Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When we dream, we do, we say, we hear, &c. and &c., that is, we believe at the time we do so; and what more can be said of us when we are awake, then we believe we are doing, seeing, saying, and hearing, &c.

The Night-Side of Nature (Crowe: 1848)

Blair awoke from a place without dreams to find the world was going to pieces. For a long time he lay very still while the world splintered beneath him, until at long last something smooth and rounded, smelling strongly of boot polish, nudged his cheek. Gently at first, then with greater insistence.

Blair tried to shift away, but his first movement drove shards of pain though the back of his skull. He froze, his stomach heaving, until the worst began to subside.

"Get up, Blair," a voice repeated with maddening persistence. "We need to talk."

Blair squinted his eyes open. The toe of a man's shoe was inches from his face. The carpet under his cheek spiraled outward in a wild confusion of blurred colors, gold and green and rose, and Blair wondered if they finally resolved themselves into reasonable vines and flowers somewhere on the far side of the world.

"Go on, get up," the voice was saying. "We've got some talking to do."

After a time, Blair managed to drag himself onto his hands and knees. He reached back carefully and touched the back of his head, finding his hair tacky with drying blood. So maybe it wasn't the world splintering. Maybe it was just his own skull.

"Did somebody hit me?"

"You were trying to help Major Davis."

Blair couldn't remember why Major Davis had needed help. For a long, slightly panicky moment, he couldn't even remember who Major Davis was. He sat back on his heels, one hand pressed hard against the side of his skull, and tried to focus on the man talking to him. He was sitting in an easy chair in front of a wall of bookshelves. The light in the room flickered gold, too dim for Blair to read the titles of any of the books. "Who are you?"

The man in the chair planted his foot in the middle of Blair's chest and shoved hard.

Blair managed to stop his fall with his elbows, but his eyesight blurred red around the edges. His head was pounding in time with his pulse, and the floor itself seemed to be humming. He scooted out of range, tensed for another blow. "What was that for?" he demanded weakly.

"The boys in Washington might be impressed by Mr. Rayne's proficiency with smoke and mirrors, but he's not the one running the show down here," said the man in the easy chair. "That means you talk to me now."

"Fine," Blair said, scooting further away. "That's just great." It wasn't his imagination -- the vibrations in the floor were more than the reflected strumming of his over-taxed nervous system. There were sounds in the building. They bled under the closed door and splashed the walls. They had weight and purpose, and as the waves vibrated through Blair they left his nerve endings stripped naked.

It occurred to him this must be the place Colonel O'Neill had hauled them down to Los Angeles to find. Wonder what the colonel had wanted them to do once they got here?

The man in the easy chair was saying something, but other sounds overwhelmed his voice. The carpeted floor buckled and Blair pitched forward into a gray morning. The sun might come out later, or maybe it would be pouring down rain by sunset. Hard to tell, but the way Blair's heart felt, he was pretty much counting on rain.

Jim hadn't said a word. Not since parking the truck and starting to walk. Blair didn't know if Jim wanted company or not. Well, no, that wasn't the truth. He was sure Jim would rather be alone right now, but Blair wasn't about to let him do this by himself.

The wooden planks rang hollow under their feet, and Blair wondered if Jim were distracting himself by listening to the waves splashing against the pilings. He swore to himself that he would hold his tongue and not talk first, but as the silence stretched longer and longer Blair began to fear they were building a wall that he'd never be able to scale, and finally he burst out, "Why aren't you saying anything?"

Real smooth. Did he want Jim to turn around and bite his head off?

Maybe he did. It would have been more tolerable than what Jim actually
said.

"There's nothing to say, Chief." Jim didn't even look back. "It's all been said. It's out. It's over." Blair had never heard him sound so defeated. "I just thought we had an agreement that I was going to read your thesis first."

Blair had promised himself not to get angry, just like he'd sworn he wouldn't be the first one to break the awful silence. But since it turned out knowing what Jim thought was so much worse than silence, he snapped back guiltily, "Look, I didn't do this."

As if that could put the genie back in the bottle.

"Right," Jim said flatly. "You didn't write the book and you didn't put my name all over it."

Blair stopped. Jim walked on.

Huh.

So that's what Jim had been thinking for the past three and a half years. Go figure.

Blair sat down on the nearest bench. All this time, Jim had thought Blair's academic career was a betrayal of their friendship. And he'd kept Blair at his side nevertheless. For god's sake, why? Had Blair made him so dependent on his help that Jim didn't think he could manage alone?

Or maybe he had simply loved Blair too much to send him away. Even while waiting for the inevitable Judas kiss.

Blair sat and watched Jim walking further and further away, until the sight of that bowed head and those steadily striding legs began to blur, and with a wrench at his already-broken heart, Blair found himself in the library once more, sprawled on his back with vines twining across the carpet. He sat up gingerly, his head clanging like a gong. The man in the easy chair was weeping, tears streaming silently down his face, and despite everything Blair felt a stab of pity for him, and wondered what he had seen.

Though he was dry-eyed himself, Blair felt wrung to the bone, empty in the place where his heart should have been. Telling himself that it hadn't happened like that didn't ease the ache of grief. Blair crawled to his feet, bracing himself hard against the desk in the middle of the room. He closed his eyes as his stomach lurched and his head swam, and when he felt steady enough to open his eyes again, the man in the chair was watching him steadily, though he hadn't bothered to wipe the tears from his face.

"I don't know who your Mr. Rayne is," Blair announced shakily, "but I'd say he's pretty good with this smoke and mirrors business."

As far as Sam was concerned, there was no reason to sneak around any longer, so she and Teal'c went in through the front door.

No one particularly seemed to notice.

The first thing she noticed however was that the floor wasn't level. From the threshold it slanted precipitously down towards the column where she had just seen the Colonel stabbed. She flattened herself instinctively against the wall to keep from falling.

Except the column wasn't there any longer, and neither was the Colonel. Or maybe they were, but as figures and objects retreated from the front door they diminished to pinpoints, a geometric progression of exponential decay. Even the candlelight seemed attenuated and dim as it was dragged down. Like being just this side of an event horizon.

She squeezed her eyes shut and flung her arm out for Teal'c. He caught her hand and held on tightly

"This is not real," she said sternly, taking no pains to be quiet. The fabric of the universe strained to the breaking point made enough noise to cover her voice. "We'd already have been pulled apart if this was real." And it was true, having closed her eyes she no longer felt in imminent danger of falling, but she was still aware of the forward drag. Her very words seem to drop from her mouth like stones to the bottom of a well. She tried turning her head to the right and carefully opening her eyes again, this time trying to focus only upon the wall and not towards the center of the room. It almost worked. The wall wasn't bending, though the world's diminishment in her peripheral vision made it difficult to keep her balance.

She eased forward one careful step, wondering how she was going to reach the Colonel if they could only cling to the edges of the room, and then she tripped straight over the edge.

She felt the fall in the pit of her stomach, but with the next swing she was back to chipping ice off the DHD. Her hands ached, and she didn't know if that was frostbite, or just sore muscles. She'd long since given up trying to melt the ice. It had never been a very good idea in the first place, given the amount of fuel expended compared to the progress made, but there had been some important psychological comfort in the bare fact of warmth. That was the sort of thing that was important to the Colonel. He pretended he was all about tough choices and the bottom line, but he was a softer touch than she was. The price he'd paid over the years, he could afford to be.

He had died about thirteen hours ago. Sam had been three meters away at the time, pounding at this solid block of ice and chattering on without expecting an answer. When she took a break to go back and check on him, he'd been beyond ever answering her again.

She had tried to close his eyes, but had to settle for pulling the thermal blanket over his face. She bent and touched her lips to the silver sheet covering his forehead, and then she went back to work. She had promised to get him home. All she had to do was chip the rest of the ice off the DHD.

Her vision blurred, but she wouldn't let herself cry. Tears would have frozen on her cheeks.

Teal'c caught her arm when she tried to swing again. She was on her knees in the lobby of the Hyperion, one shoulder against the wall. For a moment she thought she might cry after all. Was there a time when the human mind just decided 'no more' and stopped trying to fight?

It wouldn't happen to her, though. The Colonel still needed her help, and this time she wouldn't fail him.

"Major Carter. Teal'c," someone gasped. "Thank God."

Sam's eyes flew open.

Paul Davis was right in front of her, his face white as a sheet in the flickering candlelight, his once-pristine shirt crumpled and black with blood. "Major," he continued. "Please forgive the lack of formalities, but this is Charles Gunn, and you need to hear what he has to say."

Aw, jesus, Daniel.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut and buried his head against Daniel's shoulder. Daniel was moving beneath him, a sweet, easy slide and thrust, and just like before it was too good to last very long. Jack supposed it was selfish of him, but this time he wanted more. He wanted to see Daniel's face. He wanted to touch him everywhere. With his hands. With his mouth. God help him, he even wanted to talk to Daniel. Hear him laugh. See him smile.

