Mathématique: Chapter 47

“You’re gonna rescue me,” Telford whispers.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Panic attacks. Torture. Asphyxiation. Strangling. Self-harm.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 47

Day 1

They filed into his room, a silent trio, two in suits, one in fatigues. A dark-haired man, a light-haired man, and Teal’c. Teal’c held his hands behind his back. He inclined his head at Young when Young nodded at him.

“Sit,” the dark-haired man said.

Young sat at the room’s small table.

The dark-haired man took a seat across from him. The light-haired man didn’t sit.

“What’s your name?” Young asked.

“It doesn’t matter what my name is,” the dark-haired man replied. “I work for the NID. That’s all you need to know.” He pulled a recording device out of his pocket and set it on the table.

“I’d like to know your name,” Young said.

Teal’c, positioned against the far wall in Young’s line of sight, shook his head.

“If you resist any aspect of this,” the dark-haired man said, “you’ll be labeled a security risk and detained in a military facility for the duration of any ongoing or future sensitive operations undertaken by the SGC. The only reason you’re in a medical rather than conventional holding cell is that your condition is protected under a subclause of Interstellar Treaty Seventeen between the IOA and the Jaffa High Council. This clause stipulates that any person or group affected by Goa’uld technology, symbiotes, or bioweapons cannot be held accountable for acts of treason, war, war crimes, crimes of person, place, or property, or any minor legal infractions covered under planetary law on any world governed by the Jaffa or the Tau’ri. These protections apply only if the victimized state of the affected party can be unequivocally established and if the individual cooperates fully in uncovering the truth of their prior acts while aiding in the pursuit of justice against the true perpetrators.”

“Great,” Young growled. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Do you agree that I’ve adequately explained the reasons for your current detainment and the conditions upon which you will be released?” the dark-haired man asked.

“Yes.”

The dark-haired man opened his briefcase to reveal a small computer nestled in a coil of electrodes. The light-haired man stepped in, pulled the wreath of wires from the case, and unraveled them.

“This is a modified version of a Za’tarc detector,” the dark-haired man said. “It’ll allow us to identify the portions of your narrative that produce a dual neural signature, indicating deceit, coercive persuasion, or significant omission.”

“Sure,” Young said, already feeling exposed in nothing but blue-white scrubs. He flinched as the light-haired man pressed the first electrode into place.

When the electrodes had been positioned, nothing happened.

The dark-haired man looked at his computer.

The light-haired man stepped to the periphery of the room.

No one spoke.

Young looked at Teal’c.

Teal’c said nothing.

“Describe your extraction of David Telford,” the dark-haired man said, “from the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance.”

Young swallowed dry in a dry throat. “It was SG-11,” he began, “who got the word he was in trouble. He’d been embedded with Kiva’s people, making regular reports, for something like half a year when we got the word he’d been seen on Rolan, meeting with someone in a field of that psychotropic corn they grow—Kassa, I think the name is.”

He stopped, distracted by the angled view he had of the monitor on the other end of his electrodes. It displayed a hazy, shifting image of Rolan, where corn grew atop dusty soil beneath a gray sky that rarely dropped its rain.

The dark-haired man shifted the monitor so it was out of Young’s view. “Continue,” he said.

Young hesitated, unsettled at the prospect of a visual record. Out of his mind and straight into pixels? He hadn’t known it worked this way.

“Continue,” the dark-haired man said.

“Telford was studying Kassa. Trying to ID the drug. He took a meeting with a minor Goa’uld in Ba’al’s network, also working under cover. The pair of them were caught by the LA and dragged into the center of the shitty little settlement where SG-11 was embedded. Telford’s contact was shot. In public, right after he ID’d Telford’s true affiliation and rank. Telford’s contact was executed, personally, by Kiva, the most powerful Sixth House lieutenant. Telford was stunned, and Kiva’s people took him. We didn’t have to ask where. We knew where. A high ranking SGC colonel? That level of intel? They took him home. To the First World of the Sixth House.”

“Describe your mission objective in detail,” the dark-haired man said.

“They sent me in to gather intel. I’d been training for weeks for placement in the Second House, and I was the closest thing to ready that the SGC had at that point. The assignment was to get in, locate Telford, assess feasibility of rescue, and get the hell out without blowing my cover.”

“Continue,” the dark-haired man said.

“The SGC arranged for me to use a Tel’tak,” Young said. “I’m not sure where we got it, word on the grapevine was that the Jaffa Council had lent it to us in return for a favor. I gated to the Alpha Site, then piloted it, solo, to the First World of the Sixth House. I passed through their planetary defenses using Asgard stealth tech and set the ship down maybe thirty miles outside the limits of First City, on the slope of an active volcano.”

“An interesting choice,” the dark-haired man said.

Young shrugged, hesitant to go on, dreading the point where his words might turn false. Where his words would turn false.

“I used a skimmer to get into the city,” he continued. “The SGC had recovered it from a crash on a world controlled by the Second House. It held up, my paperwork held up, my damned outfit held up, and I made it through the city perimeter. I had an appointment with Kiva’s highest ranking tactical advisor, who was interested in purchasing a stolen shipment of Tau’ri assault rifles.”

“Do you remember his name?” the dark-haired man asked.

“Yeah.” Young pulled the man’s name out of a place in his mind he’d tried to pave over. “Varro. His name was Varro.”

“Continue,” the dark-haired man said.

