Chapter Seven

It didn't take Daniel long to cry himself out.

If anyone had told Jack that thirty-six hours after an Egyptian goddess walked into the SGC he'd be sitting on the infirmary floor, holding a thirty year old man who'd just cried himself to sleep in his arms, he'd have told them they were nuts. But nothing could change the fact that he was doing exactly that, and if he had his way, he wouldn't be stopping any time soon.

He'd settled himself on the floor and leaned back against the wall, just to relieve the pressure on his knees, but he absolutely refused to let go of Daniel; the sudden fear churning his gut wouldn't allow him to. There was no logical reason for it, and he knew that, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that if he let go, he'd lose Daniel forever. No matter how slight the risk might have been, it was one that he wasn't willing to take.

Sam had been called to the Gate Room only minutes after Daniel had given up fighting to stay awake. She'd gone reluctantly, and Jack had made note of the fact that it was only after he himself had ordered her to. She'd also knelt down beside them and squeezed Daniel's hand lightly before she'd gone. "Take care of him, sir," she'd said.

He hadn't felt the need to tell her that he would.

So with Sam gone to help clean up the enormous physical mess that Hathor had left behind, Jack and Teal'c were left to deal with the emotional one – the one whose sleep was still punctuated by broken, sobbing breaths.

Jack heaved a deep breath of his own and looked up at Teal'c, who was kneeling across from him, standing silent guard between Daniel and the door. He knew that he needed to share his own emotional turmoil if he had any hope of helping Daniel with his, and he wasn't feeling particularly enthused about talking to the man who'd apparently just triggered Daniel to within an inch of his life – literally. And if there was anyone who might understand what he'd done, what he'd promised, and why he'd done it …

"I told him that I'd kill him."

He hadn't been expecting the words to come out quite so easily, but once they'd started, he couldn't stop them. He closed his eyes, because he knew that if he had to look anyone in the eye while he said it, he'd lose control completely. He planted his left foot firmly on the floor and shifted Daniel in his arms so that the sleeping man's shoulders rested more solidly against his upright thigh. "If she came back for him. He couldn't do it again, he … We thought it was the only way out. I tried to protect him from her, tried to stop her, but I …" He leaned his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes more tightly closed against the memory. "I couldn't. I couldn't even stand up. And after she left, he made me promise. That if we couldn't get out, I'd kill him." He shook his head and drew in another shuddering breath. "I'd have been right behind him, and he knew it."

The moments of silence that followed, to Jack's mind, were a condemnation of his failure. Of course Teal'c wouldn't understand what he'd done. No one would understand what he'd done. Because no normal person would promise to murder their own best friend, no matter what was going on.

"You would have sacrificed his life to save his soul?"

Jack nodded wordlessly.

"It would have been a worthwhile trade."

He finally dredged up the courage to open his eyes, and he looked directly into Teal'c's. "Who does that, Teal'c? How could I promise that?"

"It is as you say, O'Neill. Neither you nor Daniel Jackson could foresee any other way to save yourselves. Would you have preferred to leave him in that situation, to force him to live the life that Hathor wished for him as her unwilling consort?"

"No." The answer came without hesitation. "Never."

"And Daniel Jackson could not have lived with the knowledge that you had been forced into a life of servitude to the Goa'uld."

"None of it ever should have happened," Jack said, giving voice to yet another thought that he hadn't been able to admit, even to himself. "The whole damn thing was my fault."

"How so?"

"She walked into the mountain and started talking about the Stargate, claiming it called to her, said she was a goddess, asked about Ra." He leaned his head against the wall again, but didn't take his eyes off of Teal'c's. "Why did I dismiss her threat potential?"

"You had no reason to believe that any Goa'uld still existed on Earth," Teal'c said. "I was similarly confused by her presence here."

"She had him the minute she kissed his hand." He looked down at Daniel's face, still pinched and tense even in his sleep, and brushed the hair away from his eyes gently. "Which was about ten seconds after I let him walk over there." Jack huffed at his own stupidity. "He asked my permission, and I gave it to him. If I'd said no, if I'd made him stay behind me, if I'd just kept him away from her …"

"You cannot take the blame upon your shoulders, O'Neill."

"Why the hell not?"

"Daniel Jackson will need your strength to supplement his own," Teal'c said. "You will not have enough to give him if you believe yourself to be responsible for what transpired here."

"Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room," came the voice over the PA system. "Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room."

He shook his head in disbelief and smirked at Teal'c. "How much you wanna bet that's big Mack's way of saying hello?"

