The world stuttered back
to life as Jack's cheek slid across the grit-covered stone of the floor.
His warning still rang in the air above him and was accentuated by
another energy blast that took out a portion of the wall beside him.
Jack rocketed to his feet
and sidestepped the falling wreckage, only to lose the rhythm of his
steps, his naked feet sliding in the scattered wreckage. He staggered
and just failed to catch himself, then tumbled into a heap on the floor.
The shadow he'd glimpsed earlier jarred into his side, all churning legs
and arms.
"Jackie, come back!"
The sound of Sam's voice
jerked his eyes to her, that action was followed almost immediately by
another blast, this one slammed into him. Sam's scream froze him into
inaction for a split second. The total lack of pain confused Jack's
already addled brain. A chunk of debris had felled him, and his head
throbbed. The cool trail down the back of his neck told him of the blood
that dripped from the point of impact. But that was the only place he
hurt.
Jack's sense of smell
drew him back to what - or rather who - had slammed into him - Jackie.
Yet the all too-well-remembered smell of burnt flesh set off an
adrenaline flood, and with it came an absolute certainty of what had
happened. His world snapped into a cold and crystalline place, a place
he'd rather not be.
As if viewing a movie, he
saw and heard Sam scrabble to her feet, screaming Jackie's name.
Dispassionately, he watched as his own hands tugged at the warm bundle
sagged against him and turned her pale face to the light.
But it felt so unreal,
this could not be happening, he argued with himself. Not again. Only a
cruel and hardhearted God would impose such a horror upon any one person
more than one time - would visit the sins of the father upon an innocent
son - or daughter.
Jack had been raised to
believe in a merciful and all-knowing God by the oft-times not so tender
ministrations of the nuns at the local Catholic Church. The lessons he'd
memorized from the Baltimore Catechism did not begin to cover the
tragedies of his life, nor what his country asked him to do in the name
of freedom. Each event eroded the faith that had flickered within.
Charlie's death had snuffed it out - he thought.
Perhaps it was easier to
feel anger toward an alien in human clothing than at the God of his
fathers. His mind shied away from the root of his anger, at the many
disappointments and his perceived abandonment, at why any God would
allow an innocent to die or tolerate the sacrifice that Jackie had made
for him - him . . . an altogether most unworthy vessel for such an act
of heroism and love.
The unmoving child in his
arms must be part of a dream of nightmarish proportions, and soon he
would awaken from it safe in his own bed at his home, his arms wrapped
around Sam's warm body. But he didn't wake up, and the nightmare
continued despite his protestations that it had gone on long enough -
that it was too much - that it must stop.
He felt the sharp jar as
Sam used him as a stop to her momentum and with a savage effort; he
wrenched his mind away from the existential bent of his thoughts back to
the here and now. Sam's arms reached for the child splayed next to him,
she tenderly pulled Jackie away to cradle against her chest. Stunned,
Jack snuggled down next to her, one arm around Sam's waist as, together,
their hands gently arranged their child's lower body and legs across
their own.
Up close, he could see
Jackie's injuries and it didn't look good for her chances of survival,
he's seen grown men die of less. Her abdomen was a mass of charred flesh
that smoked and smoldered, faintly hissing as warm blood cooled the
wound. Jack swallowed hard as tears threatened to spill from his
eyes.
"Sam?" the name wafted
from Jackie's lips, a mere whisper but her parents heard it
nonetheless.
"I'm here, Jackie," Sam
replied as tears flowed down her cheeks and dripped onto Jackie's
upturned face.
"Sah-ree," Jackie said and frowned.
"Why?" Sam voice trembled
with suppressed grief and shock, her eyes met Jack's and he could only
stare hollowly back.
"Hurt you." Jackie
breathed softly, one forefinger pointed upward as her hands rested on
her chest.
"No, you didn't hurt us,
we love you, Jackie." Sam looked to Jack for confirmation and he numbly
nodded his approval. "We're sorry you got hurt."
"Dying?" Jackie's
dark-brown eyes bored into Sam's eyes and his own.
"No," Jack's mouth formed
the word that Sam spoke; he could utter his denial, but could not speak
the lie. Sam sniffed and shook her head violently in denial. "I'll get
you some help from the Asgard."
"No," a minute shake of
the child's head forced them to face her reality.
