Post Traumatic Resolution

Post Evolutions

Jack knocked softly on the door of Daniel's quarters. When he received no reply, he hesitated, contemplating barging in without permission. That was the way he usually did things, and his team were used to it, but Daniel had only just gotten home from his capture and imprisonment by anti-Honduran extremists. When Jack had come to the rescue it had taken Daniel a few moments to recognise him as a friend not foe, and he was still a little defensive, so bursting in unexpected was probably not the best idea at the moment.

Jack sighed. If he was honest with himself, he was concerned about the younger man. Daniel claimed that he was fine, which was a typical response, but Jack severely doubted the truth of that statement. Daniel had attempted to hide it from him, but Doc Fraiser had given Jack the undiluted facts about the young archaeologist's injuries – as his commanding officer Jack had a right to know, although he could have guessed on his own. After all, he was no stranger to electrical torture. Daniel was, though, and while Doctor Lee had reported Daniel's incredible resistance to the torture, there would still be emotional ramifications.

Jack knocked again, a little harder this time, not willing to let his friend deal with this on his own. "Daniel?"

There was a muffled response this time, followed by sounds of movement and then a low groan.

Jack figured that it was invitation enough and pushed open the door. Daniel had made a half-hearted attempt to rise from his bed, but Jack waved for him to stay where he was, knowing that his leg and the burns would still be hurting.

Daniel sank back onto his pile of pillows with a gentle sigh, and then raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "Jack?"

"How're you doing?" Jack asked, settling onto the edge of the mattress.

Daniel frowned slightly. "I'm fine, Jack."

Ya sure you betcha, Jack thought sarcastically. "We missed you at lunch," was what he said out loud.

Daniel shrugged dismissively. "I wasn't hungry."

The man had gone for over 48 hours without food or water, and he wasn't hungry. "You should eat something, you know," Jack told him, surprised the Doc hadn't given him this pep talk already. "Doesn't have to be much... in fact I'd recommend against that, but a little fruit or something would do you good."

"Jack..."

"Trust me on this one, Daniel." Jack didn't add that he had been there and done the whole starvation thing too many times to count – enough to know the routine, anyway.

From the look Daniel gave him, Jack suspected that the younger man had followed his train of thought. "Maybe later," Daniel relented.

It was better than nothing, Jack supposed. The silence stretched out for a few moments. "So, uh, how's the leg?"

"It'll get there," Daniel replied, glancing down at the bandaged wound.

Do I really want to pursue this? Jack asked himself, knowing that he didn't do so well with deep conversations, but he plowed on anyway. "And the burns?"

Daniel looked up at him sharply. "Jack-"

"Daniel," Jack silenced the protest.

The man blew out a frustrated sigh. "I'll live." An 'I don't want to talk about it' if Jack had ever heard one.

"I know you will," Jack agreed. "But talking's supposed to help-"

Daniel glared at him. "Did you ever talk to anyone?"

Jack flinched and looked away. He hated shrinks for a reason. "No one who cared."

"Sara?" Daniel asked softly.

Jack offered a bitter laugh. "I put my wife through enough without burdening her with all my emotional baggage as well."

When he looked up and saw the apology in Daniel's eyes, Jack got the feeling that they had strayed off topic. "You did a good job out there. There aren't many who could have gone through that and still found the strength to escape."

Daniel offered a faint smile, but it quickly faded. "I was so close to breaking," he admitted quietly. "If we hadn't gotten out when we did -"

"Don't think about that," Jack said quickly. "Everyone has their breaking point."

Daniel's head tilted slightly to the side. "Do you?"

The question took him by surprise. Jack's mouth went dry, and his breath hitched in his throat. Unwillingly, his thoughts hurtled back to the time he had been captured by Ba'al. Daniel didn't remember, but he had been there. He had seen Jack standing at the precipice of his breaking point, needing only the slightest nudge before he would have revealed all, despite knowing the consequences. What Ba'al had done to him, over and over, was so far beyond simple torture. Jack had tried with everything he had to resist, to stay strong, but if it hadn't been for Daniel…

He was falling into the same trap he had just warned Daniel about. Jack sucked in a deep breath. "Oh yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, I have a breaking point." He shuddered slightly. "And I never want to go there again."

