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CHAPTER 1: LOST AND FOUND
Jack couldn't comprehend the force of his anger.
Jackson wanted to stay. A child could figure out why the linguist was ready,
even eager, to throw away everything and everyone he knew. The girl - Sha'uri –
Jack thought she was just a symbol of it.
Connection.
That was what Jackson was looking for, what he was so mistakenly thinking he'd
found with these people. The man believed he had nothing to go back to.
Hadn't Jack been on this very same knife-edge until just a few hours before?
Willing to sacrifice himself and his men, Skaara and the girl, all of their
people, to stop Ra. Only Jackson had asked him to wait, asked without judgement
in that way he had, and Jack's plan had fallen apart. It seemed he could kill
all of them, every one.
Not Jackson.
Not when it came down to it.
He couldn't not wait. He and Jackson were in the same space, on the same
edge.
Or so he'd thought.
Why did it enrage him so much Jackson was willing to give up, to stay behind,
even after Jack had made his choice, had it forced on him, made the stand that
moved him forward? Back into life. Into the raw acceptance of his hateful
ongoing existence. Jackson had pushed him to take that stand, had been there
with him, had made the choice with him.
It was Jackson that Jack had made the choice for.
He didn't know why.
Now, Jackson wanted to be left here, abandoned, dead to the world that knew him.
Staying here with these people was as final a choice as any death, an isolated,
living death Jackson could regret in a day or a week or a year.
The only thing Jack was sure of was Daniel Jackson was too intimate a part of
his struggle to be let go. The man he'd dismissed as full of shit had come
through, the dweeb looked directly at Jack O'Neill and knew him on some level no
one else had fathomed. Somehow...touched Jack there.
He could no more give up on Daniel Jackson than Jackson had been able to give up
on him.
All Jack had to do for Jackson was walk away from him and lie with conviction.
Bury the Stargate and Jackson behind him forever. He'd done far worse in his
time than lie to his superiors and he'd done it for far less cause. Jackson had
saved his men, saved him. Given him back his life and even some semblance of
purpose. The man had earned this from him.
He even had his line picked out, a parting shot glib enough Jackson couldn't be
too certain of him, had rehearsed it in his head until he was sure it would roll
smoothly from his tongue, not even knowing why it mattered so much he would
leave Jackson thinking about him, stewing over what Jack O'Neill meant, not this
shabby, dangerous new life he craved.
I'll be seeing you around, Dr. Jackson.
Except Dr. Jackson had become Daniel, had just connected with him in the best
way, the only way that mattered to Jack. In the fight for their lives. Or maybe,
if Jack was being honest here, in the fight for Daniel's life. The line between
his life and Daniel's life had been blurred, crossed. In the end, Jack fought
for them both.
Connection? A friend, for chrissake? At a time when nothing and no one
touched him?
I'll be seeing you around, Dr. Jackson.
The words were choking Jack. Trying to hold on to distance, dispassion, wasn't
working. He could call him 'Jackson' in his head but it didn't diminish him or
change the way Jack was thinking of him.
Daniel.
What the hell was he thinking? What was wrong with him, for chrissake? He
had a wife to go home to. How had Daniel become a man he could not bring himself
to leave?
He needed to. He should want to. Daniel had seen him at his worst, naked and
hurting. A beaten, self-destructive loser a breath away from eating his own gun,
wanting to die and cold enough to take everyone with him. He shouldn't be able
to bear seeing himself reflected in those wide, candid eyes, but Daniel was the
only thing he didn't flinch from.
Looking into Jack, Daniel knew everything. And yet Jack still
wanted…needed… He couldn't put it into words, he only knew the feeling, the
desperation of it.
He couldn't begin to understand how he'd let this happen, how or why or when his
defences had crumbled.
If he was losing or finding his way.
He did know when he left here he was taking Daniel Jackson with him.
It was all he knew.
Daniel had earned the right to stay. He was trying not to ask it of Jack,
stating his determination quietly, as if it was a matter of fact, taking
responsibility for his life so Jack didn't have to break faith. He deserved to
be allowed to make his choice, deserved Jack’s respect for his decision.
