Spoilers: A Matter of Time (Stargate, S2)

Warning: torture

Left Behind

Three and a half years later

The Air Force had tried to prepare him for something like this. They give him the spiel, put him through the training, subjected him to all the horrors imaginable so he would know what to expect. But the truth of it is, nothing could have prepared him for this, and he was in no condition to take the crash course.

Jack struggled to breathe through the pain as he curled up on his side, his hands tied tightly behind his back, trying not to think about what was going to happen to him. If they didn't do something about the bleeding bullet holes in his left thigh and his right shoulder, he wouldn't have to worry for long. He would be dead.

Getting shot hadn't been part of the plan. Someone on the inside had sold his team out, they were ambushed, he was hit, and…Frank booked it. His team had left him behind. Through the agony of the piercing round to his shoulder that knocked him off balance he had maintained consciousness. Even after the successive strike to his leg which knocked him off his feet he had attempted to crawl to his teammates and the pick-up site. As he fought to survive despite the excruciating pain in his limbs, expecting his team to come pick him up any second now, he looked up and saw them leave.

He watched the helicopter take off without him.

They had left him behind.

He didn't have long to think about it before he was surrounded by several very angry Iraqi soldiers, and after a single strike to the head he was knocked unconscious.

--

When he awoke he had no idea how much time had passed, but he was very aware that his leg and shoulder had gone untreated apart from a couple filthy pieces of cloth tied tightly around the wounds to stop the bleeding. Tight enough to cut off the blood circulation and thereby probably doing as much damage as good, and dirty enough to help a nice infection set in.

It didn't take long for the fever to show up, and he spent the next two days surrounded by the filth of his sickness, his captors only bothering to slap some disinfectant over his wounds, making sure to dig their fingers in viciously just to keep him happy, and give him multiple injections of what he suspected was antibiotics. No painkillers. He was pretty sure the bullet was still inside his thigh and he wasn't looking forward to the day their 'surgeons' removed it. His shoulder had clearly been a through-and-through, and he had some movement in his arm which was a good sign.

Then he was left alone. It must have been days, but he had no measure of time. They gave him enough water to stay alive, and even some food to ward off the hunger pains that threatened to overwhelm the pain in his leg and shoulder and the nausea of fever and infection.

They took his clothes. He knew the tactic was designed to heighten his humiliation, but as someone who had spent his formative years with an entire race of naked people, it didn't have the desired effect on his psyche. However, it did have a physical one, as he was left more vulnerable to the elements, especially during the cold of the desert night.

He didn't know how long he had been lying in that cold, dark room, his hands still tied behind his back, his hips bruised and sore from the hard floor, before they finally came for him and dragged him outside, throwing him down face first into the sand. He came up with a mouthful of sand and grit, spitting it out and blocking out the pain.

They left him out there for hours, and he was too tired and hurt to move. They tied his feet together and bound his hands to a nearby post so he couldn't easily escape. Eventually the heat of the sun began to take its toll on his physically abused body and his mind. When he saw his mother and grandfather Harry he realized he was hallucinating but it was nice to see them again so he didn't mind. He was always seeing crazy things when he was near death.

They left him out there all night, and though the bitter cold and blowing sand were less than appealing, it gave him a beautiful view of the stars. Despite his condition and impending treatment, he almost felt at peace. Wherever he was on Earth, no matter how bad things got, he had always been able to look up at the night sky and know that his father was out there. That he wasn't alone, and never would be. It was a clear night, he could see hundreds of thousands of stars, endless and infinite. It was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. He couldn't believe he could find anything beautiful about his situation, but the stars of the galaxy were calling out to him, beckoning him with their soft, gentle light, welcoming him, inviting him into their warm embrace.

The harsh light of day changed all that. Once more he was dragged unceremoniously inside and thrown down on a hard concrete floor, but there was someone there with him this time. The interrogation was about to begin.

He gave his name, rank and serial number, as was expected, daring to look his interrogator in the eye. His high rank wouldn't do him any favors in this place, as they would expect him to have more knowledge about the American military movements. He braced himself for the occasional punch to the gut or the face or cruel fingers poking his wounds. They didn't do anything that would seriously incapacitate him and he absently noted that the guy asking him the questions didn't seem all that happy about his job. The guy was just following orders, no doubt. He couldn't really sympathize, but it did give him some hope, not that he would expect any special treatment.

