Sunday, April 25
Reality L583
Jack sat up in the darkened room, cold sweat pouring down his face. He was breathing heavily, and his heart felt like a jackhammer in his chest. The images from his nightmare were still with him, painted on the darkness in front of his eyes.
Jack! No, help me! Jack! Daniel, being beaten by a maniacal looking Hammond while Jack looked on. Please, Jack! Please! The Jack in his dream had been both him and the alternate reality O'Neill. The blood, the pathetic pleading, the desperate horror on Daniel's face as he sank lower and lower under the hand of one man he trusted while another looked on, doing nothing.
Jack shook his head, trying to rid himself of the dream. It didn't work, so he shrugged and swung his feet out of the bed, glancing at the clock. Six a.m. "Might as well get up," he muttered. He arose and grabbed his bag from under the bunk where he'd dossed out the night before. Heading to the locker room, he took a quick shower and got dressed.
Carter was in the commissary when he got there, so he grabbed a bowl of Froot Loops and went to sit down next to her. "How are you this morning?" he asked.
"Miserable," she said. "Helpless. Useless!"
He blinked at her in surprise. "Carter, you are anything but useless."
She shook her head. "I am. I can't seem . . . I don't know . . . I've done everything I can think of. I can't make it work without the controller."
"It's okay, Carter," he said. "It's okay."
"It is not okay," she replied. "It's not anything like okay. I can't do it, sir. I can't get him home."
"Carter, we will get him home."
"I can't, sir," she protested, not hearing him. "I . . . I . . ." Her eyes went distant all of a sudden, that odd 'sciency' distant that she got when she was coming up with a new idea. "I think . . . excuse me!" She got up and left the commissary quickly.
Jack hoped she'd find something useful. He finished his Froot Loops and then wondered what he should do. SG-1 was on stand down because of Daniel being missing, it was Sunday, so he didn't have any administrative duties. Hammond was at home, Carter was working and didn't need him, Teal'c was with the alternate Daniel. Jack had no reasonable excuse to be on base, but he couldn't stay away.
He wandered the base aimlessly for about an hour, trying not to think about Daniel. Maybourne had said that their Daniel was behaving differently, but Jack didn't know what to make of that. Drugged. They were drugging O'Neill to heighten his aggression. Jack thought about his aggression levels. They didn't seem overly high, he supposed, but one would think they were high enough. Daniel always seemed to think he should damp it down a bit.
Daniel . . . .
He went to the alternate Daniel's room and knocked. Teal'c opened the door and nodded. Then he turned his head and said, "It is O'Neill, DanielJackson."
"Come in, Jack," called Daniel. Jack walked into the room and found Daniel sitting up in bed, his foot supported on a pillow. He had a lap desk across his legs and he was working, but he looked up with a smile. "What can I do for you?"
Jack walked over and grabbed one of the chairs from the table, flipped it around and sat straddling the back. "Just came by to look in on you."
"I'm fine," Daniel said. "But I think Teal'c could use a break."
Jack glanced up at the Jaffa who nodded at Daniel. "Indeed."
"You could call someone, you know," Jack said. Teal'c shrugged, and Jack rolled his eyes, waving him towards the door. "Go, take some time. I'll stay here."
As Teal'c left, Daniel said, "You know, he doesn't need to spend all his time in here. No one does. I don't need a babysitter."
"Are you allowed to put all your weight on that foot yet?" Jack asked, pointing to the carefully wrapped and propped limb. Daniel grimaced, which was answer enough. "So, how are you feeling otherwise?"
The other man shrugged and didn't meet Jack's eyes. "Fine."
Rolling his eyes again, Jack shook his head. "Now, where have I heard that before?" he asked rhetorically. "With all the words you guys know, isn't there another one you could say that might come a little closer to the truth?"
Daniel glared at him. "I am fine," he said. "A little pain isn't that big a deal."
"No, I know," Jack said, sighing. "But last I checked, the definition of 'fine' doesn't include a little pain, or missing one's kids, or one's wife."
