I don't consider myself a hard-ass. Smart-ass, yeah, okay, but not a hard-ass. In fact, if there was such a thing as a soft-ass, that'd be me.

Okay, forget I said that.

The point is, I'm an easygoing guy, really. I've been in the United States Air Force for twenty-six years and I've been an officer almost the entire tour. There's been only one time in my life during all those years when I buttoned myself up in a full-metal jacket and exercised my right to be a ranking asshole. That was after Charlie died, when I came on to the Stargate project. I had no interest then in making myself liked. I was plotting a course from one death to another. There were no points along the way.

Naturally, that'd be when I met Daniel. I didn't make a good first impression on him. He didn't make one on me, either. He had long, sloppy hair and the kind of brainy, distracted arrogance that I'd hated in most of my college professors. We had to relearn each other later, after I went back to Abydos. After he joined the team. It took a while for him to get me. The jokes and the casual attitude threw him off, I could tell--I'd mellowed back to more or less my usual self by then. Don't get me wrong. Charlie's death was still this great rip down the center of my life, and the new Jack O'Neill sometimes felt hollow. All facade and bravado, no heart. But I must have passed muster, because after a while Daniel started to warm up to me.

But he still thinks I'm a hard-ass. No matter what I do, he doesn't get the difference between an Air Force officer toeing the line out of necessity and one who'd eat your balls for breakfast and not even burp. He thinks I'm tough on him when I raise my voice or slap his ideas down once in a while. And, in some other world, maybe he's right. But hell, I usually regret any digs I manage to get in. And if I don't, you better believe he makes me regret it before much time passes. The fact of the matter is, I put up with a lot. I have a long fuse. But sometimes...bang.

"This is not the same conversation we've had before," Daniel was saying now, staring me down. "Though as I recall, the last time we debated acquiring technology by questionably moral means, I was right."

"And I admitted that," I said, measuring out my words, antagonized by the memory. "But if the Eurondans hadn't turned out to be neo-Nazi lunatics, you'd have been wrong and I'd have been right. There was nothing wrong with the mandate I was carrying out. It could have gone either way."

He cocked his head at me like a dog that doesn't understand your words, only your tone. He looked puzzled, but I could tell by now when his puzzlement was real and when it was a front designed to make you feel vaguely stupid. "You really believe that's all there is to it?"

Carter eased closer to us, almost into the charged air between our bodies. "Sir, with respect, I think we should--"

"Oh, we should, Carter. We should get Daniel a little bubble that he can live in happily ever after where there are no Gou'ald trying to wipe out upstart humanity."  She shut up and ducked her head, while at the same moment Daniel raised his chin.

"Am I disappointing you, Daniel?" I asked. "What would you prefer, really? How about each time a handy new weapon against the Gou'ald is offered, I take out my checklist so we can ask ourselves, is it a nice weapon? Does it make us feel good about ourselves?" My voice raised toward the end, fueled with frustration.

His jaw tightened. I'd succeeded in making him angry. The drawback was that anger only made him want to talk more. "You're reducing this to absurdity so that you don't have to face what we're really talking about here, which is stealing the blood of people who've told us in so many words they don't want to facilitate biological warfare. You're talking about trying to recreate a disease that could wipe out humanity, not save it."

I narrowed my eyes and kept them on his, refusing to be distracted by the sharp cuts of his hands. He wasn't going to strike out, though it was hard not to read his movements as a threat on some level. I certainly was tempted to strike him, or at least restrain him and stick him in a closet somewhere for the remainder of the mission.

"No, you're right. I'm not facing that," I said, feeling hot and hostile. "I'm just a dumbass flyboy who follows orders, and I never question our mandate, because that would be wrong."

His mouth soured as I finished my sarcastic sing-song. "Fine, Jack. Do what you want." He turned away, waving a hand that dismissed me from his world. He only made it a few feet and seconds before he turned back, though. He could never let anything rest. "After all, I'm only here to follow orders, too, right?"

My eyebrows climbed. "You follow orders?" I said. That was rich. "Don't tell me I missed the flying pigs. I would have brought my camera."

We glared at each other, him with arms folded, me hands clenched, while Carter and Teal'c stood by waiting for a cease-fire. Or maybe to render first aid.

"You are a very angry people," said a voice from the corner.

Shit. Mekhu. I forced my posture to loosen, and turned to see the kid sitting cross-legged on a stool. Where the hell did he come from, I asked the others with a look. They offered various expressions of ignorance; Carter a small one-shouldered shrug. Teal'c, standing nearest to our visitor, walked over and drew back a wall curtain. Little door behind it. Cute.

"Mekhu." I managed a brief smile. "How, uh, how long have you been there?"

"Many words," he said with a grin.

"Ah, yes," said Daniel, darting a glance at me. "We do share many words." He rolled 'words' around in his mouth like he wanted to choose a sharper term. "But this doesn't mean we're an angry people. We get angry for a little while, but then we...get over it."

I had nothing to say to that, but it sounded good.

Carter smiled at the kid and went to kneel down by him. Times like this, I realized how good a mom she'd make someday. "When we argue, it's because we are excited by ideas that we want each other to understand."

Mekhu looked at me, then at Carter. "He has the loudest ideas."

"Not always," I said, trying to sound mild.

"Is it because you are the leaper?" he asked me.

"That's 'leader,'" Daniel said, speaking back and forth to the both of us and somehow making it clear he was mocking me on another level.

"Colonel O'Neill is our leader, yes," said Carter. "And his ideas are important. And, sometimes, the loudest." She apologized kind of sideways to me as she said that. And then again, she didn't. She was pretty fed up with chest-thumping males, I gathered. Even a chest-thumping male can sense these things. "But he listens to us as much as we listen to him."

"I do not think you listen," Mekhu said to me.

"Oh?" Thanks, pal. That meant a lot coming from a thirteen-year-old with bare feet and purple feathers in his hair. I wasn't sure if I approved of these young Karnakian terrors and that was saying something, because usually I get along with kids.

"Idu says that those who speak with the loudest voice are the least wise." Idu was his dad. They had a new-agey sort of relationship and called each other by their first names. It was part of the whole Karnakian thing. Equality. Equality was just one of several words they threw at you, and if they'd used it to mean something I recognized that'd be great, but what they meant by it turned out to be chaos and lippy kids and the absence of anyone in charge who could answer yes or no to a simple question. Equality was beginning to get on my nerves.

"Idu," I began, and then caught Carter's eye. "Idu has his own very interesting ideas."

"I still do not understand why you have leaders. To put one person above another--how can you ever speak as equals?"

"That's a good question, Mekhu," said Daniel. I made a face at him that he ignored. "What you practice we would call a meritocracy of ideas. It isn't unheard of." He gave me a cool, pointed look. Subtle as a trout smacking your jaw, that's Daniel.

"Leadership in itself is not an evil," said Teal'c. "Where there is necessity for defense against an enemy there is a necessity for leaders."

"Why?" asked Mekhu.

"To marshal and direct forces in battle, and to serve as an example of courage and wisdom that will compel adherence to a unified cause."

Satisfied, I watched Mekhu try to digest that one. "We do not battle each other in Karnak," he said.

"Your enemies fled," said Teal'c. "They could return one day."

Mekhu took out a feather and weighed it in his hand, then let it fall with a smile.

Deep.

"Perhaps." He stood and scrutinized me. I felt more scrutinized than I cared for, in fact, and sensed a headache coming on. "You use words that you wish to have," he hesitated, "obeyed. But even the wind does not command the leaves on the trees to move. They move because it is their will to move."

Oh yeah, headache. "Okay," I said politely, searching for a reply that wouldn't be downright offensive. "I...hear you. And when you find a leaf that decides not to move, I'll be the first to take a look at that. Just let me know. Or let Daniel know," I added as if coming up with a bright idea. "I bet he'd get a real kick out of it, too." I smiled falsely at my archaeologist, who stared back like wood.

"You do not listen," said Mekhu. "You think the wind is a leader and that you are the wind."

"Oh, he is the wind," Daniel piped up, raising his brows. "A very strong, strong wind."

Carter hid a smile, and even Teal'c turned his face aside a moment. Right. Well, that was it in a nutshell. Some days you're their glorious leader, other days you're the wind.

Coffee. Sweet, sweet coffee. I sat down with my mug and warmed my hands, and wondered why there was never a plate of doughnuts lying around handy.

"The Karnakians have no government per se except as established by philosophical consensus. They're a peaceful anarchy, General. They have no system of legal sanctions, no institutions of authority. They relate to one another as equal members of an extended kinship group, loosely affiliated with other settlements along the nearest seaboard."

Daniel clicked off the projection of the mission map and circled back around the table to his chair. "No member of the community invokes authority or speaks for the whole."

Hammond glanced at me. I tipped up one shoulder and then hid behind my mug.

"What bearing does this have on your mission, Doctor?"

"Only that, as Colonel O'Neill has pointed out, we could in theory just take the blood samples that we've requested and suffer no organized retribution." His tone made it clear what he thought of that. "However, even an anarchy practices some form of social coercion. It's unlikely we'd be welcome back if we commit an offense they perceive as hostile to their way of life. Or to any individuals."

"Hey," I said. "I did not suggest that we hurt anyone."

"No, just jab them with a needle while they're sleeping."

"It's one option," I said flatly. "And if someone gave the order and it meant saving the human race, you bet I'd do it. In a heartbeat." I felt a flash of bitterness again at being the only one who'd say what no one else wanted to face, but that was my job, and I was doing it, same as I always had. Carter had said there were good odds of their blood being useful; I banked on Carter. I offered information and a range of alternatives, some of them a little dirty. When the stakes are high, that's what you do.

Hammond took an audible breath. "Gentlemen, thank you. I'm fully cognizant of both sides of this debate." He looked around the table. "If anyone wishes to contribute a fresh insight into this subject, speak now."

Carter, next to me, folded her hands on the table. "We have no way yet of knowing for sure whether there would be useful viral information obtained from a blood sample, sir. But if there is, it could prove invaluable in developing a natural physical defense against the Gou'ald. Though it was a fatal illness for the Karnakians that drove the Gou'ald away, we might be able to retro-engineer a vaccine that would render a human subject unsuitable as a host without the original illness or mortality."

"It would be a great advantage in our fight against the Gou'ald," said Teal'c.

"Though, uh, devil's advocate here--if we aren't useful to them as hosts," said Daniel, "what reason would they have to keep us around at all? Or, assuming they wouldn't just wipe us out, what's to stop them from enslaving us the old-fashioned way?"

"Guns," I said, flatly and only half-facetiously. "Big guns."

Hammond flicked a look at me, but I could tell his mind was busy assessing the issue. "You said every one of these people turned down your request?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Though we only asked--"

"A hundred," Daniel finished.

