Chapter Five
The images showing now were familiar to Daniel. They were from the first trip to Abydos.
They were followed by some that no one recognised. Jack during his retirement, obviously.
Then his return to the SGC.
/"General Hammond, sir?" Jack took up the 'respectful Airman' stance. "I regret to inform you that my report was not entirely accurate."/
"'Not entirely accurate…'" Hammond chuckled.
They saw the first briefing before his second trip to Abydos. The images slowed just enough for Sam's own words to him to come back and haunt her.
/"Is that tough enough for you? Or are we gonna have to arm wrestle?"/
Daniel sniggered. Sam slapped him gently on the arm. She caught the look on both her father's and General Hammond's faces. Both had gone red from trying to contain their laughter.
Suddenly O'Neill's voice sprang forth from the screen.
/"I can save these people!" /
"Y'know. I remember thinking he was gonna get us killed just then." Daniel said conversationally.
/Teal'c spun, raised his staff weapon.
"Help me!" Jack gave Teal'c a calculating look. "Help me." He said, in a quieter tone.
"Many have said that." Teal'c growled. /
"I guess I should have trusted Jack." Daniel concluded.
/"But you are the first I believe could do it!" Teal'c said, throwing Jack his staff weapon./
"Teal'c?" Hammond asked, pensively.
"You wish to know how I knew that O'Neill could save those people." Teal'c stated.
Hammond nodded.
"I saw it. In his eyes. In his demeanour." Teal'c turned to his friends. "I could see that all of you knew freedom. But O'Neill, seemed to be the one who could bring it."
"I know what you mean." Daniel said.
/Jack was in the control room with General Hammond. Below them in the gateroom Teal'c was struggling with Charlie Kawalsky.
The gate was active./
"I remember this," Daniel said.
Sam nodded. "When Major Kawalsky was infected with a Goa'uld."
/Jack leaned forwards and opened the mic. "Teal'c! Hold him there!"
Teal'c pushed Kawalsky's head into the event horizon.
Jack turned to Walter. "Shut it down! Now!"
The gate shut down and Teal'c released his grip on Kawalsky, who fell to the ramp.
Jack ran in and up the ramp.
A small piece of the Goa'uld fell out of Kawalsky's head and shrivelled up on the ramp.
Jack and Teal'c knelt down to look at the dead man.
"He was your friend." Teal'c said softly.
"My friend died on the table." Jack said, getting up and walking down the ramp./
The images began to whirr past again.
Presently, Jacob said, "Uh… Sam?"
"Dad?"
"What's going on here?" Jacob indicated the screen.
/Jack was in the SGC locker room rubbing a towel over his face and wet hair./
Sam buried her head in her hands. "Oh no…"
/Suddenly, Jack's locker door slammed shut, revealing a barely clothed Sam Carter.
Jack hurriedly yanked his shirt over his head. "Carter! Uh... sorry, didn't know you were in here."
Sam grabbed him and pulled him to her grabbing his head and kissing him passionately./
Sam groaned. "Oh God."
/Jack's voice was muffled. "Mmph! Hey!" He managed to get free of Sam's grip "What the hell's going on?"
Sam looked like a woman crazed. "I want you." She grabbed him and kissed him again.
"Why? I mean, no!" Jack managed to pull her off him again. "Carter, this is a little out of line, don't you think?"
She grabbed him by the shoulders, threw him on the locker room bench, and straddled him.
"You want me?" Sam asked, breathlessly. Leaning down and kissing him a third time.
"No, not like this, not like – "
She kissed him again, effectively cutting him off again. But he got the upper hand, grabbing her shoulders and rolling off the bench, pinning her to the ground.
"It's about time you saw a doctor, doctor." Jack growled, his voice hoarse.
He dragged her up and out of the locker room./
The scenes began to flash past again.
There was silence once more in the room. Embarrassed silence on Sam's part. Desperately-trying-not-to-laugh silence on the part of everyone else.
"So…" Jacob started, his voice strained. "That's where it started."
"Where what started?" Sam asked.
Jacob ignored her, instead paying attention to Hammond, who said, "Are you kidding? It was in the briefing room, the first time they met."
"What are you talking about?" Sam demanded.
"If you don't know, we're not gonna tell you." Daniel sing-songed.
"Indeed." Teal'c said.
Sam glared at them all.
The images progressed quite a way before slowing once more.
/Jack was on board what looked like a large Goa'uld ship. He was looking desperately through a forcefield at Sam, trapped on the other side.
"Sir! Just go!" Sam shouted.
