"I am not going to listen to you any more."
Daniel ignored Jack, which had absolutely no effect on Jack's complaining.
"I've listened to you before, and what does it get me? Captured, usually. Often wounded. And now, dressed like this."
"Quit whining, Jack. It's a toga, not a tutu. Your manhood is intact."
"Actually, it's a tunic. See, I was paying attention during briefing. YOU are wearing a toga, because YOU are supposed to be the rich guy. I'm the slave. I've got just the tunic."
"What a relief for you. Please shut up and go somewhere else. I'm working."
"I thought you were going to the library."
"This is a library." Daniel waved around to the cubbyholes and round boxes. "This is what books used to look like, when they were called scrolls. This place is packed with them. The history of a thousand years, indexed and filed! I wonder if Alexandria was like this before it burned."
Jack looked around. He wanted to get excited, he did, but all he saw was -- actually, he hadn't even really noticed the scrolls.
"I thought I should spend at least a part of the day hanging around wherever you are, since I'm your slave and all."
"Bodyguard, Jack. And you can, if you want. But... is that boredom actually dripping out of your ears?" Jack scowled at him; Daniel ignored that too. "How many times do I have to say it? This planet is safe. The Goa'uld wiped the address of this planet from their registries back when Ares and Ameratsu fought their little war over who would rule it. Massive casualties on both sides, popular uprising of the people, and so on and so FORTH, and the Goa'uld said to hell with it, no naquada there anyway, and jettisoned the place. The people buried their Stargates and have had a thousand years to develop." Daniel looked around at all the scrolls again and Jack could practically see the lovelight dripping from his eyes. "A thousand years of history, Jack, all carefully preserved! We might find records of anti-Goa'uld weapons -"
"Well, you will. Still think you shoulda brought some of your team."
"Undercover, Jack. Didn't you teach me what that means?"
"I'm pretty sure it means under a cover."
"Jack, I'm begging you. Go find something to do. Go to the gym."
Jack perked up at that. "Ancient Rome had gyms?"
"Yes, and also, this isn't ancient Rome. It's a civilization based on that of ancient Rome. With medieval-level technology. Actually it's astonishing how close to the civilization of the classical Roman empire it has remained." Jack could see Daniel's attention drifting back to the scrolls even as he kept speaking to Jack. Apparently they did have ground glass here, because Daniel had got to keep his glasses - the better to pore over scrolls with. "So please don't pretend you know what should or shouldn't be here. And go to the gym and get out of my hair."
"Come get me before you head home."
"I don't need -"
"I'm your bodyguard, right? Under cover? Not that anyone's going to believe that if they see me hanging out at the gym doing crunches."
"High-ranking slaves can visit the gym. Especially for fighting."
"Fighting?"
"Boxing. Whatever you want to call it."
"I'm off, Daniel. You'll know where to find me."
Daniel bent over the scroll again, but called out as Jack was leaving, "Stay away from the wrestling."
"Yeah, yeah," and Jack waved a hand behind his head and was gone.
---
Gymnasiums on Optimus were combinations of the local beer hall, music hall, and the Y. All the men dropped by for various reasons at some point during the week. I hadn't been to one yet, but I knew where the one closest to our villa was. I figured I'd find Jack there.
The slave I stopped to ask directed me to the wrestling ring. Sonofabitch.
Yep, there was Jack, sitting on a bench as I rounded the corner. He'd clearly had a few matches already. His face was red, he was breathing a little hard, he had scratches on his back and his skin was slicked with oil.
All of his skin.
He sat on the bench, naked the way classical wrestlers used to be, forearms resting on his knees, catching his breath. I had to stop and think about my own breath for a while.
There's a statue, can't remember if it was Roman or Greek - art was not my specialty - of a boxer. He wasn't a young man either; his profile was battered, his hair a little too long, his hands wrapped in boxing bandages. His body was sculpted perfection, all the muscles of the belly, back and legs defined, including that little dip-shaped muscle over the side of the pelvis that is only defined on the most athletic of men.
Jack looked nothing like the Boxer.
His hair was short and liberally gray; the skin of his arms and thighs was starting to be a little loose over the muscles, the way an older man's is. His belly was even, dare I say it, a little soft. The hollows around his neck stood out and his shoulders, those magnificent sloping shoulders, drooped forward a little and gave away how tired he was. His hands drooped between his knees, too; one of his knuckles was scraped. His commando tan stopped at the neck and the arms; the skin of his torso and most of his legs had a golden cast but was still paler, and on his chest the skin was sprinkled liberally with gray, curly hair.
He looked ridiculous.
He was breathtaking.
He wasn't a Greek idol. He was real. A real guy. My real friend. Every molecule in his body practically screamed out, "Here's a man who's used his body hard for years. This body has kept him alive and countless other people. This body can deal death and save children. This is a real body."
His eyes sparked at me as he caught sight of me looking at him. I saw him snort as I approached. No, no Greek idol here.
I'd never seen him before so obviously worn out and yet relaxed, happy. I wanted to rub those shoulders, find the aches in them with my fingers and smooth them away. His features, rather than looking craggy or old, suddenly looked sculpted out of granite, as if they'd always been this way and would always be this way, as if he too was a sculpture that time would preserve forever, just like this. And yet, at the same time, the muscles in his thighs, in his ass, looked tense, taut, as if he was ready to spring into action again in just a second, just a thought away. He looked tired and dangerous all at the same time. And very, very sexy.
I shook my head a little. Stupid Jack. I'd told him to stay away from the wrestling. One of the reasons was so that I wouldn't see this. I maintained my everyday sanity by not thinking of Jack this way. Now I would have this picture in my head forever.
I guessed I could live with that.
I shook my head as I walked up to him. "Told you to stay away from the wrestling, Jack."
He saw me, straightened. "Yeah, I know. I figured you figured I didn't want to do the naked thing. But I didn't mind. I mean, okay, so someone greased me up with olive oil and I'm pretty sure someone else tried to grab my family jewels and twist them off. But who cares? I'm never going to see them again."
"That's not why I told you to stay away from the wrestling, Jack. You sure they were trying to twist them off?"
"Well, I think so. Hurt like hell and I kicked the guy in the head. Why do you ask?"
"Because wrestling is a form of flirtation, even foreplay, in this culture, especially between peers."
"Huh." Jack took the news surprisingly well given that he was naked and oiled. "Well, if that guy wanted my number, he had a funny way of showing it."
"I'm heading to the baths. You wanna come with?"
"What are you going to bathe for? I doubt seriously you worked up a sweat sitting over books... scrolls all day."
That made me twitch and I scratched my chin to hide it. Okay, so I thought the baths were the best part of Optimus, so what? I had nothing to be ashamed of.
I decided offense made a decent defense. "You, on the other hand, probably smell like something three weeks dead. So I suggest that you join me. Or at least make a visit before you try to come back to the room tonight."
"Yessir, master sir. Buzz off, I'm having fun."
"Fine. I'll see you later. Try not to break any more hearts." I turned away to head for the public baths but the image of Jack was burned into my retinas.
No, that was not a good thing.
---
I knew if there was one thing Daniel liked best about Optimus, it wasn't the library, no matter how drooly he got over thousands of scrolls of history.
Nope, it was the baths.
The Optimans knew how to take baths, and they did, a lot. Which, frankly, made the planet bearable, since most of the population was concentrated in the tropical and subtropical zones around the equator.
Jacob had pulled a doozy when he'd found this planet. No Stargate - Jacob had actually noticed an inhabited star system while driving by. Carter told me the odds against this, which I promptly forgot. Suffice to say, it was freakishly, unreasonably unlikely.
Like a lot of stuff that happened to SG-1.
We'd made a short recon mission months ago, but now we were back, because Hammond had decided to grant Daniel's warmest geeky little wishes and give him research leave in Optimus. I went along just because it was a relief to visit a world where places had names and not just a number. In fact, Optimus didn't get a number, because it didn't have a working Stargate. I loved that.
I was here playing Daniel's bodyguard because, thanks to the whim of a malfunctioning time machine, I happened to speak Latin, which Carter did not. Also, in this culture, women did not have the mobility that Carter was used to - and a big black Jaffa with a gold tattoo on his head would have been out of the question. Nope, I got to play the slave while Daniel played the master.
Not that we were very good at it, I suspected, because I wandered around and did whatever the hell I wanted while Daniel stayed in the library.
Maybe that's what ancient Roman bodyguards did.
And every other day or so, Daniel made an excuse to visit the baths. We had some money, enough to make us look as rich as we claimed to be, and we'd used a lot of it to rent the villa. But I had a feeling we'd be eating salad and stale bread before long if Daniel kept spending his cash at the baths.
And Daniel could spend hours there.
If it was a nice day, he'd start in the natatio, the outdoor pool, and swim laps - his justification for at least half the visits. "It's exercise, Jack!" he'd claim. Yeah, right.
But half the time he skipped that and went straight from the locker room, the whaddya call it, I can't remember. Stowed his clothes and went to the hot room to work up a sweat. He spends at least half an hour in the caldarium, dunking in the hot water, rinsing his feet in the cold, and working up a sweat. I had no idea how much that man loved steam before we came here.
Then as often as not he goes through the scraping process, where you get rubbed with olive oil and scraped with a stick. He spends extra money on the scented olive oils and comes home smelling of lavender and rosemary.
This is hard to ignore.
I mean, I'm trying to maintain my colonel persona here, public baths or no public baths, despite the fact that I'm wandering around town wearing a minidress most days. But when Daniel comes back to the room in the villa we rent - and we share the same bed, because apparently that's part of my bodyguard "disguise" - and he smells like something you should put in a vase, well, that's distracting.
And when he smells like something you should eat - that's even more distracting.
Then sometimes he gets a shave -
And he finishes off in the frigidarium, the way you're supposed to, and the cold water is supposed to seal all your pores or some junk like that. In my experience, it frightens your balls back into your body, is what it does. But Daniel freaking loves it.
Comes back glowing like a freaking Christmas tree, every time. And looking about twenty.
Twenty, and dewy, and fresh and clean and smelling like spicy flowers.
And still a little slick from the oil.
I'm not so fond of the baths.
The whole thing is causing me a lot of trouble with my brandishing-guns facade, and I don't even have any guns to brandish to offset this.
Anyway. I figured I'd find Daniel in the caldarium, and I did.
Lying facedown, naked, on a bench while a slave rubbed him with olive oil.
I sniffed as I got closer. Rosemary. Jesus.
When I got closer I wondered if he was being paid extra to be shaved all over. Because I had never seen such smooth skin on any man over the age of puberty. I used to be oblivious to this kind of thing, but let me tell you, a few weeks on Optimus is enough to start you wondering if your best friend is going in for torso shaving.
Anyway, he'd just gotten his oil rubdown, and the rent-a-slave was about to start scraping him. I recognized the guy - he looked like he should be running a pizza joint in Brooklyn and be named Vinnie - and realized Daniel must have had him before, otherwise I wouldn't recognize him. Was Daniel tipping him?
Or did he just like looking at Daniel greased up and naked?
Because I had to admit, as I came up beside Vinnie making the universal "shh" sign with my finger to my lips, that Daniel, greased up and naked, was really something to look at.
In his civilian clothes Daniel looked like a reformed hippy. In his SGC jumpsuits he looked lumpy, awkward. In BDUs, he looked like a soldier - till he moved, and gave himself away.
Naked, he looked like perfection, carved out of milk.
I mean, there was a lot of public art in this town that represented good-looking naked guys, and not one of them could hold a candle to Daniel. His shoulders, spread across the table as he rested his head on his hands, looked wide enough to support the ceiling, or maybe the world. And they tapered down to a small waist, with a perfect dip in the small of his back before his ass swelled up --
Mother of God.
And then there were his legs, lean, not so long as people sometimes thought because he was pretty long in the torso - I once rented a suit with him, so I knew these things - and they almost looked delicate, especially in contrast with that chest. Even his feet - Jesus Christ, his feet looked long and delicate and somehow artistic, as if you should rub them just because they existed.
Many things have been said of Jack O'Neill over the years but not one of them was that I am a big fan of male beauty. Looking at Daniel, however, could make a believer out of me - or an art fan. Or -
"[Shall we start on the front today, Marce]?" Daniel suddenly said in Latin and, stretching, rolled over, his eyes still closed.
And then he was lying there naked and oiled from the front -
Stretching like a cat -
His throat exposed and long, suddenly very long - when had it gotten so long? - and -
ALL of the muscles that led down his chest and across that flat, lean stomach stretched and contracted in turn as Daniel made a comfy little writhing motion that was the most -
I had been going to start the scrapy thing - that's what slaves did, after all, and I was supposed to be being Daniel's slave. No matter how much he said I didn't have to, I saw what the other slaves did, and I figured, when in Rome - or your nearest Rome-derived culture - and I had taken the stick from Vinnie and almost started in on his back.
But looking at Daniel stretching like that, gleaming like that, still with his eyes closed, and all of the front of him smooth and shiny and very naked -
And then he lazily draped the back of one hand across his eyes, to keep out the light, and pulled up one knee, pointing the toes of the other leg, causing the thigh muscle to flex, drawing my attention to the soft hair and the soft flesh in between, and I -
I really had to go.
