Tatters - Part 3

by Martha

"If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing, little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! well -- there are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me!"

J.S. Le Fanu "Green Tea" (1869)

Blair thought he had probably been awake for half an hour or more, long enough for the sharp, white sliver of the moon that had first awakened him to slide across the glass of the skylight. Jim was curled up behind him so closely Blair could feel his breaths warm against his shoulder blade. His arm was draped over Blair's waist, his open hand lying gently at the base of Blair's throat, and Blair felt loved and safe and guilty, because he was pretty sure he'd fallen asleep on Jim this evening.

He remembered dinner. Beef stew with good spring vegetables. Most of a loaf of sourdough, washed down with a plain red table wine that had been its own kind of perfection. He remembered putting away the leftover stew and drying the dinner dishes after Jim washed them. He remembered plugging in his laptop and catching up on email while Jim read a book, and he could remember having some vague thoughts for next week's lesson plan and thinking he really ought to type them up while they were fresh in his mind but it was just too much trouble to form words into sentences, and about that time Jim had come up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder and asked him very quietly, his voice a warm whisper in his ear, if he'd like to go to bed now. Long day and all that.

Yeah, it had been a long day. The six A.M. trip to the grocery store, excellent as it was in theory, had some unexpected glitches in practice. He remembered stumbling up to bed with Jim right behind him, clothes hitting the floor and mumbled promises to pick them up in the morning. Jim chuckling, "Liar," at him and gathering Blair's hair up in one hand so he could kiss the nape of his neck.

And that was about it. There were memories of other nights, slipping between cool sheets with Jim, who whispered to him and laughed with him and touched him over and over again until when Blair finally fell asleep his entire body felt over-sensitized as a sentinel's, the sheets rough against his flesh, the pillow unyielding under his head. The only thing that felt right was Jim, and Blair would wrap himself around him blindly, selfishly as he fell precipitously into sleep, and he would have worried a little about that afterwards, those times when he was awake and alone, except that Jim wrapped him in his arms with such sweet, eager warmth he figured it must be all right with Jim, too.

But last night, man, nada. Apparently Blair had fallen asleep as soon as he tumbled into bed. Poor Jim.

Then Jim's hand moved at Blair's throat, and Blair slid carefully out from under his arm and rolled over. "Hey," he whispered, touching Jim's cheek with the back of his fingers. "I was trying not to wake you up."

"I know," Jim answered drowsily.

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's OK," Jim said. He captured Blair's hand in his own and touched his lips to the pads of his fingers. "Think I was having bad dreams anyway."

"Aw, geez, I hate that. Anything you want to talk about?"

"No," Jim said predictably, but he put his arm around Blair's shoulder and tugged a little, and Blair obligingly tucked himself in closer, laying his head on Jim's chest as Jim rolled onto his back. He manfully resisted the urge to ask if everything was OK, and lay listening to Jim's heartbeat while Jim decided if he was in the mood to talk about what was bothering him or not.

He was stroking the back of Blair's head and running his fingers through his hair, and the gentle repetition was on the verge of putting Blair back to sleep, when Jim finally asked, "How do you handle it? Most of the time I try to just accept it without thinking about it too much, but in the middle of the night ..."

Even though it was ridiculous, Blair first thought Jim was talking about the two of them. He lay very still and wondered if Jim could tell how his heartbeat had suddenly sped up in misery.

"Doesn't it seem like wishful thinking to believe it's the rest of the world that's crazy? Doesn't it make more sense if it's just me?"

"Maybe," Blair answered carefully, still not entirely sure what was going on. Jim's chest was warm under his jaw. "Except it's not just you. We're in this together, remember? No matter what."

"I know." Jim's hand stopped stroking, tangling briefly in Blair's hair. "That's why I'm asking you. Everything that happened over Christmas. Does it -- do you think about it when you're at school? When you're at the station? Does it change the way you think about, you know, ordinary stuff?"

Blair worked his hands under Jim's back. "I know it happened," he said. "If I had any doubts, the number of hours we had to spend debriefing with Major Whosits from the Pentagon would convince me that we're not the ones who're crazy. But for the rest of it -- I don't know. Maybe I'm not totally sure what you're asking, but the world's a crazy place and Naomi always said that every answer you find just opens up a hundred new questions, so --"

"So you're handling it."

"I guess. Jim, man, you brought me back from the dead. Anything else that happens to me the rest of my life, I figure I can deal."

Jim's chest contracted sharply as though he were laughing, but Blair didn't think that was it. Both his arms went around Blair's shoulders and he hugged him hard. "Christ," he muttered softly.

