A/N: Really nasty one now. Rated for swearing, serious violence, evangelical Christianity and another character nearly being killed off. On another note, points for anyone who gets the accidental MCR reference.
Part Six: Runaway.
As the next few days passed, Matt seemed a little better. The emptiness had faded, replaced by, if not calmness, then at least acceptance. He knew perfectly well that, whatever had happened to Rath, he wasn't being tortured by the parasite any more. Daniel was just relieved that Matt wasn't about to commit suicide, as he'd thought in some of the night's darker moments. Both went back to work and settled back into the routine: driving to the mountain at slightly different times, working on whatever translations were most urgent or most interesting, driving back to the apartment at different times, and spending the few brief hours in the evening together.
After two particularly nasty off-world missions (one involving violent warriors who tried to kill them as Go'auld, and the other involving some vicious in-group political backstabbing), both Daniel and Matt were shattered. They'd been given two days downtime, and when Matt wandered into his office in normal clothes at ten to six, Daniel knew he could probably be home in ten minutes.
"Hey," Matt said, smiling tiredly. "You alright?"
"I'm fine," Daniel replied, standing up and gently holding him.
Matt laughed quietly. "I sometimes think those will be your last words: 'I'm fine.'"
"I know," Daniel smiled. "You're making a break for it, then?"
"I think so. I was trying to translate something in Ancient, and I gave up when I realised I'd accidentally translated the same line twice."
"Did you get the same translation both times?" Daniel asked in mock-seriousness.
"Apart from one minor detail, yes," Matt replied dryly. "At least I know that bit of my brain still works, even if the rest doesn't."
Daniel smiled and kissed him briefly. "Go home."
"Will do," Matt nodded. "Want me to pick up a takeaway on the way?"
"Oh god, yes," Daniel laughed. "I'll see you in about half an hour, then."
"Yeah, see you."
"Love you."
"Bye." Matt ducked out of the office and ran for the lift. "Hold it!" He smiled gratefully at the two Marines who held the doors. "Thanks."
"You out, then?" one of them asked.
"Yeah. Two days off, so I'm going home," Matt explained. "Chinese takeaway, wine, and a night in."
"Nice for some," the other one laughed. It wasn't a particularly nice, you-and-I-are-friends kind of laugh, it was more of a let's-see-how-long-you-last kind of laugh. Matt was too tired to notice, or to care, so he laughed along and forgot the two marines as soon as he was on the surface. He swung into the battered black Volvo (one dented door panel, one dinged wing-mirror, more scratches than he'd bothered to count) and drove off. He didn't notice the low murmur of a car starting up behind him, or maybe he would have thought twice.
Daniel glanced up at the clock and grimaced. Ten past six. Time to get out before he fell asleep at the desk. He grabbed his jacket off the chair and wandered down to the locker rooms to shower and change. The hot water made him feel slightly more alert, although the cup of coffee that followed (the tenth? Eleventh? He'd lost count, which was never a good sign) probably had more effect.
"Sam? You going home tonight?" he asked, sticking his head round her door. She looked up and smiled wearily.
"In about five minutes. Coming back in tomorrow?"
"Not if I can help it," he replied dryly. "Are you?"
She gestured helplessly to the device sat on the table in a tangle of wires. "Looks like it."
"It's a compulsion, isn't it?" he smiled. She laughed.
"Don't try and tell me you've never pulled an all-nighter, Daniel Jackson. I won't believe you."
"Yeah, but not tonight," he laughed. "Tonight, I'm eating Chinese, drinking some decent wine and sleeping until ten tomorrow morning."
"Have fun," Sam called as he disappeared.
Daniel frowned in puzzlement as he pulled into the apartment lot. The lights in his windows weren't on, and as he looked around he realised Matt's battered Volvo was distinctly absent as well.
"Must be a queue in the restaurant," he mumbled to himself, shrugging in vague puzzlement and discontent. He pulled on his jacket and locked the car, making his way slowly up the stairs.
Matt grinned as he scrambled back into the car, the food in the bag stowed safely on the passenger seat. As the engine reluctantly growled into life, he idly flicked through the stations on the radio. Deciding there was nothing of any real interest, he turned it off again and drove away in silence.
