SERIES TITLE: Angels and Mazes
PART ONE TITLE: Into the Labyrinth
AUTHOR: ELG
AUTHOR PAGE: ELG
CATEGORY: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort.
SPOILERS: Major spoilers for 'Menace' and episodes leading up to it, particularly 'Beast of Burden' and 'Summit/Last Stand'.
SEASON / SEQUEL: Season 5, second half. Takes place after 'Menace'.
RATING: R
CONTENT WARNINGS: Adult themes. Violence. Language. Drug taking. Discussion of infidelity, bisexuality, possibility of sexual abuse etc. Definitely only for adult readers.
SUMMARY: After the events of 'Menace', Daniel needs some time away from the SGC, but his planned escape back into archaeology is swiftly hijacked by the USAF who believe the ancient labyrinth he wishes to excavate could hold valuable alien technology. To carry out his mission, Daniel must first face up to events buried in his subconscious for the past thirteen years.
STATUS: Part One complete and a story in its own right but actually the first half of a longer story, the second half of which is yet to be completed.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a story which takes place entirely on Earth, splits up the team, has an NID conspiracy storyline, and contains a number of Original Characters. Sorry about that. I promise the second half has the whole team going off world on a mission but I really did need to write this half to lay the foundations for the second half, honest. Many thanks to Brenda for the beta and to the usual suspects for wonderfully helpful feedback and advice: Cheryl, Joyce, Paula, Judy, Sharon, Cathy, Sue, Anna et al.

Into the Labyrinth

"The gods are sparrows, I am a falcon."
Inanna, Sumerian goddess of love, war, fertility and infinite variety

I: Cheyenne Mountain

O'Neill bent and picked up one of the pieces of replicator still scattered across the corridors like something from a children's game. Nothing could have looked more harmless; little pieces of metal all interlocking perfectly to make mechanical spiders. Almost indistinguishable from the other toys in the room that piece of machinery which thought and acted like a human child had been living in. Except human children didn't generally work only as long as their computer disks were installed; and they almost never created killer bugs they then unleashed upon an unsuspecting galaxy. Nor did they wreak havoc on the SGC.

How many times was it now that they'd been bitten in the ass by something they'd brought home because Daniel wanted to communicate with it or Carter wanted to take it apart and find out how it worked? Or, if he was honest, because he and Hammond hoped that this time they might have found the weapon that would wipe out the Goa'uld?

He stepped over to the 'contaminated waste' buckets set up everywhere in which the broken pieces of replicator were being dropped to land with a comforting 'plink' on those other pieces of metal. He peered into the depths for a minute, waiting to see if any of those pieces started twitching, trying to reform themselves, the way he'd seen them do in the past. But no, not a movement out of them this time. Without the robot controlling them they couldn't function. They'd been right on the point of breaking free from its control when it had been stopped and so had they. Now they were just pieces of metal with no ability to turn themselves back into replicators without their creator. That was Carter's theory anyway, and although Carter was as capable as any of them of getting it spectacularly wrong on occasion, this time he thought he believed her.

O'Neill reached into the bucket and prodded at the pieces. None of them retaliated in any way. He believed her, yes, but he also believed in making sure.

He'd recommended to Hammond that Area 51 didn't even get a look in, they just gave these bits of metal to Siler and he put them straight in the boiler. Melt them down and turn them into lampstands. Just make sure they couldn't ever be made replicators again. As long as there were government agents out there who thought talking with the Goa'uld was a good idea, he thought the SGC should rely only on itself. Hammond had accused him of having a bunker mentality, which O'Neill hadn't argued. There were times he did think the only people they could trust were themselves. That went for their allies on this planet and elsewhere. Not that they had many allies left who hadn't been decimated, defeated or downright destroyed. Even Thor hadn't come when they needed him this time. If Thor had come then...

He gave himself a mental shake. No one knew better than he did the futility of pining after might-have-beens. Thor hadn't come and the situation had been resolved his way instead. His way and not Daniel's...

O'Neill had to prepare himself to step into the infirmary. Quite apart from the disinfectant smell there were too many things in here he didn't want to deal with right now. First off were the badly injured airmen attacked by replicators within the SGC; something he had hoped would never happen. The hairs were standing up on the back of O'Neill's neck at how close they'd all come to having to complete the self-destruct to wipe out the terrifying metal pests. Two airmen were still sweeping the infirmary, collecting up every tiny piece of replicator they could find. O'Neill had told them to be thorough. In fact he might have yelled it. As he'd walked out of the 'gateroom he'd needed somewhere to direct his anger and those little pieces of bug had done just fine. If he could have jumped up and down on them without losing dignity he would have done.

The other thing he really didn't want to deal with right now was Daniel.

Fraiser had confined Daniel to bed at the far end of the infirmary, but given the replicator injuries she was having to deal with he wasn't getting a lot of attention.

O'Neill took his time talking to the wounded airmen and asking Fraiser for a progress report on the ones who were unconscious; giving praise where it was due; being the good CO. He knew Hammond had been in as well. He and Hammond had earned the loyalty they invoked in others. He knew they were both good COs and Hammond had proved he still remembered how to be a good soldier as well. The attack on the base had been a challenge and they'd all risen to it; dealt with it; survived it. He had no problem with any of the actions he'd taken. He knew he'd done all he could do under circumstances where the base was overrun, the countdown was marching irresistibly towards zero; he had an injured man in a potential hostage situation; and the thing controlling the enemy was at large and dangerous. He'd neutralized the enemy; averted the hostage situation; stopped the replicators; saved the base. All with one well-placed bullet.

He also feared he might have irretrievably broken something in Daniel's soul in the same instant.

He was out of beds to stand beside now. There were only three empty ones, then Daniel's. He couldn't stall any longer.

He approached the bed warily, like he might approach a snared animal he wanted to help but was afraid of getting bitten by; Daniel's frustrated rage and grief as he sat in the 'gateroom with tears running down his face still as fresh in his memory as an open wound.

"Hey..."

Daniel looked up at him. "Hey."

There was no trace of the rage or grief there now. He just looked weary and distant. Not as if he was shutting O'Neill out, just as if he wasn't really here any more. He reminded O'Neill of someone, but he couldn't think who it was. There was the same grayness about him; as if he'd faded; shrunk a little; as if his body was still here but his mind was somewhere else.

That scared O'Neill more than the anger he'd been seared by earlier. He pulled up a chair. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay."

"How's the arm?"

Daniel turned his head to look at him in mild surprise. "Okay." As O'Neill evidently shifted impatiently, Daniel shrugged. Aloud he said, "It's just a broken wrist." His eyes also seemed to say: You didn't have to kill her for it.

He hadn't – he really hadn't – shot the robot because it had hurt Daniel. Twice. Deliberately. Could have cracked his skull like an egg the first time. Had broken his arm just like that, with one malicious twist of the fingers. He'd killed it because it was the only thing he could do under the circumstances that wouldn't have risked the life of everyone on the base including Daniel.

"How's the head?"

"Fine."

O'Neill looked around for inspiration. "Looks like you might need to take a few days off. Maybe you'd like to come fishing...?"

He broke off as he saw Daniel's expression. It wasn't impatient, or angry, it was resigned, and weary, and somewhat sad. "I don't think so, Jack."

O'Neill set his jaw. "Daniel, I really think we need to talk, and this isn't the place – "

"No, it isn't." Daniel nodded. "But I don't think there's anything to say."

"Look, I did what I – "

"You did what you had to do. I know that." Daniel looked him in the eye without accusation this time, just that frightening resignation. "Now I need to do what I need to do."

O'Neill felt a chill go through him, much worse than that sharp stab of hurt when Daniel had called him a "stupid son of a bitch" in the 'gateroom. Daniel had been working so hard to get through to the robot and he'd almost succeeded. Almost found a way to keep the robot alive; stop the replicators; and save the base. Or not. They'd never know because with an alien enemy that had already proven more than a match for the Asgard swarming all over Cheyenne Mountain and half its personnel, and the self-destruct counting down, O'Neill hadn't had any choice but to neutralize the enemy the second he got a clear shot.

"I was just..."

"I know, Jack." Daniel reached out with his good arm, and his fingers rested briefly on O'Neill's sleeve. O'Neill looked down at Daniel's hand in surprise. Daniel hardly ever touched him. Daniel hardly ever touched anyone. But there had been a time when O'Neill's hand on his arm had been enough to comfort him. Now, he didn't think anyone and anything was going to banish that look from Daniel's eyes. Daniel became aware of who he was touching and snatched his hand away, the way he always did for a reason O'Neill couldn't even guess at. One day he'd have to tell Daniel that actually tactile people liked to be touched too; they could also take comfort from a hand on the arm.

He'd come in here ready to defend himself; to explain, crisply and in a way even a mule-stubborn civilian couldn't fail to understand, just why he'd had to do what he'd done; then he'd been going to tell Daniel that he understood why he was so angry. That he knew Daniel was a communicator. That no one liked the way things had gone down but with the safety of the base at stake there had been no other responsible decision to make. That it wasn't and never had been about him not trusting Daniel to do his job; just that in a military base in a military situation, as second in command he had to take responsibility for the lives of those people in the SGC; and that included Daniel's life and... So many other things he'd been going to say to justify his actions and prove they hadn't been a reflection on Daniel in any way at all; that there was no reason for what had happened today to harm their friendship.

But Daniel seemed to have worked it all out for himself. Or perhaps he'd just read it in the way O'Neill walked across the room. They knew each other so well that was possible.

Unfortunately it was them knowing each other so well that was scaring O'Neill now, because looking at Daniel, he was seeing someone who although quiet and calm on the outside, was broken and wounded within. Worst of all, for the first time in a very long time, he was seeing someone who needed to be where Jack O'Neill wasn't.

He almost said "Don't go", but thought in time how it would sound. Needy and pathetic. As if he was clutching at Daniel's sleeve. He stayed in his chair, looking at Daniel with his face as blank as he could make it. Daniel was lying right there in a bed a few feet from him, but O'Neill could feel him slipping through his fingers; knew that even while they were still talking he was losing him irrevocably.

Daniel must have seen how he really felt despite his best efforts to disguise it because he winced and said gently, "It's not you, Jack."

O'Neill gritted his teeth. "It's what I did."

"No." Daniel shook his head. "It's just the way it is."

O'Neill stayed where he was, frozen in silence, watching as the pain killers kicked in, as Daniel's eyelashes fluttered; watched him fight slumber then succumb to it; watched him sleep. And all the time he knew this time he'd lost him so completely that maybe this time he wouldn't be getting him back.

