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For What It's Worth 2/3
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
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Pausing halfway past the door to the briefing room, General O'Neill told himself to keep moving, willed his feet to step before the other, finding instead only stillness in his blood. Move-- said his soldier's mind to the knees that ached in the morning, to the feet that had pounded down the corridor early yesterday afternoon
(was it only yesterday? my god. no god.)
when the first shimmers of devastation appeared in Colorado's gray sky. They had been pale like the moon, those ships-- triangular, like a Dahli painting in the sky, so out of place. And even when he stood outside the mountain, with Samantha shivering at his side, he had not felt so helpless as all this.
"Think, Daniel," mourned an unfamiliar voice, filtering through the chaos, through the threshold, to reach Jack O'Neill's ears. "Come on." There was a thump of frustration, and another, gaining in intensity as the words were repeated. "Daniel, think. Geeze!" Without meaning to, Jack turned and found himself peering in through the doorway. He stepped, shoulders straight and even, into the room, gazing on the familiar stranger with a fascination he didn't want to define. Cradling his hand, the young man calling himself 'Dr. Jackson' was looking away, head bent and hair obscuring his features. His pained hiss moved through the brown-blond locks, displacing them.
"Don't you know that when you pick a fight with a table, you can't win?" General O'Neill inquired, watching the pale face jerk up and reveal itself, glasses flashing. For just a fraction of a heartbeat, there was a smile there on those boyish features, relief and happiness with a fraction of annoyance to contrast the mix. It was gone, dowsed, before it was anything more than a snapshot in the general's mind-- Dr. Jackson, _Daniel_
(for surely such a young man must waver under such a stern title)
was motionless and guarded.
"Ah," the linguist murmured, infusing meaning into his startled, sub-English noises. "Oh." The head bent down again, eyes scanning the room from behind glass and hair once more. "Sorry," he said, hardly any apology in the tone. Daniel's sigh followed on the heels of the word, resigned and tinged with resentment.
"Sir," O'Neill corrected, coming around the table to face Jackson without the barrier.
"Hmm?" Daniel's hand skittered up to grab the pen he'd dropped, wielding it like a scimitar against the pad of paper Catherine had tossed aside. Symbols and numbers came to shuddering, nervous birth on the page.
"You should have said, 'Sorry, sir'." Jack played the words for a reaction and, sure enough, those sky-just-pretending-to-be-blue eyes lifted from the page. Briefly, they locked gazes, Daniel's spine angling to move his chair just an inch or so away.
"I'm a civilian," he muttered, "like your Carter."
"_My_ Carter?" Jack stressed, mentally reviewing what Catherine had been at liberty to tell the young man.
"Yes." A hand pushed glasses up and swept hair aside, "From your side of the mirror." O'Neill stood stiffly, watching as the fluorescent lights threw his shadow over the other man, the gray shape shifting as Daniel stretched and removed his glasses. When Jackson rubbed his temples, O'Neill glanced again at the mass of blue-inked characters making their way across the page.
"What are you working on, there?" He moved to take the notebook in hand as Jackson did the same-- flesh touched, and Daniel pulled away, staring off into somewhere.
"That transmission you intercepted?" Phrased like a question, but really just a statement. "The spoken part was Abydonian. Er," he added quickly at Jack's look, "all Goa'uld speak at least a variant of it-- it's an evolved form of Ancient Egyptian. The rest of the message is tones, beats, really. It's a set of coordinates, numbers, that correspond to the symbols on the Stargate and indicate the planet the attack is originating from."
"Pretty snazzy," the General didn't bother attempting to sound unimpressed. "If it's as simple as all that, why didn't Dr. Carter get it?"
"Sam thinks of numbers in a mathematical way. It's her strength... it's like architecture," Daniel said with an unnerving certainty. "I think of them in a linguistic way. Almost all languages originally had characters that worked as both letters and numbers. She was looking for an equation, I think." His hand moved up, gripped the notebook at it's metal spiral-- Jack loosened his hand in surprise, and the young man smoothed his work back down on the table. Quietly, "There wasn't one." A lithe hand with strong, thin fingers brought the pen across the page again, then Daniel shook it, frowning. His next movement smeared a word into oblivion, but Jack was thinking of those hands, palms and sides stained just slightly blue. Firm, but too soft, capable, but not made to hold a trigger or grip a grenade.
"Your hair's too long," O'Neill said past the feeling unraveling in his throat. Daniel's blotted palm came up to push at his glasses, transferring a smear of ink to his nose. They locked eyes again, the younger man pressing his teeth into his lower lip.
"Like I said," Jackson muttered around the bite, "I'm a civilian."
"Is that your answer to everything?" It was supposed to ring like a shot, but it didn't-- too blunt, too damped. Something fired with the silencer on.
"Isn't being a soldier yours?" An eyebrow raised, and Jack saw his own face in those twin lenses, superimposed over the color of Daniel's eyes and the dark of his pupils.
"What makes you think you know so much about me?" Jack sneered.
