TITLE: Mixed Messages
AUTHOR: Graculus
CATEGORY: Drama
SPOILERS: 'The Fifth Race', 'Children of the Gods', 'Torment of Tantalus'.
SEASON/SEQUEL INFO: -
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNINGS: -
SUMMARY: Daniel's POV on the mission to P3R272, and what happens next....
DISCLAIMER: "Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. Not to be archived without permission of the author."
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All (constructive) criticism gratefully accepted....

Just another mission, right ?

P3R272 was the designation of the planet we were visiting, one that I hoped would give us some answers to the multitude of questions I had about what Jack calls 'the meaning of life stuff'.

I couldn't help thinking back, during the briefing for this mission, to our visit to Ernest's world.

That was where we had found the first sets of inscriptions in four alien languages, and all the time I was urging that we visit this one, I was thinking about that mission. I hoped that I was the only one remembering what had happened, and the disastrous choice that I had nearly made there.

Somehow I was sure that Jack was thinking about it too though, from the tiny frown that appeared on his forehead when I started showing the video that I had taken in the 'United Nations' chamber, on Ernest's planet.

He looked as if he was somewhere else - not the slightly glazed expression that sometimes came into his eyes when I was expounding my latest theory, but a far away look, as if watching past events unfolding inside his head.

Still, Jack said nothing, not a word to indicate that he even recalled that mission, only indicated his agreement to this one taking place with the slightest of nods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This time we landed in a chamber too, with no way out as far as the MALP could tell.

Our inspections proved that the probe was right, but I had a feeling there were still mysteries here waiting to be uncovered, more than just the inscriptions on the floor that we already knew about. Call it anthropologist's intuition, if you need a label.

I had called out, needing to say something, as much for my own benefit as it was in the hope of making contact.

Travelling to these places, some of them looking long abandoned before the dawn of our history even broke, makes me feel so small sometimes.

Take the feeling you get when you look into the night sky, that feeling of being a speck of dust so small that microscopic is an over-statement, then multiply it. Multiply it a *lot* - that's how it can feel.

My reward ?

Well, a strange look from Jack, the look that says 'Daniel, I've seen you do some strange things in your time, but...' - all spoken with the lift of an eyebrow and the tilt of a head.

"It's worth a try," I say, shrugging to try and hide my embarrassment.

It's no surprise to me, when that look comes in my direction, but it still has the same effect - haven't seen it so often recently, I must admit, but it still makes me squirm.

What next ?

Well, Jack wanted us to go home - he's always the impatient one. If there's nothing obvious, he doesn't want to hang around and explore....

Not that this attitude isn't positive in some ways - though I hate to admit there's a plus side to it, I know Jack's main concern is the safety of the team. That's what drives him, and is maybe why, all this time down the line, we've all emerged more or less unscathed.

Then it all got really strange.

This 'thing' appeared, popping out of the wall in a silent rush, looking for all the world like some kind of viewer.

Looking back, we would realise that Jack had triggered it, by walking through the circle of symbols that had motivated me to urge we visit this planet in the first place.

Teal'c got to it first. He did what his instincts seem to be always telling him, to protect the rest of the team, and looked into the window-like space at the front of the 'thing'. My heart stopped for a moment.

Nothing.

I was almost disappointed, though I had been afraid for Teal'c and his courage.

Having lost so many important people in my life, I feel sometimes like one more will be all it takes for me to fall screaming over the edge. Still, Teal'c was okay, and the 'thing', the alien device, didn't work.

So what was *Jack* doing ? And he calls *me* impulsive....

Taking Teal'c's place, Jack looked into the device - I had to bite down on the exclamation I made when the thing burst out from the wall, and wrapped itself around Jack's head, holding him in place.

Then it was over.

Releasing him, the device shrank back, and Jack crumpled bonelessly to the floor. I let out a breath I had been holding, too afraid at first to even move.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We rushed back through the 'Gate.

Sam was already sending the code as the last chevron locked and the wormhole formed.

