Stargate SG1: Suffer the Little Children (5/19)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Suffer the Little Children
Chapter Five
Jack led Daniel down the corridor by the arm, mentally kicking himself in the head with every step they took. Why he'd thought that Daniel was recovered enough - from whatever he'd managed to do to himself the day before - to withstand questioning by an FBI agent of Michael Phillips' obvious experience was completely beyond him. Why Janet had ever agreed to let him go was even further beyond him, and he had half a mind to go down to the infirmary and give her a piece of it.
Daniel had seemed fine ... well, okay, mostly fine ... on the drive to the police station. He'd been quiet, but having what was obviously a doozy of a nightmare immediately before leaving the base could probably account for that. They'd talked a bit while they were waiting to be called into Phillips' temporary office, and Daniel had seemed to be coming back around. They were both still confused as to why the man wanted to question him so badly, and neither of them could come up with a single good reason why. Daniel had found the body, true, but he didn't know anything more than the rest of them did and, truth be told, because of his condition afterward, he probably remembered less.
Then Jack had been called in for his interview.
It had been short, fifteen minutes at the most. It consisted mainly of Phillips asking a bunch of questions that Jack didn't know the answers to, and Jack answering them with, "I don't know." It had been overly uninformative and ultimately pointless, as far as the gathering of facts went.
It did last long enough for Jack to decide that he didn't think he liked Agent Michael Phillips.
He couldn't put his finger on just what it was that he disliked, but something about the man raised the hairs on the back of his neck and set his teeth on edge. For one thing, the man seemed far too interested in Daniel, and that never set well with Jack. When people were interested in Daniel, bad things had a tendency to happen to him. A theory that he'd been kicking around on his own - without mentioning it to Daniel - was that they might be looking at Daniel as a suspect. Jack couldn't imagine much worse than an FBI agent getting it in his head that Daniel was capable of doing what had been done to that little girl in the park.
Except for what would happen to Daniel if said FBI agent actually told him that he thought that.
Phillips had walked Jack out to where Daniel was waiting, intent on collecting Daniel himself, and that struck Jack as odd. Why not send the secretary, liked he'd done with Jack? He was still mulling it over when Daniel had stood from his chair, turned almost completely white, and promptly fell back into it.
"Hey!" Jack had called to him, walking quickly to his side and placing a steadying hand on his arm. "You okay?"
"What?" Daniel blinked and looked up at Jack in confusion.
Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. "Are you okay?" he asked slowly.
Daniel blinked again and shook his head. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just ... I just stood up too fast. Just a head-rush, that's all."
Jack looked at him closely, trying to decide if Daniel was telling the truth or not. Given the events of the past twenty-four hours, he was inclined to think not. "Are you sure?" he pressed. "Because if you're not, if your head is hurting again, we are so ..."
"Daniel?"
The voice came from behind him, and Jack turned his head toward it. Phillips was overstepping his bounds by calling Daniel by his first name, Jack thought. He was opening his mouth to tell him so when he felt Daniel's hand grip the sleeve of his jacket tightly. He turned back around to see Daniel staring at the man, his eyes wide and what little color had been left in his cheeks gone.
"I only need to see you for a moment, Daniel. That's all."
Scratch the 'didn't think' part - Jack did not like Michael Phillips. At all.
"Hey," Jack said softly. He waited for Daniel to turn his head and focus his eyes on him before continuing. "Are you okay?" he repeated gently.
Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, they were clear and lucid again, and he flashed Jack a quick smile. "Yeah," he said. "Just a bit of vertigo. I'm fine."
Daniel removed his hand from Jack's sleeve and pushed himself to his feet again. Jack stood smoothly beside him. Just as Daniel started to step away, Jack touched his arm again. Daniel turned toward him once more, giving Jack one more look into his very alert eyes, and smiled again.
Jack nodded his head and sat down in the chair Daniel had just vacated. He watched the two men walk back toward Phillips' office, but as soon as they were out of sight he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall behind him. Jack was beginning to think that there was something seriously wrong with Daniel's head, something much more dangerous than a mild concussion, and he had a sick feeling in his stomach that things were only going to get worse.
