Part 3Tatters - Part 2
by Martha
Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations. Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle.Jeremiah 25:9-10
~~~ To Blair's relief, Jim was right on time, driving around to the front of Hargrove just as he pushed his way out the front doors. Blair had been feeling a little tired and run down by the end of class, and he supposed it must have been obvious to his students as well, the way their expressions became increasingly slack and uninterested the more Blair had struggled to keep his lecture on track.
More sleep, that was the ticket. He definitely needed to be showing up for his lectures completely rested after a good night's sleep. This wasn't fair to his students, sleepwalking his way through class. As the kids had wound their lackluster way out of the lecture hall he'd even felt the ugly niggling of dark self-doubt. Here he finally had everything he'd ever wanted -- more than he'd ever allowed himself to imagine, really -- was it finally going to turn out that he just couldn't do it? Had he been lying to himself and everyone else all these years?
And then with the sight of Jim's blue and white truck, suddenly everything shifted back into proper perspective. He was tired and had been a little off his game ever since his trip to the grocery store this morning, that was all. It didn't mean the world was coming to an end.
He ran down the steps swung his way into the truck. "Thanks for the lift," he said, pulling the door shut. "Your day been all right?" He broke off at the expression on Jim's face. "What's the matter?"
"Who was that guy you walked out with?"
"I don't know." Blair glanced over his shoulder. "Student, I guess. What'd he look like?"
"He was right next to you, and he looked -- I thought he was saying something to you but I couldn't make it out."
"Seriously I don't know. Whoever he was, I didn't notice." Blair scanned the students strolling across the lawn and wide brick walks.
"Nobody was talking to you?"
"No." He turned back to Jim. "Maybe one of my students was bitching me out under his breath for giving such a half-assed lecture today."
Jim's answering smile was a little weak. "Yeah, maybe." He finally put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb, but Blair noticed he was still watching his surroundings with extra care.
"So what about this guy? Did he look really pissed off or what?"
"Nothing. I don't know. It's been a bad morning."
"Aw geez, man, what's going on? I thought you were going to be at the station."
"Didn't turn out that way. Everybody's been short-handed since midnight, and I ended up stopping on a domestic call right after I dropped you off this morning."
"Bad?"
Jim shrugged. Really bad, Blair translated. He rubbed the back of his hand against Jim's upper arm. "You OK?"
"I'm fine," Jim said, a touch impatiently. At the stoplight he closed his eyes for a moment before confessing, "It was over in Tacoma Heights. Nobody in the house spoke English, the patrolman who was first on the scene was totally out of his depth, we couldn't find a translator --"
"Kurdish family?"
"Yeah."
"Man, I've got to talk to Simon about arranging for me to run an orientation up at the 8th Precinct. The newer refugees are all PUK, and that's got to be causing tensions with the KDP families who're already there."
"The thing this morning didn't have anything to do with political affiliations, Chief."
"Well, it might not have been obvious to you, but we're talking about a very deep-seated and bloody history. It's not like Democrats and Republicans. Not at the end of the 20th century, anyway."
"You're telling me politics would make a woman go after her own children like that?"
"I don't know," Blair said, keeping his voice calm. "How bad was it? Did she ... kill them?"
"They'll be OK. Physically, at least. Her husband stopped her in time."
"I'm surprised he called the cops. Not exactly the first thing I'd expect."
"Neighbor called." Jim was staring straight ahead, his face bleak. "The mother seemed real calm, even with the blood still on her hands and face, and she kept trying to, I don't know, explain something. Why she'd done it, maybe, but the neighbor refused to translate for us. Seemed pretty clear it was a psych case but Valley View was full up and Erlanger and Memorial didn't want to take her so we spent the rest of the morning just trying to find some place to put her, and then when the translator from the resettlement center finally showed up, she said the mother is talking about the coming of the 'king of rags and tatters.' That mean anything to you? Some kind of political slogan?"
Blair didn't get angry. "No. I don't think so, anyway. What did the translator think?"
"She didn't think anything. Or if she did, she didn't tell us about it." Jim lapsed into silence, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"Is there anything I can do?" Blair asked quietly. "Maybe talk to the people at the resettlement center and see if anyone knows more about the family?"
"Thanks." Jim glanced at him, his expression softening. "They're handling it up at the 8th from here on out. I already told Michelson to give you a call if they needed help."
No wonder Jim was so stressed. Called in on a bloody mess of a case, and then having it almost immediately taken out of his hands like that. No closure, no chance to make any sense from a sudden, chaotic explosion of violence and hurt.
Enough cases like that, you probably started to think that nothing made sense anymore.
"You want to grab some lunch before we go back to the station?" Jim asked suddenly
"Sure," Blair said, a little surprised. "Wonderburger?"
"Nah, I'm in the mood for sashimi. Haru work for you?"
Whoa. "Oh yeah, that sounds great. Especially if you're buying."
"No problem." Jim took a deep breath, clearly making an effort to put the morning and the case behind him. "But what happened to all that bragging about bringing in two paychecks these days?"
"Hey, I bought the groceries this morning and besides, contrary to popular belief, two part-time jobs don't really equal one full time job. And actually, we do have all that fresh produce in the fridge. You want to run home, have a salad for lunch instead?"
Jim laid his warm hand on Blair's thigh for a moment, stroking down to his knee and back. "Probably not a good idea." He turned to look at Blair at the traffic light. His raised eyebrow was probably supposed to be a leer, but the effect was spoiled by a half-shy smile that made Blair grin helplessly back at him. "We go home now and neither one of us will get any lunch."
~~~
This time Jack knew where he was.
Or if he didn't know exactly where he was, at least he was certain he had been here before. He recognized the carpet, the wallpaper, the tinny sound of a phonograph playing behind one of the closed doors.
He stepped off the elevator without hesitation. The room numbers were engraved on little brass plates, and he had a key to one of the rooms, he remembered that too. He fished around in his pockets looking for it. Daniel was already there. Jack remembered that most of all. He'd fallen asleep while waiting for Jack, but he wouldn't mind when Jack woke him up, even though he'd pretend to grumble.
Dammit, what had he done with the key?
Jack tried all his pockets again. He had a vague memory of leaving in a hurry last time. Something had happened, though he couldn't exactly remember what. Maybe he'd left his key behind.
He walked more slowly, dragging his feet through the heavy carpet as he examined the room numbers. Daniel would let him in if he knocked. All he had to do was remember the number, but the damned music was distracting him.
It isn't surprisin'
The temperature's risin'
She certainly can can-canJack felt a hot prickle of dread begin to creep over his scalp. Something wasn't right here.
None of the room numbers looked familiar. The corridor dead-ended into a another long hallway, and Jack looked right and left even though he knew his room hadn't been this far down. Identical doors lined the intersecting hall. The windows at each end were draped in heavy velvet curtains. It had been midday the last time Jack was here, and though no light could have made it through those draperies either way, he was convinced it was nighttime now. He was tempted to run to the end of the hall just to be certain, but he had a sick suspicion that there might be no window there at all. If he twitched the curtain aside to find only more blank, wallpapered wall, he didn't know what he might do. Something very stupid, probably, and somewhere behind one of these identical doors Daniel lay sleeping with the covers pulled up to his chin. Utterly defenseless, trusting Jack would find him soon.
Jack went through all his pockets again, and on the verge of despair, his fingers finally touched the heavy brass skeleton key tucked deep into his hip pocket. He dragged it out in triumph and held it up to read the numbers by the lousy light of the wall sconces.
