Friday, April 23
Reality A001
Daniel pulled away from Jack as soon as he reasonably could. He gave the colonel a meaningful look and then glanced at Hammond, who was watching Teal'c and Samantha leave with Teal'c's guards. Jack gave him a look that very clearly said. 'Screw Hammond!' Daniel glared and Jack opened his mouth, then pulled away, looking resigned.
Daniel stood on his own, waiting for Hammond to turn again. He was going to have a fabulous bruise on his face in a couple of hours, and his left shoulder was wrenched from his attempt to catch himself despite the cast and the sling. The door shut with a sullen thump. Hammond stayed with his back to them for a moment, prolonging the agony.
Finally, he turned around. "Not the Jaffa?" he asked mildly. "You don't hate the Jaffa?"
Daniel gulped. "No, I don't." He glanced at Jack, who looked very confused.
"And why not, pray tell?" Hammond asked. "They fight for the Goa'uld, worship them. They're as evil as their masters."
Daniel took a deep breath. "They're enslaved by the Goa'uld and indoctrinated from birth. They have no choice."
"What do you know?" Hammond demanded. "You're not from this reality. You've never seen any Jaffa here besides Teal'c."
"That's true," Daniel said slowly, and Hammond gave him a triumphant look. "But I've done a lot of reading about them, they don't seem all that different from the ones in . . ." He glanced at Jack uneasily. "In the other reality." He cleared his throat. "By the way, Ryac is eleven years old or thereabouts."
Hammond seized him by the shoulders and shoved him down into the chair again. Daniel grimaced and bit down on his reaction as the sharp movement jarred his back and arm. "Be silent!" he growled angrily.
"Eleven?" Jack repeated. "General, is that true?"
"What of it?" Hammond asked. "He is a tool. If he is here, he is not being trained to take up arms against our people."
"That's true, sir, but . . ." Jack shook his head. Daniel sat quietly, watching them. "Using a child as a hostage makes us little better than the Goa'uld."
"O'Neill, you are out of line," Hammond said. His tone was mild, but even Daniel could tell that the general was in a dangerous mood.
Jack stood up very straight, and Daniel sat very still. "Sir, I don't believe it's out of line to express my reservations about our actions," he said stiffly.
"I see." Hammond looked at Daniel for a long moment. He felt his insides contract under that cold regard. Finally, the general turned back to Jack. "Do you have any plans to act on your reservations?"
"Act, sir?" Jack asked. "What do you mean act?"
"I'm no fool, O'Neill, I know that there are plenty of people around here who are loyal to you personally." Daniel blinked. This was taking a turn he hadn't quite expected. Hammond started moving towards Jack. "And I know that you are displeased about other recent developments." Hammond threw a glance at Daniel as he said that last and Jack's jaw tightened.
"You went too far," he snarled. "That bomb is out of line, sir." Daniel bit his lip, his stomach churning. He suddenly wished he hadn't eaten so heartily at dinner.
"Is it?" Hammond asked, his voice soft. "Berman, send for Coburn." Daniel closed his eyes and tried to conceal his shudder. He'd rather not see Coburn again.
The door opened and Daniel heard Berman's voice speaking to the guard outside. "Sir, what are you doing?" Jack asked, still sounding very angry. Daniel looked up. Hammond and Jack were facing off about ten feet away. Daniel really thought it might be better if Jack didn't antagonize the general.
"I do believe you need a reminder of my position and yours." Hammond looked over at Daniel, who stiffened. "And Dr. Jackson's."
Jack looked over at him, and Daniel distinctly saw the fear in his eyes. Infuriated, he growled, "If you touch him again –"
"You will do nothing," Hammond said, cutting Jack off. The colonel clamped his mouth shut in an angry line as the general continued. "There is still that bomb in his chest, colonel." Jack's face went white. "I can use it against you as easily as I can use it against him."
Feeling very cold suddenly, Daniel slipped his right arm under the sling and touched the spot on his left side where the incision had been made. Jack was frozen solid. Great, now he was hostage to Jack's good behavior as well. And heaven only knew what Jack would do, if he'd be angry at Daniel or if he'd get protective . . . this situation just got worse and worse.
