Redbyrd's Stargate SG-1 Fanfiction

Damage Control

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* TITLE: Damage Control
* AUTHOR: Redbyrd
* EMAIL: redbyrd (at) mindspring (dot) com
* RATING: PG-13 (some bad language)
* CATEGORY: drama, missing scene
* SUMMARY: On his way to Egypt to try find the answer to an age old puzzle, Steven Raynor ponders the mysterious murders of Dr. Jordan and the museum curator-- Could his old friend Daniel possibly be the killer? Missing scenes and epilogue to The Curse
* * SPOILERS: The Curse, The First Ones, minor reference to dietcokechic's Barista fanfics (see http://www.dietcokechic.com/stargate/)
* AUTHOR'S NOTES: I wanted to tie up some of the loose ends in this episode and to try developing Steven's character into something a bit more complex than the very limited view we got from the show. I felt he couldn't be all bad if his first thought when they find him injured at the end of the episode was to apologize to Daniel. I also couldn't resist trying to write some background on Daniel's pre-Stargate career. For reference I tried to use the TV show canon and as much as I could from the movie novelization (parts where it didn't contradict the show). The reference to Daniel studying with Jordan early in his career and then returning to work with him again in Chicago was my way of reconciling his description of Jordan as his archeology professor with Daniel having left Chicago shortly before the lecture that led to him joining the Stargate Program (which was presumably several years after he got his degrees). I also assumed Daniel's behavior during the dreams in Chimera reflected more of his personality and attitude at that time (in 2003), rather than the way he actually behaved when he first met Sarah. (Remember he describes the dreams as 'all mixed up'.)
* DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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While Sam and Janet chatted quietly a few seats ahead, Daniel slouched in the seat of the military aircraft winging toward Egypt feeling tired and depressed. Sarah was right, he shouldn't have gone back. He had known that he'd have to face some of his former colleagues at the funeral, but compared to the kind of life and death crises that seemed to be an almost weekly event the last few months, a few academics hadn't seemed like much of an obstacle. Of course he'd been sort of expecting that it would be Steven who'd be at least tolerably welcoming and Sarah who'd give him the cold shoulder. It had thrown him a little to have Sarah greet him so warmly, as if they'd parted amicably instead of in a shower of hurtful words and broken crockery.

Steven. Daniel frowned. He hated to think that Steven could be a Goa'uld. But the Steven he knew wasn't a murderer. A competent archeologist, with a real talent for writing, hungry for professional recognition, starved for approval from a family that valued money more than learning, yes. A killer, no. It occurred to Daniel that perhaps the unkind words Steven had thrown at him at the funeral had been the Goa'uld's way of keeping Daniel from spotting anything odd about his old friend. Hadn't Sarah told him that Steven had been acting out of character the last few days? He found the thought obscurely comforting and immediately felt guilty. He'd much rather Steven were angry with him forever than face the thought of another one of his friends lost to the enemy.

The direct flight from Petersen to Egypt was going to cut hours off the trip. That and having a vehicle waiting for their arrival would get them to the temple only hours after Steven. Actually, if things operated as slowly in Cairo as Daniel remembered, they might even catch up with him before he got there. He wished briefly that Jack and Teal'c were there, but waiting for them to get back from Minnesota would have delayed their departure by several hours. And Jack needed the break. Daniel had been mildly peeved when Jack had hung up on him, but he couldn't begrudge his friend the rest. The last few months had been stressful to say the least. And Jack had been trying to get enough time to go on this fishing trip since before Daniel's appendix operation.

Daniel rolled himself in a military issue blanket and stretched out as best he could. After the travel back and forth to Chicago the last couple of days, he was seriously short on sleep. He was going to need to be rested when they got to Egypt.

Steven Raynor reclined his seat and tried to ignore the people crowding him on either side. The flight to Egypt had been nearly full and he had been lucky to get even a center seat. He wondered if he were insane, going to Egypt like this with the amulet he had taken from the Stewart collection. But the carbon test had dated the amulet at ten thousand years old. If that was true, than Daniel had been right all along. Daniel- Steven felt a little queasy. Where had he been all this time, and what had he been doing? If you had told him in the old days that he could ever be afraid of Daniel, he would never have believed it.

When they had found the corpse of Cindy Walters, he had stood staring in disbelief, then had helped Daniel to wrestle the door to the elevator aside. Daniel had knelt to check for a pulse. "She's dead," he said. "I'll call the police." He had pulled out his cellphone and reported the body in a few succinct sentences. In the few minutes they had waited for the police to arrive, it had occurred to Steven that there was something -off- in Daniel's reaction. Steven had been horrified and trying to control an urge to babble. Daniel had leaned back against the wall calmly, watching him. Steven had gestured toward Cindy. "Are you sure? May be we should-"

"No." Daniel said. "The police wouldn't want us to disturb her."

It was then that the suspicion had occurred to him. He'd looked at Daniel's inexplicable calm wondering again what Daniel was doing down in this basement so late and it suddenly had hit him that Daniel was a suspect. Even then it had seemed improbable. But the things that were going on were all improbable. It was when it occurred to him to wonder if Daniel really had made a call to the police, that the pang of real terror shot through him. He had stood there staring blankly. Of course the police had arrived before he had thought of anything to do. So Daniel really had called them. But Steven couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness he had gotten from Daniel, the way he took finding a dead body in stride as if it happened every day. The police had questioned Steven for hours, and he had pointed out to them how odd Daniel's presence there was. But the police hadn't listened, had instead released Daniel even before they did him, and his residual uneasiness had not abated.

Daniel had been an outcast for five years, completely cut off from the field, publishing nothing. If the Stewart expedition artifacts really contained the proof that would vindicate Daniel's theories and catapult him to the apex of his field, how far would he be prepared to go to secure that proof?

Steven was afraid he already knew. After some of the questions they had asked him, he didn't think the police believed that Dr. Jordan's death was an accident. And who would Jordan have let in that late at night, surrounded by priceless artifacts, but someone he knew well? Someone he trusted and would want to help? That was where Steven's theory broke down. David Jordan was a kind and generous man and was-had been- very fond of Daniel. If he had found the proof of Daniel's theories, he would have invited him back to work on the project, shared the credit, and taken wholehearted joy in the vindication of his beloved student. There would have been no need for violence.

Steven moved restlessly in his seat, trying to stretch and ignoring the glares from his seatmates. This was only the first leg of an already long flight, and he had never felt less like sleeping, reading or doing a crossword. He couldn't stop his thoughts chasing themselves in circles. He would never forget his first meeting with Daniel.

Steven was sitting in front of the computer in the archeology lab, thinking that this was the best and worst week of his life. He had his brand-shiny-new doctorate, assistant professorship and a permanent post as Dr. Jordan's assistant. Not that the last had been in any doubt, he had started working for Jordan as an undergraduate. He regarded the older man practically as a father figure and knew the older man returned his affection. The same day that his job was confirmed, Jordan had come into the lab wearing a pleased smile.

"Ah, Steven! I have excellent news." Jordan said.

"Oh?" Steven had smiled back, anticipating some new archeological challenge.

"The university confirmed the new position and Daniel has accepted." Steven knew that the university had been considering creating a new position at the same time as he himself had been hired into an existing vacancy, but he hadn't realized they had gotten as far as considering candidates.

"I'm sorry, who did they hire?" Steven asked.

"Daniel Jackson." Jordan said. "The linguist from Columbia. I don't think you've met him, but Steven, he is quite brilliant. He was a student of mine years ago, when I was at UCLA. He's going to make all the difference in translating the texts we dug up this summer."

Steven knew who he was talking about, of course. Dr. Daniel Jackson, riding a rising wave of professional acclaim for his work on early Egyptian hieroglyphs. And he was coming here? Steven's heart sank and he felt a stabbing sense of betrayal. This was supposed to be the project that got his own name on papers, something he and Jordan had planned to do together. And instead they were going to hire this whiz-kid from Columbia? Steven was determined to hate him on sight.

He asked around about Jackson and found nothing to make him change his mind. He was touted as a wunderkind at Columbia, and had a string of well-reviewed articles to his name, along with an impressive number of other scholars who were referencing his work. Steven decided that he was probably going to be arrogant, condescending and a pain in the ass and wondered how long it was going to take to get rid of him once Dr. Jordan had time to come to the same conclusion.

A week later, he'd been sitting in the lab, when a figure appeared in the door, saying "Hi."

He'd looked up and seen a typical student in jeans and t-shirt, untidy fair hair spilling over his collar and falling into his eyes. Steven figured him for perhaps five years younger than Steven himself, which meant he was probably one of the new grad students. No point in inflicting his own foul mood on the kid. He said, "Can I help you?"

The kid replied, "I hope so, I'm looking for Dr. David Jordan?"

Steven said, "You're in the right place, but Dr. Jordan has stepped out for a minute. I'm Dr. Steven Raynor." It was still a thrill to introduce himself using his title. He wondered how long it would take for that to be routine.

The kid had given him a quick warm smile, and come forward to shake his hand. Steven had smiled back automatically before he registered the words, "Oh, that's great, I think we're going to be working together then. I'm Daniel Jackson." Steven had felt his face freeze as he retrieved his hand, but Daniel hadn't appeared to notice, rambling on cheerfully about the wall panels they had found and how much he was looking forward to working with Jordan and Steven on them. His apparently genuine pleasure at meeting Steven had proven irresistible and Steven had almost relaxed by the time Dr. Jordan returned. He couldn't help wondering though, 'How old is this kid?'

