Shrink
A/N: This story is set in "Urban Legends", a variant of Gryph's "Deep Water" universe, developed by Gryph and Laura Boeff. Stargate belongs to Showtime, MGM, Gekko, and Double Secret, Airwolf belongs to Bellisario and Universal. No infringement intended for any of these.
~*~*~*~*~
It started in the SGC commissary. But it didn't end there. Unfortunately.
Actually, Colonel Jack O'Neill would reflect later, it had to have started long before his ill-fated conversation with Ferretti. But the major's sly grin was the first clue he had that something was definitely up.
Which just goes to show that even Black Ops colonels can have blind spots.
~*~*~*~*~
Meatloaf, Jack was thinking at the time, eyeing the multicolored glop about to land on his tray. Maybe he could sneak back to the armory, zat this stuff properly dead before anyone tried to eat it. Why did it have to be meatloaf?
And for breakfast, too; though that last adding of insult to injury was not, technically speaking, the commissary's fault. The planet they'd just come back from had a day-night cycle roughly ten hours off Earth's, that was all there was to it. So, after they'd gotten out of Janet's post-mission exam clutches, it was supper for breakfast.
Ugh. Meatloaf.
A drift of salty garlic hit his nose as Jack headed toward SG-1's table. Daniel was a two-handed duster tonight; garlic powder in one fist, salt in the other. "How can you do that?"
"The recipe's not that bad, Jack. It just needs a little... flair."
"Carter?" Jack raised a gray-shot brow.
The blond astrophysicist had fork in hand, sampling away with none of the usual grimaces traditionally reserved for galley food. "It is better this time, Sir."
Unbelievable. "Teal'c?"
The Jaffa poked a fork through his own slice, nodded in mild approval. "The cooks appear to have increased their proportion of onions."
"You had onions on Chulak?"
"The ancient Egyptians used to swear by onions, Jack." Daniel waved a fork over his mixed salad. "Lettuce, cucumbers, bacon bits - the only thing in here they didn't have was tomatoes."
"No BLTs. No wonder they were so grumpy."
Daniel rolled his eyes, opened his mouth to speak-
Shut it with a near-audible snap, gaze flicking to someone coming up over Jack's shoulder.
Major Lou Ferretti, Jack noted, catching the faint reflection in Daniel's glasses. The grinning reflection. Uh-oh. "Hey, Ferretti." He tried to keep it noncommittal. A grin like that meant one of Lou's practical jokes was about to bite someone, hard-
"How'd you do it?" Lou shook his head, still grinning.
"Do what?" He hadn't pulled anything. Lately.
"Oh, right. Can't talk about it." Ferretti sobered. "If they could pin this on someone, man...." The grin resurfaced. "But it was perfect. Just perfect."
"What was?" Daniel asked curiously.
"What, you didn't tell him, Colonel?" Ferretti implored the ceiling. "Sir, you two gotta start talking to each other again. This was just too good!"
Teal'c's brow went up. "I do not believe we are acquainted with the circumstances you are alluding to, Major Ferretti."
"Oh. Well, that makes sense," Ferretti allowed, propping himself on the back of a borrowed chair. "It's Mackenzie."
Daniel wet his lips. Teal'c frowned. Carter glanced at them, looked back at her CO.
Right. Ask the obvious. "What about Mackenzie, Ferretti?"
"Janet's got him. And oh man, is he howling...."
Which made no sense whatsoever. Mackenzie hadn't been off-world. "Why?"
Ferretti's eyes bugged. "You didn't hear?" The major leaned in close, dropped his voice to a bare whisper. "Word is...."
Jack listened. Gulped. Tried to ignore the obscurely pleased look on Teal'c's face; damn Jaffa hearing, anyway.
Oh man. If the general thinks we had anything to do with this....
~*~*~*~*~
"I didn't do it."
Seated at the head of the briefing room table, General Hammond raised a skeptical brow.
