So I'd been getting some ribbing -- goodnatured enough, you put more than two guys together in a locker room and there's going to be some ball-busting involved, it's some kind of primitive ritual or something -- about the fact that my team consisted of me, two scientists and someone who was born halfway across the galaxy. Or, as the guys put it, "the geek, the skirt, and the alien". And I shut it down as fast as I could -- you don't talk about my people like that, not ever. But I knew I wasn't hearing all the gossip, and that kind of thing can rot a command from the inside faster than a cancer.

Ferretti was the worst of 'em, but he's allowed; he's earned it. And he was smart enough to keep it light and teasing, nothing I had to take official notice of, and he was still busted up about Kawalski's death, so anything that showed he was starting to go back to normal, well, I wasn't going to get in the way. But we've got a hell of a range of guys assigned here, and I haven't worked with half of them before, and some of them are so wet behind the ears they squeak. Hell, we're all so new at this anyway. I can't think of anything that could possibly prepare you for the sort of stuff we deal with out there. But my point is, I didn't know them well enough to know if they were serious or not, and with what we're up against, well, you've got to trust everyone around you to have your back if they have to. To be able to have your back if they have to.

So when the story of Carter getting kidnapped by those Mongols started going around -- and no, I don't know how it got out, because I sure as hell didn't tell anyone and I know Daniel and Teal'c wouldn't have either -- and they forgot to include the part where she kicked whatsisname's ass in hand-to-hand, well, I lost it. Base gossip made it out like Carter was some shrinking violet, and that's about as far from the truth as you can get and still be in the same country.

So I hit back. Bronson from SG-4 was the worst of 'em, mouthing off left and right to anyone who'd listen about how I might be just fine, and Teal'c was probably all right, but any one of his boys could beat Carter or Daniel with one hand tied behind their backs. And, well, Bronson's team's good enough, but Carter's got guts and Daniel's got pride, and I wasn't going to leave it at that.

That's how we wound up with a "friendly" bet. Bronson's team against mine, standard three-pistol bulls-eye, fifty-foot range. Highest cumulative score wins.

All of Bronson's team hold Master or above. Half my team hadn't touched a pistol until a month or so ago. Okay, I'm exaggerating -- Daniel's competent enough with small arms, fumbled his way through his quals with no problem but nothing particularly distinguished, and Teal'c's gotten comfortable enough with Earth weapons, even though he's probably always going to rely on his staff in a pinch. But I wasn't going to let Bronson keep spreading his shit without at least giving my kids a chance to defend themselves.

Yeah, it was stupid. Yeah, we had better things to do. Yeah, we couldn't afford the time to drill. But Carter's a damn good shot, and nobody who hasn't seen her file knows she's rated High Master; she doesn't show off until she has to. Teal'c does well in practice, enough that I was pretty sure he'd do fine in competition. Which left Daniel.

Who was not happy to hear that I wanted him on the range, two hours a day, all week. I got words like "penis substitute" and "Cro-Magnon ritual" and "chest-thumping showmanship", and when none of them worked, he asked me just which of the other hundred urgent things he was doing he was supposed to drop to make time for this. Even telling him it was for his own good didn't calm him down. Probably made him angrier, because he knew damn well that his shooting was accurate enough to qualify him for Gate travel and this had nothing to do with his safety or the safety of the team. It was solely for my ego, he said, and I could have spent an hour and a half explaining to him how things worked around here and how "never let 'em see you sweat" isn't just a tagline from a deodorant commercial, but I settled on making it an order.

Let's just say that the resulting shouting match lasted longer than the explanation would have, but when the dust cleared, there we were, down in the range: me, a couple of pistols, a whole hell of a lot of ammo, some ear protectors, and one seriously annoyed archaeologist.

If looks could kill, I probably would have keeled over a few times while we were gearing up, and it probably wasn't the smartest thing in the world to hand him a deadly weapon when he was that annoyed. But if I backed down every time Daniel glared at me, we'd never get anywhere, so I only said, "Let's start with how to stand."

"I've been standing since I was two," he said.

