He left me behind.

It was nearly dark by the time the Tarisani leaders brought him in to see me. I had been in chains for more than three hours by then, and the blood on my lips had already stiffened and dried.

They had worked me over carefully, methodically, leaving more bruises than I wanted to think about. In the last few long, painful hours I’d had a lot of time to think about what went wrong, what I could possibly have done or said to cause such a sudden rift.

Oddly enough, the Tarisanians hadn’t seemed angry while they were beating the hell out of me. They tackled the task like men chopping firewood, serious and businesslike. My questions were met with silence, leaving me completely in the dark about the cause of my unexpected rough treatment.

I was trying to decide what I could say to smooth over ruffled feelings when the door to my cell opened, and Jack stepped in.

I felt the familiar rush of hope, the knowledge that Jack had, again, found a way to pull my butt out of the fire. I was about to feign nonchalance by asking him what took so long, when I realized that something was terribly wrong.

He made no move to free me.

He stood and looked at me emotionlessly, taking in the bruises on my face, the dried blood trailing down my chin from my split lip. The expression on his face was ... oh God, it was bored, the same expression he got when Sam was launching into one of her half-hour technical explanations.

And then he turned around and left.

By the time I found my voice and called after him, he was gone.

Jack O’Neill, the one man I trusted to never leave me no matter what, had looked into my eyes and then turned and walked away, leaving me in chains.

He left me.

“Sir!”

Major Samantha Carter quickened her pace to catch up with her commanding officer. She’d been working on a new project for three days straight, which was why she hadn’t accompanied Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Daniel Jackson to P9R-602, a planet which had been previously contacted and was now the site of diplomatic negotiations.

Teal’c was still recovering from a broken leg, the injury having been sustained on SG-1’s last mission - the Jaffa didn’t heal quite so rapidly now that he had no symbiote. According to reports Sam had been hearing recently, Teal’c was beginning to get very impatient. She didn’t doubt it; this must be a new, and unpleasant, experience for the man who had had the healing power of a Goa’uld larva for most of his life.

“Carter.” O’Neill turned, smiling at his 2IC. He looked a little tired, maybe, but otherwise fairly cheerful, which would seem to indicate that the recent mission had gone well.

“Where’s Daniel, sir?” Sam fell into step beside him, running her fingers through her short blond hair, which could definitely use a good combing. Sam had a tendency to forget unimportant things like eating, sleeping and brushing her hair while she was working on something really interesting.

“He stayed on P9-whatever,” Jack replied. “Found the culture of the Tarzanis really interesting for some reason. I think he said something about it being related to the ancient Greeks, but I wasn’t really listening.”

Sam tried hard to hold back a smile. “Um, sir, I haven’t been to P9R-602, but I think the people are called the Tarisanians.”

“Same difference.” Jack waved a hand in the air vaguely, but Sam had a feeling he knew perfectly well what the inhabitants of P9R-602 were called, and was mispronouncing the word on purpose. He probably knew the planet’s designation, too, but wouldn’t dream of admitting it.

Carter shook her head slightly, but couldn’t resist a small grin. “I’m surprised you let Daniel stay by himself, sir, especially as accident-prone as you think he is.”

“As I think he is?” O’Neill’s eyebrow rose in a fair imitation of Teal’c. “You don’t think he’s accident-prone, Carter? I mean, come on, how many times has he died in the last eight or so years?”

She laughed. “Okay, you have a point, but you still didn’t answer my question. Why’d you let him stay?”

“Oh, those Tarzan folks seemed really nice - no apes in sight, oddly enough - and Daniel did that thing with his eyes.” The last sentence was spoken almost under his breath, as if he was hoping Sam wouldn’t hear him. She did.

“That ‘thing’, sir?”

Jack looked decidedly sheepish. “You know, that thing.” He attempted to imitate Daniel’s beaten-puppy, lost-little-boy look, without quite the same effect. “That ‘you’re not being fair and I’m gonna cry if you don’t let me have my way’ thing.”

