Rush opened his eyes and flinched. His head was pounding and it took him a moment to realise he was on a bed in the infirmary. He looked up, struggling to focus on the faces above him. Young, TJ and either Chloe or Carolyn Lam.
"Chloe?"
"No, it's Doctor Lam."
His head throbbed.
"What happened?"
Doctor Lam sighed.
"Colonel Telford insisted on exchanging with you." She said with irritation. "I warned him, as did Doctor Jackson, but he wouldn't listen. He's not coped well with your adaptations since he's been here."
"Too interested in seeing what you could do." Said TJ. "He refused to take it easy and eventually collapsed. Dr Lam sent him back on medical grounds before he had a chance to do you any real damage."
Rush tried to sit up.
"Chloe."
TJ pushed him down again.
"Where were you?" Young asked. "Where is Telford?"
His voice was angry and for the first time in some time, Rush realised they were both actually on the same page.
"My house." Said Rush. "Daniel Jackson was there too."
"Good." Said Young.
Rush rubbed his eyes.
"Surely you don't think that Colonel Telford would do anything to harm Chloe?" asked Carolyn Lam.
"Not physically," Young said, "but he's not the most restrained when he's got an idea he wants to follow through, and I don't think he'd have any reservations about pressing her for information about her condition or about Destiny and the crew."
Carolyn Lam raised an eyebrow. TJ shrugged.
"Colonel Telford has some trust issues with Doctor Rush and also some issues with Colonel Young's command of Destiny." TJ said diplomatically.
"Telford's an obsessive bully." Rush tried to sit again. "I need to get back."
"Not until you've had a rest and at least cleared the headache and let your heart rate get back to normal." Carolyn Lam's voice was firm.
"I'll get back on the stones," Young unfolded his arms, "register a complaint and get someone to check on Chloe and Doctor Jackson."
Rush's head was still pounding hard and focus was something he had to strain for.
"You are going nowhere." Said Young. "I'll make sure she's okay."
"She'd better be." Rush growled.
"Don't make me have to sedate you." TJ warned him.
Rush snorted and regretted it.
"Did you threaten Telford with that?" He asked.
"She did it." Carolyn Lam informed him. "I sent him back as he wouldn't take no for an answer and to sedate him again would waste precious resources."
TJ lifted the hypodermic and Rush scowled.
"If you rest for eight hours," Doctor Lam advised him, "I'll let you go back."
"Six." Rush bargained.
"Eight." Doctor Lam's voice was firm. "Your body is physically exhausted, I can smell how much pain you're in it's so bad and you're still massively tense and your heart's beating too fast with the pain."
Rush squinted at her.
"Well you are getting used to this aren't you?" he sniped.
"Too damn right." She responded. "Sleep Doctor or I will sedate you and it'll be twelve hours before you get back there."
Young put the stone on the plate and after a familiar moment of dislocation he was at Homeworld Command, randomly in the body of a youngish female airman due to his unplanned arrival. Damn, he hated swapping with women. It made him feel uncomfortably voyeuristic every time he had to go to the lavatory.
"It's Colonel Young." He said to the airman outside the door. "I need to speak to O'Neill and to call Chloe Armstrong."
"Yes sir."
Young waited while the airman phoned up and after a short while another sergeant arrived, one Young recognised as working directly for O'Neill in some sort of administrative capacity. The name on his chest said De Sousa.
"General O'Neill is not in his office at the moment, Colonel," he apologised, "but I am happy to see what I can do for you, and take a message for General O'Neill".
He led Young down the corridor in to another office which Young assumed was his own. They sat down and the Sergeant made them a coffee from the percolator.
"I want to make a formal complaint about Colonel Telford's behaviour." He said. "I believe that Doctor Lam will also be making a report when she comes back from Destiny."
The Sergeant gave him a surprised look.
"I also need to urgently contact Chloe Armstrong. Dr Lam terminated Doctor Rush and Colonel Telford's connection abruptly and she will probably be wondering what is happening."
Sergeant De Sousa nodded. He went to his desk, unlocked the computer and pulled up a spreadsheet. After a moment he picked up the phone and tapped in a number, before handing the handset to Young.
The phone rang after a moment it was picked up.
"Telford."
Young stopped sharp for a second before collecting his wits and continuing.
"Where's Chloe, David?"
"Back at Rush's house."
Young could hear a car in the background.
"How come you've got the phone?"
"It was in the pocket of my jacket."
"Figures."
"Not going to tell me off Everett?" Telford's tone was a little mocking.
"I already made my opinion clear on Destiny and you ignored it. Tell Doctor Jackson to take the phone back and give it to Chloe. Ask her to call in."