It didn't take him long to discover the answer. An almost-but-not-quite accidental look at the personnel file left open on Dr. Jordan's desk told him that Daniel was indeed younger than he was, but only by about six weeks, rather than the five years he had initially assumed. Despite this, he had earned two doctorates, and finished them both several years before Steven had finished his one. When the official announcement was made that he would be joining them, several people on the department maillist mentioned that he had been a prodigy; it was clear that he had not only started earlier than Steven had, but had worked incredibly hard to accomplish what he had at his age.

But it wasn't until the next day when they started the translation project that Steven had realized just how hard it was going to be to work with Daniel. He had brought in a pile of references and the translation he had started of one of the easier panels. When he came into the lab, Jordan was comparing a handwritten sheet with a photograph of a wall painting and Daniel was furiously scribbling on a pad. He had asked, "Are we starting on panel A-12?"

Daniel had replied without looking up, "I've done that one, I'm just finishing up on the section so we can see if the subjects relate to the older panels in the next chamber."

Steven had looked down and seen page after page of translations, covering everything that he had laboriously done and going far beyond it. He realized that Daniel was still wearing the same clothes he'd seen him in yesterday, and he and Jordan must have sat up all night. But even working all night, they had done an incredible amount. Jackson was translating on the fly, he realized, not stopping to look anything up and only occasionally pausing briefly for reflection, his lips moving as he considered the proper phrasing. Jordan had looked up at him, clearly tired but smiling, "This is wonderful, Steven. With Daniel's help, we're going to complete the more recent panels by the end of the week. This would have taken us months on our own, eh?"

"Wonderful." Steven had responded mechanically. The older panels were a style of hieroglyph much less well understood than the much later glyphs that Daniel was working on. Steven had understood that those older glyphs were the real challenge, but there was a lot of more routine work involved in documenting the outer chamber. He supposed it made sense to get the routine done first in case it contained clues to help decipher the more difficult earlier text and Daniel's specialty was linguistics, but he had been counting on doing a lot of that work himself, giving him the material for a few papers while Daniel and Jordan attacked the older text.. He felt a stab of jealousy as he saw the fond expression that Jordan turned on Daniel. Daniel wasn't going to have to be arrogant or condescending to be insufferable. Just by being there, he was going to steal Steven's work, his mentor and the acclaim that should have been his. And there wasn't a damned thing that Steven could do about it because the younger man was just plain better at this.

He'd behaved like a spoiled brat, he remembered with a certain amount of shame. He'd sulked around the department, hiding out in his tiny office ostensibly working on materials for his teaching course, alternating with giving Daniel a hard time in front of the other people in the department. He'd quickly discovered that Daniel was a total geek and shy enough that it was easy to embarrass him into silence on any subject except archeology. Steven hadn't hesitated to use his own more polished social skills to that end. After the fact, he'd found that he'd come in for disgusted looks from more than a few of the staff. As long as Daniel wasn't in a daze of translation, he was unfailingly courteous to the people he dealt with, and it had won him more than a few supporters. But Steven and Daniel had achieved detente a few weeks later, when they were unpacking and cataloguing some of the immense number of artifacts brought back from Egypt after the summer dig.

He'd looked up and watched Daniel carefully unwrapping and inspecting each piece, checking the description against the tags and entering it into the database. "I bet you wish we had a few grad students to assign this to," he'd said, the rest of the sentiment hanging in the air. 'Important guys like you don't want to do gruntwork.'

Daniel had looked over at him and smiled. "Actually, I kind of enjoy it. Handling these things, real objects lovingly placed in a tomb thousands of years ago by human hands, well. It makes me feel close to those people somehow." He'd carefully replaced the pottery shard in its protective wrapper. "Kind of silly, I know."

Steven had felt some of his own bad mood lift with the sudden sense of kinship. "Doesn't sound silly to me-"

A deliveryman had come in with a box. "Delivery for Dr. Jordan," he had said, dropping the box carelessly on the desk.

"Hey, careful with that!" Steven had said, going to sign for it. The man had muttered something in a surly tone and departed. "What was his problem?" Steven had asked resentfully.

Daniel had shrugged at the rhetorical question and then answered it anyway. "Probably having a bad day."

"That was no excuse for taking it out on us." Steven had grumped. "He was damned rude."

Daniel had said mildly, "In general, I think people who are rude are too wrapped up in their own issues to pay attention to how they're behaving toward someone else. I wouldn't take it personally."

Steven had looked sharply at Daniel, trying to see if that had been a barb directed in his direction, but Daniel was carefully examining a vase under a magnifying glass and seemed oblivious to any secondary meanings to his remarks. Steven had said slowly, "I expect you're right." He had returned to his cataloguing thoughtfully. After a short period of working in silence, he had looked at his watch and said, "What do you say we put in another hour here, and then go grab a pizza?"

Daniel had glanced over at him and smiled brightly. "That sounds great." His stomach let out an audible rumble and they both laughed. Daniel looked at his own watch. "I think I forgot lunch."

On the surface, they had gotten along better after that. But Steven had still felt the frustration flare on occasion. He reluctantly concluded that Daniel wasn't deliberately trying to steal Steven's work. He was just so damned preoccupied with the mysteries they were uncovering that he didn't stop to think about anyone else's feelings. And yet, if you were interacting with Daniel on an ordinary, day-to-day level, he was actually very considerate. Steven had wavered between liking him and wanting to strangle him on a daily basis.

It hadn't helped that Daniel seemed to blithely wander through life ignoring the things that Steven considered practical necessities. He never cared about what kind of an impression he was making on the senior faculty. He debated archeological questions as freely with Dr. Jordan as he did with Steven or any of the grad students. It never seemed to worry him what anyone thought.

The joy of discovery preoccupied Daniel completely. When he was caught up in work, he would exist on endless pots of coffee and junk food, without sleeping or eating until either he solved the puzzle he was working on or he hit the wall, whichever came first. Steven alternated between bitterly envying his carefree no-holds-barred approach to life and a certain unwilling concern about his obliviousness to his own well-being.

Steven came into the office one morning to find Daniel asleep with his face on on the desk. This wasn't especially surprising, since as far as Steven knew, he'd been there all night, as well as the night before. He rolled his eyes and shook Daniel's shoulder gently. "Hey, Daniel. Wake up."

"Ugmn." Daniel had mumbled, clearly resisting wakefulness.

"C'mon. You really don't want to sleep in that position." Steven was torn between exasperation and compassion. There were times Daniel reminded him of his youngest brother, and he didn't *want* to become fond of him, damn it. He shook him a little more roughly. "Up and at 'em. This is your wake-up call."

Daniel had finally sat up, yawning. "What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty." Steven said. He studied Daniel's glazed expression. "There's time to go for breakfast before your eleven o'clock class."

Daniel had looked a little startled. "Um, I don't have a class on Tuesdays."

Steven had raised his eyebrows. As flaky as Daniel could be about things like eating, he was a total professional about work. He was never late for any of the classes that he taught. It was really tempting to leave him hanging out to dry on this one, but he suppressed the urge. "I know. Today is Wednesday."

"What?" Daniel looked dazedly at the calendar, still seeming to have some trouble tracking.

A random suspicion struck Steven. "Daniel. Did you eat anything at all yesterday?"

Daniel had given him a perfectly blank look. Clearly he had no idea, and if that was the case, it was pretty likely he hadn't. Steven had sighed and said. "Come on. I'll go with."

Daniel had more or less dived into the food, confirming Steven's suspicion that he had skipped a few meals too many. "Do you do this often?" he asked.

"Do what?" Daniel had drained the first cup of coffee they brought him and was plowing through a plate of pancakes and eggs.

"Forget to eat." Steven said. For that matter, how did he do it? Daniel tackled everything he did at about two hundred percent of full intensity. When he was working, he gave off a charge of energy that was exhilerating and exhausting in turns. He had a wicked sweet tooth, and it had never occurred to Steven to wonder why he didn't get fat on a steady diet of doughnuts and candy. He obviously had a metabolism like a blast furnace. Now Steven was surprised he didn't pass out on a regular basis, as he clearly didn't eat enough to keep him going.

Daniel shrugged. "Too busy. Which reminds me, do you have the stuff on the side chamber? I wanted to make a start on that next."

Steven had gone from concerned to ballistic in under a second. "God damn it, no. I've been working on that for a month. You're not taking that, too." He was filled with a sense of bitter irony- here he was, looking out for Daniel's welfare while Daniel tried to cut more ground out from under him.

Daniel's fork had paused in mid-air as he took in the real anger in his tone and stared at the other man. "What?"

Steven's suppressed resentment boiled over. "From the day you walked in here, you've just trampled over the whole department, doing whatever you liked. It's not bloody fair. Dr. Jordan and I are the ones who spent the whole fucking summer digging that stuff up. You can't just stroll in here and take over."

Daniel had stopped eating and was looking at Steven in real confusion and dismay. "I..I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I guess I should have talked to you about who was doing what. Dr. Jordan never said..."

And that was also the wrong thing to say. "Dr. Jordan thinks you're god's gift to archeology. He's so fucking delighted you've deigned to grace us with your presence he'll let you do any damned thing you please. How you managed that, when I've.." Steven couldn't finish. Dr. Jordan had taken him under his wing and treated him as much like a son as he had a student. The contrast to Steven's own father couldn't have been more painful. Steven resented the attention Dr. Jordan gave Daniel at least as much as he did Daniel's eclipsing him in the lab.

