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.
They hadn't gone ten feet down the corridor when they met the first wave of armed resistance.
An even dozen marines lined up all the way across the corridor, assault weapons at the ready and pointed straight at them. Oh look, there was that new guy, what was his name, Albertson? Had seen him in town last week when he had gone into that new place to grab a cold one and just - hang out. Albertson had been there with a couple of buddies and had sent him over a beer - even got the brand right - gave him points for that one. Heard his buddies razzing him about sucking up to the colonel.
Now here the guy was pointing a gun at his heart with every intention of using it if he was ordered to. Jack sighed. Ain't life grand. When it didn't positively suck.
One of the men was barking something at them. Who was that, what the hell was his name - Jack, what does it MATTER - focus already!
"Colonel O'Neill, begging your pardon, Sir, but I have orders to take both you and Doctor Jackson into custody. I am respectfully requesting that you surrender, Sir. Right now. I have to advise you that if you don't, my orders are very clear."
Out of the corner of his eye Jack could see that the man beside him was drawing himself up as if preparing to do - God only knew what. Or maybe that should be the whatever that was inside the man beside him. Ah, where was that scorecard when you needed it...
Jack could feel Daniel's hand tightening on his arm in anticipation of Xi'a's next move as Jack hurried to address the man who had challenged them.
"I'm sure they are, soldier, and may I say, that your request was very, very nicely phrased. I'll be sure to mention that in my report. Nothing would make me happier than to not have to make you try to shoot me - try being the operative word here, take my word for it - but I gotta tell you - it isn't up to me. She - ah - he has somewhere to go, I have to help them get there, and if you know what's good for you, you will take my advice and get out of the way. Now. Cause THEY don't have a lot of patience with jarheads who stick guns in their faces and trust me, you don't WANT to piss them off."
"You are refusing to surrender?"
Thick or what. Must be a college graduate. Shit, he had to get these jiggerheads to move; Daniel was about to go off.
"What - you want it in writing or something? Hell yeah! Now get the hell out of the way! Not kidding here, you are about 30 seconds away from being the first Marines on the Moon!"
He turned to spare a hurried glance at Daniel, to see his friend's face looking back at him, Xi'a riding in the driver's seat. She looked at him, forming Daniel's features into an expression of the pure, primal anticipation of intended future mayhem. It was a savagely compelling, wild expression made all the more exciting by how alien it was to Daniel's normal range of expression.
In spite of himself, Jack felt his heart leap in a resonant pulse of pure, anarchistic joy. Oh, he might never have seen it on Daniel's face before, but he knew that look. He had seen it looking back at him in his mirror enough times. He knew in that instant he could really, really get to like Xi'a.
* Oh my, a wo - ah - whatever - after my own heart.*
Daniel features instantly resolved themselves into an expression of blinding pleasure. "Watch this, Jack," Xi'a said archly as she twisted Daniel's lips into a deeply satisfied smile.
Xi'a laughed and an explosion of energy surged forth blowing the line of men before them off their feet and flinging them the full length of the corridor like dead leaves caught helplessly in a sudden squall. Each in their turn they impacted against the wall with sickening thuds, fell to the ground and did not move. Xi'a gave his arm an excited squeeze and began to sprint down the corridor, drawing him along with her, a willing accomplice to the roller coaster ride that was only beginning.
Xi'a was smoking and there wasn't anything or anyone that was slowing her down. They careened swiftly through the silo, making unerringly for the embarkation room, heedlessly scattering the men in their path like so many tenpins. With about as much consideration as one would give to a piece of wood that one was seeking to knock over with a bowling ball.
Jack was more than loving every minute of it - he was literally transported with ecstasy. Maybe it was some weird reaction to all those hours of feeling like about as useful as a piece of dog crap scraped off the bottom of a someone's shoe, but he had never, ever felt a rush like this. The power that poured from Daniel's body coursed through his own, lighting every synapse, firing his nerve endings, filling his veins with fire and the exhilaration of knowing that they could do - ANYTHING - and nothing could stop them. No dog-faced, paper-pushing, pencil-necked, no-brained bureaucratic shit head could push HIM around. If revenge was sweet than by God he was going into insulin shock.
By the time they hit the last set of blast doors, the ones that would allow them admittance to the embarkation room itself the resistance was getting pretty token. Guess the body count behind them had finally become impressive enough to get the point across. Xi'a was preparing herself to take out the last obstacle when suddenly, Jack felt the presence of someone they both seemed to have forgotten in their intoxicating orgy of marine-bashing.
*Jack - don't do this. Don't let her hurt any more people. It isn't right. You know that. Please, Jack. *
Daniel! The insertion of Daniel's quiet, calming thoughts into the power-mad maelstrom of his mind was like a bucket of arctic ice water thrown all over him, drenching him to the bone. Soaking some sense into him. Better late than never.
