Part Four

Daniel considered himself uniquely gifted at fucking up. Every day, in every way. Going three rounds with Mawai had given him so many juicy failings to worry himself sick over, so much collateral damage to his sense of self, he hardly knew where to begin. Even taking stock of his life, he was coming up short.

Oh, he was clear about everything and everyone he'd failed to hold onto.

He could begin the litany with his parents. Nick-not-Grandpa, not once, not twice, but three, count 'em, three times, beat out in the end by giant Mayan aliens. Story of his life, huh? Always something or someone bigger and better. Foster parents had shuttled in and out of his so-called childhood as if through a revolving door. He'd kissed his career goodbye along with his professional credibility.

Had a relationship – failed -with a woman – embittered, angry - that never really made it out of his office apart from an outing for tea one time.

A wife he was given as a present and pretty much gave back when he started digging in the dunes. He took the life from Sha'uri, having delivered her back into slavery and the hands of the Goa'uld, having failed her in every conceivable way up until the moment she gave her life for him and for the child he hadn't been able to save for her.

He'd carelessly lost his own life more than once and the question marks over his sanity refused to go away.

This list went on. And on.

His latest snatch from the jaws of victory was a stellar one-for-all haul of Stargate, Stargate Command and SG-1.

Which left – nothing.

Or Jack.

Which, according to Jack, whose finely-honed selective hearing refused to tune in to Radio Rational, was less than nothing. Jack did not have a problem. Far from it! He was just fine and dandy, thank you. Sorry about the near-rape and beating the crap out of Daniel and stuff, but hardly to blame. He was drugged up. Under the influence. Compromised by insidiously invasive alien technology expressly designed to get him in Daniel's pants. He had nothing to do with that. Nothing to say to that. That was over. That, according to Jack, was nothing.

Daniel hadn't had a chance to figure out how he felt about all of that before it became nothing. Scared shitless? Check. Sick to his stomach? Check. Confused? Check. Guilty? Check. Absolutely fucking furious? Check, check. Responsible? Check.

That was ironic. He felt responsible even before he was told he was responsible. The chemical attraction, the hormones that went haywire, the wayward pheromones, all his.

Love is blind?

Love was fucking unconscious.

Betraying body chemistry apart, he didn't know if he wanted Jack. He didn't know if he could try to be with him. He didn't know what Jack remembered or what was real to him. He didn't know what Jack wanted except for none of this to have happened and Daniel to go away and stop bothering him about it.

He did know he wasn't holding on to Jack because he'd never held on to anyone. How he felt was irrelevant.

He didn't matter that much.

"I wondered where you were."

"Here," Daniel mumbled, glancing around vacantly to find Jack leaning against the end of the bookcase. Déjà vu. Only this time he seemed...quiet. "I was here." Daniel shrugged and pushed the book he'd been skimming back into its proper place. "Working." Instead of going towards Jack, he went away, to the window, staring down, troubled by the wasted glow of street-lighting in the dead, distant city spread out dimly far below. Time had passed. Hours. His stomach was cramped yet again and he was very, very tired. "That's what I do. I work. That's what I have. Work."

Behind him, Jack sighed, not a weary sound, rather the sound of a man who was kind of sorry for him and willing to stick it out with him for now.

"You don't have to stay," Daniel generously let him off the hook. "In fact, I don't want you to stay."

"Thanks," Jack retorted ungratefully.

"I'm not in the mood."

"Daniel, you are never, ever in the mood to talk about yourself," Jack informed him with wry patience.

"That's because there's nothing to talk about." Daniel turned around and walked back along the aisle, past Jack, starting a drifting circuit of the shelves. He trailed his fingers over the spines of the books, something he'd done as a child, when a library, a literal world of books, had been a wonder to him. "I was thinking about it all, earlier."

"Thinking about what?" Jack, trailing along a step or two behind him, was willing to play along for a while.

"Nothing."

"Daniel!"

"Nothing, Jack," Daniel repeated insistently. "Because nothing is precisely what I have."

"That's ridiculous." Jack had the patient humouring tone of a placating kindergarten teacher down pat.

It was a particularly jarring note after the fight Daniel had taken on with Mawai today, the responsibility he'd shouldered, but it wasn't a new note. What was new was Daniel not able, not willing to indulge Jack in his turn. There was nothing here to wheedle or coax from Jack, no need for him to play this game. It struck him then how many times, in how many ways Jack would try to force him into the role of child. It was hammering home here on Tiya that Jack looked to control him. Jack was comfortable with that and Daniel had made himself complicit.

"My feelings are not ridiculous," Daniel contradicted flatly. "You may not agree with me but at least have the courtesy to respect me."

"Excuse me?"

"No. No, I don't think so, Jack. Not this time."

"In case you missed it, I'm trying to help you!"

"The only thing that will help me is you facing up to a little reality. Dealing with a little truth."

"What truth?" Jack asked warily.

"I'm a loser."

Jack gave a grunt of impatience.

"How else would you define someone who hasn't managed to hold onto one single thing in his entire life? Not one single person."

"You've got me," Jack started to argue.

"You!" Daniel gave an angry snort. "You're running, Jack. Only, there's no place to go."

"I have told you repeatedly," Jack countered with iron patience.

"That's over, thank you, yes, I got that part," Daniel interjected rapidly. "Over for you, maybe. But what about me? Gone but not forgotten, that's how it is for me. You're still here, still standing right in front of me, but gone."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jack denied forcefully.

"Then let me finish!" Daniel retorted with equal force. "I grasp that I don't get to want you, that it isn't convenient, isn't in your game plan. I grasp that bitterness is my problem, that disappointment is not an option open to me. I always grasp the obvious after I've fucked up and lost out. I'm fundamentally unlovable, that's what it is. I just have nothing people want. Not enough I'm allowed to fuck up. Never. Not – not worth the effort."

Oh, god, his voice was so thick and shaky, there was so much salt in his mouth and his tight throat, he thought he might be crying.

Jack grabbed onto him, pulled him around and Daniel went blindly, folding into him, panting desperately through the cold, hurting weight in his chest.

