Part Two

Only Jack's arms kept Daniel from falling when he lurched through the gate, too shocked to even speak.

"We're safe now, Daniel," Jack called out exuberantly. "We're home!" He turned Daniel around and cupped his face, smiling euphorically beneath glittering eyes. He leaned in and brushed his lips caressingly over Daniel's, then kissed him deeply, tasting him like finest wine as Daniel stood paralysed, his mind greyed and humming, scattering thought.

Daniel shuddered convulsively and Jack freed him at once, his eyes filled with concern as he searched Daniel's face. He didn't know this man; he knew Jack. This was the illness, the toxin. Whatever it was. Not Jack. Daniel shuddered again. Jack took off his BDU jacket and swept it around Daniel's shoulders, not even seeing his bound hands.

"Let's go," Jack ordered a trifle regretfully, his hands lingering in the bunched fabric of the draping jacket. "We have a long walk before nightfall."

"How do you know?" Daniel demanded, finding his voice. "Where are we?"

He was surprised and a little comforted when Jack let him go without argument, the first hint he'd had that there was something of the Jack he knew left in this stranger. After a moment, big hands settled heavily either side of his waist. Daniel let this pass without comment if it allowed him to look around. He saw an undulating landscape of intense colour and light, fields of gold and russet, teaming with flowers, copses of strangely leeched silvery trees and a vault of cloudless blue above them, shivering with breathless heat.

"I know this place!" Daniel gasped.

"I know," Jack encouraged him warmly. "Home."

How? How could Jack possibly know about this place? When Daniel visited this world with SG-5, Jack had been on Edora for over two months. When he'd finally returned to them, Jack had become embroiled in his elaborate NID sting and had had no time, let alone inclination, to catch up on three months' worth of mission reports.

The mystery acted like a goad to Daniel's tired mind. He could only be grateful he was finding some sort of coherence, because he still could not comprehend that Jack had attacked their own people, kidnapped him and stranded them alone off-world. Jack needed his help, he needed to be functional for both their sakes. Instead, he was only conscious of being afraid for Jack and for himself.

"Untie me?" he asked carefully, lifting his hands up behind him.

Jack frowned over this as if it didn't compute.

"I won't fight," Daniel softly assured him. How could he? Jack would never let Daniel beat him, not in a physical fight, but more than this, Jack was sick. Daniel didn't want anything happening between them that couldn't be undone.

"I know," Jack agreed impatiently, as if this went without saying. He flicked out the knife he was never without and cut through the cable tie.

Daniel took a careful step away, massaging his wrists, unsurprised when Jack took hold of each of his hands and subjected them to careful inspection. It seemed to help Jack remain calm if Daniel kept in physical contact so he held Jack's hand and allowed himself to be drawn away from the Stargate and onto the road, and whenever Jack looked at him as they walked, he tried to smile.

He was holding on to what Janet Fraiser had said, about this being withdrawal. Jack's immune system was fighting and eventually would win. A few days, maybe more, he couldn't hope for a recovery as quick as the onset of the symptoms, but the time would come when Jack was thinking clearly again and they could return to the Stargate, gate through to the Alpha Site and then home.

The road was straight and good, and Daniel knew the way.

"How do you know about this place, Jack? You've never been here before."

Jack shrugged. "I remember it."

"How can you remember a place you've never been before?" Daniel prompted.

Jack was never patient with this stuff. "Probably you babbling on about it over and over."

"We haven't talked about any of my missions while you were trapped on Edora."

Jack's face darkened. "Don't talk about that," he ordered curtly.

"Why? Don't you miss Laira?" Daniel persisted. He knew Jack had given up on being rescued, on the life he knew. He'd accepted he was never going home. Laira, it seemed, had waited patiently for that moment. When they'd finally been able to return to the planet, Daniel had seen at once his friend had moved on from them all. He remembered feeling both glad and sorry Jack had found someone, only for them to be parted because Jack could no more stay than Laira could go.

"Not as much as I missed you." Jack's eyes roamed over Daniel in a way which brought heat to his face. "I didn't sleep with her until the last night and I'm wondering how long I would've lasted stranded alone with you."

"Alone?" They weren't alone here. It had only been seven or eight weeks and Mawai was old, not sick. Old and lonely. "Jack, this road ultimately leads to the city of Tiya. It's one of the most amazing places I've ever been, a perfectly preserved testament to the culture and history of a long-dead alien people. That's what it is. A museum."

Jack's expression said 'so?'

"The curator is still living there. At least she was when I visited here a few months ago with Colonel Makepeace and SG-3. Mawai. She's frail. Old." He looked around with fresh eyes and wiped sweat from his brow. "The Tiyan technology is as advanced as that of the Goa'uld and most of it is about as useless to us. Not just because of a complex mineral compound which saturates the entire planet, but some kind of atmospheric radiation. Mawai told us only the equipment the Tiyans specifically needed for their off-world explorations was engineered using materials that weren't native here. Sam wasn't with us to ask any in-depth questions, too busy working on the particle accelerator. Even though this isn't my field, it seemed obvious to me it wasn't economical for the Tiyans to make the required adjustments for everything they manufactured to function off-world. I found no evidence of an entrepreneurial culture as we'd understand it."

"Yadda!" Jack enunciated crisply.

"Mawai gave us a machine the Tiyans used to detect sound frequencies," Daniel went on incorrigibly. "Its range was incredible. We were thinking about tornado detection, but when we got it back to the SGC, it just died on us. That specific technology has to be here on Tiya to make it work, it wasn't ever engineered for off-world use. Mawai couldn't help us, she's an archaeologist, not a engineer. Her vocation is preservation, not -"

"Daniel!" Jack yelled.

He started visibly, his heart racing, realising no matter how Jack looked, nothing was right. They weren't safe. "I'm just saying we don't need to worry about shelter or rations," he explained quietly. "We'll have someplace safe to stay while..."

"While what?" Jack cut him off.

While you get better, Daniel wanted to say, but didn't. He had no idea what would set Jack off and his own nervous reactions weren't helping anything.

"Get it through your head, Daniel. We're home." Jack's tone brooked no argument. "How far to this place?"

"Tiya? It's the capital city and the only inhabited one. It's around fourteen hundred miles from here by road but right over the hill there's a way-station. It's a transport system the Tiyans used, based on matter streams, kind of like Goa'uld rings. They're everywhere people once lived. We'll run into drones around the way-station," he warned Jack.

"Drones?"

"Machines programmed to carry out a variety of tasks from irrigating and cultivating the crops on Mawai's smallholding to monitoring and repairing the city walls. These particular ones maintain and defend the way-station. They're imprinted with my identity so we should have no difficulty activating the transport."

"Mawai?" Jack asked, frowning. "Is she old?"

"Yes. I said," Daniel answered, puzzled. He was trying to recall exactly what the problem was with Jack's hippocampus. Short-term memories?

"Ancient." Jack's frown deepened. "A mummy in a red dress."

