Secrets and Shadows: Taking Sides
Part Five
For all his acquaintance with them, Daniel had never liked hospitals.
In the first couple of years, it had been a running joke that Daniel had a bed in the infirmary with his name written on it. He'd been injured often enough that it seemed like someone upstairs had it in for him.
But he'd never liked hospitals.
He was an archaeologist, he studied cultures that had long since passed into dust. Anthropology was a secondary interest, the people of then and now and the comparisons between them. And so Daniel had always hated hospitals and the clean, polite, sterile service that matched the clean, polite, sterile rooms.
A hospital was the antithesis of a ruined city, in Daniel's opinion. People just died in hospitals. At least the people who had lived in ruins had lived and not just died. Nobody lived in a hospital, they just existed.
And now, SG-1 existed in the corridor of the Memorial Hospital Emergency department, waiting for news of their friend.
It was turning out to be a bad month for SG-1.
He twisted slightly and winced, then put his hand to his sides and gently massaged the scar tissue left over from his operation. It still ached a bit, but it was healing reasonably well. Dr. Brightman had warned that there would be no running from any Jaffa for a while yet, and that suited Daniel just fine.
That the effects of the operation were limited to a scar was entirely due to Sam.
After using the Goa'uld healing device to determine the internal bleeding on him, she'd waited until after the operation, then received permission to attempt some healing on Daniel's wounds and scars. It was the first time she'd really tested those abilities, and the effort had left her drained and shaking. She'd been so weak afterwards, she hadn't even been able to protest when Jack took the device off her and forced her to lie down on one of the infirmary beds until she could get up without wobbling - or so reported Teal'c.
Daniel glanced down the corridor towards the doors where Teal'c was having his operation.
What a mess.
They didn't know the details, only that Teal'c had been hit by a car in the local Wal-Mart parking lot. Exactly what had happened was unclear, only that the car was still at the parking lot.
And Teal'c was still in the operating room.
Jack's boots paced up and down the same stretch of corridor they'd been walking for the last fifteen minutes.
"Jack," Daniel said at last, tired of the 'clump-clump-clump' of footsteps echoing along the corridor. "Sit."
Sam looked up from the book she'd been staring at, What to Expect when you're Expecting. Daniel had no idea where she'd gotten the book, but he suspected that she hadn't got quite as much reading done as she pretended she had.
"Daniel..."
"If you keep pacing, then I'm probably going to do something that will end with one of us hospitalised, Jack," Daniel told him, evenly.
Jack sat down, although not before rolling his eyes at Sam.
Two tubs of now-melted ice-cream sat on the chair beside Sam. She'd gone through a whole pint in less than half an hour, and when either of her team-mates attempted to swipe some from her, she'd rapped them over the knuckles with her spoon and glared. The second pint had taken an hour, but it went, too. Jack had opened up his Cherry Garcia, and he and Daniel shared the pint, occasionally trying to sneak some of Sam's chocolate fudge and risking sore knuckles.
Daniel still didn't know whose spoons they were. He imagined some poor orderly, standing in a kitchenette sans spoons and wondering where they'd all gone. He didn't care.
There is no spoon.
Teal'c had loved the Matrix trilogy.
Daniel hastily corrected that thought: Teal'c loves the Matrix trilogy. Present tense. He's not dead.
Not yet, added a grim little voice in the back of his mind.
Teal'c was still in the operating room, and they had no idea what was going on.
Of them all, Sam seemed the most calm. It was probably an act. Sam was good at pretending everything was fine, even if it wasn't. One of these days, Daniel would have to ask how she did that.
The slap-slap of hospital-shod feet gained their attention, and they looked up at Dr. Warner as he approached them, drying his hands on a white towel. There were smudges of blood on his sleeve, but he'd taken off his operating scrubs before coming out to see them. "Colonel, Major, Doctor. He's stable."