Tucked into her own chair, Major Sam Carter watched her CO try to dig himself out of this one. Janet hadn't gotten far into her explanation, yet; but the few words she had mentioned had every male in the room flinching.
Never thought I'd live to see the day Teal'c flinched. Sam stifled her smile. It wasn't funny. Really.
Much.
"I didn't!" Jack turned to his team. "You know I wouldn't do this to a fellow officer. Even if I had a clue how." He shot an annoyed glance Janet's way. Arms crossed, folder tucked into one elbow, Dr. Frasier did not look convinced. "Come on, Daniel, you know I wouldn't do this...."
"No, Jack." Daniel's tone was light, perfectly level. "I know you wouldn't."
Oh, hell. Now Sam flinched. Daniel was not happy.
More accurately, Daniel was ticked as hell.
Granted, Daniel had reason to be ticked at Mackenzie. The man drugs you up, throws you in a padded room, locks you away from the only family you have - only a saint wouldn't be mad at him. And Daniel wasn't a saint. Quite.
So why is he mad at Jack?
"Be that as it may," General Hammond stepped in. "We need to solve the problem. Dr. Frasier, do you have any idea what might have caused Dr. Mackenzie's...." he hesitated.
"Rapid-onset genital atrophy?" Janet said dryly.
Every man in the room cringed.
"Not yet, Sir. Though we've managed to rule out any compounds of terrestrial origin." She opened her folder, shaking out two altogether too revealing pictures. "We did find something on closer examination."
Sam only glanced, averted her eyes. Felt the red heat of a blush sweep cheeks and throat. Thank god she wasn't a linguist. She had no interest in looking at that... package, no matter how shrunken.
And why on earth would anyone get a tattoo there?
Of course, if it was some sort of alien infestation - well, that she could understand. Sort of. As long as she didn't have to look at it.
"I am unfamiliar with this script, Daniel Jackson."
Strike one. Teal'c knew most of the alien symbols out there, if only by reputation. This could be bad. What if it was an infestation? Contagious? Mackenzie had been loose in the general public a lot more than most SG teams; he could have transmitted this whatever-it-was to half the continent by now-
"That's... understandable," the archaeologist said abstractly. "Are you sure you haven't found anything Earth-native that would cause this, Janet?"
And Sam blinked, dread chain of thought broken. Daniel wasn't stupid. He could see the potential consequences just as easily. So why wasn't he worried?
"Nothing," Janet stated. "Why?"
Daniel's finger tapped the photo. "I think I've seen these before. Somewhere."
"Where?" Jack asked pointedly.
The archaeologist shrugged. "I'm not sure." He looked up at the general. "I need to do some research, sir."
Sir, Sam thought. And he was asking Hammond, not Jack.
Something's wrong with my team.
~*~*~*~*~
Teal'c frowned at the sign outside the place of intoxicating beverages they were about to reconnoiter. Richard the III's Tavern, carved wood proclaimed. In smaller letters, Bottled spiders optional.
Ah. The Jaffa nodded in comprehension. A reference to the plays of the Tau'ri Shakespeare. A man quite popular in this planet's culture, from what Daniel Jackson had told him. Curious, that Mackenzie would frequent a place named after a character that misrepresented and maligned the historical person Richard the Third had actually been.
Or perhaps not so curious, after all. Mackenzie was no stranger to misrepresentations of reality.
A pity Daniel Jackson was not here to see his suspicions of Mackenzie confirmed. Teal'c wondered why the scholar had arranged to be absent.
The need for research was real. Teal'c was certain of that. But others could have accomplished the same task. If not as swiftly.
No; Daniel Jackson had deliberately separated himself from the team. Odd. And disquieting.
Though perhaps not nearly as disquieting as the fact that O'Neill and Major Carter did not seem to find it odd.
"Bookstore, bar," Sam muttered, checking off the places Mackenzie had been. Places Janet Fraiser had requested they check, in case Mackenzie's condition was in truth contagious. "Restaurant, bar. Theater-"
"Bar," Jack finished, as they prepared to head inside. "I sense a trend."
