"Sir, it’s the Tok’ra," Sergeant Winkleman said, looking at his monitor.

"Open the iris," General Hammond ordered on his way out of the control room.

The wormhole stabilized and moments later Jacob Carter stepped through. In his hand he held two items—the chip given to them by Denjo Blont and a Tok’ra informational disc.

"Jacob," George Hammond said, welcoming his friend.

"George."

Jack O’Neill, unaware of the presence of the Tok’ra, paced into the gate room, but as soon as he saw Jacob he did an about face.

"Jack," Jacob called, striding toward the colonel.

Jack clenched his hands into fists and shook them in front of his body. "D’oh."

"Jack, I think you’ll want to see this."

Jack turned cantankerously toward Jacob. "I’m thinkin’ it’s not a Goa’uld mothership."

Jacob ignored him and simply handed Jack the information.

"What’s this?"

"This is the chip you asked us to open. But Jack," he said, directing his concern and his sympathy toward the colonel, "ask yourself what it is you want to know. Ask yourself, before you read it, why you need to know."

"Oh, come on, Jacob," Jack grumbled, snatching the two items from Jacob’s hand.

"I mean it, Jack. Knowing there’s nothing you can do in retribution for what happened to Daniel, you have to ask yourself what it is you hope to gain by knowing the truth."

Jack looked at the chip in one hand and the disk in the other, hearing Jacob’s words and his own pensive discomfort. "Will Sam know how to open this up?"

Jacob closed his eyes and prayed that Jack was listening. "Yes, she will."

Jack turned away from Jacob and made his way down the hall, raising his hand once in thanks.

While he walked, he looked at the disk and wondered what could possibly be in it that would make Jacob want to warn him. Of course, Jacob never thought Jack could handle anything—socially, in times of mediation—basically anything having to do with actually having to speak. Okay, so maybe Jacob had a point.

But Daniel was on the disk. Whatever it was that pushed him over the edge, it was in the disk, and still Jack continued to hear Jacob’s warning:

"What is it you hope to gain by knowing the truth?"

The weight of the decision brought him to a dead stop in the middle of the hall. Jack flipped the disk over in his hand and thought about all the things that could be on it—beatings, torture, suicide attempts. Things he didn’t want to think about. They all had to be there, and they all had to be sickening, otherwise Daniel would be back at work, being a pain in the ass once again.

But he wasn’t. Every day that passed without Daniel making strides in his well being reminded Jack that the eight months Daniel had spent away had to be incomprehensible in their terror.

Did Jack really want to know the details of Daniel’s implosion? Was it even his right?

Jack ripped open the flap on his jacket pocket, stored the disk therein, and continued on.

*****

"Doctor Jackson," said Doctor Sebastian, placing her glasses on her knees, "would you like to find a seat so that we may discuss this further?"

"No," Daniel told her, waggling a finger in her direction. "I’d really prefer to walk."

"Tell me, did you have another migraine this morning?" she asked, opening his file to check any notations of medication.

"Yes. Yes, I did," Daniel told her, folding and refolding his hands across his chest. He punched his glasses up his nose, brushed the hair out of his eyes and never once stopped pacing.

"And now?"

"Oh, now…now it’s gone," he said, nodding. "Incredible amount of caffeine in those pills."

"Yes, there is." Doctor Sebastian watched his movements—scattered and manic. "But not enough to produce this kind of reaction."

Daniel stopped, his eyes darted in her direction and then he pressed his lips together. He blinked his eyes, adjusted his attitude and said, "Yes, well, maybe not, but I’m bouncing off the walls here, and it has to be the drugs."

"Or perhaps the topic." She waited for his response, but when he seemed to disregard her, she restated it for him. "When we speak of your trauma, you seem to separate your memory from the anthropological evidence. Why do you think you do that?"

Daniel threw his head back and sighed. He raked both hands through his hair and grasped hold of the back of his neck, frustrated that he was going to have to explain this yet again. "Look, it’s really very simple. If I can separate myself from the situation, if I can take myself outside of the circle and think about it from a culturally significant point of view, who am I to say they were wrong?"

"But they tortured you," Doctor Sebastian reminded him, and the sound of the word sent his hands flying around his waist and his chin plummeting to his chest. "How can that be seen for anything other than it is?"

"Because you’re looking at it through a very narrow perspective," Daniel said, shaking his head, irritated that he had to explain the simplest things to her. "We make presumptions everyday about what’s right and wrong, and always through the limited scope of our own culture. If what you say is true, if what the medical reports say is true, and I was beaten and even…" Daniel paused, closed his eyes against the vertiginous sensation piling into his body. How could he finish the sentence if he could not speak the words? He shook his head and tried to pretend that they already had been said. "…then isn’t it also true that they healed me? That they fed me? Yes, by our standards I was treated poorly—"

"Poorly?" Doctor Sebastian questioned.

"Yes. Um, okay, inhumanely, but by their standards, maybe not," Daniel said, finishing his thought, incredulous as to her inability to comprehend the situation just like he saw it. She stared at him, those pity-laden eyes, mossy and framed by tiny wrinkles, waiting for him to go on. Daniel shook his head and shrugged. "At the very least, I contributed to their society somehow."

"And how did you do that?" she asked, suddenly finding her skin singing with anticipation. A breakthrough, she thought. Yes, he is very close…

The thudding inside his chest began to increase. Daniel touched his fingers to his carotid artery and turned away from her. "I wish I knew."

"It sounds as if you do know," Doctor Sebastian prodded. Go on, she silently urged. Meet the challenge. Go on, Doctor Jackson…

"Well, I don’t. I’m just trying…" he said and stopped, tried to swallow in order to slow down his heart rate. "I’m trying to understand it from an anthropological standpoint."

"Was there ever an instance that you can remember when you could not understand their treatment of you?"

"No." Daniel twined his fingers behind his head and tried to relax.

"Meaning you understood all their actions?"

"Meaning…meaning…No. I just meant…" he muttered, flustered by the topic. "Look, all I’m saying is that within their social delineation…I mean it seems perfectly clear that I wasn’t a member of their cultural experience, so…"

"In what ways were you different?" she asked, leading him to reveal some of his experiences.

"You’re missing the point," he countered. A groan heavy of frustration and contempt burst from him. "I’m just trying to explain that in order to understand why they did the things they did, you have to take yourself outside the circle."

"And why is it you still want to understand these people, especially after they brutalized you so?" the doctor said.

Daniel pressed his hand to his chest and deep within his darkened mind began to count to ten, anything to calm down his racing heart.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"Look, I’ve thought about this a long time," Daniel said, and even as he said it, he knew his voice was betraying the panic he felt, "and I’ve decided what may or may not have been done to me isn’t as important as…as important as why."

Doctor Sebastian rose, concerned with the increasing amount of sweat forming on Daniel’s face. "Doctor, why don’t we sit down?"

Daniel continued, side-stepping away from her. "And, frankly, maybe the why comes down to ‘because,’ and if that’s the case…if that’s the case, we have nothing more to…to discuss." On his final word, Daniel leaned over his knees and gulped at air. His heart rapped a frantic, determined rhythm against his sternum.

"Come. Sit here," Doctor Sebastian said, urging him to sit down on the chair.

"I can’t seem... to catch... my br-breath," he gasped, allowing himself to be guided into the seat. Daniel felt his head being pressed forward. From some desperate, latent instinct, he cried out and slapped her hand away.

"Forgive me," she said, pulling her stinging hand from his neck. "Try to keep your head down. You’re hyperventilating."

Oh, God, I hit her, he said to himself. Oh, God…Daniel pressed both hands to the floor aside his shoes, and beat-by-beat his heart began to slow, even while his humiliation rose.

"I’m…sorry," he began.

"No, no. Just breathe," she said, standing by his side.

Daniel screwed his eyes shut tight, blocked out the memory of slapping her hand away and forced himself to calm down. Finally, his breathing returned to normal, and once again his body felt depleted and raw.

When at last he could think of something other than the fear that his heart would beat itself to a pulp, the memory of slapping away Doctor Sebastian’s hands slipped back into the fore of his mind. Humiliated, dismayed by his actions, even when he wasn’t sure why he hit her, Daniel whispered, "I’m sorry for hitting you."

"I should not have touched you," she said, ashamed that she had made such a rookie mistake, and after all these years. "It is my fault entirely."

Daniel rolled his finger and thumb across his temples. "I thought you said the Zoloft would alleviate my symptoms."

"It will," she said, returning to her chair. "You must give it time to build up in your blood stream."

"I’ve been taking it for five days," he said.

"Give it a full two weeks, please, before you pass judgment."

"Nine more days? I don’t know if I can take this another day, let alone another nine days," he said.

"I would suggest that it’s not only your symptoms but the fact that we are talking about rather sensitive issues," she said. Across from her, Daniel remained in his coiled position. "How are you feeling now?"

"Oh, I don’t know," he said, attempting to lift his head. When he did, the dizziness returned but not the racing heartbeat. "I feel…ashamed."

"Ashamed?" she asked, surprised.

"I’m…I’m very sorry I hit you. I’m... very sorry." Daniel ground his teeth together, tucked his chin in to his shoulder and hoped that she’d take his apology and forget about it.

"No. You have nothing for which to apologize," she said. "But can we discuss why you reacted the way you did? What is it, do you think, about people touching you that brings you to such actions?"

"Um…" Daniel began. "It’s, um…"

"Doctor Jackson?"

"Doctor Jackson, can you hear me?" Doctor Sebastian said, leaning in closer to Daniel.

When at last he heard his name, Daniel’s eyes popped open, and there she was. Dazed, his mouth hanging open as if anesthetized, Daniel trembled with fear.

"What is it, Doctor Jackson?" she asked.

"I... I I I don’t know." He searched her eyes hoping that she had seen it for him. "I…I…"

"A flashback?" she asked.

"I think so. Maybe." Daniel closed his eyes and let his head fall backwards against the wall. "I’m not sure."

"Tell me what it was about?" she said.

"I don’t know."

"No, I will not accept that answer," she told him. "Whatever was in this memory, it cannot hurt you now. You must talk about it."

"You’re not listening," he said, thumping his head against the wall. "I don’t understand what it was, so how can I tell you?"

"Tell me what were the images? What were the noises?"

Daniel sorted through the memory, and the one thing he kept coming back to was the hands. Hands so big they wrapped around his biceps. Hands so strong they snapped his fingers. Hands so cruel they produced an endless agony to already flayed skin.

"Here," she said, handing him the box of tissues.

Daniel had no idea what she was offering to him, but when he pulled his head from against the wall and looked into her face, he saw that his vision was oscillating. It was only then that he became aware he was crying.

"I…"

"It’s all right," she said, pulling one tissue out and placing it in his hand.

Daniel lowered his eyes and felt the soft pounce of tears hitting his legs. He pulled the tissue open and pressed it to his face.

Doctor Sebastian sat back and let him compose himself. She could hear him breathe in and out, deliberate and slow. She watched him shake his head back and forth, struggling with himself to make sense of his life. She poked a strand of her hair into the knot at the base of her skull and watched him in silence.

When at last he was ready to speak, Daniel rolled the tissue in his hands, clapped his hands together at his knees, never looked up at her and said, "I don’t like to be touched."

"I see that," she said, nodding.

"I never have," he said.

"Is it any worse lately?" she asked.

"Yes."

Nodding, appreciative of the modest progress they had made, Doctor Sebastian smiled at him and said, "Then I will be more careful not to touch you."

"Thank you," Daniel said. He picked at the used tissue ball in his hand and wondered what she must think of him. Wondered if she thought he was as big a head case as he thought he was.

*****

"In our last session," Doctor Sebastian said, leaning over her desk, reading her notes, "we talked about cognitive restructuring, yes?"

"Yes." Daniel picked up a pencil from the side table and began performing legerdemain with it. He sealed his lips together, tired of the now predictable sequence—restating the objectives of the last session; evaluating the progress within said objectives; building on that progress, or examining why no progress was made. It went round and round, boring and futile.

"Have you been practicing the breathing exercises that we discussed?" she asked, taking her seat in front of him.

"I breathe in; I breathe out. Occasionally, I yawn." He gave her his best deadeye stare, conveying his depth of dissatisfaction with the whole affair.

Doctor Sebastian tilted her head to the opposite side and gave him plenty of silence with which to fill.

"Look, it’s just that this seems to be going in circles. I don’t see any progress."

"Yes, you’ve brought up circles before," she said, taking her glasses off. "Tell me more about circles."

"No. It’s…you’re…" Daniel placed the pencil back onto the table and shook his head, stymied by the conversation. "No."

"Is there some reason you choose not to talk about circles?" she asked.

"There’s nothing to talk about! God!" Daniel cried. "All I said was we’re going around and around. LIKE IN A CIRCLE! There’s…I…nothing more than that. God!"

Doctor Sebastian picked up his chart and read through a page.

"What?" Daniel said, trying to peer over the edge of the file.

"I find it interesting that you describe the healing device as a…ah, yes—‘a circle of light.’ You have also described, in some of your nightmares, as being surrounded by a ring of people. What do you make of this?" Doctor Sebastian focused on him with gentle, inquisitive regard.

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head, grinding his teeth together.

"You seem angry."

"Me? Angry? Why should I be angry?"

"Am I not the person who should be asking the questions?" she said, smiling.

"Then why aren’t you?" Daniel asked, allowing a certain smug attitude carry him through the tedium.

"What would you like me to ask?"

"How should I know? Aren’t you the psychiatrist?"

"Perhaps you’d like to discuss a different topic?"

"Do YOU think we should discuss a different topic?"

Doctor Sebastian laughed, covering her frustration with feigned amusement. "What topic would you like to discuss?"

"Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?" Daniel continued.

"Can we talk about why you couldn’t speak after your surgery?"

"Do you have the proper clearance?" Daniel asked while awakened anxieties skittered through his body.

"Do you mean military clearance?"

"Is that what you think I mean?"

"How can I gain clearance?" she asked, resting her face in her hand while she concentrated on his nervousness.

"Why should I tell you?"

"If I continue with this game, this attempt to sideline me, will I gain clearance?"

Daniel stopped and stared at her, angered by the ease in which she had ground him to a halt. "No."

"Doctor Jackson," she said, rising from her seat and walking toward her desk, "in our last session we discussed mastering your memories so that you may revisit the trauma in a way that’s not overwhelming." She pulled a tissue from the box and wiped her nose. "I think we are getting close to something that you would rather not discuss. Is that the reason for the word games?"

Daniel slouched in his chair and let his long legs slide out in front of him. "I don’t know."

"I will not accept…"

"Yes, I know," he said, letting his head fall back to the wall behind him. "Fine. I don’t even know what we were talking about."

"We began with a discussion on circles," she said.

"And I told you I don’t believe there is any merit in that discussion," Daniel told her. He piled his arms across his midriff and closed his eyes.

"Can we discuss why you believe you were unable to speak even after your voice was restored?" she asked, taking her seat before him once again.

"I’m not going to get out of here unless I give you something really juicy, am I?" Daniel asked, combing his fingers through his hair.

"That all depends on what you consider juicy," Doctor Sebastian told him.

Daniel opened his eyes and stared at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, wondered how many patients before him had done the same. "Okay. I think," he began, "that I tried concentrating on their form of language so hard that I temporarily may have lost my own." His words surprised him—they almost sounded believable.

"Does that happen often when you’re learning a new language?" she asked.

So much for believability, he thought. "No, but it wasn’t an oral language, so…" Daniel sat up and crossed his feet under the chair. His knees began to shake. "I just think I concentrated so hard trying to find meaning in their gestures that I might have…" He waved a hand next to his head. "Maybe I shook something loose, I don’t know…"

"I must tell you, Doctor Jackson, that sounds like a rationalization for the truth," she told him. "And I think the truth is inside you, but you are not prepared to accept it."

"Oh, fuck you!" Daniel blurted out, rising in trembling anger from his seat. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from her, skimming over the blurry book titles that lined her shelf.

"Twenty-three languages, and this is the kind you choose," she said, shaking her head, waiting for his response.

"Then tell me your native tongue, and I’ll tell you to fuck off in it," Daniel said without turning toward her.

"I think it is highly significant that when we begin to discuss your inability to use your language, the one you fall back on is vulgarity." She jotted down a note to herself in his file. "Not only vulgarity, but the act represented within that vulgarity is rather an interesting choice."

Daniel dropped his chin to his chest and brought a hand to his neck. He could feel a blinding migraine approaching. The muscles along his jaw line contracted while he continued to bite down on his anger.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I’m done today," he said.

"Yes, I believe you are," Doctor Sebastian agreed. She stepped to the door and called Sergeant Garanzia in, but before the sergeant could enter the office, Daniel slid by them both on his way back to his room.

"Watch him carefully," Doctor Sebastian told the aid. "This could be a difficult night."

"Yes, ma’am," Sergeant Garanzia said, excusing herself to catch up with her patient.

*****

"Hi, Bob." Sam straddled the barstool and unzipped her jacket.

"How you doin’, Major?" Bob asked from behind the bar. He placed a cocktail napkin in front of her.

"Oh, you know," she said, twirling the napkin. "Can I have a beer with a chaser of Seagram’s?"

"Gotcha," Bob said and pointed a finger at her.

While the barkeep pulled on the draft arm, Sam rubbed her hand through her hair, turned her head from side to side and tried to work out some of the kinks. When she opened her eyes, over right shoulder she saw Jack. Sitting alone at a corner table, one beer in his hand, an empty bottle in front of him, he sat staring at nothing.

Bob placed the beer and shot in front of Sam and nodded to the colonel. "He’s been here a while. I finally convinced him to eat something."

Sam picked up the shot and said, "So much for chaser, huh?" She tossed it back, picked up her beer and sauntered over to her CO.

"Hey, Colonel," she said, taking a sip from her beer.

"Carter." Jack glanced at her over the rim of his beer. "What brings you here?"

"Probably the same thing that brought you here," she said. She grabbed the back of the extra chair. "May I, sir?"

"Sure. Why not?" Jack said, lobbing his bottle cap across the table while he remained slouched in his chair. He pushed the chair out for her with his extended foot. "You want something to eat?" Jack waved down the waitress.

"Um, yeah, I guess. What are you having?" Sam scooted her chair in and pulled a plastic coated menu out from behind a chrome guardrail affixed to the edge of the table.

"I’m having a steak, Carter," Jack pronounced. "Rare. So rare that if we medivac it to the nearest vet, it may still have a sporting chance."

Sam smiled and let her head bob up and down. "That’s pretty rare, sir."

"How about you?"

"A steak sounds good. Maybe not that…healthy," she said, placing the menu back with the other ketchup- stained, greasy placards. "I was thinking of going up to see Daniel tonight."

"Don’t bother," Jack told her, finishing his beer and placing it next to the first. "I was just there. He’s not feeling well. Another migraine."

"Damn," Sam muttered.

"Hey, Jams. What can I do ya fer?" Tiffy the waitress asked, a big girl with spit curls laced around her temples and forehead.

"Jams?" Jack asked, eyeing Sam with suspicion.

Sam chose to ignore the colonel and just order. "I’m going to have a steak, medium, with a side salad. Oh, and another beer," Sam told her. A dancing beer bottle caught her attention, and Sam revised her order. "And one more for the colonel." Jack placed the empty bottle down.

"Comin’ right up," Tiffy said, taking the empties with her. "And your steak should be out right soon, Jack."

"Thank you there, Tiff," Jack said, slouching down even further in his chair.

When the relative privacy of a table in a bar was restored to them, Sam leaned onto her elbows and searched for an opener. "So, sir…"

"I owe you an apology, Major," Jack blurted out, organizing the packets of sweetener into a more aesthetically pleasing pattern.

"Sir?"

"I was rude and shortsighted. And I should have offered this apology a while back, so I apologize for that as well." Satisfied that the pattern of blue, white and pink was a much more appetizing one, Jack set his sights on the salt and pepper shaker, all in an attempt to divert his attention and Sam’s. "You were right about Daniel. I was wrong. I’m sorry."

Sam wrapped her long fingers around her stein of beer. "Well, I appreciate that, sir, but I’m not sure it’s needed. I was…I was wrong, too."

"How’s that?"

"I wanted to believe that if he could just…" Her words caught in her throat. What did she believe? "I don’t know…maybe if I could protect him, maybe he’d be fine." Tiff placed a new beer on the table for Jack and silently walked away. Sam hunkered around her mug of beer, not really seeing it, not really wanting it. "I want him to be safe, you know? I just want him to feel safe." Sam dropped her head into one hand, tired and worn numb by the constant worry.

"He is safe, Carter," Jack told her, lifting his beer to his lips.

A silence descended upon them. A silence of fatigue, of guilt, of concealed pain wrapped around them. Forgiveness, longed for and selfishly sought, skulked around the periphery, just out of sight. In their sad reverie, penitential and quiet, they began to cast off their anger toward each other, toward the lost months, toward their arrogated culpability.

"Carter—"

Without hearing her name, Sam cut in. "Sir, I—"

"Here ya go, Jack," Tiff said, placing a plate in front of him.

"Thanks, Tiff. Damn nice of this cow to give itself so selflessly," Jack said, reaching for his utensils.

"Enjoy," Tiff said.

When Tiff was out of earshot, Jack said, "So, Carter…"

Sam felt the need to down as much beer as possible before telling Jack exactly why she needed to stop at the bar before going to see Daniel.

"Whoa. Careful, Carter," Jack said, gesturing toward her tipped-up mug with his brawny knife. "That’s a good way to…"

"I opened up the file, sir," she said, placing her empty mug down.

"The file." Jack set his cutlery down aside his plate.

"In order to transfer the information Dad gave us to a Word file, I had to play with it a little." Sam brought both hands together and pressed them to her lips, still cold from the beer.

"So…"

Sam chose her words with measured care before proceeding. Weighing the price between truth and protection, she said, "I only saw bits and pieces, but…but I think Doctor Sebastian has her work cut out for her, sir."

Tiff brought a plate and set it down in front of Sam. Sam moved her elbows out of the way and smiled to the waitress.

"Thanks, Tiff," Sam said.

"You’re welcome, Jams." Tiff touched Sam on the shoulder and strode off to the kitchen.

"Okay…Jams?" Jack asked.

Sam shrugged, embarrassed and related the strange tale. "She calls me Jams because of Carter’s Pajamas. You know—‘If they could just stay little ‘til their Carter’s wear out.’ Jams—pajamas. It’s…um…"

"That’s…" Jack said, nodding his head. He sucked in a breath, ready to express his feelings on the story, but decided to close his eyes and forget that he ever heard it. "So, C…Sam, who has the file now?"

"I gave it to General Hammond, sir." Sam crossed her arms in front of her plate and regarded the meat with a decided lack of interest.

He could see just how much pain it had caused her to see the contents of the file, even the small amount that she had seen. It reminded him once again that he was happy he chose not to look into the disk himself.

"Good," Jack said, and he raked his fork across the top of his scored meat. When he looked up at her, he saw the dejection and dispirited lethargy he thought they both wore. "You okay, Sam?"

Her appetite gone, Sam turned her plate first one way and then the other. "I guess I’m not that hungry."

Jack looked at his own meal and decided the same. Both plates pushed to the side, Jack waved down Bob at the bar and motioned for him to bring two more beers.

*****

When she was on base, Sam gave her full attention to her work, to her experiments, to her vast responsibilities. When she was off world, her focus was wire sharp: obtain the objectives of the mission.

When she was outside the mountain, her thoughts, her concern, her preoccupation ran toward Daniel.

She missed him. She has missed him desperately when he was gone, but now…

When he was gone, when they had no idea where he was or where to look for him, Sam could pretend that he was bored, sitting in some room, talking circles around his captors. She could comfort herself with fantasies that perhaps he was held in a state of metabolic inertia, free from any torment, just waiting for his team to find him.

Then there were the thoughts, dark and unwanted, coming usually at night, that Daniel was simply gone. That maybe his life had been snuffed out, and any of his mental energy—that signature of spirit and sentience—was merely a mirage, a falsely intuited response she had created, desperate to keep him alive, placed there if only so she could properly say goodbye.

Maybe, she had thought, he was dead. Maybe there was no point in looking for him. Maybe it was for the best. No more suffering. No more wondering.

No more.

And then they found him. And then her nightmares began in earnest. Only they were living, breathing nightmares, the kind that grab you by the throat and choke the resolve from your body. The kind of nightmares that remind you everyday that you are aware of the pain, that you are keenly cognizant that unimaginable acts took place. Nightmares that force you to see that the person standing in the room with you is so far excused from his former self, that you miss him more than when he was in a different part of the galaxy.

She missed him. He was just beyond the door that led to his room, and Sam missed Daniel with a deep ache.

Sergeant Garanzia pulled open the door and stepped out into the hall, addressed Sam out of respect and continued on down the corridor.

Sam took a deep breath, pushed herself away from the wall, ambled across the hall, and tapped on his door. She poked her head into his room and caught sight of him.

Facing away from her, his figure muted by the bright light streaming in through the window, Daniel stared into a world he could barely comprehend.

"Hi, Daniel," Sam finally was able to say.

Daniel turned his head, glanced at her over his shoulder before turning back to the smudged window.

Sam set her purse and coat down on the bed and scuffed her feet along the floor, a habit she had adopted around Daniel. It warned him that she was approaching. The last thing she wanted was to startle him, unnerve him anymore than he already was.

"You look good, Daniel," Sam said, her back to the window. "You look like you’ve gained weight. That’s good."

His eyelids fluttered for a moment. He lowered his face and sighed. "It’s the drugs."

"Oh," Sam said, nodding. Side effect, she thought. Well, it was a good one. His face didn’t look so emaciated; his body didn’t look so fragile.

"What day is it?" he asked, returning his stare out the window.

"Um, Tuesday," she said.

"Baked spaghetti."

Sam blinked. "’Scuse me?"

"Tuesday is baked spaghetti. Wednesday is pork chops. Thursday is…I don’t remember, but Friday is baked chicken. Saturday is lasagna. Sunday is beef stew. Monday is meatloaf, which brings us back to baked spaghetti Tuesdays." A bird dipped and dove through the air, and Daniel tracked it from one building to the other until it disappeared.

"How are you, Daniel?" Sam asked.

"I’m cycling through my symptoms nicely," he said, while black and brittle spiels of soft laughter tumbled from his lips. "I did nightmares and flashbacks so well that now I’m working on migraines and heart palpitations. I figure in a week I should be a full-blown head case."

"Daniel…"

"Sam," Daniel interrupted, sliding his hands out of his pockets and under his arms, "if I asked you to sign me out of here, would you? Would you take me home?"

A soft yet insistent tingle rose in her eyes and nose. She touched her head to the cool glass and looked at his face, lowered so she couldn’t see his mournful eyes, and told him, "No."

Daniel nodded. He glanced up at her and produced a lamentable smile. He shrugged and said, "I didn’t think so. Can’t blame a guy for asking."

"Daniel, I want you to be well again, and the only way that’s going to happen is if you stay here and get well," Sam told him. She held out her hand to him. Some days he’d take it; other days he’d stare at it. She was never sure which day it would be, but she always offered it to him.

"So, what’s your definition of well?" he asked, trying to find the strength to reach out for her hand, let it embrace a small part of him.

"You being happy again," she told him. She kept her hand hovering next to him, knowing that some days it took longer than others.

"Can I be well and not be happy?" With his heart beginning to race, he pulled one hand out from under his arm and placed it in her palm. The warmth and safety of her fingers calmed him, and he let out a long-held breath.

"Sure. I guess. Yeah." Sam held his hand, didn’t caress it with her thumb. Didn’t gently squeeze it. It was enough that his hand was in hers.

"Then I guess I’m well enough to go home," he said, his words shaky and daunted. He stole a look at Sam, saw her gentle smile, watched her shake her head. Daniel dropped his chin, screwed shut his burning eyes and grasped her hand with a sort of desperate need.

Sam fingered the underside of his wrist, just a touch. "We all just want…we all just need to know you’re safe, Daniel."

The words stunned him enough to look her straight in the eye. "What?" And when he saw her focus on his wrists and felt her fingers graze across the scars that marred his skin, Daniel yanked his hand away. "Do you…do you think…" Daniel stumbled back until his calves met with his bed. "Do you think I tried to…Does Jack?"

"Daniel…"

Daniel’s feet scraped the floor while he scooted around the bed and wedged himself between the dresser and the corner. "God, Sam! Why would you think that?"

"Daniel," she began, stepping closer to him, "it’s only that…"

"NO!" he cried. "Don’t…just…" His finger pointed at her to stay away, and when she did, Daniel pressed both hands to the top of the small dresser and groaned, releasing some of his anger, his fear, his highly explosive anxiety.

"Sam," he said, pressing his head with a thud against the wall, "what happens when the atom splits? Hmmm?"

"It divides. Why?" she asked.

"But the original atom," he said, thumping his head against the wall, "what happens to it? Is it gone?"

"Well, I suppose. Yes. Daniel…"

"Sam, if I’m at the center of my universe and I split, what will be left?"

"You won’t split, Daniel," she told him.

"But if I do, what will be left?" he asked. "Darkness?" Daniel stared at the pocked ceiling tiles. "Darkness, right?"

"Daniel…"

"Darkness. It’s darkness." His stomach seized; his vision blurred; his hands scraped into the smooth surface of the dresser. "God, Sam. You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?"

"What have I done, Daniel?" she asked.

Daniel tilted his head to the side and offered her all his sympathy for her ignorance. "You opened the box, Sam."

Sam shook her head, unsure and afraid. "Daniel, what…"

"I’d only been there a short time," he began, pulling in labored breaths through his nose. "Only long enough to know I didn’t want…couldn’t live with it any more. One day—or night. I’m not really sure which—I woke up and one of them had left part of his clothing behind. I found a piece of metal—I don’t…I don’t know what it was for—in the pocket. I decided right then and there that whoever came in next, whoever tried to…"

Daniel stopped, sucked in one long breath and held it. He shook his head while the air gushed out between his lips. "I wouldn’t let them touch me again. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do, but the metal was sharp enough that I knew I could…I could somehow…that one of us wouldn’t…" He nodded in place of the awful words.

Sam understood and nodded back while silent tears crawled across her cheek.

"They were incredibly big. Did I…did I ever tell you that?" Daniel asked, swallowing against his own sorrow.

"No."

"Maybe seven…seven and a half feet tall," he said, glancing up into the upper reaches of his room. "When they came in…" Daniel stopped, looked around the room, looked around his memory, searched for the words that didn’t want to come. "I was nothing to them in terms of size. Nothing. But I realized, right there, I realized that I was…something. That I was worth something to them. I was a commodity. I took the metal and I held it against my wrist."