Carter gave a slightly unladylike snort. “He’s not that bad, sir.” And if you think you’re going to get me to admit I’ve been conned by the same look at least a hundred times, you’re out of luck.

“Just about.” O’Neill gave her a sideways glance. “Come on, Carter, I know he’s done it to you too.”

Nice try. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, sir,” she lied cheerfully, and suddenly seemed to remember that she had left something vitally important in her lab.

They parted ways, and not even for a moment did Sam suspect that something was wrong.

I’m losing track of time.

At first I kept track of the hours in my head, but that didn’t work for long; extended periods of trauma-induced unconsciousness do strange things to my body’s internal clock. I have no idea how long I’ve been here. I have no idea how long it’s been since Jack left me.

A few times I almost managed to convince myself he was an illusion. I wanted him to be an illusion, wanted it desperately, but the rational part of me knew that I hadn’t been here long enough then to be hallucinating. That came later, when the lack of food and water started to catch up to me.

Jack was here.

And he left without helping me, without lifting a finger to get me out of this hellhole.

After that fiasco with Ma’chello’s little bugs, I never would have imagined that I’d hope to be crazy. I hope that now, hope fervently that any moment I’m going to wake up in a padded room and find out that this has all been the nightmare from hell.

But I know it won’t happen. This is real. As real as the rats that come out to chew on my feet at night; as real as the beatings that are mechanically administered every time I drift off to sleep; as real as the hitch in my breathing because the last beating broke a couple of ribs.

My name is Dr. Daniel Jackson. I am an archaeologist/linguist and a member of SG-1, and I have been abandoned by the one person I trusted most implicitly.

As Jack would say if he was here, life’s just peachy.

Colonel O’Neill was sitting at a table by himself, staring reflectively into a coffee cup, steam rising to envelop his face. Sam hesitated a bit, sensing that he wanted to be alone, but curiosity got the better of her and, procuring her own caffeine fix, she went to join him.

As soon as she sat down across from him, Jack’s pensive, melancholy expression vanished and he smiled cheerfully, his sudden mood switch throwing her off slightly. “Morning, Carter,” he said a little too loudly. “How’s your project going?”

“I finished it three days ago, sir.” She took a sip of coffee, then barely managed to repress a curse word when she burned her tongue on the hot liquid. “I thought I told you.”

“Yeah.” He nodded absently. “Yeah, you probably did.” The faraway expression returned to his eyes, as if he was looking at something only he could see, or trying to solve a puzzle inside his own head.

Sam considered asking him what was on his mind, but knew from experience that she probably wouldn’t get a straight answer, so she asked a different question instead, one that had occurred to her just before she fell asleep the previous night.

“I wonder why Daniel wanted to stay on P9R-602 after he’d been so eager to get back and start translating that tablet?”

Jack’s hand froze halfway to his coffee and for a moment he didn’t move at all, and something in his brown eyes was haunted. Then he shook his head, picked up his coffee, and took a big gulp, saying afterward, “He finished the tablet, Carter, the night before we left.”

Now it was Sam’s hand that stopped in mid-motion. She cocked her head slightly sideways. “Uh, sir, are you sure? I talked to him less than an hour before the two of you left and he was really impatient to get back and get started. That tablet was just about all he could talk about.”

The Colonel shook his head more emphatically. “No, he translated it. I know he did.” Some of the certainty left his voice and he asked, “Didn’t he?”

Very puzzled by this time, Sam shook her head. “I don’t think so, sir. It should still be in his lab if you want to take a look.”

Without another word, O’Neill jumped to his feet and headed out the door, almost jogging. Her coffee forgotten, the blond Major followed her CO, determined to uncover the reason for his bizarre behavior.

The tablet was lying un-translated on Daniel’s desk, exactly where Sam had known it would be. She turned to Jack to see what he made of the situation, but was completely unprepared for his reaction. He clutched his head and staggered against a chair, his eyes squeezed shut in a combination of pain and horror.