When Phillips had brought him back forty-five minutes later, in the middle of a full-blown panic attack, Jack had jumped to his feet, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and led him straight to the door.
Jack had no real way of knowing what the agent had said, and Daniel wasn't saying anything about anything right now, but the "Don't let him leave town!" that Phillips had shouted after them had made Jack's blood boil. He wasn't really a betting man, but he'd give dollars to donuts that his theory had been correct. He was also willing to wager that Phillips, in his oh-so-infinite wisdom, had actually told Daniel that he was a suspect.
This day just kept getting better and better.
So now he was leading a nearly catatonic Daniel, one that hadn't said a single word since they'd left the police station, down the corridor toward the room he'd been assigned to until Janet released him.
They were attracting more than their fair share of attention from the personnel they passed, and Jack was grateful when they finally reached the door. He opened the door and led Daniel inside quickly, kicking it closed behind him. He turned Daniel around, pushed him backwards until he sat on the bed, and then stood, looking down at him.
Daniel sat limply on the bed, his shoulders slightly raised and his arms wrapped around his middle, and stared straight at the wall, unblinking.
The silence was beginning to make Jack nervous, so he decided to fill it.
"There we go, Daniel. All done." Jack ran his hand through his hair and turned away. "So now, I think you should probably just take your jacket off, and your boots, and go back to ..."
"I don't like my dreams."
The voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, and sounded so young that Jack thought he'd imagined it. He turned back toward Daniel slowly. Daniel hadn't moved; his blank expression was still firmly affixed to the wall. Jack was seriously beginning to think he'd imagined the quiet declaration.
"Did you say something?"
Daniel didn't answer, and Jack sighed. "You know, Daniel, if you don't start talking soon I'm going to have to go get ..."
"It isn't real."
Jack tilted his head and took a few steps forward. He turned one of the chairs to face the bed and sat down in it.
"What isn't real?" he asked, though he had a suspicion that Daniel might not actually be hearing him.
Daniel shrugged and turned his head slowly, until he was looking directly into Jack's eyes. Oh, Daniel was hearing him, all right. But from the look in those eyes, Jack did doubt that this was any Daniel that he knew. If the small voice and hesitant posture hadn't given it away already, the wide, frightened, far-too-innocent eyes staring back at him would have.
"What isn't real, Daniel?" Jack asked again, keeping his voice as soothing as possible. He debated with himself over whether to go get Fraiser or not, but he couldn't think of anything she could possibly do to help. Physically, there was nothing wrong with Daniel but a minor concussion.
"It's just a stupid dream. Jenny's told me that I shouldn't be afraid of dreams, because they're not real."
"Who's Jenny?" Jack hoped that the question sounded more curious to Daniel's ears than it did to his own.
Daniel simply shrugged again and turned away. "If it's just a dream, then it's not real," he explained. "And it can't be real, because if it's real, then that means it really happened."
Every alarm that could sound in Jack's head did so after that statement. He wanted to grab Daniel by the shoulders and shake him until he explained exactly what that meant, but he forced himself to settle for sitting farther forward on the chair.
"And what did happen, Daniel?"
Daniel shook his head, but didn't turn back toward Jack again. Keeping his eyes locked on the wall, Daniel whispered, "Nothing. Because it's all just a dream. Because it's not real. Because if it really happened, then I should have saved her."
Jack closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He was in way over his head with this one, but he was hesitant to involve anyone else. If there was one thing that Jack knew about Daniel it was that he was as leery of mental health professionals as Jack himself was, and if Mackenzie heard Daniel talking like he was right now ... No, Jack would do everything he could to keep things from going that far. He had a head injury, right? He was just confused, lost in some memories from his nightmare, and it was all because of that concussion.
It had to be.
Jack took a deep breath and tried once more. "Daniel, I still don't know what you're talking about. You really need to tell me."
Daniel blinked twice in rapid succession and turned his head slowly.
"Jack?"
Jack started in surprise and leaned farther forward. "There you are," he said with a small smile.
