Part Three

Jack O'Neill had survived high school, flight school, combat, leaping out of perfectly good aeroplanes, special ops, black ops, knee ops, crashing, gassing, shooting, stabbing, snaking, bombing, blasting, zatting, ageing, dying, General Hammond on his back, Fraiser's fingers up his butt, Daniel Jackson in his face and an academy roommate with cheesy feet.

He figured he was tough enough.

That was before he smelled the scaly honker that apparently gave them milk. One whiff from a few yards away and he doubled up where he stood, retching.

The stench was indescribable.

The honker was friendly. And free-range.

If it slobbered in his ear one more time, he was going to shoot it.

Even finding the tools and a couple of light, wooden wheels he thought he could make something of, didn't make up for honker drool in his orifices. Ripe for murder, he stamped back into the eerily empty, immaculate city. Fortunately, he did some of his best thinking this way.

If the Tiyans were so hell-bent on preservation, then somewhere in this museum there had to be a museum. There had to be stuff in that museum, old stuff, stuff that worked, 'cause round these parts, everything worked. It was literally built to last. The Tiyans didn't start out with this level of technology; they got here slowly, the way everyone did, over time. For every speeding drone with all the bells and whistles existing for the sole purpose of tripping him up in the street, there had to be an old-time clunker. Ditto for the super-duper beam-me-up-Scotty transporter system.

So maybe, just maybe, way back when, even the Tiyans had needed to jump-start an old clunker once in a while. Someplace, Jack had to be able to find himself the old time equivalent of a car battery. Even better, he might be able to find the car.

"Academic excellence, my ass," Jack growled. Build a power source? He could program his VCR, that's what he could do.

He also figured if the drones and the transport system were these huge, sophisticated networks, then something, somewhere was controlling them. They had proof those systems could be re-programmed and here, the singular expertise of a man who had never, no matter how long he was off-world, alive or dead, missed a single episode of The Simpsons, had to pay off.

Twiddling the knobs on the transporter set would pay off too. Mawai was getting to that control room to do her dirty work and she sure as shit wasn't hoofing it. The old bitch was doddering with one foot in the grave and Jack right behind her, ready to make with the hearty shove. Methodically testing all the transporter destinations he could reach, he would eventually find her secret underground lair.

Even with vile purple veggies, stinky livestock, Lady Macbeth and his academic excellence to contend with, they'd been in tighter spots. Daniel was starting to bounce back from the bad stuff, was getting pretty okay again with Jack and not blaming him for going all caveman on his ass again. They were SG-1. Shit happened. Daniel – Daniel was rolling with it. Once he got Daniel to drop this crazy notion Jack kind of had the hots for him, they'd be fine. Getting Daniel to drop anything was about as easy as getting a terrier to drop a rat it had by the neck, but he was dead wrong on this one. Jack would make sure he knew it.

There were more important things. They were stranded, sure, but they had supplies, shelter, options. They had a goal. They even had a plan.

Daniel wasn't Daniel unless he was shouldering some emotional crisis or moral dilemma. If there was nothing, nothing was what he found to worry over. Daniel sucked at being happy. Too busy navel-gazing to ever stay in the moment. He made Jack crazy.

Some day, he would say something, Daniel would just agree with him and the shock of it would kill him.

Like Jack being some kind of closet case. This was a classic Danielism. If anyone would know, it would be Jack. Daniel, of course, thought he knew Jack better than Jack did. What? Was Jack in denial of his denial? Was he hiding out in a closet someplace inside this closet he was supposed to be hiding out in?

Daniel should get a life of his own. He should find that museum. Make himself useful. Get out and do stuff instead of worrying over Jack all the time.

Yeah.

Jack was supposed to poke around the city some more but his feet were taking him to the central plaza and the castle. The city wasn't laid out in straight blocks; they curved, giving it the shape of an oval, not a square. The castle filled one whole quarter of Tiya, its main gates opening out onto a ceremonial avenue dissecting the plaza. You could cut across from street to street in clear, unbroken lines from the gates in the city walls to the fancy piazza tiling, spectacular fountains and golden parkland of the central plaza.

Every plant was gold or some other colour; he didn't see green. The trees looked like autumn but their leaves weren't falling. No green. He didn't know why it bothered him so much. He complained every time he stepped out onto a world that looked just like home. This one had something in the air, something in the soil, an element in everything that stopped things being green and he couldn't stop thinking about it. Stinky cows came with obscene, scaly butts and honked at you and he couldn't stop thinking about that either. The grass was wrong, the sky was wrong, the stars were wrong.

