Babies.
When it came right down to it, they were damn babies. The accusation kept reverberating in his head.
Babies that steal souls.
Babies that grow up to be murderers and assassins. Babies that stole Sha're out of his arms. Stole her very essence.
Their last kiss... in front of everyone for God's sake. In front of Jack and Sam. He'd never live that down. He'd stood there like a fish gasping air as his wife locked a delicate hand behind his neck and practically sucked him into her mouth. Oh god, if he could only do it again. Just one more kiss, knowing it was to be their last. He'd have died rather than let them take her.
Instead he'd been off regaling Jack with his damned archeological and anthropological wonders. There was no discovery or wonder worth the price he had paid.
The self-recriminations, the guilt, they were still there poking through the pain sensors in his brain, dragging him further away from the research he was hiding in. His glasses slipped down his nose; he wrinkled it, but they stayed halfway down the bridge. He gave up. Even inanimate objects were thumbing their figurative noses at him. He took the glasses off and laid them on the cluttered desk top, staring at them blurrily, trying to blink away tears of frustration.
He had to get out of here. He was driving himself crazy. He had to go somewhere, anywhere, where he wasn't penned in by four walls and memories that insisted on rising up to choke him.
Stars. He wanted to see stars. And lie alone in the black night wondering which one held Sha're just out of reach of his empty arms.
"Sir?"
Jack O'Neill sighed at the softly spoken word. There was too much question in the tone, just the right hint of apprehension to set off internal alarms.
This was not going to be a quick question. He fully intended to hear her out, then hit the door on his way to a six pack and enough football to numb his mind and rock him off to a desperately needed sleep.
He dropped his duffel bag and turned. "What is it, Carter?"
"Sir, I was just wondering if you could talk to Daniel?" The statement carried the weight of a question.
"Daniel? What's wrong with Daniel?" Their last excursion to other worlds had dumped them into the middle of domestic chaos, but the one who was emotionally trampled this time around had been Teal'c not their resident geek. Jack ran through a mental checklist of the latest debriefing trying to find some kind of basis for the concern in her voice.
Daniel... okay, Daniel tended to get emotionally trashed even when he didn't leave some of his blood behind on a mission but O'Neill's weary mind couldn't dredge up anything out of the ordinary on their last mission.
Hell, Teal'c was the one that Carter ought to be worried about. The man had left his wife and son behind on another world—the commute alone for visitation would be ridiculous—he had been stripped of his symbiote, had nearly died himself. Where was her concern for the big guy?
But, no, her worry was hovering over their own personal, angst-ridden boy genius.
What now?
Jack O'Neill had neither the time nor the inclination to launch a rescue attempt on hurt feelings or lost hopes or... oh for cryin' out loud... for whatever Daniel's chaotic mind was inflicting on itself at the moment.
"Well..."
Uh oh, Carter hesitating was a bad sign.
What the hell had he missed?
"Spit it out, Captain," he growled. "I'm off the clock here." Even as he said it, he could see his night of beer and football and bare feet retreating further away from the realm of possibility.
She bit down on her bottom lip. Another bad sign. "Colonel, I left something out of the official report."
Oh shit. "And what might that be, Captain?" They were swapping ranks off duty, so he knew it had to be serious. Though it was hard to tell when it concerned Daniel. There was serious as it would be recognized in the real world and then there was serious as defined by Daniel Jackson's hyperactive mind.
"Sir, when we took the Goa'uld out of the tank... well, we had started away, or at least I had started away, but Daniel was just standing there looking at it. At the tank."
He circled one impatient hand in a 'go on' gesture.
"He said that he was thinking about all the people who would someday be used by those larvae."
Jack had no problem imagining that, considering the agony he had seen in Daniel's face when Sha're had been taken from him by Apophis as host for the larva of his queen.
Carter wasn't really looking at him, all around him, but never quite face to face. He let her stew on her own uncertainty until it prodded her to continue.
"I told him that if we killed the infants we would be just as guilty as the Goa'uld. H e seemed to accept that and we started away."
