*****

Voices from far off were intruding on his nice warm place. He rolled over and tried to cover his ears to block them out. It didn't work. Grumpily he stuffed the pillow over his head.

The movement caught the attention of one of the nurses attending another patient. She quietly stepped away and informed Dr. Fraiser that he'd woken up.

"Good morning, Colonel!" the doctor piped cheerfully.

"Umph," was the muffled reply.

Dr. Fraiser wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and pressed a button on the monitor to get a reading. He pulled his head out from under the pillow and squinted at the light.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Head hurts less," he noticed. She shined a light in his eyes, and he squinted and pulled back giving her a very annoyed look.

"Yesterday afternoon the symptoms of intracranial pressure subsided," she informed him.

"Yesterday afternoon?" He started to push himself up.

"Uh uh uh." She gently pushed him back to the bed. "Not yet. I want to do a quick examination, and then you're going to eat."

"How long have I been here?"

"About thirty hours," Daniel said as he popped in the room.

"What did you do, drug me?" he demanded of Janet.

"Didn't have to. You were completely exhausted, and you were still suffering from fluid build-up around the hematoma," Janet explained.

"How are you feeling?" Daniel asked him.

"Actually, I feel okay. Except for the tape worm I seemed to have developed." He rubbed at his stomach feeling the emptiness.

"Actually, I knew you'd be hungry so I called Sam. She's bringing you some breakfast from the commissary," Daniel told him.

Jack looked around and didn't see what he was looking for. He looked at Daniel for the news he knew must be coming. Daniel recognized the question in his eyes.

"She's in an isolation room," he explained.

Jack tried not to let the relief he felt show, but he felt certain he'd done a miserable job.

Janet elaborated, "She began running a pretty high fever, and I wanted to protect her immune system from any more stress. That, and with teams returning yesterday, she didn't need the commotion."

Jack nodded. He was amazed at how much better he was feeling. He decided he'd go check on her after he ate.

Sam appeared with a tray of assorted breakfast foods for him. "I didn't know what you'd be hungry for, so I grabbed some of everything." She set the tray in front of him. It was piled with pastries and cereal and a plate of hot food and some fruit. There was juice and milk and, ah there it was: coffee. Jack dug in and started refueling.

Janet finished with her notations to his chart and said, "When you're done you are free to go. I don't think you need to stay here for any reason. Just please, this time, take it easy." She shot an accusatory look at Daniel, who squinted and shrugged a wordless Daniel-esque apology.

"I brought you some stuff." Daniel reached down and retrieved a bag from the floor.

"How is she, Daniel?" Jack asked with a dark expression.

"She's not so good, Jack." He pushed his glasses up on his nose in a self-conscious gesture. "But last time I checked on her she was conscious. Sam sat with her for about an hour yesterday and told her about the SGC. No one has told her about her husband, though. I assumed you would want to be the one..." His voice trailed off. "I just wanted to bring you this." He set the bag in a chair next to Jack's bed. "I've got to get back to my office. SG4 brought something back they want translated yesterday. Good to see you're feeling better." He smiled ever so slightly, ducked his head, and left the room. Off to work. Life moving forward; carrying Daniel Jackson with it.

"So how about you Carter? What kind of work do you have planned to keep you away from the rest of your vacation?" Jack asked with a mouthful of eggs.

Major Carter grinned at him widely, "We have some information about the element that was being used to fuel the weapon Dr. Tolla Ben Jahadi was developing, SE201b. I was going to go to my lab and formulate some models so I can run some simulations. It appears that when combined with other heavy metals, SE201b has a great deal of potential for strengthening known compounds. Its use as a component in fabrication applications is promising."

"Sounds good. You go make models." He took a large swig of his coffee.

She beamed at him, "It really is good to see you feeling better, Sir," and she bounced away excited about the prospect of her new science experiment.

Jack finished up his breakfast and decided to take a shower. He reached for the bag Daniel had brought him and riffled through it to see what his options were: fatigues, undershirt, clean underwear and socks, a shaving kit, a toothbrush, his wallet, keys, and a CD. He pulled it out and looked at it. He didn't have to look to know what it was, but something about holding the weight of it in his hand felt comforting. Was Daniel aware of the fact that Shaboni had liked it? Or was there some other message here? Didn't matter. He decided he'd take it to her.

He went to the shower and started getting cleaned up. He had tape over an IV site on his left hand. He pulled it off and admired the bluish bruise that was spreading around the pinpoint hole in his hand. He undressed and turned on the shower. He set the shaving kit on the sink and caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises under his eyes looked like a light version of the paint football players wore to protect themselves from the glare of the sun. His nose, however, looked considerably better. He pushed at it gently with his fingers. It didn't hurt much at all. He smiled as he remembered Shaboni slamming her hand into his face. If she'd been awake at the time she could have killed him with that little maneuver. Knowing that she had been Sayeret, Shaldag in particular, he knew she must be a fearsome soldier. And the Mossad was known for their ninja-like assassins. He would have liked to have known her when she was healthy and strong.

"Don't miss this chance." Sarah's words came back to him. Or had they really been his words?

He went to the isolation room. She looked fragile, but better. He sat down on a stool next to her bed. She had been taken off the respirator and the tracheotomy tube had been removed, a sterile white covering over the incision. She was sleeping. Her breathing was so much clearer and easier that he found it difficult to believe she'd been practically dead only a day ago. 'Two days.' He reminded himself.