"Red is the colour of Mawai's City State, Givo," Daniel explained, wiping his brow again. He'd almost forgotten the heat of this place, lush, late-summer heat which melted the brain. The walls of the Shullay Castle in Tiya were seven metres thick and still the heat-"What did you say?" Daniel demanded. "How do you know what Mawai looked like?"

"She's smaller than Fraiser and walks with a cane," Jack smiled. "A friend."

"I'm not so sure." Daniel stopped in his tracks. "Your memories have been affected along with everything else in your limbic system. We've been working on the presumption this virus or chemical or technology was erasing your existing memories, not creating new ones." He looked intently at Jack. "Your motivations, your behaviour, your perceptions - they've all been overwritten. Like software."

Daniel felt he was on the cusp of understanding here. Jack was smiling with disturbing indulgence but he made no move to stop Daniel from pacing and thinking out loud.

"You brought us to a place you've never been, you have memories of a person you don't know and have never met. You were, effectively, re-programmed." Daniel shook his head at Jack, baffled. "Why you? How! The only thing that makes sense - God, that's it!"

He pounced excitedly up to Jack, astonished and sick with relief at finally getting it. "I was here. I'm the one." He smacked his hand off his chest. "I'm an idiot. A carrier! Whatever this is, you caught it from me. But why you and not?" Not Sam or Teal'c, or anyone else he'd been with every day.

He frowned, trawling through his stressed, erratic memories of the last few days, then jumped as it hit him. "Pheromones!" he cried out triumphantly. "Your underlying attraction made you react to me and maybe that was the delivery system."

Delivery system? That jarred, somehow. Daniel's eyes widened.

"Jack, don't you get it? This was a trap! A trap set by – by Mawai for me!" Oh, this was right. This fit. He didn't know why Mawai would do such a thing, or what she could possibly hope to gain from it, but that could wait. "We have to go back!" he ordered decisively.

Jack smiled and touched Daniel's face and then Daniel saw the Zat in Jack's hand.

His throat was so dry he could barely swallow and it was this more than anything which forced him to wake. Daniel lay still for a long time, blinking and confused as his vision slowly steadied. A vaulted ceiling soared above him, painted a deep, celestial blue and starred with gold, surmounting the fabulous colours of the Tiyan globe. He knew this room, at the top of the Evening Tower in Shullay. He'd admired it greatly when Mawai had taken him through the castle. At the end of a tour of giddying riches, he'd praised this room. Mawai had remembered he liked it.

Arched windows opened on all sides to a broad, tiled terrace rich with plants and cooling pools. Sheer, shimmering fabric shot through with gold draped each window, drifting in the breeze. Golden light filtered into the room, slanting across the bed where Daniel was lying, in the centre of the room. The sheets were creamy and thin, and slid across his warm, bare skin when he stirred. Their few things were on the ornate couch, far distant, clothes and weapons heaped and visible.

Jack was there, silhouetted in the strong light at the window and it was only as he drew near that Daniel realised he was naked and proudly erect.

Salt flooded Daniel's mouth. He didn't want to fight, not again. He'd been through too much, too quickly, with Jack, and he was slow and stupid now. Shock was shutting his body down.

Jack paused at a table to pick up a cup, prowled over to Daniel and did nothing more sinister than smile and hand him the drink.

Daniel's hand shook but he took the water and gulped it down, following Jack with his eyes as he strolled around the head of the bed and slid easily in the other side. Putting the cup down was the only excuse he had to move away, so he tried. Jack's arm slid around his waist and pulled him back before he could even sit and then Jack tumbled him down in the sheets. A fist planted hard in the mattress neatly trapped him as Jack sat staring hungrily down at him.

It was hard to breathe and he was very afraid.

"Don't," he whispered as Jack touched his face. "Please, Jack. Don’t."

He knew the dark eyes and the ugly creases in Jack's face, the tight slash of his lips and the tremor at his clenched jaw. When Jack wore this face, people - died. Even those Jack cared for. He didn't think he was talking to Jack at all.

"I don't want to do this."

Jack's face smoothed out and he smiled, his callused fingertips tender on Daniel's cheek. "Yes, you do," he chided.

Daniel's heart slammed and he struck out, his hand smashing wildly into Jack's face. Jack's head snapped around, blood beading the corner of his mouth. He touched his fingers to his lips, licked the blood from them and then he backhanded Daniel with curious care.

Dazed and blinded, his head exploding, Daniel found himself flung over on his side, trying to push himself up onto his elbow. His cheek throbbed and stung, blood dripping warm.

"The skin is broken, not the bone," Jack said softly. "I can’t hurt you, Daniel, not like that, even though you broke your promise to me. You said you wouldn't fight." He kissed the wound better, like he would for a child, and then he took Daniel's chin and tilted his face for a kiss. He took Daniel's shaking mouth and rolled their bodies smoothly, pinning Daniel under him, using his knees to force his thighs apart.

Daniel choked on the pistoning tongue in his mouth, trying to speak, he didn't know why. Jack was gone. Nothing could reach him. Daniel was alone with brutal weight and jolting heat and shaking, sweating hands on him, a steely cock grinding into his in a grating clash of hips. He shuddered pitiably when he heard his name, whispered brokenly into his aching mouth. He whispered back, pleading, then shouted out as teeth punctured the skin of his throat, his shoulder. He panicked then and fought, bucking and heaving with all he was until he threw Jack off and rolled away and then he cried out in agony as his arm was taken, twisted up behind him, locked efficiently into place.

"Daniel, please," Jack sighed as he forced Daniel face first into the mattress. "I don't want to be rough, not our first time. Anything you want, baby, I promise. Just not this time. Not the first. Let me love you. Just let me love you." He kissed the nape of Daniel's neck and then his weight was all across the small of his back. "Let me take it slow and easy."

Daniel was breathing in silken sheet, panicking and light-headed and still he couldn't move for the crushing pressure at his wrist, his shoulder. It took everything he had to push up into that pain. Jack didn't want to hurt him. Daniel had only this to hold onto.

"I want to kiss you," he gasped out.

Latching on to a fistful of hair, Jack tugged back his head to bite at his lip.

Daniel felt he would snap.

He moved his mouth beneath Jack's, softly, inviting. He thought he might be sick.

Jack softened too, warmed to him. He forgot about holding Daniel down and simply held him. When Daniel moved, easing infinitesimally onto his side, Jack moved with him, touching him. A fine tremor in his fingers, Daniel touched back. Jack was good with this. Murmuring pleasure, Jack would play for a while. Daniel suffered hands and mouth on him, rubbing at Jack's back and arms, then down, down to trace the curve of his hip and ass. He took Jack's ass in his hand, squeezing and kneading, Jack bucking in pleasure.

There was blood on Daniel's mouth, slick and juicy to Jack, feasting. Unclenching, Daniel parted his lips, Jack plunging eagerly, choking him. He endured, responding as best he could until the hand on his ass wasn't enough and Jack needed more. Always more. Jack took Daniel's hand between his legs, groaning as Daniel grasped and rubbed him.

