A/N: Thank you very much to the generous reviewers! Feedback very welcome in fact nearly essential. Thanks again to The Floopster for her patience and excellent grammatical skills!
Spoilers: loads random and up to season 8
chapter 3
Daniel touched two fingers to the corner of his mouth and winced.
On the way to the Infirmary Hannah had awakened and had lashed out in her fear. Leaping off the gurney, her fist had connected with surprising speed with Daniel's face, and with her father's too, if the darkening bruise on his cheekbone was anything to go by.
Teal'c, whose kel'no'reem had been disturbed by the shouts and the pounding of boot-clad feet, had joined them. Together, they had wrestled the General's terrified daughter down as carefully as they could. In her frenzy to escape all of them had sustained minor injuries. The Doctor had sedated her heavily, so that she now lay unconscious, and restrained "for her own safety" in an isolation room.
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The Doctor looked up grimly from his notes. "General O'Neill, your daughter appears to have suffered a psychotic episode." The experienced medic hesitated, he had dealt with a great many servicemen over his long career, but this General was quite frankly a tricky customer. Well, he thought, best just to say it and suffer the consequences." It is a highly unusual occurrence in a person of her age, we normally only see this as part of posttraumatic stress disorder. I have seen the condition at first hand in personnel who have had traumatic battle experiences, and amongst prisoners of war." He let the words hang in the air uncertainly, aware of how it sounded.
Jack leaned his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. The Doctor inhaled to carefully begin again, but the General cut him off," You wouldn't have read her file. It was classified in ol Doc Frasier's day." He broke off anguished and continued to stare at the patch of grey stone floor between his feet.
Daniel attempted to continue "Hannah had an, er, interesting arrival at the S.G.C."
"Get him the file, someone," Jack whispered in a strangled voice.
Daniel continued, "I guess Janet expected something like this initially. She always said Hannah had recovered too quickly, but after ten years no one seriously thought it was an issue anymore."
"The File, anyone!" the general growled in a low voice.
Davis, who had appeared in the doorway, took in the scene with one glance and bustled away to do the General's bidding.
Daniel waited for a second before he continued, "Jack, you need to contact Sam"
"Jack," he repeated urgently.
A hissed intake of breath," I can't."
Daniel scowled, "you mean, you won't?"
Jack raised himself slowly, looked up at Daniel and narrowed his eyes. "No, Daniel." He pronounced the younger man's name deliberately. "I mean; she is off-world with Jacob and his Tok'ra buddies on some secret mission to an unknown planet, with no gate - it can only be approached by ship, I mean, I Can't!"
Daniel flushed slightly, and looked at the floor as Jack's voice softened again.
"Anyway, her mission is due back in two days time and Jacob knows I don't like to be kept waiting!"
"Could we secure the assistance of the Asgard or the Tok'ra, O'Neill?" Teal'c suggested.
"No I don't think so," his friend replied.
The Doctor ventured, "I could recommend Dr Mackenzie?"
"No! Not now, not no how, not ever!" yelled the General, turning to face them, eyes blazing.
The Doctor flinched and quietly left as Daniel put his hand on the furious man's shoulder.
"Jack, it won't happen."
"Over my dead and rotting corpse." Jack breathed heavily, chest heaving, discomfited by this rare show of emotion.
Daniel sighed; he knew it was going to take a while for his friend to get a handle on his fear. Always strangely calm in every life and death situation they had faced, Jack's emotional Achilles heel was his wife and child, and Daniel knew it would take a supreme effort, for his friend, to regain his control.
Minutes went by with only the sound of the beeping monitors and his friend's ragged breathing disturbing the silence. Daniel wanted to say something, to soothe Jack's nerves and to buy him time to calm down. Eventually he began.
"She was one of the only memories I retained after my ascension." The younger man grinned involuntarily, memories flooding his mind. He pushed his glasses up his nose.
"Jack? Do you remember how she used to follow T round the base copying him, when she was small? That first time she smiled, you said it was like a million lights going on." He chuckled quietly.
"What about the first time she said "Crap" . . .you chased her round 3 corridors and she thought you were going to be so mad, but when you caught her you just tickled her until she screamed."
The very corners of the tall Jaffa's mouth quirked upwards, "Indeed, you had to move at an accelerated pace to catch her!" he declared.
O'Neill listened to his friends talking and slowly the picture of her restraints and the small white hands in them receeded and a smaller thinner Hannah came into view. He remembered every time she had raised her eyebrow and said 'indeed' like her Jaffa mentor, and he grimaced when he remembered the threats he had had to make to get her to talk and the heartbreaking joy of hearing her call him daddy the first unexpected time.
And then images he had struggled these long years to forget returned . . . . .