Once Jack pointed out, Daniel realized it was pretty obvious. Daniel was used to two basic types of leader: the ones who were willing to listen and learn, and the ones who proved their dominance by abusing the powerless. The latter usually did a lot of shouting, physical menacing and more or less constantly resorted to violence to prove their superiority. The other howlers had acted like their scarred leader was one of the latter, but Daniel had missed it because the big, black monkey king had done very little to menace Daniel the day before.
No, what he'd done was far more subtle. He'd purposely misunderstood Daniel's every attempt at communication, and dropped red herring clues and suggestions that had resulted only in Daniel's looking incredibly foolish to the other howlers. It had been a demonstration of power, but not in any of the ways Daniel had come to expect. The ape had been proving his mental might by playing dumb. That was a behavior Daniel had seen remarkably few times, and it was an oft overlooked tactic.
But of course Jack had recognized it, because he specialized in pretending to be stupid and dense. He used it to get his way, to make other people lose their cool and look foolish when they lost their temper at him, to provoke other people into going on the attack so he had an excuse to defend himself without getting into trouble, and also -quite often- to make people he liked look a lot smarter and more reasonable by comparison. He used it to get what he wanted, and to get out of doing what he didn't want. Jack was very good at what he did, using it for the benefit of those of which he approved, and the detriment to those which he did not. It was no surprise that he should recognize his own calling card, even if it was being used by a monkey.
Daniel could be accused of being impulsive. Certainly that was part of what had driven him through the Stargate originally. But today his first impulse was to not piss off the monkeys, to use the opportunity to study how long it would take them to tire of their game, and what tactics they would use to try and make sure he stayed on the string, because it might provide insight into how primitive humans had interacted and behaved. But right now the clock was ticking.
SG-1 had missed one check-in already, and it wouldn't be long before their GDOs were locked out, if they hadn't been already. There was always a backup solution, usually involving gating to a world where allies of the Tau'ri who had a special GDO and iris code of their own lived. But that was a less than ideal solution for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that allies could sometimes change residency, or be attacked, or cease being allies. Another option was to go somewhere a team was scheduled to visit, but that came with risks of not knowing what lay on the other side of the 'Gate. And the longer they waited, the less they would know of scheduled missions.
Now was not the time to screw around with the howlers. Not with that hanging over his head. Not with the rest of SG-1 counting on him to make some kind of progress communicating with their captors. Not when he could clearly remember all the times before that he'd let SG-1 down because his personal feelings and interests got in the way, jeopardizing their safety or even getting them hurt. He knew he'd wind up doing it again, because there would always be something he was so interested in, so passionate about that he would forget himself and everyone around him. But not today.
Back in the hut, when Scar thrust the cylinder at him, Daniel took it, then brazenly set it aside. He had avoided direct eye contact yesterday to avoid appearing challenging. He did not show the howlers this courtesy today, staring right at their leader defiantly. He knew doing so was a risk, but they needed to understand that he knew they'd been using him, and that he wasn't having a bit of it.
It needed to be completely unambiguous that Daniel was only willing to try and communicate if the howlers were. So long as they wanted to use him to amuse themselves, he wasn't willing to play. Like anyone used to getting their way by using intimidation and force, Scar was infuriated.
Scar snarled at him, using tactics that had yesterday gotten Daniel to back off, give ground and send submissive signals to avoid a fight. But today Daniel held his ground, and refused to give up his position. Now they were communicating, albeit not in the way Daniel had wanted. Now he could read what the howler was saying, and knew the howler understood what he said back.
With a roar, Scar lunged at him. Daniel didn't flinch. But he raised his head slightly. The staring was challenging, but the slightly bared throat said he didn't want to fight. It was a message a human might fail to see entirely, and one an animal couldn't miss, but might find confusing when the two signals were coupled to make a singular message. Daniel was betting the howlers would get it.
