Fission of Silence
by Pough
Part 4

Back to Part 3

"Sir, it's the Tok'ra," Sergeant Winkleman said, looking at his monitor.

"Open the iris," General Hammond ordered on his way out of the control room.

The wormhole stabilized and moments later Jacob Carter stepped through. In his hand he held two items—the chip given to them by Denjo Blont and a Tok'ra informational disc.

"Jacob," George Hammond said, welcoming his friend.

"George."

Jack O'Neill, unaware of the presence of the Tok'ra, paced into the gate room, but as soon as he saw Jacob he did an about face.

"Jack," Jacob called, striding toward the colonel.

Jack clenched his hands into fists and shook them in front of his body. "D'oh."

"Jack, I think you'll want to see this."

Jack turned cantankerously toward Jacob. "I'm thinkin' it's not a Goa'uld mothership."

Jacob ignored him and simply handed Jack the information.

"What's this?"

"This is the chip you asked us to open. But Jack," he said, directing his concern and his sympathy toward the colonel, "ask yourself what it is you want to know. Ask yourself, before you read it, why you need to know."

"Oh, come on, Jacob," Jack grumbled, snatching the two items from Jacob's hand.

"I mean it, Jack. Knowing there's nothing you can do in retribution for what happened to Daniel, you have to ask yourself what it is you hope to gain by knowing the truth."

Jack looked at the chip in one hand and the disk in the other, hearing Jacob's words and his own pensive discomfort. "Will Sam know how to open this up?"

Jacob closed his eyes and prayed that Jack was listening. "Yes, she will."

Jack turned away from Jacob and made his way down the hall, raising his hand once in thanks.

While he walked, he looked at the disk and wondered what could possibly be in it that would make Jacob want to warn him. Of course, Jacob never thought Jack could handle anything—socially, in times of mediation—basically anything having to do with actually having to speak. Okay, so maybe Jacob had a point.

But Daniel was on the disk. Whatever it was that pushed him over the edge, it was in the disk, and still Jack continued to hear Jacob's warning:

"What is it you hope to gain by knowing the truth?"

The weight of the decision brought him to a dead stop in the middle of the hall. Jack flipped the disk over in his hand and thought about all the things that could be on it—beatings, torture, suicide attempts. Things he didn't want to think about. They all had to be there, and they all had to be sickening, otherwise Daniel would be back at work, being a pain in the ass once again.

But he wasn't. Every day that passed without Daniel making strides in his well being reminded Jack that the eight months Daniel had spent away had to be incomprehensible in their terror.

Did Jack really want to know the details of Daniel's implosion? Was it even his right?

Jack ripped open the flap on his jacket pocket, stored the disk therein, and continued on.

"Doctor Jackson," said Doctor Sebastian, placing her glasses on her knees, "would you like to find a seat so that we may discuss this further?"

"No," Daniel told her, waggling a finger in her direction. "I'd really prefer to walk."

"Tell me, did you have another migraine this morning?" she asked, opening his file to check any notations of medication.

"Yes. Yes, I did," Daniel told her, folding and refolding his hands across his chest. He punched his glasses up his nose, brushed the hair out of his eyes and never once stopped pacing.

"And now?"

"Oh, now...now it's gone," he said, nodding. "Incredible amount of caffeine in those pills."

"Yes, there is." Doctor Sebastian watched his movements—scattered and manic. "But not enough to produce this kind of reaction."

Daniel stopped, his eyes darted in her direction and then he pressed his lips together. He blinked his eyes, adjusted his attitude and said, "Yes, well, maybe not, but I'm bouncing off the walls here, and it has to be the drugs."

"Or perhaps the topic." She waited for his response, but when he seemed to disregard her, she restated it for him. "When we speak of your trauma, you seem to separate your memory from the anthropological evidence. Why do you think you do that?"

Daniel threw his head back and sighed. He raked both hands through his hair and grasped hold of the back of his neck, frustrated that he was going to have to explain this yet again. "Look, it's really very simple. If I can separate myself from the situation, if I can take myself outside of the circle and think about it from a culturally significant point of view, who am I to say they were wrong?"

"But they tortured you," Doctor Sebastian reminded him, and the sound of the word sent his hands flying around his waist and his chin plummeting to his chest. "How can that be seen for anything other than it is?"

"Because you're looking at it through a very narrow perspective," Daniel said, shaking his head, irritated that he had to explain the simplest things to her. "We make presumptions everyday about what's right and wrong, and always through the limited scope of our own culture. If what you say is true, if what the medical reports say is true, and I was beaten and even..." Daniel paused, closed his eyes against the vertiginous sensation piling into his body. How could he finish the sentence if he could not speak the words? He shook his head and tried to pretend that they already had been said. "...then isn't it also true that they healed me? That they fed me? Yes, by our standards I was treated poorly—"

"Poorly?" Doctor Sebastian questioned.

"Yes. Um, okay, inhumanely, but by their standards, maybe not," Daniel said, finishing his thought, incredulous as to her inability to comprehend the situation just like he saw it. She stared at him, those pity-laden eyes, mossy and framed by tiny wrinkles, waiting for him to go on. Daniel shook his head and shrugged. "At the very least, I contributed to their society somehow."

"And how did you do that?" she asked, suddenly finding her skin singing with anticipation. A breakthrough, she thought. Yes, he is very close...

The thudding inside his chest began to increase. Daniel touched his fingers to his carotid artery and turned away from her. "I wish I knew."

"It sounds as if you do know," Doctor Sebastian prodded. Go on, she silently urged. Meet the challenge. Go on, Doctor Jackson...

"Well, I don't. I'm just trying..." he said and stopped, tried to swallow in order to slow down his heart rate. "I'm trying to understand it from an anthropological standpoint."

"Was there ever an instance that you can remember when you could not understand their treatment of you?"

"No." Daniel twined his fingers behind his head and tried to relax.

"Meaning you understood all their actions?"

"Meaning...meaning...No. I just meant..." he muttered, flustered by the topic. "Look, all I'm saying is that within their social delineation...I mean it seems perfectly clear that I wasn't a member of their cultural experience, so..."

"In what ways were you different?" she asked, leading him to reveal some of his experiences.

"You're missing the point," he countered. A groan heavy of frustration and contempt burst from him. "I'm just trying to explain that in order to understand why they did the things they did, you have to take yourself outside the circle."

"And why is it you still want to understand these people, especially after they brutalized you so?" the doctor said.

Daniel pressed his hand to his chest and deep within his darkened mind began to count to ten, anything to calm down his racing heart.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"Look, I've thought about this a long time," Daniel said, and even as he said it, he knew his voice was betraying the panic he felt, "and I've decided what may or may not have been done to me isn't as important as...as important as why."

Doctor Sebastian rose, concerned with the increasing amount of sweat forming on Daniel's face. "Doctor, why don't we sit down?"

Daniel continued, side-stepping away from her. "And, frankly, maybe the why comes down to 'because,' and if that's the case...if that's the case, we have nothing more to...to discuss." On his final word, Daniel leaned over his knees and gulped at air. His heart rapped a frantic, determined rhythm against his sternum.

"Come. Sit here," Doctor Sebastian said, urging him to sit down on the chair.

"I can't seem... to catch... my br-breath," he gasped, allowing himself to be guided into the seat. Daniel felt his head being pressed forward. From some desperate, latent instinct, he cried out and slapped her hand away.

"Forgive me," she said, pulling her stinging hand from his neck. "Try to keep your head down. You're hyperventilating."

Oh, God, I hit her, he said to himself. Oh, God...Daniel pressed both hands to the floor aside his shoes, and beat-by-beat his heart began to slow, even while his humiliation rose.

"I'm...sorry," he began.

"No, no. Just breathe," she said, standing by his side.

Daniel screwed his eyes shut tight, blocked out the memory of slapping her hand away and forced himself to calm down. Finally, his breathing returned to normal, and once again his body felt depleted and raw.

When at last he could think of something other than the fear that his heart would beat itself to a pulp, the memory of slapping away Doctor Sebastian's hands slipped back into the fore of his mind. Humiliated, dismayed by his actions, even when he wasn't sure why he hit her, Daniel whispered, "I'm sorry for hitting you."

"I should not have touched you," she said, ashamed that she had made such a rookie mistake, and after all these years. "It is my fault entirely."

Daniel rolled his finger and thumb across his temples. "I thought you said the Zoloft would alleviate my symptoms."

"It will," she said, returning to her chair. "You must give it time to build up in your blood stream."

"I've been taking it for five days," he said.

"Give it a full two weeks, please, before you pass judgment."

"Nine more days? I don't know if I can take this another day, let alone another nine days," he said.

"I would suggest that it's not only your symptoms but the fact that we are talking about rather sensitive issues," she said. Across from her, Daniel remained in his coiled position. "How are you feeling now?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, attempting to lift his head. When he did, the dizziness returned but not the racing heartbeat. "I feel...ashamed."

