Long Road Back, Part 7

It was strange: in this place he seemed to have so many names. He was Onyel, he knew that for a fact, but the only person who ever called him this was the huge black guy with the golden mark on his forehead – Talc. No, Teal, Teak, something like that. And even he didn't get it quite right, spoke the name with a strange emphasis, putting the stress on the wrong syllable – 'O-neel'. He supposed the guy must be foreign. Everybody else seemed to call him a variety of names, some of them even changing what they called him according to circumstances. It was very puzzling, but he was learning to respond to 'Colonel', 'Jack', 'Sir', 'O'Neill', 'Son', even if he didn't entirely believe that they all applied to him.

Mentally he tried the name and title out, rolling them on his tongue, trying to apply them to himself. Jack O'Neill; Colonel Jack O'Neill, United States Air Force, and didn't that just sound important... Nah, he couldn't see that, not at all. Just Onyel the drone, Onyel the insignificant, Onyel the disposable. Delusions of grandeur there, buddy, just a cog in the machine. And don't stray off the point again. Consider that an order.

In its own way, this place and its customs were just as frightening as Katen's regime had been. The methods were different though, that much he was grateful for. The food was regular, it was warm and comfortable, and no one had hit him yet in all the time he'd been here. So on balance, he supposed he was lucky. But this feeling of rootlessness, never quite knowing what was expected of him - that was unsettling. Made him wary, always on edge, always scared of doing something so wrong that the surface kindness would stop and the beatings and starvation would start over. So he minded his manners, and did his best to be submissive and compliant.

But even in this, he had the nagging feeling that somehow, he wasn't getting it quite right. This feeling was always strongest with the one called Daniel. Which was unfortunate, because Daniel was the one he seemed to see the most of; he was nearly always there. He had had to watch him pretty closely for that reason, and had caught some strange looks in the man's eyes, even when he was on his absolute best behaviour, making himself as agreeable as he knew how. Actually, when he thought about it, particularly when he was on his best behaviour.

Maybe he should just ask him what he was doing wrong, before he did something so wrong that the kindness stopped.

The thought started to scare him virtually the moment he thought it. Questions had not been encouraged in the other place, Katen's place. He had asked a few in the early days, with the inevitable unpleasant results, and he wasn't about to test any theories about whether or not the results would be the same in this place. 'Don't ask, don't tell.' The phrase drifted up out of his subconscious: where he'd heard it before, he had no idea. He knew it was significant though, and not to the other place. It was something he associated with where he was now – maybe something he'd overheard when he was on the edge of consciousness some time. Whatever, it seemed like sound advice.

Except, there seemed to be so many questions. Sometimes his head seemed to be so stuffed full of them that he could hardly think through the jumble. Bits and pieces of stuff floated into his head at all odd times of the day and night, sometimes in dreams, sometimes just popping up out of the blue, snatches of non sequiturs that seemed so real to him but so unrelated to everything he knew about himself. It was like watching a kaleidoscope, everything whirling around and settling into a pattern that lasted until the next piece popped up. Then everything whirled around again, settled into a new pattern. The patterns never lasted long enough for him to get a handle on them, just sent his thoughts off at strange tangents.

He seriously wondered if this was insanity, then dismissed the thought. If he was rational enough to question his rationality, then he couldn't be insane, could he? He certainly felt more rational than he had for a while. On the other hand, wouldn't insane people grab onto the fact that they could question their sanity in an odd rational moment to argue that they weren't insane? Maybe you could go insane just thinking about going insane; it was certainly driving him nuts. Not that being officially nuts mightn't come as a relief in a strange way, giving him license to plunge into the maelstrom and not care about the consequences.

No, he wasn't going to consider going nuts. As a strategy, insanity sucked even worse than indecision. He absolutely would not go down that route. Nor was he going to consider the possibility that he was nuts before this whole nightmare started, that this jumble of nonsense inside his head represented a return to what passed for normality for him, 'cause it sure didn't feel normal.