Blair hugged him back, and eventually Jim said, "There was something at the crime scene today."

"The crime scene. The Kurdish family, you mean. Where that mentally ill woman hurt her children."

"She was trying to devour them," Jim said in his cop voice. "When her husband found her she was gnawing at the throat of her youngest like a dog worrying a bone."

"Oh, God." Blair said faintly. He hadn't seen the police report.

"There was a smell in the house. I should have recognized it right away but I was distracted, or maybe I just didn't want to know. The place stank of blood and cooking spices. I recognized sumac, and toasted sesame seeds and --" Jim swallowed hard. Blair could feel his chest moving. "But there was something else, too. Dead and flat. I don't know how to describe it. Like the way lead smells in freezing cold weather, but more dense than that. Emptier."

Jim had described a scent like that before. "Jim--" he began.

"It was the smell of that place Jackson took me when he got us away from the NID."

"Aw, man --" Blair began, but Jim kept talking as though he wouldn't be able to say it if he let himself stop now.

"Behind the scent of blood and spices and olive oil, I swear to you that woman's house smelled like the end of the universe."

~~~

Insomnia had never really been a problem, so Cordelia had never realized before just how clearly you could hear each bus downshifting as it approached the Melrose-San Vicente intersection.

The police sirens screaming down Santa Monica Boulevard, the car alarms going off outside bars, the constant roar of traffic like waves breaking upon the shore, that was just ambient noise, to the point where she wasn't even sure she'd be able to sleep without it.

Those busses were about to drive her insane, though. She was lying wide awake, staring through a part in the curtains upwards at the orange night sky, listening to bus after bus arrive at the station behind the Design Center. None of them ever seemed to make the light. She listened to the changing whine of the engines as they slowed, the laborious groan as they began to accelerate again, and wondered if she were losing her mind.

You know, it hadn't been that long since she'd been in a live production. True, there was no money in it, or hardly any -- but there was always the chance of being seen, and that more than made up for the long hours and guild minimum pay.

But this damned play was on the verge of making her rethink her strategy when it came to low budget shows. It had taken her forever to learn her lines, which were clunky and a mouthful, sure, but simply shouldn't have been as difficult to memorize as these had proven to be. And now that she had them down, she couldn't get them out of her head.

The king has opened his tattered mantle. It played through her mind like a stupid top forties single.

The light on Melrose must have just changed, because she could hear a bus engine beginning to labor its way up the hill.

The king has opened his tattered mantle. There's naught but Christ --

According to the director this was the supreme moment of terror, the climax of the entire drama. Cordelia was just going to have to take his word for that, because frankly, as far as she could tell, none of it made any damn sense. It was "artistic." Avant garde, or had been at the turn of the century when it had been written. Which was fine; it was all fine. Critics liked to turn out for the artsy stuff, and that's how you got noticed and talked about.

The king has opened his tattered mantle. There's naught but Christ to cry to now."

She rolled over on her stomach. If she couldn't get any sleep, the only thing anyone was going to be talking about were the bags under her eyes.

The king has opened. The king has opened.

The lines were marching through her mind like toy soldiers on parade. She flopped onto her back again in disgust. Through the part in the curtains she could see a sliver of the moon, and on impulse she blurted out, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabelle Lee."

The sound of her own voice in the darkness of bedroom startled her, but it seemed to work. The stupid lines from that stupid play stopped dragging their corpse-like weight through her consciousness, and as soon as she closed her eyes, she drifted peacefully off to sleep.

~~~

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

Isaiah 6:1-4

Teal'c stood in the doorway of Daniel Jackson's office and watched him work. His head was bowed deeply over a book and one foot was restlessly tapping the floor. Occasionally he turned away to make notations in an open notebook or to type a few keystrokes on the computer, but in the time Teal'c had been there, he had not once raised his head enough to note his presence. The only time he'd looked up at all was to glance with quick nervousness towards the far corner of the room.

When Daniel finally did notice him, he started in annoyance. "Teal'c," he muttered. "I didn't know you were -- have you been there long?"

"I have."

"Oh." Daniel looked back down at his book and then back up at him. "Have you seen Jack around? He's supposed to be looking into travel arrangements for us." Daniel scowled. "Apparently everyone's still a little nervous about that crazy Dr. Jackson, and Jack won't let me go to L.A. by myself."

Teal'c came into the office and looked at the computer screen. Frozen on the monitor was the last image the UAV had transmitted from P3X-636 before it had disappeared into the open maw of the temple, and they had lost telemetry for good.

