DISCLAIMER: All characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Being attacked by Daniel is like getting savaged by a teddy bear. Not that he isn't strong. He is. Scarily so, as it turns out. But he really is the last person you'd expect to go flinging people about, or pounding on them without provocation. Which is why, even with all the medical data in my hands, I completely underestimated him ... and ended up shrugging one-shouldered for a week.
So there you are. You do indeed learn something new every day. Or you do around here, anyway.
It hurt all of us to see Daniel tied to the bed like some kind of dangerous animal, but I really didn't have a choice. Sam isn't the only one faced with tough decisions, or with the will to carry them out regardless of the cost. In my job, as in hers, it comes with the territory.
I still don't know how Daniel managed to get the restraints undone. It should have been impossible. God knows they're hard enough to undo when you're on the outside of them. But somehow he managed it. Assaulted poor Rod Brown. Came damn close to shooting Jack.
I heard the shots. Called for backup to take care of Brown and ran like hell: I was so afraid. The acoustics in the complex are hopeless, the gunfire could have come from seventeen different directions.
When I found them, the crisis was over. Daniel was disarmed. Weeping into Jack's shoulder, a sodden mess. Three base guards milled around, completely incapable of deciding whether to arrest Daniel or hand him a box of Kleenex. Men. I shooed them away.
Jack was rocking Daniel like a child. As he must have rocked Charlie in the aftermath of catastrophe. Was saying, over and over, "It's all right, Danny. It's all right." Soothing himself as much as Daniel, I think.
Daniel didn't believe him. Between hiccuping sobs I could make out just one word: sorry.
Describing Daniel as 'child-like' does him a grave disservice. He is a man, in every sense of the word. Nevertheless there is something ... innocent at the heart of him. It's hard to put into words. I think it has to do with his childhood. The death of his parents. The loneliness that followed. Being an only child. Circumstances that drove him inwards to live within the fantastic realms of history and his own imagination.
Whatever you want to call it, he has a quality that touches the hardest heart. The most alien. It's his gift, really. But it makes him vulnerable to pain in a way that most of us aren't. Thank God.
And Jack, whose armour against pain has over the years grown to medieval proportions, was defenceless against it. Our eyes met over the top of Daniel's bowed head ... and I saw he was shattered. Drowned. Undone by Daniel's abandoned despair. I felt suddenly crude. Oversized and intrusive. Unwelcome.
Echoing footsteps in the corridor freed me. Sam and Teal'c. I held up my hands, held them at bay. "It's okay," I said, hurrying to meet them. "It's under control."
"What happened?" Sam demanded.
"I'm not sure, exactly," I said. "Daniel got loose, attacked me and Airman Brown, made a run for it."
Teal'c was frowning. As well he might. "Airman Henson said shots were fired."
"Yes. But no one's bleeding," I assured them. Not on the outside, anyway.
"Where is Daniel Jackson now?" Teal'c demanded.
"He's with the Colonel, just around the corner. I think you should give them a min--"
I was talking to myself. I looked at Sam, she looked at me. We both sighed. "Is he really all right?" she asked.
"I think the worst might be over," I said. "But no. I wouldn't say he was all right."
"Oh, God," she said. "Come on. We'd better see what's going on."
Not a lot, as it happened. Daniel was asleep, or unconscious, still cradled in Jack's arms, still slumped against his chest and shoulder. Jack was still rubbing his back, cramped awkwardly on one knee. Teal'c stood over them, impassive and radiating distress at the same time as only he can.
"I really need to get Daniel back to the infirmary," I said, fighting the urge to whisper.
"I will carry him," said Teal'c. Reached down and lifted Daniel out of Jack's embrace in a single effortless motion, holding him as easily as if he were Riyak.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go."
When I turned round to see who was following us, there was only Sam. Surprise, surprise: Jack was gone.
Daniel woke up an hour and a half later. Sam and Teal'c had surgically attached themselves to his bedside, and I was busy analysing blood test results on a computer in one corner. Daniel coughed, we all jumped, and I left the glowing screen to check on my troublesome patient.