***

When the summons came to Hammond's office he knew this was it. Daniel was leaving. He didn't much care about the how and why. He just cared that it was happening and he couldn't stop it.

After two days slumped in depression waiting for the axe to fall it was almost a relief. He decided attack was the best form of defense. If it had come to this; to the finishing line of a formal announcement; he had nothing to lose anyway.

He rocketed into Hammond's office on a propeller burst of attitude. The second he saw Hammond's unhappy face and Daniel's self-hugging body language, not to mention that crisp white letter lying on the table, he knew he'd read the situation right and should start yelling about it. Loudly.

"So, this is it? You don't like the way a mission goes down so you're going to sulk your way out of here?"

Hammond looked shocked. "Colonel O'Neill."

Daniel just sighed. "Jack..."

O'Neill shot him a look. He'd hoped to provoke some kind of angry reaction but Daniel was still looking resigned and long-suffering about it at all. And weary. Bone-deep weary. So like someone else. Someone from his past. Not military. His childhood. Damnit, it was on the edge of his memory. Looking at the shadows under Daniel's eyes, O'Neill felt all the anger get sucked straight out of him. So did the strength. He was sitting down even before Hammond pointed a finger at the chair.

He looked sideways at Daniel, not hiding the hurt. "You're going?"

"I need some time off."

That didn't sound so bad but Hammond's palpable distress suggested Daniel had asked for a lot more than a week's vacation. "How much time?"

"I don't know."

"Well could you at least give me some kind of idea? I am your team leader."

"Not any more, Colonel." Hammond sounded like someone who needed to share the bad news to try and halve the pain of it.

"I never saw you as a quitter, Danny."

Daniel gave him a very straight look. "Don't pull the rally round the flag boys bullcrap with me, Jack. It won't work and it's beneath you." He didn't add 'And don't call me 'Danny' either' but O'Neill read it in his eyes. People had stopped calling Daniel 'Danny' in 1973 when his parents had died before his eyes. Calling him that was like stroking a cat – elicited a purr every time however much he might wish to hang onto his dignity. It was a name for emergencies and intimacies. It was also not something to be wielded like a weapon; used cynically for manipulation. That blunted its power. He read all that in Daniel's eyes as well. They were very expressive, and he and Daniel knew each other frighteningly well.

O'Neill pointed at the door. "You're ditching us because of a freakin' robot, Daniel! Why shouldn't I pull every low trick in the book?"

Daniel sighed wearily. "As I just explained to General Hammond, I'm leaving because I don't know who I am any more, and I'm no use to this facility until I find out."

"I know who you are." O'Neill put every ounce of intensity into he could find. "You're someone I want on my team. You're someone I need on my team."

There had been a time when that would have been enough to make Daniel melt. He could be seduced by kindness and affirmation back into friendship even when the links seemed to be entirely severed. But this time Daniel just looked even more weary. "Not like this. I'm no use to you like this."

O'Neill glared at him in baffled hurt because Daniel wasn't caving, which meant he was leaving, which meant he was going to be left. Again. By someone he had cared for; he had obviously somehow terribly failed. "Like what? With your arm in a sling or your head up your ass?"

"Colonel."

Hammond was glaring at him accusingly. The general was probably joining all kinds of dots in his head, thinking this was the way his 2IC always spoke to their wayward but lovable civilian and if so no wonder he was quitting.

He just wanted Daniel to get mad at him again. In the 'gateroom no one else had existed. It had been the two of them and a dead robot. He'd been hurting so much for Daniel, the guy could have spat in his eye and he wouldn't have minded; and Daniel had been ripped open with grief and anger and frustration, but god he'd been focused on him. He'd been so there. They'd been the only people in their world for a second. Now Daniel was already in a different place from him; sidling out the door with an apologetic wave.

Daniel did look him right in the eye, that was something; but the terrible resignation was still there. The way people looked when they were exhausted with too much grief. All this for a machine? No. Stop fighting and use what you know, O'Neill, and you know him, better than you know yourself; better than he knows himself. It must be there in his eyes; it always is. O'Neill looked and read it right this time, slumping with defeat as he realized the truth. Not the robot then. All this for a principal. Somehow they'd frog-marched Daniel across a line he'd never wanted to cross and he had to get back on his own steam.

He saw Daniel see him get it too. There was that little nod again and the words were gentle. "I'm no use to you if I don't believe in what we're doing any more."

And now he remembered who Daniel had been reminding him of. Father O'Hanlon from the Church of the Sacred Heart. The one who'd left the priesthood after his faith had cracked like a broken bell.

He felt as if he was falling into a deep gray pit; this really was the future; and it really was unavoidable. Hammond's voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. "Doctor Jackson won't be leaving right away. He's putting out feelers to old colleagues but he's going to do some consultancy work for us until a place on a suitable archaeological site comes up. He'll still be here for a few more weeks."

"That's nice." O'Neill said it dully, looking down at the floor. Here in body, perhaps, but not in soul. His team was broken. It had just had lost its heart.

"Don't, Jack, please..."

He looked up to see misery in Daniel's eyes, wretched at having to witness what his leaving was doing to O'Neill. He should let him off the hook. Try to pretend this wasn't ripping his guts out, to lose him like this, to something he couldn't fight. But he couldn't. Everything hurt too much. He hurt too much and he didn't agree with it. He would never agree with anything that wrecked his team and cost him his friend. He glared at him resentfully, getting to his feet. "Go, if you have to go. But don't ask me to be a sport about it. I don't think it's right for you or for us."

He walked out before the guilt overwhelmed the anger and he had to start thinking about how much he might be to blame for this, and worst of all, whether or not Daniel might not, in fact, be right.

***

Daniel wearily massaged the back of his neck. He was at the stage where he just wanted to be gone. He wanted to be a member of SG-1 again; he wanted to feel he had something to contribute again, and while he was like this, he was just walking wounded. He'd tried to explain it to Jack a couple of times now, but it was hopeless. It always was when he was saying something Jack didn't want to hear. He suspected that in his heart Jack might know exactly what he was talking about; understand more completely even than Sam or Teal'c – who had lent a far more sympathetic ear and told him they would support him whatever he chose to do even though they would miss him. But he hadn't seen that same 'click' of comprehension he had seen in their eyes that he had seen in Jack's as the man looked at him in Hammond's office. He didn't think anyone knew better than Jack just how deeply recent events had damaged him. The trouble was, he didn't think anyone was more determined than Jack was that if the right answer to any question turned out to be Daniel leaving SG-1 then Jack would always maintain it was the wrong question being asked in the first place.

In some ways he thought he was still recovering from Shifu's dream. Sometimes he still woke up streaming with sweat thinking it was true; that he'd done those terrible things. That Teal'c was dead because of him. A million Russians were dead because of him. He loved Shifu and no doubt he'd needed the dream to stop them all making a dreadful mistake; but thanks to four years on a first contact team, not to mention the small matter of his wife having been taken by the Goa'uld, he'd already had a lot of weirdness swimming around in his brain and Shifu's little life lesson really hadn't helped.

He knew it had been a mistake to agree to try to kill the System Lords. The thing that frightened him most was that he had agreed to it. He had been so caught up in the how and why; so pressured by the knowledge that there was apparently no one else who could do what the Tok'ra felt it was necessary to be done, that he'd agreed to something he had realized mid-mission he found too morally repugnant to continue with.

Sarah's arrival had been timely in many ways. It was seeing her, a friend who had once loved him, or her outer casing at any rate, and knowing she was going to die if he completed his mission; that had brought it home to him exactly what he had signed up for here. What he was proposing to do to. That whatever hell they might be trapped in, he was still going to be the one who killed all these hosts along with the Goa'uld within them. The realization he had been in denial of; in a kind of moral fog; that by killing the other System Lords all he and Jacob would be doing would be handing power to a Goa'uld apparently bigger and badder than the rest – the scenario which in the past they had risked their lives and their liberty and willingly dived into 'hell' to avert – had meant that to continue with the mission was something that would do far more harm than good. The undoubted evil of Anubis had saved him from having to explain to Jacob why he couldn't go on with something he knew he should never have agreed to in the first place. Sarah had provided the excuse; but she had never truly been the whole reason.

Then there was Chaka. He didn't know now if he had done the right thing. He only knew that to leave those sentient beings enslaved by other sentient beings simply because one 'side' happened to be homo sapiens and the other 'side' didn't would have been wrong. That didn't mean that what Chaka and the other Unas might have ended up doing might not turn out to be equally wrong.

And then there was this latest episode. He had lied to a creature that trusted him. Tried to betray someone who had the mind, if not the body, of a human child. He had told Reese he would protect her, and he hadn't. He had failed to tell her what he had already known, that he didn't have the authority to protect anyone. He was part of a system that didn't work the way he worked; didn't necessarily even share his values. It was the communicator versus the protector all over again. Jack's first priority was always to protect; Daniel's to communicate. They'd been through this before. Did they talk to the entity or did they kill it? They'd talked and Jack had ended up having to kill a teammate. As far as Daniel was concerned, that didn't mean they had been wrong to try to communicate in the first place. One never could be wrong to try to talk to another sentient life form rather than to arbitrarily terminate its existence just because it could be dangerous. He wasn't sure about Jack. Jack might see that as a failure on his part; an error of judgment that had almost cost Sam her life. Sometimes Jack did think the end justified the means; although Daniel did also believe that Jack believed there were immutable moral certainties that had to be clung onto, even by the tips of your bleeding fingers, whatever else was happening. It was just that Jack's moral certainties weren't always the same as his; and he was more fluid in his application of them than Daniel had at least used to be.

But Jack's moral certainties weren't the issue here. Daniel had never expected the military to think the same way he did. Well, okay, perhaps in the early days he had, but he thought there had also been a certain amount of cynicism on his part. Maybourne, the NID, Kinsey, even occasionally the President himself, had all shocked him in their time with how much lower they were willing to sink than he'd expected or how wrong-headed they might be in their approach, but he had gone into this with a certain amount of wariness. The Stargate program had been the only means for him to search for his wife; and the Stargate program had also turned out to be the ultimate adventure for any student of lost people and lost languages. The Stargate was the conduit to civilizations that had ceased to be on this world, yet thrived beyond the stars; a means to hear dead languages spoken for the first time in millennia. The need to find Sha're had been so overwhelming that it had overridden his other concerns. Yes, he had argued for the cultural aspects of the civilizations they encountered to be explored as assiduously as the technological capacity, and they had given him what he wanted; but he'd realized very quickly that it was considered a much lesser part of their exploration. He was on a military field unit, searching for weapons to help in a battle he wasn't sure they could win without doing something that would make them as bad as the people they fought. Oma Desala had tried to show him the way that road could lead twice now, and he had heard her and believed he understood and was in agreement. But he had still found himself standing in a chamber committed to a mission that was making him act not as a communicator or an archaeologist, but as an assassin. And not even an assassin who risked his own life with the knife or the gun, as he had fought the Goa'uld in the past, but someone who used a chemical that could not hurt him but would kill their friends and enemies alike if it was ever to fall into the wrong hands. In his heart he still believed a weapon that made brave men act like cowards was a weapon that should never be used.

