On mental illness: "Don't ask me those questions! Don't ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don't talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don't want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist." ― Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)

What was happening to him?

Daniel lay flat on the infirmary bed, one knee bent, right arm across his chest, the other lying at his side, fingers tapping out an irregular rhythm against the mattress, the plastic coating under the thin sheet making a loud sort of echo that snapped in the quiet air. His eyes were open – wide open – flicking back and forth in a search pattern, but the stained concrete ceiling was giving him about as many answers as the nurses and doctors that had parked him here after the latest round of tests.

Jack was long gone. After feeling up an innocent saline bag and attempting to pierce through the fog of Daniel's confusion with that dark, thousand watt stare of his, he'd yielded to Janet's shooing and her promise of 'news as soon as I have some, Colonel,' with a finger wave and a bland expression. Daniel had learned over the past few years to be wary of that blandness: something was likely lurking underneath, ready for an opportunity to bite.

Like a shark. A deceptively porpoise-looking shark. A porpoise-looking shark that lured you in with its playful antics and then had you for lunch.

His lips quirked. He could almost see the image – himself in a cool blue ocean, the grey-bodied sea creature circling, just beneath the surface, keeping hidden. The water rippling in concentric circles, shades of blue and grey, out from Daniel's body, and then coming back with greater force. He frowned. He was stuck in that ocean – that pond – the shark wasn't Jack, and it wasn't playful. It was grey and stark and dragged something like seaweed draped across its body. He blinked, trying to erase the image, but now he was caught in a whirling puddle bounded by silver – the Stargate, the open wormhole, the energy holding him somehow upright and motionless while contorted figures made of bone and tatters swam closer and closer. Closer. Too close. Skeletal arms reached for him, ripped at his clothing, drew blood.

"Daniel – Daniel –"

"Daniel?"

He jerked backwards, arms slapping at the water, legs kicking out. "No!"

"- we're coming, Daniel -"

They were too close, pulling him under, trying to drown him. One clutched at his arm, the fingers small and cold, holding tight. He surged upwards, neck stretched to try to reach the clear air.

"Doctor Jackson!"

He gulped in a huge lungful of air and tossed his head to clear the water from his vision, twisting, turning, to find his attackers, his enemies –

"Daniel – can you see me?"

Frowning, he felt his heart beating like ravens' wings in his chest. "Janet?"

Janet. Nurse Clark. Rounding the bed, a large airman. The infirmary. The mountain.

"S- sorry," Daniel stammered, cold and shaking, "s-sorry." He tried a snorted laugh. "That was some dream – nightmare."

Soft brown eyes pierced straight through him. "Daniel."

The arm she wasn't holding was pulled in tight against his chest, the muscles of his chest and shoulders rigid with tension, his fist clenched. Fight or flight. Fight or – he straightened, scanning the faces of the two women. He saw fear, concern, Janet was pale, and the nurse, stern – no change there, his more sarcastic self inserted sharply – but neither seemed mussed or hurt. He didn't – he wouldn't –

"No, Daniel. We're fine."

Eyebrows lifting, he blinked at the petite doctor as she moved closer, her grip loosening. "We're just worried about you."

Had he said that out loud?

"Let's get you back in bed."

"Janet –" Daniel hesitated to argue with her, to put any more stress on her slim shoulders, but he wasn't – he couldn't stay here – it was too quiet – too empty. "Can't I just go back to work? I'm going stir crazy in here, lying around like I'm injured."

She guided him to lie back, fixing a blood pressure cuff around his arm, hands busy, calm, but her professional mask a little loose around the edges. "Physical injury is easy, Daniel. Whatever is causing your symptoms is … not quite as easy to pin down."

He couldn't help comparing the squeeze of the expanding blood pressure cuff to the feel of her hand – and realizing that her panicked grip had been tighter. He lowered his voice. "Janet – what's going on?"

She wouldn't meet his eye.

"Janet?"

Finally, after checking her machines and making a few notations on his chart, she held it against her chest and looked at him. "Why don't you tell me what you were just seeing, Daniel? What was upsetting you?"

His eyes flicked towards the nurse where she was hovering behind Janet, her movements almost completely shielded by the doctor's small figure. "It was just a dream." What was she doing with the instruments on that tray? Her hands were skittering against the metal, her fingers long, too long, too thin. He didn't want her to touch him with those hands. Nurse Clark's hands were always cold, but this was … this was …

"Daniel?"

He jerked, gaze snapping back to Janet's face. "Really, Janet. It was just a stupid dream. Don't make me tell you that I was dreaming about … Jack."

A smile flickered and was gone. "I'm going to need more if I'm going to get some use out of that as blackmail material," she whispered. "But," she began, immediately solemn, "the readings on your EEG tell me that you weren't actually sleeping."