"So you tried to…"

"Well, tried is really the operative word there," Daniel said, bringing his hands together on top of the bureau. "I wanted to make them understand that I was willing to destroy their…their…" Again he nodded. "But they were so big, Sam."

Sam took slow, measured steps to the opposite side of the chest of drawers and placed her trembling hands near his on the top of the chest. She wanted, needed to comfort him and find comfort for herself.

"One of them grabbed me; the other held out my hand and sliced my wrist with his knife." Daniel stopped just to watch Sam’s reaction. Knew she was probably shaking with horror. He paused and let her grapple with her own loss of words. When he continued, his voice was dull and quiet. "Then they healed me, and then they cut my other wrist. They healed me again, and then they beat me. I never tried to do it again."

By the time she was able to speak, to say anything close to the terror she felt, Sam was weeping and without reservation.

"They didn’t…they didn’t heal me after that beating. They, um…I think they wanted…" Daniel came to a stop again, wondered how he could cause Sam to be in such pain over his pitiful story. Why did she care? "I think they wanted to give me something to think about, so they didn’t heal me."

"Oh, God," she cried. Sam reached for his wrists to anchor her downward spiral, lowered her wet cheeks to his hands and sobbed. "Daniel…"

Her sorrow in his hands, Daniel stroked away her tears with his thumbs. "You asked how we communicated. People ask me if I ever understood them. I did. I did."

Her tears were like warm droplets of grief baptizing him, absolving him of all his sins, original and of the flesh. He accepted them, cupped his hands around her saving tears, and forgave her as well for having paid witness to it.

"Laboravi in gemitu meo, lavobam per singulas noctes lectum meum; lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabam." Daniel accepted her tears, let them wash him of his iniquities. He lowered his face and kissed her hair. "Et tu, Sam?"

"Oh, Daniel," she cried, clutching at his arms, drowning in her inexorable anguish. "Oh, Daniel."

"And now you know the problem with memory," he whispered through her hair, his voice sweet and calm. He lay his cheek upon her soft hair and let her tears cleanse his sullied hands. "Open one memory and it splits into two. Two to four. Four to eight. Eight to sixteen, to thirty-two, to sixty-four, one-twenty-eight. Two-fifty-six…"

"Daniel," she whispered, destroyed and crumbling.

"Until there’s nothing left but memory. Until there’s nothing left of…me."

*****

"Doctor Jackson."

Daniel pulled a book from Doctor Sebastian’s collection and thumbed through the pages, part ignoring her, part ignoring his body.

"Have you read that?" she asked from her chair.

Muted and delayed came her words through the viscid haze. But then a twinge of pain, a sharp pinch, a burgeoning throb stole his focus away.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel spun on his heels, finally bringing the near past to the almost relatable present. "What? Have I…Oh. Yes. Well, some."

"What is your impression of the author," Doctor Sebastian asked.

Daniel shook his head and returned the book to the shelf. "Not much, I’m afraid."

"I would think you’d be very interested in his work integrating myths."

"Who? Joseph Campbell?" Daniel asked, taking a book by Jung from the shelf. "He’s a great popularizer, but he's a poor academic. I mean, the man quit his own PhD studies after meeting Krishnamurti and instead chose a more intuitive approach in which everything was evaluated in terms of his particular Krishnamurti-influenced beliefs, which, as you are well aware is typically characterized by his often-repeated ‘follow your bliss’ crap." Suddenly, Daniel felt he was channeling Jack—a highly educated, disdainful Jack, but a cynical Jack, nonetheless. The thought brought a fleeting smile to his face.

Daniel separated two volumes of works by Kierkegard and Camus and slid Jung between. His eyes grazed across the spines of the other books, and the insistent throb deep within him radiated further. He shifted his weight and held onto the bookcase.

"Doctor Jackson?" she said, peering around him to catch a glimpse of his face.

Daniel pushed away from the shelves and dug his hands into his pockets, pressed the warmth against his hipbones. He dipped to read the title of a book, make it look as if he were totally engrossed in the act instead of a different sort of act.

"It's as if he stopped reading the work of anyone else when he quit the academic track. He did read people such as Jung," Daniel said, turning to Doctor Sebastian in order to make his point, but just as quickly turned away, embarrassed by his own knowledge. "He, uh, yes, he read a great deal of Jung and is very much a Jungian, a believer in concepts like the…collective unconscious."

"And you have only read some of his work?" she asked, regarding him with humorous skepticism, rather entranced by his knowledge, and rather concerned with his erratic movements.

"Well, I’ve read enough to get a general feel for his…shoddy academia," he said, returning his attention to the books.

"Does shoddy academia bother you?"

"Of course. Doesn’t it bother you?" Daniel asked, keeping his voice level. "If nothing else, academia should be…pure. Scholarly works should be untainted by vast generalities and careless research."

"Campbell’s research is not up to your standards?" she asked, almost as interested in Daniel’s appraisal of the author as in the words he was not saying. She made a note to herself to ask him about his absence from academia.

"I’m not sure that he has done his research at all," Daniel told her, stepping toward his chair, pausing and then continuing on to her desk. "It’s not beyond him to change a myth here and there just to fit his beliefs. For an example, his rendition of ‘The Odyssey’ is is is is absolutely chock full of glaring, embarrassing mistakes. But, since those who would read Campbell more than likely haven’t read much Homer…" He shook his head and picked up a glass paperweight full of azure blue bubbles and exploding pink blooms.

"I’m curious, Doctor Jackson, but in which language did you read Homer?" Doctor Sebastian asked, resting her pen in her lap.

Daniel turned the glass bauble over in his hands. "Oh, um…Greek. Of course, Greek." And then he treated his physician, his mender of minds to a display of his intellect by reciting a portion of the original text in the original language.

This mind, she thought, listening to him effortlessly glide through the ancient words and phrases, this great and utter coffer of knowledge. Could they possibly know what they have done to it? Did they even stop to care?

Daniel placed the paperweight back on the table and showed her an embarrassed, tight-lipped smile. "Anyhow, that’s what it sounded like to the Athenians."

"Quite impressive," she said.

Daniel’s eyes darted over her face, across the room and to the window. A windowsill to lean on. Yes. Walking in short, choppy steps, he made his way to the window, grabbed hold of the edge and tried to take some pressure off his lower back. Spikes of neuralgia drove down the backs of his thighs and took hold of his gut, cramping and hard.

"Doctor Jackson, perhaps you would be more comfortable…"

"No, I’m fine," he told her. Cold sweat gathered on his upper lip and on his eyelids.

Doctor Sebastian rose from her seat and joined him at the window. Her voice quiet and concerned, she asked, "Are you in a great deal of pain?"

Daniel’s legs began to tremble and he pressed one hand into his eye. "Oh, enough, I guess."

"Have you been using the suppositories I prescribed?"

Humiliation and anger rained down on him in equal parts. He turned his face from her and ground his teeth together. It was a purely medical question. It was a simple question between doctor and patient, but the back-story, the events that made the question pertinent bristled with humiliation and shame, and because of it, he couldn’t help but be angry that she had to ask.

"I’m fine," he said again, distancing himself from her. "I’m just…I’m fine."

"I realize this in an uncomfortable subject for you, but your pain is merely a result of a physical trauma, nothing more," she told him. Daniel stepped around her desk chair taking awkward, halting steps, finally stopping at the farthest reaches of the room. "You needn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed, Doctor."

"I know. I know." He pressed his shoulders to the wall and counted. One, two, three, four, five…Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…

Doctor Sebastian walked to her door, opened it only a few inches, and motioned to the person waiting outside.

Breathe, Daniel told himself. God, breathe…

Sergeant Garanzia stepped through the door and edged in before Daniel, spoke to him in hushed words, watched him nod his head. She kept her eyes riveted to the man, asked him questions and remained very calm. Daniel bound his arms across his midsection and whispered back his response.

Doctor Sebastian stood separated from them and allowed the young man and his assistant to come up with a plan. She knew Daniel needed to be in the care of Sergeant Garanzia, to be in the capable, caring hands of the nurse, away from the tension of emotions and memory. That’s why she had assigned the sergeant to Daniel’s case. Doctor Sebastian knew he would need someone he could trust, someone who would assist him, someone who had no history with him. Doctor Sebastian knew Daniel would need a protector. Sergeant Garanzia, with her carefully chosen words, her unflappable composure, was the precise person for the job, and for Daniel’s sake, Doctor Sebastian was very thankful.

"Okay?" Doctor Sebastian heard the sergeant say to Daniel. Sergeant Garanzia turned her attention to the physician and said, "I’ll take Doctor Jackson back to his room, ma’am." She held out her hand, guiding Daniel toward the door.

"Perhaps we can talk later," Doctor Sebastian said to Daniel.

Daniel nodded and let Sergeant Garanzia escort him back to his room.

Out in the open corridor, Daniel trailed his trembling hand against the wall. Each step compounded the pain, and by feeling his way down the hall, Daniel could close his eyes and try to escape it.

Sergeant Garanzia let Daniel choose the pace and remained silent by his side the entire time.

She opened his door for him, allowed him to pass, watched him slide himself into his bed, and cup his body around his pain.

"I’ll be back in a few minutes with your prescription," she said.

Not waiting for a sign that he heard, Sergeant Garanzia slipped out of the room.

Crestfallen, his body pulsating with a deep, inner agony, Daniel slipped his hands between his knees and tried once again to knead away his memories.

He tried to clean the tablet of retention. Swipe it away. Renounce its power. But it kept returning—a jolt of pain, a flash of images, an unruly sense of panic. He pushed his mind, his intellect to reason it out. He fervently hoped his ability to be logical and forgiving would enable him to surmount it all.

But his mind was under constant attack, and when it could no longer endure the bombardment, his body became the target.

"Perhaps your body reacts to what your soul cannot comprehend," Doctor Sebastian had told him.

Daniel didn’t want to be a body. His body had never been as useful to him as his mind, and he didn’t want to be concerned with the thrumming pain that invaded his temporal flesh. No, it was his mind that would deliver him. It was his mind that would keep him safe. He had no other choice but to believe it.

He had tried to reason his way out of the brutality so many months ago, and look where that got him. He had hoped his intelligence would be his shield, his ability to be rational his protective layer. Intelligence and logic along with pleading and defending himself became as useless as bullets without a gun. His greatest weapon, and it abandoned him at every turn.

Lying frozen with pain in his bed, staring at the hazy whiteness out his window, Daniel was trapped—in his body, in his mind, in a bed. Nothing he did—nothing--seemed to work anymore.

And really, did it ever work?

He had tried to become a shadow, a vestige of the man he once was. He had reasoned that maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t be able to find him if he became an umbra in the presence of the glaring fulmination. Nothing could find him if he crept alongside, merely an indistinct, remnant of spirit.

But they always found him. Then. Now. They found him at night. During the long stretches of sleepless hours, Daniel couldn’t shift fast enough when rough hands and blistering eyes tore at him. Couldn't ignore when his body violently revolted against the remembered assaults, and he ended up stumbling from his bed, doubled over with cramps and nausea churning his insides.

So even though he tried to convince himself that he had no knowledge of his ordeal, his body always reminded him that he was lying. Every ache screamed at him, "Remember this?"

With no escape, Daniel turned his eyes into the softness of his pillow and wept.

*****

Jack was the last to step through the wormhole, and he, like the three before him, looked perplexed.

"Colonel?" General Hammond said while his 2IC descended the ramp.

"If Salvador Dali were still alive, I’d say we should send NID out to check on him, sir, because L57…whatever whatever whatever was…well, to put it technically, sir, it was wack," Jack told him. "Sinclair Lewis would have been frightened. ee cummings, sir, would have been left scratching his head. Steven King…okay, well, he might have found inspiration from the place, but…"

"I’m sure our debriefing will be highly…informative, Colonel," the general said, his rotund belly shaking with a soft chortle.

"That it should be, General. That it should be," Jack said, clumping loudly down the steps. "Right after I take a handful of aspirin."

"Jack," General Hammond said.

Hearing his first name was never a good sign where Jack was concerned, and he turned to the general with no small amount of nervousness.

"Jack, I wanted to give you the head’s up on a situation before you got wind of it," the general said.

"I’m not going to like this, am I, sir?" said Jack, removing his hat and scratching his head.

"Major Davis called me earlier this morning to warn me that Senator Kinsey has shown a particular interest in Doctor Jackson’s file." The general, his face flushed with anger, wrung his hands together. "I’m sorry, Jack, but…"

"No!" Jack growled. "If you’re going to tell me that Kinsey wants to talk with Daniel, NO!"

"Jack…"

"No way in hell, sir," he continued. "Look, General, I mean no disrespect, but if you don’t stop this thing from happening, I’m gonna shoot that rat bastard myself if he so much as takes a step near Mental Health."

"Colonel, I don’t like this anymore than you," the general boomed, "but you would be wise to keep threats like that to yourself. Do you understand me, Colonel?"

Jack ground his teeth together while his limbs twitched with anger. "Yes, sir."

"Senator Kinsey will not be coming to the SGC. Major Davis will be here in a few days to discuss the matter. I simply wanted to make you aware of what’s coming down the pike."

"I appreciate that, sir," Jack managed to say before his anger bubbled over again. "Dammit, General! I told Daniel I wouldn’t let anything happen to him. I gave him my WORD that he would be safe."

"I understand, Jack, but—"

"If you let this happen, if you let those sons a bitches do this—"

"What?!" the general demanded. "What will you do, Colonel? Resign? Go in, guns blaring? Pirate Doctor Jackson away so they can’t reach him? What?"

"I don’t know!" Jack said. "Something."

"And then what will happen?"

"I don’t know, but at least they won’t be able to bother Daniel anymore," Jack said.

"And you won’t be allowed to see him again," the general reminded him, bringing his rough tone down, smoothing over the painful truth of the matter. "Any rash decision you make now can only harm Daniel further. What’s more, I think you know that."

Jack crushed his teeth together and closed his eyes. "I promised him, sir."

"I realize that, Jack, and believe me when I say I will do everything in my power to make sure you keep that promise." General Hammond. "Now why don’t you go clean up? We’ll debrief in an hour." General Hammond patted Jack on the shoulder and left the room.

Alone in the gate room save the ammunitions storage officer, Jack unlatched his weapon, gave it to the sergeant and stared at the Gate.

Stared at it and cursed it for the execrable lot it had brought to those who ventured through it and to those who would enjoy an unsavory career because of it.

*****

Daniel entered the office slowly and found Doctor Sebastian to be seated behind her desk. He headed directly to his seat and carefully lowered himself into it.

Doctor Sebastian looked up from her work, removed her glasses and smiled. "Ah, Doctor Jackson. How are you feeling?"

Daniel pressed his elbows into his thighs and let his hair shield his face. "I’m fine."

"Do you feel well enough to continue our conversation?" she asked, slipping around her desk.

"Conversation."

"Yes, conversation."

"It’s not a conversation," he told her, holding his bangs off his forehead with both hands. Strands of hair sprouted out from between his fingers like the frayed ends of electrical wires.

"What would you call it?" she asked, taking her seat across from him.

Inquisition. Witch-hunt. Invasion, he thought. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Do you miss academia?" she asked.

His fingers raked through his hair until they met at the back of his neck. "Sometimes. Yes."

"Why?"

He knew she’d ask that. Sometimes he felt like he could run his own therapy session—ask a question, get an answer. Ask another question, get another answer. Keep asking the same damn question, keep answering the same damn answer. It never ended.

"Doctor Jackson, what about the academic world do you miss?" she asked.

Daniel lifted his head and let out a long breath. "Oh, I don’t know. I guess I miss…the sense of exploration and discovery."

"Tell me, how is that unlike your position in the SGC?"

Daniel felt the wind rush from him. Tired of fighting and left a little less prepared by the drugs he had been given hours earlier, Daniel slouched in his chair and rested his head in his propped up hand. "It was easier."

"Go on."

A small imperfection in the gray carpeting caught Daniel’s attention and helped him move away from the tears he felt springing in his eyes. He pulled his lips to the side of his mouth and blinked, focusing on that one spot of black in the sea of gray. "If I had stayed with my university job, if I hadn’t been so…zealous in my theories, I’d have tenure by now."

"But your theories were proven correct, were they not?" she asked.

"Yeah. Well…yes," Daniel said, but even so, what did it prove?

"When you say it was easier, how so?" Doctor Sebastian asked. She placed her glasses back across her nose and watched his subdued and reticent body language.

"I’ve studied most of the civilizations on Earth," he said, rubbing his thumb over his scalp. "I understand them."

"Then where is the exploration and discovery?"

Daniel became enmeshed with the black fibers stuck in the carpet. Its solitary nature drew him in, shielding him from having to show his burdensome emotions.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I guess the discovery came when I’d find some research that was wrong, or a translation that was incorrect."

"But through the SGC, you’ve been able to discover whole civilizations. Does this not excite you?" Doctor Sebastian held her pen in her hand, waiting for his reply to such a leading, provocative question.

"Whole civilizations," he repeated in a whisper. Back and forth, he thumbed his hair. "I never wanted to discover…them."

"But you did," she reminded him as gently as possible, knowing if she only could lead him in the right direction, he’d be able to open his full and heavy heart, unburden himself of memory—fetid and propagating in venom.

"I wish I hadn’t," he said. Daniel closed his eyes, long dry from staring at the fleck of black. "I wish I hadn’t done a lot of things."

"Like what, Doctor?"

Like fighting to stay alive, he thought. Like trying to pretend there was a life back home worth returning to.

"Doctor?"

"I I I I don’t know," Daniel said, shifting his hips and pulling his head up.

"You bring yourself to edges, Doctor Jackson," she said, leaning toward him. "You get just to the edge, and then you back away. Why do you think you do that?"

He lifted his eyes to her, began to speak and then thought better of it. On her desk was a green shaded lamp, and on that lamp was dust, and in the dust was a speck of white.

"Doctor Jackson, what are you afraid of?"

He focused on the minute speck of white until the sight of the lamp disappeared and all that was left was the dust. No dimension other than the imperfection, no depth to the room. A steel rod connecting his eyes to that blemish.

"Doctor Jackson?"

After a moment, her question registered and Daniel let the pitiful answer be known. "Falling off, of course," he said and blinked. "You need to dust."

Doctor Sebastian crossed her arms over her knees. "Yes, I’m sure I do. What do you think would happen if you fell?"

"I’m allergic to dust."

"I’ll give you an antihistamine," she told him. "Can you answer my question?"

"I don’t want anymore drugs."

"About the question."

"No."

"Why don’t you try?"

"Because."

"That is the answer of a little boy," she said. "What would happen if you allowed yourself to remember?"

"I remember," Daniel whispered.

"What do you remember?" she asked.

"About what?"

"Shall we try about whom?"

Daniel’s eyes fluttered in a listless tempo and his lips pulled back across his teeth. "Them?"

"Yes," Doctor Sebastian said, nodding. "Let’s begin with one word. Tell me the one word that comes to mind when you remember them."

Daniel dropped his head into his awaiting left hand and thought. And thought. And no words came. Only silence and the niggling of still raw wounds. It started in his hands, then moved to his arms and legs—a trembling.

"You will not fall, Doctor Jackson,"

It was only when his lungs began to clench and burn that he remembered to breathe. When he at last looked up to meet her eyes, the sight of her was blurred and distorted. "Anger."

"Anger? Toward them?"

"No," he whispered. "Maybe…" Or maybe it was an overwhelming anger with his own lack of strength. Maybe it was the burdensome task of carrying his own cowardice, of having allowed them to break him so easily. Maybe it was the awesome guilt for having crumbled when others—Jack, Sam, Teal’c—had surely been through worse, but they seemed to be fine. Why? Why couldn’t he just walk away? Why have to live with the pain of having been broken?

"Maybe, what?" she asked.

"Maybe I’ve already fallen."

"And how does that feel?"

On the table next to him was a box of tissues. Daniel reached for it and pressed his thumb into the sharp corner. He extended his hand over the top and pressed the pad of his middle finger into the opposite corner. He stared at the box.

"Doctor Jackson?"

The corners dug into his fingers, and the pain somehow soothed him. The more he squeezed the box, the greater the pain, and the sensation was oddly satisfying.

"Let’s go back to earlier today, shall we?" she asked, realizing he was too close for any productive results. Time to pull away and attack from a different angle, she decided. "Today you quoted a section of ‘The Odyssey’ to me. For me—for my…admitted lack of literary knowledge, tell me what you said."

It took some digging to think back that far, but Daniel plowed through the muddled remains of his memory to dredge up the afternoon’s conversation. "Um, Zeus: ‘How foolish men are. How unjustly they blame the gods. It is their lot to suffer, but because of their own folly they bring upon themselves sufferings over and above what is fated for them. And they blame…" And all of a sudden, he heard the words he had chosen to translate. He heard the words that he hadn’t consciously chosen to say. He heard the words and wondered why they had come to him. "…and they blame the…the gods." A chill dribbled down his spine. His gaze darted across the floor, his eyes rolled and closed.

"Who do you blame?"

Disgusted by his weakness, Daniel said, "I don’t blame anyone."

"Do you blame God?"

"No."

"Do you believe in God?"

"I am an agnostic."

"Not an atheist?"

"No."

Doctor Sebastian paused. She watched him clench and unclench his jaw muscles, dig his nails into his skin. An almost palpable tension emanated through his pores, and she wondered how long he could hold out before he became his own worse enemy.

"Tell me why you are an agnostic."

Daniel ran his hands through his hair, tussling it. "I want to get my hair cut."

"I’ll make arrangements for it. What makes you an agnostic?"

"It’s just too long. I don’t…I’ve never liked long hair."

"I will make you a bargain: Let us finish this conversation, and I will take you to the barber myself as soon as we are finished," she said, smiling, though brooking no nonsense. "Now, please, continue."

Daniel kneaded the palms of his hands into his aching brow and thought the bargain was fair. "I’ve seen enough to know that…God, or…a higher power, or whatever definition you choose, exists, but I can’t in full consciousness state that there is one all powerful deity. But I’m also not willing to believe there are none. So, I ride a fence of agnosticism—always in search of…some truth."

Doctor Sebastian considered his answer. "I think riding a fence of skepticism." She didn’t believe it, but it wasn’t her job to agree or disagree, only to promote discussion.

The topic, like all topics in her office, began to tire Daniel. He leaned back his head and wrapped his arms across his chest. "No, in search of more concrete affirmation. Maybe…maybe I’ve seen too much to believe. Maybe I’ve seen too much not to believe."

"Maybe you don’t want to be angry at another person who should have protected you but didn’t?"

What was the use of a gift to speak and to battle with words if he could be tripped up so easily? What was the use of taking pride in the ability to debate and convince with logical arguments if one retort could diminish him so effectively? When at last he could breathe again, Daniel said, "I never asked for protection."

"And you did not receive any." Doctor Sebastian took no pleasure in inflicting such pain, but as a physician she knew, before a wound can heal, it must be abraded.

"Doctor Jackson, I should like to ask you again: With whom are you angry?" she asked.

Things began to flicker past his mind. Pictures of people flitted in and out of his sight. Visions of faces he thought he had destroyed poked at his memory. People he loved; people he feared; people he had forgotten. Those who had left him; those he had left.

"Doctor Jackson?"

And one face kept glaring at him. One face screamed his name. One face spat out his anger and resentment clearly and for all to see. That one face, a crystalline image representing Daniel’s greatest failure, with obsidian eyes and a brandished weapon, bore into Daniel’s mind and lacerated his soul.

"Doctor Jackson, with whom are you angry?" she asked. She watched Daniel, eyes open, his head shaking in a continuous negation of her words, or maybe his. She watched him and counted each tear that broke across the threshold of his sorrow.

And then the fragile armature of his face demolished. When at last his voice responded to thought, it was threadbare and willowy.

"Me."

*****

"It does," Sam said, nodding, inspecting the freshly cut hair. With it cropped so close to his head, the presence of the random gray hairs became more visible. They coalesced into patches at his temples, and if they weren’t framing Daniel’s prematurely lined eyes, Sam might otherwise think the gray was stunning. But it wasn’t. More like…stunned, she thought, but she couldn’t let Daniel know that. She stole a manufactured smile, nodded her head and said, "It looks good."

"Welcome to the Grecian Formula club, pal," Jack said, ripping open his bag of chips and coughing when Sam’s elbow creased his solar plexus.

"I believe the gray hair makes you look rather distinguished," Teal’c said. He bowed in honor of Daniel’s new features.

Jack straightened up and crooked a lopsided smile. "I’m touched, Teal’c."

"I was speaking only to DanielJackson," Teal’c said, raising his chin.

Jack slunk back down in his chair and parroted Teal’c’s statement.

"I agree with Teal’c," Sam said. "In fact, you look well. For the first time in a long time, you look…" She smiled and shook her head. "You look like Daniel."

Daniel looked away and shrugged off the suggestion that he looked well. He knew it was their wish and not the reality that he looked better. He knew that it was just his friends really hoping things were good with him.

Things weren’t good. He didn’t look better. He wasn’t looking well. Not at all. Every morning he looked in the mirror to tear his stubble away from his face with the electric razor, he saw how he was—decimated.

"So, Daniel," Jack said. He picked up the bag of tortilla chips he had brought with him and offered them to Daniel. Daniel waved them off. "Um, I was…up in the mountains the other day fishing."

"I went with him," Sam told Daniel in an aside. She rolled her eyes.

Jack, not one to strike up conversation even if he did have a riveting topic, was beginning to wish he’d listened to the news more carefully the night before. Maybe then he’d have something to talk about. Something. ANYTHING. He dipped his hand in the chips and tried to keep up the story about fishing. Hell, he thought it was stimulating; Daniel probably would, too.

The afternoon had been an exercise in heavy labor trying to get Daniel to join them in any conversation. The three of them had thought they’d stop by, bring Daniel some lunch, gab. Show him that they were thinking about him, that they hadn’t forgotten about him. They brought sandwiches and chips, a box of brownies and a thermos full of coffee, and they piled into one of the lounges down the hall from Daniel’s room.

It seemed so simple. Apparently, they had forgotten to tell Daniel that it was supposed to be simple.

Every conversation fell flat, or in the laps of the other three. Observations of Daniel’s healthy look went unacknowledged. Whatever they tried to do to bring Daniel into the fold was rejected or ignored. He just stared, past them, through them, consumed by a conversation within his own dispirited mind.

"So, we’re in the mountains…fishing," Jack said. He chewed on a chip waiting for the next part of the story to come to him.

Nothing.

Sam seemed to understand that it was her turn to interject. "Aaand, we…caught a couple fish."

"It was astounding to me, as well," Teal’c said, keeping his demeanor placid.

"Sarcasm, Teal’c. Maybe not your best look," Jack said. He glanced at the Jaffa sidelong and then backed off when Teal’c raised an eyebrow of dissent.

Daniel remained still as air, not at all interested in Jack’s story, or any story, for that matter. He stared at the end of the armchair, ran his fingernails over his scalp and worried that the bones in his skull were cracking open.

"Okay, well, maybe the fishing part wasn’t…all that exciting, but we did almost run out of gas," Jack said. He pointed to Sam, hoping that she’d pick up the line.

Sam looked at Jack, nodded that she understood, and began to speak. "Uh, yeah. We…did."

"I tell you," Jack said, cutting off any attempt Sam was going to make to carry on in the conversation, "you get up there in the mountains, the gas prices are ridiculous. You know my truck, right, Daniel?"

They seemed to be splitting under the intense pressure, these cranial bones. Daniel closed his eyes and pressed his head against his hand, hoped that if he pushed hard enough, the world would not explode through the fissures in his skull.

"Daniel?" Jack said. He put down the bag of chips and stepped closer to him.

"Your truck," Daniel managed to say. "Yes. I know your truck."

Jack shared a worried glance with Sam and Teal’c and then continued.

"Anyhow, my truck takes about 35 gallons to fill it up, and when you’re buying gas from Joe the local station owner, well…you do the math," Jack said. He sat down and looked over the faces of the people in the room, clearly not riveted by his story. "No, I mean it, Carter. You do the math. It’s like…math. You know me…"

"Oh," Sam said. She blinked. "I’m sorry, sir. What was the question?"

"It’s not important," Jack said, flicking his hand through the air. "Needless to say, to fill up my tank is almost as expensive as…" Jack thought about his words, "…as a tow. Huh. Maybe I should just have my truck towed to work each morning. May be cheaper."

"Gas is expensive these days, O’Neill?" Teal’c asked.

"Expensive?" Jack asked, glad someone was listening. "It’s up there with any of your precious metals, yes."

Daniel perched both elbows on the armrests and clutched his head in his hands, pressing the separating bones together.

"So, your story isn’t so much about fishing as it is about…gas prices," Sam said.

"Pretty much." Jack said. "I mean, you take one trip out of the city, and they rape you over gas prices."

The word sliced into Daniel’s ears, like the corroded edge of a rusted blade. "What?"

Jack looked around. He wasn’t sure who had asked. "I said gas prices are terrible outside the city. Daniel?"

"No," Daniel said. He gouged his fingernails into his scalp. "No, you said they…You said when you were talking about gas prices that they…You can’t be…over gas prices. God, Jack!"

"Daniel, what did I say?" Jack asked his friends for some clarification, and fast.

Sam tossed the container of brownies onto the side table and started toward Daniel.

"You should be more careful, Jack!" Daniel said, drilling into Jack with burning eyes. His hands fisted into impervious balls of rage. "Why can’t you choose your words more carefully? You can’t just…you can’t just use words so…so carelessly."

"Daniel," Jack began, shaking his head, "what did I say?"

"God, Jack! Words are powerful and…Jesus Christ, Jack!"

"Would somebody just tell me what the hell I said?" Jack bellowed.

"You said…they rape you, sir," Sam told him, less concerned for Jack than Daniel. She crouched next to Daniel and reached her hand forward to console him. "Daniel…"

"Touch me, and I’ll hurt you," Daniel said, catching the advancement of her hand in his peripheral sight. His fixed stare never left Jack’s eyes, but he said again, "I mean it, Sam. I will hurt you."

Sam pulled her hand away and nodded. "Okay."

"Why did you say that, Jack?" Daniel demanded.

"I didn’t mean anything by it, Daniel," Jack said, shaking his head.

Daniel rocketed out of his seat, knocking Sam to her backside. "WHY?" Daniel’s focus, splintering with acrimony, remained taut on Jack. His wild eyes black with dilated fury

Jack rose and held his hands out between them both. "Daniel, calm down."

"No, Jack. Not until you tell me why you…why you chose that that that word? Why?"

"I’ll get Doctor Sebastian," Sam said, scuttling out of the room.

"Daniel, I made a mistake. I didn’t mean anything by it," Jack said, trying to keep calm and quiet.