"Any wager would be unwise," Teal'c replied. "Dr. Mackenzie informed Captain Carter and myself of his intention to seek out General Hammond. Dr. Fraiser was attempting to dissuade him, but I doubt that she was successful."

"Yeah, I thought as much." He rolled his eyes and let out yet another sigh. "Gonna need some help here, Teal'c. Knees aren't what they used to be."

"Of course."

It only took them a minute to decide that the best way to get Daniel back into his bed without waking him was for Teal'c to simply pick him up and carry him.

"That's sweet, Teal'c," Jack said, his half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood painfully obvious to both of them. "Who'd have guessed you're such a big softy?"

"Should you ever speak of this moment, O'Neill, I will deny it."

Jack couldn't help the smile that crossed his face.

Teal'c laid Daniel down gently on the mattress, and Jack lifted the blankets from the foot of the bed to pull them up and across him. "Make you a deal, Teal'c. I won't tell anyone you carried him to bed if you don't tell anyone I tucked him in."

"I agree to these terms." Jack was smoothing the blankets down when Teal'c spoke again. "Have your emotions returned to normal, O'Neill? Or is the control drug still adversely affecting them?"

Jack snorted in reluctant amusement as he pulled the bedrail into place. "I just spent the last half hour sitting on the floor, holding a grown damn man in my lap like he's a little kid. What do you think?"

Teal'c's only answer was a silent nod of his head.

Daniel was muttering into the pillow, so Jack leaned close enough to hear him.

"Have to go. Chulak. Have to go."

"You're not going anywhere, big guy." Jack ruffled his hair fondly, gently, as he stood straight again. "Staying right where you are."

He started to walk away, but he stopped halfway to the door and turned around again. That feeling was back, the roiling in his gut that told him not to leave, but he had no choice. He could only imagine what Mackenzie was telling Hammond, and he had to get to the Briefing Room so he could stop them from doing something they'd all regret. Since he wasn't able to stay with Daniel himself, he settled on the next best thing.

"Stay here, Teal'c. Stay with him. Don't leave his side until you hear it from me, got it?"

"I do, and I will." He took up a position at the foot of Daniel's bed, hands clasped behind his back, looking down on him, keeping watch.

Jack left the room, allowing himself only one more quick glance at Daniel across his shoulder on his way out the door. He'd have to deal with whatever was going on upstairs as fast as he could, because he couldn't shake the feeling of dread, no matter how hard he tried. The only way to get rid of it was to get back to Daniel's side, where he could watch him like a hawk.

He saw four SFs walking down the hallway, with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, obviously on their way out. "Hey, you there! Airmen!" he called out to them. They turned back and walked over.

"Yes, sir?" one of them said.

"Dr. Jackson is in this infirmary," he explained quickly. "Teal'c's in there with him. I need you four to stand an extra guard out here, is that understood? No questions asked, but under no circumstances is Dr. Jackson to walk out this door."

"Of course, sir." They arranged themselves in a loose formation around the door immediately.

Jack nodded briefly, both satisfied with the extra security he'd arranged and nervous about it. He didn't know any of the four men, but new personnel were coming in on a regular basis, so he shouldn't have been surprised at that.

"I'll be back soon," he said, then he turned down the corridor and headed for the elevator. As the elevator door closed, it occurred to him to wonder what those airmen had been smiling about.


He knew he was going to hate what Mackenzie had to say from the minute he walked through the door of the Briefing Room. He hated clichés, but the tension in the room really was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the looks on the faces of the three people seated at the table left absolutely no doubt what – who – they'd been talking about.

He took a deep breath and walked toward his usual chair, but he didn't pull it out to sit down. He was high strung enough that standing was definitely the better option and besides, if he didn't sit down, then leaving would be faster.

"Okay," he said as he crossed the room. "Tell me what Dr. Mackenzie wants to do so I can talk you out of it."

"Colonel O'Neill …," Mackenzie began, but Jack cut him off with a wave of his hand.

"I heard what you were saying in the infirmary. Violently unstable, threat to himself and others, requires constant supervision and medication … Am I getting warm?"

"Surely you don't mean to stand there and say that Dr. Jackson isn't any of those things, Colonel."

Jack nodded his head briskly. "Actually, I am going to stand here and say he isn't any of them."

"Colonel …"

"He's got some sort of alien drug in his system that's throwing his emotional center off balance. Doc Fraiser can tell you all about it, if she hasn't already."