Daniel stared across the table at Steven and said with genuine contrition. "Steven. I'm really, really sorry. I never meant to come in and hog all the best parts of the research for myself. I wasn't even thinking about the publications, and I should have-"

Steven was starting to feel guilty about yelling at Daniel, when it was sounding like they could probably could have talked this out weeks ago. He glared across the table, "Damn it, how am I supposed to fight with you, when you keep apologizing."

Daniel's eyes had gone wide, and then an irrepressible gleam of humor lit his eyes. "I'm not very good at fighting. It's a geek thing."

Steven had tried to stay angry and wound up laughing. "Daniel."

"Look," Daniel said, "We can work something out. There's plenty of stuff to do for everyone."

And they had, mostly. Steven had kept sole control of the work he'd started and gotten co-credit on several of the major articles that had come out of the body of the work. He'd protested once and Daniel had brushed it aside, "Are you kidding? Not only did you do a ton of work on this, you're a better writer than Dr. Jordan and I put together."

"Uh, thanks." Steven was absurdly pleased with the compliment and hadn't objected again. And if he'd still felt some jealousy over the fact that it had been Daniel's championing his contribution to Dr. Jordan that had given him that credit, he'd tried to wrestle it down.

The steward had been by several times now, passing out drinks and meals, which Steven accepted more out of boredom than any real hunger. He ate the entre without enthusiasm and shredded a roll absently onto the tray. He remembered doing this flight with on their way to a summer dig.

They had their heads together going over the equipment lists and planning out what they would need to do to get the dig set up. Steven said, "You've done this before, haven't you?" He was acutely conscious that despite being the same age, Daniel had been on far more digs than he had.

Daniel said. "Only for much smaller digs than this, I assure you. This is the first time I've been involved in organizing something this size."

Steven smiled. "Me, too." He gave himself a mental thwack for betraying the sting of inferiority. It was hardly Daniel's fault he was brilliant. And he had a disarming knack for touching Steven's own love of the past and making him feel like a equal partner. A few more years of working with Daniel, Steven thought ironically, and he was going to lose all his hangups. He smiled ruefully. A year ago it would never have occurred to him that he had hangups.

Dr. Jordan leaned across the aisle and said, "And I'd be lost without the both of you. I remember doing all this stuff myself, and I much prefer delegating!"

They both laughed. Dr. Jordan's gaze went to Daniel and he said, "Daniel, your parents would have been very proud."

Daniel's return tone was casual, even pleased, but Steven could feel him stiffen slightly as he replied, "Thank you, sir. I like to think so."

Steven looked at Daniel as Dr. Jordan had returned to the papers he was reading and said, "Your parents are dead?" They'd worked together for nearly a year, but he couldn't remember Daniel ever saying anything about his family before, though Steven had certainly mentioned his own siblings' antics from time to time. Yet somehow Steven had formed the vague idea that Daniel had a couple of aging parents and maybe a sibling or two tucked away in a rose-covered cottage somewhere. "Yeah." Daniel answered in a vague tone, looking back down at the site plan.

"And Dr. Jordan knew them?" Steven persisted.

Daniel shrugged. "Professionally. They were archeologists." Daniel was radiating clear 'keep out' signals, his body language closed and unhappy, even in an airline seat.

Steven wondered what he was so uptight about. "Um, recently?"

Daniel said, "No, years ago. Do you think we should be setting up the tents quite so close to the dig area? It's going to be a pain to move them if we decide we need to excavate in that direction."

Steven rolled his eyes. They'd talked about this already. He tried to subtly turn the subject but still draw Daniel out. "I'm sorry. Still it must have been cool that they were archeologists. My dad thinks archeology is a total waste of time."

Daniel glanced over at him. "Really? What does your dad do?"

Steven grimaced. "He's a banker. So's my oldest brother. And my older sister is a stockbroker. All sober and respectable. I was his first big failure."

Daniel's eyebrows went up, "You have a PhD and a post at a respected university. How can he consider you a failure?"

"The lack of a six-figure income for starters," Steven said drily. "My father's standards are pretty simple, if narrow."

Daniel shook his head. "I'll never get that. I mean, you're doing something you love. Doesn't that mean anything to him?"

"Nope." Steven shook his head, barely realizing that they had somehow gotten completely off the subject of Daniel's family. He never had found out any more about Daniel's family, he remembered.

The familiar heat of Cairo burned through Steven's shirt. He turned as Dr. Jordan joined him. "Where's Daniel?" Jordan asked.

"In pursuit of our luggage." Steven said, waving a hand at his friend's barely visible form. "He may be partially solar powered, the heat seems to fill him with energy, unlike the rest of us."

David Jordan laughed. "Daniel loves Egypt. Come on." He had led the way across the tarmac to where Daniel was talking to one of the airline personnel in rapid-fire Arabic, his hands flying.

He turned as they came up. "It should be just a minute, they're processing the luggage through customs now," he said.

Steven shook his head. "Damn, you're fluent. I speak some Arabic but I couldn't even follow that."

Daniel shrugged. "I was born here. Arabic was my first language."

"Don't you mean second language?" Steven asked.

Daniel shook his head. "Nope, first was Arabic, second was French. English was third." He looked over past Dr. Jordan's shoulder. "Look, there are our bags now."

Steven took a swallow of water and returned to brushing sand gently away from the base of the wall, aware of Daniel similarly engaged beside him. Once they had started actually digging, Daniel's driving energy had given way to a focused patience as they methodically uncovered the ruins of the structure. Steven had felt more kinship with the other scientist than ever as he relaxed into the same meticulous rhythm. As much as he usually relished the stress of university politics and the bustle of the city, on a dig he felt peaceful and satisfied in a way he rarely was elsewhere.

Beside him, Daniel sat back on his heels and studied the wall painting he had painstakingly uncovered. "Wow, Steven, look at this-"

Steven shuffled over to squat next to him. "It's not in very good condition."

"That's not what I meant." Daniel traced the outline of the hieroglyphs, his hand almost touching the wall. "These are early. Maybe earlier than anything we've seen. And they're beautiful. It's almost as if-" his voice died away.

"Almost as if what?" Steven asked curiously. Daniel was staring at the wall, his gaze faraway. "Daniel?"

Daniel looked at him with an almost dazed look in his eyes. "As if the writing system was fully developed at a much earlier time than we previously thought."

Steven frowned. "Maybe we just have an exceptionally good artist here."

"No-" Daniel shook his head and jumped to his feet. "No, it's not just the quality of the execution. I'm so stupid. Why didn't I see it right away? The older glyphs are more complex, they express ideas much more elegantly. And they appear so suddenly. Then after a brief period, we see cruder versions of the language appearing all over the place. It's more like the writings came from somewhere else, and were adapted rather than the locals figuring it out on their own."

"That's pretty, uh, radical." Steven shook his head. He'd seen Daniel on theory kick before, but this was way out there, even for him.

Daniel came partway back to Earth. "I know. I'm going to need a lot of evidence to prove it."

"Steven!" Steven turned to see a tall willowy young woman with long curly hair approaching Dr. Jordan as the professor waved him over.

"Sarah." Dr. Jordan took the young woman's hand and drew her forward into a hug. "It's good to see you. And I'm delighted that you've finally agreed to come to Chicago. Steven." He turned to the younger man. "I'd like you to meet Dr. Sarah Gardner. Sarah, this is Dr. Steven Raynor."

He knew that Sarah Gardner would be joining them for at least a year. Possibly longer if she worked out and they could fund her position. They shook hands, Steven looking her over frankly. Not really his type, though she was certainly good-looking. Tall and thin, with a riot of strawberry blond curls. Steven's taste ran more to petite curves. He gave her a consciously charming smile, and said, "Please call me Steven."

"And I'm Sarah." She smiled back,but with a twinkle that said she had his number and wasn't buying any.

"Where's Daniel?" Dr. Jordan had asked.

"In the lab, romancing an artifact," Steven said, rolling his eyes. "Where else?" Far from abandoning his hieroglyph theory, Daniel had continued to develop it obsessively in the year since their return from Egypt. Just getting his attention was a chore some days.

Dr. Jordan laughed as the phone rang. He picked it up while Steven continued to the men's room. Steven was sorry later that he hadn't gotten to see Sarah's first meeting with Daniel. Not that it hadn't been amusing to watch Sarah coming on to him in an understated British way that had gone straight over Daniel's head.

"Y'know." Steven had drawled later, taking her aside. "If you really want to get his attention, you're going to have to cover yourself in hieroglyphs."

Sarah had turned a startled gaze back to him and then laughed. "I may try that."

Steven had grinned. As entertaining as it might have been to pursue the fair Sarah himself, watching her making a play for Daniel was probably going to be far more amusing.

He smiled faintly. Daniel was such a geek, and it hadn't been just amusing, it had been hilarious. Sarah had first tried a low-key approach and Daniel had been completely oblivious. He had cheerfully talked with her about archeology, or about just about anything else with evident pleasure and no sign at all that he realized she was interested in him. At one point, Sarah had asked Steven, "Are you sure he likes girls?"

Steven had laughed. "Oh, yeah. You may need to break it to him that you're female first though. I'm telling you, hieroglyphs."

Sarah had threatened to pour a cup of juice over his head and he had backed away feigning terror.

He'd taken the opportunity later to sound out Daniel as they worked side by side in the lab. "So, Daniel?"

"Um." Daniel had responded intelligently, patiently inspecting every inch of a decorated bowl.

"What do you think of Sarah?" he had persisted.

"Hm?" Daniel had long since mastered the art of making responsive noises when he was preoccupied without actually transferring any of his attention to the speaker.

Steven repeated patiently, "Sarah. What do you think of her?"

