"Wait a second," he pants, breathlessly, rolling over onto his back and dragging the spare pillow underneath his hips. "Like this. It's good, I'm flexible --"

"Fucking hell, you sure are," Virta says, kneeling between his legs and grinning down at him. "Gimme a second, hang on --"

They haven't done this yet. Been a handjob here, a blowjob there. All so very low-key and laid-back. It isn't that he thinks some acts are a betrayal more than other acts are, or even that some acts are only betrayals if they're done with intent instead of as part of the endless game of chess he's playing. Question just hasn't come up. Took him a while to maneuver things tonight so that it would.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, in certain circumstances it's perfectly possible to prove a negative. Goa'uld possession is one of them. With the support of complex and elaborate machinery, it's possible to prove that an individual is not a Goa'uld host, just as it's possible to prove that they are. He doesn't have the complex and elaborate machinery. Field tests are less reliable. There are six low-tech tests designed for deployment under conditions where MRI imaging is impossible. Five of them are only suitable for detecting a new possession: seventy-two hours or less. Four of them require the complicit cooperation of the suspected host, or at the very least, make it clear to the individual that the test is being conducted.

The one test that will detect an older possession has a twenty percent false negative rate: in one case out of every five, it will fail to detect a symbiote that is actually present. (Fraiser had written papers. Physiology of the host. Physiology of the Goa'uld. Lots of complicated factors.) Fortunately for him, it's also one of the two tests that can be conducted without suspicion. If you're willing to come up with alternate explanations for your actions. Fortunately for him, he is.

Virta slides into him, slow burn that under any other circumstances would feel fucking fantastic. He wraps his legs around Virta's waist and locks his ankles together. There's a part of him, cool and calculating, locked behind the whimpers and moans and writhing spine-shivering wiggles, that's watching the choreography. Making sure he puts on a good show. It's like he's sitting on the side of the bed, watching himself, watching Virta, distant and detached. The sounds of sex -- the wet, fevered slap of skin against skin -- have never sounded less erotic.

He's lucky he's had practice faking it with the snake over the past three months; otherwise, he'd blow the whole thing sky-high. (Harder for a man to pretend interest where there is none. Still, there are plenty of men who don't get hard when they're getting fucked; it helps.) He can't do what he usually does -- retreat inside his head, let his body go through the motions without him -- this time; he has a job to do. Test to administer.

It only takes a little bit of encouragement for Virta to bend over him, enough for him to wrap his arms around Virta's neck. Enough for him to clutch at Virta's back, digging his nails into the skin of Virta's shoulders. Enough for him to ape passion, to pretend that he is so far gone with the experience of pleasure that he is barely conscious of what he's doing.

They'd practiced. All of them. It's a skill you don't lose with time, once you've developed it. The window is millimeters wide; the amount of force necessary is more than most people are willing to use. He's at a shit angle for it. Can't be helped. He drags his fingers up Virta's spine, hard enough to bruise. Virta's skin is slippery with sweat. Makes it even harder.

A Goa'uld symbiote can't be detected externally in a human host by visual examination alone. Not once it's had time to settle in its permanent resting position, carving out room for itself behind bone and muscle and tendon. Nor will a simple touch reveal its presence. But in eighty percent of human hosts, upwardly-directed sharp pressure, applied between the T3 and T4 vertebrae, will cause an answering involuntary spasm in the symbiote, fractional and minute. Detectable. If you're paying attention. If you know what you should feel, underneath your questing fingertips, the faintest of flutters so easy to miss.

He pays attention.

Fuck.

At least Virta's not one of the twenty percent. Small fucking mercies.

*

Easier than he'd been expecting to keep from giving away that he knows the truth. Either he's getting better at lying (with face, with body, with voice) or his subconscious had already known the truth and prepared him to receive confirmation without flinching. Either way, doesn't matter. He's pretty sure Virta doesn't catch on that he's realized.

Virta's tiny little studio apartment is up by Lake Union, a grey and unprepossessing building that nonetheless has some fucking gorgeous views. When he leaves, he doesn't hail a cab; he laces up his sneakers a little tighter and takes off at his typical brutal pace. It's two in the morning, but Seattle's safe enough by night if you don't make yourself look like an easy mark. Nobody bothers him; he's had enough practice in looking dangerous.

He shouldn't stay out too late, shouldn't take too much of a detour, but Justifiable Cover Maintenance Secures Us Provisions; he has enough leeway that he doesn't have to take the most direct route home. Which is good, because he has a lot of thinking to do, and it's the kind of thinking that can't be done anywhere but at top speed or in full meditation; anything else would overwhelm him.

Fact: He has fucked up. Badly. He has trusted someone he shouldn't have trusted, failed to spot warning signs he should have caught. (Looking back on it, there were several. Dozens. A full accounting of all his fuckups will have to wait, though; he doesn't have time for them now.) The fact that he is still standing, still independent, not yet snaked: good news (for him), but unexpected. The magnitude of his fuckups is so overwhelming that his good fortune is just that: luck. He can't rely on luck forever.

Fact: He would not have seen the truth lying behind the false faces he failed to notice without assistance. Fact: That assistance came from one of the snakes. Fact: The motives and motivations verbalized by that snake for its betrayal of its compatriots are reasonable and plausible within the framework of what he knows of the Goa'uld. Fact: The snake has said it is willing to help him sell the others down the river in exchange for a guarantee of its own safety.

Fact: If he accepts that offer, he will be committing himself to an alliance with a fucking snake.

Fact: If he accepts that offer, he will be condoning, by implication, whatever that fucking snake has come here to do.

Fact: It would be possible for him to accomplish his stated mission objectives -- the eradication of the snake presence on Earth -- without assistance from the inside, if no one on the inside knew what he was trying to do. Fact: The snake, or at least one of it, knows what he is trying to do; there's no way he concealed his reactions well enough to maintain the presumption of innocence. Fact: The snake will now be observing his actions in the light of its assumed knowledge of his mission objectives. Inference: The snake will be able to deduce what his intermediary plans leading to that mission objective are. Inference: If the snake wants to stop him, it will be able to.

Fact: The snake has not yet stopped him.

Conjecture: The snake has told him the absolute truth, whole and entire, about its motivations; it objects to whatever the grand plan of the others is, or it thinks that grand plan doesn't have a chance of success, and it's looking for a guarantee of safety. Conjecture: The snake is setting up a long, subtle test or trap, one that will culminate in either his death or (more likely) a suborning so thorough it will advance the grand plan while (somehow) delivering a fatal setback to the snake's enemies. Conjecture: The snake is ... no, he really can't see any other options but those two. No matter how hard he tries to come up with other possibilities, he keeps circling back to those. Either the snake is telling him the absolute truth, or it's trying to pull his strings for its own purposes.

Fact: These two possibilities are mutually exclusive, and the time is approaching -- he can feel it -- when he will have to commit to one set of actions or another; he can't keep playing both sides against the middle forever.

Fact: He has to make a choice. Before the point of no return, before the moment when he will be forced (by pressures both external and internal) to leap one way or the other, because decisions made on the spur of the moment are more likely to be the wrong decisions. He's already made too many wrong decisions. He can't afford any others.

Game theory again. Draw the matrix in your head. Draw the branches of the tree. Draw the truth tables. If the snake's offer of alliance is a lie and a test, and he rejects it, he wins and the snake loses. If the snake's offer of alliance is a lie and a test, and he accepts it, he loses and the snake wins. If the snake's offer of alliance is genuine, and he rejects it, both of them lose, but he loses more. If the snake's offer is genuine, and he accepts it, they both win, but the cost of his victory will be high indeed.

If fucking p, then fucking q. If fucking not-p, then fucking not-q.

It all boils down to one question, over and over again: can he trust the fucking snake, or not? Question he can't fucking answer. Not now. He's proven to himself that his perception is seriously fucking fucked.

O'Neill would never trust a snake. Ever. No matter what the extenuating circumstances might be. Particularly this snake. And he keeps having to remind himself that he's not O'Neill -- not, not, no matter that he's drawing on O'Neill's experience and O'Neill's abilities, dredging up the secrets he's let slumber for so long -- but he can't let himself fall into the reactionary trap of doing the opposite of what O'Neill would do now any more than he could have back when he'd first become himself. If p, then not-q leaves p and q just as bound as any other logical proposition -- first and greatest of the realizations that led him to his entire fucking self-identity -- and he spent too goddamn long building that separation to allow himself to fall into that trap. Don't react; act. He has learned, over and over again, that he can't define himself by negatives; a life spent running from means you're that much more likely to trip and fall into a pit you didn't notice because your head was turned to watch what was behind you.

