Chapter Twenty-Eight

His feet were cold. Head down as he strode away from the confrontation aboard Ba'al's clone's mothership, Daniel watched his bare feet slap against the metal floor of the corridor knowing that this small discomfort should be very low on his list of priorities at the moment, but, somehow, it wasn't. A spark of anger spit through the fog that encased his emotions at the petty tactic – taking his boots. He felt the frown grow between his brows but the anger died away as quickly as it had bloomed and he was left with only disorganized sensations of long abiding pain and loss and confusion. One thought seemed to surface for a moment at the edge of his awareness before slipping away, reappearing suddenly and then vanishing, leading him a breathless chase to grasp it. His heart thudded against his chest as if it was trying to break out, the sound of his blood rushing drowning out all other noises. It was the movement at the edge of his vision that caught his attention and disrupted his agitated pace – Daniel's head snapped up and restless blue eyes focused warily on the figure detaching itself from its relaxed position against the wall.

A Jaffa – First Prime by the look of the gold emblem that had been carved into his smooth forehead. A name flashed across Daniel's mind and brought with it the taste of copper and a sense of disgust that spread slowly, searing every nerve. The Jaffa straightened deliberately, an amused stare never leaving the archaeologist's face as he moved to stand between Daniel and his flight from whatever demons currently pursued him.

"Dr. Jackson." The First Prime's lips curved into a smile.

His blood becoming fire in his veins, Daniel bit off the Jaffa's name: "Thellesan."

Folding his arms over familiar armor, Thellesan nodded as if in casual greeting. "I am pleased to see you looking so well."

"Wish I could say the same. Oh, wait… no I don't."

The Jaffa's quick laughter nearly had Daniel diving for his throat the way he had Ba'al's only a few minutes ago. It was only a few minutes ago, wasn't it? How long had they left him to run amok on their ship after he'd turned his back on the young, bleeding Jaffa from the Ancient planet? Daniel swallowed the swell of fear his confusion brought to his throat. "I see you got a new knife."

Thellesan dropped one hand to caress the handle of the long knife at his belt before smoothing his fingers lightly along one sharp edge from hilt to tip. "Oh, no, Dr. Jackson. Not a new knife." He raised his hand up before his face and rubbed his thumb against the two fingers in a circle, an open look of pleasure in his eyes. "This one is very special to me." The Jaffa's voice and heavy-lidded gaze brought to mind a satiated jungle beast. "I can still feel the slickness of your blood, can almost smell it."

The snarl surprised Daniel as his loathing burned through the remaining fog in his memories. The smug Jaffa lying against Vala's slim form, pressing his mouth over hers until she practically disappeared into the wooden pillar at her back. The dark eyes raking over his own bruised body, reveling in his vulnerability. The tension in Daniel's back and legs as his muscles unconsciously prepared to propel him through the space separating him from his target made him tremble.

Ba'al's First Prime danced backwards and held his arms out at his sides, palms raised towards the human in mute appeal. "My Lord simply asked me to reassure you of my healing," he began, "and to direct you to your new workspace." Thellesan observed the dark shadows haunting Daniel's bright gaze and continued softly. "Please, I do not have permission to hurt you." His glittering eyes and half-smile betrayed the 'yet' he left unvoiced.

"I think you might have a little more trouble with that now that I'm not tied up to a post and beaten senseless," Daniel growled, his lips pulling back to reveal teeth in a mockery of the Jaffa's smile.

Thellesan gestured to the open doorway to his left and Daniel allowed his attention to dart away for an instant, his mind desperately trying to sum up the images and feelings that emerged unbidden. His body's signals were clear – weight evenly balanced on the balls of his feet in preparation, hands held out from his sides, clenching and unclenching as if searching for something to hold, abdomen tight, anticipating the need for swift movement. But his thoughts tumbled restlessly, and the focus that he knew he needed – he had to have – to defeat this Jaffa kept skittering away. He squeezed his eyes closed and the memories assaulted him, each carrying an instant flood of emotion that ripped through his nerves and left him gasping. Vala struggling against her bonds as the flames rose around her, the heat searing him where he stood so close, helplessly watching. The pale, smiling face of the prior, inches in front of his own, equally unmoved by either pleas or defiance amidst the dying village on Quetesh's planet – Daniel's guilt, his conviction of his own responsibility for every death the Ori brought to his galaxy utter and complete. A cold feeling of inevitability swallowed him as he watched the blood flow from the single bullet buried deep in Anubis son's chest – his bullet, soon to be followed by so many more until all that was left was Khalek's knowing smile in a sea of red. The smell of death, the screams of men and women he barely knew, and the taste of burning wires and circuits sent a wave of betrayal shifting through him – his own betrayal as he flung the device away from him and hurled himself into the rings on the Korolev to save himself.