Radios. That's what he needed. Communicators. He didn't want Daniel cut off, thinking he was all alone in this place where everything was wrong. They only had each other to rely on; it was stupid, stupid to be out of contact. Anything could happen, and would.

He added this to his list of questions for Mawai. He was headed for her. Everything else was just a detour, an appetiser. Mawai was the main event, the only show in town. He needed to understand her because she was worse than an enemy, she thought she was a friend. She thought she was good, and so she thought she was right. She could be colder and more calculating than any posturing Goa'uld and do it all with a smile on her face, believing she meant it for the best. Do-gooders were the worst kind to take on.

Transporters were dotted here and there, more plentiful than public phones back home. He stopped at one, a random choice. It activated immediately, responding to the presence of the stone he wore. An image of his immediate surroundings appeared in its centre. You Are Here.

The way it worked was simple enough to figure out. Three tracks of curvy symbols: latitude, longitude and elevation. You mapped out the rough area you wanted to be, then the symbols refreshed based on where you were compared to where you wanted to be, and you narrowed it down to where X marked your particular spot. The images in the central panel changed constantly as you hit the keys, so you could pick out your destination from there.

There was also what he thought was a location directory but the words meant nothing. Either you knew the address you wanted and rattled it off via the keys, or you used the phone book to look it up. It was impressively intuitive. Jack could see what Daniel meant about the Tiyans only building stuff that improved their quality of life.

He knew the symbols for Mawai's room at the top of the Morning Tower, touched them confidently, felt the pleasant buzz of translocation, then stood facing her door. It made him want to kill her, the Stargate wasn't this easy to reach, but most everything she said and did had the same effect on him.

Mawai looked up eagerly as he walked in, staring past him in the hope Daniel was there. Her face dimmed to wariness when she saw Jack was alone.

"I told you before," Jack said smoothly. He was not about to give her anything he could make her work and trade for. Daniel was his trump card. She would do anything to get him. "He's not coming." Jack's power was in acting as Daniel's intermediary. He'd made it clear to her if she wanted Daniel she had to go through him.

"There is too much I have to teach, so much for Daniel to learn. His pride is wasteful."

"Oh, it's nothing so personal as pride," Jack said pleasantly. "It's principle."

Her room was identical to the other, the one they'd been trapped in, in the other tower. Only this one was circled around and around with a maze of waist-high tables and book cases piled high with books, artefacts, pottery, pieces of equipment he didn't recognise, even the odd preserved animal or bird. The clutter screamed mad professor and should have reeked of dust and the old witch, but didn’t. The drones took care.

Jack came a little closer to her and hitched his butt up onto a table. "Daniel won't come. He won't give you the satisfaction."

She stared searchingly at him and he looked blandly back, aware he had the advantage of being used to dealing with people, not machines. Mawai lacked the skills.

"You think only of escape," she accused him, her voice thready. "You fill his mind with it. He did not heed the other so much as you."

"Which other?"

"The one who was here before. The one who watched our dear boy with the heart in his eyes."

"Makepeace?"

"Robert was his name."

"You expected Makepeace to be with Daniel?" Jack made no threatening move but she shrank back from the look on his face. "You intended to spring this trap on him?" He could picture what Makepeace would've done to Daniel, he could see it. The ugly bastard wouldn't have held back, wouldn't have cared if he'd hurt him. With all the aggravation Daniel had made him eat, he would've enjoyed it. There wouldn't have been that one chance Daniel had taken with Jack. No chance.

Jack could see it all. He and Makepeace, they weren't so far apart. He could hardly breathe for what he was seeing. Makepeace getting his taste of fucking Daniel, fucking him again because no matter what Daniel said or thought he wanted, he gave it up once, he'd give it up again. Learn to enjoy it. Makepeace would take and take, and there'd be no way back from that. He would never let Daniel go.

"I should kill you," he told Mawai matter-of-factly. "Daniel is all the time wanting me to care and he thinks if I do, it makes me a better man. He never seems to see that when I kill now, it makes me worse because I do care and I still kill. I never used to make a choice to kill. I never used to feel anything. I just did what had to be done, what was asked of me. Caring makes me choose and what I choose is, I choose to kill you."

"You will not. He may not forgive me as you say, but he understands me and in time he will accept," Mawai replied with gentle certainty. "You, he would not forgive and he could not understand. You could not bear that, I think." Her dark eyes were a mystery. "He means much to you, as much as he did to the other."

What was this? Was Jack supposed to be blind to what went on in his own command? With his own people? "Get it through your head," he retorted derisively. "Daniel means nothing to Makepeace. Nothing."

"You are a fool or you are a liar and I, I think you are no fool." Mawai had the nerve to laugh at him.

