Chapter 2
Jack woke up to darkness and pain, his body struggling to relieve itself of the vomit that had built up in his throat. He retched violently, barely aware of the hands that had turned him to his side so that he wouldn't choke on the stuff. It took a few minutes, but he finally stopped puking up his guts and the hands helped him to lie back down, falling back to sleep even before he was settled in.
The darkness was still his companion when he woke again, a throbbing pain in his head and chest making him wish he were dead. Something touched his forehead, startling him with the suddenness of it, and he thrashed out with his hand to protect himself. "Shhhh," came a soft, soothing voice. "Shhhh." Jack wanted to fight the unknown intruder, but his body wouldn't cooperate with his wishes. He lay there instead, listening to the soothing tones of the person who pressed a cool cloth to his forehead, calming down despite himself, as sleep took over again.
He had gained conscious several more times over the next few days. He didn't remember much, just that a few of the times he had wakened to discover that he was on the move, strapped to a travois of some kind, and groaning in pain as the travois was dragged over rocks and dirt. The agony had always been too much for him, causing him to slip back into a welcome oblivion, a place where he found immediate relief from the pain. But it was the darkness he woke up to every single time that worried him the most.
The soothing voice was also a constant companion. Jack had come to rely on that voice, listening for it every time he gained consciousness. It was a woman's voice, along with a woman's touch that calmed him when the fever raged inside his mind. And it was her presence that soothed him when he woke up in pain. He needed her, although he couldn't think of a reason why. He just craved the sound of her voice every time he woke up.
He didn't know how long he had been drifting in and out of consciousness when he woke up with a clear mind. He lay there in the darkness, waiting for the familiar sound of his angel, the woman who had tended to him the whole time. But all he heard was silence. He lay there, listening hard, then stiffened up, wincing in pain as he did so when he realized that he was not alone in the bed he was in. Someone was plastered against his side, with one arm thrown across his stomach. He lay there, hoping desperately that it was the woman with the soft voice snuggled up to him. He tried to move, but pain shot across his chest, causing him to groan. "You must sleep," the voice from his dreams told him. He smiled through his pain at the sound. She was still with him. He relaxed at that thought, and fell back asleep soon after.
He woke up the next day screaming in pain. His eyes were on fire and he tried to reach up to rub them, but strong arms were holding him down. "What's going on?" He heard Daniel yell at the top of his lungs. "What have you done to him?"
"Oh God," Jack screamed. The pain in his eyes was excruciating. He struggled against the arms that were holding him down, while calling out for the one person who would help him. "Daniel? Help me Daniel. Please."
"What the hell have you done to him?" Daniel asked again. Jack heard the desperation in his friend's voice, but he was more interested in escaping from the burning agony that resided in his eyes.
"Help me!" he pleaded.
"It is only medicine," a female voice said. Jack barely heard her. He had to break free of the arms that were holding him down, and he fought them with all his might, ignoring her pleas. "Please. You must not rub at your eyes."
"Let him go," Daniel demanded.
"Stay back," another voice spoke up. Many other voices shouted out demands and suggestions, while Daniel's voice filtered into Jack's mind, but Jack finally gave up on paying attention to anything that was going on in the room. All he could think about was the agony he was experiencing and that no one was going to help him.
He finally stopped struggling when it occurred to him that maybe if he did, they'd let him go. But the people who were holding him down must have seen through his plan, because they continued to hold on to his arms, effectively stopping him from reaching up to try to repair the damage to his eyes. Someone came and sat down next to him, causing the bed to shift a little, and ran their fingers along Jack's cheek. The pain was easing up a little, but Jack wanted it to go away altogether.
"Help me," he said to whomever it was sitting next to him.
It was Daniel who had come to sit with him. "What did you do to him?" Daniel asked again. Jack calmed down at the sound of Daniel's voice, realizing that not only had Daniel survived that blast, but he was also here with him. At least Jack wasn't alone in the darkness he had found himself in.
"Daniel," Jack whispered, the agony stripping him of his dignity. "It hurts."
"It'll be okay, Jack," Daniel responded, his fingers moving up to touch what Jack figured were bandages that covered his eyes. He nodded, as he tried to win back his dignity, but Daniel's anger broke through Jack's concentration. "He's bleeding." The accusation didn't surprise Jack at all. Something bad had to have happened to cause him so much agony.