Utter blackness, relieved only by the flickering date stamp in the bottom right and left hand corners of the screen.

"What do you hope to learn by examining footage of nothing at all?"

"It's not nothing," Daniel said a little sharply. He shook his head and made a vague gesture with one hand that Teal'c assumed was meant to indicate apology. "I wasn't looking at this specifically. Just letting the tape run. I was actually looking at the glyphs and pictures on the temple walls. Some of them remind me of the symbols for the archangels as they appear in the Liber Ivonis, but really, with a translation this modern the text is too corrupt for me to be sure of anything."

Teal'c indicated the book lying open on Daniel's desk. The writing was Latin, but Teal'c could only make out isolated words. "This is one of the books that has caused Dr. Mackenzie and Dr. Fraiser to raise questions about your fitness for duty."

Daniel's lips thinned into a tight line. "Yes, it is. Jack told me they're afraid of it."

"I believe Colonel O'Neill is correct in that assessment."

"Great. Just great. Would someone tell me how the hell I'm supposed to do my job when the tools I need make people question my sanity?"

"Apophis and many of the other system lords faced a similar problem."

Daniel's eyebrows went up. "Um, how so, exactly?"

"Apophis greatly feared the spread of education among the Jaffa; yet maintaining an orderly society clearly dictated the need for literacy, at least among certain classes."

"Right, I can see that. How do you make sure the trains run on time if none of the engineers can read a clock?"

"You are speaking metaphorically."

"Uh, yeah." Daniel's squinted up at him. "What does any of this have to do with me?"

"In the theology of Apophis worship, as well as that of many other of the goa'uld, we are taught that every Jaffa has a personal -- " Teal'c had to consider. "Familiar, perhaps, although demon might be a more appropriate translation, mystically bound to his soul."

"Demon. Am'mit?"

Teal'c nodded. "During my apprenticeship, the temple priests taught me that each Jaffa's am'mit usually remains unaware of the soul to which it is tethered. However, excessive reading and writing, particularly the study or transcription of Jaffa history or culture, would awaken the am'mit. Once aware of the soul with whom it shared its existence, the am'mit torments the Jaffa day and night, allowing him neither rest nor peace nor tranquility until he falls into a corrupt madness."

Tealc' realized his fists were clenching as he talked about the old legend, and he forced himself to relax. "One so tormented will be found wanting when judged in the Hall of Maat, his soul forfeit to the Devourer. It was an effective dissuasion against reading and writing anything not directly related to the service of Apophis."

"How very Swedenborian of Apophis," Daniel said. "Though if I remember my metaphysics, Swedenborg thought that every human soul had three demons connected to it. This is fascinating, Teal'c. How come you've never mentioned it before?"

"It is one thing to renounce one's god. It is apparently another entirely to renounce superstitions learnt in one's childhood."

"Yes." Daniel agreed. "I suppose it is."

"Does Dr. Mackenzie believe that your current studies will awaken your own am'mit?"

That surprised a snort of laughter from Daniel, but then he smiled unhappily and said, "That's probably not a bad way of describing it. What does the am'mit do, anyway? Once it's awake and wants to start in with the torment."

Teal'c turned his head toward the empty corner of Daniel's office before answering. "The am'mit manifests as a creature that only the afflicted Jaffa can see. Sometimes appearing as a Jaffa itself, though with subtle and terrible deformations, and sometimes as an animal."

Daniel's head dropped. "That's it? Just an invisible friend?"

"Eventually, the am'mit begins to talk. From that point, the descent into madness is swift and irreversible."

