Tony stumbled into their rooms. He had to lean heavily on Gibbs, and the second he pulled free from that stabilizing force, he careened toward the couch, stopping only when he face-planted into it.

"Sry, boss," he said into the cushion. Sleep. Sleep would be good. However, when Gibbs started pulling at his arm, Tony cooperated and rolled over. Of course, he hadn't been entirely on the couch, so that made him slide down onto the floor.

"I don't even remember drinking," Tony said. The world spun around him, and two Gibbses looked down on him. That was just wrong.

"Come on, don't make me do all the work," Gibbs complained as he got his hands under Tony's arms. Tony complied by pushing up with his legs, but he did it with so much force that he leaped into the air before falling back onto the couch in an undignified sprawl.

"That was some good stuff." If all the slaves got that kind of happy juice, Tony now understood why they worshipped the goa'uld. Oh, Tony didn't approve, but he'd worked narcotics long enough to know the lengths human beings would go for a good fix. Tony could only hope this shit wasn't addictive because it was definitely good.

"I know this is hard for you, and I didn’t want you to make the others suspicious with any feelings of discomfort you might have," Gibbs said. Maybe it was the drugs, but that didn't actually make sense.

"Feelings?"

"Onac don’t have verbal language, Tony. We use chemicals on to communicate images and feelings, and human skin does have some of those same chemicals."

"Oh." Tony frowned and tried to get him eyes to focus on Gibbs. He got to the point where there was only one of him, although he was a little blurry around the edges. "You thought I was faking it."

"You offered to host an onac, Tony."

"Boss, you never did get it, did you?" Tony chuckled. Considering that Gibbs knew everything, how could he have missed the most obvious fact of Tony's existance?

"Get what, Tony?"

"Undercover work."

"I’ve done plenty of undercover work. Hell, my whole life since Samas has been one big undercover mission. I may not be as good at it as you are, but I do get it."

Tony grinned and let his head flop back onto the couch. "Nope. You don’t. I never do undercover work, boss."

"What?"

Any other day Tony would have reveled a little in the glory of confusing Gibbs. Not now. Now he needed Gibbs to be the all-knowing boss. "I let myself feel everything. You remember Jeffery White, right boss?"

Gibbs frowned. “Murderer who stole antiquities from Iraq, geeky guy who liked to carve people up. You shot him.”

“Which really hurt because I liked him,” Tony said. Reality was wavering a little around him, and he let himself enjoy the sense of disconnect from his body. “Part of me wanted to run off with him and protect him from all the bullies in his life, and the agent part of me was locked down in this little box. That’s how I do undercover, boss. I always feel everything. I loved Jeanne. Wanted to live with her and have little doctor babies.”

Gibbs didn't answer right away. His fingers stroked Tony's hair. "Oh, Tony."

"Love you too, boss. Always have. But I’m too good with undercover to say that. I started young, you know.” Tony frowned. How much of that had he actually said out loud?

“Oh? How young?”

"I was worse than McGeek, but I made up Tony DiNozzo and I lived him until I was him.”

Gibbs' fingers kept petting him, and Tony felt himself drift toward sleep. "That must require much work, Tony."

"Yep. Worth it. The dork I was back in school never would have been an agent. Will it hurt when the onac gets inside me?"

Gibbs' fingers stilled, but they still rested against Tony's head. "A little, Tony. It’s like a sore throat."

"Okay."

"It won’t damage you."

"Okay."

"If I said it would hurt like hell and trap you inside your body, would you object, even then?"

"You never try and fight back with bullies, boss. You know that. You stand there and prove you can take it without flinching. Well, unless you can kick their ass, and then you do that. Mostly I got good at taking it."

"You’re going to hate yourself tomorrow, Tony. I really didn’t think the nish’ta would have this much of an effect on a human."

Tony forced his eyes open long enough to look at Gibbs, and he seemed genuinely upset.

"No biggie. I’ll sleep it off.”

"Yes, sleep might be the best solution." Tony yelped when Gibbs scooped him up like a damsel in distress and carried him toward the bedroom. That was not a Gibbs thing to do.

"Samas?" Tony asked.

"Yes, I am here."

"You were the one who gave me the happy juice. How did you do that?"

"I breathe it out through the host's mouth. I gave you only a very small dose, and I am truly apologetic about the strength of your reaction." Samas lowered him into bed, tucking his legs under the covers. They'd shared the bed last night, but it was so big that Tony hadn't even felt noticed him. Now Samas sat on the edge of the bed and stroked his forehead.

"A little bit of danger in the bedroom is fun, but these guys are ruining my favorite slave fantasies," Tony said. He rolled toward Samas and his stomach ended up pressed against Samas.

"Do you have such fantasies?"

"Yep. Gibbs would call that weak, though." Tony frowned. Wait. He shouldn't be admitting that, not out loud.

"Gibbs certainly would not. He is confused because he sees slavery as inherently harmful, but he does not believe you weak. If it makes you feel better, Gibbs is at odds with my own views on slavery.”

“What? Harem girls in genii outfits?” Tony started giggling as he thought about Gibbs surrounded with a dozen of ‘em. He’d shoot someone.

“I always thought that by now I would nest. I would have dozens of suitors around me, all of them willing to enslave themselves to me and my offspring in the hope that I would choose their DNA and their memories to spawn new onac. Gibbs struggles to reconcile that with his own views.”

“I bet,” Tony said with a snort. His eyes were falling closed.

“He probably thinks we both need a shrink.”

“He is very fond of you. We both are, Tony.” Samas petted Tony’s naked back, and a shiver went down Tony’s spine. “You are the only one who has ever stood up to us when we were wrong,” Samas confessed.

Tony shook his head. "Nope. Ra did that."

"Ra kept me in a weak vessel—a girl hardly old enough to know her own thoughts, one raised with the certain knowledge that she was useless except as a host, and therefore she didn’t know how to read or think for herself. Being in her was… disturbing. I much prefer Gibbs. Together we are able to command the proper respect."

Tony started giggling.

"The Nish’ta may take more time to wear off than I had anticipated. An electrical shock could clear your mind."

"Aww boss, you want to electrocute me? Why don’t you use this stuff on Ba’al?"

“The nish’ta is used when a queen nests. I would gather those whose DNA I planned to use, dose them with nish’ta to ensure they did not pose a danger to the young onac and then settle in to hundreds of eggs that would hatch within hours of reaching the water. But once an onac has been taken into a queen’s nest, he can never belong to another queen. They develop an immunity to nish’ta.”

“So Ba’al belongs to another queen? If he has another queen, why does he need you?”

Samas ran his hand down Tony's arm. “No, he doesn’t belong to anyone. But he smells of nish’ta residue, so I suspect that he has taken a dose to give himself immunity. The queens who rebelled against Ra relied on the nish’ta, believing it would help them win their war, so the goa’uld know the danger. The queens should not have used it to take over those who would fight them, and the goa’uld should not have rendered themselves immune. So much is wrong.”

"Your people are kind of twisted."

"As are your, Tony. Gibbs has gone places where human beings perform great atrocities and claim to do it in the name of righteousness."

"Crazy people are crazy in any universe. Ba’al is crazy, by the way."

"Yes, I am aware."

“Okay,” Tony said. Reality was getting blurry, but he could feel it when Samas stood up. Tony reached out and caught his arm.

“No, don’t leave.”

Samas sat back down, his heat pressing into Tony. “You need to rest.”

“You could rest too.” Tony scooted farther into the bed, still holding Samas’ shirt. While he could have fought, Tony heard the sigh that meant he was giving in. “Tell me about the slave stuff Gibbs gets all weird about. I bet I’m way less judgmental.”

“I think you are,” Samas said. The bed tilted as he climbed in, and then Gibbs’ arms were around Tony. That felt right.

“Onac come to a queen to be found worthy, and if they are chosen for the nish’ta, they are allowed to stay. It is not something a queen forces on them. The nish’ta allows them to stop fighting each other and to yield to the queen and help care for the offspring. It is the only time we live in large social groups. Otherwise we are solitary creatures once we reach adulthood.”

“Voluntary slaves.”

“Yes,” Samas agreed. “But the goa’uld have twisted that as they have twisted all else our people once held dear. They tell each other that slavery is natural to our species, and it is, but they will not admit how far they have altered the original traditions.”

“Maybe we should avoid telling O’Neill that slavery is normal for you,” Tony suggested.

Samas’ arms tightened around him. “Yes, I had taken that into consideration.”

“It’s not so bad volunteering to be a slave, as long as you trust the person doing it will only do what you want.”

“Slavery means you don’t get a choice about what you want,” Samas said. At least Tony thought it was Samas. The voice had shifted. Maybe it was Gibbs.

“That’s why it’s more fun to play at being a slave than to be one in real life,” Tony said sadly. The arms around him tightened even more, and Tony let himself drift off to sleep.

Tony woke feeling rumbled and sore and a little like a small animal had died in his mouth. All the common suspects for a hangover had shown up, with the unique exception of a headache. He lay in bed staring at the ornate drapes hung around the bed, and slowly the memories seeped back in.

Shit.

Tony sat straight up and looked around, but there was no sign of Gibbs. Of course not. That sort of emotional diarrhea was almost designed to send Gibbs into full retreat. He didn't do emotions. Ever. The man had hidden an entire marriage and dead child for years, and Tony had only found out because the damn goa'uld digging into Gibbs' past had poked that particular part of Gibbs' past and Tony had run across the evidence of Shannon Gibbs' death in old NIS files when he'd been chasing wild leads.

But Gibbs share an honest emotion? Yeah, that wasn't happening.

Tony groaned. And here he'd gone and emotionally vomited on the man. He'd shared fucking sexual fantasies, and yes, he'd shared them with Samas, but Samas shared a body with Gibbs, so it wasn't like he hadn't heard.

Well, the damage was done.

Tony forced his stiff muscles to carry him out of bed and into the lavish bathroom. His hair was sticking up at odd angles, and he definitely looked older than usual. After taking a second to run water over his face and finger comb his hair, Tony went in search of clothes.

Gibbs might be doing his avoid-at-all-costs routine, but as his second, it was Tony's job to make sure he followed. Either that or it was his job to avoid Gibbs until he calmed down and keep others out of the potential blast area. The worst part was that with Gibbs you never truly knew which you were supposed to be doing.

One slave shirt later, and Tony was ready to face the world. Maybe. He still felt rough, but the universe wasn't going to wait for him to get over his nish'ta hangover. He had always been overly susceptible to narcotics. They made him loopy. However, who knew that his lack of tolerance expended to alien drugs made by mating queens? Tony imagined trying to explain that drug sensitivity to his doctor back home. That would be amusing. He’d end up in the funny farm, but it would almost be worth it.

Bracing himself for potential refusal and physical abuse, Tony triggered the door and faced the two jaffa guards waiting outside.

"Hem?" one asked. Tony was surprised by the lack of weapon pointing and bluster, but it was a good sign. He gave them his best grin.

"Have you seen..." Gibbs was on the tip of his tongue, but he caught that in time. "Lord Samas?" he finished.

"Your lord has gone to speak to Lord Ba'al about our arrival," one of the guards offered, which was more information than Tony expected. Sometimes it was good to be seen as the harmless one, a strategy that Tony had tried to teach Ziva and Tim to absolutely no effect.

"Did he request you follow?" the second guard asked.

"Request? No," Tony admitted. "I'm just trying to figure out if he would want me there or if having me there would make him irrationally cranky."

The second guard smiled at him sympathetically. "He appeared quite calm and not in need of assistance. I can ask those in attendance if he appears in need of your services," he offered.

"Yeah, that'd be great," Tony said with a smile. Taking favors was as important as giving them when trying to build rapport, but if Gibbs was calm, Tony didn't need to stir the emotional pot. If Gibbs spent too much time thinking about Tony's sexual preference for play slavery, he was going to have all sorts of not-calm things to say, so calm meant Gibbs was focused on something else. Tony didn't want to distract him from that.

The jaffa spoke into his version of a radio and then said to Tony, "Lords Ba'al, Samas and Kali speak to one another, and none appear to have need of their slaves."

Tony nodded. He wished he could go and stand on the side and just be there, but he would probably be a distraction at this point. Lord Ba'al was on his own, so hopefully he wouldn't do anything terminally stupid so that Samas ate him. Or if Samas did eat him, hopefully the jaffa would see that as a coup and take Samas’ orders long enough to drop them off back on Earth.

"Your lord left a message," the first jaffa said. "When he left, he said that when you awoke, we should tell you that your enemies now prisoners of Lord Ba'al, so you no longer had to concern yourself."

"Our enemies?" Tony couldn't help the flash of confusion. It seemed to put the two jaffa on edge.

"You do not understand the message?" one asked, clearly uncomfortable with the very idea.

"Sure I get it, but honestly, you have to be more specific about which enemies because Samas tends to make a lot of them. Hell, half the people we're allies with don't actually like him all that much. He tends to make them look like idiots and steal their best followers before costing them their status."

The friendlier of the jaffa smiled. "Ah. Lord Ba'al is much the same way. They are well paired, then. The enemy of which your lord speaks attempted to keep you from coming with Lord Samas when we brought him up."

"O'Neill?" Tony's voice cracked.

"Yes," the jaffa agreed.

"Oh, that is not going to put Samas in a good mood at all. Nope." Tony ran a hand over his face.

"Lord Ba'al will dispose of the villains," the older jaffa said, and Tony almost laughed. Villains. Right. O’Neill’s sense of humor was twisted enough that the comment would probably amuse him.

"I should go and find some food, check on the status of Lord Samas' wardrobe. You know, slave stuff," Tony said. It was time for him to start figuring out the layout of more than the hallway from their quarters to the main meeting rooms and back. He held his breath, waiting to see how the jaffa would take his request.

"The ship is difficult to navigate, hem. Is there a slave you wish to assist you in your tasks?" The friendlier, younger of the two jaffa looked at Tony with such perfect innocence that Tony had to wonder where they got these guys. You didn't let people wander around your ships, not without a military escort. Tony had been planning on trying to find ways to ditch his guard, but he hadn't expected it to be this easy.

“Stelli was helpful."

"Who?" The jaffa seemed confused.

"The slave who brought the food yesterday," Tony explained.

The older jaffa offered, "The sedjemash."

"I shall call for him, hem. He will be here shortly."

Tony took that as an invitation to go back into his room and wait. Since that's what a good slave would do and Tony was playing at being a good slave, he offered a quick thanks and retreated. They had dropped out of hyperspace so the space around them was black with tiny, distant stars glimmering faintly. Standing at the window and looking out into space, he thought about what he'd told Samas. He really didn't pretend while he was undercover. That sort of pretense got cops killed, so despite all the warnings about identifying with the target, Tony had always let himself sink into the cover identity. Tony DiNozzo was only a role, so it was easy enough to move into another.

But if they couldn't break free of Ba'al, Tony might have a very long life in a very uncomfortable position. He had no doubt that an onac would share control with him. Samas shared with Gibbs, after all. But if they didn't have personalities like Ba'al said, Tony might inherit an onac equivalent of a child. He'd be stuck raising some rugrat who lived in his skull. Tony didn't actually like kids, but he'd make himself like them if that's what it took to back Gibbs' play.

And Tony had come to terms with all that. He had. Adding O'Neill into the mix had just changed the equations a little. Well, the first step was gathering some intel. The rest would have to wait.

The door chimed, and Tony went over to answer it.

"Hem." Stelli stood waiting on the other side, and he bowed deeply. "Do you have some task for me?"

"Yeah, I needed a tour guide, but I told you to not give me all that bowing stuff. Save that for the lords." Tony smiled at him, and Stelli seemed momentarily alarmed.

He stood straighter, but kept his eyes on the floor. "Yes, hem. I am very pleased to hear that your lord has chosen you to carry a god."

Tony nodded. "Lord Samas never had a problem with that. He just didn't want one of Lord Ba'al's onac in me. He's territorial."

"Most gods are," One of the jaffa agreed amiably.

Tony noticed that Stelli kept his head down and a safe distance from the jaffa. Tony would have to be an idiot to miss the power dynamics going on here, and he wasn’t an idiot. However, the jaffa were. It was time to see how far Tony could push them. “So,” Tony asked cheerfully, “how about you show me to that beautiful woman who makes the clothes? I have a few suggestions for colors and styles Samas might like, and then I want a few non-perishable foods for our quarters, and Samas will definitely ask about the prisoners and how far away they are, so I should probably check on that before he gets back. I also need to check on some jewelry—I need someone who can do some more subtle, smaller pieces. Samas is not a fan of flashy, and the belts we have are a little on the over-the-top side. Finally, I have to figure out the laundry situation. The sheets are on the silky side, and Samas prefers something with more cotton. Soft wins over sleek when it comes to the boss’s bedding.”

Stelli looked at him with wide eyes.

“And I need to do all that before the boss gets back,” Tony added. So far neither of the guards had batted an eye at Tony checking the prisoners. Yeah, they were idiots.

“How long will you lord be gone?” Stelli asked.

“I have no idea,” Tony admitted.

Stelli gave a curt nod. “Then we must hurry, hem. If the order of your tasks does not matter to you, I would suggest for the sake of time that we handle laundry, bedding, clothing, jewelry, the prisoners, and then food.”

“Reverse those last two, and we have an agenda. Lead away, and I’ll follow.” Tony looked at the guards. “Are you guys going to stay here?”

The older jaffa looked at him for a second before he shook his head and got that exasperated expression Fornell sometimes got when Tony talked. “Infiltrators will attempt to place listening devises or poison in the private quarters of their betters in order to attack the true gods. Any rooms used by one of the lords are guarded at all times.”

“Oh.” Tony grimaced. “Sneak attacks on someone’s bedroom seems like a shitty way to handle things. I mean, if Samas is unhappy, he tends to get right in your face and let you know, not sneak around.”

The jaffa gave a slight nod, a slight tilting of his head. “Lord Samas has honor, hem. Do not fail your lord by assuming that others do as well.”

Tony nodded. “I honestly don’t know all the rules or dangers up here, so if you see me doing something that could be dangerous, you’ll let me know, right?” Tony used his most helpless expression, the one he’d once used to convince a drug dealer that he wasn’t a cop even after the drug dealer found a picture of him in a uniform on the internet. The jaffa smiled kindly.

“I shall. Now attend your lord’s tasks.”

“I will. Thank you.”

After Stelli gave the two jaffa a deep bow, Tony gave them a small one and then trotted after Stelli. Stelli was already talking, explaining as he strode through the corridors at a surprisingly fast pace. “Laundry is on each level. One must arrange a time for them to come and take the laundry if you place it in a bag near the door, but you should pick it up yourself. Do not give access to your lord’s quarters. The same facilities offer a range of bedding, so we can choose new bedding and drop it off at your quarters before moving on to the clothing and jewelry. Artisans and craftsman are several levels below us.”

Stelli started explaining the basic layout of the ship, and Tony listened carefully, mentally mapping the information as best he could. He had no idea if he’d be able to help O’Neill and his merry band of villains, but Tony knew one thing—he had to try. After all, if Gibbs hadn’t wanted him on a rescue mission, he wouldn’t have made a point of having the jaffa tell him about their capture. And Tony knew one thing: if Gibbs wanted O’Neill rescued, Tony was going to do his best to make it happen.

Tony stopped at the door. The level opened into a long hallway with cells on either side. This was definitely not the ultra-modern room where Ba’al had locked up him and Gibbs. “Give me a second. I’m going to go talk to them,” Tony said with a smile. The guard ignored him, but Stelli gave him a very odd look.

“They’re dangerous, hem.”

