Chapter 3

"Now, are you going to tell me why you stopped taking your medication?"

Jack glared at the doctor. She was smooth one, he could tell that much. Tall, thin, with dark curly black hair, she had miles of legs that just went on, legs that were especially noticeable with the way she was sitting across from him on one of his chairs. Normally, Jack would be turned on by such a sight, especially if she were blonde, but the fact that she was here evaluating his sanity was a bit of a killjoy.

Muttering under his breath, Jack cursed Carter. What had happened? What was going on with Daniel? There was no way that things could have gone that sour between all of them. And there was no way that he'd have pulled a Rip Van Winkle and slept away ten years of his life.

Bouncing his leg up and down nervously, he covered his mouth, struggling to come to terms with the mess that had been thrown on him since he'd woken up this morning.

"Jack?" the shrink asked.

Withdrawing his hands, but remaining in the same position, he narrowed his eyes. "I'm not on any meds."

The woman nodded once, what Jack would call a sympathy nod, before she gazed at him warmly. Not warmly. Jack knew those looks. Back from his tour of Iraq, the Air Force had set him up with a dozen or so different shrinks, trying to get him to "talk" about his time under enemy lines, to "talk" about the torture he'd experienced and the pain he'd felt. It had been no different than his operations in Europe during the Cold War days, his dealings in Iran, or his time after Charlie's death.

They were all the same.

"What the hell do you want?" Jack snapped. "Who set you up? Kinsey paying you? The Trust?"

She sighed and shook her head. "Jack, you promised me that you'd take your medication faithfully if you were released."

"Released?" Oh, she was so not talking about what he thought she was. "You're kidding me, right?"

"This isn't a joke, Jack," she replied sternly. "This is very serious. You can't just pretend nothing happened. A head injury is a life changing event."

Jack just stared at her. So, now it was a head injury. Hesitantly, Jack brought his hand up to his forehead, rubbing it, applying gentle pressure while gliding his hand to his temples.

It was ridiculous for him to even consider this shrink might be right. This whole scenario had to be an illusion, or caused by a Goa'uld, or Kinsey, a human Replicator, or hell, even the Acshen.

"You don't remember, do you?" she asked gently.

"I don't remember it because it never happened." He rose to his feet and stood over her. "So, why don't we just skip the games and get right to the point. Who are you?"

Slowly, she rose to her feet, gazing at him levelly, her brown eyes never wavering in their intensity. "Jack, you aren't going to try and intimidate me. I know you better. And you know who I am. I'm your psychiatrist, Doctor Schneider. Now, sit down and we'll get through this together, okay?"

Despite his mental protests, Jack nodded and eased himself back down on his couch. His little tiff with Carter had taken more out of him than he'd like to admit, and that dull sense of fatigue he'd experienced this morning was threatening to overwhelm him again. Besides, he knew by reading this woman over the past few minutes he wasn't going to get anywhere if he kept snapping at her, so he figured he'd take a page out of a different book for a while and go along with it.

"That's better," the shrink said in a soothing voice, lowering herself back into his chair. "Now, what is it you don't remember?"

Jack fought the urge to make a snarky remark over such a stupid question and was pleased when he succeeded. "Don't remember a damn thing, Doc."

"Nothing at all?"

He sighed. He hated shrinks. "I woke up this morning, tried calling people I knew, discovered I am definitely not getting my beauty sleep, and had a run in with my old pal Carter."

"You became hostile with her," Schneider said.

"Hostile? Hardly." His glare intensified. "You tell me if you woke up without any memory over the past ten years if you'd be serenading the clouds."

"Behavioral and personality changes are not uncommon with frontal lobe impairment," she told him. "And with some damage to your temporal—"

"Lady, I don't have brain damage."

She shook her head at him again, causing his annoyance to flair even more. "It's been ten years. Denial over the fact isn't going to change anything. You need to accept this impairment and move on."

"I'm not impaired in any way," he told her flatly. "I'm perfectly fine. It's all of you that have been sucked into some bizarre reality."

The psychiatrist bowed her head and sighed. "I had really hoped we'd gotten past this a long time ago."

"I've never met you before today." He was quickly becoming exasperated. "What about that fact do you not understand?"