"Sarah?" Daniel had given him a puzzled look. "What about her? Um. Good archeologist, thorough. Some solid work in her article on the Kharnak dig last year.."

Steven had been hard put not to laugh. Poor Sarah. "I meant as a woman. Don't you think she's hot?"

Daniel had blinked. "Um, sure." He had given Steven a speculative look. "How come? You thinking of asking her out?"

Steven had laughed out loud and almost given it away right there, but in the end his warped sense of humor had won out. "No, not at all," he had denied, and settled back to watch for Sarah's next move.

He had to give her credit, she was perfectly capable of being direct when she wanted to be. One afternoon after the three of them had gone out to lunch, she had suggested taking a walk. Daniel had stood up from the table, fastening his jacket, "Sure. Steven, you coming?"

Steven had started open his mouth to accept when he caught Sarah's piercing stare. He considered going anyway, out of pure mischief, but gave in when Sarah kicked him unsubtly on the ankle. "Um, no, think I'll head on back," he said. Daniel and Sarah had strolled away down the street, Daniel talking about the artifacts they had looked at that day. He was sorely tempted to follow them, as he was dying to know what Sarah was planning.

He didn't have long to wait. They returned to the office perhaps an hour later. Sarah was wearing a rather smug expression. Daniel was definitely noticing at last that she was female. He looked after her as she left the office with a rather stunned expression.

Daniel had dropped down to sit behind the table, not looking at Steven. Steven had said, "Had a nice walk?"

Daniel blinked. "Um. Yeah. Steven?"

"What?" he said.

"You really aren't interested in Sarah, are you?" he sounded vaguely guilty.

Steven grinned. "Only in the sense that she's female." He glanced at Daniel's uncertain face and said, "Naw, not at all. We're just good friends." He had to ask, "So what happened?"

"Oh." Daniel said a little weakly. "I think we're dating."

Over five years later, Steven still couldn't help but smile. Daniel had been so surprised, and so clueless.

"So what, haven't you dated before?" Steven had teased.

Daniel had said a little defensively, "Oh, some. But it was never.."

"Never what?" Steven asked.

Daniel had shrugged. "They would get all pissed off if I tried to read a book or do something that wasn't going out. It never really worked."

Steven said. "You sound like you want to skip right over the dating part and go straight to married."

Daniel said a bit wistfully, "Well, that doesn't sound so bad."

Steven rolled his eyes, "What does Sarah see in you?"

"I have no idea." Daniel sounded so bewildered that Steven had completely lost it, and laughed until he could hardly breathe.

In hindsight, Steven had wished that he had tried to warn Sarah a bit more seriously about how focused Daniel was on work. Once the first flush of hormones had worn off, Daniel had been sweetly affectionate with Sarah when she was present, but tended to absentmindedly forget her existence when she wasn't.

In some ways, Sarah and Steven would have been far better matched. But the chemistry had been all wrong. And by the time Sarah had recovered from the meltdown of her relationship with Daniel, they had settled into a comfortable working friendship that was undisturbed by the constant rotation of attractive young women who Steven dated and two brief subsequent relationships of Sarah's.

Daniel had always attracted at least as much attention as Steven had, but unlike Steven, was oblivious to all but the most blantant passes. Steven had watched Daniel awkwardly but kindly decline advances from students of both genders and the occasional pass from a coworker in the first year and a half they had worked together. It wasn't until he saw Daniel with Sarah that he wondered if the larger part of Sarah's attraction for him was that she shared Daniel's passion for the past. And at least part of it had to be loneliness. Daniel's casual friendliness to nearly everyone he met tended to obscure the fact that he had few close friends. Steven was fairly self-absorbed, but even he had guessed that Daniel hadn't had an easy life.

Courteous, kind, brilliant, shy. A little obsessive about his work. Steven couldn't believe that the man he'd known five years ago could be a murderer. But there were two bodies, so someone had to be the killer. And who else was there? One freak accident had been hard enough to swallow, but two was ludicrous. There was still something that Steven didn't know. Perhaps this amulet could answer some of his questions. From his research, he was almost certain that it was a key. He had to find the lock that it fit.

It seemed like everything was conspiring to slow him down. The plane sat on the runway for almost an hour before they were allowed to disembark. The car took forever, the traffic was heavy and slow. Driving over the sand to the site was hard work. If the car had ever had power steering it was long since degraded, and Steven's arms were sore when he pulled to a stop outside the entrance to the tomb. At least the directions had been right.

He flashed his light around the empty tomb. The wall paintings were in a fabulous state of preservation, but as there were so many priceless antiquities in this ancient land, it was unlikely that anyone but a few archeogists would ever see them. He looked around. If the key fit a chest or other removable object, he was screwed, because the place had been completely stripped of its contents. But Steven thought the key would be to something embedded in the structure of the temple itself, a chamber or vault. The light flickered over something below the paintings and Steven stepped closer. There! He could see a depression in the wall that looked like it would fit the back of the amulet. He couldn't work out what the thing would do mechanically, though. Perhaps he would have to twist? He dug through his bag and unwrapped the amulet, setting it against the slot.

The piece settled onto the slot with only a click of stone on stone, but Steven could hear a powerful hum start instantly, then he stepped back in startlement when a part of the stone shelf in front of him started to rise up, revealing a lighted chamber. It looked more like something modern than anything he would have expected to see in a tomb. One of the lighted shelves had a piece of something that looked like jewelry. Steven reached out wonderingly to pick it up and examine it. He had no idea what it was, but it sure didn't look like any piece of Egyptian jewelry he had ever seen. He heard a faint noise behind him, a soft step on stone and turned, recognizing the figure behind him with a soft gasp of surprise.

"S-sarah?" Steven said. "What are you doing here?" He took a step toward her. "And what the hell- I could swear your eyes are glowing."

Sarah was stalking toward him with a contemptuous, arrogant expression, unlike anything he had ever seen on her face in all the years they had worked together. He almost took a step back, but told himself he was being silly. Then she spoke. Her voice was like hers, and unlike it, with a weird echoey overtone like nothing he had ever heard. "Stupid, arrogant human. That is not for you." She belted him hard across the side of the face, an attack he was too surprised to even try and avoid, as she snatched the bracelet from his hands. He slammed face down into the paving stones, astounded at the strength of the blow.

"Ow! Sarah, what are you-" As he started to pick himself up off the floor, he saw that she had slipped the bracelet over her hand so the large gem rested in her palm. The jewel started glowing as she raised her hand, palm towards him.

"You are of no use to me." Sarah's changed voice rolled over him as he felt something like a wall fall on him, driving him relentlessly to the floor. He just had time to think that he had done Daniel a grave injustice. There was an instant of blinding pain and then it all went black.

Sensation returned in a wash of pain so intense, he instantly wished he was still unconscious. He realized that someone was running hands over his tormented body and he moaned in protest.

"Steven!" That sounded like Daniel, he thought. 'Can't be Daniel.. he left.' After a couple of seconds later he remembered- the funeral, Dr. Jordan, his trip to Egypt. 'Daniel still shouldn't be here,' he thought.'Must still be confused.'

A female voice he didn't know said. "He's bleeding internally."

'Poor bastard,' he thought. Then he realized. 'She's talking about me.'

The male voice again, and it really did sound like Daniel. "Steven, it's me."

He found his voice with an effort. "Daniel?" 'What are you doing here? Did you know I took the amulet?' He wanted to ask, but it was too much effort to vocalize complex thoughts.

"What happened?" Daniel asked.

Steven sighed. Complex thoughts or not, he was going to have to try. "I took the amulet. It's over ten thousand years old. Your theory was right all along. I'm sorry." The hands were back, trying to roll him up on his side and he jerked away at the stab of pain. "AHHH!"

The soft female voice said, "Just take it easy, okay? I need you to hold still."

'If you want me to hold still, why're you trying to roll me over?'he wondered.

Daniel spoke reassuringly, but in a tone of desperate urgency, "It's okay, she's a friend. What about the jar?"

"Huh?" Steven had no idea what he was talking about.

"The Osiris jar. Did you open it?" Daniel asked insistently.

Steven was confused. Why was Daniel asking about that? "No," he replied.

"Why did you come here?" The hands had moved back to his shoulders. Everything still hurt.

Steven collected his wits and said, "I figured out the amulet was a key. There's a hidden chamber. I wanted to make the discovery." Short sentences were easier. The pain didn't seem that much worse, but it was rolling over him in waves and making it hard to concentrate. He wished Daniel would ask him another question. It helped him to focus and there was something very important he had to tell Daniel if he could just remember it. But he seemed to have lost Daniel's attention.

The woman was saying, "Daniel, we *have* to get him out of here!"

Then Daniel was talking to him again, and it was the right question this time, "Steven, who did this to you?"

But the right question came too late, Steven's brain was starting to fuzz out. He faintly heard the voice, the not-Sarah, telling Daniel, "I did!" 'Guess I don't have to warn him now,' he thought and slid gratefully back into the thick black fog.

Daniel slouched in a chair next to the examination table. Fortunately Steven's condition had been too critical for Janet to spare much attention for him while they transported him back to town. He knew from way too much experience that nothing did much for a ribbon device headache except time. At least this time he had managed to resist to the extent of doing something useful. And Steven was going to live. Janet had wielded her medical credentials to good effect and they had gotten permission to stay with Steven until he went into surgery in case he started babbling.

Sarah was gone. Daniel was fairly sure he'd have been feeling sick even without the help from the ribbon device. His relationship with Sarah was long over, but he still remembered her fondly, thought of her as a friend despite the way things had ended. He was already starting to think of her in the past tense, as if she were dead. Sha're, Skaara, Kawalsky, Robert- Skaara was the only one they'd gotten back, and that had been a miraculous fluke, the kind of thing they couldn't expect to happen twice. He didn't have any hope left to expend on Sarah. He'd spent his last reserves of it on Sha're.

