• SPOILERS : Heroes; Lost City; Zero Hour
• SUMMARY : After the events of Zero Hour, Jack is faced with the same old enemies, the same old nightmares, and the same old doubts. Apparently, only the battleground has changed.
• PG-13 [A] [Hc]

* * * * *

* * * * *

"How do you say, ‘I have a headache’ in Goa’uld?"

"General?"

Jack flinched and looked up to find Sergeant Davis standing at the end of the conference table, a sheaf of papers in one hand and a puzzled expression on his face. Smirking, Jack closed the personnel file on the table in front of him and cleared his throat.

"Sorry, Sergeant. I was just . . . thinking out loud." Jack shuffled the closed file to the stack on his left and pulled another file from the stack on his right. "Did the motorcade get off all right?"

"Sir?"

Jack glanced up at Davis’s incredulous tone. "What? What’s wrong?"

"Nothing, sir. It’s just - the President left over ten hours ago."

"What?" Jack fumbled back the cuff of his pale blue dress shirt, blinking at his watch in disbelief. Soon after the President had left, he’d come in here to go over some of the personnel files before heading for home. It was now nearly zero six hundred hours. Geesh, no wonder he had a raging headache. Sighing, he rubbed his hands across his face in a vain attempt to wipe away the need for sleep. When he opened his eyes, Davis hadn’t moved - was still watching him. "Was there something you needed?"

"Yes, sir." The younger man approached and held out the papers to Jack. "These need your initials. On the bottom."

Jack frowned and took the papers, flipping through the familiar looking forms. "I signed these three days ago."

"Actually, that was yesterday, sir. And you’re required to initial each page, in addition to signing."

Shaking his head, Jack sighed and reached for the pen that was now as much a part of his uniform as the star on each shoulder. He scribbled his initials on the pages then handed the forms back to Davis. "Anything else?"

"Um, before he left, Mr. Gilmor asked me to remind you that you have a meeting at zero eight hundred hours with someone from accounting to go over the preliminary budget for the third quarter; two representatives from Amra have requested a meeting with you and are scheduled to arrive later this morning; and you have a noon luncheon at the Academy."

"I do?"

"There’s going to be a small ceremony in honor of your recent promotion."

"No." Jack frowned, trying to remember anything being mentioned about a luncheon. "Really?"

"Yes, sir. Mr. Gilmor gave you a memo about it two days ago."

Jack’s frown deepened, along with his headache. "I thought I dealt with the Amrans."

"You did, sir. However, officials from both factions of the Amran government have requested another meeting. A different set of delegates this time."

"Oh, joy."

"Yes, sir."

Suddenly feeling the weight of the last forty-eight - wait . . . the last seventy-two hours, Jack squeezed the bridge of his nose. Excluding all the bad stuff, he was tired, he was hungry, and he needed a shower and a pee . . . in no particular order.

"Sir, is there anything I can do? Can I get you something?"

He squinted up at Davis.

"Some aspirin, sir?"

Jack grinned. Despite the white hair, the kid reminded him of Radar from M*A*S*H. Feeling as old as Henry Potter himself, Jack shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. "No. I’m fine. I just need to . . ." What?

Hands braced on the top of the sleek table, Jack glanced at the stacks of files then over at the waiting Sergeant. He nodded at the file folders, then vaguely motioned towards his office. "Davis, could you . . . ."

"Oh." Davis darted towards the table and began gathering the files. "Sure, sir. I’ll just put these in your office."

"Yeah." Feeling strangely removed, Jack watched for a moment. A shower. A shower would help. "I’m going to . . . I’ll be back." He stepped around the shorter man, stumbling and righting himself with the aid of a chair.

"General!" Davis had latched onto his elbow.

Jack gently pulled his arm away. "I’m fine. Just . . .," he was silenced by the look of concern on Davis’s face. He was surrounded by people, good people, who were counting on him to lead them. How had Hammond done it all these years? "I’m fine. I’m going to grab a shower." He forced a smile that had no life behind it. "I feel a bit . . . gamey."

Davis laughed softly. "Yes, sir."

Avoiding the stairs, weaving only slightly, Jack walked the length of the briefing room towards his office, thus making his way to the elevator in the adjoining hallway.

"General?"

Jack looked back at Davis, who was weighted down under a pile of manila folders that represented the best the SGC, the military, had to offer.

