All Debts Repaid

Author: BadgerGater

Email: [email protected]

Category: Action/Adventure, heavy angst (be warned, a bit dark)

Pairing: None

Rating: PG, violence, a few adult words

Season: Early four

Spoilers: Shades of Gray, any episode season 3 or before

Summary: An old enemy takes his revenge on the Colonel

Warnings: Violence, a few adult words; and I think you might need a tissue or two

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the property of the author and may not be posted without the author's consent.

Authors Notes: For LinLin, who seems to think Jack needs a little mental health therapy. So I gave him some. But probably not the kind she was suggesting. And for Margo, who sent me a MacGyver tape that inspired this (Can you figure out how?)

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The man in the suit smiled grimly. "This drug, it will completely erase his memory?"

"Yes, Sir."

"He won't remember who he is, what he's done, where he lives, who his friends or his enemies are?"

"Not a thing. It's particularly fitting, Sir, since SG-1 itself discovered this, last year, on a planet called Vyus. Everyone on the planet was exposed, and the whole population suffered complete amnesia."

The man chuckled, liking the idea. "So, we give the man a taste of his own medicine. How fitting." The man paused a moment. "It won't kill him? You know my boss doesn't want the man dead." The man in the suit didn't understand that, but then, some people were squeamish when it came to murder.

"Oh, no. No adverse effects were found. Except the memory loss of course."

"But you said there was a cure?"

"Yes. However, so long as none of his friends at the SGC know where he is, it won't matter. No one without the highest level clearance will recognize the drug in his system, or know there's anything that can be done to help."

"And how do you intend to insure that his friends won't find him?"

"We're going to ship him a long ways from Cheyenne Mountain, where they'll have no reason to look." The man in the blue jeans and plaid jacket smirked at the man in the suit. "We've got our own issues to settle with that deceitful son of a bitch. He won't be pulling any more little undercover missions for anyone."

-------------

The man in the suit returned to his hotel room, and placed a call to a private line in a fashionable home in a famous and exclusive suburb of Washington, D.C.

"Yes?" answered a well-known voice on the other end.

"It's set."

"You're sure? I don't want any slip-ups."

"Sure. Our friend is highly motivated for his assigned task. He won't miss his target."

"He can be trusted?"

"Entirely, Sir. I don't leave any loose ends."

"That's what I expect of you. Excellence. Performance. Everything wrapped up neat and tidy."

"Yes, Sir. Neat and clean and no mess."

"Good. When can I expect to see the deal completed?"

"Soon, within a few weeks. We just need to find the optimal opportunity to conclude the deal."

"Very well," Senator Kinsey put down the phone with a satisfied smile. He was a man who always finished what he'd started, and he was about to finish with Colonel Jack O'Neill.

---------------------------

Colonel Jack O'Neill was tired. He'd just returned from six exhausting days on P4X-151. They'd hiked from the Stargate to a temple, which had turned out not to be at all what they'd been looking for, and from that temple to another temple and another temple and another temple, only to find all of them empty of anything of any interest to anyone except Daniel. Well, Carter had been interested, too. But him? He'd just been bored. And tired of walking, walking, walking. And just plain tired, because he hadn't slept well thanks to those gnat-like flying insect thingys that filled the night air with their constant, incessant, annoying buzzing noise. They hadn't seemed to bother the rest of the team, not like they bothered him.

As he unlocked his front door and tossed his bag on the floor, O'Neill was looking forward to three days off. The house was silent and empty as usual, the red light on the answer machine blinking diligently. Ignoring it, he went to the kitchen and got a beer before heading back to the living room. Jack sat on the couch and sorted through the stack of mail he'd picked up from the box. Bills, junk mail, a note reminding him of the need to get the oil changed in his car, an offer for inexpensive life insurance, a chance to change his long distance service, and another credit card: the usual, impersonal stuff. Impersonal, like the rest of his life.

He sipped his beer pensively and thought the house seemed awfully empty tonight, not that it was ever any different. For the thousandth time he contemplated how empty his whole life was, how his career kept him from spending time with regular people, pursuing any kind of personal relationships, hell, he couldn't even have a dog, he was gone so much.

O'Neill flipped on the TV and let the sounds of some witless game show lull him to sleep on the couch. In his dreams, the memories he suppressed during his waking hours haunted him. He dreamt of those long ago days when he'd come home from a mission, exhausted as he'd been tonight, but instead of entering an empty house, there had been a family to greet him. He kissed a beaming Sara, ruffled Charlie's tousled hair, and slapped Buddy on the back, the dog's tail wagging in greeting. A homecoming meant something back then, when he'd had a family to come home to. But invariably the thoughts of those good times led him to remember how it ended, how it all ended one bright summer day, how Sara's smile had turned to a cry of horror, how the sunshine had turned dark and chill, with the remembered echo of a gunshot...

Jack jerked awake, sweating in the tangled afghan he'd pulled over himself as he'd dozed on the couch. He swung his long legs to the floor, holding his head in his hands, wiping sweaty hands through his disheveled hair. "God," he whispered. "Go away. I don't want to remember any of it. None of it. No more memories. No more!"

Wearily, he stumbled from the living room, up the short flight of stairs and down the hallway to his bedroom. He shed shirt, trousers and socks, and sank onto the bed clad only in t-shirt and briefs.

Sound asleep at last, O'Neill didn't hear the man enter, didn't see the face lurking above his bed, hidden behind the ski mask. Some slight sound woke him just as something bitter was sprayed into his face. O'Neill gasped, struggled to move, then fell unconscious across the bed.

Rough hands quickly fastened bindings around his wrists and ankles. "Okay," the voice whispered. "Let's get him out of here."

He was carried unceremoniously out of his bedroom and down to the garage, dumped behind the seat of his truck, and driven away into the darkness.

---------------

O'Neill woke slowly, cautiously, uncomfortably. As awareness slowly returned, he lay quietly, listening, trying to take stock of where he was and what had happened to him. He remembered someone in his house last night, and then, nothing. There was a whopper headache raging just behind his eyes, making concentrating on anything difficult.

"You can just open your eyes now, Colonel," said a vaguely familiar voice, contempt ringing through it despite the use of his rank. "We know you're awake."

Jack opened his eyes, recoiling from the bright light shining down on him. Instinctively, he started to bring his right hand up to shade his eyes, quickly discovering his hand wouldn't move. The other one wouldn't either. He raised his head and looked down his torso to see heavy leather restraints holding his wrists to the bed railings. Similar bindings held his ankles and crossed his waist.

"So, Colonel O'Neill, it's good to see you again," the voice continued.

Turning his head, Jack could see only a blurred image, the face unrecognizable in his still chemically befuddled brain. "Who?" he managed to slur past dry lips.

"Why, Colonel, you don't remember me? A CO should always remember those who served under his command, especially those sacrificed through his own actions."

Jack blinked, concentrated on the face, and the image slowly began to clear. "Neumann?" Neumann was supposed to be in prison, convicted of a whole list of charges based on his involvement with Col. Maybourne's team of illegal operatives stealing alien devices.

"I'm touched you remember, O'Neill," the ex-airman grinned. "You won't for long, of course, but that's not important now. What is important, though, is that at this moment, you know why you're here and what you're here for."

"And what would that be?" Jack croaked through a mouth so dry he could barely rasp out the words. Shit, he thought, grimacing, whatever that drug had been, it had some nasty side-effects. He let his eyes slide shut again as the headache spiked.

"Now, now, Colonel, you should be paying attention when I'm speaking to you," Neumann's tone grew hard and a rough hand grasped O'Neill's chin, pulling his head around.

"Ow!"

"Oh, so sorry Colonel. But you'll forget it all in a few minutes anyway, so I don't suppose it matters now, does it?"

"How'd you get out?" O'Neill mumbled. "You're supposed to be in prison."

"Oh, well, you know, these jails they have today. Not as secure as they once were. I got an early parole, you might say."

O'Neill was fighting to force his eyes open. "Somebody let you out?"

"Yes, one of those unfortunate, or in this case, very fortunate, paperwork screw-ups. So I thought I'd come and visit my old CO."

"How nice of you."

Neumann laughed. "Yes, I knew you'd be glad to see me. I've brought you a little gift, you see." He held up a syringe.

"A gift? For me? I'm moved. Or I would be, if you'd loosen these things up a bit," he offered, pulling at the restraints securing his wrists. Oh shit, thought O'Neill, I hate needles. I've been through this crap before, people trying to get me to tell them things I'm not about to tell.

Neumann held the syringe up against the light, enjoying his moment, the Colonel thought with growing trepidation. One part of his mind was frantically working at trying to think of a way out of this situation, while the other was trying to keep Neumann busy, occupied with anything but sticking him with that needle and whatever stuff might be in it.

"You see, Colonel, this is something you should recognize. Do you?" He held the needle in front of O'Neill's face. "You've seen it before."

"Sorry. Doesn't look familiar. Seen one needle, seen them all."

"That's okay. You'll know in a bit." Neumann chuckled. "Or rather, you won't know. Anything."

O'Neill's stomach clenched. He didn't like this, not at all. "Look, Neumann, I don't know what you want..."

"Oh I've already got what I want, you, right here, under my command, this time," the court martialed ex-officer said. "No games. No lies. No deceptions. No orders except mine."

"Ah, sorry, I don't take orders well."

"No, only when it comes to betraying your country."

"*You* were the one who betrayed your country."

O'Neill couldn't protect himself from the slap that stung his cheek.

"I didn't betray anyone. I was trying to save us from those bastards out there," Neumann shouted angrily.

Jack slid his tongue around to probe the cut on his lip. "No, *you* were destroying the only alliances we have, our only means of defense. *You* were endangering the whole planet."

"Shut up!" Neumann screamed at him, slapping his captive's face again.

O'Neill blinked as the blow made his eyes water, and he made a yawning motion to test the movement left in his jaw. "You know, it takes a real man to hit somebody who's strapped down hand and foot. You want to argue, then argue. Or at least fight fair. Turn me loose and we'll see..."

"Huh. Fight fair. That's what we were doing out there, O'Neill, evening out the odds. Trying to make it a fair fight. But you wouldn't understand. And now you never will." Neumann looked down at the Colonel. "Fool that I was, I looked up to you, O'Neill. I thought you were a patriot, the famous Colonel Jack O'Neill, savior of the planet. And then I discovered you worked for the aliens. You sold out your own world to cozy up to * freaking aliens.* Well, it was a mistake, a big mistake, O'Neill. You made yourself some enemies, big important enemies with your cute little undercover mission. And now they're going to make sure you never get in their way again." Neumann grinned. "They helped me disappear from prison and now I'm going to help you disappear. Permanently."

The ex-officer waved the syringe in front of the Colonel's face. "Do you want to know what's in the needle?"

Jack glared up at his tormentor, silently.

"Changed your mind, Colonel, did you? Not talking now? Cat got your tongue? Hmmm," Neumann grinned wickedly. "Oh, I'll tell you, since you'll never be able to tell anyone else. Remember that little planet, Vyus? All those people with amnesia, the ones that your team helped that crazy woman fix? Well, this time no one's going to fix *you* O'Neill. This," Neumann held up the needle, "this is a massive dose of Dargol. Won't kill you, won't even hurt you. Erases your whole entire memory, of course, so you won't be doing any more little sting operations for those smug aliens." He moved the needle toward the Colonel's throat. "This must be given directly into the carotid artery. They say it's rather painful."

"Hey, look, Neumann, there's no need..." O'Neill's mind raced desperately for something to stop this madman. "Let me talk to whoever you're working for..."

"Too late, O'Neill, you can't talk your way out of this one. Goodbye, Colonel."

As the needle jabbed into his neck, Jack O'Neill focused his mind on the one thing he had forever vowed to remember. 'Charlie.' Silently, he chanted the name over and over again as the chemical burned its way into his bloodstream. 'Charlie.' He grimaced, gritted his teeth, bit his tongue to keep from giving that bastard the satisfaction of hearing him cry out in pain. 'Charlie.' His hands clenched until he thought his fingers would break. 'Charlie.' His back arched off the bed, the muscles in his arms, legs and neck standing out as they locked in agony, rigid. 'Charlie.' Blackness washed over him, carried him downward into the darkness, and engulfed him. 'Charlie...'