It was gone nine when Daniel gave up on any hope of Chinese and made sandwiches from some hard rolls and butter – no cheese, it had been thrown away when Matt had noticed the mould colonising its surface. He sighed angrily to himself and flicked through the TV channels, hoping for something to pull him out of his bored, irritated state. No such luck. Tonight was reality-show night, and he threw the remote down on the sofa in disgust, leaning over and grabbing a book off the shelf.
As the lights from the restaurant faded to a dull orange glow, Matt noticed a car pulled up at the side of the road. Someone bent over the engine looked up, seeing his lights, and signalled frantically for him to stop.
"What's up?" he asked, pulling in behind the parked car and rolling down his window.
"Oh, thank God you've turned up," the dark-haired stranger said. "Seriously, I was beginning to think I'd be stuck here all night. It's nothing really major, but I need, like, three pairs of hands to fix it." He laughed in a self-deprecating kind of way. "Really, I just need someone to hold the water line in place while I screw it back up. Please, man, can you give me a hand? Just five minutes?"
Matt shrugged. "Sure, I guess." He unclicked the seatbelt and made his way to the other side of the engine, where the stranger guided his hands into place.
"That's it, there… now…"
The book long since abandoned, Daniel muttered a few further curses at Matt as he lay on the bed, nursing a glass of red wine. It was half-past twelve, and he'd been gone for more than six hours. Truth be told, he was starting to get a little worried beneath the frustration at his boyfriends' non-appearance. Part of him was panicking that something had happened, that Matt had been assaulted and was lying bleeding in an alley someplace. The currently louder part was mentally deriving scenes of Matt in a strip club, or at a bar, flirting with someone else, getting pissed and having a great time without him. He knew perfectly well that this was about as likely as Matt coming home with a baby armadillo. It didn't help, and another sigh left him as he took another swig of the wine.
When Matt woke up, he was tied to a chair in a warehouse. The bright lights on the ceiling stung viciously, and he winced in the harsh white glare. When his vision returned, he was able to see the two marines from earlier that evening – the ones who'd held the lift for him. One was wielding a baseball bat; the other, a cruel-looking switchblade. As he tried to struggle against his bonds, he realised with a creeping sense of sick dread that he couldn't move. All he could control were his facial muscles and some of the tendons in his neck.
As the two men moved towards him, he knew he wouldn't even be able to scream.
Daniel knew even as he woke up that it had to be just a dream. It couldn't be real, it was just the product of an intoxicated and fearful mind.
When he heard the noise again – that soft whimper, combined with the noise of someone dragging themselves across the floor – he cursed the gods internally in every language he knew, and ran towards the source of the noise. It was coming from the bathroom, and going by that sound it was not going to be a pretty sight. Sure enough, what greeted him made him feel genuinely ill, both out of disgust and fear. Matt was lying on the floor of the bathroom, having clearly been sick. By the look of it, he'd been throwing up blood. He was drifting in and out of consciousness, his eyes unfocused. Every few seconds, he would stop breathing, then cough and shudder violently as his body reacted against the lack of oxygen.
"Janet, help me."
By the time they got Matt to the Infirmary at the SGC, he was on a ventilator and a heart monitor. He was missing every second or third breath, and he'd thrown up more blood and vomit. He was still unconscious.
"It looks like an extreme allergic reaction to something," Janet managed to tell Daniel in one of the calmer moments, once they'd stabilised him. They were sat beside Matt's bed, watching him. "He's been injected with some kind of paralytic drug, and his body has reacted by going close to anaphylactic shock. I think you were very lucky to find him when you did – if he'd been left much longer, I think he'd have gone into a coma."
"Is he going to be okay?"
Janet sighed. "Daniel, I can't answer that because right now, I don't know. He's stable right now, but it's difficult to know how he'll respond to what we're giving him. If it was an allergic reaction, then I don't know what it was a reaction to, so anything we do has the potential to make things worse."
Daniel tried to smile. "Thanks."
"We're doing our best, okay?" Janet sighed helplessly and went back to her office. As soon as she'd gone, Daniel collapsed, resting his head on the sheets and gently taking Matt's hand.