A few hours later he was thrown back in his cell and he was too exhausted from his ordeal to cushion his fall. He fell on his arm awkwardly and screamed as something in his shoulder snapped. With his hands still tied behind his back and blood and pus seeping out of the gunshot wound, he wearily sat up and slammed his dislocated shoulder against the wall until it slid back into place. He curled up on the floor and whimpered softly, fighting back tears of agony.

He fell asleep thinking of Sara, Charlie and Sam, and the last time he had seen them all together. It had been Charlie's third birthday and Sam had dropped by for the week to celebrate with them. Jack had just returned from a three-month stint overseas and he was more than ready to spend time with his family. He hated that he was missing so much of Charlie's life. He had already missed out watching one son grow up, he hated that he was doing the same thing with his other son.

He remembered Charlie's fascination with Thor, how the little boy had clung to his grandfather with innocent trust, and he had wondered if that was how he had been with Thor. He hoped so. Charlie was two during Thor's last visit, and that would be the last time they could be together.

His thoughts inevitably turned to Thor. He had promised his father that he would never ask for his help on a mission. He had kept his promise after the parachuting mishap, struggling alone across a desert in hostile territory for nine days until he made it to safety, never expecting a rescue because of the nature of his mission. He could have died, but he didn't ask Thor for help. He had to rely on himself, to depend on his people and his own wits to get him out of danger, but this time, he didn't think he had the strength to wait for help to arrive or to save himself.

He was too badly hurt to escape on his own feet, and judging by the treatment they had given him so far, it would take a long time for the leg wound to heal, if it ever did. His condition would deteriorate over the weeks given the meager meal portions he was given until he would hardly have the strength to walk, not to mention the muscle atrophy from staying off his injured leg. Apart from the physical deterrence of his condition, there was also the matter of an escape plan, in that he didn't have one. There was nothing useful in his cell, and from what he had seen so far when they dragged him through the compound, even if he still had his genius intuition this was one place where MacGyverisms were in short order. There was nothing but walls and concrete floors and dirt.

And his team thought he was dead. Cromwell would report him as MIA, suspected as KIA and there would be no rescue mission mounted for him. Eventually someone might hear word of his survival but he doubted anyone in Washington would care whether he made it home or not. He was good at his job but so were a lot of other men like him.

It was ironic, when he thought about it. He had spent his whole life preparing for a war against the Goa'uld, knowing he might never actually face them in real battle, and he had already lost his edge for that war. His scientific background of the Stargate and the Asgard and Ancient technology had been wiped clean from his brain. Now he might lose his life to an enemy right here on his home planet, because of the negligence of a man he thought was his friend. All his life, his enemy had been a distant concept, an abstract idea that he knew existed but couldn't reach.

Now, his enemy was literally gripping him by the arms, dragging him roughly to an interrogation that involved very little interrogating. And there wasn't a thing he could do to get out of it. All he could do right now was hope for a rescue.

Within the next two weeks, that hope began to fade.

--

It had been about a month before they removed him from his isolation room and threw him in with the other prisoners. Once there, he realized that he would have preferred the remoteness and safety of being alone in his prison cell with nobody to bother him but the man responsible for his interrogation.

His shoulder had more or less healed but it was very weak and had little mobility, and he walked with a heavy limp, unable to bear much weight on the damaged leg. Their surgeons had finally removed the bullet two weeks ago and had most likely done more damage than help. Physically, his overall condition seemed among the most severe of the other prisoners he was locked up with, which left him more vulnerable to attack and the desperation of hungry men.

These people followed an entirely different set of rules. It was every man for himself, and it didn't matter what you had to do to another human being, as long as you survived. There was no hope here. There were men with their hands cut off, some with their tongues cut out, and even if they could have their freedom there was little they believed they could do with it. It made him sick to see humans treated like this, and as much as he wanted to help them, to give them some kind of hope, he knew it would do no good. This wasn't a battle he could win.

On his first day in the general population he proved to everyone that he wouldn't go down without a fight. He was the only American and it was obvious they had little love for his kind, regardless of what perceived crimes had landed them in this prison. Two men tried to steal his portion of food, knocking him across the head to stun him, but he retaliated with cool instinct, breaking the first guy's nose and knocking the other guy unconscious with a single blow to the head. Expecting a fight and spurred on by a mob mentality as well as a chance to take out their hatred on the American, they came at him in pairs. It took a broken knee, a dislocated shoulder, another broken nose and a severely bruised trachea to convince the others that they'd be better off leaving the American alone.