------------------------

He woke slowly.

Above him, bright lights. He blinked, tried to sit up and discovered he was strapped down to something soft, a bed.

Where?

What?

Why?

The where, from his brief glimpse around him, was obviously a hospital of some sort. He knew that by the strong smell of disinfectant, the white walls, the hospital gown he wore, the bright lights overhead. Definitely a hospital.

What had happened to him? He tried to remember, but he didn't have a clue. Tentatively, he moved his arms and legs as much as the restraints would allow, realizing that nothing seemed broken, although he ached in every muscle, joint and bone. The monster headache felt like his skull had been used for a hockey puck, but the good news was his body seemed relatively intact.

So why was he here? Some sort of accident? Some weird illness?

There was a blank spot right there at the front of his brain when he tried to recall what had happened, in fact, when he tried to remember...anything.

It was hard to think past the pain in his head, but he pushed, needing to know, to remember what had happened to him and where he was...

Who he was.

Who?

Name, his name, his name was...

Nothing

A blank.

He squeezed his eyes closed, forced himself to relax, ordered himself to remember.

My name is....

Nothing.

Empty.

Barren.

Zero. Zip. Zilch.

Nada.

No answers.

No clues.

Just nothing.

Nothing there.

Nothing to remember.

No name.

He took a deep, shuddering breath trying to calm himself.

Okay, don't worry about the name. Think of something else. What day it is, what year it is, where you are, what you ate for breakfast or whenever you ate last.

Didn't help.

There was still that terrifying black hole in his brain where his memory should be, where all the information should be about who he was.

There was nothing there.

His mouth was dry with sudden horror.

He had to have a name. Everyone had a name.

How could he not know his own name?

He searched again. My name is... People call me... I am....

He could feel his heart hammering in sudden fear.

Be calm, he told himself. You know your name. You are..

And then he knew, or rather didn't know.

His mind was a blank, an empty slate.

No name, no address, no who he was or what he was or where he was or what the hell had happened to him to make his head hurt. Nothing. Blank. Empty.

Panic.

His eyes flew open, his hands grasping, groping, for someone or something to hold on to. His heart was racing, his breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.

A face appeared above him, an unfamiliar face, smiling. "Hello. How are you?"

He swallowed, his throat raw and dry. "Who?"

"I'm your nephew, Douglas."

"Nephew?" He didn't remember any nephew. He didn't remember anything. Panic. Panic. Calm down, he ordered himself. Slow down. Think. Think. Damn it, he didn't know this man, didn't know anyone named Douglas. His nephew?

"Do you know who I am?" the man asked him.

He shook his head no.

"Do you know who you are?"

Oh God. A yawning chasm, a pit of utter, empty blackness. He didn't know. He didn't know!! "Who am I?"

"You don't know?"

"No." He fought the panic, fought to suppress the shiver of fear that crept down his spine. "I don't know."

"Uncle William, I'm your nephew Douglas. You're in the hospital again."

"William?" the name triggered no memory, no recollection, seemed foreign and unfamiliar and meant nothing to him.

"You're ill," Douglas said, "mentally ill. You've had problems before. Just never anything this bad. We've had to hospitalize you. For a long time, this time, I'm afraid."

He had to believe Douglas, after all, there was no one else to believe. Douglas seemed so sure of the facts, so concerned about him, but it was like he was being told a story. Something told him not to trust Douglas, but he had no facts to base such a feeling on, just something odd in the man's eyes, something that told him it was all a lie. But he didn't know. His life was a blank, a complete and total blank until this morning when he'd awakened in this hospital. He didn't know anything, who he was or where he was or.... Don't panic. Don't panic. Over and over, he made that his mantra.

There was one name he remembered, though he didn't know who it was or what it meant. He harbored that one tiny secret, the one clue to who he was.

"Charlie," he whispered into the darkness.

-----------------

When Colonel O'Neill failed to report to the SGC on Monday morning, General George Hammond send an SF officer to his home. A knock on the door produced no answer. There was no apparent sign of trouble.

When the Colonel didn't contact anyone or turn up in a jail, hospital or morgue within the next 12 hours, Hammond accompanied the rest of SG-1 to O'Neill's home. Nothing was amiss, everything neat and in its place as always. The Colonel's wallet and ID lay on the kitchen table. There was food in the refrigerator. Mail sat, opened, on the table before the fireplace. His bed had been slept in, there were dirty clothes in the hamper. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except there was no sign of Jack O'Neill.

The neighbors, cautiously questioned, remembered nothing unusual.

Three days later the police discovered what was left of his pick-up, a burned out wreck at the bottom of a canyon, off a deserted road far back in the mountains.

An all-out search was launched. O'Neill, after all, was involved in the most secretive project in the United States military. Not a sign was found.

-------------------------------

Therapy. This was supposed to be therapy? This shit, these stupid, boring lifeless tasks. Painting a birdhouse was supposed to help him get his memory back?

The doctor said he was suppressing his memories, that there was a mental block he had to break through. He knew he wasn't suppressing anything, or at least, that was what he thought. There was nothing there.

God, just thinking about it, trying to think about it, gave him a raging headache.

He needed to move, get outside, walk around, think.

They wouldn't let him.

They kept him strapped down to the bed and when he insisted he needed to move around, to be doing something, they'd started giving him the drugs. Funny, he couldn't remember anything about who he was, but he remembered how he hated needles, and drugs. Nasty stuff, in those shots, made his head all thick, his thinking fuzzy. How was that supposed to help him remember who he was? Huh?

They finally unstrapped him and left him asleep. Awareness returned slowly. He didn't know who he was or what day it was, how long he'd been here, wherever *here* was, but some inner sense of foreboding, of desperation, drove him to push himself upright. With a groan of too-long unused aching muscles and creaking joints, he sat up on the bed and swung his bare feet to the floor, bracing himself with a hand on the bed. He waited long minutes while the floor stopped swapping places with the walls and ceiling, and once everything stayed in place, slapped his feet onto the floor and forced himself upright. Weaving like a drunk, he took a staggering step toward the door, every muscle trembling with weakness. They must have left him there a long time, he thought, though he didn't know how or why he knew the physical effects of long immobility.

Forcing his wobbling knees and shaking legs to carry him forward, supporting himself with one hand on the wall, he made it as far as the doorway.

He had to get away. He didn't know where he was going or why, just that he didn't belong here. He had to find Charlie. Charlie would save him, Charlie would answer all his questions, restore his past and show him who he was. Thinking about Charlie always made a sob rise in his throat. He didn't know why, he only knew Charlie was the key to who he was. Charlie was his soul.

Peering around the doorway, he saw no one. The corridor was dim and silent, the sound of snoring coming from several nearby rooms. Slowly, still listing distinctly to the left, he kept his left hand on the wall for stability and started stealthily down the hallway.

He knew how to do this, why or how he didn't understand, but there was something familiar about sneaking down an unlit corridor, looking for trouble on every hand. He stopped cautiously at every doorway, listening, every sense alert, then moved on, his bare feet making no noise on the dingy linoleum.

Ahead of him, at end of the hallway, he could see his goal now, the doorway to the outside world and freedom. 'Charlie, I'm coming,' he thought. 'I'll find you, somehow. I'll find you, you'll find me. Charlie!'

-------------------

The sudden loud voice from behind shocked him. "Hey, you, what are you doing out here?"

He spun around, or tried to, his still rubbery legs betraying him as the attempt at too-sudden movement spilled him to the floor even as he tried to run. Too late. Too late. He scrambled, crablike on the floor, trying to get back on his feet, get away.

Cold hands gripped his arms, roughly pulling him erect. "You can't be out here," said the gruff orderly.

"I need to find Charlie," he said softly.

"You need to stay in your room, buddy," the orderly said, hauling him upright.

He resisted. He didn't want to go back to that room, he didn't, but now the rat-a-tat sharp footsteps of a nurse came down the hallway, her hands joining the orderly's in dragging him, protesting, back down the hallway, back to that room.

Even as he tried to explain why he had to leave, he felt the first touch of leather on his wrists. "NO!" he shouted. "No!" but he was outnumbered. The restraints were buckled into place. The orderly stood watching as he futilely yanked and pulled on the leather holding him down to the bed. Then the nurse was back, a syringe in her hand. "Mr. Riley, here, this will relax you!"

Relax? He didn't need to relax! He didn't want to relax, he wanted out, needed to be out. "No!" Even as he felt the needle bite into his arm, he turned desperate eyes to the nurse, but there was no sympathy or compassion there. "No. Damn you! No."

The drug hit his bloodstream then, suffusing through his system, blotting out reality, carrying him away once more into the empty darkness.

--------------------------

He didn't know how much time had passed, everything was hazy, distant, distorted.

Then someone came to see him.

"Mr. Riley, you have a visitor," the male nurse announced, taking him to one of the private rooms where family or friends could visit patients.

Visitor? A visitor. Please God let it be someone who could help him, a face he could recognize, a clue to who he was. Please, God.

It was, and it wasn't.

Oh yes, he knew this face, but it was someone he knew would not help him.

He turned to the nurse, "I don't want to see him.

"Visitors are good for you," the nurse said, patting him on the arm, pointing him down into a chair.

Unwillingly, he sat.

"Hi Uncle William," Douglas smirked.

"I'm not your uncle," he growled.

"Now, now, you wound me when you talk like that," the man was still smiling, a phony smile that never reached his eyes. "I've come all this way to visit, and you don't even want to see me, your beloved nephew."

"Yeah, right." He stared down at his hands, fingers tightly knotted together, a grip as tight as the one he was fighting to keep on his emotions at the sight of this man. "I *don't* want to see you."

"But you should, William, I know all about you. I know the truth," the voice was oily, wheedling, and suddenly, the gray haired man knew, knew without a doubt, that in fact Douglas did know the truth, a truth he wasn't telling.

Douglas walked over and bent down to whisper into the man's ear. "I know the truth. I know who you are and I know who Charlie is, and I'll never tell." The young man straightened with a triumphant smile.

He lost it. Without a thought, he was up out of the chair, his hands reaching for Douglas's neck as they crashed to the floor. "Tell me!" he shouted, kneeling atop the younger man, hands wrapped around the downed man's throat, shaking him. "Tell me! Tell me the truth. Damn you."

Douglas was still smiling, smiling as the orderlies charged into the room, dragging him off his 'nephew.'

"Calm down, William," he heard the doctor's voice from behind him as he was pinned to the floor. "Calm down."

"That bastard knows the truth. He knows who I am!"

"Yes, he does," said the doctor. "He knows you're his uncle."

"That's a lie. He told me. He told me it was a lie!" God, why wouldn't they listen to him, why wouldn't they help him? Why did no one believe him when it was the truth?

"You are delusional, William," the doctor told him as once more the needle bit into his arm.

"Nooooo!" he tried once again to pull away, struggling futilely against the arms that held him, but the drug was winning, winning again, and his last sight was of the smug look of satisfaction on Douglas's face.

After that, the door to his room was always locked. It wouldn't have mattered, actually, because they gave him more and more of the drugs to keep him quiet and subdued.

---------------------

And then one night, his ability to fight back already compromised by the drugs, someone had come into his darkened room. He wasn't aware until it was too late, until once more he felt the restraints snapping over his wrists and ankles.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

He struggled vainly against the straps that held him as a rough hand grabbed his jaw, forced his teeth open and stuffed a gag in his mouth. He didn't understand what was happening, even as he saw the man take his water glass from the small table beside his bed and heard the sound of glass shatter. Then the man turned to him, and the dim light from the hall showed him that it was Douglas, his so-called nephew looming above him, and reaching down with the sharp edged shard of glass in his hand. The first stroke across his unprotected arm caused him to inhale sharply as agony flared in torn tissues. Blood began to flow as Douglas used the glass to savagely slice his arm again and again, and then the other arm, too. The gag stifled his shouts of anger, pain and despair. Helplessly, he'd watched the blood leaking from his arms, soaking bright red on the white sheets, dripping and pooling onto the cold floor.