Sam took his arm, asking if he needed to go to the infirmary, but he didn’t seem to hear her. Straightening, he said in an icy calm voice, “Major, go to General Hammond and tell him we need a rescue team geared up and ready to go to P9R-602.”

“Sir ... ?” To say Major Carter was confused would have been an understatement.

The brown eyes that fixed on her were cold and professional, all feelings hidden behind a strict military façade. “One word, Major: Nem.”

“Oh,” Sam whispered, then: “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

The Tarisanians have a zat gun.

I have no idea whether it’s mine or Jack’s; don’t suppose it matters much in the grand scheme of things. What does matter is that the Tarisanians evidently know how it works, and that they can only shoot me once without causing permanent damage, i.e. death. Which is fortunate or unfortunate, depending on how you want to look at it.

The really maddening thing is that they aren’t asking questions, demanding information. I have no idea what they want or why they’re doing this. I know only that I’ve been given no food or water, and that sleep means pain.

And I know that I am alone.

The Tarisani leaders must have anticipated that the Tau’ri would return to claim their missing archaeologist; the heavily armed SG teams met with resistance only a short distance beyond the gate. Colonel O’Neill possessed a thundering headache and increasingly confused memories, but it had been clear to all that the only way to keep him from this rescue mission would be to shoot him, probably more than once.

The Tarisanians were an advanced race technologically, but their weapons left something to be desired when pitted against the crude but effective Tau’ri guns. The battle was going exceptionally well, with the rescue team fighting its way to the outskirts of the small Tarisanian city, when O’Neill was blindsided.

Under normal conditions, without the headache, the Colonel might have seen the lone opponent and taken him out without a problem. One could only guess.

Sam heard the familiar sound of a zat’n’ktel firing and turned to see her commanding officer go down, writhing in pain. Before she or any of the other Tau’ri warriors could react, a second shot ended the Colonel’s pain and a third hit him immediately after. His body shimmered slightly, then disappeared, the 2IC of Stargate Command disintegrated in an instant.

The zat-wielding Tarisanian was taken down by bullets from several different sources, but not before the deed had been done and the dead could not be brought back, not even with a sarcophagus.

Colonel Jack O’Neill, a man who believed in never leaving anyone behind, had inadvertently broken his personal creed and had paid the ultimate price as penance.

The warmth was the first clue that things had changed. I was always cold in my cell, even in daylight; and I certainly never had blankets tucked up under my chin and a soft mattress under my body. I wasn’t hungry, thirsty or in pain either, which was a nice change.

After a few moments of enjoying the peace, I decided it was time to find out just exactly what the hell had happened. I managed to open one eye, followed by the other, and the first thing I saw was Sam, sitting beside my bed. She looked awful, and that was putting it nicely. Her hair was a mess, her eyes were bloodshot, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. No sooner had I made those observations than I realized that, unless these last however many days had existed only within the mother of all nightmares, I was no beauty queen myself.

“Daniel!” Sam cleared her throat and tried really hard to pretend she hadn’t just been crying. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad.” My voice sounded like sandpaper on a blackboard. “What happened?”

“It’s - sort of - a long story.” Sam was getting the hiccups, the kind that kids get when they cry. She swiped her hand across her eyes, and I began to get a really bad feeling. Sam is a woman, but she’s anything but weepy. For her to be practically sobbing, something really bad had to have happened.

“Sam, what’s going on?” I said. “Sam!”

She tried to regain her composure. “You were kidnapped by the Tarisanians, Daniel,” she managed finally, and I bit back my reply of I noticed. “They used some kind of mind control technology on the Colonel, altered his memory to make him think that you’d stayed willingly. Wh-when he figured out what had happened, we went back and got you out, and - ”

“And what? Sam, what?”

She closed her eyes, wiped again at a face that was already streaked with mascara, and said softly, “He was killed, Daniel. The Colonel is dead. We saw him die, all of us. He was shot three times with a zat.”

Jack.

No. Please, no.