The Tok'ra had been desperate; he acknowledged that. Their strength had been waning for a while. The System Lords pursued them ruthlessly and had all but wiped them out. He didn't blame the Tok'ra for trying such a method to destroy the Goa'uld. He did, however, blame himself for ever agreeing to be a part of it. That was a line he should never have crossed and now he wasn't sure who he was any more, or what he believed in.

He believed in Hammond, and Jack, and Sam, and Teal'c, and their integrity, their loyalty, and their courage; but he couldn't expect their priorities to always be his priorities; their morality, his. They had different objectives; different responsibilities. He could not expect them to keep his moral clock for him. That was his job; and recently the inner compass that told him whether something was wrong or right, or should be questioned, didn't seem to have been functioning as well as in the past. It was as if there was so much white noise in his head, he couldn't hear his conscience any more; had lost himself somewhere inside himself; a missing part of who Daniel Jackson was trapped in the middle of a labyrinth whose center he had yet to find.

Daniel grimaced as he realized his coffee was cold again. He was spending a lot of time staring into space that would have been better spent finishing up the thousand and one tasks he needed to do before he handed over to someone else. Jack had first told him he'd better clear out his office then, if he was going AWOL on them; then told him quietly and without meeting his eye that of course they would keep his name on the door, keep this office for him; keep his possessions.

"I kept your stuff while you were on Abydos, didn't I? You're only going to Egypt this time. Right?"

He'd looked up to see those familiar brown eyes clouded with rejection and unhappiness, and the guilt had twisted inside him. "Egypt or somewhere like it," he'd said firmly. "Just for a few months, Jack. Just until I..." Even to Jack he couldn't say 'Just until I find myself again'. It sounded too Born Again. He wasn't waiting to be saved. He just needed to find the center of that labyrinth and everything would fall back into place.

He poured his coffee down the sink before reaching across to check his email. He had sent out feelers to every friend he had left from the past, asking for something quiet, preferably in Egypt. He didn't want to find the lost treasures of some long dead Pharaoh. Didn't need to discover Troy. He was happy to help investigate post holes; excavate an ancient rubbish tip. Help with some translation. Just somewhere out in the field with nothing to think about but the past of this world.

He'd hoped he would have heard back from John Nelson by now. As soon as Daniel sent out word that he was looking for a site to retreat to for a few months, Nelson had said he would make enquiries. He'd admitted to being in Egypt but he'd been uncharacteristically cagey when Daniel had asked him about the dig he was working on. As the days had gone by and he'd heard nothing, Daniel had begun to think there was no possibility of being able to join him. He'd picked up the phone to call his father's old friend and Daniel's sort-of godfather, Alexis Spiros, a dozen times and then thought of the explanations he'd have to make and withdrawn his hand again. He loved Alexis dearly and hoped one day he'd find the Dudael he was looking for, in reality anyway although not, he trusted, in the afterlife. To spend one's life searching for the last known resting place of a fallen angel was a dream he could relate to. Alexis was the man who had taught him Hebrew, told him the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, read to him – probably at far too young an age – the story of the rebel angels named in the Book of Enoch; those winged footnotes in disputed Apocrypha. But Alexis was a curious man who still thought of Daniel as a boy who needed guidance. He would want a detailed explanation of where Daniel had been for the past few years and what exactly he had been doing. There would be a lecture about the papers Daniel hadn't published, the tenure he'd lost. Alexis would want assurances that Daniel had no intention of ever returning to work for the Air Force... No, much as he cared for his godfather, Alexis was not the right man to approach in this instance. Mentally sorting through his list of past acquaintances, he once again came to the conclusion that Nelson was the only one who wouldn't make him tell him what he'd been doing since they'd last seen each other.

He knew he could probably find another dig someplace. He still had some of his old contacts; enough that he could find their phone numbers and ask a favor, and he could work with strangers if he had to. Usually one formed a good working relationship with other archaeologists very quickly; all bonded together through mutual interest and mutual enthusiasm. But when the ties that bound him to Jack, Sam, Teal'c and Hammond were so strong and so very difficult to stretch – breaking them would be an impossibility, but even stretching them was painful enough – it helped to have someone he had known as long as John Nelson and knew he could rely on to never ask awkward questions offering him a gentle bridge back to the world of ruins, dust, and dreams.

Nelson was a British archaeologist who now divided his time between New Hampshire and Egypt. A gentle scholar who, to the tangible bewilderment of almost everyone, including Nelson himself, had somehow married an heiress of great beauty and even greater determination. A kind man who had been there to shepherd him through one of his first professional digs. The fact it had ended in disaster had certainly been no fault of Nelson's. Daniel wished he could be as certain that no blame attached to himself... Nelson wrote infrequently but at great length when he did take the trouble to communicate and was someone who had tactfully made it known in many of the darkest periods of Daniel's life that he was around, and money or a place to stay was always available if it was needed. His hair had been receding for as long as Daniel could remember; a thin hard-working man who could light up like a roman candle when he talked about a subject he loved. Someone who still had his enthusiasm and his innocence. Daniel knew that was somewhere inside himself still also; it had just become a little buried over the last few years.

Best of all, Nelson had never asked difficult questions. When he didn't hear from Daniel for over a year he hadn't worried or grown resentful. That was just the way things were. When Daniel got back in touch, that was the way things were too. When Daniel told him he couldn't tell him what he was working on; Nelson had accepted that as well. Other people wondered how quiet, unremarkable Nelson had got a wife as beautiful as Mary Silverstein; if he really deserved a woman that lovely, that funny, that clever, that good, and that rich; those four adorable children; that beautiful home in New England. Daniel wondered if Mary knew how lucky she was to have a husband so gentle, so quietly brilliant, and so kind, who loved her so unreservedly. If those four adorable children knew what a huge difference there was between having a father who was often abroad but who one could visit simply by stepping on a plane; and having one who was dead and buried and never coming home.

The modem dialed and then dialed again. Connected. He had mail. Daniel swore if it was another internal memo he would scream...

When he clicked on his inbox, Nelson's name leapt out at him and for the first time in days his heart actually lifted.

Dear Dan,

Many apologies for the delay in getting back to you. The truth is I couldn't tell you about the dig I was working on straight away. Firstly, I had to get clearance to talk about it to anyone. And secondly, I wasn't sure that you should be told. But then Mary reminded me that you're a big boy now and it's your decision to make.

Hold onto something but we're excavating the Labyrinth again. It wasn't destroyed as we thought. I don't know why not. By rights there should be nothing left, but Daniel...it's not even dented. We've been clearing debris for the past eight months and now we're able to get back in and it doesn't seem to be scratched. No one can explain it. The damn thing went up like Vesuvius. It should be just a big hole in the ground. The pyrotechnics expert they brought in says there's some mineral in the rock that encourages combustion but inhibits corrosion. I don't think he has a clue either. All he seems to do is tap it a lot and shake his head. I know this place has some terrible associations for you but it's also the proof you were looking for thirteen years ago of the cross-pollination of ancient cultures. I know you haven't published in a while and the secrecy agreement about this place still stands, but even if you can't tell the world about it, wouldn't it be something to know you were right? There are more gods from more diverse civilizations mentioned here than on any other ancient monument. It's like a Who's Who of defunct deities...

Daniel closed his eyes, trying and failing not to remember. He could recall the excitement when they'd prized back the stone blocking the entrance. Advancing down those stairs, ignoring the warnings from the diggers that it might not be stable, wide-eyed with the wonder of it, dumbstruck by the markings on each wall; glyphs; runes; pictograms; variants he'd never seen before; having to touch them to see if they were real. An Aladdin's cave of mysteries, which had been hidden here unseen by any human for thousands of years. They'd thought they'd found the first unlooted tomb since Howard Carter held up his candle to illuminate the 'wonderful things' interred with King Tut. Thought they'd found another resting place for the beloved sons of dead pharaohs. But it had been so much more. It had been everything. Beside it the Rosetta Stone was a pebble on the beach; the Dead Sea Scrolls a scrapbook of unfinished crossword puzzles.

...you would be a great asset as I'm sure you know and this is the biggest archaeological mystery on the planet as far as I'm concerned. Forget Mohenjo-Daro. Forget Atlantis. Forget the Sphinx. There is no temple or monument anywhere that has so many different texts in so many different languages. The sheer volume and complexity of these tablets makes the head spin. Variants of old myths I've never seen anywhere before. The missing parts of so many lost tales. And all those different forms of writing. You remember what it was like? A linguist's paradise...

Then there was heat. The blast throwing him into darkness. Then the quiet of the hospital bed in Cairo; sheets as crisp as paper unexpectedly heavy against his skin; a ceiling fan turning; a beige blur he woke up to before the rest came into focus. Nelson on a chair staring at him in disbelief, then shouting that he was awake, at last, he was awake. Mary crying over him; her tears in his hair. A doctor shining a light in his eyes. Him asking what had happened and everyone looking at everyone else before Nelson said, with undisguised hope: "You don't remember?"

He'd closed his eyes, trying to claw it back and just for a second something had shimmered in and out of focus; darkness; tunnels; dragged; everything distorted and smeared with his own terror; but through it all a voice talking in Sumerian, telling him the Babylonian myth of Inanna's descent into the Underworld; his own culpability in that crime. Cloth ripping, a knife blade gleaming. Paralyzing fear of what was to come next... Then Rajid wrapping that blanket around him, telling him he must hurry; he must run; back to the stars; out of the mouth of hell.

"Rajid...?"

As he'd said the man's name he'd seen Nelson wince and heard Mary start crying again, and he'd known Rajid was dead. That brave old man who had known his parents and been one of his few remaining links to the past, was dead somehow because of him.

Later someone in a blue uniform with the name 'Thornton' on his chest, had shown him paper after paper in which he promised he would tell no one, publish nothing, sue no one, and told him that if he signed on the dotted line he wouldn't be blamed for the deaths or the destruction. As that was all he'd wanted, to escape what he couldn't remember, and leave behind his guilt, he'd signed and signed and signed...