"No!" Jack yelled back. /
The images flashed past once more. Sam was looking down at the man in the room below.
"You know, I always thought that sucked." Daniel said, surprising everyone in the room.
"Doctor Jackson?" Hammond questioned.
"Well… Jack wouldn't have left any of us behind." Daniel reasoned. "It was only his reason for not leaving Sam that was different, and that got him into trouble. That sucks."
Sam nodded mute agreement. General Hammond said nothing.
The next set of slower images were strange. Nobody recognised them, or had even heard about them, except Teal'c, who smiled happily when he saw them.
/Jack riding his bike through the corridors of the SGC./
/Jack at a potter's wheel. /
/Jack and Teal'c playing golf through the Gate.
"Colonel O'Neill! What the hell are you doing!" Hammond's voice came from the control room.
"In the middle of my backswing!" Jack yelled back./
/Jack entered the control room, dressed in civvies. He walked up to General Hammond and handed him a piece of paper.
"Colonel, what are you doing out of uniform?" Hammond asked.
Jack looked at his watch, and turned to face Sam, who had come over to them. "Handing you my resignation." He replied.
"Resigning? What for?" Sam asked, confused.
"So I can do ... this!"
Jack took Sam's face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth. As she responded to the kiss he turned and dipped her. Behind them General Hammond looked about ready to have a heart attack./
"I can't believe he did that!" Sam and Daniel exclaimed together.
"I can't believe he resigned first." Jacob said.
"O'Neill was concerned that the loops might cease, he did not wish to get MajorCarter in trouble." Teal'c said.
"You knew!" Sam said.
"I did."
"You could have told me!"
"Why?"
Sam didn't have an answer.
On screen the images continued to flicker, occasionally slowing slightly.
/Jack in an SGC corridor facing down an entity-possessed Sam. He zatted her, twice./
"Ouch." Sam said.
/Jack catching Teal'c's dead body as he fell to the ground on Vorash, the Tok'ra's abandoned base./
When the images slowed enough to depict a full scene, only Daniel recognised it.
/Daniel and Jack were standing in the gate room, at the base of the ramp. The room was bathed in an eerie bright light.
Jack looked confused. "Daniel?"
"Yeah." Replied Daniel, apparently unable to think of anything else to say.
"Did you want something?" Jack asked softly.
"Yeah. Tell Jacob to stop."
Jack looked surprised at his friend's request. "Why?"
"Because I'm ready to move on." Daniel looked both extremely happy and extremely sad.
"You just giving up?"
"No. No, I'm not giving up, believe me."
Oma Desala was on the ramp. Jack and Daniel looked up at her and she turned into energy. Then she floated into the Stargate and activated it. The wormhole was extremely bright.
Daniel smiled slightly and gestured towards her. "You remember Oma?"
"Sure."
"I think I can do more this way. It's what I want. I have to go now. Everything's gonna be fine. Please Jack. Tell Jacob to stop."
Suddenly Jack was back in the infirmary, watching Jacob try to heal Daniel.
"Jacob, stop." Jack said, his voice hoarse.
"Are you serious?" Jacob asked.
"It's what he wants."
Jacob looked across Daniel's bed at Dr Fraiser. "Someone else want to tell me what to do?"
It was Jack who answered him. "Just let him go."
Jacob lowered the hand device. Daniel inhaled, once, then the machines showed his heart stopping.
"Colonel!" Janet sounded panicked.
Daniel began to glow as he ascended.
Jack was back in the gateroom with Daniel.
"I'm gonna miss you guys." Daniel said, fighting back emotion.
"Yeah, you too." Jack replied, smiling slightly.
"Thank you. For everything."
Jack was obviously extremely upset and confused and trying not to show it. "So, what? See you around?"
Daniel smiled as he realised he had no idea how to answer the question. "I don't know."
Daniel turned and walked up the ramp to the glowing Stargate.
"Hey. Where are you going?" Jack called after him.
Again Daniel was confused. "I don't know."
He walked through the Gate and Jack watched, smiling slightly./
Daniel spoke. "I remember that." He said quietly.
Sam gently laid her hand on his arm.
The next time the scene changed the atmosphere was very different
/Jack was sitting on the floor in his on-base quarters. His knees were drawn up and his arms were resting on them. His hands hung limply from the wrists.
The room was wrecked. Things lay broken on the floor. The only illumination came from a bedside lamp that lay, somehow intact, on the floor.
There was a knock on the door.
"Go. Away." Jack growled.
The door opened anyway and General Hammond stepped in.