He needs a judgement call. A reality check. Someone who can reassure him that his logic is sound, that his judgement isn't as fucked as he's starting to suspect he's managed to let it get. And he needs it from someone who isn't O'Neill, because there's no way in fucking hell O'Neill could be any more objective about the situation than he is.

The candidate should be obvious. There are two and only two people in this world that he trusts, wholly and without reservation. O'Neill is one of them. And for the last twelve weeks, he's been closing off his mind to thoughts of the other (the mind is a computer, and like any computer, it can be given a set of instructions), because if he hadn't, he would have gone mad from pain or longing.

He can't, in good conscience, ask Mitchell to come under with him. (And oh, God, he wishes he could.) Mitchell would hold; he's good and he's smart and he's fucking steady as hell. But Mitchell's also crippled, and crippled isn't a dirty word -- honorable scars won in honorable service, ferryman's fee paid in full and in advance -- but it's a fact of their life, the life they're building together: there are things Mitchell can't do anymore. This is one of them.

He wishes to God that it wasn't.

If he could risk a line out, anything deeper than the shallow channels that are already more of a risk than he should accept (but he has no choice, and so much of this has been about having no choice, and it should be getting easier the more he learns to deals with it but it isn't and he thinks it never will) he'd call up Mitchell and dump this in his lap. Because there are two people in this world he trusts, but only one of them can be trusted with this situation.

Can't, though. Can't be helped. Suck it up. Keep on going. (One foot in front of the other. Don't think about it too closely, or else you'll have to start thinking about all the other reasons you're not calling Mitchell, all the ones that revolve around how the minute you hear his voice all the programming will start to crumble and there'll be no fucking way to get it back.)

Mitchell's not the only option, though. And it's a long shot, but it's one he's kept in reserve, in the back of his mind, from moment one.

He'll send the message tomorrow. If he's really lucky, the snake won't push him to make a commitment, one way or the other, until after he knows it's been received.

*

All's quiet for another three days. Breathing room. Good thing on the surface, not so great when you get down past the first layer. He's nervous and jumpy, only avoiding looking over his shoulder because looking over his shoulder would be suspicious. Can't change your behavior. Can't act any differently than you did. This is all a delicate dance of appearances and reality, and he's been playing a role for three and a half months but the parameters of the role keep slipping and he's got no fucking clue what he should be doing if he were actually who and what he says he is. So he settles for just keeping his head down, working on the things he's been working on: interminable conference calls and cutthroat negotiations and the constant knowledge that everything he's doing is advancing the snake's plan, one infinitesimal step after another.

It would be a fucking ironic bitch, he thinks, if his actions turn out to be the factor that lets the snake win in the end. But he can't give his duties anything less than his full capability. To do otherwise would not only be suspicious -- because the snake knows full well what he's capable of -- but dangerous. If the snake -- any of them -- believes he is doing less than his best, he stops being an asset and starts being a liability. And he knows what happens to liabilities in the snake's world.

His only consolation is that Delta leaves him the fuck alone.

It's a relief, in a way, when Virta comes wandering into his office on Thursday, just before lunch. Uncharacteristically subdued, looking like his dog just fucking got run over by a fucking car or something, and flip-flop goes his stomach, because it's confirmation. Delta hadn't been lying to him.

Game fucking on.

"Hey," Virta says. Looks over his shoulder. Checking for the boss. Looking for a moment where it's just the two of them: carrying on an affair right under the boss's nose, and if Virta had been who he'd represented himself as, it would have been the last fucking thing he would have done, because he'd spent so long trying to position himself as saving grace.

Should have fucking seen it. Should have fucking spotted it. Virta had been playing worried-for-him, concern that he was in some kind of abusive fucking relationship or something -- ha, ha -- up until the point they'd gone to fucking New York and he'd fucking let Virta fucking play him, thinking all the while that he was the one using Virta. At which point Virta had let it drop, slid sideways so carefully into the offer of fuckbuddy-and-safe-harbor that he'd barely fucking noticed, and if Virta had really been what he had -- it had -- said it was, things would have been so different. A friend who's worried about your safety, a friend who believes you're being exploited and possibly endangered, wouldn't invite you to his bed, not when there's a chance those actions might cause your overly-controlling boyfriend to find out and freak out. Should have fucking realized. Something should have read wrong. He hadn't caught the wrongness. Not even a fucking hint.

Stop. No point in kicking yourself over your mistakes. They happened. It's over. Move on.

"Hey," he says back, locking his workstation (quick flick of fingers over the keys; it's second nature by now) and spinning around in his desk chair. "What's up?"

"Heading out for lunch," Virta says. (And fucking shit death, but the reactions are note-perfect, down to the listless little hand-gesture, and if it hadn't been for Delta's warning he probably would have fallen for it, and that makes his fucking skin crawl.) "Market, maybe. I could use ... You wanna come with? Please."

It's hard, so fucking hard, to try to figure out how he would have reacted if he didn't know this whole fucking thing was a setup. Both of them playing roles. Virta has more practice than he does, is all. He's still rusty, even now.

So: they've established themselves as friend, as comrades. Virta's been positioning itself as his second-in-command, his outlet, his wingman and his lieutenant. If his 2IC came to him, looking like Virta does now, he'd move to help: get out of the environment, get away from the problem, and figure out what kind of pep talk or problem-solving was warranted. He's done it a thousand times.

He tries for 'casual' and 'concerned' all at once, and hopes he hits it. "Sure," he says. "Gotta be back by two, is all. Conference call with the suits again."

Virta manages a little smile, pale and wan. "Shouldn't be a problem," it says. "I just ... fresh air. You know."

They're quiet as they take the elevator down, which isn't unusual. He can't quite resist the urge to poke, though. (Broken tooth. Your tongue always finds it in your mouth, even once you're already down to tasting blood.) "You're quiet," he says, mild as mother's milk, as they spill out onto the grey and dank street. "Something up?"

"Yeah," Virta says. Looks over its shoulder, playing jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. "I just. I don't. I didn't think it was a good idea to say anything inside."

Things are waking up inside his head. Processors coming online. Fucking finally. "Yeah?" he asks, jamming his fists into the pocket of his hoodie, fingers closing around the few stray coins he's forgotten to dispose of elsewhere. "What's up?"

Virta bites its lip. Looks over its shoulder again. As obvious as a jumpy long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, or as a kid who's stumbled into something he shouldn't have stumbled into, and it's a perfect fucking representation of an amateur trying to play with the big boys and overplaying his hand. It's such a well-constructed role that if it hadn't been for the warning, he knows he would have believed.

Fucking hell. What else has he missed?

"Look," it says. "I think I'm being watched. I think I found something. Big. Like, really, really big. Like, there-aren't-even-laws-to-cover-it big." Pause. "You remember, a couple of weeks ago, when I gave you that bundle of stuff we got off the military network the boss wanted us to crack?"

"Yeah," he says. "I remember."

They hit the red light at the corner, get caught in the knot of people waiting for the light to turn. Smart move would be to fucking stop talking; walk-and-talk to avoid surveillance only works when you keep fucking walking, and even then, not always. But the role Virta's playing wouldn't know that. Still makes his teeth fucking itch when Virta keeps talking anyway. "Okay," it says, jittering just a little, bouncing in place on the heels of its feet. "This is gonna take a bit. Bear with me. So you know all the weird tech shit on that system, right? All the plans and blueprints and stuff. I -- oh, God, this is gonna sound fucking insane. This is gonna sound fucking insane, and you're not going to believe me, but you're the only person I can think of who might possibly not think I've lost my fucking mind, so I'm gonna try."

"Go for it," he says. "I won't call you insane until you're done explaining."

Virta looks around itself again (obvious, glaring) and drags him away from the push of the crowd a little, drops its voice. "Okay," it says again. "The crazy part is, I think the conspiracy theorists are right. I think there are aliens at Area 51, and I think the government's been covering it up for years and years. It's buried deep in the shit we pulled, but if you read between the lines, it's there. There's no way some of that stuff was developed here. And I think -- I don't think the aliens are the good guys. I think we're fighting some kind of secret war, and we're really fucking close to losing."