I shook my head to Vinnie and motioned him to get back to work, backing away slowly, like you do from a man with a weapon, or an ambush.
I figured I'd take a quick dip in the caldarium and head back.
Or maybe the frigidarium.
My pores could use closing.
---
I know I should have waited for Jack before I agreed to meet with the consul, but I didn't figure it was any big deal.
I mean, he was just traveling through, and we were just two of thousands of travelers in the city at this time - I was one of literally hundreds who had come to use the library alone. This was a big city. Why would the consul be interested in us?
Of course I realize now I should have waited for Jack before I told the doorman to let him in the house.
His shoulders hunched forward as if he were gripping something to his chest, his chin receded, and, I quickly realized, his brain had skipped town. He was barking mad.
"[The old gods are of interest to many scholars,]" I said carefully. I'd asked for fruit and wine to be brought for his refreshment; I put the fig I'd bitten into down on the marble table and wished I could get the fruit knife farther from his hand. He made me that nervous. I started to pace.
"[But you have come from so far away, from so far to the north. You must know more than the others. More than the local scholars.]"
I didn't know what the safe answer was and oh, I needed to know. Brag? Or demure? I chose the latter. "[There are many of us interested in the source of the old gods, Consul. There are many hints in the records but the stories are contradictory. Some believe, as I do, that there were several different homes of the gods, not just one.]"
"[And could you find even one of these homes?]" His dark eyes glittered eagerly as he turned and pinned me with a glance.
"[Consul?]"
"[Could you find it? Could we build a ship and sail to it? Or could we send a message? As the soldiers do when they flash mirrors at each other across mountain valleys?]"
He was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. I felt my mouth go dry. Whatever he knew, he knew more than we'd thought. "[And why would the Consul be interested in contacting the gods?]" I laughed, trying to make it sound like a joke.
He glared at me. Clearly, to him it wasn't funny. "[I have been Consul for fifteen years. I can go no higher in this assembly. But I have visions - visions for Optimus, and for Ishido across the sea whether or not they wish to see it. I cannot achieve my vision if I am still only a Consul. But if I were a god --"
The smile that spread over his face was lopsided, and it struck me that he was, in fact, insane. In the great tradition of Roman emperors like Nero.
Those who did not know history, apparently, really were doomed to repeat it.
I had to tread very carefully. And I had to get us the hell out of here.
And that was going to be tough, because there was no Stargate.
Smiling as sweetly as I thought I could and not vomit on his feet, I said, "[The stories of the gods are only myths, Consul, from long ago. And if they were not, I doubt you would want to meet one.]"
"[But the stories have some basis in fact. That is why you study them, is it not? And the stories say that the gods occasionally honored one of us, one of their servants, and made us one of them, a god as well. Several of the early emperors became gods, and were worshipped as the gods of old were worshipped. If I could get a message to them, I could offer them such rewards... They would certainly reward me.]"
I really, really didn't want to know what he was planning to offer them. I wanted to smile and keep smiling while I backed toward the door, then go find Jack and get the hell off this planet.
Instead, Jack chose that moment to burst in.
"Dammit, Daniel, you said you would wait for me."
I nearly panicked.
The look in Jack's eyes said clearly that he hadn't expected me not to be alone and he wished he hadn't yelled in English.
I wished it too. I stepped up to him and slapped him, hard enough to make a good loud sound, and said, "Shut up."
More startled than hurt, Jack's eyes widened and I looked into them pleadingly. Please, play along.
And he got it, thank goodness he got it, because he dropped to one knee and bowed his head. Something I had never before seen him do.
Thank you, Jack, I thought to him silently as I turned back to the consul, my chin held high. "[Forgive him, sir. He is barbaric... and forgetful.]"
"[As you please,]" said the Consul, but I wanted him to go sit down, and instead he came closer. He put his fingers under Jack's chin and my pulse rate jumped... and so did Jack's, I could see it in his throat. While it was excusable in him, it was not in me. I kept my expression as blankly icy as I could.
"[What language is that he spoke?]" asked the Consul, searching Jack's face while Jack tried to keep his eyes downcast. It would not have been politic for a slave to meet the consul's gaze.
"[A horrifically degenerate tongue of the northern lands,]" I told him, shrugging it off as of no importance. It was so unimportant, in fact, that I went to pour myself a cup of wine. Anything to make sure he didn't see in my face how nervous I was, and how much I wanted him to back away from Jack.
Not that Jack couldn't take care of himself. But if he killed the Consul, getting off this world might be slightly more difficult.
"[Mmm. I can see why you keep him,]" and the Consul smiled conspiratorially at me and I felt very much like I wanted to go right back to the baths.
But I allowed only the barest quirk of a lip that might be interpreted as an answering smile as I said, "[He's useful.]"
I knew the assumption among the house staff was that Jack was my lover - I'd encouraged them to think that, since otherwise they might find it odd that I never brought home any feminine company. But it was one thing for the house staff to think it and leave us alone. It was another thing for this slimeball to think it - and to imply it right in front of Jack. Jack did not know that his undercover persona included that particular feature and I had rather wished not to have to discuss it.
This conversation had to come to a close.
"[Consul, I am sorry to be keeping you -- did you not tell me you had an appointment within the hour that you had to keep on the other side of town?]"
"[Oh yes,]" and he seemed to be easily distracted, dropping Jack's chin and drifting away. "[I hope I get a chance to see you again before either of us leaves the city...]"
I followed him out to his waiting horse and servants and tried not to look like I was hurrying him away, hurrying to get back into the house and shut the thick door and get away from the feeling that there could be a knife between my shoulderblades at any second.
Not to look like I was hurrying back to Jack.
I found him in the hall, still kneeling, by the impluvium. The water reflected late evening sunlight onto his face, still downturned.
"Oh God, Jack, get up," and I offered him my hand. "Your knees..."
"Are fine, Daniel, I'm not an invalid yet," but I saw him straighten a little slowly. "I didn't want to take the chance that His Gropiness there would come back and surprise me acting like a grownup. What the hell was that?"
"That... was a very unpleasant surprise. Jack, I think we have to get out of here."
"What?"
"And I mean, like, now."
"Okay."
Jack is Jack. Everything is an action item to him. Time to go? We went. Out the door, did not look back, did not collect two hundred dollars.
While we were pushing down the street through the crowds of people out buying their dinner from the street-level restaurants and stalls, he said, low, pitched for just me to hear, "Problem?"
"Only in that the Consul is crazy as a loon and wants to grow up to be a Goa'uld."
Jack just nodded. "Problem."
It took us two hours to get to the rendezvous point. We walked out of the city on the stone road, turned off onto a footpath, then into raw land, scrubby silver-gray bushes punctuating the brown-gold hillsides that ringed the basin in which the city sat, between the mountain on one side and the sea on the other.
We paused on a hilltop, looking down over the tumbling stone square buildings that looked like child's blocks from up here, child's blocks bleaching in the sun like bones.
We were quite alone and far enough from the city not to be seen or noticed. Just behind us a small dip in the foothills would provide a covered landing place for a glider, say, after dark. Which was fast approaching.
I kept the comm in my pouch; Jack's outfit provided for little storage.
"Jacob," I said into it. "We're going to need to be picked up much sooner than planned. As in now."
Nothing.
Jack and I looked at each other, the kind of look we often do give each other, the kind of mixture of tired terror and expectant grief that just says, "How is it going wrong this time?"
"Jacob?" I said again.
He didn't answer.
He wasn't there.
I could see it in Jack's eyes.
We both suddenly felt a lot more alone.
---
It was late, well after moonrise, when we got back to the house.
We'd had most of the necessary discussion up on the hilltop.
"I don't think we can wait." I'd seldom seen Daniel so antsy. "We've got to get off this world."
"I'm all for it, Daniel. Just tell me how."
Daniel squinched one eye shut, looking out over the sea. "This planet used to have two Stargates. We know that from records on other worlds. There must be at least one still here."
"And we would find it by...?"
"Research, of course. In the library. There is probably some record, a record that wouldn't make sense to the locals but that would make sense to me if I could find it."
"The library."
"Yes, the library!" he said, with that tone of his that meant "Why are you deliberately being dense?"
"The library you said had a thousand years of history in it?"
His shoulders drooped. "We'll have plenty of time for research now," he said grimly.
We headed back toward the house.
A lot of our now limited resources were tied up in renting the house. As long as we had it we'd have shelter, food, and a certain amount of limited help. Security in this culture didn't depend on town cops, it depended on your personal posse - and the villa was built to be defensible, no windows on the street, heavy doors and shutters, the works.
If the Consul had really wanted to take Daniel away, he'd have just done it. Perhaps it was just a fishing expedition. Or perhaps Daniel was telling himself that to make himself feel better about our very limited options. Either way, neither of us was feeling the joy but to return to the villa seemed our best option right now - especially since we had no idea what had happened to Jacob and when - or if, though we didn't say that - he'd return.
So, we hiked back into the city, back up to our own door, starving hungry and trying to act as if we hadn't just been out for a four-hour stroll. The doorman let us in and we slipped back to the sleeping room without seeing anyone else.
It was amazing how many people there were in the house. For Daniel to live "alone" in this town he required not just me, his personal bodyguard/slacker, but also what were essentially a butler, a cook, a houseboy and a chauffeur. Add their random friends and the neighbor's servants into the mix and it was tough to find a minute alone.
We never ran into them in the sleeping room once we'd gotten in there and shut the door, though. I hadn't really thought about it but Mr. Greasy had made it plain. The servants thought we were locked in here having hot monkey love.
"So, the servants leave us alone in here because they think we're having hot monkey love?" I said to Daniel as soon as the door was locked.
And so help me, he blushed a bright, bright red to the roots of his hair. He crossed the room to a small table, broke off some bread that was kept there and dipped it in a bowl of honey. This gave him a few minutes before he had to talk. I grabbed an apple-ish fruit in the meantime and started scarfing it down.
Finally he said, "It's not that unusual in this culture, and I thought we'd need some privacy, and as soon as you let them know that you want privacy they make their own assumptions, so I just..."
"Yeah? You just what?"
"I didn't say..." Daniel just waved the bread.
I was really curious. I didn't know the Latin for "hot monkey lover." "Didn't say what?"
"Let it drop, Jack."
"Hey, it's dropped. I'm just going to get in our bed. I was wondering what you expected me to do in there."
"I'm not expecting anything. I'm hoping you'll shut up." Then apparently something about the idea of me shutting up reminded him of him slapping me and he turned all apologetic. "Jeez, Jack, I'm sorry about the slap."
I almost chuckled, he looked so serious. "Don't worry about it, Daniel. It didn't really hurt that much."
"But it's red --"
I shrugged. I didn't have a mirror anyway. "Who cares? It'll be gone by morning. You do what you have to do when the time comes, Daniel. I'm not going to hold it against you."
Rather than shrugging it off like I'd expected him to Daniel just looked more serious. "Keep thinking that." He washed down the bread with some swigs of wine from a pitcher. I hated that stuff warm. I admired his ability to drink whatever was handy.
"If there's anyone who knows about stuff you have to do, it's me. Don't worry about it, really." Trying to get him to smile, I dropped a curtsey with my minidress and cocked my head in what I hoped was a fetching way. "I'm getting in our bed, sir. I'm not planning to wait up, so you might have to wake me if you want to have your wicked way with me later."
Wincing, Daniel still smiled as he nodded. "That's right, Jack. Laugh it up. Wait till the next time you have to tell a lie you don't like."
So he didn't like pretending I was his hot monkey lover, huh? I felt a little odd about that. Odder than I felt about being the hot monkey lover in the first place. I tried to shake it off, went to clean my teeth and spit out the window before I latched the thick shutters closed. It was my favorite part of the night. "You're nuts, Daniel," I said as I pushed the latch, three fingers thick, through the hasp. "I like all the lies I tell."
I couldn't read his expression - which was a little odd to me too, given how well I knew them. He'd thrust out his lower lip, and he had a little frown on his forehead - a new one, a thinky-looking one, not the usual ones.
He just said, "I wish I did," and went, like he always did, to flop straight into the bed.
It felt a little premature somehow, crawling in after him while my head was still spinning with questions about what the servants thought we were doing in here. "So what exactly is it we're supposed to be doing in here?" I said, because in my experience not asking questions is what gets you killed, and therefore I've developed the habit of asking them.
In this case, however, it was the asking that seemed to put me in more danger. "So help me, Jack, if you don't lie down and go to sleep I'll --"
"What? Punish me? And how, exactly, is that going to happen?" I lay on one side, head propped up on a hand, and poked him. "You're not even asleep yet so don't pretend you are."
"Jack." The tone was warning.
"Hey, master. I have a right to know what you'd do to me if I don't straighten up and fly right, don't I?"
All of a sudden he flipped over and lay on his back, his bare eyes boring straight into mine as he said, "I'll take that strip of leather over there and use it to put welts on the backs of your thighs. Then, since you won't be able to sit or lay back, you'll have to kneel to service me."
I blinked. And blinked again. My eyes flicked over to the leather. I'd thought it was for sharpening knives. And his tone was alarmingly even, and alarmingly serious, as he said it.
"You... wouldn't," I said experimentally.
He sighed and his eyes went back to being Daniel's eyes, which was the first moment that I realized that for a second there they'd looked different. "Of course I wouldn't. You asked me what they thought would happen, I told you."