No. No more. Sweat trickled down his back and through the short hairs on his temples and he concentrated on the sensation, following the trail of a single drop under his shirt and down his back and bringing his thoughts to a kind of shuddering halt. A puff of warm air across his face encouraged him to open his eyes, and he blinked away the sticky moisture that had caught in his lashes. A warm hand settled on the back of his damp neck, and Daniel turned his head to seek the source, feeling the heat of a strong body close against his side, focusing finally on brown eyes just a few inches from his own. Two sets, one superimposed upon the other. His breath caught painfully – one pair smiled at him, crinkling in familiar lines, and brought a sense of welcome that nearly undid him. The other burned with something else, something no less fierce but far less kind and Daniel knew in that moment that only one belonged here on this ship. And it was not the one he needed.

"Come." The Jaffa's breath drifted across Daniel's cheek again, and his hand slid down to rest against his back, its pressure communicating where he wanted Daniel to go. An instinctive reluctance to comply rose within him and he set his feet firmly against the metal flooring, feeling his arms fold to cross themselves over his chest. A grin stretched slowly, leisurely, across Thellesan's face. "You are tired," the smooth voice reminded him, "still recovering from your wounds." That heavy hand stroked a path that followed the tickling perspiration and a spark awoke in the dark depths of the Jaffa's gaze, gone in an instant. "Let me help you."

Help? Didn't he realize there could not possibly be any help for him? He'd moved beyond help some time ago, beyond hope, beyond any dreams for good or right, at least when it applied to him. Daniel felt himself frowning again, knowing it was a familiar expression, one his face fell into naturally. He'd stopped yearning for, what, happiness? completion? so long ago, had covered it over with an incessant striving to perform, to solve every mystery he found through the Stargate, that this simple phrase uttered by a being he recognized as his enemy finally stilled his muddy, swirling thoughts. Daniel grasped at one thing – a simple thing – but something he knew he wanted, needed, had to fix. Could fix. This was important – at this he could succeed. He let it expand to fill his entire world as he turned to face the Jaffa.

"My feet are cold."

The spark was back, burning powerfully now, as if a valve had been opened and fuel gushed to meet the flame. The Jaffa's hand stilled against his spine, as his other reached out and grasped Daniel's upper arm, pulling him closer until the archaeologist's crossed arms sat firmly against his chest. A sound deep within the First Prime's throat made Daniel's eyebrows quirk in confusion and he opened his mouth to ask how this could possibly be considered helping, but the noise of metal-shod footfalls interrupted him. He turned his head, shrugging to try to expand the space between his body and the Jaffa's relentless hold.

"My dear Thellesan," the strangely accented voice tsked, chiding the First Prime as if he was a wayward child, but the Goa'uld's face revealed that he was not teasing. "Is this any way to get back into my good graces?"

Daniel turned his head back to watch the hurried stifling of emotion on the Jaffa. The hands dropped away from him and Daniel staggered, confused, realizing just how much he needed someone, anyone, to struggle against just to maintain his own equilibrium. He put out one hand to the wall and breathed deeply.

"You have hurt him." Suddenly Ba'al's voice returned to its deep, echoing cadence, as if both host and symbiote strove to speak at the same time.

"My lord, I…"

"No, no." Daniel interrupted the First Prime's denial, raising one hand. "We were just discussing footwear, actually."

Ba'al smiled. "Of course you were." His eyes narrowed, and he gestured sharply to the two Jaffa flanking him. "Assist Doctor Jackson to his office."

Straightening, Daniel shuffled forward. "Don't need assistance, but thanks anyway," he refused firmly, moving through the open doorway just ahead of the towering thugs. Towering thugs with excellent reflexes, he quickly admitted as they did not plow into his back when he stopped abruptly just inside the door. His mouth was dust, the long muscles in his legs quivered and he knew his eyes were wide, white showing clearly around each blue iris. He felt someone brush past him, but didn't move, didn't blink. A voice sounded somewhere off to his right, droning on about journals, translations, and reference works, about having enough time to finish his research while they were en route. It eventually trailed off into silence.