She was stirring.

"Hey, there," he said gently.

"Jack," she smiled weakly. "Daniel said you were not feeling well."

"Ah, I'm fine. Just needed some serious sleep."

"I have met with Major Carter and Teal'c. They are your team." It was one of those questions.

"Yep. Carter, Teal'c and Daniel. They're a great team," he said proudly.

"They have a very good leader." Her gray eyes were sparkling. "Major Carter tells me everything about what you do. That the compounds Tolla was working with were coming from other worlds, just like he said. That people like you brought them here."

"Yeah, well, I have very little control over what happens to the stuff I bring back," Jack said apologetically.

"Do not be misunderstanding me, Jack. It is good what you are doing. It is so much bigger than the petty fighting that my country has always known. It is so much more important than anything we have ever been doing." She spoke softly, but candidly. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she looked as if she was going back to sleep.

Jack sat there just staring. For a very long time he watched her. He tried to draw in to his memory the look of her dark brown hair against the stark white of the pillow. He doubted he would remember. Something so sweet was fluid, always motion. He ached inside. But this time he would allow the ache. He wouldn't suppress it. He would let it burn. Because the alternative would be to suppress all his feelings again, especially those having to do with this strange and beautiful creature lying still and slipping from him before he even really knew her and all too quickly. Maybe it wasn't love, but whatever it was, it was alive. He'd lived the alternative too long, and even though it was painful, alive was better than not.

Jack got up and went to his office. He retrieved his small personal stereo that he kept in there for nights when he had to stay at the base. He'd become accustomed to running something like the TV or stereo to subdue the busy thoughts that would threaten him when night fell. He took the stereo to the isolation room and plugged it in, placing the CD Daniel had brought in his bag in the player. He turned the volume down low and let the music play. Shaboni smiled a faint smile that told Jack she wasn't actually asleep, though probably heavily drugged with pain medication. They listened to the music together. Jack took her uninjured hand in his and held it gently. They sat together like that for the whole thing, just letting the music play.

After the music had stopped, Jack continued to sit quietly with her. Eventually she stirred and opened her eyes. "That was quite wonderful," she commented.

"I thought so," he agreed. Then his face turned hard and he decided now was the time.

"I have some information for you about your husband," Jack started.

She lay there watching him levelly. She would not ask. She would not become distraught. He could see that the information he had for her would simply bring her journey to its end. He wondered what that would mean for her spirit. Would she continue to fight once she knew it all?

"The people who took you were the same people who hired him. He was working on the same project that Ben Jahadi was working on; though I'm pretty sure he didn't know it. He disappeared six months after coming to the United States. The official report is that he died in a lab accident. I believe that the same guys who took you were directly responsible for his death, possibly because he was trying to leave to come home. But I'm not sure. All of the chemists who were hired to work on the same project disappeared about the same time."

Her eyes looked dark. Shaboni had been assigned to one of the most secretive units of the Sayeret and then recruited by the Mossad. She had lived a life of intense secrecy. It was more than likely that her personnel file was as classified as his was. Soldiers who operated in the highly secretive world of black ops and intelligence learned to compartmentalize. They were exceedingly good at it. But there were times when the drive for retribution overran programming. Jack would have bet money that this was one of those moments for Shaboni. Would she want to seek to avenge her husband's death now that she knew who was responsible?

"We were ambushed in Prague," she told him. "Two men had followed us to our dinner and then they followed us back to Tolla's lab. He was believing that Emil had been working on the same project as he. That the chemical he was being given to develop into a weapon would be to poison selected targets. He was to be making a delivery system that could be sequenced to specific DNA. He was telling me the delivery system was for DNA of something that was not human, but while he had been able to construct the bomb he was not yet able to be perfecting the targeted delivery system. I laughed at him, Jack. I was thinking he was saying that Emil was mixed up in alien conspiracy. He had been telling me earlier that there was metaloid, he called it Naquada. If he was to put this Naquada together with the other substance it would attack the human body like more common metals, except the combination of the two would somehow protect the brain so that you would know what was happening to you as you would waste away. The men had shot him, but he connected a timer to an explosive charge he had hidden under a table before he died. One of the agents tried to take the weapon, but I was able to stop him. I miscalculated his intentions, and when I was close to him he opened the compartment containing the two substances. He threw them in my face. They got in my mouth and I was breathing and swallowing them. The other man got away, and I was able to be getting to the street when the lab was destroyed." She stopped for a moment, and closed her eyes tightly against pain. Her breath came in quick short gasps.

"Shaboni we can talk more later." Jack started to get up and let her rest. She shot her hand out and grabbed his arm.

"No, we can not." She looked at him severely, "I have been talking with Doctor Fraiser. There is no more later."

Jack sank back down onto the stool. He looked at the floor. "Keep talking," he said finally.

"Please tell the doctor that I am needing more pain medication, first." He hopped up and opened the door to the room.

"HEY! Need some help in here!" he yelled down the corridor. Someone on the medical staff came running in.

"Yes, Sir?"

"She needs some more morphine." The medic went to her chart and flipped a few pages. Jack shifted his weight from one foot to the other impatiently. "Did I stutter?" he asked irritated.

"Sir, I just needed to check her orders." He put the chart down and went for the medication. He reappeared momentarily with a syringe and pushed the medication into her IV. She sighed lightly with relief as the pain receded.

"Sit down, Jack. There is more I must tell you."