Title: We Practise To Deceive [Novella]
Author: Biblio
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack and Daniel
Category: Angst. Drama. First Time. Romance.
Season/Spoilers: Season 3. An episode tag for "Foothold."
Synopsis: Can two wrongs really make a right? When Sam pushes Jack to the edge of his control, an unsuspecting Daniel takes the consequences.

STORY EXTRACT

Sam's car was parked safely out of sight on the main road, hidden by the encompassing trees in this quiet, exclusive cul-de-sac on Cheyenne Mountain. The subterfuge was necessary if she was going to go through with the plan which had brought her to Colonel O'Neill's home. Her slow, sly approach from the road to the house had given her too much time for reflection, bringing painful reminders of too many questions for which she didn't have answers.

It wasn't mystery Sam loved, rather it was solution. Puzzles nagged at her, skulking in quiet ambush, sapping her energy, disturbing her focus. A deeply personal puzzle was driving her to distraction. It had been there at the back of her mind for months, surfacing time and again, giving her no rest. The events of the past few days had brought it sharply into focus.

Their foothold situation was resolved only in the sense the aliens were gone. There were no answers, not about where they came from, how they'd known about Earth, lost for so long even to the Goa'uld. Certainly not about how their technology worked or how their impersonations of dear, familiar friends had been so flawless. The SGC didn't even know if the threat was at an end, though the base was clean and their personnel finally were all accounted for.

Too many questions. Sam sighed heavily. Unanswered, increasingly pressing questions were the reason she was here, hovering undecided at the colonel's door.

Her conscience was loud and her ethics offended but louder still was her - curiosity wasn't the word for it. Curiosity - properly channelled - fuelled her work, zestful curiosity ran bone deep in Daniel, a certain quality to his make-up, a flavour uniquely his own, one she found hard to comprehend outside the austere beauty of her science. Certainly, Sam was curious about what engaged her. By her standard, though, everything engaged Daniel and this she found hard to comprehend. He went too deep for her at times.

Her presence here was not curiosity, not because Sam was engaged but because she was driven. Her need for an answer was stronger than any impulse or half-stifled qualm of conscience. She had to have her answers because this mystery was giving her no rest.

Strange she could watch the colonel and Daniel together for years and only yesterday did she realise there was something there between them, something she sensed and saw, which was beyond her ability to quantify. The two men shared a specific, and, she had finally learned, exclusive connection.

Sam didn't think the difference was obviously there in the colonel's interactions with her, nor in his with Daniel when she was there to see the two of them, of that she was sure. She wasn't that oblivious. Only once had she been given cause to wonder at him, in her surprise at the colonel's irrational, instinctual, intense dislike of the innocent Ke'ra, flirting with their charmingly shy but willing Daniel.

It had been so clear to Sam that Daniel was on the rebound, desperate to make even the smallest step away from Sha'uri, to re-engage and move on with his life.

After their return to base with Ke'ra and the Vyan volunteers in tow, Colonel O'Neill's near-obsessive watchfulness where Daniel was concerned had been quickly overtaken by their unexpected entanglement with the Destroyer of Worlds. Daniel's flirtation with Ke'ra, the colonel's reaction to it, was subsumed in dealing with the harsh reality of Linea, and Sam had buried the memory without pause for reflection.

In any other circumstance, with any other man, she would have unhesitatingly deemed his overreaction, his brooding, silent scrutiny and voluble anger as jealousy. But of course, since the man under consideration was Colonel Jack O'Neill, based on everything she knew about him, she hadn't hesitated in dismissing that possible interpretation of his reaction as absurd.

Today, all of Sam's assessments and assumptions were overturned. She felt as if she were blind and deaf, insensate.

The colonel was a completely changed man to her now. She wished with all her heart she hadn't followed him from the control room, that she'd stayed put to help deal with the aftermath of Colonel Maybourne's clean-up operation. Curiosity, though. She'd wondered why the colonel had turned and walked away from them without a word. So uncharacteristic of him when the base was in an uproar, barely functional, personnel unaccounted for, and Maybourne there to record it all to use against them.

