1.

**********

"Sooner or later, you have to face reality."

"... no I don't."

**********

It's always the same: clear morning light on the lake water, the woods so still that his senses expand into the silence, hearing so sharp that every snap of a twig, every twitch of a leaf within a kilometer makes his heart stutter and race.

And Daniel, hands shoved into his pockets, walking through the tripwires without disturbing them, perfectly ordinary and perfectly dead.

Given sufficient trauma, the human brain (weaker) will hallucinate. This is empirical fact, documented through the centuries.

Once, he'd tried ignoring Daniel, for a day or two. Could have been a week. Hard to keep track of time there; he'd have kept a tally if he'd had anything he could use to scratch lines into the walls. If he'd had anything to count except the number of times he was returned to his cell; if he wasn't afraid that the walls would be wiped clean too each time, smooth and unmarked as the skin under the scorch-holes in his clothes, as if nothing had happened, nothing to prove it was real, no wound no scar no memory –

– an effort to pull out of the thought, like wrestling a plane out of a spin, the controls sticking as you begin to hurtle into the ground.

Once, he'd tried ignoring Daniel (cut off the thought there). Holding onto his mental discipline, clarity through the waking dream. But he doesn't dream, doesn't sleep, so this cannot – and everything tilts and blurs, sliding away before he can grasp it, before he can think about what he is doing (think about what he is thinking). This is not real, therefore I do not perceive it.

Holding onto his sanity.

Okay, so maybe that part didn't work out so well.

Everyone breaks, sooner or later. If not by disclosing information, then in other ways. This too is empirical fact.

These days, he doesn't bother trying to ignore Daniel. It's always the same conversation, or variations on the theme, Daniel pacing beside him or crouched next to him in the hut, frustration simmering under the surface of his Zen calm. Sometimes he argues; sometimes he begs.

"You need to go back," Daniel says. "They can help you, they're looking for you. You just have to go back."

On today's menu: patient repetition. Careful kindergarten-teacher tones. Put down the scissors, sweetie, you don't want to do that.

"Back where?"

"Home."

Home is grey concrete walls is grey crystal tunnels – he clamps down on the rising panic, swallows it down like nausea, shutting off the thought before it can take hold. Take him places he doesn't want to go.

Instead, he spreads his fingers out flat on the floor – rough wooden boards over hard-packed dirt – and considers them.

The place was abandoned when he got here; probably had been for years, already decaying back into the woods, planks warping and rotting. Must have been a hunter's shelter; the soil here's heavy clay, be a bitch to farm, and there aren't any traces of a settlement around. But the woods are full of game; there are even fish in the lake (and isn't that the irony to end them all). Out in the wilderness, a long long way from any of the piss-poor excuses for civilization around here. Off the map.

He remembers this from before: curled up on this floor shaking, every cell in the body screaming that it was dying, every system failing, knowing that he'd have given in if he'd had the choice. Knowing that he would have hiked back to the gate and gone searching for a sarcophagus if he wasn't too weak to stand, would have taken the tel'tak from the hill if he hadn't spent an afternoon pulling out every crystal from the controls while his hands were still steady enough, shattering them one by one, before the withdrawal kicked in, while he was still strong enough to remember why he had to. He remembers staring at his fingers then, from a long way away, wondering if he could move them, and not being able to remember why the color of the skin was unfamiliar, why this body was wrong –

Floorboards. Simple things. Real. You can't go far wrong with floorboards.

Somewhere, Daniel is still talking.

It's always the same.

**********

He doesn't sleep these days. Only the half-sleep he remembers from combat zones, catnaps where your mind goes on working, monitoring every explosion, every footstep, and deciding whether you need to be awake or not. Dreamlike and lucid at once; you wonder why things aren't quite right then realize that of course it's because you're fast asleep.

Sometimes it's only the gaps that give it away, like a needle skipping on a record, jump-cuts in a film, time lost between one thought and the next. Shut your eyes and open them again. Cut: the fire's lit, and at first you don't remember lighting it.

Cut: you're walking into the woods.

Something's kicking in the third trap, one of the little animals that looks like a cross between a lizard and a rabbit. Caught by the neck this time, and already half-strangled. It's better than when the noose catches a leg and they try to chew through their own flesh to get free, look up at him with bright mad eyes and bloody mouths.

He loosens the wire cutting into the soft skin of its throat and smoothes a hand over its head, brittle quills trembling against his fingers, then snaps its neck. Small mercies.

"Does it bother you?" Daniel says from behind him, in that oh-so-casual tone that means he thinks he's got something. "I mean, that we've been talking in Goa'uld for the past ten minutes."

"No we haven't."

Okay, so maybe it's not one of his finest ever conversational moments. Daniel ignores it anyway, ploughs on remorselessly. "You see, Jack O'Neill doesn't understand Goa'uld."

"Hey. I can say kree in five different languages." He pulls his knife and begins gutting the critter before the meat can spoil. Weird creature, neither fish nor fowl. Intestines spool out in steaming purple coils over his hands. He doesn't like knives so much these days (careful) but you can't skin a lizard-rabbit with a zat.

The woods smell wet and harsh, like wild garlic.

"You know there's something wrong here. You know this doesn't make sense."

The thing about Daniel is – is, was, yadda – he's never believed there were things it was better not to know, safer not to examine too closely. Just like he never quite got that there are things you shouldn't touch. Daniel wants to see everything in perfect light, imagines infinite radiance instead of the merciless white light of an operating room: no shadows, no dark corners, nowhere for a wounded thing to crawl and hide.

"Daniel, let me explain something to you." He lets the knife dangle between his fingers, sheened with blood and scales, and looks up from where he's crouching. "You're dead. You're a hallucination. You're my hallucination. Of course I can understand what you're saying."

"I'm not dead. Not, ah, as such." Daniel pinches at the bridge of his nose, the place where his glasses would rub, if death wasn't a cure for near-sightedness (who knew?). "We've been over this."

Empirical facts. The human body cannot survive exposure to over thirty sieverts of radiation (and he should have gone with him to the research facility, he should have – ).

The human body cannot survive planetfall in an escape pod with malfunctioning inertial dampeners, organs rupturing, bleeding out inside so fast, blood pressure dropping lower the harder he drove the heart and not enough oxygen reaching the brain, slipping away in the blackness in pain and fear and he should have done, he should have said, he should have known how to say goodbye –

"Ascension is a myth," he snarls. "A superstition fostered by the Goa'uld to keep the Jaffa subservient."

"Yeah." Dry, appraising. "That didn't even sound like you."

Cut.

**********

It's late afternoon by the time he circles back toward the hut. Light slants down through the trees, heavy and golden as syrup, congealing like molasses as the day cools and the sun drops down.

The days are getting shorter. He's got no idea what the seasons are like here, but it's got to be heading towards the cold end of the year. Winter'll be tough, but he's got enough supplies to hole up for a while.

Demeaning, to live like a beast in the woods, but he has done worse before, to survive, to escape – and the thought breaks up like light on the water when something stirs beneath the surface, scattering hard glints too bright to look at.

Daniel's back again, strolling beside him, immaculate clothes untouched by the mud and the blood. The soggy grass is undented by his feet. He comes and goes; ignoring him never works for long. It shouldn't be a relief when he comes back (a delusion, evidence of his failure, his insanity), but it always is.

"You can't stay here forever, you know," Daniel says, glancing up through his eyelashes. Soft, almost conciliatory, as if he's apologizing for earlier.

"Why not?"

A risky tactic; if he asks questions, sometimes Daniel will try to tell him things, and then he has to stop paying attention for a while. Days, sometimes.

But this time, Daniel doesn't push. "You know why."

"What, a guy can't retire, do a little fishing?"

"Not like this." Daniel doesn't even crack a smile, just shakes his head, all seriousness. "This is a dead end."

(At first, it had taken him a while to work out why everything Daniel said sounded wrong, the intonation a fraction off. An empty beat at the end of every other sentence where another word should be.

Finally, he'd lost it. "Would it kill you to use my name once in a while?"

"Well, it can hardly kill me if I'm already dead, can it?" Daniel had said thoughtfully, as if he'd been distracted into pondering the question. Then, innocent and lethal, "And which name would that be?")

That's Daniel for you: always certain that he knows what's best for other people. Right from the start, a tornado of arrogance disguised as a sneezy geek: These people don't want to die. It's a shame you're in a such a hurry to.

But Daniel's dead, Daniel left. You don't have the right anymore, he wants to say. You don't get to have it both ways, claim non-attachment and non-interference and all that Oma Desala crap then drop by on alternate Sundays to tell people what to do.

Instead, he says, "You got a better offer?"

"Let them help," Daniel says, like he always says. "They can fix this. It doesn't have to be like this, you can get back to ... being yourself again."

But it's half-hearted this time, as if his attention's somewhere else. When even your imaginary friends have got better things to do, that's when you know you're screwed.

"Daniel, did you leave the gas on or something? Because I'm starting to wonder –"

– down, down, hitting the ground and rolling behind the cover of a tree even before the faint purr of rotors registers on his conscious mind.

He lies flat in the muck and dead leaves, trying to listen past the sound of his heart slamming into his ribcage, then twists over awkwardly, the hard curve of a branch digging into his back. He shields his eyes with one hand and squints upwards at the patch of sky between the lattice of bare branches.

It's only a minute or two before the UAV comes into view, its silhouette crisp and unmistakable as a bird heading home to roost, mellow light striking a blinding gleam off its metal skin.

SGC. Tau'ri. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He went through ten different gates before he even slowed down, used every trick he knew to keep from leaving a trail, there's no way they can have found him without – "You sold me out," he hisses, and knows before he turns his head that Daniel won't be there. "You bastard, you sold me out."

He counts off sixty seconds after the UAV's out of sight – part of his mind calculating how long before they can turn it, bring it back this way again if they've seen anything – then he's on his feet, pushing up smoothly in a way that would have killed his knees before, and into the hut.

A quick scan of the tiny space confirms that there's nothing he needs that's not already in his pockets, nothing that's worth the time it'd take to pack. Nothing he can't make, or steal once he gets off-world again, the same way he picked up the tel'tak and the rest of his bag of tricks before he went to ground (using his knowledge of a hundred trading planets, even raiding a decades-old cache of materiel). The only things he needs are in his head.

He kicks at the remains of the fire, knocking the ring of hearth stones apart, then kneels with a handful of kindling, wood-shavings and dry moss, and holds it to the embers until a flame catches. One breath, another, then the fire's caught hold, and he tosses it onto the pile of bedding in the corner.

The place is nothing more than rickety boards, mostly held up by the dead tree they're propped against. Everything's still damp from the last big rain; it'll smoulder for a while but burn soon enough. Hell of a beacon if they've got infrared pointed this way, but if they're searching on this planet at all they already know too much. By the time they come looking, he'll be a long way from here, and the fire will destroy any traces he's left behind. Let them think it's a false alarm.

Then he ducks out of the shack and into the trees, moving at a steady jog until something catches at him and he breaks into a headlong run –

– lifting an arm to shove a branch out of the way, raindrops clinging to the bark, a cold spatter across his face in the darkness, her small hand icy in his, slipping behind, and he clamps his fingers round her wrist and pulls hard, brutally, yanking her off her feet to keep her stumbling after him, not fast enough (human, weaker) and he knows how far the gate is, how close the guards are, knows there's no way this can work, the parameters of the equation don't change no matter how many times you run the numbers, and for a moment he understands that this is actually happening –

– gone.

**********

Night falls fast here.

He makes good time, even once he slows down, but he's taking the long way round, circling through the woods to head for the chappa'ai from an angle. Doesn't hurt to take precautions. A compass'd be useful sometimes (assuming this place even has a magnetic pole) but he doesn't need it; he knows these woods like the back of his hand.

By the time he's close to the gate, the last of the light is fading, down to smears of yellow and grey above the treetops.

The sound of movement stops him cold. Too big for any of the wildlife he's seen around here; too many to be a bunch of lost peasants. Therefore I say unto you: fuck.

Evidently someone up there (and he's not counting Daniel) is even more pissed at him than usual, because would it hurt the universe to cut him a break once in a while? He'd figured they'd take more time to analyze the visuals from the UAV before sending personnel through, but it looks like that was too much too hope for.

Too much to hope that he'd be left alone.

They're making as much noise as a platoon of Jaffa, and judging by it, they've got a decent number of boots on the ground already, fanning out through the trees. He could try to get around them, make it to the gate behind their backs, but if they've got a brain between them they'll have left it guarded.

He moves away from the gate as fast and as silently as he can, looking to put some distance between himself and them. Buy himself some time to think before they hunt him down.

**********

In a few hours, the last of the light's gone.

His eyes have adjusted (night vision sharp as a sniper's scope; he's not thinking about that either), and he picks his way easily. There's no moon, but constellations he can't name grey the sky, making it a fraction lighter than the branches and the tree-trunks. Enough for him to tell one shade of black from another.

Old training (survival evasion resistance escape) says get clear, find a hole-up site and stay put. But he can't quite make himself do it; something tugs at him, draws him back towards his pursuers. He'd rather keep an eye on them, keep the enemy where he can see them. Better than cowering blind in a cave or under a screen of branches, waiting for them to come and drag you out.

He kneels to smear a double handful of dirt across his face – bitter mineral taste on his lips – then doubles back, ghosting closer to them in the dark.

The flare of light through the branches freezes him, nauseous with fear. But the light is cold white, electrical. The flicker of flashlight beams. Not torches, not the flames of braziers. There are no horns sounding this time. He thinks.

At best, they'll have a map patched together from the aerial scans. But he's had the time to learn this place, learn the things that a map won't show, and he can keep dodging them for a long time. There's a limit to the resources that even the SGC will pour into a manhunt (no one gets left behind, and his mind wrenches away from the thought, yank-and-bank and we're up and away).

If the worst comes to the worst, he's laced areas of the woods with enough traps to slow anyone down, a maze that only he knows the way through. Area denial: Insurgency 101.

The beams of their flashlights swing and bounce, casting Halloween shadows through the trees. They're not even trying for stealth, crashing through undergrowth and calling out, to each other and into the night. As if they imagine that he wants to be found.

Primitives. Like children.

It makes it easy for him to edge closer and still keep out of range of their lights. Habit makes him test each step before he shifts his weight, feeling for twigs that might crack or rotten wood that could shear wetly underfoot, but he never mis-steps. He remembers this place by daylight, and the memory overlays the darkness like an X-ray, telling him where there's a clear path between the trees and where it's fouled by fallen branches and thick brush.

Close enough now that he can hear the crackle of their radios. He drops back and to the side and lets one of them pass him, eavesdrops on the chatter: no luck yet; keep searching. Might as well be invisible.

Then his skin prickles, pins-and-needles, as if the white noise of the radio is running through his veins. The familiar (familiar?) sensation of naquadah in the blood.

Shit.

A snake in SGC patches. Infiltration? He should warn them, Christ knows what the thing's planning – but for all he knows, the whole fucking op's Goa'uld.

Something tugs at him again, an undercurrent of yearning, and he forces it down, breathes out anger.

If they've got lifesign detectors – hell, if they've got infrared, or a decent tracker among them – he can lead them right where he wants them to be. Let them learn the hard way that he's more trouble than he's worth.

He cuts across the trail, dodging a flashlight beam, then retreats, pulling away into the night again. There's a flurry of radio traffic, urgent whispers and commands, and then he can track them blind as they wheel round to follow him.

If you go down to the woods today ...

**********

Half a klick takes them past the perimeter of the danger zone.

Within ten minutes there's an undignified yelp and crash as one of them goes down over a tripwire. The plain kind; he didn't have enough of the monomolecular filament to go round. The regular wires only trip and tangle, while the monofilament slices through anything like wire through cheese. His early warning system.

After that, there's a brief burst of traffic before they go to radio silence. Decent precision, too, he'll grant them that: a few of them advancing at a time, testing paths through the trees, while the others hold back to keep them covered.

No more calling out, now. Instead, he hears the unmistakable sounds of zats being armed. Which means they want to take him alive, and – no. He can't allow that.

In the night, his hearing expands until he can hear their ragged breathing, the clench of his own heart, until he's nothing but his senses, the instinctive awareness of predator and prey, dilated black pupil of an animal watching death. He doesn't have to think, then; reflexes and training carry him, reacting faster than his conscious mind could, stepping effortlessly through the minefield.

Safer, easier, if you don't think.

One of them comes to an abrupt halt, teetering on the edge of a pit trap, and he feels the man's body sway, imagines that he could reach out and brush the tips of his fingers across his face in the darkness and vanish again. Invisible.

They slow down then, moving forwards warily.

Still, it's not long before the next one goes down. He hears the crash of a body hitting the forest floor hard, close by him, and a choked-off scream. Not just a bad fall, but real pain.

He circles round, knife slipping automatically into his palm. That's the other problem with zat'nik'katels: they make noise.

The enemy's a huddled shape on the ground, doubled up around the pain. Looks like he went down at an angle over one of the monomolecular wires, turning as he fell. His leg's slashed to the bone; lucky it wasn't taken off altogether.

But there's no prickling in his fingers, no naquadah in the guy's blood; this one's clean, not a snake, and –

Reynolds. He recognizes him. Fuck. That's Reynolds.

Man down – aww hell, the blood's spurting. Arterial.

The knife's back in his belt before he thinks about it; he gets Reynolds under the arms and drags him a few paces – dead weight, too stunned to fight – then props him with his back against a tree.

Then he grabs Reynolds's hand and shoves it down against Reynolds's thigh, heel over the femoral artery, his own hand clamped over it, keeping it there, keeping the pressure on. Wishes he had a med kit handy, but it's not like he's needed one lately.

"Hold it," he says, and Reynolds stares, struggling to see him in the dark, then nods, trained response to command voice. He won't be able to, not when the shock kicks on, but it'll give him something to focus on instead of how badly fucked he is. "Good man."

Where the hell the rest of this bunch of clowns are, why they aren't here yet, he doesn't know. They must have heard Reynolds go down. Jesus. This rate, the poor guy'd bleed out before they even got a medic near him.

He sucks in a lungful of air and bellows, "Hey! Over here!" before he can think about it. "You've got a man down, get your asses over here with a med kit now!"

There's a frozen pause, dead silence when all he can hear is his own voice ringing in his ears, before they start floundering towards him, making even more noise than before. A flashlight beam skips over him, then away again, and he hollers again – "Over here, morons" – and waves his arm for good measure.

Then all the beams of light swing towards him at once, dazzling him, as if the glare is exploding in his eyes.

The first one to stumble into view is a woman, Air Force uniform and pale hair scraped back and tucked under a cap, and all he can think is how much she looks like Shallan. Except she doesn't, not at all. He doesn't know why he'd have thought that.

"Carter?"

It comes out as a hoarse whisper. Been a long time since he talked to anyone who isn't dead.

Carter stares at him. Her zat wavers and dips, before she brings it up sharply, keeping it trained on him. "Colonel?"

More uniforms behind her. Daniel and Teal'c must be on their way over – but no, Daniel's dead. Daniel's a hallucination, which is why he's not here, except when he is. Teal'c and Jonas, it should be. But he can't see either of them.

Carter lowers her flashlight, beam dropping from him to Reynolds, and he can see her face more clearly without the light shining in his eyes. She snaps, "Malek," sideways, not taking her eyes off him.

Malek's got to be the snakehead stepping into the clearing beside her, pale pinched face and curly brown hair. He slings his pack to the ground and pulls it open; apparently Carter's the one in charge.

Never seen the guy before, and he knows every snake they've run into, of either brand, but somehow he's sure this one's meant to be somewhere else: not here, not in an SGC uniform, following Tau'ri orders, kneeling on the sodden ground to pull a Goa'uld healing device out of a standard-issue Air Force pack.

The snake stands and takes a step towards him (boot-heels clicking on a stone floor, but no, there's only the faint squish of mud and leaves). He lets go of Reynolds without thinking about it, pushing onto his feet and taking a step back as the snake gets closer.

They all tense, and he sees the business ends of their zats tracking him as he moves.

The odds suck; no real chance he could dive for cover before at least one of them hits him, but he nearly takes the chance anyway. He's already braced, knees bending a fraction, stance shifting to look more casual: not about to try anything, just relax, take your eyes off me for a millisecond, damn you –

"It's okay, sir," Carter says, trying for reassuring and managing the tone that says that nothing's okay at all; she's always been a lousy liar. "It's okay. We've come to take you home."

Home is – he jams the heel of one hand hard against his forehead, hoping maybe it'll jar his brain back into place.

Malek's crouched by Reynolds now, light collecting in the stone in his palm, pouring down like water. The bleeding is slowing, down from a gush to a dribble that looks black in the light. Reynolds has stopped trying to sit up, but the lines of pain on his face are softening. Still creepy as hell, watching Goa'uld toys being used on people he knows.

More snakeheads have appeared in the gaps between the trees now, and he knows them too; Carter hasn't said their names, but he knows them anyway – Jalrow, Itet – he recognizes them, and that thought leads – things are coming apart in his head. This is what he's afraid of, and he can't think properly, can't – it feels as if he's underwater, struggling for the surface with no light to tell him which way is up, drowning –

– can't think properly, on his hands and knees in the freezing mud, shoulder burnt through to the bone by the staff blast, boots of the Jaffa splashing through puddles towards him – mustn't be taken alive – and one hand's halfway to the pocket with the neurotoxin, except he can't – not this host, not – there's something he can't remember, a sudden desperate impulse to flee the body, get out where he can think clearly, but by then it's too late, he's surrounded and the butt of a staff weapon hits him in the back, knocking him down into the mud, bone shattering, and he can't get his legs under him and he shuts his eyes and –

– he shuts his eyes as Jalrow says, "We are here by authority of the council, to vouch for your safety." Snake voice, all eerie harmonics and distortion.

But the council would not risk so much to retrieve a single operative; he would not expect them to. Unless perhaps they want him back to punish him for his failure, to make an example of him. Then Carter's voice jerks him back again.

"We've been working with the Tok'ra," she says, in the nervous voice that means she's revving up for an explanation which is going to be three times as long as it needs to be.

This close, he can feel the residue of naquadah in her blood, like a scar. Jolinar's host, and something twists inside him, a spasm of distaste.

"There was an agreement, pooling resources was the only hope of finding you –"

A rustle behind him. He turns his head and finds that little Asian kid – linguist, had a crush on Daniel, oh, what was her name, Satterfield – is trying to get round behind him, get a clear shot.

She jumps when he looks at her – and who the hell thought it was a smart idea to put her in a combat situation, and can he get that person fired? she's about twelve, for chrissakes – but she lifts her other hand and settles it on the butt of the zat, keeps her aim steady.

They're all looking at him like he's crazy now, like he's an animal gone feral and vicious. And suddenly he's watching himself from the outside, ragged and dirt-smeared, at bay in a forest at the end of the world. A bloody-handed scarecrow, pupils blown wide and black.

Bugfuck nuts.

"You're not thinking straight, sir," Carter says, and he doesn't manage to stifle the bark of laughter. No shit, Carter.

Yeah, you could maybe say that. Just a little. Just a little bit fucked up in the head. That can happen, if you get tortured to death enough times.

"You need to come back with us now, sir," she says.

"And if I don't feel like it?"

She holds his gaze, and there's something unfamiliar in her eyes, brittle and steely at once. Her voice is hard.

"Then, with respect, we zat you and carry you. Sir."

He's almost impressed. This is a different Carter, as if he's fallen through a quantum mirror. She looks thinner, older, as if she's been pared down to bone since – he doesn't know. Shit, he doesn't know.

Hard to keep track of time. "How long's it been? Since I ..." He trails off and waves a hand, as if he's trying to sketch a shape in the air. A hole in reality.

That's when she cracks, a tiny tremor in her face before she locks it down again, as if she doesn't know whether she's going to burst out laughing or crying.

"You've been missing for more than five months, sir."

**********

2.

**********

Grey concrete walls.

He stops short on the metal ramp, looking around at the underground chamber. The watery light of the event horizon bounces off walls, paint-striped floor, the transparent shields behind which rows of soldiers crouch, their weapons aimed at him.

This, then, is the base of the Tau'ri. No, wait. This is the SGC, home sweet home, the same ramp he's walked, run and occasionally rolled down hundreds of times before. But he can't shake the feeling that it's strange, that he's looking at it for the first time.

Like déjà vu only backwards: everything looks right but feels wrong. Maybe it's all an elaborate fake, like Hathor's little mock-up of the SGC, and if he didn't know that wormholes are one-way doors, he'd be thinking about bolting back into the event horizon right now.

But then the blue glow vanishes with the usual zip, and one of the men watching from behind the glass – Hammond, Hammond, he knows him, he shouldn't have to think twice – orders the security forces to stand down.

Around him, his captors shift and relax, some of their tension vanishing as they move down off the ramp. The familiar sensation of a mission accomplished. Reynolds hobbles down with one arm slung round Captain Ortega's shoulders, his face a study in professional impassivity.

Behind the SFs, a bunch of snakeheads wait in a solemn row, like a delegation. Some of them wear the familiar brown leather uniforms, but a few are in the sweeping furred robes of councillors. This is indeed some form of joint operation, then. He straightens his spine and nods to them with as much dignity as he can muster.

"Thoran." His hands brush the illuminated handrail and jerk back involuntarily; he seems to have wandered over to the edge of the ramp, but he doesn't know when that happened.

Thoran stares at him, through him, his face clouding over, then turns away to glare up at the man behind the glass. "We do not wish to speak to the host," he snaps.

A sting of shock and an impulse to protest, he isn't – but the thought slips out of reach and he can't hold onto it, almost, but not without – not without ...

Hammond touches the controls of the microphone again, with the air of someone continuing an ongoing argument. "I'll thank you to remember that you're still in my jurisdiction, gentlemen."

Thoran's mouth compresses into a sharp line, a wince of annoyance and disdain, but he doesn't reply.

"SG-T teams, we debrief in an hour," Hammond continues. "Then you're on stand-down. Major Carter, escort Colonel O'Neill to the infirmary, then report back to me."

He turns away from the microphone to say something to the man beside him, then adds, "Well done. All of you," with a brisk nod of his head. It ripples through all of the team members, snake and human alike: the sort of quiet acknowledgement that he's seen men die for.

The Tok'ra have gone into a huddle in the corner of the gateroom, some kind of debate being conducted in silent glares and resonant whispers. None of them will look him in the eye; their glances skim across the room and jump across him, as if he's an interruption, a glitch in their visual field. An error.

Carter's not looking at him either; she's on the other side of the room talking to her team. Malek, Greene and Satterfield. No need to ask who's on Carter's team: he can read it in everything they do, they way they look to her for cues even before they look to her for orders.

And he knows that conversation, too. He should be the one having it, checking in with his team after a mission, the quick word to make sure that everyone's okay, nothing's hinky. But everything's out of place, the wrong way round. No sign of Teal'c or – no. Jonas. No sign of Jonas.

Carter nods to the snake and says something to Satterfield, whose sturdy earnestness is starting to look a little frayed, then breaks away from them to hover by the doorway, looking uncertainly at him, as if she's wondering whether she's going to have to come over and fetch him. Or march him there at gunpoint. Two of the SFs have already moved to wait in the corridor.

He remembers the way to the infirmary, at least, and he'd rather not be dragged there. The more he co-operates, the fewer restrictions they'll place on him, and the easier it'll be if he does have to run.

The SFs fall into step behind him and Carter as they head down the corridor – gunpoint it is – and he tries not to notice the tread of their boots behind him, the pressure of their eyes on his back, even though it makes him jittery to have people in his blind spot. Tries not to act like he's under guard.

They turn left, towards the elevators, and he rotates the map he's building in his head, notes the color of the paint stripes on the floor for future reference. No. He knows the way, he can remember the way. This isn't new.

It's like double vision, images wavering and splitting apart in front of him, until he wants to stop and blink, press the heels of his palms against his eyeballs and force everything back into focus again.

One of the SFs pulls a plastic card from his pocket and swipes it through the machine on the wall – he'll need to remember that – and the elevator doors open. A tiny metal box.

He freezes. Animal reflex. Hold perfectly still and maybe nothing will see you. If you don't think, don't think about anything at all, then you don't have to think about why you're so afraid.

"Colonel?" Carter says from behind his shoulder, and he exhales and forces himself to step forwards. The guards follow her in; he refuses to cringe away from them when they stand too close.

The elevator jerks into motion, taking them further and further away from the gate. He looks at the thin seam between the metal doors. You'd need a crowbar to pry them open if they jammed, if you were trapped in here. His hands have tightened into fists.

He leans back against the wall and makes himself draw in a deep breath and then release it. Okay. PTSD fun and games time. Nothing new there, either; he's been there, done that, faked his way through the sessions with a military shrink. You just have to wait it out, hang in there until your brain's finished playing tricks and you can get back to normal again.

But Carter's gazing at him, eyes wide and worried: he's freaking her out. Not a good sign. He takes another breath.

"So. Where's Teal'c?" There. That's a coherent, rational question; he's quite proud of it.

Carter's shoulders relax; she's always happier when she's got a question she can answer. "He's at the Alpha site, with the rebel Jaffa. It's been a little tense now the Tok'ra are there; General Hammond thought it was better if he stayed there full-time, to help keep things under control."

Then she frowns and makes the little hand gesture that means she's tied herself up in her own explanation. "Sorry, that was while you were ... the Tok'ra base at Risa was attacked by Anubis's forces several months ago, they had to evacuate. The survivors have been at the Alpha site ever since."

It hits him in the back of his knees, like he's been hamstrung, his legs cut out from beneath him. Risa gone. One of their last major bases fallen. And they must have been desperate, to seek refuge with the Tau'ri. He flattens his hand against the wall of the elevator and hears his voice say, "How many escaped?"

Carter jumps, almost a flinch; he doesn't know why. "Less than a quarter." She hesitates, then adds, "I'm sorry."

And she shouldn't be apologizing to him; it's not like he's ever lost too much love over the snakeheads. It's not like he's thinking of the numbers dead, not like he knew them (his comrades, his sisters and brothers).

But he's losing count. It's hard to keep track of the dead, especially when you keep having conversations with them. Though maybe – a stupid spark of hope, but he's been wrong about Daniel so many times before; maybe he's crazy the other way around –

"And Daniel?"

He regrets it as soon as it's out of his mouth; her face gives him the answer right away. She shuts her eyes, then starts slowly, carefully. "We were on a mission to Kelowna, sir. You were there. We didn't know they were building –"

He cuts her off before it can get any worse. "I remember, Carter. I was just ... checking."

Not one of his all-time best excuses. She nods, eyes suspiciously bright, and he adds, "I'm not nuts, Carter."

And if he wasn't, she'd duck her head and grin at him, all cheery insubordination, but she looks away and says, "No, sir," so he knows for certain that he's screwed.

The elevator groans upwards, and the fluorescent lights dim, and he thinks that soon the doors will grate and swing back, and – no. No, they won't; the lights are coming back to full and they only flickered because sometimes the power generators get overloaded when the geeks on 19 are running an experiment or playing video games or doing whatever they do all day. Every muscle in his body is rigid, because if he moves a millimeter he might try to put his fist through the metal wall, kick and punch his way out or break himself trying.

No. This is the SGC and that's Carter, and the guards trying not to stare at him are human.

They will watch him more closely if they know that he's insane.

So he says, "Jonas Quinn?" Ask after everyone on the team, collect the whole set. Logical thing to do. Something he would do.

This time she does flinch, a quick spasm of pain across her face and then resignation. Like she was expecting to be slapped, but didn't know it would be this soon. Five months. How bad has it been for her, for all of them?

"There was an incident with the X-303, sir."

Maybe the little freak screwed them over after all. Or maybe his wacky naquadriah blew the whole thing sky-high. "What'd he do?"

She lifts her head then, squares her shoulders and looks him in the eye – no, looks through him, as if she's giving a formal report; he's seen that look on a hundred officers reporting bad news to a CO.

"The Prometheus was hijacked, sir. We believe it was a rogue NID operation of some kind."

Jesus Christ. He thought the ship was still half-built; no-one should have been able to get it off the ground, even if they got onto the damn thing.

Carter pauses and swallows. "Jonas was one of the SGC personnel on board at the time. We doubt they kept any of the hostages alive once they got into hyperspace."

Oh, yeah, it stinks of a screw-up. Not Carter's, if she was with the search teams at the time, but someone must have blown it big-time to let the NID get near the ship. And Jonas would have been a fat lot of use trying to stop them.

It wouldn't have gone down that way if he'd been there; he wouldn't have let it.

A twinge, but he shoves it out of the way ruthlessly. Screw it, he's not going to feel sorry for Jonas Quinn. He's got no spare pity for anyone but himself right now: he's entitled to be a bastard. Jonas made his choices, he chose to bring himself here and he chose to subject himself to the same risks as every other man and woman at the SGC, and if he'd chosen differently and done the right thing in the first fucking place, maybe Daniel wouldn't be dead too.

No. The only question is why the NID would have gone after a half-finished prototype. "What the hell did they think they were doing?"

"Maybourne claimed they were chasing a cache of Ancient weaponry –" Carter trying to deal with Maybourne, there's a thought to give you nightmares – "but no-one's seen the ship since. If they couldn't stabilize the hyperdrive, then it's possible that the ship may have been destroyed ..."

The elevator jolts to a stop and the doors slide open with a clank and hiss. He blows out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. When he looks back at Carter, something's changed in her face, and she doesn't continue.

"Major?" he prompts.

"I'm sorry, sir," she says formally. "I don't think I should be telling you this."

"Why the hell not?" The SFs are still impassive, eyes front. The doors start closing again and one of them slams a booted foot sideways to keep them open.

Carter doesn't meet his eyes. "Because your security clearance is –" She stops, starts again. "Technically, you're considered a security risk, sir."

**********

The doctor – Fraiser – greets them at the door of the infirmary with a warm, professional smile. Then she deftly steers him sideways into one of the concrete rooms, one hand behind his arm, not quite touching. The two SFs stop outside the door and take up positions on either side of it. Under guard.

He backs into the bed and sits down on it with a thump, glances round him. Primitive Tau'ri medical technology. Boxy machines with knobs and wires. Next they'll be drilling holes in his skull to let the demons out.

"Now, is there anything we can get you?" Fraiser asks. "Food, clean clothes ..."

He shakes his head. Not letting them take anything away from him. Not yet.

Her hands skim over him, brisk and dispassionate enough that he doesn't pull away, checking his pulse, his heartbeat, thumbing his jaw open and looking into his mouth as if she's checking his teeth. Then she pulls a penlight from the breast pocket of her coat, flicks it on and shines it into his eyes.

Light flares, a brilliant burn like white phosphorus, transparent flames licking up over everything in the room. Willy Peter, make you a believer. Burn you right through to the bone.

When it fades, Fraiser's looking at him, mouth set, as if she's just answered a question for herself.

Carter's in a far corner of the room, behind one of the banks of machinery, one hand resting on it, like someone petting a cat to reassure themselves. She murmurs something and Fraiser nods.

"Well," she sighs. "Ideally, I'd like to get an MRI, but ..." A rueful shrug.

Even the thought of lying trapped until they pull him out of the machine makes something constrict inside him, a tight knot of fear. Choking, drowning, the body desperate to lash out no matter what the mind tells it. It must show on his face; Fraiser's mouth curves wryly, sympathy without pity.

Movement in his peripheral vision makes him glance up. A troop of Tok'ra (and what would the collective noun be – a knot of snakes, maybe) are filing into the observation gallery, dark shapes behind the tilted glass. Come to watch him.

And Mackenzie. Meaning that it's one step from here to the nice room with the quilted walls. Okay, so he may be nuts, but he's not nuts in any way that Mackenzie (who's never stepped through the gate in his life) is ever going to understand.

He meets Mackenzie's eyes deliberately and holds them, stares him down until Mackenzie breaks and looks down, starts sorting diligently through the sheaf of papers he's clutching. Okay, so it probably doesn't do much for his chances of looking sane, but it's worth it if it'll keep that quack away from him.

"You're in excellent health, at any rate," Fraiser says. They both know that's not always a good sign around here. "Now ..." She hesitates. "Ba'al's lo'taur told the Tok'ra that he used the sarcophagus on you a number of times. It's possible that you may have developed a dependency."

Shallan. It means she reached the base safely, and his heart clutches with relief. He'd taken her as close as he dared, shoved her towards the rings before he gated out again, because he couldn't (wanted to) keep her with him, because she looked at him with wide frightened eyes and he started to, to – he needed to get away. Needed to make sure she was safe, from everyone. From him. Then get the hell away, somewhere where he could think clearly.

Fraiser's still looking at him, as if she's waiting for a response. He replays his memory of the last few minutes and registers the rest of what she said. Dependency. Such a polite little euphemism. Meaning is he going to be hitting the withdrawal shakes anytime soon, and should she get the restraints and the sedatives ready.

He shakes his head. "Nope. I'm clean." Made damn sure of that, stranded himself so he didn't have any options except cold turkey. No other options. Let yourself fall, let yourself want that (to be healthy to be whole to be okay, warm bright light that smoothes everything out) and there's only one way it can end.

He's not sure if he expects her to believe it – junkies lie, and it's not like she can check his arms for track marks – but she only nods.

"We're nearly done, but I'd like to get a blood sample. Will you let me do that?"

She's already ripping open a packet to pull out a fresh needle, but the question sounds genuine. As if she wouldn't insist if he said no. And that makes it easy to give the traditional grimace of distaste and shove his sleeve up his arm for her.

She swabs a cotton pad across the inside of his elbow, and he feels the chill of alcohol evaporating. Look away, deep breath, he hates it but at least it's a familiar nuisance. Then there's the hard pinch of the needle, steel sliding under his skin like a blade –

Somehow he's on his feet, on the other side of the room, hands raised defensively in front of him. One of the trolleys has been kicked over, and the floor is covered in shattered glass (fragments, edges, gleaming). His throat is sore, as if he's been shouting.

Carter's halfway across the room, her eyes wide. Behind the dark glass of the observation gallery, one of the Tok'ra is on his feet. Fraiser is standing perfectly still, the syringe still poised in her hand.

He tries to shrug, tries to smile. "Oh, you know me and needles."

A small line forms between Fraiser's eyebrows. "In English please, colonel," she says gently.

His Arabic's pretty good and he can get by in Spanish and Farsi, but somehow he doesn't think that's what he was yelling in.

**********

They bring a tray of food anyway, never mind that he said he didn't want anything. But the sandwich tastes strange, as if there's another flavor overlaying it, something that he can't get out of his mouth, and he doesn't take a second bite. The coffee tastes like chemical propellants, but he's pretty sure that's how Air Force coffee has always tasted. And it hits his system like a shot of amphetamines, stronger than he remembered, unless his tolerance has worn off.

Carter vanished while one of the medical corpsmen was sweeping up the broken glass. Bolting towards her lab, he imagines. Or her team (Carter's got a team now, even if it's one quarter rookie and one quarter snake, and that's just wrong). First time she's let him out of her sight since they found him, and from what he's picked up she's been leading the search teams for months. But then Carter's never been good at dealing with crazy people. All those months moving heaven and earth to get him back, and now they've done it and the problem doesn't have a nice neat answer anymore.

Fraiser is an unobtrusive presence in the corner. She spent a while tidying, sorting unspeakable implements back into their rightful places on the trolleys; now she sits and taps intermittently at one of the computers. It's busywork, a way of staying put without crowding him. She's always been good at that.

He wonders if this is the same isolation room where Daniel died. The one where you put the people who are contaminated, radioactive.

Footsteps in the corridor: he looks up as Hammond appears in the doorway with Thoran on his heels, a grim shadow who's somehow managing to convey that he is not following Hammond, Hammond is preceding him.

"Good to have you back with us, colonel," Hammond says.

"Good to be back, sir." It seems like the sort of thing he'd say.

"If you feel able –" Hammond exchanges a quick look with Fraiser – "there are some things we'd like to clarify about what happened to you."

"Sure. No problem."

Hammond gestures him to sit down again, but the idea of perching on the bed facing down a general and a member of the council makes him feel too exposed. Instead, he pulls one of the cheap plastic chairs up to a table in front of the banks of machines.

Thoran regards him gravely, stern as winter – his brother beyond the ties of blood, but Thoran has always put personal attachment aside for the sake of the cause, as is proper.

Some kind of silent battle of wills rages briefly between Hammond and Thoran before Hammond nods, sober in victory, and turns towards him.

"I understand this may be difficult for you, but I'm afraid we need to know. Why did you return to Ba'al's fortress?"

But that's not right, he didn't return. "I told him. I'd never been there before."

He would not have returned. Why would he have? He had never even considered taking her with him (never considered it seriously); escaping alone was risky enough, without dragging an untrained slave with him, and Ba'al enjoyed making examples of those who attempted to defy him. Foolish sentimentality would only have jeopardized both of them, jeopardized the mission –

No. He'd never been there before. Told Ba'al that, told him that again and again and again. Didn't recognize the girl (the slave) when she stared back at him, cowering back into the shadows of her cell, not knowing him behind a stranger's face –

He plants his elbows on the table and presses his hands against the sides of his skull. Feels as if his head's coming apart, as if everything's coming apart and he's trying to hold it together with his bare hands.

"Why did you leave the Tok'ra base?" Thoran demands.

Hammond adds, "Did the symbiote force you to leave?" and Thoran gives him a murderous look.

There, see, now, symbiote, that's one of the words he's not thinking about, the words that make something unbearable shift and twist inside his mind, almost breaking the surface of consciousnesss. He shuts his eyes and tries not to glimpse it.

Why did you leave the Tok'ra base? Because it seemed like a really good idea at the time. He doesn't manage to bite back the laughter.

He remembers that perfectly: how obvious it was, shining clarity through the confusion. Of course he had to go back for her. It was the only possibility that made any sense. But he knew that none of the others would understand why (don't think about why), so he made his report, quite calmly (if they had known he was insane, they would have watched him more closely), and then –

"I don't remember."

