Diplomacy (8/27)
Title: Diplomacy ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5a-- 5b Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11a-- 11b Chapter12 Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b Chapter16 Chapter17a-- 17b Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26 Epilogue
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Team
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18 August 1998; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs
Janet was in her office when Sam poked her head in. "Sam, come in."
"How's everything?" Sam asked, stepping in.
Janet sighed. "I think I had a flashback to the NICU rotation I did during my residency," she said wryly, sipping a cup of coffee and rubbing her eye. "Cassandra seemed like a handful at eleven, but one night of baby-watching with the...what was that word?"
"Harsesis."
"Yes. You know, there's a reason I went into deadly diseases instead of pediatrics."
Sam grimaced. "Guess you don't normally deal with a lot of babies around here."
"Not besides you people, anyway," Janet said grumpily, then put down her coffee and folded her hands in her lap. "So. What do you need? Still having trouble sleeping?"
Sam glanced reflexively over her shoulder to see if someone else could have heard that, because she did not need anyone thinking she was cracking after that...experience with Jolinar, then assured her friend, "No, no, I'm...it's not...I told you, it was just a few weird dreams."
Too gently, Janet said, "Sam, it's understandable. Being taken by a Goa'uld...I can't imagine, but I'm sure that an invasion like that is akin to--"
"Janet, really, uh... No. It's not like that." Janet made a noncommittal sound. Sam sighed. "Look, you said Jolinar was a second mind in...in my body, right? I think maybe I'm just starting to remember some...memories." Remember memories. Good one, Carter. Articulate. "They're just too vague now to get a grasp on anything."
"The symbiote's memories?" Janet leaned back, looking thoughtful. "Dreams often call up things hidden in our subconscious. If the Goa'uld--"
"Tok'ra," Sam corrected automatically, stopping herself just short of reminding her friend that the Tok'ra had had a name, because honestly, what a stupid thing to think about.
Janet paused and gave her a piercing look, but went on, "If the Tok'ra left some memories in your mind, I wouldn't be surprised if you started unburying them through your dreams first."
"Yeah...anyway, that's not why I'm here," Sam said, eager to get off the subject. "I was wondering about the Harsesis." She determinedly didn't squirm while Janet stared at her, until the doctor accepted the change in topic.
"Right. That. Dr. Rothman was here last night to check up on Daniel. They were talking about somewhere we're supposed to take the baby, I think, but from what I overheard, it was more myths and speculation than anything solid."
Sam nodded. "The Harsesis' mother mentioned something called Kheb. She talked about getting answers there and said that something at Kheb could help him, but I've never heard of it."
"We'll deal with that when it comes. Until then..." Janet paged through a chart. "I can tell you that there's no naquadah bomb in his chest, no immediate visible danger to us, and no apparent medical problems for the baby. He's remarkably healthy after that little adventure you all had."
"Good."
"Well. More or less."
Unable to stop a little groan, Sam begged, "Please tell me there's nothing..."
"It's just...do you remember those blood samples that SG-11 brought from Argos?"
"That's where the...oh geez. Nanocytes?" Her stomach dropped, and she turned to squint at the baby, trying to decide if it looked older than it had last night. He, she reminded herself. It was a he. Even if it was a Harsesis, too. "Exactly the same, the one-hundred day program?"
"No, not the same, I'm sure, but this isn't exactly something we learned in med school. These look the same to me, but they're...inactive, I think, not even trying to replicate themselves. The Argosian nanocytes needed to be within range of their transmitter, though, so the ones in the Harsesis might need some other signal."
"Then...they're still not acting exactly like those Argosian nanocytes did."
"Apophis isn't exactly Pelops, either," Janet pointed out. "They could be based on similar technology but still have completely different programs."
"But he's not aging?" Sam said.
Janet snorted. "Well, he's twice as old as he was yesterday."
"Janet..."
"He hasn't suddenly aged a few months in the space of a day, no. Maybe the baby's growth will accelerate after a time, to allow for fuller physical and cognitive development at this early stage--I can't know, but it looks like they're shut off."
"But they're still in the body," Sam clarified. "Inactive, foreign particles in the bloodstream should be cleared by the immune system, shouldn't they?"
"Yeah, and there's nothing apparently wrong with the boy's immune system," Janet said. "We think some signal that the Argosian nanites were transmitting contributed to their ability to evade the immune system. So...these nanocytes might be active after all, but you couldn't tell by looking at them, and I have no way of safely removing them from all of his tissues."
"Right," Sam said, trying to think what that could mean but knowing she couldn't test it, because last time she'd tried poking at nanites in a dish, they'd started eating their way through Med Lab 2 and had had to be incinerated. No way was she risking that again, not unless it was unavoidable. She wondered if they could just try providing the nanites with the right frequencies to turn them off, and then wondered what the medical side effects were of blasting a newborn baby's head with various frequencies of radiation in the hopes that something might happen. Then again, if the nanites were off, the wrong frequency might turn them on, which could be...well, bad, considering they could be programmed to do anything. "Actually..." she said as a thought struck her.
"What?"
"Daniel's sister said the Harsesis has some sort of knowledge. Even Teal'c's not sure what that means, but I've been thinking Goa'uld genetic memory. But maybe that's not it at all; maybe there's information stored in those nanocytes, somehow."
"Too bad we don't know much about manipulating nanocytes, then," Janet pointed out.
"Yeah. So if this Kheb place can tell us something, I guess we really do need to find it." Maybe there was some technology there to remove the nanocytes from the baby and destroy them--like...like wiping a hard drive--or extract usable information from them...
"Well, don't get too caught up in your nanocyte-memory theory, because there are some anomalies in his DNA." Janet grimaced apologetically. "The larval Goa'uld that Hathor spawned earlier this year carried DNA as genetic material, and preliminary tests on the Harsesis show several regions with sequences similar to what we found in Hathor's Goa'uld."
Sam chewed her lip. "So this human baby could have Goa'uld genetic memory, after all."