"Easy," Jack crooned, holding him tight. Holding on. "Easy, Daniel."

Nothing was easy.

He was pouring sweat, shaking and icy, rubbing restlessly into Jack's throat, into warmth he couldn't touch. He wanted very badly to touch, to have something real, something Jack. Something his, not done to him. He stretched up, not even seeing Jack, touching numb lips to his. Jack was warm, though, and he could touch if he chose. He did choose, stinging heat in his mouth, bursting in his chest as he kissed Jack harder and harder, pushing into the whole of his body. His heat and Jack's, flowing...

Jack wrenched away, sending Daniel staggering as he backed-pedalled furiously. His face wild, he cast a murderous look at Daniel, then stormed away.

He couldn't stop running, no matter what he or Daniel wanted. He couldn't face anything Daniel could offer.

Numbly, only going through the motions of functioning, Daniel gathered up a book or two from the table, his notes, the thick, creamy paper and smooth pens of many colours Mawai had thoughtfully provided throughout his prison.

Daniel, failing to absorb one shock too many, stumbled from the library down to their room in a stupor he couldn't shake. Fogged and stupid, he sat dully at the table, waiting, a cold hand cupped over the nagging pain in his side.

Jack didn't come.

Shivering, Daniel undressed, keeping on the long, thick shirt of soft, natural, bleached fibre Jack had got for him. He crawled into bed, deep under the covers.

Waiting.

He'd kissed Jack. Kissed him. He was the kisser, not the kissed. He couldn't remember having done it before. He'd never kissed anyone. Not that way, not being the one to think of reaching out first. He had only ever been kissed. Now he had kissed Jack and Jack was gone. Clearly, this thing of being the kisser was a one-shot deal and he lost. That was him, alright. A loser.

Loser.

And so it went, around and around and around, hammering and mocking until his head was thumping.

Then Jack was there, ghosting across the room towards his bed.

Strangled by fear, by failure, Daniel found he would reach out one more time. It wasn't making a choice so much as knowing he had nothing left to lose. The ground had shifted from under his feet, Jack was gone, and he was falling, falling.

"You can get in with me, if you want." He sounded half-dead.

Jack froze.

"You can get in with me, if you want."

Jack had never imagined Daniel could sound like that. Daniel didn't give up. He wasn't capable of it. It was far more than mere tenacity or grit, it was an inner strength. It was the quality Jack most admired in Daniel and it was the one that gave him the most trouble.

He was moving before he could make a conscious decision, only knowing he couldn't bear to have Daniel sound like that. To have made him feel like that. When he was there, at the bedside, he told Daniel to put out his right hand. He wanted the reassurance of the argument this should provoke, but Daniel reluctantly complied in silence. Jack pressed the communicator disc he'd taken from Mawai's empty office to the back of Daniel's hand, waiting for questions about it that didn't come. The hand in his was cold and clammy, Daniel wracked by shivers. He was waiting for Jack, had already waited too long.

Having taken off his boots before he came in, Jack had only to unlace his breeches and step clear of them. He draped them carelessly over the curved footboard. Daniel had kept on his shirt and respecting that natural reticence, so would he. He had to find boundaries before he pushed them.

He stood there at the side of the bed, looking steadily down at Daniel. "I'm sorry," he said clearly. "I'm not sorry for you. Move over."

With as little fuss as Jack had undressed, Daniel hitched over and made room for him. Jack got in beside him and pulled the blankets high around his shoulders, keeping what heat in the bed he could. Daniel lay stiffly beside him, quiet for longer than Jack had ever known him to be. It was wrong.

"Now what?" he asked.

"I don't know," Daniel responded with dazed, disarming candour. "I didn't think you were listening."

"Let's try this." Jack reached for Daniel, pulling him in so close, so tight. When his arms had found comfortable places on Daniel to be, Daniel shyly moved his head onto Jack's pillow. He looked sick with relief, but was still staring at Jack with shining eyes.

"What made you get over yourself?"

Of course, now with the talking.

Jack kissed him very slowly, very gently, feeling a great pain inside as he finally let go of what had held him together for all his adult life. He'd bucked the system, stuck it to the man, but he was at his core military. He not only chose to put on the uniform, he worked like a bastard to earn the right to wear it. He made an informed, irrevocable choice to take on its limitations and its demands. He made himself a tool of his government, a target for others.

He killed because it was his duty and his responsibility, he killed well and with great skill because he was talented and because he was proud. He succeeded at it all, did everything that was demanded of him, and more. He loved what he did even when it grew in time to be hateful. He loved it so much he wouldn't give it up when it changed him, when it changed his wife.

Sara was always the one who had to adapt, to give in to him. He wouldn't give it up when his son felt neglected, began to buck against the system Jack had defined, the man Jack was. He wouldn't give it up when his son died because of the man Jack was, climbing back into his uniform even when he'd given up on living. Jack was a selfish bastard who didn't have the excuse of being blind, of being oblivious. He made a choice that what he did was who he was. Because he loved it.

Who he was could not love Daniel Jackson.

Jack was career military. At any cost. Immovable.

He was in bed with a man he loved, giving up, giving in on most of who and what he was. The only answer he could find for this was that he'd found in Daniel the one person as strong as him. The only one. Only Jack could have found an absolute equal in the least likely package imaginable, in a man quintessentially his opposite, who disagreed with everything he said and almost everything he did.

As hard as Jack pushed and fought, Daniel stood his ground and pushed back. Most times, Jack was the one who would give. He never, ever meant to, only he'd learned through hard experience that immovable lost out to irresistible. He had the solution to that particular age-old puzzle. He was intimately acquainted with the flaws and subtle pressure points that made immovable...brittle. He knew what it was to draw lines in the sand and to have Daniel blithely cross them.

Getting into this bed with Daniel was the one thing he would never have given. He hadn't believed it was possible because it cost him too much and he had never been able to give. Friendship had to be enough. He had made it enough. This was the one line he would not cross. It should've been easy. Before Daniel erupted into his orderly existence, Jack's definition of 'best friend' was a guy he'd willingly die for but didn't even know he had a kid.

