Creation Myth

by Corby

Chapter Two: Split

Part One

Jack O’Neill had long decided that he and Forrest Gump could never successfully co-exist on the same planet.

Life was like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get? Riiiight. Life was like a lucky dip in a crocodile pen. Sooner or later you knew you were going to lose your hand.

Jack held his own up before his face, as if checking to see they still had some kind of accord with his arms. Yep. Still hanging in there. No smear of red to the elbows, as perhaps there should be if the universe really believed in just desserts. No Pilate and Sons basin for hand-wringing nearby, waiting for Jack to try the whole one-quick-wash and there’s no tell-tale signs at all routine.

Ready for my guilt trip, Mr De Mille...

It was a trip he could take with the family ticket. Everyone on base could hop aboard this one. Every single motherless son-of-a-bitch could claim a seat, right alongside Colonel Jack O’Neill, sitting up there beside the driver.

They’d forgotten Daniel.

Weren’t any more sudden clenches in the gut, as there’d been for the last three days. He could think those words, know the truth of them, the cold, hard, stinking fact of them, and not feel like doubling over with the pain that accompanied their previous visitations. Seemed he was getting used to the idea. In much the same way, he imagined, people got used to a notification of cancer. Nothing to be done about it. Couldn’t get shocked by it each and every time. Gotta deal. Gotta cope. Gotta look in that face in the mirror each morning and give it a wave.

Hiya, Jack. How ya doing this morning? Forgotten any team members lately?

The Stargate looked as solid, as deceptive and seductive and downright treacherous as it ever did. Jack leant forward to press his forehead against the glass of the debriefing room, looking at its perfection, its circular smugness. Sometimes, in the dark reaches of the night, when a mission loomed the next day and some kind of primal instinct in his bones began muttering to him don’t go don’t go don’t go, the circle never looked like anything but a witch’s maw, waiting to devour him and his team. It was a thing of beauty and an instrument of dread, and there were times, like now, when Jack feared it as he feared his own weakness. It was more hole than circle, more void than rim, and Jack could look straight into the eye of the thing and know it had swallowed up his closest friend so utterly that not even the memory of him had escaped.

His breath was ghosting the glass, and Jack closed his eyes. There was no real reason why he should be here rather than the infirmary. Daniel Jackson lay there, fighting to come back to them all, and by rights and habit Jack should be at his side, championing the battle as he always did. Whatever the Stargate allowed to come back, in whatever shape or circumstance, Jack had always been ready to help find health and home again. Part of his duty, part of his heart, and he never begrudged the time or sweat it demanded. But now – now leaning against the glass and staring at the Gate seemed like the only recourse. There was nothing Jack could bring to that lost man down in his sickbed save guilt and grief. Not what you’d call helpful. Not even brave.

They’d forgotten Daniel.

"Shit," he breathed softly, and watched as the mist on the glass grew briefly before shrinking again. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be a trapdoor with a symbol that denoted fakery and an easy exit, stage right. Had to be some kind of get-out clause, because this was a burn that would last the year through, and Jack didn’t think he had what it took to quench the fire.

He had never held anything quite so frail as Daniel Jackson’s body. Even when his son was born there’d been a lustiness in the child’s cries, the way he screwed up his eyes and face and yelled, that spoke of strength. This scrap of flesh was here for the long haul, he seemed to say, and Jack had held him with wonder and gentleness but no fear. Daniel’s bones had seemed to come through his skin as he touched him, and when the young man had screwed up his eyes it was to hide with pained whimpers from the torchlight.

Ah. There you go. There’s that vicious gut-kick after all.

He glanced at his watch. Three in the morning, and all is foul. They’d had seven – almost eight – hours to work on Daniel since the team had returned. Without triumph. You don’t celebrate doing what you were meant to do, and doing it three months too late.

"Jesus!" He gripped the bridge of his nose, and tried to calm the burning that threatened to fan into another inferno. He’d had too many of those already, and they left nothing but ash and hurt feelings. Yelling wouldn’t silence the anguish, and storming through well-wishers wouldn’t quiet their words.

Somehow he had to look calmly at his failure – his monumental, awful, irredeemable failure – and begin to build a course of action upon it. A to-do list that would soothe Daniel’s re-entry into the life that abandoned him.

"Colonel?"

A young airman stood behind him, watching his reflection as it converged with Jack’s. Jack met his eyes without turning around.

"Doctor Fraiser was hoping you could come on down to the infirmary for a moment, sir."

Sure. The infirmary may be a floor or two up, but ‘down’ sounded right to him. Down was a direction that Jack could do pretty much without trying. He gave a nod, and the airman lingered, uncertain.

"Yes?" Jack barked, and the young man jumped.

"Sir, can I get you a - a coffee or something?"

Pity. Would you believe it, he was getting pity from this pre-pubescent kid whose balls hadn’t dropped yet. God give me strength. Pity yourself if you ever get assigned to me, sonny. Chances are I’ll leave you to rot in a shit-hole just because I can’t be bothered to remember your name. Pity Doctor Daniel Jackson, or what’s left of him after I led him into the Valley of the Shadow and dumped him there.

"That’s all, airman," he snapped, and the kid saluted him as if he wasn’t really the lowest piece of crap in this dungheap.

Maybe Janet had good news for him. Maybe the walking skeleton that was Daniel – no, not walking, he reminded himself, just shivering on the floor, all wrapped up in himself as if there was some kind of comfort in bony arms and filthy BDUs. Just shaking, eyes screwed up, and a kind of mewling sound that I didn’t even recognise as human at first – maybe he was waking up and chowing down on some heavy duty vitamin soup. Maybe he was sitting up and asking so many questions they would have to sedate him just to get him to breathe in.

And maybe those bones have worked through the paper-thin flesh, and maybe Janet’s trying to scoop everything back inside the sack of skin, and maybe it’s overflowing the bed and dripping through her fingers onto the floor while she calls for help help someone help me –

Stop it! He pushed back from the observation window and swung about to follow the airman. Get a grip, you jerk. Well, hey – self-abuse had always been a talent of his, something he knew he was gifted at.

His boot-steps echoed through the corridors as he strode towards the infirmary. Funny, he thought, how sure they sound. Here’s someone who knows what he’s doing. Who would never – never – lose someone he should care for. Who would never commit the unforgivable sin…

A soft glow from the infirmary met his eyes, and he felt himself flinch. He knew why the lights were so low. Nothing to do with the time of night. Everything to do with the abused state of one archaeologist’s eyes and mind. So dim in there Jack could barely make out the hunched figures working like creatures from a hellish underworld, gathered about the bed at the far end of the room. Gnomes mining for the life of a man he missed like one of his own limbs.

Oh, yeah. But only when reminded of the fact.

He approached like a supplicant, unconsciously bending shoulders usually drawn back in military compulsion. If he was ever honest with himself he’d admit he wanted to crawl over to that bed with his head hidden under his own arms, unable to face the figure lying there, so still. So quiet. But hey – if he was ever really honest with himself, he’d go and get a big gun and blow his own useless head off his shoulders. Tempting as the thought was, he knew he owed Daniel. The kid should have the chance to tell him to do it before he actually did. Least he owed him. Hell, what were friends for?

As he drew closer he could hear the soft beeping of the machines that surrounded Daniel. Janet Fraiser was murmuring something to her medic, who nodded and bent to adjust the patient’s blanket. He was a big man, and the contrast between the healthy, broad back and the – wreck – in the bed was acute and almost physically painful.

Jack coughed under his breath, and Janet cast him a brief glance.

"Colonel." The tone was dry. Jack had not endeared himself down this way over the last day or two. "Daniel was conscious a few minutes ago. I think he’s trying to come back to us." Damn, the woman could oven roast potatoes with that voice. "I was hoping you could spend some time here, in case he re-surfaced again. He needs reassurance, Colonel."

Reassurance. That I can do. I can open my mouth and have all those useful lies come running straight out. Don’t even have to try, Danny. Not like I have to remember anything.