Hammond frowned. "How did they know what your purpose was in making the request? Surely you could have found someone who'd accept a lesser explanation, one that wouldn't raise these objections."

"They had town criers, sir, for lack of a better word," said Carter. "Whatever we discussed with an individual was usually broadcast quickly around the city." She shared a dry look with the rest of us. "It was quite effective. By the time we realized what was happening, the reasons for our interest were popular knowledge."

"I have to admit I find it hard to credit that no one among these people saw it in their own best interests to help us fight the Gou'ald." He shook his head once but didn't straighten his shoulders against the burden of command. I read the signs and cursed inwardly.

"At this time I cannot condone drawing blood against the express wishes of an intelligent people, by any means. With no certainty the results would even be of use, this would risk putting an unjustifiable strain on further talks. You'll return to the planet and pursue other avenues. If you're unable to obtain what you need, we'll have to curtail this initiative for now." He looked at me. "I'm sorry, Colonel."

"Sir," said Carter.

"Yes, Major?"

"There were some other indications that the Karnakians might retain Gou'ald technology. It's only hints so far, and they may not even know what they have. It's been several generations. But everyone we've spoken to concurs that the Gou'ald left PR5-358 very suddenly when the plague hit. We think there may be artifacts within some of the Karnakian dwellings."

Daniel spoke up. "We've seen rings worn by a few of the women that were almost certainly of Gou'ald craftsmanship, but tradition prevented their removal."

"I was going to test them," clarified Carter. "If we can find anything not currently owned or in use…." She trailed off with a twitch of her brows, point made.

"You're authorized to offer any standard trade agreement," noted Hammond. "And I'll have stores make up a package of goods for exchange. Is there anything further?"

Dismissed.

"I think it's their idea of a joke," said Daniel, squatting to sift through the items left on our mat. He picked up a bunch of flowers, put them down. "Or a philosophical statement. Sort of like a koan. We ask for jewels and weapons, they bring us...items from nature." He puzzled at the array, then sat on the floor and began turning over shells and rocks.

"That's peachy. So what we'll do is present a bouquet to Apophis and ask him not to rip our brains out. Think he'll go for that?"

"Jack, this just proves my point. These people are committed to a peaceful ethos. Helping us to fight the Gou'ald would be fostering a conflict that goes against all their beliefs. That's how they see it."

I framed a picture in the air: "Sitting. Ducks. That's what these people are, Daniel." I was fed up and disgusted. A joke, he said. Some joke. They wouldn't be laughing the next time the Gou'ald rolled through their gate.

He looked up at me. "That's what we thought about the Nox."

I ran a hand over my head and walked away. I had no answer to that, but I knew--I knew--this was different. I stared out the window, over the rooftops and toward the sea. Pretty place. Reminded me of the Saudi coast. They had a big sunset up on display tonight. Wide and pink and orange. The water glittered in the distance and I could hear laughter floating up from the street. Trees swished, some birdlike thing landed on the rail and hooted at me, and I closed my eyes. It was always places like this that got nailed the hardest. We could come back in five, ten years and find a graveyard and blasted rubble. Daniel knew that, he had to, but he didn't see that.

He knew but didn't see. Evil was an abstract idea to him. No matter how much shit went down, he walked through it and came out the other side with the experience written like glyphs into his brain. He was a dry book.

I turned and stared at the back of his head, and knew I lied to myself. The accusation sounded good but all it took was one look at him to realize it was a crock. I couldn't make his pieces fit together any other way though, didn't get how he could feel so passionately one minute and then sweep life aside the next to make a place on his shelf for dusty, useless ideas. Ethos. What was an ethos if you weren't around to enjoy it?

Carter and Teal'c came in, dusty from head to toe and tired around the eyes. "No luck, sir," Carter reported. She dumped off her pack. "News of our visit had already reached the next village up the coast. By now there's probably not an inhabitant of this planet who doesn't know we want to collect their 'essence' to fight the Gou'ald." Carter doesn't often get ticked off, but when she does you can tell from fifty paces.

"Sorry to hear that, Major." I grimaced, waved a hand at our rug of treasures. "We, however, have collected some lovely shells, driftwood, and rocks."

She stared at the mat, then stared at me with big eyes. I shared her pain.

"Our trade proposal," I said. "We asked for jewels, they bring us--" I waved again. "Daniel thinks it's a joke."

Teal'c surveyed the booty. "I do not see the humor."

"Tell me about it," I said, sitting on a rickety chair.

"Where's Mekhu?" asked Daniel. "Did he come back with you?"

Carter sat across from me, and poured herself a cup of water from our hospitality pitcher. "He's here. He wanted to know if we'd be going soon, and I told him yes." She looked at me as she sipped her water. "He said he has a gift for you."

"For me?" I blinked. "Well, I have all the flowers I can handle. Don't know where I'd put any more."

She twisted out a tired smile. "Well, if nothing else, I think we can safely say that the Karnakians would be one of the stubbornest people the Gou'ald ever had to face."

There was an idea. "Maybe the snakes didn't leave because they got sick," I said, waggling my brows in a knowing way. "Maybe they went insane."

"Most Gou'ald are driven mad by the sarcophagus, O'Neill. Not by their hosts."

"It was a joke, Teal'c." He cocked his head at me. "Oh, never mind."

Mekhu came in, skipping barefoot across the stone floor with a display of energy that made me want to nap. Kids today. "Hey, Mekhu. Watch the priceless artifacts."

He bounced to a stop in front of me and then stood on one foot, scratching his toes down the other calf. "Your people are leaving, Colonel."

"Yes. Very soon." None too soon.

"You have not found your visit fruitful." I eyed him, not immediately answering. His dark hair was full of straw and he had blue spots of paint on each cheek. Mix anarchy and fashion and this was exactly what you'd expect to see.

"We enjoyed meeting you, Mekhu," said Daniel, coming to join us. "And your people. We appreciate the hospitality that you and your family have shown us. We'd hoped to learn more, though; to gain more tangible knowledge that would allow us to fight our enemies."

I was reluctantly impressed by Daniel. Grateful even, for his unexpected support. He'd gotten in a tiny dig there, and I could tell he was ready for another fishing expedition. I suppose it made sense. Even an archaeologist can't do much with a bunch of posies.

"We have been interested to learn of your ways," said Mekhu. He gave me a sly grin. "And we do not want you to leave unhappy." He pulled a dangling chain of gold from his pocket, and held it temptingly across his palms. "This is the hali al-Najidri. It has been in our family for many years and is a token of great esteem and honor."

"Hey," I said, staring at the links and jewels. Plain-looking, but who knew what fancy Gou'ald action it might contain. "Nice...trinket." I exchanged looks with the others, who were already busy exchanging looks of their own.

"Mekhu, are you sure that this is yours to give away?" asked Carter. She kept her voice steady and skeptical but couldn't hide how ready she was for him to say yes.

"Oh, yes." He showed off his white teeth.

"May I...?" Carter took it from his hands and turned it over. "I don't sense any naquada, sir," she said, disappointed.

"And it's not, uh, Gou'ald in style," added Daniel in a murmur, looking quickly to Teal'c for confirmation.

"I do not believe it is," agreed Teal'c. "It appears to be a simple ornament."

"So it's not--"

Carter shook her head at me. "No, sir."

Damn. I edged out a smile for Mekhu, who was holding the chain again. I couldn't really tell him this wasn't what we were looking for. "Thanks. We'll treasure it." I reached for it, but he drew away.

"It is for Daniel that you must wear this."

"Beg pardon?"

"You have shared anger. The hali al-Najidri is a circle of peace. To wear its gift is both to give and accept forgiveness."

"O-kay." I looked at Daniel, who pursed his lips and gave me no clue. "Mekhu--" I was going to double-check and make sure this wasn't the Karnakian equivalent of a marriage band, but then I couldn't bring myself to ask a question like that of a kid. Oh well. What the hell if it was. We were leaving anyway. "Sounds great. Daniel?"

"What? Oh." He took the chain and stretched it out for a moment, gave me and then Carter an odd, questioning look, then shrugged his brows and came around behind me. "I, uh, forgive you and ask your forgiveness." I felt the cold metal slide around my neck and tried not to make a face. "May this band contain and express the spirit of our friendship," he added from behind me, ad-libbing for what sounded like the hell of it. Give the man an inch of ritual, and he takes a mile.

"Ditto," I said, feeling foolish and trying not to notice Carter's smile and Teal'c's...well, it wasn't quite a smile, but something was creeping around the edges of his lips. Smirk, I'd have to call it.

Hated that. A great guy, Teal'c, but too pleased for his own good sometimes. Of course, who do you think taught him everything he knew?

Right.

We were over hill, over dale, and more than halfway back to the gate when I found out that I couldn't take the damn chain off. I had a heavy pack and a gun slung over my shoulder, and was drabbed out from head to toe, but there I was screwing around with my new gold jewelry and cursing under my breath. Oh, they tell you to accessorize, but they don't tell you it's for life....

"Carter!" I called ahead. And then, to the others: "Hold up." Carter came back down the line. "Get this damn thing off of me." I tugged at the metal on my neck, annoyed, and then lifted my head and stared off into space as she squinted and fiddled.

"Hmm," she said.

"Carter," I said, trying to keep my voice interrogative instead of warning. I really hoped that she wasn't going to tell me--

"I don't see a clasp."

"Really? That's odd. Let me see." Daniel edged in and took her place. His knuckles brushed my neck as he turned the metal around and around. I took a deep breath. Whoa. That was...odd. I wanted to jerk away from his hands but I also wanted--

"Okay, okay," I said, pulling away. "That's a neck, not a corkscrew. This can keep till we get back to base."

"It's probably very easy to open," said Carter. "But we may need better light."

On that note, we kept hiking gateward, under this huge grey and white sky that looked like a meringue. And wouldn't you know, it grew darker. Thunder rolled and lightning cracked and we gated from weather to calm, coming in out of the rain to the familiar boring walls of our gate room. Always good to be home, welcomed by guns. They're comforting, in the right hands.

Hammond was front and center waiting for us as we clomped down the ramp.

"Report, Colonel."

I pointed at my neck. "I went to Karnak and I all I got was this lousy necklace." He looked straight at me, tolerantly unamused, so I was obliged to go on. "They weren't interested in trade, General. They did give us some nice flowers, though."

Generals don't like to be confused, and it's not in one's best career interest to tease them. Hard to kick the habit, though. Especially when my team was always so quick to save the play.

"We went up the coast to the nearest village," said Carter, "and tried to find anyone who hadn't heard the news of our visit." She shook her head. "No luck, General."

