Two ribs cracked. He can tell by the pain when he breathes in too deeply, so he doesn't breathe deeply. Hasn't for a while. Wouldn't want to anyway. This place smells like a sewer, like the sewer that it is. He smells like a sewer, shit and piss and blood, and all he wants is to get clean, and he knows he --

Ma ba'araf ishi thani, he says, through lips that are puffy and swollen. (ad-Douri always hits him in the face: bakasir snanak, ta'ala mus zobry.)

It doesn't stop the blows. Bitfakir mabta'araf, bes bta'araf. Bes hatha o bawagif shway --

Lieutenant Colonel Jack O'Neill, he says. The words blur in his mouth. He doesn't even remember what language he's speaking anymore. Estoy Americano, de Fuerza Aérea de Estados Unidos, nada más, I won't say anything else --

But ad-Douri drives a fist into his stomach, and he's gasping Eyreh be afass seder emmak, and the world is tilting, spinning, as he pitches over, clinging to a zipline, feeling the pull of eight, ten Gs, and Cromwell's face is calm as he lets go, falls (the enemy/Gate is down) and everything is white, white and sound --

-- and someone pins down his shoulders, sharp rough shock --

He comes awake quickly, between one piece of horror and the next. The snake's leaning over him. One hand on each of his shoulders, bearing him down into the mattress, holding him tight. His throat hurts. He must have been screaming.

"You were dreaming," the snake says.

He wets his lips. "Yeah," he says. Voice scratchy. "Got that. Thanks."

The snake lets him go. No reason not to. He's awake now. No more screaming to disturb its little book group night. He expects it to go back to the living room, curl back up on his couch and keep doing whatever the fuck it does all night on the nights he hasn't been summoned elsewhere. (It's like having his own fucking pet gargoyle. Except it eats all the chocolate. And he suddenly can't keep ice cream in the place for more than a night. He doesn't think about that too closely.)

But it doesn't go anywhere, just looks down at him, face lit and shadowed by the city lights streaming through the open window. "Do the dreams come often?" it asks.

He isn't exactly prepared for an evening of sharing. "Often enough," he says, short and sharp. "Thanks for the rescue. Don't let me keep you from whatever you were doing."

It keeps staring at him. For a minute he thinks it might pull off its shirt, its pants, and climb into bed with him. Some people have teddy bears; he apparently has a teddy snake. But no, it only nods. "May your dreams be untroubled," it says, and turns away.

Takes him a long time to fall back to sleep.

*

Downtown Seattle: Just Come Making Safety Utterly Plausible. (He's running out of ideas.)

Beautiful fucking day. Not the weather -- that's the familiar grey-and-rainy, April having given way to May. (Cruelest month, lilacs out of dead land, memory and desire. Yadda.) But his heart's more easy as he runs it anyway: down First, around the ballparks, back up along Fourth, following the split to Second. He always feels better once he has a plan. Light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, given his luck, it's an oncoming fucking train. People always used to call SG-1 the luckiest damn bastards alive, and nobody would ever listen when they said no lucky person would ever go through half the shit they went through. People at the SGC wanted, needed to believe in good luck, so they concentrated on the miraculous escapes and never stopped to think about the shit-ass luck that made the miracles necessary. Human nature. He doesn't believe in luck, but if he did, his would be abysmal: Murphy's killed more Gate Team members than e'er snake could hope to match, and maybe the fact that he wasn't one of them has used up all of the quota of luck he was assigned for a lifetime.

Spring. (Since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room --) His own personal Longest Winter is coming to a close, but that doesn't mean he's out of the woods. Not an ending yet, so he can't let himself start to think of it as one. Not even into the endgame yet. Barely into midgame, and he's got nothing on his side of the board but knights and pawns, and he still has to take it all the way down to mate in two without his opponents realizing they're walking into a trap until after it's started to spring shut behind them. Can't get cocky. Can't let it make you get cocky. It's only a plan. It's not a victory. Not yet.

He should have made the offer to O'Neill. He should have suggested he stay. Sleeper agent. Special reconnaissance. He's trained for it; he's here. Opportunity of a lifetime to get someone inside the snake's plans, to make sure nothing's been missed and nothing's going to get screwed if and when he decides to blow it wide open. He should have made the offer. It's the smartest thing to do right now. He didn't.

And O'Neill didn't think of it, didn't mention it, either. That worries him. Once upon a time, O'Neill would have; he knows this. (Once upon a time, he had; assigning good men, brave men, to live far from home and family, to risk their lives in service to their country, and every time the casualty reports came back from behind the lines he'd seen their faces in his dreams.) He doesn't know why O'Neill didn't. Would O'Neill have, if it had been any other operative behind the lines? Would O'Neill have, if it had been any snake but the snake he's facing?

How much of this is personal?

He can't know. And he's selfish enough, tired enough, that he didn't suggest it, and now the window's closed. He's bringing someone else in. Someone else under. His command; his responsibility. His conscience. Just another weight to add to all the weights he carries, and once upon a time he'd made those decisions every day and now it's been years, years, and here he is. Long fucking road between Captain O'Neill and here.

Time to walk it again.

*

And okay, as plans go, this one kind of fucking sucks, but it's the best answer he could find. He can't make any final decisions until he gets a fucking sanity check. And Mitchell would come running in an instant if he asked, but he's not going to ask and he's not going to give Mitchell a chance to offer, because if Mitchell did, he'd have to say no. So he has to settle for second best.

(Don't think about Mitchell.)

Can't call Carter. Can't call Teal'c. Really can't call Daniel. (The long-distance rates are a bitch.) Any of them would come running, but the snake would never believe it. Snake's going to have a hard time swallowing this one too, but he's been holding this card in reserve. Just in case. Hey, Rube.

He wasn't expecting things to move quickly -- there are a lot of strings that need to get pulled on the other end -- but apparently O'Neill hasn't lost the ability to get his ass in gear when he has to. Two and a half weeks into May, Ba'al (Echo) and Virta call him down into a conference room on 17, one of the ones HR uses for interviews. He saunters in with his very best fuck-you glare, thumbs hooked through the belt-loops of his jeans, playing irritated and annoyed with every line of his face and cant of his head. "Busy," he snaps. "Can't get anything done with you breathing down my neck."

"Oh," Ba'al says, silken and ornate, "I think you'll rather want to be here for this interview. You'll never believe what we pulled out of the general employment application pool."

The door opens, and he knew it was coming, was ready for it, but it still gives him a jolt to see Spencer Griffith walking through the door, wearing a suit and tie, looking nervous.

Easy enough to parley the jolt into shock and disbelief. "Griffith?" he blurts. And this is why he asked for Griffith, this is why he wanted Griffith, because he knows Spencer Griffith has been sneaking and lying and weaseling out of bad situations since the day he was born, even before he started started sneaking and lying and weaseling out of bad situations professionally, and the boy's a damn fine actor; his mouth is hanging open too, and he's gone pale and shaky-looking.

Ba'al and Virta are staring at them both. Virta's watching him. Ba'al's watching Griffith. Looking for authenticity of reaction, he suspects. Whatever he's managing to portray, it must be whatever the snakes were looking for. He can only see Virta relaxing because he's looking for it.

"JD?" Griffith says, sounding distracted and disbelieving. "You -- Uncle Cam's been worried sick."

"I take it you two know each other," Ba'al says. Fucking snake. Fucking drama whore. If it doesn't already know the whole story of how they're connected, he will eat his fucking laptop.

Gotta pray the cover trail holds up. He hopes it will. It probably will. Carter was the one to paper-trip Griffith, and Carter's fucking good at what she does. And she cares about Griffith an awful damn lot. Gonna have to be careful. If he manages to get the kid killed, he's going to be in a shitload of fucking trouble.

So he puts authenticity into every fucking inch of his performance. Plays for baffled and confused, irritated with just a glimmer of interest, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Virta watching him like a fucking hawk. "Yeah," he says. "Ex-partner's cousin. Supposed to be stationed at Buckley right now, not standing here in a suit and tie. What the fucking fuck, Griffith?"

He sees Griffith's knuckles go white as he folds his hands into fists. "Aunt Sa -- Someone found out I had a little business on the side," Griffith says, soft snarl that's all the more effective for being underplayed. He can see Griffith's eyes darting sideways, to the snake. Griffith's face is a textbook fucking study in how much can I get away with not saying? "My CO brought me up on charges without listening to a word of my side of the story, I told him to go fuck himself with a cheese grater, he had a few choice words for me in return, I hauled off and hit him, and the next thing I know I'm in the fucking lockup and staring at a general court-martial. Which ended badly, and now I'm on dismissal and waiting for the automatic appeal to utterly fail to overturn the sentence, and I've been kicked out of the family and cut off without a goddamn penny, and thank you so much for being here to screw up the interview for the best job I was likely to be able to get with that hanging over my head. Seriously, are you done fucking this family over yet?"

