Against the Regs
The 'Doctor' and 'General', with their two Jaffa escort, exited through a pair of golden doors into the 'SGC'. For the moment, the danger of being caught had passed. Carter's flashback, too, seemed to have ended, and Jack took his hand away from her mouth. As opposed to what protocol would normally dictate, however, Jack didn't let go of her entirely. His excuse to himself was that he needed to be able to restrain her again swiftly if she relapsed into her memories. They were, after all, in a Goa'uld facility, and more Jaffa could appear at any moment, especially if their escape had been detected.
His true reason was one he would never admit.
Until 20 minutes ago, he'd thought that the rest of his team were dead. Surrounded by strangers, supposedly in a year by which time everyone he'd ever know had grown old and died while he'd been in stasis, Jack had never felt so alone. He'd come close to that feeling, once – but he couldn't afford to think about that right now. With this device still imbedded in his temples, it could activate and send him hurtling back to that dark moment in his life, and that could cripple him. Damn, why had he ever let them use it on him?
"Can't we take these things off?" Carter whispered, her thoughts apparently mirroring his own.
She didn't pull away from him, even though she should have. CO and 2IC were not supposed to be in such close, physical proximity. He was practically embracing her, and the danger had passed, but she didn't pull away.
She, too, had thought that everyone she cared about was dead. She, too, had probably been privately mourning, uncomfortable to let it show in unfamiliar company. Suddenly finding out otherwise didn't instantly eradicate the grief felt at believing to have lost all the people they had ever known and loved. Being in hostile territory demanded that they set that aside and focus on the here and now.
But maybe, with no one around to see, they could have these few moments of comfort.
"I don't know, you tell me," Jack replied. He lifted a hand to finger the alien technology, but his arm didn't move enough to release her from the almost-hug. He wasn't ready to let go yet. "Mine's in pretty deep."
"Yeah, you're right," Carter agreed. Their quiet conversation was a completely innocent, legitimate reason to remain as they were; having Jack's mouth close to her ear meant he didn't have to use volume for her to hear his words. The fact that it meant her back was against his chest and he had one arm around her waist was purely coincidental. "Pulling them out might cause some pretty nasty collateral damage."
"Yeah, we don't want that."
Carter took a few, deep breaths, composing herself.
And then the moment was gone. She gently extracted herself from his arms, and they moved on to find Daniel.
ooOOoo
Jack's body was shuddering violently. Of course it was; he was cold! He'd just been cryogenically frozen and then revived, for cryin' out loud.
It had absolutely, totally and utterly nothing to do with how close he had come to having a parasitic snake take up permanent residence around his brain stem.
He stared down blankly at the freezing pit that he'd just thrown Hathor into. The stasis pods offered protection – she had none. She was dead, it was over, and Jack was glad.
His thoughts drifted, and he was reliving the nightmare of his desperate internal struggle against possession. He'd known that surrender would mean the deaths of his teammates, and ultimately the death or enslavement of every single person on Earth. He'd fought with every ounce of strength he had, but without the swift action of the Tok'ra he knew he would have failed. As it was, the outcome had been perilously uncertain for a while there. Jack was going to have nightmares for years.
He stubbornly brought his attention back to the present, and turned to Carter's crumpled form. He knelt beside her, needing to know that he had acted in time to save her life and prevent any 'nasty collateral damage', as she would put it. The Goa'uld hand device was even worse than the memory-recall device, and he knew the terrible effects it could have on the human brain.
He pulled her into a kneeling position and shook her slightly. "Carter," he said hoarsely. She was alive. Confused, out of it, but alive.
"Sir. What happened?" she asked dazedly.
What had happened? Jack had nearly been Goa'ulded. He'd nearly killed her. He'd nearly killed all of them. The terrible possibility of losing everyone that mattered to him had deeply affected him earlier, but even worse was that it could have been by his own hand, as he was a helpless spectator to the actions of the symbiote inside him.
"Oh, god." Jack didn't even try to pretend this time that the tight embrace was anything but. He pulled Carter into his arms and held on as if his life depended on it. Absently, a part of his mind defended that he was cold. It was as good an excuse as any, so he continued to hug her – for the warmth, honestly.
He tried to answer her question. "Hathor's-" Placing the mature symbiote on his chest, promising he would pledge his loyalty to her when he woke, wrenching his head to the side, exposing his neck, allowing the Goa'uld access – excruciating pain… He winced, shoving aside the unwelcome memory, "-gone."
"What about you?" Carter asked. The 'are you a snakehead' and 'are you all right' were left unspoken.
He fell back on the cold excuse to explain his violent shivers, since it was the truth anyway – just not all of it. "But I'm me," he reassured her. "I'm me," he repeated, reassuring himself.
Carter then described the current tactical situation and her mission. Jack was grateful to have something to think about besides the nightmare he'd only just escaped, and he set his mind to the task. It wasn't quite as painful, then, when he reluctantly pulled away from the hug and she did the same.
Duty called.