Daniel ducked his head and looked away. "What's your point?" he asked in a muffled voice after a couple of minutes.
Jack felt like a heel for upsetting him. He leaned closer. "It's okay not to be fine, you know." Daniel shrugged. "You do know that, don't you?" Daniel shrugged again. "Surely some Daniel somewhere knows that!"
Daniel's shoulders started shaking and Jack bit his lip. Then Daniel turned to face him, shaking his head. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry when you do that. You sound so much like my own Jack when he's on one of those kicks."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "I do, do I?"
"Most definitely." He looked down at the papers in front of him. "Could you hand me the book over there?" He pointed at a pile of five or six books.
Jack got up and walked over. "Could you give me a clue? A color at the very least."
Daniel chuckled. "Green."
Jack picked up the green book and handed it to Daniel. Then he sat down again and watched the other man work for a long while. It was so strange to look at this man and know, despite his appearance, despite the sound of his voice, despite everything, this was not his Daniel. He lowered his forehead to the back of the chair.
"Jack?" He brought his head up in surprise at the closeness of the voice. Daniel had inched his way down the bed and was reaching out. "Jack, are you okay?"
He bit his lip. "No, I'm not okay," he said, giving Daniel a lopsided grin.
Daniel dropped his arm and looked abashed. "I'm sorry. Of course you're not. No more than I am."
They fell into a maudlin silence for a few moments, then Jack cleared his throat. "Well, that's enough of that," he muttered.
"Right," Daniel said, flushing. "Back to work."
Jack found a deck of cards in a cupboard and sat down at the table to play solitaire. As he flipped the cards over in game after game, he contemplated Daniel, both this one and his own. Maybourne said his Daniel was getting treated differently in that other reality. He thought about all the things that had happened to Daniel, and wondered what was being added to the list as he dropped a nine of hearts on a ten of clubs.
Abruptly, he glanced over at the Daniel in this room. They hadn't told him about the visits from Maybourne, too worried that he'd be alarmed. But . . . was that fair? Didn't he deserve to know what was going on, what they were attempting to do to help him? He certainly didn't deserve to be treated like a child, and he surely had information that could prove useful to them.
As he looked at this Daniel, he thought about what his Daniel would say if they tried to do something similar to him and shivered at the imagined invective. When Rothman showed up about forty-five minutes later to drop off some books, Jack asked him to stay awhile. Daniel didn't even notice, he was so focused on what he was doing. All Daniels were alike in that sense, Jack guessed.
He headed up to his office and gave the general a call. A very young female voice answered the phone and said she'd go get grampa for him. Jack smiled, thinking of the picture of Hammond's young granddaughters that rested on the general's desk. "Hello?" said Hammond into the phone, his voice light and casual.
"General, sir, I'm sorry to disturb you at home," Jack said.
"Colonel O'Neill," Hammond said, and his voice sharpened to a more businesslike tone. "Is something wrong?"
"No sir, I was actually just thinking about something and wanted to address it at the earliest possible opportunity."
The general sighed and said, "Yes?"
"We've been keeping Maybourne's visits from Daniel . . . this Daniel . . ."
"I know who you mean, colonel. And?"
"I was just thinking that it isn't entirely fair to keep it from him. He's not a child, so we shouldn't treat him like one."
Hammond was silent for a moment. "You were dead set against it."
"I know . . . I didn't want to get his hopes up, I just . . . I spent a couple of hours with him today and I got to thinking that our Daniel would be furious at him if we pulled something like that on him."
"True, but are you sure you can trust him? Are you sure he trusts us enough to cope with this? And how's he going to react to finding out that our Daniel isn't receiving the same treatment he did?"
"He's Daniel, sir. He'll be glad for him."
Hammond let out a bark of unwilling laughter. "You're probably right, colonel. That's just one of my questions, though. What about the others?"
Jack nodded. "I do think we can trust him. And I think he can cope with this, sir."
"Be very cautious. Watch his mood carefully."
"I will, sir," Jack said.