The door opened and Coburn came in. Daniel felt his breath catch in his throat, and Jack hastily shook his head. "Sir, I'm not going to do anything. You don't have to –"
Hammond smiled . . . it was a very predatory look. "No, I guess I don't," he said, sounding very pleased with himself. "Coburn, thank you, but you are dismissed." The man saluted and left the room. Daniel hadn't realized he'd stopped breathing until he took a breath in as the door shut. He wondered how he'd cope with seeing his own Coburn again when he got home. Assuming that happened.
Jack had walked over to a wall and was standing facing it. The tension in his shoulders was clear to read. Hammond chuckled. "I'm glad we understand each other, colonel," he said. Glancing at Daniel, he said, "You shouldn't look so frightened, Dr. Jackson. Your value to me just doubled."
Daniel looked away. What the hell were they going to do? What the hell was Samantha doing now? Did she have any ideas? Would she be able to communicate this to his people? Another letter would be too risky, so he'd probably have to live without information.
"Now, Colonel O'Neill, your punishment for tonight's insubordination is simple. You will not be permitted to visit Dr. Jackson again until Monday." Daniel looked quickly at Jack, who was glaring at Hammond. "So, you need to leave."
Jack gave Daniel a helpless look, saluted the general, and walked out of the room, leaving Daniel alone with Hammond and Berman. "I knew you'd have that effect on him," Hammond said, walking over to stand above Daniel. "Your original predecessor in this reality made him weak and sympathetic. You'll do the same thing. I guess it's inevitable." Daniel just looked up at him. There was nothing else he could do. "But in this case it's actually a plus, because this gives me a weakness I can exploit." Hammond grinned at him. "Since you don't legally exist, I can do anything I want with you."
His jaw tight with anger he dared not express, Daniel looked away. The blood on his lip was drying and beginning to itch. He didn't scratch it. He wouldn't, not under Hammond's eye.
"You really do need to remember that, Dr. Jackson, for your own sake." With that, Hammond left, Berman close behind him. Daniel sat in that chair staring at the wall for several long moments, then he shook his head. There was nothing . . . literally nothing he could do to solve this.
After awhile, he got up and went into the bathroom. He cleaned up his mouth and wet one of the washcloths thoroughly with cold water. Applying that to his face, he lay down on the bed.
When it became clear that nothing further was going to happen, Samantha closed the program that allowed her to access the cameras in Daniel's cell. This was a real pickle. Colonel O'Neill would be furious, but there wasn't a lot they could do. It was true that there were plenty of people who were loyal to him on a personal level, but it was also a fact that all of the people involved in keeping Daniel in that room were Hammond's people.
The door opened and she looked up to see Colonel O'Neill standing there. "Come on, it's time to go," he said. She nodded wordlessly and followed him out of the mountain. They climbed into his truck and he drove them out into the countryside. She wasn't sure what he was doing, where he was going, until they reached a stream. They got out of the truck and wandered down to the noisiest part of the creek and sat down under a tree.
She started off sitting a few inches away, but he reached out his arm and snuggled her close against him. "Easier to talk without being overheard when you're closer," he said in her ear.
She tried to relax, so she'd look like she liked being where she was. It was dark, they were out in the middle of nowhere, and this man was more than half crazy. She knew he hadn't the slightest interest in her in that sense, but it was still alarming. "Yes, sir," she said.
"Jack."
Biting her lip, she nodded. "Yes, Jack, then."
"Good. Now, I know you were watching. What happened after I left?"
She described Hammond's behavior, and as she repeated Hammond's words about Daniel's lack of legal existence making him vulnerable, Samantha could sense the colonel tensing with anger. "And then Hammond left, and Daniel got cleaned up and went to bed. He was pretty freaked, I think."
"I should think so," Jack said. He was silent for a long moment. As the minutes passed, she began to wonder what he was thinking, why they were here. Finally, he took a deep, shaky breath and said, "There's something wrong with me, isn't there?"
She blinked, hardly believing what she was hearing. "Sir?"
"That man, that Daniel, that isn't Danny, is it?"
"No, sir, it's not," she said, her voice trembling, hoping she was taking the right tack.
"What's wrong with me? Why does my perception of reality keep shifting?"