He didn't remember moving, but his fingers could feel the raised hieroglyphs on the lid, the warmth of the technology as it lay dormant, waiting. It was like a live thing, predatory, confident in the knowledge that its attraction could not be eluded. And Daniel wanted it. Someone gently nudged the amber crystal to the side and the cover of the sarcophagus opened, white light shining from within. Daniel moved back as one golden wing slid closer, one step, and then another, until he felt a presence at his back, a touch on his shoulder.

"We have plenty of time." He could hear the amusement, the dark victory in the tone. "By all means refresh yourself. When you awaken you can finish your work on the Ancient inscriptions and I can assist you in finding Merlin's weapon."

No. Daniel turned his head to speak the word to his captor, but his eyes refused to release their focus on the Goa'uld machine and his mouth was too dry to utter the simple syllable.

The Goa'uld laughed – a deep, rich sound that managed to kick Daniel's brain back into the 'on' position. He carefully clasped his hands behind him and turned his back, still feeling the temptation yawning behind him but thanking any gods of any pantheon for the arrogance of the Goa'uld in general and this one in particular. "Thanks," he managed to whisper after clearing his throat, "but I'm fine. A little thirsty," he added after a moment.

The thin face barely held onto its smile, clearly disappointed, but Ba'al covered it up by ushering Daniel to the other side of the room where his notes and books were spread neatly on a long table, the Goa'uld equivalent of the laptop sitting to one side displaying the Ancient text from his notes on the glowing screen. Daniel wrinkled his nose at the hint of mold overlaid with charred paper that wafted through the purified air of the mothership. He saw that one section of the rubbing had been destroyed and replaced by a copy – obvious by the lack of the kinds of smudges and wrinkles that defined the other pieces, as well as the clean edges that were free from his notations and scribblings.

"I took the liberty of uploading the inscription into my own version of an Ancient translation program. I'm sorry, but I could not quite make out your notations on the rubbings you'd made at the site itself." Ba'al took one of Daniel's journals from the table and absently flipped through it, glancing up now and then to observe any reaction on the archaeologist's face.

Jaw clenching, Daniel didn't hesitate to give him what he wanted – he'd denied himself the sarcophagus, denied the urge to break the First Prime's neck and he was sick of it. With one stride he reached the clone and tore the journal from his long-fingered hands. "That's probably because you don't read Hungarian," he snarled. "Te nem ért, ostoba." He'd learned years ago to make his notes in Earth languages that he had yet to discover on the other side of any wormholes in case his journals ever fell into enemy hands. Abydonian, Egyptian, Goa'uld, Asgard, Ancient, even Ancient Sumerian and Chinese were out there, somewhere, but he hadn't yet met a population of Magyars that had been stolen from Earth's past and transplanted on another world. He flung the journal back onto the table and watched it slide across the rubbings, upsetting the careful placement of papers and books. "And why do you think I'll tell you anything?"

Ba'al tucked his hands into his long sleeves. "Why not?" His eyebrows rose to punctuate the question. "By now your Taur'i friends know that you are no longer on the Jaffa world," he gestured at the archaeologist's arm, "your transmitter will tell them that."

One hand reached up to clutch at his arm. "You left it?" Why would he do that?

"I did. I know that you travelled to that world via the Stargate, and that your ship left some time ago to explore the other planets in this system." Ba'al shrugged. "There is absolutely no danger that they will be able to reach you here aboard my ship. They are too far behind."

Daniel didn't bother to struggle against the honesty in those words – they sounded right. Even if Vala had returned to the SGC and Landry sent the Odyssey back to look for him, they'd always be a step behind the Goa'uld's ship. It would have been a better tactic to leave the Odyssey and the rest of the team to its search of the other planets in the solar system and write him off as lost, even though Daniel knew they'd never do it. At least then they'd be waiting for Ba'al when he came out of hyperspace above one of the worlds instead of chasing them futilely across the galaxy.

