When the General dismisses them, Daniel is already halfway to Honduras in his head - running over packing lists, transportation details, how much having Bill Lee along is going to slow him down. To be fair, he likes Bill. As far as the non-SG-1 staff of the ‘hard sciences’ department under the Mountain go, Bill is one of the easiest to get along with, and he’s truly smart. But he’s not going to be the greatest asset in an archaeological search. Daniel would almost rather go alone, but he knows that would never fly with the Air Force, even if he could convince Hammond (which he knows he never would be able to - George might not be as overprotective as Jack, but he’s a close second).

Jack.

That thought stops his whirling mind in its tracks, and Daniel sets down the text he’s paging through, eyes sliding over to his phone. After the recent close call on 997, his partner is not going to be thrilled about him going anywhere without the rest of SG-1, even somewhere that’s on Earth. Jack, who has been off at Peterson for a few days logging flight hours to keep his pilot certifications up to date, has missed out on all of this excitement completely. 

He glances at the clock, looks down at the memo he took a few minutes ago about the military transport already arranged to get him and Bill to Honduras. Peterson is a big place; if he doesn’t reach out and arrange to meet up with Jack on base, they’ll pass like ships in the night and be away before Jack even knows about the mission. A part of Daniel’s mind points out that this is the path of least resistance. What Jack doesn’t know about until afterward won’t hurt him, and Daniel is just acting under the General’s orders. 

The more responsible, but unfortunately smaller, part of his mind reminds him how much progress they’ve been making lately in their relationship, most especially communication. The larger part remembers the last time he’d wanted to go on a dangerous mission suggested by Jacob, and how Jack’s unwillingness to let him go had ripped into the very core of them. Even while his gut is clenching in early guilt and misery, he decides he can’t risk the argument with Jack, because he simply can’t risk knowing his lover still doesn’t trust him. Instead of picking up the phone, he jots down a quick and carefully worded note for his partner instead and tucks it in his pocket to leave in Jack’s locker. 

It will be better this way, he tells himself as he throws himself back into preparations.

His first thought when the flagstone snaps back down into place and the whole chamber starts to shake, overtaking the thrill of a successful find, is Jack is going to kill me. 

Bill is staring at him, mouth agape, so he adds out loud, “I think running would be a good idea right about now.” As the water breaks around them, he holds tight to the artifact with one hand and uses the other to grab at Bill’s shirt, pulling the shocked engineer to his feet. “Come on, damn it!”

The pressure of the water jetting from the wall knocks both of them off of their feet several times before they get out of the chamber. When they make it back to the tunnel, the water is halfway up their shins, and it’s an effort to run through it, crouched over and holding the cube in front of him to make himself fit in the narrow space. He’s aware of Rogelio’s distressed calls into the radio, but they don’t have time to stop and answer.

The water swirling around them is knee-deep, and then waist-deep. 

Daniel is glad that Bill is right at his back because he doesn’t have the breath to waste cajoling him to go faster - he has to put every effort of energy into fighting the water and moving faster himself. It feels like he isn’t making even an inch of progress. 

The cold water is chest-deep, making each labored breath even more shocking, and then shoulder-deep. Daniel can see the beams of light from the shaft filtering down ahead of them, but as the water creeps up his neck he knows they’re not going to make it before the water closes over their heads. 

“When I say go, take a deep breath,” he orders, just loud enough to make sure the engineer can hear him over the roar of the water, more concerned about getting all of the words out before they are underwater. “I can see the exit but we’re going to be under first. Don’t panic, and don’t fight the current or you’ll get disoriented. Work with the water, it will help push us into the shaft and then we just have to swim up.” 

He glances back. Bill is wide-eyed and pale, but he looks determined. Daniel has a spare thought to hope his companion knows how to swim, and then he hears another wave rushing along the tunnel behind them and since he already had to tip his head back and chin up to give his directions, he knows they’re out of time. “Now, Bill!”

He takes his own deep breath and closes his eyes, letting the powerful water shove him into the final atrium. His body is shoved into the far wall with a hard crunch that knocks some of the air out of his lungs and, cracking his eyes open underwater, he manages to catch Bill with one hand before it does the same to the engineer. He uses that grip on the other man’s shirt to drag him into the narrow space, ensuring he has also found the escape shaft, before pushing off hard towards the surface. For a minute he relies on just his arms, afraid to kick Bill in the head, but when a tentative kick doesn’t hit anything solid he holds the artifact above his head and kicks powerfully towards the surface. 

The water is murky with ages of dust and dirt, and he can’t see anything now with it swirling around. Just as he’s on the verge of disoriented panic himself, the artifact is momentarily a hundred times heavier as it breaks the surface of the water and then it’s gone, replaced by a warm hand dragging him over the edge. As soon as he is free, Bill’s head breaks the surface, and his companion levers himself out of the hole beside him, collapsing on the ground.

“Are you okay?” Rogelio sounds shocked. Daniel thinks the kid might have been truly distressed about them dying, and not just the lost paycheck. “I thought you were dead for sure,” he goes on. “What happened, Señor?”

“We triggered some sort of trap,” Daniel says, still gasping for breath.

“I think I figured out why those passageways were so narrow,” Bill chimes in from behind him. “It's to prevent people from escaping alive.”

“You're good,” Daniel can’t help himself, echoing Bill’s earlier words but imbuing them with a definite bite of sarcasm. As he catches his breath, Daniel is already starting to think of ways to downplay this little incident to keep Jack from going ballistic. Yeah, okay, Bill is probably going to write the full truth in his report, but Danny thinks he can convince his colonel that the engineer is just being dramatic, and that they weren’t ever in any real danger. He finally gets the water wiped away from his eyes, looking up expecting to see just Rogelio standing in front of them. He has to blink a couple of times to clear his vision and then take a second look because he’d lost his glasses in the shaft, but then his heart sinks.

“What have you found?” Rogelio asks, sounding amazed, and completely oblivious to the new danger behind him. Slowly, Daniel raises his hands and stays silent, even as he gets carefully to his feet. Silence also from Bill behind him is a welcome indicator that his teammate is doing the same. “Oh, I'm not going to rob you, Señor,” the kid laughs a little, so Daniel jerks his chin to indicate the young man should turn around. 

Alerted to the fact that all is not well by the look on their faces, Rogelio slowly turns, to where the one man whose gun isn’t trained on them is smirking. “Usted? Madre de Dios.” He doesn’t get anything else out before the bald man gestures to one of his men.

“Be quiet,” he says to Daniel’s group and then to his henchmen, “Buscarlos.” He lifts his gun and trains it on their guide, and the man on the end breaks away from the others. He roughly pats them down, divesting them of their equipment as he goes. He strips Bill and Daniel of their shirts, too, probably because of the gear shoved into their pockets. When he’s finished, he turns back to the bald man. 

“Sin armas,” he announces, and Daniel relaxes just a little. He’d known that he and Bill weren’t armed, of course, but he hadn’t been sure about Rogelio. They don’t need the increased tension in this situation that would come from both sides having weapons. And he’d been very careful to make sure they didn’t pack anything with them that would lead back to the Mountain or even the Air Force, unless these men had been following them since their arrival in Honduras on a military transport plane. The leader of the men just nods, and the one who’d done the search secures their hands and then starts to blindfold them. As he’s knotting the fabric behind Daniel’s head, Rogelio speaks from somewhere in front of him.

“Ellos puedan pagar,” he tries to negotiate, but anything else he might have said is lost in a pained grunt as something strikes him, hard enough to leave him gasping for breath.

“Be quiet,” the leader repeats in the same frighteningly polite voice, and Daniel squeezes his eyes shut even behind the blindfold. Oh yeah. Jack is going to be pissed.