Hands were releasing him, then, and he yanked the gag from his mouth as he slipped to the floor, huddling against the wall, using the cloth gag to try to stem the flow of blood, moaning at the pain. The cloth was saturated, blood slowly leaking down his arms, covering his hands, dotting his white shirt and white trousers and the clean floor.

Finally, someone came and this time, confused and in pain, he welcomed the shot that sent him into oblivion.

----------------------------

He woke to find himself in a different room. Neat white bandages covered his arms, a single thick leather belt strapped across his chest held him down on the bed. His thirst was raging, and a plastic cup of ice chips sat nearby yet impossibly far away on the table. He wanted a drink, but he didn't call for help, wouldn't, because experience had taught him that the price of the much wanted water would be unwanted needles and more drugs, dulling his senses but not helping. So he lay silently, thinking, as minute by minute his mind cleared. He recalled what had happened, Douglas's gloating face and confusing words, the pain, the fear that he would die there, helplessly strapped down to the bed while his life bled away...

God, stop that! Think of something useful, something helpful. Think of a way out of here! his inner voice demanded.

It was a long time before anyone came, hours that he laid there, staring helplessly at the ceiling, thinking and finding no answers.

Finally, someone came, one of the doctors.

"How are we feeling, Mr. Riley?"

"I've told you, *we* are not Mr. Riley," he answered matter of factly.

The doctor was already making notes on his chart. "Why did you hurt yourself?"

"I didn't. Douglas did this."

"Your nephew Douglas did visit you earlier in the day but visiting hours ended long before this incident happened. What did he say that so upset you?"

"It wasn't what he said, it was what he did," he insisted.

"And what did he do?" the doctor asked.

"He cut my wrists."

"And why would he do that?"

"I don't know. You need to ask him!"

"Mr. Riley, you suffer from paranoid delusions, the unfounded belief that someone is trying to harm you. No one is hurting you, other than yourself."

"Damn it. I did *not* do this. It was him, it was Douglas."

"Mr. Riley, there was no one else in your room. You did this to yourself."

"No!" He fought to keep his voice down, to keep control. "God, why won't you listen to me? Douglas must have waited, snuck into my room..."

"Why would he do that, William?"

"I told you, I don't know! He hates me, but I don't know why. I can see it in his eyes. He's lying. He's hiding the truth."

The doctor was scribbling furiously on the chart, shaking his head. Turning to the nurse, he handed her a sheet of paper. "I've increased the dosages on all his meds. He's a danger to himself and others."

The man on the bed lunged upward against the bonds that held him in place. "No! You can't do this! No! Listen to me, damn you! Drugging me won't change what happened! I didn't do this!" he shouted as the needle slipped once more into a vein.

The doctor looked down sadly at his patient, watching as the man's struggles ceased and his shouts faded into muttered whispers of denial. "He's getting worse instead of better, more delusional. His family wants him transferred. I'm pretty sure this will be the last straw as far as they're concerned."

By the time he was loaded onto a stretcher for shipment to a long term care facility, he was completely unaware.

------------------

The van pulled up in front of the old building. HarborCrest had once been a modern place, but that was long ago, before the government cutbacks and the movement to send most every one, no matter how ill, back to the streets. Only the worst cases ended up here, in custody, those who could be proven to be a danger to themselves or others.

Dr. Borakan watched as a stretcher was unloaded from the van, and another unfortunate sufferer was carried into one of the rooms. He liked to call them rooms, though most would call them cells-- four bare walls, a cot bolted to the floor, a bare mattress, restraints on the bed rails, locks on the doors. The paint was dingy from age, the floors cracked and old. The whole place seemed tired and lost.

The patient was comatose, strapped down to the stretcher. He'd already been sent the chart of one William Riley, age 45, committed by his only living relative, a nephew, after the man had attacked him and then slit his own wrists. Dr. Borakan pulled back the bandages covering the man's thin wrists, saw the rough, red scars crisscrossing the veins. The man had cut himself with a broken glass. The doctor shook his head over the still livid scars. When coherent, said the records, Riley would speak reasonably, intelligently, but had no memory of who he was, where he lived or that he had a family; complete amnesia, and paranoia, believing a vague someone was trying to hurt him.

Dr. Borakan had no illusions. He was as tired as his overtaxed facility. This patient had been under intensive treatment for months, to no avail, finally resulting in the damage he'd inflicted on himself and his caretaker. Now, like most of those who lived at HarborCrest, he was being warehoused.

----------------------

"I'm sorry, William, but you can't leave," Dr. Borakan repeated.

"I didn't do this!" the man insisted. There was something about him, something different than most of the others, some hint of authority, of intelligence and competence that didn't fit his medical records, but then again, the mentally ill could be very, very convincing.

"Yes, you did. You broke a glass, attacked and injured your caretaker, and then slit your wrists. That was after you'd attacked your nephew."

Frustration and anger flared, rage building because no one would believe him. Why? Why was this being done to him? Why didn't anyone believe him? It made no sense. He didn't know much about himself, but he *knew* he wasn't William, and he *knew* he hadn't done this to himself and he *knew* that he didn't belong here, caged like some mad animal.

The half-healed cuts on his wrists throbbed, his head hurt, and his left knee, as it so often did, ached abominably. They gave him so damn many drugs, why couldn't they at least give him something to make the pain go away?

He squeezed his eyes shut, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. God, why couldn't he remember? He tried, he did, he tried over and over but there was nothing there, nothing at all. It was like he was born that day when he awoke in that hospital. Not a flash, not a single bit of recall, no memory, not a familiar thing from before. No one, nothing. Just the one name, Charlie. His, someone elses, he didn't know.

In frustration, he beat his fist against the bed railing.

He had to find Charlie. Charlie would know all the answers.

---------------------------------

Doctor's notes:

Patient: Male. Name: William Riley. Age: 45. Description: Six foot, 2 inches tall. 175 lbs. Gray hair. Brown eyes. Numerous scars from self inflicted wounds during previous crisis.

Diagnosis: Amnesiac. Paranoid delusional. Bouts of mental illness ongoing for the past 11 years, but in increasing severity until the last severe manifestation of illness approximately 60 days ago.

Mr. Riley refuses to take his medications, requiring administration by force. He continues to insist that he did not injure himself or ever hurt one of his caretakers, although the records indicated repeated such incidents; He further believes that someone is after him, though he does not know why or who.

He recognizes no one, including his nephew who has visited twice. Both visits, in fact, have resulted in further paranoid and violent symptoms, insistence that his nephew is plotting against him.

He functions adequately day to day; knows the staff and is cognizant of current events, but has no recollections before the date of his last hospitalization three months ago. He refuses to acknowledge or come to terms with his illness in any way.

He has a multitude of repetitive nervous movements including drumming fingers and pacing.

He is easily frustrated, resulting in shouting and threatening; combative; refusing to follow directions for even the most simple tasks.

Because of his history of violent behavior toward himself and others, he remains a patient. Frequent violent outbursts and attempts to escape have led to forcible restraints and increased medications.

The outlook is grim. There is no sign of improvement in either his memory or his behavior.

Continued treatment is recommended.

"Continued treatment." Dr. Borakan sighed. Warehousing, he knew that was all that was being done here, all that would be done for those unfortunate enough to end up in this place at the bottom of the mental health chain. Riley was a difficult case, unresponsive. The man seemed to be bright, but combative, argumentative, difficult at his best, impossibly belligerent and resistant to any attempts to help him.

---------------------------------

"Mr. Riley, time for your meds."

"No."

It was the first time he had outright refused, and the last.

The orderly was a brute of a man, standing inches taller than his own slender height, outweighing him by a hundred pounds. Yet, somehow, he'd known just how to take the man down, his body moving as if by reflex, knocking the pill cup away, his hand slicing upward to the jaw, his foot hooking behind the man's ankle, dumping him unceremoniously on his back. He bolted, racing for the door, down the hallway, but the second door was locked.

Before he'd had a chance to try to open it, the others were there. Three, four, five orderlies, overpowering him with the sheer strength of numbers, holding him down. He kicked, punched, bit, fought with desperate strength, inflicting more than a little damage, but absorbing blow after blow himself until, nose bloodied, arms pinned behind his back, they'd strapped him down and forced the medication down his throat.

He didn't know how long he'd spent in that straight jacket.

If he wasn't crazy already, like they said, he was slowing going nuts, from being caught up in this nightmare existence. After that, they'd increased the drugs, dulling his senses to the point where he could barely shuffle from his 'room' to the day room. He sat all day in a drug induced stupor until the orderlies came and took him to eat a tasteless lunch, another tasteless dinner, then took him back to his room for a night of chemically induced sleep. The orderlies were distrustful, the big man he'd taken down rude and rough, disparaging, treating him more like an animal than a human being, taking out the frustrations of their jobs on him. He was an easy target. If he had bruises, they were explained away as something he'd done to himself. His rough treatment was justified in their eyes by the damage he'd inflicted in the one frenzy of despair he'd allowed himself.

------------------------

Finally, they must have reduced his medications, he thought vaguely, because he drifted less and seemed more aware, aware enough to decide he had to leave. He didn't know how long he had endured this hell when he decided he had to change.

He began to think of himself as Charlie, and to plot his escape. He didn't think about where he would go when he left, what he would do or how he would survive. He only knew he was dying in here, bit by bit. He would have to hold himself back, rein in his temper, control his tongue, comply with orders no matter how bitterly he hated the way they treated him, no matter how painful the humiliation.

He could bide his time.

He could be patient.

He had to be free.

-------------------------

The first break the SFs got in the case was an anonymous phone tip. "Merrado, Colorado. The HappyNighter Campground. An RV on Lot 22." The mystery caller hung up.

A team of USAF security personnel surrounded the site, and wire taps led to the discovery of the escapee, Lt. Neumann, a man they all knew had held a grudge against O'Neill.

---------------------

General Hammond was in on the debriefing. "We rushed the trailer, Sirs," explained the SF Major. "There were shots fired from within the recreational vehicle. We fired tear gas into the trailer and, I don't know how this happened, General, but I specifically and clearly ordered no return fire. Everyone on my team knew we needed Neumann alive. But when we forced the door and moved in, we found the man dead."

"What?" Dr. Daniel Jackson leaped to his feet. "How could you let that happen? How could you let that man die? He was our only lead to finding Jack!"

"Calm down, son," soothed Hammond, who turned his ire on the unfortunate SF. "Major, how in the hell could that happen?"

"We're doing ballistics tests right now, Sir, but my men all swear they didn't fire any shots. Several said shots were fired from somewhere behind us."

Jackson was still furious. "Did you find anything in the trailer?"

"Nothing indicating the whereabouts of Colonel O'Neill. But, I do have this, Sir." The SF withdrew a tape recorder from his pocket. "Our surveillance equipment picked up Neumann's last words. This is what he said as he was dying."

The voices on the tape were plain. Jackson recognized the SF major's voice. "Where's Colonel O'Neill? What did you do with him? Tell me!"

A mere whisper, amid harsh breathing and a macabre sound that was half laugh, half gargling death rattle. "Gone. You'll never find him, not even his body. There's nothing left to find. Gone."

Hammond sank back in his chair, suddenly feeling 10 years older.

-----------------------------

It took weeks of patient waiting before things began to change. He hid his returning awareness, playing dumb and numb, never resisting, never fighting back, although it took every ounce of his self-control to contain his emotions. Slowly, they began trusting him, leaving him to watch television in the dayroom, finally even allowing him outdoors.

Outdoors. Like a small piece of heaven, to feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. He loved being outdoors, loved the wild, silent places, he knew that not because he remembered it, but because his whole body came alive outside.

When they came to take him back inside, he nearly lost his resolve to be the perfect patient. He could hardly bear to let this small bit of paradise slip through his hands, but he knew he had to follow their orders, knew he had to continue to lull them until a careless action would provide him the chance to escape this hell.

Patience, he counseled himself, you must have patience.

He planned, watched, waited, and learned.