"Will he be okay?" Daniel asked, knowing that 'stable' wasn't always a good survival indicator.
Warner hesitated as he dried off his right index finger, "I won't lie, it's going to be down to the wire. He'll need all the medicine we can lay our hands on, and he'll do best if we can get him transferred back to the mountain." The intonation of 'medicine' indicated that he meant Teal'c's tretonin supplies. "But it's fairly straightforwards from here."
Sam was crushing the pages of the book in her hand. "Do you have any idea what happened?"
Dr. Warner shook his head, "The EMT said something about being hit by two cars, but other than that..." He shrugged. "From what I gathered, it was a bad case of wrong place, wrong time. He no longer has the kind of protection he had before he lost his little friend, and that will make a significant difference in his recovery. It's going to be slow." One hand pressed lightly down over his eyelids.
"Time to heal?" Jack asked.
"Depends," the Doc said, with more calm than might be expected of a man who'd just spent four hours in surgery and was now facing a firing squad of questions. "Standard recovery time now he no longer carries Junior is longer than before. His medication helps...but I'd say at least two, three weeks." He dropped his hand and slung the towel over his shoulder. "They won't let you in to see him tonight," he added, looking up at each of them. "We'll check he's stable here, then probably transfer him to the mountain in the morning. If one of you wants to ride with him, that shouldn't be a problem."
"I call shotgun."
Warner cracked a faint grin and checked his watch. "It's too late to go into the office, and you've all had a busy day. Go home," he told them as he turned away. "Get some rest. I'm going to."
"Thanks, Ron," Sam said.
He waved a hand over his shoulder, a good man and a good-natured one, for all that he found himself dealing with situations that his medical training had never told him about. While his interaction with SG-1 had been limited over the years, he'd attended to many an other SG-team competently and cheerfully.
"Well," Jack said, clapping his hands together. "You heard the Doc. Home."
Daniel eyed him, "When have you ever obeyed doctor's orders, Jack?"
Sam smirked collected their rubbish and started off down the corridor and, after a glare at Daniel, Jack walked after her. Daniel hurried after them.
"I'll call the hospital tomorrow morning to find out when they're transporting Teal'c," Daniel said as they paused at the edge of the parking lot. The evening was fast falling down around them, the days getting shorter as they plunged towards winter. Even now, the air was, if not cold, then without the soft, easy burr of summer warmth.
A glance at Sam showed weariness etched clearly on her features, even in the softer twilight. He touched her elbow. "You're okay taking Jack home?"
There were a lot of other questions Daniel wanted to ask her, like how she was sleeping, how she was eating, whether or not she'd spoken to Shanahan yet, what she'd decided about the baby...
He didn't, and she simply nodded, "It's fine, Daniel." Her house, although quite a ways from Jack's, was still on the same side of town. Daniel's was way across town, making 'lifts' difficult. The paperwork for Jack to borrow one of the Air Force vehicles would be processed in a day or so. Until then, he was reliant on airmen and his team-mates to get him around.
"Call me before you go in, tomorrow," Daniel added as his friends started over towards Sam's car.
"Will do," Sam promised.
The jeep moved slowly through the early evening traffic, and Daniel took the time to think over the day's happenings.
He didn't believe in God, per se. He believed in a consciousness to the universe, but wasn't willing to give it a name. It seemed safer that way.
Nevertheless, he thanked the universe's consciousness all the way back to his house. For small mercies, gratefulness was definitely the order of the day.
As he reached his house, he wanted nothing so much as his bed, and maybe a quick call to Linda, see how she was doing. He parked the car, turned off the headlights and yawned as he climbed out of the car and headed inside.
At the door, he paused in the act of reaching for the door handle.
His front door was slightly ajar.
Slowly, pushed the door open, and switched on the hallway light.
Chaos met his gaze.
