Author's Note: This chapter begins some pretty graphic violence. This chapter isn't nearly as bad as what's coming, though, so if this is too much for you, you'll know this story might not be for you.
Jack looked around. He was standing in the yard of his parents' house in Minnesota, the one they'd lived in when he was a kid. The air was hot, heavy, and humid. He could smell his mother's hydrangeas on the slight breeze. The paint on the house was fresh and he remembered the summer his dad had painted vividly. It was a perfect replica. It was so real he could taste summer in the air. But his mind fought against the evocative picture, it was more than thirty years in his past, it shouldn't feel so visceral.
Scotty Parks was twenty feet away tossing a baseball into the air shouting, "C'mon Johnny, hurry up!"
Jack was jolted when he heard the familiar voice and moniker. He saw himself at eight years old run out of the house and take up a position across from Scotty. Scotty tossed the ball to eight-year-old Jack and suddenly he could feel the ball impact his hand and he realized he was looking out at the world from his much younger body. And wasn't that just an odd sensation?
He threw the ball back to Scotty and then caught it again when it sailed his way. Scotty took a step back towards the road and Jack was suddenly very sure exactly what day he was experiencing. He immediately fought against it, but it was no use. The best he could do was pull himself out of his childhood body and back to standing off to the side witnessing it all from his place near the pear tree his mother had planted. His eyes were drawn to the details of the leaves and he even reached out to touch one, warm and slick in the sunlight.
"You got any Coca-Cola?" Scotty called, drawing Jack's gaze to the small, curly-headed boy.
"Naw, Scotty, mom says no pop."
Jack could remember the conversation like it were yesterday. He knew the inflections he was hearing in his and Scotty's voices were perfect recollections of the actual day.
His mouth went dry and his palms started to sweat. He knew what was coming and, like a train wreck, he couldn't look away.
"I can't believe you lost the good ball to Harvey Feldstein," Scotty groused as he tossed the ball back to Johnny.
"He's never hit a homer before," little Johnny protested. "How was I supposed to know?"
"You shouldn't have bet the good ball anyway."
"I didn't see you putting anything up."
"What do I got that Harvey Feldstein would want?"
"What do you got that anybody would want?" Johnny asked with a wicked grin.
Scotty threw the ball at him with some force and stumbled backwards into the road.
"Geez, careful!" Johnny shouted. "If mom saw that she's gonna have our hides!"
The sound of the screen door clacking against the house split the air. "You boys be careful now, you throw that ball into Old Man Masterson's place and I'm gonna make you go get it." Jack's gaze was drawn to the front stoop where he father stood, dressed in brown trousers, a white tank-top undershirt and suspenders. His chest seized. It had been years since he'd seen his father, even in a dream, if that was what this could be called.
"Dad," Jack gasped softly as Johnny and Scotty groaned comically.
"You wanna play, dad?" little Johnny asked.
"Nah, I'll just sit here and watch a while."
It was all so real. Jack remembered the feel of the leaf between his fingers and wondered how much in this world he'd be able to touch. Wondered if he'd be able to change anything. But he hung back, didn't step in. Didn't snag the ball out of the air between the boys as they tossed it back and forth.
Jack watched in horror as a car drove by too fast and ruffled Scotty's hair. Scotty stumbled forwards with his hand on the back of his head saying, "Whoa!"
"Come in from the road, son," Jack's dad called out.
Scotty made his way into the yard a good ten feet and tossed the ball back to Johnny. "That was close!"
Jack started to feel dread build up within him as he watched the boys play happily, his father sitting on the front stoop picking at dirt under his fingernails and watching the game of catch.
It happened in slow motion. Johnny threw the ball too hard, Scotty ran backwards, face turned towards the sky to catch it, a car came careening around the corner. Scotty stepped into the road. The driver was looking down. Jack's dad stood up and yelled, "Scott!" The driver looked up. Slammed on the brakes. There was a thump and a scream. Scotty flew through the air. And then there was blood.