It wasn't going to happen. Jack knew it wasn't, and it shook him to the core.
His mind kept skittering away from what Sara would make of Daniel when he took
him home. It only added to his confusion he was able to picture Daniel there.
He'd learned early in his career, learned in the hardest possible way to keep
who he was and what he did strictly separated. Nothing and no one had made him
break his self-imposed segregation after his good buddy Burke showed him what
happened when you let people in. You let them in, they let you down. Jack had
not been moved from his isolation, not even for his wife and her desire to be a
part of everything.
He'd never imagined anything could move him.
Working out how to take Daniel across that line with him, the mere fact he was
even considering it, was enough to tell him he wasn't going to be able to walk
away and leave Daniel Jackson behind. It wasn't easy to face, nothing about it
was easy, but Jack had turned away from the path he was on, had been turned away
from it by Daniel. He was never supposed to go on, to go home. Now he was back
in the fight and not about to let Daniel give up on it. It almost made sense to
him this was so hard to see and do.
The concrete reality of his inexplicable determination not to part from this
young man he barely knew and had only his own pain in common with, scared him
more than anything, and still, he couldn't let go.
"Better say your goodbyes," he ordered tersely. Daniel glanced back over his
shoulder, Sha'uri's blinding smile faltering for the first time as she looked
straight up at Jack's face. Her own became shadowed and wary, as it always
seemed to be when Jack took Daniel's attention from her.
"Jack?" Daniel queried softly, puzzled but still trusting.
Jack acknowledged to himself Daniel had some justification for trust.
Wait for me.
Jack had waited. How could he not? They'd connected in the way only truly
experienced in combat. Somehow, Daniel knew what Jack was thinking, feeling,
didn't need words. The wordless communication, the connection was stronger than
anything Jack had felt before, for sure. It shook him to feel this. He was
married, for God's sake. And still it was Daniel who was reaching him. A man who
should be a stranger, touching him in a way he wasn't used to.
And maybe he should stop fucking thinking and get his people out of here.
"Did you tell Kasuf to bury the gate?" he asked Daniel directly, wincing
inwardly at the quick, relieved nod he received, Daniel's assumption he now
understood what Jack’s problem was. "He understands?"
"He'll bury the gate as soon as you take your men through, Jack," Daniel assured
him.
Clamped to Daniel's hand like an anchor, Sha'uri's watchful eyes never left
Jack's face.
Jack turned to Kawalsky. "Move out," he ordered sharply, nodding at the active
Stargate behind them. Kawalsky murmured his acknowledgement and headed over to
the Stargate, rapidly directing Tech Sergeant Brown to take point and Captain
Ferretti to follow him through. Three guys. All who were left of Jack's men.
"Daniel." Jack slung his MP-5 harness across his shoulder, trying to avoid
looking Daniel in the eyes. "Let's go."
Daniel gaped at him, stunned and disbelieving at Jack's curt, unmistakeable
order.
"It’s not safe for you to stay. Not for you, not for them," Jack said coldly.
Daniel didn't move an inch. Jack stepped up close, crowding him, a smile
twisting his lips when Daniel stubbornly refused to budge, his chin tilting
proudly. Jack couldn't even remember the last man who didn't flinch when he saw
Jack O'Neill coming. This was the boy he’d tried to write off as a dweeb. He
must have been out of his mind.
It struck him then this was too close to the truth.
It sobered Jack, angered him. He was afraid for himself. Of himself. It seemed
only with this man could he feel anything. Fear moved him now to take Daniel's
arm, a hard grip but not hurting, to efficiently break Sha'uri from Daniel and
pull him insistently towards the Stargate. A murmur of dismay rose from the
people gathered close around them, Sha'uri and Skaara at the head of the now
restlessly surging crowd, their unintelligible voices quick and anxious as they
looked to Kasuf for guidance.
"Jack!" Daniel protested, trying to tug free, hardly able to believe Jack meant
to drag him ignominiously back through the gate.
"O'Neyer!" Skaara called out, his shocked face working with too many emotions
too close to the surface, a steadying arm clasping tight around Sha'uri.
A few hours ago, Jack had been ready to kill him. Kill all of them.