From watching the TV and listening to the others talk, he'd learned he was in New York state. He'd also began acquiring little things to help his escape-- coins filched from the coffee fund in the employee's lounge, a blue jacket an orderly left hanging over a chair in the dayroom, and bits of food hoarded from his lunches. He hid them carefully, under the little bench in the courtyard, away from prying eyes and snooping orderlies.

He curbed his impatience and waited until he had gathered things he needed, and one gray and cloudy afternoon, he sat outside on the bench, watched Albert the orderly sneak away for his afternoon cigarette, and, once the man was out of sight, walked quickly away.

For three days he hid in the drainage ditch in the park, shivering with cold, carefully eating his small tidbits of food, drinking less than clean water, but desperate to avoid the searchers. He saw them, looking for him, several times.

On the fourth day, he emerged from his hideout and walked for miles before, by chance, finding an even better hideaway, under a bridge, among a half a dozen homeless men, all as filthy and ragged as he was.

"Who are you?"

"Ch-Ch-Charlie," he decided, using the one familiar name he knew.

"What do you want here?" a bearded, grime encrusted man asked him.

He didn't want trouble, trouble brought attention, attention would get him sent back there, to that hospital. He shivered. "I don't want any trouble, mister," he answered quietly. "Looking for a place to sleep is all."

The dirty man looked him over, eyeing the jacket. "Give me that and you can stay up there, out of the rain," he said, pointing under the underpass.

"No." He was not going to be bullied, by this guy or anyone else. He'd had enough of being bullied by orderlies and doctors. "No."

Three of them jumped him, but seemingly of their own accord, his hands and feet knew what to do. He hit the dirty guy, threw over his head the man who'd jumped on his back, and punched the third man who'd joined the fight.

In just seconds, all three lay on the ground staring up at him, Grime Face rubbing his jaw. "You pack a punch, Charlie," he said.

After that, they let him keep his jacket, and sleep under the bridge.

He stayed there for a week while he figured out what to do, where to go to get away, and in the end, along with one of Grimey's friends, hopped a freight to the nearby big city.

New York City.

The name was familiar, like a place he'd once read about or seen on TV. But he had no clue if he'd ever been there, or lived there. It didn't matter.

He found another place where the homeless congregated, and fought his way in for a dry spot under a bridge support. Fall days were getting shorter, long nights getting colder, and he shivered in the thin jacket that was his only protection from the weather. Someone told him about a homeless shelter, but he was afraid to go there, afraid he'd be turned in to police and sent back to the hospital he'd run away from. He did go to the mission a few blocks away, once a week to get a hot meal, a donated used coat to keep him warm, socks and a blanket, precious possessions he hid away in the cardboard shelter he constructed under the bridge.

He took to walking the streets, searching the faces, searching for familiar faces, sometimes stopping and asking people if they knew Charlie. It was stupid and hopeless, but he didn't know what else to do, and the need to find Charlie drove him to desperation. Charlie needed him and he needed Charlie, and if they could just find each other, everything would be okay.

Then, one day, a few blocks from the mission, on a day when he'd been too late for lunch and his stomach was growling with hunger, he met Clara.

The smells coming from the restaurant were delicious, familiar smells, scents that made his mouth water, though he didn't know why. He went around the back, and there, in the dumpster, he looked at the wasted food. So near yet so far away. Wasted.

"Mister?" a woman's voice called out from the doorway. She was looking hard at him, at the hunger plain on the dirty, thin face. "You hungry?"

He stared at her, but said nothing.

"I've got leftovers in the kitchen, and I'm about to close."

He shook his head, suddenly afraid. "I don't take charity," he said, defiantly.

"I'll just have to throw them out if you don't eat them," she said, kindly.

Uncertain, but his hunger driving him forward, he walked up to the doorway. She pointed to a small table inside the kitchen and he went in and sat down, pulling the hat from his head. When she brought him a plate of the rich smelling soup, he devoured it like the starving man he was.

"My name is Clara," she told him.

He looked up, despair and darkness in his eyes, said nothing, going back to spooning the soup into his mouth.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

He looked at her again, at the kind eyes. "Call me Ch-ch-charlie."

"Glad to meet you, Charlie." She smiled, and the gentleness of that simple response and her kindness made him blink hurriedly to hide the tears that suddenly welled in his eyes.

After that, he visited the little restaurant every evening except Monday, when it was closed. She always saved a plate for him, for the cadaverously thin, silent man with the dignified bearing and shy, polite smile, who never talked about himself. She had the feeling he'd been someone important, once, before whatever tragedy had happened to him.

Clara also didn't miss what he did for her. Every morning, no matter how early she arrived, the building's stoop and front walk were meticulously swept clean and the snow shoveled. She never caught him at it, but Clara knew it was the quiet man's way of repaying her, of earning the small kindness she was showing him. Once, she asked him if he was the one responsible. He shrugged, raised his eyes to hers, not meeting her gaze, his eyes just sliding across her face, but a small grin crossed his lips and lit up his eyes. It was the one moment she saw him happy, pleased with himself and this tiny act of self-respect.

She left the room then, and wept, silently so he wouldn't hear her, knowing how important this small shred of dignity was to this silent, sad man.

------------------

He learned how to survive in the city, avoid the bad streets and the young punks who taunted the homeless; found places to spend the long days, warm spots to huddle during the cold nights. He was surviving, somehow, but despair clutched at his soul. He was living but not alive; his existence as bleakly empty as his memory.

He was walking down Third Street, territory he usually avoided, but sometimes he could find bottles here, bottles he could return for the five cent deposit fee. It was a risk, coming into this neighborhood, because there was a gang of street toughs who liked to hang out by the grocery store on the corner. But this day he didn't avoid them, because he saw what they were doing.

They had a dog, just a young puppy really, and it's piteous cries cut through to his heart. No living thing deserved what those boys were doing to that dog, to be tortured until it could do nothing but whimper in pain. Without thinking, he stalked boldly up the street.

"Stop that!" he ordered.

They turned from their game to glare at him, eyes lighting, realizing they had a new victim to taunt.

"So Raggedy Man, *you* be tellin' *us* what to do?

"Let the dog go!" he answered, defiantly, unsure where the sudden courage had come from, but knowing he couldn't live with himself if he walked away from a helpless animal in pain.

"You gonna make us?"

"Let the dog go!"

One of the punks kicked the puppy and it whimpered.

Rage overcame his sense of survival. He spun, kicking the kid who'd just kicked the puppy, sending the punk flying, as 'Charlie' knelt and made a grab for the dog, his small pocket knife slashing the rope that held the animal tied.

Someone jumped on his back, and then another, and another, their sheer numbers forcing him down, the strength of more than half a dozen well-fed young bodies bearing him down to the ground. Someone kicked him and he felt a rib snap, the pain mobilizing him, and with a shout he surged to his feet, fists swinging.

He grabbed the dog and ran, each breath agonizing.

They pursued, and two blocks away cornered him in the courtyard of a small apartment building. He set the dog down, and turned toward them, teeth bared in fury, all the pent up rage of months of uncertainty, pain, mistreatment and despair emerging into his shout. "Back off!"

They didn't. One stepped forward, a young man with long hair tied back in a ponytail, gold capped teeth shimmering in the chill winter sun, waving a knife.

"Get him, Tony," someone shouted.

Tony advanced, knife in front of him.

'Charlie' dodged the first swipe of the knife, felt it bite into his sleeve on the second, but once again his body knew what to do. He stepped into his attacker, grabbing the wrist, turning it back, Tony gasping with pain and dropping the weapon.

One on one, they were no match for him. But they outnumbered him six to one.

Tony's pal Andre snatched the knife off the ground and swung it into 'Charlie's undefended ribcage. He coughed, moaned, pushed himself upright, sent Tony flying as Andre withdrew the weapon, aiming for another thrust that would finish the bum. 'Charlie' stepped into the blow, spun the hand holding the knife, and Andre stepped into his own thrust, a look of surprised horror sliding across his face as he sagged toward the ground.

"Get him!"

"He killed Andre!"

"Get him!"

They were on him in a rush, and in greater numbers than he could fight off. A boot impacted the wound in his side and 'Charlie' lost his footing, sliding to his knees as blackness danced at the edge of his vision. He tried to climb back to his feet, instinct making him duck a blow from his left, but another boot landed solidly in his ribs and he couldn't breathe. More blows landed on him, driving him down to the ground and something hard hit his head and the world went black.

Down the block, Clara saw it happen, saw her gentle friend Charlie go to the defense of the dog, the gang pursuing and attacking him. Her frantic call to 911 brought the police and an ambulance.

------------------------

The story was the lead item on the local news broadcast that night, and picked up around the country on the national feeds within the next three days.

"In New York City yesterday, a homeless man went to the defense of a stray dog in an east side neighborhood, and now one man is dead and the dog's defender hospitalized," read the reporter. "The unidentified homeless man remains in critical condition with stab wounds, broken ribs and a concussion following the incident near the Third Street Market.

"Andre Ramirez, 19, a convicted felon, drug dealer and reputed gang leader, died in the fight. Witnesses reported the incident started when the homeless man tried to free a dog the gang was abusing. One of the gang members drew a knife.

"Police are still investigating, but stated that at this time no charges are anticipated against the unknown man, who has not yet regained consciousness. He is known only by the name Charlie, reported a woman who runs a nearby restaurant. Clara Segard said she has provided meals to the man for the past several months. 'He's a gentle and quiet man, I've never seen him react to anything before,' said the restaurant owner. 'He's never talked about himself, or where he's from.'"

The film clip showed a police woman. "Numerous eyewitness reports state that the man was defending himself against the attackers," said New York City Police Spokesperson Juanita Rebezano. "A finding of self-defense appears evident."

"The dog has been turned over to the local Humane Society Shelter. There are already dozens of requests to adopt the animal."

In Colorado Springs, Daniel Jackson was making dinner, the TV sound on, but he was not watching the picture when the newscast showed the battered features of the unconscious man they were hoping to identify.

-------------------------

His return to consciousness was agonizingly slow. He recognized the sounds and smells and knew it was a hospital, not the same one as before, this one was too clean and too quiet, but he couldn't be too careful. Cautiously he moved his arms and legs, realizing he wasn't strapped down. There was an IV in his hand, and tubes in other less comfortable places, and while he felt sleepy and heavy, he wasn't being drugged, not like before. There was a dull ache in his side, and his head, and he remembered the street fight.

With a sigh, he let himself sleep again.

-------------------

"Charlie? Are you waking up for me today?"

The voice sounded kind, not at all like the voices in that other place. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, everything still blurry as he struggled to focus. Oh God, he'd been wrong. Wrong. Panic stricken, fear lanced through him, because the voice belonged to someone in clothing he recognized, she was a nurse and this was a hospital...

The soft beeping he could hear in the background jumped from slow to rapid.

"Charlie," the soft voice was back. "Relax. You're okay. No one here will hurt you."

He'd heard that before, didn't believe it, but... how did she know to call him Charlie? He opened his eyes carefully, let his gaze drift around the room before coming to rest on the person standing beside his bed, a pleasant looking woman with a smile on her face, a genuine smile, not that guarded, phony smile he'd seen on the faces at that other place.

"Charlie, you were hurt in a fight, and you're in the hospital but you're going to be okay."

She knew his name, maybe she really knew who he was? Hope flickered. He licked dry lips, and whispered hoarsely, "How do you know my name?"

Her smile grew wider. "Your friend Clara told us. She was here to visit earlier, but she had to go to work, at her restaurant. She told us your name was Charlie, and that you're a good man." The nurse continued quietly, offering him a spoonful of ice chips which he accepted gratefully. "Is there someone we can call? A friend or family member? People must be worried about you. You've been here two days."

He tensed at the question, but forced himself to relax. "No, no one," he said in a very small voice.

"Well, okay, if you think of anyone, you can tell one of us later, okay?" the nurse smiled reassuringly. "Now I need to check your incision."

Lying back quietly, he said nothing more for long moments while she checked the bandages on his side, talking softly while she worked. "You had a knife wound that required surgery and quite a few stitches. It's healing well, but you'll have to stay with us a few more days. You have a couple of old scars," she added conversationally. "Were you in the Army?"

