was he right now?
"Jackson, Frank, are you two dead?" a voice asked.
'No. I'm dead,' Frank told him.
Without realizing, Daniel answered at the same time, with the same words.
Silence followed. Mitchell stepped over Daniel and knelt in soft dirt in front of Daniel. Blood that had freely ran down his face, jaw, and neck was no congealing and drying. A cut ran down his arm; it had sliced right through his jacket and over shirt, tearing through a pocket.
"What happened?" Daniel and Frank asked.
"What is wrong with you two?" Mitchell demanded.
"What?" Daniel asked.
"It sounds like you're talking at the same time."
Daniel felt woozy suddenly. He closed his eyes, hoping it would settle the nausea settling in his stomach.
"Daniel?" Mitchell said.
'Danny?' Frank said.
Daniel slipped back into unconsciousness. Frank tried to take over the body. He opened his eyes, golden light flashing in them. He saw Mitchell lean closer, saw his mouth moving, but he couldn't hear him.
"Cameron..." Frank said, trying to stay consciousness.
Mitchell grabbed his shoulder, but Frank didn't feel the pressure. He felt panic rise. He couldn't sense anything.
"Frank, give Daniel control," he heard Doctor Lam order.
Frank closed his eyes.
He was inside a dark tube. There was a little light coming in from the end. He heard a quiet hum and even though he knew he was in the CAT scan and safe, his heart was still beating in his throat.
"Can't we just skip this part?" Frank asked.
"Frank, just give Daniel control," Lam gently pushed.
Frank didn't want to. While he was in control he knew he could get out of this.
'Frank, why do we have to go through this every week?' Daniel asked him. 'I'm getting really tired of it.'
Frank closed his eyes. He was afraid.
He heard a distant voice scream, "CAMERON!"
He opened his eyes, staring at the small patch of sunlight on the floor. He heard a clank-clank and felt himself swaying back and forth. The light moved to the swaying motion. He closed his eyes. He heard someone whispering, and someone else crying softly. He was aware of people around him but he faded back into unconsciousness before he could determine who they were.
"CAMERON!" Carter yelled.
Mitchell scrambled to his feet, turning and craning his neck to try and see over the ledge twenty feet overhead. Carter suddenly appeared, panting and out of breath.
"Teal'c went to grab a rope from the M.A.L.P. Are you two okay?"
"I am. Daniel has a reed through his leg. He and Frank were awake for a couple of minutes, but they're out again."
Carter keyed the mic on her shoulder. "Teal'c."
"Go ahead." Teal'c replied.
"Daniel can't climb out. See if you can find something we can use to get him out of here."
"I will see what I can find. Perhaps I should request backup as well?"
"Go ahead. We're going to need help lifting him out."
"I am almost to the gate. I will do so as well."
"Sit tight, Cameron. We'll figure something out."
"Not like we're going any where," he retorted sarcastically.
Carter vanished for a second and then reappeared. "By the way, if Daniel doesn't say it, 'I told you so' is really in order."
Mitchell smirked at her. "It didn't look like a trap!"
"Did you really think some race was going to just leave a pile of gold laying around for anyone to take, Cameron?"
Mitchell hesitated and the forcefully answered, "YES!"
She smirked. "I guess they make booty traps for persons such as yourself."
"What does that mean?"
Carter vanished, but he could hear her laughing at him. He shook his head, looking back down at Daniel.
"You could have warned me there might be traps," Mitchell told him.
He looked down at Daniel's thigh. The bottom of the pit had small, sharp-ended reeds lining it. At one time the bottom of the pit was lined with these reeds that had been cut off to a sharp edge and pointed toward the top. They were meant to impale anything that landed on them, but luckily for both men, the hardened mud foundations that held them up had cracked and they'd fallen; except a few like the one that had impaled Daniel's thigh.
The reeds were small, not even as big as his small finger, but they surprisingly strong. SG-1 had encountered them in the marsh outside this temple and Mitchell had been smacked in the face by enough of them to know just how strong they were. It annoyed him that the team found such great amusement in letting them flip back into his face after they passed but he guessed he deserved it. Maybe. Perhaps a little bit. He had replaced the sugar with salt before they'd woken up and laughed hard when, at the same time, they'd realized what he'd done. Threats had been made that they'd get back but he was pretty sure letting him trip a booty trap wasn't what they meant. Otherwise Daniel wouldn't have tried to stop him from taking that last, fateful, step. Which suddenly struck Mitchell as odd in itself.
Just as he stepped onto a trigger stone, Daniel had screamed, "STOP, CAMERON!"
Under Daniel's voice he had heard Frank's resonating voice. It was like two radio stations playing the same song but on frequencies off just enough that you could tell the difference. It also wasn't the first time he'd heard it on this mission or back home. But Daniel kept brushing it off, telling everyone they were hearing things. Did he really think that the entire base was buying that they were hearing things? Because most of the personnel had brought it to Landry's attention – who in turn hat told hem it was being dealt with or not to worry about it.
It had happened again the night before, right after they arrived on the planet. Carter pressed him about it and demanded he tell Doctor Lam about it.
Daniel finally muttered, "Carolyn is researching it. It's under control."
The three of them didn't like that answer. Teal'c was the first to tell Daniel he wasn't comfortable knowing there was even something wrong with him – not him personally, but that they didn't know if he needed to be protected or not.
That apparently was enough to piss Frank off, because he suddenly took control, ordered all of them to mind their own business, pointed out the numerous times Daniel had saved their asses when they weren't themselves, that they were to leave the two of them alone, that the problem was under control, and that they four of them had been sent here on a mission that they were expected to complete – not interrogate a member of their team.
The three were all stunned by the outburst. It wasn't like Frank to blow up like that and Daniel's voice had been under Frank's through the entire outburst – a clear indication that host and goa'uld felt the same way about the situation. So the three dropped the issue and the next morning, Daniel and Frank were back to their happy and geeky selves.
Mitchell sat down next to Daniel, staring at the top of the pit. He'd stopped missing the old Daniel a long time ago, but this new version of him was a little more than he could take some days. So much so that he had been considering asking Landry to transfer him to another team... But he always found himself looking at the pros and cons of loosing the best two archeologist, linguists, and cultural anthropologists on the base. Combined they hadn't come up against anything they couldn't figure out in half the time it would have taken Daniel alone to figure out with a whole team of computers and assistants. Every time he came around to those thoughts, he'd tear up the request he'd written and throw it away. Besides, it had only been a few months and they were still adjusting to one other, weren't they?