Dr. MacKenzie was an irritating man, O'Neill decided within two minutes of being introduced to him. Too patronizing, too quick at making assumptions, and too intent on ferreting information out of other people's skulls. But under the circumstances, he didn't see any choice but to the let the man have a go at digging out whatever he could in the hopes it could be used to find Her-the woman he'd lost. He was highly skeptical about the whole proceedings, but with the help of some mind-numbing medication he passed quickly into a hypnotic state.

"Tell me what you see, Colonel."

"Nothing. It's too dark. I can't see anything."

"Where are you?"

"I'm not sure. A room maybe. Or a cave. Or...or a ship. A ship. A spaceship."

"And it's dark because?"

"Because Carter shorted out the power system."

"Why?"

"Why? Because that's what she had to do to disable their sensors."

"You're hiding then?"

"Hiding. Yes. I'm not going to let that snakehead have the satisfaction of torturing me again...and...I won't let him do that to her either."

"Do what, Colonel?"

"Torture her, kill her, then do it all over again."

"I see," the doctor said, trying to keep his voice calm and steady and not quite succeeding. He and the colonel had spent way too many agonizing hours tap dancing around the damage Baal had inflicted on O'Neill's already hammered psyche the last time he'd had him in his clutches. He swallowed down a groan and asked, "It's Baal you're hiding from, then? You're on a ship controlled by Baal?"

"Yes," O'Neill answered.

"How did you get there?"

"He yanked us right out of the wormhole...he had a machine...an Ancient machine. Carter blew it to pieces, then she blew the lights and sensors, and now we're hiding."

"You're not hiding anymore, Colonel. You're back at the SGC."

"I'm home."

"Yes, you are, but where is Major Carter?"

"I...I...I left her behind. She was hurt...too hurt, couldn't keep going. Had to come and get Frasier to help her. Only..."

"Only what, Colonel?"

"I don't know..."

"Let's go back then. Major Carter was hurt?"

"Yes, ribs...chest...I don't know. Hurt her to move and breath, but her ribs didn't feel broken. Coughing up blood, passing in and out of consciousness. Can't keep dragging her along...it'll kill her...got to leave you, Carter, but I'll be back. I'm coming back! Promise me you'll hold on until I get back, promise me!"

"Where, Colonel? Where are you going back to get Major Carter?"

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"Stay with me, Colonel," MacKenzie ordered him, but he'd pulled out of his trance and was glaring angrily at the doctor.

"This isn't doing us any good!" he snarled in frustration.

"We know more now than we did before," the doctor told him. "We'll take a break and..."

"And what?" Jack demanded, "What we know is it's too late...she died waiting for me to bring help days ago!"

"We can't know that!" Dr. MacKenzie answered him. "People can survive some internal injuries...and we can't rule out that she was discovered by Baal and..."

"Yes, you can rule that out, because I would never have left her where he could find her...I'd have zatted her into oblivion before I'd let him get his hands on her! And failing that, I'd have killed her myself and made sure he couldn't get near her until it was far too late for that sarcophagus to work!"

MacKenzie blanched in the face of his vehemence. "You remember then?" he asked quietly.

Jack slumped into his chair. "I remember Baal, and Carter, and everything...I remember it all, but it's no good. Because I don't KNOW where I left her. I just knew I had to get help and fast. There wasn't time to think...there was just...running." He didn't need to look at the doctor to know the enormity of that confession. He was a field officer. He'd survived years of black ops and SG-1. It took a lot to wipe out all that training and leave only one long, flat out, terror-blinded, panicked run.

He began to soberly retell what he now did remember, "After we'd escaped and blown the machine, there was nowhere to go. The place was crawling with Jaffa, we hadn't been able to find out where the ship was, but it was a safe bet we weren't in friendly territory. We had to get off that ship. Baal had...well, we'd been his guests a little too long already. I guess we were both suffering from sarcophagus sickness by then. We'd hung around until we had a shot at taking out the machine, but..." He shuddered. They both would rather have died than stay and continue in the endless cycle of torment in which they'd been trapped. He'd meant what he'd said earlier: he'd have killed her himself rather than let her fall into Baal's hands again.

