Return

Jack woke up, gasping for breath, listening to his heart race, and stared into the darkness. He remembered Daniel burning to death, and he remembered Daniel walking out of the water to meet them, miraculously unharmed, but he couldn't remember which was the dream and which was the reality he'd have to face in the morning. It took close to ten minutes before he finally managed to convince himself that he remembered both, but more recently the second one: Daniel was back at the SGC, sleeping safe and mostly-sound in the infirmary. Jack laid back down, rolled over, and breathed slowly in and out until he was asleep again.

The second time, he couldn't remember which was true, and he couldn't remember whether his certainty of an hour before had been another dream. He'd had dreams like that when Charlie died, waking and remembering he was okay only to wake for real and remember he wasn't. Eventually he persuaded himself that it was really all right this time, and went back to sleep, forcing his hands to unclench from their frantic fists, pushing away the thought of jumping in his car, driving out to the base, and checking on Daniel. If nothing else, they'd all been banned from the infirmary until morning.

The third time he woke, the sky outside had turned gray, and everything in the room was in black and white, while his memories were vividly colored. He could see the yellow-orange flare and the pale film of ash, the blue-gray of the water and of Daniel's open eyes. Daniel's dying scream was harsh red, and his voice calling "Don't shoot!" was a familiar brownish-green.

About the time he realized he was hearing in color, Jack rolled out of bed and headed for the kitchen. He hit the junk drawer, and the cabinet by the phone, and the closet by the door, and then leaned against the kitchen counter for a moment, wrinkling his nose against the marker fumes as he wrote. He carried the piece of cardboard and roll of masking tape to his bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and picked his spot. The side of the night stand would work, just under the alarm clock where it would pick up the faint red glow. He taped all four sides down, tossed the tape on the floor, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Again.

Jack finally woke up in daylight, and when he turned his head, he was surprised to see a sign, tilting gently to the right, written in his own capitals with glow-in-the-dark paint marker on cardboard.

That's good to know, he thought, amused and wondering what he'd been drinking, and then he remembered. Daniel's scream, the heat and light and oh Christ the smell. His heart started to race, even with the reassurance of his own writing before him, because Daniel was burning to death behind his eyelids and nothing was stopping that no matter how much Doc Fraiser promised the cognitive diss-whatever would go away on its own. He sat up, elbows on knees and face in hands, and when he could hear himself think over the pounding of his heart, he reached out one hand and smoothed the tape on one corner of his little sign.

He knew--not a fear, but a certainty--that the day was going to come when he was going to look at that sign and have to peel back the tape and throw it out. Maybe, if he was lucky, it wouldn't be him who had to do it, but there was going to be a day when it wasn't true anymore.

It's true today, he thought, getting to his feet, and that's enough for today. Might be easier if he took it down before he had to, save himself the grief later on, but that seemed like bad luck, and anyway, it was obviously serving a purpose. Before he headed to the bathroom, he tossed his pillow aside to cover the words. No need to be obvious about tempting fate.

Teal'c was accustomed to waiting. He had done a good deal of it in the service of Apophis, and O'Neill had assured him that the United States Air Force operated on very similar principles, which he had summed up as "hurry up and wait." Thus he had not been particularly surprised that, when his team's banishment from the infirmary had expired, he was still not allowed entrance. He had merely nodded to Doctor Fraiser's explanation, and taken up a comfortable stance in the hall. It would be easier, he and the doctor both knew, if he were the one to explain the matter to O'Neill when he arrived, as he inevitably would.

The first part of his wait--the wait for O'Neill--was not long. He himself had erred a little on the side of promptness, while O'Neill's arrival was precisely timed. Teal'c was silently impressed by this precision, given that O'Neill's journey to the infirmary was longer and therefore far more unpredictable in duration than his own.

He strode up in his usual garb--blue utility trousers and a black t-shirt--tucking his sunglasses into one side pocket as he walked. "Teal'c? What gives?"

Teal'c smiled slightly at his teammate's no-nonsense greeting. "Many things, O'Neill, but Doctor Fraiser's resolve is not among them. We must remain outside until Daniel Jackson has had his breakfast and morning check-up."