"I'm not entirely sure, sir," she said. He sounded heartbreakingly uncertain, but she didn't dare tell him the whole truth. He was unstable and unpredictable. "I think you might be being drugged, but I can't be altogether certain."
He nodded. She couldn't see him, but she could feel his chin moving above her head.
"I think there's something wrong with a lot of people around the SGC, sir. Me included."
"I . . ." He paused and she drew away to look into his face. She'd never seen him looking so unsure of himself. "I don't know how long this will last, Samantha," he said. "My understanding of the world seems pretty fluid these days."
"That's okay, sir," she said softly. "Just remember, you need to protect Daniel. He's an innocent pawn in all of this."
"Right," he said. They were silent for a moment. "Samantha, you were right."
She blinked. "Sir?"
"About Danny and . . . you were right. Obviously." Tears began to flow from his eyes. His whole body was shaking with emotion. "I killed him."
She held him, utterly astonished by this development. He wept like a child on her shoulder, and she rocked him, trying to guess what this could mean for the future. If this new realization did last, what did it mean for the Daniel they had captive?
The colonel stopped crying after awhile, and they were silent. Finally, his head still on her shoulder, he said, "Hammond has to be gotten rid of. You heard what he threatened to do to Danny." She tried not to let her dismay show in her body, but she must have stiffened. Fortunately, O'Neill took it for a reaction to his mentioning Hammond's threat. "I don't think I can wangle something to make him legally alive again, but maybe we should find some allies. The two of us can't manage this alone, and I can't be seen doing anything out of line."
"Right," she said. This was one hell of a roller coaster ride. "I'll see what I can manage." How he'd feel about the allies she'd already gained she couldn't guess. Siler he wouldn't mind, but Maybourne? She wondered if the Jaffa, Teal'c, would help for a promise of freedom. If it came to a battle in the base, they'd need every trained fighter they could get. She shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself. He might yet be loyal to some Goa'uld. He had been First Prime of Apophis, after all.
"Good. And Samantha?" He drew back to meet her eyes. "Thank you. I couldn't do this without you. I would have attacked Hammond if you hadn't stopped me." He shook his head. "What he would have done to Danny for that . . . I don't even want to contemplate."
She shook her head. "No, me neither."
"So, you're going to have to find an excuse to go in and see Danny tomorrow, since I'm not allowed to. Make sure nothing more has happened to him."
"Yes Jack," she said. "We'd better be getting home."
"If we're being watched, there are certain things an observer would expect from a man and a woman who sought out a private spot in the wilderness late at night," the colonel said. Her eyes widened, but she knew he was right. Feeling a little awkward, she leaned in and kissed him. His hands were warm on her back, and one of them slid up into her hair.
There weren't exactly rockets and explosions, but once she lost her tension it was surprisingly pleasant. They made out for awhile, and then he helped her up. They went back to the truck and he opened the door for her.
"Are we going back to the base so I can get my car?" she asked.
"No, Samantha. We're going back to my place."
Samantha blinked at him. "I don't think so, sir." He raised his eyebrows. She grinned. "I may be cheap, but I'm not easy."
He looked vaguely taken aback at this comment. "Well, lieutenant, I'm sorry my courting doesn't live up to your expectations. What's your suggestion?"
"I think you should take me to my house, come in for about a half hour, then go home, looking disappointed. Then, in the morning, you can come pick me up to take me in to work."
"I have to look disappointed?" he asked.
"This charade was your idea, sir," she said.
He nodded. "And you being the girl, you get to set the pace," he said. Slipping his arm around her waist, he pulled her close and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "We'll play it your way."
Samantha felt rather confused as the evening went on. At her house, they acted very much like a courting couple would, but the colonel also seemed so much more like himself . . . the way he was before everything went to hell. She missed that. She missed him almost as much as she missed Daniel. They had been like a family . . .
Saturday, April 24
The colonel left around twelve-thirty in the morning. Samantha saw him out and shut the door, wondering how the hell she was supposed to contact Maybourne. The man needed to know about this, and the colonel had asked her to seek allies. She was on shaky ground with allies in the NID, but since she was already communicating with him . . . and a local uprising in the SGC could be dangerous without outside support.
She had to think, and she had to think unencumbered by emotions and the dulling effects of the drugs in her system. Despite the late hour and her weariness, she went out into the backyard and started her tai chi exercises.