“I demo’d the weapons. Varro inspected the cases loaded into the back of the skimmer. We negotiated a price, he took me out for a drink.”

“He took you out for a drink?”

“Yeah,” Young confirmed. “We hit it off. He bitched about Kiva. I bitched about Varek, Second House lieutenant. He bitched about life next to an active volcano, I bitched about life in the swamp of the Second House’s First World. He bought me a drink, I bought him five more. We started talking about the Tau’ri.”

“Did he mention Colonel Telford?”

“Not by name, but he told me the story of a Tau’ri double agent, part of Kiva’s inner circle, who’d been ratted out as a spy. He told me they’d tortured the bastard. That Kiva was the type who brought a literal artistry to that kind of work, if I knew what he meant. I said I didn’t. He said you hadn’t seen the seal of your own house until you’d seen it carved into the skin of an enemy.”

Telford coughs. “Wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Shaking, he sits forward to study the Goa’uld controls.

Young glances at him. Sees the bleeding insignia of the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance, cut crudely into the other man’s chest before Telford shifts the remains of his jacket to shield it from view.

It’ll scar.

It’s meant to.

Opposite him, the dark-haired man clicked a button. “Continue,” he said.

“Varro didn’t tell me where they were holding Telford, and I had more sense than to ask.” The words came stronger now, familiar from a dozen debriefings the SGC had put him through. “He’d as good as told me he was involved with the interrogation, so I followed him. Home from the bar that night, and the next day, after I delivered my shipment. It didn’t take long to determine that Telford was being held in Kiva’s personal quarters. It didn’t take long for me to figure I had a real chance of getting him out. On my own.

“Risky call,” the light-haired man said. “You were alone.”

“Yup. But if I left to report back, there was no guarantee Telford would be alive when the cavalry rode in. I saw a chance and took it. I swapped my Second House insignia for Sixth House insignia. I waited for Kiva to leave, and slipped into her quarters at shift change.”

“Everett.” Telford is half-dead on the floor, covered with blood, none of it dry, all of it his. “Fuck, I’m hallucinating.”

“I wish.” Young slices through blood-slick bonds. “This isn’t my idea of a good time, y’know.”

“Don’t—” Telford chokes out the word, too late.

Young grimaces as he sees sensors embedded in the bonds begin to flash.

“Oh what.” Young slashes through the cords around Telford’s ankles. “You expected something subtle?”

“From you?” It’s half a laugh, half a sob.

“Describe what you saw,” the dark-haired man said.

“Colonel Telford, bound hand and foot, in serious need of immediate extraction and medical attention,” Young said. “I freed him. We escaped Kiva’s residence together, killing three of her guards. We fled the city in a stolen skimmer. We were pursued by Alliance forces and shot down just outside the perimeter of the shield that protects the First City from the nearby volcano. In the skimmer crash, I broke my back and my hip. Colonel Telford and I made it to the Tel’tak and escaped the planet.”

The dark-haired man stared at him.

Young stared back.

“That narrative is ludicrous,” the dark-haired man said. “I find it astonishing that more people didn’t question it at the time. Furthermore, your neural signature began doubling at the point Varro told you where Telford was being held.”

Young stared at him.

“That is not what happened,” Teal’c explained, quiet and solid against the opposite wall.

“Yeah,” Young said. “I’m getting that.”

“We’ll begin again,” the dark-haired man said.

Day 2

“There are pieces of it,” Young said, his voice hoarse, “just pieces, that exist outside this damned story we keep rehashing.”

“What pieces?” Teal’c asked.

“I can remember him.” Young took a ragged breath. “David. In a holding cell. Standing in front of a gold wall covered with LA graffiti. I remember him holding something in his hands.”

“What was he holding?” the dark-haired man asked.

“A pain stick,” Young said. “The kind we use to scare sense into the new recruits.”

“What does he do with it?” the dark-haired man asked.

“What do you think?”

“This is the second narrative,” the dark-haired man said. “The true narrative. Describe everything you remember.”

“I say,” Young said, “‘I came to get you out.’ He says, ‘I know. And you will. Just—not the way that you imagined.’ I say, ‘you can’t mean that.’ He apologizes. He says it’s his fault. I say ‘I know it is.’ He tells me I won’t remember. Like that’s some kind of consolation. I call him on his bullshit. He tells me—” Young trailed off.

“What does he tell you?” Teal’c asked.

“That he’ll do whatever Kiva wants,” Young said. 

“Then what happens?” the dark-haired man asked.

“I don’t remember,” Young replied.

“Unacceptable,” the dark-haired man replied.

Day 3

He slips around the doorframe, silent, his Zat close to his chest.

Telford sits at Kiva’s desk. In one hand, he holds a glass of dark liquid. Wine. The other hand rests upon a Zat. When he sees Young, he stiffens. “Everett.” He sets his wine on the desk with the quiet click of glass on wood. “God damn it.”

Varro steps from a shadowed doorway to his left.

“Varro set me up.” Young pressed his fingers into his temples. “I think. He must have. He was there. When I entered Kiva’s room, he was there. He was there and Telford was waiting.”

“Describe the room. In detail.”

“Dark. A long table. A desk, off to the side. A shelf with a few bottles of shit wine. Two doorways, one through which I had entered, another to my left. A window behind the table. Outside, only darkness.”

“And where was Colonel Telford?”

“I told you, he was at the desk.”

“And Varro?”

“In the doorway.”

“Repeat your narrative. Again. From the beginning. Leave nothing out.”