He hung up.
Daniel let himself in, and wandered through the house two hours later. He finally found her curled up on Rush's bed, he was wrapped around a pillow and had scrunched the quilt up around her. In sleep it was hard to distinguish her from Carolyn, but when he gently shook her arm to wake her up, if was clear from her response that it wasn't Carolyn. Carolyn had the medical professional's ability to go from completely asleep to alert in seconds. Chloe went from asleep to hyperaware and looking for trouble, rolling backwards away from him, with a deep inhalation. Daniel took a step back in surprise at the strong reaction. She looked at him from where she was crouched on the far side of the bed, pulling herself together.
"Sorry," she apologised, "I don't sleep well on my own."
"Are you okay?" He asked.
"I have PTSD and I feel half deaf, blind and scentless here." She said.
Not the question he'd been asking.
"Coffee?"
She stood.
"Okay. What time is it?"
"One in the afternoon. I brought back lunch. I have the mobile by the way. Colonel Young called, he wants you to call in to check you're okay."
Chloe took the mobile and rang back the last number. It didn't ring long before a woman answered.
"Can I speak to Colonel Young?"
"Speaking." Said the woman in a slightly wry voice.
"Oh." Chloe stifled a laugh.
"You take what you can get at short notice." Young said. "How are you?"
"I threw Telford out." She said. "Is Nicholas okay?"
There was a short bark of laughter.
"Rude, aggressive, sarcastic."
Chloe laughed again, Young joined her a moment then sobered.
"He has a pounding headache and TJ says he's physically exhausted, but he'll be fine after a sleep. TJ and Dr Lam are making him rest for eight hours while they try and find someone else who can swap with him. He was pretty intent on getting back to you but Dr Lam overruled him."
"How long till he comes back?" she asked.
"Probably in the morning by the time he gets to you." Said Young. "But Doctor Jackson is there to, ah, keep you company."
Chloe noticed the awkward pause.
"Baby-sit me." She clarified. "Make sure I don't go crazy."
"You said it." Young said. "But pretty much that's the idea."
Chloe sighed.
"It's okay, it's a good idea, I need company and I need someone I know."
"Okay, well, now I've spoken to you I'm going back, I've done what I needed to do here."
"Okay." She said. "Tell Nicholas I'm going to stay here and…" she paused.
Young laughed.
"I know. You try and relax. See you in three days." And he hung up.
Chloe went to find Daniel.
Rush gave up and tried to sleep. The infirmary was quiet and deserted apart from him, but despite the exhaustion he failed to sleep until Young came back a couple of hours later to say he has spoken to Daniel and to Chloe.
"They're staying at your place till you get back." He said.
Rush nodded then winced.
"I've registered a complaint about Telford's behaviour." Young added.
"Good, I'll be doing the same." Rush would have liked to have snapped the words out, but now he had begun to relax he was too sleepy and in too much pain and the words came out as a weary murmur.
"Get some sleep Rush." Young advised, not unkindly. "I know you're a lot of work, but Telford really gave you a good competition on that one."
Rush snorted.
"I think Chloe's mellowed you." Young told him.
"I must be doin' summ'n wrong then." Mumbled Rush sleepily, giving him a vague scowl. "I thought she was gettin' sharper."
Young laughed, and heard Rush mutter something else in Ancient that sounded like it was quite probably telling him to do something anatomically improbable. He left the man to sleep.
Mrs Armstrong had not been happy that Chloe wasn't coming back for dinner. Chloe had explained Nicholas sudden recall to Destiny, conveniently leaving out the conflict with Telford and said she and Daniel needed to finish up without him.
After lunch Daniel had retrieved Rush's SGC laptop, and sitting at the desk in the study they had worked on recording the grammar of Destiny era Ancient. Chloe found it difficult to explain a lot of it, it was too automatic, too ingrained but she was willing to answer Daniel's questions until he could establish what the rules must be from her responses.
"What if you're talking about two people?" "What if it was something that happened but isn't happening any more?"
Largely it appeared from Daniel's explanations of what she was saying, that the grammar was the same but with some structures that had gradually simplified, and informal familial and highly formal registers which had evidently fallen out of use. It passed the time, kept her mind off of other more painful topics and felt like she was doing something useful.
When Daniel had amassed enough notes that he needed to start writing them up, she moved to one of the white boards and started to doodle vaguely. It wasn't until she felt Daniel put a hand on her shoulder that she really started to think about what she was doing.
"What is it?" Daniel asked, staring at the white board full of equations.