Daniel looked around to see Janet scrubbing, already attired in a sterile gown. It looked like she had obtained permission to observe the surgery then. Daniel felt better knowing that she'd be there. Steven couldn't be in better hands. Sam wasn't around; she had already gone back to the temple with a team to strip out any remaining Goa'uld technology. Daniel looked over at Steven.

The nurses had cleaned him up a bit, but he was going to have quite a bit of bruising on his face. As Daniel watched, his eyelids started to flutter and open.

Steven came awake again in a white room with an antiseptic smell. 'Hospital,' part of his brain identified. He remembered some confusing dreams, Sarah hitting him, Daniel asking what happened. An impression of sun, heat, movement and excruciating pain. The pain was still there. "Umn." He groaned.

"Steven." He turned his head a fraction and Daniel's concerned blue eyes swam into view. "Take it easy. You're in the hospital now, they're taking you into surgery in a few minutes, but you're going to be fine."

Daniel looked pale himself, except for a reddened patch on his forehead. Steven wanted to tell him not to worry, but talking seemed a little beyond him at the moment. He frowned. He wanted to trust Daniel, but there was something...oh, yeah, it was Sarah he couldn't trust. But that didn't make sense either. The only thing Daniel had done wrong was to leave- "You won't leave?" he whispered hoarsely, before he could stop himself.

"I'll be right here." Daniel promised.

"Okay." A man in a white jacket came and stood by his bed and Daniel glided away- no, he was the one being rolled away, except it was all too much effort to stay awake.

Steven woke again, feeling oddly dreamy. The pain was gone, but the walls were doing something peculiar. They were curved and looked like metal. He looked around. There was a roaring in his ears and the curtains around the bed seemed to flutter. He could see Daniel sprawled in a chair beside his bed. At least Daniel didn't seem distorted. Though he might fall out of the chair, Steven reflected. Good thing he was tied to it. He shut his eyes again and slept.

It seemed odd to Daniel to be debriefing without Jack fidgeting impatiently across the table and Teal'c listening with solemn attention. But they were still in Minnesota, or- he glanced at the wall clock- possibly on their way back, and in any case they hadn't been around for the wild chase to Egypt in pursuit of Steven Raynor. And though they hadn't known it at the time, Sarah.

He wondered how much detail he could legitimately leave out of his report. He winced inwardly, remembering how indiscreet he had been.

Sarah had asked him why he hadn't come back, thought it was because of her. Daniel had told her, "The truth is, I got caught up in something- incredible."

Sarah had read the barely concealed excitement. "You found something, didn't you? Something that supports your theory? Tell me." He looked down. "Come on."

Daniel had said feebly, "I can't."

"Daniel!" Sarah had protested.

And Daniel had relented. "Okay. Let's just say- that what the world knows about ancient Egypt just barely touches the surface. The truth is more incredible than any of us ever imagined."

He could kick himself. All that time, it had been Osiris. And he had as good as told the Goa'uld that he knew far more than he should. During their conversation in Dr. Jordan's office, he had not concealed that he could read Goa'uld writing. Sarah- or rather Osiris- had called him on it. And he had said, " Let's just say I can't go into it right now, but this is really important." How much more obvious could he have been?

Daniel returned to earth to see Hammond staring at him. "Doctor?"

Daniel hurriedly replayed the last few minutes of conversation that he had allowed to wash over him. "Um, yes, well, exposure. Nothing overt, I should think. While Sarah and I certainly knew each other well at one time, I've had no contact with her since before I first went to Abydos. So, while she certainly knows a lot about me personally and will have surmised that I know more about the Goa'uld than most of the general population from our confrontation in Egypt, she has no idea of the location of the stargate or that the SGC exists, and she has less idea of the scope of the SGC's operations than the system lords do."

Hammond was obviously reading something in his general uneasiness. "And?"

Daniel shrugged. "Well- this is the first major Goa'uld we know of who has taken a host from Earth and then escaped offworld. S-Osiris will be in a position to tell the System Lords quite a lot about our society and level of technology. And frankly, Osiris shows signs of being more subtle than most. He possessed Sarah and then stayed undercover, hid himself thoroughly and kept out of sight to avoid arousing suspicion. That's a lot sneakier and more patient than any Goa'uld we've seen before."

Hammond nodded. "So we have a very smart Goa'uld out there who knows a lot about us."

Sam was looking at Daniel intently. "Is that all, Daniel?"

This was one of those days that Daniel wished Sam didn't know him quite so well. "From the SGC point of view it is." He hesitated, then went on. "We know that the System Lords have a price on our heads. Personally, I can't help but find it disquieting that Osiris has just gained a lot of knowledge about me that he could use against us." He lifted his coffee cup and sipped water with barely disguised irritation. He wasn't actually paying any more attention than usual to Janet's usual post-ribbon-device ban on caffeine, but he wasn't foolhardy enough to drink coffee in front of her. "Realistically, it's no worse than it was when Ammonet was out there."

"What I don't understand is why Osiris was hanging around at all." Janet said. "After all, he had the amulet, and he knew where the temple was. Why not just grab the Isis jar while it was still in Chicago and go."

Sam asked. "Could he have been waiting for you, Daniel? He could have known from Sarah that your theories would have led to you discovering the Goa'uld."

Daniel blinked. "Ow. That's a scary thought. Um. Well. I think he was still hanging around because he wanted the Isis jar. It had gotten misplaced. The curator found it the same day I went down to ask about the missing amulet. And then of course I got to it before Osiris could. So there's no special reason to think he had any idea I knew something useful, at least before I turned up."

"There's no way he could have known about your work for the government?" Sam insisted.

Daniel shook his head and said slowly. "I can't be sure, of course. I used Dr.Jordan as one of my references when I applied for my security clearance. He could have mentioned it to Sarah, though as far as I know he didn't. And Sarah would have found the idea of me working for the government pretty bizarre if she knew. All speculation of course." Daniel glanced at Sam, Janet and the general apologetically. "I don't want to let paranoia get the better of me. It's damned unnerving how..how..um.."

"Personal?" Sam suggested.

"Yeah. It's damned unnerving how much of my personal history has gotten tied up with the Goa'uld." Daniel suppressed a shiver. He continued in a determinedly positive tone. "On the plus side for us, Osiris doesn't seem in any hurry to blow our cover to the general public. He could easily have prevented me from finding out about the age of the amulet, but he didn't. At that point he was clearly fishing. And the technician was already dead by then. The only reason to kill the technician would be to conceal the age of the amulet and by implication the existance of the Goa'uld."

"Daniel?" Sam asked. "Is it possible that Osiris didn't kill the technician and the curator?"

"What are you talking about?" Daniel said.

"Could Steven Raynor have done it?" Sam asked.

Daniel blinked. "Steven? He wouldn't. And what would be his motive?"

"As discoveries go, this would be huge. It would make his reputation." Sam said.

Daniel stopped and considered it. His gut said no, Steven wasn't capable of anything like that, but Sarah- Osiris- had said he was always jealous of Daniel. He couldn't really be sure, could he? "I can't believe that," he insisted. "Why kill anyone? He'd need the carbon test results to prove the discovery, no matter who got the credit. And what harm could the curator do to him?" Daniel hesitated, recalling some old and bitter arguments between them. "If he was going to kill anyone, why not just kill me? But he didn't, the worst thing he did was try to get me embroiled in problems with the police while he hightailed it to Egypt to try and make the discovery for himself."

Sam nodded, satisfied, and he let his attention drift as Sam picked up the discussion reviewing the actions taken at the temple. After Sam, Janet and Daniel had evacuated Steven, a team from the SGC was sent in to strip anything that looked like being potentially Goa'uld technology. They had filmed every inch of decoration in the place and then they had blown the remnants into a pile of jumbled sandstone blocks. It was the sort of thing that Americans weren't supposed to be able to do in a foreign country, but knowing Egypt as he did, Daniel strongly suspected that the right folks had been paid off.

Daniel tuned back in to Janet, who was wrapping up her report on Steven's injuries. Daniel had gotten the medical all-clear himself this morning, despite the residual headache from yet another round with the ribbon device. Well, so long as he honored the ban on caffeine, anyway.

"-serious, but he came through surgery and the airlift to the US very well. We'll probably be able to release him in three or four days."

General Hammond said. "Thank you, Doctor. And that brings us to the last issue-"

Daniel nodded, tapping his pen on the table. "The question of just what do we tell him. I would really like to handle that part myself." He looked at the General. "I don't suppose that we can simply tell him the truth?"

"Given that you recommended against recruiting him for the SGC, that is out of the question, Dr. Jackson." Hammond's tone was reproving.

Daniel looked down at his pad. "Then it will have to be a partial truth-" He held up his hand, as the General began to protest. "Please let me explain what I have in mind."

Steven gradually drifted awake, conscious of a faint buzz of intercoms. He was more awake than he had in ages, if somewhat confused. He felt bruised all over, with a particular soreness under the bandages on his chest, where he was told they had had to operate because he had been bleeding internally.

The nurses hadn't been able to answer many of his questions the first time he surfaced, but they had told him he was in a military hospital in Colorado and had been injured in an accident in Egypt, when part of a temple had fallen in on him. They couldn't or wouldn't tell him why he was in Colorado.