"That's -- that's very interesting," Daniel said, still not looking at Teal'c. "If you'll excuse me, though, I need to try to get some more work done this morning before..." He reached for a pencil, fumbled and dropped it. Reaching for it, he knocked over an almost-full cup of coffee with his elbow. With a yelp of alarm he snatched the book out of the way of the spreading pool of coffee, but his notes were rapidly soaked. Clutching the book to his chest he sputtered, "Godammit! Teal'c, would you please grab some paper towels from the men's room for me?" His voice wavered, and Teal'c suspected he held the book so tightly not only because of its narrow rescue, but to hide the fact that his hands were shaking.

~~~

"So Daniel," Jack said, taking the uncomfortable chair next to him, carefully setting his coke on the floor and the greasy cardboard box containing a pepperoni pizza from the concourse's Pizza Hut on his lap, "Teal'c tells me you two had a nice talk about demons."

Daniel looked up from his book, annoyed. "What? No we didn't. And besides, Teal'c started it."

"Way to convince Mackenzie you're not going nuts."

"Teal'c was talking about --" he broke off and waited for the overly-loud warnings about leaving one's baggage unattended to end. "He was telling me about superstitions Apophis promulgated in order to control the spread of literacy among the Jaffa."

Jack shrugged. "I'm just saying." He flipped open his pizza box. Pepperoni swam in red grease. "Want some?"

"No, uh, thank you."

"Actually, Teal'c was worrying that you were a little freaky about it."

"I'm sure Teal'c didn't say I was 'a little freaky.'"

"Maybe not in so many words," Jack conceded.

"If anything, he's the one who's not over the whole am'mit legend yet." Guilt forced Daniel to add, "But he's right, I was little surprised to hear that the idea of a persecutory being has apparently survived in the religions beliefs system lords impose on their followers."

"Survived from what?" Jack asked, paying rather closer attention than Daniel had expected. He stuffed a good two-thirds of a pizza slice into his mouth, but kept an eyebrow cocked in Daniel's direction as he chewed.

"This is all just theory," Daniel said at last. "And it's probably not susceptible to proof, at least not with our current understanding of goa'uld prehistory. Are you sure it's safe to be discussing this here?"

Jack looked around the concourse. A flight from Vegas was just deplaning, and the swelter of voices and footsteps and luggage carts and baby strollers bounced off poured concrete walls and vast expanses of plate glass and once again off the linoleum-tiled floors, becoming an exhausting, indistinguishable buzz of white noise. He raised an eyebrow at Daniel again.

"Ah. Probably safer here than in your living room."

"Yep. So tell me your theory. 'Not susceptible to proof?' I know this one. That means Carter would turn her nose up at it."

"And I couldn't really blame her, but the more I look, the more pieces fall into place. I'm right about this, Jack. I'm sure I am."

"You do have an annoying tendency to do that," Jack said.

"Do what?"

"Be right. So this wild and crazy theory."

"All right. Keep in mind the dates are still a little sketchy, but sometime between one and a half and two million years ago, I believe the goa'uld began taking hosts from a species who were more powerful than themselves. Ultimately these hosts turned on the goa'uld and almost succeeded in destroying them."

"Hey, this is what you were talking about the other day," Jack said.

Daniel nodded. "At least one breeding queen must have escaped, though, and her spawn would have retained the memory of the goa'uld's greatest defeat. That means the Tok'ra must know about this, incidentally, but I'd like to have a little more information before we tip our hand and let them know that we know about their near-annihilation around the time of earth's second ice age."

"Probably a touchy subject, goa'uld or Tok'ra," Jack agreed. "And it's not like they're so keen on sharing information under the best of circumstances. So where are you getting all this?"

"I believe members of the host species were present on earth in varying numbers well into mankind's prehistory and perhaps even beyond, probably leaving for good about the time city states began to appear in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley."

"Didn't stick around to kick some goa'uld butt again? We could have used their help about that time."

"I'm not sure why they left. I think in the final analysis they didn't really care very much about mankind or the goa'uld one way or another, especially once the goa'uld were using human hosts. The records seem to indicate an utter lack of anything recognizable as human emotions. Nothing like compassion, and nothing like hatred or the desire for revenge either."

"Okay, wait. See, this is what I'm not getting. What kind of records are you talking about? Where's this information coming from?"

"That's the whole point. I think mankind knew about these beings and that we remember them in our history as, um, angels or elves or giants, seraphim and cherubim, devils or demons or djinn, all kinds of supernatural beings. If the goa'uld taught us to fear God, I think these beings taught us there were ways to subvert even the will of the Almighty. We preserved accounts of them in our oldest legends, and once we learned to write, made translations of their own writings. By now there's not much left, of course, but fragments can still be found in ancient works of esoterica and the occult."

Jack had just been picking up his second slice of pizza, but then he set it down again and wiped the pepperoni grease off his hands with an inadequately small napkin. "So that's why you've been reading those old books that have Mackenzie so freaked out. You're on the trail of a race that once had the damned goa'uld for breakfast."

"Yeah. Something like that." He watched Jack's face for the expected skepticism or outright disbelief, but Jack only frowned a little as he wrestled with the implications of what Daniel was saying.

"Well, that's pretty cool," he pronounced at last. "You think you can figure out how they kicked goa'uld butt?"

Jack believed him. Jack didn't think he was nuts, that he ought to be locked up to keep him from haring off on another wild goose chase. Jack believed him.

"Well, I hope I can figure it out," Daniel told him, feeling suddenly, ridiculously happy, even with the prospect of his own am'mit beginning to talk to him just any day now. "And if the clay tablet in Denver's private collection in L.A. is genuine, it could be a huge step forward. He claims the cuneiform is Archaic Sumerian, which is little hard to believe since there's almost nothing but business and administrative records in that dialect, but if he's right, and it really is a religious text from 3200 BCE, it would be the earliest, most authentic account yet of the goa'uld's old hosts. Can I have some pizza after all?"

"Help yourself." Jack held out the box out. The pizza was congealing and would probably give him a hell of a stomach ache by the time they landed in L.A., but right now Daniel didn't give a damn. In his current mood it tasted fantastic.

"So these creatures have a name? Something catchier than 'those badasses who nearly wiped out the goa'uld'? Not that that doesn't have a certain ring to it."

"I don't know what they call themselves," Daniel mumbled around a mouthful of chewy, cold pepperoni. "I've been thinking of them as the Seraphim, but you and Blair Sandburg called them Revenuers."