She sluiced off in the shower after her exertion and contemplated the situation. Siler. She needed to get Siler involved. He'd already made an overture, and she needed help. Sane help. The colonel's instability was nerve-wracking.
She wanted to kill Hammond with her bare hands. What he'd done to the colonel and their own Daniel was criminal to say the least, and then he'd driven the colonel to kidnap other Daniels, one after another, in a vain search for a replacement. All those nice, kind, gentle men, beaten and left for dead in realities that weren't their own.
Something occurred to her suddenly. How many drugs had they pumped into O'Neill to turn him into the monster he'd been to the last Daniel? That had been terrible to watch. That Daniel hadn't been cowed in the least by O'Neill's normal level of threat, so things had escalated out of control. He'd done some of the work set out for him, but when the colonel got authoritative, that Daniel had gotten very stubborn and aggressive, which didn't go over well with O'Neill.
She leaned her head against the side of the shower and resolved to ask how that Daniel was when next she saw Maybourne. She sighed and started scrubbing her hair. What she wouldn't give to roll time back a year, to when everything was much simpler.
Daniel woke up and looked up at the dimly lit ceiling of his prison, unutterably depressed by the sameness of it. He was tired of this room, tired of working, tired of having a stiff arm, tired of being scared. His left shoulder ached as did his left hip where he'd landed. The lights came on, and by that he knew it was seven thirty. He should get up, get showered and get dressed, but he didn't want to. He wanted to roll over and pretend the world didn't exist.
Last night had been horrible. Now what happened to him didn't depend solely on his own actions, but on what Jack did outside these walls. There might one day be an explosion in his chest, and he'd die, never knowing what Jack had done . . .
He hadn't seen the sun in nearly three weeks. He hadn't even heard any music except what was in the movies that he'd been brought. No people except Samantha, Jack, a couple of airmen, the doctor and his nurse, Hammond, Berman and Coburn. The airmen didn't talk to him, nor did the doctor really. The nurse had only been in twice, and he never wanted to see Hammond, Berman or Coburn again. Jack was unpredictable and Samantha was . . . downtrodden.
This was a wretchedly unpleasant reality. He almost preferred the one where nearly everyone had been killed by the Goa'uld.
The door opened and Daniel looked over apathetically. An airman walked in with a carafe of coffee on a tray. Daniel noticed two mugs and shuddered, hoping he wasn't expecting an unwelcome guest. It was Saturday. Maybe he'd get lucky and Hammond was at a barbecue or something. The airman left and shut the door behind him.
Eventually, a call of nature drove him out of bed, and once he was up it seemed stupid to lie down again. He fitted the cover over his cast and took a shower. The water coursing over his body felt incredibly good, so he just stayed in the stream until the water started getting cold. Then he turned it off and got out. Drying himself off seemed to take forever, and he just didn't care. After a few minutes, he dropped the towel on the floor, walked back into the room and dropped down on the bed, covering himself up with a blanket and lying there, trying to think of nothing much. He didn't have to get to work right away, anyway. He wasn't supposed to work more than six hours.
Breakfast was brought in, but he didn't move. He stared at the wall beside the bed, the cold concrete wasn't exactly engrossing, but there was nothing else much he wanted to do. It was easier to just lie on the bed and not think.
He must have dropped off, because when the door opened again, he started awake and sat up, staring. Samantha stared back at him and he realized that he was naked. He just closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. She was suddenly beside him, her hand on his back as she sat down next to him on the bed.
"Daniel, what is it? Are you okay?"
"Okay?" he asked, his voice ragged, and he realized he was on the verge of tears. With a Herculean effort, he forced his emotions back and said, "That's kind of a stupid question, Samantha, though I guess you weren't here for the worst of last night's events."
Samantha squeezed his shoulder. "Why, what happened?"
"Hammond is using me to control Jack," he said, and he could hear the wooden quality his iron suppression of his reactions was giving his voice. "I don't think he's ever going to let me out of here, whatever he says about offworld missions. I think he likes me just where I am, an easily reached pawn in the dirty game he's playing with the rest of the world."
"Daniel, I don't know . . . I don't know what to say," she said.