Day 4

“What did Kiva want Colonel Telford to do?” the dark-haired man asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“Why was he holding an instrument of torture?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did Colonel Telford torture you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I think he must have, yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t remember.”

“Did you pass information to the Lucian Alliance after you returned to Earth with Colonel Telford?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I didn’t give them anything.”

“Did you aid them in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Describe your dealings with Vala Mal Doran.”

Day 5

“What are you waiting for?” Young snarled. “We all know what it takes to end this. We all know what it takes to break Goa’uld coercive persuasion. So do it. Try it already. I’m asking you to.”

“The International Oversight Advisory Committee doesn’t sanction the methods to which you refer,” the dark-haired man said.

“You know this isn’t going to work,” Young replied. “Do what you have to do. Stop dickin’ around. I’ve been ready for it. I’ve been ready since day one. I’m not gonna report anyone to the IOA.”

“Restart your narrative at your entry into Kiva’s personal quarters.”

“Telford was sitting at the desk,” Young snarled. “Varro was in the doorway. They both had Zats.”

“When did Colonel Telford acquire the pain stick?”

“I don’t know,” Young growled. “He picked it up off the floor, maybe. Or Varro gave it to him.”

“Which was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he holding it in Kiva’s quarters? Or later, in the cell?”

“I don’t know.”

“Colonel—”

“Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?”

Day 6

“How did you break your back?”

“In a skimmer crash.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Is it possible that Colonel Telford was the one who caused your injuries?”

“I’m sure it’s possible.”

“You remember him telling you Kiva had directed him to conduct your interrogation.”

“I’m not sure it was an interrogation.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I don’t remember it,” Young growled through clenched teeth, “so how can I know whether they asked me any questions?”

“In order to break your hip and your back, in a manner consistent with a crashed vehicle, they’d have needed an impressive amount of force.”

“An ‘impressive’ amount?”

“Does anything suggest itself to you?”

“The only thing that ‘suggests itself’ to me is a skimmer crash.”

“You had injuries on your forearms, your neck, your face. Small cuts, containing tiny shards of alien glass. Do you think those injuries might’ve been artificially created?”

“Teal’c,” Young said. “Teal’c, you know what’s gotta be done. Just do it. Right now. I’m begging you.”

“Colonel Young, the course of action you’re requesting is prohibited under—” the dark-haired man began.

“Yeah. Treaty Seventeen. Oh I know. But it’s not prohibited on Chulak, is it? It’s not prohibited in the case of Jaffa located on soil controlled by Homeworld Command?”

“Correct,” Teal’c confirmed. “But you are not Jaffa.”

Young tried not to lose his mind.

“Yet,” Teal’c said.

“Yet?”

“Two individuals hold dual citizenship,” Teal’c said. “General O’Neill and myself. The petition to make you the third has been set in motion.”

“How long until—”

“The purpose of these sessions isn’t to provide you with information,” the dark-haired man broke in. “Please discuss ongoing legal proceedings outside of hours allotted for NID interrogation.”

“Are there any?” Young growled. “Hours outside?”

Day 7

“You’ve gotta hang in there,” Jackson said, earnest and exhausted on the wrong side of a two-way mirror. “Teal’c is working as fast as he can, but he’s being blocked by factions within the High Council who feel Tau’ri influence on the emerging Jaffa Nation is already too strong. They don’t particularly care to be used as a loophole to circumvent the idiosyncrasies of Tau’ri governance.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” Young growled.

“Maybe not, but they have a real point,” Jackson said, and god, he looked tired. “You know what’s coming if Teal’c is successful, right?”

“I know, Jackson.”

“Someone will—ah. Someone will—”

“I know what they’ll do, Jackson,” Young said. “You don’t have to say it.”

“I do.”

“No, you really don’t.”

“Someone will bring you to the point of death, until your heart stops and your brain begins to undergo anoxic injury. Under low oxygen conditions, the drug used to achieve coercive persuasion dissociates from synaptic receptors and reenters your bloodstream. Your kidneys and liver will metabolize it over several hours.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Jackson.”

“I’m not sure if they’ll offer you a choice of method. Would you, uh, god. Would you want a choice of method?”

“No,” Young said. “Who’s gonna do it? Lam?”

“No.” Jackson looked away, pulled off his glasses, and pressed the back of his hand against a red-rimmed eye. “No. We don’t—we don’t ask this of our physicians. It’s not fair to them, it breaks the Hippocratic Oath, and it’s not consistent with the spirit of the Rite of M’al Sharran, which is supposed to be performed one bloodkin warrior to another. Classically, it involves removal of a symbiote, but in your case—well, I hate to say it’ll be a little more ‘hands-on’, but—”

“Jackson.”

“Sorry. I’m rambling. I know. You, uh, you realize Homeworld Command has never done this, right? I mean, this is a Jaffa thing. This is not a Tau’ri thing. We have, as a people, in the past, felt it more humane to put our affected personnel through an NID debriefing then reassign them where they can’t do any damage. But in your case—”

“That’s not gonna work,” Young said. “Not with Telford and Vala and Rush missing.”

“No,” Jackson agreed. “From an informational security standpoint, the SGC has never had a more damaging leak.”

“So who’s it gonna be then?” Young asked. “Who’s going to do it? Cause the, uh, hopefully limited, anoxic brain injury?”

Jackson slid his glasses back into place. “Who do you want it to be?”

What a terrible thing to ask.