"It is only the medicine that leaked out of his eyes." Softer fingers touched Jack's cheek, as someone else sat down on the bed, wiping away the wetness that was soaking the bandages and rolling down his face and into his hair. "The body produces tears to wash away foreign substances in the eyes, which is nature's way of protecting them." She continued to stroke Jack's face, and he concentrated on the movements as she went on with her explanations. "But the medicine will help to possibly cure his blindness. This is why his eyes are bandaged tightly. Even though the tears are trying to wash away the medicine, we have to make sure it stays inside his eyes."
"You can cure his blindness?" Daniel asked, surprise evident in his voice. Jack stilled, as he too waited for the response. It would be well worth the agony if he could gain his sight back.
"In some cases," the woman responded, crushing Jack's hopes into the ground. "The medicine will only work if the blindness is not permanent. Because you told us his blindness came from a blow to the head, I thought we should try the medicine."
"You could have at least told me that you were gong to fry my eyes," Jack spoke up tiredly. His chest hurt from the struggling, now that the pain in his eyes had eased into a dull ache, although it still felt like the medicine was burning holes into his head. He was just plain miserable and he "never" wanted to ever go through that again.
"We must apply it when the patient is asleep," the woman said. Now that Jack had calmed down, he recognized the voice. But the soothing sounds of the familiar voice had him on edge now. He didn't know if he could ever trust her again. "It is easier that way. If we have to do it a second time, I promise I will tell you in advance."
Oh God, Jack thought, panic moving in again. "Not in this freaking lifetime," he snarled at her, rage and panic forcing him to try to get free of the hands holding him down. He was never going through that again. The hands tightened their grasps, and Jack stopped struggling, breathing heavily from his efforts, as he realized that he was trapped. "Damn it, Daniel. I'm not going through that again."
"Don't worry about it Jack," Daniel told him.
"You will if it is necessary," the woman said stubbornly, nearly at the same time.
"No," Jack said adamantly, as he shook his head. "No way. That stuff's worse than the blindness." He tugged at his arms one more time, then lay still, resorting to silence as he tried to figure out a way to save himself. He just needed to calm down.
"We will wait and see," the woman insisted.
"That's easy for you to say," Jack growled. He had definitely decided that he would never trust her again. The hands suddenly let him go, and Jack was momentarily surprised.
"Do not rub your eyes," the woman demanded of Jack, an order that Jack immediately dismissed, as he automatically brought his hands up to touch the bandages that were wrapped tightly around his head.
"Come on Jack," Daniel spoke up. He wrapped his fingers around Jack's wrists and pulled on them, effectively stopping him from doing what he really wanted to do, which was to pull the bandages off his face. Jack resisted momentarily, desperately wanting to find relief from the nagging pain, but Daniel was insistent. "Leave it alone. Let the medicine do its job."
"Never again," Jack told them. He would kill every last one of them before he would let them do that to him again. "I mean it."
"Then let's hope the medicine works the first time," the woman said, the soothing tones of her voice putting Jack on edge. Even the softness of her touch had him flinching away when she ran the back of her fingers over his cheek. She was dangerous, he decided, and he wouldn't ever let his guard down again.
She sighed, and then stood up, standing quietly for a moment, before the sound of footsteps moving away told Jack that she was leaving him alone. He lay there listening to her tell the others that he was fine and to the voices of the other people giving her advice and shuffling out of the room. Daniel stayed with him though. The room had quieted down considerably, and Jack lay there in the silence, suddenly wondering what had happened to put him in his current situation. "Daniel?"
"I'm here Jack."
Jack had to smile at that. Daniel was the king of understatements of the century. But he was determined to get some answers. "What's going on here? Where are we?"
"We're in a village," Daniel responded. "I don't have a whole lot of memories about how we got out of that cave-in. Just fragments of waking up to see daylight through a hole in the wall, and of dragging you out of there." Jack wracked his mind for some of the same memories, but nothing came to him. Daniel was on a roll though, and Jack listened to the story, as Daniel knew it. "I do remember waking up a few times as we were being dragged through the desert, but even those memories are vague." Jack could certainly relate to that. His brain had been so scrambled, he couldn't even be sure he was lucid even now.
"It took us several days to get here," Daniel continued on. "I woke up a few days before we got here, with a headache from hell." He stopped for a minute, and Jack waited, wondering if he was going to finish the story. "Thank you," Daniel mumbled. Jack could hear him sipping on something, before picking up where he left off.