"You don't understand," Daniel argued urgently, seeing Jack flinch from Skaara’s
urgent eyes and recover instantly. Daniel had no idea what it meant for Sha’uri
if she lost him now. He'd kissed her, dammit! Spent the night in privacy behind
that curtain, talking with her. She could be dishonoured in the eyes of her
people, losing her husband like this. Her husband. He didn't even know what that
meant for him, except he needed to stay. This – all of this – it was his dream.
"Jack! For God's sake, listen!" he cried, pulling determinedly away.
Jack shot a look to Kawalsky for help. It left him feeling ashamed, maybe
Kawalsky too, but the major sucked it up and ran forward to help Jack drag
Daniel to the Stargate. Jack ignored the way Daniel hung resistant from their
hands, his whole body yearning as he strained desperately back to stare at
Sha'uri, who was calling after him, her voice shrill with panic.
"They'll send another bomb, Daniel," Jack snapped, despising himself just a
little more.
Daniel froze, shooting a harsh, questioning look at Jack. He turned impulsively
to Kawalsky, mouth already open to spill out some naïve, idealistic protest. The
look on Kawalsky's face silenced him, horrified him.
"They won't take the risk, Daniel," Kawalsky told him with some gentleness, eyes
filled with infinite regret. "And we have our orders."
"We tell West we blew the Stargate exactly as ordered," Jack decided rapidly.
"These people have to die, Daniel. They represent a risk the Air Force will not
be willing to ignore. The first question the brass will ask is are there more
aliens like Ra out here. It's not a question we can answer. So, if West finds
out they're alive, he'll send through a bomb. He'll make sure. Unless?" He left
it for Daniel's quick mind to fill in the necessary blanks.
"Unless they're already dead," Daniel acknowledged. Eyes devastated, he slumped
exhausted between the two adamant soldiers, all the fight going out of him as
reality hammered home.
Their gripping hands on him were all at once supporting, roughly comforting. The
least they could do. All Jack would do until he had Daniel safely home.
"You're too important to the project," Jack plausibly lied with a truth. "I
couldn't explain losing you. I have my orders."
Kawalsky's sudden nervous shift handily lent weight to the unspoken implication
Jack had been ordered to protect the geek at all costs. Kawalsky didn't know the
full extent of Jack's orders but he did know Jack. He sensed something was off
here, way off, but he was too good a soldier not to back Jack's play.
Daniel froze before the shimmering light, looking back once, all the indulgence
he allowed himself.
Out of the roar of distress and betrayal, Sha'uri's despairing cry followed them
into the Stargate.
"Danyel!"
Jack hadn't taken his eyes off Daniel since they'd
arrived back. The boy had endured the comprehensively invasive medical testing
with alien passivity and sat now in mute misery between Jack and Kawalsky as
General West and his staff did their voluble hawkish worst, incidentally backing
up everything they'd told Daniel on the planet. Their linguist seemed to fold in
on himself as West threat-assessed and speculated endlessly on the alien body
count he could claim credit for. Jack wasn't wholly sorry for the casual
brutality of military operation. It was best Daniel knew exactly what he'd
signed on for.
He'd seen that Daniel was drawn to Sha'uri, but he didn't even know her. They
were strangers and this – Jack could hardly call it mourning - would fade.
Daniel couldn't feel all that deeply for her. There wasn't time. As for the
girl, she could more than take care of herself. Jack felt no remorse for
breaking her away from Daniel. The yokels may not have been good enough for her
but she'd lost no time in landing the man bearing the Eye of Ra, pseudo godhood
and all. Jack had no doubt she'd land right on her feet. Daniel was the one
who'd need some care.
It only helped Jack that West and his ilk looked at Daniel and couldn't see past
the massive intellect, the long hair, the gentleness and the glasses. The
unmistakeable protectiveness of Kawalsky and Ferretti was working against Daniel
too. They backed up every answer he gave in that soft, sensitive voice of his,
quiet and dull for the first time since they'd met. Daniel's weary dignity
evoked pity and odd understanding from men who knew what combat was like. A
measure of respect, too. He'd done all that was asked of him, and more, he'd
been there for the men. Helped Jack take out Ra. The Air Force would take care
of him, no question.