He watched O'Neill's silent frustration with interest, wondering in what form it would express itself. He ran both hands through his hair, raising it into untidy spikes that eloquently expressed his turmoil, pacing a few steps back and forth and peering at the uninformatively sealed entrance to the infirmary. Finally, O'Neill took up a similar stance to Teal'c's, across the corridor, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Has she ever seen him eat?" he demanded after a moment. "I don't think Daniel can eat an energy bar without getting distracted and forgetting to finish. If she wants him to clean his plate of infirmary food, we're going to be out here all day."

Teal'c had noted the tendency to become distracted in mid-meal among all his Tau'ri teammates--doubtless a result of their inefficient habit of holding discussions and meals in tandem--but he thought that sharing that observation would be unproductive. Instead, he said, "There will be little to distract him in the infirmary."

O'Neill snorted. "Daniel could go deaf and blind and still get distracted. No way can waffles compete with the inside of his brain."

This was so patently true that Teal'c could only nod his acknowledgment of O'Neill's well-made point. His irritation duly exercised--not, Teal'c noted with approval, upon Doctor Fraiser, which would have been unworthy, but upon himself, an appropriate confidant--O'Neill sagged back against the wall, his slouch permitting Teal'c to perceive that his teammate's night had passed no more peacefully than his own. Though there was no logical reason to be concerned for Daniel Jackson now, the memories of his death persisted, most disturbingly. He wondered, not for the first time, whether their artificial memories had not been instilled with this sense of horror to deter them. As before, Teal'c concluded that it was, perhaps, only that he was very greatly disturbed by the thought of losing one of his teammates in such a fashion.

Aloud, he said, "Among the Jaffa, to falsely report a prisoner's death to his family is considered an offense as grave as actually killing him."

O'Neill raised his eyebrows. "That so?"

Teal'c had long since decided that the Tau'ri's penchant for requesting confirmation of plainly stated facts was one of their more endearing traits. "It is. As a consequence, the same revenge may be sought against the deceiver as if he had in truth murdered one's kin."

O'Neill smiled. "Now there's a thought."

Teal'c nodded, and smiled slightly back, showing teeth. "Perhaps we could make a productive use of the time we spend waiting for Daniel Jackson to finish his meal."

O'Neill's amusement faded to seemingly serious consideration, and he rubbed at the back of his neck as though it pained him. "Go get some fried fish for lunch?"

"That would be most fitting." Fire returned for fire, and screams for screams. One memory to cherish, one to erase.

O'Neill glanced toward the door again, and sighed. "Daniel wouldn't like it."

This was true; Daniel Jackson's nature was for more forgiving than that of his warrior companions. That, in Teal'c's opinion, was why Daniel Jackson needed warrior companions, to do the things he would not approve but which needed to be done.

"Anyway," O'Neill added, "Daniel said he's the last one left. Doesn't matter how long he lives, he's going to die alone, left behind by everyone he ever knew."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow, impressed by O'Neill's acuity. It was an even more fitting revenge, considering that the adversary's true purpose had been to separate Daniel Jackson from his own kind, and a lingering retribution was always to be preferred to a speedy one. He closed his eyes briefly, imagining his enemy's cold and lonely death when his memory of Daniel Jackson's torment loomed. It was indeed a fitting solution. "Thank you, O'Neill."

O'Neill smiled, as much at Teal'c as at the door of the infirmary, sliding open behind him. "Don't mention it."

Teal'c turned to enter beside him. "I will not."

Sam watched Daniel disappear through the door of the mess, and when he was gone she looked across the table to see the Colonel doing the same. Teal'c watched the door for another few seconds, frowning slightly, then looked back at the two of them.

"Well," the Colonel said after a moment, staring down into his coffee. "Like the man said. Work to do."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, knowing they were both waiting for her to dash off to do some math or fiddle with some machinery they didn't understand. She didn't want to, though, even knowing that they'd both gravitate into her lab within a few hours. It had been a rough night, but a few extra-careful minutes over her makeup and she presented just as cool and professional a face as the Colonel and Teal'c. Actually, come to think of it, the Colonel was looking unusually possessive of his coffee, and Teal'c's eye makeup had that really-carefully-applied look to it.