"Or it could be something else entirely. Those regions haven't been fully sequenced and analyzed, so...they might be non-coding regions with some regulatory function or no function at all. They might be encoding some Goa'uld trait. They might make him superhuman. They might be nothing. The fact is, Sam, we have no idea. I'm out of my league, here."
Sam hesitated, then said, "Teal'c says that the genetic memory is part of the reason why the Goa'uld are born evil."
"For now," Janet said firmly, "we'll deal with him as a normal, human baby. Believe it or not, a quiet one, as babies go, but..."
Sam frowned, remembering how Daniel had dragged a newborn halfway across a planet, without a whimper until they were almost home. Almost as if the baby had known...
"Is that normal?" she asked, then reminded herself that their idea of 'normal' probably didn't apply when this baby was probably the only Harsesis in existence, and possibly the only one or one of few ever to have been in existence.
"Some kids are quieter than others," Janet assured her. "Trust me--there is nothing wrong with that set of lungs he's got on him. Don't go jumping the gun."
"If you say so," Sam said. "And you're right. Daniel's sister--the host--could've been wrong, or the Goa'uld could've been trying to trick us through her, so really, all we know about the Harsesis, or Kheb, or anything is little more than speculation right now." Which was good, in a way, because if it sounded like just another myth, the Pentagon might not sweep in right away to poke around in the Harsesis' brain.
"In any case, for reasons of security, he's staying at the SGC until we can decide whether he's a victim or a time bomb or both. Besides, with a familial connection on base..."
"Family? You mean Daniel?" Sam said uncertainly.
"They put the baby...sort of in his charge." At her incredulous look, Janet clarified, "Just officially, on paper. It's more of a...next-of-kin thing, really. We figure it might make the Abydons more comfortable, and it'll make our own higher-ups think less about aliens and intel until we have a better idea of what we're dealing with."
Because it might make them think instead about the lost baby and the teenaged older brother who'd tried to rescue him and was now trying to take care of him. Higher-ups weren't the only ones who'd be thinking hard about that. "But you'll keep an eye on him?" Sam asked.
"The health of people on this base is my responsibility, Sam, not Daniel's," Janet reminded her. "And I was just complaining before; I don't mind looking out for them both. The baby's adorable, really, when he's not crying."
"And do we have to worry about security?" And that sounded silly and paranoid, because she was talking about an infant, but she was also talking about forbidden Goa'uld offspring, so she'd take silly and paranoid over being killed in their sleep by something their scans couldn't pick up. There were still nanocytes in there doing--or not doing--who knew what, after all, and genes that could encode who knew what...
"Well, whatever dangerous secrets the Harsesis has," Janet said, "there will be some serious physical and cognitive limitations to what a human baby can do on his own."
They could learn a lot from this kid, but Sam was inclined to be cautious. She knew better than most, after all, how difficult it could be to hold onto humanity--and sanity--with Goa'uld anything in one's head.
"For now," Janet added, "I think the feeding and diaper changing will be a bigger problem than security. And Daniel notices if the baby even twitches, so we'll have plenty of advance warning if he starts aging rapidly or something."
Sam felt her brow wrinkle. "Daniel's not in there."
Janet took a look for herself. "Really? He's been hanging around since you all got back last night. He just stepped out when the baby fell asleep--looked like he was going toward the supply closet, but I thought he would've been back already."
"He's been here all night?" Sam asked.
"All night."
When they'd returned from Cimmeria... 'drained' was an understatement. Teal'c had been scowling, stoically waiting for a reprimand that never came about losing Sha'uri and Amaunet when he'd had her in his grasp. The colonel had given a report and then looked unsure whether to stare at Daniel's scraped knees or at Sam's scraped knuckles. Sam had had eyes only for a hand-shaped bruise peeking out from under the torn edge of Daniel's sleeve where a Jaffa had grabbed him, and she'd never gotten the reprimand she was waiting for, either, for failing to protect him from the enemy. Daniel hadn't even noticed, trying frantically to stop the baby from crying long enough to pass the regular decontamination protocols and to give a brief accounting of events, until Hammond had taken pity--or decided to salvage his own sanity--and sent them and the infant off to the infirmary.
The mission would, however, be considered a major success on paper. They'd contacted the Asgard race; wiped out a substantial chunk of Heru-ur's army; prevented a few Goa'uld from trampling into Nagada village; fixed their blunder on Cimmeria; and gained the Harsesis child, whatever that meant, and kept him away from at least three Goa'uld who wanted him for themselves. After destroying the Goa'uld motherships earlier that year, it was looking like SG-1 and their genius linguist kid brother were starting a list of improbable victories. There were even beginning to be jokes--and a few questioning, not-so-joking looks--about SG-1, the smallest unit at only three people, which normally disliked taking a temporary fourth member, training the youngest member of the SGC to fit their already-unusual roster.
Sam knew it would be a long time before SG-1 and Daniel would be able to think of that day without thinking of how many ways they'd each failed.
"I gave him his check-up," Janet was saying, "and made him get a shower and a change of clothes, but no one had the heart to make him leave."
"I'm not sure he'd listen if you ordered him out," Sam admitted. She sighed and confided, "Back on Cimmeria...don't get me wrong, Janet. Daniel's quick, and he follows orders just fine when he wants to follow them, but he needs to learn that it's not okay to decide not to." He'd been obviously inexperienced, too, but everyone was at first; at least Daniel hadn't choked too badly. He might be pretty good with real training under his belt, even, but there was a load of discipline missing.
Janet's expression stayed impassive. "Sounds like it turned out all right. It's hard, choosing between family and...orders."
Which, of course, only reminded Sam that she'd followed her orders to the goddamned letter, and for that, her dad, himself a decorated major general in the US Air Force and apparently a good personal friend of General Hammond, would die (not die, just sick, her dad wouldn't die) thinking she had a useless desk job studying satellites instead of fulfilling his dreams. Her dreams. Whatever.
"Well. That's something Daniel will need to learn," Sam said curtly.
With a raised eyebrow, Janet said, "Sam, he's fifteen."