Promising himself he would never cross the line with Daniel Jackson was like making himself a promise he'd never take a swim; a righteous, no-sweat, no-brainer until you fell out of the goddamned boat you couldn't keep away from. And here he was: Colonel Jerk O'Neill, man of steel, out of uniform and over the line, living proof you could fool yourself all of the time.

Jack thought he had Daniel beat until he was over here by the bed, stripping. And he gave in because Daniel asked. That was it. That was all it took. Daniel asking him to give in, wanting and needing Jack as if his life depended on it, believing Jack would refuse him and asking him anyway. And after a lifetime of unenlightened self-involvement, Jack could not find it in him to refuse. It hurt. He felt the ache of it in his bones. Daniel had been hurt more, though, and Jack felt the balance, the rightness, at finally getting to fix all of that.

Daniel's hands crept between them to rest hopefully, persuasively over Jack's chest. Daniel was waiting for him, needing him, and in the end, it was terribly easy for him to say.

"I love you."

Daniel gulped noisily, his fingers clenching convulsively in the shirt. He honestly didn't know the power he had.

Irresistible.

Reaching around to stroke Daniel's hair, Jack kissed him again, hungrier but taking great care. Daniel had pressure points too and Jack had hurt him. Not all the wounds were so easy to see or feel as the one marking Daniel's generous mouth, moving softly with his.

Jack the bastard was in love with Daniel Jackson, the gentle soul who'd gutted him. Whatever that cost, he would pay and pay. Willingly now, and in time, gladly.

"You want anything?" Jack offered suggestively, rubbing Daniel's shoulders. Within limits, obviously. So far, Daniel's experience was Jack + Sex = Nightmare. And Jack's equipment wasn't exactly in full working order.

"I want you to tell me why you got in bed with me."

"I'm in bed with you," Jack objected, feeling the first slippage of the conversational avalanche. God alone knew he should be used to it by now.

"I know you are." Daniel gave him a pleased, grateful little kiss. "I want to know why."

"Being in bed with you and in love with you isn't enough?" Jack felt the golden glow of noble sacrifice dim abruptly. "That doesn't stand on its own merits? I mean, now you've got me here, you don't want to have sex with me or anything?"

"Sex?"

"Sex."

"I didn't expect you to get in bed with me. I wasn't prepared for it," Daniel explained with a certain ingenuous dignity. "Plus, although I'm absolutely certain I want you, definitely in the context of bed, I didn't exactly get into specifics."

"That's good to know. I was starting to think you were going to tell me to get out again," Jack said somewhat tartly.

"I'm not freaked or having flashbacks or anything," Daniel assured him.

"I did pick up on that when you asked me to get in here with you, yes."

"You're incredibly annoying, you know." There was an encouraging lack of condemnation in Daniel's complaint.

"And you have no idea why you love me?"

"None."

"That's about as much idea as I have of why I'm in this bed," Jack admitted, giving way to a rueful grin, glad he was not in this mess alone. "I've spent most of the night convincing myself of what's best for both of us, and it didn't include you saying get in here with me and me doing it."

"So, you have no idea why you love me either."

"None."

"What did you have in mind? Sex, I mean."

"Nothing interactive," Jack disclaimed promptly. "I've got my pride to think of."

"Is that what you call it?"

"What's left of it." He nudged Daniel's thigh with his. "You did good," he promised quietly, offering up his professional opinion, and gratitude, for what they were worth. "For both of us."

Daniel closed his eyes for a long, difficult minute, his mouth tight. Then he kissed Jack as hard as he had back there in the library, pushing into him with single-minded intensity, with the whole of his body. Jack readily accepted time would be needed for them both to adjust and absorb, to move on from thinking of sex and attraction to wanting and feeling. Kissing Daniel Jackson was only the barest taste of possibilities he had opened up to.

Had he allowed his imagination free-rein, he would've known what Daniel's indomitable inquisitiveness meant in a kiss. The first thing, naturally, was Daniel couldn't keep his tongue to himself. It got everywhere. He couldn't, for a second, keep quiet. He hummed appreciation, murmured astonishment, groaned, grunted, moaned and whimpered. He couldn't keep still and the hands, like the tongue, got everywhere. He couldn't kiss half-heartedly; it took the concentrated attention of lips, teeth, tongue, face, hands, belly, chest, hip, cock and thigh, even toes, for him to communicate to Jack how very, very nice he found all of this. There was licking, nibbling, sucking, blowing, the brush and stroke and press and taste of lips, and that, that little grating thing with the teeth.

When Jack cracked, when he craved, he should have known Daniel's sensitive, practiced fingers would grace his cock with the precise, exquisite love and reverent passion he gave unstintingly to every thing precious to him. He should have known Daniel would make him sweat and shake, wrack him with sweet, sweet pain, pay him back a thousand times over for what he was giving up of himself.

He should've known how easy it was to touch Daniel, how little was asked and how little it took to please him. Just Jack's mouth clamped demandingly to his. Being able to touch and hold each other while they passionately kissed. Jack's slow, easy hand, knowing and very natural rubbing his cock against his shuddering belly, a slick, sweating palm gliding hotly over the underside. The subtle, fingering pressure on his balls that made his thighs quiver, made his body arch and clench in speaking silence as Jack implacably stroked him to streaming orgasm.

Jack, kissing wounds he'd inflicted on Daniel's strong, intoxicating body, with trembling, wondering hands stroking through his hair, should have known Daniel loved him.

What he didn't know was how Daniel could be so alone, how anyone could hurt him when he gave so much, when he was capable of touching them like this. Jack was never letting go of him.

Neither felt like talking, breaking the fragile mood. It only seemed important they be close. It was enough. When Jack shifted only a little, those gentle, compulsive hands urged him back and so he stayed as he was, letting Daniel hold onto him for as long as he needed to.

"How long do you think we can just lie here pretending to sleep?" Daniel enquired. He had turned over onto his side through the night and was curled into a comfortable ball, only the top of his head visible above the snug blankets.

"I figure one of us has to crack sooner or later and go pee," Jack responded in a friendly, conversational way.

"Is there anything more embarrassing than waking up next to a man you've known for years, only this time, you've had your hand on his cock and he's had his hand on yours?" Daniel's tone suggested not.