There's something amusing, he thinks, in the way they're both pretending. Going through the motions of you-know-I-know and running down their lines. "Yeah, okay," he says. "Time to be glad that I promised you I wouldn't call you crazy until you were done."

Virta tries for another little smile, but it flickers, fades. Fucking hell, that fucking snake is good. Or maybe it's the host. He doesn't know. Can't know. "I know, I know. But -- it fits, okay? And it's the only thing that does. So okay, just go with me on the alien thing for a second. So, like, all the targets the boss has given us -- I think they're all somehow related, you know? Again, you really gotta put it together, bit by bit, like six pieces from six different places, but I think all the targets the boss has been giving us are somehow part of this coverup shit. Which means -- I think the boss knows. About the whole thing, I mean. I think he's somehow a part of it. And I'm not sure that he's on the side of the angels."

So many ways he could play this. So many paths he could try. He can feel them clicking across in his mind, back and forth, possibility after possibility. Assume he is a loyal agent of the snake. Assume one of his underlings has come to him and said something to make him think the jig is close to being up. What would he do?

Deflect. Discourage. "Okay," he says, making his voice as dismissive as possible. "Look, I know I said I wouldn't call you crazy, but -- dude. Crazy. When was the last time you slept?"

Virta grabs his shoulders. He suppresses the automatic (instinctive) impulse to knock those hands away; there's no reason for him to be on high alert, or rather, the persona he's fronting would work hard to avoid showing the persona Virta is showing that he's capable of high alert. (The layers make his head fucking hurt.) "Please," it says. Puts a bit of push in its voice, a perfectly-gauged note of urgency. "Look, I know you spend a lot of time with the boss, I know you've got your thing, and I haven't said anything else because it's none of my business and I know you can take care of yourself but I think -- I think you're in danger."

Nice. He'd been wondering how the snake would justify coming to him with this; after all, he's widely known as one of the boss's pets. Logically he should be the last person in the universe Virta should come clean to. He likes to think he would have thought of that. If this had been real. If he hadn't been warned.

Virta licks its lips again, not waiting for him to say anything. "I think we're all in a lot of trouble," it says. "I think the boss has been trying to get some kind of, I don't know, somebody on the inside or something. You know that company we went to New York to try to buy? Remember I found those files that said they were related to this military thing? I keep coming back to that, because -- the guy who keeled over while we were out there. I found some shit. A couple of saved emails. I think he was about to go to somebody, blow the whistle. Because this shit is scary. And I know the cops said it was natural causes, but I think -- I wonder if the boss had him killed. Somehow. And I really, really, really don't fucking want you or me to be next, because we were there and we've been working with this shit and if somebody's trying to clean up after themselves, we're the next logical target. And I'm thinking we need to, I don't know, tell somebody or something. Leave a message somewhere or something. Make sure that if anything happens to us, somebody will know."

Virta's fingers clutch against his shoulders. It's a lovely fucking impression of panic one step away from hysteria, fear-for-its-life written in every motion, every word. He runs the scenarios in his head again, judges that it's all right to pull away from Virta's touch. (Finally.) Keeps his notion of how he would have played this in his head.

He's got a sick, grinding sense in the pit of his stomach that if he'd gone into this cold, if Virta had come to him with this story and this level of terror, he might have caved. Might have told Virta there was nothing to worry about, that there were people taking care of things, that none of the information Virta was telling him was new to him at all. The relief of having dodged a bullet is no relief at all, not when you realize just how fucking close you nearly came.

Still. Have to play it carefully. Put yourself into the role you need to be playing: the snake's trusted agent, understanding there is a danger, identifying that there is a potential complication but not sure of the best way to handle it. He's pretty sure that person would move to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible, which -- if they weren't standing on a public street -- would involve silencing Virta, decisively and permanently. (Good thing they're standing on a public fucking street. Having to fight a fucking snake would really fucking make him cranky. He wonders if that's why Virta decided on here for the showdown.)

So, the next best option: shut Virta up, and go running straight to the snake as soon as he can get free. And if he hadn't decided to take Virta into his confidence -- and fucking hell, whether or not he would have is something he'll never know -- he would have done the same thing, would have had to do the same thing, and it would have fucking killed him to have to do it. Because if this had been real, if Virta had actually been nothing but a stupid innocent amateur poking his fingers in places those fingers shouldn't have wandered, there would have been no way Virta wouldn't have tripped a tripwire or a fucking dozen, and Ba'al would have found out. Would have known Virta had brought the issue to him, would have wondered why he hadn't done something. And he would have known all those factors, and he would have realized that Virta was lost but believed there was still a chance to save the rest of his team. And he would have done exactly what he's going to do now: go to the snake and spill his fucking guts.

One quick flash, of the agonies he would have agonized. Because in that scenario, he would have believed he'd be turning a stupid punk kid over to something whose idea of a good time is knives and acid and dropping you down a fucking two-hundred-foot hole over and over and over again, and he still would have done it. Needs of the goddamn fucking many. He would have hated it, hated it like he'd hate stomping puppies or poisoning babies, but he would have fucking done it, with the hum of the sarcophagus in his ears and the feel of his voice in his own throat, screaming. (No Daniel to be his conscience. Not anymore. Not ever again.)

Would have fucking left him in pieces. Again. If it had played out that way. Didn't. And it's all thanks to a fucking snake.

Keeping the layers and roles straight in his head makes him want to put a fist through a wall somewhere. Can't. So he channels what he can into his voice and shoves the rest of it back into the fucking box in his fucking head and he will fucking deal with it later. Like next year, maybe. "Okay," he says, trying to keep his voice low and compelling. Reassuring. "Okay, look. Just ... don't say anything to anybody else. You don't want to call attention to yourself. I'll look into things a little, make sure I don't trip any warnings. I'm closer to the inside. I can get more information, some corroborating evidence. If we're going to do anything with this, we need to make sure we've got as much intel as possible. You just keep doing what you're doing, and I'll take care of it."

Virta's face transforms. It's perfect. Hesitation giving way to relief and gratitude and a sudden slow relaxation, spreading across the playing field like a sun rising. Like the way some green lieutenant who's found himself in emergency field command looks when somebody with higher rank and more experience comes along and the kid finally gets to say 'I stand relieved'. "Okay," it says. "Okay. Yeah. Thanks. I just -- I don't know what to do about any of this."

God, if this had been real, he would have had to hate himself forever, even more than he already does. The fact that his betrayal will lead to no lasting consequence doesn't erase the betrayal itself; it's just another fucking tickmark on the tally of all his sins remembered.

"It's okay," he says. "I do. I still haven't told you everything about all the things I know."

There's a flicker of interest in the snake's face. It almost amuses him, imagining the snake imagining him about to betray himself. It gives him a second, to see if he's about to say anything else. When he doesn't, it breathes out, a long whoosh of breath. "Thanks," it says. Acts like it's making itself smile. "Just, you know. Keep me posted. I want to know what you're doing."

"You will," he says. "Don't worry."

You have to take your little amusements where you can find them.

*

Snake's on the phone when he lets himself into its office. He drops into the visitor's chair and waits. Quiet. Patient. Echo is the Ba'al warming the chair today; he can tell. Echo's the one that wears t-shirts from ThinkGeek underneath its dress shirt and snazzy suit. He amuses himself by trying to figure out what today's says, squinting at the dark lines beneath the thin white fabric. It's mostly blocked by the snake's tie, but eventually he decides it's "you had me at EHLO".

Concentrating on figuring out the t-shirt keeps him from concentrating on the anger that's bubbling up into his throat, the knowledge that but for the grace of snake he would have been sitting here and wanting to put his head between his knees and puke until there was nothing left to come up.

He watches his body language. Carefully. One knee hooked over the arm of the chair, foot swinging. Proper and precise amount of slouch in his spine. Eyes on the snake, not looking away or around the room. He has to remember he's pretending to be the loyal minion, here to report up to his lord and master.

"I'm certain you have news of scintillating importance to impart," it says to him, once it hangs up the phone. "I'm dying to know what it is."

Pissing off the snake is a game that isn't fun anymore. Never was, really, but he could forget it wasn't, for a little while. "Got a problem," he says.

