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.
It must have been a trick of the light. It must have been the bump on his head, or all over his body even. Whatever it was, Jack O'Neill was fully prepared to swear on a whole stack of the Holy Tome of your choice that he had not seen what he had in fact. just seen.
One instant Daniel was above him, about to become a serious victim of gravity, an experience he probably would not have enjoyed in the slightest, and then he just.wasn't there.
Oh, he was there, just not there, up there. Daniel was kneeling by his side there and although Jack was more relieved than words could say of that particular fact, he doubted that even Carter could have explained exactly how it had come to pass.
If he could have moved he would have grabbed that shaggy headed Houdini and hugged him till his ribs broke. Except he couldn't move and he furthermore had a feeling that engaging in that sort of activity wouldn't do his own ribs very much good.
Suddenly the silence of the dank chamber was shattered by the sound of a deep, booming voice. Daniel sprang to his feet, whirling around as if he could locate the source of the sound by doing an imitation of a dervish.
Whatever deep, dark and sepulchral was saying, Jack couldn't make it out. To him it sounded like a cross between gargling and spitting, but from the expression on Daniel's face, he was making perfect sense out of the unintelligible sounds. The hollow, echoing torrent of strangeness suddenly stopped. Daniel yelled a few phrases in the same language, his voice laced with desperation and fury, what he was saying sounding for all the world to a bemused Jack like some sort of a challenge. To underscore this impression Daniel suddenly darted back to his side, gesticulating wildly at him while still addressing his attention and remarks to the air, and then he thumped his fists against his own chest.
Daniel was plainly both really, really honked off about something and yet at the same time scared, well - shitless. Why? What was he saying? What had the other guy been saying? What was going on? Why couldn't he move? What was the air speed velocity of a swallow? Christ, O'Neill, can't you EVER be serious? Well, he might be completely in the dark at the moment, but given the nature of the man beside him, it was a pretty sure bet that Daniel would be filling him in on all of this any second now.
Failing to get any sort of a reaction to his puzzling performance, Daniel allowed his shoulders to slump in defeat and then turned his attention back to the man who was lying on the floor waiting to be let in on what all the shouting was about. A deeply troubled expression on his pale face, Daniel knelt at Jack's side. He paused a moment, a slightly trembling hand pressed to his mouth, as his eyes raked over the prone body of the man before him. He didn't make a sound or a movement, but the sound of his rapid breathing was unnaturally loud in Jack's ears. A final huge intake of breath from behind that hand, the sound of which bordering on a sob, Daniel moved closer to him, gently extended his hands and beginning a slow but thorough physical assessment of Jack's injuries. Still, not so much as a sigh passed through the portal of his tightly compressed lips.
Jack continued to lie there in quiet faith that all would soon be revealed to him, waiting for the verbal onslaught that he was sure would come. Daniel should be talking his ear off by now. Yup. Any time. He was just going to start talkin'. Had to happen. Flappin his lips like the town gossip with a hot bit of news. Aw, hell.
Nuthin. Nada. Zippidee Doo Dah. Typical. If he was at home trying to watch the game instead of lying on his back on some alien planet probably dying or something else equally guaranteed to ruin his day then he wouldn't be able to get the kid to shut up.
Mind you, having to listen to Danny yakking his ear off would have been a small price to pay if he really COULD be sitting at home right now.
Jack tried to turn his head toward his uncharacteristically taciturn friend to see what he was doing, but found that the effort was more than he could manage. The attempt at movement causing a resurgence of the nausea that had only just gone away, Jack closed his eyes and tried to hold onto the contents of his stomach. He had to content himself with remaining completely still with his eyes closed, feeling rather than seeing the gentle and strangely reassuring pressure of Daniel's hands as he ran them slowly up the length of one leg, and then the other. Daniel's motions were deft but excruciating tender. Jack felt that if he had been made of glass Daniel could not have been more careful of him. As those comforting hands continued their painstaking examination of his hips and his torso, so capable and yet so caring, Jack couldn't help thinking that the kid had the missed his calling.
Too bad all this care and concern is wasted on the likes of me.
Daniel's questing fingers gently probed a spot over the ribs on his lower left side. A lancet of pain jabbed into him. Daniel had barely touched it - he had been so careful not to hurt him so he tried not to cry out but it just caught him by surprise -
"Ah GEEZ! That's a major owwie for sure!" Jack gasped. "Congratulations, Doc, I think you hit paydirt." Jack found he could move his head again so he turned toward the man beside him, in time to catch him flinch as he had been struck. His hands faltered, he took a deep breath and said, "I'm so sorry. I don't mean to hurt you but I have to do this." Before he continued his examination Daniel attempted a wan smile, intended, Jack was sure, to reassure. However, Daniel couldn't get those eyes of his to lie.
