Fission of Silence
by Pough
Part 5

Back to Part 4

Long into the uncomfortable night they waited outside his door. Long past the shift changes, the meals and the rotation of the setting sun, they waited for Daniel to wake up.

Sam stretched her legs out in front of her, pointed her toes and tried to get some feeling back in her body. She glanced over at the colonel, asleep sitting up. She marveled at his talents. She smiled to Teal'c who nodded back to her. And then she stood up.

"I can't take it anymore," she said. She wiped her hands on the seat of her pants and pressed Daniel's door open, just a smidge, to see where he was.

"Daniel?" she called. His bed, though mussed, was vacant. "Daniel?"

The frosty light of the moon poured over the windowsill and endowed the floor in an ethereal glow.

Perched in the outer reaches of the moon's bright light, bathed in its shimmering opalescence sat Daniel. His limbs pulled up to his body, his expression flaccid and blind, he had sometime during the silent night settled himself on the hard, cold floor.

"When did you get out of bed?" Sam whispered, entering the room.

He didn't look up. He didn't say a word. He stared at whatever his mind could see.

"Daniel?" Sam said, careful to approach him with slow steps. "Daniel, you okay?"

In the shroud of the moon's light, Daniel's skin was a ghastly shade of violet. Sam couldn't be sure he was even breathing, but in the selenian light she saw the flesh in the soft hollow of his neck bounce up and down in a slow, steady rhythm.

"Daniel, I'm just going to sit down next to you, okay? I won't touch you. I promise." Sam lowered herself to the ground and sat with her back against the same wall, just below the casement of the window. She crossed her legs and touched her hands together in her lap. She hoped she'd find some way to talk to him, to express all the sorrow in her heart.

But she was mute. She was numb and mute and spent and tired, and all she wanted was a way to turn back time. That's all. She wanted her friend back, whole and exasperating. She wanted her confidante back. She wanted Daniel.

"Why did this have to happen?" she cried. Sam picked at a loose string peeking out of a seam in her pants. She sucked in a harsh breath and shook her head. "Well, you have to get better, Daniel. That's all there is to it."

The stillness of the room, the somber mixture of sedation and silence, was soon filled with Sam's breathy sobs. "You're my touchstone, Daniel. I'm lost without you. So, if you can't get better for yourself, get better for me, okay? Please?"

Her chin touched her chest at the same time she felt his head touch her shoulder. When she turned her tear-filled eyes, she saw him leaning against her.

"Daniel?"

Expressionless, two eyes beholding nothing, his cheek rested against her shoulder. And when she bent over to catch a glimpse of his face—strangely beatific in the moonlight—a renewed anguish rocked Sam's body.

"Oh, Daniel," she wept. Caught between wanting to pull him in closer and wanting to preserve the moment, Sam wavered, unsure of which direction or action to take. "Daniel..."

Her focus traversed the room, settling nowhere, afraid to move the rest of her body. She knew she was trembling; thought he surely must feel it. The weight of his horrific journeys seemed to be pressed against her shoulder, and all she wanted to do was embrace it further, tighter, and continue the journey for him so he could rest.

"Daniel, please get well," she whispered. "I can't protect you like this. I can't protect you from your mind. Please get well."

And then she felt it. One hand, soft as breath, hovered against her cheek. Touched her with a tenderness almost impossible to feel. With an exigency she didn't think possible, Sam pressed into the hand and sought comfort.

"I can't protect you, Daniel," she whispered between sips of air. Lifting her hand to his, Sam wove her fingers through his and cried for them both.

They sat together in the pale light of the harvest moon, Daniel's hand against her face, her hand enmeshed with his, while tears silent as the fluttering of moth wings, edged across her cheek.

"Daniel," she whispered, needing more. Sam tucked her arm behind him, and when he didn't protest, when he didn't even respond, she sought more. She took great care and time to pull him into her lap and cradle him in her arms. And he let her. She hushed him, though he was silent; told him everything would be all right, not that he cared.

While she rocked him, stroking his peaceful brow, she wept, and he stared. He stared past the opulent light, past the glossy shine of the tiled floor, past the sliver of hallway lighting and into the hall itself, where Jack stood watching the two, numb with sorrow.

And Jack knew Daniel was in there—maybe a thousand light years away—and he knew Daniel was staring at him and wondering, "Why, Jack?"

And Jack knew the days of being the one Daniel turned to were over. He knew he had squandered away the right when he treated Daniel with such wanton cruelty and disdain.

His head pounding with self-reproach, Jack stepped away from the door so he didn't have to see the two eyes that reminded him of his censurable guilt. He stepped away so he didn't have to see further evidence of how much he had lost almost a full year ago.

Janet pulled the sweater off the passenger seat and stepped out of her car. She had a pretty good idea where she'd find Jack, so when the knocks on his door went unanswered, Janet walked around the back.

Sure enough, there he was—feet propped up on the rail, slouched deeply in a chair, his telescope angled low to his eye.

"Colonel," she called from the base of the ladder.

"Sorry. Can't come to the door. I'm rinsing my delicates," Jack said, checking in on the Sagittarius Arm and the Carina Nebula.

"Had I known, I'd have brought over my laundry," Janet said, reaching the top of the landing. "How's the universe tonight?"

"Just about where it should be—out there." Bright young stars winked at him, their pinkish glow enchanting the colonel. Celestial sirens he knew not to listen to.

Janet walked to the edge of the deck, each step thudding on the raised platform. "Nice night. Little chilly, though."

"What brings you here, Doc?" he asked, adjusting the focus.

"I was across town at Mental Health checking in on Daniel, and thought I'd stop by," she said, pulling her sweater over her head.

"Oh, yeah? How is he?" Jack asked. He brought his beer to his lips without taking his eye off the optical. The darker, denser Carina shrouded the precocious stars in dust, protecting them, occluding them.

"Same as yesterday. Quiet. Withdrawn," she said, looking out over his dark lawn. "Sam's with him."

Jack deepened the focus. "She's good with him."

"Yes, she is." Lightning bugs randomly popped up below her. "So is Doctor Sebastian."

Jack pulled his eye away from the viewfinder and sought Janet's figure out of the corner of his eye. Knowing that a lecture was at hand, Jack brought his beer to his lips and steeled himself.

"Daniel's illness...Daniel's emotional well-being is..." Janet said, trying to find meaning, trying to find a way to describe the clinical without allowing the sorrow to interfere. It was a lesson in futility, and Janet could only shake her head and bluster on. "He's not well, Colonel, and Doctor Sebastian is doing everything she can for him."

Jack crammed his beer bottle between his thighs and entered some data into his laptop. "Yeah, I know," he said, returning to his telescope. Where'd you go, Carina?

"You do?"

Finding that Carina still lorded over the younger stars, Jack bid farewell to the nebula and swung the telescope away. The universe in check, it was time for confessions in the dark down on planet Earth. "Might as well grab a chair and pull up a beer, Doc. Night's young."

Taking a moment to get past the shock of Jack's conciliation, Janet stepped away from the railing, opened the cooler and pulled out a beer. She took her drink to an Adirondack chair covered with tree leaves and twigs, brushed off the seat and lowered herself down into it.

"We need to talk about the other day," she said, and followed her words with something just as bitter—half a bottle of beer.

"It was stupid, and there's not much I can do to change it," Jack said. "In fact, there's nothing I can do to change it, so..."

"I'm not here to blame you, Colonel," Janet said, picking at a loose corner of the bottle's label.

"Then why are ya here, Doc?" Jack asked, pelting Janet with a pinched look and quickly losing interest in the conversation.

"I'm here because..." Janet began to peel the label off her beer, all the while wondering what she really wanted to say.

Jack watched her in the limited light, and when it seemed the silence would go on for a while longer, he said, "Good talk, Doc." He lifted himself from his seat and sauntered over to the cooler. "We should do this more often."

"Doctor Sebastian isn't the enemy," she finally said.

His hand half in the cooler, Jack stopped. "I know that, too."

"You do?"

He pulled an icy bottle from the chest and snapped the top off his beer, threw the cap into the cooler. "I was angry, and..." Jack hooked his fingers around the neck of the bottle and returned to his chair. "I'm nothing if not sensitive, but watching Daniel have a...a..."

"We call it a psychotic episode," Janet said, trying to enlighten him.

"Yeah, well, I call it a freak show, but the point is," he continued, pouring his long body into the creaking chair, "it wasn't my idea of a good time. I may have, as in it's a possibility—albeit a small possibility—taken out my anger on Sebastian." Jack looked up from his bottle to gauge Janet's reaction. "Maybe."

Janet simply nodded, finished the rest of her beer, and nodded some more. She knew Jack well enough to know that what she had just heard was the O'Neill equivalent of a supplicated, full-throttle mea culpa. You take what you can get, she thought.

"Did you go see him today?" she asked.

"No, I didn't," Jack said, lifting his beer to his lips with two fingers.

"You planning on seeing him anytime soon?" she asked again.

"Not sure what good that would do."

"You're his friend. He needs you," Janet reminded him.

"No," Jack said, lowering his beer to the deck. "Daniel needs Carter. Not me."

"How can you say that?"

"Come on, Doc, let's not do this," Jack said, propelling his lanky frame from the seat.

"I mean it, Colonel," Janet said, joining him at the rail.

Jack dug his hands into the rough wood and slung his head between his shoulders. "Look," he said, rocking back and forth, "Daniel is...There's a whole trunk full of baggage there, and I have this...feeling that my name's written all over it. He'll be better off if I just stay clear."

"I don't think that's true," she said.

"Yeah, well," Jack muttered. He kicked his toe against the wooden floor and lowered his elbows to the rail. "Screw it."

"He's fighting, Colonel," she said. "His mind is split between what happened and what he was and where he's going. Everyday is a struggle for him to...to go forward and not... " And it was the "and not" that stopped her. It was the thought of where he was headed that caused Janet to cease, to press her fingers against her lips and wait until her throat wasn't so pinched.