He watched Jackson's mouth form the beginnings of a word, but then his own hand was reaching for the phone, silencing it just seconds after it rang. With his eyes etching Daniel's form in all colors, he barked, "Yes?" A pause, and he could hear Daniel trying to listen, even over the sound of his own frantic scribbling. Kawalsky's voice trembled over the phone line, spitting out casualty figures and time limits. "Right," he said wearily, "Right. Dr. Carter thinks the Goa'uld will only be able to keep the wormhole established for so long. As soon as their power fails, we can dial up and start moving people to the beta site again. Keep the refugees coming." A hiss, a vile whisper, but Kawalsky's tone said it couldn't be helped. "They got the roads _already_?" Jack bit his lip, throwing a glance at Daniel, but the young man only moved his hand faster across the page, tore it off and began the charting on another. "Just get as many as you can. We're grasping at straws here." He slammed the phone down with all his rage in the fist holding it, felt his knuckles connect with the desk, but didn't even wince. Silence poured like those still red markers-- all over the world, Jack knew that 'life' as everyone defined it was shattering into tiny pieces they could choke on. He rubbed his smarting hand against the leg of his pants.
"Can't win a fight with a phone, either," Daniel remarked dryly. He risked a glance towards O'Neill, "And I don't know... anything, here. About you, or Sam, or Catherine... anybody. I can't figure you out. No context. You're Jack, but you're not."
"Dr. Carter," Jack stressed, surprising himself, "mentioned something in the hallway about... parallel dimensions? Isn't that just a bad sci-fi plot contrivance?"
"It's possible. In theory." Daniel rolled his eyes, the motion less condescending than it was simply... knowing, "It explains a lot about the nature of time and-- well, I'm an archaeologist, not an astrophysicist."
"You really believe this?" Jack's voice was more than neutral, just a blank, empty space. He felt that hollowness in himself, like when he woke and his hands found the body lying next to his to be foreign and loved but simply not right. He thrust against the feeling violently.
"Well," the younger man spread his hand to illustrate the point, "either I'm in a parallel dimension or I'm crazy. Now, mind you, the theory of insanity seems logical based on what we know, but it doesn't explain a lot. It would be nice if all these people we're really dying and this is all in my head."
Jack stepped back a bit, only to find himself moving closer, "Oh?"
"I mean," Daniel chuckled dizzily, and Jack saw weariness and fear ghosting across the other man's face, "What's one more mad man in a galaxy of lunatics. But if I'm crazy, that means..." With a shake of his head, Jackson clamped his lips shut, as if swallowing the words back down.
"It means... what?"
"It means--" Soft, too open and vulnerable to be here, in this place with devastation raining down like holy fire, "that I can't go home." They stood still, looking at each other-- the general straightened his back, as though there was an pane of glass at his side and he might possibly be a little more
(tough, real, true, fortunate, strong-- worthy)
than whatever was on the other side.
"Mighty nice delusion you have here," Jack joked tightly, turning away, though his mind conjured an image of the pain he somehow knew would be on Daniel's face. The silence that had stretched between them was too easy to move through, to comfortable against his shoulders-- he cut through it because he felt he could not afford it.
"I've hardly started crawling under the wallpaper, yet," the retort was dry, laced with humor. "Things aren't all... that out of whack around here."
"Do you want to be crazy, or not?" O'Neill turned swiftly, eyes tracing down the lines of the stranger's body, reading the young man's mood with frightening ease.
"Doesn't matter," Jackson replied, quiet and full of understanding, "the galaxy-- this, or any other, hardly turns based on what I, or you, or anyone else wants."
"Just wish you'd make up your mind," the general muttered, watching question flare behind those slightly smudged glasses. "One minute you say things are almost the same here, and the next you say this whole thing is insane."
"It _is_ insane!" Daniel rose from his chair in a motion that was pure frustration, "My God, the _world_ is coming to an end out there! Everyone else believes reality to be something completely different from what I _know_ it to be." He stalked towards the other end of the room, away from O'Neill, and turned back just before he came to the wall. Hands moved, hovered, in agitation, "You said you didn't want to see me again unless I had pertinent information. What, you think my world has discovered a magic can of Goa'uld-away?" Daniel's blue gaze flickered up to O'Neill's face, and whatever he saw there made him shake his head in apology, "Geeze. I really have been hanging around Jack too long."
('as far as i'm concerned, you and i know each other very well'
'...hanging around jack too long.'
as in together, me and this young man. like that moment you wake up and the world is whitewashed, able to be anything you want before all the colors come down and define your life again.)
"I said I didn't want to see you," O'Neill said tersely, "because I don't need a bleeding heart heaping more guilt on my back when the next state over is in flames." The reality of four metal walls and the man enclosed with him seemed to stagger Jack, just for a moment.
Daniel blinked rapidly, eyes flickering as if to follow the words, "Guilt?" Then, before the other man could summon words to his tongue, Jackson stepped forward, eager to soothe. "No, Jack... I didn't mean..." he took a breath, "No one ever has a right to blame you for any of the stuff this program has made you do. You just didn't have any other way, you were backed against the wall. I know that... but it doesn't make me forget that all these people are dying. I gave you the address for Chu'lak, and I think I knew what you were going to end up doing with it. I don't blame you." He reached out a hand to touch the camoflogue-clad shoulder, but Jack jerked away.
