by Travelling One
He didn't know how this had happened, what he was doing here, where the
others were.
He didn't know much of anything, except that since regaining
consciousness thirty seconds ago and opening his eyes, cheek to the
ground, a rigid terror had rapidly been working its way up through his
body as small realizations dawned. There appeared a steady nothingness
around him, that cool slick floor, shiny and pale blue, its surface
visibly
melting into wet ice but dry and solid to the touch. The distant walls
may have been only ten feet away or a hundred, visual acuity and depth
perception playing tricky games with the eyes of a human. No doubt,
whatever aliens occupied this place saw no such disparity in
perception. Paleness, murkiness, emptiness; he didn't know what it all
was or what it all meant. He didn't know why his knees were fastened to
the falsely melting floor, with two white metallic braces his fingers
had no way around, through, or into. He didn't know where his clothes
had gone… and he surely didn't know why.
But if scared had a touch, a tangible presence, he was its creator.
Stay calm.
How can one do that, when one was not calm to begin with?
“Hello? Anyone?” But as Daniel had already gathered, if they'd wanted
to show their faces, they'd have already done so.
All he could do was lift himself up to his knees and fumble with the
unforgiving knee braces, something, anything, and wait. He could kneel
or he could lie prone, the vastness of the room pulsing and shrinking,
and all he could know was that somewhere, his teammates were either
looking for him, or they'd been captured too. And that was knowing
nothing at all.
Giving up with the braces, knees aching from the pressure, Daniel lay
down. Less exposed that way, the position still refused to give in to
comfort or calm. All he could do was wait, aware of the cold, smooth,
marble-like floor beneath his unclothed body, and try to contain his
terror.
He recalled nothing. Talking with his teammates one moment; then waking
up here the next.
It was not under his control to stop it; even if he'd realized in time,
there would have been nothing he could do. For lying flat afforded him
no vision of what was beyond his head; so silent, it could have been
the swish of a non-melting floor, and so the wires, or hair-thin
tendrils, or whatever sort of stiff fibres they may have been, were
already entering his brain from behind before Daniel could even realize
there was any threat. And by that time, he couldn't move at all.
_____
Oh, but he knew they were in there now, still, again, deep inside him,
for he could feel the movement, the gentle prodding inside his head,
the shifting and swaying of thread-thin fingers, like the tickling of
water drops sliding down one's skin. But as much as he wanted to shake
them free, rise and pull away - damaging or not he didn't even care -
he was cemented to the floor, or maybe immobilized with anesthetic, but
he could move his fingers and toes, or so he thought. Maybe that
was an illusion too, for all he knew. All that was important, though,
was that he was neutralized, and some alien technology was poking
around in his head… looking for something. What? How could he stop it
from discovering any classified secrets, if he didn't know what it
wanted in the first place?
And then the cold took him. The sudden, shocking, icy chill that
stormed through his entire body, starting with his brain, pulled him
into a frigid zone of terror, a terror that even minutes and hours
before had not been this strong, this all-encompassing, and his body
was shaking from within.
And then the heat was blazing through him like fire, battling the chill
away in such a sudden rush that sweat was pouring down onto his lips
and into the slits of his tightly closed eyes, and he knew this to be
his undeserving hell. Unending. This was not the first time the ice had
turned into fire, nor the second. He could tell the passing of time
only by encroaching thirst and hunger. Until rescue came, Daniel knew
these games would continue, games not so much for the capture of his
knowledge, but for the curiosity of alien experimentation. He was
something new for whatever species had teleported him away from the
vacant, deserted planet SG-1 had been exploring. He still had seen no
one.
And at that moment Daniel knew. He knew he wasn't getting out of here
by his own means, or by rescue, for his team had no idea where to look,
nor would the SGC. Whatever had been watching them, wherever it was
located, his team couldn't see it. Maybe it was even too far away in
the skies, a ship or orbiting moon, but Daniel knew he wasn't going
anywhere until these beings had satisfied their curiosity. Maybe not
even then.
For all he knew, they were speeding through time and light years to
somewhere no one on Earth would find for centuries.
And the cold ran like sparks of electricity, electric ice, punctuating
every nerve ending in his freezing body.
_____
“Colonel! Over there!” Carter was already running back to the gate, for
Daniel had not been there ten minutes ago, or two hours ago, or the day
before yesterday when they'd contacted the base the first time. But he
was there now.
