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* TITLE: Setting Up House Part 3: Whatever It Takes
* AUTHOR: Redbyrd
* EMAIL: redbyrd (at) mindspring (dot) com
* RATING: PG
* CATEGORY: Missing scene
* SUMMARY: Working for the military had never been Daniel's first, second or third choice of occupation, but if staying on the team meant fitting in, then somehow he'd find a way to do it.
* SPOILERS: the movie, Enemy Within
* AUTHOR'S NOTE: This segment came out unexpectedly dark. The next one will be funnier, I promise.
* 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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"Up and at 'em." Daniel was vaguely aware that someone was being cheerful at him, but his eyes felt like they were glued shut. He waited for the voice to go away. "Daniel?" A hand came down on his shoulder and shook gently. "Wake up."
"Umgn." Daniel mumbled. There was something wrong, that wasn't Skaara- memory trickled back in and more than ever he wanted to go back to sleep, avoid facing things for just a few more hours.
"Come on, Daniel." The voice was starting to get impatient.
Daniel mustered enough brain power to protest. "Go 'way."
"Damn it, Daniel, you've been sleeping for ten hours, not counting the two hours getting down here. You can't possibly still be sleepy." Jack. Yep, Jack was a morning person.
Since he wasn't going away, Daniel pried his eyelids open and made getting-up motions. There was something about Jack's statement that bothered him. "Doesn't take two hours to get here from the base," he pointed out, yawning.
"I stopped for groceries." Jack said. "You didn't wake up."
"Oh. What time is it?" Daniel squinted at the window. It was a bit hard to tell much without his glasses on, but it looked like it was light out.
"0800" Jack told him. Daniel foggily translated that into 8 am, and wished Jack wouldn't speak military at this hour.
Daniel said, "Okay, I'll just shower..."
"Don't bother, just put your clothes back on." Daniel was too sleepy to wonder why Jack was in such a hurry, so he just did it, pulled on the jacket Jack had loaned him and followed him outside. He stopped at the door and smiled with involuntary delight. There was a blanket of new snow covering everything, and in the early morning sun, it sparkled in a dazzling diamond lightshow. Sha're would love this. His smile faded. "Daniel!" He glanced back at Jack just barely in time to catch the snow shovel Jack tossed him. "C'mon, help me dig out."
The snow was light and easy to shovel and they quickly cleared the driveway though Daniel finished somewhat out of breath. Jack, he noticed enviously, didn't look like he had done anything at all strenuous. When they were done, Daniel replaced his shovel in the garage and turned to Jack, who was bouncing on his toes. "Lose the jacket, Daniel, and come on. We're going for a jog."
"A jog." Daniel hadn't really minded helping shovel, but the idea of running filled him with a strong desire to go back to sleep. He waved a hand back in the direction of the house. "Ah, why don't you go without me, and I'll get breakfast."
"Daniel." Jack looked irritated. "Physical training, remember?"
"Oh!" Daniel suddenly remembered himself telling Jack he'd do whatever it took to stay on the team. He just hadn't envisioned jogging in the snow at an ungodly hour of the morning. He gritted his teeth but nodded.
"Leave the jacket, you won't need it." Jack instructed.
Jack didn't set a very fast pace as the ground was slippery underfoot, but Daniel nonetheless found himself panting and pouring sweat in a very short time. He doggedly kept on, and Jack slowed the pace when he saw Daniel was having difficulty. "Sorry," Daniel gasped. "Didn't realize I was in such pathetic shape."
Jack jogged in place for a minute, while Daniel stopped and leaned over, trying to catch his breath. "You're not that bad."
Daniel gave him an incredulous look.
"Really," Jack said. "You kept up fine on Chulak. I expect the altitude is just bugging you."
"Altitude?" Daniel looked him blankly.
Jack led off at an even slower pace and still had plenty of wind for conversation. Daniel hated him. "Sure. Colorado Springs is over six thousand feet up. That's plenty high enough to notice if you're exerting yourself. You'll get used to it." He glanced at Daniel. "You should make a habit of wearing sunscreen here, by the way, even in the winter. The sun is stronger this high."
"Right." Daniel panted in his wake for a distance that was surely shorter than it seemed. And despite the sweat pouring off his body, he was so cold when they got back even lukewarm shower water burned on his freezing skin. He shivered miserably. He didn't dislike exercise per se, but he'd always hated gym and now he'd agreed to tackle an exercise regimen that would make high school look like a walk in the park. "Sha're" he reminded himself as he shaved. He would do whatever it took to find her so they could both go home.
#
By the time they made it to the base, he was hungry enough even what passed for food in the commissary looked good and he ate a plate of pancakes while Jack poured milk onto a bowl of Fruit Loops. Jack gave him a challenging look, "What?"
"Blech?" Daniel said, with a small smile.
"I seem to remember you like sweet stuff." Jack said.
"Not that kind." Daniel poured more syrup over the pancakes. "This kind, sure." Even the military couldn't screw up syrup. Well, so long as you liked corn syrup. His friend Stephen had always turned up his nose at anything that wasn't real maple.
"Picky, picky."
They still had an hour before the briefing and Jack took him up to the shooting range and checked out a couple of handguns.
Daniel asked, "Is this really necessary?"
Jack looked at him. " 'Whatever it takes?' "
He flushed. "I'm just asking."
Jack said, "Yes. I don't expect you to become a soldier, and I do expect the rest of the team will look out for you, but I want you to be able to defend yourself. We already know not everyone we meet is going to be friendly."
Daniel listened seriously, and then looked down at the guns. "I should warn you, I'm not very good at this."
Jack said, "That's what practice is for." He ran through the safety checks and Daniel was gratified he hadn't forgotten much when he'd worked with the kids on Abydos. He remembered learning to shoot in the Yucatan. He'd never been good, but at least he'd gotten over flinching at the recoil.
They shot holes in paper targets for half an hour and then cleaned the weapons. Daniel was chagrined his wrists were sore. Jack noticed him massaging one with another and raised an eyebrow. Daniel shrugged wryly. "Have to get used to it, I guess."
Jack looked over at him seriously, "Well, in a real situation, a fight's not likely to go on that long. You remember the one on Abydos."
For a split second, Daniel thought he meant Apophis snatching Sha're and Skaara, and his hands stilled on the gun. Then he realized Jack was talking about the fight against Ra. He shrugged again. "Don't ask me how long that lasted, Jack. It seemed like forever. But the main event was only what, fifteen minutes?"
"If that." Jack slotted the last piece of his gun together with a deft click.
Fumbling, Daniel took several more minutes, feeling clumsier than normal with Jack watching him. Finally he had it. "Finally."