He vaguely recalled the trip here.. the curved metal walls must have been an airplane, and Daniel had been buckled into a jump seat dozing beside him during the trip. Keeping his promise. Daniel took promises seriously. He remembered asking Daniel not to leave, and the other man saying he'd stay. Not like the last time-

He'd walked into the office to find Daniel, head down on the bare desk, with a full box of odds and ends packed neatly beside it. He'd emptied the cup of cold coffee sitting beside Daniel's hand and poured more from the pot. Ghastly stuff, if it had been sitting all night, but at this hour Daniel wouldn't care about anything other than the caffeine content.

Daniel had jerked awake as he'd set the cup ungently on the desk in front of him. "Wha-?" His hands closed around the cup and he had straightened in the chair. "Oh. Thanks."

"Don't thank me until you taste it." Steven said, as Daniel took a swallow of the bitter brew and grimaced. "I take it you broke the news to Sarah."

"Uh. Yeah." Daniel looked unhappy. "I hated to do it, but, well, I have to go."

"Why, Daniel?" Steven asked. "Damn it, I know you're set on delivering this paper, we've all tried to talk you out of it enough. But I don't understand why you're leaving the Institute for this grant in LA."

"I can't take another Chicago winter?" Daniel suggested in a humorous tone, obviously trying to avoid further discussion."

"Dr. Jordan wants you to stay." Two years of watching Jordan lavish on Daniel the affection and respect that Steven had craved. Two years to realize that good looks and polished social graces were no match for Daniel's shy unconscious charm and genuine warmth. Two years of living in the shadow of Daniel's brilliance. He felt a certain pride that he only felt a flicker of jealousy as he brought up Dr. Jordan. It had always been impossible to hate Daniel. He was still working on not envying him.

"Steven, I can't." Daniel gave him a wide-eyed helpless look, the one that would have had undergraduates running from miles around to comfort him if they'd seen it.

"He's very fond of you." Steven thought that probably the battering his ego had taken at Daniel's oblivious hands was good for his character, but he still wondered why he was pushing this. Why try to talk Daniel out of leaving when he'd spent a great deal of the last two years wishing he'd go be brilliant somewhere else?

"I know." Daniel said. "That's why-" He stopped abruptly. "Um."

Steven suddenly realized what was going on. "You know your paper's going to be controversial and you want to protect Dr. Jordan from guilt by association?" That was a very Daniel thing to do. And that wasn't all. "And us. Sarah and me. You're protecting us too."

Daniel avoided his eyes but couldn't prevent the flash of embarrassment that crossed his face. "Sarah's made it pretty clear that she doesn't want to be associated with my ideas."

Steven was still fixed on the paper. "Damn it, Daniel. We've spent the last couple of months trying to convince you that a theory as radical as what you're proposing won't be accepted. If you agree with us, why won't you just wait? Get more evidence before you try to sell this to the academic community."

"And do what in the meantime?" Daniel said, his hands slicing through the air. "Churn out papers full of lies that agree with the status quo? Pretend that I don't know that a great deal of the accepted knowledge is just plain wrong? I can't do it. I won't. I have to publish. So when other people find corroborating evidence they don't just push it aside as an aberration. That's how the system works."

"That's how the system ought to work." Steven snapped in exasperation. Honestly, for a smart guy, Daniel could be really dumb. "In actuality, there are too many professors with too much of their reputation riding on the way things are for anything less than a great whacking clue falling out of the sky to make a dent in their convictions." He glared at Daniel. "And you know it too, or you wouldn't be walking away to do this alone."

Daniel said, "It's a risk, I know that. But I've done my homework on this. It isn't a guaranteed disaster. I think I have enough to make at least some people listen."

Steven shook his head. "I've read the paper, Daniel. And I was there for your epiphany. And I've seen all your research materials. And I'm still not sure that I believe it. You're way beyond scholarly here, and well into abstruse. You'll be lucky if half your audience even understands it." Daniel's paper drew its arguments from subleties of expression in a dead language that was obscure even to archeolinguistic specialists. On a good day, Steven could just barely keep up with Daniel's ordinarily formidable intelligence. When Daniel was in high gear, he seemed to skip all the normal intermediate reasoning steps to intuit answers while other people were just getting an inkling that there might be a question. For something this radical, it would take years for the academic masses to catch up, if they ever did. If they were even willing to listen in the first place.

"Then I'll just have to try harder." Daniel said. The immovable rock had nothing on Daniel once his mind was made up.

"You're throwing away your career, your reputation, for *nothing*." Steven insisted. "It's not going to work!"

"Not for nothing." Daniel was finally starting to get mad himself. "For a principle!"

"For a selfish, stubborn, arrogant idea!" Steven fired back. He knew it wasn't what he wanted to say the instant it left his mouth, but he'd always had a quick temper. "Who are you to challenge the whole body of work? What if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong!" Daniel said, "And if I am, someone will prove it and our knowledge will still be advanced." He checked the time, then jumped up and grabbed his box. "I should be going- I've got a train ticket-" he hesitated, as if he didn't want to leave on this note.

"Fine." Steven said angrily. "Don't let the door hit you on your way out."

Daniel turned and walked out, managing to turn the doorknob despite his hands being occupied with the box. He didn't ask Steven to help.

Steven stared after him with a pang of loss. He suddenly knew why he'd tried to persuade Daniel to stay. Despite Steven's mixed feelings about him, Daniel had been a challenging research partner, a good listener, fun to be with, a friend. Steven was going to miss him. A lot.

Steven suppressed a groan, as he tried to shift in the hospital bed and a stabbing pain knifed his side. Okay, not moving here. Nothing wrong with being stiff and sore from lying in the same position. Much better than moving.

He lay still and remembered shamefacedly how rude he'd been at the funeral. After Dr. Jordan died, he and Sarah had tried to find Daniel. Steven had braced himself against seeing Daniel again, and only relaxed when they had been unable to locate him. But Daniel had seen the papers and turned up anyway.

Steven hadn't been prepared for the suppressed anger and resentment that had boiled up at the sight of him. He'd meant to be polite and mature. He winced as he remembered describing Daniel as one of Jordan's disappointments, and the nasty crack he'd made about Daniel's lecture. Yeah, way to be a supportive friend. He hadn't had the guts to go up to Daniel after the lecture and offer his sympathy, assuming Daniel would have accepted it. And when he had looked for Daniel the next day, his friend had been gone. His tiny apartment had been emptied, and he'd left no forwarding address. No forwarding address for five years. At the funeral, what Steven had wanted to say was, "We missed you."

He winced again. What he'd really said was, " 'Why did you come? You managed to stay away all this time. If you're looking for closure, Daniel, I'd say you're a little late.' " Okay, he was a jerk. A stupid jerk. On some juvenile level, he'd wanted Daniel to admit that Steven had been right, that he shouldn't have given the paper, shouldn't have left them. Having him show up not only okay, but neat, well-dressed, obviously having had no trouble getting his life together without them just proved that Steven was wrong even when he was right.

And Sarah's reaction had been- well, disturbing. She and Daniel had broken up in a spectacular screaming fight, completely uncharacteristic for them, and she'd sulked mercilessly for months after he'd left. On the rare occasions she had mentioned him afterwards, it had been with a flash of anger and hurt disappointment at his selfishness. Yet when he'd turned up at the funeral, she'd thrown herself at him like she was ready to start over without so much as a hint of lingering resentment over the way he'd left. He had a disturbing flash of her as he'd seen her last in Egypt, a completely un-Sarah-like look on her face.

He looked toward the door. Unlike any hospital room he had ever seen, the door had a lock on it, and a small window covered with wire mesh. He could see a man in military uniform standing outside the door. In a corner of the room, near the ceiling was a compact black security camera. Am I a prisoner? He wondered uneasily. Not that he was in any shape to make a break for it at the moment. His dearest ambition was to be able to stand up for long enough to use a rest room, rather than having a nurse provide him with the obnoxious bedpan.

He saw a form pause at the door to speak to the guard and then enter. At least the door didn't seem to be locked. He wasn't altogether surprised to see it was Daniel.

"Hey, Steven." Daniel greeted him casually, and took the seat beside the bed uninvited. "How are you feeling?" He unclipped the sunshades from his regular glasses and replaced them.

Steven looked at Daniel uncertainly. He was still angry about the disappearing act that Daniel had pulled five years ago, and how hurt Professor Jordan- and all of them- had been not to hear from him. But the resentment that had flared at the funeral had largely burnt out. And Daniel was the first person to come in who might know what was going on, and he was full of questions. "Everything hurts," he said honestly.

"Par for the course." Daniel assured him. "The doctors say you're healing up nicely, and in a few weeks you'll be good as new. You'll be out of here in a few days."

Well, there was an opening. Steven replied, "Yeah, about 'here', Daniel. Why am I in a military hospital? Nobody will tell me."

Daniel gave him a guarded look. He couldn't get over the change in Daniel. He had barely recognized him at the funeral. His hair was almost dark, with none of the near-blond streaks it used to have from the desert sun, and the short almost military cut was a sharp contrast to the shaggy mop that he remembered. At the funeral, Daniel had been wearing a conventional dark suit which hadn't been so strange given the occasion, but now he was neatly attired in a plaid shirt and slacks. A far cry from the baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts that were his usual casual wear in the old days. "I guess that's partly my fault."

What? Oh, his question. "Your fault? How could you be responsible for me being in a military hospital?"

"We pulled a few strings." Daniel told him in a matter of fact tone.

"Pulled strings? You?" Steven was more confused than ever. "You joined the military?"

Daniel sat back in the chair, keeping his eyes on Steven's face. "Not exactly. I'm a civilian consultant to the Air Force."