Daniel might have felt a little bit vindicated had he known - Jack’s first response when he found out that Daniel had left on a mission while he was at Peterson was definitely getting mad. 

He’d returned to the Mountain around lunchtime from Peterson, and wandered down to the locker rooms to change, thinking about tracking down his team for a convivial lunch before he spent the last few hours of the day catching up on paperwork. 

When he opened his locker, a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Bemused, Jack leaned down to pick it up. It wasn’t white printer paper like an official memo or one of Sam’s brightly colored post-it note reminders. Danny, he thinks with a little smile, feeling the heft of the cream-colored paper between his fingers. This is a piece of paper from one of his partner’s fancy notebooks and journals. He sets it down with his phone on the bench and changes quickly, absently shoving his phone into the pocket of his fatigue pants before unfolding the paper, scanning Daniel’s neat and precise handwriting, expecting some welcome home or a quick note about picking something up for dinner. Daniel thinks in writing, and he’s been known to leave notes about some random thought or another if Jack isn’t right there for him to talk to.

‘Jack,

If you’re reading this, then I chickened out of calling you and you beat us back. The General sent me and Bill Lee to Honduras to look for the Telchak device. I didn’t want to argue with you like the last time I went on a mission for Jacob and Selmak.’

Jack knows Daniel had hesitated there because there’s an ink blob instead of a period where the linguist had rested his pen and created an extra-large, dark dot. He can envision the frown on his partner’s face, the deep creases above his eyebrows, the way he probably bit his lip. 

‘We should only be a couple of days. I’m sorry I couldn’t call. 

Daniel’

Damn it, Daniel. Jack turns on his heel and stalks out of the lockers to the elevator, taking it up to the floor where Sam’s lab is to get some answers, because his lover’s note was delightfully, infuriatingly vague.

Sam is bent over some device on her worktable, something that looks like a tiny welding torch sending sparks everywhere around her gloves and safety goggles. It looks delicate and involved, and he doesn’t want to startle her. Jack leans up against the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest, and waits. She fiddles for a moment and joins two more pieces together before straightening, shoving the tinted goggles up to rub her face. 

She looks tired, and the fact that she doesn’t notice him immediately is another giveaway that she might be stretched a little thin. Jack mentally recalculates how much of a jerk to be. He gives it another moment and then pushes off the wall and strolls towards her. 

“Colonel!” Sam visibly blinks and reorients herself. “How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough. Haven’t we talked about sleeping regularly before, Major?”

“We in a little bit of a time crunch, sir,” she rebuffs him with a sheepish smile. 

“Aren’t we always?” he mutters, but it’s under his breath, and she doesn’t bother responding. He places Daniel’s note on the worktable between them, waits until she picks it up, and then asks, “Care to fill me in, Carter?”

She does, of course, and he feels pretty caught up on current events when she finishes her rehash. He asks a few clarifying questions about the actual issue at hand just to feel good that he did, and then he taps the heavy paper sitting between them again, raising an eyebrow. “How long has Daniel been gone?”

“About two days. They had a transport out of Peterson on Wednesday to Honduras, and then they were supposed to catch a smaller charter flight yesterday to get closer to their destination and give them a little distance from the Air Force to help support the idea that they’re civilians.” Eyeing Jack carefully, he can see the exact moment she decides that isn’t enough information to keep him happy. “Sir, I talked to him when they landed in Comayagua, and I know he’s been making regular reports to the General. Honestly, compared to what we’re planning, Daniel is safer in Honduras. And you should have seen how excited he was when he was packing a bag full of his archeology equipment.”

Jack knows exactly what Danny would have looked like, knowing he was headed off to play in some ruins out from under the watchful eye of the United States Air Force (and a certain hard-assed Colonel). A part of him that he is trying hard not to acknowledge is a little hurt that his lover hadn’t even called, to share that joy and excitement with him. 

A much bigger part of him is extremely worried, because he doesn’t know of a single mission involving the Tok’ra even peripherally that hasn’t gone sideways, and Honduras isn’t exactly a safe tourist attraction either. Doctor Daniel Jackson could get into trouble anywhere, much less the jungles of South America, and Bill Lee is not exactly the backup he would have chosen to send along. Gradually he becomes aware that he’s glaring at Sam, the tension rising, and his worry is doing that thing where it transposes into anger instead. 

God, he’s a broken record. He knows exactly why Daniel hadn’t called him, and that’s it, right there. The last time they had a conversation like that, he’d told Daniel he didn’t trust him and nailed the lid shut on the coffin of their pre-ascension relationship. If he was Danny, he wouldn’t have trusted Jack with this either. 

Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he runs a hand over his face and stops glaring at Sam. Maybe if he hangs around the General’s office at the right time, he can take Daniel’s next call and convince his archaeologist he’s not as mad as Daniel is clearly expecting him to be. But in the meantime, he has to get his head in the game and make sure Bra’tac and Jacob don’t convince the rest of SG-1 to do something foolish in pursuit of these super-Jaffa. “Okay, Major, I haven’t checked in with the General yet, and it sounds like you are ready to go talk to him about this science stuff too. Run me through the plan again on the way.”

He doesn’t have a lot of time to worry about Daniel over the next twelve hours or so, because the super-soldier proves rather difficult to capture. It isn’t until they’ve dragged it back to the Mountain, gotten Reynolds settled with Janet, and he’s left the creepy half-formed Goa’uld to Jacob and Sam’s tender mercies that he has a free minute to track down Hammond. When the General reluctantly admits that Daniel is now six hours overdue, Jack gets that prickle of unease down the back of his neck. 

It’s stupid. Probably, Daniel just got caught up in the thrill of his dig and forgot to check-in. He’ll be sheepish and sorry about it when he calls in next, Jack can justifiably yell a little bit, and then spoil him when he gets back by letting him talk about Mayan ruins for a week. 

It’ll be fine.

Silence fills the little hut as the man outside thunks the bar down across the door, and Daniel waits until he hears footsteps retreating before turning to look at Bill again. It’s safe to assume that there is still a guard posted outside the door, but since their captor has been speaking to his people in Spanish, Daniel is guessing most of them don’t speak a lot of English, and they’re probably free to talk about anything they’d normally be free to talk about off-base. Non-classified things. 

“You okay?” He levers himself up to face the engineer. The rebels hadn’t seemed all that interested in roughing them up, but he’d heard Bill take at least two falls in the jungle before they arrived. “Bill?” he adds, a little sharper, when the man doesn’t respond at first. It seems to shake him from his daze, and he looks up into Daniel’s face.

“Uh, yeah. Fine,” the man starts out strong but then he gives a slightly hysterical giggle. “I mean, we’re fine, right? What could possibly be wrong? We’ve been kidnapped by some rebel militia and nobody knows where we are. It’s fine.”

Standing, Daniel presses his shoulder to the wall so he can get a view of the horizon between the tattered slats of wood, and tries to wrap his tired mind around some quick calculations about geography and time zones. “Look, this is one of those few times where being part of a military operation is going to work in our favor,” he jokes as he sits back down, but by the way Bill is staring at him, it falls flat. “We’ve definitely missed at least one check-in with the General. I was cutting it close before we went in the shaft, and I knew it. He’ll give us a couple of hours of leeway and then he’ll put the wheels in motion. When we’re not any of the places we’re supposed to be in town, they’ll send someone to check the ruins. As soon as they find our stuff at the site and we’re not there, they’ll send in the cavalry.”