"I think it's pretty much rock bottom in the how-low-can-you-go stakes."

"Not that it was bad," Daniel clarified hastily and with unnecessary emphasis, slinking an inch or two further under the blankets.

"No." Jack winced at their not exactly glowing endorsement of the night's athletics. It was his experience that his mind existed solely to fuck his body over and that feelings, like toast, were designed by that bitch Nature to land butter-side down. "Can we just agree that, you know, it happened and we got through it?"

"We can," Daniel said slowly, a hint of reluctance suggesting he required something more in the way of reassurance before he would allow his bladder to get the better of him.

"And that we don't regret it," Jack added quickly. Not regret per se, he thought. You couldn't wholly regret something you were hoping to get to do again quite soon and then repeat at frequent intervals forever. "Only our lives got turned upside down..."

"Even more than they already were," Daniel flattened Jack encouragingly.

"And that some reaction time is natural and understandable."

"Completely understandable."

Jack, who was not cowering abjectly under the blankets, began to feel he was edging ahead on points on the coping thing. Not bad for the unapologetic, unenlightened military male in the equation, he congratulated himself. It helped for him to remember these things every time Daniel remembered just whose testosterone it was got them in this mess.

"Jack?" Daniel wheedled. "Are you going to tell me what you did, where you went and most importantly what you decided, when you ran away last night?"

"Wasn't planning to, no." What was the point? Jack had had his, what did Mawai call it? His night of the soul? Yeah. He'd had that, convinced himself he was so over this little hormonal hiccup, Daniel was deluded and just plain wrong, situation normal, all fucked up. Then he came back here, Daniel pouted at him and he leapt straight in bed with him. What few shreds of dignity and credibility he had left, he was hanging onto.

Eyeing the door, which he was closest to, Jack wondered if it was possible to make it out of the room before Daniel made it out from under the covers? Not that he was embarrassed. He was coping just fine with Daniel knowing the pepper-and-salt hair thing applied to his pubes too.

He could make it if he snatched his pants and ran, he decided.

"Don't even think about it," the heap under the blankets instructed, apparently adding telepathy to his list of talents. A hot hand found Jack's thigh and rubbed a soft hello.

"I like this feeling of being able to do something," the blankets confided charmingly.

Jack liked it too. Very much. When his legs spread wide pretty much of their own accord, Daniel happily proved his mastery of body as language. Easing over to rest his head on Jack's chest, he snuggled under the arms that came around him, made contented, drowsy sounds, dreamy fingers caressing, lingering.

Jack's parched, ecstatic heart contracted tenderly as his weeping cock jumped for joy. He was racking up a debt of feeling he would take a lifetime to return.

"You’re easy," Daniel said, a possessive, claiming hand curved over Jack's hip.

Daniel deserved the moment. Nothing that was personal to him seemed to have ever come easy. If Jack didn't take much work, well, that was fine by him. Daniel should keep his hand where it was and take a load off.

"Anything I can do for you?" Reciprocation was only fair and just between friends. It wasn't only that Jack wanted to put his hands all over Daniel.

"You can shift your butt and take me back to that museum."

Jack lifted the blankets to direct an irate glare into sparkling, wholly unrepentant, bratty blue eyes. Daniel did not care about the sensory deprivation he was inflicting.

"You asked," Daniel defended himself with a smugness that suggested he knew how much of a brat he was being. "Anything you can do, you said. Anything." He slithered up to bestow a quick consolation kiss. "Never ask a question you don't know the answer to or make an offer you can't meet. It's the first rule of negotiation." Oh, he was enjoying himself. Getting Jack to put out was very, very bad for him. "You know about negotiation, right? It's what happens when you don't shoot. Sometimes known as diplomacy."

"You're real cocky this morning, aren't you?" Jack said evenly, fighting off an ambushing wave of indulgence.

Daniel stretched lazily, pulled a face and rubbed at his side with an irritable hand. "Why not? I got laid last night and I get to drag you all over a museum this morning. It's like Christmas." As the museum was a much more enticing prospect than a sprawled and sweaty Jack, Daniel rolled out of bed and went over to investigate breakfast. He looked at all the dishes, shrugged disinterestedly and went out into the garden empty-handed, flooding the room with cool, sweet-smelling air.

Jack, who'd decided his diet was going to be dairy-free from the moment he'd run into their milk on the hoof, didn't blame Daniel for turning his nose up. He made do with thick slices of fried meat, eggs and a savoury pastry. Dental hygiene was taken care of by the little balls that had accompanied every food offering. They were filled with something, or rather a billion little somethings, that sort of tingled the crud off of your teeth. Jack missed the minty taste of toothpaste.

Baths were taken separately in the depressingly hi-tech communal facilities and, sadly, without sex. Daniel wasn't jonesing for anything that didn't come with a tour guide. Their lives came with hot and cold running cleansing, meals and clothes. The morning routine Jack was used to had become abbreviated and he missed that too, taking his time over shaving. This at least was familiar. He was a huge fan of cool stuff and techno-toys, nobody loved them better, but not to the extent water became optional in your bath. He wanted to splash around, play with his duck and also his archaeologist, not have his dirt irradiated and deodorised.

When finally he had run out of avoidance tactics and Daniel was dancing with impatience, they set off for the museum.

"Something I meant to ask you yesterday, before we got distracted," Jack said. "I haven't read the Tiya mission report..."

"You don't read reports for missions you're part of," Daniel countered rudely.

"BUT," Jack's voice rose impressively. "I don't get why it was decided nothing here was worth the SGC's effort."

"Nothing was decided." Daniel's brow wrinkled. "My recommendation was to send in an archaeological team, obviously, but also a scientific team to conduct a feasibility study on whether or not the factors rendering most Tiyan technology useless off their world could be overcome. We do know the Tiyans explored other planets through their Stargate, so some of the technology was definitely engineered with materials found off-world. It was all theoretically possible."

"Well, we have concrete proof Tiyan toys can be played with well by others right here," Jack said dryly, tapping his head.