"No, I asked you what they thought we were doing in here." I should have let it drop, I could tell. But for some reason I didn't.
But Daniel did. "If you can't figure that out, Jack, I'm not going to tell you bedtime stories about it. You're a grown man. Fill in the blanks yourself."
And with that he blew a puff of air over the oil lamp suspended on his side of the bed and lay back down, back to me, body language announcing that the conversation was over.
I lay on my back and watched the ceiling. I liked a climate where you could sleep under a big open hole in the roof; I didn't like a gaping hole over where I would be asleep and defenseless. This villa had decorative gratings over the skylights, too small for knives to get through and too sturdily attached to be removed without making a sound. Arrows might have gotten through but not with much of their fletching still attached. Still, it didn't need much to kill a guy.
We'd taken this house because it had the gratings.
Tomorrow I'd get up there and cover them.
Tonight I'd just stay awake.
I'd have discussed it with Daniel but he was already pretending to be asleep. Apparently he didn't want to talk to me any more. I didn't realize he'd been so upset about telling the rest of the house staff we were lovers.
Of course, if it upset him so much, why had he done it?
Or did it just upset him for me to find out about it?
I was surprised to realize, since I had plenty of time to lay there and think about it, how much it didn't upset me. I never cared what anyone else thought about my love life, as long as they thought I was having one. I often didn't, have one, that is, but celibacy doesn't really go with the whole colonel persona. One's foot soldiers, I had learned over the course of a long career, preferred to think that the old man had three or four hot women every time he had leave, and always arrived back on base rested and refreshed and ready to kick some enemy ass. It made them tense, for some reason I didn't understand, for them to think that I wasn't getting any.
I was always grateful that SG-1 didn't feel that way. Teal'c was too old a soldier to think that I might blow a mission if I hadn't gotten, well, blown recently. Carter was too corn-fed and wholesome; she probably preferred to think that I never had sex at all, which sadly wasn't far from the truth, so she was happy. And Daniel - well, I had no evidence that Daniel had ever thought about it.
Which was odd in its own way, now that I thought about it. Because the shyest guys will often greet you with "Hey, how's it hanging?" after a few years of fighting side by side, much less becoming the sort of blood brothers that Daniel and I became long ago.
Daniel never did ask, never suggested it was time for me to get laid, never checked with me about where the good places were to pick up some uncomplicated company. He wasn't military, and that was a lot of it. I knew nothing about the sexual habits of academics in the wild.
But I also hadn't figured him for the kind of guy who'd be uncomfortable about us pretending to be lovers. I mean, who cared? After all we'd done for each other over the years - and saving each others' lives was a regular occurrence - did he really think the idea of him touching me was going to freak me out?
Except... hmmm. If I was reading the signs right, the idea here was that I would be doing the touching. And anything else he asked for. I mean, I wasn't dead sure, but being a slave in this sort of situation didn't really sound like there was supposed to be a lot of quid pro quo.
Maybe that was what was making him uncomfortable. If so, I couldn't figure out why. Since it wasn't real anyway, what did it matter what people thought?
I rubbed the sore spot on my cheekbone. He hadn't seemed to have a lot of trouble whacking me in the face to give the impression that I was a properly behaved slave.
Except, being Daniel, he'd remembered to apologize after.
He'd apologize at the drop of a hat but he didn't want to talk about what the two of us were supposed to be doing in here in the evenings with the door locked. Not even just to tell me bedtime stories.
I'd have to find a way of letting him know that the bedtime stories might amuse me. I have nothing against men. I like me, and I like a lot of the rest of us too. We're okay. If you're okay with the half of the species that grows hair all over the place and can't see dirt, why not be interested in the sexual habits of same?
And maybe it was just because I almost never did get any that I was finding the idea of at least hearing about it sort of entertaining. Like, you know, video games. Without the video. Or the game.
I'd had a long life but there was a lot I still didn't know. I wouldn't mind learning about some of it.
It looked like we were going to have plenty of time on this planet for me to learn new things.
I put my hands behind my head as I lay back, kept my eyes on the grate, dropped into a light meditative state and listened to Daniel pretend to sleep.
---
I had the same dream I'd had a number of times before.
It was the tail end of the dream Shifu gave me - or part of it.
I woke smelling the smell of warm Jack in my nostrils, breathing hard, squeezing the pillow tight in my arms, and rubbing myself against what passed for a mattress in this town.
The rough-woven linens provided lots of friction but the straw center below the heavy-woven canvas batting did not provide a lot of quiet; even under an outer layer of down quilting the straw rustled and cracked as I rocked against it.
And I had to stop because I was getting harder by the moment.
I told myself that just having Jack in the bed brought the dream back, that was all. It was uncomfortable but necessary. We had to stay close and this was the cover provided by this culture.
I wouldn't admit, even to myself, how much I liked having the smell of him all over the bed. Of course I couldn't smell myself - people can't - but I could smell the faint traces of the occasional perfumed oil that had also grabbed hold of the bed, and lavender, rosemary, and Jack was a delicious perfume to wake up to.
That's all it is, I said, rolling to the side as if to get up and then sitting there for a moment waiting for the blood to drain from the least thinking part of me.
And then I remembered how much trouble we were in and I had a lot more to worry about.
"You okay?" asked Jack, and I jumped a little. He was right there. He was always right there. How could I have forgotten when I woke up with my lungs filled with the smell of him?
"Yeah. Just, you know, waking up," I said and rubbed my eyes. I didn't have to look to know what he looked like. He always looked the same in the mornings, rested, alert, and ready to face the world without coffee.
I was never ready for that.
"You sleep okay? Good," I said, stumbling out of bed because my hard-on was mostly gone and I had to get out of there.
I didn't hear what he replied, if anything.
~~~
That day when Jack decided to stick close to the library instead of heading out on his own I didn't complain. I still spent most of the day taking notes but I also tried to keep my ears open.
There were four or five other men I recognized by sight who were working in the same area of the collections as I was. We'd gotten to the point where we nodded from time to time but I couldn't remember any of their names.
Then I remembered one - Ari, wasn't that the guy's name? Vocative of Arius. Yes, I remembered him.
When he walked past my table I made a point of not looking like I meant to do it when I looked up and nodded at him. "Ari," I said and looked back down.
Startled, he nodded back. "Daniel," he said, giving my name an inflection that made it sound as if he were adding an e, "Daniele" with a pronounced final e in the Italian way. I'd decided keeping my name, which should sound unusual but reasonable to Optiman ears, was safe enough.
I hoped I'd been right.
Anyway, I hoped that made it seem more natural when I went by Arius' table a little later, ostensibly looking for some scrolls about Ameratsu's last battle. "[Have you seen scroll 638?]" I asked, what I hoped was nonchalantly.
He looked a little distracted, but only a little. "[Ah... I think Maximius has that. I was surprised. He's not been in this area of the shelves for weeks.]"
"[I thought he was researching ancient texts on food storage.]" I craned my head a little over the shelves, looking for Maximius. He was a beefy young man, as I recalled, now that Arius had reminded me of his name.
"[Maybe the Consul has been rattling his cage, asking him questions about Ameratsu.]" When I showed my surprise, Arius shook his head ruefully. "[You too, eh? He's been cornering all of us, asking us what we know, what we believe, if we can make miracles happen.]"
"[You don't seem too worried.]"
"[My family owns most of a peninsula. I'm safe from him no matter what he wants. And his lantern is only half-lit,]" which was a new metaphor on me but that clearly meant the same as the one I was thinking of - batshit nuts. "[I expect to see him coming before he tries to do anything to me.]"
I didn't consider that exactly reassuring. "[You sound ready for trouble.]"
"[I am. You know that four-story house on the north corner of the vintner's square? With nothing adjoining it and the iron spikes on the gates? That's mine.]"
"[I'm jealous.]" And I was. Because just thinking about the Consul made me want to hole up somewhere very safe, preferably quiet, and close to wherever Jacob was hiding in the glider.
He better be somewhere close in the glider.
Until we could hook up with him again, though, I had to try to think tactically. I wasn't Jack but I was no slouch either.
"[Worried?]"
I looked down at Arius. His dark hands were long and aristocratic and rested lightly on the parchment upon which he was writing notes in an impeccable hand. But his eyes were friendly and he seemed to find the idea of the Consul as distasteful as I did.
"[What he wants is impossible.]" Neither of us had to refer to it; he knew what I was talking about; he nodded. I went on, "[And it disturbs me that he wants it. I do not know to what lengths he would go to pursue such a mad goal. And the fact that he is asking all of us--]" I shook my head to indicate disquiet.
"[If you need to, come to my house.]"
I was taken aback. We'd only spoken a few words. "[I would not. But thank you.]"
He shrugged, his shoulders almost too thin to support the weight of even the fine lightweight woolen toga that he wore. It was dyed lavender and contrasted with the green linen tunic he wore underneath. I suddenly realized the meaning of the color. If they had stayed true to Roman tradition, he was a member of a ruling house, one of the old families of kings.
He would not be likely to be intimidated by the Consul.
"[Do as you like,]" he said, unoffended. "[But if there is need. Come and bring your man. Scholars are scholars. We must not let bureaucrats bully us.]"
"[Thank you. I will remember your kindness.]"
I got back to my table more convinced than ever that we had to get the hell out of this town, and with no more idea of where to go.
The universe felt very large, and I felt more than a little lost in it.
Automatically I looked around for Jack. There he was, sitting just behind the aisle, chair tilted against the wall. Was he sleeping? Why was he tired? That worried me too - once I got rolling on the worried thing it was hard to stop - but he seemed to feel my eyes on him and opened one eye, nodded at me, then dozed again.
Okay. The universe wasn't so VERY big.
A little more research, making it look good. Then I had some other questions to pursue. My research agenda was changing, from a history of the Goa'uld wars to the location of the Stargates. It was horrifying to think how many places I might have to look for information, but there was no way to find it except to start looking.
---
I'd thought if Daniel got the chance to play schoolboy all day that he'd relax some. But all through the day and into the night he was still antsy.
"Lock the door," I told him, stripping off my tunic as I came into the bedroom. I was more than a little gritty from crawling around on the roof with medieval Roman nails and boards that were almost too thick to nail through, certainly with nothing more than a hammer and my tender hands. But I got the cover on, got the ladder taken away, and got the butler/doorman, Paulus, to hire a couple more rent-a-slaves for the next few days to help watch the perimeter. I watched them for a while and I had no faith that they could stop a determined kitten if one tried to attack but I didn't consider them protection; I considered them an early warning system. If they raised a ruckus, we were out the back and gone.
"Don't let anyone hear you giving me orders," he said a little shortly as he latched the heavy wood.
"Jesus H. Christ, Daniel, we're alone. And they don't understand English anyway."
"The tone makes it clear. And I just hope we're alone."
"What does THAT mean?" Instead of going to the water pitcher and sluicing off a little - I felt like I needed a two-day steam - I prowled the perimeter of the room. I didn't see anything that looked like a place for a spy to hide.
"I don't know. I'm worried that the Consul has spies, that's all."
"Inside our house?"
Daniel shrugged. "Could be. I'm clearly on his list."
I didn't like the idea of Daniel being on that greaseball's list. Of anything.
Daniel went on, "I'm thinking that's why he said what he said. Because he had some sort of information from someone in the house. Why else would he have leaped to that conclusion?"
Uh, because you send off sparks every time you get within a few meters of me? I wanted to say. But Daniel was right. He simply hadn't seen us together for any amount of time - we couldn't have done or said anything to get him to leap to his conclusion.
"Got any ideas about who the spy could be?"
Daniel shook his head, shrugged. "Just gut instincts. Paulus and Grumius, the kid who does the errands, have spent the most time with us, and I trust them. And Grumius is a big gossip - I've heard him half a dozen times telling Paulus or the cook some story about some neighbor's love life. He could have repeated something to anyone in the city and have it gotten back to the Consul - if the Consul were looking for information."
I wanted a hot shower. "Does it matter?" was my next question.
"If this city thinks you're queer as a three-dollar bill?" Daniel just shrugged, but looked sideways at me. "Probably only to you."
"Doesn't matter to me." I caught his eye as I said it, so he'd know I meant it. But he didn't even act like he'd caught the message I was sending him.
Instead he said, "This culture has a certain rudimentary respect for master/slave relationships. It would go a long way toward explaining why we would resist being separated."
"Not running the risk of getting gay-bashed in the street?" 'Cause frankly, I didn't relish that idea. For me or for Daniel. And no matter how much I might like to think otherwise when I look in the mirror in the morning, Daniel was a hell of a lot prettier than me, and that rang the danger bell as far as I was concerned.
But Daniel didn't think so. "I've presented myself as fairly rich, and rich equals powerful. We run the greatest risk being alone - I doubt if the locals would be sure what would happen to them if I were hurt, or you were."
"If it matters, we can do better." I gave up on the idea of putting my tunic back on, threw it on the floor - I didn't even want to look at it again until it was washed - and settled back in the bed. Usually it didn't bother me to be naked around Daniel, but doing it while having this conversation seemed a little, well, bare. I put my hands behind my head and tried to look nonchalant as I leaned back against the cushions. "I don't know. Bat our eyes at each other. Whatever it takes. To explain why we won't go somewhere alone, I mean."
