" Good morning campers, and how is everyone on this fine summers day?"

Sergeant Walter Davis looked up balefully from the complicated diagnostic he was running with the help of Major Samantha Carter and hoped like hell that she would have some sort of smart comeback for Colonel O’Neill. Nothing that could get her in trouble, just something that would wipe that self-satisfied smirk off the Colonel’s face.

His wish was granted.

" As you can obviously see, we’re fine, thank you Colonel," she said with a saccharine smile.

"I returned early from vacation and Walter and I have spent the last couple of hours correlating data between our computers and the different SG teams mission reports, checking to see if there are any discrepancies."

" Oh?" he asked, although Davis could see that he was already beginning to glaze over like he usually did when the Major began to talk technical.

" And?"

" And the results are on your desk." She smiled at him sweetly. "I figured you needed something easy to get you back into the swing of things."

She had him. Davis was almost certain that there was nothing of the kind on the Colonel’s desk, but it served him right for rubbing them up the wrong way.

He just managed to suppress the smile at the panicked look O’Neill gave them, schooling his face into an impassive mask as the gray haired man started to back out of the control booth with a weak smile plastered on his face

" Ah, on my desk, you say?"

Major Carter nodded, her hand lightly resting on Sergeant Davis’s shoulder lest he let anything slip, not that he was likely to. The poor man was shaking so hard with suppressed laughter that she feared he would bust his gut.

" Yes sir," she said innocently. " It’s in a large orange file. You should be able to find it easily enough."

O’Neill’s face was beginning to take on a trapped look.

" Can’t you handle this without me?" he asked desperately.

Carter feigned shock. " Well we could, but you’re our superior officer and we…"

His frantically waving hand cut her off.

" Handle it. Handle it." He straightened himself from the doorway where he had been leaning weakly.

" You’re a big girl, no offence, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t need me for every tiny little thing, right?"

Davis decided to chip in.

" Begging your pardon maam, but the Colonel’s right, and it really is routine stuff." He transferred his gaze to O’Neill. "Would you like me to go fetch the file sir?"

O’Neill’s expression was that of a reprieved man. "Oh yeah. Go."

Davis rose, glad to take the kinks out of his back after all the hours sat in one spot.

" It’s the orange file, the one designated B-20, maam?" he asked, knowing that there was no such file.

Carter nodded, trading a sly smile. "That’s the one."

" Yes maam," Davis said, heading for the cafeteria for a much needed break.

One half of SG1 stared at each other once he had gone.

" So, did you enjoy your weekend?" Carter asked eventually, his assessing gaze making her nervous.

To her relief he transferred his gaze to the gateroom below, apparently forgetting about the orange file.

" It was great Carter," he murmured. " I did nothing but sunbathe and fish. You should have joined us."

" And Daniel and Teal’c?" Carter asked, envying his tan.

" Massive boredom and second degree sunburn. You figure out which is which."

He sighed, perching on the edge of a bank of computers. " For someone who used to live on a hot planet, Daniel sure is sun sensitive," he moaned, making things easy.

" I was wearing a hat," came the outraged voice of Daniel Jackson from the door. " It was the sun’s reflection off of that fishless water that got me, something we didn’t have on Abydos. Remember?"

" What, no sun reflection, no water, or no fish?" Jack asked, deliberately goading the red-faced linguist.

" Why you…"

Daniel’s voice was drowned out by the first chevron on the stargate locking into place, which was just as well for Daniel’s sake, Sam thought, staring down at her computer monitor.

" Offworld activation," she called. " No ID."

"Shall I close the iris?" a breathless Davis asked, racing back into the room and sliding into his seat.

O’Neill simply nodded, watching as the shiny titanium iris shut with a grating sound.

Suddenly Davis relaxed. " SG4 ID sir," he said.

"Open the iris," O’Neill said, staring at the blue event horizon as the iris opened. "A bit late with the ID," he murmured half to himself as the first of SG4 came staggering through the wormhole.

" Close the iris…CLOSE THE IRIS," Major Baker yelled, crumpling face down on the ramp as the last of SG4 came tumbling through.

" Do it," O’Neill snapped, staring intently through the glass at the inert figures. " And get a medical team down here," he added, pushing past Daniel on his way to the gateroom.

The figures were beginning to stir as he pushed through the alert Special Forces soldiers and crouched next to Baker.