"Oh," Ba'al says, "really, you'd be surprised at what doesn't ruin your chances of obtaining a job offer from this company." It stands up, leans over the conference room table, offering one hand to shake and using the other to keep its tie from dragging on the table. "Kevin Balim. CEO. I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Griffith. Your CV is rather impressive."

He watches as Griffith's eyes dart over to Ba'al again, back to him, back to Ba'al. Griffith holds out a hand. Tentatively. It's always fucking sweet to watch a professional at work, he thinks, as Griffith bites his lip. He'd known Griffith would be good, but he hadn't expected Griffith to be this good, to be able to psych himself up into faking the subtle autonomic cues the snake can damn well read. "Um," Griffith says, reining in his temper -- visibly, obviously -- and licking his lips. "Sorry. I didn't mean to go off like that."

"Quite understandable," Ba'al says. It's almost looking cheerful. It sits back down, looks over at him. "Jack? I'll defer to your greater knowledge. Shall we continue this interview, do you think, or would you say that Mr. Griffith's skills wouldn't be a good match for the position?"

Griffith looks back over at him, too. "Jack?" he asks, playing a combination of confused and pissed. "I thought your name was --"

"No fucking clue what the position is," he interrupts, dropping down into one of the chairs next to the snake. "Next time you want me to sit in on a job interview, you might want to brief me on what we're hiring for first. Are we talking entry-level customer service or keys-to-the-kingdom here?"

He hooks one knee over the arm of the chair, lets his foot swing. Stares at Griffith. (Playing thoughtful and contemplative, and Griffith's playing baffled and slowly-getting-pissed right back at him. Not a flicker of anything else. Kid's a fucking marvel.)

"We thought we'd buy you a present," Virta says. "You've seemed so overworked lately."

He snorts. Yeah, okay. Maybe his luck hasn't run out yet, because that's better than he'd fucking hoped. He looks back at Griffith. "What'd they do you for?" he demands. "'Side business' covers a whole lot of sins. Mouthing off to your CO wouldn't get you drummed out. Trust me, if it did, I'd've been fucked six ways to Sunday more times than I could count."

Griffith's still staring at him. "You --" he starts, and then shakes himself. "Contraband," he says, tightly. "I needed the money."

He snorts again. "Wanted the money, is more like it," he says. "Always thought there was something not entirely squeaky clean about you. That's not an insult, by the way." He looks back at the snake. "You're willing to take a chance on him, I'll back it," he says. Looks back at Griffith. "Assuming that by 'contraband' you mean that you put together what Carter does for a living and decided to filch some of the blueprints and schematics out of her stuff when she came to the house for visits."

He watches Griffith's jaw drop, admires the neatly-executed doubletake. "You know?" Griffith blurts. "I thought -- I overheard her and Uncle Cam talking, back when Uncle Cam was recovering. And I didn't believe it. But then -- I tossed her stuff, and okay, I knew what she had with her was classified, but -- you would not believe how much I could make by just funneling some of that tech to the right hands --"

"Oh," he says, "I'd believe it." He looks back at the snake. The snakes. "My vote says keep. You're right, I could use a minion. And one with enough balls to fuck with Carter is probably better than I could have asked for. At least I won't have to waste too much time breaking him in."

And Carter must have done a damn fine job in back-dating the paper trail (because he knows the snake will have fucking checked), and Griffith must be up for a fucking Oscar for his performance with the family -- that's going to take forever to clear up later, but hey, on the bright side, there might not be a later -- and the whole damn scenario must check out through all the channels the snake's been able to verify, and they must have hit whatever reactions the snake was looking for note-perfect. (Either that, or the snake's handing them more rope. Because that's more luck than he wants to believe in.) The snake nods. "You're hired," it says, to Griffith. Then, to him, "Do be sure to watch what you tell him; I'd hate to have to have him killed after you go through all the trouble of training him."

He flips up his middle finger, shows it to the snake. "C'mon, Griffith," he says, cheerful and chipper. (Not entirely faked. In fact, not faked at all. He hadn't realized just how fucking much seeing a friendly face would lift his spirits, even if Griffith is giving him a not-entirely-feigned "what the fucking fuck" look.) "Heave-ho. Have I got a story to tell you. My office is upstairs." He looks back over at the snake. "How much is my budget for paying a minion, anyway?"

"He can have twice your salary," the snake says. (Echo's the one with the sense of humor. He's still not drawing a paycheck.) It stands up, signaling an end to the discussion. "I'll have the paperwork sent up for you. Oh, and Mr. Griffith?"

Griffith stands too (conscious assumption of the automatic habit, standing when the superior officer stands, and Griffith makes it seem so unconscious that the snake will never suspect it's deliberate). "Yeah?"

The snake smiles again. "Do be aware I wasn't joking about the having you killed part. Welcome to Farrow-Marshall. I hope you'll find your stay here ... illuminating."

*

Griffith's smart enough to realize they're being watched as they head back up into his office. He gets the kid settled in the visitor chair, says he'll be back in a second, and ducks over into the break room to pick up two bottles of water. (Coffee's shit up here. He's not gonna serve it to someone he likes.) When he gets back into the office, Griffith's unknotted his tie, and he's looking around himself like he's fallen down the rabbit hole.

"Oh my ears and whiskers," he says, just to fuck with Griffith's head a little -- just to let Griffith know to be prepared to have his head fucked with, because he told O'Neill to tell the kid to be ready for anything but he's not sure how much the lesson sank in -- and Griffith's head jerks around. He hands the kid a bottle of water, drops down into the other chair. Griffith's staring at him, like he's something new and scary and terrifying. (And either Griffith's a damn fucking gifted actor or the kid's gotten a look behind the mask he's always been careful to wear in front of the family, the mask of calm consideration and not-a-fucking-threat, because the fear and the fascination aren't entirely play-acted.)

"So," he says, getting himself settled in the chair. (There's just enough room in these chairs for him to get his legs up beneath him, arrange himself into kekka fuza and straighten up his spine.) "You have got to be in so much shit right now."

Griffith scowls at him. "Did you maybe stop to think I might not want to be your -- what'd you call it? Minion?"

"No," he says, flat and colorless. "Because if you didn't, you already know too much, and the boss would be having me dispose of your dead and lifeless body right now. And that kind of thing really would put a fucking damper on my plans for the rest of the afternoon, so it's easier all around if we just don't go there. Okay?" He smiles, wide and insincere, and Griffith recoils a little.

And dammit, he is going to have to spend a fuckload of time mending fences after all of this. If there is an after-all-this. Because Griffith's looking wild around the eyes, and no, it isn't entirely an act. He can't imagine what O'Neill told the kid, but he doesn't expect it was enough. And even if it was, Griffith's known him for two years as his cousin's lover, and he might have already deliberately shown Griffith that what you see isn't the entirety of what you get, but seeing it in a warm and sunny kitchen is something entirely different than seeing it in the midst of the enemy's stronghold.

But he'd read Griffith's jacket -- he does still have a few strings to pull -- and he knows both Griffiths, Spencer and Skipper alike, came to the SGC out of his old unit, the 720th Special Tactics Group. Special Operations. And he doesn't know which programs are still active (it's been a long damn time since he kept in touch; those years are better buried) and he doesn't know what pieces of the messy, messy puzzle Griffith might have already played, but he does know one thing: Griffith might be green, but he's solid.

So he spares a moment of pity -- sorry, kid, I'll brief you as soon as I can get us somewhere it's safe -- and keeps to his role. "Okay," he says, cracking open his bottle of water. "Let's start with rule one: the boss is not, in fact, lying when he says he'll kill you if you fuck him over. Or probably have me kill you. And I don't want to have to do that. So how about we have a couple of hours of Q&A about how not to fuck the boss over in six easy steps. Then I'll tell you all kinds of bedtime stories about your new role in life, we'll fill out a shitload of paperwork, and I'll go enlist Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary to get your relocation all set up. I want you here full-time by Monday. Any problems there?"

Griffith takes a deep breath. "No," he says, after a second. "No. I'm good. I was gonna go back home, but they wouldn't -- they didn't -- my dad's not talking to me right now, and Aunt Sassy made sure that nobody else would either, so I've just been crashing on a friend-of-a-friend's couch in Denver; I flew out here for the interview on like my last five hundred bucks --"

He wonders how much Sassy Mitchell's figured out about what's going on. He wouldn't put it past her to have put a few things together. He's going to be in so much fucking shit when all of this is over. (Not as much as Griffith is, though.) "Hey," he says. "Relax. It's all good." He smiles -- it's not even entirely fake -- and adds, "Lots of benefits to working here, too. It's not the 'all mortal peril, all the time' channel. We'll get you back to Denver to pack shit up and back out here in style. I've got a corporate AmEx. And the apartment building we'll move you into is right around the corner. Wait until you see it."