The bitterness shriveled at the reminder. "Yeah." She was a grown woman and could deal with her problems on her own time; someone needed to keep an eye on Daniel. She was the one who hadn't protected him yesterday. "Did Colonel O'Neill ever come in?"
"Right after your post-mission exam, in fact."
"And?"
"Had a little talk, privately. Then Daniel came back in here, and the colonel left."
"Hm." She wondered if there'd been a reprimand, CO to insubordinate subordinate, and wondered if it had really been for the best. She checked her watch; they had a briefing later concerning the Abydos trip scheduled for the next day, but there was time yet. "Janet, where did you say Daniel went?"
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The door to the medical supply closet was closed, so she cracked it open, looked inside, then pulled it open more fully. As she had expected, Daniel stood there with his back braced against the wall, staring at the ground. When the door creaked, he straightened, not looking up, turned his back to her, and began to look through a bin on the shelves, apparently at random.
Sam closed the door again and walked up behind him. She peered into the bin he was rummaging in, quirked an eyebrow, and said, "Hm. Not sure what you're planning on doing with nitrile gloves; latex is usually fine unless you're allergic--which you're not--or you're working with nasty solvents."
Daniel dropped his hands, his whole body drooping a little, but didn't turn around.
"Now, this," she went on, picking up a bottle of baby powder and shoving it under his nose, "might be closer to what you were looking for. Baby duty and all."
"I'm," he said, then cleared his throat. "I'm really not..."
"...in the mood? Maybe you need one of these," she suggested lightly, holding up a pillow covered in hospital blue plastic. "Look familiar?" He didn't look. "It's called a pillow. Here on Earth, we use pillows when we sleep. Which I thought you knew already, but maybe you're not so familiar with its use these days."
"Yi shay," he breathed, a little annoyed now.
"I'm just saying--you run on empty too long, you're gonna fall asleep in the middle of a translation, and you know Dr. Rothman would--"
"It won't matter if they throw me out, Sam!" he finally cut her off, spinning around in exasperation. She didn't have time to decide whether his reddened eyes were from sleeplessness or something else before he turned back and leaned his hands against the shelving, taking a deep breath.
"Wha..." she said intelligently. "Wait, who told you that?"
"No one," he mumbled. "General Hammond wants to get this business with Abydos settled first. But tomorrow, after he's had a chance to work things out with Kasuf, he...wants to see me in his office. And I know I messed up. I really messed up."
Sam winced in sympathy, knowing the general was a reasonable man but also knowing how ominous it always felt to be called into the general's office. And besides, this time, any reasonable man would have plenty of good reason to be unhappy about what had happened. It wasn't her place to say something that might contradict the general, but she was confident enough saying, "That doesn't mean... If we kicked people out every time they made a mistake, we'd run low on personnel very fast. And besides, if General Hammond's waiting until you help us finish the Abydos business before discussing things with you, then obviously, he still wants your help."
He didn't move.
"Daniel, no one's kicking you out. Is that why you're skulking in a closet?"
"No," he said, but didn't elaborate.
"Is it the baby--you needed a break?" He twitched, and she went on, carefully, "You can't stay up watching over him forever. You don't have to feel like he's your responsibility."
"He's family," Daniel answered edgily, his fingers tightening on the bin of nitrile gloves but not pretending to be occupied with anything this time. "My little brother. And it's not like he has his mother or his...his grandfather to take care of him right now."
Not his father, she noticed, but, considering who the father was, that was understandable. "I'm just worried that you'll get too attached--"
"Too attached?" he repeated, an edge in his voice.
"That didn't...come out the way I wanted," she said apologetically. "I know you're close to his mother. But we can't keep him on base forever, you know that. Even if...well, this base is no place to raise a baby. And you can't forget that he's--"
"The child of two Goa'uld," he interrupted resentfully. "Right?"
"I was about to say that he's an unknown variable in a lot of ways, that's all. Daniel--"
"He's a baby, Sam!" Daniel burst out, thumping a fist uselessly on the wall. "A baby. Without a...without...not even his mother to..." He stopped suddenly and rubbed his forehead, exhaling shakily.
Sam took hold of his shoulders and firmly turned him around. He kept his face turned away but didn't try to break out of her grasp. "I'm sorry we weren't able to bring your sister back," she said, and she meant it. She could only imagine: finding Sha'uri by accident, after almost a year, and being so close to bringing her home, Goa'ulded but safe, not once but twice. And then, to lose her again...
"You gave me a pen when I first came to Earth," Daniel said abruptly, apropos of nothing.
"What?" She had, almost a year ago. Back in the days when Daniel had been a bundle of scared, confused grief that couldn't hide behind anything but his curiosity and intellect, she'd given him translations and busywork to do, but that didn't tell her why he was bringing it up now.
"You gave me a fountain pen and a notebook. I knew how automatic pens worked, but it was a little bit like...like magic, still, the first time."
"Well," Sam said, still lost. "I'm--"
"There were stories from my parents about...machines, weapons that could destroy Ra by pushing a button... And now, I know it isn't that easy, I've seen it myself, but there are so many wonders on Earth that I thought, once we found Skaara or Sha'uri, we could somehow...we could save..." He stared at the floor and said in a tiny voice, "I promised Kasuf that we would save his daughter, Sam. That I would make sure she was safe."
There was nothing she or anyone else could say to make that any better. That didn't mean she couldn't try.
"You did everything you could," Sam said firmly. "She was wounded, yes, but--no, no, Daniel, listen to me. She was wounded, not killed. It wasn't a fatal hit, and with a symbiote, she'll heal fast. She's more useful to Heru-ur alive than dead, now that he's lost a lot of his army and reputation. And we saved her son."
Daniel glanced at her. "I've heard people talking since we got back. Half of them seem to think it was a really good idea, going to Cimmeria, and the other half think it was a really selfish one."
Here it was.
She could imagine the gossip this last trip would have generated--some people laughing, slapping him on the back for his daring, and others frowning in disapproval at the irresponsibility that could have cost them all their lives. "And what do you think?"
