Kylie Lee | Slash fan fiction

He opened his eyes, and there it was: the bright light. Memory trembled, suspended, then rushed in.

It had happened before. It had all happened before.

---

The arrows always pointed the way down. Down was the relevant direction; it didn't matter which way was up. He had learned to walk to the correct side of the cell when he felt the gravity change. He'd place his feet on the wall, and it would become the floor.

The cells were clever, he gave Ba'al that much. Ba'al was also clever in his choice of his torture: knives dropped from his fingers and unerringly headed to his body. Drops of acid thought sideways was down. Pressure would increase so greatly that he could not breathe. Ba'al, the master of gravity. Usually Jack hung like a spider caught in a web, feeling as if he was pressed hard to the ground, so he couldn't lift a hand or a foot, but he was actually on a wall. Usually. The acid and the knives and the weight pressing inexorably on his chest were just the beginning. When he died, he would be revived in a sarcophagus, so it could all happen again. And again. And again.

He was alone in his cell right now. Sometimes Daniel was there, and sometimes a woman he didn't know was there, although she didn't come inside the cell. She waited outside and looked down the gravity well at him. Sometimes she spoke. Something had happened. Something was going on, and Ba'al wanted to know about it, as did the woman. Jack knew it was important that Ba'al not know about her. He knew little else.

He had determined not to speak only to be perverse, but somehow he told what he knew, which was little enough. He knew the ways of torture, yet he told. He gave a name: Kanan. He'd hardly had time to be joined: he'd been about to die, so they stuck a snake in his head. Did no one keep a sarcophagus handy for these life-and-death emergencies, so the whole snake thing could be avoided? Apparently not.

He knew nothing, but he feared he knew everything. He would prefer not to betray anyone. Sometimes he thought he would remember, he would tell Ba'al, and then Ba'al would let him go.

He knew better. But sometimes, his body wanted what his mind told him he could not have, like Daniel at night. He'd turn, and nobody would be there, because of course Daniel was dead now. When he woke up, before the gravity shifted, marking the time to be presented to Ba'al for his pleasure, sometimes kept his eyes closed and pretended he was home. He could imagine it so clearly that it became real: the feel of his bed underneath him, the location of the night stand, the window there, the door there, the rug there, the bathroom through that door. He could reach out and feel—not Daniel's warm skin, but the emptiness beside him.

Because the emptiness of the bed mirrored an emptiness inside himself, he was afraid that here, in Ba'al's stronghold, he had made Daniel up. Daniel was perhaps some kind of metaphorical expression of his innermost thoughts, there to give him hope now that the option of death had been removed. You won't die! You can ascend. You can get out of all of this. Daniel embodied that hope.

Oh, but he couldn't ascend. The white light would not take him and make him disappear onto a higher plane of existence. Instead, the white light would revive him in his corporeal body, and Ba'al would start again.

The arrows moved. They always pointed down. Time to go.

---

The woman sat a little sideways and gazed at him, far below in his cell, with her sad eyes. Daniel couldn't see her. He wondered whether she could see Daniel, because Daniel deliberately left when the guards came, as if he could be seen. He knew her, and yet he didn't. Her identity hung elusive, just out of reach. "Have you come for me?" she asked. And: "Will you take me away?" And: "Are you him?"

Yes, and yes, and yes, but all of it was really no, because he'd been captured, and he was in no position to help anyone. His body had gone somewhere without his mind. When the symbiote left, he was alone again, and wholly himself. Kanan knew everything, but Kanan was gone and had left nothing behind.

He touched a gash in his shirt, a large one in the middle of his chest. He thought there should be more, to mark time, but often his shirt was removed before a guard pushed him against the gravity web. He remembered the blow more than the pain—the heaviness of it, the sick thud through his body. "Look," Ba'al had gloated, holding up his heart. "This is just the start." Jack had imagined that the round ball of flesh was still beating. Had it really happened? Or was it the result of one too many movies? He had looked down and seen the gash in his chest, like he looked down now and saw the rip that marked it, and he'd known then that he wanted to die.

"Such suffering," the woman said, shaking her head. She had a slight accent that he couldn't place. "Such pain."

"Help me," he told her. His voice pleaded. "Who are you? Why are you here? Do I know you?"

It all turned on her, he knew. If he could learn who she was, then this entire mission would suddenly make sense. And if it made sense, he would know what to do. He would be able to take action.

Or he would be able to tell, and Ba'al would stop.

She couldn't save him, any more than Daniel could, with his talk of ascension. It was the other way around: he had to save her.

"You shouldn't have come," she said, her face sorrowful. "It was kind of you."

"I can't do anything for you," he admitted, hands on the wall that was sometimes a floor. "They got me. Ba'al got me."

She turned her head sharply, as if she heard something, and then she simply evaporated, body turning to a wisp, a shade. A moment later, and she was gone.