But if it wasn't insanity, what did that leave? Not a whole lot of options, if he was honest. In fact, far as he could see it boiled down to two. Either his current hosts - no, not 'hosts', he wasn't altogether comfortable using that term for some reason - were telling the truth, this was his home, he wasn't Onyel but rather O'Neill and he genuinely couldn't remember, or they were lying for some arcane purpose that he couldn't fathom. But try as he might, he really couldn't think of a valid reason for them to keep the fiction up for this long, if fiction it was, couldn't see how it would possibly serve their purposes to allow him to reclaim more and more of his mind. Because that was what was happening, he was sure of it now that he'd ruled insanity out. Well, fairly sure that it wasn't just wishful thinking, anyway.

Unless, of course, they had simply miscalculated. He'd noticed over the past week or so that immediately after he was given whatever those pills were that the doctor insisted he take, the stuff stopped surfacing in his head, for a while at least. But that 'while' was definitely getting shorter, had been ever since he'd been brought here. And although that had a downside in that it allowed the jumble back in full force, at least eventually it all subsided and he had periods like now where he could think with perfect clarity: all in all, he was grateful for that too.

Although he would be more grateful if he could organise his thoughts into a coherent plan of campaign: he had a nagging feeling that in his normal state of mind, strategising was something he was fairly competent at, and it was disturbing that this ability had apparently deserted him just when he really needed it. Well, he would just have to wait and see, it was all he could do: wait and see what they had planned for him, wait and see if he got any better at planning himself.

One thing he did know for sure though: he really, really sucked at just waiting to see.

*

Now that he had a deadline, Daniel was starting to feel nowhere near as confident of his abilities to break through and reach Jack as he had when he was arguing for the chance to try. One lousy week. What sort of a difference was that going to make after two solid weeks of trying, and getting nowhere?

Maybe his approach was wrong. Maybe 'softly-softly' wasn't the way to go about this. Maybe he wasn't the right person to be doing this no matter what his approach, despite his earlier conviction that he was the only person who should be doing this. Maybe Janet was right and professional help was the only option. So many 'maybes'.

It was a blow to his pride. He'd been so totally certain that he'd be able to break through the walls that Jack was holding in place, that something of his memories would have survived, and if he was completely honest with himself, that that 'something' would be the bond they shared, the sense of fulfilment they'd found when they'd finally found each other. That this would be the bridge to what Jack had lost.

He cursed himself for a silly romantic fool. It hadn’t worked with Sha're after all, had it? And what they'd shared was at least the equal of what he and Jack had found. He might have been expected to have had the brains to work out that it wouldn't work this time either and to have thrown in the towel long since. That was the worst of idealism; it so often tossed cold common sense right out the window.

And cold common sense was now telling him that his failure wasn't much of a surprise. Jack had no reason to trust him if the bulk of what he could remember with any clarity was his time in that wretched cell and what happened when SG1 arrived to bust him out. He was bound to be aware, even peripherally, of the events leading to his location and rescue, and he was bound to have put two and two together about Daniel's starring role in locating him, and come up with a resounding four: he was amnesiac, after all, not idiotic, and Daniel's actions at the cells had not been remotely guaranteed to inspire confidence in someone who didn't know him. Trouble was, he could see no way out of it: unless Jack trusted him, he'd never open up, never give him his best chance of jogging a genuine memory out of him. And conversely until he could jog Jack's memory, get him to trust at last, he'd never open up. Damn it, he'd realised that he was going to suffer for his actions, but he hadn't before stopped to consider that they might bite him in the ass in just this way and coincidentally prolong Jack's suffering as well. What a fucking mess.