Daniel blinked again, and though his confusion was evident, Jack was glad to see that his posture had returned to one he'd expect to see on a thirty-year-old man.
"What?" Daniel asked. "Where was ... where am ... how did we get here?"
Jack stood and walked to the bed. "Wanna try one question at a time?" he asked as he sat down at Daniel's side.
Daniel closed his eyes and leaned forward, rubbing his forehead with his hand. "I'm really beginning to hate this waking up not knowing what's going on thing," he said.
"Waking up?" Jack asked. "Daniel, I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you weren't asleep."
"Yes, I was," Daniel argued. He opened his eyes, dropped his hands to his lap and turned his head slightly. "I fell asleep in the car. And now you wake me up, and we're in the mountain, in my room, and I don't remember how we got here."
"Um ... we walked," Jack said. "I'm telling you, you weren't asleep."
Daniel closed his eyes once more and let his head fall back. "Sleepwalking," he said simply. "God, I haven't done that since I was a little kid."
A little voice in the back of Jack's mind piped up, 'And when you do it, you act like one.', but he ignored it.
"Sleepwalking?" Jack asked. "When you were a kid?"
Daniel nodded. "Yeah. I woke up once in the middle of the street at three in the morning."
"How old were you?"
"Um ... ten, maybe? I don't remember what happened, or what I was dreaming about. I just remember waking up standing in the middle of the street."
Daniel yawned, and Jack took that as a cue to stand up.
"You know what, Daniel?" he said as he walked toward the door. "You've had a really rough couple of days. Why don't you go ahead and lay down and get some real sleep?"
Daniel lay back against the pillows and stretched out. "What for?" he asked. "So I can have another nightmare? Bite someone else? Or maybe wake up in the middle of the parking lot?"
Jack pulled the blanket up from the foot of the bed and draped it across Daniel's legs. "I can't do anything about the dreams, Daniel, but I do guarantee you that those last two things will not happen."
Daniel nodded and rolled onto his side, burying his head deeply in the pillow. Just as Jack reached for the doorknob, Daniel called out softly.
"Jack?"
Jack turned slightly. "Yeah?"
"What is wrong with me?"
"You hit your head, Daniel," Jack answered without hesitation. "You just hit you head."
Jack opened the door and stepped into the hallway. As he set out to find Teal'c - to make certain that no one went into Daniel's room while he was sleeping and that Daniel didn't come out until he was completely awake - he knew that his last statement had been a lie.
Something was going on with Daniel, something that had nothing to do with the bump on his head, and Jack had every intention of finding out just exactly what that something was.
If he could only figure out where to start looking.
"Tell me something, Carter," Jack said as he walked into Sam's office unannounced.
Sam looked up from her computer screen. Jack pretended not to notice that she minimized whatever it was she'd been looking at.
"Sir?"
"Hypothetical situation, Carter. Say you know this guy - smart guy - who finds a dead little g ... dog in the park. All of a sudden, this guy develops this habit of kind of zoning out. And when he zones out, he keeps acting like a little kid and talking about another little g ... dog that he says is dead. And when he zones back in, he says he doesn't know any other dead dogs. Hypothetically, what would most likely be wrong with him?"
Sam blinked at him a few times. "Purely hypothetical, sir?" she asked.
Jack nodded quickly. "Yeah, hypothetical situation."
Sam smiled sadly and leaned forward, crossing her arms on her desk. "Hypothetically, sir, I'd say you should probably ask Janet."
Jack shook his head. "No, hypothetically, I don't want to ask Fraiser. Not yet, anyway." Jack sighed and leaned forward against the desk himself, lowering his voice. "We need facts, Carter. But right now, I don't think we even know what kind of facts we need. I do know that I don't want Fraiser, or anyone else for that matter, poking around in Daniel's brain until we know just exactly what they're going to find in there. We need somewhere to start looking, though, and I thought that maybe you might ..."
"Repressed memories, sir," Sam said suddenly.
Jack straightened back up and stared at her in surprise. "What?"