P3X-636.
OK, that was right, he thought, recognizing the room number. Wondering why he still felt so uneasy, Jack hurried down the corridor until he found the door, and slipped the key into the lock.
Immediately he heard a heavy thunk as the last chevron fell into place. He stepped aside just before the blue splash of the event horizon spilled into the hallway and then rushed away like the sea at low tide. Cutting it a little close there, Jack thought, and stepped through the door.
He found himself on a beach at the edge of a ruined city. As far as the eye could see were broken towers and crumbling walls. A swollen reddish sun burned high in a dark sky, and the atmosphere was so thin he could feel the sun's heat even though the air was very cold.
With a gasp, Jack sat bolt upright in bed, fumbling frantically for the bedside lamp. When he turned the lamp switch, a moment of brilliant light blazed and then with a tiny, sharp snick the bulb burnt out, leaving him in darkness.
He swung his feet around and set them on the floor, waiting for the bright explosions of light to stop spotting his vision, for his heart to stop pounding in his chest.
P3X-636, dammit. Dammit all to hell.
When the phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin. He fumbled for the handset in worse than total darkness, still blinded from the light bulb, snatched the phone up at last and barked, "O'Neill."
"Hey, Jack. It's Daniel."
Jack fell backwards on the bed, not entirely admitting to himself just how good it was to hear his voice. "Christ, Danny, do you know what time it is?"
"Um, no. Let me check." A moment of scuffling around. "Looks like it's about 3:20. Oh-three-twenty," he corrected himself. "Were you sleeping?"
Deep breaths. Jack could feel sweat drying on his skin. "Yes, I was sleeping. Where the hell are you? Are you all right?"
"I'm at the mountain. Of course I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be?"
Jack counted silently to ten. "Is there some reason you're not home in bed?"
He heard Daniel exhale wearily. The sort of noise he made when Jack was asking a question too ridiculous to require an answer. "Look, something's come up and I need you to authorize travel arrangements for me."
"Travel arrangements."
"Right. I'm going to L.A."
~~~ "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."H.P. Lovecraft (1926)
~~~ Daniel was the one who had supplied the coordinates to P3X-636
Well, the coordinates themselves had come from the Abydos cartouche, and in the normal course of events it would have been months or even years before anyone got around to dialing them. But Daniel had asked, and although Jack supposed he had made a formal request with enough exhibits and footnotes to keep the bean-counters at the Pentagon happy, he hadn't bothered to read it himself. This was Daniel after all. He might be a little flaky some days; he even might have spent six months roaming around the country in a battered blue Honda after a particularly severe flake-out, but c'mon. When Daniel Jackson said his research suggested dialing those coordinates sooner rather than later, well, then, you got off your ass and dialed the damned coordinates.
He had kind of assumed that Carter at least would have read through Daniel's request. When they got their first peek at the MALP images though, she seemed just as taken aback as the rest of them.
"Oh, my," she breathed.
Jack took one look and immediately hoped the atmosphere was methane, or the temperature at the surface several thousand degrees above or below zero, or the whole planet in the path of a meteor or something. Anything to prevent them from ever having to step through that stargate.
Even Teal'c seemed faintly unsettled.
Daniel on the other hand leaned forward across the table to get a closer look at the screen. "Incredible," he said. "Can we get a better sense of scale?"
"We'll send a UAV through first, of course, and we could triangulate the size of some of the closer ruins." Carter tapped on the screen with the end of her pen. "Like what's left of this tower here."
"I don't think that's a tower," Daniel said. "I think it's just one pier. See how the line of rubble stretches back to the horizon? It must have been part of the same colonnade. We're looking at the remains of a single building here."
Carter sounded skeptical. "If you're right, I can't imagine what kind of a species would build to that scale. No one we've ever heard of."
"The goa'uld knew about them."
Teal'c's head swung around in surprise at Daniel's assertion.
"I'm not sure of the timeline, but it was probably around two million years ago, give or take a few hundred thousand. Back when goa'uld larvae were still growing to maturity in duck ponds. Probably well before they started taking human hosts at all."
"I have no knowledge of this species," Teal'c said.
"No. No, you probably wouldn't. The goa'uld would hardly be likely to tell their Jaffa they once worshipped the builders of this city as gods."
"Excuse me?" Jack sputtered, almost choking on his coffee.
"I can't prove it, of course, but there are scattered references ... Teal'c, you remember, on P4X-347, the script on the walls in that goa'uld dialect that was so difficult to read."
Jack cocked a worried eyebrow at Sam, even though he thought he already knew the answer.
"Yes sir," she said quietly, without his having to ask. "The planet where we found the Light.
Jack rested his head in his hands. Oh, great. Just great.
"I think this city was sacred to the species the goa'uld remember as the Old Ones. Racial memory, anyway. As far as we know, none of the system lords are old enough to have any direct memory of this city or the Old Ones themselves."
"Didn't live there?" Jack asked without looking up.
"Who, the Old Ones? Um, no. I gather they didn't really ... live in cities. Slept beneath them, sometimes.... What I've been able to put together so far is pretty fragmentary."
Jack raised his head, but before he could ask the next logical question Daniel continued hopefully, "So if we get the UAV launched by this afternoon, we can head out first thing in the morning?"
He sounded like he was planning a picnic. Jack scrubbed his hand over his face. "No, we cannot 'head out first thing in the morning.'" He pointed to the screen. "For one thing, I'd like a lot more information about this place before we go bebopping through the stargate."
After a moment of silence, Jack, realized everyone was looking at him. Right, right. That's exactly what this little meeting was about -- determining whether the destination held sufficient interest and was safe enough to justify the trip. "I mean, the atmosphere is probably poisonous. Or something."
"Actually sir," Carter began, but in his eagerness Daniel talked right over her. "The air's a little thin -- the planet's dying, and the atmosphere is bleeding off into space -- but it's perfectly breathable. We can carry oxygen if we need it. It's not a problem."
"Carter?" Jack asked pointedly.
She shrugged. "He's more or less right, sir. There are no obvious contraindications."
How about the fact that the place creeped him the hell out?
"Do we really want anything to do with creatures that the goa'uld looked up to? Doesn't that make them several orders of magnitude worse than the goa'uld themselves?"
"It's been two million years," Daniel said mildly.
Even Hammond chimed in, at which point Jack realized the battle had already been lost. "Sounds to me, Colonel, like it could be to our advantage to learn whatever we can about a species that the goa'uld once feared enough to worship."
"I'll have my final recommendation to you after we've had a chance to review the UAV tape," Jack said in defeat, and by 0700 the following morning, the wormhole was spitting SG-1 out onto the beach of a red and dying planet.
It was a rough landing. Jack spun out of the wormhole dizzy and nauseated, stumbled hard and promptly fell off the platform and onto wet sand that felt solid as asphalt. He swore and lurched to his feet, trying to shake out the sharp pain in his left elbow, and turned to see the status of the rest of his team. Teal'c was helping Carter up on the other side. Daniel alone hadn't fallen off the platform, but he was on his hands and knees, his head down like he was about to be sick. "Daniel?"
"'m OK," he mumbled. "Just need a minute here."
Jack turned around slowly, taking his first reconnaissance of this godforsaken place. The ocean was gray and reeked of salt. The beach was as gray as the water, and the waves that poured across the sand were sluggish and grasping, leaving dirty foam hieroglyphs scrawled in their wake.