Tony smiled at him. “So am I. Samas would have me if I weren’t.” Neither Stelli nor the guard looked particularly convinced by that. If anything, the guard was trying to avoid looking amused. “Really, they’re behind bars. I’m fine,” Tony said, “but I need to give Lord Samas a report, and I can’t really do that if I stand here and look at them.”

“Stay back from the bars, hem,” the jaffa commented, and with that, he seemed to think the conversation was over. In terms of providing actual security, the security on this ship sucked.

“I will. Thank you for the advice,” Tony offered as kindly as he could. O’Neill was so going to shoot this guy dead by the end of the day. After all, any covert ops soldier that Gibbs admired could pretty much kill with a look. “Wait here,” Tony told Stelli, and then he headed into the mostly empty section.

O’Neill had stood the second the door opened, as had Murray, but now the woman, Carter, stood up and Daniel. All four stood near the bars. Tony walked close and stopped right outside the range of Murray’s freakishly long arms. He wouldn’t put it past these guys to take him hostage, and Ba’al didn’t seem like the sort to negotiate for a slave’s release.

“Well look who showed up,” O’Neill said. He put his arms through the bars and rested them on the cross pieces. “Why am I not surprised?”

“O’Neill,” Tony greeted him. “Weirdly I am surprised. Why are you here?”

“I'm looking for you, but now that I see you, I'm wondering why we bothered. You look like you're fitting in fine.” O’Neill looked him up and down, and Tony was suddenly painfully aware of just how well he fit in with the other slaves. However, he wasn’t about to let O’Neill and the others see him sweat.

He grinned. “That's me. I fit I'm anywhere. You, however, kind of stand out. The jaffa call you villains, which is a little amusing, except for the part where they're going to kill you.”

O’Neill rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah. They always want to kill me. It's a thing.”

“And then there was that time they did kill you, over and over again,” Daniel said. He sounded a little less blasé about having been captured.

“I got over it,” O’Neill said with the same sort of negligent disregard for his own injuries that Gibbs sometimes showed. Gibbs generally wasn’t as obnoxiously amused by it all, though. O’Neill was definitely not playing with a full deck.

“So, how did you land here?” Tony asked.

O’Neill actually turned around and walked away, or at least as far as he could, which translated into the back of the cell where he leaned against the wall. Daniel answered. “The evidence you found… the fibers and the shoe prints… they pointed to a woman. There are a limited number of goa’uld women around who are old enough to remember Shamash.”

“Two, actually. Kali and Amaterasu,” Tony said. That still didn’t explain how they’d ended up here.

“We were supposed to be meeting someone on one of the planets Kali recently abandoned,” Daniel explained.

“She hadn’t really abandoned it, had she?” Tony asked, cringing as he imagined how well that had gone. Kali wasn’t as psychopathically crazy as Ba’al, so he could see her people staying loyal, even if she’d left.

“Ya think?” O’Neill demanded. “So, you seem oddly up on goa’uld politics.”

“You overhear a lot hanging out in the throne room,” Tony agreed.

Murray tilted his head and gave Tony a very odd look. However, O’Neill seemed to take the conversation over again. “Do that a lot, do you?”

Tony shrugged. “Someone has to keep Samas from eating any more baby goa’uld. He’s oddly unamused at how they’ve all turned into parasites.”

“Unlike him. He’s not a parasite living in Gibbs’ brain, not at all.” O’Neill’s sarcasm was starting to wear on Tony. Instead of engaging, Tony took a cue from Gibbs’ interrogation techniques. He put his basket down, crossed his arms and waited. Yep. He could do silent. He could totally do silent.

Daniel looked back and forth between Tony and O’Neill, and Murray raised an eyebrow, but other than that, the place got weirdly quiet. Tony was starting to think he’d misjudged when O’Neill sighed and caved in.

“What are you doing in here? Keep in mind that we will get out of this, so if you plan to gloat, I wouldn’t. I will remember it, and I will hold it against you when I have the P90 and you’re behind bars.”

“Why would you assume I would gloat? We're on the same side.”

“Really? It doesn't look like that from here. In fact it looks like we're in the cell and you're standing outside it with... are those Danish?” O’Neill peered at Tony’s basket.

“An alien version of them,” Tony said as he picked the basket up again. “I wasn’t sure anyone was feeding you guys.”

“So you brought donuts?” O’Neill demanded in an incredulous voice. “I'm not sure I even want to understand your logic.”

“Hey. I'm trying to be nice. I come bearing food after all.” Tony lifted the basket. He’d specifically stopped by the kitchens so he could bring them dinner. Tony glanced toward the distant door to see how Stelli and the jaffa were handling this conversation, but the door was closed and no one seemed to be paying attention. In NCIS headquarters, that would have been a sure sign of hidden surveillance. Around here, Tony was almost positive it was one more piece of proof that these guys sucked at being evil overlords unless they happened to be evil overlording over people who were already terrified and beaten down.

“Try to come bearing a cake with a file in it and some C4,” O’Neill suggested.

“Or a computer interface,” Carter suggested.

“If I had a file and C4 or a computer, you'd be my first stop. But since I'm missing both I come with pastries and fruit." Tony held the basket close enough for them to reach. “The good news is that you're in the long term, deal with them when you get around to it prison.”

“We know. Believe it or not this isn't our first rodeo.” O’Neill sounded like he was annoyed with Tony for breathing, but he was quickly emptying the basket, passing items back to the others. He had taken half the pastries and most of the fruit when Tony pulled it back.

“Leave me something to take to Gibbs' quarters or this is going to look really strange.”

“Right, because it looks normal right now.” O’Neill shook his head. “We’ll do our best to spring you when we get out of here, but my people come first. You shouldn’t have gotten involved in this, DiNozzo.”

“I’ve been Gibbs’ senior field agent for a long time, and I’m not going to walk away from the boss. He does lots of things amazing well, but he’s used to me having his six. I’ve got skills I bring to the table too, colonel.”

“Right, like fetching food and hanging out in the throne room in case Samas needs to order someone around.” O’Neill nodded.

“You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me something I don’t know,” O’Neill demanded. Tony could feel his blood pressure rise.

Daniel stepped up to the bars. “We know you’re loyal to Gibbs, and team members should be loyal,” Daniel said in a soothing voice. The look he shot Jack was less soothing. “But these people are more dangerous than you understand. They see you as an inferior life form, and they will implant you with one of these parasites.”

“Ba’al already tried. Gibbs put his foot down, and here I am, still ungoa’ulded.”

Tony watched while the others traded concerned looks.

“Honestly, Samas came out of Gibbs’ head and ripped the symbiote in half before it could get in me. I’m well aware of the dangers here. Gibbs already told Ba’al that if he could find an onac, not a parasitic goa’uld but an onac, that he would have me carry it.”

All emotion vanished from O’Neill’s face. There was death in the expression he wore now, and Tony could feel the danger skim across his skin.

“I want to say right now that there is a difference between the goa’uld and the onac. I have already told Gibbs that I trust his judgment.”

“Newsflash,” O’Neill barked out, his voice low and furious. “He’s a couple of thousand years old, and he didn’t get that old by playing nice. You’re going to end up locked up inside your own head, watching your hands torture people to death.”

“Jack!”

“Telling the truth, Danny. These assholes took Sha’re and Skaara.”

Daniel came and stood next to O’Neill. “I know.”

O’Neill looked at Tony. “If you let a snake in your head, you’ll be more sorry than us. We’re only scheduled for execution. But you’re in so deep that you can’t even see a way out.”

“No,” Tony said, “I can’t. But I’ll follow Gibbs, and if he can do something to help, I’m sure he will. However, you can’t assume he’s the same as the goa’uld. I’ve seen them together, and trust me, there’s no love lost. Look, I have to go.”

“Wait,” Daniel called. “Do you know where we are?”

Tony shook his head. “No. Gibbs demanded that if Ba’al wanted a snake in me that he had to get them from the onac homeworld, but I don’t know if that’s where he’s brought us. I do know that we stopped, but other than that, I can’t say. I don’t get invited to the briefings. I’m only a hem, after all.”

Murray spoke for the first time. “The position of the hem is always precarious. Others will kill you to gain your rank, and you will be the first sacrificed if your lord’s plans go awry.” He spoke the words softly, and he had that same tone so many of the jaffa did, as if he were trying to help someone who was clearly not bright enough to know he was in trouble.

“I know,” Tony said. “If Gibbs has to sacrifice me, it’ll be because he has a plan that he can’t afford to have fail.” Tony didn’t add that after Tony’s drunken confessions, Gibbs might actually avoid him for the rest of the trip. He wondered what Ba’al would do if Tony suddenly seemed to fall out of favor. Tony was guessing it wouldn’t be good. “But I don’t want to weaken Gibbs’ hand here, so I need to head back to our quarters and change the sheets and lay out some new clothes. The work of a slave is never done.” Tony gave them a cheeky grin and headed back toward the door. If they got out of this, he suspected that O’Neill would either shoot him or have him locked up in a funny farm. The way his luck was going, that might not even be a bad idea.

The door chimed, and Tony went to answer it, expecting Stelli or the jaffa. Instead, Ba’al stood there in all his black and unctuous glory.

“Lord Ba’al.” Tony backed up and tried to figure out what he should do. He kept his gaze down, but other than that, he was definitely in the dark here—a really bad sort of dark.

“Tony.” Ba’al had that overly friendly voice going that made Tony want to throw up.

“Does Lord Samas need me?” Tony looked behind Ba’al, but Gibbs wasn’t there.

“I thought we might speak.” Ba’al walked over to the couch and sat. Now Tony definitely didn’t know what to do. Looking down at a goa’uld while hovering over him felt painfully dangerous, but sitting next to Ba’al didn’t seem any better, and kneeling… yeah, he wasn’t going there. “Come here, Tony.”

“Okay, I really don’t know the rules here. Samas’ main rule is to not draw attention and do my job well, and those two don’t seem all that important here.” Tony inched closer.

“Come, kneel in front of me,” Ba’al ordered.

Shock stopped Tony cold, and he looked at Ba’al for several long seconds before he realized he was staring straight at Ba’al’s face. Then he dropped his gaze.

“That bothers you.” Ba’al sounded amused.

“You’re not my Lord Samas,” Tony answered. “I would prefer he be here.”

“He is not. Come. Kneel.”

Tony didn’t have a lot of illusions here. He had no power, no weapons, and no ability to defend himself against Ba’al. Maybe O’Neill was right about him being an idiot for coming, but if so, he could only play this through. Tony walked slowly over and knelt down as far from Ba’al as he could.

“Closer.” Ba’al opened his legs and gestured to the space between his knees. “You and I must talk.”

Tony shuffled forward, his body tense with fear. When Ba’al reached out to stroke his cheek, Tony flinched away only to have Ba’al catch his chin and hold him.

“You are not used to being handled.”

“Only by Samas and Gibbs,” Tony said honestly.

Ba’al made a little humming noise. “Samas could have great power if she would bend a little.”

“Not really in her nature,” Tony said.

“No. It is not.” Ba’al stroked his fingers through Tony’s hair. “You will soon be one of us.”

Tony chewed on his lower lip and stared at Ba’al’s knees.

“You have a choice. You can guide your queen onto a path of power or watch her fall as all the other queens have.”

Tony looked up at Ba’al’s face for a second, and then dropped his gaze back down. His knees hurt from the hard floor, but he was starting to get an inkling of the plan. Ba’al thought to control him and use him to control Gibbs. It didn’t matter what sort of game Ba’al played, Gibbs was not going to be tamed. It wouldn’t happen.

“What are you thinking?”

“That Samas would never let me guide her onto any path. She makes her own choices.”

Ba’al laughed. “But you have already shown skill at helping ease her into decisions. I understand what it means to be the power in the shadows. I can help you, young one. More importantly, I can make sure your queen does not follow all the others. Queens are brutal and uncompromising. Those are not traits that inspire loyalty in others. After all, if you please her enough, she will eat you alive. That’s not really a reward most of us would seek out.”

“I’m a little big for her to eat,” Tony pointed out. He certainly didn’t have an onac in him, and no matter how aggressive Samas might be, he wasn’t large enough to eat a human. Tony was also starting to get a headache with the shifting pronouns, not that he was going to correct Lord Ba’al on the whole gender issue.

“True.” Ba’al let his hand rest on Tony’s shoulder. “What did you speak to the tau’ri about?”

Tony could feel the danger buzzing around his head. “About how they found us.”

“And how was that?” Ba’al tightened his fingers slightly.

Tony decided to go with the truth. When you didn’t know how much the enemy knew, it was always a great tactic, and as a bonus, bad guys just never saw it coming. They expected a lot of things—grandious bragging, threats, obfuscations, and outright lies, but honesty was their kryptonite. “Gibbs and I found evidence in his basement that a woman had been there… red silk fibers with what looked like gold, and footprints in the dust.”

“Kali used to be better than that. Her assassin skills are rusty.”

Despite a rising surge of sarcasm, Tony didn’t point out that forensics evidence had probably improved since her last visit to Earth.

“Nothing else?”

“They asked for C4, an explosive. I told them I was fresh out and offered them fruit.”

Ba’al hummed again.

Tony shifted as his knees started to really ache. The slaves around here must have callouses on their kneecaps, but Tony’s knees were virgin soft. Okay, so maybe not virgin soft, but his sort of kinky play usually meant about sixty seconds on his knees before him and the guy he’d picked up ended up groping each other. This was getting painful.

Tapping his fingers against his knee, Ba’al announced, “We are at the onac homeworld. In a short while, we will join him on the planet, and you will cease to be a human.”

Tony nodded. He was wondering if that’s where they were. Gibbs had told Ba’al that he wanted a range of onac, so it did seem like it would be easier to go to them rather than have a whole tank of them brought to the ship. Then again, when a person had thousands of slaves, he could probably do whatever he felt like.

“You are not concerned?” Ba’al cupped Tony’s chin in his hand. Having the goa’uld look at him was a little like having the lions in the zoo watch you as you walked by their enclosure, only without the bars.

“I follow Samas. I always have, and I’ve never regretted it.”

Ba’al chuckled. “You are unique among tau’ri. However, remember what I said. Your queen is not invulnerable. A wise goa’uld makes alliances to protect his interests.”

Tony looked up. “Excuse my impertinence, Lord Ba’al,” he said. He nearly choked on the words because the B-movie cheesy dialogue was really too much for his irony button to handle. “But I will have a symbiote take over my body. Why would you think I had any say in what my body does after today?”

Ba’al ran the back of his finger down Tony’s cheek. “The onac are damaged. There will be more of you left than there should be. No harm to that. By the time a thousand years passes and you’re ready to take a new host, you’ll have the strength to take the body as you should.”

Tony blinked. Creepy.

“You must be prepared.” Ba’al clapped his hands, and the doors opened. Startled, Tony surged to his feet as a dozen women hurried in.

“Prepare him for implantation,” Ba’al said. He stood and walked out, and Tony was left facing half-naked women who closed in on him faster than he expected. They caught his arms, and pushed him back toward the bathroom. He couldn’t even get a word out before an older woman in an outfit that would have made Jeannie look demure called out. “Isadell, deal with his hair; Ada, jewelry. Dela and Telii, get him bathed and perfumed. Mapsha, you are in charge of nails, and do not forget his feet. Let’s make our prince look his part.”

“But….”

That’s all Tony got out before someone was grabbing his pants, and while he tried to hold them off, someone else got his shirt off him, and from there he pretty much lost the fight.

Tony put out a hand to keep his balance after the rings deposited him on uneven ground.

“Careful, hem,” one of the jaffa commented.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Tony figured that if he fell in the mud, it was going to take a dozen women another two hours to get him put back together. His arms were heavy with jewelry, he couldn't really see much around the high neck on the heavy cloak he wore. The woman had even painted his eyes. Dark lines traced the shape of his eyes and made him look like either a refugee from the cast of Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor or a rent boy. Getting assaulted by a bevy of half-dressed slave women was more fun in fantasy than in reality.

The jaffa spread out and started heading up a low hill, and Tony followed, careful to lift the embroidered cloak. They had barely cleared the area when the rings came down again, this time depositing Ba'al, Kali and more jaffa.

Tony stepped to the side and waited as Ba’al breezed by without a look. Kali followed in his wake, but she did pause to give him a long look. Oh yeah, the politics around here were worse than in SecNav’s office. Tony tried to imagine SecNav dealing with all these crazy goa’uld, but his imagination wasn’t that good.

“Hem,” one of the jaffa said when Tony didn’t get moving fast enough.

“Samas is waiting, right?” Tony asked. Sure, there wasn’t anything he could do if Gibbs and Samas weren’t down there, but he just needed someone to give him one word of comfort here. A half word, even.

The jaffa rested a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Your lord waits for you. He is not one with great patience, so do not make him wait too long.”

Tony huffed. “That’s no joke,” he said, but he gathered up his robes and followed the others. Both Ba’al and Kali seemed to have the whole cloak, cape, billowing clothes thing down. When they walked, the fabric billowed around them regally. Tony felt constantly one step away from faceplanting in the dirt, and he suspected the jaffa felt the same because the one who had talked to him hovered close, a hand near Tony’s elbow at all times.

They came to the crest of the hill, and looked down the other side, and now Tony could see Gibbs. He didn’t have the fancy outfits, but he was looking good in his black outfit and brilliant blue shirt. The sight of three members of O’Neill’s team made Tony stumble. The jaffa next to him caught him with a hand under his elbow, and Tony mumbled his thanks as he hurried down the hill. Ba’al was already facing off against Gibbs.

“Why are they here?”

Gibbs grunted but didn’t answer.

“We’re happy to go back to our cell if that helps you two with your little lovers’ spat,” O’Neill offered snidely. Then he turned and Tony could see the second O’Neill recognized him. The smirk grew wider.

“Well don’t you look cute?” O’Neill said.

“Jack,” Daniel said, his voice low and warning.

“This is a big day for you, isn’t it? You’re becoming a goa’uld. I guess that’s a step up from an NCIS agent.” O’Neill shifted, but with his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t do much else. “You’re going to regret this.”

“Doubt that,” Tony said. “Now the makeup? I totally regret that.”

“You’re not the only one,” Gibbs said dryly.

“Sorry boss. The slave women were oddly insistent. So, is that where they are?” Tony looked at the calm pond. A lazy stream fed into the pond on the far side, and it was so utterly peaceful with the wind stirring through the trees that Tony felt a weird need to laugh at the irony. This was not feeling like the right sort of environment to get taken over by an alien. Tony felt like every alien invasion movie he’d ever watched had lied to him.

“Yep.”

“We need to talk, Samas,” Ba’al said. He raised his hand, and several of the jaffa stepped closer.

Gibbs turned and eyed Ba’al up and down. “This is my world and my choice,” Gibbs said coldly.

Ba’al didn’t seem ready to give up that easily. “Why are they here?”

Gibbs gave Ba’al a cold smile. “To bear witness. Tony, do not let the first one to reach you win.” Gibbs intentionally turned away from Ba’al and watched Tony. Everyone at NCIS said that Gibbs was impossible to read, but it wasn’t true. Tony could see the concern and guilt in every twitch. Tony gave Gibbs his best grin.

“No problem, boss. So, do I have to be careful about how gentle I am when I turn them down?”

“Nope,” Gibbs said firmly.

“Okay then.” Tony started to shrug out of the heavy cloak. One of the jaffa stepped forward and took it from him. It sounded like Daniel calling out his name as Tony headed for the water, but Tony ignored it. He kept his eyes on the water as he stepped down onto the muddy bank. The water rippled, and Tony brought his hands up to defend himself.

