Wednesday, April 21
Reality A001

Samantha picked up Daniel's breakfast tray and headed towards his room. She would have heard if he'd been killed, surely. It was a little early for his breakfast, but she couldn't wait any longer. The guard nodded to her, looking vaguely perturbed, then opened the door.

She walked in and saw Daniel lying in bed, fully clothed. "Are you okay?" she asked, rushing across. "Are you hurt?"

His face was a mask of pain and his left arm rested by his side. His right hand was tapping intermittently on the mattress. He didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "I've been given some time off from work."

"Why?" she asked.

"Hammond . . ." He paused, his face working oddly. "Hammond didn't appreciate my moral concerns regarding that translation," he said finally. "I'm supposed to be thinking about the consequences."

"Which are?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, are you going to do it?"

He shook his head and then winced, stilling his body completely. "No," he said after another pause. "I've chosen the consequences."

"What consequences?" she asked.

He shifted slightly and grunted. His face twisted with agony. "He broke my arm," he grated through clenched teeth.

"But –" She looked him over in shock. "Where's the cast?"

His eyes flicked to hers and he grinned tightly with a flash of black humor. "That's the part I'm supposed to be thinking about," he said.

"God!" She put the tray down. "I'll get you some ice."

As she started to get up, he reached out with his right hand and caught her arm. She wasn't expecting it, so her continued movement shifted him slightly. He hissed and his hand clutched at her arm painfully. She dropped back to her knees and waited for him to recover enough to speak. "I don't think Hammond would approve," he said finally. "I think I'm supposed to be in pain."

"Well, if that's the case, he needs to give some kind of specific order," she said, pressing his hand back to the bed. "I'll be back soon."

She left, and as she headed towards the infirmary, she came face to face with Colonel O'Neill. His eyes widened when he saw her expression and he turned to follow her back into the elevator. He turned an intimidating look on the people who started to get on with them, so they wound up with a car to themselves. "What is it, Carter?" he asked. "Have you seen Daniel?"

"Yes sir," she said shortly. Even knowing about the drugs, it was hard not to put all the blame for this situation squarely on the colonel's shoulders.

"How is he?"

"His left arm is broken," she said. Her voice trembled with the anger she felt. The doors opened and she started forward immediately.

"Broken?" O'Neill exclaimed. "Where are you going?"

"The infirmary," she said and put on a burst of speed, not looking back to see if he was following her. Disregarding the infirmary staff, she made straight for the ice packs and got a couple out. Without speaking, she headed back to the elevator to find that the colonel was holding it for her. He let the doors go and stepped back as soon as she was in.

"What have you got there?" he asked.

"Ice packs."

"Did Warner send you?"

She felt her lips stretch in a sour grimace. "The doctor isn't there, sir. The general hasn't called him as far as I know. Daniel's just lying on his bed in pain." The elevator doors opened and she didn't wait for the colonel, she just headed out. The guard opened the door and she walked in quickly. Daniel looked up, eyes wide with alarm until he saw her. Then his expression relaxed . . . momentarily. She watched his face stiffen with apprehension when he saw the colonel.

She dropped to her knees and only then realized that she didn't have any way to get his sleeve off him that wouldn't hurt him.

"What happened?" the colonel asked.

"Hammond didn't kill me," Daniel said.

"Could you for once in your life not be a smart ass?" O'Neill demanded loudly.

Daniel jumped when the colonel yelled and his face went white as he jostled his arm. He swallowed the pain visibly and gave the colonel a snarky smile. "I don't think so."

O'Neill let out an exasperated snort, then said, "What are you doing, Carter? The floor doesn't need to be iced."

"I'm trying to figure out how to get his arm out of his sleeve."

Unbelievably, Daniel started to sit up. "I can –"he started, but broke off sharply. His face went the color of buttermilk. She stuck her arm under his back to help him lower himself slowly. She could hear the colonel rummaging behind her.

"This is an office! Why aren't there any scissors?"

She waited to answer until she'd slid her arm out from under Daniel's shoulders. "They didn't want him to have anything sharp," she said.

