“Jack!”
Daniel’s desperate cry of warning is the last thing Jack remembers before he starts to wake up in the infirmary. He can just barely hear a familiar voice at the edge of his consciousness, cutting through the blinding headache he’s woken with. “Oy,” he grates out, trying to lift a hand to squeeze the pain from his head.
“Doctor!” a voice cries out, as Jack lets his arm fall back down on the bed.
“Inform General Hammond that the Colonel is awake,” he pries his eyes open as Janet rests a cool hand at his wrist, taking his pulse and eyeing the monitors. The nurse rushes off, and even the sound of her uniform rustling is loud against his headache.
“Hey, Doc,” he manages to gasp out, but this time when he blinks at least he can open his eyes all the way.
“How are you feeling, Sir?”
“Headache,” Jack admits, “bad.”
“Well, I can take care of that, but first I need to know if you're feeling…yourself?”
“Other than this nail through my head, fine. Why?”
“I'll explain later. Teal'c managed to get the three of you back through the Stargate from the ship, my team took it from there.”
He absently notes that it’s good that Teal’c has recovered his mojo. They needed him on SG-1, and there had been a few moments recently when Jack really wondered if Teal’c would leave them because of his perceived inadequacies. Whatever had hit Jack, presumably it either didn’t affect Teal’c or he’d recovered faster. Even with Tretonin instead of his symbiote, the big guy tends to bounce back faster than the humans. “Carter and Daniel?”
“Major Carter is suffering the same after-effects as you, Sir.” Jack grunts in response, closing his eyes. If Sam’s the same as him, then she should recover any minute now or might already be awake. That’s good news.
“Janet?” Sam’s voice comes from the bed beside him, faint and sounding just as pained as he feels.
“Sam?” Fraiser abandons Jack, but he can hear her cover the couple of feet to the next bed over. “Hey. It's gonna be fine. You've both suffered some form of neural shock.”
Jack forces himself to open his eyes to look over and check on Carter, and as he’s doing that, the General strides into the infirmary. “Colonel, Major? How are you feeling?”
“Got a nail in my head, Sir,” Jack complains, wishing they’d hurry up with the vital-checking schtick and go ahead and give him something to dull this pain.
“That sounds like our Colonel O'Neill,” Hammond chuckles, looking at Fraiser.
“Their EEG's show normal brain activity, Sir,” she agrees. “They appear to be unaffected.”
“Unaffected? By what?” Jack demands, and does another mental headcount. If Teal’c was fine to bring them home, and Sam beside him is also fine, that leaves...oy. Crap. “Where's Daniel?” He struggles to get upright, batting ineffectually at the cords and wires connecting him to Janet’s machines. She’s back over to him immediately, hands on his chest, pushing him back down.
“Sir, I need you to stay right where you are, at least until you're strong enough.”
“I'm fine!” Jack manages to get a hand behind himself and uses the other to try and push her away, but she doesn’t budge.
“No, you're not, Sir!”
“Oww,” gasping for breath, and feeling like someone took the nail out of his head and heated it to red-hot before sticking it back in, Jack is forced to admit he isn’t strong enough to get out of the bed. “No, I'm not.”
“Colonel.” Hammond’s voice is pitched to get his attention, so Jack obliges, turning his head to look up at his commander. His voice as he continues is gruff, but there is no mistaking the fondness in his expression. “Teal’c declined to leave the observation room. I believe he intends to keep your customary vigil over Doctor Jackson. You can rest, and recover.”
“We will need the both of you back to firing on full to help Daniel,” Janet adds solemnly.
When he finally manages to get released from the infirmary after getting a couple of hours of shuteye, Teal’c yields his watch over Daniel to Jack without question and goes the task of aiding Sam. Nobody demands that Jack leave his post in the observation room, even as half of SG-1 heads back to the Stromos to look for answers. Jack has to trust that SG-12 will keep them safe, because he feels glued to this window, and his partner down below.
This is just a little bit too much like the last time Danny got his mind invaded, for Jack’s comfort. What if he leaves, even to look for a cure, and Daniel surfaces asking for him? On an even more solemn note, he promised Daniel that he’d never get put back into psychiatric care outside of teh SGC, for any reason, and he doesn’t quite trust even Janet not to break that promise if Jack isn’t here to enforce it...not if she really thought it was in Daniel’s best interest. It’s looking pretty bleak, another start-calling-the-alien-allies situation, until Daniel surfaces for the briefest of moments.
Jack knows the instant Daniel is back in control of his body and jumps up from the chair, pressing a hand to the glass. Janet is only a millisecond behind him, her voice and hands turning gentle as she tries to reassure their terrified teammate. But they only get those couple of seconds, and then someone else takes Daniel’s place. Jack smashes his fist against the glass, once, and then winces at the pain as he rests his forehead on the cool surface. The Tok’ra, the Asgard, the Tollan - they have been either unreachable, unhelpful, or almost too late every time the SGC has needed them in recent times. One of these times, ‘almost too late’ is going to be permanently too late...and it’s not going to be when it’s Daniel. It can’t be. Jack has to believe that Sam and Janet can figure this one out on their own.