It would help if he were at least getting some sleep. Between researching all he could find about amnesia in every spare moment, trying to keep on top of his departmental duties and spending hours sitting with Jack, he was putting in long days. He'd hoped in the early days that exhaustion would keep the inevitable sleep disturbances at bay, but the hope had proved to be groundless. No matter how hard he worked, how bone tired he was when he finally dropped into his bunk in the guest quarters, he doubted if he'd had more than two or three consecutive hours of sleep since his first night back before being wrenched awake, brain racing in circles, worrying at the problem of how to get Jack back. Hiding it from Janet and his team mates was an additional strain, although in that at least he'd seemed to be successful – one small victory to chalk up, he supposed, at least he had nobody nagging him. Not that he would have paid much more than lip service to it, but it was one less drain on his energies. And now that Teal'c and Sam were temporarily reassigned to other units and had both gone off world, he only had to worry about keeping up a front for Janet, which made life that much easier still. On the downside, his intuition and creative thinking seemed to be letting him down just when he was most in need of them.

Damn it! This was so frustrating! He wasn't used to spending so much time thinking about a problem and still coming up empty, especially not one that mattered as much as this did. He wasn't just fighting for Jack's life and career, he was fighting for his own. He missed Jack, his Jack, lover, friend, sparring partner and confidant, with an ache that was frighteningly physical, an ache that got worse every single time he had to confront the shell of the man he'd known.

The shrilling of his office phone cut across his thoughts. He uncurled the hand that had formed a fist on top of his desk and stretched out to answer it.

"Jackson."

"Daniel, Janet here." She didn't sound too pleased with him and Daniel sighed inwardly. The last thing he wanted was another fight over Jack's treatment. He didn't allow it to colour his voice though.

"Yeah, Janet, what can I do for you?"

Her voice was crisp as it echoed along the wire, cool and professional.

"I've assigned someone to give you some pointers on Colonel O'Neill's condition. Hopefully they will be to your satisfaction."

Daniel clearly heard the slight stress on 'they'. No, she definitely wasn't pleased with him, and he felt a brief surge of defiant irritation coupled with an increased determination to work until he dropped to pull Jack back into his life, personality intact. Although he realised that he hadn't handled the situation well. With a sudden pang of sympathy, he appreciated that she had to be worried too: it was making them both more sensitive than they might otherwise have been.

"Ah, okay. Who is it?"

"The name's Ross. Civilian psychologist attached to psych. services. I've called him and asked him to get in touch to arrange a preliminary chat."

"Uh, thanks, Janet. Listen, about earlier --"

"Yes?" Daniel felt the emotional temperature drop another couple of degrees.

"I'm sorry. I lost my temper, and I shouldn't have. Chalk it up to stress?" He made it into a slight question.

There was no sign of a thaw on the other end of the line; Janet's voice remained chilly. "Agreed." Although which part of his apology she was agreeing with, Daniel had no idea.

"Expect Ross to call you sooner rather than later. We need to get moving on the Colonel's rehab."

"I will. Thanks."

The connection was cut, and Daniel stared ruefully at the whirring receiver in his hand before carefully replacing it on its cradle. He obviously had fences to mend there, another problem to add to an interminable list.

Fuck it. He needed coffee. Double-fuck it: he obviously wasn't going to get any any time soon as the phone shrilled again.

"Jackson."

"Doctor Jackson? My name is Ross. Doctor Fraiser asked me to get in touch with you as soon as I could to arrange a meeting. About Colonel O'Neill?"

"Um, yeah. When would be convenient?" Daniel pulled up his diary on the monitor of his pc.

"Ah well, uh - no time quite like the present, eh? I have a free slot coming up - have you some free time now?"

Daniel sighed heavily, not particularly caring whether Ross heard him or not, nor what interpretation he put on it. Given that they were inevitable, some situations were better over and done with. Besides, if Hammond heard that he was avoiding following his orders, he might just suddenly find that the General's patience had run out. Best to bite the bullet. Just - not too enthusiastically.

"I could manage ten minutes or so," he replied coolly. "Where's your office? Exactly?"

"Level 21, C wing. Room 27."

"Okay, I'll be there in, fifteen minutes?" Because, damn it, he was going to get that coffee first.

"That will do fine."

The connection was cut.

*

"Come."

With a deep sense of gloom, Daniel opened the door and walked in. His long awaited coffee had done nothing to lift his spirits or engender any enthusiasm for what he was sure was going to be a difficult meeting.