"I don't... I wasn't really...thinking. At the time."
"I don't buy that," Sam said. He looked up again, startled, more nervous now, but she knew Daniel well enough to know he could be reckless but not unthinking. And that was even more frightening, because it meant he knew exactly what he was doing and had convinced himself it was the right thing to do. "I didn't come here to yell at you; I just want to know what you were thinking."
He swallowed, then said, in a rush, "The Cimmerians have probably never seen anyone good come through the Stargate. With the Hammer gone...it turned out Olaf was hiding when I came out, waiting to ambush anyone who came through the 'gate, and he only let go of me and started to listen when he saw I was human and not armed. If someone had gone through with a gun or something, especially if they recognized SG-1, there would have been a fight, and someone would have died or been hurt. And they weren't the enemy. It...just...seemed like a good idea back on Abydos. It was the best option I could think of."
Sam winced at the image, grateful she hadn't seen him almost get chopped in half by Olaf's axe. "That's a big assumption for something so risky." And a lot of conviction for something he must have thought about for all of ten seconds. "Look, I'm aware of what a lot of the scientists here think, but just because we're in the military doesn't mean we run in, guns blazing, without thought for other options."
"I know you do try the diplomatic route," he said hastily. "I know that's proper procedure--always look for peaceful solutions first, but you can't always to do that, because it's dangerous, and defense comes first when there's doubt. I know I shouldn't have...run off."
'But...' she heard.
"But," he said, "what if it's the only way?"
"Then you talk to your teammates, Daniel!" she said. He flinched, and she was aware that she'd just said she wasn't going to yell at him but she also still remembered how she'd spent a long few minutes thinking she'd get to Cimmeria and find his dead body on the ground, and maybe everyone else's too. "Do you understand what could have happened?"
"Yes, I do, Sam, and I didn't--"
"We were terrified, Daniel, we thought--"
"I'm sorry!" he insisted. "Sam, please, it wasn't...I didn't think...I wasn't trying to put in you danger, you have to believe me, I would never...but..." He raked a shaking hand through his hair, turning away, his voice shaking, too. "But he took her. I was so close--I was...seconds, literally, at the DHD, but I took too much time for myself, before, and we almost got her back here and, and...gods, he took her, Sam! And she was--she'd already been--I don't know what the word is, but she--"
"All right, hey, calm down," she said, taking a step toward him with a hand out just as he looked up again. He took a step away from her and backed into the wall, his eyes wide. "Daniel, I'm not gonna hit you."
"I know," he moaned, sinking into a crouch with the heels of his hands ground into his eyes. "I wasn't...I know, Sam." Sam started to bend down, too, but she didn't want to spook him any more when he was jumpy already and running on the adrenaline that came with a day of running for dear life on top of no sleep. So she was leaning helplessly against the opposite wall and watching when he suddenly rose to his feet, rubbing his nose, and said, "I, uh...I should get back to Sharemes--"
"Back...to what?" she asked, more cautious now, because these days he only slipped and blurted foreign words when he was really tired or upset, and she knew that he was both right now.
Or maybe not. He stopped with a hand on door's handle. "I...I've been calling him that. It's just a... It means 'son of Sha'uri.'"
"You named the Harsesis?" she said, trying not to wince.
"It is the custom of our people to name a child within a day of his birth," he said tightly, reverting to the carefully enunciated speech he used when he was scared or angry and trying not to show it. "He needs a name that's not 'child of two Goa'uld.' And I thought it better that he be named for his mother, not for... Because thus far, everyone has defined him for what he is to Apophis, and they forget that he is also the son of his human mother, who is known as Sha'uri."
Absurdly, Sam thought of the time her brother Mark had found a stray dog and tried to keep it. 'Don't name it,' their dad had ordered. 'I'm not having you getting too attached.' Which made her think of her dad yet again, which she couldn't do right now, not if she wanted to have this out with Daniel.
"Daniel," she tried carefully, "I just don't want you to be hurt when--"
"I can't call him some Goa'uld name, Sam! I'm not asking it of you. But until he meets his grandfather and, and...and receives a name, I am going to call my baby brother Sharemes."
And I'm calling him the Harsesis, Sam thought privately, because defenseless baby or not, they couldn't afford to forget what he was, not when the stakes were high enough to make System Lords scared.
"Have you even looked at him?" he asked suddenly. "The baby. Have you really looked at him?"
Not sure what he was getting at, she said, "I wasn't trying to drag you away from your...your little brother." When he remained hovering at the door, uncertain, she lowered herself to sit on the floor, the way Daniel used to do all the time even when there was a chair right next to him, and said, more gently, "Janet's watching him now. He's fine. Come back and talk to me for a minute. Please." The floor was hard and cold, and a shelf was digging into her spine, but she'd sat in more uncomfortable places for less important things.
When he finally did, sliding down opposite her, he stared at his knees instead of looking at her. She racked her brains for something to say now that he wasn't running away, but before she could, he spoke, tentative in the way Daniel usually wasn't these days. "S-sam?"
"Yeah, Daniel," she said immediately, glad for the opening.
"What...how do you..." He stopped, suddenly very interested in the loose thread he was fiddling with on his jacket sleeve. He shook his head. "I'm sorry. It's not...appropriate to..."
"No, go ahead. You can ask me anything, you know that."
He still hesitated, though, and didn't meet her eyes when he said, slowly at first and then faster, "I don't know...in English...when a woman is...when she is forced to carry a man's child..." Sam's heart clenched and her breath caught as she realized what he was babbling about. "I don't know why I keep...I just keep thinking that I don't know the word, and it's not like it makes a difference, right, what it's...but I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't--"
"'Rape,'" she managed to say in a normal voice. "That's what it's called."
Daniel went very still and didn't answer for a while. When he did, it was to say, "Rapio, rapere. From Latin. To take by force."