"Would you like me to reschedule the meeting with accounting, sir? I could probably-"

"No." Jack shook his head. "No, that’s okay." He turned to leave and then added, almost as an afterthought, "Thank you, Sergeant."

* * * * *

What was it about water? Hot water. Cold water. Depending on the circumstances, they could be equally pleasant. Equally beneficial. Standing under the scalding torrent, long forearms braced against the gritty tiles, Jack glimpsed through closed eyes the distant, frigid showers that had been his Iraqi wake-up calls after cold desert nights. Despite the present heat, he shivered and lifted his face into the stream of liquid bullets.

Like an insensate animal, the water pelted at him in a futile attempt to wash away the remains of the day. Of the month. Of the year. Shifting his weight, turning his back to the nozzle, Jack blinked through the droplets clinging to his tired eyes and stared through the haze of steam directly into the dank, cold cavern that until recently had been his home for far too long.

He’d told them he had no memory of it.

He’d lied.

He had memories, but they were vague, frightening things. Flashes of light with glowing, inhuman faces. Tiny fingers reaching for him, brushing against his skin with fiery trails of ancient, timeless evil. Distorted visions that rose through the blue gloom of Antarctic ice, stretching from one cavern to another. Trying to grasp him in their clutches even here, safely snugged within the depths of his home continent.

Jack quietly gasped and scrubbed his hands across his face, forcing away the slow crawl of the water that felt too much like tiny fingers. Reaching blindly behind him, he shut off the shower and stood for a moment, reeling in a fog of memories and facing an overwhelming rush of things he neither completely understood nor for which he felt even vaguely prepared. Yesterday, he’d thought that along with the decision to not resign, he’d feel a sense of relief and of confidence that he’d done the right thing.

Unfortunately, that feeling hadn’t hit him yet, and it was with an unhealthy eagerness to escape that he toweled himself dry and headed for his locker. He threw open the metal door with a loud bang and stared at the ruins of yesterday’s dress blues. The uniform lay crumpled, lifeless, in the bottom of his locker. Forcing his eyes from it, Jack dressed in his BDU’s. Now more than ever, they suited him. Making a mental note to have his laundry done, he shut his locker and faced a new day, dressed for battles of an entirely different sort.

* * * * *

Doctor Brightman seemed nice enough, but as Jack stood unnoticed in the door of the infirmary watching her, he couldn’t help comparing her to her diminutive predecessor. It was unfair, but he did it nonetheless.

"General."

Jack nodded at the passing nurse then smiled as Brightman turned to look at him.

"General O’Neill?"

"Doctor."

"Something I can help you with, General?"

As the soft-spoken, young woman approached, Jack caught a faint whiff of White Shoulders. It was the fragrance Sarah had worn for years and he recognized it immediately. "Uh, yeah." Momentarily taken aback by an almost overwhelming feeling of loss, Jack ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. I . . . I thought maybe you could give me something for a headache."

Brightman frowned slightly. "A headache?"

"Yeah, I get . . . we get headaches around here. Quite a bit. Fraiser used to give me these little pills for them. Sometimes a nasal spray. But I’m out. I thought . . .," he shrugged, beginning to wish he’d just suffered until he could get to a drugstore.

"Please, follow me, General."

Glancing around, Jack hesitated before following the new doctor to the nearest exam bed. When she stopped beside it and merely looked at him, he cleared his throat and eased onto the edge of the bed.

"So," Brightman pulled a penlight out of her pocket and before Jack could protest, she’d stepped between his legs and was shining the light directly in his eyes, "when did this headache start?"

"Dammit!" He flinched and instinctively pushed her away.

Brightman paled, looking like he’d struck her. "Sir?"

New pain pulsing behind his eyes, Jack pressed his hands to his face, shutting out the light. "Sorry. It’s just, I’m . . .," he groaned softly and swore. He shouldn’t have come here. He didn’t have time for this. All he’d wanted was some aspirin, some ibuprofen, something.

"You’re light sensitive," she quietly summed up.

"Ya think?" Jack pulled his hands away, blinking and squinting towards the white blur that must be the doctor in a lab coat.

"I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know that."

"Yeah, well, Fraiser knows tha-" Too late, he realized what he was saying. His face flushing, he scooted off the bed.

"General," she reached out a hand to stop him. "It’s okay."

"Listen," he shrugged off her hand, forcing a tight smile, "it’s not a big deal. Really. In fact, I’m feeling better already."