"Ashamed?" she asked, surprised.

"I'm...I'm very sorry I hit you. I'm... very sorry." Daniel ground his teeth together, tucked his chin in to his shoulder and hoped that she'd take his apology and forget about it.

"No. You have nothing for which to apologize," she said. "But can we discuss why you reacted the way you did? What is it, do you think, about people touching you that brings you to such actions?"

"Um..." Daniel began. "It's, um..."

Hands, large and scratchy, grabbing the back of his neck, prying open his mouth, forcing him down.

"No!" he screamed, fighting against the overwhelming power. His hands flew from his side and smashed against bone.

And then large, scratchy hands were gathered into fists, smashing against Daniel's bones, until he learned not to strike back.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Each time they grabbed him, dragged him, forced him, Daniel's primal response was to lash out, and each time he gave into that response he was punished, until they did not need to grab, drag or force him anymore. Until he had learned; until he had forgotten to lash out.

"Doctor Jackson, can you hear me?" Doctor Sebastian said, leaning in closer to Daniel.

When at last he heard his name, Daniel's eyes popped open, and there she was. Dazed, his mouth hanging open as if anesthetized, Daniel trembled with fear.

"What is it, Doctor Jackson?" she asked.

"I... I I I don't know." He searched her eyes hoping that she had seen it for him. "I...I..."

"A flashback?" she asked.

"I think so. Maybe." Daniel closed his eyes and let his head fall backwards against the wall. "I'm not sure."

"Tell me what it was about?" she said.

"I don't know."

"No, I will not accept that answer," she told him. "Whatever was in this memory, it cannot hurt you now. You must talk about it."

"You're not listening," he said, thumping his head against the wall. "I don't understand what it was, so how can I tell you?"

"Tell me what were the images? What were the noises?"

Daniel sorted through the memory, and the one thing he kept coming back to was the hands. Hands so big they wrapped around his biceps. Hands so strong they snapped his fingers. Hands so cruel they produced an endless agony to already flayed skin.

"Here," she said, handing him the box of tissues.

Daniel had no idea what she was offering to him, but when he pulled his head from against the wall and looked into her face, he saw that his vision was oscillating. It was only then that he became aware he was crying.

"I..."

"It's all right," she said, pulling one tissue out and placing it in his hand.

Daniel lowered his eyes and felt the soft pounce of tears hitting his legs. He pulled the tissue open and pressed it to his face.

Doctor Sebastian sat back and let him compose himself. She could hear him breathe in and out, deliberate and slow. She watched him shake his head back and forth, struggling with himself to make sense of his life. She poked a strand of her hair into the knot at the base of her skull and watched him in silence.

When at last he was ready to speak, Daniel rolled the tissue in his hands, clapped his hands together at his knees, never looked up at her and said, "I don't like to be touched."

"I see that," she said, nodding.

"I never have," he said.

"Is it any worse lately?" she asked.

"Yes."

Nodding, appreciative of the modest progress they had made, Doctor Sebastian smiled at him and said, "Then I will be more careful not to touch you."

"Thank you," Daniel said. He picked at the used tissue ball in his hand and wondered what she must think of him. Wondered if she thought he was as big a head case as he thought he was.

"In our last session," Doctor Sebastian said, leaning over her desk, reading her notes, "we talked about cognitive restructuring, yes?"

"Yes." Daniel picked up a pencil from the side table and began performing legerdemain with it. He sealed his lips together, tired of the now predictable sequence—restating the objectives of the last session; evaluating the progress within said objectives; building on that progress, or examining why no progress was made. It went round and round, boring and futile.

"Have you been practicing the breathing exercises that we discussed?" she asked, taking her seat in front of him.

"I breathe in; I breathe out. Occasionally, I yawn." He gave her his best deadeye stare, conveying his depth of dissatisfaction with the whole affair.

Doctor Sebastian tilted her head to the opposite side and gave him plenty of silence with which to fill.

"Look, it's just that this seems to be going in circles. I don't see any progress."

"Yes, you've brought up circles before," she said, taking her glasses off. "Tell me more about circles."

"No. It's...you're..." Daniel placed the pencil back onto the table and shook his head, stymied by the conversation. "No."

"Is there some reason you choose not to talk about circles?" she asked.

"There's nothing to talk about! God!" Daniel cried. "All I said was we're going around and around. LIKE IN A CIRCLE! There's...I...nothing more than that. God!"

Doctor Sebastian picked up his chart and read through a page.

"What?" Daniel said, trying to peer over the edge of the file.

"I find it interesting that you describe the healing device as a...ah, yes—'a circle of light.' You have also described, in some of your nightmares, as being surrounded by a ring of people. What do you make of this?" Doctor Sebastian focused on him with gentle, inquisitive regard.

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head, grinding his teeth together.

"You seem angry."

"Me? Angry? Why should I be angry?"

"Am I not the person who should be asking the questions?" she said, smiling.

"Then why aren't you?" Daniel asked, allowing a certain smug attitude carry him through the tedium.

"What would you like me to ask?"

"How should I know? Aren't you the psychiatrist?"

"Perhaps you'd like to discuss a different topic?"

"Do YOU think we should discuss a different topic?"

Doctor Sebastian laughed, covering her frustration with feigned amusement. "What topic would you like to discuss?"

"Aren't you supposed to tell me that?" Daniel continued.

"Can we talk about why you couldn't speak after your surgery?"

"Do you have the proper clearance?" Daniel asked while awakened anxieties skittered through his body.

"Do you mean military clearance?"

"Is that what you think I mean?"

"How can I gain clearance?" she asked, resting her face in her hand while she concentrated on his nervousness.

"Why should I tell you?"

"If I continue with this game, this attempt to sideline me, will I gain clearance?"

Daniel stopped and stared at her, angered by the ease in which she had ground him to a halt. "No."

"Doctor Jackson," she said, rising from her seat and walking toward her desk, "in our last session we discussed mastering your memories so that you may revisit the trauma in a way that's not overwhelming." She pulled a tissue from the box and wiped her nose. "I think we are getting close to something that you would rather not discuss. Is that the reason for the word games?"

Daniel slouched in his chair and let his long legs slide out in front of him. "I don't know."

"I will not accept..."

"Yes, I know," he said, letting his head fall back to the wall behind him. "Fine. I don't even know what we were talking about."

"We began with a discussion on circles," she said.

"And I told you I don't believe there is any merit in that discussion," Daniel told her. He piled his arms across his midriff and closed his eyes.

"Can we discuss why you believe you were unable to speak even after your voice was restored?" she asked, taking her seat before him once again.

"I'm not going to get out of here unless I give you something really juicy, am I?" Daniel asked, combing his fingers through his hair.

"That all depends on what you consider juicy," Doctor Sebastian told him.

Daniel opened his eyes and stared at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, wondered how many patients before him had done the same. "Okay. I think," he began, "that I tried concentrating on their form of language so hard that I temporarily may have lost my own." His words surprised him—they almost sounded believable.

"Does that happen often when you're learning a new language?" she asked.

So much for believability, he thought. "No, but it wasn't an oral language, so..." Daniel sat up and crossed his feet under the chair. His knees began to shake. "I just think I concentrated so hard trying to find meaning in their gestures that I might have..." He waved a hand next to his head. "Maybe I shook something loose, I don't know..."

"I must tell you, Doctor Jackson, that sounds like a rationalization for the truth," she told him. "And I think the truth is inside you, but you are not prepared to accept it."

"Oh, fuck you!" Daniel blurted out, rising in trembling anger from his seat. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from her, skimming over the blurry book titles that lined her shelf.

"Twenty-three languages, and this is the kind you choose," she said, shaking her head, waiting for his response.

"Then tell me your native tongue, and I'll tell you to fuck off in it," Daniel said without turning toward her.

"I think it is highly significant that when we begin to discuss your inability to use your language, the one you fall back on is vulgarity." She jotted down a note to herself in his file. "Not only vulgarity, but the act represented within that vulgarity is rather an interesting choice."

Daniel dropped his chin to his chest and brought a hand to his neck. He could feel a blinding migraine approaching. The muscles along his jaw line contracted while he continued to bite down on his anger.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I'm done today," he said.

"Yes, I believe you are," Doctor Sebastian agreed. She stepped to the door and called Sergeant Garanzia in, but before the sergeant could enter the office, Daniel slid by them both on his way back to his room.

"Watch him carefully," Doctor Sebastian told the aid. "This could be a difficult night."

"Yes, ma'am," Sergeant Garanzia said, excusing herself to catch up with her patient.

"Hi, Bob." Sam straddled the barstool and unzipped her jacket.

"How you doin', Major?" Bob asked from behind the bar. He placed a cocktail napkin in front of her.