When the Colonel looked up again from his cup, giving her the ‘Well? Why are you still here?' eyebrows, she just smiled, a little ruefully, just to show him she knew she should be getting on with things, and yet here she was, sitting next to Daniel's empty chair in the mess. Here they all were.

Teal'c's eyebrows went up for just a second, then back down, but he shifted his weight slightly closer to them. Sam leaned over the table as she sipped her coffee, and the Colonel scooted his chair in. SG-7 came in, arguing loudly but cheerfully about whose fault it was that they hadn't eaten in eighteen hours. Lt. Harriman was contributing nothing more to the discussion than, "Jello. Jello with whipped cream. Blue jello, red jello, green jello, red yellow green jello, green jello with whipped cream..." The team broke around their table, engulfing their silence in noise for a moment before they passed.

When they'd settled at a table against the wall, their chatter mostly dampened by their awe-inspiring enthusiasm for mess chow, Sam peeled both her hands off her mug and laid them flat on the table's surface. "Sir," she said quietly, "I've been thinking."

When she glanced up to see what he thought of that, the Colonel was still staring into his coffee, and Teal'c was keeping an oddly intent watch on SG-7. "The way you do, Carter," the Colonel finally said. "What about?"

"Sir," she said, floundering, unable to think of the right way to say it, how to tactfully put words to the thing that had been gnawing at her between her memories of Daniel's death, the only thing that was worse. "Sir," she blurted, finally, when he looked up, "we left him behind."

The Colonel let out a long breath, his shoulders slumping. Teal'c was watching them with what, on anybody else she'd ever met, would have been an expression of mild interest. She wasn't sure yet what it meant on Teal'c, but in this context, probably nothing good. Then the Colonel straightened his shoulders, lowered his chin, and looked Sam square in the eye, one of those steely you're-playing-with-the-big-boys-now looks that she'd been getting from various male officers since Academy. "Yeah," he said quietly, "yeah we did."

He kept watching her, Teal'c kept watching her, like they expected her to have something to say. She didn't know what she could say; she knew they really had no other choice, no reason whatsoever to doubt Daniel was dead until the cognitive dissonance escalated to such a point that they couldn't deny it. But Daniel had suffered--no matter how he waved it off, insisting he'd only been questioned, not tortured or mistreated--and that was due to them. He was part of the team and they'd left without him, and Sam couldn't feel anything but a swelling sense of horror, beyond guilt, beyond fear that it could happen again, just... they'd left him behind. "Sir?" she said, searching for some kind of answer, but the Colonel looked away, and Teal'c looked down.

She could almost hear the Colonel's teeth grinding, and Teal'c started tracing intricate designs on the tabletop with one fingertip, and she knew: leaving a man behind wasn't some formless horror to them, wasn't anything new. They knew this, they'd lived with it, they would go on living with it, and now, so would she. "We won't do it again," the Colonel said quietly. "Fool me once, shame on you..."

Sam bit her lip. The only way they could have avoided leaving Daniel behind, in the circumstances, would have been to stay, searching for him or just stumbling around that godawful planet, until they were captured or killed as well. But at least then they'd have known; at least then she wouldn't feel this, this. "Yes, sir," she whispered, and the Colonel smiled a little, just a crinkle of his eyes.

Teal'c relaxed his posture enough to lean in toward them, and she looked toward him; he looked solemn, above and beyond the usual, and said quietly, "Indeed."

Sam looked from her CO to her teammate, and took a long breath. So that was it, that was how you did it. You looked each other in the eye and you swore it would never happen again, even though you all knew there was no way you could promise that. "Okay," she said, with a brisk nod, forcing herself to a chipper tone of voice, "Well. I guess I'm probably nearly as far behind as Daniel is, huh?"

That earned her a nearly actual smile from the Colonel, curving lips and all, and her stomach flipped a little as she stood. "Yeah, holding a wake probably isn't a much more efficient use of time than being dead, Carter. Go--do some math."

Sam rolled her eyes as her stomach settled back into place. "Sir, yes sir."