It’s easy to keep his voice light and upbeat like he’s not particularly worried. He leaves out what they’re both thinking - that their guide is dead already - and hopes that maybe Bill is a little in the dark about the US government’s relationship with the various South American governments that might delay a search and rescue team from being deployed. Daniel knows in his bones that Jack will come anyway (no matter what) but it could be another day before his partner even knows he’s missing, and if the government says they can’t come, that would slow Jack down considerably. 

I should have called Jack, he thinks miserably as he slides back down to sit beside Bill. He’s starting to feel his own aches and bruises, and he’s very aware it’s not going to get better. It wouldn’t have killed us to take the damn military escort he would have insisted on. If Daniel hadn’t been so impatient to leave, that escort might have even been Jack, and then they probably wouldn’t be in this situation. 

They’re left to stew in their thoughts for an entire day, and most of another day. It’s a common tactic, letting your subjects get hungry and thirsty and exhausted, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. That’s the thing about torture and interrogation techniques - often, you don’t have to be particularly creative. Just cruel.

He spends the first day trying to keep Bill’s spirits up, but by day two the engineer is morose and lethargic, and he gives it up as a lost cause. Instead, he devotes a good portion of his day trying to map the rebel camp; the hut is poorly built and Daniel thinks he could break them out, but it wouldn’t do any good if they just get shot trying to escape. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a good view of portions of the encampment and he can’t get a good headcount of men either. There are at least six, but he gets the feeling more men are coming and going.  No, it doesn’t look like running is a good first choice. They need to give the Air Force time to find them. 

What Daniel is dreading, that doesn’t seem to have occurred to Bill at all, is that starvation isn’t likely to be the rebels’ only course of action. Raphael had made it clear he wanted information - and neither of them had been forthcoming. Of course, even if they tell the man the truth, he’s going to think they’re lying. 

Looking over at his companion who has laid down on the ground and seems to be staring sightlessly at the roof, Daniel almost wishes Bill would lose consciousness. He’s a wild card; the archaeologist has no clue what kind of fortitude he might have under pressure, and he’s not sure he wants to find out. 

Finally, they come. When he hears the voices outside the hut and the bar scrape against wood as it is raised, Daniel scrambles to his feet to make sure they grab him first. It works, and he stumbles out into the bright light with their angry hands pushing at him. He feigns more clumsiness and disorientation than he’s truly feeling, so he can get as good a look at the campsite as possible. They’ve done a fairly good job of clearing land for their base, but his heart jumps when he gets a glimpse of how close the back of the hut is to the jungle. If push comes to shove, he thinks they could sprint that distance. 

The men shove him into a chair in a new building, and despite his best efforts, the first thing that gets Daniel’s full attention is the food and water on the table. His stomach cramps painfully just at the sight. Raphael steps forward from the dim corner to pour himself a cup of water, messily spilling some and smirking as if he knows that Daniel’s mouth is trying in vain to produce saliva in response. 

“You've not had water or food for two days,” the man says conversationally, putting down the cup and selecting a piece of pineapple instead. Daniel looks away, but there’s no disguising the familiar sound of the juicy liquid being bitten into. “Ahh. Hmm. Muy delicioso. Pick of the season. This is very good. Today, we're going to start slow. I'm going to ask you, again…” he turns, and his movement makes Daniel slit his eyes open as the man sweeps a cloth off of the Telchak device on the table. “What is this?”

He can’t answer that question. He shouldn’t answer any of the questions. Daniel takes a steadying breath and looks away from the artifact.

“And this is the part where you do not talk. Okay,” Raphael takes another teasing bite of his yellow fruit, the juice dripping down his fingers, and then waves it in front of Daniel’s face. “Hmm? For you…” a sadistic glint in his eyes, he touches the piece of fruit to Daniel’s lips and then draws it away. Daniel pinches his own hand, in the tender webbing between his fingers, to keep from licking his lips but he can’t help the way his eyes follow the fruit. “And your friend, if you tell me what this is. I don't know how long someone can go without food, but I believe the human body needs water every three or four days.”

We’ll live longer than that, Daniel’s brain supplies unhelpfully, but we won’t be in any shape to make an escape attempt much past today or tomorrow. The heat of the jungle is unhelpful but at least it’s a moist heat - it could be worse. It could be the dry heat of the desert dehydrating them even faster. The man takes another noisy drink of water, and Daniel’s stomach roils and he shivers involuntarily. What if the extraction team is counting on them being able to help in their rescue?

What if there isn’t a rescue team on the way? No! He shuts that thought down hard and refocuses on the here and now. They can’t afford to think that way. But they really, really need water - so he breaks his silence, hoping he can convince this man that they’re just nothing and no one. 

“It's an ancient artifact.” he offers quietly, his voice hoarse and dry.

“An artifact?” The man sounds puzzled, as if that wasn’t a clear statement. Even now, Daniel finds that annoying.

“Yeah. I'm an archaeologist, that's what I do. I look for…artifacts.” The best lies are built on truths, Jack had always said. Keep it as simple as you can. Well, he can’t talk about the Stargate, but funnily enough, it was his documented profession that had him down here in South America. Daniel laughs, nervously, trying to put on the air of a frightened academic. “And now, uh, found one. Seriously, I'm an archaeologist. You guys can look me up on the internet if you want.” He works to channel Jack at his most flippant, straining to look around at the men who had escorted him here. “You have a computer?”

Let them try to find him online. Then maybe they’ll believe he’s crazy and not worth their time, and let them go. Yeah right, tell yourself another fat one, Daniel.

“It all makes perfect sense. You're nothing more than an archaeologist, and you find and study artifacts.” Raphael repeats, sounding very earnest.

Daniel matches his tone and nods. “Makes perfect sense.”

“Mmm,” the man hums, unconvinced. “I'm going to ask you one last time. What is this?” He rests a hand on the device, making Daniel’s stomach flip, and then his eyes harden. “And again, you're not so talkative. What gives you the right to come into our country and steal valuable artifacts? You call yourself a scientist? You're nothing but a thief. And you think you're better than me. But I have reasons for what I do.”

For the first time, he sounds like someone who kidnaps and murders random explorers, and the look on his face makes Daniel’s heart start to speed up. Placatingly, he says, “I don't doubt that.”

“Chalo,” Raphael snaps, the same name he’d called out to shoot their guide. Every muscle in Daniel’s body tightens and he can feel his heartbeat kick up another notch, tensed for a blow, but the man steps from behind him to the other side of the hut and uncovers something in the corner. It’s an indistinguishable mass of wires and cables for a moment, but Daniel makes out the shape of a battery underneath the mess just as the man takes the two alligator clips and rubs them together, the sparks crackling in the silence of the tent.

He flinches. He’s been tortured before, but something about the sheer...earthiness of this torture method terrifies him. This is some alien pain stick or unfamiliar weapon, it’s like a bad mafia movie where the plot fails so miserably the directors get all their thrills off of torturing the audience’s favorite character in some gruesome way that feels believable because you could do it in your garage. 

“And here's something else you should not doubt, compadre.” Raphael leans into Daniel’s space, his breath and body reeking.  “You will tell me what I want to know.”

God, Jack, please hurry. He closes his eyes and says a little prayer to anyone who might be listening. Please hurry. Now would be good.

It was almost a relief to hear that Daniel had been kidnapped, if only because the uncertain tension in his gut can now be funneled into starting to make plans. He’s already packed before Hammond gives him the go-ahead because there wasn’t a chance in hell he wasn’t going. It’s good to have the backing of the Air Force, but he could have done without the complication of the CIA, and in particular his history with Burke, but he is willing to utilize both as tools to get to Daniel. 