If David had been there, if David had been the man that Young thought he had been—the choice would have so been clear.

He missed David. Not just the man, but the idea of him. He missed the solid, too-intense, extremely type-A presence that’d been Colonel David Telford. He missed the guy who’d beam into his apartment on a Friday night at 2300, in uniform, weapon out, pockets full of tech that would counter a fucked up piece of LA insurgency.

David would’ve been able to do what Young needed done. Not easily, but he’d get it done. Look Young in the eye afterward. Take him out for a drink. Make it possible to leave the whole thing behind them. And, if Young didn’t make it, David would move on.

But David wasn’t here. And, maybe, he wasn’t David anymore.

Cam. He could ask Cam. Cam would step up, no doubt. But he wouldn’t be the same afterwards. Cam didn’t do things like choke his friends to death. He wasn’t built for it. Hadn’t signed on for it. Wouldn’t handle himself well if things went south.

If Sheppard had been here—but he wasn’t. And even if he had been, Young wasn’t sure, had never been sure, about how close to the edge the man operated. He had no idea what kind of psychological burden this might be for Sheppard, and he was sure he’d never find out. The man was locked down better than a vault buried a mile under seaside surf.

He thought about asking Teal’c, but he didn’t know Teal’c. The last thing he wanted to do was show disrespect for the rite he’d been begging to undergo.

That left one person. A man who could handle anything and, somehow, hold himself together.

“How am I supposed to ask this of anyone, Jackson?”

“Who’s gonna volunteer?” Jackson’s voice cracked, but his answer was already written on his face.

“I’m sure some bleeding-heart altruist will step up,” Young said.

“Yeah.” Jackson shut his eyes, like even blinking was painful.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“When Teal’c confirms your citizenship, you can request it. The Rite of M’al Sharran.”

“M’al Sharran,” Young repeated.

“Name me, when you ask,” Jackson said. “That’s a part of it.”

Young nodded.

Jackson pressed a hand against the one-way glass, bracing like the weight of the planet was trying to crush him down. “It’s got about a thirty-three percent survival rate, just so you know. And that’s among Jaffa.”

“Great,” Young said.

Jackson pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Any word on Rush?” Young asked.

“I can’t talk about that,” Jackson said.

“Any word on Vala?” Young asked.

“Can’t talk about that either,” Jackson said.

“Yeah. I know.” 

Day 8

“Did you pass information to the Lucian Alliance after you returned to Earth with Colonel Telford?

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m—not sure.”

“Did you aid the Lucian Alliance in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would I know if I had? What’s the point of these questions when I don’t remember?”

“Describe your dealings with Vala Mal Doran.”

Day 9

“Did you pass information to the Lucian Alliance after you returned to Earth with Colonel Telford?

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Did you aid the Lucian Alliance in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Describe your dealings with Vala Mal Doran.”

Day 10

“Did you pass information to the Lucian Alliance after you returned to Earth with Colonel Telford?”

“It’s possible.”

“Did you aid the Lucian Alliance in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush?”

“I—really don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“How could I possibly be sure?”

“Describe your dealings with Vala Mal Doran.”

Day 11

“Did you pass information to the Lucian Alliance after you returned to Earth with Colonel Telford?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you aid the Lucian Alliance in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush?”

“I don’t know.”

“We aren’t making any progress.”

“No kidding.”

“If you had aided the Lucian Alliance in the abduction of Dr. Nicholas Rush, what would you have done?”

“I’m not answering that question.”

“You don’t have the luxury of refusing to answer questions.”

“I could have turned him over at any point. He was my neighbor. I was the one who kept yelling at him to hang on to his signal scrambler. I was the one who extracted him from the base when the LA gained a foothold here. I had every opportunity to turn him over. I was the acting head of the Icarus Project. I had access to his data, to his computer, to the security team in the basement of his building, to all the encryption codes that protected his signal transponder. I had a key to his apartment for god’s sake.”

“You had a key to his apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he kept locking himself out.”

“Please describe the nature of your relationship with Dr. Rush.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Please describe the nature of your relationship with Dr. Rush.”

“We were friends. Damn it. We are friends. Colleagues. Neighbors.” 

“That’s the extent of your relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Would you describe yourself as particularly upset by his abduction or defection?”

“Yes. Obviously. I was responsible for his safety, as he was a civilian contractor recruited to work on the project I commanded. I considered him a friend. He’s got an unexplained medical condition related to his genetic status and I think he’ll fold like a bad hand when exposed to LA interrogation techniques, and only blind goddamned luck or outside intervention will keep them from accidentally killing him.”

“And you believe you wouldn’t have exposed a friend to such an environment.”

“No,” Young snarled. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s been well documented that coercive persuasion overrides even the strongest emotional ties.”

“Well great. So what do you want from me, then?”

“Describe your dealings with Vala Mal Doran.”

Day 12

“Maybe I fucked up.” Telford sits at the bar in O’Malley’s, shirtless, bleeding from the insignia cut into his chest. “Maybe that’s all it was. Just me, being a fucking idiot, giving Rush that ride home because he was miserable. Because he couldn’t sleep and I felt sorry for him. Maybe they took me too. Maybe they killed me this time. Maybe they gave me back to Kiva.”

Young swallows in a dry throat.

“Maybe you need to rescue us both. Or maybe,” Telford takes a sip of beer and leaves bloody fingerprints on the glass, “maybe you were the one who sold us out. Have you considered that?”