The snake lifts one manicured eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Virta," he says, his tone clipped and short. "One of the Wunderkinder. He's read the files I lifted from Area 51, and he's put two and two together. He took me out for lunch just now and started dropping lots of hints about how he thinks you know what's going on. He mentioned Clancy. Said he thinks Clancy was about to go blow the whistle to the SGC, which is why you had me kill him. Not that he knows it was me who did it. He was talking about finding somebody to tell, because he thinks he's going to be next, and he wanted me to know because he thinks I'm on the list too. I figured I should find out if you wanted his death to look like an accident or just a disappearance."

He'd toyed with the idea of telling the snake he'd already taken care of the problem -- hey, loyalty and initiative are supposed to be valued qualities in a minion, and he'd have really liked to see the snake's face if it thought he'd managed to knock Virta out of the running -- but it would have been really hard to explain, afterwards. Pity. Would have been a lot more fun than sitting through this whole farce.

The snake studies him. If this had been real, he knows he would have been squirming; instead, he concentrates on meeting the snake's gaze, clear and calm. Finally it laughs. "I'm proud of you, Jack," it says. "We didn't think you'd do it."

It's easier than he thought it would be to let a little bit of the anger flash through. "You wanna elaborate on that?" he says.

The snake pushes the intercom button on its desk phone. "Send Virta in," it says, and yeah, okay, he knows this is a fucking setup, but his endocrine system's still screaming at him. Thanks, body, got the memo already: we're in danger, you can stop shouting at us. Door opens. Virta walks in. Wanders straight over to the other visitor's chair and sits down. Smiles at him. Same smile the snake's giving him. He can see the similarities now that they're in the same room, and it pisses him off that it took him this fucking long.

"I'm touched, though," Ba'al -- the Ba'al wearing the Ba'al-suit -- says. Clinical. Detached. "So worried about our well-being."

"I'm not touched," Virta says. Cranky and petulant, echoing in the space between them, and no matter how many fucking times he hears the fucking snake reverb voice, it still makes his skin crawl. "I'm offended. You were really going to turn me in, after everything we've meant to each other?"

Knowing this was going to happen doesn't change how fucking furious he is. He fights for control over his voice. Finds it. "Because you were going to fuck up the plan," he says, and okay, less control than he thought, because it comes out taut and vicious and pissed and it fucking feels good to snarl a bit. So he keeps going. "And you can take your fucking tests and fold them until they're all sharp corners --"

"Oh, come now, Jack," Ba'al says. "You don't think we'd trust you without testing you?"

He folds his hands into fists. His nails bite into the palms of his hands, sharp and burning. "Fuck this noise," he says. And he is pissed, really pissed, and it's the kind of anger that comes from three and a half fucking months of being played and manipulated and lied to, and it's enough rage to actually make the snake -- both snakes -- recoil from the intensity of it.

Yeah. Okay. He's got just enough presence of mind to remember that he's playing a role here, just enough control to channel the rage into the kind of reaction the role he's playing calls for. But only just.

He stands up. "You," he says, pointing at Virta, "can throw yourself out a fucking window, you fucking liar. And you --" Points at Ba'al. "That's it. I've fucking had it. I've done nothing since I got here but work my ass off for you. And just because I don't leap out of my chair every time you snap your fingers doesn't mean I'm not on your side. I've put up with your suspicions because if I were you I probably wouldn't have believed me right up front either, but you show me one case, just one fucking case, of me not being trustworthy. Just one. You're not going to find one. You know why? Because we're on the same side, you stupid fucking fuck. And I'm tired of the tests and I'm sick and tired of the fucking games, so you know what? Put your money where your fucking mouth is. You want my help, you tell me what the plan is. All of it."

And to his surprise, they do.

*

Downtown Seattle. Job's Cover Makes Some Unavoidable Problems; the snake's expecting him for an assignation after work. But he can take an hour. He uses it to run up to Capitol Hill; the steep streets force him to concentrate on his breathing, his body, his legs. Having something to concentrate on lets him get some thinking done. He stops at Dilettante while he's up there, picks up a box of fucking chocolates. Life is like, etc. Never know what you're going to fucking get.

Yeah.

It's bad. He'd known, O'Neill had known, that it was going to be bad. He didn't know how bad it was going to be.

The snake's plan itself is pretty simple, elegant and fiendish in its directness. Step one: establish a totally-unimpeachable presence as a legitimate businessman, sans peur et sans et-fucking-cetera. Step two: get one of the Attack of the Clones into Congress and get it maneuvered until it's got fingers in a bunch of pies and snakes in a bunch of key heads. Step three: get the IOA ditto, to lock down the SGC's operations. Step four: get the people who'd be trouble in the SGC reassigned or out of the way, move in its own people.

That part, he'd guessed.

What he hadn't guessed is what happens from there. The snake's not after Earth. Or it is, but only as a means to an end. It's not looking to crush Earth beneath its Italian-leather-clad heel. It doesn't even plan to let anyone know it's taken over the planet; no shrines, no temples, no worship. It wants to use Earth's resources, Earth's infrastructure, as a base of operations. Upgrade Earth's technology, 'discover' enough advances, so it can use Earth as Free Parking without tripping anyone's radar, all the while concentrating on its real goal.

Because what the snake's really after isn't Earth; it's Earth's alliances. All the advanced technology beyond what the Goa'uld already have, all the technology Earth has managed to beg, borrow, or steal (okay, they put it back). The Asgard. The Ancients.

Atlantis. (And if the snake actually manages to get a Wraith for a host, they're all fucking doomed. One galaxy. Two. All human life everywhere except for the ones kept penned up as cattle.)

O'Neill had briefed him on bits and pieces of the current playing field Out There. Not much -- his clearance has been pulled (technically, he never had it in the first place), and there's only so far O'Neill can talk himself into full disclosure. (Same person. Different person. Yeah, neither one of them has any idea which view the JAG would take if it came down to it, and they've agreed, without ever actually coming out and saying it, that he's going to have to trust O'Neill to tell him the most important stuff, and O'Neill's going to have to trust him to only ask about the stuff that's most important.)

But he's smart, and O'Neill knows how to tell him things in ways that look innocent on the surface, but that he'll be able to put together without much trouble. He's got a bit of a handle on the galactic power situation as it stands. Minor Goa'uld all at each others' throats, everybody still trying to step up to fill the power vacuum left by Anubis's defeat. Some new players -- he thinks they're human, but he's not sure; O'Neill's being cagey -- having set up as the Junior Mafia: bootlegged tretonin, various and sundry naquadah supplies, scavenged Goa'uld technology. The Tok'ra. The Free Jaffa. The Not-So-Free-As-The-Other-Jaffa. The Fuck-You-All-We're-Just-Doing-Our-Thing-And-You-Can-Go-Fuck-Yourselves Jaffa. The Ancients, still high up on their fuzzy glowy-squid clouds. Bunch of different players. Earth's got the best connections; they've got allies in all the camps that look like they might have a chance of making it to the end of the race.

And the snake wants them all.

Thinks that pulling the puppet strings of the SGC is its route to having them. And it probably would be. He doesn't know what the SGC's been up to in his absence, but he's pretty sure they wouldn't let all that alliance-building lapse. Wouldn't have when O'Neill was in charge, at least. And the people who are still connected, the people he trusts to tell him like it is, are uncomplimentary about Hank Landry's ability to find his own ass with both hands, a flashlight, a map, and a GPS receiver, but he knows why O'Neill shoved Landry into the hot seat, and it has nothing to do with Landry being the best of bad choices. It's because Hank can't find his own ass without etcetera. Because Hank won't get some cunning and crafty idea into his head and try to implement some new grand vision. But also because Hank will fight tooth and claw to keep the SGC from getting turned into nothing more than a rubber-stamp division of the IOA, because that would take Hank's own private kingdom out of his hands.

Protection via incompetence. In the absence of a better candidate -- and O'Neill couldn't have stayed, for reasons he understands completely, and Daniel didn't want the job, despite being enough of a cold-hearted bastard (and he means that with the greatest affection possible) to do it, and that means there were no better candidates -- Hank's good enough.

