Fic: Nadir (1/2)
Nov. 26th, 2002 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galaxysoupFANDOM: Stargate SG-1
RATING: PG-13 (some kind of icky descriptions, bad language which is multilingual and therefore educational)
CATEGORY: Action/Adventure, drama, angst, AU I suppose because I sort of throw a monkey wrench into all of season 6
SUMMARY: Meridian tag (but don't worry, the gang's all here).
SPOILERS: Oh, boy. Big ones for Meridian, of course, Shades of Gray and Legacy, small ones for the movie, Maternal Instinct, Absolute Power, Prisoners, Crystal Skull... basically, everything in the first four seasons is Fair Game.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is my first long story, so I want to know if I actually managed to pull it off with any degree of finesse. Thanks to MK, LimeKid, and LittleK for beta work, and, as always, for listening patiently.
"To life...and its many deaths."
-The Impostors
NADIR
In, out.
In, out.
In, out.
The white curtains billowed softly in the light breeze, reminding him of sailing ships and summer nights when you thought you'd die if you couldn't find a bit of wind somewhere. Daniel lay on his side, facing the window across the room, and watched the curtains.
In, out.
In, out.
He could almost feel himself moving with the curtains, back and forth, whispering across the floor like a dancing ghost. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the soft shush shush of the fabric, a gentle rhythm that sang to him like a lullabye.
In, out.
He let himself drift, thinking of white things. There had been gauzy white linen curtains in one of the apartments he had shared with his parents, curtains like these. They were floor length as well, and even on those nights when the heat had pressed down like a living thing, smothering and suffocating, the curtains had still found some way to move. No matter how hot it had gotten, all he'd had to do was concentrate on the underwater movement of the curtains and he could fall asleep.
He opened his eyes again, rocking minutely back and forth, following the curtains.
There had been other white things, recently. He could remember looking down at himself, at the small bumps under the white sheets that represented his knees, the tiny tented hillocks so far away that were his feet. He'd always liked clean white sheets. There was something about them that automatically made you feel comfortable.
He remembered looking down at the bandages on his chest, white and textured, watching with detached curiosity as a small red spot grew in size and spread across his ribcage, remembered realizing through a haze of drugs that this was his blood smeared on the bandages, his blood and not red dye or ketchup like one of his foster fathers had always told him they used in the movies. He could remember the nurse coming by, noticing the blood and quickly changing the bandage, her face carefully shuttered to hide her revulsion at what was concealed underneath.
He could remember the pain, the pain that the drugs finally couldn't blunt, the feeling as his stomach and intestines turned to mush and his skin cracked and dissolved until he was nothing but a person-shaped bag of blood and blazing nerve endings, all neatly covered over by clean white bandages. He could remember looking out from two holes in a mask of white cotton, the vague stirring of panic when he realized he could no longer move on his own. He wasn't even a person any more, not really, because people have organs and skin that isn't made of bandages.
He shuddered, and resolutely turned his mind away from those morbid thoughts, curling up a bit tighter on the bed, willing himself to think of other things.
Daisies. Daisies were white. There was nothing too sinister about daisies.
Oma. Oma Desala and Shifu were white, some of the time anyway, and there was nothing wrong with them. Okay, so Oma could flatten an entire regiment of Jaffa with lightning and Shifu could send dreams that rocked all your conceptions of yourself and your worth to the core, but he'd meant well, really...
He sighed in resignation. There was nothing for it; he was going to have to get up now. His brain had kicked into gear again, and there was no way he was going to be able to turn it off. Once it got started on thinking there was no stopping it. He remembered Jack's incredulity on Hadante, when Daniel had thought of a gate address after being strangled. It gave him such a smug feeling of satisfaction, sometimes, to shock Jack that way.
He shook his head to clear it and sat up, dangling his legs over the edge of his bed. It was no good thinking of Jack right now, or Sam or Teal'c or Janet or Cassie or anyone else he'd left behind. They belonged to a different part of his life. When he'd woken up the first morning and asked Oma if he could ever go back and see them again, she had rebuked him gently, pointing out in her inevitably cryptic fashion that the Great Path did not go in circles, and with an effort, he had tried to put his friends into the section of his brain reserved for foster families and old teachers, all the people he'd loved in the past and had to say goodbye to. But SG-1, like Sha're, had refused to fade away. It was going to take a long time to dull those memories.
He levered himself to his feet and wandered over to the window, nudging his way through the ballooning curtains to lean against the wall and stare out over the garden. It looked a lot like the garden on Kheb, which he supposed made sense.
He'd been surprised, that first morning he'd woken up, to find that he wasn't intangible, wasn't light like Oma. He distinctly remembered turning into light, floating up through the infirmary ceiling away from the stricken faces of his friends and through the gate to...wherever he was now, exactly. Oma had given him an inscrutable look (not that she really had any other kind, of course), and said "When the mind is freed, the body is no longer required," which he took to mean that he still had a bit of work ahead of him before he was allowed to ascend for good.
He was kind of glad, actually, to have his body back. He liked being solid. That whole fiasco with the crystal skull and his own disappearing act had imbued him with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for being invisible and intangible.
The air in his room changed slightly and he turned, the hairs on his arms standing up with static electricity.
"Hello, Oma."
"Good morning, Daniel. Your thoughts seem heavy today."
He gave her a little half-smile. "I was thinking about the past again."
She inclined her head gravely in the direction of the door. "Come, Daniel. We will tread the paths of the garden, and you will tell me of your friends and your enemies."
He smiled gratefully at her. He was never quite sure if her curiosity regarding his past was genuine or simply an excuse for him to talk, but he appreciated it either way. He doubted there was much he could tell her about the Goa'uld, for example (she had, after all, known of the Harcesis child before they had), but talking made him feel less like a slightly foolish student and more like someone with two PhDs who had been travelling through the Gate for six years. If there was one thing he'd missed these past few years, he reflected as they walked by the water lily pool, it was an interested audience.
* * * * * * * * *
Colonel Jack O'Neill sat down at the commissary table and regarded his mashed potatoes with a considerable lack of enthusiasm. He wasn't particularly hungry, but as a good CO was trying to set an example for Carter and Teal'c. It was true what Joni Mitchell used to warble about parking lots and paradise, he thought. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.
A tray plonked itself down in front of him and he looked up. "Hey, Carter."
"Hi." She slumped down into her seat and poked her Jell-O dubiously. "They messed it up. I didn't think it was even possible to mess up Jell-O. I mean, who doesn't know how to make Jell-O? You just follow the instructions on the box. All you have to do is add water and let it sit. It's not that hard. They didn't even get the color right. It's supposed to be blue. This isn't blue, it's..."
"Blue?"
She sighed and took a bite. "Yeah. Blue."
A third tray announced the arrival of Teal'c. "O'Neill. Major Carter."
"Do you think this Jell-O looks funny, Teal'c?"
Teal'c fixed her with one of his patented inscrutable stares. "It is Jell-O."
"Good point."
They continued eating in silence, and Jack couldn't help but wish for the incomprehensible chatter that used to be the trademark of SG-1 team lunches.
"I feel like right after we got back from Nem's planet," he said abruptly. Carter dropped her fork.
"Because Daniel Jackson is not dead."
Jack shifted uncomfortably and wished he'd never said anything. They'd been doing such a good job not talking about it so far. "Yeah."
"He's in a better place for him," Carter said, but she wouldn't look up from the systematic liquefying of her blue-not-blue Jell-O.
"Yeah," Jack said again, and there was silence at the table.
The truth was, he felt a little abandoned. Okay, so Jacob wouldn't have been able to heal Daniel completely, and okay the kid had pretty much been at loose ends since Sha're died and Shifu proved without a doubt that he could take care of himself, but that was no excuse to accept an offer from Tinkerbell On Crack and take the wormhole express to who-knows-where without so much as a by-your-leave or a "Toodles!" to your teammates. How many times had he told Daniel not to go wandering off?
Jack smacked his spoon down into his mashed potatoes with a little more force than was necessary. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being a little unfair to his erstwhile teammate. It wasn't like he'd really said good bye either, after all. Just some crack about Daniel being a pain in the butt. Good job, Jack.
Another smack of the spoon splattered mashed potatoes across his tray and earned him a raised eyebrow from Teal'c, who was managing to eat even the crap the commissary called food with dignity. He gave Teal'c an embarrassed half-smile, and glanced over at the shelves of pie on the other side of the commissary, considering skipping lunch altogether and going straight for dessert. Some days that was the best way to go. What was it that Daniel had told him once? "Life is uncertain, eat dessert first"?
"Oh, for cryin' out loud..." he muttered as he spotted Jonas Quinn making his was uncertainly through the commissary line.
"What, sir?"
"That Quinn kid. You just know he's going to come sit with us."
Carter cracked a smile and gave him that look she only gave him when she thought he was acting like he was still in junior high. Jack ignored it loftily.
"We are the only people that Jonas Quinn knows, O'Neill," there was a hint of rebuke in Teal'c's voice.
"I know, it's just..."
"We're not quite ready to accept his part in Daniel's..." her voice trailed off.
"Transition to Tinkerbell?" That got him another smile. "It's not even that. It's just...can you remember how long it took to get Daniel to think like a soldier? We're going to be starting all over again with another clueless civilian. If Daniel made me go gray, this guy's going to give me a heart attack. And ulcers."
Teal'c shifted next to him, a movement reminiscent of the way tectonic plates change position. "Is he to be our new member, O'Neill?"