"You can’t be…gas prices don’t…Jesus, Jack!" Daniel said. A lava flow of anger burst through his limbs, and release, one way or another, became frighteningly imminent. "Jesus!" He picked up his chair and pitched it at Jack. "Why did you say that?!" Daniel grabbed the chair next to him, raised it to his shoulders and whipped it across the room.

"Daniel, god dammit!" Jack yelled, ducking.

"DanielJackson!" Teal’c grabbed Daniel’s arms from behind and did not allow him to throw another piece of furniture.

With his arms locked down, with the familiar scent of musk and filth, the familiar sound of panting air, and the familiar response of fighting even if they killed him, Daniel opened his mouth and screamed. He would not let this happen. Not again. He screamed and kicked and clawed his way out of their arms and threw himself into the corner of his cell. He slid to the floor, ready to become a storm of arms and legs, kicking feet and clawing hands.

Two orderlies rushed into the room, followed by a doctor whose white lab coat rustled in his wake.

"I’m Doctor Collant," he said, kneeling in front of Daniel.

"Where’s Doctor Sebastian?" Jack demanded.

The orderlies cornered Daniel and reached for him, began to subdue him.

"She wasn’t available, so I stepped in," the young doctor said without looking at Jack. "Doctor Jackson? Doctor Jackson, can you hear me?"

Daniel splayed his hands against the wall and kicked with every ounce of madness left in his body. He kicked and screamed and slapped and cried and dug at his own body with his hands.

"No!" he screamed. "You can't do this!"

"When did this start?" the doctor demanded, pulling a hypodermic from his pocket.

"A minute ago," Sam told him. She rushed to her knees and tried to get in close to her friend, feral and uncontrollable. "Daniel, honey. Daniel!"

"You can't DO this!" he screamed, unable to see them, only his cell and the hands rushing to silence him.

"Doctor Jackson, I need you to calm down now," the doctor called. "Hold him still."

The hands ripped Daniel’s limbs, twisted his joints and forced open his mouth. They dug into his delicate flesh, pinching and enjoying his tender skin. He writhed and bucked, tearing his arms from their avaricious grasp.

"Kill me!" he screamed.

"Daniel!"

"Doctor Jackson!"

"God! Kill me!"

"Danny, relax!"

"Hold him still!"

"No!" Jack ordered, reaching for the burly orderlies who held Daniel down. "Get off!"

"Colonel, we have this under control," Doctor Collant told him, plunging the sedative deep into Daniel’s arm.

"Daniel, I’m here!" Sam called out. "Daniel!"

"Kill me…"

Jack shoved an orderly away. "Get off him!"

"Kill me…"

"What the hell is going on here?" Doctor Sebastian said, racing into the room.

"We had to sedate the patient, ma’am," the young doctor calmly told her, replacing the protective cap on the needle.

"Kill…me…" Two dead eyes peered out of sunken holes.

"Daniel, sweetie," Sam said, clutching at his slackening limbs. "Daniel?"

"Who gave you the order to sedate my patient?" Doctor Sebastian asked. She pushed the younger officer out of the way, crouched down and looked directly into Daniel’s eyes. "Doctor Jackson? Doctor?"

"You told me he’d be safe," Jack growled, spinning to face Sebastian. "You promised me he’d be safe."

Doctor Sebastian shook her head and scowled. She turned to Doctor Collant and demanded, "I said who gave you the order to sedate my patient, Major Collant?"

"Kill…"

"It has always been procedure to sedate a patient when—"

"Under Doctor MacKenzie!" Doctor Sebastian said, silencing him with a steely glare. "I head this department now. You were made aware of the changes. There will no longer be mass sedations just to suit our needs."

The junior officer cocked his head to the side. "Surely, Doctor Sebastian—"

"Get out!" she demanded.

"But—"

Teal’c stepped in next to the doctor. "I believe you were asked to leave."

Doctor Collant gave Daniel one last look and rounded in haste to leave the room.

"You promised me," Jack said, his features pinched with fury. "And I promised Daniel."

"I am sorry for this," Doctor Sebastian said. She checked Daniel’s pulse, found it steady, flawless in its normalcy.

"Daniel?" Sam whispered, wiping his damp brow. "Daniel?" His limbs hung loose across his body, his hands draped without care over his legs.

"Take him to his room," Doctor Sebastian told the orderlies.

Jack shielded Daniel from the orderlies. "Not a chance in hell."

Doctor Sebastian waved the orderlies away. The two men looked at each other and followed orders.

"Teal’c," Jack said, lifting Daniel’s arm over his shoulder. Teal’c picked up Daniel’s dangling arm and together they lifted the boneless body from the floor. Daniel could feel Jack’s hand around his back, Teal’c’s around his waist, pulling him up off the floor, and for a brief moment he had the disconcerting sensation of tumbling forward, of being in a freefall.

Doctor Sebastian stepped back to give them room. "Colonel O’Neill—"

"Nice outfit you got goin’ here, Doc," Jack called back, and then he and Teal’c were rounding the corner into the hall.

As Jack and Teal’c whisked Daniel down the hall, Daniel’s only sensation was muted movement, a dull, thick motion. His head lobbed forward, heavy and listless. His eyes no longer recognized sight; his ears no longer registered sound. He was floating and had reason to believe things would never change.

"Let’s get him in bed," Jack said, holding Daniel’s arm steady, his hand grasped firmly to Daniel’s belt.

A world away from care and pain, Daniel hovered in his palliative dominion of chemical freedom.

Jack held Daniel’s head while they lowered him to his bed. "Easy."

Teal’c pulled the thin sheet up to Daniel’s shoulders and stepped away.

A smear of color caught Jack’s eye, and without turning, he said, "You let this happen."

"Colonel O’Neill, I can assure you Doctor Collant will be disciplined for his actions," Doctor Sebastian said.

"Damn straight he’ll be disciplined," Jack told her. He rose from Daniel’s side and began to stride out of the room.

"Colonel O’Neill," she called after him, "if you think you are going to interfere with one of my men, you had better reconsider, sir."

"One of your men just messed with one of mine," Jack said, tacking and charging toward her.

"And I will handle it," she said. She held her ground, defying his glowering stare with her own steely intractability. "For now, and in my hospital, you will stand down."

Jack stared hard at her and ground his teeth together. He had made a promise to Daniel that he’d be fine, that he’d be safe, that no one would hurt him. The promise broken, his friend diminished to a puddle of drugs, Jack could hardly contain his bitter anger.

"I am…furious that this happened to Doctor Jackson, Colonel," Doctor Sebastian said, speaking the words through her clenched teeth. "What’s done is done, and I give you my word—my word as an officer—that it will never, NEVER happen again."

"Yeah, well, you know what? That means squat to me," Jack said.

"I understand your anger."

"Do ya now?"

"Furthermore, I do not think it is unjustified, but for Doctor Jackson’s sake—"

"For Doctor Jackson’s sake, I’m gonna rip ol’ Doc Colon a new one!"

"And how would that solve anything?" she asked, stepping forward. "Haven’t we seen living proof that violence--that…brutality proves nothing?"

Jack leaned toward her and quietly said, "I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m just gonna even the score."

"Colonel," Sam said, appearing at his side.

"Back off, Sam. This doesn’t involve you," Jack told her.

Teal’c flanked Jack’s other side and placed a sympathetic, cautionary hand on Jack’s chest.

Jack looked down at the massive hand covering his heart and at his 2IC’s concerned look, and then back to Doctor Sebastian. "You promised me he’d be safe."

"He will be," she offered, trying to diffuse whatever combustible emotions were coursing through her fellow officer.

"He’d better be." Jack slapped Teal’c’s hand away and marched out of the room.

"He will be safe," Doctor Sebastian assured Sam and Teal’c.

"Yes, ma’am," Sam said, regarding her senior with an arctic demeanor. "Permission to be excused, ma’am?"

Doctor Sebastian nodded, and Sam and Teal’c removed themselves from the quiet room.

*****

Long into the uncomfortable night they waited outside his door. Long past the shift changes, the meals and the rotation of the setting sun, they waited for Daniel to wake up.

Sam stretched her legs out in front of her, pointed her toes and tried to get some feeling back in her body. She glanced over at the colonel, asleep sitting up. She marveled at his talents. She smiled to Teal’c who nodded back to her. And then she stood up.

"I can’t take it anymore," she said. She wiped her hands on the seat of her pants and pressed Daniel’s door open, just a smidge, to see where he was.

"Daniel?" she called. His bed, though mussed, was vacant. "Daniel?"

The frosty light of the moon poured over the windowsill and endowed the floor in an ethereal glow.

Perched in the outer reaches of the moon’s bright light, bathed in its shimmering opalescence sat Daniel. His limbs pulled up to his body, his expression flaccid and blind, he had sometime during the silent night settled himself on the hard, cold floor.

"When did you get out of bed?" Sam whispered, entering the room.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t say a word. He stared at whatever his mind could see.

"Daniel?" Sam said, careful to approach him with slow steps. "Daniel, you okay?"

In the shroud of the moon’s light, Daniel’s skin was a ghastly shade of violet. Sam couldn’t be sure he was even breathing, but in the selenian light she saw the flesh in the soft hollow of his neck bounce up and down in a slow, steady rhythm.

"Daniel, I’m just going to sit down next to you, okay? I won’t touch you. I promise." Sam lowered herself to the ground and sat with her back against the same wall, just below the casement of the window. She crossed her legs and touched her hands together in her lap. She hoped she’d find some way to talk to him, to express all the sorrow in her heart.

But she was mute. She was numb and mute and spent and tired, and all she wanted was a way to turn back time. That’s all. She wanted her friend back, whole and exasperating. She wanted her confidante back. She wanted Daniel.

"Why did this have to happen?" she cried. Sam picked at a loose string peeking out of a seam in her pants. She sucked in a harsh breath and shook her head. "Well, you have to get better, Daniel. That’s all there is to it."

The stillness of the room, the somber mixture of sedation and silence, was soon filled with Sam’s breathy sobs. "You’re my touchstone, Daniel. I’m lost without you. So, if you can’t get better for yourself, get better for me, okay? Please?"

Her chin touched her chest at the same time she felt his head touch her shoulder. When she turned her tear-filled eyes, she saw him leaning against her.

"Daniel?"

Expressionless, two eyes beholding nothing, his cheek rested against her shoulder. And when she bent over to catch a glimpse of his face--strangely beatific in the moonlight--a renewed anguish rocked Sam’s body.

"Oh, Daniel," she wept. Caught between wanting to pull him in closer and wanting to preserve the moment, Sam wavered, unsure of which direction or action to take. "Daniel…"

Her focus traversed the room, settling nowhere, afraid to move the rest of her body. She knew she was trembling; thought he surely must feel it. The weight of his horrific journeys seemed to be pressed against her shoulder, and all she wanted to do was embrace it further, tighter, and continue the journey for him so he could rest.

"Daniel, please get well," she whispered. "I can’t protect you like this. I can’t protect you from your mind. Please get well."

And then she felt it. One hand, soft as breath, hovered against her cheek. Touched her with a tenderness almost impossible to feel. With an exigency she didn’t think possible, Sam pressed into the hand and sought comfort.

"I can’t protect you, Daniel," she whispered between sips of air. Lifting her hand to his, Sam wove her fingers through his and cried for them both.

They sat together in the pale light of the harvest moon, Daniel’s hand against her face, her hand enmeshed with his, while tears silent as the fluttering of moth wings, edged across her cheek.

"Daniel," she whispered, needing more. Sam tucked her arm behind him, and when he didn’t protest, when he didn’t even respond, she sought more. She took great care and time to pull him into her lap and cradle him in her arms. And he let her. She hushed him, though he was silent; told him everything would be all right, not that he cared.

While she rocked him, stroking his peaceful brow, she wept, and he stared. He stared past the opulent light, past the glossy shine of the tiled floor, past the sliver of hallway lighting and into the hall itself, where Jack stood watching the two, numb with sorrow.

And Jack knew Daniel was in there--maybe a thousand light years away--and he knew Daniel was staring at him and wondering, "Why, Jack?"

And Jack knew the days of being the one Daniel turned to were over. He knew he had squandered away the right when he treated Daniel with such wanton cruelty and disdain.

His head pounding with self-reproach, Jack stepped away from the door so he didn’t have to see the two eyes that reminded him of his censurable guilt. He stepped away so he didn’t have to see further evidence of how much he had lost almost a full year ago.

*****

Janet pulled the sweater off the passenger seat and stepped out of her car. She had a pretty good idea where she’d find Jack, so when the knocks on his door went unanswered, Janet walked around the back.

Sure enough, there he was—feet propped up on the rail, slouched deeply in a chair, his telescope angled low to his eye.

"Colonel," she called from the base of the ladder.

"Sorry. Can’t come to the door. I’m rinsing my delicates," Jack said, checking in on the Sagittarius Arm and the Carina Nebula.

"Had I known, I’d have brought over my laundry," Janet said, reaching the top of the landing. "How’s the universe tonight?"

"Just about where it should be—out there." Bright young stars winked at him, their pinkish glow enchanting the colonel. Celestial sirens he knew not to listen to.

Janet walked to the edge of the deck, each step thudding on the raised platform. "Nice night. Little chilly, though."

"What brings you here, Doc?" he asked, adjusting the focus.

"I was across town at Mental Health checking in on Daniel, and thought I’d stop by," she said, pulling her sweater over her head.

"Oh, yeah? How is he?" Jack asked. He brought his beer to his lips without taking his eye off the optical. The darker, denser Carina shrouded the precocious stars in dust, protecting them, occluding them.

"Same as yesterday. Quiet. Withdrawn," she said, looking out over his dark lawn. "Sam’s with him."

Jack deepened the focus. "She’s good with him."

"Yes, she is." Lightning bugs randomly popped up below her. "So is Doctor Sebastian."

Jack pulled his eye away from the viewfinder and sought Janet’s figure out of the corner of his eye. Knowing that a lecture was at hand, Jack brought his beer to his lips and steeled himself.

"Daniel’s illness…Daniel’s emotional well-being is…" Janet said, trying to find meaning, trying to find a way to describe the clinical without allowing the sorrow to interfere. It was a lesson in futility, and Janet could only shake her head and bluster on. "He’s not well, Colonel, and Doctor Sebastian is doing everything she can for him."

Jack crammed his beer bottle between his thighs and entered some data into his laptop. "Yeah, I know," he said, returning to his telescope. Where’d you go, Carina?

"You do?"

Finding that Carina still lorded over the younger stars, Jack bid farewell to the nebula and swung the telescope away. The universe in check, it was time for confessions in the dark down on planet Earth. "Might as well grab a chair and pull up a beer, Doc. Night’s young."

Taking a moment to get past the shock of Jack’s conciliation, Janet stepped away from the railing, opened the cooler and pulled out a beer. She took her drink to an Adirondack chair covered with tree leaves and twigs, brushed off the seat and lowered herself down into it.

"We need to talk about the other day," she said, and followed her words with something just as bitter—half a bottle of beer.

"It was stupid, and there’s not much I can do to change it," Jack said. "In fact, there’s nothing I can do to change it, so…"

"I’m not here to blame you, Colonel," Janet said, picking at a loose corner of the bottle’s label.

"Then why are ya here, Doc?" Jack asked, pelting Janet with a pinched look and quickly losing interest in the conversation.

"I’m here because…" Janet began to peel the label off her beer, all the while wondering what she really wanted to say.

Jack watched her in the limited light, and when it seemed the silence would go on for a while longer, he said, "Good talk, Doc." He lifted himself from his seat and sauntered over to the cooler. "We should do this more often."

"Doctor Sebastian isn’t the enemy," she finally said.

His hand half in the cooler, Jack stopped. "I know that, too."

"You do?"

He pulled an icy bottle from the chest and snapped the top off his beer, threw the cap into the cooler. "I was angry, and…" Jack hooked his fingers around the neck of the bottle and returned to his chair. "I’m nothing if not sensitive, but watching Daniel have a…a…"

"We call it a psychotic episode," Janet said, trying to enlighten him.

"Yeah, well, I call it a freak show, but the point is," he continued, pouring his long body into the creaking chair, "it wasn’t my idea of a good time. I may have, as in it’s a possibility—albeit a small possibility—taken out my anger on Sebastian." Jack looked up from his bottle to gauge Janet’s reaction. "Maybe."

Janet simply nodded, finished the rest of her beer, and nodded some more. She knew Jack well enough to know that what she had just heard was the O’Neill equivalent of a supplicated, full-throttle mea culpa. You take what you can get, she thought.

"Did you go see him today?" she asked.

"No, I didn’t," Jack said, lifting his beer to his lips with two fingers.

"You planning on seeing him anytime soon?" she asked again.

"Not sure what good that would do."

"You’re his friend. He needs you," Janet reminded him.

"No," Jack said, lowering his beer to the deck. "Daniel needs Carter. Not me."

"How can you say that?"

"Come on, Doc, let’s not do this," Jack said, propelling his lanky frame from the seat.

"I mean it, Colonel," Janet said, joining him at the rail.

Jack dug his hands into the rough wood and slung his head between his shoulders. "Look," he said, rocking back and forth, "Daniel is…There’s a whole trunk full of baggage there, and I have this…feeling that my name’s written all over it. He’ll be better off if I just stay clear."

"I don’t think that’s true," she said.

"Yeah, well," Jack muttered. He kicked his toe against the wooden floor and lowered his elbows to the rail. "Screw it."

"He’s fighting, Colonel," she said. "His mind is split between what happened and what he was and where he’s going. Everyday is a struggle for him to…to go forward and not… " And it was the "and not" that stopped her. It was the thought of where he was headed that caused Janet to cease, to press her fingers against her lips and wait until her throat wasn’t so pinched.

"He’s fighting," she was finally able to say. "What you saw the other day--that was Daniel trying everything he could to beat back this son of a bitch." Janet’s fingers skittered across her lips, her cheek, through her hair. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t do this. That Jack wouldn’t want to have to deal with her on an emotional level. She didn’t want to deal with it on an emotional level, but apparently her emotions were winning out. Janet grabbed hold of the same rail and focused her eyes into the murky darkness. "He’s slipping, Colonel. He can’t fight this alone."

Jack clasped his hands together, his conjoined hands jutting out from the railing, like a bow of a sinking ship. "I don’t know what to say to him."

"You don’t have to say anything." Janet said, while Jack brought his fisted hands to his head, knocked them against his skull. "And no one expects you to fix this. It’s not your responsibility."

"It was." Jack tilted his head up to her. "It was my job to protect him, to protect them all, and I…and I let…" Janet remained still while Jack seemed to come to a stop, running out of steam, running out of explanations. She stood by him and allowed him time to gather his acrid, self-incriminating thoughts, and when he had, his voice was quiet and filled with regret. "I let him walk right into danger. I did. Hell, Doc, I as much as said, ‘Here, take him.’"

"No, you didn’t," she said. "And frankly, Colonel, to suggest you had any hand in this is…well, it’s arrogant."

"Lovin’ this talk, Doc," Jack told her, twisting his face into a frustrated glower. Stepping away from the edge of the deck, he said, "First, I’m an uncaring Neanderthal, and now, I’m a self-centered misanthrope."

"Good words," Janet said, straightening her back.

"Yeah, well, Daniel’s not around to regale us with his vocabulary, so I have to pick up the slack where I can." Jack said. He picked up the lens cap to his telescope, tossed it around in his hand and thought about all the things Daniel wasn’t around to do. Jack closed off the telescope and said, "I seem to have a way with words when it comes to deriding myself these days."

"Jack," Janet said, "just go sit with him."

"I don’t see the point."

"Because it’s what friends do. Daniel would do it—"

"No, don’t go pushing the guilt button, Doc, ‘cause it won’t work."

"But you know it’s true," she said. "He would."

Jack picked up the black cover and held it in his hands while he thought of the times Daniel had sat with him, not talking, just accepting Jack’s silent despairing. "Yes, he would," he finally said, unfolding the cover and blanketing the telescope with it. "I’ll think about it."

"That’s all I ask," Janet said.

Jack smoothed the cover over the scope and tilted his head back to stare at the vastness of space, the incomprehensible breadth of endless possibilities. Of soul-shattering possibilities. "I don’t want to know what happened out there, do I?" he asked.

Janet turned away from him, suddenly overcome by images of suffering, of scars. "I think you know," she managed to say.

Jack uttered obscenities to the cold air and ground his hand into his aching brow.

*****

It wasn’t so much that he was quiet and still. It wasn’t that he didn’t respond to her questions. It was that his eyes were glazed, rimmed and blood shot. It was that the blue seemed to be washed pale and stippled with gray. It was that for all they had conquered, here Daniel was again—locked away in his own silence.

So she continued to stroke his hand and talk to him while the nursing staff changed the sheets on his bed.

"Janet wanted me to tell you she’ll stop by tomorrow. Cass has a concert at school tonight, so she’ll probably see you before she goes back to the base," Sam told him, watching her fingers smooth the skin on top of Daniel’s hand. He stared into the center of the room, not seeing Sam, not even feeling her touch. "There’s been an outbreak of Mono, so she’s been pretty busy. I had it years ago, and…uh, I think you had it…at least I seem to remember you…"

Sam touched her hand beneath her nose and capped off her sudden onset of tears. This is ridiculous, she told herself, and forced a smile. Sam turned her attention to the staff finishing up with Daniel’s bedding and continued to rub his hand, limp in her hand.

"General Hammond’s granddaughter won a dance competition," Sam told him, almost completely at ease with his gathering of scars. Touching the raised, waxy tissue on his wrists no longer made her innards clench. When her sight glanced at the scar where a tracheotomy once poked out, she no longer had to clear her throat in empathy. They were all becoming part of him, all part of who he was. That thought alone brought a different sort of misery to her, so she begged her mind to cast off the comparison of what he had been and what he had become.

"Major," Sergeant Garanzia said, placing a meal tray on the tray table next to Daniel.

"Yes?" Sam said, startled, her eyes bolting up to meet the sergeant’s.

"It’s time for Doctor Jackson’s meal," she said. "Why don’t we talk in the hall?"

"Oh," Sam uttered, looking at Daniel once again, wondering how the hell they were going to feed him. Wondering if he actually ate. "Yeah. Okay. Just…can I have a minute to…"

"Certainly, ma’am," the sergeant said, and she turned to leave the room.

Sam clasped his hand in her embrace, and ground her teeth together. She’d been there for an hour and a half, and in that time she’d seen him blink a few times, take one deep breath, and swallow. All the autonomic responses of a person who was asleep, only with his eyes open.

"Look, Daniel, I have to get back to the base, and you have to eat. Eat, Daniel. Okay? I want to hear that you’ve eaten when I come back to see you. Okay?" she said, not really expecting an answer from him, and not getting one. She reached out and touched his face. "Daniel, come back. It’s time to come back from wherever you are."

Where he was was black and cavernous and void of sound. It was cold and empty and silent. Daniel was locked away, entombed in lethargy, depleted of form.

And nothing Sam could do or say would change that.

Sam stood up, pulled on her jacket and leaned over to kiss him. "I’ll see you soon, Daniel. Have a good lunch." She cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand one last time, and slowly left him to his all-consuming trance.

Sergeant Garanzia was giving a nurse instructions when Sam walked into the hall. The sergeant quickly finished with the nurse and called out to Sam. Sam turned to her and waited for the sergeant to walk closer.

"Do you have a moment to talk, ma’am?" Sergeant Garanzia asked.

Sam thrust her hands into her jacket pockets and shrugged.

"You may not see it," the sergeant said, leading Sam to a quiet room, "but he knows you’re there."

"You’re right. I don’t see it," Sam said. The two women walked into a private room, sparsely appointed, lit only by one corner lamp. They each took seats flanking the meager light.

Sergeant Garanzia smiled and knew it would be an uphill battle trying to explain that Doctor Collant’s hasty decision to sedate Doctor Jackson and Doctor Jackson’s breakdown were mutually exclusive. And because Doctor Sebastian was the Chief of Staff at the facility and Doctor Jackson’s personal physician, the sergeant was quite sure Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill blamed her for their friend’s catatonic state. Sergeant Garanzia felt the record should be set straight.

"Major, what happened the other day was a very unfortunate incident," she began, carefully choosing her words. "But Doctor Jackson’s condition today has more to do with his illness…in fact, is completely due to his illness, rather than the actions of Doctor Collant and the staff."

Sam rubbed the base of her neck, just under her hairline and knew what the sergeant was saying true, but Sam was in no mood to forgive and forget. "Look, why don’t we just skip it? It’s not going to make a difference at this point, so…"

"Of course," Sergeant Garanzia said, nodding.

If Sam had her druthers, she would have put the entire staff up for court martial, but she knew that was reactionary and judgmental. It was Collant she really wanted to see on the wrong side of a staff weapon blast. At least she could still have her fantasies…

"Major, I want you to understand that we’re doing everything possible for Doctor Jackson," the nurse said.

"Sergeant, why is this so important to you?" Sam asked, grilling her with reproachful eyes. "I’m not the one you should be reporting to, and even if I were--"

"I’m telling you because you care about him," she said. "I’m telling you because you’re his friend. I’m not trying to excuse anyone, nor am I trying to apologize. I’m trying to explain, in the physical sense, why Doctor Jackson is still in a catatonic state. And I’m trying to explain it to his friend, not to Major Carter."

Sam stared at her, shocked at her audacity. But then Sam understood the freedom of her words, and there were many questions Sam needed answered, not Major Carter, so she nodded and let the nurse speak to her while putting aside their ranks.

Sergeant Garanzia relaxed her posture and began to speak. "There are times in our patients’ illnesses when moments of stark terror occur. When, say, they completely re-experience what they went through at the hands of their aggressors. Flashbacks."

"He’s had flashbacks before," Sam reminded her, feeling her acrimony rising.

"Yes, he has, and it’s all connected. In PTSD, nothing is isolated. It’s all part of the package, and every flashback, every…resurfacing memory takes a toll on the patient." The sergeant paused a moment to let the major digest the information. Dealing with Air Force personnel, especially officers, was sometimes more challenging than the patients. Military officers, she had come to find out, wanted answers yesterday. They listened for content so that they could work to solve the problem, not accept it. They couldn’t help it. It’s what made them officers. But very often, their gung-ho attitudes left little room for the subtleties of the individual experience, especially for an individual experiencing crisis.

When she felt she had given the major enough time, Sergeant Garanzia went on. "There’s a constant spiking of chemicals released by the brain for patients who suffer from this disorder. Sometimes they occur during a break through in therapy, when the veil is lifted, so to speak, and the patient must come face to face with the trauma, often times when they thought they had no recollection of it."

"Cognitive dissociation," Sam added, nodding. She’d read all the literature. She’d been through enough debriefings to last a lifetime. She thought she understood it far too well.

"Correct," Sergeant Garanzia said, nodding, impressed that she didn’t have to go through the basics. "Doctor Jackson is…he’s had to face some rather difficult memories of late, and because of it he’s emotionally exhausted. This latest dissociative episode was enormously straining on him. See, under certain moments of stress, particularly in PTSD, the brain begins to fire off all sorts of chemicals that cause the heart to race, the body to…well, to react as if pain or a threat is imminent."

"Like a nightmare," Sam said.

"Well, more than that," Sergeant Garanzia corrected. "When a person is under high stress, their epinephrine increases, their endorphins go up, their heart rate jumps, and all their blood goes to their core—you’ve probably noticed how Doctor Jackson seems often to be cold."

"Yeah. Right," Sam said, nodding.

"With PTSD, all these things happen on higher than normal levels and for such a prolonged period of time that the brain doesn’t know how to shut it off, or it starts… ‘red alerting’ to anything that it might think is similar to the event, such as the episode that occurred with you and Colonel O’Neill in the break room."

"Oh, my God," Sam uttered, covering one eye with her hand, and when she played back the turbulent scene in her head, she covered the other eye and uttered again, "Oh, my God."

"Anytime a patient must endure that level of heightened emotions, the brain starts kicking in chemicals." Sergeant Garanzia pulled two tissues from the box and handed them to Sam, who took them without question. "After a while, though, the body’s reserve of things like serotonin and adrenaline are depleted."

"Serotonin," Sam repeated, pressing the tissue to her nose, feeling all the blood rush out of her own arms and legs. "I know I should know what that is."

"It’s a chemical that helps raise the blood pressure. It helps keep our moods elevated," Sergeant Garanzia told her.

"Right, right," Sam said, closing her eyes, nodding. "I knew that."

The sergeant gave Sam a moment to compose herself. She offered the major another tissue, which Sam waved off at first.

"Maybe I should have my serotonin levels checked," Sam joked as she pulled another tissue from the box.

"Yes, ma’am," Sergeant Garanzia said, understanding Sam’s need to make light of her emotions.

Sam pressed the tissue to her eyes and took a deep breath, calmed herself. When she pulled the tissue away, two translucent wet spots graced the center, fringed in smudges of black mascara. Sam sniffed the final tears away and said, "It’s been a long time. Doctor Jackson…Daniel’s been through a lot, and I think we’re all…worn out."

"I have no doubt that you are."

"So, this catatonia is caused by…" Sam began, dabbing the tissue to her eye.

"It’s a matter of chemicals, ma’am. As a scientist, you can appreciate the power of the body’s chemistry," said the sergeant, gently smiling. "We’re working very hard on bringing his serotonin levels back in line. When they are, he’ll perk up. This will pass, Major. Eventually."

It took a few moments for the sergeant’s last words to register with Sam, but when they did, Sam thanked the nurse. Sergeant Garanzia stepped out of the room and gave Sam a moment of privacy in order to gather her strength.

"When will this end?" Sam asked herself, clawing at the back of her neck. It was like running on ice, never getting anywhere, constantly falling, scrambling with negligible results. These weeks, these months, these hours spent waiting for the moment when they could find their footing again, when they could slough the whole year off like a reeking, heavy pelt. They were all exhausted. And they were all desperate to go forward.

But would he ever leave the glassy ice?

Would Daniel ever be able to find purchase long enough to reach the shore?

Would she be there waiting when he did? If he did?

*****

Jack decided not to think about it. "Be like the shoe company. Just do it."

He stood outside Daniel’s door, nodding to the passing officers. Jack hitched up the back of his pants and pushed open the door.

And there he sat. On the edge of his bed, facing the window, his back to the door, Daniel never moved when Jack entered the room. His eyes never left the profuse light pouring through the streaked glass while Jack pulled up a chair, spun it around with one hand, and straddled the back of it.

Jack had no idea what he should say to Daniel, if there actually were any words that could come to approximate Jack’s inexpressible thoughts. So he sat and looked over the silent man.

He couldn’t help but think that it had to hurt Daniel’s ankle the way it was cracked over to the side, the long bones along the edge of his foot pressed into the linoleum. Jack briefly wondered if he should, at the very least, put some socks on Daniel’s feet. Maybe just reposition his foot, because, man, that had to hurt.