Daniel's thighs flexed hard against his hipbones, and Jack worried vaguely that he giving himself bruises, but the slide and press across Daniel's corded belly felt too damn good to stop. Jack kept surging forward even as he tried to slow himself down, until in desperation he pushed Daniel's right knee to the mattress. He wanted to think here, just for a moment, and there was no point even trying while he was between Daniel's legs.

Daniel ran his left foot across the back of Jack's thigh, over knotted calf muscles, and then up again. Slower this time, the callus on his heel tickling the sensitive spot behind Jack's knee. Then Daniel let his leg fall open and canted his hips just so, and Jack forgot all about slowing down.

This was just fine, really. They could always talk later.

Daniel craned his neck up so he could kiss Jack's ear, and whispered, "It's OK. I want you to."

Jack tried to laugh. It came out as a groan. "OK?" he managed.

Daniel wasn't laughing either. "It'll be all right," he gasped

.

Shattering reality over and over again and putting it back together a little less neatly each time. Blair had to wonder how many repetitions the world could take before there weren't enough pieces left to stick back together anymore.

He turned his hands up and and saw for the first time that they were covered with blood. The front of his shirt was stiff with it as well. All that couldn't have come from the knock on the back of his own head.

Major Davis.

The memory was still fragmented, but Blair had a sudden, vivid recollection of gunfire on a dark street, and the headlight from a passing car illuminating the stunned expression on Paul's face.

"You shot him," Blair said, his voice shaking at the realization. "You son of a bitch, he was trying to help me, and you shot him."

"I executed him," the man in the chair corrected mildly, and he finally got up. Blair held his ground mostly because he had nowhere else to go. "We lost eleven agents at Blewett Pass, and Major Davis was collaborating with the men responsible for their deaths."

Those were the agents who had kidnapped Jim, nearly killing him with tear gas in the process. Blair couldn't quite allow himself to think that they had deserved to die, but it must have been close enough to the surface because the man lashed out, backhanding Blair. He staggered, hardly aware of impact across his face because the force of the blow seemed to have knocked his brains out the back of his head. His assailant grabbed the scruff of his neck when his knees buckled and slammed him face down on the desk. Blair's world went gray and quiet for a while, until a stuttering rhythm like a failing heart brought him back.

Something hard and metallic bore painfully against his ear. Blair supposed it was the muzzle of a gun. "How did Ellison do it?"

Blair counted his own shallow breaths, trying to concentrate on the question and not on the vibrations coming up through the desk. His breastbone rang with them, the rattle of the world shaking itself to pieces. His personal world was going to end a little bit faster than the rest if he didn't figure out a way to calm down this maniac with a gun.

"Sorry man --" he managed. "But how did Jim do what?"

"Eleven agents in two vehicles. You expect me to believe Detective Ellison and a civilian linguist overcame them all and then disposed of the bodies as well?"

Oh, that.

The man above him released the safety. Blair felt it in his skull more than he heard the sound itself.

"Let me up and I'll tell you," Blair tried. "You blow my brains out, and you'll never know."

By way of answer, the man punched him twice in the back. Blair's head jerked sharply against the gun, and for an instant he was sure he was already dead. He sagged back to the desk as the smeared, bloody pain in his kidneys let him know he was still alive. Something warm and wet trickled across his scalp and dribbled down the side of his neck, and the man above him was leaning into him hard, the point of his elbow skewering him between his shoulder blades.

As Blair gasped for breath around the explosions in his head and his back, he had to wonder why he'd been so keen on living just a little while longer after all. Especially if this was all he had to look forward to.

Jack froze at Daniel's words.

OK, something was wrong if Daniel felt he had to promise everything would eventually be all right. He forced himself to roll away, pulling Daniel onto his side and clamping his hands on Daniel's shoulders. Jack had known something was the matter right from the first, dammit, but he had wanted so badly to believe that he could hold Daniel without consequences. It was never that simple. In fact, something had happened the first time they had been together, hadn't it? Something that left a cold, sick feeling in his gut when he tried to remember.

"What's going on, Daniel?" he asked gently, schooling the fear out of his voice. "This isn't just about you and me, is it?"

Daniel smiled at him, but there was something lurking in his eyes that was so sad. "Then what is it about?" He brushed Jack's lips with his fingertips, but Jack turned his face away.

"I don't know. Something." Even as he said it, an appalling memory flashed into Jack's mind. Something had come to their bed that night. Soft and reeking, and Jack had thought he might go insane when he saw it touching Daniel.

There had been more. Jack didn't know if it had been the same night or some time later, but he remembered a creature with cloven hooves, heads facing in every direction and angel's wings like some ancient city's appalling god-king.

That abomination had been crawling out of Daniel's bed.

"God, Daniel --" He shut his eyes as though that could banish the memories. "Please." Even as he pleaded, though, pain shot through his side as though a giant fist had suddenly wrapped itself around his ribs and started to squeeze. Jack couldn't breathe past it. His own rib cage had become a vise inexorably crushing his heart. He flailed out in panic but Daniel caught him and immediately pulled Jack close, wrapping his arms around him, cradling Jack's head to his breast. Jack could hear the thunder of Daniel's own heart, and the pressure on his chest slowly began to ease. Daniel stroked his back, held him, laid his cheek against the top of Jack's head while trying to curl himself around him.

"You're all right," he whispered to Jack. "You're all right. I've got you."

And it was true. The worst of the pain was fading. He could breathe again, cautious sips of air at first, and when the pain didn't return he filled his lungs. He still felt a dull ache between his ribs, as though he'd pulled a muscle running, but that was the worst of it. "Daniel," he murmured, his voice hoarse. "What are you doing?"

Daniel kissed the top of his head. "I'm just making sure you're all right."

Jack pulled away and looked at him. Daniel's eyes were dull, half-closed in exhaustion. "We need to go," Jack said. "I think something's coming."

Daniel nodded. His face had gone so white it was all but translucent. A blue vein Jack had never noticed before crossed Daniel's left temple like a scar, and the circles under his eyes were gray.

"Daniel?"

"You go on," Daniel said. "I'll be right behind you."

Oh, right. Jack was on the verge of telling him just what he thought about that idea when a door slammed somewhere down the hall. Jack started at the noise, but Daniel just blinked.

"Please go, Jack," he said. "I don't want you to see this."

"Goddammit, Daniel--"

Daniel reached up and touched Jack's lips to silence him. His fingers trembled against Jack's mouth. "Don't worry. I'm sure it won't work."

"What won't work?" This was something Jack was supposed to know, but he couldn't put the pieces together fast enough. Music was playing somewhere close by. Jack could feel it echoing through the walls. "This is no damn time for twenty questions. What won't work?"

Daniel took his hand away from Jack's face and held it out to demonstrate how bad his tremors had grown. He let his arm drop. "I even can't get myself around anymore." He smiled, and Jack saw his lips had gone blue. "I'll never be able to support that."

The man at the kitchen doors stood in an attitude of profound listening, a Colt revolver clutched in both hands and raised almost as high as his head. Jim could have told him a thing or two about how useless his stance was. For one thing, there was nothing to hear on the other side of that door. Splintered gasps of human voice, now and again, but everything else was caught in a vortex spinning away to unimaginable destinations. And on this side of the threshold the only thing to hear was Jim Ellison coming up from behind, and he'd missed that too.

Jim felt pretty certain he must be one of the human friends the creature in the cellar had told him about. Neither of them seemed very good with firearms.

"Police," Jim said sharply, putting his own gun to the back of his neck. "Freeze."

The man started and then, to his credit, froze.

"Drop your weapon."

Not so quick to comply this time.

"Drop your weapon," Jim repeated. "I'm way the hell out of my jurisdiction, so I'd really rather not shoot you."

Another long moment passed, and then at last the man lowered his weapon. "Yes," he said faintly. British. He let the revolver drop to the floor. "I'd hate to cause unnecessary paperwork."

Then at a deadly pace
It came from outer space
And this is how the message ran...

Science Fiction/Double Feature (O'Brien: 1974)

There had been something alive on P3X-636 after all.

And now the NID was using ... magic. Or, something. Old musicals and an avant-gard play to transport this unknown alien to earth.

Well, obviously, Sam thought. Why hadn't she figured it out for herself?

"Major Davis," she said gently, and placed the back of her hand against his forehead to check for fever. "I think you're going into shock."

At that, the wounded civilian Davis had apparently taken into his confidence without a second's thought for security concerns snapped, "Lady, the whole fucking world's going into shock, or hadn't you noticed?" He gestured furiously behind himself, towards the maelstrom in the center of the room, and his hand and arm seemed to disappear into the void. His head whipped around in frustration, and as time stuttered, Sam saw his face frozen in a thousand individual snapshots. "You've got to stop the music."

So, all right. Jack had found himself in conversations like this before with Daniel. He knew how they worked. No point in continuing the discussion. Not even dragging the man along by the scruff of the neck would help. The best he could hope for was that Daniel would finally notice him, because not once in all this time had Jack ever won the argument. The best he'd ever done was to make Daniel see him, Jack O'Neill, standing here at his side.

Lying at his side, now, but the principle was the same. He put his hand on the back of Daniel's head, drew him forward and kissed his face. "I've got another idea," he told Daniel calmly, even though the music in the hall seemed to be getting louder. "How about you and me blow this joint together?"