He’d been afraid these creatures would be like the white, wormy thing that Ba’al had tried to put inside him, but the first onac to come at him had the same dragon-like fins as Samas. It was smaller and not as darkly colored, but it clearly had muscles because it flew out of the water at him. Tony barely slapped it aside with his hand, stumbling as he did so. A second onac came at him, and Tony caught this one with his hand. The creature screamed and writhed in Tony’s grip.

“Am I getting cursed at?” Tony asked. He cocked back his arm and threw the onac as far as he could into the pond.”

“Yep,” Gibbs agreed.

“Thought so. It’s funny how swearing sounds like swearing in any language.” Another onac came darting out of the water, and Tony jerked back, lost his footing, and ended up falling on his ass in the mud. He still managed to slap the onac away. He then charged to his feet when an onac swam up his loose pants.

“Oh no. You are not going up my dick, you overgrown piece of bait.” Tony shook his leg, and he felt the onac slide down his leg before it slipped away. That distracted Tony so much that the next onac would have gotten him only a second onac darted out of the water with his mouth open. The second, larger onac sliced the first one, who went screaming away. There was a small flurry in the water, and Tony really hoped that someone wasn’t getting eaten. Tony didn’t see the attack from the side until he felt a burning pain at the side of his neck. He reached up in time to touch the onac’s tail as it slipped into Tony, leaving a sluggishly bleeding wound behind.

Tony turned around, and the jaffa with his cloak bowed deeply. “My lord,” he offered, holding the cloak out.

“Oh. Yeah.” Tony plodded up the gentle slope to dry ground. His pants were covered in mud and he’d lost one shoe, but he pulled the jeweled cloak around his shoulders as he went to Gibbs’ side. Tony blinked. No, that was Samas in control now. Samas reached up and rested his hand against Tony’s cheek, and Tony gasped.

He could feel a fierce protectiveness, a fondness for Tony and a hatred of anyone who tried to hurt Tony. There was possessiveness there and desire. Tony couldn’t believe how much desire. And under that desire, there was a deep fear that Gibbs and Samas weren’t good enough. They’d lost so much, and they both had this deep feeling that it was their fault. The guilt communicated through Samas’ touch sent Tony to his knees.

Tony reached out and caught Samas’ hand. Without even trying to get up, Tony leaned forward and rested his forehead against Samas’ hip. There was no need for guilt. Tony understood how much Gibbs had always given up for his team. Tony understood the depth of love there, even if Gibbs had never said the words. He knew.

He felt Samas’ fingers run through his hair.

“I hope you’re happy,” O’Neill said.

“Very,” Samas agreed. “Tony will be well.”

“Right, because he looks peachy from where I’m standing. So, if you’re finished showing off how you can sacrifice your own people, maybe we could go back to our cell. The ambiance is better up there.”

“Put them in the pond,” Samas said. The words were said so calmly that Tony didn’t understand them at first. Samas’ hand was too comforting, and the feeling of love and comfort coming through the touch too overwhelming. Only O’Neill’s vivid cursing broke Tony out of his fugue state.

Tony struggled to his feet.

“Stop,” Ba’al said, his voice sharp and angry.

Kali stepped forward as all the jaffa seemed to freeze. The two who had O’Neill by the arms had him right at the edge of the pond, and a third jaffa paused in his task of dragged Daniel right behind him. The two jaffa holding Carter seemed to be waiting their turn, and a half dozen more had half-raised their staff weapons, although they clearly didn’t know whose orders to follow.

Kali spoke slowly and calmly, her chin raised. “The queens control the distribution of the symbiotes. Samas is within her rights to demand this.”

Ba’al gave a tight smile. “That was many centuries ago, and a few things have changed.” Ba’al turned to the jaffa holding O’Neill’s team. “Return the prisoners to the ship.” Ba’al turned to Samas. “We need to talk about your assumptions of power.”

“Yes,” Samas said as he stepped forward. “We do.”

Tony flinched back a half second before Samas came out of Gibbs’ mouth. Ba’al jerked backward, but he couldn’t move fast enough. Samas hit the base of Ba’al’s neck and dove into the flesh, leaving a bleeding hole.

“Gibbs?” Tony stepped to his boss’s side.

“He needs to know the difference between an igigi and a goa’uld,” Gibbs said. He turned and looked at O’Neill. “The igigi share a body, Jack. Samas never was my jailor. However, he has to save his people and he’ll do what it takes to get that done.”

“O’Neill’s eyebrows went up, but he watched without comment. Ba’al seemed frozen, his body locked in place even as his eyes started to roll back in his head. Tony was starting to get concerned when Samas’ sharp nose poked out from the wound in Ba’al’s neck. Samas leaped toward Gibbs, and Gibbs reached out to catch him just as Ba’al fell straight back. Dead. Kali walked over and looked down at him.

“Our deal?” she asked.

“You and Lord Yu can begin to use the ancestral breeding grounds,” Gibbs offered. Tony, however, kept an eye on Samas. Sure enough, he started to jerk, his mouth coming open to show rows of sharp teeth. Tony took a quick step back to avoid any potential splatter.

Samas gave one strangled squeal and then he threw up chunks of white, wormy gunk all over the ground.

“Okay, that’s just gross,” O’Neill complained. “Gunny, would you like to explain?”

Gibbs looked over. “Samas doesn’t approve of goa’uld, Jack. He never did. Onac share adventures with hosts, but they fight their own battles.”

“Okay.” Jack drew out the word, clearly unsure about the whole situation.

“There are a few cave paintings that make a lot more sense now,” Daniel said softly. “And I really wish they didn’t.” Carter just made a truly disgusted face.

Samas screamed. He spread out his fins and opened his mouth wide as the sound got louder. Gibbs reached out to Tony, and Tony took his hand without hesitation. One loop of Samas’ tail wrapped around Tony’s wrist, and Tony could feel it all. He could feel the triumph at defeating an enemy, the disquiet at having made a deal with Kali, the unease at what he had to do now to save his people.

Tony also felt the concern for the hundreds of small lives Samas had deposited into the lake. Samas didn’t dare stay to protect them, so they would have to grow up fast and they would need protectors who would prevent the other onac from eating them. Too few onac carried memories. The unas denied them the right of joining, so the lakes that had once been full of onac song as the creatures boasted about their adventures were now all eerily silent. With no stories and no hosts or adventures, the onac would never recover their culture.

“Gibbs,” Tony said. He didn’t say anything else, but he shook his head. This was not a good idea.

“Not up for debate, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said quietly.

“Does someone want to cut us free?” O’Neill asked. “You know, assuming that we’re all on the same side here.”

Samas dove back into Gibbs’ mouth.

“Anyone?” O’Neill asked. He sounded suspicious, and he should be.

Gibbs turned to the jaffa keeping them prisoner. “Put them in the water,” he ordered.

“You son of a bitch. Gibbs, I’ll fucking kill you!” O’Neill bellowed, but nothing could stop the jaffa from dragging the three members of O’Neill’s team into the pond full of waiting onac.

“You’re dead,” O’Neill said as he sat on the bank of the pond. He looked a little ragged, but it was Daniel who had slipped and gone into the water completely. He looked like a drowned rat. Carter had handed over a small cloth so he could try to clean off his glasses.

“Wait for us at the rings,” Samas told Kali. She looked at the three newly infected hosts sitting beside the pond.

“Is this wise?”

“You allowed Ra and the other goa’uld to destroy our entire culture. Was that wise?” Samas asked. For long minutes, they stared at each other.

Kali finally closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment. “Jaffa, kree!” she called out, and then she was striding up the hill with their guard following behind. Weirdly, Tony was a little ambivalent about that. The jaffa liked him more than O’Neill and company did. Actually, right now O’Neill was watching with a calculated fury, and Tony figured that someone was going to end up dead pretty damn fast.

“I’m sure Samas had a good reason,” Tony said. After all, he had an onac in him too. It wasn’t like Gibbs and Samas had singled O’Neill and his people out.

“We have to take the ship,” Gibbs said. He walked over to Ba’al’s dead body and started pulling off the hand jewelry-weapon thing.

“It looks like you already staged your coup,” O’Neill said.

Gibbs shook his head. “Kali has a few jaffa loyal to her, but that’s it. The ship is still full of Ba’al’s troops, and we need to get up there, lock the jaffa down in the lower decks and take control of the bridge. There are sixteen lower-level goa’uld on board, and there may be another Ba’al.”

“Excuse me?” O’Neill stood up and faced off against Gibbs. “Maybe you’ve have too many brain cells eaten by that snake of yours, but you ate Ba’al and then vomited up chunks of him.” O’Neill glanced over at the mess on the ground.

Samas moved forward. “It was a clone.”

“What?” Carter came to O’Neill’s side and looked down. “Are you sure?”

“Very.” Samas held out the weapon to Carter. “I have no naquadah in me, so I cannot use the goa’uld weapons.” She took it, her gaze going to O’Neill, and Tony really did not like this. O’Neill was going to order her to use it against them. Tony knew it. He stepped forward to cover Samas.

“DiNozzo, don’t you dare act like we’re the bad guys here,” O’Neill snapped. “That bastard put snakes in us. Snakes. I don’t really see a good reason for us to cooperate. I mean, maybe I could overlook the whole hiding on earth thing, but holding us captive so you could put snakes in our heads puts you on the ‘exterminate with prejudice’ list,” O’Neill said.

“They are not snakes,” Samas said, “and despite the persistence of your ignorance, they will not take over your bodies.”

“Did you just call me stupid?” O’Neill narrowed his eyes. “Oh, this day just keeps getting better.”

“Jack, hear him out,” Daniel suggested, but the tone was more like a warning.

“He put a snake in your head, Daniel,” O’Neill shouted. He was also talking to Daniel as if Daniel were about five years old—enunciating each word slowly. Now Daniel was starting to look pissed.

“Sir, assuming the worst, we know it takes a goa’uld some time to establish itself in the host,” Carter said. “We have time to get to the Stargate and dial the alpha site. They can get us into confinement.”

“And then what?” O’Neill demanded.

Carter gave a helpless shrug before suggesting, “Maybe the tok’ra can help.”

“Another race that has given up its own heritage to take over the lives of hosts,” Samas said with disgust.

Carter whirled around and pinned Samas with a nasty glare. “They do not take over hosts.”

“They cannot exist without hosts,” Samas fired right back, and Carter didn’t seem to have an answer for that. “These onac will help us, but they will not stay in you beyond this mission. I give you my word.”

“Yeah, right,” O’Neill said dismissively.

Daniel gave him a weary look before he turned to Samas. “Why would they leave us?”

“Because if they have stories to sing, they can get a queen’s attention. They can convince a queen to use their DNA for the next generation, and if they’re really lucky, the queen might use some part of their memories. The onac were always warriors. They joined with unas to perform great acts of heroism and then they came back to the waters.”

“But it’s been centuries since that system has existed,” Daniel said. “I know the unas. Their adulthood ceremonies require an unas to take on some adventure, yes, but they have no stories of onac joining. For them, the relationship is purely adversarial.”

Samas sighed and looked over the pond. “I do not know what happened. I can guess that Ra did something to remove those onac who understood our ways. Perhaps he feared another challenger. However, Kali and Yu are willing to revive the practice if we can manage to take the ship for Kali, and as a bonus, it would allow you to retrieve your missing teammate.” Samas turned and looked at O’Neill. For a second Samas lifted his hand as if to reach out for O’Neill, but then he dropped it back down to his side.

“I am going to drop your ass in a cell so deep in the earth you’ll never see sunlight again,” O’Neill said, his voice deathly calm.

“I truly hope not. But if it comes to that, I can separate from Gibbs.”

“Oh, I’m not going to forget that Gibbs went along with this plan. You weren’t even in him, and he did nothing to try and protect the humans, not even his own second.”

“His second isn’t complaining,” Tony added, “well, except about the makeover. Ba’al’s makeover was not fun.” Tony had been washed and waxed in places he did not want to think about, places that were going to itch and chafe terrible. And he would wipe the makeup off his eyes, only he was afraid he’d end up smearing it and looking like a raccoon.

Samas slipped away, and Gibbs’ tense lines dominated the body. When he spoke, all the alien reverberation had vanished and he sounded tired. “This is Samas’ world, colonel. What wouldn’t you do to save earth?”

“I’ll tell you one thing—I’d happily blow up this whole planet with every last symbiote on it.”

Gibbs’ jaw tightened. “Luckily Samas is more ethical than that. He’s only trying to save his people, not destroy anyone else.”

Daniel rushed in before O’Neill could speak. “How does this save his people? Help us understand this.”

Gibbs looked at him. “The onac need to remember what it is like to be honorable, to take on a mission and then go home to the waters and feel proud of their accomplishments. They need to sing until the other onac remember that they are not animals. They are more than predators of fish. We were the memory for the unas. Together, we evolved into a culture based on strength.”

O’Neill snorted. “And then you took over the universe and enslaved humanity. Good job with that one.”

Gibbs was so ready to blow. Tony moved to his side and rested a hand on Gibbs’ arm. “Boss, they have some right to be cranky. Don’t go badass on them. Now, correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but the general plan is that we all go take the ship, free Murray, and then come back here so all the onac can go home and brag about blowing up the goa’uld, right?” Tony didn’t wait for Gibbs to answer; he turned to O’Neill, “which actually sounds like a great plan for anyone who hates the goa’uld enough to want to blow them up.”

“We shouldn’t kill Kali,” Gibbs said. “She knew this was all wrong, but at least she’s willing to try and fix it before it’s too late. She and Yu will try to find humans who want to come here to join with an onac to improve their odds on a mission. If the tok’ra can find hosts for their abominations, at least some humans have to be willing to help the onac rebuild.”

O’Neill stepped closer “What? You’re going to look for volunteers now? That’s very altruistic of you considering you just had jaffa throw us in the water with our hands tied.”

Tony expected Gibbs to go all flinty eyed and angry, but instead Tony could feel a satisfaction rolling off of him. When Tony slipped his hand down so that his fingers brushed across the bare skin of Gibbs’ arm, he could feel the pride, the certainty that the onac in O’Neill would learn of honor, the certainly that the onac in O’Neill would protect Samas’ children.

Gibbs looked over, his slowly smile clearly leaving O’Neill a little uncomfortable. “I won’t apologize. My people have been imprisoned in that pond for generations, and I’m going to destroy every last bastard that did it, and if I have to use you to make that plan happen, I’m fine with that. Now you can help me take that ship and then I’ll help you return those onac to the waters, or you can find the Stargate and figure out the rest on your own.

Gibbs turned his back and started up the hill, but Tony kept his eyes on the earth team. O’Neill in particular looked like he would be just fine shooting Gibbs in the back. Luckily, O’Neill didn’t have a weapon. Gibbs got halfway up the hill before he turned around. “Oh, and onac have as much self-preservation as any other species. If you try to go to the tok’ra to have the onac pulled out, it might take you over in self-defense.”

That said, Gibbs continued up the hill, and backing away from O’Neill. Carter and Daniel were both watching O’Neill, and Daniel offered a quiet, “Jack?”

O’Neill threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. We’re already compromised, so we might as well do something insanely stupid. And when this is over, you are paying for this, Gunny.”

O’Neill headed up the hill with long strides that left Tony scrambling to chase after him. After all, the robes Ba’al had chosen for him weren’t exactly ideal for field work.

Tony fired the staff weapon around the corner, not bothering to do much aiming. The damn thing was either painfully inaccurate or Tony just sucked.

“I’m almost there,” Carter said as she did something to the wiring inside the wall.

“Speed is a priority, Major,” O’Neill suggested. It was worse than having Timmy nagging when Tony was trying to pick a lock. However Carter clearly had more patience because she ignored O’Neill’s complaints.

A new round of staff weapon blasts scorched the walls of the corridor, and Tony pressed himself behind the structural beam that gave him some protection. Even that was starting to feel uncomfortably warm as the heat of the staff weapon blasts started to penetrate.

“Carter!”

“Working, sir.”

O’Neill pressed Daniel against the wall as the new blasts came dangerously close to his position. Tony pointed his staff weapon around the corner and sent several blasts in return. He really hoped some lucky jaffa didn’t blow his hands off. He liked his hands.

“Got it!” Carter said, and then Tony could hear doors sliding closed with heavy thunks. Tony waited to see if any jaffa were on their side of the locked door, but it seemed fairly quiet.

“Is everyone okay?” O’Neill asked.

Tony looked down to his arm. The fabric had been singed and charred, but the skin underneath was new-healed pink. “I think this should hurt more. Or possibly it should just hurt,” Tony commented.

O’Neill walked over and caught Tony’s arm in a firm grasp. “Huh. Samas, Jr is good for something.”

“The symbiote in Tony can’t be biologically related to Samas,” Daniel pointed out.

“Uh huh,” O’Neill said absent-mindedly. “Carter, do you have a clear path down to the cells?”

Carter knelt in front of an open panel, an open zat at her side. “I’m working on it, sir.”

O’Neill gave a jerk of his head, and Daniel moved to cover the passage they’d come from. The jaffa back there should all belong to Kali, but that didn’t mean O’Neill trusted them, or that Tony did either. Jaffa were weirdly serious in their belief that the goa’uld were gods. Hell, Kali’s jaffa only agreed to the move because they believed that as another god, she had a right to challenge Ba’al. Apparently some of them had switched over because of Samas and the fact he was an actual queen rather than a regular symbiote in a female body like Kali. Luckily, O’Neill’s group hadn’t caught onto that fact yet.

“I should go help Gibbs.” Tony started back the way they’d come.

O’Neill reached out and caught his arm. “The gunny is a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

“He doesn’t have anyone on his six.”

“He’s the one who says to trust Kali, so let her cover his six.”

“Would you let her cover your six?” Tony demanded.

“I wouldn’t trust any of us to cover anyone’s six. We all have snakes in our heads,” O’Neill snapped. “Now focus on your damn mission, DiNozzo. The gunny can handle the goa’uld. We secure the jaffa and retrieve Teal’c. Clear, soldier?” This was O’Neill’s colonel voice. Tony had worked with the military long enough to recognize that sharp tone that meant that a commanding officer was about to bust someone down about three ranks. The problem was that Tony wasn’t military. He narrowed his eyes and really had to rein in his temper.

“I’m here because Gibbs told me to help you navigate. Gibbs. I don’t take your orders.”

O’Neill gave him an overly cheerful smile. “Yeah, well Gibbs ordered you to take my orders. Now, I’m ordering you to help us navigate down to the cells.”

Tony crossed his arms. “The service passages are straight down this hall, two bulkheads toward the aft,” Tony said, gesturing toward the locked door where jaffa still battered against the metal.

“Well, crap.” O’Neill rubbed a hand over his face. “Carter, can you find us another way down?”

"I can try," she agreed, but there was a grimness in her answer that made it pretty damn clear that this wouldn't be an easy thing. O'Neill nodded.

"Danny?"

"We're still clear this direction," Daniel answered.

Tony frowned as he thought about all the unreasonable demands Ba'al had made over the time Tony had been on the ship. It didn't matter what was going on, he expected his slaves to always be near and always be ready, even when they worked sixteen hours straight. Tony was never again going to accuse Gibbs of being an unreasonable taskmaster. Well, not that he had in the first place, but he'd thought it once or twice or a dozen times.

"Stelli!" Tony yelled out, his voice echoing down the halls. The jaffa behind the bulkhead paused in their efforts to batter down the door using brute force.

"DiNozzo, have you finally snapped?" O'Neill asked with more curiosity than anger.

"Maybe," Tony said. "Stelli!" he yelled again. Now Carter and Daniel were both giving him odd looks. They could question his sanity all they wanted, Tony was almost sure that one of the slaves would be listening. And while the other hem would keep their heads down and avoid getting involved, Stelli's life as a low-ranking slave just might suck enough for him to get involved.