"Ba'al got me," Jack repeated, this time to himself. They should have come for him by now, Carter and Teal'c and even Jonas Quinn. He had to do something to get out, but his bright light wasn't Daniel's bright light. His came from around him, healing him, readying him to fight another day. His light had become the sarcophagus, now that his team was gone. Daniel's came from within.

---

Ba'al took him on all fours when he was done making shallow cuts all over Jack's naked torso. He plunged himself in and Jack only shivered. It was about power, but when Ba'al lost himself, when he cried out and pulsed pleasure into Jack, long, long, long, it felt like he had won a tiny victory. He tried to think about nothing much.

When Ba'al withdrew and turned Jack onto his back, Jack was hard. It was the victory, he told himself, even as Ba'al smiled down at him, gloating. He took Jack into his mouth, and victory got confused with wet hot pleasure. Before he could come, Ba'al stabbed him through the heart. Jack had known he would. Release meant freedom. That wouldn't happen.

When the white light revived him, he remembered the last thing he had seen: Ba'al covered in blood, pants undone, heavy dick and balls swinging free, knife in hand, smiling.

---

"You know I missed you," he said matter-of-factly to Daniel, the words an understatement of epic proportions. Above them perched the sad woman. She only watched. Jack ignored her.

"I know." Daniel looked exactly like himself, except he didn't wear glasses. Maybe ascension improved one's vision.

"In fact," and he strove for conversational, "I still do."

"Jack. I'm right here." Daniel sat across from him in the cell, wearing the same ribbed sweater he'd worn every time he'd appeared, although Jack was convinced that days had passed. Time had gotten as confused as gravity. "I want to help you."

"Intel. A zat gun. An escape route." Jack listed off all the ways Daniel could help, even though he knew it was futile.

"Ascension."

Daniel wouldn't give up.

"You guys wouldn't know what to do with me up there," Jack asserted confidently. "You think you're the kind of guy who goes around breaking rules?"

"Bending," Daniel cut in. "Bending rules, not breaking them."

"Well, I'd be far, far worse. And you know it." Jack jabbed a finger to punctuate his words.

Daniel leaned forward to hide a smile. "I guess that's true," he admitted.

Finally. "Damn right. Anything that relies on me had better be all about the plan, the weapons, the chain of command, the crazy last-minute firefight for the saving of the ass. Not—not this stuff." He made a futile gesture encompassing his cell.

"By 'this stuff,' you mean the self-introspection required to reach enlightenment," Daniel asked, only he phrased it like a sentence and not a question.

Jack pointed at Daniel. "Got it in one."

"You are so much more." Daniel's voice filled with intensity, and Jack couldn't look away from those eyes, strangely naked without the glasses. Without his glasses, Daniel could see deep into him. He had always been able to do that.

"You see it. Only you." Jack rose abruptly to his feet and paced. He had to get away from those eyes. Above him, his watcher simply sat. Both of them wanted something from him, and he couldn't give it to either of them.

"Not just me," Daniel murmured.

"You saw it because you wanted to see it," Jack snapped. "You saw it to make up a story to make what we did together all right."

He'd half-hoped to make Daniel angry, but this new ascended Daniel didn't respond in kind. Instead, he said gently, "No. Do you really think that?"

He didn't, but right now, he did. He really did. He didn't have to say it; Daniel saw it in his eyes, both meanings. Yes, and no, the same as his response to the woman and her questions.

"There's a truth here!" he yelled, indicating his body. "There's not a truth here!" He tapped his head with two fingers.

As if to punctuate his words, the gravity changed. The arrows swung, and it was time to meet Ba'al to be destroyed, only to be brought back by the white light. Again and again and again. The woman at the top of the room had gone. He put his hands on the wall that would become the floor. He couldn't do it anymore. He was too tired.

"Go away, Daniel," he said loudly, but the cell was empty.

---

"It's a story," he said conversationally to Ba'al. "It's like a movie. Do you Goa'uld have movies? Or possibly films? They're like plays, but recorded."

Ba'al unstoppered a bottle. "Tell me how you breached my defenses," he ordered. The gravity field holding Jack to the web slightly distorted his words. Ba'al had lots of little buttons or ties down the front of his long jacket, and Jack bizarrely wondered who did them up for him. He had a flash of the woman who visited his cell performing this task. She wouldn't look at Ba'al when she did it. Her hands would do the work and her eyes would stay focused on her task. When she was done, she would take a step back and fold her hands, waiting, as she waited at the top of Jack's cell.

Jack continued. "So all these little things happen. You see the keys in the second shot of the film, say, and later on, they show up as some kind of crucial plot element. You have to remember that you saw the keys early on—like, maybe whose keys they were is important. So it's a big plot revelation later." Jack felt as if he'd lost control of the metaphor, but he soldiered on. "All these little things happen, and then before you know it, you have a story, made up of all these parts, but instead of it being a film, you use the things in your life. And you make up a story where it all means something. The keys. Then the revelation."