Jesus, what had he been THINKING of? What the hell was the matter with him? Those men were colleagues, friends, fellow soldiers and officers he had fought with, served with, stood shoulder to shoulder with and he had LAUGHED when they had fallen before them.
*Power, Jack. Cuts both ways. We've done a lot of harm. We can't leave until we put it right. *
Jack shook his head, emerging from the power-drunk dream that had briefly but terrifyingly possessed him. All he could think was to thank God that Xi'a was living in Daniel's head and not his own, because if not for his friend's - self-control and innate goodness - who knew what kind of further unbridled mayhem would have ensued.
He also knew that when he got back and got a moment he was going to have to start working on the part of himself he just got a look at here today.
He looked into the blazing eyes that usurped Daniel's to see an answering sense of shame within.
"Can you do what he says, kid?" Jack asked her. "Can you fix those guys we threw around?"
"Yes Jack, I can," she answered in a very quiet voice. "Now I know why it was intended that the a'tah should last for many, many passings of the seasons. The body is a wondrous thing and the power - fearsome and tempting - if you do not have the training."
Jack had no idea what she was talking about; he just wanted to somehow undo everything that had happened in the last - however long it had been since they had been cracking backs against walls and loving it.
Something he couldn't see but definitely could feel rolled out from Xi'a and flowed down the corridor behind them. Jack was quite content to stand there hating himself while she did her work.
*She was very young when she was taken and she has been alone, scared and hurting for a very long time. She doesn't understand - about a lot of things. She just wanted to please you. It's not your fault. Her enthusiasm is very - overwhelming. *
**She didn't overwhelm YOU, my friend. **
*I've had a little more time to get used to her - personality. That's all. *
** You're never gonna leave me alone to be happy to think the worst of myself, are you, Danny? **
* 'Fraid not. Deal with it, O'Neill. *
A sudden squeeze of his arm brought him back to normal awareness. He didn't know how much time had passed, but it seemed that Xi'a was ready to move on.
"It's done. Their bodies have been repaired and they will not remember what I did to them," she said to Jack as she lifted Daniel's arm and placed his hand on the blast door. As soon as she touched it, it was just - gone. The path to the embarkation room was clear.
They walked inside, striding toward the Stargate, which was already activated, awaiting them. Jack looked around, slightly stunned by the bizarre tableau that presented itself to his astonished eyes.
There was a last line of defense blocking the ramp to the Gate. Yet another line of armed soldiers doing their duty, waiting there in the last valiant attempt to keep them from escaping. And lookee, lookee, there was Maybourne, right there in for no doubt what he hoped would be the kill.
Some people just never learn.
It wasn't bizarre that they were standing there; that much was only to be expected. What was whacked was that they were all - standing there. Not moving. Staring. Completely frozen. Jack looked up at the Control Room. Man, same deal up there. Everybody was making like their favorite impression of a store mannequin.
Feeling more than slightly like a schmuck as comprehension dawned, Jack turned to favor Xi'a with a more than slightly accusatory look.
"So tell me, could you have done this all along?"
Xi'a looked back at him with one of Daniel's best completely abashed expressions.
"Yes," she answered in the otherworldly alien-voice equivalent of a thoroughly young and thoroughly contrite child.
"So - we could have gotten here without - all that other stuff?" He pressed, knowing he was really more honked off at himself for encouraging than at her for actually doing.
"Yes." Unbelievably, the answering voice was even smaller and even more like that of a child.
Crap. He couldn't stay mad at her any more than he could stay mad at Daniel. Especially when the fault was really his because of the two of them he was the one who should have known better.
*Yes. *
Another country heard from. Okay Daniel, point taken. Let's just get the hell out of here and sort the whole thing out later. Thank god nobody was going to remember anything about any of this.
Except him.
And of course, Daniel.
"Ready Jack?" Xi'a's eyes were glued to the Gate, and he could feel the excitement within her beginning to grow, spilling out and over him once more. She was finally going home.
"Ready -" he started to say, and then cut himself off.
Just one more little piece of business to take care of before leaving.
He held up a hand to stop her and for the first time endeavored to separate his arm from her clasp. "Just, one little second. Won't take a minute. Something I have to do."
Chuckling under his breath Jack scooted over to Maybourne's side, knelt beside him and quickly knotted his shoelaces together. He heard both Daniel and Xi'a laughing behind him as he straightened up and made his way back to them.
He was never quite sure where it came from and he could never get a straight answer out of Daniel about it, but the suddenly, an extremely vivid image of Maybourne standing there with his trousers around his ankles popped into his thoughts.
"Tempting, but no. A little too over-the-top. Let's get the hell out of here before I change my mind."