"Please wake up," he mumbled. The fact that it wouldn't help at all didn't change the fact that just saying the words made him feel slightly better. "I will find out who did this. I'll never let them hurt you. I promise." He glanced up as he heard footsteps coming towards him and hastily let go of Matt's hand. Sitting up seemed like too much effort.
Jack rested a hand on his shoulder. "Daniel? What happened?"
So Daniel told him.
"Holy shit," Jack muttered, when Daniel had finished his retelling of the night's events. "Daniel, are you okay?"
Daniel just nodded. "I'm fine." The memory of Matt's comment the previous evening – I think those will be your last words – rang through his mind.
Jack glared at him, his expression showing exactly what he thought of that reply. "Get some sleep. Shower. Have something more than a chocolate bar to eat. You're not going to help him by working yourself into the ground trying to figure out who's responsible for this." He looked searchingly at the younger man. There's more here than he's telling me. "Daniel, what is going on?"
The archaeologist glared back at him. "It's none of your business, Jack."
"It is if it means you drive yourself nuts!" Jack responded. "Tell me. I might be able to help."
"I doubt that very much," Daniel muttered under his breath. "And I don't trust you to keep our – my – secrets."
"Our secrets?" Jack left the question hanging.
"Matthew's and mine. Jack, you're a military man – if something compromises me, or him, you have a duty to take it to the next level. You could easily get us both kicked out of the SGC. Please," Daniel said quietly. "Jack, for once in your life, please, just let it be."
The colonel held his gaze. "Bullshit. You two are the best that we've got. The higher-ups aren't going to get rid of you unless you go on a murderous rampage, which will only happen when hell freezes over and Carter decides to retrain as a psychic. Just tell me. Before it gets you lying in the next bed, preferably."
Daniel's eyes flicked around the room. Aside from Matt, in the bed, himself, and Jack, they were alone. He sighed quietly.
"You do realise that DADT still applies to us." He watched the cogs whirr behind Jack's eyes, moving from blank incomprehension to shock to faint amusement.
"Well, that explains a lot."
"Like what? That both of us are outsiders? That we're both the subject of harassment and bullying?" Daniel snapped at him.
"I was thinking more along the lines of your preference for a nice red wine over a bottle of beer, and history over hockey, but hey, whatever floats your boat."
Daniel laughed. It was the first time something had made him smile all evening.
"Besides," Jack added. "As long as you don't start something here, it'll be okay. Hammond won't give a damn. As long as it stays outside the mountain, nobody will either know or care. Just give it some time."
Daniel ended up staying with Matt most of the night, after showering and curling up on the next bed. He was there when Matt nearly died, and he was there when he came round.
"Ugh… head hurts…"
"Water?" Daniel asked quietly, offering him the glass. Matt reached for it, then saw how badly he was shaking. Wordlessly, Daniel took a straw off the bedside table and handed it to him.
"Better?"
"Much. Less sandpapery." He set the glass down gently on the table.
"Do you know what happened to you?"
"Hazy on the details, but yes."
"Any idea who it was?"
"Not a fucking clue." He shivered slightly, and Daniel leant forward and pulled the sheets closer around him. It made him smile. "That's weird."
"What's weird?"
"I'm being mother-henned by someone who barely takes care of themselves."
Daniel giggled. "Shut up. I'm not taking chances here."
"I'm not actually that bad," Matt said hopefully. "Can't I just go home?"
Janet sighed. "No. We're keeping you under observation until I'm satisfied that the drug has worked itself out of your system. If you can keep your lunch down, I might consider it." She checked his read-outs again, made a note, and went back to her office.
"Don't try and argue with Little Napoleon," Daniel said wryly, as she disappeared from sight. "You won't get anywhere. In fact, she will keep you in longer, just to spite you."
Matt groaned softly. "Break me out?"
"Not for love nor money," Daniel replied. "Trust me. It is not worth the hassle." He smiled faintly, checked there was no-one else around, and kissed the younger man's lips briefly. "I'm going to go and find some stuff we can work on down here – keep your brain occupied."