"That wasn't bad," Jack said. He reached over for the targets. Daniel's shots were all over the paper, while Jack's were neatly grouped in the center. "If you were a rank beginner, you'd have hardly had any shots that hit the target," Jack went on. "You remembered more than I thought you would. Have you been practicing?"
"We didn't have enough ammunition for the kind of practice anybody would have needed to get reasonably good," Daniel said. "So, not much."
Jack clapped him on the shoulder, "No lack of ammunition here. Anyway, you've already got something some soldiers never learn."
"Oh?" Daniel asked, a little wary Jack was going to come out with a smart remark.
To his surprise the colonel was serious, "You stay cool under fire. Hell, hardly any of those Abydonian kids managed to hit anything with automatic rifles during the revolt, even at close range, but I saw you take out at least two Jaffa, one with a handgun. That was pretty straight shooting under any circumstances. "
"Oh," Daniel said, considerably startled. "Um, I just.. I just did what I had to."
"Yeah, well," Jack said. "Nobody knows how they'll react until the situation is real. So having faced the real thing is a better indicator of how you'll do in the field than any amount of training. You did fine on Chulak, too. Keeping those refugees calm and getting them through the gate probably saved more than a few lives." He got up and led the way back to sign the guns in.
Daniel followed, unusually quiet. He thought he'd been fairly useless on Chulak. They'd been captured, he'd spent most of his time there unconscious, and he'd been so dazed at the end he'd nearly gotten them all killed while he flipped through his notebook looking for the return address to Earth. At least he was never going to forget that again. Moving the refugees through was nothing. It had been the least he could do.
#
The debriefing had been unremarkable, compared to the mission. The rest of the day went quickly, drilling military procedure. Not surprisingly, Daniel had mastered the military hand-signal system in a couple of hours, though he thought it lacked flexibility. "What do you do if you need to say something that's not covered?" he asked.
"You either go somewhere else, or take it as a sign you talk too much," Jack told him with an eyeroll.
Teal'c had mastered the signs nearly as quickly, with the trained memory of a man who'd spent most of his life in an illiterate society. Teal'c might be one of the privileged few taught to read Goa'uld, but he was unaccustomed to uses of writing humans took for granted, like to-do lists and reminder notes.
At the end of the day, Jack said, "I thought I'd head over to the Academy hospital, see how Ferretti's doing and grab some dinner. Want to come?"
"Sure," Daniel replied. He'd been wondering about Ferretti, and the whole non-military food thing was always a plus.
The Air Force Academy hospital was a stark contrast to the bare infirmary, sunny, welcoming with wide windows overlooking manicured grounds. "I can see why they'd transfer people here if they were going to be sick a while," Daniel said.
"Makes it easier for families to visit, too," Jack pointed out.
They got directions to Ferretti's room, and headed up. He should have expected it after Jack's comment about families, but Daniel was a little non-plussed to find a trim dark-haired woman sitting by Ferretti's bed. ""Um, hi, I hope we're not... we could come back later.."
Ferretti looked over at them and smiled, "No, please, c'mon in," he said. "I'd like you to meet my wife."
The woman rose to shake hands as Ferretti made the introductions. "Liz, I'd like you to meet Colonel Jack O'Neill and Dr. Daniel Jackson."
She murmured a polite greeting to Jack and shook Daniel's hand with a faint puzzled glance at her husband. "M.D.?" she asked.
"No, archeology," Daniel answered at the same time as Ferretti said, "He's a linguist."
Liz blinked.
"Both, actually," Daniel said hastily. "Archeology and linguistics."
"That sounds interesting," Liz Ferretti said noncommittally. Daniel wondered if he could possibly look more guilty even though he'd been nothing but truthful. How on earth could Ferretti be married and keep his wife in the dark about what he did?
"You're looking better," Jack said to Ferretti.
He gave Jack a shrewd look. "I'm fine. Any news?" he asked, glancing from the colonel to Daniel.
Daniel knew the answer was written on his face as he shook his head. There was news. It wasn't good. Liz Ferretti looked from them to her husband and back and offered, "May be I should excuse myself for a few minutes?" she offered.
"No, not at all," O'Neill said. "It's just- Lou, I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"What's going on?" he asked, looking anxious.
"Charlie is dead," O'Neill said bluntly.
Ferretti's wife jerked in surprise. "Charlie Kawalsky?" she asked. At O'Neill's nod, she said, "I didn't know he was hurt too."
"No one did," O'Neill said. "He thought he was fine. We all did until he collapsed." He glanced out the window and put his hands behind his back, an approximation of parade rest. "It was a parasitic infection he picked up on our last mission. No one caught it."
Ferretti's good eye opened wide. O'Neill nodded slightly as Liz turned to look at her husband with sudden concern. "Was that what that last set of tests was about this morning?" he asked.
"Yeah," O'Neill assured him. "But you're clean and so's everyone else." Daniel blinked. Jack was telling the truth, but so obliquely no one outside the program would even guess.
"Jesus," Ferretti looked shaken and upset.
He and Kawalsky had been buddies, Daniel supposed, probably as close as Kawalsky and Jack. "I'm sorry," Daniel said, thinking of the first Abydos mission. Kawalsky and Ferretti standing at the bottom of the ramp grinning like maniacs and so filthy it was a wonder their clothes hadn't gated home on their own. He and Jack exhausted with the nervous tension of sitting on a live nuke until the last possible moment. All four of them united in the simple joy of still being alive. Even Jack, who hadn't started the mission that way. The contrast with the news they carried now was far too painful.
"We should probably let you guys visit," Jack said.
"We'll be back," Daniel said. "Sorry we had to be the bearers of bad news."
Ferretti nodded numbly and wished them a good evening.
They were silent until they reached O'Neill's truck, then Jack asked. "So, what do you want for dinner? Pizza? Burgers? Chinese?"
"Chinese," Daniel said immediately. "Wow, I haven't had Chinese since I left LA." He couldn't help feeling his enthusiasm for the change of subject was a little unseemly, but he was suddenly starving. "So, what's your feeling about spring rolls?" he asked .
#
Daniel waited for Teal'c after their morning language lesson, rocking restlessly on his heels. Two days after their visit to the hospital they'd stood at the memorial for Kawalsky. Daniel in his best suit, which made him look impoverished but not actually homeless, Jack, Sam and Ferretti more than putting him in the shade in their dress uniforms. Ferretti had attended in a wheelchair, with his wife pushing it. She'd stood on one side of him while Jack and Daniel stood with Hammond across the aisle. Sam had been somewhere in back with the handful of other people who'd come.