Lying prone, unclothed, unmoving, they didn't know if he was dead.
“Jeez.” O'Neill picked up speed to zip by her, arriving first at the
side of his friend, Carter and Teal'c tied for second as they reached
the gate area a moment behind Jack, whose fingers were already on
Daniel's carotid. Teal'c placed his jacket over Daniel's lower body,
even before the relieved announcement that Daniel had a pulse.
“Get him home,” was Jack's way of telling Carter to start dialing
already, and what was she waiting for, a taxi? “Where the hell did he
come from?” It was a rhetorical question, one spoken solely to ease the
tension and fear that Daniel was in bad shape. They knew something had
whisked him away; otherwise, he'd have been there two days ago, at
their sides, still chatting about the fact that one could see so far
into the distance here it was like witnessing infinity. Until Daniel
had walked into the distance right beside them, like walking into a
transparent mist, and had suddenly just … not been there. Walked right
into infinity, right before their eyes, only at the time he'd been
standing, and happy, and vibrant, and he'd had his clothes on. Someone,
or something, with a purpose had taken him. “God,” the whisper beneath
Jack's breath was audible to the others, or was that their own minds
they were hearing?
After a day of deliberation and contemplation, Hammond had finally
given in to their pleas to return with Carter's classy toys, to figure
out what anomalies of atmosphere were going on here. To stay until they
found a missing teammate… or until further danger threatened, whichever
came first. Danger, in Jack's eyes, however, had variable degrees of
acceptability.
Now it was obvious it had been nothing natural.
So no one answered the rhetorical question, but Jack didn't notice or
care. His fingers were still on the side of Daniel's ice cold throat -
in the guise
of monitoring his pulse - when the gate swooshed open.
_____
The tickly, prodding feelings inside his brain were gone, but that
always happened when his brain went numb, along with the rest of him,
so that meant nothing.
The pillow meant something though, along with the warmth on top of his
body, and he was right-side-up, so Daniel swallowed his fear and
allowed his eyes to flutter open.
“Finally.”
Eyes trying to focus on the
man at the
foot of his bed, his
attention to Jack's lop-sided smile was interrupted by a soft peck on
his head, and Daniel turned to see Sam smiling, hovering above him. His
confused but beholden, grateful emotions drowned out her words.
So. He'd been rescued. From where? Where the hell
had he been? What the hell was that place? How the
hell had they found it, and was he the hell okay?
“Where was I?” his voice croaked out a whisper.
“By the gate.” Jack misunderstood.
His brows crunched into a puzzled frown, and Daniel suddenly realized
there'd been no rescue at all. He'd given those abductors whatever
they'd needed to know, whatever they'd wanted, for as long as they'd
wanted, and then they'd released him. Discarded him? Had they known
someone would be there to take him home?
“Oh.” Daniel let his eyes slide closed. Home was home, though, and
nothing else mattered.
“Yeah.” Jack knew Daniel knew he'd been used and tossed away. By what?
By whom? MRIs showed half a dozen minute, narrow lesions in his brain.
Thank goodness nothing else showed up… anywhere. Except on his knees,
where there'd been two wide red marks each, above and below the joint,
slowly fading now. “Where were you?”
“I don't know.”
“Uh,” Jack looked around at the confused faces of his other two
teammates, and that of Janet Fraiser. “Unconscious?”
“No.” Well, yes, but just sometimes. “Chained to something in somewhere
by something or someone, with filaments in my head.”
“Ah.” So Daniel knew about those. Not a pleasant way to spend three
days, and Jack cringed, changing the subject in his mind, until Daniel
spoke.
“They played around…in my head. Don't know what they were looking for.”
And no idea what they got.
Right. Jack pursed his lips, then sucked them both inward; he knew
where this was heading.
“Alright, Daniel,” came Janet's soothing voice. “You're dehydrated and
you must be hungry, but
I also want you to rest. Stay on base for twenty-four more hours,
minimum.”
More? Daniel didn't ask how long he'd been here already. He could do
rest, though.
But Jack knew there was more than that coming down the road; one more
big test that Janet had not done, had no intention of doing until
directly ordered. For Hammond had already told him; the Powers That Be
had not liked those MRI results; no, not one little bit.
_____
“God. I'm sure there's nothing in there to find,” Daniel pouted, half
pleaded, as they walked down the hall. He hoped he was being honest
with himself.