Sam looked down at her keyboard and scratched her forehead absently with her index finger. "Um ... repressed memories. I've been ..." Sam paused, reached for her mouse, and pulled the screen she'd been looking at when Jack entered back up. She gestured at it distractedly. "... reading up on it. It's what happens when ..."
Jack glanced at the computer screen briefly and nodded his head. "When someone sees something they don't want to remember, so they make themselves forget. Yeah, I know what it is."
Sam looked up and Jack leaned his elbows on her desk again.
"Now tell me what you think that has to do with Daniel."
Sam cleared her throat softly. "I, um ... I think I've seen him do this before, sir."
Jack's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he kept his voice steady. "When?"
"On P7J-9899, sir, the Gamekeeper's planet. In the recreation Daniel and I were stuck in, when his ..."
Jack cut her off with a wave of his hand. "I know what happened, Carter. What I still don't understand is what that has to do with this."
Sam leaned away from the desk and sat up straighter in her chair. "When we first arrived, when we were walking around, Daniel said that he knew where we were, that he'd been there many times, but he didn't seem the least bit worried about being there then. And then when we saw his ... his parents, and he walked toward them ... he kept saying 'no,' that it couldn't be real, that it wasn't real ..."
"Oh, that sounds familiar."
"Sir?"
Jack shook his head as he remembered the conversation he'd had just before leaving Daniel under Teal'c's watchful eye.
"If it's just a dream, it's not real. If it's not a dream, then that means it really happened."
Sam tilted her head slightly, still obviously confused, but when it appeared that Jack was going no further with his explanation, she resumed hers. "He said that he used to play it over and over again in his head, thinking of how he could have saved them. But the way he said it, sir, it was almost like he was surprised he'd done that. Or like he was surprised that he remembered doing it."
"And if it really happened, then he should have saved her," Jack whispered.
Sam's eyes widened. "Saved who, sir? His mother?"
Jack shook his head slowly. "No, Carter. Jenny. Daniel thinks he should have saved Jenny."
"But, sir, who is Jenny?"
"That's what you're going to find out, Carter."
Chapter Five
Jack led Daniel down the corridor by the arm, mentally kicking himself in the head with every step they took. Why he'd thought that Daniel was recovered enough - from whatever he'd managed to do to himself the day before - to withstand questioning by an FBI agent of Michael Phillips' obvious experience was completely beyond him. Why Janet had ever agreed to let him go was even further beyond him, and he had half a mind to go down to the infirmary and give her a piece of it.
Daniel had seemed fine ... well, okay, mostly fine ... on the drive to the police station. He'd been quiet, but having what was obviously a doozy of a nightmare immediately before leaving the base could probably account for that. They'd talked a bit while they were waiting to be called into Phillips' temporary office, and Daniel had seemed to be coming back around. They were both still confused as to why the man wanted to question him so badly, and neither of them could come up with a single good reason why. Daniel had found the body, true, but he didn't know anything more than the rest of them did and, truth be told, because of his condition afterward, he probably remembered less.
Then Jack had been called in for his interview.
It had been short, fifteen minutes at the most. It consisted mainly of Phillips asking a bunch of questions that Jack didn't know the answers to, and Jack answering them with, "I don't know." It had been overly uninformative and ultimately pointless, as far as the gathering of facts went.
It did last long enough for Jack to decide that he didn't think he liked Agent Michael Phillips.
He couldn't put his finger on just what it was that he disliked, but something about the man raised the hairs on the back of his neck and set his teeth on edge. For one thing, the man seemed far too interested in Daniel, and that never set well with Jack. When people were interested in Daniel, bad things had a tendency to happen to him. A theory that he'd been kicking around on his own - without mentioning it to Daniel - was that they might be looking at Daniel as a suspect. Jack couldn't imagine much worse than an FBI agent getting it in his head that Daniel was capable of doing what had been done to that little girl in the park.
Except for what would happen to Daniel if said FBI agent actually told him that he thought that.