Hank wouldn't have gotten it into his head to screw their allies, especially not with Reynolds there to lean on him. (Should have been Daniel. But Daniel's called it quits, thrown in the towel, broken against the shoals. Been chewed up and spit out, like so many good men.) But Hank's not smart enough to spot a long con when he sees it, and really not smart enough to spot a snake in human clothing. And Daniel's on Atlantis (diminished and gone into the West, to remain Daniel). Carter's at Area 51 and Teal'c is with the Free Jaffa, and both of them hang around often enough to possibly be trouble for the snake's plans, but not enough to be trouble immediately.

The snake's been careful. (Crafty. Subtle, and snakes aren't subtle, and that makes him fucking nervous, because who the fuck knows if this is the real plan or just the next layer in the onion?) It's built a little empire (out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class; oh, yeah, because what he really needs right now is Mitchell's fucking crap taste in music polluting his mental mp3 player -- don't fucking think about Mitchell) and if it tends that empire carefully, it can go undetected for a long time. Years. More. All it has to do is lock down the key players under its own control, find enough loyal minions to do the things a snake can't and talk to all the people who'd be able to detect snakehood.

Minions like the loyal minion he's playing. And that thought makes so much more of this make sense, because the snake is going to need good people, capable people, to run the various bits of the Evil Empire for it, sure, but more than that, it's going to need people who are going to be able to lend the whole crazy thing legitimacy. The Asgard fucking love O'Neill. How would they react to being told that O'Neill had a tragic accident, but the SGC had brought his clone in to help run things? Fuck, it would fly.

If the snake has its way, nothing's going to change at all but who's calling the shots. Earth's halfway to being the new benevolent dictators of the galaxy anyway. The Fifth Race. Only thing that's kept them from making more progress than they have in the short time they've had has been the internecine power struggles coming from the right hand not knowing what the left hand's doing. With a snake in the master seat, that all evaporates. And if the snake does it slowly enough, carefully enough, in ten years the galaxy will look around it and realize that they've got a new Evil Overlord and nobody even noticed.

They are so fucking fucked.

He's composing the message to O'Neill in his head as he runs back over Broadway, loops across Pine, under the freeway. This is going to be a bitch to slam down into something short enough to pass along. The fucking encipher alone is going to take days. The snake's going to be watching him now, even more closely. Make sure he's worthy of that trusted-lieutenant status he's been offered.

Offered him the job of First Prime. ("Thanks," he'd said. "No tattoo. Got my own. And I'll pass on the snake in the gut thing, too.") Didn't say yes. Didn't say no, either. Out of character to accept immediately, but he's starting to think maybe the snake hadn't fucking been joking when it had teased him about offering him the job, way back at the beginning. There's something a little bit pathetic about the fact he's starting to think the fucking snake values him for his independence. For his ability to think clearly, without the heritage of centuries of kree'ing on command. For his ability to come up with ideas and plans without having to get permission to think first.

It says something about the state of the galaxy when the only people you can trust as your henchmen are clones of yourself and the nineteen-year-old clone of a guy you once tortured to death over and over for a few weeks. You just can't find good help these days.

The worst part of it is, he can't think of the next logical thing to do. He'd recommend a plan of attack -- literal or metaphorical -- to O'Neill in his next message, except he can't figure out what makes the most sense. He still doesn't know how many Ba'al-clones are running around out there, nor does he know if Seattle is the snake's only base of operations on Earth (doubtful), if Ba'al has other strongholds across the galaxy (likely), or if all of the clones are present on Earth at any given time (unlikely). The need to salt the ground behind him is no less pressing now than it was when he came under; if he can't take them all out at once, better to take none of them out at all.

Stay put and keep feeding back intel? That would be the most logical route for O'Neill to order: set up channels out, secure and uncompromisable, double-blind in the event of disaster, and tell him to go to town, keep him there as long as possible, trust him to make his own escape if and when the situation heats up to the point where his cover is about to be blown. It's what he'd do, if he were in O'Neill's shoes.

It's also not what he signed up for.

He'd told O'Neill: one op. Six to nine months. They'd agreed it shouldn't take longer. Get in, figure out what was going down, get out, blow everything to Kingdom Come. And sure, no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, and he'd warned Mitchell (don't think about Mitchell) that it could take longer, but when he'd said 'longer' he'd been thinking a year. Fourteen months, tops. He's got a life. He's got a job. He's got a family. All things he's tried like hell not to throw in O'Neill's face more than he needs to, because O'Neill doesn't have either and knows he's not going to be able to, not while he's still on this job. For O'Neill, the job comes first.

He's spent months, years, learning how not to be that guy. That guy who lives for duty and responsibility, that guy who goes to bed every night in a cold and lonely room knowing that he's done his part for God and Country. Because he has to. Because nobody else can. Because someone has to, and that someone is him, and he's stood up in front of God and Country and raised his hand and repeated the words: support and defend, foreign and domestic, true faith and allegiance, without reservation or purpose of evasion --

Thirty-eight years. And some of it was good, and some of it was bad, and some of it lives in places he won't ever touch again unless he needs to -- until he needs to -- but it made him. It took him months, years, to come to terms with the fact that all of it, even the parts he never wanted to live through and never wants to live through again, are what built him. Built O'Neill. Can't walk away. Can't set it down. Can only let it sleep for a little while.

The only reason he could let himself stop being Jack O'Neill, let himself make himself himself, had been because O'Neill had been there to keep the faith. To carry the weight. And this is something O'Neill can't do and he can, and if he doesn't find another way through to an ending, he'll have to. The bitch of it is, the stone cold fucking bitch of it is, if he has to do it, he will. And he knows O'Neill knows it. He'll do it, and he'll do it well, and he'll see it through, and he'll walk straight away from the life he'd managed to build and straight back into the life of duty he'd walked away from once already.

Because he has to. Because nobody else can. Because someone has to, and that someone is him, and no matter how much mental yoga you do to make yourself into your own person, an oath doesn't cease binding you just because you're not the same person you were when you took it. Nobody's the same person they were forty years ago. Ten years ago. Ten days. He'd been able to let himself put it down for a while because O'Neill had been there to hold it for them both. He should have known that grace wouldn't last forever.

God, please, just let him be able to see Mitchell one more time.

But he's putting the cart before the horse that the barn door was shut on as Nero fiddled, or something like that, and he's got a snake to smile pretty for, a snake waiting for him to show up and pretend to be everything he's not. So he charges blindly ahead, running, always running, never a chance to stand still.

Downtown Seattle. Home sweet fucking home.

*

Later on, when he lets himself back into his apartment, bruised and filthy and sweaty and sore (thank fuck Echo never expects him to stay put, after), there's a snake sitting on his couch. Feet up on the fucking coffeetable. Reading a book. Eating the fucking box of chocolates.

Fucking snake.

He slams the door behind him, harder than he should. It makes the tchotchkes on the entryway table rattle and dance. "What the fuck do you want?" he snarls. "And get your fucking feet off my table."

The snake doesn't look up from its book, but it does take its feet down from the table. "I'm surprised you haven't thrown those hideous knick-knacks out the window yet," it says, absently. Turns a page. "Would you like to? I'd be happy to help you cart them up to the rooftop garden. We could have a contest to see who could throw them further."

He closes his eyes and counts to twenty. When it doesn't help, he recites the prime numbers from one to a hundred. In Polish. "Get your goddamn hands out of my box of chocolates," he says. "You hate chocolate."

"They hate chocolate," it corrects. "I'm rather fond of it. Go take your shower. I'm sure you'd like a chance to get clean."

"Would be fucking nice," he snarls, and -- because he knows better than to think he's going to win an argument with a snake, especially this snake -- he goes to take a fucking shower.

When he gets out of the shower, he inspects his bruises in the mirror. Nothing that won't heal; Echo is one of the ones that always forgets its snake strength and snake power while it's fucking him, and that makes him think of Virta and wonder how long it took for Virta to learn how to control itself, wonder how much the snake just retreated and let the host take point, and that just pisses him off even more.

He can still feel the snake's hands on his skin. Some people would want to cover themselves up, he knows -- hide their bodies away behind baggy clothes, reach for safety and security by drowning themselves in fabric -- but he fucking hates anything around his wrists and throat. Having to keep himself covered, keep his ink covered, has just been contributing to the constant state of low-grade pissed he's been in this whole time. (When he hasn't spiked from pissed to furious, that is.) So he pulls on sweatpants and a tank top, stalks barefoot back out into the living room. The snake's still reading. It left him two of the chocolates. How fucking generous.

