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Here's the next part of this fic which has somehow managed to get to 11,000 words when I wasn't looking. Actually that's not a lot when it feels as if I've done nothing but write and think about it for _days_. Hmm.
Still don't know how much more there is of it. Enough that's there's room for some comfort, and not necessarily just for Daniel either :;pets Jack::
Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Five
There's an instinctive shift of position that leaves Daniel facing the three of them and suddenly everyone's standing and Jack's finger is hooked inside the trigger of his rifle, cool metal warming fast.
"So who am I talking to?" Jack asks, stepping back just enough that he's got room to pick a non-lethal part of Daniel to shoot if he has to.
"To me, Jack," Daniel says patiently. "The Lindess don't really understand the concept of vocalising thought."
"They don't?"
"Why should they? It's not like they have mouths, or vocal chords."
"Well, I don't know! They might!"
"They communicate mentally."
"It's not like they have brains either, Daniel!"
"No, they do, they just don't have a head to keep them in."
Jack's just settling into the conversation when Carter clears her throat and the comforting illusion that he and Daniel are having one of their little chats dissolves. Dark eyes, mottled skin, twisted, crowded body --
"Can you talk to them, Daniel? I don't care if you use Morse code or smoke signals, just do it. Make them let you go."
Daniel shakes his head. "No. I've been thinking and I've changed my mind; this, all of it, is my fault. I've single-handedly destroyed something that's been developing for millennia, and I did it in a week or two. Go me."
"First, it wasn't your damn fault, and second, it was a dumb idea to start with!" Jack takes a deep breath. "Daniel, you said it yourself; the Shalin weren't doing it right. If they had been, then who knows; maybe they'd have been ready for the rings a long time ago. You warned them and they didn't listen."
Even warped out of true, Daniel's face can still convey stubbornness like nobody else. "I owe it to them to complete the transformation. That'll be three of us, and --"
"And what?" Jack demands. "It won't make any difference. It's a waste of time and it's a waste of you." He pushes his rifle down and to the side and steps closer. "And it's going to hurt, Daniel, and you're going to be screaming in there for ever, and --"
"Sir!"
"Oh, forget it, Carter," he says, swinging around and giving her a bright, angry grin. "Daniel's in one of his heroic moods again and we all know how well that goes, don't we?"
Carter's horrified face lets him know just how giant a leap over the line he's just taken but he's too lost in misery to feel more than a pang of regret that she's looking at him like that. She steps forward and addresses Daniel, her gaze sliding away from his face. "Daniel, the Colonel's right; you're not part of this; none of us are. If there's any chance that you can get them to accept that--"
"Sam, they know who I am. What I did."
"And they know how many of your team have died and that you didn't mean to do it," Carter says.
Teal'c nods in silent agreement and Daniel wavers, just a little, before shaking his head. "They're not -- it's too soon and the concepts you're asking them to embrace are too abstract, too alien to them."
"Why? Vengeance came pretty easy to the damn Shalin!"
"Jack, if you'll just listen -- maybe this isn't such a terrible thing, maybe it's an opportunity to learn something new, be part of something wonderful -- Jack, listen --"
"To what? You're never going to make me think that this is a good idea, Daniel. In fact, you know what? I prefer the one where I kill you."
"O'Neill, I cannot permit you to do that," Teal'c says, stepping forward.
Jack ignores him, sick with hurt and anger that Daniel would even think about going along with this willingly. "Tell them, Daniel," he says softly. "You could have told them a long time ago. I know you; as soon as that thing went around your neck, you'd have started to try to talk to them. It's what you do. And you were scared at first, and I get that, I really do, but now you're not and that I don't get at all. That makes me wonder if I'm really talking to my Daniel or some faked-up version."
"Oh, I'm real," Daniel says tersely. "Want me to tell you your favourite beer? Where you keep your porn? The last movie we watched together, and how that connects to my second question?"
Sam ducks her head, hiding a blush or a grin -- Jack's money's on the grin -- and Teal'c's eyebrow lifts in a question he's wise enough not to voice.