Brightman’s lips seemed to harden, the only sign of her disbelief. "Please, sir. If you’ll just take a seat, I can-"

"I have a meeting, Doc." He winced at the slip of the nickname. It wasn’t right. ‘Doc’ was Janet. This woman was a stranger. "I’m running late."

* * * * *

"So, by taking last year’s actuals and comparing them to the actuals for the first quarter of this year - which have only recently become available - we’re able to calculate the percentage differences and apply them to the remaining quarters of this year."

A soft, annoying ringing reverberating through his aching head, Jack stared down at the stack of spreadsheets, each with their multiple columns and multiple rows of tiny numbers - tiny with respect to font size only; huge in terms of the dollars they represented. He glanced over at the woman sitting to his left.

She was wearing a stylish grey suit with a pale pink sweater. Nice. Strictly civilian. She also rivaled Teal’c in size and physique. On the downside, she wore that same shade of orangish-colored lipstick that Carter had favored a few years back - that stuff he’d teased her looked like she’d been sucking on too many tangerine Lifesavers. He’d hated it then and apparently, in this instance, absence had not made the heart grow fonder.

Picking up the glass of water that Davis had set in front of him over an hour ago, Jack took a drink and cleared his throat. "Ann-"

"Anita," she corrected.

Jack changed a grimace into a tight smile and wondered briefly if Anita had ever considered combat duty. He could certainly use her on one of his teams. "Anita. Sorry." He squeezed the bridge of his nose before glancing at her again. "You’ve spent how many years doing this stuff?"

She smiled and blushed slightly. "Well, I received my CPA in early 1991, but I’ve only been working here, at this particular facility, for just over six years."

"Six years." Jack smiled and nodded pleasantly. "Wow."

She laughed softly.

"So," Jack flipped through the stack of papers, pausing at a particular page about halfway down the stack and pointing at a small line with his index finger, "since when do we decrease the budget for ‘weapons and related equipment’?"

"Um-"

"Wait." He smiled and held up a finger before flipping back three pages and searching closely until he spied the line he wanted. "And what is ‘travel and related expenses’? And why is it so high and, apparently, on the upswing?" He pushed the stack of papers to the side and leaning back in his chair, pulled his water glass closer.

"Well, General O’Neill, before answering your first question, let me just stress that this is merely a preliminary budget. It’s not set in stone." At Jack’s nod, she continued. "The reason that the budget for ‘weapons and related equipment’ has been decreased is because it’s assumed that now that you’ve been in operation for going on eight years, the SGC has built up an adequate supply of weapons. Any future expenses will consist mainly of upgrades, replacement parts, ammunition, etc." When he didn’t speak, she straightened her own matching stack of papers. "As to ‘travel and related expenses,’ those are . . . well, expenses for travel. Things such as airfare, hotels, fuel, security personnel, catering. They’re on the ‘upswing,’ as you call it, because-"

"Whoa, whoa." Jack sat up in his chair. "Wait a minute. Hotels? Security personnel? Catering? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I’m talking about travel expenses."

"For whom? Jennifer Lopez? The President?"

Anita laughed again and shook her head. "No, no. Of course not."

"Excuse me. General, I’m sorry to interrupt, but . . ."

His stomach growling ominously, Jack looked up to find Davis standing to his right. "What? What is it?"

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but the Amran representatives will be arriving shortly."

"Yeah. Okay. Fine. Thanks." He waved Davis away and sipped his water, his hand trembling slightly.

"As I was saying, sir," Anita calmly filled her own glass from the decanter in the center of the table, "the President has his own budget for travel and related expenses."

"Of course he does."

"Yes. These line item expenses here are for what I like to call ‘periphery personnel.’ They’re on the rise mainly due to-"

"‘Periphery personnel’?" Holy cow, where was Daniel when he needed him?

"Yes, sir. Foreign dignitaries, internal auditors, State Department personnel, senators. Anyone who-"

"Wait a minute. Senators?" The SGC was actually paying people like Kinsey for every visit? Suddenly, he was unsure if he was hungry or nauseous. Maybe both. And dammit! His headache had reached blinding proportions and if Ms. Ann-Anita-Orange Lips got too close, she might be taken out in the resulting fallout when his freaking head exploded!

"General O’Neill?"

Jack looked at her, suddenly aware that she’d been talking. "Sorry, I . . .," he glanced at his watch and reached for the stack of papers, "I have another meeting. I’m going to have to get back to you."

"But, sir, all you really need to do is . . ."