Going after Daniel means leaving Carter to command the mission to Tartarus, so she is his one stop before he heads to catch his plane. If it were any other mission he’d be all about Sam’s first command; God knows she’s more than ready. His reservation lies in the fact that it’s a joint mission with the Tok’ra and the Jaffa. Bra’tac is the definition of a good soldier, but he’s also an ancient being compared to the Tau’ri and despite the respect in the Jaffa culture for their women, Jack has noticed one thing they aren’t is field commanders. And on top of that, she’ll have Jacob and Selmak. It would be bad enough if it was just her dad, who outranked her in the Airforce, but add in an even more ancient being in Selmak and the trouble Tok’ra tend to bring...he just wouldn’t have picked this for his protege’s first real command. 

But it’s not like they have a choice. Someone has to go rescue Daniel. Sam wouldn’t want him to do anything differently, and so he just has to trust that she is prepared. They wish each other luck and he gets on his way.

As he boards the C-130, an airman hands him a thick folder, which proves to hold a set of reports on everything from Daniel’s mission details to the political situation in Honduras to information about how to hire local guides to find Mayan ruins. The efficiency and thoroughness of the report has Walter’s fingerprints all over it, and Jack settles in to learn everything he needs to know even as he wonders if Daniel knows how many people in the SGC would go to bat for him on any given day. 

Burke is an unwelcome reminder that the old Jack O’Neill isn’t necessarily someone the new Jack O’Neill can always be proud of. Their first encounter lasts less than fifteen minutes, a tense and uncomfortable fifteen minutes, before the man gets up and walks away. Inwardly, Jack curses at himself. No, he doesn’t trust Burke, but the man does know this territory better than Jack, and what if this isn’t a one-man extraction? If he finds Daniel and Doctor Lee and can’t get them out by himself, he’s going to have to waste precious time trying to get more backup in place. But by the time he swallows his pride, his old service buddy is long gone. 

He’s physically closer to Daniel than he has been in days, but the distance has never felt more insurmountable.

Absolutely everything hurts. They have to drag him back to the hut because Daniel’s body simply isn’t cooperating. There’s an ugly buzz in the back of his head and his eyes aren’t focusing right, though he wonders vaguely if that’s the missing glasses or effects of the torture. The human body wasn’t meant to endure any of the methods Raphael employed over the last several hours, and even Daniel’s ability to dissociate had only done so much good. He’d passed a good few hours imagining himself into his and Jack’s bed at home, but when dream-Jack started doing the things Raphael was doing to him in real life, he’d given up on that tactic. 

Was that when he’d started screaming? Raphael had liked that. 

His skin is on fire. Or is that what’s underneath his skin? He can’t tell.

If there was anything left in his stomach, he’d vomit. That’s a backhanded blessing, because he would probably choke on his own fluids. He can’t turn his head to see what’s going on. Bill’s yelling, but when Daniel tries to move his body just doesn’t answer his demand. 

For a long time, all he can think is...nothing. The pain is all there is. 

Sometime later when he manages to drag himself upright and out of the stupor of pain, he lets his head fall on his arms, braced on his knees, and breathes. He’s never felt farther from achieving kelno’reem, but it does nevertheless have a steadying effect. Jack, he thinks miserably, now would be really good. If it takes you much longer I don’t know what you’re going to be rescuing. 

When the door opens again, they drop Bill in the same place they’d dropped Daniel. Keeping a wary eye on where the rebels are until they get out of the shack, he crawls over and does a quick once-over of his companion. To his relief, they don’t seem to have worked the engineer over as thoroughly as they had Daniel...maybe he pissed them off less. 

“I never thought I would die like this,” the man mumbles, closing his eyes and looking like he’s totally given up. That won’t work - Daniel needs him to be all in if they do get a chance to escape.

He lifts the cleanest cloth he can find to clean a wound on the other man’s face, judging it’s depth and severity. “Ah, you're not dead yet.” Daniel should know, he’s been dead several times. 

“I'm sorry, Daniel. I couldn't take it.” There’s no point in telling Bill the whole point of torture is for him not to be able to take it, but Daniel is at a loss for other words. “I told them.”

“What?” It takes him a minute to wrap his head around that, because Lee is still breathing. If he told this psychopath they were searching for an alien device to take through their space portals, he would have expected the man to just straight up shoot him in pique. “What'd you tell them?”

But, well, trust them to get kidnapped by the one rebel mafia who for some reason believe the most outlandish story they’re told, instead of the more logical ones Daniel had tried. Bill confirms that when he mutters, “Everything.”

God. Now what? It complicates Daniel’s fledgling escape plans because they really can’t leave the device here if the man knows what it is, or thinks he does - it would be too easy for it to fall into the wrong hands before they can get a team back here to retrieve it. He heaves a heavy sigh, resigned, and does what he can for Bill medically. The engineer’s compliance earns them some water, delivered a half-hour later by some henchman. It’s desperately needed, though not enough by any stretch of the imagination.

Daniel takes note that it doesn’t come with pineapple. Apparently, Daniel’s reticence had lost them that opportunity. He supposes he’ll have to convince Bill again this afternoon that eating bugs is better than starving. The worms are even a little juicy. 

Yeah, it turns his stomach too, but so does dying of starvation. He’s eaten worse. 

Before he gets around to making the opening salvo in that argument again, the rebels come back for him. His stomach drops in real fear this time as they drag him along - if Bill told them everything, Rafael probably wants to torture Daniel to confirm the information. But Daniel can’t risk that, in case he says something Bill didn’t already.

Which means he’s just going to be tortured again. 

They shove him back down in the same wooden chair, this time securing him to it with zip-ties. He guesses they got tired of picking him up and putting him back in the chair last time when his involuntary twitching and convulsions sent him sprawling. Rafael starts off easy - he punches him a few times, slaps his face. Whatever he wants, this time he wants it badly enough to leave Daniel coherent. 

He wonders how long that will last before the man is too angered by Daniel’s responses to care if he gets coherent answers. On the tail of an open-handed strike to Daniel’s face, he demands, “If you value the life of your friend, you will tell me what I want to know!” Tasting copper, Daniel spits blood. He needs to stop bleeding - it’s just wasting liquid he needs to keep inside his body. “Your friend told me this device may be the origin of the Fountain of Youth myth.”

That’s harmless. Anyone who read up about the temple they’d visited, though it was obscure, would get that reference. Daniel tentatively agrees, “Yeah, it may be.”

“How does it work?”

That is not a safe question, though his answer is honest when he says, “I don't know.” Rafael raises his fist, poised to strike, and Daniel just yells the first thing that comes to mind. He wants this man to stop hitting him. He needs his head to stop ringing and to be able to think clearly, not have a concussion on top of everything else. He shouldn’t have gotten frustrated with Bill for breaking. “Look, you grabbed us five minutes after we found it!” That must ring true enough, because the fist doesn’t connect. 

“Who is this Telchak?” 

“He's a mythological figure, a Mayan god that may or may not have lived here thousands of years ago.” Daniel sends silent thanks for questions that are safe to answer that make him seem more cooperative.  And so it continues, some of his answers earning him a blow or a kick, others passing muster, until the rebel leans in and grabs Daniel’s chin in one hand and growls.

“I do not think it is so harmful. I have never in my life felt as strong as I do right now.” He swings around and pulls a cloth off of the cube, which is glowing. It’s humming a little, too, which Daniel had thought was a sound in his head but can now attribute to the device.

“You turned it on?” How had he figured out how to turn it on? Sheer dumb luck? What are the chances, that an evil villain stumbles across just the right combination of buttons to turn on the insanely powerful alien device? Sometimes, Daniel hates the universe. 