"You already don't let me go many places alone."
I shrugged again. "We'll have to put on a better show."
"We have to get the hell out of here, is what we have to do."
"Unless you've got a spaceship in your luggage I don't know about, Daniel, I think that's going to be a little tough to do."
He was pacing. His hair stuck up in all different directions, which was how I realized he must have been rubbing his hands over it. And his eyes were wide. "I mean it, Jack. We've got to get the hell out of here."
"I thought we decided last night staying here is our safest course of action."
"I'm changing my mind. We've got to get out of town, at least. Somewhere new, with new cover stories."
"We don't have a lot of resources for this."
"Dammit, Jack, you aren't paying attention! You have no idea what you're dealing with here!"
In two steps Daniel was by the bed and leaning over me. For a tenth of a second I had a crazy idea he was going to hit me again - his eyes were that wild, almost shooting sparks.
"Don't you know what's going to happen if they separate us? Or if they kill me? They consider you a slave, Jack, don't you realize what that means? They're going to sell you. To someone who really will expect you to kneel... And that can't happen. I will not let that happen."
He had his arms folded in front of him as if he were already a living wall blocking me off from the rest of the world. It startled me. Daniel in defensive mode I had seen. Daniel being defensive of me I had not.
"Don't worry, buddy. It won't happen."
"Jack." He was making this all too heavy, I wanted it lighter, but I had to look at him when he said it that way. And his eyes really did look like blue fire in the low light. "I know what it means to you. I know what you won't do, what you can't do. I won't let it happen to you."
I didn't know what he was talking about. There was no way he could really know what I actually could not, would not do. He was standing there, thirty pounds lighter than me and three inches shorter, and looking for all the world as if tornado winds could not move him from that spot. The intensity of the look he had on me held me pinned.
I believed him.
"Okay," I told him instead of finding a way to make a joke out of it. It didn't feel like a joke, me slumped on the cushions in our bed, skin bare against the sheets, him standing over me with fire in his eyes and his shoulders set as square as a wall. "It'll be okay. Come to bed."
And the electricity of the moment took on an entirely different tone as I said it. I could feel it. It startled me too, but I didn't take it back. I looked him square in the eye and said it again. "Come on to bed."
I saw his mouth drop open and the breath went out of him, whoosh, like he couldn't hold on to it. Then he whirled away.
There was nothing left for him to do, though, but strip and get in the bed, the way we always did. And he did.
But it felt electric still.
I knew he was awake and so was I. Tonight I could sleep, and I would, I had to. I lay down a little flatter, checked the knife under the pillow, the other one under the mattress trapped in the rope-weave frame, and closed my eyes.
But behind my eyelids I could still see those blue sparks.
~~~
The next morning Daniel was up before I was, which only happened once a millennium or so. I figured I'd been more tired than I'd thought.
Getting old, a voice in the back of my head said. Slowing down.
I'm doing all right, I told myself as I swung out of bed.
I still wasn't used to not having a shower every morning but it's easier than you'd think to get used to the stink of yourself. At least today I put on a clean tunic.
And went out to eat breakfast with Daniel.
We couldn't spend any more time together if we were joined at the hip.
~~~
That day at the library I had no intention of leaving Daniel alone, especially once I noticed --
"That guy's following us," I pointed out to Daniel as he riffled through a stack of scrolls.
"Yes, I saw him," Daniel said quietly.
"Since when?"
"Noticed him when we left the house this morning."
"Dammit." I looked around. The library was a series of rooms, each one with its own shelves and tables, none particularly large. The guy was sitting in a far corner but there was no doubt in my mind - he was watching us.
"Wonder what he's supposed to report back to his boss?" Daniel said, obviously irritated. "I mean, what does he think, that I'm going to yell 'Eureka, I found the gods' address' and run out into the street?"
"That guy? I doubt he thinks anything. Look at him, he's a hired hand."
Nose twitching with annoyance, Daniel turned back to the shelves where the round boxes storing the scrolls were stacked.
I don't know what got into me, but when he turned his back to me, I just reached up, without thinking, and ran my finger along the line of his neck, from just below his ear to the base of his throat.
He froze.
So did I.
"What was that for?" he asked under his breath, though I could see the vein jumping in the hollow of his neck as I drew closer.
"It just occurred to me - if you want to confirm that we're lovers --" I hadn't meant it to come out so soft, it sounded far more, well, intimate to say the word aloud than it had even felt to touch him, "we should look like it."
"I'm not sure whether it will hurt us or help us if the Consul thinks that," said Daniel, voice still even, still quiet. But he hadn't moved a muscle. "Homosexuality is expected here but still not societally acceptable."
"They gonna arrest us?"
"No --"
So I did it again. The skin of his throat surprised me - it felt firm, even hard to the touch. Though the skin itself was silky smooth - Daniel was silky smooth - his throat was muscular, masculine.
Interesting.
"Knock it off, Jack." His voice was hadn't changed.
"Why?" I asked, leaning forward so my breath touched the spot on his neck I'd just stroked.
And with that he made a noise, a peculiar noise, and whirled on me. "Because it's not a game." His eyes were wide behind the glasses, his mouth open - hell, his mouth was always open - and his cheeks were a little flushed. He was angry.
"You look good angry," I told him.
Instead of pissing him off more, the air went out of him. I saw his shoulders droop. "It's not the time or the place to tease me, Jack. You want to help? Take these -" he piled three scrolls into my arms "- and check them for mentions of Ameratsu's forces. Anything that might give us locations and help attach them to a timeline. Okay?"
And without waiting for me to answer he took some more scrolls over to another table.
He reminded me of a girl I'd asked out in junior high. She too made a very big point of sitting as far from me in the lunchroom as possible.
I guessed I'd just gotten the equivalent of "There is no way I am going to see the new James Bond movie with you, Jack O'Neill."
Bummer.
~~~
That night after dinner we both avoided going off to the bedroom as long as we could. We played the dice game we always played; I won, but the game was so based on chance I couldn't get that excited. The butler's nephew came in and juggled for us, and that was a hoot; Daniel tipped him big. And Daniel took another stab at teaching me Twelve Lines, which is apparently all the rage. I'll get it soon, I will. I'm more entertained by listening to him explain the game than I would be by playing it, so I don't really pay attention to the rules. He'll catch on one of these days.
But we couldn't avoid it forever. Eventually, we headed for the bedroom.
And when we got there, I locked the door while Daniel just stood in the middle of the room, staring at his feet, arms locked in front of himself, the bed suddenly even a bigger cause of discomfort than it was a piece of massive furniture.
"You know," Daniel said as if he were just making a passing remark, "I think I'll sleep on the floor tonight."
"Oh, come on, Daniel, don't do that. I won't touch you in bed, I promise. Unless you snuggle up to ME, in which case all bets are off."
He sighed. "Okay, let's get this over with. What's with all the gay jokes?"
I spread my hands. "What gay jokes?"
He turned and looked at me and he really was angry - as angry as he'd been in the library, maybe more so. The muscles in his jaws flexed. "You're touching me, you're making jokes - what, you think since I gave us a cover story that included some 'hot monkey sex' as you so tastefully refer to it that I must harbor secret longings for you and that you get to make fun of them?"
"Hey. Whoa. Reign it in, there, buddy. I think no such thing." But it was very interesting that that's what Daniel had decided I was thinking. Was he really that insecure about his sexuality? "I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd mind it this much. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on your straightness, truly."
"Then what the hell are you doing?" he spat out impatiently.
"I'm not doing a damn thing, Daniel. This, we do this." I stepped a little closer and I felt it, like a thickening of the air, like a buildup of static electricity.
"We do what?"
"This." I gestured back and forth from me to him. "This is sexual tension, isn't it?"
My heartbeat raced suddenly and I realized as I said it that I was saying it. I hadn't even admitted to myself that I'd thought it yet, and I'd just blurted it out.
I decided to see if I was crazy. "You telling me you don't feel this?"
We stared into each other's eyes and neither one of us would have noticed if the house fell down around our ears. I could see his tongue behind his parted lips, each eyelash framing those bright blue eyes, the color of heat creeping along his skin, up his neck, into his cheeks again.
"Oh yes," he whispered, "this is sexual tension."
Then, drawing a deep breath, he backed up a few steps.
"Which is odd, don't you think?" he added more conversationally.
I thought about it. "How come?"
"I mean, you're my best friend."
"Friends make the best lovers." Where the hell had THAT come from? Was I under some form of mind-control? I had never before thought for one minute that I was actually attracted to Daniel. I mean, it was hard to ignore that he was a good-looking guy but I usually tried not to dwell on that. Now I couldn't remember why. The thoughts formed one after the other in my head, logical, reasonable. O'Neill has nothing against the idea of sex with men; O'Neill finds Jackson to be one tasty piece of eyecandy; O'Neill would not be averse to the idea of sex with Jackson.
Daniel, I thought to myself, and that shook me far more. Not Jackson. Daniel.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I told him in a fit of honesty, because he was backing away from me more, as if he too were worried that I might have been secretly snaked when neither of us was looking. "I have no idea what I'm thinking. We've spent weeks together on this planet, we're stuck here, we should be thinking about how to get home, and instead I find myself thinking, Hmm, that's an interesting spot on the side of Daniel's neck."
"Well, don't," and he sounded almost desperate.
"What? Come on, I'm the military guy. I'm the one laying it on the line here. You just going to leave me twisting in the wind 'cause you're afraid I'm going to ruin your straightness record?"
"No, no, you'd be a little late for that," and then watched me while I processed it.
That meant --
"I KNEW you knew more than you were letting on," I cried and stepped forward again.
"Okay, hang on, just hang on a minute here." He held up a hand.
"What for? If you're not protecting your straight guy scorecard, then what the hell?"
"Jesus, you are sure of yourself, aren't you?"
Okay, that one gave me pause. I was being a little arrogant. "I'm being a little arrogant, okay," I admitted. "It doesn't help when you call me Jesus." That got him to smile. "But I know you can feel it too. I'm not making this up, this... whatever it is."
"No, you're not making it up. But I think we'd both better forget about it and focus on finding one of those Stargates - or Jacob. All right?"
"Why?" I don't think I'd ever felt more rejected than I felt right at that moment, not since I'd gotten the hang of asking girls out, somewhere around sixteen or so. And that had been a long time ago. Apparently, if you wanted to start asking guys out, you had to start from scratch. "I think, if I'm not wrong, and you're not that straight, then I'd like a little more explanation than just 'Forget it.'"
"Jack, this isn't the time or the place."
"Daniel, this is the perfect time and place."
I didn't really think I had to explain it. We were alone, far from the SGC, maybe not ever GETTING back to the SGC. If there were ever a time to see if there could be more to our relationship, this was it. Our window of opportunity. "Don't you see, this might be the only chance we ever get?" I said softly.
"Okay, let's just think about that for a minute, okay?" Suddenly animated, Daniel started pacing, hopping, waving his hands around - he was animatronics on speed all of a sudden. "Chance for what? Let's think. Chance to date? As in, leading to what? A picket fence? A dog? What world would that be on, Jack? 'Cause that wouldn't be the one where you're in a military that VERY much does not like that sort of thing. Are we thinking about, what? A roll in the hay? Jack's big experimental gay moment? Because, why, you missed out on this when you were in college? I feel no particular responsibility for that."
Oh, he was on a roll, pacing like an evangelist preacher.
"I don't know what's going through your head, Jack, but let me tell you how it looks to me. You're bored, maybe you're lonely, you've got too much time on your hands, you're in a culture very different from your own, you've got reason to think about this stuff, you think, hey, why not? Well, I'll tell you why not. Because it's not like doing something crazy, like jumping out of a plane or eating monkey brains. For most people, it involves feelings."
"I haven't been lonely being here with you," I said.
That stopped him in his tracks. He blinked at me.
"And I never compared this to skydiving or monkey brains." I stepped closer again. "There it is again. Can't you feel it? It's ..." Weird. Crazy. Obvious. Another step, and I could practically hear his heart beat - mine too. "I just want --"
"What? What do you want?" Now he stood there, staring at me as if he'd never seen me, asking me that in the quietest voice.
"I don't know," I shrugged, but stepped closer again.
"You might as well tell me."
"I don't know. When I say I don't know, it's because I don't know, goddammit. I just want to... can I... touch you?"
Daniel blinked like it was going out of style, his hands suddenly dropping at his sides like he had lost a fight.
"You want to touch me?"
"Yeah. I do."
"You touch me all the time."
I reached out a hand, and he didn't move, so I let my fingertips stroke along one cheekbone, the line of his jaw, across the point of his chin, along his lower lip.
"Not like this," I said, surprised at how hoarse, how rough my voice had suddenly become.
We stood like that for a moment, and I swear I felt like I'd never seen him before. The curves and planes of his face - he was so beautiful, prettier than any man should be, pretty in a way no woman could be. Soft lips, the dimples in his cheeks, big blue eyes anyone would kill for -
"No. Not like this."
I could feel heat radiating off him but he didn't do anything else. We just stood there, locked, eyes boring into one another, trying to understand.
And then he spun away. To the bed.
Where he grabbed a pillow and tossed himself down on a carpeted corner of the room without further discussion.
Okay, I thought, with a cold sinking sensation in my stomach. That was a 'no'.