"No, Daniel," Jack says, smothering his anger in sarcasm and failing to extinguish it completely, "I don't. Because I know all of that already and it proves nothing."
"Ah, sir --"
"Carter, if you're going to ask me what we watched and why you weren't invited --"
"Or I," Teal'c says off-handedly enough that Jack knows he's hurt.
"You were off-world," Jack says defensively. He'd have included Teal'c; sure he would. Teal'c would've had fun winding Daniel up by waiting until Daniel was starting to get flushed, tongue darting out, glasses getting adjusted way more often than usual, and then asking questions that left Daniel trying to divide his attention between the screen and his curiosity in Jaffa customs. Yeah, Teal'c would've been welcome.
"No, sir, I wasn't," Carter says. "And I know what you watched because I took the tapes back; Daniel didn't have time."
"Can we focus here?" Jack growls. God, Daniel just doesn't get the rules sometimes, which makes no fucking sense given what he does for a day job. He's going to have words with him about that little stunt when this is all over.
"What I was trying to say, sir, was that maybe we're approaching this from the wrong end."
"How's that?" Jack's fizzing with impatience now. This is it, he knows it; Daniel can talk to the fucking trees and get them to back the hell off, maybe even do something about Foster and Talbot, and they'll all be home in time for the hockey game. It's all going to be fine, and they can waste time bickering as if they're sitting around a table at the SGC eating lunch, and it doesn't matter, he doesn't mind, because Daniel can do this. There's never been an alien he can't sweet talk, certain System Lords excepted, and this one's in his brain, dammit, in a front-row seat with a great view of the stage.
Daniel's a star, a pro, a charmer.
He's just not fucking performing tonight for some reason.
"Daniel, when the Shalin died, it wasn't instantaneous, was it?" Carter asks.
He shakes his head. "Sacer wore the ring for a few hours before you came, but I don't see --"
"So the Lindess had chance to take a lot of information from them?"
Daniel nods. "I suppose so. They -- they're used to the Shalin not coping well with the merging; they've come to expect that, but I can feel that they're shocked by what's happened." He frowns and stops, reaching up to touch his face. "I don't -- that hurt." He tries to smile. "I probably shouldn't ask for a mirror, should I?"
"No, Daniel, you look fine," Jack says, making sure he doesn't answer too quickly. "Little under the weather, but nothing we can't fix once you're back home."
"I'm not going. I need to -- I'm not finished here."
"Yes, you are."
Daniel looks at him, shakes his head, and walks away to stare at trees.
The three of them exchange glances and then Jack's radio crackles at him and it's the Tok'ra wanting to know if they can go now, and by the time he's dealt with that and updated Hammond, Daniel's been missing for half an hour.
"I'm wondering if even with the deaths, the Lindess can do what they need to do, even if it's too late for the Shalin," Carter says as they move through the forest. It's hot, and although as far as they know there's nothing dangerous on the planet apart from the trees, Jack's getting a headache from peering through greenery looking for someone about to jump them. "If we can make Daniel accept that, maybe he'll be ready to try convincing them."
"What do they need to do?" Jack snaps, spitting out a bug. Hates this planet. Hates it. "Mutate and grow legs, or something?"
Carter doesn't smile. "I don't know, sir. The trees just got a flood of information when they've been used to it coming in a slow drip; once they've processed that, then who knows what they'll do with it?"
Teal'c glances at her, the filtered sunlight turning the tattoo on his forehead to an indistinct dazzle of gold. "In his notes, Daniel Jackson speculated that the Ancients were trying to alleviate the shortcomings of both races, and without the Shalin, their plan must surely fail."
"What shortcomings exactly?" Carter asked, kicking her boot free of a tangle of brambles.
Teal'c shrugs. "The Lindess could not influence their environment in any meaningful way, but enjoy long lives, whereas the Shalin were mobile and able to nurture the trees, yet lived only a scant few years."
"How few?" Carter asked. "In comparison with the Lindess, I'd imagine we all seem like mayflies."
