Shadows of Fear – Part 7
Jack had waited, knowing Daniel was awake, but gradually the other man's breathing changed as he succumbed to the pull of sleep. Then keeping one eye on Daniel's sleeping form, Jack sat and swung his legs around until his feet met the floor before making his quiet way out of the bedroom. Softly shutting the door behind him, he headed for the guest bathroom.
As much as he needed to have Daniel there, he also felt the desperate desire for privacy – to regroup and re-evaluate his actions on the previous night in the cold light of day. Flipping the toilet lid down, he sat hunched over, both hands clasped on the back of his neck, his fingers massaging and tugging at the tense, aching muscles in his back and upper spine. He moved his head and shoulders up and down as he pressed into his neck, fingering the hard ridge of scar tissue running from his hairline to just between his shoulder blades. Shuddering with revulsion, he remembered the feeling of the Goa'uld's first massive bite, then the ripping as it tore its way through the skin and deep into the fragile tissue below. After the initial scream involuntarily rose in his throat, agonizing spasms had him clenching his teeth and trying to just survive. Forget fighting, he hadn't been able to think that far ahead, just taking one desperate breath at a time.
And last night. . .
God, last night.
It had happened again. She had held the hissing snake, pushing it towards him, and he dropped the phone and had been back there, back in Hathor's fake SGC, pleading, begging.
"Oh ... God, no ..."
His fingers dug cruelly into the scar, pain shooting up in all too familiar waves as he probed, searched and scratched.
Slipping from the toilet, he fell to the tiled floor and started to shake, tremors wracking his body as shock finally set in.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack didn't hear the knock on the door, didn't even realise Daniel had entered the bathroom until he was kneeling beside him, one hand holding his shoulder while the other pressed a wadded towel to his bleeding neck. When he eventually uncurled and shakily sat, Daniel moved away, standing and waiting silently near the now open door.
"Jack?"
He looked up, startled out of his profound embarrassment by the look on his friend's face. After a couple of swallows he managed to croak out a dry "What?"
It didn't seem to help, if anything his reply appeared to make Daniel even more worried as he held tightly on to the bloody towel, his hands flexing as if he were wringing it.
The tickle of moisture running down his neck and into his collar brought Jack's hand around to investigate and, after he had wiped it across his skin he brought it back and stared at the bright blood now smeared on his fingertips with something akin to astonishment.
"Daniel?" He held them out to the other man. "I think I must have cut myself. Can you have a look?"
Daniel gave a short, sharp shake of his head. "We'd better let Janet handle it. Get dressed. I'll drive."
"Okay."
Jack got to his feet, his legs numb from the cold floor. He couldn't help staggering slightly, but managed to catch himself on the basin before he fell. Holding himself upright, with one hand clutching the hand basin's white porcelain, he turned on the tap and held his other hand under it, watching the blood run down the drain hole.
Through all this he wondered at Daniel's stillness.
Jack knew the cut on his neck was still bleeding. He reached to open the cabinet above the basin.
His eyes meet others, staring back at him from the mirror. Eyes filled with condemnation and contempt. Young eyes grown old with pain.
He had been so promising, so ready for anything.
So very, very young.
But Lieutenant Elliot had died and now had joined the ranks of his tormentors.
He was here and the air seemed to crackle with energy as if its fabric was trying to rip.
And through it all, Jack could see Daniel in the mirror, standing there oblivious.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack was staring into the mirror as Daniel waited, watching carefully. He was ready, for what he wasn't sure, to run, to fight – he didn't know.
The signs were all there, even down to the bleeding gash in Jack's neck, but ... He studied his friend, seeing the dull eyes in a face lined with fatigue.
There hadn't been a time when Jack had been alone offworld except once, and even then it had only been during his watch that last night on the planet. And he'd been checked, just as they all had, when he came back. The MRI had shown nothing.
No, it wasn't possible – unless ... He dismissed the fleeting notion that Jack had been infested by a Goa'uld while here on Earth. Whatever was happening to Jack had started before he left the base and he knew for a fact that Janet would have spotted the obvious entry point in Jack's neck if it had been present before he came home.
Daniel felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he came to the conclusion his nightmarish fears Jack had been taken as a host were groundless. Something else was happening here, but just what Daniel had no idea.
He really needed to get Jack to talk to him. There hadn't really been time the previous night, not with Jack acting so out of character. He had seemed so fragile that pushing him even slightly might have sent him over the edge.
Not that it looked like he was in any better a state now.
It was that same sense of standing on the edge of a precipice and waiting for Jack to leap that catapulted Daniel into action, making him hurry forward to stand beside his friend, to put his hands over Jack's, and to prise them off the basin's edge. He held them tight, feeling their icy coldness, and stood beside the other man staring into the mirror, trying to see what was holding him enthralled.
All he saw were their reflections, with the bathroom beyond.
"You can't see them, can you."
"See who, Jack?"
Jack's eyes met Daniel's in the mirror, and Daniel felt his heart miss a beat at the horror in his friend's voice.
"Them."
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Daniel couldn't see them, couldn't smell the charnel reek, couldn't feel them closing in.
Behind Elliot, Henry Boyd screamed at him in slow-motion silence, his mouth gaping, while Ivanov's melting face ever flowed and reformed.
And there were others – Simmons, even Apophis – each of them staring back at Jack wherever he looked, wherever he turned.
"Who? Jack – see who?"
Jack closed his eyes against the reflected faces, and shook his head, but he wasn't allowed to hide. Daniel had him by the hands and was turning him away. He kept his eyes shut, knowing if he opened them he would truly be in their midst.
"Answer me, Jack. Who do you see? Is it Major Kawalsky? Are you seeing him again?"
And Jack couldn't help laughing. If only it were that easy. If only it was his friend Charlie standing here with them, even with the accusation Jack had seen in his stare. Charlie he could deal with.
But there were others ...
"If it is, we should call Sam, get her to bring her equipment and set it up here. She might be able to get some readings – find some answers."
He carefully opened his eyes, and his breath caught in his throat, for now there were more – crowded into the small space, cheek to jowl, enemies with colleagues, friends with strangers, and as Daniel pulled him from the room Jack brushed against them, his skin shivering, each one turning as he passed. He couldn't hear their footsteps as they followed, but he knew they did so by the prickling of his scalp and the feeling of dread in his soul.
They reached the lounge room and walked into shadows and darkness beyond which Jack could glimpse others, all with their eyes grim upon him, each waiting, watching and seeing inside him, and as light flared at Daniel's touch of the switch, they remained, not retreating.
Daniel sat and Jack followed, his eyes darting around. He could see his friend following his movements, looking to see what he saw, but he knew that for him there was just empty space and the commonplace stillness of the early morning hours just after dawn.
No matter how much he hoped it was a dream, Jack knew that it was not. What had caused it, he didn't know. What it meant, he had no idea. What he had to do to stop it, he couldn't even hazard a guess. But he knew he couldn't last much longer, with every step, every breath, watched by judgmental eyes that ate away at him.
He searched the room, looking for the one face he dreaded most to see with contempt shining from its gaze. His eyes paused as they hit upon new faces, sometimes replacing old ones, sometimes crowding in beside the rest, but it was with relief that he couldn't find the one he looked for. Relief and sadness, for although he feared, he also burned with the need to gaze once more on the person he missed most.
His son.
And when at last he was sure Charlie wasn't there, he turned to Daniel and blocked out everything but what he needed to explain.
It was with a certain sense of irony and a twisted half smile that felt ghastly even to him, that he spoke the words in a whisper, fraught with the need to be believed.
"I see dead people."
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
TBC