" What happened Major?" he asked, reaching for the man, only to freeze in surprised astonishment as the man he had taken for Major Baker rolled over onto his back.

"Tony?" he breathed.

"Hello Jack," Tony Sato hissed malevolently, and opened up with his P90.

Jack O’Neill was a former special operations operative, and years spent fighting the Gou’ald had honed his survival instincts to a fine degree, but there were limits to even his skills. All he could do in the fraction of a second given to him was desperately twist his body away from Sato, and pray.

…

The deep-throated noise of a P 90 on full automatic echoing around the gateroom was so unexpected that the lieutenant guarding the room could only gape in surprise, watching dumbly as Colonel O’Neill spun away, the front of his blue BDU’s blossoming red.

Such was his shock at the unexpected violence perpetrated the leader of SG4, a man he knew well, that he froze. By the time he realized that the man facing him - the rest of his men crowding around him protectively - was not Major Baker and SG4 after all, it was too late.

Luckily, the rest of the people guarding the gate had better sense.

Standing resolutely over the crumpled forms of their two leaders, the gateroom guards opened fire.

They poured streams of bullets at SG4, the stunned men instinctively following the one command that the crumpled gray haired man at their feet had drilled into them again and again - if it looks suspicious and came out of a wormhole, shoot first and ask questions later.

…

"Major!"

Sergeant Davis’s voice came out as a horrified squeak as he watched the man he respected above all else spun around to crash to the gateroom floor.

He turned to her imploringly. "What are they doing…?"

His query was cut short as the glass between control room and the gateroom starred into an opaque eeriness.

"Christ," he yowled, diving for the floor, taking the keyboard with him as he fell.

As sudden as the shock was, he managed to retain his wits, and quickly locked down the stargate, effectively shutting down the SGC from the outside universe.

"Foothold," the strained voice of Major Samantha Carter said, her electronic voice reverberating around the control room and elsewhere, accompanied with red lights, sirens, and the rumbling of doors, as she made sure the SGC was isolated from the rest of earth as well.

"Sam?"

Sam Carter looked up from the keyboard she had appropriated and gave Daniel a thin smile, sighing in relief as the blast doors slid down over the starred glass.

"There is nothing we can do at this time," she said, her heart aching.

He nodded, looking sick.

"Sam," he said quietly. "Jack…"

She nodded. "I saw."

Daniel sank into a chair next to Sergeant Davis.

"And, isolated as we are here in the control room, we can’t do anything," he said bitterly.

She nodded, her fair hair looking macabre in the flashing red lights.

"No," she said simply.

"The special forces are clearing each floor as we speak," Davis said helpfully, crawling into the nearest chair. "They’ll be here shortly, probably via the briefing room."

He pointed a finger up the iron stairs towards the room where all SG units were briefed and debriefed.

"They’ll help him."

The look in Doctor Jackson’s eyes wasn’t too encouraging. Nevertheless, he persevered.

"They’ll be here shortly, sir. Just give it time."

"I saw Jack take a full clip," Daniel said bluntly. "Time is the one thing I believe he doesn’t have."

…

Despite popular belief, it is hard to kill a man.

Okay, a well-aimed bullet to the heart will do the job, the human body unable to sustain its blood flow without the pump, but besides that, there have been cases of human beings taking no less than fifteen bullets, and still surviving.

The impacts by themselves don’t necessarily kill. What does kill, and most effectively, are two things - blood loss, and shock.

If either of those two factors comes into play, the victim is a good as dead, unless he is surrounded by people who have been well trained in what to do in an emergency, like a specially trained group of Special Forces soldiers.

…

"Elevate his right side," a young voice snapped.

Jack vaguely felt something soft being stuffed under his back, making his breathing easier.

"He’s been shot in the lung," the young voice explained. "What I’m attempting to do is stop the blood from draining into the undamaged one."

"Do you know what you’re doing sir?" a scared voice asked.

"Yep," came the confident reply.

"And the chest shot, Sarge?" another voice asked.

"All we can do there is apply pressure and wait for help," the unknown Sergeant said.

"What we can do in the meantime is work on the non-life threatening wounds, like his shoulder, wrist and thigh."

Jack felt hands working on other areas of his body, places he never even knew were hurt.

"His head?" someone asked.

"Leave that," the young voice said. "His skull may be fractured. If you apply direct pressure on a fracture…"

"He looks as if he is gonna die anyway, just like the Loot," another voice said.