Teal'c shakes his head, maneuvering his staff weapon past a low branch. "No, Major Carter; did you not see the report on the bodies in the city? None were of babies and there were very few young children. The Shalin mature rapidly, reaching full growth within a few weeks, and die after approximately three decades."
"Thirty?" Jack says incredulously.
"Indeed," Teal'c confirms. "The Ancients must have hoped that the Lindess would have provided them with --"
"With nothing," Jack interrupts. "It's not giving them longer lives to shove them inside a tree; why isn't that blindingly obvious to everyone?" Opportunity, his ass. Does it look like Foster's enjoying himself, poor bastard?
"You're still reacting as a human," Carter says, keeping her tone respectful but firm. She's good at that. None of them are scared about calling him on it when they think he's full of shit and normally he likes that, wouldn't have it any other way.
Not now, with Daniel switching sides on him and making it complicated.
"I am human, Carter. I can't react any other way. And don't ask me to put myself in their shoes -- sorry, roots, because I'm not Daniel, okay?"
"I'm just saying --"
"I know what you're trying to say, Carter." Jack rolls his eyes. "Fine; maybe for both of them it was a way out, but it went wrong -- and if the Ancients had bothered to stick around and see their little science project get a big, honking 'F', we wouldn't be cleaning up their mess, so don't think they're not on my shit-list, too, because they are."
"Yes, sir," Carter says, her voice subdued.
"When we locate Daniel Jackson, what do you plan to do?" Teal'c asks. "These tracks are fresh; I believe that we will soon be upon him."
"I'm going to take him home," Jack says. "He's no risk to others and that stuff Janet gave him seemed to help."
"But we tried taking him through the 'gate before, sir," Carter says.
"Yeah, and we nearly killed him. I know. But we don't have any choice now. I figure we get the 'gate open and maybe give him another dose of that stuff, knock him out, too, rush him through..." Jack frowns. "I'm thinking once we're light years away that collar won't be able to communicate with the rest of them and we can get it off. It's a plan. Not much of one, but unless either of you can come up with something better, it's what we're going with."
Carter bites her lip but stays silent and Teal'c inclines his head, looking relieved, as if the prospect of doing something is as appealing to him as it is to Jack.
They push their way through another few hundred yards of forest and find Daniel.
Jack still doesn't know what a Lindess looks like in its natural state, and he's been giving every tree they pass a suspicious glare, but he's been wasting his time. The lindess tree Daniel's kneeling beside is unmistakable, not for its bark or foliage which, to Jack's eyes, resembles an oak, but because the soughing limbs are moving against the wind, not with it.
"Daniel, get up and let's get out of here," Jack orders, striding over to him.
In the time that they've been apart, Daniel's lost his jacket. The curve of his spine is more pronounced now and under the darkened, still-bruised skin, Jack can see a tracery of veins, green-tinged and thick.
Daniel's hands are flat against the tree and Jack reaches down and takes hold of Daniel's wrist, rough skin hot under his hand, what feels like too many bones bulking it out.
He tugs and Daniel cries out, his head going back, dark eyes wide and open and blank. Jack stops pulling and goes to his knees, sliding the tip of his finger between Daniel's hand and the tree.
Fuck.
"It's got him," he says as the others join him. "Shoot, branch, whatever, running right into his hands. Or out of them. Hard to tell."
"Then we must free him," Teal'c says.
"I'm not sure that's such a good --" Carter begins.
Jack gets up and walks away, taking Carter and Teal'c with him. When he's about ten feet away he nods at Teal'c's staff weapon. "May I?"
Teal'c's eyebrows tug together but he passes his weapon to Jack and steps aside.
"Sir, please," Carter says urgently. "At least try talking to him -- to them."
"You want me to talk?" Jack raises his voice. "Daniel? Excuse me? Earth to Daniel Jackson? Get away from the life-sucking alien and let me save your ass. And tree, assuming you can hear me, let go of him, or I'll shoot you in your ass, and trust me, I'll find it." He gives it a beat of three and then shrugs. "Guess it didn't work. Let's go with my idea."
The blast from the staff weapon rips a hole in the bark, just where the trunk divides into branches, and the forest screams.
