Author: Eilidh17

Category: Gen, Kidfic

Warnings: NC-17 for Torture and Violence, Angst, Language

Feedback: Yes Please

Authors Note: Please do not read if anything in the Warnings offends you.

The Endless Memory – Chapter 2

"There are regions of his brain just shutting down. I've never seen anything quite like this."

No matter how many times I look at the medical monitor, the kaleidoscope of colors that represents an image of Daniel's brain finds new and ever more boring ways to confuse me. I can't focus on this. The small body in the bed that represents my very big best friend, needs all of my attention, and I simply don't have time to listen to Janet tell us one more time how very little there is she can do.

I just don't fucking get it. I understand Fraiser's need to be all clinical and detached, she's got a job to do and hard decisions to make. I get that, and don't think I don't recognize how much more difficult that becomes when the person she's caring for is a freak of nature, something that by all rights, can't actually be. Of all the whacked out stuff we've seen through the 'gate this sits right up there with our minds being transferred in to artificial bodies and the whole concept of parasites taking over human hosts to rule the galaxy. Actually, I take that back, this is way worse than anything we've run afoul off. Sue me, but I didn't sign up for this crazy crap.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that in war no one is innocent. What a laugh, whoever thought up that crazy notion needs to be tossed through the Stargate ass first. It's a war out there, might not always look that way, but the galaxy is just one big battle zone with enemies way smarter than we've got the right to be going up against.

So, while Janet is attempting to enlighten us all with her ability to say a lot but convey absolutely nothing, I focus on Daniel's face. He's quiet at the moment, but beneath that peaceful exterior is a mind in turmoil. I'd thank who ever is watching over him for these moments of small mercies, but that type of thinking tends to bite me in the ass when the monks' little mind game starts up again and the kid is thrown back into his living nightmare.

My butt is numb from sitting in this chair for so long, but it's a small sacrifice in the scheme of things. Daniel is sound asleep, turned on his side facing me with his hand curled inside mine. At times I can feel his soft puffs of breath tickling the hairs on the back of my hand. It's taken a few days for Daniel to allow us into his world and share some measure of physical contact. No-one blames him. Why would we? He doesn't know who we are. His mind is stuck in an endless loop of his parents' death, and I mean the exact moment of their death. Poor little bastard, it's a horror story, one I'm thankful we don't figure in.

"He's dying."

What?

As fast as my mind registered Janet's words I shut my self off from Daniel-watching and tune back in. "What do you mean dying?"

"I'm sorry, Sir. His mind simply can't withstand the strain of reliving such an intense memory over and over and its shutting itself down."

Such an intense memory?

She doesn't understand the half of it, and I seriously doubt Carter does either. I know she saw combat time flying sorites over the gulf, but I'm pretty sure her tour of duty didn't include months of psychological and physical torture in the hands of the enemy. Looking at Teal'c I can see the muscles in his jaw tensing and his gaze harden. He knows. As first prime he might not have metered out the interrogations so much as supervised them, a privilege of rank probably, but on his climb to the top he would have been forced to do things in the name of his god that there would be no justification for.

I know what this is like. There are memories I've buried so deep along with the scars that have conveniently healed to the point I'm no longer reminded how I got them. Not all those scars are physical.

They don't want to kill you. What's the fun in that? Nope, capture an enemy soldier and you'll be rewarded, but bag yourself an officer and your family lives well on his blood, and the information he can unwillingly provide, for years to come. I bet the bastard that scored me was living the high life.

Everyone is made to be broken. How you achieve that goes one way or another. You can beat your prisoner to within an inch of his life and hope the physical pain is more than he can bear, and he reveals himself like a code that's been cracked, or you can take the other path.

The psychological one.

Directed stimuli. Harsh and merciless. I understand Daniel's pain more than I want to admit. I remember the bite of leather straps on my already abused skin matching my throbbing head that was strapped to the spine of a high backed chair so I couldn't move… no matter the need.

And then there's the image of a little girl that will live in my mind forever.

She must have been all of about three or four. Dark brown eyes, long hair and a smiling face, she was almost posing for the camera. The first few times I was forced to watch her image - or maybe it was the first few days, I can't remember now – I was confident she had no idea of what was about to happen to her. I mean she couldn't willingly have consented to being martyred, but looking back on it now, I'm not so sure. We'd been warned the enemy liked to use kids as weapons, all in the name of upholding values that were so different from ours, but I'd never witnessed it first hand.

So she waved at the camera, her giggles being fed through an archaic sound system blasting out at me from the four corners of my tiny cell. Her image was blocked momentarily as a hand waved in front of the camera holding a US military issue grenade… with the pin pulled. God, I knew what was coming. Didn't need the visual to get the idea but the sick bastards running this movie for my entertainment made sure I saw every last damn frame. Ever had your eyes held forcibly open? You get the idea.

