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Leaning against a bulkhead beside a rack of staff weapons and zats in an auxiliary armory on Anubis's ship, Jonas said, "The truth is, I don't think that Colonel O'Neill was very comfortable having me around."
"That's not what he told me," Daniel said promptly. Also the truth: Colonel O'Neill hadn't said anything to him about Jonas one way or the other. Why would he? Daniel hadn't asked, and this team didn't strike him as the kind of group that gossiped about each other, especially to people outside the group. Jack's silence regarding Jonas said a lot about Jack and a little about Daniel and, well, nothing about Jonas, which was what saying nothing was supposed to do. He was just as silent regarding Major Carter and Teal'c, and they were just as silent about him and each other, all stingy with information that might clue Daniel in to relationship dynamics and personal history he was supposed to recall on his own.
He'd meant it just now when he'd waxed nostalgic for Vis Uban. The people weren't as simple as all that -- they'd woven intricate and sophisticated myth and ritual through the uncomplicated regularity of their nomadic life -- but his own detachment had made his time there painlessly easy. Mind the goats, fetch wood and water, mend the tents, do whatever work they gave him as he wore whatever clothes and ate whatever food they gave him, no stake in any of it. The first thing that had genuinely engaged him since he woke under the cruel glare of that sky had been the woman's picture on the nightstand, and when he asked them about her, eagerly, they shut down and wouldn't tell him. Ostensibly waiting for the knowledge to return naturally, though Teal'c was quick enough to confirm the truth when he deduced it rather than remembering it. He never asked again, after that. He accepted that he had to learn things for himself, make his own way. It seemed to suit him, that kind of self-reliance. And two times being stonewalled was plenty.
So he studied Daniel Jackson's professional history the way his curriculum vitae informed him he had studied the history and languages of this planet. He made private, independent assessments of the people around him, uncontaminated by what others might have told him about them or about his past interactions with them. He learned what he could learn by reading. What the four members of SG-1 didn't seem to realize, despite knowing full well that one of Doctor Jackson's specialties was anthropology, was that he was nearly as good at reading people as he was at reading text.
That they didn't seem to realize it was telling, and raised some intriguing possibilities about himself. Had he concealed certain skills deliberately, to invite people to underestimate him? Colonel O'Neill was doing precisely that with his intelligence; maybe he'd pretended to social cluelessness in order to observe behavior unsuspected. Maybe the very experiences and relationships he couldn't remember had interfered with or suppressed the ability. Or maybe it was an ability he hadn't had before, and had now only because he wasn't Doctor Jackson and before did not exist for him, or because this degree of objective clarity was unavailable by definition to the subjective consciousness and he had not been subjectively aware for long enough for it to wear off, or because it was something new -- something he'd learned to do on a higher plane.
What he had learned seemed to persist in his memory in a way that what he had experienced did not: so far, his skills and his knowledge had come back at need. On Vis Uban, language came to him when he was spoken to; tasked with building and tending a cookfire, he knew that he knew how to do that, and he did it. Upon arrival at Stargate Command, he knew how to open doors and climb stairs, how to get into and fasten clothing and footgear, where to relieve himself and how to work the flush mechanism and the sink faucets and the soap pump; he turned without thinking to the dispenser for a paper towel to dry his hands. He knew how to read and write, how to operate weapons and communications devices, how to work a Goa'uld computer console, how to cover a teammate and clear a room and lay down suppression fire. He was missing only context: personal context, subjective recollection of having acquired those skills and that knowledge. He had no memory of attending a single class, he couldn't remember walking up the Janss Steps or strolling the Midway or meeting a classmate for coffee, but he knew the layout of the UCLA campus, he could describe U of C's Collegiate Gothic architecture, he could list the Upper West Side establishments where Columbia grad students congregated in the mid-eighties -- he knew what a college was, a campus, a quad, a class, a coffeeshop. He had no memory of writing a single academic paper, but one quick scan of his résumé made his conscious mind aware of all he'd learned, and from that moment on it was all accessible to him, as if it always had been.