"Not –" he swallowed thickly, immediately hyper-aware of the sticky pads attached to his skin, "I must have been. There's no – no – "

Janet stepped closer, one hand on his shoulder. Behind her, the nurse had her back to them now, but he heard the clicking of her fingernails, of bone and metal.

"Daniel. 'There's no'- what?"

"No – no – water – no Stargate –" his eyes widened as if he could somehow make them see what that figure in tattered white was doing. "No Linvris …" his voice slowed, weakened. "Is there?" he hissed, pressing backwards, his heels digging into the slick sheets to find traction.

"I'm afraid not." Janet answered kindly. "It sounds like you're having a hallucination."

"What?" Daniel stilled, his mind racing. No. That couldn't be true. He closed his eyes, placing the strange images and fears to one side to try and arrange the facts in nice, linear order. Fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, Daniel followed his trail back through time, each step along the path that had led him to this infirmary bed. Linvris in his closet. Voices in the locker room. Death's head figures coming down the ramp. The chill, hairs standing on end, as something in the Linvris chamber brushed past him. The smell, the instant of panic, when he came face to face with the first corpse.

"No. You're wrong." He opened his eyes and speared her with his cool stare. "I'm guessing that the scene in the Linvris chamber must have touched an old fear, brought some forgotten memory of death back to my subconscious. Now, every time I close my eyes I have some sort of flashback. PTSD. Something like that." He huffed, squaring his shoulders against the mattress. "Hallucinations? Come on, Janet. I know people around here think I can be a little flaky – mostly Jack, again – but I'm not delusional."

Janet tilted her head, considering. "Okay. That is one possible explanation." Her grip on the papers and chart in her arms tightened. "But I have some serious doubts. And some test results to analyze. So, until I have more of a definitive answer for you I'm afraid you'll have to stay here."

Daniel blew out a frustrated breath.

"And, since you're sure it's some kind of stress-induced nightmare, why don't I send Doctor MacKenzie in to talk with you?" She obviously sensed the scorn in his level stare. "It couldn't hurt, Daniel. And, maybe we can get to the bottom of this a little sooner and get you back to work?"

Clever. He nodded in acknowledgement of Janet's cunning gambit. Appeal to his need to stop dwelling, to get his hands on some documents or artifacts and put this whole embarrassing situation behind him. "I don't see how it could help either, but okay."

"Great." She patted his shoulder before turning away.

One finger pointed menacingly, Daniel called her back. "Hey. As long as you keep that," he gestured towards the nurse's skeletal figure, "away from me."

"Daniel!" Janet admonished.

"A deal's a deal," he sing-songed.

She shook her head, laughing under her breath. "All right, Daniel. She is about to go off-shift anyway. How about I send Sam down to keep you company?"

He nodded. "Much better." Relief rolled through his aching muscles, but he kept a close watch on the thing Janet thought was her nurse until it stopped skittering around and headed out the door.

MacKenzie sighed and tugged his glasses from his nose with one finger, the thick report falling closed on his desk one single page at a time as if the words within it were trying to hide. Guilt sat heavily in his stomach. All of the accomplishment and pride of well-executed research and the kudos of those few of his peers who were read into the Stargate program had become dust and ashes in his mouth. When this report - these findings - had been all theoretical, when his careful theories, his painstakingly detailed analyses of EEGs, his study of mental disorders, of brain chemistry and genetic predispositions were tucked neatly into stark black type on a white page, he'd actually felt pride. Intellectual accomplishment.

But when the reality leaped from the page to sit before him in flesh and blood, clothed in drab BDUs and wearing the faces of real men and women – heroes – the only emotion he could feel was regret. Regret that he could do nothing to stop this, that he could say nothing to ease the grief and loss, and, finally, regret that his findings gave him no other solution.

Solution. He shook his head, fingers pinching against his nose and his eyes tightly shut. That was not a word he would allow past his lips during the upcoming briefing. There was no solution to schizophrenia.

Doctor Jackson was mentally ill.

His visit with the young man had begun well enough. People of high intelligence often had little use for psychiatric medicine or psychotherapy. Couple that with the previous interactions he'd had with Daniel Jackson after certain extremely difficult missions and MacKenzie hadn't expected to be greeted with openness and heart-to-heart communication.

What he had expected was Doctor Jackson's typical calm sarcasm and pointed observations while he neatly side-stepped any real honesty about his own difficulties. Unfortunately, the sick young man lying too still in the infirmary bed had borne little resemblance to the gifted member of SG-1 he'd encountered before. His carefully constructed façade of poise and quiet, hands clasped loosely in his lap, was barely skin-deep, almost transparent, clumsily slathered over deep fear and confusion. MacKenzie had allowed Daniel to hang onto the shreds of his self-control throughout the interview, pushing very little, and noting every time the young man's voice began to rise in frustration or his gaze drifted, tracking something only he could see.