"I'm not sure yet. It makes sense, I mean, we need a cultural expert and he does that, and it's easier to take someone from offworld than to recruit a guy from Earth and expect him to keep quiet. Daniel was sort of a unique case, there. So it sort of makes sense. Logically speaking. Yeah."
Carter sighed and drained her Jell-O with a surprisingly childlike slurp. "Well, he seems like a nice enough guy, I suppose. And he did come through for us, in the end."
Silence fell at the table again, broken by the predicted arrival of Jonas, who stood uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot before finally asking "Er, can I sit down?"
"For crying out loud, Quinn, it's a free commissary."
Jonas blinked at him, "Oh," and sat down. The silence grew brittle and uncomfortable as everyone tried to pretend there was no silence whatsoever.
"I'm sorry."
They all jumped. "For what reason do you apologize?" Teal'c rumbled, recovering first.
"I'm sorry for the circumstances that led to my arrival. I only knew Doctor Jackson briefly, but he was a fine man. I wish I had known him better."
"He's not dead," Jack said sharply.
"No! No, of course not. I didn't mean to imply that." Jonas poked at his food, then proved he had at least some survival instinct by putting down his fork. "I just thought I should say...I don't want to replace Doctor Jackson. From what I have learned of him, that would be impossible. But I would like to help you out, however I can. This place...well, it's as much of a home as I can lay claim to now, and I'm serious about helping to defend it."
Despite himself, Jack felt a small thawing in his feelings towards Jonas. "We know. It's just going to take us a little while, okay? No hard feelings."
Jonas smiled, relieved. "No hard feelings." He popped a large forkfull of mystery meat into his mouth and blanched, grabbing for his glass.
Jack sighed.
* * * * * * * * *
"Being sweet and nice isn't going to stop three or four Goa'uld motherships if they decide to come back again. I'd rather be a thief and alive than honest and dead. It's a clich, but there it is."
Pause.
"If you really believe that, I guess, uh, I guess I never really knew you at all."
"Come on. You're a bright guy. You had to sense some of this."
Pause.
"Then no. I guess you couldn't relate to me any more than I could to you."
"So this whole, uh, this whole friendship thing we've been working on for the past few years?"
"Apparently not much of a foundation there, huh?"
Daniel's eyes snapped open and he was out of bed before he knew it, standing shivering in the center of his room, arms tight around his chest in the habitual pose of self-protection he hadn't let himself adopt the first time he had heard those awful words come from Jack's mouth.
The first time.
Well, he supposed it had only been a matter of time before one of his recurring nightmares caught up with him.
He walked over to the window, between the billowing curtains, and stood, soothed by the gentle touches of fabric against bare skin. He and Jack had laid that awful conversation to rest a long time ago, but it still came back to haunt him sometimes. He leaned his head against the window's edge and stared out at the stars, trying to calm his fluttering heart.
The air changed. "Daniel? Is something wrong?"
He turned and offered her a half-smile. "Nightmare. Sorry if I woke you." Do you sleep? Or do you just...blink off?
Her face crinkled in sympathy and she gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, floating somewhere between corporeal and light form. "Dreams sometimes teach."
He gave her a blank look. "Right."
She gave his arm another squeeze and let go, elaborating. "You cannot go on a journey if you never leave your front step. You must release your burdens."
"Ah. Cut the ties to my past," Daniel said softly, staring out at the stars. There were clouds gathering to his left. He wondered if it would rain. "Move on. Get over it. Keep on trucking. Stiff upper lip."
He could hear the smile in her voice. "Sleep, Daniel."
A slight rush of air announced her departure. Daniel reached out and trailed his fingers lightly across the curtains, letting the motion soothe him, and wished he had something to keep his mind off his past. Pity he had left all his translation work at home. That was a thought, though. Maybe Oma's people had some sort of archive or library he could poke around in. Humor the Earthling and all that. Too bad they didn't believe in coffee.
"You hear that, Jack?" he murmured to the stars. "Even when I'm incorporeal I can't stop working. Is it any wonder I never left the mountain?" The idea brought a smile to his face.
For crying out loud, Daniel! A ghostly mental Jack-voice complained. Do you live in your office?
Daniel's smile faded.
"Release my burdens. Right."
* * * * * * * * *
Clutching a large pile of files to her chest, Sam made her way determinedly down the hall to Daniel's office, reminding herself with each step that when she got there, she wasn't going to see Daniel. Daniel would not be there. Daniel was gone. Daniel didn't live there any more. Jonas was there. Going to see Jonas. Yep, just heading to Jonas's office.
She pushed the door open and for a split second, despite her preparations, her heart leapt as she caught sight of the figure perched on a stool at the large worktable.
He turned to smile at her. "Major Carter, hello."
Reality crashed in. She forced a smile and recited the first twenty elements in the periodic table to bring her brain back in line. "Hi, Jonas."
His eyes flicked down at the files in her arms and she recalled abruptly what her mission was. "Oh! Right. Um, I just thought I'd bring you some of the files from our missions, so you could, you know, get a feel for what we're doing." Her voice trailed off as she stood awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, the files digging uncomfortably into her fingers. What was she doing, making nice to Daniel's replacement? She should be resentful, she should be angry, she should be pulling the same sort of things she'd pulled the first time her father had dared bring a lady friend home after her mother's death.
Lithium, beryllium, carbon, boron.
Jonas beamed at her, cutting that train of thought short with an almost audible screech. Right, Sam. And the reason you aren't pulling that kind of crap is because you're an adult now and the circumstances are completely different. And besides, it hadn't worked anyway.
She dumped the files on the only clean surface she could find, the desk chair. It looked like Jonas agreed with Daniel's filing theories, at least.
Jonas looked mildly uncertain. "There...certainly are a lot of them, aren't there?"
Sam felt a marginally malicious smile growing on her face and let it. Colonel O'Neill had called it the Evil Twin Smile once, the one both she and Daniel got when they were planning something guaranteed to give him a headache. According to the Colonel, the only expression it was worse to see both of them sporting was the Innocent Face. That was when he knew he was really in trouble.
"Jonas, this is just the first year."
His jaw dropped. "Oh," he said faintly. Sam took pity.
"It's not as bad as it looks, honest. A lot of this stuff is just recommendations for future missions, equipment lists, stuff like that. You'll probably want to stick to the summaries, give you an idea of how we operate, that kind of thing. It shouldn't take you too long, and if you have any questions, just ask one of us."
He gave her a warm smile. "Thank you, Major Carter. Well, I guess I'd better get started then, shouldn't I?"
Her retreat towards the door was halted by his next question. "Major Carter, I couldn't help but notice that a large number of the books on Doctor Jackson's shelves appear to be diaries of some sort."
She turned back, a million memories of Daniel scribbling in his journals running through her mind. "Yeah, Daniel kept a journal of each planet we visited, pretty much."
He shifted uncomfortably. "Do you suppose...do you think it would bother anyone if I took a look? Just to clear up a few details, here and there. I mean no disrespect," he added hastily at the look on her face.
Resentment slammed through her. Who was this man to think he could just waltz in and take Daniel's place? Read his journals? Like hell!
Vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron.
She pushed aside her feelings with an effort and a mentally growled grow UP, Sam!. "No. No, I'm sure that's okay. I'll just...I'll just go now." She turned away quickly, blinking hard.
"Major Carter?"
"Yes?" She forced another smile. Soldiers don't cry, Sam. Come on, be professional.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I'm not trying to take his place. I don't want to be his replacement. I hope someday I'll be able to make myself useful on my own merits, but until then, any help I can get, well...I just thought...if archaeologists on Earth proceed in the same manner as archaeologists on Colona, there will be a lot more I can learn from Doctor Jackson's journals than I can from official mission reports."
Sam gave him a rueful look. "No, you're right. Go ahead and read. You might find talking to Teal'c helpful, too - he was in your place a few years ago, and he'll be able to give you some insights into the way we do things that we wouldn't think to give."
"That's an excellent idea, Major Carter. Thank you."
"Oh, and Jonas?"
"Yes?"
"You can call me Sam, if it makes you more comfortable. Daniel... lots of people call me Sam."
His smile was grateful. "Thank you...Sam."
Sam turned and wandered back down to her lab, trying not to mind that Daniel's office didn't smell like coffee any more.
Osmium, iridium, platinum, gold...
* * * * * * * * *
After a bit of searching, Daniel finally found Oma in one of the gardens. "Oma, I wondered if I might ask you a favor."
She smiled at him, swirling gently. "Certainly, Daniel. If it is within my power."
"Right. Well, I was wondering, um, you see, that thing about releasing my burdens? Well, it isn't, uh, isn't really working very well. So far. I mean - I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. But the thing is, when I was on Earth - and I know that was in the past, and I'm supposed to be releasing that burden, but bear with me - when I was on Earth, and my mind was troubled, it helped to be able to do some work. To take my mind off of it, you know?"
She gave him a perplexed look. "You wish to travel through the Stargate?"
"No! No, not that work. I did other work too, see, I used to be an archaeologist and a linguist and - well, it's not really important, I mean, I'm releasing that, but the work I used to do, I would, uh, read things. Translate them. You know, accounts of other civilizations? It used to give me an insight into the cultures we were - well, anyway, I was wondering, do you have a library?"
She blinked. Daniel shifted uncomfortably.
"You wish something to read?"
"Yes! You know, just something to keep my mind occupied. It always helped in the past. Which I'm leaving behind. Really. No past."