“Good. Let's hope not.” Jack's voice held a crispness left over from a
memory; there'd damn well better be
nothing to find, for Daniel would be in trouble if there were. He
latched onto his friend's upper arm to offer emotional support; Daniel
knew as well as any of them what those zatarc detectors could do. He'd
protested; they all had. But something had been in
Daniel's head, and no one at the Pentagon was willing to take the risk.
Unfortunately, even Hammond agreed with them.
“You don't have to look like you're being led to the electric chair,
you know.” Hypocrite, Jack scolded himself. That's
what he'd
felt like, a year ago. Empathetic sweat capped his forehead at the
memory. “It'll be okay,” he whispered, out of range of Colonel Vasburgh
with his NID escorts, and he gripped Daniel's arm even tighter.
_____
“But I don't want to remember more,” Daniel
pleaded, his
eyes closed, and he could feel only the straps around his wrists and
ankles and the band around his head. His body ached to be free, and a
panic had started to rise minutes ago, one he was afraid he couldn't
contain. He could almost feel tingly tendrils playing with parts of his
brain. No, he could feel them, and he shuddered,
but the trembling wouldn't stop.
“You have to continue,” and as Vasburgh's order was not a request, it
made Daniel dread the next minutes even more.
“It just kept on. Ice. Fire. Dripping sensations, all through my veins.
Um, uh. Prickling. It would grow stronger, like electric currents. Then
everything merged together, and I guess I'd pass out. The last time I
opened my eyes… I was here.” But he still wouldn't open his eyes, now,
not this time. Not until they took those restraints off, not until he
knew Jack's face was smiling. At least this time he knew he was fully
clothed.
This time, though, finally, the ominous voice didn't utter the dreaded,
repetitive, “Okay, Doctor Jackson. Let's go through this one
more time.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
No, this time the words were different, and the voice
resigned. “Alright, Dr. Jackson. We'll be releasing you.”
As Daniel let out a relieved breath and opened his eyes, Jack's face
still was not smiling.
_____
“But you are not free to leave.”
Those echoing words still sent an icy chill up his abdomen
and
spine, and he felt sick. He could still hear Jack's vehement protests,
futile protests, loud and vulgar, as he was shoved into this solitary
cell. He'd thought these were primitive, horrifying places to be kept,
when Jack had been imprisoned in one during his Touched phase, and his
stomach had clenched then as well.
And for the third time in … how many days? Daniel found himself
unsuccessfully fighting down his terror.
All he wanted was to go home. Home, to rest in comfort, to read, to
look out the window at the sun. That's all he wanted; was it so much?
Was he a threat to someone on Earth, to Earth itself? He couldn't live
with himself if that was the case. Maybe he wouldn't have to, for long.
Another shudder rang through him at the memory of the zatarcs; poor
Lieutenant Astor; poor Martouf. And Jack and Sam; what they had gone
through, suspecting but not knowing. What he had gone through, watching
it all go down, his friends' lives - or sanity - on the line.
Imprisonment had been terrifying in that other place, offworld, with
his knees chained to the floor and his body bare and his brain wired to
alien whims. Yet imprisonment was almost worse when it was your own
people doing it to you, for there was no hope of rescue here, none at
all. Here, everyone knew it was happening. No one would intervene.
It hurt to remember what had happened to Sam and Jack when they'd been
accused of having been compromised. Sam's state of suspension might
have not ended even yet, had she not had her flash of insight. Jack may
not have withstood the zatarc search and removal; no one could ever
know for certain what would have become of him. What would happen to a
person under such circumstances, who was not really under an alien
influence? Would he have been alright? Would his brain have been
mutilated, as the machine searched and searched for something that
wasn't there, destroying bits and pieces along the way? But Daniel had
no idea what had been done to his own mind, for he knew without a doubt
that he'd passed out, and more than once; this present state of
affairs, he knew, could very well be permanent. Never mind that he
might, indeed, even be a zatarc - or something worse. While he'd lain
there, petrified and assuming his abductors were taking information
from him, they may well have been uploading something into him instead.
He had left too
many doubts, too many questions unanswered, during that test. The
scanner had kept wavering, showing truths and then lies. No one knew
what to make of it; what to make of him. No one trusted him any more.
