1998 - Need
The thoughts that are running through Daniel's head are even more terrifying than the thoughts that were running through Jack's own when he was thinking about killing himself.
Frantic, panicked, drug-addicted thoughts.
"I understand, I do," Jack says to calm him.
Daniel relaxes, and allows himself oh-so-briefly into Jack's own head. Jack does understand. He understands everything, and everything is going to be all right.
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Secrets
Jack's stomach turns. There are times when he really wishes he couldn't read other people's minds. He wishes he didn't just tell what General Hammond was thinking.
General Hammond is even less sure than Jack is that the Air Force isn't somehow responsible for this. General Hammond even has a mental list of people he thinks might be responsible for killing a civilian that might have let the world know about the Stargate program.
Jack really doesn't want this to be true. When you decide to give your life to something, you really want that thing to be worthy of it. You want from it perfection. But there is nothing in all the world that is perfection. So, jack decides to focus on the good things, and not think about the parts of the Air Force that he can't deal with.
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The Fifth Race
There is one second before the alien starts speaking his language when Jack first begins to understand his thoughts. It's imperfect, like when he read the minds of the enemy soldiers in Vietnam. The foreign language obscures the meaning of the words just enough that it is difficult to understand what the person is trying to say. But he still understands.
"Help me," Jack grinds out with his mouth.
But there are no language barriers in his mind, and he is able to speak fluently. He tells them where he is from, and what happened to him, and a lot of other details about his life, some of them are unintentional.
"A human that can do this? It is a new thing," the alien says mentally, in awe.
"So I am human?" Jack asks desperately in his mind. It is a question that he has never before received an answer to. It's a question that he has become more and more worried about as time went by.
The alien doesn't answer the question. Perhaps he doesn't know the answer any more than Jack does. But the answer is powerful nonetheless, and it gives Jack the wonderful feeling that it doesn't really matter if he is human or not.