West talked with something approximating kindness of needing Dr. Jackson to help
close down Project Blue Book. Jack was figuring they could spin out the
mothballing for a few weeks, enough time for the Air Force to lean on the
university, whatever it took to get young Dr. Jackson a nice tenured
professorship in the anthro department here in the Springs.
Jack shifted uncomfortably, wondering why the hell it was so important he keep
Daniel safely within reach. When Burke had gone south on him, two families had
been wrecked and the fallout had hit Sara hard too. Jack had never repeated or
compounded the errors he'd made letting Burke in. He and Kawalsky had served
together for years, Kawalsky considered himself a good buddy, but Jack had made
damn sure the man knew nothing about him. Jack had kept Sara out of the Air
Force too. He lived within reach of Peterson, but too far away for Sara to be
pissed she didn't get to play Mrs. Colonel anymore.
There was no obvious way for Daniel Jackson to fit into Jack's neatly boxed,
compartmentalised life. He didn't. Except, he had to. Jack had to make room
somehow. Had to compromise. It didn't sit easy with him.
"What?" he asked blankly, shocked suddenly back to the here and now by a
half-heard pronouncement.
Daniel's glasses were on the table while he pinched the bridge of his nose and
scrubbed impatient hands over his eyes. "I said," he repeated patiently. "What
makes you think the Stargate only goes one place?"
Jack glared at him, embarrassed he'd tuned out so goddamned much since West had
swallowed his line about nuking the natives without much question, a small pain
among many in his brilliant career. They'd debrief in full later, but for now,
enough time was bought Kasuf could bury the Stargate ten times over before West
would order a probe through. Even without Daniel smacking them upside the head
like this.
"Dr. Jackson?" West snapped, thrown off script, looking to his staff for
support.
Jack could understand his reaction. They'd been shedding the civilians from the
payroll from the moment Daniel cracked the code that opened the Stargate. If
West had to bring them all back now he'd finish his career with an
embarrassment. No way he'd allow that. Meyers, the astrophysicist Barbara Shore
and her team of bright kids, even their great matriarch Catherine Langford, were
history.
"If that was the case, why are there thirty-nine symbols on the outer track of
the cartouche? And on the Stargate?" Daniel posed a reasonable question. "Why
not six?"
The only response was baffled, soon-to-be-pissed silence.
"Some kind of code?"
Jack didn't know the major who spoke up, he’d never served with the man. He hid
a smile when Kawalsky and Ferretti straightened in their seats, glaring the man
down. Dr. J had spoken. They were full of 'deal with it' attitude. The same guys
who'd knocked the dweeb on his ass a few days back. Seeing how hard the two of
them had fallen, Jack felt a bit better about his own fathomless attachment to
the boy.
"Why? With thirty-nine symbols, there would be over one hundred million possible
combinations." Daniel straightened up defensively as all the uniformed closed
minds focused on him absolutely. They were floundering in the wake of something
they hadn't - what was it Jack called it? Threat-assessed. "A code so complex
would imply the Stargate needed protection." He let the relieved comprehension
flow before stamping down. Hard. "Protection from whom?"
"There was a rebellion," Jack interjected. "You said so yourself. For Ra, the
writing, literally, was on the wall." He winced at the searing reproach in
Daniel's swift dagger look. Shit. He'd forgotten who it was had led Daniel to
those hidden hieroglyphs, taught him to speak the dead language. The girl.
Sha'uri.
"The primitive people enslaved by Ra ten thousand years ago were nomadic. They
didn't even have a fully developed writing system," Daniel retorted. He was
brainstorming and knew it, but the need to shock these hawks from their
complacency was too strong for him to be reasonable. He'd tried being reasonable
with Jack on the planet and it got him dragged right back here, apparently a
hostage of the Air Force and in Colonel O’Neill’s custody.
He hadn't missed the way West had made Jack responsible for his 'disposition'.
Daniel wasn't stupid. He could read the looks Kawalsky and Ferretti were trying
not to exchange. He had to open his big, fat mouth and now he was in so deep he
might never get out.