Scar roared right in his face, showing his mandrill-like fangs to their roots, spittle flying from between his open jaws. Despite the size difference, Daniel got the uncomfortable impression that the howler could fit his entire head in its mouth, and he didn't even want to begin to imagine what those wicked canines could do to his skull, given the opportunity and enough bite force.
"I'm not some toy for you to amuse yourself with," Daniel said in mild tones, knowing his message would be carried by eye contact and intonation, rather than the words themselves, but that speaking them would help him to focus on what he wanted to convey, "If you want to talk, then let's talk. But if you want to use me to show off how smart you are to your friends, I won't be the tool you use for that. You want something from us. So tell me what you want. Otherwise, get the hell out of my face."
The howler slapped his ear hard. It felt like being hit with a two-by-four, and Daniel would have been knocked down from his sitting position if he hadn't put a hand out to stop himself. Knowing this was as much a demonstration to the howler's followers as to Daniel himself, he forced his eyes open and glared at Scar even though his ear throbbed and his brain felt like it was swishing around in his skull, making it difficult to see.
Despite the desire to roll over again, Daniel knew that would only stop the attack for now. He'd be right back to where he'd started. Every time the howler won by beating him up, the howler became that much stronger in the eyes of his followers, making him more inclined to do it again. Though he might not ever do it unprovoked, Daniel didn't want to bet on the morality of a monkey.
Since they couldn't do things the easy way, they had to do them the hard way. Daniel was more than willing to let Scar play the dominant role, but not at the cost of Daniel's ability to reach an understanding with him. What he didn't know what how much of this monkey was posturing, and how much was deadly serious. Certainly it hadn't taken much of anything from Jack to set the howler off, and it didn't seem to have taken a lot from Daniel either.
"Go ahead, hit me again if it'll make you feel better," Daniel hissed, intentionally dropping his voice to a slightly lower pitch, "But it won't change anything."
Based on the howler's reaction, Daniel bet he took that lower tone as a threat. Scar went on the attack, and the audience went wild with hooting and hollering, jumping up and down on their perches and banging on the perches and walls with their hands to make a lot of noise.
Scar slapped him several more times, and when Daniel put his arms up to protect himself, the howler lunged forward and latched onto his right forearm with its teeth. The howler's mouth was large enough that when the jaws closed, the canine teeth crossed on the opposite side of Daniel's arm from the monkey. The howler's mouth snapped shut with enough force to break Daniel's arm, but once the molars met skin, the howler eased up a little.
Daniel couldn't hope to twist his arm free, and attempting to do so would only wind up doing more damage, as the howler would tighten his grip to hang on. Daniel resisted the impulse to try and kick the howler away, knowing it hadn't done Jack any good and would ruin Daniel's chance of making the point he was trying to get across.
What was a little blood and an open wound in exchange for understanding?
"Does it make you feel big?" Daniel growled through clenched teeth, still glaring into the reddening eyes of the howler, "Attacking an unarmed prisoner in front of your pack? We both know even if I managed to fight back, they'd just tear me apart. So what does this prove?"
Infuriated by the insubordination and blatant disrespect, the howler bit down harder. Daniel screamed.
Bloodied, holding his injured arm with the hand of his good arm, Daniel was returned to the enclosure. Even though he tried not to draw attention to it, turning to watch the gate close as he had the night before, then moving to rejoin the team, Sam noticed at once that Daniel was hurt.
"Daniel!" Sam cried, springing up to come to his aid, concern and anger both visible in her features.
"I'm okay," Daniel said, trying to wave off her examination.
"The hell you are," Sam retorted, refusing to be dissuaded, trying to check the wound to his arm through the shredded fabric of his jacket, and the bruising on the side of his head at the same time.
"So," Jack asked, not getting up, as Daniel walked over and sat next to him, Sam still hovering around him like a worried mother hen, "How'd it go?"
"You were right," Daniel sighed, "I was being played for a fool."