O'Neill came over and leaned against the wall near Tony. "I've seen men snap under battle conditions, but I have to say that you have a unique way of handling it. Would you like to tell me what a 'stelli' might be."

"He might be someone who can help," Tony said. "However, I don't know if he can get through the locked doors. If he can, he'll be here."

O'Neill looked over and traded meaningful looks with Daniel. Tony had his own secret "look" code with Gibbs, so he could pretty much interpret what they had going on, so he wasn't surprised when Daniel took over the conversation. O'Neill moved over to cover Daniel's position guarding their rear.

"Is Stelli one of the hem?" Daniel asked in a calm voice he probably used to the soothe the natives and PTSD mad soldiers.

"The hem are going to keep their heads down and try and survive. Stelli is a sedjemash, which is the main reason why he might take a chance on us."

"Sedjemash?" O'Neill asked even as he watched his section of corridor.

"Low-ranked slave," Daniel answered.

"And their lives kind of suck, so offering him a chance to work a ten hour day in a base kitchen feeding soldiers would be a huge step up for him."

"You want to take him back to Earth?" O'Neill sounded scandalized.

Tony was supposed to be guarding the bulkheads Carter had lowered, but he turned his back on the task. Daniel was right there, he could guard the sealed hallway. "I'm not asking him to stand up against his gods and then abandoning him here to deal with the consequences on his own. So, yes, I plan to take him back to Earth."

"No." O'Neill didn't even pretend to make a joke out of it.

"Jack, we have taken others in."

"Others who have proved they are determined to fight the goa'uld,” O’Neill snapped. “We don’t run around offering it to every Tom, Dick and sedjemash.”

"Well if Stelli shows up and helps us, he'll have proved that too," Tony said. "He's a good man."

"Right, because he helped Samas." O'Neill rolled his eyes, and Tony was really on the verge of punching O’Neill. Okay, so getting an onac shoved in your head was a little rough. Tony could feel a little sympathy because he was weirded out himself; however, O’Neill was surpassing acceptable levels of bitchiness.

"No, because he helped me. He didn't have to, and given that Ba'al and Samas have pretty much hated each other from day one, it would have been a lot safer for him to steer clear, but he has helped me from the first."

Carter spoke up. "Colonel, I'm having trouble getting tactical data, including internal maps or sensors. Whatever is going on up on the bridge, it's slowing the computers down. A lot. They almost react like the main control panels have sustained damaged and the data is getting rerouted. If Di'Nozzo's friend can offer some help, we might need it."

O'Neill glared at her, but then he gave an elaborate sigh. "Yes, fine. Assuming Di'Nozzo's slave buddy shows up, we'll ask for help in return for a trip to Earth. You do know this is going to be one of the worst debriefs in all SGC history, correct? I mean, the three of us are going to be in full restraints as we give it."

"Yes, sir," Carter agreed.

"I'm holding out hope that the symbiotes are going to come out on their own," Daniel said.

"And little boys are made out of puppy dog tails," O'Neill said wearily.

Tony frowned. "There's no way that Gibbs and Samas will let you guys get stuck with symbiotes you don't want," Tony said carefully. O'Neill gave him a blank expression, but Daniel's mouth twisted unhappily before he ducked his head and Carter seemed to focus all her attention on the computer panel she was busily disassembling. Tony had no idea what to say in the face of that sort of pessimism.

He was saved from having to come up with any sort of response. O'Neill brought his stolen zat up and stepped into a shallow niche that offered some cover. "Halt!"

"I... yes, of course," a familiar voice answered.

"Stelli!" Tony hurried past O'Neill. The man made a horrible noise when Tony crossed his line of fire, but Tony didn't care. Stelli was there with that same calm expression he always wore.

The second Stelli saw him, he bowed his head. "My Lord. Did you ask for me?"

Tony caught the man by the shoulders and gave him a hug. Stelli looked absolutely dumbstruck. "You have the best timing ever. Now, we need to get into the area we visited earlier, the section with the cells where they were keeping O'Neill before we picked up symbiotes."

Stelli blinked at him. "I... All of you?" Stelli looked around for a second, and then he ducked his head in a less obvious bow. "Of course. If we cannot use the main corridor..." Stelli looked past them and toward the locked bulkheads.

"Oh, we definitely aren't going that way," O'Neill said.

Stelli nodded. "Then if my lords are not offended by the inadequacy of the facilities, we may use the servants' passages."

"Oh trust me, I'm far harder to offend than that," O'Neill said with a sort of manic grin. Tony wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment, but for now, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and two seconds of O’Neill not bitching about Gibbs was a gift.

They were two decks down and scurrying on a narrow ladder in a corridor that barely had enough room for one person to walk without both shoulders touching the sides when O’Neill spoke again. “So, how’d you know to look for these passages or yell for that Telli guy?” O’Neill actually sounded curious rather than confrontational, so Tony kept his own bitchiness to a minimum.

“I grew up in big houses. The servants always knew how to get around the place, and if I wanted to avoid my father, I learned to. I knew one of the servants would be keeping an ear out for us, and if I called for something specific, they’d get it if they could, well, as long as it didn’t require them to stick their necks out.”

O’Neill grunted and stuck his zat in his waist so he could brace his hands on the walls as he kept moving down the stairs. From the look of it, his knees did not like this particular activity, but he was still moving pretty damn fast. “You were avoiding your father, huh?”

“Do not start playing psychologist,” Tony said firmly. He’d already had Kate making uncharitable comments about his daddy issues and his loyalty to Gibbs. She hadn’t even met his father, and she made all sorts of assumptions. It was annoying—and he missed the hell out of having her annoy him. Sometimes he ached so much it felt like a missing limb. However, if he wouldn’t put up with psychobabble from Kate, he sure as hell wasn’t taking it from Gibbs. “My father never did anything wrong. We just had incompatible personalities.”

O’Neill looked over his shoulder and gave a disbelieving snort.

“This way, my lords,” Stelli said. He pushed open a panel and slipped out into a regular corridor.

Carter paused near the exit. “Sir, are you doing okay?” she asked when O’Neill passed.

“My knees don’t like me, but I’m holding up better than I thought I would.” With that, O’Neill kept right on going, and Carter took up a position on their six as soon as Tony passed.

At the next juncture, Stelli stopped. “The cells are in the next section, but a guard is posted whenever there is a prisoner.” He looked at them, and from the expression, he was really hoping he wouldn’t get ordered out into the middle of the firefight. The worst part was, he would probably go.

“No problem,” O’Neill grabbed Tony’s arm and yanked him forward. “Go play nice with the guard and then shoot him.”

“Excuse me?” Tony demanded. He was fine with shooting someone who was trying to shoot him, but he was not going to set out with the goal of killing someone. That was a line he was not crossing.

Daniel was there and he put a hand on the staff weapon Tony had liberated from a jaffa. “Hand me that. You take the zat. Remember, one shot disables. It takes two to kill,” Daniel said.

“Okay, that’s a little better.” Tony took the zat while O’Neill rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Go stun the evil alien slavers,” O’Neill sniped.

“They are slavers and they’re not evil,” Tony hissed as he passed the man. O’Neill really was annoyingly dogged in his hatred of all things not human. “Right or left?” Tony asked Stelli.

“Left, my lord.” Stelli wrung his hands as if undecided as to what he should do.

Tony patted him on the arm. “Wait here,” he said, and then he put on his best cocky grin and started strolling down the hallway, the zat hidden at his side. Either he’d get close enough to get a nice clean shot or the jaffa would shoot him dead. Weirdly, Tony felt a little zing of excitement at the choice. Normally facing death was not this exhilarating. However, if it kept him from freezing up in terror in the middle of a mission, Tony could handle a little lack of terror. He’d just invest in some therapy later.

Tony stood at the side as Carter tried to get the cell door open. O'Neill was leaning against the bars bemoaning their lack of C4. Eventually he seemed to get bored with listening to himself bitch. “So,” he said in a lazy drawl. “How’s it hanging with you, Teal’c?” Up until now, O’Neill had walked the room peering at every shadow. Now he finally focused on his teammate, who clearly wasn’t named Murray.

“All things hang as they usually do.”

O’Neill grinned. “Well that’s better than the alternative. Carter?”

Carter currently had her hands in the guts of alien circuitry. “I’m working on the locking mechanism now.”

“Yeah, I see that. I was hoping for more results,” O’Neill said.

Carter spared him a dirty look. “This is not easy, sir.”

“Now that’s your problem. You always make it look easy, so now you’ve raised my expectations.”

“I’ll make sure to disappoint you more in the future,” Carter said dryly without even looking up from her work.

Daniel laughed, and O’Neill gave him a dirty look. “So, Teal’c, here’s the thing. Thanks to Di’Nozzo’s friend, we’re all compromised.”

Teal’c raised an eyebrow.

“We got matching snakes. It’s like getting a team tattoo, only less tacky. So, if any of us start trying to take over the universe, feel free to shoot us in the ass with a zat.”

Tony got the feeling that O’Neill had finally managed to shock Teal’c. Personally, Tony would have been shocked at their little ragtag rescue, but Teal’c had been all stoic man up until this point. Now he blinked at O’Neill as if waiting for the punch line. Eventually he bowed his head and gave a simple, “I shall. How did this happen?”

O’Neill grimaced before saying, “Samas had the jaffa drop us in a pond full of goa'uld.”

“Onac,” Tony corrected him.

“Right. One burrows into the brain of an unwilling host, and the other... Oh. Right.” O'Neill gave Tony a dirty look.

Tony's temper finally snapped. “You can stop acting like an utter bastard. Gibbs and Samas are trying to save their people, and in case it’s escaped your notice, he’s a good guy.”

Immediately, O’Neill was in his face. “Right. And we’ve never heard that one before. Do you have any idea how many of these assholes have pretended to be on our side? They claim to be our allies and then test dangerous equipment on us. And we get ordered to still play nice. They tell us that they hated Ra and are on our side. Only their definition of ‘our side’ seems to include ripping out pieces of my internal organs and collecting DNA from Danny the old fashioned way.” O’Neill was right there in Tony’s space, crowding him back into the wall.

Tony glanced over, and Daniel was bright red, his gaze going everywhere except Tony. The arms around his stomach and the way he withdrew were familiar enough. Tony knew victims.

“Pieces of internal organs?” Tony asked softly, avoiding the more explosive topic of Daniel and stolen DNA.

O’Neill snorted and turned his back. A few brisk and stiff steps took him to the other side of the corridor where he watched for guard, and from the looks, he would have welcomed a chance to shoot someone.

Surprisingly, it was Daniel who spoke up. He might be showing the signs of a victim, but he was one of those victims that had a spine of steel who would stand up and point right at the perpetrator. Tony had seen that enough to recognize the type, and he’d seen enough victims who couldn’t do that to be impressed by Daniel’s strength.

“Hathor was the worst of them. She was one of the queens, and she used a goa’uld device to remove some of Jack’s internal organs to turn him into a jaffa. It would have worked except we had access to a sarcophagus, one that we blew up shortly after that.”

Tony frowned. “Wait.” He looked over at Teal’c. “You used to be human?” That was disturbing on a level that Tony rarely got disturbed anymore. Hell, he was in Baltimore when they had that kinky group who did self-serve castrations on each other and landed one guy in the emergency room. After that, Tony would have claimed he’d seen it all in terms of body modification, but this was a new level of disturbing.

“I was not,” Teal’c said calmly. “For many generations my family have been jaffa, although I believe my ancestors were once from Earth.”

That somehow made it worse. Not only did the goa’uld screw with people’s bodies, but they made it genetic so that the kids were screwed by default. Tony really didn’t like these guys.

Daniel had his head ducked in a half bow, and he studied the back of his own hand where he gripped his zat. “She used my DNA to try and spawn new goa’uld.”

“What?” Tony’s voice came out as a disbelieving sort of squawk, which was not the tone he was going for with a potential rape victim.

Daniel’s head popped up, and Tony could almost feel the aggression rolling in from O’Neill’s side.

“I mean, they’re a different species. Why would a queen want human DNA? That’s… disturbing and wrong.”

O’Neill snorted.

Daniel shrugged. “If the symbiotes have some human DNA in them, it makes them more compatible with human hosts.”

“And that probably explains why they can’t live as free-swimming predators,” Tony said softly. “God, no wonder Samas thinks the goa’uld are sick bastards.”

O’Neill narrowed his eyes. “Do not start in on how all onac are warm and fuzzy.” From the tone O’Neill was using, he was seriously considering shooting Tony.

“Samas is as warm and fuzzy as a porcupine. That was actually the second time I watched him eat one of his own people and then vomit up the remains,” Tony pointed out. “He’s a predator, and if he thinks an onac is weak, he’s not going to feel guilty about killing in cold blood. Well, assuming they have blood.”

O’Neill leaned back against the corridor and seemed to turn his attention back to guarding the far end of the hall, but now that Tony understood the dynamics better, he could see how O’Neill kept part of his attention on Daniel the whole time.

Tony ran his fingers through his hair. This was a little more complicated than he’d understood. “I just think that Samas wants his people to be predators. That won’t work if they stay in hosts. I don’t think he’s going to keep his word because he’s warm and fuzzy. I think he’ll keep his word because he has a sense of honor and because it gets him what he wants.”

“Selfishness is a motive I can get behind when it comes to the goa’uld,” O’Neill said, and this time Tony didn’t bother correcting him.

“I wonder if the genetic manipulation was because of Ra or if the queens were doing it to try and get back at him, maybe by making their jaffa stronger than his.” Tony couldn’t quite figure that one out.

“What?” Daniel pushed up his glasses. “What are you talking about?”

“The queens.” Tony could see the blank expression on Daniel’s face. “The queens always had the power, so Ra tried to clip their wings and there was some sort of war. And clearly this is news to you.”

Daniel made a strange face. “Sort of. We know there were a lot of queens that got put in stasis in some way.”

“And others were killed. Apparently Yu was associated with one of the queens who really hated the idea of moving into hosts full time. He and Ra didn’t get along well after that.”

“And you found out all this in the few days you were here?” O’Neill asked. He didn’t bother hiding his skepticism, but that was fine. Tony cultivated an air of incompetence, so he didn’t mind it when people believed his shtick.

Tony grinned. “It helps to make friends in low places.” Personally Tony was still a little hacked off that O’Neill had dismissed Stelli, sending him back to the slave quarters. True, he was probably safer there, but he was Tony’s buddy, not O’Neill’s.

“Where does Samas fit into the war between the queens and Ra?” Daniel asked.

Tony grinned and did a bit of quick mental editing. “Ra brought the igigi in to try and fix some genetic line or replenish his forces… I don’t actually know what. But I know Samas lost his queen when she refused to cooperate with Ra. Apparently she hadn’t realized what he was doing with her children until later.”

Daniel was nodding. “That makes sense. Igigi were lesser gods, slaves to the higher gods. Shamash was never identified with that mythology, but he was known as the god of justice who inspired Hammurabi and was the mentor to Gilgamesh, the champion of mankind. He stepped in to protect people several times in history.”

“Right. So he’s the good guy,” O’Neill said, and now he was glaring at Daniel.

However, unlike Tony who always tried to return a stupid grin for every hateful look he got, Daniel gave O’Neill an equally unhappy glare. “I am not an idiot, and the Code of Hammurabi was one of the most brutal codes of justice in all of human history. If Shamash had anything to do with it, I would call him a cold hearted bastard who cares about justice, even if his concern for actual people is a little lacking. His queen would have been Nanna, who was the daughter of Ninlil, but we haven’t run into any mention of those queens.”

Tony blinked. Okay, Tony was used to people subconsciously weaving in the details around the lies and obfuscations he sometimes used. Tony would mention some random woman, and let Tim’s imagination go from there, even when Tony was talking about the waitress at the local sandwich shop. However, Daniel seemed to be taking that to an oddly specific extreme. “Nanna? Ninlin?”

Daniel was humming. “Has Shamash mentioned either of those names?”

Tony didn’t intend on giving Daniel any specific details he could check on. The man was too smart. Luckily, given a couple of details, he also seemed pretty willing to make up the rest of the story on his own. Tony answered sadly, “Mentioning queens around Samas, especially mentioning his queen, is a sure way to get locked out of the room or just have Samas separate from Gibbs and go swimming. Not much talking gets done when he’s in that form.”

“I have never heard of a goa’uld who casually separated from the host,” Teal’c said. The man was usually so silent that his voice startled Tony. He was equally shocked that Teal’c almost seemed to be coming down on the side of giving Samas the benefit of the doubt and not lumping him in with all goa’uld.

“Oh thank God. I have it,” Carter said. She had no more than finished when the cell door popped open.

“There you go, Major. See, miracles on demand,” O’Neill said happily. “Okay kids, it’s time to blow this popsicle stand.”

“What? No!” Tony stepped right into O’Neill’s personal space. “We said we could go back up Gibbs as soon as we had Teal’c.”

“And, but, or…” O’Neill let his voice trail off, that same manic glee coloring his tone. He man was definitely a couple of reels short of a full movie.

“And I’m going to the bridge. But Gibbs would never leave us. Or you can leave, and then you’ll be stuck with onac in your heads.”

O’Neill gave a dramatic sigh. “Fine. We’ll go find the gunny. Happy?”

“Deliriously,” Tony answered. O’Neill didn’t fool him, though. If the colonel hadn’t been planning on going up to the bridge, he wouldn’t have been so quick to agree. He’d never planned on leaving Gibbs behind, but he had planned on threatening to leave, just to annoy Tony. The man was an asshole. Unfortunately, Tony was starting to think he was an asshole who might be right about one or two things.

Tony leaned against a fancy looking console and tried to catch his breath. At least he did until Carter shoved him. “Don’t touch that,” she snapped. Then again, she had taken a bad hit to the head when one of Ba’al’s underlords had tossed her into the wall, so Tony figured she had a right to be cranky.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said as he shuffled to the side where he couldn’t touch anything.

“The drive controls are there, and so are weapons,” Carter said wearily. It almost sounded like an apology.

“Yeah, DiNozzo, don’t blow up the planet by accident,” O’Neill called from the other side of the room.

Daniel was bandaging O’Neill’s arm with supplies from SG1’s newly rediscovered packs. He exchanged a few hushed words with O’Neill, but the colonel just rolled his eyes. The only one of them that seemed to have come through unscathed was Teal’c. Even Kali looked a little worse for wear, although she had a manic grin on her face that rivaled O’Neill’s.

“We have won,” she announced. O’Neill narrowed his eyes and shifted the P90 he had in his lap, but he didn’t comment.

Gibbs gave quick nod. “We have. Now those of us from Earth are returning to the planet. We’re taking a tel’tak.”

The smile vanished off Kali’s face, and Tony watched the whole room shift. Daniel moved to the side of O’Neill and inched closer to a column. Teal’c’s hand rested against his staff weapon, and Carter moved to use the console as cover. Unfortunately, Tony didn’t have a weapon and he wasn’t sure which side to take cover with, so he stood right in the middle of the potential firefight.

“You should stay with us, Samas,” she said, her voice carefully controlled.

Tony could have pointed out that Samas wasn’t driving the body, but Kali, like all of SG1, seemed to think that the reverberation in the voice was a reliable gauge of who might be in charge. It wasn’t.

“I will not,” Gibbs said, imitating the slightly more formal tones of Samas. It was the first time Tony had heard Gibbs do that, either that or Gibbs was keeping control of the body and Samas was running the voice. Either way, Tony shifted closer to his boss.

“You would be welcomed back,” Kali said.