"Who said I cared whether you did or not?" the general's eyes narrowed, then closed all together to block the other man out. "You admitted you don't _know_ me. Stop acting like you do."
"Some things are the same here," Daniel clamped his lips down over the words. After a beat, he continued, somehow beaten, "Ra's dead there, Ra's dead here. Catherine's father found the Stargate there... same here. And," he took a breath, "Charlie is dead, there and here."
At the moment, all Jack wanted to do was again spit those words-- 'why do you care?'-- like a defense, but there was a genuine sorrow moving slowly over Jackson's face.
Now they were standing almost toe to toe, but he didn't remember either of them moving. O'Neill closed his eyes, listening to Samantha's whispered briefing to him in the hallway-- she was saying that maybe they could use the assistance of the Dr. Jackson from this reality
(this is plain freak'n _nuts_)
but... but no. Dead, she'd hissed, and he'd been glad she wasn't looking at his face. The Daniel of this world was in Egypt, dead and unconcerned by the Stargate. Jack had the sudden image of a train rushing by him through the darkness of a tunnel, and he was standing on the platform, ever bone in his body feeling it go by. Just a little too late, just the wrong stop, the wrong step-- deja'vu all over again, only it's never happened before.
"Even," Daniel smiled a little, "the scar on your eyebrow." The safe darkness behind the general's eyelids fell away-- there was the boy calling himself Jackson, with his fingers raised just so in the air, to indicate the dent in the soldier's toughened skin. "Did you get that in Iraq?" the eyes were far away, "I never asked."
Without meaning to, Jack caught that lithe hand in his own, "You said you know your me very well." There was a flicker in those blue eyes that were mirrored in brown-- reflected endlessly by those glasses; something about ownership and karma and prying what you could from the cold, dead fingers of Fate.
"Yes, my Jack-- The Jack from my dimension," Jackson stumbled to correct, letting a breath out to erase the words. "We know each other very well. He's my friend... prob'ly," said with just the slight the slur of a petulant child, "the only real one I've ever had." They were close now, too close. The general hand two gentle hands on that which God or Fate or Whatever would have denied him.
O'Neill's voice was low, "Is that so?"
"You don't believe me?" Daniel tilted his chin up, and Jack could smell the nervousness on him, the fear and lingering antiseptic scent of the infirmary clinging tight.
"I believe you," the words rolled heavy off Jack's tongue, husky and too true.
Unasked, a question wavered between and against the both of them; O'Neill lifted his hand from it's place on the young man's arm, ghosting a single finger against Daniel's temple. The blue eyes closed, a lid thrown down to keep a secret out of sight, and then Daniel was laughing. It was hard and deep and raw on his throat, a sound Jack had heard echoing off dirty, desert-baked prison walls.
"What's so funny?" he asked, resisting the urge to shake the other man, to make that sound snake back down to where it had come from.
"Jack," Daniel managed between the shaking hysterics, "Jack's always making these... jokes about the Stargate. The Wizard of Oz," he chuckled, rolling his eyes, seeing memories from a life General O'Neill had never lived. "And I just thought of it-- it's the ruby slippers pinch... there's no place," he giggled helplessly, laughter translating into a few scattered tears. "No place like home!" O'Neill took one step forward, caught Daniel to him with an ease that surprised him-- he patted the shaking back tersely, stiffly, held on tight despite himself.
"S'okay," he said, because he knew that Daniel wasn't crazy. Knew it until it cut him to the quick, until he was sure that-- should he live through this-- he would wake shivering with sweat on a warm summer night, next to Samantha but grasping towards that which never should have been. His name was being whispered-- once, twice-- against his neck, but not calling to him.
"No," Jackson shook himself harshly, fought free and returned to his seat with all the sudden calmness of a person who didn't really want to be seen. He took pen to the paper again, began writing stargate symbols with panicked lines. "Don't you have command stuff to be doing?" He didn't look up, and O'Neill dropped his arms from the vanished shape he'd been holding.
"Hardly anything we can do, until Dr. Carter gets the Stargate under our control again," the general considered, stuffing his hands in his pockets, "I've got my men mining every level with C-4, but we're on the defensive, now."
"Uh-huh." Back to small noises, eyes averted down to concentrate. "Well," the linguist muttered, making a quick check over what he'd written, "I've got the address now-- for the origin of the attack." He copied it with quick clarity onto a fresh sheet of paper, tearing it out and pushing it across the desk.
"Right," Jack glanced down only briefly. Taking a few steps backwards, he tried to make his vocal chords work the way he wanted them to-- to communicate this whatever-it-was- settling in the hollow at the small of his back. The muscles could not, or would not, obey; he retreated to the threshold. "For what it's worth..."
Daniel sat lax in the chair, head tilted up and eyes closed, "Don't..."
And so the general didn't-- wondering what it was he would have said.
So. Right, he said to himself, marching down those bare metal corridors with his fist closed around the coordinates. There was an iron to his bones he hadn't felt before, to mask and enclose this new feeling, to keep it secluded and away. A good thing, really, a safe defense, because when he came into the conference room, he saw the red defeat over Egypt and was certain it was blood.