And then he realized Daniel probably didn’t even care.

He hated seeing Daniel in the stark white scrubs. They reminded him too much of the last time Daniel had been sequestered in Mental Health. A time, once again, when Jack thought he knew what was best for Daniel instead of asking Daniel what was best.

Jack was pretty sure Daniel wouldn’t be much for talking if he asked his opinion presently.

A chill rolled across his skin when he allowed his imagination to wander—when had the staff taken Daniel out of his street clothes? Why did they need to leave him in scrubs? Did they know how much Daniel hated the things? Did they care?

Forget it, Jack.

It didn’t even seem like Daniel was breathing. Jack could just catch the slightest movement of Daniel’s shirt rolling out at the waist, rolling back in. Slowly, lethargically.

For Christ’s sake, Daniel, take a deep breath, Jack wanted to say. But he didn’t. It was just another suggestion, neither here nor there, that Jack wanted to offer, that Jack thought might pull Daniel out of wherever the hell he was. Nothing he had suggested so far had worked. Taking a deep breath, then, seemed just as highly unlikely to work.

So Jack took one instead and scrubbed his hand through his hair.

It was just a personal annoyance of his, but Jack hated it when Daniel scratched mercilessly at his thumb. It made Daniel look nervous, unsure, rattled. Or, then again, maybe it made Jack feel all those things. Either way, he wished Daniel would cut it out.

There again, he wasn’t sure if Daniel much cared what Jack thought. Not now. Maybe not ever.

So Jack watched Daniel’s two hands, balled up under his chin, digging into skin that was raw and abraded, and Jack held tight to the back of the chair so that he wouldn’t instantly jump from the seat and grab hold of the hands, tell Daniel to stop it, cut it out! For crying out loud, Daniel, that’s enough!…

However, Jack knew that would only bring back the screams, and then the bitter recrimination would return in the ear-splitting howls. Nope, Jack thought he’d just let Daniel pick at his skin all he wanted. What harm did it really do, anyhow? So what if it made him look pathetic. He was pathetic.

Once again, Jack couldn’t be sure whom he was calling pathetic. Two candidates in the room—one staring out a window; one staring at his reflection from thirteen years earlier.

Jack wondered if, when people had come to visit him those weeks after his return from the Iraqi prison, they saw the same cavernous ridges chiseled into his brow that Jack saw on Daniel. He wondered if people sat in his room bouncing around their private cache of emotions—anger, regret, frustration, confusion. Oh, and that extra ingredient would be guilt.

So why did he come to see Daniel? What did he hope to accomplish? It was pretty damn obvious that Daniel wouldn’t be able to remember that Jack had even been there, so why bother?

Jack was on his feet and striding to the door before he even knew he was in motion. He was reaching for the handle when it occurred to him:

He wasn’t there for Daniel. He was there for himself.

Jack needed to know that he could stick by Daniel, his friend, even if he couldn’t do one damn thing. He needed to know that it was all right not to have the answers—and God knows he didn’t have a friggin’ clue—but that it wasn’t his place to try anymore. Jack needed to know that he could switch gears, be Daniel’s friend, that’s all. He needed to know that he had the strength to just…be there.

Because he wasn’t sure he could.

It was for himself that Jack sat back down and added to the silence of the room.

It was for Daniel that Jack found the strength to not fill that silence.

*****

She had been in her office transcribing notes into Daniel’s file when the call came in. In fact, Doctor Sebastian had just finished writing the words "unresponsive, possible set back" when the nurse called to tell her that Daniel was up and pacing his room.

"How is he?" Doctor Sebastian asked, out of breath from her sprint to his room.

"He seems very alert," Sergeant Garanzia said, running alongside. "He woke from a nightmare and was ill."

"Oh, my. How long ago did this occur?" Doctor Sebastian asked, jogging down the hall while twisting a band around her long, graying hair.

"Just over five minutes ago. 2315," said Sergeant Garanzia. "I paged you as soon as I became aware of the situation."

Doctor Sebastian and the sergeant reached the door in breathless expectation. Doctor Sebastian motioned for the officer to remain outside.

"Doctor Jackson?" A gentle knock forewarned him that the door to his room was opening. Daniel, huddled against his bed, pulled the collar of his t-shirt over across his face, wiping away sweat and tears in balanced proportion.

A sliver of light cut into the room along with two small feet.  The light grew to fill a long swath, exposing Daniel and burning his eyes.  There were whispers to a person in the hall, and the room’s garbage can was passed back to the unseen nurse.  Doctor Sebastian quietly closed the door as far as it would go, turned on the small table lamp and sat down across from her patient.

"I’m fine," Daniel told her before she could begin with her questions.  He rose from his curled position and wiped his sweaty, shaking hands against his drawstring pants.  Pacing sightlessly from one end of the room to the other, Daniel said, "I had a nightmare, that’s all."  He shook the sizzling tension from his hands and trudged in syncopated steps around the small area.  "Um, I’m...really, I’m fine."

"I don’t believe you are," Doctor Sebastian softly told him.  She watched with concern as the desperately tired man paced the room, his footing unmeasured and depleted.  She wondered how long he could sustain this.  She wondered how often he had used his quarters or his cell for the arena in which his conscious and subconscious did battle. "Can you sit, or do you need to keep moving?

"I need to...I think I should..." he tried to say, but instead could only wave his hand in front of him and continue to pace.

"Very well," she said.  "Can we discuss what has happened in the last days?"

"No." Daniel fumbled toward one end of the room, plastered his hands to the wall and leaned his forehead between the splayed set of fingers. He closed his eyes and begged his heart to slow down, his veins to stop throbbing.  "I don’t remember any of it."

"I don’t believe that is true," Doctor Sebastian said.  She watched his head pendulate from side to side.  "I believe there is a great deal you remember, but you refuse to talk about.  Perhaps you remember all of it."

His hands scraped the wall.  He scratched and scrabbled against the flat surface and fought to contain the feral cries building inside.

"Surely you realize that it will come out," she said.  "Little by little, your body will revolt.  It does not wish to be the urn for these memories."

"I can’t," came the hushed voice.

"Why not?"

His head swayed, finally coming to rest with his cheek pressed solidly to the wall.  "You wouldn’t understand," he croaked.

"Perhaps I would."

His brow creased and he bit his lip until the pain of it replaced the pain creeping into his voice.

Doctor Sebastian waited, turning a simple gold band around her finger.  She waited for him to speak, waited for him to trust her and himself.  When she could almost feel him closing himself once again, she decided to trust him in order that he might reciprocate.

"My mother was a comfort woman during World War II," she began, carefully averting her eye to give him a chance to seek her with discrete glances. "She, along with all the women in her town, were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial soldiers.  Perhaps you have heard of these women?"

And then his eyes were open, blinking and attentive, reaching through his own terror to hear of Sebastian’s mother’s life.

"She rarely spoke of it.  When she did--when she would impart her tale to me--the one message I received time and time again was that one’s only responsibility in the face of such hardship is to…survive."

A bud of trust pushed up through his soul, and Daniel found himself turning to face her. A hardly significant kernel of empathy rose in him, whispered for him to hear her words. He wove his trembling arms across his chest and stared at the shifting floor.

"When a person endures such barbarism as my mother did, one learns to take the mind elsewhere."  Around her finger Doctor Sebastian spun her ring.  She didn’t try to hide the fact that her mother’s suffering, lost to the years gone by, continued to be her familial burden. She simply went on, simply carried on with her mother’s greatest source of pain. "My mother learned what every person learns who must live amidst the cruel, wretched life of war.  She learned that to survive it, that to continue to live through it is all that is required.  It is the greatest victory over one’s enemy."

And when Daniel lifted his eyes to her, he was stricken to find his physician—this bracing woman of strength—silently weeping.  How was it that she was filled with such charism, such capacity to understand and empathize?  Watching her tears spread through the wrinkles around her eyes, Daniel began to timidly, anxiously release.

Doctor Sebastian dabbed her fingers to her eyes and continued. "My father, a fighter pilot with the US Air Force, met my mother during the Korean War. They married, had a little girl, and then my father was shot down. My mother and I lived alone in the middle of South Korea until my father’s family brought us to the United States. I was 17 years old.

"So you were right, Doctor Jackson.  I am a Korean-American."  Doctor Sebastian smiled at Daniel, and when she did, unshed tears broke over the sides of her cheeks. "My father’s name was Major Benjamin Sebastian. My mother…my mother’s name was Jhoon Sill Kim," she said, her voice wavering.  Doctor Sebastian fingered the ring, the frieze worn away, the metal rubbed to a warm patina, until she could find her words again.  She sniffled once, twice, and went on.  "And my name is Abigail Jhoon Jung Oh Sebastian."

Daniel stepped his feet out from the wall and slowly lowered himself to the floor. He pressed his head to the wall and tried to breathe.

"So, you see, I may just understand after all," she quietly said.

Daniel wedged his arms between his raised knees and his body and hoped, prayed that if he opened the box--just this once--he’d be able to close it again.

And then he began. "I always understood why they were beating me.  I mean, I didn’t like it, but…but I understood it." His words barely covered the space between them. He lifted his elbows to his knees, his entwined fingers to his brow. "One day, after they had beaten me and healed me--I can’t remember why I was beaten--they brought me back to...to him."

So difficult, she thought listening to his words, keeping her eyes lowered, allowing him a modicum of privacy during this time of confession.  So difficult to give voice to such silent memories. Go on, Doctor. Go on and let it go.

His features, half in shadow, half in subdued light, contorted. He ground his teeth together and forced himself to keep talking.  "Um, when they brought me back to his…his room to…I’m not really sure, I don’t…I’m not sure why. But I realized that they had forgotten to heal my jaw.  See, they had been able to heal my ribs and my broken wrist, but they forgot--or…or maybe they didn’t know that my jaw was fractured.  And I guess I should have told them, but…" He dropped his trembling hands to his shoulders and framed his face between his crossed wrists.  He smoothed his tight lips, his quaking chin, across his hands, trying in vain to hinder the onset of tears.

"So when I tried to... open my... See, I’m not sure why I had to, but when I tried to open my mouth I…" He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows, hoping she’d understand him without having to say the words. Doctor Sebastian nodded, and Daniel pushed forward.  "I couldn’t. My jaw…my jaw was broken, you see, and I couldn’t open my...So, I couldn’t…um…" Daniel lifted a hand in a futile effort to divine the words, but instead clamped it over his quavering lips to stifle his sobs. His eyes locked on hers, and she held his focus solidly and waited for him to regain his composure.

And when he could speak again, the rush of words flooded the room. "I couldn’t talk, and they couldn’t understand me even if I did, but I tried to make them understand that I wasn’t being disobedient, I was just...I couldn’t open my mouth." He heard his own words, his own voice reaching out from his body, in tones unfamiliar to his ears.  They spoke of brutality. They spoke of suffering. They spoke of incomprehensible grief, and Daniel struggled to keep his voice from betraying him further. He shrugged his shoulder and pulled his palm across his eyes, scraping the tender lids while air entered his body in uncontrolled quick gasps.

"So you were beaten again," Doctor Sebastian said, supplying the words caught in his pain.

Daniel nodded, and somewhere found in himself the strength required to endure the unflinching truth of his past. He sucked in one long, shuddering breath and whispered, "I didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve that."

"No, you did not," she told him, turning her head from side to side, finding her own tears renewed by his suffering.  She offered him silence, a chance to reconcile his anguish, his unnecessary guilt. She offered her discreet support, her tacit acceptance of his grief.

When at last he realized the futility in maintaining any semblance of normalcy in the face of such personal desecration, Daniel whispered, "Doctor Sebastian, if I just need to sit here and…and cry, are you going to sedate me?"

She tilted her head in sympathy, smiled the best she could and said, "No. No, I will not. I believe it is the first honest emotion you’ve had since coming here." She watched his head tumble toward his crossed wrists, his shoulders jump with tears. "I will stay here to see you through, to make sure you are safe. I will stay with you, Daniel.  Your sorrow does not frighten me."

And then the rush of tears came unobstructed. And then the pain of those months was given a voice. And then Daniel was forced to face his own devastation fully.

And Doctor Sebastian kept watch to see that he did so.

*****

General Hammond lifted the top of his computer and booted up his schedule for the day. Thirty-five years in the Air Force had offered him many things, and being able to be at his desk at 0530 wide-awake and ready to go was one of the greatest disciplines he ever learned.

But looking at the schedule and seeing the day in front of him, General Hammond almost wished he could go back to bed.

He hit the icon to activate his message center and rifled off a note to Colonel O’Neill:

"Major Davis arrives at 1300 hours.  Meet in briefing room at 1315. Hammond."

He paused a moment to decide if anything else needed to be said, realized it would be inappropriate to add a few well-placed adjectives within the body of the message, and hit send.

Thus began General Hammond’s day in the bowels of the SGC.

*****

"There always seems to be someone missing, I don’t know who," Daniel said, his voice dry as the August air. Outside his window, the Air Force Academy began to meet the morning while the last of the long night passed from black to blue.

Doctor Sebastian stood near him, wondering if the world Daniel saw seemed as isolating as the world she looked upon. Her legs twitched with fatigue, and her back ached from standing at the window with him for the last few hours of their conversation.

From the sorrowful gloaming to the weary genesis of day, they had spoken in hushed words, in tearful memory. Exhausted, they stared out the large window, watching lights begin to illuminate windows, and color return to the world.

"From where are they missing?" she asked.

"When I see the room—um, any room in my memory when I was …when I was…" Trapped by the loss for words, fatigued by it all, his head fell forward, hardly able to dredge up the strength to lift it. He closed his eyes and wrestled with highly charged syntax, his emotions worn thin from the months and nights and hours.

"It is very difficult for you to find the words still," she suggested. "I think if we can find one word that you can use to speak of your time with the them, then you will be able to manage your memories, yes?"

Daniel opened his eyes, watched the sky turn from indigo to fragile blue, and wished he could be more awed by the dusty pink being breathed into the clouds.

"Perhaps the easiest way would be to say you were with them," she said, rubbing her eyes.

Daniel held the phrase up in his mind, tested the weight of it, and thought he could speak the words. "Yes."

"Good," she said, and marveled at the break of day, the yawning reach of salmon and peach clouds welcoming the sun with a mellifluous ease. "So in your memory of being with them…"

"In my memory, in the rooms I was in when I was…with them," Daniel said, and paused, grateful that the words hadn’t destroyed him like he thought they might, "I can just see someone, something in the room. Just…catch a glimpse of them, and then they’re…gone."

"Who do you think it is?" she asked.

An incandescent sliver of orange broke the meniscus of the horizon, glowing and oscillating.

"I don’t know," Daniel said. "I try to see them, but they…whoever it is, they hide behind the others, or behind a chair, or…" He stopped, took a breath, filled his lungs and let his tired eyes close for a moment.

"There are times when we subterfuge our memory in order to get by," she said. "Perhaps this is what you have done."

"Maybe. Maybe." Daniel’s eyes fluttered open, taking in the brilliance of the sun’s arc pressing above the horizon between two buildings.

"You are tired," Doctor Sebastian said, tilting her head to more closely examine him.

"Yes, I am," he said. Daniel watched the sun completely escape the earth’s greedy grasp and take command of the sky. "So are you."

"This is true," she said, smiling. "But I will stay with you until you choose to rest."

A cadet, sure and rigid, strode through the grounds below Daniel’s window. Long shadows began to fill the courtyard while each dew-covered blade of grass twinkled when the sun touched it.

"Soon," Daniel said, taking a moment to glance at her, a brief, bashful moment. "Soon."

"The sunrise is beautiful this morning," she said, and just as she spoke the tops of trees were set ablaze with color.

"Ra has won another battle," Daniel said.

"So have you."

A panorama of light and soft hues filled his window and the world below. A formation of soldiers, crisp and precise, jogged through the grounds.

A night of hard and burdensome emotions had drawn on his every reserve. The pre-dawn hours of numb acceptance had drained him completely. Daniel felt himself began to list. He grabbed the windowsill to steady himself. "This is very difficult."

"Yes, it is," she said, watching the golden light cast its warmth across his languid features. "And it is far from over."

"Will it ever end?" he asked, feeling the ambient heat penetrate the window before him.

"It will," she said, nodding. "It will."

"When?"

Gaining height, the sun’s light moved through the filtered clouds of dawn into the thin atmosphere of morning. "It will be over when it’s over. I cannot give you a time frame."

The brightness of the risen sun burned Daniel’s eyes, already stinging from his lack of sleep. He closed his eyes and let his skin be the sole observer of the sun instead. "I’m tired."

"I know."

"Thank you," Daniel whispered.

Doctor Sebastian nodded and tapped his hand. "You are welcome, Daniel. Sleep well." Padding out of the room, Doctor Sebastian apprised her patient one last time and asked the spirits of her ancestors to bring him rest.

And out his window, two young soldiers, with their proud chests and taut movements, prepared the flag to be raised. Before it reached the top of the pole, Daniel was asleep in his bed.

*****
Sam and Teal’c walked down the hall of the SGC, both observing the stunned silence of an unspoken vow they had all taken.  It was a silence of exasperation and dejection, brought on by the bitter realization that Daniel wasn’t as well as they had hoped and prayed.  Daniel was wasting in a whirlpool of emotional acid, and every day that passed it seemed he slipped farther and farther into the vortex and away from them.

So they passed through the hours and the duties with a diminished sense of purpose, trying to keep their vision affixed to the flickering light of hope.

"Are we ready?" Jack asked, meeting the two outside the briefing room door.

"I suppose," Sam said.  One by one, they entered the room, shoulder to shoulder, bound at the very least in their resolve to protect Daniel from those forces that would attempt to destroy him again.

One by one they eyed the liaison seated across from them.  One by one they related a silent message that although they were missing their teammate, they were still a team, and they would not be defeated.

Paul Davis nodded to each one and counted the months left before he could put in for a transfer out of Washington, D.C.

"All right, people, if you’d like to take your seats, we can get started."  General Hammond spread out his hands, welcoming in SG1.

Sam, Jack and Teal’c all crowded on one side of the long table.  Paul Davis sat alone with his briefcase.  When everyone was seated, General Hammond took his seat at the head of the table.  "Thank you.  You all realize why we’re here.  I’d like to give Major Davis the first opportunity to speak and perhaps attempt to explain to us why he’s here."  The general paused to let his barely hidden resentment sink in.  He wanted to set the tone from the beginning that the SGC would cooperate only as far as they were required, and that Paul Davis should expect nothing more than rancor from them.

"Major Davis," the general said, "you have the floor."

"Thank you, sir."  Paul Davis pulled his papers from his case while the three remaining members of SG1 puffed up their bellicosity.  "One week ago, Senator Kinsey and the other members of the sub-committee received General Hammond’s weekly report, and in it was a mention of a disk that the Tok’ra had translated concerning Doctor Jackson’s abductors and his captivity."

"Captivity," Jack said under his breath.  Davis turned his attention to the colonel, and Jack decided to make clear a few things.  "Animals are held in captivity, Major.  Tell me you’re not saying Daniel’s an animal."

"I..." Paul Stammered.

"I don’t believe Major Davis was suggesting anything of the kind, Colonel O’Neill," General Hammond said.  There was setting a tone, and then there was being rude.  The general abhorred rude behavior, even in these circumstances.  He nodded to Davis and told him to keep going.

"Thank you, sir.  I wasn’t...I mean I would never suggest that."  Paul Davis dabbed his sweaty upper lip.  He shuffled his papers while he regained his composure.  He knew his arrival was not necessarily welcome, but he wasn’t prepared for the acrimony focused directly on him.  "Senator Kinsey believes he and the Senate Sub-com should have a copy of the information contained in the disk."

Jack puffed out his cheeks, felt anger suffuse him and squelched an indignant obscenity. "Why?" he asked.

Paul Davis blinked and said, "Senator Kinsey believes having a copy of the information is important to complete the file kept on Doctor Jackson’s return."

Jack looked to the two people flanking his side, turned back to Davis and again asked, "Why?"

"Well," Paul began, taking a quick glance at the general who was nodding in agreement with Jack, "Senator Kinsey feels that a great deal of money was spent--"

"Oh, here we go," Jack interrupted.

"--in the recovery effort, and he would like to study the file to see if any of that money can be recaptured through information on alien technology."

"Oh, please," Jack said, rolling his eyes.

"Look, Colonel," Paul said, flattening his hands against the table, "with all due respect, I would give just about anything not to be here, but I am under orders."

"Yes," Jack said, inoculating his words with acrimony.  "Yes, you are."

General Hammond felt the meeting was rapidly deteriorating, so he stepped in. "Major Davis, when do you need the file?"

"As soon as Doctor Jackson is well enough to corroborate the information."

Every person in the room stared in utter disbelief at him, their mouths agape, asking in shot gun manner, "What?"

Paul Davis looked from one to the other, uncertain why there seemed to be any confusion or surprise.  "Surely the senator’s office told you I was to gain confirmation from Doctor Jackson regarding the report."

"Major Davis, this is the first I’ve heard of it," General Hammond said, the color in his cheeks broadcasting his exploding anger.

"Oh," Davis said, shifting the papers in front of him with no purpose in mind.  "I’m…yes, sir.  I’m to return with the file and its corroboration."

Jack fisted his hand, let it go slack, fisted it again and spoke for the people seated.  "No."

"Sir?"

"No!" Jack glared at Davis, peering at him across the hedge of his brow.  "You can tell Kinsey to go straight to hell."

"Colonel," General Hammond interrupted.

"No, General, I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question!"  Jack’s hands began to gesture without reserve.  "You’ve seen Daniel.  You know what’s going on with him.  Hell, he’s a goddamn vegetable.  No.  I’m not going to let you do this, Major."

Paul Davis drew on his militaristic tenacity and held his ground--a useless, ridiculous piece of political landscape.  "Sir, all Doctor Jackson has to do is—"

"Why?" Sam demanded.

"What?" Davis asked.

"Why does he have to corroborate it?" she asked, while next to her Jack shook his head and threw his pen across the table.

Paul removed Jack’s pen from his lap and slid it across the table. "Senator Kinsey feels the file bears no relevance unless it can be confirmed by Doctor Jackson," Davis said.  Sweat dripped down his spine and past his waistband.

"I knew this would happen," Jack said, pushing against the edge of the table, grasping at his rapidly dwindling composure.

"Major Davis, I can think of no reason other than…petty malice why Senator Kinsey would need Doctor Jackson to confirm the file," the general said.

"I can’t speak to his personal intentions, only to his work with the sub-com, and he feels--"

"I’m sure I speak for every one in the room when I say I don’t give one good goddamn what Senator Kinsey feels."  General Hammond said, rounding on the officer, silencing him with a glare that froze the words on his lips.  "Now, you go back to Washington and tell the…senator that his request has been denied."

"He’ll shut you down."  Davis didn’t bother looking up.  He kept his eyes and voice lowered, and contained in the silence that followed his statement.  "He’ll tell the sub-committee and the President that the program has become too cost prohibitive and can’t possibly be supported further."

"He’s been saying that for years," Jack reminded Paul.  Sam and Teal’c nodded.

"But this time he has the ear of the president."  Paul hoped they were hearing how serious the matter was.  Hoped they could understand, even in his taciturnity, the severity of the situation.

"Fine!" Jack barked, slapping the table.  "Shut it down.  Lock it up.  Blow the whole thing to hell, I don’t care."

"Colonel O’Neill, you don’t understand," Davis said, rising from his seat, propelled by the turbulence from the maelstrom between his personal beliefs and his orders. "If he shuts it down, you’re all out."

"So what? So I retire, and Carter goes into the private sector and makes a million dollars.  So what?" Jack said.

"So what?" Paul asked, while the veins in his neck and face began to surface.  He dug his fists into the top of the table.  "What’s Daniel going to do?  Hmmm?  If Kinsey shuts down this program, Daniel won’t be considered a civilian contractor, and then the care he’s receiving at the Air Force Academy Hospital will no longer be availed to him."

"He wouldn’t do that," Sam said.  "Kinsey wouldn’t do that."

"You know he would!" Paul cried out, pounding his fist into the table, searching for at least one of them to acquiesce for Daniel’s sake.  "You know Kinsey has always wanted to shut this place down.  You know that.  Well, he’s got you by the short hairs, and he knows that, too." 

When an appreciable silence filled the room, Paul let his head drop between his arms and considered how far out on a professional limb he had just climbed.  From the way his heart pounded and his fear level spiked, he thought he was pretty much about ready to fall off.  "Look, General, he’s just waiting for you to say no."  Paul raised his eyes and regarded the general with hushed insistence, and when he spoke again, it was with quiet precision.  "Don’t let him have the last word.  Don’t let him destroy Doctor Jackson."

General Hammond tented his bulky fingers and touched them to his lips while he considered his decision.  "If Doctor Jackson reads the file--"

"You can’t do this, General," Jack said, swiveling to face his CO.

General Hammond held up his hand and continued.  "If he reads it and cannot confirm or deny the report, what will be Kinsey’s next move?"

"I don’t believe he’s thought that far ahead," Paul confided.

"Then tell him we’ll discuss it with Doctor Jackson’s physicians," the general said.  "That should buy us some time."

"No way Sebastian will agree to this," Jack said.

"Then she will be reassigned," Paul told him, and the thought of it, knowing that Kinsey would do exactly that, made Paul all the more angry that he had to be placed in the middle.  "One way or another, Kinsey will keep going with this until his bluff is called and the report is confirmed."

"Unfortunately, I think he will," the general said.  He took a deep breath, filled his lungs with air that seemed stagnant and stale, and prepared himself for the battle ahead.  "Thank you, Major Davis, for your candor."

Paul Davis shoved his papers back into this briefcase and snapped the enclosures.  So many things he wanted to say to them, so many ways he wanted to tell them he was sorry, that he wished he didn’t have to be Senator Kinsey’s gopher, but it was all part of the honor of wearing the uniform.

And so it was with stoic tenacity and respect that Paul Davis held out his hand to General Hammond and then to Colonel O’Neill, and then left the SGC to endure the tirades of a spoiled, corrupt senator.

*****

There he is again, Jack thought to himself, finding Daniel standing alone at his window, looking out through the streaked pane of glass. He wondered what held Daniel’s attention for so many hours a day. Jack took two steps into the room, hitched up the back of his pants and said, "Hey."

Daniel turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. "Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack said, his voice breathy and full of forced serenity, trying to mask his surprise that Daniel actually acknowledged him. "How ya doin’?"

Daniel redirected his attention back to the window and shrugged. "Better than the last time you saw me, I’m sure."

"Yeah, well, depends on when you think that was," he said, sidling up next to Daniel.

Daniel swung his head around and peered at Jack. "I’m talking about…in the break room. When…what do you…"

"I was here a couple times when you were, uh—" Jack paused to lift his hand to his forehead and let his fingers sail out into space. He cocked his head to the side and clucked his tongue against his cheek.

Daniel narrowed his eyes down and nodded. "Oh. I didn’t know."

"No, I’m sure you didn’t, or else you wouldn’t have been…"

"Catatonic."

"…out there," Jack supplied, launching his hand once again from his forehead, miming what he believed to be an appropriate appraisal of Daniel’s emotional state at the time.

"Yes, well," Daniel said, frowning and wishing Jack would stop the gestures, "I guess I should thank you for checking in on me, then."

"No need," Jack said.

Daniel didn’t have a clear memory of the afternoon in question, but he did remember coming unhinged and throwing things at Jack, wondering why he was doing it. Just another in a long line of confusing, terrifying events his mind had been supplying him. Daniel pressed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders to his ears. "I’m sorry about…what happened, Jack. I hope I didn’t…hurt you."

"No," Jack said, squinting into the mid-day sun. "You got off some pretty impressive pitches, but you didn’t manage to take my head off."

"I don’t…I’m not sure why I…" Daniel began and then stopped, the incomprehensible events that had led up to his breakdown strangling him. "It’s just when you said that word, I…" And all he could do was let his voice drift and shake his head, the one act that seemed to come to him when words wouldn’t.

"I know. That was careless of me, Daniel, and if I would have stopped to think—"

"What? What would you have thought?" Daniel asked, suddenly hearing the implied underlying knowledge.

"I wouldn’t have said it," Jack said, letting his eyes lower.

Daniel’s eyes, sightless and fluttering, turned back to the window. He pulled his lips to the corner of his mouth and felt a sudden heat scour his chest and neck. "I try so hard to keep it all inside, you know? I try not to…burden anyone with what happened. I mean, what good would it do you all to have to think about it?"

Jack pulled his long fingers across his tired eyes and laid out in his memory the disk that held Daniel’s secrets. A file chock full of the horrors Daniel had survived. A file he knew would be placed in front of Daniel soon. A weariness overtook him in that moment, so he rubbed his forehead and propped his head up in his hand.

"So, when you said…that word," Daniel continued, clearing his throat, "it, um, kind of freaked me out, and instead of burying it, I all but advertised…what they did. To me."

When Jack turned to respond, with words he hadn’t quite figured out, he saw how much it had cost Daniel to even allude to the cruelties he had survived. Jack didn’t want to add to his pain, so he nodded and let it go.

Outside, cadets marched through the campus in short sleeves, occasionally wiping their brows with their hands. Daniel watched them, far removed from their world of order and matriculation. "What’s it like out there today?" he asked.

"It’s hot," Jack told him, futzing with the change in his pocket.

Daniel nodded and could see the heat rising from the outer ledge just beyond his window. "I was always cold," he said, and the words startled Jack.

"How’s that?" he said, lifting his chin.

"I could never get warm…there. I was always…it was always…damp. Cold. I was always cold." Daniel placed his hand on the smooth glass and could feel the sun’s warmth penetrating the thick surface. "Even now, since I’ve been back, I can’t…I can’t seem to get warm enough. Never enough. Strange, isn’t it?"

"I was always too hot," Jack said, and wondered if this were the time or place to bring up his own past. Somehow it felt selfish, and he thought he should apologize for saying it. "Listen, I’m—"

"Was there ever a time when you thought they’d broken you?" Daniel asked before he could talk himself out of it.

Jack suppressed a flinch and considered not only the question, but also why Daniel was even asking it. "Only every day."

"How did you…" Daniel began to ask, turning only as much as was needed to see Jack’s posture, search it for signs that it was okay to go further. "How did you go on?"

Jack pulled one hand out of his pocket and smoothed away the dust on the windowsill in front of him while he considered his answer. "You know, Daniel, I guess if I woke up in the morning and I was still breathing, then, well, I did my duty."

Daniel slumped. He let his head drop, his chin nearly resting on his chest and he ground his teeth together. "So everyday you were able to…rebuild?"