“Welcomed back by two creatures who did not defend their queens. Ra and other others were mad with power. What excuse do you have for allowing the near extermination of our species?” Gibbs had his best glare going—the one that sometimes made suspected pee themselves just a little.

Kali lifted her chin. “We survived.”

“And you left generations of children to die in ignorance. I will not forget that, so it’s best that we don’t see each other again,” Gibbs said. He took a step toward her and grabbed her bare arm. Kali stared at him with wide eyes, and Tony held his breath. They were saying something to each other in that touch. Eventually Gibbs pushed her away and took a step backwards. “We are taking a tel’tak.” He turned his back on Kali and started to leave the bridge.

“Samas,” Kali called out. Gibbs stopped, but he didn’t turn around. He waited with his back turned. She looked around the room, clearly not happy saying this in front of an audience. “Samas, we will not make that mistake again. We will defend the waters, and we will make sure that the rites of hosting are observed.”

Gibbs turned, but instead of looking at Kali, he looked at Tony. “Who are the most honorable and brave individuals on his ship?” he asked.

Tony glanced over at Kali, but her face was devoid of any expression. Given that she had refused to help Samas, she wasn’t going on his list, though.

“There is a slave named Stelli. He was willing to risk his life to come to our aid. There was a young jaffa with dark hair and a scar on his left cheek. He was always watchful, and I think he sees a lot more than he lets on.”

Gibbs gave a nod and then looked over at Kali. “If you’re going to see the rites are done well, that is where you start to prove it to me.” And with that, Gibbs was done. He strode out of the room. Tony hurried after, only half-hearing the snarky comments O’Neill seemed to fling at Kali as if throwing grenades to cover their retreat. O’Neill’s mouth seemed like it was much more capable of starting trouble than a grenade, though.

Daniel ran after them, and O’Neill called out his name along with “for cryin’ out loud.” O’Neill seemed to like that phrase.

“What are the rites?” Daniel asked.

Gibbs glanced back at Daniel and then his gaze moved farther back to O’Neill. For all his bitching, O’Neill seemed to be watching their six while Carter and Teal’c moved up.

“I too would like to know,” Teal’c said before passing them and taking point.

“Warriors had to prove themselves worthy before they were allowed near sacred waters. Now the onac seemed to swim everywhere, and they don’t seem to know the difference between someone getting water and someone trying to find a symbiote.”

Daniel cringed. “We actually lost a scientist that way. He was infected, and when he tried to kill us, we had to kill him.”

Gibbs stopped and turned. “Why would he try to kill you?”

“Maybe because we had him tied up and we were going to drag him back to earth and cut him out of his host’s brain to try and save the scientist,” O’Neill offered. He was definitely trying to prod Gibbs into some reaction.

“The onac don’t know any better now,” Gibbs said with a sigh. He started moving through the ship again. Slaves were starting to come out of hiding, and several bowed deeply as they passed.

“Okay, that’s kind of creepy,” O’Neill complained softly.

“Creepy is leaving Stelli behind,” Tony complained, and he didn’t bother being quiet about it.

“He wouldn’t understand Earth culture. We would make him miserable,” Gibbs said. “Besides, most of the slaves have families here, Tony.”

“Leaving him behind is not the way to make his life better, boss.”

“No, but you told Kali that he had the balls to get in the middle of the fight. That will mean something to her. She was always a warrior, and she’ll be looking for good men and women. Trust him to make the best out of the opportunity you gave him.”

Teal’c stopped at one of the rings rooms. “We can transport to the deck with the tel’tak, but I cannot predict who might be waiting.”

O’Neill sighed. “Right. We walk. At least the knees aren’t bothering me too much today.”

“Sir, the symbiote is probably trying—”

“Carter,” O’Neill cut her off, “do not suggest that this worm in my head is doing anything good.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a tone that somehow made it very clear that she was implying exactly that. Carter had a knack for saying things in military-precise words while at the same time seeming to mean the exact opposite. Tony liked her.

“So,” Daniel said, drawing the word out as Teal’c now led them toward access corridors that linked the ship decks. “Why all the politics around this planet? Why were they all trying to get at you?”

Gibbs sighed, rubbed his face, and then dropped the pretense of speaking with Samas’ voice. “The others can’t leave their hosts. While in a body, communication through the skin is hard. The images are muted, and the onac can’t use his full language. So Kali and Yu and Ba’al can’t talk to the onac in the waters.”

“Samas can?” Daniel asked.

Gibbs nodded. “Before Samas brought everyone down to the planet, he went into the water alone and tried to figure out what had happened. Onac remember events from thousands of years ago, so one of the symbiote lines should have been able to share the information.”

O’Neill made a very unhappy noise. “Gunny, we are going to have to talk about some of the decisions you made, such as allowing that snake back in you. For your sake, I really hope you didn’t know the whole plan.”

Gibbs’ response was so predictable that Tony could have cried. “I knew,” he said. God forbid Gibbs cover his own ass. While the man might be willing to avoid talking about the things he’d done, he always refused to outright lie—even when he damn well should. O’Neill went from looking pissed to looking homicidal.

When Daniel physically stepped between the two men, Tony knew he wasn’t the only one to notice that shift.

Jumping into the breach, Daniel quickly asked, “Did any of the symbiotes know what happened?”

“None of them knew anything,” Gibbs said, his voice flat. “Samas thought he might find the genetic memories skewed. He was afraid he’d find a planet full of potential goa’uld who all remembered Ra’s stories of stolen power and how good it felt to control others. Instead he found they were all mute and ignorant.”

“Mute?” Daniel practically shoved Tony aside to get next to Gibbs. He even pulled out a small mini-recorder and turned it on before attaching it to his vest. Gibbs raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Onac communicate through chemicals on their skin. As they swim, these leave traces in the water so that as another onac swims through, they can hear whatever the first onac was thinking about. Most of the symbiotes who have taken human hosts call it singing. None of them were singing.”

“Wait. None?” Daniel sounded alarmed.

Gibbs gave him a flat look. “None. When Samas tracked the onac down, they all acted like simple predators or prey. There was no sentience there at all.”

“But… You’re not just talking about a cultural collapse, but a complete de-evolution affecting the entire species down to the individual level. This is… this is…” Daniel clearly didn’t have words for what this was because he waved his hands without finishing.

“Bad?” Tony guessed.

“Catastrophic.”

“So, really bad,” O’Neill said. “I’m still not feeling the sympathy.”

They had been walking and climbing down levels and walking more, but now Gibbs stopped and looked at O’Neill. “This is no different than if someone had blasted Earth back to the stone age because they’d taken offense to the Nazis. The goa’uld are evil. I don’t disagree with that, but all onac are not to blame for the actions of a corrupt memory line that will die when the last of the goa’uld die.”

“The last die?” O’Neill pounced on that. “Are you talking in metaphors, perhaps?”

“Yu is unable to fully regenerate. Kali is significantly weakened. Many of the other ancient goa’uld have died because their conditions made it impossible to defend against others. They don’t return to the water, and being in the human host creates health problems they could not predict.”

“And the younger generation?” O’Neill asked, his mind already clicking away on threat assessments. It was freaky the way the man could go from goofy to deadly serious in a heartbeat.

“Ra had the queens weaken the younger symbiotes to make sure they never challenged him. That was the main contention between Ra and Samas’ queen,” Gibbs said. “Samas’ queen refused to do it, so Ra destroyed all her offspring. The queens who complied created generations of symbiotes who are inferior. They’re dying faster than the original generations.”

“Huh.” O’Neill didn’t look convinced, but he did look interested.

“We know Lord Yu is having trouble,” Daniel said. “It stands to reason that if Yu is aging, that means the goa’uld of his generation can’t regenerate anymore, yet we haven’t seen a new crop of younger, stronger goa’uld taking over. Ba’al is the youngest one we’ve seen take power, and he’s thousands of years old.”

“So, you think this could be true?” O’Neill clapped his hands together. “I’m all for throwing a ‘don’t let the door hit you on your ass on the way out’ party to celebrate their extinction.”

Daniel’s glare actually frightened Tony a little. With a sigh, Gibbs started down the corridor, and Teal’c, who had stopped, slipped back into point.

“Daniel, they’re bad guys,” O’Neill said.

“The goa’uld are. Gibbs is talking about an entire species facing extinction.”

“Good.”

“A species that is not evil.”

“Danny, Samas had you tied up and shoved you in a pond full of parasites. I think he falls on the evil side of the fence.”

Tony’s back stiffened and he wanted to turn around and argue, but it wasn’t his place. He hadn’t suffered the way these people had. He was actually a little surprised that Daniel was standing up for Samas considering he seemed to have suffered more than the others. Humans recovered from physical wounds faster than the psychological traumas. Tony had seen enough police work to know exactly how true that was, but Daniel was still in there defending Samas.

“What would you do to protect humanity?” Daniel demanded.

“I wouldn’t hurt innocent people.”

“And the Salish?” Daniel demanded.

“Oh for crying out loud. I wanted to help them resettle; I wasn’t trying to shove snakes in their heads.”

“You tried to take them off their planet, and look how well that worked out.”

O’Neill glared at Daniel.

“And how about Euronda?”

Whatever that was about, O’Neill practically bristled with aggression. “I didn’t take the deal, Daniel.”

“You were ready to cooperate with a mass murderer to get technology. I was the one who argued against it. And then there’s the people of Orban who weren’t really thrilled with you kidnapping one of the children scientists.”

“They brainwiped children, Danny. What was I supposed to do, let them keep destroying kids?”

Daniel’s voice got soft. “I think you did what you had to in order to save lives, Jack.”

They had reached the hanger doors, but O’Neill and Daniel had been so deep in their conversation that the rest of them had stood guard and waited while the two men went at it.

Tony disliked having to wait for Daniel to make all the arguments, but it didn’t matter how logical Tony was, he didn’t have the history with O’Neill that would make the other man listen. Tony got it. After all, there were days that Tim had perfectly reasonable requests, but Gibbs didn’t act on them as quickly as he would have if the same request had come from Tony. Part of Tony preened in the evidence that Gibbs liked him better, but part of him cringed in sympathy every time Tim hit that wall. Eventually Gibbs would trust Tim, but it took time.

Well, unless your name was Ziva, and Tony was still trying to deal with that bit of jealousy.

O’Neill reached out and caught Daniel by the arm. “Let’s go home and worry about the rest later.”

“We have to stop at the water and get the onac out of you first,” Gibbs said.

O’Neill snorted. “Just that easy, huh?”

“Yes,” Gibbs said.

O’Neill’s expression turned calculating. “I thought you said they were all dumb animals now. No more singing. They’re all instinct and no thought. Does any of that ring a bell?”

Gibbs faded away, and the soft smile was all Samas. “My people lack creativity. I am well aware of this flaw. However, we make up for this flaw by the speed at which we can learn things. I sang for the onac in the waters, and within an hour, they were starting to repeat my songs. They are already recovering—they are a blank slate that I can now fill with the memory of great quests and voluntary pairings. I will see my people return to what they once were, even if the unas refuse to join in the ceremony again.”

“That’s what Kali and Yu are agreeing to… they’ll bring people here for voluntary joining?” Daniel asked. O’Neill watched in silence.

“They remember the way. This is also the sacred water where they were born. Their genetic family is here… their offspring. If they can’t save themselves, they can save their descendants or they can watch as their genetic line dies with them. Ra has finally lost. His vision of the goa’uld will die, and the onac will survive.”

Gibbs triggered the controls and opened the hanger doors. Tony tensed, half afraid more of Ba’al’s jaffa would appear out of nowhere, but only a few servants bowed to them as Gibbs strode toward a squat, triangle-shaped ship.

“Move out, people,” O’Neill said with a sigh. “I wonder if I can claim amnesia and just skip this whole debrief.”

The look Carter gave him was almost sympathetic. Daniel’s wasn’t.

Tony looked out at the calm waters. Ducky would call this place bucolic, and it was… except for the alien snakes in the water and the giant people-lizard things that apparently lived in caves and threatened to eat archeologists. Tony made a silent vow to never again ask Daniel a direct question. The answers were a little scary. “So, how do we do this, boss?” he asked.

Gibbs looked across the shallow pond. “Walk into the water, and the onac will come out.” He was still using the reverberation that everyone else associated with Samas.

“And when that doesn’t work?” O’Neill asked. He walked out ankle deep into the water and clutched his P90. Tony watched, but nothing happened. “What next?” O’Neill asked as if utterly unsurprised.

Gibbs frowned and walked toward O’Neill. Tony watched as the colonel’s body language screamed his unease, but he didn’t retreat as Gibbs reached out and wrapped fingers around his wrist.

“I’m not sure, but I think we had an in-service training about this kind of touching,” O’Neill commented.

Gibbs gave a small smile. “Your onac only had to know his choices. He will come out.”

“Ri—” O’Neill gagged and then the onac was flopping out of him. It hit the shallow mud and flipped itself into the air with a slap of its tail, and then O’Neill was firing his P90. Bullets shredded the onac’s body and pieces flew everywhere. Gibbs didn’t react, but Tony’s heart pounded painfully hard and Carter and Daniel both clutched their weapons.

“Jack? What the hell was that?” Daniel demanded.

“I’m not letting a snake run around with information out of my head,” O’Neill said.

Gibbs nodded. “The onac could either make a run for it or I threatened to kill him and rip him out of your head. He made his choice.” He looked down at a few chunks that floated on the surface of the muddy water. Tony was surprised that the other onac weren’t munching, but then he could feel something pressing against his skin, warning him away from the mess, and he was guessing that was Samas.

“You want our onac to teach the ones in there, don’t you?” O’Neill asked.

Gibbs gave a small nod. “One song is not enough to teach them how to sing.”

“But three or four would be?” Daniel asked. “I would support any reasonable attempt to recover your species, but do you really think this would be enough?”

“Yes,” Gibbs said. “Ra and Ra alone taught an entire generation of onac to desire power. I can remind them of what they used to be.”

Carter moved to the edge of the pond, and Tony watched as O’Neill shifted slightly, his weapon ready. He planned to do this again. “How do you know it was Ra alone?” Carter asked.

“My mother’s mother was alive at the time. She heard only distant fragments of his song, but a host came here—something not unas. It came to the sacred waters, and when Ra joined with this host, he learned to crave power and the submission of others. The host was warped in ways the onac were not prepared to handle. None of the queens knew of the danger when he started to sing, so none of them ate him and vomited his parts up on dry land.”

“So, one person can make a difference?” Daniel asked.

“No,” O’Neill snapped. “You are not doing this.”

Daniel got an expression that Tony was quickly learning to associate with Daniel pissing off the colonel. “I go into alien cultures all the time.”

“You, not snake-you. Not a chance, Daniel.” O’Neill had the weapon aimed in Daniel’s general direction, and Carter suddenly cried out. O’Neill swung back around to see her coughing and stumbling back away from the water.

“Crap.” O’Neill whirled around and focused on Daniel again.

“Sorry, sir. It got away,” Carter said.

“Teal’c, you couldn’t have shot it?” O’Neill asked wearily.

“You did not request that I do so,” Teal’c answered. O’Neill just sighed.

“You are not shooting my onac.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, and Tony wondered how he had fallen into the world’s oddest conversation.

“Watch me,” O’Neill said.

“You do not get to make the decision for me,” Daniel said, and before anyone could blink, he had done a belly flop right into the twelve inches of water at the edge of the pond.

“Daniel!” O’Neill hurried over and hauled Daniel up. From the coughing and smiling, Tony was guessing that Daniel had successfully helped his onac escape.

“That’s going to be a good story for the campfire,” Tony commented.

“Ya think?” Gibbs said, grinning as he watched Daniel pick his way out of the mud.

Tony walked to the edge of the pond. “If you shoot my onac, I will do very unpleasant things to your hair,” Tony warned the colonel.

O’Neill put the safety on his weapon and got an arm under Daniel’s elbow before the man could faceplant in the mud again. “DiNozzo, I don’t care what you do with your snake. You don’t have classified material in your head.”

“Hey! Yes I do,” Tony objected, “although it’s more about the wonderful world of NCIS paperwork.”

O’Neill grunted, although that might have been because of Daniel’s weight.

When Gibbs reached out and caught his arm, Tony could feel the flash of emotions between them. Gibbs and Samas were proud of him, protective and viciously afraid for him. There was a deep affection there that Tony hadn’t expected given the many ways he’d pissed Gibbs off in the past few days. Tony had no more than had that thought than he felt a wave of amusement, of approval for Tony’s ability to break the rules.

Then Tony got something more specific. He felt a ghost image—the slide of water over his long body, a narrow crevice, the presence of tiny onac, of small voices that whispered rather than sang. Their thoughts drifted out in tiny doses, almost lost in the current of the river. Tony could feel the danger. They were small, and there were so many that other onac would see them as prey. Some would die. That was accepted, but they couldn’t all be lost. They carried the memories.

He remembered Kali as she swam through the water, her fins hard razors as she fought. He remembered Yu’s twistiness, the way he would flip a tail and drive his teeth into his opponent while his opponent still tried to chase that elusive tail. He remembered the waters loud with a dozen songs, queens sliding through them seeking the best. And when queens met, the water would turn red with their blood. These tiny onac hiding in the gaps of the rocks sang of all that.

Samas should stay to protect them, but to do so would be to leave Gibbs dangerously short of resources. Samas couldn’t protect both the children and his host. Tony grabbed Gibbs’ arm and imagined himself in the body of an onac, his own fins erect and his teeth sharp as he snapped at any onac that came near his brood. They were Samas’ children, and Tony always took care of the boss’s stuff.

Samas smiled at him. “I will join you in the water shortly,” Samas said. Tony could feel the violence in that promise. Samas would chase him, try to sink teeth into him. Tony had to tempt the queen into taking his blood and his DNA without giving up so much that the queen found him weak or that she killed him. He couldn’t protect the children if he was dead. It was a new challenge, and Tony felt a hot flash of adrenaline and then he felt a need to retch. He bent over to vomit, but the onac slipped out instead.

The second it was clear of Tony, its fins opened and it vanished into the water with a flick of its tail. For one strange second, Tony felt like he should be in the water, searching for that cache of rock where he would find his small charges. But that wasn’t his quest.

Samas tightened his fingers around Tony’s arm. “Keep the idiot from throwing himself on his own sword,” Samas requested.

“Always,” Tony agreed. And then Samas did a far quicker and neater exit from Gibbs. He dove into the water nose first, and appeared again, snapping up several pieces of O’Neill’s symbiote from the water. Tony suspected that Samas wouldn’t be vomiting that one back up, but what O’Neill didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Gibbs dropped his hand and trudged slowly out of the water, squinting. “I hate how he can never fix my eyesight well enough to make it stay fixed when he leaves.”

Tony started laughing. “Christ almighty, Kate, you missed that one.”

“DiNozzo?” Gibbs demanded.

Tony laughed some more as he climbed up to dry land. “Your eyesight, boss. One day you were a sharpshooter who made us both feel inadequate to breathe the same air, and the next you were squinting at a license plate on the screen asking if the last letter was a B or an R when it was really a five. Kate finally decided you had a deep subconscious hatred for desk work and your problems with your eyesight were all a psychological symptom.”

“Huh. Not really,” Gibbs said.

Tony sat down on the grass and looked up at an alien sky. He wondered if Kate was watching, and if so, whether she’d just fallen off her heavenly chair laughing. “Yeah, I think we missed the boat on a lot of things, Gibbs.”

“Probably. But right now, I think we need to talk about the future,” Gibbs said. Tony thought Gibbs was talking to him, but when he looked over, Gibbs had his attention locked onto O’Neill.

“Yeah, we probably should, Gunny,” O’Neill agreed.