Then without waiting for Daniel to answer he got out of bed, pulled on his pants and and tucked in his shirt before turning back. Daniel still lay on his side, watching Jack with shadowed eyes. "Or how does dinner sound? We could get Thai this time. It sounds good, really."

Jack," he said, his voice ominously gentle.

Jack quickly turned his back on Daniel again and got busy looking for some clothes , raising his voice to drown out anything else Daniel might be planning to say. "Or we could go back to Gunn's chili dog place. Good food. I'd probably need to skip the extra onions and jalapenos this time --" He finally found Daniel's suitcase half-kicked into the coat closet and snapped open the latches, only to find it packed full of books. "All right, I give up. Where the hell did you put your clothes?"

No doubt about it -- the music in the corridor was definitely getting louder.

"Jack," Daniel said again. "You know it doesn't matter now."

Right.

Jack stomped back to the bed and pulled Daniel up. He yanked the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders, while Daniel tolerated the manhandling without comment or complaint. "If naked you came, then naked's the way you'll leave. Come on."

"Never knew you were such a philosopher," Daniel finally said. "Oh, wait. Yes, I did."

That spark of Daniel gave Jack new hope. "And up we go," he said, his arm tightening around Daniel's ribs as he tried to hoist him to his feet.

Daniel immediately fainted dead away, slipping from Jack's arms to sprawl across the floor in a graceless muddle of bared limbs and tangled bedclothes.

Jim pushed the stranger against the wall and held him with the gun at the back of his neck as he patted him down, relieving him of a hunting knife, brass knuckles, a switchblade tucked into his sock and a brace of smooth wooden stakes under his jacket.

"We really don't have time for this," the stronger protested.

"No," Jim agreed, "we don't. Can you point Ethan Rayne out to me?"

"Why do you want him?"

"Your friend in the wine cellar seems to think he's the best chance we have to stop this."

"Is Angel all right?"

"Angel?"

"Dammit, man --"

"He has four bullets in him," Jim said. "But I didn't put them there, and I gather they're not necessarily that much of a problem for him." He handed back the weapons. The switchblade, the hunting knife. The brass knuckles and the stakes. He took back his private armory from Jim with raised eyebrows and a faint sense of vindication which Jim didn't have time to begrudge him. Besides, he probably thought Jim couldn't read his expression by flashlight.

He reached for his Colt, but Jim picked it up it first and emptied the bullets into his hand before giving him the gun.

"I need that," he complained.

"For the last time, can you point out Ethan Rayne to me?"

"Yes, already. I'm Wyndam-Pryce by the way, not that you asked. "

"I'll get the spelling later. And one gun between us is plenty. I'm a better shot than you."

"You can't possibly know that."

"Yes," Jim said, and turned off Wesley's flashlight. "Actually I do."

"Oh, hell," Jack muttered. The record playing in the room down the hall began to skip as he dropped to his knees beside Daniel and lifted his head. Daniel blinked up at him. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself. Any chance you can get up and walk out here?"

"Sorry." Daniel managed a quick smile. His breathing was quick and shallow, his skin cold to the touch even though he was sweating. Jack helped him sit up, and that minimal effort made Daniel begin to shake. Jack tucked the sheet around him as he pondered their options. He could carry Daniel a short distance if he had to, but all the way out of the building? No. He couldn't trust their lives to his aging knees and back.

Wait a minute. Of course. They were in the Hyperion after all. "Angel and Wesley must be here somewhere. We'll get them to help."

Daniel shook his head. "They're not here. No one's here but us."

"What do you mean they're not here? Half of Los Angeles is here between the NID and those actors and Blair Sandburg and --"

"No," Daniel said. "We're not in the Hyperion."

"Then where in the name of God are we?"

"I'm not sure." Daniel scrunched up his face in concentration. "But I think Ethan Rayne opened a portal from '636 and we're ... I'm not entirely sure. I think we're just sort of hanging around in the vestibule."

"What, like a couple of cosmic doormen?"

Another faint, pained smile. "Sort of."

"Well that makes it simpler, right? Because neither one of are are gonna be ushering anything through to earth."

Daniel nodded.

"What?" Jack was instantly suspicious again. "There's something you're not telling me. What's going on?'

"You should go, Jack."

"I'm not, so deal with it."

"Look at the way our minds have constructed this -- this place. Not like a foyer, and I'm not dressed like a doorman either." He let the sheet fall open, as though Jack didn't already know he was naked as an egg underneath. "I think the Revenuers' sleeping god will try to take corporeal form and reach earth though an, ah, assignation."

"A what?" Jack demanded, even though he knew perfectly well what Daniel had said. "All right, that's it. We're out of here." He got up, intending to pull Daniel over his shoulder by brute force if necessary.

Daniel fought him. "It's too late," he panted, and with an icy horror in his gut, Jack turned to see the shadow moving restlessly back and forth under the closed door.

"She certainly can," Ethel Merman sang again and again. "She certainly can. She certainly can."

Sam felt as though she were trying to swim against a powerful tide. Sounds and memories beat at her. Visions, nightmares and dreams. Things that had never happened. Things she would never forget. She saw Daniel offering himself as a host, and the Jaffa pulling him forward as he sacrificed his very existence to be with Sha'uri. She saw Teal'c at Cor-ai, facing his own staff weapon in Hannos' hands. Jack shouted in furious protest and Daniel was talking frantically about mitigating circumstances and judicial mercy. She heard the staff weapon fire and knew the moment Teal'c died by the way Daniel's face crumpled, all his words gone to dust.

Sam shook herself free of the stench of burnt flesh and the lingering sound of Jack's single, hoarse sob, and saw the lobby of the Hyperion once more. The flames on the candles didn't flicker. Jack and Daniel were pinned against a marble column, the upper half of Daniel's face covered with a black cloth. Jack's leather jacket was ripped and stained red, and Sam saw a drop of blood suspended motionless three feet above a pool of red on the floor. Music came from a pair of bookcase speakers hanging above Jack and Daniel's pinioned hands, and Sam could see the sound waves caught mid-ripple across their white, intertwined fingers.

She managed another step before she heard Cassandra's frightened voice calling for her as she swung the steel doors shut at the base of the missile silo. Everything that was human screamed for her to go back, to try to contain the explosion by holding Cassie in the circle of her arms, but something more than her humanity wouldn't let her return. This is what the war had asked of her. To deny everything she was in the name of the greater good as she lay supine under Bynarr, the host's body heaving against Rosha, and though Jolinar longed to retreat, she stayed close and bore the violation with her.

Until Sam managed another step and once more saw Jack and Daniel's interlaced fingers and the sound waves moving across their hands like sunlight on the water.

The door flew open behind the agent who held down Blair on the desk, the muzzle of his gun pinching his ear against his skull. Blair couldn't see the open door, but he felt the gossamer boundaries of the universe flapping madly in its wake. Around the curtains of existence was a glimpse of the beach unmarred by footsteps, and beyond that were ruins unfathomably ancient before Earth's sun had begun to burn. A shadow moved massively across the shattered landscape as a woman's voice said, "The king has opened his tattered mantle."

"Police," Jim said. "Put it down slow."

Blair's heart began to thump so hard he knew the man holding him down must be able to feel it. The pressure against his ear suddenly eased as his captor hefted the weapon and squeezed off a shot.

Before the bullet left the chamber Blair had already flung himself upwards, clawing at existence with both hands. In a series of snaps like cheap plastic shower curtain rings breaking one after another, he ripped down a reality that had abruptly gone from being unpleasant to flatly, absolutely unacceptable.

Teal'c burst into Amaunet's pavilion, leaving the entrance flanked by the queen's dead Jaffa, and inside found them together. Daniel and Sha'uri were huddled on Amaunet's woven rugs, their arms around one another and the two of them quaking like the aspen trees O'Neill had shown Teal'c in the mountains northwest of Colorado Springs. Sha'uri beamed, dazzled with triumph and happiness, while Daniel's tears were still wet on his face, his forehead red from Amaunet's hand device.

Faced with the imminent death of her beloved first husband, Sha'uri must have been able to overcome the influence of the queen she carried within her. Such things were not unprecedented, though it had been foolhardy of Daniel to trust his life to Sha'uri's ability to defy the symbiote. Teal'c clasped her upper arm, Amaunet's gaudy gold sleeve slick to the point of oiliness under his hand.

"Teal'c," Daniel said in a hoarse voice. "It's all right. We're all right."

Sha'uri made no attempt to free her arm. "Teal'c," she said simply, her pronunciation better than Daniel's had ever been. Teal'c wondered, distantly, if that had been a calculated insult all along, just like Daniel's refusal to pronounce the diphthong in the world goa'uld.

Like so many things, he and Daniel Jackson had never spoken of it.

With a shake of his forearm, he flung Sha'uri down in a corner of opulent pavilion and leveled his staff weapon, making it a clean kill despite Daniel's scream. She had hardly deserved so honorable a death for defying her god.

Then Teal'c turned to Daniel.