"You’re rebuilding, Daniel," Jack said, jumping ahead in the conversation. He wouldn’t allow Daniel to keep going with the line of logic, not if it in any way fueled the bonfire of self-reproach Daniel carried inside him. "Give it time, Daniel. It takes a lot of time."

"It was just once, Jack," Daniel said from his stooped position. "I fought like hell for a while, but that one time…That one time was all it took."

Jack guessed it was more important just to listen, not try to give Daniel any words of consolation. So he continued to dust the windowsill, and just let Daniel talk.

"One…one time," Daniel continued, his voice rising in timbre. "And if you want to know the truth, I don’t think I’ll ever come back. Not all the way."

"You will," Jack finally said after a long, uncomfortable silence broken only by Daniel’s uneven breaths. They weren’t words of empty promises. These were words of faith, of promises kept. "You will, Daniel. It’s only been a few months."

The younger man grabbed hold of the windowsill and shook his head. "It doesn’t matter."

Jack looked upon his friend, his eyes bruised with too many sleepless nights, his skin ashen. Jack watched Daniel’s fingers etch into the polished granite casement, the veins in his hands protruding in a high relief. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No," he said, his head swinging from side to side.

"Okay."

"One time, Jack. It only took one time, and then I was done. They had me." Daniel’s voice trailed off near the end, and Jack wasn’t sure what to say or do, or how to react.

"Look, Daniel, whatever it was, you made it through."

"Through to what?"

"Through to the end. You beat them. You survived."

"For what, Jack?" Daniel sardonically asked, leveling Jack with a cold, despairing look.

For what? Jack didn’t know how to answer him. What was it that had brought Jack back from the ravaging memories of Iraq? Sara. What reason did Jack have for wanting to live again? Charlie. What did Daniel have? He had to offer him something, didn’t he? As Daniel’s friend, he had to give him some reason, right?

"Well, you know what they say," Jack told him, rasping his hands together to rid them of the dust, "that which doesn’t kill us, makes us—"

"—a basket case for the rest of our lives?" Daniel said, lifting his eyebrows high on his forehead. "Look, Jack, I know what you’re trying to say, but…it just isn’t the case." Daniel shoved off from the windowsill and spun around, away from Jack. He took a few steps toward anywhere else but where Jack was and tried to explain. He wove his fingers across the back of his neck and pressed his elbows together until his arms shook. "You know, we always talk about how things like this ennoble us, make us stronger. Like…like some character in a movie that has to deal with some harsh reality and comes out of it a better person."

"Daniel," Jack began, facing his distraught friend.

"That’s…that’s not going to happen here, Jack," Daniel said. He looked to the ceiling, finding any other sight too difficult, and pulled in a sharp breath. "There was nothing ennobling about what happened to me. It just…it…" Daniel found himself shaking his head, once again unable to express the pain in his soul. And then his hands began to speak for him—fisting, opening empty, waving, and finally clapping over his eyes, digging into them as if he could scrape away the memory. "They broke me, Jack. Right down the middle, they tore me in two. And I’m no stronger for this, and the only reason it didn’t kill me was because I wasn’t there long enough."

And then it was Jack’s turn to sling his head between his shoulders, stooped over with shame. "I don’t know what to say to you, Daniel. I’m not sure what you want to hear."

"I want to hear it will all be over soon," Daniel told him. "I want to hear…that I’m getting better."

Jack’s eyes pinched almost shut, his thoughts whirling, and his lips formed words his mind wasn’t ready to speak.

Daniel glanced at Jack and saw the effect his question, his plea had on him. Daniel rolled his eyes, sighed and said, "At least you’re being honest with me."

"Daniel," Jack began, stepping closer to the younger man, "I wish to God this had never happened to you. I wish you had never--" But when he saw that his words had caused the shallow movements in Daniel’s chest, had caused his face to bloom with fresh grief, Jack came to a halt in his litany of regrets. He clamped his mouth shut, tried to think, tried to come up with some way to bridge the ever-widening gap between them. "It’s gonna be all right, Daniel. I promise."

"I’m tired," Daniel whispered, turning toward his chair and collapsing into it.

Jack, his body numb and his mind swirling with despair, kept his narrowed focus on Daniel and watched him press his clasped hands to his lips. "Look, Daniel…"

"Thanks for stopping by," Daniel said, his voice nasal and tight.

Jack felt his spirit peter out, as if it were a balloon pricked by a pin. He rushed a hand through his hair, shook his head and tried again, "Look, get some sleep. I’ll come by tomorrow."

Jack thought by now he’d be used to Daniel’s tears. He thought that after all they’d been through together, all that Daniel had been through lately, that Jack would be immune to the heart-wrenching effect Daniel’s tears had on him. He felt a physical tightening of his chest while he watched Daniel lift a shaking finger in front of his own lips, pleading with Jack to wait a moment while he collected himself.

Daniel thumped the finger to his pursed, trembling lips, straining to get a hold on his emotions. But it wasn’t working. He lowered his finger and pressed his fist to his mouth, pulling in tiny bursts of air through his clogged nose.

Silently, Jack watched his friend plane his hand across his mouth, flick a tear away from his eye with his thumb, all the while keeping his lips sealed as tight as the steely grip around Jack’s chest.

"Daniel," Jack whispered, to which Daniel lifted his finger again, asking for just another moment.

And when Daniel could finally speak, his words sliced through Jack with misplaced precision. "It’s just that…it’s difficult to…be around you," Daniel managed to say before he ground his the palm of his hands into his eyes and growled a sigh.

Jack felt a visceral pain shoot through him, and he knew it was an agony he deserved. "Okay."

"I’m sorry, Jack," Daniel whispered, digging his elbows into his knees, his stricken face dissolving into his hands. "For everything."

"Me, too." Jack listened with an eviscerated soul to the muted sobs escaping from Daniel’s hands before he turned to leave. He reached for the door and looked back one last time.

"Take care of yourself, Daniel." Jack waited for Daniel to nod before he stumbled blindly out of his room.

*****

"Then who do you think it is?" she asked again, leaning toward him

Daniel cradled his throbbing skull in his hands and said, "I don’t know."

"No—"

"Yes, I know," Daniel said, his voice edged with frustration, "you won’t accept ‘I don’t know,’ but…really, I don’t know."

"Could it be the face of the main aggressor?" Doctor Sebastian asked.

"Maybe," he said, running his thumbs across his scalp, finding veins just under the skin that seemed swollen with the very blood filling his ears and sight.

"When is the last time you took an Imitrex?" she asked, sitting back. Doctor Sebastian pulled his file from her desk and checked over his meds chart. "This morning, yes?"

"I think so," Daniel said.

Doctor Sebastian replaced the file on her desk and stepped to her windows, pulled shut the blinds and walked to the door, where she turned off the overhead light. The shaded lamp on her desk remained lit, greatly diminishing the harsh lighting. Doctor Sebastian lowered her body into her chair and watched while Daniel tightened and relaxed his jaw, over and over.

She kept a close eye on him and smoothed back her hair from her temples, gray at first, then jet black. She waited for him to lift his head and begin to talk again, once the pain subsided, once the panic of memory lessened. It was a pattern with him, and over the course of the last weeks, she had come to learn about the importance of allowing him ample time. His strength was his honesty, his ability to do the hardest things, speak the harshest words. But it only came after time.

So she waited.

When at last his face came away from his hands, she could see the deep lines, the features arranged as if to convince himself that he had the strength to speak. He did not look at her, nor did he begin to talk right away. He lifted one thigh, then the other, and dug his hands underneath.

"You’re right," he finally said. "I remember much more than I can talk about."

She simply nodded and allowed him more time.

"But…but this image, this…" he began, his eyes not quite shut, not quite open. "It haunts me, and I don’t know why."

"It is a person," she restated, having tried to break through this memory with him for many days.

"I think so, yes," he said.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Doctor Sebastian. She stood up and leaned over her desk, reading his file in the diffused light. Page after page, she skimmed the words, looking for the one piece of information she needed to back up her idea. When she found the sentence, she pulled the file to her and sat down.

"Daniel, you have said that you were not allowed to look your captors in the eye, correct?" she asked.

"For the most part," he said, his legs beginning to shake.

"Then perhaps this image you have is because you do not have an actual memory of a certain face, of…the face of the one who controlled you," she said, trying to keep her words void of emotion.

"No, no," he said, and he grabbed the edge of his seat and started to rock. His chest began to tighten. He forced out the words, hoping to lower the intense pressure building in his gut. "I knew them all. I…I may not have…I may not be able to picture their faces, but…I can…" His hand clutched the edge of the chair and his head tumbled down to meet his chest. "It’s not one of them. I know who they are. It’s not one of them."

"Then perhaps this person is purely a representation of someone or something."

Daniel closed his eyes and was met by the ever-present red flares exploding across his eyelids. He sucked in his lower lip and nodded.

"Breathe, Daniel," she said, placing the file back on her desk. "Take a deep breath. Good. Let it out slowly. That’s right. Now another. Very good."

The air came in through his nose, out his mouth, and as it turned from oxygen to carbon dioxide, it took with it molecules of his tension. Singular clusters of his apprehension evaporated, and yet the image remained. So he breathed. And he breathed some more.

"They say great athletes are able to completely focus in on the present," Doctor Sebastian said, watching her patient try to calm himself. His eyes remained closed, but she knew he was listening. His mind worked quickly, and she knew he was absorbing everything she was saying. "They say this ability to cast off the past, forget what might happen in the future, is how they remain so in the moment, able to remove themselves from the stress of the actual event. Perhaps that is why you are unable to remember this image. Perhaps you had cast off the past and the future in order to survive each moment."

"Then this image," he said, "is…what?"

She crossed her legs and cupped her hands over her knee and thought about what she believed. "Is it possible that this image is…you?"

"Me?" he said, his mouth hanging open a touch.

"Perhaps it is your mind’s way of removing you from the situation. Perhaps this image is simply your—"

"My voice," he said, and even as he did, it stunned him.

And it stunned her as well. Now it was her turn to sit with her lips slightly parted, unable to speak.

"It’s me. It’s my…voice. Or, maybe, more correctly, my…my words. That’s who…I mean, that’s what it is," Daniel said, pinching his eyes down to mere slits concentrating on holding onto the revelation before it slipped from his grasp. He swallowed hard, shook his head and tried to continue, and when he did, the words tripped over each other. "It’s why I…That image is my…That’s it."

"Daniel, slow down and tell me what you’re thinking," she said, leaning toward him.

"I put it away," he whispered, bringing his hand to his throat. "I put it away. I hid it. That’s why I can’t see it, because it’s hiding, or it was hiding. Why is it I still can’t see it? I can talk. I’m talking now. I have it back, but I…Why can’t I see it?"

"I’m not sure, but we shall find the answer," she told him.

Daniel scrubbed one hand over his cheek and then pinched the bridge of his nose, overwhelmed by the idea multiplying in his head.

"This is an important step you’re taking, Daniel, and we shall work it out together," she said, and she watched him, could almost see the process happening in his mind. Doctor Sebastian wondered if this linguist, for all his great and varied abilities with foreign words and dialects, would be able to articulate that which was at the center of his soul. Would he have the strength to intone those awful, lost words?

She watched while Daniel continued to rock himself, his breaths careful and measured. His arms were tightly wrapped around his chest as if giving himself the comfort of touch that he could endure from no one else. His eyes were open, but she knew he was not seeing her, nor the room in which they sat. She knew he was still battling to find that shattered, elusive voice, the part of him that had been so violently taken. She knew he was searching, this skilled, battered archeologist, for the key to his identity. From the ruins of his existence, Daniel strained to excavate the mystery of his entombed voice, yet feared what his findings would bring.

*****

On her way to his room, Sam remembered she had forgotten the sack of almond cookies in her car. Over the last few weeks and months, Sam was getting to be known on a first name basis at the bakery near the Academy. When they saw her coming, she was sure they shook their heads, marveling at her metabolism, wondering where she put all those cookies and baked goods on her slender body. She never let on that they weren’t for her. She’d simply look in the case and say, "Hmmm. What looks good today?" and then walk out with a dozen or two cookies, all the while knowing the bakery staff stood shocked by her voracious appetite and enormous sweet tooth.

She always brought him something—cookies, magazines. Something. She felt strangely awkward reaching his door without an offering. She shook her head and decided she was just being silly. When she had reached his room and was just about to push open the door, it was pulled away from her outstretched hand, and Sam stumbled. Stepping back, she pressed a hand to her heart and smiled.

"You startled me," she said.

"I’m sorry, Major," Sergeant Garanzia said, exiting Daniel’s room.

"No problem," Sam told her, peering around the sergeant. "Is he awake?"

Sergeant Garanzia frowned and nodded. "He is, but…" She stepped to the side of the door and pulled Sam alongside her. "Bad day, today. He’s…uncomfortable. Remember when we talked about certain times when a patient’s chemistry is compromised due to highly emotional events?"

"Yeah," Sam said, her eyes darting with the concern building inside her.

"His sessions with Doctor Sebastian have been…very productive," the sergeant said, being careful not to overstep her bounds. "But the other side of that coin is—"

"Low serotonin levels?" Sam asked.

Sergeant Garanzia nodded. "Like I said, it’s not one of his better days, but he’ll be glad to see you. He always is."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Sam said, and the two parted company.

"Daniel?" Sam stepped into Daniel’s room, expecting to find him staring out the window, sitting in his chair.

"Sam," he said, his voice flat and indistinct. Laying on his back in bed, his long legs bent at the knees, his arms draped over his body, Daniel stared up at the ceiling, bored to the teeth.

"I forgot your cookies in my car," she told him, removing her jacket and slinging it over a chair.

"That’s okay."

"So, how are you?" she asked, standing next to his bed, her hands across the back of her hips. Feeling her bones so close to the surface, her musculature so toned, Sam privately issued herself a ‘well done,’ and all those times she said no to baked goods seemed to be worthwhile. Almost. "Sergeant Garanzia said you’re not having a great day?"

"Oh, I don’t know," Daniel said, his fingers wiggling next to his sides. "I was just laying here considering what I should do with this room."

"What’d you come up with?"

"I’m torn between paneling and wallpaper," Daniel said, but his words were dry and listless. He kept his focus steadfastly on the banks of fluorescent lights and said, "I’m leaning toward paneling, but I’ll have to hire a contractor. For some reason, they won’t let me near power tools in this place."

Sam sat at the foot of his bed and knew from the sound of his voice it was going to be a long morning. "Daniel—"

In the periphery of his vision, Daniel caught her image over his knees, at his feet, and a bubble of complete terror shot up from the depths of his memory. He clenched the sheets below him and his pulse jumped. "Don’t…Sam, could you sit someplace else?"

"Oh, sure," she said, rising from her spot, trying to act as casual as possible to calm him, or maybe to fool herself into thinking she wasn’t shaken. She listened to him breathe quickly while she glanced around the room, unable to find a more suitable seating arrangement, not while her thoughts were consumed with the possible reasons Daniel needed her to move in the first place. "Um, why don’t I sit…I’ll sit here."

"I’m sorry," he said, rubbing his eyes, imploring his body to relax. "It’s um…"

"No, you don’t need to explain," she told him. Sam looked around the starkly unassuming room and wondered if a change of scenery might not do him a world of good. The room had suddenly become a very confining place to her, and she hoped he would take her up on her offer. "Daniel, it’s a beautiful day. You wanna go for a walk?"

"Can’t," was his one word answer. He opened his eyes, blinking and decided how much he wanted to share with Sam. "I have to lay here for a while."

"Oh," she said, frowning, not quite sure what he meant. "You mean…"

"Yeah," he said. "It’s a pain in the ass." A brittle, acerbic chuckle dripped from his mouth, one that held no humor.

"Oh," she said again, and then she understood his double entendre. "Oh!"

"Right," he said.

"Right. So…"

"Yes, so, paneling," he suggested.

"Yeah, so…what’s the deal with paneling?" she asked.

"It doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere anytime soon, so I might as well give my room that homey look," Daniel told her, drumming his fingers on his belly.

"You won’t be here that much longer."

"Are we talking real time, or home renovation time?"

"Daniel," Sam said, hoping to bring a little perspective to the topic, "it’s just the serotonin levels."

"Yes," he emphatically pronounced. "I see you’ve been briefed on the effects of plummeting neuro-chemicals, too. Sergeant Garanzia is nothing if not thorough."

"Daniel—"

"Fine, Sam. Let’s just say I do get out of here," he said. "Then what?"

Sam shrugged. "What do you want to do?"

"Do you see me coming back to the SGC?" he asked a little too brightly.

Sam knew when she was being bated. She looked at his body, strung too tight, toes tapping, hands fisted together. "To be honest, Daniel, no, I don’t."

Her answer took him by surprise. He was gaining more and more tired of the "You’ll be fine!" speech from everyone who came to see him. Especially when he knew it wasn’t true. Her candor, then, smoothed out his caustic tone, and when he spoke again, his voice was calmer. "Me, neither, but why is it you’re the only one who doesn’t assume I will come back?"

"I guess I don’t see why you’d want to."

Daniel nodded. His thoughts exactly. A sudden pinching of his tender flesh, and Daniel adjusted his position with a grimace and a refusal to remember the source of the pain. When the pain passed, he said, "So, what do I do?"

"I guess you do anything you want."

"For a moment there I was really impressed with your clarity, Sam," Daniel said, his tightly pitched voice returning. "All of a sudden, though, we find ourselves back in the fantasy land of endless opportunities."

Sam let the dig pass and went on. "Look, Daniel, with your experience and education, you could do anything."

"Okay, let’s look at my list of skills, shall we?" Daniel folded his arms under his head and began to click off his macabre resume. "Linguist. In the hot market for linguists, who wouldn’t want to hire one who, up until a few weeks ago, was aphasic?" Sam shook her head, and Daniel relentlessly carried on. "Moving right along to anthropologist. Ah, yes, the anthropologist who’s afraid of people and other cultures. I can’t see how that would pose a problem, can you?"

"Daniel," Sam tried to interject.

"Let’s not forget archeologist," he said, undaunted, his voice oozing with sarcasm. "I’m that special breed of archeologists who is afraid to dig into his own past, let alone the past of others, lest he discover some horrendous secrets. Oh, yeah. My options are endless."

"Daniel, you’re making it sound much worse than it is."

"We haven’t even discussed my personal life," Daniel said, waggling a finger in the air.

"Why? It’s not like any of us have ever had one before," Sam said, trying to add some levity into the leaden conversation.

"And now even less," Daniel told her, unwavering in his tirade. "Who’d want me? I mean, think about it, Sam. Touch me, and I scream. Say the wrong word, and I start tossing the furniture around. Not what I’d call fun first date material."

"Come on, Daniel."

"God, let’s not even begin to talk about actually trying to have a…physical relationship."

"I won’t if you won’t," Sam said, hoping, wishing he’d stop with the topic, but Daniel wasn’t hashing it out for Sam as much as for himself, and so he continued.

"I’m not sure if you realize it, but my recent…experiences with the physical have been, shall we say, lacking in pleasure," he snarled, and Sam winced. "Kind of destroys the libido, if you know what I mean."

"Are you finished?" Sam snapped, tired of the self-flagellation.

Daniel stopped, considered the question, and closed his eyes. "For now."

"Good," she exhaled. She wanted to be sympathetic. Hell, she thought she was extremely sympathetic. And supportive, but there was only so much she was willing to listen to before she had to call a spade a spade, and self-pity exactly for what it was. "Look, you’ve never done maudlin well, Daniel. It doesn’t suit you." Sam kept his ruddy complexion in view and let her jangled nerves settle. "You’re down, that’s all. All this is only temporary—No, it is. Let me finish," she said, raising her hand slightly when she saw Daniel purse his lips, ready to protest. " It’s only temporary, and it’s because of your bio-chemistry. And you know one of the side-effects of the anti-depressants is decreased libido."

"Don’t…don’t do…that," he stammered, turning his face to Sam. "Don’t try to explain everything away. It can’t be done. I know. I’ve been trying to do that for months, and look where it got me, Sam."

She grabbed hold of her knees and stared at the floor, finding her energy and enthusiasm siphoning off. She wondered why she was even arguing with him, reminding herself that it wasn’t her Daniel, but a depressed, highly agitated person, a by product of tumultuous emotions and careening chemistry.

Daniel returned his focus to the ceiling and rounded his arms across his body. Intellectually, he knew she was right, and his mood was due to the decreased serotonin levels, to say nothing of a strategically placed analgesic, but trying to remember that was all but impossible, especially when his torment was matched by the barely lessening throb in his pelvis. His life had become one long string of misery, both physical and emotional, and there was never a cessation in the proceedings. What he wouldn’t give for one good binge-drinking weekend, to numb the singed nerves and deaden the insistent images. He couldn’t remember the last time he was good and drunk. Then again, maybe he could…

"Sam," he said, his quieter voice catching her off guard, "do you remember that wine tasting we went to a couple weeks before I…before we…before…"

"Yes," she said, taking over for him, knowing there was no reason to go on with the timeline. She understood. "Or, as I prefer to remember it, the wine chugging."

"I seem to remember our objective going in was to learn about quality wines," Daniel said, smiling in spite of himself.

Sam’s eyes lit up with her own wine-soaked memories, and said, "When exactly did those objectives change to quantity, not quality?"

"If memory serves, it was somewhere along the table where they were serving up samples of wine from the O’Neill Vineyards," Daniel said.

Sam clapped her hand to her eyes and rolled forward with laughter. "Oh, my God! We made a promise that that story would never be spoken of again."

"And it never has been," Daniel told her, angling his body slightly to the side to see her, listen to her gentle laughter. And while he lost himself in her easy reverie, a new sadness descended upon him. Watching Sam try to cover her embarrassment over one drunken night’s escapades, Daniel realized for the first time how much his ordeal had imposed upon her. Suddenly, the laughter and the smiles seemed frivolous and unimportant.

"God, that was a fun night," Sam said, wiping her moist eyes. "Yeah, we’ll have to do that again sometime."

"It was always you," Daniel broke in with a somber voice, catching Sam in mid-gear, his burdensome expression erasing the lightheartedness. Her laughter dissipated, and she shook her head unable to fathom when this renewed anguish had begun. "Back there, when I needed to remember something…good, something…safe. It was always you."

Sam felt her face heat up. "Oh, Daniel. You don’t mean that."

His tears shouldn’t have surprised her. They seemed so common since his return. But it was that they slid across his still face, two glistening lines slipping across stony features. It was how easily and quickly they came that undid her. "What…what about Sha’re?" she asked.

And then his face began to change, to buckle, and the tears became heavier. With one sudden gasp of air, Daniel uttered through clenched teeth, "I couldn’t remember what she looked like. I still can’t."

Sam frowned and felt tears welling up in her own eyes. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, held out her hands and hoped he would take them and tried to give back to Daniel something that, had his life taken a different turn, should have been his to keep. "When I think about Sha’re, I remember her gorgeous black hair. The way it caught the light and just sort of…shimmered." Daniel sniffed, edged his hand out to hers, and nodded. Sam let his hand simply rest in her cupped palms while she clumsily composed her thoughts. "Her eyes were black and…and—oh, Daniel, I’m not very good at this—but what I loved about her eyes was the way she’d blink when she’d say your name. ‘Danyel.’ Do you remember? ‘Danyel.’ Just like that."

Daniel swallowed and mouthed the word yes, and began to clear away the haze that hovered over his memory of her.

"Sha’re’s smile was never as bright as when you were in the room. And then…wow! Total wattage. That was a thing to see," Sam said, smiling, covering his hand with hers. "But only for you."

A glance of black eyes; a mouth twitching with laughter; sensuous, olive-toned hands combing hair back from her glistening face--these were his again.

"She had long, slender arms that…well, I guess they always made me think of dancers’ arms. Expressive and graceful," she said, stroking his fingers, sending through him her peace and love.

When he closed his eyes to bring his wife better into focus, more tears spilled from his spiked lashes. And then she was there, her arms dancing around his neck, her eyes sparkling with heat and passion, her body fragrant and lush. Daniel remembered and wept.

"And Sha’re had a great body," Sam said, cocking her head to the side and finding an embarrassed smile. "I don’t mind saying, I would love to have her body."

"Me, too," Daniel whispered, and Sam chortled. Daniel tried, but couldn’t quite find it in himself. He didn’t open his eyes, worrying that if he did, he’d lose Sha’re again. He listened for Sam to quiet herself, and when she did, he said, "I miss her, Sam."

"I know you do, sweetie."

Daniel pulled his fisted hand across his eyes and concealed his unrelenting sadness with his arm. Dejected and spent by the jarring emotions, the rollicking waves of oceanic sorrow, he let loose a twitter of nervous laughter and said, "Fuckin’ serotonin."

"Fuckin’ serotonin," Sam agreed. Her thoughts exactly.

*****

General Hammond placed a cup of coffee down on his desk and smiled at Doctor Sebastian. "Again, I want to thank you for coming in on such short notice, Doctor."

"It is my pleasure," she said, taking the coffee cup in her hand.

The general lowered himself into his chair and bridged his hands across the armrests. "As you may know, an information chip was given to Colonel O’Neill at the time of Doctor Jackson’s rescue from the…" The general ran his finger over a notepad on his desk, "…the Verlocs."

"Yes," she said, pulling the hot cup from her lips, "I believe I read that in his file. I’m sorry…did you say Verlocs?"

"Yes," General Hammond said, and watched her write down the name of the beasts in her notes.

"If my memory of it is correct, the chip could not be accessed," she said, returning the top to her pen.

"That is correct," he said, nodding. "We sent it to one of our allies—"

"The Tok’ra," she interjected, lifting the cup again.

"Right. The Tok’ra were able to open the chip and transcribe its contents onto this disk, which allowed Major Carter to transfer the information to our own systems." General Hammond pulled a pale green file folder from the top of a stack. He looked at it with eyes that were shaded by the degeneration of humanity within the file, and then pushed it across his desk to her.

Doctor Sebastian stared at the file, thunderstruck that the answers to all her questions, the keys to every lock on Daniel’s psyche were merely inches away. Slowly, she lowered her cup to the desk and picked up the folder.

"This file details every act perpetrated on Doctor Jackson. I will warn you, Colonel," the general said, "that the contents are very disturbing."

Her fingers quaked as she cracked open the file. She threw one last look to the general—perhaps to ask permission, perhaps to be dismissed from the duty—and then began to read.

While he watched the color drain from her face, General Hammond spoke in the quiet, rolling timbre of a storm, miles and miles away, lumbering across the Texas plain. "Some of the words, some of the…conditions were not able to be translated, but I believe you can understand the overall details."

Doctor Sebastian brought a hand to her cheek and shook her head. "Oh, my. Oh, dear God." She turned a page and winced.

"This is the only copy of the information on paper, Colonel. It will be in my possession until such time as I am forced to hand it over," the general said, breeching the more unpalatable subject.

It took a moment for his words to register in her mind, but when they did, her eyes shot up from the grotesque words on the pages in front of her. "I’m sorry?"

"The Senate Sub-Committee who oversees our budget is demanding that the file be released to them," he said. "What’s more, they are…demanding that Doctor Jackson corroborate the information."

Even staring directly at him, even hearing every word clearly and unobstructed, Doctor Sebastian could not understand what he had just told her. "They want what?"

"They want Doctor Jackson to read the file, and tell them if the information is correct," he said, and all his sympathies traveled across the desk with his words.

"That is impossible," she said, closing the folder.

"I have no choice."

"No, I will not allow it," Doctor Sebastian said, finding the unyielding strength to disregard an order from a superior officer.

"I realize how…unfathomable this is, but I am under orders—"

"Do you know what this will do to him?" she blurted out.

"I believe I do, Colonel, but we simply have no other choice."

Doctor Sebastian lowered her eyes and removed her reading glasses. "General Hammond, let me tell you what I am prepared to do in order that this atrocity does not occur." When her stony features rose, General Hammond saw the intractable tenacity that surely accounted for her rank. "I will leave here, find a private mental health facility in which to place Doctor Jackson. Then I will resign my commission and take a staff position at that new hospital. There I will treat Doctor Jackson in a place where these politicians cannot touch him."

"If I could, I’d sign the papers for you," General Hammond said. "But you and I know, that’s not going to happen. These senators will remove you from his care the moment any effort is made to thwart their plans."

"Then I shall have to move quickly," she said.

"I don’t believe you are aware of the situation, Colonel," the general said. "This is DefCon four, and they have in place all their weapons, including a replacement for you, in the event that you try to sabotage this in any way."

"This is intolerable," she uttered.

"I couldn’t agree more," the general said.

Doctor Sebastian pushed herself from her chair and barely felt the floor below her as she walked to the glass partition that separated his office from the briefing room. Staring through the glass, past each etched permutation of civilization and life, Doctor Sebastian worked through strategy after strategy, plan after plan of how to protect her patient, only to find that each one ended with the same result—Daniel further withdrawn, further injured. Perhaps irrevocably. In her virulent surrender to the powers that be, Doctor Sebastian placed a hand on the glass map and found that her only reply was to close tight her eyes and shake her head in absolute disgust.

General Hammond rounded the corner of his desk and joined her at the map, and in the glass he could see her expression of deep contempt, and knew that it more than likely mirrored his own.

"General, I have been in the Air Force for thirty-two years, and in that time I have been ordered to perform duties I thought unsavory, even below me, but I did them. I did them and knew that—at least on some level—I was helping the greater good. But this order…" Her hands met behind her back, and she straightened her posture in a futile effort to shore up her lagging faith in the system. "How can I, in the face of the Hippocratic oath, allow this to happen?"

"Because in the end, it will not be you doing the harm. In the end, you will still be allowed to treat your patient after the harm is done," General Hammond told her. "It’s tainted consolation, I know, but it’s all you have."

Doctor Sebastian raised her eyes, adjusted her focus and for the first time saw the configurations in front of her. "These…these markings—are they planets? Stars?"

"These are places where we know a Stargate exists," General Hammond said, his sight glancing over the breadth of the map.

"And Doctor Jackson—he has been to…"

"Doctor Jackson has been to a great many of these different Stargates, yes," he said. He couldn’t remember the last time he looked at the cluster of etched points and thought of the enormity of his position, or the vastness of the SGC’s mission. But seeing each dot, each incarnation of life or hope, seeing it through the eyes of one who was just taking it in for the first time, the general couldn’t help but be profoundly affected by it all.

"Colonel, Doctor Jackson is an integral and valued member of the SGC, and whatever you can do to facilitate his return is much appreciated. We need him back," the general said.

"You realize that may never happen, especially in light of this latest abomination," she said.

"Yes, I do, but as long as we are open for business, Doctor Jackson will have a home with us. No matter what that position is, Doctor Jackson will always have a home," he said, and on his last words, the weary soldier was brought to the brink of emotion. He ran a hand across his mouth and turned from the map. "Excuse me."