“Yeah,” Young replies.

“Shit.” Telford sighs, looking at the glass, then at the polished wood of the bar. “I’m getting blood everywhere, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Young replies.

“Bartender’s gonna be pissed. Pass me a napkin?”

Young jolted awake. He ran a hand through his tangled hair and opened his eyes to the dim fluorescence of circadian lighting that indicated early morning or late evening.

The door to his isolation room opened. Instead of the NID personnel he expected, two young marines preceded Lam and Teal’c into the room.

Teal’c was dressed in the traditional robes of the Jaffa High Council.

“We finally gonna do this thing?” Young asked.

Lam, pale as her coat, didn’t speak.

“Colonel Young,” Teal’c said, “by order of the Jaffa High Council, ruling body of the Free Jaffa Nation, we grant your petition of citizenship and extend to you the rights granted all free Jaffa.”

“Great,” Young said. “Thank you. I request to undergo the Rite of M’al Sharran with Dr. Daniel Jackson. Immediately. As soon as possible.”

Teal’c inclined his head.

“We’re ready now,” Lam said. “Please come with us.”

Young followed them into the main floorspace of the empty infirmary.

Jackson stood alone in the center of the room, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He stared at an unoccupied gurney, equipped with open leather restraints, flanked by an array of monitors.

Young’s steps slowed at the sight. He forced himself to keep walking.

Jackson turned as he approached, fixing Young with a blue blaze of a look that burned a little too hot to be wholly sane.

Maybe—maybe he should’ve picked Mitchell.

“Jackson,” Young said, as he drew level with the other man. “Thanks.”

Jackson nodded. “Yeah,” he replied, but the word had no sound.

Young sat on the gurney, lifted his good leg, and dragged the bad one after it. Lam stepped in to help, one small hand slipping beneath his foot as he leaned back. She buckled padded restraints around his ankles, his wrists, his waist, his chest. “Sorry,” she breathed, tightening his chest strap.

Young gave her a wan smile.

From within his robes, Teal’c produced a candle and placed it on the table next to Young’s bedside, behind his head and beyond his field of view.

“Am I supposed to be able to see the candle?” he asked.

“The candle,” Teal’c said gently, “is for Daniel Jackson. He will need a place to look.”

Young nodded.

Teal’c inclined his head and stepped away.

Lam attached leads to his chest, his finger, his head.

“TJ, uh, Lieutenant Johansen I mean, won’t be here for this,” Young said, “right?”

“No.” Lam peeled the adhesive backing from defibrillator pads and threaded them beneath his scrubs, pressing them to the skin of his chest. “Dr. Brightman and a small team are standing by in the event I need assistance in your resuscitation. No other medical staff will be involved in this…procedure.”

He heard Teal’c speaking to Jackson, low and indistinct.

“Wait outside the door, please,” Lam directed the marines.

Young heard them retreat.

Lam slid her hand into Young’s, strapped to the gurney. “I’ll do everything I can to bring you back,” she promised.

“I know,” he said. “Just don’t go injecting yourself with naquadah again, yeah?”

Lam gave him a watery smile. “They locked it up. You need a double key and a special code to access it now.”

Young nodded. “Good. I’m not worth another set of your organs.”

Lam’s smile turned real. “Wow. Way to take an awful moment and make it truly horrible. You’re not supposed to out-gallows-humor a doctor, y’know. It’s rude.”

He mustered up a smile of his own. “Pick up the slack, then, doc.” He let the humor go, and said, “Thanks for being here. This is the exact opposite of your job description.”

“First, do no harm.” Lam’s expression turned rueful. “Check back with me in fifteen years after I’ve written the textbook on Medical Xenoethics, and we’ll talk about whether this was a good idea or not. You ready?”

“Yeah,” Young said.

“Dr. Jackson,” Lam said quietly. “Teal’c.”

Slowly, together, Teal’c and Jackson reentered Young’s peripheral vision. They came to stand opposite Lam.

Jackson looked appalling in the fluorescent infirmary light, so bad that Young suspected the man hadn’t slept for days.

Maybe—maybe not since Young had tacitly asked him to participate in the rite.

“Dr. Lam,” Teal’c said, “please step back.”

Lam didn’t step away. She turned her body, her face, her gaze from Teal’c and Jackson. Her hand stayed where it was, gripping Young’s own.

“The Rite of M’al Sharaan confers the gift of a free death,” Teal’c said. “From that death, a free life may come.” He looked at Jackson.

“Shai kek nem ron,” Jackson whispered, visibly shaking. He met Young’s eyes and translated, “My brother dies free.”

Young nodded.

Jackson’s fingers wrapped around his throat, ice cold and trembling. He leaned over Young, one knee braced against the bed, pressing in, pressing down, cutting off Young’s airway.

“Well done,” Teal’c said softly.

Jackson’s gaze burned into him.

Young stared back. The heart monitor was a green and panicked wave in his peripheral vision. His hand clamped around Lam’s fingers, and her bones shifted beneath the strength of his grip.

“Shai kek nem ron,” Teal’c said, speaking to Young now. “Cast your mind toward the truth of what you seek.” He began to chant. “Shai kek nem ron. Shai kek nem ron.”

Jackson’s fingers tightened further.

Young tried not to struggle.

“Shai kek nem ron.” Jackson joined with Teal’c, chanting like he was the one who couldn’t breathe.