"He's fighting," she was finally able to say. "What you saw the other day—that was Daniel trying everything he could to beat back this son of a bitch." Janet's fingers skittered across her lips, her cheek, through her hair. She had promised herself that she wouldn't do this. That Jack wouldn't want to have to deal with her on an emotional level. She didn't want to deal with it on an emotional level, but apparently her emotions were winning out. Janet grabbed hold of the same rail and focused her eyes into the murky darkness. "He's slipping, Colonel. He can't fight this alone."

Jack clasped his hands together, his conjoined hands jutting out from the railing, like a bow of a sinking ship. "I don't know what to say to him."

"You don't have to say anything." Janet said, while Jack brought his fisted hands to his head, knocked them against his skull. "And no one expects you to fix this. It's not your responsibility."

"It was." Jack tilted his head up to her. "It was my job to protect him, to protect them all, and I...and I let..." Janet remained still while Jack seemed to come to a stop, running out of steam, running out of explanations. She stood by him and allowed him time to gather his acrid, self-incriminating thoughts, and when he had, his voice was quiet and filled with regret. "I let him walk right into danger. I did. Hell, Doc, I as much as said, 'Here, take him.'"

"No, you didn't," she said. "And frankly, Colonel, to suggest you had any hand in this is...well, it's arrogant."

"Lovin' this talk, Doc," Jack told her, twisting his face into a frustrated glower. Stepping away from the edge of the deck, he said, "First, I'm an uncaring Neanderthal, and now, I'm a self-centered misanthrope."

"Good words," Janet said, straightening her back.

"Yeah, well, Daniel's not around to regale us with his vocabulary, so I have to pick up the slack where I can." Jack said. He picked up the lens cap to his telescope, tossed it around in his hand and thought about all the things Daniel wasn't around to do. Jack closed off the telescope and said, "I seem to have a way with words when it comes to deriding myself these days."

"Jack," Janet said, "just go sit with him."

"I don't see the point."

"Because it's what friends do. Daniel would do it—"

"No, don't go pushing the guilt button, Doc, 'cause it won't work."

"But you know it's true," she said. "He would."

Jack picked up the black cover and held it in his hands while he thought of the times Daniel had sat with him, not talking, just accepting Jack's silent despairing. "Yes, he would," he finally said, unfolding the cover and blanketing the telescope with it. "I'll think about it."

"That's all I ask," Janet said.

Jack smoothed the cover over the scope and tilted his head back to stare at the vastness of space, the incomprehensible breadth of endless possibilities. Of soul-shattering possibilities. "I don't want to know what happened out there, do I?" he asked.

Janet turned away from him, suddenly overcome by images of suffering, of scars. "I think you know," she managed to say.

Jack uttered obscenities to the cold air and ground his hand into his aching brow.

It wasn't so much that he was quiet and still. It wasn't that he didn't respond to her questions. It was that his eyes were glazed, rimmed and blood shot. It was that the blue seemed to be washed pale and stippled with gray. It was that for all they had conquered, here Daniel was again—locked away in his own silence.

So she continued to stroke his hand and talk to him while the nursing staff changed the sheets on his bed.

"Janet wanted me to tell you she'll stop by tomorrow. Cass has a concert at school tonight, so she'll probably see you before she goes back to the base," Sam told him, watching her fingers smooth the skin on top of Daniel's hand. He stared into the center of the room, not seeing Sam, not even feeling her touch. "There's been an outbreak of Mono, so she's been pretty busy. I had it years ago, and...uh, I think you had it...at least I seem to remember you..."

Sam touched her hand beneath her nose and capped off her sudden onset of tears. This is ridiculous, she told herself, and forced a smile. Sam turned her attention to the staff finishing up with Daniel's bedding and continued to rub his hand, limp in her hand.

"General Hammond's granddaughter won a dance competition," Sam told him, almost completely at ease with his gathering of scars. Touching the raised, waxy tissue on his wrists no longer made her innards clench. When her sight glanced at the scar where a tracheotomy once poked out, she no longer had to clear her throat in empathy. They were all becoming part of him, all part of who he was. That thought alone brought a different sort of misery to her, so she begged her mind to cast off the comparison of what he had been and what he had become.

"Major," Sergeant Garanzia said, placing a meal tray on the tray table next to Daniel.

"Yes?" Sam said, startled, her eyes bolting up to meet the sergeant's.

"It's time for Doctor Jackson's meal," she said. "Why don't we talk in the hall?"

"Oh," Sam uttered, looking at Daniel once again, wondering how the hell they were going to feed him. Wondering if he actually ate. "Yeah. Okay. Just...can I have a minute to..."

"Certainly, ma'am," the sergeant said, and she turned to leave the room.

Sam clasped his hand in her embrace, and ground her teeth together. She'd been there for an hour and a half, and in that time she'd seen him blink a few times, take one deep breath, and swallow. All the autonomic responses of a person who was asleep, only with his eyes open.

"Look, Daniel, I have to get back to the base, and you have to eat. Eat, Daniel. Okay? I want to hear that you've eaten when I come back to see you. Okay?" she said, not really expecting an answer from him, and not getting one. She reached out and touched his face. "Daniel, come back. It's time to come back from wherever you are."

Where he was was black and cavernous and void of sound. It was cold and empty and silent. Daniel was locked away, entombed in lethargy, depleted of form.

And nothing Sam could do or say would change that.

Sam stood up, pulled on her jacket and leaned over to kiss him. "I'll see you soon, Daniel. Have a good lunch." She cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand one last time, and slowly left him to his all-consuming trance.

Sergeant Garanzia was giving a nurse instructions when Sam walked into the hall. The sergeant quickly finished with the nurse and called out to Sam. Sam turned to her and waited for the sergeant to walk closer.

"Do you have a moment to talk, ma'am?" Sergeant Garanzia asked.

Sam thrust her hands into her jacket pockets and shrugged.

"You may not see it," the sergeant said, leading Sam to a quiet room, "but he knows you're there."

"You're right. I don't see it," Sam said. The two women walked into a private room, sparsely appointed, lit only by one corner lamp. They each took seats flanking the meager light.

Sergeant Garanzia smiled and knew it would be an uphill battle trying to explain that Doctor Collant's hasty decision to sedate Doctor Jackson and Doctor Jackson's breakdown were mutually exclusive. And because Doctor Sebastian was the Chief of Staff at the facility and Doctor Jackson's personal physician, the sergeant was quite sure Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill blamed her for their friend's catatonic state. Sergeant Garanzia felt the record should be set straight.

"Major, what happened the other day was a very unfortunate incident," she began, carefully choosing her words. "But Doctor Jackson's condition today has more to do with his illness...in fact, is completely due to his illness, rather than the actions of Doctor Collant and the staff."

Sam rubbed the base of her neck, just under her hairline and knew what the sergeant was saying true, but Sam was in no mood to forgive and forget. "Look, why don't we just skip it? It's not going to make a difference at this point, so..."

"Of course," Sergeant Garanzia said, nodding.

If Sam had her druthers, she would have put the entire staff up for court martial, but she knew that was reactionary and judgmental. It was Collant she really wanted to see on the wrong side of a staff weapon blast. At least she could still have her fantasies...

"Major, I want you to understand that we're doing everything possible for Doctor Jackson," the nurse said.

"Sergeant, why is this so important to you?" Sam asked, grilling her with reproachful eyes. "I'm not the one you should be reporting to, and even if I were—"

"I'm telling you because you care about him," she said. "I'm telling you because you're his friend. I'm not trying to excuse anyone, nor am I trying to apologize. I'm trying to explain, in the physical sense, why Doctor Jackson is still in a catatonic state. And I'm trying to explain it to his friend, not to Major Carter."

Sam stared at her, shocked at her audacity. But then Sam understood the freedom of her words, and there were many questions Sam needed answered, not Major Carter, so she nodded and let the nurse speak to her while putting aside their ranks.

Sergeant Garanzia relaxed her posture and began to speak. "There are times in our patients' illnesses when moments of stark terror occur. When, say, they completely re-experience what they went through at the hands of their aggressors. Flashbacks."

"He's had flashbacks before," Sam reminded her, feeling her acrimony rising.

"Yes, he has, and it's all connected. In PTSD, nothing is isolated. It's all part of the package, and every flashback, every...resurfacing memory takes a toll on the patient." The sergeant paused a moment to let the major digest the information. Dealing with Air Force personnel, especially officers, was sometimes more challenging than the patients. Military officers, she had come to find out, wanted answers yesterday. They listened for content so that they could work to solve the problem, not accept it. They couldn't help it. It's what made them officers. But very often, their gung-ho attitudes left little room for the subtleties of the individual experience, especially for an individual experiencing crisis.

When she felt she had given the major enough time, Sergeant Garanzia went on. "There's a constant spiking of chemicals released by the brain for patients who suffer from this disorder. Sometimes they occur during a break through in therapy, when the veil is lifted, so to speak, and the patient must come face to face with the trauma, often times when they thought they had no recollection of it."

"Cognitive dissociation," Sam added, nodding. She'd read all the literature. She'd been through enough debriefings to last a lifetime. She thought she understood it far too well.

"Correct," Sergeant Garanzia said, nodding, impressed that she didn't have to go through the basics. "Doctor Jackson is...he's had to face some rather difficult memories of late, and because of it he's emotionally exhausted. This latest dissociative episode was enormously straining on him. See, under certain moments of stress, particularly in PTSD, the brain begins to fire off all sorts of chemicals that cause the heart to race, the body to...well, to react as if pain or a threat is imminent."

"Like a nightmare," Sam said.

"Well, more than that," Sergeant Garanzia corrected. "When a person is under high stress, their epinephrine increases, their endorphins go up, their heart rate jumps, and all their blood goes to their core—you've probably noticed how Doctor Jackson seems often to be cold."