He shook his head no, a troubled frown on his face.

The look made her frown in response. "Well, you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to."

She was surprised when he asked, "The other man? He died?"

"I'm sorry, yes, he did," she answered him truthfully.

Her hands were gentle as she worked, and while what she did hurt in a vague sort of way, she explained that the IV contained antibiotics, fluids and medications that held the pain at bay and made him sleepy.

She had just completed her tasks when he heard brisk footsteps in the hallway. A small man in a baggy sport coat entered, addressing the nurse. "Dr. Rolinski said I could talk to him if he was awake."

The nurse looked down at Charlie. "He's awake, but not very talkative."

"Well, I've only got a few questions." The stranger stood silently while the nurse smoothed her patient's blankets and showed him the call button. "Press this if you need anything, okay?" she explained kindly, and left.

The stranger said nothing for several minutes, looking at the man on the bed. "I'm Detective Saliani NYPD." The cop didn't miss the brown eyes flickering. 'This man has secrets,' the detective made a mental note, so he waited quietly, saying nothing. It was a good technique, the detective knew. Most people grew uncomfortable with it.

The man on the bed lay silent, not meeting the policeman's gaze. 'Definitely hiding something,' Saliani thought, but he's a smart one, doesn't let much show. Finally, the policeman settled himself on a chair and took out a pen and small notebook. "So, Mr....?"

"Charlie."

"First name or last?"

"Just Charlie," the patient insisted.

"Address?"

"I move around."

The detective nodded. "Mister, look, I'm not here to arrest you for anything. There were enough witnesses to what happened in the street the other day to make it clear you reacted in self defense." And reacted very well, the detective thought, not at all like an ordinary citizen. "But a man died, and I do need to fill out a report. You understand, there's a lot of paperwork when someone dies violently."

The gray haired man nodded slightly.

"So, tell me what happened."

"They attacked me. I defended myself. He had a knife. I didn't mean to kill him, but... I had no choice."

"Did he say anything?"

The gray haired man let his gaze drift to the detective's face. "I don't remember." The brown eyes slid closed. "I don't remember. And I'm tired now."

Saliani sat in the hardbacked visitor's chair for several minutes, but it was plain the man wasn't going to answer any more questions. With a sigh, the detective rose from his chair. "Well, then, Mr. Charlie, maybe we can talk again later. We took your prints while you were unconscious, so we'll just see what turns up."

The rhythm of the heart monitor increased suddenly. The brown eyes snapped open, locked onto his face, then slid shut again, and gradually, the beeping slowed.

Detective Saliani stared at the injured man for long moments, tapping a finger against his notebook. There was a mystery here, one he was going to solve. At last, when 'Charlie' showed no signs of rousing, the policeman left.

-------------------

He knew he had to leave. Would his fingerprints lead them back to the hospital he'd run away from? He had to go before they discovered who he was, before they took him back to that place, that place where they'd drugged him and locked him in the room and put that straight jacket on him. Not again. Never again. He'd rather be dead than go through that again. He'd killed a man, now, and they'd never let him out. Sure, the cop had said he wasn't here to make an arrest. Yet. He didn't trust the man's shifty eyes, that suspicious look the man had given him. That detective was going to start digging around and if they didn't lock him up for killing that punk they'd send him back to that other place.

He shivered, calmed his racing heart, and began to plan another escape.

---------------------

In the middle of the night, he carefully removed the IVs. Slipping out of the bed, he found his clothes and his coat hanging in the closet, and dressed awkwardly. Weak and clumsy, every movement producing a new flicker of pain in his side, he finally struggled into his trousers and got one arm into his shirt. Hiding his half dressed state under the bulky coat, he checked the hallway, and shuffled toward the stairs. It was quiet in the hospital, and so it was easy for him to slip out and back onto the safety of the street.

It was a long walk back to his place under the bridge. The medication quickly wore off, and the pain rose in sickening waves. He began staggering, shivering and shaking. Several times he almost passed out from the agony but he forced himself to keep moving. Walking pulled on the stab wound and the broken ribs, but he pressed grimly on, finally reaching his shelter under the bridge.

He was relieved to find no one had taken his things or his place. Finally, then, he curled up in his coat, hands clutching the throbbing wound in his side, and drifted into a pained dozing semi-sleep state.

-----------------

It was a phone call George Hammond never expected to get. He'd given up hope months ago, and truthfully, the only call he anticipated he'd ever get regarding Jack O'Neill would be some bored police clerk asking him to come and identify a body. It was the best he could hope for, he thought, to someday find the body, and give the man a proper burial.

"General Hammond? Colonel Ron Clowden here, Air Force Special Security Services, Washington."

"Yes, Colonel, what can I do for you?"

"You have a missing persons report out on a Colonel Jonathan O'Neill?"

Hammond's heart skipped a beat. Was this the call he'd been both anticipating and dreading? At least, now, they'd know.

"Something interesting just came across my desk, Sir. A set of fingerprints, matching those of your Colonel O'Neill."

Hammond rubbed a hand across his forehead. So Jack had been found. Perhaps this could give all of them a little peace. "Yes, Colonel?"

"The prints were from the NYPD."

Now that was a surprise. George perked up. "New York City? They found his body in New York City?"

"Not his body, Sir. They've got an unidentified man in a New York hospital, injured in some sort of street attack."

Hammond sat up straighter. Jack, alive? How? Why? Where had he been? Why hadn't he contacted anyone? "Are you sure it's him, Colonel?"

"Definitely, General, we've double checked. They're Colonel O'Neill's prints. And the photos seem to match as well. It's a little hard to tell, what with the beard, the hair and all the bruises. But it's him, all right."

"Well, what are you waiting for then Colonel Clowden?"

"Well, Sir, he's gone."

"Gone?" Hammond had jumped to his feet. "Gone? Gone where?"

"I contacted the NYPD as soon as we confirmed the prints. The man had refused to identify himself to police, and last night he left the hospital in the middle of the night."

"What?" Hammond's emotions were on a roller coaster. O'Neill found, alive and now missing? What the hell was going on?

"It appears, General, that he's been living on the streets for several months, according to the police report, frequenting a mission that feeds and clothes the homeless..."

"What the hell?" Hammond muttered. "Colonel, we'll have a team there to meet you by tomorrow morning."

"Yes, Sir."

Hammond hung up, then called in his aide. "Lloyd, get Major Carter, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c in here. Ten minutes ago."

"Yes sir," answered the stunned aide.

------------------------

Daniel Jackson was yawning, a steaming cup of coffee held in his hand as he settled himself into a chair in the SGC briefing room. "So why'd the General call us back here at this hour? It's nearly midnight."

"I do not know, Dr. Jackson. Perhaps some crisis?"

Daniel smiled. "It doesn't look like there's any crisis around here," he said, waving a hand at the quiet gateroom below. "There's no activity like anyone is going anywhere tonight."

"Sam?" Daniel asked, turning as the third member of SG-1 came in. "Any ideas what's up?"

"Nothing," she answered, looking around. "Where's Woodington?"

Jackson frowned, thinking of Air Force Lt. Col. Anson Woodington, who'd been assigned six weeks ago as SG-1's temporary CO. Daniel knew it wasn't Woodington's fault, the man had tried really hard to become part of the team. And he even had to grudgingly admit the man was a pretty good CO. But the truth was, he wasn't in Jack O'Neill's league. No one was, and no one was ever going to replace Jack. He was more than their leader, he was their friend, and their rock. He knew them better than they knew themselves. They'd survived the impossible together, time after time, and not only was SG-1 not the same without him, the whole SGC wasn't the same. As angry and annoyed as Daniel sometimes got at Jack, he always knew that underneath the brash exterior was a good man who always did his best, and would never, ever let his team down.

"Lt. Col. Woodington was in the gym, as was I when I received the message to report here to the General's office. But he was not summoned to this meeting," Teal'c informed the others.

Hammond breezed in just then, a strange grin on his face. "Lt. Col. Woodington won't be involved in this mission, people."

"Sir?" asked Carter, puzzled.

"SG-1, we have news."

"News?" asked Daniel, puzzled, then hope dawned. "Jack?

"O'Neill?"

"The Colonel?"

"Yes." Hammond answered with a triumphant grin. "He's alive."

"What? Where? Why?" Questions poured out of the three SG-1 teammates.

The General quickly waved down their questions. "Do you remember the news reports of a homeless man in New York City who took on a whole street gang in defense of a dog?"

Daniel's face went white. "I heard about that," he said softly.

"That was the Colonel?" asked Carter. "But why?"

"O'Neill has great affection for dogs," Teal'c intoned.

"Not why did he do *that*, why haven't we heard from him, where has he been?" Carter asked, puzzled. "Sir, this wasn't another undercover mission...."

"No," Hammond answered hastily, quickly explaining what little he knew of the situation. "He's apparently been living on the streets in New York City for months. We don't know why. Yet. So, I've got a plane waiting at Peterson for the three of you. Find him, people. Colonel Clowden will meet you and fill you in on the latest details."

-----------------

Once in New York, they'd split up to search the leads on possible whereabouts for the missing man. Teal'c and Colonel Clowden going to the mission, Daniel and Sam going to Clara Segard's restaurant. She suggested the nearby spot where the homeless camped beneath the old Fourth Avenue bridge. "He might be there, that's where most of them live."

"How did he seem?" Sam asked, concerned.

"Scared, he was scared, miss, frightened and alone. He'd never talk about why or who, but he was afraid. Most of them are, the homeless, afraid. I think he'd been in one of those hospitals, for the insane. I asked once where he came from, and shouldn't he go back, and all he said was 'Never. I'm never going back', and with this terrified look in his eyes. If you find him, be careful. He's not very trusting."

They'd quickly found the homeless wouldn't talk to outsiders, so they'd split up and worked their way cautiously through the tangle of boxes and blankets that served as shelters.

In the end, it was Daniel who found him. At least, Jackson thought he'd found him. He wasn't quite sure. Was this scarecrow of a human being really Colonel Jack O'Neill, his team leader and friend? Beneath the shaggy hair and ragged beard, the dirty, far too thin body, and empty, mistrustful eyes, Daniel recognized the man, or what remained of him. There was something he'd never seen in Jack's eyes, fear, downright terror, actually.

"I'm not going to hurt you." Jackson soothed, stepping cautiously closer to the man huddled in an oversized ragged coat.

"Go away."

"I'm your friend. I'm here to help you." Daniel couldn't stop the words, and the pain in them. "Don't you remember me?"

The brown eyes, eyes he knew so well, eyes that he'd seen show anger, despair, pain, compassion, but never terror, even when faced with horrifying dangers and death, flickered with interest. The head tilted in that familiar way Daniel recognized, and his heart almost stopped at seeing the gesture he knew so well.

A hesitant question. "Do you know me?"

God. Hesitant, Jack was never hesitant, not the cocky, confident, brash, annoying officer he knew so well. Never hesitant. Never like this. "Yes. I'm an old friend."

The dead eyes studied him for a long moment, before cautiously revealing his secret. "Are you Charlie?"

Daniel all but gasped at the name. Jack remembered something, despite whatever had happened to him. Jackson smiled.

Sudden hope made the brown eyes light up eagerly. "Are you Charlie?"

"No." Jackson said softly. "I'm Daniel."

"Do you know where I can find Charlie? Did you bring Charlie? I need to find Charlie," there was naked pleading in the eyes now. "Charlie will know how to help me."

Daniel didn't know what to say. He desperately needed to keep Jack talking, to convince him to come along with him, but he couldn't lie to him, either. "Charlie's not here, but I can help you find Charlie."

The light in the brown eyes flickered. The man knew, somehow, that this stranger could be trusted. "So I'm not Charlie." There was disappointment on the thin face and in the empty eyes that peered up into Daniel's face. "Who is Charlie?" he asked softly.

Daniel didn't know how to answer, but he didn't have to, because the next question caught him even more by surprise.

"Who am I?" he was asked, suddenly. "Do you know?"