The test results were clear enough – the psychiatrist saw no reason to antagonize his patient when Daniel clearly could not defend himself with his usual wit. Those moments when the spark of Daniel Jackson's personality shone through his illness, when the young man made an insightful remark, or carried MacKenzie's question to a logical conclusion were perhaps the saddest moments of all.

The knock at his door did not surprise him.

"Come in." He laid his glasses down carefully atop the research study.

Janet Frasier had its twin clutched to her chest. Her face was pale and pinched, the white around her mouth and the shadows crowding her eyes open indications of her anxiety.

He gestured her towards a chair. "I see you've come to the same conclusion."

Her body language screamed denial. "I don't know if it's a conclusion, Colonel. Not yet. It's only been 12 hours since the first indication of Daniel's – of Doctor Jackson's –" Nostrils flaring, she bit off her words and stared at him. Fierce. Accusing.

Of course. MacKenzie leaned back in his chair, giving her the illusion of space, the emotional and professional distance she needed. "I am not the enemy, Doctor Frasier." He would fill that role – 'bad guy', 'outsider'- if she needed him too. If she could not step away from the friendships she'd begun to build with this young man and his team and pull the clean white coat of medical science about her, he would do it. It was his job far more frequently than he liked. Families. Friends. Other doctors. They needed someone to speak the harsh truths, to lay out the deep fears and horrors associated with mental illness in front of them, to force them to face lifelong diagnoses of pain with breath-stealing completeness so that it was impossible to turn away in denial.

"You and I and Doctor Warner all put this report together. We all contributed. After the Jonas Hanson incident, after the mental manipulations of the aliens Nem and Hathor. After discussions with the Tok'ra and the Tollan. After hundreds of MRIs and EEGs, the diagnosis and treatment of everything from migraines to incipient paranoia. Our conclusions –"

"I know what our conclusions were, Colonel. I just –" She seemed to shrink further into the chair. "I just hoped that, if this was going to manifest, that it would take years – decades – for Stargate travel to have these kinds of effects."

MacKenzie nodded. "That was our initial theory. However," he tapped the offending document with one fist, "we did note that team members with certain genetic predispositions or particular birth traumas in their histories might exhibit symptoms long before others."

He watched the grudging acceptance begin to displace the denial in her eyes, watched the reluctant acknowledgement replace the tense fight in her muscles with a scientist's honesty and a doctor's desire for answers. He allowed her a few more seconds to gather her thoughts and then reached out for the half dozen medical files he'd asked her to bring.

She sighed and handed them over. Jonas Hanson's was on top.

"Colonel Hanson was a textbook case. Pre-term delivery and sepsis at his birth. A change in personality not long after SG-9 began Stargate travel." The colonel's MRIs had shown no sign of Goa'uld possession, but, when they had time for further analysis, the gradual loss of grey matter in the brain was evident. There had never been a reason to check Hanson's brain chemistry before his delusions had overwhelmed him, no indication that they should check his neurotransmitters, his dopamine level. Hindsight being 20/20, MacKenzie still kicked himself for missing clues and hints that Hanson was on the verge of a psychotic break. He shuffled that file to the side and took up the next one.

Daniel Jackson.

He laid one hand on the cover, strangely reluctant to open it and confirm what he remembered quite clearly.

"We don't have any birth records for Daniel," Janet reminded him.

"No, but we do have some early hospitalizations in Egypt from which we can extrapolate." Small. Underweight. Lung problems. Pre-term delivery was the obvious explanation for this combination of factors for the otherwise active and curious child. While the medical tie-in of birth trauma, low birth weight, or other obstetric complications to adult schizophrenia gained slow but steady credence within the psychiatric community since its initial discovery in the early 1930s, the most recent studies, making use of large sample sizes and modern record keeping, had fomented brisk and nearly bloody argument.

Even so, far more health professionals agreed with the obvious linkage than denied it.

MacKenzie sighed. "And then, his grandfather –"

Janet leaned forward, armed with a familiar argument. "There has been no documented diagnosis of schizophrenia for Nicholas Ballard."

"No. But he has been housed in a private treatment center for years after," MacKenzie paged through the medical history for the exact wording, "a mild neurotic breakdown." Nonsense. The so-called 'treatment center' was run by a lay Board of Directors easily influenced by access to their wealthy patients' funds. Patient files were filled with meaningless notations concerning 'anxiety,' 'whimsical notions,' and 'childlike antics,' with not a single solitary respected psychiatrist on staff to determine actual diagnoses. Counselors, not therapists, worked with these men and women. Kept them mildly sedated and happily numb and out of the way.

"But we can't make assumptions, Colonel. And, without a diagnosis, Dr. Ballard's medical records are not relevant – and, in this case, cannot legally be discussed in relation to Daniel's … situation."