~~~

But, according to their fiery nature, it is very difficult for them to appear in this outward world, because there is a whole principle or gulph betwixt them, namely, they are shut up in another quality or existence, so that they can with greater difficulty find out the being of this world, or come with full presence into it, than we can remove into the kingdom of heaven or hell with our intellectual man. For, if it were otherwise, and the devils had power to appear unto mortals as they lift, how many towns, cities, &c. would be destroyed, and burnt to the ground! how many infants would be pluckt away in their innocence, and unoffending creatures be destroyed by their malicious power?

Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1800), A New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences, Book 4.

They went back to the house in Tacoma Heights the next afternoon. Blair had been worrying about possible turf issues, but the lead detective from the 8th Precinct seemed perfectly happy to accompany Jim and Blair, and was even able to give them a walk through the house. None of the family had yet returned.

"Yesterday I would have said for certain the D.A. wouldn't press charges." Detective Michaelson was a stocky woman with a bulldog jaw and startlingly beautiful green eyes. "But after the L.A. attack, I hear the commissioner is pressuring the district attorney to come down hard on her. Fucking ridiculous. Anyone can see the poor mother is nutty as a fruitcake."

"The L.A. attack?" Blair asked, keeping one eye on Jim. They had already been through the house and now they were picking their way across the tiny back yard. A sleek, self-satisfied calico cat watched their progress from the alley through a chain link fence, then turned and padded away with a contemptuous flick of her tail.

"Yeah, happened too early this morning to make the papers, I guess," Michaelson said. "Bunch of Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants working in an illegal sweatshop. One of them had her baby with her."

"Oh, God. You're kidding. And she -- it was like here?"

"Even worse." Michaelson seemed to take a grim satisfaction in laying out the details, and Blair felt distinctly woozy by the time she finished.

"That's -- oh, God. I don't even know what that is. Some kind of mass hysteria?"

"You're asking the wrong person. All I know is it's going to make things go a lot harder on this poor woman. You got a thing for cats, Ellison?"

Blair turned. Jim was standing against the chain link fence, to all evidence engrossed by the calico cat as she crisscrossed her way from garbage can to garbage can. He didn't answer Michaelson.

"He loves 'em," Blair said. "Got half a dozen at home." He laid his hand on Jim's shoulder, making his touch careful and deliberate. "Jim, man, that cat looks pretty well fed. I bet she already has a good home."

Jim hardly flinched, and when he turned his head to Blair, there was a tight smile on his face. "I think we're finished here. I appreciate your time, Detective."

"Yeah," she said dubiously, looking from Jim to Blair and back again. "Don't suppose there's anything you can give me on this? I hate to see that woman go to jail when she should be in a psych ward."

"Not really my field," Jim said shortly. "Sorry."

Back at the truck Blair asked quietly as Jim opened the door for him, "You OK to drive?"

He looked faintly put out. "I'm fine, Sandburg. Thanks for the concern." Once they were both in the truck he said, "Half a dozen cats at home?"

"I like cats. What, you don't like cats?"

Jim scowled and put the truck in gear.

Blair took a deep breath. "So were you right about what you thought you sensed yesterday? Have those, those things, the Revenuers, really come back? You think they could have anything to do with what happened here?"

"All I could smell inside the house was blood and detergent, and I was starting to think I was wrong. Hope I was wrong." Jim's hands tightened around the steering wheel, but then he dropped his right hand onto Blair's knee, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease a little. "Then I walked right into a damned pocket of that smell right there by the fence. Nothing about it is natural. It doesn't even disperse like a regular scent would. Clings together like glob of mercury. About that cold and that dense, too."