He puts his head down on the table and rests his forehead against the cool plastic surface. It feels good against his skin. Maybe he's running a temperature, maybe he's delirious. Like fever dreams, skin burning and freezing, slipping in and out of awareness, knowing you aren't in your right mind but not able to find your way through the fog.

The human brain. Given sufficient trauma. Because he was weak.

"What do you remember?"

He's standing near the edge of a cliff, the rock beginning to crumble and collapse under his feet, and they keep on pushing him, sending him staggering back, when all he wants is to keep his balance. He doesn't even know if they know what they're doing to him. "You're making me crazy," he whispers. "I'm trying not to be crazy." He doesn't know if they can hear him.

"Did you disclose any information to Ba'al?" Thoran asks. "Or to any other Goa'uld?"

"No!" he snarls against the table.

He's insane, not a traitor. Do they imagine that he would forget his training so easily, as if he'd never suffered through an interrogation before? (But he would have broken; everyone breaks, sooner or later.) A thin sharp edge of fear: perhaps this is the only thing that drove them to retrieve him, concern for the classified knowledge in his mind. The memories he carries.

As if he'd spill everything he knew to the first snake to ask.

"It's all right, colonel." Hammond's voice sounds as if it's coming from a long way away. "We can continue another time."

He keeps his head down on the table and doesn't think about anything at all. It's safest.

In the distance, he can hear them talking in hushed voices, fragments of conversation that he can catch as they drift by him, if he bothers to listen.

"We have as much right to speak to our operative as you do to yours, General."

"To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure who we're talking to."

**********

"If the symbiote seized control –"

"It is against our highest laws."

"Perhaps you've forgotten, Councillor, but we've seen Tok'ra break those laws before." Fraiser, quiet and forceful.

"If he did, could this explain the colonel's state of mind?"

"A host who is forcibly controlled remains fully aware."

"I hate to say it, but that does appear to be true, General. We know from Major Carter's experience ..."

Echoes bounce off the concrete walls, reflections of reflections, until they fill the room and he can't hear anything anymore.

**********

"... some kind of fugue state ..."

**********

Later, much later, someone pulls a chair up to the table, across the corner from him. Fraiser: he can see the edge of her white coat in his peripheral vision.

It's quieter now. When he lifts his head, there's no-one else in the room. Even the observation gallery is empty. She smiles at him, one corner of her mouth tucking in.

He'd feel ashamed, except she's seen him as a caveman and as a ninety-year old, seen him with his brain overwritten by an Ancient library and seen him go nuts from Machello's little bugs, not to mention having stuck her needles or her gloved fingers into every part of him she can reach. He thinks they're probably beyond the "shame" stage by now.

She folds her hands on the table in front of her, neat and precise.

"I know you don't want to hear this, colonel, but there are some decisions we need to make." Her voice is very level. "I don't know how much of this you can remember, but when we got back from Antarctica, you were very ill."

He remembers that, remembers how much effort it took to open his eyes, to swallow, to breathe. Images of an isolation room – this one? – and blurry figures in biohazard suits looming over him. And Carter –

"I won't lie to you. You were dying. The Tok'ra offered us a deal. You agreed to –"

He puts his head down on the table again, hands laced together over it, fighting the temptation to put his fingers in his ears and block it out completely. La la la I'm not listening.

Maybe if he started banging his head on the table, they'd leave him alone.

They don't see how hard he is fighting, how hard he has been fighting for all these months, how every time they try to help they make it worse, until one more careless word might shatter him into pieces.

Fraiser doesn't complete her sentence. She sits in silence for a few minutes, then sighs. Resigned. "You should get some rest. But there's more coffee, if you want it." He hears a tray sliding along the table towards him.

When he doesn't move, she puts a hand on his shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze, and to his surprise, he doesn't flinch. It seems like it's been a long time since anyone's touched him.

The legs of her chair squeak on the floor as she pushes it back.

**********

He wakes alone in his head, and panics – slipping away in the darkness, the body broken, dying, alone – before he can calm himself enough to reach out, and finds that he can still sense the host's mind. A dim presence, past unconsciousness nearly into coma, but still there. Still alive.

Drugged. They were drugged. The human brain is more susceptible, loses consciousness more easily. He can taste the chemicals in their system and reflexively nudges the body to metabolize them faster, traces the threads of memory back –

– so sleepy, but he doesn't get sleepy, jolting realization – tipping out the coffee over the table to find a gritty residue at the bottom of the cup, familiar ploy, and oh, he/they should never have let his guard down, never trusted them so much – kicked the chair back but the world tipped and slid sideways and hands caught him gently, merciless –

He can't move. Pinned down, exposed, unable to curl away from the pain. But when he tenses, he feels bands of pressure at wrists and ankles, neck and chest. Some kind of restraints. Not his own weight holding him down, gravity crushing him.

A low babble of voices around him, echoing off concrete walls: the isolation room, or something similar. Hold still, play dead. He keeps his eyes shut but tenses again, deliberately testing the restraints this time. They hold. For now.

"This could not have been anticipated," a voice is saying. Jalrow. An expert in biotechnologies, he recalls. "There are no previous data on the effects of repeated sarcophagus use on an emerging blending. It is hardly a subject that we could study."

"Are you saying that ..."

The host's mind is waking now, rising up like a diver from the depths. Diffuse swathes of sensation sharpen, drifting into focus.

"... a process by which the central nervous systems of symbiote and host become enmeshed, become as one. It is possible ..."

He feels himself begin to drown, clarity slipping away in the face of the tumult –

"... possible that the mechanism of the sarcophagus interpreted this as tissue repair, as a healing process, and ..."

– and he has to fight down the shameful impulse to claw for the surface, force the host's consciousness down to keep his own head above water –

"And?"

"... and accelerated it."

This is not how it's supposed to be.

Fuck.

Bright light through his eyelids, and he jerks, thrashes against the restraints. But no, it's the ceiling lights glaring down at him. No sarcophagus here, not at the SGC. Unless they've found one. They wouldn't.

"We warned you that the process was not without risk."

A hand on his shoulder, pressing him back against the bed. "It's all right, colonel. Take it easy."

Then hands at his wrist, unbuckling the leather straps. He keeps his eyes front, staring at the lights. Doesn't let the flick of an eye signal the movement in advance.

Then his arm is free and his hand is on her throat.

The room is perfectly silent.

He turns his head, then, and finds her watching him, face unafraid, pulse steady where his fingers dig into her skin.

"You don't want to hurt me, colonel," she says. As if it's a statement of fact, a point of information she's reminding him of.

In the silence, he can think better. He thinks she might be right. This isn't him. This isn't who he is.

When he relaxes his grip, she doesn't try to pull away, but begins moving again, busy hands working on the next set of restraints. Done, she makes a half-turn, towards the straps on his ankles, and he lets his hand drop, then lifts it again to scrub it over his face.

"We had to restrain you because it was the only way we could get a drip in," she tells him confidentially, as if they're the only two people in the room, as if he can't feel the pressure of eyes watching him. "It took quite a bit of diazepam before we could stop the seizures."

"Seizures," he says stupidly, tongue thick.

"You started having uncontrollable seizures a few minutes after the Tok'ra started the extraction procedure. We had to call a halt immediately. I'm sorry."

Extraction – there's tape on the back of his hand. He peels the edge up and yanks the needle out of the vein, pitches it across the room. The IV stand teeters, then hits the floor with a satisfying crash.

Carter is standing on the far side of the room, behind the banks of machines, white-faced.

"We have told you before." Another snake voice. "A blending is not something that can be made and unmade purely for your convenience."

"I don't believe that this is the time or the place for this argument." Oh, they're in for it now. Fraiser's voice hasn't risen at all, but he's seen three-star generals quail at that tone. "I suggest that we start reducing the number of people in this room, so that I can take care of my patient."

There's a bandage on the side of his neck, and he rips that off too. The incision underneath is half-healed, a narrow, bloodless gash. They must only have had time to sever a few peripheral nerve filaments; if he concentrates, he can feel the dead spot in his awareness, already vanishing.

"He is as much our patient as yours." Jalrow again, coldly angry. "We have been most forbearing to allow him to remain in Tau'ri custody for so long."

"I don't think that you are listening to me. You will leave this room. Now. And I will take care of both my patients."

He rolls sideways, flipping himself off the edge of the bed and onto his feet in one motion, then looks around him. The Tok'ra are filing out like sulky children.

Carter still hasn't moved. She looks stricken, as if she's just been told that she's facing a court-martial. Or a firing squad.

"You need to understand, sir," she blurts. "We were doing what we thought was –"

"Oh, I understand perfectly well, Carter," he snarls. And he knows, he's tried so hard not to know, maybe he's always known. "I understand that I still have a fucking snake in my fucking head, thank you very much."

**********

A nurse is sent to get him BDUs (his or not, he's not sure; no patch on the sleeve, either way) to replace the surgical scrubs. He doesn't ask what happened to the clothes he was wearing. Probably incinerated. He pulls clean clothes on over a grimy body; at least they didn't wash him while he was unconscious. Not that he couldn't use a shower, but he can't stand the thought of their hands on him.

Then Fraiser hangs up the phone on the infirmary wall and tells him she's arranged for him to be transferred to one of the VIP rooms.

He doesn't ask why he can't stay in his own quarters, because he knows the answer already. There are no security cameras in base personnel's private quarters.

The VIP room smells musty, and the plant in the corner is plastic. Like someone bought a crappy hotel, dismantled the rooms, then carried them down in the elevator piece by piece to re-assemble them in under the mountain. Room-in-a-box, complete with tacky lampshades and miniature bars of soap. They probably don't leave a chocolate on your pillow, though.

"Is there anything you need, colonel?" Fraiser asks.

"What I need," he says, enunciating carefully, "is for everyone to get the hell out and leave me alone."

He's nearly given up on people listening; it's a surprise when she nods briskly and says, "I'll do my best to arrange that, sir."

She doesn't lock the door, but there are two more SFs standing outside it, and he doesn't imagine that he's welcome to go wandering around the facility.

It takes a while to register that they've all gone, that no-one's going to come to poke him and prod him and talk at him, at least not right away. He rests his forehead against the wall and lets it sink in, listens to the silence around him and waits for the noise in his head to start dying away too. It's the first time he's been left alone since they found him.

Except he's not alone, is he?

He drops down to the floor and sits with his back against the wall, in the corner opposite the door. Maximum time to react if someone comes in.

When he bends one knee up in front of him, it doesn't twinge. One of those little reminders, one of those bad jokes, and the worst part is that he can't quite stop that treacherous rush of relief when the pain he was braced for doesn't come.

It makes him think of being hauled out of the sarcophagus and dropped back into his cell, like a bag of garbage down a chute, still dazed, still not quite working right, as if his soul had been crammed back into his body the wrong way round, trying (not) to remember why this body wasn't right to begin with. He could never figure out how he wasn't in any pain, when he still hurt so much.

He tips his head back, looks up at the ceiling.

"Daniel?"

Just a whisper, in case the guards outside hear him talking to himself. He doesn't need them thinking he's any more nuts than he actually is. And whether Daniel's on a higher plane of existence or a figment of his fucked-up imagination, yelling doesn't seem like it'll improve the odds that he'll hear.

Daniel, come back. Daniel, help me. Or hell, just tell me some more about how you can't interfere.

He'll take being bugfuck over the alternative.

No answer. Either Daniel's not around, or he's doing his breeze thing again, hanging out in the air-conditioning. Or he doesn't exist, because he's dead.

Human bodies don't survive massive radiation damage, not without help. So fragile. They die so easily.

He draws the other knee up and rests his folded arms on his bent knees, puts his head down for a while. This is the space your body takes up; these are the limits of your world, the things you can be certain of. It makes it more manageable. This is the only space you have to defend. A cell within a cell.

And he is a prisoner here.

After a few hours, one of the SFs comes in with a tray of food, and leaves it on the table. He ignores it. Fool me once, etcetera.

After a few more hours, another SF comes in and takes it away again.

In the bathroom, there's a plastic sign over the hand basin that says the water's not suitable for drinking purposes. He sticks his head under the faucet and drinks from it anyway; he can go without food for a long time but he'll need water.

Anyway, he's pretty sure he's got bigger problems than lead poisoning right now. And they wouldn't re-route the base plumbing just to drug him. He thinks. There are limits to his paranoia (from which it follows logically that they really are out to get him).

He turns off the faucet and watches it leak, a steady drip of water falling and sliding down the ceramic surface. Like droplets forming in air, sliding along the curvature of a gravitational field.

He backs out of the bathroom carefully and shuts the door.

Water. That's all. Ordinary water. They should get those automatic thingies that shut off the pressure after a minute and leave you with soap all over your hands. Otherwise alien dignitaries could leave the water running all night and then where would you be?

But he can't afford to let his guard down. Not with everything turned inside out, the SGC full of snakeheads, the NID out of control; not when he's a prisoner here, surrounded by Tau'ri, primitives incapable of telling the difference between him and a Goa'uld. Whatever their temporary agreement with the council, they would gladly kill him if –

No. That wasn't him. He wouldn't have thought that. He didn't.

The fucking snake. Thinking in his brain.

Jesus.

He backs away from the thought too, folding himself into his corner again, a shoulder against each wall, feet braced on the industrial carpet.

No space small enough if you can't even trust your own thoughts, but he still feels safer that way. Three points of contact, the floor and two walls, in case the room starts to tilt and slide, gravity pivoting around itself to tip you onto the wall or the ceiling in a comedy pratfall.

From across the room, the red eye of the motion sensor on the security camera watches him. If he holds still for long enough, it blinks off. Nothing's happening. A gap in the tape. Fuzz out to electronic snow.

The doorway is the first difficulty. Getting out would depend on the element of surprise, moving fast enough to disable both guards before they could react. Hard to do without injuring them, or worse. He may not be willing to risk that, not yet.

But then he'd have a weapon and an access card for the elevators. He's on level 25, and the gate's down on 28. He runs the odds in his mind: the likely routes that a security contingent will take once the alarm's raised, the chances that he can take the gateroom and hold it for long enough to activate the chappa'ai. The parameters of the equation.

No dialling device, so he would need to incapacitate the technician and operate the computers to dial the gate himself. An unfamiliar, alien system would be difficult to hack, but not impossible; given sufficient time –

No. Definitely not him.

He leans his head back, then bangs it against the wall with a sharp crack.

Not the last bit, anyway, the computer stuff; that's never been his thing. And he doesn't understand how he can't tell the difference. It should be easy to tell what's you and what's ... not.

But instead it's just thoughts, a jumble of ideas rattling around inside his skull with no labels on them, no way to tell what's whose.

He should be able to tell. But he's so fucking tired. Not physically – feels like he could run forever – but like he hasn't slept for months. As if the exhaustion only caught up with him when he stopped moving. He shuts his eyes, just for a moment.

Then the thought reaches him, a crawling realization like something slithering across his skin: when he's asleep, the snake stays awake, doesn't it?

Knowledge, unbidden: no need for REM sleep to restore the brain, to download short-term into long-term memory. Not when each cell remembers, memories metabolizing into genetic structure, twisted ribbons in the nucleus of each cell.

Not his knowledge. Something he remembers, something a part of him (not him) takes for granted. If the symbiote brain required sleep, a Goa'uld would risk losing control of its host every time it rested.

Fine. He won't sleep, then.

He doesn't even want to think about what the fucking thing's been doing while he sleeps all these months, walking around in his body, prying into his mind, touching, looking –

In his head. Seeing everything.

Panic scrabbles at him, familiar, unbearable. No. There are things he hasn't thought about for years, that he's spent years not thinking about, deleted, classified, beyond top secret, and he's damned if he'll let someone, something crawl into his brain and rape him, spread out all his failures and shames to pore over them –

– blank spots in the host's mind, holes in the map, things that can't be thought about, the will lashing out with a viciousness that stuns him, so he recoils blind, can't even think about the things that he's not allowed to think about, places in the brain he can't think with – not without forcing himself through the host's defenses. Too strong to lean on or cajole, no way but by force, and an old anger, an old hatred that tells him he would never be forgiven.

Neural damage, he could begin to repair or compensate for, but this is something different. The host's mind is ... defective. And he doesn't know why they would have done this to him.

**********

The door opens.

Another day, another guard with a tray of food. "Should I leave it on the table, sir?" the guard says, then does anyway, once he's worked out that he's not going to get an answer.

The door closes again. He doesn't move.

No coffee on the tray this time, he notices. Maybe they're trying a different gambit. He wants to trust them; he should be able to trust them. People he knows, despite the creeping certainty that they're strangers, aliens. He knows them. Hammond, Fraiser, Carter, Thoran.

Fuck. Not Thoran.

Stuck in a concrete box with a snake in his head, thinking in his brain. With his brain.

If they want, they can shoot him with a tranq gun and put him on a drip. But he's damned if he's going to make it easy for them.

**********

The door opens.

The door closes.

**********

The door opens, and his fingers start to prickle, naquadah buzzing in his blood even before he recognizes the massive silhouette in the doorway as a Jaffa.

Double vision again, part of him cringing back – they send Jaffa to drag you from your cell – while part uncurls in relief.

"O'Neill." A grave tilt of the head. "I am sorry that I could not be present sooner."

Teal'c, he tells himself. This is not some random Jaffa, this is Teal'c, you know him, you remember him. You'd trust the guy with your life. Assuming he's not, you know, got himself brainwashed by Apophis again.

Cannon fodder for the Goa'uld, bred to kill and to die. Ignorant slaves.

The guy you'd trust to put a bullet in your head if you got snaked. Maybe that's why he's here.

Teal'c regards him silently, then steps inside and closes the door.

He'd like to get up – doesn't know if the impulse driving him is fight or flight – but he's too fucking tired. Feels like he could sleep for a thousand years. If he could let himself.

More of the silent contemplation. Then Teal'c nods as if something's been agreed (what, he has no idea), and sits down on the floor, his back against the neighbouring wall, legs crossed. As calm as if he was settling down to kel-no-reem.

He can sense the Goa'uld symbiote inside Teal'c's pouch, naquadah concentrated into a tight knot instead of diffused through the bloodstream. Coiled hatred, moving sluggishly in its dreams of power. And distantly, back through the bloodlines, the genetic memory of what it is to be that. An involuntary shudder of revulsion.

But hey, at least Teal'c doesn't have Junior in his head, which makes him the winner today.

And if Teal'c's here, it means things can't have gone too far off the rails.

There have been times when the Great Stone Face act has been a pain in the ass, but right now, he's just grateful that Teal'c isn't saying anything, isn't asking questions or trying to make him do anything.

It reminds him of times he's nearly collided with Teal'c in the dark, coming to relieve him of the watch on some alien planet, because Teal'c was sitting so still that he could have been an outcropping of stone or the trunk of a tree. Rooted. As if he was there first and the rest of the planet grew up around him.

The Jaffa is not an immediate threat.

It looks like Teal'c's going to sit there forever. Or until he says something. Or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.

"Hey." His voice feels raw, unfamiliar. "Nice of you to drop by, but you don't have anything better to do?"

Not a hint of surprise. "I do not."

That's T for you. Ever the scintillating conversationalist.

The silence stretches out, echoes dissolving into it, and he wonders if this is Teal'c's equivalent of a wake. Sit through the night with the dead, say your goodbyes one last time.

Not as depressing as you'd think, though. More like Teal'c's stillness is contagious, spreading into his thoughts and smoothing them out, hushing the noise in his brain.

After a while he lets his head fall back again the wall, lets his eyes close. Teal'c can keep watch for a while. He's pretty sure Teal'c won't let the snake try anything.

His eyes snap open at a noise, body tensing to protect himself from an attack, but it's only Teal'c standing up. Seems like it's only been a few minutes, but the clock on the wall says that hours have passed.

"I require nourishment," Teal'c informs him solemnly. "Is there anything that you wish me to obtain?"

He shakes his head – not falling for that – but Teal'c doesn't press the point. "I will return shortly."

He only just manages to stop himself from asking Teal'c not to leave. Not to leave him alone (not alone). The room's noisier, more crowded, without him in it.

A quarter of an hour later, though, Teal'c's back as promised, carrying a tray piled high with food (Teal'c's always eaten for at least five). He arranges the tray carefully next to what has become his spot on the carpet.

Half a sandwich vanishes in neat bites. Teal'c leaves the other half untouched, resting neatly on the edge of the china plate.

One summer, years back, a stray dog turned up near his house. He spent weeks leaving food out on the porch and pretending not to notice when it disappeared, then sitting out on the porch himself, a little closer each day. Not even looking at the scrawny mongrel until it stopped shaking, until it'd let him get close enough to grab its collar and read the tags.

He knows he's being played; he's pretty sure Teal'c knows he knows it (surprisingly intelligent for a Jaffa; unexpected, to encounter that here of all places). But he appreciates the effort anyway.

The sandwich still tastes weird (unfamiliar), but he's beginning to suspect why. The Goa'uld have never quite figured out turkey sandwiches.

And Teal'c doesn't blink an eyelid when he snags it, just goes on working his way through half the fries and half the fruit salad. His deadpan doesn't waver until he gets to the banana and hesitates, holding it poised in mid-air like a bright yellow zat.

"Okay, okay." He rolls his eyes and watches the corner of Teal'c's mouth twitch upwards a millimeter. "Hand it over."

Teal'c is gracious in victory. Nice to know that some things never change.

"So," he says eventually, through a mouthful of fruit. "Alpha site, huh?"

"General Hammond considered it advisable that I remain there, to help mediate tensions between the rebel Jaffa and the Tok'ra."

Yeah, he can't imagine that's been fun. Not unless being refugees has knocked the Tok'ra down a peg or twenty. Which he doubts.

"How's that going, then? Working with the ... snakes?" He waves a hand in apology. "No offence to Junior."

"Major Carter's father and Selmak have proved most helpful."

Selmak's Tau'ri host, the one he's glimpsed a few times, heard the rumors about. Probably means the others are being asses; Teal'c is nothing if not precise in his choice of words.

Still, it feels almost ordinary. Regular shooting the breeze, or as close to chatty as Teal'c ever gets. Bitching about the SGC's allies. As if he's safe, as if he could let himself relax a little and it wouldn't matter.

He ought to have something to say in return, ought to be picking Teal'c's brain for everything he's missed out on, but he feels worn thin, hollowed out. And it looks like Teal'c's happy to sit there all night if he needs to.

He leans his head back and looks up at the ceiling lights until his vision starts to blur. Feels like he can think more clearly now. Room to breathe. He understands the Jaffa: their capacities, their limitations. A known quantity, if an unpleasant one. Perhaps –

He exhales, and feels something shift inside him, sliding, like he's a glove being turned inside out.

His head tips forward, cold gaze locking onto Teal'c's face, and it's not him moving. Like he's nothing more than the skin, the outside, the body someone else is wearing, stretched helpless over someone else's will.

Like you're the puppet with someone else's hand up your ass.

And he knows he should be freaking out right about now, but instead he's frozen. Can't move, can't blink, can't scream.

A tension, almost a tickle, in the back of his throat before his mouth opens and a voice says, "Teal'c of Chulak."

Metallic and echoing, and he's always thought that fucking Goa'uld voice sounds like a machine, something unspeakably alien jerking the human vocal cords around to try to simulate a human voice and failing miserably.

The distortion strips out the intonation, makes it flat and unreadable.

Teal'c meets his – its – eyes without surprise, as if he's been waiting for this all along, then bows his head in greeting.

"Kanan of the Tok'ra."

The panic catches up to him then.

He tries to fight, tries to move – anything, if he could even twitch his fingers, just to know he had that much control – and his whole body lurches, pitching him over sideways. The snake yields control so suddenly it's like hurling yourself against an unlatched door.

Little fucker probably enjoys seeing him take a pratfall. He will not control the body against the host's will.

He pulls himself upright again and coughs, gagging. His throat aches, as if the muscles have been trying to clamp down, cut off that fucking snake voice. He's had that nightmare before, the one where you hear the Goa'uld voice coming out of your own mouth, right before you watch your hand lift a ribbon device and kill your friends. Except now he wonders how many times that voice has come out of his mouth without him even noticing, and that's worse.

Teal'c hasn't budged, just sits there watching him freak. Which he's weirdly grateful for; he's not sure he could handle anyone coming near him right now.

He takes a breath, then another, and tries to get it together, adrenaline after-burn making him feel rubbery and numb. The snake isn't fighting him; isn't trying to take over again. And apparently Teal'c doesn't think it's time to shoot him in the head. Yet.

He doesn't know how Teal'c can be so calm. Resigned, maybe. Maybe a bullet would be better.

"O'Neill," Teal'c says finally. "I have come to know some of the Tok'ra at the Alpha site. I believe them to be honorable, according to their own lights."

Great; now Teal'c's joined the conspiracy against him.

Then he presses the heel of one hand against his forehead and scrunches his eyes shut. Okay, okay. Teal'c wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it, qualified as it is. Not like Teal'c's been a big fan of the snakeheads either. And he was still sitting there as if he was prepared to have a conversation with the damn thing. That has to count for ... something.

But he doesn't know what Teal'c expects, like he's supposed to be reasonable and rational and fine with this. "Doesn't mean I want one of the fucking things inside me."

A slight inclination of the head, the one that means acknowledgement of a statement and nothing more.

Okay, maybe that wasn't so tactful, given that Teal'c's had a snake inside him for the past eighty years or so, but it's not the same thing.

"We cannot always choose what is given to us," Teal'c says. His expression doesn't change, but the light shifts on it as he stands, shadows moving and deepening. Something like grief. An old grief. Teal'c's had five months to do the math and come to terms with this.

Perhaps this was a wake, after all. He remembers a stranger in the armor of a Serpent Guard, a long time ago, shaking his head as Daniel begged: Something of the host must survive. But they've both learned a lot since then. He hopes they have.

Teal'c clasps his hands behind his back, as if he came here to deliver a message, and, having delivered it, is ready to be on his way. It feels abrupt and too soon, even though Teal'c must have been here for the best part of a day.

"I will be at the Alpha site, O'Neill."

3.5 seconds away. Practically next door, right?

A surge of anxiety at the thought of the Jaffa leaving. Teal'c leaving. Crap.

Teal'c would stay, if he asked. He knows that. No matter what needs doing at the Alpha site. But he nods, and doesn't trust himself to say anything. Sure, fine, not a problem.

The door opens. The door closes.

**********

3.

**********

He doesn't think about anything at all for a while.

The clock on the wall says it's 23:00, then 00:30, then 01:21.

Still not thinking, he lifts his hand, rests it on the back of his neck. Nothing out of the ordinary. Aging skin, getting a little loose, like the scruff of an animal's neck. The place where an incision was: already gone (no wound, no scar, no memory). Might as well never have happened.

No chain, no dog-tags. They must have gotten left behind somewhere: at the Tok'ra base, he's guessing. Of course they wouldn't get it. Wouldn't think it mattered.

His fingertips brush across the entry scar that Hathor's little darling left, and okay, that still bugs him. Just a short ridge of scar tissue. It only tugs if he turns his head a certain way; mostly he can forget about it. It's only when he notices it that it itches, and he's never sure whether he wants to jerk his fingers away and wipe them clean, or scratch at it until it bleeds.

Inside, an echo of distaste, a sharp flinch of revulsion.

He slides his hand across his neck and digs his fingers in next to the top of his spine, as if he was trying to loosen the deep knots of tension there. Works his fingers in between the cords of muscle and tendon, until he feels something shift and move and ripple in there –

– until refracted back to him he feels fingertips touching him, prodding him, almost painfully. Disquieting awareness of symbiote-body, lodged blind and deaf deep in flesh.

He stands, carefully. Walks into the bathroom, carefully.

Then he kneels in front of the toilet and throws up, fragments of half-digested fruit and sandwich on an empty stomach, and keeps throwing up until he's down to nothing but ribbons of yellow bile, a foul taste in his mouth and the burn of acid in the back of his throat.

He rinses his mouth out, then braces his hands on the edge of the basin. The fluorescent light makes everything look bruise-colored.

Then he raps his knuckles on the side of his skull, as if he's knocking on a door.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are."

This time, he hears the pause, the hesitation in his head. Then:

Colonel Jack O'Neill.

Not a voice in his head. More like remembering words, or watching them spelled out on a computer screen (or a Ouija board), inert and toneless.

His reflection hasn't changed. Somehow he thought he'd see something. See his own eyes light up with that slow-motion flash, maybe, the old nightmare all over again.

Instead, it's just the same face he's shaved every morning all his adult life. It looks old and tired and scared.

"Don't," he says involuntarily, then clears his throat. He doesn't have to sound terrified, even if he feels that way (even if it knows he feels that way). "Cut it out."

Puzzlement, angular and sullen. He doesn't understand what the host wants from him.

"You want to play nice? We can start by making some house rules."

He doesn't know what he's expecting: anger, maybe. Instead, there's effort, the sheer laboriousness of forming words (as cumbersome as using words to carry information from one hemisphere of the brain to the other, but a courtesy, etiquette for a new blending):

It is not necessary –

He slams his hand down on the ceramic edge of the basin, hard enough to hurt. "I said don't. Okay, that's – make that rule number one. You don't talk to me. You shut the fuck up in there."

The snake's thoughts aren't in words this time; he feels them like a weight, heavy and muddy as flood water, eddying sideways. Opaque.

But that's anger in there, sharp and bitten back. He's pissed. No, the snake's pissed.

Compliance. He will do whatever the host demands of him. However impractical.

(Imagining the impossibility of functioning if he is not permitted to communicate, the situations in which it might mean death for both of them – )

"Look, if you absolutely have to say something, you ..." He doesn't know what. "You use the voice. My voice." The thought makes his skin crawl, but – "Not the talking in my head. You don't do that, ever."

Maybe he's already conceded too much, Already negotiating with the fucking thing, when it holds all the cards.

"And only if it's necessary. Life or death stuff."

No clue what he'll do if it says no. Nothing he could do – hell, he couldn't even tell anyone. The SGC's known for years that the snakes can talk in the host's voice if they want to, can pretend –

Reminder to self to be patient (anger prickling underneath). The host is traumatized, damaged, his mind ill-equipped to deal with a blending to begin with –

"I said. Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

Really doesn't need to know that the snake thinks he's brain-damaged. Thinking. The host cannot expect him not to think.

"Try me."

No barriers, no filters. They should not be enmeshed so deeply, so early in a blending. Not for years, for decades. Entangled, he thinks, neural filaments regenerated mindlessly, tangled inextricably into scar tissue, where instead there should be careful, chosen links. "Accelerated."

Perhaps they are neurologically damaged.

He shoves off from the wall and pushes his way back out of the bathroom again, then paces round the edge of the room.

Eight long strides take him from wall to wall, but he feels safer on his feet. At least this way he knows he can still move, is still in control of his own body.

For as long as the snake allows it. Until it decides it's done playing nice.

He will not.

02:15, says the clock on the wall.

The human brain requires sleep.

Been a long damn time since he let the military feed him go pills, but he'd ask to be escorted to the infirmary right now and beg Fraiser for a handful if he thought there was a snowball's chance that she'd cave.

He turns round and goes counter-clockwise instead. Already got the route by heart; he shuts his eyes and runs a hand along the wall as if he was blind, feels the faint grain of the wallpaper against his fingertips. It's better than thinking.

He likes these hands. Long, blunt fingers, calloused and scarred with use; skill and grace learned so deeply that it's buried in muscle memory, no longer conscious. The beginning of inflammation in the joints, cartilage on the knobs of bone worn down, but that's easy enough to repair –

The wall hurts his knuckles. He shakes his hand out, then warns, "I'll do it again."

Apparently the snake can feel the pain too, and apparently it didn't see that coming; he can sense its mind recoiling, an ass-over-tip scramble of frustration and something almost like fear. There's a savage pleasure in knowing that he can hurt it too, just a little, even as the fear spills over and he waits to see what it'll do –

Impulse to clench his jaw, grit his teeth. As if he could bite through his tongue to keep silent. Not his impulse.

"Just ... keep it to yourself, okay?"

Back to the pacing again. Sentry duty.

The host is hurt, afraid (a roil of anger again, under the surface). He must be patient. Give him time to recover his senses and begin to adjust.

Five more loops around the room. One foot drags and he stumbles, catching himself with a hand pressed against the wall, the echo of a thought still in his mind, of how natural, how easy it'd be to take over and catch them, prevent them from falling. How hard (how frustrating) it is to throttle back the instinct.

Another loop around the room, and another. The sneaking sense of how good it'd feel to stop, sit down, let his eyes close. Just to rest them. Just for a moment.

Fucking snake trying to mess with his head.

But the reaction comes through sharp and clear this time, surge spilling over into words, would never, before they're bitten off again (forbidden to speak; compliance). It almost feels like outrage.

Innocence. Almost.

Another loop around the room, not thinking about anything at all.

"House rules," he says out loud.

Assent.

"We'll draw up a list. 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In Jack O'Neill's Head."

Bafflement, blank and edged with frustration.

Even when he dredges up the memory, the e-mail attachment forwarded by an old buddy at Peterson. The puzzlement just becomes threaded through with resentment, a suspicion that he's being mocked in a way he doesn't understand and doesn't like.

Apparently he's not only stuck with a snake in his head, he's stuck with a snake with no sense of humor in his head.

He doesn't want to think about going to sleep – the human brain will lose consciousness eventually anyway (and that's not his thought, shut up shut up shut up) – but at least he can take some basic precautions.

The two SFs outside jerk to attention when he yanks the door open and leans out. One of them looks like he was half-asleep himself. Can't remember the kid's name, and that bugs him.

Starts with a G.

"Airman, if he tries to get out of here, shoot him."

The kid stares at him like he's sprouted an extra head – which might not be too far off the mark – then mumbles, "Yessir."

He pulls the door shut and rolls his eyes. No point making them think he's crazier than they already do. He'll just have to hope they've been briefed properly, won't let the snake walk out of here without a fight. Don't shoot till you see the gold of his eyes, boys.

The snake is wondering if he will lie down on the bed, or the couch, but that feels too much like surrender. Instead, he goes on walking.

Gerritsson. The kid's name is Gerritsson.

**********

This is a dream.

In the dream, there is a map, and a prison cell. The map has inscriptions on it that he can't read. But he recognizes the river, curving up through narrow floodplains like an asp, a spinal cord, a pharoah's crook, before it fans out into the delta.

The prison cell is somewhere in Iraq.

He's trying not to go there, but he keeps sliding across the map, like it's tilting, the gravity shifting to drag him there, tumble him down until he lands broken (Jack fell down and broke his crown, inertial dampeners didn't – but no, it was his 'chute that malfunctioned) in a place that has no doors. Only entrances and no exits, because whenever they come to take you out it gets worse.

It's only a dream, so he tries to concentrate on the map, remember that it's paper (the map is not the territory, all they have is the aerial scans, no plan survives first contact with the enemy), but that isn't working so well, and then he remembers that when you realize it's a nightmare, that's when you wake up, you just have to remember how, and tries to open his eyes.

But they're already open, gazing down at the book on his lap.

He watches the inscriptions unscramble themselves, turning into English from a hieroglyphic gibberish which he recognizes as ... English. Huh. Language stored in the host brain.

The names on the map say Edfu, Deir-El-Medina, Thebes.

A measure of relief that the host has woken; his dreams were becoming an unpleasant distraction.

He remembers the book now. There'd been a heated and pointless debate early on about the furnishing of the VIP rooms, arguments about finding a selections of books and ornaments that made an "appropriate impression" on visiting alien dignitaries without revealing any tactically-relevant intel about Earth. And Hammond had veto-ed his suggestion of the complete works of Danielle Steel.

The coffee-table book on Karnak and the Valley of the Kings was one of Daniel's contributions. It had taken him a while to recognize the hidden barb, the careful insult to any visiting Goa'uld: here are the ruins of your temples, which we abandoned and forgot. Here are the broken shards of your legends, made into trivia for our scholars to misunderstand and bicker over.

He didn't know Daniel that well in those days. Knew he was a stubborn bastard; didn't yet know the quiet, deadly way that Daniel could hate.

The muscles in his face are tense, and at first he doesn't recognize a frown, from the inside out. Compressed lips, set jaw, like the grim underbite of a pike.

Everything feels wrong. Back too straight, shoulders hitched back. The snake's been rearranging everything while he sleeps. Like one of those people who can't borrow a car for half an hour without moving the driver's seat forwards and changing all the pre-sets on the radio.

The oddness snags him, drags him back, and he remembers turning the pages of the book (no, remembers the snake turning the pages of the book). Can't figure out what feels so backasswards there, until it clicks that he was doing it left-handed.

The snake's a southpaw. Which is just ... weird. Creepy weird. It doesn't even have hands, but now it thinks it's going to be left-handed with his hands.

Serve the fucking thing right if it ends up with a stutter.

He deliberately tries to shake his head, and feels the same shift as before, the snake giving up control of the body. The air of someone stepping back with his hands raised, signalling ostentatiously that he's not looking for a fight.

He shakes himself all over, shrugging his shoulders a few times, and feels things settle back into place, back to where they should be. But everything still feels wrong, as if his body's still missing something, something he remembers or can't quite remember. Like reaching for something before you remember it's not there. The empty space on the other side of the bed.

Similar enough in height and build that he forgets and leans on motor memory that isn't there, fails to account for the reflexes that are, and stumbles clumsy and heavy over loss that aches deeper for having been numbed for a while: other-self who should be present, sharp and baffling and fluent. The body not-his-body remembers.

He shakes his head like if he's trying to shake water out of his ears. Opaque. Thoughts he can't tell from his own except when they won't go into words, shift and parse and solve for equations that shouldn't fit a human brain.

And now it's left its memories smeared across his, everything inside-out and wrong (arm in plaster, fingers cramping as he tried to scribble notes with his left hand, going batshit with the itch to just switch hands).

Without thinking, he picks at the wrongness like a scab, and finds that it goes back further, that he can remember what the snake was doing while he was asleep. Think of it, and it comes into focus – not like something he's finding out now, like something he already knew and is remembering:

Relief when the host's mind finally slipped into an uneasy doze, when he could finally stop the endless pacing. A slower, more careful examination of the room (a smudge of dust on his fingertips from the leaves of the artificial plant). Determination to use the limited resources available to study, to better understand the place where he is trapped.

Perhaps now the host will understand that his fears are groundless, that he has no intention of plotting escape against the host's will.

Of course, it could be lying to him, feeding him fake memories. Not like there's any way he could tell.

But he cannot prevent the host recalling, cannot hide or distort. These are the host's memories too, now, weaving them together (to remember doing something is to be the person who remembers it, shaped by those actions and those choices).

Well, Jolinar hadn't been able to stop Carter from remembering. That much is true. Maybe it's a tactical advantage. Gather more intel, know what he's up against. He catches at a concept (host) as it crosses his mind and lets it drag him with it –

– it's like a hall of mirrors, flashes and glimpses that lead back into each other, reflections of reflections – the cold stone floor against his bleeding back and being the one sprawled on the floor and the one leaning down to kiss and the one dying, rending pain of separation, nerve filaments shredding, self tearing away from self, hard tusked body all sinew and gristle pushing into his (own) throat, self losing self discovering self, memories of the host's memories of the host before – and not a hall but a well lined with mirrors, infinite regress, infinite fall, clutching fear at where they might end up, falling back into the memories before Egeria, coiled into the nucleus of each cell, what he is what he remembers being what he's afraid to be –

– pulls him back and sets him down, and for a dizzy swaying moment he doesn't know which of them he is.

Irritation scrawls itself over the alarm (the shame). Recall is shared, but millennia of memories (memories of memories) can hardly be browsed through at random. He can provide guidance if desired, demonstrate how a specific memory can be sought for, evoked.

Yeah, no thanks. Like he hasn't just had the world's worst case of TMI. Images are still riffling through his head like a trick shuffle gone wrong, cards sprayed into the air, fluttering down slowly, jumbled and out-of-context. The private shorthand of memory, where an arrogant tilt of the head aches with loss and the feel of spittle on his face is half-fond.

Doesn't know what any of it means. Doesn't want to know. But he has the uncomfortable sense that he knows way, way more about the snake than he ever wanted to know.

The snake thinks he does, anyway.

And he doesn't even want to think about it going both ways, what the snake must already know about him. Fifty years' worth of memory must be easy to dip into by comparison: nicely indexed for your reading convenience, National Geographic for the snake set.

And then he's thinking about the things he doesn't want to think about, and that brings them welling right up (don't think of a white bear). There are memories he won't take out of their box and look at even in the privacy of his own mind, and he can't bear to think that the snake remembers the smell of that fucking prison cell, or the smell of a little boy's damp hair, no-tears shampoo, getting too big to carry up the stairs after his bath –

Everything's burning, a crackling golden haze across his vision as if the world's on fire, and he closes his eyes against it and knows that won't help a bit.

Neurotrophic deposits of naquadah in the human cornea, he remembers. Peripheral energy discharges in response to spikes in nervous system activity.

Absolutely fucking irrelevant.

When he finds his voice again, he says conversationally, "You don't touch that. Never. Understand? You keep your stuff to yourself, you keep your damn hands off my stuff, and we leave each other alone."

He would not intrude intentionally. But memory cannot be segregated. He can no more ignore or forget the host's memories than the host himself can.

"Then you better start learning how, hadn't you?"

He does not comprehend, from the glimpses he has caught, why these memories are so terrible, why they must be guarded with so much pain. Interrogations, missions, a child dead: he suspects they are trivial enough compared to what his own memory holds.

"Yeah." His throat feels sore again, and he's tired already. "That's because you don't know shit, Skippy."

**********

It's like being in a zoo: people stop by every day to visit and gawk at him, until he's thinking about setting up a peanut stand.

He eats the food they bring him and takes showers (noticing the long lean battered body, the white sickle curve of a scar over a kneecap, stop it) and brushes his teeth until he can't taste vomit any more (why does it always taste of oranges, when it looks like it has carrots in it?), and works at looking normal.