Jack shook his head. "No,
Jackie . . . stay with us." His eyes widened as the girl's fingers
reached toward his lips, but did not quite touch. "Please?" he whispered
as her arm flopped back and he reached out to cup her face and stroked
her cheek with his thumb. If he wished hard enough, and denied what he
saw . . . perhaps, just perhaps . . .
"See . . . my sisters,"
Jackie whispered with a hint of a smile. Jack squeezed his eyes tightly
closed for just a moment, and prayed they'd wake up from this nightmare.
Sam's anguished gasp had them flying open in alarm.
Jackie's eyes widened and
she gave one last gasp. Then her body relaxed as her final breath
rattled out of her throat. The spark of life gradually left her dark
eyes leaving them dull and lifeless as they stared off into oblivion.
Their tragic and
profoundly private Pieta-like tableau was shattered by a bass voice
above them. "The girl is dead?" Baal nodded forbiddingly. "Pity, I shall
have to put her in the sarcophagus . . . or create another. Bring them."
And he turned to leave.
Baal's grotesque
intrusion was like a sharp stick thrust into an unsuspecting beehive,
and in an instant Jack's frozen grief swarmed into a rage that boiled
inside his chest and then sought to find its release in a scream of
disbelief and fury that threatened to erupt from his mouth. He bit his
lip till it bled in an effort to contain it while his trembling hands
moved Jackie's body away from his own.
Once his child's body was
safe in Sam's care, he loosed the buzzing flight of rage and flung
himself at Baal's retreating back; and allowed his wrath to explode in
one word of negation and denial. "Noo!"
Baal shouted, "Stop!"
Jack's attack took the
Goa'uld by surprise and the infuriated man took full advantage of it.
With Baal knocked to the floor, Jack straddled him and raised his fist,
then smashed it into the snake's nose with punishing force as years of
pent-up rage and fury poured forth. Beneath him, the Goa'uld writhed and
twitched as he tried to avoid Jack's fists.
The Warriors did not
intervene, too well programmed to obey their master's every command,
even those not intended for them. Their god was on his own.
Baal's nose flattened
under the assault of first one fist, and then the other as blood
spattered his handsome face. With metronome-like regularity, Jack's
words were punctuated by his fists. "You . . . son . . . of . . . a . .
. bitch!"
Blood sprayed Jack's face
and he licked it off his lips, savoring the coppery taste of it,
relishing it. Not because it was blood, but because of who's blood it
was. It tasted of revenge - sweet and heady - one he'd yearned after for
years. No longer would he deny himself of it, he had paid its price many
times over.
"This one's for Jackie .
. . this one's for her sisters . . . every . . . single . . . one."
"One and two and three . . ."
A distant part of his
brain recognized the words and meaning of Sam's chant, her hope. It
should have made sense to him, but the rage and sweet blood could not be
resisted. They were Jack's preoccupation, his extraction of vengeance on
the one snakehead that had plagued him, whom he believed had broken him
years ago. And now Jack intended to break him in turn.
His words, still in time
to his fisted blows, grew increasingly unintelligible as his already
ravaged throat became hoarse with his shouted proclamation of Baal's
every crime. Nevertheless, Jack knew what he said, he'd lived it and a
part of him gloried in the freedom of voicing it at long last. Each
declaration of every degradation and humiliation made him stronger, not
weaker.
Jack's chest heaved from
exertion and years of hidden anguish, slicked with sweat and blood, and
for once it wasn't his own. He cocked his fist back and relived the last
sin of Baal's power over him, the life he himself had taken to gain his
freedom many years ago. Not an innocent, but a life nonetheless, and it
was fitting that Baal experience the same end for himself.
The weight of every
moment spent at the mercy of this wanna-be god fueled his fist as it
descended, a dark angel flashing through the sudden brilliance that
erupted around him, closely followed on Jack's shout, "And this one's
for me!"
Ensnared by the light and
sound he knew he should recognize - his fist slammed into . . . an empty
floor? Distantly, his mind was aware that instead of the satisfaction of
dying flesh under his blow, he felt the bones of his hand give way, but
he dismissed all of this as unimportant. The most important thing now
was to protect Jackie and Sam.
As if in a dream, he
heard Sam's voice behind him, loud with urgency. "I need some help here.
She's not breathing!"
"Jackie!" Jack's voice
was so hoarse that her name was only a croak.
He staggered to his feet
and lurched toward Sam who cradled the child - his daughter - in her
arms. Jackie's pale thin face was tucked up against Sam's breast while
her arms dangled at her side lifelessly.
