jack in the box

First Jack figured he'd be able to get out somehow. He just needed an opportunity. A fighting chance.

Then he figured the Tok'ra might come. Maybe the SGC would break him out. You didn't leave your people behind. No one was supposed to get left behind.

Then he stopped thinking about escape. It all turned into one very long day. He wasn't even sure anymore of how long he'd spent in Ba'al's prison. It felt like an eternity.

He would sit numbly in his cell and stare into nothingness, counting the scars and open wounds on his body. You couldn't see them, but they were there, filled with acid. His whole body burned with the memory of it. His blood was acid, burning its way through his veins.

The sarcophagus healed his body, but it strengthened the scars in his mind. He was sure if he ever looked in a mirror, he would see them all, weeping acid instead of blood.

They came for him eventually, his rescuers. The whole place was under attack and Jack knew if he didn't do it now, he would never escape. The shield that kept him captive in his cell was down and he ran out, encountering a guard. He disarmed the Jaffa with a ferocity that amazed him. The urge to kill the other man was so strong he could taste blood in his mouth. Someone came from behind and attacked him. He was down, terrified of going back in that cell.

Suddenly he was being pulled to his feet and dragged outside, under the cover of night. He'd almost forgotten what night was, because his cell was always bright. Outside there were stars, burning holes in the skin of the night sky and there was a cool breeze, soothing their pain. Jack was numb as he was taken to another place.

There were more questions. Questions about Ba'al. Questions about Kanan. Jack laughed. It was funny because he really didn't know. All those times Ba'al had asked, he hadn't told lies. He really didn't know. The Tok'ra were pissed off because they rescued him and it was all for nothing. Jack would've agreed, but he was back to counting. It was the only thing that kept him sane.

Having exhausted their questioning, the Tok'ra took him home. Stepping onto the ramp in the gate room, Jack looked at the expectant faces and thought it funny that until coming home, his sanity had still felt quite intact. And then he fell onto the ramp in a heap.

And he kept falling, deep into the ground as everything melted around him.

He awoke now and then, drifting in and out of consciousness, aware of concerned voices. Sometimes he awoke to hear his own screams, his arms unable to move, no matter how much he struggled against the restraints.

Giving up, he would lie there as his face burned with heat, waiting for the drops of acid to hit. But it was okay, because pleasure followed pain. First the burn of acid and then a shot of cold, curing the pain. It was a cycle. No sensation would last forever. It was all about waiting it out. You gritted your teeth through the bad and then the good would come.

One day he awoke and they were all there, standing around his bed with smiles, telling him how he'd given everyone a fright. He wanted to laugh insanely at that. Sure, he gave them a fright.

He was declared fit and healthy, now that the sarcophagus withdrawal had passed. Of course, they didn't know yet. They didn't know that dead people could never be okay. Especially people that had died as many times as he had.

The first de-briefing was a blast. Jack almost took a sick pleasure in telling them the details.

"Well, Sir, the short of it is, I spent a lot of time being tortured, killed and being brought back to repeat the whole thing. I wouldn't have minded so much, if it wasn't for the whole torturing and killing part," he said with a smirk.

They stared at him, not sharing the humor and it hit him, how unfunny it all really was. People who died, didn't come back.

Everyone around the briefing room table looked stunned and he wanted to ask them exactly what they thought he'd been doing all that time? Torture pretty much went hand in hand with capture.

Hammond wanted him to take some time off. Teal'c looked guilty, though Jack couldn't figure the hell why. Carter asked him if he wanted to talk about it and Jack rolled his eyes saying, 'not unless there's a happy ending.'

It was amazing how easily they believed his sanity. Of course, they didn't feel his hands sweating whenever the gate dialed up. They didn't feel his heart hammering wildly each time a random memory flashed in front of his eyes. They didn't know that every night he dreamed of that place. They didn't know that any calm he felt was because he was still counting the days of his imprisonment and the scars on his body.