Her eyes crinkled with amusement but she answered him gravely. "I see no problem with reading. We do, indeed, have an archive. I believe that is what you seek?"
Daniel grinned, immensely relieved. "Great! An archive would be wonderful."
"I do not believe you are familiar with our style of writing."
Daniel's smile grew. "Even better."
"Follow me."
* * * * * * * * *
"...Okay, so the gun you're going to be carrying is pretty straightforward. Carter and I, we carry P90s, which are fully automatic machine-guns capable of firing 900 rounds per minute at a rate of 2,346 feet per minute, and Teal'c carries a staff weapon which is an entirely different story, but I don't think you're quite up to that yet, so we're going to start you off with a Beretta nine millimeter handgun. It's pretty simple: also fully automatic, standard sights, fifteen round stagger magazine, combat trigger guard, and it'll fire about..." Jack's voice trailed off as his brain, going on automatic until now, registered the expression on Jonas's face as being somewhere between incredulous and deer-in-the-headlights. Irritation swelled.
"Okay, I'll make this a little simpler. This is a 'gun'. These are 'bul-lets'. Fifteen of them fit in a 'mag-a-zine', which means you can shoot somebody fifteen times before resorting to pistol whipping. Ah! Don't ask!" He held up a warning finger, recognizing the look on Jonas's face as the one Teal'c always got when he was about to ask for clarification. "This little lever is called a 'safety'. When the lever points along the barrel, that means the gun will fire. When it's angled down, like this, it means the gun will not fire. With me so far?"
Jonas nodded uncertainly. Jack rubbed his temple with one hand, asking himself again why he hadn't just delegated this job to the weaponsmaster... Because you felt sorry for him, you dope. It's the same reason you taught Teal'c and Daniel personally too. Cut the kid some frigging slack, okay?
"All right. To shoot, you point the gun away from yourself and pull the trigger, which is this piece of metal here." Jack suited action to words and a neat hole appeared near the center of the target at the end of the firing range. Jonas jumped. "You see this little metal point at the end of the barrel? That's the front part of your sight. When you're aiming the gun, you line that point up in the notch here and center both on the target. Do you feel ready to try taking a shot?" He clicked on the safety and dropped the gun in Jonas's hand. "Now, whenever someone hands you a gun, you want to check two things. First: see if the gun is loaded, which means checking the clip, like so, and also (now this is important) see if there's a round chambered...like this. And then, if it is loaded, put the safety on. With me?"
Jonas gave him a completely unconvincing nod.
Jack sighed. "Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but it's something you really need to know before you go off world with us. Don't worry, we'll make sure you get lots of practice. I don't know if you'll ever get to be comfortable around guns - Daniel worked with them for maybe six years and I don't think he ever got comfortable - but you'll at least know how to use one safely, which is really all we're asking. If you were in the military it would be different, but since you're still a civilian, we'll cut you some slack. Okay?"
Jonas's face cleared somewhat and he nodded more assertively this time. He gripped the gun and trained it on the target, managing a fairly good approximation of Jack's own stance, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Jonas gave Jack a puzzled look. Fighting to restrain a smile, Jack said gravely, "Of course, one of the things to remember is whether or not the safety is still on..."
"Oh, right," Jonas said sheepishly, and turned back to the target. He lined up the shot and squeezed the trigger. The sharp report of the gun made him yelp with surprise and drop the firearm with a clatter on the floor.
Jack closed his eyes and counted to ten. "And never drop your weapon."
Jonas scrambled to pick up the gun, only to have it snatched from him by a wide-eyed Jack. Bewildered, Jonas stared at him in astonishment.
"And never, EVER point your gun at someone you don't plan to shoot!" Jack could feel the anger rising in him and knew he'd better get away for a minute unless the cleaning crew wanted to be scraping Jonas off the walls. "Just...stand right there and don't touch anything! I'll be back in a minute," he growled, and stalked out into the hallway.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Come on, Jack. He isn't even from this planet. It's not his fault. Breathe in, breathe out. Christ, Daniel hadn't ever been this clueless, had he?
No, Daniel had never been this clueless. From the moment Brown dropped that pistol into Daniel's hand on the first mission to Abydos - as far as Jack knew, the first time Daniel had ever held a gun - Daniel had been pretty good about weapons. He'd never be Annie Oakley or anything, but he'd been a fair shot. Hell, Daniel had even been allowed the use of an M16 as early on as the Touched mission, not that he'd made a habit of it...
And all this was completely pointless, because that wasn't Daniel in there he was trying to teach. It was an uprooted academic from another planet who didn't know what words like 'magazine' and 'millimeter' meant, and who was going to kill someone by accident if he wasn't taught properly.
Resolved, Jack marched back into the firing range with all the grim determination of a man hell-bent on making it in front of a firing squad without a blindfold or a last smoke. Oooh, bad analogy, Jack...
Jonas was standing right where Jack had left him, looking so comically intent on not moving it almost made Jack smile.
"Okay, Jonas, let's try this again. Now you know that the gun makes a lot of noise when it's fired, so be ready for that this time. All set?"
His jaw squared, Jonas picked up the gun, aimed, and shot. A large chunk of cement wall several feet away from the target disintegrated.
Jack closed his eyes and debated whether or not beating his head against the wall would solve anything in the long run.
* * * * * * * * *
Humming contentedly to himself, Daniel unrolled another scroll and laid it across his increasingly cluttered worktable. The writing style was, as promised, completely unfamiliar, but with a little work he was pretty sure he could figure it out.
The contents of this latest scroll brought him up short. It wasn't written in the style of Oma's people, it was in what looked like a derivation of Arabic with a healthy smattering of Latin and Greek thrown in. Odd. Not a combination he came across usually.
But, to a kid who had grown up speaking more Arabic than English, easy enough to decipher. It seemed to be an account of a battle of some sort...no, not even a battle, an invasion. The enemy was apparently a race of beings who could cast illusions so realistic there was no piercing them, and who relied on some small empathic ability which let them judge their enemies responses and adjust accordingly. Daniel could almost feel the writer's horror as he described monsters with such increasingly terrifying forms that his planet's defenders had simply thrown down their weapons and cowered. This was what he loved about archaeology, this connection with someone long dead; a shared feeling, being able to imagine exactly what someone from so long ago had experienced, the terror as the illusion-monsters approached, knowing there was nothing he could do except write down his experiences and leave them as a warning...
Daniel shivered sympathetically, glad that SG-1 had never come up against such creatures. They'd only encountered the Goa'uld...and the Reetou...and whatever that race of beings that had taken over the SGC last year had called themselves... and...okay, so they'd run into plenty of nasty creatures over the years. He scanned the rest of the account to see if the writer had remarked on any weakness the race had, but came across nothing. As far as the author was concerned, they were invincible.
Peachy, as Jack would say. He supposed that the only way to tell if something was an illusion would be to watch carefully for any discrepancies between what you were seeing and what you knew to be true. Although, if these beings had empathic ability as the account suggested, they would be able to sense your suspicion and adjust, so that by the time you realized you were dealing with an illusion, it would be too late. What was it that Oma had said the first time they met? "If you immediately know the candle light is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago." He'd never understood it before, but maybe this was what she had been referring to.
Daniel cast a speculative eye over the other scrolls. If he could find others written in this strange mix of familiar languages, he might be able to glean a good deal of information about possible allies and enemies. If he could then pass that information on to the SGC...
But no, Oma had already told him he couldn't go back. An awful feeling began to uncurl in Daniel's gut. He couldn't actually tell anyone about this. All this knowledge...if he found some concrete threat to Earth, he wouldn't be able to pass it along. He would have to sit here, useless, stewing in the knowledge that SG-1 might be trying to defeat these very same enemies. And he would never know.
For the first time since his near-ascension, Daniel realized how alone he was.
The air changed next to him. "Daniel?" Oma's voice called anxiously. "Are you all right?"
Daniel forced a smile. "Yeah, fine."
Her eyes came to rest on the impetus behind Daniel's current panic attack, and for a moment something dark flickered behind her eyes, and made Daniel wonder if she knew firsthand about the people mentioned in the scroll.
"I just...I was just reading, and it occurred to me - if SG-1 gets captured, or killed, I'll never know. I won't know if they're okay and I won't be able to help them. They could be in trouble right now and I wouldn't know it." Daniel's took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I know I'm supposed to be leaving all that behind, but they're my family, or as close as I've got to one. It worries me."
Oma's expression seemed to ease a bit. "You mustn't worry, Daniel. I'll keep an eye on them for you. They're fine. You must release your burdens. Come, walk with me in the garden. Have you had much success with your translating?"
Daniel relaxed fractionally. "No. You were right. Most of it is stuff I've never encountered before, although it reminds me a little of a variation of Mandarin Chinese we came across on P4R949, and I think if I use that as a base..." He lost himself in the intricate puzzlework of a new language as they strolled through the garden, Oma nodding her head gently whenever he made a particularly brilliant revelation, regarding him the whole while with a sort of indulgent amusement that reminded him strongly of a lioness watching her cub's infant show of ferocity.
When he returned the next day to the library, the Arabic scroll had vanished.
* * * * * * * * *
Teal'c's muscles rippled as he struck out, his fist connecting solidly with the punching bag. The bag swung briskly back and Teal'c waited for it to complete its arc, then struck again with the other fist. Some sixth sense, honed over a lifetime of training, warned him that someone approached. Never slowing his mock fight, Teal'c analyzed the approach of the other person.