"We also asked for any Gou'ald artifacts or weaponry they could find," added Daniel. "But they, uh, brought us gifts of nature instead." He dug into his pocket and handed a rock to the general, who turned it over in his hands. "At least we have evidence of an indigenous fossil record."

"I'm sure the President will be very glad to hear that," I said.

"I'm afraid not," said Hammond to all of us, bluntly. "But you did your best." He handed the rock back to Daniel and eyed me then. "What, pray tell, is that you're wearing, Colonel?"

"It is the hali al-Najidri," said Teal'c, as if this explained everything.

Daniel adjusted his glasses. "It's an expression of peace and forgiveness between two people. One of our hosts gave it to Jack--actually, he gave it to me to give to Jack. We'd been having a, ah, debate about policy."

Hammond gave a small grunt. "Why am I not surprised."

"We haven't been able to get it off yet," said Carter.

"Tell me that's not a piece of Gou'ald technology, Major." Hammond drew alert at her words and sounded ready to be alarmed.

"No, sir. We've checked. There's no sign of naquada."

"Nor do I recognize it as a device used by the Gou'ald," said Teal'c.

"Luckily, sir, it goes with my dogtags."

Yeah, that went over well.

"Report to the infirmary, Colonel," said Hammond dryly. "Before I have to write you up for violating dress regulations."

"Yes, sir."

"Debriefing in one hour."

You know you're not really home until you have blood drawn, an MRI, a high-frequency blast from the old harmonica generator, and that damn penlight shone in your eyes. It makes me all misty. Really.

"Well, Colonel, your blood-work looks normal, and your MRI is clear. You're as healthy as you were when you left." Fraiser slid her pen back in her pocket.

"How healthy is that, exactly?"

She ignored me. Go figure. "I can't find anything to indicate that the necklace is interfering with your normal functions, or in fact having any effect on you at all."

I held up a finger. "It's not a necklace. Girls wear necklaces. From now on we're calling this a chain." Daniel rolled his eyes at me from where he sat, but hey, your mind decides these things for you during an hour of pricking and poking.

Fraiser smiled. "Well, your chain appears to be no more than that. And since you've experienced no unusual reactions--"

"Nope. I feel fine."

"--then I'd say you're unlikely to be at any risk wearing it for now, until we're able to find a way to remove it."

I stood and pulled on my jacket, and Daniel hopped off his bed. "Yeah, about that." I tugged again at the metal, wishing it were at least long enough to tuck down my shirt.

"Come back after your briefing. We'll be able to take another look and start a detailed analysis then if necessary. And in the meantime, if you should feel anything unusual--dizziness, nausea, headache--"

"You'll be the first to know."

I strolled out of the infirmary with Daniel tagging along at my side. "I hope we don't have to damage the piece to remove it," he said absently, by which I mean you could tell the remark was being radioed out from somewhere in deep space.

"I hope we don't have to damage my neck to remove it," I said, annoyed at his priorities.

"Well," he said after a moment, "that too."

Misty.

"Their technology level isn't very high," Carter said. "But I wouldn't rule out a visit at some later date. If nothing else, it's worth trying to establish a relationship of trust. It may take time. Not every culture is going to be responsive on first contact. It's a lot to ask, when you think about it, sir--handing over blood samples to a bunch of strangers who show up on your gate-step."

"Agreed," said Hammond, and then asked her to estimate how long it would take to establish relations. She said something, Daniel said something, Teal'c said something. I poured myself a cup of coffee and let my team do their job.

Fresh coffee, I noticed, taking a sip. I poured another mugful and wandered back to the table.

"--might be responsive in time to a dialogue of reason rather than offers of trade," Daniel was saying. "They aren't a mercantile society. We may even have offended them with our offers, though it's hard to tell. From my own observations, I think it's unlikely they'd take offense in a manner we'd easily recognize. Uh, thanks," he said, taking the coffee I offered.

I stroked the back of his neck and then dropped into my chair.

"Did you take away any similar impressions, Major?" Hammond asked.

I stretched out in my chair and answered Daniel's frown with raised brows. What? Did I have something growing on my face?

"I couldn't say, sir. It's not really my area. I would agree though that the Karnakians responded atypically to offers of trade. They had no interest in medicines, technology, or even agricultural innovations."

"It would be difficult to establish a common bond," said Teal'c, "with a people who have no wish to raise their standard of living." Standard of living, I noticed, with an inward smile. I loved it when Teal'c showed off his Earth lingo.

"I think the point here is that they define their standard of living differently than we do," said Daniel, caught up again. "Not by technological development but by philosophical enlightenment. They live in harmony with nature and with each other--they have no need for a justice system, no need for a police force or a military presence." He lifted his hands as if trying to describe a bowlful of air. "How can you measure the value of that in terms of money or material goods?"

"They own things," I said, vaguely irritated, conflicting thoughts scratching around the door of my mind. Hated that. Distracting. Like dogs wanting to be let in, but less fun. "If they're such a perfect society, why do they have possessions? Why wouldn't they hand over their rings to Carter?"

"I don't know," Daniel said, turning my way. "They're not a communist society now, but they're still developing. It's only been, what," he looked at Carter, "seven generations since the Gou'ald left? Give them time and they might be that much further toward realizing a true Utopia."

"You think communism's a utopia?" I asked. Man, but he was unbelievable sometimes.

"What I think is--"

"Doctor Jackson, thank you. I'm sure that this would be a fascinating discussion for all of us, but I have another meeting."

We focused our attention Hammond's way. It was a surprise to all of us. "You do?" I said.

He stood. "Believe it or not, there are other SG teams on this base, and other duties that compel my time."

I affected hurt. "I thought we were special."

"You're very special, Colonel." Ouch. "And I look forward to reading all of your reports."

Dismissed.

Infirmary. Again. Poked and prodded. Again. I closed my eyes and thought about how much I wanted to nap. Carter stood behind me, turning the damn chain on my neck again. Around and around and around....

"There has to be a clasp," she said with aggravation in her voice. "It was unjoined when Mekhu brought it to us."

"The exterior is definitely gold," Fraiser said as she peered into her microscope, before coming back over. "But it's plated onto a secondary layer, which is what must have stopped the cable cutter. I'll remove a larger area of the plating and try to take a clean sample for the microprobe." She began scraping at the thing while she and Carter talked over my head. Literally.

"What do you think it means that the designers of this plated the gold on a base mineral?" Carter asked.

"It could mean nothing--it could be the alien equivalent of costume jewelry." Scrape, scrape.

"But the way the links are joined suggests they might be threaded onto a common core."

"Something something something," Fraiser said. I tuned them out until I felt the scraping stop. The women were still deep in discussion. Give two scientists a single molecule to talk about and the fun will never end.

Impatience drove to my feet. "This is all very interesting. But I have a report to write. Let me know when you figure out a way to hack this thing off."

I went to my office. Small place. Glossy wooden desk with doodads on it. No windows. Half a mile below the surface, give or take a secret level. I sat down, booted up the thing on my desk and yawned.

Jean came in. "Sir, it's good to have you back." She handed me four batches of folders, one at a time, letting me stack them at my whim. "These require your signature. These you need to read as soon as possible. These are the reports that you should read but never will. And these are the landfill." I took the last handful of folders from her, then handed them right back. They had now officially passed across my desk.

"Thank you, Corporal." I started whipping through my first stack of folders, scrawling my name more or less near the dotted lines. "What's the intel?"

"Sergeant Agosta won the base middleweight title, the commissary is no longer serving pecan pie, and Captain Martinez had a boy, sir."

"Really? That's great. Hey, I should probably--"

"You sent a card, sir."

I raised my brows. "Was I tasteful?"

"Yes, sir."

"They'll never believe it's from me." I handed back the first stack of folders, with full faith in Jean that I hadn't just authorized an ops audit or signed away my weekends to motivational command seminars. She left, and I thought about our recent mission and dawdled. I picked up a report on base security, opened the cover, closed it.

Time to get cracking. Open the program, load new report, and...stare at the empty form. I felt an odd restlessness.

Maybe I needed pie.

Forty minutes, a yo-yo, and a month of Dilbert later, I shook myself alert with a recognition of nothing accomplished. I had that disjointed feeling that comes with returning from a mission and trying to resynch with local time. When I checked my watch, it read 1710, but the numbers had no meaning. It was all about food, I decided. A sandwich, another cup or two of coffee, and I'd be back on track.

That restless feeling I'd decided was my stomach directed me to the commissary, but my feet took me to Daniel's office. He was sitting at a counter, laptop idling nearby, but he had a book open. Six or seven, in fact, if you counted the ones within squinting distance. Once he started typing, he'd be hard to stop--his mission reports were twice as long as everyone else's--but he always put it off. I liked that. Gave me something to nag him about.

He looked up for a second when I came in, then sank back into his book when he saw it was just me. I wandered around his office, picked up stuff that looked cool, and wondered how the hell he ever found anything. There was a stack of thick, heavy books on one counter. I pulled off the top one, flipped through the pages, then sniffed it.

"Was there something you wanted?" Daniel said, trying to act like he was noticing me for the first time when in fact I was bugging the shit out of him.

"No." I set the book down, then gave his question some more thought. "Thought I'd go get something to eat. You want to come with?"

"No. I'm not hungry."

That was his idea of a conversation. If I'd left then, he'd have given it no further thought. Some linguist. I sat down on a stool, picked up a pencil, tapped it against the nearest surface. I thought about the sound it made, about where pencils came from, about whether the Tok'ra had pencils, about possibly devising a system of field distress signals with Teal'c that would include broken or embedded twigs, about my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Godfrey, who used to say--

"Jack, please stop doing that."

I laid the pencil down, gave him my most upbeat look. "Sorry," I said. He dipped his head, and his whole face scrunched up. He wanted to read, this was clear, and he tried hard to ignore me. I stared at him because I could do that, I was a colonel. I stared at his forehead and glasses and at his mouth, which kept twitching. I remembered when his hair had been longer, and wondered for the first time why he'd never let it grow back. It wasn't as if he could pass himself off as a soldier. He was a brainiac, with buzz on the sides. But it worked for him, that whole look.

He met my gaze, sort of tipping his head up like a worried kid who wants to check if you're still on his case. "You're still here," he said.

I came up with something fast. "Thought I might write my report here," I said. "My office is--" What was the word? Empty? Boring? Quiet? "Cold."

"Cold?" He blinked.

"Freezing."

"Don't you have a thermostat?"

I had no idea. "Sure...maybe." I paused. "I don't know."

"Okay." He went back to his book, so it appeared to be settled. I made a pot of coffee and sat down at a computer and with my notebook in front of me banged out my observations, assessments, and recommendations; logged the radio transmissions we'd made and the names of our local contacts, with descriptions; and provided all the other stuff that intelligence wanted to know, like the size of their militia and their tech-dev level and whether they used psychoactive recreational drugs.