Daniel grimaced. "Which is particularly stupid since I could kill you with a pencil if I were so inclined."

She grinned down at him. Colonel O'Neill came up behind her. "Glad you know how to do that," he said to Daniel.

The archeologist narrowed his eyes, looking up at the colonel. She could practically see the common sense vanishing from his expression. "Jack taught me," he said.

"I did?" O'Neill asked.

Daniel glared. "No, not you. My –"

Colonel O'Neill broke in before Daniel could say the delusion-breaking words. "Carter, get out of my way. We need to get those cold packs on him. He's obviously getting hysterical."

Sense seemed to have returned to Daniel's brain. "Ya think!" he said.

The colonel firmly pushed her away and took her place. "Okay, let's get rid of that sleeve," he said, snicking a folding knife open. Daniel made a little whimpering sound, eyes fixed to the matte black blade. "I'm not going to hurt you, Danny," the colonel said. She watched as he carefully sliced through the fabric of Daniel's sleeve, baring the black and blue mess that was his arm.

It was clear that someone had struck him hard midway down his forearm. One sharp blow to snap the bones. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the injury. It was so clearly deliberately inflicted.

"Fuck." The colonel's voice was flat, and she winced at the contained fury she heard in it. O'Neill bent and picked up the ice packs, gently placing them across the injury. Daniel hissed and closed his eyes. The colonel looked up at her and she could see how intensely angry he was.

Eyes still closed, Daniel didn't see the look. "Pretty, is it?" he asked.

She stroked his long hair out of his eyes. "Not very colorful yet," she said.

"Ah." Daniel's eyes slitted open and he smiled at her.

"Who did this?" O'Neill demanded in venomous tones.

Daniel's eyes opened fully and he looked at the colonel sideways. "What difference does that make?" he asked.

O'Neill glared at the injured man, recognizing the diversion as a refusal to answer. "I can find out for myself, you know."

Daniel's lips twitched. "I guess you'll have to do that, then," he said, then closed his eyes again.

"Damn it, Daniel!"

She put a hand on the colonel's shoulder to remind him that Daniel was injured and that she was present. He subsided slightly, looking very tightly controlled.

The blue eyes cracked open again and Daniel looked up at the colonel, humor in his pained expression. "Sorry, Jack," he said. His eyes closed again. "Thank you, both of you. This helps."

"No problem, Daniel," Samantha said. "Colonel, I can stay with him for awhile."

"I'll take you up on that, Carter," he said. Daniel's eyes opened and he looked up at them dubiously. "But first go fetch him a fresh breakfast. I'll wait with him till you get back."

"Yes sir." She picked up the tray.

"I don't need one of you to watch me," Daniel said.

"Of course not," the colonel said sarcastically. "Run along, Carter."

Giving Daniel a wink behind O'Neill's back, Samantha went out. She only realized as she reached the kitchen how incredibly natural that last interchange had felt. It lent her clearer insight into why the colonel was allowing wishful thinking to lead him into delusion.

"Jack, I'm just going to lie here all day," Daniel said, glaring up at the Jack O'Neill who was hovering over him. Perhaps hovering was a trait common to all Jack O'Neills. "I don't need a babysitter."

Jack shook his head. "So, I don't suppose you have to use the restroom or anything?"

Daniel blinked up at him and then let loose a stream of multi-lingual invective. "I didn't have to," he growled.

"Well, you would have had to eventually, and you don't want to have to ask Carter for help with that, do you?"

Daniel grimaced. "No, I guess not. But I don't need help. I think I can pee on my own."

"Ah, yes, but can you get across the room to the bathroom on your own?"

He rolled his eyes. "I made it over here from the chair on my own," he said.

There was silence and he looked curiously up at Jack. The other man's face was dark with fury and Daniel quailed back slightly. "What do you mean?" Jack asked in a quiet, dangerous voice.

Uncertain what was making the unpredictable man so angry, Daniel tried to explain. "I didn't want to sit on the chair all day, and having my arm hang like that was agonizing, so –"

Jack interrupted him. "What chair? What happened?"

"I really have to go to the bathroom," Daniel said, hoping that would distract him.