He wouldn't be recommending this as a summer vacation spot any time soon, that was for damned sure.
With a half-sick feeling of reluctance, he turned on his heel to look at the ruins behind them. The remote images had been bad enough.
Broken stone blocks the size of five-story buildings lay tumbled across the landscape as far as the eye could see. He traced the jagged outline of a stone in the near distance, and the sky began to tilt. With a grunt of surprise Jack suddenly found himself sprawled on the sand again.
"Careful, sir," Carter called out, her warning a little late. "It'll help the vertigo if you just focus on the horizon."
"What the hell's going on?" Jack demanded, but he took her advice, staring determinedly oceanward until his stomach had stopped turning flipflops.
"It's all right, Jack," Daniel insisted unconvincingly as he staggered to his feet. "There's something about the size of these ruins and the carvings on them --- some of the angles -- it's just an optical illusion. Screws with our balance. We should be OK as soon as we adjust."
He shuffled his way carefully off the platform, and then, apparently noticing Jack's skeptical expression, he turned stubbornly to the ruins. Jack was too far away to catch him when Daniel suddenly reeled sideways and hit the sand hard.
"Dammit, Daniel --"
"I'm OK," he said, pushing himself up. "Just need to adjust," he added before promptly throwing up his morning cup of coffee.
"Yeah, I can see that," Jack said, not entirely without sympathy, as Daniel scooted away from the mess on the sand and fumbled for his canteen. "Carter, as soon as you can do it without falling over or getting sick, dial us home."
"Jack, you can't," Daniel complained weakly, and Carter, for unfathomable reasons, took his side.
"Daniel's right. I really think we can handle this if you'll give us a little more time. It's just the scale and maybe the low oxygen levels in the atmosphere and that rough ride through the wormhole. I'm sure the vertigo is temporary."
"Told you this planet was no goddammed good," Jack grumbled. Teal'c was the only one who didn't look at him in some surprise. "Well if I didn't say it out loud, I was thinking it. You've got ten minutes, Major. If we can't stand up by then, we're so, so very out of here."
Unfortunately, though, it turned out Carter and Daniel were right. Within a few minutes Jack found himself able to look steadily at the messed-up horizon of rubble without having to fight the urge to puke. Everything about this place still made his flesh creep, from the sluggish ocean behind him to the sickly red sun wheeling so low in the sky. And especially the ruins themselves. He felt as though they were standing on the edge of an impossibly vast graveyard, and he had the unsettling conviction that not everything buried here was completely dead.
Rather against his better judgment, Jack found himself authorizing the attempt to complete their mission on this planet just the same.
Daniel seemed so certain, after all.
~~~ When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name ...
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven.Enuma Elish (1902 King Translation)
~~~
Fifteen kilometers inland the UAV tapes had revealed a structure which seemed intact. That was their destination. If it had been a straight shot they probably could have been in and out before nightfall, but of course, every step of the way demanded they navigate over or through crazy broken landscapes, and once they lost sight of the ocean, there was nothing to steady the impossible angles zigzagging against the sky.
The air was bitterly cold, but when they emerged briefly from the shadows of ruins, the sun burned like a fever. The only signs of life were occasional flakes of lichen at the base of the stones.
Though Jack had been hoping to find a less claustrophobic place to sleep, that first evening they were forced to make camp in a narrow canyon between building stones the size of small mountains. The shadows were blue-black in the twilight, and the jagged slash of sky visible far overhead turned red as they pitched tents and ate their MREs in silence. Daniel started to gripe about Jack pushing the pace too hard for him to adequately record their surroundings, but his heart clearly wasn't in his complaint, and frankly, Jack was sorry when he fell silent again. The familiar background noise of Daniel bitching about things no one could change was infinitely preferable to the weight of silence in this Cyclopean graveyard.
A wind came up at sunset, moaning its way through the alley between the ruins, and making Jack decide he rather missed the silence after all. For more than an hour they sat outside their tents, which were pathetically small and fragile-looking scraps of human civilization against the walls of blackness. No one was in a hurry to go to bed, but no one had much to talk about, either. He and Carter wore oxygen masks for a while to counteract the effects of a difficult hike in such thin air. Teal'c didn't need the extra oxygen, and Daniel grouched that the dryness of the air in the tank aggravated his sinuses. When Jack insisted, he promised he'd wear it tomorrow if he felt himself getting fatigued.
Afterwards, that was the excuse Jack needed to blame the worst of it on hypoxia.
Jack thought he would have trouble falling asleep that night, but he must have dropped off as soon as he lay down, because he remembered nothing until he awoke to find Daniel shaking his shoulder and whispering, "Jack! C'mon, you've got to see this."
"Wha--?" It was a difficult climb back to wakefulness, despite the urgency in Daniel's voice.
"Dammit, Jack, come on!"
"I'm awake," Jack said, not precisely lying. He fought his way clumsily free of the sleeping bag. God, he felt like he'd been drugged. "Wha's the matter? Carter and Teal'c OK?"
"They're fine. I want you to see this. The moon's come up."
"You're getting me up for a moonrise?" Jack grumbled, and then he finally remembered where he was. Suddenly wide awake, he crawled out of the tent after Daniel as quickly as he could.
"Look," Daniel said, pointing upward.
There were no stars, just a jagged piece of crescent moon the color of butter. Sickly yellow light streamed over the jumbled ruins. Jack had been aware of the markings on the stones during the day, but had assumed they were striations in the rock or marks left from quarrying.
In the pallid moonlight, though, the subject of the carvings was inescapably clear.
"Jesus," he muttered, and instinctively reached for Daniel, knotting his fist in the sleeve of his BDUs.
Carter crawled out of the tent. "Is everything --" her voice trailed off as she glanced up.
"Is that -- is that what they looked like?" Jack thought their voices sounded dangerously loud, echoing through the gargantuan bones of this city. The moaning wind of sunset had long been silenced.
"I don't know," Daniel said at first. Then he admitted, "Maybe. As well as they could be represented by intaglio carving in stone at any rate."
"God," Carter choked.
"God is right," Daniel said. "You know, we've always wanted to assume the goa'uld corrupted human religion for their own purposes. But maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the goa'uld remembered their own veneration of the Old Ones." He waved vaguely upward, where the engraved figures seemed to writhe in the moonlight like viscera uncoiling from a battlefield wound. "They could have nudged human evolution along a little, hardwired into our genetic code an ability to experience the numinous. Maybe the reason human beings almost universally practice religion is because the goa'uld made us that way. "
No one answered him for a long time. Jack tasted bile at the back of his throat, and had to look away from the carvings so far overhead. There were probably similar figures cut into the rocks here at eye level, but those were too close for him to see anything but random lines, comfortingly meaningless. Or so Jack could pretend.
"That is not a pleasant hypothesis," Teal'c announced at last, in what had to be the understatement of the millennium. Jack hadn't even realized he had come out of the tent.
"We'll have to send a UAV in to get pictures of this when we get home," Daniel said. Jack saw Carter's head whip around, and she stared at Daniel as though she'd never seen the man before in her life. "I know I can't get any decent shots from the ground."
No wonder they kicked you out of academia, Danny boy. Jack's mind was still scrabbling over Daniel's new horrors the same way he'd scrabbled through the ruins all day. Not because your theories are so crazy, but because you scare the shit out of people.
Carter said quietly, her voice under iron control, "I'm going back to bed, sir. As long as you're still taking the next watch."
"Of course I'm taking it. Your paper covered my rock fair and square."
