DARK EMBRACE CHAPTER FIVE

CJ and Janet arrived promptly. CJ now in a set of scrubs and a lab coat was paling but too stubborn to give into the pain now that the adrenalin had worn off. Hammond looked up at the two women, bookends nearly the same height and their collective medical knowledge and experience worth its weight in naquehda.

"Report, Captain."

"Begging the General and the Major's pardon, I need to just get this out." Her thoughts were clear and had to be precise. "I've reviewed the Colonel's medical file. I know his history. He's suffering from or will be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and Delayed Stress reactions. I've heard how he's handled everything from being impaled on more than one occasion, infested, infected and nearly made into a Jaffa. General, the Colonel is an extraordinary man who has been to more hells that you and I will every conceive of."

"We are all aware of his history Captain, go on." Hammond knew where this was heading and he didn't like it.

"Sir, Major Carter's appearance set him off. I had him stabilized and lucid. I don't think she is the actual cause but she is connected to it. Her voice set him off. Until he resolved this, for now while he is still recovering, I suggest she be kept away from him."

"Keeping any one of SG1 away from their C.O. is going to be impossible." Janet shook her head.

"Send them back to the planet to find out who did this but get them off planet for a few days. This maybe one time he doesn't need the near familial support of his team. He's got to work through this himself."

"Sir, CJ is right, I defer to her recommendations."

"The last thing he needs right now is people fussing over him. He needs them to find out who did this to him. He also needs to be given the space to come back and or face what ever it was that has traumatized him. In the Colonels case it maybe cumulative from all of his years in special ops and here with the Stargate. "

Janet's pager went off. She looked at it quickly and with just a nod from the General she left, but CJ didn't.

"General Sir, when he finally breaks down or is ready to face what ever it was, who he is going to need is you. You maybe the only person he can feel vulnerable with. I've seen your interaction, he thinks of you as a friend, a brother in arms, and you'd be the only one who can understand. It won't be a matter of pity, or sympathy that's the last damn thing. It will just be enough to acknowledge with someone who walks in the same shoes."

"Captain you're very perceptive."

"Seen it before, my father got repatriated in 1970 after six years as a P.O.W. He blew his brains out on my sixteenth birthday. I resolved then that I wasn't going to lose another vet or someone else's father. "

Hammond swallowed hard; he could have used a nurse like her at the end of his tour in country, back a billion years ago when he was young. He was damn glad they had her.

"Dismissed Captain."

The events had taken a toll on CJ too; she needed a break and suddenly had to get out and up top, out in the open air. She tried to be causal but an anxiety attack was building. Finally she arrived on the surface and bummed a cigarette from one of the S.F.'s on patrol. The funny part was she didn't smoke but leaning on a Hummer in the broad daylight centered her. She policed the cigarette butt like her father had taught her and took the long elevator ride back down the rabbit hole.

"Major, I want you and the rest of SG-1 to return to the planet. You are to take SG3 & 5 with you. I want you to find who or what captured and did this to my Second in Command. Get to the bottom of it. If it is a Goa'uld, discover the identity, make a threat assessment, and then eliminate the threat with extreme prejudice." Hammond was vehement and his usual implacable face was tight with anger. He'd had enough of the Goa'uld nearly killing his people. For once he was going to give into the desire to do some serious ass kicking. It was payback time.

At first Sam and Daniel began to protest, instead wanting to be here for Jack but a raised hand from the General and a softening smile from him assured them.

"I'll be here." Hammond said simply.

Teal'c bowed his head in reverence to the General. The deep dark Jaffa revenge thing was well known and he had that look and that need.

"We'll be ready in 30 minutes sir." Carter's voice gained strength with each syllable. It was time she remembered she was also an Air Force officer and Second in Command of the Flagship team. Her CO had been made to suffer at the hands of unknowns and they were going to have to pay for it.