Just a little more, Daniel thought, as Jack fucked his hand.

Jack fell onto his back, his thighs sprawled and shaking as Daniel teased his balls. The stranglehold around Daniel gave way as the pleasure took Jack. Daniel bit down on the tongue he was sucking, his fingers cruel, clawing where Jack loved to be touched most.

Jack screamed.

Daniel rolled, fell onto his feet, and ran. Never looked back. Never thought at all until the Zat was in his hands and he turned, firing into Jack's chest.

Jack was thrown to the floor and was still, but Daniel could only see his face, the look on his face. His stomach cramping viciously, he thought he might die.

Jack O'Neill woke stark naked on a tiled floor in a place he didn't know. He wasn't the kind of man to panic over this even when he wasn't convulsed by the worst hangover of his life. The spike in his head drove him over onto his side; he heaved and spat up bile where he lay. His balls pounded and he heaved again, collapsing shakily onto his back. His throbbing tongue felt twice its size. He must've bitten it. When he could move, when he could lift his head, he found bruises, the marks of fingers around his right testicle. There were no more pains. Blood around his mouth but nowhere else.

No, not a man to panic, but he felt relief.

It took him too long to make it to his feet but he got there, stood unsteadily, staring around him blankly. Last he remembered, he was getting onto an elevator with his team, thinking not of the briefing they had scheduled with Hammond but of the game, after. Hockey. Beer. Pizza. The classic combo.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," he husked.

He was in a big round room which was decked out like a luxury penthouse suite at the Bellagio in Vegas. Whatever this mission was, wherever he was, it was fucked up beyond all recognition and he needed to find his team now.

When his vision steadied some, he catalogued his surroundings properly. The only door was vast and, to his shock, locked. Inconsiderate bastards, making him break out. They were a little light on furniture, apart from the vast, rumpled bed, a table here and there, and a couch with what looked like clothes draped over it.

Jack went over to investigate the splash of white and found two pairs of pants, two short, sleeveless tunics, all in a fabric which could get him arrested but was probably sensible for the climate. And for his wounded pride. He pulled on the longer pair of pants with extreme care and stared broodingly at the other. He didn't have a frickin' clue how he wound up here, but he wasn't alone. He could keep one of his team safe. He slipped on the tunic but didn't bother to button, and picked up the other clothes. Too small for Teal'c, too large for Carter.

Daniel was here. Seemingly not dressed either. What in hell was going on?

Jack slung the outfit over his arm, frowning. He started to walk away – also with extreme care - and realised the wall behind the couch wasn't a wall at all, but a screen. It was curved and painted so it matched the wall exactly, like an optical illusion. Behind it, he found a vast, sunken tub surrounded by marble and lavish facilities, but no Daniel, naked or otherwise.

Thinking only Daniel could manage to get lost in a locked room, Jack headed out the nearest open window and onto a balcony decked out like Busch Gardens, with cool black and white tile underfoot and what looked like a river running through it. To scale, of course. Several comfy couches were nearby, inviting lounging, bordering a table loaded with food. Here and there through the plants, Jack glimpsed a trellis of stone which stood higher than his head.

He kept walking, checking each artful little nook and flowery cranny for an absent archaeologist who should have been bathing Jack's fevered brow and generally ministering to him in his hours of need. Then he found he was perched at the top of looked to be a very large castle looming over a city surrounded by battlements which made the Great Wall Of China look pokey.

"Holeee buckets," Jack muttered, mildly impressed. And no one lived here? Then he frowned, wondering how in hell he knew that. This was beyond weird, shading into scary. "Wherefore art thou, Daniel?" he called. He was answered by silence. For once in his life, Daniel was not in the mood to talk. "Daniel?" he called again, starting to think maybe Daniel wasn't in the room with him just now. Maybe the clothes were waiting for Daniel when he was returned to the room? Daniel wouldn't deliberately worry Jack by not answering.

And he was beginning to be extremely worried.

Forty cents into the fifty cent tour, he found Daniel with his back to the wall, the crap kicked out of him and a Zat steady in his hands. It was a gut-punch, finding Daniel hiding out here and hurt, too scared to speak out, stunned reaction driving Jack forward in a fury, wondering where in hell was he while this was going down? Where was he, for chrissake? Why couldn't he remember? Daniel didn't get hurt, not when Jack could possibly prevent it. Protecting Daniel. That was his job.

The Zat reared, armed and aimed in hands that weren't steady at all.

"Don’t come any closer," Daniel said clearly. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

"Daniel, it's me." Jack hated at times to be so cold but it kept him alive. He was cold now, questioning the presence of the Zat, the sidearm tucked into Daniel's belt. How could he have been imprisoned, how could they have been hurt, if they were still armed? Why was Daniel so scared and so definite in his fear? "Daniel?"

"Jack?"

Jack stared at the Zat, aimed square at his chest. "Are you serious?" he demanded, dumbfounded. "What's going on here, Daniel? What are you thinking? That I'd hurt you?" He could not believe this was happening! It made no sense for Daniel to be scared of him. None! "I'd never hurt you."

"You've said that before," Daniel responded with the same cool clarity. "But look at me." He was hurt. His cheek was split and raw, his lip, swollen around a mass of livid bruises. More bruises circled his left wrist, finger marks standing starkly out from the mess. "Jack, stop!" Daniel ordered, not missing the slow, subtle steps Jack had taken towards him.

The situation was crazy, Daniel had to be crazy, holding a weapon on him. Only Daniel was as composed as Jack had ever seen him, his mind made up.

"I don’t blame you," Daniel assured him with frightening sincerity. "But I will shoot you."

No hysteria, only a quiet resolution with fear behind it. Jack did stop, didn't even try out his practiced guy-in-charge bullshit. Sometimes Daniel let him get away with it but this was not one of those times. Jack was not in charge here, and it was time he knew why. "What happened?" he demanded tersely. What was his failure here?

"You tell me," Daniel countered.

Jack thought for a moment. "All I know is I got on the elevator with you all. We had a briefing. I was thinking about the game, not the briefing, about Minnesota Wild kicking Canuck butt. I was on the elevator and then I was here with my naked butt on the floor, a bitten tongue and my balls on fire."

"What were you thinking on that elevator? Specifically."

"Specifically? I was thinking if that pile of books you were holding was anything to go by, I would be killing you later for making me miss my game."

The Zat didn't waver but somehow Jack had said the right thing. Some of the strongly marked tension lines around Daniel's shadowed eyes and thinned lips eased minutely.

"How about you answer a question for me?" Jack cajoled, keeping his hands out where Daniel could see them, level with his waist, nice and natural. "Where are we and how did we get here?"

"That's two questions," Daniel corrected him pedantically, a vertical crease appearing between his brows. "I need to sit down," he said abruptly. He looked as if he might fall down.

"There's food," Jack explained, pointing slowly and carefully past Daniel. "A place to sit face to face. How about I lead the way?"