It passed the time, and eventually I saved and filed what I'd written. They'd be sending it back to me sooner or later with an RMI attached, because I hadn't scanned in the map, which was buried in my pack waiting to be excavated. Of course, this was only the preliminary report. Tomorrow we'd have the post-mortem team meeting to fill and file the DTTD in all its boring glory.

I swung around on my stool and stretched. "How's your report coming, Daniel?"

He looked up from the notebook he was scribbling into. "What?"

"Your report. How's it coming?"

"You know I haven't written it yet."

I moseyed over. "Whatcha doing?"

"You know what I'm doing." I knew. Trying to capture the local lingo before it disappeared from his brain; like trying to capture water in a sieve, poor guy.

"You eaten?"

"Uh, no." He didn't look my way this time, and his attention faded from me as he scribbled more. I sat off behind him, watching his scholarly back. The curve of his neck. The movement of his hand. The way his arms framed the notebook and how his broad shoulders flexed every now and then. Ten minutes or so later, he straightened and gazed directly at the far wall; then, before I could begin to wonder what he might be staring at, craned a look over his shoulder.

"Jack."

"Yep."

"Why are you here?" He put his pen down and turned on his stool to face me. "Is there something you want to talk about?"

"Talk? No." God, no.

"You've been in my office for," he looked at his watch, "almost six hours."

I raised my brows and acknowledged this with a nod. "That's a record, isn't it."

"Yes." He sounded unthrilled.

"You," I said, pointing, "should eat something."

"I'm not...hungry," he said, and I marveled at how he did that, how by the time he worked out a three-word sentence you felt he'd thought about saying ten other things.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay," I said, "I'm going to hit the sack."

"That's a good idea."

I went. Once I got down the hall I felt like I'd left something undone or unsaid, but I continued walking out of habit until I reached the nearest bunk room. I took off my boots and stretched out on the bed and thought about sleeping. I did sleep for a while, then I woke suddenly and sat up in bed, heart skittering. I looked around the room. I didn't recall a nightmare or sense that I'd heard a sound, but damn, I was awake. That sucked. I checked my watch: middle of the night.

It occurred to me that I'd asked Daniel if he'd eaten, but I'd never eaten anything myself. Pie, I thought. Pie. The commissary would be open. I was hungry, so I headed there and ate a trayful of stuff that I didn't really notice well enough to name. They had no pie. I filled out a complaint card.

Daniel's office was still lit when I returned, and he was asleep over his notebook. I put a sweater across his shoulders, a big woolly thing he never wears, then found a chair, rolled it near him, and settled into it.

I was more tired than I'd realized, and as it hit me like a hammer and my eyes closed, I thought: When he wakes up, maybe he'll tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do.

I woke and my neck hurt, and everything was exactly as I'd left it. Daniel's office was bigger than mine, but it still had no windows, and it was still the kind of place in which you could fall asleep and wake up and have no clue what hour or day or month it was. In short, we were buried beneath the surface of the earth.

Chairs aren't beds. I wiped a hand over my face and groaned, then bent forward and massaged the back of my neck. Daniel was still zonked, I noticed. I kicked his stool, and he seized upright and said urgently, "La wain bitwwaddi had darb?"

"Now, now."

He turned around; his glasses were halfway down his nose. "Jack." He closed his eyes. "I'm asleep." He opened his eyes. "Or not."

"Time for breakfast."

Daniel pushed his hand up under his glasses so they rested on his fingers, and rubbed his eyes. "No," he said, getting frowny. "No. I was in the middle of a thought." And he turned and started writing in his notebook.

Okay. That was too much. I stood and reached my hand out, ready to haul him up out of that chair and drag him to the commissary. Then my hand dropped and I just...left by myself. I tried to shrug it off, but it bugged me. As I went through the chow line, I grabbed two of everything and carried it back to him. I was whistling when I returned, happy for no reason. Or no reason I wanted to evaluate closely.

He saw me, saw the tray, and stopped writing. "Breakfast is served," I said, putting it down in front of him.

"Jack, I don't want you to take this the wrong way." He spoke carefully and stared at me. "But I'm beginning to find this disturbing."

"What's that?" I grabbed an apple and a bowl of cereal and found a clear space.

"You've hardly left my side since we returned from PR5-358."

"So?"

"So. That's weird."

"No, it's not," I said with certainty.

"It's not?"

"I'm hanging out. It's what guys do."

"Oh." He gave that some thought and rubbed the side of his neck with another puzzled frown, so very Daniel he could patent it. Enough with the frowning, though, for crying out loud. I stood up and turned him around on his stool and began to massage his neck.

"What are you doing?" he asked, like he truly didn't know.

"Your neck's bothering you." I rubbed, and for a moment had the idea that this should have been strange. Instead it was...okay. Good. Good for him, and good for me. My head buzzed, and the rest of me felt peaceful, relaxed. Like a weight was sliding away.

"Jack, that's--that's, ah, good--wow. But I'm not sure this is so smart. What if someone came in. They could get the, um, wrong impression."

I stroked his neck with my thumbs. He shut up and tipped his head back into my hands. Heat spread through my body, familiar but different. I moved my hands to his shoulders and worked my grip as deeply as I could into his tight muscles. Yeah, this was definitely good. And it had never occurred to me that I could reach out to him like this. I wondered why not. So a man has dirty fantasies now and then. Perfectly normal. Doesn't mean every casual touch between two friends is off-limits.

"Oh," Daniel said. "Oh...ouch...ohhh." I moved and the back of his head brushed my solar plexus. He leaned forward without warning. "Okay. That's...that's good. I'm good now. Thank you."

Disappointed, I drew away. "I could keep going. Really. It's no problem." I knew how hopeful I sounded; couldn't help it.

"Um, no. Thanks." He didn't turn around. "I should...breakfast." He started to eat, and I picked at my own food, wishing he'd ask me to do more.

"Jack, are you following me?"

I paused mid-saunter, hands in pockets. Daniel had come to a standstill himself, there at the turn of the corridor.

"I happen to be going that way. To the elevator." I hesitated. "Up."

"You're stalking me."

"No I'm not," I said, offended. Loftily I brushed by him and headed to the elevator. Now he had to follow me. Ha.

We entered the elevator together. He was wearing his civilian clothes, I was wearing mine. We rode up slowly to the surface in silence. I could see him from the corner of my eye, staring at me like I was an alien visitor. After a minute, I turned my head and stared back.

"I'm going home now, by the way," he said. "Alone."

"Duh," I said, because what else could you say to that. Our forty-eight hours of post-mission detention were up, our reports were filled, and we'd been cleared to leave the mountain. I was going home too. I had things to do. Things I could do, anyway.

I wasn't stalking him. That was just silly.

In the parking garage, we went our separate ways and it was only coincidence that I ended up behind him in the north portal. I kept on his tail through the blast doors and up to the security booth and then watched his Kia zoom off after he was checked through. Once I'd been passed, I drove sedately out of the mountain and gates and hit the road. His car wasn't in sight, which was fine, because he was going home and I was going home.

Sunglasses on, radio on, windows down, one arm resting in the late sun. I sucked in the breeze and thought about what I wanted for dinner, and the evening ahead was looking dandy, until I began to feel hot around the collar. Literally. Damn chain. I plucked at it and shifted in my seat and grimaced, and repeated those actions for another three miles and then it finally sank in that the chain was getting hot and I stepped on the brakes and veered off the road in a panic.

Sitting on the side of the road, hand wedged between metal and neck, information flooded in. It was more than a touch of chain-burn. My head hurt, my gut boiled, my body crawled with rising anxiety. I dug out my cell and tried to decide who to call: Daniel or the mountain. I weighed these options in a haze, far longer than you'd think I'd have to, and then a splitting pain made me groan, and I hit speed-dial.

He had his phone off, the bastard.

I chucked the cell away, put the car into gear and floored it. I should have turned around, it was crazy not to, Hammond would have my scalp, but my car pointed the other way and my brain was fried. And the weird thing was, the faster and further I drove, the better I felt. By the time I entered Colorado Springs the heat clenching my neck had faded to warmth, like you might feel after a good shower. I headed for Daniel's apartment building and hoped he'd be there and not futzing around the supermarket.

When I helloed him through the speaker, there was a long silence before he buzzed me in; and when I got to his door he opened it and stood there with no welcome. Any other time, I might have felt like a jerk, but he looked really good with a ratty grey tee-shirt on and his glasses off, reminding me out of the blue of this guy I played football with in high school. Tim. Looking at Daniel, I had a brief, miserable moment when I wanted to step forward and do something rash. Energy welled up in me and had to spill out.

"This damn thing is Gou'ald," I said, yanking at the chain.

His face changed and he let me in--pulled me in, and closed the door. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"It got hot," I said. "And zapped me." I waved a hand at my head.

"Zapped you how?"

"Headache. Upset stomach. Ick. General ick." Tension buoyed my voice. The world felt funny. Good, bad, uncertain.

He crossed his arms and his face pulled into worry. "Are you sure it was the necklace--the, uh, chain? Maybe you're getting sick. We could have brought something back."

"It's this. I know it. If I hadn't been sure, I would have turned around."

"Why didn't you?"

I shook my head and looked around his hall for something to focus on. Masks. Rug. "Seemed easier to go forward."

"Which is the same reason why you haven't left my side for the last two days," he said, putting it together. "It must be the chain. It's compelling you."

"To what?" I glared, hating to have this put into words, hating to face up to what I'd deliberately not been thinking about.

He shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know. Physical proximity, certainly."

"Shit." I said, and pressed my forehead against the nearest wall. "Not again. Why do freaky alien things always want to visit my brain?"
 
"I'm not sure I'd characterize this yet as visiting."

"Who cares?" I turned. "I want this off, I want it gone." Except I didn't want it gone, not strongly enough to make my words sound convincing. Convincing to Daniel, sure, but not to me. For him I'd wear this a long time, without complaint. Okay, now that came out of left field. I tried to wrap my mind around the two inconsistent thoughts. Cognitive dissonance, they called this. Fancy name for a headache.

"Yesterday," Daniel said.

"What about it."

"You, uh, rubbed my shoulders." He sort of rolled his shoulders as he spoke, remembering or nervous, or both.

"What about it?"

"Don't you think--"

"No."

"O...kay. But you have to admit it's strange that--"

"Daniel." Let it go, I thought, drilling him with a look.

And he did.

My neck burned.

"What sort of compulsion?" Fraiser asked, when we'd returned to the mountain.

Daniel and I looked at each other. "Proximity," we said together.

Fraiser raised her brows. "Nothing else?"

"No," I said firmly.