Young’s lungs ached. His head buzzed, his thoughts dissolved into panic. He tried not to struggle, tried to make it easy on Jackson, but he couldn’t hang onto the idea, he couldn’t hang on to anything. He bucked against the restraints, fighting, back arching, hip blazing as he struggled to break Jackson’s hold.

“Do not let go!” He heard Teal’c shouting at Jackson over the roaring in his ears, heard Jackson choking out the words of the chant over and over. The ice cold grip on his neck didn’t change.

It was only as his strength was going, his vision going, that he remembered to think of Telford, to focus on Telford.

Young slips around the doorframe, silent, his Zat close to his chest.

Telford sits at Kiva’s desk. In one hand, he holds a glass of dark liquid. Wine. The other hand rests upon a Zat. When he sees Young, he stiffens. “Everett.” He sets his wine on the desk with the quiet click of glass on wood. “God damn it.”

Varro steps from a shadowed doorway to his left.

Young feels a horrible, sinking feeling in his chest.

“Why did it have to be you?” Telford asks from the other side of his Zat. The question is so buried in despair, it’s hardly a question at all.

Varro steps in. Young feels the cool press of metal behind his ear. “Hand over your weapons, colonel.”

Young surrenders his Zat. “It was always gonna be someone,” he says, still struggling to comprehend the reality of what’s happening. Already tables are turning in his mind. It’s not difficult to think of Telford as the enemy, not when he’s dressed in their leather, drinking their fucking wine. “Or had that not occurred to you.”

“I knew,” Telford says. “Of course I knew.”

“Shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron oh god I’m sorry shai kek nem ron—”

Young, left in a graffitied cell for hours, has time to consider the chain of decisions that brought him to this place. He’s in the unbearable position of knowing how select pieces of top-level intel are making out of the SGC, but not being able to do anything about it.

He spends his time thinking about his own stupidity, because he can’t reconcile the man in Kiva’s quarters with the David Telford he knows.

The David Telford whose couch he had slept on during fights with Emily, who liked Science Fridays on NPR, who worked on the weekends, who shined his shoes every Sunday night like a dork, and who professed a love of post World War I abstract art that J Shep thought he was faking and that Cam thought was hilarious and that Young had never understood.

So, maybe it’s no wonder that when Telford returns, when he enters the cell holding a Goa’uld pain stick, Young speaks first. “I came to get you out,” he whispers, and the last word cracks with betrayal. He strains against repurposed bonds of Goa’uld manufacture.

“I know,” Telford says, his voice a ragged smear, as if any amount of guilt could atone for what he holds in his hands.

Young has seen it before. There’s one at the SGC. They keep it for the orientation of new recruits. It’s a display item, shown as the nature of Goa’uld interrogation techniques are explained.

“And you will,” Telford continues, “just not the way you imagined.”

“You can’t mean that.” Young tries not to show any distress. He suppresses the urge to pull against his bonds.

“I’m sorry.” Telford looks at what he’s holding. “Oh Christ. Oh shit. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“Yes,” Young replies. “It is.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Telford says, “you won’t remember this.”

“How could that,” Young replies, his voice finally breaking, “be consolation for anyone but you.”

Telford looks away.

Young doesn’t.

His head angled down, Telford says, “Kiva is— Kiva’s decided that it’ll be me who does it.” Even now, even holding the thing in his hands, he can’t say what he means.

“Does what,” Young needles, pitiless. “Does what, David?”

“You don’t understand,” Telford replies.

“You,” Young snarls. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Not anymore.”

“You’ll be all right,” Telford says.

“How?” Young demands. “How will I be ‘all right,’ you lying son of a bitch?”

“You’ll live.” Telford can’t conceal the strain in his voice. “You’re my ticket back.”

“You don’t need a ticket back. You never did. We were looking for you, damn it.”

“And if you’d found me,” Telford rasps, “when I needed to be found—if you’d found me then, maybe, maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe you could have saved me. Maybe you could’ve preserved me for a life of scrubbing floors at the Antarctic base, or reading the essays of new recruits from the comfort of a VA Psych Ward. But you didn’t find me then.”

Young looks away.

“Get up,” Telford says.

“No,” Young says, unmoving.

“Get up.” Telford activates the pain stick.

Young hears the buzz of building charge. “No,” he snarls.“You’re gonna have to drag me outta this room, David. You’ll have to—”

His words choke off and his back arches, beyond his control, muscles contract with a shock they can’t fight. He screams through a closed throat, his nerves on fire, his eyes tearing, his lungs rebelling—

“Get up,” he hears Telford say, when he can hear again.

His jaw hurts. His mouth is full of blood. He doesn’t speak. But neither does he get up.

“You think you can outlast this?” Telford’s on his knees next to Young. “You think that you can resist the Lucian Alliance? It’s impossible.”

“Why, because you couldn’t do it?” Young rasps.

“Who says I wanted to?” Telford snarls, savagely angry. He turns to the guards at the door.“Bring him,” he says, and leaves the room.

Young tries to walk, but his muscles refuse to cooperate, so they drag him through golden halls. Past statues of dead and defaced gods. They dump him on the floor of what can only be a lab, equipped with stolen technology: Goa’uld, Tau’ri, Asgard, Ancient.

He doesn’t move. He lies on the obsidian floor, trying to catalogue what he sees.  

A woman’s boot, crafted of black leather, steps into his line of sight.

“Begin,” she says.

He’s hauled onto a table. A needle pierces the crook of his right elbow. He feels the cool press of an SGC-issued sidearm against his temple.