"Doctor." Jack tipped his head and just knew, from the way the muscles in his face relaxed into the movement, that the Colonel was doing what he did best. Freeze-drying was the perfect form of preservation, and he had taken the time to freeze-dry his expression years ago when he knew that moments like this would come rolling around with weary regularity.

"Okay. From the top? He’s forty percent underweight. He’s suffering from numerous vitamin deficiencies. Vitamin C – hence the bleeding gums and sores. Vitamin D and K – there’s going to be problems with the clotting mechanism of his blood, so we’ve got an IV going to get those back into his system. Not too thrilled about giving anything by mouth at the moment." To illustrate the point, Janet bent forward and gently pried the patient’s mouth open, allowing Jack a stomach-churning glimpse of ulcers and blood. "Intense photophobia. Loss of muscle tone. He has intra-cellular dehydration, and we’ll re-hydrate very carefully to address any potassium imbalance. His physical condition, Colonel, is stable but safely categorised as poorly and requiring intensive nursing."

Jack took a step closer to the bed and its precious burden, finding his eyes drawn inexorably towards his friend’s face. It was the perennial fascination of man with disaster. Even as his gut tightened, a certain sense of fatalistic aestheticism – an admiration for beauty in its most morbid form – kept him gazing at Daniel’s skin. It was translucent, the flesh of a man long-drowned who’d seen not nearly enough of water. Almost clear. Like durian fruit, that bizarre delicacy that supposedly smelled like hell, tasted like heaven. Jack placed his fingers neatly along the military issue blanket as Janet Fraiser adjusted the IV lines at the head of the bed. The roughness beneath his fingers was welcome. It grounded him as he looked at skin so soft and so corrupted.

If this was a film, he thought suddenly, I’d be here on my knees and sobbing Danny, Danny, Danny… and instead I couldn’t squeeze a tear if God himself grabbed me by the balls. I mean, I do hate. But I don’t do hypocrisy. I will never have the right to weep for this.

Because there’s a chance that someone may not realise there’s blame to be had here, there’s guilt for the taking. Some misguided loyalist – Sam Carter, no doubt, or possibly Hammond – will find reasons and rights and ratholes to bolt to, and they’ll invite me along for the ride. "Hey, Colonel, we were in this together. We all messed up. It was all the Tezhkan’s doing." And that was the logic that lessened the crime, that said three hundred wrongdoers equals one three hundredth the liability.

Wrong. It multiplied it to the power of. To the power of –

Daniel Jackson, lying here, opening his eyes in this hellish light.

The boy was not awake, and not asleep. He lay in a world where the light was bordered with darkness, and where darkness coloured the light. He blinked, and gave greeting to the diffusion about him.

There were shapes, circles with lines, and the lines gaped to make sounds so sad and strange the boy felt lonely in his waiting.

One shape, one sound came closest of all. And it offered a word, over and over, that the boy knew to be totemic and long gone; so he smiled a little, and waited for the sound to sink into the blackness where all things dwelt, and learned.

But the shape persisted, and the sound insisted. And there was movement, as hands long bereft of cargo and meaning were gripped in rough earnest and worked, and worked.

The boy blinked again, and pitied as the night was lost to the bloodless light.

But then the shape came closer still, and something brushed his own being in an act of warmth and permanence. He opened his mouth, and the totem flew home; so that daniel? daniel? became flesh and bone, and answer me! became a scourge.

All the Words were gone, and he shook his head to signal that; they were trammelled up into the box, and it was mired in an horizon that none could see. Demons could bray atop it. Flames could crave its fastness. But the box was secure, and lost, a battened ship on an endless sea. The boy felt the loss afresh, as if mourning for a phantom limb; one that jerked and twitched in the night, with an itch that tormented flesh long lost amongst the dates and ravening fate.

But the circle was close, and the … hand – was closer, touching his … face – and stroking a longing, a need so sharp it pricked him to sound.

His tongue was dry, his mouth a cavern, but a Word lingered, unsuspected and ready, as it ever was and ever had been. No water to ease its passage. Just a cough, a dry tearing, as he spread his lips to bring his voice forth into a light that was no light at all.

"Jack?"

The room yawed and pitched as he rose into the darkness of the shape that bent to crush him.

Part Two

Circles. Circles of water. Almost baptismal, Jack thought, as he scooped the sponge and let the water trickle gently onto the matted hair beneath his hands.

When enough water had penetrated the mass he brought his hand down to softly circle again, working the water through the dry and filthy hair so patiently that the sores strewn across the scalp were never threatened. The mild shampoo lathered fitfully in response to his measured movements, but that didn’t bother Jack. They had plenty of time.

"Feel nice?" he asked, and the head beneath his hand shifted a little, as if nodding.

Satisfied, for the moment, Jack refilled the sponge and brought it back to the hair. Most of it had been clipped off, but the two inches closest to the scalp were perilously knotted over the lesions, and there was no sure way of avoiding tearing the scabs save this gradual soaking and cleansing. An unspoken agreement between the entire medical staff that Daniel was to be spared pain whenever possible had cast the deciding vote in the manner of treatment. And Jack O’Neill had happened to be near when the nurses engaged in the task were called away to treat a flurry of injuries from the returning SG-6. It was the simplest thing in the world for him to take over their charge.

"So." Another circle of water, and Jack winced at the ugly patch of skin that absorbed the moisture. "We were still partying, us and the Tezhka. Couldn’t get much of what they were saying, because you’d decided to disappear on us, but the vibes were still good. Then the fat ugly one – looked like my Uncle Frank, the one that sent me those season tickets? – he comes back in and gives us all the forty watt grin before handing over these little button things. So straight away Carter’s into Professor mode, oohing and ahhhing at the super itty bitty transistor capacity. And Teal’c and I are nodding as if she’s not talking her usual Science Swahili."

He paused to gently work at a particularly tenacious knot of flesh and hair and black dirt. "Anyway, we’re all giving our best impression of a Shriner’s convention – without the silly hats – when Carter suddenly sticks this thing behind her ear. She said the idea just came to her. And you know how it is. I mean, you’ve been a college boy, right? It’s like those midnight notions of driving into town for another pack of beer – you know it’s not the greatest idea in the world but you can’t figure right then and there why the hell not. "

Funny thing about words, thought Jack. They could be delivered so lightly, and carry such darkness.

"So we all stuck them behind our ears and we all grinned at each other, and then we all shook hands and came on home."

The sponge paused. For a moment, Jack wondered at the harsh breathing that filled the curtained cubicle; then he almost imperceptibly shook his head. He’d lied on the stand before, he knew what guilt could do to air intake. Just hadn’t realised that telling the truth could take an equal toll.

"This warm enough for you?" he asked, recognising the self-made diversion. Daniel moved again, one foot shifting almost three inches, and Jack found encouragement in the sight.

"Look at that, Danny-boy. You’ll be turning cartwheels next." Satisfied with water temperature, Jack began the hypnotic motion over Daniel’s head again, avoiding the places he’d already conquered.

"We get back, and everyone’s pleased, until they ask, ‘Where’s good old Doc Jackson?’ You know, normally at that point Danny, I’d have a reasonable explanation for them. Like ‘Oh, Daniel? He’s been eaten by giant termites,’ or ‘Daniel? Got turned into this great, big balloon of swamp gas, we’re thinking Macey’s Parade might want him,’ or ‘Oh, Daniel’s been spirited into another dimension and we have no idea where the hell he is.’ Kinda good, solid stuff that Hammond can really relate to. But not this time. This time I go totally left field. This time I say, ‘Daniel’s staying with the Tezhka, sir, for an important exchange of cultural and military information.’ Crazy, huh?"

There was a nasty fluttering in his stomach, and Jack sincerely hoped it wasn’t a precursor to spewing up his story in a long, acidic string of black bile. He rested his hands lightly on Daniel’s head, as if in blessing, and took several deep breaths.

