//"Dammed traitor! I'm going to kill you, Da'yell and if it is the last thing I do!"
The man stood in front of him, the heavy old sword raised his dark eyes sparkling from fury and hate//
No, please, Chel… please no!
//"You betrayed us all! What did they give you for it? What was the price Da'yell?"//
No… didn't betray them… I swear… Chel, brother…
//"I'm no brother of a dirty traitor. Die!"
The sword came down in one, graceful motion.//
CHEL! NO!
"For crying out loud, wake up Danny!"
With a start Daniel awoke, drenched in cold sweat, at the edge of hyperventilation. Confused he looked around. He was in his apartment on the couch. So he had not even made it to bed last night.
"Are you all right, Danny?"
Startled Daniel looked at Jack. He had not realized that his friend was here.
"I'm fine", he mumbled, "Just some stupid nightmare… what are you doing here?"
Jack gave him a funny look.
"When you didn't show up for the briefing this morning I tried to phone you, but you didn't answer. So I came over. Used the spare key. Must have been one hell of a dream, took me long enough to wake you."
"Oh God, what time is it?"
Now Daniel was awake. Damn! When he could sleep through Jack coming into his apartment, then he was really going soft. Covert Ops or not, normally Daniel would wake up in a matter of seconds when someone sneaked up on him when he was sleeping. Jack used to tease him repeatedly about his terrible light sleep on missions.
"Half past eight" Jack answered Daniels question. Then he looked the archeologist slowly up and down and said:
"Why wasn't I invited to this party?"
"What?"
Daniel followed Jacks look.
//Oops//
Yesterday evening, he had planned for a quiet drink in a local club. The club owner was an Immortal and an old friend of Daniel. They had renewed their friendship after Daniel stumbled into the club one night not long after his first return from Abydos. Just like back then, Daniel had wanted to simply be able to forget for a while. The risk of being beheaded while drunk, was one he took with only slight hesitation. To be honest, he had absolutely no idea how he got home.
Next time a little less of the strong stuff.
But Daniel could see what Jack was looking at. Richard's Club had a dress code. And even if he had generally some special rights in this club, without the proper clothing he would not get in.
"You know, you shouldn't go partying during the week."
"Geez, thanks for the good advice, Jack!"
With these words, Daniel stood up and went in the general direction of the bathroom.
"I'm taking a shower and getting changed. You can phone the SGC and tell them I'm still alive."
"Hey, why so grumpy this morning?"
"Mmm, I had a nightmare, overslept and still had no coffee this morning. Pick one reason, Jack."
With this Daniel disappeared behind the bathroom door. When the hot water started running, he felt how bad his hands where shaking. He was just glad that Jack hadn't noticed. The last thing he needed now was Jack playing mother hen. Dammed nightmares. After coming back from Nem's planet he had them rather frequently. Every night. Sometimes even twice a night. Things he had never wanted to remember again showed up from his subconscious as clear as the first time he had seen them. And the problem was: He had many memories he did not want to have. In his long life he had seen enough proof of the human ability to make any war as bloody as possible. And more often than not he had been in the middle of it.
The hot water was soothing, but it could not take away the echo of the last nightmare. This one came most often. This man standing in front of him, holding a sword high, ready to strike. Daniel had known that this man was his enemy, but only a short time ago he realized the reason for his hate.
"Why don't you believe me, brother?" Daniel whispered under his breath, holding back the tears of resignation he'd refused to let fall for the last six thousand years.
*********************
"Danny boy, you really look bad."
Daniel looked up from his translation work and fixed Jack with a questioning gaze.
"If that was supposed a compliment Jack, I think you missed an important part of the concept."
Normally Daniel would not have snapped back like this, but he was tired and worn out from his constant lack of sleep. It was not the first time in his life that nightmares robbed him his sleep, so he knew that in a month or two his overactive subconscious would settle down again. At least he hoped so. He really hated to wake up in the middle of the night and then being unable to go to sleep again for several hours.
If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that it was getting worse. No rest at night, being tense all day and then trying to drown his worries in alcohol, something that was not even easy with his kind of metabolism. Hell, he practically acted like an invitation for any young hotshot head-hunter.
"Daniel? Are you listening to me?"
Daniel jerked out of his thoughts and looked at Jack apologetically.
"Sorry Jack. What did you say?"
"I asked you if you were all right. Doesn't seem so to me."
"I'm fine."
"You always say that. I suspect you would even claim to be fine if you were dying. Besides it's my job to space out on others, not yours. You are going to ruin your image."
Daniel gave Jack a funny look but did not even consider answering this. Jack would not understand until Daniel told him the truth. The whole truth and this was something he really wanted to avoid. The last people on earth Daniel wanted to find out about Immortality was the military. Not that he did not trust Jack, but this was one of the times when Daniel preferred to live after the words: better safe than sorry.
