Jack is sitting in the chair, staring down into the observation room when Sam and Teal’c come in quietly behind him. There’s paperwork he’s supposed to be looking at in front of him, but he hasn’t touched it since Doctor Brightman went in to check on Daniel a few minutes ago, instead observing her moving around and taking his partner’s vitals. She jots down some final notes on Daniel’s chat and then walks around to join them. 

“How is he?” Sam asks as soon as the doctor stops before Jack.

“He's lost a lot of blood but his life is no longer in any immediate danger.”

“The members of SG-11 insisted he seemed perfectly normal,” Sam sounds as confused as Jack feels. “Did you notice anything peculiar about him, Sir?”

Jack doesn’t bother to look around, his eyes still on Daniel below them. “I thought it odd he was shooting up the Gate room.”

“He reacted immediately after the Gate was shut down,” Teal’c tells her, and Jack knows the man behind him doesn’t feel any better than he does about Daniel lying unconscious in the infirmary bed below them. 

“Why was he so desperate to go through?” Brightman asks the question in all of their minds, and the General misses Doc Frasier more than ever. Brightman is good, but her first instinct is still to assume that it was Daniel who had acted in the Gate room; Jack knows something else is going on. 

“Does he have any of Colonel Vaselov's symptoms?” Sam connects the dots out loud.

“No lesions yet but that may just be a matter of time,” Brightman says. “He does have an elevated white blood count.”

“Yet Colonel Vaselov displayed no unusual behavior,” Teal’c counters. 

“That doesn't necessarily mean they're not suffering from the same condition,” the doctor weighs in, an opinion Jack had been waiting for. “If an infection reaches the brain it can manifest itself in a variety of ways, from memory loss to full-blown psychosis.”

“You don't think it's a coincidence?” he looks up at her now, not sure whether that’s good or bad. It’s probably good if the instances are linked, and Daniel didn’t just go crazy on his own, but Jack knows Vaselov isn’t doing so hot.

“Seems unlikely, Sir. I think there's a high probability that we have a contagion on the base.”

Jack looks back down at his partner, lying motionless. 

Jack should have known something was hinky before it happened; he’d felt that clench of apprehension the minute Brightman had said she needed to examine everyone who’d been in contact with Vaselov and he’d remembered Daniel had been one of those people. Jack had wasted no time in hurrying to stop his archaeologist from Gating out and arrived just in time to order the Gate closed before the first man stepped across the event horizon. 

“Daniel,” he’d called his name even as the other man was turning back towards the control room, looking for an answer as to why the Gate had disengaged. Something in Jack’s voice must have tipped him off that something wasn’t right, because his expression had been changing even before Jack continued, “report back to the infirmary.”

The rest of the team were already making their way down the ramp, probably making way for the splash of it reopening, but Daniel had grabbed the last man as he’d walked past, his arm around the man’s throat and his sidearm pointed into the man’s side. An uncharacteristic snarl distorted his features, one Jack had only seen when Daniel was possessed, or suffering from sarcophagus withdrawal, or generally when he was farthest from being himself. 

It was shocking enough to make him hesitate, but Daniel’s snarled words (“Open the Gate! Do it. Now!”) had spurred Jack into action. He was unarmed himself but as he sprinted for the door, he relieved the nearest soldier of the weapon he was holding, absently making a mental note to address how easy it had been for him to take the gun.

It only took a few seconds for him to reach the Gate room but he heard the two shots echoing around the cavernous room before he reached it, so he raised the weapon he’d grabbed even as he swept his gaze across the space between the doorway and Daniel, assessing the situation. The weight of the pistol had been familiar in his hands, but even then he’d desperately wished it had been a Zat. As Daniel had wrestled his captive down the ramp, he’d been looking at Jack and missed Teal’c appearing in the other doorway, Zat at the ready. The Jaffa zatted, momentarily dropping their teammate, but Daniel struggled up to his knees and reached for his gun with a shocking speed that should not have been possible for him as a mere human.

Jack had seen Teal’c’s regret and determination as he’d raised his Zat again. If Daniel had remained unconscious, a second Zat shot would have killed him. He doesn’t know for sure if a second Zat shock is fatal if the victim is still conscious. He can’t tell whether Teal’c knows either. “Daniel!” he shouts, and the man had turned and looked at him.

Jack hadn’t had any other choice. A bullet might kill him. They’ve got a damn good team of doctors under the mountain, who can probably fix near about anything except a headshot. Getting zatted a second time would probably kill him. Daniel had raised the gun, and Jack took the shot.