I closed my eyes and prayed for patience. Seems I've been doing that a lot around Daniel lately. (Seems I've been doing that a lot since I met the guy, in fact.) "Let's start with how to stand so that you have a good base to shoot from," I said, with what I hoped was calm patience and was probably more like snitty chill. Something about Daniel makes me want to strangle him, I swear. He's just lucky it's counterbalanced by whatever it is that makes me want to slap him on the back and keep him on my team forever.

He put the Beretta on the range's counter, and I couldn't stifle the automatic lunge; I'd watched him load it, and while I hadn't seen him thumb off the safety, we all know what the first rule of loaded pistols is. But he just gave me a death glare, and I stopped myself, because it was pointed downrange.

The look he was giving me could blister paint. "I think I see the problem," he said, slowly.

I was ready for another lecture on military games and closed-society bonding rituals, and I didn't particularly want to hear it. "The problem is that we have a week to get you up to speed enough to hold your own against Bronson's team," I snapped.

"No, it isn't." Daniel reached up to push his glasses up his nose and bumped against the eye protection we were both wearing. He let his hand drop in frustration. "The problem is that you haven't been paying any attention at all."

"Like to see you explain that one," I said.

He crossed his arms over his chest and studied me. The temper fit was starting to fade away, replaced by the little frown between his eyebrows that meant he was trying to figure out the best way to say something again. "No, really, Jack," he said, and it was his "studying the natives" tone of voice. "Answer me one question and then I'll explain what I'm thinking. How many people have come up to you this week and told you that you should get rid of the geek dragging your team down?"

I frowned. I hadn't thought he'd heard any of the gossip. And I didn't want him to think that I thought that way. Sure, Daniel's got his nose in a book on this side of the Gate, but offworld, he's solid enough; I'm not the first commander in the history of warfare to have a civilian specialist to deal with and I'm not going to be the last, and as long as we keep him in the rocking-chair and keep our eyes peeled, we're fine. Last thing I needed was for him to think that I doubted his ability, because that leads to freezing up, and freezing up leads to dead soldiers really damn fast. "I don't think --"

"Answer the question, Jack," he said, and man, they used to call me stubborn.

"A few," I said. He gave me the look again. "All right, a lot. But you know I don't think that --"

"No," he said. "I think you do. Not the same way they do, but you do." He squinted down the range at the target, then looked back at me. "I don't hold it against you, you know. You've been trained to think in a certain way. You didn't actually look at my Gate quals, did you?"

His calm self-assurance made me feel defensive as hell. "Of course I did. I'm your team leader."

Daniel shook his head. "No, I mean, you might have looked at the numbers, but you didn't actually look at any of the context." He smiled then, just a little; it wasn't quite amusement. "You didn't remember that they sent me and the other few civilians off to Peterson for testing that Thursday, did you."

"No," I said, the syllable long and drawn-out. "But I don't see what that has to do with --"

"The Thursday after the Tuesday we got back from Chulak," Daniel said, in his teacher-to-the-slow-kid-in-the-class voice. "The Tuesday after we got back from Chulak after being awake for approximately twenty-four hours. The Tuesday after we got back from Chulak with a boatload of refugees, none of whom spoke English, none of whom had any idea where they were going or how they'd gotten there, none of whom had any clue what was happening to them or who these strange people around them were --"

The penny dropped. "You didn't come home with me that Tuesday night," I said, slowly. "You were still in the Mountain when I got back in on Wednesday morning. With a cup of coffee. I'd assumed you slept on base --"

Daniel nodded. "Which I did. Eventually. Friday afternoon." He shrugged, just a little. "I -- didn't think I'd be able to sleep. So I stuck around and made myself useful. I took those quals after I'd been up for about seventy-two hours, Jack."

I frowned some more. "You should have asked them to postpone the tests."