Johnny stood transfixed, Jack's dad took off at a run and so did Jack. Jack reached Scotty first and assessed the situation. Scotty was bleeding from a gash in his head and one arm and leg were twisted grotesquely.
Little Johnny crept closer then screamed for his mother.
Jack's dad's hands were fighting Jack's for space to check Scotty's injuries. The driver had gotten out of the car and was casting a shadow over Scotty. Jack held the boy in his arms gently, knowing there was nothing that could be done, Scotty wasn't even breathing. Jack looked back at Johnny, the boy was creeping closer and closer and Jack hollered for him to stay back while at the same time knowing it was the fact that he'd seen the accident, seen the body, that had facilitated this moment.
Suddenly he was looking through eight-year-old eyes at his father cradling Scotty's head with blood all over his hands and forearms. He felt the terror the same way he had that day, no buffer was the distance of time. He watched his friend lying there, hoping against hope that he was going to be fine. His mom, who had run outside as soon as he screamed for her, had run back inside the house to call for an ambulance. He could hear her raised voice through the screen door.
Then it was like time slowed down. His father turned to him, his voice low and stretched out telling him to go inside. Johnny stood his ground, he turned his head, it felt like through a thick syrup, to focus on Scotty's face, slack with blood covering one eye and cheek. He looked back at his father as the sudden urge to vomit raced up his spine, he swallowed and held his lunch, but his stomach roiled.
All of a sudden, Jack was sucked back out of Johnny's body and he was standing under the pear tree again, watching it all unfold. His hands felt sticky, though, and when he looked down he was covered in blood. He looked back at the macabre scene unfolding before him and watched as Johnny stumbled backwards as his father repeated the order to go inside.
Tears sprang into Jacks eyes at the same moment Johnny began to tear up. As Johnny cried, Jack took a deep breath and blinked the wetness away. It became clear to little Johnny as he sobbed that his friend wasn't just injured, but he was dead and when his mother came back out of the house, he clung to her, buried his face in the curve of her waist. Jack watched as his mother met his father's eyes and his father shook his head with a grim look on his face.
His mother ran a hand over Johnny's hair and shushed him, rubbed a hand over his back and Jack swore he could feel her gentle touch the same way he felt the oppressive weight of dread settled down around him. He looked back down at his hands, at the blood, and he knew that it couldn't be real. That he was just a boy when Scotty was killed. But the blood on his hands told him it was happening in that very moment, that Jack was a part of it as much as Johnny was and still, time didn't seem to factor into it.
Emotions swirled around inside of Jack making him at first distraught and then enraged by the fact that he was made to relive this horrible moment from his childhood. Though he was in it, he was outside it and he knew, he was aware that it was a dream, some kind of hallucination, he thought as he looked again at the blood on his hands.
He yelled with frustration, "What do you want?"
Before his eyes his father became Astarte and the grin she gave him was almost feral and that coupled with the blood, gave him a fierce chill that he felt to his bones.
"What is this?" he snarled at her.
She didn't say a word, she just dropped Scotty's body and he landed with a sick thud on the pavement.
In the next moment his childhood home was gone and he was back in the room in Astarte's house, but it seemed dark and red and black and he knew he was still hallucinating as the walls seemed to close in on him. He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and willed his mind to obey him.
Instead, it shut down.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Sam found herself uncharitably wondering what the Colonel was doing at the very moment she realized she'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours trying to figure out how to bring him home. Was he in Astarte's company? Kicking back? Enjoying life off-world again? Had he already decided he was in for a long stay or did he believe she'd do whatever it took to bring him home again? Did he assume she really was a miracle worker? Did he believe his stay was short? Or was he gearing up for another extended stay?