The fury was replaced by concern so rapidly that it was disorienting. With extreme care, Jack folded Daniel's left arm across his chest. Daniel hissed and grit his teeth, but Jack was causing him as little pain as was possible. Daniel brought his right arm up to cradle the left as Jack slid his arm beneath Daniel's shoulders and helped him sit up.

God, it hurt. Moving even slightly hurt. He couldn't help groaning at the agony that surged through him from the break in the bones of his forearm. Jack grimaced. "Maybe I should get you a bedpan," he said.

"Don't even think about it!" Daniel said through gritted teeth. "I can do it, by myself if I have to."

"Fine. Just . . . lay back a minute."

"Jack!" Daniel protested as the other man pushed him, gently, back down to the bed. He stood up and went across to Daniel's desk and then disappeared into the bathroom for a few moments. When he came back, he pulled the chair over to the bed again. He put down a pair of rulers from the desk and then pulled his knife out and he started shredding one of the black t-shirts from the cupboard in the bathroom. "What are you doing?" Daniel asked, puzzled.

"Making you a splint."

"Jack, no!" Daniel said, trying to struggle upright again. He blanched at the pain, but managed it anyway. "Jack, Hammond doesn't want it splinted."

"Fuck Hammond."

"He'll blame me, Jack."

The colonel faltered in his preparations briefly, but then he shook his head. "I'll manage Hammond, Danny. Don't worry."

Daniel turned on the bed, gritting his teeth against the sensations from the broken arm. He got his feet on the floor and started to try to get up, but Jack shifted sideways slightly, and he had to sit back down, wincing. "Let me get past," he said.

"You need the splint," Jack replied.

"Jack, please. Hammond said I needed time to think about the consequences. He specifically left me with the arm unsplinted. He doesn't –"

"Was I unclear?" Jack demanded. "Fuck Hammond! And the horse he rode in on."

"Jack . . ." Daniel moaned, knowing that he was right, that Hammond would be furious, and that he probably wouldn't take it out on the colonel.

Jack's teeth were grinding as he finished turning the body of the t-shirt into a long strip of stretchy fabric. The anger that simmered beneath the surface did not, however, translate to his hands as he reached out and positioned Daniel's arm between the rulers. Gentle though he was, Daniel was sweating and clenching his right fist before he was done. Still, the support was very helpful. Samantha came in partway through the process and put her tray down on the desk. She watched the proceedings in silence, her eyes full of worry.

Jack positioned Daniel's arm diagonally on his chest, hand resting on the front of his shoulder. "Hold that there with your other hand, okay? No, not like that." He took Daniel's right hand, which he'd been moving towards his left hand and positioned it to cup his left elbow. "Support under your elbow." When he was satisfied, Jack got up and went into the bathroom.

Daniel looked over at Samantha. "He insisted."

"Good," she said. "I can't believe General Hammond hasn't given you any medical attention."

He shrugged and let out a muffled yelp. Jack emerged from the bathroom with remarkable speed. He had another t-shirt in his hands and was clearly mutilating it as well. "You okay?" he demanded.

"I shrugged," Daniel said. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Nitwit!" he said with exasperation, but his eyes grew soft and he smoothed Daniel's hair tenderly. "Be more careful," he added and went back into the bathroom.

Daniel watched him go with a sense of unreality. "Your Jack isn't like that, is he?" Samantha asked in a quiet voice.

He shook his head. "Not so much physical anything," he said. "Maybe the one goes with the other."

Jack came out again with the mangled t-shirt and a hand towel. Using the two items in concert, he created a padded sling that supported Daniel's arm in the position it was already in, cradling all the weight of the arm on his elbow.

There was still pain, but Daniel felt much more secure. He stood up with a bit of help from Jack and went to the bathroom. When he came out, Jack and Samantha were talking quietly. "Can you manage breakfast on your own, Danny?" Jack asked.

"I said I'd be fine," Daniel said. "This is helping enormously."

"I'll be back soon," Samantha said.