Daniel knew how to answer this question. "You are my best friend. Your name is Jack O'Neill, and I've come to take you home."

The scarecrow figure shrank back away from Daniel's outstretched hand. "No. Not back there. That place is not my home. It's not. I am never going back. Kill me first, don't take me back there. Not there..."

"Where? Where is there?" Daniel asked.

"Hospital," Jack's thin body shivered and he pulled the threadbare coat tighter around himself. "Drugs, straps, drugs...."

"Shhhh, it's okay. I won't take you there. I'm sorry. I should have explained better. Your real home, not that bad place. To a good place, a place where you have friends and, and family. Your home. Your work. Where people will help you."

"Doctors?" there was fear back in the eyes.

"Friends," so, yeah, okay, Janet was a doctor, but a friend, too. And oh God, he hoped she could do something. "But first you need medical..."

"No!"

Daniel fought to keep his voice calm, reassuring, reasonable. "Jack, you were badly injured. You left the hospital before you should have..."

"No hospitals. No! No!" Jack was backing away, ready to flee.

Daniel couldn't let it happen. "Your injuries need treatment. If that stab wound has gotten infected, you could die."

"No treatments!" Jack shouted, and turned to flee, breaking into a stumbling run.

Not knowing what else to do, Daniel ran after him, easily catching up to the injured man, and tackled O'Neill. The Colonel fought, kicking, thrashing, fists slapping into him, but Daniel held on. It was a sign of how weak O'Neill really was that the battle lasted mere moments. Daniel could never have overcome a well O'Neill so quickly, or easily. The feeble resistance soon ended, the thin form beneath him burying his face in his hands. For a horrible moment, Daniel thought Jack would cry, but the shudders were silent, and the eyes, when Jack raised his face, were lifeless. "Don't send me back there. Please."

"I won't," Daniel vowed. "Not to that place, to a good hospital." He looked Jack O'Neill in the eye and promised. "No one there will hurt you. I promise. I'll stay with you and I won't let them hurt you. And then I'll take you home, to your real home."

"Home? To Charlie?"

Daniel, unable to speak, nodded. Wrapping his arms around Jack's too-thin shoulders, the young man remembered a time not so long ago when O'Neill had done this for him, when Jack had promised to help him. Daniel remembered the way Jack had held him as he sobbed in the storeroom at the SGC, moments after he had tried to kill Jack. Jackson pulled the shivering man closer. "We'll get through this together, Jack, I promise.

---------------------

Finally, when Jack's shuddering had subsided, Daniel pulled the cell phone from his pocket. "Sam, I found him," he said softly. "He's here, under the bridge at Keller Avenue. I need an ambulance. No lights or siren, just a quiet ride back to the hospital."

"How is he?" There was hope in her voice.

"He's," Jackson looked down to see O'Neill's half open, fever-bright eyes watching him intently, "he's alive, hurt but alive. We'll get him back," he added, voicing the hope as much for Sam and himself as for this stranger who listened intently. "I'll meet you at the hospital."

They sat silent then and finally O'Neill asked softy, "Daniel, I need my stuff."

"Your stuff?"

Jack pointed at a cardboard hut tucked up under the bridge. "My stuff. In there."

Afraid Jack might disappear if he left him, Daniel helped his friend upright and together they staggered over to the meager shelter. Helping Jack to sit down, Jackson knelt down and pushed the cardboard door aside. Inside there were blankets, and a lightweight blue jacket, everything arranged neatly, in O'Neill's always military manner. Under the folded jacket, Daniel found a few coins, a bent fork and spoon and a chipped plate, a few cans of food. Under them were pictures, a stack of pictures torn from magazines: a snow-covered mountain, a forest of pine trees, a fish jumping out of a lake, a house that looked slightly like Jack's home back in Colorado Springs, hockey players, dogs, a star field against the black backdrop of space, and airplanes. At the bottom, well worn edges indicating it had been handled often, was a picture of a little boy that looked vaguely familiar. Daniel stared and suddenly it came to him. There *was* a resemblance to the little boy the blue crystal had become, that vision of Charlie come to life.

------------------------------

They kept O'Neill in the hospital for a week, IV antibiotics finally getting the raging infection under control and the knife wound began to heal. Daniel camped in Jack's room, his calming influence the only way O'Neill would let the doctor's give him medications or examine him. Sam and Teal'c visited but went unrecognized, and seemed only to make the Colonel more uncomfortable and agitated.

After seven days, he was physically well enough to be released, cleaned up and relatively healthy, although so thin and pale he looked fragile as fine porcelain. His movements were still guarded, tentative, mistrustful, and he wouldn't let Daniel out of his sight. It was as if he had placed all his trust in this one man, the one who had promised to help him find Charlie.

Deciding he wasn't ready for the close contact and stress of plane travel, Daniel rented a car to return to Colorado. They spent one final night in New York before starting the long drive home.

Jack slept most of the way, exhausted. When awake, he stared silently out of the window, fingers drumming nervously on the denim of the new blue jeans covering his thin thighs, shooting surreptitious glances across the seat at Daniel, across the insurmountable gulf of lost memories.

He desperately tried to remember this man, remember Colorado Springs, this place where Daniel was taking him, but the blank wall in his head remained. He sighed, brushing his hand across his face.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asked gently.

"Oh for crying out loud..."

Oh Lord, that was so Jack, so precisely what O'Neill would say, that Daniel felt an irrational surge of hope, that something could be done to bring the man back. And then Jackson looked over at the shadow of the man huddled in the passenger seat with no knowledge of the impact of what he'd said, and felt despair hit him like a fist to the solar plexus.

They couldn't be too late, not after all this, not after the miracle of finding him alive. Janet would do something. The sudden realization that, if she couldn't, it might mean Jack would be turned over to the likes of MacKenzie suddenly made Daniel blanche with remembered misery of his own.

Jack noticed. His face suddenly mirrored Daniel's own look of horror. "Daniel?" he asked.

"Sorry. It's okay. Just a bad memory."

"Of me?"

Yes, but he wouldn't say it. Not now. "No. Just a bad time of my own. I survived, with your help."

Jack looked uncertain. "My help? I don't think I helped people, I think I hurt people. A lot."

"You remember?"

"No. No. Just," the shoulders shrugged uncomfortably. "It's just a feeling, the sense of what I did before, before whatever happened to me. That I hurt people." He was very, very still, saying the words so softly Daniel had to strain to hear them. "I know how to hurt people, how to fight, even kill. I didn't even have to think about doing that."

Daniel wasn't sure how to answer. He tried to remember Janet's advice about telling the truth, just the bare facts. "You were in the military. You were trained to defend yourself."

"To kill people?" Brown eyes met his, a frown furrowing the forehead beneath the gray hair. "I killed people."

"If you had to. That's what a soldier does."

"I know what a soldier does," Jack answered, irritated, sounding once again like himself, music to Daniel's ears.

"In your work, you've had to make hard decisions, but you've done what you've had to do to protect the innocent, take care of your team and your country."

"I've done terrible things, haven't I?" doubt shadowed the brown eyes.

"We have done what we needed to do. Sometimes it was pretty ugly."

"You, too?" there was disbelief in the voice.

"Me too. I'm on your team. You taught me, well, you taught me how to take care of myself."

The eyes were showing more and more distress. "Just what is it we do? Did?"

"It's hard to explain. It's military. Top secret."

Jack nodded, seeming to accept the temporary explanation. He turned to look again at the green fields dotted with trees. "Lots of trees around here. Trees everywhere. It's so green here. Beautiful."

The lump was back in Daniel's throat. This was Jack and yet not Jack, this man without the experiences and memories that made him who he was. Finally, to help pass the long hours, Daniel asked, "will you tell me what you do remember?"

O'Neill turned to Jackson and studied him, then shrugged, and in an emotionless voice, told about the hospitals, the streets, the homeless shelter, all the while his hand was running back and forth along the ridges of scar tissue along the underside of his left forearm.

Daniel bit his lip not to cry.

--------------------------------

He didn't want to trust this woman, this doctor, but Daniel insisted she was okay, so in the end, with Daniel sitting in the room, he let Dr. Fraiser examine him. He found her to be quiet and reassuring, gentle, explaining each action in a soft soothing voice, and when she called him "Colonel" his head snapped up.

"I'm a Colonel?" There was surprise, and a touch of pride in his voice, she was happy to notice.

She hadn't meant to let the rank slip. "Yes, Sir, you're an officer and a damn good one."

He was silent a long time as she finished the exam, his forehead furrowed in concentration as he tried to fit this piece of information into the framework he was building of who he was, or had been. "What happened to me?" he asked, hoping she could offer him some answer. The not knowing was becoming more and more unbearable, as he learned bits and pieces of who he'd been.

"I'm not sure, Sir. The tests haven't shown any physical reason like head trauma. I need to draw some blood to test for drugs. You may have been given some."

"Why?"

She paused, considering her answer carefully. "You do important work, Sir, very top secret. There are people who would like to know about what you do."

--------------------

The first battery of standard tests told her nothing, as did the results of his physical. Dr. Fraiser was totally frustrated. The Colonel was trying to be cooperative which in itself was disconcerting, because O'Neill wasn't normally like that. But she knew he was keeping a tight hold over himself, his fears thinly disguised, his hopeful expression breaking her heart as test after test told her nothing, except how badly he'd been treated. New scars marked his body, including the slashes on his wrists; the still raw scar marking the barely healed knife wound and the other marks left by the street gang's beatings; the old needle marks in the crook of his elbow; the scars at wrists and ankles where he'd futilely fought restraints.

She had to curb her anger over what had been done to a good and decent man.

Days passed, and there was no change. There was nothing wrong with O'Neill's current ability to remember, it was just the past that was completely and utterly gone. He did, in fact, quite clearly recall everything since that day he'd awakened in the hospital. Minus, of course, the days he'd been kept drugged to insensibility, Fraiser thought angrily. The Colonel didn't forget a thing he was told, swiftly learned all the names that went with the faces in the infirmary and those few who were allowed to visit.

He also recognized another face.

She hadn't been sure it was a good idea, but had finally relented to the General's insistence.

General Hammond carried a folder as he and Dr. Jackson walked into the infirmary.

"Hi guys," O'Neill smiled at them.

"Hi," Daniel greeted him.

"Jack, I have something here I'd like you to take a look at," the General requested.

"Sure," O'Neill agreed, taking the folder. He opened the cover, and stopped. He went very, very still, his face turning a shade paler, his eyes getting darker. His hands shook where they held the folder, and very slowly he raised his eyes to the General. "Who is he? How did you know?" he demanded, waving the photograph. "Who *is* this bastard?"

"Ah, I take it you recognize him then," Daniel commented softly.

"Oh yeah," there was anger in the quiet voice now. "That's my self-proclaimed nephew, Douglas Riley. The son of a bitch who did this to me." O'Neill held up one arm, the scars across his wrist fading but still visible. "Who is he?"

Hammond nodded. "He's an old enemy of yours, a former Lt. Neumann. A man who held a grudge and vowed to hurt you."

"What did I do to him?"

Hammond looked from Jack to Daniel, and nodded.

Jackson answered. "You stopped him and his partners from doing something that was illegal and dangerous, something that could have had horrific consequences for millions of people."

"This guy?" Jack asked, incredulous.

"Well, he had friends, lots of friends, some pretty important people most likely. Did you see anyone else? Did he ever talk about anyone else?"

O'Neill shook his head. "Just him. He would visit," the Colonel shivered, "and drop hints. He enjoyed... gloating." After a long moment he asked, "Where is he?"

"He's dead."

The gray haired man went silent, nodded. "Good," he said simply, and closed the folder.

-------------------------

Seven days. Seven days of frustration, his and hers, seven days of being unable to help O'Neill was driving Dr. Fraiser to distraction. Worst of all, she didn't know how much longer she would be able to keep him here, how long Hammond could continue to cover up his whereabouts. If they didn't find something soon, she would have to turn him over to MacKenzie, and she didn't think his fragile hold on hope could survive such a brutal betrayal, back to locked rooms and drugs and God only knew what else.