"I have," she said softly from her chair at Mackenzie's side.

"There ya go," Jack said, pointing at her for emphasis. "So, that's it. Case closed. He's not thinking straight right now, he's overreacting, it's not his fault, and once that drug stops messing with his head, he'll be fine." He turned to face General Hammond at the head of the table. "Can I go now, sir?"

Hammond shook his head slowly, so Jack tried another tact quickly.

"He's not the only one still under the effects of that drug. How are you feeling, General? Not worried about anything, not panicking?" Hammond flinched, and Jack felt a flash of sympathy for the man, but he moved past it quickly. "You can't really be making any decisions about the welfare of your people with an alien drug still in your system, can you?"

"If I can't," Hammond said, a vaguely uncertain edge to his voice, "then neither can you."

Jack's heart plummeted into his feet.

"I'm institutionalizing him, Colonel."

He spun toward Mackenzie with a glare that was designed to strike fear into the heart of the strongest Marine. "You're doing what?"

"It's the only logical step to take at the present time."

Jack turned back to Hammond again. "General, this isn't …"

"Dr. Mackenzie told me what happened in the infirmary." He sounded sad, and Jack got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one who didn't want to be having that conversation. Any doubt of that was eliminated by the next words out of his mouth. "I'm sorry, Jack."

"Don't apologize to me, General," he said hotly. "I'm not the one you're thinking about shipping off to the loony bin for having the same problems every other man on this damn base is having right now."

"No one else on this base has tried to kill themselves," Hammond pointed out.

"No one else on this base fought her hard enough to get dosed as bad as he did, either." It was an odd situation, Jack having the upper hand in the Briefing Room and General Hammond backing down, and he wasn't entirely sure that he liked it, but he'd press any advantage he could get. "That's why it's as bad as it is for him. Ask the doc. Hundreds of trained soldiers in this place, and we lined up for her, went down without an argument. But Daniel fought her every step of the way, and she made him pay for it. You're gonna make him pay for it, too?"

Mackenzie leaned his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and spoke again. "This is for his own protection and for the protection of everyone on the base."

Jack turned toward him in absolute disbelief. "You think he's a threat to other people?" He stared back at Mackenzie with naked fury. "No one bothered to warn you that I've got a small anger management issue right now, did they?"

"He is volatile, Colonel," Mackenzie insisted. "Look at what just happened. Look at how easily triggered he is, how quickly he becomes violent, how …"

"You want volatile, you sanctimonious prick?" Jack slammed his fists into the table, making everyone in the room jump. "You're the one that set him off!"

"Colonel." There was a warning in Hammond's tone, but it was nowhere near as strong as it should have been.

"He attempted to seriously injure Dr. Fraiser."

Jack shook his head vehemently. He doubted that Mackenzie was trying to push him into losing control, but that didn't change the fact that he was about to do it. "No, he didn't. He was having a flashback. You know how those work, right? He thought she was Hathor. He thought was defending himself."

"That part was my fault, Dr. Mackenzie," Fraiser put in. "I've already told you that. I know better than to walk up behind someone in that state of panic, and I should have known better than to talk to him the way I did. I was concerned about his injuries and trying to prevent him from hurting himself, but the way I went about it was a recipe for disaster."

Mackenzie either dismissed or ignored what she'd said, looked Jack straight in the eye, and pushed forward. "He tried to kill you."

Jack's arm started to sting, and he looked down at it. He'd forgotten about the gash there, halfway between his shoulder and elbow. It wasn't deep, barely a scratch beneath the torn sleeve of his uniform, and it had stopped bleeding at some point, though he had no idea when. He'd been too concerned with Daniel to pay it any mind. He shook his head again without looking up.

"He was trying to save me."

"By burying a scalpel in your chest?"

"By sending me somewhere she couldn't hurt me!" All pretense of minding his temper was gone. Apparently Daniel wasn't the only one whose emotional responses could be triggered beyond his ability to control them. "You don't have to understand, hell, you can't understand, because you weren't there! You have no idea what we went through!"

"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond's voice thundered through the Briefing Room, shocking everyone in it into silence. He softened his voice again, and the uncertainty started to creep back into it. "Jack, you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that Dr. Jackson doesn't need intensive therapy and medication to deal with what happened. If anything, you're doing a damn good job of convincing me that you do."

"I'm not accepting any treatment from this incompetent asshole," Jack shot back.