Daniel had collapsed backward with a grunt and then a moan, and unlike with the first ineffective attack he’d stayed down. The medical personnel had been there in seconds, and Jack had been shoved away as they rushed Daniel to the infirmary and then shortly into surgery. Jack’s aim had been good, well away from vitals like the brain and the heart, but bullets still did extensive damage. Jack had not spared himself the responsibility of reading Brightman’s report of how much damage his bullet had done to his lover. 

“We’ll have to go into lockdown,” Sam says, and Jack nods. 

“I will stay with Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c says quietly behind him. Jack nods, standing and shoving his hands in his pockets. He hates it - he wants to watch until Daniel wakes up himself - but he has too many responsibilities now as General. Entrusting the watch to Teal’c will have to suffice. 

He joins Brightman, Carter, and Teal’c in the corridor just as the doctor opens the blast door to Daniel’s observation room. Jack is glad he’s not lost his edge with his desk job yet, because he’s not out of breath and can pretend he was casually walking, rather than jogging (okay, maybe running) to be among the first people Daniel sees. They’re going to have enough to deal with over the fact that Jack shot him, and that Daniel shot two of the SFs, without Jack being absent when Daniel finds out. 

Jack cedes the right to walk through first to Brightman, but the rest of the team lets him go second. Daniel’s eyes are on him immediately. Their irrepressible civilian is sitting up, of course, even though he’s been unconscious for the better part of a day and was shot just this morning. 

“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Daniel demands.

The rest of SG-1 is silent, letting the doctor take point on that one. “You're recovering from a gunshot wound,” Brightman tells him calmly, picking up his chart and walking over to consult her machines. 

“What?” Daniel stares after her, momentarily speechless. 

“You have no recollection of the incident?” Teal’c asks.

“No!” Daniel’s anxiety is rising, and so is his voice. “Who shot me?” He’s looking towards SG-1, and Jack, for answers.

“Don't…change the subject,” Jack tries. They need to know what Daniel knows before they address that elephant in the room. “What do you remember?”

Daniel gives him a frustrated, confused look but answers the question without further prompting. “I went to see Colonel Vaselov, and right in the middle of our conversation he collapsed…and…I went to help him, and…that's it.”

“You don't remember accompanying him to the infirmary?” Sam asks; they know from security footage and the infirmary staff’s reports that that is what had happened next.

“No!” Daniel emphasizes the single word, clearly upset at his lack of memory, and then looks from face to face, his own expression sinking back into dismay. It’s only a moment of grace before he asks again, “Who shot me?”

Silence, but he can feel the heaviness in it. Daniel’s eyes rest on Sam and then Teal’c, who say nothing but Jack can only speculate at what must be on their faces because his partner’s gaze slowly comes back to rest on Jack, and it’s full of confusion and hurt. Jack grimaces and tries to shrug. “You were shooting up the Gate room.”

“You wounded two guards,” Carter adds, clearly attempting to help, but Jack immediately wishes he could turn the clock back on what they both said until he had more time, because Daniel’s face is already morphing from confusion to guilt, and they don’t have the time or privacy to address it until the situation is resolved. “We think we may be dealing with a foothold situation,” Sam goes on. “Specifically, an alien entity capable of taking over human hosts, not unlike the Goa'uld. And it seems to be able to travel from person to person.”

“Although at present,” Teal’c adds, “we have no knowledge of how this is possible.”

Daniel is looking down and away from them, but it’s hard to tell if he’s lost in his thoughts or something to do with what they are telling him. 

“Daniel?” Sam prompts after a moment. 

“Anubis,” he mutters.

“Daniel Jackson?” Teal’c’s prompt is a little more forceful.

“It was Anubis,” he says a little stronger, and then looks up at them. “Or rather, Anubis was controlling me.”

“Anubis is dead,” Jack says firmly, and wonders if getting shot had taken more out of Daniel than they thought. 

“No, he's not,” Daniel says, and in a tone of voice that makes them all realize he’s quite serious. “And he's here in the base.”

Jack’s office and the infirmary aren’t in the same zone, and Brightman insists on keeping Daniel close ‘in case of surgical complications’. She doesn’t want to risk him having access only to stations that are essentially just field medics if something happens, and Jack can’t not have access to his office and the red phone, so he’s forced to let himself be separated from his partner. He doesn’t like it - they haven’t had a chance to talk, and now that will be postponed indefinitely - but he has to trust that Sam will be enough if Daniel starts to have a guilt spiral. Hopefully, he’ll be too busy between helping with the logistics of the lockdown and sneaking off to work on his own projects to worry too much about what had happened.