"Call me to let me know how he takes it, and if you learn anything new."
"Of course, sir."
Jack hung up the phone and contemplated how best to broach the subject with Daniel. After a couple of minutes of fruitless thought, he shrugged and got up. He'd figure it out as he went, like he did everything.
Rothman and Daniel were deep in discussion over some incredibly minor point of linguistic variation when he got there, so he let them hash it out to their mutual satisfaction, settling down to his solitaire game again. Eventually, Rothman glanced at the time and gave a little yip of surprise. "I have to go. I'm supposed to give a talk in fifteen minutes."
"Thanks for the help, Robert," Daniel said. Rothman nodded distractedly, glanced at Jack and then left hurriedly.
Jack didn't want to seem too pushy, as if he'd just been waiting for Rothman to leave so he could rush Daniel and demand answers, so he finished his current solitaire game, then got up and walked over to the bed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Daniel shook his head urgently. Jack closed his mouth and sat down, waiting while Daniel worked feverishly. After several minutes, the archeologist looked up. "Sorry, Jack, got firmly fixed on a thought and didn't dare interrupt it."
"Don't worry, I understand," Jack said. "Do you have a lot more to go?"
"No, actually," Daniel said, closing the file. "That's the last of that project. Just a minute." He reached over to the phone and dialed an extension. "I'm done. Someone can pick it up." He nodded. "Right. So, is there anything else for me?" There was a pause, then Daniel's shoulders slumped. "Oh, okay. Thanks." He hung up, looking more than a little depressed.
"What's up?" Jack asked.
Daniel shrugged, putting on an expression of unconcern. "They don't have anything for me to work on," he said.
"Well, I have something I want to talk to you about," Jack said. Daniel raised his eyebrows and settled back against the headboard of the bed, his hands folded. His eyes gave the clear impression that he believed Jack was merely attempting to give him something to think about other than his situation. Jack cleared his throat. "We haven't said anything to you for fear of how you might take it."
"I take it you're no longer concerned about that?" Daniel asked wryly.
"No, I still am," Jack said, "but I came to the conclusion that treating you like a child wasn't in anyone's best interests."
"I see," Daniel said. ""I'm glad to hear it. I knew you were keeping something from me, but I wasn't sure what."
Jack meditated briefly on the futility of lying to a Daniel Jackson, then coughed. "Well, you see . . ." He paused, uncertain just how to begin.
"No, I'm afraid I don't," Daniel said after waiting a decent interval.
"Sorry." Jack shrugged. "I didn't . . ." He grimaced. Hell, he'd better just say it. "We've been in contact with the Harry Maybourne from the reality where you were held, where our Daniel is being held now."
Daniel's eyes widened. After a short pause during which he seemed incapable of speech, he said, "Harry Maybourne?"
"Did you see him while you were there?" Jack asked, suddenly realizing that they should have asked him that when Maybourne first showed up.
"No, no one even mentioned him." Daniel shook his head slowly. "Ours is a gung ho, xenophobic asshole. What's yours like?"
"The same," Jack replied. "This one seems to be cut from a different mold." This Daniel gave him a funny look much as his own might have after such a mangled metaphor.
"He's been in contact, though?" Daniel asked. "Why? Did he contact my reality?"
"He says not," Jack said. "I gather he hasn't had access to the mirror before this."
"But why?"
"He says he wants to end it. Get our Daniel back to us and get all the other Daniels back to where they belong."
Daniel was silent, his mouth open, staring in astonishment. Jack sympathized. Eventually, he seemed to recover himself. "Do you believe him?"
Jack nodded slowly. "Actually, I do. And that really surprises me."
"Wow." Daniel blinked. "Why didn't you want to tell me?" he asked.
"Um . . ." Jack grimaced. "I didn't want to get your –"
There was a knock at the door, interrupting him. Jack got up with an apologetic frown, but Daniel just shrugged. He walked over and let in the lieutenant who'd come to pick up Daniel's work, Lt. Graves. She walked over to the bed and smiled shyly as she took the papers from Daniel. Then she left, blushing slightly. Jack rolled his eyes.