"To the Air Force?" Steven was beginning to feel like a parrot. "What does the Air Force need with an archeologist?"

Daniel said, "I can't actually discuss what I do for them, Steven. It's classified."

Steven just looked at him.

He raised an eyebrow and looked a bit amused. "Think about it. I'm a linguist as well as an archeologist, remember? So how many obscure dialects do I know? And where am I specialized?" Daniel shrugged. "Do I have to draw you a diagram?"

That actually made a weird sort of sense. He knew that Daniel wasn't just a theorist who analyzed ancient writings, he also spoke a ridiculous number of modern languages with astonishing fluency. And a lot of them were dialects native to the Middle East, Africa and southeastern Asia, which were all political hot spots most of the time. He could see why the government might find someone with Daniel's skills useful. But- "I can guess why they might want you, but why would you want to do it?"

Daniel's gaze slid away from his uncomfortably. "It's a job."

Steven choked. " 'It's a job?' Since when were you ever interested in just a job?" He remembered the good times, before Daniel and Sarah had paired off. Sarah had never stood a chance. Whatever passion Daniel had felt for her had been a candle to the leaping flame of his passion to learn about the past.

Daniel shrugged. "Times change, people change."

Steven shook his head. "I don't believe it. Not you." Well, he couldn't have believed it of the old Daniel, anyway, the Daniel who threw himself into every new project with unrestrained enthusiasm and quicksilver intelligence. This tidy stranger with the sad look, who weighed his words before speaking, was someone he wasn't sure he still knew.

Daniel leaned back in his chair and shoved his hands in his pockets. "After the fiasco in Los Angeles, the Air Force hired me to do a translation job for them. I needed the money- it was only going to be for a few weeks. Then I got married."

"Married?" Steven decided that maybe he didn't know this Daniel at all. He watched a quick warm smile flicker over Daniel's face. "Uh, congratulations?"

"Yeah. It was great while it lasted."

"It didn't work out?" Steven asked cautiously.

"She died." The sad look was back.

"I'm sorry."

Daniel nodded. "Thanks. Anyway, I pretty much decided to get out of academia. The Air Force made me a permanent offer- more money than I could ever have made in archeology, no grants to deal with, no entrenched academic ideas. I took it. It's not anything I ever thought I'd be doing, but it's interesting and challenging in its own way, and I still try to keep up with the journals and so forth."

Steven reached for his water glass, less out of thirst and more to clear the sudden lump in his throat. It wasn't all that unusual for people trained in archeology and anthropology to give up on it as a career. The financial rewards were small and there were too few positions for the people who wanted them. But that Daniel, of all people, should be one of the ones to quit- he never would have expected that. How could he? Daniel was brilliant, not merely good, had loved it unreservedly, had fought so stubbornly for his theories. This Daniel really wasn't the same man he had known, he thought. He put the glass down. "So what happened in Egypt?"

"You don't remember?"

He frowned. "Some. I had just found a secret panel. There was this sort of bracelet thing inside." He waved his hands in a spiral, trying to describe it's shape. "I picked it up, and that's when Sarah showed up. She *hit* me." His astonishment rang in his voice. "And took the bracelet. Um, she said something about me being stupid and useless, and then the roof fell in. Literally, from what they tell me. I vaguely remember you being there and asking me.. something about the amulet. And pain, a lot of pain."

"Yeah, we were both there. She's presumed dead. They haven't been able to dig out the body. And frankly, no one is much interested. They'd have to move tons of rock, and they don't know where she was when it came down. You're sure you don't remember?"

Steven gulped and tried to think. "I don't remember seeing her after I was injured- it's all too confused."

Daniel said. "You were already mostly unconscious when I got there with a couple of friends. We pulled you out before the whole place collapsed. His hand went briefly toward his forehead, which looked a bit reddened. "I got a headache of my very own in the process."

"Thanks. For saving me I mean." He frowned. "Why did you and Sarah follow me there?"

"Ah. Well. That is the question, isn't it?" Daniel was studying him with the attention he would have given to a rare artifact covered in hieroglyphs.

"What?"

"Sarah and I didn't follow you. I followed you. I didn't know Sarah was there until I got there."

"Huh? Why?" Steven repeated.

"There are a couple of ways that this can go, Steven." Daniel told him. "You see, there are still three dead bodies in Chicago that want explaining."

"Professor Raynor and the museum curator?" Steven asked. "Who's the third?"

"What you should be asking is, who killed them?" Daniel said. "That's certainly the question that the police are going to be asking."

"Am I a suspect?" Steven remembered the quite infuriating events at the police station after they had found the museum's assistant curator dead. He had told the police that he had found Daniel poking around in the storage area where the body was found, even rather pointedly said that he had no business being there. Yet Steven had been interrogated for several hours while Daniel had made a phone call, given them a simple statement, and been immediately released. And the police had told Steven not to leave town, a request he had promptly and stupidly ignored. In hindsight, that had to have looked bad.

"Yes, quite likely." Daniel confirmed.

"But you know I didn't do it, right?"

Daniel nodded. "Oh, yes. Anyway, I know who killed them."

Steven was getting a bad feeling about this. "Are you going to tell me?"

Daniel sighed. "Maybe. There are conditions."

"Like what?" Conditions? Daniel knew who the murderer was, but there were conditions?

"I am authorized to explain some of what is behind this. But only if you sign an NDA."

"What?"

"A non-disclosure agreement." Daniel explained. "Basically, you get some answers, but you have to swear never to tell anyone else or pry into stuff we tell you to leave alone. And if you break it, you go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars."

"So you can tell me who the killer is, but I can't tell the police and they can arrest me?" Steven could hear his voice rising.

"Not at all. I tell you what happened, the police are requested to quietly close the file unsolved and the whole matter gets dropped." Daniel's voice was calm and soothing.

Steven wasn't sure which was worse, the idea that the government could so easily shut down a police investigation or the fact that it was Daniel telling him that it could be done. "Who the hell are you, Daniel? How can you sit there and tell me that you can have a civil police case just shut down?"

"Ah, that would be one of the things you'd have to agree not to pry into, actually." Daniel hesitated "The investigation wouldn't be pleasant, but I'm pretty sure the police would get to the truth in the end though."

"Damn it, who killed Professor Jordan?" Steven couldn't believe that Daniel would consider that a matter for negotiation.

Daniel turned his hand palm up in a you-asked sort of gesture. "Sarah killed him, Steven."

"No!" Steven looked at him in horror. "Are you insane? She would never-"

Daniel cocked his head slightly and looked at Steven intently. He fell silent. "Decision time, Steven. I really can't tell you anything more unless you agree to the NDA. Keep in mind, Sarah is gone. If you agree, the government will shut down the murder investigation and the case will remain officially unsolved. Sarah's family can mourn a daughter lost in a tragic accident, not a murderer. If you aren't on board with this, the investigation will have to run its course. I'll try and make sure that they get to the truth for your sake, but there are severe limits to what I can do for you."

"I don't believe it was Sarah. I mean why would she?" Steven insisted. His brain flashed treacherously to Sarah, hitting him with unsuspected strength. Doubt bled into his mind.

"I can't tell you that without the NDA, Steven. It's your call." He waited patiently.

Steven was awash in confusion. Sarah, a murderer? But he knew he hadn't killed anyone. Sign the papers and Daniel would answer his questions. But he wouldn't be able to do anything with the answers. Don't sign and he'd be embroiled for weeks in a murder investigation, complicated by his own flight to Egypt.

"You know why she did it?" He hadn't planned to say that in such a plaintive tone.

"Yes."

How did he put such conviction into a single word, Steven wondered. If he didn't sign, he would probably never find out why the professor had died. It was the last that decided him. "I guess I'll sign."

Daniel nodded and fished a sheaf of papers and a pen from his pocket. "Read this and then sign by each X."

He skimmed the papers, a comprehensive contract committing him to silence and waiving a bunch of his rights, including the right to trial in a civil court. "What's this?" He pointed.

Daniel glanced at it. "That says that if you are ever accused of violating the terms of this agreement, you'd be entitled to an administrative hearing under an arbiter with top secret clearance instead of a trial in a court."

"Ah." The agreement was fairly daunting overall, but Steven raised the pen. Then set it down. "But this doesn't say what information I'm agreeing to keep secret?"

"No, you don't get the information until after you sign."

"So how would anyone know what you told me?"

Daniel pointed at the lens he had spotted earlier. "You're on candid camera. A copy of the tape of our conversation will be filed with the agreement."

"Ah. And do I get a copy?"

"Nope."

Steven gulped but went ahead and signed. He just really had to know.

Daniel took back the document and checked that he had signed it correctly in all the required locations, and returned the form to his pocket.

Steven looked at him expectantly. "So why do you think that Sarah killed Professor Jordan?"

"You remember the Osiris jar?"

Steven frowned as a memory floated back. "You asked me about that in the temple."

"That's right. The jar contained a very dangerous- substance. Sarah opened it- we'll never know if it was deliberate or accidental. It was absorbed through the skin. And it made her- in a word- nuts."

"Nuts?" Steven hadn't expected this.

"Psychotic, delusional, megalomaniac. It's bad stuff. It could turn Mother Theresa into Jack the Ripper." Daniel seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "I don't think we'll ever know exactly what was going through her mind after she was - exposed. She appeared quite rational, but actually, her mind wasn't her own."

"You're serious."

Daniel nodded. "Deadly."

Steven was silent for several minutes, absorbing this. "And this stuff was in the Osiris jar? How did it get there?"