"Yes, sir." She and Teal'c both disappeared back into their tent.
"You too, Daniel." He was still looking upward, but the slice of sky visible above the canyon-like walls was so narrow the moon was almost gone. "We've got a long way to go tomorrow. Take a hit of oxygen while you're at it. Make you feel better."
"I feel fine," Daniel argued by rote, but he obediently turned towards the tent. In a sudden weird flash of insight, Jack thought that being Daniel Jackson must be a lot like seeing pictures all the time, when everyone around you only saw chicken scratchings on the rock.
How fucking lonely that must be.
"Daniel," he said quietly.
He turned around. "Jack?"
"Do me a favor, and be careful how you word your report, would you?"
A short, bitter laugh. "Don't worry. "
"Dammit, that's not what I meant," Jack said, except he supposed it probably was. He just didn't know what to say and couldn't stand the idea of Daniel stumbling off to his sleeping bag, believing that he lived in a universe so bleak that human spirituality was just a goa'uld-induced perversion. "C'mere."
After a moment of hesitation Daniel came back. Jack shook his head at him, and as the moon finally moved past their narrow horizon, Jack put his arms around Daniel's shoulders and pulled him in. Daniel made a little sound deep in his throat, and though he didn't hug Jack in turn, he relaxed against him without resistance, laying his forehead against Jack's neck, wrapping his fists in the shoulders of Jack's coat. His body felt warm and solid and good, sheltering Jack from the soul-deep cold of this planet.
"Is it just me, or does this place make a person nostalgic for Netu?" Jack finally muttered into Daniel's hair, because he couldn't stand here holding him all night, no matter how good it felt.
He was rewarded with a little grunt of laugher.
"Go to bed, Daniel." He patted his back, and Daniel uncurled his fists from Jack's coat. "Try to get some sleep."
~~~
The familiar he had was called Malchi, (be my king,) a word in Hebrew of an unknown signification. After this they appeared faster than he desired, and in most dismal shapes ...which did very much affright him, and the more when he found it not in his power to stay them, insomuch that his hair (as he told me) stood upright, and he expected every moment to be torn in pieces; this happened in December about midnight, when he continued there in a sweat till break of day, and then they left him, and from that time he was never well as long as he lived.Letter sent to the Bishop of Gloucester, by the Reverend Mr. Arthur Bedford, Minister of Temple Church, in Bristol. August 2d, 1703.
~~~
The next day was worse. Carter and Teal'c were both subdued, and even Daniel didn't have much to say. As they continued to travel inland, they began to encounter fragments of walls and columns that hadn't been completely reduced to their component building blocks. They even found a stretch of roadway. Each paving stone was the size of a city block, and they made good time until the boulevard finally dead-ended into a long, high mound of half-shattered stones. It looked as though a single unimaginably tall tower had suddenly tumbled sideways.
The barrier stretched as far as Jack could see in both directions.
"We'll have to climb over," Daniel announced. "The building we saw on the UAV tape is only a few kilometers past this."
"Whoa, not so fast." Jack slid his backpack off his shoulders and stretched his aching muscles. The plan had been to reach their destination by mid afternoon at the latest, then turn around and start for home first thing in the morning. It would take them the rest of the day just to climb this heap of rubble, assuming they could manage it in the first place. It would be difficult and exhausting, possibly dangerous, use resources they really couldn't spare and put them significantly behind schedule. "What do you think, Teal'c? Can we make a climb like that before sunset?"
Teal'c paced back and forth, looking up at the barrier and considering. "Although you, Major Carter and Daniel Jackson are all showing significant signs of fatigue, I believe we would reach the summit in two hours. I cannot know, of course, whether conditions on the other side would hinder our descent, or, indeed, perhaps even render it impossible."
"I'm not fatigued," Daniel protested, sure sign that he was pretty damned tired since he didn't recognize the futility of arguing with Teal'c.
"My decision, Daniel," Jack said mildly. "Take five."
Daniel glared at him for a moment, but then his eyes cut away as if he were watching someone behind Jack. Jack turned his head to see, even though he already knew no one was there. It was just an annoying mannerism Daniel had picked up somewhere along the way. Not entirely surprising that the man had developed a nervous tic after six months on the run, but it was unsettling at the best of times, and downright nerve-wracking on this planet. "And knock that off, would you?"
He hoped Daniel would protest that he had no idea what Jack was talking about, but Daniel only looked vaguely guilty before stomping off to pull out his camcorder.
Dammit. This place was giving everyone the willies.
"Carter? How do you feel about pushing on?"
She smiled tightly. "Honestly, sir? I'd like nothing better right about now than a hot bubble bath, but the builders of this city are unlike any race we've ever encountered. Seems a shame not to see at least one intact piece of their architecture while we're here."
"Yeah," Jack grumbled unhappily. "That's what I was afraid of."
The climb took closer to three hours than two. The thin atmosphere was affecting them all; despite Junior's help, even Teal'c seemed slower than usual. Jack watched the position of the sun and hoped like hell they would be able to get down the other side without too much trouble. The last thing they needed was to find themselves stranded halfway down the side of an artificial mountain when darkness fell.
The shattered surfaces of the stones they were climbing were deeply grooved and rutted, as though from the depredations of rain and weather. Jack suspected darkly the stones had actually been engraved, and that they were climbing over pictures like the ones they had seen last night in the moonlight. Ants crawling up the face of an alien Mount Rushmore. He didn't ask Daniel to confirm his suspicions.
And then he had cleared the summit, and Teal'c grabbed his arm when he staggered. "Please use caution, O'Neill." Carter was sitting down on the canted surface of the stone, her arms firmly planted on both sides like she might go tumbling off if her attention wavered, and Daniel was sprawled flat on his stomach. He looked as though he didn't trust the stability of the rock any more than she did.
It didn't take Jack long to decide to follow their example. Closing his eyes to shut out the sight of what loomed on the other side of the summit, he held onto Teal'c and gently lowered himself to the ground. It wasn't until he felt the solidity of cold stone under his butt that he risked opening his eyes again.
"Thought you said this place was still kilometers away," he croaked.
"It is," Carter said. "Four or five at least. It looks closer than that because it's so darn big."
Jack forced himself to chuckle. "That the technical term, Major?"
She managed a wan smile of her own. "Somehow I feel like I've just about run out of technical terms on this trip."
Daniel meanwhile had propped himself up on his elbows and was fiddling with the camcorder, looking through the viewfinder and then putting it away again in disgust. "It's no use," he grumbled. "Without some sense of scale the pictures will be next to meaningless." He looked across once more at the only structure left standing, and his complaints trailed away. "What's the point? No one would believe us anyway."
"They will believe you, Daniel Jackson. But they will not understand."
Daniel turned his head. "No," he agreed. "They won't."
They made camp at the foot of the artificial mountain range. Daniel had wanted to push on, but he didn't fight too hard when Jack immediately vetoed that idea. Everyone was exhausted. Climbing down had been a sonuvabitch because not even Teal'c could walk easily with that structure filling their field of vision. It was more than just the size of the thing, Jack was convinced. The major architectural details were plain, stone piled atop stone, but something seemed wrong about the angles, and when Jack turned his head carelessly and glimpsed it from the corner of his eye, the entire front facade seemed to undulate.
The worst was the black void beneath a pediment hundreds of meters tall. The height of the opening itself defied calculation, and Jack didn't enjoy thinking about what could possibly have needed a front door that size. If it had been the same creatures whose images were engraved on the stone, then Jack was pretty sure he didn't want to know.