"Damn!" she muttered, frustrated, at another set of useless test results.

"Janet?" Major Carter was at the door. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, or nothing new, at least. I'm running out of ideas on how to help the Colonel."

"He's not remembering anything more?"

"No. Nothing. Nothing at all, not a single thing, except the name Charlie." Janet closed her eyes and let her shoulders sag. "And I'm about out of options. I have the feeling I'm missing something, something important, but I just don't know what it could be."

Sam set her coffee down on Janet's desk. "So, let's go back to the beginning and review all the data we have, systematically. Sometimes a new perspective works wonders." Carter pulled out a pen and paper. "Symptoms?"

They wrote for nearly an hour, and studied the sheets of yellow lined paper that were now tacked to the walls of Janet's office. "So, the Colonel disappeared, we don't know how or why. There's no sign of physical trauma, no drug residues. He just has a complete and total memory loss of everything before his disappearance."

"Right. One day he wakes up and hasn't a clue as to his past. The only thing he remembers is his son's name, although he doesn't know why he knows that name. And he has a few vague feelings about what he was before. That's it. Gone. Like his whole life was erased."

Sam was staring at the sheets, tapping her pencil on the desk, feeling something was just beyond her grasp. "Is there any way this could be natural?"

"Natural causes for his amnesia? Physical disease or injury? No. I've run every conceivable test. This was done to him while someone was trying to extract information."

Suddenly, Sam's face lit up. "Maybe that's where we're wrong. We've been *assuming* it was an accidental side effect of someone trying to get top secret information out of him. What if it wasn't a *side effect*? What if it was done *on purpose*?"

"Why?"

Carter jumped to her feet, pacing back and forth. "To cover up something someone did. To prevent the Colonel from doing something or reporting someone or something. As punishment or revenge."

"Okay, so if we have a motive, how does that help?"

"It means his symptoms are no accident. They're not a side effect but the intended result." Sam's eyes were bright. "What substance do we know that causes amnesia, sudden, total, complete amnesia? We've seen it here before."

Janet jumped to her feet. "The vorlex? Dargol? Someone from Area 51 or the NID poisoned him with it on purpose? Oh my God! I never tested for that, I never even looked for it." The diminutive doctor bolted from the room.

"Janet?" Sam called after, following her friend out the door.

"I need to test another blood sample..."

---------------------

An hour later, Dr. Fraiser and Major Carter were in General Hammond's office.

"General, it was right here under my nose the whole time. I don't know how I missed it." Fraiser lamented. "I never tested for Dargol. It's too rare, too highly classified, I never even considered he might have come into contact with it. No one but the military or a government organization would have it, so I never looked for it. I'm sorry, Sir.

"No apologies needed, Doctor, none of the rest of us suggested it either. I'm just glad we have an answer."

"And an antidote. What worked on the Vyans should work on the Colonel." Carter was smiling for the first time in months.

"Restoring all his memories?" the General asked.

"Yes, Sir," the doctor smiled, a genuine smile for the first time in a long time. "The antidote we developed with Kira should restore all of the Colonel's memories."

"No side effects, doctor?" Hammond inquired.

Fraiser's smile dimmed. "No medical side effects sir, but the psychological..." She shared a glance with Hammond, acknowledging the Colonel's past that only the two of them were aware of, the dark Black Ops days, his imprisonment in Iraq and the horrific parachute accident that should have killed him. On top of the death of his only child, the ensuing break-up of his marriage, and the loss of so many friends and colleagues, it was a load of memories that might be shattering even to a man so strong.

-----------------

Dr. Fraiser was the one who went to tell him.

She paused in the hallway outside his room, seeing him quietly settled on the bed, watching a hockey game. She smiled, thinking of the last two weeks as they'd tried to help him. There were so many things that had surfaced in that time, his love for hockey, dogs, children, old movies, checkers and card games. His impatience. The physical skills his body hadn't forgotten, the workouts in the gym helping him pass the time and ease his growing restlessness as his body recovered physically. Even without his memories, there was so much of him that was still him, and yet so much of him that was still missing.

Janet took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and knocked on the door to get his attention. "Colonel?"

His face turned to hers, and reading her expression, he knew something important had happened. "You found out? What happened to me?"

"Yes, Sir. We have an answer."

He smiled, a dazzling smile that she'd never seen from the whole Jack O'Neill, the one filled with anguished memories of sorrow, loss, death, and despair. She could give him back all that he was, but at the price of this innocence. She shook her head, knowing the choice wasn't any choice. "We have an answer. You were given a drug that blocked your memory, and we have an antidote that will restore it."

He was staring at her, studying her face gravely, having seen some uncertainty there. "So what's the down side? Huh?"

She swallowed. "It will bring back all your memories, the good and the bad."

He looked away, down at his hands, remembering all the scars on his body. He knew they told a story he wasn't sure he was ready to hear. "So there's a lot of bad stuff inside my head, huh?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

"Stuff I probably don't want to remember?"

She nodded. "Some of it."

"But it's all or nothing? The good and the bad, or being like this," he waved a hand in the air in frustration, "like half a person, forever?"

She nodded again.

"What would you do, Doc?"

"It's not my decision."

It was his turn to nod, a grim smile playing across his lips. "That bad, huh?"

She tried to smile. "The military is a tough life, Sir."

"And my family? I've noticed a distinct lack of a wife or kids hanging around..."

"The people here are your family, Colonel."

He nodded, absorbing the information, but knowing there was no choice. He had to know. Nothing could be as bad as the things he imagined. "Okay, Doc. We do it."

------------------

They'd settled him in the VIP suite, Fraiser insisting they needed to be near the infirmary, in case things went badly, but knowing he needed privacy. Too, she wanted him in a place he'd recognize and surrounded by people he knew, and she'd warned all of them. "Don't push him. Let him get his bearings as much as he can on his own. Answer any questions truthfully." Fraiser looked around at O'Neill's team, standing ready to help. "This won't be easy, for him or for you. We all know there are some painful memories in store for him. Losses he's never really come to terms with. He's going to need all of you, even if he doesn't ask for your help."

"We understand, Dr. Fraiser," said Teal'c nodding. "We know O'Neill well."

"I know you do. I just want you to remember this won't be easy or pleasant. I'm not sure the good will in the end outweigh the bad," she finished worriedly.

-----------------------------

As his doctor, privy to the dark secrets concealed in O'Neill's lengthy medical records, Dr. Fraiser knew better than anyone else, except the General, perhaps, exactly how ugly some of those memories would be. She didn't want to admit it, but she was scared for O'Neill, for this officer she admired and thought of as a friend. He was a good man who'd endured some terrible blows during his long career, not to mention the disasters in his personal life. She knew this was the right thing to do, the only thing, but it didn't leave her any less worried about how he'd handle the ugly things that were going to suddenly reappear in his memory.

When she entered the VIP suite with the carefully prepared injection in hand, she couldn't miss his nervous, restless movements as he reclined atop the bed's blue bedspread. His eyes fastened on her face and she forced herself to give him a reassuring smile. "Here we go, Colonel," she said softly, swabbing his arm. He flinched as she inserted the needle, and closed his eyes. For long moments, nothing happened. He lay, quietly, eyes closed, and then, with a low moan, his breathing began to increase, his body shook, sweat popping out on his forehead, and his fists clenched and unclenched.

Janet soothingly stroked her hand along his forearm and he relaxed. The electrodes fastened to his chest continued to give the monitor's evidence of his heart beating fast but steady.

A small smile played across his features. Such a simple thing, he thought, something taken for granted, something precious, knowing who he was. He raised his fists above his head in triumph. "Yesss. Colonel Jack O'Neill."

"Yes, Sir." So far, so good, thought Fraiser.

"Doc," he added softly, recognition in the way he said it this time, his eyes bright with excitement.

She grinned, rubbing his arm slowly.

He looked around with dawning recognition, smiling, nodding at Daniel, Sam, Teal'c and the General. His friends, his team. His work, his life, this place, all familiar, all known quantities. Thank God, he remembered them. He *remembered* them and this place. Oh yessss!

Fraiser saw exactly the moment the rest of his memories hit him. The eyes widened in horror, the face changing from innocent wonder and immense relief to hell, she didn't have the words for it. Under her hand, she felt his arm stiffen, his whole body go rigid and she heard the heart monitor's beeping jump from steady to frantic racing. He pushed himself to an upright position, ripping the electrodes from his chest, his hands flying up to cover his face. "No. No. No. No." he muttered softly.

"Jack?" Daniel's voice was loaded with concern as he stepped forward toward his friend.

"Get out."

"Jack..."

"Get out. All of you." He wouldn't look at them.

Fraiser nodded and reluctantly they left.

O'Neill's face was still hidden.

"Colonel?" she asked with deep concern, noting how he was gulping for air, reaching up to take his wrist and feeling the pulse race under her fingertips.

"Get out!" he rasped.

"No, Sir," she insisted.

He wrenched his arm out of her grip, and pulled his hands away from his face, showing her a look of bleak, wretched despair that made her own heart leap in worry.

"Get out," he said, almost viciously.

"Colonel..."

The hands were back in front of his face. "Your medicine worked, Doc. I remember it, all of it. Now leave me alone."

"Sir...."

He was forcing his breathing back under control, steadying his heart rate and pulse, but as he uncovered his face, Janet couldn't miss the distress in his eyes, the anguish that had replaced the emptiness. Was one any better than the other? she asked herself as she watched him fight to hold back the emotion, moisture welling in his eyes. His gaze slid across her face, then away, the way it always did when he battled for control of his emotions.

It took a long moment before he knew his voice was steady enough to speak. "Doc, I'm okay," he flashed her a smile he hoped was convincing, knew from her frown it had fallen flat, but it was the best he could do. "I just need a few minutes alone, to think about all this. It's a lot to take in."

"Colonel..."

"You're a good doctor, and a good friend. But I don't need either right now," she was pleased to hear his voice get stronger.

Reluctantly, she nodded, squeezed his hand. "Need anything?"

His smile was thin and pale, like the rest of him. "No. Just let me think, hmmm?"

"Okay."

She'd barely closed the door before she heard the first crash. She flinched, hearing the sound. Well, good thing they'd emptied the room of all the valuables, in preparation for this very moment.

General Hammond was waiting in the hallway, nodded at the noises coming from the room. "The Colonel is rearranging the furniture?" he asked, softly.

"You might say that, Sir."

Hammond nodded. "Do you think he needs any help?"

"No, General, this is one task the Colonel needs to complete all on his own."

Another crash. "I think I'll just wait here then, Dr. Fraiser. I don't think this will take long." Hammond seated himself on a chair.

"Right, Sir. Call if you need me," she added, and headed back to her office, and the task of updating O'Neill's already oversized medical file.

------------

They were there, back in his head, all of his memories. All of them, this flash flood of recollections, the things that had created him, the people and events that made him who he was-- the good, the bad and a truckload of ugly; the horrible and the wonderful; the clean and the dirty; the joy and the all but unbearable grief and guilt; the victories and the defeats; the little things and the big things, the bits and pieces that fit together to create Jack O'Neill.

The memories had returned like a tidal wave, washing over him, threatening to overwhelm him. Somehow, and he didn't know how he'd done it, he'd held himself together until the others were gone, until the worried, well-meaning faces were out of the room and he was alone.

Charlie. Oh God, like a blow to his gut, the memory of his son drove the breath from his body, drove him to his knees with a sob. He had *killed* Charlie. No man should outlive his child, a child he'd killed. Charlie. So bright and perfect and full of life; Charlie, who'd loved him unconditionally, who've looked up to him, who'd counted on him; Charlie, who he'd failed so unforgivably.

And Sara, he'd failed her, too. He remembered how it had been, the two of them, how fiercely he'd loved her, how he'd ached for her, how passionately they'd made love, and the cold, bitter silence that ended their life together; her wail of despair over Charlie's still body lying in a pool of blood, the light in his son's eyes fading, dying and it was all his fault...

Jack moaned, a harsh despairing wail, and he swung his arm viciously, making contact with the table lamp and sending it to the floor with a shattering crash, as shattered as his soul had been.