"Oh! God, you're right." Looking impressed, Daniel gave Jack a shy nudge in the ribs. "If the nanotechnology hadn't been engineered to work in other environments, we wouldn't be here."

"So if you didn't give Mawai the impression you were outta here and never coming back, it must've been Makepeace. I think I can guess why, too," Jack said grimly. "Mawai doesn't exactly have those people skills, y'know? If she was half as direct talking to that repressed bastard Makepeace about being attracted to you as she was telling me about it, he'd have freaked first and made her pay later." Unfortunately, it made perfect sense to Jack. "He's the last jerk I'd out."

"I doubt it had anything to do with me," Daniel argued, still stubbornly refusing to accept the jarhead had any feeling for him at all, of any kind. "I think the only thing on Colonel Makepeace's mind would have been getting access to Tiyan technology and resources for Maybourne's off-world NID operation."

There was that too.

Daniel almost forgot about their woes when the transporter deposited him in his five-floor Happy Place.

"We're looking for power-sources," Jack sternly warned him, knowing it wouldn't be enough. Daniel would find the ceramics and ceremonial stuff. It was what he did.

Looking over at the benches nearby where they'd confronted Mawai yesterday, Daniel gravely asked Jack if he thought they'd done any good.

"Honestly?"

"Always."

"Then I don't know. I hope so. You hit her pretty hard, Daniel." And had been hit hard himself in the process. "I think she needs to believe what she's done to you is right and you've just made that impossible for her. She won't be able to leave it alone. She'll have to rationalise what she's done, justify it to herself, and then I think she'll have to justify it to you. We need to let her stew for a while. Let all of this sink in before we hit her again." He came closer to Daniel, giving his shoulders a squeeze. "I know patient is just a word in the dictionary to you, but..."

"Excuse me?" Daniel objected, his eyebrows shooting up. "You are accusing me of impatience? You?"

"What about it?" Jack frowned heavily. And then he removed his hands. Daniel could support himself if he was going to get snarky about it. "First I can't touch, now I can't talk?"

Daniel's lips twitched. "The only reason things went okay in bed is because we didn't talk," he said unexpectedly. "That's the key to us getting along. We don't talk."

"Ever?"

"Never."

"I'm good with that," Jack assented graciously, although he reserved the right to smack Daniel with the olive branch if provoked. "In the spirit of not talking and getting along, I suggest we split up and search different floors, only communicating if we find a power source. Not stuff I can't identify and you get bouncy over. Just the power source." This prohibition was harshly explicit, but vital to Jack's sanity. There were five floors of virgin goodies. Five.

"What if I find a fully operational space ship or something? I'm not supposed to report it if it doesn't come with the Energiser Bunny slapped on the side?"

"Give me a kiss," Jack commanded. Daniel looked meek enough as he complied, but bit him. Sexily, it must be admitted. "Go away."

"Bouncy!" Daniel sneered over his shoulder as he headed for the first floor exhibits.

"How are we supposed to get along by not talking if you never shut up?" Jack retorted, double-timing it away from the temptations of museum make-up sex. His sense of self was teetering as it was, without letting the itch in his pants make him a bitch. Even after running up four flights of stairs, he was still fixated on what Daniel's hands could do to him. Bitch was the word.

The second floor of the museum was a bust from the get-go. It was packed out with artsy-fartsy crafts from Tiya's colourfully ethnic distant past and the folksy spoils of their trips through the Stargate. Jack completed a cursory circuit of the exhibition halls and moved up to the third floor. When the first thing he laid eyes on from the stairwell was a fancy frock with a jewelled skirt about a mile long, he cut his losses and went up to the fourth. Here, he struck paydirt. Or at least valves and circuitry.

It was maddening to not have the visual clues of language. He had to make a complete circuit of the floor just to orient himself and at the end of it, he decided he'd have to call Daniel up here to help him. There were too many objects and most of them were too sophisticated for him to be able to identify from a quick scan what purpose they might have served or even what ballpark criteria had been applied to their arrangement. Like wasn't with like so far as he could see. Nothing seemed alike. He and Daniel were going to have to go through each of the technology halls trying to pick out the old stuff from the new. Jack felt there were a limited number of designs possible for a race with two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears, one mouth and one nose, and the older the toys, the more likely it was he could play with them.

He touched a finger to his communicator, then again to call up Daniel's image. "Daniel?" he muttered into his hand, feeling stupid. He heard stereophonic retching. "Daniel!"

There was a heart-rending groan, then a Niagara-force flush, water splashing, swilled down and spat out. Then a pitiful little whimper.

"Stay put and keep this, er, channel open," Jack ordered. "I'm coming down."

"I don't feel so good," Daniel whined.

"You don't say." Jack took the stairs down at a dead run, two or three at a time. This was his greatest fear of being stranded, one of them getting sick or injured. They had no medical resources, not even a painkiller. "Where are you, Daniel?" he asked quickly as he ran out into the main museum thoroughfare.

"Arboretum," Daniel replied briefly. "Dead centre. At least it wasn't a stinky cow that made me throw up," he added after a moment's reflection.

Racing down the hallway, Jack didn't have breath to spare to disagree. It was entirely possible to him Daniel was having a reaction to the local versions of dairy or produce. Even at that pace, it took him almost ten minutes to find the huge glass dome of the arboretum. It was decked out like every museum hothouse, criss-crossed with faux nature trails, running water that made you want to pee, flowers that didn't grow enough places for most of the planet's population to care if they died out, and rare, fragile insects you swatted off your face or walked on. Daniel was indeed dead centre, sitting hunched over at the side of a rock pool holding his belly. He was bemused by a dusting of butterflies in his hair and one on the lens of his glasses.

Jack dropped to his haunches in front of him, taking hold of his knees. "What's up?"

"Breakfast," Daniel joked.

"Just nausea?"

Tiring, Daniel shook his head. He was pale and sweating. "Cramps. Pain."

"Show me."

Daniel shifted his hands to delicately cup his right side, above the hip, then began to rub his abdomen. "It just started." Then he thought better of this. "Actually, no. I guess it's been going on for a few of days now, just not this bad."

"What kind of a pain? Describe it for me?"