Griffith's controlling his breathing pretty tightly. Playing nervous and on-edge. "Sounds good," he says, spot-on impression of trying to keep his voice from wavering and not quite managing to make it. Or maybe it's not an impression. Method acting, perhaps. "I think. Right now I don't know what I'm supposed to think."

It's in-character for the role Griffith's playing, but he hears it as honest truth as well. He leans forward. Puts a hand on Griffith's wrist, squeezes. "Hey," he says again, making his voice warm and comforting. "I told you, it's all good. I'll take care of you. Don't worry."

He hopes Griffith hears it the way he means it. He can't say I promise out loud. But it is a promise, whole and entire. He dragged Griffith into this, and that means it's his responsibility and his duty to get Griffith out of it in one fucking piece.

"Okay," he says. They're being watched, being listened to -- he must assume this to be the truth -- but he flicks his thumb over the inside of Griffith's wrist before he draws his hand back anyway, sketching the sign. Old SG-1 codes, their personal private shorthand. All systems go. He has to hope O'Neill taught Griffith the signs. (Has to stifle the flash of annoyance that anyone else in the world would know them.) "Step one. You already know about the advanced technology thing. Wait until you hear where it comes from."

They kill an hour or so while he tells Griffith a lot of things Griffith already knows. Not all of it; he wants whoever's listening to recognize that he's playing ball, wants the snake to guess that he's taking the soft approach. He leaves out the little matter of conquering the world and the galaxy beyond it. Leaves out the snake thing, too. Covers the alien part. Covers the technological advances part. He flat-out says Farrow-Marshall has contacts offworld, heavily implies they're working to get offworld tech into the Earth economy so that everyone can use it. Hammers heavy on how the US government's been covering things up, how the fruits of offworld spoils have been reserved for the rich and the powerful. By the end of it, if Griffith had really come into this as ignorant as he's playing, the kid would walk away thinking Farrow-Marshall was the good guys and the snake was a genuine fucking American fucking hero. It's a wonderful recruitment speech. Too bad it's almost entirely fiction.

"You know about all of this, though," Griffith says. "How do you --"

He flashes Griffith a look. Back off; that part's out of bounds. "Yeah," he says. "I do. Let's just say I'm a little more connected than you all always thought I was."

By the end of it, Griffith's act has passed through properly shocked and through glimmer-of-interest, and has gone all the way to fully fascinated and fired up at the possibilities inherent in the scenario. Throws out a few ideas here and there. Asks a few what-ifs. Kid's going to do just fine. Griffith's not as experienced as he is, but then again, who is? Kid's not raw, not totally green, just nervous. And hey. Fate of the world, resting on your shoulders? He remembers the days when that made him nervous, too. Griffith's smart enough to see that the fact he asked for the kid specifically, that he trusts the kid enough to hold up his end of the masquerade -- that he's placing his life in Griffith's hands -- as one fucking hell of a compliment. Which it is.

By mutual unspoken agreement, they don't mention Mitchell. He's saving that conversation for later.

This is a risk and a gamble of the highest order. But he's banking on something he'd already suspected and Delta had confirmed: the Ba'al collective has enough respect for him now that it thinks he's too fucking subtle to pull something like this. Something obvious. Something right out in the open and under its nose. Two members from the same notional family, both showing up in the heart of Ba'al's empire, both claiming to have had changes of heart? Yeah, that one's too unbelievable even for a soap opera; truth is, must be, weirder than fiction. When you've built your reputation for being subtle and crafty, the subtlest and craftiest thing you can possibly do is to be open and blatant. It'll hold. For a little while, at least, and a little while is as long as he needs it to hold.

He hopes. He has to hope. (But if you have to hope, you're already fucked, because it means you haven't done everything you can possibly do to control the situation. He has. He thinks. He still has to hope.) Biggest danger right now is twofold: either the snake is going to decide that Griffith's a sleeper agent, order him to kill Griffith to prove that he's not, or the snake's going to decide to make Griffith a host. (In which case they're fucked without lube, because the snake knows everything the host knows, and he knows Griffith knows enough of the plan to fuck him if the snake finds out.)

He thinks he's got his bases covered. Hopes. If the snake does suspect, he's pretty sure it would want to tease the process out, let things slip slowly, enjoy the fear and terror for a while before making its move. The snake enjoys interrogation, enjoys torture, too much to have it over-and-done-with too quickly. If the snake does suspect, his only sign will be waking up one morning to find Griffith gone and himself facing some unpleasant questions, but he's pretty fucking sure he could get through it unscathed. Delta assures him the rest of the collective has finally come to believe in him. And it would suck for Griffith to have to go through it, but he doesn't think the snake would do anything irrevocable too quickly.

He doesn't like what it says that he's able to consider consigning someone to weeks of torture the better option.

(The marvelous thing is that it's painless. That's how you know when it starts.)

Only a little while longer. End's in sight. Can't let it make you get sloppy, but you can use it to make yourself sharper, better, faster. If you work hard enough, you'll get your reward. (On Earth or as it is in Heaven.) Once this is over, you'll have the time to sit down with the inside of your head and undo all the shit you've done to yourself to get here. Until then, get a grip.

So he listens to Griffith's ideas. (And some of them are damn good, and wouldn't just work for the bad guys, and he wonders how many of them come from Griffith's time with the SGC. He hopes O'Neill will listen to them too when all of this is through; Griffith's too young, too junior, to be put into any position of authority on paper, but the SGC's always had a fine and upstanding tradition of not letting rank or the lack of it get in the way too badly, and he hopes Hank hasn't fucked that tradition up.) Scribbles down cryptic notes to himself in his own personal shorthand, and he wishes the snake luck in trying to decipher it; between the fact that his handwriting sucks and the fact that his abbreviations are often insane, he hopes it gives the snake a fucking migraine.

Eventually, he sends Griffith downstairs to HR, bearing a hastily-scribbled list of the forms he's to ask for and the things he's to requisition. (Laptop. Desktops. Cell phone. Earpiece. Etcetera. He leaves a note for whatever HR goon's manning the office to send Griffith up the chain until he hits Cocumél; he knows Cocumél will make sure Griffith gets the special gear, the stuff the snake has bugged.) Makes him twitch to send Griffith off without any backup, but it has to be done. He sits back, and he waits, and sure enough, the snake's letting itself in not five minutes later.

"An interesting coincidence," it says, leaning against the door-jamb of his office.

He snorts. Rocks his shoulders in their sockets. Unfolds his legs. "Lucky one. Kid's sharp. Good enough that I never actually noticed he was bent, just mildly crooked a little. And that takes talent, let me tell you. You're right; I can use him."

"Ah," the snake says. "But can you trust him?"

He shrugs. "Damned if I know," he says, aiming for 'cheerful' and sticking the dismount. "Which is why I haven't yet. And won't, until I think I can. Give me credit for knowing how to manage my people." He puts his feet up on his coffeetable, folds his arms across his chest. Stares at the snake. "Give me six months with him. I'll deliver you a willing coconspirator or a dead body all wrapped up with ribbons and bows for your Christmas present."

The snake smiles. "You say the sweetest things," it coos. "I'll leave it in your hands. Don't fuck up."

"Not planning to," he says, and means it. But (oh, he hopes, he hopes) not the way the snake thinks he does.

*

Griffith's back in about an hour and a half, earpiece in one ear, carrying a folder full of paper. He's just finishing up the conversation with Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary; he waves Griffith to take a seat.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Thanks. 'Preciate it. We'll call."

Griffith's watching him. He flicks his eyes up from where he's jotting down notes to himself, meets Griffith's eyes, holds them. Just a second. Yes, we're still on camera. Later. I promise. Mitchell would have been able to read it. He doesn't know if Griffith can. (Don't think about -- Hopeless by now.)

He breaks the connection with one touch to the phone. "Pack your bags," he says, cheerful and chipper. "Wait, you probably already have. We're catching the last flight down to Denver tonight. Leaves in about two hours. The driver will swing us around to your hotel so you can check out and grab your stuff. You have anything down there that won't fit in a few suitcases? I've got the movers on call if we need them."

The stare he gets is vaguely gratifying. He can see the instant when Griffith shakes himself, pulls himself back into character. (Fortunately, the blank what-the-fuck also fits. Still, Griffith's going to have to get over that pretty damn quickly.) "I don't need help," Griffith says (playing a little confused, a little annoyed). "I'm pretty sure it's not normal for your new boss to fly down with you to pack up your shit and move you."

He snorts. Puts his feet up on his desk. "Please," he says. "Give me some credit here. I just dumped a shitload of very sensitive information in your lap. It's not that I'm saying you're not trustworthy. I'm just saying it's to my advantage to make sure you don't have a sudden crisis of conscience. Or decide to sell me out to the highest bidder." He smiles, wide and merry, and watches Griffith's face go through contortions of shock settling down to anger; the kid is fucking good. "Besides," he adds. "You can always use an extra pair of hands when you're moving. You're springing for the pizza and beer, though."