"Oh, you know," she said, twirling the napkin. "Can I have a beer with a chaser of Seagram's?"

"Gotcha," Bob said and pointed a finger at her.

While the barkeep pulled on the draft arm, Sam rubbed her hand through her hair, turned her head from side to side and tried to work out some of the kinks. When she opened her eyes, over right shoulder she saw Jack. Sitting alone at a corner table, one beer in his hand, an empty bottle in front of him, he sat staring at nothing.

Bob placed the beer and shot in front of Sam and nodded to the colonel. "He's been here a while. I finally convinced him to eat something."

Sam picked up the shot and said, "So much for chaser, huh?" She tossed it back, picked up her beer and sauntered over to her CO.

"Hey, Colonel," she said, taking a sip from her beer.

"Carter." Jack glanced at her over the rim of his beer. "What brings you here?"

"Probably the same thing that brought you here," she said. She grabbed the back of the extra chair. "May I, sir?"

"Sure. Why not?" Jack said, lobbing his bottle cap across the table while he remained slouched in his chair. He pushed the chair out for her with his extended foot. "You want something to eat?" Jack waved down the waitress.

"Um, yeah, I guess. What are you having?" Sam scooted her chair in and pulled a plastic coated menu out from behind a chrome guardrail affixed to the edge of the table.

"I'm having a steak, Carter," Jack pronounced. "Rare. So rare that if we medivac it to the nearest vet, it may still have a sporting chance."

Sam smiled and let her head bob up and down. "That's pretty rare, sir."

"How about you?"

"A steak sounds good. Maybe not that...healthy," she said, placing the menu back with the other ketchup—stained, greasy placards. "I was thinking of going up to see Daniel tonight."

"Don't bother," Jack told her, finishing his beer and placing it next to the first. "I was just there. He's not feeling well. Another migraine."

"Damn," Sam muttered.

"Hey, Jams. What can I do ya fer?" Tiffy the waitress asked, a big girl with spit curls laced around her temples and forehead.

"Jams?" Jack asked, eyeing Sam with suspicion.

Sam chose to ignore the colonel and just order. "I'm going to have a steak, medium, with a side salad. Oh, and another beer," Sam told her. A dancing beer bottle caught her attention, and Sam revised her order. "And one more for the colonel." Jack placed the empty bottle down.

"Comin' right up," Tiffy said, taking the empties with her. "And your steak should be out right soon, Jack."

"Thank you there, Tiff," Jack said, slouching down even further in his chair.

When the relative privacy of a table in a bar was restored to them, Sam leaned onto her elbows and searched for an opener. "So, sir..."

"I owe you an apology, Major," Jack blurted out, organizing the packets of sweetener into a more aesthetically pleasing pattern.

"Sir?"

"I was rude and shortsighted. And I should have offered this apology a while back, so I apologize for that as well." Satisfied that the pattern of blue, white and pink was a much more appetizing one, Jack set his sights on the salt and pepper shaker, all in an attempt to divert his attention and Sam's. "You were right about Daniel. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Sam wrapped her long fingers around her stein of beer. "Well, I appreciate that, sir, but I'm not sure it's needed. I was...I was wrong, too."

"How's that?"

"I wanted to believe that if he could just..." Her words caught in her throat. What did she believe? "I don't know...maybe if I could protect him, maybe he'd be fine." Tiff placed a new beer on the table for Jack and silently walked away. Sam hunkered around her mug of beer, not really seeing it, not really wanting it. "I want him to be safe, you know? I just want him to feel safe." Sam dropped her head into one hand, tired and worn numb by the constant worry.

"He is safe, Carter," Jack told her, lifting his beer to his lips.

A silence descended upon them. A silence of fatigue, of guilt, of concealed pain wrapped around them. Forgiveness, longed for and selfishly sought, skulked around the periphery, just out of sight. In their sad reverie, penitential and quiet, they began to cast off their anger toward each other, toward the lost months, toward their arrogated culpability.

"Carter—"

Without hearing her name, Sam cut in. "Sir, I—"

"Here ya go, Jack," Tiff said, placing a plate in front of him.

"Thanks, Tiff. Damn nice of this cow to give itself so selflessly," Jack said, reaching for his utensils.

"Enjoy," Tiff said.

When Tiff was out of earshot, Jack said, "So, Carter..."

Sam felt the need to down as much beer as possible before telling Jack exactly why she needed to stop at the bar before going to see Daniel.

"Whoa. Careful, Carter," Jack said, gesturing toward her tipped-up mug with his brawny knife. "That's a good way to..."

"I opened up the file, sir," she said, placing her empty mug down.

"The file." Jack set his cutlery down aside his plate.

"In order to transfer the information Dad gave us to a Word file, I had to play with it a little." Sam brought both hands together and pressed them to her lips, still cold from the beer.

"So..."

Sam chose her words with measured care before proceeding. Weighing the price between truth and protection, she said, "I only saw bits and pieces, but...but I think Doctor Sebastian has her work cut out for her, sir."

Tiff brought a plate and set it down in front of Sam. Sam moved her elbows out of the way and smiled to the waitress.

"Thanks, Tiff," Sam said.

"You're welcome, Jams." Tiff touched Sam on the shoulder and strode off to the kitchen.

"Okay...Jams?" Jack asked.

Sam shrugged, embarrassed and related the strange tale. "She calls me Jams because of Carter's Pajamas. You know—'If they could just stay little 'til their Carter's wear out.' Jams—pajamas. It's...um..."

"That's..." Jack said, nodding his head. He sucked in a breath, ready to express his feelings on the story, but decided to close his eyes and forget that he ever heard it. "So, C...Sam, who has the file now?"

"I gave it to General Hammond, sir." Sam crossed her arms in front of her plate and regarded the meat with a decided lack of interest.

He could see just how much pain it had caused her to see the contents of the file, even the small amount that she had seen. It reminded him once again that he was happy he chose not to look into the disk himself.

"Good," Jack said, and he raked his fork across the top of his scored meat. When he looked up at her, he saw the dejection and dispirited lethargy he thought they both wore. "You okay, Sam?"

Her appetite gone, Sam turned her plate first one way and then the other. "I guess I'm not that hungry."

Jack looked at his own meal and decided the same. Both plates pushed to the side, Jack waved down Bob at the bar and motioned for him to bring two more beers.

When she was on base, Sam gave her full attention to her work, to her experiments, to her vast responsibilities. When she was off world, her focus was wire sharp: obtain the objectives of the mission.

When she was outside the mountain, her thoughts, her concern, her preoccupation ran toward Daniel.

She missed him. She has missed him desperately when he was gone, but now...

When he was gone, when they had no idea where he was or where to look for him, Sam could pretend that he was bored, sitting in some room, talking circles around his captors. She could comfort herself with fantasies that perhaps he was held in a state of metabolic inertia, free from any torment, just waiting for his team to find him.

Then there were the thoughts, dark and unwanted, coming usually at night, that Daniel was simply gone. That maybe his life had been snuffed out, and any of his mental energy—that signature of spirit and sentience—was merely a mirage, a falsely intuited response she had created, desperate to keep him alive, placed there if only so she could properly say goodbye.

Maybe, she had thought, he was dead. Maybe there was no point in looking for him. Maybe it was for the best. No more suffering. No more wondering.

No more.

And then they found him. And then her nightmares began in earnest. Only they were living, breathing nightmares, the kind that grab you by the throat and choke the resolve from your body. The kind of nightmares that remind you everyday that you are aware of the pain, that you are keenly cognizant that unimaginable acts took place. Nightmares that force you to see that the person standing in the room with you is so far excused from his former self, that you miss him more than when he was in a different part of the galaxy.

She missed him. He was just beyond the door that led to his room, and Sam missed Daniel with a deep ache.

Sergeant Garanzia pulled open the door and stepped out into the hall, addressed Sam out of respect and continued on down the corridor.

Sam took a deep breath, pushed herself away from the wall, ambled across the hall, and tapped on his door. She poked her head into his room and caught sight of him.

Facing away from her, his figure muted by the bright light streaming in through the window, Daniel stared into a world he could barely comprehend.

"Hi, Daniel," Sam finally was able to say.

Daniel turned his head, glanced at her over his shoulder before turning back to the smudged window.

Sam set her purse and coat down on the bed and scuffed her feet along the floor, a habit she had adopted around Daniel. It warned him that she was approaching. The last thing she wanted was to startle him, unnerve him anymore than he already was.

"You look good, Daniel," Sam said, her back to the window. "You look like you've gained weight. That's good."

His eyelids fluttered for a moment. He lowered his face and sighed. "It's the drugs."

"Oh," Sam said, nodding. Side effect, she thought. Well, it was a good one. His face didn't look so emaciated; his body didn't look so fragile.