Daniel had decided, after due consideration, that he hadn't gone crazy. They had. And not just run-of-the-mill individual crazy, but some kind of freakish collective craziness. He'd been watching them at the base, and had identified a pattern. Sometimes something startled them--Lt. Harriman blowing bubbles in a glass of chocolate milk, for one mystifying example--and sometimes there was no visible cause at all, just a shared awareness passing between his three teammates like birds on a wire. Jack and Sam would both move toward him, one or both of them sometimes reaching out to touch him, usually stopping short, and Teal'c would straighten up, looking around sharply. Daniel suspected Teal'c wasn't so much looking for something as not-looking at him.

Now they were on their first mission since Daniel's return--a nice, quiet, boring world with some nice archaeologist-friendly ruins an easy couple of kilometers away from the gate--and Jack, Sam, and Teal'c were all acting like they'd decided to make a return trip to Chulak equipped with nothing but sunscreen and floppy hats. It was nothing obvious--they went right on making the usual jokes, Jack complaining and Sam listening to him as intently as ever, Teal'c offering the odd tidbit from the Jaffa perspective--but he'd been working with them, watching them, for months now, and they were different since he'd been gone. It had only been three days, but something important had happened, and he'd missed it.

He stared into the fire, telling himself that it was nothing, just the first mission after a close call. He fidgeted with the drink powder packet from his MRE, looking around the fire at all of them not looking at him, and quietly tore it open. The powder was very fine, and he knew from experience that there wasn't enough sugar in it to make it clump up, no matter how long it sat in its packet. Not enough sugar to make it worth drinking, either. He rolled it around his palm for a moment, surveying the firelit faces around him again, and then with a gentle underhanded motion that brought to mind his second foster father yelling Danny, you're throwing like a girl, he tossed the powder into the flames.

The fire blazed up, bright blue, and Teal'c was instantly on his feet, Sam's hand was on his arm, Jack was up in a crouch with one hand over his head. And as Daniel watched them, they looked at each other, a little rueful, a little deadly serious. Warriors, all three of them, and it was never more obvious to him than at that moment, in firelight.

He was long past the age of asking the cool kids to let him in on the joke, but, dammit... "Okay," he said, even as Sam and Jack withdrew their hands, straightening up, kicking the fire, looking away. "See, that was weird."

He looked up at Sam, a little pleadingly, hoping she of all of them wouldn't force him to actually ask, and she bit her lip, looking to Jack and Teal'c as if for permission, and then back to him. Daniel didn't look away, afraid she'd just brush him off if his determination wavered for an instant. Finally she sat back down, Jack and Teal'c slowly following suit. She looked away first, back at the fire, picking up a stick and poking some sparks free to fly up into the night. "You died, Daniel," she said, finally, quietly, and he was suddenly intensely aware of being probably the only living people on an entire planet, light years from home. He bit back the impulse to say he remembered, because it was obvious he didn't. He'd missed that, he'd been busy getting... questioned, very gently, no matter what Janet's tests showed.

"Yeah," he said finally, when it seemed like that was the only answer he was going to get. "I heard about that."

Sam's answering smile nearly quivered, and she blinked at the fire, but didn't look at him. He glanced at Jack, at Teal'c, but they were both staring into this fire as if they couldn't hear a word of this conversation, and Daniel struggled against the urge to howl, to scream, to make them look at him and see he was right here, alive, unburned. "You died right in front of us," she said, barely audible above the snap of the fire. "There was nothing we could do, and even if it didn't happen, I remember." She looked up, across the fire, to Jack and Teal'c again. "We remember," she said, a little louder, drawing a shallow nod from Jack, a shiver of eyelids from Teal'c. "It's just... hard to know you're all right, without..."

She looked up at him, blue eyes dark in the orange light, and he knew that wasn't all, but it hardly mattered. "Oh," he said, and then cleared his throat, hoping to break the mourning mood, to remind them that, really, he wasn't dead. "Well if that's it, then, uh," he spread his arms. "Touch away."

Sam grinned at him, a laugh in her eyes, but she leaned up onto her knees and reached out, laying one hand across his shoulder. He smiled at her, and then there was a hand on his other shoulder as well, and he looked over to see Jack, still staring into the fire but holding on hard. He closed his eyes against the look on Jack's face, and then a third warm hand settled onto the back of his neck, Teal'c's presence solid as stone at his back. "It's okay," he said quietly, "I'm back. All in one piece."

It was kind of funny; he'd said that a hundred times since he'd returned, but that was the first time it didn't feel like a lie.