Apparently I really wasn't all that charming, I thought to myself as I walked back towards the bed - the bed Daniel was through sleeping in with me, apparently - and lay down.
I was bone-tired, exhausted actually, but it took a while before I could go to sleep. I'd done something wrong, said something wrong, and now I'd have to fix it. I'd probably done a lot of things wrong, I realized as I drifted into sleep. Starting with volunteering for this mission. Or for reactivated duty. Or for breathing.
I fell asleep with the deep conviction that somehow, someway, I was a schmuck.
---
I woke up still trying to figure out how to explain to Jack that I really, really could not be his experimental gay date for How To Pass The Time When Marooned On A World Without A Gate.
I didn't know what was going on with him but it was clear to see that he was having some odd thoughts, very odd for Jack, and when we got back home he was going to stop having them, because he'd be back to his regular routine, and if I wanted to stay sane all I had to do was keep him at arm's length.
Because truth be told, this was NOT a new idea as far as I was concerned. I'd spent a fair amount of time over the years realizing that Jack was a damn good looking man - and he had those big masculine hands that always make me wonder what it would be like to have them all over me.
But I managed to get by in a military base by squashing those sorts of thoughts. I was allowed to sweet-talk the nurses in the infirmary into sneaking me ice cream - as long as they were women. Fantasies about muscular SFs who really knew how to handle a P90 were not allowed. No one said it, I just knew it.
And fantasies about the man who was essentially my commanding officer, even though I wasn't even IN the military, were definitely verboten.
And the biggest fantasy of all - Shifu's dream, which still felt stuck in my head like a sticky gear I couldn't get out, gumming up the works from time to time, confusing me about which reality I was in - it didn't help.
Because that version of a fantasy about Jack I didn't even want to allow myself. Could not. Would not.
I rolled over and stretched. Sleeping on the floor played havoc with my back. I could feel all my joints popping into place as I moved, and shoved myself gracelessly to my feet.
I staggered out to the dining area still trying to figure out how to explain to him exactly why it would be a bad idea to choose me to explore whatever new kink he'd just decided to have. I thought maybe it would be clearer to me after some breakfast, and wished, like I did at the same time every morning, for coffee. (It had, it HAD to be more than just a physical craving; the caffeine had to be long gone from my system.)
I was still thinking it as I slumped on the bench by the table and mumbled to Paulus while I rubbed my eyes, "[Where is Jack?]" I pronounced it the way the locals did, making it sound like a barbaric Northern name - Jyak, with a bit of a vocative e on the end when I addressed him because the Optimans simply did not use male names that did not end with appropriate masculine endings.
"[He went out hours ago.]"
Paulus didn't look happy and suddenly neither was I. But I WAS wide awake.
"[Did he say when he would be back?]"
"[He said he would be back for breakfast, sir.]"
I looked at the position of the sun on the floor. It was late for our breakfast.
That was not at all good.
~~~
If I turned out the city looking for Jack it would be noticeable. I didn't mind noticeable, but I was trying not to draw attention to myself.
I had so few resources. I needed a few squadrons of armed SFs.
What had made me convince Hammond to let me come here?
I sent one of the rent-a-slaves to look through our usual marketplaces and devoted myself to pacing. If he was dead already, how would anyone know to let me know? He wore nothing identifying who he was. We were strangers in this city. And it was a city, with hundreds of thousands of people.
If he were hurt, if he'd had trouble - how would I ever find him?
Calling for a wax tablet and stylus from my belongings, I composed a short note to Arius. Right now he was the only friend we had - and we needed a friend, badly.
I'd just sent the cook, who, unbelievably, was named Talmudius, off to Arius' house with the note when Paulus announced a visitor.
The Consul.
Go away, go away, go away, I chanted at him in my head while I gave him a smile and waved him into a parlor.
He had two sturdy guards with him. They took up positions by the door. I didn't give them a second glance.
"[Sir, I apologize that I cannot visit with you long this morning - the slave I brought with me from home is missing today and I must try to find him, he is too valuable to lose.]"
"[I doubt that he is lost,]" said the Consul airily, waving a stubby hand as he strolled through the room.
I didn't bother to hide my glare. "[He would not try to escape, Consul. He is loyal to a fault and has never cause any trouble, at least not of that sort.]"
Through the far door Grumius came in, another rent-a-slave in tow. Whatever he wanted, it would have to wait. I waved him to stay put. He stood, quietly, listening.
"[No, because you let him behave as a free man would. No matter. You have not lost him. I have borrowed him.]"
I had to turn my head to move an ear closer to him. I couldn't have heard him right. My eyes narrowed involuntarily. "[Pardon me?]" I asked, but quietly. I could feel a twitch start in my left eyebrow.
"[I have borrowed him. I need him.]"
"[You need him for what?]" Twitch, twitch.
"[To get your attention.]"
And in that moment I realized that the Consul was just as capable of planning a tactical assault as a sane man, and far less limited by the boundaries of reason. I would never outguess him because I did not think that way, I could not think that way.
Jack could have outguessed him, because that's what he was good at. But he wasn't here.
I folded my arms across my chest and looked up over the top of my glasses at the Consul. What I told him was, "[You have my complete attention.]"
I did not add a "sir".
He did not pretend that this conversation was anything other than a hostage negotiation. "[You will provide me with the information I require about how to contact the gods. I will return, with more guards, this evening, and you will accompany me back to the government house with a written record instructing me how to contact them. The sacrifice to the gods begins at sundown and by sunup I intend to reap the rewards of my sacrifice.]"
"[Your sacrifice.]"
"[My sacrifice. Of peace. And blood. There will be a hundred slaves killed tonight, their blood painted over the plaza where the statues of the gods watch over us still. And in the morning there will be war. But by then I will be a god and I will quickly deal with ANY who oppose me.]"
And the unpleasant little man started for the door.
I blocked his path. "[Where is my slave?]"
"[Safe in my possession.]"
"[I want him returned now.]"
"[He will be returned when you have done as you are instructed.]"
I took a step closer, looming over the little man. I bared my teeth in something only the most casual observer might have thought was a smile. "[I am a scholar, a man of thought, remember? I am not stupid. You have no intention of returning him. But you will. And right now. Or you will never have the answers that you seek.]"
He didn't even flinch. "[I'll have them, and tonight, one way or the other. If you will not, others will. Do not delude yourself. I will not be opposed in this. The time has come, the augurs tell me, and I must fulfill my destiny. Do what you like. You can choose whether you will be a part of the new order or not.]"
I was breathing too quickly. The top of my head felt like it might float away, but all I could see was red. "[You putrid little animal - ]"
I could see my hands reaching out toward his throat, I felt like I couldn't stop them, but behind me I heard a snick of metal against metal and remembered his guards. I could probably kill him. But they would probably get me. And I still didn't know where Jack was - if Jack was.
On the other side of the room was an answering snick. I looked up. Grumius and the rented slave were glaring at the Consul's guards. Of course. That's why they'd come in to begin with. To even the odds.
Apparently, only I hadn't seen this coming.
I wished that I had a Goa'uld hand weapon.
I wished that I hadn't wished that.
I dropped my arms but stood tall and looked down my nose at him. I spoke loudly and clearly, making sure the guards heard and understood.
"[You greasy wart on the back of a diseased sewer rat.]" It felt good, not clean, but good, to tell him what I thought of him. "[Kill me, and your plan will fail, because only I know how to get a message to the gods, who no longer live on this world and who are all far beyond your puny reach.]" His eyes widened; I nodded, and went on, trying to keep my voice clear and even, "[But you kill him and you will find out what the wrath of heaven looks like. Because I can bring you just as much pain and terror as the gods ever could. And nothing you do could ever appease my anger if you bring it down upon your revolting head.]
His jaw had dropped open and he was staring at me. He looked like he had actually forgotten to be angry in his sheer astonishment.
"[Now. Leave. And return my slave immediately.]"
I strode from the room as if his actions were not of the least concern to me. And making straight for the bedroom I checked under Jack's pillow, and under the mattress.
Both knives were there.
I had so wished one or both of them would be gone.
With shaking hands, I took them out and strapped the big one to my thigh, and hid the small one in the folds of my toga.
Grumius followed me. I had to tell him how glad I was to see him, how he had done the right thing, how I owed him a big favor.
Instead I just said, "[Has he gone?]"
"[He has, sir. I must ask. What did you mean? Did you mean that?]"
I looked into his eyes, a clear mossy green unusual among the Optimans. He was a good man, and I shouldn't have underestimated him because he liked to gossip and couldn't seem to manage to find his way home in under an hour when he was sent out on an errand. His big square hand was still fastened around the hilt of his short sword and he looked entirely ready to fight.
He couldn't be more than twenty.
"[You're a good man, Grumi,]" I told him, and patted his cheek. "[I meant it. I would need to return to my home to obtain weapons and men. But I would do so without hesitation, and I will, if he does not return Jyak.]"
Grumius nodded. "[I knew you would not leave without him.]"
"[Of course not. Who said that I would?]"
"[The Consul's guard. I heard his horseman talking in the street as the Consul came in, laughing with his compatriot and saying that you would not be likely to part with a single coin for the dried up carcass of a used slave that they had taken to government house this morning.]"
Carcass? I felt hollow, for some reason my feet felt numb. Carcass, in describing what had to be Jack, that I did not like at all.
But on the other hand Grumius had just told me what I needed to know.
"[Grumi, you just got promoted to my personal guard. Your salary just tripled. And payday's tonight. Will you help me?"
And Grumius, solid fellow that he was, just nodded. "[I knew you would need help. There's going to be an uprising, sir, if what he said is true.]"
"[There's going to be a mass murder if what he said is true. We're going to try to stop that. And we're going to get Jyak back. You ready?]"
~~~
I strode in to Arius' study with Grumius right behind me.
He had struck me before as a very bookish man, but now he looked as at ease planning an assault as he had mapping an index. He wore only a tunic, no toga, and he had a sword strapped to his waist, and several men, presumably his personal warriors, were around him.
"[You were not followed?]" was how he greeted us.
I shook my head. "[I don't think so.]"
"[Good. I received your message. I have sent word to the landholders I know in this city, offering them cooperation, giving them warning. There are no servants left in the house. Word will undoubtedly spread - no way to keep all those servants from gossiping - but that's all the better. We can't shout warnings in the streets, but if people leave now - or arm themselves, all the better.]"
I was relieved. He was an aristocrat, and aristocrats didn't always think of the common man. He wasn't just interested in saving himself; he was interested in stopping a bloodbath.
Arius went on. "[You should stay here. You are a stranger and vulnerable in the streets.]"
"[I cannot. My slave has been abducted -]"
"[As has my nephew and heir. And Maximius' wife. Leave the fighting to those with more to lose.]"
I frowned at him. "[It's not a question of more or less. I cannot lose him.]"
He squinted at me, almond-shaped dark brown eyes peering into my head. "[Don't you see,]" he said more softly. "[Whatever he means to you, he wouldn't want you to die too.]"
Carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass....
"[I doubt that he's dead. He is, uh, an extremely well-trained warrior. I must at least try to find him.]"
Arius shook his head again. "[You'll get lost. And then you'll be dead.]"
Grumius stepped up, and though his eyes were wide, as though he'd never seen a person as rich as Arius up close, his voice was steady. "[The master will not get lost, good sir. I will stay with him.]"
Arius only paused for a second before giving in. "[Wait just a short while. I can find men to go with you. Alone it's suicide. And if he is the warrior you say he is, he would not want you to run to your own death.]"
I could see Jack's face right behind my eyelids, hear his voice in my ear. "Whatchya in such a hurry for, Daniel? Dead now is very much like dead later."
Carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass....
Don't be dead, Jack, I told him in my head. I'm going to be so pissed off at you if you're dead, you have no idea.
I opened my eyes. "[I have to find him. You have to help me.]"
The look on Arius' face clearly said that he didn't know when I had started issuing orders. But once I'd started, I couldn't stop.
"[I need a small squad of men. Good fighters, not amateurs. Men who know tactics, and hand to hand combat.]"
A raised eyebrow. "[And do you know hand to hand combat?]"
I waved an impatient hand. "[Some. Enough.]"
"[Tactics?]"
"[Enough. Just give me five men.]" I stepped closer, looked Arius square in the eye. "[Please.]"
Arius shifted his weight from foot to foot, scrutinizing me. I knew he could see my desperation; I knew it wasn't a good bargaining position; I didn't have a choice.
And Arius knew it. He said, "[And for me... For me you will kill the Consul.]"
A VERY bad bargaining position. "[He'll have a hundred men guarding him.]"
"[No he won't. He'll be in the middle of a pitched battle. I don't think he's expecting it. I've promised other landholders I will try to rescue as many of their loved ones as possible. That means we must take government house. But no one from this country will want to be responsible for murdering a government official.]"
I'd never seen brown eyes look so icy before. But Arius' were quite cold as he said, "[But you aren't from this country, are you?]"
"[No,]" I admitted. "[I'm not.]"
"[Even if my men do it, if they are under your command, it will be less trouble for me - for all of us. And he would have to hang anyway. He has committed treason against the people half a dozen times over today.]"
I thought about how few people I had ever actually shot at, much less killed. I am a man of books, not of weapons.