"Yeah. Right," Sam said, nodding.

"With PTSD, all these things happen on higher than normal levels and for such a prolonged period of time that the brain doesn't know how to shut it off, or it starts... 'red alerting' to anything that it might think is similar to the event, such as the episode that occurred with you and Colonel O'Neill in the break room."

"Oh, my God," Sam uttered, covering one eye with her hand, and when she played back the turbulent scene in her head, she covered the other eye and uttered again, "Oh, my God."

"Anytime a patient must endure that level of heightened emotions, the brain starts kicking in chemicals." Sergeant Garanzia pulled two tissues from the box and handed them to Sam, who took them without question. "After a while, though, the body's reserve of things like serotonin and adrenaline are depleted."

"Serotonin," Sam repeated, pressing the tissue to her nose, feeling all the blood rush out of her own arms and legs. "I know I should know what that is."

"It's a chemical that helps raise the blood pressure. It helps keep our moods elevated," Sergeant Garanzia told her.

"Right, right," Sam said, closing her eyes, nodding. "I knew that."

The sergeant gave Sam a moment to compose herself. She offered the major another tissue, which Sam waved off at first.

"Maybe I should have my serotonin levels checked," Sam joked as she pulled another tissue from the box.

"Yes, ma'am," Sergeant Garanzia said, understanding Sam's need to make light of her emotions.

Sam pressed the tissue to her eyes and took a deep breath, calmed herself. When she pulled the tissue away, two translucent wet spots graced the center, fringed in smudges of black mascara. Sam sniffed the final tears away and said, "It's been a long time. Doctor Jackson...Daniel's been through a lot, and I think we're all...worn out."

"I have no doubt that you are."

"So, this catatonia is caused by..." Sam began, dabbing the tissue to her eye.

"It's a matter of chemicals, ma'am. As a scientist, you can appreciate the power of the body's chemistry," said the sergeant, gently smiling. "We're working very hard on bringing his serotonin levels back in line. When they are, he'll perk up. This will pass, Major. Eventually."

It took a few moments for the sergeant's last words to register with Sam, but when they did, Sam thanked the nurse. Sergeant Garanzia stepped out of the room and gave Sam a moment of privacy in order to gather her strength.

"When will this end?" Sam asked herself, clawing at the back of her neck. It was like running on ice, never getting anywhere, constantly falling, scrambling with negligible results. These weeks, these months, these hours spent waiting for the moment when they could find their footing again, when they could slough the whole year off like a reeking, heavy pelt. They were all exhausted. And they were all desperate to go forward.

But would he ever leave the glassy ice?

Would Daniel ever be able to find purchase long enough to reach the shore?

Would she be there waiting when he did? If he did?

Jack decided not to think about it. "Be like the shoe company. Just do it."

He stood outside Daniel's door, nodding to the passing officers. Jack hitched up the back of his pants and pushed open the door.

And there he sat. On the edge of his bed, facing the window, his back to the door, Daniel never moved when Jack entered the room. His eyes never left the profuse light pouring through the streaked glass while Jack pulled up a chair, spun it around with one hand, and straddled the back of it.

Jack had no idea what he should say to Daniel, if there actually were any words that could come to approximate Jack's inexpressible thoughts. So he sat and looked over the silent man.

He couldn't help but think that it had to hurt Daniel's ankle the way it was cracked over to the side, the long bones along the edge of his foot pressed into the linoleum. Jack briefly wondered if he should, at the very least, put some socks on Daniel's feet. Maybe just reposition his foot, because, man, that had to hurt.

And then he realized Daniel probably didn't even care.

He hated seeing Daniel in the stark white scrubs. They reminded him too much of the last time Daniel had been sequestered in Mental Health. A time, once again, when Jack thought he knew what was best for Daniel instead of asking Daniel what was best.

Jack was pretty sure Daniel wouldn't be much for talking if he asked his opinion presently.

A chill rolled across his skin when he allowed his imagination to wander—when had the staff taken Daniel out of his street clothes? Why did they need to leave him in scrubs? Did they know how much Daniel hated the things? Did they care?

Forget it, Jack.

It didn't even seem like Daniel was breathing. Jack could just catch the slightest movement of Daniel's shirt rolling out at the waist, rolling back in. Slowly, lethargically.

For Christ's sake, Daniel, take a deep breath, Jack wanted to say. But he didn't. It was just another suggestion, neither here nor there, that Jack wanted to offer, that Jack thought might pull Daniel out of wherever the hell he was. Nothing he had suggested so far had worked. Taking a deep breath, then, seemed just as highly unlikely to work.

So Jack took one instead and scrubbed his hand through his hair.

It was just a personal annoyance of his, but Jack hated it when Daniel scratched mercilessly at his thumb. It made Daniel look nervous, unsure, rattled. Or, then again, maybe it made Jack feel all those things. Either way, he wished Daniel would cut it out.

There again, he wasn't sure if Daniel much cared what Jack thought. Not now. Maybe not ever.

So Jack watched Daniel's two hands, balled up under his chin, digging into skin that was raw and abraded, and Jack held tight to the back of the chair so that he wouldn't instantly jump from the seat and grab hold of the hands, tell Daniel to stop it, cut it out! For crying out loud, Daniel, that's enough!...

However, Jack knew that would only bring back the screams, and then the bitter recrimination would return in the ear-splitting howls. Nope, Jack thought he'd just let Daniel pick at his skin all he wanted. What harm did it really do, anyhow? So what if it made him look pathetic. He was pathetic.

Once again, Jack couldn't be sure whom he was calling pathetic. Two candidates in the room—one staring out a window; one staring at his reflection from thirteen years earlier.

Jack wondered if, when people had come to visit him those weeks after his return from the Iraqi prison, they saw the same cavernous ridges chiseled into his brow that Jack saw on Daniel. He wondered if people sat in his room bouncing around their private cache of emotions—anger, regret, frustration, confusion. Oh, and that extra ingredient would be guilt.

So why did he come to see Daniel? What did he hope to accomplish? It was pretty damn obvious that Daniel wouldn't be able to remember that Jack had even been there, so why bother?

Jack was on his feet and striding to the door before he even knew he was in motion. He was reaching for the handle when it occurred to him:

He wasn't there for Daniel. He was there for himself.

Jack needed to know that he could stick by Daniel, his friend, even if he couldn't do one damn thing. He needed to know that it was all right not to have the answers—and God knows he didn't have a friggin' clue—but that it wasn't his place to try anymore. Jack needed to know that he could switch gears, be Daniel's friend, that's all. He needed to know that he had the strength to just...be there.

Because he wasn't sure he could.

It was for himself that Jack sat back down and added to the silence of the room.

It was for Daniel that Jack found the strength to not fill that silence.

She had been in her office transcribing notes into Daniel's file when the call came in. In fact, Doctor Sebastian had just finished writing the words "unresponsive, possible set back" when the nurse called to tell her that Daniel was up and pacing his room.

"How is he?" Doctor Sebastian asked, out of breath from her sprint to his room.

"He seems very alert," Sergeant Garanzia said, running alongside. "He woke from a nightmare and was ill."

"Oh, my. How long ago did this occur?" Doctor Sebastian asked, jogging down the hall while twisting a band around her long, graying hair.

"Just over five minutes ago. 2315," said Sergeant Garanzia. "I paged you as soon as I became aware of the situation."

Doctor Sebastian and the sergeant reached the door in breathless expectation. Doctor Sebastian motioned for the officer to remain outside.

"Doctor Jackson?" A gentle knock forewarned him that the door to his room was opening. Daniel, huddled against his bed, pulled the collar of his t-shirt over across his face, wiping away sweat and tears in balanced proportion.

A sliver of light cut into the room along with two small feet.  The light grew to fill a long swath, exposing Daniel and burning his eyes.  There were whispers to a person in the hall, and the room's garbage can was passed back to the unseen nurse.  Doctor Sebastian quietly closed the door as far as it would go, turned on the small table lamp and sat down across from her patient.

"I'm fine," Daniel told her before she could begin with her questions.  He rose from his curled position and wiped his sweaty, shaking hands against his drawstring pants.  Pacing sightlessly from one end of the room to the other, Daniel said, "I had a nightmare, that's all."  He shook the sizzling tension from his hands and trudged in syncopated steps around the small area.  "Um, I'm...really, I'm fine."

"I don't believe you are," Doctor Sebastian softly told him.  She watched with concern as the desperately tired man paced the room, his footing unmeasured and depleted.  She wondered how long he could sustain this.  She wondered how often he had used his quarters or his cell for the arena in which his conscious and subconscious did battle. "Can you sit, or do you need to keep moving?

"I need to...I think I should..." he tried to say, but instead could only wave his hand in front of him and continue to pace.

"Very well," she said.  "Can we discuss what has happened in the last days?"

"No." Daniel fumbled toward one end of the room, plastered his hands to the wall and leaned his forehead between the splayed set of fingers. He closed his eyes and begged his heart to slow down, his veins to stop throbbing.  "I don't remember any of it."

"I don't believe that is true," Doctor Sebastian said.  She watched his head pendulate from side to side.  "I believe there is a great deal you remember, but you refuse to talk about.  Perhaps you remember all of it."

His hands scraped the wall.  He scratched and scrabbled against the flat surface and fought to contain the feral cries building inside.

"Surely you realize that it will come out," she said.  "Little by little, your body will revolt.  It does not wish to be the urn for these memories."

"I can't," came the hushed voice.

"Why not?"

His head swayed, finally coming to rest with his cheek pressed solidly to the wall.  "You wouldn't understand," he croaked.

"Perhaps I would."

His brow creased and he bit his lip until the pain of it replaced the pain creeping into his voice.

Doctor Sebastian waited, turning a simple gold band around her finger.  She waited for him to speak, waited for him to trust her and himself.  When she could almost feel him closing himself once again, she decided to trust him in order that he might reciprocate.