"Fine, come on in." Jack said, not looking at who had entered the room.
General Hammond glanced around the room. He sighed and carefully sank down beside Jack.
"Jack."
"George." Jack replied, determined to be difficult. He still did not look up.
After a moment's silence Jack asked, "You got SF's spying on Carter and Teal'c too?"
Hammond snorted, amused. "Just you."
"Why?"
"I suspected you would be more…" Hammond paused, searching for the right word. "…volatile in your grief."
Jack looked around at the carnage. "Very perceptive."
"Are you gonna be okay, Jack?" Hammond asked.
Jack ignored the question, instead asking one of his own. "Do they blame me?"
"Major Carter and Teal'c?" Hammond asked.
Jack nodded.
"No, they don't."
"I'm quitting, you know." Jack said.
"You are not." Hammond said, his voice firm and certain.
"Excuse me?" Jack asked, glancing sideways at his CO.
"Jack, I read your psyche evaluations from before and after the first Abydos mission. A very different Colonel O'Neill returned from Abydos, largely due, I think, to one Dr Daniel Jackson. You owe it to him to keep being the man that came back."
Jack sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face. "Sir, its Daniel."
"I know, son."
The two men sat quietly for a moment.
"You're gonna be okay, Jack."
"That an order?"
Hammond smiled. "You should talk with your team about this."
"Please. Teal'c doesn't need to talk. He actually gets the whole 'higher plane' thing."
"And Major Carter?" Hammond pressed.
"Carter thinks I'm the heartless bastard who let Daniel die. I wouldn't want to disillusion her."
"That's not what she thinks, Jack." Hammond said softly.
The klaxons sounded, signalling that the Stargate was activating.
"You better go, sir. They're playing your song."
Hammond laughed at that. "Help me up. I'm an old man, you know."
Jack stood and pulled Hammond to his feet.
"This isn't your fault, son." Hammond said.
Jack didn't reply.
"I'll send someone to-" Hammond began, gesturing at the mess surrounding them.
"No. I'll do it." Jack said.
"SG-1?" Hammond asked.
"Stay on active duty. We need to be able to do this. To move on." Jack said firmly.
Hammond nodded.
"See you tomorrow, Jack."
Jack nodded.
Hammond paused at the door. "And Colonel?" Jack looked at him. "Try to be gentle with our SF's. It's not their fault you can see 'em coming a mile off."
Hammond exited the room, leaving Jack all alone./
"We had no idea." Sam said.
"Of course we did not." Teal'c replied, "O'Neill took measures to ensure that was so."
The next image was fleeting, but was a happier one.
/Jack was piloting a death glider. Behind him sat Jonas Quinn. To their left Teal'c and Sam flew another death glider.
Jacob's voice came over the radio. "What about Jonas?"
Jack paused before he spoke into his radio. "All members of SG-1 present and accounted for."
Behind him Jonas grinned widely.
Jack spoke into his radio again. "Teal'c, take lead."
Teal'c saluted Jack, then pulled away.
"Are you smiling?" Jack asked Jonas suspiciously.
"First time in a death glider." Jonas grinned.
"Oh!" Jack said, mischievously. "Well…" He took the death glider into a barrel roll, smiling.
Jonas looked positively sick./
The next memory was horrible.
/Jack was trapped against some sort of web-frame on a wall. Opposite him, holding a knife that seemed to be drawn to Jack's body, was Baal.
Baal spoke. "Do you not know the pain you will suffer for this impudence?"
"I don't know the meaning of the word!" Jack said. Then: "Seriously, impudence, what does that mean?"/
"This seems familiar…" Daniel muttered, slightly confused.
/Jack's eyes opened. He was in a sarcophagus.
Then he was sliding down a wall into a cell.
He stood looking up at the opening. A woman was there, looking down at him.
"Is it you?" She asked.
Jack looked utterly confused. Then he heard:
"Hi Jack."
Jack looked down to see Daniel sitting opposite him in the cell.
Daniel was wearing a white jumper and chinos. He had no glasses on. He gave Jack a little wave.
"Daniel?" Jack asked.
"I leave...and look at the mess you get yourself into."
Jack just looked at him, nonplussed.
"It's good to see you."
"Yeah...you too." Jack said, sitting down opposite Daniel. "Shame you're a delusion."
Daniel hastily corrected his friend. "No, I'm here... I'm really here."
Jack's face conveyed his scepticism. "Sure you are." He thought for a moment, then removed his shoe and tossed it at Daniel. It passed through him, bounced off the wall and back towards Jack.