Jack was a man of weapons. But I was positive he was in a strange place, outnumbered, without weapons. Alone in some cold stone-lined room where they might be doing anything to him... if I was lucky.
Arius was watching me think. He said, "[Your... well-trained warrior. Didn't you say you cannot lose him?]"
I took a deep breath and felt something cold slip into place in my chest. "[What assurance do you need?]"
"[Your word will do.]"
"[I will do it.]"
---
I blamed myself for not watching where I was going.
But only a little.
Mostly, I blamed them. And I told them so.
"I blame you," I managed to huff out when the bigger guy tied me to the wall, running a chain through the leather thongs that were holding my wrists together behind my back and the pain of the arms being pulled back and constantly yanked on was really beginning to throb in my shoulders. They hadn't dislocated one yet - but the day was young.
Unfortunately, because I'd spoken in English, the guy hadn't understood me, and it didn't really matter as he yanked up on my arms again, then back and down, fastening them in a position that forced me to my knees.
I didn't really need him to explain anyway. It was going to be a very bad day. That needed no explanation.
~~~
It was a few hours before the little greasy guy in charge came in. By then I had a fat lip and a puffy eye and a bunch of bruises here and there. I'd felt better, but then again I'd felt worse.
Mostly I wanted to know what was happening. The guards had let slip some things that made me think I wasn't the only new guest in this dungeon. And somewhere outside, not nearly far enough away, at one point I'd heard a high voice crying. I hoped to God it was the voice of a woman and not, as it sounded, a kid's voice.
"[What is happening?]" I asked his greaseballness.
He looked surprised, as if the answer should be obvious. "[A new world order.]"
"[Oh. Those.]" I rolled my eyes. "[Look, I'm not from around here, so you might as well just let me go, I'll go on about my business, and you can get on with that whole taking over the world thing, all right?]"
"[I need Daniel's information. More than most. I think he was not lying to me today. I think he has the answer I need.]"
Please please please, don't let Daniel be stuck in some other room like this one. "[I don't believe you. He'd never claim anything crazy like that. Even if you tortured him. And if you did, how can you believe what he said?]"
"[I didn't have to. I just asked.]"
I breathed a sigh of relief - it sounded like truth - though I didn't think that could possibly be the whole story either. I doubted that Daniel had given anything up to this maniac. "[That's funny, because I know for a fact that Daniel doesn't like you.]"
"[Yes...]" The Consul walked up to me where I was chained again to the wall, kneeling, not quite able to straighten up, but keeping him in my sights. "[But he does like you.]"
I tried to shrug. The pain in my shoulders was like white fire. Don't do that again, I made a mental note. "[Sometimes he likes me. Sometimes he doesn't. One of those things, you know?]"
But the Consul was shaking his head slowly, tapping at his lower lip, and looking at me like he was studying a book. "[Oh no, my friend. He does like you. Too much, I think.]"
He stepped closer and put his hand under my chin again, forced my head up. A few inches farther and he could have killed me - and the flex in my neck hurt like hell too, though not as bad as my shoulders. This time I looked him right in the eye. In fact I considered spitting in it.
"[He was quite arrogant when speaking to me, too arrogant, really. Perhaps I should take something more away from him. Perhaps I should take something from you.]"
Me on my knees in front of him, him fingering my chin kinda thoughtfully. I didn't like where this was going.
"[Try it,]" I said, jerking my chin toward his crotch to make it clear that I understood the threat and that he didn't scare me. "[Give me the chance. And I'll bite it off.]"
His forehead screwed up like I'd just given him a math problem he couldn't solve. Clearly this guy didn't get enough people in a day disagreeing with him.
"[I can prevent that,]" he said in a matter-of-fact way, "[by having all your teeth removed first.]"
While I contemplated that prospect and really started to - well, wish and think all kinds of things that related to weapons I wished I had and places I wished I was instead, some minion came in, and I thanked the god of luck that looks over me for the interruption.
"[My lord,]" said the flunky, and kneeled. "[The captain of the house guard wishes to see you. He believes that he has spotted groups of armed men putting themselves into position around government house.]"
The Consul shrugged. I could feel for the guy. Fighting off battalions of pissed-off people was so boring. "[Arrest them. Or kill them.]"
"[They are quite numerous, sir. And many of them wear the colors of landowners whose family are here.]"
Family, huh? Well, that answered that. I wasn't the only door prize the Consul had picked up today. If there were landowners out there whose families were in here, that was a sure sign the people in here weren't voluntary guests.
The Consul shrugged again. "[Very well.]"
He and his flunky left together. There was no door, no bars, but it didn't matter yet; it would take me hours to work my way through or out of the leather thong, which was cutting into my wrists and which would cut deeper as I worked on it.
Yep, I thought to myself, feeling a chill settle over my heart, it's a bad thing when being left alone like this for a few hours seems like the best of all possible outcomes.
I had never given up the habit of prayer in moments of stress like this and before I knew it I whispered out loud to the universe, "Keep Daniel away. Keep him safe."
After all, I could take care of myself.
---
There were crowds of people in the center of town; there were always crowds of people, people wearing everything from layers and layers of fine hand-dyed and decorated lightweight wools and linens to nothing. They were young, old, clean and filthy, hungry, fat, and almost everyone had to try desperately to avoid horseshit in the road and filth in the gutters and mud in the places where feet had killed all other vegetation.
But today the crowds weren't surging purposefully back and forth like they usually did. Today the crowds were milling, stirring, the plaza a big bowl in which they were slowly whipping themselves into a froth, the buzz of voices slapping back and forth in the bowl the way water would. It was clear something was up.
And along the alleyways around government house, which sat square and straight along one side of the plaza, lumps of people caught in the flow of traffic, murmuring to each other, staring at the building, and contributing to everyone's impression that something was about to happen.
In front of government house, in front of steps that sloped so gently down to the pavement, men were putting together a rough pen made of wood, with sides and a roof that had clearly been premade, lashing it together with heavy hemp and leather.
I didn't like the looks of that.
Neither, apparently, did a lot of the other people.
But we weren't going to hang around long enough to see it used.
"[Well, we have to get inside,]" I said, turning to my loaned hired guns without guns, hoping I didn't sound as nervous as I felt.
They muttered at each other, and the man farthest in the back laughed.
But I hadn't said anything funny.
I took a deep breath.
I turned to look at them. They fell silent. Stupid children. Like kids in school.
I walked through them to the man in the back. "[Go home,]" I said to him softly.
His eyes widened. He was a big guy, built like a wall, and easily both taller and heavier than me. But he looked... frightened, for a second.
God, I hated that look.
But I stared at him.
And he turned and left without another word.
"[All right. The rest of you stay close.]"
I didn't know their names. I didn't want to know their names. I didn't want to be on this planet and I didn't want to be alone.
I didn't have a damn thing I wanted.
The government house was big. Most of the main floor was public meeting halls and courtrooms. Big and airy, not much more than colonnades.
But below the floor was a maze of chambers winding between the stone supports of this floor space and that one, a winding rat warren. For rats.
And their stolen treasures.
I thought Jack was probably down there somewhere, alive or dead. But as I scanned the building I felt sick thinking of how far we might have to look. The steps stretched for easily a hundred meters, and extended back into a hornet's nest of attached buildings, two and three stories tall, feeding back into the city proper. If he was back there, how would we ever find him?
We needed someone who knew where he was, that was all.
We needed the consul.
And as we strolled down the alley we hit another group of men that looked about as convincing at strolling nonchalantly down the alley as we did.
"[Daniel!]"
It was Maximius. Who did Arius say they had of his? His wife, wasn't it?
I grasped his hand, smiled as if it were a cheerful sunny day and we were both on our way to the library.
Maximius wore a toga but below it I could see two tunics. The Mongols had worn silk tunics under their armor; arrowheads often got caught in it, were easier for the warrior to draw out. Maybe the Optimans had developed something similar. Because I also saw a number of hard pointy shapes clustered around Maximius' middle. When it all went to hell, I had the feeling that he would toss off the toga and start dealing mayhem.
I knew how he felt.
"[Have you had any news of your wife?]" I asked him. I wanted to be kind, to feel kind for a moment.
"[Yes, thank all the gods.]" He pointed behind him. There was a small woman behind his men, dressed like a servant in rough cloth and with a bare head. Her tiny heart-shaped face was stern and stony. "[Her sister went into the building pretending to be a servant, managed to hear from the guards that there is a large group of captives being held on this side, below the first courtroom.]"
"[How would we get down there? I do not know the building, I have never been in there.]"
Maximius wiped sweat off his forehead. It was warm, and the weapons under the toga must be heavy too. "On this side, the first courtroom is the frontmost room. There is a small staircase to the rear of the room, next to the outside wall of the building. You'll be able to see it in the corner, it has a thick, short door, that leads into a tiny tube of a staircase going both up and down.]"
The cells would be down.
I nodded. "[I'll go with you.]"
"[I cannot enter the building until Arius gives the signal.]" The man looked agonized. He was fairly young, maybe twenty-five, and had a wife probably the same age inside this building.
"[What is he waiting for, then?]" I snapped.
Maximius didn't seem to know. He looked around. It was clear to both of us that at least half the crowd was armed and ready to storm the building. It was well past noon and the wooden cell at the front of the building was almost done.
Maximius' light brown eyes flicked up at the roof as if looking for a sign, then back at me. "[I don't know,]" he admitted.
"[Fine. Let all these people wait out here. You and I can go in together.]" I couldn't stand out here and wait much longer. It had already been hours and I had no idea what was happening to Jack. The best option was that he was simply incarcerated. He could be being tortured; or he could be a cooling slab of meat and bone lying anywhere in the city.
I didn't know what I was going to do if I couldn't find him. Finding a Stargate, finding Jacob, getting home, none of it interested me at all. If I couldn't find him I would just keep looking. It was, after all, as good a way to pass the time as any.
Not that I usually had a lot of luck looking for people.
And if I found him and he was dead...
Well, going home wouldn't matter then either.
"[Come on,]" I told Maximius, and headed for the stairs.
"[I can't -]"
I saw him look around at my soldiers, at his own. He wasn't alone, couldn't act alone. If someone told Arius he had disobeyed orders, he might be in trouble when the government got patched up together again. And he didn't want to run afoul of Arius, clearly.
Easy enough.
"[Well,]" I said, walking back to him, "[these fellows are under my orders. I'm going in anyway. If you come with me, you run the risk that Arius will find out.]" I looked him in the eye. "[However, if you don't come with me, you run the risk that I will find my own slave and leave the building before even attempting to free any of the other prisoners, including your wife.]"
He looked puzzled, as if I had suddenly slapped him. "[You would do something like that?]"
"[I will.]"
"[I did not think you so callous.]"
"[Well, you don't know me, do you.]"
My teeth hurt from clenching them. I felt surrounded by useless, brainless people who did nothing but prevented my progress.
It was a familiar feeling.
It felt all too much like Shifu's dream.
I half-wished it was, that I would wake up again and be me again, gentle me, with books and a lab and translations to do.
But I felt the pommel of Jack's knife dig into my palm as I clutched it through the fabric of the toga, and I knew I wasn't going to wake up. On the other side, a borrowed sword weighed down my skin.
I had no more time for discussion.
"[You and you,]" I said, jerking my chin at two of my men. "[Follow us at a distance. Grumi, stay right behind me, in walking position. I'm just a man visiting the courts as if it were a normal day. You two, just an arm's length behind us. Maximi. Let's go. And your men, circle around to the right, be at the door when we get there, the door closest to this side, you understand?]"
I couldn't wait, started off. If we did it right, we would converge on the door as a wedge, force our way in even if they tried to keep us out. If we did it wrong, I'd go in alone.
They were not going to be able to stop me today.
I strolled, watching my feet as if I were thinking, hearing Grumius' breath behind me. After a few paces Maximius caught up.
"[So, Daniel, what did you think of the Gallatine prophecies, I heard you had read them yesterday.]"
He was making conversation. I could feel my breath hot in my mouth as I walked up the stairs, and started looking around.
A lot of people were standing on the stairs, many of them looking at the wooden cell and talking, looking distressed, or angry, or confused. A dozen soldiers were lashing on the roof.
"[I thought they might contain information about the last movements of Ameratsu's troops,]" I said honestly, flicking a glance back over my shoulder to check the position of my men. Miracle of miracles, they were where I told them to be.
"[I'd heard you were studying the last days of Trebellius Libo, to see if you could trace his route through the fire mountains to --]"
And that was the end of that conversation, because at just that moment there was a shattering crash behind us.
We whirled. Pieces of the crowd had converged on the cell and suddenly, as if they'd been planning an assault of their own, pushed it over. The wooden beams hung brokenly from their bonds and a tumble of bodies lay amongst the wreckage, most of them Consul's guards who stood up to find themselves immediately engaged in hand-to-hand with the saboteurs.
Within seconds a full-blown riot raged in front of the government building, up the steps, and trailed into the alleys.
"GO!" I shouted at Maximius and ran full-bore for the right-most door.
His men were there first, wedging their shoulders against the planks as someone inside tried to close it, to bar it against us.