He's got fresh clothes in his backpack, so he won't have to run back to the apartment first; they won't be gone for long. (Pointless trip anyway. Or not pointless, but not the same point anyone else might think it carries.) It runs pretty standard: car-and-driver (Jaffa; they've started to warm up to him a little, but only a little), swing by the Holiday Inn for Griffith to run up the stairs and grab his shit (battered duffel bag, full of things -- if Griffith is smart, and Griffith's smart -- that came from Goodwill and can be left behind if necessary), off to the airport.

He's traveling under Jack Bauerlin's ID again. While Griffith was dealing with the HR army, he'd acquired a second set of papers for Griffith; they proclaim him to be Spencer Gallatin, Jr. Quick and dirty job, but it'll hold enough for TSA scrutiny. While they're at the counter to check in, he pulls his earpiece off his ear, takes the phone out of his back pocket. Shoves them into the front pocket of the backpack and hands it over to be checked as baggage, instead of carry-on. Griffith doesn't need to be prompted to do the same. They walk through security empty-handed; on the other side of the screening area, he buys two bottles of water, a book of sudoku puzzles, and the first book he sees where the author's name is larger than the title in gold leaf foil on the cover.

They're seated in first class, of course. Near-full plane. He booked the last two first class seats.

He knows once again he was right to pick Griffith when Griffith doesn't break character once, not even when they're on the plane and seated. He hands Griffith the book, keeps the sudoku for himself. He's just finishing up the last of the easy puzzles when the pilot calls prepare-for-takeoff, and he closes his eyes and tries to gauge the pilot's skill by the subtle cues shuddering through the frame of the plane.

The ten-thousand-foot bell dings just when his subconscious tells him it's about to. He reaches forward into the seatback pocket, pulls out both bottles of water, and hands one to Griffith. "We're clear," he says, softly. So softly nobody around them can hear him over the engine noise. "Or as clear as I could get us. Thanks for coming. You have no fucking clue how much I appreciate it."

Next to him, Griffith breathes out, short and sharp. Relaxes like someone who's just been given permission to stand down. "I thought that's why you swung this," Griffith says, equally softly. "Couldn't be sure, though. Fuck, you're terrifying."

His lips twist. Not a smile. Doesn't have to playact right now, but it's hard to drop the habit, after so fucking long. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry about that. For what it's worth, you pulled it off beautifully. Sorry I had to snarl at you so much; the snake has to think I'm on its side. I don't know how much O'Neill told you?"

His look, his inflection, makes it a question. "We didn't have time for much," Griffith says, as an answer. "He's working under the assumption that he's being watched most of the time, and I know he took steps to block the surveillance, but he didn't want to push it too long. I got bits from him, bits from Aunt Sam. She says to tell you the system's crackable now, by the way. And General O'Neill says to tell you that he couldn't get you all the time you wanted, but he could get you three weeks, starting now."

Great. He hates deadlines. "Okay," he says. "We've got a lot of ground to cover and only a two-hour flight to go over it in. The minute we're off this plane, assume we're being watched until I tell you otherwise. Keep playing it like you're playing it. Now, here's the deal."

He does most of the talking. Instructions. Background. The bits and pieces he's managed to piece together. Griffith listens, nodding, the whole way; he can see the mind ticking away behind those blue eyes, memorizing and categorizing and accepting instruction. Takes him halfway through his monologue before he realizes that Griffith's calling him 'sir'. Not the first time, either. Griffith's good at spotting authority, no matter what disguise it's wearing.

They're more than halfway through the flight when he makes himself take a deep breath and get to the real reason he wants Griffith here.

"Here's the deal," he says. "I could have handled the cleanup on this by myself. I brought you in because I needed backup, but not the kind of backup I told O'Neill. And I owe you an apology, because this is me putting you in danger just because I fucked up."

A muscle flickers in Griffith's jaw, but that's the only reaction. "It doesn't matter why you need me," he says. "I came."

He tries on another smile. It's starting to feel a little more natural on his lips by now. "Yeah. I know you did. And believe me, I'm gonna owe you one from now until the end of time, and I am going to move heaven and earth to make sure that my choices don't come raining down on your head. But I called you here because I need an unbiased second opinion, and you know just enough to be able to think intelligently about this and not so much that you've got the same personal shit that I -- that everyone else has."

He curses himself for his slip. Can't be helped. Griffith wouldn't have missed it, but the kid doesn't say anything. Just nods. "Okay," Griffith says. "Go ahead. Hit me with it."

So he tells Griffith about Delta, and about the plan he's considering.

*

From the minute they're on the ground again, they're back on stage. Even if they're not actually being watched. He doesn't know if they are being watched, actually. Could be the snake trusts him enough to be the person being the watching. Could be the snake has them under surveillance to make sure that he's not doing exactly what he's doing. Doesn't matter either way. Griffith's been briefed now, or as briefed as he could deliver in the length of time they had in the air and away (he hopes) from prying ears; Griffith knows how to play it.

He booked them rooms at the Ritz-Carlton overnight. It only takes them a few hours to get Griffith's stuff from the friend's apartment. (Looks like Griffith's been living there for a few weeks. He wonders how fast Griffith got down here and got this set up.) They part at the desk. "Call me if you're going out," he says, and Griffith nods.

When he gets back up into his room and sshes in to check his email, the snake's sent him a login to some internal security system he's never seen before. When he logs in to check it, turns out it's the internal surveillance system. Slick piece of work. Griffith's ID has already been placed on his watch list for him. He clicks through the collection of what information is collected. Turns out he was right; any phone calls made on the company cell phone are automatically recorded (which any idiot could assume), but the earpiece can be turned on remotely and monitored even when the phone isn't active. He doesn't check for his own ID to see whether the snake's still watching over his shoulder; he has to assume the snake is, and more than that, has to assume the system is designed so that any surveillance on an individual is not displayed to that individual. That's how he would design it, at least.

He taps out a quick order for the system to SMS him an alert if Griffith's GPS coordinates change, logs off, brushes his teeth, and goes to bed. Sleeps like a fucking baby, too. About fucking time.

Their flight leaves at 0830. At 0630, a knock sounds on his door. He opens it to find Griffith standing there, fully dressed, holding one of the bags they'd packed yesterday. "Hey," Griffith says. "Got any room in your stuff for some of mine? I don't want to have to make the company pay for me to check an extra bag if you can cram it in with your shit."

"Yeah," he says, taking the bag from Griffith and dropping it on his bed. Griffith hangs back and lets him shuffle things around. Shaving kit on top of the pile of clothes and electronics. He shoves it all the way down into the bottom of his backpack. Griffith jams his hands into his pockets and doesn't let on, even by looking, that he's going to be getting everything back when they get back to Seattle but that kit.

Gotta hope the TSA doesn't decide to take a look. He's pretty sure the symbiote poison has been packed into a container that looks innocent enough to pass screening, and if they accidentally discharge it, it won't hurt anybody who doesn't have a snake in their head, but if they lose this it's going to be a bitch to get a replacement.

Saturday. They're back in Seattle by noon, and he's got Griffith moved into an entry-level condo at the corporate Hotel California by dinnertime. He leaves Griffith with a list of all the places in the area that deliver, tells him to come over for dinner tomorrow night. Walks off and leaves the kid to his own devices. Makes him nervous to do it. Kid's not used to living a lie 24/7, and one little slip, one little fuckup, and this is all toast.

Still. He has to trust that the kid's not going to fuck up.

He leaves Griffith's apartment and runs the stairs up to the penthouse (forgot his run this morning; shit, shit, that's breaking pattern, and sure, he could explain it away as the exigencies of travel, but it's better to keep from making the slips than to find a way to explain them). Knocks. Shoves his hands into his pocket and waits for the answer. When it doesn't come, he knocks again.

A minute later, the snake yanks open the door, looking irritated. It's wearing a pair of olive-green cargo pants and a light green t-shirt that says "Think Globally (Act Within Local Variable Scope)". He can't tell which one it is.

"Sorry to interrupt," he says, putting a little more slouch into his spine than he usually bothers with, just to add that super special touch of insouciance. "Thought you'd like an update."

The irritation transforms, just a little, into curiosity. It holds the door open for him. "Yes, of course," it says. "Come in."

There are three others of them sitting in the living room. (Came home and found a lion in my living room -- really, his brain can shut up any fucking day now.) Freaks him out. Not like he hasn't seen more than one of them at a time, but it still messes with his head. He doesn't know where to look. Mayfield's sitting in the living room, too, her long and luscious legs crossed at the knee. (He's tentatively pegged Mayfield as a snake, but he hasn't decided if it's another clone of Ba'al or if she's her own woman. Either way, no Tithonus she.)