"Well--" began Daniel. I scowled his way. "--no," he finished. He didn't look happy.

"If there's something you're not telling me, gentlemen," said Fraiser, and left the threat hanging. Carter and Teal'c stood nearby. All eyes and ears were on me.

"No," I said again.

Fraiser assessed me, then nodded once. "Engineering has finished adapting the laser-cutter and I think we should be able to remove it now."

I twitched. "I'd like to point out again: Lasers. Neck."

She smiled, and said in that practiced reassuring doctor tone: "We'll be very careful, Colonel."

"Say again?" commanded Hammond.

"It broke the laser, sir." Carter, taking it personally, ducked her head like an a-plus schoolgirl who'd nuked chem lab.

"How does a piece of jewelry break a laser?"

Fraiser, hands folded on the table, gave me a sour face and the hairy eyeball. I almost got the feeling she held me responsible. "That's a good question, sir."

"Okay," I said, holding up my hands. "Now we know how not to get this thing off my neck. Let's focus on how we do get it off."

"Well, I hate to say it," said Daniel, "but we may have to return to PR5-358 and talk to Mekhu."

"What makes you think Mekhu knows how to remove it?" asked Carter.

"What makes you think he doesn't?" Daniel asked back in a reasonable tone.

Kids. Jeez. Hammond and I traded a glance.

"I'm ready to authorize another mission if it becomes necessary." Hammond rested his arms on the table. "But I'd like to rule out all other options first. I find it hard to believe that with all our expertise and a billion dollars' worth of equipment we can't manage to take that thing apart."

"Sir, I would advise that we make experimentation our secondary recourse." Fraiser spoke with care. That special tone of hers always chilled my blood. "We don't know yet how it could affect Colonel O'Neill if damaged. Already it's induced headache, nausea, tremors. So far, the burning sensation produced appears to be a kind of psychosomatic pain, but we simply don't know how these effects might escalate if the necklace is triggered."

"Chain, not necklace," I said, but in a subdued voice. I absently rubbed my neck, thinking about how it would feel if my head fell off.

Carter took up the thread. "When we sampled the secondary material under the gold plating and ran it through the electron microprobe, we found it to be a hard, dense mineral--denser than iridium. X-ray analysis confirmed that it had an unrecognizable diffraction pattern."

"I knew it," I said.

"That would mean we'd be looking at a material we've never seen before on Earth, sir."

"Ah."

"Given what we now know, it seems certain there's an inner structure around which the device is built. An unknown technology." She paused briefly to let that sink in. "We may not be able to determine its full function."

"However," said Fraiser, "I think we should consider that it may be designed to thwart removal. Its operative qualities suggest that it's meant as a," she hesitated, "disciplinary device."

Could this get any worse, I wondered, putting my head down on the table as embarrassment washed through me.

"You mean like a pet collar," Daniel said.

Oh yeah. Worse. I sat up again and narrowed my gaze at him. He shrugged once and pulled an apologetic face.

"Or an electronic monitoring device of the type used for criminal offenders," said Carter.

"But it didn't burn him when we left the planet," Daniel said, frowning.

"Because it's imprinted to you." Carter leaned forward, thoughts energizing. "Mekhu set this whole thing up. He said this was to be worn by the colonel, for you. When you put it on him, it must have established a signature of some kind."

"But if it's only responsive to individual control, that would mean it's a--" Daniel stopped, his mouth hanging open a half inch.

"A slave collar," said Teal'c.

Was it just me, or did he sound amused? I looked at his stern, disapproving face. Okay. Just me. Pretty sure about that. I gazed suspiciously into his eyes again, and he blinked back without twitching a muscle.

Eighty percent certain.

"Major, we need to get that device off of him now--safely. If it means returning to the planet, then you have a go." Hammond at least was taking this seriously, but in my moment of relief, Daniel said,

"Maybe we should test it." His detached interest raised my hackles.

"We should not."

"I'm not talking about anything serious. I mean, I could say, 'Jack, get me coffee,' and see--"

I stood, and he stopped, and everyone looked at me. I felt the urge to move and the need to sit back down. The longer I stood there, the more my neck burned and my head ached.

"Colonel, what's happening?" asked Fraiser.

"It's a pain in the neck, is what's happening," I said through gritted teeth, battling with my pride against a sudden, crazy urge to do Daniel's bidding.

"Uh, I don't really want coffee," Daniel said.

I sat back down with a thump, and then leaned my head against my fingertips, digging them into my temples.

"Sorry, Jack." Daniel sounded less enthused about his experiment now, and I was glad. All I needed was for everyone to figure out how much it fucking jarred me to the bone not to be able to serve him. Like I wanted to.

Erase that thought, I told myself.

I really tried.

"Mekhu!" I bellowed when we got inside the courtyard. "Get your feathered tail out here!" I strode around the dry fountain and across the stones. They had no doors here, and I wove in and out of the arches, passing through the empty rooms. My team followed, careful not to cross my path. I kept having this impulse to turn and request orders from Daniel, but told myself I was only doing what he'd want me to do. It worked well enough to keep the chain's interference to a low burn.

"Colonel O'Neill." I stopped short. It was Idu, with a welcoming smile that I wanted to wipe off his face.

"Where's Mekhu? I have a gift of his to return."

Idu's happy face stayed happy. "He has gone on walkabout."

"Come again?"

"He is traveling." Idu waved a bony hand, jangling his bracelets. "To see the world. Many young ones journey when they come of age. He would have left sooner, but then you came to visit. He enjoyed your time together."

"Yes, about that," said Daniel from my side, in a dry voice. "He gave us a necklace--a chain--that we've discovered to have unusual properties."

"It's a slave collar," I said, yanking it up with one finger. "And I want it off now. Your kid seemed to this was a great idea for a joke. I don't."

"A slave--oh," said Idu, touching the chain. "This does look familiar. Yes. We found it in the cellar a few years ago, buried in a box with a scroll that warned of its dangers. It was a tool of the occupiers, with which they exerted control. A very bad thing. We returned it to the ground." I exchanged a brief, cynical look with Carter. Things like this never stay buried.

"Can you remove it?" asked Teal'c, who'd moved next to Idu and taken up serious looming.

Idu blinked. "Does it not have a clasp?"

I cursed, we dug up the cellar, we found nothing, we tore the house apart, we found nothing, I cursed. Idu wasn't able to help us take the damn thing off, and couldn't tell us in what direction Mekhu had gone, or when he'd be back.

"Can you narrow it down?" I asked, snideness a cover for the panic I tried to stifle; panic which was a cover for...relief? No way. No.

Idu shook his head at my question. I pressed: "A month? A year?" He only shrugged and gave me a sad look. He regretted what had happened, he said, but I noticed he didn't apologize for his son.

"Now what?" I asked, when our team had gathered in a huddle. "Suggestions. Options. Anything. Anyone." They were quiet, not even speaking with their eyes. "Someone throw me an inch of rope here."

"Searching a planet's surface on foot to find one boy would be a difficult and lengthy task," Teal'c finally said.

"Ya think?" I glared. Help, I'd asked for, not Jaffa pessimism. And even if it was realism, to hell with it. Teal'c gloomily dropped his gaze at my reply, and I felt ashamed of myself for a moment. But hey, I was the slave here now. Crankiness might be one of the few freedoms I had left.

"We can't even be sure that he'd know how to remove the device," said Carter. "Or whether he still has the scroll."

"Or whether it contains anything of value," added Daniel.

I didn't look at him. "So we go home," I said, blunt and bitter.

But the bitterness tasted almost sweet, and that made it even worse.

I slumped in a chair facing Hammond's desk.

"When that kid crosses my sights again, I swear they'll have to send in a squadron of Marines to hold me back."

"It certainly sounds as if he could benefit from a firmer hand," Hammond replied sourly. I tried not to read too much into that. He began to speak, then seemed to change his mind. After some more inner deliberation, he said, "We'll continue to investigate alternatives for the safe removal of the device, Colonel." He took a breath. I could feel the crash coming and braced. "But until this is resolved, I'm going to have to restrict your duties. There will be no off-world missions for SG-1. You will remain on base along with Doctor Jackson. I'm sure you'll both find plenty of work to keep you busy."

"General, please." Daniel would find ways to stay busy. He'd be happy as a clam. The only kind of work I could do on base would drive me out of my mind in less than a week. I couldn't come right out and say that to Hammond, but we both knew it.

"I wish there was another option, Jack."

I thought about requesting administrative leave, but couldn't think of any argument in its favor--they wouldn't let me leave the mountain and I'd be that much more bored. I was going to point out that this arrangement wasn't fair to Daniel, but I couldn't see how that would benefit me, so I let the thought slide.

"I'll be speaking with Doctor Jackson in a few minutes." He paused again to study me. I felt irked. I didn't need to be handled with kid gloves. "Is there anything you'd like me to convey to him?"

"Sir?"

"Anything you'd prefer not to say to him yourself?" he elaborated. My confusion must have been obvious. "I'll be making it very clear that he is not to issue anything that could be construed as a command, nor is he to experiment in any way with the device without my approval and only then when Major Carter or Doctor Fraiser is present."

Oh, for crying out... "General, that won't be necessary."

"I believe it is. What occurred in the briefing room the other day demonstrated how easily influence could be exerted through the device. I'm not saying he would do it intentionally--"

"He won't do it," I said. "I trust him." And I told him with a hard, steady look that my trust better be good enough. After a few ticks of our watches, he nodded.

"Very well."

I left Hammond's office to find Daniel hanging around the briefing room, arms folded tight across his chest, glasses pushed back to rest on the top of his head. He looked up when he sensed me. I'd had a crack ready to roll off my tongue, an ironic at your service, master. But then his long body straightened from where he leaned, and my mouth went dry, and I wasn't sure I could say those words ironically. These last few days, if I focused too closely on Daniel, it was like I was wearing full dress blues and reporting to the President.

So say the President is this handsome young guy who's saved my life on missions, as I've saved his; he's worn my blood on his hands, as I've worn his; I've witnessed his grief and pain and anger, as he's witnessed mine; and now he holds full authority over me, could make me sink to my knees on a whim. And I'd do it, and more: hungrily, without question. I'd die for him, kill for him. He's my President, not a media joke or the passing tenant of a tarnished office, but the most honorable man I know, the stake to which I've bound my life.

Okay, flight of fancy. But I'm an airman. Anyway, that was Daniel to me. But he was still a bookish, frowning geek who could be irritating as hell. The contradiction teased a sore spot, and was only getting worse as time passed. I simmered with frustration I didn't know how to relieve.

He put his hands in his pockets, oblivious to his new power. "You, uh, want to get some lunch, Jack?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, and burned. But with pleasure.