A part of him was sure that this was all an elaborate trick that Ba'al was playing, because he had played it before. Any moment now, the illusion would break and Ba'al would scream at Jack, asking him, 'why will you not break?' and Jack would count that as one more victory for himself.

The illusion wouldn't end. Jack was becoming certain he was home, but it didn't seem to matter. Because he was thinking more and more about the black shoe box in his closet, the one where he kept a gun.

When he awoke from his nightmares, he could hear the click of the trigger, loud inside the closet.

Sometimes he heard it in the SGC it was so loud.

He carried on though. For a while things seemed to get better. He was beginning to feel a dead calm within himself. Yes, he had died over and over. Yes, he had been tortured. But, hey, it was all part of the job, right?

Click.

Who was to say it wouldn't happen again? No one was forcing him to stay in this job.

Click.

He wasn't the only one that had suffered at the hands of the Goa'uld. He wasn't the only one tortured.

Click.

He was alive and back at the SGC. That was all that mattered now.

Click.

Putting on his dress blues, Jack was staring at the closet. The door was shut, but he could see the shoe box and hear the gun. It was only a matter of time. Some days, he could already feel the gun in his hand. Jack straightened his tie with steady hands, always steady and never wavering. He put his watch on and picked up his hat. Placing it on his head, Jack slowly headed to the mirror.

Jack looked at his reflection, straightening as he did. He looked no different than he did months ago. Not different at all.

"Do you really think so?" Ba'al asked, standing over his shoulder like he did sometimes.

Jack looked into the mirror at Ba'al. "Yeah. I do."

"Look again," Ba'al said with a smile.

Jack frowned at Ba'al and looked at his reflection. Nothing. He was the same.

"Look harder," Ba'al hissed in his ear.

Jack looked back.

There they were, all of them. Every wound that Ba'al had inflicted. His face and hands were covered. He could see them the through the holes in his clothes. Burnt and scarred flesh. Bloody knife wounds.

Jack stared with wide-eyes, his heart hammering in horror as he looked at the bruised and abused body. His breath was stuck somewhere in his lungs as he stared. Nothing was healed. It was all there. Every scar he had counted was there. Even the ones that weren't from Ba'al were there.

Jack stepped back, shaking his head, his face contorting with anger. "No," was all he said.

Ba'al stepped in front of him, close enough for a kiss. "There is no escape."

Jack shook his head. He was home. He knew he was home.

Ba'al nodded in agreement. "Yes, but there is no escape."

Like a wisp of smoke, he disappeared into the air as Jack stared. Jack stumbled back, clumsily sitting on the edge of his bed.

Click.

When he looked into the mirror, the scars were still there.

Jack got up and went to work. He didn't look in the rear view mirror as he drove, because he knew the scars were still there. He could feel them bleeding under his uniform.

There was going to be a ceremony. A senator was going to commend the SGC on its efforts. They were all going to get a pat on the back for going out there and dying. Of course, some of them died and never made it back, so they wouldn't know.

Jack wondered if anyone would notice him in his blood soaked uniform. Why would they? No one had realized yet that they'd brought back a dead man. He could already feel the gun in his hand.

The ceremony was what did it for Jack. The senator's sanctimonious speech about the brave young men and women that risked their lives for their country and their world.

No one wants to die, Jack wanted to say. When you fight, it's with the hope you'll make it out alive.

Unless you have nothing to live for, he thought.

He walked out. People noticed him walking out, the senator stopping mid-speech to watch. Jack was done. He was gone. He could already feel the gun in his hand.

"Sir! Wait," Carter shouted after him.

He turned to look at her, Teal'c right behind her, both of them looking concerned.

"Wha... where are you going?" she asked, confused.

Jack looked around for answers that didn't include, 'to blow my brains out and be done with it all' .

"O'Neill," Teal'c prompted, asking a million questions just by saying his name.