Whatever he'd been expecting, it certainly wasn't this. The room he walked into was a startling contrast to the drab, utilitarian grey on the other side of the door and he stopped dead just over the threshold. The room glowed; there was no other term for it. The walls were painted a soft apricot-gold colour. No institutional desk: instead a roll top writing desk and a couple of chairs and a couch, deeply padded and in a shade of blue that sang against the gold. Even the quality of the light was subtly different, in no way that Daniel could put his finger on.

"Doctor Jackson, I presume?"

The deep, soft voice came from his left and he swung around to find its source.

The individual to whom the voice belonged wasn't quite what Daniel had expected either. His mental picture had been his usual less than flattering image of the psychiatric profession as a whole: middle aged, stoop shouldered, quiet voiced and with an insidiously unhealthy interest in cigars. This guy was pretty far removed from that.

He was huge. That was Daniel's first impression as he tipped his head back slightly. At least three inches taller than Jack and about twice as wide, he was built like a pro wrestler or a boxer. And he had the face to match his physique: his nose didn't run down the centre of his face so much as snake down it and was flattened beyond redemption at the bridge.

As he extended his hand, his eyes caught and held Daniel's. They were large, liquid brown, sharp with intelligence but twinkling with kindly good humour. Daniel extended his hand in turn. The man had a firm, uncompromising handshake, a sharp downward tug like someone testing a knot in a rope.

"Doctor Ross."

"One and the same. I'm pleased to meet you at long last. Please, come and sit down."

Daniel pulled himself together and followed Ross to the group of chairs that formed the focal point of the room. As he sank into his chosen armchair his gaze swept around the room again, enjoying the opulence of it all.

Ross had been watching his reactions with some amusement, and said as he took his own seat, "I take it you approve of the décor."

"Uh, yeah." Daniel's eyes swept around the room again as he replied. "It's, uh, unexpected is the word. Striking, even."

Ross chuckled, a rich, deep, bubbling sound, infectious enough to crack through the veneer of Daniel's crankiness and make him grin faintly back. "Uh huh. I find it a great antidote to the rest of the base. I spend way too much time here to ignore my own comforts and I've never been a huge fan of institutional grey, it's too depressing for words."

Daniel could sympathise with that one, it reflected his own thoughts on the matter with uncanny accuracy. But at the same time, he was curious. And to tell the truth, slightly envious. He indicated the room with a sweep of his arm.

"You managed to get a budgetary allowance for this?"

Ross laughed outright. "Hell no! Have you ever tried to get the goddam stingy Air Force to spring for anything out of the ordinary? Okay, stupid question, I guess. I thought the bean counters would pass out when they saw my list of requirements. I managed to finagle the paint job, but the furniture and the daylight bulbs were at my own expense. Bastards couldn’t see what was in front of their noses even when I pointed out they were therapeutic aids and much cheaper than the usual, drug-based approaches. It was too 'out there'," Ross added exaggerated air quotes, "for them."

At Daniel's inquisitive lift of his brows, Ross expanded, "My background is in endocrinology. With particular emphasis on the interdependence of the limbic system and the function and state of the brain. Which in turn led to examining alternative therapies and their clinical usefulness and that's what I've based my career on to date. Which is tantamount to hippy-trippy navel-gazing to the unimaginative idiots in charge of this man's Air Force. Tell me, do I look like a hippy?"

"No," Daniel was caught flatfooted by the demanding tone of the question. "You're way too --," he caught himself just in time and hastily jettisoned what he'd been going to say. "Uh, just 'no'," he finished lamely. Ross didn't seem to take offence. Instead he snorted quietly and Daniel strongly suspected that he knew what he'd been going to say without him saying it.

"Exactly. Idiots, every last one of them."

"But you're here despite that."

Ross nodded. "Yep, I'm here. Thanks to Doctor Fraiser. She went to bat for me. She's prepared to accept that these therapies might be useful tools in the right circumstances. So thanks to her, I'm here to research their practical applications in the military in a high stress environment. Believe me, they do work."