The stranger moved quietly, which ruled out O'Neill and Major Carter. O'Neill had learned the hard way never to sneak up on Teal'c, and incidentally that Jaffa do not appreciate practical jokes. Major Carter was clever enough to have figured that out before O'Neill's regrettable accident, and took care to step heavily as she approached. Most of the rest of the SGC were wary enough of the big man to walk around him in a wide arc, especially when he was practicing, as he was now.
So it was someone unused to the SGC and its members, which left...
"Jonas Quinn."
The person behind him stopped abruptly, and Teal'c could almost taste the man's surprise.
"How did you know it was me?"
Teal'c caught the rebounding bag and turned, arching one expressive eyebrow. "Not many at the SGC are unwise enough to come up behind me quietly."
Jonas Quinn blinked. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry."
Teal'c's expression softened into his version of a smile. "It is of no matter, but perhaps something to keep in mind in the future. What brings you here?"
"I came to talk to you, actually."
Teal'c waited.
Jonas shifted uncomfortably, evidently made uneasy by the Jaffa's taciturnity. "Maj - uh, Sam mentioned that it might be a good idea for me to talk to you. She said you'd be able to give me insights on...on the people here that she and Colonel O'Neill wouldn't think to give."
"On the Tau'ri." Teal'c inclined his head and motioned the scholar to one of the benches lining the gym. "Major Carter's suggestions are often wise. What do you wish to know?"
Jonas Quinn sat on the edge of the bench as if preparing to retreat rapidly should Teal'c show any signs of aggression. "I don't really even know where to start, I mean, there's so much to learn. I guess...what is your take on the people here? What are they like? I can't seem to get a handle on any of them."
"The people in this facility come from a background that is, I think, very different from your own. You are a scholar, are you not? And have little experience with the military?"
"Well, I have experience with the military of my planet, but...yes, I suppose you're right."
"They are people of great honor and loyalty, but it would perhaps be most informative for you to hear of O'Neill and Major Carter, would it not?" He arched an eyebrow as he spoke.
Jonas Quinn colored slightly, confirming Teal'c's suspicions as to his real motives in coming. "Well, yes. I feel bad asking them anything personal, because I don't want to offend. Do you mind?"
"I do not." The Jaffa rested his head against the wall, choosing his words with care. "O'Neill and Major Carter are both people of great strength, courage, integrity, and, though O'Neill obscures the fact, intelligence. They are not without faults, however; Major Carter will occasionally become so involved in a problem's scientific manifestation she may forget its more human aspects, and O'Neill can have something of a... 'one-track' mind when it come to matters of a military nature. Daniel Jackson was of great help in tempering these faults, often to his own detriment...although," he conceded with what came as close to a smirk as he ever got, "he was never able to discourage O'Neill's sometimes pathological overprotective streak."
Jonas Quinn grinned.
"They are...unlike anyone else I have ever met, certainly." He turned to face Jonas Quinn fully, and the scholar drew back slightly at the big man's expression. "I took an oath when I first joined the Tau'ri. I swore to protect them, with my life if necessary. Do not bring harm to them."
Jonas Quinn gazed back steadily. "I won't hurt them. I promise."
Teal'c leaned back, satisfied. "Indeed."
* * * * * * * * *
Daniel pulled his pillow over his head and admitted he was frustrated.
Frustrated, angry, confused...and he had the start of something that might be dread growing in the pit of his stomach.
His attempts to locate the tantalizing Arabic scroll had been met with a polite unhelpfulness apparently common to libraries across the galaxy. At first he had been told that there was no scroll like the one he described, and he therefore must have been imagining it. This was all done in a ruthlessly pleasant and tenderly concerned manner that suggested kindly to him he was mentally unstable or, even worse, wasting their time. The veteran of library battles by the thousands, he had finally managed to uncover the fact that if this particular scroll had existed then it must have been misshelved because there was no possible way it could have shown up on his table otherwise, and was he happy now?
This, unfortunately, still didn't tell him where the recalcitrant scroll had gone, and the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach was telling him that it was time he woke up and smelled the celestial coffee, because his subconscious was trying to tell him something. It was the same feeling he'd gotten before realizing the pyramids were older than anyone wanted to admit, and again when it became apparent that Ra hadn't been the last of his race after all, and then when he'd deciphered exactly what Hathor meant when she said "We are the mother of all pharaohs."...in short, it never meant anything good. Important, maybe, but rarely something destined to bring him long life and prosperity.
Merde.
All right, time to think, Daniel. What was it about the scroll?
It told the history of a race, a race with incredible powers which they didn't exactly appear to use for philanthropy. So, assuming a worst-case scenario, the logical assumption was that the scroll had been taken to prevent him from learning about this nameless race. The only problem with that scenario, of course, was that he'd already deciphered it.
Okay, think carefully. Does anyone actually know you've translated the scroll?
Well, the answer to that had to be 'no'. He'd talked to Oma about the other scrolls, but as far as he could remember, he'd given no indication that he'd already read the Arabic one. And, since it had been a relatively easy language, he hadn't even taken his usual copious notes. So as far as anyone knew, he hadn't read it.
All right. So the scroll had been taken to deny him knowledge of the illusion-masters. Could it have been because Oma didn't want him to worry?
No, that didn't make sense. He was already worried, and she knew it. Taking the scroll would have accomplished nothing, if she thought he couldn't read the damn thing. She'd sensed his panic and come running, but his panic had never been explicitly linked to the scroll.
Wait...sensed his panic? Weren't the illusion-masters supposed to be empaths?
Yes, but he'd bet his bottom dollar empathy wasn't entirely uncommon in the galaxy. And Oma's people, pacifistic and non-interventionist as they were, would be prime candidates for empathy.
Don't discount anything out of hand, Daniel. Loose ends will just lead to doubts later on.
All right. So, going by the worst-case scenario assumption again, Oma was either one of the illusion-masters or was an illusion-master pretending to be Oma. What was it he'd said the other day? That the only way to tell if something was an illusion would be to watch carefully for any discrepancies between what you were seeing and what you knew to be true, but that the illusion-masters had empathic ability and would sense your suspicion and adjust anyway, so by the time you realized you were dealing with an illusion, it would be too late.
Well, removing the scroll would certainly be considered an adjustment, so the next thing would be to look for discrepancies. Okay...the first time he'd met Oma, her priest had tried to teach him (using far too many deliberately cryptic phrases, if you asked Jack) that Oma could take care of Shifu better than he could, then he'd confronted Oma, realized what was going on, and let her take the baby.
And, now that he thought about it, Oma had never said a word. Nor had she ever assumed a corporeal or even human form. That was certainly a discrepancy. And it would explain some of the things that had been nagging at the back of his mind, like why he hadn't ascended all the way, and why now that he thought about it, no one had tried to teach him anything more important than the best way to the bathroom.
So far at least, his conspiracy theory was making more sense than a partial ascendance.
But how would an alien illusion-master know to use Oma's form?
Well, they were empaths, weren't they? Maybe they'd set it up to, oh, rely on his expectations or something. He expected to see Oma, then that was who he saw. But that begged the question - when had the deception begun? Right after his ascension? If that was the case, then how had they gotten rid of the real Oma?
Frustrated, Daniel pounded his pillow with one hand and scowled. Maybe there was some way he could test his theory. If the illusion relied, as he hypothesized, on expectations, there had to be a way. All he needed was something constant...
His eyes fell on the curtains. Every morning when he woke up, and every evening when he went to bed, the curtains blew gently in the wind.
Bingo.
He settled himself comfortably on the bed and closed his eyes. He thought, I do not expect the curtains to be blowing. I expect the curtains will be completely still when I next see them. He repeated this, fixed the image of still curtains in his mind, tried not to feel silly, and then opened his eyes.
The curtains were still.
Scheisse.
He was right.
He closed his eyes again, fighting down his rising panic. Calm down. You can't afford to give anything away. If you are right - and that's still a big 'if' - Not-Oma will be able to sense it and she'll come running. Orbing. Whatever. He concentrated on breathing, and slowly opened his eyes. The curtains still hung limply in the window. Okay, think carefully, Daniel. What reason would somebody have to impersonate Oma?
,i>"Come, Daniel. We will tread the paths of the garden, and you will tell me of your friends and your enemies."
Dear God. She had asked, and he had answered. All the stories Jack had ever told him about being captured, all the lectures he'd had to sit through about withstanding torture and not giving anything away, just telling those bastards your name, rank, and serial number, dead men tell no tales, all that came flooding back to Daniel.
Oh, they were in such big trouble.
He focused on breathing again, remembering Teal'c's lessons on meditation, and recited the opening passage from the Book of the Dead in the original Egyptian for good measure. When he was sure he was calm, he opened his eyes again.
Okay. First things first. He had to get out of there. But how could he leave in the knowledge that an unknown enemy had learned all the secrets of the Tau'ri from him? He couldn't possibly. He had no clue who held him captive or why they were getting information from him.
Always be sure of your escape routes, Daniel Jackson. Teal'c's voice rumbled through his brain.
He would also have to find the Stargate. If all else failed, maybe he could at least get a message to one of their allies, since he didn't have a GDO and therefore couldn't be sure of anything getting through to the SGC.
He got up and went to the window, checking the horizon for the Stargate. He hadn't noticed one in any of his wanderings, but it was always worth a shot.
Nope, still no gate.
Daniel closed his eyes and ran through Teal'c's meditation techniques again. I do not expect to see gardens, he thought. I do not expect to see anything in particular. My mind is Void. I have no expectations. Show me what you will.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
Reality came crashing down. All pretense of calm vanished.