"I thought you said Ra banned reading and writing?" Jack argued. "Which is it?"
"The symbols on the Stargate and on the cartouche are unique," Daniel said
quietly, certainly.
He pushed back his chair and picked his way along the wall behind the other
occupants of his side of the table towards the blast screen and the missile silo
housing his Stargate. He leaned there, feeling crowded, harried, watching the
technicians swarming all over the gate, taking readings of this and that. His
whole life had been burned away, insignificant in the face of a much greater
truth. He was reeling, trying to make sense of it all. Mythology was now
history, legend supplanted by fact, magic by technology. Gods were real, real
and alien, the same little grey men you found on TV and cheap Halloween masks,
as much a myth of man as any ancient god.
It was giddying and humbling and real.
All of it real.
The Stargate could not be closed to him. He wouldn't lose this, would not allow
these narrow minds to take it from him when they had given and taken so much
already.
He became aware of Jack's watchful presence immediately behind him, then of
General West truculent at his side.
"None of the writings I saw on the alien planet or in Ra's ship were the same.
The symbols are unique to the Stargate." As he postulated, Daniel felt a
reviving surge of excitement. He was right about this, it felt right to him.
"Hieroglyphs aren't a natural evolution of those symbols." He nodded
meaningfully at the Stargate. "It's possible they're from an entirely different
language."
"That of Ra's species?" West barked, surprising him.
Daniel hadn't realised West was paying that much attention. "The primitives Ra
enslaved didn't develop their own writing system, General. They were taught the
hieroglyphs of his race, presumably to make them more useful to him. Reading and
writing were only banned among the slaves when Ra was banished from Earth and he
sought to conceal from them the truth of their history in order to maintain his
deified authority over them. The evidence for that was painted on the walls of
the catacombs and in the genuine fear of the people whenever I would try to
communicate with them in writing."
"I saw that," Jack agreed. "Those people weren't faking, Sir."
"Hosts and parasites," West grated. "Alien parasites. God help us." He was
hardly standing up to the responsibilities these revelations imposed. Lack of
imagination had made him a careful, logical administrator to ground this
hideously expensive civilian flight of fancy but his mundane mind was crippling
him in the face of their new reality.
Little grey men, Roswell greys, real and out there. Real here. Among us. The
creators of their civilisation. More than their lives were changing, here. Their
futures were changing too. There were more questions than any one man could
answer to.
Worried by West's obvious inadequacies, desperate for some time alone to begin
to think about all of this, Daniel stuck doggedly to his point. "All of the
evidence supports Ra's species being the source for hieroglyphs, but that
doesn't explain where the symbols on the Stargate came from," he said clearly.
"They're not like any hieroglyph ever seen. There are no points of similarity,
nothing to indicate one language might have evolved from the other."
"Two languages? Two alien species?" Jack asked intently. "Maybe Ra's people
weren't dying. Maybe they were being killed."
"By the little green men?" Kawalsky muttered in a sarcastic aside to Ferretti.
"This is all speculation," West snapped, overhearing.
Daniel recognised he'd pushed West too far. Homo sapiens was resistant to change
and this man was anything but flexible. Daniel had challenged him, threatened
his belief system and by extension his authority. Retaliation was, regrettably,
the obvious response of the unimaginative. He turned impulsively to Jack. "This
man would not be my first choice to lead a scientific project," he complained.
Jack's lips twitched before he froze to rigid correctness, once again the arctic
hard-ass he was when they first met. The flare of warmth in his eyes wasn't
imagined though. A study in seeming contradiction, Jack O'Neill was as much a
mystery to Daniel as the gate down there.
"You're acting as if the Stargate is a combination lock, as if the symbols are a
code," Daniel said calmly, riding out the storm breaking out over his head. "I'm
positing that the combinations of symbols are in fact destinations, that each
combination of seven symbols forms a unique address," he insisted. "An address
for another world. Do you have any idea of the potential of that?"
"It's worth investigating," Jack suggested brusquely, proving to Daniel he at
least did see the potential.
West glared at Jack, pissed enough from Daniel's tactless impatience to blow him
off, and just a little too close to retirement to take the risk.