"There isn't anything to say," Daniel replied. "He was very clear about it, said my value to him had doubled. Is he going to want to risk that on an offworld mission?"
"He almost has to," she said. "We're losing a lot of personnel on missions because no one knows how to properly communicate with the people we meet."
"Well, evidently my sole thing to communicate to them is 'Give us your stuff and we won't kill you and your children. Somehow I'm not fond of the idea of being the mouthpiece for a bunch of extortionists and robbers."
"We're not always like that, Daniel, I swear."
"You shouldn't ever be!" Daniel shook his head. "That Jaffa, from last night, Teal'c? In the other reality, he's on SG-1. We saved his son's life, we didn't threaten him. I can't – I can't do this. I loathe your Hammond."
Her eyes widened with worry. "Daniel, you have to try. I know it won't be like this forever." Urgency filled her tone, and he could see that he was scaring her.
He didn't want to scare her. He took a deep breath and managed a weak smile. "You're right. And things certainly won't change if I don't get my work done, I suppose. Could you turn your back for a minute while I go back into the bathroom and get dressed?"
"Sure," Samantha said and suited actions to words. Daniel forced himself to get dressed and went out to where she sat waiting.
"I'm sorry, Samantha, I didn't mean to alarm you."
She gave him an impulsive hug, which he returned one-armed. "I've got some work I need to get done, but I'll be back at lunch time."
He nodded, and she left quickly. Privately, he doubted that she'd be back if Hammond had anything to say about it. He seemed much freer with punishments than with rewards.
Daniel sat down at the desk and got to work. The eggs were pretty well inedible by now, but the toast was okay and so was the sausage. He ate them absently while he worked, drinking coffee. Someone brought some more coffee in after awhile, but he was so focused on his work that he didn't notice who it was. He'd been given a book this time, a fascinating history of a ruling house on a planet Daniel had never heard of. His instructions were to translate a page every hundred pages or so, which was driving him nuts because he wanted to read the whole thing, but it was a good technique for finding out if a text was likely to contain useful information. It seemed, quite frankly, that this one wouldn't. That was one of the most frustrating thing about his job back home . . . all the things that went unregarded because they weren't 'useful.'
Here wasn't the place to fight that battle, though, and now definitely wasn't the time.
Around two o'clock he looked up and sighed. Samantha hadn't shown up, though lunch had. He'd eaten it without paying much attention, and now he couldn't begin to say what he'd had. There were crumbs on the plate that looked like bread, so he guessed it had been some kind of sandwich. Shrugging, he got back to work.
The door opening startled him, and he glanced automatically at the clock. It wasn't a usual mealtime, so he turned around nervously, not sure what to expect. It was Samantha. "Sorry," she said, "I got delayed by a couple of projects."
He smiled. "It's okay. I wasn't sure I could expect you back today anyway."
"Well, it's my weekend, and you're not supposed to be working at this hour, so there's no reason I shouldn't have come," she said, walking towards him. She took the pen out of his hand and put it down. "Come on, Daniel, you need to relax a little."
"I'm not sure I can," he said, looking down at the book. He was only about three quarters of the way through it. "I need to get this done."
"And you have been ordered not to work longer than six hours a day until Thursday," she said, pulling him up out of his chair. "So you need to stop working now and leave that for tomorrow."
"I'm sure Hammond wouldn't mind if I started working full time again," Daniel said.
"He would if you collapsed," she replied, indefatigably pulling him over to the bed. "Daniel, you have to take care of yourself, or you'll get sick again."
He allowed himself to be pulled. "It's not like there's anything else to do in here," he said.
"Look, I figure Shakespeare can't have changed much between the realities, so I grabbed a couple of videos, ran them past Hammond and got permission to bring them in and watch them with you. I've got popcorn, pizza and soda coming. Relax a little and have fun."
He found this more than a little startling, but he settled down on the bed as if it were a couch, just as they had the night before. She walked over and put the tapes down next to the machine. She popped the Cinderella tape out and said, "Do you want A Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet?"
"Romeo and Juliet," he said. "Then when we're depressed from that play's ending, we can watch Midsummer to cheer us up."