Jack put himself between the door and Daniel, for all the good it did. The wood screamed under unimaginable pressure, not splintering but bending inward like rubber and a stench like sulfur, and then it was gone and something was in the room with them. Jack saw wings and heard a voice saying, "The king has opened his tattered mantle," as Daniel's body arched into the maelstrom.

A face swam up in front of Sam, wide-eyed with ecstasy. "It's glorious," he said, his words slipping away into the cacophony of music. "Glorious!" There was blood on his hands, on his face, and it was glorious, at least for instant, because if there was one thing Sam understood, it was that raw energy was the most beautiful thing in the universe, and for once in her life, she was allowed to experience it without the mediation of numbers, which were beautiful in their own right, but nothing like this.

Behind her, something popped like a gunshot.

The blood-stained man spun around, a curse on his lips. Somewhere, someone was talking about a tattered king, but what had been inevitable a moment before now seemed only one possible outcome among many. The destructive power of the universe was beautiful, but given the choice, living was even better. She spotted the portable CD player on the settee and grabbed it with both hands to send it smashing to the floor.

Sound splintered into a thousand glittering fragments.

Daniel fought briefly, but his grief and despair made him weak, and in the end, he couldn't stop Teal'c, who proceeded to write the consequences of Daniel Jackson's sins large upon his body. He deserved death but Teal'c was merciful, and when he was sated he pushed Daniel's face to the rug and told him to kiss the ground where his gods and masters had trod.

As Teal'c rose to his feet Amaunet's pavilion spun around him and fell to pieces, and he was back in the hotel lobby where a man's voice was reciting, "I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign." The delivery was stilted, stresses falling on the wrong syllables and words running together until Teal'c barely recognized the language as English. Not that he was paying very much attention. His head and his heart were burning with a shame so fierce he thought it might consume him whole.

It was a dream. An hallucination. He had never attacked Daniel Jackson. He had killed Sha'uri only to save his life, and he would have made any restitution Daniel had ever asked of him. That was the only truth. He could not, he would not have acted any other way. That he could see such things at all only showed how perverse the NID's attempt to raise the sleeping god truly was.

His head came up as the woman he'd been sent to find began to speak, her words breaking in the wrong places, and the veneer of existence crackling along with her voice like ice melting on a frozen lake, "The king has opened his tattered mantle."

For a long moment, still dazed, his soul battered by his vision, Teal'c could not remember the name Major Davis had given him, and was afraid he'd have to break her neck to stop her.

"There's naught. But Christ. To --"

"Cordelia Chase," Teal'c bellowed, rage suddenly tearing the words from his throat. He would be a pawn to blasphemers no longer. He would not suffer these perversions of his honor, nor would he tolerate a universe where all that he held dear could be cast aside so lightly.

"Be SILENT!"

The end of sound was shattering. Teal'c fell, dashed to the ground by the weight of silence. All the candles winked out, and in the profound darkness Teal'c was aware of nothing but the entire planet tumbling blind and headlong through space.

"Excuse me," Cordelia said, finally breaking character when it became clear that no one else was going to do anything. "We are in the middle of a dress rehersal here. Could somebody please get the lights?"

"They will be very curious to know the tragedy -- they of the outside world who write books and print millions of newspapers, but I will write no more, and the father confessor will seal my last words with the seal of sanctity when his holy office is done."

Robert W. Chambers, "The Yellow Sign"

Nine hours later when Blair made it to the balcony to watch the sun rise, he found someone else had beat him there . He almost turned back, but it had been such a struggle climbing the stairs in the first place, especially the way his head was pounding, that he went out anyway. The pre-dawn air was warm and sooty, and the stars had vanished from the night sky. The other man didn't say anything until Blair was practically next to him, and then he spread out his hand, gesturing toward the glow on the eastern horizon. "I don't think that's really the sun coming up," he said quietly. "I think those are the fires still burning from last night."

"Oh," Blair said. He hadn't known about the fires.

"I rather dread dawn," the stranger continued. "Even though I can't see it, I can almost feel how much the city's changed. God knows how many buildings have been left standing."

Jim had been able to feel it, too. He had been gone for hours now with Teal'c and Major Carter, and though he'd been reluctant to leave, he couldn't stay. Blair hadn't asked him to. Not when Jim could hear the moans of the trapped, the wounded and the dying all around them. Right now, other people needed Jim more. In the meantime, though, his separation from Jim ached like a bone-deep bruise. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce," the stranger suddenly announced, and stuck out his hand. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced."

Blair shook. This was the whole point of manners, after all. Useful little rituals to get you through the awkward moments. Something to do with your hands and your mind to reduce the possibility of going absolutely batshit in the interstices. "Blair Sandburg."

"I know," Wesley said. "Shouldn't you be resting?"

"I'm fine," Blair snapped more sharply than he'd intended. The point of coming up here had been to get away from all the people who all seemed to know more about him than he did about them. But even as he answered, his head began to spin and he had to lean hard against the balustrade.

"Take it easy," Wesley said in his precise voice. More Oxford don or BBC commentator? Blair wondered woozily as Wesley took his arm and eased him down.

The roofline dipped and swirled, but the world underneath, the one that really mattered, was reassuringly solid and stationary under his butt. "Are you all right?" Wesley asked. "Do I need to get help?"

"I'm fine." Blair propped his elbows on his knees and covered his eyes with both hands.

"Forgive me, but you don't appear to be fine."

"Just tired," Blair didn't raise his head. "I don't remember the last time I slept."

"All the more reason for you to rest now. Let me help you downstairs."

It wasn't worth arguing about. "Just give me a minute."

A siren began to scream several blocks away, making them both flinch. Blair thought about Jim out there, just as tired as he was, dealing with the noise and the chaos without him.

"Has Dr. Jackson woken up yet?"

Blair raised his head. The sky was getting lighter. "No. He should be in a hospital."

"So should Gunn. Should Jack. So should you. How did you get dragged into all this anyway? You're an anthropology professor in Cascade, Washington, is that correct? And Jim's a police officer. If there's some connection with Ethan Rayne and a rogue branch of U.S. military intelligence, I'm afraid I can't see it."

Blair snorted. "It's a mystery to me as well."

"You've worked with Jack O'Neill and Dr. Jackson before now, I think Jack said."

Blair didn't disagree, even though "worked with" made it sound like that nightmare on Christmas day had been somehow voluntary on his part.

"But you're not Air Force."

Blair could almost grin at that. "Do I look Air Force to you, man?"

"I suppose not. Jim, though --"

"Special Forces. But it's been years, now."

"Ah."

Starlings had begun to congregate along the roofline, black against a graying sky.

"Dr. Jackson is a brilliant man," Wesley said abruptly. "One of the lights of his generation. I wish we had been able to meet under less trying circumstances." A silence. "I pray he's going to be all right."

Blair thought about the expression on Colonel O'Neill's face as they'd laid Daniel Jackson out by candlelight. Daniel had looked like a corpse, but Jack was the one with a face of stone. Not even a flicker in those dark eyes.

What about you?" Blair said to change the subject. "How did you end up a part of all this? Do you live here?"

"I only work here. My apartment's out in Silverlake. If it's still standing, that is." At that, Wesley got up and turned around to look over the balustrade again. "Oh," he said softly.

Blair got to his feet more slowly, but as careful as he was, the back of his head began to pound so badly he let his arms rest on the balustrade and lowered his head again, eyes squeezed shut, until he was certain he wasn't going to puke or faint. Then he opened his eyes carefully and looked out at what remained of North Hollywood and the rest of Los Angeles by the gray light of a very late dawn.

Cordelia waited. One beat. Two beats. Three.

Nothing. Not only did the lights not come up, but no one said a word. She could hear her costar Gregor breathing close to her in quick, scared pants, but the big baby didn't say a word.

Did she have to do everything herself?

She took a moment more to get her sense of direction in the dark, and then took off confidently towards the Hyperion's front door. Before she had gotten very far, though, a single flashlight flickered yellow off to her right, and it became clear why nothing was happening.

The blocking was all screwed up. She'd known Ethan's last-minute decision to cast Daniel Jackson as the Tattered King was a bad idea. No matter how pretty they were, it just never paid to work with amateurs. Daniel was supposed to be standing alone at the central pillar for the final lines of the play, and instead he seemed to be surrounded by the mob at the crucifixion. "For pete's sake you guys--" she began, and then stopped dead.

Ethan?

Ethan Rayne?

For the past six weeks she'd been rehearsing a play produced by Ethan Rayne?

Intellect fought with memory, and then she stormed forward, livid with rage. Daniel's bodyguard Jack Something-or-Other was strung up against the post beside him, and for some reason Ethan was flashing a pocket knife around and hissing threats.

"You cowardly little weasel," Cordelia snapped. "You unspeakable, dried-up old fraud. What did you do? A cheap enchantment? Some bargain basement glamour? Do you know I was halfway in love with you?"

His eyes darted in her direction. "Not now, darling Cordelia," he soothed. "You know how the critics can be."

"Critics? There aren't going to be any critics! I've wasted six weeks of my life learning incomprehensible lines for an idiotic play and the columnist for the Weekly isn't even here, is he?"