After announcing that they had to talk, both O’Neill and Gibbs proceeded to not talk. It was like watching two functional mutes lead their debate teams. Tony would have jumped in, only he wasn’t sure how to get out of this mess. He only knew that he’d stick with Gibbs, whatever decision he made.

“I accept that I will be brought up on charges,” Gibbs finally said, “assaulting an officer at the very least.”

That sounded a lot like falling on a sword. Tony pushed himself up onto his feet.

O’Neill glanced his way. “Don’t get your panties wadded up,” O’Neill snapped, and Tony’s eyebrows went all the way to full mast. He definitely needed to do something unpleasant to O’Neill, and as the reigning king of practical jokes that pushed the line between joking and harassment, Tony had a few ideas—that is assuming he didn’t land in a jail cell next to Gibbs.

“Tony, stay out of this,” Gibbs warned in his most dangerous ‘do not cross me’ voice.

“Forget it. I promised Samas that I wouldn’t let you do anything stupid. Besides, you were happy to live your life as an NCIS agent until other people started dragging your past up. You didn’t ask for this.”

“No, but he sided with an alien over his own people,” O’Neill said. That should have come out in a pretty accusatory voice, but instead O’Neill sounded curious. He watched Gibbs.

“Your interrogation technique could use some polish,” Gibbs said. “If you want to know something, ask. I’ve already told you that I agreed to help Samas because without help, his entire race would have been destroyed because of these goa’uld.”

“And now they’re all hunky dory,” O’Neill said. Again, the tone of voice was far too neutral.

Daniel took a step forward, and he might have walked right up to Gibbs only O’Neill caught his arm to keep him close. “Agent Gibbs, you said the onac were already learning from Samas, and if you had Samas and Tony, why did you have to infest us?”

Gibbs turned his back and headed downstream a few feet before choosing a wide rock to sit on. “Kali needed a ship. She has almost nothing left, and the others watch Lord Yu. The younger goa’uld know he’s dying, and they’re ready to try to grab his empire. Apparently he’s so mentally confused, that he’s really not able to do anything except order his jaffa to continue doing their jobs. With that ship, Kali can make trips into his territory and start trying to get his planets to shift their loyalty.”

“She’s building an empire,” O’Neill said dryly. “Great.”

Gibbs shifted his gaze over to O’Neill. “Colonel, she only has another decade or two to live. She’s old, and she’s trying to build a legacy, not an empire.” Gibbs looked over at Teal’c. “She would negotiate with the free jaffa as long as it didn’t interfere with her main plan.”

“Which is?” O’Neill demanded.

Gibbs looked out over the water. “To bring people here. To have the onac remember what she did. To have hosts carry her descendants out into the stars and then come home to sing about it.”

Daniel nodded. “That makes sense. It would explain why the symbiotes have predatory structures. That’s a lot of body to try and shove into a host’s head.”

“And it’s cramped, which is why the onac who stay in hosts atrophy,” Gibbs said. “Samas would like to come back and help you fight the rest of the goa’uld, but he can’t give up his body to permanently live in mine.”

“Help us? We’ve gotten that offer before, Gunny. It didn’t turn out that well.”

Tony grimaced. Unless he was badly misreading the situation, it had ended with the team badly assaulted and Daniel raped. Not well would be an understatement.

Gibbs shrugged. “I expect you’ll keep both of us under guard. Samas knows that.”

“And what sort of help would he be offering?” O’Neill rested his arm on his P90, which was either a habit or a threat, Tony was having trouble reading him.

“He’s onac. Once he sees technology, he learns it fast. He knows a lot about certain types of goa’uld tech, including surveillance and life support, and with that knowledge, he can learn the others systems pretty fast. He doesn’t know much about the current politics, and frankly, he doesn’t want to know. However, if you have someone infested with a goa’uld, he would be very happy to rip it out.”

“What’s the alternative?” O’Neill asked. Tony was surprised the man was even considering the offer.

“I refuse to go near the water again, Samas stays with his people, and when we get back to Earth, I suspect you’ll arrest me.”

“Or not,” Tony barked out. “Gibbs helped rescue you people,” Tony said, poking a finger in O’Neill’s direction.

“That? Nah, we would have gotten out of that. We’ve been in way worse situations.” O’Neill had the gall to make it all sound like a joke.

“You were locked in a jail cell on an alien ship.”

O’Neill gave Tony a very long look before he answered. “And we’ve been in situations that make that look like a vacation. We would have gotten out on our own. However, I do give you credit for stepping up to the plate when you didn’t have to.” O’Neill turned to Gibbs. “You’re not going to come out looking quite as good in the reports. Even if we make a deal, there’s no way for me to make my superiors accept it.”

“I know what I did,” Gibbs said in his most implacable voice.

“Okay.” O’Neill looked around at the trees that gently chittered in the wind. “So, you’ll trade your knowledge of goa’uld tech for what?”

“First, it’s Samas’ knowledge,” Gibbs said. “I retain enough that I could hotwire a tel’tak, but I wouldn’t be able to change the filter on that thing without Samas in here.”

Carter frowned. “Usually the host retains more of the symbiote’s knowledge, unless the symbiote is trying to keep the host ignorant intentionally.”

“Samas is old,” Gibbs said. “If he shares too much, it could overwhelm me. Onac that old don’t usually join with hosts anymore, but we were both in a bad situation. At the time, I didn’t much care if he destroyed my mind trying to fit in there.”

“Colombia,” O’Neill said softly. That’s where he and Gibbs had first met, on a covert ops mission in Columbia, and O’Neill had never known that Gibbs had his onac passenger. Tony almost felt sorry for whoever they’d gone after, because Gibbs, Samas and O’Neill together was a pretty damn scary combination.

Gibbs nodded. “I think I would have kept volunteering for suicide missions, but it seemed a little hypocritical. Samas had lost more than I had, and he still kept fighting to survive in the slim hope that one day he’d get a chance to strike back. He’s actually a little pissed that you people killed Ra. He had a lot of fantasies about what he would do to that son of a bitch.”

“Get in line. Ra wasn’t popular with a lot of folk,” O’Neill said dismissively.

“Ra killed over a thousand members of Samas’ family, wiped them all out to try and make sure that the onac reverence for temporary hosting died with them. Samas’ own host died in horrible pain. Samas would have died with her only the goa’uld underestimated them both.”

“Yeah, Ra was a sweetheart like that,” O’Neill agreed. “So, Samas is helping us out of some desire for revenge?”

Gibbs shook his head. “The goa’uld hate the idea of these waters. They don’t want to admit that they’ve become parasites, and these waters remind them. If the goa’uld find this place, they’ll destroy the whole planet. Samas will do what it takes to keep his people safe, and that means he’ll help you destroy the goa’uld.”

“So, you come back, accept being in custody for the rest of your life, and help us with technology. Why is that sounding too good to be true?” O’Neill had been casually watching everything, but now he turned and really focused on Gibbs.

“I’m going to be in custody either way,” Gibbs pointed out. “I’d rather be helping my country than sitting in a jail cell. Samas has a couple of conditions, though.”

“Right. Of course. Let’s hear ‘em.”

“He needs to be able to swim freely. Onac were never designed to try and prevent aging or stay in a body long-term.”

“So we find him a bathtub,” O’Neill said with a casual shrug.

Gibbs was immediately on his feet and moving toward O’Neill. Tony watched as Teal’c immediately brought his staff weapon to bear on Gibbs, and Tony brought his staff weapon down to point at Teal’c. Carter then had her P90 pointed at him, and this was not a good place for a stand off. There just wasn’t enough cover.

“Tony, stand down,” Gibbs ordered.

“Boss?”

“Now.”

Tony gritted his teeth, but he lowered the staff weapon. When Carter came close, her P90 still pointed at his stomach, Tony allowed her to confiscate it.

Gibbs waited until Tony was unarmed before turning his attention back to O’Neill. “Samas doesn’t want to swim in circles. He needs a large enclosure. He’s not asking to be allowed to swim in the Atlantic unsupervised, although he has done that quite a lot, but he does need something closer to a swimming pool than a bathtub.

Daniel spoke up. “We have the aquatic biology labs. They have a series of connected pools they used to bring back native fish.”

Gibbs nodded. “That would be perfect as long as your biologists know that Samas is likely to eat some of their specimens.”

“Well, that might not be exactly, you know…” Daniel frowned. “Maybe we could find them another lab.”

“How much time does he need to spend in the water?” O’Neill asked, and Tony had the definite impression they were moving on to negotiating the details.

“In an emergency, he can stay in me for weeks. The situation with Ari certainly proved that.” Gibbs looked over and gave Tony a wry look. “Your concern about my lack of sleep was appreciated, but not really necessary.”

“At least now I don’t feel bad about the fact that a man ten years older than me was running me into the ground without trying,” Tony said with a shrug. “You were giving me an inferiority complex.”

“What about in non-emergency situations?” O’Neill said, interrupting the moment.

“If he comes out every night, he can go months without wanting a day alone. If we’re on a case and he stays in me, after four or five days, he starts to want out.”

“So, we’d have your help when Samas is with you, but we’d also have periods of time when we could talk to you without the snake being in there?” O’Neill nodded, seemingly pleased by that. “I assume that you’re negotiating without Samas so we know that you’re not under duress.”

Gibbs gave one of his not-nice smiles. “I’m doing it without him because if you don’t agree to his terms, there’s no way in hell I’m going back in that water and you won’t force me. If you’re going to be an asshole, Samas is stuck here until he can find someone to host him long enough for him to find a way to Earth so he can kick my ass.”

“That won’t take long because I’m standing right here, boss,” Tony warned him. If Gibbs did try to sacrifice himself, Tony wouldn’t hesitate to get Samas.

O’Neill rolled his eyes. “Teal’c, keep that one away from the water.”

“I shall,” Teal’c agreed.

Tony watched as Teal’c moved into position, but honestly, Tony wasn’t worried. Teal’c would be able to overpower him, but not before Tony darted around him and got into the water. Speed and agility trumped strength, at least it did if you only needed ten or twelve seconds to get the job done.

“DiNozzo, don’t think about it,” Gibbs warned.

Tony gave Gibbs his best smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

O’Neill and Gibbs both snorted.

“He’s annoying,” O’Neill commented.

“He’s the best I’ve ever had on my team, both with undercover work and with forming relationships with others. I’ve watched as suspects just about fell in love with him and victims told him details they’d hidden from everyone else out of shame.”

O’Neill looked Tony up and down. “Yeah, I saw some of that. He’s still annoying.”

“Look who’s talking,” Tony pointed out.

O’Neill shrugged without disagreeing. “So, do you have conditions other than a big swimming pool?”

“One,” Gibbs said, “and it is not negotiable.” Gibbs waited a couple of seconds before continuing. “Samas will have nothing to do with the tok’ra. Nothing. He considers them as corrupt and disgusting as the goa’uld. If he so much as comes face to face with one, he will eat it alive and vomit it back up.”

“Yeah, he likes doing that.” O’Neill gave an exaggerated full body shiver. Tony had to agree that it was a little gross.

“The tok’ra tried recruiting Samas, and they did some pretty shitty things. He doesn’t want them even knowing he’s still alive, especially since he knows most of them, and they know him. Onac have long memories.”

Carter still had her P90 pointed at Tony, but she backed up several steps so she could see Gibbs. “Did he know Selmak?”

“The name is familiar, but you would have to ask Samas, not me.”

“Well,” O’Neill said loudly, “I am in favor of any plan that leaves the tok’ra in the dark. I think the general will go along with that, but honestly, he might not.”

“Then know that Samas will eat every tok’ra he can reach,” Gibbs warned.

O’Neill got a thoughtful look on his face. “If you’re going to make promises like that, I may invite a whole gaggle of tok’ra to my next birthday party.”

“Jack,” Daniel warned.

“What? Hey, I am always very up front about how much I dislike them, so if they’re stupid enough to show up for my birthday party, I’m not going to feel bad about Samas eating them. However, you have to clean up the mess he’ll leave behind,” O’Neill said, pointing a finger in Gibbs’ direction. “Right then, any other conditions?”

“Don’t let Tony get trapped in this mess,” Gibbs said. He looked over at Tony.

“Forget it, boss. If you’re in this, I’m in this.” Tony didn’t add that he had as much reason as Samas to protect this planet. That was him in the water. That onac might not have been born from Tony’s DNA, but he was family.

“DiNozzo.”

“Forget it. Once they know where they’re going to ask you to work, I can make my own deal. I’m not walking away. Besides, if the SGC needs someone to go undercover as a goa’uld, I’m willing to bet they’re short on good undercover agents and fresh out of anyone who would willingly come back here to pick up an onac.”

“He’s right on both counts,” O’Neill said. “However, his deal would be pretty straightforward compared to yours, Gunny. Once we get the brass to sign off on having you around, hiring a federal agent will be easy.”

“And if they don’t sign off on Samas’ deal?” Tony demanded.

O’Neill’s blank expression said everything it needed to.

“Samas has gotten himself out of worse jams,” Gibbs said. “So, are we taking the chappa’ai or the tel’tak?”

O’Neill looked over at the squat ship. “We can’t just leave our pretty toys behind, Gunny. Time to make donuts, or in this case, take the pretty stolen ship and head for home.” Still grinning, O’Neill turned and headed for the tel’tak. The other members of his team followed so that Tony was left with Gibbs.

Gibbs was looking at Tony with the expression he normally reserved for those times when Tony had said something particularly stupid in front of the director.

“I have as much reason to protect this world as you do. And I’m also rather invested in protecting Earth,” Tony said.

Gibbs turned and went back to the pond without comment.

“You know, you’re going to have to think of a really good story for Ziva and Tim. Otherwise, those two are going to keep going until they land themselves in the middle of this mess with us,” Tony warned. Ziva would probably love all the ass-kicking these people seemed to do. He wondered how Kate would have handled the secret. He could just imagine her whispering a profile in his ear as she watched O’Neill. She definitely would have had a few things to say about that man and his humor.

Gibbs crouched down and the water splashed up. That’s all. But when Gibbs turned around, Tony could see the subtle differences. Samas was driving the body.

“He worries about you,” Samas said.

“He worries about everyone.”

Samas smiled. “He does.”

“So…” Tony looked out at the water wondering if Samas had time to do anything.

Samas turned to look across the calm pond. “You gave a good chase, but then you were not actually trying to escape.”

“From you? Nope.”

“The larvae are very small and vulnerable, but I’m sure you’ll protect them with the others.”

Tony smiled. His symbiote had earned the offspring he so desperately wanted. “A whole generation of smart-ass onac. The universe should tremble.”

Samas laughed. “I think the universe is safe. Do you think the SGC will hold up their end of this bargain?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Yes,” Samas said. “Gibbs and I are very good at seeing the evil in a person’s heart. Our gut, as you call it, is quite well attuned to it. However, you often have better insight when it comes to people in general.”

Tony looked toward the tel’tak. “They’ll try to keep the bargain. Honestly, it would be safer for you to stay here. I’ll stay with Gibbs.”

Samas started walking toward him, and halfway up the hill, his body language shifted. Tony wasn’t even a little surprised when Gibbs firmly headslapped him.

“Right boss. All three of us stick together.”

“Damn right, DiNozzo. Now get your ass on the alien spaceship.”

Tony laughed. “That’s a phrase I never thought I’d hear you say.”

“It’s a phrase I wish I could have avoided,” Gibbs said. “But we’ll work it out.”

Tony wasn’t surprised when O’Neill and crew locked them in one of the tel’tak’s rooms. Luckily, it seemed to be the one bedroom, so while the SG crew had to camp on the floor, he and Gibbs got a bed fit for a goa’uld, and goa’uld did like their comforts. It was weird because they subjected their real bodies to getting jammed up inside a tiny space in a human brain, but then they demanded the human body get all the luxuries.

Gibbs finished pacing the room and stopped near the door. He finally sighed and walked over to the bed.

“So, you think Kali can pull this off—get hosts to start going through there?”

Gibbs nodded. “She always did whatever she needed to. She’ll do it.”

“She betrayed you, didn’t she?” Tony asked. It would explain why she hadn’t come to Samas directly, and why Samas would have the DNA of the younger goa’uld. At one point Samas had liked her well enough to consider having little Kali babies.

Samas chuckled, a softer sound than when Gibbs did the same thing. “You still surprise us with your insights. Yes. She did. Shiva refused to take human hosts and came to us to talk about removing Ra from his throne. This would be dangerous because Ra had so much technology. Whatever host he had originally joined with, he had gained incredible knowledge that no onac had ever possessed. He thought Kali would stand with us. Even when an enemy had poisoned her and she had gone mad and killed everyone she could reach, she stopped short of killing Shiva. He was so sure she would remain loyal.”

“She betrayed you.”

Samas gave a sad smile. “She betrayed Shiva, killed him on Ra’s orders. Shiva’s servants then betrayed me. However, by that time, Ra already knew that I was planning on trying to kill him.”

“She doesn’t deserve to have a legacy.” If the others were listening, that was vague enough to make them think Tony was talking about her plans for an empire. He really meant the children Samas had left behind.

“She was once a great warrior,” Samas said sadly. “The dreams Ra brought of power… they were so strong that I think I might have fallen under them if I had heard him sing directly. I was saved by luck and distance Tony. I can’t condemn her for being unlucky in both.”

“Then I’ll hate her for both of us,” Tony said.

Samas came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “The universe should prepare for a generation of onac who are insanely loyal and vindictive.”

Tony shrugged. He looked down, and he still had on a couple of the smaller goa’uld bracelets. He’d thrown most of them off before the fighting began, but these were hinged, and he hadn’t had time to figure out the mechanism, so it’d been easier to keep them on. He fingered the carved gold and thought about the slaves on that ship. They’d just been passed from Ba’al to Kali, and they had no voice in any of it.

Samas reached out and curled his fingers around Tony’s wrist. “We all know how to handle the burdens of the life we are born into. Gibbs often struggles with the thought that I have lost so many. Thousands of my family died in a failed attempt to destroy Ra. Most of us never even had a chance to take a host, and hundreds were mutilated by Ra in his quest to bring the goa’uld under control long before they even had a chance to rebel. But my kind… we are born and we die in such numbers that this was not the burden for me that it would have been for him.”

“I feel like I should have given them a choice.”

“If they had wanted, they could have come to you and asked for that choice. They didn’t.”

Tony wasn’t even surprised that Gibbs and Samas seemed able to read his mind. They always could. “So I left them behind.” Tony rubbed his forehead.

“So you left to go back to the world you know, a world where they would not understand the rules.”

Tony looked over. “You’re not usually this big into comforting.”

Samas shrugged. “I’m in a good mood. Besides, I often do wish to comfort you. Gibbs is far more careful of his interactions with you.”

“Careful? Why?” Tony could feel a dark unease settle into his stomach. He’d admitted to being sexually attracted to Gibbs, and this was where the man nicely pointed out that he was disgusted by the idea.

“He very much has the sexual preferences of a queen,” Samas said.

“He wants to bite me until I bleed?”

Samas’ mouth came open, but after a second, he closed it again without speaking. He cleared this throat before he found words. “No. Definitely not. But he sees himself as the active partner, the penetrator. He knows how you reacted to the suspect who was a man dressed as a woman, and the horror you felt when you kissed this individual. Until recently, he believed you were strictly interested in being the penetrative partner with receptive females.”

Tony grimaced. “I’ve never heard sex described in quite such unsexy terms.”

“Gibbs is not sharing his knowledge on this particular topic, and I am having to rely on my own understanding of human sexuality. I am sure I am getting parts wrong.”