We picked at our...stuff. Some kind of chicken casserole, I think. "If this is supposed to teach me the error of my ways, I'm not getting it." Disgusted, I dug my fork into the casserole and left it there. It remained standing straight up.

"I agree," said Daniel.

I prickled. "What I meant was--"

"I know, Jack. And I agree. This is wrong. And, frankly, I'm not that interested in having you leashed to me like an obedient puppy until god knows when."

"Not that interested?"

"Not interested."

Vaguely disappointed, I pushed my tray away and leaned back in my chair. "I thought you might get a kick out of it."

Daniel stared. "Why would you think that?"

I shifted uncomfortably, unable to say what would make me think that. Little things, big things. The way he bucked every order he disagreed with. His arrogance, his moral certainty. Things I could list if we were fighting, but couldn't bring up when we weren't. Not without sounding like an asshole.

"Why would you think that, Jack?" he repeated more intensely. Light glinted off his glasses as he tilted his head.

I'd provoked him. It made me want to smile for the first time in days. Mean of me? Okay, sure, I admit it. "Your chance to turn the tables, that's all."

"That would imply I'm usually your slave," he said, clearly missing my point. Whoosh, right over that cropped head. Damn literalist.

"You're under my command."

"Oh, right," he said, but his tone said: Oh, that.

"Don't you want to get a little of your own back?" I prodded.

"My own what?"

I began to speak, discovered I had no answer, shook my head. Hard to tell when he was being clever and when he was being dense. Better safe than suckered.

My days quickly picked up a boring pattern. Get up, work out, eat, go have my neck examined, work a while on the computer, eat, have weird machines aimed at my throat, totally fail to have chain removed, work again, eat, play card games and board games, sleep.

For most of these activities, Daniel was my shadow. Or I was his. I set up a desk in his office and began backfilling six months of red tape. Now that was a joy, let me tell you.

For a while we tried to go our separate ways--trouble was, he could, I couldn't. I couldn't get in three miles on the treadmill without shuddering to a stop and seeking him out, couldn't hit the firing range for more than twenty minutes at a time without my hands eventually shaking hard enough to send a spray of bullets across the wall. When I wasn't with Daniel, I was angry and snappish; when I was, moody restlessness took hold and I acted, god help me, like a schoolgirl with a crush. Fraiser kept saying I should work on building up my resistance, that giving in might be feeding the chain's power, making me more dependent. I let her lecture me, but I didn't tell her how it felt, wanting to be near Daniel. How it felt being near him all the time and waiting for him to give me a task, an order. Purpose.

Waiting in vain. Because I'd been right to trust Daniel. Day one, he said to me, "I've been giving this some thought, and I need to be careful not to say anything offhand that would come across as an order," and then he wrote a note to himself on the blackboard: do not give Jack orders. He'd come up with that on his own. I checked. And that was that. He never asked for a single thing, never told me to do anything, not even, "Shut the door behind you, Jack." He was polite and oblivious and self-sufficient, and I was ready to strangle him, whenever I wasn't this close to begging him for a scrap of attention. Pathetic.

After a week of hell, further details of which are best forgotten, things took a turn. At first I was only amusing myself. It started with the CD player. I'd had Carter and Teal'c stop by the house (not just Carter; that would have been weird) and bring me back clothes, CDs, and the O'Neill family boom box that we'd used for yard parties. Soon as I had the last item in hand I installed it on my desk and cranked that baby. Took Daniel almost fifteen minutes to snap. A tolerant man, until I broke him. The louder I nudged up the volume, the lower he hunched over his computer and pretended that rotating random tracks from Toscanini and Aretha Franklin weren't making him insane.

I wasn't trying to annoy him; but it was a bonus. I let the music blow over me and played solitaire on my computer, too wired to work. I saw him approach from the corner of my eye, but when he tapped my shoulder, I still jerked in my seat, surprised by the pleasure. I looked up, brows raised expectantly.

"Jack. That's kind of loud," he said, raising his voice to speak above the music.

"Yes, it is," I called back, though he was less than two feet away.

"Can you turn that down, do you think?"

"Sorry?" I said, cupping my ear and ignoring the hot bite of my chain.

He began to make hand gestures. "Down, can you turn it down?"

"What?"

He nearly lost his temper. "Turn it down, Jack!"

I turned it down to a whisper, and felt a jolt of bliss go through me. "Sorry." I smiled on the inside, while giving him a serious look. "Music's in my blood, Daniel. But if it gets too loud again, just tell me to lower it. I will." I sounded innocent, I sounded sincere. He looked suspicious but walked away.

I'd known as soon as I scored the hit what was in it for me: here was what I'd been missing, what would scratch the maddening itch I'd lived with for the past week. I tested the effect and confirmed that each time I drove him to snap an impatient order--and obeyed it--I earned myself a sweet little jolt right to the brain and balls.

I'm not a weak man. I've been tortured and tempted; fought morphine addiction not once but twice; had to resist the lure of my own gun. I've bent my will to finish missions even when I was concussed and fractured. Put a Gou'ald in me and I swear I'd fight the rotten snake to the death, preferably not mine. But since that collar went on I'd been frustrated on a whole different level and I was ready for any fix. A goose to the old libido now and then--that was harmless, wasn't it? I didn't answer my own question. I tossed good sense aside and went for the buzz and pellet like a trained rat. This was the flip side to pain; positive reinforcement, Fraiser would have called it if she'd known. I didn't intend to tell her.

I managed to ration two days of fun out of the music trick until Daniel figured out the concept of a standing order: that he could ask me not to turn it up again, and I'd have to obey. He wasn't happy about it, though; he crossed his arms and set the rule resentfully, only after five minutes of trying to reason with me failed. I didn't learn ignoratio elenchi for nothing.

"If I didn't know how much you hated all this, I'd suspect you were deliberately provoking me to issue an order, Jack."

"Oh, I hate this," I said cheerfully. And I did, sort of. But let a man get bored and horny and he'll do strange things to himself.

He gave me a skeptical, narrow-eyed look. "Don't turn the volume up again past three."

"Sure," I said, and got my happy jolt. Then I sat and pondered new strategies.

An hour or so later I blasted James Brown and let it draw Daniel to me. He was excited. He turned off the music himself and leaned over me, face glowing, eyes wide. "Jack, how's your neck--your head?"

"Fine. All fine." They hurt, actually, but it'd soon be worth it.

"You disobeyed me," he said, unnaturally pleased. "This is great! The chain isn't exerting any punitive effect?"

"Nope. But," I said, raising a finger, "I didn't disobey you."

"You did. Maybe you're becoming desensitized. We have to tell Janet--"

"You said not to turn the music up again past three. Oh, wait." I paused a beat. "Volume, you said. I thought--" I checked my watch. Fourteen forty-five, two forty-five. Yep. I held out my wrist to Daniel, like a slow kid showing off his birthday present. And if anyone else had seen me then, they'd have thought me mentally challenged, no question.

Let me tell you, acting that dumb takes years of practice.

Daniel's mouth hung open a moment in disbelief, then he straightened. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Jack, don't turn the volume past three on the dial again, as long as that CD player is in this office. Or near the office. And the same goes for any CD player in or near this office." He turned to move away, turned back. "And anything like a CD player that makes a lot of noise."

"No problem," I said.

Sir, yes, sir.

Sweet.

It was harder to get his attention after that. Daniel has a gift of concentration when he's busy with his books. I learned to whistle off-key, installed a dart board near his blackboard, left full coffee cups balanced half on his notebook and orange peels on the seat of his stool.

He started wearing headphones, ignored the dart board, moved the coffee cups, swept off the orange peels.

I began flying paper airplanes at his head. I'm in the Air Force. I'm good. He was stubborn, sensing by this time that I was trying to get something out of him.

"Stop that," he said, after the fifth airplane smacked him in the ear. One hit of joy, and my fun was over.

He never said stop bugging me, though, for which I was grateful.

Funny, too, when you think about it.

I like to keep scientists on their toes. Test them every now and then. See if they give me the same story twice. And then again, sometimes I just like to try people's patience. It's a military thing. You do it in the barracks when you can't do anything else, you do it while you're waiting for your turn at the simulator, and you do it when you're in charge, because that's what twenty-odd years of Air Force fuckheadedness does to your sense of humor.

"Tell me why I'm here again?"

Carter gave me a look that said she was tolerating me for my own sake, but right away she looked guilty, and then determinedly upbeat. It was like watching that woman with the different faces, Sybil something.

"I've got a good feeling about this, sir. This is a nanotech destabilizing catalyst--"

"Stop right there."

"Yes, sir." She smiled. "All you have to do is lie as still as possible. What we've got here should do the trick." She looked up, somewhere past my field of vision. "Hi, Janet. I was just getting ready." She tightened stuff around my head that was supposed to keep me from moving, then Fraiser appeared, made the usual small talk, and surrounded me with high-tech equipment. Some of it had lights.

"This will dissolve the material," Carter said, "almost like an acid, but the reaction is specific to the molecular structure of certain metals." It sounded like she was talking to herself more than me, but I gave a grunt to let her know I'd heard.

"Burn my neck off and it's the brig for you, Major."

"Hold still, Colonel."

I sighed as deeply as I could without moving anything, closed my eyes, and let her do her stuff. Loved Carter. Brain like a supercomputer, officer through and through, a hell of a good solider. And a decent person, under the doctorates and brass. I don't make that compliment lightly.

An hour later and the good major was nearly cursing.

"I don't get it," she said fiercely. "This should have worked." She gave me an upset look as if I might question her claim, while Fraiser released me from the wacky dental-chair-and-bondage rig they'd cobbled up. "I'm sorry, sir. I really thought we had it this time."

Guilt again. She was still kicking herself for letting me put the necklace on. We'd talked about this already. I'd told her firmly and seriously not to do that, but it was like telling water to flow uphill.

"You did your best, Major," I said, stretching and cracking my neck from side to side.

She didn't look pleased. "Well, that's not good enough," she snapped, before adding a quick sir as an afterthought.

No, it wasn't, but I didn't want to tell her that. I raised my brows at the two of them. "It's not hurting me, right?"

Fraiser shook her head. "Not that I can see so far. I can't find any narcotic effect, like we saw with the Atanik armband. I also can't find any sign that it's affecting Doctor Jackson. As long the device isn't used to enforce commands, the most significant influence it exerts may well be the restriction on movement outside a proximate range."

"Right," I said, pulling on my jacket. "Lucky for me, the good doctor takes regular showers and keeps a minty fresh scent at all times."

I left them on that note. What else was there to do? I had an hour's worth of headache, and that whole proximate range deal was sounding damn good.

"Captain Burgess has reported in," said Hammond. The tone of his voice said it all for me, but he went on. "Mekhu has still not returned."