And it feels like work every time, an effort to wrench his attention away from all the other crap in his head and remember to act like Jack O'Neill. It's easier when he's the only person in the room. Only two people in the room. Whatever.

So he works at it, practices picking out the things that sound like something he'd say, and shoving away the rest. I didn't think that. Not mine. Shut up shut up. Ignoring the resentment, the on-the-tip-of-his-tongue sensation of trying not to say something. He is not permitted to speak; he will continue demonstrating his willingness to obey the host's rules, and then perhaps he will see reason – but that's not him, either.

If you're going to shut up, then shut the fuck up.

Fraiser shines a penlight in his eyes for old times' sake and asks him how he's doing.

"Oh, fine. Apart from the whole snake in the head thing."

She gives him that familiar small pursed-lipped smile, professional amusement tucked behind the professional sobriety. "Glad to see you're feeling better."

"Yeah, about that. Tell me you're working on a way to fix this."

She stows the penlight in her breast pocket and sighs, then tells him about EEGs and MRIs and theta waves and how a tiny spot of damage, a tiny scar in the brain can become the eye of an electrical storm if it's stimulated the wrong way (like, say, sticking a scalpel in it), neurons going crazy and firing off at random.

He translates it in his head: his wiring's not up to code, the snake's circuits and his spliced together, botched soldering and bandages of duct tape. But if anyone tries to fix it then everything shorts out: a shower of blue sparks and all the fuses blow. Blackout.

"Truthfully, colonel, I'm afraid there may not be anything more we can do right now. We know so little about how the sarcophagus works, about symbiote biology, and I'm not prepared to take the risk of making things any worse. Now, the Tok'ra have been saying that if you were in their custody and they could observe you, they might have a better chance of coming up with something ..."

Something surges inside his mind, yearning and afraid, before it collapses into the low simmer of anger (betrayal) he's starting to think of as background noise. "Over my dead body."

"That's what I thought you might say." She hesitates, then adds, carefully, "As a doctor, I have a responsibility towards both of you here."

There is no "both of you," he wants to say; it doesn't work like that.

Daniel would have had something to say about it, probably involving the significance of the English language's failure to distinguish between you singular and you plural, with a detour into "thou" and "y'all" (so okay, he does listen occasionally), but Daniel's not here, which is part of the problem.

But he doesn't say anything out loud, because she continues, "I need to know how the symbiote's doing. Technically, he is my patient too. If he's able to communicate –"

His throat tightens, raw again. "Look, can't you – just get the damn thing out of me. Cut it out. Do whatever you have to do. Find a way."

Kill it. The thought twists under the surface of the host's mind, only half-denied.

His voice must have risen; Fraiser gives him a steady look, as if she doesn't need an MRI scanner to look inside his head.

"You know I can't do that. In any case, given what happened last time, the risk is that both of you might die or be severely brain-damaged. And –" a quick glance at him, pre-empting an interruption – "that's a risk I am not prepared to take."

**********

They won't let him have copies of the mission reports, not even for the missions where they were looking for him, which makes no fucking sense.

Officially, the Tok'ra are allies, and they're supposed to have been sharing all this stuff anyway, so the snake-in-the-head thing shouldn't be a issue.

But then again they have been allies (officially) for a while, and he still wouldn't trust any of them further than he can throw them. Okay, in his more rational moods he has to admit that he wouldn't let himself see shit either.

Still, he finds himself trying to compile a mission schedule in his head, tracking the times of day people come to visit him and the times when no-one does, the times the klaxons sound for unauthorized offworld activations and the times he hears boots pounding the concrete, noises muffled by the door, a world away.

No idea what they're up against. Anubis again, maybe, or the system lords, or the replicators, or, hell, maybe these days they're fighting giant cane toads from another dimension. He doesn't even know what to worry about.

Memories of being in the tanks, utterly isolated, without speech, without even words to think with. Only dim luminous silence and blurred shadows, and occasionally the clearer image of a hand pressed against the outside of the glass, sister/brother offering a mimicry of comfort. You oscillate between torpidity and restlessness, lashing yourself around the perimeter of your prison. The first you know of an attack is when the power cuts out, the prickle of the electrical fields through the water dying away, when the falling bombs shake the underground complex, deep vibrations you can feel/hear in your bones. Helpless, useless.

He's not going to think about that.

*****

The next day, they move a television into his room.

No mission reports, but hey, now he has all the time in the world to watch Bowflex commercials, which doesn't strike him as a fair trade-off.

He swivels the couch to face the door and tries The Simpsons for a while, but the weight of bafflement (and irritation at the bafflement, like someone leaning over his shoulder just to say that's not funny) gets too depressing.

By 2 am, he's been channel-hopping for hours, another round in this night's doomed struggle to stay awake. He's never going to win, but he's damned if he'll lie down and stop fighting. Flick and flick across programs, and who needs a quantum mirror when you have a remote with a button to push.

The TV says "– now with new–" and "– next week's exciting–" and "– en! have you ever wonder–" and "– eral of the late Senator Kinsey–" and "– for years I–"

Back, back, and crap, what channel was that.

A cortege of black limousines rolls across the screen, and then the program cuts back to the discussion of the likely long-term impact on the Senate in the run-up to the presidential elections. Not even recent news, by the sound of it.

The usual references to an isolated shooter, dismissal of Internet conspiracy theories, etcetera, but he's already switching off. No way this is coincidence. No way. Single bullet grassy knoll my ass.

"Rogue" agents (yeah sure) hijack a multi-billion dollar government project, and you can bet that someone high up decided it was past time to clean house at the NID. And the NID knew Kinsey was a weak link. Congratulations, you've just been voted Most Likely To Spill The Beans If It'd Save Your Own Skin.

Petty Tau'ri politics. Internecine bickering, while Anubis threatens the entire galaxy.

Looks like the NID came out of their corner swinging. And whatever's going on, there's nothing he can do about it.

When he wakes up, after a few hours of uneasy dreams (waking up and waking up and waking up in a light-filled box that he somehow knows isn't the sarcophagus, because they won't ever come to take him out), the snake's found an empty channel and is watching the static snow.

**********

He figured Carter would turn up eventually, just as soon as her guilt started to outweigh her social awkwardness about the whole snake-in-the-head-crazy thing. He just didn't expect her to bring her whole team with her.

But when he opens the door, they're all there, hovering in the corridor a few meters behind her, as if that way he can't see them. Or in case she decides to make a break and run for it.

Even the snake – Malek – is there, at the back, wearing the same snotty aristocratic attitude all the Tok'ra have, looking for all the world like a medieval princeling who's been forced into Air Force BDUs as the result of some cosmic mistake.

Risa fallen, so many dead; even if there was no error on the part of the base command, he doubts that working with the Tau'ri was a desired assignment.

Carter's balancing a stack of boxes and a plastic bag in her arms. "Teal'c said you were feeling better, sir," she offers, nervous and over-cheerful. He's pretty sure that Teal'c said nothing of the sort, but she's not going to rat Fraiser out.

Behind her, Satterfield murmurs something and elbows Malek in the ribs, and his mouth twists, a split-second flash of a smile which makes him look disconcertingly human and young. Greene glances back at them, dour face warming. Some inside joke, he figures. The kind you only have once you've been working together for months, once you've passed the point where a team becomes a team. If you're lucky enough to get that far.

Carter hefts the boxes in her arms and says, "I thought you might be tired of commissary food," and he realizes that he hasn't said anything and looks at the boxes more closely. A peace offering (it's been a sore point for years that Domino's will deliver to the guys upstairs at NORAD, but not to a place that officially doesn't exist).

"Now that's just wrong. Pizza is strictly a dinnertime food, Carter." A pause for consideration. "Breakfast at a pinch." Let it not be said that he's incapable of reasoned compromise.

She takes her cue, only a beat or two late, and says, "Sorry, sir," bright and unrepentant and looking like his old Carter again, not this New Model Carter.

"Anyway. Come on in. Mi guest room es tu guest room."

To his relief, she picks up on the telepathic signals he's sending and turns to the others to say, "I'll see you later, guys." Small mercies.

The pins-and-needles sensation in his fingers drops off as the door closes, dying down to the level of the residual naquadah in her blood. Jolinar.

The snake's been quieter than usual since he opened the door, lying low, but he can feel it watching her, with that cold curious attention that makes him think of a lidless reptilian eye. A host who has survived her symbiote. As if it expects her to be a leftover, a husk. Makes him want to warn her.

She sets the pizza boxes on the table and moves the plastic bag down off from the top of the stack. "Janet wanted me to bring these over." The rectangular outline of a few books and a few CDs, a photo frame and that's it: the handful of personal items he keeps in his quarters. Means they've decided he could be here a while.

Personal belongings are not encouraged.

"No beer?"

Silence, and he looks up to see why she's missed her cue this time. Her smile's dissolving, and she blurts, "I'm sorry I didn't come to visit sooner, but I thought – Janet said –"

He waves a hand generously, and says, "Hey, you've been busy."

A flinch before she can pull her good-officer face back into place. "Actually, sir, all the joint ops teams have been on stand-down, until there's an official decision on whether the program will be continued or not. I've mostly been catching up with lab work."

Now, isn't that interesting (and he doesn't mean the lab work). Doesn't take much to figure that whatever temporary deal they put together to retrieve him is starting to fray again.

"Busy," he repeats.

"Yes, sir." Eyes front, voice level.

He's not that much of a bastard, so he pulls a chair up to the table and gestures to her to sit down. "It takes four people to buy a pizza?"

A hint of a smile. "They decided that pizza was an important part of Earth culture to which Malek hadn't yet been exposed." Not just relief at being let off the hook: her team make her smile.

"Ah." He remembers that from the early days, spinning excuses to get Teal'c out of the mountain. Arguments with Daniel over acculturation, whether a baseball game was or was not more appropriate than a trip to a museum.

It makes his chest ache, in the place that feels empty, hollowed out. Months spent pulling SG-1 together, making them into a team by force of will, years holding them together against everything the galaxy could throw at them. Until the biggest danger was that they were all too close, tangled too tightly in each others' lives.

Even after Daniel was gone, he'd thought he could still hold them. Or he thought they'd still hold together, even if he didn't have anything left to hold them with.

But you turn your back for a few months and they're all gone. Like they were just waiting for the excuse.

He shoves a pizza box back across the table towards her, but she says, "I already ate," and folds her hands on the table, tugging her sleeves down over them.

Instant suspicion of what they're trying, how they'll retaliate if they can't drug him. But no, that's the snake, shut up. Carter flinches again, and shit, he must have said that out loud. "Sorry. Not you."

Anyway, if they wanted to drug him again, which he doubts, they wouldn't send Carter to do it. Not unless she's become a way better poker player than she used to be.

The pizza is cold (they always are, once they've been smuggled through the checkpoints and down twenty-odd floors), and the smell is enough to tell him that it's going to taste as strange as everything else. But he takes a few bites anyway and tries to remember how pizza's supposed to taste, find the familiar taste of tomato and cheese under the unfamiliarity.

He takes an extra bite just because of the wincing disgust at the concept of cheese.

"So. We're working with the –" snakes – "Tok'ra these days?"

"You missed the three-week screaming match, sir," she says, deadpan.

"Sounds like I missed a lot of things." But he can see her start to waver again at that, and moves to head her off at the pass. "How's that going?"

"Good," she says, sounding determined. "It was pretty rocky to start off with. The Tok'ra council nearly broke off diplomatic relations altogether, right after you ..."

A silent beat. Evidently nobody's found a suitable euphemism yet, or not one that they'll use in front of him. He fills in: went missing, went crazy. Went to pieces. Went for a little walk to Ba'al's fortress.

"But with the security risk – working together was the only chance we had of locating you, so ..."

He can fill that in too, he suspects, knowledge rising up from memory (not his memories). Operatives know better than to expect rescue if a mission goes wrong.

But the council wouldn't want that much classified intel running around the galaxy without a leash, in case some enterprising young system lord snapped him up.

The council must put the cause before the welfare of individuals. Typical fucking snakes.

"And Dad's been at the Alpha site, so we liase a lot, and ..." She nods, as if she's trying to convince herself, and repeats, "It's been good."

There are a lot of things he's never going to talk to Carter about, and Jolinar is one of them. Won't ask her what it's cost her, working so closely with the snakes all these months. Hell of a thing to do.

But he remembers Jolinar in the lock-up: chin lifted high in scorn, the cold glow of snake eyes in Carter's face, her voice (if it was her voice; he's never asked) released to plead in abject terror, to beg him not to leave her like this. He remembers Cassie's terror too, her iron certainty that the Goa'uld had threatened to kill her and meant it.

Since they met the Tok'ra (or got formally introduced, anyway), Carter's convinced herself that it was all a big misunderstanding, and the snake who promised a little girl she'd die if she told was one of the good guys all along.

And if that's what Carter has to do to live with it – well, it's not like he's ever been in a position to judge anyone else's coping mechanisms. But he can't afford to forget.

A suspicious quietness in his head. Like that sense that there's something important you've forgotten, something obvious you're not noticing –

Something the snake doesn't want him to see. And the thought makes it snap into focus:

Jolinar, bright star, whisper and scandal and shame, scalding him. Brilliant and passionate, impulsive – too impulsive; too close, always, to being a rebel – and, oh, she burned with it, and she brought off missions that perhaps no-one else could have, but. But.

Disapproval, silent and bone-deep. Excuses are made, unspoken, in crystal corridors (necessity, exceptional circumstances, the spirit and not the letter of the law), but – no place in the mind deep enough to bury it, for one who shames all, makes us no better than –

To be sitting here across the table from the one she violated, memory fresh and brutal in the host's mind. It's the shame that he doesn't want the host to see, pride prickling like a heat-rash. Doesn't imagine the host would be capable of understanding.

"...Sir? Colonel?" Carter's looking worriedly at him; he's staring at her, and he wonders how many times she said it before he heard.

"Sorry. It's –" He grimaces, waves a hand at his head. He didn't want to know that. Didn't need to know that. Isn't going to buy whatever bridge it's trying to sell him. "Fucking snake."

And there it is, the elephant in the room. If a snake can be an elephant.

Carter takes a deep breath, then blows it out again. She looks down at her hands where they're linked together on the table.

"We thought we were doing the right thing, sir." She must have rehearsed this, rehearsed these words, over and over again. "We thought – I thought that at least we had to give you the choice."

And she did, whatever the "choice" of a semi-conscious man is worth, and he died anyway. Died quite a few times, as it turned out.

But he can't say it. Won't. Her face says she's been guilt-tripping herself for months.

"The Tok'ra promised us that it could be temporary, until they found someone else – that the symbiote would be prepared to die rather than remain in an unwilling host."

It wouldn't have been her decision in the end, he knows; Hammond would have been the one to make the final call. But she's the one who got him to agree to it.

That's the thing about Carter. If God sees a sparrow fall, Carter will find a way to feel guilty about it.

And he really, really wishes she didn't, wishes she'd get over it, because she needs to, if she's going to be able to make the judgement calls she'll have to make and live with them afterwards. And because then he could get pissed at her now, just a little, and not have to worry that she'd break.

It's why she's here, he realizes. To ask for forgiveness. Absolution. Ask him to tell her that she made the right call, that he's going to be okay.

That's the other thing about Carter. The things she needs from him are always the ones he can't give.

He shakes his head, cutting her off. "Not while I'm eating, Carter. Can we ... change the subject or something?"

Her face tightens. "Sure. Of course. Um, what would you like to talk about, sir?"

"You could tell me what's going on with the NID, Prometheus, all that. I saw on the news about Kinsey."

"You know I can't tell you that, sir," she says, and her voice is way too quiet, but this time it doesn't sound like an apology.

**********

He leaves the photo frame face-down in the bag. Even if the snake has his memories and can visualize the picture as clearly as he can, there are some things he won't let it touch.

But he puts on one of the opera CDs, hoping maybe it'll drown out some of the noise in his head, give him a break from the endless thinking. 3 am's always a bad time. He skips the disc ahead to a favorite track.

The music's nearly inaudible when it starts, muted strings creeping in at the edge of perception, and he always has to remind himself not to reach for the volume control, to wait and let it swell as the voices come in, that radiant blossoming of sound – the scene where the prisoners are unshackled for a few minutes behind the governor's back, stumbling from their dungeon into the sunlight, dazzled by the possibility of light and air and freedom.

And in his head, there's utter stillness. Absorbed, rapt. Listening. It should be a relief, but –

The oboes and strings tell of an ordered, righteous universe, where enlightenment leads in the end to liberation. The chorus builds to a crescendo, then hushes itself as a solo voice warns them not to attract the attention of the prison guards. Speak softly, be on your guard. Builds again, irrepressible, then pulls back, smothers itself. We are watched with eye and ear.

The click of the off button echoes through the room.

"It doesn't belong to you," he tells the startled silence. "You don't get to have that."

**********

"Councillor Thoran is demanding that the Tok'ra be allowed to speak to Kanan," Hammond says. His gaze darts around the room as if he imagines the snake is hiding in a corner somewhere.

"Don't suppose you feel like telling them to go to hell, sir?"

The corner of Hammond's mouth quirks upwards before he smoothes it out again: funny, Jack, but not that funny.

"As it happens, I don't. I know that Jake was hoping we could keep the joint teams running longer, but right now, we may be in danger of losing the alliance altogether."

Yeah, big surprise there. He's betting they wouldn't have bickered their way to the joint search teams in the first place if it wasn't for both Carters pulling every string they could. And now the search is over, everyone's starting to remember why they hated each other in the first place.

"And that would be bad how?"

"I've already told them that from now on, we won't be permitting any more SGC personnel to become hosts, even in emergencies. Not until we've resolved this situation. After Major Carter, Lieutenant Elliott ... well, the track record hasn't been good, let's say that."

The snake's lying low again, but he can feel its bad mood, sullen and angry as scalded skin. Oh yeah, for all the self-righteousness, it doesn't like humans talking about the Tok'ra's little oopsies, washing the snakes' dirty laundry in public.

"I'm not letting any more of my people be hurt," Hammond continues. "But there've been a lot of missions we couldn't have brought off without Tok'ra intel, and I'm not going to jeopardize that if I have a choice. And it's still possible that they may be able to help you."

"Are you making it an order, sir?"

"You know I'm not. But truthfully, colonel – if you were in their custody, we'd be asking no less."

Silence.

"You let me know if you think you're up to it."

The door swish-thumps shut, and he's left with the pressure in his head, dull and nagging as a headache. Things he must say, things he would say if he was allowed to speak.

The snake's a passive-aggressive little bastard when it wants to be.

"Fine," he says. "Fine, you win this one. You can have the body for half an hour. Go talk to your little snake friends if it'll make them shut up. I don't want to know about it."

It shoots across his nerves, a sour acid-burn of resentment and regret, and he thinks this is it, this is when the snake stops playing, but then it's gone again, dissolved instantly, leaving him with nothing but the bad taste in his mouth.

Still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

*****

He does not wish to take control of the body any sooner than necessary. He can wait until they are in the presence of the other Tok'ra, to minimize any distress to the host.

Yeah, yeah. "Get it over with."

Knowing what's coming doesn't make it any easier. The snake takes over, slides into control of his body, and there's that first sickening second when his body moves and it's not him moving. He can't even panic properly: whatever he feels, his heart-rate will stay slow and steady, his breathing even.

But he chokes down the instinct to try to move (doesn't want to find out if he could, if it'd even let him, this time). Like driving on black ice: steer the car into the skid, don't fight it, and you've got more control. He made a deal and he's going to follow through. Not going to let it think he can't handle it.

This time, he's watching for it, and can feel the way the snake settles into his skin, the relief of being in control after restraining himself for so long. Chin lifting, back straightening, like it's been itching to correct his posture for days and will settle for this instead of smacking his hands with a ruler and making him balance a book on his head. Small shifts, rearrangements of muscle tension, a (moment of self-indulgence) flex of long fingers to feel them.

Like someone looking around a house, he thinks. Considering the options for improvement. Needs a lot of repair, but it'll make a fixer-upper. Rip out the sheetrock, knock through that wall, add a lick of paint and you can get it right how you want it. You'd never know anyone else ever lived here.

It strides through the corridors between the SFs escorting it, glancing around as if it owns the place. Like one of those movies where the camera's pretending to be the viewpoint of the detective, or the serial killer; he can only look where it looks.

His hands, its hands, have tightened into fists by his sides: when he notices, it does too, and forces them to unclench. He has been preparing himself for this; he cannot afford to weaken now.

One of the meeting rooms has been set aside, with a jug of water and a tray of glasses on the table, as if they were going to be discussing budgetary requirements or trinium mining options. The snake's glance flicks over to the security camera on the wall. He'd bet they've got audio bugs in here too – and finds the snake thinking the exact same thing, mirror reflecting mirror as they both register it at the same time.

Too much to expect that they would not be spied on.

The snake settles itself in the chair at the head of the table (arrogant bastard). Somehow, it's taller than him. Like it's determined to use every inch of his height to take up space with.

It props his elbows on the table and steeples his fingers (ah, Mr. Bond), then changes its mind and leans back, stretches his legs out. From the inside, the body language clicks: nervous.

A flicker of irritation that the host would think that.

The Tok'ra delegation file in a few minutes later. Names come into his mind unbidden – Ardesh, Jalrow, Telkar – dragging a chain of memories, meetings and missions and orders, people he has known through so many lifetimes, so many bodies, colleagues and lovers and kin.

Not Malek, he notices. Could be the beginnings of a split there, between the higher-ups, the snake politburo, and the ones who've been part of the joint ops teams. Nothing like being forced to work together to make people get over themselves fast.

Last to enter the room is Thoran: comrade, dearer-than-brother. Pain slices through his chest, a quick hard spasm in which he feels nothing but shame – that he has failed so badly, allowed himself to be led astray by his (his host's) attachment to a slave, brought low by this host's cognitive defects. Shame for what he is about to do.

He folds his arms against it and raises his chin, goading himself back to outrage. Betrayal.

"Kanan." A bow of the head in greeting, and he sees – the snake sees – relief through the dignity, the host's restrained severity that Thoran wears like a mantle. "We had feared you were lost to us."

The background simmer of anger boils up, righteous and necessary, and this time he can almost catch the words forming in his mind before his mouth opens and that eerie bass emerges, flat and furious:

"This host did not consent."

No.

Then, fury catching fire through the shock: oh no no no, you bastard, you fucking bastard –

Murmuring indignation from the Tok'ra across the table. "We were assured by the Tau'ri –"

– grabs for control of the body, and this time he thinks the snake's going to fight him, had more things to say, but it pulls back and his hands slam down hard on the edge of the table and he shoves to his feet, his own voice breaking through:

"– you don't, don't you dare, you have no fucking right –"

Didn't think he pushed the door that hard but it smashes into the wall and ricochets back again as he storms out into the corridor, and every damn Tok'ra in that room can go fuck themselves for all he cares. The snake's reeling, baffled, protesting – like it imagined he would be grateful –

"It's none of your fucking business. You have no right –"

It is all of his business. It is his obligation.

His back collides with the wall as he turns, instinctively trying to round on the little fucker as if it was outside him (surprise surprise, no-one there).

Someone's repeating, "Sir," voice rising, and he has a vague sense that some of the SFs are following him, but he ignores them, shoves away from the wall and stalks down the hallway, wishing like hell that he could get out of here, get some air, get to breathe without the incessant noise around him and the noise in his fucking head –

Resentment coiling into anger, hurt. It is his obligation to speak on behalf on the host, name the wrong that has been done so that it can be set right.

Oh yeah, like announcing to a roomful of people that someone's been raped. Didn't even bother asking him about it first, seeing how he felt. Probably didn't even occur to it –

He could not have asked. He could not have asked because he was forbidden to speak, told to shut up –

Spiteful little shit. "I said don't talk to me, I didn't mean don't talk to me."

Fingers on his arm.

By the time his conscious mind registers it, he's already moving, reflexes precise and lethal – elbow slams back into the assailant's ribs (unexpected crack of bone) and turn into the movement, body colliding, momentum spinning his opponent face-first into the concrete wall and pinning him there, pressed up against his back, forearm locked across his throat, hand clamped to the back of his head –

– registers it, registers green cloth in his field of vision through the white-hot flare as it dies.

One of the SFs.

In the distance, he hears people yelling, is aware of sidearms being levelled at him, the way he's always aware of weapons even in the periphery of his attention.

Somehow the choke hold's wrong, his arm looped up under the guy's armpit, twisting his neck at an angle, hand braced to shove his skull down and round –

Not a choke hold. About to break the guy's neck.

Jesus Christ. He pulls back slowly, disentangling himself, and feels himself start to temble as the adrenaline burn catches up with him.

It's not a surprise when hands grab him, and he doesn't look round, doesn't resist, lets himself go limp as they take him down to the floor, mashing his face against the concrete. Not even when they yank his arms up behind his back and pin his legs with way more force than necessary, his mind calmly and distantly noting the flaws in their technique.

They haven't even noticed that he's not fighting. If he wanted to resist, he wouldn't be the one on the ground (weaker). Probably wouldn't help to point that out, though.

This time, when they take him back to the VIP room, they lock the door.

**********

Wall to wall and back again, and he wants to put his fist through the wall so badly that it hurts, and he doesn't because if he starts smashing things he might never stop.

There's a painless burn in his muscles and joints, and without having to think about it he knows it's microscopic tears in the tissue, the body driven to whip round faster, hit harder than a human body should be able to. Immune system's already smoothing over the damage, making it all go away like nothing happened, and somehow that just makes him even more pissed.

He has a moral obligation. A duty. Even if the host cannot appreciate that.

Because the last thing he needs right now is to be a charity case for the fucking snake.

He spoke no more than the truth. The host did not consent – a surge of anger at the betrayal, that the others would put him in this position. Whatever the Tau'ri told them, they must have known that the host's mind was not equipped to cope.

"Fuck you, I did so consent."

The mental equivalent of rapid blinking, as if it thinks it might have heard him wrong. Even apart from the defects in his mind, the host was not in any condition to give free consent.

Yeah, like you guys are so picky. Not going to play the poor little victim for you or anyone else, Skippy. Don't fucking tell me what I could or couldn't do.

Then memories are being flung at him, a blast of heat, a wave, like opening a furnace:

The host's body burning up, scalding through the mucus on his skin, almost enough to make him rear back, tear himself out of the huge hands holding him, but instead instinct takes over and he slides deeper, a ripple of muscle taking him down the host's throat (gagging at the thought, the half-memory), barbed fins hooking and lodging him deep, piercing tissue to be healed later (stab like an icepick through the back of his throat). Like walking into a house on fire; tremor of fear that the host might be past saving, might drag him down into death too. But he can't permit himself the thought, all his attention absorbed in reaching out, keeping the body alive.

Need to bring down the temperature before the brain is damaged, if it isn't too late; nerve filaments already growing, insinuating themselves into the host's nervous system. Circuits complete themselves, a neural link into the hypothalamus (the brain's mindless thermostat trying to burn out the invading virus even if it burns out everything else as well); he hijacks its programming, persuades, convinces, forces. The virus is easier to control, immune system already extending itself, mind/body/cells spreading through the host's bloodstream, weaving them together, making them one feedback loop, one body. And there, unlooked-for, one last flicker of consciousness –

Recognition. Revulsion and hatred twisting like a knife inside his skin, no.

A wall of no, a mind impossibly strong in a dying body, can't ignore and can't – won't – suppress, thoughts that this mind can't think about, and he shatters against them.

He bangs open palms against the wall of the room, fighting off the urge to punch it, then rests his forehead against them.

Didn't want to know that. Always thought all the high-minded talk about symbiosis and sharing was so much bullshit, when it came down to it. Yeah, the Tok'ra say they care so much about the hosts, but –

We are Tok'ra. Vow and bedrock, knowledge unfolding, unwanted –

"Whaddya mean 'we,' white boy?", but his heart's not in it.

– redefinition, correcting meaning: "Tok'ra" cannot be singular, a symbiote cannot be Tok'ra, not alone. Only the consensual blending of symbiote-and-host is Tok'ra. Only ever plural, we are Tok'ra, against Ra and all he stood for. No other way.

All that separates you from the Goa'uld. The host's consent.

And the lack of it is a wound in his self, a crime committed that he is bound to set right. He would leave if he could, even if it meant his own death, but since he cannot (convenient, Skippy), since they are tangled inextricably together, he must do whatever he can.

"Yeah? Would you let me eat a bullet?"

Flinch at the thought, hesitation. The host is not in his right mind. He doubts that he truly wishes to die.

Other images, surging up from memory of their own accord (no, no): the cold weight of the sidearm in his hands, the taste of oil on the barrel, the day he put it in his mouth and held it there until the metal was warm and slick with spit but still he couldn't pull the trigger, not yet, not then, the day before the doorbell rang and they told him they had a mission for him.

Better to prevent him, surely, for his own good, so that when he comes to understand –

"Thought not."

– yes (no, the host wouldn't; would he?). No other answer he can permit himself. If it was truly asked of him. Yes.

"Fuck."

He didn't need to know that. So much easier if he didn't have to believe it. And he can't believe it. Like something stuck in his throat, that he can't choke down and can't cough up again, can't fucking breathe.

He will make any restitution required. If the host will only let him know what he wants. What it will take to make this right.

"What I want," he whispers against the wall, "is not to have a snake in my fucking head."

Frustrating, lashing himself: he understands, but what else, what does he want that is possible?

He is not going to crumble, he is not going to crack, he is not going to be bargained into being okay with this. His no is all he has left. He's not going to let them take that away too.

He is not continuing this fucking conversation.

**********

It's the evening of the next day before Hammond comes to talk to him.

Nothing in his head but waiting – him trying to outwait the snake, the snake trying to outwait him, he doesn't know – and the silence that's indistinguishable from noise. The endless, nagging, unvoiced question: what do you want?

He pushes to his feet and is waved back down. "Sit down, Jack."

"Jack," not "colonel". Off-duty. Yeah, this is the visit to bring the bad news.

"How's ..." Shit. Doesn't even know the guy's name.

"Sergeant Reed's in the infirmary. He has a concussion and several broken ribs. But he's going to be fine."

Reed was milliseconds away from not being fine ever again, and Hammond knows it.

In the pause, he can hear what Hammond isn't saying: Give me an excuse, Jack. Tell me it wasn't your fault. Tell me the snake make you do it. Not like things haven't been written off before, swept under the carpet. Personnel not responsible because of alien influence.

Tell me it wasn't you.

But it was him. Or partly him. He thinks.

His skills and his reflexes. The snake's strength and speed making them twice as dangerous. Somebody's panic, somebody's rage. Both of them, neither of them, doesn't really matter. He nearly killed an innocent guy by mistake, and oops, must have tripped over the snake isn't going to cut it.

He looks at the tabletop and senses rather than sees Hammond's nod. The end of something.

"The Tok'ra have announced that they're pulling out their personnel and withdrawing to the Alpha site," Hammond says.

Yeah, he can imagine that they're not too happy right now either. Snake probably really spoiled their morning.

"Now. I have had people, both inside and outside the SGC, expressing their concerns to me about your current situation."

He wonders what sort of pressure Hammond's under, who's pulling the strings.

"Things don't seem to be improving for you right now, and – well, I'll be frank, we're not set up to provide long-term mental health care here. Technically, I have an obligation to transfer you somewhere more appropriate."

He translates in his head: the locked ward where we stash the people who are too fucked-up to know what "classified" means any more. The ones who couldn't hack it and had psychotic breaks, and the ones with the bad head injuries, and the ones who were ribboned for a little bit too long, too much grey matter microwaved.

Because even if the regular psych hospitals are full of other people babbling about little grey men and mystic codes that let you travel to other worlds and government conspiracies to hide the secrets of the universe, you can't take the risk that someone will put two and two together and make thirty-eight, see the things on the MRI scans and in the blood samples that shouldn't be there.

Daniel's not the only one he's visited in there. Only one who ever came back, though.

Maybe he could volunteer for a court-martial instead. He hears Leavenworth's nice this time of year.

"Now, as it happens, I have some queries about the security of our usual arrangements." Hammond's glance skips over to the camera on the wall. Pay attention.

Join the dots. Ward security's designed to stop people getting out, not people getting in, and the NID are still pissed they didn't get Teal'c's symbiote to vivisect. Yeah, he can imagine they might be taking an interest.

"You're under my command, Jack, and that gives me a responsibility to make this decision. However." Hammond's voice is careful, just stating the facts. "Kanan is not."

And there it is, the idea like a solid object lying on the table between them.

"Now, I have no authority to confine an operative of a foreign ally. It would be grossly improper and could jeopardize diplomatic relations."

Like diplomatic relations with the Tok'ra are worth a damn right now, and how Hammond's managing to stay deadpan, he'll never know.

"General?"

"I'm saying that if you were to identify yourself – yourselves – as Tok'ra personnel ... well, in that case, I would have no authority to stop you from leaving with the others."

"Going to the Alpha site."

"That's right."

He rubs his hand over his mouth. The Alpha site's still SGC territory, even if it's offworld. They phone home through the gate on a daily basis. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.

"So, this would be pretty much an on-paper deal then, sir?"

"That would be between you and the other Tok'ra."

The snake's being ostentatiously silent in his head, loud as a kid holding his breath till he turns blue. If he does nothing, says nothing, then he cannot be blamed for it. At some point, the host will have to recognize this and be reasonable.

Dream on, Skippy.

He will not obstruct the host's choice. If the host wants them to be confined to a mental institution (primitive, barbaric), then they will go.

He puts his head in his hands. Like it's fine to put the responsibility for the decision all on him, like it wants to force him to say it out loud.

"Yeah," he says, finally. "Okay. I'll go."

**********

4.

**********

The gateroom smells of machine oil and disinfectant-scrubbed concrete. But through it he catches the ever-present ozone scent of the chappa'ai itself, like wet ash and thunderstorm air, universes colliding like pressure fronts. Familiar across a thousand worlds.

He will not regret leaving this place. The host will, though.

If he was leaving permanently. Which he's not. This is just a stop-gap until this whole mess gets sorted out.

Under the bravado of the thought, sadness – and the maddening whiplash of anger and denial as soon as it's perceived. That is becoming familiar also.

He's the only one of the crowd assembled in the gateroom not to have a rucksack or bag; even the Tok'ra have their bags slung across their shoulders like interstellar bike messengers. But there's nothing he wants to hold onto so badly that he'd be willing to let the snake near it.

If the SGC decide it's easier to make him dead on paper, his will's up-to-date and on file. Sara gets the house; he figures she'll probably sell the cabin. There's a stash of letters tucked in the back of his locker, behind the metal tin of photos – has been for years – but most of the people who matter know where he's gonna be anyway.

In a corner, Carter's team are saying goodbye to their pet snake. Malek's back in the brown leathers (and thank God for small mercies that being Tok'ra on paper doesn't extend to having to wear the damn uniform; the Tolkien elf look's never done anything for him). Malek's hands are clasped behind his back, pale face severe.

Even speaking quietly, that organ-pipe voice is audible halfway across the room. "Major Carter. It has been a privilege to serve with the Tau'ri. I did not expect ..." He pauses and frowns, a muscle twitching in one cheek. Carter's wearing the polite smile that he's seen pasted onto her face through a thousand interminable alien speeches. "It has been an illuminating experience, and I only hope that –"

That's when Satterfield tackles him like the world's smallest linebacker, body-slamming into him hard enough to rock him back on his heels, wrapping her arms round his chest and hanging on.

His face freezes, then races through shock and outraged dignity before the poker up his ass dissolves and he reaches an arm cautiously round her shoulders to return the hug. She leans comfortably against him, laughing.

Then the mood's broken and they can all become easy with each other again. Greene slaps him on the back, all earnest man-to-alien approbation. Carter's smile's turned genuine. Proud of her team. And he knows damn well that it can't have been easy to pull together a mixed team, humans and aliens. Not with the SGC and the council breathing down their necks and everyone waiting for them to fail.

Malek drops his head to his chest, then looks up without the arrogance, eyes widening. But it's still a surprise when he says a few words, human-voiced. He was never at Risa long, but he has never heard Malek's host speak in public before. Too soft for him to overhear, though he catches the faint stammer and sees Satterfield lift her head to listen, not laughing any more.

Carter steps closer and squeezes his arm (remarkable, that she can overcome her prejudices enough to work with them, after what Jolinar did to her; even distinguishing Tok'ra and Goa'uld is beyond most unblended humans).

Satterfield releases him reluctantly. "Your memory will be kept among us," she says solemnly. It's only the thickness of her accent that jolts him into realizing that she's speaking Goa'uld, softening the words more than a native speaker would. And that startles him less than her use of the formal mode of speech-between-equals, less than the host's smug certainty that it's not an error.

Then she switches back to broad American and adds with a grin, "Don't be a stranger, okay?"

Malek bows his head to her. When he lifts it again, his eyes flash, and he steps back from them to join the small group assembling at the side of the ramp. Reynolds and Petroski and their teams have already said more restrained farewells to their resident aliens.

Then the last chevron locks and the event horizon boils up out of nothing and crashes back into a silver pool.

The Tok'ra and the few human personnel bound for the Alpha site start filing up the ramp. Thoran sweeps through without looking back; he hasn't looked over once since he set foot in the room.

The ripples swallow the outbound travellers down one by one, and his feet are still glued to the floor.

Carter's hovering again. She hasn't visited since the thing with Reed, but he's got no idea if that was her call or Hammond's, and now her face says that she's trying to work up the courage to say something.

In the end, though, all she says is, "Goodbye, sir."

"Hey, you could have said au revoir, at least," he protests mildly.

"Right, sir." At least she's smiling as she walks him to the gate ramp. "Say hi to Teal'c and Dad for me."

Ripples criss-cross and bounce off each other on the event horizon, like a swimming pool that's been balanced on its side, like he's standing with his feet on the wall, about to fall.

On the ramp, he turns and looks up to meet Hammond's eyes beyond the glass. It's been an honor, sir.

Then he steps into the wormhole and feels his body dissolve into stinging sleet, blown through the dark between the stars.

**********

At the Alpha site, it's early morning. The sun's barely edged past the treeline, and the ground is still cold and wet with dew, soaking the edges of his boots. Once you've hit gatelag, you never bitch about jetlag ever again.

The site's not much different from the last time he saw it, a patch of rocky ground blasted and bulldozed flat, a shallow bowl carved out from the flinty hills and the forests.

But there are at least three times as many Quonset huts now, with a thicket of solar panels balancing on spindly poles between them. Plus a clump of tents which have got to belong to the Jaffa, unless the SGC's decided to go in for the Renaissance Faire look.

Looks like there's been a population boom, and he's guessing it's not a human one; they've never kept more than a skeleton crew at the Alpha site, just enough personnel to keep it habitable in case they need to fall back there, plus a few scientists doing the sort of research that the SGC'd rather keep off Earth in case they blow up Colorado by mistake.

The welcome party's mixed, too: Major Pierce, Bra'tac and Jacob. No sign of Teal'c, but Rak'nor's tagging along behind Bra'tac.

At least no-one's paying too much attention to him: they're all too busy meet-and-greeting, splitting off into different groups and heading off into the camp.

Bra'tac goes straight over to Malek and clasps his arm Jaffa-warrior-style (and what the hell? Got to be a story there).

"It is good to see you again. We have had some altercations of late, and I would value your assistance in resolving them."

"I hold no rank here until I am re-assigned." Stiff and wary; evidently the poker's back in place again.

Bra'tac makes his little humming noise of consideration, like a Mack truck contemplating whether it's going to run you down or not. "But some of the Tok'ra will listen to you nonetheless, yes?"

Looks like whatever happened when the Tok'ra arrived at the Alpha site, it involved Malek learning the hard way that you do not argue with Grand Master B; he follows Bra'tac meekly off towards one of the rows of huts.

Tok'ra following Jaffa, a frisson of disturbance (disapproval?) along his nerves: something he did not expect to see in his lifetime.

He heads over to Pierce. A good guy, even if he's not exactly what you'd call imaginative; it's some reassurance to know that someone decent is heading up the show, even if no-one's actually in charge of the asylum. "Major. You want to tell me where I'm billeted?"

Pierce stares at him before jerking to attention and snapping off a reasonably clean salute. "Sir!"

"At ease, major."

Pierce is still staring at him, the whites of his eyes showing like a nervous horse. "Sir. Uh ..."

Apparently the part of Pierce's brain assigned to military courtesy has short-circuited and taken the rest with it.

Credit where credit's due, he's not sure there ever was a protocol for interacting with a senior officer who's crazy, has a snake in his head, and might accidentally kill you with his bare hands if you look at him wrong.

"Uh, sir. You're assigned to the Tok'ra, sir."

"Oh, for crying out loud. On paper."

"Yessir. However, they've been insistent – sir, with all due respect, we've got a situation here. The Tok'ra and the Jaffa are getting on better than they were, but the last thing we need is another flashpoint. Sir."

Hell. It's not like he can't recognize a request for assistance, and objectively he has to recognize that they're probably up to their asses in alligators. But behind the military deference, there's fear, too. Fear of him.

"Pierce. This is –" he waves a hand in the direction of his own head – "me, here." For want of a better word.

"Yes, sir." Pierce doesn't look convinced.

It's the same fear that everyone at the SGC's been living with for years: that someday you'll see someone you know – a colleague, a friend – snaked. And you'll have to make that split-second call: try to capture them alive, put a bullet in their head, or just run like hell.

And the exact brand of snake doesn't make a lot of difference, because the ones who weren't there for Kawalsky have all heard the stories about Jolinar.

A flash of memory: he'd gone to the zoo with (not thinking about that, keep your fucking hands off). A zookeeper sitting with an armful of python, telling the gaggle of children that it was harmless, that they could reach out for themselves and feel that it was dry, not slimy at all, while the kids clutched each other and shrieked in gleeful terror. Lost cause if ever there was one. That's millions of years of evolution telling monkey brains to be afraid of things that crawl and things that skitter and things that slither. And you can Daniel Jackson all you want about how physical form shouldn't matter, but human instincts are there for a reason.

