"There was darkness and there was light, but there was no line in between. And talking with [your] heart is like pleading with a machine."
-Ani DiFranco
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Or Else No Flesh Should Live 5/6
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
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He was, essentially, in purgatory.
Alright. Okay. So you know what you don't have. What you don't _got_, as the song might say. Ain't got no, can't get no. Jonathan O'Neill, you will use proper English at the dinner table. Turn that horrid music down. You roam the streets like a vagabond-- at least wash your hair for church.
No, you don't have that. You don't have an ex-wife named Sara and a late son named Charlie. Your father is not Patrick O'Neill; you never rode high on his shoulders, touring the battleship he served on. You never had a fight with him when you looked to the sky instead of the sea. Your mother is not the gray haired stranger you call Annie-- more familiar than her full Anrin, miles away from 'Mom'. No Air Force Academy for you. No log cabin waiting for you to finally retire.
But hey, we'll throw you a bone! It's like a game show, or whatever-- strand a man on a deserted island. What's the bare minimum he can survive with? All the stuff they talk about in medical texts, but something else, too. The watch so-and-so gave you. The picture of your fiancee. Maybe a charm, or the key to your house. Something to hold onto. To make it real, because insanity is wavering in the heat out there on the white sand.
You get to keep your best friend-- your... well, there really isn't a _word_, not in any language you know. Ask Daniel.
Say:
"Hey, Daniel. When I saw you that first day with General West, all I was thinking was that you must be pretty goddamn smart. Maybe also that you had beauty _and_ brains-- possibly that you looked star-struck and dazed by a concept I really couldn't even wrap my mind around. I was pissed at you on Abydos-- well, hell, I guess you picked that up. The chief of the tribe presents you with his daughter. Isn't that rich? Any other guy woulda tumbled with her and left her high and dry. Because they _could_. You? You, the blue eyed linguist, the guy who seemed to have wandered out of frick'n Egypt himself? Not only do you turn her down, you marry the girl! And I go home; on nights when I'm up past 3am and a little drunk, I talk to you. I ask you why you won't get out of my head. I bag on my ear like you're water I've got stuck in the canal. God, I _wanted_ when I saw you again, dusty robes and mended glasses. I wanted to hug you and crush you and I couldn't even let that thought register in my mind. Sorry, raised Catholic-- got oodles of issues I'm sure you, being the anthropologist you are, would find frick'n fascinating. Oh, and did I mention something else? About Sha'uri. Ye-eah.
'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.'
But what about your neighbor's husband? Careful there, God-- this Colonel's look'n for loopholes.
"Look, Daniel. I liked Sha'uri alright-- she was a sweet woman. A good kid. Kinda like the dark-eyed Mexican girl in Sophomore Geometry, who I used to chuck gentle paper wads at because, you know, she wouldn't look at me otherwise. The Goa'uld shit couldn't happened to a kinder person, your gentle wife. Like something out of a fairy tale-- she's been spellbound and imprisoned, and I doubt the loyal friend aiding you in your quest is supposed to fall in love with you...
But.
I want you for myself.
I want to do all sorts of things to you that I don't really have the technical know how for. I want to do stuff to you that I'd never, ever thought of doing to a man. Sometimes I wake up at night and I just want you in my arms so badly.
"So, Daniel. What this rather long-winded, convoluted anti-sentence is gett'n to is really... well. You're my best friend but I'd also sell my soul or some-reasonable facsimile there of to make love to you.
You speak twenty three languages.
Is there a word for that?"
You get a long laugh thinking about that, thinking about his face and those sweet blue eyes blinking 'what'.
So you have your best friend to lean on.
You also have your 2IC, who's known the same structure of rules and regulations you have but pretty much mentally lives in a different galaxy, no shit. And a Jaffa 'brother in arms' who you wouldn't hesitate to lay your life down for, but you really don't think you can cry on his shoulder or anything like that.
Carter's gonna take four walls and make them hers. She's gonna make knickknacks and write equations on the wall, like a kid hanging posters in the dormitory to make it more like home. She's gonna accept that we are _stuck_ here for _ever_, which is now a lot longer than you used to think it was.
You're in purgatory, because you can cross that line if you want to. You can see it in the dust; no longer the Colonel, with things to distract yourself from what you desire so badly.
That word. Desire. Sounds so illicit! Oh, definitely against the rules. But so wonderful going down, the first sip of wine on a chilly New Years when you're underage and no one's looking.