A blonde woman who really needed to spend some quality time with her stylist started to block Cordelia's way, but she brushed past her. "You know, summoning demons is one thing, but this is my career you've been messing with."

"One step closer and I'll cut his throat," Ethan said, and that was the final straw, because he wasn't even talking to her.

Cordelia punched him in the nose so hard she felt her knuckles crack.

Make in a circle the character of Klepoth or Kepoth, speak the following eleven words Ador, Klepoth, Chelath, Migaroth, Cabot, Silma, Sirath, Sernchiel, Rotho, Maron, Collen, and continuously thereafter you will hear a pleasant music.

The Key of King Solomon, by Armadel. Book 3: Concerning the Spirits and their Capabilities (Edited and transcribed from British Library manuscript Lans. 1202 by Joseph H. Peterson. )

When the policeman opened the door to the lobby, Wesley thought it was already too late, because Ethan had obviously succeeded in coaxing something damned big most of the way across. This plane felt more fragile than dragonfly wings, flickering and fluttering over a dark, muddy pond. Something incomprehensibly vast lurked in the waters, and at any moment its head would break the surface. He caught a single glimpse of Ethan, and he thought Jack was there in the lobby, too, but the impression was fleeting.

Candlelight danced. Dragonfly wings.

The policeman fell to his knees with a groan. Wesley dropped beside him. "Give me your gun, at least," he said. "I have a chance of stopping this if I can get to Ethan."

Really, though, Wesley didn't much believe that anymore.

The policeman reached out with his free hand and grabbed Wesley's forearm, hard. His eyes were closed. "Help me," he said urgently.

"It would make more sense right now if you would help me."

The policeman bowed his head, his grip tightening on Wesley's forearm to the point of pain. Wesley thought he said, "The sea's getting in," but that made no sense, and besides, it was hard to understand him over the howling maelstrom. From time to time Wesley thought he heard lines from Cordelia's play, too, but they were nothing like his rehearsals with her. Now they sounded like a dirge for the entire universe.

"Let me go," Wesley said, trying harder to pull free. "Please. You've got to let me try."

The policeman finally raised his head. His eyes opened. "Chief," he breathed. Suddenly he released Wesley and stumbled to his feet, backing up until he hit the front desk. Wesley looked to the center of the lobby, where there was nothing anymore, just a twist of reality like a bit of lemon peel, and then again at the policeman. With one hand on the desk, then against the wall, he was moving purposefully towards the office. After a moment of indecision Wesley followed. Mostly because he seemed like the only purposeful element left in the world.

The policeman stopped at the closed door, and in the flickering light Wesley saw him poised with his gun held upright like the hero of some American cops-and-robbers TV show.

Then he smashed in the door.

A lantern was burning in the office, and compared to the chaos behind them in the lobby, the room looked like a warm, golden cave. Two men were bent over the desk, half-entwined like wrestlers or lovers, and the policeman said, "Police, freeze," just the way he'd said it to Wesley. Cordelia's voice came floating through the whirlwind, and it sounded like she'd finally gotten those lines about the tattered king right for the first time.

The policeman staggered, crying out in pain at the same time Wesley heard the gunshot.

Then something changed.

There was a ripple across the already-battered remnants of this plane. Cordy's voice faltered. Wesley had an instant to realize the other sounds in dark harmony with her had been an Irving Berlin song, for God's sake, before they ceased, too. The bullet had left the gun, but it hadn't struck the policeman after all. He hadn't stumbled or shouted in pain.

Then the lantern winked out.

"Hey, it's all right, I've got his gun," said one of the two men from within the office. "Jim, it's OK, don't shoot."

A muttered exclamation, and then the flat sound of flesh against flesh. "Stop it," said the same voice. "It's over, man. I'm all right."

Everything stopped. Not just the sound of the fight. Everything. Wesley turned around slowly. The lobby was dark and silent, and nothing was trying to break through.

Almost nothing. Wesley turned back slowly, eyes straining for the faintest glimmer of light. He had felt something in this room, just for an instant. Something powerful enough to deflect an entity so vast it would have ruptured reality.

Something faster than a speeding bullet, too, he thought, with an insane urge to laugh.

A light finally came on from somewhere behind him in the lobby. He heard Cordy complaining violently, but he couldn't look away yet. He had to know what he had sensed.

In the dim light he saw one man unconscious on the floor. There were two others beside him. The policeman -- Jim -- was holding another man whose long hair fell in his face. Jim's arm was around his shoulders, his other hand on the back of his neck, pulling him forward to tuck his face against his shoulder. Petting his hair. "Chief," Jim said. "Blair."

"I'm OK."

"You're bleeding," Jim said, halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Jesus, how many times did you let them wack you on the head?"

"Not my idea." A long silence. "Aw, man, Jim. Is the world still here?"

Jack came up fighting. He swung low, hoping to catch his assailant under the ribs.

Assuming it even had ribs.

A hand caught his fist to still the blow, and Carter told him sharply, "Stop it, sir. It's us. You're safe."

Jack's eyes flew open, but he couldn't see a damn thing. Just white lights in the darkness. "Daniel," he said.

"Don't fight me," Carter replied, which seemed a bizarre non sequitur to Jack. "You've been stabbed. You need medical attention."

"I'm fine," Jack muttered, trying to pull away. "Where's Daniel? That thing--" But the words wouldn't come. He couldn't even remember what he'd seen. When he tried to grasp the memory he saw instead carved figures in the moonlight, and a sound escaped him that must have sounded an awful lot like wailing, because Carter shushed him like a child and then called for Teal'c.

"I can't hold him. Can you--"

"Ease up, I got 'im." Jack recognized that voice. Wesley's friend. The black kid who'd wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. Strong arms wrapped themselves around his chest, and Carter let his hands go. Jack felt himself pulled backwards, and his weight came down on one ankle. He felt a twinge of pain and winced, expecting it to get much worse, but it didn't.

"Gunn," he said. "Is Daniel here? Can you see him?"

"Your man's right here." He eased Jack into a chair and released him. "Open your eyes and see for yourself."

Jack blinked, and for a moment he saw figures moving in the unsteady light. Teal'c had scooped Daniel up in his arms like a gangly, long-legged child. Then Carter turned her flashlight on Jack, and the glimpse was lost again in a blinding wash of light. Teal'c and Carter are here, he finally thought. "Report, Major," he whispered.

"Yes, sir," she said, even as she pulled his jacket off his shoulders and pushed up his shirt. "The hostiles appear to have fled or been contained. Assessing casualties now. My god, sir."

Jack tried to bat her hands away. "Not the first time you seen my abs, Major."

She ran the side of her hand along his belly, then under his rib cage. "You were stabbed, but I can't find the wound. There's blood but no entry wound."

"There won't be one." At that, Jack pushed aside Carter's flashlight and squinted upwards at the speaker. Paul Davis looked like hell, swaying on his feet, his white shirt splotched with blood, but still a damned sight better than the last time Jack had seen him. "I don't have a bullet in me anymore either."

"Colonel, Major Davis, begging your pardon," Carter protested, "but I saw--"

"We all seen a lotta shit tonight," Gunn said. "Not all of it came true."

"You and Teal'c all right?" Jack asked.

"Fine, sir."

"Ethan Rayne?"

Carter swung the flashlight around. Rayne was sitting on the floor with his hands cuffed together, trying to stifle a bloody nose with a white handkerchief. He glared balefully up at the light. "You think this changes anything?" he asked in a stuffed-up voice. "Do you even begin to understand what Dr. Jackson was trying to achieve?"

"Can we get him out of here?" Jack said wearily, and Teal'c hoisted the man to his feet by the scruff of his neck.

"With great pleasure."

"No religion, no magic," Ethan insisted as Teal'c hauled him away. "Just the leftover bits and pieces of aliens who never cared that mankind even existed in the first place. Who's going to hear your bedtime prayers tonight, Colonel Jack?"

"You will be silent," Teal'c said calmly. "Or I will allow Ms. Chase to strike you again."

"I appreciate the offer," Cordelia muttered. She was sitting on an ottoman, her knees together and her feet apart, the nearest thing to a graceless pose Jack had ever seen from her, shaking her right hand irritably. "But I think I broke a couple of fingers the first time."

"Help me up," Jack said, and this time Carter took one side and Gunn the other, and they walked him a few steps to the couch where Teal'c had laid Daniel to rest. Teal'c or someone had removed the blindfold, and Daniel's eyes were closed, his face peaceful in the stark white glare of Carter's flashlight. Jack sat down at the head of the sofa and felt for the pulse in Daniel's throat. His chest rose and fell in slow, regular breaths.

"He seems to be sleeping," Carter said. "That's probably the best thing for him right now."

Sleeping.

Jack thought about Daniel alone in one of the upstairs guest rooms, the bedclothes pulled up to his shoulder while someone played Irving Berlin songs in a room down the corridor.

He was waiting for Jack. And Jack would never get there now, because he was trapped here, on the other side of sleep.

He patted Daniel's cheek. "Come on, Danny-boy. Up and at 'em."