"What day is it?" he asked, returning his stare out the window.

"Um, Tuesday," she said.

"Baked spaghetti."

Sam blinked. "'Scuse me?"

"Tuesday is baked spaghetti. Wednesday is pork chops. Thursday is...I don't remember, but Friday is baked chicken. Saturday is lasagna. Sunday is beef stew. Monday is meatloaf, which brings us back to baked spaghetti Tuesdays." A bird dipped and dove through the air, and Daniel tracked it from one building to the other until it disappeared.

"How are you, Daniel?" Sam asked.

"I'm cycling through my symptoms nicely," he said, while black and brittle spiels of soft laughter tumbled from his lips. "I did nightmares and flashbacks so well that now I'm working on migraines and heart palpitations. I figure in a week I should be a full-blown head case."

"Daniel..."

"Sam," Daniel interrupted, sliding his hands out of his pockets and under his arms, "if I asked you to sign me out of here, would you? Would you take me home?"

A soft yet insistent tingle rose in her eyes and nose. She touched her head to the cool glass and looked at his face, lowered so she couldn't see his mournful eyes, and told him, "No."

Daniel nodded. He glanced up at her and produced a lamentable smile. He shrugged and said, "I didn't think so. Can't blame a guy for asking."

"Daniel, I want you to be well again, and the only way that's going to happen is if you stay here and get well," Sam told him. She held out her hand to him. Some days he'd take it; other days he'd stare at it. She was never sure which day it would be, but she always offered it to him.

"So, what's your definition of well?" he asked, trying to find the strength to reach out for her hand, let it embrace a small part of him.

"You being happy again," she told him. She kept her hand hovering next to him, knowing that some days it took longer than others.

"Can I be well and not be happy?" With his heart beginning to race, he pulled one hand out from under his arm and placed it in her palm. The warmth and safety of her fingers calmed him, and he let out a long-held breath.

"Sure. I guess. Yeah." Sam held his hand, didn't caress it with her thumb. Didn't gently squeeze it. It was enough that his hand was in hers.

"Then I guess I'm well enough to go home," he said, his words shaky and daunted. He stole a look at Sam, saw her gentle smile, watched her shake her head. Daniel dropped his chin, screwed shut his burning eyes and grasped her hand with a sort of desperate need.

Sam fingered the underside of his wrist, just a touch. "We all just want...we all just need to know you're safe, Daniel."

The words stunned him enough to look her straight in the eye. "What?" And when he saw her focus on his wrists and felt her fingers graze across the scars that marred his skin, Daniel yanked his hand away. "Do you...do you think..." Daniel stumbled back until his calves met with his bed. "Do you think I tried to...Does Jack?"

"Daniel..."

Daniel's feet scraped the floor while he scooted around the bed and wedged himself between the dresser and the corner. "God, Sam! Why would you think that?"

"Daniel," she began, stepping closer to him, "it's only that..."

"NO!" he cried. "Don't...just..." His finger pointed at her to stay away, and when she did, Daniel pressed both hands to the top of the small dresser and groaned, releasing some of his anger, his fear, his highly explosive anxiety.

"Sam," he said, pressing his head with a thud against the wall, "what happens when the atom splits? Hmmm?"

"It divides. Why?" she asked.

"But the original atom," he said, thumping his head against the wall, "what happens to it? Is it gone?"

"Well, I suppose. Yes. Daniel..."

"Sam, if I'm at the center of my universe and I split, what will be left?"

"You won't split, Daniel," she told him.

"But if I do, what will be left?" he asked. "Darkness?" Daniel stared at the pocked ceiling tiles. "Darkness, right?"

"Daniel..."

"Darkness. It's darkness." His stomach seized; his vision blurred; his hands scraped into the smooth surface of the dresser. "God, Sam. You don't even know what you've done, do you?"

"What have I done, Daniel?" she asked.

Daniel tilted his head to the side and offered her all his sympathy for her ignorance. "You opened the box, Sam."

Sam shook her head, unsure and afraid. "Daniel, what..."

"I'd only been there a short time," he began, pulling in labored breaths through his nose. "Only long enough to know I didn't want...couldn't live with it any more. One day—or night. I'm not really sure which—I woke up and one of them had left part of his clothing behind. I found a piece of metal—I don't...I don't know what it was for—in the pocket. I decided right then and there that whoever came in next, whoever tried to..."

Daniel stopped, sucked in one long breath and held it. He shook his head while the air gushed out between his lips. "I wouldn't let them touch me again. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do, but the metal was sharp enough that I knew I could...I could somehow...that one of us wouldn't..." He nodded in place of the awful words.

Sam understood and nodded back while silent tears crawled across her cheek.

"They were incredibly big. Did I...did I ever tell you that?" Daniel asked, swallowing against his own sorrow.

"No."

"Maybe seven...seven and a half feet tall," he said, glancing up into the upper reaches of his room. "When they came in..." Daniel stopped, looked around the room, looked around his memory, searched for the words that didn't want to come. "I was nothing to them in terms of size. Nothing. But I realized, right there, I realized that I was...something. That I was worth something to them. I was a commodity. I took the metal and I held it against my wrist."

"So you tried to..."

"Well, tried is really the operative word there," Daniel said, bringing his hands together on top of the bureau. "I wanted to make them understand that I was willing to destroy their...their..." Again he nodded. "But they were so big, Sam."

Sam took slow, measured steps to the opposite side of the chest of drawers and placed her trembling hands near his on the top of the chest. She wanted, needed to comfort him and find comfort for herself.

"One of them grabbed me; the other held out my hand and sliced my wrist with his knife." Daniel stopped just to watch Sam's reaction. Knew she was probably shaking with horror. He paused and let her grapple with her own loss of words. When he continued, his voice was dull and quiet. "Then they healed me, and then they cut my other wrist. They healed me again, and then they beat me. I never tried to do it again."

By the time she was able to speak, to say anything close to the terror she felt, Sam was weeping and without reservation.

"They didn't...they didn't heal me after that beating. They, um...I think they wanted..." Daniel came to a stop again, wondered how he could cause Sam to be in such pain over his pitiful story. Why did she care? "I think they wanted to give me something to think about, so they didn't heal me."

"Oh, God," she cried. Sam reached for his wrists to anchor her downward spiral, lowered her wet cheeks to his hands and sobbed. "Daniel..."

Her sorrow in his hands, Daniel stroked away her tears with his thumbs. "You asked how we communicated. People ask me if I ever understood them. I did. I did."

Her tears were like warm droplets of grief baptizing him, absolving him of all his sins, original and of the flesh. He accepted them, cupped his hands around her saving tears, and forgave her as well for having paid witness to it.

"Laboravi in gemitu meo, lavobam per singulas noctes lectum meum; lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabam." Daniel accepted her tears, let them wash him of his iniquities. He lowered his face and kissed her hair. "Et tu, Sam?"

"Oh, Daniel," she cried, clutching at his arms, drowning in her inexorable anguish. "Oh, Daniel."

"And now you know the problem with memory," he whispered through her hair, his voice sweet and calm. He lay his cheek upon her soft hair and let her tears cleanse his sullied hands. "Open one memory and it splits into two. Two to four. Four to eight. Eight to sixteen, to thirty-two, to sixty-four, one-twenty-eight. Two-fifty-six..."

"Daniel," she whispered, destroyed and crumbling.

"Until there's nothing left but memory. Until there's nothing left of...me."

"Doctor Jackson."

Daniel pulled a book from Doctor Sebastian's collection and thumbed through the pages, part ignoring her, part ignoring his body.

"Have you read that?" she asked from her chair.

Muted and delayed came her words through the viscid haze. But then a twinge of pain, a sharp pinch, a burgeoning throb stole his focus away.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel spun on his heels, finally bringing the near past to the almost relatable present. "What? Have I...Oh. Yes. Well, some."

"What is your impression of the author," Doctor Sebastian asked.

Daniel shook his head and returned the book to the shelf. "Not much, I'm afraid."

"I would think you'd be very interested in his work integrating myths."

"Who? Joseph Campbell?" Daniel asked, taking a book by Jung from the shelf. "He's a great popularizer, but he's a poor academic. I mean, the man quit his own PhD studies after meeting Krishnamurti and instead chose a more intuitive approach in which everything was evaluated in terms of his particular Krishnamurti-influenced beliefs, which, as you are well aware is typically characterized by his often-repeated 'follow your bliss' crap." Suddenly, Daniel felt he was channeling Jack—a highly educated, disdainful Jack, but a cynical Jack, nonetheless. The thought brought a fleeting smile to his face.

Daniel separated two volumes of works by Kierkegard and Camus and slid Jung between. His eyes grazed across the spines of the other books, and the insistent throb deep within him radiated further. He shifted his weight and held onto the bookcase.