Part Six
Still don't know how much more there is of it. Enough that's there's room for some comfort, and not necessarily just for Daniel either :;pets Jack::
Previous parts are here
Leaving Time
Part Five
There's an instinctive shift of position that leaves Daniel facing the three of them and suddenly everyone's standing and Jack's finger is hooked inside the trigger of his rifle, cool metal warming fast.
"So who am I talking to?" Jack asks, stepping back just enough that he's got room to pick a non-lethal part of Daniel to shoot if he has to.
"To me, Jack," Daniel says patiently. "The Lindess don't really understand the concept of vocalising thought."
"They don't?"
"Why should they? It's not like they have mouths, or vocal chords."
"Well, I don't know! They might!"
"They communicate mentally."
"It's not like they have brains either, Daniel!"
"No, they do, they just don't have a head to keep them in."
Jack's just settling into the conversation when Carter clears her throat and the comforting illusion that he and Daniel are having one of their little chats dissolves. Dark eyes, mottled skin, twisted, crowded body --
"Can you talk to them, Daniel? I don't care if you use Morse code or smoke signals, just do it. Make them let you go."
Daniel shakes his head. "No. I've been thinking and I've changed my mind; this, all of it, is my fault. I've single-handedly destroyed something that's been developing for millennia, and I did it in a week or two. Go me."
"First, it wasn't your damn fault, and second, it was a dumb idea to start with!" Jack takes a deep breath. "Daniel, you said it yourself; the Shalin weren't doing it right. If they had been, then who knows; maybe they'd have been ready for the rings a long time ago. You warned them and they didn't listen."
Even warped out of true, Daniel's face can still convey stubbornness like nobody else. "I owe it to them to complete the transformation. That'll be three of us, and --"
"And what?" Jack demands. "It won't make any difference. It's a waste of time and it's a waste of you." He pushes his rifle down and to the side and steps closer. "And it's going to hurt, Daniel, and you're going to be screaming in there for ever, and --"
"Sir!"
"Oh, forget it, Carter," he says, swinging around and giving her a bright, angry grin. "Daniel's in one of his heroic moods again and we all know how well that goes, don't we?"
Carter's horrified face lets him know just how giant a leap over the line he's just taken but he's too lost in misery to feel more than a pang of regret that she's looking at him like that. She steps forward and addresses Daniel, her gaze sliding away from his face. "Daniel, the Colonel's right; you're not part of this; none of us are. If there's any chance that you can get them to accept that--"
"Sam, they know who I am. What I did."
"And they know how many of your team have died and that you didn't mean to do it," Carter says.
Teal'c nods in silent agreement and Daniel wavers, just a little, before shaking his head. "They're not -- it's too soon and the concepts you're asking them to embrace are too abstract, too alien to them."
"Why? Vengeance came pretty easy to the damn Shalin!"
"Jack, if you'll just listen -- maybe this isn't such a terrible thing, maybe it's an opportunity to learn something new, be part of something wonderful -- Jack, listen --"
"To what? You're never going to make me think that this is a good idea, Daniel. In fact, you know what? I prefer the one where I kill you."
"O'Neill, I cannot permit you to do that," Teal'c says, stepping forward.
Jack ignores him, sick with hurt and anger that Daniel would even think about going along with this willingly. "Tell them, Daniel," he says softly. "You could have told them a long time ago. I know you; as soon as that thing went around your neck, you'd have started to try to talk to them. It's what you do. And you were scared at first, and I get that, I really do, but now you're not and that I don't get at all. That makes me wonder if I'm really talking to my Daniel or some faked-up version."
"Oh, I'm real," Daniel says tersely. "Want me to tell you your favourite beer? Where you keep your porn? The last movie we watched together, and how that connects to my second question?"
Sam ducks her head, hiding a blush or a grin -- Jack's money's on the grin -- and Teal'c's eyebrow lifts in a question he's wise enough not to voice.
"No, Daniel," Jack says, smothering his anger in sarcasm and failing to extinguish it completely, "I don't. Because I know all of that already and it proves nothing."