Daniel had attended Nimzicki's funeral the day before, getting a ride with Dr. Warner and two of the nurses. It had been a much bigger affair, mostly people who'd worked with him. For that one, Daniel had lurked in the back.
Brian Nimzicki's parents, two sisters and a brother stood in the front row, looking stunned at the loss of their son and brother. His father had been Air Force too, Daniel guessed, judging by the decoration pinned to his coat. His mother was Japanese, and after the service, he murmured a formal phrase of condolence in her native language, automatically defining his relationship to her son by the choice of phrase. "He was kind and skillful," he added with the inflection that suggested he'd been a patient or very casual acquaintance of no particular significance. Funny how in Japanese you had to know where you stood in relation to others, and then reaffirm it whenever you spoke to them. She thanked him mechanically and he'd stood outside the Air Force chapel staring at the shrubbery until his ride was ready to leave.
The rest of the last two weeks, they'd spent most afternoons doing team training while Hammond fought the Pentagon to a draw to get Teal'c onto the team. Today they would be briefing for their first mission, so Teal'c had asked if they could start early rather than skip his regular language lesson.
Daniel and Teal'c were spending a bit more time on English than Goa'uld at first as the Jaffa worked hard to improve his fluency. Daniel had arranged for several sets of English language tapes and basic instruction books, and he knew Teal'c was studying obsessively when he wasn't training with the rest of the team on military skills. His comprehension was already good enough to follow most of the conversation around him, though he was still comparatively slow to speak. While working with Teal'c was still painful, Daniel found his growing respect for the Jaffa was starting to cool his anger.
Daniel looked around the room. Teal'c had been assigned quarters on base. They were little different than the holding cell, with the sole exception that the lock was on the inside instead of the outside. Daniel glanced over the bare room. "This is-uh, basic," he commented. "Is there anything we can get you to make this more comfortable for you?"
"I require little." Teal'c said gravely.
Daniel gave him a sidelong glance as they started for the briefing. "I'm sure- but I asked if there was anything you would like."
Teal'c gave him another one of the faintly puzzled looks he occasionally turned on Daniel, then said slowly. "I am accustomed to using a flame as an aid to concentration when I meditate. If such were permitted here, I would choose to have one."
"A flame?" Daniel blinked. "Um. I don't suppose a candle would hurt, although we'd better check that it wouldn't set off the sprinklers."
"Sprinklers?" Teal'c asked.
It was a good thing Daniel enjoyed lecturing, he thought a bit wryly. The sheer number of things about life on a planet with alien technology that required explanation would have long since exhausted anyone with less of a compulsion to teach. It was a queer inversion of his life on Abydos, where he'd constantly been asking questions and getting others to explain the unfamiliar customs and activities of his new home. Daniel pointed at the spiky valves attached to pipes running along the ceiling. "Sprinklers. They're attached to sensors that go off if there is a lot of smoke or heat in a room. They spray water to douse a fire."
"Ah." Teal'c assimilated the explanation as they got on the elevator and Daniel punched the button for the briefing room. "The Goa'uld tel'taks have something similar, though the fire is extinguished by means other than water."
Daniel thought about the ways to put out a fire on a spaceship. "Gas or vacuum?" he asked.
"I do not understand." Teal'c said.
"Is the fire put out by pumping in an inflammable gas, or by just removing the air from the room?" Daniel asked. "Or some other method?"
Teal'c thought about it for a moment. "Removing the air from the room, I believe." He gave Daniel another puzzled look. "How did you know it would be that?" he asked.
They were a bit early for the briefing so Daniel went to refill his coffee cup. "It seemed logical. Fire needs oxygen to burn, so all methods of extinguishing fires depend on keeping oxygen away from the fuel. Water is commonly used here, because it's widely available. A spaceship would have less water available, but it's airtight already, so it makes sense you'd either evacuate the chamber or use an inert gas to smother the flames."
Carter had arrived in the middle of the explanation and said, "The other reason for using water to extinguish fires is because it absorbs a lot of heat and cools the fuel, making it harder to burn." She glanced at Daniel. "Why firefighting?"
Daniel said, "Teal'c was wondering if he could have candles in his quarters, and I was saying I didn't know if they would set off the sprinklers or not."
"Candles should be fine." Sam said. "I wouldn't burn incense, though. The sensors that control the sprinklers are set off by particles in the air."
Daniel took the seat next to Sam at the table. She was doing the military training with her teammates, though Daniel had thought she needed little refreshing. When he had said as much, she had laughed and shook her head.
"Actually, I do need this," she told Daniel. "I have basic weapon skills, and I've kept up my hand-to-hand skills as part of my overall fitness program but I haven't done this kind of marching around with hand weapons since basic. Remember that as an Air Force officer, I've been getting a PhD in astrophysics, flying around in airplanes and working on various scientific projects. What foot soldiering skills I have are a little rusty."
Daniel remembered her matter-of-factly setting a row of mines on Chulak and disbelieved, but she was continuing. "And the four of us need the practice working together- we need to know what we can expect from one another in the field."
Jack and Teal'c had come up quietly behind her as she spoke and both nodded approvingly. Daniel had noted the military unanimity and straightened his shoulders. 'Whatever it takes.' He asked as cheerfully as he could, "Okay, what next?"
He brought his attention back to the briefing room, where Hammond opened the meeting with a polite welcome to Teal'c and the official confirmation of what Jack had already told them, that the Jaffa would be joining SG-1.
The briefing went smoothly. The MALP telemetry on P3-575 showed the gate was standing in a wooded area. They were to look for any signs of life, take samples of rocks, soil and plants, but there was nothing especially interesting visible on the telemetry
#
Daniel got into his gear with Carter. Jack had already left for the gate room and Teal'c was listening silently to their chatter. "What happens with Kawalsky, now?" he asked.
Sam said. "There will be a memorial on the base for him."
"What will they tell his family?" Daniel hadn't wanted to ask Jack that question.
"Well, they can't tell them what really happened," Sam said. "Probably some sort of training accident." They checked over their weapons and shouldered their packs.
Daniel swallowed. "It's so selfish of me. All I can think of is that with Kawalsky dead we're further away than ever from finding out how to help my family." He led the way toward the gate room.
Carter fell into step and looked at him sympathetically, "If anything, the fact that he knew how to set the auto destruct code proves there's hope for Sha're and Skaara."
"How?" Daniel asked gloomily.
"Because only Kawalsky could have known that code."
Daniel looked at her with a glimmering of hope, "So something of the host must survive?" They walked through the door into the gate room.