"Doctor Jackson?" she said, peering around him to catch a glimpse of his face.

Daniel pushed away from the shelves and dug his hands into his pockets, pressed the warmth against his hipbones. He dipped to read the title of a book, make it look as if he were totally engrossed in the act instead of a different sort of act.

"It's as if he stopped reading the work of anyone else when he quit the academic track. He did read people such as Jung," Daniel said, turning to Doctor Sebastian in order to make his point, but just as quickly turned away, embarrassed by his own knowledge. "He, uh, yes, he read a great deal of Jung and is very much a Jungian, a believer in concepts like the...collective unconscious."

"And you have only read some of his work?" she asked, regarding him with humorous skepticism, rather entranced by his knowledge, and rather concerned with his erratic movements.

"Well, I've read enough to get a general feel for his...shoddy academia," he said, returning his attention to the books.

"Does shoddy academia bother you?"

"Of course. Doesn't it bother you?" Daniel asked, keeping his voice level. "If nothing else, academia should be...pure. Scholarly works should be untainted by vast generalities and careless research."

"Campbell's research is not up to your standards?" she asked, almost as interested in Daniel's appraisal of the author as in the words he was not saying. She made a note to herself to ask him about his absence from academia.

"I'm not sure that he has done his research at all," Daniel told her, stepping toward his chair, pausing and then continuing on to her desk. "It's not beyond him to change a myth here and there just to fit his beliefs. For an example, his rendition of 'The Odyssey' is is is is absolutely chock full of glaring, embarrassing mistakes. But, since those who would read Campbell more than likely haven't read much Homer..." He shook his head and picked up a glass paperweight full of azure blue bubbles and exploding pink blooms.

"I'm curious, Doctor Jackson, but in which language did you read Homer?" Doctor Sebastian asked, resting her pen in her lap.

Daniel turned the glass bauble over in his hands. "Oh, um...Greek. Of course, Greek." And then he treated his physician, his mender of minds to a display of his intellect by reciting a portion of the original text in the original language.

This mind, she thought, listening to him effortlessly glide through the ancient words and phrases, this great and utter coffer of knowledge. Could they possibly know what they have done to it? Did they even stop to care?

Daniel placed the paperweight back on the table and showed her an embarrassed, tight-lipped smile. "Anyhow, that's what it sounded like to the Athenians."

"Quite impressive," she said.

Daniel's eyes darted over her face, across the room and to the window. A windowsill to lean on. Yes. Walking in short, choppy steps, he made his way to the window, grabbed hold of the edge and tried to take some pressure off his lower back. Spikes of neuralgia drove down the backs of his thighs and took hold of his gut, cramping and hard.

"Doctor Jackson, perhaps you would be more comfortable..."

"No, I'm fine," he told her. Cold sweat gathered on his upper lip and on his eyelids.

Doctor Sebastian rose from her seat and joined him at the window. Her voice quiet and concerned, she asked, "Are you in a great deal of pain?"

Daniel's legs began to tremble and he pressed one hand into his eye. "Oh, enough, I guess."

"Have you been using the suppositories I prescribed?"

Humiliation and anger rained down on him in equal parts. He turned his face from her and ground his teeth together. It was a purely medical question. It was a simple question between doctor and patient, but the back-story, the events that made the question pertinent bristled with humiliation and shame, and because of it, he couldn't help but be angry that she had to ask.

"I'm fine," he said again, distancing himself from her. "I'm just...I'm fine."

"I realize this in an uncomfortable subject for you, but your pain is merely a result of a physical trauma, nothing more," she told him. Daniel stepped around her desk chair taking awkward, halting steps, finally stopping at the farthest reaches of the room. "You needn't feel embarrassed or ashamed, Doctor."

"I know. I know." He pressed his shoulders to the wall and counted. One, two, three, four, five...Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...

Doctor Sebastian walked to her door, opened it only a few inches, and motioned to the person waiting outside.

Breathe, Daniel told himself. God, breathe...

Sergeant Garanzia stepped through the door and edged in before Daniel, spoke to him in hushed words, watched him nod his head. She kept her eyes riveted to the man, asked him questions and remained very calm. Daniel bound his arms across his midsection and whispered back his response.

Doctor Sebastian stood separated from them and allowed the young man and his assistant to come up with a plan. She knew Daniel needed to be in the care of Sergeant Garanzia, to be in the capable, caring hands of the nurse, away from the tension of emotions and memory. That's why she had assigned the sergeant to Daniel's case. Doctor Sebastian knew he would need someone he could trust, someone who would assist him, someone who had no history with him. Doctor Sebastian knew Daniel would need a protector. Sergeant Garanzia, with her carefully chosen words, her unflappable composure, was the precise person for the job, and for Daniel's sake, Doctor Sebastian was very thankful.

"Okay?" Doctor Sebastian heard the sergeant say to Daniel. Sergeant Garanzia turned her attention to the physician and said, "I'll take Doctor Jackson back to his room, ma'am." She held out her hand, guiding Daniel toward the door.

"Perhaps we can talk later," Doctor Sebastian said to Daniel.

Daniel nodded and let Sergeant Garanzia escort him back to his room.

Out in the open corridor, Daniel trailed his trembling hand against the wall. Each step compounded the pain, and by feeling his way down the hall, Daniel could close his eyes and try to escape it.

Sergeant Garanzia let Daniel choose the pace and remained silent by his side the entire time.

She opened his door for him, allowed him to pass, watched him slide himself into his bed, and cup his body around his pain.

"I'll be back in a few minutes with your prescription," she said.

Not waiting for a sign that he heard, Sergeant Garanzia slipped out of the room.

Crestfallen, his body pulsating with a deep, inner agony, Daniel slipped his hands between his knees and tried once again to knead away his memories.

He tried to clean the tablet of retention. Swipe it away. Renounce its power. But it kept returning—a jolt of pain, a flash of images, an unruly sense of panic. He pushed his mind, his intellect to reason it out. He fervently hoped his ability to be logical and forgiving would enable him to surmount it all.

But his mind was under constant attack, and when it could no longer endure the bombardment, his body became the target.

"Perhaps your body reacts to what your soul cannot comprehend," Doctor Sebastian had told him.

Daniel didn't want to be a body. His body had never been as useful to him as his mind, and he didn't want to be concerned with the thrumming pain that invaded his temporal flesh. No, it was his mind that would deliver him. It was his mind that would keep him safe. He had no other choice but to believe it.

He had tried to reason his way out of the brutality so many months ago, and look where that got him. He had hoped his intelligence would be his shield, his ability to be rational his protective layer. Intelligence and logic along with pleading and defending himself became as useless as bullets without a gun. His greatest weapon, and it abandoned him at every turn.

Lying frozen with pain in his bed, staring at the hazy whiteness out his window, Daniel was trapped—in his body, in his mind, in a bed. Nothing he did—nothing—seemed to work anymore.

And really, did it ever work?

He had tried to become a shadow, a vestige of the man he once was. He had reasoned that maybe, just maybe they wouldn't be able to find him if he became an umbra in the presence of the glaring fulmination. Nothing could find him if he crept alongside, merely an indistinct, remnant of spirit.

But they always found him. Then. Now. They found him at night. During the long stretches of sleepless hours, Daniel couldn't shift fast enough when rough hands and blistering eyes tore at him. Couldn't ignore when his body violently revolted against the remembered assaults, and he ended up stumbling from his bed, doubled over with cramps and nausea churning his insides.

So even though he tried to convince himself that he had no knowledge of his ordeal, his body always reminded him that he was lying. Every ache screamed at him, "Remember this?"

With no escape, Daniel turned his eyes into the softness of his pillow and wept.

Jack was the last to step through the wormhole, and he, like the three before him, looked perplexed.

"Colonel?" General Hammond said while his 2IC descended the ramp.

"If Salvador Dali were still alive, I'd say we should send NID out to check on him, sir, because L57...whatever whatever whatever was...well, to put it technically, sir, it was wack," Jack told him. "Sinclair Lewis would have been frightened. ee cummings, sir, would have been left scratching his head. Steven King...okay, well, he might have found inspiration from the place, but..."

"I'm sure our debriefing will be highly...informative, Colonel," the general said, his rotund belly shaking with a soft chortle.

"That it should be, General. That it should be," Jack said, clumping loudly down the steps. "Right after I take a handful of aspirin."

"Jack," General Hammond said.

Hearing his first name was never a good sign where Jack was concerned, and he turned to the general with no small amount of nervousness.

"Jack, I wanted to give you the head's up on a situation before you got wind of it," the general said.

"I'm not going to like this, am I, sir?" said Jack, removing his hat and scratching his head.

"Major Davis called me earlier this morning to warn me that Senator Kinsey has shown a particular interest in Doctor Jackson's file." The general, his face flushed with anger, wrung his hands together. "I'm sorry, Jack, but..."

