Chapter Text
Daniel buried himself in his books. It had been the first moment of peace he’d gotten since they’d come back through the stargate, with Jack keeping up his tirade even through the requisite post-mission medical checks. Daniel had managed to escape the infirmary first, and had absconded to his lab, where he put off writing up his report. He was going to have plenty of time to finish it later, since Jack had apparently “grounded” him from missions for the foreseeable future. He’d balked at the term, but Jack had just turned his criticisms to Daniel’s lack of facility with military terminology and culture. Daniel had tuned him out as Janet took his blood pressure. It had been slightly high.
He looked over his notes on the writing system they’d found and then stood to scan his shelves for something on the Cypro-Minoan syllabary. He was just reaching up to grab it when the door to his lab crashed open.
“We’re not done talking about this, Daniel,” Jack resumed his earlier lecture. “You almost got yourself killed. And God knows what happened to that planet.”
“I know.” It had been terrifying, the quick brush of a hand across the stone carvings suddenly setting off a chain reaction of shifting ground beneath their feet, rising monoliths, and an ominous rumble that Daniel didn’t want to speculate on. He’d frantically started to decipher what he’d triggered, trying to reverse the process, but Jack had bodily hauled him away from the device, throwing him through the gate after Teal’c and Sam.
“You know? That’s it?” Jack stared at him, incredulity steeped in outrage. “You touched an alien artifact that I specifically told you not to touch, almost killing all of us, and all you have to say is that you know?”
Daniel set the book down on his desk and took a breath. It had been a close call, but not markedly different from any of their other brushes with death, and in the end they’d all come out unscathed. “I was just trying to read it. There was no way for me to know that was going to happen.”
“Exactly. There was no way for any of us to know what was going to happen, which is why I told you not to touch it!”
“I’m sorry!” he snapped, irritated that Jack wouldn’t let it go, and still on edge from the earlier adrenaline rush.
“Yeah? Sorry enough that you kept messing with it after I told you to get through the gate?”
“I was trying to fix it!” He didn’t mention that there was a chance that he could have fixed it, if Jack hadn’t dragged him through the gate.
“I don’t care what you were trying to do. When I tell you to get through the gate, you walk through the goddamn gate. You don’t screw around with alien technology that’s about to blow up in your face.”
“If you’d given me a few more seconds-”
“Stop it. I don’t want to hear it. I give you an order, and you follow the order. That’s the way chain of command works.”
“I’m not military, Jack. You can’t expect me-”
“Daniel, stop talking. That’s the order you’re getting right now: Close your mouth.”
Daniel took a breath, trying to keep his own cool in the face of Jack’s barely contained fury. “I’m trying to have a reasonable-”
“You. Will. Close. Your. Mouth.” Jack’s voice boomed through the lab, the command tone snapping Daniel’s teeth shut before he even registered the words. Jack continued, only slightly mollified by Daniel’s immediate compliance. “Now sit your insubordinate ass down in that chair.”
Daniel sat where Jack pointed. He wasn’t afraid of Jack, but he also knew it was pointless to try to argue with him when he got this riled up. “I am done arguing with you about this. The next time I tell you to get through the gate, you drop what you’re doing and get through the gate. Is that clear?”
Movement from the doorway caught Daniel’s eye. Two airmen maintained eyes front as they passed the lab, but their backs snapped straighter at Jack’s rebuke. Daniel barely kept a lid on his own resentment by pressing his lips together and looking at the notes in front him.
“I asked you a question, Daniel. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Jack, I still understand English.” Even with his eyes on his notes, Daniel could feel Jack’s gaze sharpen, cutting through the solace Daniel normally found in his work and sending his sympathetic nervous system into overdrive. He leaned into the sensation and softly muttered, “As well as about thirty other languages you don’t, which is why I’m here.”
Silence fell upon the room as Jack’s blazing fury turned to ice. Daniel’s heartbeat quickened at the two measured steps Jack took toward him, every line of his body vibrating with suppressed violence. “If I come back, and you are anywhere else but in that chair, in that exact spot, your next stop will be a holding cell. And I’m not going to bother asking you if you understand, because with your giant thirty-language brain, I’m sure you’ve got it covered.”
With that, Jack spun on his heels and strode out of the room, and Daniel stayed exactly where he was.
The phone rang, and Daniel was halfway up to answer it before he fell back into his chair, mentally kicking himself for feeling so compelled to stay where Jack had put him. He awkwardly dragged the chair over to the table, and answered.
“Dr. Jackson, General Hammond has asked that you report to his office immediately.”
“I’m…” He didn’t know how to explain his current predicament without it seeming ridiculous. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
The extended silence on the other end of the line told him exactly what the airman thought of his explanation. “I understand, sir. General Hammond has asked that you report to his office immediately.”
“Right, I got that. I just, uh…” He racked his brain for a plausible explanation that wasn’t a complete fabrication.
“If it would help, sir, some SF’s could come by to escort you.”
“No!” he yelped. That was the last thing he needed. “I’ll be right there.”