Phillips had walked Jack out to where Daniel was waiting, intent on collecting Daniel himself, and that struck Jack as odd. Why not send the secretary, liked he'd done with Jack? He was still mulling it over when Daniel had stood from his chair, turned almost completely white, and promptly fell back into it.
"Hey!" Jack had called to him, walking quickly to his side and placing a steadying hand on his arm. "You okay?"
"What?" Daniel blinked and looked up at Jack in confusion.
Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. "Are you okay?" he asked slowly.
Daniel blinked again and shook his head. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just ... I just stood up too fast. Just a head-rush, that's all."
Jack looked at him closely, trying to decide if Daniel was telling the truth or not. Given the events of the past twenty-four hours, he was inclined to think not. "Are you sure?" he pressed. "Because if you're not, if your head is hurting again, we are so ..."
"Daniel?"
The voice came from behind him, and Jack turned his head toward it. Phillips was overstepping his bounds by calling Daniel by his first name, Jack thought. He was opening his mouth to tell him so when he felt Daniel's hand grip the sleeve of his jacket tightly. He turned back around to see Daniel staring at the man, his eyes wide and what little color had been left in his cheeks gone.
"I only need to see you for a moment, Daniel. That's all."
Scratch the 'didn't think' part - Jack did not like Michael Phillips. At all.
"Hey," Jack said softly. He waited for Daniel to turn his head and focus his eyes on him before continuing. "Are you okay?" he repeated gently.
Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, they were clear and lucid again, and he flashed Jack a quick smile. "Yeah," he said. "Just a bit of vertigo. I'm fine."
Daniel removed his hand from Jack's sleeve and pushed himself to his feet again. Jack stood smoothly beside him. Just as Daniel started to step away, Jack touched his arm again. Daniel turned toward him once more, giving Jack one more look into his very alert eyes, and smiled again.
Jack nodded his head and sat down in the chair Daniel had just vacated. He watched the two men walk back toward Phillips' office, but as soon as they were out of sight he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall behind him. Jack was beginning to think that there was something seriously wrong with Daniel's head, something much more dangerous than a mild concussion, and he had a sick feeling in his stomach that things were only going to get worse.
When Phillips had brought him back forty-five minutes later, in the middle of a full-blown panic attack, Jack had jumped to his feet, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and led him straight to the door.
Jack had no real way of knowing what the agent had said, and Daniel wasn't saying anything about anything right now, but the "Don't let him leave town!" that Phillips had shouted after them had made Jack's blood boil. He wasn't really a betting man, but he'd give dollars to donuts that his theory had been correct. He was also willing to wager that Phillips, in his oh-so-infinite wisdom, had actually told Daniel that he was a suspect.
This day just kept getting better and better.
So now he was leading a nearly catatonic Daniel, one that hadn't said a single word since they'd left the police station, down the corridor toward the room he'd been assigned to until Janet released him.
They were attracting more than their fair share of attention from the personnel they passed, and Jack was grateful when they finally reached the door. He opened the door and led Daniel inside quickly, kicking it closed behind him. He turned Daniel around, pushed him backwards until he sat on the bed, and then stood, looking down at him.
Daniel sat limply on the bed, his shoulders slightly raised and his arms wrapped around his middle, and stared straight at the wall, unblinking.
The silence was beginning to make Jack nervous, so he decided to fill it.
"There we go, Daniel. All done." Jack ran his hand through his hair and turned away. "So now, I think you should probably just take your jacket off, and your boots, and go back to ..."
"I don't like my dreams."
The voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, and sounded so young that Jack thought he'd imagined it. He turned back toward Daniel slowly. Daniel hadn't moved; his blank expression was still firmly affixed to the wall. Jack was seriously beginning to think he'd imagined the quiet declaration.
"Did you say something?"
Daniel didn't answer, and Jack sighed. "You know, Daniel, if you don't start talking soon I'm going to have to go get ..."
"It isn't real."
Jack tilted his head and took a few steps forward. He turned one of the chairs to face the bed and sat down in it.
"What isn't real?" he asked, though he had a suspicion that Daniel might not actually be hearing him.