Daniel threw up his hands. "And have them think it was the civilian geek asking for special treatment. Yeah, that would have gone over really well," he said. I could hear the bitterness in his voice. He shook his hair out of his eyes and jerked his chin up, staring at me. "You think I don't know that I'm here because Hammond feels sorry for me and you think I might possibly be useful?" he snapped. "You think I don't know I can get pulled off the line the minute someone, somewhere thinks I'm too personally involved, or that I'm asking for some kind of special concessions, or that I'd be safer here working on things that the rest of you bring back and never setting foot through the Gate myself? Jack, I have spent the past eleven weeks waking up every morning praying that today isn't the day you're going to decide that I'm more of a hindrance than an asset and hoping like hell you'd notice that I'm not some kind of faint Victorian maiden to be protected out there."

"You didn't say anything," I said, and now I was starting to get annoyed. "Daniel, you can't just let these things slide without telling me."

"And you can't seem to remember that there were two of us in the Gateroom of that pyramid when we killed Ra," Daniel snapped. "Which one of us shot --" His voice caught. "Which one of us shot that guard who killed Sha're? Which one of us stood up in front of the entire population of Nagada and shot at Ra with a weapon he'd never fired before?" For a second, I thought he might stamp his foot. "For God's sake, Jack, you've been treating me like I'm exactly what everyone on this base has been saying to you for the past eleven weeks. The civilian."

"You are a civilian, Daniel," I said, quietly.

"And thank fuck for small favors, but that's not my point. My point is that 'civilian' isn't a dirty word." He turned away from me, and for a second I thought that maybe the argument was over and he was going to stomp off, until he picked up the nine that was sitting on the counter. "Going hot," he said, and settled down into his stance.

I could have said something, could have slowed him down or stopped him -- he was too annoyed to really be at all effective -- but first of all, I could tell he had something to prove -- to me, to himself -- and second, I was still reeling. I hadn't realized he'd been bottling all of that up, and from what he'd said, I really should have, and that made me think about what else I might be missing. Because if I hadn't noticed this, then odds were pretty good I'd missed something else. About him. About Carter. About Teal'c. And that's the kind of shit that gets men killed.

His stance was unorthodox. Wasn't Weaver, wasn't Isosceles. Modified Weaver, really, his body turned to the right, with his right leg behind him bearing most of his weight on a slightly-bended knee, his pelvis canted back so he was half-sitting in place, his feet perpendicular to each other like some kind of fucked-up ballet pose. Looked stable enough. I watched as he bit his lip, took a breath, let it out slowly, cupped the butt of the pistol with his off hand, rolled his shoulders once, and took aim.

The shots echoed between us, and the familiar scorched-earth scent of discharge wafted clear. We used the standard silhouette targets on the range. His first shot went high and left, hitting the shadowed figure in its left shoulder outside the target range, and he dropped his right shoulder, scowled, and corrected.

The rest of the magazine cleared 9s and Xs. All right, one stray shot in the target's throat, when Daniel hadn't recovered enough from the recoil. But if the guy had been firing at us, a throat shot would have made him stop pretty damn fast, too.

When Daniel was done, he thumbed the safety, released the magazine, opened the action, checked the chamber, and set the pistol back down on the counter. Pointing downrange. He rolled his shoulders again, wincing a little, and said, still facing downrange like he couldn't even bear to turn and look at me, "I shot my first pistol when I was seven, Jack. Archaeological camps are common targets for looters. I'm not saying I'm the best shot in the universe, and I'm certainly not used to shooting back under live fire, which, yes, I need practice with. But you don't need to treat me like a liability."

"Okay," I said. My voice was loud in my own ears, between the hearing protection and the faint buzz that comes from the sound of live fire that the hearing protection can't completely shield you from. "Now do I get to deliver my lecture?"

His shoulders slumped. "Go ahead," he said.

I stepped up to lean against the lane divider and slapped the target call-back. Mostly for something to do. "First off, it's been eleven weeks. You were planning on telling me this when?"

Daniel turned his head, startled. This close, I could catch the faintest whiff of the blowback on his skin. "What part? The shooting, or --"

"Oh, pick one," I said. "The insecurity. The harassment. The fact you haven't trusted me since the beginning. The fact that you've been holding back on your skills and abilities when it might mean the difference between life and death."