"Yeah, I saw him," the bartender admitted after seeing their military ID. He pursed his lips, polishing a mug. Tilted his head to get a better look at Mackenzie's photo in the dim light. "Came in half-sloshed; I would've cut him off sooner, but his date said she'd get him a cab home."
"Date?" O'Neill's tone only sounded casual. With reason. Mackenzie had not mentioned a 'date'. Unwise of him.
"Classy gal," the bartender nodded. "White dress, sable over-wrap - not department-store stuff, know what I mean? Some guys get all the luck."
"I don't think he'd call it lucky," Major Carter said dryly. "Did you get her name?"
"No, never did. There some kind of trouble?" He glanced from face to face, settled on Teal'c.
"Major Mackenzie appears to have met with some... misfortune," the Jaffa rumbled. Lifted a brow in implication; it would work in the Serpent Guard barracks....
Apparently, it worked among Tau'ri as well; the bartender grinned. "Oh, that kind of misfortune." He shook his head. "She didn't look like the type to roll a guy, but-" he tossed his cloth into the mug. "Let me get you the name of the cab."
~*~*~*~*~
"And the winner is... tattoo parlor." Jack reached out, rattled the chained grate.
"Closed tattoo parlor," Sam muttered.
"Well, as to that-" Jack grinned. Been a long time since he'd indulged in breaking-and-entering.
"Sir, wouldn't it be better just to come back when they're open?"
"With such obvious protections, it is likely they have engaged an alarm to summon your police, in the event their place of business is disturbed," Teal'c noted.
Spoilsports.
~*~*~*~*~
Tell me you didn't do this, Daniel typed.
Daniel. I'm surprised at you. (Grin.) As a fellow colleague once said, "A good operative never takes a fight someone else is willing to take for him."
???
Do you think you're the only person Mackenzie's made a mistake treating?
Er. Well. He hadn't thought about it, much. Tried not to think about it at all, really. Every time he thought about the whole mess, he remembered the queasy twist of reality, the long, drawn-out horror of taking more drugs to counterbalance those Mackenzie had forced into his system-
Daniel. Michael's words sprang up on the screen, commanding attention. Breathe. Slow and easy. Think about the sky over Cheyenne. Clear, so blue it makes your heart hurt, streaked with cirrus like scattered milkweed down....
Images of the white cell faded, washed away by mountain wind. He could almost feel the breeze sailing out of the sky, cool and sharp and alive, gods, so alive.
That's right. Easy. Remember the wind. Remember the sky.
Daniel blinked, looked around at his office. Books, computer, piles upon piles of paper. Not a trace of wind. What are you doing?
A long, blank silence on the screen. If my superiors knew, they'd probably lock me up and throw away the key.
Knew? Knew what? Daniel arched a skeptical brow. You have superiors?
Well... higher ranking officers. A quiet pause. I believe you're familiar with the term 'empath'.
Well, yes; after they'd run into the telepathic Asgard, he'd made a point of looking up what humans knew about ESP - wait. You?
I will deny that, Daniel. Letters landed on the screen with iron forcefulness. If certain personages in government had any inkling that an intelligence officer had even the slightest shred of paranormal abilities, said officer would likely spend the rest of a very short life on Hansen's Island.
Hansen's Island? Where's that?
Don't ask. We may investigate psychics and mages, and we may even hire them under strict supervision, but they never rise to positions of power in our organizations. A breath's pause. Even if they only found out what they could do by accident.
Daniel wet his lips. So what could... someone do by accident?
Not much, came the frank admission. Possibly just follow their intuition, sense when someone's heading into a bad rumination, help them pull themselves out. (Shrug.) Daniel... you need to see a professional. A real one, with an open mind. Someone who can treat attempted mind-control; chemical, biological, or mystical.