He stood up, his headache throbbing with the motion. "I need to go over this. I’ll get back to you." When she didn’t respond, he added, "Dismissed."

* * * * *

Seated at his desk, Jack stared out the window into the briefing room. The Amran delegates were finally leaving. Sighing, rubbing his temples, Jack watched them go. They’d been pissed at first, demanding an apology for his treatment of their predecessors. Nearly two hours later, after sitting across the conference table from an ominously silent, glaring Jaffa, they’d been willing, albeit grudgingly, to talk like the adults they professed to be.

As the spokesman for the plainsmen turned to look at him through the window on his way out, Jack flinched. The guy reminded him of someone. He wasn’t sure of whom, but the man gave Jack the creeps with his devilishly black hair and aquiline features.

"General O’Neill?"

Still staring out the window, Jack quietly acknowledged the sergeant. "Davis."

"Sir, you have twenty-five minutes until your luncheon." When Jack didn’t respond, Davis took a step closer. "I took the liberty of ordering a car for you, sir."

Jack counted the passage of time by the throbbing in his head.

"A clean uniform is laid out in your quarters."

Finally, he turned to look at the young man, marveling that Davis always seemed to wear a perpetual half-smile on his face, as if he alone in all the universe were aware of some cosmic joke. Who knew? Maybe he was. Jack forced a tight smile of his own. "Thank you, Jeeves."

Davis’s smile broadened and he snorted softly at the joke. "You’re welcome, sir. I’ll tell the driver you’ll be there in five minutes."

Staring at the empty place where Davis had stood, Jack muttered softly, "You do that."

* * * * *

He was aware that he’d dozed only when he was jolted awake by the sudden braking of the dark sedan. The file on his lap slid soundlessly to the floor. Without trying to catch it, he watched as it haphazardly spilled its contents across his polished shoes.

Young, clear, hazel eyes glanced at him via the rearview mirror. "Sorry, sir."

"No problem, Airman."

The Air Force Academy and all its trappings behind him, Jack rested his elbow on the armrest, braced his jaw against his fist and pressed his forehead against the warm glass, staring out at the harsh sunlight glinting off the shiny assortment of cars in the midst of which he was immersed. A traffic jam in Colorado Springs of all places - who would have thought? Suddenly sensing that he was on the cusp of understanding Davis’s cosmic joke, Jack looked across the rolling dunes of metal at the impending ridge of mountains standing like a seawall between himself and the brilliant blue of a Colorado sky.

Seeing a flicker of movement in the periphery of his vision, Jack’s gaze settled on the neighboring car. A young woman driving a well-worn Honda Accord was studying the sedan. Tired eyes flickered up, met his own and with a shy, resigned smile, looked away. As she inched past, Jack caught the familiar outlines of a child seat and a small, chubby fist. In that brief moment, he lost his tentative grasp on the ‘meaning of life’ stuff and was once again at a complete loss, floundering in a riptide of unsuspecting humanity.

* * * * *

Jack closed the file on PTX-389. SG-3 had gone, had found nothing worth conquering, and had returned unscathed. No harm, no foul. Glancing at his watch, he found it difficult to believe that a mere twenty-five hours had passed since the President’s departure. It felt like a week at the very least. Hell, this day alone had felt like several days, and it was just now shy of nine o’clock in the evening. Surely a month had passed since all vestiges of the plant had been eradicated - both Dr. Lee’s and the President’s.

Rubbing his burning eyes, Jack had to smile at the thought of the parting look on Gilmor’s face. He supposed he shouldn’t have said that Hammond had clued him in, but the big guy deserved it. No sooner had Gilmor appeared than Hammond called ‘just to see how things are going’ and ‘how the new guy is working out for you.’ Yeah, right. In a pig’s eye. Jack could almost see the glint of laughter in the General’s eyes all the way through the freakin’ telephone lines. Well, touché, mon Général.

Making a mental note to give Hammond a call in the morning, Jack reached out to straighten the papers on his desk and was startled to find her standing in the open doorway silently watching him.

He covered his surprise with a friendly, "Hey."

"Hey." She inched closer, White Shoulders wafting into the room ahead of her.

Waving her towards a vacant chair, he wondered if she realized how frightened she looked. Of course, who in his right mind could blame her?

"So, how are things? Settling in okay?"

"Yes," she smiled softly, barely meeting his glance, and he was suddenly reminded of sharp brown eyes that wouldn’t back down. "Everyone has been very nice. Thank you."