Daniel's deep, penetrating gaze was unsettling. It was as though he were staring right into Jack's soul – a look that mirrored one he had given Jack once before, when he had revealed too much.

"And don't think I'd stop there!""You're a better man than that." "That's where you're wrong!"

Jack hadn't been able to meet Daniel's eyes then, and he couldn't now. He glanced down at his boots. As much as he didn't want to bring himself into this, if it would help Daniel then he would. "I've been trained to withstand torture, but even I have one." He didn't mention that it took being killed again and again, in some of the most painful ways imaginable, to break him. Somewhere, in his forgotten memories, Daniel knew. Jack had told no one else, not even in the report he was required to give to Hammond, and he wasn't at all eager for Daniel to remember what had happened.

"I've seen battle-hardened military men crumble under what you went through," Jack went on. Through the painful memories that his words were invoking, he offered a smile. "I'm proud of you."

"Since joining the Stargate program, I haven't exactly been a stranger to pain," Daniel pointed out. He was studying his fingers. "But all those times, with the Goa'uld… It was different. I knew that they were evil. How could a human being…" His voice trailed away into silence.

Jack wasn't sure that some people weren't more evil than even the Goa'uld. He had seen the sick, inventive ways that humans had come up with to inflict pain on each other. He had been on the receiving end of many of them. What Daniel had experienced was just the tip of the iceberg, but that was more than any civilian should have had to endure.

"And all those times," Daniel continued, "it ended quickly. I knew that I could hold on, because you would find a way to get us out of there soon. And you guys were there, being strong right alongside me, taking the worst of it for me when you could. This time…"

This time, Daniel had suffered for over a week. This time, Daniel had watched Doctor Lee succumb to the pressure, leaving his efforts practically redundant. This time, Jack hadn't been there to protect him, to help him keep up his strength, to give him hope. This time, Daniel had feared that no rescue was coming for him.

"I'm sorry, Daniel."

Blue eyes flickered up to look at him. "For what?"

As if it wasn't obvious. "For not getting there sooner. For leaving you to make it out on your own. Dammit, for not being there to prevent it in the first place!" Jack said heatedly, slamming a fist against the wall and then instantly regretting it when Daniel flinched at the noise.

Oh, brilliant, O'Neill. Real smart. Sara knew better than that. Hell, even Charlie knew better than that, and they hadn't been through what you have. Keep it up, this is sure to make Daniel feel better.

He blew out a frustrated sigh, running his fingers through his hair. "Sorry," he repeated gently.

"Not your fault," Daniel countered simply. "At least it's over now."

Jack wished it was, but likely as not it was only the beginning. The nightmares would start soon. Jack was an authority on that one. After Iraq, he'd had nightmares every night for a year, and they had never really ended, only become more infrequent. And he was still having nightmares from his stint in Ba'al's fortress. They, he was sure, would follow him to his grave.

"It's not that easy," Jack whispered.

Daniel suddenly frowned at him. "What happened while I was gone, Jack?"

Okay, that was an odd question. "Uh, we found out some more about those new warriors that Anubis has…" Jack quirked a smile. "Carter decided to call them 'super soldiers' -"

"No," Daniel interrupted, propping himself up onto his elbows. "That's not what I meant. What happened while I was ascended?"

"You were gone a year, Daniel," Jack deflected. "A lot of stuff happened."

Daniel glared at him. "What happened to you, specifically? I know something did. I tried asking Sam and Teal'c but they refused to tell me. In fact, they warned me off."

Jack shrugged, trying to make the gesture look nonchalant. "Nothing happened. I don't know what you're talking about."

The glare intensified. "I'm not stupid, Jack. I can read the signs as well as the next guy – better in fact. We've been friends a long time."