This cell was dark. Two small lights on the walls but no windows, not
unless someone opened that little hatch, and even that only allowed the
dimmest of lights to filter in from the corridor. Ignoring the bunk and
its uninviting mattress, Daniel slid down to sit on the floor, pulled
the thin blanket over his head and knees, and tried to contain his
vibrant, distraught, shivers.
_____
He was sitting there, still, when the door opened, and when it closed.
He sat there when the cot creaked and the smell of soup or something
hot nearly choked him. He sat there when Jack's voice said, “Brought
you food.”
When the body slid down beside him, and his CO made no other sound at
all, just sat close enough to feel his shoulder, Daniel sat there as
well, a lump with its knees up, covered fully in an ugly gray blanket.
When Jack said, “I'll come back and we'll play chess,” Daniel finally
moved.
Uncovering his head, Daniel drew in a breath, looked at the concrete
floor, and took the chance. “Tell me the truth. Am I…” a
zatarc? Jack knew what he meant.
“No.” Not in his mind, no.
No? “Then why am I in here?”
“NID doesn't trust that machine. It kept changing its mind. Something
was going on.”
“What was going on was that I was telling the truth. But I can't tell
what I didn't understand.” And he hadn't understood what those things
were inside his brain, or what they were doing there, or who had
abducted him. He didn't know a hell of a lot, and that was the truth.
“I know.”
“They still think I've been compromised?”
“You have been.”
“So they're… what? Going to keep me here forever? Until I don't freak
out or start blasting someone? Or until I do?”
Jack shrugged. No, he wasn't supposed to tell Daniel exactly that.
Wasn't supposed to tell him that NID was waiting for proof, waiting for
Daniel to go mad waiting for a mission he couldn't complete, waiting
for him to kill himself. The lesions in his brain were from something,
and the Tok'ra now had NID vastly and amazingly more paranoid than
ever. “They'll give up.”
Or more likely, conveniently forget about him.
“When? How long will I be in here?”
“I don't know.” And he didn't. “But I'll come by all the time. We'll
play chess, cards. Monopoly, Scrabble, Dominoes.” Jack rose to go get
all of those, and more.
Daniel nodded. “Or just bring me some books from my desk.”
_____
“Why the fuck not?” Jack was so much more than
livid; if
he'd been C4 those men wouldn't have dared be near, trying to
intimidate and control. They wouldn't have stood a chance. “Latest MRIs
showed the lesions are healing.”
“He has to believe that he's not getting out of
there, that
his mission has been completely thwarted. We have to do it this way if
you ever want to see an end to this.”
“What mission? Daniel was experimented on by some
race we never even met.” And
needs medical attention and companionship, not solitary confinement.
Screw you, Vasburgh. You picked the wrong teacher in Maybourne.
“You don't know that.”
“I do.”
“How? You never saw them. They may well have been Goa'uld.”
And that was that. No games, no visitors, no passing the time with a
friend. They had to know once and for all… but how long would that take?
_____
Daniel had waited.
Then he had waited some more, but Jack still hadn't come.
He should never have gotten his hopes up.
Out of sight, out of mind? Was his team going offworld without him?
Still, a book would have been nice. Some company, even better. He
needed something to do in this tiny dark cell, something to take his
mind off… his mind.
The third day, when food arrived there was a note smuggled inside the
napkin, one that said, “Daniel, I tried, I swear I did. They won't let
anyone see you.”
Daniel looked at the food, and the cot, and the little barred window
with the sliding panel on the outside, and the note gripped tightly in
his fingers, and knew for sure he could no longer hope to be free.
_____
“How is Doctor Jackson?”
Hammond's question to the marine who'd delivered the food this time
earned the same answer as it had for the past five days, three times a
day.
“I don't know, sir. He was just lying in bed.”
“How is Doctor Jackson, Sergeant?”
“I can't tell, sir, he didn't say anything. He was lying in bed.”
“How is Doctor Jackson, Corporal?”
“No idea, sir, we didn't talk. I think he was sleeping.”
Hammond knew what this distasteful test was meant to do, but
he
couldn't advise Daniel. They had to let the mind control - not that he
really believed there was any,
by this point - believe this was
an indefinite stay, orders of the president himself. In his own eyes,
the zatarc test had shown the cup to be half
full, as opposed to the NID's view of half empty. Truth and uncertainty
had played out equally. That had never happened before, according to
the Tok'ra. Voices, namely his and Jack's, were working hard to
convince TPTB, amid much disagreement, that they had no reason
to
keep the man locked up
indefinitely.