“Yes.” the man agrees, sounding adoring as he stares down at it. 

“Turn it off,” Daniel pleads. “You don't know what you're dealing with. The effects of the device may be unstable. It's very dangerous. Look, it's beyond our comprehension! Turn it off.”

“You're lying.”

One of the men speaks up from behind them - in English, so probably someone pretty highly ranked, not some farmer talked into being a foot soldier. “What if he isn't? The device is cursed, Raphael; we should turn it off.” 

“Turn it off? Do you not feel different, as well?” Daniel recognizes the look on Rafael’s face from the mirror when he had been in withdrawal from the sarcophagus; apparently, it not only has the same effects but also works faster. He goes very still in his chair, unwilling to challenge the man further, tied up without any weapons. However dangerous the man already was, it’s tenfold now. His henchman doesn’t have the same inside knowledge, or caution. He speaks up again.

“I do, and it scares me. Por favor, Raphael, if you will not turn it off, I will.”

Rafael shoots him, with no hesitation. Adrenaline kicking in, Daniel keeps his eyes lowered and struggles not to panic. Forget recovering the device, he and Bill need to get the hell out of Dodge. Now.

One man covers the body, and on Rafael’s signal as he rubs his face, scowling, they cut Daniel’s bonds and drag him unceremoniously across camp back to the hut. As soon as the door closes, he stumbles across the floor and falls to his knees at the weak spot he’d already identified where several boards have started to come loose. He pulls off his belt and one of his boots, creating a makeshift leverage device.

“Uh, Daniel?” Bill slides over, looking at him like he’s gone nuts. 

“Time to go,” he interrupts whatever else the man was going to say. 

“Shouldn't we at least wait till night time?” Bill queries again. Daniel doesn’t have the energy to explain why going into the jungle at night with no weapons or supplies is an awful idea, so he keeps cranking his winch tighter. 

“I don't think we have that long.”

“We won't get a hundred yards before they kill us.”

“Yeah, if we stay, they'll definitely kill us.” The board creaks against its nails. “I saw the short-term effects of that device. I know what a sarcophagus does to a person's sanity, and this is far more powerful. I don't think we want to stick around to find out what long-term exposure does.” The first plank finally pops free at the bottom, and then falls in towards them. He tosses it aside and grabs the next one, able now to get a good hold and the right angle to loosen it as well, pulling it away from the wall. The space still isn’t big enough.

Machine gun echoes through the camp. Spurred on to new urgency, he pulls one more plank away from the frame, leaving just enough room for them to squeeze out of the hole. Nobody is watching them run the fifty feet to cover of deep grasses, because all eyes are on the man with the gun - the man who was dead not thirty minutes ago, as he fires on his own people. 

“That's not good,” he can’t help but observe, and then they start running. They don’t have a great head start, their white shirts make them easy targets, and neither one of them are in any shape to be running. Every dozen feet, they have to change course again to narrowly avoid being shot. The sound of Bill crashing along behind him suddenly stops, and Daniel cusses the other man out in his head as he turns back. Bill is leaning against a tree, panting hard. 

“Bill, you gotta keep moving!” Daniel demands, grabbing the other man’s arm and swinging him around as machine gun fire rips apart the three he was holding a millisecond ago. That motivates the engineer for a minute and they’re off again, moving rapidly. The next time, Bill just falls, clutching his side, not helping at all when Daniel tugs him upright. 

“I can't, I can't breathe!”

“Yes you can,” he growls it, trying to imbue it with his best commanding-officer-colonel-Jack-O’Neill voice. He’s not leaving this man behind now. They’re too close to freedom. “Come on!”

“I can't. Daniel, I can't.” Bill isn’t getting enough air into his lungs even to speak. Daniel can’t carry him. Plan C, then. 

“Okay, okay.” he shoves the engineer down behind a big tree, glancing back to make sure their pursuers didn’t see him do it. “Stay there. I'll draw them off!” His lungs ache, he’s still dizzy and nauseous, but he has Jack and Teal’c breathing down his neck about his fitness regularly, and his body obeys him when he starts running again. He can run until he passes out - he would swear he almost did the last time Teal’c was displeased with him - unless they shoot him first.

It takes them a couple of hours to hike out to the place where Daniel and Doctor Lee’s GPS locators have been unmoving since before Daniel missed his check-in. His guide is convinced there’s nothing out here, and Jack isn’t sure he’s wrong - there may be nothing except  GPS locators, but he has no other leads and no real information on the ground without Burke. 

Burke, who seems to have had a change of heart. Jack watches him, trying to assess whether he’s being truthful. Despite his illogical and frankly crazy sound rambling, the man had come to find him to offer his help even though Jack had belittled him today as well as (in his mind), abandoning him all those years ago. And, well, the crazy isn’t exactly new. He might be less sane than he was when they were kids, but he was never quite all there. 

It had never prevented him from being a loyal teammate. 

“I'll take you where you need to go,” he insists.

“For old times' sake?” Jack watches his reaction closely and is surprised when the other man drops his gaze for a minute, only briefly glancing up as he responds. 

“You know, I took an emotional inventory, and I realized that I have some issues.” That, Jack thinks uncharitably, is an understatement. “Thought maybe we can put our petty differences aside on this one. You're gonna need me when this one goes down, buddy. Come on, give me a chance. I won't let you down.”

He’s gotten better at second chances. Needing them himself has taught him a thing or two. He makes the decision, and turns and sends Pedro away. He needed the guide when it was just him, but with Burke along the civilian would just be a liability. 

Suddenly cheerful again, all signs of sincerity and remorse wiped from his face, Burke starts up a ridiculous comedy routine as they start to hike. It has the potential to be irritating, but instead, Jack finds the familiarity settling over him like a second skin, along with something akin to faint fondness. It may have been twenty years, give or take, but the strange relationships formed between soldiers in a unit are a lasting force. Daniel could probably rattle off some facts and statistics about emotional attachments formed in high-stress situations, about PTSD, about God-knows-what, but Jack is just left to trust his gut and hope it hasn’t steered him wrong in this case. 

They hike along some path that seems to be indicated mostly in Burke’s scary brain (and man, is that not a place Jack ever wants to be), alternating between the CIA agent’s bizarre humor, thoughtful silences, and Burke dropping random bits of information he thinks might be relevant to the mission. It’s in the middle of one of those that something makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he signals for a stop. 

There’s a body lying in the undergrowth, not moving. Jack leans down to double-check his pulse, and when the young man turns his head and mumbles “I’ve been shot,”, honestly Jack and Burke almost shoot him again. After a second of recovery, they come back in close, and he tries to roll him over to check the wound, where he can see blood seeping up the man’s shirt. 

Man? He’s not much more than a boy, and he cries out as Jack tries to move him, so the colonel gives up, agreeing, “You have been shot.”

“Si.” The kid says agreeably, and Jack wonders if he’s going to have to deal with two mentally unstable companions. Though this one has the excuse of being injured. 

“Air rescue should be here in about an hour,” Burke says, which is the first helpful thing he’s said all day. 

“Well, I've been lying here for days. What's another hour?”

That’s the spirit, kid, Jack thinks and has to bite back a smile as he asks, “Who did this?”, shifting to get out of the way so Burke can cut the zip ties binding his hands. 

“Banditos, banditos,” he says and then mutters, “que mueran del dolor del culo.” 

Jack understands the sentiment, but he needs the kid to focus. “All right, all right. We're looking for two scientists.”

As luck would have it, the kid was the guide Daniel had hired. They reluctantly leave him since Burke promises medical help is on the way, and Jack finds himself reinvigorated for the hike. If they’d been on foot when they kidnapped the doctors and were still traveling on foot when the guide was shot, they have to be close. 