Daniel slumbered on, and Jack remembered moonlight on stone. The carvings moved, ponderous and inexorable while the gibbous moon sank beyond the cliffs, and God damn Ethan Rayne to the seventh level of hell, because no, Jack didn't know who he would be praying to after tonight. Especially if Daniel didn't wake up soon. He lowered his head until his lips almost brushed Daniel's brow and told him, "Time to come back now. Coffee's on and everything." Brushing Daniel's hair back, he touched the backs of his fingers to Daniel's temple, where he could feel the heavy, slow beat of his pulse. "Seriously, Daniel," he whispered. "You're killing me here."

"So do you think we'll be able to charge the federal government for all this?"

"Right, girl," Gunn snorted. "Like the government is ever gonna admit any of this happened in the first place."

"Like they can just deny it? With power out all over the city?"

"Yeah? Ask the feds what they know about deliberately engineering the AIDS virus and see what the government can deny--" Gunn broke off mid-rant, hissing in pain. "Would you watch what you're doing?"

"It's supposed to hurt," Cordelia informed him. She was washing the long cut on his chest with hydrogen peroxide, dabbing gauze left-handed while she soaked the bruised knuckles on her right hand in a bowl of ice water. "That means it's working." By the light of the kerosene lantern the dried blood on Gunn's chest looked glossy and wet.

"Almost got it," Wesley said as Angel groaned aloud. "Steady --" Another groan, and then a clink as Wesley dropped the third bullet onto a plate. Angel spat out the rolled-up wash cloth he'd been biting on.

"All right?"

Angel panted harshly and rolled his eyes up to regard Wesley. "You sure you're not in training for the Watchers' Feast?"

"The Watchers have a feast?" Cordelia asked. "How come Giles never gets invited?"

Wesley laid down the forceps and picked up the scalpel again. "Last one. Are you ready?"

"Just give me -- a minute here."

"The skin's already growing back over the bullet hole," Wesley reminded him severely. "It'll be worse the longer you wait."

"Not asking for all night," Angel snapped. "Just long enough to catch my breath."

"That won't make it any easier," Wesley answered, but his voice was gentler. He put his hand on Angel's shoulder. "By the way. Thank you for saving my life. I wouldn't have survived that many bullets in my stomach."

Angel grumbled something and looked away.

"What?"

"I owed you," Angel repeated quickly, not looking up at Wes. "Just glad I was there."

"I am too. And you don't owe me anything."

"Seriously," Cordelia said. "So we know Jack works for the Air Force, right? So we'll be sending them an invoice. And the other guys were NID? They are definitely getting a bill for facilities rental. Not to mention medical expenses. What about that cop from Washington? Think we could get away with billing his precinct too?"

"His name's Jim," Wesley said. "And I still don't understand why he was here in the first place. As far as I can tell, Colonel O'Neill could practically have his pick of Air Force personnel for this -- whatever it was. This mission. Why involve a police detective from Cascade?"

"He could see in the dark," Angel said.

"No, it's not the cop," Gunn said. "It's the Sandburg guy with him. You folks weren't there, but Rayne was practically pissing himself, he got so excited when the NID brought Sandburg in. Going on and on about how he's some kind of heavy duty mojo man."

"Did he really?" Wesley said thoughtfully. "That almost makes sense. You know, I felt something ... I think Jack must have called Blair Sandburg, not that detective at all. I suppose Jim was just here as his bodyguard."

"Really," Angel tried again. "He could see in the dark. Pitch black, and he knew I was there."

"Put this back in your mouth," Wesley said, and proceeded to push the wadded-up cloth between Angel's teeth. "I want to finish up here and check on our guests. Perhaps Dr. Jackson has woken up by now."

"So should I send Blair Sandburg's invoice to his home address?" Cordy mused. "Or do you think Jim handles his front office, too?"

And we read of Medea.
She spake three words, which caus'd sweet sleep at will,
The troubled Sea, the raging Waves stand still.

Three Books of Occult Philosopy (Agrippa, Translation by J.F.:1651)

"I was working on my own," Agent Katz repeated mildly. "The NID will confirm my letter of resignation has been on file for weeks."

"Yes, I'm sure they will," Paul Davis said, aggravated that he couldn't be nearly as calm as the agent. He was shaky with exhaustion, his chest ached with the memory of Katz's bullet, and he still had a stomach ache from that bad falafel dinner in Cascade. Surely it was more than a little unfair that fried chick peas had followed him past the end of the world. "And all the other agents who were here tonight? I take it they all have the same letter on file?"

"I don't see any other agents." Katz made a show of looking around the office. He was handcuffed to the chair with two pairs of the plastic cuffs they'd found him carrying. Detective Ellison had taken charge of his weapon and sealed it in a plastic grocery bag from the kitchen.

"We'll find your confederates. One of them will talk, whether you do or not."

Katz snorted. "You're wasting your time, Major. I was working alone."

"And Mr. Rayne?"

""The man had his own agenda."

"And that would have been what, exactly?"

Katz shrugged. "You'd have to ask him."

"What was yours?"

Paul didn't really expect an answer to that either, but after a long moment a subtle, ugly smile twisted the corner of Agent Katz's mouth. It was the same look he'd had on his face when he'd shot Paul at point blank range.

Paul wished he was the sort of person who wouldn't have hesitated to tip Katz's chair over backwards right about now.

"I'm a patriot and a soldier," the agent said at last. "When I saw the safety of this country -- of this planet --being compromised, I was honor-bound to take what steps I could to neutralize the threat."

"And you did this under the supervision of your commanding officers?"

"We've already covered this, Major. Losing our concentration, are we?"

This was why he was a diplomat, not an interrogator, Paul thought tiredly. Every taunt from Katz went zinging straight home, until Paul wanted to shoot the man with his own gun, or maybe go stand outside and cry a little bit. Mostly, though, he wanted to find a quiet corner somewhere and sleep without dreams and nightmares until dawn. The hapless actors in Ethan Rayne's play had all found bedrooms upstairs hours ago. The bare thought of laying his head down on something soft made him sway slightly in sheer exhaustion, and he sat on the edge of the desk before he fell over. "And what was this dire threat again?"

"There are none so blind," Katz murmured, still smiling.

"Fine," Paul said. "It doesn't matter whether you tell me anything or not. Obviously this operation has been in the works for months, probably ever since Dr. Jackson rejoined the SGC. The NID will have generated a paper trail a mile wide since January. They'll try to eradicate everything--I presume that's happening right now-- but this is the government. Something will slip through, and I intend to make it my business to find it. Overhead for Ethan Rayne's theater rental. Air fare to Los Angeles. Long distance phone bills. Reimbursement for the Chinese takeout someone got while surveilling Dr. Jackson's apartment. Something."

And to Paul's weary astonishment, that actually made an impression of some sort on the otherwise unflappable agent. His face darkening he said, "I really don't understand you, Major. You've actually worked with Dr. Jackson, and still you can't see who he is."

"Dr. Jackson is the archaeologist who opened the stargate. Is there something I'm missing?"

"His wife was a goa'uld. His stepson is another. According to Jackson himself, he had a vision in which the entire racial memory of the goa'uld was revealed to him. To say his loyalties are divided is an understatement. Bottom line, though, he's a diagnosed schizophrenic who should have been institutionalized with his grandfather as soon as Colonel O'Neill dragged him back from Abydos. What I can't understand is why in god's name they let him out the first time."

Paul stood up. To his surprise, he really did feel calm now. He thought it was a shame that Teal'c wasn't here to tear Katz's head from his shoulders, but maybe that was just as well.

"You're talking about the man who saved my life, Agent, after you tried to take it. I'm glad to be able to say that I do know who's going to be locked up soon, and it won't be Dr. Jackson."

"You have no right to hold me like this. You'll be the one up on charges for kidnapping and illegal imprisonment."

"Have your attorney call me," Paul said, before closing the door behind him. "Maybe we can do lunch."

Jack had tried to sleep. He'd even nodded off a few times during the night, curled up tightly around Daniel as if mere physical proximity would be enough to grant him entry once again to Daniel's dreams. So far, it hadn't been, and ever since dawn Jack been sitting awake by the bed in a guest room that reminded him so strongly of his earlier dreams that he'd been reluctant to have Daniel here at all, though the privacy of the room eventually won out over his fears.

A few hours ago he'd pulled back the curtains and opened all the windows to let in the sounds and smells of the morning after. Two of the apartment building across the street had collapsed. Timbers and masonry sprawled across the street, and it looked as though Angel's car had probably been caught in the wreckage. Jack wondered if Angel had noticed yet. No emergency personnel had shown up, and he assumed if anyone still living were trapped in the rubble, Ellison would have directed Teal'c and Carter there first. Knots of people moved in slow, dazed patterns up and down the street, trying to salvage their belongs from the wreckage or just wandering in shock, and sirens still wailed at random intervals in the distance. After a while Jack stopped watching and came back to sit by the bed.

"So anyway," he continued, reaching for Daniel's limp hand across the bedclothes and gripping it tightly. "It's a little after eleven by now, and I'm starting to notice this nagging headache. It's taken you years, but I think you've finally got me as addicted to that poisonous black brew as you are. So thanks. Thanks a lot. This is another one you owe me."