Daniel nodded jerkily and Jack turned just as slowly, walked just as carefully. He was starting to get on top of things here and wanted to keep it that way. He wanted Daniel back on his side, where he was supposed to be. Only that made sense. Jack took a seat on the far side, unable to stop himself from cringing or the breath hissing from his lungs.

"Sorry about that," Daniel apologised absently as he too sat. Then his frown deepened. "Sorry it was necessary but not sorry I did it."

"You did this?" Jack burst out incredulously.

"We're in Shullay Castle in the city of Tiya, fourteen hundred miles from the Stargate on the world of Tiya," Daniel recounted with the same scary precision. "We were in that elevator about four days ago. You were affected by some agent, some compound, we weren't able to determine what, something alien that affected the limbic system of your brain. You became irrational, sexually aggressive towards me, violent towards anyone you perceived as a threat. Your condition rapidly deteriorated. You almost died. After three days in a coma, you came around, insisted you were fine, got me to spring you from the Infirmary.

This was impossible. How could all of this have happened and Jack not remember any of it? Busting out of the SGC? It made no sense, no sense at all!

"You stole these weapons, attacked the technicians in the control room, destroyed the dialling computer and kidnapped me," Daniel droned on through his litany. "You brought me to Tiya, a place you've never been, because your memories and drives were altered to compel you to ensure it. You zatted me back there at the Stargate and when I woke up here..." For the first time, Daniel faltered. "You tried to rape me. I had to hurt you to get away from you and I had to zat you to make sure. I waited out here for you. All night. I waited for you to come after me and - and try again."

"I don't believe you." Jack's denial was instinctual, unequivocal, final.

Daniel switched the Zat to his other hand, then pulled down the neck of his t-shirt to bare his neck and shoulder. There were ugly bite marks, still crusted with blood.

Jack stared fixedly, his throat working.

Daniel lowered the Zat to rest his hand, the one with the bruises, on his thigh. He was very tired, dimmed somehow, his head dropping as if too heavy for him to hold up. "What do you remember?" he asked again.

"Nothing!" Jack flared.

"Not even the old crone in her blue dress?"

"Red!" Jack fired at him. Daniel was wrong, this was wrong, it was all wrong.

Daniel looked small and helpless, folding in on himself before Jack's eyes. "Red," he whispered.

"Mawai's dress is red." Jack throttled back on his rage, only trying to talk Daniel down. It was the only thing that mattered. He wasn't rational and he was armed. "You should know that, Daniel."

"You shouldn't."

Mawai.

"You were the one who told me her name," Jack countered impatiently.

"No, I didn't. You remembered her because that specific memory was imprinted in your brain by whatever it was she did to us."

Mawai?

Daniel touched delicate fingers to his pulped cheek. "The skin is broken, not the bone," he said, oddly intent.

"I can't hurt you!" Jack gagged on a revulsion of feeling.

I can’t hurt you, Daniel, not like that.

The skin is broken, not the bone.

"I don’t want to do this, Jack," Daniel quoted gently, remorselessly.

You said you wouldn't fight.

Wouldn’t fight.

"No." Memories flayed, a strobe of taste and sound and feeling, revolting his mind. Daniel. All Daniel. So gentle and so sweet, so alive and so strong he was driving Jack insane. The taste and shaken feel of him, pinned and capitulating, opening to Jack, arching, melting. Pain, then, ice stabbing in Jack's head, his gut, his body spasming with chills, a blur of concrete ceilings, the tearing need for Daniel and home, a small body falling at his feet. "Oh, god! God!"

Home and Daniel. His Daniel, waiting for him, wanting him, the two of them safe and finally home. Everything Jack wanted, tasted, touched. Hurting the fight out of Daniel, drunk on beauty and need, pinning him down and taking.

Jack put his splitting head in his hands. His eyes were filled with Daniel's skin, pale and bruising where he touched, the strong, straight back beneath him, the taut perfection of his ass.

I can't hurt you, Daniel.

Can't hurt you.

"It wasn't your fault and it's nothing that can't be fixed," Daniel observed almost matter-of-factly. His point was made, Jack was remembering, and he was content. What Jack did with the memories was up to him. Daniel wasn't going to help him out, wasn't going to offer him understanding or absolution. "The only thing that matters for now is I can't trust you, not until I know this thing is out of your system. I have to – I have to test that somehow."

"The only way to do that is to put down the guns."

Nodding thoughtfully, Daniel started to put the Zat down on the table.

"NO!" Jack roared. "Are you out of your mind?" he raged. "I tried to rape you, for chrissake! I could fucking do it again! Keep the fucking weapons!" He jumped up and stormed inside, almost falling over a vase in his path. He kicked out at it, lashed out, sent it crashing to the floor, yanked it up and crashed it down again, and again. Stumbled over soil and scattered shards to pound on the door, smack his fists into hard wood. The pain was real. He trusted the pain. It satisfied.

"Feeling better?" Daniel enquired from too close behind him. He was too close.

"Get away from me!" Jack scrubbed bloody hands over his face. "Get away!" His voice broke and he hit out again at the door, only Daniel was there, taking Jack's hands, getting in his face, caring so very much it hurt. It was everything Jack hated most about him, everything he loved.

"I tried to rape you. I tried..." He was falling forward, Daniel taking his weight. Jack's arms hung loose by his sides, his face touching cool wood. "I tried..."

"It wasn't you," Daniel repeated woodenly. It sounded like something he'd tried to convince himself of. "Whatever Mawai did, it buried you so deep..." He broke off, his throat tight. "You tried to protect me as long as you could and even at the end, you didn't want to hurt me. You – you weren't right in the head, Jack. It was done to you. It was done to both of us. You can't let it beat you, not now, not when I need you."

This hit home. It was meant to. Jack straightened up and backed off one measured step, two.

"I need you," Daniel said again. His eyes were huge.

His hands were empty.

Jack didn't touch. He didn't think he could touch, ever again.

"Tell me about Mawai," he ordered. "Tell me everything."

God, he was cold.

"Tiya is Mawai's life's work, Jack. She wanted it to be mine," Daniel sighed, rubbing his gritty, stinging eyes. He was desperately in need of sleep but every time he dozed, fear jerked him awake. Jack was calm now, back to being himself, but watching, watching. "We talked, a lot, and she hinted, but never asked outright." It was difficult to remember, so much had happened since. "I was in love with this place but you were gone and..."

"It's not like I didn't miss you guys too," Jack said awkwardly. He'd bounced from one extreme to another, from profane, enraged attacks on the furniture, the door, anything that got in his way, to protectiveness around Daniel. Every move he made, every word, was slow and considerate, and he stayed at all times where Daniel could see him coming. He could do nothing more to show Daniel he was in control and he was perfectly aware this was not enough.

Daniel had put down the weapons and that was all the trust he was good for just now.

"It was a dream," Daniel went on. "Just a stupid dream. The archaeological equivalent of a condo in Florida." Never a real option. It was important to him Jack understand this. "I never mentioned it to anyone. This mission is not going to stand out from any other."

"What about the support team? Who came with?"