It's really Alexis' dig, but he had to be airlifted to hospital after his appendix went bang. You know what that's like. He told me to tell you he blames you; he says if you wrote more often, it would never have happened. He'll be back in a few weeks but until he gets here I'm sort of in charge. He expects you to be here when he arrives so if you're planning to turn me down you'd better start working on your excuses.

There is another fly in the ointment. Given the Elamite texts, not to mention the other variants of cuneiform, I suppose it is inevitable that Darius is also here, despite everything, and as energetic, as arrogant, as absolute as ever. Apparently his medication is working although he is still convinced the US Air Force is the root of all evil. I find nodding politely makes the conversations pass so much faster than trying to reason with him these days. Mind you he has always seemed to charm the Egyptian Government into giving him anything he wants. I think they recognize that for all his faults he does care passionately about this country and this culture, and every artifact stolen from every tomb in the last four thousand years burrows under his skin like a weevil. I've seen him sit down and weep on reading accounts of objects being melted down; not because he cares about the gold but because that piece of the universal puzzle that is the past has been lost forever. That part of Darius is still intact and is still the one thing about him that reminds me of you.

Given what he did to you, I can well understand if you don't want to be here with him. I think he's safe. But I thought he was safe thirteen years ago. I really thought he was past all his old troubles although given how he came straight back to work after Anna's death I suppose we should have realized something was terribly wrong. He says he's been in therapy and knows who he is now but I don't think he remembers what he did. I know you always say you don't remember what he did either but given how close you came to...well anyway; he seems sane enough these days, and I hope he'll stay that way.

Mary sends you her love as always. She says you should visit more. Frankly, given that you are considerably younger and prettier than I am and even Mary is only mortal flesh and blood – although the closest thing to an angel in human form as I think you will agree – I'm very glad you stay away from Dover. What little hair I had the last time you saw me has now gone the way of the Sumerians so any 'slaphead' comments on our next meeting will be greeted with extreme hostility and resentment; especially if you still have that full head of hair I have been envying for the last ten years. Visited Rajid's grave today and it must be said Darius did him proud. It's really a tomb fit for the king of a man he was...

Daniel had to close his eyes as the grief swept through him, a chill in the blood. He'd hardly thought about Rajid for ten years. Or anything else that had happened back then. What was the point in thinking about events he didn't remember? In pining after a find that had been lost to him and everyone else in one night of horror; victim of a madman's delusions? But now he remembered Rajid fussing over him. Worrying he'd been working too long. That he wasn't remembering to eat. And what would Daniel's mother say if she knew Rajid was letting him neglect himself like this...?

He was going to miss having people who worried about him. However annoying it sometimes was. He would miss that frown of concern from General Hammond; the way the man sometimes called him 'son' and Daniel felt warm all the way down to his toes. He was going to miss Sam being the over-anxious big sister; trying not to fuss, but unable to completely disguise her worry. He was going to miss the unbreachable safety that was Teal'c; and most of all he was going to miss maddening, impossible, overprotective Jack O'Neill. But if he stayed he might end up doing what he had done to Rajid: being the unwitting cause of their deaths. His judgment was faulty at the moment; instincts dulled by too many missions and not enough time to think. The same thing had happened in Egypt, when he'd allowed his reason to be blurred by a combination of curiosity, glamour and fear; by runes, and hieroglyphs, and the unquestioning certainties of someone who had turned out to be dangerously insane...

With an effort Daniel directed his attention back to Nelson's email.

...so if you want to join us here there is a place for you and you must know how useful you would be in helping to unravel all the mysteries this place represents. You always liked a lot of questions to answer. Well this labyrinth presents more questions than any man could find answers for in a lifetime. A linguist of your skill would be invaluable. But I can also understand if this is the last place on earth you want to be, and Darius the last man on earth you ever want to see again.

I just thought you should know this is the project I'm working on and this is the place I'd like you to be if you want to be here. If nothing else, I can promise you that if you come here you will be 'em kab hek-en-mess'.

Let me know either way.

Regards,

John

Daniel couldn't help a bittersweet smile tugging at his mouth as he read that last phrase: em kab hek-en-mess – in the company of friends. He had that now. That was what he would be giving up in going to Egypt.

"So what did he do?"

Daniel jumped what he was sure had to be three feet straight up in the air. He hadn't heard anyone come in. Had been lost in the world Nelson represented; hearing his voice; imagining his expressions as he typed this out. He'd been halfway back to that world; would not have been surprised to look around and already find himself in Egypt.

He wheeled around to find Jack standing behind him looking unreachable, and felt momentarily terribly exposed. How long had Jack been there, reading over his shoulder? Had he seen the comments about Darius?

"What?" He stared at him in confusion, his heart pounding unnaturally fast as he recovered from the shock. He ran a hand through his hair. "Damnit, Jack. Don't you ever knock?"

Jack just looked at him unblinkingly. "No. What did he do?"

"Who?"

"This Darius character?"

Daniel tried not to flinch but he guessed his rigid immobility was probably just as much of a give away. He hadn't had the dreams in so many years even though for a while after it had happened they had pursued him relentlessly like angry furies. Darius's voice rising and falling; that majestic intonation; the way a lion would speak. No wonder at Cambridge they'd nicknamed him 'Aslan'. He looked like a prophet; a king. Richard Coeur de Lion with his mane of red gold hair. His own voice, so unconvincing by comparison, trying to reason with someone incapable of understanding reason any more. Darius’s dragging him deeper into dizzying darkness...

No. That was where the memory stopped. That was the point past which it would never go. The maze lay ahead of him and at its center something too terrible to even contemplate. But he didn't remember what it was and he never would.

"Daniel?"

Daniel blinked his way back to the here and now; fighting the urge to shiver as the fragments of lost memories washed through him again. He'd almost managed to forget it had ever happened. So long ago it had practically happened to someone else.

"Nothing." He clicked off Nelson's email as he spoke so Jack couldn't read any more. Pleased with how steady his voice sounded. "He didn't do anything."

He looked up to find Jack looking at him not with the baffled anger he was expecting, but an unreadable face. Someone who wasn't baffled or angry or frustrated because he'd learned as much as he needed to know.

"Okay." Jack nodded. "See you around."

Then he was gone. As the door closed behind him, Daniel wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. So long ago, right? So long ago it didn't matter now. And he didn't remember it anyway. He doubted Darius did either. As the events of that night had been witnessed by only one person, and that one person was dead, that meant it had practically never happened. Maybe it was locked up somewhere in his subconscious. Maybe it had worn away like old lettering on sandstone. Either way it wasn't relevant because he wasn't that semi-culpable student any more. And Darius by all accounts was now more or less permanently sane.

He wondered if he would still find Darius unstable and brilliant and frightening and exciting. If the man's light still had the power to draw others to him, willing moths to his dangerous flame. If being near to him would be like standing near an active volcano waiting and half wishing it would erupt; or if Darius on Librium was now just another middle-aged archaeology professor with yet another crackpot theory looking for a book deal and a television tie-in.

***

Although he had no intention of ever telling Daniel, O'Neill did always knock on Carter's door. The difference being that if he wandered into Daniel's office to find the man adjusting his shorts it wouldn't bother either of them much, while if Carter was fiddling with her bra strap or something it would just be too disconcerting. Life was easier really if he saw Carter as genderless. Someone who just was, in the way relatives were; a fixture who also happened to have a sex attached to them, but who wasn't defined by it. He'd always thought of her like that in the past; then forgotten to for a while; a bad mistake that had made every one of his team, especially Carter, think the less of him and the less of her. It had certainly made him think a lot less of himself. Now Carter was back to being Carter again and he tried not to think about his period of thinking of her any other way. It was embarrassing to him and he suspected to her too. He was just relieved they could meet each other's eye again without cringing.

When she went on a date these days he found himself less inclined to be jealous than he was to act in loco parentis; having to fight a tendency to want to know the guy's life history and particularly health records before being prepared to give his blessing. Daniel was only slightly less subtle than he was and although Carter was prepared to cut Daniel more slack than she was him, it wasn't that long since she'd given them that 'You're not my father, sir, and you're not my brother, Daniel, and if I want to date anyone I like I will do' lecture. Admittedly that had been in response to the lecture they'd given her after she'd insisted on shipping out on their cook-out to spend a weekend with a guy who in their defense had looked exactly like a Hells Angel.

Given the way guys had been dropping like flies around Carter and how emotionally raw it had left her, he and Daniel had felt they were entitled to be a little concerned. Or 'interfering' as Teal'c had called it when he'd told them that in his opinion to comment on the lawless appearance of the guy who turned up at O'Neill's house to take Carter away for the weekend would 'not be wise'.

They'd disagreed, and O'Neill had firmly beckoned Carter into his kitchen for a little talk with him and Daniel out of earshot of the tattooed and bearded gorilla on the motorbike.

Daniel had made a pretty good case for the dangers of rebound dating while still in the midst of the grieving process based on his own experiences. While O'Neill considered his own little interjection on the necessity of not getting involved with people with criminal records because of the negative impact it could have one one's promotion hopes in the Armed Forces had actually been delivered with no small degree of tact.

O'Neill had told himself afterwards that he thought the ensuing exchange was the proof that not only were he and Carter so over one another, but they had also managed to become better friends as a consequence. He figured only a friend would have bawled him out the way Carter had just done. When he stopped wincing from that rather unwarranted reminder about who the two members of SG-1 were who'd slept with the natives on missions and how it wasn't her or Teal'c, he'd probably be glad they'd managed to clear the air with that little chat. Well, that attempt at a little chat which had turned into Carter giving them the scary harpy treatment while he and Daniel flinched, tried to hide behind each other, and hoped she didn't head for the cutlery drawer.

They'd trailed after her back into his yard, chastened and subdued, to be told that quite apart from the fact they had no right to interfere in her private life whatsoever, the man on the motorbike was not in fact a Hell's Angels or a graduate of San Quentin. At which point, Teal'c looking very smug and superior, had observed that Doctor Harrison was ready to leave any time she was, Major Carter.

How were they supposed to know the guy was an astrophysicist who specialized in quantum theory? It hadn't said that anywhere on his Harley Davidson. Personally O'Neill thought astrophysicists had an obligation to look like astrophysicists and not like people called Hammer Boy Billy from Arkansas, but when he'd pointed that out, Carter had looked him and Daniel up and down in a very disconcerting way and said, "And how exactly do you think you two look?"