"Jack, listen to me…"

"No, you listen to me," Jack snapped. "I've supposedly got ten years missing from my life caused by a head injury I don't remember ever getting and one of my subordinates, an old teammate of mine, hates me while the other one apparently has some issues of his own." He leaned forward, lowering his tone. "I don't want to hear any pop psyche or some in depth analysis that my problems are related to my mother. I want someone to tell me what happened and I want to know now."

Doctor Legs didn't budge. "If you had stayed on your medication, you wouldn't have had this problem. I don't feel the best course of action would be for me to tell you. Get back on your medication, let your memories return, and get on with your life."

No, no. He'd heard this one years ago. Just another shrink's way of bribing a patient into taking medication. Dope a person up, and he stops being a problem.

He'd dealt with addiction once before in his life. He wasn't going down that road again.

"How about you give me some place to start first," Jack said, testing her. "Like how about telling me what caused this?" He pointed to his head. "And what about Daniel? What happened to him?"

The psychiatrist wasn't pleased. He could always tell. "You are still in denial about that as well?"

"Pretty hard to be in denial when you can't remember what happened."

Schneider sighed and leaned back in her chair, regarding him carefully. "You know about the incident that happened off-world. You know the damage that you, Doctor Jackson, and Teal'c suffered."

"Teal'c?" Jack hadn't even considered that possibility. "Is he alright?"

"You know as well as I do how Teal'c is," she said calmly.

"No, I don't, in case you forgot," he said bitterly. "Since apparently I did."

Instead of another sympathetic gaze, Jack was surprised when the shrink rose to her feet, grabbing her purse, and came to stand over him. "It will come back to you with time."

Not a good enough answer.

"Then what about Daniel?" he asked, standing to meet her, having a feeling that the last person to whom he had any hope for discovering what happened to him was about to walk out that door. "What happened to him?"

Schneider's whole demeanor changed, and he picked up on the acute sadness in her face. "He didn't fare as well as you and Teal'c."

He wanted to thank her for stating the obvious, but didn't, more concerned as he watched her head for the foyer. If she left, then he'd never find a way to undo this, find out what happened to Daniel, Teal'c, Carter, and himself.

"Where are they keeping Daniel?"

She gazed at him gently. "You know where."

"What happened off-world?" Jack asked, getting right to the point.

She paused at the door, turning to squeeze him on the shoulder. "Just get some rest, Jack." Stopping, she started to rummage through her purse before reaching out and handing him a bottle. "Take your pills. They'll help you keep your mood swings and your aggression under control. I know you're still struggling with it even all these years later, but that is why it's important to take your medication." She adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. "Promise me you'll take those and I won't send someone here to watch over you."

Jack grunted, glaring at the pill bottle. He hated pills. He hated them so damn much.

"Yeah, I promise," he muttered.

"Good. I'll check on you in a couple of days." She smiled warmly at him. "Now, no more outbursts, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever."

"Jack," she said firmly.

"Oh, I promise," he said flatly. Promise to beat the living crap out of whoever started this game, he thought to himself.

"Good," she said again. "Take care of yourself."

Jack nodded, watching her go. When she had left, and her car had pulled from the street, Jack stepped away from his window and began to walk back to his bathroom. Strangely, the room was still warm from this morning, though the steam and the pressure had lessened considerably.

He took a moment to stare at his reflection, once again haunted by the face of a man he didn't recognize. That small part of him, that part that whispers doubts in his ear that this whole crazy nightmare was true, made him look deeper, forcing him to bear into the worn eyes that watched him from behind the mirror.

They were the eyes of a lonely man, a man saddled with years of pain and regret.

Slowly, Jack brought his fingers back to his head, pressing onto his skin, and trailing down to his left temple. There, he saw the faint remembrance of a scar, a long thin line that extended down over his ear.

The shrink had mentioned something about damage, damage to his mind.

Down trodden, Jack gazed at the pill bottle in his other hand. He could feel the pull to just accept everything that was happening, take his pills like the good soldier, knowing that when he woke up the next morning, everything would be okay.

But he also felt the burning deep down that no matter what he did, things would never be okay, and that he was on the brink of losing everything.

Without another thought, Jack cast aside his feelings and did what he did best. Took action.

Ripping open the bottle and washing down two pills with a glass of water, he grunted with dissatisfaction. With one last look at the bottle, he dumped the rest into his toilet, flushed, and tossed the bottle in the trash.

Then, he went back to bed and tried to bury the unease, discomfort, and the nagging persistent voice that kept calling him from somewhere in the darkest parts of his mind.

Why…