For a moment, Sam could only gape in disbelief at the flatness, the abrupt lack of emotion that colored his tone as he worked out the etymology of a word that meant something so appalling, something that had been done to his sister, and could that really be the way men thought on a planet like Abydos where women didn't have equal rights?
But before her shock could bleed into something angrier, louder, more volatile, he pulled his knees to his chest and dropped his head onto them, his breathing slow and deliberate as his arms curled tight around his legs, and she understood.
She reached out, then stopped half an inch away from his shoulder, not wanting to startle him. He must have heard, though, because he peeked an eye out and butted her hand with his head. Sam matched her breathing to his, smoothed back a few stray strands of his hair, and tried not to think about whether it was worse to be invaded through her spinal cord and her thoughts or through her womb and her genes.
Sha'uri would know.
God, they had to save that woman.
"Sam?" Daniel said a minute later, his voice muffled in his knees. He didn't look up at her. "Were you...awake? When Jolinar took over. Were you still aware of everything?"
In an instant, Sam stopped breathing.
She must have stopped moving, too, because Daniel said quickly, "You don't have to answer. I shouldn't have asked."
But Sha'uri had been a prisoner for months, and she'd still had the strength to fight against Heru-ur and Apophis in whatever way was available to her. Sam had known Jolinar for a day, maybe two, and he had given his life to save hers. She was safe. Daniel's hand was trembling where it clenched on his knee.
"Not everything," Sam made herself say. Daniel lifted his head to meet her eyes, letting her hand fall from where it had rested on his shoulder. "Some of it. I think...it was different. Jolinar was used to sharing everything with his host. Even when he was trying to keep me...to shut me down, he kept communicating with me once in a while, like he'd forgotten he wasn't trying to talk to me. But there's no reason Amaunet would have wanted Sha'uri to be aware."
He stared at her for a few, long seconds. "I didn't know that," he said. "I've never...asked."
No one had asked, except Janet, and even that was gentle prodding about her general mental state. No one ever asked for more details than her report had given. "I wouldn't have wanted you to," she told him. "I'm still--like I said, a lot of it's blurry. I'm sorry, I know that doesn't answer your question. I wish I could help more."
"Don't be sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said. "It'll be okay. We'll find her, and we'll take care of the baby. You--"
"I can't just leave him alone," Daniel said. "He doesn't have anyone else."
"I know," she said.
"I won't, Sam, and--"
"I know, Daniel. I know."
He sighed and stretched his legs back out on the floor. "Okay. Okay." He clenched his fists once, then admitted, "I can't be...objective about this. I know that. But I don't want to have to be. He doesn't need someone to be objective about him."
"I know how that feels," she said, because she'd been there before, only months ago.
He paused to think, then said, "Cassandra."
"Yeah," she said, and she had to suppress a smile as she wondered why the two of them always seemed to end up sitting in hallways and talking about the little aliens they brought back to Earth--because those two little aliens had somehow managed to blindside them both, perhaps, leaving them to see insinuations where there were none and ignore logic when it stared them in the face. "Sometimes we can't get the distance to see clearly, and we need to know our teammates can help. And me, the colonel and Teal'c...we're your team on this one. You need to know you can trust us, and you need to let us know we can trust you."
"Of course I trust you all," Daniel said. "It's just...well, Jack said that it was a good thing it happened, yesterday, but that I'd better not do it ever again."
"That sounds...about right," Sam said, and he made a little sound of frustration.
"But that doesn't make any sense!"
"Are you sorry you did it?" she asked.
"I'm really sorry I ran off without telling any of you," he said in answer, then went on, "and sorry I endangered your team, and--"
"No, stop," she said, because she didn't have to be an expert in semantics to hear the difference in what he was saying and what she had asked, and she had no interest in rehashing every right and wrong by dancing around the point that actually mattered. "Going to Cimmeria wasn't the problem. We'd have gone ourselves, once we knew the situation. Not with you, maybe"--which was a little sobering now she knew they'd needed him to pass Thor's test--"but we would've gone to fix our mistakes. But deciding not to consult with the team...that was wrong."
"I know. I knew at the time, too," he admitted. "Jack said there were...extenuating circumstances, so there wouldn't be consequences from him...but we haven't really talked. Yet. I think he was mad and didn't want to make a big scene in the hallway, with the baby. So we haven't really talked, and...I don't know what I should do."
"Oh," she said simply, because there wasn't a protocol that anyone understood that could explain how Daniel and Colonel O'Neill worked.
"But he doesn't trust me," Daniel confided to his shoelaces, folding his arms across his chest. "I mean, I've never been a...a team member to him, but after yesterday...he's never going to trust me, not like that. And I don't blame him, but..." He sighed. "I spent the last year trying to prove to that I could be trusted to do this job, and I think he started to believe me. And it took less than a minute to destroy that."
She shook her head. "If the colonel says he understands the circumstances, then he does--he's not one to mince words to make people feel better. But you have to remember...if you or Dr. Rothman go out with a team, you need leeway to do your jobs, yes, but you need to let us do ours, too."
"Safety comes first," he said, repeating it by rote.
Which wasn't strictly true in every case, but for him it was. The rest of them had signed up knowing they might have to give their lives for their country (or world or species). What frightened her, aside from Daniel's impulsiveness, was that he understood those rules--how could he not, living on a military base--and didn't seem to get that it wasn't a matter of trust, but rather that those rules were different for him: his safety was the responsibility of the team he was with, so if he did something stupid, it was that much more dangerous for everyone.
"All of us, including you, have to figure out how things fit together," she said. "We're not used to working with a teammate who's with us specifically as a non-military member; you've probably seen the same thing with SG-2, and we've seen it with Dr. Rothman on perfectly peaceful worlds. Look, do you think Colonel O'Neill listened to me and Teal'c without question when SG-1 was first formed?"
"I don't... Yes?" Daniel guessed.
"He and Teal'c hit it off," she allowed, "but even they needed time to learn how to work with each other. And me, a scientist"--and a woman, she thought, since, although that hadn't seemed to matter much to the colonel, it mattered to a lot of people in this business. "He tried to get me off the team the first time we met."
