O'Neill Interrupted – an interlude. Part 9
Jack sat up, realising that the sense that had saved his life so often had been right to warn him of a presence in his room.
Things were looking up at last. He had been released from the cell and brought to this rather plain, but luxurious in comparison, bedroom. It even came with a closet of clothes and washing facilities. Sure, there was a guard posted at the door and he wasn't allowed out unless summoned, but he didn't care – he had a soft mattress and regular meals.
It was that same mattress he was lying on when he had been woken from his light doze by the feeling he was being watched.
"For crying out loud! What do you want? Can't a guy have a nap around here without someone floating in for a visit?"
Janet Fraiser shook her head, her eyes alight with anger. Jack couldn't help looking at her hands to make sure she wasn't holding any sharp pointy medical instruments.
"I can't believe you're doing this, sir, betraying your own planet and your friends. Why? Why are you doing it?"
Jack laughed, moving his feet onto the floor and standing. "Funny – that's exactly what Lord Anubis wanted to know."
"Lord? He's a snake – one of those Goa'uld you have been fighting so long – and now you are calling him Lord?"
"Yeah, well, at least he's looking after me." Jack rubbed his face, limping over to the jug of water on a small table. "You go without the most basic of comforts for over a year and then tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing." He poured a drink, and moved to sit in the single chair, holding the glass carefully in shaking hands. "As for betrayal – you're preaching to the wrong guy, Doc. I could write a book about betrayal and how it feels to be abandoned."
"No one has abandoned you, sir. They have never given up hope of finding you."
"That's where you're wrong! They did find me and they left me here." The glass shattered against the wall, flung by a man so angry he could barely speak.
"No! You can't believe that." Fraiser came closer, squatting down beside Jack's chair. "Teal'c didn't see you. You can't believe he would have left you if he had."
"Can't I?"
"No, in your heart you know you're wrong. Your team, General Hammond, everyone at the SGC have been searching for you all this time, but they've had other battles to fight. These kull warriors are unstoppable, that's what Sam and Jacob were working on at the new Alpha site."
He interrupted, his voice vibrating with fury. "They're busy fighting the kulls? That's rich. Those things are so big and slow they could be taken out with a well aimed slingshot. You'll have to come up with a better answer than that."
"You haven't seen them in action, Jack."
He raised an eyebrow. "It's Jack now, is it?"
"We're friends, aren't we?"
"I can't be friends with a figment of my imagination. I guess there's something inside me wants human companionship, so I conjure up someone I can talk to. You, Carter, Daniel. Probably going to be the pizza guy next."
"There is a lot more going on than you are aware of, sir, and you're giving Anubis what he wants because of a misguided sense of injustice? Is that all it is? A temper tantrum? A fit of pique?"
"No, I. . . " Jack stopped, giving her a calculating look. "How do I know you aren't something created by this thing in my head?" He tapped the spot that gave him the most pain, and where he assumed the implant to have been inserted. "Trying to find stuff out." He turned his head towards the door as if he expected it to open, then back to Janet. "I don't have to explain my motives. You are a figment – nothing more."
"No. You're not imagining me. I'm really here."
Jack's lips twisted into a smile. He extended his right hand and waved it through the doctor's face, waggling his fingers as he did so. "Yeah, right."
"Last time it was a shoe."
He gave Janet a startled look, thinking through the implication of her words, before asking softly, "Like Daniel?"
She nodded, her face sad. "Exactly like Daniel. I'm dead, Jack."
"Dead? How?"
"A team member was injured offworld – Simon Wells of SG-13. I went along with the rescue party. I didn't know what hit me. Alive one second, dead the next. Colonel Dixon was hit too and almost died, he's been leading SG-1 for over a year now, but Sam, Teal'c and Daniel were okay." She smiled, her expression relaxing. "And Simon made it. His wife gave birth to a little girl. They named her Janet, after me."
For a second Jack almost found himself being pulled into the delusion. His eyes began to water and he rubbed at them angrily, then he froze, his mind going into overdrive.
"Jack?"
When he spoke it was in a snarl, every word spat out from between bared teeth. "You almost had me going there with your sob story of heroic self-sacrifice. Almost. But you made two mistakes. Daniel and Carter are dead."
"No. Daniel came back to us months ago. Sam escaped the kull warrior and was rescued by Daniel and Dave Dixon. I'm the only dead person around here, Colonel."
"Dead. They're all dead. And now you are too. Dead." Jack began to chant, muttering the words over and over. "Morte, morte, morte, vos es mortuus."
"Nul desperandum."
His eyes flickered across her face at her words, but he continued to mutter. "Doc doesn't speak Ancient. She isn't real. Dead, all dead. Dead." He knew he was losing his mind and this was just more proof. Anubis had told him they encountered SGC troops on another of the planets he had given them, and this apparition was merely a manifestation of the guilt he felt. Janet's death as punishment for his transgressions. For what he was doing.
Mea culpa.
Nothing more.
Nothing more.
He shook his head and rocked backwards and forwards. His dream was telling him not to despair, but he had done so long ago.
Jack continued to rock far into the night as Janet kept watch over him.
xoxoxoxoxoxo