"Well, of course, no way Hammond’s gonna buy something loopy like that. He starts in about no-one being left behind – which is a concept I’ve always gone for in the past, by the way, but hey – a change is as good as a holiday, right? And just as he’s winding up into full search and rescue mode, he gets quiet, and starts smiling. Doctor Jackson doing some field research? Great idea, and why didn’t we think of it sooner? No, no, he can stay as long as he wants, and we’re all smiling and all grinning and we all shake hands and go our separate ways and that’s how it went, Danny, for the next ninety days."

No lightness of tone now; this was being dredged from somewhere so bruised and deep that each syllable hurt. He stared at the curtain, unseeing, unconsciously flexing his fingers into Daniel’s scalp. The blessing, if it ever existed, was long gone; and there was something vaguely blasphemous about the idea anyway, if he thought too hard about it.

"Carter’s figured it out. The button gave off some kind of sonic level mood enhancer. Tuned up into our endocrine system and released a little burst of joy juice every time we thought of you. And we did, Danny, don’t think we forgot about you. We’d – we’d sit in the commissary saying,"Wonder how Daniel’s going?" and "Wow, bet he’s having a high old – "" The words briared in his throat, stuck sharp and snagging thorns so far into his voice there was no chance for anything to get past, not even air.

Jack pulled back his hands and twisted them about his elbows.

Carter could have her theories, and her reasons. Hammond could put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and tell him they’d never stood a chance, that what had happened to Daniel Jackson had just been a tragic result of coming up against an infinitely more technologically advanced race with an obscure agenda of their own. They could say whatever the hell they liked, because it hadn’t happened under their field command. They weren’t the one who promised silently, every time they stepped through the Stargate, that those for whom he was responsible would come back home. Dead or alive, whole or injured, he, Jack O’Neill, would bring them Home. And instead he wandered away from a tea party and left his best friend to rot in utter isolation, on the other side of the galaxy and sanity. There simply wasn’t an act of contrition harsh enough to scrape away that kind of fault.

The voices from beyond the curtain were becoming more scarce. The work of healing was under way out there. Jack squeezed his eyes shut and let the pain flow through his body, filling his every limb. There. Pain level at maximum capacity. Heal that.

A small noise from the bed, and Jack quickly opened his eyes again.

"Ssh. It’s okay, Danny." One hand returned to the gentle circling motion, this time on Daniel’s shoulder. "It’s okay." Nothing more strenuous than this all day, and Jack wondered when he’d ever felt so tired. Restraint came at a higher price than he’d ever acknowledged in the past, and the sheer brute strength that lay in tenderness was draining him. But it was worth it; Daniel was owed the truth, and he’d delivered it, without sparing himself or anyone else.

Surely, that would make the next time easier. When Daniel could look him in the eye as he chanted a mea culpa.

When Daniel was awake to hear it.

He stretched a very, very little. Everything was in flux, here; everything required Great Care.

He knew who this Jack person was. He knew he was out of The Cell. That realisation had come without effort, a gift of knowledge that lay uselessly in his mind for want of context. He had no idea where he was, or who the others were who came and went so noiselessly. He couldn’t name the colour of the wall; he couldn’t classify the low murmurings and beepings that disturbed him with their aimless being.

He felt the need for courage. If the truth be told – and to whom would he tell it, and why? – he knew that more was expected and hoped from him, and it was mildly disconcerting to know that he lacked the slightest clue as to what that actually was.

His body lay in a bed of such green crispness that it reminded him of – lettuce! Bed of lettuce; bed of roses; bed of pain. Roses, thorns, crown of thorns, blood. Pain. He was in pain.

There’s context for you, he thought.

It was possible that climbing from this bed was required, and he reflected upon the idea gravely. That would necessitate one foot sliding across the bed and off the edge. And that fact brought certain – considerations.

For example – and he was quietly pleased at how well organised his thinking had become – he had no idea of what was on the floor. There could be anything. Firebugs, perhaps, or a kind of endlessness that swallowed flesh as he had once been swallowed before. Perhaps one foot would sink into its grasp and he’d be forever splayed there, legs akimbo, waiting for a celestial knee to the most exposed part of him.

And then there were the curtains that he always wanted to remain closed. He rather liked them. They wrapped around the bed of pain in fair imitation of World’s End, delimiting the extensions of his mind’s eye to a comfortable scope. Thus far and no further, they said, in a flaxen weave of inscrutable, unimpeachable blandness. He could deal with the curtains. They were on his side.

The creatures that parted them, however, were a thoroughly mixed bunch. Jack always talked of threat assessment. What was on offer? (Terrible grey slime that tasted of rotting offal. False smiles. Maybe technology if we work this right). What was concealed? (Darkness. Darkness unimaginable). How did one’s own assets match the overt danger? (Zero results. No match found.) But the creatures came and went so quickly, a series of magical appearances – ta dah! – without band sting, without applause. And just as he’d stared at and studied and stapled one into his mental notebook, another would rudely invade the world. Chattering, plumping, peeling, poking, smiling and smiling and lying, lying, lying, firebug eyes that scattered whenever a button was thrown.

They’d taken his watch, and that mattered. If that Jack came back, he’d ask it where the numbers had gone. Of course, Jack’s own reality was open to speculation, and there were one or two ideas that he’d come up with to test out Jack’s permanence. He, person in bed, could be very tricky when he wanted to be. Very sneaky indeed. He could watch through slitted eyes as the Other Two came and spoke at him, and know to a certainty that he had become completely invisible to them. Just by almost closing his eyes, he knew he had vanished, and the thought delighted him. Then, when the – annoying, tiresome, aggravating - Words had slowed and finally stopped, he would suddenly open his eyes and watch them jump in startlement. Boo! He would yell, inside his dry and aching mouth, and they would smile nervously because they never suspected he’d been lying there all that time.

Lying. Lie. Did they know how powerful that word was? To lie with someone, to lie to someone, to lie beside. Lay of the land, lie of the mouth. A stone and an egg and a woman could all be laid. A lay could be a song or a screw. A layman didn’t understand the power of his name, that could bring fertility and falsehood into the world. Liar, liar, pants on fire. For the woman with the wide hips and heavy breasts, and those deep brown eyes that adored only him…

He began to chuckle softly to himself. So much he knew, so secretly stored in the lettuce bed. And surely that gave him power, even if the floor was beyond him. Why, he could even quote that old fifth century suck butt, Ptahhotep. How did it go? Ah, yes -

A man is recognised by that which he knows.

His heart is the balance for his tongue;

His lips are correct when he speaks,

and his eyes in seeing;

His ears together hear what is profitable for his son,

who does righteousness and is free from lying…

Lying again. Always lying. Lying in bed, waiting for that Jack to come and tell him again how much they had thought of him, how often they hoped he was doing well, how sorry they were that he, person lying in bed, hadn’t been quite so happy as they believed. Buttons had got in the way, apparently, and once again he was so glad he'd thrown his own away. He understood how buttons could be mettlesome at times, tangling up the truth. But that was no excuse for that Jack’s endless lies.

Another careful stretch, and all the aches rushed down his flanks where the muscles had been insulted by the demand. Great Care, he reminded himself. This was a delicate world, where skin peeled away without warning, and blood flowed from wounds unknown and unguessed at. Even his mouth, that was always dry, bled in sympathy sometimes - a salty tribute to his condition.

And what was his condition? The same as his strategy, he answered himself, and smiled tightly to spare his lips.

I’m lying in wait.

For the lying to begin again.

Part Three

Okay, Johnny. Let’s meet the lucky contestants behind the curtain on today’s episode of Let’s Convalesce.

Well, Jack, first contestant is a quiet type whose hobbies include one syllable words and eye avoidance. He likes picking at his blanket and one day hopes to end up in his very own dressing gown over at Mental Health. Let’s give a big, warm SGC welcome to Danny Jackson.

Jack stood before the curtains, eyeing them with tired suspicion. Fifteen days of this escalating uncertainty had left him thoroughly distrustful of their innocuous quiet. They hung there, neat and demure, hiding a silently germinating nightmare that never left him alone; and the temptation to rip them down, to set the lights blazing, to sweep away the clutter of boxes that banked up around the bed in answer to this particular patient’s constant demands was almost overwhelming.