"I'm fine, Sam," he said. Then he blinked and shivered. "I mean Samantha." He sat down, staring at the food. The slip felt very disturbing, like he was forgetting where he was and what the circumstances were. She rested her hands on his shoulders for a moment. "It's all right," she said, and he knew she wasn't referring to his inadvertent use of her nickname. They left him alone, then and he made short work of the food in front of him.

When the food was gone he shifted the tray as well as he could. With his arm splinted and out of the way, he might as well try to get some work done. Maybe that would make Hammond less angry about the splint.

He got the next section of the monument out and set to work.

Samantha led the way back to her office and the colonel waited with ill-concealed impatience while she called up the morning's security video. She didn't particularly want to watch this, but the colonel had insisted. Since he'd have to go through reams of red tape to get direct access, this was the only way he could get it without Hammond knowing immediately that he was looking.

She keyed up the video for six-thirty a.m., then fast forwarded until she saw Daniel stirring. They saw him going into the bathroom, then the door opened about twenty minutes later admitting Lt. Berman, General Hammond and Major Coburn.

The scene didn't play out quite as she'd expected. From what little Daniel had said, she'd been anticipating some kind of a straightforward administration of punishment for the misdeed of failing to follow instructions, not the choice Hammond gave him. Since he wasn't sitting in the desk chair, she could see Daniel's face, and he looked utterly blank when he held out his arm to Major Coburn. The colonel sent up a steady stream of curses as background to the events playing out on the screen. She winced when the blow fell and the colonel went ominously silent.

In the quiet, they could clearly hear Hammond speaking. "I think you need some time to consider the full reality of your situation, Dr. Jackson, and the consequences you've invited upon yourself. I won't expect any work from you today, though if you can manage it, I won't object." He rose and left the room, his escort going with him, leaving Daniel sitting in the chair, eyes squeezed shut with the pain of his injury. Hurting for him, she watched him get himself over to the bed, cradling the broken arm against his chest. His face was sheened with sweat when he finally got himself into the position she'd found him in. That was at roughly seven-fifteen.

"Stupid, stubborn son of a bitch!" O'Neill ground out. "Doesn't lack in courage, but he makes up for it with a complete absence of common sense!"

"Sir, he shouldn't have to compromise his principles," she said.

The colonel turned furious eyes on her. "Should isn't very relevant around here right now, is it, lieutenant?"

"No sir," she said, taken aback. "No, I guess not."

"There are some people who need to work on their hand to hand combat skills," he said, and stormed out of the lab. She wondered vaguely if Major Coburn was on that list.

Gathering up some reading material, she returned to Daniel's room. He was still sitting at his desk, now translating the monument he'd been working for nearly a week now. She stopped in the doorway, astounded, until the guard cleared his throat and she realized she had to go inside before he could shut the door.

"Something wrong, Samantha?"

"N . . no," she said, walking over to the guest chair. She paused for about ten seconds, looking down at it, then she shook her head and sat down. "You should probably get some rest."

"What point is there in that?" he asked. "I'll be in almost as much pain if I lie down again, and I won't have anything to think about except where I am and what's going on. At least this way I'm getting something out of it."

"Getting something out of it?" she repeated, puzzled.

"This is a fascinating development from the Celtic root language, and gives me a whole new grasp of the shape of that particular tongue. See, we can only really get a general idea of how one of those truly ancient, unwritten languages worked, and that only from the languages that developed from the root. This is another offshoot, so it gives me further insight into the source language."

She nodded slowly. "Like being able to deduce the cause of an event in space by calculating the trajectories of the objects affected by it," she reasoned.

He nodded, eyes alight. "Of course, that may be a little premature . . . I don't know for certain if Gaelic and Welsh and Manx follow the same patterns here as they do . . . elsewhere. Can you grab a couple of books for me off the shelf?"

"Sure," she said. She got up and pulled down the books he asked for and watched him return to work. Daniel Jacksons seemed to be the same the . . . the same across realities. The only times the other Daniels they'd had would relax was while they were working. Her own Daniel would have worked through broken bones and punctured organs if they'd let him.

She wondered why this Daniel's Jack didn't offer him the same level of affection theirs did. She couldn't believe that the violence was a necessary trade off. Maybe he was just less sensitive.