"Stop me going mad with boredom, you mean," Matt called back as Daniel walked out. The archaeologist paid little attention to the two soldiers going past him on his way. Maybe if he had, something might have got his attention. As it was, he just carried on.
"What the fuck are you still doing here?" Ashley muttered. He was the shorter of the two, muscular, with white-blond hair and green eyes. He saw himself as the all-American guy, and it showed. The cross around his neck – silver, matching his dog-tags – swung gently back and forth as he leaned over Matt. "Didn't you get the message, faggot? We don't want you. We don't need you." He wrapped the fingers of one hand around Matt's throat, just tight enough to reduce his air supply. "Get. Out."
"We gotta go," Jake muttered, idly fiddling with his own silver crucifix. "Napoleon's coming back." He was taller, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. While he wasn't as muscular, he was more vindictive and imaginative in his threats to compensate. "And you don't need to threaten him."
"But it's fun," Ashley protested, still throttling Matt.
"But you don't need to. All you have to do to get him out of here is threaten his precious boyfriend, and he'll do anything you want." The words were like shards of glass to Matt, and he knew they were right. Damn him. I'd do anything to protect Daniel. And he knows it.
Ashley grinned. "All right, freak. You've got two days to quit and never show your filthy face round here again. Otherwise your pretty boyfriend might not be so pretty any more." He tightened his grip briefly, then dropped him, as if Matt was nothing more than a doll. "Let's go."
As they walked out, it took all of Matt's self-control not to sob. He held it down, held his breath and locked the emotions in the black box in the back of his head. Deal with that later.
When Daniel returned, he found Matt curled under the sheets, gripping one corner tightly in his right hand. That alone was enough to set off his internal radar: Matt barely ever did that unless freezing cold, stressed, or afraid. But the look in his eyes was worse.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
Matt didn't look him in the eye. "Nothing. Everything's fine. I'm just tired. My insides feel like I've been put through a blender."
"Maybe we'll hold off on the translations today, then," Daniel replied, setting the work down on the table. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Matt nodded. "Want to go home."
"I know," Daniel murmured, taking his hand. "I know."
As it happened, Matt was released the next day, under Daniel's watch. The archaeologist was given strict instructions as to what to do and what should happen, about this and that and enough other things to make his head spin.
"She's trying to confuse me so much I just give in and let her keep you in the Infirmary," he commented as he walked with Matt to the lift. Ashley and Jake walked past, going the other way, and roughly pushed Matt to the wall as he fell into step behind Daniel. It wasn't hard, but the meaning was clear: get lost.
"Are you going to come back in tomorrow?" Daniel asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Matt looked up. "Oh – um – unlikely. I'm tired. I think I'll just stay at home and try to catch up on some rest," he said quickly. Daniel nodded.
"Fair enough." Daniel knew perfectly well there was something else going on, but decided not to push it. Not tonight. Not when he's just out of the Infirmary. Tomorrow.
That night, Matt mumbled, very quietly, "I want to leave. I want to go home."
Daniel very nearly had a heart attack. "What?"
Matt looked down, shamefaced. "I want to go home."
"What's happened? What's wrong?" He couldn't understand. What is going on here?
"This isn't right. I don't belong here." I love you, Daniel, but all I'm going to do is get you hurt. "Please. Just take me home."
"He what?"
"He said he wants to go home – to his home world. He wants to leave the SGC and go back where he feels he belongs."
Hammond looked at him calmly. "Daniel, I won't allow it. At least, not until he can stand here and explain himself. What brought this on?"
Daniel glanced back at the door, checking it was shut. "I think something has happened to him that's linked to the SGC. He wants to go home because he's afraid to stay here."
"You think someone here planned the attack on him?"
"I don't know, sir. But whoever it was had to know where Matt would be and when. This wasn't just a random attack, this was a calculated beating. Someone here has a grudge against him."
"Why would anyone want to hurt Matt?"
Daniel sighed briefly. "DADT. Someone must have worked it out. Homophobia isn't exactly unheard of here."
The general sighed sadly. "If only people's beliefs could keep up with their intellect. See what you can find out."
"Alright, what do you want me to look for?" Sam asked, swivelling in her chair to look at Daniel.