Mackenzie's the SGC psychiatrist-
According to your own files, Michael's text interrupted, Of the seventeen officers and enlisted who've been ordered to see Mackenzie since you were released, only four actually have. I checked. Their injuries left them immobilized. They couldn't get away.
...Oh.
(Sigh.) The military instituted psychiatrists for a reason. Those personnel need help. Having their superior officers encourage them to avoid Mackenzie is not treating the problem.
Daniel snorted. So you decided to do something about it.
Who, me? (Snicker.) Though it's possible someone I know just may have happened to let Corporal Arkwright's puri dai - lovely lady, Ekaterin, you'd like her - know where a certain enemy of the tribe might be found....
~*~*~*~*~
Sam clenched and unclenched her hands behind her back, watching Daniel face down Janet's unwilling patient. The team was here, and the general was here, but she still had a bad feeling about this-
"So." Daniel looked Mackenzie in the eye. "You told Corporal Arkwright he wasn't seeing ghosts."
"Of course he wasn't!" the psychiatrist blustered, sheets drawn over his affected region. "It was an obvious case of depressive hallucination, brought on by-"
Daniel's voice was as cold as she'd ever heard it. "He tried to hang himself."
"As I said, depressive-"
"He asked you to let his relatives hold a cleansing ceremony."
"Give in to pagan mummery?" Mackenzie snorted. "To chase away the ghoulies and ghosties? It was in his mind, Dr. Jackson. A mere imbalance of chemicals and emotions. He certainly wasn't being haunted."
"Well, I'd say his puri dai disagreed with you."
"His what?"
"The headwoman of his tribe," Daniel filled in. "Corporal Arkwright's mother is Natalya Trubetski. She's Russian."
"Dr. Jackson, I am well aware-"
"More importantly, she's Rom," the archaeologist went on grimly. "And even though she married a gaje, it was an official marriage, blessed by her mother, the puri dai, and the elders of the tribe. So Corporal Arkwright is, technically speaking, Rom." He flourished Janet's photos. "These are Romany symbols. Or as you'd probably put it, gypsy."
"Daniel?" Jack arched a brow. "You're sure this isn't off-world?"
"I'm sure," Daniel said firmly. "The Rom... the gypsies are an oral culture. They still don't like writing today. Think it corrupts the mind with gaje culture. Outsiders. Us. They do have a point-"
"Daniel." Jack drummed his fingers on his arm.
The archaeologist shrugged. "Last I'd heard, the best anthropological guess is that the Rom didn't even pick up the idea of using symbols in their curses until after they'd tangled with the medieval Catholic Church. Way after the Goa'uld came through."
"The Circle of Darkness?" Sam put in.
Daniel shook his head. "I did a little more research after I got back, Sam. It may have looked like a medieval English village, but I think you could make a good argument for convergent cultural evolution. Maybe from the Saxon tribes that contacted the Roman Empire, around the first century AD. They did have the arch." Blue eyes rolled behind his glasses. "It's a lot more likely than the Antarctic Gate being up and running in 1100 AD to ship out Medieval English slaves."
Good point.
"Except for the part about drilling a hole in your head to let the demons out," Jack said testily.
Also a good point. And probably enough to quell their archaeologist's enthusiasm, given how the team had been acting lately-
No. Sam saw Daniel's eyes narrow, preparing to haul out archaeological chapter and verse in support of his position. Ready, willing, and able to defend his theory, whatever rude opinions were ranged against him. Wow. Haven't seen that in a while.
"Actually, Colonel, trepanning has been around a long time," Janet put in. "We have trepanned skulls from the late Stone Age onward, all over the world." She brushed back a strand of auburn hair as the colonel threw a surprised glance her way. "I've been doing some reading on historical medical practices. In case one of the teams gets into difficulty on another planet and I have to consult with the local practitioners. I'd hate to be burned as a witch just because I wash my hands between patients."
"You're more likely to get stoned," Daniel put in abstractly. "It takes a lot of wood to burn someone. Subsistence cultures don't like to waste that much energy. Even on a witch. It takes large-scale civilization to do that."