He looked awful. Paper white. Eyes dull and red rimmed. Sooty smudges beneath them. Exhausted. Demon-driven.
He said, "I tried to kill Jack." His voice was hoarse and cracked.
Sam was holding his left hand. His right rested on the blanket, knuckles raw and swollen and brown with Betadine. "Shhh," she said. "It doesn't matter. Don't think about it now."
His face looked naked without its glasses. Defenceless. "Is he all right? Did I hurt him?"
"You did not," said Teal'c.
Daniel lifted his free hand, went to rub it across his face, and winced. Turned it over to stare at his battered knuckles. "I hurt someone," he whispered. "It's all a mad dream, but I remember. I hurt someone, didn't I?"
"Yes," I said. "You attacked Airman Brown. You blacked both his eyes, broke his nose and his right cheekbone, and you split his lip."
"No," said Daniel, shaking his head. "No...."
"I'm afraid so," I said. "But he'll mend."
He was frowning. "There's something else ... I can remember, I --" He sucked in air. "It was you, Doctor Fraiser. You were bending over me, and I --"
"Daniel," I said, using my scalpel voice. "Enough. I am all right. Airman Brown will be all right. There'll be more than enough time to exhaust the rights and wrongs of this situation once you're well again. Do I make myself clear?"
Fretting, he turned back to Sam and Teal'c. "Jack's okay? I didn't hurt him? I shot at him, I was trying to kill him."
"No, you weren't," Sam said. "You were confused. Sick. You weren't trying to kill anyone."
"Where is he?" said Daniel. "Where's Jack?" He struggled to sit up. Before I could protest, Teal'c flattened him against his pillows with one hand.
"Colonel O'Neill is not here, Daniel," he said.
"Oh, God," said Daniel, and wilted. "He hates me."
"No, he doesn't," Sam said sharply. "Daniel. He doesn't."
Daniel wasn't listening. "How can you be here? How can you even want to look at me? God! How can I make it up to you, Sam? Teal'c? What I said. What I did. How I acted. Please forgive me. I don't know what I'll do if you can't."
He was working himself into a fine old state. Sam and Teal'c exchanged anguished looks. Well. Sam's was anguished. And Teal'c's would have been, if he'd let it.
She said, "Don't. Daniel, don't. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. You didn't mean any of it. We understand that, don't we, Teal'c?"
Teal'c nodded. "It was the sarcophagus."
"That's right," said Sam. "It was the sarcophagus. You didn't mean any of it."
Blanched, shaking, Daniel said, "I meant to kill Jack. He won't forgive me for that. You know him, Sam. He'll never forgive me. Not for any of it."
He was on the brink of a complete breakdown. Time to pull the plug. "Okay," I said. "Visiting hours are over. Teal'c, Captain Carter, I'm afraid you'll have to leave now. You can come back again tomorrow. For a short visit."
They left, and we were alone. I collected stethoscope, thermometer and bp cuff and began a routine exam. Daniel stared up at the ceiling like a man bereft of hope. He was flaccid beneath my hands, inert and unresisting. I took blood, inserting the needle between the bruises in the crook of his arm. He didn't even flinch.
"I am so disgusting," he said, as I labelled the sample and set it aside.
"No, you're not," I said.
"Yes. I am. Look at what I've done. I abandoned my wife. I left my friends to be worked to death in a mine, starved and chained like animals, while I lived in a palace. I attacked you, and Brown. I tried to kill Jack." His voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands. "I'm a monster."
I put down the sample. Settled myself beside him on the bed, and took his hands in mine. Gently pulled them away from his face and said, "Enough. Listen to me, Daniel. How long have we known each other now?"
Dully, he said, "Two years, about."
"And in two years," I said, "have I ever lied to you?"
"No."