Teal'c was half-carrying Jack, whose head lolled in an alarming way - he was still unconscious, his face pale.

I don't remember very much of our return, except Sam's voice calling for the medics as she emerged from the event horizon. Guess I was in shock.

I just remember my thoughts, my mantra it seemed to be, at the time :

'He's got to be okay, he's got to...'

Repeat those phrases over and over for the next hour and you'll get an idea of the frame of mind I was in.

I'd never tell Jack any of this, but I'm not sure I could keep doing this without him.

When it's bad, really bad, I remember him promising me that we'd keep looking for Sha're and Skaara until we found them. Jack may be a lot of things, and I've thought some of them about him myself, when he won't listen to what I'm saying, but he *is* a man of his word.

The next little while was the calm before the storm.

Jack woke up.

He was fine. Grumpy, but fine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first indication we got that anything was wrong was in the briefing room.

We were all sitting there, just like nothing had happened, like Jack hadn't been flat on his back after staring into some alien device. The *normality* of it was almost terrifying.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack drawing something on his pad - whatever it was, it looked *complicated*.

And when the general asked him a question, Jack sounded like even being there to discuss the mission was too much trouble, then got more and more snappy. He seemed to lose his temper really quickly with the general - Jack *never* does that.... even when he disagrees with Hammond's orders.

"Teal'c looked. I looked. It grabbed my head, I passed out, I came to, we're here, we're home, can we go ?"

All said like Jack had somewhere better to be, like it was a waste of time even *thinking* about what had happened on P3R272, let alone discussing it at length.

Understandably, General Hammond was concerned.

"Colonel ? Are you sure you're okay ?"

Then Jack said it, the words that seemed to turn my life upside down.

"I am absolutely *fine*. There is nothing cruvus with me."

It took a moment for his words to register with me, so that by the time I turned to look at Jack, everyone else in the room was staring at him already.

"What ?" Jack asked, a defensive look flitting across his face so briefly I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"You just said there's nothing cruvus with you," I replied, trying to keep my voice calm.

"I did not," Jack replied, sounding even more defensive, if that was possible.

Then we got into one of those little arguments that friends can sometimes have easier than the more verbose variety, with the words 'did' and 'didn't' flying back and forth between us until Jack suddenly tired of it.

His voice changed, an unexpected note of concern creeping in.

"Cruvus ? What is *that* ?"

"I don't know. Um, well, I'm guessing the context of what you were saying you were trying to say that there was nothing wrong with you."

I was hedging, suddenly afraid for my friend, and he knew it - I could see that knowledge clearly written in Jack's eyes. He expected me to have an answer for him, and I had let him down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, I was working in my office, trying to use the translations I was struggling with to block out the little voice in my mind that was telling me that everything was going to hell in a hand-basket and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Something was wrong with my best friend and there was nothing I could do about it. At least I could control my *work*.

Then a whirlwind blew the door open.

It was Jack, a strained expression on his face, not bothering with the usual pleasantries like knocking - I suppose, looking back, I should be glad the door was still on it's hinges, the way he burst in.

He was closely followed by Teal'c, who also managed to radiate an air of concern, despite the fact that his face showed nothing out of the ordinary.

"Alright, what the *hell* is going on with me?" Jack almost shouted.

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking up from the manuscript I was studying.

"Well, apparently I've lost the falatis to speak properly ! That wasn't a joke. I didn't do that on purpose."

While I busied myself searching through old books, looking for clues as to the language Jack was speaking, I didn't notice the way that Jack was looking intently at the computer screen, where the video we had made of the ill-fated trip to P3R272 was running.

That in itself was unusual, Jack doesn't much like computers, and inscriptions make him run for the hills. And when he spoke....

"Nu ani aquinatus," Jack said, not taking his eyes from the images on the screen.

"What ?" I said, looking up at him from the book I had been poring over.

"Nu ani aquinatus, ic quabi de un...." Jack repeated, moving on to more of the script I had been unable to decipher.