"Ah, sir --"
"Carter, if you're going to ask me what we watched and why you weren't invited --"
"Or I," Teal'c says off-handedly enough that Jack knows he's hurt.
"You were off-world," Jack says defensively. He'd have included Teal'c; sure he would. Teal'c would've had fun winding Daniel up by waiting until Daniel was starting to get flushed, tongue darting out, glasses getting adjusted way more often than usual, and then asking questions that left Daniel trying to divide his attention between the screen and his curiosity in Jaffa customs. Yeah, Teal'c would've been welcome.
"No, sir, I wasn't," Carter says. "And I know what you watched because I took the tapes back; Daniel didn't have time."
"Can we focus here?" Jack growls. God, Daniel just doesn't get the rules sometimes, which makes no fucking sense given what he does for a day job. He's going to have words with him about that little stunt when this is all over.
"What I was trying to say, sir, was that maybe we're approaching this from the wrong end."
"How's that?" Jack's fizzing with impatience now. This is it, he knows it; Daniel can talk to the fucking trees and get them to back the hell off, maybe even do something about Foster and Talbot, and they'll all be home in time for the hockey game. It's all going to be fine, and they can waste time bickering as if they're sitting around a table at the SGC eating lunch, and it doesn't matter, he doesn't mind, because Daniel can do this. There's never been an alien he can't sweet talk, certain System Lords excepted, and this one's in his brain, dammit, in a front-row seat with a great view of the stage.
Daniel's a star, a pro, a charmer.
He's just not fucking performing tonight for some reason.
"Daniel, when the Shalin died, it wasn't instantaneous, was it?" Carter asks.
He shakes his head. "Sacer wore the ring for a few hours before you came, but I don't see --"
"So the Lindess had chance to take a lot of information from them?"
Daniel nods. "I suppose so. They -- they're used to the Shalin not coping well with the merging; they've come to expect that, but I can feel that they're shocked by what's happened." He frowns and stops, reaching up to touch his face. "I don't -- that hurt." He tries to smile. "I probably shouldn't ask for a mirror, should I?"
"No, Daniel, you look fine," Jack says, making sure he doesn't answer too quickly. "Little under the weather, but nothing we can't fix once you're back home."
"I'm not going. I need to -- I'm not finished here."
"Yes, you are."
Daniel looks at him, shakes his head, and walks away to stare at trees.
The three of them exchange glances and then Jack's radio crackles at him and it's the Tok'ra wanting to know if they can go now, and by the time he's dealt with that and updated Hammond, Daniel's been missing for half an hour.
"I'm wondering if even with the deaths, the Lindess can do what they need to do, even if it's too late for the Shalin," Carter says as they move through the forest. It's hot, and although as far as they know there's nothing dangerous on the planet apart from the trees, Jack's getting a headache from peering through greenery looking for someone about to jump them. "If we can make Daniel accept that, maybe he'll be ready to try convincing them."
"What do they need to do?" Jack snaps, spitting out a bug. Hates this planet. Hates it. "Mutate and grow legs, or something?"
Carter doesn't smile. "I don't know, sir. The trees just got a flood of information when they've been used to it coming in a slow drip; once they've processed that, then who knows what they'll do with it?"
Teal'c glances at her, the filtered sunlight turning the tattoo on his forehead to an indistinct dazzle of gold. "In his notes, Daniel Jackson speculated that the Ancients were trying to alleviate the shortcomings of both races, and without the Shalin, their plan must surely fail."
"What shortcomings exactly?" Carter asked, kicking her boot free of a tangle of brambles.
Teal'c shrugs. "The Lindess could not influence their environment in any meaningful way, but enjoy long lives, whereas the Shalin were mobile and able to nurture the trees, yet lived only a scant few years."
"How few?" Carter asked. "In comparison with the Lindess, I'd imagine we all seem like mayflies."
Teal'c shakes his head, maneuvering his staff weapon past a low branch. "No, Major Carter; did you not see the report on the bodies in the city? None were of babies and there were very few young children. The Shalin mature rapidly, reaching full growth within a few weeks, and die after approximately three decades."