There was a long quiet pause, before Jack finally said, "Oh, I know what this is…It's your way of dealing with what happened, by worrying about someone else. I can understand that. But Daniel-"

"You're avoiding the question, Jack," Daniel said in a hard voice. He reminded Jack of a pit bull terrier sometimes; once he sank his teeth into something he was determined not to let go. This was exactly why Jack had been reluctant to have this little heart-to-heart. He had tried to avoid letting anything slip that might spark Daniel's memory. He had sworn Carter, Teal'c, Janet and even General Hammond to secrecy about this, and although they hadn't understood why he suddenly mentioned it after so long or why he wouldn't want Daniel to know of his capture by Ba'al, they'd agreed.

"You can't possibly have expected me not to notice," Daniel pressed.

"Notice what?" Jack said, trying to sound casual, innocent, while worrying just what it was that he had allowed Daniel to see.

"The nightmares, Jack. The haunted look in your eyes. The way you took a hasty step back when Sam spilt a little acid in her lab. Your increased dislike of the Tok'ra. Your avoidance of bright, white lights. Your reluctance to touch the knife at your belt. The way you flinch when someone touches you if you're not expecting it." Daniel sighed in exasperation. "I don't know how they all link together, but I know they do."

Jack waved a hand dismissively. "You're reading too much into things, Daniel. Acid burns, ya know." He forced himself not to wince at his own words. "I'd be stupid not to get out of the way. I've never liked the Tok'ra. I'm photo-sensitive, so of course I avoid bright lights. I prefer guns to knives. And I don't like people sneaking up on me."

Daniel didn't look satisfied.

"You've only just got your memory back. Maybe you just don't remember that I'm no different to normal."

"You're lying to me," Daniel said stubbornly. "Something happened to you, and you don't want to tell me. Why?"

"For cryin' out loud, Daniel, I didn't come in here to talk about me," Jack snapped, his patience long since evaporated. He stood up and strode to the door, throwing over his shoulder, "I was worried about you, but you seem to be doing just peachy. Remember, though, that avoidance and denial won't help you in the long run."

Daniel wasn't cowed. "Then why are you avoiding the subject of what happened to you, and denying that anything happened at all?" he retorted.

Jack spun around, all restraint gone, anger flooding his mind. "Because it's none of your business!" he yelled. "I don't want to talk about it, okay? Leave it alone, for once in your life! Why do you always want to dig up things long buried?" He decided to ignore the irony of his words – Daniel might be an archeologist, but he had no right trying to dig into memories that Jack had locked away for good reason.

"So you want me to open up to you, but you don't think you should open up to me, is that it?" Daniel responded, with ire matching Jack's own. "This is a two-way relationship, Jack! You can't keep pushing me away."

"I don't want you to remember!" As the words spilled from his mouth, Jack's eyes widened in panic and he tried quickly to cover his stumble. "I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember."

It was too late, Daniel had heard his slip. He sat up slowly in the bed, staring at Jack. "You don't want me to remember?" he whispered incredulously. "You mean I was there?"

Jack frantically shook his head. "No, that's not what I said."

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not!" Jack insisted.

But Daniel wasn't listening to him anymore. He seemed lost in his thoughts, no doubt trying to do exactly what Jack was afraid of.

Jack snapped his fingers as loudly as he could, trying to distract Daniel from his goal, but the pit bull terrier had an unbreakable grip. Next, he tried shaking the younger man's shoulders. He couldn't let Daniel get those memories back, he just couldn't. What would Daniel think of him, if he remembered the screams of agony that had mutated to animal howls? If he remembered the sobs of pain? If he remembered the pitiful pleas Jack had made to his captor? If he remembered what Jack had asked him to do, looking for the easy way out? If he remembered how close Jack had come to giving Ba'al the information he wanted? If he remembered the way Jack had beaten a Jaffa to a bloody pulp, far beyond what was necessary to knock him unconscious?