"No!" Jack growled. "If you're going to tell me that Kinsey wants to talk with Daniel, NO!"

"Jack..."

"No way in hell, sir," he continued. "Look, General, I mean no disrespect, but if you don't stop this thing from happening, I'm gonna shoot that rat bastard myself if he so much as takes a step near Mental Health."

"Colonel, I don't like this anymore than you," the general boomed, "but you would be wise to keep threats like that to yourself. Do you understand me, Colonel?"

Jack ground his teeth together while his limbs twitched with anger. "Yes, sir."

"Senator Kinsey will not be coming to the SGC. Major Davis will be here in a few days to discuss the matter. I simply wanted to make you aware of what's coming down the pike."

"I appreciate that, sir," Jack managed to say before his anger bubbled over again. "Dammit, General! I told Daniel I wouldn't let anything happen to him. I gave him my WORD that he would be safe."

"I understand, Jack, but—"

"If you let this happen, if you let those sons a bitches do this—"

"What?!" the general demanded. "What will you do, Colonel? Resign? Go in, guns blaring? Pirate Doctor Jackson away so they can't reach him? What?"

"I don't know!" Jack said. "Something."

"And then what will happen?"

"I don't know, but at least they won't be able to bother Daniel anymore," Jack said.

"And you won't be allowed to see him again," the general reminded him, bringing his rough tone down, smoothing over the painful truth of the matter. "Any rash decision you make now can only harm Daniel further. What's more, I think you know that."

Jack crushed his teeth together and closed his eyes. "I promised him, sir."

"I realize that, Jack, and believe me when I say I will do everything in my power to make sure you keep that promise." General Hammond. "Now why don't you go clean up? We'll debrief in an hour." General Hammond patted Jack on the shoulder and left the room.

Alone in the gate room save the ammunitions storage officer, Jack unlatched his weapon, gave it to the sergeant and stared at the Gate.

Stared at it and cursed it for the execrable lot it had brought to those who ventured through it and to those who would enjoy an unsavory career because of it.

Daniel entered the office slowly and found Doctor Sebastian to be seated behind her desk. He headed directly to his seat and carefully lowered himself into it.

Doctor Sebastian looked up from her work, removed her glasses and smiled. "Ah, Doctor Jackson. How are you feeling?"

Daniel pressed his elbows into his thighs and let his hair shield his face. "I'm fine."

"Do you feel well enough to continue our conversation?" she asked, slipping around her desk.

"Conversation."

"Yes, conversation."

"It's not a conversation," he told her, holding his bangs off his forehead with both hands. Strands of hair sprouted out from between his fingers like the frayed ends of electrical wires.

"What would you call it?" she asked, taking her seat across from him.

Inquisition. Witch-hunt. Invasion, he thought. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Do you miss academia?" she asked.

His fingers raked through his hair until they met at the back of his neck. "Sometimes. Yes."

"Why?"

He knew she'd ask that. Sometimes he felt like he could run his own therapy session—ask a question, get an answer. Ask another question, get another answer. Keep asking the same damn question, keep answering the same damn answer. It never ended.

"Doctor Jackson, what about the academic world do you miss?" she asked.

Daniel lifted his head and let out a long breath. "Oh, I don't know. I guess I miss...the sense of exploration and discovery."

"Tell me, how is that unlike your position in the SGC?"

Daniel felt the wind rush from him. Tired of fighting and left a little less prepared by the drugs he had been given hours earlier, Daniel slouched in his chair and rested his head in his propped up hand. "It was easier."

"Go on."

A small imperfection in the gray carpeting caught Daniel's attention and helped him move away from the tears he felt springing in his eyes. He pulled his lips to the side of his mouth and blinked, focusing on that one spot of black in the sea of gray. "If I had stayed with my university job, if I hadn't been so...zealous in my theories, I'd have tenure by now."

"But your theories were proven correct, were they not?" she asked.

"Yeah. Well...yes," Daniel said, but even so, what did it prove?

"When you say it was easier, how so?" Doctor Sebastian asked. She placed her glasses back across her nose and watched his subdued and reticent body language.

"I've studied most of the civilizations on Earth," he said, rubbing his thumb over his scalp. "I understand them."

"Then where is the exploration and discovery?"

Daniel became enmeshed with the black fibers stuck in the carpet. Its solitary nature drew him in, shielding him from having to show his burdensome emotions.

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I guess the discovery came when I'd find some research that was wrong, or a translation that was incorrect."

"But through the SGC, you've been able to discover whole civilizations. Does this not excite you?" Doctor Sebastian held her pen in her hand, waiting for his reply to such a leading, provocative question.

"Whole civilizations," he repeated in a whisper. Back and forth, he thumbed his hair. "I never wanted to discover...them."

"But you did," she reminded him as gently as possible, knowing if she only could lead him in the right direction, he'd be able to open his full and heavy heart, unburden himself of memory—fetid and propagating in venom.

"I wish I hadn't," he said. Daniel closed his eyes, long dry from staring at the fleck of black. "I wish I hadn't done a lot of things."

"Like what, Doctor?"

Like fighting to stay alive, he thought. Like trying to pretend there was a life back home worth returning to.

"Doctor?"

"I I I I don't know," Daniel said, shifting his hips and pulling his head up.

"You bring yourself to edges, Doctor Jackson," she said, leaning toward him. "You get just to the edge, and then you back away. Why do you think you do that?"

He lifted his eyes to her, began to speak and then thought better of it. On her desk was a green shaded lamp, and on that lamp was dust, and in the dust was a speck of white.

"Doctor Jackson, what are you afraid of?"

He focused on the minute speck of white until the sight of the lamp disappeared and all that was left was the dust. No dimension other than the imperfection, no depth to the room. A steel rod connecting his eyes to that blemish.

"Doctor Jackson?"

After a moment, her question registered and Daniel let the pitiful answer be known. "Falling off, of course," he said and blinked. "You need to dust."

Doctor Sebastian crossed her arms over her knees. "Yes, I'm sure I do. What do you think would happen if you fell?"

"I'm allergic to dust."

"I'll give you an antihistamine," she told him. "Can you answer my question?"

"I don't want anymore drugs."

"About the question."

"No."

"Why don't you try?"

"Because."

"That is the answer of a little boy," she said. "What would happen if you allowed yourself to remember?"

"I remember," Daniel whispered.

"What do you remember?" she asked.

"About what?"

"Shall we try about whom?"

Daniel's eyes fluttered in a listless tempo and his lips pulled back across his teeth. "Them?"

"Yes," Doctor Sebastian said, nodding. "Let's begin with one word. Tell me the one word that comes to mind when you remember them."

Daniel dropped his head into his awaiting left hand and thought. And thought. And no words came. Only silence and the niggling of still raw wounds. It started in his hands, then moved to his arms and legs—a trembling.

"You will not fall, Doctor Jackson,"

It was only when his lungs began to clench and burn that he remembered to breathe. When he at last looked up to meet her eyes, the sight of her was blurred and distorted. "Anger."

"Anger? Toward them?"

"No," he whispered. "Maybe..." Or maybe it was an overwhelming anger with his own lack of strength. Maybe it was the burdensome task of carrying his own cowardice, of having allowed them to break him so easily. Maybe it was the awesome guilt for having crumbled when others—Jack, Sam, Teal'c—had surely been through worse, but they seemed to be fine. Why? Why couldn't he just walk away? Why have to live with the pain of having been broken?

"Maybe, what?" she asked.

"Maybe I've already fallen."

"And how does that feel?"

On the table next to him was a box of tissues. Daniel reached for it and pressed his thumb into the sharp corner. He extended his hand over the top and pressed the pad of his middle finger into the opposite corner. He stared at the box.

"Doctor Jackson?"

The corners dug into his fingers, and the pain somehow soothed him. The more he squeezed the box, the greater the pain, and the sensation was oddly satisfying.

"Let's go back to earlier today, shall we?" she asked, realizing he was too close for any productive results. Time to pull away and attack from a different angle, she decided. "Today you quoted a section of 'The Odyssey' to me. For me—for my...admitted lack of literary knowledge, tell me what you said."

It took some digging to think back that far, but Daniel plowed through the muddled remains of his memory to dredge up the afternoon's conversation. "Um, Zeus: 'How foolish men are. How unjustly they blame the gods. It is their lot to suffer, but because of their own folly they bring upon themselves sufferings over and above what is fated for them. And they blame..." And all of a sudden, he heard the words he had chosen to translate. He heard the words that he hadn't consciously chosen to say. He heard the words and wondered why they had come to him. "...and they blame the...the gods." A chill dribbled down his spine. His gaze darted across the floor, his eyes rolled and closed.

"Who do you blame?"

Disgusted by his weakness, Daniel said, "I don't blame anyone."

"Do you blame God?"