Suddenly I wanted only oblivion, a dark quiet place where I could rest and not know. Hands touched my face, I heard Janet’s soft voice, and I descended into drug-induced unconsciousness.

It was nearly dawn in the Tarisanian city; the sky was lightening and vivid streaks of pink shot up from the horizon, obliterating the last visible stars overhead.

From a dark and permanently cold cell on the outskirts of the small city, a voice whispered into the empty silence, the words slurred through a swollen mouth and a broken jaw.

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud ... ”

Time meant nothing to me after a while.

For about three days I kept pretty good track, but after that there were too many hours of unconsciousness, too many periods of concussion-induced confusion. In my dark bloodstained cell, daylight faded into night and back again, with the hours marked only by relentless beatings.

After what seemed a very long time, they gave me a bowl of murky water and a few scraps of rancid food. The water, though disgusting, helped keep me alive, but the food was pretty much useless. Ever tried to chew with a badly broken jaw?

Days turned to weeks and beating after beating blurred into one big kaleidoscope of agony, and I waited, for the chance that had to come eventually. Dying quietly chained to the wall in a rat-infested dungeon, I waited, because I knew I could.

I’d done it before.

I knew now what Daniel must have felt like.

Or maybe I didn’t, not really, because I knew why my teammates weren’t coming back for me, and Daniel had had no such understanding. He’d known only that I left him, and nothing of mind control and altered memories.

Maybe eventually someone would start to overcome their programming and out of the clear blue they’d think, whoa, maybe he’s not dead after all. Maybe, but by the time that happened, I’d almost certainly be a rat-chewed corpse, something that, to be painfully honest, I never aspired to be.

So I waited.

I waited, and grew weaker while the beatings continued (no idea why, to tell you the truth - they’re not asking any questions) and my strength faded. I waited, while the Tarisanian kid who brought my fetid water looked more guilt-ridden every time he entered my cell. He was the son of some high-up Tarisanian leader - I remembered that much - but this kid didn’t take after Papa. He had a soul, which seemed to make him a novelty among the Tarisanian Powers That Be.

Maybe he didn’t like the idea of leaving a human being to die slowly, toes gnawed to the bone by rats the size of small dogs.

Maybe he didn’t like the way I was chained to the wall even though the cell door was securely locked and I was too weak to make a run for it anyway.

Maybe he wasn’t sure just what he didn’t like about the situation, but something inside of him screamed that it was wrong, that this person bled like him and looked like him and didn’t deserve to die like that, so completely stripped of every shred of dignity.

I guess I’ll never know, to tell you the truth. What I do know is that he waited until sometime past dark, until the city was enveloped in silver moonlight, and then he came with a key to the door and a key to my chains.

Neither of us spoke a word; we both knew silence was imperative, for if I was captured I would certainly be killed, and who knew, the Tarisanian boy might be facing the same risk. The kid helped me stand on bruised legs, weakened by starvation and lack of use, and when he had gotten me away from my prison and indicated that I was on my own, he reached up and touched my face. Just once, just for a second, his gesture almost a blessing. The last glimpse of his face before he turned and ran back toward his home reminded me that just about everywhere, no matter how evil a society seems to be, there are people who do what they know is right, who risk their lives for strangers who will never be able to return even a simple ‘thank you’.

And that, I believe, is the hope of a universe that sometimes seems pretty hopeless indeed.

My prison had fortunately been close to the outskirts of the city, and it took me a relatively short amount of time to reach the safer forest trails, which were beyond the range of human habitation and led to the Stargate. My muscles screamed from the sudden abuse and every breath seemed to tear my lungs but I forced myself to move, knowing this was the only chance I’d get, knowing that I couldn’t let that Tarisanian kid risk his life for nothing. I concentrated on one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.

The landscape was forested but mercifully flat; I don’t think I could have handled a steep hike. A second moon had risen, giving me enough light that I could stay on the trail, guiding my stumbling steps. My rat-gnawed feet were obviously infected, making every step agony, and my concussed equilibrium tilted and spun the world around me. I willed myself to stay on my feet, knowing if I fell I’d probably never be able to get back up.