They hike on, and after a few minutes, Burke brings the topic back to himself. Jack tries to shut him down, to divert him, but he really seems determined to make Jack understand something that Jack thought he understood long ago. Now seems like a terrible time to dredge up the past, in his mind. Finally, the man just flat out demands, “You don't want to know the truth? I mean, come on, you really don't want to know?”

Jack stops, frustrated, and they face each other. He doesn’t have the emotional energy to deal with this while he’s worrying about Daniel, but Burke just isn’t going to let it go. 

“Man, it wasn't my fault.” There’s honest pain in the agent’s voice, and it makes Jack stop and listen. “I mean, I didn't choose, I just reacted. It stinks, the whole damn thing stinks. You want to know what really happened? Fine, I'll tell you. Woods was ghosting us. He sold out; he was, he was no good. He was sending out a rogue transmission; he was giving our position away. Woods realized that I was on to him, and he turned his weapon on me. And I just, I just reacted.”

That changes everything. Damn it, I don’t have time to unpack this. They needed to keep moving. Still, the fact that he may have condemned his friend for killing someone else in friendly fire if that wasn’t what happened....he can already feel the nightmares this is going to produce. “Why didn't you come forward with this?

“Come on man, you remember how close we were. The wives and the beers and the barbecues. I couldn't do that to Cindy. It comes out Woods was a traitor, she doesn't see a penny of that pension, a month away from his retirement. Woods wasn't gonna retire. He was setting himself up as a mercenary for that warlord. He made his choice. He's gone, that's all that matters.”

Jack can’t say anything, and the other man walks away. 

Shit.

He follows in silence for some time. Gradually the frosty feeling subsides, and he knows that they’re back on an even keel - or the closest the two of them can get, with that bombshell hanging over them - when Burke stops and offers him some gum silently. He’s always been a guy who gets hot, feels his feelings, and then gets over them. And he can probably sense that a big part of Jack believes him. It makes more sense than the original lie ever did. Jack’s considering saying something to that effect, just to get it out in the open between them, when gunfire rips apart the peaceful jungle around them. 

Without exchanging words, they start running towards it, Burke yielding to his nonverbal commands without any hesitation at all, as if they served together yesterday. The shooting is sporadic, and he has to pause to listen sometimes, but they’re catching up to it. A long burst sounds right on top of him, and he puts on another burst of speed. 

There are three men, all standing over Daniel, who is crouched at the base of a tree, cowering to protect his face. One of them lifts a machete into the air and snarls, “I'm going to skin you alive!” With only enough care to make sure there are no stray bullets to whizz past and hit Daniel, Jack kills them with no remorse. As soon as they’ve fallen, he darts forward and makes sure they’re going to stay down. 

“How many more are there?” he looks up from the bodies. His partner is open-mouthed, wide-eyed, and clutching a large rock in his hand, clearly ready to take on his pursuers with the last available weapon. Jack doesn’t doubt that that would have included his fingernails if that’s what it came to. But he doesn’t respond to Jack’s question.  C’mon, Daniel, stay with me. He moves over to his archaeologist, smacking his shoulder to get his attention. “Daniel!”

“That's it. You got 'em all.” He’s still brandishing his rock, blinking like he’s uncertain if Jack’s real. “What are you doing here?”

God, Danny. Jack just stares at him, hoping that doesn’t mean Daniel didn’t think he was coming. If that’s the case, their relationship maybe isn’t as much on the mend as Jack thought it was. Daniel looks at the rock as if he’s never seen it before, either, much less picked it up, and then tosses it to the side. “I’m here to get an update. Hammond says you missed a check-in,” he tries for humor, voice teasing, but he just gets the same wide-eyed stare, so he tries again. “Oh for cryin’ out loud, Danny, I’m here for you. As if there was ever any doubt.”

“Oh. I, um,” Daniel reaches out and pats his arm a few times. “Are you real? I was maybe hallucinating last night, you weren’t real.”

“Yeah, I’m real, kid,” he touches the side of Daniel’s face, just a moment because he can’t keep his hands totally to himself. “We’re gonna go home. Focus. Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay, um,” the younger man licks his lips, grimacing. “They shot me,”

“That’s not ‘okay’, Daniel, how many times do we have to talk about this?” In contrast to his hissed complaint, he keeps his hands as gentle as possible as he moves Daniel until he can see where the bullet tore into his leg. No exit wound, which means it’s still in there. “Okay, I’m gonna wrap this up, okay? We got anything else to worry about?”

While he digs a cleanish bandana out of his pocket to triage the bullet wound, he listens to Daniel’s wandering and hazy chorus of complaints with some serious concerns. “Hit my head, a few times,” something that’s almost a giggle, which is totally out of place. “Gotta concussion. Super dehydrated, maybe heat stroke. Probably some burns, didn’t look. I think I sprained my ankle when I fell, but so sore all over, maybe I didn’t. Ow.” His recitation trails off into a little hiss of protest as Jack tightens his bandage. 

“You gonna be able to walk on this?”

“Yeah,” he grunts, and it’s the most coherent thing he’s said yet, but the least likely to be true. Jack starts to offer him a hand up, but ducks again when a bullet bites into the tree above them, just behind the loud report of a shotgun. The man wielding it cocks it again and starts towards them.

“Telchak's device re-animates dead tissue-” Daniel starts to say, but Jack doesn’t have time for an explanation about why the man walking towards them is riddled with bullet holes in the chest and still walking. He grabs Daniel’s arm and hauls him upright. 

“Yeah, whatever. Come on.” Maneuvering both of them to the far side of the tree, he props his archaeologist up against the wooden truck and leans out to shoot at the apparent zombie. He strikes true, but the bullets barely have any effect. Burke appears on the far side of the clearing. 

“Hey, get down!”

Jack ducks and the grenade launcher does the trick. The zombie-man seems to disintegrate. Burke kicks through the dust in confirmation as he wanders their direction, and Jack turns around to get Daniel back on his feet. He’d fallen down pretty much as soon as Jack let go, making his claim of being able to walk on his injured leg most likely a lie. He’s able to free one arm to support Daniel, now that Burke is here to help with the shooting, so he hobbles his very disoriented lover out to meet their backup.

“What's with the guy from Evil Dead?”

“Um…” Jack doesn’t have an answer, even if he knew what Burke was read in to and what he wasn’t. He glances over at Daniel, who just grimaces again.

“Classified?” Burke asks, giving him an easy out. 

“Yeah.”

“You guys are into some crazy crap, man!” his old friend dissolves into maniacal giggles, getting an alarmed look from Daniel, and Jack just sighs.

They pick Bill Lee up from his hiding place while they hobble back to the rebel camp. Jack wants Daniel off his leg as soon as possible, but he has to hold his breath and his patience until the scientists get the device turned off. After that, nothing could have stopped him from hustling Daniel into the waiting air rescue helicopter. The medic starts both of the scientists on fluids immediately and treats their scrapes, bruises, cuts, and burns while they wing their way across the sky towards the Honduran base. 

Stubborn as ever, Daniel puts up a brief but spirited fight against getting the bullet removed before they board the plane to go home, arguing that the rest of the team might need them. Jack lets him argue for about five minutes, watching him get less coherent and less stable minute by minute, listing side to side and catching himself only just before falling off the gurney. One of the times he is looking at Jack and nearly falling over, banging his elbow to catch himself, Jack meets a nurse’s eyes over his head and gives a short little nod, and she jabs him with a tiny syringe. It’s a statement to how out of it he already is that he doesn’t notice, just righting himself and batting them away again. “I’ll be fine! We need to get back to Sam and Teal’c. Jack, I’m fine.”