" He won’t, not if we work together, Saunders," the Sergeant said angrily. "So stop standing there like a moron and help out."

Full awareness rushed over Jack, making him moan and drag his eyes open, blinking dazedly up at the three SF’s kneeling around him.

For a moment he couldn’t understand why they looked so concerned, then felt the tearing pain deep in his chest, making him cough, which only made him gag, unable to find sufficient air.

"Easy sir, easy."

He felt himself lifted slightly and looked up into the face of a black haired sergeant, a face that was silhouetted by flickering red light.

"Mendez," he said recognizing the young Sergeant. "Foothold." He couldn’t hear the siren that went with the lights, but maybe that was just him.

"Yes sir," the sergeant grinned. "But we got them all."

"Sato?" Jack asked, surprised.

He didn’t think that the guards would have been a match for the well trained ex-Special Operations engineer.

"Sir?’ the sergeant asked.

His apparent confusion sent ice water through Jack’s veins.

"How many people did you get," he whispered urgently.

"Four sir."

"Crap," Jack said, feeling his eyes lose focus. "SG4 has five members."

…

"We have one hell of a situation on our hands people," General Hammond said, glaring round at the heads of all the SG teams currently on world.

"Somehow we have managed to allow a Gou’ald into the SGC and from there onto this planet, a mistake that can have very grave consequences to us all."

"That isn’t quite fair sir," Major Mansfield, SG 17’s commander said. "The Gou’ald in question used to be one of our own, and came in heavily armed, surrounded by Jaffa, also disguised as a SG team.

"They also met heavy resistance sir," Colonel Reynolds, SG 16’s C.O. said.

"They had the element of surprise on their hands," Major Ferretti, SG2’s leader said, trading a sympathetic look with Major Carter. "That is something every soldier in the world, or universe, prays for - that moment of numbed immobility that complete surprise creates. Colonel O’Neill and the gate guards were no exception."

"He also had the shock of coming face to face with Colonel Sato to contend with," Colonel Van Ryn, SG5’s commander said thoughtfully.

"I know him as well as Jack does, and all I can say is, thank God it was he and not me who encountered him, because like O’Neill, I most probably would have frozen for a vital second, and I have no special forces training to fall back on."

"How is he?" General Hammond asked, asking the question they all wanted to hear.

Van Ryn shook his head, changing into the doctor he was, his ice blue eyes somehow managing to look soft as he took in the hunched posture of Major Carter.

"Not good, sir. Fraiser could tell you for sure, but in my opinion, not good at all. He came through the operation okay, but," he shrugged helplessly, "there is only so much we can do."

"What happened to him, sir?" Ferretti asked.

Van Ryn trained his eyes on Ferretti and sighed.

"Massive bloodloss was the main problem we had to face," he said slowly.

"That, coupled with a skull fracture and severe trauma to his chest and lungs, well, the next twenty four hours will be critical."

"The Tok’ra?" Hammond asked.

Carter shook her head. "They’re not responding from their last known address sir."

General Hammond sat back in his chair with a discouraged thump.

"So all we can do now is wait," he said.

Major Carter hung her head. "Yes sir," she whispered.

Carter’s nod was interrupted by a cough from Ferretti.

"Begging your pardon sir, but you can wait. We on the other hand, with your permission, have a slimy cock-sucking no good bastard Gou’ald to find."

His expression was vicious. "And I make no apologies for my language sir."

…

"His name is Chi’tin, Carter said loudly, marveling at how many people could be crowded into the gateroom at any one time. The marines of SG2 had arrived back on base over an hour ago, and were just now sneaking into the back of the room after their medicals, behind SG’s 3, 5, 10, 15, and 16, their expressions just as determined as the others.

"O’Neill was almost dispatched to the afterlife during their encounter," Teal’c rumbled.

"There is valid warning in this statement."

He glared around the room, making more than one soldier cringe and look away from his burning eyes.

"Had Sato, the host, still been in control, Colonel O’Neill would not have been so grievously injured. However, he was not."

"This will still be the case when Chi’tin is finally found. When you encounter the Gou’ald, do not hesitate to shoot to kill, for the man you used to know, the host, has long since ceased to exist."

"Do not use established methods in finding him either," Carter said. "Remember please, that the host used to be a Colonel here in this facility, and as such has a good working knowledge on how we operate."

"So what are we meant to do, Major?" a voice asked.