"Colonel O'Neill, is SG-1 ready to ship out?" Hammond asked.
"We are, sir," O'Neill replied.
The general replied. "Then you have a go for a standard recon mission on P3-575."
"Yes, sir."
The doors opened and their Jaffa team member joined them. "Reporting as ordered." Teal'c said, his English crisp and precise.
O'Neill leaned over and corrected him in a low tone. " 'Sir', it's 'sir'."
"Sir." Teal'c repeated.
Hammond said, "Welcome aboard, son."
Jack and Teal'c walked up the ramp to join Sam and Daniel. Carter gave them the latest telemetry report. "The MALP reports conditions on the planet are favourable."
Jack looked across the ramp at his team. "Well?"
They walked up the ramp together and stepped into the wormhole.
They exited the wormhole in a somewhat random orientation related to the one in which they had entered it. Daniel was grateful for the hardshelled helmet as it socked the ground with a solid thwack, and he somersaulted into a tumble of rocks piled around the base of the stargate. "Ow." Daniel said in a somewhat muffled voice. He picked himself up off the rocks. He was going to have a fine crop of bruises after that landing. He turned and looked at Teal'c, O'Neill and Carter, who had managed to land in a heap on the top of the platform. The rocks Daniel had landed on looked like they had once been stairs, much weathered and damaged by age.
Jack cursed and climbed to his feet. "Shit. You know, Captain, when the Goa'uld use the gates, they don't seem to do this. Is ours defective?"
Carter scrambled off Teal'c with a muttered, "Sorry," and replied to the colonel. "No sir. But there may be some problems with the drift calculations that are causing the rough ride. We're working on it."
Once they had disentangled themselves, Jack started giving orders. "Carter, you and Daniel set up camp. Teal'c and I will take a look around and make sure there aren't any nasty surprises in the area. " O'Neill didn't wait for her acknowlegement, just shed his pack and motioned Teal'c to follow him.
Carter stared after him, and once they had disappeared into the trees, muttered, "Yes, sir, right away sir, anything you say, sir."
Daniel looked at her a bit cautiously. "Um, Captain?"
Carter replied in a professionally uninflected tone. "What?"
"Any preference on where these go?" Daniel gestured toward the other side of the clearing. "I was thinking over there, on that slight rise so we won't be in a puddle if it rains. "
She said, "Looks fine to me. Why ask?"
"Because there might be some defensive considerations I wouldn't recognize." Daniel answered mildly. "And also, I've done a lot more camping in deserts than in terrain like this."
Sam looked over at him apologetically. "Sorry, Daniel. I don't mean to take out my crummy mood on you."
"You didn't come a few thousand light-years through a wormhole to set up camp?" Daniel suggested.
Sam grimaced. "Something like that."
"Well, me neither. I'd rather be looking for signs of civilization. But it is almost dusk." Daniel paused. "And someone has to set up camp. If it's us every time, we can start complaining."
Sam smiled. "Deal. You're absolutely right and I need to not jump to conclusions on insufficient evidence. It's just that there's enough prejudice out there that it's sometimes hard not to see it where it isn't."
Daniel smiled back. "If it's any consolation, you're going to look like one of the normal ones on this team."
She gave him a questioning look and he continued. "Well, think about it. Of the four of us, Jack's the only one who's the right species, the right gender and has the right training. And frankly, I think people who are inclined to be jerks are going to be snotty to the alien and the civilian first."
Sam raised her eyebrows. "Have people been giving you a hard time?"
Daniel shrugged. "I haven't even been back three weeks yet. I was thinking mostly of the first trip. I caught plenty of attitude from the first team on Abydos. Though to be strictly fair," he said scrupulously, "they did have a legitimate gripe, in that I had said I could get them home and it turned out to be somewhat more complicated than that."
"Ah." Sam glanced around. "According to the telemetry, it's going to get chilly overnight. How about I grab some firewood while we can still see and you can get out the tents? I'll stay within sight. "
"Sounds good." Daniel opened the packs, noting they had a pair of two-man tents. They were pretty standard, so he just glanced at the instructions to confirm there was nothing weird and then efficiently set them up. Years of roughing it on digs had left him no stranger to tents. He found a camp shovel and dug a neat fire pit, ringing it with rocks. He could glimpse Carter through the trees and he put the last stone in place around the pit as she returned with an armload of wood.
"Wow, you're fast." Sam said. "I didn't mean you had to do it all. You must have been a boy scout."
Daniel said, "Never. Archeologist, remember. I sometimes think I've spent more time living in tents than I have in houses." He piled a neat stack of kindling in the fire ring and laid the wood over it in a pattern that would let air get to the fire. "Want to light it now? We'll need more wood if we do."
Sam nodded. "Might as well. No need to use heaters for the MREs if we don't have to. "
Daniel set a match to his carefully laid fire, and watched in satisfaction as it flared up and the dry sticks caught. They both walked around and collected a good pile of wood to last through the night. They put the MREs on to heat when O'Neill radioed to tell them they'd be back in fifteen.
When Teal'c and O'Neill walked into the camp it was nearly full dark. Daniel was sitting crosslegged by the fire writing in his journal while Sam sat far enough away to keep an alert eye on the area. "Well, this is cozy," O'Neill raised his brows in appreciation. "Good work, Captain."
Daniel looked up and winked at Sam, "We both did it." He gave her a minute headshake no as she opened her mouth to give him the credit. He retrieved the heated MREs and passed them around. "Have this fine tasty plastic food-substitute. And what did you find?" he asked.
"Trees, trees and more trees," Jack said flatly. "Not much else."
"No sign of structures, roads, artifacts?" Daniel asked.
"No," Jack said.
"There were tracks of people, perhaps hunters," Teal'c said. "Primitives."
"What makes you say that?" Daniel asked.
"Their tracks were of bare feet, splayed as if they were people who had never worn shoes," Teal'c explained. He reached into a vest pocket. "And I found this."
Daniel took it and looked at it carefully, then turned an accusing look on Jack. "This, Jack, is what we in the business call an artifact."
"It's a stone arrowhead, Daniel. Not an alien weapons platform."
"Have you ever tried to make one of these, Jack?" Daniel asked. "It takes more than a little skill, you know."
"Have you?" Jack asked.
"Yes," Daniel said. "They came out lopsided. It takes a lot of practice to do them this neatly."
"And does that tell you anything about the people here?" Carter asked.
Daniel looked over at her. "Well, it tells me that either the local technology is stone age, or there's no easily accessable ores. Nobody gets this good at chipping flint if they have an easier way."
"Stone age, then," Carter said. "Most likely. There's a lot of iron and copper ore in the rocks around here. I could see that much even in the short time we had before dark."
