While SG-1 was reporting to General Hammond, Jack was sitting in the room he stayed in over night at the SGC, thinking over what happened.
Charlie died years ago, he thought. It couldn't be those crystals again; I'm sure of that.
Someone knocked on the door. Jack ignored it. The knock came again, a little more insistant. He was just contemplating heaving himself up off the bed when the door opened, and General Hammond came in. He stood in the doorway, looking at Jack, sitting on the bed, then flicked the light switch on the wall. The sudden flood of light allowed Hammond to see Jack's face for the first time. It was worse then he expected.
It wasn't that Jack was crying, holding himself, or even fingering his gun. It was that he was doing nothing.
Jack's face was expressionless, his eyes dead. This, to Hammond, really showed just how badly this was affecting the leader of SG-1
Hammond sat down on the bed next to O'Neill. Jack probably wouldn't talk to him, but Jack would know someone was there; and, from the way Jack didn't ask Hammond to leave, it probably meant something to him.
Major Carter was heading to the infirmery at a brisk pace, eager to hear Dr Fraiser's report. Sam had only ever seen Charlie in pictures, and once when a crystal had taken Charlie's form. Even though she'd never known Jack when Charlie had died, she knew from Daniel that Jack had contemplated suicide. She only hoped nothing bad would arise from this.
She met up with Daniel as he came through an intersecting corridor, examining something in his notebook and looking troubled. Purely by chance, the arcaeologist fell in to step beside her.
'Hey,' she said. Daniel looked at her, as if he'd just noticed. He was wearing his SG-1 jacket, zipped up to his throat, which, compared to the black shirt with the sleeves rolled back to the elbows Sam wore, looked quite formal.
'Oh, hi Sam,' he said. 'Listen, um, I was just going over the sketches I'd made of the villiage on that planet, and I noticed that there were no signes that the Goa'uld had been there for what seems like thousands of years.'
'How does this help us?'
'Well, think about it, Sam. You said the position of the bodies suggested they killed each other. If the Goa'uld had been there recently to take hosts, I would have thought they'd have killed each other to stop their friends and family from suffering at the hands of the Goa'uld, but the fact that they weren't there suggests they killed each other for a different reason.'
'So, then, what could it be?'
Daniel shrugged.
'I agree with Daniel Jackson,' came Teal'C's voice, who, judging by how quickly he had arrived, must have been trailing behind them. 'If a Goa'uld had infested them, they may have killed each other in hope of killing the human carrying the symbiote, but there is no evidence of anything of the sort.'
'So, what you're saying is, something caused these people to go crazy and kill each other?'
'Yes,' Daniel said, doing some sort of awkward nod, 'or something gave them a reason to kill each other.'
The three of them turned a corner and entered the infirmery. 'Janet,' Sam said, the two men trailing slightly behind and on either side of her. 'Any news?'
Janet nodded, looking proffessional in her usual medical attire. 'I just finnished the DNA tests, and it seems-'
At that moment, the doors to the infirmery opened again, and Jack, followed by Hammond, who was making excuses for him not to enter, walked up to Janet.
'Got anything for me,' he said, his voice monotonus.
Janet hesitated. Clearly, she didn't want to deliver her news infront of Colonel O'Neill. 'Sir, I'm not sure you should be in here.'
Jack stared at her, betraying no emotion. 'He's my son, Fraiser. What do you have for me?'
Janet sighed, then consulted the open file she was carrying. She looked up from it, flicking it closed.
'DNA tests prove the body is that of the late Charlie O'Neill.'
No one spoke as their brains tried to process what Janet had just told them. Jack kept his head held high, continue standing straight, but, at Janet's words, his body took on a stiffness that betrayed what he was feeling.
'I've also conpleted my autopsy on the body,' she said, walking past them to where Charlie lay, covered, from his shoulders down, by a white sheet. 'My findings were identical to that of the autopsy performed when he first died. Cause of death was a gun shot wound, self inflicted, as proved by the angle of the shot and Charlie's fingerprints on the gun.' She shrugged. 'Asside from that, there's really nothing more I can tell you.'
'Janet,' Jack said. 'Charlie's body is in a coffin in a graveyard. It has been for years. How is it possible his body ended lightyears away on another planet?'
'I don't know,' Janet said after a pause. 'To tell you the truth, I don't even know how this body can be identical to Charlie's, if both of them are human and neither of them are clones.'
Stunned silence followed Janet's speech. All of them were wondering what could cause two of the same person to appear, on different planets, several years appart.
'Could the Asgard have anything to do with this?' Sam asked tentatively.
'I don't think so,' Janet replied. 'As far as any of us knows, while the Asgard are skilled at cloning, they can do nothing of this magnitude. I'm really at a loss to explain it.'
Jack looked grim. 'Thank you, Doctor,' he said, then left.