"Sharp, stabbing. Made me throw up."

"Lie down," Jack instructed him.

"The butterflies will fall off and I'll fall in the water."

"They fly and you swim and I need to examine you, so lie down." He stood, took Daniel's shoulders and helped him to ease down onto his back. Then he began to unlace the breeches.

"I like your bedside manner, Dr. Kildare," Daniel commented. "Just warm those hands!"

"It hurts here?" Jack touched the tips of his fingers to Daniel's abdomen, let Daniel move them to where he felt the pain most. Field medical training was drummed into you as hard as weapons training so you could do it any time, any place, under fire or under any circumstance. You did not panic. When Jack pressed down on the area, Daniel yelped, knees reflexively curling towards his chest, glaring resentfully up at his healthcare provider. "My first guess? Gastroenteritis," Jack said calmly, loosely knotting the laces on Daniel's breeches and helping him upright again. "Most of the stuff we've eaten since we got here, we haven't been able to identify."

"Okay."

"Let's get you back to the room and start getting fluids into you."

"You're sure it's gastroenteritis?" Daniel, worryingly, suffered Jack's help in getting him to his feet and didn't push away from the arm he kept around him as he began to walk him out of the arboretum.

"Could also be a urinary tract infection."

"I see. Burning pee to look forward to, huh?"

"Or the onset of appendicitis," Jack grimly voiced his great fear.

"Oh," Daniel said very quietly, wrapping his arms over his abdomen.

"In which case, we'll be out of here very soon."

"Will we?" Daniel asked with a sharp gasp, his face pinched and greying.

"Damn straight."

Play time was over.

Their progress through the museum was necessarily slow. Daniel was nauseous the whole time, leaning more and more heavily on Jack each time they stopped so he could throw up. Thanking god for the transporters, Jack got them back to their room and Daniel into bed as quickly as he could. He stripped him efficiently down to his loose, flowing shirt, opened the door to let in the fresh air, then ran to the gleaming kitchen nearby the drones prepared their meals in. He found a large basin to keep handy by the side of the bed, a tall pitcher and glass for the cool water, and even ice he could chip into. More water went into a second pitcher so he could bathe Daniel's face and keep him comfortable if his temperature climbed. He added cloths and put everything onto a tray.

From what he could remember, the onset of acute appendicitis was anywhere from four to forty-eight hours. If it was gastroenteritis, he was expecting diarrhoea to start. Daniel was a healthy guy who shouldn't get any sicker than he was. Getting him comfortable, getting fluids into him was the best Jack could do for him for now. He wasn't about to wait for Daniel to get worse, though. Waiting this out was a risk he would not take. Mawai wasn't in her office when he went looking for a communicator last night but her quarters had to be close by. She no longer had the option of licking her wounds in private. Jack needed to know what Mawai did when she got sick or injured, where she went or who she had to call on. There had to be something. Had to be.

He went in with the tray and found Daniel curled into a miserable ball. "Worse?" he asked sympathetically.

Daniel nodded, trying to smile.

Jack efficiently checked his pulse, found it to be ninety beats a minute. He asked Daniel what it usually was.

"Seventy."

Jack gave him an ice chip to suck on, dampened a cloth and began to bathe the sweat from his face and forehead.

"I have no luck," Daniel complained, bashfully turning his bruised cheek into Jack's hand.

Jack gave him another ice chip, smoothed back the wet hair from his brow and kissed him softly there. "I'm going to call Mawai," he said confidently. He went outside, out of earshot, activating his communicator. "Mawai?" he barked. "This is O'Neill. Mawai? Daniel is sick. Do you hear me? I'm no doctor and he needs one. He needs you too." Being cold had its advantages. Jack dealt with most of the vile, destructive things in life head-on. It was only death that couldn't be fixed. He could suck up to someone he hated with a smile on his face. "Mawai? Answer me! Daniel is sick. He could die." There. He'd said it. Admitted the possibility. It was good Jack was not the man to panic, or he'd be screaming now.

"What's making him sick, I can't treat," he went on with murderous control, knowing she was hearing him. "I think it's his appendix. I need to know what you do when you're sick. How do you get treatment for wounds, injuries, sickness? Mawai?"

He could hear her shallow breathing but she didn't answer. Jack could control fear but anger beat him. For a moment, he was light-headed with a sense of relief she had crossed the line. He would hurt her now, as much as saving Daniel required him to.

He went back inside, checked on Daniel, told him was going to fetch the old bitch down to him and see about getting him the real medical deal. Mawai needed help with the stairs, he said with a smile. He kissed Daniel on the mouth, brushed his cheek, reminded him he would be only minutes away and Daniel should call him if he needed him. He hoped Daniel would believe help was coming. He hoped he could give Daniel a few minutes of peace if he could give and do nothing else for him.

Then he tucked the zat in his breeches and went for Mawai at a sprint. He transported to her office and again found it open and empty, the drones moving quietly about their tasks. He ran down the stairs and tried the corresponding door on the floor below. He found it locked. This was easily dealt with. He zatted it once, twice, then a third time, always the charm. As the door disintegrated, he found the room inside was darkened, every heavy drape drawn tight. Mawai was huddled in her bed in the centre of the room.

"Get out!" she screamed at him as he stalked over to her bedside. "Out! It is not your right to enter!"

"Daniel," Jack responded with cutting clarity, "is sick and you are out of options." He yanked back the bedcovers and she struck at his hands as he stooped, hooked her under her armpits and lifted her bodily from the bed. She dangled, doll-like, from his hands before he set her down.

"You lie!" she beat at him with her fists. "You know only lies and threats and dark things, O'Neill."

He had no time for her distress. He'd never cared for anything she felt, only for the fact her death didn’t serve his purpose. While he was concerned only about furthering their escape, she was safe. That was no longer the case. Securing medical attention for Daniel was his only priority. He took a fistful of her nightdress and pulled her up close, letting her hang from his hand. "This weapon works on people too," he said icily, pointing the Zat at her.

Her eyes widening fearfully as he armed the Zat to fire, Mawai stared up at him.

Jack looked calmly back.

"You would do it," she recognised dazedly. "You would strike me down."