What the...
I'm on Colona!
Part Two
RATING: PG-13 (some kind of icky descriptions, bad language which is multilingual and therefore educational)
CATEGORY: Action/Adventure, drama, angst, AU I suppose because I sort of throw a monkey wrench into all of season 6
SUMMARY: Meridian tag (but don't worry, the gang's all here).
SPOILERS: Oh, boy. Big ones for Meridian, of course, Shades of Gray and Legacy, small ones for the movie, Maternal Instinct, Absolute Power, Prisoners, Crystal Skull... basically, everything in the first four seasons is Fair Game.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is my first long story, so I want to know if I actually managed to pull it off with any degree of finesse. Thanks to MK, LimeKid, and LittleK for beta work, and, as always, for listening patiently.
"To life...and its many deaths."
-The Impostors
NADIR
In, out.
In, out.
In, out.
The white curtains billowed softly in the light breeze, reminding him of sailing ships and summer nights when you thought you'd die if you couldn't find a bit of wind somewhere. Daniel lay on his side, facing the window across the room, and watched the curtains.
In, out.
In, out.
He could almost feel himself moving with the curtains, back and forth, whispering across the floor like a dancing ghost. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the soft shush shush of the fabric, a gentle rhythm that sang to him like a lullabye.
In, out.
He let himself drift, thinking of white things. There had been gauzy white linen curtains in one of the apartments he had shared with his parents, curtains like these. They were floor length as well, and even on those nights when the heat had pressed down like a living thing, smothering and suffocating, the curtains had still found some way to move. No matter how hot it had gotten, all he'd had to do was concentrate on the underwater movement of the curtains and he could fall asleep.
He opened his eyes again, rocking minutely back and forth, following the curtains.
There had been other white things, recently. He could remember looking down at himself, at the small bumps under the white sheets that represented his knees, the tiny tented hillocks so far away that were his feet. He'd always liked clean white sheets. There was something about them that automatically made you feel comfortable.
He remembered looking down at the bandages on his chest, white and textured, watching with detached curiosity as a small red spot grew in size and spread across his ribcage, remembered realizing through a haze of drugs that this was his blood smeared on the bandages, his blood and not red dye or ketchup like one of his foster fathers had always told him they used in the movies. He could remember the nurse coming by, noticing the blood and quickly changing the bandage, her face carefully shuttered to hide her revulsion at what was concealed underneath.
He could remember the pain, the pain that the drugs finally couldn't blunt, the feeling as his stomach and intestines turned to mush and his skin cracked and dissolved until he was nothing but a person-shaped bag of blood and blazing nerve endings, all neatly covered over by clean white bandages. He could remember looking out from two holes in a mask of white cotton, the vague stirring of panic when he realized he could no longer move on his own. He wasn't even a person any more, not really, because people have organs and skin that isn't made of bandages.
He shuddered, and resolutely turned his mind away from those morbid thoughts, curling up a bit tighter on the bed, willing himself to think of other things.
Daisies. Daisies were white. There was nothing too sinister about daisies.
Oma. Oma Desala and Shifu were white, some of the time anyway, and there was nothing wrong with them. Okay, so Oma could flatten an entire regiment of Jaffa with lightning and Shifu could send dreams that rocked all your conceptions of yourself and your worth to the core, but he'd meant well, really...
He sighed in resignation. There was nothing for it; he was going to have to get up now. His brain had kicked into gear again, and there was no way he was going to be able to turn it off. Once it got started on thinking there was no stopping it. He remembered Jack's incredulity on Hadante, when Daniel had thought of a gate address after being strangled. It gave him such a smug feeling of satisfaction, sometimes, to shock Jack that way.
He shook his head to clear it and sat up, dangling his legs over the edge of his bed. It was no good thinking of Jack right now, or Sam or Teal'c or Janet or Cassie or anyone else he'd left behind. They belonged to a different part of his life. When he'd woken up the first morning and asked Oma if he could ever go back and see them again, she had rebuked him gently, pointing out in her inevitably cryptic fashion that the Great Path did not go in circles, and with an effort, he had tried to put his friends into the section of his brain reserved for foster families and old teachers, all the people he'd loved in the past and had to say goodbye to. But SG-1, like Sha're, had refused to fade away. It was going to take a long time to dull those memories.
He levered himself to his feet and wandered over to the window, nudging his way through the ballooning curtains to lean against the wall and stare out over the garden. It looked a lot like the garden on Kheb, which he supposed made sense.
He'd been surprised, that first morning he'd woken up, to find that he wasn't intangible, wasn't light like Oma. He distinctly remembered turning into light, floating up through the infirmary ceiling away from the stricken faces of his friends and through the gate to...wherever he was now, exactly. Oma had given him an inscrutable look (not that she really had any other kind, of course), and said "When the mind is freed, the body is no longer required," which he took to mean that he still had a bit of work ahead of him before he was allowed to ascend for good.
He was kind of glad, actually, to have his body back. He liked being solid. That whole fiasco with the crystal skull and his own disappearing act had imbued him with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for being invisible and intangible.
The air in his room changed slightly and he turned, the hairs on his arms standing up with static electricity.
"Hello, Oma."
"Good morning, Daniel. Your thoughts seem heavy today."
He gave her a little half-smile. "I was thinking about the past again."
She inclined her head gravely in the direction of the door. "Come, Daniel. We will tread the paths of the garden, and you will tell me of your friends and your enemies."
He smiled gratefully at her. He was never quite sure if her curiosity regarding his past was genuine or simply an excuse for him to talk, but he appreciated it either way. He doubted there was much he could tell her about the Goa'uld, for example (she had, after all, known of the Harcesis child before they had), but talking made him feel less like a slightly foolish student and more like someone with two PhDs who had been travelling through the Gate for six years. If there was one thing he'd missed these past few years, he reflected as they walked by the water lily pool, it was an interested audience.
Colonel Jack O'Neill sat down at the commissary table and regarded his mashed potatoes with a considerable lack of enthusiasm. He wasn't particularly hungry, but as a good CO was trying to set an example for Carter and Teal'c. It was true what Joni Mitchell used to warble about parking lots and paradise, he thought. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.
A tray plonked itself down in front of him and he looked up. "Hey, Carter."
"Hi." She slumped down into her seat and poked her Jell-O dubiously. "They messed it up. I didn't think it was even possible to mess up Jell-O. I mean, who doesn't know how to make Jell-O? You just follow the instructions on the box. All you have to do is add water and let it sit. It's not that hard. They didn't even get the color right. It's supposed to be blue. This isn't blue, it's..."
"Blue?"
She sighed and took a bite. "Yeah. Blue."
A third tray announced the arrival of Teal'c. "O'Neill. Major Carter."
"Do you think this Jell-O looks funny, Teal'c?"
Teal'c fixed her with one of his patented inscrutable stares. "It is Jell-O."
"Good point."
They continued eating in silence, and Jack couldn't help but wish for the incomprehensible chatter that used to be the trademark of SG-1 team lunches.
"I feel like right after we got back from Nem's planet," he said abruptly. Carter dropped her fork.
"Because Daniel Jackson is not dead."
Jack shifted uncomfortably and wished he'd never said anything. They'd been doing such a good job not talking about it so far. "Yeah."
"He's in a better place for him," Carter said, but she wouldn't look up from the systematic liquefying of her blue-not-blue Jell-O.
"Yeah," Jack said again, and there was silence at the table.
The truth was, he felt a little abandoned. Okay, so Jacob wouldn't have been able to heal Daniel completely, and okay the kid had pretty much been at loose ends since Sha're died and Shifu proved without a doubt that he could take care of himself, but that was no excuse to accept an offer from Tinkerbell On Crack and take the wormhole express to who-knows-where without so much as a by-your-leave or a "Toodles!" to your teammates. How many times had he told Daniel not to go wandering off?
Jack smacked his spoon down into his mashed potatoes with a little more force than was necessary. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being a little unfair to his erstwhile teammate. It wasn't like he'd really said good bye either, after all. Just some crack about Daniel being a pain in the butt. Good job, Jack.
Another smack of the spoon splattered mashed potatoes across his tray and earned him a raised eyebrow from Teal'c, who was managing to eat even the crap the commissary called food with dignity. He gave Teal'c an embarrassed half-smile, and glanced over at the shelves of pie on the other side of the commissary, considering skipping lunch altogether and going straight for dessert. Some days that was the best way to go. What was it that Daniel had told him once? "Life is uncertain, eat dessert first"?
"Oh, for cryin' out loud..." he muttered as he spotted Jonas Quinn making his was uncertainly through the commissary line.
"What, sir?"
"That Quinn kid. You just know he's going to come sit with us."
Carter cracked a smile and gave him that look she only gave him when she thought he was acting like he was still in junior high. Jack ignored it loftily.
"We are the only people that Jonas Quinn knows, O'Neill," there was a hint of rebuke in Teal'c's voice.
"I know, it's just..."
"We're not quite ready to accept his part in Daniel's..." her voice trailed off.
"Transition to Tinkerbell?" That got him another smile. "It's not even that. It's just...can you remember how long it took to get Daniel to think like a soldier? We're going to be starting all over again with another clueless civilian. If Daniel made me go gray, this guy's going to give me a heart attack. And ulcers."
Teal'c shifted next to him, a movement reminiscent of the way tectonic plates change position. "Is he to be our new member, O'Neill?"