It was more than she could comprehend, this atlas of places out in a universe beyond her understanding. It was more than she could fathom, the unconscionable cruelty of men on another man who wandered the universe with an ease and comfort in search of treasures and knowledge, only to be disregarded by the very people who funded his explorations. How could these bureaucrats be so inhumane to their gentle scout? How could they not see the devastation their craven actions would cause?

"When did the institution become more important than the man?" she asked, and even as she did, she realized the naiveté of her question.

From his chair, unable to look upon the map any longer, General Hammond said, "When the institution came under the hand of a coward named Kinsey."

*****

There were reports to read and reports to submit; requisition forms to okay and to deny. There were stacks of personnel files to go over, budgetary concerns to wrangle with, and two or three subordinates who had requested to be seen, angry that their missions had been scrubbed. He had messages from congressmen, from colleagues, from allies and family. All of them, every piece of paper stamped ASAP, languished in assorted piles on his desk, pushed aside to far reaching corners.

Except for one.

General Hammond had taken great care to line up the bottom of the anemic green file exactly three-quarters of an inch from the edge of his desk. In the bottom left corner, he had meticulously lined up the black computer disk that held the hard copy of the information. He ran his finger across the header on the file—"Jackson, Daniel"—and across the dates that delineated the eight missing months.

Thirty-five years in service to his country, and the general had never been so flustered in his life. He sat at his desk, fingering the hideous green file, and was paralyzed with rancor, stymied by tar-black hatred toward one man.

Senator Kinsey.

It was inconceivable to General Hammond that this petty, evil man could have such vitriolic feelings toward the SGC that he would happily see a man, a good man destroyed. And although the general had never considered himself to be anywhere near the fire and brimstone Baptist that his mother was, he took some comfort in knowing that once the senator’s temporal, malignant time was over, he’d find his reward in the white hot flames of Hell.

General Hammond prayed to God that He’d, at the very least, intercede on the general’s behalf so that he didn’t have to room with Kinsey.

Thirty-five years in the Air Force does not allow one’s soul to remain clean. Choices are made, men, women and children are sometimes sacrificed, and you weigh their lives against the greater good, and you know your own life is just one more obstacle in the way of another group’s drive toward justice. Yes, choices are made, and you find yourself waking up in a cold sweat, wondering if they were the right choices. Wondering if, on that day when your body chooses to cease carrying your blighted soul, you’ll have to answer to the mournful dead, the used.

Choices are made.

As he splayed his fingers across the file, General Hammond weighed the life of one man against the greater good and found the scales slamming to one side.

General Hammond picked up his phone and dialed Major Carter’s lab.

"Carter," came the voice.

"Major Carter, this is Hammond. I want you to meet me up top, outside the gates in five minutes. Do I make myself clear?" he said in a voice that bespoke not only the urgency but also the determination in the choice he had made. A choice he would make clear to the major once outside the moral and ethical constrictions of the mountain.

"Yes, sir," she said, and the phones were promptly hung up.

General Hammond snatched the disk off the top of the file, stuffed it in his shirt pocket, marched out of his office and to the elevator, where he told the airman to take him to the top.

Sam didn’t stop to question the order. She rushed through the corridors and waited impatiently for the elevator doors to slide open. Once inside she allowed her mind to consider the different scenarios for the odd request. Why would he want to meet me up top? Was there a foothold situation arising? Did it have something to do with Dad? When the doors finally opened, Sam was momentarily startled.

"Major," General Hammond said, taking her by the elbow as soon as she stepped from the car, "let’s talk over here."

"Certainly, sir," Sam said, while she was led by the arm. "Uh, sir, what’s this all about?"

General Hammond kept a laser focus on the maintenance shed that stood just beyond the entrance to the mountain. He let go of Sam’s arm and advanced with doggedly insistent steps.

When they reached the faded shed, Sam shrugged her shoulders and watched the general pace for a moment before saying, "Sir?"

"Major Carter, how difficult would it be to insert a virus into program that could not be traced to its originator?" he asked, pacing tight circles behind the shed.

Sam’s eyes blinked rapidly while she thought about her answers. "Well, I suppose it could be done. May I ask why?"

"I’m a military man, and when I’m given an order, I do it, but…" he said, shaking his head, his hands connected to his waist. "This just isn’t right."

"Sir, I’m not sure I—"

"I have no right to ask you to do this, and that’s why I’m not making it an order," he said, turning fully to her. "I simply don’t have the computer expertise that you do, or I’d do it myself."

"Do what, sir?" Sam asked, watching his face burst with splotches of red.

"Major, I don’t want that son of a bitch Kinsey to get a hold of Doctor Jackson’s file, but I have my orders. So here’s what I’m asking," he said, pulling the disk from his shirt pocket. "I’m going to have to hand this thing over, but I’m wondering if there is any way we can…muck around with the it, insert a virus that will not only destroy the information on it, but decimate the hard drive of any computer that tries to open it. Can that be done, and can it be done so that it is undetectable?" he asked, searching her resolute countenance. He knew she understood him, but he wanted to make sure she understood the ramifications. When he began to speak again, his tone was softer, and he was no longer speaking to a ranking officer, but to his best friend’s daughter, a young woman whom he had watched grow up. He was speaking to family. "Sam, I can’t order you to do this, and I wouldn’t make it an order, because what I’m asking is—"

"I’ll do it," she interjected.

"Sam, if it doesn’t work—"

"It will work, sir, and even if it doesn’t, I don’t care. Not anymore," she said. She held out her palm to him. General Hammond paused before handing over the disk, and when he did, he knew he had made the best choice for all concerned.

Choices are made, and this one was made for Daniel Jackson.

*****

When he stopped to watch her, Daniel noticed how preoccupied she seemed. Her eyes, usually sparking with concerned tenacity, drifted away from the conversation. One crooked finger pressed against her lips where the wrinkles radiated away. The pen she held in her other hand tapped a frenetic rhythm against her knee.

"Doctor Sebastian," Daniel said, "I get the feeling…"

She focused in on Daniel and felt her face begin to pink up. "I am very sorry, Daniel," she said, grasping the pen in both hands. Averting her eyes, Doctor Sebastian endeavored to find the best way to tell him his personal hell would be made public, and he would be made to certify it. For two days she had deliberated how and when she would tell him about the file. For two days she had lost sleep, snapped at her daughter, lost her appetite. She was a professional, and therefore should have been able to separate herself from her patient. Never had she felt so inexorably bound to the protection of a patient. Never, that is, until she was ordered to force her patient to corroborate the evidence of his sadistic subjugation, only to be subjugated by an even more sadistic politician. The thought made her stomach snarl with acidic vitriol.

"Daniel," she began, "I have something I need to discuss with you." She paused and considered telling him that she’d rather chew glass than have to discuss it, but starting a conversation with her patient by frightening him first seemed counterproductive. So she smiled at him and placed her pen on her desk. "When you were brought back to the SGC, Colonel O’Neill was given an information chip which contained the transcripts of your…imprisonment."

Daniel yanked his glasses off and tossed them on the chair next to him. "Yes, I know," he said, rubbing his eyes.

"It has been opened, and its contents…" How could she expose him to this? How could she rush his therapy, and at such a critical moment? Loathsome. For days, that was the only word she could conjure up to describe her duty. Loathsome.

Doctor Sebastian rose from her seat and headed for her credenza where a pitcher of water and a cache of glasses sat waiting. "Can I offer you some water?"

"No, but you can offer me an explanation," Daniel said, watching her uncharacteristically nervous movements.

Doctor Sebastian poured a glass of water and held it in her hands, her back turned to Daniel. "You know a senator named Kinsey, yes?"

Daniel slumped sideways in his chair, his mouth slung open as if he had suddenly been drained of all spirit. His file and Kinsey in the same sentence. Kinsey and his file. "Oh, God. What?"

"This Senator Kinsey," she said, rotating the glass between her palms, "is demanding that your file be opened and that you…authenticate its contents personally." She felt like such a coward, hiding her face from him, especially when he would need her now more than ever before. So she set the water back down without drinking it, stepped nearer to Daniel and removed his glasses from the neighboring chair. With care, she placed the glasses on her desk and took a seat next to him.

"It is a…revolting demand," she said, and she observed him careening from one emotion through to the next, one hand fisted in his hair, the other clutching the armrest of his chair. His profile hardened, muscles twitched, and then the silhouette collapsed, and his eyes opened blindly. "It is inhumane and unforgivable, and if there were some way I could stop it, I would. Please know that."

Doctor Sebastian braided her fingers together and lowered them into her lap, her line of vision following them. "It is my understanding that you will not be asked to substantiate each act, only verify that the cumulative information contained in the file is correct."

His hands shifted to his midsection and he began to rock in his chair, holding his body as if at any minute he would explode.

Doctor Sebastian turned slightly in her chair, grabbed hold of the armrests of his chair, and spoke in the most hushed words she could muster. "But, Daniel, even though I have been ordered to communicate this ludicrous demand to you, I cannot make you read the file. I cannot force your eyes to read, Daniel. Do you understand?"

Daniel rocked and grappled with his terror, the horror of having to come face to face with memories he wished he could dismiss as sick nightmares. Except for a few unrelated incidents, he had managed to keep the box closed, to keep his mind from having to decide if his soul was alive or dead. It wasn’t possible to be both, and if they made him read accounts of his own essential death, his own bodily desecration, would the choice be made for him?

"Don’t read it, Daniel." Doctor Sebastian knew that if her colleagues in the psychiatric community had any idea how personally she had come to be involved in Doctor Jackson’s case, they’d strip her of her license, discredit her professionally, and destroy her career.

And they should, she thought. Destroy it all, just as Daniel Jackson is being destroyed. Tear down the curtains and burn down the walls. Send ribbons of unholy screams throughout the universe decrying the lack of professional detachment. But be sure to add this portrait of a man, crushed irrefutably. Be sure to exhibit the faint and fragile soul that lay obliterated by political vendetta.

Her hands strangled the upholstery of the chair. "Refuse them, Daniel. It is your right," she said, punctuating each word, finding her carefully suppressed accent breaking through the meticulously constructed English, as if her very core were reaching out to him. "They cannot force you to do this."

And then that voice which plagued his many waking and sleeping hours came once again. His ragged voice, begging his captors to leave him alone--a futile and otiose exercise. It blared so loud in his head, this screaming, useless mandate, that he was sure it was seeping out through his ears, a torrent of scrambling panic and pathetic imploring.

You can’t do this, he heard his voice cry. Daniel pressed his hands to his ears.

"Don’t do it, Daniel," she begged him. "Don’t let this Kinsey do this. Don’t read it."

You can’t DO this! his voice demanded, fraught with useless entreaty.

"Daniel?" Doctor Sebastian said, listening to his breathing becoming more and more rapid, laced with muffled sobs.

Please! Don’t DO that! His voice, splintering in supplication, sliced through his mind

Doctor Sebastian shifted off her chair and knelt in front of him, tried to enter his line of vision. "Daniel, can you hear me?"

"Doctor Jackson!" she called, hoping she could reach him with her voice, not by touching him.

When he lifted his wet eyes to his physician, she knew he wasn’t seeing her. He was caught between then and now, his mind contracting with a memory that demanded acknowledgement. She watched him gasp at air, seize the armrests of his seat, all the while steadfastly and sightlessly maintaining his unwavering blind focus on her.

"Daniel, tell me what you’re seeing," she said, holding out her hands, as if anticipating the fall of words from his lips.

With one final breath, he crushed shut his eyes and labored to bring the horrific image to the surface. And when it came, screaming and turning him inside out, he fumbled for her hands and clasped them to his.

"What? What is it, Daniel?" she cried, gripping his shaking hands more solidly.

Moments passed when she wasn’t sure if he could speak at all, if he could even breathe. Moments and tear-stained seconds passed, his hands clutching hers, struggling with the pain of birthing his past. Finally, he was able to speak, breathless and undone, and the sound that scratched out the words fell wholly unfamiliar on her ears.

"It was just my body, until then," he said, rocking once again to ease the thrumming agony. "It was just my body."

"What happened, Daniel?" she whispered.

He cocked his head to one side, frowned and stared at her, a look she knew was the precursor to words that would rattle her soul. With one final bitterly sympathetic shake of his head, a fresh pair of rolling tears, he exhaled and said, "That’s when I…split."

*****

He lay twisted and shivering, always cold with no clothing to protect him from the damp stone floor. He stared at the dripping ceiling, knowing that enough time had passed for the next set to approach him. It wasn’t as if he was used to it—he didn’t think one ever got used to it—but it was becoming a pattern. A horrifyingly set pattern of degradation and pain, followed by more and more, and finally painful healing. He had managed to interrupt the pattern for a few hours when he found a misplaced piece of sharp metal, but that turned out to be…Oh, that had really been a bad idea.

Two at a time, always a pair, they’d come. One to hold him; one to take him. Both to beat him until he stopped screaming and fighting against their restraining hands. And then they’d switch. Usually by the second Daniel was too badly injured to fight. Or to be held down. Or to care. It didn’t matter at that point in which position they chose to take him. Somewhere along the thirteenth time he realized it wasn’t about a physical act but an intellectual mastery.

Fine, he told himself. It’s just my body. Do what you will. It’s only my body.

The pattern was made more complicated by the healing sessions, usually every sixth time--an agonizing process. Afterward, they’d drag him back to his dank holding cell and smile while he heroically, ineffectually fought against their massive hands, until they had grown tired of the game. Grabbing his small, weak hands, he was easily rendered incapable of lashing out. And then the only thing he could do was scream until his voice was lacerated and he could feel the cords swelling inside his throat.

When it was over, when he was hoarse and exhausted, they’d toss him to the ground and leave.

"It’s just my body," he’d tell himself, panting, dragging his torn and seeping body to a safe corner. "I’ll be all right."

By Daniel’s count—he couldn’t be sure it was accurate, but he tried to keep it straight—the next set would be numbers thirty-two and thirty-three. No, thirty-one and thirty-two…They’d healed him after the last round, or was it the time before?

If he had had the strength, he’d rub his eyes, try to force his brain to be unclouded, but he couldn’t. He had just enough energy to think, and to dread the next time, because there was always a next time.

"Come on!!" he screamed, lying in a puddle of stench, both his own and the others. "Just get it over with!" And then he realized he had enough energy to weep and wonder how much more his body could withstand.

So when they entered, first two, then two more, and then one more, Daniel was surprised at the serenity that washed over him.

Five of them, he thought. Five of them will kill me. Okay. It’s over. Five will kill me…

He didn’t fight them. He didn’t try to haul his scraped limbs away. He gave into them, and allowed them to kill him quickly, he hoped.

When the first one pulled at Daniel’s bruised ankles, shackling them to the ground with his burly hands, Daniel closed his eyes and surrendered to the inevitable end.

When the second and third each grabbed a hand and pinned them to the stones, Daniel began to hyperventilate.

When the fourth knelt next to his head and lifted the back of Daniel’s neck with one hand and forced open his jaw with the other, Daniel began to fight.

"You can’t do this!" he demanded, not knowing exactly what was to happen, but realizing, in its change of the usual pattern, it meant he would more than likely live through another inconceivable act.

Daniel frantically searched for the fifth participant and, writhing under the four crippling sets of hands, cried out, "You can’t DO this!!"

The fourth’s massive hands pried open Daniel’s jaw, and the fifth positioned himself at Daniel’s head. Daniel could just make out a long object in the fifth’s hand, passing over his eyes, coming toward his mouth. Daniel wrestled and his jaw slipped from the fourth’s sweaty grip.

"Please, don’t DO that!!" Daniel begged, even though his voice kept cutting out on him, unable to take his eyes off the object. "Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!" he cried, until his mouth was filled and his air was cut off, and his head was held still, and he shut his eyes and began to see only red. And then black.

And then nothing.

Waking up in the damp cell, his head pounding, Daniel rolled to his side and began to catalogue the incised pains he had come to know.

But there were none. At least not the usual ones. His jaw ached and his throat burned. Even his teeth felt loose, but the rest of his body felt strangely whole, untouched.

The worst part of it was that he was still alive. He slid his arms to his body, but before he could break out in tortured sobs, the door to his cell swung open, and two entered. His head whipped in the direction of the terrifying creak that the door made when it was opened and shut. His body began to tremble, his eyes wild with fear and resolve.

No, Daniel thought, his limbs unable to coordinate his retreat quickly enough. I won’t let this happen again.

Daniel scrambled back against his cell and clutched the cold stone wall. He brought his knees to his chest, preparing for battle. His lungs spasmed and he coughed. In a flash, they tore him from his crouch. One at his feet unbuckled his clothing, one at his head grabbed Daniel’s wrists. Hands the size of urns pressed Daniel’s arms to the inside of his knees, forcing open his legs.

Every muscle and sinew contracted. Daniel sucked in a lungful of air past a singed throat, threw back his head, and nothing happened.

Silence.

The insidious, slicing pain began again, and Daniel once more filled his lungs with air to scream, but there was nothing. He marshaled his senses to fight his terror, and one last time Daniel sucked in air, but as it passed through his throat, he heard only a vacuous, rasping escape of strangled air.

And then all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears, and he knew it was the only sound he’d ever be able to produce, because he was gone. They had somehow severed his soul from his body.

The bifurcating agony fell away, his body acquiesced to the taking while he stared at the smiling, upside down face above him. He stared at the face of the one holding him, at the one laughing at him, and was rocked against the floor by the one taking him, destroying him, slowly at first, then more emphatically. He stared at the inconceivable smile above him, and his limp hands were let to drop to the ground.

Daniel’s fingers began to scratch against the squalid floor—Up, down, up and circle circle circle…

Up, down, up, and circle circle circle…

And then it was still. Then the taunting smile disappeared. Daniel’s boneless body was repositioned, and the other’s face appeared, sated, glistening with a sheen of sweat. Daniel stared, blind and silent, at the lifeless, dispassionate eyes.

And then one held him, one took him, and one was split in two.

*****

She wasn’t sure when he stopped talking. She wasn’t sure when she began to shake. All she could see of his face were the deep ridges in his brow.

"I know this is difficult, Daniel," Doctor Sebastian whispered, tugging gently on his hands, "but it is important, and you are doing very well."

He took a series of shallow breaths, spent and sunken. Never lifting his disconsolate face, Daniel said in a voice weak as morning ice, "After that, words were only in my…mind. I couldn’t defend myself, or try to talk my way out of it. Words were just…narrating what was happening to me." In her hands, Doctor Sebastian could feel the desperately constructed shields crumbling, and all that was left was the tragic, doleful debris of his soul.

Then Daniel lifted his blanched face and looked directly at her—his gaze blue and forlorn, hers hazel and sorrowful. "My words…It’s just, I didn’t want to know, but these words kept…telling me. So I put them away."

She wasn’t quite sure at what point all the blood had drained from his face. In that flash of a moment, she wasn’t sure why he suddenly grabbed the arms of his chair. When he lurched forward, she did, however, manage to thrust a wastebasket under him before he violently threw up.

She held his forehead through the worst of it, and when she thought the vomiting had abated, she jumped to the side table and brought back a glass of water and a box of tissues.

"Here," she said, removing the can from his grip and placing the glass in one hand. "Rinse out your mouth."

The water shook tempestuously inside the glass in Daniel’s hand, but he somehow controlled it enough to take a sip. He splashed the water around his mouth and spit into the container, which she held for him. While he repeated the process, Doctor Sebastian pulled handfuls of tissues from the box.

"Are you finished?" she asked, touching the glass. When he nodded, he exchanged the glass for tissues, and used them to wipe his mouth, his nose, and with a new handful, his eyes.

Doctor Sebastian placed the glass and the used tissues in the wastebasket and hurried them out her door. When she returned, Daniel was pushed back in his chair, his face hidden by his hands. She pulled her chair closer to him, the room still pungent with the stench of illness, and waited for him to speak.

His fingers parted his hair in wild segments, dug into his scalp and sideburns. "What I just told you, that’s when I died," he said from behind his gated eyes. "It was only my body up until then. It wasn’t me."

She nodded, fully realizing his torment. "Yes, I understand."

"When they took away my voice…they couldn’t have known what that did to me. There’s no way they could have known," he said, and she agreed. "It was just a physical act until then. And it was just my body."

She watched him straighten his torso, fill his lungs with air and hold it. In one long sigh, he exhaled, his eyes closed to all but memory. "So when I came back, my words wouldn’t…didn’t want to come back to me. If I couldn’t speak, I didn’t have to remember, you know?"

"Yes."

Daniel rubbed his hands across his blotchy face and let them fall heavily in his lap. "Now I can speak. And now I can remember." He met her gaze and tried to smile, but it was as empty and dark as his eyes. "And now you know everything."

"And so do you," she said, not wishing to join him in his attempt to sublimate his grief. "How do you feel?"

Daniel’s eyes fell away, and he shrugged. It did not surprise her, then, that this man of letters and intelligence would come up with the one perfect word to encapsulate his shattered existence.

"Invalidated," he said, and she nodded, laboring through her own solemn aphonia. "And that won’t be in the file."

"I suppose you are right."

Daniel slid his hands to his aching shoulders and lifted his exhausted features. He drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out in a sigh before saying, "I’ll read the report."

Doctor Sebastian shook her head and began to weep. "No, Daniel."

"It doesn’t matter. I know what happened to me. It doesn’t matter."

"I can’t let you do this," she cried, grasping hold of the arms of his chair and dropping her chin to her bucking chest.

Daniel laid his arms across hers and tossed his head from side to side, depleted and numb. "Don’t worry. It can’t happen again. An atom can only split once, and then it’s over."

The strength it took him to impart his misery was monumental compared to the paltry amount of strength it would require her to regain her composure. Doctor Sebastian swallowed her sorrow and lifted her face, watched his weary head sway from side to side.

"I will be with you, Doctor Jackson," she whispered. "If it must be done, I will not let you do it alone."

And in the silence of that moment, while she watched him nod his appreciation, Doctor Sebastian felt the spirit of her mother leave the room, a room that no longer needed an empathetic guide.

*****

"Before this meeting officially begins," General Hammond said, eyeing the stenographer in the corner, "I’d like to state the ground rules." The general tossed the green file and the disk into the center of the table, not quite within Paul Davis’ reach. He didn’t want to make it too easy for the junior officer. "In front of you are the only two copies of Doctor Jackson’s file from the Verlocs. The hard copy does not, under any circumstances, leave this room or my possession. You will be given fifteen minutes to read through it while we await the arrival of Doctors Jackson and Sebastian." Paul Davis nodded and reached for the file. "Furthermore, if Doctor Jackson reads the report and finds it to be incorrect, the hard copy and the disk will be destroyed."

"General…" Paul tried to object.

"Aht!" Jack uttered, lifting a finger of warning. "You know us—we like to play by the rules, and we expect the same of our…opponents."

The general sat at the head of the long, Formica table and continued. "In the event that Doctor Jackson can, in fact, corroborate the evidence, then you will receive the disk."

"And Major," Sam cut in, eyeing him with deadly precision, "if you do receive the disk, it is for Senator Kinsey alone to open. Do I make myself clear?"

Paul searched her face for the subtle signs of implied meaning, and when her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, he said, "Yes, Major Carter. No one else but the senator will ever access the file."

"Good," Sam said, satisfied that her surreptitious message had been successfully relayed.

"I want to make another thing perfectly clear," the general said. "Doctor Sebastian has the right, without prejudice, to end this at any time. No questions asked."

"Yes, sir," Paul agreed, and then he began to open the file folder.

"Can’t wait to jump right into Daniel’s sordid past, can ya?" Jack snarled.

Paul Davis looked at the wall clock, saw that he had thirteen and a half minutes to make it through the fifteen odd pages, and chose to ignore Jack.

*****

It was such a simple thing, having regular clothes, a belt and shoes that tied, but it meant the world to Daniel. Sam must have gone to his apartment to put together the outfit, he thought, and she would have known about the shoes. She would have known and understood the importance. Leaning over his knees, tightening the laces again and again, feeling the sturdy leather grip the sides of his feet, Daniel immersed himself in the perfunctory task. He wished all of his clothing had ways to make them tighter, more constricting, because every minute the clock moved toward eleven hundred hours, Daniel felt his joints and tenuous grasp on control coming unhinged.

A soft rap on his door startled him more than he would have liked, and when his sight came to focus on the figure entering, he was relieved to see it was his physician and not one of his friends, come to offer him words of support.

"How are you feeling?" Doctor Sebastian asked, her hands nervously twitching behind her back.

"Oh, I don’t know," he said, bending to finish tightening his laces. "I suppose I’m anxious, in the most clinical sense of the word."

"I will remain at your side throughout," she said. "You need only tell me, and I will stop the proceedings."

"I’ll be fine," Daniel said, trying to convince himself more than her.

"No, you won’t." The patient lifted his startled face to the physician, and the grievous truth that her words launched gave him permission to be afraid. "But when it is over, we will repair any damage done. I promise you this."

Daniel locked eyes with her, mined for some strength he would be able to carry with him. He drew in his lower lip and looked away. He worried that the damage would be too great.

"They are waiting," she said, giving her hand to him if he needed it.

Daniel stared at the proffered hand, blinked and felt his shoelaces loosening. He leaned over, unlaced each one quickly and then pulled each section up until they were firmly tied. Doctor Sebastian frowned at the new compulsive component of his illness, and knew the stress of the day had already begun to take an enormous toll. However, when Daniel looked back to her, she was smiling, her eyes slightly narrowed--half moons of compassion.

"Ready?" she asked, masking her concern.

Daniel said nothing, but was on his feet and halfway out the door before she could catch up with him. She watched his measured, careful footing, his hand now and again touching the wall. Was he steadying himself? she wondered.

"Daniel, are you dizzy?" she asked, stepping to his side.

"I’m fine," he said. His focus was drilled to the end of the long, antiseptic hall where the conference room was. The more he stared, the faster the lines of the corridor began to merge until they disappeared into the bright, diffused light at the end—an apprehensive lesson in vanishing point perspective. Even the thin lines of the tiles carried his vision to that appointed place on the horizon where he’d be forced to couple his past horrors with his present incomprehensible nightmares.

"Sergeant Garanzia tells me you turned down the Valium I had prescribed."

"I don’t need it," he told her, his eyes riveted to the horizon, his feet carrying him as if of their own accord.

"Very well." The knot in her chest tightened with every step. Barbarism, she said to herself. Forcing my patient to remember that which his mind is only now supplying him incrementally is barbarism, she contemplated. Sons of bitches. Ridiculous, self-serving, arrogant bastards, she thought she had silently said, but when Daniel glanced at her, one corner of his mouth up-turned, she realized her anger had spilled into the auditory. Doctor Sebastian felt her face become hot.

"Excuse me. I did not mean for that to be heard. I don’t usually speak those kinds of words, especially not in English."

"That’s all right," he said, finding the short journey into the vulgar rather comforting. Daniel turned his attention back down the hall and smiled. "They sound better in Korean, anyhow."

Doctor Sebastian lowered her eyes and laughed, realizing that she had, indeed, spoken in her native tongue where she had always felt more comfortable expressing anger and derision. "Of course, Korean is one of yours."

Daniel shrugged and became silent again. So, too, did Doctor Sebastian.

When they had at last reached the room, Doctor Sebastian turned to Daniel and tried to put him at ease with a smile. Her fingers grasped and gripped her hands in front of her. "I need to speak with General Hammond. Will you be all right for a moment?"

Daniel nodded, and she left him alone. He thought he’d be able to take those few seconds she offered him to pull himself together, but without pause, his friends, his former teammates began to appear in the hall. Sam was the first, reaching out her hand in that slow, unassuming way he had come to expect. Daniel took it, almost gladly, and when Sam felt him give her hand a gentle squeeze, she tentatively stepped in and gave him time to fend off a quick kiss on the cheek, which he did nothing to stop.

Stepping back from their fleeting moment of tenderness, Sam smiled and said, "You look nice."

Daniel ran his free hand across the crisp cotton shirt and over the fitted waist of the worsted wool slacks and said, "I think I have you to thank for it." Sam shrugged her shoulders and waved off the need. Daniel brought his eyes up to hers and said, "And you look…official."

"Well, color me military," Sam said, smoothing out the lines of her Class A uniform.

"It is good to see you, my friend," Teal’c said, pressing his hand forward. "It has been far too long."

"Yes, it has," Daniel said, finding the warmth and protection of Teal’c’s familiar hands more comfortable than he would have ever imagined. Maybe I am getting better, he thought. "How’s R’yac?"

"He is advancing well through his training with Master Bra’tac." The Jaffa tipped his head respectfully and smiled. "They both send their respect and regards."

"Thank you," Daniel said, his eyes sliding away, embarrassed that even more people knew of his pathetic experience.

And while he stared at the highly polished floor, two size twelve shoes, also highly polished, came into view. Daniel braced himself for the first hurdle he would need to overcome before the day could end, and slowly he brought his eyes up the dark blue slacks, over the jacket emblazoned with bits of colorful ribbons and medals, and to the face, whose mouth was bracketed by ever-deepening lines. Daniel felt half-responsible for the sudden aging in all their faces, a responsibility that was becoming increasingly more cumbersome. So he pulled back his lips across his teeth, grimaced and drew together his brow.

"Jack," he managed to say.

Jack lifted his chin in salutation, blinked a few times and asked, "How’ve ya been?"

"Fine," Daniel lied, his eyes darting over Jack’s shoulder, across his chest, past his jacket--never settling on Jack’s face. The pain was too close, the wounds too near the surface.

Sam’s attention was divided equally between the three men. To Daniel, she wondered why he was suddenly so nervous. She thought he and the colonel were getting along. Had the colonel said something? As for the colonel, Sam wondered why he was returning to the rigidity of months past. But then again, when she looked further, it was more like a deep sorrow she could sympathize with, but she wasn’t sure she could fully understand. Turning to Teal’c, she silently asked him if she were the only one seeing the awkwardness between these two, who were, at one time, great and devoted friends. The not so subtle lift of Teal’c’s eyebrow told her she wasn’t alone in her observation.

Jack shook his head, his mouth agape, in that nervous habit he’d never managed to rid himself of, and said, "So, you ready for this?"

At that moment, Daniel would have given anything to be able to stoically answer in the affirmative, be able to put Jack and the others at ease. But he could feel his fingers tingling, his chest tightening, and when he did offer his one word answer, it came out in something of a laugh, something of a cry. "No."

The corners of Sam’s mouth turned down and she swallowed the lump in her throat. "Daniel, you don’t have to do this."

"Yes, I think I do," he told her.

"We shall be seated together, DanielJackson," Teal’c said to his brittle friend, caressing Daniel’s quarrelsome nerves with his voice. "As a team we shall accompany you until this distasteful event is completed."