When the door was closed again, Daniel tilted his head at him. "You didn't want to get my hopes up? Was that the end of that sentence?"
"It was," Jack said, shrugging.
"I see. Well, what else did Maybourne say? How is your Daniel?"
"Um . . . first I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask you," Jack said hesitantly.
Daniel's lips tightened, and he looked annoyed for a moment. Then his eyes cleared. "You want a check against what Maybourne told you, don't you?"
"Among other things."
"Okay, ask away." Daniel's tone was light, but his expression was shuttered.
Jack nodded. He picked up the clipboard he'd brought with him from his office and sat ready. "First, who did you see there that you knew from your reality, and what were your impressions of them?"
"That's easy. I didn't see many people. Samantha Carter." Daniel looked thoughtful. "She's a lieutenant there. At first she was very cold, very hard, but she softened quickly. She brought most of my meals, most of my projects, ice when I was hurt." He was quiet for a moment. "I think she hates what's going on but doesn't know how to stop it."
Jack nodded and jotted some notes. "Go on."
"Major Charlie Kowalski." Jack looked up in surprise. "So he's dead here, too?" Daniel asked. Jack nodded. "I only really saw him the first day and the last. He was on the snatch and on the drop. He seemed cruel and callous, but again, I saw very little of him."
"I see." Jack made more notes, deeply disturbed by the notion that any Kowalski anywhere could be seen as cruel and callous.
"Jack O'Neill." Daniel shuddered. "He was incredibly violent, incredibly angry." His eyes were open, but he wasn't looking at anything in this room. "When he wasn't being actively infuriated, he was incredibly domineering. Not to say that my Jack isn't pretty damned bossy, but this man . . . he wanted to control every minute of the day. I would eat what he told me to eat when he told me to eat whether I was hungry or not, whether I wanted it or not. The lights went out and came on at the same time every day . . ." He shook his head. "I still don't understand why he was so angry at me all the time."
"He was drugged," Jack said, hoping to ease some of the baffled hurt in the other man's eyes.
Daniel turned sharply to look him in the eyes. "Drugged? The hell you say?"
Jack nodded. "Maybourne said he's being given drugs to enhance aggression without his knowledge. He said that most of the staff was being given drugs of some kind. That Carter is getting downers."
"That . . . that makes it all make so much more sense," Daniel said, his voice very quiet, eyes distant. "He kept having these moments, where he'd act suddenly very concerned, almost caring, but it would disappear the next moment into a haze of violence."
Jack contemplated that uncomfortably. "Did you see anyone else?" he asked. "Hammond, for instance?"
"Oh yes," Daniel said with a shudder. "He was the creepiest damn thing I've ever seen. He looks and sounds like my Hammond, like your Hammond, but he is the coldest bastard . . . I only saw him twice, but that was plenty."
"Tell me about it?"
"Both times were moments when I'd refused to translate something. I was so angry at being stuck there, at how constricted the situation was, at them. I would just stop working. Jack would get angry, but I guess he didn't get angry enough for Hammond on two occasions. He came in, bringing Major Coburn . . . I forgot him. He ordered Coburn to be careful of my head and my hands when he pounded on me, since they were the only parts of me that mattered, so long as I was going to live at the end of it."
Jack closed his eyes, trying not to imagine his own Daniel in that same situation.
"Did Maybourne tell you how Daniel is? Your Daniel?"
Jack nodded. "Yes. He's . . . he's behaved differently than all the rest of you, and so has been treated a bit differently."
"How so?" Daniel asked.
Jack crossed his arms. "He hasn't rebelled much. He's done what's been asked of him, and on the first night, he saved a team from being sacrificed by translating from that little room he's being kept in."
"Really? How's he being treated?"
"That Jack's being brotherly, I guess, but he's sinking into the delusion that our Daniel is really his original Daniel."
"Kowalski said that their Daniel was dead. That their Jack had killed him because he was unmanageable."