Night air on Tarisan is icy and thin, comparable to the high country of the American Rockies, and sound carries a long way, which was why I knew the exact moment when the Tarisanians realized I had escaped.

Now, the Tarisanians are a technologically advanced race; they have vehicles that work much like Earth cars and trucks (despite being a hell of a lot uglier), but the path to the Stargate was a foot trail only; they’d considered the ’gate to be merely a boring old monument and had rarely had reason to visit it until we arrived. Thank God for small miracles, because they could have run me down in about a minute in one of those pug-ugly cars. As it was, they could travel on foot a whole lot faster than I could, but I had a good head start. I had made more than three-fourths the distance of the trail before they even started.

They guessed I was heading for the Stargate (perceptive people, those Tarisanians) and I could hear the angry yells behind me, could see the light from their electric lamps. I guess they’re electric, anyway. They could be nuclear lamps for all I know, powered by naquadria or something. I bet Carter would love to get her hands on one.

In the silver light of the dual moons, the Stargate was possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. If I’d had more time, and if my jaw hadn’t been broken, I might have kissed it, or at least the DHD. I had no time to spare, and my jaw was very broken, so I bypassed the theatrics and reached out shakily to press the first symbol on the DHD.

And then stopped.

And remembered that without a GDO, I was about to be cosmic roadkill.

Not much better than a rat-eaten corpse, to tell you the truth.

The SGC would have no reason to even think about opening the iris. To them, I was dead; they had no way of knowing that there’d never really been any battle, that we’d all been captured almost as soon as we’d stepped through the gate. A little memory tampering, a few convincing battle wounds given to Daniel’s ‘rescuers’, and they were returned through the ’gate with no one the wiser, except, of course, me. And the fact that I knew better didn’t really do anyone any good.

The yells behind me were getting closer at an uncomfortable rate, so I quickly dialed the first address that came to mind. It happened to be the planet where Daniel found that tablet he was so eager to translate; boring place, uninhabited, lots of trees and water and dusty old temples that made our resident archaeologist jump for joy.

Maybe not the perfect place for somebody who had been starved and beaten mostly to death, but the bottom line was that there weren’t any Tarisanians there, and for now, that was good enough.

I dialed the gate and stepped through just before my pursuers turned the last bend in the trail.

I spent three days on P7Y-818 (yes, I remember the designation, but don’t tell Carter, and for God’s sake don’t tell her I remembered the address!) sleeping, drinking lots of fresh water, and eating handfuls of soft red berries that tasted somewhat like strawberries. I knew the risk involved with eating alien berries, but I didn’t figure it was any more risky than starving to death, so I took the chance and, when I didn’t die in agony, decided I had made the right decision. Chewing still hurt like hell, but the berries were soft and I was hungry enough to put up with it.

By the third day my strength was returning, the headaches were starting to get less severe, and my thinking was decidedly clearer. Possessing some basic survival skills, I knew I could survive here for some time, but who knew when or if an SG team would return? There had to be somewhere I could go, some ally I could contact to get sent back to Earth.

The Nox? A possibility, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the address to their planet. The Tok’ra? We hadn’t had contact with them in a while; I could remember the last known address they’d been at, but with the way the Tok’ra moved around, they probably weren’t there any more. I could very well find myself on a deserted desert planet or, worse, in the clutches of a Goa’uld.

It was a chance I’d have to take.

Oh boy. If the Tok’ra wanted to choose ugly planets, they’d really picked a winner with this one. It looked like the Sahara in a severe drought, but I didn’t see any Jaffa or glowy-eyed people who commanded me to ‘kneel before your god’; that was a definite plus.

I’d bathed thoroughly and rinsed out my clothes on P7Y-818, and my gnawed feet had been washed clean and bandaged and were feeling somewhat better, but I still limped badly and I knew I looked like death warmed over several times. If the Tok’ra saw me coming, hopefully they wouldn’t perceive me as a threat. I mean, hell, what was I going to do, collapse on them?