Jack and Teal'c exchanged a tolerent and mildly bemused glance, and then they were all digging into the cooling food. Daniel grimaced. "Have these things actually gotten worse in the last year?"
"Actually, I think they've gotten better," Sam said, tasting hers thoughtfully. "Just try to think of it as fuel."
"That should be easy," Daniel smiled at her. "It tastes like plastic."
"I thought it tasted like chicken," Jack said. They exchanged a look. "Plastic chicken," they said in unison and laughed.
After the meal, Daniel turned to Teal'c. "We should continue with language lessons."
"Indeed." Teal'c nodded approval.
Jack said, "So Teal'c is learning English, and you're learning Goa'uld?"
"That's right." Daniel said.
Sam asked. "Is Goa'uld spoken on many planets?"
Teal'c said, "Goa'uld is the native language of the Goa'uld and of the Jaffa. Many humans speak a form of the tongue that DanielJackson knows from Abydos. Some speak other languages."
Daniel nodded. "Teal'c knows a couple of other human languages. They seem to be based on other ancient tongues like Greek and old Hindu dialects. But Abydonian, or old Egyptian seems to be the most widely spoken." Daniel had gotten Teal'c to speak to him enough in the other languages that he could parse the unfamiliar accents, but they had not drifted nearly as far from their parent tongues as Egyptian had. He was confident he'd be able to quickly understand native speakers when he met them.
Jack said, "Well, it sounds like if we ever want to be able to talk to people without Daniel around, we're going to need to polish up our language skills." He looked across the fire at Daniel. "Think you can teach us Egyptian, Daniel?"
"It's not a difficult language." Daniel said. "We can start with simple vocabulary, and I have some notes for a phonetic dictionary and grammar back at the base."
Teal'c and Daniel taught the other two a few simple sentences, and drilled them, though Jack had a distinct tendency to mangle it into the closest English homynym. Sam was possessed of a retentive memory, but had trouble pronouncing words. "I took Spanish in school," she admitted. "And a bit of German, but no one could understand a word I said."
"You'll catch on," Daniel encouraged. "Egyptian, for want of a better name, is fairly easy to pronounce for English speakers. There aren't a lot of foreign phonemes."
"Is that long distance?" Jack quipped.
Carter winced, and Daniel shook his head. "Phonemes are the basic sounds of speech."
"Then why didn't you just say sounds?" Jack asked.
"Why do you call an MP-5 an MP-5 instead of a gun?" Daniel asked.
"It's more precise- " Jack broke off and gave him a dirty look. "I didn't really need a serious answer, Daniel."
"Then I called it a phoneme because I knew you'd try to make a joke about it," Daniel shot back. Jack grinned, and this time it was Teal'c and Carter that exchanged a dubious look at their antics.
"At least I'll be able to understand the people the next time we're on Abydos," Sam said smiling.
"Ah," Daniel hated to break it to her. "Actually, you won't, Sam. Oh, you might get a few words, but it's really a different dialect. What Teal'c and I are teaching you guys is the version that's used on most of the Goa'uld occupied worlds Teal'c's visited."
"When did you learn that, Daniel?" Sam asked with a puzzled frown. "I mean, you'd never heard it before Chulak, right?"
"No, but it's similar enough. Remember Skaara and I could get the gist of what was being said even when we first heard it? Teal'c's been teaching me."
Teal'c gave him a startled look. "I have not."
Daniel shrugged, "Sure you have, Teal'c. As we've been talking, I've been working on my accent."
Teal'c said, "You had not heard this dialect before you came to Chulak?"
Daniel gave him a vague look, the one he'd developed as a child and perfected as a teenager in college. He'd quickly learned under most circumstances people were more intimidated or jealous of his skill than admiring. "It's very similar, as I said." He had the uncomfortable feeling his act wasn't working on these people. Of course he was out of practice. On Abydos no one had noticed or cared how fast he learned, and they'd been eager to teach him anything he asked. He was out of practice at dissembling.
Though perhaps here it wouldn't matter. Sam looked mildly impressed but not envious, Teal'c simply inclined his head and Jack was rummaging through his pack for a snack. "Power bar?" he offered.
They all shook their heads. Jack unwrapped the one in his hand and bit into it. "Probably about time to turn in," he said. "I'll take first watch. Carter, you're second. Daniel third, Teal'c fourth. Okay?"
The others nodded and Daniel shrugged. "Fine with me. Any preferences on sleeping arrangements?"
O'Neill glanced over at the two tents and at his extremely mixed team. "Carter, you a heavy sleeper?"
The captain shrugged. "Medium, I guess. I can sleep through some noise."
The colonel looked at Teal'c. "I do not sleep, O'Neill. I require only a few hours of kel-no-reem."
"Of what?" Jack seemed confused and Teal'c looked at Daniel for a translation.
"Meditation, Jack. As I understand it, Teal'c has to meditate to maintain the health of the symbiote and therefore his own."
"Ah." O'Neill looked back at the Jaffa. "How alert are you while you're doing this meditation stuff?"
Teal'c said. "I will hear noises. I can easily be roused should I be required."
"Okay." Jack nodded. "And I'm a very light sleeper, whereas it takes a bomb to wake Daniel once he's out. I'd rather not have heavy sleepers together for obvious reasons. So- I'll share with Daniel, Carter with Teal'c." He glanced at Carter, but her expression was professional and unrevealing.
Teal'c looked at Carter. "I do not require shelter for meditation."
She shrugged. "It's going to be chilly overnight. Unless you don't require warmth as well, you'll probably be better off crawling into a sleeping bag like the rest of us."
Teal'c nodded and moved off into the woods toward the area they had designated for the latrine. Carter looked at Daniel and O'Neill and said, "I may as well turn in. Goodnight, sir, Daniel." She picked up her pack and stuffed it into her tent, crawling in after it.
Daniel glanced at Jack, "Um. I could have shared with Teal'c, if that's going to be a problem." He'd started to feel a vague sense of responsibility for the big Jaffa as the only one who could understand anything of his native language.
Jack looked at him calmly. "Daniel, how often do you normally wake up in the night?"
Daniel stared him, then shut his mouth, which had dropped open. "Have I been talking?" He had a vague recollection of Jack shaking him awake out of a nightmare at his place. He'd fallen back to sleep again with little memory of what had happened and Jack hadn't said anything about it in the morning, so he'd thought it was part of the dream. Of course the last night he'd spent in quarters on base, he'd woken up the unlucky soldier who'd been trying to sleep in the bunkroom at the same time.