"No."

"Do you believe in God?"

"I am an agnostic."

"Not an atheist?"

"No."

Doctor Sebastian paused. She watched him clench and unclench his jaw muscles, dig his nails into his skin. An almost palpable tension emanated through his pores, and she wondered how long he could hold out before he became his own worse enemy.

"Tell me why you are an agnostic."

Daniel ran his hands through his hair, tussling it. "I want to get my hair cut."

"I'll make arrangements for it. What makes you an agnostic?"

"It's just too long. I don't...I've never liked long hair."

"I will make you a bargain: Let us finish this conversation, and I will take you to the barber myself as soon as we are finished," she said, smiling, though brooking no nonsense. "Now, please, continue."

Daniel kneaded the palms of his hands into his aching brow and thought the bargain was fair. "I've seen enough to know that...God, or...a higher power, or whatever definition you choose, exists, but I can't in full consciousness state that there is one all powerful deity. But I'm also not willing to believe there are none. So, I ride a fence of agnosticism—always in search of...some truth."

Doctor Sebastian considered his answer. "I think riding a fence of skepticism." She didn't believe it, but it wasn't her job to agree or disagree, only to promote discussion.

The topic, like all topics in her office, began to tire Daniel. He leaned back his head and wrapped his arms across his chest. "No, in search of more concrete affirmation. Maybe...maybe I've seen too much to believe. Maybe I've seen too much not to believe."

"Maybe you don't want to be angry at another person who should have protected you but didn't?"

What was the use of a gift to speak and to battle with words if he could be tripped up so easily? What was the use of taking pride in the ability to debate and convince with logical arguments if one retort could diminish him so effectively? When at last he could breathe again, Daniel said, "I never asked for protection."

"And you did not receive any." Doctor Sebastian took no pleasure in inflicting such pain, but as a physician she knew, before a wound can heal, it must be abraded.

"Doctor Jackson, I should like to ask you again: With whom are you angry?" she asked.

Things began to flicker past his mind. Pictures of people flitted in and out of his sight. Visions of faces he thought he had destroyed poked at his memory. People he loved; people he feared; people he had forgotten. Those who had left him; those he had left.

"Doctor Jackson?"

And one face kept glaring at him. One face screamed his name. One face spat out his anger and resentment clearly and for all to see. That one face, a crystalline image representing Daniel's greatest failure, with obsidian eyes and a brandished weapon, bore into Daniel's mind and lacerated his soul.

"Doctor Jackson, with whom are you angry?" she asked. She watched Daniel, eyes open, his head shaking in a continuous negation of her words, or maybe his. She watched him and counted each tear that broke across the threshold of his sorrow.

And then the fragile armature of his face demolished. When at last his voice responded to thought, it was threadbare and willowy.

"Me."

"It does," Sam said, nodding, inspecting the freshly cut hair. With it cropped so close to his head, the presence of the random gray hairs became more visible. They coalesced into patches at his temples, and if they weren't framing Daniel's prematurely lined eyes, Sam might otherwise think the gray was stunning. But it wasn't. More like...stunned, she thought, but she couldn't let Daniel know that. She stole a manufactured smile, nodded her head and said, "It looks good."

"Welcome to the Grecian Formula club, pal," Jack said, ripping open his bag of chips and coughing when Sam's elbow creased his solar plexus.

"I believe the gray hair makes you look rather distinguished," Teal'c said. He bowed in honor of Daniel's new features.

Jack straightened up and crooked a lopsided smile. "I'm touched, Teal'c."

"I was speaking only to DanielJackson," Teal'c said, raising his chin.

Jack slunk back down in his chair and parroted Teal'c's statement.

"I agree with Teal'c," Sam said. "In fact, you look well. For the first time in a long time, you look..." She smiled and shook her head. "You look like Daniel."

Daniel looked away and shrugged off the suggestion that he looked well. He knew it was their wish and not the reality that he looked better. He knew that it was just his friends really hoping things were good with him.

Things weren't good. He didn't look better. He wasn't looking well. Not at all. Every morning he looked in the mirror to tear his stubble away from his face with the electric razor, he saw how he was—decimated.

"So, Daniel," Jack said. He picked up the bag of tortilla chips he had brought with him and offered them to Daniel. Daniel waved them off. "Um, I was...up in the mountains the other day fishing."

"I went with him," Sam told Daniel in an aside. She rolled her eyes.

Jack, not one to strike up conversation even if he did have a riveting topic, was beginning to wish he'd listened to the news more carefully the night before. Maybe then he'd have something to talk about. Something. ANYTHING. He dipped his hand in the chips and tried to keep up the story about fishing. Hell, he thought it was stimulating; Daniel probably would, too.

The afternoon had been an exercise in heavy labor trying to get Daniel to join them in any conversation. The three of them had thought they'd stop by, bring Daniel some lunch, gab. Show him that they were thinking about him, that they hadn't forgotten about him. They brought sandwiches and chips, a box of brownies and a thermos full of coffee, and they piled into one of the lounges down the hall from Daniel's room.

It seemed so simple. Apparently, they had forgotten to tell Daniel that it was supposed to be simple.

Every conversation fell flat, or in the laps of the other three. Observations of Daniel's healthy look went unacknowledged. Whatever they tried to do to bring Daniel into the fold was rejected or ignored. He just stared, past them, through them, consumed by a conversation within his own dispirited mind.

"So, we're in the mountains...fishing," Jack said. He chewed on a chip waiting for the next part of the story to come to him.

Nothing.

Sam seemed to understand that it was her turn to interject. "Aaand, we...caught a couple fish."

"It was astounding to me, as well," Teal'c said, keeping his demeanor placid.

"Sarcasm, Teal'c. Maybe not your best look," Jack said. He glanced at the Jaffa sidelong and then backed off when Teal'c raised an eyebrow of dissent.

Daniel remained still as air, not at all interested in Jack's story, or any story, for that matter. He stared at the end of the armchair, ran his fingernails over his scalp and worried that the bones in his skull were cracking open.

"Okay, well, maybe the fishing part wasn't...all that exciting, but we did almost run out of gas," Jack said. He pointed to Sam, hoping that she'd pick up the line.

Sam looked at Jack, nodded that she understood, and began to speak. "Uh, yeah. We...did."

"I tell you," Jack said, cutting off any attempt Sam was going to make to carry on in the conversation, "you get up there in the mountains, the gas prices are ridiculous. You know my truck, right, Daniel?"

They seemed to be splitting under the intense pressure, these cranial bones. Daniel closed his eyes and pressed his head against his hand, hoped that if he pushed hard enough, the world would not explode through the fissures in his skull.

"Daniel?" Jack said. He put down the bag of chips and stepped closer to him.

"Your truck," Daniel managed to say. "Yes. I know your truck."

Jack shared a worried glance with Sam and Teal'c and then continued.

"Anyhow, my truck takes about 35 gallons to fill it up, and when you're buying gas from Joe the local station owner, well...you do the math," Jack said. He sat down and looked over the faces of the people in the room, clearly not riveted by his story. "No, I mean it, Carter. You do the math. It's like...math. You know me..."

"Oh," Sam said. She blinked. "I'm sorry, sir. What was the question?"

"It's not important," Jack said, flicking his hand through the air. "Needless to say, to fill up my tank is almost as expensive as..." Jack thought about his words, "...as a tow. Huh. Maybe I should just have my truck towed to work each morning. May be cheaper."

"Gas is expensive these days, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked.

"Expensive?" Jack asked, glad someone was listening. "It's up there with any of your precious metals, yes."

Daniel perched both elbows on the armrests and clutched his head in his hands, pressing the separating bones together.

"So, your story isn't so much about fishing as it is about...gas prices," Sam said.

"Pretty much." Jack said. "I mean, you take one trip out of the city, and they rape you over gas prices."

The word sliced into Daniel's ears, like the corroded edge of a rusted blade. "What?"

Jack looked around. He wasn't sure who had asked. "I said gas prices are terrible outside the city. Daniel?"

"No," Daniel said. He gouged his fingernails into his scalp. "No, you said they...You said when you were talking about gas prices that they...You can't be...over gas prices. God, Jack!"

"Daniel, what did I say?" Jack asked his friends for some clarification, and fast.

Sam tossed the container of brownies onto the side table and started toward Daniel.

"You should be more careful, Jack!" Daniel said, drilling into Jack with burning eyes. His hands fisted into impervious balls of rage. "Why can't you choose your words more carefully? You can't just...you can't just use words so...so carelessly."

"Daniel," Jack began, shaking his head, "what did I say?"

"God, Jack! Words are powerful and...Jesus Christ, Jack!"

"Would somebody just tell me what the hell I said?" Jack bellowed.

"You said...they rape you, sir," Sam told him, less concerned for Jack than Daniel. She crouched next to Daniel and reached her hand forward to console him. "Daniel..."