"Didn't know you were having a party," he says. "I could have brought the beer."

Mayfield snorts, an indelicate and amused sound. "I was just leaving," she -- it -- says. Uncrosses its legs, rises. "I'll come back later."

The Ba'al who answered the door waves a hand at her. "Sit," it says. "Jack won't be staying long." It looks at Mayfield, hard and unyielding, and Mayfield's chin tips up, eyes narrowing. It sits back down. Cool and self-possessed and oh, there is something going on here that he can't identify and wishes he could, because if there's trouble in paradise he can probably use it somehow.

"Oh, all of you just cut it out," says another one of the Ba'als, one of the ones sitting on the couch. Just as touchy, just as irritated, but this one has a hint of familiarity in the set of its face, the wave of its hand; he tentatively pegs it as the Monster-for-his-Bridegroom. Has it confirmed when it adds, "Go on, JD. Pay no attention to the dragon in the corner."

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice, but now's not the time. He rocks on his heels, puts thoughts of intrigue out of his head. (Worst case scenario, he can ask the snake later, and isn't that a charming thought.) "Got Griffith settled. Nothing suspicious while we were out. I've got him down on the third floor. Came up to say we were back, and thank you for giving me access to the snooping software. It'll make keeping an eye on him a hell of a lot easier."

"That was the point," says the other Ba'al on the couch: scornful, dismissive. "If you need anything else from Security, call down and ask for Richard. He's been given instructions to help you."

He rocks on his heels again. That's a good sign. He's pretty sure Richard Schroeder is Ba'al's chief Jaffa on Earth; not quite First Prime, but close enough. "Yeah, thanks," he says. "Having the kid over for dinner tomorrow night. One of you should probably come down and join us. If he's going to be helping me, he's going to have to get used to having the boss around."

He's greeted by a bridge of sighs and one lone acquiescence. Fortunately it's the one he needs to lure. "Yes, yes," his own personal elephant in the room says. "Fair enough. Feed me something worth my time."

He sketches a salute, loose and sloppy, two fingers flicking towards his forehead. (Present arms; the bolt, and the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance, which in our case we have not got; arma virumque cano and the Wrath of Peleus' Son, the direful Spring of all the Grecian Woes, o Goddess, sing and he really needs to get around to vacuuming out his brain one of these fucking days before he goes fucking crazy, down in the ground where the dead men go.) Mayfield's watching him. So are two out of four of the snakes.

"Downstairs if you need me," he says. "You kids have fun now."

His shoulderblades itch as he turns around and lets himself out.

*

The next night, the snake shows up before Griffith does, strident in its best disguises, jeans and a t-shirt from a band he's only vaguely heard of and is pretty sure broke up in the 90s. For a minute, he's afraid it's Echo -- Echo is the one with the seemingly-endless wardrobe of t-shirts -- but the suspicion fades when it wanders in, throws itself on the couch, and puts its feet on the fucking table.

"Swear to fucking God I'm going to cut your fucking feet off one of these days," he says.

It smirks at him. "You're welcome to try," it says, merry and polite, but it takes its feet down. It gestures at his ear; takes him a second (it really is amazing how fucking fast he forgets the fucking thing), but he takes the earpiece out and tosses it on the counter.

"Yesterday seemed tense," he says. "No joy in Snakeville?"

The snake shrugs. "One goal for each, not twain among the dead unreconciled," it says, and he has to fucking gape, because did the fucker just fucking quote Swinburne at him? But it keeps going: "We're bickering again. It happens. Athena is an annoyance at best and an active distraction at worst, but the others find her useful. How goes your decision?"

He files the Goa'uld name away -- must mean Mayfield, which means there's more than one snake-qua-snake around, instead of just clones of Ba'al; he recognizes the mythological figure, of course, and the thought of Ba'al and Athena in the same sentence just makes his head hurt. Daniel keeps talking about doing a comprehensive mythological census of the Goa'uld and Earth's legends to see if he can find any rhyme or reason for the connections and never had the time. (Then again, Daniel's also threatened to go back to the Hebrew Bible and pull out all evidence of Goa'uld presence and technology, and only stopped when several people pointed out to him what a spectacularly bad idea that would be.)

"Still thinking," he says. "Don't rush it."

The snake sighs. "We don't have forever, you know. I've given you time. This is the sort of thing that's best not left too long. You've earned your reputation for being useful, but your usefulness may not last forever when circumstances change."

He stares at the snake, suspicion dawning. "You got someone into Homeworld, didn't you."

The snake smirks a little, the corners of its lips tipping up. "I'll trade you mine if you trade me yours. Your Captain Griffith's not on dismissal after all, is he? And yet he's never come near the SGC; we've checked. What strings did you pull there, and how did you manage to pull them? Or was it pre-arranged?"

He'd been expecting the snake to figure out something, which is why he doesn't flip the fuck out. But it's still a challenge to keep his voice even, his hands from shaking. He heads into the kitchen as a cover, opens the fridge, pulls out two beers. "I've mastered practical telepathy," he says, his voice bone-dry. "Awfully useful for sending messages."

The snake actually laughs. "No, I hadn't thought you would share your secrets."

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," he says. He pops the caps off the beer bottles against the counter, brings one over to the snake. It takes it from him, delicately, evenly; their fingers don't even touch.

"To answer your question," the snake says, after it drains a good quarter of the bottle in a single sip, "no, we don't. Not yet. But my cohorts are working to suborn a particular individual in General O'Neill's office. I shall hold the information about whom until after we reach an agreement. Call it my bargaining chip."

Could be the snake's lying through its teeth. Could be the snake's telling the truth, and O'Neill's already figured out who's getting the court direct. Could be the snake's telling the truth, and O'Neill has no fucking clue. No way to tell. "You're asking a lot of me, you know," he says.

Up goes one eyebrow. "And you are asking considerably much of me in return. We've been over this. Have you brought your Captain Griffith in with you to provide you guidance? Or simply as a lifeline? It would be tragic if anything happened to him --"

The bottle leaves his hand before he's even conscious of throwing it; it trails beer as it flies, a perfect parabolic arc across the space between them, heading straight for the snake's head. Snake catches it, of course. The last half-inch of liquid in the bottle sloshes as the snake holds it up.

"You don't threaten him," he says, fighting to keep his voice taut, his spine straight. "You threaten me as much as you like, but you don't threaten him."

The snake smiles, soft and satisfied, and raises the near-empty bottle in salute before finishing off the last of the beer that remains inside it. "Duly noted," it says, and he stands there thinking that he's just handed the snake a fucking engraved invitation, invited it down like the wolf on the fold and pointed it to his soft and tender underbelly. Fuck.

He's starting to crack. He can feel himself starting to crack. Five months under and he let himself start thinking about the endgame and this is the way the fucking world ends; not with a bang, but a beer bottle.

He's saved from having to think of anything to respond with by the knock on the door, and it's even odds that it's Griffith or the food delivery, and he doesn't know which he hopes for. He doesn't let himself hesitate before stalking over and opening it. Griffith it is. To the kid's credit, he seems to pick up on the tension. Or maybe he just picks up on the fact that there's a lake of fucking beer seeping into the cracks in the hardwood floor.

"This isn't a bad time, is it?" Griffith asks, his eyes darting back and forth. "I can come back."

"No," he says, and takes a step back. "Come on in. I was just going to get a towel to clean up that spill."

The snake stands up. "I'll do it," it says. "My own fault. For being so clumsy."

It's not talking about its reflexes.

*

Snake says his apartment still isn't under surveillance, even if Griffith's still on the Wheeling list. Stupid to accept it as truth, even if it is possible. Can't be helped; he has to get Griffith's opinion somehow.

So he waits until they've finished dinner (sushi; Imo's doesn't deliver, but the concierge was all-too-eager to run out and fetch; he's not sure if it's because dinner was for the boss or if it's because the concierge likes him for being generally undemanding) and the snake's excused itself for the night. Or at least for the moment. It promises it'll be back later, and he can see Griffith's eyes rounding a little at the implications -- the snake went out of its way to sound salacious -- and he winces. Yeah, that's going to go over well.

The only way he has to communicate with Griffith right under the snake's surveillance -- if they are under the snake's surveillance -- is going to go over even better. He wanders over to the couch, takes the beer (untouched; he hadn't even needed to tell Griffith to avoid alcohol for the duration) out of Griffith's hand, sets it on the coffee table. Griffith is just looking up at him with eyebrows drawn together when he straddles Griffith's lap and leans in close like he's nuzzling Griffith's ear.

He gets one shocked instant of Griffith thinking what the fucking fuck as clear as day before he can hiss "play along" in Griffith's ear, his lips against the shell of Griffith's earlobe, soft enough that even Griffith can barely hear. There's an instant more of shock and pause, and then Griffith's hands come up to his back, awkward, clutching. "That's the one," he says.