He made his way to Hammond’s office, where Jack was already seated across from the general. Daniel stopped just inside the door, feeling like he was marching into his execution chamber. Or at least the principal’s office.
“Sit down, son.” General Hammond looked up from the paperwork in front him and indicated the empty chair next to Jack’s. Daniel sat, giving the colonel a wide berth. “Colonel O’Neill has just given me a very troubling report on your inability to follow orders while on off-world missions.”
Daniel looked to Jack, whose stony countenance had yet to react to the interaction. “I... okay.”
“It’s not ‘okay,’ Daniel,” Jack started, before the general cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“The success of these missions and the safety of those on them depends on the ability of everyone to respect military protocol.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that.”
“Son, I have a stack of paper right here that suggests you don’t. Now, you’ve been given a lot of latitude when it comes to your participation in this program.”
Resentment over the fact that Jack had written a small treatise on Daniel’s shortcomings rose from his chest and tightened around the base of his skull. He’d thought they’d talked things out each time, but apparently Jack had been documenting every dispute in preparation to use against him in the future. Daniel bit his lip and forced out a heavy breath as he processed his thoughts. Before he could formulate a coherent response, Jack pointed an disapproving finger at him.
“See? That right there. That little huff instead of a ‘Yes, sir.’ That’s latitude.”
“Sorry,” Daniel ground out.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Jack corrected him, and Daniel’s frustration reached a breaking point.
“I’m not military, Jack!” He felt betrayed. Betrayed that Jack hadn’t trusted him to fix the device. Betrayed that Jack was coming down on him so hard so suddenly. Betrayed that Jack was bringing all this to Hammond.
“Alright.” General Hammond put up a calming hand, and they settled back into their chairs. “Dr. Jackson, we understand that you are a civilian, but you are working for the Air Force, and you’re going out in the field where we expect the chain of command to be respected. If you can’t do that, then you can’t be out in the field.”
“I do respect the chain of command. I just...” He trailed off, unsure how to explain the magnitude of the discoveries that they were making with each trip, how they could revolutionize their understanding of earlier cultures. Daniel was on the cusp of deciphering Linear A. “I’m not a soldier. My job is different, and it has its own code of behavior. I can’t abdicate my responsibility to act ethically just because I’m ordered to.”
“I see.” The general frowned at the report in front of him. “Dr. Jackson, did you feel ethically obligated to touch this alien device?”
“No,” Daniel faltered under the general’s placid stare. “But once we triggered it, I couldn’t just let it blow up the planet.”
“Yeah, maybe aliens built a device to help travellers blow up their planet,” Jack interjected with a caustic nod. “Or maybe, just maybe, they built something that would kill the travellers - that’d be me and you, by the way - and leave the rest of the planet safe.”
Daniel considered the possibility. “Yeah, I guess that makes more sense.”
“Ya think?”
Before Daniel knew it, he’d forgotten where he was, and his world had narrowed to Jack’s smug, sarcastic face. “I didn’t know that at the time!”
“You knew I told you not to touch it.”
“Maybe, ‘Look with your eyes, not with your hands,’ didn’t feel like such a serious order in the moment!”
“Gentlemen!” General Hammond cut through the exchange, and Daniel was chagrined to realize they’d had an audience. “We have a problem here. Dr Jackson, right now neither the colonel nor I feel comfortable putting you out in the field. Since counseling you on this issue has clearly been ineffective, we’re left with two options: to reassign you to work strictly on-base, with no off-world missions, or to terminate your contract with the stargate program completely.”
The reality of the words started to sink in. He would no longer be part of SG-1. No field work, no first-contact, no Jack, Sam, and Teal’c. No team. He boxed up every emotion he might have about the situation and forced a calm demeanor. “Okay, I’ll go pack my stuff.”
The world constricted around him, and Daniel stood, barely registering Jack’s voice as he followed the tight tunnel of his vision out of the general’s office.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Daniel. Daniel!”
Daniel had no idea which things were his and which belonged to the stargate program. They probably all belonged to the stargate program. He started shoving the books that he didn’t want to leave behind into a rough pile on one side of his desk.
“Daniel, stop it.”
The artifacts were obviously government property, but Daniel still shuffled through them as he ignored Jack’s presence in the doorway.
“Since I didn’t see a resignation letter, I’m going to assume I can still order you around. Put the alien doohickey down and talk to me.”
“It’s a mehen board,” Daniel muttered, setting the disk down. “I can turn in a resignation letter by the end of the day.”
“Or - and here’s an idea - you could not resign. You don’t have to write a letter. I don’t have to get used to a new scientist. It’s a win-win.”
“Did you miss the part where I was fired from my job?”
“Yeah, I did. Because you weren’t ‘fired’. General Hammond was making a point that he doesn’t have a lot of options for disciplining civilian contractors other than firing them.”
The logical extension of that statement was clearly that Daniel was fired, but he didn’t have the energy to wend through a maze of conversation. “What’s your point, Jack?”