"I usually am," Jack gloated.
Daniel decided to let that one slide. He'd already fought enough battles for one day.
"You didn't get these injuries from playing the fool," Sam observed, carefully starting to pull Daniel's jacket off enough to get a real look at his arm.
"Well that's because I told King Kong what I thought of him," Daniel replied.
"And?" Jack asked, with raised eyebrows.
"And it pissed him off," Daniel concluded.
"I see," Jack nodded knowledgeably.
"But I think he got my point," Daniel said brightly, then winced when Sam's gently probing fingers found the ragged edge of one of the punctures left by the howler's teeth, "Ow."
"Sorry," Sam muttered, though Daniel half suspected she'd done it on purpose as a wordless comment about Daniel's approach of intentionally provoking the howlers.
"And what, pray tell, makes you think that?" Jack inquired.
"Well, for one thing, I'm still alive. For another, after doing this-" he nodded towards his injured arm, "he started yelling at his subordinates and then took off. They brought me back here."
"You pissed him off so much he had to leave the room?" Jack sounded very surprised by this news.
"Apparently," Daniel shrugged somewhat sheepishly, then flinched as the action tugged at the jacket, which in turn brushed against the bite wound on his arm.
"Danny," Jack began, then seemed not to be able to think of anything else to say, and just shook his head and sighed in exasperation.
"Yes, I know. He could have killed me," Daniel replied to the unspoken scolding, "But I thought he was smarter than that. And I was right."
"You usually are," Jack muttered discontentedly.
"And just what do you think this accomplished?" Sam asked, gesturing to Daniel's arm with the cloth she'd pulled from one of her pockets.
She doused the cloth in water, which was all that she had, and started trying to clean around the bite.
"What this accomplished-" Daniel began, then stopped with a hiss when Sam put too much pressure on his arm; this time he believed it was accidental.
"Now Mighty Joe Young knows Daniel can figure it out when he's being played," Jack supplied, since Daniel had been briefly rendered incoherent, "And that he's tougher than he looks."
Suspecting thinly veiled ridicule, Daniel gazed at Jack searchingly. Jack looked back steadily for a moment, and then (intentionally, Daniel thought) misinterpreted why Daniel was staring at him.
"What?" Jack asked, "There was nothing else good in theaters that week."
"Since when do you have time to go to movie theaters?" Sam asked, pausing in her ministrations to look over her shoulder at Jack.
But Daniel understood with a clarity that was startling even to him, "That was not long after Jack got the Ancient database downloaded into his brain."
During the time off that followed, Jack must have been doing things that made him feel normal and human again. It was the sort of experience that required that kind of detox. Still, Daniel wasn't sure that a movie about a gorilla that was too big to be accepted by other gorillas really qualified.
"Yes..." Jack dropped his gaze for a moment, then changed the subject, "So how's the arm? Will you be able to be our pitcher come baseball season?"
"We don't play baseball," Daniel pointed out.
"That's beside the point," Jack said firmly, clearly seeking to avoid letting the conversation slip back into the topic he was trying to escape from.
Sam aided and abetted by saying, "He'll live, but he's lucky it's not broken."
"He wasn't trying to break me," Daniel pointed out, "He was just trying to scare me."
"And did he succeed?" Jack asked.
Looking at his shredded arm and frowning, Daniel answered, "Yeah, he did a bit."
"But you didn't back off," Sam remarked.
"Danny never has," Jack said before Daniel could reply, "Why would he start now?"
"Can you... stop talking like I'm not sitting right here?" Daniel asked, vaguely annoyed.
"Only if you stop being a pain in the ass," Jack replied.
Resisting the urge to smile, Daniel answered back, "Never."
Sam tried to give them both an irritated look, but amusement sparkled in her blue eyes. She was annoyed with Daniel for getting himself hurt, and with Jack for seemingly approving of it, but she knew as well as Jack did that Daniel had acted out of faith in Jack's observations and opinion of what was happening, and Jack's response was appreciation and recognition of that trust. Everything else could be written off as affection, team bonding and reveling in the fact that they were all still alive.