Tiny inaudible snort from Griffith, running through his shoulders; Griffith turns his head, buries his nose in the hair that's tickling it. He suppresses the shiver. Not his fault. Griffith's skin smells familiar, all too familiar, and smell is the sense that cuts deepest, the most unkindest cut of all. "Figured," Griffith breathes. "You're fucking crazy."

Yeah, thanks, that's fucking useful. He ignores the feel of Griffith's hands on his back. It's cover. Nothing more. "Crazy enough to frag the op?"

"Fuck, I don't even know," Griffith says, soft and uncertain. "Don't put this on me."

He makes himself breathe, steady, even. (Bad plan. Griffith's skin smells right, but he's pulling away even as he's leaning in, subtle small shifts of muscle and tendon, and with his eyes closed -- and when had he closed his fucking eyes, anyway? -- it feels like rejection and renunciation and he knows, knows, that his subconscious is going to be throwing that one at him for days. Weeks. For-fucking-ever.) He won't be upset. Won't let himself be upset. This is a shitload of a lot to drop in Griffith's lap and Griffith doesn't have the experience to be able to face this shit unflinching. This is all coming fast-and-furious and it's not exactly fair to expect Griffith to be able to make a call after two hours of interaction with the snake when he hasn't been able to make the call in coming up on the second fucking month.

Doesn't stop him from fisting his fingers against the fabric of the couch, resting his head over Griffith's shoulder for half a second before he takes another deep breath (stupid, stupid, Griffith smells too goddamn familiar, the faintest and softest of reminders, soap and sweat and he will not think about what Griffith's skin reminds him of) and puts his lips back where they were. "Couple of days," he says. "Nothing more. We have to move fast."

Griffith's fingers tense against his back, and for a second, he thinks Griffith might be half a second away from shoving him away, leaving him sprawling out on the floor. "Shit, I know," Griffith hisses in his ear. "Gimme -- Couple of days. A week, tops. I don't know enough yet."

He knows Griffith knows what's at stake. He's described both plans, in exhaustive detail, thirty-five thousand feet up and nobody listening in. Option one: say yes to the snake, let it line up all the ducks in a row, knock them down boom and get the hell out of Dodge. Option two: stall the snake for as long as they can, try to figure out where all the other snakes are, come up with some plan to get them all in the same place, roll up the score and anchors aweigh and pray like fuck they didn't miss any. Only two options. It's how he knows he's past the point where returning were as tedious as go o'er, because all of the branching possibilities are falling away, one option after another shot down like cans at the county fair.

Yes or no, go or no-go: binary choices, everything tailspinning down to a single coinflip, and he has to move fast, because the snake knows too fucking much and the longer he delays an answer, the closer it comes to looking like a choice. If he says yes, the snake will believe him, because he won't say yes if it's a lie, fucking snake knows that much, and so if the answer's no he won't, wouldn't say no, just draw it out for as long as possible, as long as he thinks he can. The longer he delays, the more likely the snake will believe his answer's no, even if he hasn't made the choice at all.

He'd feel better about that prospect if he'd had any success at all in figuring out just how many Ba'al-clones there are out there. (He'd been hoping Griffith would come bearing intel, hoping that O'Neill had worked his magic, hoping the SGC hadn't been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses while he's been stuck out here on the other side of the wall -- but no, that's not fair; Griffith says they've been after intel in the Galaxy At Large while he's been after intel here, and it's not their fault Ba'al is apparently capable of outwitting the best minds on this planet. Which, you know, so not helping him with his decision.)

So he's sympathetic to Griffith's little attack of nerves. (Grateful beyond the telling that Griffith's first response to hearing the problem set before him wasn't to kick it up the chain of command, the way so many people's responses would be, because this is the kind of thing that can't be solved in offices halfway across the country by men who don't know or don't remember what it's like getting their hands dirty. No matter what shit might rain down after.) But they don't have a lot of time to indulge it.

"Tops," he says, scant faint confirmation whispered in Griffith's ear. "Think fast, for God's sake. Now push me away."

Griffith sounds blank; the hands on his back still. "What?"

He puts his hands on Griffith's shoulders (warm, strong, and God, he can't, he can't fucking do this for much longer, but he has to and there's no way around it) and squeezes. "Push me away," he orders, putting command in his tone even though his voice is barely audible. "Make a scene. In case we're still on Candid Camera."

Another half-second of processing time (and yeah, he's sympathetic, but for fuck's sake, the kid has to start bringing his A-game any fucking time now), and then Griffith shoves.

He goes sprawling backward, off Griffith's lap, onto the floor. Doesn't crack his head on the coffeetable, but only because he was expecting it. "What the fuck?" he demands, his voice at normal volume again.

Griffith's eyes flick a quick apology, there-and-gone so fast that if he weren't looking for it, he wouldn't have seen it. "I'm not you," Griffith says. "I don't believe in fucking the boss."

It's a nice rebound. A damn nice rebound. Hurts like fucking hell, of course. His own fucking fault for telling the kid to make a scene.

*

Monday dawns bright and early. Out the door at 0530 today; up to First, up Denny, and he zigzags back-and-forth along the streets down the length of the freeway all the way on back. Today his brain is singing nursery rhymes at him as he runs, hitch-skip-thump just rhythmic enough to lull his mind into thought and just annoying enough to keep him from getting any useful thought accomplished. It's the meditative equivalent of the Song That Never Ends, and about as welcome, because every time he thinks he's getting somewhere there's another verse of something kicking him out of gear. All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel; the monkey thought it was all in fun; pop goes the weasel.

He doesn't like koans any more than he did when it was Oma-fucking-Desala spewing them, even though some of that might be negative association -- if you immediately know the candlelight is fire, your life is already burning down around your ears -- but running is for reasoning and meditation all at once, putting everything out from alpha to omega and working it all through. What bubbles up from the depths of his consciousness today aren't logical propositions, though, but nothing more than scraps and fragments, bits and pieces. Self-referential identities. Things he remembers, things he's always thought he'd forgotten.

Bobby Shafto's gone to sea, silver buckles on his knee; he'll come back and marry me, bonny Bobby Shafto. And Jack O'Neill never went to sea, but space is the new ocean, the final frontier (O grant thy mercy and thy grace--) and yeah, Jack came back (the very next day, thought he was a goner) but it changed him. Them. O brave new world that hath such people in it (let's start at once; there's a hell of a world next door) and he, they, changed utterly, and their terrible beauty and magnificent desolation have led them here-and-now and it's time to hearken unto the statutes and unto the judgments and save the fucking world again.

There have been times in his life where he's made the call, shuffled the cards, iacta alea esto and let the chips fall where they may, and some of those decisions have been trivial and some of them have been played for the highest stakes there are. (What's more important than your life and the fate of all you love? The fate of the world, the galaxy, and in the end he's always known that dulce et decorum est pro caelo mori, and if you're willing to die for something, you should be willing to live for it, too, pay the fiddler and call the tune, even if you're the one left without a chair when the music stops.) And his life as himself has been blessedly few of such disasters, but he's always known the day of reckoning was still on the table, because he's always been willing to use whatever weapon was at hand and that was true even when he was O'Neill.

He's been waiting for the day when O'Neill would call him back to the Great Game, knowing that someday his prince would come and his glass coffin would claim him, and so what if he put himself back in this time? Sooner or later all his roads would have led to downtown fucking Seattle, to the serpent and the apple and the pressure to fall off the tightrope he's walking, to let the walls crumble and the sun shine in. Inevitable, really. He's been falling since the day he was born-not-born, and the trick from here is to fall in a way that can win the game when he hasn't even figured out the rules.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. He's been them all and he'll be again, and the question now is what he needs to be, how he needs to play this, what he can do to see it through. So he asks himself the golden questions, in the silence of his own mind, in the hallowed hollows of the spaces he's claimed as self: What do you have? What do you need? What are your obligations? What is the optimal outcome?

Can you see any other way?

Back to the lobby of the apartment building, not over to the office, and the Jury Convenes, Meeting Secretly Under Pretense. Griffith's standing in the lobby, talking with the concierge, deploying that charm like a tactical nuke (words are a weapon and always have been; every tool is a weapon if you hold it right). He saunters up, claims Griffith's attention. Good morning, campers; it's time for a healthy breakfast. Or something like that. Take Griffith for coffee (two bills this time, second number odd; O'Neill will know what he means, all present and accounted for) and will you go, lassie, go; we'll all go together, off to fill out the last of the HR paperwork and pick up Griffith's badge and go for the Cook's tour of the heights and nadirs of Snakeville. (We'll all go together when we go.)

Griffith's bright and bountiful this morning, up and down, back and forth, learning names and coaxing smiles and winning hearts wherever they go. He saves the Happy Hacker Haven for the last stop on the tour. "My old team," he says, presenting Griffith like a trophy all tied up in ribbons and bows. "If you need information, they're the ones to ask."