Jack reached out, found something by feel, something cool and sleek, took it from the table and dropped it shattering to the floor.

Mawai jumped violently, spitting something shocked at him in her language.

Never breaking eye-contact, he moved along to the next object precious to her, swiping at it with the full force of his outstretched arm, sending it crashing. And then he moved on to the next.

Mawai's tone became pleading, tearful.

The boots he wore were thick-soled and sturdy, his foot nicely cushioned as he ground his heel down on a fragile little metal something.

"Stop, stop!" Mawai gulped down her distress and her tears, understanding they had no effect on him, terrified of what he might do next. "I beg of you, stop!"

Jack came up to her desk, bending slowly to plant fists either side of her. "I could break the world," he promised menacingly.

She believed him. "He would not let you," she whispered, her certainties no longer so absolute.

Jack smiled. "He would forgive me." He patted her withered cheek with insulting confidence, making her cringe back from him in revulsion.

She believed him.

"You want to talk to him?" he offered, coolly taking advantage of her turmoil.

"You have said..." She broke off, speechless with confusion at his rapid change of tack.

"He won't come to you but that doesn't stop you talking to him," Jack broke in. "Daniel is in the library right now looking for the books he needs to get started with translating this language of yours."

Mawai's naively greedy pleasure at hearing this was stronger than her dislike and mistrust of Jack. Her face brightened pathetically.

"Once he gets started, the books will draw him in," Jack went on persuasively. "He'll forget he's angry and remember you can help him. If he can talk to you then?" he hinted.

"Yes!" she said eagerly, "Yes."

She turned and chirruped a few words in her lilting language at one of her attendant drones. It scooted over to the wall at the rear of the room, Jack immediately going after it when he realised what looked like stone was in fact another of those stupid screens you had to know was there before you could see it. He really hated this Scooby Doo secret panel stuff. The drone was taking out two small metal discs. Jack reached in past it, made it three discs, patted it on its surprised little head, and strolled away.

"How do these work?" he called. "So I can show Daniel."

"Why would you help me?" Mawai asked suspiciously. "I have no trust for you, O'Neill."

"I'm not," Jack snorted contemptuously. "I'm helping Daniel. And you shouldn't trust me at all, except with him."

"You do care for him greatly," Mawai acknowledged, frowning deeply over this as she tried to fathom out Jack's many contradictions and complications.

"He's my responsibility."

"He is your love," she corrected him vacantly, holding up her right hand, its back towards him. "Here, like this." She touched a trembling finger to a central spot below her middle finger. "Push here."

Gritting his teeth over her sentimentalism – he was stuck here only because she messed with his mind and his testosterone got away from him as a direct result of it - he mimicked her actions. Once he pressed it firmly into the back of his hand, the disk melted into a second metal skin. Jack could see it but couldn't feel it was there. "What's the range of the communicator? How far away from him can I be?"

"You could stand anywhere on this world and Daniel here in Shullay, and still be able to converse," she said indifferently. This capability meant nothing to her. How long had it been since she'd had anyone to talk to?

"How do we use it? How do I communicate, how does Daniel hear me?"

Mawai took her time fitting the second communications disc to the back of her own hand, taking as much petty enjoyment in making Jack wait as he would've if their positions had been reversed. Then she held up the back of her hand to him. "Touch to here," she said, fingering the veined contours of her communicator.

Jack pressed his disc against hers and immediately as he turned his hand to check it out, he could see her image, a holograph glowing over the metal. On her disc was a matching image of his own face.

She turned the third disc over in her fingers. "Bring him to me," she ordered, too needy for subtlety.

"Why don't we meet some place neutral?" Jack suggested suavely. It was a little crude to just take the communicator from her, especially when he had no idea what other questions he might have for her or toys she might have for him. "Daniel loves museums. He told you that. If he told you anything about himself, he told you that. Museums. Huge public buildings filled with old things."

"Ah'cha'lassah?" Mawai clarified, frowning and wary.

"Sure!" Jack said briskly, sure Daniel could be relied on to sweetheart the location of the local Smithsonian out of her if this turned out not to be it. "Give me the symbols for the transporter and we'll meet you there in one hour." As soon as she'd handed him the laboriously penned address, he turned away from her, took a few steps, then pulled up theatrically. "Actually, it might not be one hour," he confided candidly. "It might not even be today unless one of these little guys," he waved at a nearby drone, "takes me to where Daniel is."

Mawai chirruped the instruction to the drone, while Jack look bored, buffed his nails and listened intently. The drone scooted over to the door, which Jack politely opened for it. When they were outside, he repeated the phrase Mawai had used, substituting her name for Daniel's. The little guy obediently turned around and started back the way he came.