O'Neill could see where this was heading, but he waited the rest out. "We were less than three steps away before he turned and started firing on the tank. He even used my weapon, Sir. He destroyed it. The infant larvae were squealing on the ground, dying right in front of us. It was like he'd spaced out. He just stood there, staring at them. Then he glanced at me, but I don't think he really saw me. His eyes were blank. Then he looked at me again and let me take the weapon out of his hands. He never said a word, Sir. Not one word. It was like he was someone else. Not Daniel. At least not our Daniel."
"And you think 'I' am the one who can talk to him about this... this little act of terrorism?"
Carter turned on all watts in the smile that she threw his way. "Oh, yes, Sir, I do. Daniel listens to you."
One eyebrow quirked—a skill O'Neill was learning from their laconic Jaffa.
"Oh, if that's the case, then why can't he follow my orders?"
The radiant smile dimmed a notch. "Well, he does, Sir." Carter backtracked. "I mean, when he sees what you... when he knows it's the right..."
O'Neill let her off the hook. "Okay, okay, Captain, I'll go see what his problem is."
The smile was back.
Jack growled to himself as he started what he hoped was a very short search for his wayward archeologist. Where did Carter get off pinning such unquestioning trust on him anyway? Whatever had possessed him to abandon retirement to ride herd on a motley crew of space explorers? Even as he indulged himself in the internal workings of his frustrations, he knew the answer. Had known the answer all along.
He was keeping his 'kids' safe. Like he hadn't been able to protect his own kid.
He shut the thought off as too painful to give in to at the moment and stored it back in the corner of his brain where he kept all the unbearable memories deeply buried.
Daniel had given up on staring blankly at the silent night sky. Now he leaned forward, his arms wrapped defensively around his drawn up legs, his chin propped on his knees as he tried to watch the almost invisible blades of grass sway in a silent rhythm that only they could hear. He had tried to consciously ignore the diatribe his conscience was leveling at him; it wouldn't go away. So, he simply sat there and let his mind flay him alive with accusations and guilt.
"This seat taken?"
O'Neill didn't wait for an invitation, simply plunked himself onto a piece of lush grass and leaned back on his hands, and stared up at the star sprinkled sky. Sometimes the naked eye could see more than the tunnel vision of a telescope. The vastness. The tiny flickers that penetrated the blanket of black that spread over the earth, robbing the sun of its reign.
Pretty fancy imagery, Jack, he chided himself. Hell, even the voice in his head was a smart ass. That same voice didn't hesitate to lobby insecurities back to him either. He was a career military man, pragmatic, practical; he gave orders; those orders were obeyed; end of discussion. He had no business wandering through the corridors of Daniel's mind trying to ferret out platitudes and reassurances that might relieve some of the pain that had haunted the younger man since a tumultuous childhood. Losses. Daniel's relatively short life could be measured in losses. His parents. His place in academia. His wife.
And now his innocence.
What the hell could Jack offer him in exchange?
'Here, Dr. Jackson, please accept our gratitude for your work on the Stargate project.'
Pretty lame trade off, huh?
The Stargate.
The definitive program that could have restored Daniel to his rightful position in the fields he had studied and labored in for almost all his life.
What did they have to offer?
The chance to get himself killed, or addicted, or resurrected, or lost in alien worlds with the very real possibility of never going home.
And home. What were they holding out as a carrot there?
A new 'family' consisting of one gung-ho GI Joe colonel who starched his underwear, a blonde bombshell captain/doctor who might as well have been Artoo Detoo for all that Daniel noticed her obvious attributes, and a worm-infested, enigmatic hulk of an alien who still couldn't understand a normal, everyday conversation because it was all subjective and he was all literal: some trade off. Gee, what more could the little geek want?
Even as he condemned himself and the project and the rankings powers that be, Jack knew the answer. Daniel was doing what he loved. Someone had once said that an archeologist was the ultimate dumpster diver and they were right. Where Jack saw 'rocks' Daniel saw 'artifacts'. It had become as natural as breath to them. Daniel would ooh and ahh over his artifacts; Jack would snarl that they were rocks and not even good looking rocks at that.
There was an easy comfort in the bantering. The 'did not, did too, did not, did too' level that O'Neill found himself sinking to when he and Daniel butted heads on some salient point, neither of them willing to concede---it had grown to be normal between them by now.
Silence stretched between them a little longer than was comfortable.
Jack figured the quiet would grate on Daniel's nerves enough that he would take the initiative.