Daniel shrugged and turned his head slowly, until he was looking directly into Jack's eyes. Oh, Daniel was hearing him, all right. But from the look in those eyes, Jack did doubt that this was any Daniel that he knew. If the small voice and hesitant posture hadn't given it away already, the wide, frightened, far-too-innocent eyes staring back at him would have.
"What isn't real, Daniel?" Jack asked again, keeping his voice as soothing as possible. He debated with himself over whether to go get Fraiser or not, but he couldn't think of anything she could possibly do to help. Physically, there was nothing wrong with Daniel but a minor concussion.
"It's just a stupid dream. Jenny's told me that I shouldn't be afraid of dreams, because they're not real."
"Who's Jenny?" Jack hoped that the question sounded more curious to Daniel's ears than it did to his own.
Daniel simply shrugged again and turned away. "If it's just a dream, then it's not real," he explained. "And it can't be real, because if it's real, then that means it really happened."
Every alarm that could sound in Jack's head did so after that statement. He wanted to grab Daniel by the shoulders and shake him until he explained exactly what that meant, but he forced himself to settle for sitting farther forward on the chair.
"And what did happen, Daniel?"
Daniel shook his head, but didn't turn back toward Jack again. Keeping his eyes locked on the wall, Daniel whispered, "Nothing. Because it's all just a dream. Because it's not real. Because if it really happened, then I should have saved her."
Jack closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He was in way over his head with this one, but he was hesitant to involve anyone else. If there was one thing that Jack knew about Daniel it was that he was as leery of mental health professionals as Jack himself was, and if Mackenzie heard Daniel talking like he was right now ... No, Jack would do everything he could to keep things from going that far. He had a head injury, right? He was just confused, lost in some memories from his nightmare, and it was all because of that concussion.
It had to be.
Jack took a deep breath and tried once more. "Daniel, I still don't know what you're talking about. You really need to tell me."
Daniel blinked twice in rapid succession and turned his head slowly.
"Jack?"
Jack started in surprise and leaned farther forward. "There you are," he said with a small smile.
Daniel blinked again, and though his confusion was evident, Jack was glad to see that his posture had returned to one he'd expect to see on a thirty-year-old man.
"What?" Daniel asked. "Where was ... where am ... how did we get here?"
Jack stood and walked to the bed. "Wanna try one question at a time?" he asked as he sat down at Daniel's side.
Daniel closed his eyes and leaned forward, rubbing his forehead with his hand. "I'm really beginning to hate this waking up not knowing what's going on thing," he said.
"Waking up?" Jack asked. "Daniel, I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you weren't asleep."
"Yes, I was," Daniel argued. He opened his eyes, dropped his hands to his lap and turned his head slightly. "I fell asleep in the car. And now you wake me up, and we're in the mountain, in my room, and I don't remember how we got here."
"Um ... we walked," Jack said. "I'm telling you, you weren't asleep."
Daniel closed his eyes once more and let his head fall back. "Sleepwalking," he said simply. "God, I haven't done that since I was a little kid."
A little voice in the back of Jack's mind piped up, 'And when you do it, you act like one.', but he ignored it.
"Sleepwalking?" Jack asked. "When you were a kid?"
Daniel nodded. "Yeah. I woke up once in the middle of the street at three in the morning."
"How old were you?"
"Um ... ten, maybe? I don't remember what happened, or what I was dreaming about. I just remember waking up standing in the middle of the street."
Daniel yawned, and Jack took that as a cue to stand up.
"You know what, Daniel?" he said as he walked toward the door. "You've had a really rough couple of days. Why don't you go ahead and lay down and get some real sleep?"
Daniel lay back against the pillows and stretched out. "What for?" he asked. "So I can have another nightmare? Bite someone else? Or maybe wake up in the middle of the parking lot?"
Jack pulled the blanket up from the foot of the bed and draped it across Daniel's legs. "I can't do anything about the dreams, Daniel, but I do guarantee you that those last two things will not happen."
Daniel nodded and rolled onto his side, burying his head deeply in the pillow. Just as Jack reached for the doorknob, Daniel called out softly.