Jack shook his head. "That's not how Maybourne tells it. According to him, the Jack and Daniel from that reality were extremely close, to the point of being like brothers."
"Really?" Daniel looked thoughtful. "So what happened then?"
"I guess their relationship involved some roughhousing, play fighting, that kind of thing, but they'd both been abused as children, and the roughhousing became something a little more unhealthy. Jack would hit Daniel when he was angry over something Daniel had done."
Daniel blinked. "I'd be a mass of bruises all the time if my Jack did that to me. Not that he'd get away with it, but . . ."
Jack nodded. "Well, this unhealthy situation was exacerbated by the drugs. With Jack being given things to make him more aggressive and Daniel being given things to make him more passive . . ."
Daniel was silent for a moment. Then he said, "So that Daniel's death was a genuine accident."
"According to Maybourne. Then Hammond put the pressure on and their Jack went off the deep end. He kept grabbing Daniels, but, oddly enough, none of them wanted to be there, so they'd get angry, and he'd get angry –"
"And he'd take it out on us physically." Daniel nodded. "That follows. So your Daniel, by not rebelling, is fitting into the mold?"
"I guess," Jack said, shaking his head. "I don't get it. It's the last thing I'd expect from him, but apparently he seems to know exactly how to react to keep that O'Neill from beating the crud out of him. The only time he's been hurt is when he refused to translate something that would have made it easy for that Hammond to kill a village full of Jaffa."
Daniel's jaw dropped. "What happened?"
"He refused," Jack said, gritting his teeth. "Hammond told him that he could do it or he could have his arm broken."
Daniel covered his eyes with his hand. "I know where this is going," he said. "Coburn did it, I'm sure. Hammond doesn't do things himself."
Jack looked down at his hands. "And that isn't the worst. Our Daniel hasn't been hurt quite as often as any . . . as you were, but Hammond has decided to keep him, and for that he needed something to control him with." Daniel lowered his hand from his eyes, looking apprehensive. "He put an explo –" Jack shook his head. He was not going to use euphemisms. "He put a bomb in Daniel's chest to destroy his heart at a signal from a remote control."
The other man looked frozen for a few moments. Then he burst out, "Sick bastard!"
Jack nodded fervently. Then he looked down at his notes. "So, all of this is jibing with what you know of the people in question?"
Daniel nodded. "Actually, it's making a lot of things make more sense than they did before. Jack . . . that Jack always seemed to be trying to placate Hammond in some way or other . . ." He shivered. "I wish your Daniel wasn't there."
Jack closed his eyes. "So do I, and only a Daniel would say that rather than 'I'm glad I'm out of there.'"
"Knock it off, Jack," Daniel said. "So, do you have a time frame for getting him back?"
"Maybourne says it could take as much as six months, and since the mirror's at Area 52, us going through to there doesn't seem like it's got much scope."
"Hell." Daniel grimaced. "Well, if it would help at all, I can give you an idea of where in the base the room I was held in was located."
"That would be great," Jack said and Daniel started drawing. It didn't take long. Jack recognized the room. It was used for storage. They must have added the bathroom in, because the room here didn't have a bathroom.
"We have a storeroom there in my reality," Daniel said. "But there that room has been fitted out as a prison. I never set foot outside it from the time I was taken there till they carried me out. And I was constantly monitored, even in the bathroom, I think, though I could never be sure. The cameras were hidden."
"Damn it!" Jack shook his head. "I hate this."
"I know. I hate to think what Sha're and the kids are going through, wondering where I am."
"It's disturbing, isn't it?" Jack said. "God, I'm sorry. Now I've made us both depressed."
"I was already depressed," Daniel pointed out. "Not much you can do to make me more depressed, really."
Jack slumped in his chair. "Well, we're going to get you home and get our Daniel back." Daniel nodded firmly, as though convincing himself. "So, I've got a great idea. I'll go find a chessboard and you can wallop me at chess a few times. That's bound to cheer you up."
Daniel looked dubious, but he agreed to the proposal, so Jack sent for a chessboard. They played until dinner time.