"Touch me, and I'll hurt you," Daniel said, catching the advancement of her hand in his peripheral sight. His fixed stare never left Jack's eyes, but he said again, "I mean it, Sam. I will hurt you."

Sam pulled her hand away and nodded. "Okay."

"Why did you say that, Jack?" Daniel demanded.

"I didn't mean anything by it, Daniel," Jack said, shaking his head.

Daniel rocketed out of his seat, knocking Sam to her backside. "WHY?" Daniel's focus, splintering with acrimony, remained taut on Jack. His wild eyes black with dilated fury

Jack rose and held his hands out between them both. "Daniel, calm down."

"No, Jack. Not until you tell me why you...why you chose that that that word? Why?"

"I'll get Doctor Sebastian," Sam said, scuttling out of the room.

"Daniel, I made a mistake. I didn't mean anything by it," Jack said, trying to keep calm and quiet.

"You can't be...gas prices don't...Jesus, Jack!" Daniel said. A lava flow of anger burst through his limbs, and release, one way or another, became frighteningly imminent. "Jesus!" He picked up his chair and pitched it at Jack. "Why did you say that?!" Daniel grabbed the chair next to him, raised it to his shoulders and whipped it across the room.

"Daniel, god dammit!" Jack yelled, ducking.

"DanielJackson!" Teal'c grabbed Daniel's arms from behind and did not allow him to throw another piece of furniture.

With his arms locked down, with the familiar scent of musk and filth, the familiar sound of panting air, and the familiar response of fighting even if they killed him, Daniel opened his mouth and screamed. He would not let this happen. Not again. He screamed and kicked and clawed his way out of their arms and threw himself into the corner of his cell. He slid to the floor, ready to become a storm of arms and legs, kicking feet and clawing hands.

Two orderlies rushed into the room, followed by a doctor whose white lab coat rustled in his wake.

"I'm Doctor Collant," he said, kneeling in front of Daniel.

"Where's Doctor Sebastian?" Jack demanded.

The orderlies cornered Daniel and reached for him, began to subdue him.

"She wasn't available, so I stepped in," the young doctor said without looking at Jack. "Doctor Jackson? Doctor Jackson, can you hear me?"

Daniel splayed his hands against the wall and kicked with every ounce of madness left in his body. He kicked and screamed and slapped and cried and dug at his own body with his hands.

"No!" he screamed. "You can't do this!"

"When did this start?" the doctor demanded, pulling a hypodermic from his pocket.

"A minute ago," Sam told him. She rushed to her knees and tried to get in close to her friend, feral and uncontrollable. "Daniel, honey. Daniel!"

"You can't DO this!" he screamed, unable to see them, only his cell and the hands rushing to silence him.

"Doctor Jackson, I need you to calm down now," the doctor called. "Hold him still."

The hands ripped Daniel's limbs, twisted his joints and forced open his mouth. They dug into his delicate flesh, pinching and enjoying his tender skin. He writhed and bucked, tearing his arms from their avaricious grasp.

"Kill me!" he screamed.

"Daniel!"

"Doctor Jackson!"

"God! Kill me!"

"Danny, relax!"

"Hold him still!"

"No!" Jack ordered, reaching for the burly orderlies who held Daniel down. "Get off!"

"Colonel, we have this under control," Doctor Collant told him, plunging the sedative deep into Daniel's arm.

"Daniel, I'm here!" Sam called out. "Daniel!"

"Kill me..."

Jack shoved an orderly away. "Get off him!"

"Kill me..."

"What the hell is going on here?" Doctor Sebastian said, racing into the room.

"We had to sedate the patient, ma'am," the young doctor calmly told her, replacing the protective cap on the needle.

"Kill...me..." Two dead eyes peered out of sunken holes.

"Daniel, sweetie," Sam said, clutching at his slackening limbs. "Daniel?"

"Who gave you the order to sedate my patient?" Doctor Sebastian asked. She pushed the younger officer out of the way, crouched down and looked directly into Daniel's eyes. "Doctor Jackson? Doctor?"

"You told me he'd be safe," Jack growled, spinning to face Sebastian. "You promised me he'd be safe."

Doctor Sebastian shook her head and scowled. She turned to Doctor Collant and demanded, "I said who gave you the order to sedate my patient, Major Collant?"

"Kill..."

"It has always been procedure to sedate a patient when—"

"Under Doctor MacKenzie!" Doctor Sebastian said, silencing him with a steely glare. "I head this department now. You were made aware of the changes. There will no longer be mass sedations just to suit our needs."

The junior officer cocked his head to the side. "Surely, Doctor Sebastian—"

"Get out!" she demanded.

"But—"

Teal'c stepped in next to the doctor. "I believe you were asked to leave."

Doctor Collant gave Daniel one last look and rounded in haste to leave the room.

"You promised me," Jack said, his features pinched with fury. "And I promised Daniel."

"I am sorry for this," Doctor Sebastian said. She checked Daniel's pulse, found it steady, flawless in its normalcy.

"Daniel?" Sam whispered, wiping his damp brow. "Daniel?" His limbs hung loose across his body, his hands draped without care over his legs.

"Take him to his room," Doctor Sebastian told the orderlies.

Jack shielded Daniel from the orderlies. "Not a chance in hell."

Doctor Sebastian waved the orderlies away. The two men looked at each other and followed orders.

"Teal'c," Jack said, lifting Daniel's arm over his shoulder. Teal'c picked up Daniel's dangling arm and together they lifted the boneless body from the floor. Daniel could feel Jack's hand around his back, Teal'c's around his waist, pulling him up off the floor, and for a brief moment he had the disconcerting sensation of tumbling forward, of being in a freefall.

Doctor Sebastian stepped back to give them room. "Colonel O'Neill—"

"Nice outfit you got goin' here, Doc," Jack called back, and then he and Teal'c were rounding the corner into the hall.

As Jack and Teal'c whisked Daniel down the hall, Daniel's only sensation was muted movement, a dull, thick motion. His head lobbed forward, heavy and listless. His eyes no longer recognized sight; his ears no longer registered sound. He was floating and had reason to believe things would never change.

"Let's get him in bed," Jack said, holding Daniel's arm steady, his hand grasped firmly to Daniel's belt.

A world away from care and pain, Daniel hovered in his palliative dominion of chemical freedom.

Jack held Daniel's head while they lowered him to his bed. "Easy."

Teal'c pulled the thin sheet up to Daniel's shoulders and stepped away.

A smear of color caught Jack's eye, and without turning, he said, "You let this happen."

"Colonel O'Neill, I can assure you Doctor Collant will be disciplined for his actions," Doctor Sebastian said.

"Damn straight he'll be disciplined," Jack told her. He rose from Daniel's side and began to stride out of the room.

"Colonel O'Neill," she called after him, "if you think you are going to interfere with one of my men, you had better reconsider, sir."

"One of your men just messed with one of mine," Jack said, tacking and charging toward her.

"And I will handle it," she said. She held her ground, defying his glowering stare with her own steely intractability. "For now, and in my hospital, you will stand down."

Jack stared hard at her and ground his teeth together. He had made a promise to Daniel that he'd be fine, that he'd be safe, that no one would hurt him. The promise broken, his friend diminished to a puddle of drugs, Jack could hardly contain his bitter anger.

"I am...furious that this happened to Doctor Jackson, Colonel," Doctor Sebastian said, speaking the words through her clenched teeth. "What's done is done, and I give you my word—my word as an officer—that it will never, NEVER happen again."

"Yeah, well, you know what? That means squat to me," Jack said.

"I understand your anger."

"Do ya now?"

"Furthermore, I do not think it is unjustified, but for Doctor Jackson's sake—"

"For Doctor Jackson's sake, I'm gonna rip ol' Doc Colon a new one!"

"And how would that solve anything?" she asked, stepping forward. "Haven't we seen living proof that violence—that...brutality proves nothing?"

Jack leaned toward her and quietly said, "I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm just gonna even the score."

"Colonel," Sam said, appearing at his side.

"Back off, Sam. This doesn't involve you," Jack told her.

Teal'c flanked Jack's other side and placed a sympathetic, cautionary hand on Jack's chest.

Jack looked down at the massive hand covering his heart and at his 2IC's concerned look, and then back to Doctor Sebastian. "You promised me he'd be safe."

"He will be," she offered, trying to diffuse whatever combustible emotions were coursing through her fellow officer.

"He'd better be." Jack slapped Teal'c's hand away and marched out of the room.

"He will be safe," Doctor Sebastian assured Sam and Teal'c.

"Yes, ma'am," Sam said, regarding her senior with an arctic demeanor. "Permission to be excused, ma'am?"

Doctor Sebastian nodded, and Sam and Teal'c removed themselves from the quiet room.

Part 5

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