Let’s just get some goddamned air in here.

He cleared his throat and called softly. It was always a good idea to warn potentially lively creatures of your imminent arrival. Unbroken horses tended to kick when blindsided.

"Hey, Daniel? You home?"

There was a noise, a rustling, from behind the curtains, so Jack tightened his face into a wary smile and pulled them back.

"Morning, Daniel. How you doing today?"

And say ‘Hello’ to contestant number two. Dr Jackson is a confirmed pain in the ass. He likes to practise his irritability and killing looks, and has recently been voted "Most Likely to be thrown from a Moving Vehicle by a Member of the Health Profession."

The blue-eyed glower from the bed took the edges off his smile, but Jack came forward with a kind of involuntary resolution and tried to broaden it.

"Sooo… sleep well?"

"Did you bring it?" A whisper of voice, but no less piercing for all that.

Jack sighed, and gave a tiny shake of his head. At once the blue-eyed glower narrowed.

"I’m not asking a lot here. It’s my property. I just want it returned." Daniel shifted his hips, managing to make the weak movement a complete expression of his disgust. "If the task is beyond you, perhaps you could assign it to someone who actually cares about my welfare."

"Here." Without pleasure, Jack reached into the small rucksack, and brought out a large paper bag. He saw how the face he knew so well immediately filled with the expression he liked so much, and it brought a sharp, twisting pain into his guts. This was nothing but fool’s gold, this enchanted smile. It would prove worthless in a matter of seconds.

"Yes!" And anxious hands were grabbing for the bag, plundering it greedily until the intricately carved wooden box was wrenched from its depths. "Yes!"

No. Jack knew it, even as Daniel’s long fingers were tracing the carvings in wonder and hope, even as his eyes flickered from one graven image to the next as his lips worked soundlessly. The box was a beautiful thing, found in an expensive antique shop on Styge Street. Mid-nineteenth century, the shop owner had said, probably German in origin, and originally designed to hold the sorts of useless ephemera the sentimental Victorians had loved so dearly. Pressed flowers. Dance cards. Locks of hair, and lockets to keep them in. Mementoes to be brought out on days when a melodramatic swoonfest was required. It had cost Jack enough that he winced as he fished for his wallet, but in the late afternoon sunlight and surrounded by the survivors of unholy times, Jack had dared to feel a flicker of hope. Daniel loved this old stuff. Maybe the box held more than a maiden aunt’s lost romance.

Daniel was holding it to his face now, as if trying to read the curlicues and find meaning in the carved roses. The light was going; Jack was reminded of watching the end of a brilliant tropical day, when the sun set so quickly it really did seem as though it was sizzling into the sea. The more closely Daniel scrutinised the box, the harder his hands began to tremble, and the more Jack felt the keening begin somewhere in his soul.

When the gasp of release came as Daniel threw the box onto the bed Jack was almost relieved.

"That’s not it!" Such dreadful, daily grief. "You didn’t bring it! You lying son-of-a-bitch!"

Contestant Number Two also enjoys abusing friends while bleeding his own distress all over the blankets, and has been known to use language that would make a marine blush.

"Daniel." In the days that Jack had begun to consign to Never Again, he would have raised a finger and begun a playful cross-batting of words and gestures with his errant archaeologist. Daniel would stutter a protest, he would counter with a series a "Ah – ah – ah"s and somehow they would find a mutually acceptable level of frustrated agreement. Funny, he thought, how simple our best memories could be. "We’ve had this discussion before. You say you had a box, and it was important to you. I’ve told you, there was nothing in that cell except you and some bugs. You keep asking for a box, and I keep doing the best I can. But I’m telling you – there was nothing else in there."

Daniel drew his knees up and clutched them with arms that ended in bony wrists still scarred with old sores. Way to play fair, thought Jack. Remind me again how much I hurt you.

"You didn’t look," and the words were spat in utter, rasped contempt. But there was no disguising the sliver of panic in his eyes, as he gripped even harder around his knees. "You didn’t go all the way. Too much of a hurry. You never take the time to look."

Jack grimaced. I didn’t look, did I? Not for ninety days. I’m looking now, Danny-boy. In all the wrong places, for all the wrong things. And maybe you’re right, maybe we left something valuable behind in that cell. Maybe when I heard that metal, scraping sound in the silence of that abandoned place and went barrelling down into the darkness – maybe when I flashed my light in there and saw all those shadows swinging about because I was panting and wired and couldn’t hold the torch still – maybe when I realised one of those shadows wasn’t moving and I started to make those terrible sounds that meant to be your name – maybe I missed something important, something we should have salvaged.

And maybe this is damnation, and I’m so far into Hell I’ll never get back. Even if I wanted to.

"Okay, here’s the deal." With a patience he never even guessed he owned, Jack began the penitential ritual once more. "If you eat up all your greens, start the rehab Janet’s been pushing for the last three days and try to bring on some of that legendary Jackson charm so the nursing staff don’t beat you to death with your own bedpan – we will go back to that planet and look for you." And there’s a double meaning there that I don’t want to deal with just now, Jack thought. He watched as Daniel’s eyes skittered past him as if assessing all the hidden angles to this offer, and he allowed himself to picture a different Daniel – one who grinned, and quirked his eyebrows, and said "Jaaack?" One who didn’t second-guess a smile, or touch of the hand. One who knew himself and his friends, who bitched about cold coffee and the military mind, not imaginary boxes, who cared about and for so much that sometimes Jack feared for his Danny’s heart even as he welcomed it.

One who hadn’t been abandoned in blackness for a quarter of a year.

More self-torture than allowance, really.

"You." This Daniel drew his lips in tightly, the old scabs cracking loose as he did so. "You said you’d find my box for me. You lied."

"I didn’t lie. I’m still trying. Don’t give up on us, Danny. You know what a stubborn son-of-a-bitch I can be. I’ll find it for you. Don’t give up."

Daniel slowly dropped his head forward onto his clasped arms, and Jack almost cried out against the expression he could see stealing across his friend’s face. No! Not so soon! I’ve only just got here. Dammit, Daniel – give me a bit more time!

Too late. Could be Jack’s motto. Should be carved across his chest with a red- hot needle. Too late.

And lastly, Contestant Number Three. How about a hand for him, folks? He likes to keep his eyes closed, prefers rocking silently in his bed, and dreams of utter oblivion. The man with no name, no words and no future – yes! It’s everybody’s favourite, patient number 4736!

Money or the box? Take the cash, Daniel, because I don’t want to know about the box. I don’t want to know what they brought into that place. I don’t want to see them opening up a lid and pulling out terror. I know all about that one, and why you need to find it and break it and send it to Ultima Thule on a one way ticket. It’s all about control, and it never works quite that way. Because it’s not the box you need to break, Danny – it’s the fingers that held it, and used it, and closed the door behind them every time.

He waited until The Noise had left, grinding his face against his knees until he knew the curtain had twitched again and he was magically restored to his own world of quiet realities. Solitude brought calm, and as he waited for the settling of his blood he gave vent to the last remaining anger in little puffs of breath against his own bones.

This – this Jack! Jack-rabbit, this jackanapes, Jack of all trades, jack-a-nory, Jack Robinson, Jack Frost, Jack and Jill, Jack the Lad, car-jack, hi-jack, Hi Jack!, jackal, Jack-in-the-box, the box, the box, the box…

Nothing but a jack-off.

This Jackson.

Somewhere in the night, in that soft darkness he had grown to trust and long for, the name had come to him in the guise of an answer. He understood, now, what had happened and where he was. The annoyance of the past days, as the falsehoods had rushed upon him from all of the mouths that plagued his existence, began to fade. They were not aware. They meant no harm. Their lies were born of deep ignorance, and what, in all fairness, could he expect of them save these mendacious platitudes? They did not know themselves – how could they taste the dark truths the night had to offer?

It was the box that troubled him, and only that.