“I like your weaponry.” The woman’s face is inverted. She stands over him, wielding her stolen gun. Her eyes are cruel and her mouth is hard and she should be beautiful but he can’t make himself see it.

She’s Kiva. She must be.

She wears her leather better than most. There’s something ascetic in the height of her collar, in the crisp lines of her jacket against walls of blazing gold. She makes the apex of Goa’uld culture look garish. Cheap. That must be the idea.

“Me too,” Young replies.

Kiva smiles.

Young smiles back, then rips the needle from his arm. He lunges away, throwing himself off the table, towards Telford, who, even now, after everything, still feels like the safest, sanest person in this lab.

They crash together to the floor.

Telford lets Young up, only to bring him back down with another agonizing electrical discharge.

“Which way is it going to be?” Telford grabs Young by his leather jacket and drags him back to the table. “The hard way, or the hard way?”

“The hard way,” Young grinds out. “It’s always the hard way.”

“Good answer,” Telford says, a gloss of amusement over deeper horror.

Young is getting to him, he’s sure of it; he’s just not sure that getting to him will make a difference.

“I told you we should have begun with the orthopedic adjustment,” Kiva says coolly.

Telford nods at Kiva’s black-clad entourage, and, suddenly, there are hands holding Young down.

“—shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron has it been long enough you have to TELL ME if it’s been long enough how do I know how do I know how am I SUPPOSED to KNOW—”

“What the hell is that thing.” Young left hip is clamped to the table, a fixed point more solid than any human grip. Inescapable.

“We need it for your cover story,” Telford says.

“What ‘cover story’?” Young hears the desperation in his own voice, knows Telford will hear it too.

“You’re gonna rescue me,” Telford whispers. He turns a crank on the device fixed to Young’s hip.

He hears the crack of splitting bone, and then—

He’s never been in so much agony. He’s cold. He’s hot. He can’t breathe. He can’t see. He can’t survive this. Surely he’ll die in this gold room, far from home, under an ash-filled sky.

“Give him the drug,” Kiva says. “Give him the drug, fly him out beyond the force field, and complete it.”

“I will,” Telford says.

“—shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron—”

“Where did you leave the ship?” Kiva asks.

“Where did you leave the ship?” Telford asks.

“Where did you leave the ship?” Kiva asks.

“Where did you leave the ship?” Telford asks.

“Where did you leave the ship?” Kiva asks.

“You priceless son of a bitch.” Telford looks down at Young with fire in his eyes.

“—shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron shai kek nem ron—”

Young opens his eyes to the smell of sulfur, the fall of flaking ash. He can’t remember how he got here. There’s glass in his arm, glass in his face, in his hair.

Telford is beside him, shirt off. “Which way is it gonna be?” he asks, looking at the sky, a knife in his hand. “The hard way, or the hard way?”

“The hard way,” Young says, and the words feel heavy and slow. “It’s always the hard way.”

Telford looks over, surprised, his eyes bloodshot, his skin pale. “Yeah.” He braces his shoulder against the Tel’tak. “Good answer.” He draws his knife across his chest, quick and deep, making one swiping cut and then another. “Fuck that hurts. You won’t remember this.” He coughs, choking on ash.

“I won’t remember this?” Young repeats, confused, gasping through the pain.

“No. You’ll remember finding me,” Telford’s voice cracks as he begins another pattern, this time on his side. “You’ll remember I already had these. It’s Kiva,” Telford says. “Kiva who’s doing this. Kiva who did this.” He cries out through clenched teeth as he cuts deep. “Kiva who did this to me.” He repeats it over and over as he works.

When he’s finished, Telford pulls out an alien first aid kit.

Instead of using it to fix the cuts that Kiva gave him, he packs his injuries with salt.

“What are you doing?” Young asks.

“I’m getting out the first aid kit to help you,” Telford explains. “Do you think it can help you?”

“No,” Young says.

No use, is what he doesn’t say.

“She did this.” Telford, sweating, shaking, gestures at the salt packed into his wounds. “Kiva did this, so it would scar. Remember that. So it would scar.”

It’s difficult to think.

“You found me,” Telford says. “You got Varro drunk, you slipped in at the shift change, and you said, ‘I came to get you out,’ and I said—”

“You said, ‘I know’,” Young replies.

“Yeah,” Telford breathes, his eyes closed, his teeth gritted, shaking with pain. “I said I know.” 

“Oh god, David,” Young says. “What did they do to you?”

“No gods here, Everett,” Telford rasps, tears streaming from his eyes. “No gods anywhere. Jackson’s killed them. Or he will. To a one.”

Confused, Young shakes his head to try and clear it.

“Hey,” Telford leans in. “Everett. I’ll never be able to thank you. To repay you.”

“Things aren’t like that between us,” Young says, barely able to think past his pain, past his rage, past the sight of what the Lucian Alliance has done to David. To David, who hated them more than anyone—

“This falls outside the bounds of debt,” Young says.“Outside repay.”

“It does.” Telford’s voice breaks. “I know it does.”

“Did they give you the drug?” Young asks.

“I don’t think they did,” Telford says, weeping, “but how would I know?”

“Yeah.” Young can’t think past the buzzing of his thoughts, past the agony in his back and hip.

Telford takes a breath. Wipes his face. Coughs on the ash in the air. “You saved me,” he rasps. “But our skimmer was shot down, close to your ship. Do you remember? I pulled you up, but you couldn’t stand. I couldn’t stand either.”