"You are no fool, O'Neill," Mawai called after him. He could hear the dislike roughening her tone.

Satisfied, Jack called his drone to heel and closed the door on her. His drone hovered suggestively near the transporter and he followed, thinking getting around was going to be as easy as a-b-c-1-2-3. They had the open sesame part down pat, now they just needed to know the word for Aladdin's Cave. Or Stargate.

They beamed into the library, so far so good. Jack figured there was no way this drone would sense Daniel's presence from the top of the Morning Tower but the drone nearest to the Linguistics section where Daniel had said he'd be working, could. He was more convinced than ever they were all linked in a vast network.

He road-tested his drone, first running the length of the towering main hall with its soaring mezzanine galleries of books and stained glass, then stopping in his tracks, then walking, then walking the wrong way. So long as he was headed towards Daniel, his drone was happy to keep pace with him. When he strayed, it hovered in place until he came back to it. God bless artificial intelligence. There was a very real chance they could use one of the little guys as a guide for that long walk to the gate.

When they finally reached Daniel, he was on the uppermost floor of the library. The anteroom he was in was small compared to the ones lower down, cool and mellow with light from the tall windows tucked between each substantial bay of shelves. Large, well-worn study tables stood in neat rows on the recessed floor with Daniel happily oblivious in the middle of it all, buried to his eyebrows in books.

He was industriously working on exactly what Jack had ordered him to work on but he was having fun doing it. Fun was not part of the deal. It pissed Jack off.

"What the fuck was going on between you and Makepeace?" he exploded before he was even at the table. Knowing he was being unreasonable only made him madder, he could hardly begin to explain why.

Daniel reared back in apparent coronary heart failure. "What!" he gasped. "Who?" He blinked furiously and tried again. "When?" Then he scowled exasperatedly at Jack. "What are you talking about!"

"You and the dear-departed jarhead."

"What business is it of yours?" Daniel demanded unexpectedly. Then he returned his attention to his book.

"What business?" Jack barked, floored by this.

"Precisely. What business?" Daniel chose not to bother to even look up. He just kept on writing.

This really pissed Jack off. Mawai had just told him Makepeace was watching Daniel with, quote, 'his heart in his eyes.' That made it Jack's business.

"You've already made it abundantly clear that you are not now, nor have you ever been, attracted to me." Daniel made a careful note in the margin of his book while Jack fumed at him. "Which means I could be schtupping Colonel Makepeace on the gateroom ramp and it still wouldn't be any of your damn business. Now, was there anything else you wanted to rant irrationally about or are we done?"

Jack's sharp intake of breath made Daniel deign to look up at him.

After a pensive moment, he sighed, got up and went to fetch another book. "If you want to be sure, if it really bothers you this much," a disembodied voice rose from among the shelves. "You could always kiss me again, see what happens."

"I am sure!" Jack hollered, positive he could feel a vein throb in his temple.

"Then stop obsessing about Robert Makepeace and tell me why you smell like a startled skunk with halitosis."

"Oh, my god! You can smell that?" Jack groaned.

Daniel popped his head out from behind the shelves. "You stink," he informed Jack cheerily.

"It's not me, it's the cow!" Jack vehemently disclaimed all responsibility. "Or what passes for a cow round these parts. It's got a scaly ass and it honks. A cow that honks, for cryin' out loud! I'm telling you, we're not looking at your basic pasteurising for the milk here, we're talking full-scale decontamination."

"I was going to suggest if any of the animals were of suitable size, domestication and disposition, we might consider using one for haulage during the journey if nothing better comes up."

"I threw up."

"You what?" Intrigued, Daniel came out all the way from behind the shelves, an armful of books balanced expertly on his hip.

"I got one whiff of that thing and puked on my feet."

"Downwind?"

"Up." Jack went over to where Daniel was browsing, leaned his shoulder against the end of the bookcase, and watched him.

One of Daniel's mobile eyebrows went up questioningly.

"Just checking," Jack explained pleasantly.

"Hmm?"

"Checking to see if you've lost your few remaining marbles."

Daniel straightened up, scowling, and tried to get by. Jack stopped him, careful not to touch him or get close, just reached across to rest his hand on one of the shelves opposite. "What the fuck do you mean, 'kiss me'? After everything that's happened? You can't even wait for the bruises to heal? We have no idea if that – thing – is completely out of my system."