He knew it was important. He knew it was left behind. But he couldn’t conjure an image of it into his tired mind. Its planes and angles remained hidden from him, even as he worked into the mystery of it with all the mental strength he possessed. He would picture the generic schemata of a box – sturdy, un-surprising, straight and solid and infinitely mysterious – and from there would embellish and extend until he was faced with a fantastic monstrosity. Sometimes the designs emblazoned on its sides would be Persian, sometimes Hindu, sometimes Chinese. Once even Baroque, but he put that down to the odd meal he had been served the morning before. He would begin simply, adding colour to one side, words to another; perhaps a picture drawn with the rough artistry of a peasant, or the fine detail of the professional painter. And as the right combination eluded him he would throw more and more onto those blank surfaces, until the honest wood was lost in a Boschian nightmare of demons and desires.

Every time that Jack came to him he hoped for revelation. Of course, he ruefully admitted to himself, that was the worst of it. Terrible thing, hope.

There were boxes now, neatly stacked beside his bed, of all shapes and designs and sizes. Each represented a wound inflicted unthinkingly by the one who came with such persistence and overt sympathy. To scatter them with an idle sweep of his hand was the work of a second, and he smiled as they tumbled from him, spilling their useless secrets onto the floor that lay beyond imagination. At once, there was an exclamation of annoyance from beyond the curtain, and he grinned quickly into his knees. Impossible to feel pity for fools, and they incurred upon his privacy with such blithe confidence that he felt it his duty to repay them whenever the chance arose.

The curtain was flung back, and one of them stood there, her arms ending in bunched fists, tired and angry. He flicked one quick look at it then closed his eyes, hiding the pleasure, disappearing into the linen before it could counter-attack. He heard it tweeting and hooting as it clumped about his bed, then a quite clear curse escaped it as some part of it banged against the frame. He chuckled, and felt its foolish attempt to hate.

None of that mattered. It was the box that haunted him, and his need to know it once again.

He’d owned one years before. It had been small, roughly made, and originally intended to carry betel nuts. Every time he opened the lid the scent would envelope him, and it almost always made him sneeze, and smile at the sneezing. He carried the box about with him in a canvas satchel with the letters AIF stamped upon its front in faded black ink. For a long time he thought the letters to be the initials of someone’s name – Abdul Indullah Fayed, for example, or perhaps a German from one of his father’s friend’s crews – maybe Albrecht Inigo Friedrich. An old, toothless man who smelt of dung and tobacco cackled the truth to him one slow afternoon in the souk. The bag was a military one, scavenged no doubt from the tall strangers of Ostralya who came to Egypt fifty years ago. They had been laughing and proud and too young of soul, the old man said; and many had left their blood and bones on the far shores of the Great Sea. Soldiers of so many empires come and gone, and he’d laughed, his mouth a round black hole that mesmerised and menaced the small boy squatting beside him in the heat.

For a time he was worried that the bag he entrusted his box to had once belonged to a military ghost – he knew what his parents thought of the soldiers that obstructed and bullied them everywhere they went. And he knew instinctively that beneath his parents’ complaints and private cursing lay a rivulet of fear. Soldiers had power and were as unreliable as children and donkeys – a combination to be treated with respect and distance, if possible. The boy honed that lesson to his soul, as he saw the arrogant and broken signs of military impermanence wherever they travelled. Even as a six year old he wondered if a bag plucked from long dead soldier’s fingers would be a dependable place to store his treasures.

Because the box was his home, and it carried everything he knew of the word within it.

There was the identification card his mother had patiently prepared for him. It introduced Daniel Jackson in eight languages, and requested the finder of said Daniel Jackson to please return him to the nearest American embassy. There was a subtle hint of a reward in the wording – enough, in his mother’s judgement, to encourage rescue and discourage ransom. All of which had been necessitated by that ability to become consumed by the landscape that had proven to be one of his earliest and most enduring talents.

A small bronze figure, circa 800 BCE. It was that of a cross-legged scholar, amuensis perhaps to some Eastern satrap, and the first thing Daniel Jackson had ever found on a dig. After some discussion, he was allowed to keep it – a fact the adult Daniel reflected upon with astonishment and admiration. The boy had named the tiny scribe Hapshut, and held long conversations with him during the resting periods enforced by the unforgiving sun. He was Daniel’s friend, in lieu of any other, more vigorous example of the abstract notion, and every night Hapshut would hear Daniel’s stories and write them down upon the bronze tablet held in eternal readiness.

Pencils. Notebook. Pictures, words, plans, maps – a world captured in paper and lead.

A photograph of the dog that attached itself to their camp one year, when Daniel was five years old. It was a scabby, mangy, bloody-eyed beast, but Daniel had delighted in feeding it scraps, even against his parents’ express admonitions. He didn’t persist from any reason of defiance; he simply understood need. He named it Fido – rather cleverly, he had thought, and was pleased with himself as he explained to his father that the word was Latin for trust. His father’s lips had trembled, as they did when he was secretly amused, but he’d nodded gravely as he explained about rabies and fleas and moving on.

A fine brush. His own, with his initials carved into the handle. He’d used it to rescue Hapshut from the earth, and when allowed he diligently worked it across the dirt in whatever string-bound section of the site his father designated to be his.

Coins from Iraq, India, Egypt, Germany, France, the USA.

And the only birthday card he’d ever received. It was, though he hadn’t known it at the time, simply the front half of one; the greetings had been cut off, leaving only the bright picture of balloons, a small boy, the number 8 and ‘Happy Birthday!’ in shiny lettering. The boy wore jeans, and an oversize cap – and Daniel just knew he was an American, one of the children he glimpsed on their rare visits to that baffling place. He would chew gum, and know about baseball, and would fish bare-footed in the Missouri river with his best friend Huck. He would have a horse called Flicka, a boy scout badge, and would solve mysteries that had left all the grown-ups stumped. He would be as carefree as he seemed on the card, running with a kite that held the shiny 8 upon it, not looking where he was going in his red gym shoes. Daniel knew without being told that the boy was so unconcerned because he knew all the secrets of America, all the arcane rituals that children like him practised without thinking how difficult they were. And because he had the depth of family that meant never fearing abandonment, never dreaming of being lost.

On some nights, when the hurricane lamp glowed outside through the canvas walls and he listened to the murmur that always seemed to rise from the workmens’ camp, he would carefully pull the card from his box and finger its smooth surface as he populated the boy’s world with those strangest of things – aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbours, grandmothers, grandfathers – all standing solemnly on guard surrounding the boy and his kite. The card in its banal colouring and the images it inspired were as exotic and fascinating to Daniel as the world of the Pharaohs would no doubt have been to the kite-boy’s live counterparts. And he would wonder if he would ever penetrate the mysteries of that place, America, his own Xanadu - and would shudder at the thought of one day being compelled to.

These were his treasures, and they bumped and jangled around the Middle- East with him and his family for four years, safely stowed in the little betel box. Was this what he was meant to find?

It had been lost so long ago. A mere twelve months after his parents’ deaths, and a boy had grabbed it from him, up-ending its contents onto the pavement and laughing, laughing as he ground them beneath his red gym shoes. Hapshut had been kicked into the gutter and tumbled down the storm drain. Daniel remembered how the number 8 had twirled in the dirty rainwater, a spinning eternity, and how it had united briefly with the photograph of Fido in watery adherence before disappearing after Hapshut into darkness. Later the sight had comforted him, as he lay alone on his bed and tried not to cry. It was nice to think they had each other’s company as they were swept away. He tried not to think of the boy on the card, because his face seemed so like the one that had sneered as his treasures were taken from him.

Daniel sighed, and released his knees. He was feeling ridiculously stiff, crouched like this in bed, and he wondered at the fact. Now that he’d solved the riddle of his own existence – absurdly simple, as most riddles were once revealed – the notion of physical pain became a nonsense. That was the work and worry of khat, the body, and no longer anything to concern him.

No, he was khaibit. The shadow that could separate from soul and heart and body, both spiritual and natural, from name and form. The khaibit that lingered near the soul but could not touch it.

And all about him, moving so quietly on their crepe-soled shoes, whispering in their starched cotton and khaki, were the shades of others long gone from their own world. He was in the world of shadow, and when he looked into their soulless eyes he could find no reflection.