"You were out of it, Jack, and I'll admit that I was afraid you weren't going to make it. The people who found us took care of you though, and Reena over there seemed to be determined that you would live." Reena didn't respond, but Jack didn't need to hear her voice to know whom Daniel was talking about. Her presence alone seemed to calm Jack's unease, despite his resolve to never trust her again.
"She succeeded," he told Daniel grumpily. The ordeal he had gone through upon waking up made him wonder if his survival had been worth it.
"Yeah, she did. You belong to her, don't you know," Daniel said casually.
"Excuse me?" Jack asked incredulously. The implications that statement brought up didn't even bear thinking about. The words, "belonging to someone" and "Jack O'Neill" were never to be spoken in the same sentence as far as Jack was concerned, except when his wife had uttered them in their bed. Hearing them said on a foreign planet had his hackles up and anger building up in his heart. Not in this lifetime, he snarled inwardly.
"Calm down Jack. It's not like that. From what I gather, strangers to the village cannot live among the people in this village on their own. They must be taken in by someone in order to abide by their laws. Reena has taken you in, which means you are her responsibility." Jack still didn't like the implications of the whole thing, but Daniel didn't seem to be too worried about it, so Jack decided to give them all the benefit of the doubt. After years of working alongside the man, Jack had learned to trust Daniel's judgment.
"Leezell has taken me in," Daniel continued, breaking through Jack's inner turmoil. "And I have the freedom to come and go as I please. We just have to live in the house of the person who is sponsoring us and hope they don't change their minds about our status, as to whether or not we can do as we please."
"Whether we can do as we please?" Jack asked, the inner turmoil rising up once again. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Well," Daniel hedged, his reaction not easing Jack's mind in the least. "It's entirely up to the sponsor in terms of whether they want a slave, a friend or an adopted family member when they take someone in. Leezell wants a friend, and from what I am told, so does Reena."
"No one ever wants a slave," his sponsor spoke up, her voice coming from somewhere near the end of the bed. "A friend is much easier to live with." You got that right, Jack thought, as a small grin creased his face.
Daniel, apparently, wanted to clarify things further. "As long as we live in the village, we are the responsibility of the people who have taken us in. We can come and go as we please, but whatever we do will be a judgment on Reena and Leezell."
"Well hell, isn't that terrible?" Jack said sarcastically, his mind racing with thoughts of some good old-fashioned paybacks. His eyes still hurt from the "medicine" that woman had put in them.
"You will behave," Reena told him. Jack kept his silence at that, although he knew the evil grin on his face must have told her his thoughts. If it did, she was ignoring it. "Here," she said, as she sat back down on the bed and put her hand under his head to help him to sit up. "It's just water," she promised.
Jack knew better than to trust her with that statement. "Daniel?" he said, mentally reaching out for the only person he did trust.
"It's okay Jack. It's only water. I just had some of it, myself." Something was placed against his lips, but Jack was still hesitant. Maybe she put something in it when Daniel wasn't looking. He reached up and grabbed the cup, debating on the wisdom of drinking anything that woman offered, but his thirst for anything liquid won out. He brought the cup up to his lips and sipped at the welcomed offering. The sensation of cool water on his tongue and trickling down his throat helped him to make a final decision. He tipped his head back and drank the rest of the water, enjoying the taste of it and the relief the water brought to his parched throat.
"More," he said, deciding that if there was any poison in it, a little more wouldn't make a difference. The cup was taken from him and he listened to the sound of water being poured into it. He liked that sound. The cup was placed back into his hands and he greedily drank from it, glad that he had given in.
"You must rest," Reena said, as the cup was taken from him once again. He hated to agree with her on this, but he knew she was right. He was tired and a little nap would be just the ticket to hide from the burning ache in his eyes. He let her and Daniel help him to lie back down and he tried to relax.
An unreasonable terror raced through him when he heard another voice say, "Come Daniel. Let him rest. We will come back to see him later." Daniel didn't respond, but Jack so hoped that Daniel would tell her where to shove it and stay with him instead. He was too proud to ask though, and disappointment took over when Daniel stood up.
"You're safe here, Jack," Daniel told him. Jack didn't believe him, and even though he trusted Daniel's judgment, he was too tired to even try. He ended up keeping his silence, wishing he didn't feel so helpless.
Silence enveloped him as he lay there in the darkness, broken only by the sounds of a crackling fire and his own beating heart. Silence and fear, Jack thought, as sleep pulled at him. This was so not good.