The shards of a priceless pottery vase, circa 1890, lay tumbled at his feet. The stylised pattern of lilies around the rim gleamed up at him, forever shattered. Further in, the Tiffany lampshade sported dark holes in the stained glass pattern of its dome, like teeth punched out of the smile of an otherwise beautiful woman.
A quick glance further into the house showed the same pattern of destruction, the same disarray.
Someone had gone through his house quite thoroughly. Someone not Daniel, nor anyone to whom he'd given a key to get into the house.
He stood quite still for a long moment, listening for the sound of someone who might still wait in the darkness. Nothing.
Daniel turned on his heel, fumbling in his pocket as searched for his cellphone. He hit the speed dial, feeling as though his fingers were all thumbs, and waited for the other end to pick up. Eight rings later - an eternity of waiting - Jack answered the phone, lazily. "O'Neill, here."
"Jack, are you home yet?" The words tumbled from his mouth, beyond his control.
"Not yet. What's up?" The question was sharp, a reaction to the apprehension in Daniel's voice.
"Can you and Sam come over?"
Jack's voice blurred as he spoke away from the phone. "Can we head over to Daniel's?"
"Sure. What's up?" Sam's words were clear, although she sounded distant.
"Dunno." Jack's voice was suddenly in Daniel's ear again. "What's going on?"
"I think I've been burgled."
"You think?"
Daniel gritted his teeth, in no mood for word games. "The door was open when I got home and it looks like someone's come in and systematically destroyed my stuff."
"Destroyed it?"
A glance into the living room showed more than mere destruction. "They took my DVD player and television," he said. That didn't bother Daniel. What bothered him more was the way the rest of his property - so much of it irreplaceable - had been wrecked. Theft, he could handle. Willful destruction was something else.
And then there was the fact that his house - his space - had been violated so thoroughly. His skin crawled.
"Have you called the police yet?"
"Not yet. That was next on my list." Daniel knew enough about thefts to know that the police wouldn't be able to do anything other than take down the details of what had been taken.
"Call 'em now. We'll be there in fifteen."
Daniel closed up the phone and called the police, reporting the burglary. Then he went through the house, room by room, mentally cataloguing the damage.
There was a lot of damage.
Daniel was looking through his journals, trying to determine if any had been opened or taken. He didn't think so, but he wanted to be sure. Some of them had classified information in them.
"Hello?" The call came from the front door. Sam. "Daniel?"
"In the bedroom," he called back. No. None of them were missing.
A few seconds later, Sam peered into the room. "My God," she said, wincing. "It's like this in every room?"
"Yeah," Daniel said, heaving himself off the floor with a grimace.
"Sheesh," Jack muttered, regarding the slashed pictures on the wall. Daniel made a mental note to look for the sword that had hung over the mantelpiece.
"They were amateurs," Daniel noted bitterly, following Jack's gaze.
"Oh?"
Daniel pointed at the entertainment unit where his stereo had once sat. "They took electronic equipment worth a couple of hundred, and destroyed antiques worth several thousand."
"Why destroy anything at all?" Sam murmured.
"Vicarious thrill?" Jack offered, and turned towards the window where a car had just pulled up outside. "I think the cops are here."
They were. However, much as Daniel had expected, the police weren't able to do much more than take a list of the items stolen and inquire after Daniel's insurance.
"The extent of the damage is unusual," the female officer offered. "Usually they just take the electronics and get out of there." She turned to regard him, "Do you have any personal enemies? People who might hold grudges?"
"No," Daniel lied. There was no point in saying, 'Yes,' and then having to explain that the people who did hold a grudge against him were more likely to come looking for him in a flotilla of spaceships than with a gun.
"Ah well, sometimes people just...get destructive." Her mouth pursed as her partner folded up his notebook and waited with his hands on his hips - a classic pose of impatience. "I hope you're insured?"
"Yes." Financially, everything was all insured. But how did you replace the irreplaceable?