It was the context he’d been searching for, and he sighed again, but this time with quiet satisfaction. He would need to learn the ways of the shadow world, their language and custom, but he had trained in the art of simple divination since a small boy. Nothing to it.

And there was something very comforting in the knowledge that the rest of Daniel Jackson was far away, in another world where truth and heart mattered.

Part Four

Damn, he wanted this to work.

There had been times in Jack’s life when he had wanted something so badly – for the sake of his own skin, or those around him – that the sick tension had almost crippled him. He could find nothing admirable about wanting so much the need oozed through your skin as rank sweat. But it was a part of the military world, he supposed, for those who took to the field (what a sweet word for such an ugly reality) and learned the fragile art of handing their survival to a stranger deemed superior.

He hated waiting on principle.

Waiting – for the woman you loved to be split apart in bringing your child into the world. For orders to retreat, run, get the hell out of there, live through this one… for the man who was the closest thing you had to a best friend, maybe even little brother. Watching him crawl back from a precipice was an experience so inherently tense that holding your breath was instinctive, and very necessary. So how blue in the face was he after forty-something days of willing the crawl forward?

It was enough, he’d decided that morning – Daniel was close enough that Jack could reach over and give him a tug to safety. Whether Daniel wanted it or not.

Daniel’s quarters (perennially dark, quiet, a tomb in everything but name) represented a halfway house, according to Janet. Her patient’s continued reluctance to leave the base meant that one of the rarely used guest-rooms had been re-designated as a convalescent ward. Jack had spent too many hours there, cajoling conversation, herding Daniel with brutal care and cunning towards this moment – when Jack O’Neill, He Who Abandons, would redeem them both in a blaze of triumphant sunshine.

He’d done rescue missions before, and this one was a milk run. All he needed was the patented O’Neill ignorance of subtleties, refusal to hear reason, despotic unwillingness to compromise and selective deafness when it came to multi-syllabic cries for help.

Piece of cake.

"Yo! Daniel! You decent?"

The door was swung wide before a reply had a chance of being heard. Hey, begin as you mean to go on, right?

"Jack." After blinking in the dim light, the colonel focused on Daniel sitting dressed but barefooted on his bed. "Was that the military form of a polite knock?"

"Hell, no. We use boots for that one." Jack’s immediate scrutiny of the room took in the changes since the day before. The boxes had been piled up against the far wall for a week or so, since Daniel had moved in from the other ward, but now there seemed fewer.

"Having a garage sale?" and he jerked his head towards the incongruous stack.

There was no answer for a moment, as Daniel frowned at his hands lying limply in his lap. Bones, thought Jack; they look like bones pushing up through earth. He shook himself. Ridiculous. That’s what saving on the light bill did to you.

"Doesn’t seem much point in keeping them." The voice was quiet, collected, as it almost always was now.

"Guess not." And what brought that on? Jack wondered, but the fact of it bolstered his own faith in a plan barely worthy of the name. He drew a breath, and decided to call upon Hearty and Heartless to be officers of the watch.

"Want to come for a walk?"

"Where?"

A shrug. "Around. Come on, Daniel, no point sitting here in the dark. That’s Teal’c’s schtick, remember?"

The beginning of a glare from the bed, quickly lost as Daniel ducked his head and reached for his socks.

"Sure. Give me a minute."

"So you’re remembering footwear these days?"

"I’m remembering lots of things."

Jack swallowed. You’re forgetting your military history, Colonel, he told himself. Never underestimate the enemy.

And just when did Daniel earn that title?

"Okay." Two booted feet clumped onto the floor, the sound startling in the grey quietude that seemed to surround Daniel everywhere these days. "I’m ready."

"Let’s move out," and Jack managed a smile with that, letting Daniel know they were in this together, this adventuring down a corridor.

They walked side by side, less than companions, more than jailer and ward. Occasionally they’d meet others, who offered strained smiles of their own before hurrying past, silently offering the difference between those with somewhere to go and those for whom going was an end in itself. Jack found an acerbic comment for each after they passed, hoping to shock Daniel with his excruciatingly bad manners.

Fat chance of that, he thought. Kinda blew the rude scale when you left the guy waiting for a lift for three months. Well, anything to distract him from what I’m going to do here.

Jack had his military training, certainly. But it was to earlier memories, and hunting, that his mind cast for an analogy. The searching and scenting and taking of game that was easily frightened, forever elusive, big-eyed and tense-limbed in the early morning mist. Military operations were based on logic and grounded in technology. Hunting was an organic thing, visceral and blood-hot. A good hunter could identify with his prey, will his being into the tracks of the one he was about to destroy; and Jack swallowed again as he allowed his guts to churn briefly with the vertigo that had ruled Daniel Jackson’s world for too long.

Daniel hadn’t asked again where they were going. Maybe it’s not a hunt, Jack thought with sudden pity. Maybe this is just butchery in a holding pen. Not much skill in the chase if there’s nowhere else to go.

They had reached the end of this particular corridor and were facing the elevators with a fork to their left. Daniel automatically began to shuffle towards the new direction, but Jack’s hand reached out and grabbed his sleeve – hoping it would hold when Daniel began sliding towards the edge again.

"I thought topside today." My, the voice of command coming through for him again. That tone that brooked no questioning or opposition, even when the will behind it was floundering in uncertainty. "What do you say, Daniel?"

He had expected stillness, or its opposite, a frenzy of physical denial. His own muscles were tensed, ready for reaction. His fingers were gripping the material against a sharp pull away towards the freedom of a cell.

He didn’t expect a small, secret smile.

"Ah." Daniel’s head was up, tilted, as if listening to something calling from far above. "Why would you want that?"

The lamb on the killing block had just propped itself on an elbow and offered to chat. Jack blinked, wrong-footed.

"Well – you know." Damn, you always do this to me, Daniel! "Sunshine’s good for you. Beautiful spring day up there. And I thought you’d want to work on your tan." Rapid recovery’s my specialty, though. Don’t forget who you came to the dance with. "Fish-belly white’s not so in this season. You could use a little colour."

The smile widened a little, and Jack found himself staring at it. How could one simple movement of a pair of lips look so utterly wrong?

"There’s nothing I need in the daylight." It was gentle, but a dismissal nonetheless.

"The hell there isn’t!" Jack’s hands tightened further on the sleeve, and Daniel looked at it pointedly. "There’s fresh air and vitamins and some kind of life, goddam it!"

The only things that grow in the dark, Daniel, are fungus and fear.

"What difference does it make to you? I’m fine right here."

"Fine? You’re not fine, Danny, you’re just hiding out."

"I’m doing my work, aren’t I?" And that was true enough – Daniel had begun consulting on translations three days before. "I don’t ask anything of anybody. I don’t even expect you to remember I’m here."

Son of a bitch.

Jack dropped the sleeve. Needed his arm to stem the blood flow from his own belly. Be careful when you corner your prey – a fight for survival brings teeth to the weakest of creatures.

"Okay, Daniel, here’s the thing. We’re not debating this. We’re going up for a good, healthy walk. You’re going to bitch and moan the entire time. You’re going to give me dirty looks behind my back on the way home. And it’s going to do you the world of good. That’s the plan. Signed, sealed, sitting on the general’s desk. So let’s get moving."

And that infuriating smile was gone, leaving only a sad lift of the eyebrows over bewildered blue.

"Why, Jack? Why are you doing this?"

"Because I’m your commanding officer, Daniel." And, oh, how completely wrong was that? Wrong thing to be after his failure on Tezhka; wrong thing to say, here and now, when his friend’s vulnerability couldn’t have been more apparent if he’d broken down in tears of fright. "Because you need this, whether you know it or not."

"I know what I need, Jack," Daniel said in a low voice.

Jack ignored him, striding over to the elevator and pressing the buttons, hoping they’d work quickly.

"Be here in a second, Daniel, and then we are going up."

He was aware of Daniel staring at him, head to one side again.

"Maybe. You never can tell with buttons, Jack."