"Have a seat," the snake invites. Makes him want to keep standing, just to prove he can, but that sort of childish foot-stomping is beneath him. Or should be, at least. He sinks down into seiza again, on the floor, same spot he picked last time. Ass on his heels. Palms on his thighs. Knees together. Breathe.

The snake dogears the page to keep from losing its place and sets the book aside. It lifts a finger, gestures towards its own ear; it takes him a second before he realizes what it means. Earpiece. He keeps fucking forgetting he's wearing it. He takes it out. Tosses it onto the coffeetable; it clatters as it hits. The snake leans forward, its elbows on its knees, its hands dangling freely. "I'm sorry," it says.

Last fucking thing he would have expected to hear out of the snake's fucking mouth. "For?" he demands.

If he didn't know better, he'd say the expression on the snake's face is something akin to sympathy. "For the fact that the one person you'd thought you were developing a genuine friendship with turned out to be waiting to betray you. I would have told you sooner, if I'd been certain that your role was a role, rather than waiting until it became urgent and pressing that you know. For that, I'm sorry."

It creeps him the fuck out. Snake shouldn't be able to sound so genuinely regretful. "Still not sure why you think I'm playing a role now," he says. He isn't -- quite -- trying to convince the snake that he's genuine; that ship's already sailed. But he's already fucking had his nose rubbed in the fact that he's fucking up, and as much as he hates the idea of taking directions from a snake, if he's fucking up in other ways, it would probably be a fucking good idea to know how.

The snake smiles, just a little. "Because you haven't betrayed me. I took a chance; I'm glad I did. I suppose it's tacky to say 'thank you for not blowing my cover', given the circumstances, but I also suppose I should."

This is more than a little surreal. He spent ten years or so setting his course by one solid and unswerving fact: the Goa'uld are power-mad, psychotic megalomaniacs. This one isn't. Or it does a fucking damn good impression of not being, at least, and he'd really like to know why. "What made you start to suspect?" he says. "Originally."

He barely notices, until the words are out of his mouth, that he's tacitly coming clean.

The snake cocks its head, purses its lips. Considers. "I had been uncertain about your motivations from the time you arrived," it finally says. "We all were. You did an excellent job of alleviating those suspicions. For me, though, I decided your role was a role that first morning I joined you on your morning run. Before you knew that we were legion. Do you remember? I offered you the use of the sarcophagus, and you declined."

He tries to ignore the surge of want that the sarcophagus's mention kicks up in his chest. "I remember," he says. Neat, clipped. He hadn't realized that had been Delta. Looking back at it now, it's obvious.

The snake nods. "Your reasons for saying no were excellent reasons. I couldn't say what made me realize they were an excuse. Something about the sound of your voice, the look on your face. You know what the sarcophagus can do, and you wanted to say yes, and you knew you couldn't. Because you knew that you wouldn't be able to control yourself, if you did." The look on its face makes him want to bend over, rest his head on his knees. He knows that wanting. He shouldn't have points of commonality with a fucking snake. "I suppose it made me sympathize."

He can feel his fingers tightening on his thighs. He makes himself uncurl them, spread them out, resting quiet and undisturbed. "You don't use the fucking box," he says. Not quite a question. Not quite a statement. He has a really fucking hard time believing that the snake doesn't, but he knows that look. It's the look of someone who'll always be an addict, talking about the monkey he'll always be vulnerable to. The monkey he's decided isn't going to be allowed to win.

"No. Not when it isn't absolutely necessary, at least," it says. "And absolute necessity is much more rare than one might think. My compatriots are less willing to tolerate any form of physical imperfection for even the length of time it would take to conduct repairs. I grew to realize that the easy way out was causing more harm in the long run. It's not easy. But it's worth it. Or so I believe." It makes a face, its mouth twisting into a rueful expression. "It's certainly set me apart from the others. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view, I suppose."

It stands up. Crosses the room and disappears into the kitchen. (He barely notices that his subconscious sentries don't twitch as it passes him.) "I could try to convince you that I'd had a change of heart and was ready to spend the rest of my life rescuing puppies and helping little old ladies across the street," it says, raising its voice just enough to be heard over the pass-through. He can hear the sound of the refrigerator opening, closing again. "I could probably manage to convince you, given enough time. But we don't have enough time, and the time for pretense is over. I have absolutely no desire to become some sort of tiresome moral crusader righting the wrongs of society. But I have no interest in subjugating humanity, being worshipped as a god, or ruling the whole galaxy, either. For one thing, it's far too much work. I've come to realize that I'd be perfectly content -- what is the expression? Living the high life. Good food, good drink, interesting problems to pick apart and solve. I'm hoping you can live with a mutual non-aggression pact."

It comes back out from the kitchen. Two bottles of beer in its hands. As he watches, it pops off the bottlecaps with one thumb. They're not fucking twist-off caps. Fucking show-off. It holds down a bottle. He takes it and sets it aside, untouched. The snake stays put right where it is, close enough for him to touch, staring down at him.

"You are going to win, you know," it tells him. Clinically. Dispassionately. "Whether you know it or not. Right now, I'm certain it doesn't seem like you will. You're beginning to see the magnitude of the problem you committed yourself to solving, and you can't see an easy way to get out of this without screwing yourself. But what I said last week still holds. Even if you, personally, fail -- and I don't think you will -- your people will succeed. Which is, I suppose, little consolation for you, but it's true. And knowing that I'm looking to ally myself with you mostly because I know you're going to win may make you more or less inclined to trust me, but that's true as well. I don't like losing. I never have. For the length of time you're here, I'll help you -- and I can be a considerable help to you. In exchange, I ask only your word that I'll be left to live my life and run my company undisturbed, as long as I don't seek any greater control of Earth or any of its countries."

He's starting to get a crick in his neck from having to look up at the snake; he stops himself before he stands up to face the snake on its level. Petty little power games. Once a snake, always a snake, he supposes.

"What's to keep me from saying yes and then turning around and fucking you once I get out of here?" he asks.

The snake sinks down to the floor, a foot or two away, folding its legs underneath it gracefully. It smiles. Genuine amusement. "The fact that you don't renounce promises," it says. "Not once they've been given. Not unless it's required, in order to uphold something you find even more dear, and even then it torments you. If you give me your word, you'll keep it. Of that, I have full confidence."

He closes his eyes for a few seconds. No snake should know that much about him, and he's not even sure how it does. Doesn't want to think of all the little conversations he and the snake had, in an interrogation room halfway across the galaxy. Doesn't want to wonder when the snake cloned itself, whether the snake sitting next to him now remembers being the snake that was his host for that charming little vacation. He of all people knows how much difference can arise between a clone and the original, how little the continuity of memory can affect the person you become, but he also knows how much it can leave marks. He doesn't want to let himself think that the snake's unwavering belief in his own ethical system might stem from the snake watching him die, over and over again, all to protect a woman whose name he didn't even know.

Lie down with dogs. Rise up with fleas. Fucking hell, he's already decided he's going to do this, and now he's just trying to figure out if he's going to be able to live with himself afterwards.

"I don't control things," he says, his voice tight. "I don't have the authority to commit to something like that. I can suggest. I can't make promises. Don't think that I can."

The snake nods, its face serious again. "I know. But you have influence. A great deal of influence, I'm suspecting, else General O'Neill wouldn't have sent you. Not with such autonomy. I've watched you carefully, and I haven't seen any evidence that you're receiving instructions or communicating in any way. For you to have that much leeway means that you must have enough authority to make decisions and expect them to be binding."

He supposes that's something to be proud of, that he hasn't fucked up enough for the snake to catch him phoning home. It doesn't make him feel any better.

The snake takes a swallow of its beer. He looks for any sign of smugness that he's taking this proposition seriously in its face. Doesn't find any. That doesn't make him feel any better either.

"I have conditions," he finally says.

No relief in the snake's face, but its shoulders ease, just a fraction. He only sees it because he's looking for it. "Name them," it says.

For a second, he realizes how fucking insane this is, two men sitting on the floor of the corporate condo from hell, negotiating the fate of the world. Playing chess with Death. He wants to laugh, wants to beat his fists against his thighs and scream. Can't.