"Hey, Jack. Kanan."

Jacob. Selmak.

That freaky double vision again, as if Jacob's transparent, nothing but a shell, embodiment for the sharp, vivid presence of Selmak.

Wise and beautiful and terrible (as an army with banners, the host involuntarily finishes the thought). One of the oldest surviving amongst them, most revered and most whispered-about.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Pierce turning away, grateful for the rescue. Coward.

He's never had a problem with Jacob before, always gotten along fine, not bothered by the snake unless it chose to pop up in a conversation. Which it didn't do that often, only when there was a need for its input, and Jacob never seemed bothered by it. And yeah, he was glad for Carter that she got some more time with her dad, that the price for the Faustian deal never came due. Even if a tiny part of him was always waiting for it.

"C'mon," Jacob says. "We've got the tin cans from E through K. Jack, I'll introduce you around if you like. We've even got an e-mail hook-up for the databursts through the gate, finally. Though you'll have to go over to the base canteen if you want to grab a coffee, which frankly I wouldn't recommend because you don't wanna know what it does to symbiote nervous systems."

Jacob's voice, Jacob's words, but the brusque kindness has the flavor of Selmak to it, and how the hell did he never see that before? Not that he'd really known Jacob before he got snaked, but he knew Carter, and her relationship with her dad was tough enough even before she knew about the cancer. Before the snake. And then afterwards, it had gotten so much easier. Shit. Shit. Maybe the Tok'ra were all faking it right from the start, because it's not like anyone had a way to check. Not without one of those Tollan gizmos, which the Tollan oh-so-conveniently wouldn't share.

But the thought won't stick, slides off the other thoughts in his mind like an unglued label. No pretence: only the nature of blending, two minds growing into each other, reactions shaped by the same memories. Impossible for consciousness to be shared without thoughts overlapping, boundaries blurring. Blending. Until who controls the body or the voice at any given time may be the least important detail, nothing more than a matter of convenience or courtesy, to differentiate symbiote and host for the benefit of others.

He remembers the bitter, sardonic relish his host – former host – took in playing the minor Goa'uld, dripping arrogance through their voice, feeding him the words to deflect suspicion, kneeling and prostrating them at Zipacna's feet with a grace that made it a dance, a private mockery of the other underlings' grovelling. Lording it in the face of the enemy that had enslaved and nearly killed him, knowing that he was the splinter under their skin.

The memories will come to hurt less as time passes, he knows, becoming less like the phantom pain of a lost limb and more like a part of what remains, woven into his genetic structure, the traces of his past hosts that he carries with him.

"Jack?"

And he and this new host are already deeply blended, entangled and enmeshed, the sarcophagus making the process an obscene parody of what it should be. If (when) the host is willing to acknowledge this, become more reasonable –

"You know what?" he announces. "I need some fresh air." He turns on his heel without waiting for a response and sets off across the stony ground, heading towards the trees.

Behind him, there's an exasperated sigh, and then Jacob (Selmak) is at his elbow, matching him stride for stride.

"So, basically, you're determined to make this all as difficult as possible," Jacob says.

"Yep. Pretty much." He grins, broad and obnoxious and happy. It feels like the first time he's smiled in months.

"Good to know." Jacob stops in his tracks, and says to his retreating back, "When you change your mind, you know where to find me."

But in his head, there's the suffocating knowledge that me is shorthand for us.

**********

He keeps walking until he reaches the edge of the camp, the electrified fence buried deep among the trees.

Standard protocol: you can scan the planet from the air all you like, but you can't scan the whole landmass down to the micro level, and nobody wants to get bitten in the ass by whatever turns out to be lurking in the woods on P3X-whatever, whether it's bloodthirsty tree weasels or hallucinogenic fungus.

Still.

If they're following protocol, the fence will extend a few more meters underground. And even if he could get under it, or over it, they'd send out the UAVs and find him again eventually. The gate's right at the edge of the camp, and heavily guarded, and he's not batshit enough to risk hurting his own people. Not any more.

He's not seriously considering a breakout anyway. The snake in the head spoils the fantasy: no way to run far enough and fast enough to get away from that.

Instead, he makes a right turn and paces along the perimeter.

The trees here are tall and narrow as telephone poles, evenly spaced. Spruce and hemlock, or close enough cousins. Back in the woods again, only this time there's a fence around him and no imaginary friend to promise that if he goes home it can all be fixed. The fact that he's not seeing dead people any more should feel like a net gain in sanity, but instead it only feels like another sort of loss. Daniel's back up on his cloud, he figures, chanting mantras of non-interference.

Part of him is yearning for the safety of tunnels, buried safe and secure. Hidden. Above ground's too exposed and too vulnerable. The sky's too big.

He grimaces. Doesn't wanna know about the snake's Freudian issues, thanks. Doesn't want to know any of it.

The last few days have been cold war, trying to tune out the silent insistence that he name a way of making this right, co-operate, be reasonable. And beneath it, the equally implacable certainty that he he should, that eventually he will, that surely he must.

It hasn't tried to talk, hasn't been pushing for more time in control of the body. It just watches through his eyes, waiting and wanting, and that's more than enough. Underneath all the crap about honoring his wishes, he gets the sense that it feels like it's owed time in control of the body. Like the times when he's asleep aren't enough, when it spends hours doing God knows what.

Doing nothing. Nothing that the host does not remember, nothing that he would not permit.

Like it has a right to share the body. No. Shit. Not the body, his body. The fucking thing's infecting how he thinks. Like it thinks this is its body too.

He does not understand how else he can be expected to think of it. Like it doesn't have a body of its own; not one you'd want, admittedly.

But this is the body in which he lives in the world, the senses through which he experiences it, not symbiote-body's (darkness, heat, immobility, the claustrophobic press of tissue and bone). The face he is learning to wear in his mind's eye. Could the host think of himself, his self, as two convoluted hemispheres of grey tissue (coils smooth as toothpaste), trapped blind and deaf in the bone case of his skull?

A perspective shift, then, like one of those optical illusion trick pictures, the flip of perception that makes two faces out of a vase, and he's getting the snake's sense of itself, a vague human outline (tall, solid, male) that's already adjusting to include cropped grey hair (distinguished) and long narrow fingers. Trying to settle into this new self, cramped and frustrated by the host's constraints.

The fucking snake's starting to think it looks like him.

He lengthens his stride. Walking isn't enough to burn off the itchy restlessness, the sense of being cut off, not owning his own body. But he needs to get away somehow. Better to be a moving target.

**********

He's nearly completed a full circuit of the camp (trying not to think about zoos) by the time the Tok'ra come and find him.

Two of them, and he wonders why they come in pairs, like the two who trail behind Anise every time she turns up at the SGC like the proverbial bad penny.

He did not expect Thoran to come. Unreasonable, to have expected it.

"Hey, fellas." He gives them a shit-eating grin.

They stop at a safe distance, and he thinks of tossing a stone at them to see if they'd startle away like crows.

Names fall into place involuntarily – Ardesh, Verran – and memories with them, knowledge that goes back thousands of years, shimmering images of past hosts lapping over the mental sense of Ardesh's dry caution, Verran's scholarly mildness.

Too much, too overwhelming, and jeez, couldn't the snake get a handle on Need To Know before it starts shoving its memories at him? But he isn't. Wouldn't. These are the host's memories too, now.

How the hell do they stand it? Trapped with the same tiny, shrinking population of people for centuries, until everyone knows everything about everybody. No secrets, no doors. Makes small-town Minnesota look like Manhattan.

The security of being known, being trusted. Nothing to explain or excuse.

"Kanan," one of the snakes says (Verran, Ardesh, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he doesn't care which one is which, so it doesn't matter if he remembers).

"Nope," he says jauntily. "Want to leave a message?"

The snake hesitates, then exchanges a glance with its companion.

The thing about snake-baiting is that they never get it, not really. But they get that they don't get it (all except the really dim ones), and that annoys the heck out of them.

"We have been sent to show you to the Tok'ra accommodations," Ardesh continues in the same neutral tones, as if he hadn't said anything.

"Why?"

Another hesitation – he wasn't supposed to ask why, they didn't come briefed for that – and then, "You would surely be more comfortable among your own kind."

Not wandering around where other people can see him, see how much the Tok'ra fucked him over. They'd like to have him securely out of sight somewhere, the crazy relative chained up in the attic.

Like hell they're his kind.

"What would make me comfortable is knowing you guys have a way to fix this."

A longer pause, as if he's embarrassing them by asking at all. Terribly gauche, don'tcha know.

"We thought it was understood that the effects of the sarcophagus may be irreversible. In the few cases where we have extracted a Goa'uld symbiote who has kept the same host for centuries, the host has been left ... vegetative. It is rumored that some of the oldest system lords, such as Yu –"

– and he's never hated that pun more –

"– may be incapable of taking new hosts."

He knew as much, whatever the host may have pretended to hope. Still, to hear it spoken aloud ... This is his last host, then. The one he will die with, whether that death is a century away when the host-body begins to fail, or days away in a Goa'uld attack.

"That's not what you told the SGC."

Impassive faces, hands clasped in front of them. "We gave no assurances. We informed the SGC that with more opportunities to observe your condition, we might be better able to understand its nature. In any case, we expect that many of the ... problems ... you are experiencing will naturally ameliorate with greater sharing."

"Sharing. See, now that's the problem. Don't think I need any more sharing. In fact, you could say I'm having an over-sharing issue here."

"Further research into extraction would require a substantial commitment of resources for what are essentially unique circumstances. We cannot favor the convenience of one over the fight against the Goa'uld."

Revanna and Risa, so many dead. Massacre and retreat and evacuation, losing more of their number each time, as Anubis and his pawns force them into flight, using their extinction as a gift to buy the allegiance of the other system lords. Until the few hundred refugees huddled in Tau'ri shelters on this empty planet may be more than a third of their population.

Nice martyr act, Skippy. Nothing like a noble cause to justify screwing people on the details, huh?

"So, you guys ever let your hosts talk?" he inquires casually. Memory starts providing instances, indignation rising, and he shoves it aside. Not the point.

Another wordless exchange of glances. Like they all know each other so well they're fricking telepathic.

But then the second snake – Verran – dips its chin and blinks, then looks up again, his expression open and friendly. It fits better with the beaky nose and freckled skin, somehow. The owner of the body, come out to play. "What d'you want to know?"

No name pops into mind this time. The snake doesn't remember the host's name, if it ever knew it. Probably doesn't consider minor details like that worthy of its attention.

But he hadn't expected his bluff to be called like that, and now he's stalled: what does he want to know? How are you okay with this? How can you be? How could you be so desperate to stay alive that you'd trade your body to a snake?

But it feels too like a concession, like an admission of something. The same way you did, something in his head taunts, and he doesn't think it's the snake.

He clears his throat. "So, what's your story? Why'd you let them put a snake in your head?"

A flinch at the intrusion on the deeply private relationship between symbiote and host. There are only ever a few reasons, and all of them are bitter.

"The Morrigan destroyed my homeworld," the young man says calmly, and he recognizes Verran's studious calm, soothing over the rawness of wounds that never heal. Cities burning, planets burning; the Goa'uld destroy for tactical advantage, as retaliation, or for the pleasure of it, just because they can. "I could have starved among the ruins, or died of disease like my family. Instead, I chose to become Tok'ra. To fight."

Nothing he can say to that.

"That was fifty years ago," the host adds. Not so young, after all. Then, something sharp breaking through the calm: "Is that enough to answer your question? Or is there more you want to know?"

But he's seen it – he has, not the snake, the times when they've come through the gate to find smouldering rubble where a town stood the week before. Or a village after a punishment raid by Jaffa, huts still standing, empty except for the corpses, slit throats or chests blown open by staff blasts. A baby in its cradle, one time, thrown back into a pile of bloody blankets.

The SGC's done what they can, sometimes. They've evacuated small handfuls of refugees, shuffled them to other planets and left them with tents and MREs and sackfuls of seed-corn. There's one little girl from Hanka who's in high school and has a dog, and that has to count for something. But there are millions, maybe billions of humans transplanted across the galaxy, enslaved by the Goa'uld.

Memory: on his knees in the mud, all his weight hanging from his wrists – not his wrists (not then, not yet) but still his memories – spitting curses at the Jaffa until the whip tore another strip of flesh from his back and took the last of his words away with it.

When he doesn't answer, Verran's host nods once, then dips his head again, eyes flaring gold as the snake returns to control, bright as the reflection in a cat's eyes that spells out: predator. Apparently that's all the time in the driver's seat the host gets.

"May we be permitted to speak with Kanan now?" the snake enquires. The same voice, through the distortion, but the inflections are different.

It reminds him of a telemarketer who's inadvertently ended up on the phone with a six-year-old. Can I talk to your mom or dad now? Is there a grown-up in the house? Like they've decided it's easiest to talk to the snake direct now. Cut out the middleman.

And the snake wants to talk to them, too, pulling out of its own memories (holding them away from him, as if for once there's something it doesn't want him to share). He can feel the bitten-tongue sensation of its frustration return.

He will abide by the host's wishes.

Sure it will. Well, if it's so keen to abide by his wishes – his wish is that it not talk. 'Cause that worked so fucking well last time. Had enough of that to last him a lifetime, thanks.

He tilts his head from side to side, pretending to consider it. The two snakes don't move a muscle, standing eerily still, but he can tell they're getting twitchier anyway.

"How about ... no." Petty, but he'll take his entertainment where he can get it these days.

He would be willing to wait until the host is asleep, if that would cause less distress.

Yeah, nice try. Don't even think about it.

He is coming to think that the host is determined to be unreasonable.

Whaddya know: Skippy's a slow learner.

Ardesh's gaze shifts somehow, and he gets the creepy sense that he's become transparent, that it's looking right through him, snake talking direct to snake.

"Kanan. We are sorry that your blending with your host is still unresolved. Perhaps in time, with patience, you will be able to bring him to a better understanding of our ways."

Translation clear as day in the snake's mind: the onus is on him to ensure that his host sees matters in the proper light.

In other words, the snake should make him shut the fuck up and stop being a public embarrassment.

No. No Tok'ra symbiote would "make" a host do anything against his will. They would not ask that, would not expect it of him.

Silent, squirming humiliation. He has already broken ranks in front of outsiders by accusing the council of blending him with a host who did not consent; that will not soon be forgotten. Now the host must go out of his way to ensure that everyone knows that they are broken, incapable of behaving with respect and dignity.

The Tok'ra stand and watch as he walks away from them.

The scar on his neck itches: the mark of a host taken by force, the mark of a Goa'uld.

**********

The patter of rain on dry pine needles startles him awake.

Cold and dark, a light rain condensing out of the mist. The snake's hunkered down under a tree, arms folded on his knees, balanced on the balls of his feet despite the heavy boots. Memory says it's been there for hours, perfectly still, gazing into the dark.

Inhumanly still, creepy bastard that it is. Casually twisting his body up like a bendy toy, as if his joints were supple rubber and flexible wire instead of aging human cartilage.

Watching the dark. Pointedly, pedantically obeying the host's rules. Doing penance.

There are times when it almost seems like a person, and then he reminds himself what it is, cold unreadable snake eyes watching the world from behind his own.

Remembering still. His eyes were shut by then, forehead pressed against the wooden post, and he did not see, but remembers (remembers being) the petty Goa'uld lordling who threw a handful of copper into the mud, contemptuous payment for a half-dead slave, the sort of inexplicable divine whim that no mortal dares question, then flicked his fingers for the Jaffa to carry him home like a side of beef from the market. Who bent over him as he lay on the chamber floor, cold stone against his bleeding back, hurting too badly to fear what cruel entertainment the false God might have planned, too weak to move but not to spit, not to hate them all. And the Goa'uld recoiled, face twisting in anger before it smoothed out suddenly, before he wiped the spittle away (blood-stained slime on his fingers, cleaned off carelessly with a fold of brocade robe) and said in a human voice (not his but his, remembered too), "We are not what you think."

He shudders, dizzy again. Enough to send a ripple across the surface of the snake's poise, and he feels the familiar sensation being tipped back into control of his own body. He wobbles and braces himself with a hand, then shifts to sit his ass down on the ground, damp pants be damned.

Nothing he can do. He did not choose this, but he is the one here, bound to remedy it, torn by the violation of the host's will. Not Tok'ra. But he fears that nothing he can do will ever be enough; the host will never be satisfied. He is bound by duty and the host is not. The more he honors the host's wishes, the more the host works deliberately to make them outcast.

Can't win for losing. Somebody's thought.

"C'mon," he says, as he stands. "On your feet."

**********

His eyes have adjusted to the dark; he moves through the night as easily as through daylight. The drizzle dies away soon enough, and it's easy to tune out the chill. He doesn't even have to shiver unless he wants to.

There should be an ache in his bones to let him know the weather's changing, all the places where they've been broken and re-set and broken again. But of course there isn't. Something else that's been taken from him. Like he asked the snake to come in and fix him, overhaul an aging human body until it runs like it's fresh off the production line. Probably would have taken his scars away too if it could.

He thinks of heading over to the central buildings, the human ones, offices and infirmary and canteen. Even if he's not officially billeted there, they can't stop him hanging around, reminding them that he's still human. He's pretty sure they can't, anyway.

But then he remembers that it's night. The Tau'ri sleep at night, and their operations slow down accordingly. There won't be anyone awake there except for the few on watch.

The buildings are dark and silent, and he walks on past them.

From the high ground around the camp, the movement of firelight between the tents catches his attention. When he gets closer, he sees silhouettes passing in front of a bonfire like shadow-puppets.

Makes sense: kel-no-reem only takes a few hours a night, so he guesses the Jaffa have to find other ways of occupying their time. He can smell meat cooking, and it looks like there's some kind of animal being roasted over the flames. Pierce must have given them permission to hunt outside the camp perimeter, or would have if he's smart; it takes the site one step closer to self-sufficiency and away from relying on the gate to send MREs halfway across the galaxy.

Teal'c's probably down there. And he could use some of that calm companionship, even if the thought of walking into a Jaffa encampment is making the snake nervous. Especially. Especially if.

He sees the sentry before she sees him. Still isn't expecting her to jump up and shove the business end of a staff weapon in his face, though. Getting on better my ass. In the shifting light, he can see a tall, scrawny woman with the emblem of Cronus on her forehead.

He's about to tell her that he's here to see Teal'c, but then the firelight jumps and shifts, reflected in the puddles on the muddy ground, surrounded by Jaffa, the chappa'ai too far away, out of reach –

Light sears across his retinas, and he knows his eyes must be flaring.

He hears the familiar bzzt and crackle from the staff weapon as it's activated. "What is your business here, Tok'ra?"

"I'm not a fucking Tok'ra," he snaps without thinking.

The sentry tilts her head in a weirdly familiar gesture, eyes hard. "Then you are Goa'uld."

D'oh. This could take some fast talking. "No, I'm not a –"

"Jaffa. Kree!" It's not a shout, but pitched to carry effortlessly across the space, and his knees sag with relief at the voice.

Disconcerting to feel relief at the arrival of a Jaffa – but this Jaffa is different. An exception, carrying stillness and compassion with him.

The sentry snaps to attention as Teal'c approaches, beginning, "This one is onac'tar but says he is no Tok'ra, and –" then stops instantly as Teal'c raises a hand, regal in his robes.

Slaves, with the mentality of slaves. But he didn't think that. He's always thought the rebel Jaffa are okay as far as it goes, even if they do tend to think with their staff weapons. Centuries of kree-ing don't do a lot for independent thought.

"O'Neill is of the Tau'ri." Teal'c meets his eyes before he continues remorselessly, "And of the Tok'ra also."

He's not just speaking to the sentry; some of the Jaffa seated round the fire turn to look as Teal'c hits full-on oratory mode.

"He is one of the great warriors of the Tau'ri, who have freed many thousands from enslavement to the Goa'uld. By his hand died Ra, Apophis, Hathor, and many other false gods."

Not like he personally killed them with his bare hands, the way Teal'c's making it sound. There were a bunch of other people involved. And, on several occasions, tactical nukes.

But Teal'c's giving him a look that says Back my play or else, and he can read the situation well enough. He's walked into the crossfire and Teal'c's playing political theater to get him out of there with his skin intact.

So he nods and smiles and scuffs his boots until Teal'c pauses for breath, and then says, "Well, it was nice stopping by. Is that the time? I should –"

Teal'c's hand wraps round his arm. Gently, but it feels like a steel band. "Remain a while," he says. "You are welcome amongst us."

Even if I have to personally kick the ass of anyone who disagrees, his tone implies.

The sentry is scowling.

"Return to your duties," Teal'c tells her, without another glance in her direction.

And something clicks in his mind, something that's been waiting to fall into place ever since he heard that "Kree." This is Teal'c's command voice: enough steel to make people snap to follow before they think twice, the casual assumption of authority that demands it. Convince them that you've never imagined for a heartbeat that they'd be dumb enough to argue, and they'll breathe a sigh of relief and not imagine it either.

He's spent a lifetime practising that tone. Never heard it in Teal'c's voice before, though. And yeah, he knew that Teal'c was commanding armies before anyone at the SGC was out of diapers, but ... he didn't know.

"You didn't tell me," he says, and shit, his throat's sore again. "That you'd left."

Teal'c regards him. "You were aware that I was residing at the Alpha site."

"That's not what I –" He scrubs a hand through his hair. "You know what I mean."

But he doesn't need to wait for an answer. It doesn't matter what's down on paper, in the files in Hammond's office. Whether they've filled out the forms yet, whether Teal'c's scented candle collection's still in storage for him somewhere in the mountain. It's a done deal.

"O'Neill," Teal'c says. "I joined the Tau'ri because I believed that you were the best hope of freeing my people. It has been an honor to serve by your side. But now my people must pursue their own freedom, and my place is here with them."

"'So long, it's been nice knowing you?'" It comes out more bitter than he intended.

Teal'c's eyes are dark and sad, but his expression doesn't change. "The rebel Jaffa and the Tau'ri will remain allies. General Hammond believed that my presence here would assist in maintaining that alliance."

Then something glimmers behind the mask, and he adds, "Had I remained at Stargate Command, I would have been assigned to another unit, under the command of another leader. I preferred otherwise."

No, he can't see Teal'c meekly following Reynolds or Harper, or, God help him, Ivanov. He's always known that Teal'c's loyalty was personal, a private allegiance given to him and then to Hammond, not to the Air Force or the United States. First Prime of O'Neill, someone had said once, not knowing he was in earshot. There have been times when he's tap-danced like crazy to keep other people from finding that out, when "suspect loyalties" could have landed Teal'c in an NID cell. Still.

He swallows past the ache in his throat. "That's ... helluva thing, T."

Teal'c bows his head, and says with formal grace and only the slightest twitch of the corner of his mouth, "As you would say: back atcha."

This time, when Teal'c meets his eyes again, he gets the sense that Teal'c is talking to the snake too. Ironic that the Jaffa can see him when the host cannot.

"I could not have remained on Earth forever," he continues. "It is ... difficult, to be an alien among the Tau'ri."

A message, even if he does not know which of them it is addressed to. Both, perhaps. He knows that any courtesy the Jaffa extends to him is for the host's sake; that as much as anything else, it is a warning: I see and know you. But it is courtesy still.

"I believe that Jonas Quinn found it so also, before his death," Teal'c adds quietly.

But Jonas was always way weirder than Teal'c, he wants to protest. Teal'c's just ... Teal'c. Jonas was far more alien, with his too-wide smile, like someone who's picked up his idea of how to be human from 1940s public information films. How to be wholesome and hygienic. We support the war effort. Always trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed, shiny as an apple that's rotten at the core.

Memories turned over like cards, as if he can read his own fate there: another alien, who made himself a traitor and outcast from his own people, who came to Earth because he believed it was his duty. Who failed in his moment of crisis and spent the rest of his life trying to pay for it, and died without having paid enough. Even his death is not enough to abate the resentment the host feels for him.

That's not true. He put Jonas on the damn team, didn't he? That's the thing about the snake, the worst thing; it sees everything and doesn't get any of it.

Now he wonders if Teal'c and Jonas talked about things together. What they talked about. What do the aliens say to each other when the humans aren't listening? (Daniel's voice, in some long-ago argument: You have heard of Copernicus, Jack?)

"I should ..." He waves a hand into the night. Do something, go somewhere ... else.

"You do not have to leave," Teal'c says. "You would be welcome to join us for our repast." Welcome to join the resident aliens' club.

He can smell charred meat, and the snake thinks it's a better prospect than pizza, judging by the fact that it doesn't smell strange the way everything else does.

Which is a surprise, somehow. Not that he'd put much thought into its dietary preferences (really rather not, thanks), but with that level of sanctimoniousness, he'd have expected the Tok'ra to be vegans. They seem like the kind of people who think tofu's a food.

Then again – snakes. Not like their Goa'uld-y ancestors were eating plankton before they decided that hey, wrapping themselves round people's brainstems and taking over their bodies might be a fun evolutionary lifestyle choice.

The memories that trickle up have the tang of something primordial, wordless and timeless, genetic memory millions of years old, compressed into blurred underwater vision and sharp hunger, the sting of electrical currents, the dull infrared of blood-heat and the impulse to lunge home, sever the spinal cord, paralyze the prey. Somewhere, somewhen, the discovery that neural regeneration let them do more than paralyze, the long slow awakening to light and air and speech.

It leaves him feeling nauseated again, his tongue slippery with the memory of alien blood.

"You do not have to leave," Teal'c says.

"Yeah," he says, and takes a step back into the dark. "I do."

**********

5.

**********

"So, how long d'you think you can keep this up for?" Jacob – Selmak, whoever, but it's Jacob doing the talking – asks. He settles himself comfortably on a log and gazes out at the morning. Like he's sitting out on a porch shooting the breeze, like it's a relief to take the weight off his feet. But he knows Jacob doesn't feel tired physically, any more than he does.

He shrugs.

Jacob unscrews the cap of one of the plastic bottles of water he's carrying and takes a swig. Then he holds the other one out, and keeps holding it, not bothering to glance over.

Okay, fine. He takes the bottle and sits down, mainly because Jacob's wearing the retired general and don't you forget it, sonny face, and there are fights he'll think twice before picking.

Memory ghosts the image of Selmak's last host: a few centuries ago, newly-blended, a round-faced young woman listening to arguments in the council chamber with the same shrewd half-smile he's seen on Jacob's face, the smile of someone who knows better but is giving you enough rope to hang yourself with. But no, that's one of Jacob's expressions, from before he got snaked. The one evoked by "deep space radar telemetry". Isn't it?

And, overlapping, the memory of an old woman with the same round face, dying serenely on a crystal slab. Saroosh. He remembers that. His memory, not the snake's.

"Look," Jacob says. "I know you've had a rough time. You both have. But moping around here acting crazy is not going to change anything."

Oh yeah, gotta love that Carter family sensitivity. Carter tries for tact, even when she doesn't manage it; Jacob just couldn't give a shit.

"That's your advice? Suck it up and deal?"

Jacob's eyes narrow. "You wanna put it like that, then yeah. It's either that or not deal, so which one're you gonna pick?"

"Didn't know it was multiple choice. I've always flunked on those."

A frustrated sigh. "You think it's easy for anyone? I didn't exactly wake up one morning and think, hey, I've got some free time, I could get an alien symbiote implanted in my head and be living on another planet in time for dinner. It's a lot to adjust to. I get that. But you've dealt with worse."

Wariness in his head. He has heard the whispers about Selmak's Tau'ri host, more outspoken and opinionated than is usual. Disconcertingly so. Selmak's experience is revered, but some fear that with increasing age she has become eccentric. Unduly influenced by the host, perhaps.

The irony tastes like ashes in his mouth.

"You were dying," he manages.

"Yeah, well, newsflash, Jack: so were you. This is better."

Then Jacob's chin dips, and his voice drops a few octaves.

"The process of blending is inevitably one of compromise and negotation," Selmak says. "Jacob and I have had our disagreements."

But the tone is fond, and the snort that follows is purely Jacob. "Damn straight we have. But we worked it out. We'll go on working it out. It's no different than a marriage."

Flunked that too, he doesn't say. It sounds maudlin, even in his head. And there's something bracing about Jake's cheerful lack of sympathy. Jacob's never believed in mollycoddling people if he thinks they're capable of coping.

Still, he's not going to do down without a fight. "Sounds more like everyone's saying that since it's inevitable, I might as well lie back and enjoy it."

Jacob favors him with a look that says he's not even going to dignify that with a response. "The two of you got off on the wrong foot, no denying that. But I've asked around, and the council was assured of your consent. George backs them up on that."

A wash of heat through his memory. If he consented, if he was capable of consent, why would he have lashed out so? He doesn't understand why the host insists on maintaining otherwise, except out of sheer perversity.

"The word 'temporary' was used. I distinctly recall it."

"Well, no one saw that one coming. Not that a full blending's always easy to undo, but ..."

Difficult, to separate two entwined nervous systems and leave both reasonably intact. There is always risk, and never a good time, whether a symbiote is still weak from a new blending or deeply enmeshed in an old one. But it is rare for it to be needed, rare for separation to occur for any reason but death.

Some hosts will consent to a temporary blending in an emergency and then agree to permanence later, once they fully understand the meaning of being Tok'ra, and the hazards of separation.

He wonders if that's what Thoran was hoping for.

Another head-dip. "You were Ba'al's prisoners for more than ten days, as far as we can determine," Selmak says.

Ten days. It doesn't seem right, but then he doesn't know what would. As if Ba'al's prison warped time like it warped gravity, each death a rupture in spacetime.

"We are ... aware of his methods. The blending has not been your only challenge."

Interrogation is nothing new, nothing he has not been trained for. The Goa'uld have always been torturers. Ineffective as a tool, of course, unless one has the means to verify any information obtained; it is why the Tok'ra first developed the za'tarc detector.

But then, information has only ever been an excuse for the Goa'uld to torture, not a reason. And Ba'al is known to be more skilled than most. His lo'taurs rarely survived long; if they broke too easily, he grew bored, and if they would not break, they only earned greater attention from him, and she had already lived longer than most –

When he looks up, Jacob is watching him. Jacob, or Selmak: he doesn't know which of them's in charge now, who that ancient sadness belongs to.

"How you do you cope?" he hears himself say, and he'd blame the snake except it sounds like his own voice, so he guesses not. "I mean, not with the –" he gestures in the direction of Ba'al's Hotel California (you can check out but you can never leave). "With all this crap in your head."

"Well, there's a reason we call it a blending."

Yeah, and right now he's thinking Cuisinart. Drop your brain in with the snake's and set to "puree."

But Jacob's still talking. "Usually you've got some control over what's shared at first. Not this kind of bleedthrough. Looks like the sarcophagus messed that up."

"And later? You said 'at first'."

Jacob shrugs. "You can't build the Berlin Wall in your own head."

"How about 'good fences make good neighbors'?"

A flash of gold in Jacob's eyes, and Selmak says, "It is, I believe, what makes us different from the Goa'uld. The neurology of the blending is the same – though some people hate to admit it –"

Jacob's intonations in the snake voice, and he's never seen the lines between them blurred so much before. He wonders whether he somehow didn't see it before, or whether this is something that they're deliberately showing him now.

"Two minds sharing thoughts and memories cannot help but intermingle. But the Goa'uld deny this process, guarding their own identities jealously. They pluck information from the minds of their hosts, but blind themselves to all else. If they acknowledged what their hosts suffered, they could not live as they do. To be Tok'ra is to accept the nature of the blending, to influence and allow ourselves to be influenced in return."

A minute shift in attention, as if Selmak's somehow turning from him to the snake. But this time, the snake actually seems uncomfortable at being addressed. As if it'd been skulking around, hoping to avoid direct attention.

"I believe the Tau'ri may be a 'test case', as Jacob would say. Over the millennia, we have grown accustomed to hosts who have known only slavery, who are grateful for rescue and used to taking symbiotes for gods. Perhaps we have grown too comfortable. The Tau'ri are ..."

A hesitation, before Jacob interrupts: "Pig-headed, is what Selmak's trying to say. Too damn reckless sometimes, if you ask me. Kids playing with matches and gasoline. But it's what we're bringing to the table. And we –" a different meaning to "we", now – "have to find out if we're truly capable of living as equals. Put up or shut up. To translate loosely."

A flare of baffled hurt, resentment, that Selmak of all people would criticize him, blame him by implication. As if he has not already risked so much for the host's sake, jeopardized his reputation, held back while the host insults and alienates the other Tok'ra.

"By the way," Jacob adds – another shift of attention, gimlet gaze switching to the host, as if he's trying to catch him off-guard – "Selmak doesn't remember Kanan as the chatty type, but he was never this quiet."

He shifts uneasily on the log. For once the snake's not nagging for permission to speak, so now he gets Jacob giving him crap about it instead. All he needs. "Yeah, about that. What does Selmak remember?"

"Honestly?" Jacob grimaces. "Okay, maybe he's not a bundle of laughs. A traditionalist."

Translation: even Selmak thinks the snake's an asshole.

"Smart guy, though," Jacob adds. "A good long-range covert operative. One of the best we've got. You think we'd send an amateur up against Ba'al?"

He rolls the water bottle between his palms, then looks up, squinting into the sunshine. "You could have done worse, Jack," he says quietly. "You could have done a lot worse. And if you keep him locked up, don't let him talk ... you're doing just the same thing the Goa'uld do."

It hits him like a punch to the gut, leaving him breathless, too startled to be angry right away. "Bullshit," he manages, then sucks in air. Can't believe that even Jacob would have the balls to say that. "That's – hey, for starters, this is my body. I was here first. Anyway, he, it can take over any time it wants."

"Sure," Jacob says flatly. "If that's the way you want to look at it."

"So, what do you want me to do about it?"

"Think about it, Jack. That's all I'm asking." He takes another swig of water. "Though in case you haven't noticed, we're still fighting a war with the Goa'uld. Once you've finished thinking it over, you might wanna, I don't know, pitch in, lend a hand ..."

He snorts and gets a sharp sidewise glance. Jacob's a hardass, but he's a smart hardass. Got to know that he's been feeling like a fifth wheel.

"We've got a quorum of council members here now, since Thoran got back," Jacob continues casually. "There's going to be a strategy meeting this evening."

"And ...?"

"And I'd like for you to be there. There're some things going down that you should know about. It may have slipped your attention, but we're holding the alliance together by the skin of our teeth here. It'd be good not to be the only person in the room who's got ties to Earth."

Jacob screws the cap back onto his bottle of water and stands, stretching. "Plus we could use your input." That tiny shift of attention again. "Both of you. I don't know how much the SGC's told you, but your Tok'ra security clearance is still good enough to get you in."

It's a bribe, a lure, he knows. The snake gets you access, gets you back in the game.

If the council had chosen to downgrade his security rating, he wouldn't know about it. Drop enough levels, and he might never even know the meeting was taking place. Whatever his current status, he knows that Selmak is making a gesture. One that extends beyond the desire to provide therapeutic occupation for the host.

Something's happening.

"J hut. Past the generator shed, turn left, you can't miss it. Meeting's at twenty-three hundred hours, but we're on a twenty-six hour day here, so make sure you've re-set your watch. If you feel like dropping by."

"I'll check my day planner," he says, and watches Jacob's mouth twist in amusement – "You do that, Jack" – before he drops his head and looks up golden-eyed.

"Colonel O'Neill," Selmak says. "Believe me when I say we are aware that a permanent blending was not your choice." A wry smile, Jacob's and not Jacob's. "You have ensured we cannot help but be aware. And it is a violation of all we hold most dear. But it may be that you bring us something we need."

After Jacob's gone, he takes a swallow of water, then finds himself draining the bottle in one long pull, surprised by how thirsty he is.

**********

The day gets darker.

His watch turns out to be running on something like Hong Kong time, but eventually he runs out of excuses and heads over to the Tok'ra huts a few hours after nightfall.

His skin starts to prickle before he's even got in the building, a naquadah buzz that's worst in his fingertips. By the pricking of my thumbs ... he's never going to get used to that.

The first room he goes into is dimly-lit and quiet; a few of the snakes glance up, gazes skimming over him and away again. Contemptuous, or uninterested.

The courtesy of not drawing attention to his Tau'ri uniform, not showing curiosity. Doubtless they all know his condition.

Something's niggling at him, but it takes him a moment to spot what's out of place: no door in the doorframe. They must have taken all the internal doors off their hinges. Which counts as vandalism, or defacement of US government property, at the very least.

The Tok'ra hold no secrets from each other. There is no need for doors or partitions. Like hell there isn't. And the snake who told him that turned out to have plenty of secrets in the end.

A couple of them are standing in a dark corner, doing something – kissing. He looks away hastily. They're moving slowly, close enough to breathe each other's breath. Fingers intertwined. The flashbulb visual isn't enough to let him tell gender; in the identical uniforms, they could be a man and a woman, two men or two women.

As if it mattered.

The other Tok'ra don't bother to look, or to avoid looking. Blasé, like they've seen it all before. He edges out into the corridor.

Physical contact on bases is always easy, conferring no ties or obligations. The demands of the cause rarely allow time for the formation of attachments that might interfere. Both host and symbiote have sexual needs, and it's convenient to meet them with sister/brothers, the comfort of like minds and skin against skin. Developing ties to an unblended human would be – impractical. Perverse. Like copulating with a child or an animal.

Again with the not needing to know. He's always thought that snakes and sex are two concepts which shouldn't ever be near each other, and he'd be happy if he could get through the rest of his life without having to think about it. And he's never going to jerk off ever again.

There's noise from further along the corridor. Not the murmur he'd expect from a human crowd, but he can hear voices raised, the tone of someone addressing a meeting. Must be that way.

Still, he hesitates, not quite able to make himself head over towards the noise. When it comes to the crunch, it goes against all his instincts to walk into a nest of snakes on his own. He's probably the only human in the building.

No more or less human than any other host there.

He leans his back against a thin partition wall, then mutters, "Fine. Fine, you do your ... thing." Let the snake be the one to deal with the stares for a while.

Nothing happens, so he ducks his chin down, doing his best to copy the head-dip thing they all do. Then he feels his head flop, muscles going limp before the snake picks up the reins. Must be why they do it in the first place.

The snake squares his shoulders and pushes away from the wall, and okay, it's almost easier this way, as long as he doesn't try to move, doesn't think about the fact that he's not in control. He can pretend he's just a passenger, that he's not the one striding down the corridor. Like he can watch from the outside: a tall snakehead with grey hair and an arrogant, unsmiling face. The BDUs are the only thing wrong with the picture, and the snake manages to carry himself as if he's really wearing the puritan brown leathers and it's only an optical illusion that he's not.

The meeting room must take up half the length of the Quonset hut, and it's packed. But there's no background noise, nobody whispering to their neighbor or shuffling papers or, hell, even passing notes in the back row. The Tok'ra stand still and silent as statues. Like they don't bother looking human when there aren't any outsiders to see.

No chairs: you don't need them if you don't get tired, and of course they don't bother with soft furnishings in their tunnels. Though he's always felt that some drapery would do wonders to make them more homey.

Even the councillors are standing, grouped around one side of a small table, while the crowd leaves a circle of empty space in front of it, an arena for speakers.

People shift back as he enters the room, stepping aside to make room for him. It is reassuring to know that he is still acknowledged, his expertise recognized. He would remain at the back if this was a seminar on scientific progress, but in a discussion of intelligence-gathering and strategy, his place is in the front ranks.

After years spent undercover, it is always a comfort to return to the safety of a base, where there is no need for lies, where everyone's skills are known, everyone entitled to contribute as they are best qualified.

All snakes are equal but some are more equal than others, huh, Skippy?

He ignores the gibe; equilibrium will not be helped by searching through memories for the reference.

"The presence of so many Jaffa here must be considered to compromise security until a new base can be found," someone is saying. "Even if there are no traitors among them, they cannot be expected to maintain secrecy if captured ..."

Names, faces. Too many, and he deliberately turns his attention away, shuts off the flood before it can overwhelm him. Lots of people the snake knows, got it, enough.

Some he doesn't recognize; they must have taken new hosts since he saw them last. But no one has asked him to identify himself, and that can only mean that they all know of his host. His situation. There is hardly likely to be another Tok'ra attending the meeting in Tau'ri uniform.

But the snake's no shrinking violet; it's planted itself in the middle of the front row, and is busy taking up space again, as if it's used to using physical presence to intimidate, to subtly bully others out of its way.

"... if we do not make contact with a significant proportion of the cells being operated through Risa. An unacceptable level of fragmentation can only ..."

Jacob looks up from one of the gizmos on the table (a modified Goa'uld tablet, adapted to encrypt information and erase it without trace), and catches his eyes, manages to convey good to see you and by the way you're late.

Thoran follows Jacob's gaze and bows his head in silent greeting; he returns the gesture and lets his eyes close in relief. Perhaps his disgrace is not irretrievable.

Around him, people step forwards one by one, following imperceptible cues, to report or critique or argue a point, then step back again. The invisible web of protocol and order, unspoken and understood.

He wishes he had something to fidget with. Keep his hands busy. If it was up to him, he'd sit back and let the noise wash over him until he could get a sense of the room, the real undercurrents of who's who and who's pushing what agenda. Getting a crib sheet from the snake's memories isn't good enough. But then it's not up to him.

He will return control to the host whenever it is desired.

That's not what he meant.

He settles for tuning out as much of the administrivia as he can. At least he doesn't have to pay attention just because the snake is, and thank god for that, because everyone seems determined to turn the tiniest details into an opportunity for political point-scoring and the whole process drags on for hours.

He has no idea how Jacob hasn't gone batshit, unless he's somehow rigged that tablet to act as a Gameboy.

But then through the blah-blah he hears one of the councillors say, "Anubis remains the primary threat," loud and clear as the snake snaps into high alert.