Scratch that, he was damned certain he was better off not knowing, even if they had been gone these past two million years.
Carter finally asked the obvious question. A sickly sunset shimmered in the west over the broken horizon, but rather than watching it, far less the structure ahead of them, they were all focusing too much attention on a pot of water which was not yet boiling over the sterno burner. Teal'c had wanted hot chocolate.
"Why do you think it's the only place still standing?"
Even Daniel was focused on the not-boiling water in the stainless steel pan. He didn't glance over his shoulder at the building itself. "Obvious answer, I guess, is that it was the most important. Hence it was built with the deepest foundations, the sturdiest walls."
"Government building?" Carter hazarded. "No, a temple."
"Sports stadium," Jack suggested. "Kiwanis Club."
"Dormitory," Daniel said.
Feeble, but Jack was glad to hear him try. "So that's why they made the front door so big. So's they could get the keggers down to their room."
The dream was waiting for Jack that night. He was still halfway aware of the sleeping bag snugged around his shoulders and Daniel's light snores when he heard Charlie calling.
Just a dream, Jack thought, but he got up from his living room sofa and told Daniel he'd be right back, that he had to see what Charlie was doing first. His voice was coming from the garage, but when Jack got there, Charlie was nowhere to be seen.
"Charlie? Where are you?"
He heard his son's voice again. At first Jack thought he must be outside, but then he realized the voice was coming from under his feet. Charlie was in the cellar, of course, and in Jack's dream it didn't seem strange at all that his house now had a cellar, far less one that was reached by way of a hidden door behind Jack's workbench. Jack touched the secret panel, and an entire section of the back garage wall swung open to reveal a cobwebbed staircase. Pretty cool, actually. How had he forgotten about this?
"Hey, Daniel!" he yelled. "You ought to come see this." He started down the winding staircase without waiting for Daniel's answer. "Charlie! You down there?"
This time Charlie didn't answer, but Jack could hear small footsteps skittering away. A game of hide and seek. "Careful on the steps," Jack called down to him. Poor Sara so wouldn't approve of this. That was probably the real reason Jack never used these stairs.
Further and further down Jack followed the sound of Charlie's footsteps. The stone walls dripped with moisture and glowed with a dim yellow phosphorescence that grew brighter as the stone gave way to packed earth. The stairs became rough and uneven, and eventually Jack found himself in a steeply-descending tunnel chiseled through solid rock. He was so far underground that he began to sweat in the heat, and he'd almost forgotten he was following Charlie at all when the tunnel took an abrupt turn, and Jack felt a breeze on his face. The air was cool, but he caught the faintest whiff of something fetid.
The tunnel ended at a cliff overlooking an underground chamber so vast the far walls were lost in the distance. Everything was lit with the same pallid light, and the waters of a black lake lapped at a rocky shoreline. Jack thought he saw a moored boat, but before he could be sure, he finally spotted Charlie at a distance below him. "Hey!" Jack called, waving his arm and trying to figure out how to climb down to him. "Up here!"
Charlie was crouched on his elbows and knees. He paid no attention to Jack. His hands were busy at something Jack couldn't see, and he ducked his head once, and then twice. When he finally raised his head, something thin and glistening was stretched taut between his mouth and the thing he held squirming against the ground.
"Jack," Daniel said from behind him. "What is it?"
Jack whirled around, trying to shield him, but Daniel had already seen, and unlike Jack, he wasn't crippled by silence. He began to scream, and he was still screaming when Jack woke up.
Christ.
Jack was shaking and covered in a cold sweat, but he found his flashlight immediately. Daniel was wrapped in his sleeping bag, his fingers clenched white around the edge under his chin. His eyes were wide open but blind, and he was yelling himself hoarse.
"Colonel O'Neill!"
"Colonel!"
The tent flap was unzipped and the nylon walls flapped like sails in the reassuringly artificial white light of Carter's and Teal'c's flashlights.
"It's all right," Jack said, meaning only, "nobody's dead," because clearly nothing was all right. He put his hand on Daniel's face and said, "Wake up, c'mon Danny, wake up," and then hauled Daniel bodily up in his arms, but that only made things worse. Daniel continued to yell, every shriek like a physical blow, and now he was fighting against the restraints of the sleeping bag and Jack's arms as well. "Aw, c'mon," Jack groaned, "wake the hell up already."
"Must be night terrors," Carter said. "Cassandra used to get them. It was impossible to wake her up."
Thanks, Major. That's very helpful, Jack didn't say out loud, his arms full of fighting archeologist. Daniel was wailing and wrenching his body so violently Jack didn't know how much longer he'd be able to hold him.
Then Daniel's head suddenly snapped around and caught Jack square on the nose.
"Son of a bitch!" Jack squawked at the red explosion of pain, and then Teal'c was there, just a couple of second too late. He dragged Daniel away, still kicking and screaming, while Jack clamped a hand over his face and felt the gush of blood against his palm.
He lurched his way out of the tent and allowed Carter to help him up. Teal'c was holding Daniel immobile in a bear hug, obviously trying to avoid getting a bloody nose himself, and Daniel's yells had turned into sobs. His sleeping bag trailed along the ground, still tethered around his ankles.
Carter pushed a wad of gauze into Jack's hand. "Sit down, sir," she ordered him kindly. "Tilt your head back."
Numbly, Jack did as he was told. Daniel didn't seem to be fighting quite so hard anymore, and when he was hanging almost limp in Teal'c's arms, Carter pulled the sleeping bag off his feet and shook it out. Daniel had finally stopped screaming, but he wept as Teal'c eased him down and settled him on top of the sleeping bag. Carter knelt on the ground beside him, holding his hand and petting his head, muttering soft nonsense to him. Daniel's face was turned away so Jack couldn't see whether his eyes were open or closed, but he was certain Daniel was still asleep.
Charlie never used to wake up after a bout of night terrors, either.
God, Jack hated this planet.
"How severe are your injuries, O'Neill?"
"Don't think he broke my nose. Hope not, anyway." He cautiously lifted away the gauze, and a fresh gush of blood spilled over his lips and chin. He immediately put the gauze back. The taste of blood in his mouth and the thick feel of it running down his throat reminded him of his dream.
He really, really hated this planet.
"There's a chemical cold pack in the medical kit," Carter said, not budging from Daniel's side. "Teal'c, could you get the thermal blanket out, too? I think it'd be best not to move him again, now that he's finally settling down."
Teal'c brought the cold pack and fresh gauze to Jack and spread the blanket over Daniel.
"You think this could be a symptom of hypoxia, sir?" Carter asked eventually.
"That's what I'm thinking." Really, it might be. "We'll make sure he spends some quality time with an oxygen tank before we start back in the morning, sinuses or no sinuses."
"We're not going on to the temple?"
"If Daniel's getting sick we can't risk it."
When his nose finally stopped bleeding, he sent Carter back to bed and took her place at Daniel's side. She protested that she didn't mind sitting up so Jack could rest, but she was nodding with exhaustion even as she said it.
"Get some sleep, Sam," Jack said, not making it an order. "One of us needs to have a clear head in the morning."
"All right." Her voice was soft as she eased her hand free of Daniel's grasp and crawled into her tent.
"I am not certain any of us are capable of a 'clear head' in this place, Colonel O'Neill." Teal'c moved into the ring of lamplight.
"Do you know something about this planet?"