Young remembers it, remembers standing, remembers the pain as unbearable, untenable, unbelievable. He remembers digging his hands into the shreds of Telford’s uniform. Telford, who was injured, who’d been tortured, who had been pushed past human endurance, who couldn’t even support himself.

“I remember,” Young says.

“And I said, ‘What was I thinking’,” Telford chokes, trying to breathe through ash and tears. “We’re doing this the hard way.”

“The hard way.” Young tastes blood and sulfur. “What’s the hard way?”

“Clawing, crawling your way to an objective.” Telford’s hand closes over Young’s hand. They sit outside their Tel’tak, beneath the falling ash. “The struggle in the dirt.” Their entwined fingers dig into loose earth.

He remembers dragging himself through the darkening landscape, up the steep slope, hand over agonizing hand while his bad leg trails uselessly behind him. He’d done it. Just now.

“I wish you hadn’t come,” Telford whispers in the turbid air. “I wish to God you hadn’t.”

“It’s too late for that,” Young replies.

The atmosphere is searing.

Beside him, Telford coughs. He clenches a handful of gray dust. “We’re not gonna die here,” Telford says.

Young coughs. “No?”

“No,” Telford replies. “I won’t allow us to die here.”

“Not looking good,” Young says.

“Yes it is.” Telford shields his face from a blast of heated air. “I think Sanchez has a crush on me. Agree, or disagree?”

For a moment, Young’s confused, are they sitting here, next to the Tel’tak with their hands in loose, red dirt, or is Telford dragging him, shoving him up a barren, rocky slope?

“Disagree,” Young spits a mouthful of blood, losing himself in the vivid memory of their climb. He can almost feel his free hand sliding easily over stone as fingernails scrape for purchase on loose rock. “You wish,” he adds.

“What do you mean ‘I wish’?” Telford asks.

“Everyone—“ Young shudders with a wave of pain, “—wants to date a combat engineer.”

“Yeah,” Telford breathes. “Short though. Don’t know about the hair.”

Young inhales slowly, easing air past blood. “Dick.”

“I save your life, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Still a dick,” Young rasps.

Telford coughs.

“If you make it back,” Young says, “and I don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Look out for Emily, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Telford gasps, “but no. We’re both going back. That’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal, is it?”

“That’s the deal.”

Young nods.

“Then let’s leave this piece of shit world,” David Telford says, tortured, barely alive, covered with dust and ash and blood. When he stands, unsteady, to activate the ring controls, Young knows it’s the bravest fuck off to death and fate he’s ever seen. That he ever will see.

And he’ll remember it that way, all the days of his life.

Day 14

Young opened his eyes to a cement ceiling.

A new one.

This wasn’t the isolation suite, this was—

“Jackass,” Mitchell said in a hoarse whisper. “Hi.”

Young shifted his gaze from the concrete overhead to find the other man watching him, pale and drawn, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hi,” Young rasped, confused by the agony in his back, the ache in his throat, the pain in his neck, his head.

Like a bucket of ice water, everything came back to him.

“It worked,” he rasped. He tried to sit, but his back spasmed, sending a bolt of pain from spine to heel.

“Did it?” Mitchell pressed him back. “Good. Maybe we can scrape Jackson back into a human-shaped container.”

“Where is he?” Young asked.

“He’s been lying on the floor of VIP Suite #4, throwing up, for, oh,” Mitchell theatrically clocked his watch, “about the past seven hours.”

“I’ve been out for seven hours?” Young asked.

“You’ve been out for twenty-eight hours,” Mitchell said. “Lam resuscitated you, like a boss, then kept you sedated while the drug was metabolized outta your bloodstream. There’s some reason to think that once it dissociates from your brain or synapses or whatever, it retains its bioactivity. So, y’know, no reason to screw you up any more than you’ve already been screwed up. It’s outta your system by now.”

“Cam—” Young began.

“You should’ve asked me,” Mitchell said, his voice ragged.

“Cam—”

“I get why you didn’t,” Mitchell said. “I get it. I do. You probably weren’t wrong. I don’t know that I could’ve done it. I don’t know what I’d have been like afterwards. But, no matter how well he supposedly takes it, Jackson’s not the garbage can for all the fucked up shit of the galaxy, okay? We can spread it around a little bit.”

Young shut his eyes and swallowed. His throat felt raw and painful. “What happened?”

“To you or to Jackson?” Mitchell asked. “You want some water for that frog in your throat?” Without waiting for an answer, he poured a cup from the pitcher at Young’s bedside.

Young took a sip of water. “To Jackson. I remember what happened to me.”

Mitchell nodded, looking away. “Yeah, well, it took Carter, Teal’c, and an hour in a VIP room to talk him into taking a sedative. He slept for about twenty-one hours, then started throwing up.”

Young grimaced.

“As soon as Lam clears the NID to come in, I’ll go tell him you’re not obviously brain damaged. That should cheer ‘im up.”

“Cam,” Young said. “It was worth it. I remember everything. I’ll be able to pass the Za’tarc.”

“Do you know where they are?” Mitchell didn’t look at him. “Where Vala is? Or Rush? Or Telford?”

“No,” Young admitted, “but I remember what happened. I know I didn’t help the LA. I know Telford did. He was the leak. I’m sure of it.”

“Then it was worth it,” Mitchell said in a quiet monotone, staring at the far wall. “I guess.”