"My mother was a comfort woman during World War II," she began, carefully averting her eye to give him a chance to seek her with discrete glances. "She, along with all the women in her town, were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial soldiers.  Perhaps you have heard of these women?"

And then his eyes were open, blinking and attentive, reaching through his own terror to hear of Sebastian's mother's life.

"She rarely spoke of it.  When she did—when she would impart her tale to me—the one message I received time and time again was that one's only responsibility in the face of such hardship is to...survive."

A bud of trust pushed up through his soul, and Daniel found himself turning to face her. A hardly significant kernel of empathy rose in him, whispered for him to hear her words. He wove his trembling arms across his chest and stared at the shifting floor.

"When a person endures such barbarism as my mother did, one learns to take the mind elsewhere."  Around her finger Doctor Sebastian spun her ring.  She didn't try to hide the fact that her mother's suffering, lost to the years gone by, continued to be her familial burden. She simply went on, simply carried on with her mother's greatest source of pain. "My mother learned what every person learns who must live amidst the cruel, wretched life of war.  She learned that to survive it, that to continue to live through it is all that is required.  It is the greatest victory over one's enemy."

And when Daniel lifted his eyes to her, he was stricken to find his physician—this bracing woman of strength—silently weeping.  How was it that she was filled with such charism, such capacity to understand and empathize?  Watching her tears spread through the wrinkles around her eyes, Daniel began to timidly, anxiously release.

Doctor Sebastian dabbed her fingers to her eyes and continued. "My father, a fighter pilot with the US Air Force, met my mother during the Korean War. They married, had a little girl, and then my father was shot down. My mother and I lived alone in the middle of South Korea until my father's family brought us to the United States. I was 17 years old.

"So you were right, Doctor Jackson.  I am a Korean-American."  Doctor Sebastian smiled at Daniel, and when she did, unshed tears broke over the sides of her cheeks. "My father's name was Major Benjamin Sebastian. My mother...my mother's name was Jhoon Sill Kim," she said, her voice wavering.  Doctor Sebastian fingered the ring, the frieze worn away, the metal rubbed to a warm patina, until she could find her words again.  She sniffled once, twice, and went on.  "And my name is Abigail Jhoon Jung Oh Sebastian."

Daniel stepped his feet out from the wall and slowly lowered himself to the floor. He pressed his head to the wall and tried to breathe.

"So, you see, I may just understand after all," she quietly said.

Daniel wedged his arms between his raised knees and his body and hoped, prayed that if he opened the box—just this once—he'd be able to close it again.

And then he began. "I always understood why they were beating me.  I mean, I didn't like it, but...but I understood it." His words barely covered the space between them. He lifted his elbows to his knees, his entwined fingers to his brow. "One day, after they had beaten me and healed me—I can't remember why I was beaten—they brought me back to...to him."

So difficult, she thought listening to his words, keeping her eyes lowered, allowing him a modicum of privacy during this time of confession.  So difficult to give voice to such silent memories. Go on, Doctor. Go on and let it go.

His features, half in shadow, half in subdued light, contorted. He ground his teeth together and forced himself to keep talking.  "Um, when they brought me back to his...his room to...I'm not really sure, I don't...I'm not sure why. But I realized that they had forgotten to heal my jaw.  See, they had been able to heal my ribs and my broken wrist, but they forgot—or...or maybe they didn't know that my jaw was fractured.  And I guess I should have told them, but..." He dropped his trembling hands to his shoulders and framed his face between his crossed wrists.  He smoothed his tight lips, his quaking chin, across his hands, trying in vain to hinder the onset of tears.

"So when I tried to... open my... See, I'm not sure why I had to, but when I tried to open my mouth I..." He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows, hoping she'd understand him without having to say the words. Doctor Sebastian nodded, and Daniel pushed forward.  "I couldn't. My jaw...my jaw was broken, you see, and I couldn't open my...So, I couldn't...um..." Daniel lifted a hand in a futile effort to divine the words, but instead clamped it over his quavering lips to stifle his sobs. His eyes locked on hers, and she held his focus solidly and waited for him to regain his composure.

And when he could speak again, the rush of words flooded the room. "I couldn't talk, and they couldn't understand me even if I did, but I tried to make them understand that I wasn't being disobedient, I was just...I couldn't open my mouth." He heard his own words, his own voice reaching out from his body, in tones unfamiliar to his ears.  They spoke of brutality. They spoke of suffering. They spoke of incomprehensible grief, and Daniel struggled to keep his voice from betraying him further. He shrugged his shoulder and pulled his palm across his eyes, scraping the tender lids while air entered his body in uncontrolled quick gasps.

"So you were beaten again," Doctor Sebastian said, supplying the words caught in his pain.

Daniel nodded, and somewhere found in himself the strength required to endure the unflinching truth of his past. He sucked in one long, shuddering breath and whispered, "I didn't deserve that. I didn't deserve that."

"No, you did not," she told him, turning her head from side to side, finding her own tears renewed by his suffering.  She offered him silence, a chance to reconcile his anguish, his unnecessary guilt. She offered her discreet support, her tacit acceptance of his grief.

When at last he realized the futility in maintaining any semblance of normalcy in the face of such personal desecration, Daniel whispered, "Doctor Sebastian, if I just need to sit here and...and cry, are you going to sedate me?"

She tilted her head in sympathy, smiled the best she could and said, "No. No, I will not. I believe it is the first honest emotion you've had since coming here." She watched his head tumble toward his crossed wrists, his shoulders jump with tears. "I will stay here to see you through, to make sure you are safe. I will stay with you, Daniel.  Your sorrow does not frighten me."

And then the rush of tears came unobstructed. And then the pain of those months was given a voice. And then Daniel was forced to face his own devastation fully.

And Doctor Sebastian kept watch to see that he did so.

General Hammond lifted the top of his computer and booted up his schedule for the day. Thirty-five years in the Air Force had offered him many things, and being able to be at his desk at 0530 wide-awake and ready to go was one of the greatest disciplines he ever learned.

But looking at the schedule and seeing the day in front of him, General Hammond almost wished he could go back to bed.

He hit the icon to activate his message center and rifled off a note to Colonel O'Neill:

"Major Davis arrives at 1300 hours.  Meet in briefing room at 1315. Hammond."

He paused a moment to decide if anything else needed to be said, realized it would be inappropriate to add a few well-placed adjectives within the body of the message, and hit send.

Thus began General Hammond's day in the bowels of the SGC.

"There always seems to be someone missing, I don't know who," Daniel said, his voice dry as the August air. Outside his window, the Air Force Academy began to meet the morning while the last of the long night passed from black to blue.

Doctor Sebastian stood near him, wondering if the world Daniel saw seemed as isolating as the world she looked upon. Her legs twitched with fatigue, and her back ached from standing at the window with him for the last few hours of their conversation.

From the sorrowful gloaming to the weary genesis of day, they had spoken in hushed words, in tearful memory. Exhausted, they stared out the large window, watching lights begin to illuminate windows, and color return to the world.

"From where are they missing?" she asked.

"When I see the room—um, any room in my memory when I was ...when I was..." Trapped by the loss for words, fatigued by it all, his head fell forward, hardly able to dredge up the strength to lift it. He closed his eyes and wrestled with highly charged syntax, his emotions worn thin from the months and nights and hours.

"It is very difficult for you to find the words still," she suggested. "I think if we can find one word that you can use to speak of your time with the them, then you will be able to manage your memories, yes?"

Daniel opened his eyes, watched the sky turn from indigo to fragile blue, and wished he could be more awed by the dusty pink being breathed into the clouds.

"Perhaps the easiest way would be to say you were with them," she said, rubbing her eyes.

Daniel held the phrase up in his mind, tested the weight of it, and thought he could speak the words. "Yes."

"Good," she said, and marveled at the break of day, the yawning reach of salmon and peach clouds welcoming the sun with a mellifluous ease. "So in your memory of being with them..."

"In my memory, in the rooms I was in when I was...with them," Daniel said, and paused, grateful that the words hadn't destroyed him like he thought they might, "I can just see someone, something in the room. Just...catch a glimpse of them, and then they're... gone."

"Who do you think it is?" she asked.

An incandescent sliver of orange broke the meniscus of the horizon, glowing and oscillating.

"I don't know," Daniel said. "I try to see them, but they...whoever it is, they hide behind the others, or behind a chair, or..." He stopped, took a breath, filled his lungs and let his tired eyes close for a moment.

"There are times when we subterfuge our memory in order to get by," she said. "Perhaps this is what you have done."

"Maybe. Maybe." Daniel's eyes fluttered open, taking in the brilliance of the sun's arc pressing above the horizon between two buildings.

"You are tired," Doctor Sebastian said, tilting her head to more closely examine him.

"Yes, I am," he said. Daniel watched the sun completely escape the earth's greedy grasp and take command of the sky. "So are you."

"This is true," she said, smiling. "But I will stay with you until you choose to rest."

A cadet, sure and rigid, strode through the grounds below Daniel's window. Long shadows began to fill the courtyard while each dew-covered blade of grass twinkled when the sun touched it.

"Soon," Daniel said, taking a moment to glance at her, a brief, bashful moment. "Soon."

"The sunrise is beautiful this morning," she said, and just as she spoke the tops of trees were set ablaze with color.

"Ra has won another battle," Daniel said.

"So have you."

A panorama of light and soft hues filled his window and the world below. A formation of soldiers, crisp and precise, jogged through the grounds.

A night of hard and burdensome emotions had drawn on his every reserve. The pre-dawn hours of numb acceptance had drained him completely. Daniel felt himself began to list. He grabbed the windowsill to steady himself. "This is very difficult."

"Yes, it is," she said, watching the golden light cast its warmth across his languid features. "And it is far from over."