A knock came at the door and Jack started a little because this room still gave him the heebie jeebies, before pulling himself together and calling, "Come in."

Wesley stuck his head around the door and let himself in. "How's Dr. Jackson?"

What does it look like? Jack thought irritably, but that was hardly fair, so he said, "No change."

To his credit, Wesley didn't proffer any meaningless words of encouragement. He came to the bed and looked down at Daniel, who was snoring softly, his mouth hanging open. Jack didn't release his hand.

"Do you think it may be time to consider medical intervention?"

"If I thought there was a chance in hell we could actually get him treatment, I'd have taken him in hours ago," Jack said. "As it is now, he'd just be layin' on a gurney in the corridor while they took care of people with sucking chest wounds and compound fractures. He's better off here."

Wesley nodded. "I actually came to tell you that half a dozen national guardsmen just showed up and took custody of Agent Katz ."

"The national guard's been mobilized?"

"That's what they said. Angel went ahead and let them take Katz."

"What about Ethan?"

"Oh, I thought you knew. The INS came for him well before sunrise this morning."

Jack laughed bleakly. "The INS."

"They had ID."

"I'm sure they did. Did you get a chance to talk to the guardsmen about the situation? How widespread is the damage?"

"One of them said the power grid for the entire Pacific Coast is down."

"Christ." Jack shook Daniel's hand lightly. "You're missing all the excitement here, Daniel. Sounds like you and Ethan managed to bring down half the country."

Wesley smiled a tight, sad smile, and Jack looked away from him.

"You must be hungry," Wesley said. "I'd be glad to sit with Dr. Jackson if you'd like to stretch your legs, get a bite to eat. Help yourself to anything you find in the kitchen. Oh. You might want to skip the bags of, um, fluid in the refrigerator, but anything else --"

"Don't tell me."

Wesley spread his hands and didn't tell Jack what he'd already guessed.

Jack closed his eyes. You know, once upon a time his world had made a kind of sense, he was almost certain. He just couldn't remember when that might have been.

"Which reminds me," Wesley said. "How's the bite? That vampire last night got a pretty big chunk out of you."

"It's fine." Jack reflexively covered the puckered scar on his neck. "Itches a little is all. Apparently while we were together in that -- in that place , I was busy sucking up Daniel's life force like a vampire myself. Fixed up my ankle, my neck, that spot under my ribs where Ethan stuck a knife in. All just a little sore and achy now. 'Course , it probably cost Daniel his life, but hey, as long as I'm fine, what's the problem?"

"You didn't know what was happening, and you couldn't have stopped it even if you had known."

"Ethan told me exactly what was happening, but once I got there, I didn't remember. Wesley --" Jack hesitated. One part of him couldn't believe he was about to ask this question out loud.

Then again, Wesley had just asked him with a perfectly straight face how a vampire bite was healing. So he probably wasn't in any position to judge other people's loony requests. "Wesley, you know -- stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Magic. Stuff. This craziness like Ethan was doing." Jack gestured in frustration.

"I'm not like Ethan Rayne."

"Right. I didn't mean it like that. But can you get me back into Daniel's dreams like he did?"

Comprehension dawned. "Ah."

"Can you do it?"

Wesley paced the floor. "No. I wouldn't -- I can't perform a spell like that. It's too intimate, too dangerous. I could end up trapping your soul outside your body. I -- No. I'm sorry."

"But it is possible."

"It's possible," Wesley agreed unhappily.

"Then help me find someone who will."

"Jack, I don't think you understand what you're asking."

"What I understand is that Daniel is lurking somewhere inside his own head and either can't or won't come out, so I have to go in there and get him. He kept trying to push me out the door, you know, telling me he'd catch up later, but God, I know the little bastard better than that. He was never intending to follow me at all."

Wesley looked at him for a long time, obviously trying to reach a decision. "There's a young woman in Sunnydale who's shown an enormous aptitude ... but Jack, she's very young, and I don't know how disciplined. It would be a terrible risk for all of you."

"Sunnydale? Just north of here? OK. Let's go. Angel's Plymouth is toast, by the way. Do you have a car?"

"Wait. Wait." Wesley made slow-down motions with both hands. "Let me think a minute. There might be a better way."

Blair knocked on the door with his free hand and then let himself in. He was feeling lost and ridiculous, so he held out the coffee cup like a shield. "Angel made a fresh pot. I thought you could use some."

Colonel O'Neill lifted his head. The light from the open window was behind him, a dull, filtered brightness as the smoke from a hundred fires around the city smothered the sunlight. "Thank you." He released Daniel's hand to stand up and take the cup from Blair. "Hey. You're not looking so hot there. Sit down."

Blair let the man guide him to a chair, although he was thinking that Colonel O'Neill wasn't in such great shape himself. The shadows under his eyes looked like bruises, and there was a definite tremor in the hand that lifted the coffee cup to his lips. He took a long drink and then smiled thinly at Blair. "Didn't realize how much I needed that."

"Yeah," Blair agreed. "Just something about that first sip in the morning after the end of the world."

There was a flicker in Colonel O'Neill's dark eyes. "Looks to me like the world's still here."

"Right." Blair ran his hands back and forth over the tops of his jeans. "Look. Wesley has this crazy idea that I can -- I don't know what the guy's been smoking, but I've gotta tell you, I'm not what he thinks I am. I don't know how to help Daniel. I'm sorry. My honest opinion is that we should try to find a hospital that can give him an MRI. Anything else is just way, way outta my league."

O'Neill nodded. The tight, thin smile returned for an instant. "Yeah. Don't really know what I was thinking myself. Hang around the likes of Wesley and Angel too long and you start to hope everything has some sort of damned magical solution."

"Last night was crazier than I ever want to see again," Blair said. "Knowing that things can get that far out of wack, it's tough to go back to taking the mundane world for granted."

"Yeah. You're right about that. So will you try?"

Blair squeezed his eyes shut. "I just told you--"

"I don't know how to help him," Colonel O'Neill said, his voice raw, like a man trying to hold back tears. Or one who would never be able to shed them. "Please."

So even though Blair knew perfectly well this was crazy and pointless, in the end he toed off his shoes and crawled onto the bed, settling himself into a comfortable half-lotus at the foot of the bed next to Daniel, who lay on his back with his face turned to the side. The diffuse sunlight made him look younger than his years, and to tell the truth, his face was the only peaceful one Blair had seen all day. Maybe they ought to just let him sleep.

But Blair looked at Colonel O'Neill's expression one last time before closing his eyes, and didn't say that out loud.

He tried to clear his mind by focusing on his breathing, since it was the only thing he could think to do, but extraneous thoughts kept pinging around his head. He thought about Jim, somewhere out there in the city, and hoped that everyone he found would be alive and well. He wished he had kissed Jim before letting him leave last night.

He thought about his Monday classes, which he was probably going to miss. Heaven only knew when he and Jim would be able to get back to Cascade. Would Rainier even be open on Monday?

And had the world really come that close to ending? All Blair could remember clearly was that crazed NID agent smashing his ear against his head with the muzzle of his gun. His ear still hurt. He'd kept meaning to take out the earrings, which were probably bent and damaged, but somehow in all his pointless wandering around this morning he'd never gotten around to it.

And knowing Colonel O'Neill was watching him, he didn't want to reach up and fiddle with the earrings now. He tried not to think about it, with the inevitable result that he slowly became completely obsessed with his aching ear. He thought about jagged, twisty little gold wires digging their way crookedly across flesh until he couldn't stand it any more, and simply had to reach up and pull them out. A hand gently touched his own, and without opening his eyes, Blair turned his palm to drop the earrings into Colonel O'Neill's hand. His ear lobe stung sharply for a few moments, and he felt a drop or two of blood, but then the pain began to fade, and with it went his awareness of the rest of his body, from his throbbing head to the slight ache in his hips. He'd been sadly out of practice of late.

Great, he though fuzzily. Now I'm falling asleep, and he felt badly for Colonel O'Neill -- for Jack, the man's name was Jack -- looking for miracles from someone who apparently couldn't even attempt meditation for more than fifteen minutes or so without dozing off

Blair had to admit, though, it was a funny kind of sleep. He was aware of the people outside on the street, their voices reaching him as clearly as if they were here in the room with him. So many frightened, unhappy people, grieving for the loss of their homes, for their loved ones. Still in shock from the night of visions and nightmares.

And he was aware of the sun moving across the sky even though he couldn't see it though the smog and smoke. (And besides, he thought, his eyes were closed.)

He knew when Jim got back to the hotel, hours later, he and Sam Carter and Teal'c all too exhausted to worry about the fragile nature of the universe and unspeakable gods from beyond the stars. So tired that when Wesley told Jim vaguely that Blair was upstairs sitting with Jack and Daniel, Jim accepted it without question and asked if this place had gas water heaters, because he'd been dreaming about a hot shower all day. Blair smiled at that, relieved, and turned around to look down the hill towards the park bench where Daniel sat alone, throwing a tennis ball to a chocolate brown retriever. About damned time, Blair thought to himself , and jogged down the hill to meet him.