"I'm not sure yet. It makes sense, I mean, we need a cultural expert and he does that, and it's easier to take someone from offworld than to recruit a guy from Earth and expect him to keep quiet. Daniel was sort of a unique case, there. So it sort of makes sense. Logically speaking. Yeah."
Carter sighed and drained her Jell-O with a surprisingly childlike slurp. "Well, he seems like a nice enough guy, I suppose. And he did come through for us, in the end."
Silence fell at the table again, broken by the predicted arrival of Jonas, who stood uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot before finally asking "Er, can I sit down?"
"For crying out loud, Quinn, it's a free commissary."
Jonas blinked at him, "Oh," and sat down. The silence grew brittle and uncomfortable as everyone tried to pretend there was no silence whatsoever.
"I'm sorry."
They all jumped. "For what reason do you apologize?" Teal'c rumbled, recovering first.
"I'm sorry for the circumstances that led to my arrival. I only knew Doctor Jackson briefly, but he was a fine man. I wish I had known him better."
"He's not dead," Jack said sharply.
"No! No, of course not. I didn't mean to imply that." Jonas poked at his food, then proved he had at least some survival instinct by putting down his fork. "I just thought I should say...I don't want to replace Doctor Jackson. From what I have learned of him, that would be impossible. But I would like to help you out, however I can. This place...well, it's as much of a home as I can lay claim to now, and I'm serious about helping to defend it."
Despite himself, Jack felt a small thawing in his feelings towards Jonas. "We know. It's just going to take us a little while, okay? No hard feelings."
Jonas smiled, relieved. "No hard feelings." He popped a large forkfull of mystery meat into his mouth and blanched, grabbing for his glass.
Jack sighed.
"Being sweet and nice isn't going to stop three or four Goa'uld motherships if they decide to come back again. I'd rather be a thief and alive than honest and dead. It's a clich, but there it is."
Pause.
"If you really believe that, I guess, uh, I guess I never really knew you at all."
"Come on. You're a bright guy. You had to sense some of this."
Pause.
"Then no. I guess you couldn't relate to me any more than I could to you."
"So this whole, uh, this whole friendship thing we've been working on for the past few years?"
"Apparently not much of a foundation there, huh?"
Daniel's eyes snapped open and he was out of bed before he knew it, standing shivering in the center of his room, arms tight around his chest in the habitual pose of self-protection he hadn't let himself adopt the first time he had heard those awful words come from Jack's mouth.
The first time.
Well, he supposed it had only been a matter of time before one of his recurring nightmares caught up with him.
He walked over to the window, between the billowing curtains, and stood, soothed by the gentle touches of fabric against bare skin. He and Jack had laid that awful conversation to rest a long time ago, but it still came back to haunt him sometimes. He leaned his head against the window's edge and stared out at the stars, trying to calm his fluttering heart.
The air changed. "Daniel? Is something wrong?"
He turned and offered her a half-smile. "Nightmare. Sorry if I woke you." Do you sleep? Or do you just...blink off?
Her face crinkled in sympathy and she gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, floating somewhere between corporeal and light form. "Dreams sometimes teach."
He gave her a blank look. "Right."
She gave his arm another squeeze and let go, elaborating. "You cannot go on a journey if you never leave your front step. You must release your burdens."
"Ah. Cut the ties to my past," Daniel said softly, staring out at the stars. There were clouds gathering to his left. He wondered if it would rain. "Move on. Get over it. Keep on trucking. Stiff upper lip."
He could hear the smile in her voice. "Sleep, Daniel."
A slight rush of air announced her departure. Daniel reached out and trailed his fingers lightly across the curtains, letting the motion soothe him, and wished he had something to keep his mind off his past. Pity he had left all his translation work at home. That was a thought, though. Maybe Oma's people had some sort of archive or library he could poke around in. Humor the Earthling and all that. Too bad they didn't believe in coffee.
"You hear that, Jack?" he murmured to the stars. "Even when I'm incorporeal I can't stop working. Is it any wonder I never left the mountain?" The idea brought a smile to his face.
For crying out loud, Daniel! A ghostly mental Jack-voice complained. Do you live in your office?
Daniel's smile faded.
"Release my burdens. Right."
Clutching a large pile of files to her chest, Sam made her way determinedly down the hall to Daniel's office, reminding herself with each step that when she got there, she wasn't going to see Daniel. Daniel would not be there. Daniel was gone. Daniel didn't live there any more. Jonas was there. Going to see Jonas. Yep, just heading to Jonas's office.
She pushed the door open and for a split second, despite her preparations, her heart leapt as she caught sight of the figure perched on a stool at the large worktable.
He turned to smile at her. "Major Carter, hello."
Reality crashed in. She forced a smile and recited the first twenty elements in the periodic table to bring her brain back in line. "Hi, Jonas."
His eyes flicked down at the files in her arms and she recalled abruptly what her mission was. "Oh! Right. Um, I just thought I'd bring you some of the files from our missions, so you could, you know, get a feel for what we're doing." Her voice trailed off as she stood awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, the files digging uncomfortably into her fingers. What was she doing, making nice to Daniel's replacement? She should be resentful, she should be angry, she should be pulling the same sort of things she'd pulled the first time her father had dared bring a lady friend home after her mother's death.
Lithium, beryllium, carbon, boron.
Jonas beamed at her, cutting that train of thought short with an almost audible screech. Right, Sam. And the reason you aren't pulling that kind of crap is because you're an adult now and the circumstances are completely different. And besides, it hadn't worked anyway.
She dumped the files on the only clean surface she could find, the desk chair. It looked like Jonas agreed with Daniel's filing theories, at least.
Jonas looked mildly uncertain. "There...certainly are a lot of them, aren't there?"
Sam felt a marginally malicious smile growing on her face and let it. Colonel O'Neill had called it the Evil Twin Smile once, the one both she and Daniel got when they were planning something guaranteed to give him a headache. According to the Colonel, the only expression it was worse to see both of them sporting was the Innocent Face. That was when he knew he was really in trouble.
"Jonas, this is just the first year."
His jaw dropped. "Oh," he said faintly. Sam took pity.
"It's not as bad as it looks, honest. A lot of this stuff is just recommendations for future missions, equipment lists, stuff like that. You'll probably want to stick to the summaries, give you an idea of how we operate, that kind of thing. It shouldn't take you too long, and if you have any questions, just ask one of us."
He gave her a warm smile. "Thank you, Major Carter. Well, I guess I'd better get started then, shouldn't I?"
Her retreat towards the door was halted by his next question. "Major Carter, I couldn't help but notice that a large number of the books on Doctor Jackson's shelves appear to be diaries of some sort."
She turned back, a million memories of Daniel scribbling in his journals running through her mind. "Yeah, Daniel kept a journal of each planet we visited, pretty much."
He shifted uncomfortably. "Do you suppose...do you think it would bother anyone if I took a look? Just to clear up a few details, here and there. I mean no disrespect," he added hastily at the look on her face.
Resentment slammed through her. Who was this man to think he could just waltz in and take Daniel's place? Read his journals? Like hell!
Vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron.
She pushed aside her feelings with an effort and a mentally growled grow UP, Sam!. "No. No, I'm sure that's okay. I'll just...I'll just go now." She turned away quickly, blinking hard.
"Major Carter?"
"Yes?" She forced another smile. Soldiers don't cry, Sam. Come on, be professional.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I'm not trying to take his place. I don't want to be his replacement. I hope someday I'll be able to make myself useful on my own merits, but until then, any help I can get, well...I just thought...if archaeologists on Earth proceed in the same manner as archaeologists on Colona, there will be a lot more I can learn from Doctor Jackson's journals than I can from official mission reports."
Sam gave him a rueful look. "No, you're right. Go ahead and read. You might find talking to Teal'c helpful, too - he was in your place a few years ago, and he'll be able to give you some insights into the way we do things that we wouldn't think to give."
"That's an excellent idea, Major Carter. Thank you."
"Oh, and Jonas?"
"Yes?"
"You can call me Sam, if it makes you more comfortable. Daniel... lots of people call me Sam."
His smile was grateful. "Thank you...Sam."
Sam turned and wandered back down to her lab, trying not to mind that Daniel's office didn't smell like coffee any more.
Osmium, iridium, platinum, gold...
After a bit of searching, Daniel finally found Oma in one of the gardens. "Oma, I wondered if I might ask you a favor."
She smiled at him, swirling gently. "Certainly, Daniel. If it is within my power."
"Right. Well, I was wondering, um, you see, that thing about releasing my burdens? Well, it isn't, uh, isn't really working very well. So far. I mean - I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. But the thing is, when I was on Earth - and I know that was in the past, and I'm supposed to be releasing that burden, but bear with me - when I was on Earth, and my mind was troubled, it helped to be able to do some work. To take my mind off of it, you know?"
She gave him a perplexed look. "You wish to travel through the Stargate?"
"No! No, not that work. I did other work too, see, I used to be an archaeologist and a linguist and - well, it's not really important, I mean, I'm releasing that, but the work I used to do, I would, uh, read things. Translate them. You know, accounts of other civilizations? It used to give me an insight into the cultures we were - well, anyway, I was wondering, do you have a library?"
She blinked. Daniel shifted uncomfortably.
"You wish something to read?"
"Yes! You know, just something to keep my mind occupied. It always helped in the past. Which I'm leaving behind. Really. No past."
Her eyes crinkled with amusement but she answered him gravely. "I see no problem with reading. We do, indeed, have an archive. I believe that is what you seek?"