Maximius and I both hit it at a dead run and pushed for all we were worth. I felt my skeleton creak as I shoved with all the rage I'd had tamped down inside me all day, and I could feel the door slip back a little. Then Grumius was there, shoving his shoulder next to mine and pushing, his toes sliding on the slick stone steps. Then the rest of my borrowed men hit us like hockey forwards and the door swung inward violently.
Inside people scattered as we pushed our way in, Maximius and I shedding our togas, edged weapons suddenly bristling from every hand.
The open hall was full of screaming, running people, but there was a knot formed up under one pillar, a thrashing set of bodies hacking at each other, falling, dying, maybe fifty men at the base of a pillar that had seen a thousand years and would survive being splashed with a little blood.
Maximius moved as if for the door at the far end of the colonnade but I stopped him with a blade in his path.
"[I think the Consul might be in there,]" I said, pointing.
"[Who cares? I just want to find my wife!]" Maximius snarled, and shouted to his men to form up with him.
"[And if he survives today to try again?]"
I didn't know if he would buy it but it was all I had left. He did pause. Looked at me. And looked at the knot.
My last card. "[Come with me and he won't.]"
Maximius shook his head. "[I will not murder an elected official.]"
I strode forward, knowing I had him. "[No one is asking you to.]"
Arius' men arrowed in front of me, hacking a path through the crowd. I hoped that the people we hit were the enemy. There were so many people swirling around, stabbing and snarling at each other. In the movies battles are always pitched like sporting events, with uniforms or colors on each team so you can see whom to fight, whom to kill. Real battles are never like that. In the shoving, screaming, pulsing mass in the middle, there's always chaos, and when it moves away, it leaves broken dead bodies behind.
I tuned it out.
Following the back of Grumius as he helped plow the way for me and Maximius, Maximius' men behind, from time to time their backs against ours as they turned away a falling blade, even angry fists.
In a cocoon of bloodshed we arrived at the center of the fray.
And there was the Consul, a sword clotted with blood in his right hand, still clutching his toga with his left, furiously hacking at the people who managed to get through the remnants of his personal guard who were ranged before him, keeping the pillar at his back.
He looked very, very surprised to see me.
We faced off as my men engaged the last of his. He could see his dreams of godhood crumbling before his eyes, and he still didn't believe it. He chopped at me and screamed to his men as if there was somewhere for them to go, as if he would get to fight another day.
I was no swordsman but neither was he.
Our clumsy swings rang, however, because we both put the force of fury behind them. I was surprised that the blade in my hands didn't break. The vibrations did make my palms, my hands numb.
Numb suited me fine.
Finally he took a two-handed swing at my face, dropping his toga, shouting his anger, and I swung my sword like a baseball bat and knocked his strike aside. In the next second I pushed the flat of my blade forward, pressing his arms down, pressing him back to pin him against the ancient stone.
"[Where is he?]" I had my lips next to his ear as if we were lovers.
"[Gone. Dead.]" But the flick of his eyes in the direction of the stairs was better than a lie detector test.
"[Liar.]" I pressed my weight and the flat of the blade cut through his tunic and a line of blood appeared on his chest. "[What would you gain by being so stupid?]"
He looked up into my eyes. Blood and sweat was smeared across his forehead and one cheek; his eyes were wide and spit flew from the corners of his mouth as he hissed at me, "[I would take something away from you.]"
I felt ice in my veins, ice in my stomach, under my fingernails and in my feet. I could have been a stone statue, I felt so hard and cold. That couldn't be true, could it? Would he really have killed Jack just to get back at me? Before his scheduled sacrifice, even?
Around us the battle raged on but the rushing in my ears made it quiet where I was. I picked out of the battle the three remaining men of Arius'. Grumius approached but was stopped, trapped by a side battle.
The men Arius had loaned me were good fighters, battle-hardened. Just soldiers. They did not take initiative. They took orders.
I gave the orders with my eyes.
As they approached, two on one side, one on the other, I turned back to the Consul. He had a name; what was it? I had known at one point. Oh yes. Aulus Antius Petronax. Insane. Criminal. Dead.
"[I warned you,]" I said softly, and nodded at my men. My orders.
All four of us attacked.
One blade he turned away but three of us managed to cut inside him, one low on the right, one high on the right, and my blade stabbed him in where I thought he had an organ called the heart.
Still puzzled, he fell to his knees, and I couldn't hear but I could see the hacking cough of a man stabbed in the lungs, blood flecking his lips, but it didn't last long.
I must have gotten the heart.
I turned away before he'd even finished falling. "[We have to go,]" I said to the men left nearest me.
We pushed our way out of the crowd, grabbing Maximius, Grumius, and the last of Maximius' men as we went.
The rioting didn't stop, the battle didn't stop, just because the man who'd started it was dead. That was the way it worked. I'd seen enough battle to grasp these simple facts.
Eventually, word would spread, the people loyal to the Consul would surrender or flee, the city would settle down except for the leftover looting and the side battles where a neighbor took advantage of the chaos to get back at the guy who'd been pissing him off for years or who slept with his wife. There would be blood shed throughout the night, possibly into the morning, and even if a provisional government could be put together by Arius before sunrise (and I had no doubt he would do it) it would be years before the fighting really stopped, the tears were shed, the records were written. And the mothers would never be comforted.
There hadn't been a murder of a hundred slaves on the plaza steps. Instead there'd been the death of hundreds, maybe thousands of other people. Because some had believed the Consul's promises and threats and others had stood up against him.
And probably much of it, too much of it, was somehow my fault.
I would worry about it later.
Looking down, I saw a spatter of blood along the hem of my tunic and on the skin of my shins. It was probably the Consul's. Aulus Antius Petronax.
I hadn't felt like it before but suddenly I had to stop. I thought I might throw up.
Only Grumius paused with me, patted my back, patted my hair as I straightened, spat. My mouth wasn't dry. It was full of spit, as if my body were trying to wash itself clean from the inside.
"[I'm glad he's dead,]" was all Grumius said, and I didn't answer him. Instead I ran to catch up with Maximius.
There were a lot of cells under the floor to search, a lot of tiny rooms that might contain a lot of people. Hopefully they were all still alive.
If only one were alive, I wanted it to be Jack.
And I hated myself, hated that I could even hope that selfishly, because I knew even if it were true, I didn't deserve it.
---
There's a space where you know you aren't going to get out of this but you have plenty of time to think about what you should have done differently to not get IN it.
I hate that space.
I tend to fill that time with endless scenarios playing over and over in my head, me working out just what I should have done differently in each case in order to not wind up with my knees throbbing against cold stone, my legs numb, my shoulders in agony and my wrists tied to the wall with a chain and possibly on their way to gangrenous by now from lack of blood flow.
The repetitive insistence of pain tends to really wear a person out, yet when you can't really stand, sit, or lie down, it requires all of your attention.
I had gone through angry to furious to murderous to tired to resigned, and now I just wanted it over.
Actually, that wasn't true. I wanted it never to have gone down like this. That's why I was playing over and over in my head what I should have done to keep from getting in this position.
Mostly I shouldn't have left the house this morning. I was so irritated, and a little worried, that Daniel had spent the night on the floor. I wanted to give him whatever he wanted, and apparently he wanted space.
That's what I'd told myself, anyway.
With the crystal clarity of hindsight, however, it was clear that I was hurt and I wanted to go away and lick my wounds a little. Poor Jack, hasn't been turned down in thirty years, can't stand a little rejection even from his best friend. Spoiled brat, that's what I was.
I should've stayed where I was supposed to be and done my job.
God only knows what had happened to Daniel since I'd wandered out and left him snoring on the floor.
I shouldn't have let him sleep on the floor in the first place. He's allergic to dust, after all.
I could picture his back, the triangle shape of him as he lay on the floor, the way his hair stood up on top of his head as he lay there, and I wished, I wished, more than anything else, that I hadn't left him alone there.
I'd had a responsibility, to get Daniel off this planet and home. That was the only reason I was here, the only thing I could do. And I'd blown it. Big time.
Way to go, O'Neill.
Teal'c wouldn't have screwed up like this. And neither would Carter. Except that Carter wouldn't have gone along in the first place. She never seemed to be around when Daniel was traipsing off over the horizon. Maybe she moved in different orbits. Maybe she was on a different plane of existence.
Maybe I'd never see her again.
I could just see her smile, the one that made it seem sunny even in the depths of the mountain. And I could hear Teal'c, not his voice, but the way his hands slapped on the staff weapon when he swung it around to bear on an enemy.
I'm so sorry, I kept telling them in my head.
Teal'c had gone on these kinds of missions before. He might come back with a crying, broken Daniel, a near-dead Daniel, a Daniel who wouldn't speak to him because he'd shot Daniel's wife, but he always came back with Daniel.
It didn't look like I'd be going anywhere with Daniel.
And what would happen to him when I was gone? A lot of people thought of Daniel as a harmless geek, but I knew better. He was actually an active danger to himself. Like a puppy who doesn't realize that the drop he's jumping over might be a thousand feet deep. He always had his eyes so fixed on whatever there was to learn just over the horizon that he couldn't even see what he was stepping in.
I thought of Daniel when he'd first joined SG-1, baby-faced and earnest. I was pretty sure I was the only one who caught him crying in his office. I wouldn't have given him away.
And over the years he'd become more and more part of the team. I trusted him with a P90 at my back, absolutely. But I wouldn't ask him to go it alone.
Now, in effect, I was asking him to go it alone. And it was hardly fair of me.
Even as my brain was spinning in these depressing circles my hands were working at the leather. It cut into the soft part of my hands, but I felt confident that eventually I could get it loose enough to get off.
I was also pretty sure I wouldn't have that much time.
Daniel, I thought to myself as I let my head droop forward, trying to relieve the pressure in my neck that was turning into throbbing spasms. I even liked his name.
I shouldn't have left. I should have laid right down on the floor there with him.
Of course, if we knew we were about to die, there's probably a long list of things we'd do. Mine involved pinning Daniel to the floor and getting the answers to a few questions. Like, exactly what did he not like about me? My breath? The hair? The clothes? The jokes?
"People LOVE my jokes," I rasped out loud.
Weeks of sleeping in the same bed, of watching Daniel at the baths, over every meal, almost every hour of the day, and I was still going to die without knowing what it was about him that I couldn't get tired of looking at.
Peculiar, that.
I lost track of time as I kept shifting and shifting, trying to rock over a half an inch and relieve some of the pressure on my knees, raising up a little to try to relax my shoulders, leaning back a little to let up on my neck. It became an absorbing dance in and of itself, the constant movement to try to find a position that was not no pain, but less pain.
So I lost track of the scenarios where I convinced Hammond not to let Daniel go on this trip; where I convinced Jacob to come with us so he wouldn't get lost; where I brought Teal'c with me; where I sent Teal'c in my stead; where I sent Carter to look after Daniel as his pretend housewife; where I did a better job of checking in with Jacob more regularly, had a backup evacuation plan, brought more weapons despite the risk of discovery, or just plain ended up fishing, in Minnesota, with Daniel sitting on the dock by my feet reading a book.
Because I couldn't really imagine him fishing.
The plain truth was I'd been enjoying myself before it had all gone south. I liked hanging out with Daniel. After a hundred or so worlds it all starts to get a little repetitive, truth be told. But Daniel's never boring. Puzzling, fixated, insane, infuriating, right, or wrong, but never boring.
I'd gotten caught up in the little fantasy that we were really somewhere else, outside of the world, outside of the Stargate, where we could do something else, be something else.
Where I could run my fingers along his face and he'd let me.
For all that he was loudmouthed, honest, and heart-stoppingly beautiful, Daniel was pretty closed off. From everyone, I thought, but especially from me. When we weren't arguing we could close ranks pretty tight. But whatever was in the middle of Daniel making him tick - that I didn't know.
I would have liked to find out.
I should have asked him more questions, made it clearer that I wasn't really curious about the hot monkey love, I was curious about him. What he thought about it, what he liked and didn't like about what he thought, what he liked and didn't like about me.
A thousand opportunities lost between one heartbeat and the next.
I had been so stupid.
If I could get out of here, I told whatever higher powers might be listening, I would ask Daniel to teach me a thousand words for "moron". And I would tell him he could use them all to refer to me.
As much as I'd liked touching him, as much as I'd wanted to do more, what I really wished was that I was going to get to spend more time with him.
I heard guards moving through the hallway and shouting from time to time. I couldn't make out most of the words. Sounded to me like words for outside, and reinforcements, and casualties. It didn't make any sense. The casualties were going to be us, weren't they?
I wished that kid would cry again.
There was no light except that cast by a torch outside the room. It was enough to show me the walls and floor but I wished I could see daylight. Was it still day? How long had it been?
Would Daniel find a way home without me?
When another group of feet came clattering down the hall they didn't sound any different to me - coarse men's voices shouting, and the occasional clang of a weapon hitting the narrow stone passageway's wall.
But these didn't run by; they trickled down the hall slowly, getting closer, as if they were walking, maybe looking in each room.
And then I heard his voice.
"Jack?" said Daniel's voice, uncertain, like flutes, like music, like magic.
"In here!" I shouted back, my voice hoarse and dry but just as loud as I could make it.
The slap-slap of feet in leather sandals on stone and there he was, standing in the doorway.
I thought for a second it wasn't him.