"There is only one story I am interested in hearing," Ba'al said coldly, rotating the bottle he held. Jack knew what it held, just as he knew he could do nothing to avert it. "Yours. How you got here. Why you are here." He looked at Jack expectantly.

"I guess my story is all about Kanan," Jack decided. "Only I didn't know it at first because I don't remember anything. But he's the reason I'm here. If I told you anything else, I'd just be making up a story, because I'm pretty light on the facts."

"I prefer the truth." Ba'al turned the bottle's opening toward Jack.

"But there isn't a truth," Jack said earnestly. He knew what was in the bottle, and his body shrank from the anticipation of the pain. "There's me here. That's the truth." It was the argument with Daniel all over again, he realized. His body was here, but nothing in his mind told him why. There was no candle there, illuminating all. "You've got to go with the facts. Question your guards."

"You dare tell me what to do?" Ba'al began, but before he could work up a head of steam, Jack overrode his words.

"Question your guards," he repeated. "Check security footage. Check your ring system and figure out when it was last used. That kind of thing. It's all about the facts. You put the facts together, and then you make a story, but let me tell you, that story will have a lot more truth to it than anything I could tell you." He couldn't move to indicate himself, but he made an abortive twist with his head before he remembered that. "You can't rely on my memory. Eyewitness reports aren't all that reliable. That's all I'm saying."

Ba'al sighed. "I appreciate your advice." His voice dripped sarcasm. "You breached my defenses with the ring system? We saw no ship in orbit."

Jack sighed. Ba'al was terribly literal. "Maybe I used the rings. I don't know. But it's a possibility, and frankly, it's one that you should have checked out before now. Because I don't think you have. Have you?" He could see in Ba'al's posture and reaction that he hadn't. "You see? Questioning the guards? That's just the first step. You've got to dig deeper."

"Silence!" Ba'al thundered, and Jack gave him a false smile but shut up. "For your impudence." He released a large drop of acid. Jack shut his eyes before it hit. He felt it a moment later on his shoulder, and then pain blossomed through his body.

The white light would mark the end the pain. He would endure.

---

"Daniel." Jack jerked awake. How long had he been asleep? It didn't matter. Time had distorted like gravity.

"Don't talk, Jack." Daniel's blue eyes were close, as if they were in Jack's bed at home. Jack found he couldn't conjure up his bedroom the way he could when he was alone, when he used sense memory to convince his body he was still there, and not here.

"I'm kind of running out of resources here." He put up a hand and let it hover at the line of Daniel's jaw. If he moved that last tiny bit, his hand would pass through nothing. "You're not helping." The cell floor was hard against his back. He'd taken off his shirt to use as a pillow. He felt like he should apologize for the things he'd said before, but he didn't. Daniel didn't need him to.

"I was just thinking about what you said about your body, versus your mind." Daniel lay beside him, propped up on an arm. The usually reassuringly heavy weight of the leg he had thrown over Jack was absent. Daniel's hand ghosted over his bare chest. "Maybe you can find the path to enlightenment another way."

If there was a light inside his body and not his mind, it had gone out when Daniel died. "Please don't do this," he whispered when Daniel bent his head. Lips brushed his, a long, long kiss, and so great was his desire for Daniel to be real, to be alive, that he could almost feel him. "Please," he repeated, only this time, he wasn't begging Daniel to stop. He hadn't known that the ascended would want to do this. It would be like Jesus having sex.

He wasn't with Jesus, he discovered. He found he didn't need Daniel's touch; his own, combined with Daniel's presence, was enough. Daniel's hand moved down, and he undid his own pants. His penis felt hot and alien. To feel something other than pain—

Above him, a flicker moved, and he knew she was there, watching. What did she see? Could she see Daniel bending over him, making love to him? Or did she see Jack alone, masturbating, saying someone's name?

He found he didn't care. He squeezed and stroked. He looked not at her but at Daniel. She needed him, but he couldn't help her. Now, he needed Daniel.

"I didn't mean it," he gasped, hips starting to move as Daniel's mouth moved down his body. He'd apologized after all.

"I know," Daniel said reassuringly. "Shh. Don't talk. Let me. Here."

Time stopped. When Daniel rolled on top of Jack later, no pressure followed. His pupils were huge, the way they always got when he was hot. Jack missed the hard pressure of Daniel's erection against him. Daniel still wore his bulky sweater, but a fully dressed Daniel on top of him did—something. His back arched as his hand worked. The feel of his pants rucked around his hips excited him, like it had when they'd made love in the dark on an alien world, so desperate that undressing took too long.

"Daniel," he said, half in despair and the other half in relief and love, and Daniel stared into his eyes as he came. Hot jets splattered his chest and stomach, and with release came the white light, blanking out everything else, his mind gone, only his body existing. If the woman still watched, she would dissipate as a result of that light, annihilated by it.

It was like ascension. It would pull him up.