Daniel nodded and clenched his teeth. "I appreciate that, Teal’c."

"I believe we are ready to begin," Doctor Sebastian said, appearing at Daniel’s side. She gently smiled a greeting to each, her hands clasped behind her back to mask their tremors. "I wonder if the rest of you wouldn’t mind if I had a moment alone with Doctor Jackson."

"No. We’ll, uh…" Jack began, pivoting on his heels toward the room and then back to Doctor Sebastian. "Yeah. Yeah, we’ll just…go inside." Jack tried to force a smile, a thing he had never been able to do, and then turned away. Regret for yet another missed opportunity pierced Daniel’s heart.

"Good luck, Daniel," Sam said, touching his fingers. Daniel was able to flip his hand around fast enough to catch Sam’s, and although he couldn’t quite meet her eye, at least he felt like he could breathe.

He nodded, bit the inside of his lip, and whispered, "Thank you."

Sam’s voice was suddenly gone, so she did her best to acknowledge she heard him. She worked up a timorous smile, and let Teal’c escort her into the conference room.

Daniel, relieved that the well wishing was over, wrapped his arms around his chest and closed his eyes while he breathed deeply and let it out in an explosive gust. Doctor Sebastian kept watch over him and allowed him the moment to center himself. He’d need it.

"This will not be easy," she said, using her voice like a soothing balm across barely healed wounds, "but you are very strong. I will remain next to you for the duration, and at any time you wish it to end, you need only to glance in my direction."

"I…I know everything, right?" Daniel asked as his brow line reached high above his darting eyes. "I mean there’s nothing in that file I don’t know, right?"

Doctor Sebastian rounded her shoulders for a moment and smiled, sadly but with compassion, "We shall see."

"At the very least, it’ll give us something to talk about tomorrow," Daniel chuckled, but the truth of the matter was far from humorous, and neither he nor Sebastian could rouse their amusement. Doctor Sebastian waited for him to pass through the futile act of repression, knowing it was merely a staging area in preparation for battle. His eyes fluttered shut and he began to go through the breathing exercises they had practiced. When at last his eyes opened, she saw in them fear but a great deal more resolve. "I’m ready."

Together they walked into the conference room. Clean and bright and cold, the room was a contrast between shiny chrome and the darkness of dress uniforms. General Hammond and the three others stood next to their chairs, a stenographer sat inconspicuously in the corner, while Major Paul Davis remained fastidiously studying a document Daniel presumed was his file.

"You’re looking well, Doctor Jackson," General Hammond said, pulling Daniel’s attention away from the point of interest that all too soon would be the focal point for Daniel as well.

Daniel gathered himself enough to see that the general had offered him a hand, which Daniel took. "Thank you, sir,"

"We’re going to make every effort to see that this ends quickly," he told Daniel, and then redirected his gaze to the woman seated silently in the corner, a black stenography box at the ready. The general nodded in her direction, and her fingers alighted over the keys. "With that in mind, why don’t we take a seat?"

Doctor Sebastian motioned for Daniel to sit at a chair closest to the door, just in case, and she took one right next to him. Before Daniel could sit down, though, he looked across the table and watched Paul Davis scan the remaining few lines of the egregious file. His hands shaking, Paul never looked up from the horrific words to see that the subject of the recorded brutality was standing directly in front of him. When at last he reached the end of the report—a litany of one inhumane atrocity after another—he closed his eyes, closed the file, drew a hand across his face, and shut out the rest of the room. Breathe, he told himself, breathe, or you’ll throw up.

"Major Davis," General Hammond prodded.

Paul Davis dropped his hand, startled, and saw for the first time that the room was filled with all the people who needed to be there, including Daniel Jackson, and Paul wished to God he didn’t have to be one of them. Shaking his head, profoundly bothered by the images running amok in his mind, he stood and couldn’t for the life of him remember how he was supposed to address the man not four feet away. "Daniel, I…"

Daniel noticed the gray pallor of Paul Davis’ skin. How it reminded him of bleached wood, washed up and stranded on a beach, and he almost felt sorry for the major. Almost. "I can tell you what happened, but can you really understand?" Daniel asked with a gentility that fluctuated between contempt and compassion.

Davis, thunderstruck and destroyed by proxy, could only offer the two words he hoped would stand for all the turbulence in his heart—for Daniel’s ordeal; for the inquiry; for having been given the disgusting orders to familiarize himself with Daniel Jackson’s most private nightmares. "I’m sorry," he said, and never meant those two words more in his life.

Daniel met Davis’ gaze, saw the profuse remorse in them and nodded. "So am I."

Reeling from the incomprehensible thought that Daniel could actually still be alive after the months of abuse and torture, Davis, unable to move, remained standing for a moment while Daniel sat down.

"Major Davis, if you’ll take your seat, we will begin," General Hammond said. "Doctor Jackson, I would officially like to go on record stating my absolute distaste for these proceedings. I think they are outrageous, uncalled for, and an act of personal cowardice on the part of the person responsible for them." The stenographer dutifully recorded each word, and General Hammond was well pleased that she did. Jack O’Neill lifted a bent finger to his lips and squelched a "Yes!" "But orders must be followed, and so we are here. Major Davis, if you’ll pass me that file." Paul Davis gladly abdicated responsibility for the file to the general and then sat back, nervously waiting for the obscene business to begin.

General Hammond placed the file in front of him and prayed that it wouldn’t be the ruination of one of his people. "Doctor Jackson, I wish there were some way I could…effectively convey to you the deep regret I have over this entire affair." The general ran his fingers along the edge of the file, too ashamed to look Daniel in the eye. "Before we begin, is there anything you’ll need to make this…at all easier?"

"I can’t imagine such a thing exist, General," Daniel said, biting the inside of his lip. Sam sat next to him, her fingers dovetailed together in her lap, while Jack sat at the far end of the table, his head propped up in his hand, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all, contemplating retirement and alcohol. "I suppose the best thing to do is just get it over with."

General Hammond nodded, and slowly pushed the file to Doctor Sebastian, who regretfully slid it in front of Daniel. Daniel stared at the file in front of him, pulled a shaking hand across his mouth, and stared some more. His heart began to crash against his ribs, and his veins throbbed with the frantic rhythm. Breathing in and out of his nose, Daniel threw off his glasses and tossed them onto the table.

"Doctor Jackson," his physician began, touching his hand with the slightest pressure.

"I’m fine," Daniel asserted, and fumbled with the front cover, crumpling it before he could get it open completely. "I’m fine."

It started off as many personnel reports do—height, weight, distinguishing marks, health—the salient yet unemotional facts and figures of a man, sans the spirit. Daniel took a certain amount of pride in the supposed psychological profile—stubborn, antagonistic, pugnacious. But then it went on, and his throat began to close.

"May I have some water, please?" he asked, barely able to make his voice heard. The general, Doctor Sebastian, Sam and Major Davis all vied for the carafe in the middle of the table. While Daniel continued to read of his troubling past, Sam poured a glass of water for him and set it near his hand. He thanked her, drank the water, and tried again to read.

"Fifty…fifty-two thousand mead," he whispered, raking one hand through his hair. He read on, and began to breathe more heavily. Daniel pressed the palm of his hand over his mouth, but he was unable to mute the sounds of his increasing fear.

"Daniel, are you all right?" Doctor Sebastian asked, leaning in very close to him.

Daniel’s head bounced up and down, quick movements, and he said, "I, uh…the Corrections." He switched hands, and dug at the tension grinding against his brow, his eyes tightly closed. "Funny, I…Corrections seems so…It’s not what I would have called it."

Jack O’Neill, unable to sit still and listen, exploded from his chair and strode to the window. He massaged his temples and tried to drown out the sound of Daniel’s agony by reminding himself that none of it would have happened had he not stopped to exchange snide remarks with Sam. When his guilt did little to mute Daniel’s words, he forced himself to listen—the only penitent act he could offer.

"I had no idea…there were that many. I lost track after…after thirty, thirty-two. I had no idea…fifty corrections." Sucking in air as quickly as he could, Daniel grabbed hold of the edge of the table with one hand, the seemingly shattered bones of his skull in the other.

Doctor Sebastian turned to the general and said, "I think we should stop."

"No," Daniel called out, covering his eyes with both hands. "I just…I need a minute. I’ll be okay."

It was unbecoming of a Jaffa to lose one’s composure in battle, but this battle that Daniel Jackson alone faced was more than even the old soldier could bear. What started as a tremble in his chin, a quavering of his cheeks, continued until one solitary tear furrowed a path down his iridescent cheek. Of all the unjust acts he had been witness to or had carried out in the name of Apophis, this suffering seemed the most heinous, and Teal’c knew there was precious little he could do to change it, nor to change the past. And so he wept.

When at last he was ready to speak again, Daniel slid the file forward and pressed his back into the chair, his eyes yet closed. With one final cleansing breath, Daniel spoke. "You’ll want to know about the healing device. It’s the only technology I experienced." Daniel opened his eyes and looked directly at Paul Davis’ pale face. Daniel wasn’t sure what was worse at that moment—having to recount his story, or the pity, the fearful pity in Davis’ eyes. He wondered if Davis was the only one looking emotionally disheveled, so Daniel glanced from face to face, a ring of people, all looking defeated and tired. Daniel wanted to give them some assurance that the feeling would pass, that it would get better over time, but he couldn’t convince himself of that, so how could he offer a lie to them?

Davis, mouth slightly agape, stared back at Daniel, absolutely staggered by Daniel’s ability to soldier on, even under the circumstances. He shook his head, having not heard exactly what Daniel said.

Daniel’s focus came to rest once more on Paul Davis, and he said, "You’ll want to take notes, Major, because I’d rather not go through this again."

"Certainly," Paul said, completely unsure why he was picking up his pen and opening his notebook, but whatever Daniel was willing to offer, he’d dutifully, hopefully with a deaf ear, dictate.

"Each time I was brought into the…I’m not sure what you’d call it," Daniel began, grasping the side of the table, closing his eyes to better remember. "It was a room, a dank room, made of stone—like most of them were in that section—and the healing device was controlled by one person. If I had injuries to my face, which I normally did, the healer would, um…" Daniel touched his face with his hands, his lips relentlessly trying to speak words his mind hadn’t yet called up.

"Take your time," Doctor Sebastian whispered.

"There was a salve that was applied to my face," Daniel said. "I—I—I don’t…I don’t know what it was made of. Musty. Um, I’m sure herbal in content." He swallowed and could smell the pungent rot of it, the chilled presence of it on his skin, and his flesh began to writhe. "Um, I would lay on the ground, a long, rectangular rock with grooves on either edge, and a blanket of sorts, a sheet made of…of Kevlar, maybe? I’m not sure. Something, a conductive agent. Sam could…Sam would be able to figure it out. In any event, it was a blanket that was tucked around my…my body, but only up to my chin."

Daniel’s hands fell to the edge of his chair, which he grasped, and he rocked and moaned without realizing it. Forced himself to breathe. "I don’t know, but I assume the device could not be used on head injuries. At least it never was on me."

Paul Davis wrote as quickly as he could, grateful that he had something to do other than just have to sit by and listen. Transcribing Daniel’s experience removed the horror and left only words. Paul wondered if he’d spend the next few days trying to transcribe the sounds of the world so that he wouldn’t have to listen to the emotion. But there were questions that needed to be answered, and it was with a great deal of separation from his natural instinct to forget that Paul Davis asked, "Was there a pattern to the amount of times they healed you?"

From his curled position on the chair, Daniel nodded and said, "Yes, I believe in the beginning—during my…Corrections, was it?—the healings came…every sixth time."

Davis looked up from his writing, blinked and asked, "Why every sixth time?"

"Oh, for God’s sake, Davis!" Jack growled from his position next to the window. "Don’t answer that, Daniel."

"I suppose it was to ensure continuity of…structure," Daniel managed to say. Jack dropped his head into his hands and cursed. Daniel hoped Davis would take him for his cryptic explanation, and not need to have it explained. Daniel was sure he wouldn’t be able to do that. But when he saw the look of perfect confusion on Davis’ face, Daniel bit the inside of his cheek, closed his eyes, and said, "After six…Corrections, I think I was...It was a matter of…elasticity."

"Jesus Christ," Jack uttered, bile rising in his throat.

It was amazing to Daniel that Paul Davis’ face suddenly became even more blanched at that moment when comprehension finally blossomed in his mind. Daniel didn’t know whether to chide him for being so slow on the up-take, or pity him that he could even begin to possibly understand.

Jack’s hands flew to his hair, to the back of his head, to his neck. If he had a gun. If he had a gun…This was the reason he didn’t want to read the report in the first place. How could it possibly do anyone any good? It was the stuff night sweats were made of. The stuff that wheedled through the subconscious and pried out past traumas, past failures. If he had a gun…

"The, um, healing device," Daniel went on in a voice that was far too controlled for the situation, "was, as far as I can remember, a…particle stream, only in a circular form. I guess the best way to describe it is…it was similar to an MRI, only it was…pin-points of light, held independent of each other through the air." The table in front of Daniel began to lose its vertical hold in his eyes. Shapes and figures began to pull like taffy, strangely comical to only Daniel. "I know that’s hard to understand; believe me, it was for me. The light came out of the wall; it started at my feet and made its way to my neck. ‘Scuse me," he suddenly said, and rushed to his feet. Doctor Sebastian was at his side in an instant.

"Daniel?" she said.

"It’s…it’s getting hard to breathe," Daniel panted, pacing with his eyes closed, too dizzy to watch the entire room tilt. His hand waved through the air, searching for something to grasp, and what it found was Sam’s hand.

"Perhaps we should end this," Doctor Sebastian said to him, holding him by the elbow. Sam nodded her vehement approval.

"No," Daniel said. He threw back his vertiginous head and pulled his arm away from Doctor Sebastian, but grasped more strongly onto Sam’s hand. "I need to do this."

And while Daniel gasped at air that wouldn’t come, Jack, from across the room, watched through deeply narrowed eyes, feeling as raw and undone as he ever had in his life.

"The pain…um, like scraping, uh…knife-like. It caused seizures and…" Daniel felt his knees begin to buckle. In an instant, General Hammond and Teal’c were with him. Eight sets of hands, guiding him to his seat.

"Please, don’t," Daniel begged, pushing away their hands. Even when after they had backed up, Daniel continued to wave them off. "Please, don’t. Just…Please."

"All right, son," General Hammond whispered, beckoning Doctor Sebastian and Sam to assist Daniel to his seat.

Sam clenched his hand and cloaked him with her arm. "Daniel, let’s sit down." After a moment, after his air didn’t come to him through a tightly constricted pipe, Daniel allowed her to steer him to his place at the table.

"I think we’ve heard enough," the general said, standing behind Daniel.

"I concur," Teal’c said.

Daniel, his arms crossed on top of the table, his head cradle therein, began to whisper a message to himself, one that had sustained him so often. "It was just my body. It was just my body."

Doctor Sebastian sat down next to Daniel and touched his elbow. "Daniel," she whispered, "let me take you back to your room."

"No," he whispered back, and when he lifted his face, his skin was ashen, his hands, pressed against his forehead, shaking. "No. I can do this."

"Yes, you can," she said. "But you do not have to."

"I need to know," he said. "Just give me a minute, okay?"

Doctor Sebastian drilled into Paul Davis with an iron glare. "When you report back to Washington, do not forget to tell them of this, of what they have done," she demanded.

Paul Davis swallowed hard and said, "No, ma’am, I won’t."

Teal’c and General Hammond walked back to their seats, which left Sam Carter staring at Jack O’Neill. She knew him to be steely, cold, indifferent, when he had to. Charming, humorous and warm when he felt comfortable. But never, in all the years she had worked by his side, had she seen him look so afraid, so catastrophically undone. She felt herself begin to crumble, so she slid into her chair and shielded her eyes.

Finally, when he felt he had stepped back from the brink of tears, Daniel lowered his hands and just breathed. Breathed with his eyes closed, like he had learned to do the first day he had entered Doctor Sebastian’s office. Breathe…

And then he pulled the file to him again, and hoped he could get through it without his internal organs bursting.

"Lev…Levan," he whispered, his eyes wide, red rimmed and wet. Daniel nodded, and found that another unasked question now had an answer. Anonymity, he thought, was somehow safer. "He has a name. Levan." One could hide behind the rationale of "The monster has no name, therefore the monster doesn’t exist." But suddenly, the monster had an identity, and Daniel could no longer hide. Daniel’s fingers grazed over the words, aiding his blurred vision to keep track of which line he was on. It was becoming more and more difficult for him to read the words—they kept waving and jumping from the page, bending and disappearing in flashes of light—but her persevered, until he came to a new word, a title. He backed up and read the sentence again. "Um…creature trained to…to…Slaker?" Daniel looked to Doctor Sebastian, who shook her head. "Slaker? Like, to slake? Um, think…Old English—slacian, loosen. Middle English, to lessen, diminish. I don’t…I don’t get it. Um, slake. It means to quench, to allay, to…to…"

There was a collision of words and hidden images in his head, and Daniel gasped. "To satisfy."

In that moment, when the alternate definition and his latent memory met up, his body emitted a strangled sob. His hand trembled against his mouth, and the tears once obstructing his view, began to freely tumble down his cheek.

"Please, Daniel," Sam begged, seeing his obvious horror. "Please, stop."

Daniel’s eyes were riveted to the word, and as he stared, hazy images of his life as a Slaker churned up in his mind. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, ashamed and aware, bit his lip and uttered to himself, "My God."

Jack clutched the window ledge in his hands, stepped back and dropped his head between his shoulders. Every nerve in his body sparked in rage. Every molecule clenched in black anger. "Daniel…" he tried to say. "God, Daniel…"

Doctor Sebastian took her patient’s arm, hoping to persuade him to put an end to the trauma. "Daniel, you’ve read enough."

He turned to Doctor Sebastian and whispered, "I guess I didn’t know everything that was going to be in the report, did I?" Daniel pushed her hand off his arm and turned the page of the report. Two pages in, he was met by words that burned into him insidiously—"Strong, healthy, able to withstand physical punishment. Addle brained, imbecilic, torpid, unable to understand simple directions." There was nothing there he could find to argue with, so he turned the page.

Sam rocked back and forth in her chair, one arm bound to her aching stomach, one hand to her mouth, and wept. Each time she tried to look at Daniel, the tears came more insistently. She wept, and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her.

Jack heard her sobs from his post at the window, but knew there was nothing he could do to comfort her. He lifted his pale face to the bright sunlight and looked out past the grass and the trees and the cement walkways to a brick in a wall that knew nothing of him, and even less of his pain. He focused his energies and his sorrow on the spot, and shut out the rest of the world.

On the last page of the report, Daniel came across a figure, the sum of his existence, and began to chuckle, and then to laugh. Even Jack turned to see what had brought on the inappropriate outburst. Daniel’s eyes, squinted down to slats through his dark laughter, looked directly into Jack’s, and when he did, the laughter faded, and the expression changed to unfathomable sadness and tears.

"I was sold for sixty-two thousand mead, Jack. I don’t…I don’t know the exchange rate between mead and dollars, but…but it sounds like a lot. At least I had worth." Without taking his eyes off Jack, Daniel trembled and wept. "At least I was worth something."

"That is enough," Doctor Sebastian said, closing the file, shoving it away from Daniel. She reached across his back and tried to persuade him to stand. "It is over. I won’t let this go on any further."

Sam jumped to her feet and took one of Daniel’s arms, assisting Doctor Sebastian in lifting him. "Come on, Daniel. Stand up, sweetie."

"I had worth, Jack." Daniel let himself be raised from his seat, all the while shaking his head and relentlessly holding Jack’s pitiful focus. "I was worth something."

"Come, Daniel," Doctor Sebastian said, but the connection between Daniel and Jack would not so easily be broken. The colonel stood blinking, utterly unable to speak, to lend support. All he could do was hold Daniel in his sorrowful focus, try to force himself to speak. Nothing. He was paralyzed, caught in the excruciating gaze of his friend’s agony with nothing to do but stare back and shake his head no.

After a moment, Daniel lowered his face. What could Jack offer him? he wondered. What could he possibly say that would make it any easier? Daniel wiped the tears from his face, bit the inside of his cheek, and gathered himself just enough to report what he had been ordered to do.

With a voice that was far too normal, much too gentle, Daniel said from his slumped position between Sam and Sebastian, "It’s true. The file—it’s all true."

Doctor Sebastian and Sam took great care to navigate his tremulous body away from the table. Teal’c joined them and took over for the two, grasping Daniel’s hand in his, one large, sturdy arm wrapped around Daniel’s back.

Three men, dressed in their dignified Class A uniforms, remained motionless, barely breathing, while the crushed remains of their friend, their subordinate, their colleague were rushed out of the meeting room and back to his room.

Two men, who dared to split the subtle meaning between responsible and censurable, remained behind in the silent room when the third left to report back his findings. Two men remained, a general and his 21C, ashamed to look at the other, ashamed to see their own answerable guilt.

One man, whose shoulders bore stars and responsibility, stayed behind in the hallowed room, left behind by his 21C, who ran from the room in search of a private place in which to get sick. One man remained and found his own face awash in tears.

*****

His jacket hung limp over the back of the chair, as limp as his head between his arms, propped up on his knees. In his hand, Jack held Daniel’s glasses, the only vestige of the day that remained in the antiseptic conference room.

General Hammond had excused himself hours earlier to return to the SGC, but not before checking in on Daniel. The general had kindly made his way back down to the conference room, knowing Jack was there alone, and more than likely was concerned. The general told him that Daniel had been given a light sedative and was sleeping, to which Jack nodded. General Hammond asked Jack if there was anything he needed, to which Jack shook his head.

"I’ve been witness to more disturbing images than I care to remember, Jack," he had said, seeing the disconsolate slump of Jack’s body. "I thought, maybe naively, that this…nightmares would end when SG1 was reunited, but it just seems to be going on and on." The general watched the remaining light of day sift away through the grounds of the Air Force Academy. "To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if this particular nightmare will ever end. And I don’t mind tellin’ you, that scares the hell out of me."

Jack shook his head and turned the wire-rim glasses over between his fingers. "Sir, I think it’s time you assigned Andy Packard to SG1 on a permanent basis."

The general turned to Jack and understood why his team leader chose at that moment to talk shop. After all their years together, General Hammond understood a thing or two about Jack O’Neill, and with this recommendation, he understood it was the only way for Jack to come to terms with his profuse grief. The general rolled back his shoulders, laid his hand on Jack’s slumped back and said, "I’ll fill out the paperwork first thing in the morning."

"Thank you, sir," Jack barely managed, tapping the glasses against his palm.

"Jack," General Hammond began, using his voice like a soothing hand, "it’ll take a day or two for the paperwork on Packard to go through. SG1, therefore, will be on stand down. I’d like to suggest you take a few days, take care of yourself. I’m going to tell Major Carter and Teal’c the same."

"That won’t be necessary, sir."

"Maybe not," the general said, "but it’s what I’m going to recommend."

Jack took the general’s words for what they were—a carefully couched order—and agreed. "Yes, sir."

And then Jack was alone, left in the lifeless sterility of the white room, where echoes of his friend’s demons still hung in the air. He was left alone to attempt to recount each step, where he had failed, where he had miscalculated, where he had simply read the signs horribly wrong. His list was long, and with each month that passed in his memory, Jack could hardly stand to be inside his own flesh.

"Danny," he whispered, touching the hinges of Daniel’s glasses. "God..."

One confession after another, a gathering of personal failures, of professional deficiencies, of faults, of dereliction of friendship, passed his lips in hushed, repentant words. One after another, until his throat ached, his head throbbed, and he was too numb to feel anymore. Until the evening slipped into night, and yet the white room remained burning white, steadfast in its harboring of the day’s unforgivable malfeasance.

So it was that at 2132, ten hours after he and the rest forced Daniel Jackson to open his soul to them, expose his greatest pain for the official record, Jack O’Neill gathered his jacket, his hat and Daniel’s glasses, and shuffled out of the room, ostensibly to go on stand down.

The halls were quiet, and Jack realized he had never been in Mental Health past visiting hours. He wondered how far down the hall he’d be able to go before one of the nurses or physicians would gently ask him to leave. Each face he passed nodded to him, spoke his title or addressed him in respect. Each person seemed to understand that the colonel was authorized to walk the corridors of their facility, knowing his journey would end quietly enough at the end of the hall, at the end of a confession. They seemed to realize that which Jack could not—that he had one more stop before he could leave, before he could move on.

When Jack reached Daniel’s room, it almost came as a shock to him. He looked back down the hall and wondered when he had passed the exit door. Jack ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes, pondered the unfathomable question which had propelled him—how did it all go so wrong?

He’d just check on him, Jack decided. Sneak inside, probably find him asleep, and maybe even steal a touch to Daniel’s arm, hope that in that otherworldly place, Daniel would know that Jack had been there. That Jack, oh, hell—that Jack cared for him. Always would. He hoped Daniel would understand this, at least someday. And that he was sorry.

Jack pushed the silent door open just enough to pass through, and when he did, he found Daniel sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched over his legs, the muscles in his back under the taut shirt jumping. Jack tossed his hat and jacket on the chair, Daniel’s glasses, too, and took one step closer, leaned over to get a better look, took another step and said, "Daniel?"

Without leaving his position, Daniel quietly said, "Hi, Jack."

Jack was relieved to hear Daniel’s voice, tired and hoarse, but even. "Hey," he said, stepping closer. "What are you doin’?"

"Tying my shoes," Daniel said, pulling up hard on his laces. "I guess Doctor Sebastian figured I was drugged enough that I wouldn’t try anything…desperate with the shoelaces. It took some negotiations, but I was able to convince her to let me keep my shoes on." Daniel crossed the laces, and yanked them tight across his foot. "It’s funny, you know, but I can’t seem to get them tight enough."

"Yeah," Jack said, lowering himself into the chair in front of Daniel while he watched in sad confusion. "I bet."

One loop, wrapped by the other end, loop through the hole, tighten. Onto the next. "Did Davis go back to DC?"

"Yeah. Couple hours ago," Jack told him, looking on as Daniel’s scoured fingers dug at the laces of the right shoe, pulling each intersection up and free.

"He wasn’t ready for that," Daniel said, starting at the bottom of the holes, tightening each, pulling up, moving on to the next. "It wasn’t his fault. He was just following orders." And then Daniel was looking at Jack from his hunched position, his lips pressed together, his eyes sliding across Jack’s face—embarrassed that he was absolving Paul Davis of sins that, had Daniel committed on their last mission, would have changed the course of events almost a year past. He was sure Jack understood the paradox, so Daniel resumed his work.

"How can I help, Daniel?" Jack asked, amazed that he was even able to make himself heard over his thumping heartbeat.

"You can’t," Daniel told him, crossing the laces, yanking them tight across his foot. One loop, wrapped by the other end, loop through the hole, tighten. Onto the next.

"Daniel…"

"My job has always been to find languages in the middle of noise." Daniel grabbed the perfectly symmetrical ends of his tied laces and slowly pulled until the loops closed in on themselves, leaving only a knot. "There are certain patterns in languages, certain grammatical structures. They just…I guess they just make sense to me." One by one, Daniel loosened the crossed laces, until the shoe was opened, gaping and accessible. "Even with the Goa’uld, I was able to understand their language, and the very act of analysis was a way to…to…to objectify it." Starting at the lowest point, Daniel hooked his fingers under the laces and tugged at them until the sides of the shoe pulled together. "It took away the color of the language and left only words to figure out. But these people, the…the…" Daniel stopped, the laces wrapped around his hands.

Jack cleared his throat and croaked out, "Verlocs."

"Right. Verlocs." Cross the laces, through the hole. One loop, wrapped by the other end, loop through the hole, tighten. Onto the next. Jack pressed his elbows into his knees and rubbed his aching eyes. It was too much. It was too damn much.

"Anyhow, the Verlocs, they didn’t have an oral language, at least not one I could hear or see. There wasn’t any way for me to hide behind analysis, or the minutia of analysis." Daniel watched the precisely tied bow on his shoe fade as he pulled the free ends. "For all my education and knowledge, it didn’t mean a thing. I tried to communicate with them—it didn’t help. See, they took my only weapon—my words." Daniel opened the shoe, the laces undone. He sat up and opened his hands, draped lazily in his lap. "And you know why, Jack? You know why they muted me?"

Jack forced himself to lift his eyes to Daniel, be witness to his soft, awful words. "No."

Daniel stopped, gathered his will to speak the rancorous truth --shameful and emasculating. He lifted his brow and sighed. "Because they didn’t want to hear me scream."

Jack tried not to give any outward appearance that he was crumbling, but even so, he felt his shoulders slump. He could hear himself whispering pointless apologies, hard obscenities. He didn’t know if those whispers were only in his head, or if he had spoken them aloud. He could hear nothing but the furious pounding of his heart, the rage at Daniel’s captor thrumming in his head

Daniel shrugged his shoulders, oblivious to the effect his words had had on Jack. He leaned over his knees, started at the last set of crossed, flaccid laces and began again. "I couldn’t even scream. And see, the humor of this whole story, the really dark, sinister irony of it is this: That even though they took away my words, my very ability to speak, they still employed my mouth." Daniel chuckled as he strained to pull the laces tighter and then tighter still, binding his foot inside the leather. "Isn’t that weird? I have this strange ability to speak twenty-three languages, and even when I can’t use one of them, my mouth is still useable." Daniel wrapped the laces around his hands, red and raw from the continuous work, and pulled up even harder. "Poor bastards," he strained, "they never knew how good they had it. It’s not everyday you get to use someone who’s multi-lingual for a mouth fuck."

With a sudden pop, his hand flew up in the air, almost punching him in the eye. In his palm was a broken shoelace, the tattered end swinging below his fist. Daniel stared at it, stared at Jack, stared at the lace, horrified. "What do I do now? What do I do now? What…how am I gonna tie my shoes now, Jack?"

Jack held up his hands. "Okay. Just…hold on." Frantic, he leaned forward and began to take the laces out of his shoe, but realized they’d be too short for Daniel’s shoe. He glanced up at Daniel and found him breathing in short pants, beginning to shake, transfixed by the broken lace dangling from his clenched hand.

"Here," Jack said, pulling his shoe off and offering it to Daniel. "Here, Daniel."

Daniel’s jaw slung open, a cry edging toward the opening. Tears slid unobstructed across the taut skin. Jack held his shoe open for Daniel and waited for Daniel to make the next move. When it seemed that Daniel was too overcome to think, Jack knelt down in front of Daniel, reached for Daniel’s foot, slowly and with the utmost care. He loosened the broken lace and slipped the brown oxford from Daniel’s foot.

