For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1

Chapter 26: The Blame Game
(Daniel's POV)

I hear a knock on my door and when I look up I'm not surprised to see Jack standing there. I take a moment to take in his appearance. His face is drawn and I can see that his knuckles are more than a little bruised... hopefully from trying to beat a punching bag into submission rather than the base's concrete walls.

"Daniel, you have a minute?" he says, almost reluctantly.

"Sure, Jack, what is it?" I ask.

"Oh, I think you know that."

"You talked to Hammond, didn't you?" I say, even though I already know what the answer to that question is going to be.

"Oh, yes, and boy was that one fun little chat. Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, sounding more than a little hurt.

"One, I didn't know; two, it wasn't my place," I explain.

"It's one or the other, Daniel," he growls and I can see that he is not happy.

"No, it's not. I just found out about this on that mission we had yesterday but even if I'd known, it still wouldn't have been my place to tell you anything," I explain.

"I was in charge of that mission, damnit, I should have been informed!" he all but yells.

"Yes, well, somehow I suspect Sam thought it was a private matter and with Warner..."

"Cut the crap, Daniel," he interrupts me. "That's an excuse and you know it. By the time we came back she'd already lied to us about it. After we got her back she told us she was fine. She should have said something then!"

"It's not that simple, Jack," I say, trying to get him to calm down.

"She was injured and we let her fight that creep!" he exclaims, not quite ready to listen to reason.

"Well, that part's not exactly news, I remind him. I mean, we found out about that almost as soon as we returned. As for any other 'injuries' she may have sustained, those were probably fairly minor from a medical perspective and she knew it."

"WHAT?" this time he doesn't all but yell.

"I said 'from a medical perspective', I'm not saying it doesn't matter... and I suspect that at the time she felt like she couldn't stop to acknowledge any of it to anyone, including herself," I say, trying to get him to understand. "I think at the time she just forced herself to keep going, to push it all away until she came home. As for Warner, it's not entirely an excuse, she wasn't comfortable with him and I don't blame her. Would things have gone down differently had Janet been in the infirmary? Maybe, I don't know. Maybe Sam would have said something or maybe Janet wouldn't have bought her story that she had only been beaten, in the end it doesn't matter."

"So you know why she didn't say anything? You know what was the real reason?" he asks.

"I do, but it's not my place to tell you," I admit. Even though I know he is not going to like that answer, I'm not comfortable with the idea of lying to Jack either, so I'm stuck with the less than pleasant truth.

"Daniel..." he growls threateningly.

"It's not," I insists.

"Maybe, but you are going to tell me anyway," he says, refusing to back down.

"No, I'm not."

"Listen, Daniel, I really don't want to push Sam on this right now but I will if I don't have a choice," he warns me. "I don't want to do it, you don't want me to do it and she certainly doesn't want me to do it. The thing is that we can't have a secret like this hanging over our heads. We are supposed to be a team and that means we have to be able to trust each other."

"So what, you are just going to go in there and bully her?" I ask.

"If I have to," he says.

"You are bluffing, Jack."

"No, I'm not," he insists.

"Yes, you are."

"Am not."

"Are... there's no way you'd do anything to hurt her."

"Maybe."

"No 'maybe' about it. I'm not betraying her and that's final," I say, crossing my arms and ready to stand my ground on this particular subject.

"For crying out loud, Daniel, who said anything about betraying her? I'm her friend too, you know? You are not the only one who is worried about her!" he reminds me.

"She should be able to handle this as she sees fit. I mean, sure, I understand why General Hammond felt you had to know, Sam knew it was bound to happen from the moment she agreed to talk to Janet, but how much she tells who should be her choice."

"I know that but we are supposed to be a team!" he insists.

"I know, but even within a team some stuff is still personal... and, by the way, Teal'c still doesn't know anything about this and Sam is not sure whether or not he should be told at all, so you may want to watch what you say around him," I warn him.

"More secrets?" asks Jack, sounding anything but happy about that one.

"I think it's more like playing it safe for the time being. We simply don't know enough about Chulak to know how Teal'c would take something like this and his reaction could end up hurting Sam," I point out.

"Okay, I guess that make sense in a twisted kind of way but he is her friend," says Jack, still sounding all but happy about that one... not that that comes as much of a surprise.

"I know, but it's not our decision to make," I remind him.

"Fine, so how did you figure it out in the first place?" he asks, letting that subject drop, at least for the time being.

"I'm not sure," I admit. "I can tell you how I think I figured it out but I'm not sure whether that's a real explanation or just a rationalization. I mean, there was something that had been feeling kind of off but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until a couple of weeks ago..."

"A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO! I thought you'd only figured it out yesterday!" he exclaims.

"I've had the feeling that something wasn't quite right for a while now. A couple of weeks ago I figured out that that something probably had to do with Sam but I didn't know what it was, not really. Some additional thinking allowed me to narrow things down to Simarka but until yesterday I was fuzzy on the details," I explain before going on. "I tried talking to her yesterday while we were on that mission and that's when she first told me what had happened but it wasn't the time or place to have that conversation so things got postponed again until after we came back. She showed up at my place last night and that's when we really talked things through."