And wasn't that a wonderful image. Sam shuddered. "So you can read those?"
"They're symbols. More concepts than language, but...." Daniel traced lines on the photo. "This one is permanence with condition, I think. Sort of an if p, then q idea. Pretty common in curses."
"Curses?" Janet said sharply.
Daniel nodded. "This one I've never seen used, so no one ever traced out the whole thing, but... this symbol means enemy of the tribe." He looked up.
"Do you truly expect me to believe I've been..." Mackenzie swallowed. "Cursed?"
"Indeed." Teal'c never grinned. But that non-expression was a close to a grin as she'd ever seen.
"But there is an out," Daniel pointed out brightly. "This symbol is a little tricky, but I'm fairly certain it has to do with travelling the same road as the one you've offended." He shrugged. "So leave the SGC, and you should be fine."
Dusting off his hands, he left.
"Of all the insane, imbecilic, irrational-"
Ignoring Mackenzie, Sam went after her friend.
General Hammond caught up with him first. "Dr. Jackson. Are you certain?"
Stopping, Daniel leaned against the corridor wall. "General. I don't like Mackenzie. Actually, don't like is probably an understatement, but...." He drew a breath, closed his eyes, pushed up his glasses. "I'm not Rom. That's as accurate a translation as I can make. If he leaves the SGC, the curse will go dormant. If he comes back, it comes back." He brushed hair out of his eyes, met the general's gaze. "I think Arkwright's tribe is Lowara. I'm not sure. If it is... Arkwright made it, despite Mackenzie. Mainly because his team got in to see him, and he asked them to talk to his mother. Which they did - she showed up two days later, with about ten other people from her tribe, and held that cleansing despite the staff."
Hammond nodded. "I see."
"I'm... not sure you do, sir." Daniel bit his lip. "They're after justice, not just revenge. He hurt people here. So the puri dai wants him anywhere but here."
"What about taking it off?" the colonel put in. "I mean, we can't just let people go around cursing Air Force officers. No matter how much we don't like them."
Daniel bit back something Sam suspected might have been rude. Worked his jaw a moment. "Two options. You could try to take off the tattoo. You might want to have Janet do a biopsy first, though. Besides the subsidiary curses that might hit anybody who tried to interfere - according to folklore, magical inks are notorious for having all kinds of weird components. Mostly toxic ones."
"Okay, bad idea... door number two?"
"Try to find the puri dai and have Mackenzie apologize to her and her tribe." Daniel smiled wryly. "I wouldn't count on that one."
"The man did apologize, Daniel."
"Perhaps to you, O'Neill," Teal'c put in. "He has never voiced an apology to Daniel Jackson."
"That's... not the point, Teal'c," Daniel waved it off. "As I said, you'd have to find the puri dai. And that would be a needle in a haystack. She might not even be in this country by this time."
The colonel shrugged. "So we check her passport."
Daniel shot him a sidelong glance. "This may come as a shock, Jack, but the Rom are notorious for not using them. Even if they have them in the first place."
"So we ask Corporal Arkwright."
"Sir?" Sam asked dryly. Are you nuts?
Jack gave her an annoyed glance. "We can't just leave him like this, Carter."
"Actually, Colonel, I don't see why not."
"Sir?" Sam couldn't help it; the word shot out of her mouth even as Jack turned toward the general.
"There comes a point at which a commanding officer has to consider the good of his command. Despite his superiors' orders." Hammond's gaze lingered on the infirmary door, before he shrugged and turned away. "You may inform the major his transfer orders will be cut by 0900 tomorrow."
Jack finally got his throat moving. "You - you're going to-"
"Is there a problem, Colonel?"
O'Neill stiffened. "No. No problem. Sir."
Hammond nodded once, decisively. "Oh. And one more thing. Dr. Jackson."