Jack held out his hands
to take her from Sam, but then saw the gore encrusting them and snatched
them away. Although the blood was primarily Baal's it wasn't appropriate
to touch a child with hands stained with blood. It had scared her before
- back in the cell - and he'd promised her that he would protect her
from harm. And now she was dead. Another promise broken - she had been
right to distrust him.
Someone tried to push him
away from his daughter and he lashed out with his hands. "Don't touch
her. Just leave her alone," he snarled. "Haven't you done enough
already?"
"But Jack . . ." Sam
pleaded as she jerked away from Jack's side. "It's Thor . . . and Ernie.
They can save her."
Jack blinked the sweat
out of his eyes and looked around not really seeing where he was as he
tried to make some sense of the situation. "What?"
His mind raced out of
control .The last thing he'd known was that he'd been beating the crap
out of Baal. What had happened to change that? Where was he now, and how
had he gotten there?
"It's me, Jack. Ernie. I
want to help," a short gray . . . Asgard? Yeah, that was it.
Jack opened his mouth and
then closed it with a snap. His forehead wrinkled as he fought to halt
his whirling brain, trying to catch onto something that might tell him
who this creature was. "Ernie?"
The Asgard held out his
hand in a silent plea of empathy. "Yes, Jack. It's me."
Jack nodded numbly as
something deep within told him this was someone he could trust and stood
aside, whereupon Ernie turned away from Jack and beckoned to Sam.
"Bring her here, Sam, and
I'll get her hooked up to a medical pod." He gently steered Sam toward
his goal and Jack shambled after.
"I tried giving her
rescue breathing but I'm not sure it was enough. She was shot by a Kull
Warrior - it was an accident. It was aiming for me and she got in the
way," Sam explained as she laid Jackie in the pod. Then she straightened
Jackie's arms along her body and bent down to kiss her on the
forehead.
"Please, Ernie. Save her.
She . . . she deserves to live," Sam pleaded with tear-filled eyes.
Ernie patted her arm and
nodded. "Of course she does. I'll do the best I can."
Then he bent to his work
and hurriedly began hooking Jackie's body up to the various ports and
monitors contained in the medical pod.
A touch to Jack's elbow
startled him. Baal and his carbon-copy Warriors loomed out of the chaos
and jumble in his head; in reaction he flinched and rounded with a
raised fist to hit whoever had dared to disturb him. His clenched hand
screeched to a halt in mid-air when another image snapped into focus and
he discerned the identity of his assailant.
"Thor?"
Thor's eyes widened and then he nodded. "You seem to be on edge,
O'Neill. Would you come with me?"
"No, I can't. I need to
stay with Jackie." Jack's attention had already returned to her still
unmoving form.
"Who is Jackie?" Thor's
voice was annoying and it was getting on Jack's last nerve.
"What?" He ran the
fingers of one gore-encrusted hand through his hair, leaving reddened
tufts standing at attention in its wake. "Oh, um. Jackie? She's my
daughter."
"I was not aware that you had a daughter."
"For crying out loud,
Thor, could you just leave me alone right now?" Jack snapped and then
left Thor to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam. This time he had a
name for the creature across from him. Slowly his overloaded mind
puzzled out that somehow help had arrived in the form of the Asgard. New
hope raised a warmth in the ashes of his faith. Perhaps . . .
"Has Ernie said anything
yet?" Jack asked her, while his hands clenched and unclenched at his
side. He winced as the bones he'd shattered in his hand complained at
the rough treatment. He flexed his fingers again and gloried in the
shaft of pain that shot up his elbow.
Pain he could understand.
They were old pals, buds, - comrades-in-arms as it were - and he
deserved to suffer. For Jackie had shielded him from that last laser
blast with her own body - and paid for her selfless act with her life -
a price far too high for a soul as dark as his.
Another clench of his
fist renewed the pain; his ally, a buttress against his raw emotions and
a refuge from a nightmarish present that was too much for him to face. A
new shield against older nightmares he refused to recognize, even though
he knew them intimately.
"No, he hasn't. She looks
so small and helpless just lying there, doesn't she?"
"Huh?" temporarily shaken
from his own horrific thoughts, he raised shaking hands, looked at them
blankly and then let them drop back down to his side as if he didn't
know what to do with them. His head felt too small for the chaos and
pounded in time with his heartbeat.