You ain't got nothing to go back to, Jack-my-boy.
You're Jack O'Neill and you're six years old, slouching in your chair at Sunday school and playing with the little clip on bow tie Dad makes you wear. The teacher-- nice, faceless, kindness-and-light-- talks about sin and the wages of sin is death and been there done that, all right.
She tells you about hell. Nowadays, you could hand her the gate coordinates and tell her with a straight face to go there herself. Buncha different worlds out there that are just like hell-- Nem's planet included.
You can go to Hell or you can go to Heaven. Also, you can go to purgatory, because despite the whole black-and-white good-and-evil thing, there's always a way around the rules. Even God has to cut you a break.
Prayers can get you out-- prayers of your loved ones, like burnt roses on a Pagan altar.
But you don't have anyone to pray. There's a man walking around out there with your face, and you were him up until a little while back but now you're stuck in a body that doesn't breathe and there's no one to mourn you cause no body _knows_ _you're_ _gone_.
Prayers; fingers touching the rosary. Hail Mary, Mother of...
Mother of _God_, I'm never gonna get out of here, am I?
Daniel's the only one I have with me, really. But, God help me, I wouldn't want anyone else.
#(#)#
Carter stopped sleeping in the bench room.
At first, Jack didn't notice-- she tended to 'sleep' on a different cycle, anyway. His matched Daniel's; they always lay down together, and almost always rose together as well. Once or twice, his rest program had cycled down, forcing his eyes open with much the feeling one gets when surfacing from deep water. Daniel's empty bench had looked more like a coffin than ever, too many sharp edges and black lines. In the stillness, the hum of the station had nearly overwhelmed Jack-- he felt suffused with a heat too terrible to bare and, though it had only lasted for a moment, he knew he didn't want to feel such a way again. No need for Daniel to feel that same, sick, height-of-summer shimmer.
So Carter took a room down one level and a little towards the western end of the complex. He hadn't been down to visit her, so he didn't know what it looked like; he envisioned it as a sort of mockup of her lab, when he thought about it at all. There were probably papers everywhere, some with blue-ink line drawings, tacked up on the walls. Half a dozen projects in various stages of completion. Keyboards and monitors rigged in bizarre combinations.
He realized just how long it had been since he'd seen the stars.
It surprised Jack that Teal'c had not been the first to leave the nest, really. The place of their birth-- a twisted cradle of life.
(This is where I lost my life, and some little lonely ingrate dwarf gave me another one, claiming it was better.)
The Jaffa was distant and hard to read; his nature made it more difficult to tell whether or not this was an indication of something being wrong. Jack wondered if, perhaps, the big man didn't feel like a replacement part. Something for a broken carburetor. Brought in when the first model failed.
There had been another Teal'c before him.
Now that was disturbing. A Teal'c, a Jack, a Daniel, a Carter. Like dolls you pick up in the store-- Barbie's best Asian girlfriend, Spring, or whatever. Vaguely, he recalled picking out toys for Cassandra; stunned by the sheer volume of _stuff_ provided as girl's play things. Charlie's endless legos and He-man toys seemed somehow sane by comparison. The action figures had littered the floor of Charlie's bedroom for at least two years, always paused in some epic, plastic battle of wills, parts waiting to be tripped over by himself or Sara.
//Do the others get this weird sensation sometimes, too? I just think of something, a little thing-- Cassie's toys, barbecue, the NBA play offs. The fact I meant to fix the dehumidifier on my next leave. Has _he_ gotten to that, yet? Will _he_ plant Azaleas in the garden this spring, like I thought about? Or will it be the old stand-by lilies of the valley, white petals like open mouths? What about the entrance hall rug that needs replacing? What about returning cousin Chelsea's call, like I kept meaning to?//
It was like the Time Warp. One minute standing in this new life and then-- it's just a jump to the left and a step to the ri-i-ight. And there you go again.
It really drives you insane-ay-ay-ane.
Teal'c was the next to leave, however-- he'd taken a set of two rooms a level bellow Carter's. Daniel said the Jaffa didn't 'sleep' but Ke-no-reem-ed (is that a word?) out of sheer habit. When Harlan took Daniel to the old personnel quarters, the young linguist returned with an armload of candles as a present for Teal'c; the one time Jack had been to visit, it cast a strange sheen over everything, like a desert sun filtering through the tent flap. It reminded Jack of Chu'lak, and of Teal'c quarters at the SGC, and of course both had been the Jaffa's home.