"Well, needless to say, if you need anything - anything at all . . .," he let the offer dangle like a pesky participle, waiting for her to grab onto it. He was greeted with a silence so severe that he could hear the rush of blood through the tight veins in his temples. "Do you need anything, Doctor Brightman?"

When she shook her head, he sighed and moved the stack of folders to one side of his desk, revealing the signed letter that had been hiding like a cockroach from the light. Quickly, he snagged it and laid it face down in front of him. He should probably shred it, at the very least take it home and file it away, but for some reason it was comforting to know that the letter was here, near at hand if and when he needed it. He opened a drawer, intending to shove it inside, but the drawer was full. Apparently, while he’d been off lunching with the cadets, Davis had been busy alphabetically arranging personnel folders.

Jack closed the drawer and finally, somewhat at a loss as to what to do, he merely stared at the top of the woman’s slightly bowed head. Just as he opened his mouth to tell her he was headed out the door for home, she looked up and for the first time, met his gaze and held it.

What was it with blue eyes around here?

"I came to see how you were feeling."

Jack shrugged and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together.

A frown halved her forehead and she pressed her lips together. Without speaking, she reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a small prescription bottle, setting it in the middle of his desk amidst a subtle cloud of his ex-wife’s perfume. "For the headache."

He waited until she had sat back in her chair before reaching out and snagging the bottle, shoving it into his pocket before she could change her mind. "Thanks."

"You’re welcome. General O’Neill," she swallowed, her hands clutching at one another, "about this morning . . ."

Jack raised a hand, silencing her. "If you’re about to apologize for trying to do your job, I’d prefer you didn’t."

"But . . ."

"Aah! Please . . . Doctor." He scowled at her. "The only thing more annoying than an empty platitude is a politician. Or maybe a scientist. Or a snake," he conceded.

Brightman suddenly graced him with a crooked grin and seemed to relax. "Sir, I - I wasn’t going to apologize."

"Oh. You weren’t?" Jack dropped a hand onto the back side of the signed letter. "Then . . . never mind."

"I was going to say that before today, I hadn’t had a chance to look at the charts on any personnel. I wasn’t aware that you suffered from migraines or that you were light sensitive. Besides, even if I had known, I don’t make a habit out of handing out prescriptions just because another doctor deems it appropriate."

His pulse quickening, Jack frowned and straightened in his chair. "Doctor Brightman, I think you’ll find that Janet Fraiser is highly thought of in these parts. You might want to watch what you say about her."

"That wasn’t what I meant, General. Doctor Fraiser left behind her a stellar reputation. It’s obvious that her staff - all of the personnel here, thought very highly of her. It’s just . . . until further notice, I’m the CMO here now. I have to perform my job the best way I see fit. And I’m not Janet Fraiser."

Realizing how it would sound, he said it anyway: "No, you’re not."

She smiled, not unkindly. "Just as you are not George Hammond."

Touché, mon Général, indeed.

His headache rising between them on familiar fumes, they both waited to see if he would take up the gauntlet. When he didn’t, she stood up.

"I look forward to working with you, General."

Oddly, Jack was pretty sure she meant it. "Yeah. Same here."

* * * * *

The guard at the entrance stopped Jack as he was leaving. "General O’Neill, sir. I was instructed to give this to you, sir."

Returning a sloppy salute to the young airman, Jack nodded and slipped the envelope into his pocket without looking at it. He was tired and he knew from previous experience that he had approximately half an hour in which to drive home before the pain pills he’d just swallowed kicked in.

Fortunately, traffic was light, and he had showered, changed into his sweats and was standing at the kitchen counter eating a stale peanut butter sandwich when the drugs hit. At the first sign of the familiar, narcotic haze, he tossed the uneaten portion of his dinner into the garbage bin under the sink, stumbled drunkenly to the sofa and collapsed. He was asleep in under two minutes, unaware that he had beaten his own best time by a full thirty seconds.

At promptly twelve minutes after two, he sat up on the sofa yelling at his team to ‘keep your heads down, for crying out loud!’ Panting, Jack swung his legs off the couch and squinted over at the clock. The numbers stared back at him, then with a click and a wink, they shoved another moment irretrievably behind him.

"Damn." Pulling off his t-shirt, he used it to wipe the sweat from his face and staggered into the kitchen for a glass of water. He drank it down then poured another before making his way to the bedroom.