"That's something anyway," the male officer noted. "Look, I'll be honest with you, we're not likely to find the perps, so you'd best call your insurance and let them know the deal straight away." He glanced around at the chaos. "In the meantime, I don't imagine you want to start the cleanup right now... Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel was tuning the radio out of his head as Jack fiddled with the channels. He and Jack were driving to Jack's house, Sam was headed home herself.
She'd looked just about ready to fall asleep at the wheel, but when Daniel asked if she wanted a lift home, she'd refused.
So here Daniel was, driving a car-less Colonel home.
It was a run of bad luck that everything seemed to be happening to SG-1 all at once. Jack's car burned out, Teal'c getting hit, Daniel being burgled.
Now, all they needed was for something to happen to Sam.
Daniel braked. Hard.
"Daniel?"
He didn't speak as he swung the car around in an illegal u-turn. He wasn't sure he could breathe. "We're going to Sam's house."
"What? Daniel are you nuts...?"
"Do you really think it's a coincidence that all this is happening at once?" Daniel demanded.
He could feel Jack's frown, "Sometimes shit happens."
"And sometimes shit is organised."
"Organised, by... Oh no." Jack said quietly. "He wouldn't."
"Do you want to bet Sam's life on it?"
"He wouldn't hurt Carter."
"Maybe not," Daniel conceded. "But do you want to risk it?"
"I don't seem to be getting much of a choice." Jack sat back. "Do you have any proof?"
Daniel snorted, "No. Just a feeling..."
"A feeling?"
"Yes. A feeling. And I've been right on feelings before." Daniel didn't have to mention the number of times he'd gotten SG-1 out of trouble on nothing more than an intuition.
"And if you're wrong on this one?"
"Look," Daniel stated, thinking fast. He had to find a way to at least solidly convince Jack that they should take precautions for Sam, if nothing else, since it very much looked like SG-1 was being targeted for some purpose or another. "At the very least, it doesn't look all that good, okay? Your car gets stolen and burned out..."
"It's just a car..."
"...then Teal'c gets hit by a car..."
"People get hit by cars all the time..."
"Two cars - in a parking lot..."
"Bad luck."
"And then my house is burgled - and not just burgled, but someone goes in there with the intention of causing a great deal of destruction," Daniel said. He glanced at Jack's face, caught in the waxing and waning chiroscuiro of the street lights. "What? You don't think he's capable of..."
"Oh, I think he's capable of it," Jack assured him. "I just think you're barking up the wrong tree."
"Okay, then think of it this way," Daniel accelerated around a corner, causing Jack to grab for the hand-hold on the door. "Even if it's not Shanahan - and it might not be - it's still a pattern related to SG-1. That means Sam is next on the list."
"Isn't that assuming that it's all intentional?"
Daniel frowned as he waited for the traffic to ease so he could get out onto North Academy Boulevarde. "Yes."
"And?"
"And isn't it a little too 'accidental' that the week after pissing off her ex-boyfriend, we - Sam's team-mates - find ourselves the victims of various criminal activities?"
"Isn't that just a bit too obvious?"
"Jack, this is the guy who ran into the middle of a stakeout without the faintest idea what was going on. Subtlety is not his middle name." Daniel glanced at his passenger. "And you're doing it again."
"What?"
"Defending him."
"I do not..."
"You've had this whole backlash thing happening ever since Sam started going out with him."
Jack scowled, "Explain."
Daniel drove, "Everything's okay with you. Too okay. Would it kill you to admit that it hurts that Sam is dating a loser? Do you have to be so...so nice about it?"
"You seem to be being bitchy enough for the both of us, Daniel."
"Yeah, well I don't have to kid myself that I'm not in love with her, Jack." The instant he said it, Daniel knew he was in deep kimchee. Rule number one about anything between his friends was to never suggest that anything had ever happened, was in the process of happening, or would ever happen. And if such a thing ever was suggested, then it was advisable either get out of the immediate airspace or change the topic very fast.