"It's all very clear to you, Jack, isn't it?" Daniel shifted his grip on his stack of books to let a handy shelf take their weight while Jack was in his way. Rubbing at the niggling pain in his side, another unnecessary physical reminder of fighting off Jack, he glared balefully. "Well, maybe it's not so clear to me. I don't have the memory lapses you do and I don't know whether I'm supposed to believe the dying man who couldn't lie to either of us or the one standing in front of me. I don't blame you for what happened and I don't want you to blame yourself. I also don't want you blaming me, months or years from now, if we don't get out of here. "

"We will."

"If we don't," Daniel repeated himself insistently, "Because our options for a sex life are severely limited and even you, pigheaded as you are, have to see that sooner or later it will become an issue. I only wanted to know where I stand. What I need to worry about and what I don't. After everything that's happened, I don't think that's too much to ask." Daniel spoke with restrained dignity and when he looked significantly at Jack's blocking arm, Jack was the one who moved.

"I told you," Jack said as Daniel began to walk away. "You don't need to worry about that." He came out with all the conviction he could muster.

"Worry?" Daniel's face was unreadable. "I can barely take in what's happened between us. What I'm feeling, you call it shock and I have to believe you. I'm – I'm inside it and I can't find my way clear. Months from now, years from now, maybe all I'll feel is alone. Alone for the rest of my life if you won't face your feelings about me the way I'm having to face mine about you. I don't know. I don't know anything."

He was scared. Why was Jack so slow to see that?

"I'm sorry," he said stiffly.

"You've never said that to me before," Daniel noted with a wry look from beneath his lashes, not quite making eye contact. "Don't be sorry, Jack. Do something."

"You've never talked to me this way before," Jack snapped more irritably than he meant it.

"For once, it's not my fault."

"Just my responsibility."

"I told it to you straight, Jack. I need you. I don't expect that to change. I have nowhere else to go."

Jack didn't either but this was something Daniel clearly wanted him to work out for himself. "Why can't you leave things alone?"

"I don't know," Daniel admitted candidly, his lips ghosting into a smile. "It's just in me, I guess." He dumped his load of books on the table. "Was that stinky cow the sole highlight of your fact-finding mission this morning?"

"No," Jack replied loftily, relieved they were dropping the other thing. "I got us cool stuff." He stuck his hand out for Daniel to inspect. "Sophisticated communicators," he explained, letting the disc catch the light.

"Planning on talking to yourself?" Daniel enquired lightly, persisting with being the biggest pain in Jack's bruised ass.

"You get yours direct from Mawai when we meet her at the museum."

"Museum?" Daniel was pro-museum on general principle so he shouldn't have any fault to find with a prolonged visit to this one.

"A brilliant idea I had. One of many, I might add."

"Brilliant, how?"

"It's full of stuff. Old stuff. Stuff that still works."

"Like possibly, maybe, power sources? Stuff like that?" Daniel's blue eyes gleamed.

"Exactly like that."

"I found the map room, geography and climatology sections, and we're sitting in the Tiyan-English linguistics collection right here. With the right vocabulary, I should be able to find out about all the scary stuff that you want to know is out there before we run into it on the road."

Jack had done better, gone farther and achieved more. He felt this was self-evident but was not beyond gilding his lily just a tad. "I also learned how to make the drones go fetch and got Mawai to hate me just a little bit more than she hated me before."

"You have a real talent in that direction."

"You really are in a foul mood, aren't you?"

"It's a coping mechanism."

"Any idea how long you'll be coping for?"

"None."

"Then let's hit that museum and you can cope all you like with Mawai."

"Just keep telling yourself this could all be much, much worse, Jack," Daniel advised demurely as he marked his page, closed his book with a snap and got to his feet with a hint of his old energy. "I could be bearing a grudge."

Jack turned away, shrugging. Yeah, well, maybe Daniel should bear a grudge. Maybe Jack wouldn't feel so restless and disconnected if he had something to test himself against, to work past.

"Don't forget you're the only bargaining chip we have," he warned Daniel as he led the way down the hallway. "Don't go serving yourself up on a silver platter with a polished apple in your mouth to the old bitch. Make her work for everything. Make her give us more cool stuff."

"I thought I was working with her," Daniel remarked. "I thought you were hinting that was an order."

"That was last night."

"Before you decided to get even as well as getting cool stuff."

"Get this straight," Jack advised him. "What she made me do?" He put out a hand to lightly brush Daniel's face and watched in grim comprehension as he flinched back from the unexpected touch and then didn't know what to do with the violence of his reaction. "We'll never be even."

For such a bright guy, Daniel could be damned stupid. Some days, he needed a straightforward reminder Jack cared. They were friends. Jack cared a lot. There were words for how much he cared Daniel had been made to flinch from him, but none Daniel would want to hear.