He drew back. "I haven't held back anything," he protested. "I told you straight up that I wasn't going to have any problems --"

"And then you let me go on thinking that your actual skill level was lower than it is, and don't go protesting that you haven't. There's a part of you that was enjoying every time I was surprised at what you could do on the other side of the Gate. Don't deny it. And I can't have you doing that to me, Daniel. If I kick you off my team for anything, it'll be that. Because that's deadly."

I watched him chew on his lip for a minute, watched the way his eyes went distant and thoughtful as he reviewed his own performance. "All right, I'll grant you some of that," he said, slowly, and that's when I knew it was going to be all right; if he'd said he didn't know what I was talking about, I'd've had his transfer papers on Hammond's desk within the hour. "What's the rest of it?"

About fifty other things, but I knew I'd have him for about three minutes of lecture, tops, and Rome wasn't built in a day. "Second, and I know you're going to roll your eyes at me and tell me this is patently obvious, but you're not dealing with academia anymore, and the ignore-it-and-hope-it'll-go-away method of dealing with hazing and smack-talk is going to get you precisely nowhere. If you don't thump your chest right back when someone thumps his chest at you, you're going to get shoved into a pigeonhole you'll never be able to get out of. And I'm pretty sure General Hammond is smart enough to look past conventional wisdom, and I'm sure as hell that he'll take my opinion into consideration, but you need to have the respect of the military if you want to stay alive. The guys who are mocking you now are the guys who'll be on the rescue op if anything happens. You want them on your side."

He picked up a box of ammo and thumbed it open. Probably for the same reason I'd pushed the target callback, because he didn't re-load the magazine, just stood there playing with the lid of the box. "I'm not here to win popularity contests, Jack," he said. "I'm here to find my wife."

I grabbed his wrist. It made him jump; he hadn't been expecting it, and even though I'd telegraphed the move a mile wide, he'd still missed it. I took the box of ammo from his hand, closed it, and put it back down on the counter. "You know that. I know that. Every man in this command knows that," I said, and my voice was harsh. "But to the people in charge, you are here to provide support and aid to further the goals of the program as a member of SG-1. Do you have any fucking clue how hard I had to fight to get General Hammond to agree to let you go through that Gate? Do you have any fucking clue how hard General Hammond and I had to fight to get the people who sign his orders to agree?"

Daniel's eyes were wide, and I could tell he hadn't thought about it. "I thought --" he said, and I let his wrist go.

"No," I said. "You didn't. Think, I mean. You've been treating me like I'm an enemy to be gotten around. And I hate to be all clichéd about it, but I'm not your enemy. I'm the best friend you've got right now."

"Yeah," he said, with a little frown, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and my heart broke a little bit, because what he was really saying was that I'm his only friend in the world right now. And I knew he was right, or at least that he thought he was right. He's got Carter and Teal'c, too, but he's been avoiding getting close to Carter because she's a woman and avoiding Teal'c because he's the reason Daniel feels he has to avoid getting close to Carter because she's a woman, and he's got General Hammond, I think, but I can't be sure and anyway Hammond wouldn't ever let on. "Jack, I haven't been treating you like an enemy. I really haven't."

"Then I'd hate to see how you treat your friends," I said, and I could see it go straight through him. He jerked his eyes up to meet mine, wide and startled, and I made a little think-about-it gesture. "Look," I said, as gently as I could. "When we go through that Gate, and we come upon a bunch of people who're descended from, I dunno, some obscure Pacific Island tribe that only you and four other anthropologists in the world have ever heard of before --"

That got him smiling, just a little. "Don't be ridiculous, Jack," he murmurred. "Most of the cultures we've encountered so far are derived from --"

I held up a hand to shut him up and kept going. "--You do your thing, tell me what I need to know, tell us all how we can behave to avoid being lumped in with the bad guys, right?"

Daniel nodded, slowly, not quite seeing where I was going yet. "Right," he said.

I nodded too. "You're getting fucked here because you think you're in your native country, so you have to know the culture. And you really don't. Because the military has its own rules, and you're too busy looking down your nose at them to learn how they apply to you."