"Hey!" he called. "Dr. Jackson! Daniel!"

Daniel gently pried the sopping tennis ball out of the dog's mouth and threw it again for her. She spun out after the ball, her feet kicking up gravel as she tore across the walk. Only then did Daniel look in his direction. "Blair?"

"Of course it's me! Good grief, have you been here all this time? Everyone's out looking for you. Jack's about to go nuts."

The dog came galloping back happily and tried to present the tennis ball to Blair, and when he didn't respond quickly enough, nosed the ball into Daniel's lap instead. "Good girl," Daniel said, though when he tried to take the ball himself, she wrenched her head away and went trotting off with her tail in the air, the ball clamped in her jaws. Blair wondered if any humans ever lived up to her playing-catch standards.

"I've been right here," Daniel finally said. "I didn't know anyone was looking."

"Well, surprise, they are. You ready to go?"

"I don't think so," Daniel said. "Things ... haven't worked out so well. I thought maybe this time-- You know, I'm just going to hang out here for a while. I think Sha'uri will be around soon."

"Who's Sha'uri?"

Daniel turned his face away without answering.

"Daniel? I'm serious. Who's Sha'uri?"

"Tell Jack I'm fine, would you?" Daniel got up and began walking away. Blair scurried to catch up, feeling the cold weight of foreboding in his
chest.

"I don't think he's going to buy that from me. You'd better come tell him yourself."

Daniel raised a hand in dismissal and refused to meet Blair's eye. "Jack worries. It's part of his job."

"Part of his job? Do you even hear yourself? The guy's tearing himself to pieces over you."

Daniel stopped. "Sam and Teal'c love Jack. They love him so much. They'll take care of him, and he'll be all right." He sounded to Blair like he was trying to convince himself. "Just make him believe that I'm OK."

"I can't do that, man. What's up with you? What are you running away from this time?"

"I'm not running," Daniel said. "I'm just not going back."

"What are you talking about, 'not going back'?"

Daniel finally turned. "Would you?"

And at that, the green of the grass on the hill was overrun with twining flowers, and the sky grew angles and corners. They were back in the hotel room with the ghastly carpet and the dark walls, Blair thought, relieved. Apparently they'd been gone for hours because the room was dark, the curtains drawn, and Jack was nowhere to be seen.

Come to think of it, he didn't see Daniel either. Blair turned nervously, beginning to suspect things were not exactly what they seemed, and heard a muffled sound on the other side of the bed. His heart thumping in his chest, he slowly rounded the bed, one reluctant step after another. A table lamp cast a sickly yellow light through the ancient paper shade.

There was nothing on the floor but a wadded bundle of sheets and blankets. Blair let out the breath he'd been holding, just as he noticed the spreading stain on the sheets.

Something within the bundle twitched. A bare foot, streaked with winding black trails like spilled ink, protruded from under the blanket.

For an instant horror froze Blair in his place, but then he dropped to his knees and began to peel back the sheets. His hands shook as he uncovered Daniel's face. "Don't -- don't try to move," he whispered hoarsely. "I'll get help."

Daniel's head turned blindly in the direction of Blair's voice. "Don't tell Jack," he pleaded. There were more black trails running across his face, spilling from his eye sockets like tears. "Don't let him know it was like this."

"Oh my god," Blair had begun rocking involuntarily. "Oh god, Daniel. Just lie still." He pulled the sheet back further and found his body split the length of his spine, and instead of flesh and blood and bone there was nothing but darkness spilling in gouts, pooling amongst the folds of the blankets and then washing blackly across the floor.

He didn't think about what he did next. He simply yanked away the blankets and pulled Daniel into his arms, cradling his body tightly against his own.

"No--" Daniel tried to fight free, but he didn't have the strength.

"Hush," Blair whispered, his hand cupped around the back of Daniel's head. "You fixed up Jack and Major Davis. God, Daniel, you held everything together until Ethan's spell broke. You've got to let me help you now."

Daniel shook his head mutely, but he couldn't fight anymore. "It's all right," Blair said. "I promise, everything's going to be fine." He had no business making a promise like that, but saying the words out loud kept him from panicking when it began to hurt.

The ache bloomed under his breastbone and swept outwards like wings. The pain was the flat void he had seen in his nightmares, and it had turned suddenly, unspeakably intimate. The shock of desecration made him weep. He buried his head against Daniel's shoulder and locked his arms tight around Daniel's ruined back. As emptiness gouged him, Blair began to slough apart, collapsing into the vacuum. He wondered how Daniel had held himself together for so long. This was worse than death, which in Blair's experience was a crowded, complicated affair. This was his soul spitted by nothingness more vast than universes.

Blair howled until his trachea burst like a shotgun barrel, and that was when Daniel pushed him aside and clumsily freed himself.

"Stop," he panted to Blair. "Stop. You'll go too far."

Blair flailed a moment more until he realized he and Daniel were once more on the hillside in the park, sprawled side by side in the grass while the chocolate brown retriever watched them with with big, serious eyes. She still had the tennis ball in her mouth, and drool was running down her jaw.

"What do you say we split the difference?" Daniel whispered hoarsely. "Then maybe we can both go home."

Blair nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and when Daniel reached out his hand, Blair took it and held on tight. Daniel tugged at Blair, and Blair struggled to follow, and when he opened his eyes, he was still sitting in a half lotus at the foot of Daniel's bed. He felt very, very calm, and very, very still and he wondered if he had just died after all. He didn't move for fear the slightest jolt would dislodge his spirit and send him floating to the ceiling.

Daniel's eyes were open, and after a little while Jack reached down and smoothed the tears from his face. "Hey."

Blair didn't hear his response, but Jack whispered, "Yeah, it's me," and then, "Aw, hey, easy." He curled forward to touch his forehead to Daniel's, and then bent down to lay his head over Daniel's heart.

Blair carefully straightened one leg. Encouraged by his failure to immediately begin drifting ceilingward, he crawled off the bed. His toes tingling as the blood started to flow again, he limped to the door. He heard Jack say, "Sandburg," as he put his hand on the doorknob, and he answered automatically, "I'm good, I'm good," before he let himself out.

Wesley was lurking in the corridor, and he hurried up to catch Blair as he stumbled. "Are you all right? What happened?"

"Daniel's here. I'm good. It's all good," He clutched Wesley's forearm with both hands as his knees buckled, and Wesley maneuvered him quickly to the
wall.

"Careful. You need to sit down. Put your head down if you feel like you're going to faint."

Blair didn't argue. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, which was just about the time Jim came bursting out of the stairwell like a madman. "Sandburg! Christ, what the hell are you doing?" He was shirtless and barefoot, still wet from the shower. Blair looked up at him and had to smile.

"Nothing, man. Everything's fine."

Jim probably didn't believe that, but he calmed down at once, crouching beside Blair and reaching his hand out to lay his palm against the side of his head. "What the hell are you up to, Chief?" His voice was terribly gentle. "I heard --"

"Just thinking," Blair said. God, he was tired. He had to concentrate to stay awake long enough to finish his sentences.

"Thinking?"

"This going to the grocery store at six a.m. I'm not sure that's really going to work out for me after all."

Jim stared at him. "No problem," he finally said. His voice cracked, and his eyes were red and smudged-looking. "I told you I could go on Thursdays."

Blair felt relieved enough to cry, too. That six-in-the-morning thing had been nuts. He reached clumsily for Jim, and he came at once, pulling Blair forward and wrapping his arms around his back "That's right, you did tell me," he muttered into Jim's big shoulder. He turned his head and allowed himself to relax against Jim's warm, slightly damp bulk, and it was as good as coming home again. "I remember now. You did."

The last of the blood supplies in the fridge had all spoiled by the end of the second day without electricity. Angel used what was left to fertilize the bird-of-paradise growing in crumbling concrete planters around the fountain, and then went hunting.

He returned a little after midnight, no longer hungry but hardly satisfied, and almost immediately ran into one of his stranded house guests. Jim Ellison was carrying a heaping plate of peanut butter crackers and a mug of powered hot cocoa up the stairs.

"Are those for Blair?" Angel asked.

The first smile Angel had ever seen from the man spread across Ellison's face. "He woke up ravenous a little while ago," he said happily. "Told me if I tried to force-feed him any more chicken soup he'd start growing feathers."

"He's probably safe enough. I don't think there's any more canned soup in the cabinet."

"No." Ellison grimaced. "Look, thanks for letting us eat you out of house and home."

"Don't thank me. I'm pretty sure Cordy's keeping a running tab."

"Jack heard the Red Cross will be opening up food distribution centers by the end of the week. All the canned green beans and five-pound blocks of American cheese we can eat." Ellison suddenly broke off. His nose twitched and he looked sharply at Angel. "Pigeons?"

Angel spread his hands and shrugged.

"How in --"

"Well, actually it's not that hard. Once you find them roosting, you can just scoop them up by the armload."

Jim still looked uncertain. Or maybe a little appalled.

"Oh, believe me," Angel hastened to reassure him. "They make a much better dinner than rats."

Robert W Chambers: "The Yellow Sign" from The King in Yellow (1895)