At the time they'd been sprawled defensively in lawn chairs in O'Neill's yard, nerve-frazzled from her lecture and needing to console themselves with beer. He'd been wearing jeans and a t-shirt and Daniel had been wearing a pair of cut offs and nothing else while his shirt dried after an accident with the beer cans O'Neill had accidentally shaken up not on purpose at all before handing them to Daniel to open. He'd got that there was probably a point Carter was making but he still wasn't sure exactly what it was. He could see that with his all over tan from that last mission to the Land of Light promoting cultural whatever it was, and endless length of leg which the somewhat skimpy nature of his cut-offs was accentuating, Daniel was looking a tad unscholarly to the uninformed observer, but Daniel had no idea how those clothes made him look and O'Neill sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to break it to him, and anyway Carter's sundress hadn't been exactly all-concealing either so she could hardly talk. And damnit, O'Neill was proud of the fact he could still get into the same jeans he'd been wearing ten years before and he didn't care if they were a little on the snug side.

He'd settled for a plaintive, "I'm off duty!"

Daniel had looked down at himself and said even more plaintively, "All archaeologists look like this."

Which had at least restored Carter's good humor. As she'd kissed Daniel on the top of the head in farewell she'd said dryly: "Daniel, if all archaeologists look the way you do right now, no sophomore without a seeing eye dog would ever major in anything else." Then she'd hugged Teal'c goodbye, pulled on a crash helmet, climbed on to the back of the Harley Davidson of the Quantum Theory Hells Angel and taken off in a roar of diesel.

So, yes, he definitely thought he and Carter were better friends these days than ever before, and the fact she felt comfortable enough with him these days to bring up every disastrous sexual encounter he'd had since she'd known him was probably a...bonding thing.

But still, wandering into her office to find her wearing only her underwear for some arcane feminine reason was not something to which he wanted to be exposed. So when he reached Carter's office, he knocked, said her name, gave her the grace of one second precisely to tell him not to come in if she didn't want him to, and then entered.

She was studying her computer screen with the kind of rapt attention Daniel usually reserved for artifacts. She was also muttering in a way disconcertingly similar to Daniel's and making rapid notes on a piece of paper.

"How can they keep things like this from...?"

"Carter...?"

At the sound of her voice she also did the guilty start he'd just witnessed from Daniel and made an ineffectual effort to block the screen with her body by swiveling around in her chair.

He gave her a long level look. "Carter...?"

She looked like a kid who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and there was a definite note of resignation in her: "Sir?"

He decided to dispense with asking for an explanation and just leant over her shoulder to read what was on the screen. "You been surfing porn sites, Major?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Colonel. I've been watching those all-male, all naked, Greco-Roman wrestling bouts again."

He stared at the graphs and tables she had been examining, and then looked at her sideways. "Well you seem to have accidentally hacked into Area 51 while you were doing it."

"Oops." As he raised an eyebrow interrogatively she looked defensive. "They won't answer my requests to share data and there's no reason for them not to. We're working on the same project. I'm having to waste time repeating experiments they've already carried out..."

He held up his hands in surrender. "You don't need to yell at me about it."

"It's a waste of my time and the SGC's money for me to replicate work that's already been done when I can just..."

"Illegally obtain their data?" he prompted.

She darted him a look; trying to work out how disapproving he was, but he could do deadpan, and unlike Daniel she didn't know him well enough to read his mind. Which was probably just as well on occasion. "Well... Sometimes I also think we need to make sure they're not..."

"Planning anything else that might get one of us killed?"

Relief flickered across her face. "Exactly."

He shrugged. "I have no problem with that. Especially as I don't know about it. Because I never saw this and we never had this conversation."

She nodded. "Understood."

He tapped her monitor. "If you can hack into Area 51 I figure you can find out some information for me."

"Probably. What do you want to know?"

"It's about an archaeologist called Darius something, specializes in cuneiform. He was on a dig with Daniel about thirteen years ago someplace in Egypt. Also a guy called John Nelson. Also someone called..." Noticing her lack of activity, he looked at her in exasperation. "Why aren't you writing this down?"

Carter sat back in her chair and folded her arms. "Sir, can I speak frankly?"

"Sure."

"Daniel's made his decision and I think we should respect it. He feels he needs some time away from the SGC."

He glared at her. "So?"

She returned his gaze defiantly. "Well with the greatest respect, sir, I'm not prepared to spy on him and I don't think you should either. Professional paranoia might be appropriate when dealing with NID, but these people are archaeologists. They're no danger to him and there's no reason for us to be going behind his back trespassing into his private life or anyone else's."

He picked up a pen from her desk. "Are you done?"

"Yes."

He pulled her notepad over and wrote down the details as he said them aloud. "Darius Someone, an archaeologist who specializes in cuneiform. John Nelson, another archaeologist. Currently working on some site in Egypt. Both of them worked with Daniel on the same dig which as far as I can make out isn't in Daniel's personnel file."

"Sir, did you hear anything I just said?"

"Carter, I have a good reason for asking for these checks."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir, it's not enough. You're asking me to go behind Daniel's back and check up on his friends and I won't do it."

He drew a circle around the word 'Darius’s and stabbed it with his pen. "Thirteen years ago this guy did something which put Daniel in hospital, apparently for quite a long time. This guy is going to be on the dig that Daniel is going to be flying out to on Monday. I need to know that history isn't going to repeat itself or I would be failing in my duties as Daniel's CO and as his friend."

Indecision washed across her face, but when he saw the way her fingers were already reaching for the keyboard he knew he'd won her over. "Hospital?" she echoed faintly.

"For a 'long time' apparently."

"Darius Someone?"

"Specializes in cuneiform. On a dig with Daniel and this Nelson guy in Egypt thirteen years ago."

She was already typing. Over her shoulder she said, "I'll get right on it."

He patted her on the shoulder. "I knew I could count on you, Carter." When he left the room she was already calling up pictures and text. He just hoped she came up with something before Daniel's flight left for Egypt.

***

"Some puzzles for you to start solving, Dan. These are just some of the inscriptions that have got us all stumped. Alexis is convinced that the answer to the last resting place of Azazel lies in Chamber KL6 so he told me to tell you to start there... But as he's in Cairo and I'm the one emailing you I'm sure you'll agree with me that the half-obliterated inscription under the glyphs for Nekheny is much more interesting ..."

Daniel unzipped the second batch of pictures Nelson had emailed him from the site. He had to skate on the surface of his memories not to find himself shuddering, flinching from some unremembered nightmare, but he was also filled with excitement; wanting another glimpse into the buried past, those lost texts revived and just waiting to be revealed. His curiosity had always been so much stronger than his fear. Even now when a part of his subconscious was screaming at him that there was horror in that place, that danger awaited him there, he couldn't help the old fascination taking hold of him again. There had been so much magic in those low-ceilinged corridors. Hieroglyphs, runes, cuneiform, pictographs; those worn fragments of Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Proto-Canaanite, and Ancient Egyptian. The first six chambers they'd entered had contained inscriptions in five different ancient languages, and for all the red flag frantically being waved at him by his sense of self-preservation he was eager to see what Nelson had sent him.

He must have made the first important step into reclaiming his past, untainted by his present; to rediscovering pure archaeology as a search for the history of the lost civilizations of this world; because it was a shock on a par with a bucket of ice water being emptied down the back of his neck, to click on that third picture from Nelson and find himself staring at what were unmistakably Goa'uld symbols.

Clicking off the picture as though it was on fire, he snatched his hand away from the mouse. For an insane second he thought about pretending he hadn't seen it; that he didn't know. No one on the dig would be able to translate them, after all. Then five years of being a part of the SGC reasserted itself too strongly to ignore. He might be poised on the brink of returning to his old life as an archaeologist but at the moment he was still technically a member of this facility, and had been fighting this battle too long to just walk past.

The only way to win is to deny it battle...

Yes, but this wasn't just denying the battle; this was denying information to his friends which might be useful to them. What if he told no one, flew to Egypt, and the next day Sam, Teal'c or Jack were killed off world because he had failed to provide them with some information that might have saved them? What if there was information in the Labyrinth of Nekheny that might be recorded nowhere else which could help them in their battle against the Goa'uld?

He groaned inwardly. He wanted to leave this behind and become an Egyptologist again. But he couldn't because the Goa'uld hadn't just messed up his own life; they had also messed up the history of his whole world. And he was now not only an archaeologist but also someone committed to the fight against them; even if he did occasionally need a vacation from it. He couldn't stop being an unwilling foot soldier in that war even if he left the SGC.

Daniel clicked on the picture again and looked at the inscription. Then he sighed, printed it out, and walked slowly towards General Hammond's office.

***

As he knocked and entered Hammond's office, Daniel saw Hammond slowly replacing the phone. The older man looked far from happy, and when Daniel darted a glance to his left there was Jack with that buttoned-down look on his face, which also told him better than an internal memo that everything in the garden was far from lovely.

"Sit down, Doctor Jackson." There was gentle regret and more than a hint of apology in Hammond's face.

Looking at the general, Daniel felt another painful twinge of guilt. It was hurting Hammond to let him leave this place, he knew that. The guilt was made worse because the man had tried so very hard to accommodate him and after listening to his initial explanation of why he felt it necessary to go, hadn't tried to reason him out of it, or offer a single word of reproach, he'd just done all he could to try to give him what he wanted.

Daniel sat down, still studying Hammond's face. "Is there a problem?"

"Things just got a little complicated." Jack sounded angry. The way he always did when he couldn't vent where he wanted to vent and the frustration was building up. He'd looked and sounded just like that when he'd left Daniel crying on the floor of the 'gateroom nursing his broken arm beside the body of the dead Reese.

"Because of the Goa'uld inscription?" Daniel looked between them. He knew Jack was looking for an excuse to stop him leaving, but he wasn't going to let this be it. "Why? We knew the Goa'uld used to be on this world. It's not so surprising we found some of their script on an ancient monument but that doesn't mean..."

"Because of the Air Force." Hammond admitted it with a sigh.

Daniel blinked at him in confusion. "What?"

Jack shrugged, the anger still coming off him in waves. "Right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing kind of thing."

Daniel shook his head. "What?"

Hammond leant forward. "Doctor Jackson, it appears that the original excavation of this site was carried out under the supervision of the United States Air Force. As you know we have a good relationship with the Egyptian Government..."

He had a sudden flashback to Darius sitting in front of the campfire, swigging from a bottle of Coke heavily laced with whiskey, saying "Have you ever had resources like this available on a dig? All the equipment we need? All the time we need? And in return all we have to do is sell our souls to the US military..."