It wasn't so long ago that she'd not have, for a moment, thought one uncharitable thing about him. Before he was stuck on Edora, and before he was on the undercover mission, she'd known her feelings for him had blown far past professional admiration. Sure, she'd told Janet there was no problem when she'd asked during the time Sam had been working herself to death to build a particle accelerator, but she'd lied to her friend outright. At that point, Sam was already certain she was in trouble. But friend or no, Sam wasn't about to tell another officer that she'd developed inappropriate feelings for her commanding officer. No, part of her thought she could get it under control.
And maybe, in the wake of Edora and the undercover mission, she had. She certainly didn't feel the way she used to feel. Though, it wasn't that she felt an absence of affection, it's that she felt an abundance of hurt. And if she truly didn't care, shouldn't she be feeling ambivalent? She shook her head and turned back to her simulation.
It didn't matter what she felt: good, bad or indifferent. Her job was to bring him home. And she had to admit, that the more simulations she ran, the more she was convinced that getting to him through the gate was never going to happen. Without physically being on his side of the gate there was nothing she could do. She didn't want to go to the General with that prognosis so she continued to run simulations, hoping she'd stumble over something useful.
"Please tell me you've been home. Or gotten some sleep. Something," came Daniel's voice from her doorway.
Dammit, she didn't have time for this. "Of course I've slept," she snapped, "it's been two days since he was stranded on the planet."
"It was a reasonable question considering," he said. He didn't have to say it was in consideration of her behavior when the Colonel was trapped on Edora. Anyway, by now Daniel was pretty used to Sam snapping at him when she was stressed and overtired so neither one worried about it too much. "Besides, I'm talking about real sleep. In a bed. For more than a couple of hours."
Sam scoffed but it was a giant pain in the ass that he knew her so well. Because it was true: she'd caught only a couple of hours here and there with her head down on her desk when the numbers started to run together too much and she was in danger of reading the data incorrectly.
"He'll be fine, you know. They were nice people."
"So were the Edorans and you all wanted me with my nose to the grindstone to get him home from that planet."
"Our definition of nose to the grindstone is a bit different than yours," Daniel pointed out gently.
"What do you want me to say, Daniel?" she huffed.
"Say you're not going to run yourself into the ground again. We need to get him home, yeah, but there's no need to kill yourself making it happen."
"I didn't kill myself last time."
"Not for a lack of trying."
"Daniel..." she warned lowly.
He raised his hands in surrender. "Okay. So... how's it going?"
"Not good," she admitted.
"Not good like you have to build another machine or not good like we can't get him home?"
"Like getting him home through the gate is unlikely."
"You'll figure something out."
"I guess I'll have to," she said, somewhat bitterly. Sometimes it really sucked to be to only go-to person in these situations. Her computer beeped at the end of yet another simulation and she shot Daniel a look.
"I'll leave you to it, then. Good luck," he said as he backed out of the room.
"Thanks," she muttered and reached for her cup of coffee as her eyes roved over the data on her screen. She took a swallow of coffee only to find it had gone cold. Too bad, she needed it and she wasn't getting up for fresh until she'd seen the results.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack came awake like he'd been dunked in ice cold water, but when his eyes sprang open and he looked around he realized he was alone. And in a cell. A nice cell, but a cell nonetheless. The décor inside the cell gave him the impression he was still in Astarte's house. He felt weak, and wrung out and he remembered, too well, the side effects of the Blood of Sokar. At least there wasn't a Goa'uld around with a pain stick. Or well placed punches. At least, he thought grimly, he wasn't being tortured. Well, physically tortured.
Because what that first taste of the Blood of Sokar had told him was that they intended to psychologically torture him. Sure, the memory of Scotty Parks' death was a horrific one. He'd had nightmares for a long time after that, of seeing his father covered in Scotty's blood. And he'd harbored a lot of guilt. If only he hadn't thrown the ball so hard... It took years for him to realize it was really just a tragic accident and to stop blaming himself at every turn. That was a tough burden for an eight-nine-ten year-old to carry.