"Will it ever end?" he asked, feeling the ambient heat penetrate the window before him.

"It will," she said, nodding. "It will."

"When?"

Gaining height, the sun's light moved through the filtered clouds of dawn into the thin atmosphere of morning. "It will be over when it's over. I cannot give you a time frame."

The brightness of the risen sun burned Daniel's eyes, already stinging from his lack of sleep. He closed his eyes and let his skin be the sole observer of the sun instead. "I'm tired."

"I know."

"Thank you," Daniel whispered.

Doctor Sebastian nodded and tapped his hand. "You are welcome, Daniel. Sleep well." Padding out of the room, Doctor Sebastian apprised her patient one last time and asked the spirits of her ancestors to bring him rest.

And out his window, two young soldiers, with their proud chests and taut movements, prepared the flag to be raised. Before it reached the top of the pole, Daniel was asleep in his bed.

Sam and Teal'c walked down the hall of the SGC, both observing the stunned silence of an unspoken vow they had all taken.  It was a silence of exasperation and dejection, brought on by the bitter realization that Daniel wasn't as well as they had hoped and prayed.  Daniel was wasting in a whirlpool of emotional acid, and every day that passed it seemed he slipped farther and farther into the vortex and away from them.

So they passed through the hours and the duties with a diminished sense of purpose, trying to keep their vision affixed to the flickering light of hope.

"Are we ready?" Jack asked, meeting the two outside the briefing room door.

"I suppose," Sam said.  One by one, they entered the room, shoulder to shoulder, bound at the very least in their resolve to protect Daniel from those forces that would attempt to destroy him again.

One by one they eyed the liaison seated across from them.  One by one they related a silent message that although they were missing their teammate, they were still a team, and they would not be defeated.

Paul Davis nodded to each one and counted the months left before he could put in for a transfer out of Washington, D.C.

"All right, people, if you'd like to take your seats, we can get started."  General Hammond spread out his hands, welcoming in SG1.

Sam, Jack and Teal'c all crowded on one side of the long table.  Paul Davis sat alone with his briefcase.  When everyone was seated, General Hammond took his seat at the head of the table.  "Thank you.  You all realize why we're here.  I'd like to give Major Davis the first opportunity to speak and perhaps attempt to explain to us why he's here."  The general paused to let his barely hidden resentment sink in.  He wanted to set the tone from the beginning that the SGC would cooperate only as far as they were required, and that Paul Davis should expect nothing more than rancor from them.

"Major Davis," the general said, "you have the floor."

"Thank you, sir."  Paul Davis pulled his papers from his case while the three remaining members of SG1 puffed up their bellicosity.  "One week ago, Senator Kinsey and the other members of the sub-committee received General Hammond's weekly report, and in it was a mention of a disk that the Tok'ra had translated concerning Doctor Jackson's abductors and his captivity."

"Captivity," Jack said under his breath.  Davis turned his attention to the colonel, and Jack decided to make clear a few things.  "Animals are held in captivity, Major.  Tell me you're not saying Daniel's an animal."

"I..." Paul Stammered.

"I don't believe Major Davis was suggesting anything of the kind, Colonel O'Neill," General Hammond said.  There was setting a tone, and then there was being rude.  The general abhorred rude behavior, even in these circumstances.  He nodded to Davis and told him to keep going.

"Thank you, sir.  I wasn't...I mean I would never suggest that."  Paul Davis dabbed his sweaty upper lip.  He shuffled his papers while he regained his composure.  He knew his arrival was not necessarily welcome, but he wasn't prepared for the acrimony focused directly on him.  "Senator Kinsey believes he and the Senate Sub-com should have a copy of the information contained in the disk."

Jack puffed out his cheeks, felt anger suffuse him and squelched an indignant obscenity. "Why?" he asked.

Paul Davis blinked and said, "Senator Kinsey believes having a copy of the information is important to complete the file kept on Doctor Jackson's return."

Jack looked to the two people flanking his side, turned back to Davis and again asked, "Why?"

"Well," Paul began, taking a quick glance at the general who was nodding in agreement with Jack, "Senator Kinsey feels that a great deal of money was spent—"

"Oh, here we go," Jack interrupted.

"—in the recovery effort, and he would like to study the file to see if any of that money can be recaptured through information on alien technology."

"Oh, please," Jack said, rolling his eyes.

"Look, Colonel," Paul said, flattening his hands against the table, "with all due respect, I would give just about anything not to be here, but I am under orders."

"Yes," Jack said, inoculating his words with acrimony.  "Yes, you are."

General Hammond felt the meeting was rapidly deteriorating, so he stepped in. "Major Davis, when do you need the file?"

"As soon as Doctor Jackson is well enough to corroborate the information."

Every person in the room stared in utter disbelief at him, their mouths agape, asking in shot gun manner, "What?"

Paul Davis looked from one to the other, uncertain why there seemed to be any confusion or surprise.  "Surely the senator's office told you I was to gain confirmation from Doctor Jackson regarding the report."

"Major Davis, this is the first I've heard of it," General Hammond said, the color in his cheeks broadcasting his exploding anger.

"Oh," Davis said, shifting the papers in front of him with no purpose in mind.  "I'm...yes, sir.  I'm to return with the file and its corroboration."

Jack fisted his hand, let it go slack, fisted it again and spoke for the people seated.  "No."

"Sir?"

"No!" Jack glared at Davis, peering at him across the hedge of his brow.  "You can tell Kinsey to go straight to hell."

"Colonel," General Hammond interrupted.

"No, General, I'm sorry, but it's out of the question!"  Jack's hands began to gesture without reserve.  "You've seen Daniel.  You know what's going on with him.  Hell, he's a goddamn vegetable.  No.  I'm not going to let you do this, Major."

Paul Davis drew on his militaristic tenacity and held his ground—a useless, ridiculous piece of political landscape.  "Sir, all Doctor Jackson has to do is—"

"Why?" Sam demanded.

"What?" Davis asked.

"Why does he have to corroborate it?" she asked, while next to her Jack shook his head and threw his pen across the table.

Paul removed Jack's pen from his lap and slid it across the table. "Senator Kinsey feels the file bears no relevance unless it can be confirmed by Doctor Jackson," Davis said.  Sweat dripped down his spine and past his waistband.

"I knew this would happen," Jack said, pushing against the edge of the table, grasping at his rapidly dwindling composure.

"Major Davis, I can think of no reason other than...petty malice why Senator Kinsey would need Doctor Jackson to confirm the file," the general said.

"I can't speak to his personal intentions, only to his work with the sub-com, and he feels—"

"I'm sure I speak for every one in the room when I say I don't give one good goddamn what Senator Kinsey feels."  General Hammond said, rounding on the officer, silencing him with a glare that froze the words on his lips.  "Now, you go back to Washington and tell the...senator that his request has been denied."

"He'll shut you down."  Davis didn't bother looking up.  He kept his eyes and voice lowered, and contained in the silence that followed his statement.  "He'll tell the sub-committee and the President that the program has become too cost prohibitive and can't possibly be supported further."

"He's been saying that for years," Jack reminded Paul.  Sam and Teal'c nodded.

"But this time he has the ear of the president."  Paul hoped they were hearing how serious the matter was.  Hoped they could understand, even in his taciturnity, the severity of the situation.

"Fine!" Jack barked, slapping the table.  "Shut it down.  Lock it up.  Blow the whole thing to hell, I don't care."

"Colonel O'Neill, you don't understand," Davis said, rising from his seat, propelled by the turbulence from the maelstrom between his personal beliefs and his orders. "If he shuts it down, you're all out."

"So what? So I retire, and Carter goes into the private sector and makes a million dollars.  So what?" Jack said.

"So what?" Paul asked, while the veins in his neck and face began to surface.  He dug his fists into the top of the table.  "What's Daniel going to do?  Hmmm?  If Kinsey shuts down this program, Daniel won't be considered a civilian contractor, and then the care he's receiving at the Air Force Academy Hospital will no longer be availed to him."

"He wouldn't do that," Sam said.  "Kinsey wouldn't do that."

"You know he would!" Paul cried out, pounding his fist into the table, searching for at least one of them to acquiesce for Daniel's sake.  "You know Kinsey has always wanted to shut this place down.  You know that.  Well, he's got you by the short hairs, and he knows that, too."

When an appreciable silence filled the room, Paul let his head drop between his arms and considered how far out on a professional limb he had just climbed.  From the way his heart pounded and his fear level spiked, he thought he was pretty much about ready to fall off.  "Look, General, he's just waiting for you to say no."  Paul raised his eyes and regarded the general with hushed insistence, and when he spoke again, it was with quiet precision.  "Don't let him have the last word.  Don't let him destroy Doctor Jackson."

General Hammond tented his bulky fingers and touched them to his lips while he considered his decision.  "If Doctor Jackson reads the file—"

"You can't do this, General," Jack said, swiveling to face his CO.

General Hammond held up his hand and continued.  "If he reads it and cannot confirm or deny the report, what will be Kinsey's next move?"

"I don't believe he's thought that far ahead," Paul confided.

"Then tell him we'll discuss it with Doctor Jackson's physicians," the general said.  "That should buy us some time."

"No way Sebastian will agree to this," Jack said.

"Then she will be reassigned," Paul told him, and the thought of it, knowing that Kinsey would do exactly that, made Paul all the more angry that he had to be placed in the middle.  "One way or another, Kinsey will keep going with this until his bluff is called and the report is confirmed."

"Unfortunately, I think he will," the general said.  He took a deep breath, filled his lungs with air that seemed stagnant and stale, and prepared himself for the battle ahead.  "Thank you, Major Davis, for your candor."

Paul Davis shoved his papers back into this briefcase and snapped the enclosures.  So many things he wanted to say to them, so many ways he wanted to tell them he was sorry, that he wished he didn't have to be Senator Kinsey's gopher, but it was all part of the honor of wearing the uniform.