Daniel does not bounce back as quickly as Jack and Sam had. Moments after waking up on the Stromos, he’d passed out again. Apparently, housing a dozen minds for most of a day was more taxing than the rest of them could begin to understand. Teal’c had carried him back through the Stargate, and after running a few more brain scans and confirming that his brain was normal and that he was just tired, Janet had let Jack settle him into his own room for the night. His bed on base, that is - she’d flatly refused to let him leave the Mountain until he woke up again and was able to have a full conversation with her.
“C’mon, Doc,” Jack had wheedled. “Don’t you think he’s been through enough today? He doesn’t need to be disturbed by all the comings and goings in the infirmary while he gets some rest. You said yourself he’s fine, just probably tired.”
“You’d think he’d be used to waking up in the infirmary, at this point,” Fraiser had said with a roll of her eyes, but after a long look at Daniel lying on the gurney, face crumpled up into a worried frown in his sleep that looks anything but peaceful, she relented. “But he needs to be monitored. I want his vitals recorded at least every three hours, Colonel.”
“I won’t leave his side,” Jack promised.
Janet turned a sardonic look on him that felt entirely too knowing. “I’m sure you won’t,” she muttered and then started quietly unhooking him from the last few machines. “If he wakes up, try to get him to drink some more water. He can have more medication for the headache every four hours if you can wake him to take them. If he’s hungry, something light. If he’s up to it in the morning, bring him back down here before breakfast. Otherwise, I’ll come by to check on him at 09:30.”
Now, Jack’s got the bedside lamp on, and some overdue reports spread out across his lap. Daniel is sprawled out on his stomach on the other half of the bed. Jack’s wishing for the reading glasses he still pretends not to need but finds ease his eye strain anymore when he’s doing long hours of reading. There’s a pair stashed away in the bottom of Daniel’s desk, (because his partner is prone to tossing them to Jack when he starts muttering about not being able to sit to do paperwork for even one more minute, hoping to squeeze in a little bit more office time before Jack hustles him off to do something else) but Jack doesn’t want to go trekking through the base this time of night to find them.
A few minutes later he is glad he didn’t when Daniel starts to shift restlessly beside him. Reaching around, Jack touches his forehead - no fever. Probably just nightmares, then, or the headache. He’s about due for more meds. Sliding his hand down, he gently kneads the pressure points at the base of the other man’s skull. Daniel groans and rolls towards him, blinking in the warm glow of the lamp.
“J’ck?” his voice is dry from disuse, and his tongue flicks out over his lips. It’s ineffectual, as his next words are just as hoarse. “Wha-?”
“Easy, Danny,” Jack sweeps his files into one pile and throws them on the ground - an issue for the morning. “You’re back at the SGC. How do you feel?”
“M’brain hurts,” the younger man complains, “Tired. Ow.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Your brain got a little overused today.” Daniel squints up at him, face scrunching up in confusion, and Jack shakes his head. “Nevermind. Janet gave me some more meds, these should help with the ow.” He lifts Daniel into a half-sitting position, letting him use Jack as a support as he reaches behind him to get the pills and the glass of water from the nightstand. He holds out the pills and a pliant Daniel opens his mouth obligingly, taking a sip of the water right after when Jack holds it to his mouth to swallow them. Jack feeds him the rest of the glass in small sips, and by the time it’s gone Daniel’s face has relaxed a little, the medication already chasing away the pain.
“Did we get attacked?” he sounds stronger, though he keeps his voice at a whisper pitch.
“Something like that,” Jack agrees absently, wrapping a hand around Daniel’s wrist and counting heartbeats. He adds this number - still slightly high, but consistent - to the clipboard Janet had foisted on him.
“Sam?” Daniel struggles to sit up further, alarmed, but Jack moves to hold him in place. He doesn’t like how easy it is to do so, but his partner’s still half asleep. “Teal’c?”
“Settle down, you’re not getting up. Janet would have my head,” he uses his restraining hold on Daniel to feel that he’s still taking deep, even breaths and records that stat as well. “They’re both fine. It was you getting in trouble, like usual.”
The grumbled rebuke at the end is what seems to get to the archaeologist - Daniel deflates, leaning away from Jack and almost toppling over the other way before Jack can adust his grip and lower him back down to the mattress. “Sorry,” he sniffs, and Jack wants to kick himself.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he disagrees, “I didn’t mean it like that.” Daniel looks up at him, and somehow even when he’s mostly out of it, his eyes are wide and bright in the lamplight as they question the truthfulness of Jack’s claim. “I’m just still a little on edge. You scared the crap out of us, kid.”
“Sorry, Jack,” he says again, but his voice this time is sheepish instead of bordering on devastated, and he rolls back towards Jack as he yawns. “What time is’t?”
“Still early. Go back to sleep,” Jack reaches over and snaps off the light, more than happy to abandon his reports and get some sleep himself. As he lays down and starts to pull the blankets back over both of them, Daniel wraps his arms around him, plastering himself to Jack in an octopus-like way that’s strangely comforting in its familiarity.
“Stay?” Daniel begs, even as his eyes are sliding closed. Jack wraps an arm around him, glad he’d bumped down the temperature in Daniel’s quarters in preparation for the full-body contact that sleeping Danny usually wanted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises.