Mackenzie had the audacity to look offended at that. "Incompetent? Colonel O'Neill …"

"You set him off," Jack repeated. "You knew he had a trigger, you swore you'd go out of your way to avoid it, but you went in there and you hit it dead-on. How long were you in there before you hit it? Two minutes? Three?"

"I assure you that I did nothing of the sort," Mackenzie said. "I had asked him only basic questions up until that point. I'd said nothing about either the rape or the suicide attempt. I wasn't even in the room when he started."

"You weren't even …?" He blinked in confusion; he couldn't have heard that right. "You weren't in the room with him?"

"You left him alone?" Janet asked at the same time.

"For a few seconds," Mackenzie answered. "We spoke briefly, introductions and pleasantries only. I laid my notebook down and went to get the chair that I'd left in your …"

"You laid your notebook down?" Janet was horrified. Jack didn't understand why until she asked her next question. "Where, exactly, did you put it?"

"On the table near the head of …"

"You stupid son of a bitch!" Jack lunged forward, reaching across the table in an effort to grab Mackenzie's jacket. Hammond was out of his chair in an instant, and his hand flat against Jack's chest was the only thing that stopped him from bodily dragging the psychiatrist across the table.

"You might be right about the colonel requiring medical intervention as well, General. And you can see, as I told you, there was no reason for Dr. Jackson to have …"

"He read it!" Jack and Janet said in unison.

Mackenzie looked surprised by the declaration. "You can't be certain of that."

"Of course we can!" Jack shouted. "It's Daniel. He's got enough curiosity to kill a dozen cats on a good day. He had no idea what happened to him, and he was already mad that I wasn't telling him. You left the answers to every question he had just sitting there, and you walked away. That's like putting a plate of cookies in front of a four year old."

Mackenzie shook his head and turned his attention back to Hammond.

"I will apologize if my actions resulted in him being triggered, General. But what triggered him isn't as important as what he did once he was," he said. "He became violent immediately. He tried to strike me …"

"I understand the feeling," Jack muttered, earning a hard warning look from Hammond.

"He tried to strike and stab Dr. Fraiser. He tried to kill Colonel O'Neill. He made another suicide attempt …"

"God damn you!" Jack grabbed the back of his chair, his fingers biting into the leather as he squeezed. It took every ounce of self control he had not to throw it out of the way and lunge for Mackenzie again. "We've been over this. That's not him. It's that damn drug making him that way."

"Colonel O'Neill, calm down!" Hammond ordered. Quieter, only to Jack, he said, "I'm on your side, Jack, but you're not helping him right now. You're not doing yourself any favors, either."

"You want to help him, General? Really?"

"Of course I do." There was real injury in Hammond's voice, and Jack made a mental note to apologize for causing it. Later. After he'd stopped what was about to happen.

"Then leave him here. Let us take care of him."

"That's impossible," Mackenzie put in. "He requires much more specialized care than he can ever receive here."

Jack turned on him again. "I promised that I wouldn't leave him! And I am not going to stand by and let you mess that up."

"His health is far more important than your desire to keep a promise."

"Right now, a big part of his health depends on whether or not I keep that promise. Do you want to make sure he never gets over this? Take him away from us. Take him away from the only family he's got and stick him in a rubber room somewhere. Because that'll help him so much."

"I'm only thinking of what's best for him, Colonel O'Neill."

"You're going to destroy him," Jack said hotly. "You do understand that, don't you?"

"O'Neill."

Jack spun around.

"Teal'c?"

Everything going on in the Briefing Room was forgotten. None of it would matter if something had happened to Daniel, and the fact that Teal'c was there, standing in the door of the Briefing Room when he should have been standing at the foot of Daniel's bed, almost guaranteed that something had happened. He shook off Hammond's hand on his chest, turned, and walked across the room and out into the corridor without a single backward glance.

"What's wrong? Where's Daniel?"

"Daniel Jackson is in the infirmary," Teal'c answered simply.

"Then why are you here? What happened?"

"You summoned me."

Jack's heart jumped again, that time into his throat. "No." He shook his head quickly and started jogging down the hallway. "No, Teal'c, I didn't. I wanted you to stay with Daniel. Who told you I sent for you?"

"One of the four airmen you left to guard the door."

"Why would they …"

"Colonel!"

Jack slid to a stop as an obviously upset Sam Carter came up behind them. "Carter?"

"It's Daniel ..."

He hadn't thought it was possible for his heart to sink any further. "God, what now?"

"I went down to the infirmary to see him, and he's not there. He's gone, sir."