"I’m gonna put this on you, okay?" Jack asked, holding open his dress shoe, his shined and polished black dress shoe. It was very difficult for Daniel to allow people to touch him, made even more difficult when that person was Jack, but his hands shook so, and he was crippled with fear. And he needed that shoe on his foot, right away, so he put aside his fear in favor of his desperation, and let Jack slide the regulation dress shoe onto his foot.

"Okay?" Jack whispered.

Daniel looked at the watery sight, blinking, trying to understand, and nodded. One brown shoe, one black. One black shoe that needed to be tied. He leaned over his knees, never letting go of the severed lace, and tried to hook the new laces with fingers that were barely under his control. Still he tried, unable to grasp the waxed laces.

Jack offered his assistance to the heartrending act, passing his unwavering, steady hands over Daniel’s trembling fingers. "Let me, Danny." Daniel pulled his hands away and nodded, while tears, silent as clouds, dripped onto Jack’s hands, onto the highly polished surface of the leather like raindrops. Jack pulled the throat of the shoe together, one crossed pair of laces at a time, until he reached the top. He made the initial tie, yanked it twice and then finished it with a bow.

"How’s that? Okay?" Jack asked, holding the top of Daniel’s foot, trying to determine if it was snug enough on his foot. Daniel bobbed his head and began to snake his arms around his body, shivering and faltering. Jack stood up and sat on the edge of the bed next to Daniel, close enough to hear his whispers, but not too close to frighten Daniel.

Daniel stared at the mismatched shoes, and had to keep blinking away the tears in order to see them better, which upset him further. Jack took a chance and slid an arm across Daniel’s back, waited for him to pull away.

Daniel didn’t move, nor did he so as much as flinch. He just shook his head and tried to find his voice. "I thought I was smarter than you, Jack," he whispered, feeling as burned and raw as his hands. "I thought I knew better. I…I…" Daniel held out his abraded hands, the detached lace wrapped around his palm, and let both hands drop into his lap, depleted and destroyed. "I thought I was smarter than everybody, and for my arrogance I was raped." And then his hands were clasped together, the fingers knotting and tightening around each other and over the useless shoelace. "But it wasn’t my body, and it wasn’t my…mouth," he stated, glancing at Jack and then at the hand on his arm, consoling him. "They raped my mind. Over and over and over and…They took everything from me, Jack. And I could…God, Jack, I could never understand why." Daniel glanced at Jack’s hand, rubbing up and down on his arm, and he couldn’t comprehend whose hand it was or why he couldn’t feel it. "It’s just, I couldn’t…I couldn’t…Why did they…do…"

With one gentle motion, Jack gathered Daniel into his arms, rocked his sobbing body against his chest and stroked away the heat pouring off his face. Jack held him and dipped his face against Daniel’s hair, conjoining Daniel’s grief with his own. Jack smoothed the tremulous muscles in Daniel’s arm, swayed gently back and forth, quieting him, and whispering utterances of useless promises. "It’s all right now, Danny. It’s gonna be all right."

Daniel sobbed--husky, coarse exhalations of anguish--which tore through Jack. Daniel cried and shook and leaned against Jack, and Jack laid his head against Daniel’s, kissed him, wished there was something, anything he could do to take the pain away. Knowing there wasn’t, Jack closed his eyes and listened to Daniel’s torturous cries.

After a while the sobs quieted and the heat emanating from Daniel’s skin dialed down, and when he spoke again, Daniel’s voice was quiet and almost even, and it crushed Jack.

"They took everything from me, Jack," Daniel cried, staring into a room that was split between memory and presence. "Everything." Daniel fingered the tattered lace in his hand, pinched it between his stinging fingers, as if it were the tangible remainder of his existence, a thing without value, without use. He grasped it and held it to his chest.

"Shhhh." Jack cradled Daniel in his arms, let him weep, let him dissolve. Jack cradled him, wiped his tears away, and found some of his own. "Shhhh…"

"What am I worth now, Jack?"

"Shhhh," Jack whispered. "Shhhh…"

*****

Jack tucked the thick gathering of files under his arm and zipped up his jacket. Although it was a comfortable seventy degrees down inside the mountain, once he hit the surface, the cold Rocky Mountain air would meet him. The weather reports indicated they were in for snow, possibly a Christmas blizzard. Good, he thought. It’ll be a nice change. Completely cover the ground, make every last bit of the earth pure white. Erase any lingering vestiges of summer and fall.

The elevator doors were just sliding open when Jack heard two heavily booted feet bounding down the corridor to catch him.

"Sir!"

Jack stepped inside the elevator and tried to will the doors to close before Sam Carter could get there.

"Sir," she called, ramming her hand between the closing doors.

Jack rolled his eyes—his clean get away aborted. "Carter," he said, feigning that he hadn’t heard her calling him, "where’d you come from?"

"I’ve been trying to catch up with you since you left level 24," she said.

"No kidding? Huh," Jack uttered, not even pretending that he was lying.

Sam glanced at him sidelong, but then went on. "You’re going to Daniel’s, right?"

"Yes, Carter, I am," Jack said, crossing his feet, propping himself up in the corner of the elevator.

"Could you do me a favor?"

"I won’t give him a kiss for you, Carter," Jack said.

"Well, actually, sir—"

"Because then I’d have to give him a kiss from Doc, from the nursing staff. And you know how jealous Siler gets," Jack droned on. "Teal’c…"

"Yes, sir. That’s very…um…Anyhow," Sam interjected, pressing one hand into her back pockets, the other holding the door open, "I was wondering if you could remind him that we’re meeting at The Blarney Stone for dinner tonight."

"Ah, Carter," Jack said, wrapping his arms across the files he held against his chest, "you know what he’ll say: ‘I’m not up to it,’ or, ‘I have too much work to do,’ or whatever the excuse is for the week."

"Yeah, I know, but…"

"But I’ll tell him," Jack said, nodding. "Who knows? One of these days, he may run out of excuses."

"That’s what I’m hoping," Sam said. She let go of the elevator door and smiled at Jack.

"Anything else, Carter?" Jack asked.

The doors began to slide shut, so Sam smiled and quickly rattled off, "One kiss, sir. It’ll be our secret."

"Nice, Carter," Jack said, watching the doors close on Carter and a very confused junior officer passing behind her. Jack almost wished he could have seen his 21C explain that one. With a whir and draw, the elevator began its ascent, up from the depths of the SGC on its way to the surface.

Snow for Christmas, he thought. How nice that would be. Let it snow, and put an end to the worst six months he’d had to suffer through in years. A summer he had characterized as being on constant "turbo suck," and a fall he refused to name. It had been six months of heartbreak and anger. Six months that had started with him finding his friend; six months that had dragged on while his friend tried to find himself, and when the six months had ended, Daniel was still wandering, searching for a way back, and all Jack and the rest could do was wait for him, try to light the way.

Daniel no longer resided at Mental Health, but he hadn’t been able to come back to the SGC, either. They had tried, once. They got as far as his lab on 19 before Daniel started to hyperventilate. It was agreed then that maybe other arrangements could be made. For now. That’s what they had all said. "We’ll just have you work at the Academy for now. Until you get your bearings."

For now.

That had been nine weeks earlier. It was starting to feel more like forever.

Jack trudged out of the mouth of the tunnel and pulled his collar up around his ears, holding the files close to his body. Once a week, when his schedule permitted it, Jack would gather up notes and data, reports and files, and take them to Daniel’s new office on the grounds of the Academy. It was the best accommodations possible for the situation, and proved to be a very workable condition. The material that Jack brought for Daniel to translate was highly classified, and being on the grounds of the Air Force Academy more than met the security requirements. Plus, Daniel’s office was close enough to Doctor Sebastian’s office that if he ever felt like he needed someone to talk to, well…

Not that he ever did. He still had his weekly appointments with her, but he only begrudgingly attended those.

And so they worried about him, as a parent worries for their child about to walk to school all by himself. They knew it was vitally important for Daniel to break loose of his reliance on Doctor Sebastian, on anybody, for that matter. They knew he needed to be able to take care of himself, and he was trying, he really was. But…

Jack flipped the switch on his heater, blasted the inside of his truck with cold air while he drove away from the mountain. He quickly checked the files he had gathered, and made sure there were the pictures that SG8 had brought back from their mission. Pretty easy stuff for Daniel to translate, but there was an unspoken collusion around the SGC to provide Doctor Jackson with a constant stream of work so that no one would ever be able to deem his position "unnecessary." No one like Kinsey.

The son of a bitch had a hard on when it came to Daniel, Jack cursed, unzipping his coat as the cold air slowly turned warm. It probably didn’t help that, for some unknown reason, Kinsey’s hard drive melted moments after he tried to open Daniel’s file. Damnedest thing. Jacob Carter even came to town to see what could be done. It was, after all, a Tok’ra program that had reformatted the original information. Jacob was extremely repentant when he looked at the hard drive and found it infected by an insidious virus.

"I am very sorry, Senator," Jacob had said, shaking his head, rubbing his brow, "we thought we had quarantined the virus. Apparently, changing the format reactivated the strain. You didn’t…you didn’t touch the disk for a prolonged period, did you?"

Jack smirked remembering how Kinsey had rushed out of the room, screaming expletives, desperate to find some Clorox with which to wash his hands. Jack and Jacob took that moment to leave the senator’s office, but not before shaking hands with Paul Davis and wishing him well.

Turning onto the expressway, Jack decided there had been a few good things to have come out of it all: the SGC had acquired Paul Davis, and Senator Kinsey was making weekly trips to his internist, convinced with every twinge and rash that he had some alien disease.

The absolute clincher was that Kinsey had a new-found fear of handling any information that reached him from the SGC, made even worse by the fact that Jack himself had convinced Kinsey’s office intern to wear haz-mat gloves ("For your own protection, ma’am") when she delivered the last report. Jack guessed that the sight of an ashen Gen-Xer wearing bright yellow rubber gloves might possibly push the good senator over the edge.

The last Jack checked, Senator Kinsey was doing a lot of golfing in Florida, or so his office said…

When Jack reached the main entrance to the Air Force Academy, he flashed his ID, the carriage of his truck was checked for explosives, and he was waved through. The snow had just begun to fall when he drove past the turn off for Mental Health. A quarter mile ahead, Jack turned off into the administrative buildings, where Jack parked, gathered all the files, and readied himself for the bitter cold.

"Colonel," a cadet saluted, passing Jack on his way to the building. Jack saluted back and pressed on through the bitingly cold wind and needling snow.

They had become accustomed to the colonel at the front desk, nevertheless, Jack showed them his ID before trudging down the hall, rubbing the snow out of his hair.

Except for the number next to the steel casing, it was an unmarked, closed door. Jack tried the knob out of curiosity. Locked. It was always locked. When they had decided he could work from a satellite location outside the SCG, one of the stipulations Daniel had demanded was an office with a door he could lock from the inside. No one questioned him. They were just relieved that he wanted to get back to work.

One afternoon, though, it became clear why Daniel wanted to be able control who came in and out of his office. Jack had been sitting in the chaotically disorganized office, waiting quietly for Daniel to finish a translation when the door swung open.

It was a vision that continued to haunt Jack, that of watching Daniel bolt from his desk and jam himself in between the wall and a bookcase, grasping at the wall, shaking.

"Get out!" he had screamed at the unsuspecting cadet delivering mail. "Get out! Now!"

The flustered young woman scrambled to leave the mail and the office as quickly as possible.

When the door slammed behind her, Jack crouched down in front of Daniel and simply waited for him to calm down.

It took a while for him to disentangle his fingers from his hair, but when he did, Daniel stared at Jack, pulled his shaking hand across his mouth and shrugged.

"I, uh, I don’t…" Daniel stammered, drilling his frightened stare into Jack. "I don’t want anyone…to just…"

"You want the door locked at all times," Jack said, finishing for his rattled friend.

Daniel nodded, and the door was never left ajar again.

Standing outside Daniel’s door, a clutch of files under his arm, Jack softly knocked on the ecru colored hollow steel.

"Yes?" came the tight voice a moment later.

"Daniel, it’s me," Jack called out. He turned his ear toward the door and heard rustling, something falling to the ground, Daniel swearing, and finally the door swung open.

"I, um…" Daniel began, never meeting Jack’s eye, turning to clean up his mess of strewn books and papers.

Jack tossed the new files on Daniel’s couch and said, "Nice to see you, too, Daniel." When he saw how flustered his friend was, Jack wished he had checked his sarcasm at the door.

Daniel shuffled the papers into a ragged pile and stood up with them, searching his desk for a place to put them. He turned toward the lab table, but found only more piles.

Jack thought he’d give Daniel a hand, and pushed a heap of books together, clearing a space for Daniel. "Go ahead and put them down there."

Daniel’s eyes darted across the desk, embarrassed that he was so undone by the confusion. He laid the pile of papers—dog eared and crumpled—on the corner of the table and turned to pick up the books. When he knelt down, he grabbed the edge of his desk and pressed one hand into his eye.

"You all right?" Jack asked.

"I’m fine," Daniel said, though the pitch and graininess of his timbre spoke otherwise.

"Come on," Jack said, pulling Daniel’s desk chair to him. "Why don’t you sit down?"

Daniel disregarded Jack’s offer for a moment, choosing to remain crouched while the pain in his skull eased. When he thought he could probably move without his head exploding, Daniel raised himself into his seat.

"Headache?" Jack asked, dropping himself down onto the couch and quickly removing a highlighting pen from underneath him.

Daniel swiveled into his desk shaking his head. He made an attempt to look busy and preoccupied. He sorted through papers, moved a book from one side of his desk to the other, and said, "I’m okay." Three pencils were placed in the top drawer of his desk.

"Daniel," Jack said, riding a precarious line between supportive friendship and concerned friend, "how’ve you been feeling?"

"Fine," Daniel told him, his voice dripping with condescension. "You?"

"You know how it is," Jack started, crossing his arms behind his head. "If it’s not the back it’s the knees, and if I’m lucky it’s both."

Daniel rose from his seat and paced until his attention settled on his bookshelf and another stack of haphazardly piled papers. "I, uh, the translation for SG…" Daniel turned the top page upside down and read the recipient’s name, "SG3. I didn’t quite finish it. I will. It’s taking more…time than I thought it would, but I…I’ll get around to it."

"No problem," Jack said.

"It’s, um, um, a dialect of…um, I think…Welsh," he said, becoming lost in the words. Daniel reached for a pencil that at one time during the day was behind his ear, and when he found it missing, he ground his hand into his eye again, tossed the pile back on the shelf.

"Daniel?"

Standing silent and still for a moment, Daniel felt the hollow pain ebb just enough to keep moving. "How’s Sam?"

"She’s good," Jack said, sitting up on the edge of the couch. "She sends her best, wanted me to remind you about dinner tonight."

"Tonight?" Daniel asked, taking short, choppy steps around the clutter and stacks of books. "I…I think I forgot."

"Well, now you remember," Jack said, watching Daniel with a concerned eye.

Daniel stopped, picked up a pencil from his lab table and held it in a tight fist. Frowning, he said, "I can’t."

"Any particular reason?" Jack asked.

Daniel shot him a quick glance, tossed the pencil onto his crowded desk, and pulled a file off the top of an overloaded cabinet. "I finished the translation from P78-24…whatever. It was simple," he said, handing the file to Jack.

"Good," Jack said, lifting himself from the couch and accepting the file. The translated documents were tossed on the pile of new documents that Jack wasn’t at all sure Daniel needed to see. "So, you…were going to tell me why you can’t come out tonight."

Daniel busied his hands with a dry erase marker while he prodded himself to come up with a better excuse than the one he had given Jack. The truth was, though, he couldn’t. He couldn’t sit in a room with that much noise. He couldn’t tolerate being touched by happy, oblivious people accidentally jostling him as they passed by with a dripping beer in hand. No, it was too much. He couldn’t do it. He tapped the marker against the writing on the board and tried to change the subject. "This, um, this…I’m not sure, but…"

"Daniel?"

Turning the blue marker in his hand, Daniel felt himself edging close to tears and didn’t know why. Daniel ground his teeth together, crushing his emotions into submission, but he realized a long time ago that he had little control over anything, much less his mind, his memories. He pulled off the top the marker and began writing navy blue words above the blood-red hieroglyphics while his eyes filled with tears, and all the while Jack watched him, wishing he didn’t know the signs that Daniel was off his medication.

"Hey," Jack quietly spoke, coming to stand next to Daniel at the white board, "what’s goin’ on?"

Daniel continued to write out the words above the pictorials. He shook his head to Jack’s question and soldiered on, refused to acknowledge his unnamed sorrow.

"I know it’s none of my business, but…" Jack stopped and watched Daniel’s hand shake, the pen skitter against the surface. "Daniel, you still taking your meds?"

Daniel paused, the marker faintly tapping against the board. "You’re right," Daniel said, erasing what he had written, "it’s none of your business."

Jack let it go, but he thought he might make a quick trip to Mental Health, casually mention to Sebastian that he thought she might want to check in on her patient, you know, maybe. "Okay," he said.

Daniel stepped back from the board, pointed to it and found that he wasn’t quite ready to produce sound yet, at least not one that didn’t sound choked. So he pointed at the board again, erased a word with the side of his hand and rewrote it. Daniel nodded, his chest a tight ball of strain, and said, "I’ve been conjugating verbs incorrectly. I…I don’t know why."

"It’s okay," Jack assured him.

"Maybe it’s the, uh…aphasia."

"Is that possible?" Jack asked, a new set of concerns bounding into his mind.

"I don’t know."

"Daniel—"

Dropping his chin to his breastbone, Daniel said, "It makes me tired."

Jack looked around the room, confused. "Conjugal verbs or aphasia?"

"No," was all Daniel offered. If Jack couldn’t figure it out from that, well, Daniel wasn’t going to waste his energy to explain it.

Jack took a deep breath, scratched his forehead and understood they were talking about Daniel’s anti-depressants. They’d had that conversation before, and if it wasn’t that they made him tired, it was that they made him gain weight. Jack thought they had put the conversation to bed, but apparently not. "Yeah, but…it’s kind of a got-to, right?"

"You’ve never had to take them," Daniel said, keeping his blurred focus on the board. "You don’t know what it’s like."

"You’re right, but you could help me understand," Jack said. As he watched his friend ride yet another wave of bruising emotion, Jack tried to remember that he wasn’t there to fix things for Daniel, nor was he there to protect Daniel. He was there because he was Daniel’s friend. He’d had to learn a lot about what it was to be a friend in the last six months, and the most important thing Jack had learned, especially where Daniel was concerned, was listening was much more important than speaking. So he listened and waited for Daniel to help him understand.

Daniel wanted Jack to understand, but he didn’t want to explain. He just wanted it, all of it, to go away. He wanted to rest, and he wanted to be himself again, whoever that was, when he woke. "I need to finish this," Daniel said, though barely loud enough to be heard.

Jack slowly reached out his hand and took the pen from Daniel, capped it, and laid it in the trough at the bottom of the board. "Come on. Sit down."

Daniel dug his hands in his pockets and tried to concentrate on the translation hastily written out on his board. If he could just lose himself in the words and not have to think about his own problems, things would be so much easier.

"I think this should…should say ‘freedom from oppression,’ not ‘freedom for oppressed,’" he said, clearing his throat.

"Daniel," Jack whispered, laying a hand on Daniel’s back.

Too many wounds, too many scars. Too many months spent losing and hiding and wondering and crying. Too many images in which to find his place, to come to accept his actions. There were too many ways he needed to come to forgive his innocence, but there was never enough redemption. Not a moment’s peace. No comfort in the arms of what should have been home.

"Daniel," Jack said again, giving Daniel’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, "let’s talk."

"This needs to be finished," he managed to say, pressing the cuff of his shirt to his eye.

"It can wait." Jack turned Daniel’s chair to him, prodding him to sit down.

Daniel glanced at the hardwood chair, the scratched seat, and then back to the board. He swallowed hard to dissolve the tightness in his throat.

"Daniel," Jack said again, more gently, touching Daniel’s elbow.

"I think it’s…I think it’s coming back," Daniel whispered, never turning to face Jack.

Jack sidled up next to Daniel and guided him to the chair, which Daniel willingly allowed.

"Here," Jack said, keeping his hand on Daniel’s shoulder until he was seated, "just sit down and talk to me."

Daniel sat down, propped his heels against the legs of the chair and his elbows into his knees. He yanked off his glasses, let them dangle from his fingers and covered his face with his trembling hands, hiding his wet eyes.

Jack took a seat next to Daniel, rubbed his back while he worked to collect himself, and when the stuttering breaths ceased, Daniel pulled his hands away from his face and let them hang between his knees, his head slung limp between his shoulders.

"I know it makes you tired," Jack said, venturing onto thin ice, "but I gotta think that feeling tired is a whole lot better than feeling like this." Daniel didn’t answer, but he didn’t bite back, either. Jack’s hand slid to the nape of Daniel’s neck and gave it a gentle squeeze. Some progress had been made, he thought. Daniel no longer winced when Jack touched him. That was progress. Some. "Come on, Daniel. Talk to me."

From his angle, Jack could see the tight muscles in Daniel’s jaw contract and relax, contract and relax. The tears had stopped, but still his skin was blotchy and red.

"Sometimes, I think…I’m afraid it’s happening again," he said in a voice Jack was becoming far too accustomed to—thick and heavy with tears.

"What’s happening?"

"I’m afraid I’m losing my…words." Daniel tossed his glasses onto his desk and then struggled to find a place for his hands.

"What do you mean?"

Daniel spooled his arms around his body, pressing his cold hands under his arms. "This should be easy for me. The translations…I mean they aren’t difficult, but I…I can’t seem to…"

"Come on," Jack whispered, drawing his hand across Daniel’s trembling back. "Calm down, Danny." Jack searched Daniel’s desk for a glass of water, a tissue, anything that he could offer Daniel. What he found was a mug of cold coffee. "Here. Calm down."

Daniel’s hand eased out from under his arm and took the mug. Jack stood up and walked to Daniel’s coffee maker. "Is it possible," he began, returning with the carafe of sludge-like fluid, "that this is all part of you not taking your meds?" Jack warmed up Daniel’s tepid mug with fresh, day-old coffee that was at the very least hot. "Is it possible that your…brain chemistry is out of whack, and it’s affecting your ability to speak?"

Daniel pressed both hands against the warm mug while Jack replaced the carafe on the hot pad. "Maybe."

Jack took his seat next to Daniel again, his folding hands across his chest. "Well, there you go. Pop a few Paxil, and be on your merry way."

"It’s Zoloft, and it’s a little more complicated than that," Daniel said, feeling his emotions coming back on line.

"How much more?"

Daniel looked into his mug, fished out a floating coffee ground, and shook his head. He sniffed away the remaining tears, pressed his lips together in a tight grimace and shrugged his shoulders.

"Okay, so," Jack said, patting him on the back, "you’ll start taking your drugs again?"

Daniel nodded, and Jack forced back the overwhelming desire to ask Daniel to take them while he was watching. No, he’d have to give Daniel this leeway, this trust. Nevertheless, Jack made a mental note that a stop to see Sebastian was at the top of his to-do list.

"How’s Andy working out?" Daniel asked suddenly.

"Who? Packard?" Jack asked. "Yeah, Packard. He’s, uh,…You know, it turns out, Packard’s an idiot."

"He’s not an idiot," Daniel said, the smallest amount of satisfaction entering his voice. He kept his eyes focused on his lightly swirling coffee and tried not to smile. "He just…"

"No, he’s certifiable," Jack said, hooking his hand onto Daniel’s shoulder, thumbing the rigid musculature of his neck. "Teal’c’s even been known to call him a mook."

"A…A mook?" Daniel asked, blinking.

"’The Sopranos,’" Jack explained. "Teal’c is fascinated by Tony, the lead character. Mob boss. We’ve…we’ve had to talk about the language." Jack wrinkled his nose and waved his hand—it was over. No big woo. Just a six-foot-four-inch Jaffa rumbling murderous epithets to those who would yank his chain…

"Yes, I’m sure that would be…um…" Daniel wiped his hand across his mouth trying to erase his smile.

"How you sleepin’ these days?" Jack asked.

Daniel shook his head and brought the mug to his lips.

"Why don’t you take Carter up on her offer?"

"I don’t know…"

"Look, you can stay with me, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts her bathrooms are cleaner," Jack told him, playfully squeezing his neck.

Daniel was silent while he thought about the offer. Since leaving the hospital, he had been adamant that he could go it alone, live independently again. But his apartment was so quiet and so full of unexplainable sounds, all at the same time. He began working later and later, even bringing files home with him so that he’d fall asleep, exhaustion winning over fear.

And then there were the nightmares, and the moments of absolute panic when he’d find himself staring into the face of a monster, only to realize it was a death mask from the Ivory Coast, a Goh mask from Japan. Two of many such masks he had collected over the years and had for some stupid reason hung on his bedroom wall, the grotesque faces leering down at him in his bed, wooden and carved substitutes for Levan and the nameless others. Tearing them off his wall one night, smashing the priceless art on his bedroom floor, Daniel wondered why he had ever collected such gruesome artifacts.

"Maybe I’ll come over for the night," Daniel said, nodding.

"Good. We’ll eat like kings," Jack said, rising to his feet, lightly patting the back of Daniel’s head. "I have two big ol’ boxes of Cap’n Crunch in the pantry. How’s that sound?"

"With or without berries?" Daniel asked, placing his coffee on his desk.

"Gotta have berries, otherwise it’s not a complete meal on that triangle thing of nutrition." Jack leaned over the couch and picked up the files—all of them. "So, you want me to come pick you up, or…"

"I can drive," Daniel said, keeping his eyes lowered.

"Okay, but don’t work too late," Jack warned him. "The roads are getting bad out there, and I’m not hauling my ass out onto the road with my truck just to tow you out of some ditch."

"Hopefully, it won’t come to that."

Jack placed the files on the one empty corner of Daniel’s lab table while he pulled on his coat, zipped it up to the top and buttoned the collar across his neck. "Okay, then, we got ourselves a plan." Jack gave Daniel one last look. "You okay now?"

Daniel nodded, furrowed his brow and pawed at his hair. "I guess."

He closed his eyes and was met by the rooms, the assorted figures, and waited for the lurking figure to peek out at him. Daniel patiently waited, glanced across the room in his mind’s eye, past the chairs and watched as the once furtive and ensconced image stepped out from the shadows.

Into the light of his psyche the skulking figure stepped, and Daniel recognized him immediately. He was tall, unbowed by shame and trauma. His hair was brown, not shot through with premature gray. His crystal blue eyes were clear, bright with knowledge and curiosity, instead of clouded with things best not remembered, with pain still too near the surface. His voice was confident, assured, not stunted and stifled by fear. And as he stepped closer into focus, Daniel saw that this man and what he represented was the man Daniel had once been.

"Hello," the man whispered to Daniel, nodding.

"Hi. Where’ve you been?"

"I’ve been here all the time."

"I thought you were gone."

"No. Not entirely." The man, strong, vital and assured, frowned at him and said, "I can’t stay.

"Why?"

"You’re not ready yet."

"Ready for what?"

Daniel stared at the figure of the man who carried with him all that Daniel had lost. The man maintained his compassionate hold on Daniel and allowed him to take a glimpse at those things that had been torn away and forced to step aside. The man quietly exposed his pain at having to stand by and watch while his own body had been violated, while his spirit had been shattered.

"There’s too much," Daniel cried.

"I know," he whispered.

"I don’t want to think about it."

"I know." The man smiled and nodded. "You don’t have to. I’ll take care of it until you’re ready."

"Until then, what do I do?"

"Do what you need to do. Take care of yourself."

"How?"

"Forget."

"Daniel?" Jack said, peering at him. "You all right?"

Daniel took a deep breath, opened his eyes and saw the crowded office once more for what it was. The man was gone, but his quiet message resonated in Daniel’s mind. Daniel would take care of himself. He would take care of himself in the only way he knew how. Box it up. Close it off. He would forget.

"Daniel, what’s going on?" Jack asked.

And when Daniel spoke, his words were replete with the scrapings of a dignity left to expire. "It wasn’t all bad."

"What’s that?" Jack asked, his hand on the door handle.

"Back there," Daniel went on. "It wasn’t all bad back there. I didn’t have to…to think."

A chill raced through Jack’s body. "Daniel—"

"I didn’t have to…I didn’t have to try to understand anything. I didn’t have to worry about anything other than doing what I was told. I didn’t have…I didn’t have to…think." Daniel closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of his chair. "It wasn’t all bad."

Jack stood motionless and unable to feel his limbs. He gritted his teeth together and tried to bring some moisture to his suddenly parched mouth.

"Sometimes," Daniel continued, his voice soft and resigned, "sometimes I miss it."

Jack couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t form words. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought someone had just pummeled him across the back with a bat. He stared helplessly at Daniel, shocked that once again, the depth of his friend’s pain ran so deep. A panic rose in Jack as he peered at his friend, struggled against wanting to rush the man, grab him by the lapels and jerk him out of his irrational thoughts. What the hell are you talking about?! he wanted to demand.

Daniel kept his hazy focus somewhere between his office and a silent room in a cold building, on a distant world, at the end of a wormhole. He thought about what he had said to Jack, how he missed it, but not the place. No. He missed the strange freedom of submission. Sometimes, it was easier to not have to think. To have every decision made for you. Sometimes, he thought, it was easier to let your spirit be subdued and let someone else take the responsibility. Sometimes, it was simply easier to let go of your spirit all together.

Daniel took a deep breath and looked at Jack, wondered at the shocked expression on his friend’s face. Wondered why Jack’s normally tanned complexion was bleached ashen

Jack blindly grasped for the door handle from which his tremulous fingers had somehow fallen away. "I’ll, uh…" he said, and realized he could hardly hear himself. "I’ll pick you up after work. The roads are…bad."

"Okay."

"Okay, well," Jack mumbled, pulling open the door. "Okay…"

"Bye, Jack."

Jack stepped outside the door, made sure it was locked, and grasped the metal casing around it. He felt his breath coming in gasps, his heart crashing against his ribs.

"Holy God," he whispered, precariously close to becoming sick. His hands slid to the middle of the door, his forehead coming to rest between them. He remembered he had forgotten the files inside the room, but there was no way he could go back in. No way.

"Oh, God," he said to no one, so quiet he didn’t even think the one he had intoned could hear.

And while his body sizzled with fear, while his heart pounded with a white-hot panic, Jack listened for any sounds coming from inside the chaotic office that would help him understand. He listened for crying, for yelling, for the sounds of papers rustling—anything.

There was only silence. From outside Daniel’s office door, Jack strained to listen for his friend’s life beyond the barricade. He strained, he yearned to hear a continuation of spirit, of vocation, of independence.

But there was only strange, ubiquitous, endless silence.

And in that silence, Jack heard the fission of his own heart.

The End

---

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