It was bad enough that half the SGC personnel had seen him return to base, bloodied and half wild with terror, lashing out violently at anyone who tried to get close to him or the woman whose hand he had held in a death grip. It was bad enough that Janet had guessed what had been done to him from the state of his clothing and ripe case of sarcophagus withdrawal, and told General Hammond. It was bad enough seeing the looks of sympathy on the faces of his teammates during the weeks it had taken to recover. They all, at least, thought that he had been strong. He couldn't bear to have Daniel remember the truth of how weak he had been.

"C'mon, Daniel, snap out of it," Jack urged.

For a long time, Daniel didn't respond. Gradually the glazed look faded from his eyes, and he seemed to grow aware of his surroundings. As soon as he noticed Jack, Daniel visibly blanched, and then vomited as Jack leapt backwards out of the way. The younger man continued to retch, thankfully leaning over the side of his bed as he did. Jack considered a moment, and then slipped around the mess to support Daniel with one hand on his shoulder and the other gently rubbing his back. What little had been in Daniel's stomach was quickly expelled, and then Daniel was dry heaving.

"It's all right, Daniel, you're safe now," Jack soothed quietly, figuring that Daniel had finally realised what had been done to him over the past week. Delayed reaction; it wasn't uncommon. "Those men are dead, they can't hurt you anymore. It's over, no more torture. You're safe."

Daniel gasped a breath, looking up at him in disbelief. "I don't care what those men did to me. What Ba'al did to you-" He paled further, looking close to fainting. "Oh my god, he killed you. Over and over. Tortured you to death with knives and acid. Brought you back to life in a sarcophagus again and again so he could torture you all the more. I watched him do it, I just watched as he killed you so many times, watched as you screamed and cried and begged. You begged me for help, too, and I just watched. Oh god, what have I done…"

Jack staggered away from Daniel, away from the words that unlocked the box of forbidden memories and brought them in a sweeping torrent to the forefront of his mind. He could practically feel the daggers plunging into his chest, the acid hissing and burning its way through his skin and muscle and bone. And the other ways that Ba'al had hurt him, when those methods became boring. The popping and cracking of ribs as the gravity level had increased, crushing the life out of him. The pain stick that had become lodged in his stomach after it was released from Ba'al's fingertips, and continued to send tendrils of liquid fire throughout his body and exploding from his mouth, nose and ears until he had died from pure unbridled agony. Being released from the spider web into the abyss to crack his skull open on the hard stone at the bottom, and if he didn't die immediately, having the process repeated until he did. Receiving a staff blast to the face that took long, excruciating seconds to kill him. And again and again, without fail, the sarcophagus restored his life so another piece of his soul, his mind, his sanity, could be stripped away. He could practically hear his tortured screams echoing through his head.

And Daniel had seen it all.

Jack felt his back hit a wall, and he panicked, bolting across the room only to run into another solid surface, and then reel to the left and right to experience the same problem. He was trapped. Oh god, he was trapped back in his cell, and the world was about to turn topsy turvy on him until the wall was a floor and the floor was a wall and he had no possible chance of escaping. Heart pounding wildly, he found a corner and curled into a ball, bracing himself, not knowing which way he would fall but knowing that it would hurt.

Not again, oh god, please not again. He couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. He was Special Ops trained, but no one could be trained to deal with this. Before, there had always been hope of rescue, or death, but he was granted neither. Rescue could not find him, and death offered no release to the torment. Only surrender did, and that went against everything Jack stood for. But if he had to go through it again, he would surrender. It was just too much.

"Daniel…" he whimpered.

A hand landed unexpectedly on his shoulder, and Jack almost leapt out of his skin. The room was supposed to shift, to give him some sort of warning, but it hadn't, and the Jaffa were here, and they were going to drag Jack down the corridor into that room again, and then the blood and tears and screaming would start all over –

"Jack."

Daniel's voice. But it couldn't be his hand, because Daniel wasn't here in the flesh and blood sense. Was he?

The hand didn't grip him painfully, bruising him with strong fingers, nor did it attempt to pull him up to his feet and drag him away. It just rested there, and somehow it was almost... comforting.

"Jack, it's okay. You're all right."