Blair put his hand over Jim's. "They were here." Blair's voice sounded flat in his own ears.

"I don't know that for sure. Something was, though, and whatever it was left behind a little blobby bit of nothing to go floating off through the neighborhood -- " Jim broke off with a deep breath. "Fuck," he said succinctly.

"Yeah. You gonna call the feds, or you want me to do it?"

"I don't know. Let me talk to Jackson first. Maybe he can do most of the talking to the Pentagon for us."

"Yeah, maybe, but who knows how long it'll take to contact him? Can we really afford to wait that long?" Blair mimed a one-sided phone conversation. "Hello, Air Force? I'd like to talk to a civilian consultant to some super-duper secret project. Yeah, I think it was Stargate, or maybe he's with NORAD, but no one ever confirmed anything for me one way or another except to swear me to secrecy for the rest of my life, so frankly, I've got no idea. But when you track him down, would you have him give me a ring?"

"Or I could just call his cell phone," Jim said.

"You have Daniel's phone number? How do you have his phone number? Last time we saw him he was pretty much completely nonverbal."

"He's called a couple of times."

"He what?" Blair turned to stare at Jim. "What the hell does he want? And why didn't you tell me before now?"

Jim almost smiled. "I don't know why I didn't mention it. Couldn't possibly be because I wasn't in the mood to listen to you ranting and raving."

"I'm not ranting and raving."

"You hate the man, Sandburg."

"I do not hate Daniel Jackson. I hate what he does for a living."

"You don't even know what he does for a living."

"He works for the Air Force and he's hiding the truth. That's good enough for me."

"I worked for the Army and I'm still hiding the truth about what I did for them. "

"You know damned well it's not the same thing." Blair took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "And even if it is, as far as I'm concerned he endangered your life -- I know, I know, that's not the way you see it -- but that's the way it looks to me, and OK. Maybe it's sort of hard for me to let go of that. I mean, I could have lost you forever and never even have --"

Dammit. If he kept this up he was going to end up in tears. He broke off and looked fixedly out the side window, but he was holding Jim's hand hard.

"I'm right here, Blair," Jim told him softly. "Not planning on going anywhere."

"I know," Blair said when he could trust his voice again. "So what have you and Dr. Jackson been chatting about?"

"He wants to know what I remember about that place."

"That place? Oh."

"Yeah. Where we were when we weren't on the side of a mountain road in a snow storm with a van full of NID agents, but before we ended up on your bedroom floor. He couldn't remember anything about it himself, once the Revenuers got through with him."

"But there's not that much you could tell him, right? You didn't even open your eyes."

"I couldn't." At the traffic light Jim freed his hand from Blair's grasp and scrubbed it quickly over his face. "At the time Jackson told me that we were looking down on some beautiful city. I knew he was wrong, but I also knew it wasn't worth my life to open my eyes and see for myself."

"Jesus, Jim," Blair whispered.