"Perhaps you should see Doc Fraiser?" Jack said suddenly. Daniel glared at him.
"I'm fine. How often do I have to say this until you believe it?"
"Danny we all are just worried about you."
Jack could do nice if he needed to, and now it was definitely needed. The more you tried to push Daniel into doing something he did not want to, the more he would push back. If you wanted to trick Daniel into doing something, the best way was a guilt trip. Jack knew this but only used the knowledge in a case of emergency. And he considered Daniels health such an emergency.
"Look, you really haven't acted like yourself since the mess on Nem's planet. And after this near disaster with the Tok'ra you're acting even weirder."
//Ohh, I'm acting like myself, just not like Daniel Jackson//
"I'm just a bit stressed, Jack. Nothing else. You're making this bigger than it is."
"How often do you have nightmares?"
Daniel still glared at the colonel. Why couldn't Jack stop worrying?
"They are just stupid nightmares I have on occasions, why the big deal?"
"Because I care, Danny, and you obviously don't sleep very much in the last time. Carter and Teal'c are worried, too. And when we couldn't reach you this morning…"
"I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?", Daniel interrupted Jack with a small smile of resignation on his face.
"Nope!" The colonel answered laughing, "Since I normally have to drag you out of the mountain for some free time it is a memorable occasion that you oversleep after going clubbing in the middle of the week."
"I'm not that bad."
"Face it Danny, you are worse. If we didn't come get you for the lunch breaks you would forget eating altogether."
Daniel sent Jack yet another glare but secretly he was pleased that the topic of their talk had moved away from his nightmares and towards a safer ground. Sadly he had underestimated Jack.
"So will you go and see Fraiser?"
"There is nothing wrong with me, Jack. What do you think Janet is supposed to do?"
"Please Danny, humor me."
"If I go to Janet, will you leave me alone?"
Jack made a gesture of crossing his heart.
"I swear."
Daniel signed. Okay, he could understand that his friends were concerned about him, but this did not mean that he had to like it. He really did not like the infirmary and avoided going there whenever he could get away with it. Even so, Janet complained regularly. Since she was the only person on the base who knew about him, she let no other doctor near him. When you considered the frequency with which he got hurt on missions, he had to admit that he gave her a lot of overtime.
Daniel was also sure, that it was not Jacks idea alone to get him see a doctor. Sam most likely shared her own worries with her CO. They both hadn't gotten out of mother-hen-mode since their got him back from Nem's planet. Daniel suspected that they somewhat still feared that Nem had done more than dig out some old memories. After all this Alien had planted a vision of his death into the heads of the rest of the team. They did not want to risk any nasty surprises. But you would think that after a few month the anxiety would have lessened. Not with this team.
"Okay, even if I still don't see what Janet can do."
"At least she can give you something that will let you sleep through the night. I think you need it."
As if any decent medication would work for him. And then, he wanted to be able to wake up when he needed to.
Without any further protests Daniel let Jack escort him to the infirmary. He felt like a prisoner. Hopefully Jack would not linger around to see if his friend was really all right. As long as the Colonel was around neither Daniel nor Janet dared to talk openly. Jack had this nasty habit of hearing exactly the things he was not supposed to hear.
"Daniel, Colonel. What can I do for you?"
"Tell Jack that I'm okay!", supplied Daniel with a half-smile. Janet fixed first him, then the colonel with a critical stare.
"You don't look "okay" Daniel." Janet finally said. Jack gave a short triumphant laugh and shot Daniel a look that clearly said: told you so! Daniels brief look towards Janet told her clearly that he considered her a traitor.
"Why does nobody believe, that I'm fine? I just haven't been sleeping too well lately."
Janet's eyebrows raised with interest. She knew that Daniel had trouble sleeping. Always had, so his Chronic said, but as far as she knew it had never been so bad. But then, his Chronic was not one of those which were terribly complete.
Janet steered Daniel to a separate part of the infirmary and he reluctantly complied. Jack left them after Janet favored him with her patented Go-away-and-let-me-work-in-peace glare. One short look at Jacks expression as he retreated was favored with a chuckle from Daniel. Now Janet turned to him.
"What's the matter, Daniel?"
His cheerful expression crumpled.
"It is really nothing, Jen. My nightmares just became a bit more frequent."
Janet looked at her friend with concern. She could only suspect the kind of pressure he was under all the time. Always desperate trying to hide who he was, or more preciously what he was. On the base she was the only person who he could confide in and it couldn't be easy to live with the constant fear of discovery. But he had never displayed such behaviour during the whole last two years.