"SG-3." Daniel smiled wryly. "Colonel Makepeace specifically. He came with me to Shullay while his men secured the Stargate. I'm sure he's whiling away his time in that cell just aching to help out the guy who put him there. If Sam and Teal'c get that far, if they talk to him, he'll lie his ass off and let us rot. And even if he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the only thing he saw here was a lonely little old lady who was real nice to us. As far as I can remember, he liked her too."

If only this was as depressing as it got. He had more bad news for Jack.

"The most important thing is that we don't know what affected you. We never got that far. Janet hadn't begun to analyse her test data when your condition deteriorated. We weren't able to determine if you'd been drugged, infected with a virus, or a chemical, or..." Daniel yawned cavernously, his eyes drifting shut. He had to fight them open again. "Sorry. The point is, Sam and Teal'c are looking for an explanation, but they believe the one infected was you. I don’t know it will even occur to them the carrier was me."

"Whoa!" Jack made a time-out motion with his hands. "Back up there. Carrier?"

"Janet deduced you were affected by my pheromones," Daniel explained, yawning. "The limbic system of your brain went haywire. Motivation, memory, behaviour. Sexuality, aggression, defence, all were sent into overdrive. I think," he began and yawned again.

"You never stop."

"I think Mawai was re-programming your memory to include knowledge of this place. I think she targeted pheromones specifically so," Daniel faltered, having no idea how Jack was going to take this. "Whoever brought me here - I wouldn't be alone."

Jack's face went very still. "You're trying to say I was more than affected by you, I was attracted to you." He spat out the word 'attracted' as if he couldn't bear it in his mouth.

"You told me - you said it was as if all the walls in your mind were knocked down."

"I said a lot of things while I was out of my head," Jack retorted. "Now I'm saying this: you don't need to worry about that anymore. That's over."

"Your sexuality didn’t arbitrarily reverse itself or fixate on me," Daniel argued, more troubled than he cared to be. "Your primal instinct to mate should have fixated you on Sam or on Janet, or on some other female. The underlying attraction is there. It has to be or you would never have responded to me."

"That's over," Jack repeated himself icily.

"Oh, so we're in denial," Daniel snapped irritably, glaring into Jack's wintry face. "How does that work, Jack? You ignore it and hope it goes away? You were more rational about this when you were infected."

"Why don't we worry less about the touchy-feely crap and more about getting out of here?" Jack advised coldly. "You know, escape?"

"Why don't you try dealing with your guilt instead of letting it fester?" Daniel retorted, even though he took the point about priorities. "Mawai is – seemed - a good person." Jack's face darkened to malignancy at the mention of her name, a nice, convenient target to project all the blame and guilt onto and avoid his own feelings. "I found her to be open, caring, brilliant – a friend and sympathiser. At least, I thought she was. But if she did this?"

Daniel got up and began to pace off his nervous energy, angry at having been played for such a fool.

"Nothing she said to me, nothing she projected of herself was the truth. She was this helpless, frail old lady in thrall to the technology maintaining Shullay and the city around her. I told you this place was a museum, right?" He was losing track of what he'd explained and when, what Jack might or might not remember. "And that Mawai was in effect its curator? That's what she wanted from me. To take over from her."

"You told me," Jack assured him, in a much more normal, Jackian tone.

"I'm not exactly on top of my game," Daniel acknowledged vaguely. His mind was racing a million miles an hour and he felt he could bounce off all four walls like some hyperactive kid. "I was up three nights with you in the Infirmary and then last night, well..." He trailed off, remembering the unfamiliar, starlit dark, the intensity of listening, the sound of his own heartbeat drumming in his ears, the sickening way it would miss a beat when he thought he heard..."I'm gonna take a bath," he said abruptly, going inside.

Only then did he realise how this retreat might look and sound, what Jack might think he was reacting to. It wasn't the attack. He turned right around and marched back out, catching Jack slack-faced and slumped. "I'm not fragile," he declared, glaring. "The only thing I'm mad at you for is what you did to me to get me through the Stargate, you sonovabitch."

"I don't remember."

"Think about it. I'm sure it'll come to you. All you have to do is find the one thing you'd need to say to get me through the gate without fighting you. It shouldn't be too hard."

You can let me walk out of here alone and wonder for the rest of your life what happened to another person you love.

Daniel needed on some level to have Jack acknowledge the cruelty of his manipulation. It wasn't an imposed memory, it was nothing Mawai had known of his life and could have used against him. It was only Jack with all the walls of his mind knocked down, saying to Daniel what he would normally have held back. Using his feelings for him – feelings Jack knew he had – against him. This was what hurt.

"Why don't you think some more about how we get out of here? For starters, is there a room below this one?"

Daniel looked through the decorative plants to the stone trellis. "We're fourteen hundred miles from the Stargate, dependent on the way-stations to get back..."

"Way-stations?"

"In a minute! I'm making a point, here. Dependent on way-stations to get back and you want to start out by shimmying down a knotted silk sheet and plunging to your death? Why not just wait until she unlocks the door?"

"How does the old crone even get up here?"

"There are transport pads everywhere in the castle." Daniel was decidedly snappy and aggravated, feeling battered by the overwhelming events of the past several days. "But you need a specific stone to activate them. It's formed of a mineral the transport system scans for that's needed to activate the matter transfer process to locations within the castle. Mawai told me only the Shullay household had those jewels. It was a security feature. The way-stations everywhere outside of the castle, those are different. Any Tiyan can access those freely. Effectively, they're dual purpose, part of both Tiyan defence and transport. Anyone accessing a way-station who doesn't have the unique Tiyan biological signature is met immediately and assessed by the defence drones. When Makepeace and I checked out the way-station by the Stargate, that's what happened to us, only Mawai came to meet us. She imprinted our DNA on the transport system and on the drone biological scanning systems as a gesture of goodwill. It was the only way for us to travel away from the Stargate or be sure we could get back."

"Why don't you tell me these things?" Jack sighed.

"You were occupied with kidnapping me at the time," Daniel retorted bitingly, shutting Jack up for a second or two.

"So all Mawai has to do to trap us here is delete your DNA imprint so you can't get us back to the Stargate?"

Daniel folded his arms high across his chest. "Don't try to make me feel defensive, Jack," he warned. "This is not my fault."

"No, it's mine," Jack said briskly.

"No, it's Mawai's!" Daniel turned on his heel and stalked away in search of his bath, well aware he was hardly functioning at his best. Jack shouldn't have to be asking him these things. He shouldn't be incoherent, he should be thinking. Helping.

The huge, sunken bath was always filled with water, purified, heated, cooled, scented, set to cleansing, all by a touch to the keypad artfully concealed in the floor. The amber key warmed the water and cycled it to cleanse the user, he recalled, and the effect was near instantaneous. Pausing only to kick off his boots and belt, he plunged right in. The blood from his wounds hadn't wholly dried on his t-shirt; it had been too humid through the night. He sank down into the water, letting it close over his head. He curled into an aching ball there beneath the surface until his lungs were bursting. Then he stood at the edge of the pool, the water holding him, gratefully folding his arms on the cool tile to bury his face and not think for a while. Just a little while.