"Take the advice Colonel O’Neill gave me when he eventually recovered from their first meeting. If you know Sato, don’t be too proud take your second in command’s advice."

"Colonel O’Neill told me to take over leadership of SG1 instantly if we ever met him again, theorizing that it would be the unknown variable of an unfamiliar opponent that would finally bring Sato down."

"A wise decision," General Hammond said, clomping onto the metal ramp in front of his men. He was unaware of the impressive sight he made, silhouetted as he was by the huge stargate.

He assessed the men and women stood before him with paternal pride tinged with sadness, for Colonel O’Neill was not doing well.

"People, we have been given the go ahead by the Pentagon to return Colonel Sato and his Gou’ald symbiote here to the SGC."

His eyes raked the stiff soldiers before him.

"Alive if possible."

Thirty or so faces looked at him in disbelief.

"I agree," Hammond said into the deafening silence. "So your orders are as follows, take him alive if possible. If he proves to be a danger to yourself or your team, dispatch him at once."

He hesitated, aware that the soldiers were hanging on his every word.

"Sato has done enough damage already. As I’m sure you all know by now, Colonel O’Neill was seriously wounded when he came through the gate. The Jaffa who accompanied him killed Lieutenant Masterson outright in the same firefight. Luckily, Masterson’s team managed to kill all the Jaffa without any other serious injury."

"How is the Colonel?" an unknown voice called out.

"Still very critical," Major Carter snapped, hiding her true feelings.

"The best medicine you can give him right now," Daniel said harshly, "is Sato’s head on a stake."

"That’s it, people," Hammond said, looking at the archaeologist curiously.

"Report to Colonel Van Ryn who has your areas assigned to you, and good luck."

Everyone stood to attention with a synchronized crump that shook the gateroom, and then filed out, finally leaving Hammond and the rest of SG1 alone.

General Hammond took a moment to stare at SG1’s archaeologist, taking in his glittering eyes.

"His head on a stake? A bit bloodthirsty, weren’t you, Doctor Jackson?" he asked mildly.

"No General, I wasn’t," Jackson said sadly.

"I was with Jack when he was rushed into the infirmary. If he lives through the night it will be a miracle indeed."

Hammond shut his eyes briefly, offering up a quick prayer.

"The Tok’ra?" he asked desperately.

"They are trying to contact Dad as we speak," Carter said. "The problem is, he is on a mission, and maintaining radio silence.

"There’s a healing device at Ellis. Can you do anything with that?"

Carter looked forlorn. "I thought of that. It’s not there anymore."

The blood drained from Hammonds face. "What?"

Carter looked down at her boots, her shoulders slumped. "All they will say is that they have moved it to Washington."

"I’ll find it." Hammond grated.

"It is in Washington sir."

"And it will take too long to get here?" Hammond said, suddenly enlightened.

She nodded. "And we first have to locate it, sir. You know the NID."

"Damn," Hammond said bitterly.

She sighed, a sad sound.

"Hopefully Dad will be here soon."

"Don’t count on it," Daniel warned. "Freya said that Jacob wasn’t due to contact them for days."

General Hammond grunted slightly, making up his mind. "Colonel O’Neill will just have to hang on a little while longer." He made it sound like an order.

"I’ll pull some strings in the meanwhile. Maybe I can locate our healing device real fast."

…

"How is he?"

Doctor Janet Fraiser looked up from her endless reports and smiled at Daniel, who was leaning against the doorjamb with an apprehensive expression on his face.

"Still with us," she said softly. "Barely."

She gestured to the far side of the infirmary, where a still gray haired figure lay, surrounded by a myriad of machines, all beeping and chirping softly.

"It's a miracle he is, considering the damage Sato inflicted."

"He’s a fighter," Daniel said softly, feeling his heart sink as he looked at his friend.

Jack was lying on his back, covered in bandages. His face, under the white head bandage, was gray and lifeless. If it weren’t for the beeps and snap hiss of the machine that breathed for him, Daniel would have sworn that he had already died.

"He’s a fighter," he said again, firmly this time. "He’ll be okay."

Janet sighed and got to her feet, heading for the coffee peculator. "I guess we have his excellent health to thank for that."

"That, and his incredible will to live," Daniel said, accepting the coffee gratefully.

For a while they sat in companionable silence, both watching the man they considered a friend struggle for survival.

"Damn Sato," Fraiser said eventually, setting her mug down with a thump. "He used to be Jack’s friend."

Daniel sighed. "I know."