"Jack, are you reading this ?" I asked, a feeling beginning to creep over me.

I was... *jealous* ?

Something bizarre was happening to my best friend, and suddenly I was envious of him, because he had been able to translate an inscription I'd not even been able to make a start on ?

"I don't know, you tell me!" Jack snapped, bringing me back to the present with a jolt.

"Well, I don't know. I haven't even been able to associate sounds to the symbols," I said, suddenly aware of how tired I was. "Do you know what this means ?"

"No ! I mean, I'm just looking at it and the words pop right into my fron ! Does anybody think this is odd ?!"

Jack's voice was getting more and more agitated as he spoke, glancing to myself and Teal'c with an expression full of entreaty to us both, desperate for some kind of explanation.

I had nothing.

Nothing except a hopeless feeling, a feeling that things were not going to get any better....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next I heard, Jack was toiling away, building *something*. He had taken some kind of power source from Teal'c's staff weapon, Sam told me, but we had no idea what he was up to.

I may be a scientist, but my understanding with machines extends as far as the on button and no further.

Whatever it was he was building, it was complicated.

That was another sad sign that the Jack I knew was one we were losing fast - Jack's a tinkerer at best, quick able to spend hours playing with a car engine, but he's not someone who has the technical knowledge to actually *build* whatever it was he was building.

Jack was deteriorating all this time - his ability to understand what we were saying was slipping away slowly but inexorably.

I felt so helpless, watching the man who I considered my best friend leave us like this. It was like we were all standing on the shore, watching him drift away from us, further and further, knowing soon he would be out of our reach completely.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was stood in the control room with the general and Sam, and my patience was beginnning to wear a little thin.

I was making progress, but not enough to satisfy me, and barely enough to even tantalise us with a hope of helping Jack.

"Jack was able to read the alien language, both the inscription from the wall of the meeting place on Ernest's planet and the circle of symbols from 272 where this happened to him," I explained.

"What does it mean ?" asked Hammond

"Oh, well, my translation is a little bit vague. Um, I think the circle means 'the place of our legacy'... or it could be 'a piece of our leg' but the first seems to make more sense."

Looking back, I sounded like the idiot I was feeling at the time. Here I was, the linguist, the *expert*, struggling to make a translation that made any sense. And feeling guilty.

Why ?

Because, at the back of my mind, a small voice was screaming that it should have been me !

I'm the impulsive one, the risk-taker, the human target - yet it was Jack who ended up with this dubious gift from another race.

A gift that made me somehow obsolete. That he couldn't share with anyone, no matter how much they might want to experience the floods of information passing through his brain.

He was losing himself in a deluge of learning, and I envied him.

How sick is that ?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack was getting more and more frustrated as time went on.

His ability to speak English had gone first - he could still understand what we were saying, but was unable to communicate his thoughts, his feelings, his fears.

He's always said that if my hands were tied, I'd have trouble stringing a sentence together, but now it was Jack who was full of gestures.

He had no choice. Words escaped him, English ones anyway, and I felt so useless.

I was trying as hard as I could to understand him, to communicate with him, but every time it felt like I was hitting a brick wall.

The gestures were enough to tell me Jack was coming to the end of his tether - I hoped I was imagining the looks I thought he was giving me, looks full of desperation and disappointment, but somehow I knew I wasn't.

It was only the extreme situation that Jack was in that drove him, my conscious mind argued, but my heart still sank.

After all, aren't I supposed to be the expert linguist ?

The one who can translate anything ?

I know so many languages, yet the one I needed the most now was the one I was struggling to master. If Jack wasn't disappointed in me, I was disappointed with myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had found a planet, one of the ones from the new 'Gate list that Jack had somehow managed to re-program the computer system to include.

I could hardly believe my ears - Hammond expected me to go with Teal'c, Sam and another SG team, leaving Jack back at the SGC without any way of communicating with anyone.

I had to protest, that it was important that I be allowed to carry on trying to translate the language that Jack was speaking.