_____
“Son.”
Daniel knew Hammond had been standing there, standing for a few moments
looking at him lying on the cot, covered by the blanket, but he still
didn't move. He figured Hammond had heard reports of him no longer
eating, no longer moving, and he didn't give a damn. But when Hammond
shuffled closer and touched his leg, Daniel squirmed away.
“Yes, I'm alive,” he stated firmly from under the covers.
“Son, I know this has been hard on you. You have to understand the
precautions; you were compromised.”
When there was no response, Hammond continued. “You have to eat, Doctor
Jackson.”
And Daniel didn't know whether to feel upset, deflated, or apathetic.
“I do? Why?”
“Because, as you said, you're still alive. This confinement won't be
forever.” That much, he knew he needed to convey. But in Daniel's eyes,
“not forever” could still be a long time, longer than any programming
was willing to wait.
For the first time, Daniel uncovered his face. “General…” and the pause
was much longer than was comfortable in friendly company. “When I was
eight and my parents died, I felt like I'd lost everything. After a few
weeks, months maybe, I looked around, and realized there might still be
something left for me to salvage.” Another pause, but Hammond didn't
interrupt. “After playing the fool in front of my colleagues, before
the Stargate program, I was out in the rain with nothing, and I felt
again that I'd lost everything. At that moment, Catherine came along.
Then… then, when I came back here after Abydos, after Sh… I was certain
I'd lost everything, and there was SG-1 to pick me up and land me on my
feet. Now, Sir, I look around.” His eyes shifted, and Hammond knew what
was going on behind those eyes, knew what Daniel was seeing. There were
the dark concrete walls, a barred window in a locked steel door.
Colleagues
who no longer trusted him; others who were no longer allowed to be
near. “And now I know what
it is to lose everything.” Freedom. The air, the sky, the sun. Free
will and choice. Hope. All Daniel could feel was despair, that old
familiar emptiness within, stronger than ever. Maybe he was just
getting too tired of bouncing back. Would the NID ever let him, this
time?
Hammond flinched, knowing he couldn't leave the man with that. No,
son, you haven't. Colonel O'Neill has set up camp at the end of the
corridor, creating an incrementally increasing list of swear words with
each passing minute; he'd be a hell of a lot closer if not for the
guards. Major Carter is fuming in her lab, trying to prove the zatarc
detector is worthless; Teal'c has come to me five times questioning the
reasoning behind your incarceration. And I've been on the red phone
eight times a day on your behalf. You still have everything. This will
end, son, I promise you that. Words he was not allowed to
utter. Hope he was not allowed to bestow. Hammond
didn't want to leave it at that… but he had to.
So he did.
Only a slight shake of his head - borne not of annoyance with the man
before him but of frustration with those who deemed themselves wiser
than those who worked day and night at this job, with these loyal and
trustworthy people - followed him from the locked room. He could not
bring himself to look back at the forlorn appearance of a good friend,
the soft rustling incontestable evidence of Daniel's slow retreat under
the blankets.
_____
Two days later the cell door opened, and standing there were marines,
guns at their sides.
“Come with us.”
And for nearly the first time in days, Daniel stood up.
In silence he followed them. Was this another interrogation? Another
zatarc test, a search-and-destroy-his-brain mission? Would they give
him the choice the way they'd given one to Sam and Jack? Where was
Jack? Where was his team? Were they offworld? Daniel's steps were
anything but light and free.
He was led into the general's office… a room occupied by Vasburgh,
Hammond, and more NID. The guards remained, and Daniel's sparse,
disguised hopes of potential freedom sank. He closed his eyes in
despair. “What's going on?”
The voice he knew to be Vasburgh's spoke the words as only Vasburgh -
or possibly Maybourne - could. “Doctor Jackson, you're coming with us.
You're to
be held in a secure facility.”
More secure than the SGC? You mean, an experimental facility?
Daniel felt a sharp bitter arrow impale his spirit, felt the sting at
the back of his throat, and could hardly get his own words out. “What
am I charged with?”
“You know as well as we do that it's for the protection of this base…
and some as yet unknown element. But we'll find out.”