The doors gasped open, and Jack regarded the elevator with pride, as if he were personally responsible for its appearance.

"Come on, Daniel. The sooner we start, the sooner it’s over." He put one foot against the door, holding it open while turning towards his friend; and at the look on Daniel’s face he knew that some kind of truth needed to be offered, a sop to the gods and demons that hovered above their sorry mess. "I know you’re wading in quicksand here, but for once, don’t use your brains. Trust me."

Daniel paused, and Jack could swear he saw something flickering beneath the surface of his eyes. A kind of desolate fire. Black flames in a landscape of ash and loss.

"Daniel." As gentle as he could make it. "Do you want me to call in Sam?"

"No, of course not," Daniel murmured. He dipped his head, and took a step closer. "I don’t think I’m ready for this. Janet said – "

"The last time she saw you Janet said, and I quote, ‘If you don’t take him out of my sight in the next two minutes I am going to give him an instant orchidectomy with my name badge.’ Are you sure you want to hang around?"

"She said – she didn’t say that?"

"Hey, just calling it like I heard it."

Another step, and one hand reached out to touch the edge of the sliding door; prey scenting lure. Jack‘s eyes smoothed the harshest lines of steel, satined the rough-polished floor.

"Ouch."

"Oh, yeah."

His prey looked upwards.

"Maybe we better…"

Jack bowed. "After you. It won’t bite, Daniel."

Daniel closed his eyes briefly. "Perhaps not. Do you know what ‘sarcophagus’ means, Jack?"

A chance for levity? "Uh – time share condo in Gou’ald?"

With a fluid movement, as though tumbling from a great height, his prey swung himself into the far corner of the trap and waited for its jaws to close. He stood there with arms outstretched along each wall, as if expecting the metal to fold in upon him, assuaging some cold hunger known only to places of steel and stone.

Jack followed, quickly punching in the code that would lift them with angelic ease towards the light. The doors closed, and he heard Daniel’s voice. A wealth of fear and loneliness in each word, and Jack almost didn’t turn about to face him.

"Sarcophagus means ‘flesh-eating stone’. It’s a concept I have new understanding of nowadays."

God, he felt cold. Didn’t they heat these damned things? Jack rubbed his arms, and wished for sunlight.

That’s all they needed. Sunshine. Wind. Late spring blooms. And space, limitless space to coax a man’s soul out into wide wildness. I’ve trapped you, Danny, but only to set you free. You’ll feel the heat on your cheeks, and bring your face up to the light like a dying man scenting water. You’ll see the vastness of the mountains, and feel comforted by their strength. You’ll see the endless spread of plains below, and want to run out into them, burning up their green miles in exhilaration. You’ll hear eagles calling, and want to fly up to them, away from the grey grotto you call home now. Trust me, Danny. Trust me.

The elevator rose smoothly, silently, inexorably taking them towards the confrontation Jack had decided Daniel needed.

It wasn’t betrayal.

"This isn’t betrayal, Danny."

There was another smile – sad, soft, totally pitiless.

"Of course not, Jack." One hand went to Daniel’s eyes, shading them against a glare that didn’t exist yet, hiding him from the hunter who did. "This is nothing. This is just a little sunburn. That’s all."

Part Five

Daniel Jackson stood in the doorway, and let the words come.

So long since the dreams fled. Where did they go? Who or what holds them now, the fleshlings, the marrowmeat? They are spinning about those other, the many, the six brethren who stalk the dust and the stars.

I have no dreams.

Sometimes at night I wake, and my eyes open to a room that is beyond my comprehension. It exists in a perfect state of disunity with anything I know. I blink, and neon slivers my pupils. I open wide, and a pale darkness that hasn’t earned the name pretends to comfort me. As if it knows its master. As if it understands its true nature.

So many held in the same illusion. Sam, of the blonde hair, the bright and fearful smile. Sister from without the womb, shadow born of guilt and sorrow.

Sometimes, I see you watching me, sensing my reality, searching for my patten. You want to chain me, Sam, you want to bring me to you and pronounce me whole. But not with your flesh. You will drag me to your mind, but not your breast.

And your mind would hold me at arm’s length to scrutinise my scars and deliberate upon my shortcomings. You will not sully your fine intellect with my blackness; you will not taste of shadow, and knowledge of your self. Oh, Sam, you, of all of them, could know me. But you will not dirty your hands.

You brought me chocolates. A whole box of dark, my favourite. But you left the box on the front seat of your car, and the sun destroyed them. Made them liquid. They say there are no accidents, Sam. You meant to let them go. What are you trying to tell me as you shrug past the embarrassment and scoop up one piece, then another? What do I read as I gaze at this sweet, ruined mess?

And Teal’c. The warrior, you say, a man of action and honour. An honour that will dissemble in the face of glowing blue light, that will bargain for a chance at blood and heat. A whore in stoic silence, a slut for revenge and the carnal whiff of battle who struts like a cardinal. A man who fears the dark so much he will not sleep, lulling his mind with candle-light as a stranger in a raincoat might offer ruined chocolate to a child.

Should I trust you, Teal’c? Will you return my dreams? Or will the blood-heat that torments your ears drum out the sounds of their whispers? You left a man alone in the dark, to be tormented beyond endurance by nothing but the eternal truths of solitude and night. Your honour prompted nothing but smug considerations over meals with your friends. Your action was to wait upon the loss of an alien joy.

So will I turn, at the end, to Jack? Brother indeed. Shadow born and bred. His ribs glow white against a deep darkness so familiar it breeds contempt. If I delve through here, Jack, if I scratch away at your flesh I will find dust and ash and a beating red heart amongst the inky Black Ops cancer. I will find shade enough to cry "Home!"

Loyalty is bone to you, it holds you upright when your own dreams play vagabond thief with your mind. Did you steal my dreams too, Jack? Did you scoop them into your guilt to savour their madness? They twist and turn in a black wind, hung on a gibbet to amuse your soul. Did you like what you saw? Did they find brothers of their own inside your glowing ash?

I wait in the long silence as there is a splitting apart, a movement through the space before me.

"So – here it is, Daniel. Just as you left it. Fish and everything."

Jack is smiling as he hands me a key.

"Welcome home."

Part Six

"Dr Daniel Evans Jackson, PhD." Jack read the envelope in his hands casually, riffling the torn edge between his forefinger and thumb. The late sun sparked across the most jagged point, creating a corona as he squinted. "You know, I lost a lotta money on that one, Daniel. You owe me."

Daniel sat upright in the deck chair to his left, slightly hunched, his hands dangling where his arms rested upon his knees.

"I do? Why?"

"Evans. We had a book on your middle name. No-one came up with Evans."

"Ah." Daniel stared downwards, to where the afternoon brought sharpening shadows from out of the grass. "Named after the famous Sir Arthur Evans. Guy who excavated Knossos. Wasn’t it on my record?’

"And what? You thought I’d cheat?" Jack’s voice intoned aggrieved righteousness to a fault. He glared across at the younger man, even as he revelled again in the wash of normalcy that the day had brought for him. Daniel’s mouth was quirking slightly. "Well, I didn’t."

"That was very noble of you."

"Damn straight."

Lanky fingers bent down to twist blades of grass. "So what did you bet on?"

Jack tossed the envelope aside and reached for his beer.

"Ethelred."

There was a pause. From somewhere in the distance Jack could hear the unsubtle beats of a boom-box, as the neighbour’s teenagers tried for suburban ghetto chic. Beneath the faint intrusion he could hear the sound of birds and insects and life, buzzing in neat counterpoint to the primal rhythms further afield. Does it get any better than this? Jack wondered, and stretched lazily. His legs were warm, the beer was cool, and Daniel was beside him, being Daniel.

"Ethelred."

"Yep. The Unready." Jack took a swig of beer, and gestured with the bottle. "I did history at high school. Thought it would’ve been perfect for you."

"Mmm." A non-committal sound, and Jack watched as those long fingers flicked the green blades out to die in the July sunshine. "The fact that ‘Unready’ refers to a lack of counsel, not chronic lateness…?"