The clock could not be turned back, there was no magic reset button they could hit on their friendship, and Jack was not forgiving. There was a great deal he was prepared to do for Daniel but he would cut the cost of it out of Mawai's withered hide until she died.

This was a modern building by Tiyan standards, with a cool grey floor that might have been metal, might have stone. The walls were silvery, with a subtle sheen of light that shouldn't have come from wood. The entrance hall to the museum was open its full five-storey height, a monumental glass roof arching high over head, swooping down in an elegant, graduated curve to reach the floor. To protect the city residents from an uncouth view of the five open levels of the museum, a shielding decorative wall of water was strategically placed. Jack's fingers were currently waggling at Daniel through it. Then a foot appeared.

"I'm not wet," he called for perhaps the tenth time. "How can I not be wet?"

Water that wasn't wet was right up there with grass that wasn't green and stinky cows that honked in Jack's volubly expressed opinion.

"Jack?" Daniel replied evenly. "I'm gonna go back for the gun, okay?"

Jack's head appeared, Cheshire Cat-like, through the water. "I have the Zat here," he offered generously.

Daniel shook his head. "Not going to get it done," he declined politely.

"This is really annoying you, isn't it?" Jack observed intelligently.

"I'm going to kill you."

"Is that a threat?"

"Statement of intent. "

"Ah, you'd be lost without me," Jack sneered, bounding athletically through the wall of water. He immediately regretted this as his aching balls badly twinged, but hey, what an entrance.

"He would be found without you." Mawai's dispassionate judgement emerged from nowhere, making them jump. The air shimmered like a heat haze and there she stood, rigid with distaste and disapproval. "This one," she spat, gesturing passionately at Jack, "is all anger and deceits. How could you set your heart on him!"

"I – I didn't," Daniel stuttered, stunned by the accusation as well as her unexpected appearance.

"Is he not the choice of your ah'tiyan'ah'tenrae?"

Jack glared at Daniel, who, through selfishness and/or incompetence, had not managed to master the entire Tiyan language in one morning and couldn't give the explanation demanded of him.

"Do you humans of Earth not pair for life? Is it not that only death will part those who are hand-fast?"

"Hand-fast? Married?" Daniel interpreted, ignoring urgent, surreptitious signals from Jack to find out about the other stuff. The cool invisibility stuff. They'd get to it, when the time was right. For Mawai, not for them. Patience, he'd learned, was only the first part of the tortuous process of diplomacy.

"Bonded, yes. Hand-fast." Looking grim and tired, Mawai walked slowly over to sit wearily at one of the stylish polished wooden benches arranged pleasingly around the place.

"Explain ah'tiyan'ah'tenrae?" Daniel urged her, following. "I only know the first of those words." The Tiyan were the people, literally the keepers of this place, its guardians.

"I thought I had done the right thing," Mawai fretted.

"Oh, you've done a lot of things, lady, none of them right," Jack drawled unpleasantly, taking his place hip, thigh and shoulder-close to Daniel.

"There is a vigil kept, a long night of the – the soul," Mawai explained intensely. "Where two who would be hand-fast together learn all that may be known of one another and make their bond."

"You give them something, right?" Daniel clarified, a cold, ugly knot in the pit of his aching stomach.

"In the old days it was fruit of the tenrae, a rare and precious tree," Mawai recounted reverently. "Tenrae in your words is remembrance."

"Tenrae is memory, tiyan is keeper," Daniel rapidly signified his understanding to her. So this ritual was about keeping memories, presumably those confidences shared by the happy couple during their vigil.

"Our numbers grew. It was not possible to break with tradition nor to take from this world the few tenrae groves we have," Mawai explained with conviction. "And so we sought knowledge. Another way. In time, the way was found to keep the spirit of our tradition alive."

"A technology." Daniel leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, giving her all of his attention. It pleased her, flattered. He was genuinely fascinated, though, starting to feel the edges of an explanation for what had been done to him and Jack.

"Like all technology, a way to better and protect," Mawai said softly, significantly.

Daniel could see how badly she needed him to understand her, to give in to her. She was consumed by the need. He was reminded uncomfortably of Ernest, his pitiable need to share, stronger even than his fear. He was too angry to be able to pity Mawai as he had Ernest even though she was perhaps as broken inside as Ernest had been.

"A technology to touch the mind," Mawai went on. "To share. To take a memory precious to one into the mind of the other, a thing only possible between those truly bonded."

"Nanotechnology," Daniel realised. "Tiyan nanotechnology."

"Fraiser would've found the little buggers," Jack objected. "In my blood."