And that wasn't all. It was the worst but not all of it. A kaleidoscope of images, moments, memories flashed across his consciousness. Iraq, left behind and captured. Ten years ago now, and yet he could feel the blows, the pain, the humiliation, the anger, the hatred, the hopelessness and the despair. He understood the scars now.

Crawling nine days across the Iranian desert, focused on getting home, on getting back to the light in his life, the one person he needed, and who needed him.

The terror in that moment when his deepest fear came to life, when Hathor set that snake on his chest and he stared his fate in the face, and froze in horror. The snake tearing through his flesh, shrieking in his head, it's death throes ringing inside his skull. He shivered.

Watching Henry Boyd die. Frank Cromwell's hands slipping through his straining fingers. Kawalsky collapsing on the ramp. Dark memory after dark memory flooding through him.

He'd thought he'd known despair when he'd been empty of memories, but this, oh God, this...

But it wasn't all bad. O'Neill forced himself to dig deeper, past the horrors at the surface, searching for the good. Even if the bad did too often outweigh the good, the good was still there, enough good, enough hope that he hadn't joined Charlie in the cold ground.

It had to be there, and it was, when he looked for it. He *knew* who these people were now, Daniel, Teal'c, Sam, Doc, the General, good people, people he cared about and who cared about him, people who'd saved him. The battle they were fighting, a war for his people and his planet.

Jack recalled more now, made himself look at the good times of Charlie's life, not just his death, the joys of fatherhood, not just the agony of loss. Small moments, bright Kodak moments of life, he had those, too, when he looked: the day Charlie was born, his first steps, his first words, losing his first tooth; teaching him to fish and play hockey; camping, fireworks, birthdays, baseball, Christmas, learning to ride a two wheeler; his first day of school...

His parents. Brothers and sisters. Opening the letter of acceptance from the Air Force Academy, the day he'd graduated from flight school, playing hockey, a dog named Lucky; the day he met Sara, the moment he'd known he was in love with her, the ceremony when she'd married him; Minnesota and granddad and the cabin and fishing; Skaara, Merrin, Cassie, Thor.

O'Neill fought for every good memory, dug out every bright recollection and happy moment because he needed to remember them. They were why he'd done this; to find these good things, he'd willingly accepted the horrors he'd suspected resided with them. Now he understood the looks the others had given him these past weeks, what they'd known and not told him, and he blessed them for it.

Breathing normally now, his heart no longer hammering like it was ready to leap out of his chest, Jack looked around, suddenly aware of the wreckage in the room, seeing what he'd done in those first moments of frenzied despair.

It was going to take him a long time to digest all of this, to understand all it meant to be Jack O'Neill once again. But at least this time he took with him the comfort of knowing it could be done, that he could find a way to live with the losses of his life.

-----------------

They were waiting in her office, as she had known they would be, worry etched deeply on to each face.

"So, how is he, really?" Sam asked.

"Remembering things."

"We know that. How *is* he?" Daniel insisted.

Janet looked around from one to the other. "Look you know I can't talk about..."

"We are the closest thing he has to family, and we don't know what's happening," Daniel let the frustration leak into his voice. "How can we help him if we don't know what he's going through?"

"I can't talk about it," Janet repeated, wishing she could tell them, because she knew his team could help O'Neill cope. But she couldn't, because so much of what she knew about the tragedies of the Colonel's life were things she'd seen in his medical files, and a few rare glimpses he'd given her into his soul, alone at night in the infirmary, when he'd suddenly felt the need to talk. "I'm sorry but I can't."

"We know," Sam soothed. "But we want to help."

"And Jack's never done more than hint at things, like when he was a POW, and people, friends who died..."

"Colonel O'Neill has experienced great loss in his life." Teal'c offered it as a statement.

"Yes, he has Teal'c," Fraiser could agree to that simple statement. "There are things you do know, about his son, Daniel, more than anyone else on that, I think."

Jackson shook his head. "He's never really talked about him," Daniel admitted. "Not really. He never does, he just drops hints, little bits and pieces."

"I can't tell you anything specific, you know that. You also know the Colonel has been through some terrible losses and difficult times. He's chosen not to tell you the details, and I can't violate his privacy, no matter how good the reasons. If he wants to tell you, he will."

"He won't," Jackson repeated.

"Probably. I, look, I," Janet frowned and look down. "The Colonel is an intensely private man. An unhealthy thing, in many ways, but he copes, somehow. I trust that he will tell you what he believes he needs to tell you, and nothing else. I wish he would open up to you, I've encouraged him to do so, to let you help him. What he's remembered in there today," she shivered, "it's a heavy burden for anyone."

--------------------

When the VIP room finally grew quiet, Hammond knocked, and entered slowly. O'Neill stood in the middle of the shambles of smashed lamps, overturned tables and scattered papers.

He looked around, taking a deep breath, not meeting Hammond's gaze. "I think you need a new decorator, Sir."

"Son?"

O'Neill lifted his face to meet Hammond's gaze, and what the General saw there shook him to his core-- despair, grief, anger, pain, hatred, guilt. But there was determination too.

"Neumann was the only one I saw, but he wasn't working alone. He *said* so."

"That's what we thought, too, but we were never able to link him with anyone. We have ideas..."

"Oh, so do I," O'Neill shuddered. "He told me he had help, but he was careful never to say who it was."

"He told you?"

"Oh yes, he wanted me to know," O'Neill swiped a hand across his face, as if by doing so he could wipe away the memory of Neumann's eyes, gloating, as he injected the drug; gloating as he slashed Jack's wrists; gloating as he told O'Neill that he knew the truth, and Jack never would. The Colonel shivered. "He enjoyed it."

Hammond looked down. "Jack, if you ever need to talk about this, or anything, any of the memories, my door is always open."

O'Neill let his gaze drift around the destruction in the room. "Thank you, Sir. I know that. And I appreciate it." The Colonel's eyes once again met those of his CO. "There were some things worth knowing," he said, simply, not adding the other half of the coin. He didn't have to. Hammond, he knew, understood.

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Daniel had known exactly where to look for his friend. He hadn't even bothered going to the door, he'd headed straight for the backyard and the ladder up to O'Neill's rooftop sanctuary, the place Jackson knew the man retreated to when he needed to think.

A dark figure filled one chair, and, when Daniel's head appeared above the roofline, the Colonel's hand waved him at the empty seat beside it.

Neither spoke for a long time. Finally, softly, O'Neill's voice said, "Be careful what you wish for, Daniel. You may be unlucky enough to get it."

Daniel said nothing, just waited for Jack to go on.

After a long silence, soft words floated out of the darkness. "I used to think it was what I wanted, to forget, that it would be better not to remember what happened to my kid, what I did to him and to my wife. I thought I wanted to forget it all. Frank leaving me behind. Iraq." Jack's shudder of revulsion echoed in his voice. "Watching John Michaels die in my arms; the look of terror on Henry Boyd's face on that planet; Frank sucked into that black hole; Kowalski and what wasn't really Kowalski anymore dying on the gate ramp; Sha're; Skaara; Hathor setting that snake down on my chest." Jack paused, shivering. "There's a lot of ugly shit in here, Daniel, in my head, but at least it's mine. It's who I am, and without it..." the head bowed, and for a moment Daniel thought Jack wouldn't go on.

"Not knowing was worse. Afraid of everyone and everything, because I didn't know who I was or what I might have done. Not knowing why I knew how to kill. Not knowing why the police were looking for me." The voice was so soft he barely heard the words, over the sighing of the wind. "I was so lost. I didn't have the bad times, but I didn't have the good either. No home. No friends. No job. No family. No memories of anything," the shoulders shuddered again. "Just this vague feeling of, of...." he couldn't find a word.

Daniel couldn't either.

Finally, Jack said. "Disconnected. I had no connections, to anyone or anything."

Daniel nodded, not knowing what to say.

The silence lengthened.

Daniel reached over and put his hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I'm glad to be home," Jack said at last, and lapsed into silence.

Daniel waited. Finally, he realized Jack's breathing had steadied into the soft snoring of sleep. Jackson stood, slid out of his jacket and gently placed it over his friend. He settled back in his own chair, snuggling into his flannel shirt. He would stay there, up on the roof, as long as it took, because Jack was his friend, and as much as Jack needed him, the last few months had also taught Daniel how much he needed Jack's friendship.

The bond they'd forged back on Abydos was still intact, a little dented maybe by time and circumstances, but it was still there, a link that made them friends forever, despite all they'd been through. They'd helped each other over the rough times and they would see each other through this, too.

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Colonel Jack O'Neill walked down the familiar street, dressed in his Class A blue uniform. It fit him again, now that he'd gained back the weight he'd lost, and it fit him in another way, now that he had himself back, all of himself.

It was strange, being back here in this place where he'd been so lost. For a long time, he'd thought he could never come back here, the memories of this time and place were too raw and painful. But he owed her a debt, and if there was one thing Jack O'Neill believed in, it was that a man kept his word and paid his debts.

His feet remembered the familiar route but this time he entered by the front door, stepping up to the neat white counter, taking a seat in the otherwise empty restaurant. He'd timed it for early in the day, before the place got busy.

"Just a minute. I'll be right with you!" a voice he knew well called from the kitchen.

In a moment, Clara walked out, wiping her hands on a towel. "We just opened, Sir, it will be a few minutes..."

She stopped, staring, knowing there was something familiar about this man. Funny, she didn't think she knew anyone in the military, especially not such an unforgettably handsome officer, decked out in full military finery, and wearing enough glittering medals, badges and insignia to blind a person.

He raised his head from the menu.

Those eyes. That face. She was trying to recall...

And then he grinned, a small grin, and she recognized it.

Stunned, she stopped, staring. "Charlie? Charlie!"

He stood as she came around the counter, enfolding her in a strong embrace, his arms wrapped around her, his face buried against her shoulder.

"Jack, actually, Colonel Jack O'Neill."

He was smiling now as she pulled back, keeping her hands on his arms, as if she was afraid to let him go because this image of him strong, healthy and healed might disappear. "You, you..." she smiled. "You look good." She hugged him again, and he laughed.

Lord, he had a good laugh.

She dabbed the tears from the corner of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, handing her his handkerchief. "I didn't mean to..."

"Lord no, they're happy tears. Happy to see you, see you like this, see you well and strong and..."

"And back to who I am," he said, a touch of pride in his voice.

She'd always known this man was someone special, even through the grime of the street and whatever disasters had befallen him, something far beyond the average had shown through. "Did you find Charlie?"

His face darkened, his smile fading, the light in his eyes losing its luster. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, opening it to a picture of the smiling face of a small boy, with shining eyes like his father. "Charlie was my kid," there was a tremor in the voice but Jack ruthlessly forced himself to go on. "He died five years ago. All I have left of him now are the memories," he forced a sad smile, "good memories mostly."

"You're okay?"

He nodded, not meeting her eyes, and this time, she reached out to hug him. He accepted the comfort from her, hugging her back, thinking how she reminded him of his grandmother. Maybe that was why he'd been drawn to her.

She pulled back, searching his face. "You *are* okay? Really?" her hands still on his arms, she shook them gently.

This time, he raised his gaze to meet hers. "Yes. I am. Now. I, well, I owe you so much."

"You owe me nothing, Ch..Jack. Seeing you like this, this was repayment enough."

He shook his head. "You are the one good thing I remember from all those months." Averting his eyes once again, he looked around the restaurant. "The place looks good."

"Yes, I was able to get a small business loan and buy the building. It was really a surprise, a government agency calling to tell me about a program...." Suddenly Clara caught the devilish glint in his eyes. "You? You! It was you!"

"Me?" he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"You did this!"

"Did what?" he asked innocently, smiling again.

"There was no government grant for the down payment. You paid it!"

"It's a good investment. I need something for my retirement days, you know," he said, trying to make light of what he'd done. He looked down, shrugged. "Least I could do. I owe you my life."

"You don't owe me a thing."

"You were the one person who treated me like I was still human. You gave me hope. " O'Neill once again met her eyes. "I owe you everything. And I never leave a debt unpaid."

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