It was cooler in his room; the ceiling fan softly whirred overhead. Setting the glass of water on the night stand, he stretched face down across the bed and shivered as the tumbling air quickly dried the sweat on his back.

Exactly one and a half hours later, he grunted loudly and came awake fighting the invisible force engulfing him. Sweating, his heart racing, he frantically wrestled for his freedom, his desperate panting and the soft, mechanical hum of the gravitational device the only things that existed within a frigid, ancient darkness.

With a harsh rip of torn fabric, he was free. Jack lunged for the icy surface and fell flat on the floor, his legs tangled in the comforter and his fingers digging into the nap of his bedroom carpet. Bewildered, his head throbbing, he lay there gasping. Trying to sort out the mingled memories, he stared at the pale rug and saw the face of the Amran delegate, the plainsman who had looked so much like Ba’al.

Ba’al.

Dammit!

Jack rolled to his back and stared up at the shadowy ceiling fan.

Ba’al.

"I can’t do this. Not anymore." He said it aloud, both to break the horrific silence of a house with a solitary occupant and to prove to himself that he was still here. Still someone.

His team. He’d thought they were being tortured. Tortured. Killed. Revived. Repeatedly.

Shivering, Jack reached down and grabbed at the comforter. Pulling it over himself, he huddled beneath it and tried not to think about the possibilities. Just as he had tried not to think about the possibilities and the memories when faced with Ba’al’s ghostly image in the ‘gate room.

When would that image cease to bother him? When would that particular ghost cease to haunt him? And, could he endure the chill of winter without the fractured, tormented visions of an icy, prolonged prison? An endless, waking nightmare?

The only answer was the hum of the fan and the blank stare of the uniform draped across the chair next to the bed.

When would it all stop?

In reply, his head throbbed relentlessly, silently. Just as silently, just as relentlessly, the streetlight outside his window softly illuminated two silver stars.

Groaning in protest, he rolled to his hands and knees, then struggled to his feet. Blindly, he dug in the pocket of his uniform, his hand curling around the small pill bottle. As he pulled it out, the envelope came with it, fluttering silently to the floor. He picked it up, then sat down on the edge of the bed, switching on the lamp.

Squinting against the harsh brightness, he swallowed the pills and washed them down before studying the envelope. There was no return address but the postmark was D.C. and the date was three days ago. The remnants of the dream causing his hands to shake, Jack tore open the envelope and pulled out the single slip of paper.

* * * * *

"Dismissed."

Feeling more human than he had in months, Jack stood up from the conference table and walked into his office. When he sat down, he realized Daniel had followed him.

"Daniel?"

"Jack?"

Pulling his laptop in front of him, Jack opened it and waited for it to power up. "Something on your mind?"

"No. Not really." Daniel leaned against the closed door. "Just wondering . . . you know, how you’re handling all this."

Jack smiled and scribbled a note to himself to check back with Anita in accounting to see if she’d had time to revise the proposed budget. "How do you think I’m handling it?"

There was a slight pause and Jack looked up, suddenly concerned. Daniel was smiling.

"It would appear that you’re handling it . . . quite well. Which, in a weird sort of way, is rather unnerving."

Jack chuckled and logged onto his computer. "I’m not quite sure how to take that, Daniel, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just pretend you never said it."

"Sure."

He had seventeen new e-mails, all of which begged his attention and some of which would require a detailed response. Frowning, Jack pulled open a drawer and removed his leather-bound day planner. A slight noise alerted him to the fact that Daniel was still there, staring at the frames on the far wall.

"Uh, Daniel, was there something else?"

"No. Actually . . . yes." Daniel turned and looked at him, pointing at a picture frame which Jack had hung two days before. "What is this? I assume it’s supposed to mean something."

Grinning, Jack glanced at the simple, typewritten slogan and immediately realized that he’d forgotten to call Hammond back. He jotted another note on his calendar.

"Jack?"

But Jack was already busy typing and seemed unaware of his friend’s presence. Daniel shrugged and left the office, shutting the door behind him as he mumbled, "‘If the mare’s leg ain’t busted, for God’s sake, please don’t shoot her? What the hell is wrong with that man?"

<finis>

Author’s Note: This story is for Arnise, Hoo, and the JackFic team. Congratulations! It’s because of your hard work that JackFic won Best Stargate Fan Fiction Archive in the Stargate SG-1 Fan Awards 2004! Consider this my humble thank you....

© January 2004 Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.