His feet are starting to fall asleep. He shifts his position: seiza to kekka fuza, folding his feet up onto his thighs, soles turned upwards to face the ceiling. Ticks off his points on his fingers. "One, you give me a list of everything this company controls, and I do mean everything, and get rid of anything that was acquired just to fuck with the SGC," he says. His mind is skipping ahead of itself, reaching out for all the moves he needs to make, all the things he needs to get out on the table right now. Somehow he doesn't think the snake will take kindly to having additional clauses added later. "Two, you drop the whole politics thing. No running for public office, no influencing the people who are already in public office -- with money, with power, anything -- and no trying to buy laws or regulations or anything like that."

The snake's smiling again. Fucking creepy. "I believe the purchasing of favorable legislation is a fine upstanding American corporate tradition," it says. Something must show in his face, because it clears its throat immediately and goes back to serious. "But I take your meaning. Go on."

"Ha ha fucking ha," he says. "Three, no more snakes on Earth. No clones, no underlings, nothing. Period, end of sentence. That includes Jaffa. Non-negotiable. Period. Four, you produce a list of every person you or any of the others have worked with or planted, anywhere in a position of power, and agree that you won't try to replace them once we clear them."

The snake nods. "Yes," it says. "I had assumed. Go on."

He tries to think of the other provisions of the Master Plan that he needs to step on. "Five," he says. "No more offworld tech. No bringing it to Earth, no funneling it into the economy, no leaking bits and pieces of it, no trying to reverse engineer it so that it looks like it was developed here. No buying research, no steering research, no giving or selling hints or clues to anybody doing work in those areas already."

The snake nods again. He doesn't like the way it seems to be agreeing. It isn't that he was expecting more argument, but he was ... expecting more argument, really. And the capitulation doesn't tell him anything. If the snake's motivations are exactly what it says they are, these provisions wouldn't be too much to agree to. If the snake's playing some more subtle game, it would pretend to agree anyway, to put him at ease so it could keep doing whatever the hell it was trying to do.

"Six," he says. "About the rest of the galaxy --"

He stops. The enormity of this comes crashing in on him. Negotiating for the fate of fucking everything. Fucking hell, he's this close to fucking trusting a snake. His instincts are telling him to trust the snake. And he's already proven to himself that his instincts about whom to trust are fucking unreliable at best and downright dangerous at worst. His judgment's fucked, plain and simple: lack of sleep, lack of safety, lack of breathing room. He's been playing roles for too fucking long. The longer you stay under, the more you have to question your every fucking move. He knows this. He always has. Or had. Since Poland, and beyond.

He cannot trust himself to make this call. (But who can he trust?)

He drops his hands. Lifts them again, scrubs them over his face. Delay. He needs room to think. "Not now. Those aren't all my terms. I'll have others. Before I can say yes or no. I need to think. I need to --"

"Yes," the snake says. Picks up both beer bottles, rises to its feet (without needing to pinwheel its arms to gain purchase, too, which just makes him think the fucking thing is fucking showing off). "You're under a great deal of pressure. I would rather have a considered answer. I will tell you that I can agree to the conditions you've offered so far. I know it's difficult for you to believe, but I really have no interest in ruling your world. I've had enough of that; I'd find it miserable. The challenge of ruling a single company is more than enough to keep me occupied for quite some time."

It takes both beer bottles back over to the coffeetable. Sets one down, keeps the other. Drops down onto the couch and arranges itself lengthwise over it, its back against the arm of the couch, its feet and legs across the cushions. Picks up the book again. Looks just like it's settling down for a long winter nap. "I would suggest," it says, clinically, "that you sleep. I can't imagine you've been doing much of that. As long as I'm here, you won't be bothered."

His brain presents him with the image of the snake lying across the foot of his door, loyal and faithful fucking guard dog. He really fucking hates his brain sometimes. "Yeah," he says, short and clipped, and climbs up to his feet. (And it's fucking hard to keep from flailing his own arms for balance as he goes, but he fucking manages.) He reaches over and picks up the box of chocolates up from the coffee table. Puts it on the counter between the kitchen and the living room. "And if I wake up and find that you fucking ate those," he says, "I'm going to fucking kill you with the power of my mind."

The snake laughs. Actually laughs (fucker), and he wants to lunge across the coffeetable and wrap his hands around its throat, and he can't, because he's half a step away from shaking on a fucking deal with it.

He thought it would take him a long fucking time to fall asleep, knowing the snake is sitting out there. Waiting. But no. He's out like a light no more than five minutes after he strips down bare and climbs between the sheets, and he sleeps like the fucking dead.

*

Downtown Seattle. A rare and lovely April day out there. One of the ones that are bright and clear, the warmth of spring, the first promises of summer glinting far-off on the horizon. He lopes instead of running, a desultory loop around downtown: Jogging Can Mitigate Some Unpleasant Pains. (When this is over, if this is over, he's going to have to shin splints for months. There's a fine line between aggressive physical conditioning and masochism-via-exercise, and he's got a feeling he can't even see the line in the rear-view mirror anymore.)

Saturday. He's got the deck of cards in his pocket, a backpack full of the work and the laptop he's allowed to bring out of Farrow-Marshall HQ to use for cover, and the next message to O'Neill in his head, waiting to be enciphered; he's planning on hitting the library, holing up in its bathroom to do the majority of the work. But just as he's dropping a folded dollar bill into the tip-jar at the coffee shop (second number even, because this is the textbook definition of 'heating up') and turning away with his latte, someone bumps into him and sends him and his coffee flying.

He'd had his backpack off his shoulders and open to shove his wallet into it, and it goes flying, scattering papers everywhere; his laptop skids out from the interior pocket it lives in. A gasp from the girl who slammed into him. (Twentysomething. Short hair, spiked with mousse, dyed an unnatural shade of black. Freckles across her face. Fresh and still-unhealed piercings in her nose and in her eyebrow. The slightly-too-straight posture of someone who's used to standing at attention. Been so long that he can't remember her fucking name, but he knows precisely where he saw her last.)

She crouches down next to him immediately and starts helping him shove the papers together. "I am so sorry," she says. "Oh my God. I can't believe I did that. I am such a klutz. My momma always told me I'd been raised by wolverines."

He reaches out a long arm and snags the laptop before someone steps on it. "It's all right," he says. "Partly my fault. My mother always told me she was going to sell me to the circus if I didn't watch where I was going."

She laughs. "Yeah, I, uh." They both rise to their feet. He grabs a handful of napkins off the counter to drop on the floor and sop up some of his spilled coffee. "Is your laptop okay? Oh, God, I'd feel awful if I broke it."

"Should be fine," he says. He balances it on one palm, pops the lid; it clicks, whirrs, presents him with the login screen. "Looks okay, at least. You're off the hook."

"Here. Let me --" She flips open the messenger bag she's carrying, fishes around in it, comes up with a piece of white cardstock. "This is my business card. If you find that it's busted when you get it home, call me, all right? I have a good insurance policy. I can pay to have it fixed for you."

He glances at the card -- name, phone number -- and shoves it in his back pocket, then takes the sheaf of papers from her and drops it, laptop, and backpack on one of the few tables scattered in the storefront. Starts to rearrange his chattels for re-stowing. "I will," he says, in the tone that means he won't, turning his back on her: dismissal.

He waves off her offer to replace his coffee, shoves everything back into his backpack, and sets the straps back on his shoulders. Jogs down to the Market, through one of the top-floor archways, down a few ramps, getting sworn at as he pushes through the crowds. Out one of the back doors marked employees-only, keeping his eyeballs peeled. He drops to a saunter as he walks up Alaskan Way, pacing the waterfront. Up Broad, across Denny, past the permanent mini-carnival that doesn't open until later in the day, past the Godawful music museum building. The long way around. He loops around and enters the Science Center, handing over the price of admission in cash, and accepts the exhibit map. Shoves a quarter in a locker to stow his backpack. Makes sure to remember to pull the earpiece out of his ear and shove it and the phone into the backpack first.

It's Saturday, so it's not deserted, but late April isn't yet tourist season, so it's not overrun. He wanders through the exhibit halls in no particular rush. Butterfly house is pretty; he lingers there for a while, staring at the flutter and dance of all the tiny little winged jewels, until the crowd around him has changed, fully, no fewer than three times.

Then he doubles back on his own trail, heads down to the group entrance, turns down a completely unremarkable grey and deserted corridor, turns again, and settles himself by the bank of pay phones. Fishes the business card out of his back pocket. Dials the phone number on its face.