"That works," she said. As she got the movie ready, he reflected that even if Shakespeare's plays hadn't changed significantly, the interpretations of them might have. Before she started the movie, the door opened. Daniel looked up apprehensively, but it was just an airman with a big bucket of movie style popcorn and a twelve-pack of Coke. He set them down on the desk and looked at Daniel oddly before he went out again.
"Well, that's all set, then," she said, grabbing the popcorn and pulling out a couple of cans. "Here."
They settled down to watch Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, which was pretty much exactly the same as Daniel remembered. Same actors, same interpretation, the familiarity was very soothing despite the tragic content of the story. He watched the doomed folly of the relationship between the young couple play out on the small screen.
When it was over, he said, "I always find that so frustrating, the message gone astray . . . the way we see the messenger and Romeo pass each other on the road."
"I think Romeo's an idiot," Samantha said.
Daniel turned to her in surprise. "An idiot?" he asked.
"He gets there, he sees her, and he kills himself. If he'd waited five minutes, he'd have known he didn't have to. She had to get out of the marriage to Paris or be forsworn, but he has no excuse." Daniel didn't quite know what to say in the face of her vehemence. "Suicide isn't romantic, it's wasteful. Even assuming she was dead, he could have gone on, lived his life without her. He's doing her no tribute by dying for 'love,' just proving that he's weak of spirit."
"Wow," he said. "I wish you'd been in some of my college classes. I did get tired of those girls wallowing in the 'romance' of it all." She grinned at him, pleased by this accolade. "I always wanted to ask them if they wished they'd fallen in love, gotten married and died before turning fourteen."
"So true," she said. "I don't understand the fascination."
"It's the romance of a long ago time," Daniel said, sighing. "After all, most of the young girls who see this don't think about the fact that there weren't flush toilets, reliable doctors or dentists, or that Juliet's life expectancy would have been extremely short even if she hadn't killed herself at thirteen."
"The idiocy of young girls is not a subject I want to delve too deeply into," Samantha said. "Not that young boys aren't just as stupid, but I can't help being frustrated with my own gender."
He nodded. "Well, why don't we move on to a play that makes fun of everybody equally?"
"Works for me," she said. The pizza had arrived while they watched the first movie, and Daniel sat, replete, while she swapped the movie in the machine. He had his eyes closed, thinking about the movie, the conversation with Samantha, and nothing much else. It was a pleasant moment, and he wanted to hang onto it as long as possible.
An itch started in the middle of his right shoulder blade, and his brain automatically told his left hand to scratch it. The slight jog of his left arm irritated his aching shoulder and made him grit his teeth. If Hammond wanted him to get used to being here, breaking his arm was a poor choice. Every time he went to scratch his nose, he was reminded of what could happen if he stepped his foot out of line again. Or if Jack stepped his foot out of line.
He took a deep breath to fortify himself in the struggle to control his feelings of helplessness. There were many times in his life when he'd felt powerless, but this was particularly bad. He couldn't get out of this room, he couldn't stop any of the people who came in from doing whatever they wanted to with him. They outnumbered him, and he didn't know who he could trust. He was sure that he could trust Samantha, he believed that he could trust Jack within limits. His Teal'c had said he should trust this reality's Maybourne, but beyond that he had no idea who out there would help or hurt him. No doubt some of them would 'help' him by putting him back in here.
"Daniel? Are you in pain?" Samantha's voice rang with concern.
He looked up. "No, thanks. I'm getting the pain medication on schedule. I'm just . . . I . . . it doesn't matter."
Her expression told him that she didn't agree, but he caught her hand and smiled. "It's okay, Samantha. There's nothing you can do but what you're already doing."
"The next movie's ready to go," she said.
"Then sit down and let's watch."
This was a more recent interpretation, and it was very enjoyable. Daniel and Samantha laughed and got annoyed and enjoyed the story thoroughly. By the time it was over, the lights had been out for about twenty minutes, so when the credits started, Samantha got up. "I'd better be going, Daniel."
"Thank you, Samantha," he said, catching her hand again and squeezing it. "This was nice."
She smiled. "I'll see if I can't get some more movies okayed."
"Sounds good," he said. "I'll see you later."
"Definitely," she said. Bending, she gave him a hug, and then she left.
Daniel changed into his pajamas – he was getting better at the one-handed button thing – and went to bed.