"If you let Daniel die, I'll do a lot more than strike you down, lady," Jack warned her with absolute conviction.

She shuddered violently, looking at him much as he might have looked at Milosevic's ethnic cleansers in Kosovo or at an SS guard in a concentration camp. She looked at him and saw evil.

Whatever.

"Daniel is sick?" she asked with naked suspicion as Jack took her out of the room, too fast for her frailty, not fast enough for his urgency.

"Sick enough he might die." Without letting go of Mawai, Jack rapidly tapped their destination into the transporter keypad and took them down. "But you should see him," he said as they stepped clear, back on the lowest level of the library. "You don't believe me, you can take a good hard look at him and see for yourself."

"I have no wish..."

"You have no say." Well aware of how threatening his size and strength were to Mawai, Jack picked her up off her feet and carried her down the first flight of stairs, having to hold her up at his side as he rushed her along corridor to the next. With the twenty-twenty vision only hindsight brought, he was cursing his choice of quarters, selected specifically to make it impossible for her to reach them.

He was out of time.

She cried out when he lifted her again, swooped her down and caught her stumble only because it was not convenient to him for her to be hurt. "Who do you see when you need medical help?" he asked.

"I do not ail," Mawai said breathlessly as he shoved her along. "We Tiyans are a hearty, long-lived people."

"So you never get sick but you must get hurt, you must have injuries, right?"

She shook her head at him. "I am alone, O'Neill. There is no one to whom I can turn for such help as that. Were I to have been injured as you say, I would surely have died."

"Where can I go? What can I do?" Jack snapped. "Can I get him through the gate? Can you fix the Stargate in time?"

Refusal was rigid in her face and he almost, almost hit her then, his fist brushing her cheek before he stopped himself. He had touched Daniel's cheek, the one he'd split open, before he left him to come for Mawai.

He was out of time.

"What he has can kill him in a couple of hours," he spat at her. "At most, a couple of days. If you've got nothing to give here, then he dies. He dies in agony. Is that what you want? Will that make you happy? To put him in the ground with you?"

Mawai flinched back from him in horror. "I would not harm Daniel!"

"You think I'd be left alone here if he dies?" he hammered at her. "That I'd be the one to carry the Tiyan torch for you? That I have no choices? That I'm O'Neill, for that crime alone I deserve a life sentence of solitary confinement here? Know this, Mawai: I will not give you the satisfaction. You not only get nothing from me, you lose everything. If Daniel dies, we all die with him and I take this whole fucking planet out with us."

"Y-you cannot!" It was just as Daniel had said. Mawai could hardly conceive of such an act of wanton destruction. She was hearing Jack's words but not able to understand them – or him – on any level.

Jack put his face in hers. "Watch me," he purred. Anger always beat him. It was a strong feeling, he could use it. Not like fear. Fear, he put away from him. He hooked Mawai around the waist and carried her along, wanting her to know what it was to lose control to something she couldn't fight, something that would damage and destroy all she loved and valued. He wanted her to know a little of the fear her interference with Jack's mind and body and control had put Daniel into. And if Daniel did die, if nothing could be done to save him, Jack would be her ruin as surely as she was Daniel's.

"I want you to see him," he said again as he turned at last into the hallway where their room was. "I want you to know what Tiya means to him. Those things I broke in your room? Your precious things? That was nothing to what I broke in Daniel."

"O'Neill..."

"Your hi-tech loving bond, your hand-fast cup o' kindness, it took away all my control. It let me hurt him. Rape him," he said savagely. "You know rape?"

Mawai shook pitifully as he put her down a final time, tears rolling down her cheeks. She knew.

"This is what we did to him, you and I." He propelled her over to the bed where a feverish Daniel lay very still, doubled up and panting through the pain. He looked the way he'd sounded to Jack last night when he'd taken his last chance and asked for Jack to give something, to come to him. He looked half-dead. "This is what Tiya means to him." Mawai tried to turn away and he took her chin in a bruising grip, forced her back to look at Daniel, his fist cocked threateningly. "Look at him!" It was fear of Jack that moved her, but when she saw Daniel, she was appalled. "He's not going to live here, Mawai. He's going to die here."

Mawai's face crumpled and she reached out a trembling hand to touch Daniel's brow, crying out in shock as she felt how hot he was.

Daniel opened pain-glazed eyes and tried to smile at Jack. "Mawai," he acknowledged softly, incredibly not beyond the hope that she was here to help him, that she would find it in her to do right by him at last.

"Daniel?" Jack said intently, ready to do or give anything to make that help a reality. "Please. Show Mawai exactly what Tiya means to you." He glanced significantly down towards Daniel's wounded shoulder, praying he was alert enough to follow his meaning. Everything depended on Mawai breaking now. Daniel's life depended on it. Jack could only kill her in the end and killing her did nothing for Daniel. He needed her alive, alive and breaking.

His face twisting, Daniel reached up very slowly to move aside the collar of his shirt and bare his shoulder.

Mawai moaned when she saw the raw, ugly bites deeply marking his pale, bruised skin, bringing a stifling fist to her trembling mouth as the reality of Jack's attack on Daniel hit home.

"You left us," Daniel whispered to her in pained bewilderment. "Jack was sick and I was unconscious. You knew we were in trouble."

"You knew we both needed help," Jack backed him up "You couldn't fail to see it. But you led me to that room and you left us. You left us alone and I did this to him."

Mawai couldn't tear her eyes from those bites as Daniel panted harshly through another wave of pain.

"He did worse," Daniel said when he was able. "I was hurt... and you left us."

"He waited all night for me to come after him again, thinking one of us would die," Jack snarled.

"Both of us would die." Daniel looked up fleetingly at Jack, his shadowed eyes frank. "And you cared so much for me, Mawai, you left us."

"That is what O'Neill said, that both would die," Mawai said distressfully. "One of you would not be left without the other."

"That's love," Daniel said simply. "Nothing you've done to us has been for love, Mawai. You can only take from people, not give, and that's not love. You don't know what love is."

"You say I can only take but you would have taken O'Neill's life with your weapon," she argued defensively. "I could not do that. It is not my way."