And so it was with stoic tenacity and respect that Paul Davis held out his hand to General Hammond and then to Colonel O'Neill, and then left the SGC to endure the tirades of a spoiled, corrupt senator.

There he is again, Jack thought to himself, finding Daniel standing alone at his window, looking out through the streaked pane of glass. He wondered what held Daniel's attention for so many hours a day. Jack took two steps into the room, hitched up the back of his pants and said, "Hey."

Daniel turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. "Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack said, his voice breathy and full of forced serenity, trying to mask his surprise that Daniel actually acknowledged him. "How ya doin'?"

Daniel redirected his attention back to the window and shrugged. "Better than the last time you saw me, I'm sure."

"Yeah, well, depends on when you think that was," he said, sidling up next to Daniel.

Daniel swung his head around and peered at Jack. "I'm talking about...in the break room. When...what do you..."

"I was here a couple times when you were, uh—" Jack paused to lift his hand to his forehead and let his fingers sail out into space. He cocked his head to the side and clucked his tongue against his cheek.

Daniel narrowed his eyes down and nodded. "Oh. I didn't know."

"No, I'm sure you didn't, or else you wouldn't have been..."

"Catatonic."

"...out there," Jack supplied, launching his hand once again from his forehead, miming what he believed to be an appropriate appraisal of Daniel's emotional state at the time.

"Yes, well," Daniel said, frowning and wishing Jack would stop the gestures, "I guess I should thank you for checking in on me, then."

"No need," Jack said.

Daniel didn't have a clear memory of the afternoon in question, but he did remember coming unhinged and throwing things at Jack, wondering why he was doing it. Just another in a long line of confusing, terrifying events his mind had been supplying him. Daniel pressed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders to his ears. "I'm sorry about...what happened, Jack. I hope I didn't...hurt you."

"No," Jack said, squinting into the mid-day sun. "You got off some pretty impressive pitches, but you didn't manage to take my head off."

"I don't...I'm not sure why I..." Daniel began and then stopped, the incomprehensible events that had led up to his breakdown strangling him. "It's just when you said that word, I..." And all he could do was let his voice drift and shake his head, the one act that seemed to come to him when words wouldn't.

"I know. That was careless of me, Daniel, and if I would have stopped to think—"

"What? What would you have thought?" Daniel asked, suddenly hearing the implied underlying knowledge.

"I wouldn't have said it," Jack said, letting his eyes lower.

Daniel's eyes, sightless and fluttering, turned back to the window. He pulled his lips to the corner of his mouth and felt a sudden heat scour his chest and neck. "I try so hard to keep it all inside, you know? I try not to...burden anyone with what happened. I mean, what good would it do you all to have to think about it?"

Jack pulled his long fingers across his tired eyes and laid out in his memory the disk that held Daniel's secrets. A file chock full of the horrors Daniel had survived. A file he knew would be placed in front of Daniel soon. A weariness overtook him in that moment, so he rubbed his forehead and propped his head up in his hand.

"So, when you said...that word," Daniel continued, clearing his throat, "it, um, kind of freaked me out, and instead of burying it, I all but advertised...what they did. To me."

When Jack turned to respond, with words he hadn't quite figured out, he saw how much it had cost Daniel to even allude to the cruelties he had survived. Jack didn't want to add to his pain, so he nodded and let it go.

Outside, cadets marched through the campus in short sleeves, occasionally wiping their brows with their hands. Daniel watched them, far removed from their world of order and matriculation. "What's it like out there today?" he asked.

"It's hot," Jack told him, futzing with the change in his pocket.

Daniel nodded and could see the heat rising from the outer ledge just beyond his window. "I was always cold," he said, and the words startled Jack.

"How's that?" he said, lifting his chin.

"I could never get warm...there. I was always...it was always...damp. Cold. I was always cold." Daniel placed his hand on the smooth glass and could feel the sun's warmth penetrating the thick surface. "Even now, since I've been back, I can't...I can't seem to get warm enough. Never enough. Strange, isn't it?"

"I was always too hot," Jack said, and wondered if this were the time or place to bring up his own past. Somehow it felt selfish, and he thought he should apologize for saying it. "Listen, I'm—"

"Was there ever a time when you thought they'd broken you?" Daniel asked before he could talk himself out of it.

Jack suppressed a flinch and considered not only the question, but also why Daniel was even asking it. "Only every day."

"How did you..." Daniel began to ask, turning only as much as was needed to see Jack's posture, search it for signs that it was okay to go further. "How did you go on?"

Jack pulled one hand out of his pocket and smoothed away the dust on the windowsill in front of him while he considered his answer. "You know, Daniel, I guess if I woke up in the morning and I was still breathing, then, well, I did my duty."

Daniel slumped. He let his head drop, his chin nearly resting on his chest and he ground his teeth together. "So everyday you were able to...rebuild?"

"You're rebuilding, Daniel," Jack said, jumping ahead in the conversation. He wouldn't allow Daniel to keep going with the line of logic, not if it in any way fueled the bonfire of self-reproach Daniel carried inside him. "Give it time, Daniel. It takes a lot of time."

"It was just once, Jack," Daniel said from his stooped position. "I fought like hell for a while, but that one time...That one time was all it took."

Jack guessed it was more important just to listen, not try to give Daniel any words of consolation. So he continued to dust the windowsill, and just let Daniel talk.

"One...one time," Daniel continued, his voice rising in timbre. "And if you want to know the truth, I don't think I'll ever come back. Not all the way."

"You will," Jack finally said after a long, uncomfortable silence broken only by Daniel's uneven breaths. They weren't words of empty promises. These were words of faith, of promises kept. "You will, Daniel. It's only been a few months."

The younger man grabbed hold of the windowsill and shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

Jack looked upon his friend, his eyes bruised with too many sleepless nights, his skin ashen. Jack watched Daniel's fingers etch into the polished granite casement, the veins in his hands protruding in a high relief. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No," he said, his head swinging from side to side.

"Okay."

"One time, Jack. It only took one time, and then I was done. They had me." Daniel's voice trailed off near the end, and Jack wasn't sure what to say or do, or how to react.

"Look, Daniel, whatever it was, you made it through."

"Through to what?"

"Through to the end. You beat them. You survived."

"For what, Jack?" Daniel sardonically asked, leveling Jack with a cold, despairing look.

For what? Jack didn't know how to answer him. What was it that had brought Jack back from the ravaging memories of Iraq? Sara. What reason did Jack have for wanting to live again? Charlie. What did Daniel have? He had to offer him something, didn't he? As Daniel's friend, he had to give him some reason, right?

"Well, you know what they say," Jack told him, rasping his hands together to rid them of the dust, "that which doesn't kill us, makes us—"

"—a basket case for the rest of our lives?" Daniel said, lifting his eyebrows high on his forehead. "Look, Jack, I know what you're trying to say, but...it just isn't the case." Daniel shoved off from the windowsill and spun around, away from Jack. He took a few steps toward anywhere else but where Jack was and tried to explain. He wove his fingers across the back of his neck and pressed his elbows together until his arms shook. "You know, we always talk about how things like this ennoble us, make us stronger. Like...like some character in a movie that has to deal with some harsh reality and comes out of it a better person."

"Daniel," Jack began, facing his distraught friend.

"That's...that's not going to happen here, Jack," Daniel said. He looked to the ceiling, finding any other sight too difficult, and pulled in a sharp breath. "There was nothing ennobling about what happened to me. It just...it..." Daniel found himself shaking his head, once again unable to express the pain in his soul. And then his hands began to speak for him—fisting, opening empty, waving, and finally clapping over his eyes, digging into them as if he could scrape away the memory. "They broke me, Jack. Right down the middle, they tore me in two. And I'm no stronger for this, and the only reason it didn't kill me was because I wasn't there long enough."

And then it was Jack's turn to sling his head between his shoulders, stooped over with shame. "I don't know what to say to you, Daniel. I'm not sure what you want to hear."

"I want to hear it will all be over soon," Daniel told him. "I want to hear...that I'm getting better."

Jack's eyes pinched almost shut, his thoughts whirling, and his lips formed words his mind wasn't ready to speak.

Daniel glanced at Jack and saw the effect his question, his plea had on him. Daniel rolled his eyes, sighed and said, "At least you're being honest with me."

"Daniel," Jack began, stepping closer to the younger man, "I wish to God this had never happened to you. I wish you had never—" But when he saw that his words had caused the shallow movements in Daniel's chest, had caused his face to bloom with fresh grief, Jack came to a halt in his litany of regrets. He clamped his mouth shut, tried to think, tried to come up with some way to bridge the ever-widening gap between them. "It's gonna be all right, Daniel. I promise."

"I'm tired," Daniel whispered, turning toward his chair and collapsing into it.

Jack, his body numb and his mind swirling with despair, kept his narrowed focus on Daniel and watched him press his clasped hands to his lips. "Look, Daniel..."

"Thanks for stopping by," Daniel said, his voice nasal and tight.

Jack felt his spirit peter out, as if it were a balloon pricked by a pin. He rushed a hand through his hair, shook his head and tried again, "Look, get some sleep. I'll come by tomorrow."

Jack thought by now he'd be used to Daniel's tears. He thought that after all they'd been through together, all that Daniel had been through lately, that Jack would be immune to the heart-wrenching effect Daniel's tears had on him. He felt a physical tightening of his chest while he watched Daniel lift a shaking finger in front of his own lips, pleading with Jack to wait a moment while he collected himself.

Daniel thumped the finger to his pursed, trembling lips, straining to get a hold on his emotions. But it wasn't working. He lowered his finger and pressed his fist to his mouth, pulling in tiny bursts of air through his clogged nose.

Silently, Jack watched his friend plane his hand across his mouth, flick a tear away from his eye with his thumb, all the while keeping his lips sealed as tight as the steely grip around Jack's chest.