But really, the whole thing just pissed him off. He didn't want to relive that moment, and it had been a huge burden to carry as a child, but it wasn't, by far, the worst moment of his life. And he was afraid what would happen if they continued to subject him to the Blood. He could tell by the way he felt that he couldn't physically stop them from holding him down and forcing him to drink the liquid. He was weak and the effects of the substance were long enough lasting that if they drugged him regularly enough he'd never have a chance to fight back. All he could hope was that they'd underestimate his constitution and give him a chance to fight back. But even if he escaped, what then? With the Stargate out of commission what would he do?
Could he set up camp near the Stargate? Or even just a few klicks from the town? Close enough that he could see rescue if it came? Maybe, but it wasn't much of an escape plan considering he'd be easy enough to find living out on his own like that, not really hidden away as well as could be.
He supposed he could try to find more people. Surely the planet's population didn't consist of this one small group of people. But suppose the SGC found a way to get him home and then they couldn't find him? They'd be looking in this town not somewhere far off that Jack had been able to escape to. So despite the possibilities of the torture, Jack grudgingly came to the conclusion that he needed to stay. He'd been through worse, he figured, he could survive this.
He thought he could anyway. But everything felt so real when he was inside the hallucinations, and if he could inhabit his body while inside, was it possible that he'd have to relive the physical torture he'd been subjected to? Could he really take that again coupled with the compounding pressure of the psychological torture? Could he withstand it while he waited for Carter to pull some save out of her ass? He had a lot of faith in her after she was able to rescue him from Edora, but how good was she, really? Good enough to save him before the torture got to be too much to handle?
And what of him once he was saved? What kind of place would his mind be after being made to relive the worst moments of his life? Because damned if the Blood of Sokar would let you hallucinate pleasurable things. His experience with the stuff so far said things were going to get worse. Much worse.
A noise pulled him out of his reverie and he felt his body tense in preparation for fight or flight even though his brain knew he was capable of neither in his current condition. He couldn't see very far outside his cell as the area outside wasn't lit as the cell was from within. He had no way of knowing if he was being watched even at that very moment. He tried desperately to tune his ears for any sound at all, suddenly wary of not being alone. Soon, he heard the noise again and it seemed to be coming from above him. Someone walking around upstairs perhaps. Cells would be in a basement, right? Not something you'd have in a lounge room for anybody's viewing.
Unless, maybe Astarte wasn't the benevolent leader she seemed. He'd have never guessed that her desire for him would turn her to something like this. He hadn't even thought it had been that serious an attraction that she'd have to go to such lengths to make him a part of her service. Or maybe it was less about the attraction and more about her getting what she wanted no matter what it took. Though what she'd want with a broken down man he couldn't be sure, but he had a feeling breaking him was exactly what she had in mind.
As he thought more and more about what he was to be subjected to and the possible reasons for it, his anger grew – intensified by the last vestiges of the Blood of Sokar running through his system. His fight response was growing stronger though he knew it was a moot point, he'd be unable to fight anyone who came to him now with anything more than a half-hearted struggle. It would take only a couple of those young women to hold him down and force another dose of the drug into his system. It made him feel helpless and helplessness made him feel rage. A burning rage that took up residence in his belly and made his mind begin to flash with leftover images from his memory of Scotty's death.
Jack fought against the memories not wanting to walk down that path again while he was still feeling raw. But with only the remaining tendrils of the Blood of Sokar wrapped around his brain the memories weren't nearly so vivid and were merely that – memories long buried that had been dredged up by the hallucination.
Jack scooted back so he could lean against the brick wall that made up the back and one side of his cell. He pulled his knees up in front of him protectively and wrapped his arms around himself. He listened for more footsteps over his head and heard the occasional pass from one side of the room to the other. He wondered where the door was into the room he was being kept in, wondered if he'd be able to anticipate the approach of someone by where the footsteps stopped. He leaned his head back against the wall and shored himself for a wait and then another dose of the drug and hoped the next memory would be something he could weather.