“My point is that the Air Force has plenty of ways to keep people working and miserable at the same time, but none of them apply to you.” Jack ticked possibilities on his fingers. “Forfeiture of pay: a violation of labor law; restriction: a violation of civil liberties; reduction in rank: well, turns out there’s no protocol for busting a PhD down to a masters degree.”
The image of Jack and General Hammond brainstorming ways to punish him solidified his resolve. “Okay, then it sounds like I’m fired, so let me pack my stuff.”
“Daniel, I want you to stay on this team, but you have a huge problem with authority, and an even bigger problem with my authority over you. You’re pissed off at even the suggestion of me punishing you for breach of discipline.” Jack paused, as if waiting for a response, but Daniel refused to engage him. “Everyone else on the team has gone through military training that’s drilled it into our heads that we have to follow orders. You haven’t, and it makes you a danger to yourself and the rest of the team.”
“Okay, Jack. I got it. I’m dangerous because you can’t punish me. Point taken.”
“No, you don’t ‘got it’!” Jack took a deep breath, and appeared to settle down before continuing. “Daniel, can you look me in the eye and tell me that you believe that you should follow my orders on missions, whether or not you think they’re right?”
Daniel couldn’t. Jack knew Daniel couldn’t.
“Can you even admit that I’m in a position of authority over you?”
“You’re the leader of our team,” he wavered.
“That’s not what I asked. Can you admit that I’m in a position of authority over you?”
Daniel sighed. “Jack…”
“Now, can you use your genius anthropologist brain to see how this is a problem in our military culture?”
Daniel fiddled with a stone from the mehen board while Jack waited him out. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”
“Okay,” Jack held his hands out to his sides in question. “What do I do?”
“Well,” Daniel pressed his lips together as he distanced himself from the topic. “I guess, in military culture, you use your positional power to reinforce the social hierarchy.”
“See? I knew there was a reason I kept you around. And how would I do that?”
Daniel rattled off his answer without letting the words stick too long in his brain. “Punishment, while ostensibly used to deter particular behaviors, more often functions as a dominance display that enforces the social hierarchy.”
“So it sounds like you’re saying I should punish you.”
“No, I’m saying it would be the culturally appropriate response.”
“You wanna hear my culturally appropriate proposal?”
Daniel really didn’t. “Okay.”
Jack held up a finger. “Three weeks restriction to the base and your apartment. You go straight between the two and don’t stop anywhere else.”
“What about the grocery store? How am I supposed to eat?”
“If those instructions are too complicated, we can make it just the base.”
Daniel sighed. “No, I got it.”
Jack held up a second finger. “For the first two weeks, you’re on alternate assignment.”
“What does that mean? Like peeling potatoes? Cutting grass with nail clippers?” When Jack just shrugged, Daniel pressed on. “What about my actual work? I’m already behind!”
“And now you’re going to be two weeks behinder.”
“I can’t take that much time off work! I’ve got a pile of stuff to do. Can’t I just pay a fine or something? Do the pay forfeiture thing?”
“No and no,” Jack shook his head with a cynical chuckle. “Because every time I give an order from then on out, you’ll be calculating exactly how much money it’s worth for you to obey it.”
Daniel considered the scenario. It did have a ‘buying indulgences’ sort of feel to it. “Isn’t there anything else?”
“This is usually not a negotiation, Danny-boy,” Jack told him, then sighed. “Okay, a week in a holding cell.”
“Could I bring my work with me?”
“No, you can’t bring your work with you to jail!”
“You said the Air Force had ways to keep people working. What about all that boot camp stuff?”
“Oh, you want to march up and down the halls all day shouting ‘I am a dumbass who touches everything he sees’?”
He did not. “What else?”
“Sorry, there’s not a catalog that you get to pick your punishment out of.” He ran his hands over his face, then clenched his fists in frustration. “I’m running out of ideas here. You want me to beat you?”
“Would I be able to go back to work right after?”
Jack’s mouth opened and closed several times before it managed to produce any sound. “Wh-? Daniel, I can’t beat you.”
“You can’t lock me up for a week, or make me scrub the floors with a toothbrush, either.” Daniel wasn’t sure where his argument was coming from, or where it was going. Jack considered him for a few more moments, then turned away and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Would it convince you to follow orders?”
The question froze the air in the room around him, as well as that in his lungs. Daniel hadn’t expected Jack to agree. The prospect of Jack actually hitting him was suddenly, pressingly real, and his mind shrank from it. “I don’t-” He’d been beaten twice on Abydos, and it had prompted a definite shift in his relationship with Kasuf. He considered the implications. “Maybe. Probably?”
Jack still wasn’t looking at him. Instead he studied a point on Daniel’s bookshelves. “That isn’t exactly part of the UCMJ.”
“But it happens?”
“It has happened.” Jack finally turned back to look at him. “Is that what you want?”
Daniel already felt smaller at the possibility, but maybe that was the point. “I don’t know. I mean, what exactly…”
As Daniel trailed off, Jack went back to massaging between his eyebrows, his discomfort palpable. Daniel let the question dissipate. “Can I think about it?”
“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “Just get back to me by the end of the day.”