"The howlers are returning," Teal'c interrupted before they could continue.
Daniel looked up at this and listened. Teal'c was right; the howlers were getting stirred up again, and making the sound they made when their scarred leader arrived.
As one, the team arose and turned towards the gate to the enclosure, standing together as a unit. They didn't have to discuss the point they intended to make now. They were SG-1, and they would not stand by as one of their own was taken away and beaten. It didn't matter which of them it was, or what they'd said or done to cause the beating, the team wouldn't stand by and do nothing. Even if they couldn't stop it, they would still put up a fight. That was their way.
The howlers fell silent as the gate swung open. Scar walked in, his usual contingent following and spreading around the enclosure behind him. Daniel noticed that he was walking on three legs, the fourth was up against his body, holding onto something. He stopped some distance from the team, and seemed to be sizing them up. They were of course much taller than the howlers, and standing together made a much larger 'body' than the howlers were perhaps used to seeing them as. Even when they spread out, the howlers were in such numbers that they seemed to flow like a river, a single moving body instead of multiple smaller ones. So far, SG-1 had been more separated and it was possible the howlers had formerly seen them only as individuals.
Daniel wasn't surprised when Jack stepped forward, holding one of his hands slightly away from his body and gesturing slightly but sharply, palm towards the team, ordering them to stay.
Jack didn't have to repeat the gesture or do anything more overt to enforce it. One of the first things Jack had trained Daniel on was recognizing hand signals, which entailed more than just knowing what they looked like. It also required him to know when and where to look for them, because sometimes -as now- they weren't meant to be noticed by others. Lacking his glasses, Daniel couldn't have made out a more complicated gesture than the command to stay, but Jack knew that.
Scar stared at the impudent human that moved towards him. In social structures with hierarchy emphasized as it was in the howlers, members of higher standing moved towards, lower moved away. Jack was taking a dominant position, moving directly towards the howler, eyes locked. As if he was looking for another fight. Slowly opening its mouth and revealing its fangs, Scar looked prepared to take him up on that.
Linguistics were beyond Jack's ken for the most part. But when it came this kind of communication, Jack was nothing shy of expert, and he stopped just one step before the howler would have launched at him. Jack always knew just how far he could push before a fight, and how hard he could push before a fight turned lethal. He'd measured the howler's tolerance during their first meeting in the enclosure, when he'd overstepped his bounds. Now he knew just how hard he could push those buttons.
The howler lifted his head slightly. Jack tilted his own down, away from the howler. But he didn't break eye contact. Instead, he gestured towards Daniel, and spoke in a low voice.
"Never," he practically snarled at the howler, "That's one of my people. You don't do that to my people."
The howler opened his mouth and snarled back, roaring a low-note response to the threat in Jack's tone. Daniel wasn't sure Jack's message was getting across, or if the howler merely thought Jack was challenging him. Jack might just be making the howler mad. In fact, the look in the howler's eyes suggested that was exactly what was happening. Jack could convey dominance and threat, but he couldn't explain his reason. That was about to get him in trouble.
Despite the command, Daniel knew he had to intervene.
"Jack..." he spoke softly, but warningly.
"Daniel..." Jack replied in like tone, not taking his eyes off Scar, "The adults are talking."
"The adults," Daniel said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice and failing, "Need to calm down."
Jack must have let his irritation with Daniel show. What Daniel saw was the shift in Scar's demeanor, from unsure to certain. The howler had been warning Jack to back off, but suddenly he was done with warnings. This time however there was nothing to stop Daniel from getting in the way. Reacting faster than Jack because the colonel's attention had been divided between himself and the howler, Daniel moved to block the scarred howler's path.