The kid wasn't saying anything, but he was sure scared about something. Three guesses what that was.
Jack grunted, heaved an impatient sigh, and then abruptly wished he hadn't. If it even hurt to breathe now, that was a pretty fair sign that he was hip deep in trouble. Well, he hadn't gotten where he was by running away from every unpleasant little thing.. As much as he was enjoying Daniel's ministrations, he was starting to feel about as useful as. condoms to a nun. Time to start getting some of the missing picture filled in.
"Daniel?" His voice sounded a little too shaky and a little too weird. "Daniel, as exciting as all of this is, if you get any more familiar we're gonna have to get married, and I already have all the dishes I need. What's goin' on?"
"Jack?"
Daniel had answered him back too quickly to give himself time to hide the panic. Crap. Maybe he didn't want to know what was going on after all... "Ah, just giving you the once-over, Colonel, to see if I can see how badly you're hurt. "
"Figured as much. Sooo, where did you have time to go to medical school?"
Good! He got Daniel to laugh. As long as he didn't return the favor, they'd get along fine.
"Oh, no formal training," Daniel smiled to himself. "Picked up one or two things in the field though. And once the women at Abydos had gotten over the shock of the idea that a man would be interested in learning their cures and remedies, they showed me a few things as well.
"Cool. I bet you did the boy-scout thing too."
Jack gritted his teeth against more pain as Daniel located another problem in the area of his clavicle.
"Sorry to disappoint," Daniel flushed as he noted Jack's reaction, but continued. "Never had the pleasure. Was a charter member of Tut's Rangers, though. Cairo Chapter. The Rootin' Tut'n Squad."
Jack looked back at Daniel as if he had grown another head. Daniel continued what he was doing, his gaze averted from Jack, watching him ever so covertly from the corner of his eye.
"Get outta town! You made that up!"
Daniel allowed himself the tiniest smile. "Yeah, I did. Not too shabby, huh?"
"I'll laugh later when it doesn't hurt so much. You about done there or what? What's the verdict?"
Daniel was running his strong, soothing fingers along the back of Jack's neck, then moving them up to cradle the back of his head with one hand while he probed Jack's scalp with the fingers of the other. "Well, Colonel, the good news is that you don't seem to have any broken extremities. Arms and legs seem to be okay. I'm not so sure about your left hip and a couple of ribs on that side are broken. Ditto for your collarbone. You've got some abdominal swelling that doesn't look good. Probably internal bleeding. From the way you've been drifting in and out I would venture to guess that you probably have a concussion. Keeping my fingers crossed about any other more serious skull injuries, but given how hard your head is."
"Har - de - har" Jack snorted. "Well, good for you. Guess I more than had THAT coming." He wanted to laugh but knew it would probably hurt too much. "So don't sugar-coat it, Doc, give it to me straight. How long do you think I've got?"
Daniel's eyes, formerly so open, suddenly veiled and he pulled up from Jack as if he had been struck.
"Don't make jokes like that! You're going to be fine."
Jack was trying to look both brave and understanding. He couldn't tell if he was pulling it off or not.
"Come on, Danny-boy, let's not kid a kidder. I'm all busted up inside. I can feel it. I can feel everything else as well. Can't move any of it, but I can feel it. That can't be too good either, now can it?"
Having apparently completed his examination, Daniel was sitting beside him, his chin resting on knees he had drawn tightly up close to his chest, held in place by arms that were wrapped tightly around them. He was looking past the man lying beside him, that distant, worried look in his eyes again.
"No Jack, it isn't very good at all. It means that I really shouldn't move you, but I have to. I've got no choice. If I have any hope of getting through this thing and getting you back home I'm going to have to move you. But doing that means I am going to have to hurt you more - "
"Whoa! Stop the pony ride for just a second! What did you just say? Getting through WHICH thing? What do you know that I don't know - besides almost everything I mean - what was all that yakking about and how did you get from up there to down here without ending up in basically the same condition that I am in?"
"I knew that I had to," Daniel replied softly. "I had no choice. There was no other way to get down, and I had to get down. You needed me, and the only way to get to you was to let go and take my chances. Trust in my faith that doing the right thing would keep me safe. I guess it was the right thing to do because apparently I passed the test and the voice you heard was that of the Guardian telling me that the conditions for passing the First Trial of Ma'at had been satisfied. The Trial of Faith. Apparently there are three more. If we get through all of them in one piece, we can go home.