“No. I don't know that.” Daniel's eyes opened, beseeching the general
to step in, to stop this, but Hammond only looked guilty. Daniel pulled
back,
touching the wall, and sank down. He couldn't stop his shoulders from
shaking, felt blurring in his vision and wetness on his lashes.
Couldn't stop anything this time; it came too suddenly. This,
he knew without a doubt, was loss.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please don't do this.” And suddenly he
couldn't stop, and he buried his face in his knees, silent sorrow
overflowing. There was no dignity in being labelled a threat to his
friends, to his home. There was no dignity left here to salvage. If he
needed to cry… the hell with whoever might be embarrassed by watching
him fall apart. The rest of the room was silent, but he didn't hear it.
His head buried against his knees, he'd stopped listening.
He was vaguely aware of a body next to his, but more fully aware of a
hand pressing firmly on his shoulder. “It's over,” Jack's voice said,
next to his ear. “I've brought Monopoly.”
And Daniel hitched in his breath, and picked up his head. Jack was
sitting beside him, head nearly touching his own, eyes intense. A hand,
then lips brushed his opposite temple; Daniel turned, and there was
Sam. Teal'c stood tall and serious just beyond reach, and Hammond
watched from the doorway. Vasburgh and his buddies were gone, along
with the guards.
“What?” Daniel managed to expel.
“They were expecting you to bolt, or something. Act up, shoot at them -
or yourself. Whatever. Bit of a surprise you gave them. Anyway, bigger
surprise, but they
kept their part of the deal.”
“Deal?” Daniel asked, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes, his
cheeks. “To leave if I didn't react ...or kill someone?”
“Yeah.” Only, they were
hoping you'd try. They'll be watching.
“I'm free?” The word caught as it left his lips.
“Yeah.” The best 'yeah' Jack had offered in a long, long time.
_____
“Pull over.”
“What?”
“Stop. I want to get out.”
“Uh…” Okayyy… they were in the middle of brush
country,
long past the mountain. Nothing up ahead for miles but a state
park. Jack cast Daniel a wary look. “You okay?”
“Yes. Stop the car.”
Jack pulled up along the edge of the road, and Daniel quickly stepped
out, taking a deep breath. He leaned his back against the side of the
warm vehicle, staring out across the savannah-like grasslands to the
distant tips of a butte. Wisps of scrub and brush mingled with dirt,
stirring in the slight breeze. A rogue wildflower sprouted near his
foot, claiming its territory. Far above a hawk glided, patrolling the
almost cloudless sky.
“What?” Jack sidled up next to him, watching.
“Nothing.” Couldn't he just look, for a while?
“Daniel?”
“What, don't you trust me?” No zatarc, but Daniel felt he might forever
have something to prove. Nothing was in him, no programming, no techno
spy. His last MRI had even shown the lesions to be barely visible,
almost fully healed. How could one prove nothingness, to someone who
couldn't see it?
“You know I do. I trusted you from the minute we found you lying at the
gate.”
Or you wouldn't be here
with me now. Daniel nodded, still searching the
vastness. Those words were better
than any gifts or grants he'd ever received. No money could buy trust.
He believed Jack.
“So what are we doing out here?” Jack tried again.
If Jack trusted him, he could risk sounding… flaky. “Me, I'm filling up
on hope. You, you're standing there impatiently waiting for me.”
“Come again?”
“I had a lot of time on that planet, in that… place… to feel despair,
Jack. I didn't expect a rescue…” and didn't get one.
“I was a psychological mess. Really, really scared.”
“I know.”
“Then when my own people didn't trust me, locked me up, I experienced
such overwhelming regret and desperation I felt as though I could
hardly breathe. I didn't even know if I wanted to. But out here - in
this openness, this infinite space -
out here, with... someone who believes in me, it feels like hope. Let
me enjoy it.”
“Hope.”
Daniel shrugged, with a wistful smirk. He'd almost cringed at the word.
“Sound stupid?”
“Nope.” Jack rested a hand on Daniel's back. “Hope's good. I like hope.
Take all you want. And by the way, I'm not impatient.”
They stood there, for what seemed like infinity. Even so, the sun
didn't move.
Finally, Daniel sighed and turned to open the car door. He slid inside
as Jack trekked around to the driver's side and did the same.
Jack clicked his seatbelt into place, then paused, hesitant. “So…” he
looked sideways at his friend, and started the motor. “Got enough now?”
“I do.” Daniel nodded. “Yes, for a change. Finally. I do.”
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