Daniel grinned, immensely relieved. "Great! An archive would be wonderful."
"I do not believe you are familiar with our style of writing."
Daniel's smile grew. "Even better."
"Follow me."
"...Okay, so the gun you're going to be carrying is pretty straightforward. Carter and I, we carry P90s, which are fully automatic machine-guns capable of firing 900 rounds per minute at a rate of 2,346 feet per minute, and Teal'c carries a staff weapon which is an entirely different story, but I don't think you're quite up to that yet, so we're going to start you off with a Beretta nine millimeter handgun. It's pretty simple: also fully automatic, standard sights, fifteen round stagger magazine, combat trigger guard, and it'll fire about..." Jack's voice trailed off as his brain, going on automatic until now, registered the expression on Jonas's face as being somewhere between incredulous and deer-in-the-headlights. Irritation swelled.
"Okay, I'll make this a little simpler. This is a 'gun'. These are 'bul-lets'. Fifteen of them fit in a 'mag-a-zine', which means you can shoot somebody fifteen times before resorting to pistol whipping. Ah! Don't ask!" He held up a warning finger, recognizing the look on Jonas's face as the one Teal'c always got when he was about to ask for clarification. "This little lever is called a 'safety'. When the lever points along the barrel, that means the gun will fire. When it's angled down, like this, it means the gun will not fire. With me so far?"
Jonas nodded uncertainly. Jack rubbed his temple with one hand, asking himself again why he hadn't just delegated this job to the weaponsmaster... Because you felt sorry for him, you dope. It's the same reason you taught Teal'c and Daniel personally too. Cut the kid some frigging slack, okay?
"All right. To shoot, you point the gun away from yourself and pull the trigger, which is this piece of metal here." Jack suited action to words and a neat hole appeared near the center of the target at the end of the firing range. Jonas jumped. "You see this little metal point at the end of the barrel? That's the front part of your sight. When you're aiming the gun, you line that point up in the notch here and center both on the target. Do you feel ready to try taking a shot?" He clicked on the safety and dropped the gun in Jonas's hand. "Now, whenever someone hands you a gun, you want to check two things. First: see if the gun is loaded, which means checking the clip, like so, and also (now this is important) see if there's a round chambered...like this. And then, if it is loaded, put the safety on. With me?"
Jonas gave him a completely unconvincing nod.
Jack sighed. "Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but it's something you really need to know before you go off world with us. Don't worry, we'll make sure you get lots of practice. I don't know if you'll ever get to be comfortable around guns - Daniel worked with them for maybe six years and I don't think he ever got comfortable - but you'll at least know how to use one safely, which is really all we're asking. If you were in the military it would be different, but since you're still a civilian, we'll cut you some slack. Okay?"
Jonas's face cleared somewhat and he nodded more assertively this time. He gripped the gun and trained it on the target, managing a fairly good approximation of Jack's own stance, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Jonas gave Jack a puzzled look. Fighting to restrain a smile, Jack said gravely, "Of course, one of the things to remember is whether or not the safety is still on..."
"Oh, right," Jonas said sheepishly, and turned back to the target. He lined up the shot and squeezed the trigger. The sharp report of the gun made him yelp with surprise and drop the firearm with a clatter on the floor.
Jack closed his eyes and counted to ten. "And never drop your weapon."
Jonas scrambled to pick up the gun, only to have it snatched from him by a wide-eyed Jack. Bewildered, Jonas stared at him in astonishment.
"And never, EVER point your gun at someone you don't plan to shoot!" Jack could feel the anger rising in him and knew he'd better get away for a minute unless the cleaning crew wanted to be scraping Jonas off the walls. "Just...stand right there and don't touch anything! I'll be back in a minute," he growled, and stalked out into the hallway.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Come on, Jack. He isn't even from this planet. It's not his fault. Breathe in, breathe out. Christ, Daniel hadn't ever been this clueless, had he?
No, Daniel had never been this clueless. From the moment Brown dropped that pistol into Daniel's hand on the first mission to Abydos - as far as Jack knew, the first time Daniel had ever held a gun - Daniel had been pretty good about weapons. He'd never be Annie Oakley or anything, but he'd been a fair shot. Hell, Daniel had even been allowed the use of an M16 as early on as the Touched mission, not that he'd made a habit of it...
And all this was completely pointless, because that wasn't Daniel in there he was trying to teach. It was an uprooted academic from another planet who didn't know what words like 'magazine' and 'millimeter' meant, and who was going to kill someone by accident if he wasn't taught properly.
Resolved, Jack marched back into the firing range with all the grim determination of a man hell-bent on making it in front of a firing squad without a blindfold or a last smoke. Oooh, bad analogy, Jack...
Jonas was standing right where Jack had left him, looking so comically intent on not moving it almost made Jack smile.
"Okay, Jonas, let's try this again. Now you know that the gun makes a lot of noise when it's fired, so be ready for that this time. All set?"
His jaw squared, Jonas picked up the gun, aimed, and shot. A large chunk of cement wall several feet away from the target disintegrated.
Jack closed his eyes and debated whether or not beating his head against the wall would solve anything in the long run.
Humming contentedly to himself, Daniel unrolled another scroll and laid it across his increasingly cluttered worktable. The writing style was, as promised, completely unfamiliar, but with a little work he was pretty sure he could figure it out.
The contents of this latest scroll brought him up short. It wasn't written in the style of Oma's people, it was in what looked like a derivation of Arabic with a healthy smattering of Latin and Greek thrown in. Odd. Not a combination he came across usually.
But, to a kid who had grown up speaking more Arabic than English, easy enough to decipher. It seemed to be an account of a battle of some sort...no, not even a battle, an invasion. The enemy was apparently a race of beings who could cast illusions so realistic there was no piercing them, and who relied on some small empathic ability which let them judge their enemies responses and adjust accordingly. Daniel could almost feel the writer's horror as he described monsters with such increasingly terrifying forms that his planet's defenders had simply thrown down their weapons and cowered. This was what he loved about archaeology, this connection with someone long dead; a shared feeling, being able to imagine exactly what someone from so long ago had experienced, the terror as the illusion-monsters approached, knowing there was nothing he could do except write down his experiences and leave them as a warning...
Daniel shivered sympathetically, glad that SG-1 had never come up against such creatures. They'd only encountered the Goa'uld...and the Reetou...and whatever that race of beings that had taken over the SGC last year had called themselves... and...okay, so they'd run into plenty of nasty creatures over the years. He scanned the rest of the account to see if the writer had remarked on any weakness the race had, but came across nothing. As far as the author was concerned, they were invincible.
Peachy, as Jack would say. He supposed that the only way to tell if something was an illusion would be to watch carefully for any discrepancies between what you were seeing and what you knew to be true. Although, if these beings had empathic ability as the account suggested, they would be able to sense your suspicion and adjust, so that by the time you realized you were dealing with an illusion, it would be too late. What was it that Oma had said the first time they met? "If you immediately know the candle light is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago." He'd never understood it before, but maybe this was what she had been referring to.
Daniel cast a speculative eye over the other scrolls. If he could find others written in this strange mix of familiar languages, he might be able to glean a good deal of information about possible allies and enemies. If he could then pass that information on to the SGC...
But no, Oma had already told him he couldn't go back. An awful feeling began to uncurl in Daniel's gut. He couldn't actually tell anyone about this. All this knowledge...if he found some concrete threat to Earth, he wouldn't be able to pass it along. He would have to sit here, useless, stewing in the knowledge that SG-1 might be trying to defeat these very same enemies. And he would never know.
For the first time since his near-ascension, Daniel realized how alone he was.
The air changed next to him. "Daniel?" Oma's voice called anxiously. "Are you all right?"
Daniel forced a smile. "Yeah, fine."
Her eyes came to rest on the impetus behind Daniel's current panic attack, and for a moment something dark flickered behind her eyes, and made Daniel wonder if she knew firsthand about the people mentioned in the scroll.
"I just...I was just reading, and it occurred to me - if SG-1 gets captured, or killed, I'll never know. I won't know if they're okay and I won't be able to help them. They could be in trouble right now and I wouldn't know it." Daniel's took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I know I'm supposed to be leaving all that behind, but they're my family, or as close as I've got to one. It worries me."
Oma's expression seemed to ease a bit. "You mustn't worry, Daniel. I'll keep an eye on them for you. They're fine. You must release your burdens. Come, walk with me in the garden. Have you had much success with your translating?"
Daniel relaxed fractionally. "No. You were right. Most of it is stuff I've never encountered before, although it reminds me a little of a variation of Mandarin Chinese we came across on P4R949, and I think if I use that as a base..." He lost himself in the intricate puzzlework of a new language as they strolled through the garden, Oma nodding her head gently whenever he made a particularly brilliant revelation, regarding him the whole while with a sort of indulgent amusement that reminded him strongly of a lioness watching her cub's infant show of ferocity.
When he returned the next day to the library, the Arabic scroll had vanished.
Teal'c's muscles rippled as he struck out, his fist connecting solidly with the punching bag. The bag swung briskly back and Teal'c waited for it to complete its arc, then struck again with the other fist. Some sixth sense, honed over a lifetime of training, warned him that someone approached. Never slowing his mock fight, Teal'c analyzed the approach of the other person.