"Can you pull up the security tapes for the corridor outside the Infirmary about two days ago?"
She nodded, flicking through the records. "Here we go." She frowned, squinting at the screen.
"What is it?" Daniel asked.
"The camera's blurred. Somebody's been messing with things. Either the lens is out of focus, or someone has deliberately gone back over this footage to make it look like the camera was damaged."
"Can you work out the difference?"
"Probably. But it would take a while. Let's see what we can learn from this first."
They ran the film at high speed, looking for anything unusual.
"You get anything?"
Daniel shrugged. "Could be nothing. Who are those two?"
"No idea. Marines. We could look them up, but they were probably just checking up on a buddy on the ward."
Daniel shook his head. "No, they weren't. There was no-one else there that day."
"Okay… Hold that thought. What else did we need?"
"Corridor leading to the lift, yesterday evening, around half-five."
"Alright… Hey, this has definitely been messed with." The footage from the camera was blurred enough to make figures indistinguishable from each other. "That can be cleaned up later too."
"And the last one? Same corridor, same camera, but the night Matt was attacked."
Sam flicked through the options, pulling up the film. "It's clean."
They watched Matt walking down the corridor, running for the lift and getting in.
"Who's in the lift with him?"
"Don't know. We went too far forward, hang on…" She hastily rewound the film.
Two marines – one white-blond, one dark-haired – walked into the lift.
"That must be them."
"Matches what we already had. I mean, you can mess with the film all you like, but there's no way you can hide that hair."
"Who are they?"
"No idea. Give me a minute." Sam sighed in frustration. "Shit. You can't search by image. Do we know anything else about them?"
"One or both of them must be security detail," Daniel said. "That's how they got to the film."
"So why not mess with this one?"
"Too obvious. It would have given it away that it was them."
"Damned if they did, damned because they didn't," Sam commented, carefully flicking through the profiles.
"Serve them right," Daniel muttered.
After several minutes of patient searching and comparison, they got the hits they were hoping for.
"Ashley Sanders is the blond one, and the dark-haired one is Jake Williamson. Ashley is a sergeant, mostly working with new recruits, and Jake is a security guy who – surprise surprise – works with the surveillance team." Sam turned back and looked at Daniel. "Do you know why they hate Matt so much?"
"Because they're both stupid bastards," Daniel commented sarcastically. "That, or they're just plain old evangelicals."
"Revenge?"
"Best served cold. Antarctica style." Daniel turned and walked out. Sam leaned back in the chair, mentally replaying the conversation. She hadn't had a real answer out of Daniel as to why these two hated Matt so much, although he definitely knew. And the 'evangelicals' comment earlier – when he was usually so aware of other belief systems and cultures.
"I'm not asking, you're not telling," she muttered under her breath. "Damn Republicans."
Hammond glanced up, hearing the knock on the door. "Come in."
Daniel stepped inside, closing the door quietly.
"Did you find out who it was?"
The archaeologist nodded, setting two files down on the desk. Hammond looked through both in turn, skimming the details on the front page.
"I have to admit, I'm not too surprised that these two were at the root of it."
"You knew?" Daniel was taken aback.
"I had my suspicions. I grew up in Texas, I know a Bible basher a mile off." The general sighed sadly. "I'm disappointed they've not grown out of it."
"What are you going to do?"
"Depends. I could just sack them. Or I could bring them in here and humiliate them. Or I could post them to Antarctica and let the guys down there figure out what to do with them."
Daniel smiled. "I suggest humiliation, with a side order of snow and ice."
"I'll see to it. Now go and tell Matt that things are going to be fine. Dismissed."
Daniel didn't need telling twice. He was smiling as he sprinted for the lift.
"Matt?"
He found the younger man curled up in a corner of the bedroom. He'd half-hidden himself under the blankets.
"Matt, it's okay. I know what happened. I know who it was." Daniel knelt down and gently unhooked the blankets from around Matt's skinny form. "And I also know that right now, they're on a plane to the outpost in Antarctica." He smiled. "It's okay. Things will be fine. You've still got your job, but Hammond's given us two days off."
Tentatively, Matt reached one hand out towards Daniel. "Should we pick up where we left off?"