"He'd had Carter in his torture chamber before...I don't know what he'd done to her. She'd figured out a way to short circuit the sarcophagus so she could sneak out of it and find me, so it hadn't done her much good at all-she was in bad shape. She'd held on to get the job done, but...she was fading fast after it was over. I used the rings to get us off the ship...had no idea where they'd take us. Anywhere but there. It was some sort of storage room just like you'd expect on a Goa'uld mothership. I couldn't find a Gate or cargo ship, so we took an escape pod...but there's no way to know where you're going in one of those tin cans. We crashed into a planet. By some miracle the air was breathable...I tried to bring her with me but couldn't.

"I had to leave her behind," he said. He wanted, needed, to believe he'd had no choice, but the guilt lay heavily on his soul. "I promised her I'd bring help...and...I left her behind." He jumped to his feet and began to pace, the exhaustion and injuries that had left him passed out for almost two days forgotten in his agitation. "I don't even know how far I'd gone before I ran into the Gate...it looked like any other Gate on any number of worlds. I don't even know what the symbol of origin looked like...I just started punching in any I didn't recognize until it worked. I have no idea how to get back to her."

"There might be more you'll remember under hypnosis, Colonel. We'll try again...for now get a bit of rest."

Rest. He was exhausted. Exhausted from enduring Baal's idea of a good time again and again, exhausted from watching Carter subjected to it over and over again as well, exhausted from fighting the effects of sarcophagus withdrawal, and exhausted from living with the knowledge he'd left her behind. He couldn't rest. Not now. He'd have the rest of his life to rest, because his resignation was being handed to Hammond as soon as he could focus his thoughts long enough to write it. For now he had a duty to fulfill, and that didn't include resting. He'd failed Carter: the least he could do was find her body and bring it back for the hero's burial she deserved.

"Now," he insisted, "We do it now." The determination in his voice persuaded the doctor. They settled back in for another session, and once again he felt himself slipping into a trance.

"Don't worry yet about the symbols, Colonel," MacKenzie instructed him from miles away. "Let them come to you. Tell me how you were able to let the SGC know it was you coming through?"

"Morse code...password for Hammond. Something we put in place a long time ago."

"What if the General wasn't in the mountain?"

"Then it's over...splat, I'm a bug on the windshield."

"Indeed," the doctor said, unintentionally sounding very Teal'c-like. "So tell me about the planet you're on..."

"Trees...the ever-present trees. Rocks...good cover-but no need, there's no one here...hasn't been anyone here for a long time from the looks of it. It's warm...not hot. Midafternoon maybe. There's a river...muddy brown, not much bigger than an irrigation ditch."

"You're following the river?"

"Yes."

"And it's leading you where?"

"To a path...all overgrown. No one's been this way for years...it ends at the Gate. I can get home...bring help for Carter-it's not too late!"

"How long ago did you leave her?"

"An hour, maybe a little less."

"You see the Gate symbols?"

"Yes."

"Draw them for me," the doctor said quietly, his voice carefully devoid of excitement or urgency.

"All right," the colonel said. He took the pen and paper and quickly sketched out the symbols. Dr. MacKenzie looked hopefully up at the observation window and nodded. They were finally getting somewhere.

JSJSJSJSJS

Sometime along the way, her vision started to grow dim and the pain lifted enough for her to wonder if this was it. If at the end, her oxygen-starved mind would simply fade away, and she'd find death was nothing more than drifting off to sleep. She didn't think that sounded so bad after the painful ends she'd faced at Baal's hand, and that, in itself, frightened her. She'd never seen herself as a quitter, and she'd promised the colonel she'd hang on. It would be the ultimate betrayal of both of them, if she just let her life ebb away without a fight. As much as she could, she had to hold out against the ever-stronger allure of the lethargy and peace calling to her, but she was afraid it was a fight she couldn't win. She'd lost it time and again in Baal's torture chamber, and maybe it had been futile to ever think she could have won it here. Still, she'd promised and she'd hold on a while longer.