"We need to asses the potential threat," Jack suggested suavely, which was not
at all what Daniel intended. It was disingenuous to say the least. Jack knew as
well as Daniel did that the potential threat was the gate here.
West nodded sharply, turning back to his staff.
Jack smiled to himself as the predictable happened. The general was two days off
retirement and not about to take risks with his pension. West issued a series of
terse orders, all of them designed to put Project Blue Book in a holding pattern
until he was relieved of command by his replacement. Only one order captured
Daniel's wandering attention.
"If the Air Force has scientists, why weren't they part of the Stargate team to
start with?" Daniel asked, honestly bewildered by what he'd just heard.
"Presumably you handpicked the best people and they're all civilians."
West shot him a look that could kill and got a whole lot terser. Kawalsky and
Ferretti headed out the door almost at a dead run to start tracking down the
team of scientists they'd just discarded, West's X.O. right behind them with
orders to call the Pentagon and scare up the Air Force's own apparently
second-rate specialists.
The general paused at the door as his team scattered. "Report back here in two
days for your official debriefing, Colonel. You know the drill."
Jack nodded briskly. The drill in this case was to keep the annoyingly direct
Dr. Jackson safely out of West’s hair while he saved face and hauled his fat ass
off to Palm Beach.
"And watch him." West jerked his thumb at Daniel.
"Yes, Sir." Ignoring Daniel's indignant scowl, Jack tucked a firm, guiding hand
around his elbow and led him away from the Stargate. What lay beyond it - that
was over now. Daniel was stiffly resistant, angry and taking on the Air Force
maybe for the hell of it, but whatever and whoever he might be dreaming of back
there on the planet, he was with Jack now.
"That's plain scary," Ferretti muttered to Kawalsky and Brown.
They were skulking in the farthest corner of the commissary watching Colonel
O'Neill first bully, then when that failed, cajole Daniel into choking down a
little chow. O'Neill was now supervising every forkful with a forbidding look
which didn't disguise his anxiety, visible from all the way over here.
"How long have you known the colonel, Sir?" Ferretti politely enquired of the
surreptitiously-staring Kawalsky.
"Served with him ten years on and off," Kawalsky said absently. "And no, I've
never seen him like this either."
"Nice?" Brown drawled, rolling his eyes.
"Almost." Kawalsky shook his head in mild disbelief. He didn't know what Daniel
had, but as Jack's 2IC through more crappy Special Ops missions than either of
them cared to remember, he wished his C.O. listened to him like that.
"Try stone-killer Jewish mom," Ferretti interjected, high-fiving a snorting
Brown. "Anyone'd think he liked the guy or something," he grumbled, grinning.
"Or something." The drawling Sgt. Brown stiffened as they stared at him. As one
man, they turned to stare at O'Neill. O'Neill and Daniel. O'Neill. Nah. Brown
pulled a wry face, disgusted with himself for going there. "No way."
"Tell it," Ferretti snorted. Anyone but O'Neill he'd maybe wonder. Dr. J was
pretty enough he'd be beating off susceptible airmen with a stick. Or O'Neill
would be shooting them. Either way, it was gonna be a blast having him around
this tomb to liven them all up.
Far less certain than the other two of what he was seeing, Kawalsky sipped his
coffee and kept right on watching.
"What exactly did we decide?" Daniel asked tiredly, unenthusiastically pushing
his waffles around his plate. Jack was watching him with the knowing confidence
of a man who'd cracked tougher nuts than him at the dining table.
"You decided General West isn't up to the job of leading Project Blue Book and
the Pentagon agreed," Jack said dryly. "The Pentagon decided Dr. Langford and
the rest of the geeks weren't up to it either and disposed of them. You decided
we needed them back. General Hammond decided it would be prudent for us to round
up Intel on where they all are, what they're doing, and who they're doing it to,
in case he agrees with you and not the Pentagon. General West decided he hates
you."
"If this – um?" Daniel looked up blearily, at a loss for a mere name among the
morass of information fired his way in the past few hours.