"Daniel," Jack whispered, to which Daniel lifted his finger again, asking for just another moment.

And when Daniel could finally speak, his words sliced through Jack with misplaced precision. "It's just that...it's difficult to...be around you," Daniel managed to say before he ground his the palm of his hands into his eyes and growled a sigh.

Jack felt a visceral pain shoot through him, and he knew it was an agony he deserved. "Okay."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Daniel whispered, digging his elbows into his knees, his stricken face dissolving into his hands. "For everything."

"Me, too." Jack listened with an eviscerated soul to the muted sobs escaping from Daniel's hands before he turned to leave. He reached for the door and looked back one last time.

"Take care of yourself, Daniel." Jack waited for Daniel to nod before he stumbled blindly out of his room.

"Then who do you think it is?" she asked again, leaning toward him

Daniel cradled his throbbing skull in his hands and said, "I don't know."

"No—"

"Yes, I know," Daniel said, his voice edged with frustration, "you won't accept 'I don't know,' but...really, I don't know."

"Could it be the face of the main aggressor?" Doctor Sebastian asked.

"Maybe," he said, running his thumbs across his scalp, finding veins just under the skin that seemed swollen with the very blood filling his ears and sight.

"When is the last time you took an Imitrex?" she asked, sitting back. Doctor Sebastian pulled his file from her desk and checked over his meds chart. "This morning, yes?"

"I think so," Daniel said.

Doctor Sebastian replaced the file on her desk and stepped to her windows, pulled shut the blinds and walked to the door, where she turned off the overhead light. The shaded lamp on her desk remained lit, greatly diminishing the harsh lighting. Doctor Sebastian lowered her body into her chair and watched while Daniel tightened and relaxed his jaw, over and over.

She kept a close eye on him and smoothed back her hair from her temples, gray at first, then jet black. She waited for him to lift his head and begin to talk again, once the pain subsided, once the panic of memory lessened. It was a pattern with him, and over the course of the last weeks, she had come to learn about the importance of allowing him ample time. His strength was his honesty, his ability to do the hardest things, speak the harshest words. But it only came after time.

So she waited.

When at last his face came away from his hands, she could see the deep lines, the features arranged as if to convince himself that he had the strength to speak. He did not look at her, nor did he begin to talk right away. He lifted one thigh, then the other, and dug his hands underneath.

"You're right," he finally said. "I remember much more than I can talk about."

She simply nodded and allowed him more time.

"But...but this image, this..." he began, his eyes not quite shut, not quite open. "It haunts me, and I don't know why."

"It is a person," she restated, having tried to break through this memory with him for many days.

"I think so, yes," he said.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Doctor Sebastian. She stood up and leaned over her desk, reading his file in the diffused light. Page after page, she skimmed the words, looking for the one piece of information she needed to back up her idea. When she found the sentence, she pulled the file to her and sat down.

"Daniel, you have said that you were not allowed to look your captors in the eye, correct?" she asked.

"For the most part," he said, his legs beginning to shake.

"Then perhaps this image you have is because you do not have an actual memory of a certain face, of...the face of the one who controlled you," she said, trying to keep her words void of emotion.

"No, no," he said, and he grabbed the edge of his seat and started to rock. His chest began to tighten. He forced out the words, hoping to lower the intense pressure building in his gut. "I knew them all. I...I may not have...I may not be able to picture their faces, but...I can..." His hand clutched the edge of the chair and his head tumbled down to meet his chest. "It's not one of them. I know who they are. It's not one of them."

"Then perhaps this person is purely a representation of someone or something."

Daniel closed his eyes and was met by the ever-present red flares exploding across his eyelids. He sucked in his lower lip and nodded.

"Breathe, Daniel," she said, placing the file back on her desk. "Take a deep breath. Good. Let it out slowly. That's right. Now another. Very good."

The air came in through his nose, out his mouth, and as it turned from oxygen to carbon dioxide, it took with it molecules of his tension. Singular clusters of his apprehension evaporated, and yet the image remained. So he breathed. And he breathed some more.

"They say great athletes are able to completely focus in on the present," Doctor Sebastian said, watching her patient try to calm himself. His eyes remained closed, but she knew he was listening. His mind worked quickly, and she knew he was absorbing everything she was saying. "They say this ability to cast off the past, forget what might happen in the future, is how they remain so in the moment, able to remove themselves from the stress of the actual event. Perhaps that is why you are unable to remember this image. Perhaps you had cast off the past and the future in order to survive each moment."

"Then this image," he said, "is...what?"

She crossed her legs and cupped her hands over her knee and thought about what she believed. "Is it possible that this image is...you?"

"Me?" he said, his mouth hanging open a touch.

"Perhaps it is your mind's way of removing you from the situation. Perhaps this image is simply your—"

"My voice," he said, and even as he did, it stunned him.

And it stunned her as well. Now it was her turn to sit with her lips slightly parted, unable to speak.

"It's me. It's my...voice. Or, maybe, more correctly, my...my words. That's who...I mean, that's what it is," Daniel said, pinching his eyes down to mere slits concentrating on holding onto the revelation before it slipped from his grasp. He swallowed hard, shook his head and tried to continue, and when he did, the words tripped over each other. "It's why I...That image is my...That's it."

"Daniel, slow down and tell me what you're thinking," she said, leaning toward him.

"I put it away," he whispered, bringing his hand to his throat. "I put it away. I hid it. That's why I can't see it, because it's hiding, or it was hiding. Why is it I still can't see it? I can talk. I'm talking now. I have it back, but I...Why can't I see it?"

"I'm not sure, but we shall find the answer," she told him.

Daniel scrubbed one hand over his cheek and then pinched the bridge of his nose, overwhelmed by the idea multiplying in his head.

"This is an important step you're taking, Daniel, and we shall work it out together," she said, and she watched him, could almost see the process happening in his mind. Doctor Sebastian wondered if this linguist, for all his great and varied abilities with foreign words and dialects, would be able to articulate that which was at the center of his soul. Would he have the strength to intone those awful, lost words?

She watched while Daniel continued to rock himself, his breaths careful and measured. His arms were tightly wrapped around his chest as if giving himself the comfort of touch that he could endure from no one else. His eyes were open, but she knew he was not seeing her, nor the room in which they sat. She knew he was still battling to find that shattered, elusive voice, the part of him that had been so violently taken. She knew he was searching, this skilled, battered archeologist, for the key to his identity. From the ruins of his existence, Daniel strained to excavate the mystery of his entombed voice, yet feared what his findings would bring.

On her way to his room, Sam remembered she had forgotten the sack of almond cookies in her car. Over the last few weeks and months, Sam was getting to be known on a first name basis at the bakery near the Academy. When they saw her coming, she was sure they shook their heads, marveling at her metabolism, wondering where she put all those cookies and baked goods on her slender body. She never let on that they weren't for her. She'd simply look in the case and say, "Hmmm. What looks good today?" and then walk out with a dozen or two cookies, all the while knowing the bakery staff stood shocked by her voracious appetite and enormous sweet tooth.

She always brought him something—cookies, magazines. Something. She felt strangely awkward reaching his door without an offering. She shook her head and decided she was just being silly. When she had reached his room and was just about to push open the door, it was pulled away from her outstretched hand, and Sam stumbled. Stepping back, she pressed a hand to her heart and smiled.

"You startled me," she said.

"I'm sorry, Major," Sergeant Garanzia said, exiting Daniel's room.

"No problem," Sam told her, peering around the sergeant. "Is he awake?"

Sergeant Garanzia frowned and nodded. "He is, but..." She stepped to the side of the door and pulled Sam alongside her. "Bad day, today. He's...uncomfortable. Remember when we talked about certain times when a patient's chemistry is compromised due to highly emotional events?"

"Yeah," Sam said, her eyes darting with the concern building inside her.

"His sessions with Doctor Sebastian have been...very productive," the sergeant said, being careful not to overstep her bounds. "But the other side of that coin is—"

"Low serotonin levels?" Sam asked.

Sergeant Garanzia nodded. "Like I said, it's not one of his better days, but he'll be glad to see you. He always is."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Sam said, and the two parted company.

"Daniel?" Sam stepped into Daniel's room, expecting to find him staring out the window, sitting in his chair.

"Sam," he said, his voice flat and indistinct. Laying on his back in bed, his long legs bent at the knees, his arms draped over his body, Daniel stared up at the ceiling, bored to the teeth.

"I forgot your cookies in my car," she told him, removing her jacket and slinging it over a chair.

"That's okay."

"So, how are you?" she asked, standing next to his bed, her hands across the back of her hips. Feeling her bones so close to the surface, her musculature so toned, Sam privately issued herself a 'well done,' and all those times she said no to baked goods seemed to be worthwhile. Almost. "Sergeant Garanzia said you're not having a great day?"

"Oh, I don't know," Daniel said, his fingers wiggling next to his sides. "I was just laying here considering what I should do with this room."

"What'd you come up with?"

"I'm torn between paneling and wallpaper," Daniel said, but his words were dry and listless. He kept his focus steadfastly on the banks of fluorescent lights and said, "I'm leaning toward paneling, but I'll have to hire a contractor. For some reason, they won't let me near power tools in this place."

Sam sat at the foot of his bed and knew from the sound of his voice it was going to be a long morning. "Daniel—"

In the periphery of his vision, Daniel caught her image over his knees, at his feet, and a bubble of complete terror shot up from the depths of his memory. He clenched the sheets below him and his pulse jumped. "Don't...Sam, could you sit someplace else?"

"Oh, sure," she said, rising from her spot, trying to act as casual as possible to calm him, or maybe to fool herself into thinking she wasn't shaken. She listened to him breathe quickly while she glanced around the room, unable to find a more suitable seating arrangement, not while her thoughts were consumed with the possible reasons Daniel needed her to move in the first place. "Um, why don't I sit...I'll sit here."