No, he was going mad. Without Daniel he would have lost it by now... although Daniel's presense in itself might be an indication that he was already crazy - Daniel was dead, after all.

"Jack, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trigger your memories like that, I just thought that I needed to know..."

Memories. These were just memories, Jack realised. He'd escaped from that hell hole long ago. A year had passed since then, and Daniel had descended. They were in the SGC, in Daniel's sleeping quarters where he had been recuperating after his rescue from anti-honduran extremists. Jack had come to see how he was doing, and Daniel had remembered about Ba'al.

Jack cautiously lifted his head and opened his eyes. Daniel was sitting beside him on the floor, his injured leg stretched out, concern etched into his features.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asked gently.

Jack sucked in a few deep breaths, struggling to restrain the memories and slam the lid closed on them again. "Not yet," he replied.

Daniel nodded slowly. It clearly wasn't the answer he wanted, but he'd expected it. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen."

Mixed anger and gratefulness warred within Jack. Daniel had deliberately pushed until Jack gave up information he had never intended to, and then determinedly forced himself to remember what he had witnessed... in the process making Jack relive the horror of it all over again. But he had pulled Jack out of the nightmare, too. Twise, in fact.

So, Jack didn't punch him. But he couldn't prevent the anger lacing his words. "Happy now?"

Daniel looked away, selfconsciously removing his hand from Jack's shoulder and folding his arms over his chest. "No," he said quietly, shamefully. "I wish I hadn't remembered."

"Bit late now, isn't it?" Jack replied bitterly. "Well, maybe now you'll think twise before you try to decide what I should and shouldn't tell you."

"I'm going to have nightmares," Daniel said hoarsely, dread and horror shadowing his eyes.

Serve him right. "Just be glad you were only watching the show. Going through it yourself is a whole different ballgame."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed softly. "And here I was, thinking that what I had gone through was bad. I must seem so weak to you, in comparison."

Jack remembered, then, why he had come in here in the first place. The anger vanished. "No, Daniel. Don't ever think that. You're a civillian, and you handled it better then I did when that first happened to me. You held yourself together, and had the wits about you to escape. When I was in your position, I waited for someone to come and rescue me, and I was a basket case for weeks afterwards."

"You?" Daniel questioned disbelievingly.

"Yeah," Jack confirmed. "Just because I've had more experience with this kind of thing doesn't make me stronger than you, Daniel."

"But what Ba'al did to you-"

"The only reason I made it through that was because you were with me, helping me to be strong, to keep it together, to hold onto my sanity. I couldn't have done it alone. But you did, and even when you were hurting you fulfilled the same role for Doctor Lee as you did for me."

"But I didn't save you," Daniel argued, the guilt he felt showing clearly on his face. "The one time that ignoring the rules would have meant something, I just stood by and let Ba'al-"

"No, you didn't," Jack said firmly. "I might have thought that at the time, but if you had done what I asked, the Others would have stopped you long before I made it out of there, and I never would have had a chance. By giving Sam and Teal'c that nudge in the right direction, you saved my life." He gave Daniel a sidelong glance, full of meaning. "And I'm glad you didn't end it when I told you to. I wouldn't be here now if you had."

Daniel smiled hesitantly at him. "I'm glad, too. As hard as it was."

"As hard as it was," Jack agreed.

The tension visibly sloughed away from Daniel's body, leaving him exhausted. His head dropped back to rest against the wall, and his eyes closed.

Jack smiled softly at his friend. "You can't sleep there, Danny." He carefully lifted Daniel into his arms, noting how much weight he had lost over the past week, and settled him back down onto the bed.

Daniel blinked up at him blearily. "Don't... want to... sleep..." he protested, belying the statement with a yawn.

Jack never wanted to sleep after an ordeal like that either, because he didn't feel safe, and he didn't want to have the nightmares. He understood, but Daniel's fatigue was evident.

"Rest. I'll be right here," Jack promised. "Trust me."

A smile flitted across Daniel's lips, and his eyelids drooped closed. "I can do that."