“Not wrong,” Tony admitted, “just described oddly. And this next part is going to make me look like an ass.” If Kate were here now, he would never admit this. “I made a big deal because I hated how Kate always tried to profile me, and getting upset about a gay kiss fit into her profile. I liked the fact that she never caught onto the fact that I’m bisexual. And I was initially bothered because I am not into cross dressing. I want women parts on women and men parts on men. Some people prefer partners who are a little rounder, some like ‘em short,” Tony looked at Gibbs, “some like them redheaded. I like my partners with a lack of gender ambiguity. I know it’s irrational and it probably makes me a transphobic ass, but that’s why I was bothered.”

“Human sexuality is odd.”

“Yep,” Tony agreed, “but we can’t help what we like.”

“And you like Gibbs,” Samas said.

“There is a lack of gender ambiguity there,” Tony admitted. “If he were any more stereotypically male, he’d be forced to wear flannel and carry a cigar with him at all times.”

Samas looked confused for a second, and then Gibbs was there. “I sometimes wonder what goes on in that head of yours, Tony.”

“Not much,” Tony admitted.

A frown flickered over Gibbs’ face.

“So, I’m confused, is this the ‘it’s not you, it’s me speech,’ because if so, you’re definitely rusty, boss.”

Gibbs rolled his eyes. “You always assume the worst when it comes to yourself. This is the ‘let’s get some things straight’ speech.”

“Straight. Right,” Tony nodded as he pressed his lips together.

“Since Samas has been here, I’ve become more flexible about the idea of sex, but I started pretty uptight, Tony.”

This was definitely sounding like the break up speech. Tony nodded his head and tried to keep a neutral expression.

“I will admit that I would enjoy sex with you, but I would never bottom. You might be bisexual, but if you’re with me, that prick of yours doesn’t get to visit any place more interesting than a hand.” Gibbs had a grim expression on his face, and it took Tony a second to figure out why. Gibbs thought that would be a deal breaker.

“That’s fine,” Tony said with a shrug. “I rarely top with guys, and trust me, I never had even a hint of a fantasy where you were anything other than a dominant top. Hell, about half the women I dated liked to peg me, so being bottom is no problem.”

“Peg?” Gibbs asked.

Tony felt his face warm. “Yeah, if you don’t know, you might want to let that one go, boss.” Tony really was not up to explaining that kink.

Gibbs grunted. It was the sort of noise he made when he was told to drop something that he was planning to not drop. Tony felt his face warm more. “So, you don’t mind me being a stereotypical dominant top?” Gibbs stood and moved to stand right in front of Tony.

Tony swallowed. “Not so much,” he agreed. Gibbs tightened his hand around Tony’s wrist, and the pressure forced the edge of the gold bracelet into the flesh of his inner wrist. Tony could feel his cock start to harden.

Gibbs held him for a second and then released him. “Strip,” he ordered.

Tony’s brain had a little white out moment, and it took Gibbs raising an eyebrow to get the damn thing kick started. Then Tony scrambled off the side of the bed and started stripping out of the silly layers of silk that the slave women had spent hours putting on him. Gibbs was taking off his own clothes at a more sedate pace. He draped the leather jacket over the one chair in the room, and then his silk shirt followed. By the time Gibbs was stripping off the leather pants, Tony could see Gibbs’ hard erection tenting his red silk underwear.

Tony had another little white out, and then he was pushing off his own pants. That left him naked except for the jewelry on his wrists, and one decorative swirl clipped to the side of his ear. Again, he hadn’t been able to figure out the latch, and right now, Tony didn’t care.

“Lie on your back in the middle of the bed. Arms at your sides,” Gibbs ordered. Tony’s cock was immediately hard. Gibbs definitely didn’t need any time to get used to the idea of ordering Tony around in the bedroom. Without a second’s hesitation, Tony did as ordered.

Gibbs grunted and then leaned down to tug Tony’s arm out a few inches. “Don’t move.”

Tony nodded. His mouth was too dry to respond properly.

Gibbs circled the bed and then sat on the edge where he ran his fingers over Tony’s arm. Tony curled his fingers into the sheets and fought every instinct that told him to move, move, move. Gibbs explored the curve of Tony’s flank as he worked his way down until he traced circles over the hollow formed by Tony’s hipbone. Now Tony’s cock was rock hard and the tip was slick with precome.

“You okay, Tony?”

“Great, boss.” Tony might have said more, but Gibbs pulled at one nipple hard enough to make Tony gasp. Immediately, Gibbs’ fingers gentled. Tony moaned low in his throat, but then Gibbs pulled his hand back and Tony blinked owlishly.

“Hands back where they were, Tony. Do not move them again.” Only then did Tony realize that his right hand had drifted to his hip, his fingers itched with a need to grab his cock and start jerking off.

“Sorry, boss.” Tony put his hands back at his sides and groaned as Gibbs rewarded him by running his thumb over the end of Tony’s cock. Tony cried out and arched up into the touch, but he didn’t move his hand.

Then Gibbs’ fingers curled around Tony’s cock. Tony opened his mouth, but he couldn’t make a sound. “Tony, tell me one thing you’ve fantasized about,” Gibbs ordered.

That was not fair. Tony’s brain wasn’t even fully functional, and Gibbs wanted to have a conversation? Or maybe it was Samas. Maybe Samas didn’t know that this was killing Tony.

“Boss…” Tony let the word trail off. “Please…”

Tony looked up into Gibbs’ startling blue eyes.

“One fantasy, Tony.” Gibbs was definitely not going to let this one go. Tony closed his eyes because he could feel the bonds here so much more than any leather against his wrists. Other doms had always controlled him with rope, but Gibbs was grabbing hold of something deep in Tony’s soul, and he wasn’t going to let go.

“I want to suck you,” Tony admitted.

Gibbs considered him, his head cocked to the side. Then he shifted around, lying down so they were in a classic 69 position, and Tony groaned in raw need. Keeping his hands at his sides was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but Gibbs had asked him to do it, and he wasn’t going to fail a second time.

“Permission granted,” Gibbs said in the same tone he might use when he let Tim use the G19 requisition forms. It was weirdly hot.

“Permission for…”

Gibbs smiled at him. “For anything, Tony. At least until I issue new orders.”

Tony smiled. After rolling up onto his side, he ran a hand over Gibbs’ warm skin and then rested his palm on Gibbs’ hip. He looked down at Gibbs’ face, and Gibbs watched him. Time to impress the boss. Tony kissed the end of Gibbs’ cock. It hardened under his lips, and Tony sucked the head into his mouth, tasting the salt and musk. When he moaned, he could feel the vibration of it in his lips and Gibbs’ cock got even harder.

Tony took Gibbs’ cock farther into his mouth, using his tongue and lips to feel the shape of it, the firmness. While Gibbs breathed harder and the skin under Tony’s hand felt warmer, there was no other reaction. Even now, Gibbs was in control. He didn’t utter a single sound.

Tony pulled back and then leaned in until Gibbs’ cock brushed the back of Tony’s throat. Gibbs thrust forward just a little, and Tony found his throat blocked by the head of Gibbs’ cock. He’d played this game with tops, but this was different. This was Gibbs taking away his air, waiting to see Tony’s reaction. Tony closed his eyes and tried to stay calm as he used his tongue to explore the ridge and the veins of Gibbs’ cock.

Then Gibbs pulled back, and Tony was left with only the tip of the cock in his mouth. He sucked hungrily and let his tongue slide along the slit.

The throbbing in his own balls approached the level of pain even through Gibbs hadn’t touched him. What’s more, Tony’s lower jaw ached as he continued to suck while Gibbs started slowly thrusting in and out of Tony’s mouth. Tony experimented, sucking more gently during one thrust and more passionately during the next. He flicked his tongue over the end one time, and another he pressed the end of Gibbs’ cock up against the top of his mouth.

Sometimes Gibbs would give the smallest of groans or grunts, but other than that, he was silent and his pace never varied. Tony’s own body twitched as he fought an urge to grab himself and jerk off. His balls felt heavy and his cock was cold as the precome dried.

Gibbs rested his hand on Tony’s stomach, and Tony’s whole body twitched. The heat of Gibbs’ hand soaked in, and then that hot hand slid down toward Tony’s cock.

Tony fought every instinct he had. He wanted to buck up toward that heat, to grab himself, to do something. Instead, he focused on breathing as Gibbs kept up his slow, shallow thrusts into Tony’s mouth and Gibbs’ hand brushed against Tony’s balls. The touch was feather light, but Tony groaned at the shivers that ran through is his whole body.

When Gibbs wrapped his hand around the base of Tony’s cock, Tony shouted around the cock in his mouth. Gibbs thrust in, nearly choking Tony, and he jerked Tony’s cock at the same time, and then Tony was coming so hard that his muscles locked up. With a guttural shout, Gibbs came. The cum hit Tony’s mouth with warm splatters dotting his chin.

Gibbs quickly sat up and turned around so they were lying next to each other. Then Gibbs pulled him close, Tony’s cum smearing between them.

For some time, Tony lay silent while Gibbs stroked him gently. “You’re still an idiot for following me into this mess,” Gibbs said softly. Tony was almost sure that the insult was Gibbs’ version of declaring his love. After all, Gibbs was trying to keep him safe.

“I know, boss. But I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

“Whither thou goest,” Gibbs said softly, and it almost sounded like a complaint.

“Yep,” Tony agreed. It was true, and it was time that Gibbs figured that out.

A week in the same room, and Tony was ready to climb the walls. Not even sex could keep him happy. Samas was showing up more, and he was just as quick to pace the room. Gibbs was the only one who could lie on the bed and just wait. Even the food came out of a compartment in the wall, so they’d been sealed in completely.

So, the click of the door unlocking didn’t register with Tony right away. He didn’t react until Gibbs was on his feet, grabbing his shirt and slipping it on. He hadn’t even finished with the first button when the door slid open and O’Neill stood there.

Tony was still scrambling to pull the covers up, and O’Neill groaned. “You might want to consider not telling because I’m not asking,” O’Neill said.

“Funny enough, we’re civilians,” Tony shot back.

O’Neill cleared this throat. “About that…”

“What did you do?” Gibbs asked, his voice dangerously low. Tony’s brain clearly hadn’t fully engaged because it took him several seconds to fully realize what Gibbs was implying.

“I got you the best deal I could,” O’Neill said. “I’ve been on the radio with everyone up to the President himself, and I convinced them to all of your conditions.” O’Neill emphasized the word “convinced” just enough to make it clear that he’d had to apply a little pressure. “However, the President wanted to make sure we had clear authority to keep you—no claiming you were kidnapped, no NID trying to grab you, no scramble for a cover story if you went missing. The easiest way to do that was to reactivate your commission. Congratulations, you’re an official gunny again.”

For a second, Gibbs just stared at O’Neill, and then he started buttoning his shirt again. “Great.”

“That’s ‘Great, sir.’” O’Neill smirked. When Gibbs didn’t respond, the smile fell away. “It was the best deal I could get you, gunny.”

“I know, sir,” Gibbs said, “but if Samas is running the show, you are not going to get any salutes out of him. He’s pissed enough that he’s going to have a hard time keeping a civil tongue in his mouth.”

“Well, that might not be a problem.” O’Neill grimaced.

Gibbs froze. Slowly he lowered his hands to his sides even though his shirt was only half buttoned. It was a damn sexy look. The cold fury on Gibbs’ face was a little intimidating, though. “Colonel?”

“No one liked the idea of you being too close to the Stargate. They’re transferring you to Area 51 where we have a couple of engineers who are Carter-level good with goa’uld technology.”

“Area 51?”

“Yep. So, here’s the thing. McKay is a bit of an arrogant ass, so please try to avoid killing him. I mean, if you absolutely have to, we can cover for you. This is McKay we’re talking about, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of paperwork. So the general rule with McKay is bruise, don’t break.”

Tony wrapped the sheet around his waist. “I’m not getting shut out,” he blurted. “I don’t care about the military ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ crap.”

O’Neill made a face. “We’ll tell the officers to knock before going in your rooms because this is a little less than discrete.” O’Neill carefully didn’t look at Tony who was naked as a jaybird with only the sheet around his waist.

“We have one set of clothing and no way to wash it except to use the shower,” Samas said. Tony was guessing that Gibbs was too pissed to deal with this. “Tony’s clothing is hanging in the washroom.”

“Stick to that story, uh huh.”

“It is the truth. If we were having sex, I would make sure to tell you in great detail.”

O’Neill narrowed his eyes. “You’re Samas.”

Samas tilted his head. “I am.”

“Well crap. Why aren’t you doing the voice thing? I like it better when I can tell you two apart.”

“You knew it was me or you would not have asked.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know when you switched. Look, we plan to tell the officers exactly who you are, so we’re going to have to figure out some sort of system where Samas wears a science uniform and Gibbs has the regular gunnery sergeant uniform. That should let people know which of you is which. And if anyone questions your relationship, you just tell them that Samas is sleeping with DiNozzo, and since Samas is an alien, clearly he isn’t in the US Armed Forces.”

“As for you…” O’Neill gave Tony a long look.

“He stays with me,” Samas growled.

“Hey, he’s all yours. I find him annoying, but maybe you like to be annoyed. However, when the folks back home did a little background check, they found something interesting.”

“I am not responsible for whatever my father has done,” Tony said firmly.

From the confusion on O’Neill’s face, that had not been the general direction the conversation had been taking. “Okay,” O’Neill said, drawing out the O. “You might want to talk to a therapist about your father issues. You’ll have a couple on-base.”

Tony clamped his teeth together and carefully didn’t cast aspersions on O’Neill’s parentage.

“But back to my point. A lot of goa’uld technology is reverse engineered from the Ancients, a pretty human-like race that was around a few million years ago. They liked to seed planets with mini-mes. A small percentage of humans have actual Ancient DNA, so clearly there were a few of those Ancients who liked to get kinky with the races they created.”

“And?” Gibbs demanded.

“And DiNozzo has the Ancient gene. It means that the scientists who are working with Ancient technology could really use his help activating devices for them to study. So, you get lightswitch duty.” O’Neill grinned.

“Lightswitch duty?” Tony was almost sure he was insulted. He was going from an investigator on one of the top teams in a federal agency to lightswitch duty.

O’Neill shrugged. “Danny ropes me into playing with his Ancient toys all the time since I’m one of the others with the gene. Lightswitch duty is a legitimate position for a civilian contractor.”

Gibbs took a step forward. “But that’s not your whole life. You have a job with meaning, and you would ask Tony to be nothing more than a lightswitch for scientists.”

“Samas, it’s okay,” Tony said softly. It would be. They could stay together and Tony would have Gibbs’ and Samas’ back. They’d need that on a military base full of people who hated the goa’uld and who couldn’t tell their onac from their igigi. Besides, Samas would be vulnerable when he was in the water, and if Gibbs had been officially reactivated, he wouldn’t be free to stand guard every time Samas went for a swim.

“You are a trained federal agent.”

Tony smiled. “With a talent for fitting in everywhere I go. It doesn’t matter if I’m with an art thief or infiltrating a mob-owned business, you know me boss, I find a way to worm my way into some cushy job. A base full of military people can’t be any harder to infiltrate.”

Samas stared at him.

“I’m not going back to NCIS. If I did, I would have to break in a new boss and find a way to fit in with a new team, and honestly, you’re the only person I ever really clicked with at NCIS. Tim tolerates me, Kate thought I was an overgrown child, Vivian had dreams murdering me in my sleep—dreams she often shared with me in vivid detail, and Ziva is pretty sure I’m a man-child who can’t be trusted around weapons. Can you really see me happy at NCIS without you?”

“Fornell would take you on his team,” Samas said.

“Great. Then I could be Sacks’ probie. I try to avoid working with people who attempt to convict me of a murder I didn’t commit. I’ll pass.”

O’Neill cleared his throat. “Why do I suddenly suspect your official file might not have as many details as I might want? And here I thought the plague was the worst of your troubles.”

“Not even,” Tony said with a snort. “I sort of attract trouble.”

“To say the least,” Samas agreed. “I often despair at your ability to find trouble.”

O’Neill made a face. “Look, just remember that these Ancient devices actually have a mental control system. If you’re secretly suicidal, you’re pretty damn likely to blow the whole base to hell and back.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. “What? No. Why would you even think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” O’Neill looked at him oddly. “So, speaking of your job, I’m going to need you to go back to NCIS and tell your coworkers that Gibbs has been reactivated because of a situation.”

“They’re still looking?” Samas looked surprised.

“Of course they are, boss. They’re not going to give up.” Tony rolled his eyes.

“Actually,” O’Neill said, “David and McGee both obeyed the order to stand down. It’s your forensics tech you need to get to back off. She’s been battering at our computer firewalls, and if she gets access to classified data, I’m going to feel back when I have to order someone to arrest her.”

Tony knee walked to the end of the bed. “You are not arresting Abby.”

“Then get her to understand that she has to back off.”

Tony looked at Gibbs. He was the only person who had ever convinced Abby to do anything.

“Forget it,” O’Neill said firmly. “Samas doesn’t leave Area 51. You will have Captain Lorne as backup.”

“Backup or a guard?” Tony asked.

O’Neill shrugged. “A bit of both. NID loves getting their claws into anyone with the gene, so if you’re on Earth, you’re now officially a target. However, Lorne will also be making sure you aren’t going off the reservation.”

“Goodie.” Tony sank back down onto the bed.

With a sigh, O’Neill leaned against the side of the door. “Look, I don’t like feeling like the bad guy here, and I honestly am trying to get you the best deal I can. Play nice, and I will try to move you into areas that you might find more interesting. I happen to think you two are good guys, even if I question your tactics. So give me some time to work on this from my end.”

“Tony,” Samas said, “this is the only way to strike back against the goa’uld. Someone must distract them while Kali works, or you know the consequences.”

Samas’ children would die, not that Tony planned to tell anyone from Earth that. But it was true. Tony’s onac and Tony’s onac’s kids would die. And yeah, Tony knew that he probably shouldn’t feel so attached to them—hell, O’Neill had shot his onac—but still, Tony could feel that hard knot in his stomach at the thought of it. The SGC would never know about those children of Tony’s, of O’Neill’s and Daniel’s and Carter’s, but they would be out there, joining with hosts and exploring the world. But if the goa’uld destroyed the planet, then all those lives would be lost.

“Tell me that what we do at Area 51 will help you take out those bastards,” Tony asked O’Neill.

O’Neill looked right at him. “The work out of Area 51 has a better chance of saving the world than I do,” he said seriously. “The right piece of technology can turn the war. I’m just a soldier holding my own on the front.”

“I doubt you’re just that,” Samas said, “but if you need help with technology, I will do my best to make sure your people have everything they need. Gibbs would accept no less. He truly would die for your country or your world. And while I will not die for your country, I am more than willing to help your world destroy the goa’uld.”

O’Neill nodded. “I still wish you would have kept your snaky self out of his head.”

Samas smiled. “But then we never would have met. Gibbs was dying. I gave him his life back and in return, he promised that if there were ever a way to strike back against the beings who destroyed my people, he would take whatever risk he needed to give me that chance.”

For a long time, O’Neill really studied Samas. “And in keeping his word, he gave up his life. I’m not sure the gunny deserved that.”

After that, Samas’ smile wasn’t so kind. “None of us have gotten what we deserve. As long as we’re alive to protect our own and strike our enemies, life owes us nothing else.”

O’Neill nodded. “At least you don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t.”

“I never have. It’s why Ra tried so hard to kill me.”

O’Neill didn’t answer. Turning, he left and the door closed behind him.

“Well that went well,” Tony said softly.

Samas walked over to the bed and rested his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “It went considerably better than I expected. We will have a chance to help your people strike back at the goa’uld, and we will be together.”