It had taken her a minute to realise Daniel was missing, his alien copy the only one not killed in the self-destruct blast set off by their leader. A minute more, and she realised the colonel had gone to check on Daniel, make sure he was okay and fill him in on the events of the past few days. Of course she had followed.

The medical team, summarily dismissed by the colonel, had met her as she exited the elevator on Level 23. It hadn't occurred to her that his prohibition applied to her. She was his second-in-command and Daniel was her friend. Sam could only be grateful for the darkness in the damaged, reeking power plant and the colonel's complete absorption with Daniel.

Even thinking about it now, Sam still couldn't pinpoint the moment she'd comprehended what she was seeing wasn't the rendering of first aid, or even of common care. Colonel O'Neill had cradled Daniel's head and shoulders in his lap, stroking his hair and talking to him softly, patiently, asking Daniel to wake for him. He had touched Daniel's face, fleeting, gentle touches to brow, cheek and lips. A lover's touch, Sam had thought, her mouth drying now at the quiet, insistent power of what she'd witnessed.

This was a truth she had been blind to when she saw those dark eyes, saw everything, looked right into them and into the core of Jack O'Neill as she'd worn the facsimile of Daniel's face. When she removed the alien device and revealed herself, Sam had watched the way the colonel shut down, shut her out, his instinctive emotional withdrawal from her in her own skin. She'd assumed it was only his usual, pantomimed reaction to freaky alien technology.

She'd assumed a lot. It made her sick now to think it.

It was only when she saw the colonel with ­ no, she corrected herself. Saw Jack with Daniel, saw his warmth and intimacy, the naturalness of his concern, his compassion, all the tenderness in his reactions to Daniel, she finally realised his withdrawal had been from her, that it was personal, and it meant something she could not afford to ignore, because she wasn't Daniel.

Daniel's presence or absence was the denominator, not hers. She felt less than a whole person to the colonel, had been made to feel she was...inadequate. Not good enough. Not a poor substitute, not a friend or teammate or colleague of lesser degree, the colonel's unguarded response had been too absolute for that. She was judged and found wanting. Not-Daniel.

She had stayed quiet and watchful in the shadows a little while longer, sick with shame and shock at her realisations and her conduct, spying on her friends, her teammates, long enough to see Daniel stir and Jack withdraw, to become again the man she recognised and had believed she knew. Teasing, brash, friendly. Larger than life. Showing his public front, even to Daniel.

Sam was punchy with exhaustion, confused by the myriad events and alarms of the past few days, the drug lingering in her system, the aliens wearing faces she knew, every word, look and mood of theirs familiar. She hadn't been able to tell deception from reality or trust her own instincts. Her faith in her perception was shaken even before she was confronted by the depth of the colonel's feeling for Daniel.

She had to know what it meant, had to discover if she really knew these two men, wherever the journey took her, because right now, she didn't even know herself. There were too many questions for her to be able to think clearly and she really, really needed to know what this all meant if she was going to be able to go on. There had to be clarity.

After sounding the all-clear, the general had entrusted her with the alien facsimile device for experimentation. Sam had breached his trust and brought it here with her. She would fulfil the letter of her duty, but the spirit was violated.

She was shaken by regret and doubt, but refused to go easy on herself. Her hesitation was conscience-driven, lip-service only. She'd already made her choice or she wouldn't be here. She wouldn't be wearing the device. She couldn't argue this was right, couldn't make herself believe it was fair. She had to have an answer, she had to taste even for a moment the connection which she'd finally learned was leaving her out in the cold. Her feelings were too strong to be denied.

Sam raised a reluctant hand, seeing strong, slender fingers which weren't her own she'd observed touching and exploring with such delicacy and precision, such passion, on so many different worlds across the galaxy. She stood for a moment, flexing her fingers this way and that, watching Daniel's beautiful hand move elegantly for her. It reminded her forcefully she was nothing but a construct, an avatar. There was no joy for her in this science.

With a shudder of distaste, Sam knocked softly at the substantial wooden door.

She was wearing Daniel's face.

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