"I'll call when we get home." Jim said, sounding tired. "I should have known this would never really go away."

~~~

My body thrives, my heart exults
At our walking together;
Hearing your voice is pomegranate wine.

Poem 2, from IIc, The Third Collection, Papyrus Harris 500

Jack was a little tense during the flight to L.A. He didn't relax noticeably while waiting in line for their rental car, and then when Daniel picked up the voicemail message from Jim Ellison on his cell phone, Jack went from tense to stony-faced and positively monosyllabic.

"I'll call Hammond," he said after listening to the message. "You hold our place in line."

"I wonder if we --"

Jack stalked away to find a semi-private place for his call without looking back.

So, OK. Jack was a lot tense. He wasn't the only one. Daniel wrapped his arms around himself and tried not to think too much about the fact that if Detective Ellison was right about what he'd sensed at that crime scene, then as of right now, Daniel was officially out of time.

He watched the harried Avis clerk trace a destination on a freeway map for a father of three ahead of him, the youngest wailing in her mother's arms and the two toddlers squabbling on the floor. Dad looked up from the map to complain in a querulous voice, "I can't believe that's really the most direct route to Anaheim. Do you have someone here who's better at reading a map? I think I need to talk to your supervisor."

On their way to Disneyland, Daniel supposed. Not the sort of family outing of which he had any memory. Watching the fighting kids and cranky parents, it didn't look like he'd missed anything.

He wondered a little insanely if the Revenuers would like Disneyland. It was probably surreal enough to fit their sense of style.

In exchange for telling us how to destroy the goa'uld -- and incidentally, for NOT wiping out humankind in the process, because I can see where it might be easier from your point of view to just fumigate the entire galaxy -- we promise to share all the secrets of Space Mountain. Is it a deal?

Maybe he could convince Jack to give it a shot. Hell, Jack O'Neill could probably pull it off.

His smile didn't last long. They were back, and Daniel wasn't ready for them.

He knew more than he had four months ago. He knew, by now, that the goa'uld hadn't merely stolen the Light from the Revenuers, but had once used them as hosts. He had a sketchy timeline for their presence on earth, and had even found the planet of their unspeakable god. The bare memory of P3X-636 still made his flesh crawl. He had dream-like memories of screaming at Jack, crying and cursing him as he was irresistibly drawn to the unnamable who lay sleeping beneath that monstrous temple.

He even remembered, at the final extremity, knowing that Jack would stop him anyway. That Jack would save him, no matter what.

But he had no idea what to do with any of it. Though he understood some of the things the Revenuers had done, he still didn't know who they were, what they wanted, where they came from or how to communicate with them, much less how to ask them for help fighting the goa'uld or even why they were here in the first place.

Actually, he did have a dark suspicion about that one. He thought that it was possible his own use of the Light had drawn them back to a planet they had abandoned five thousand years before.

The crying baby wheezed in another lungful of air and let out a truly earsplitting howl as her mother tried with half-frantic exasperation to shush her. The child's eyes were scrunched up tightly, but she opened them when she ran out of air. Enormous, tear-stained brown eyes peered at Daniel for a moment before she squeezed them shut again, buried her wet face against her mother's neck and continued to wail.

Daniel felt the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, and he forced himself to turn around and look behind him. Nothing. Just an increasingly restless line of tourists and businessmen.

Thank God.

Then something made him look over his shoulder again. The third man back was utterly nondescript, his features hidden by the brim of a battered canvas hat. A dirty trench coat hung on his body like a tent, but it was his hands that drew Daniel's attention. They were as bloated and white as those of a corpse three days drowned.

You're not real. Daniel clenched his fists in his pockets and refused to look away. You're just some kind of psychic boobytrap. You're NOT real, and I'm not afraid of you.

Ironic, that the goa'uld had used their knowledge of the Revenuers' sentry to keep the Jaffa from recording their own history. The am'mit didn't care about Jaffa. Obviously it was here to protect the secrets of Revenuers from prying eyes.

I'm not your enemy, Daniel implored, wondering wildly if persuasion would work where defiance never had. I just want to save my race from the goa'uld.

A hand fell on Daniel's shoulder. "That's very nice," Jack said, sotto voce. Daniel nearly jumped out of his skin. "But do you really think you should be discussing that here?"

"God, Jack!"

"You all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"That's just you, scaring about a decade off my life." The baby had stopped crying, and when Daniel dared to look again, the am'mit was gone. Everyone else in the line was giving Daniel a wide berth, though, and he wondered bleakly how much of his little speech he had said out loud. "Did you talk to Hammond?"

Jack nodded. "Carter and Teal'c are on their way now, and Davis will be meeting them just in case." He spread his hands and shrugged, and Daniel understood. Davis was going in case they needed to mobilize troops against a full scale invasion.

"They don't need us?" His voice was still a little shaky, but he surely had good reason for it to be.

"I told Hammond you thought this ancient tupperware we're going to look at might tell us more about the Revenuers. If that's true, you can do more good down here for now. Am I right about that?"

"Yeah. I hope so."

"OK, then."

"But you could go, Jack. They may need you, especially if things get bad."

"We'll go together when you're finished here."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"Yes, as a matter of fact you do."

"Dammit, Jack --"

"Don't." Jack snarled at him, keeping his voice to a whisper. "Just don't. As if things weren't freaky enough, have you forgotten that about three hours ago you sprang the news on me that you've been looking for the Revenuers for months? Now you may not remember what happened the last time they caught up with you, but I can assure you I remember it very clearly." He tapped his temple with two fingers. "You could say it's pretty thoroughly burned into my brain, in fact."

"They didn't hurt me. All they did was erase--"

"Let me refresh your memory. When Ellison found you they had you strung up like a goddammed Christmas tree. They zatted me and Carter, twice. They yanked out Junior. Twice. All in all, they ruined everybody's Christmas, so I'm sorry if it offends you, Daniel, but right now I'm just not in the mood to let you go traipsing off anywhere by yourself."

"Excuse me," said the woman behind the Avis counter said in an exasperated tone of voice. The family going to Disneyland had finally moved on. "May I help you?"

As Jack filled out the paperwork he asked Daniel more calmly, "Do we have time to drop our bags off at the hotel before heading up to Hollywood to see about this guy's etchings?"

Daniel looked at his watch. "It's already six thirty. We'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"You're kidding me. We fly all the way out here to see his precious stuff, and he can't hang around another hour for us? Does he understand the fate of the world could be at stake here?"

"I tried to convince him to wait, but he was pretty adamant about closing time on the phone. He says he won't keep his shop open after dusk, uh, because of the vampires."

Jack turned to stare.

"I'm pretty sure he was kidding," Daniel said.