"More like yelling," Jack confirmed casually.
Daniel winced. "Sorry."
"No need." Jack poked the fire. "But I sleep lightly enough I can just shake you when you start to thrash and go right back to sleep."
"You shouldn't have to-" Daniel protested.
Jack said, "Hey. It's no big thing. Be surprising if you weren't having nightmares, under the circumstances." His tone made Daniel wonder if Jack hadn't had a few himself. 'After what happened to Kawalsky? Duh! ' he thought. Jack continued, "Though I have gotten the impression this may have stirred up some old stuff for you."
Daniel gave him a startled look, and tried to remember what he might have been dreaming about. Stones falling- he shivered. "Um, I should turn in too, I guess."
Jack nodded. "Don't let the bedbugs bite."
#
When Sam woke him, he was dreaming uneasily of walking through the pyramid on Abydos, a scene that often preceded a confused replay of the running fight they'd had with the Horus guards Ra had sent to capture them. He'd crawled gratefully out of the tent, glad not to have that one again. He vaguely remembered Jack shaking him once earlier, so he'd probably been dreaming then too. He silently mouthed a few choice curses, and hoped the nightly horror show would start to die down soon. He knew from long experience once something set him off, he'd go on suffering disturbed sleep for a few weeks until the immediate trigger had faded.
Daniel sat with his back to a tree and stuck his hands into his armpits to try and keep them warm. Sam had told him to leave the fire out so he'd have some night vision while on watch, but he regretted losing the warmth. He stared up into the sky, picking out two small moons moving against the starfield. He missed the three large moons of Abydos, the dry air, the nighttime chill that dawn would chase away with blazing heat. He hadn't felt as cold and miserable as he had this week since- he thought back and a chill of fear went through him- since his first winter in New York. He shivered. He hadn't thought of that in years. Eight years old, his parents suddenly gone. He'd barely said a word to the social services people, but had woken night after night screaming in Arabic as the stones fell again and again. He rose and walked around trying to warm up. It was too dark to go far, but he knew the area beside the firepit was clear.
The last week had been so busy, he'd hardly had time to think. He'd occasionally dreamed of Earth when he was on Abydos, but it was usually dreams of Egypt, warm familiar scenes from his childhood or from the many digs he had worked on. Wrapped in the warmth and welcome of his adopted family, dizzy with his newfound love for Sha're, reveling in the culture that spoke to his oldest and most beloved memories, Daniel had been at home on Abydos in a way he hadn't felt since his earliest childhood. Losing Sha're and the home of his heart all at once was making him feel alone, unbalanced. Incomplete.
He stopped at a rustling in the nighttime forest. Damned if he knew what he was supposed to be listening for. He'd camped in the desert and the jungle but the most time he'd ever spent in this kind of deciduous forest was an occasional walk as a teenager. He waited, but there was no further sound.
Really, he owed a lot to Jack. The colonel had taken him in, helped him get on the team, helped him stay on the team, supported him. He realized that somewhere in his messed-up psyche, Daniel associated Jack with Abydos. He'd empathasized with Jack then, and found himself respecting and even liking the man he'd come to know on the first mission. Somehow, in the confusion and trauma of the last couple of weeks, Daniel had clutched at the lifeline Jack had thrown him and used it to fill a part of the bleeding void where his family had been. He frowned. That wasn't like him. The Daniel Jackson who'd grown up alone and unwanted made a point of keeping his promises and being there for other people, but he never counted on them being there for him. He'd learned to accept help graciously when offered, but never to ask for it or depend on it.
There was a certain irony in realizing he'd come around back to nearly the same place he'd been at age eight- alone, penniless and friendless in a foreign land, dependant on the charity of strangers. Of course now the difference was he was an adult, not a child, he had skills to offer his hosts in return for his place here, and he was only separated from his family, they were alive out there somewhere. He could still hope he would get them back. Jack would help- Daniel resolved to watch himself. Jack had already done far more for him than he needed to. It wouldn't be fair for Daniel to lean on him, just because he missed his home and family. What he really needed was to pull together his defenses, reclaim the habits he had learned in years alone on Earth. He'd managed by himself before. He could do it again.
There was a soft rustle of a zipper and Teal'c crawled out of his tent. "It is the time for my watch, DanielJackson."
"It is time-" Daniel corrected, automatically. "In this context you can drop the article." He paused and turned his thoughts away from his personal problems, "You're doing remarkably well with English, Teal'c." he said. "You've mastered an impressive amount of vocabulary for only two weeks, and you have an incredible ear. Your accent is impeccable." `
"Impeccable?" Teal'c repeated.
"It means faultless or irreproachable. It has the connotation that improvement is impossible or unnecessary."
Teal'c nodded, and he knew the Jaffa was committing the new word to memory. Even in the dim light, Daniel thought he seemed gratified. "It is a difficult language, but has great beauty and subtlety."
Daniel smiled. "Yes, though I didn't like it much myself when I was young. I found the extremely irregular grammar annoying."
Teal'c looked at him in surprise. "Is not English your native language?"
"No." Daniel shook his head. "I was born almost halfway around the planet from Colorado, in Egypt, where the stargate was found. My first language was Arabic, the dominant language spoken in that area. English was one of the next two I learned, but I didn't use it as much as some of the others until I came to live in the United States."
Teal'c said, "Earth is a very complex world."
"Yes." Daniel looked at Teal'c and realized that as hard as returning to Earth was to him, it had to be far more difficult for the Jaffa. "How are you doing with all this, Teal'c?"
"I do not understand." Teal'c sounded puzzled.
"This must be very difficult for you, leaving your home and everything familiar to you." Daniel said.
Teal'c said, "You too have left your home."
Daniel wondered if it were obvious to others how alien he sometimes found Colorado and the Air Force. "Yeah, but I lived on Earth before that. It's nothing new to me."
Teal'c was silent for several minutes, and Daniel wondered if he did not want to answer, but the Jaffa spoke before he could make a move to leave. "It is very strange and full of new things. I am grateful I will not die a slave. I am hopeful for my people. I am amazed that I have set foot on the First World that was thought to be lost for centuries." He hesitated. "I miss small things. Familiar foods, music. I wish that I could tell my old teacher, Bratac, what I have discovered. Compared to what we are doing, it is unimportant."
Daniel said, "Less important perhaps, but never unimportant, Teal'c."
There was definitely a lightening in the sky, Daniel could clearly see Teal'c slightly raise his eyebrow. "You should rest, DanielJackson. Soon it will be light."
Daniel nodded and crawled back into the tent he shared with Jack, pausing to strip off the outer layers of clothing before crawling into the sleeping bag.