He registers movement behind him as several people leave the room: those whose security clearance is not high enough for this topic. They have not been able to place any operatives among Anubis's retinue, and that is a source of concern in itself; the status and identities of those assigned to his close allies must remain protected.

It's weird; he instinctively wants to turn round, see who's going, but the snake keeps its eyes front. He can't even look out of the corner of his own eyes.

"He will not risk another attack until he can be sure that he can also defend himself." Someone disagreeing with whatever point's just been made, in tones of venomous politeness. "His territorial position is weak, his armies limited; he will not divide his forces while the other system lords can still turn on him."

His three-dimensional mental map of Goa'uld territories and alliances expands to fill his attention as he adjusts it, updating his knowledge of key outposts and major Jaffa troop deployments as they are mentioned.

And holy shit that's a lot of intel the Tok'ra haven't ever shared with the SGC. Not like that's exactly a shock, but still, seeing it all laid out like that – it makes him feel a whole lot better about how hard he pushed for the SGC's briefings to the Tok'ra to be edited into oblivion.

Unlike the other system lords, Anubis has not concentrated his efforts on gaining territory, and nothing in the new data suggests a change in the pattern. He is not planning in terms of star systems controlled and populations enslaved; instead, he seems to be pursuing technological advancement as a short-cut to power, searching for and reconstructing Ancient technology.

A disquietingly original tactic, for a Goa'uld. The Tok'ra have relied for centuries on the inflexibility of the system lords, their tendency to fall back on the same ritualized patterns; it has been their greatest weakness. But Anubis is something that even the Goa'uld fear.

"Kanan." The solemn young African-American (African-alien, whatever) councillor with the scraped-back hair and the vaguely familiar face. She offers a careful smile and adds, "Colonel O'Neill," as if she's doing him a great favor.

Oh yeah, that whole meteor deal. She was the one who gave SG-1 a ride home. He reaches, and doesn't know if it's the snake's memory or his that supplies the name Jalen.

"You have been assigned to monitor several of Anubis's allies," Jalen says, dropping the pretence that "you" means anyone except the snake. "What is your assessment?"

The snake bows its head to her and takes a step forwards, then settles itself with feet spaced shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind its back. A glance down at the floor, gathering thoughts, forming words.

He's never seen the snake this comfortable before. In its element.

"Zipacna's power base has always been tenuous," the snake says, and he cringes at the sound of it coming from his own mouth, feeling his own lips and tongue arrange themselves round the distorted voice. "He retains it only by grovelling to those he believes more powerful than he. If he is loyal, it is because he believes Anubis still has use for him as a pawn."

A flash of memory, sprinting down a corridor towards the escape pods while blasts from Yu's mothership shook the walls, before he wrenches himself away from the thought and what came after, forces a dismissive shrug.

"And Ba'al?"

He feels the fractional hesitation, not quite a flinch. Feels the snake trying to cover it. Invisible to anyone except him.

Tok'ra courtesy, to assume that he can report on Ba'al with equanimity; not to insult him by assuming him weak.

"Ba'al remains an anomaly." He's almost grateful for the flat, expressionless voice. "His interest in technology makes him useful to Anubis. But his loyalties are equivocal."

Behind his back, he can feel his hands curled into fists, nails beginning to bite into his palm. Doesn't know if the snake even knows it's doing it. He is not thinking about knives.

"I do not believe that Anubis was aware of the outpost I was assigned to map."

Another nod, releasing him. He steps backwards and the other Tok'ra shift to make room for him, careful not to crowd him.

He stops listening to the discussion for a while, letting it wash over him, the adrenaline wash through him. Easier to accelerate its metabolism that way, force the body into calm.

He can feel Selmak's eyes on him, and doesn't look up, for fear the pity he imagines there might break him.

Then, through the static, he catches, "... the ship Prometheus."

He nudges for control of the body and feels it handed back to him. Almost surprised when it works, but he's getting the hang of this now. Like tapping someone's shoulder to let them know that you want to edge past them in a narrow space.

Jacob catches his eyes and gives a tight nod. This is it, then. He's still shaky, still jittery with adrenaline after-burn, but paying attention.

"Further reports have been intercepted," Jalen says. She places another tablet on the table. "But there is still no pattern that we can discern. The first attacks were on minor players such as Tilgath, but now Camulus's mothership has been destroyed, and it is rumored that both Bastet and Kali have lost garrisons."

Thoran is frowning; the snake recognizes the signs that his cool, analytical mind is still turning over a problem, refusing to jump to conclusions. "The descriptions are consistent," he says. "A ship of Tau'ri design, but using Ancient weapons."

Oh, hell. He's not liking this picture one little bit. No wonder Jacob wanted him there.

"Yeah." Jacob exhales heavily. "I've talked to the SGC, and the specs match. It's gotta be Prometheus. We know the NID were chasing a cache of Ancient weaponry. Looks like they hit paydirt."

A frisson of surprise at hearing a host do so much of the talking. Unusual in a council meeting, unless the symbiote is known to be very reserved.

As if he's had the same thought, Jacob dips his head and lets Selmak continue. "The ship is of Tau'ri manufacture, but stolen by rogue elements in one of their government's agencies." The echoing voice carries effortlessly across the room. "Stargate Command cannot be held responsible for their actions."

"So they say." Thoran idly taps one long finger on the tablet. Typical; of course the Tok'ra would have to find a way to be difficult about this. Yeah, let's suspect that this is all some elaborate and completely pointless plot by the SGC, just so we can be paranoid about it.

Selmak's eyes flash briefly. "The hijackers included one Colonel Simmons of the NID, and a Goa'uld in the body of a Tau'ri, who had been held prisoner by them."

Adrian Conrad. This just gets better and better. The bastard came damn close to having Carter's brain sliced-and-diced, and that was before he got a snake in his head. Being Goa'uld-ed didn't improve his personality any. And now Simmons has sprung him somehow, stupid fucker.

"Yeah, it's the NID," he says out loud. "NID, rogue NID, whatever. This is exactly the kind of shit they think is a good idea."

People around him have turned to stare. "What?" he mouths at one of the people gawping at him. They're all supposed to be contributing according to their qualifications, right? And god knows he's qualified to recognize the NID's style when he sees it.

Thoran smiles briefly, mirthlessly.

The snake winces internally at the breach of protocol. Too much to expect, that the host would be able to understand.

"By attacking other system lords, they weaken opposition to Anubis," Jalen says, condescending to speak directly to him again. "We have explained to the Tau'ri that removing individual Goa'uld only creates a power vacuum into which others will move."

She sounds earnestly baffled. Explained to the Tau'ri. As if everything the Tok'ra said was broadcast to the entire planet. Special bulletin on CNN: the galaxy's full of evil alien parasites who'd like to invade Earth, but we're not supposed to keep killing them, 'cause the other alien parasites say it's a bad idea.

"Look," he says. "The NID aren't on my Christmas list either, but hey – dead Goa'uld. There's gotta be an upside to that."

Jacob's eyes have narrowed, and he gives a fractional shake of his head. Don't push it, Jack. But it's Selmak who says, "The system lords will not permit such attacks to go unchecked. There is grave danger that they will retaliate."

Nice. Not only do they have rogue NID landing them up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle, but human hosts are meant to be seen and not heard.

Anger at the insinuation, the injustice of it. All symbiotes here have fought the Goa'uld for centuries. It is hardly unreasonable to recognize that they have more experience of strategy than hosts whose experience may be limited to a few decades of subsistence farming.

Better if the host were to relinquish control, allow him to handle this. Yeah, the snake would think that, wouldn't it? He holds on, just to piss it off.

"Seeking a new base must be a priority," Thoran is saying. Looks like they're back to politely ignoring him again. "As I have already said. If the system lords deem that this breaches the Protected Planets Treaty, then not only the Tau'ri but also those associated with them stand to be destroyed."

Yeah. The Goa'uld might decide to nuke Earth, but more importantly, let's talk about how this affects the Tok'ra. It's what it all boils down to in the end, despite all the symbiosis and equality bullshit.

Well, screw Thoran, and screw his silent "h" too. He's not forgetting that Thoran was the one who turned up at the SGC to tell them that the healing device wouldn't be enough, but hey, the Tok'ra just happened to have a spare snake lying around, and that, O Best Beloved, is how we ended up in this fucking mess in the first place.

Anger, banked and buried under the snake's false calm. Like the burner on a stovetop, dull black but hot enough to take the skin off your palm if you lean on it by mistake.

Oh, but Skippy's such a nice snake. He's so fucking tired of the ostentatious patience, the condescension, the pretence. Just get it over with.

"We are certain these attacks have not been authorized by the Tau'ri?" Jalen asks.

"George and I go way back." Jacob again. "He's a good guy, wouldn't lie to me. The ship was stolen."

Thoran's frowning again. Jalen watches someone in the crowd, then nods permission to speak.

"I do not believe that Major Carter would be complicit in such a deception either," Malek says. His voice is steady, but his shoulders are inching up around his ears, and he steps back quickly. Surprising that he would be willing to risk his tenuous position after the loss of Risa by such outspokenness. It will hardly help his standing if he is seen as swayed by personal attachment to the Tau'ri.

Prissy hypocritical fuckers.

"Major Carter could have been misinformed," Thoran says.

Yeah, because that's what we do, spend all our time telling elaborate lies to our own people. Oh no, wait, that would be you guys.

"Perhaps the question is irrelevant," Jalen suggests. "If the attacks were not authorized by Stargate Command, then we must recognize that they cannot speak for all the peoples of Earth."

Heads you win, tails I lose. Enough of this crap. "Look," he says. "As much fun as it is pointing fingers, maybe we'd be better off working out what we're going to do about this?" The snake squirms, humiliation so sharp that he almost imagines it's physically moving under his skin, thinks of rocks and the things you find underneath them.

This time, there's a ripple in the crowd. No whispers, but he can feel knowing glances being exchanged. He's speaking out of turn, all right.

The snake tenses, pushing him to hand back control. That'd make it so much easier, wouldn't it? Just take over. He hangs on and feels the familiar split-second of panic, wondering if this is the time when it won't take "no" for an answer. He's sick of wondering.

"Thank you for your contributions, Colonel O'Neill," Jalen says, all irony. Now go to the back of the class.

"C'mon," he says, pushing forwards into the circle, and he's looking at her but all he can feel is the rising pressure in his head, like the sullen air before a thunderstorm, the sky getting ready to fall. He can run off at the mouth on auto-pilot; not like he hasn't had plenty of practice at snake-baiting. "What have you guys got to offer that's any better? Other than we all sit on our asses waiting for the right time to do something, whenever in the next thousand years that is –"

"Kanan," Thoran says, and the snake hears the gentleness in his voice and burns with shame. "We cannot continue the meeting in good order if your host continues to be so ... vocal."

In other words, shut him up, by any means necessary. Oh and it wants to, the snake wants to, so badly he can taste it. Doesn't know why it doesn't go ahead and do it.

"Jack, this isn't helping." Jacob's voice. But then, it could just as easily be Selmak. Whichever-the-fuck one of them it is, if it even matters any more; he's on the side of the snakes.

"Yeah, well, screw you, Jake," he says softly. "Screw you."

"We understand that you have been through a great deal, and that it is difficult for you to control yourself," Jalen says, and the sound of her voice rings like a knell. "It would be more appropriate if you were to go elsewhere until you can calm yourself."

The crowd's shifted, people moving aside to leave a clear path between him and the doorway. This way to the exit, and don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

She looks almost sad. "Are you willing to leave, or do you require assistance?"

Two Tok'ra step forwards from the crowd, and he figures that "assistance" means the kind involving a zat. Movement in his peripheral vision, and he turns to see another one behind him, feels his hands curled into fists, doesn't know if it's the snake's anger or his and doesn't give a shit. He is not going to let them drag him, he is not going to let them touch him.

"Keep your fucking hands off me," he spits out.

Nobody moves as he stalks out of the room, through the empty corridors and out of the building.

Outside, it's black night, the sky dead with clouds. As the door slams, the snake shoves into control without so much as a by-your-leave, and he's so startled he doesn't fight it.

"Are you satisfied?" Flat, deadly fury through the distorted tones. "What more do you want? I have done everything you requested, I have made all possible accommodations –"

He clutches for control then, grabbing his voice back as if he's gasping for air. "Oh, you have?" he snarls. "What happened to all that 'we are Tok'ra' bullshit? I am you and you are me and we are the walrus?"

Seething anger that chokes, that will not become words. The host does not understand, will not understand, that he has destroyed everything –

"See, Skippy, it's all very well you pretending you're so hard done by. But let's face it, you're a Goa'uld. You can take over and shut me up any damn time you want, and that makes all of this so much bullshit." A dangerous exhilaration in letting go, letting rip, the gloves finally off. Finish this now.

He would not. He would never. It is anathema.

"Yeah, but you want to, don't you? And we both know it. Can't lie to me, Skippy."

Then it boils up, a surge of anger, hatred, blinding him, white-hot burn igniting in his eyes. If that's what you want, if you think you want to know –

It hits him like a wrecking ball, like a blow to the head, so fast and hard you can't fight it, don't even know how to fight it. Nothing like the times the snake's in control of the body, nothing like that at all – like you're pinned, crushed, a black sack pulled over your head, can't move can't breathe can't think, like your head's being held underwater and you're going to die except that this is the rest of your life and this is eternity.

Then the snake lets go and recoils back. Feels like it was years, centuries, but it couldn't have been more than seconds.

A flurry of words, defensive and frantic: there and you wanted and why I will never –

– never –

Fury burnt out to ashes in an instant. Nothing left but icy cold and clammy self-disgust.

He staggers, flung back into control of his own body. His legs won't hold him up. He stumbles to lean against the side of the building – feels like he's concussed – then lets his back slide down the wall, sinking to the ground.

His head's in his hands. One of them must have done that – he thinks it might have been him. No, must have been; the snake's not doing anything, paralyzed with horror at itself, himself. That he could have done that, and done it so easily, could have wanted to do that.

He remembers to breathe and finds that he's panting, can't catch his breath, can't get hold of himself. Jesus. It's what he's been expecting all along, but somehow it wasn't what he expected at all. Wasn't how he expected it.

Underneath the adrenaline and the shock, he expects to feel something else, something worse. But he doesn't.

The snake's almost more freaked out about it than he is. No, no "almost." As if it never occurred to him that he had a breaking point, could be so flawed. Yeah, well, welcome to everybody else's fucked-up life, Skippy.

Oh God, the Goa'uld hosts. Skaara and Sha're. Daniel's Sarah, still. Is that what it's like for them all the time? No need to reach for the answer because he knows already, he can feel it there, back in genetic memory, back before Egeria. The memories of so many hosts, so many lifetimes, as if they were his own. Suppression until the host will be still (catatonic) and cause no trouble. But it's never enough. Millennia buried alive in your own body, destroyed, insane. But not gone, always there, a pinpoint of consciousness, and the Goa'uld cannot bear it, twist and contort themselves into grotesque mental shapes to block out that other mind. Obsessed with the million ways to break down and annihilate the being of another, because they cannot obliterate the other in their own minds.

And the memory too (not-his-but-his, carried in the nucleus of every cell, every part of his being) of what it meant to realize, to understand, to allow yourself to know and to be bound by the memory, the vow, that no-one should have to suffer like that ever again.

Nausea and cold, like rising shock, the way it feels to bleed out. But that's the snake. All he feels is a weird sense of relief. Like he's got the answer to a question. The other shoe's finally dropped.

Been a long time coming. And now it's come, the only surprise is how long it took to get here. To push the snake this far. And how appalled the snake is by his own actions. He can't doubt that, even if he'd like to. That's bedrock.

At least now he knows the snake is only – well, "human"'s the wrong word, but he'll take it anyway.

"Okay," he finds himself saying. It comes out as a whisper, barely audible, but then he's not talking to anyone outside his own head. He has no clue what he's saying okay to, but – "Okay."

**********

He dreams of alarm clocks and knows he's dreaming, a sea of alarm clocks surrounding his bed and they're all ringing, so no matter how many he turns off he can't find them all, can't go back to sleep. But no, he is asleep, he needs to wake up, follows the thread of consciousness along –

– and wakes up running, between one footfall and the next.

The noise is the rising screech of sirens and he's sprinting towards the gate, faster than he'd have thought possible, because whatever's happening it'll be happening there.

He's back in control of his body before he knows it, and stumbles, nearly falling flat on his face – the snake's flinching away from control, afraid to hold onto it any longer than necessary, and under any other circumstances he'd think that was fucking great except that now is not the time to sprain an ankle. He regains his balance and keeps running, stepping up the pace.

It's still dark, the stars clearly visible. There's only the faintest glow in the sky to say that they're headed towards morning. Hours to go before the dawn.

By the time he gets to the gate, there's a cluster of people round it, silhouetted against the cold shimmer of the event horizon. Most of them are in Tau'ri uniform, rumpled, some still pulling on jackets or tugging clothes straight. They must have been asleep when the alarms sounded.

There are Jaffa coming through the gate.

At first he thinks they're under attack, but the Jaffa are walking down the steps, staff weapons by their sides. Probably some of Teal'c's people coming back from a scouting mission.

"Come on, come on," someone chants under his breath; hands grab a Jaffa's arm and pull him to one side, trying to clear the steps. Get all of them through as fast as possible.

He pushes through the crowd, and the fact that people barely look twice at him, too busy staring at the gate – that's a bad sign all by itself. Pierce is by the DHD; he gets over there in time to hear him tell one of the Jaffa, "Start getting people to the gate."

The Jaffa nods, hard-faced, and takes off at a run towards the tents, trailing his men behind him.

Pierce glances over and doesn't seem to recognize him, then shakes himself as if he's still trying to wake up, and says, "Orbital sensors went off five minutes ago, sir. Looks like incoming ships. A lot of 'em. We're bugging out as soon as the gate's clear."

Shit, shit, shit. This shouldn't be happening; there's no way that anyone should know the location of the Alpha site. No way. And lots of ships means Goa'uld; nobody else is in a position to muster a fleet. Except the Asgard, and he figures Thor'd say hi before dropping in like this.

There must have been a security breach somewhere. Undoubtedly among the Jaffa. But he didn't think that, and anyway there's no time for Skippy's oh-so-charming bigotry. More people are assembling round the gate, Tok'ra and Jaffa and a scattering of Tau'ri.

The last of the Jaffa must have come through the gate, because the wormhole cuts off, plunging them all into darkness. Pierce starts dialing the address for Earth immediately.

Only the lights from the nearby buildings illuminate the scene, and he feels his pupils dilate fast, adapting to night vision with disconcerting speed, and blinks a couple of times.

Then a muted noise goes through the crowd, somewhere between a whisper and a moan.

He looks upwards, and it's as if the stars are moving, pieces of constellations sliding out of place. Then the image resolves into the shapes of ships in the dark sky, growing with impossible speed; not stars, but the tiny lights of thousands of windows tracing the angular outline of a mothership. And another.

It's like the way a city at night looks from a plane, coming in to land with the lights of office blocks and skyscrapers rushing up to meet you, distant glittering toys becoming huge and real.

For a moment, it feels as if they're hanging upside-down from the skin of the planet, looking down into the sky at the ships rising up towards them. And then the world turns right-side-up again, and for the love of God why is Pierce being so slow?

Another chevron on the gate locks and lights. Pierce dials the last symbol and slaps his palm down on the central dome of the DHD.

And nothing happens.

He can see smaller outlines breaking away from the motherships now, knows that in a minute he'll be able to identify the round shapes of al'kesh bombers.

Pierce starts re-dialing Earth, swearing continuously under his breath, a flurry of obscenities that he's probably unaware of, or he'd think twice before using them in the presence of a senior officer, snaked or not. He slams the dome down again, harder this time, as if that'll make it work.

Again. No lock. No kawoosh, no wormhole, no nada.

The SGC gate's already locked.

Could be the coincidence from hell. Maybe the SGC's decided to cut the electricity bill by sending out gate teams at oh-dark-whatever. Or the Goa'uld are deliberately tying it up; probably would have tried to tie up the gate here, if it hadn't already been active. Or – but he's not going to think about any of the other options.

The al'kesh come in low, skimming through the sky, flying saucers for the psycho killer set.

He knows the equipment at the Alpha site. They've got no ground-to-air, no ships. Nothing.

Light streaks through the air like a comet, then more streaks, a meteor shower – one's coming closer, turning into a fireball, and people dive for cover, hitting the ground with their arms shielding their heads.

Around him, he feels the ground explode upwards, ripping into the air. The punch of successive impacts jars through his bones.

When he lifts his head, he sees that the gate's still standing. But there's a red glow behind him and he turns to see buildings on fire, some of the Quonset huts crushed and shredded like the tin cans they are.

He can hear screams, too. They're going to have injured to move, on top of everything else. If they've got anywhere to move to. If they're not trapped.

Pierce scrambles back to his feet and heads back to the DHD.

In the sky, he watches the lights of the al'kesh shrink as they head out.

Pierce is punching out another address, and he recognizes it halfway through. Cimmeria. But that's no damn use, the replacement hammer would take out the Tok'ra and the Jaffa, and Pierce must have figured out the same thing because he breaks off and waits for the DHD to reset.

He can see the al'kesh turning, coming back round for another bombing run.

Pierce is frozen, hand hanging suspended over the DHD. Too slow, too slow, too slow.

Easy to shove him out of the way – no time – and start dialling, co-ordinates rising effortlessly from his memory, their memory. One address he's certain the Goa'uld don't have.

He slams the dome down and watches the vortex spill out, shining and beautiful.

Dead silence and everyone's standing around like idiots. He's the only one moving. He grabs the nearest Tok'ra and drags him up the steps, telling him, "Vouch for them," before pitching him through the event horizon; someone needs to make sure the Jaffa and humans aren't met with staff weapon blasts.

Pierce is picking himself up off the ground, looking dazed. "Tok'ra outpost," he snaps, and watches Pierce pull himself together and turn to yell, "Moving out, people. Get through fast as you can, keep the gate clear."

At least there are no civilians here. Everyone's trained; there's no panic, nobody tripping or fighting each other to get to the gate. The people nearest the steps start streaming through the event horizon, while others break away and head back to the buildings.

Fire's a bitch; way too easy for people to get trapped. They're going to need help fighting the fire and getting the injured out. No hesitation – a micro-second's hesitation, unforgivable – but he's already running.

The next impact shakes the ground and knocks him off his feet. No idea what kind of ordnance they're using, but it looks like they're trying to bomb the crap out of the place from the air, not trying to land ground troops. At least not yet.

Debris's flying and something rakes his arm, hot and sharp – metal, shredded and blasted into shrapnel. It's ripped through his sleeve – hell, his arm. Nothing he can't heal; a thought shuts off the pain. He can keep it shut off for a long time.

He pushes up onto his knees, feels someone grab his elbow to help him up, and turns to see Bra'tac, face smeared with dirt and smoke.

"Get your people to the gate," he says. Another impact rocks the ground, but this time they both stay standing.

Bra'tac doesn't let go of his arm, eyes locked on his face, intent as a hawk's. "Where to?"

"Safe haven," he says, and shit, he hears the distortion and echo in his own voice. But Bra'tac doesn't even blink, just nods and turns, breaking into an easy run.

Guess it doesn't even matter if he was speaking Goa'uld for a minute there.

The Jaffa tents are flimsy, poles and heavy canvas. They're going up like torches but they're a hell of a lot easier to get out of fast and there's less debris to trap people.

He turns towards the central buildings – computers, someone needs to wipe them, ensure no classified intel falls into Goa'uld hands – but someone groans nearby and he veers back.

A Jaffa, lying on the ground with one leg twisted at a vicious angle. A quick check doesn't suggest any spinal injuries, the guy's safe to move, and he gets an arm under his shoulder and pulls him up onto his feet with most of his weight on the good leg. But the guy's bigger than he is, and it's gonna be a bitch getting him to the gate.

Then the weight's being taken from him, and he turns to see another Jaffa and a Tok'ra getting a solid grip on the guy. He ducks out and lets them get on with it.

The medics have got the stretchers out, and people are being carried to the gate in a haphazard relay. So many people, so many wounded. He has some idea of how many people there are at the Alpha site, but no idea how many of them have already gone through the chappa'ai, how many are left. He loses track of time as he helps lift and carry, helps steer people towards the gate, and hits the ground with the others at each new airstrike.

And this one's no different, fire arcing through the sky, but he sees the trajectory, sees where it's going to land. Someone's memories tell him what a direct hit could do to a naquadah power generator, and he bellows, "Down! Everyone down!" at the top of his lungs and hits the ground rolling.

He sees the light from the explosion even through his closed eyelids.

When he looks up, a pillar of oily flames and black smoke rises where the generator shed was, metal sheets and concrete blocks blasted across the grounds.

He braces his hands on his knees and stares at it dumbly, hypnotized by the destruction. Pins and needles stab through his skin – fucking naquadah – but he takes a step forwards without thinking, drawn in.

Someone's down on the ground, pinned under the rubble. He lifts the metal H-beam off him – thank God for snake strength – and recognizes Pierce.

Must have stayed to help get all his men out. We don't leave people behind. He doesn't want to think about what's broken and smashed, about the bloody skin he glimpses where Pierce's uniform is torn away.

Someone is talking – he's talking. The host is talking. A stream of steady meaningless words, the sort he can produce in his sleep, "It's okay, hold still, gonna be okay, you're gonna be fine, gonna get you out of here," because the words don't matter. Even if Pierce is still conscious, all he's hearing is tone, and all he needs is a voice, a lifeline to hold onto, the promise that it's okay, someone else is taking care of it.

He's trying to work out how the hell he's going to get Pierce to the gate without hurting him worse, when a heavy hand drops onto his shoulder and a deep familiar voice sounds in his ear. "The gate cannot remain open for much longer. We must leave now."

The Jaffa. Teal'c. He can't leave, he doesn't know if they've got everyone through yet, he has to stay – but Teal'c is there, helping him lift Pierce.

He grabs Pierce's other arm and pulls it over his shoulders and then they're up, heading for the gate at a stumbling run, boots thudding up the stone steps, and they don't even break stride as the event horizon gulps them down.

**********

6.

**********

Too many people, too little space.

The chappa'ai is in the tunnel complex itself, spitting them out down slick steps into a passageway that's already choked with people. Memory says the outpost is tiny, only used as an organization point for the most highly-classified operations; no address is more closely-guarded. If they are not safe here, then they are safe nowhere.

Noise bounces off the crystal walls, as if they're amplifying the echoes instead of absorbing them, sound doubling and redoubling. People shouting in Goa'uld and English, cries of pain and the sound of running feet all merge into an incoherent roar, like the noise you hear when your head's underwater.

Hands reach out, taking Pierce's weight from his shoulders and lifting him on to a stretcher. He doesn't let go until he's sure they've got him, fingers clutching a fold of Pierce's sleeve until the stretcher disappears in the crowd.

A couple of Jaffa hurry up to Teal'c and start bending his ear about something. Behind him, he hears the tearing sound of the wormhole disengaging. Thirty-eight minutes up. They must have been the last people through. If Teal'c hadn't got him – if Teal'c hadn't come back for him – he wouldn't have made it.

And there must still be people at the Alpha site, trapped there. Left behind.

"We have to open the gate," he says to the Tok'ra at the DHD. Someone he doesn't recognize, an unfamiliar host. "We need to dial the Alpha site again." They can send a rescue party through, open the gate again from the other side –

But the Tok'ra shakes his head and says something about a lockdown, hand going to the zat at his belt. He backs off, raising both hands to show that he's harmless, trying to read the guy's lips.

"They will not permit us to leave," Rak'nor tells Teal'c urgently, cutting through the noise and making sounds separate themselves out again.

"The Alpha site was betrayed," the Tok'ra snaps. "It is only to be expected that the person or persons responsible will attempt to leave, or to communicate this address to the Goa'uld."

One of the Jaffa tightens his grip on his staff weapon. "Do you accuse us?"

"The base commander has instituted a lockdown. No-one may be permitted to leave until we are in a position to evacuate this base in its entirety."

Oh yeah, because that's going to go down so fucking well.

"Are we then prisoners?" Teal'c enquires, his tone unreadably calm.

"No more than are we all." And admittedly, the look on the Tok'ra's face says he isn't any happier about being trapped in a tiny space with a bunch of Jaffa than they are.

He rubs both hands over his face – pungent smell of blood and soot on his skin – and tries to think, tries to clear his head, because someone needs to take charge before the whole situation boils over.

People push past him, bumping and jostling him, and he can't get the thoughts straight in his mind. They need to open the gate again. Breach security and everyone here could die.

"Okay, folks," he says. "Listen up. We need to break this party up –"

"We do not take orders from Tok'ra," the second Jaffa spits.

And he must have lunged forwards, must have done something, because then Teal'c's between them, a restraining palm pressed against his chest. He takes a step back, then another, watches Teal'c turn to talk to the guy in a low voice.

Right. Let Teal'c handle it. Anything he tries to do now is just going to make things worse. He fucking hopes that Teal'c can handle it.

Abruptly, his back's pressed against a wall, stooping as if he can fit himself into its curve, vanish between its edges. Below the noise, below everything, he can hear the constant creak and boom of the tunnels themselves as they shift in response to pressure, the overwhelming weight of rock and earth bearing down on them.

Someone – the chief of security, he remembers – is talking at him, over him.

"– to compromise the security of a delmak five outpost, under any circumstances –"

The patch of wall looks like grey fur, but it's made up of tiny needle-sharp crystals, like the inside of a geode, pricking through his jacket.

Typical snakes. A bunch of their people just narrowly avoided being nuked, so they're going to bitch about it.

"Which of you chose to disclose this address? Host or symbiote?"

A pause, silence ringing in his ears; he registers that he's just been asked a question.

Hadn't even occurred to him to think about it. Someone's memory, someone's thought, the necessity of it – it saved their asses, and aren't you guys the ones who are supposed to be so big on "we are one" anyway?

He laughs, because he can't not, because it's not like the snake knows either. "Lady, I have no fucking clue."

It should terrify him. That he doesn't know, hadn't even thought about it. But somehow it doesn't. His brain must be postponing the freakout in self-protection, putting it on hold until later. Adrenaline'll do that.

The security officer's still talking, but then Thoran's in between them, one hand raised, saying something to her. Steering her away.

People keep streaming past, a river, a tidal wave, until it's easier to let go of his grip on the wall and let himself be swept along with them, down the endless corridors. His feet know the way.

Anonymous. A few sidelong looks when someone registers the combination of Tau'ri uniform and naquadah in his blood, but then something more important catches their attention. Everyone's got worse shit to worry about. Right now, no-one's looking twice at him; no-one recognizes him or cares. It feels almost like safety.

He lets his eyes shut briefly, and after that things come in flashes, like a movie when the projector's breaking down, the images slowing to a stutter, individual frames jerking past one by one, not adding up. Sounds slowing down, sinking into an incomprehensible bass drawl, meaningless as the ocean.

Once, he catches sight of a blonde head in the crowd, and for a moment he thinks it's Shallan. But he's disoriented, he knows. Seeing what he wants to see.

When he next looks up, he's in what must be an improvised infirmary. The tunnel widens out here into a long chamber, and the wounded are laid out in rows along each side, like people sleeping on a subway platform. He catches sight of Pierce being lifted off a stretcher into an empty space.

The injured Tok'ra lie unnaturally still and silent, not moaning or crying out in pain. Most of them. Only extreme or drawn-out pain will wear down the symbiote's ability to block it, and –

No. He's not thinking about that, about exactly how long it takes before the pain starts to bleed through, a trickle and then a damburst. Inevitable, inescapable, but you try to escape it anyway, every time. The mind knows better, but the body is a dumb whimpering animal that doesn't know why it's being hurt, that keeps expecting something other than pain. And after the first time you don't even have the will left to stop the heart and end it that way.

"Are you in need of medical attention?" someone asks. Loudly, as if they're repeating something they've already said. Or they imagine he doesn't understand English. Or Goa'uld. Whichever.

Oh yeah, his arm. Forgot about that. He lets the sensation filter into consciousness enough to register a gash from flying shrapnel, tissue torn and burnt.

Trivial. Easy enough to heal on his own.

The Tok'ra healer is still staring at him, which means he hasn't answered out loud. "Uh, no. Just peachy."

"Then you can be of assistance," the healer snaps, and damn, these people could use some work on their bedside manner.

But there's something being shoved into his hand: smooth rounded metal, warm as if it's just been taken from someone else's hand, still slick with their sweat. One of those Goa'uld doohickies that always reminds him of an apricot Danish. A healing device.

The healer gives him a little shove in the direction of the injured, then turns to address someone else.

He's on his own. Him and the snake.

Reflex (or something) takes him down onto his knees next to the nearest person, and never mind the fact that he hasn't been able to kneel like that for years.

The guy on the floor's a human – that is, human human. Unblended human. One of the SGC personnel, some kid whose name he doesn't know. More than a few broken bones, from the way he's lying, and he doesn't want to think about how much more damage they probably did moving him.

Olive skin gone ashy, breathing shallow and rapid: in shock, and he'd bet the guy's bleeding internally. He looks round, looking for a doctor to call, anyone, but there were only a few corpsmen at the Alpha site to begin with. They've always relied on being able to stabilize the seriously-injured on the spot and then ship them back through the gate to the infirmary at the SGC.

But his hands are already busy, one sliding the healing device over the other. The flat round stone settles into his palm, splaying his fingers out around it.

He holds it out over the guy and shuts his eyes, trying to tune out the noise and chaos, and concentrates. On what, he's not sure, but it seems like that's how it should work.

There's a rising hum – something he can feel, not hear, a naquadah buzz along his veins. It makes him think of the sarcophagus, the same unnatural energy forcing unnatural health into a body that's trying to let go, and he nearly rips the damn thing off and hurls it across the floor.

But then it falls into place, lines of energy running hot/cold through his body, like a circuit's been completed and the power's starting to flow, light pouring out of his hands and into the injured man's body. And he can feel it there too, drawn into the broken places where the body needs help to heal, like water into dry cracked soil.

As easily as he can reach out his thoughts into the host's body to repair his own wounds.

You just have to get your mind out of the way and let it happen, let it run through you. Like riding a bicycle; you never forget how. But it's easier than the snake's memories predict (he has no aptitude for this; his hands are a saboteur's and a killer's, not a healer's).

Nearly too easy, when he opens his eyes and sees the guy's color beginning to return, his breathing deepening. The hand in the device is trembling against the hand bracing it, fingers locked so tightly around the stone that they're starting to cramp. It takes an effort to turn the device off, like a tap that's sticking, won't stop leaking energy.

But he thinks the guy's stable at least; the bleeding's stopped. He's got a fighting chance.

He stands and looks round, trying to get an idea of what he's supposed to do next. Across the passageway, he sees Thoran kneeling to use another healing device, furred robes trailing on the blood-smeared floor.

And he catches sight of Jacob talking to Bra'tac, their heads together in a private council of war.

"– have complained of sickness."

"Yeah." Jacob sweeps a hand over his balding head. "Looks like everyone who was still at the site when the generator went up got exposed." A pause for internal conversation. "Low dose. Selmak says it shouldn't be anything that your symbiotes can't handle. You just need to wait it out. Couple of hours, tops."

Radiation exposure, and that's another thought he's not, not going to follow. Even if the Jaffa and the Tok'ra can handle it, it's going to be another matter for any of the unblended humans who got exposed. Bad news.

Nobody seems to be in charge; looks like everyone's expected to make their own assessment and pitch in wherever they think they can be most useful.

He moves along the rows and tries to see who's been treated and who still needs help. Another Tok'ra moves out of his way, gives him a fractional headshake when he glances at the injured man, but –

Jesus fucking Christ. He doesn't even know how the guy's still alive. Must have been near the generator when it blew, skin blackened and bloody, charred in some places, but he's still trying to breathe, the symbiote sustaining the host. The face is only partly burnt, but it still takes him a moment to recognize Malek.

He doesn't know when he knelt down, but he's there, with the healing device in his hands, and he's not going to think about Carter, who got more afraid of it each time she used it, less and less certain, until at the end she'd been terrified that she was only hurting Daniel worse.

It's not the same as before. This time, it's like pouring water into a sieve, energy draining away faster than he can replace it, nothing holding, everything slipping away, and the memory feels like a wound opening up inside him. But there's another mind in the blackness, another point of energy, very faint – the symbiote, still trying to heal the body; the host's mind out of reach, but reaching, still, and he can't let go of that. Won't.

He hangs on, like he's hanging onto someone who's being dragged away by the undertow, knowing that he'll have to let go soon, but not yet, not –

A hand on his arm, a hard grip wrenching his hands apart, breaking the circuit. His eyes snap open, reflexes screaming at him to turn, strike, defend himself, but he can barely lift a hand, sluggish as if he's underwater or fighting heavy gravity.

"He's not going to make it," Jacob repeats. "The host's not going to make it. He's gone already. All you're doing is dragging it out for longer."

Hard eyes meeting his, telling him what he already knows, what the snake already knows.

He feels numb, slammed back into the shape of his own body, as if the energy short-circuited and fried his nerves. Jalrow edges past, a small egg-shaped instrument in his hand, and moves it through the air over Malek's head.

"The host is brain-dead," he pronounces, and Jacob nods – no, Selmak nods. He doesn't know how he can tell the difference, but he can.

Two of the Tok'ra turn the body over, rolling it face-down: not roughly, but not kindly either. Impersonally. As if they're handling an inanimate object, a piece of lumber.

One of them wrenches the jacket down; the other produces a small scalpel and slices into the back of the host's neck, slashing through cloth and flesh in one quick motion, as if there was no difference between the two.

A knife in a snake's hands, and his stomach turns over, but memory rushes in before he can even protest. The symbiote is too weak to leave the body on his own. This is standard procedure (other-self slipped away in the darkness, trapped in a corpse, nothing left but waiting to follow).

The Tok'ra cuts deeper, and where a layer of muscle gapes open he sees something blue-grey, moving sluggishly, and fights back nausea. The second Tok'ra prepares a containment canister, while the first reaches bare fingers into the wound, probing, then curls them round and eases the length of the symbiote out.

Like a fucking tapeworm, something monstrous, something that should never be inside a human body. It's always given him the creeps, seeing one of the snakes outside a host. Knowing how fast they can move, uncoil and leap at you.

But that's Malek's symbiote.

Then, double vision making things jump and shake; no, that's Malek. The host is –

He doesn't know the host's name.

Washing over him, the shock of memory: being torn from your body, host-body, the one you walk through the world in, and hurled back into symbiote-body. Brutal reminder that this is what you are: not human, helpless and nearly blind out of water, fighting the primitive urge to lunge for a host, escape out of the cruel air. Huge rough hands pick you up and you know that they're the hands of comrades, sister/brothers, and still you shriek and twist reflexively, small and sinuous and afraid –

But the symbiote – Malek – isn't twisting, isn't moving or vocalizing. It – he – dangles limply over the Tok'ra's hands, eyes white, filmed over with nictitating membrane. When they slide him into the canister, he twitches convulsively, spasming as he hits the water, then slackens again, drifting on the motion of the fluid as it sloshes to and fro.

Too weak to survive, in all probability. He must have poured all his strength into trying to save his host. And now ... the containment canisters are a stop-gap, designed for transportation only. They lack the life-support systems of a tank, and even those can only sustain life for a limited time, without the rich bioelectric charges of a host's nervous system. They are not what they once were, back in their species's past; they cannot survive alone. There may only be one or two tanks, or none, at such a small base. And they are probably already occupied.

Cold knowledge.

The Tok'ra stand in the middle of the tunnel, the canister slung between them, and look around. He knows what they're looking for. There were only a handful of unblended humans at the Alpha site to begin with. There are even fewer here. Everyone else is Tok'ra or Jaffa: incapable of taking another symbiote.

He watches, immobile, as they make a decision and crouch next to Pierce, start talking in low voices. As if he's forgotten how to do anything but watch.

Then Pierce's "No" breaks through the noise, like the volume suddenly jumping on a TV, the "mute" button switched off. Somehow he's halfway across the tunnel towards them but frozen again, not knowing whether he's trying to help them or stop them. Over my dead body.

"Your injuries are severe," one of the Tok'ra is telling Pierce. "Perhaps more so than you know; the generator explosion produced considerable radiation. We can make no guarantees of your survival, but if you were to blend with Malek, it would improve the odds for both of you."

Pierce is struggling to sit up, looking past them. At him. But he doesn't know what – who – Pierce is seeing.

Jacob intervenes, lowering himself to one knee to talk to Pierce, a glance cueing the others to step back. "It's your call, major. Nobody's gonna force you. But we can talk about it. Tell you anything you need to know to make the decision."

But Pierce ignores Jacob, staring past him, as if he can see the shape of something vast and terrifying in his future.

"Colonel," he says. "I can't, I –" Then, desperate: "Don't let them."

It slices through him. Yeah, it's not like he's exactly been a poster boy for the joys of blending here, and he wants to tell Pierce that this is not how it's supposed to be, not how it would be for him, wants to swear to Pierce that he won't let the Tok'ra near him – wants to –

He puts a hand to his head and grinds his knuckles against his temple.

"Nobody's going to make you," Jacob repeats, steely reassurance in his voice, and he gets a glimpse of what Jacob must have been like when he was Air Force, not Tok'ra. "But they're not kidding you. You're in rough shape. It's an option."

Pierce goes on shaking his head, as if he hasn't heard anything. Finally Jacob waves the Tok'ra away, repeating the gesture with his eyes flashing bright when they don't move immediately, and they leave. Probably to go in search of someone else to harass, the fuckers.

Jacob puts a hand under Pierce's shoulder and helps him ease back down again.

This is how much they hate us. The thought tastes like bile in his throat. We repel them so greatly that they would rather die, rather sentence one of us to death, than blend.