When he fails to catch himself entirely and Jack has to step in and grab him to prevent a faceplant, he’s had enough. “Daniel,” he says in a flat voice, “shut up and let the damn doctors do their jobs. You’re not going anywhere until you do.”

The no-nonsense voice works, or at least it gets a very tired and slightly drugged Daniel to snap his mouth closed and stare up at Jack, looking a little hurt at the tone. The staring match only continues for a moment before the archaeologist starts to feel heavy in Jack’s arms. “Did you...did you tranq me?” he manages to splutter. Jack gentles his grip and lays his partner down on the gurney, risking sweeping his hand affectionately through Danny’s hair and down the back of his head counting on the medical team being too busy getting their stuff ready to notice or care how he touches the apparent civilian lying bruised and beaten in their infirmary. 

“Yeah, kid, they did. You’re making everyone’s job real hard here.” He lifts Daniel’s feet up and then pats his leg. “They’re gonna get the bullet out and check you over, and then we’re out of here. When you wake up we’ll probably be most of the way home. Go to sleep, Daniel.” Jack doesn’t walk away, holding Daniel’s desperate gaze, until those blue eyes do close. That’s when he lets himself sag as they wheel Daniel into makeshift surgery, rubbing his face. He needs to report to Hammond again with their ETA home, but first, he needs to sit down a minute. Or twenty. Maybe he can catch a quick nap. As long as he’s here when Daniel wakes up, everything else can handle itself. 

Daniel is quiet in the passenger seat, facing the window. 

For a week, Jack’s been attributing his partner’s uncharacteristic reticence to simple exhaustion. They’d arrived back to the Mountain with just enough time to grab quick showers and for Fraiser to put them both through another pretty exhaustive medical exam before Sam, Teal’c, Bra’tac, and Jacob had returned from their mission to Tartarus. Daniel had insisted he was ‘fine’ (Jack asked the General if he could issue a memo to the entire base defining that word, but he’d been shot down), so the General had kept them around for a couple of hours to debrief. Only after that was he able to drag Daniel home and pour him into bed - despite being ‘fine’, Daniel had slept for nearly 18 hours, woken up to have a meal, and then slept for another 8 hours. 

Jack, with Janet’s full support, had bullied Daniel into staying home another day after that, but on day three he’d been back to work and cleared as totally healthy, aside from the obvious healing bullet wound and other small injuries. That was nearly three days ago now. So physically, there’s no continued reason for Daniel to be still so withdrawn; which leaves a mental or emotional one, where the colonel is further out of his depth. 

He puts the truck in park and shuts off the ignition - but by the time he’s turned to the passenger seat, his lover is out of the truck and sliding through the front door, dropping his bag beside the shoes he’s toed off in the entryway. Without saying anything, he disappears down the hall. Not willing to let this go on anymore without challenging the status quo, Jack stalks after him, following him into the bedroom, where he’s pulling sweats and a t-shirt out of a drawer. Jack closes the door behind himself; experience has taught him that sometimes Daniel’s a runner, and having that tiny advantage has come in handy in the past.

Jack settles down on the edge of the bed and crosses his arms, watching him move around and change, intentionally letting the air get heavy around them. Finally, the atmosphere breaks into Daniel’s fugue and he looks up, locking eyes with the man on the bed. He blinks once, twice; frown wrinkles appear between his eyebrows, and then he slowly straightens. He’s only half changed, one of Jack’s t-shirts already shrugged over his head but his pants dangling from his fingers. 

“Jack?”

“What’s wrong, Daniel?”

The man actually huffs at him, as if it’s a ridiculous question, but doesn’t quite meet his eyes when he mutters, “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Daniel,” he returns, in a quiet and not particularly friendly drawl. If ‘nothing’ was wrong, he’d have his normal Daniel back. Not that Jack expects not to deal with a lot of nightmares and no small amount of PTSD in his partner from his experiences in Honduras, but these all-the-time low spirits is more than that.

“I’m fine,” Daniel asserts, turning away from Jack and stepping into the sweats and yanking them up. “What do you want for dinner?”

“How about we just agree to strike ‘fine’ from SG-1’s vocabulary entirely?” Jack suggests to the world at large. “I’ll let everyone else know tomorrow. Nobody’s using ‘fine’ when asked how they are, from this point onward. You’re not fine, Daniel, so talk to me.”

Slowly, the younger man turns around, making a long moment of eye contact again before he says again, slower as if Jack’s a particularly stupid cadet, “I’m fine. What do you want for dinner?”

Jack narrows his eyes a little and taps his fingers on his arm as he considers this response, gauging Daniel’s words against his intent. It seems to him that Daniel is looking for a particular response from him, and he’s just not sure what it is. He decides to try one more time for the easy way. He lowers and softens his voice, uncrossing his arms and leaning forward a little. “Let me help you, Danny. We’re not leaving this room until you talk to me.”

There is no mirroring in Daniel’s body language when Jack softens, which is unusual. Jack catches him twitching towards the bed for a millisecond before he stiffens, visibly coming to a decision, and goes for full-on belligerence.  “Make me,” he challenges, and then turns and walks towards the door. 

Fine. Jack sighs. Challenge accepted.

Colonel Jack O’Neill is a lifetime soldier, trained in special ops. Under his and Teal’c’s tutelage and years of the Stargate program, Daniel isn’t the graceful but undeveloped academic he used to be, but Jack still has the advantage. Maybe someday the age difference between them will give Daniel the upper hand, but that time hasn’t come either. He snags Daniel before he can reach the door, spinning him around and using momentum and a well-placed foot to knock his legs out from under him and drop him on his ass on the bed. He stays standing, ready to knock his ridiculous lover back onto the bed if he tries to get up, and scowls. “Talk.”

Daniel goes red, puffs up like he might try and get up to start the physical altercation Jack’s braced, stiff stance promises; he opens his mouth clearly intent on blasting Jack with hot words...and then he just deflates, dropping his gaze and shrinking into himself. “‘m sorry,” he whispers. 

Arching an eyebrow, feeling a little bit of whiplash, Jack doesn’t let himself soften yet. “For what?”

Arms creeping around himself, the archaeologist doesn’t look up. “It’s my fault. Bill got tortured, poor Rogelio got shot. All those men died. We almost lost the Telchak device.”

This should feel like progress, but honestly, the list baffles Jack. He’s pretty sure exactly zero of those things were Daniel’s fault. Frowning, he only manages to counter with a placating, “Daniel-” before the man’s head shoots up and he interrupts.

“It was my fault,” he insists. “I knew Bill and I should never have been in Honduras by ourselves. I know what South America is like. I knew it was a bad idea, which is why I didn’t call you either, so you couldn’t object. I just...I just really wanted it to feel normal. Like a dig and not a military operation. It was stupid and selfish.”

He always beats himself up more thoroughly than anyone else can. Jack should have recognized the guilt three days ago, but they’re out of practice. “Daniel,” he starts again, and this time when Daniel opens his mouth to object he gives a sharp shake of his head. “No, you had your turn. Hush.” Daniel shuts his mouth, though Jack’s word choice earns him a little bit of side-eye. Jack waits a minute to make sure he’s got Daniel’s full attention. 

“It might not have been your all-time best idea, but it wasn’t selfish. We all know what sacrifices you make for the program. Everyone is happy for you when you get to do the playing in the dirt thing. I do wish you would have called me. Yeah, I would have asked for you to wait so I could tag along, and leaving me a note instead was just plain mean. Clearly, we still have some work to do on the trust and communication fronts. But, the fact is the General had already approved you to go, so you were in the clear. Hammond is the one who dropped the ball there - I’m sure he was counting on the two of you with no prearranged plans, going to a remote place with no known ruins, would be inconspicuous enough to slide under the radar, and if it was anyone else’s luck we were playing with, it probably would have been.”