It stood to reason that interaction with any one of the people Daniel Jackson had been close to should have had a similar effect. Either the barrier to experiential and emotional memory was less easily penetrated, or those memories had in fact been erased, or these SGC people were lying or mistaken about his identity. For all he or they could know, he was some kind of simulacrum with only half of their Doctor Jackson copied to it; that would be no stranger than anything else they'd encountered in their explorations, and if the Ascended beings they described were as powerful as they believed, anything was possible. But he didn't need to remember Jonas to see the effect that Colonel O'Neill's "discomfort" had had on him -- and because he didn't remember any of them, didn't know anything about them past what he could learn by observation, he had no compunction about adding, without missing a beat, "He said you were a good man."
It was as clear as day that Jonas needed to hear that Jack had spoken well of him; that his own return had shaken Jonas, who seemed to have only recently felt settled in his unit; that Jonas might be capable of any number of reckless actions if he saw this mission as his last chance to impress the colonel. It was as plain as the nose on his newly corporeal face how much Jonas craved O'Neill's approval. So he manufactured some, and gave it to him.
The last thing he expected was how intensely interesting Jonas's answer would be -- not for what it said about Jonas, but for what it said about Jack O'Neill.
"Really? He said that?" In the standby illumination of the compartment, microexpressions glossed the flat response with cascading subtitles. He wanted to believe it, he didn't believe it, he didn't want to call Daniel a liar. He cared, but he didn't care, because he refused to risk being hurt any more. A year of striving and failing to redeem himself with a man who would not forgive him had left him downcast and disheartened; he was too tired to be glad to hear it even if it was true. And while he might be persuaded that the colonel had come around, at least a little, he would never buy the colonel admitting it out loud.
Probing with disingenuous irony, making it half question and half commentary to see which way Jonas took it, Daniel said, "Yeah. You're shocked he never let on?"
The wry lift of browline and averted gaze confirmed it: Jack O'Neill's MO was not to let on. Not just about Daniel, but about himself.
It was the second thing since he'd woken in that field that genuinely engaged him. The tablet was mildly interesting but of no special significance. This mission was mildly interesting, and undeniably exciting, but he wasn't emotionally invested in its success; Major Carter had said that her friend Daniel was the kind of person who would give his life for someone he didn't know, and apparently they had that in common, because he didn't know these people, and he'd agreed without hesitation to risk his life for them. But this -- the thrill of curiosity, the jolt of insight, the flash of something like familiarity -- recognition, that was what was missing, the capacity to recognize, to know again, recognoscere, reconnoître --
Jonathan J. O'Neill. Nickname Jack. Middle name spelled out one time, on his birth certificate, listed as an initial on all official documents since. Daniel knew the name. He'd known it before he knew he knew it, because it was James, and he'd called him Jim. And persisted in calling him that -- not bothered to remember, at first, and then plain forgetting, but then doing it deliberately, and not just to needle him ... to tell him something. Or to tell himself? A string tied around the finger, to remind you that there was something you needed to remember. One syllable to remind you to remember that you were the only one outside of Jack's family who knew Jack's middle name.
That that signified, and that you had to find out how.
Jonas had given up trying to return the subject to what would change now that Daniel was back, and was fielding an idea about the ring transporter. The isotope had worn off, and whatever they tried to do, the Jaffa would probably run them to ground in short order. But yeah. They had to try.
Of all the facts that could possibly have been rooted strongly enough in his mind, it was a fact about Jack O'Neill that had weathered the clean sweep. Of all the clues Oma Desala could have planted to help him solve the mystery the Others were making of him, she picked a name, a word central to identity, a word of power; it didn't just happen to be a secret name, and it didn't just happen to be Jack's. Of all the single bits of personal knowledge his subconscious could have fought to preserve, it chose a piece of private information that Jack had divulged only to him.
If he lived, if they didn't ring into thin air or solid rock, if the receiving platform materialized them in one piece and they weren't killed in Anubis's assault on the city and managed to get through the stargate to safety, he was going to find out why.