"What are they doing to catch him?" she asked, looking tired.

"They’re all hunting him down, Janet," Daniel said.

"Sam, Teal'c, and a whole lot of people who like and admire Jack and hate what has happened to him are out there looking for Sato."

"He needs to be shot on sight," Fraiser said, the soldier in her replacing the medical doctor for a second.

"For what he did to Lieutenant Masterson and almost did to the Colonel, he deserves nothing less."

Daniel nodded. "I couldn't agree more," he said.

"But?" Fraiser asked, the expression on Daniel's face worrying her.

"I'm just thinking about what Sam said."

He turned to Janet, his eyes unfocused as his brain whirled.

"She said the greatest danger the SG teams had to face was his knowledge. Sato knows the SGC, he knows most of the people here, and how we operate."

"So?" Janet asked.

"Well, doesn't that work for General Hammond as well?" Daniel asked. "Sato knows him too."

"Where are you going with this?" Janet asked.

Daniel pushed up his glasses with a distracted air. "Maybe nowhere," he muttered, "or maybe somewhere terrible."

He took a sip of cold coffee and stared at her thoughtfully.

"I’m worried.

What worries me is this. Sato, or rather Chi’tin, is an assassin, an Asra’c, which is essentially a gun for hire."

"So?" Janet asked again.

"Like a gun for hire, an Asra’c must have a target."

"Agreed," Janet said, looking confused. "But surely Sam and Teal’c will find him before he does anything."

"Maybe," Daniel said slowly. "What I want to know is why he left the base, and how is he intends getting back in."

Daniel got up and paced agitatedly.

"I mean, the last time we met he was after something specific, the Tonal de Asra’c, revered by his kind for some reason. His mission was meticulously planned, right down to having a Tel-tac ring him back on board for a quick getaway."

"Now, all of a sudden, he arrives through the stargate, messily fighting his way to the surface, where he escapes, pursued by God knows how many SG teams. Why do that?"

Janet drew in a sharp breath.

"It was planned?" she asked.

"I believe it was," Daniel said.

"Sam warned the SG teams to take care, because Sato knows how most of them operate. She should have warned General Hammond as well."

Janet felt her scalp contract.

"You think he is still on base, don't you."

He nodded and reached for the phone.

"I do - and excuse the ornithological cliché’s - but with half the personnel off this base on a wild goose chase, we're sitting ducks."

...

General Hammond stared Dr Jackson, and felt his blood slowly congeal.

"You make a good case, Jackson," he said eventually. "Nobody actually saw Sato leave Cheyenne Mountain. It was just assumed that he did."

"I don't think he left, General," Daniel said earnestly. "Whatever his mission is, I believe it is here, at the SGC."

Hammond grunted and reached for the phone. "Whatever it is, if he is still on the base, he cannot be allowed to leave."

"What are you going to do?" Daniel snapped.

General Hammond raised an eyebrow in surprise at Daniel's tome of voice, but answered anyway.

"We may still have an armed Gou'ald on base, Jackson. I intend sealing off the SGC again, and instituting another search. A more thorough one than last time."

"That’s a mistake," Daniel said brusquely.

Hammond's other eyebrow rose to join the first.

"Really?"

"Yes."

Daniel held the General's eyes.

"I bet you Sato knew that we would eventually figure out his plan, and that you would act the way you are doing. What if he has a back up plan for such an eventuality, like a bomb wired to the threshold alarm, or something equally as nasty?"

"He wouldn't destroy the base," Hammond said slowly, thinking again. "He wouldn’t need to do that to achieve his objective."

"It would be smaller, a diversion guaranteed to shift our attention elsewhere, leaving Sato free to do what he is contracted to do."

Daniel sat back, impressed.

"Sato may know me," Hammond said, his expression dark. "But I also know Sato."

"Now all we need to figure out is what that Gou'ald's target is."

"Oh crap," Daniel said softly.

Suddenly Daniel knew who the target was, and the enormity of it sent him to his feet where he stood, his body quivering with suppressed rage.

"It's Jack," he said.

"How do you figure that?" Hammond asked.

"Remember the debriefing, after our first encounter with Sato?"

Hammond nodded. "Your point?"

"Jack told us that Sato had told him that he would spare my life, but not his own."

Hammond nodded. "That is why O'Neill was almost killed."

"Yes, because the news that the leader of SG1 had died would be a valuable asset to have."