“You did all you could to protect the program and the Telchak device, and more than anyone could have expected. The guide being shot was his fault for running, and the fault of the men who shot him. The torture you and Bill had to endure was the rebels’ fault as well.” Jack pauses to harden his voice and point one finger at Daniel’s chest. “And those men who died were terrorists, Daniel, engaged in kidnapping and extortion. You’re not going to keep their deaths on your conscience.”

The man sitting on the bed still has his arms wrapped around his midsection, face averted, body language closed off. He doesn’t contradict Jack, but he doesn’t give up any of his tension either. When no response is forthcoming Jack prompts, “Daniel?”

All he gets in response is a tiny shake of the head, and he blows out a breath, knowing what his lover is pushing for. A part of him had hoped as the months stretched by that maybe Daniel’s need for absolution in this way might have been burned out of him when he ascended and then descended again, but the rest of him had known it was only a matter of time. It’s just intrinsically a part of Daniel, and he has vowed to love the man in all his parts. Before he ascended, they’d mostly moved past the need to do this song and dance beforehand, but he supposes he should have expected something of the sort for the first go-round in their second lifetime. 

“Daniel,” he says, “do you want me to spank you?” A comical grimace of distaste flashes across the other man’s face and Jack knows it’s in response to his use of the word ‘want’. Rolling his eyes, he modifies his question. “Do you need me to spank you?” Immediately, some of the tension melts off of Daniel’s body. He hadn’t wanted to ask, he’d just wanted Jack to know, like he used to. Jack was just a little slow on the uptake this time around. But they’re back on familiar footing now, and the colonel just wants it over with so he can have his Daniel back.

Reaching out, he guides Daniel to his feet and they swap places again. Once he’s seated on the edge of the bed, Jack pulls the unresisting man down across his knees, his upper body supported on the bed and his legs dangling off the other side of Jack’s lap. He only gets a quiet grumble of objection when he tugs Daniel’s pants and underwear down to mid-thigh, resting his right hand briefly on the bare bottom exposed over his knees as he makes sure he has his left arm wrapped securely around Daniel to hold him in place, left hand gripping Daniel’s hip. 

“After we do this, you’re gonna let it go. No more guilt.” Without waiting for a response, because Daniel’s probably way too far into his head to give one, he lifts his hand and lets it fall back down, a crisp smack on the left side. There’s already a blooming pink mark as he moves onto the other side and lands a matching swat, settling into a comfortable rhythm. His pattern is intentionally unpredictable, moving all over Daniel’s bottom and focused on raising a uniform color all over. He cups his hand so that each swat is more sound than impact; if Daniel’s been holding onto this for a whole week, he’s probably not going to release his guilt if the spanking is too short, but Jack doesn’t think his lover did anything wrong, so he doesn’t want to dole out a serious punishment. 

A few minutes into this strategy, as the light blush starts to deepen into a rouge pink, Daniel is still quiet, but his body is betraying him. He’s starting to squirm in Jack’s grasp, his legs twitching almost involuntarily; he’s reached his left hand back around Jack’s waist and taken a desperate grip of Jack’s shirt. When he hears the first little gasp of indrawn breath, Jack pauses and strokes his hand once down his boy’s back. “Let it go, Spacemonkey,” he murmurs in encouragement and then starts spanking again. 

His pattern stays erratic, falling on whatever part of Daniel’s butt that seems the palest at that moment, but he flattens his hand and increases his force a little, making each smack count a little more. Daniel only holds out for one or two circuits of loud swats before he opens his mouth, letting out a yelp or a whine each time Jack’s hand makes contact. Hard on the heels of the first yelps are sniffles, and Daniel’s butt is now looking distinctly red instead of pink. It’s warm under Jack’s palm, and as he listens to his partner’s little cries he thinks they are almost there. But if they don’t get all the way, Daniel won’t let himself feel absolved. Hardening his heart against the inevitable tears, Jack lifts his right leg to give himself better access to the most tender spots on the undercurve of the bottom and tops of the thighs, and tightens his grip on Daniel before bringing his hand down harder yet again, in sets of three. 

Three smacks to the very undercurve of Daniel’s left cheek, then three right where his butt meets his thigh, then three on the top of his thigh. Daniel gasps, cries out, and throws his free hand back; but it falls ineffectually over the top of his butt, not reaching to the tender area where Jack has focused his attention. He methodically places the same nine swats on the right side, hand unerringly finding its intended spot despite the way Daniel kicks desperately. He returns to the left side and starts again, and this time when he gets to swat four the man in his lap gives one last loud gasp, and by the time he’s landing the first of the second set of nine spanks on the right side, the archaeologist has dissolved into tears and gone limp over his knee. 

Jack quickly finishes his set and then starts rubbing Daniel’s back, hand warm against the skin where his shirt had ridden up around his chest where he was squirming around. He hums a little, waiting for the worst of the tears to abate before he starts up a soothing litany of endearments and reassurances. While Daniel is settling, he casts a critical look over his handiwork. Daniel’s butt is a uniform bright red, just a little deeper color on the lower half, but absolutely nothing that looks like it will bruise or even last overnight. He’s satisfied that he hasn’t lost his touch, though it’s certainly not on the list of skills he’s proudest of. 

When they’ve both had a second to catch their breath he slides backward, maneuvering both of them onto the bed so that he’s leaning up against the pillows at the head of the bed, Daniel sprawled across his chest, now silent tears soaking into Jack’s shirt. “Easy, Danny. Let it out, that’s it. Let it go. Everything’s okay.” Daniel only cries quietly for a minute, before he peters off into a boneless relaxed silence. 

Just when Jack is sure he’s fallen asleep, a wobbly “Ow,” floats up from where his face is still buried in Jack’s front. He can’t help but smile a little, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards, but he doesn’t say anything, just keeps on carding his hand through Daniel’s hair, fingertips massaging the scalp underneath. When Daniel lets out a huge sigh, he tugs gently on the hair entwined in his fingers until blue eyes lift to meet his, as Daniel shifts around to cross his arms on Jack’s chest so he can prop his chin on them and tilt his face up to Jack. 

“Feel better?”

“Yeah.” Daniel looks less wild, sated and loose-limbed instead of wound up like a jack in the box. When he voices an embarrassed apology this time, it’s with an air of actual closure, instead of frenzied guilt. “Sorry about the note, Jack. I do trust you, so it was stupid. I was caught up in the past.” 

“Thank you,” he accepts the apology because Daniel needs him to, but then brushes his hand over his lover’s damp cheek, wiping away some of the residual wetness. “Past me was an unforgivable jerk, Danny, so sometimes current me is going to pay for those mistakes. But I am always on your side. So maybe current Daniel can try to remind past Daniel that I learned some hard lessons the last time, before you let him take the steering wheel next time.”

He knows he took the imagery a touch too far when Daniel’s brow wrinkles in politely confused disbelief, but after Daniel just looks at him silently for a moment, he sighs and collapses back down across Jack. “Yeah,” he agrees, turning his head to rest over Jack’s heart, listening to his heartbeat. His breathing starts to slow, matching Jack’s, and his eyes start to droop. When the colonel reaches around and down to pull a blanket over the two of them, he does it carefully to avoid dislodging Daniel at all. 

He was thawing steaks, but maybe they’ll just order takeout. Later. Whenever Daniel wakes up.