Nelson saying, "What does it matter who's funding it? We're not going to be uncovering any five thousand year old nuclear weapons the Air Force can use anyway. I seriously doubt there is anything in the labyrinth that could have any possible military use so as that's the case I'm all for some money that would otherwise be going to help the US Government kill people being used to further our knowledge of Predynastic Egyptian history..."

Daniel hadn't been sure where he stood on the matter but he was inclined to agree with Nelson. What did it matter where the money came from when by being used for archaeology it couldn't possibly end up having any military application? But, of course, if the USAF had known about the Goa'uld and their technology and believed the Labyrinth to have some connection to both then their funding made sense. Except they couldn't have known about the System Lords back then because no human being on Earth had known about the Goa'uld until he and Jack had stepped through the 'gate which took them to Abydos and first looked into the glowing eyes of Ra.

Daniel put a hand up to his head. "There were Goa'uld hieroglyphs on the outside of the doors. They were the first thing we saw when the coverstone was lifted. But how did the US Air Force...?"

"Naquada." Hammond sighed. "It seems that a part of the structure was exposed and preliminary mineral tests by the Egyptian Government revealed a previously unknown element. The assumption in their labs was that the stone from which the sample was taken could not be manmade after all but must be part of a meteorite. They asked for assistance from NASA on identifying the element..."

He knew enough about how these things worked now to imagine the chain of events. Everything NASA did was probably monitored by people who were aware of the SGC. SGC or at least NID scientists would have jumped on that mineral analysis in an instant as soon as they realized there was another structure in Egypt that matched the composition of the Stargate. Then the negotiations would begin. Money and weapons and no doubt considerable concessions of a diplomatic nature, and at the end of it the USAF had bought themselves the right to an archaeological dig on Egyptian soil which Egyptian archaeologists had already assessed and written off as a hoax site anyway.

Hammond nodded as if he was also a little ashamed of the way these things were done. "At the time we were unaware of the existence of the Goa'uld. We were only aware of the fact that the Stargate was constructed from an entirely new element and that this archaeological find was made from the same material. Now, of course, our Government considers it of even more vital importance that the dig takes place under the aegis of the United States Air Force."

So much for his great escape. His way back to archaeology was turning into another mission for the SGC. "I guess there's no such thing as a get out of Cheyenne Mountain free card."

"Hey, we didn't know."

Jack's vehemence made him start a little. He looked at him in surprise and saw that Jack was bubbling with suppressed anger.

"I never thought you did."

"There's nothing on your personnel file about this dig – which was my first clue something was a little strange about it. Hammond and I had no idea it wasn't kosher until you brought in those pictures and we did some checking."

Hammond nodded. "I'm still asking questions, but the evidence so far suggests the NID funded and monitored the previous excavation as well as this one. However, on the previous occasion the details of that excavation were never passed onto this facility."

The officer who had made him sign all those papers had seemed enormous to him back then; so military it was impossible to see the human-being underneath; just a shiny blue uniform, and the wings on his breast, those colored markings that were something to do with campaigns fought and probably won in someone else's backyard. "A man called Thornton from the US Air Force came to see me in the hospital. I thought it was because I was an American citizen or because the explosives might have come from a military installation."

Hammond continued evenly, "I think we should look on this as a good thing. It means our government has been on top of the situation from the start. Any information pertaining to the Stargate that might emerge as a result of this excavation will now come directly to this facility as well as to Area 51 and you will be able to take your sabbatical from Cheyenne Mountain on full pay as you will undoubtedly be assisting in the Stargate program."

No, it meant he wasn't taking a sabbatical at all. He was just being sent on another mission for the SGC. And getting the fun of having to return to archaeology under what were effectively false pretenses. What's more he didn't get to share the truth of his findings with the other members of his profession. Whoopee-doo.

"Nelson and the others know this is an Air Force sponsored gig, Daniel."

He'd forgotten Jack's ability to read his mind. He turned to see the man looking at him in a mixture of disapproval and pleading for him not to be difficult. But he was feeling difficult right now. He understood how Reese had felt; a five year old's mind trapped in an adult's body. Right now he knew exactly how it felt to want to throw someone at a wall.

Hammond nodded. "Yes. I presume Nelson would have told you on your arrival. This will save him having to break the news to you."

"Super." Daniel didn't even try to pretend that wasn't a false smile. This wasn't what he wanted in any way but it was also unavoidable. How could he not go when he was so obviously the best, if not the only, man for this job? Who else connected to the Stargate program could get a legitimate invitation to this dig that would raise no suspicions whatsoever? Who else could liaise with other archaeologists while ensuring NID didn't get to grab some new and terrifying weapon without having to tell anyone else about it?

"We don't like this any more than you do." Jack was still glaring at him as if it was somehow his fault, but looking behind the surface anger Daniel saw the anxiety and frustration there. The way Jack looked when Daniel was getting hurt by some means that he felt was avoidable.

Hammond shuffled some papers on his desk, not meeting Daniel's eye as he added, "Given the circumstances, I feel it would be in everyone's interests if there was a visible representative of the US Air Force on the site to keep an eye on things and to ensure that both the archaeologists and the NID share anything they learn with this facility."

And because last time I worked on this dig I ended up in a coma, and you know all about that now. You probably know more about it than I do, and even if you don't yet I just bet you'll find some means to uncover it... It was an immediate consolation to realize that this time Hammond could pull every string and call in every favor he liked, but there was no way for him to uncover information that was locked in the inaccessible regions of Daniel's psyche.

Daniel turned his head to look at Jack. "You're going to be coming with me." It wasn't a question.

Jack returned his gaze. "Can you think of anyone better?"

And if he was honest he couldn't. He remembered the Air Force officer with the shiny buttons and the unreadable face behind his mirrored sunglasses having the kind of personality that paralyzed opposition, while Darius was of the same ilk. It was going to take someone with the hide of a rhinoceros and the determination of a bulldozer to make sure this project was kept secret and the information was funneled to the right people through the right channels. But that didn't alter the fact Jack had been looking for a way to either stop him going or to muscle in on this trip from the start and this had provided him with exactly the 'in' he was looking for. So, although Daniel might have to put up with it that didn't mean he was going to pretend to be happy about it.

Daniel got to his feet. "No I can't. I can see exactly why you're the best man for this job." He looked Jack in the eye. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

The smile Jack gave him was downright facetious but there was vulnerability behind the unreachable exterior. Jack had never taken rejection well. "What, you don't want my company?"

Daniel didn't want to hurt him but he wasn't going to lie. "No, Jack. Just this once, I don't. I want to get the hell away from you, from the SGC, and from the Goa'uld."

"Well I want to go fishing, not babysitting grave-robbers in Egypt. So I guess no one's getting what he wants this time out." Despite the brittle defiance, there was still a flicker of hurt in those brown eyes.

Daniel looked across at Hammond, feeling sick inside as he realized he was never going to escape this damned life however hard he tried, and now he was going to have to face his old demons with Jack having a ringside seat. "Can I go, sir? If we're leaving tomorrow morning I've got a lot to get ready."

"Of course, son." Hammond's eyes were full of concern for him. Daniel knew the general was torn between calling him back and telling him he didn't have to do this, and knowing that Daniel was the best man for this job. Just as Jack was the best man to make sure he carried out that job. It just wasn't a job he wanted to do right now.

"I'll pick you up at six-thirty a.m. Make sure you're packed and ready to go." Jack's shout followed him out into the hallway but he didn't acknowledge it, just closing Hammond's door behind him; taking extra care to shut it carefully because the urge to slam it was so strong. The frustrated anger made him want to weep all over again and his arm began to throb in its sling just to remind how much life sucked. Even knowing it was unfair couldn't stop his resentment that somehow Jack had managed to hijack his escape plan. All this time and effort to get away from everything that Jack represented only to have Jack assigned to come along and hold his hand. Whether it was Jack's fault or not, Jack had got what he wanted, and Daniel very emphatically hadn't. Right now that seemed like reason enough to not like Jack very much.

***

II: Egypt

It was a long flight from Colorado Springs to Cairo. Unnecessarily long in O'Neill's opinion although not as mind-numbingly nightmarish as Daniel had wanted in the first place. Daniel had been adamant that he wanted to travel to Egypt like a 'normal person'. O'Neill had pointed out that 'normal people' had to take a three hour flight from Colorado Springs to St Louis, before taking a three hour flight to JFK where they had the sheer joy of a six hour wait before the thrill of an eighteen hour flight to Cairo, before another four hour wait before catching a flight to Aswan in the hope that they might by then still have retained enough will to live to hope that someone had arrived to pick them up to take them to the middle of nowhere dig they were heading for. Whereupon Daniel had got seriously pissy with him and yelled that he didn't care, that was how he wanted to do it.

After O'Neill had pointed out, with what patience he had left that this was nuts and his knees couldn't take all that hanging around even if Daniel's skinny little ass could, Daniel had said that no one was forcing him to come, so there. Well, he hadn't actually said 'so there' but O'Neill had been pretty sure he'd added it mentally. Rebelling internally but knowing it was pointless arguing with Daniel when he was like this, he'd handed over the travel arrangements to Hammond, mentioning Daniel's request that it should be as non-USAF as possible and that he thought Daniel deserved first class accommodation in whatever piece of crap domestic airplane they ended up flying but that if he had to spend more than two hours waiting for a flight to anywhere he was going to kill someone, probably Daniel.

Hammond had managed a tactful compromise, which still meant they'd had to spend eighteen hours on a tourist flight to Cairo, but had cut through the pissing about getting them from Colorado to JFK. An Air Force jet had flown them into the airport an hour before departure and they'd settled themselves into the first class department with minutes to spare.

He'd hoped Daniel might be feeling a little sheepish about his earlier outburst, but if he was grateful to have been spared all that hanging around in airports he was hiding it well and looked downright mutinous when shepherded onto the jet at Colorado Springs, snatching his bag away from O'Neill when he tried to carry it for him to spare his still recovering wrist. The way Daniel winced told O'Neill better than any rebuke from him that Daniel's action had been seriously dumb, but he still hung onto his bag like grim death, utterly refusing to allow O'Neill to put it in the overhead locker for him, whereupon O'Neill had thrown in the towel, let him do what was probably permanent injury to his wrist bone if that was what he wanted, and asked the flight attendant for the biggest whiskey available.