And with the thought, a surge of bitterness – to be dependent on hosts to live, and to be denied at their whim – before the snake can suppress the thought, drive it away, an automatic wash of shame. Unacceptable, forbidden, the very thought tantamount to a violation of the host's rights.

But still the resentment twists inside him, acid in the gut, pain that won't go away.

Not like he imagines the inside of his head is too pretty, either.

Then Jacob's hand is on his elbow – he's still in the middle of the passageway, and Jacob is steering him out of the way as another group of people come through.

Before he knows it, he's sitting on the floor with his back against a wall, a bottle and some kind of packet being shoved into his hands. He's still got the healing device looped over one palm, and fumbles it off, flexing cramped fingers.

"You need to eat something," Jacob says. "That thing takes more out of you than you think."

And people accuse him of being a mother hen. The bottle turns out to be water, and the packet's full of small leathery squares that taste like seaweed. Compressed protein and nutrients. Tok'ra MREs: yet another thing he could happily have gone through life without knowing about.

"Been a bitch of a day, if you'll pardon my French," Jacob says. "Everything's going to hell, the Jaffa are pissed about the lockdown, it'll be a damn miracle if there aren't riots, and Selmak had to shout down half the councillors before we could even radio the SGC and let them know we got out. They're still not letting us give Hammond the gate address here."

"Malek's host," he says. "What was his name?"

"What was ...?" Then: "I don't know, Jack. They didn't ever talk about that."

It's getting more crowded. When there's time to breathe, some of the Tok'ra lift the covered bodies of the dead and move them into a side room, then move more wounded into the empty places. Some of the Jaffa won't leave their wounded comrades. Some of the Tau'ri won't, either. It's not as if there's any more space in the rest of the base.

After a while, Jacob pushes himself up off the floor. "Gotta go yell at some more people."

He looks down and finds that he's eaten half the packet of whatever-they-are; apparently the snake thinks they taste just fine. But his head's beginning to ache, and he has to remember how to filter out the pain. Radiation exposure; the sort of low-grade cell damage that's easy for a symbiote's immune system to heal, and he doesn't want to follow where that thought's heading but he can't stop it.

If they'd had a symbiote available when Daniel was dying (probably wouldn't have been enough anyway, wouldn't have made any difference, he tells himself). If he'd been the one who had to make Carter's choice.

Motion in the corner of his eye makes him turn. Thoran finishes pulling off his robe of office, stripped down to his shirt-sleeves, or the Tok'ra turtleneck equivalent. Then he bends to spread his robe over the body of Malek's host, as gently as someone covering a sleeping friend, or tucking a child into bed for the night.

"We know the revulsion that many Tau'ri feel for our kind," Thoran says, without turning round. As if he's talking to the air, to no-one in particular. "I was aware of Colonel O'Neill's ... distaste ... for us." He runs a hand along the fabric, smoothing out the folds. "But I did not believe he would be so irrational as to prefer death over blending with another mind. I had even hoped that the experience, however brief, might have left him with greater understanding of our ways."

He hears the irony in Thoran's tone, in the silence he leaves to echo. No need to spell out the magnitude of the miscalculation, and he knows that Thoran will not offer the insult of an apology. Only an explanation.

A chess-player, he thinks. Takes one to know one. A good one, too, good enough to make a smart player's mistake, not a dumb one's. And cold enough, or driven enough, to use his best friend as a pawn. What's worth the cost of sharing all the knowledge in the brain of one of our top operatives with the Tau'ri? The chance of buying Colonel O'Neill's sympathies. Let him understand us first hand. Get him on our side, even if we can't recruit him.

He leans his head back against the wall, and ignores the crystal spikes trying to poke a hole in his scalp. Like getting the punchline of a bad joke, half a year late. The chessboard's been overturned, and all the pieces are still rolling across the floor.

"O'Neill – and Kanan, is it not?" Bra'tac's voice.

He doesn't know how much time has passed when he opens his eyes to see Bra'tac leaning on his staff weapon as if it's a cane, with the attitude that says that he's a frail old man who could only kick your ass with one hand tied behind his back nowadays. "I have need of your assistance."

But when he climbs to his feet, he can't see a scratch on the old coot, apart from a long gash on his forearm, exposed by the short-sleeve chain-mail. Nasty but hardly life-threatening, and he's wondering how to translate the concept of triage into Jaffa when Bra'tac's gaze flicks sideways, his eyebrows going up pointedly.

The Jaffa on the floor – just a kid – is struggling to sit up despite the blood soaking through his robes, shoving away the Tok'ra kneeling next to him. Abdominal wound: bad for anyone, but worse for a Jaffa. If his symbiote's been injured too, he's not going to make it without help. And right now, he's too terrified and angry to let a snakehead help him.

He's seen the same thing with new recruits before, too scared to let a medic near them. But Christ, the kid looks fifteen, and he's scared because a snake's trying to use a Goa'uld toy on him.

He clears his throat and wishes he could clear the fog from his head, then says, "Sure," pitching his voice to the audience. "Be glad to help." The metal of the healing device has gone cold; no idea how long he's been spacing out for.

It's not like healing a Tok'ra. He can feel the presence of Bra'tac's immature symbiote, like a dense coil of smoke, barely a mind of its own beyond the hungry dictates of genetic memory. The snake's never done this before. Never healed a Jaffa.

As soon as Bra'tac's arm is half-healed, he pulls away and crouches over the young warrior, seizing his shoulder in an iron grip and forcing him to look at the red welt where the wound was.

"See, foolish child. There is no evil in it. They are not Goa'uld." The Jaffa kid swallows and stares at him, and Bra'tac shakes him a little more, just for good measure. "Now, let them do their work."

The kid still looks scared shitless, but he lies back, and doesn't fight when the Tok'ra healer approaches him again. With about equal wariness, come to think of it.

"Tense, huh?" he says.

Bra'tac shrugs, canny and cagy as ever. "Teal'c is speaking with the others now. It is much to ask, for the Jaffa to trust our lives in the hands of the Tok'ra, when we are as prisoners here. There are some who feel that the Tok'ra weigh our lives as lightly as the Goa'uld do."

"What do you think?" he manages.

Bra'tac hums a little, pondering, or picking his words. "I think ... the Tok'ra are people much as any other. Some wise, some foolish. If perhaps over-inclined to see their fight against the Goa'uld as something rare and special, which all must admire ..." A sideways look, watching for his reaction. Waiting to see which side he's on. "You must understand that we Jaffa see Goa'uld fight Goa'uld every day of our lives. We die like cattle in their wars. It is hard, perhaps, for us to have faith that the Tok'ra are different."

Across the tunnel, Verran lowers a healing device and sit back on his heels, head bowed. Then he draws the blanket up to cover the wounded person's face. One hand falls frees from beneath it, wrist covered by a rough brown sleeve.

A stab of pain, sharp enough that he can't catch his breath. Another sister/brother dead. The Alpha site betrayed. And still the Jaffa complain. So many Tok'ra dead, and more will die before the day is over. How many of them are left now? Fewer than a thousand? For every Jaffa who dies, more will be born. But the Tok'ra have no children. They cannot be replaced.

People, Skippy. People can't be replaced.

But the grief doesn't dissipate; it sits in his chest, choking him, hard and heavy as a stone. Means something, to know that you're a dead end, the last in line. Never thought of having kids again. You don't deserve second chances at some things.

People can't be replaced.

Bra'tac turns to go, leaning on his staff weapon, then pauses by the body of Malek's host. "Ah, the poor child," he says softly.

He wants – the snake wants – to object, to protest that Malek had the same host for more than half a century. He doubts that the Jaffa ever spoke with the host; only the symbiote, more than a thousand years old (young, by Tok'ra standards, one of Egeria's last children). It is the Jaffa and the Tau'ri who are as children, with their mayfly lives. But the words won't come.

He realizes he's been looking for faces he knows in the crowd, marking up an invisible tally: not missing, not dead. Names he knows, names he's trying not to know.

When he shuts his eyes, he can still hear the babble and the echo, still feel his skin prickle from the people all around them, still smell the blood and the smoke and the antiseptic smell of the tunnel crystals themselves. It reminds him absurdly of that gritty pink paste that dentists use, chalky and sweet.

Someone takes the healing device away from him, and he lets them. But there are no more wounded being brought into the infirmary. Things are beginning to slow down, people shifting out of crisis mode and settling in for the long haul.

The infirmary seems to be becoming an ad hoc center of operations; he sees Jacob and Thoran among a group of councillors conferring with the base commander, hears Selmak's voice raised to protest something.

Habit makes him glance at his watch; it says that hours have gone by since the attack. But then again it also still says he's in Hong Kong.

He looks up to see one of the Tok'ra approaching him (face/name/memories, and he shakes his head like he's trying to shake water out of his ears).

"Major Pierce is growing weaker," the Tok'ra says. "I fear he is now beyond the healing of a hand device."

"Sure," he snarls. "Let me guess, you're going to say that putting a snake in his head is his only hope."

But the Tok'ra only frowns at him, and that makes something click. He recognizes the guy – he does, not just the snake. The guy they rescued from Aris Boch, back when they still thought the Tok'ra were their shiny new friends. Korra.

"I believe that is indeed the case," Korra says. "We would not deceive you in such matters. But he has made his choice clear."

"Why are you talking to me, then?"

A careful shrug. Somehow it's taken him this long to notice that Korra's talking in his human voice. The host speaking. "He is afraid, and he will not let our people near him. I do not think that he should die alone."

It's a good thought. Better than he expected from them, and he's ashamed he didn't think of it himself. Though if Pierce is too scared to let any snakeheads near him, there might be a logic problem in assuming that he can help. Better to go looking for one of the handful of SGC personnel around.

Still, maybe it'll be enough to see a familiar face, a familiar uniform. Someone who doesn't have "alien" written all over him. Someone who looks like someone he knew.

It's a struggle to get his bearings again and remember where Pierce was; feels like he's gotten turned around without knowing it.

But he picks his way over to where Pierce is lying and eases himself down onto the floor next to him, settling his back against the wall.

Pierce jerks at the noise and looks round wildly, trying to push himself up. But the arm that's still working won't take his weight, and he collapses back again.

"At ease, major." He puts everything he can of Colonel O'Neill into his voice; he's getting the impression that Pierce can't see him clearly now. Retinal damage, maybe. "Only me."

Must be good enough; Pierce relaxes and closes his eyes again.

He finds a spare blanket, rolls it up and gets it under Pierce's head. Might make it easier for him to breathe for a while. Sometimes the no-furniture thing's a pain in the ass.

Then he drops his hand onto Pierce's shoulder and rests it there lightly, just enough to be felt, not enough to jar what's broken and burnt. He figures the guy could use a point of contact. He'd say something, keep talking, but right now he's all out of comforting lies. And Pierce is probably past hearing them anyway.

His head feels as if it should ache but doesn't, crammed too full of the snake's thoughts. But they're opaque, as if he's too close up to be able to read them.

So instead he just sits there and listens to Pierce's breathing get rougher.

He doesn't know how long he's been sitting when raised voices catch his attention. He looks up to see Teal'c striding into the infirmary, regal despite the blood and the scorch marks on his robes. Rak'nor, Bra'tac, and a few of the other Jaffa flank him.

Selmak crosses the passageway to greet him, trailing the other councillors reluctantly behind.

"How much longer are we to be kept prisoner here?" Rak'nor demands loudly, and round the infirmary people quieten and turn to look.

Selmak exchanges a glance with Thoran. "It may take many days for us to locate a suitable interim base. But in the meantime, we have begun extending the tunnel system to create more space for the Jaffa."

"You would have us kept apart?" And hell, this could turn into a clusterfuck before anyone can blink twice.

"We had assumed that separate chambers for the Jaffa would help reduce ... unrest," Thoran says.

"Located some way from anything the Tok'ra wish to keep secret, no doubt." Teal'c's voice is as bland as Thoran's is acid, his face impassive. He doesn't know what T's playing at: he's not stepping up and taking charge, just hanging back a little. Watching the others.

"Should we not protect ourselves?" Thoran enquires. "We can trust the Jaffa no more than you will trust us."

"We have come here in trust," Rak'nor bursts out, frustrated and earnest. "Did you think we did so lightly?"

Thoran throws a poisonous look at Teal'c: control your people.

But Teal'c only says, "Upon this base, there are several hundred Jaffa, bearing arms."

A cold shock, like icy water flung in his face. He would not have expected this Jaffa to resort to violence so quickly. Thought he was trustworthy. Safe. But he was lulled by the host's emotions, his insistence on treating the Jaffa as if he was a human. Stupid, to let down his guard so.

But no, Teal'c wouldn't do that. Would he? He's losing track of what's him and what's the snake.

Thoran echoes his thoughts too closely for comfort. "Such crude threats of violence are no more than we would expect from the Jaffa."

"I merely state the facts of our situation. I do not believe that you could prevent us from leaving if we wished to do so."

Teal'c's face is taut the way it is when he's in pain and refusing to show it. Took him a good year to learn that it meant he needed to order him to see Fraiser immediately, and he's suddenly scared that Teal'c's injured. But Teal'c's standing tall and not wavering.

And he wants to be on his feet, needs to be on his fucking feet and dealing with this before it all goes nuclear, not curled against the wall with one hand on a dying man's shoulder. But he can't get up, can't make himself move. And he's not leaving Pierce. He can do that much of his duty.

"There is a self-destruct on this base," Thoran says. "You know that we would activate it before permitting the security of the base to be compromised."

A spike of adrenaline, but he recognizes Thoran's tone (he does, the snake does). His brother at work. Thoran is watching Teal'c as closely if he's meeting his eyes over a chess board. Or a poker table. Which is fucked up, because he really doubts that the snakes play poker.

Jalen's looking alarmed, but Teal'c's mouth curves a fraction. "There is a tale told of Heru'ur that, for his amusement, he would have his Jaffa catch chel'nar from the dry hills –"

– a memory from a former host: grey, fox-like creatures, scavengers, pests in the vineyards at harvest time –

"– and set them within a ring of fire. As the smoke reached them, they would turn and rend one another. They never lived to burn. The Goa'uld will have no need to kill us, if we are so quick to do their work for them."

Then Thoran smiles too, the smile of a chessplayer who reaches to tip over his own king. "What will it take to extinguish this fire?"

Politics. And a nicer piece of brinksmanship he's rarely seen. No wonder Teal'c looks like he's in pain; warriors aren't supposed to play dirty pool like this.

"The Jaffa must be allowed to leave," Rak'nor blurts, but Teal'c silences him with a look. "We must have a share in decisions concerning this base, if we are to remain here any longer."

"Perhaps we might then be able to negotiate further," Jalen suggests –

– but then Pierce coughs, choking, and the vomit's more than half blood.

He gets Pierce turned over onto his side, and the Tok'ra healers come hurrying. The snake recognizes the ampoule they shove into his hand and knows what to do with it, pressing one blunt end against a vein in Pierce's neck and snapping it to send the drug into his bloodstream. But it's a massive dose of a simple painkiller, nothing more. Nothing more to be done.

It goes fast, after that, Pierce's breathing slowing as much from the drug as from his injuries. He's not sure if he knew that before he administered it. Not sure if it would have made a difference. He suspects not.

In the end, it's almost gentle. Small mercies. He's seen a lot of deaths, some of them his own, and this wasn't the worst.

Afterwards, after they've taken the body away, he sits with his back against the wall and doesn't think about anything for a while.

Jacob comes to stand near him, and he guesses it must be a not-coffee break in the negotiations. "He was a good man," Jacob says.

"Yeah. He was that."

"Listen, I just got through talking to George. Base command's agreed to let Sam bring a med team through, neutral parties deal. They should be here any minute now. Have to stay here until the lockdown's over, of course."

"How'd you wangle that?"

"Selmak told them that if the address of the Alpha site was leaked by the SGC, having hostages here might help preclude further attacks."

Jesus. Selmak's a cold bastard, then. He can't get a read on Jacob's tone, but his shrug is half-apologetic, half-defensive. "Hey, it worked." He hesitates, then adds, "Oh, Malek didn't make it. Just so you know. I think Sam'd wanna be here."

One of Carter's team – no, two of Carter's team – dead. Jacob's tone is casual, but he knows that Selmak and Jacob must both feel it as he does. A lonely death, in the sterile confines of a containment canister. Barely enough room to turn round on yourself. Cut off, helpless.

Kinder to have let him die with his host.

A pressure of words in his mind, aching. Words that must be spoken, but he is not permitted, and will not transgress that rule. But he knows what the words are, and it doesn't really matter which of them lets them spill into consciousness in the end.

We do not surrender, even in death. You will not be forgotten.

The bodies will be destroyed, to leave no trace, no possibility of revival even by a sarcophagus. This base will be destroyed after it's evacuated. Last one out turns off the lights and sets the self-destruct.

All that's left is memory.

He hears Jacob move, finally, and looks up to see the SGC team come round the corner into the infirmary. Carter – God, it feels like a century since he's seen her. Satterfield and Greene are behind her: the remnants of her team, escorting the medics.

Jacob goes straight to Carter; too far away to hear what he says, but he sees Carter's face crumple. She leans into the shelter of her father's arm and presses her face against his shoulder.

But then she pulls away, spine straightening, and turns to her people. Greene looks shocky, and she says something quiet to him. Satterfield looks like she's about to burst into tears. Only a year or two out of the Academy, he remembers; this could be the first time she's lost a team-mate. Carter wraps an arm round her and pulls her in, body language half-CO and half-friend.

Teal'c reaches them about the same time he does, putting a hand on Carter's arm and bowing his head in sympathy, and for a moment, it's almost like they're back together again. Like SG-1 is back together again.

Blink and the optical illusion vanishes: he has a snake in his head, and Jaffa are doing it for themselves, and Carter had a team of her own, and now it's broken.

The medics fan out across the infirmary. Fraiser gives him her quick, all-purpose professional smile as she goes by. Not much they can do; Tok'ra medical tech is centuries ahead of theirs, even if they do know more about treating unblended humans. It's a political gesture.

Carter looks up at him and says, "We got a message at the SGC." Then she realizes that she's automatically started reporting to him, as if he was still her CO, and turns to direct her words to everyone in the little group. "It came in at – it must have been exactly the same time as the attack. It claimed to be from the coalition of system lords. They said that this was retaliation for the attacks on them."

Fucking Prometheus. Because the system lords not only don't know the difference between the NID and the SGC, they don't care.

"They won't attack Earth because of the Protected Planets treaty, not yet, but they can pay us back in kind: an off-world strike for an off-world strike. And if there's another attack, they say they'll declare the treaty void. They'll hit Earth directly."

Jacob makes a face. "Yeah, they're full of it. They wouldn't risk an attack on Earth right now. Not when they've got Anubis to deal with. Not if they still think the Asgard'll step in."

But he can glimpse Selmak's doubts beneath Jacob's confidence. For the system lords to tolerate an open challenge would be seen as a mark of weakness; if Anubis is still avoiding open confrontation with them, if they think the Asgard are bluffing –

– a clamor, voices raised. He turns to see that Satterfield's slipped away from them and darted across the blood-stained floor to the Tok'ra.

"Take me," she repeats loudly. "The next symbiote who needs a host, take me."

"No," Carter blurts, then puts her hand over her mouth as if she's trying to take back what she's just said. She looks like she's been punched in the gut.

Satterfield's face is streaked with tears, but she's not crying now.

Thoran frowns at her, the way he frowns at inexplicable anomalies, data that fits into no known categories. The way someone might look if a pet cat had just spoken to them in fluent English. But she meets his gaze, fierce with determination.

She's a kid, for chrissakes. Naïve and impulsive, some sort of stupid romantic notion of self-sacrifice playing out. She'll think better of it, change her mind as soon as the reality of it sinks in. They can't let her do this. He should say something, wants to say something, but he's frozen, just as he was with Pierce. Yes. No. Please. Don't do this.

She glares round at them, as if she's daring them to try and stop her. Jacob turns to Carter and starts talking in a low voice.

He's seen Satterfield's record, and seen her handle herself in action, better than he'd predicted. Smart enough and tough enough for the SGC to recruit her, old enough to risk her life on the front lines of their secret war. But this isn't the same. This is –

No. He needs to get out of here. He can see how it's going to play out. The Tok'ra won't say no to a willing host and they won't be too picky about her motives, especially not now. Carter will try to talk her out of it, but half-heartedly, held back by the memories she carries, by her love for her father.

And he doesn't need to see what comes after that. Maybe it makes him a coward, but he doesn't want to have to watch a snake sliding down someone else's throat.

They're all looking at Satterfield. Makes it easy to step back, to skirt round them and head down the passageway. He'll be gone before they look for him.

Be somewhere else.

**********

7.

**********

It's a relief to get out of the noise and pressure of the infirmary, and he lets himself wander, not thinking about where he's going.

It takes him a few minutes to notice that he's not even the one at the wheel, the snake steering him through the tunnels, searching for a place where the crowds are less dense. As soon as he notices (he had not been conscious of it, had not intended it), he's back in control, nearly tripping over his feet.

Like the old joke about the centipede who walked fine until someone asked him how he managed to co-ordinate all those legs, and then he said, "Huh, I've never thought about it before," and could never put one foot in front of another from that day on.

He starts walking again, just to prove he can.

Same cues, same memories of the base. Easy enough to guess at where they'll have started the new tunnels. He keeps heading away from the crowds until he's found his way out to the raw edge of the base, where the new walls are still growing, rock dissolving and reforming into crystal in front of his eyes.

There's a shallow niche in the wall a few meters before the moving end of the tunnel, ready to be grown out into a room if needed. He curls up into it. It doesn't provide much cover, but anyone coming round the corner won't see him right away. The crystals spike into his back, still warm from the chemical reactions that structured them, but he can ignore them for a while. It's not the body that's tired.

And at least here it's quiet. He imagines the noise draining out of his head, the static out of his blood. Down the plughole and gone. He doesn't want to think about any of what's happened today. Yesterday. If he starts thinking about it, he'd have to think about not knowing who dialled the address for this place, being too focused on what needed doing to care. And before that, getting thrown out of the strategy meeting. And what happened after that. The ... fight.

There are ripples still spreading out in his mind, and he doesn't want to think about them. Quantum thingy. Don't ever open the box and look inside, because then you've got a fifty percent chance of having a dead cat on your hands, and who wants that?

Just goes to show that some people shouldn't be allowed to keep pets.

Minutes pass, or hours.

"They said that you were here, but I did not believe it." Her voice is very soft, as if she's afraid of disturbing him, or afraid to raise her voice at all. Still learning to speak out loud.

He can't look up, not at first, not yet. Feels like he's been shot in the chest, and they didn't even give him a blindfold and a last cigarette. It's been so long, trying not to think about her – but that's the snake, not him, and he fucking resents it, resents being dragged along by someone else's emotions. But he can't stop feeling it.

She looks different now. Still urchin-faced, fair hair cropped brutally short, but taller, somehow. Less immaculate, in the sand-colored Tok'ra uniform instead of the costume Ba'al dressed her in: black and glossy as a beetle's carapace, jointed like a doll, a parody of armor designed to make her look more vulnerable.

"Shallan," he says – the snake says, voice dropping into that alien resonance, jerking back from control as soon as he hears himself. Startled by the longing he hears in his own voice.

She steps closer – cautiously, as if she's approaching a dangerous animal – and his skin prickles: naquadah in her blood. It shouldn't be a surprise. Unblended humans don't remain with the Tok'ra. He shouldn't be surprised.

He wonders who is watching and judging him from behind her eyes, seeing her memories of him. Hates the doubts coiling in the host's mind, the guilt (whose guilt?).

He only did what was necessary for the sake of the mission. He never forced her, never made false promises. Never put her at any more risk than he needed to in order to achieve the designated objectives. He was kind to her, in small ways, enough to win her gratitude – slaves are easy to suborn – and asked only for information in return.

Nothing the fucking snakes won't do, is there?

He can't move. But then she's there beside him, dropping to her knees on the floor. She takes his hand in hers and presses her lips against his knuckles, cool and smooth against bruised scraped skin, then stands again just as quickly. He doesn't reach for her when she steps back.

"You saved my life," she says. "I cannot ever repay you."

Gratitude, not love. Never love. The host reads it in her voice, and he can't help hearing it.

Not even gratitude he deserves. He would have left her there. Did leave her there, would never have returned if he had remained sane. Inappropriate attachments – his host's, not his, not his – cannot be allowed to jeopardize a mission, not when thousands of lives may depend on the information obtained.

It was the right choice. He still believes that.

She stands there, waiting.

"So, you –" let them put a snake in your head – "took a symbiote?" he manages.

"I owe the Tok'ra my life. I could not contribute so much to the cause if I was not blended with Seresh." No hesitation.

A cryptanalyst, devoted to the cause. He remembers the man who was Seresh's last host. He had grey eyes, not blue.

Her skin is still so pale; he remembers seeing it black with bruises, the marks of Ba'al's fingers left wrapped around her throat.

He wants to ask if the Tok'ra pressured her, if they told her that she had to take a symbiote if she was to stay with them. But her smile is easy and radiant and he has no right to ask.

He remembers that too, the rush of energy in a new blending as it unfolds, as you discover each other/self. The wonder so many new hosts feel, drenched in health and knowledge and power. The memories have never tasted bitter before.

Seresh must know by now – they've been here for hours, and rumors spread fast on bases – must have heard what they are: broken, crazy, a public embarrassment to the Tok'ra. He doesn't know why she would have come to look.

"Why did you ..." He runs out of words and waves a hand at her, at where she stands. Why did you come here? Why bother?

There's no scorn in her eyes. Only pity, which hurts worse. "I wanted you to know what you have done for me. That I will continue the fight in your name."

As if he's dead. A non-person. Someone to be mourned with the fallen. And he can't say that she's wrong.

She looks like a stranger, like someone he's never seen before.

She is a stranger, he insists, someone he'd never met before he found himself walking back into a Goa'uld fortress to try to save her. All because the fucking snake had a fucking crush.

But he knows how she kisses, practised tricks giving way to something soft and startled. He knows how she tastes. Even the tug of attraction feels different in this body, filtered through the biases of this nervous system. Everything is different, wrong. These fingers have never touched her, never curled inside her.

And he is half himself, half someone else. His former host would have had words, would have translated him into eloquence, made something graceful out of everything clumsy and guilty and mute. How can you be Kanan?

She was different, he remembers (folly to believe it, to single out one abused, docile human slave over another). But there was a sweetness in her. Something that Ba'al had not yet been able to touch.

She never knew he was anything other than a minor Goa'uld courtier; they played their role well. She probably assumed she was spying for one of Ba'al's rivals, if she even dared to speculate that much. Ba'al liked his pets wide-eyed and terrified, the velvet quiver of prey caught and hypnotized by the predator's gaze, afraid even to flinch. Until he became bored with them, and turned his attention to newer entertainment.

He knows she believed Ba'al was her god even as she betrayed him, certain that she could never escape his power, looking back over her shoulder as she ran away. Remembers how she stumbled back, retreating to the back of her cell, afraid to be rescued, afraid of him, of them. "No. He'll stop us." He must have seemed angry, been angry, because there was no time –

Of course she's different, Skippy. She's finding out who she might be, for the first time in her life, now that she's not a Goa'uld's sex toy.

He told her there would be no repercussions, if she ever said no to him. If she didn't want him. He doesn't know if she believed him.

Can't bear how he looks through the host's eyes. Like something he isn't.

And he has no clue what to say to her, this stranger he never met before he dragged her out of a cell. Well, thanks for stopping by. Great to hear that the snake-in-the-head deal's working out for you.

We would have broken, sooner or later. Told him. Given you up, to buy a few heartbeats when we weren't the ones under the knife. Don't be grateful. Please don't be grateful.

"I'm glad," he says, finding his voice because the snake can't. It sounds gravelly and he clears his throat, swallows. "Glad you're okay."

He wouldn't have done it, not if he was himself, because he'd never met her. So Ba'al has a lo'taur; all the system lords do. The Goa'uld have millions of slaves and he tries not to think about it most days.

But he knows about being left behind, the whump of rotors as the chopper takes off without you. All the people he's failed, the lying promises he's mouthed on government orders (We'll come back. We'll send reinforcements. Soon.).

At least someone gets out of this clusterfuck okay. He can't, won't, begrudge her that.

She smiles at him, that open happy smile he's never seen before.

"Thank you." And then she turns and is gone, footsteps soundless on the crystal floor. As if she was never there at all. A dream, a hallucination; he's crazy enough.

In his head, the snake insists: he was never stupid enough to believe she loved him back.

Then he grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, hard.

At first, he can't tell who's in control of the body; it's been slewing to and fro. But this is him, now. He snaps his fingers to prove it, then scrubs his hands over his face again but his eyes won't stop stinging and his chest hurts, a deep-down tightness that the snake automatically tries to fix, as if it's physical pain.

Wetness against his palms.

He's been through a lot of weird shit over the years, but never anything quite as freaky as someone else crying through his eyes.

The snake's not controlling the body, not trying to, but it's leaking through regardless, helpless and humiliating. Hot furious shameful tears of loss.

He didn't even know the snake could cry. Didn't think he was the type. And he isn't. Won't be. Ridiculous to be weeping over something so trivial, for something he already knew.

When everything is broken. So many of his sisters and brothers dead, trapped and killed like vermin. When he is broken, host and self twisted together like a bad graft, a transplant half-rejected, can't separate and won't ever heal.

It goes through him in a rush, a tidal wave of emotions carrying him along with it, even as part of him feels distant and embarrassed. The snake can't bear showing so much and can't stop. And he hates seeing so much. Like blundering in on someone else naked, seeing things you have no right to see and really didn't want to see anyway.

It's the bad kind of tears, he can tell. The kind you get when people who "don't cry" cry: unable to breathe in case it turns into a sob, unable to let go and unable to keep it together.

He wraps his arms round his ribcage and tries to hold onto it, as if he can keep it boxed in, ease the ache that way. Finally, he mutters, "Cut it out."

Without letting himself think about it, he rubs at the back of his neck, ignoring the old scar. A stupid thing to be doing, as if –

Like the way you pat someone's arm, when you don't really know them. Awkward and distant. Not because you –

Because you want them to stop. That's all.

Cut it out.

**********

From his corner, he can hear things quiet down as the base settles into something like a night shift.

Not that things ever stop on Tok'ra bases; there's always more work that needs to be done, always the cause and too few people to serve it. And there are probably only a handful of people here who need to sleep. But some of the Tok'ra will choose to meditate or do light work while the hosts sleep, and the Jaffa will have to kel-no-reem.

He ventures out of his hiding place carefully. There's a small antechamber full of pools, and he leans his elbows on the rim of one for a while, then splashes water over his face. It's disconcertingly warm and salty, making him think of body fluids. Amniotic fluids.

The ornamental pools are the only luxury they permit themselves. It has been millions of years since symbiotes could survive in water without life support. Survive without hosts. But still, the presence of water calms, soothing old instincts and anxieties, helping prepare the mind for the disciplines of equanimity and self-control.

Egeria, goddess of birth, goddess of fountains. Daniel's lectures again. Mother, redeemer, daughter-wife of Ra.

Again with the way too much information about snake sex. But the thought's half-hearted.

He swipes a wet hand over his face, trying to rinse away the day's blood and grime, the stiff, prickly residue of tears that aren't his, then gazes into the lights at the bottom of the pool, trying to think.

It would be a good time to leave.

The thought hangs there. It should be shocking and yet it's – not. As if it's been there for a while, waiting to be spoken out loud. Thought out loud. Something dreaded for so long that in the end it comes as a relief. Get it over with.

They don't need him here any more. He can't go back to Earth, the Alpha site is smoking rubble, and he sure as hell can't stay here. Even the thought of it – crowded all the time, skin crawling with the naquadah in everyone's blood, surrounded by snakes – makes him claustrophobic.

They cannot fit, cannot belong here. He no longer belongs among the Tok'ra, any more than the host can be Tau'ri. And the pain is worst under the eyes of his sister/brothers, all the people who know him for the person he was, the person he should be.

Better to leave.

There's a merciful clarity to the realization, through the static and the noise. It feels as necessary as oxygen, as water, the way that first realization did: go back for her. Of course you should go back for her. Of course you should leave. So simple you wonder why you didn't see it before. Wait until everything's quiet, then walk away, and no-one will see you go. Not like he hasn't done it before.

He takes an indirect route to the gate, circling the perimeter of the base, ghosting past open doorways. He'd rather not have to say goodbye to anyone. Better to make it quick and clean. Carter will deal better with the idea of him leaving if it's a done deal, if he's not there when she does it. And Teal'c will understand.

The base lockdown is fortuitous; it will inhibit pursuit once his absence is discovered. But it won't make it too difficult to leave. He's already thinking about the encrypted panels sealing off the gate; breaking them will be slower if they've rotated the code protocols since he was last here. But locks have never held him for long.

They'll have posted guards too, but if he can take a zat'nik'katel off one of them, it should be easy from there on. This is what he was trained for.

He skirts round the sentries and into one of the narrow tunnels, the emergency fall-back routes to the gate.

He didn't expect to see Thoran, leaning against the wall with his back against the code pad, frowning at the floor. It stops him cold for a second: enough time for Thoran to raise his head and see him.

There's no surprise in Thoran's face, only a grim weariness. Blood-stained, sleeves pushed up past his elbows, he looks almost human.

"I had thought you would attempt to leave. The only question was when."

He wonders how long Thoran's been waiting for him.

"Gonna try to stop me?" He shifts his weight and gauges the odds. Thoran has a zat tucked into his belt, but hasn't reached for it yet. From what the snake remembers of their respective combat training, he can take Thoran in a fight, easily.

But something inside him twists at the idea of raising his hand against his brother, his friend. He is not yet fallen so low.

Thoran's eyes bore into him as if he can read his thoughts; he shakes his head. "We will not keep you prisoner against your will."

But he doesn't move out of the way, and the pause that follows carries the weight of a "but", wait for it wait for it:

"But you are still Tok'ra. You can still serve."

"How?" The snake's voice. He'd be annoyed, except that he's pretty sure that it wasn't on purpose. And he hears, tastes, the desperate hope under the words.

"I have a proposition."

Why of course you do. He nods fractionally, just enough to convey: go on, I'm listening. He doesn't like the sense he's getting of this, but it's sure as hell familiar.

"The Tau'ri ship," Thoran says. "Prometheus. It has already provoked direct retaliation from the system lords, and it will not stop its attacks."

Familiar opening gambit: lay out what he already knows, step by step. A prelude to something.

"We cannot survive another such attack. Had it not been for your actions, many more of us would have died today. And if the system lords declare the Protected Planets Treaty void and attack Earth ..." Thoran smiles that brief mirthless smile of his.

No need to finish that sentence.

Earth has a few cobbled-together prototype fighters, and nothing else. If the system lords know or guess that the Asgard are otherwise occupied, if they come in force, then Earth's screwed.

If they're lucky, the Goa'uld will try to land ground troops instead of nuking the place from orbit. It might be worthy occupying the planet for the prestige of taking back the first world. Most of the population might survive. If they're lucky.

For values of "lucky" that include life as a Goa'uld slave.

(And he wonders what Thoran's host thinks of all this, of the conversation his mouth and his face are having without his involvement.)

Pit the system lords against Earth, and the person who benefits most of all is Anubis. And his allies with him: Osiris. Zipacna. Ba'al. Cut to the chase, you bastard, tell me where this is going.

Thoran must have decided he's kept him twisting on the hook long enough, because he says, "The Tau'ri will never authorize a mission to destroy Prometheus."

He wants to argue, but – shit. Hammond would get it, get that taking Prometheus off the map may be the only to avoid a direct attack on Earth, postpone open war with the Goa'uld until they've got a fighting chance.

But this'd go outside the SGC, need presidential authorization, and ... he doesn't know. Trying to convince the government pencil pushers to let you blow up a multi-billion dollar project? Yeah, right. Good luck with that. And the NID have their hooks in deep. They're already fighting a crackdown; taking out Kinsey was just the beginning. And if the rogue cells are convinced that this is the best way to fight the Goa'uld, if they're seriously that dumb, then odds are that it's what the rest of them think in secret. Shit, shit, shit.

Best case scenario, the mission gets authorized after months of wrangling. Which is time they don't have. His mouth is dry.

"Nor will the Tok'ra council risk instructing operatives to attack a Taur'i vessel. Not openly."

Yeah, just as he thought. This is black ops. Been there, done that. Missions off the books, in banana republics and chilly Eastern European states, explosives bought with cash funnelled through a string of different shell companies, machine guns in Coca-Cola crates, while the men in government suits hold up their clean clean hands.

The familiarity's almost comforting.

Thoran's hand dips into a pocket and comes out holding a flat, lozenge-shaped crystal which the snake recognizes as a data chip. He balances it between his fingers, displaying it but not offering to hand it over. Yet.

"This will override the access codes for the gateroom here," he says. Still casual, as if he's merely providing a point of information. Fucker's probably enjoying this. "It also contains a requisition form for a cargo ship at Kereshent. And for a naquadah-enhanced explosive device which should be more than sufficient to destroy a ship of Prometheus's size, if placed close to the hyperdrive."

It'd mean – oh, it pisses him off that he's already thinking about it; it'd mean cutting the timing fine, to plant the bomb in the heart of the ship and still get clear before it blows. Too long a countdown, and the NID could find it before it detonates. Too short, and he gets to go boom too.

But then, they're probably not expecting him to come back anyway, are they? What Thoran's offering isn't just a mission; it's the chance of a useful death.

"Naturally," Thoran says, all irony, "if this should come to light, I will deny any involvement."

"Oh, naturally," he echoes. Easy enough to deny, too. After all, everyone knows that he and the snake are crazy. Easy enough to believe that they forged a data chip and escaped alone. A loose cannon. The ultimate deniable agent.

"Be tricky to find the ship," he says, thinking out loud. One needle in a galactic haystack. He'd bet good money that they're still using some of the NID's old off-world bases, but even if you could narrow it down to a solar system – solar systems aren't the Tinkertoy orreries that people imagine. Plenty of room to hide a battleship, tucked away in an asteroid belt or behind a moon.

Thoran nods, and he wants to protest that he hasn't agreed yet, but doesn't. "Perhaps one of the Tau'ri personnel here may have information on how the ship might be tracked."

As if he's discussing the weather. And that's an ugly suggestion, because any intel about Prometheus is classified to high heaven. It needs a security clearance he doesn't have any more.

Intel the SGC won't ever give to the Tok'ra, but that somebody might let slip to a face they still trust. Hell, maybe this is why Thoran allowed them onto the base in the first place. How long has he been preparing for this?

Something must show in his expression, because Thoran gives another curt nod. "Give it thought. There is no need to inform me of your decision; you may leave as and when you see fit."

He doesn't realize that he's holding out a hand until the data chip is pressed into it, sharp smooth edges against his palm.

Thoran turns to go, but stops and looks back at him, hesitating – the first time he's seen Thoran hesitate – then grabs his arm and pulls him into an awkward half-hug. Undoubtedly meant for the snake only.

"Be well, my brother." A fierce whisper, breath against his ear. Deniable.

And then he's gone.

He slumps back against the wall, where Thoran was leaning a few minutes ago, and wraps his fingers round the crystal in his hand.

Hey, he doesn't have to go on the mission at all. He could skip out of here and never bother to pick up the ship or the nuke. Go on the run again, lose himself so well that no-one'll ever find him. Thoran's gambling that he can be bought with the promise of duty and honor, and he has a spiteful impulse to throw it back in his face, prove him wrong.

Thoran is resting all his hopes on the chance that he knows his friend well enough to predict what he'll choose, even in this strange new host. Even broken.

Playing chess. Willing to send a friend to his death to win the game. But Thoran is no more ruthless than he would be with himself; knows that his brother would ask for nothing less.

Hell.

The tough part will be locating the ship – and he wishes he could kid himself that he's not committing himself to anything yet, just thinking about it, but he can't help knowing what the snake knows: the decision's already made.

Carter was up to her eyeballs in the X-303's specs; if there's a way to trace it, she'll know it.

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't think I should be telling you this." Carter's military born and bred, the last person who'd break those rules. And he's pretty sure he could get her to do it anyway.

Walk in there and be Colonel O'Neill again. Be Jack. She wants so badly to believe that he's okay, that he can work this out and adapt the way Jacob did, because it'll mean that she made the right choice, didn't screw him over forever. The relief will get him a long way.

There's a part of her that still thinks of him as her CO, that always will. Easy to push those buttons. And for all Carter's big shiny brain, there are things she's not so smart about, and he knows damn well that one of those things is him.

Easy to suborn.

Jesus. He rubs a hand over his mouth, sucks in a deep breath. Thinks of Carter in the gateroom with her team, Satterfield hugging Malek, solemn Greene smiling. Her kids.

Somehow she became a leader when his back was turned, and it hurts like hell but he's so fucking proud of her that he can barely breathe. She made them into a team, when he wouldn't have thought she could do it. Not his Carter.

And now one of her kids is dead, and another probably has a snake in her head. And Carter should have had a command of her own years ago except that he didn't know if she was ready to handle that yet, having to watch her people being killed and injured, all the things you can't stop but have to carry anyway. Or maybe he was the one who didn't want to watch that weight fall on her.

However it goes down, she'll be guilt-tripping herself, trying to work out a way she could have done better. Undermining herself.

And he could undermine her, too. Carter's smart; she'll understand the implications. She'll know exactly what he's asking her to do, and he could get her to do it anyway. And it would break her.

In his head, the snake is thinking.

**********

He finds her keeping vigil in one of the small chambers past the infirmary.

The archway frames her, sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped round her knees. Beside her, Satterfield lies curled on her side, a thermal blanket covering her. As if she's one of the wounded. Her eyes are closed but her eyelids twitch as though she's racing through dreams.

Memories of blendings, the body comatose while it/I/you heal, neural filaments weaving selves together. That first flood of information, so vast the mind must turn inwards to integrate it without drowning.

They both look very small. Too fragile to take this weight.