"And the news that O'Neill had survived after all must have come as a terrible blow," Hammond said. "Especially to a Gou’ald ego."

"That's for sure," Daniel said, heading for the door. "We need to..."

"Sit down Jackson," Hammond snapped, freezing Daniel to the spot. "If you go running up to the infirmary you will alert him. Rather let us be a bit more subtle."

"We do have other skilled personnel we can call on, you know," he said calmly as Dr Jackson sat back down. "Not everybody can be in an SG unit."

"What do you have in mind?" Daniel asked, confused.

"Wait and see."

General George Hammond reached for the phone, the light of the hunt in his eyes.

...

The airman dressed in the usual BDU's was ignored as he may his way down the corridor towards the infirmary, a large toolbox carried in one hand.

People were used to seeing Sergeant Siler and his technicians. They were always around, constantly fixing the things that were continually breaking down in the nightmare of a converted missile silo that was the SGC.

So often were they called out, that the maintenance staff maintained a full compliment of staff 24/7. They were now so commonly seen that they, over time, had become almost invisible.

Seen, yet not seen.

It was this anonymity this particular technician above all others craved.

…

"Maam?"

The Airman pushed open the door to the infirmary and peered around quizzically, looking for a superior officer.

"Hello? Maam?"

In that, he was disappointed. The infirmary was empty apart from a fit looking nurse tending a balding man, and a young doctor writing something on a clipboard attached to a far bed.

"We had a call about a faulty main influx meter, maam," he said. "Did you call it in?"

The nurse stopped what she was doing and shook her head.

"Not me. Maybe it Doctor Fraiser did, but she's gone for lunch."

The technician smiled ruefully. "That's just my luck," he said. "I saw her go, but she was too far away for me to call out to her."

He hesitated. "Do you think, she'd mind if I have a look anyway?"

The nurse gave him a toothy smile.

"I'm sure she won’t, airman, as long as you stay away from our star patient." She indicated a still form in the far bed.

The technician smiled, lifted his case onto a convenient desk, and snapped it open.

"Sorry, I can't do that," he murmured, the Gou'ald timbre of his voice making her eyes widen in alarm.

In one smooth motion Sato lifted the P90 out of the case and spun towards the distant bed, only to convulse in agony as the blue fire from two simultaneous zat blasts lit up his figure.

...

"Good riddance," the tall doctor said, stripping off the white coat to display the distinctive BDU's of the Special Forces.

"I couldn't agree more sir," the pretty nurse said. "After what this guy did to the Lieutenant..."

"You gate guard people are a bloodthirsty lot," Sergeant Walter Davies said, getting to his feet and warily circling the crumpled form of Sato. "Is he dead?"

Sergeant Mendez gave the control room technician a feral grin. "Oh yeah."

"He's dead sir, believe me" Airman Nancy Patterson said, a small smile of victory on her face.

"Don’t worry, Walt," Mendez said. "He don’t bite no more."

"He’s now roast snake. Done to a turn."

…

"Wow," Jack O'Neill said hazily, staring up at General Hammond and his assembled team. "You sure had fun here whilst I slept."

"Hammond grunted. "I wouldn't call it fun, Colonel, but we got him in the end, thanks to the intuition displayed by Doctor Jackson."

Jack shifted his eyes to a red faced Daniel.

"That's why he's a member of SG1," he said softly, pressing two fingers into Daniel's hand, the only part of him he could move.

"Thank God you did," Sam said, staring at Daniel warmly. "Had you not realized what Sato's mission was, the Colonel would be dead by now."

"He almost was anyway," Fraiser said, looking down at her patiently warmly. "General Hammond finally located the healing device, and it was flown back to the SGC this morning. You were suffering complications, and infection had set in, despite our best efforts.

"Sam managed to rid you of the infection, thank God."

"I helped a bit," Carter said, her eyes shining in the infirmary light. "I may not be as skilled as Selmac on the device, but I could help to a certain degree."

"And we should have Selmac here soon, to fix you up as good as new."

"If we can find him," Daniel said warningly.

"We’ll find him," Carter said, squeezing her C.O’s fingers gently.

Instead of looking pleased, O’Neill looked sad, his eyes fixed firmly on his C.O., making Hammond frown uneasily.

"What is it Jack?" he asked.

"Tony," O’Neill whispered. "This wasn’t his fault, you know."

Hammond nodded, his expression pensive. "I know that Jack," he said.