"Do they?" Daniel looked and sounded a little sceptical. "Stuff like crystals? Auras?" He trawled his memory for other, more extreme examples. "Rainbow water?"

"Okay," Ross conceded with a grin, "some of the ideas maybe are a little 'out there'. But the basic principles are sound; I've proved that to my own satisfaction. For example, how are you feeling right now? I'd be prepared to put money on you feeling more positive, less edgy, than when you came in."

Daniel stopped to consider this for a moment. His spirits had lifted - not that much, but they had. "Maybe, a little."

"You see? Orange and blue. Calming and antidepressant. And natural light. Also antidepressant. Yes, this stuff works." It suddenly struck Daniel how utterly surreal it was to be sitting discussing interior decorating with a guy who was built like a brick wall: his lips twitched with amusement and he ducked his head to hide it.

Ross noticed this too. He gave Daniel a forthright look, his demeanour immediately businesslike. "Be that as it may, you're not here to listen to me pontificating from my favourite soapbox. You're wondering what possible relevance this might have to Colonel O'Neill. "

Daniel opened his mouth to confirm this, but Ross gave him no chance to speak. "You'll be glad to hear I'm not going to propose shining pretty coloured lights at him. At least, not yet."

Again, Daniel took a breath to reply and again, Ross kept right on going. "But there are other therapies and strategies that we can consider. All of which tie directly in with the Colonel's physical condition."

At last, Daniel managed to get a word in edgeways. "You do think it's a physical condition then? Janet seemed to think that it might be purely psychological."

"Yes, I've read the notes. And no, I'm not convinced by the purely psychological argument. Admittedly O'Neill is a prime candidate for PTSD but I'm thinking there's more to this than that. There is a physical condition there, I'm convinced of it, probably a residual effect of the drug. The evidence is all there in the blood tests." Ross ticked the points off on his fingers as he spoke. "The limbic system isn't working as it should, the hypothalamus is part of the limbic, the hypothalamus was the original target of the pharmaceutical cocktail used to keep the Colonel quiet when he was captive. The inescapable conclusion is that even if we can't define it, the drug is still having an inhibiting effect on the limbic system as a whole."

Daniel nodded. That chimed with his gut feeling. And the man's innate self-confidence and his undoubted enthusiasm appealed to him somehow. He was at least prepared to listen, regardless of whether he followed his advice or not.

"And," Ross added, "it's now my job to figure out how. And how to help you get around it. As I understand it, you're not that keen for me to get involved directly? Well, I can see your reasoning there, based on your knowledge of the Colonel's normal state of mind and reactions."

"I'm glad someone can," Daniel said drily. "So, have you figured out how yet?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I have a working hypothesis, but you're the one who'll have to test it out. How much do you know about endocrine function?"

"The average layman's knowledge, I suppose. Glands secrete hormones, hormones kick-start various responses within the body - adrenaline, for example, fight or flight - that kind of thing."

"Yes, that's about the usual level of perception. But there are a lot more implications than that. According to the notes I've read, the Colonel has been uncharacteristically calm and unemotional throughout his return and subsequent treatment here. And that makes me think that his lack of emotion might be key to the drug's MO."

Daniel kept listening to him with pursed lips and without comment, and Ross continued, "Doctor Fraiser has already hypothesised that the drug, whatever it is, has its main effects on the pathways between the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex, effectively blocking the memory by disrupting the pathways between the two areas of the brain.

"The hippocampus however is not only implicated in long term memory, but in emotional function also. It seems reasonable then to assume that by blocking these pathways, emotional function will be affected as well as memory, although which of these is the intended effect of the drug is anyone's guess at the moment. And it seems further reasonable to hypothesise that if the two conditions are closely linked, one might provide the key to alleviating the other. If you follow me. If one could access the memories, the emotions would follow. Conversely, if one was to stimulate the emotions, that might provide the impetus to smash the block on the memory."