"General," said Carter, pushing forward a clipped folder of documentation. "I've been outlining a plan for remote air reconnaissance with UAVs and a targeted ground search of the Karnakian coast using humvees and bogcutters. It may sound unconventional at first, but I think if you take a look at this--"

Hammond interrupted her gently but firmly. "I'm sorry, Major. I can't spare those resources."

I could sense how offended Carter was on my behalf. "Understood, General," I broke in before she could wind herself up and speak her mind. She shot a pained look my way and I stared her down, keeping it crusty on the outside, but secretly touched by her loyalty and doggedness.

"Have we made any progress in determining whether this device can be removed?" Hammond asked Fraiser.

"No, sir, I'm afraid not. The only thing we have determined is that this is definitely not of Gou'ald design."

"We think it must be appropriated technology," said Daniel. "Like the stargates."

"We still haven't been able to scan or analyze its interior." Fraiser flashed me a glance; by this point, she was acting like she'd failed to deliver a cure for cancer and I had two weeks to live. Of course, for cancer we had a solution, if you go in for that sort of thing. For this, zip. It was my own personal circle of hell. Sure, it might be a fun hell but I was doomed nonetheless.

"No worries," I said with false good humor. "We'll just transfer my commission to Daniel, and I can trot around chipping at rocks and playing pow-wow with the natives."

Not funny, their faces said.

"I wish it were so easy, Colonel. But this is a serious matter. As long as this child stays on the road, we've lost our best team."

It should have been a kick in the pants to hear it spelled out--that we were a team, and this wasn't just about getting me back to normal, but about getting us all back. But you know, right then, it was all about me.

"And I've lost every shred of independence," I reminded them sharply. I wanted to take the remark back as soon as I said it. I made a tired mental note: be more leader-like.

"That too, Colonel," said Hammond.

Teal'c looked my way. "I do not think that is so, O'Neill. The device does not require you to conduct yourself in a servile manner. Indeed, you behave no differently toward Daniel Jackson now than you did before."

I wondered if there was a criticism there, and squinted at him. He gazed back impassively. I was probably imagining things. Teal'c isn't exactly the poster Jaffa for politically correct military leadership. Even so, he had to be needling me. The man certainly picks his moments.

The meeting petered out after that, and Carter caught my arm in the hall outside the conference room as I was trailing after Daniel. "Sir, do you have a minute?"

"Sure," I said, reluctant but resigned.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing."

She'd stuck close the first few days after our return from PR5-358, but after the most recent failure in the lab she'd learned to avoid me. I'd become too testy for anyone to stand but Daniel, and only because he had no choice. My mood had nothing to do with Carter or the experiment, and I'd tried to make that clear to her, in a roundabout way. I wasn't sure I'd succeeded. After a couple of visits to the office, it had been apparent that she felt sorrier for Daniel than for me.

"I'm fine," I offered. "Dandy." Inside I was saying sarcastically, I'm a slave, Carter. I think she could tell.

"We'll figure this out, sir." She sounded so positive for a moment, I almost believed it.

I managed a nod; I didn't want to discourage her. I let her tell me about some plan she had to microlase or microwave the chain with an experimental semiconductor and controlled beams, but before she even finished the ache was gathering behind my eyes and I was rubbing my right temple. Her voice ran like a bubbling brook, and I drifted off, imagining what would happen if I went back to the office and went over to Daniel and...

"Sir?"

I snapped back to attention. "I'm listening."

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. The way she looked at me now was the same way she looked whenever I was wounded. At least I'd finally rated some of her sympathy.

"I should let you go," she said, and did. At least someone could.

After that meeting, further tests on the chain ground to a halt; partly because it was pointless, but also because SG-3 returned from P6Y-433 and turned into wolves. Not wolves wolves, but big hairy guys with long teeth. Not much of a change, if you ask me, but Fraiser got busy trying to find a cure that would make them stop biting people, and my problem got bumped down a notch.

Daniel wanted to help with the wolf problem, and I was on board with that, so we spent several days wrestling down our rabid comrades and picking up duty shifts in the control room. It was a loopy time (lupine even, said Daniel), and we were punchy. Late at night we'd sit at the control room computers--okay, he'd sit at a computer, I'd lounge nearby with a novel I never actually read--and trade stories from our past as we killed pot after pot of coffee. We hadn't done that in months. I was almost happy; it was almost enough. I brought him refills of coffee and trays of food. When I wasn't provoking him, he wouldn't give me orders, but he let me look after him.

Once, only once, he slipped. He told me to bring him a folder of system codes. He seemed unaware of what he'd done--but of course, he was only refusing to command me on principle; he didn't know how it affected me. I brought him the folder, put it into his outstretched hand. I was parched and the joy juice hit me hard, a spike of ecstasy through the center of my brain and everywhere else. He took the folder without even a glance my way, peering at the computer screen and giving me an absent thanks, Jack. I went into the nearest head and jerked off, sliding my hand tight and fast around my aching dick, riding the high as long as I could.

It wasn't enough, though. When the wolves were our people again, and we were reinstalled in his office, I went around the bend. I made a list one day of orders that I might carry out. I spent hours on that list, picking and choosing and refining my attack, but mostly just entertaining a lot of kinky, unlikely fantasies about how it might go down. I'd pretty much narrowed my focus to sex by then. It kept me distracted from the idea of Daniel as my commander-in-chief.

Sex with Daniel. It could happen. I'd seen him looking at me now and then in the locker room, the kind of shy, flirty looks men drop when they're not really sure what they want but have had some curious thoughts. And once in a rainy tent on a mission, I swear he gave me this outright steamy gaze, a silent invitation I ignored and thought about for weeks afterwards.

Working conditions had always kept me from trying it on with him. But working conditions had changed. And no one had a clue what was going on with me; no one could tell me I was nuts. I was like a guy who wakes up one day and snaps; gets obsessed with keeping the rabbits out of his garden, or putting under par before he hits forty. I knew that. I just didn't care. A man only lives once. Okay, some twice. Three times…you know what, never mind.

"What is this?" Daniel asked with a frown, when I'd finished the list and handed it to him.

"An experiment."

He read down the paper, then looked at me over the top of his glasses. "Jack."

I held up a hand. "Listen. Here's how it works: you give the orders, and I see how long I can resist."

"We tried that already. Fraiser said--"

"This will be different."

"How?"

"You won't revoke the orders." And she wasn't going to be there, I thought.

He blinked, looked at the list again. "What are you saying, you want to clean my office?"

"Why not?"

"Uh, maybe because, no." His face set, and his lips pressed together.

"That's not a reason."

"You'd break something."

"No I wouldn't."

"Yes, you would."

"I wouldn't."

"Would."

"I'd be careful."

"My office doesn't need cleaning. Neither does," he eyed the list, "my gun, and I'm not going to let you give me a backrub again."

He did need his gun cleaned, because he took care of it for shit, but I veered away from that tangent and leaned in assertively. "Then you make a list. That's not important. The plan is to try and short-circuit the necklace."

"I thought we were calling it a chain."

"We're not calling it a chain any more. It's a necklace."

"Short-circuit how?"

"I figure if I don't obey and hack it out as long as I can, it'll start to overload, then I'll obey and it'll flip its switch, then we repeat the cycle until it gets confused."

"Or until your head explodes." He put the list down. "I don't think this is a good idea. In fact, I think it's a very bad idea."

"Look," I said. "If I could give you an order, I'd tell you to do this. If you respect my authority at all, you'll do this."

Oh yeah. I'd nailed it. The look of guilt on his face was priceless, and he caved immediately. I loved him, I could have kissed him.

Hold that thought, I told myself.

He made me wait while he revised the list, crossing things off and penciling things in. His idea of creative authority was to make me stand on one leg and to translate a quote from Latin. At least I didn't have to do both at the same time.

So, behind closed and locked doors we drilled through a series of boring commands. For each one I'd meant to try and lengthen the interval before I obeyed. Instead, according to Daniel's stopwatch, the intervals got shorter. Each command gave me a big bang though, when I finally carried out the deed; and after two hours--Daniel is a patient man--I was sizzling.

"How are you feeling, Jack?" he asked me in that careful voice of his.

"Fabulous," I said, as I washed the blackboard with long slow strokes. "Keen. Grand." I was riding a huge wave, body-surfing its surge. Every inch of my skin tingled; my eyes were half-shut and my dick was half-hard. At some point I'd have to turn around. I wished it could last.

"Um, I think the board is clean now."

"Uh huh," I agreed, washing.

"Jack." He sounded worried.

"Daniel."

"Stop doing that."

Oh, fuck him. I closed my eyes and glared at the picture of him I kept taped to my inner eyelids. In the picture he was frowning, arms folded. I couldn't even keep a naked picture in my mental locker. How lame was that.

Damn sexy man, though.

"Jack." He was right by my side, touching my back. I throbbed.

"Don't," I said, not knowing why. Upstart rebelliousness made my neck ache, but even that couldn't kill my ardor. I'd planned this better on paper, I thought. I'd been ready to…seduce him, or something. I made myself turn to face him.

"I think we should stop," he said.

"I don't think so," I said, and kissed his mouth.

"Oh," he said. "Wait, no--"

But I decided no meant yes, and I kissed him again. I never was politically correct. I pushed up his glasses and began working his mouth open with mine. He let me for a minute, I don't know why. Novelty, maybe. Then he broke away.

"Jack, stop."

I resented him. I ached for him. Stopping just made me want to start again. "I need this."

"Need...this?" He raised one hand to his head as if trying to brush a thought away, then his face cleared. "Jack, the necklace is doing this to you."

"No, it's not."

"It has to be."

"No, I've pretty much always wanted to nail you," I said, hating my own crassness as soon as the words left my mouth, but unable to take it back.

He stared at me, bewilderment all across his face. "Why?"

Why? What kind of guy asks why? "Because you look like you'd have a tight ass. Why do you think?"

"I don't believe you," he said, flatly as a slap across the face. "I would have known."

"Oh, right." I rolled my eyes.

"What--you're trying to tell me you've hidden your orientation and an attraction to me--all this time."

"Yes, Daniel. Welcome to this thing we call the military." I watched his face closely, feeling my chest tighten. I was putting it all on the line here. I was still hard as hell and everything inside me was trying to get out, raw and honest and angry.

He wasn't even blinking. "You were married."

"What's your point?"

"When you were married--"

"I was another person then." Jesus Christ, let it go, I thought. I always tried so hard not to think about what a bastard I'd been; how little I'd deserved the good life I'd had. And when it had all gone to hell, I'd felt--

"I don't want to talk about it," I told him.