"That, coupled with the fact that you want to find Merlin's weapon just as much as, if not more, than I do." The Goa'uld had moved around the table and now leaned both hands against its surface, intense gaze spearing the human where he stood between his crushing need for the sweet oblivion of the sarcophagus and the deeper, more desperate compulsion to find a way to defeat the enemy for whose presence he blamed himself. He watched as the scholar drew one black sleeve across his forehead to brush away the beads of perspiration that swelled at his hairline. The pupils within the blue eyes were still large with need, visible even as he squinted in the bright light of the work room. Ba'al tried to keep his gaze from lingering on the shaking hands and subtle shifts of weight from foot to foot. He would not draw the human's attention to his own weaknesses and he would not underestimate any member of the elusive SG-1 as the original Ba'al had done so many times. He must simply wait for the two irresistible forces that he'd placed within this one room to slowly pull the Taur'i scholar to bits.

"It's not…" Daniel swallowed bile along with his words. Dammit. What the hell was he doing? He clenched his teeth together. The weapon wasn't here – it wasn't on any of the planets within this star's system, he knew that. He'd had all the clues before Ba'al's forces had attacked the peaceful Jaffa settlement, but somehow, between then and now, during torture, escape, or repeated trips through the sarcophagus, the pieces had come together and Daniel just knew. Of course. As damaged and disoriented he was, even with the seething fury that rose and fell within him, totally submerging his higher thinking, this he had to remember.

Ba'al couldn't help smiling. Almost there already. "You do want to find the weapon, don't you, Daniel?" he asked gently.

"Yes." The word hissed between his teeth. Daniel blinked repeatedly and then rubbed both hands over his face to stall for time.

"You know that the Ori will take every world in this galaxy for their own, will oppress every human into a slavery far worse than that of the Goa'uld, even at their most powerful."

Daniel dropped his hands and scowled, blue eyes blazing at the creature in front of him. "I don't need to be reminded of that."

Ba'al stood. "I believe you do." He walked the length of the table as he spoke, crossing to stand in front of the resistant human. "Perhaps you also need to be reminded that your misguided insistence that you and your simple Taur'i friends are the ones who will ultimately prevail over the Ori is utterly ridiculous at best and woefully arrogant at worst."

"What?" Daniel was almost speechless. "You- you're calling us arrogant?"

"Yes. Arrogant. Short-sighted. Childish." Ba'al pronounced each word clearly and distinctly, watching the way they impacted against the scholar's weakened body and mind. "You stumbled upon the Stargate only a handful of years ago and yet you believe that your towering intellects can take down an enemy that threaten the Ancients – the 'gate-builders – themselves."

"Managed to take down the Goa'uld, didn't we?" Daniel snapped back.

"Did you?" Ba'al sneered. "On your own? With no help whatsoever from the Asgard. Or the Replicators. Or the Tok'ra. Or me, for that matter." He saw the doubt pass across the archaeologist's face and pressed his attack. "You used the resources that you had to use; you took what you needed to protect yourselves and to exploit your enemy's weaknesses. I do not judge you for that." He casually waved one hand in the air. "How could I? I've done the same thing for thousands of years." He smiled. "But wasn't it your own arrogance, Daniel, that made the Ori aware of this galaxy's very existence? Tell me," he took one step and cocked his head to one side, "how does that make us any different from one another?"

It wasn't anything he hadn't told himself over and over again, but the clone's statement hit him like a blow, once again scattering the thoughts that he'd been trying to gather up into some semblance of order. They flew away from him, leaving him in darkness, an abyss of reason where all he could do was feel the guilt, the horror at what he'd done, at what he'd become. The Goa'uld was right. He'd been holding onto the idea that his return from being Ascended made him the one, the only one capable of figuring out a solution to the Ori problem – he'd even accepted Adria's threat as some kind of signal that he'd been right. It was his charge, his responsibility. Suddenly a dry laugh burst from his throat and he felt the burning behind his eyes that prefaced his tears. What a fool he'd been.

Strong arms caught him as he fell, turned him, and urged him to take a few steps before easing him to rest against something, a blunt edge against the front of his thighs. A faint warning flipped through his mind once, but Daniel ignored it, and, wrapping himself in the darkness of his need, he let his head drop to his chest as the hands maneuvered him almost gently into the box. He kept his eyes closed against the whiteness as the metal arms folded back over him with a grating of metal on metal almost muffling the gloating words of the Goa'uld standing over him.

"We have plenty of time."