Jack O’Neill lay staring up at the ceiling, his expression such, that Hammond cleared his team from the room and ordered the nurses to the far side of the infirmary, effectively isolating them.

"You okay Jack?" he asked quietly.

A tear rolled down his 2IC’s face, as he suspected it would.

"No." The denial came out as a half sob.

"It’s hard to lose a friend," Hammond said gently.

O’Neill’s eyes found his, glittering with emotion.

"This was different," he whispered raggedly. "I cant help but wonder how Tony felt, inside, knowing that the snake controlling him was hell bent on killing me, and being unable to prevent it."

"He was my friend. We had known each other for years. If he could have prevented it, he would have."

He shuddered, the heart monitor charting the increase in his heart rate as another tear joined the first.

"I so nearly ended up like he did," Jack whispered. "I still remember how it felt, how I weak I was. The horror…" His voice trailed off and he shut his eyes, as if to shield himself from the recollection.

"He is at peace now," Hammond said after a while. "That’s all we can ask for."

"The peace of death," Jack said, laughing hollowly.

"Yes," Hammond said, feeling for O’Neill, still so grievously injured that all his defenses were down.

"And knowing that he is finally free, we will bury him well, with full honors."

O’Neill shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Thank you sir."

"He deserves nothing less," Hammond said.

He reached out a hand and touched the other’s shoulder briefly before hauling himself to his feet.

"You rest now," he said to the grieving man. "And rest assured that no one blames Tony for what happened, now or ever."

…

The weather had turned bad, whipping up the wind and spitting freezing droplets of rain at the couple of mourners standing at the edge of a new grave, the flowers on top placed there with military precision. Two people stood facing one another across the disturbed earth; each dressed identically to the other, right down to the silver eagles on their shoulders. Even the accents were similar, had anybody cared to listen, both natives of northern Minnesota.

They weren’t alone.

Seven people sheltered under a distant tree, the teams of SG 1, and 5, content to allow the two Colonels their time alone to mourn the passing of their friend they both had known so well.

…

"He knew the risks."

The voice was soft, making Colonel Van Ryn look keenly at the hunched figure of Colonel O’Neill.

"He did," he said simply. "We all do."

"And no one lives forever," Jack continued, burying his face into his collar.

"No."

"Nevertheless, it still hurts."

"That it does," Zack van Ryn said, sighing deeply, the sound whipped away from his lips by the strengthening wind.

The services had been over for a while now, the mourners gone home, or back to Cheyenne Mountain. When it became obvious that Jack had intended staying behind, so had Zack, with the approval of General Hammond.

"That he tried to kill me hurts even more," Jack said, swaying slightly as the wind buffeted him.

"That wasn’t him," Zack said, watching the older man in concern.

Despite Carter’s best intentions, Selmac hadn’t been found easily, and when contact had finally been made, it was to find out that he too had been injured on his mission, and hadn’t had the strength to heal anyone but himself.

This left the healing of Jack O’Neill up to Samantha Carter and her healing device. She had done her best, which was all anybody could ask of her, but ultimately, the long slow process of healing was now up to O’Neill, which was what he preferred anyway.

Consequently, Jack was still on medication and prone to tiring easily, something that Zack could see was happening now.

"I know, it wasn’t him," Jack said sadly. "Tony was trapped inside, screaming, unable to prevent anything that happened. I know that."

He shuddered, pulling his coat around his thin figure. "But all I see is his face, Zack."

He looked up, his eyes dark.

"God forgive me, but I don’t see the Gou’ald’s face, I see Tony’s."

He took a deep breath, his face turned up into the rain.

"I see Tony’s face as he shot me, not Chi’tin’s, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t distinguish between them, and it hurts."

Van Ryn was at his side in two steps as O’Neill swayed alarmingly, propping him up as Jack sagged, his strength gone.

"I know," he said, smiling gratefully as the big alien arrived and took O’Neill’s weight off him, their combined teams looking on worriedly.

"We are at war," he said, sparing a quick glance at Tony’s final resting place before returning his attention to Jack.

"Remember that," he said gently.

"Also remember this, that as good as we are, if we lose but one battle, the same thing that happened to Tony could very easily happen to us."

"That is the risk we take."

Jack O’Neill opened glazed eyes, awash with moisture.

"Nevertheless…"

"We go on," Van Ryn grunted, leading them to the parking lot. "We have no choice but to go on."

EINDE

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