"Mawai just stepped out of thin air, Jack," Daniel reminded him. "The technology is here, it's everywhere around us. It's the reason you don't get wet playing in the water and it's the reason every old thing can be touched without falling apart. It's everywhere but you can't see it, only the thing that's behind it."

"Yes, yes," Mawai agreed eagerly, her eyes shining. "We protect."

"This technology is programmed to read a memory from the mind of the carrier?" Daniel quirked an eyebrow at Mawai. She beamed encouragingly at him. Good boy, Daniel, he'd learned a new trick. "Then it's transmitted by pheromones to their sexually compatible partner." He nodded brisk comprehension, trying hard to stay focused even though the meaning of this was cutting at the edges of his conscious attention. His mouth dried and his heart began again to slam. "If the other person doesn't read that memory, if they aren't compatible?"

"No bond is formed." Mawai, a trifle impatient, believed this was self-evident. "They do not become hand-fast."

"You gave something to me," Daniel drew her on.

"I gave you fruit of the tenrae," Mawai said proudly. "It was on the last of your days here."

He couldn't remember the fruit, only the nightmares he'd had after he was home again. About the child. Sha'uri's son. He'd become utterly obsessed with finding the mythical Kheb, convinced he understood what Sha'uri had asked of him, that he take the boy away because he was the only one who could protect him. Taking the boy was the only way to fulfil his promise to her. His conviction had been as sincere as his obsession. It had taken Oma Desala to open his mind and force him to see himself and the path he was truly on. He was blinded and hate-filled.

He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowed hard. Jack said nothing but pressed into him, shoulder, hip and thigh, offering some small comfort in facing Mawai down together.

"The fruit – I ingested the technology then," Daniel acknowledged when he thought he could control his voice.

"The memory I gave was of here," Mawai explained anxiously. "Of home. Only that. I did not seek to harm, Daniel. Only to bring you home."

"This," Jack said cuttingly. "Is not home."

"This is my fault," Daniel confessed stoically. He was driven to his feet and away from them, needing a moment with his back turned to compose himself. Just a moment.

"You didn't exactly see this coming," Jack argued in that stern, pissed-parent tone he got when he was trying to keep Daniel in line.

"I wanted to be sure, Daniel." The pleading note was whining through Mawai's thin voice, failing much as the rest of her was. "I wanted you to not be alone as I have always been. I did not know if your heart was set on Robert or on another and so I wished to be sure. I hoped for you to have someone with whom you could share the hand-fast bond. The cha'nassae was directed to learn from you, to wait and to be sure."

"My fault," Daniel translated stiffly. "My pheromones, my reaction to you. My choice. You. It spread to you from me." Incredible he could get the words out when everything he thought he knew was being over-written, erased like a bad translation from his blackboard. He had a giddy memory of himself casually obliterating the words 'doorway to heaven' with the same certainty Mawai had brought to erasing his sense of who he was. For a moment, he understood how Meyers and Shore had felt, seeing the sum of all they thought they knew dismissed and wiped clean by an arbitrary hand.

"The cha'nassae was sure," Mawai said yet again, with absolute conviction.

The breath whooshed bitterly from Daniel's lungs, as if he'd been punched in the gut. He was jumpy and sore, tender all over. "Jack, you were receptive to me, so it spread to you from me. Mutually-assured attraction," he recognised, derisively using a language Jack knew. Mutually-assured destruction. Shaken by a sudden fury, he spun around. "Hard to deny your own body chemistry, huh, Jack?" he shot at him, knowing Jack in his own way was every bit as blinkered and rigid as Mawai. His mind was closed to this. To Daniel. And for all his wilful blindness and denial, he was as betrayed by his own body, his own involuntary desires, as Daniel was.

"Me, I am not sure," Mawai grieved, close to tears and to anger as she stared up at Daniel. "The marks on your face," she faltered. "I had not thought – I could not know," she tried to excuse herself. "Until he," she spat at Jack, "came to me and did this!" She reached into a pocket among the folds of her full skirt, pulling out a few crushed, twisted metal shards, mourning over them in her cupped hands. "He said he could break the world," she sighed almost to herself. "He said he could be trusted only with you. Me, I do not trust him with you."

"Who did you think hurt him?" Jack snarled, a purring menace in his voice that made even Daniel shiver.

"I thought," Mawai began to answer.

"You did this," Daniel interrupted forcefully, coming to stand braced in front of her. "You. Not Jack. It wasn't his choice to hurt me. He fought it with everything he had and it still wasn't enough. He tried to protect me to – to the end. Your technology, your cha'nassae, this is what it did to him. What it did to us." He touched fingers to his cheek. "Violence was done. It was a rape, what you did to us," he said deliberately. "A violation. Don't blame Jack for what you did! This was you."