#
The morning was cold and damp and clouds had moved in. Daniel shivered and wrapped his hands around his cup, then swallowed it down and poured a second.
Jack gave him a surprised look. "You do know that's instant?"
"It's hot, it's caffeinated. Why would I care about anything else when I'm not awake yet?" Daniel asked reasonably.
Sam laughed as she showed Teal'c how to stir the pot of instant oatmeal. "I think the colonel was expecting you to be a coffee snob, Daniel."
Daniel shook his head. "I was a student for about fifteen years, and broke longer than that. I like good coffee just fine, but I can drink anything. So long as it's hot." He tried to turn away his share of the oatmeal, but finally took it rather than listen to Jack nag. "What is it with you and breakfast?" he asked.
"Most important meal of the day," Jack told him virtuously, and generally exuded a disgusting amount of good cheer as they broke camp.
"I'd suggest we head that way," Sam pointed. "More toward those hills we can see. That will give us the widest variety of soil samples."
"We're more likely to find people by following the water downstream," Daniel pointed out.
"Daniel, I thought you said the people were likely very primitive?" Jack asked.
"It's likely," Daniel admitted.
"So they won't make good allies against anyone," Jack said. "The minerals, however, may have strategic value. So, we go up."
Daniel frowned, "You know, there is value in learning about ancient cultures-"
"It's a very simple question, Daniel.. If they can help us, we want to meet them. If not, we don't care." Jack cut him off before he'd even started.
Sam gave him a sympathetic look and he gave up grumpily. It was too early to argue properly anyway.
They set off for the hills, carrying all their gear. Daniel trudged stoically, but even the couple of weeks they'd been at it, he was starting to see improvement in his physical condition. And the atmosphere here was both thicker and more oxygenated than at home, which thankfully gave him more energy.
Teal'c was leading the way, with Jack next. Daniel was walking beside Jack when the terrain allowed but mostly following. Sam was trailing them by about twenty feet, looking alertly around her. Daniel was not alert, so the first he realized Teal'c had stopped was when he plowed into Jack with a muffled 'oof'.
Teal'c was holding out a hand to stop them. Jack gestured silently up ahead, and Daniel saw the group of hunters. He looked them over carefully. Skin clothing, nothing woven. Long spears, but nothing to give them mechanical advantage. Stone points, stone knives. These people had probably been brought here from Earth but it was impossible to say if they'd come from a primitive area or backslid. Daniel followed Jack's gesture, and stepped around him, making sure to leave Jack and Sam a clear line of fire.
"Hello," he said to them in Egyptian. "My name is Daniel. We are peaceful explorers." He repeated it in a couple of other languages. One of the men stepped slightly nearer, listening. "We came here from the stone ring," he continued. "The chappa'ai?"
Which was when all hell broke loose. Daniel had been even with Teal'c, about halfway between Jack and the natives, when they howled and charged. Contrary to Jack's opinion, his survival instincts worked just fine. He reversed course and bolted, as Teal'c fired several staff blasts at the natives. "Back to the gate!" Jack yelled as he sprinted past, and he didn't bother to answer, just put his head down and ran.
Sam was keeping pace with him easily, and Daniel knew Jack could outrun him any day of the week and twice on Sundays, while Teal'c could run them all into the ground. That meant he was the weak link. He stretched out his stride and tried to breath deeper as he summoned up a deeper reserve of adrenaline-fueled speed. They couldn't have come as far as he thought, because it seemed like he was at the gate clearing in no time, but the hunters were fast too. Several of them must have swerved onto an easier path because they were racing out of the trees at the side of the clearing. Daniel skidded to a halt at the foot of the platform, reaching for his gun instead of the DHD because the man was going to be on top of him any second.
The catch seemed to take forever to tear free, but time was moving more slowly than usual because he still had time to fire twice over the man's head before bringing his aim down and pulling the trigger. The shot hit the man in the chest at a range of three feet. He dropped his spear, came three more steps on pure momentum and plowed into Daniel like a locomotive. He went down hard, winded, and tried to gasp for breath through the hot wetness pouring over his face. He could hear the chatter of automatic weapons, and then the weight increased to the point he couldn't expand his chest and he started suffocating in earnest.
Daniel shoved frantically at the dead weight of the bodies on top of him. He could hear the whoosh of the gate opening. Good, Sam must have dialed. He couldn't see anything. There was blood in his eyes, on his glasses, soaking through his jacket. His nose was full of the coppery scent, he could taste it and his hands were slick. He struggled to breathe against the weight on his chest. Then the weight vanished and he gasped for air.
"Teal'c!" Jack was shouting nearby.
Someone- Teal'c?- caught the back of Daniel's vest and hauled him upright. He couldn't see a damned thing. He was being dragged up stairs. He tried to get his feet under him, as everything dissolved into the chill rush of gate travel.
Daniel was dragged backward out of the gate and laid gently across the ramp as Teal'c released the grip on his vest. He realized with some surprise he was still clutching his pistol in his hand and laid it carefully on the ramp before removing his glasses and wiping his face on his sleeve and sitting up. Finally! He blinked as his sight cleared to see his teammates and the gate room personnel staring at him in horror. The iris closed behind them and he heard the pop of the wormhole disengaging. "Medical team to the gate room!" Sergeant Harriman paged.
Daniel looked sharply at Jack and the others. They seemed fine. He looked in vain for a clean spot on his pants to wipe his hands, picked up his handgun and put it into the dripping holster. "Daniel-" Sam said, sounding horrified. He looked down at his gory uniform ruefully. Teal'c was standing quite close, his hand poised as if to grab Daniel.
"Boy, what a mess," Daniel said. "I'm glad we don't have to wash these ourselves."
"Hang on, Daniel," Jack said, as the medics rushed in. It was only then he belatedly realized they were calling the medical teams for him.
"I'm fine, Jack. Just a little squashed," he explained, getting to his feet.
"SG-1," Hammond was looking rather appalled. "Report to the infirmary."
#
Daniel was still protesting as they walked into the briefing room. "Jack, they checked me out. I'm perfectly fine."
"That was a lot of blood, Daniel."
"It wasn't mine!" Daniel said. "You try having three huge guys bleed to death on top of you, tell me how clean your uniform is!
"Are you all right, doctor?" Hammond asked.
"Fine, sir," Daniel gave Jack an exasperated look. "None of the blood was mine."
"It looked-" Jack began.
"Disgusting, I know." Daniel said. "Sorry I dripped on the gate room." He went to pour himself some coffee before sitting down.