He drew back, stung. "That's not true," he said, immediately. Then stopped himself, just as I was taking a breath to launch into my counter-argument, and bit his lip again. "Okay, that's partially true. But --" He made a little gesture, one of those ones that said he couldn't find the words to express what he was trying to express, and then growled his frustration and pushed his ear protectors down to around his neck and his goggles up onto his forehead. I decided it wasn't the time to lecture him about range safety. "It isn't even my native country," he muttered, and then looked up to pin me with those bright eyes. "And don't say it."

"Daniel," I said, quietly. "You gotta work with me here."

He threw up his hands. "I just don't see how this -- how wasting time with all this puffing and posturing and bragging could have anything to do with --"

"They need to know you're solid," I said. "You need to talk to them in a language that they understand."

Daniel struck backwards at the range divider with the edge of one closed fist, hard and frustrated. "Don't you think I've been trying to?" he snapped. "Believe it or not, it's not like I actually like being the pariah. Or the liability. And I'm really fucking sick of hearing the word 'civilian' like it's a curse."

"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Thinking. "Okay, look. Some of this is my fault. I haven't called you on any of this yet, because I thought it would go away, and you haven't told me any of it because you weren't sure you could trust me." I opened my eyes again at his indrawn breath and held up a hand. "Shut up. That's not the point. Okay. This is fixable. We got it early enough that it's fixable. You just have to believe me when I tell you how we're going to fix it."

Believe me and cooperate with me, but I figured I'd leave that little bit out. He looked at me like I'd grown another head. "Pray tell, Jack," he said, and hey, if he was feeling good enough to bust out the sarcasm, maybe he was feeling good enough to cooperate with me. "How will we fix it?"

I pursed my lips, thinking. "I've got some books I can lend you," I said, trying to think about what the best techniques would be. "Stuff they had us read back in OCS. It'll give you at least a window of insight. And the rest of it ..." I trailed off, looking at him. "You willing to listen to me when I tell you what you're doing wrong? Without getting defensive?"

"It depends," he said. "Are you willing to listen to me when I tell you what you're doing wrong? Without getting defensive?"

He smiled at me, a tight-lipped expression that said he was pretty sure he'd just scored a point off of me. I think I must have surprised him when I nodded. "Absolutely," I said. "As long as we're not under fire or in a crunch. For crying out loud, Daniel, I've been trying to get you to talk to me for weeks."

"You have?" His eyebrows drew together. "I hadn't --"

Next time, I swear I'm going to have these little talks earlier on. Hell, note to self, Jack: tell Hammond to put it in the new-team-leader briefing material, because I sure as hell wasn't the first team leader who was going to have to integrate a civilian into this wacky and wonderful profession. "Come on," I said, as gently as I could. "Clean your weapon, and we'll check it back in and go have dinner. You tell me where I'm fucking up. I'll teach you how to speak Marine. Then we'll talk about what training we're going to send you on --" I held up a hand before he could protest. "And no, it isn't a sign of weakness to need it. We're still in gear-up. Half the guys here, or who are going to be here eventually, are TDY to some training facility or another right now. And if you can make it through SERE, hand-to-hand, and --" I pursed my lips. "Well, we'll figure out what else as you go. But you'll feel a hell of a lot more confident after you do, and that confidence will show."

I didn't think he'd feel like hearing yet that I'd feel a hell of a lot better if I sent him to Ranger school. Hell, he wouldn't be able to get through Ranger school without a hell of a lot of prep work. Next year.

Daniel looked down at the counter. I'd give a lot to know what was going on inside his head. Then he looked back up at me, and his jaw was set in that stubborn, hell-bent-for-leather Daniel expression that told me he'd made up his mind. "All right," he said, and then, through gritted teeth -- and I could tell how much of his pride it was costing him: "Thank you."

I clapped him on the shoulder and started helping him pile up his ammo. "Hey," I said, putting as much cheer into my voice as I could. "Cheer up. Look on the bright side."

Daniel heaved a patient sigh. "What's that, Jack?"

"Bronson and his team aren't gonna know what hit 'em."

We won, too. Wiped the range with Bronson's boys. Won a couple thousand bucks in the betting pool, in fact. And hey. Nobody bet against Daniel again for a damn long time.

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