MacKenzie took a breath and placed his glasses back on his nose, narrowing his eyes at his colleague. "And that is the only reason we had not taken a closer look at Doctor Jackson. Given current circumstances, I consider that a mistake, don't you?" He raised his eyebrows, holding her gaze while he laid one hand flat on the brain chemistry scans which lay loose atop Daniel's medical file. "Doctor Jackson's dopamine levels are climbing. Documented hallucinations and paranoid delusions. There is only one logical –"

The rude noise from across the desk cut him off.

"I don't have much respect for 'logic' when dealing with the Stargate, Colonel. Ever since men began changing into primitive Neanderthals right in front of me, since aliens masquerading as Native American deities made people disappear – hell," Janet threw up both hands, "since I adopted a sweet little girl – an alien little girl – with a bomb in her chest whose entire family had been murdered by a parasitical snake, all of my years of education in science and 'logic' has been turned on its ear." She scooted to the edge of her chair. "We don't know enough. We haven't even begun to come up with other theories that could explain Daniel's behavior."

True. It was all true. And yet. "And while our best people are gathering information, while Doctor Carter and her team make detailed studies, while Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill discuss alien influences, and General Hammond and other SG teams consider other answers, what about Daniel Jackson?"

"What?" Janet frowned, slapped backwards by one simple question. "What about Daniel? We can make him comfortable –"

"Can we? Does this forward-line base have the resources and specialties necessary to help Doctor Jackson? To see to his care, to begin the anti-psychotic treatment that is the only thing that we know of that will bring his brain chemistry back into alignment? To deal with the progression of side-effects likely to manifest? To keep him safe and protected from accidental harm, from possible attacks through the Stargate – even from himself? Is there a treatment team here that will devote themselves to his care and learn, inch by inch, how to help him survive the obviously painful and frightening consequences of his illness? Doctor Frasier. Janet." He begged her to look, to see.

What MacKenzie saw were the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. He watched the dawning realization that, no matter how much she cared, or what else might be – eventually – found to be the cause of Daniel Jackson's affliction, that this man needed their help. And he needed their help now. Not when more information came their way, not after more study, not when – and if – their allies answered their call. Daniel Jackson deserved their best care now. Anything else was unacceptable. MacKenzie straightened his spine, a lump like molten lead in his gut. "There is only one known method of treatment for such high dopamine levels coupled with auditory and visual hallucinations and delusions. Only one."

"That we know of," Janet added.

"That we know of." MacKenzie nodded, not letting himself get distracted by this thin thread of hope. "And, until what we know changes, you must agree that Doctor Jackson should be moved immediately to Mental Health."

One tear spilled down his colleague's cheek and she dashed it away as if enraged by its presence. "I won't forget about him, Colonel. I won't send him off and pretend this is the end of it, wipe my hands of him."

"Of course not," MacKenzie shot back, his own anger rising. "Why would you? Why would any of us?" No doctor with an ounce of humanity would write off his patient, certainly not one of the medical professionals at the Stargate program – these men and women had proven themselves dedicated, courageous, insightful and compassionate. "Is that what you think I do? What psychiatry does? Lock people away and forget about them, Doctor?"

She turned her head, unwilling to meet his eyes. "Sometimes," she whispered. "Sometimes, it feels like that's what I do, James. Triage. Battlefield doctors have been doing it for years – deciding who lives and who dies. Who gets treatment immediately and who is shuffled off to wait. To make do. Out of sight, out of mind."

"We're not shuffling him off to wait, Janet. Quite the opposite, in fact. If we kept him here, isolated and restrained in the infirmary, hoping and praying for a diagnosis we liked better, then we'd be guilty as charged. We're taking him to a place where we can and will concentrate on helping him – right now and one hundred percent of the time." Waiting was exactly what they could not, in good conscience, do.

Janet turned back. "You'll go with him? Sign on as his primary? Stay with his case?"

It took no time at all for Mackenzie to make his decision. "I will. I'll remain on site, focusing on Doctor Jackson, until he's stabilized." And beyond. They owed the young man that much. He waited for Janet's reluctant nod. "Now," he folded his hands atop the files on his desk, "laying this situation out so that his teammates and General Hammond understand it will be a much harder battle if we are not, clearly and without a doubt, on the same page."

"To his family, James. They're Daniel's family – we need to approach them with that in mind."

"Agreed. So my point is doubly true." He lowered his chin to stare at her over the top of his glasses.

She sighed. "Until I get some different answers from our allies – the Tok'ra, or even some other people we've met out there," she waved one hand in an obvious gesture encompassing the greater galaxy, "with insight into 'gate related mental illness. If – when that happens –"

"When that happens," MacKenzie encouraged, "I'll be as enthusiastic as you are in pursuing it, I promise you." Aliens with healing devices surely couldn't have overlooked injuries of the mind completely. Could they?