Hammond's eyebrows went up, and he called the briefing to order. They took it in turns to relate the events of the mission, even Teal'c reporting in his clear but simple English the tracks he'd found and what they told him. Daniel tried to put in a word for cultural studies but Hammond brushed it off as fast as Jack had. Then they got to the meat of the story. Daniel described the hunters, their clothing and equipment.
"Stone age technology," he said. "No sign even of weaving, which is a very old art. Quite possibly they've degenerated. It can happen with very small initial populations-" Hammond cleared his throat and he hastened on to his conclusion. "Anyway, I introduced us, and they attacked pretty much straight away. They must have had some superstition about the gate, but as soon as I mentioned the 'chappa-ai' they went crazy. We took off running for the gate, but they must have known a parallel route because they came close to cutting us off. Three of them charged out of the trees. They were so close I didn't have time to dial before they reached me." Daniel wrapped both hands a little more firmly around his mug. They were shaking a little but that was just the residual adrenaline. Perfectly normal. "That's when I shot the one in the lead," Daniel said flatly. "I fired twice over his head, but he didn't stop."
"He was too damned close," Jack said. "You should have shot him ten feet further out, not when he was near enough collapse on you." He looked at the general. "There were two more right behind him. They were screaming and charging with spears. All three of them wound up on top of Daniel."
"Riddled with bullets, which was why all the blood," Daniel explained, pushing his newly cleaned glasses up his nose. "Jack shot them." He'd gotten the lowdown on the bits he'd missed in the infirmary. He scowled into his blank pad. It was all so stupid. If only they'd stopped to talk-
"I had to do it, Daniel," Jack sounded irritated. "They would have skewered you if I hadn't. The only reason I didn't shoot the first one is I didn't have a clear shot."
Daniel glanced at him in surprise. "I know, Jack. I just wish I'd been able to talk a little faster." He turned to the general. "I told them we came through the stargate, and they just went berserk. They were screaming, 'demons from the circle of evil'." He shrugged. "They didn't give us time to say anything, just attacked."
"I see," Hammond nodded.
"There was no sign of advanced technology, and the soil samples test negative for naquada," Sam put in. "So I can't see any reason we would need to go back."
Hammond made a note on his pad. "An unfortunate incident," he paused and looked thoughtfully at Daniel. "Perhaps we should reconsider the matter of civilians on SG-teams."
Daniel jerked around to give him a pleading stare and Jack stiffened. "I don't see why, sir. I might have preferred Daniel shot that guy a little sooner, but there was nothing wrong with his performance. He tried every reasonable method he knew to avert trouble, then defended himself. None of the rest of could do- or in fact did do- any better."
Daniel reminded himself to thank Jack later, and said earnestly to Hammond, "I'm not afraid to go back out there, General. There's no reason to suppose the next planet won't be entirely different."
Hammond looked torn, then said, "I'll think about it and let you know. In the meantime, I would like Dr. Jackson to speak with a counselor."
Jack was starting to look pissed off, but Daniel kept the general's attention on himself. "Why, sir?"
The older man's gaze softened. "I know you want to go out there, son, but killing for the first time can be-"
"Excuse me?" Daniel gave him a politely bewildered gaze. "That wasn't the first time I've killed. Not by a long shot."
Hammond was surprised, Sam's eyes widened slightly, and Teal'c was watching Daniel curiously. Jack's face reflected his understanding.
"The rebellion against Ra?" Daniel said, raising an eyebrow and keeping his tone calm and level. "Definitely not bloodless. I killed several Jaffa in the fighting. And then there was the bomb."
"You and Colonel O'Neill used the bomb to kill the alien-" Hammond nodded.
"And fifty or so Jaffa," Daniel said flatly. "And over two dozen human children."
There was a brief silence. "Children?" Hammond asked.
Daniel looked him in the eye. "I think the military term would be 'collateral damage'? They were slaves, body-servants to Ra. I had quite a lengthy chat with several of them, the night I spent in Ra's ship. There was no way to get them out before we sent the bomb up." Five thousand on the ground, a hundred fifty thousand on Earth. When they found they couldn't disarm the bomb, killing the seventy-five or so people on the ship had become the least evil of the available choices. Daniel had done the sums a hundred times, before, during and after, and never came up with a different answer.
"Colonel O'Neill was the one-" Hammond began.
"Jack may have armed the bomb," Daniel said. "But sending it up to the ship was both our ideas, not his alone. We share the responsibility."
Daniel and Hammond both looked over at Jack, who nodded curtly, his expression blank.
"So you see," Daniel said. "I may dislike killing, but I'm not going to collapse in shock because I had to do it. As for bodies- hell, digging up graves is my job."
Hammond looked rather bemused. "I understand, doctor. The recommendation to see a counselor is withdrawn."
"Thank you," Daniel said. If he never saw another psychiatrist, it would be too soon, as far as he was concerned. His occasional encounters with the profession as a child had left him with an ineradicable distaste for the profession. The debriefing wrapped shortly afterward.
"Hey," Jack said, falling into step with him as they walked toward his office. "If you need to talk-"
"I'm fine, Jack," Daniel said.
"I'm just saying," Jack replied. "I'm around, 'kay?"
"Sure, thanks," Daniel said.
"I'm gonna go spend an hour on paperwork, then head home," Jack said.
"I'll see you tomorrow then," Daniel said.
"You sure?" Jack asked.
"Yeah, I'm sure," Daniel replied easily. "I'm putting together lesson plans for language classes. A couple of people have asked about it already."
"Okay," Jack said, mollified. "We should talk to Hammond about it, make it official. See you tomorrow."
Daniel turned back toward his office, his steps a little slower. He hadn't lied. Really he hadn't. He accepted the deaths today, as he'd accepted them a year ago. As he'd accepted when he strapped on a gun he was taking the power of life and death into his hands. He'd killed as many people with words on Abydos as he had with weapons, when he'd convinced the Abydonians Ra was not a god. He believed, then and now, he'd done the right thing.
But he'd be sleeping on the couch in his office if he slept at all, because pools of blood vividly brought back the memory of red splashed across a museum floor, spotting ancient stones or splattered on the floor of a pyramid one year and incalculable distances away. "Two weeks, maybe three," he muttered. How was he supposed to stop having nightmares, when he kept seeing sights that brought all the bad things he'd endured back to the forefront of his mind? Especially when he couldn't help thinking on some level it was appropriate for him to be drenched in blood.
He'd get through this. He had to. Whatever it takes. It was hours later, settled at his desk with a fresh cup of coffee that it occurred to him to wonder how much Jack had thought about collateral damage after Abydos. Maybe he'd had another reason for wanting company tonight.
*end
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