"But you're a soldier, too. Airman, I mean. You were in a war."
"Well, he still didn't know me. It took a while for him to figure out where Teal'c and I both stood and how to give the right orders that were best for the team as a whole, with all our specialties and strengths and weaknesses taken into account, how to--"
"That's it, then? It's just about...orders? Obeying?" His tone made it clear what he thought of that.
"No," Sam explained. "The chain of command is not about mindless obedience. But with any team, you need to figure out where everyone fits in, and yes, sometimes that means adapting, changing certain things about the way you think and react. And you get that, I know you do. When we left the Hall of Might and had to sneak around, you listened and did what your commander said to."
"It's not the same with me as it is with you and Teal'c."
"Sure it is," she said. Sort of. "If we walk into an army of Jaffa, the colonel will defer to Teal'c about their tactics, not me. If the DHD malfunctions, he'll ask me what to do instead of Teal'c. Granted, you're not a permanent member, but if we have to solve a riddle based on Norse runes...I promise you, not one of us even thought to doubt you yesterday when it came to that sort of thing." He wasn't looking convinced. "Daniel, you're not expected to be a military expert."
"But that's not an excuse for what I did," he said.
"No, it's not," she agreed. "I'm glad you realize that. So don't do it again." Daniel fidgeted a little more. "If you ask me," she added, carefully, to make sure she wasn't overstepping too many bounds, "Colonel O'Neill hasn't figured out to deal with you under his command any more than you know how to deal with him as your commander, and yesterday didn't help that any. But he won't...I mean, he might be angry now, but--"
"He's not," Daniel said.
Sam paused, not knowing how to say, Oh, yeah, he definitely is.
"I mean," he amended, looking back at the floor, "he is, I can tell, but he didn't act like it. Last night, before he went home... I thought he was going to yell at me, and...and tell me I was grounded on base forever or, or I had to leave the program or something, I don't know. But he didn't. He was nice. He was supposed to be angry and do something to me."
"Ah," she said. Her eyes skimmed over an angry, red graze on his chin--from a staff blast gone wide on Abydos, maybe, or a stray branch on Cimmeria or being manhandled by Jaffa--and she suspected the colonel thought what had happened yesterday was punishment enough.
"He said he'd make sure we would get through this. I didn't know what to say. What am I supposed to say to that, Sam?"
She shifted a few inches to her left so that she was sitting directly across the closet from him and he couldn't avoid her gaze by looking at the wall next to her. And she avoided the question, a little bit, but she answered part of it, too, and it was only fair since avoiding things seemed to be the topic of the day. They were hiding in a closet, after all.
"I think maybe the best thing to do now is to work on figuring this out," she said. "And by 'this,' I mean Abydos, the...your baby brother, and Kheb. And we'll help you, but you and Dr. Rothman are probably the best we have for that kind of research. Okay?"
Daniel nodded and took a breath, steeling himself and looking almost pathetically relieved to be given an aim and a job to do. "Okay."
"So." Sam cleared her throat and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees the way she usually rested them on top of a desk when she was helping him with a math question. "What do you know about Kheb, or about what's supposed to be there?"
"Not much beyond what Sha'uri said," he admitted. "Maybe there's something there that can help him, or something that can protect him."
"I don't think it's somewhere the SGC has explored."
"No, probably not. We only have vague clues from old legends. Oh, but this is the interesting part: Robert learned the myth from a book on Earth, and I learned it from an old story told on Abydos. They're fairly similar, but with some very specific differences."
Differences in mythology were, unfortunately, often all they had to go on. "That's a start," she said. "What differences?"
He pulled his legs toward himself and sat up straighter, more attentive. "The legend goes that one of the gods hid at Kheb from Setesh. Robert says that in Earth mythology, Isis hid her son Horus to keep him safe from Setesh, who had poisoned him but couldn't hurt him in Kheb. Anyway, Horus later triumphed over Setesh, after Ra intervened to save Horus, which allowed them to leave Kheb and...you know, fight Setesh. You see?"
Holy Hannah.
Sam thought she might see it a little better if he could just tell it in chronological order, with fewer relative clauses and backtrackings. Okay--Setesh, Horus, Isis, Ra. Got it. Kind of. "Uh...yeah. So. Horus is the same as Heru-ur, right?" she said.
"Yes, in his adult form. He's known by other names, too, including..." He raised a finger and leaned forward. "...Harsesis."
Sam felt her eyebrows shoot upward. "Whoa--hold it--"
"Wait, wait," he cut her off, shaking his finger at her as his words started to tumble over each other. "Let me finish. Now, Abydons tell that Osiris was the one who hid there from Setesh, which is very interesting, because Osiris is the father of Horus in Earth mythology but also his brother, sometimes, which is what we learn on Abydos. That makes Horus the son of Ra, which Teal'c says is true of the actual Heru-ur's genealogy, and that connection could account for the confusion about what actually happened."
"So the difference is which god was hiding on Kheb, Horus or Osiris," Sam said, and tried to keep her eyes from crossing. Tried to keep from sighing in relief, too, because this was the Daniel whose excitable brain had charmed her a year ago, and this was the one who'd pushed ideas around with her in the Hall of Thor's Might yesterday. "Is it that important?"
"Yes," he said confidently, an enthusiastic gleam entering his eye. "The identities of gods in mythology can be somewhat fluid over time, because myths evolve, so it's not surprising that there are variations from planet to planet. But from what we know of the actual and mythological methods of Heru-ur the conqueror, this myth could very well follow something that really happened with particular Goa'ulds."
"I see what you're saying," she picked up. "The Goa'uld aren't fluid. They're separate, physical entities, so unless they change their names, that means only one of your versions can be correct. Now, what's that you said about Harsesis being Horus?"
"It means 'Horus, son of Isis,'" Daniel said, nodding, "so, I know, on the surface, it looks like Robert's version is the obvious correct choice, because the mother of the Harsesis is trying to hide him there, like Isis hiding Horus. But I'm not so certain. That's happening now. The myth is based on something that happened in the past; it's not predictive of what's happening in the present or what will happen in the future."