"I'm sorry," he said, rubbing his eyes, imploring his body to relax. "It's um..."

"No, you don't need to explain," she told him. Sam looked around the starkly unassuming room and wondered if a change of scenery might not do him a world of good. The room had suddenly become a very confining place to her, and she hoped he would take her up on her offer. "Daniel, it's a beautiful day. You wanna go for a walk?"

"Can't," was his one word answer. He opened his eyes, blinking and decided how much he wanted to share with Sam. "I have to lay here for a while."

"Oh," she said, frowning, not quite sure what he meant. "You mean..."

"Yeah," he said. "It's a pain in the ass." A brittle, acerbic chuckle dripped from his mouth, one that held no humor.

"Oh," she said again, and then she understood his double entendre. "Oh!"

"Right," he said.

"Right. So..."

"Yes, so, paneling," he suggested.

"Yeah, so...what's the deal with paneling?" she asked.

"It doesn't look like I'm going anywhere anytime soon, so I might as well give my room that homey look," Daniel told her, drumming his fingers on his belly.

"You won't be here that much longer."

"Are we talking real time, or home renovation time?"

"Daniel," Sam said, hoping to bring a little perspective to the topic, "it's just the serotonin levels."

"Yes," he emphatically pronounced. "I see you've been briefed on the effects of plummeting neuro-chemicals, too. Sergeant Garanzia is nothing if not thorough."

"Daniel—"

"Fine, Sam. Let's just say I do get out of here," he said. "Then what?"

Sam shrugged. "What do you want to do?"

"Do you see me coming back to the SGC?" he asked a little too brightly.

Sam knew when she was being bated. She looked at his body, strung too tight, toes tapping, hands fisted together. "To be honest, Daniel, no, I don't."

Her answer took him by surprise. He was gaining more and more tired of the "You'll be fine!" speech from everyone who came to see him. Especially when he knew it wasn't true. Her candor, then, smoothed out his caustic tone, and when he spoke again, his voice was calmer. "Me, neither, but why is it you're the only one who doesn't assume I will come back?"

"I guess I don't see why you'd want to."

Daniel nodded. His thoughts exactly. A sudden pinching of his tender flesh, and Daniel adjusted his position with a grimace and a refusal to remember the source of the pain. When the pain passed, he said, "So, what do I do?"

"I guess you do anything you want."

"For a moment there I was really impressed with your clarity, Sam," Daniel said, his tightly pitched voice returning. "All of a sudden, though, we find ourselves back in the fantasy land of endless opportunities."

Sam let the dig pass and went on. "Look, Daniel, with your experience and education, you could do anything."

"Okay, let's look at my list of skills, shall we?" Daniel folded his arms under his head and began to click off his macabre resume. "Linguist. In the hot market for linguists, who wouldn't want to hire one who, up until a few weeks ago, was aphasic?" Sam shook her head, and Daniel relentlessly carried on. "Moving right along to anthropologist. Ah, yes, the anthropologist who's afraid of people and other cultures. I can't see how that would pose a problem, can you?"

"Daniel," Sam tried to interject.

"Let's not forget archeologist," he said, undaunted, his voice oozing with sarcasm. "I'm that special breed of archeologists who is afraid to dig into his own past, let alone the past of others, lest he discover some horrendous secrets. Oh, yeah. My options are endless."

"Daniel, you're making it sound much worse than it is."

"We haven't even discussed my personal life," Daniel said, waggling a finger in the air.

"Why? It's not like any of us have ever had one before," Sam said, trying to add some levity into the leaden conversation.

"And now even less," Daniel told her, unwavering in his tirade. "Who'd want me? I mean, think about it, Sam. Touch me, and I scream. Say the wrong word, and I start tossing the furniture around. Not what I'd call fun first date material."

"Come on, Daniel."

"God, let's not even begin to talk about actually trying to have a...physical relationship."

"I won't if you won't," Sam said, hoping, wishing he'd stop with the topic, but Daniel wasn't hashing it out for Sam as much as for himself, and so he continued.

"I'm not sure if you realize it, but my recent...experiences with the physical have been, shall we say, lacking in pleasure," he snarled, and Sam winced. "Kind of destroys the libido, if you know what I mean."

"Are you finished?" Sam snapped, tired of the self-flagellation.

Daniel stopped, considered the question, and closed his eyes. "For now."

"Good," she exhaled. She wanted to be sympathetic. Hell, she thought she was extremely sympathetic. And supportive, but there was only so much she was willing to listen to before she had to call a spade a spade, and self-pity exactly for what it was. "Look, you've never done maudlin well, Daniel. It doesn't suit you." Sam kept his ruddy complexion in view and let her jangled nerves settle. "You're down, that's all. All this is only temporary—No, it is. Let me finish," she said, raising her hand slightly when she saw Daniel purse his lips, ready to protest. " It's only temporary, and it's because of your bio-chemistry. And you know one of the side-effects of the anti-depressants is decreased libido."

"Don't...don't do...that," he stammered, turning his face to Sam. "Don't try to explain everything away. It can't be done. I know. I've been trying to do that for months, and look where it got me, Sam."

She grabbed hold of her knees and stared at the floor, finding her energy and enthusiasm siphoning off. She wondered why she was even arguing with him, reminding herself that it wasn't her Daniel, but a depressed, highly agitated person, a by product of tumultuous emotions and careening chemistry.

Daniel returned his focus to the ceiling and rounded his arms across his body. Intellectually, he knew she was right, and his mood was due to the decreased serotonin levels, to say nothing of a strategically placed analgesic, but trying to remember that was all but impossible, especially when his torment was matched by the barely lessening throb in his pelvis. His life had become one long string of misery, both physical and emotional, and there was never a cessation in the proceedings. What he wouldn't give for one good binge-drinking weekend, to numb the singed nerves and deaden the insistent images. He couldn't remember the last time he was good and drunk. Then again, maybe he could...

"Sam," he said, his quieter voice catching her off guard, "do you remember that wine tasting we went to a couple weeks before I...before we...before..."

"Yes," she said, taking over for him, knowing there was no reason to go on with the timeline. She understood. "Or, as I prefer to remember it, the wine chugging."

"I seem to remember our objective going in was to learn about quality wines," Daniel said, smiling in spite of himself.

Sam's eyes lit up with her own wine-soaked memories, and said, "When exactly did those objectives change to quantity, not quality?"

"If memory serves, it was somewhere along the table where they were serving up samples of wine from the O'Neill Vineyards," Daniel said.

Sam clapped her hand to her eyes and rolled forward with laughter. "Oh, my God! We made a promise that that story would never be spoken of again."

"And it never has been," Daniel told her, angling his body slightly to the side to see her, listen to her gentle laughter. And while he lost himself in her easy reverie, a new sadness descended upon him. Watching Sam try to cover her embarrassment over one drunken night's escapades, Daniel realized for the first time how much his ordeal had imposed upon her. Suddenly, the laughter and the smiles seemed frivolous and unimportant.

"God, that was a fun night," Sam said, wiping her moist eyes. "Yeah, we'll have to do that again sometime."

"It was always you," Daniel broke in with a somber voice, catching Sam in mid-gear, his burdensome expression erasing the lightheartedness. Her laughter dissipated, and she shook her head unable to fathom when this renewed anguish had begun. "Back there, when I needed to remember something...good, something...safe. It was always you."

Sam felt her face heat up. "Oh, Daniel. You don't mean that."

His tears shouldn't have surprised her. They seemed so common since his return. But it was that they slid across his still face, two glistening lines slipping across stony features. It was how easily and quickly they came that undid her. "What...what about Sha're?" she asked.

And then his face began to change, to buckle, and the tears became heavier. With one sudden gasp of air, Daniel uttered through clenched teeth, "I couldn't remember what she looked like. I still can't."

Sam frowned and felt tears welling up in her own eyes. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, held out her hands and hoped he would take them and tried to give back to Daniel something that, had his life taken a different turn, should have been his to keep. "When I think about Sha're, I remember her gorgeous black hair. The way it caught the light and just sort of...shimmered." Daniel sniffed, edged his hand out to hers, and nodded. Sam let his hand simply rest in her cupped palms while she clumsily composed her thoughts. "Her eyes were black and...and—oh, Daniel, I'm not very good at this—but what I loved about her eyes was the way she'd blink when she'd say your name. 'Danyel.' Do you remember? 'Danyel.' Just like that."

Daniel swallowed and mouthed the word yes, and began to clear away the haze that hovered over his memory of her.

"Sha're's smile was never as bright as when you were in the room. And then...wow! Total wattage. That was a thing to see," Sam said, smiling, covering his hand with hers. "But only for you."

A glance of black eyes; a mouth twitching with laughter; sensuous, olive-toned hands combing hair back from her glistening face—these were his again.

"She had long, slender arms that...well, I guess they always made me think of dancers' arms. Expressive and graceful," she said, stroking his fingers, sending through him her peace and love.

When he closed his eyes to bring his wife better into focus, more tears spilled from his spiked lashes. And then she was there, her arms dancing around his neck, her eyes sparkling with heat and passion, her body fragrant and lush. Daniel remembered and wept.

"And Sha're had a great body," Sam said, cocking her head to the side and finding an embarrassed smile. "I don't mind saying, I would love to have her body."

"Me, too," Daniel whispered, and Sam chortled. Daniel tried, but couldn't quite find it in himself. He didn't open his eyes, worrying that if he did, he'd lose Sha're again. He listened for Sam to quiet herself, and when she did, he said, "I miss her, Sam."

"I know you do, sweetie."

Daniel pulled his fisted hand across his eyes and concealed his unrelenting sadness with his arm. Dejected and spent by the jarring emotions, the rollicking waves of oceanic sorrow, he let loose a twitter of nervous laughter and said, "Fuckin' serotonin."

"Fuckin' serotonin," Sam agreed. Her thoughts exactly.

Part 6

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