Chloe stepped back and looked at the board thoughtfully.
"Power conversion calculations for the FTL drive." She said.
"Something you're working on?" he asked.
"Not really," she admitted, "Nicholas and Brody have been though. It's an ongoing problem. I don't have all the data I need to finish the calculations yet anyway. File under not yet resolvable without further data"
He squeezed her shoulder.
"Seems like you've had a few of those recently." He said gently.
She nodded. "I know."
She wiped the figures from the board then turned to face him.
"What's really bothering me though is how my mom knows Colonel Telford."
Daniel shrugged.
"Maybe he came out here to speak to her about you and your father?"
Chloe shook her head as she replaced the eraser and the board markers on the side.
"No, I came out to tell her about Dad and he's not her liaison with Homeworld Command."
Daniel looked at her.
"He could have met her at a function like I did?" He offered.
Chloe looked at him.
"Well enough that she recognised him before she recognised you? She's seen you at least three times, two functions, you said?" he nodded "And the first time you swapped with Nicholas."
Daniel nodded. "And a further two meetings with Jack also." He said.
She shook her head.
"I can ask Telford." He offered. She frowned. "Or Jack?"
She walked to the door and he followed.
"I'm probably just being paranoid," she said walking out and towards the kitchen, "but I just don't trust Colonel Telford."
"Or your Mom?"Daniel asked quietly.
Chloe turned to face him, bracing a hand against the kitchen door frame. His look was intent, head tipped slightly to one side and for a moment he looked very similar to Nicholas. All this body swapping was getting confusing. She shook her head and her expression drifted to sad and slightly wistful, gaze floating away.
"My Mom has her own opinions on what is good for me." She said. "She's not above manipulating the situation to get what she wants. She's changed a lot in the last three years as well, She's harder, not as fragile." Chloe pursed her lips and looked back at Daniel. "I'm not entirely sure what she's actually doing."
Chloe allowed Daniel to distract her and shepherd her into doing things. After he had typed up his notes about the Ancient grammar he made them a sandwich and coffee and persuaded her to be recorded speaking Ancient.
"You're probably the only native speakers of this dialect of Ancient we will ever get to record." Daniel said. "It's an incredible opportunity to have. You aren't even modern speakers of an older dialect still in use, you're speaking the original dialect apparently natively. It's rare I get a chance to just study a language these days." His expression was enthusiastic, almost boyish and she couldn't help but give in to his enthusiasm.
Rush finally arrived back on Earth at about two in the morning. He had been swapped into the body of a young medic, apparently one of Dr Lam's minions. Despite being about twelve, he was much closer in build and height to Rush which was a definite improvement on previously, although anything was an improvement on being in Telford. Rush actually hoped the young man was managing okay, being dumped into a disorienting and potentially painful situation at the last minute.
He wasn't keen on the Asgard beaming technology. As a technological tool he appreciated it and wouldn't have complained at the chance to play with one, but although he'd never admit it or allow it to show the various times he had been beamed had always given him a certain sense of unease that the stargate had never given him. As soon as he had come back, the sergeant on charge had passed him a message that as there was a ship in orbit, O'Neill had arranged for him to be beamed directly to his house. He couldn't refuse, it was either take the quite generous offer or have admit he didn't like the idea of being beamed and then take a few hours to get to Chloe.
The musical tone sounded and Homeworld Command faded out and his hallway faded in. As did the gun pointed at his face. Daniel was pointing the business end of a hand gun at him, from the partial cover of the kitchen doorway. Rush regarded him with a little surprise but stood where he was.
"It's me Daniel. You can put the gun down."
Daniel appeared to tuck the gun into the small of his back and Rush assumed he must be wearing some sort of concealed holster under the open plaid shirt he had on over the t-shirt.
"Chloe's asleep." Daniel told him, stepping into the hallway.
"You're not."Rush noted.
Daniel's brow furrowed.
"I'm not entirely comfortable with the way things have gone, Nick." He said. "I think Chloe's right; she said earlier she thinks there's something not quite right, Telford exchanging with you at the last minute, her mother recognising Telford when you arrived."
Rush put the bag down on the floor and walked up the stairs. There was a light coming from his bedroom. Although he'd known where she'd be. She didn't have the hearing here he was used to and he had to remind himself when he walked in and she wasn't already awake that she simply hadn't heard him. She was curled up in his bed, wrapped around his pillow, covers pulled up tightly around her.
"Chloe?" he said quietly.
She didn't wake and he repeated it louder. She woke with a start, looking up with wide shocked eyes as she rolled off the bed to regard him from the other side, face distrustful.
"It's me." He said.