The man in the doorway stood with feet spread, as if waiting to absorb an attack, and sword in front, the hard nubs of masculine knuckles wrapped around its hilt. His jawline was hard, with straight edges, and his forehead creased in a frown. Blood was spattered on him and his arms and neck gleamed with sweat.
Then he stepped into the room. "JACK!"
And his eyes looked just like Daniel's eyes, and I recognized him.
"Now you, I'm glad to see," I said, but I almost couldn't speak, my throat was so thick.
He sliced through the wrist leather cords and I couldn't stop myself, I almost pitched forward flat on my face, but he caught me.
Supported by his arm I realized I couldn't even lift mine. My shoulders were agonizing knots and I couldn't make my arms work. But I grinned at him. "Yes," I said, "I'm awful glad to see you."
"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" His hands felt like fire as he ran them over my face, my neck, shoulders, sides, looking for wounds, looking for blood.
"I want to stand up," I muttered. I should have pushed his hands away but they felt good, warm, except for the places where I couldn't feel them. "Help me up, dammit."
Hooking his arms under my shoulders he hauled me up.
I kept myself from falling over by leaning against the wall behind me but I couldn't stop myself from making some noise as my knees straightened and the blood went back into my lower legs. I looked at my hands. They were blue, but the fingers wiggled when I willed them to.
"Are you hurt?" he said again, looking into my eyes, forcing me to meet his.
"I'm fine," I lied, and tried to take a step.
I almost fell and he caught me again.
"Just give me a minute," I said, and I don't know what my face looked like but as I looked at Daniel his eyes overflowed with tears.
Stepping into me he framed my face in his hands, those long masculine hands I'd just seen gripping the sword. They still felt hot, and strong, and held my face tight.
And leaning forward just the couple of inches he needed to, Daniel kissed me.
Maybe he'd meant it to be gentle, maybe he couldn't help it, but the next second I felt like I was being held up by Daniel's hands on my face and his mouth on mine, his tongue sweeping along mine, his tear-flavored lips opening, pushing, tasting, crushing against mine.
And I couldn't do anything but lean into him, letting him hold me up, and kiss him back.
He gave me breath to breathe, and the blood throbbing in his fingers could have been his, could have been mine; my heart was beating his blood.
It went on for a few moments, hungry and devastating and hard, and I felt him shiver, then he was trembling, then he was shaking, and I was holding on to him because I'd managed to get my arms around him and he was crushing me, crushing me to his chest.
I'd never been held so tightly in my life.
Yet his voice sounded as if he were doing something normal as he said, "Can't imagine why I'm shaking."
"Adrenalin reaction, maybe," I suggested, also as if we were playing cards back at the SGC.
"Perfect time for it," he muttered. But he didn't let go.
Except the next second he had to. This was obviously not a place for us to stay. "Can you walk?"
"I will," I assured him.
He had blood on his tunic.
"Are YOU hurt?" I suddenly felt panicked. It was so close, too close, getting out of here; if it was yanked away from me again...
Absently he glanced down at the blood. "Oh, that's not mine." Looping my arm over his shoulder he started us toward the door.
I had to remind myself that yes, this was Daniel. The color of the eyes was right.
~~~
Climbing the stairs was agony, that's the only word for it. Hellish and slow. My knees ached like someone had scraped up the surfaces of the joints and shoved an iron bar through them.
"Son of a fucking bitch," I rasped without heat as we made it to the top. There'd been fourteen.
"You're doing great, Jack. Just hang on."
Daniel steered me through a big hall with pillars in it; there were dead bodies scattered here and there, bloodstains everywhere, and people sitting on the floor, groaning, crying, holding their wounds.
"Bad day up here too, huh?"
Daniel's eyes flicked around as he steered us out. I knew he couldn't be seeing far without his glasses but a guy coming at you with a sword is pretty easy to identify even as a blurry shape. "Yeah...." He dragged the word out. "The Consul had a good horoscope this morning and decided it was his big day for godhood. He kidnapped family members of most of the people we've been working around in the library."
"You mean the rich guys with no interest in politics."
Daniel stepped out through the door first, checked around before coming back for me, looping my arm over his shoulder again. "Yeah, those were the guys. They didn't like it."
"And what about you?"
Daniel's eyes flicked over to look at me from just a few inches away. "I didn't like it either."
And as we stepped out of the building we saw it.
On the plaza in front of government house there was a heap of broken wood that had been a something just a short time before. Most of the pieces of it had been separated and lay about, edges torn and broken. The Consul had been spitted through with one of the planks and the plank braced upright with heavier beams of wood around its base. He was suspended, crookedly dead and twisted, in midair.
I expected Daniel to flinch and look away. Instead he looked at it, his expression blank, clinical if anything, as we descended the marble stairs, his arm around my waist still holding me up.
We shuffled down the sweeping staircase and immediately cut back into an alley rather than crossing the plaza. There were people around, again, mostly absorbed in their own problems, but if there were anyone looking for us we didn't need to come to their notice.
We zigged, we zagged, then I believe there was more zigging. I let Daniel drive. I was exhausted anyway and he seemed to have some sort of plan. With every step my knees and shoulders loosened up a little more; I was concentrating on that, on the reduction of pain and the regaining of mobility.
Not the kiss, I told myself. I wasn't thinking about that.
After one more zag Daniel pushed open a door, helped me inside. It was a shop, one I didn't recognize. It was empty but there were vats of olives - we could smell the fruity rich smell as soon as we opened the door - and huge baskets of raw vegetables and, off to one side, probably not for sale, probably someone's dinner, a loaf of bread.
Daniel poked around and found a small container of olive oil with a wax seal. He broke the seal. "Dip the bread in it," he said, his eyes still scanning the place while he handed it to me. "You need the energy, and the bread will be dry."
I did what he said while he went traipsing through the shop.
I was chewing a mouthful of the bread and oil when he came back muttering. "No damn water," he explained. "There's a well at the top of the street. I'll be right back."
He clutched a jug in one hand.
Seized by panic I swallowed too fast, almost choked. "Wait! I'll go with you."
"You don't need to."
He didn't want to wait for me, I realized, and realized too what it meant to be so much older than him.
"Check outside the door before you go through it," and it was an order even if it did sound like a dry choke.
And he did, and was back really quickly, almost half a gallon of clean clear water in the jug for us to split.
I tried to remember what it felt like to leave the public baths, having soaked so long that my fingers were pruney and with every bodily odor long gone. I stank and my face was stubbly.
Daniel petted my head as if I were mink.
"Drink just a little first." It was an order, and I wondered when he'd started giving orders.
He was full of surprises today.
His hands went over me again, feeling the swollen joints, checking the cuts on my wrists, looking at the inner membrane of my eyelids, at my pupils. His fingers pushed through my hair feeling for knots or bumps; he found the one where they'd knocked me out.
I winced.
"Sorry," and he did sound really sorry, but he kept looking, checking the cut over my black eye, the fat lip, gently feeling around the edges of my kneecaps inside my swollen knees.
"I'm okay. Stop fussing." My voice was getting clearer as my throat got wet.
"Sorry," he said again, sounding a good bit less sorry, and went on examining me. "Were you hurt?" he asked me softly, and I felt like if I didn't answer him sufficiently he was going to strip me and take a microscope to me.
"Not bad." He could see, couldn't he?
He sat down on the bench I'd sunk down on, looked me in the eye. His voice was level and quiet, his serious voice. "Hurt at all?" he said.
Okay, I knew what he was getting at. "No, I'm fine. His Greasiness dropped by at one point and threatened to - made stupid threats but he got called away, didn't have time to chat."
Daniel's eyes bored into mine. I tried looking away, down, at the food, at the water, but every time I gave up and looked back he was still looking at me. He didn't say anything.
"Fine, okay, he offered to fuck my face and I offered to bobbit him and he offered to have my teeth knocked out, but nobody's offers got followed up on, okay? I'm fine, aside from nearly dislocated shoulders and knees that feel as if they're made of broken Legos." I groaned to distract him while I shifted on the bench. "I really hate the whole chained to the wall thing."
Daniel kept looking at me, that searching x-ray vision look, till I guess he was satisfied. He reached over to the bread where I'd put it on a table near us, tore off a hunk, chewed it, swallowed it. "I'm awfully glad he's dead," he said conversationally.
And we had nothing more to say about that.
Time slipped by unnoticed for a little while as I enjoyed having food and water in my stomach and no chains on me anywhere and Daniel apparently enjoyed looking at me.
He was just drinking me in like I was a ten-dollar movie.
"You gonna keep doing that?" I finally asked him, not because I wanted him to stop or anything, mind you, just because I was wondering how long it was going to be for.
"As long as I can," and his brow had the not-good crink in it and his voice was so serious. Didn't he realize we'd kind of won? We'd gotten away from the bad guy in one piece?
"Well, that's as long as you like, as far as I'm concerned," I told him.
But instead of staying where he was, looking at me, Daniel twisted a little and leaned into me, leaned his shoulder into my chest, as though all of a sudden he needed to crawl inside something.
I put my arms around him and just rocked him for a moment.
And he was still shivering a little, and as I rocked him the shiver became, again, a full-fledged shake. Something like adrenalin letdown. Something worse.
"What about you, you okay?" I muttered quietly into his hair, because after all I'd left him alone for a whole day and the city had had a riot while I was gone and anything, just anything could have happened to him.
"I don't know," he half-moaned and ducked his head, tucking it under my chin like a kid would do.
Something had happened to him, something I missed.
But he didn't seem hurt, beyond a few scratches, and if he wanted to tell me --
Shit, he'd never tell me.
"Wanna tell me about it?" I said.
"No." He burrowed into my chest, my arms.
After I thought about it a minute I said, "I'm sorry I left you alone."
He snorted into my chest. "I'm sorry I dragged you out to this miserable planet."
"It wasn't miserable. We were having a good time," I reminded him.
He pulled back to look at my face. He looked astonished. I almost grinned, seeing that astonished look again - wide eyes, mouth hanging open. "A good time. In a medieval culture without running water in the houses, with nothing to do but hang around and watch me read."
"Oh, I did some other stuff too. Don't forget the wrestling." When he started to look as if he really feared I'd been hit in the head I stopped teasing him. "Yeah, a good time. We were having a good time. I think I was going to get the hang of Twelve Lines in another week or two."
Daniel just shook his head disbelievingly, and I did grin. Then he leaned back into me, and I kissed the top of his head, because it was good, blessedly good, to be back in the world where I could see him and smell him and touch him.
I remembered what I had promised in the cell.
"You have to teach me a thousand words for 'moron' so I can answer to them when you call," I whispered into his hair, smiling.
"As if you'd come when I call," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, his skull hard and real against my chest.
I kissed his hair again, running one hand down over his side of his neck, his shoulder, because that seemed to make him shake less.
He sighed, and my heart broke.
Daniel had had a bad day too.
~~~
"Don't we have to, you know, keep moving or something?" Daniel asked.
Eating and drinking had given way to sitting holding each other and while it was clear we would both be happy doing that for a century or two he was undoubtedly right.
In the very faint distance the noise of people had returned to the streets. Eventually the owners of the shop would come back.
"I don't think we can go back to the house," Daniel sighed, and my gut clenched.
"Why not? The Consul's dead."
"He might have friends that would come looking for me."
And wham, just like that, I knew what Daniel had done, whose blood that was on the front of his tunic.
What I said was, "Got any other ideas for a place to hole up for a while?"
Daniel shook his head. "I think anywhere in this city will be tough for us."
"Got another city in your pocket?"
One of Daniel's lightning-fast smiles came and went and I felt rewarded. But what he said was, "Let's get on the move." And he sat up and left me alone. I felt very alone.
"If we get out of the city, we can try to contact Jacob again."
Daniel shrugged. "Try it now. We're alone."
Of course we were. My brain must still be fogged. Daniel pulled the comm out of his pouch, along with the hard case containing his glasses. He put them on and cleaned up after our stolen meal while I tried hailing our Tok'ra chauffeur.
"No luck," I said, even though he could, of course, hear that.
"Might as well get going," he answered and we slipped out through the door.
"Got any ideas on where to go?" He approached doorways and corners cautiously, as if expecting ambushes.
"Yes," he said, surprising me again. "If we can get down to the docks we can probably find someone with a boat willing to take us across the ocean. I think this continent was a late settlement, I think if we want to find either of the Stargates we have to get back to the more original settlements, and both of those are in Ishido now."
"Great." I really was glad to have a plan. "We can charter a ride."
"Well..."
I hated the way he dragged it out.
"Just say it."
"We might have to work for trade. Unless it's a VERY small boat. I used up most of our money."
"Used up? What do you mean used up? You make it sound like you brushed your teeth with it."
"Well, I paid it. To Grumius."
I couldn't stop myself from busting out with a "What the hell for?"
"He did bodyguard duty. Well, I might add."
Well, I couldn't begrudge him that. But I didn't manage to sound too thrilled as I said, "Great. There won't be much time to waste at the public baths anyway."
"Look, I -"
"It doesn't matter." But it did. If we couldn't get out of this city... If we couldn't find a Stargate...
No. It didn't really matter.
"I shoulda given Grumius a present myself," I said, pushing myself to my feet. It ached, but in a manageable way. "Come on, let's blow this popsicle stand."
"I think it's a vegetable stand," but Daniel followed me out the door.
~~~
Finding our