The next day he was taken away for another interrogation session and when he was thrown back in the shared cell, unconscious from the electrical current that had passed through his body and nearly stopped his heart, he was unable to protect himself from a few retaliatory and well-placed kicks to his ribs and back. When he finally regained consciousness his cellmates could all see the transformation that had taken place, the pure hatred radiating from his eyes and the determination to survive. With a single glare he warned everyone never to touch him again or they wouldn't live to regret it.

He didn't like Earth, anymore. He had learned his lesson: Earth was no better than any other planet out there and humans were no better than the Goa'uld. He couldn't bear to associate himself with these people, but if he wasn't careful he would become one of them. He wasn't that desperate yet. He could already feel it inside him, the hatred and rage towards his captors and his prison mates who made his life a living Hell. He wasn't like them, not yet.

He wasn't human. He was Asgard.

He began to block out all his emotions, presenting an indifferent front and only a vague awareness of what was happening to him. The others left him alone, remembering what he was capable of despite his apparent descent into the comfort of insanity. But he wasn't insane.

He was Asgard. Thor had never given in to torture, and despite everything he had witnessed in his thousands of years he was still fighting for good, protecting his people and other humans and races that deserved to live. He was still fighting evil, though even Thor had to draw the line somewhere, making sacrifices and conceding some control to the Goa'uld because he and the Asgard couldn't honestly save the entire galaxy.

Jack would be like him. He would bury his emotions so deep that there was nothing left but the military man. Survival was no longer about protecting his body, keeping his heart pumping and his blood running. It was about protecting his soul from the evil that man does. Like so many other obstacles he had overcome in his past, the accidents and bad timing that left him bearing the blood of the innocent on his hands, he had to learn to live with the pain. It was a part of who he was, it would shape who he would become, and he couldn't allow himself to succumb like the others had. He had to walk a fine line between getting what he wanted and getting what he needed.

When he made it back home, if he ever did, he would have to live with the consequences of his actions. He would have to face Sara, and his little innocent boy, Charlie, and he couldn't bear the thought of ever tarnishing their lives. He would do what he had to do in order to get home to them but he would have to draw a line somewhere.

Which is why he withdrew from everything and everyone. He stopped responding to the others. He didn't speak to anyone, ignoring those who approached him to the extent of turning his back on them. He sat alone with his back to the wall, or spent a few hours each day working on his injured shoulder and leg, a self-imposed rehab session which some of the others began to imitate because there was honestly nothing better to do.

When the others started fighting, or beating one of the other inmates he didn't try to stop them, no matter how much it hurt not to be able to help. He had to think about himself and his commitment to getting home to his family, and putting himself in the way of other people's fights was a sure way of getting himself killed.

He didn't like what he had become in that prison, and no matter how hard he tried to block it all out, he couldn't help but hate Frank Cromwell for his part in instigating the transformation. All he had left was his love for his family and his hatred of Frank Cromwell and Iraq.

--

He had made a big mistake. It wasn't that he actually enjoyed antagonizing the interrogator, it was more that he was bored with being tortured so ruthlessly and had decided to spice things up a bit.

After a couple malapropisms which compared his torturer with something that would have his mother washing his mouth out with soap, a few harsh words regarding the décor and hospitality of the joint, and a rather cheerful oratory of how much he was going to enjoy tearing the life from each of his captors, Jack was now the proud owner of a broken rib, several raw strips of torn flesh on his back, a split lip that needed stitches but which wouldn't get it and a face so swollen and bruised that his right eye was swollen shut and he could barely move his jaw.

He felt great.

They threw him back in isolation, he wasn't sure why, but he wasn't going to complain. He preferred being alone, even if it was meant to drive him crazy. Nobody came for him for over a day, and he was thirsty and hungry and he hurt like the blazes but he wasn't going to complain. It wouldn't do any good anyway.

He curled up on the floor, facing the wall to provide his front with the most protection for when the goons returned for him, and he tried to sleep. Sleep was the only escape from the pain and the agony of his life, though it had been weeks, or maybe months, since he could actually remember the faces of his loved ones in his dreams. He could hardly remember the color of Sara's eyes, and he could barely recall the face of his youngest son, the sound of his laughter and his sweet young voice saying 'Daddy, love you.' His family was the only thing to keep him going and he couldn't even remember what they looked like.

"Hey!"

Jack tried to ignore the harsh whisper coming from the locked doorway. The voice sounded American, but they had tried to trick him before, simulating an escape attempt, but his 'savior' had slipped up and tried too hard to get information from him and he knew it was a trap. He wasn't surprised they would try it again.