"Unless Sha'uri or Amaunet got the idea of Kheb from something that happened in the past, with another Harsesis," she countered.
"But there are other flaws in that theory, including that the Goa'uld Horus--Heru-ur--is the son of Hathor, not Isis, so there are inconsistencies between that myth and reality already."
"And you think, because Abydos had more recent contact with the Goa'uld, their myth might be closer to the truth?"
"I would think so," he said, nodding, "but the Goa'uld are competitive, and Abydos mostly had contact with Ra, not Setesh, Osiris, or Heru-ur. I'm sure Ra's influence biased our myths, so our myths are probably more accurate in some ways and less so in others."
Sam leaned back against the wall. "Fair enough. So where does that leave us?"
Daniel bit his lip, then deflated. "It leaves us...sitting in the medical supply closet."
She stared at him for a second, then let out a laugh. He finally let a sheepish smile creep out in answer.
"I can ask Kasuf if he knows more when we go to Abydos tomorrow," he amended. "There's a lot to tell them, anyway. Everything was cut short yesterday." He looked away again, picking at his shoelaces, and gave a short, humorless exhalation that wasn't quite a laugh. "It was supposed to be simple, going back home."
It was never going to be simple. She knew that, even if Daniel had hoped it would be. Sam knew that going home after that long, when so much had changed in between, was never simple; otherwise, she might have tried it herself.
"Colonel O'Neill and I were both hoping--expecting--to be there with you when you went back," she said, almost an apology. "I wish we hadn't had to go to Washington yesterday." She wished it even more now, after that fiasco of a medal ceremony, and then felt like a horrible person for wishing it, because she'd never have found out, otherwise, about her dad. Not that she was thinking about her dad--he'd practically ordered her not to, and the good daughter followed the general's orders, right?--except she'd always had a problem obeying her dad's orders, and she sure as hell didn't want to start obeying them now.
"It's okay," he said immediately. "Teal'c was there. And when the leader of America calls for you, you can't just refuse him, right?"
Sam couldn't help but grin at his phrasing. "I guess not." Leader of America, indeed. Then again, the President must seem pretty removed to someone who only knew of him as the person who controlled essentially every regulatory decision that affected their lives at the SGC.
He hesitated, then said, "I, uh, heard about the reporter who was asking Jack about the SGC. Is that why you came back so early?"
"Yeah, that's why," she said, wondering how he'd heard, but then again, while the exact incident with Armin Selig wasn't going to be broadcast through the base, it wasn't like a reporter's death in the capital city hadn't made the news, so it couldn't remain a secret within the program. Daniel was probably not the only one who'd heard bits of it through the grapevine already.
"He died, right?" Daniel pressed. "They say a car hit him...when he started asking questions..."
"Yes, there was a car accident," she said. When he looked suspicious, she had to admit, "I know how it looks, but we didn't do anything to him, Daniel." The SGC hadn't, anyway, she was sure of that, but the Pentagon was full of people in high places, and plenty of them had reasons to want to keep the Stargate under wraps. "As far as we know, it was an accident."
"You saw it happen?" he guessed.
"The colonel did, but not me. I was talking to m...uh, to someone else at the time."
Daniel cocked his head to the side to study her, making her think back to when she'd been trained to hide her thoughts when under question. It was harder, she found, when the questioner was someone she liked. "And that's why you're so upset about the medal ceremony yesterday."
"I'm not 'so upset' about anything," she protested, kicking herself mentally when he only narrowed his eyes at the inane answer. "Why would you think I'm--"
"I was in the infirmary when you went to talk to Janet yesterday," he said. "I wasn't listening," he added quickly, "but you seemed...uh...not happy."
She thought she'd been discrete when asking Janet what the average survival rate was for late-stage lymphoma, but then, she hadn't realized Daniel was lurking there next to his baby brother, either. "It's no big deal. You know, we should really--"
"Who were you talking to?" Daniel interrupted. "Is that what's bothering you?"
Sam sighed. "Just my dad. He was there to see the ceremony."
Curiosity lit his eyes again. "Your dad, the general?"
"My dad, the general."
"Weren't you glad to see him?" He frowned suddenly. "Wait, he doesn't know about the SGC. Did he say... Was he bothering you about something?"
"No," she said. Daniel watched her expectantly, a trace of concern creeping into his face. "We don't talk to each other very often," she allowed. "Seeing him yesterday"--and hearing what he had to say--"was a bit of a shock."
Daniel seemed to have heard her unspoken words, though. "Did he say something to you?" he asked again, suspiciously.
"He said lot of things," she hedged.
"Are you okay?"
"Daniel."
"Sam, what's wrong?"
Later, she wouldn't have been able to say whether it was because she couldn't stand the worry in his gaze any longer, or because she couldn't stand the pressure of the secret boiling silently inside her head. She wasn't even aware of opening her mouth to speak until she heard herself say, "He told me that he has cancer."
It didn't make as much of an impact as she'd thought it would. Daniel cocked his head and said, "Cancer? Is that a...a..." He crossed his hands over each other and wiggled his fingers like they were scuttling sideways over something.
"The crab," she said, thinking of constellations and Beehive Clusters and fighting an urge to giggle, because nothing about lymphoma was remotely funny. "No. It's... Have you started reading biology?"
"Not...much yet," he said slowly, as if trying to figure out how biology, Jacob Carter, and crustaceans fit together.
Sam automatically reached to the side for a pencil, only to remember that she wasn't in her office, and she didn't really need diagrams to explain this, anyway. She found a small notepad in front of her anyway and looked up to see Daniel was on the same wavelength, pulling an ever-present pen from his pocket and offering it to her.
She flipped past the first page, which was half-filled with what she recognized as scribbled Goa'uld symbols. "People's bodies are made up of cells. Some cells have to keep dividing to keep us alive, right?" He nodded. "Usually, they only divide as much as they have to." She sketched out a surface and covered it with amorphous-looking blobs.