It was absolute night on the other side of the gate, a night violent with a raging, howling wind that threatened to pull him off his feet before he had a chance to orient himself.
The Stargate in this strange place where they had come rested in the hollow of a crater-like depression with gracefully sloping sides. While Jack struggled to stay on his feet and get his bearings Daniel tore from his side and ran to the top where they stood on the crest, arms spread wide and head thrown back in an ecstatic expression of joy, Daniel's half-naked form eerily illuminated and starkly delineated within the alien aura that surrounded him.
Abruptly separated from the influence of the energy that he had recently been a part of, Jack felt wrenchingly alone, suddenly smaller and infinitely overwhelmed by the terrifying spectacle of the sudden stranger who shimmered above him.
Daniel was some wild, unfathomable thing again, an awful, god-like incomprehensible entity that could very well just as soon squash him as look at him. And in that vulnerable moment of beholding the vision before him, and feeling himself full of every single way in which he had ever failed him, slighted and disappointed him, Jack could think of far many more reasons why Daniel should, than he shouldn't.
The blazing corona played across Daniel's naked back, caressing the muscles that rippled beneath his skin as he raised his arms above him as if seeking to embrace the sky. The wind screamed, Daniel laughed, the enveloping aura that cocooned him made his body starkly shine with impossible perfection.
They turned back to face him and Jack took several drunken steps backward, viscerally struck by a sight that was even more terrifying.
Daniel had resided in the background of a mind dominated by Xi'a's bloodlust.
Now that she was home and happy and full of the full power of what she purely was Daniel was right out there with her and as far away from what he really was as he had ever been.
There was almost nothing left of the man he knew and understood that was not fully entwined with this creature that was taking him away from his own humanity before Jack's horrified eyes.
Mother of God, what was he looking at? What was happening here?
Daniel's chaotic locks streamed about his enraptured visage, the planes of his face etched alabaster in the heart of the inferno. His muscular chest heaved, his throat pulsed, his body sang with the thrum of absolute power.
Jack was deeply afraid. He had good reason to be. Not so lately he had himself drunk very shallowly of the same cup that now offered his friend the unbridled opportunity to drain it to its very dregs. Jack was only too well aware what use he had made of his own opportunity.
Power cuts both ways? Oh Daniel, are you as good at following your own wisdom as you are at offering it?
Jack took another step back, groping blindly behind him for the Dial Home Device. Just in case. Just in case.
The beautiful, terrible head began to move, looking down. Down at the man quaking in his boots at the bottom of the bowl. Down at him. That face he used to know so well and hold so dear and now was so afraid of wore an expression he had never seen and did not have the slightest notion of how to interpret. Those sculptured, power-encased arms came down to extend themselves outward toward him in an open-handed gesture that could have been as much a preparation to strike him down as anything else.
Daniel closed his eyes and dipped his head, as if gathering himself for -
Jack closed his eyes and prepared to die.
They were startled back open by the very, very familiar sound of Daniel's infectious laughter.
"Jack," he said shaking his head. "Honestly I really don't know where you get some of your ideas. Stop standing there like an idiot and get up here! We've got a long way to go."
Jack couldn't think, couldn't speak, but found he certainly could move. Pulled up the slope by the irresistible combination of the power of the man before him and the power of his own relief that his friend was still his friend, Jack scrambled up the short rise and stood once more at Daniel's side.
Daniel/Xi'a' smiled at him as they held out their hand to him. "Come home with me," they said.
"Where?" Jack blurted out dumbly.
They indicated the vast expanse beyond them with a sweep of Daniel's other arm. "Out there. Home."
Jack's eyes followed the indicator of Daniel's hand across what appeared to be a vastly empty expanse of rough rocky wilderness. A stark, alien landscape that stretched unchanging as far as the eye could see and well beyond until at last the monotony was broken by a distant range of mountains that marred the pristine line of the horizon with their jutting impudence.
"There?" Jack gaped. "You mean, out - THERE there? All the way out THERE?"
"All the way home." Daniel/Xi'a laughed at his disbelief as they continued to hold their hand out to him, inviting him to take it.
Just like Daniel. He would only ask, but he wouldn't compel. Wouldn't make Jack do something he didn't want to do.
"Don't worry, we'll be there before you know it. Coming, Jack?"
Jack answered him by taking the final step and putting his hand in the one that had been offered him. Once more, the power infused him, swirled through him, once more he was drawn into the synergy that was Daniel/Xi'a which now became Daniel/Jack/Xi'a. Once more he understood that all was well, all had always been well, and as he did his groundless fear completely evaporated.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" He grinned at them. "Let's motor."
Their hands as tightly entwined as their minds and hearts, they hurled themselves wantonly into the long, dark, savage night.