"Here in the sense that my consciousness is here, if not here in the full physical flesh and blood sense, which is really neither...here nor there. The point is...you're not imaging this." Daniel said quickly.
"I just tossed my shoe through you." Jack pointed out helpfully.
Daniel was mildly annoyed. "Yes you did. That's because I've ascended to another plane of existence."
"Ohhh," was all Jack said.
"Remember Oma Desala, the whole...glowing thing, you helped me out. I couldn't have done hat without you, remember that?" Daniel spoke as if leading a child through something simple.
"Yeah."
"I'm… I'm energy now..."
"How's that workin' out for ya?" Jack asked.
"Good, actually...very..."
"Good."
"Very good. You...however..."
Jack shrugged "Yeah, well...you know what it's like…" he got up to retrieve his shoe, "…comin' back from the dead. Takes a while to get the colour back in the cheeks."
"Yeah..."
Jack re-took his seat. Then pointed his shoe at Daniel. "So...not a delusion?"
Daniel shook his head. "No."/
"He threw a shoe through me?" Daniel said.
"O'Neill is nothing if not practical." Teal'c said, with a trace of a smirk in his voice.
There were more imagesshowing Baal torturing Jack. They were extremely difficult to watch.
/Jack was in his cell talking to Daniel. He looked exhausted, almost defeated.
"How many more times do you think you can go into that sarcophagus before it starts changing you?" Daniel was saying. "How many times has it been already? It can regenerate your body, make you strong enough to go through that all over again, but all the time, it's destroying who you are...and once that happens...you won't be able to ascend no matter how much you want to."/
"You offered to help him ascend?" Sam asked in a quiet voice.
Daniel nodded, mutely. He looked as though he was remembering this as he saw it.
/"Hey...I appreciate what you're trying to do." Jack said.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe you could do it." Daniel replied.
"This is me we're talkin' about!" Jack was incredulous.
"Yes, it is. Now, please...just try...to open your mind." Daniel said patiently.
"Oh...stop it, will ya?" Jack said, seeming mildly embarrassed.
"Come on, Jack. You think the Asgard named uh, a ship after you because they thought it was a cool name? Now's not the time to play dumb. You're a lot smarter than that. They saw our potential in you...because of who you are and what you've done. Humanity's potential...that's the same thing Oma saw in me."
"I am not you."
"Yeah, when has that ever stopped you from doing anything?" Daniel challenged.
"Okay...put yourself in my shoes and me in yours..."
"You'd be here for me..." Daniel said, clearly not sure where Jack was going with this.
"Damn straight! I'd have busted you out...blown this rat hole to hell and made sure that son-of-a-bitch suffered!" Jack said, gesturing for emphasis.
"The Others would have stopped you..."
"They'd have a hell of a fight on their hands..."
"You wouldn't do that..." Daniel said.
"Baal would be dead..." Jack was getting more and more worked up.
"Jack..."
"...And don't think I'd stop there!"
"You're a better man than that..." Daniel said.
"That's where you're wrong!" Jack yelled.
The two friends stared at one another. Daniel was the first to look away.
"Right now, I can't imagine doing or being anything other than what I am. I see things, I understand things, in a way I never could have before. But I chose this. Even when Jacob was trying to heal me, I chose this. But you in the place you're at right now...you don't have any other choices. This is not your life we're talking about, Jack! This is your soul! This is it...what I'm offering you is your only way out." He said.
Jack was quieter now. "You're wrong about that too... I have another choice."
Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head. "What are you talking about?"
Jack just looked at him. Suddenly Daniel got his meaning. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "No."
"Any minute, they're gonna come. Baal is gonna kill me again. You can make it the last time." Jack sounded just slightly desperate now.
"Don't ask me to do that..." Daniel pleaded quietly.
"You can put an end to it..."
"I won't do it..."
At the sound of the door opening above them and Baal's Jaffa approaching, both men looked up.
"I'd do it for you, and you know it." Jack said./
"Well that wasn't in his report." Hammond said, in an effort to get SG-1 to accept and move on.
Daniel smiled sadly. "Jack probably thought he'd imagined it."
"Do you remember it?" Sam asked.
"I do now. All of it." Daniel said.
A shadow passed over his face and they knew he was remembering the torture.
The images sped by again.
"DanielJackson, you helped me greatly when I needed you. I am glad you were able to do this for O'Neill also." Teal'c said.
"Thanks Teal'c." Daniel said. Then, "I just couldn't… I couldn't do what he asked." He said.
"I, for one, am glad you did not." Teal'c said.
Daniel smiled at that.