The howler leaped high, but was brought up short when he struck a body closer than expected. Daniel fell back with the impact, colliding with Jack, and all three of them toppled to the ground. Daniel landed partially on top of Jack, and the howler was on his chest, fangs right in his face. Daniel didn't try any primitive diplomacy. If the howler wanted to bite someone, it damn well wasn't going to be Jack. Daniel locked eyes with the howler, making no attempt to hide any of his frustration or anger with the situation, knowing that look in his eyes would likely infuriate Scar. All that hostility directed at him would provoke the hell out of him.
For a moment, it looked like the howler meant to rip Daniel's throat out, then go right through him to get at Jack. But then suddenly he sat back. Confusion clouded the howler's features, and he let his lips fall partially over his fangs. He looked from Jack to Daniel and back, puzzlement overtaking anger.
Daniel realized Jack was still under him, and he could feel the colonel had also locked eyes with the howler, likely having the same look of rage and fear that Daniel did. Anger at their circumstances, fear for the life of his friend, fury at this little monkey that was jerking their collective chain in addition to holding them captive. Daniel knew Jack would've done anything to have been between him and the howler in that moment, and he appreciated that. They could fight and disagree all they liked, but when everything was on the line, they were willing to die for each other, and to get the job done. Sam and Teal'c would have done the same for them, given the opportunity, but with Jack and Daniel, there was a deeper connection, one neither of them really understood but both accepted.
The scarred howler seemed unsure how to extricate himself. For whatever reason, he didn't seem to want to carry out his attack, but he also didn't want to lose face with his pack. He was stuck.
"Jack," Daniel said quietly, "You need to relax."
"Hell with that," Jack spat through his teeth.
"He doesn't want to bite," Daniel retorted harshly, but still quietly, "But if we don't give him something, he's going to have to."
"He's sitting on us," Jack growled, "What more does he need?"
"Surrender," Daniel answered.
"What?!"
Rather than try to explain, Daniel decided to lead by example. Taking a shuddering breath, hoping to God he wasn't wrong, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, baring his throat to Scar. He couldn't see whether Jack followed suit, but he could feel Jack letting the tension out of his body. Tension attracted aggression. Relaxing his muscles might be enough to sooth the howler's need to show that he'd won and Jack had lost. But doing it went against every instinct Jack had.
Daniel felt the howler lean forward on his chest, and he couldn't quite manage not to tremble a little. Through the blood roaring in his ears, he heard Sam shout a protest, but he suspected the other howlers had moved in before she and Teal'c could join the fray. Either that or they realized that there was nothing they could do as things stood now that could prevent the howler from taking Daniel out, if he so desired, and that any move on their part might provoke just that outcome.
Then, quite suddenly, the weight came off. The howler jumped over Daniel and went flying around the enclosure, hooting and snarling, grabbing onto the thorny walls and shaking them, chasing his subordinates around, in general venting all his aggression on whatever randomly got in his way. But he hadn't killed Daniel, and he hadn't killed Jack either.
With an audible gasp of relief, Daniel opened his eyes and practically went limp as the tension he'd been unable to let go of suddenly released. Still halfway under him, Jack patted Daniel's shoulder.
"Good boy, Danny," Jack whispered, just as breathless as Daniel, "That's teamwork."
Without discussion, they opted to stay where they were until Scar had finished his tantrum. Once things got quiet, and Daniel had recovered enough of his composure, he rolled off Jack and they both sat up, inspecting themselves for any harm that might have been done in the fall.
"You're both completely insane," Sam remarked dryly, "You do realize that, don't you?"
Daniel and Jack looked at her, taking in the combination of anger at their recklessness and relief at their being in one piece and even a bit of awe that they'd managed to pull that off written on her face, then they looked at each other. Daniel shrugged.
Looking back at Sam, Jack responded, "It took you three years to figure that out?"
Sam shook her head, but her relief outweighed all the other emotions of the moment, and she laughed when she said, "Unbelievable."