"Hey, buddy. You speak English? Are you…are you even alive?" The voice trailed off at the end.

Okay, that was different. The voice sounded familiar, and if he didn't know any better he'd think it was…

Very carefully he rolled onto his torn-up back and looked up at the narrow window slit in the door, peering through his swollen black eye, trying to distinguish the face on the other side.

"I'm looking for the American. Have you seen him, do you know where he is?"

He blinked his eyes, unwilling to believe what he was seeing and hearing. With a great effort and an even greater amount of pain, he rolled onto his hands and knees and slowly crawled to the center of the room, closer to the door.

Closer to the apparition of Sam.

"Oh God, Jack!" There was no mistaking the voice now, that was definitely his son, Sam Malloy, and if he hadn't been so shocked and happy and grateful and overwhelmed by his son's presence, he would have had something to say about his son pulling a foolish stunt like this to come and rescue him. "Just hang on, Dad, I'll get you out of here. Jack, I found him, give me a hand."

He heard something scraping the door, metal on metal, then suddenly the door swung open and his son was there, kneeling in front of him. And just behind his son was Jack Dalton, looking amazed, shocked, grateful and disgusted all at the same time. "Oh God, Mac. What did they do to you?" Dalton whispered.

"Can you move? We need to get out of here in a hurry, our ride's out back," Sam added urgently in hushed tones.

Instead of trying to respond, Jack grabbed onto Sam's wrist and struggled to pull himself to his feet, grateful that he had spent the last couple months working on rehabilitating his injured leg. He had no idea how Sam and Jack had managed to get into the prison complex in the first place, or how they were going to get him out of there given his condition, but for the moment, he was just going to let them take care of everything. He was too weak, too injured, too hungry and emotionally withdrawn to think about anything but the fact that someone had finally come for him.

Although he was fiercely proud of his son for coming to rescue him, even in his current state of only slight awareness and comprehension it really irked him that his son had to risk his life for something that never should have happened. Any chances of patching things up with Frank were gone now that Sam had been put in danger.

Jack stood between Sam and Dalton as they half-carried, half-dragged him through the compound, his bare feet sliding painfully across the floor when he lost his step. Several times they were forced to slow down as they passed others in the narrow hallway but with their disguises concealing their faces and Jack strung up between them, it looked like they were just two guards transporting a prisoner.

Then suddenly they were outside and Jack flinched at the harsh daylight and was immeasurably grateful when Sam tucked a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. He didn't think it went with the masquerade but he wasn't going to argue.

They dragged him out back, through the sand and Jack could see several vehicles parked there, looking dusty and overused and he was sure they were being held together with his beloved duct tape in vital places. They approached one of the jeeps and Sam reached in, pulling out a white robe which he slung over Jack's shoulders. He hissed in pain as the cloth rubbed against his torn flesh but he certainly wasn't going to cry about it. Dalton helped him climb into the passenger seat of the truck, whispering "Hang in there, buddy, we'll get you home," and he didn't spare the time to wonder if Jack Dalton was mad at him for all the deceit and for disappearing from his life without explanation. It didn't matter, his friend was here for him now and his own team wasn't.

Dalton got behind the wheel of the vehicle and started the engine, heedless of the need for caution now, and they sped out of there, the sand blasting up behind them. Jack groaned and whimpered as his injured body was rocked and tossed around over every bump.

He heard distant shouting behind him as the prison guards were alerted to their escape, but a moment later, after a distinctive click from the back seat, there was a massive explosion and curiosity forced him to turn around, where he saw a massive fireball rising into the sky where the vehicles had once been. As he continued to watch he realized that nobody would be coming after them and he allowed himself to relax. His son had certainly followed in his footsteps and enjoyed a good explosion as much as he did.

As they were flying across the desert sands, away from that hellhole, that stinking prison that took so much of his life, he fell sideways on the seat until he was leaning against Dalton's shoulder. Needing the contact of a human being, of a friend, of family, he clung to Dalton's arm, to his leg, digging into the thick robes he was wearing, afraid to let go and find out it was all a dream. He ignored the pain in his shoulder, ribs, jaw and legs, and he laid his head against Dalton's shoulder. He was sure he heard his friend grunt something about being ticklish, but he was too busy wrapping himself up in the warmth of friendship he didn't think he could ever let go.

He still couldn't believe it.

TBC