He squinted and turned his head, then shuffled around next to her so that they could face the diagram in the same direction. "That's really what cells look like up close? They look different in the textbook."
"Well. No. Just...just pretend." So drawing wasn't her strong suit. Amorphous blobs were perfectly fine in this context. "Now imagine one cell--or group of cells--stopped coordinating with the rest of the body and started ignoring signals, growing and dividing uncontrollably. What happens then? Think about what's limiting them."
"They would...run out of space?"
"Good! That's something you see in certain cancers." She added a messy pile of cells into her drawing, using arrows to indicate some that were breaking off. "The easiest way to understand it is that you can get a mass of cells building up, called a tumor. Tumor cells don't work properly, and they can fight the good cells for space and cause more problems. And eventually they spread and start interfering with other parts of the body, too. Cancer is a very serious disease, and it's difficult to treat for a number of reasons. Sometimes, it can be fatal."
Daniel was silent for a while, studying the sloppy sketch as if it held vital answers, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "That's what...your father...?"
"Not exactly," she said. "My father has a...a blood disease, but the idea is similar."
"And it can be treated?"
"Yes, but like I said," she reminded him, "treatment is complicated and not always effective."
"So...your father's..." he said, and stopped.
...dying, he didn't say, but they both heard it, and the protective shield of clinical explanations started to crack. "No, cancer doesn't mean death," Sam said firmly. "There are treatments, and chemotherapy has advanced a lot in the last several years." And Jacob Carter would never allow a battle to be lost. She hated that about him, sometimes, but it was a good thing now. It would be fine.
"Yeah," Daniel said, still watching her worriedly. "Can I...is there anything that..." He trailed off awkwardly, chewing his lip, and she felt like an idiot.
"No--" She cleared her throat. "No, I'm sorry. I came in here to check on you, and here I am, going on about..."
"Sam," he interrupted, sounding surprised and pulling back to frown sternly at her. "Of course it's okay. You can always tell me things like that." He hesitated, then asked, "Does Jack know, or Janet or Teal'c? Or the general?"
"Everyone's got plenty to worry about already," she said. At Daniel's look, she added, "No, I didn't tell them, but Janet's probably suspicious. General Hammond... My dad probably told him himself; they're good friends. And the general's got more than enough to worry about."
"Everyone has something to worry about. Telling people about it doesn't necessarily make it worse." Daniel ducked his head and peeked up at her through his bangs.
She reached out to drop an arm over his shoulders. "Is that a hint?"
"Worries aren't additive. Cumulative. You should know that--you're supposed to be good at math, Captain-Doctor." Sam surprised herself with a laugh and gave him a backhanded slap on the arm. "Hey!"
"That's Captain-Doctor ma'am to you, Mr. Jackson," she told him. He smiled and closed his eyes, leaned back against the shelving. She let herself think he looked almost relaxed for a moment before remembering not to fool herself--the foreseeable future wasn't shaping up to be relaxing for anyone.
"We should get ready for the Abydos briefing," he said, opening his eyes after a few minutes of companionable silence.
Sam quickly checked her watch, then assured him, "We've got fifteen minutes."
"I know there's time. But I'd like to check on Sharemes first."
Forcibly pushing down her still-present foreboding at the thought of the Harsesis, she said only, "Yeah, okay. I'll go with you." She squeezed his shoulders one more time and stood to pull him up.
Daniel's feet slowed when they approached the infirmary, and she followed his apprehensive gaze to where Colonel O'Neill was standing at the door. "I was wondering where you were," he told Daniel as they approached. Daniel shot an alarmed look toward the Harsesis, but the colonel assured him, "He's fine. Sleeping like a...baby."
She almost expected Daniel to say something like 'that's because he is a baby, Jack,' but he fiddled a little with his jacket sleeve instead, glancing up at O'Neill before looking away and nodding. "I'm just going to..." he said, jerking a thumb toward the Harsesis.
"Right," the colonel said, then reminded him, "Briefing room in fifteen, and then come back here afterward. Dr. Fraiser wants to talk to you about antihistamines."
"About what?" Daniel asked.
"Antihistamines. They're for allergies."
"I know what they are, but--"
"I told her you were sneezing on Cimmeria," the colonel said. "You want to avoid that next time. And it'll be good when Colorado pollen hits you on Earth, too."
Daniel dropped his gaze again. "Yes, sir," he said. He hesitated, lingering for a second as if to speak, then hurried away to the baby's side before the colonel could do more than frown and plunge his hands into his pockets with a sigh.
Sam waited outside with the colonel while Daniel leaned over the bed serving as the Harsesis' makeshift crib, a hand hovering over the tiny body but not quite touching. Alerted to his presence anyway, the baby stirred, and Daniel bent low to whisper something she couldn't hear and probably wouldn't have understood even if she could.
"He okay?" Colonel O'Neill asked her quietly.
"I think it would help if you talked to him, sir," she answered, which she couldn't not say, though it was the most leeway she would allow herself. O'Neill gave her a strange look but nodded, still frowning.
When Daniel was done hovering anxiously over the baby and was finally reassured that his brief time away hadn't caused disaster to strike, he followed Colonel O'Neill out of the infirmary, staying back hesitantly. Sam lingered near the doorway as they headed toward the briefing room, but she saw when O'Neill realized Daniel was several steps behind, rolled his eyes, and pulled Daniel forward to shepherd him out of sight, watching his back even when they were safe and at home.
Before she went that way, too, Sam ducked back into the infirmary and looked directly at the face of the Harsesis for the first time.
Immediately, she knew why Daniel had asked her if she'd ever really looked at the baby. And immediately, she almost wished she hadn't, because Sharemes didn't have to be breathtakingly beautiful; he was breathtakingly human, just a baby boy without a mother or father, and his innocently slumbering face was going to make objectivity pretty hard.
From the next chapter (" Kin"):
"So this is your house?" Jack asked Daniel, making his way up the ramp and across the hanging crosswalk that connected the upper level of one building with another.