He did. "Sam. Sam narced on me, didn't she? She had no right—" Jack's hand, the original immovable object, locked onto Daniel's shoulder, pinning him in place on the ground a fraction of a second before his muscles tensed to rise. The last thing that Jack was going to allow him was escape. Daniel would eat himself alive with self-inflicted guilt if left to his own devices.
"She had all the right in the world, Daniel. She's your friend. She cares about you." He watched the tense profile beside him, a muscle twitching in the lower jaw, Daniel's eyes firmly fixed on nothing. "In fact, the one thing that she DIDN'T have the right to do was to leave that little incident out of the official report. Omitting pertinent information is not S.O.P. in the anal retentive military. Something you liberal hippie freak tree huggers ought to know by now."
A spark of interest broke through the stubborn anger. "She left it out?"
When Daniel's eyes finally turned on him, Jack nodded.
"Then wh-wh-why did she tell you?" The reactive stutter said more about Daniel's state of mind than anything that was going to come out of his mouth.
"Why do you think?" Answering a question with another question, a technique Jack hated when it was used on him.
Daniel thunked his chunk back down on his knees. He tried to evade. "I don't know."
Jack wasn't having any of it. "You know."
Daniel tilted his head so that he could get a quick glimpse of Jack, then went back to staring off into space. "I did the right thing."
"Ya think?"
"What would you have done," Daniel challenged.
"Doesn't mattered what I would have done," Jack said around a shrug. "I'm not you."
"You'd have killed them."
"Probably."
"So why is it wrong for me t-t-to kill them?"
"That. That's exactly the reason."
Daniel's funk was short-circuited by the non-answer. He looked at Jack again. He mouthed the word 'what' but this time he didn't turn away. He kept watching Jack, anxious for the answer now that it wasn't being offered to him.
"The stutter, Danny. You stutter when you're upset, or unsure, or scared. Right now, I'd say you're all of the above."
Self-righteous earnestness crept into Daniel's voice. "For every one of those worm things, there would eventually be a human being who would be robbed of life, taken from the people who love them, enslaved. They deserved to die."
"Umm hmmm, sounds kinda like the justification for the Holocaust."
"Damn it, Jack! That's the most stupid thing I've ever heard!"
"Oh?" Jack scrubbed one hand across day old stubble on his chin. "Do you prefer 'for the greater good'? 'Natural selection'? 'The lesser of two evils'?"
"You can't compare annihilation of a whole race of people with eradicating a species of parasite, Jack, and you know it."
"Hey," Jack illustrated the word with an expansive gesture of both hands, "I'm not the one sitting out in the wet grass eating holes in my soul worrying about it."
Daniel huffed out a breath of frustration. The chin dropped back to its place on the raised knees. "If you had done it..." Then a thought suddenly flashed across his face as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud. He tilted his head sideways, not lifting it away from its bony pillow. "If you had done it... would it bother you? Would you even feel bad?"
Jack took a moment, longer than Daniel obviously expected, to really consider his answer. "Nope." After all, it really was that simple. "No, I wouldn't."
Daniel lifted his head now, released his defensive hold on his legs and leaned back in unconscious imitation of Jack's own position, leaning back on his hands, long legs stretched out in front of him. He still wasn't happy, but at least he had uncurled from his 'hit me, beat me, make me write bad checks' position. He joined Jack in an absent study of the night tapestry above them.
"What do I do?"
"Why do you have to 'do' anything?"
"Because" –Jack heard the stutter try to wedge its way in as Daniel fought it down—"I don't know if I can live with it."
A half-smile, concealed by the darkness, worked through Jack's lips. "I don't think you have any choice, Daniel."
"It goes against everything I believe in, everything I was taught."
"You were also taught that there were no doors to other worlds. That space travel took more light years than the human race could spare. That your research, your theories were invalid. Do you believe in that?"
"No."
For long moments, night and silence sat companionably between them.
"Oh, God, Jack..." Daniel breathed the words out as if his lungs couldn't hold enough air to support their passage. "Oh, God, I felt good while I was doing it. How could I have felt good?"
And of course, that was it, the one question for which there was no answer.
Jack didn't even try. He sat there, close but not touching, his presence the only comfort he could give.
It would have to be enough.
© May, 1999 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.