"I do not. If Apophis had any knowledge of this place, he never shared it with his first prime, and I know of no Jaffa legends which speak of it."
"OK, then what's up?" Not that Jack doubted him.
"I have not been able to achieve kel-no-reem since our arrival."
"Junior acting restless?"
Teal'c bowed his head. "To the contrary. My symbiote has been extremely quiescent."
"Then what's up?"
"I believe Daniel Jackson is not the only one experiencing sleep disturbances."
Well, he had that right. Jack looked down at Daniel, breathing open-mouthed, one hand protruding from under the thermal blanket and splayed upon the ground. "We're leaving in the morning, Teal'c. I've had about enough of this place, too."
~~~ Daniel's sleep was restless. Jack found himself selfishly hoping he would wake up so they could talk, but if Daniel really were suffering from hypoxia, he needed his sleep. He grumbled and kicked, flinching and shivering as the long night wore slowly away. Once or twice he shouted out loud, but he calmed down when Jack took one of his flailing hands in both of his own. "Easy does it. Everything's under control here."
"'s'only sleeping," Daniel mumbled, the first words Jack had been able to understand in hours.
At first Jack thought he was finally awake. "Hey, I'll live. I know you didn't mean to. You were sound asleep."
"Still here," Daniel slurred and then one more syllable that could have been Jack's name, or something else altogether. Jack bent cautiously closer, feeling an immediate pain from his swollen nose, and tried to see Daniel's face by lamplight.
"What's still here?"
A sliver of white showed under Daniel's eyelids. He was still asleep after all. Dreaming, probably. Jack adjusted the blanket over Daniel's shoulders and wished for dawn.
The yellow crescent moon had set, and the east was glowing a dark, bloody red when Daniel finally awoke. "God," he moaned, rolling onto his back. "What the hell happened?"
The weight of relief made Jack's shoulders sag. In some dark, illogical part of his brain he'd been halfway afraid that Daniel was never going to wake up again. "Welcome back, Sluggo," he whispered happily. "How you feeling?"
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut. "Honestly? Like you guys have been using me for zat gun practice. Uh, Sluggo?"
"Now there's an idea. Lot of sore muscles?"
"Ohhh, yeah." Daniel tried to stretch his arms over his head, winced in pain and let them fall back to his sides. "What happened?"
"You had a mother of a nightmare last night. We couldn't wake you up."
"So you thought you'd knock me around a little instead?"
"It was more the other way around."
Daniel's eyes flew open, and he truly focused on Jack for the first time. "Oh, God. Are you all right?"
"Just have to be careful when I blow my nose. I'm fine."
"I'm sorry. I didn't -- Sam? Teal'c?"
"They both had the good sense to stay out of range."
"Aw geez. Jack, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I figure you can share a tent with Teal'c from now on."
Daniel still looked miserable, but then he raised his eyebrows. "This mean we're finally even?"
Jack shook his head and smiled down at him. "You've been holding a grudge all this time? Guess I'm lucky you didn't clobber me in your sleep years ago."
Daniel just blinked at him.
"Anyway, Carter thinks hypoxia could have contributed to your, uh, bad night. I want you on oxygen this morning."
"But I hate --" Daniel raised his eyes to Jack's face. "OK. Oxygen."
"You know, Charlie had night terrors a time or two when he was real young. The next morning he told me he thought he'd been stuck on a railroad track with a train bearing down on him." Jack made a whooshing gesture with one hand. "Poor kid. I'm sure it was from the time Sara and I took him on the old Silverton-Durango steam engine."
Daniel smiled a little uncertainly.
"Don't suppose you happen to remember what you were dreaming about last night, do you?"
No answer.
"Do you remember anything?"
"No," he whispered, but his eyes began to fill with tears.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c hailed as he strode back into camp. "It is good to see you awake. I hope you are well."
Carter stuck her head out of the tent, looking mussed and just a little fragile (though Jack wouldn't have admitted it under pain of death) as she always did first thing in the morning. "Daniel. You're awake."
Daniel didn't acknowledge either of them. A tear spilled from the corner of his eye and ran across his temple. He made a vague gesture of helplessness as a second one fell. "I don't remember last night," he whispered.
Aw, hell, Jack thought. "It's all right," he told Daniel just as helplessly, as Daniel wiped his eyes with the back of his fist and pressed his lips together hard. "I just thought... It's all right. Don't worry about it."
Daniel nodded, tried to say something else and then gave it up when his voice broke. He flung his arm over his eyes and took a few deep breaths before managing to whisper, "But I'm OK."
Jack put his hand on Daniel's shoulder and squeezed hard. "I can see that. Just take it easy. It's been a rough night."
Daniel lowered his arm and fumbled for Jack's hand. His eyes were still red and wet. "I'm all right," Daniel repeated stubbornly, but he held on hard.
~~~
The rushes grew, the rushes grew,
the mourning reeds grew.The Lament for Sumer and Urim (2000 BCE)
~~~
"What do you mean we're going back to the gate? Jack, have you lost your mind?"
Jack finished stuffing their tent into the storage bag before turning around. Daniel must be feeling better if he was shouting insults.
Sure enough, the roses were back in Daniel's cheeks with a vengeance. Whether it was the oxygen tank or his morning cup of coffee that had done the trick, Jack was ridiculously happy to see him looking better. "The tiniest modicum of respect for your commanding officer might not be entirely amiss," he said cheerfully.
Daniel stared at him. "What?"
"Get your stuff. We're going home."
"You've got to be kidding me. When we're only a couple of klicks away?"
"Closer to five or six, but who's counting?"
"I don't understand this at all. We spent all afternoon climbing over that pile of rubble just to turn around and go right back? You knew how far it was yesterday."
Jack was vaguely aware of Carter and Teal'c studiously paying attention to packing their gear. "Yesterday you weren't showing signs of oxygen deprivation."
"I'm not showing them today either."
"Sleep disorders are an early symptom of hypoxia." Jack gestured towards his own face. Daniel immediately looked guilty, though, predictably, no less defiant.
"Jack, I'm fine."
"And I look forward to hearing Dr. Fraiser confirm your diagnosis." Jack went back to looping the tent to the bottom of his pack, aware of Daniel's frustrated glower.
"Dammit, do you have any idea how important this could be?"
"Right now, not nearly as important as getting you, Carter and Teal'c to the gate."
"I'm not going back."
Oh, for --
Jack took his time getting up to face Daniel. He was standing with his feet planted and his jaw stubbornly jutted, but the way his arms were crossed hard over his body was a dead giveaway.
Teal'c and Carter weren't even pretending to pack anymore.
"And is this supposed to convince me that you're not half-loopy from hypoxia? Announcing that you intend to stay behind on a planet with no food and no water and for that matter, damned little air?"
Daniel was breathing hard with emotion, so frustrated and angry it pained Jack to look at him. But then Daniel's own gaze suddenly dropped, and something like a smile twisted the corner of his mouth. "So," he asked. "Is it working?"
"Not particularly well, no."
"Ah." Daniel nodded to himself. "Maybe I'd do better spending my time writing a new mission proposal. More equipment and personnel. Water and oxygen for an extended stay, that sort of thing. Little less loopy?"
"Little less," Jack said. "I'll let you know."
"OK," Daniel agreed, and then turned on his heel and took off running hell for leather.
Oh, Christ.