Being unconscious was not exactly as pleasant as it sounded. It was never that simple for Jack. The silent sootiness of slumber was not his, violent flashes of red spattered his twilight world of injury, and drug induced stupor like a Jackson Pollack painting. The raven wings of death and despair fluttered in his mind ripping what soul he thought he might still have left, apart.

He could hear her voice over and over again, feel her mouth on his, tasting him, feasting off of him. It was Carter's voice at first but then it had changed to the Goa'uld timber voice of the demon that had used him.

"You are mine, forever." Over and over he heard her words and had to fight against the desire to say yes. The mixed pain/pleasure responses he experience at her hands brought waves of guilt, he had succumbed, and he hadn't done enough to prevent her manipulation. He had been weak. This realization was followed by the onslaught of the images of the murders. The two children had been prepubescent with sandy colored hair, like Charlie, his son's had been at that age. So like Charlie, innocence in their eyes, the snake's victim unwilling pawns, too young to defend against her. He should have been strong enough; he should have freed them too. The look in their eyes of terror and betrayal strafing his soul as the staff blast blew a hole through their fragile bodies.

Blood was everywhere, all over his body, on his hands, in his eyes and on his lips. Submerged in what seemed the blood of every life he had ended, he swam for the surface through the sanguine sea of despair and guilt, praying for a ray of forgiveness's light. The agonized moan started low and deep in the recesses of his flailed chest and broke free in a ragged gasping for breath as he came instantly awake and aware.

Jack clamped his eyes shut, realizing it was actually just eye as the left side of his face was swollen and bandaged over. There was light here, the comforting sounds of medical monitors beeping softly and the nearly imperceptible drip of the IV. He was in the infirmary.

"Steady son." Hammond's broad face encased in sincere concern came into focus, his Texas drawl as soft and comforting as a breeze through tall prairie grass.

"Goa'uld." He barely recognized the sandpaper tone of his own voice.

"SG-1, 3 and 5 are investigating Colonel."

"How long?"

"Since we brought you back from death's doorway, Colonel, or from your last unauthorized foray?" Janet Fraiser smiled moving in past the General and began to fuss with his IV's, a hand gently resting against his undamaged cheek.

"What?"

"We'll discuss that later. You want the short version of your injuries?" Janet had learned that the Colonel needed to get a grocery list of his injuries and the prognosis. It was his way to assess the situation and make his battle plan for recovery based on good sound Intel.

"If we hadn't got to you and pumped a few units of O-neg into you wouldn't have had enough blood left in you to live. You sustained a collapsed lung but we got that taken care of. Your ribs are back together. The CAT scans showed multiple fracture lines through the infraorbital and zygomatic arch. We won't know yet if you'll need surgery but that's why you are going to have a hard time talking. There is some impingement of your mandible, jawbone. We'll have plastic surgeon see you; we still want you as handsome as ever." She paused hoping her remark would elicit some sarcastic response but Jack was starting to withdraw from them. As to the other wounds on the torso and neck those are not healing as fast as I would like, puncture wounds are always slow to heal."

"Can you tell us what happened?" It was Hammond and he was trying not to make it feel like a debriefing.

"Noise, Zatted, Goa'uld, escaped." A dew of sweat coated the still pale skin of Hammond's 2IC as Jack labored to respond. Each word was a strain, his chest still bruised, the muscles in his neck abused and the assaulted face making each word an excruciating effort.

Hammond watched his 2IC's eye go from warm brown to the cold lifeless flat color of mud. Jack turned his head away from his commanding officer. They had lost him. Jack was going to say no more. It was all internalized now and until he was ready to talk of it, if ever, his suffering would exist as a molten flow of pain waiting for a release of pressure or the inevitable destructive eruption. Hammond would give Jack time and he would be standing there for either possibility.

Just out of the line of vision CJ knew the fuse had been lit on the bomb. There was going to be an explosion or a melt down, it was just a matter of how fast the fuse was going to burn.