"Gone!" Jack's eyes darted around as he checked to make certain that no one had heard his outburst. "What do you mean 'gone'? Gone where?"

"That's the problem. No one knows where he is."

"How can no one know where he is?" Jack threw his hands in the air in frustration. He noticed the looks he, Carter and Teal'c were getting from the people walking past, and he lowered his voice. "He's not exactly hard to spot. How many long-haired geeks with glasses have we got stationed here?"

"Only one, sir." Sam said, unnecessarily. "But at the moment, he's the one we can't find."

"Damn it!" Jack turned on his heel and started running toward the infirmary; Sam and Teal'c stayed right behind him. "I told him to stay put. I put extra guards outside the door."

"Yes, sir," Sam agreed.

"How many SFs does it take to keep one wounded archeologist in bed anyway?"

"How many did you have posted?"

"Four," Teal'c answered for him.

Sam nodded her head. "Well then, sir, I'd guess that it takes more than that."

Jack gave his second-in-command a sideways glare. "Oh, thank you so much, Carter. That helps so much."

Alarm klaxons blared through the corridor and red lights began flashing above their heads. Jack, Sam and Teal'c all stopped dead in the hallway, the same question in each of their eyes as they looked at each other in silence.

"Unauthorized Gate activation!" Sergeant Davis' voice announced. "Colonel O'Neill to the Control Room!"

"He wouldn't ..." Jack looked at Carter and Teal'c in horror. "... would he?"

"Daniel Jackson would not be so foolish," Teal'c declared

Sam shook her head vehemently. "No, he wouldn't. There's no way."

They turned in unison and dashed for the Control Room. They flew down the stairs and into the room just as the blast doors cleared the window, giving a clear view of what was happening in the Gate Room below.

"He would," Jack groaned. He leaned forward, slamming his hand down on the intercom button. "Daniel!"

Daniel turned his head slowly, and Jack couldn't believe the difference that ten minutes had made.

Daniel was standing halfway up the ramp, ten feet from the event horizon. Gone were the scrub bottoms he'd worn in the infirmary, and in their place was an offworld field uniform at least one size too big. The bruises and marks on his body were hidden, and the sleeves were long enough that even the bandage on his wrist didn't show. Jack doubted that anyone seeing him walk down the hallway would have recognized him, because his long hair was pushed up under a baseball cap, and he wasn't wearing his glasses.

He looked down at his own chest, at the name patch above the left front pocket, and Jack knew why the uniform looked so big on him. That patch didn't say JACKSON, as it should have. It said O'NEILL.

Daniel locked eyes with Jack through the window. The look on his face flashed from determination to fear and back again. Then he blinked, and suddenly there was no expression, no emotion, nothing. He'd wiped everything away. He shook his head slowly, peeled the name patch off, and held it out in front of him before opening his hand and letting it fall to the floor.

"Daniel, for God's sake, don't do this!" Jack watched in horror as Daniel turned back to the Gate and began moving toward it. "Daniel! Airmen, what are you doing? Stop him!"

The four uniformed SFs at the bottom of the ramp moved forward slowly.

"Close the iris!" Sam shouted.

"I can't," Davis protested. "I tried. It won't close. I don't even know how he got the gate open. We have the entire dialing system offline for repairs."

"Boot it up!"

"I already started it, ma'am."

"Then turn the iris controls back on."

"They are on. We cleared them first, and switched them back on an hour ago. They should be functioning. They just aren't."

"Stop him!" Jack yelled at the SFs again. "Daniel, stop!"

Jack saw Daniel's shoulders rise once more, and then he disappeared into the wormhole.

"No!" Jack and Sam cried in unison.

"Damn it, why didn't you stop him?" Jack yelled at the motionless SFs on the ramp.

All four men turned back to the Control Room. Three turned away quickly and resumed their walk up the ramp. The fourth looked Jack straight in the eyes and smiled.

"We return to our queen what is hers."

It took less than a second for the meaning behind the man's word to sink in. Jack spun to face Sam as Teal'c growled behind them.

"Jaffa!"

The four men on the ramp bolted forward just as Sam's hand slammed down on the iris control in one last ditch effort to close it. It started to rotate into position immediately - obviously whatever had been stopping it wasn't interfering anymore. The first three men ran into the wormhole with no difficulty, and the one that had spoken to Jack jumped the closing iris easily. It clanged shut behind him.

Jack, Teal'c, and Sam looked at each other in horror as the sound of the deactivating wormhole echoed through the Control Room.