"Thirty?" Jack says incredulously.
"Indeed," Teal'c confirms. "The Ancients must have hoped that the Lindess would have provided them with --"
"With nothing," Jack interrupts. "It's not giving them longer lives to shove them inside a tree; why isn't that blindingly obvious to everyone?" Opportunity, his ass. Does it look like Foster's enjoying himself, poor bastard?
"You're still reacting as a human," Carter says, keeping her tone respectful but firm. She's good at that. None of them are scared about calling him on it when they think he's full of shit and normally he likes that, wouldn't have it any other way.
Not now, with Daniel switching sides on him and making it complicated.
"I am human, Carter. I can't react any other way. And don't ask me to put myself in their shoes -- sorry, roots, because I'm not Daniel, okay?"
"I'm just saying --"
"I know what you're trying to say, Carter." Jack rolls his eyes. "Fine; maybe for both of them it was a way out, but it went wrong -- and if the Ancients had bothered to stick around and see their little science project get a big, honking 'F', we wouldn't be cleaning up their mess, so don't think they're not on my shit-list, too, because they are."
"Yes, sir," Carter says, her voice subdued.
"When we locate Daniel Jackson, what do you plan to do?" Teal'c asks. "These tracks are fresh; I believe that we will soon be upon him."
"I'm going to take him home," Jack says. "He's no risk to others and that stuff Janet gave him seemed to help."
"But we tried taking him through the 'gate before, sir," Carter says.
"Yeah, and we nearly killed him. I know. But we don't have any choice now. I figure we get the 'gate open and maybe give him another dose of that stuff, knock him out, too, rush him through..." Jack frowns. "I'm thinking once we're light years away that collar won't be able to communicate with the rest of them and we can get it off. It's a plan. Not much of one, but unless either of you can come up with something better, it's what we're going with."
Carter bites her lip but stays silent and Teal'c inclines his head, looking relieved, as if the prospect of doing something is as appealing to him as it is to Jack.
They push their way through another few hundred yards of forest and find Daniel.
Jack still doesn't know what a Lindess looks like in its natural state, and he's been giving every tree they pass a suspicious glare, but he's been wasting his time. The lindess tree Daniel's kneeling beside is unmistakable, not for its bark or foliage which, to Jack's eyes, resembles an oak, but because the soughing limbs are moving against the wind, not with it.
"Daniel, get up and let's get out of here," Jack orders, striding over to him.
In the time that they've been apart, Daniel's lost his jacket. The curve of his spine is more pronounced now and under the darkened, still-bruised skin, Jack can see a tracery of veins, green-tinged and thick.
Daniel's hands are flat against the tree and Jack reaches down and takes hold of Daniel's wrist, rough skin hot under his hand, what feels like too many bones bulking it out.
He tugs and Daniel cries out, his head going back, dark eyes wide and open and blank. Jack stops pulling and goes to his knees, sliding the tip of his finger between Daniel's hand and the tree.
Fuck.
"It's got him," he says as the others join him. "Shoot, branch, whatever, running right into his hands. Or out of them. Hard to tell."
"Then we must free him," Teal'c says.
"I'm not sure that's such a good --" Carter begins.
Jack gets up and walks away, taking Carter and Teal'c with him. When he's about ten feet away he nods at Teal'c's staff weapon. "May I?"
Teal'c's eyebrows tug together but he passes his weapon to Jack and steps aside.
"Sir, please," Carter says urgently. "At least try talking to him -- to them."
"You want me to talk?" Jack raises his voice. "Daniel? Excuse me? Earth to Daniel Jackson? Get away from the life-sucking alien and let me save your ass. And tree, assuming you can hear me, let go of him, or I'll shoot you in your ass, and trust me, I'll find it." He gives it a beat of three and then shrugs. "Guess it didn't work. Let's go with my idea."
The blast from the staff weapon rips a hole in the bark, just where the trunk divides into branches, and the forest screams.
Part Six
Tags:
- fic,
- jack/daniel,
- sg-1,
- slash