"No. And I'm certainly not going to start now. This is a bad situation, Daniel. It's dire. There will be consequences. Serious consequences. You have more broken fences to mend than I can even count. And even if you can mend them all, I suspect some will never be the same again. You've been foolish, and reckless, and other people have paid the price for it. But you're not a monster, Daniel. Okay? You're not a monster."
He started to cry, then. Silently. No sound. No movement. Just tears, sliding hot and fast down his hollow cheeks.
There was so much more I could have said. Wanted to say. But he was in no fit state to hear it and besides ... it really had to come from Jack.
I just didn't know whether Jack would say it. Or if Daniel could bear to hear it from him.
I gave him a sedative. Left him alone. Closed the door behind me, flagged it 'do not disturb', and went to find the General.
"I'll be honest with you, Janet," General Hammond said. "I don't know what to do."
Oooh. He called me Janet. He practically never calls me Janet. Mystery readers would call that a Clue.
I didn't need one. I already knew we were in deeper shit than I had a shovel for. And the smell was getting worse by the minute. I'd already reassured him as to Daniel's physical recovery. Now we were contemplating the wreckage of his friendship with Jack ... and the view was anything but encouraging.
I'd already reassured him as to Daniel's physical recovery. Now we were contemplating the wreckage of his friendship with Jack ... and the view was anything but encouraging.
I sighed. "What does the Colonel have to say?"
The General's smile was grim. "Nothing I'd care to repeat in mixed company."
Helplessly we stared at each other across the pristine expanse of his desk. "Well .... does he still want Daniel on the team?"
"I don't know," the General replied. "Hell. I don't think he knows himself. I'll tell you this, though. God forbid I should ever make Jack O'Neill angry with me. The man could disembowel you with his tongue."
"Yes," I said. "I know."
His eyebrows lifted at that, but I didn't elaborate. He said, "Any idea as to how Daniel feels?"
"Daniel," I said, "is a mess. If he could, he'd be pouring coals of fire on his own head. Remorse doesn't begin to cover it."
The General sighed. "I wish I thought that would mean something to Jack ... but right now, I'm not sure it would."
We sat in depressed silence for a while. I picked at the fraying pocket of my lab coat. The General drew spiky stars on his blotter.
"We have to do something," he said explosively, digging his sharpened pencil into the creamy paper. "I'll be damned if I just stand idly by and watch those two fools self-destruct! Besides. All personal considerations aside ... this operation can't afford to lose SG1. It's as simple as that."
I said, "We could always call in Tom Mackenzie. He's got clearance. He's a good psychiatrist. Daniel and the Colonel know him."
"Right," said the General. "And you think Jack's changed his tune on clucking dogs and barking chickens and all things psychiatric because ...?"
My turn to sigh. "Right." I straightened. "I guess there's no other way. I'll talk to him."
"No offence, Doctor, but ... what makes you think he'll talk back?"
Because I know him. I know which buttons to push. And if he doesn't I'll nail his feet to the floor and make him watch Daytime soaps until he's begging for mercy.
"Oh," I said. "Just a feeling I have. I can't see him staying angry forever. He's as invested in the friendship as Daniel is. He just needs some time, and a fresh perspective."
Which didn't exactly answer the question. I watched the General's face flicker with speculation. Kept my own expression bland and unreadable. I don't think I fooled him.
He said, "Yes. Well. Let's hope you're right."
"Yes," I agreed. "Let's."
I got up to leave. Wished the General good night. As I headed for the door he said, "By the way, Doctor. I understand you and Daniel got into a little rough house of your own. Are you all right?"
"Sure," I said. "I've gotten worse playing softball. I'm fine."
Which wasn't strictly true, but Daniel was in enough hot water already. General Hammond can be a touch old fashioned about some things ... and attacking women is pretty much top of the list.
By the time I'd settled Daniel for the night and briefed the nursing staff, it was after seven. Driving away from the base, heading home, I dithered. It was Friday. Cass was at a slumber party. I had no food in the house. Well. Nothing I wanted to eat, anyway. The evening yawned before me, empty and uninviting.
On the other hand, I could go see Jack.