Reaction was setting in with a vengeance. The smart thing would be to accept this and just get through it with as much dignity as possible. Jack wasn't getting pissed at the disjointed answers he was getting to his questions, or the many and varied tangents they were taking, only when Daniel intruded on the personal. Jack was accepting this was the best Daniel could do for now, he wasn't finding fault, and he was patiently taking them through the things they needed covered one at a time.

Daniel was the one who'd made mistakes and underestimations all the way down the line on this, so, hey! Why stop now? He was on a roll. Possibly a lifetime best.

"I need to lie down," he informed himself, dragging his sorry ass out of the pool and over to the dry clothes. This was another fine example of how he'd screwed up. If he'd been in here on guard where he was supposed to be, instead of hiding out there, shaking in his shoes, he would've seen when the fresh clothes were brought and Jack's uniform taken away. They might be free now.

He couldn’t help making a quick scan of the bed, still in possession of its tangled sheets. He was glad he could make himself look, that he wasn't in avoidance. Either Jack was being sensible about getting the odds of reaching the room below or his balls hurt. Very definitely not feeling the slightest bit guilty for possibly having maimed his best friend for life, he padded over the door for a quick, surreptitious tug at the door handle. It came open in his hand.

"Oh." He really wanted to lie down. Just for a while. "Jack?" Oh, boy. "Door!"

Jack came in through the window, reacted predictably tempestuously to this anticlimactic exit, swore his head off and went down the stairs like an avalanche. Daniel, who was not fond of what spiral stairways did to his inner ear and his sense of balance, followed at a much more prudent pace, with both arms braced against the walls for extra leverage. He followed the Doppler hollers and crashes echoing up at him as Jack investigated the empty rooms for things to harm. His head was spinning by the time he reached the lower levels of the castle and caught up with Jack, standing there waiting like butter wouldn't melt and he couldn't even spell tantrum.

They kept walking. Jack kept looking at him. Every hallway led to another staircase. Daniel didn't remember the way and Jack was guessing, so they just kept going down. Eventually, they made their way through a gallery draped with vast tapestries, vignettes of pastoral Tiyan life in a past age, peppered with animals he didn't know. They were two thousand years old, preserved in all their breathtaking splendour behind a stasis field so impeccably designed, you could touch. It had thrilled him before, set him thinking excitedly of all the incredible possibilities for museums and excavations back home. Now he was only filled with unreasoning resentment at the care and perfection, the invidious patience and foresight of a people determined to preserve all they'd made of themselves and of their world.

Glancing back to check on Daniel for about the three thousandth time, Jack tripped over a drone, the first one they'd seen, tore the air with his cursing, then kicked it against the wall. Raging, he stormed after it, snatching it up before it could right itself, looking like he would tear it apart and giving it a damned good shot.

"It's just a machine," Daniel said dully. A little egg shaped body, gleaming inky black, hiding a sophisticated environmental and biological sensor array, an arched, tensile, extensible neck topped by a ball containing communication and other useful devices and what looked like a beak when closed, but which opened into a variety of flexible gripping tools. The drones reminded Daniel of swans; small, cute, bustling swans. Like swans, they imprinted and this one knew Daniel. A head reared reproachfully over Jack's shoulder as he shook some more of his temper out of it.

There were so many things he could've said in response to this childishness and in other circumstances would have, but he settled for Jack's name, disturbed and uncomfortable that this was actually enough to stop him. Jack's acquiescence wasn't natural to either of them.

When Jack put it down, the drone prudently scooted over to Daniel, floating on its cushion of air. It looked like air, but it could've been anti-gravity. Something. He'd never asked.

A column of white light shot through with shards of silver soared towards the ceiling and then Mawai was there, beaming.

"My dear boy," she greeted Daniel ecstatically, clasping her frail hands emotionally to her chest. "And your loved one," she bowed her head respectfully to Jack, her eyes bright and curious. "Not at all as I expected."

Jack looked as if he were waging some terrible battle, his face like death, his body bowing like a tree shaken by wind. He lost, lost it completely, moving so fast he was on Mawai, his hands bunched in her dress, at her throat, hauling her up practically off her feet, his face mottled and ugly.

Daniel thought Jack would kill her. He was frozen, his mouth open and no sound coming out. He couldn't say Jack's name. He did nothing.

Jack flung her down, caught and kept her from falling, murderous and careful. "Send us back," he grated. "Now."

"I cannot," Mawai responded mildly, "Even if I would. The Stargate no longer functions. It will not work again."

Daniel's legs went and he leaned, heavy and heedless, against the fragile tapestry.

"Fix it," Jack ordered her, his control extraordinary.

"I cannot. The journey to the gate would now take many more days than I have left to live."

"The way-stations?" Daniel's mouth and fingers were tingling. Shock, he guessed.

"Only these few are left," Mawai acknowledged complacently, with a courtly gesture at the castle riches surrounding her. "The way-station at the Stargate remains also." She smiled delightedly at Daniel. "It will always bring you home."

"The drones disabled the Stargate for you," Jack realised, turning his attention to the one at Daniel's feet. "Then they can undo it."

"Perhaps," Mawai shrugged, uncaring, her eyes fixed on Daniel. "My dear boy must learn."

"The drones are ancient, Jack," Daniel said drearily. "By our standards. All the technology is. Outside of the specific maintenance tasks each is programmed for, the only language they understand is Tiyan. English is not the language here. The people only learned it when they started exploring through the Stargate and found it the lingua franca among so many alien races."

"Yes, yes," Mawai agreed eagerly, "That is right! You remember."

"Let me see if I have this correctly," Jack said to Daniel, dangerously calm. "The only way home is by crossing the fourteen hundred miles to the Stargate. Then, if we make it, we need the drones to repair the Stargate. If – and this is a big if – they can repair the gate, the only way we can communicate with the drones to get them to even try is via a language you don't speak?"

"We must begin with teaching and learning now, my Daniel. I do not have long, you know." Mawai spoke without reproach, as if she were ready for death.

Jack closed his eyes at what appeared to be an invitation. "You have no idea," he told Daniel, in acute pain. "What if I don't allow him to learn your language?" he purred, attacking without warning, opening his eyes to smile at Mawai.

She smiled back. "Then you do not ever go back to your world. I will die, and you will go on. In time our boy will learn, for he will have to, and this will be your home."

"If he does learn?" Jack fired at her, spitting in frustration.

"It will take time, much time, and there is much else Daniel will learn. Tiya is his now." She quirked her head at Jack challengingly. "If he leaves this place, then all that was Tiya passes with him, all is lost. He has lost so much already, on so many worlds, I do not think he could bear this."

"A ship?" Jack asked, turning to Daniel.

"It would take two of your Earth years for the fastest ship of which we know," Mawai said confidently.

"The Asgard?" Jack went on. "Thor would come, if we could get a message out."