Jack blinked at him as if he had just heard him recite the pledge of allegiance in Swahili.
"Say. WHAT?"
Sighing, Daniel unwound himself from the ball he had formerly been trying to imitate and moved a little closer to Jack as he began to tell him what he had learned from reading the inscriptions in the reception room. He told Jack about using the radio to talk to Carter and Teal'c and about telling them to use the gate to get back home.
"I don't know if they left or not. I, uh, dropped my radio. It kinda broke."
Jack allowed himself a wry smile. "That would be it over there."
"Yup"
"Well, you could use mine. It's probably working fine. Lucky for it, I broke its fall."
"Oh wow - I never even thought of that, that's a really great idea."
Daniel fished Jack's radio out of his vest. It proved to be working perfectly, but it did not take very long to ascertain that there appeared to be no one at the other end to respond.
"Good," Daniel said softly as he gently replaced the device in Jack's vest pocket. "That makes two less people to worry about. Now all I have to do is figure out."
Daniel was sitting right beside him, but he was gone again. Back into his head, back into that place where he went when he was trying to work something out. His eyes were staring intently at what he was rolling over in that brain that could give the Starship Enterprise a run for its money when it came to warp speed velocities. He also tended to talk to himself, so if you were happened to be in the vicinity when Daniel was "cogitating", you got a free front row seat to the show. Probably wouldn't understand much, but it could be entertaining, all the same.
This time, however, what Daniel was mumbling aloud was neither coherent nor amusing. "Have to figure out what to do.etemylogically Anpu the source language. Goa'uld and Egyptian derivatives of the older parent language seeming to indicate that the Anpu are the older race. evidence of matter transmission, transmutation capabilities. if they are older, they could be more advanced. perhaps it is possible they could have the technology to undo the damage but do I dare take the risk. but even if they have the technology would they help him. can't be sure of their motivations alien psychology no way to know why they are doing what they are doing and if they even CARE if he lives or dies. God - just picking him up could kill him but he's dead if I leave him here what am I saying they have to be able to help him its his only hope I have to get him there and if they won't help him I'll MAKE them - "
"Daniel." He was right next to him and yet a million miles away. Jack tried to make his arm lift up; to reach out to him, to bring him back, but the limb would not cooperate.
"Daniel" A little louder this time. Still no response. Daniel sat there rocking back and forth, looking so solitary in his anguished contemplation words tumbling from him in a verbal cascade, almost too fast for Jack to make out what he was saying. Jack reached out to him again, the only way he now could.
"Danny - I need you."
That did the trick. That got through to him. As the words pouring from Daniel's throat halted in mid syllable and he swung his worried and anguished eyes upon him, Jack was stunned by the realization that there had been more to the words he thought he had just uttered simply to get Daniel's attention. Though the phrase was formed in artifice, by the time the words were actually spoken, they were the truth. He - him. The same guy the men in his former unit used to call (behind his back, sure, but stuff like this always gets back to you), The Lone Wolf, Colonel Cold and the Jack-inator (that last one had been his personal favorite), the original ice man - needed someone.
Well what do you know about that, Jack?
Bottom of the ninth, and you've hit a home run.
You've finally found someone worth living for
Just as you're about to pop off.
Just about par for the course..
But he couldn't think about that now. Daniel was leaning over him, unashamed of the tears that were coursing down his cheeks, making no effort to check them or wipe them away. He had laid one hand against the side of Jack's face in a gesture of infinite tenderness, almost as if he was afraid to touch him anywhere else lest even seeking to comfort he should cause him further harm.
"I'm here, Jack." The words were barely audible. "Don't worry, I'm going to get you out of this. I promise. You have my word, everything is going to be fine."
Jack's head began to swim again. He felt Daniel's breath on his neck, heard his voice close to his ear telling him he was sorry but he was going to try to pick him up now he knew it was going to hurt and he couldn't do anything about that but he was so sorry but he had to do this it was the only way.
Oh he knew that it was going tobe bad but there was suddenly nothing but fire someone screaming someone sobbing oh god I'msosorryjack how the fire burns don't cry danny itsnotsobad just a fleshwound suddenly this voice all around him and in his head heard it before but funny it makes sense now..
. One has met the conditions of the Trial of the Heart. One enters the Trial of the Mind.