Daniel did neither. "Believe it or not, it is okay not to like the guy. Just because you're worried that someone will point the finger at you and accuse you of impropriety is no reason to consider the guy all above-board."
Silence.
Daniel really was in deep kimchee. He tried again. "You're not reacting reasonably to this, Jack. Say this was happening to Cassie, you'd be in there issuing threats with the most terrifying of them."
"Cassie's younger."
"I'm saying that just because it's Sam doesn't mean you have to tiptoe around the fact that Shanahan is not exactly the nicest flower in the posy."
"Nicest flower in the posy?" Jack questioned.
"It's a metaphor," Daniel managed. "And it's still a pattern, and Sam's the next link."
"And what do you propose we do, then?" Jack demanded. "Camp out at Carter's?"
"See if she can be persuaded to stay up at the mountain."
"For how long, Daniel?"
"Until we can get proof. Or until the danger has passed. I don't know. Something." He paused. "If it is Shanahan, we can a restraining order out on him."
"Based on what?"
"The phonecalls and flowers."
"Daniel, that was nearly a month ago..."
"Jack, stop being such a dickhead."
"Only if you stop being an asshole." Great. Now they were going for snide.
"Sure," Daniel snapped as they turned into Sam's street. "Look, I'm not asking for your support."
"Good, because you're not getting it. You're the driver, I'm just the passenger."
They drove around a car parked in front of Sam's neighbour's house, and pulled up behind her Volvo. "Just don't dismiss this idea out of hand, okay?"
Jack stared over at the sleepy little bungalow with its hedge and its gate and the porch, and the light inside that showed Sam was home. "Whatever, Daniel."
Then Daniel was out of the car and at the gate. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a dog barked, and he turned to glance over his shoulder. The streetlights weren't very bright but the street looked empty.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just bad luck and coincidence.
Bad things happened in threes, right?
He pushed open the gate and walked up the path. The motion-sensor porchlight came on - had Sam been expecting someone? Jack was climbing out of the car, deliberately slower, making it clear he had no part of this.
Daniel reached out and rang the bell.
It sounded very loud.
A shuffle of curtains and a click of the lock later, and Sam was staring at him. "Daniel? What's going on?"
He let himself sigh with relief. No sign that there was anyone here. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Still, paranoid was better than victimised. And he still had to explain the situation to Sam. "I think that the whole pattern of things happening to us might be more than just bad luck, Sam. I think someone's acting out a vendetta against SG-1. Jack, Teal'c, me...you're next."
It wasn't exactly what he'd intended to say to her; not straight off the bat. He could hear Jack's heavy sigh from behind him, taste Sam's half-amused disbelief as her shadowed eyes blinked at him in surprise.
"Someone?" She asked.
"Yes." He knew the next question was coming. He could see it a mile away.
"Who?"
He opened his mouth to give a response, and a car started up in the street behind them. Without any real thought, he glanced out at the street and saw a car drive off. "You're probably not going to believe this..." he began, then stopped as he saw the crease forming between her eyebrows as she watched the car drive off. "Sam?"
"That car..."
"2001 Lexus," Jack said from behind him. "Silver grey, Colorado numberplate TWKD or something." He shrugged when Daniel looked quizzically at him. "I was thinking of getting a sedan." His eyes went back over Daniel's shoulder to where Sam was standing, milk-white in the porch light, one hand holding onto the doorframe for balance. "Carter?"
Slowly, she spoke. "That's Pete's car."
End of 'Taking Sides'
Part Four: 'What You Don't Know' will be up soon. It is the final chapter in this mammoth - the story is whole and finished and will be fully posted before Christmas 2004. I promise!
CHARACTER NOTES REMINDER: For the character of Pete Shanahan, I extrapolated on the base of what the writers of the show gave us in the Season 7 episode 'Chimera' (obsessive, paranoid, manipulative, and inept) and simply haven't smoothed everything over with a 'no harm, no foul' at the end.