"We're not completely sure. We've only seen it a few times before."

Steven's gaze was suddenly glued to his face. "Seen this before? This isn't the first time?"

"The last case I know of, five people died." Daniel looked away from Steven's eyes. "Robert Rothman was one of them."

"Oh." Steven blinked. He was slightly acquainted with Robert, they had met several times. Steven knew he was an old friend of Daniel's. He remembered seeing the death notice in a journal some months previously but he couldn't recall any details.

Daniel continued. "That wasn't released to the public, however, so keep it to yourself. But I knew to be concerned when I saw the Isis jar."

"The other case, it was a canopic jar too?" Steven asked.

"No, but the style of hieroglyph on the jar, the ones you couldn't read? Those are associated with this substance. I'm going to leave you with a number to call, and I'm going to ask you to report it if you ever see any writing like it again."

Steven shook his head in bewilderment. "Why on earth don't you just publicize that there's a danger? Shout it to the world. It would prevent more tragedies."

"Would it?" Daniel's tone was weary and still deadly serious. "It would be a horrifying terror weapon, Steven. Expose a few people to it at random, ordinary innocent people like Sarah, and they turn into monsters as dangerous as any bomb. We don't want to cause a panic. At the moment, our priority is to try and collect enough of the stuff to study so we can find ways to neutralize it."

"There's no antidote?"

Daniel looked grim. "There are a couple of possible options for treatment. The biggest problem is that it's damned hard to take anyone affected alive. They go berserk when we try to apprehend them."

Steven ransacked his fuzzy memories. "I keep hearing a voice- like Sarah, but with an echo. And glowing eyes."

Daniel said, "An occasional flash of bioluminescence in the eyes has been reported in the other cases, as well as speech anomalies when the delusions are at their worst."

"God. Poor Sarah." He hesitated. "Do you think she knew what was happening to her?"

"What do you mean?" Daniel sounded a bit evasive.

"I meant, was there any part of her that knew that what she was doing was wrong? Or did it just make her completely lose touch with reality?" Steven was struggling to accept this. Could it really be true that Sarah was exposed to some drug or toxin that caused such a complete personality change?

"Oh. That." Steven could feel his stomach start to churn when he saw the grief and horror settle on Daniel's face. "I wish I could say that she didn't have any idea, Steven. But no, I think there was a part of her that knew."

Steven briefly wished that Daniel had lied to him on that one. He didn't like it, but it was clear from the haunted look in his eyes that Daniel believed what he was saying. Unwillingly, Steven was convinced that this whole bizarre story was real. He was going to have nightmares if he thought about it too much. And he had a feeling he wasn't going to be able to not think about it. "I see."

Daniel looked at him a bit sadly. "Have an apple, Steven."

"An apple?"

"From the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

Steven recognized the Biblical reference. "Whatever happened to 'the truth shall make you free'?"

"It became the motto of the CIA." Daniel shrugged. "Some truths only serve to tarnish the memory of the dead and torment the living."

Steven didn't want to think about Sarah for a bit. And he had to talk to Daniel about the amulet. He wondered how to lead in to the change of subject. "Do you do this a lot?"

"Quote the Bible?"

"Clean up messes for the government."

"Ah, not usually." Daniel gave him a little smile. "Mostly I write long-winded reports that nobody reads."

"Have you ever thought about going back to archeology?" Steven asked him. Why hadn't Daniel brought up the amulet? He had to be excited.

"Sometimes. Not seriously." Daniel's tone was neutral.

If Daniel was excited about anything, Steven sure couldn't tell. "Why not?"

"I've got a great parking spot where I am."

Steven couldn't understand why he was being flippant. "But the amulet. Daniel, you were right. The amulet was dated to be over ten thousand years old!"

Daniel asked. "So when you got the ten thousand year result, did you have it retested to confirm?"

Was that it? Did Daniel not believe him? "Well, no. But that test is pretty accurate."

Daniel's tone was gently ironic. "You'll need more than one test to challenge the foundations that the whole present field is built on. I of all people should know that."

Steven was having that sinking feeling again, he tried to sit up despite the stabbing pain in his chest. "Tell me that you picked up the amulet on your way out of the temple."

Daniel shook his head. "I never even saw it."

Steven sank down on the bed. "There has to be proof somewhere. Don't you want to see your theories vindicated?"

"It would be nice. But I spent a lot of time looking for that proof myself. I've moved on, I have other priorities now." Daniel leaned over and patted him on the shoulder as he got up. "I'll come back tomorrow. Bring you something to read."

Steven watched Daniel leave, remembering something he had read about the high burnout rate among child prodigies. Burned out, was that what had finally happened to Daniel? Steven settled back in his bed, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the annoying tug of the IV in his arm. The weight of Sarah's death was added to the grief he already felt for Professor Jordan. He wasn't sure that he had done the right thing in signing away his rights to free speech. And he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that maybe he should also be mourning Daniel Jackson. Daniel had changed so much that Steven felt like he barely knew him. He fell asleep into an unexpected happy dream where he, Sarah and Daniel sat up all night over coffee, talking about life, travels and archeology. He woke with tears on his face.

"Daniel. How did it go?" Sam greeted him as he came into her lab in the SGC. Daniel handed her one of the cups he was carrying. She sipped appreciatively. "Ooh, you stopped at Victor's. Thanks."

"You're welcome. Kira says hi. As for Steven, hook, line, sinker." Daniel felt a little depressed. "I'm pretty sure he bought the whole package."

Sam smiled a little and shook her head. "I can't believe you did that without actually lying. When did you get so sneaky?"

"It's not exactly something to be proud of, Sam." Daniel took a sip from his own cup.

"Did you consider trying to recruit him for the SGC?" Sam asked. "Then he could have been told the truth."

"Ah, and my last civilian recruit worked out so well, did he?" Daniel shook his head. He hadn't meant that to come out with that edge of bitterness.

Sam winced at the reminder of Robert Rothman, but Daniel was continuing. "He's a publicity hound, Sam. Bestselling author, likes the limelight. He wouldn't want to give that up."

"He saw the test results on that amulet, though." Sam pointed out. "He might not let go. If he likes the limelight, he might want the chance to prove your theories once and for all and take the credit for himself."

Daniel shrugged and voiced the thought that had occasionally comforted him when he was most frustrated at being unable to share his discoveries. "Enough people knew that I was first. And I know that when the whole truth finally comes out, my position in the field is going to be unchallenged. I was not only the first, but I've had at least a five year head start on almost everyone else. Even if it's posthumous, the records will show my accomplishments."

Sam conceded the point with a nod. Daniel knew that she had materials squirreled away for just as many articles as he did, waiting for the day they could be published. He continued. "Today isn't the day to go public, I accept that. If Steven can find a way to prove my theories independently, more power to him. As I told the general, actually warning him off would probably make things worse. Asking him not to think hard about the murders is one thing. Forbidding him to follow up on a discovery that would revolutionize his field of study and make him famous is a non-starter. They'll have to declassify the Stargate someday. Maybe Steven will make discoveries that help us break the news gently."

"Maybe." Sam said softly.

Daniel forced a smile. "I should go look at the video that SG-8 brought back yesterday of yet another priceless temple, lying undiscovered for centuries." He started for the door, stopped and turned back. "You know the part I had the most doubts on?"

Sam looked at him questioningly. "What?"

"He actually believed that I could give up archeology."

"He hasn't seen you in a long time. People do change."

"I have changed," Daniel said. "But not that. I mean, me losing interest in archeology would be like, like-"

"The colonel getting bored with hockey?" Sam suggested.

Daniel's reply of "Exactly!" was drowned out by a familiar voice. "Bored with hockey? Me? What are you talking about?"

They turned to see an unshaven O'Neill in civvies come in, evidently newly returned from his fishing trip. He was followed by Teal'c, who seemed to be scratching his shoulder.

"Welcome back, sir, Teal'c." Sam was smothering a gurgle of laughter at his expression.

"Hi guys, how was the fishing?" Daniel asked.

"There were no fish in that pond." Teal'c volunteered in a rather grim tone. "I would have preferred to return to the SGC to assist with your translation, Daniel Jackson."

"Yeah, Daniel," Jack interrupted. "What the heck were you doing here translating stuff? I thought you were going to Chicago?"

"I did. It's a long story. You can read the report." Daniel wasn't really in the mood to tell the whole thing right now.

"And what was that about hockey?" Jack seemed to realize that he had missed something, but hadn't gotten near what yet.

"Impossible things, sir." Carter put in. "You losing interest in hockey, Daniel turning into a world-class liar... that sort of thing."

Jack looked amused. "Equally unlikely, I'd have said."

Then again, maybe this was the time to start telling Jack about what he did on his summer vacation. Daniel suppressed a smile. "Oh, I don't know, Jack. I found a Goa'uld at the funeral in Chicago."

Jack shook his head, "See, that's the problem with lying. You have to make up something that at least sounds vaguely plausible-" He broke off, looking from Sam to Daniel, clearly sensing that he was somehow being had.

Daniel knew that neither he nor Sam could reliably keep a straight face for long under these circumstances. He headed for the door. He did manage to stay serious for his exit line. "I'm sure you're right, Jack. I'll just have to keep working on it. See you later."

As he made his escape, he could hear Sam start to laugh and Teal'c saying, "I do not believe that Daniel Jackson was joking, O'Neill."

Jack's howl of dismay was clearly audible even in the hall. "What?! How the hell did Daniel manage to find a GOA'ULD in CHICAGO!"

Of course this particular cover story leaves the SGC with the problem of what they tell people when they get Sarah back...

*end

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