A week later, when they are finally free to leave the base after what feels like an eternity of lockdown procedures, Daniel is quiet in the passenger seat of Jack’s truck. But, well, Jack is quiet too; they may have gotten plenty of sleep on lockdown but nobody got much actual rest. So he tries not to brace for fallout as they go through the motions of picking up takeout, forcing themselves to eat and shower and change into clothes that aren’t a uniform before collapsing into bed. 

Or, rather, Jack collapses into bed with a pleasured groan. Daniel moves a little too fast on the other side and can’t hide the hiss of pain that escapes between his teeth. Jack sits back up quickly and reaches to help try to guide Daniel, to support him as he lays back.

“I’m fine!” the archaeologist jerks away from his hands, which only makes him go stiffer with the pain he was clearly hiding. 

“No, you’re not,” Jack rolls his eyes, standing up to come around to Daniel’s side of the bed. “Did you forget your pain meds at dinner?”

“No,” Daniel says, and it pings against Jack’s radar as not untrue, Daniel isn’t lying to him, but…

“Daniel, did you take the pain meds at dinner?” 

“I don’t need them. I’m fine.” Jack knows from the daily infirmary reports that Daniel had been weaning off of the strongest of the pain meds and Brightman had been in support of that, but that was before he’d gotten zatted again by Anubis/Sam. She’d pressed a new prescription bottle into his hand as they left the mountain and told him in no uncertain terms to take them if he was in pain. 

“You got shot!” Jack knows he’s looming now over his partner, hands indignantly on his hips, and is just thinking he should probably try a gentler approach before Daniel explodes under the pressure when the other man shoves to his feet, ignoring the fact that doing so makes him go incredibly pale to try and spin away from Jack’s reach. 

“I know that!  You shot me!” 

He’s holding himself painfully straight, white with the pain of how quickly he’s been moving, the arm that should still be in a sling that he removed before they came to the bedroom supported across his body by his other hand. 

“Daniel,” he sighs, and this time his partner doesn’t pull away as Jack approaches and pulls him into a careful embrace, and Jack’s work to go against his own instinct to shout back is rewarded when Daniel melts into the hug instead of resisting it, and it makes it easier to go a step further. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” the archaeologist is hard to hear because his face is buried in Jack’s chest. 

“It’s not your fault either,” Jack runs his fingers through the hair on the back of Daniel’s head; it’s still damp from showering and starting to get cold; probably so is the rest of Daniel who is shirtless against him but he doubts the shudder that moves through his partner is temperature related. 

“I’m the one who shot those two men,”

“Anubis shot them.”

“Anubis with my face and using my hands,” Daniel grumbled, “all those guys saw was me.”

“They’re stargate personnel. If they haven’t seen weirder yet, they will.”  The General looks over his lover’s head to check the time. It’s well past when he wanted to be passed out, and at this point the only way either of them are going to get any sleep is if he can get the pain drugs into Daniel and soon. “How ‘bout I go get those pills so we can get some sleep?”

Daniel mumbles something uncomplimentary into Jack’s t-shirt, and Jack decides to take a chance. He reaches down and swats Daniel’s ass; not full strength by any means but hard enough to sting. 

“Jack!” Daniel yelps and rears back to stare at him. Jack raises his eyebrows. 

“What? I’d like to sleep tonight,” he says blandly. “So we can do it the easy way, and I’ll go get those pills now, or we can do it the hard way and I can spank you until you let this go, and then I’ll go get the pills.” He’s left his hand resting on Daniel’s butt, a clear threat, but he runs his other hand down his partner’s back. He doesn’t want to, not ever but particularly not right now when Daniel’s already hurting, but sometimes Daniel just can’t find the peace of mind any other way. “You’re not going to punish yourself by not taking the meds.”

There’s a standoff, several long seconds of Daniel’s bright eyes locked with Jack’s. He imagines he can almost see the thoughts whirring away in his lover’s overactive brain, but in the end, Daniel gives in, leaning back in against Jack. 

“I don’t need that,” he sighs. “I just need sleep and to take the stupid meds. It hurts,” he admits and straightens to give Jack a crooked smile. “Love me?” 

“Always,” Jack agrees, and kisses him before helping lower him to sit on the bed. “Menace.”