"Which requires tapping into the communications system," Daniel replied. "Which requires learning the language if communications aren't sabotaged along with everything else."

Looking as if he could snap Mawai with his bare hands, Jack frowned searchingly at Daniel. "All of this was about getting you here and using everything that makes you - you," he snapped, infuriated and struggling for words, "to keep us here."

"She thinks she's doing the right thing, Jack," Daniel reminded him. "It would be easier if she believed this was wrong. Mawai's certainty that this is the best thing for me, my life's work, just as it is hers?" He looked down, away from Jack's sharp eyes. Mawai's belief and her well-intentioned cruelties cost too much. They were taking everything, breaking the life he and Jack knew, maybe the friends they were. "You didn’t ask." He was so dull and stupid, it slipped away from him, an accusation and maybe an admission.

"Daniel?" Jack said his name urgently, reaching out to him and then jerking his hand back as if burned.

If only Jack had asked. Daniel thought – he thought he could have given. He'd never wanted more than small things from Jack, mostly gifts of time and attention. A little faith and respect. But if Jack had wanted...him? It was difficult, it was new to him, but he thought he might have been able to give something. "You didn’t ask."

The look Jack cast at Mawai, stony and murderous, chilled him.

"He needs to rest," Jack snarled at her. "A room and hot food."

Mawai frowned. "All was provided."

"Provide it again," Jack ordered cuttingly, "Here, and now. He's done for."

"She doesn't know," Daniel said quietly, wishing he'd never opened his mouth. "Not what we - what she did to you. To us."

"If she knew, she'd be dead," Jack snapped. "NOW!" he roared, and all of them jumped.

Daniel was cocooned in butter-soft sheets, too tired and nauseous to move. Jack was there, sitting straight-backed and braced in a tall, sinuous, carved chair, staring at nothing, his elbows resting on the table set there in the alcove.

The narrow room was cool and shady, of plain, dark stone edging a vaulted white-washed ceiling and walls, with many windows. The furniture was plain, as plain as the gorgeous, organic Tiyan carving could be, Daniel's big wooden sleigh bed mirrored by another on the wall opposite.

When he turned his head, he was level with a door, and down towards Jack's end of the room there were two chests, for clothes and belongings, he guessed, along with a bookcase. There was another door open on the same wall as the windows, close by where Jack sat at the table, and when Daniel looked there, he saw an orderly vegetable garden bordered by flowers or maybe herbs.

"Close to the kitchen, the laundry and the bathroom," Jack remarked without looking around. "We're on the ground floor of the library. The staff lived all around here, these were their quarters. Lady Macbeth is perched like a vulture at the top of the Morning Tower and this is as far away as we can get from those handy-dandy transporter thingies. There are stairs. That should be enough to keep her from coming calling."

Daniel was dazed by the rapid flow of information, all delivered in a monotone.

"I tried sleeping next door, but you freaked. Nightmares. Night sweats too. I was in here more than I was out and in the end I gave up, snatched a few zees in the other bed. After that, you settled."

"I don't remember."

"Do you remember me making you eat soup?" Now Jack looked around, making no move to get up. He looked exhausted, with black shadows round his eyes and his lips tight. "I'm sorry," he said and his face and his voice were gentle again. "I know you need me to keep my distance right now, but it doesn't look like that's working out. We kind of forgot in the middle of all this that you were affected by this virus or chemical or whatever it was too. Whatever you were carrying, I hope it's out of your system now. You were so out of it, I had to get you to the bathroom, where you fell asleep – again - on what passes for a toilet around these parts. I got you back here, tucked you in. Crashed here. You were more afraid when I was gone."

"It's okay." It was all Daniel could say. He remembered none of this but he was grateful for Jack's care, dimly aware Jack needed to do this, to make things up to him. "Thanks," he added tentatively.

"It was shock," Jack assured him. "That was all. Delayed shock and the last blast of Mawai's infection. I know what to do for shock. It got done."

"I need," Daniel began.

"You need to rest," Jack laid down the law, which was Daniel's own stupid fault for saying he needed him. It was like offering a junkie heroin.

Daniel was content, cuddled up in warm bedding, with a summer smell in the room. His body was easier. He hurt, the weight of how close to the edge they'd come still cramping his chest and his gut, the memories he'd tried to push away, but he was far from panic now. Jack was himself again and if they were stranded, it was safe in the heart of Shullay. They'd been through much worse ordeals and come through them okay. They'd come through so much as friends, he had to believe this was not going to finish them.

"I'm not fragile," he reminded Jack, yawning. Drifting.

"So you keep saying." Jack sounded amused.

When Daniel woke, it was evening and he was drawn out from under the covers by the scent of food. His stomach growled and he stumbled over to the table, rubbing sleep from his eyes. There were bowls of savoury stew, heaped high with meat and weird vegetables, fresh bread which Jack was buttering, bowls of pale fruits thick with cream and a copper flagon of ice water. He lowered himself carefully into the chair, managing not to wince as abused muscles protested. Jack was much worse off than him in this regard.

"We won't starve," Jack observed dryly, handing Daniel some bread. "The drones appear to be programmed to wait on us hand and foot. Literally. You can't move for the little buggers." He sniffed a spoonful of stew, then ate it, chewing cautiously, pleasure lighting his face. "It's good." He ate some more as Daniel tucked in. "You think they're sucking up because I tried to kill one of 'em? The drones, I mean?"

"I think they're fulfilling their programming," Daniel shrugged, dipping his bread into the gravy, remembering yet more he had to fill Jack in on. "Produce from a smallholding is harvested by the drones and stored in stasis, that much I remember. It's a maintenance task, one I don't think we need to worry about, language-wise. They tend to the farm just as they tend to the city. The technology here is very sophisticated and none of it was ever intended to do anything but make life better for the Tiyans."

"So what happened?"

"The birth rate gradually declined. More and more males were born sterile over many generations and there was no obvious cause their scientists could combat."

Daniel paused reflectively, hoping to come out with a coherent narrative this time.

"Tiyans form an intense bond to the land and to each other. To leave would have been worse to them than death. When their medical resources failed, they turned to other methods, which resulted in the many and varied applications of stasis we see. Or rather, don't," Daniel corrected himself pedantically.

"Mawai told me the efforts of their doctors and scientists were abandoned and from what I saw in the artefacts and artwork from that era of their history, I believe they accepted it was their time, as a natural thing. There was no pain, no protracted suffering or cataclysm, just a gentle winding down, the remaining people coming closer together until Shullay was all that was left. Mawai was the last child born to the Tiyans and when she dies, their race dies with her."

"So the old bitch decided to drag us down with her," Jack said stonily, unforgiving.

"The Tiyans were dying for a long time. They couldn't or wouldn't save themselves but they could and did preserve their world. Mawai is as much a product of her environment as we are of ours, Jack. She may look human but that's only a coincidence of biology," Daniel chided him. Then he got to wondering about the hours he'd slept like the dead, about the likelihood of Jack just sitting there watching him snore. "Did you talk to her?" he asked suspiciously.