The hand moves away from the screen just long enough for me to catch "smiley" blowing me a kiss as the grenade is dropped down the front of her blouse… and seconds later she's blown four ways to hell, taking everything with her.

You don't forget those images, especially not the bloody gore that coats the camera lens just moments before it's destroyed. And not when you're forced to watch it over and over again for days on end. Time loses its meaning, and even when they were generous enough to release me from the chair, the film still played and the speakers still yelled at me. There's no respite. It's make or break, and you have no idea how much I wanted to break.

Most do. They go quiet after a while. The shock of whatever stimuli they've been subjected too finally wins and they become compliant, even catatonic. I got lucky, saw my chance for escape and took it, but the time I spent at the repat hospital opened my eyes up to just how lucky I'd been and how unfortunate others hadn't. Most of the soldiers our boys had managed to rescue from the enemy were lifeless husks, beaten beyond recognition and subjected to untold psychological terrors. Cold lifeless eyes staring out at nothing, lost in their own worlds with little to no hope of ever being reached again. If I thought what I'd gone through was hell, what the heck had happened to them?

The Geneva Convention held little weight in that war.

So, yeah, I was certain I knew what I was looking at with Daniel, and confident the Doc had seen it as well. At least I thought she had.

After Daniel's last cycle she called for a sedative and an MRI, in that order, and I figured she wanted to know what was going on as much as me. Janet is no slouch, she knows just as much about cruel and unusual punishment as the next seasoned military doctor, and I was pretty sure she'd read the signs.

Secretly I was holding out hope for option B – the one that says those freaking monks built in this punishment with some sort of biological clock that counted itself down with every cycle. I mean was it too much to hope for that there was an end in sight to this? Who the hell would hand out a punishment in such cryptic terms if there wasn't a way to end it?

Now she was telling us he's dying? What became of options A and B? What happened to the punishment cancelling out the crime? If they wanted him dead why go through with such a barbaric sentence. Was it all for our benefit? Sure as hell wasn't for his.

"But that-" I splutter, lost for words and finding myself floundering in the absurdity of it all. Thankfully Carter caught onto my line of thought and graciously took up the baton. "That doesn't make any sense, Janet." Ya think?

Janet let out a soft "huh" cocked her head towards the monitor and whispered, "You're all assuming it did from the start. I can't begin to understand what type of biology or technology is at work here that could even achieve the type of physical regression we've seen. The psychological component of this is well beyond anything Mental Health has ever dealt with." Janet lifted her gaze from the monitor to meet each of us in turn before settling on Daniel and adding, "Which is the primary reason they haven't been involved."

Scrubbing my hand across my face, I mutter "small mercies" under my breath and pointedly ignore the stares I can feel generated in my direction. Apparently my fondness towards the good doctor at Mental Health is no secret. No need to guess why.

"Is there nothing we can do, Doctor Fraiser?" Teal'c, ever the optimist, has finally bitten into the conversation. He's normally a pretty quiet guy, only offering up comment when he has something of relevance to add, and only when he feels it might be useful. Blood out of a stone is a saying I've heard attributed to him on more than one occasion. Guess you have to know the guy like we do… and I know this has thrown him for a six.

"I don't know what to suggest really," Janet adds, her mouth down turned in a sad smile. "There's just so much going on here that we don't understand."

"We're taking him back, now." I hadn't intended to say that, but by God, when the words slipped out I meant every damn one. "We take him back and get them to undo whatever it is they've done."

Janet throws me a wide eyed and very disapproving look. "I don't think that's wise, sir."

Daniel is starting to stir in his sleep. His fingers, held so loosely in my hand, are starting to twitch and I take note of the time on the wall. "Look, you've already admitted you don't know what to do, and there's no way in hell I'm going to believe the bastards that did this don't know how to fix it, so I say we take him back. And we do it right away."

"Sir, we can't be sure-"

"Carter, so help me, unless you've got a solution we haven't thought of, I don't want to hear it." Carter's mouth hangs open for a moment before she snaps it shut and straightens her shoulders. She knows the score. My mind's made up and there's no changing it. Teal'c gets the message loud and clear. Head tilted towards Daniel, he's asking for my unspoken permission to pick him up and get the hell outta Dodge.

"One hour, colonel. That's how long you've got till the next cycle starts. You can't possibly make it back through the gate and back to the temple in that time. Let him ride the next one out and I'll sedate him for the trip."

"Nope, not this time, doc. Give him a sedative, help him out, yes, but we're leaving now. No way is he going to endure this any longer. One way or another, this is going to end." Brave words… and I mean every last one of them.

To be continued…