"Jack?"
Jack turned slightly. "Yeah?"
"What is wrong with me?"
"You hit your head, Daniel," Jack answered without hesitation. "You just hit you head."
Jack opened the door and stepped into the hallway. As he set out to find Teal'c - to make certain that no one went into Daniel's room while he was sleeping and that Daniel didn't come out until he was completely awake - he knew that his last statement had been a lie.
Something was going on with Daniel, something that had nothing to do with the bump on his head, and Jack had every intention of finding out just exactly what that something was.
If he could only figure out where to start looking.
"Tell me something, Carter," Jack said as he walked into Sam's office unannounced.
Sam looked up from her computer screen. Jack pretended not to notice that she minimized whatever it was she'd been looking at.
"Sir?"
"Hypothetical situation, Carter. Say you know this guy - smart guy - who finds a dead little g ... dog in the park. All of a sudden, this guy develops this habit of kind of zoning out. And when he zones out, he keeps acting like a little kid and talking about another little g ... dog that he says is dead. And when he zones back in, he says he doesn't know any other dead dogs. Hypothetically, what would most likely be wrong with him?"
Sam blinked at him a few times. "Purely hypothetical, sir?" she asked.
Jack nodded quickly. "Yeah, hypothetical situation."
Sam smiled sadly and leaned forward, crossing her arms on her desk. "Hypothetically, sir, I'd say you should probably ask Janet."
Jack shook his head. "No, hypothetically, I don't want to ask Fraiser. Not yet, anyway." Jack sighed and leaned forward against the desk himself, lowering his voice. "We need facts, Carter. But right now, I don't think we even know what kind of facts we need. I do know that I don't want Fraiser, or anyone else for that matter, poking around in Daniel's brain until we know just exactly what they're going to find in there. We need somewhere to start looking, though, and I thought that maybe you might ..."
"Repressed memories, sir," Sam said suddenly.
Jack straightened back up and stared at her in surprise. "What?"
Sam looked down at her keyboard and scratched her forehead absently with her index finger. "Um ... repressed memories. I've been ..." Sam paused, reached for her mouse, and pulled the screen she'd been looking at when Jack entered back up. She gestured at it distractedly. "... reading up on it. It's what happens when ..."
Jack glanced at the computer screen briefly and nodded his head. "When someone sees something they don't want to remember, so they make themselves forget. Yeah, I know what it is."
Sam looked up and Jack leaned his elbows on her desk again.
"Now tell me what you think that has to do with Daniel."
Sam cleared her throat softly. "I, um ... I think I've seen him do this before, sir."
Jack's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he kept his voice steady. "When?"
"On P7J-9899, sir, the Gamekeeper's planet. In the recreation Daniel and I were stuck in, when his ..."
Jack cut her off with a wave of his hand. "I know what happened, Carter. What I still don't understand is what that has to do with this."
Sam leaned away from the desk and sat up straighter in her chair. "When we first arrived, when we were walking around, Daniel said that he knew where we were, that he'd been there many times, but he didn't seem the least bit worried about being there then. And then when we saw his ... his parents, and he walked toward them ... he kept saying 'no,' that it couldn't be real, that it wasn't real ..."
"Oh, that sounds familiar."
"Sir?"
Jack shook his head as he remembered the conversation he'd had just before leaving Daniel under Teal'c's watchful eye.
"If it's just a dream, it's not real. If it's not a dream, then that means it really happened."
Sam tilted her head slightly, still obviously confused, but when it appeared that Jack was going no further with his explanation, she resumed hers. "He said that he used to play it over and over again in his head, thinking of how he could have saved them. But the way he said it, sir, it was almost like he was surprised he'd done that. Or like he was surprised that he remembered doing it."
"And if it really happened, then he should have saved her," Jack whispered.
Sam's eyes widened. "Saved who, sir? His mother?"
Jack shook his head slowly. "No, Carter. Jenny. Daniel thinks he should have saved Jenny."
"But, sir, who is Jenny?"
"That's what you're going to find out, Carter."