Jack wandered like the spirit he often imagined himself to be, moving from one near-disaster to another, fixing vents and sleeping next to Daniel, wondering when the itch would get too much and he would _have_ to touch the other man. Occasionally, he borrowed scrap paper from Carter and sketched stars he'd never see again.
In between, he played Pong-- and a new, wrapped version of Frogger Daniel and Carter dreamed up-- wondering what he was waiting for.
#(#)#
The rest of his team seemed to have at least a working relationship with Harlan; Jack was morbidly curious when it was him the small man sought out in the myriad, twisting tunnels.
"Can I help you?" Jack asked, feeling like an inane cashier. He realized without much surprise and absolutely no guilt that those where the first words he'd spoken to Harlan in over a week.
"Perhaps," the small man was grinning-- he never seemed to stop, "it is I that can help you." He held up a thick, robotic finger, "Yes?"
Jack snorted impatiently. Without air it sounded somewhat off, but Harlan seemed to get the point. As cautiously as one approaches a jungle cat, the other man held out a square of wood.
"Where'd you get this?" the Colonel asked, accepting what he would later realize was a gift. He turned it over in his hands, marveling at the brown lines, at the color of the skin. It looked a bit like pine.
"There are many things stored here, O'Neill," Harlan seemed humorously ominous. "Before the destruction of our world, my people thought nothing of taking all the land had to give, and using it to our own purposes. There is perhaps an entire forest logged and stacked down near the coolant systems."
"Environment, huh?" Jack pursed his lips, thinking back to snatches of conversation he'd overheard between Harlan and Daniel. "Greenpeace would love that."
The other robot looked at him quizzically, but said nothing, presenting a sharpened piece of metal in his other hand, rather like a mad magician uncle, making a visit. Taking this as well, Jack weight each object in his hand, suddenly not wanting to to meet Harlan's eyes.
"I have seen you working with the smaller parts," the squat man enthused, "The one called Carter worked with computers before the... change, yes? And Daniel," Harlan smiled fondly, "writes histories. What did you do?"
"I shot people," Jack muttered, feeling difficult. At Harlan's sputtering, he resentfully muttered, "I worked for the army. I looked at stars."
"Stars?" Bird like, the other man cocked his head, "Oh, yes!" Memory surfaced in the synthetic eyes, "I am sorry. You can't see the stars here."
"I _know_ that," Jack said wearily.
"Daniel said you ah..." a pursing of lips, "that you _gardened_? We have a similar word. Grashen. To cut wood? That is what garden is, yes?"
"Um, no," he shook his head, "I've never tried carving in my life." In his hands, the tools seemed to vibrate with possibility.
"Oh," Harlan worried his upper lip, lifting the pieces from Jack's hands and placing them on a nearby ledge. "I misunderstood. I _am_ sorry." He kept saying that-- if he kept saying that, O'Neill was sure he would scream.
//Father's voice: sorry don't feed the bulldog//
"Gardening is working with plants," Jack uttered the worlds simply to fill the space. "Planting flowers. Roses. Stuff like that." But he saw the utter lack of comprehension in the robot's eyes and wondered for the first time what he had been live eleven thousand years ago. Who the man of flesh and blood had been. A scholar, a regular worker, a father?
(Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.)
For one awful moment, he thought to ask Harlan, to say, 'Who are you missing? What faces do you see and tell me, you bastard, does it get any easier after the first few hundred years?' But he could no more ask that question than he could slide back into his body of flesh and blood. He couldn't carry the knowledge Harlan would impart.
//there's a crazy image: Daniel and I, arm in arm, wounded, trying to carry each other. I only have enough strength to drag him along, and to hope he drags me when I just can't do it for a while//
"Plants." Harlan said the word flatly. It might have once had some meaning, but he'd obviously let it go. Turning with a little bit too much precision, the small man began walking away, leaving Jack's eyes to cast for something to rest on save that retreating back. Of their own accord, his hands reached for the block of wood. He held the small, makeshift knife with infinite care.
"Hey, Harlan," his voice echoed. "Uh-- I'll give it a shot."
(I'll never be able to say thank you to this man.)
The other robot turned around long enough to say "Komtriah!" and smile widely.
He added, sardonically, "Oh Lord, kombiyah."