"Oh, yeah, she does,"
Jack licked his dry cracked lips and tasted a coppery tang of dried
blood - not his own - but Baal's. It had felt so good to pound him into
the floor, an ache of pleasure sharper than the mindless shiver of
sexual climax bloomed at the remembrance of what he had done. Shame and
elation warred amongst his many waking nightmares, making reality seem
distant.
He flexed his fingers
again and rejoiced at the jolt of liquid fire that raced up his arm to
drown the hated and - at the same time desired - animalistic pleasure.
His only anchor in the whirling chaos he found himself in. He studied
his fist with numb detachment and noted the deformed knuckles surrounded
by puffy bluish skin and wondered at how steady his hand seemed. Should
it not be shaking?
"Please come with me,"
Thor's matter of fact tone broke into Jack's fevered thoughts and he
jumped, fists cocked at hip level, ready for use. Sam gave him a worried
look and he shied away from any contact with them. Dealing with the
bedlam inside of his head took all he had; dealing with more was beyond
his present capabilities.
"Why? I want to stay with
Jackie, she'll be scared when she wakes up if I'm not there," Sam's tone
was firm and unyielding as only a mother with a wounded chick could
be.
"Eir will do everything
within his power but your presence is distracting him," Thor sighed and
blinked his large obsidian eyes - eyes that were a match for Jack's
irredeemably fallen soul.
"Well, okay," Sam still sounded uncertain. "But you'll tell us as
soon as there's news, won't you?"
"Of course I will," Ernie
assured them as his head bobbed toward them and then his attention was
back on his patient.
Thor led them to a corner
with chairs that they all could use and Sam sank into one with a sigh of
relief. Jack ignored the implied gesture of kindness and stood facing a
seated Thor and Sam.
"Why don't you sit down, O'Neill?" Thor blinked up at him.
"I don't feel like
sitting down, that's why!" Jack snapped back with his fisted hands now
lowered to his side.
In response to his own
unwarranted aggression and inner pain he tightened the broken one, the
jolt of pain was welcome and reminded him of whom and what he was - a
person undeserving of any respite or kindness. How tightly could he
force his fist closed, how much pain would it take to wash this from his
blackened soul?
"Jack, are you all
right?" Sam looked worried and stood up.
"I'm fine." He flexed his
hand again and stiffened as his nerve-endings screamed from the
over-stimulation. "Just fine," he muttered.
She reached out a
tentative hand to touch him and he cringed back. "Stop, don't touch me,"
he warned, his voice loud with anger and self-loathing.
"O'Neill, is there a
problem? You appear to be hurt." Thor's voice sounded calm - soothing
even - but Jack was having none of it. He knew he didn't deserve any
acts of compassion and sought refuge in another jolt of pain. If the God
of his childhood had abandoned him, why shouldn't everyone else?
Obviously, he was beyond help, his soul already consigned to the
everlasting fires of hell for his transgressions.
"Why don't you mind your
own business?" Jack snapped and backed away from them . . . and then
stopped when he felt a bulkhead against his back. His head felt as if it
would explode at any second. "Just stay away from me - all of you!" He
knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, that to know and touch him would be
fatal - for those who loved him . . . died.
Sam's eyes were wide, her
blue irises all but hidden by her dilated black pupils as she inched
toward him, her hands outreached. "Jack? Let me help you."
Jack licked his lips. Was
that fear in her eyes? She should fear and despise him, for had his own
daughter not just died in his place? Had he not been derelict and
replayed the scene of his son's death before her? He shook his head,
unwilling to allow more death because of him. The unbearable pressure in
his skull increased and he thumped his head back against the wall at his
back. "No, I can't . . . you can't . . ."
When he felt a sudden
touch against his arm he tried to swat it away with the other hand. His
fingers met resistance and he looked down and saw another Asgard at his
side.
"What?"
"You are injured and need
to rest, O'Neill," admonished Thor with undeserved gentleness.
"No," Jack's voice wavered as his legs turned to rubber.
Deliberately he banged
his broken hand back against the wall, the pain flickered and died. His
anchor gone, his body slid against the bulkhead on its way to the floor.
No matter how badly he desired it, the cleansing pain would not
reawaken; he blinked and realized the world had canted to one side.
He fought the darkness
that beckoned to him, but it was stronger, and he had no weapon left.
Heavy waves of the horrific chaos that polished the inside of his skull
washed over Jack and sucked him down to that deep place he referred to
as 'the box'. Coming to rest in the gory bones of his own past, his
vision grayed at the edges and his breaths became useless shuddering
gasps.
"No," he whispered.
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