Greene's on his way out; he gives him a nervous "Sir" and a wide berth. Must have been talking to Carter. Good sign, if she's the one they go to for support, if she isn't cutting them off.

Carter looks up at the sound and something crosses her face when she sees him, before she pulls herself together and says, "Hey, sir."

He loiters in the doorway for a moment before he can bring himself to announce, "Snake wants to talk to you," waving a hand in the direction of his own head by way of explanation. It comes out truculent and awkward, as if it's nothing to do with him. He's just the messenger.

It's not what she was expecting, but Carter's game: she nods and says, "Sure. I mean, okay."

This time, it's like stepping back, letting the snake slide past him into control of the body. He's getting used to the adjustments, feeling his spine straightening, posture shifting. But he can see the changes reflected in Carter's face, better than a mirror.

Different when it's someone you know. For all the time she's spent with her dad and the other Tok'ra, there are some things you never quite get used to, and watching a stranger move in behind the face of someone you know has to be one of them. She's been through it with Jacob, and she's going to go through it again with Satterfield, and now –

"Hi, Kanan," she says. A little freaked out, but trying to be cool. It's the voice she uses for talking to small children and big dogs, the sound of someone trying not to make any sudden moves while she looks round for someone better qualified to take over.

"Major Carter," the snake answers. He clasps his hands behind his back, then hesitates, at a loss. Apparently he's already run out of his limited supply of conversation.

As far as he can see, the snake doesn't actually have a game plan here. But he's willing to give him enough rope. Carter needs to see who – what – she's dealing with here. And she doesn't have any emotional ties to the snake.

His eyes keep going back to Satterfield, and he can feel the snake's curiosity; he takes a few steps closer, tilting his head to look at her face. Carter stiffens, and he can see her try to make herself relax.

Yeah, he'd be twitchy too, watching that cold alien gaze sizing up someone he cared about.

He is only curious. But he refrains from going closer, and settles himself on the floor a safe distance away, cross-legged. On the same level; less threatening that way, perhaps.

He has never been good with humans, with pretense, the supple and warm-blooded arts of manipulation and lies. He has always relied on his hosts to fill in the gaps and play the minor Goa'uld better than he ever could. It is a strange sensation to be here with a mission objective, but unarmed, empty-handed. As himself.

"If the symbiote is weakened by injury," he tells her – and he sees the tiny jump the snake doesn't, the way she flinches at the sound of his altered voice – "then it is possible that both may die."

Damn, Skippy. Hell of a conversation-starter there. Do you study at this?

But it is important that she should understand, should not be lulled with false hopes. If the blending fails, if the two together are not strong enough, then the dying symbiote will drag the host down too, too weak to separate or spare her.

Carter has a peculiar look on her face. "I know, I've done this before. With my dad. But ... thank you. Thank you for telling me. I think." A quick, rueful grimace.

His gaze slides back to Satterfield again. Rare – nearly unknown – for someone to choose to become a host except to save their own life, or because they had no other choices open to them. He wonders what naivety or perversity drove her to it.

Do you ever stop being an asshole? She did it because she cared about one of you, and she didn't want anyone else to die if she could help it. Can you get any of that?

Then the snake surprises him. He feels the words form in his mind a fraction of a second before they're spoken, like an echo in advance. "Malek's host. What was his name?"

It catches her off guard, and her mouth wobbles, one corner going up and then down, as if she's trying to smile and not succeeding. "Pelagian," she says, and then: "Pel. He hated that name. He didn't – it was a long time before he would talk to any of us. It was difficult for him. I don't know why, but ... he was afraid of a lot of things. I think Malek tried to protect him."

He nods carefully. Something he was bound to ask. A duty.

All this time, and he's never heard the snake think of his own host – former host – by name. As if he didn't have an identity of his own. Just bodies to them. But you don't think of your self, other-self, by name. No need to, when they're always there, sense-of-self sharp and wordless and present as a remembered taste, a smell (to make your heart-strings crack), salt-fierce and water-fluent.

The name is an after-thought, there for the taking if he reaches for it. But he doesn't reach. The snake has a right to some secrets too.

Then it's Carter's turn to surprise him. "Dad – Selmak," she corrects herself, "Selmak said the symbiote's name was Zetal. I wondered if you knew – him? her? – sorry, I don't know which ..." She trails off.

A shrug, shoulders hitched up and allowed to drop like a puppet's. "Zetal has mostly had female hosts." Gender is a concept borrowed from human minds and human language, like so much else, fitting awkwardly yet felt deeply nonetheless.

"But you know her," Carter says.

Another shrug. He has never been especially close to Zetal. Forget skills plural, he's starting to wonder if the snake has a single social skill.

"Can you tell me what she's like?"

A simpler question. "A scholar and an archivist. For centuries, Zetal has studied records of the technologies of past cultures."

Carter frowns, the way she does when she's trying to puzzle out a problem that's refusing to co-operate. He feels as if he's getting to see what she's like when he's not around. Not that she doesn't know he's still there, a silent observer, but the snake is the one she's talking to.

"But what sort of person is she?"

He feels muscles in his forehead tighten and furrow, the snake frowning as he sorts through memories, wondering what Carter wants to know, what kind of answer she is looking for.

Oh, for crying out loud. She needs to know what sort of person Satterfield's going to be spending the rest of her life with, if they make it. That they'll be okay together.

But the snake doesn't take the prompt, concentrating on his own memories, digging for words of his own to offer. Finally, he says, "Zetal is dedicated to the cause."

Such a shining recommendation. But it's the highest praise he knows how to give.

And he hears in it what the snake means: dedicated to the fight not only against the Goa'uld, but against what the Goa'uld are. To being Tok'ra, living in partnership. He wonders if Carter's going to get that.

"A good person," the snake says, slowly, then: "Kind." Not a word he'd expect from the snake, somehow. Then: "I hope that your Lieutenant Satterfield will not regret her choice."

Carter nods, and he gets it then: she wasn't just asking about Satterfield and Zetal. She was asking about the snake himself. Ask Skippy to tell you about someone else and he'll tell you about himself without knowing it. Whatever memories of him Jolinar left in her mind, she needs to know for herself.

A stranger, a person in her own right, with her own agenda. Not Jolinar's ghost or Jolinar's guilt.

Somehow, when he wasn't paying attention, the snake took the data crystal out of his pocket. Now he turns it over in his hands, closes his fingers around it until the edges bite into his skin, then unfolds his hand and looks at it again. As if he's expecting it to have changed, like someone unsuccessfully trying to copy a magic trick. Then he looks up, directly at Carter.

"The ship," he says. "Prometheus. How might it be located?"

He sees her get it, can almost see the gears in her brain whir as she puts it all together, in the breath before she says, "Oh god."

She knows. The snake's not just asking her to do something that could get her court-martialed, to hand over ultra-classified information to someone who's not only not part of the program, he's not even part of the same species any more. He's asking her to send them on a suicide mission.

He knows she knows why, too. Because of Prometheus, two of her team are dead, and one is curled on the floor next to her, in limbo between life and death. SGC people she knows and has worked with have died today. Tok'ra who Jolinar would have remembered, too.

And Earth is hanging in the balance.

"Does the colonel – is he ... ?"

The snake nods, a sharp downwards jerk of his chin. He wonders if she'll ask to hear it direct from him, but it turns out she can do the math on that one too.

"Yes, of course he is," she mutters, and for a moment she just sounds annoyed. Then her hands fly up to cover her face, and she leans forwards into them. He can hear her drawing deep, controlled breaths.

Finally, she takes her hands away, swiping the back of one quickly across her eyes, and settles them in her lap.

"People I care about seem to keep ending up with snakes in their heads," she blurts, then, "Sorry. I didn't mean –"

Apologizing to the snake. Apologizing to the fucking snake, and his heart breaks for her.

"I used to be jealous sometimes," she says. "Of dad, of – I mean, when Jolinar – I was so busy fighting, the whole time, I never got to know what it was like, and I always ... Stupid. Selfish of me. I know."

The snake watches her silently, head cocked to one side. It makes him feel like a voyeur.

Then Carter looks down at her hands, draws in another breath and releases it, and when she looks up again, she has her command face on. Resolute.

"The hyperdrive in Prometheus runs on naquadria," she says. "The Goa'uld hyperdrives all use naquadah, we think. Naquadria is ... very unstable. Even if they've managed to account for the instability enough to get reliable control, it should give off a unique radiation signature. If you can scan the correct frequencies, it should theoretically be possible to track it. You won't be able to follow it through hyperspace, obviously, but –"

She breaks off and gives him a strange look, and he realizes that she was waiting for an interruption that didn't come. Waiting for him to wave his hands around and protest and ask for an explanation in words of one syllable or less. But the snake is listening intently, all the technojargon fitting into neat slots in his mind, and he watches Carter get it, watches her press her lips together before she squares her shoulders and carries on.

The snake's memorizing all of it, so he doesn't bother listening, just watches. There are little tremors in her face, but her voice is steady, her back straight. Her choice, to take this on her shoulders.

Tempered steel, he thinks. Not brittle. It'll wear her down, erode her millimeter by millimeter over the years, the way it does even to the best – especially to the best – but she won't crack.

**********

He doesn't plan on saying goodbye to Teal'c. It's never been about words, with them, and he knows Teal'c will get it anyway. Words have always been too flimsy in the face of Teal'c's generous silence. You can joke around, sound off to watch him arch an eyebrow at your antics, but the real things don't need to be said.

But on his way to the gate, dodging past an archway, he hears a familiar voice and stops. Just for a moment, he tells himself. Just to listen. Everyone's eyes are on the speaker; no-one will look out into the corridor without a reason.

At first he thinks it's a Jaffa meeting: Bra'tac steps forwards as Teal'c finishes addressing the group. They've even got a flame burning in some kind of metal censer like an improvised candle, light ricocheting off the facets of the wall-crystals.

But then he notices Korra, leaning against the wall, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his coat, and Jalen, standing very still, her face unreadable. Not just Jaffa.

He can see Teal'c watching the Tok'ra in the crowd too, monitoring the responses as Bra'tac launches into some Jaffa tale that presumably relates in some way to whatever they're discussing, although he's damned if he can tell how.

Teal'c looks tired, when no-one is watching him. Weary in a way he's never seen before. The Jaffa are getting their empowerment on, and you'd never guess from the expression on Teal'c's face that it's what he's been fighting for all along. But it figures: the guy was trained from birth to serve his God. He could command armies, as long as he had faith that someone above him gave the final orders. Took the responsibility. No wonder he was so eager to believe that Kytano was the Jaffa Messiah, if it meant he could put his revolution into someone else's hands.

But now it's all on Teal'c's shoulders. And Teal'c will do it damn well, he has no doubt; he's always suspected that Teal'c might secretly be the smartest out of all of them. Still. Heavy weight for anyone to carry.

It's not a surprise when Teal'c looks up and sees him – no, them. Teal'c's looking at both of them, and he doesn't know how he can tell, but he can. And he wonders how much it's cost Teal'c, right from the start, to put his own shit aside and insist on treating the snake as a person. For his sake, their sake. Because it was that or a bullet in the head.

Hell of a thing.

And then Teal'c bows his head. Gravity and grace, for all the world as if he's still sitting on the carpet of the SGC's guest quarters. Completing the introductions he began back then, or saying goodbye; no way to tell which.

He doesn't know which of them it is who bows in return, either. Not like it matters, in the end.

**********

8.

**********

The snake is building a widget.

Or possibly it's a doohickey; he's not sure.

Okay, it's a resonance augmenter which will enable the primary sensors of the cargo ship to scan on the correct frequencies to detect the radiation signature of a naquadria drive. And the worst part is that he actually understands what that means, but if he admits that then he'll never live it down.

Doohickey.

It involves a lot of crystals and wires, which the snake's laid out round him in neat rows on the floor of the tel'tak, along with something that turns out to be the Goa'uld equivalent of a soldering iron (just like a regular soldering iron, but with more gold).

He works quickly and precisely. No tinkering or messing around to see how things fit together; at intervals, he pauses, motionless while he consults the circuit diagrams in his head, visualizing them as clearly as if he was holding a blueprint, then lets them slide away again.

Photographic memory, or close enough for government work. Handy trick.

The council would hardly have sent him to map the shifting corridors and gravity fields of Ba'al's fortress if he had to keep his records on a piece of paper in his pocket.

It's strange, sitting back and letting the snake drive for this long. Feels like he's trying to hold still, not move or breathe too loudly. Not that he could move, but if the impulse to fidget gets too strong, the snake over-reacts and pitches him back into control of the body, and right now that just leads to burnt fingers, dislodged crystals, and a sense of ostentatious, strained patience.

Neither of them wants to risk the odd truce they've got going. They agree on what needs to be done, and that's enough. For now. And he's not thinking beyond that. The long-term odds of survival aren't so hot anyway; they only have to avoid tearing each other apart for a while longer.

It's not like he hasn't worked with assholes before, and at least the snake's a competent asshole.

A ripple of irritation, like an itch he wants to slap at.

Fine. Cut the commentary. No backseat driving.

The weirdest part is still not being able to look around, not even being able to close his eyes or let them unfocus. He can't even look out of the window at the hyperspace lightshow. He only sees what the snake wants to look at, neat snapshots of the circuitry to match against the diagrams in his head.

A small correction, adjusting the alignment of a crystal rod. The sort of error he shouldn't make. If he was not distracted.

He tries to ignore what he's looking at. Like it's a TV in the corner of a room, volume muted, tuned to a an endless string of infomercials. Retreat inside his head, into the tiny corner of it where he can pretend he's the only one there.

Can't move, can't do anything. Nothing more than a point of awareness, a train of thought in his own mind, and half the time he's not even sure which thoughts are his. You could start wondering if you're real, if you even exist. I think, therefore ... nada.

Must be what it's like for the Goa'uld hosts, once they stop fighting. Being eroded away bit by bit, losing a piece of yourself each day.

A flinch, like he's touched a raw spot. The snake's, not his. As if the snake thinks he was referring to that.

But he wasn't. It almost surprises him that he wasn't. But he knows what it means to the snake now, to cross that line. Tested that one to destruction. Skippy's a lot of things, but he's no Goa'uld.

The snake puts down the soldering iron (exactly parallel to one row of crystals, perpendicular to another), then closes his eyes (red-tinged blackness coming down like a shutter). He thinks about calm.

If desired, they could take a break to allow the host control of the body, then complete the work later.

Might as well get it finished now. The sooner it's done, the sooner they can get on with this.

Agreement. The snake picks up his tools again. Long, deft fingers, a craftsman's (and he tries to bury the appreciation, spare himself the host's anger).

Discretion is the better part of valor and all that crap, so he pretends not to notice. Not that he can lie to the snake any more than the snake can lie to him, but it's a way to skip the fight. He can let that one slide. He goes back to the corner of his mind, and tries to let himself drift, daydream himself somewhere more interesting.

It's a while before he notices the humming – notices that it's not just in his head. His own voice, so quiet it's barely distorted at all, absently echoing the tune in his mind.

It breaks off as soon as he notices, the snake catching himself with a twinge of regret that the music will stop now (so beautiful).

Then there's only the background drone of the engines, the snick of crystals fitting into place and the hiss of molten metal.

Oh, hell. He picks it up again, lets the memory go on playing and doesn't let himself think about it too much. He's not going to drive himself crazy with boredom just to spite the snake.

A low, insinuating melody; it'd almost be jaunty, if it wasn't for the serrated edge of the cello, scraping over bare nerves, breaking off and then returning, wheedling. Joker and assassin, baritone and bass circling each other, edging around the possibility of a deal. Glorious melodrama.

Of course then it all goes to pieces and ends in death and tragedy, but that's opera for you.

An old recording, Tito Gobbi and – oh, who was it? Neri? – but his imagination filters out the crackle and hiss. Two different kinds of darkness, smooth as polished wood.

He has heard music on a hundred worlds, remembers it from thousands more, but not like this, refracted through the host's mind. The way he hears it.

He lets the low F he can't reach in real life ring out in his mind, where he can hold it effortlessly:

Spara-fu-CILE.

**********

In his dreams, the violet streaks of hyperspace becomes the white paint stripe down the road, on the way to Minnesota, I-25 to I-80.

The drive's part of the ritual, a reminder that there's a world that isn't smeared across the galaxy between one heartbeat and the next, won't dissolve into light and beam away. Farms and cabins, fish that don't bite and mosquitoes that do. It's a dull place, compared to the daily space opera at the SGC, and he likes it that way.

He turns up the opera on the stereo and taps his fingers on the wheel; he checks the calibrations on the scanner again and waits for them to drop out of hyperspace.

Part of him is still awake; part of him always will be. He's never going to go back to Minnesota again – even if he could, it wouldn't be the same place any more with him in it, with what he is now – but that only makes him cling tighter to the smell of gasoline, a greasy truck-stop breakfast, the dank fabric of a deck chair stored away all winter.

He stays asleep until the last possible second, even after the glowing dot appears on the tel'tak's screens and the snake reaches into Minnesota to pull him out.

It's the third system they've been to, skipping through hyperspace like a slung stone. Somehow he didn't expect that they'd hit paydirt so fast. But it looks like he was right; the NID are still hanging round the old off-world bases. Not that the Asgard left them anything worth salvaging, but it makes sense: neighborhoods where they already know there's no Goa'uld influence and no nosy high-tech locals.

Dumb as rocks if you're trying not to be tracked by someone from Earth, but he'd bet that was the last thing on their minds.

The ship's already cloaked, so they mosey in for a closer look, skirting around to get a visual. And he's not even going to complain that the snake drives like a little old lady, always nursing the cargo ship's limits, because ding ding ding we have a winner. It's Prometheus, all right.

Not quite the same as the last time he saw it, buried half a klick under Nevada in a cocoon of gantries and docking clamps. There are more than a few blast marks on the sides, as if it's taken some heavy fire. And two vast, organic-looking cannons protrude from the ship's tower, like the mutant offspring of a rocket launcher and a squid. Ancient weapons. But it's the same damn ship.

A quick check says they can't get a lock on the rings, so the docking bay's the only way in, and they're not going to get any more intel hanging around out here. The tel'tak's cloaks are the best the Tok'ra have (nothing's too good for those who are about to die), but nonetheless he aims for the blind spot in the radar that Carter mentioned, the one that might still be there if the NID haven't had time to fix it yet. Doesn't hurt to be careful.

The tel'tak slides in smoothly through the forcefields, as close as he can get it to one side of the docking bay, and lands with only the slightest bump as Prometheus's pseudo-gravity fields lock onto it.

The big risk is that the NID have security cameras active. But even if the systems were wired up when the ship was hijacked, they shouldn't have the manpower to watch them all the time. Four NID, plus Simmons and the Goa'uld – or minus, because if they have half a brain they'll have someone with a gun to the Goa'uld's head at all times. Maybe they picked up more crew, but he doubts they'd be willing to work with offworlders. Not their style. They're spread thin.

The naquadah-enhanced explosive device (call it what it is, it's a nuke) is a matte grey sphere about the size of a bowling ball. Doesn't look like much, but the snake's memories say that it should be enough to take out a fair-sized city and irradiate the suburbs to boot.

He could set it here, but most of the kinetic energy would be channelled out of the bay and into space, away from the body of the ship. Better to get it as close to the hyperdrive as he can; de-stabilize that, and forget cities, the explosion will be enough to destroy a planet. Or two.

There's a tightness in his chest, par-for-the-course pre-mission jitters. He tucks the zat into his belt and lets the snake run a last check on the bomb. Something's niggling at him, the itchy sense that this is too easy, that something's off.

But then "easy" here includes good odds that they won't make it. Best-case scenario, plant the bomb in the drive room and have whole minutes to get out and get the tel'tak clear before the blast; worst-case, get intercepted and have to detonate on the spot (funny not to have to argue about it, to find that they're both taking Plan B for granted). It could be that his standards are skewed lately.

A nuke and a suicide mission; it's just like old times.

The snake's on high alert, the edge of anxiety that he's learned to recognize cranked up into a continuous thrumming tension that could almost be mistaken for calm, like a vibration accelerated until it looks motionless to the naked eye. As if he's only unafraid in the middle of a mission, when there's no room for anything except doing (risk of a shared death known and close and measurable; shared acceptance of the risk).

It's a weird kind of bonus. He wouldn't want to take anyone he likes along with him on this kind of job – anyone he might reflexively try to protect and risk screwing the mission, anyone he wouldn't want to drag down into the old black ops muck with him. Which makes the snake ideal company.

He pops the door on the tel'tak, the one next to the wall, and steps out, staying covered for as long as he can. Then he edges along the wall, gauging angles and sightlines. The far corner should be a blind spot for any cameras. The air in the docking bay smells stale and thin, recycled too many times and not pressurized enough.

He's nearly reached the doors at the back of the bay when he hears the bang.

For a split second, he thinks it's an explosion, before the gale seizes him, trying to pull him off his feet, dragging him backwards along the slick metal floor.

He knows what it is, even before he turns his head and sees blackness where the faint shimmer of the forcefields should be. Nothing holding the atmosphere inside the bay any more, nothing between him and vacuum. Shit shit shit, stupid stupid stupid – they saw him coming somehow (cameras, sensors, doesn't matter) and the fuckers waited until he was out of the ship to kill the forcefields, bye bye air and hello tornado sucking Dorothy Gale out into space.

Explosive decompression. Like a cockpit shattering, and training makes him exhale, blowing out the air in his lungs before they rupture. He's got maybe 9, 10 seconds max before he blacks out. Mission control, we have attained FUBAR.

The snake hurls them sideways into the wall of the bay, body scraping along it as they're dragged out. There's a pop and a stab of pain in his ears and after that everything's muffled.

Debris flies by, leftover scrap and discarded tools turned into a metal hailstorm, battering at him. He flattens himself against the wall and collides with a pipe, manages to get an arm hooked round it and hang on. Not a hope in hell of making it back to the tel'tak. Only a few seconds left.

No argument, no hesitation. Acceptance. He frees a hand and fumbles for the control pad on the nuke, feeling muscle tear and joints strain in the arm round the pipe, the body being wrenched past human limits.

Fingers slip on the slick metal, and everything's greying round the edges, hypoxic, starting to fuzz out, but he gets the first switch down – active – then slaps the countdown down as far as it'll go. And then it's gone, pulled out of his hands, falling towards the mouth of the bay, and the blackness swims up so fast –

– the host slipping away, can't reach him anymore, alone –

– a distant hum in his ears, ringing, the last tricks of a dying brain, or –

Blackout.

**********

Bright white light paints blotches and squiggles on the inside of his eyelids. It dims as he wakes, and his eyes open to see nothing except that smooth diffuse light, so familiar, the inside of the –

No. No no no, fuck no, anything but that.

He lashes out, fists and a knee slamming hard into the invulnerable sides of the box before the pain jars him back into himself. Like waking up in a coffin, buried alive, except that you know that when they take the lid off, it's only going to get worse.

Inside the sarcophagus.

The human brain, under sufficient stress – maybe Lord Yu never attacked and the power generators never failed and here we are still, ready for another go-around on the carousel –

And the light is dimming, which means that any time now the lid will swing open with a noise like grinding stone. He flings a forearm up to cover his eyes and knows that it won't make the least bit of difference. No, just a little longer, lemme sleep, don't wanna go to school today –

But the light that filters through his eyelids is cold blue, not Art Deco amber and bronze. And the hand that grabs his shoulder doesn't have a fancy Jaffa S&M cuff on it. He looks up along the arm to see a flash of short-sleeved shirt, splotches of yellow and black on white. Camo for an accident in a paint factory.

"Just get him out of there." A woman's voice, sounding harried and faintly bored. Speaking English. NID.

They haul on him, heave-ho, Jack-out-of-the-box, and he's barely got his feet on the ground before they yank him off balance again and wrench his arms round to handcuff his wrists. In front of him, the morons.

Across the room, the bored woman is holding a Beretta trained on him. Looks like an M9, standard issue. They must have taken the weapons from the SFs.

The sarc always leaves him feeling ... wrong. Like it hasn't quite fitted him back into his body: the outlines overlap but don't match right, parts of him still somewhere else and parts empty and numb. He's surprised that he can touch anything, that he can feel the fingers gripping his arms. And when he looks down at his hands, for a moment he expects them to be someone else's. Fucking existential hangover.

But inside his head, everything's crisp and hard-edged. Shared certainty.

All of these people need to die. Preferably as soon as possible.

Scan, assess. Inventory. No zat on his belt, of course. They're in a small windowless metal room – looks like they're still on Prometheus, judging by the decor, but he has no idea where. Could be one of a hundred small windowless metal rooms.

What does he have that he can use?

Information. NID. If they haven't been in contact with agents on Earth in the last month or so, if they haven't got ears in the SGC, then they don't know about the snake.

Something they don't know. A blind spot, a card up his sleeve. Even if it'll only last until their pet Goa'uld smells the naquadah in his blood; he'll take whatever advantages he can get. If the snake can lie low, if they can pass for human. Ix-nay on the eye-way ash-flay.

In return, he gets his own memories thrown at him: a frosty night in Germany, on the wrong side of the wall. His breath mists the plastic surface of the radio, lips nearly brushing it. "Requesting radio silence." Message received.

Wait. Was that a joke?

Hell of a time for the snake to discover a sense of humor. Even if he missed the part where you're supposed to be funny.

The two NID goons pull him away from the sarcophagus – "I was trying to quit," he protests, and is ignored – and down the corridor. Going somewhere. You walk, because if you don't, they drag you, and it's a waste of energy that you're going to need, soon.

It's cold, as if they haven't got the environmentals running on full power. Air like a meat locker. The lights are dim and blue, emergency lighting, the color they put in public toilets to stop junkies from finding a vein.

He wonders if he was dead when they scooped him up and dropped him in the sarc, or only half-dead. Not that it should matter; he lost count a long time ago. But it does. An unknown number N plus one. Another notch on the metaphysical bedpost of you've-just-been-fucked.

They march him down another long corridor, hustling him fast enough that he'd be pulled off his feet, if he was still weak and shaky from the sarc, as weak as they think he is. Standard psych tactics. He stumbles a little to oblige them, to keep them from noticing that he's recovered faster than an unblended human would, and the snake twists his head round, trying to get a glimpse of the numberplate on one of the doors before they haul him forwards. Get their bearings, get data he might be able to correlate with anything they pick up later. You can't escape if you don't know which way is out.

"No, you're not getting it. I told you, the fucking shields were up in time. "

Behind him, the woman's picked up a conversation; he can only hear one side. She must have the Beretta in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other, like someone chatting on a mobile phone.

Nuke must have gone off outside the ship. This is what you get for having a fucking safety delay built into your fucking countdown.

"It's the EMP that took the hyperdrive off line ... No, Adrian needs to take a look at it."

Adrian. The Goa'uld in Adrian Conrad's body. Jeez. Adrian, as if he's an old chum of hers, and he wonders what the fuck the NID think they're playing at.

"Nobody else can ... Until then, we're dead in the water."

Around him, the ship stretches out, vast and cold and empty. Still unfinished: they pass dark spots where the lighting's dead, bundles of wires spilling out of wall panels like a shredded nervous system.

"We're bringing him up now."

The ship was months away from its completion date when the NID hijacked it, and it looks like they only did the bare minimum of patching necessary to keep it flying. Half the ship probably isn't even habitable, but they don't need it to be. No point wasting power on life support for a crew of hundreds when you've only got five or six. A handful of people rattling round in a huge empty ship with insanely powerful weapons tacked onto it, tooling round the galaxy tilting at windmills.

"Yeah, screw you too. Jones out."

The accent makes her aggression sound weirdly coy and girlish. A cracked Southern belle. Or maybe he's just old-fashioned, and Carter would kick his ass in combat boots for having the thought.

They must have killed the hostages first thing, pretty much as soon as they got off the ground. Too much of a risk otherwise. Not enough manpower to handle the risk of a breakout. Shot them or spaced them, most likely. The TV crew, the SFs ... He wonders if they dragged Jonas Quinn down this corridor to his death, if he froze with fear or fought them any way he could, because he was afraid, because more than anything else he was terrified of being a coward again.

Stupid waste. He was smart; the SGC could have used him.

They reach an open door and the NID goons shove him in, hard enough that he stumbles into the heavy metal table and it's only half a fake-out. It skids an inch or two as he collides with it: not yet bolted to the floor. A small square room with no other exits. A cell.

A single chair. "Is this for me?" he enquires, playing "demure surprise". The woman – Jones – raises the Beretta and keeps it trained on him until he shrugs and sits down (kids these days; no manners). The guy in the ugly yellow-and-black shirt clicks the door shut.

"We need to have a conversation, Colonel O'Neill."

A cozy little chit-chat, he has no doubt. "Two Ls, and I take my coffee black, no sugar. Need my serial number too, or you got that already?"

The days of the system lords are numbered. Our death only feeds the fire that burns strong in the Tok'ra. Memorized speech, burned so deep he could repeat it half-conscious.

Frankly, he thinks it could use a little work. It lacks ... pizzazz. At least name, rank and serial number is pithy.

But the party won't get started before Simmons shows up. This is just the warm-up.

"Where are the rest of SG-1?" the man asks.

Yeah. They don't know shit. He would feel relief – does, probably, in a part of his mind far away from this place.

"You should know. You killed one of them," he says, conversationally.

The second ugly-shirted goon snorts. It's an ugly sound. "The little alien? You weren't that attached."

As if that mattered. They killed one of his team.

"Where are Major Carter and Teal'c?"

"Oh, I haven't seen them for a while. But they're ... around." He tries a suitably vague gesture in the direction of "around," but the cuffs pull him up short and he has to compensate by raising his eyebrows as high as they'll go. "I should imagine."

Let them think half his team's somewhere nearby, keep them looking for back-up he doesn't have, and it'll split their attention nicely.

Disinformation. The snake knows this game too, easing through memories of past interrogations. Pretend to break and feed them as much false intel as you can, make anything they can get from you worse than useless. Fight them all the way down. But they're a long way from broken yet.

"Where did you get the cargo ship from?"

Footsteps outside the door, clanking on the metal floor; he hears it before they do. The snake's got good ears.

"Thought I'd trade in my truck for something with a little less mileage. It's a sweet ride. Beats the hell out of sitting in traffic."

But the man who comes in isn't Simmons; he's a short scruffy guy with an embarrassing soul patch. And a Goa'uld shock stick in one hand. Oh, here we go ...

That and the sarc (but he's not thinking about the sarc, he's not thinking about the sarc because then he might want it) and a buck fifty gets you they're raiding for technology.

Or they have a Goa'uld source. In his head, a pattern's starting to form, slowly coming into focus, but he can't see what it is yet. Leave the snake to go on thinking about it.

This guy must be the last of the NID; there's an exchange of glances and one of the other men leaves. Stretched thin.

"Where's Simmons? He couldn't stop by to see an old friend?"

He's sitting up too straight, he realizes, and makes himself slouch, twists his spine round and hooks an elbow over the back of the chair. Fucking Tok'ra manners. He should be able to do a better impression of Jack O'Neill when he needs to. Not like he hasn't spent a lifetime practicing.

So familiar it ache: holding back and letting his other-self play the role they need to wear, their shared life in his hands.

"Simmons is dead. There was an accident," Jones says. The man with the soul patch and the shock stick throws her a glance – remember who's supposed to be asking the questions – and she backs off, looking resentful.

So Soul Patch is in charge, or thinks he is. Dollars to donuts the woman is smarter than he is. But he doesn't think she's lying. Not consciously, anyway.

And Simmons is dead.

"Accident, huh? That's a shame. Didn't by any chance occur near Adrian, did it?" he sings out.

That gets a tiny flicker of unease. Bingo. They're letting the Goa'uld have too much scope, and it's already come back to bite them in the ass. And they're trying not to know it, because then they'd have to do something about it and they're not sure they can.

"Nice of you to be so concerned, Colonel," the man sneers. Fricking amateurs. Why do they always have to go for over-acting? It's as bad as the Goa'uld. "But you leave that up to us. We can control the Goa'uld. He wants to stay alive. It's in his interests to help us. Now, as for you –"

Soul Patch crosses the room fast, lifting the shock stick, but uses it as a club.

It lands across his shoulder and arm as he automatically tries to block it, jarring through his bones into his teeth, nearly enough to knock him off the chair onto the floor. Just a little introduction.

He clutches the edge of the table, and feels the snake still fighting down the instinct to lift cuffed hands to catch the stick and wrench it out of the man's hands, suppressing the bright flare of fury before it reaches his eyes.

Instead, he mimes pain. He can feel it, too, before the nerve blocks and neurochemical tweaks shut it out. Oh yeah, that'll leave a bruise.

Except it won't, of course.

"Never trust a snake," he says through clenched teeth, a smile like a shark's. "That's what I always say."

They have no fucking clue what they're dealing with.

"We're doing what needs to be done, to protect Earth. Just because the SGC is too squeamish to get its hands dirty –"

"Yeah well, in case you haven't heard, the system lords aren't too happy with your little crusade. They bombed the Alpha Site into rubble. They're threatening to declare the Protected Planets Treaty void. You think you're protecting Earth?"

No, they hadn't heard. But Jones recovers impressively fast: "Oh, please. The treaty is a joke. We're a threat to them, and they're going to attack Earth as soon as they think they can get away with it. The X-303 is exactly the sort of technology that's forbidden. We're just hitting them first."

"But not Anubis." And there it is, cold and clear in the snake's mind. Anubis is not interested in territory, he operates through cat's paws –

"They're all the same," Jones says. All the fire of a true believer, Joan of Arc of the National Intelligence Division, reciting words that someone else has fed her. "If we attack Anubis first, the other system lords will move into the power vacuum. We don't have the strength to tackle him yet, but we will."

Change angles. "Adrian help set you up with the box? All those shiny Goa'uld toys?"

After he killed Simmons, no doubt. A little too late to resurrect him, oops what a pity.

"We have some contacts," Soul Patch says defensively. Not quite following; he hasn't got it yet.

"Yeah. I'll bet you do." It's beautiful, in a "sick fuck" kind of way. He wonders how long it took Adrian Conrad to sell them out, make contact with the most powerful Goa'uld he could find. The one who could help him make Ancient technology work. He wants to stay alive.

Let the NID provoke an all-out war between the system lords and Earth. Let them destroy each other, and whoever wins, Anubis comes out on top.

No need to wonder any more who leaked the address of the Alpha Site. The NID must have had it, and from there – "You know you're being played, right?"

This time he gets the business end of the shock stick. Apparently they're all done with the witty repartee.

He clenches his teeth and won't give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream. It hurts like fuck, but only for a second, before the snake can block it. He can keep doing that for a while yet.

Unless they have a hara'kesh, that fun little gadget for searing lesions direct into a symbiote's nervous system. Favorite Goa'uld punishment for their own. But these guys aren't Ba'al, and they don't have any of his toys. Nice try, already been tortured by a better class of bastard than you guys.

(But they have a sarc. God, he hopes they don't have any of Ba'al's toys).

"We'll begin again. Where is the rest of your team?"

Like they're in a play, the NID sticking grimly to their script and ignoring any ad-libs.

"On vacation." The stick again. "Summer camp with the Asgard. You should see Thor in his swimming trunks –"

Footsteps in the corridor. There's only one person who hasn't joined the party yet.

"I don't –"

Jones hears the noise and turns to unlock the door, and Soul Patch looks round, lowering the shock stick. Morons.

He braces his feet on the floor and lets his cuffed hands drop down casually to the edge of the table. Ready –

Adrian Conrad. Or the Goa'uld wearing his body. The eyes of a petulant little boy in the sagging, prematurely-aged face.

He doesn't expect the boiling surge of hatred from the snake, for this Goa'uld, all the Goa'uld, for everything they are. A jolt in his chest, as if someone's stabbed a needle into his heart, enough adrenaline flooding his system to kill an ox, to stop or start a human heart, and he tries not to jerk visibly. Ready, ready –

Heels of his hands against the edge of the table, thumbs hooking underneath. One door. Only one chance at this: not about to try anything, just relax, take your eyes off me for a millisecond damn you –

The Goa'uld comes closer, saying, "Colonel O'Neill," and he never finds out if it would actually have gone for "So we meet again" because his fingers begin to prickle and he knows the Goa'uld must feel the same thing, watches its eyes widen –

Now.

The metal table flips over as easily as if it's made of balsa wood.

It goes one way, crashing into the goons, and he goes the other, his shoulder slamming into Jones – smallest, weakest – before she can raise the Beretta. Something cracks as she hits the wall but he doesn't wonder what because Conrad's ducked away from the table, reflex taking him out of the way and the narrow doorway's clear and he lunges for it, out.

He sprints down the corridor and hears the crack of shots behind him – they're quick on the uptake, he'll give them that, but if he can get to the corner he's covered –

It hits like a hammer blow to the small of his back, and he stumbles and nearly falls before the snake catches him and hurls them onwards down the corridor, swinging round the corner and on.

The ship's a maze, and he has no clue where he's running except away. For all he knows he's headed straight for a dead end, another trap.

But then the snake reaches into his memories and grabs – paper, a stack of papers toppling across his desk, a document he'd glanced at and scrawled a signature on and forgotten, the X-303 blueprints –

National Geographic for the snake set, oh he was right all along: he'd swear he'd forgotten, barely glimpsed it, but it comes up crisp and clear as a heads-up display. The snake sends them ducking into another corridor, then doubles back –

– heading towards the pursuers, shit no – counting numbers on the doors, matching the numberplate he saw and the blueprints in his mind, yes, slamming through the door into something like a utility closet, bare metal shelves and a mop and bucket in the corner but no time to look because he's scrambling up the shelves against the wall, foot, knee, one elbow and a soft snarl of fury at the inconvenience of cuffed hands –

– but they're up, momentum beats gravity, pressed against the slant of the ceiling, find the panel in the right place, there, one hard kick knocks it inwards, into a dark empty space and he rolls and twists himself in, snagging the panel and pulling it into place behind him.

A breath's pause. Low ceiling, a couple of feet above his head. A maintenance duct. Why does it always have to be ducts?

On the move again, crawling on elbows and knees (sharp stab of pain in his back, but then it's gone), until he almost pitches head first down the sheer drop.

An awkward turn in the tight space, trying to get his feet on the ladder, can't go up with cuffed hands so he goes down, still needs another hand, crap –

– tries to balance on an elbow but it slips and he plummets down, banging against the rungs with a noise like someone running a stick along metal railings before he can catch himself, can pull himself sideways into another duct, crawl along, slowing, breathing beginning to rasp.

And stop.

Cold and dark. A faint glow of light from the emergency lights in the shaft, nothing more. Pupils dilated to maximum, blown like a doctor's dripped atropine into them, but even that doesn't get him much usable vision in the dimness.

He turns in the small space – one of them does – and draws his knees up, trying to curl round the injury. Bullet in the back, but he can't find an exit wound. No pain, only an absence of sensation, the hot-edged space where pain should be.

Where the hell are they? Diagrams flip into his mind's eye: the narrow space between the ship's inner and outer hull. Maintenance access only. Not intended to be habitable.

Sparse emergency lighting. Only the heat and atmosphere that leaks from the rest of the ship. They're feeding off the crumbs, like rats in the walls. One step away from breathing vacuum again.

He can feel wetness spreading across his back, warm at first but chilling fast against his skin. Fuck, he hopes his jacket's soaked up most of it and there isn't a blood trail leading all the way here.

He's pretty sure the NID won't come into the access shafts after him, though. Too high a risk of having to fight one-on-one in the cramped space, and now they know what they're dealing with. Even injured, he could still take one of them with him.

The smart option would be to seal off each level of the ship and then vent them to space, one by one. Kill him wherever he is. But if even if the NID think of that, it'll take them some time to set it in motion.

Or they could use poison gas, if they have any.

Such an optimist, Skippy.

But the snake's silent. Focusing on something else.

It might be getting colder in here. Or he's getting colder. Heavy, as if the gravity's slowly being turned up, starting to pin him under his own weight. And he's getting a nasty feeling about what the snake's not telling him. How badly hurt are they, anyway?

He gets a flash of it, then. Fuckers shot him with a hollow-point. Missed his spine but ripped through a kidney, exploding inside him. And they tore themselves up worse to keep on running. The bleeding on the outside's a fraction of the bleeding inside.

And the snake is trying to control it, trying to slow the bleeding, but he's panicking. He can feel it. Heart rate increasing as their blood pressure drops, shock setting in.

There's the sarcophagus, he could try to get to it, but – no. Not that, never that. The same certainty that drove them through cold turkey, even when he was out of his fucking mind. Out of their fucking minds.

Besides, not like he could afford to make himself vulnerable for however long it'd take. Might as well hand himself over to them and be done with it.

Still not feeling any pain. But he's starting to get that cotton wool feeling, like he could just lie here and go to sleep, soft and warm and cozy as a snowdrift. Like being on morphine. Oh, hell. The stupid sonofabitch must have shot them full of every endorphin possible to keep them going.

Big fucking help. Because what he really needs right now is to be high as a kite. He tries to fight off the drifting sensation, slams a hand against the metal floor to feel an instant's pain, feel something, stay awake. He can't afford not to be clear-headed.

A rush of irritation at being distracted from his work. Then that familiar voice out of his own mouth, flat and distorted and loud:

"Sleep. I will watch."

Does the snake even know how to whisper? He was instructed to use the voice. Yeah, but not – he shakes his head and tries to think. Okay, the snake's got a point. It surprises him to find himself thinking it, but still – snake brain will hang onto consciousness, stay alert longer. Conserve energy. Get out of the way and let him work.

And he trusts the snake to keep watch. Well, not trusts trusts, not trusts as in likes, but –

It's not like the snake can sell him out, after all.

He could be pissed about the memory thing, though. Even if it did save their collective ass. Even if he might have made the same call himself: no time to ask permission. But he reserves the right to be pissed about it.

Later.

**********

9.