~~~

The hotel Jack had booked was directly across from Palisades Park. "Why would I stay in some rattrap up in Hollywood?" he growled in response to Daniel's question. "I come to Los Angeles, I want to see the damn ocean. Uncle Sam can afford a couple of decent rooms for the saviors of earth just this once."

Jack wanted to stretch his legs before dinner, so they changed and took a jog through the park as the sun began to set over the ocean, ran across the bridge to the pier and then down the boardwalk almost as far as Venice before turning back. The palm trees were spiky silhouettes against a dark orange sky by the time they returned to the hotel. The concierge scowled at them as they tromped their sweaty selves through the front lobby, but Jack smiled cheerfully back at him and waved.

After showering they walked a few blocks east to an Indian restaurant Daniel remembered from his student days, about a hundred million years ago. It was a relief to find the place still existed and was still filled with British ex-patriots. A rowdy game of darts was going on in the back room, yells and cheers occasionally drowning out the folksinger with the mandolin who gamely continued her set on the front stage all the same. It was all just like Daniel remembered.

He had Nowshera fishcakes and strong, sweet black tea while Jack washed down railway lamb curry with a pint of lager. A warm breeze had blown up by the time they started back, and it smelled of the ocean and of distant shores. Jack seemed content to walk in silence, but the tea had left Daniel feeling wired He wanted to talk about everything, explain everything he was thinking to Jack, but with an effort he confined himself to Denver's cuneiform tablet.

He was trying not to get his hopes up, he told Jack, but what a find it would be if it proved to be authentic, not just in regard to Daniel's immediate research, but for the entire study of Archaic Sumerian. There was so little extant anyway, and what they did have was almost exclusively bookkeeping or school exercises. Imagine what it would mean if it proved to be an extensive religious text after all.

"Yeah," Jack said, but under the streetlight Daniel could see he was smiling. "Just imagine."

By the time they reached the hotel again, Daniel could hardly recognize himself as the humorless, owl-eyed creature who'd been hunched up under Cheyenne Mountain studying occult texts for the last four months. He felt more alive than he'd been -- well, hell, probably since he'd encountered the Light.

"Carter or Davis will call if they need us before morning," Jack said at his room door. "Me, I'm hoping everybody gets a good night's sleep before the shit hits the fan."

"Maybe it won't."

Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Good night, Daniel."

"Good night, Jack."

Daniel let himself into his room and slid the deadbolt home. His room didn't face the ocean, but maybe he'd be able to hear the waves if he opened a window anyway.

More likely, all he'd hear would be the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Oh well.

Then he turned around and saw the man in a dirty trench coat slumped in the chair by the corner. His crumpled canvas hat still hid his face, and the soft, plump hands resting palms-up on his knees were fish-belly white in the lamplight.

Without a word, Daniel stepped back out in to the hallway and let the door swing shut behind him. At the click of the automatic latch he began to shake, and he was still trembling when he crossed the hall to Jack's door, and after a long hesitation, quietly knocked once.

The door opened almost immediately. Jack was down to his boxers, one sock, and his unbuttoned shirt. "Daniel?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Jack," he said helplessly.

Jack looked at him. "You've got a hell of a sense of timing, Dr. Jackson," he said at last. Both his voice and his eyes had gone very soft.

"Well, come in, if you want," he continued, when Daniel simply stood there staring at him.

At last he put two fingers under Daniel's chin and eased his mouth closed. "Catching flies, Danny," he whispered. "Come on." He drew Daniel in and shut the door behind them.

Oh, Daniel thought at last, as Jack eased him back against the door, one hand curved at the nape of his neck, his other gently fisted around the collar of his shirt. Jack thinks -- oh.

"Thought I was playing it so close to the chest," Jack murmured ruefully. "So much for Special Ops." Then he leaned forward and kissed Daniel's mouth.

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