Suzukimo went into charm mode right back at Griffith the minute she saw him, and the only reason it's not a simper is because Suzukimo wouldn't know how to simper if you held her at gunpoint. "We'd be happy to help, really," she says, all sighs and smiles. "You can call me anytime."

He lets Griffith and Suzukimo make moon-eyes at each other while he sidles over to Virta's desk. (Virta's back to being team lead and intellectual director, gathering up the reins of all-and-sundry when he stepped away into mergers and acquisitions, and yeah, for all Virta's a fucking snake, he still misses working with the rest of these guys; moving him was actually one of the stupidest things the snake could have done, because it freed him up to look at the big picture instead of getting distracted by the problems to solve.) "Hey," he says, under cover of Griffith and Suzukimo rediscovering the birds and the bees. "How goes the B&E?"

Virta scowls. "Stalled," it says. "Don't suppose your minion has any insight."

"Haven't asked," he says. "Don't want him to think we aren't pure as the driven, even if he might be useful. I'll try to pick his brain casually. You need another pair of eyeballs on anything?"

"Maybe," Virta says. "Thought we were getting somewhere last week, but it dead-ended. About to settle in and try again this week. I'll call if I need anything."

This is the part that's giving him fits, because there's a flaw waiting to be discovered, now -- if Carter did her job, and he's confident that Carter did her job -- and he's pretty sure it's subtle enough that he's not going to be hanging the SGC out to dry before he's ready for the blowoff, but pretty sure isn't positive and if anyone can pick up on it, Virta can. If the snake manages to crack the eggshell before he's ready to direct the way it breaks, this could get messy.

Still, when you're down to black and white, yes or no, heads or tails, sometimes you have to cling at jackstraws, and once you're down to the tangle remaining you have to pick up your sticks with care, such care. Spend all your spare time lining up dominos, over and over again, so when you need to flick a finger and push them all down it looks effortless, and if something goes wrong, you've got your plan B (and C, and D, all the way down to F which is for failure which is not a fucking option) already in place, and thinking on your feet isn't a luxury in this job, it's a requirement. He's doing his best to set up his attack-lines, string them out and hang them up, and if they don't look like an attack to anyone but him, well, he's the one calling the shots here.

(He's not thinking about what O'Neill's going to do with him when all is said and done. Once O'Neill figures out what his plan was. But that's for later, and he's never believed in anticipating Judgement Day before the last trumpet calls, and anyway, O'Neill did what he called for and that counts for something.)

So he tells Virta, "You know where I live when you need me," (and Virta smirks, and he ignores the frog-slime-squirm in his stomach) and then he raises his voice again. "C'mon, Griffith, flirt with the girl on your own time." And Griffith looks up, and Suzukimo dimples at them both -- no awkward miss, she -- and he takes Griffith over to his office and settles him down in the tiny cubbyhole outside, intended for a secretary. Drops a pile of paper on Griffith's desk and tells him to start combing through it for any opportunities that leap out. It's busywork; it's all right. It's not like either of them mind not accomplishing anything to further the snake's plans, and buried in the depth of all the busywork is as much hard evidence about the snake's plans and who in the company is aware of those plans as he can afford to give, because if something goes wrong and he can't get himself out of this, it's good to have another person who's capable of testifying if needs must.

He spends his day on the phone with Yao-the-CFO, who's just down the hall but both of them fucking hate running numbers in person, playing three-card monte with a shitload of corporate money. (And, side bonus, running down the stock prices of a few small ventures he's got on his acquisition list; he's hoping he won't be here long enough to put the plans into place, but if everything goes south and he has to keep playing the role for a while, it's good to know what your next move will be.) When quitting time rolls around, Griffith's got the first-order sort completed, a merry dragnet seining through a stack of information taller than Griffith's head to pull out the things that might pan out into something down the road. Griffith's taking this seriously; there's some good work in there. (Hell, when all this is over, he might spread some money around in the way he thinks the cards will fall.)

"Nice job," he says, seriously, and Griffith doesn't smile, just nods, but he can tell Griffith's glad for the praise anyway. "You mind being the research monkey for a while?"

"Do I have a choice?" Griffith asks, but he does smile then, making it a joke. (If the snake's listening, it'll hear precisely what they want it to hear: the angry young man with his working-class ties and his radical plans, starting to realize he's playing with the big boys and liking the opportunities he's seeing.) "Yeah, drop what you need me to go through on my desk. I like finding patterns in stuff."

"Sounds good," he says, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on his desk. "You about ready to get out of here? I'll buy you dinner to celebrate your first day."

Griffith blushes a little, just a faint coloration over the cheeks, and he watches, fascinated, because if Griffith can do that on command it's damn impressive but if Griffith's actually blushing it's just fucking funny. "Actually, I've got plans," Griffith says. "Hiroko and I are going out for dinner and drinks."

It takes him a second to realize who the fuck Griffith's talking about; he's not sure he ever knew Suzukimo's first name. He can't say don't fuck around with the bad guys while you're on the fucking clock, you idiot, so instead he says, "Gotta be careful with an office romance."

"Yes, Dad," Griffith says, dry as paper, and it makes him snort to hear. (Griffith knows scraps of the true story of what was, bits and pieces, here and there; knows the what but not the who, knows he's older than he seems but doesn't know how much older, didn't realize when he met the man that provided all the DNA and most of the memories that make the measure of the man who's here-and-now. At least, Griffith's never shown any signs of knowing. Griffith's met O'Neill, and Griffith's smart but more than that, smart and intuitive, and he doesn't want to think about how much it's going to suck if Griffith adds up two and two.) "I promise to have the keys to the car back by midnight."

He waves a hand. Message received; Griffith's saying just heading out to get the lay of the land as clear as day, spreading some of that Southern charm around to anybody who's willing to buy the pig in a poke Griffith's selling, and yeah, okay, that's part of what he brought Griffith here for, fair enough. "Have fun, then," he says. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Griffith smirks. "As far as I can tell, that doesn't rule out much."

He doesn't let it irritate him, doesn't ask himself if it's all part of the role Griffith's playing or if Griffith really does think that little of him. He doesn't care what Griffith thinks of him personally. All he cares about is whether or not Griffith's here to do the job.

*

That night he goes back to his apartment, sets up his laptop so he can watch Griffith's Lojack broadcast. Doesn't listen in on the kid's date; give him some illusion of privacy, especially since the boys downstairs in the surveillance room no doubt have their ears on.

The snakes -- each and every one of them -- leave him alone. All night. It should make him feel like he's gotten a night off from having to play-the-man-Master-Ridley, but it only winds up leaving him waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually, he stops waiting for the snake to come calling and packs it in for the night. When he checks the laptop before he heads in to stare unblinking at the ceiling, waiting for what dreams may come, Griffith's GPS coords have him over on Mercer Island. Residential neighborhood. Hey. Good for the fucking kid. At least one of them's got something warm and human to cuddle up to.

*

Downtown Seattle.

He's partway into his morning run when it all comes crashing in on him. Fuck. Not now. Not now. Five months isn't long enough for him to be ready to snap like this, but apparently he Just Can't Manage Snakes' Unceasing Pressure, because without any particular warning he's slamming face-first into the wall of what the fucking fuck do I think I'm doing here.

Fuck.

Hazard of the fucking job, and used to be he'd have a control officer, someone he could make his way to and just be himself for a little bit, unwind all the layers of who he's pretending to be and all the stresses of having something this fucking huge riding on his shoulders. Doesn't have one here. Still can't let the pretense crack; he has to assume he's still being watched (the eye in the sky, the maker of rules) and can't call for help. (Is there anybody in there, just nod if you can hear me, is there anybody home?) He'd been hoping Griffith would be an outlet. Someone who knew the score. Someone who could remind him who he fucking is. It's not helping. The reflection of himself in Griffith's eyes is small and squalid, and all he fucking wants to do is go the fuck home.

Can't be helped. Get a fucking grip. There's a time and there's a place and this is neither time nor place and he can fucking have his fucking nervous breakdown once this is all over. Which is not yet, and if he doesn't get a fucking grip it never will be.

(He knows what this is. A unit that's kept at peak readiness without ever seeing combat will disintegrate under the strain of always-jam-tomorrow, never-jam-today, and if you add in lack of sleep, poor nutrition -- he still keeps fucking forgetting to eat unless someone reminds him -- and the psychological stresses of staying undercover 24/7 without a break, his mind his only refuge, a breakdown is unavoidable. Knowing what causes it doesn't make it any easier to deal with. It never has.)