"Hammond," Jack supplied. "General George Hammond. If he's a carbon copy of West
we're in deeper shit than before?" he suggested obligingly, reading Daniel
without difficulty. "I've never served with him but I hear he's a tough
sonovabitch so right now your guess is as good as mine." He shrugged. "The rules
changed, Daniel, the minute you opened your mouth about the Stargate going other
places. Whatever you believe, this isn't a theoretical scientific mission
anymore. And that gate down there isn't a billion dollar hood ornament."
"A billion dollars?" Daniel asked, startled.
"Try seven," Jack snorted, watching Daniel try and fail to process the numbers.
"If the Stargate goes other places, it presents a real threat to the safety of
Earth." He pulled a rueful face. "I don't even watch sci-fi. In fact, I hate
sci-fi. I can't believe I'm living it. So, believe me when I tell you this is
deadly serious, Daniel, so you better not be full of shit this time."
"I wasn't full of shit last time," Daniel contradicted wanly, wary and weary of
talking.
"Skaara - the others - they're safe enough," Jack said coolly.
"For now!"
"Hammond will send through a probe when the scientists tell him it's safe for
us," Jack informed him casually. "If Kasuf buries the Stargate like he's
supposed to, the probe won't get through. Hammond will be too damn busy to worry
about it. They'll buy our story and bury the planet too." Jack looked at Daniel
long enough he dropped his head and ate another bite of waffle to avoid the
scrutiny. "Is it bullshit?" he asked directly.
"About the symbols?" Daniel glanced up confidently. "No. I'm right about that."
"You're the linguist," Jack said more softly.
"How long will I be stuck here?" Daniel demanded, pissy all over again. He kept
forgetting to be mad at Jack.
"You're not a prisoner. Just broke," Jack blandly answered.
Daniel pulled a face. "Thanks," he snapped. "If I'm not a prisoner, how come I'm
in your custody?"
"We have to be back at 0900 Thursday for the next briefing," Jack said casually,
ignoring the complaint, mostly because it was justified and he didn't feel like
sharing with Daniel he was now the Air Force's prized asset. If there was any
chance Dr. Jackson could make Blue Book pay for itself, Jack was here to make
him take it.
"Back?" Daniel looked up sharply.
"I live in Winter Park." It was stupid to think Daniel could fill any of the
empty stillness there, but Jack clung to it. Daniel might have had the same
impact on his will to live as a cattle prod to the ass, but that was as far as
it went. Jack was walking, talking, breathing. Feeling, a little. Hating a
little less. Everything else would take work. A shit-load. He travelled lighter
with Daniel, was all.
"You want me to go home with you?" Daniel sat limply back, open-mouthed in his
confusion at this. He was blinking rapidly, trying to process where this request
fit what was happening between them. He couldn't make sense of the it, and
seemed to Jack to be almost alarmed.
It made Jack think again how empty Daniel's life here must be if he could have
been so willing to walk away from it. If there was no one to care or even to
know he was gone. Whatever else was wrong, Jack was sure this was right. If
Daniel needed connection so badly, if he needed life so badly, Jack would be the
one to give it to him.
"Home," he said gently. "I need to go home, Daniel." He needed to see Sara, to
have her see him, have her know he hadn't given up. There was still something
left of him. "And I don't want to leave you alone here."
There was a rigid look on Daniel's face, not quite one of refusal, but of
resistance. Jack realised Daniel didn't know what to do and decided to take the
risk, call his bluff. "It's around a two-and-a-half-hour drive," he told him,
then got up, knowing Daniel's stubbornness could leave him looking stupid in
front of his men, falling all over themselves in the effort to seem as if they
weren't watching everything going down here between the two of them.
"We can talk," he promised rashly, meaning he would listen while that soft,
refined voice washed over him.
"Yes, we can," Daniel agreed, unsubtly stressing the 'we'.
Jack was unmoved. He was trained to withstand the most intense physical and
psychological torture. There was nothing the linguist could do to him he hadn't
shrugged off in his first week of Special Ops training. His marriage, too.
Chapters: | WEAT novel home |
1
| 2 | 3 |
4 | 5 |
6 | 7 |
8 | 9 |
10 | 11 |
12 | 13 |
14 | 15 |
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