"Teal'c!" Jack bellowed as he pelted after him. "Head him off! Teal'c!" For an instant Jack was almost close enough to brush the back of Daniel's BDUs, but idiotic sentiment kept him from simply tackling Daniel like he should have done, and in the next instant Daniel was pulling away, long legs stretching and arms pumping. Jeezus, the little sonuvabitch could move when he wanted to.
The low oxygen made Jack feel like he was running through molasses, and the harder he pushed the more sluggish he felt. He could hear Teal'c and Carter shouting, but Jack didn't spare breath for any more words. Obviously Daniel was way past hearing any of them.
The black maw of the temple utterly filled Jack's field of vision, even five kilometers away. He tried not to see it, but it was impossible not to be aware of the nothingness that already seemed to have engulfed Daniel. If it weren't for the pain in his lungs and the jarring impact of his feet hitting the hard-packed earth, Jack would have had trouble believing he was really running at all. The scale of that open door made movement itself seem a delusion. They could run forever and never get any closer.
At least, not until the moment they suddenly found themselves inside.
Jack wasn't going to let that happen. He ran harder, pushing past the hot flare in one knee. When was he going to start trusting his instincts, and to hell with anything Daniel said? He'd hated this planet from the start. Should have ordered them all straight back through the gate the moment it became obvious they couldn't even stand up around here without wanting to puke.
He was on the verge of yelling to Teal'c to use his zat when Carter caught up with Jack and passed him, her smaller stature giving her the advantage in this atmosphere. She pulled almost even with Daniel and sideswiped him like a lioness knocking an antelope off its feet, and they both went down in a sprawl of limbs. Jack almost fell over them.
Teal'c skidded to a stop, dropping to snatch Daniel's hands and yank them over his head while Carter sat on his knees to keep him from kicking. Daniel's face was turned to one side and his eyes were squeezed shut. Though he was panting and red-faced, he didn't look to Jack like he was fighting back.
"Carter," Jack said, when he was able to speak, "We got anything in the med kit that would --" he trailed off and gestured.
"No sir," Her face was schooled into impassivity, dust smeared across one cheek and a bright red spot coming up on the other where Daniel's elbow or chin had connected when they went down. "We don't usually carry thorazine on missions."
"Maybe it's time to start," Jack muttered, not quite under his breath. "Goddammit, Daniel, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I do not think he knows himself," Teal'c said.
"Well, something's going on in that addled head." Jack knelt awkwardly. "Daniel." He cautiously laid his palm against the side of Daniel's face. He could feel Daniel's pulse thundering beneath the fragile skin at his temple. "Take it easy. Let's talk about this."
Daniel wouldn't open his eyes. "You sure, Jack?" His ribcage heaved as he fought for air. "Lot easier just to tranquilize me."
"Maybe so," Jack said, his heart breaking. "But you heard Carter. Doc Fraiser won't trust us with the good drugs."
"Too bad," Daniel rasped.
Jack had to look away. The temple filled his entire horizon, the darkness beyond that monstrous open door looking blacker than the depths of space.
And that was wrong, he suddenly realized, and not just in the atavistic, superstitious sense of 'wrong' they'd all been fighting since they tumbled out of the gate onto this world, but physically wrong. The rising sun was behind them. Why was that open door still dark? "Carter," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the temple. "Why the hell can't we see inside?"
She raised both eyebrows at him, not seeming to comprehend the question, then reluctantly turned her head to look. Teal'c did the same. Jack knew the moment she got it, because she flinched as though realization was a charge of static electricity, and that was just wrong, too. Jack should not be the one noticing shit like this first. They had to get their asses away from this planet.
"You can get off me now," Daniel said. His face was still turned to the side, but his eyes were open, carefully not focusing on anything.
Jack shook his head at Carter and Teal'c. "Sorry, Danny. Too much trouble runnin' you down the first time."
Daniel closed his eyes again.
Fuck this, Jack thought. His lungs were aching as though he'd never get enough air in them again and he was pretty sure he'd wrenched something in his knee which was going to make climbing back over that mountain-sized rubble heap more fun than a barrel of monkeys, never mind how the hell they were going to get a recalcitrant Daniel over it.
He grabbed Daniel's chin and turned his face. "Look at me," he said. After a long moment, Daniel opened his eyes. Given their current state of affairs, Jack decided this counted as progress. "Did you honestly think that I'd just let you go?"
Daniel only blinked at him.
"What's in that temple that's more important than food or water or air? We talking meaning of life stuff, here? Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
Nothing.
Jack allowed himself to look away for a moment -- trying to deal with Daniel in this state was shredding something deep inside him into little, tiny, painful pieces. He caught Teal'c's eye, and behind a stoic facade only marginally more convincing than Carter's, Jack saw his grief for Daniel, compassion for him.
"What's in that temple?"
Daniel stared at him with a face like stone. "Let me go."
"No." Jack remembered something Daniel had mumbled last night. "But it's sleeping, whatever it is. How long, Daniel? Two million years? Longer? It's only sleeping, and it's still here."
Daniel's eyes widened. "How do you know that?" he whispered, his voice so quiet Jack had to bend low in order to hear him.
"You told me. Last night. You were talking in your sleep."
"Oh, God," Daniel moaned. "Oh, my God. Jack." He wrenched his head from side to side, his face contorted into a terrible grimace, sounds that weren't words anymore spilling from behind his clenched teeth.
"Daniel!" Jack caught Daniel's head in both hands to stop him from thrashing. "Daniel, listen to me. There's something here that's been sleeping for a long, long time."
"Yes." Spittle flew from his lips.
"What is it?"
"I don't know!" Daniel screamed. A convulsion wracked his pinned body. "But I can feel it. It knows we're here. Oh please, Jack. Please help me."
"Jesus, Danny, I'm trying the best I know how. You gotta give me a little more to work with."
"You must calm yourself, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c covered both of Daniel's wrists with one hand and placed the palm of his other hand on Daniel's forehead. "You are surrounded by friends, and any one of us would gladly give our lives to protect you."
After a long moment, Daniel stopped fighting. Jack glanced up quickly at Teal'c, feeling ever so slightly jealous. Why hadn't he thought of that?"
Daniel made a weak sound that Jack thought was coughing, but after an amazed instant decided was probably a feeble laugh instead. "I don't want anyone to give their lives, really."
"That makes four of us," Jack said. He sat back on his haunches. Teal'c's hand remained on Daniel's forehead, but he kept his other hand on Daniel's wrists, obviously not trusting Daniel's mercurial humors any more than Jack did this morning. Despite the cool air, the sun felt hot on Jack's shoulders, and no light pierced the shadow beyond the open door. He would have liked to ask Daniel more about what he knew -- or thought he knew -- about the temple and its theoretical slumbering inhabitant, but it obviously wasn't a topic Daniel could discuss calmly right now.
Jack was weary to his bones, and it was going to be a long, long walk home.
~~~
Thy food is the food of ghosts
Thy drink is the drink of ghostsQuoted in Thompson The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (1903)
Teal'c apologized gravely to Daniel before tying his hands with Sam's belt, but Daniel hardly seemed to notice. He allowed himself to be walked back without complaint, and he sat on the ground with his bound hands resting awkwardly in his lap and an oxygen mask strapped over his face while the rest of them finished breaking camp.
"You can let me go now," he said when Jack finally took off the oxygen mask. His voice was flat and he met Jack's eyes with a steady blankness that was so un-Daniel-like Jack fought the temptation to grab his shoulders to see if he could physically shake him into his right mind.