The eighteen-hour flight to Cairo was not made any shorter by the way he and Daniel were being so polite to one another. It felt...odd to be unwanted by Daniel. It wasn't a feeling he was used to. Taken for granted, yes; resented, no. He did sympathize. Daniel had been all psyched up to get away from them for a while. He'd been planning to miss them and send them postcards; to worry about them fighting the Goa'uld without him...and then to gradually forget about them. Not completely, of course, but just the way one did on a vacation. The ordinary life receded; problems which had seemed so pressing back home just faded into the distance. That was why people went away; to escape from all that everyday stuff. At some point O'Neill had become part of the everyday stuff that Daniel needed to escape from, and here he was tagging along for the ride like an unpaid electricity bill or a leaking roof tile insisting on sunning itself on the beach right next to him.

So perhaps it was no wonder they had sat beside each other on the plane, politely passing menus back and forth, politely moving their legs aside so the other one could get out to use the bathroom, politely apologizing if they encroached upon each other's space. That was why O'Neill had insisted they were flown first class. He felt the USAF could afford it and he also felt Daniel needed to have particularly gentle handling on this trip. He was wounded, resentful, unhappy, and probably more than a little nervous about going back to a place that had damned near killed him on the last trip out. O'Neill was also going to be invading Daniel's world in a place where Daniel presumably felt most vulnerable; a walking piece of culture shock. All things about which O'Neill had been forced to remind himself with some emphasis several times on the flight over when Daniel was being so annoyingly distant to him and taking such care that even their elbows shouldn't accidentally touch.

Daniel kept himself absorbed reading through the mass of paperwork Nelson had sent him. Paperwork he conspicuously hadn't offered to have copied for O'Neill even though this was now an official SGC mission. O'Neill retaliated by reading his official briefing documents with grim determination, even though Daniel could probably have told him everything that was in them far more palatably and in half the time.

Carter hadn't been able to find out much about Darius Golding or the other archaeologists on the dig as yet, except the information that was readily available about his professional life. O'Neill had read the hastily compiled dossier she'd given him on Daniel's work colleagues on the plane only when Daniel was asleep. Although it wasn't something he necessarily wanted Daniel to know, part of being a team leader did mean being able to absorb all relevant information in a short a time as possible. So, yes, he read the mission briefings. He was just selective about the parts of them he read, and just as he knew damned well Daniel skipped everything relating to the topography of the planet and what this might mean from a military perspective he tended to junk the science or the anthropological aspects which he didn't need to know and Carter or Daniel could give him the short version of later. Even Sherlock Holmes had been careful not to fill his mind up with information he didn't need so as to leave more room for the information he did and O'Neill felt he was just following the great man's example.

This time, however, even though Daniel had the wherewithal to give him a wonderfully in-depth briefing on all his work colleagues, he hadn't asked for it. He had a feeling Daniel's version was going to leave too much out; especially all the information that O'Neill most wanted to know. So he soldiered through it on his own, with the net result that he now knew that the British guy, John Nelson, was an expert on something called the Early Dynastic Period; while Darius Golding, the American, was a world expert on all variants of cuneiform. A Norwegian archaeologist called Inga Stark specialized in runes. Sanjay Zaheer was an expert on Indian mythology, and Hélène Bouldieu was a French-Canadian Egyptologist. Alexis Spiros, the Greek specialist on Ancient Hebrew and author of some book on the 'Atlas of the Apocrypha' which had sent O'Neill into a coma within the first two paragraphs, had been taken ill with acute intestinal problems and had to be flown to Cairo for an emergency operation. Suspicious as he was of the NID, even O'Neill wasn't didn't believe they had spiked some poor old grave robber's soup with ground up leopard whiskers or something just to leave room on the dig for one of the few archaeologists in the world who knew how to translate even more dead languages than Spiros. But it wasn't because he didn't think NID were capable of casually injuring someone just to further their own ends, but because he knew damned well no one from the NID had been telling him to put a bullet in that robot; and that was the main reason why Daniel was available for this dig.

What Carter had managed to come up with on Darius Golding so far was only the inquest report on his wife's death; papers published; lectures given; letters in archaeological periodicals printed; and a long list of professional qualifications, but O'Neill had brought along his laptop and intended to be sending her regular reminders until she got him the info he'd asked for. He also asked Hammond to pull some strings; pointing out that what might previously have been considered an unwarranted intrusion into Daniel's personal life, was now essential information that might be of vital importance in a mission to recover possible Goa'uld technology. The fact that as Daniel's friend it was just plain driving him nuts not to know how Daniel had ended up in hospital and if it was likely to happen again was neither here nor there.

When he looked at a photograph of Golding from some dig near Iraq in the eighties, the man couldn't have looked saner. He was imposing-looking; even magnificent in the way he stood there bare-chested in the sunlight, biceps and pectorals gleaming, holding up an inscribed slate in triumph; like Moses with the Ten Commandments. His head was thrown back, mane of red-gold hair rippling around his shoulders, a fine dusting of sand in his beard, chest hair, and on his sweat-sheened skin. Six foot four according to his file, and famous for being able to move great blocks of stone by himself. The native workers apparently revered him almost as a god. After their recent experience with K'tano, O'Neill wasn't in the mood to be impressed by that; it just rang his warning bells. But, looking at Golding, he could see not a single trace of insanity on his face; just the kind of self-confidence that bordered upon arrogance. Someone who knew his stuff and didn't suffer fools gladly, O'Neill would have said from a first glance, and he could relate to that. There was nothing there to suggest this was a man who would go frighteningly loco after the death of his wife, only that the force of his personality might be overwhelming in a small room. Golding didn't look like a bad guy, he had to admit. If anything he looked all too much like a hero. It was only when O'Neill thought about Daniel as he must have been thirteen years ago; of how vulnerable he must have been back then, physically and emotionally, how innocent and how brilliant; how knowledgeable about everything old and dusty and decayed, and how ignorant about some of the darker parts of human nature that he felt a stir of misgiving.

He remembered the long-haired Daniel of Abydos stumbling into that Goa'uld-blasted room in search of a wife who had ended up being lost forever, saying "This is all my fault..." Then he took off almost a decade of experience. Then he looked back into the eyes of a Golding who was gazing straight into the camera, holding that inscription triumphantly aloft and realized who it was that Golding reminded him of: Hercules, the demi-god of mythology. Not a bad guy, maybe, but not someone he would have handed a twenty-three year old Daniel over to for safe-keeping either.

Daniel had told Teal'c the story of Hercules one night around the campfire on some distant world, explaining all the reasons why the show Teal'c had apparently watched that night was wrong, wrong, wrong in so many of its depictions of the mythological superhero. O'Neill had been tuning a lot of it out but he did remember that despite Hercules' fifty sons, according to Daniel, Hercules and Iolaus were definitely a lot more than good friends, and Hercules had apparently spent most of his life doing good-looking young men and then mourning their passing when they were abducted by watery tarts or whatever. The other thing which had stuck vividly in his mind was Daniel telling Teal'c that Hercules had killed his own wife and sons in a fit of madness, yet he was still considered one of the good guys despite being responsible for the death of his own children. He and Daniel had exchanged a glance across the sparking fire and Daniel had faltered and changed the subject. Carter had chipped in complaining that some woman out of mythology who'd done the same thing was always regarded as a villain, but Hercules was still regarded as a hero and why was that...? O'Neill had gone for a walk around the moonlit perimeter, trying to blot out the echo of that gunshot and all the time aware of Daniel watching him with sorrowful and guilty eyes.

Wincing at the memory, O'Neill shoved the photograph of Golding back into the folder and pushed it into his briefcase. He wasn't a briefcase kind of guy; too close to using bullet-points for his comfort; but this trip out he was the one the Air Force had wanted carrying a briefcase. Looking at Golding's physique he just hoped that by the end of the trip he wasn't wishing that he were carrying a P90 instead.

As they touched down in Cairo, O'Neill risked a look at Daniel's pale, closed-off face and realized that whether Daniel intended it or not, he was going to end up feeling very excluded on this trip. O'Neill was someone Daniel didn't want to be with right now, and he wasn't going to be in the mood to include an Air Force colonel, even one he had literally been through hell with, in archaeological conversations when he was already resentful of being effectively turned into an Air Force spy. He had problems of his own to do with coming back to this place, and these people, which, judging by the way his knuckles were white on his luggage handles, were taking up most of his thoughts. O'Neill was more unwanted by Daniel on this trip than he had ever been before, and even though he'd thought he was prepared for it, O'Neill had to admit, it really hurt.

They arrived in Cairo at four-thirty in the afternoon. He'd thought Daniel might relax when he was back in his beloved Egypt but he just seemed more tense and quiet. So much so that it wasn't really an effort to overlook his annoying behavior. It stung a little that Daniel didn't want him here, certainly, but this wasn't Daniel 'acting out'; Daniel was going into a situation that seemed to be jangling every nerve in his body and he didn't want any witnesses to it. O'Neill wished that Daniel could have found his presence comforting, but for some reasons O'Neill wasn't too sure about, O'Neill being with him was apparently just making everything worse.

He suggested they had a quick look around the city while they killed the four hours before their EgyptAir flight left for Aswan, but Daniel shook his head. "You go if you want to."

Despite the 'go away and leave me alone' body language Daniel kept consciously or unconsciously throwing in his direction, O'Neill knew him too well to be able to ignore the scared, help me, help me, body language behind it, so he stuck around, dozing fitfully in an uncomfortable airport chair, while trying to keep an eye on Daniel without appearing to do so.

The EgyptAir plane was small and felt disconcertingly light as the wind buffeted across the sands but at least this was almost the final leg of this journey from hell and both he and his knees were grateful for that. He knew that he was passing over places of great mystery and significance to Daniel. The Memphis that had nothing to do with Elvis. The Fayyum Daniel was prone to bang on about incessantly if not stopped or distracted. Thebes. Karnak and Luxor. The Valley of the Kings. They were all around here somewhere. Daniel could probably have spent a happy lifetime digging around in these old ruins now invisible in the darkness beneath them; their mournful silence drowned out by the engine noise of the plane; but the Goa'uld had found him out. He'd stumbled on the clues they'd left which other lesser archaeologists hadn't seen, and been drawn from one Abydos to another by his own curiosity and the apparently inexorable will of destiny. For all they knew the coverstone that had killed Daniel's parents had been carved to honor some departed Goa'uld. No wonder he felt he was never going to escape from the System Lords. Some days it must seem to Daniel that his life had been as distorted and disfigured by their influence as Teal'c's.