"I'm done," Jack finally said. "I can't do this anymore. I can't stand in there and listen to that idiot talking about how great it is that we stand by and watch our people go out there and get themselves killed. Did you take a look, Carter? I mean a real look. Some of them are just kids. Kids with... guns," Jack said, his voice almost breaking because he wasn't even sure what he was talking about anymore. It was all so mixed up.

Carter was standing by him now, frowning up at him. She touched his arm. "Sir?"

Jack looked at her worried face, wondering why the hell he wasn't thankful that he had died and come back, because people generally didn't come back from the dead. It was one of those pesky little laws of nature. Only, he came back so many times, bringing a little bit of death back with him each time. Sometimes he wondered if he could kill someone just by touching them.

Jack shook his head. Enough. Enough.

"I have to go," he said and left them standing there in the corridor.

When he got home, Ba'al seemed to be everywhere, whispering in his ears and bleeding in his brain. There was nothing he could do. There was nowhere he could go. Worst of all, if he died, there was nothing else. That was it. No light. No fire. Nothing. It was nothing.

He had died and every single time, there had been nothing. All he remembered was the last time he died. He ran up the stairs, yanked open the closet door and opened the shoe box. The gun was loaded. Of course it was loaded. This was always going to happen.

"It's okay, Dad. It's the only way."

Jack spun around and saw him. His dead boy, blood where the bullet had gone. Jack shook his head. No heaven. Not even for his son.

"So you see, there is only one kind of god," Ba'al said. "The one that can take life and then give it back."

Jack pointed the gun at the phantom, his finger on the safety. Why the hell hadn't he blown his brains out? What was he waiting for?

"Just, shut up," Jack said, his voice cracking. "Shut up."

"Do it. You are weak. It is all you can do," Ba'al sneered.

"No," Jack whispered. He wasn't weak. How could he be? He was still standing wasn't he? He was still standing.

He turned away from his tormentor, walking down the stairs, tired and weary. He stood in the middle of the living room, light from the open door spilling in. It was a beautiful day and the warmth of the sun was reaching him from outside.

How could it be so beautiful when everything inside him had turned black?

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

"Sir?"

Jack looked up to see Carter in the doorway, a silhouette bound by a frame of white, summer light.

His grip tightened on the gun, though really, he wasn't so sure anymore. Whether you lived or died, either way, nothing really mattered.

"Colonel... Jack, please."

"It's bullshit, Carter."

"What is?" She was still. Very, very still.

"I was there, Carter, and there was nothing! No-one."

That's why you couldn't come back. Maybe it was too much to deal with; knowing that death wasn't a release from anything.

What was the point of ending it all? What was the point of living, knowing what he knew?

Carter was asking him questions, edging nearer. It didn't matter. He was gone. Lost.

He let himself fall a little deeper into his own wounds because he knew he'd never really stopped falling since that day he had stepped back into the SGC. He knew he couldn't find his way back out until he knew how deep his scars went. He knew he had to start somewhere at the bottom, even if there was a chance of never climbing out.

People were talking to him, maybe he spoke back, but he stopped listening. If they wanted him to hear, they'd have to be louder than Ba'al's voice and his own screams.

He was lost to a haze of anger and hate. Just one long day. In his new cell, he spent his time counting the scars and counting the days. Counting the people that came in and out, counting the drugs; adding them to his scars.

"No one escapes," Ba'al would say, sitting opposite him and then fading into the walls.

When the doctors said it was okay for him to go home, he took the shoe box out of the closet to replace the missing gun, holding it for a while as he went to the mirror and took a long look. The scars were still there, along with puckered wounds and dried blood. Jack stared blankly, pointing the gun at the mirror, as if you could kill phantoms.

"Do it," Ba'al said. "The pain will never stop."

Jack nodded. "I guess not."

"Then end it," Ba'al suggested.

Jack looked at the gun. "Not today."

Looking in the mirror, he saw some of the scars had gone. They did that sometimes. But then they always came back.

- the end -