"Sorry," was all Jack said. "Twice burned. But look on the bright side -- at least you don't have to carry your own pack over the hill." They had already redistributed its contents among themselves. Hell, what was another fifteen pounds or so among friends?
Jack's nose started bleeding again on the way up, and it continued intermittently all the way to the summit. His head was aching so badly his vision began to gray out, and finally he had to call for a break so he could crouch miserably against a shattered building stone larger than his house, his head bowed and his hands clasped over the back of his neck. He counted his breaths and tried to think about being somewhere else. Home on a Saturday afternoon millions of light years away from this damned planet. Watching a game or working in the yard, maybe.
Over the past year or two, Daniel had gotten into the habit of stopping by to help on summer afternoons. Yard work was apparently a complete novelty to the man, and he took such a childish delight in the electric weed eater that Jack had started to save trimming around the raised beds for those weekend afternoons when Daniel was around. Throw something on the grill later on; sit and drink a beer or a gin-and-tonic, since Daniel had a taste for sweet, fizzy stuff, watch the sky turn red. Marvel wordlessly at the fact that they were both still alive, that Earth was still free.
"If it stays as warm as it has been this spring I'll probably need to cut the grass next weekend," Jack said. He raised his head carefully and squinted his eyes open. His skull felt too tight for his brains and he imagined he could feel the dull sunlight slipping under his eyelids like stilettos. "Pretty sure I've got some frozen burgers in the fridge if anyone's interested."
"Tell me those aren't the same hamburgers left over from last summer," Sam said in a thin voice. She was white to the lips and her eyes were bloodshot. Fighting the same headache as Jack, he knew, because that little morning jog after Daniel this morning had taken it out of all of them. Human beings weren't built to perform calisthenics in an atmosphere like this.
"Hey, they've been frozen all this time. They're still good."
"Please. Please don't." She actually looked sick enough to puke. "I can't stand thinking about Colonel O'Neill freezer-burn specials right now."
"It is not a savory prospect." Even Teal'c was looking a little strained. Daniel was sitting at Teal'c's feet, his legs drawn up, bound arms stuck straight out and resting on his knees. His head was down so Jack couldn't see his face.
"How you doing there, Daniel?"
"Great," he said, not looking up. "Just great, Jack."
"Head hurting?"
Daniel snorted.
Probably felt ready to explode, Jack thought, given how badly the atmosphere was affecting him already. Keeping Daniel tied up at this point seemed ludicrous, and besides, it was slowing them all down when Jack would have liked nothing better than to be able to make up a little speed. He turned his head to remind himself why they had to do it.
He immediately felt the vertigo in his head and in his gut. The darkness of that vast open door seemed to ripple outwards like a cheesy flashback effect, and Jack whipped his head away so fast he nearly ended up face down on the rocks. He caught himself with a groan, and felt the sickening trickle of blood start again.
"Let's go, kids," he groaned, blotting at his nose with the last of the medical gauze.
He was concerned that Daniel might try to make a break for it at the summit, and it was obvious from Sam and Teal'c's shifting glances they were watching for the same thing. Jack didn't call for a rest when they reached the top, and he didn't look back as they started down the other side. The first dozen paces downward made the dull pain in his knee flair up smartly, just as he'd predicted, but every step further they traveled without Daniel losing it felt like a hell of an accomplishment.
Besides, simply knowing the darkness of that open temple door could no longer watch them felt like fifteen pounds out of his pack again.
"Still with us, Daniel?"
Teal'c was helping him navigate a crevasse, but Daniel looked up when Jack spoke to him. His expression seemed resigned instead of blank, and Jack decided that counted as progress, too.
"I didn't know what to do," Daniel announced quietly. "Stupid. It's not like we even matter." His foot slipped in the next instant, but Teal'c caught his shoulders and steadied him.
"What were you trying to do?" Jack risked asking.
But Daniel was already gone. His eyes were fixed on the ground, and the tight lines around the corners of his mouth and between his eyebrows betrayed nothing except that he had a headache. Jack had already known that.
They made camp at the foot of the mountain even though there were still two hours of sunlight left. They were down to their last oxygen tank, and they were far lower on water than Jack would have liked, but the truth was they were all simply too exhausted to continue. Well, Teal'c could have kept slogging on, but Jack wasn't willing to separate them to send Teal'c on to the gate unless their straits became truly dire. So far this didn't qualify, despite Daniel's terrifying distance from them all.
No one felt much like eating. Daniel simply refused, wordless but immovable, and after Sam had eaten half of a grilled chicken MRE she stumbled away from camp and vomited it up again.
At dusk they tied poor Daniel like a stalking goat on top of his sleeping bag and under a thermal blanket. He acceded to this treatment like he had almost everything else today, not talking, not explaining, and if not actively helping, not really resisting either. Jack took the first watch, spreading his sleeping bag next to Daniel's, and he stayed there even after Teal'c relieved him two and a half hours later. Jack laid his head down and fell instantly asleep and into a vivid dream about throwing a cookout at his place. The weather was gorgeous and everyone seemed to be having a blast, but when Sam said please, please tell me those aren't last year's hamburgers, Jack found he didn't have the nerve to turn around and see what actually was smoldering on his grill
He woke up when Daniel called his name.
"What is it? Daniel, are you all right?"
Teal'c had switched on a flashlight, and Jack could see Daniel was struggling to sit up and not able to manage because of the way he was bound.
"Um, I'm all right. I think. Teal'c, is that you?"
"It is I. Are you in distress?"
"No. I don't think so. No." Daniel stopped trying to get up and flopped back down on his sleeping bag. "I don't. Um." He turned his head from Jack to Teal'c and then back again. "I'm wondering, ah. Why are my hands tied to a tent stake?"
~~~
Angel smelled blood rich as butter just before hearing the police sirens, and although he was already very late and the police were close he checked it out anyway, pulling into an alley two blocks down and traveling the rest of the way on foot.
He followed the dense, luscious scent to a prefab warehouse on a street of one-family bungalows behind chain-link fences, apartment buildings on stakes above their garages, a taqueria, a gas station, a combination Chinese restaurant/donut shop and a dollar store sharing the four corners of the nearest intersection. A garage door in back of the warehouse was partially rolled up, a lone yellow light attracting moths above it.
Angel ducked under the door and found himself in a hot, open space where sewing machines on flimsy tables stood in ranks and women's blouses in the colors Cordelia was emphatically not wearing this season were folded and stacked in boxes. The smell of fabric sizing was bitter but the blood was sweet, and there was so much of it Angel swayed on his feet, half-drunk on the smell.
Most of the women were very young, but one of the older ones knew him for what he was and clutched reflexively at the crucifix around her neck. She didn't cry out, though, and didn't make any move to stop him.
Something much worse than the death his kind could bring had already happened here.
He circled the source of the blood while the women wept and held each other and ignored him. There were wasteful spatters on the floor, on the tables and soaked into bolts of fabric. It was on the hands and clothing of the women, and at the bewildered center of the horror, it darkened their faces and colored their mouths as well.
A cardboard box lined with cotton batting and the same fabric as the blouses had been a basinet, and a bottle of formula mixed a little too thin was still sitting on one of the tables next to a sewing machine.
Angel recognized the mother right away. Not because she had more blood on her face than the others -- she didn't, or at least, not much more -- but because while the others wailed and cried out, she sat motionless and silent on a folding stool, and she rolled eyes darker and more hopeless than the ends of burnt-out matches up to him when he asked her in Spanish that would always have a continental accent, no matter how long he lived in California, "What happened to your baby?"