"Harangued and threatened, yes," Jack retorted, eating some more stew. "There's nothing you can do to someone who's dying, nothing I can do except take you away from her and she knows I won't take an action which is ultimately self-defeating." He looked up at Daniel, the glint in his eye very familiar, the look he wore before he told Daniel 'this is an order'. "You already told me the odds of Carter and Teal'c figuring out from what little evidence they have that this was all about you, not me. They can backtrack our missions until they hit the one that took us to Edora but will they consider changing tack to look at you?"

"There are a lot of missions to consider," Daniel acknowledged, pushing his bowl away. He'd barely eaten half the stew but wasn't hungry any more. "But we're still dealing with a finite number of locations we could be. It's not hopeless." His stomach refused to settle, a twinge of pain making him rub his side absently.

"Keep yourself busy while I was gone?" Jack asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Worked my ass off." Daniel had missed Jack so badly it was if a part of him was gone, a perpetual ache where Jack's presence should have been. It hadn't let him rest, not for a minute.

"Mawai handed over two of those transport thingies you were babbling on about. " Jack reached around behind the flagon and picked up a bracelet, which Daniel hadn't seen, sliding it over to him. "She'll do anything for us except let us go. I tried this puppy out, wound up in a hundred different dust traps inside but never once got any place outside. In my humble opinion, after all the trouble the old bitch went to in order to get you here, the gate is kaput just like she says. It's such an obvious escape route I don't see how she'd have left it untouched."

"I don't believe she'd have destroyed it, Jack," Daniel decided after thinking it over. "It would be an absolute anathema to the last of a race whose single guiding precept was conservation and protection. I can see her disabling the gate somehow, but destroy it? Never. I don't think she could even conceive such a notion."

"Are you sure enough to walk fourteen hundred miles to find out?"

"Would you walk fourteen hundred miles on a bet the Nox were pacifists?" Daniel asked dryly. "Yes, I'm that sure."

"Two options, here, Daniel," Jack warned him. "Either Mawai can fix this and she won't, or she can't. As in literally can't. She programmed those drones to disable the gate. The parts they took, whatever they did, might not be reversible, not by us. You could learn everything she wants you to learn, we could make that walk, thinking you'll get us out of here, only to find these digs are permanent."

"Let's think about this logically," Daniel suggested, wondering who this sadder, wiser version of Jack O'Neill was and what he'd done with the ranting, unreasonable original. "It would be impossible for Mawai to destroy the Stargate, she would only conceive of disabling it. So far as we know, even the Asgard and the Nox haven't found a way to disable the gate itself. They've either used their technology as an adjunct or they've buried it. But what do we know can be disabled easily?"

"My limited understanding of how the Stargate works?"

"The DHD."

"Ah. Would've been my second guess."

"And what do we know will make the Stargate dial even without a DHD?"

"Carter?"

"Jack!"

"Just trying to make you feel better."

"By annoying me?"

"You live for it."

The nice, quiet guy sitting opposite a few minutes ago? Could Daniel get him back, please? "You're the engineer, Jack," Daniel reminded him unkindly, ignoring his outrage. "Figure out how to rig us up a power source so we can dial out manually."

"Who told you I was an engineer!" Jack demanded, stricken to the heart.

"The certificate is right there on the wall of your bedroom. Second Lieutenant J. O'Neill, class of 1974, academic excellence in military sciences and engineering. Academic excellence," Daniel repeated meaningfully.

"You're the doctor!"

"Of archaeology. If Mawai buried the DHD or the gate, I'll get right on it."

"What were you doing in my bedroom?"

"Your laundry was ready to be classified as a sentient species and someone had to water all those ferns you left to die." This was a little unfair. Jack hadn't exactly asked for the Edoran Stargate to be taken out by a meteor.

"You guys drew straws, huh?"

Daniel was shy of admitting looking after Jack's things was something he'd wanted to do. "Sam was building a particle accelerator and Teal'c won't talk to anything he can't beat in battle," he brushed it off. "And we're wandering from the point."

"Which is?"

"Is it worth walking fourteen hundred miles only to find out we can't ever get home?"

"Snakes and ladders," Jack remarked idly. "We throw the dice, climb a ladder that takes us two months, lose our turn when the gate won't work, then hit the way-station and slide all the way back here to square one." He took a doubtful bite of a virulent purple tuber, then spat it out, shuddering. "Two months out of what could be the rest of our lives?"

"So when do we start?"

"We'll need a map, a planned route, plotting of climate changes and weather patterns, terrain, hazards, indigenous plant or animal threats, edibles we can pick up along the route, provisions, weapons, transport for the power source. "

"The power source."

"Don't start with me, clothing, shelter, and a dictionary."

"Dictionary?"

"The one you'll be writing while you learn this language."

"I don't know that I want to," Daniel confessed, staggering Jack. "I don't want to give in to Mawai any more than you do. The end does not justify the means, not to me. She may believe she's doing the right thing, but she violated your mind to compel you to bring me here and then imprisoned us, maybe permanently."

"It's a golden cage," Jack agreed bitterly. "A prison the size of an entire world." With nasty purple tubers thrown in.

"I loathe being manipulated. I understand the necessity of going along with her for now, I mean, I take your point, but I'm not happy about it."

"You'll forget all this," Jack predicted cynically. "You're a slut for an alien syllable." Then his brain caught up, he did a double-take and could've cheerfully bitten off his tongue. Brick-red, he stared at Daniel, speechless and apologetic.

Daniel was sick to death of it all. He was tired of being careful, of Jack being careful, tired of being watched and coddled. He was sick of feeling sick. Mostly, he was tired of not having any choices. He chose not to dignify any of this with a response, figuring if he left it alone then Jack would leave him alone and gladly forget he'd ever flapped his gums.

"While you're working on your A-B-Cs, I plan to poke around this place and figure out what I can. I want to see how far I can push the drones, what tasks I can make them do without needing this special language." Jack polished off his stew, looking thoughtful. "That should be your first task, by the way, compiling us a working vocabulary so we can do what we need to with the little buggers."

Daniel thanked him politely for the advice.

"I need to get out of here, check out the city, the countryside around it. Locate that smallholding you mentioned because the fucker could wind up feeding us for the rest of our lives. See what and where the animals are, if there are streams nearby, fish and freshwater. I also want to confirm if this transport system really is disabled. Find a way-station and see where this jewel-thingie takes me, if anywhere. I also got Mawai to get us some more appropriate clothes. Thicker," Jack added vaguely. "I didn't think you'd like - these are too thin."

Daniel honestly hadn't noticed. The only thing he'd cared about was covering his skin. Why did it bother Jack so much he brought it up with Mawai? He glanced down at himself, curious.

"White." Jack tugged deprecatingly at his crumpled tunic. "We'd practically glow in the dark to anything lurking out there in search of its next meal."

Ah. So it had nothing to do with the bite marks and the bruises, the marks of force and sex on his body he'd just worked out Jack could see clearly through the flimsy fabric. That was good to know.

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

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