It was probably the language of the people who built the 'Gate system, I argued, knowing that held some weight. And then I played my trump card, looking the general straight in the eye, glad for once that I'm a civilian.

"Bottom line, Sir, what about Jack ? I mean, right now I'm possibly his only hope for communicating on any serious level. I can't leave him like this. And I won't."

A tense moment followed, before the general agreed, and suddenly I felt a little less guilty, a little more actively involved in trying to help.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was desperate.

I'd kept what was happening with Sam, Teal'c and the others who accompanied them to P9Q281 a secret from Jack.

I figured that he had enough to worry about for himself, without the extra burden this would place on him.

I played the video of the last message Sam had sent, praying that he still understood enough English to see what was wrong, to grasp what we were asking from him.

If the alien race whose knowledge was in Jack's brain were one of the races we thought, then they *might* know how to fix things and help them to come back.

Might.

Jack's face was expressionless as he watched the video. It was difficult to tell if he even recognised Sam's face.

I tried to explain, to get through to him, and wondered if he could comprehend what I was saying. For a moment, there was no response.

Suddenly, Jack started collecting materials, pens and paper, from around the office. He was doing *something*, that much was clear.

Dr. Fraiser and I just stood there, watching, as Jack began drawing the most complicated schematics I'd ever seen, hunched over the paper with extreme concentration.

It was as if he had forgotten that anyone else was there. He had a job to do, and that was all he could concentrate on.

As we stood there, Janet and I, Jack seemed to suddenly realise we were watching him. Grabbing a spare piece of paper, he scribbled a few words, and shoved the scrap of paper in my direction.

Picking it up, I read it out loud.

"Shut up and go away."

Some things never change.

He may have the knowledge of an ancient race inside him, but somewhere there too is the Jack O'Neill I've come to know. Throwing him a sloppy salute, the kind I knew he hated, Janet and I beat a hasty retreat, leaving him to his drawing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"He's already gone," I said to the general.

Jack was there, in the control room with us, but he was already far away, too far for any of us to reach him again.

What was the point of compelling him to stay here ?

There was nothing anyone here could do for him. The way his brain was behaving, he'd soon be dead, Dr. Fraiser reckoned, so his only real hope was to take this leap of faith, and go wherever it was that he was being summoned.

I wasn't surprised when the general refused to let Jack take a transmitter with him.

I could understand his reasoning. I didn't *agree* with it, but I could understand where he was coming from.

I had to speak with Jack one last time before he left, warn him about the risks he was taking, as if he didn't know them. It was as much for my benefit, I think, as his, a chance to somehow express to Jack what he means to me, that he's my best friend.

"You understand that if you do this, if you go, you might not be able to come back," I said, standing there at the top of the ramp with my friend.

All I got in return was a small smile from him, though I'm not sure how much he could understand of what I was saying anymore.

Then Jack stepped through the event horizon and was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Have I done the right thing ? Have I argued for Jack to go somewhere that could be dangerous, possibly even fatal, because *I* wanted to go there ?'

Those were the kind of thoughts running through my brain, all the time that Jack was away.

We didn't even know if he had reached his destination, wherever that was, because our tracking devices had lost him.

All I knew was that I had been one of the main players, that I had helped to persuade the general to let Jack go, hoping that whoever he would find when he reached wherever it was he was going, might be able to help him.

And I would have to live with that decision, regardless of it's outcome, always knowing how selfish my motives were.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm back," Jack said simply, walking down the ramp and stopping where Teal'c and I were waiting for him.

"What happened ?"

I'm sure my face betrayed my concern, from the way Jack looked at me when I was speaking.

"Do you still possess the knowledge of the Ancients ?" Teal'c said, abruptly.

"Nope. Don't remember a thing. But you know that meaning of life stuff ?" Jack said, looking me straight in the eye. "I think we're going to be all right."

Then he smiled slightly, and I knew that Jack had really returned.

~fin~