I made it about ten painful steps through the sand before I was completely surrounded. I quickly took in the drab, ugly clothes and had to fight to keep myself from grinning, which would hurt like all hell.

“I’m not gonna kill you,” I said, holding my hands up non-threateningly, slurring my words because I was trying to move my jaw as little as possible. “Is anybody around here named Selmak? Or Jacob Carter, maybe? I’ll talk to either of them if they’re around.”

“Jack?” A very familiar voice said incredulously from behind me. “Colonel Jack O’Neill?”

I turned to look into the face of General Jacob Carter and his symbiote, Selmak - well, I guess I don’t really look into Selmak’s face, and I’d prefer not to if the truth be known, but she does share Jacob’s face some of the time. There was no doubt who was in charge when he - uh, they - saw my face, however; have you ever seen a Tok’ra’s eyes bug halfway out of his head? If not, take it from someone who knows, you don’t want to.

Jacob and his symbiote had obviously been informed of my ‘death’.

“Guilty as charged,” I slurred painfully, squinting my eyes against the bright light, which made my head hurt and provided evidence I wasn’t completely over the concussion yet. “You don’t think you could send me to Earth, do you?”

Overcoming his shock at seeing me, General Carter stepped up and put a hand on my shoulder - evidently afraid that I was about to keel over in front of him, which was probably a valid concern. “We’re in the middle of moving and we can’t spare anybody right now,” he said, which didn’t surprise me for some reason, “but I’ll send our GDO signal for you.”

“Thanks,” I slurred, indescribably happy to have discovered an option that did not include becoming either a rat-gnawed corpse or cosmic roadkill.

“Unauthorized offworld activation!”

Major Samantha Carter sighed and briefly rested her forehead against the screen of her laptop computer. She’d been working on the same equation for hours and wasn’t getting anywhere; she just could not seem to focus on her work. It was horrible to lose a teammate and friend like Jack O’Neill, but there was something more - she felt as if something was eating at her from the inside and she didn’t know why or how to make it stop.

Realizing that she needed a break, Sam migrated toward the ’gate room, knowing she’d probably find Daniel there. He’d recently been released from the infirmary after being treated for broken ribs, dehydration, and bruises on pretty much every square inch of his body, and he could usually be found somewhere near the embarkation room. He was in denial, Sam thought sadly; he couldn’t accept that his close friend was gone. Sometimes she couldn’t accept it, and she had seen it happen right in front of her eyes.

“We’re getting the Tok’ra signal, sir,” Sam heard as she approached the computer control room. General Hammond’s voice said “Open the iris.”

Sam hurried into the room, hoping against hope it was her father. They’d managed to get a message to the Tok’ra about Colonel O’Neill’s death, but she hadn’t been able to talk to her father directly, and she needed all the comfort she could get right now. Maybe seeing her father would distract her for a while.

The person who came through the wormhole certainly did distract her, but he wasn’t her father.

Daniel, standing gingerly next to Sam with one arm in a sling and his face mottled green and yellow from the fading bruises, felt his jaw nearly hit the floor. Teal’c, who had taken it upon himself to become Daniel’s personal bodyguard while the archaeologist recovered, looked like he was about to faint, which was disturbing beyond description, and Sam ...

Sam would have definitely fallen over and done some pretty serious collateral damage to the back of her head if General Hammond, who was dumbfounded himself, hadn’t caught her.

Colonel Jack O’Neill stood unsteadily on the ramp as the wormhole shut down behind him with a snap. Gazing blurrily up at the computer control room, he took in the shell-shocked expressions of the people standing there and managed to say clearly, “Hi, kids. Miss me?”

“S-s-sir!” Sam squeaked. Sam never squeaked.

Utterly blissful in the knowledge that he was neither rat food nor a splattered iris decoration, Jack O’Neill managed a full-fledged smile despite his broken jaw, then fell over backward and landed on the ramp with a loud thud.