He keeps himself alert, but not jumpy, watching the corridor's single approach as the phone rings six times, clicks, and then goes dead. No voice mail. Wasn't expecting any. He hangs up, plants his shoulders against the wall, and waits.

Ten minutes later, to the second, he's got his hand on the receiver of the pay phone, lifting it just as it's starting to ring. "Yeah," he says.

No question about who it is on the other end of the phone, so O'Neill doesn't bother identifying himself. He can hear a soft mechanical whine beneath O'Neill's voice; not the Asgard jammer, that's soundless, but something to prevent someone with a directional microphone from picking up anything useful. It's not perfect -- technology can minimize the chance of anyone eavesdropping, and he knows O'Neill will have made prior arrangements to be able to use a land line that's relatively low-risk for man-in-the-middle, but if anyone's still keeping tabs on him, he's sunk. Still. He doesn't think he's been followed; he's pretty sure he's gotten the knack of spotting surveillance, and he knows his clothes aren't bugged. (Or thinks he knows. Snake told him so. All comes down to whether or not he can trust the snake.)

"We're pulling you," O'Neill says. "Can you get to the Greyhound station without being tailed?"

"Hell you are," he says. It's quick. Automatic. Nothing's changed; if he leaves without locking the doors and stacking the chairs on the tables behind him, he's going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his unnatural life. "Unless you're calling to tell me that you're nuking Seattle tomorrow, I'm staying put."

"Don't be stupid," O'Neill counters immediately. He breathes, deeply, from the pit of his stomach, fighting down the automatic impulse to counter attack with attack. Won't serve anyone if he can't keep control of his emotions. "Intel we're getting says you're in trouble. I want you out of there before you get hurt."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Headache. Again. Still. "Don't be stupid," he says, wearily. "I'm more use here, and you know I don't give a flying fuck about my own safety. And all the arguments against leaving without things done still stand. Even you can't protect --"

My family, he starts to say. Cuts himself off. O'Neill hears it anyway. "All right, fine," O'Neill says, sounding annoyed; "I want you out of there before you finish going native on me, dammit."

Spike of anger. Spike of irritation. He breathes through them both. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that," he says. "Took you this long to figure out it was me who did Clancy, did it? Or is it that you just found out that I'm the one taking point on the negotiations for Resslaer-Szdinski? Come on, that started back in fucking February."

"Well, I wasn't exactly looking," O'Neill snaps, and then pauses. He can hear O'Neill stopping himself, breathing, calming himself down. Too alike for their own good; too different for common ground. "Okay. Yeah. Low blow. But I'm serious about wanting you out of there. Mitchell will kill me if I let you get killed."

The stab of pain at the mention of Mitchell's name (don't fucking let yourself fucking think about Mitchell) is completely unexpected. Completely overwhelming. The stab of anger -- that O'Neill is taking responsibility for his actions, his choices, speaking as though this is O'Neill's plan and he's just the puppet without any control of the situation -- isn't unexpected at all. But he should have known. O'Neill's all too quick to blame himself for the actions of anyone. Not just him.

"My shit," he snaps. "My choices. Not yours."

"My command," O'Neill snaps right back.

"I think you know how much that's bullshit," he says. Then stops himself, because the last thing they need right now is a war over who's got the bigger dick. Especially when, hello, stupid question. "Okay. Backing up. Starting over, without the sniping. I'm close to having a chance to stabilize the situation. Decisively. If you guys can say the same, I'm out of here. If not, I'm staying put. I was on my way to put together a package for you, yell for another pair of hands, but since I've got you on the line, I'll do it quickly, verbal."

"Quickly," O'Neill agrees. "And no. We're still trying to track down enough information to be comfortable making a move. The intel about the cloning really threw us for a loop."

He snorts. "You think it threw you for a loop?" he says. "Try being right there when they decided to drop it on me. Okay. Quickly. Don't fucking interrupt."

It doesn't take him long to summarize the high points; he'd already composed the message in his head, after all. He drops it in O'Neill's lap as quickly as possible, tap-dancing over the surface of most of the sticky parts. O'Neill takes the news of Delta's break from the ranks about as well as he'd been expecting, which is to say, not well at all.

"You can't possibly be thinking of trusting a snake," O'Neill says, firm and flat.

He's been on the phone long enough that he's starting to get nervous, even tucked away back here in the corridor where he can watch all the approaches, and nerves always make him cranky. "Trust, no," he snaps. (Only a little twinge about lying. What O'Neill doesn't know can't hurt him. Unless he's wrong, of course, and he's about to gift-wrap Earth and hand it over to the snake with a ribbon tied around it, in which case what O'Neill doesn't know can hurt him plenty. But he's not going to get any sense out of O'Neill if he makes a full confession, and it's easier to get forgiveness than permission; that's one axiom he and O'Neill both still hold dear.) "Use, yes. I can have this cleaned up in a month if you don't get in my way." He pauses, reconsiders. "Six weeks, tops, just to be on the safe side. Can you hold your end until then?"

There's a pause. He knows it for O'Neill running possibilities, turning ideas over in his head. "Yeah," O'Neill finally says. "The President's getting touchy, but I think I can hold him. If you're sure."

"I'm sure," he says. "Now here's the part you're not going to like."

O'Neill's voice turns wary. "What part's that?"

"The part where I tell you what I need you to do."

Takes a few minutes to rattle off the list. A couple of vials of symbiote poison. A second pair of hands. A cover story to explain things, which is going to take moving heaven and fucking earth to get everything arranged properly, and oh, when this is over, Mitchell is going to kill him if Momma doesn't beat him to it. (Don't think about --) A couple of sets of spare ID, just in case. A gradual, but complete, cessation of the SGC's (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to root out Ba'al's strongholds across the galaxy. A backdoor into the SGC itself, not just Groom Lake, and not a honeypot, either: the actual system. A list of everything he needs to find when he gets there.

He was right; O'Neill isn't happy. Especially since -- he thinks -- O'Neill can put together bits and pieces of what, precisely, he's planning. But he finally snaps, "For God's sake, Jack, don't fuck rule one," and O'Neill shuts up. Rule one is don't jog the elbow of the agent on ground. And he knows O'Neill fucking knows it.

"You know that if you fuck this up, we're screwed," O'Neill says, soft and vicious. "All of us. Everything."

He catches himself grinding his teeth. "Believe it or not, yes, I do happen to be aware of that fact."

There's a fractional pause from the other end of the line. He tries to suppress the itchy, crawling sensation between his shoulderblades; he's been off the grid for far too fucking long. "Dammit," O'Neill finally says. Capitulation. Should feel like more of a victory than it does. "Dammit. All right. If you're wrong, I'll kill you myself if the snake doesn't beat me to it. Are you sure your guy's up for this? Got a backup for if he says no?"

"He won't say no," he says. Calm, assured. Sounding like he knows what the fuck he's doing. He knows O'Neill will only hear the calm, the confidence, and never suspect the nerves behind it. "Trust me. But no, I don't have anyone else in mind. If you have someone who's clean on paper, not connected with the SGC at all, send them. If you've got them. If not, I can muddle through without the help."

"I really don't," O'Neill says, reluctantly. "But I'll try. All right. Got anything else?"

"Yeah," he says. Talks fast, before he can talk himself out of it. "Tell Mitchell I miss him, I love him, and the only way I'm not coming back to him is if this gets fucked beyond repair, and if that happens, I'm gonna be thinking of him all the way up to the end."

He hangs up before O'Neill can react. O'Neill will bear the message, he knows. Faithfully. It's not fair to lay it at his feet to carry, but it's the only way he can get the knowledge to Mitchell, and if he's not coming back from this one, he wants to be sure Mitchell knows he was loved beyond all shred of a doubt.

*

He slides through the elevator doors just as they're halfway closed on Delta, turning his hips to shimmy into the narrow gap. "Going to lunch without me?" he says. "I'm hurt."

The snake's eyes are interested. "I had been planning on taking a drive, actually," it says, and if it had been planning that before he showed up, he'll eat his fucking laptop. "Would you care to join me?"

He bares his teeth. It's not precisely a smile. "Love to," he says, bright and false and cheerful. "It feels like so long since you and I have gotten a chance to be alone together."

Still not ready to say yes or no. But there are a few things he needs the snake to do for him.

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