"Yes. Sir?" Daniel stood a hair straighter.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd compile a summary of some of this... folklore." The general's expression wasn't quite a smile. "We've encountered some fairly unusual phenomena off-world. Perhaps it's time we began reexamining some of our local anomalies."
"You want to curse Goa'uld, sir?" Jack's eyes bugged.
Teal'c cast a cool glance his way. "I believe the Tau'ri have a saying. If it is foolish and yet succeeds...."
"If it's stupid and it works, Teal'c - hey. Daniel?"
"Research, Jack," the archaeologist called over his shoulder as he headed for the elevator.
"Nuts," the colonel muttered under his breath. "Everybody's gone nuts."
"I'm not so sure, sir," Sam said abstractly, heading for her lab. "Odd as it sounds, NASA's fairly certain the Ghostbusters are legitimate. We took a look at some of their analyses of cross-stream events to determine what was happening in the Stargate's wormhole. Total protonic reversal isn't what happens when you go through the 'Gate, but there are some similarities...."
And she lost herself in physics equations, breaking down the wildness of the universe to numbers and constants.
~*~*~*~*~
Jack steeled himself, knocked on the doorframe. "Okay, clue me in," he said dryly. "How come I'm the bad guy?"
Daniel glanced up from Icons of Power, back-lit by the dancing Egyptian paintings on his screensaver. "Jack. You're not-"
The colonel raised an expressive brow. Hanging around Teal'c paid off.
Daniel shook his head, waved him to the one chair that wasn't covered in books and papers. "You mean, why isn't the general willing to risk our necks to help someone who's screwed up at least twice now? This time with another soldier?"
"That bit you put in about curses hitting us didn't help," Jack pointed out. "Subsidiary curses, Daniel? Come on."
"It's true."
Jack blinked. "What?"
"It's true, Jack." Daniel picked up his mug. "If Janet tried to take that tattoo off, she'd be interfering with the puri dai's punishment. Essentially, she'd be in the same boat as somebody who helped a convicted felon break out of prison." The archaeologist sipped his coffee, gaze level. "I don't think Mackenzie is worth Janet's life."
Jack worked his jaw, managed words. "You think she could die."
"Yes."
"You literally think she could die."
"Yes, Jack," Daniel repeated patiently. "I literally think that Arkwright was seeing something - maybe not ghosts, but something - that he needed his tribe's help to chase away. I literally think Mackenzie screwed up royally. Again. And I literally think that if Janet tries to fool around with a technology we don't understand, she could get hurt. Or dead."
"Ah-ah-ah. You said technology." Jack grinned, leaned back in the chair. Gotcha. "Curses aren't technology."
"Technology is anything we use to manipulate the world around us, Jack. Computers are technology. Language is technology." The archaeologist shrugged. "And so is magic. We don't understand how Thor teleports things around. That doesn't mean it doesn't work."
"Doesn't mean it's magic, either."
"Jack-" Daniel sighed, shook his head. "Why do you think Mackenzie's worth risking a curse for?"
Jack rolled his eyes. "Idiot or not, he's one of us, Daniel. And you know we don't leave a fellow officer behind."
"I'm not an officer."
Calm words. Almost empty of expression.
So why did they hit like a punch to the gut?
"Daniel-"
"General Hammond asked me to finish a preliminary summary," the archaeologist said neutrally. He pointed toward the door.
"Daniel-" Jack tried again.
"Get out of here, Jack." Daniel's lips were a thin line, and his eyes were fixed on the screensaver. "Just go. Before one of says something I'll regret."
Mrs. O'Neill hadn't raised a complete idiot. Jack got.
And leaned against a doorjamb down the corridor, feeling like the walls had crumbled around his ears, trying to piece together exactly what had happened.
If p, then q, ran through Jack's head; odd, morbid echo of the infirmary and college algebra. If not q, then not p. If you are one of us, then you are an officer. If you are not an officer....
Which just goes to show that even Black Ops colonels can have blind spots.
How do I fix this?