"So what clued you in on the fact that there was a problem in the first place?"

"This is going to sound silly but it happened while I was watching her sleep. She was curled up," I say, well aware of just how insignificant that detail sounds, at least at first.

"I'm not following you, she always curls up to sleep," says Jack, sounding somewhat confused.

"No, you see, that's why we didn't notice. Simarka was so early in the team's history that we didn't even realize that there had been a change but the fact is that during our first couple of missions she used to stretch out under the stars and she'd just look up at the firmament until she fell asleep. That changed after Simarka."

"Still that's quite a leap, isn't it? I mean, to go from a change in how she sleeps to something like this..." he trails off.

"As I said, I'm not sure if that's the real thing that caught my attention or if it was only the final piece of a far more complex puzzle."

"I asked Hammond for permission to go back to Simarka... he said no," says Jack.

"I figured you would... if it makes you feel any better, if you'd been allowed to return, chances are you would have been unable to find him," I tell him, trying to offer some sort of comfort.

"Why?"

"Because they are nomads and it's probably a different season so they are unlikely to be where we last saw them," I explain. "To find them again you would have to calculate approximately one year based on their calendar."

"I still wish I could go back there and..."

"And what? Turn back time?" I ask. "Going after Turghan wouldn't do us any good."

"Maybe not but it would definitely make me feel better," he says, shrugging his shoulders.

"He was defeated by the person who had to defeat him," I point out.

"I know. Dr. Fraiser said something along the same lines but..."

"But you still want to go back and kick his ass?" I ask with a smile.

"Exactly," he agrees, nodding emphatically.

"Believe me, I know the feeling but it wouldn't help... not where it matters," I tell him.

"It would make me feel better," he insists.

"And it would make Sam feel like you don't trust her to fight her own battles," I point out.

"Okay, maybe but..."

"If it makes you feel any better you could try to look at the whole thing from a different perspective," I interrupt him.

"And what perspective would that be, Daniel?" asks Jack, sounding far from convinced.

"The one that says that for Turghan there could be no greater humiliation than to be defeated by a woman --by his woman-- in front of his men. Sure, you beating him would have been satisfactory from your perspective, but nowhere near as devastating and humiliating from his," I tell him with a smile.

"I guess I can live with that," he reluctantly agrees. "So how is she doing, really?"

"As well as can be expected, I guess," I say, not knowing how to explain things without betraying Sam's trust. "She's been coping with this whole mess for months now... I think that's the hardest part for me to remember. It's news to me but she's still the same, though there are a bunch of little things I never really noticed before that all of a sudden are making a whole lot of sense and that bothers me... countless reminders of the fact that I should have figured this one out a long time ago."

"I'm going to mess this up, aren't I? I mean, I'm going to go in there and say the wrong thing," says Jack, sounding rather nervous at the thought.

"Just go talk to her, Jack... you know you'll have to do it sooner or later," I remind him.

"Easy for you to say, you are not the one who messed this up," he all but growls. "If I hadn't taken Moughal's word that Turghan would wait then maybe we would have managed to get there sooner... and we sure as hell wouldn't have wasted all that time resting the damned horses by that river."

"I didn't mess this one up? I ask, not quite believing my ears. I was supposed to be the one in charge of avoiding a situation such as this in the first place but I was too busy letting my curiosity get the best of me! I was so excited at the thought of actually having a chance to study a civilization that had been extinct here on earth for centuries that I didn't even stop to consider the fact that I was putting Sam in danger. She wanted to come back but I insisted that we should stay a little longer. I was the one who told her that she should try to accept their ways, I was the one who..."

"I was in charge of that mission," Jack insists. "I saw how they reacted to Sam's presence and I didn't insist that we pull back the moment we had a chance... not to mention the fact that when I saw her in that blue dress..."

"Oh, yes, let's not forget that dress! I say, shaking my head at the memory of that dress... and at my reaction to it.

"You know what happened to it?" asks Jack, whose thoughts on that matter probably mirror my own.

"Turghan ripped it off Sam's body before he beat the crap out of her," I say, feeling almost sick at the thought.

"Figures," mutters Jack.

"At least it's gone," I say.

"Well, there's that," he agrees. "I guess we really messed this one up, didn't we?"

"Yes, I guess we did," I say, not wanting to get into an argument over whose mistake it really was. There's no way I'm ever going to get Jack to realize that it wasn't his fault so I don't even try.

"I really should go talk to her, shouldn't I?" he asks, sounding more afraid than I've ever heard him sound before... and --considering what we've been through in the past few months-- that is saying something.

"I guess," I tell him, knowing how much he won't enjoy that encounter.

"Wish me luck... something tells me I'm gonna need it," he says as he walks out the door.

Author's notes: Hi guys, thanks for the feedback, as usual it is really appreciated. Also, I know some of you were waiting for the gym scene here... it was edited out at the last minute. It's just that when I was going over it I kept feeling that it detracted from the story a lot more than it added to it, so, out it went.

Anyway, thank you again for the reviews, as usual the next update will be posted in a week, though in the meantime I'm also posting the first chapter of a new story called In The Genes' (in case you are interested the story id is: 2645891).

Alec