There's a certain sick inevitability to all of this. Once upon a time, which is always twice as long ago as you think it should be, Jack O'Neill's personal life had been a wreck upon the shores, every choice and every chance leading to disaster, but he'd always been able to get the fucking job done. He'd wondered (a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away) if personal life and professional life were a zero sum game, competence in one leading to failure in the other. The SGC had started to prove his point for him. Him, Daniel, Carter, Teal'c; it wasn't that men and women with families, with lives, failed at the SGC so much as those with other ties were never half as willing as they needed to be to throw it all to the wind on a single roll of the dice. And he spent seven years under that Elf Hill, sacrificing himself upon the shoals of necessity every fucking time he needed to, and at the end he'd come back a stranger (to himself, to others) and he'd had to, gotten to, start over.

He'd thought it would be easy to dive back under those waters and recollect that life. Or no -- not easy. But possible. He hadn't counted on the fact that he's one of those people with ties and tethers now, and in making himself someone who could bear up under that weight, he's made himself someone who can crack under this one.

And seventy-five percent of the reason he hollered for Griffith was to have someone who knew who he was, someone who could stand there and reassure him there's someone on the other end of that line, and it was a stupid fucking move, because now he's not just about to let himself go under for the third time, he's about to drag Griffith with him. When he'd stepped over the Great Divide, he'd made a bunch of fucking promises to himself, and one of them was that he'd never again accept the burden and privilege of command, never again be the one to condemn eager-eyed young men and women to burn out and flame away on his word and his directive. There are things he's done and things he's done with, and the list of things he's done with includes being the last man standing while other people pay for his sins and his remembrance. He's not going to let Griffith be the next name on his own personal black granite wall.

Which means it's suck it up and soldier, soldier, stick my legs in plaster tell me lies about Vietnam, get your ass in gear and get a motherfucking grip, because he will not let himself be someone else's ruin. Maybe that's the service Griffith can offer him. Maybe he let himself holler for backup not because he needed the pair of hands, but because he needed someone to value other than himself, because if he'd hit this particular tightrope-walk solo he might have let himself slide down and out with no one on belay and it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.

Get up. Get out.

Keep going.

Griffith's already sitting at the desk when he drags himself up the stairs, and he schools his face to impassivity as he passes by, because yeah, he's taken the time to pull himself up by the seat of his fucking pants but that doesn't mean he wants to have a fucking conversation. Still, Griffith didn't seem to get the memo. "Morning," the kid chirps, bright-and-fucking-cheery, and oh, God, he's starting to understand why Daniel always used to snarl at him before coffee.

(Coffee. Fuck. Forgot the fucking coffee, forgot the fucking message, what the fuck else is he forgetting to do? Missing one day of checkin isn't going to sink him, because the divers alarums don't get sounded until three days of radio silence without warning, but that's just fucking sloppy and fuck, he's cracking, he really is.)

"Morning," he snarls, and Griffith recoils at the tension in his voice, and fucking great, because the kid was already looking at him like he's motherfucking crazy and the last thing he needs right now is to make it even worse. He tries to modulate his tone, knows he only makes it half the way to 'sane'. "Sorry. Didn't get much sleep. Forgot to get my coffee, too."

Griffith frowns. "Go, sit down. I'll get you a cup. How do you take it?"

He can feel his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Pretty sure Griffith can see it, too. His first impulse is to snarl that he doesn't need tending, but that's reaction, not action, and it wouldn't be fucking fair. He's dragged Griffith into this thanks to his own fucking weaknesses, and he's not going to pile vilification on top of necessity, because he hasn't fallen that far. (Yet.)

So he makes himself smile, and he knows Griffith will see it for the lie that it is, but it can't be fucking helped. "You don't have to do that. I'll get it. Got time before I have to be on the phone with New York. Thanks, though."

Griffith gives him one of Those Looks, the one that goes straight through all his lies and his disguises and penetrates down to the bedrock they lie upon. (And oh my stars and garters it's like they learn that look in the womb, because the number of times Mitchell's given him a look identical to that one is legion and yeah, okay, we're crucifying ourselves this morning, drive another nail in while we're fucking at it; he still can't afford to think about Mitchell, his keystone and his linchpin and now is not the fucking time.) The look is equal parts refutation and realization, and Griffith's young and Griffith's untested and just like the skill to do comes from doing (and a round of applause to the Roman poet for that little bon mot), the skill to read comes from reading, and Griffith hasn't built as large a range of interpretation, the translating dictionary of gesture and expression.

But he's still pretty sure Griffith, for all his inexperience, knows people well enough to see that something's wrong even if the kid doesn't know him well enough to tell what that something is. And Griffith's frowning, tiny and unsatisfied, like reaching the end of the sentence and trailing off with a comma, waiting for the other clause to come.

Oh, God, he misses Mitchell and his wordless understanding so fucking much and he can't even let himself think the man's name, can't close his eyes and summon that impression, the sense-memory, the tactile ghost of Mitchell's touch --

"No," Griffith says, firm and unyielding, and it takes him a second for his ears to process the negation. "I said go and sit." He stands, pressing his hands against the desk, rising from the chair like Venus rising in a Botticelli sculpture and twice as fucking granite-hard. "You spoke up to take care of me, I can damn well take care of you."

Behind the cover story, behind the dress-up and make-believe and kabuki masks they've carved for themselves, it's a message. I've got your back. It should reassure him, and there's a part of him that is reassured by it, but there's a bigger part of him that learned long ago to hear I've got your back with the invisible antiphon at the end, I've got your back and you'd fucking better have mine, and right now what he needs is a fucking week on the fucking beach somewhere, or to climb inside his fucking head and rearrange the fucking scaffolding until it's going to hold, and he doesn't fucking have the fucking luxury of either.

He passes a hand over his face, scrubs at his eyes. "Yeah, okay," he says, because he might not want Griffith waiting on him hand and foot (too creepy) but right now the thought of possibly meeting another human being in the breakroom when he's just getting a cup of fucking coffee is a task akin to crossing the Rubicon and there's nothing to be done but turn around and close himself in his office and stare at his hands until they stop shaking.

The worst part is how there's nothing he can point to and say this, this is the one piece too much to carry, this is the straw that made the Black Camel kneel at Dhul-Hulaifah against the blessed stony ground. Nothing for him to rage against but rage itself, and he's been doing that for so long that he is tired, he is weary, he could sleep for a thousand years.

It's not raining outside today. If he could care he'd probably find the sunlight beautiful.

Griffith's back with the coffee lickety-split, and the kid turns off the smiles and the sunshine straight across the threshold. And when he lifts his head to watch the processional, he sees a message, loud and clear. One split second, there and gone. Griffith's striding across the room, bearing the coffee cups like a priest bears the reliquary, all slouch and sidle the way the kid's been presenting, representing, since he got here. Then, suddenly, Griffith's chin comes up and his shoulders go back and it's reporting for duty, sir, here I am, whatever you need. Blink and you miss it.

He doesn't blink.

He called Griffith here, his duty, his responsibility, and it doesn't matter why and it doesn't matter how. This whole fucking mess has been about doing the things he never wanted to do again, picking up the burdens he left long behind him, and the one burden he's always shouldered as years go by has been the burden of the men and women looking to him for a cue, for an order. And Captain Spencer Griffith is the latest in a long line of names and faces that starts out in nineteen-fucking-seventy-nine with David Martinez and Billy Cox and stretches out unbroken through to Samantha Carter, his last and greatest, always stronger than she thought she was. All the sons and the daughters of the patriot game he's shaped and he's molded, and he can't have a fucking nervous breakdown yet, he's got an officer to command.

It's a bitch to have a fucking conversation, here in the glass-bowl fish-lens that is this life, but Griffith is here and Griffith is counting on him and he will not let this fact amount to nothing. So he sits himself up (to take the cup Griffith's offering him, nothing more meaningful, nothing up my sleeve) and locks his eyes on Griffith's gaze and he dips his chin in thanks. Not thanks for the coffee at all. Back to back against the world, we merry few, we band of brothers, and Griffith hands him the cup and turns crisply around on one heel to go back to shoring up the snake's empire until they let it come crashing down.

Back to work. Clock's ticking. Old time is still a-flying. Pick your cliché, he can recite them all.

Soon, he promises himself. Soon.

Sooner or later he may even believe it.

*

Delta comes to him that night, when the lights are down and the clock's gone midnight and he's sitting on a cushion facing the wall and trying to soothe his troubled mind. Drags him straight out of what little peace he's managed to build and casts him snarling right back into the world-that-is.

"I'm afraid I need an answer," it says.

No time to glean Griffith's thoughts. No time to weigh the snake's heart against a feather. No more time to stand poised on the razor's edge between contemplation and commitment, and he's always known (in his heart of hearts, in the places he goes when he can't avoid sleeping anymore) that no matter how many straws he grasped at, this would come down to his deal and his decision, and he closes his eyes and begs forgiveness of anything that might be listening in.

"Yes," he says.

The only thing that makes it bearable is that when he opens his eyes, the snake isn't smiling.

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