The stranger moved quietly, which ruled out O'Neill and Major Carter. O'Neill had learned the hard way never to sneak up on Teal'c, and incidentally that Jaffa do not appreciate practical jokes. Major Carter was clever enough to have figured that out before O'Neill's regrettable accident, and took care to step heavily as she approached. Most of the rest of the SGC were wary enough of the big man to walk around him in a wide arc, especially when he was practicing, as he was now.
So it was someone unused to the SGC and its members, which left...
"Jonas Quinn."
The person behind him stopped abruptly, and Teal'c could almost taste the man's surprise.
"How did you know it was me?"
Teal'c caught the rebounding bag and turned, arching one expressive eyebrow. "Not many at the SGC are unwise enough to come up behind me quietly."
Jonas Quinn blinked. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry."
Teal'c's expression softened into his version of a smile. "It is of no matter, but perhaps something to keep in mind in the future. What brings you here?"
"I came to talk to you, actually."
Teal'c waited.
Jonas shifted uncomfortably, evidently made uneasy by the Jaffa's taciturnity. "Maj - uh, Sam mentioned that it might be a good idea for me to talk to you. She said you'd be able to give me insights on...on the people here that she and Colonel O'Neill wouldn't think to give."
"On the Tau'ri." Teal'c inclined his head and motioned the scholar to one of the benches lining the gym. "Major Carter's suggestions are often wise. What do you wish to know?"
Jonas Quinn sat on the edge of the bench as if preparing to retreat rapidly should Teal'c show any signs of aggression. "I don't really even know where to start, I mean, there's so much to learn. I guess...what is your take on the people here? What are they like? I can't seem to get a handle on any of them."
"The people in this facility come from a background that is, I think, very different from your own. You are a scholar, are you not? And have little experience with the military?"
"Well, I have experience with the military of my planet, but...yes, I suppose you're right."
"They are people of great honor and loyalty, but it would perhaps be most informative for you to hear of O'Neill and Major Carter, would it not?" He arched an eyebrow as he spoke.
Jonas Quinn colored slightly, confirming Teal'c's suspicions as to his real motives in coming. "Well, yes. I feel bad asking them anything personal, because I don't want to offend. Do you mind?"
"I do not." The Jaffa rested his head against the wall, choosing his words with care. "O'Neill and Major Carter are both people of great strength, courage, integrity, and, though O'Neill obscures the fact, intelligence. They are not without faults, however; Major Carter will occasionally become so involved in a problem's scientific manifestation she may forget its more human aspects, and O'Neill can have something of a... 'one-track' mind when it come to matters of a military nature. Daniel Jackson was of great help in tempering these faults, often to his own detriment...although," he conceded with what came as close to a smirk as he ever got, "he was never able to discourage O'Neill's sometimes pathological overprotective streak."
Jonas Quinn grinned.
"They are...unlike anyone else I have ever met, certainly." He turned to face Jonas Quinn fully, and the scholar drew back slightly at the big man's expression. "I took an oath when I first joined the Tau'ri. I swore to protect them, with my life if necessary. Do not bring harm to them."
Jonas Quinn gazed back steadily. "I won't hurt them. I promise."
Teal'c leaned back, satisfied. "Indeed."
Daniel pulled his pillow over his head and admitted he was frustrated.
Frustrated, angry, confused...and he had the start of something that might be dread growing in the pit of his stomach.
His attempts to locate the tantalizing Arabic scroll had been met with a polite unhelpfulness apparently common to libraries across the galaxy. At first he had been told that there was no scroll like the one he described, and he therefore must have been imagining it. This was all done in a ruthlessly pleasant and tenderly concerned manner that suggested kindly to him he was mentally unstable or, even worse, wasting their time. The veteran of library battles by the thousands, he had finally managed to uncover the fact that if this particular scroll had existed then it must have been misshelved because there was no possible way it could have shown up on his table otherwise, and was he happy now?
This, unfortunately, still didn't tell him where the recalcitrant scroll had gone, and the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach was telling him that it was time he woke up and smelled the celestial coffee, because his subconscious was trying to tell him something. It was the same feeling he'd gotten before realizing the pyramids were older than anyone wanted to admit, and again when it became apparent that Ra hadn't been the last of his race after all, and then when he'd deciphered exactly what Hathor meant when she said "We are the mother of all pharaohs."...in short, it never meant anything good. Important, maybe, but rarely something destined to bring him long life and prosperity.
Merde.
All right, time to think, Daniel. What was it about the scroll?
It told the history of a race, a race with incredible powers which they didn't exactly appear to use for philanthropy. So, assuming a worst-case scenario, the logical assumption was that the scroll had been taken to prevent him from learning about this nameless race. The only problem with that scenario, of course, was that he'd already deciphered it.
Okay, think carefully. Does anyone actually know you've translated the scroll?
Well, the answer to that had to be 'no'. He'd talked to Oma about the other scrolls, but as far as he could remember, he'd given no indication that he'd already read the Arabic one. And, since it had been a relatively easy language, he hadn't even taken his usual copious notes. So as far as anyone knew, he hadn't read it.
All right. So the scroll had been taken to deny him knowledge of the illusion-masters. Could it have been because Oma didn't want him to worry?
No, that didn't make sense. He was already worried, and she knew it. Taking the scroll would have accomplished nothing, if she thought he couldn't read the damn thing. She'd sensed his panic and come running, but his panic had never been explicitly linked to the scroll.
Wait...sensed his panic? Weren't the illusion-masters supposed to be empaths?
Yes, but he'd bet his bottom dollar empathy wasn't entirely uncommon in the galaxy. And Oma's people, pacifistic and non-interventionist as they were, would be prime candidates for empathy.
Don't discount anything out of hand, Daniel. Loose ends will just lead to doubts later on.
All right. So, going by the worst-case scenario assumption again, Oma was either one of the illusion-masters or was an illusion-master pretending to be Oma. What was it he'd said the other day? That the only way to tell if something was an illusion would be to watch carefully for any discrepancies between what you were seeing and what you knew to be true, but that the illusion-masters had empathic ability and would sense your suspicion and adjust anyway, so by the time you realized you were dealing with an illusion, it would be too late.
Well, removing the scroll would certainly be considered an adjustment, so the next thing would be to look for discrepancies. Okay...the first time he'd met Oma, her priest had tried to teach him (using far too many deliberately cryptic phrases, if you asked Jack) that Oma could take care of Shifu better than he could, then he'd confronted Oma, realized what was going on, and let her take the baby.
And, now that he thought about it, Oma had never said a word. Nor had she ever assumed a corporeal or even human form. That was certainly a discrepancy. And it would explain some of the things that had been nagging at the back of his mind, like why he hadn't ascended all the way, and why now that he thought about it, no one had tried to teach him anything more important than the best way to the bathroom.
So far at least, his conspiracy theory was making more sense than a partial ascendance.
But how would an alien illusion-master know to use Oma's form?
Well, they were empaths, weren't they? Maybe they'd set it up to, oh, rely on his expectations or something. He expected to see Oma, then that was who he saw. But that begged the question - when had the deception begun? Right after his ascension? If that was the case, then how had they gotten rid of the real Oma?
Frustrated, Daniel pounded his pillow with one hand and scowled. Maybe there was some way he could test his theory. If the illusion relied, as he hypothesized, on expectations, there had to be a way. All he needed was something constant...
His eyes fell on the curtains. Every morning when he woke up, and every evening when he went to bed, the curtains blew gently in the wind.
Bingo.
He settled himself comfortably on the bed and closed his eyes. He thought, I do not expect the curtains to be blowing. I expect the curtains will be completely still when I next see them. He repeated this, fixed the image of still curtains in his mind, tried not to feel silly, and then opened his eyes.
The curtains were still.
Scheisse.
He was right.
He closed his eyes again, fighting down his rising panic. Calm down. You can't afford to give anything away. If you are right - and that's still a big 'if' - Not-Oma will be able to sense it and she'll come running. Orbing. Whatever. He concentrated on breathing, and slowly opened his eyes. The curtains still hung limply in the window. Okay, think carefully, Daniel. What reason would somebody have to impersonate Oma?
,i>"Come, Daniel. We will tread the paths of the garden, and you will tell me of your friends and your enemies."
Dear God. She had asked, and he had answered. All the stories Jack had ever told him about being captured, all the lectures he'd had to sit through about withstanding torture and not giving anything away, just telling those bastards your name, rank, and serial number, dead men tell no tales, all that came flooding back to Daniel.
Oh, they were in such big trouble.
He focused on breathing again, remembering Teal'c's lessons on meditation, and recited the opening passage from the Book of the Dead in the original Egyptian for good measure. When he was sure he was calm, he opened his eyes again.
Okay. First things first. He had to get out of there. But how could he leave in the knowledge that an unknown enemy had learned all the secrets of the Tau'ri from him? He couldn't possibly. He had no clue who held him captive or why they were getting information from him.
Always be sure of your escape routes, Daniel Jackson. Teal'c's voice rumbled through his brain.
He would also have to find the Stargate. If all else failed, maybe he could at least get a message to one of their allies, since he didn't have a GDO and therefore couldn't be sure of anything getting through to the SGC.
He got up and went to the window, checking the horizon for the Stargate. He hadn't noticed one in any of his wanderings, but it was always worth a shot.
Nope, still no gate.
Daniel closed his eyes and ran through Teal'c's meditation techniques again. I do not expect to see gardens, he thought. I do not expect to see anything in particular. My mind is Void. I have no expectations. Show me what you will.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
Reality came crashing down. All pretense of calm vanished.
What the...
I'm on Colona!
Part Two