He touched his face again in emphasis.

"Accept responsibility! You had no right. None!"

His voice was rising, Mawai folding in on herself in grief and shock, and he forced down a stinging memory of his confused responses to Jack's advances, fought himself back to steadiness, back to a place where he could use this. Falling apart, he'd have to do on his own time, later.

"What I don't get," Jack interjected, "is why Daniel? Why him? What in god's name did you think you were trying to accomplish?"

"Exactly!" Daniel seconded him. "You talk about securing Tiya's heritage and culture but what's the difference between you dying alone now and me dying alone forty or fifty or sixty years from now? What could one person – or two – possibly accomplish?"

"If you were so set on keeping this place alive," Jack supported him, "Why didn't you try to bring in people from outside? From one of those worlds Daniel tells me the Tiyans explored? Why didn't you even try to negotiate with Stargate Command?"

"I could not!" Mawai was gaping at the two of them as if they were insane. "It is wrong! Do you forget my people died? That I am the last of Tiya?" she objected strongly. "How could we in good conscience subject another people to our fate? It is not possible."

"Yet you didn't hesitate to subject Daniel to your fate," Jack accused angrily.

"I did it for love!" Mawai cried.

"LOVE?" Jack roared, absolutely infuriated.

"Love!" Her fanaticism laid bare, Mawai did not back down from Jack's rage. "For the love he and I share for the past, a love so deep, so encompassing, the likes of you could not comprehend. It is everything."

Daniel was loath to concede anything to her but he had to face his own shock at her betrayal of him. He really had believed they'd connected, that they had each found somewhat of a kindred spirit.

"For love and for the strength he has," she said challengingly. "Do you not know his spirit of endurance? I saw it clear! Daniel is a man who needs no other. He could live alone here all of his days and endure without despair. How could anyone despair who is touched so strongly by the past his place is there?"

"You picked Daniel because he's got nothing?" Jack was so enraged he could barely get the words out, so choked with feeling he couldn't possibly have meant what he said. It couldn't be what he thought of Daniel. Not at the core. It couldn't. It was the anger lashing, not Jack.

It...hurt.

"You don't actually need anyone, though, do you?" Daniel's quiet voice cut through the explosive hostility erupting between Jack and Mawai. "When you die, the drones will go on doing what they were made to do. What you built them for. To protect Tiya, to conserve its past and preserve its legacy."

Mawai got shakily to her feet, reaching out to put a pleading hand on Daniel's arm. "They cannot love, Daniel. Not as you and I..." Her voice broke, tears starting. "When I found you, I could not bear..." She was weeping, begging for his empathy and forgiveness.

"You couldn't bear to let it go on unloved," Daniel said gently. "Maintained by machines fulfilling their programming."

"You understand," she whispered.

"I understand," Daniel promised. He was aware of Jack's sudden, restless shift behind him. "You destroyed my life and Jack's life, abrogated your responsibility to conserve the essence and spirit of a dead people, and not only failed to communicate the legacy of Tiya but made an absolute lie of it."

She jerked back from each scathing condemnation as if struck, her face greying.

"The sole purpose of your life, everything you've lived for, eradicated." He calmly removed her hand from his arm. "What you did," he said contemptuously, "was the opposite of love. It was hateful. We don't share anything, Mawai, because for all my failings, I would never calculatingly destroy a life claiming love as justification. I don't love Tiya. I could never love it because I'll always know what it cost me and what it cost Jack and even what it cost you."

She fled then, crying inconsolably.

Daniel flung out an arm to stop Jack when he would have gone after her and they stood together, watching as she was taken by the transporter.

"It's too soon," Daniel explained his reasoning. "She needs time to absorb – to accept she was wrong. I think she knows it." He tried to smile and found he was looking at Jack but not seeing him, his eyes unable to focus.

"Don't start," Jack warned him, rough with emotion he failed to entirely suppress. "We're way past the point of who's to blame. What's done is done. Just let it be."

"Don’t you have anything to say to all this?" Daniel snapped in disbelieving frustration, too distressed to articulate even to himself what most flayed him about this obscene invasion of privacy.

"Sure I do." Jack ignored Daniel's agitation as if it weren't there. "You did good, maybe good enough we have a shot at getting out of here. I say we let the old bitch stew for a while and then if she's still holding out, hit her up with an idea for setting up a permanent research base here."

"In other words, we wait for her to die and claim all the cool stuff for Mom, apple pie and the good ole' US of A."

"I'm comfortable with that."

It was Daniel's turn to walk away. He hoped Jack would be very happy, all alone in the state of denial.

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

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