Daniel was forced to admit that this made some sort of sense. "Okay, that seems logical. I've been trying to get Jack to remember by telling him about things that have happened and it hasn't done much. He had trouble remembering what I'd told him to start with. His short-term memory was shot too, thanks to the halcion. But even now that his short-term memory's improving, I'm still not making much headway. I was actually starting to wonder about my approach - whether it was too soft. So, you're saying you think I should traumatise Jack in some way, scare a response out of him?"

He got what he felt was a slightly condescending look for his trouble. "Not exactly, no. That might have long-term negative implications. I'd tend to put that approach into the 'taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut' school of psychotherapy - typical layman's approach, no finesse at all, if you don't mind me saying so. But there is overwhelming evidence for the durability of the emotional memory attached to life experiences and its continued accessibility even when physical memory is suppressed. After all, it's the rationale behind hypnosis as a therapeutic tool."

As Daniel took a breath and opened his mouth, Ross held up his hand to forestall comment yet again. "And I'm not proposing we try that either, not just yet anyway. I'm just suggesting that as well as continuing to appeal to the Colonel's rational mind, you reach out to his subconscious with an emotional appeal. If you can find the appropriate stimulus, an event or experience with strong enough but not overwhelming emotional connotations, not necessarily negative emotions, it might be enough to start the process of total recall."

And there, Daniel couldn't help thinking, lay the problem with this approach. There was certainly no lack of choice when it came to emotional connotations, very much the reverse in fact. The trouble was that little weasel word 'overwhelming'. It ruled out one hell of a lot of potential stimuli.

"So what kind of thing do you suggest?"

"To be honest, I'm really relying here on your knowledge of O'Neill's past to come up with something appropriate. I haven't had a whole lot of time to work through the files General Hammond made available to me so I'm boxing in the dark here. Although I'm not convinced that anything work-related would be as effective as something personal anyway. You two are close, I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something. Some shared memory that has significance."

So, back to square one. Daniel took a long, considering breath. The obvious route, their current relationship, was completely out of bounds: if - no, when - Jack's memories of that returned, Daniel wanted them to be spontaneous. No way was Jack ever going to wonder if that situation had been manufactured. But Ross was still talking.

"Also, it might be a good thing if you can use an emotional memory from early on in your acquaintance with Colonel O'Neill. Something from when you first met, for instance. It might be the case that if you can access an early memory, it could make the recall of subsequent events easier. Although," he added with a slight frown, "I have nothing other than gut feeling to back that idea up."

Daniel mentally reviewed his own memories of his early days with the program. When he'd first met Jack - well that was obviously another no-go area. He wasn't altogether sure that reminding Jack of the coldly suicidal man he'd been then would be the most reassuring way forward for him. And he certainly didn't feel comfortable about making Jack revisit the grief of losing Charlie and Sara all over again, even if those events had fit all Ross' criteria. The second Abydos mission wasn't much better (he wasn’t prepared to revisit his emotions at that one), nor was the mission to Chulak that had followed it. That had led to the death of one of Jack's good friends and at Jack's order. A mercy killing of a sort, granted, but a killing nevertheless.

So much death, so much loss, so much suffering. Maybe Jack was better off not being able to remember any of it.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Ross' voice sliced across his gloomy thoughts and Daniel's head jerked up.

"I'm sorry. You were saying?"

There was a glimmer of some emotion that Daniel couldn't quite put a name to in Ross' eyes as he answered, "At least it seems my approach has gotten you thinking. When are you next due to visit with the Colonel?"

"I usually go in the afternoon and evening. Mornings he has PT and I have to catch up with departmental work. So," Daniel glanced at his watch, "a couple of hours' time, I guess. More or less."

Ross was getting to his feet, the interview obviously over so far as he was concerned.

"Well, hopefully you'll have a chance to come up with something. I'll touch base with you again in a day or two. Meantime, if you want to run anything by me, you know where I am."

He extended his hand again and Daniel shook it with a small smile as he got up out of his chair. "Thanks."

He had some serious thinking to do if he was going to make this work.


*

Part 8