The fact that she was his doctor, at last officially, was not the only reason for her concern. She considered Daniel Jackson her friend and was well aware that she had broken one big taboo by this.
She was a watcher, member of this secret organization which had devoted itself to the one very special aspect of human history: the Immortals. Like the name said, they were supposed to watch and document the lives of the Immortal, never, under whatever circumstances, to interfere or worse, even reveal their existence to anyone. She could argue that Daniel was not just anyone. He had been her assigned Immortal before he did a disappearing act three years ago. No one could find him anymore, and with the recourses of the watchers that would mean something. Headquarters had tried to reconstruct where Daniel had disappeared to. In some way the panic when they discovered the role the military seemed to play in this all could have been amusing, if she herself hadn't feared the worst. "What if…?" was a phrase that had been used very often in those days. What if the military, by some freak luck, had found about Immortals? Of course no one had believed the story that Daniel Jackson had died on some mission. After all: this man couldn't die and continued to prove it for the last two thousand years.
That was how Janet had ended up back in the military. Infiltration, plain and simple. And she had thought her assignment to Daniel would be an easy one.
The discovery of what exactly was going on under Cheyenne Mountain in the wake of Apophis first attack had gotten her into a moral disaster. She had sworn an oath to the USAF but also to the watchers. In the end she had decided to try to confine to telling the watchers only what they absolutely had to know. Sometimes even less.
But the Stargate hadn't been her only shock. Just at the beginning, when she had Daniel fidgeting in her infirmity, trying to find a way to tell him that she knew about Immortals without blowing her own cover, he had suddenly grabbed her wrist and twisted it. The long stare he had given her tattoo had made her extremely nervous. When he finally looked up he had smiled to her utter surprise and asked:
"How did the Watchers manage to get you such a high security clearance?"
Janet had been speechless. In the following talk Daniel had revealed that he had known about the watchers nearly from the start on. For heavens sake, he had been a member more than once! She decided then that this was something the Watchers did not have to know! And the double play had began. Daniel wanted to stay and look for his wife and so Janet would stay too and make sure that the military remained utterly clueless.
"Have you any idea why your dreams have become more frequent now?"
Daniel looked at her for a very long moment before he finally said:
"I'll tell you, but promise me that it will stay out of the Chronicle, at least for now."
So it had something to do with him being Immortal. And again Janet had to decide between her loyalty to the watchers and her loyalty to her friend.
"Okay. This will fall under doctor-patient confidentiality"
He searched her face, obviously to see if she said the truth. Then he took a deep breath to get his thoughts in order.
"How old do you think I am?"
"Is this a rhetorical question, or just an attempt to divide my attention?"
"No." Daniel answered in all honesty "It's just that the watchers always seemed to be better informed on this special point than myself."
Janet frowned. What was Daniel getting at?
"According to your Chronicle you are a bit more than two thousands years old. First death 20 years BC, a merchant caravan that was robbed by particularly cruel bandits and only one person survived…"
Janet sounded like a schoolgirl quoting out of some textbook.
"…why do you ask this? You should know best."
"That is exactly the point Janet: I don't remember. Or at least I didn't."
"What?"
Daniels words confused her. She tried to remember some of their conversations. She sometimes asked him about one aspect or another out of his Chronic, but now she realized that she had never asked him about his first death, or his life before this. And he had never volunteered any facts about this time.
"What I mean Janet is that I was never so sure about my age myself. My memories started after this massacre. There was nothing before. Nothing, do you understand? No memories of the people who raised me, or how I'd joined the caravan in the first place. Hell, I didn't even know my own name for that matter. And I most certainly knew nothing about the game. I would have been very dead very fast if it hadn't been for the man who found and retrained me."
"Retrained?"
Janet had a nasty suspicion where Daniel was heading. But she wanted to be absolutely sure.
"Yes, retrained. Even if I had no idea who I was, he was absolutely certain, that I wasn't a new one. That I was part of the game before he found me. And then, I had a few run-ins with Immortals I'd never met before, but who seemed to know me."
"You mean you are…"
"A lost one? Yes, I think that is the term."
"And why are you telling me now?"
Daniel looked at her with a small, tired smile.
"Because I remember. When Nem tried to find the information he needed, he also destroyed whatever was holding back my memories."
"So this is why you've been acting so strange since then." Janet muttered, as her interest as watcher took over:
"Have you any idea how old you are exactly?"
Daniels look suddenly changed to a mischievous smile, something Janet really was not used from him.
"I'm not sure yet. But you see, I can remember a few certain events, that should help to determine my age…"
"What events?" Janet asked, not sure if she really wanted to hear the answer.
"I remember Ra's reign on earth."