She was on the edge of a knife, Jack recognised. Whichever way she went, it was the finish and she was the only option Jack had. The drones had to be able to fix the gate. There had to be time. Had to be. They had no other way out. His only hope was to get Daniel to the medics on the Alpha Site. He couldn’t let himself think of how unrealistic this hope was; panic rose to strangle him and he was no use to Daniel that way.

"If I'd raped Daniel," Jack growled, "If he hadn't been able to fight back, it would have destroyed who he was, left him as dead inside as me. I needed him to stop me, Mawai. I trusted that he would. It was the right thing to do."

"It was all I had left to g-give." Daniel's teeth gritted on a hissing breath and he writhed on the bed, trying to get away from the piercing pain, his knees clenched to his chest, a few strained tears leaking.

Jack barged past Mawai to cradle his body protectively over Daniel's, to comfort him as much as he could, hold him as he clenched tighter and tighter still around that stab in his gut. "I've got you," Jack promised, cupping Daniel's head to his chest. "Do you even have anything we can give him for the pain?" he asked Mawai in a dead voice.

"N-not a p-prayer," Daniel gasped weakly. "It's j-just my l-luck."

"Why does he always have to meet people like you?" Jack bit out at Mawai in agony at the intolerable truth of this. "People he cares for who only want to use him. Take from him." He kissed Daniel's hair. "Why do you keep trusting us when we always let you down, Daniel? Why?"

"I'm an u-unconscious f-fuck-up who b-believes the lies people tell me. B-b-but I'm still better than M-Mawai," Daniel insisted through gritted teeth, still doing what he could to back Jack up in this fight. "At least I don't b-believe the l-lies I tell m-myself."

"I do not..." she began to protest feebly, finding Daniel's distress hard to bear.

"You're lying now!" Daniel cried out in utter abhorrence. "You're watching me die because – bec – be..." He broke off in aguish.

"Because it's easier for you to face Daniel's death than your failure," Jack came to his rescue. "You're lying when you say you don't take lives because by doing nothing, you're killing him." It was killing Jack to watch Daniel battle through all of this, trying to talk round a woman whose reason for existence was the preservation of a life that was long dead and buried, but who wouldn't lift a finger to save the man dying in front of her.

"You didn't trap us here for Daniel's sake, Mawai, or for Tiya, you did it for yourself," he said with icy contempt. "You care only for your needs and your wants and you can't love. Love? That's the biggest lie of all. It isn't in you."

"If you were c-capable of l-love," Daniel panted, "You'd h-help me, not k-kill m-me." Exhausted, he was convulsed by another spasm, hanging onto Jack as a lifeline while he panted harshly through the worst of his anguish.

"The Stargate, it is not possible," Mawai suddenly said in a strange, keening tone. "You cannot go through. But I – I will fetch aid, I swear it. I will not let Daniel die."

"What help?" Jack snarled, a breath away from snapping.

"I will send a message. The - the Asgard. They are old friends to Tiya." Mawai was so exposed by her lies, so afraid of facing the truth of what she'd done to all of them, she could scarcely speak. She feared and hated Jack but at this specific time she hated herself more. It wouldn't last. Her sorrow and her grief were more for herself and her losses than for anything she'd cost them. "Commander Thor will come, O'Neill. I swear. I have one of the a'rien'thalla – the Asgard summoning stones."

"You lying, treacherous cunt," Jack breathed, staring unseeing into the incongruously bright sunlight streaming over them.

"You must help me back to my rooms, O'Neill. With you, I will go more quickly along." Mawai sounded terrified. "Aid will come that much sooner."

"I'm fine," Daniel lied, trying to keep back the fear, pushing at Jack to go. As Jack pulled away from him, he grabbed at Jack's shirt, managing to lift his head long enough to meet his eyes. "She's not worth it, Jack. Please."

Jack kissed him caressingly on his gentle mouth. Daniel was asking so he would do what he could to keep control, to stay focused, for his sake. "Back soon," he gave his word. When he turned on Mawai she cowered back from him as if he would hit her. "Where's the stone?" he demanded curtly.

"I must..."

"WHERE?"

"Say this to the drone you will find in my rooms, O'Neill." She quavered through the same chirruping language he'd used to direct the drone to find Daniel and this time he picked out the sound of the Asgard word in the place he expected to hear Daniel's name.

"A'rien'thalla," he repeated carefully and when he was sure of what he was to say, he went out at a dead run, leaving her behind to face the consequences of her actions. Daniel wouldn't thank him for having Mawai watching him suffer that way, but Jack was the bastard, here, not the bleeding heart. He felt no pity. He wanted Mawai to see it all, to have it burned into her brain, to see it each and every time she closed her eyes and be maddened by the memory for the rest of her miserable solitary existence.

And then he ran, ran so hard his lungs burned and his muscles shook, barely holding him up as he took the transporter up to her office, shouting for the drone as he materialised. It reared up from behind a table and scooted over to the treasure trove behind the bare, concealing wall, Jack on rubbery legs right behind it, snatching up a stone he recognised. The one he had on Earth was keyed to him, but he tried it anyway and found this one was keyed to Mawai and so he ran again, pelting back to Daniel, aware of nothing but the time he was losing.

He put the stone into Mawai's hands and went at once to Daniel, checked his pulse and his fever, found to his dismay both were worse. Jack worked to cool Daniel, to make him as comfortable as he was able, watching from the corner of his eye as Mawai expertly manipulated the glowing, jewelled surface of the stone to transmit their SOS to the Asgard fleet.

"Now we wait," she said, carefully not ever looking at Jack as she huddled against the wall, her brooding gaze fixed on Daniel. She was utterly defeated, with barely the strength to stand and watch as all of her dreams were shattered.

Wait? Jack lay on the bed with Daniel, holding onto him as hard and as long as he could. So long as Daniel was fighting, then Jack was fighting too. It wasn't hope he clung to so much as it was conviction he could not bear to lose Daniel. Because he couldn't bear it, it couldn't happen. It made no sense, but it seemed Jack was not cold inside after all and he could panic. Wait? Wait for what?

"We're out of time."

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

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