**********

A tide of blood, and he drifts on it, falls and rises on each ebb and flow. Each heartbeat roars in his ears like the ocean.

Each pulse sweeps aside fragile clots as soon as he can get them into place. Slow the heart rate, slow the internal bleeding, and blackness starts to creep in around the edges, not enough oxygen to maintain his focus, let alone the host's consciousness.

And he can't let go, can't let his attention turn fully inwards. He keeps watch, staying alert for any shift in the darkness, any noise, any vibration conducted through the metal grille beneath them. But there's only silence, and the smell of machine grease. And the light that shouldn't be there.

Isn't there. He is losing his grip.

A dream. Or a memory. Or something else. He's pretty sure now that he remembers what he saw when Daniel died – when Daniel left. Regardless of the Tok'ra party line on ascension. But it's still like a dream, the way you're never surprised in dreams, because it always seems perfectly logical at the time. He knows what he'll see before he looks up, and feels the snake's thoughts cringing away.

"It's that time, is it?"

Be nice to think old friends would drop in from their higher planes of existence just to visit once in a while, but Daniel's social graces were never that hot to begin with. Which means this isn't a good sign, though it's not like he needs the extra hint to know that he's circling the fucking drain here.

"Hi, Jack."

Given sufficient trauma, the human brain will hallucinate. This is empirical fact.

Daniel's folded up next to them in the small space, hunched over to keep his head from banging into the ceiling. Polite of him to pretend that physical reality still applies to him. It's a nice touch.

It should be too dark to see his face clearly. But then Daniel isn't really there at all, so it makes sense that he can get away with fudging the details.

Even the glowing squid's a kind of metaphor, he knows, the human brain trying to make sense of the impossibility that Daniel is now. Carter tried to explain once, talked about Orlin and higher dimensions and showed him diagrams of tesseracts until his brain shorted out. Glowing squid is easier.

Daniel goes on watching him, eyebrows raised, expression earnest. Perfectly ordinary.

He averts his attention – will not weaken, will not participate in the delusion – and concentrates on trying to stem the flow of blood, constricting arteries, clamping shut capillaries, anything to buy them some time –

"What? You were in the neighborhood? Thought you'd drop in? 'Cause I'm kind of busy here right now."

"Jack?" Daniel's voice is gentle. "You're not busy. You're dying."

No. Not yet. He can still fix this. "Fat lady hasn't sung yet."

"You have to face reality, Jack. You can assess the odds as well as I can. Better. And you know they're not good."

He laughs, and it's a choked, ugly sound, muscles cramping before he can tear his wounds open any further. Yeah, kinda noticed that. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

"You're probably bleeding to death right now," Daniel continues (so helpful, that's Daniel for you). "There's a limit to what a symbiote can do."

Broken inertial dampeners on the escape pod, bleeding out so fast, and he couldn't stop it, should have been able to – he doesn't want to think about that. About dying here, dying like this, stuck in a hole with a snake in his head. God, he doesn't want to die like this.

"And even if you don't, they're not going to let you escape. The worst possibility here is not that you die. It's that they recapture you and put you in the sarcophagus again. And you know what that will do."

He doesn't want to think about the sarcophagus either. "You know what? I think we've had this conversation before."

Back in the cell, and he remembers that iron certainty that he was hallucinating – a myth invented by the Goa'uld – remembers trying to ignore Daniel, hold onto his sanity. This is not real, therefore I do not perceive it.

Daniel's mouth purses into a small smile. "Yeah, well. I always said you were a lousy listener."

That's Daniel for you, snarky and real, and in his head it won't gel, won't fit with the Daniel who's made out of light, energy, who's shuffled off this mortal coil and transcended this earthly whatever and gone to do whatever Ascended beings do. Which turns out to be not a lot. "You got a better offer?"

"Same as before." Daniel draws in a breath – but he doesn't need to breathe, does he, just like he doesn't even need glasses any more – and says decisively, "I can help you ascend."

A spike in the heart rate, and he tries to control it, drag it down. Focus. Too much adrenaline in the system to drop into trance. He can't afford to be distracted like this.

"Yea-uh," he says, sing-song. "Would that be you singular or you plural? 'Cause in case you haven't noticed, kind of buy one, get one free right now."

"Yes yes, your nervous systems are inextricably enmeshed." Daniel's got that familiar frown, the one that means his brain's racing ahead of whoever he's talking to, come on, catch up, don't you see. "I'm talking about your soul."

Souls: a common concept in primitive human cultures, part of the myth of the afterlife propagated by the Goa'uld to encourage resignation to slavery in this life. A crude metaphor for the psychological damage caused by the sarcophagus.

(If he hasn't lost his soul already. If he had one to begin with.)

His former host spun childhood tales of evil spirits, possession, the ka of animals riding in the bodies of men. A demon, he whispered, full of fierce amusement and an incomprehensible love, but you're my demon.

It sticks in his throat, and he thinks it might choke him. "So ... ticket for the next plane of existence, valid for one only?"

Daniel sighs. "Look, I'm not Oma. I can't help someone ascend unless they're already on the path."

He exhales on a huff of laughter, and this time it hurts like he's been stabbed before the snake can rein in the pain. "Daniel? This is me here, not the Dalai Lama. I bought a raffle ticket to free Tibet once, but I don't think that counts."

But Daniel's face is utterly intent. Focused, with that will that opens stargates and, okay, might not move mountains but it can mobilize everyone living under one. He wasn't really surprised when Daniel started believing he could light candles and levitate P-90s with the power of his brain: Daniel has always believed in crazy shit and done it because he believed he could.

But that's Daniel, who was always one step away from floating off the planet, right up until he actually did. He's not Daniel and things don't work that way for him. They never have, not even when he's got Ancient libraries trying to eat his brain. Too much of his own shit weighing him down.

"You're closer to the Ancients than you know," Daniel says. "You have to believe me, Jack. This is your only way out of here."

Funny that Daniel will use his name now, when he wouldn't before. And which name would that be? As if, in the end, the only person he can see is Jack.

That's the thing about Daniel. He'll take a staff blast in the chest for a guy he's only just met, but if you're not on his radar, you might as well not exist. Like the old joke about the professor: he's not absent-minded, he's just present-minded somewhere else.

"What happens to the snake?" he says, reluctantly. "Without a host ... don't think he's going to get far on foot."

Fear coiling in the pit of his stomach, their stomach, an icy cramping weight. The snake's scared. No. Not real. A hallucination, a delusion. Only afraid of their injuries, of the damage he is trying to control.

"Both of you are probably going to die here anyway. Or worse. This doesn't change that."

The snake's not afraid of dying, he realizes. Only of dying alone, waiting alone in the dark as he's waited one too many times before.

"I change into a glowing squid, he goes splat to the floor?"

Daniel doesn't laugh. "This isn't funny, Jack."

"I think it's funny."

Easy to think of the snake as human-shaped – snake thinks of himself as human-shaped, most of the time. A shadow with his face, his body. Even if he insists on being taller somehow. But he's not. You could hold him in your cupped hands. He would drown in the air.

"Even if I could ..." Daniel shakes his head, face full of infinite regret, cosmic compassion-for-the-universe. An Oma Desala expression. "The Goa'uld probably aren't even capable of ascension."

Maybe something shows in his face, because Daniel says, "The genetic memory of the Goa'uld – believe me, I know what that's like. I can't play God. I can't choose to bring that onto a higher plane. Oma's been showing me – and besides, I can't help someone ascend unless they're willing to release their burden of their own accord. The Tok'ra don't even believe ascension's real."

Doesn't seem fair. "What, so because he won't clap his hands and say he believes in fairies ...?"

Release your burden. But the snake's his burden, part of it. They are each other's burdens. All the things they carry, both of them, so many and so heavy, memories and memorials and duties. You can't let go of it. You don't deserve to. It's what weighs you down, holds your feet to the ground.

Daniel's forgotten what death is like, he thinks. Understandable, with the whole glowing deal. At the SGC they used to made cracks about Daniel dying all the time, having a revolving door to the afterlife, but he never really did. Okay, not any more than the rest of them. He was always presumed dead or almost dead or resuscitated at the last minute, ascended or transcended, death sliding off like it couldn't touch the light in him.

Not that dark wordless place you go down to, the place where you die, over and over again. He shuts his eyes and tries to think. It's a struggle to keep his head lifted, against the heavy gravity pulling him down. "So, the sarcophagus? Is it like a set number of times?"

A blink. "What?"

"Before you lose your soul. How many?"

Daniel's been in the box himself, more than a few times. Is it 25 rounds? 50? Do you get to 51, and ping, that's it, you're done, St. Peter's ripping up your season ticket?

Though he figures his went through the shredder a long time ago, in a sheaf of classified documents. No one comes out of black ops with clean hands. And the snake's got to be in the same boat, or worse. Makes it all theoretical anyway.

Daniel pinches the brow of his nose before he answers. "It doesn't work like that. It's changing you, from the very first time you use it. Changing you. Who you are. Taking away everything that makes you Jack O'Neill."

But he's changed already. Snake, sarc, and once the chocolate and the peanut butter are all mixed up, you can't un-mix them again. That's ... thermodynamics. Entropy. Something like that.

And Daniel's changed too. Daniel changed first, he wants to protest (childish, you started it). Daniel walked out on him and turned into – no, not a stranger. Not like this wasn't always there, part of him, this pure shining focus, the crazy certainty that makes the universe bend to his will because it doesn't occur to him that it might not.

But now everything else has been burnt away, and all that's left is pure and radiant and relentless. No shadows to hide in, no eyelids to shut, only perfect light for all eternity.

He thinks he might have liked the previous version better. The Daniel who wouldn't wear contacts because if he had to fight off Jaffa before he'd had his first cup of coffee, it was faster to fumble for his glasses: Well, I could try shouting, "Hold your fire, I think I dropped a lens," Jack, but I don't think they'd be impressed. Cranky stubborn human sonofabitch.

Do they even have coffee where Daniel is now? Got to suck royally if they don't.

"You know, me and the whole glowing gig?" he says, before he can think about it. "Face it, it's not gonna work out."

Coagulation, blood clots linking, knitting, holding then rupturing again; he can't, it won't –

"You can't know that." There's a note of frustration in Daniel's voice. "You don't know what it's like. Believe me. Back before – I couldn't have begun to imagine. Any of this."

Back when you were human.

Daniel needs this. That's always got him like nothing else can: the things that Daniel needs, because God knows Daniel won't take care of himself. He could but he won't; he'll sacrifice himself even while he insists that he's right and you know it, Jack. And Daniel needs him to believe that this is the answer. Whatever it is that's so unimaginable, whatever Ascended beings do all day.

I think I can do more this way. But next thing you know, he's back telling you that he can't interfere, he can't do anything at all. Except help you ascend. So then you can turn round to the next poor schmuck and tell them sorry, you can't interfere either, but how would they like to buy a timeshare in eternity. It's a fucking Ponzi scheme.

And he has a mission – they have a mission – to take this damn ship out of Anubis's hands, and he can't see a way to do it, a way out of this hole, only the blank metal walls of their trap.

"See, that's the thing," he says, mouth on auto-pilot, old familiar conversational rhythms playing out by themselves while his mind's somewhere else (down in the dark where the snake's heart flutters). "I've never liked going into anything blind. They don't give you free samples to hand out?"

"Jack." And yeah, that's desperation in Daniel's voice. "You have to give me an answer."

It hurts to hear. Daniel needs this, needs him to be Jack, needs to believe that this is the solution, the fix. That he can be fixed. Because Daniel's always believed everything can be fixed.

But he was past fixing long before he got a snake in his head. And the fucking box can't take his soul away from him any more than Daniel can save it.

He tries to deflect it, put it off for one last moment: "What was the question again?"

Daniel looks tired. Humanly weary. "Don't play dumb. This is your only way out of here."

There are things he can't do (won't do) to anyone. Doesn't matter who. It's what got them into this fucking mess to begin with, after all. Be a shame to change now.

It hurts to say it to Daniel's face, like his throat's full of rusty metal, torn-up edges – God it hurts like knives, but he forces it out anyway: "We don't leave people behind."

He watches Daniel's face work and knows a thousand things are racing through his mind, things to say, ways to argue. But in the end, Daniel only bows his head. "It's your choice," he says finally, and his voice is full of pain. "It's always been your choice."

He lets his forehead drop down to rest on the cold metal floor, and knows that Daniel will be gone when he looks up again. If he ever looks up again.

He tries not to think about what he's said, what he's just done, because he's terrified that he'll beg Daniel to come back. Sorry I didn't mean it I've changed my mind please –

Tries not to be swamped by the wave of emotion from the snake, the gratitude: ashamed to show it, to let his fear slip, but it breaks through anyway, raw and abject and astonished. And it's not like he even likes the fucking snake.

"So, just to check," he says out loud. "You weren't listening to any of that, were you, Skippy?"

He was not (oh, hasty scramble to think it, to offer them both cover). Not even if there had been anything to listen to. Which there wasn't. Only a hallucination.

Proof that the host's mind is defective, as he has maintained all along.

The snort of laughter makes him wince. The snake needs to learn to lie better, but it'll do. For now. It'll do. "You hold that thought, Skippy."

He's feeling the pain, now. Distant. Like it's there, but happening to someone else. Which it kind of is.

But the bleeding's slower than it was. Down to a steady trickle. Patched together with what must be the Tok'ra equivalent of spit and duct tape, clots that'll rupture again as soon as they move. Be pissing blood for a week. But they don't have to last that long. Just long enough to do what they need to do.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

Not that he expects that'll mean a whole lot to the snake.

First priority's getting out of the damn cuffs. Whatever they do, they're going to need to be able to move.

Dislocating enough joints to get their hands through the metal rings would be possible, if a strain on his resources to repair.

He rolls his eyes. See, that's what happens when you overthink a problem. He needs a bobby-pin, or something close enough: a thin piece of metal, a stiff wire ...

Maps and circuit diagrams, conduits, flashing in front of his mind's eye. The light further along the maintenance access shaft is dead. Probably wasn't connected by the time of the hijack. Which means it won't register as a new circuit break on the ship's computers.

Right. He crawls along on his elbows, and tries not to think about the damage the snake knows he's doing to the body. The plastic panel comes free easily enough with a sharp tug, and – ah, here we go. Wires, screws, bonanza.

It takes a few minutes before he can find a wire that'll serve as a pin, but then he lets himself drop down onto the floor again, half on his side, trying to keep his weight off the entry wound.

Smith and Wesson cuffs. Proving that the NID are even dumber than he'd thought. He bends the wire into a right angle, one short side and one long, then tucks his hand in, bending the wrist as far as it'll go – this is the tricky part –

He fumbles the wire and it drops onto his chest and skitters onto the metal grid, nearly falling through. Fingers shaking. Fuck. It's a bitch to pick it up again, fingertips clammy and numb. He doesn't need to be shocky right now.

But then the snake's sliding in, smoothing out fine motor control. Not taking over, just steadying his hands. The wire turns like a crank, and the lock pops open.

He pulls the cuffs off and drops them on the floor, grimacing at the clatter (too late), then tries to make his brain work.

What do we have, what do we need?

The NID'll be expecting them to go for the docking bay, try to escape in the cargo ship. But they won't be: that's a given. Something they're both taking for granted. Escape (survival) isn't the objective.

And the Goa'uld in Adrian Conrad is undoubtedly looking forward to another confrontation, mano-a-mano. Snake to snake. You probably think this song is about you ...

Okay. The NID are spread thin. Four of them. Three if the crack he heard was Jones's back breaking, and he thinks it might have been; apparently Skippy doesn't have any issues with hitting women. Plus the Goa'uld. Still enough people to cover the bridge and the engine room.

A distraction would come in handy right about now. The snake's already thinking about weak points, scrolling through his mental maps. Sabotage: the fine art of being a monkey wrench into the works.

Work down the list. Engines. Power. Control systems. Ventilation. Life support – independent life support systems on every level. Atmospheric scrubbers and oxygen generators. It's a fail-safe. Which means there's one on the level nearest to them now.

Then the patterns come together, thoughts meshing, and it's faster than anything he's known, like knowing someone so well that you don't have to finish a sentence, everything implied and understood, if we and it would and they will and and then. And then.

He hisses through clenched teeth. Nice.

It doesn't matter who thought what. They've got a plan.

The lighting panel should have a back-up battery so it won't cut out in emergencies. Easy enough to find and disconnect it. It's lithium-ion, a bonus; if it's short-circuited or even over-heated, it'll ignite. Explode if they're lucky. They stash it inside their jacket along with a coil of wire, then edge backwards towards the ladder, testing how much they can move without critical damage.

They'll need tools.

**********

Down the ladder, half a level. Past an access door through the inner hull of the ship, and down again, careful and slow. This is where it gets tricky.

The blueprints he saw (the snake remembered) were months old by the time he got snaked. Maybe a year back, all told. The timetable's probably been changed hundreds of times since then, adjusted and delayed as the geeks tinker with the ship's drives and everyone else fights over budgets and the precise specs for the doorhandles. There's no way of knowing how far the unfinished areas of the ship extend, let alone where the construction crews might have ditched parts and tools when they finished work for the day.

Into another crawlspace, between the levels. Think. There has to be an answer.

Track the lighting. Prometheus was built in a silo, half a kilometer underground. No daylight. So they can't have been working in the parts of the ship where the lighting's not connected in yet; they'd have had to rig that first.

Find the boundary between the lit and unlit areas, and you've got the best odds of finding electrical tools.

Into a duct heading inwards, towards the core of the ship, and he hopes to high heaven that the NID don't have any lifesign detectors around. Bad enough that they're going to have to venture out of cover at some point.

Darkness, darkness. Then, glimmering through the cracks between panels: light.

It takes a while to find an access panel, and then he lies with his ear against it for a long time, listening to the snake listening, straining their hearing to its limits.

Can't hear anyone moving around, but they take a length of the stiff wire anyway. Sharp enough to stab into the right spot in someone's throat; flexible enough for a garrotte.

They push out the access panel and climb down silently, and damn, that spooky snake stillness is useful sometimes. Crack open the door, don't see anything. Move on out.

It takes a few minutes to find a room where there are abandoned tools, but it feels like years, his heart hammering in his ears. Run into one of the NID, and they've got a fighting chance. More than one, and it's game over. Every step away from their bolthole raises the risk.

But then – treasure trove. There are even a few perchlorate candles scattered on the floor. Looks like they were stashed in a cupboard as backup, quick-and-dirty combustion to produce an emergency oxygen supply as needed. They must have fallen out during the bumpy takeoff.

Sweet.

**********

Once they're done, it's a small ragged bundle: a tangle of wires, the battery, an igniter (resistance wire, not chemical, thank God) ripped from one of the perc candles, and his wrist watch. All wrapped up in strips of cloth from the parts of his jacket that weren't soaked with blood.

He fights off the impulse to tie it up with a bow; sometimes you just shouldn't gild the lily.

It takes a few more minutes of belly-crawling through the ducts to reach the oxygen generator on this level. Then they use a screwdriver to pry loose one of the fat metallic tubes running from the oxygen generator to the ventilation system. Electrolysis: water in here, hydrogen out thataway, oxygen thisaway.

Pure oxygen. Makes everything flammable as hell; a bar of aluminum'll burn like wood in a pure oxygen atmosphere. If you get a spark in the right place. The rags'll help start a nice little fire.

The NID'll be able to extinguish the fire pretty fast once all the alarms go off, of course. And they will go off: fire's one of the biggest hazards in a confined environment like a plane or a submarine. Or a spaceship. The fire alarms were probably the first circuits to be connected.

They punch the button on the watch – the timer – drop the parcel in, wedge the tube back in place, and move.

Ten minutes to go. Back along the duct to the ladder and down, counting seconds (and what is that, Goa'uld for "Mississippi"?).

The NID are dumb, but they're not that dumb; any spontaneous combustion on board the ship, and they'll start looking for him in the immediate vicinity.

But ten minutes is a long time, and by then they'll be a long way from where the NID think he is.

If two of the NID go running for the fire, that leaves them one person to cover the bridge and one for the engine room (and he hopes to fuck it's not the Goa'uld).

By the time the count's up, they're three levels down and halfway across the ship from where they planted the incendiary, balanced on a narrow ledge inside an access door.

The ledge is tilting and he's trying not to slide off – but no. Blood loss making them dizzy, and they cling to the door handle. It's a long way down.

Hand trembling (make that stop). Clammy skin slipping on slick metal.

Two seconds past the count, and the smoke alarms go off, a hard constant ringing like a jackhammer drilling into their ears. Warning lights start flashing red.

Then they're not thinking any more. No identity, only senses tracking and reacting, reflexes and training and attention, surer than conscious thought. Dancing through the minefield. Thought will only trip you.

Count ten more seconds for good measure then kick the door open. The corridor's clear.

Halfway down it, they hear running feet and flatten themselves against a wall, trying to merge into it. Hold perfectly still, and no-one will see, predator or prey. But the footsteps are moving away from them, towards the fire.

Faded now. They move again, down the next corridor. To the engine room.

The pressure doors are sealed. Slap the button – no joy. Fuck. Coded access only. Fingers race over the keypad. Test different combinations, fishing from memory (doesn't matter whose), a minute, another minute, too slow. Goa'uld pass codes. Standard transliteration, run the cryptography in his head, numbers slide and invert themselves, and the host's getting impatient pick it up pick it up pick it up –

– the doors hiss and start to open.

Whose roof is fire, whose walls are living serpents. Old words, old rituals, buried deep in the bloodlines. The Goa'uld have never had any imagination. Might as well leave your combination lock set to the factory default or your dog's birthday.

The guy in the ugly shirt's standing at a console across the room, his back to the door. He turns as it slides open.

9-mil in his hand coming up.

Freeze.

The lights flash, on off, on off, bouncing shadows like torchlight through branches.

He clutches the doorframe and lets his knees sag. Let him see the blood on them, let him think they're weak. Barely a threat.

(Calculating, calibrating: they can take another bullet if they have to and still keep moving. Anything but a head shot.)

"Get your fucking hands up." Ugly Shirt actually brandishes the 9-mil. Right-handed; it'll take him micro-seconds longer for him to turn towards his firing side and still keep them in his sights.

Fingers slip off the edge of the doorframe, stagger, one stumbling step further into the room, just happening to veer to the side –

– then lunge, across the room in two long strides, grab his hand and wrench it up and away, one hard chop to his wrist and bone snaps and the guy yelps and drops to his knees, hold on the weapon loosening.

Easy to twist it out of his hand, no resistance, and then a boot to the jaw takes him down to the floor.

Shift the 9-mil to the other hand. Pull the trigger twice.

Done.

Breathe in, breathe out, vision still burning, phosphorus, napalm. Then cross the room, punch the controls until the doors slide closed then rip the panel off the wall, yank the wires connecting them to the door hydraulics.

Repeat as needed with the other doors. Now no-one's going to be getting in without a plasma torch.

Discard the weapon on the floor.

Back to the computer console. Already up and running, no more need to bother with pass codes.

In, in, sidewinding through programs, windows flickering open and shut nearly too fast to follow, looking for – here, yes. Venting sequence. Commands, instructions, now.

Nothing.

Safety over-rides. Insisting on sensors registering sealed doors first, sequential venting, protocols, fuck. He's going to fail because of fucking OSHA.

Out of the program, looking for a back door in the raw code, and he doesn't know this language but he knows systems and patterns and he recognizes the Goa'uld coding twined into it, hijacks it, insinuating himself into the system, weaving himself into its lines and looking for its weaknesses, its blind spots –

– down to their knees, wrench off a panel under the console, reach unerringly for one of the interface crystals and yank it out (searing hot, take the skin off your palm) –

Now the computer's down one feedback loop, sensors not registering the danger, and he runs the same set of instructions again, demands, forces –

Hit the last button.

There's a deep, distant boom, like an explosion underwater. The whole ship jolts, lurching sideways, and they drop into a crouch to stay on their feet, as every airlock and door on Prometheus opens and locks open, and the ship's atmosphere vents howling into space.

The scream rises like a jet taking off, then falls away again, until the only noise is the endless ringing of the alarms in the engine room. No sound in a vacuum.

In space, no one can, etcetera. (It's a movie, Skippy.)

He stands, shakily. Not dead, which is ... unexpected. The pressure doors have held. Disconnected from the controls, so they didn't open. He looks up, and – yeah, the air vents are sealed. Fire protection subroutine, to keep smoke from asphyxiating people.

Fucking OSHA again: there's a punchline for you.

He finds he's turned back to the computer, and lets the snake tap out a few more commands to shut down the alarms. Merciful silence.

Then they lean against the console, taking stock.

It's possible that some of the NID made it into EVA suits before all the atmosphere vented. If there were any on board. If they had time. Which they didn't.

Still. Only an hour or two's oxygen in the suits' tanks. If they can't get in here, all he has to do is wait them out. Asphyxiation's a crappy way to go.

He looks round the room, eyeballs its dimensions, calculating the volume. There should be oxygen for a day or two, if the vents don't leak too badly. The CO2 build-up will kill them first.

Like being in a car slowly sinking under water, a shrinking pocket of air trapped under the roof.

His hands wander over the keyboard, rifling through programs, but the engine control's still offline. Dead in the water. No chance of re-starting life support without a way to reach it.

Good thing, in a way. If they could leave this room, then they could get to the sarcophagus. Better not to have the option.

He checks the room, but there's no stash of perchlorate candles in here. Should have held onto one, but it would have slowed them down.

By the time he's finished searching, the pain's leaking back into consciousness again, no longer muffled by endorphins and adrenaline. The bleeding's worse; he needs to stay still if he's going to have a hope of repairing it again.

And the NID must be dead by now. It's weirdly anti-climactic.

The 9-mil's still on the floor. That's an option (if the host chooses; if it is asked of him). But he doesn't move to pick it up.

Drop the ambient temperature, and he can take them into deep trance, slow their heart rate to a few beats per minute, near-hibernation. It will reduce their respiration and prolong their survival.

You can pull some of those Jaffa tricks too, huh? Sounds like a plan.

But trance will inevitably increase the sharing between their consciousnesses. No way to avoid it.

The snake really needs to stop telling him this sort of shit (no, I didn't mean don't tell me).

First things first; he pulls up an audio program and records a brief message requesting urgent pick-up of a stranded operative, and/or salvage of valuable technology if pick-up is not available in time. Then he runs it through the standard encryptions and sets it to repeat, broadcasting across Tok'ra frequencies.

Across the room, some of the weapons controls have lit up, glowing green, inviting. He can hear them in his head, singing at the edge of his nerves. Tugging at him the way the Ancient database did. The metal's engraved with swirling script, in a language the snake can't read.

Nice irony. He gets to die surrounded by Ancient superguns. Weapons weapons everywhere but not a drop of air to breathe.

And that's it. Nothing more to do.

He settles down on the floor, back propped against the wall, and tries to relax. Tries to check his watch, before remembering why it's not on his wrist. Shit.

He could probably pull up a clock on the computer, but – hey, NID time, Earth time. He'll live without it. Or not, as the case may be.

The emergency lighting goes on flashing, on off, on off.

He can feel the snake reach into his heart, overriding nerve signals, dragging out the pause between each heartbeat like a lead weight pulling him down. It should be terrifying. He should be panicking, and he wonders if the snake's stopping that too. But he isn't.

Funny, the things that pop into your mind at a time like this. Old advice, tricks for survival. If you're in a car sinking under water, you should wind the window open a crack and let the water start pouring in. It's counter-intuitive but do it anyway. Once the car's nearly full of water, the pressure inside and outside the door is equalized: you can kick the door open and swim free.

Eyelids flutter and drop, things slow down. Hours might be passing between one thought and the next.

It's not bad.

The host half-drowses, and he turns his attention to repairing the body, the long slow struggle to close internal wounds torn open again. The burn on the palm of their hand – right hand? – can be left for later, if there is a later.

It's like knowing there's someone else in the house with you: that background awareness of another person's presence, doing chores, sweeping the floor, clearing up. There, even if you can't hear them. Not bad.

So. Skippy?

A sharpening of the snake's focus and the mental equivalent of a frown at the name, but without the edge of resentment that usually accompanies it. As if the snake's decided that it's incomprehensible, but maybe not an attack.

You're just not a Skippy, are you, Skippy?

No answer. Only the slow rush of each heartbeat, like the sound you hear between your head and the pillow late at night.

This blending thing. How's it supposed to work, then?

He thinks of beginnings, putting thoughts together, matching, comparing, finding points of commonality in the torrent of memory. I am; you are; who are we?

So, it looks like we could be here for a while. Tell me about your last host, Skippy. He sounds like an okay guy.

The host can recall the memories for himself, if he wishes.

Yeah. I know. Tell me anyway.

**********

Time passes. Hours, or years, or days.

There's a noise, far away, which turns into the crackle of the comms. It's an effort to surface, to come back from where he is (they are). From a long way away, he can hear a voice: no echo, but it's speaking Goa'uld, and the formal inflections denote humble self speaking on behalf of a high-ranking master. Jaffa.

"... this is cargo ship Chel'nar." A fractional hesitation, before the voice starts again, "We have come from Per Re ..."

It almost doesn't register. And then they're scrambling up from the floor to the computer console, jerking numb muscles into use, fumbling to open a new communication channel despite the dizzying headrush.

It's a Tok'ra identification code.

"We will –" damn, forgot to turn the microphone on – "We will meet in Per Ma'at."

We have come from the house of Ra.

We will meet in the house of truth.

There's nothing but silence, then a burst of static and Carter's voice saying, "Sir? Sir?"

"I'm here, Carter," he says. "We're here."

"We scanned from outside," she says, breathless. "We couldn't see any life signs, and the airlocks are – we got your message but it took us three days to get here. I thought we were too late."

Three days. It doesn't seem right, but he doesn't know what would. Lost track of time somewhere along the way.

And now Carter's here in a tel'tak, and they're not going to die after all.

"Scan again," he says. "The NID – you need to make sure they're all dead." His throat's bone-dry.

Not that there's a real chance that anyone survived except them. But maybe some of the NID sealed a room(somehow), kept going using the perchlorate candles (not enough for three days). He needs to know for sure. Needs more time before people come on board.

"Scanning now," Carter says, superfluously. He suspects she's afraid to break off communications, afraid of losing the voice in her ear. Like he's a ghost, might fade and vanish forever if she doesn't pay attention.

A minute later, she reports, "Only one set of life-signs, sir. You're in the engine room?"

"Yup." I am, we are; neither one's right. His voice sounds odd and unfamiliar in his own ears. Strange to have to speak out loud.

"Do you have access to the computers? If you can seal the airlocks and unlock the rings, then we can ring aboard and try to get the life support running again."

His left hand's already drifting over the keys, tapping out codes before he can think to protest. He doesn't feel ready for this.

It takes him a while to remember that he needs to tell her. "Done."

A few minutes later, the computer shows the rings activating, accepting an outside lock. Just a pattern of pixels on a screen. Shouldn't mean so much.

He turns round and props his ass against the console, leans back. The CO2 levels aren't that high yet; they shouldn't be this dazed. But suddenly everything's happening very fast, and he feels like he's struggling to wake up, fighting off the urge to pitch the alarm clock across the room and go back to sleep. Go back to that safe place inside his head, his/their minds curled together.

There's a dead body on the floor, he notices. At first it won't add up, doesn't parse, until he remembers (is reminded) that it's the NID guy they killed. Oh. Yeah.

From the comms, he can hear voices again. Fuzzier now, static crackle-and-pop: they must be using headset radios inside EVA suits.

"What happened here?" Carter asks.

He fills her in on the details. Most of them. When the gaps get too long, she prompts him with questions, as if she's hanging onto his voice like a lifeline.

No, the other way around. Holding a lifeline out to him.

Time passes.

It takes him a while to register that Carter's voice is saying, "Sir? Sir?" again. Then, "Kanan?"

It's the snake who holds down the button, says, "I am here," with that flat, careful enunciation, then slides control back, draws his attention back to the microphone again.

"We've got life support up again on this level. You can open the doors now."

With the controls he destroyed. "Negative. No can do, Carter."

"Okay. Just ..." She sounds at a loss. "Just stay where you are, then."

He manages to switch off the microphone before snorting. Like there's anywhere for them to run to. Back in a trap again, and he should feel better knowing that someone's coming to get them, but he doesn't.

He expects to see the blue burn of a plasma torch carving through the trinium, but in the end, there's just a soft hiss, and the doors slide open to reveal Carter at the control panel with her hands full of wires and clips, a few jump leads clenched between her teeth. Hot-wiring the control panel. Neat.

The pressure in the room adjusts, making his ears pop, and he swallows hard.

"I have no idea what you managed to do to these controls, sir," Carter says. She sounds impressed. Or horrified; it's hard to tell.

"It was a team effort," he tells her.

Behind her, he sees Greene and then Rak'nor. Which means someone must have insisted on representatives of all sides being present, which means the Tok'ra and the Jaffa and the Tau'ri haven't all massacred each other, miracle of miracles.

And behind them, Satterfield. Alive. But she's still wearing the same green BDUs as Carter, not the brown leather uniform, and he's suddenly afraid for Zetal, afraid of what they might have done to his sister (drill holes in your skull, to let the demons out).

There's an awkward stand-off before they venture into the room. Trying not to crowd him. Especially once they notice the dead guy on the floor.

His back collides with the wall and he realizes that he's edged away from them, over to the far side of the room.

Then Satterfield bolts over to one of the consoles, and his skin buzzes with the naquadah in her blood as she races past. Blended. A host, despite the Tau'ri uniform.

"These must be connected to the Ancient drone weapons," she says, absorbed, scanning the inscriptions. They're not glowing any more; they went cold and dead a while back, after he moved out of their range. "Looks like they've just tried to patch them direct into the ship's systems."

She sounds indignant, like someone who's just seen a vintage Mercedes being used to haul garbage. Evidently the NID can add technology abuse to the list of their sins.

She pauses, listening, then drops her head. Then her eyes flash and her snake's talking, rapid-fire volley of words making the distortion worse, body language imperious and stiff:

"This conforms with archive records describing weapons constructed by the Ancients. But we have never known any to be found in a functioning condition. Whereas, if reports are correct and these have been used in combat ..."

It's as bad as the geeks at the SGC. They can never get to the point, which in this case is: guns. The war is coming, one way or another, war with the system lords or Anubis or both at once. Too late to stop it now, even if they've delayed it for a while. But on the plus side, they've just picked up a battleship with enough firepower to take out a mothership before breakfast.

Another head-bob, ponytail bouncing, and Satterfield glances round and beams as if she's pulled off a cool new trick (did you see that? didja didja?). Reserved Zetal, in such an extrovert host; he can't make it match in his head, see how they fit together. "We need to get these back, somewhere where we can do a proper analysis."

As if having a snake in your head is as amazing as stepping through a wormhole from one planet to another, all part of the same deal. As if she's got the galaxy in her pocket. He doesn't know whether he should feel pity or envy.

But there's a flurry of activity round her, and then someone discovers that the controls light up again when Rak'nor touches them, and after that no-one pays attention to him.

He leans against the wall and makes himself exhale.

Too many people, too much noise, too many demands on his attention. If he has to think about it, has to notice who's in control of the body and try to be who they need him to be, then everything starts to fall apart again. He can fake it if he has to, if there's a gun to his head. But now there isn't. Carter and her crew aren't an enemy to be performed for.

He doesn't want them to be the enemy.

Movement, and he opens his eyes to see Carter standing next to him. Okay, probably even Carter can spot when someone's one step away from going catatonic.

He suspects that Major Carter sees more than she is given credit for. More than she will give herself credit for.

"Are you okay?" she asks, then winces. Dumb question. "We've got a med kit, if –" She stops herself again, then asks carefully, "Is there anything you need?"

"No, I'm ..." He waves a hand. "We're okay." It's even mostly true. The body's pretty much patched up; it'll take more time and rest to heal fully, but they won't die. He's covered in dried blood, mostly his, and he stinks and he probably looks like ten kinds of shit, but that's all fixable.

Blood pressure's still dangerously low, fluid volume way below where it should be, but all he needs is water; he can take care of that as soon as he gets back on his ship.

His ship. Their ship. Not the one Carter came on, because – he holds the thought at arm's length, not quite ready to think it yet. Doesn't know how long he's known for.

Carter doesn't look convinced, but she doesn't argue either. She watches him for a moment, head tilted and mouth soft, then looks over at the huddle by the console. Constellations of lights are coming on round the room as more systems are restored. He catches Satterfield looking at him, wide-eyed and shy; she drops her gaze quickly back to the keyboard again.

He tries to remember that the room's been unsealed, that he should be able to breathe now, but there are too many people around. And it'd be worse if he tried to go back.

"Teal'c's with the Free Jaffa," Carter offers. "They're setting up their own base; the Tok'ra have been helping them re-locate. People are talking about a new alliance ..."

A sharp unexpected ache at the possibility that he may not see the Jaffa again. Not just the host's emotions; Teal'c of Chulak has been an honorable ally. Has been kind, for the host's sake and more than that. Almost a friend. Another thought to hold carefully, to contemplate later.

"Yeah. I can see that." He gestures at the little gang, and Carter nods. Tok'ra, Jaffa, Tau'ri, cats and dogs living together. Too many people who've crossed the floor to go back now.

And a Tok'ra wearing the insignia of a USAF lieutenant. Oh yeah, the paperwork on that one's going to be fun. He pities whoever's going to have to handle that (and it's not going to be him).

If she's not staying with the snakes, the brass are going to have a shitfit; there's going to be a hell of a fight if she wants to keep her commission. They'll probably have to fight to keep her out of an NID cell, to begin with. But she's a bright kid, great record, at the start of a promising career; he can see why she wouldn't want to give that up just because she has a new roommate. And if Zetal's on board with it – well, maybe she's another one like Selmak who's been waiting for a test case. Or maybe she just likes the idea of a Arch'n'Anth department that doesn't get evacuated every other month.

Not retired like Jacob, not crazy like him. They can't get rid of her so easily.

He watches Carter watching Satterfield, hands folded on the butt of her P-90. If Satterfield wants to stay at the SGC, he knows Carter will fight for her, mama bear protecting her cubs, just like he's tried to do for so long. And Selmak and Jacob will weigh in on the Tok'ra side. Might change a lot of things; might change everything.

Viva la revolución. Even if he can't be part of it.

"So," he says. "People's Popular Front of the Alpha site?"

Carter ducks her head and grins at him, the first real smile he's seen out of her in a long time. Then, deadpan, "Popular People's Front, actually. What did the Goa'uld ever do for us, sir?"

That's his Carter. Took him months to notice she had a sense of humor. Months before she'd let it sneak out. And she looks like she's okay. Tired and too pale, as if the color's been washed out of her by the blue lights, as if she hasn't slept since the bombing of the Alpha site. But surviving. Bearing up under the weight.

A thought at the back of his mind, and – yeah. He lets his chin drop. She needs to know, and it's easier this way. Easier to say, to let it be said.

"Major Carter," the snake says. "There is a sarcophagus aboard this ship. I would advise you to ensure that its operating mechanism is destroyed at the first available opportunity."

She nods, and he can see her putting the pieces together, guessing too much. There are rules concerning the return of all captured alien technology to the SGC, but some things don't have to make it into the reports. "I'll do that," she says. "I promise."

He trusts that she will. They both trust her. He can let her take care of this.

She's still watching him, as if she can see something in his face. "Sir?" A quick frown, annoyed at herself. "Both of you. You're not going to be coming back with us, are you?"

It hits him like oxygen, a rush of relief that he didn't have to say it. Didn't have to break it to her.

He flails their hands around vaguely. "Oh, you know. Things to do, system lords to kill ..."

They've been thinking about that too. Might pay Ba'al another visit: do it right this time. It'd take planning – Ba'al knows this face, so getting close will be tricky – but they've got time. They have a debt that needs paying off, preferably with a sharp serrated edge; doesn't matter if it gathers interest for a few more years.

And there's plenty that a lone agent can do, if they've got the skills. More than one way to fight a war. They've both taken their vows, in their separate ways; there's no statute of limitations on duty.

Carter bites her lip, then makes up her mind and reaches for her wrist, peels open the Velcro straps of the GDO and shoves it at him. "You take this. I'll talk to Hammond, I'll make sure the iris code doesn't get locked out. You can come back any time."

She'll carry this. She can take this weight. Carter will hold the SGC steady, and Teal'c will do his thing with the Rebel Jaffa, and – hell, maybe Daniel will find his way home again somehow, out of the bright and shining dead end he's trapped himself in. Stranger things have happened.

He's going to miss them.

He takes the GDO. Good to have boltholes, places to fall back to in an emergency, even if they can't stay. She hesitates, then adds softly, "Take care of yourselves."

"Hey," he says. Any more of this, and Carter will be trying to have an Emotional Moment, and that never ends well. "Big shiny space guns, Carter. Use them wisely. Kick Anubis's ass."

He watches her pull it together. "Yes, sir." Her best military tones, and a sharp salute.

He returns the salute, and tries to let it say everything he can't: respect, honor. Gratitude. I stand relieved.

Then she relaxes and gives him an off-kilter attempt at a smile. "I should –" she gestures at the others. Giving him an out. She'll keep them busy while he slips away. He nods, and she heads on over.

She only looks back once.

**********

The cargo ship's still where they left it, thank to the miracles of modern technology and gravity-locking.

It takes a few deep breaths before they can cross the docking bay, but the forcefields don't waver and soon they're safely sealed in and back in the pilot's seat. Alone.

He's always wondered why the Goa'uld have to paint everything gold, but it's a relief after the cold blue and fluorescent lights of Prometheus. Autumnal, in a garish way.

It's quiet; nothing but the hum of the engine. Quiet inside his head, too. A thoughtful quiet, the opaque pressure that means that the snake's thinking hard. Opaque as a polarized screen: tilt your head at just the right angle and it's clear as day.

"So," he says, out loud. "Where do we go from here?"

[ LJ ]