He blinked, finally. "But I could make you, couldn't I?" We looked at each other in silence a few moments, before he said, "I won't. I won't, Jack. I'm...sorry. I have to go. I mean. I'll stay close by, but I have to--"

"Daniel." I grabbed his arms, held him. Maybe my flirting theory was shot to hell, or maybe he was just being difficult. I decided not to care. I stroked my palm down the side of his neck, slid the other one up along the curve of his head. It felt so good. He only needed to let me do this. "Let me do this," I said, so roughly it came out like a demand instead of an offer. "I want to go down on my knees for you."

"It's the necklace, Jack." His eyes were bright blue, and too gentle. He pulled my hands down and held my wrists. "If you were in your right mind, you wouldn't be doing this. And when you are in your right mind again, you'll regret this. I won't take advantage of you."

"I think I'm sick of those morals of yours," I said savagely.

"It's not only my morals, it's your regulations."

"Screw regulations." I yanked out of his grip and caught his face in my hands and kissed him, but he knocked me back with a shove I hadn't been ready for.

"No, Jack." He held up a finger, making me feel like a reprimanded dog. "Don't kiss me again. Don't touch me again--not like that. Don't tell me about your private feelings."

Each command struck me like a blow. I stared at him, anguish twisting my guts. His face didn't show even a flicker of emotion. I'd seen how cold he could be in the past, but this....

"You'll treat me as a friend for as long as you wear that," he said. "No more." Voice even, gaze steady as a soldier's. He could assume command, I realized then. And I felt like I was looking at someone else for a moment, at a man who could order a surgical air strike without flinching, kill a city without mourning. He'd talk about their ethos after they were gone, study their dead languages and burial stones, and nothing would touch him.

He left me, and I sat on the floor and had a rest. It had been a long day. Hey, it had been a long life.

I don't know what I thought would happen after that, but things returned to normal. Almost. I sat and worked, he sat and worked, we went to boring project launch meetings, we played gin. I won, he lost. Carter snuck a bottle of Macallan onto the base and for two consecutive nights I drank alone in bed and jerked off drunkenly, thinking of Daniel's hands, how he'd grabbed my wrists, how it would feel to have him pin me down and force himself on me, issuing orders that I couldn't disobey. Both times when I got to the part of the fantasy where he shoved inside me, I bucked and shot hard across my chest.

Sometimes I fell asleep to a different type of fantasy, though. In this one, Daniel led me through the gate on a mission, across alien sands; he gave me his best blue-eyed gaze, and commanded me to destroy a Gou'ald ship that lay ahead of us, because I was the only one who could, the only one, Jack. And I would have, in a heartbeat, just to see pride touch those cool eyes. I'd have died a hero, to give him back everything he'd given me.

Both dreams were stupid. Both were making me crazy.

I behaved, though. Because he'd ordered me to. I had no words for how it felt, and even if I had, I couldn't have told him. It hurt. It was a big, fucking ache in my body like someone had beaten me all over. And I knew how that felt; I had plenty of muscle memory.

Teal'c, who'd been temporarily reassigned to SG-2, started visiting me more often between missions. We watched the sports channels together, and I told him about the rules of soccer, one of the few games I hadn't already explained to him in detail. He listened and asked typical Teal'c questions and made me feel almost okay. During the games, Daniel sat on the other side of the lounge and read books, or typed on his laptop. Not looking his way was an effort that made me dull and tired.

Carter was immersed in research, by choice, and sometimes we sat and had coffee. We didn't know what to say to each other, though. She told me about her work, I listened. One week she went on some sort of manic cookie-baking spree. After the fourth batch, I told her to stop, that I'd get fat.

And Daniel and I, we were okay. I felt as if he'd wrapped me in a straight jacket and gagged me and then left me walled up somewhere to suffocate. But other than that, we were like this. I learned more than I wanted to about Persian folklore and the Egyptian mummification process. I could tell he was getting cabin fever; so was I. We begged day-trips and hiked outside the mountain. We were a chain-gang of two.

The most pathetic moments of my day were when I brought him coffee or a sandwich and he thanked me and I got my charge. Not a full jolt like I'd get if he were ordering me around, but a weak buzz; enough to keep me hooked. He must have guessed after the scene in his office that I wasn't just going through the motions when I served him. But he didn't say anything. Not to me, not to Fraiser. He let me do it. We both pretended it was casual, that my gestures were devoid of meaning.

Fun all around.

After almost a month of this--three weeks of negative reports from Burgess--I stood in the control room one day watching SG-3 gate out and thought: I've got to get the hell out of here. I brushed past Daniel, took the stairs two at a time, and barreled into Hammond's office. I slammed the door behind me.

"Permission to return to 358 and search for that little Karnakian brat, sir," I said, frustrated rage pouring off my skin.

Hammond said into his phone, "I'll call you back." Not the red phone. Even through my haze of self-absorption I registered relief.

"Sit down, Jack."

I stood and glared. "No thank you, sir."

"I can't let you go back there."

"Excuse me, sir, but why the hell not?"

"You're not currently fit for command."

I planted myself at his desk and leaned forward, getting in his face. "I. Don't. Care. Let Carter take command. Let Daniel. I can't sit here another day and do nothing."

Hammond was picking up my frustration. "If I could let you go, you know I would, Jack."

"Oh, I know that, do I?" I pushed off from his desk and paced, running both hands through my hair, hating myself for acting like this, hating Hammond and Daniel and the world.

"I know it's hard, son." Son, he was calling me son. This was bad. Fatal. "I feel for you, I really do." He paused, and I stared elsewhere. I couldn't look at him. "Is there anything you need?" he asked quietly. "Anything you want me to talk to Doctor Jackson about?"

I cracked a laugh. "Oh, yes. Please. Tell him to take this damn necklace off me."

Hammond said nothing eloquently for a moment, before replying, "I'm sure he would if he could. It can't be very entertaining for the man. For either of you."

Oh, such administrative even-handedness, such diplomacy. I wanted to spit. I turned back to scowl at him instead. "Fun? No, it's not fun, sir. But Daniel has something to do. Daniel has translated three new languages. Daniel has written two new papers that no one can read because they won't be declassified until 2020. But I can't even go to a fucking throughput meeting without Daniel tagging along, while everyone wonders what the hell he's doing there and why I'm stuck uselessly on base."

"No one thinks you're useless, Colonel."

"I am useless, sir. God. If I could just take this damn thing off." I grabbed the necklace briefly, then squeezed my eyes shut and ground the heels of my hands into them.

He sat silently, and I stood silently, and then I sank into a chair.

"Colonel, I know it's not much, but if you'd like some time--"

"Oh, what's the point?" I said, sarcasm thickening my voice. "What am I going to do, hit the beaches?" Hammond looked at me with too much sympathy in his face. Too much sympathy all around.

"I'd do anything he asked," I said tiredly. The words tumbled out, shocking and horrible. I didn't look at Hammond. Didn't have to. Could imagine his face, and what he was thinking. I hadn't admitted it out loud before now. It was obvious to everyone, it had to be; but also obscene. The kind of thing you didn't speak of in mixed company.

"Anything," I admitted to Hammond, not caring what he thought, though I'd surely regret it later. "I'd toss myself on a grenade, sing him a song. He doesn't...he won't ask. Won't ask me to do anything."

"Colonel, I really think--"

"It makes the whole goddamn thing pointless," I said in disgust, pressing my head to the edge of Hammond's desk. I was at my own edge, looking down into the months ahead. Years, even. "If he had any decency he'd tell me to take this fucking useless hunk of metal off."

"Colonel, please." He didn't have to finish the sentence.

I sat up, gathering myself slowly together as the tide washed out. "Right. Yeah. I'm fine, sir." I closed my eyes. "Fine."

"Get some rest, Jack. Take a few days. If you need anything, I'll have it brought in."

I tried to imagine what he was thinking of. Booze? Pot? A mariachi band? Christ. My brain said take it off, just take it the fuck off of me. I was too tired to even rise from Hammond's chair.

"Take it off," I said. I opened my eyes and stared at Hammond, who stared back with the quiet reserve of a man who had nearly seen it all. "Take it off," I repeated.

Hammond ducked his head, as if unable to meet my eyes any longer. "I wish I could, Jack."

"Wait. No, no, no. Wait a minute. No." I shook my head, ran a hand over my hair. "It couldn't be--no, because that--" I paused, mind whirling. "Because that would be too--" I stood up, knocking back the chair, and ran from the office, down to the control room.

Daniel, waiting there, was startled to his feet by my arrival. "Jack--"

"Tell me to take it off," I said, wildly. He stared back, eyes big.

"Jack, calm down--"

I grabbed his shoulders. The necklace was toasting me with warnings, but I ignored it. "Tell me to take it off."

"Take it off," he repeated, trying to follow my words to their meaning.

That might even be enough. I reached up to the necklace, twisted it blindly. And it fell off.

Oh, yeah. I clapped Daniel's shoulders in crazy glee and really wanted to kiss him, a man-to-man spirit-of-the-moment kiss, but instead I shook him a bit and laughed. His mouth gaped and I grinned like a wildman. Then I hollered like that guy in Dr. Strangelove as he dropped from the sky riding the bomb. Carter and Teal'c came running up out of a convenient nowhere, and Hammond stood by my side and stared at my neck in blank amazement.

"Oh my god," said Daniel.

Carter's eyes got big. Saucer big. "It's off. What did you do?"

"I asked him to take it off," Daniel said, stunned. "He asked me to ask him to take it off, and I did, and now it's--" He waved at me.

"Off," I said. "Off, off, off."

"Thank god," said Hammond, and put a hand on my shoulder. "Good to have you back, Colonel."

You've got to let generals have their moments. "Thank you, sir."

"It is good to have you in command again, O'Neill." Teal'c inclined his head.

Daniel was grinding the heel of one hand between his brows, without seeming to be aware of it. "I can't believe we didn't--but it doesn't make sense. I couldn't take it off you."

Carter shook her head. "Maybe the collar used to come paired with another device, a kind of master key." I could have poked her for that one. "The command for removal may simply have been a loophole in the system. There's no way we could have known," she added.
 
"Agreed," said Hammond. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Doctor."

"I," Daniel paused and looked at me, "will try not to, no. Yes." And I knew he'd been thinking of saying something else entirely, probably along the lines of, I could have been rid of him a month ago. I twitched my brows and let my eyes glitter knowingly at him.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Okay. No. Not quite.

After a period of medical observation shortened by my impatience and strategic obnoxiousness, I went home and Daniel went home, each of us on three days' leave that conveniently rolled into a weekend. I'm pretty sure he wanted to see me as little as I wanted to see him. The first night I ate two steaks and drank five beers and sang to myself in the shower and then climbed up on the roof to stargaze, and fell asleep up there. I'm lucky to be alive. I could have rolled off that damn roof.

The next day I pa