Daniel had the window seat but there was nothing to see out there in the blackness. All the same he kept his face pressed to the glass, gazing out into the nothingness with quiet desperation, as if he was searching for something he knew he was never going to find. O'Neill found it hurt to look at him, so turned away and studied the other occupants of the plane instead. Even feeling over-sized, over-fed and decidedly foreign was better than seeing that look in Daniel's eyes and feeling for the first time in a very long time that Daniel not only was taking no comfort from his presence, he didn't even know he was there.

They staggered out into the airport at Aswan at ten o'clock in the evening, punch-drunk from too many hours of traveling, inhaling dust and sand they could taste but couldn't see, the heat evaporated, just leaving a trace in the exhausted feel to the air.

O'Neill wished he'd insisted they both stayed in the Hotel Cataract like he'd wanted to, because he was beat and Daniel looked as wiped as he felt. But Daniel had insisted he just wanted to 'get there', even though that meant they would be driving through the night. Knowing there was a luxurious hotel right here in this city that he could be heading for even now and instead he was going to have to rattle through the desert for hours was making him grit his teeth in irritation. When he had to endure hardship he endured it, if not uncomplainingly, at least without too much bitching, but this felt self-inflicted to him. They could have made this journey in easy stages and even if Daniel was determined to wear a hair shirt for the duration he didn't see why he had to. O'Neill mentally resolved that even if he had to chloroform Daniel to do it, they were both going home on an Air Force jet.

He was in Daniel's territory now and he waited for Daniel to take charge the way he had on Abydos; the way he did on new worlds where they spoke old tongues that only he could understand. But Daniel looked as dazed as he felt and sick with exhaustion. Even though this place must have been more familiar to him than it was to O'Neill, Daniel looked around the airport as though he'd never seen it before, and had no idea how he came to be here.

O'Neill had his mouth open to say, "You don't have to do this" when he realized that if he said it, Daniel would bite his head off. There was nothing worse, when every nerve in your body was clearly jangling like a cymbal, than having someone else pointing out that not only had they noticed, they were going to be tactless enough to tell you they had. He closed his mouth and realized that if ever there was a mission when Daniel needed handling with kid gloves this was it, and if ever there was a time when he needed to think not once, not twice, but probably thrice, before he opened his mouth, then this was also it.

He thought it was probably a relief to both of them when that quiet but undoubtedly affectionate, "Dan...?" made them both turn around.

He'd seen Nelson's picture so he knew who this guy was. He had less hair than in the photograph, the top of his head entirely bald now, with hair only in thin half moons at the side of his head above each ear. He wore something shapeless and beige and was very thin, the outline of his skull clearly visible, but his eyes were very kind, and full of warmth as his gaze rested on Daniel.

"John..." Daniel's face crinkled into the kind of smile O'Neill hadn't seen enough of over the past five years.

"Good to see you again." Nelson reached out and shook his hand vigorously, then after a slightly embarrassed shrug, gave him a tentative hug, patting him on the shoulder awkwardly as they disengaged.

O'Neill wondered if all Brits were as crap at self-expression as this guy was or if it was just an archaeologist thing. Nelson and Daniel were staring at each other like long lost brothers, radiating happiness to see one another again, and the best they could manage was a stumbling mention of the other's name and an incredibly awkward hug. Daniel hadn't really responded to Nelson's embrace, but O'Neill knew from experience he never did. He liked being patted and hugged the way children did, seemed to take comfort from the physical contact, but it never occurred to him that he could reciprocate in any way. When Daniel had been even two years younger O'Neill hadn't felt embarrassed about grabbing him and hugging him until his ribs creaked, or ruffling his hair, and patting him on the back. There had been something childlike about Daniel that stopped it seeming an invasion of his personal space; but too much life experience had eroded his innocence and he was less...huggable now; too unmistakably an adult. Daniel had erected an invisible barrier around himself, as if he needed a force field to shelter behind while he thought far too much about far too many things. All the same, O'Neill liked to think that however prickly and grown up Daniel might become, if he hadn't seen him for ten years he would just grab him and squeeze the breath straight out of him, not pat him awkwardly on the arm while shaking his hand.

Nelson noticed O'Neill at last and held out a hand, while darting a curious look in Daniel's direction. "John Nelson. How do you do, Mister...?"

"Colonel Jack O'Neill." Daniel introduced him in a neutral tone O'Neill didn't much care for. "He's representing the United States Air Force." And nothing to do with me, seemed to be the unspoken rider.

Nelson shook his hand anyway, and his eyes were still warm. "Pleased to meet you."

"You too." O'Neill made the effort to be civil. After all Nelson was definitely one of the good guys here. "Any friend of Daniel's is a friend of mine."

Daniel darted him a quick look to see if he was being facetious, but O'Neill wasn't and Daniel knew him well enough to know that. He gave O'Neill an apologetic wince then turned back to Nelson. "Colonel O'Neill and I work together sometimes."

Colonel O'Neill? As he and Daniel followed Nelson out to the jeep, O'Neill felt himself bristle at that use of his title in a way that surprised him. There had been missions when he'd have preferred it if Daniel could be bothered to remember his rank, especially when they were trying to impress some alien culture with really big weapons. But he hadn’t realized how much he took it for granted that he was 'Jack' to Daniel; what a little spot of warmth the way Daniel said his name always gave him, until he'd stopped saying it. Daniel was now the only person left in his life who called him 'Jack'. Not hearing it again was going to hurt. 'Jack' meant a whole lot of things to him; it especially meant that Daniel saw him as someone human, vulnerable, his friend; when to others he was 'O'Neill' or 'Colonel' or 'Colonel O'Neill'. There was a lot of power in names and as an anthropologist he knew Daniel knew that.

He looked at Daniel sideways. "How very formal, Doctor Jackson."

Daniel darted him a begging look he didn't at all understand. It was the standard 'Don't make a scene. Don't show me up' look he had used to get from his wife at parties on a regular basis, but with a wraparound of desperation that he couldn't really equate to the current situation. Daniel definitely seemed to want him to hide something from the other archaeologists, even Nelson, and as far as he could make out, that seemed to be the fact they were friends. That hurt so much it practically took his breath away and he was determined that the first time they were alone he was going to have this out with Daniel. After five years of watching each other's backs on missions he didn't appreciate having to pretend they were just nodding acquaintances.

Nelson was directing them towards his jeep, apologizing for the suspension, or lack of it, in advance. O'Neill heard him murmur to Daniel, "Darius wanted to come, but I told him I thought it was better if he didn't..."

Daniel's response was inaudible but O'Neill saw him flinch. The wind was unexpectedly chilly, whipping at his blue shirt, the stars very low and bright. Daniel still sounded strained as he asked: "How's Alexis?"

"Still in hospital but recovering well. Raring to get back here, and looking forward to seeing you again. Scary when it happened though. The projectile vomiting had to be seen to be believed..."

O'Neill tossed his suitcase into the back, then loaded the other bags which contained all the equipment with which the Air Force had entrusted him, but when he automatically went to take Daniel's hold-all from him Daniel hung onto it as though it was the Ark of the Covenant. "What is up with you?" O'Neill hissed at him, giving the bag a firm tug.

"Nothing." Daniel let go of the handle quickly.

O'Neill winced as his shoulder was almost pulled out of its socket. "Jesus, Daniel, how many books have you got in here?"

"I told you I could handle it." Daniel darted an anxious look at Nelson.

"I'm not saying I can't handle it. I'm saying you always pack too many books." O'Neill tossed Daniel's bag into the back along with his, resisting the urge to shake his head in disbelief as he did so. "Did you bring your laptop or just your entire library?"

"Yes," Daniel said in near-desperation, giving him a full-on begging look as he did so.

Realizing that this was Daniel's most blatant Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! expression, O'Neill shut up, although this time not without a shake of the head he couldn't suppress.

It was a long and bumpy drive across the desert road, but he was almost glad of the time span. He needed this journey to adjust to being this unwanted piece of luggage Daniel was having to drag along with him. However, he did intend to reverse that process as soon as it was humanly possible; when Daniel got over his current neurosis about being associated with him, or possibly with the uniform he wore. He still wasn't quite sure what Daniel's problem was with him at the moment. He also thought this was his best, and possibly only chance, to demonstrate to Daniel that he could, in fact, learn to play nice with others, even others who were archaeologists. As he had a more than sneaking suspicion he and Darius Golding were not going to hit it off, he also thought trying to prove to the much more amenable Nelson what an all around okay guy he was might not be a bad idea. Especially as he was apparently wasn't going to have Daniel as an ally once they reached the site, and might well need one when faced with a matched set of grave robbers.

He had long since learned with Daniel that the fastest way to mollify him if he was angry or win his gratitude if he wasn't angry was to ask for information from him and actually listen to the whole answer, if at all possible asking intelligent questions in the process. He didn't like to do it too often in case Daniel started to expect it of him and reverted to doing what he used to do in the old days – bouncing into O'Neill's office at any time of the day and night like Tigger on speed bubbling over with enthusiasm about something that was to any rational person totally boring, insignificant or just plain incomprehensible. But, O'Neill could when he had to, absorb new information and respond to it with polite attention, he just chose not to most of the time.

He leant forward and said to Nelson, "So, can you tell me a little about this dig?"

Nelson gave him an amused look. "Well as you're the official Air Force rep you're probably the only person I can talk to about it. Which is something of a relief, I have to tell you, as I'm bursting to tell someone."

"Can you fill me in on the background to the area first?"

He just knew Daniel was giving him a look of total disbelief but it was dark enough in the jeep for him to pretend he didn't know that. Nelson smiled the smile of a Jehovah's Witness finding someone who actually wanted to buy The Watchtower and plunged straight into a history lesson O'Neill didn't want but had to admit, just for once, he really needed.

"The Labyrinth is situated west of and partially underneath Kom el-Ahmar or Hierakonpolis, site of ancient Nekhen. So called because this was the site of the worship of an extremely ancient falcon god, Nekheny, about which very little is still known." Nelson tossed the words to O'Neill over his shoulder, shouting above the sound of the engine, effortlessly going into lecture mode in a way already familiar to him after five years of working with Daniel. "Although Horus was worshipped there later as well, Nekheny was an entirely separate Predynastic entity who just happened to be represented by a falcon on a site where Horus later gained ascendancy. I think the inscription on the Boston Falcon from Amunhotpe III's temple at Soleb describing Amunhotpe as being 'Beloved of Nekheny' proves that he was once a significant god or else why would a Predynastic deity still be getting a mention in the Eighteenth Dynasty?"

Seeing Nelson looking at him expectantly, O'Neill said gravely, "Why indeed?"