"Irrelevant." And perfect, just perfect, Daniel scoring another point off him. Consider it yet another present, Danny, and Jack’s grin grew even wider. "So how did you like your birthday?"

Daniel glanced up briefly into the sun, as if to answer directly into its rays, then hid his face again.

"It was very… green." He gave a vague gesture at the garden that surrounded them, and Jack felt a little stab of pity. Yeah. Getting locked away in cells and mountains didn’t allow for a great deal of greenery in anyone’s life. Guess you’d notice, coming to a place like this.

"Well… I wanted pink icing, but Carter insisted on peppermint."

The head stayed down, but Jack saw the mouth move, and another moment of rightness blessed him. This had been something of a gamble, for them all, and even as a man not unused to high stakes, he’d waited for the marbles to drop with some trepidation. A roulette wheel had come to be a spinning prayer, and as the day wore on Jack had watched with all the intensity of a losing gambler looking to make a last play. And the prayers had been answered. First as the guests arrived, then as the birthday boy himself had gradually followed the drift of the day out into the sun he usually avoided.

They’d decided to warn Daniel of the party. This was to be a day that elicited smiles of pleasure, not yelps of surprise. He’d seemed reasonably pleased with the idea, and now, as only the two of them remained in the watercolour wash of the ending day, Jack could touch the optimism rising inside him. Touch? Hell, he could slap it on the back and offer it a beer.

"So – on a scale of one to twenty – how would you rate it against your other birthdays?"

More grass was sacrificed to the voracious fingers, then Jack saw Daniel shrug. "Not many with which to compare."

"Well, with the last, then."

The fingers stilled, then picked again more savagely.

"Not the last."

Ow. One marble jumping the wheel and spinning into Jack’s eye. Another story of woe for Daniel Jackson? Perhaps with Shau’re? A quick feint to the right was needed.

"No, you’re right. Why compare? Those steaks were the best things you’ve ever had, bar none. And as for the company – "

Daniel smiled, shaking his head slightly. "Best ever. Bar none."

And wasn’t it ridiculous, this gratification rising into his belly, this sudden urge to jump up into some kind of war-dance, complete with pelvic thrusts and shaking of spears. Something wild and feral, ending with a cosmic mooning and aimed squarely at the Fates. You tried, you bitches, but I won. We won. Daniel’s safe and sane and with us once more. We’ve pulled him back through that damned magic circle and here he is, kicking and whole, ready to take it on once again.

Perhaps. No-one had mentioned the likelihood in Jack’s hearing, and he had certainly not raised it with Daniel himself. But as he sat here in the soft promise of a late afternoon, lifting on the tender scents of a midsummer garden, the bloody exhilaration of a battle-cry muted to something closer to the song of birth. Perhaps here, in this time of gentleness, possibilities could be glimpsed and spoken of without harm.

"You know Hammond’s considering letting you come along with us on our next outing. PX3 to the power of 9 whatever. If you’re very good and promise to bring a note from home."

He waited, his warrior’s eyes reading every line of his friend’s body and face. The looked-for tension never came. Daniel glanced across at him, his expression unreadable.

"Yeah?"

Jack echoed Daniel’s earlier shrug. "It’s not what you’d call a vital mission, but just to get your feet wet again…?"

And Jack realised he’d waited for air support with a similar level of heightened awareness, a kind of urgent calm. Everything about him seemed to have stilled. Damn, but he hoped those Fates could take a joke.

Daniel looked away, blinking as the light caught his eyes. He didn’t seem upset, or worried. No fear like lightning tensing his shoulders. Only his lips tightening as he reached again for the grass he was intent on destroying single-handed.

"Why did you say that? Get your feet wet, I mean?"

Jack blinked. A lateral Dr Jackson? Who’da thunk it?

"I don’t know. I guess – " he waved his hand with the beer bottle still grasped tightly. "It’s a circle of water. I suppose. Why? Does it matter?"

Daniel swivelled suddenly on the deck chair, turning completely towards him.

"It’s just that – sometimes the Gate seems to me to be – something else. A – a well, or mouth, or – " He worked his fingers, searching for the words. "Or maybe a kind of rebirth, every time we go through."

This was so close to his own inchoate images of the stone circle that Jack’s jaw tightened in defence.

"Which would make it - what, Daniel? Aren’t getting too Freudian there, are we?"

"I never liked Freud," Daniel said quietly.

"Nothing but good to say about you," Jack responded, uncomfortable.

Daniel didn’t seem to have heard him. "Vagina dentata," he continued. "It’s an old image, common through many cultures."

"Dental - ?"

"A vagina with teeth," Daniel explained gently, and Jack winced. You don’t use those two words in a sentence, Danny, he wanted to complain. "Fear of castration, of being lost as one penetrates the unknowable."

"Whoa." Jack held up one hand. "You are so not doing good things to my head here, Daniel."

"Do you ever feel that? When we step through, do you ever… " and Daniel’s words disappeared, as if the golden sun had eaten them whole, the most gentle betrayal imaginable.

Jack’s optimism looped into a death spiral.

"Is this your oh so whacky way of telling me you don’t want to come? Because it’s okay. No-one’s gonna rush you, Danny. If you’re – you know, seeing teeth and God knows what on the Gate – "

"Jack." Daniel’s expression was wry. "I’ll come. I just - wondered. That’s all."

"You’re – you’re sure?" Dammit, Daniel, you haven’t lost your ability to take me on a switchback ride in a handful of sentences. "We’d have to okay it with half the medical personnel on the planet, but – we’re going through in a couple of days. We’ve got time."

"Yeah. I’m sure." One hand rose to shade Daniel’s eyes, keeping his face in the dark. "I think I might go in now, Jack. Been a long day. Just – just like to have a rest in the spare room, if that’s okay?"

So the wheel has ground to a halt, and we have a winner. Jack let the tension in his belly go, allowing the headiness of victory a swift encore.

"You bet. And, er – Daniel?"

The young archaeologist was standing above him now, and the light was streaming past him as Jack squinted into it. Like those old paintings of saints, Jack thought suddenly. The shadow in the centre would be Daniel’s face.

"It’s good to have you back."

The figure above him, warped by sunlight, nodded, and rays of sharp light splintered through his hair. Then he was gone, and Jack sat back against the lounge-chair with the tired contentment of the man who has fought hard for an honourable draw.

It had been a good day. The beginning of a new chapter in SG-1’s tale. With the thought came another, one that seemed to seal the result in Jack’s mind. It was, he realised, ninety days since they’d rescued Daniel from that black cell. The symmetry was perfect. The journey out of its clutches had been long and hard and bitter, but they were now free. Whatever the ransom demanded by the Fates for this freedom – and Jack gave a little nod of his head, considering that conciliation was probably smarter than the joyful exhibition of defiance he’d offered earlier – had been paid threefold in those ninety days of healing and hell.

Jack sighed, and felt the peace come sifting into his soul. They all had a second chance, and he knew how rare a blessing that was. This time, they’d make sure that Daniel Jackson stayed as whole as he was in this glorious, mundane, golden moment.

Daniel opened the door to the spare room. On this side of the house the night was already approaching. He smiled a little to see the shadows behind the bed, to watch them spread as he closed the door behind him.

It had been a good day. For everyone. He remembered the smiles on Sam’s face as he opened her gift, the way Teal’c eyed the steaks as they suddenly flamed on the barbecue. And Jack’s almost painfully solicitous manner – are you comfy there? Warm enough? Cool enough? Hungry? Thirsty?

He understood all of it. And he was going back through the Stargate. A good day indeed.

Slowly, he undressed, taking his shirt and jeans off with precise force, as if peeling a layer of skin from a dead animal. He laid down on the bed, arms loose at his sides, eyes closed.

No. No sleep. Not yet. There was something to be done. His fingers itched for it. Something he had to do, every time he came to a new room. Something that waited for the dark.

Easily, he sat up and swung his legs over the bed before climbing down onto the floor.

Then khaibit Daniel crooked his thumb and began to measure up the floor.

Go on to Chapter Three

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