“We’re alive, we’re together, and we’re still striking back at the enemy. I guess from an onac point of view, life is good.”

Samas looked at him sadly. “It is. What does it look like from a human point of view?”

Tony wasn’t fooled. Gibbs could have given that answer, so for Samas to have asked it, he was more interested in Tony’s reaction than any general human response. “I think it’s a hell of a lot better than any alternative I could have come up with,” Tony said. He smiled up. Samas moved his hand until he ran his thumb over Tony’s lips. As long as he got to stay with Gibbs and Samas, Tony had what he needed.

“Okay, Abby is going to seem a little strange, so don’t freak out.”

Captain Evan Lorne looked at him oddly. “You know where I work. Do you really think one lab tech is going to freak me out?”

“Yes,” Tony said firmly. “Which is why we’re going to see the director first. Tony watched the elevator numbers as he headed back up to his familiar stomping grounds. The guards at the front doors had greeted him warmly, and Tony had to make them promise to not tell everyone he was coming. When Sec Nav had told the NCIS people to stand down, he hadn’t given them any explanations, and from what Tony had gotten from the guys at the door, that had led to some pretty wild speculation.

Not that their guesses would ever be as wild as the truth.

“Nervous?” Lorne asked.

“Hey, I’m just here to tell some coworkers to back off. I won’t get nervous until I have to face Abby.”

Lorne nodded. “It’s hard, telling people half truths about what you do.”

Tony looked over, but Lorne kept his eyes on the elevator doors. The fact was that Tony liked the man. He liked most of the people in his new job, and part of him didn’t want to. He wanted to hate an organization that kept Gibbs under guard at all times. But they were good men and women, and they’d built Samas an entire eco system and they respected Samas’ opinion as much as Gibbs’. Well, everyone except McKay, but he tended to shoot down everyone’s theories. It was kind of cute the way he blustered and bluffed and tried to make himself out to be the one with all the answers. It kind of reminded Tony of himself when he was much younger and even more insecure.

The elevator dinged. Tony plastered a smile on his face and stepped out into the room where he’d spent the best three and a half years of his life. It took a half a second, but then heads started to turn. The clacking of computer keys went slowly silent, and people started to stand up to see what had caused the interruption.

“Tony?!” Tim yelled from across the room. “Holy crap. It’s you. Where have you been? Where’s Gibbs?” Tim came trotting down the hall, his eyes sliding past Tony to look behind him.

“What’s the matter McNeedy? Are you in need of a Gibbs headslap?”

“What? No.” Tim stopped. He gave Lorne a strange look, and for one second Tony wanted to give him shit about Tim eyeing up the handsome man in the dress uniform. If they were still teammates, he would have, but now… it didn’t feel right.

“Tim McGee, this is Captain Evan Lorne. Lorne, this is McNerdy the computer whiz.”

Lorne put on one of his brightest smiles and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you. Believe it or not, Tony has a lot of complimentary things to say about you and your work.”

Tim took Lorne’s hand, but his gaze kept slipping over to Tony and giving him these little confused microexpressions. “Yeah, nice to meet you. I haven’t actually heard anything about you from Tony, but then Tony has been sort of missing for a month now.”

“Not missing, reassigned. Reassigned. I know you got the memo.” Tony put on his most superior grin. “After all, how could Sec Nav not promote me once he saw my greatness?”

“Your greatness?” Tim’s words were utterly flat.

“Well, I’m greatness adjacent, anyway,” Tony said with a shrug. “I’m good at watching the boss’s six, and believe it or not, getting recalled to active duty has not improved his disposition much. He makes seamen cry.”

“To be fair, I think that seaman would have cried without Gibbs,” Lorne pointed out. When Lorne had come to Area 51 to pick up Tony, he’d been a little shocked at McKay’s bluntness. McKay bluntness plus Samas and Gibbs bluntness had actually led to more tears than the Armed Forces normally allowed.

Tony shrugged. “Hey, if a little old civilian can deal with those three without crying, the folks in uniform need to suck it up.”

“Those three?” Tim jumped on the first real bit of intel Tony had offered.

Tony gave Tim a slow smiled, every bit of arrogance he could shoved to the forefront in order to make Tim believe the story he was going to tell. “And that would be classified way above your pay grade, Tim, although I work there so clearly I have the clearance to know all about it.”

Tim slowly reddened.

“Anyway, we were in town, and I was going to stop in and see you guys and drop in on the director before fielding the wrath of Abby. How bad is it down there?”

Tim’s expression immediately turned to sympathy. Oh this was going to be so very bad. “She’s convinced that you were sucked up into a huge government conspiracy,” Tim said. “She’s talking about blackmail and secret agencies, and things that only exist in comic books.”

Tony cringed. The worst part was that Abby’s best guesses would come closer to the truth than he could ever admit.

“She thinks a gunnery sergeant being reactivated during a national emergency requires blackmail?” Lorne asked, confusion in his voice. Tony did appreciate that Lorne was following his lead instead of trying to manage the situation himself.

“National emergency?” Tim asked, his voice going up.

“I’m sorry, Agent McGee, but I’m not cleared to talk about the situation. However, Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs and Tony have both proved invaluable, which is why we’re here.”

“I’m cleaning out the desks,” Tony said with a smile. “And I really tried to find a place for you on the team, McGee. I did. But these guys have computer experts coming out their hoo-ha.”

Lorne laughed. “Is that a technical term?”

“Yep,” Tony said, grinning back as though they were close. True, he respected Lorne and Lorne had been utterly professional and polite in the three days since he’d picked Tony up, but they weren’t exactly buddies.

But now Tim was looking back and forth between them, clearly struggling to figure out the relationship.

“You’re cleaning out your desks?” Tim’s voice was very small.

“These kinds of opportunities don’t come along every day, McGee,” Tony said as he gave Tim a slap on the shoulder. “We all know how many valuable skills Gibbs has, but I found a place where I can shine.” To be more precise, the artifacts he touched shined or glowed or vibrated or in one memorable case, blew up. However, it was important work. Tony understood that. “So, where Zeeva?”

“She is out with another team. Nieberbalm caught a case with a family that speaks Pashtu, so she went to translate. They just left about an hour ago, so it’ll be a while before they’re back.”

“Oh.” Tony had only worked with Ziva a couple of months, so missing her wasn’t a tragedy, but he had promised to check on her for Gibbs. Samas had finally explained the way that Ziva had shot her brother to save Gibbs’ life, and Tony now understood. Gibbs’ loyalty to her came from the same place as his unflagging loyalty to Samas—they’d all lost family. They’d lost too damn much family, and Gibbs wanted to scoop them up and protect them. Samas found the concept strange, but he put it in the same category with Gibbs’ other quirks, such as enjoying tying Tony down for sex. When Samas was in charge, sex came with much more wrestling and occasionally chasing each other around Area 51, much to the distress of Samas’ guards. Tony called them training sessions, but he was fairly sure he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“I’m sorry, Tony, but we don’t have that much time,” Lorne said in his most sympathetic voice. It was nice to have a guard that expressed sympathy.

“And here I thought NCIS was the highest stress job I’d ever have,” Tony said with a put upon sigh. “Well, at least we carved out a little time to touch base and collect our stuff. If you want to grab Gibbs’ stuff from his desk,” Tony nodded toward the desk in question. It was still empty although a new laptop was sitting on Tony’s desk.

“Did you give my desk away, McTraitor?”

“You were reassigned,” Tim defended himself. “And I didn’t let her put her things in the drawers.”

“Because the drawers are locked,” Tony pointed out, pulling his keys out of his pocket. Lorne already had Gibbs’ keys, and he’d apologized as he’d explained that he would have to inspect everything they removed from the building. After all, Samas might have hidden some technology in a place he could access it easily. Tony knew it was bullshit, but he also got the feeling that Lorne knew it was bullshit and he was following orders, so Tony didn’t let it bother him. “Go find us some boxes. We’re going to go touch base with the director.”

“But you are going to see Abby, right?” Tim asked, panic on his face. Yep, if Tony didn’t go down there, Tim would have to talk to her, and Taliban interrogators couldn’t hold a candle to Abby when she was on a mission.

“Yes, I’m going to see Abby. Now go, get boxes. Shoo.” Tony waved him off, and then headed for the stairs, Lorne falling into place next to him.

“You’ve been hanging out with McKay too much,” he said softly.

“Nah. I treated McGoo like that before I met you guys. He needs someone who won’t treat him like glass or he’ll never be able to handle the real world. That one had too much MIT. If he wants to be a field agent, he’s got to get used to people saying things he doesn’t like. A few months as a patrol officer getting called a pig and a douchebag would probably improve his performance in the field, but that’s not likely,” Tony said. They reached the top and Lorne opened the door for him. Of course, that also allowed Lorne to check the room out first. He did that a lot.

“Cynthia!” Tony sang her name as he came through the door. Normally that earned him an eyeroll, but she came around the desk and caught him in a hug.

“I heard the prodigal son had returned. The director is waiting for you.”

Tony cringed. “Oh, if the rumor mill is running that fast, I’d better make this quick and get down to the lab.”

That made Cynthia laugh. “Yes, you’d better. Go on, the director has a full schedule, and she has people on hold while she talks to you.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Tony was to the door before Cynthia spoke again. “We miss you around here, Tony, you and Gibbs. It’s been almost boring.”

Tony flashed her a grin, and then Lorne was opening the door, doing his checking the territory thing again. When Tony stepped into the director’s office, he could see her shocked expression as she considered Lorne. She’d been in the business long enough to recognize a guard, but he doubted that she saw Lorne as anything more than a bodyguard. An Air Force captain who cleared rooms ahead of Tony even in the middle of NCIS headquarters. Yeah, the director had played this game long enough to know something was up.

However, Jenny Shepard was nothing if not smooth. She stood up and came around the desk, catching Tony by the arms in a sort of awkward imitation of a hug. “Tony. It’s so good to see you again.”

“Director,” Tony said, and that’s where the awkward started. He couldn’t play her the way he had to the others. Lorne’s presence made that impossible.

Jenny smiled at him and then offered her hand to Lorne. “Jenny Shepard,” she offered.

“Captain Evan Lorne. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Yes, well I hope you’re taking care of my men.” Jenny looked over at Tony again.

“Doing my best, ma’am.”

Jenny looked back at Tony. “I guess the rumors about you working for another agency are true.”

Tony shrugged. “I’m Gibbs’ second.”

“Yes, you always were. So, can you tell me anything about this new job of yours? I know what Gibbs has done for his country in the past, and I would like to think you aren’t getting involved in that aspect of government work.”

Wetworks. Tony knew damn well that Jenny and Gibbs had killed together, gone on assassination missions. Tony looked over to Lorne, not sure what to say in the face of this sort of question.

“With luck, Tony will never see that sort of direct action,” Lorne said. “He has a skill set that makes him more… flexible than most.”

“Flexible?” Tony demanded. “Why Lorne, I didn’t know you thought of me like that.” Tony batted his eyes, and Lorne started to blush.

“Tony,” Jenny said with a sigh, “If you’re going to work more closely with the military, you might want to tone down the sexual references.”

“Ma’am,” Lorne said, “Tony’s skill set is valuable enough that if he made a sexual game out of playing hide and seek with his male lover while running all over base and having sex on any convenient horizontal surface, we’d deal with it.” Lorne turned and gave Tony a long look, and now Tony was blushing.

“Oh.” Jenny’s voice sounded very small, and she cleared her throat.

“Lorne’s just trying to get me back for the flexible comment,” Tony said, but he couldn’t stop the blush.

Jenny waved a hand. “Right. Tony, if you ever need me or need a reference or decide to come back to the less exciting end of the pool and do some law enforcement again, we’re here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tony agreed. She gave a little frown. Tony realized he’d never been one to ma’am anyone before, but he’d always been a chameleon, and he was now living on a base full of military personnel. Tony wasn’t surprised he had already started to shift. “I should go see Abby. Apparently, she’s ready to call out the National Guard.”

“I vetoed that plan,” Jenny said. “Go see her. Reassure her that changing jobs is not the same as the world ending.”

Tony almost gave her another ma’am, but at the last minute, he changed that to a quick nod and a “You got it.” He turned and headed for the door.

“Tony?”

He turned back, and Jenny was smiling at him. “You always were one of our best. You hid that in Gibbs’ shadow, but the people who count always knew.”

Tony smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for the truth. Now go. If Abby finds out I have you up here, she’d going to storm the castle. It was nice to meet you Captain Lorne.”

“Ma’am,” he said with a nod, but when Tony left, Lorne hurried to get to his side. “The director of a federal agency is afraid of a lab tech?” he whispered as Tony led them to the elevator.

“Entire continents are afraid of this lab tech,” Tony whispered back as he pressed the button to call the elevator. Lorne was giving him a very strange look. “She sleeps in a coffin.”

“She what?”

Tony just grinned. He was going to miss introducing new people to Abby. You could tell a hell of a lot about a person by how they responded to her, and Abby had a good feel for people, as long as she wasn’t dating them. Then she had the worst taste in the world. But he was looking forward to subjecting Captain Lorne to a good dose of full-on Abby.

Lorne was still looking at him oddly when the elevator reached Abby’s level. As the doors opened, Tony could hear the heavy dirge music drifting down the hall. Oh that was not good.

“Did someone die?” Lorne asked.

“No, but someone is going to,” Tony said. When Lorne tried to step up to clear the room, Tony put out a hand to stop him. “I don’t know if you’re going to get a lab tech flying at you to hug you or a beaker thrown at your head, but trust me, whatever happens it’s aimed at me.”

“And my job is to take the beaker to the head, or better yet, make sure neither of us gets hurt,” Lorne said firmly, and then he pushed Tony back and pushed the door open. His reflexes were much better than Tony’s because he jerked back out of the way, but the only thing to come flying through the door was Bert, the stuffed hippo.

Lorne frowned as he looked at the stuffed toy and then looked up at Tony. Smiling, Tony grabbed Burt and hugged him so he made a farting noise and now Lorne looked really disturbed. However, he knew his job. He pushed the door open slower, sticking his head around the corner. “Ms. Sciuto?”

“Who are you?”

Tony pushed past Lorne and headed into the danger zone, Burt held in front of him like a shield. “Hey Abbs, I see you’ve met Captain Lorne. Try to keep throwing things in reserve for a second date, okay?” he asked.

Abby stared at him with wide eyes, and for several long seconds, Tony wasn’t sure how she was going to react. She might hug him or kill him, and he could see the delicate balance between those two things in her gaze. Maybe Lorne could sense that too because he edged closer. Brave, stupid man.

Then the balance tipped, and suddenly Abby was in his arms, crying as she held onto him. “I looked for you, and the director said I shouldn’t, and I hit this firewall, and Tim said he didn’t think it was a good idea to break through it because it was like NSA level encryption, but I couldn’t find you.” She dug her fingers into Tony’s flesh until it honestly hurt.

“Hey, we’re fine. We’re okay, both of us. Abby, you know how Gibbs gets when he’s on a case.”

“A case?” Abby backed off, a fierce scowl in place. “You were on a case and you didn’t call me? I’m your forensics genie. I’m your magician of the trace evidence. I’m the third musketeer.”

Tony smiled. “Yes, but it wasn’t the sort of case with trace evidence.”

Abby crossed her arms and gave Lorne the stink eye. “This is a military thing, isn’t it?”

“From Gibbs’ past,” Tony agreed, “and it’s important enough that Gibbs wants to work on cleaning up this mess, and I kinda agree. Besides, I can’t leave the boss to fix stuff on his own. Who would have his six?”

“The rest of the military might,” Lorne said quietly, but Tony ignored him. Abby only rolled her eyes in his direction before focusing on Tony. She got it. Their Gibbs didn’t take care of himself. He needed them—he needed family.

“You still should have called.” Abby punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow.” Tony rubbed the sting away. “We were chasing down bad guys, and then we got caught by bad guys and then we got rescued while doing some of the rescuing.”

Lorne made a strangled noise that was probably his nice way of threatening to kill Tony if he revealed classified information.

“Gibbs and I managed to do that sort of thing before changing agencies. She’s not going to be shocked that we’re doing more of the same,” Tony said.

“Usually only you get captured,” Abby disagreed. “And Gibbs gets you out.”

Tony shrugged. “Better class of bad guy, and Gibbs still got me out.”

Abby pressed her lips together and gave Tony a thoughtful glare. “And where is my silver fox? If this is all just an agency transfer, why isn’t he here?”

“Um…” Tony looked over toward Lorne, and now Abby transferred all her attention that way. Tony knew exactly what she would see. Lorne was a young captain, which meant he’d taken positions with a hell of a lot of responsibility, and he was wearing his dress uniform, so he had all his medals and ribbons on display. He hadn’t served in any of the major war zones, but he did have a number of awards that only went to those who served in active conflicts. Abby was a scientist. She would put the evidence together, even if she never would get the full picture.

“Tony?” Abby demanded as he stared at Lorne until he was looking mildly alarmed.

“Gibbs tried to order me to not take the job. He tried to order me back here, Abbs, but like I pointed out to him, I’m a trained federal agent, and I would have died several times over if he wasn’t such a stubborn bastard that he refused to give up on me, even when others would have. He ordered me to survive the plague, and I did because disobeying Gibbs just isn’t an option. If he ordered me back here, my life expectancy would probably drop.”

Abby chewed on her lip.

“But you’re not in the line of fire, and Gibbs can’t put you there,” Tony said. He was giving Abby more of the truth than he gave to the others, but he still ached to tell her about all the wonders he’d seen. He could just imagine Abby’s face if she got to see Earth from space, but that would come at too high a cost. Abby would never be safe again.

“I don’t want to lose my family,” Abby said softly.

Tony opened his arms, and she came back for another hug. He held her tight and let himself breathe the unique smells of shampoo and perfume and lab chemicals that would always mean Abby to him. “Gibbs is gone because this fight is too important for him to walk away. He’ll come see you if he can, but you can’t wait for it, Abbs. And you can’t go looking for him, because if you find him, you’ll get dragged into this mess with him. It would kill him. He needs you safe.”

“What about you?” Abby asked, her voice muffled because she still had her face buried in his shoulder.

“I had to choose what part of the family I stayed with. Gibbs needs me.”

“He needs me too,” Abby said.

Tony pulled back and looked into her tear-stained eyes. “Yes, but Tim and Ziva and NCIS need you just as much. It’s like me, Abby. NCIS needs me and Tim is still too timid and he needs me, but Gibbs needs me, and I had to decide which place needed me more.”

“How can I decide where I’m needed more if you won’t tell me anything?”

Tony pulled Abby close and kissed her forehead. “You trust Gibbs, Abbs. Gibbs wants you safe, and that’s why he took this job, to protect everyone. But anyone who’s with him isn’t safe. That’s ripping him up inside. Please, Abby, don’t keep pushing, not when he’s still struggling with the idea that I’ve given up my life to stick with him. I love him for being all protective over us, but you know how he gets when we’re in danger. Please don’t be the person who destroys him. Don’t do that to him.”

“I hate this.”

Tony closed his eyes. “Me too, Abbs. Me too.” He held her until Lorne made some comment, and Tony let his mouth make some gentle excuse. But he felt broken, disengaged from the conversation. Letting Abby go hurt more than any other part of his miserable day, and Tony couldn’t quite get his brain to fully engage as he walked out of her lab for the last time.

The visit with Ducky went much quicker. Ducky admitted that the director had called him, and apparently the two of them assumed that Tony was working undercover for covert ops people in order to cover Gibbs’ six. Ducky had loaded Lorne down with orders about watching Tony for chest colds and getting him checkups. Lorne had taken it all in stride, agreeing to essentially wrap Tony in cotton before he accepted a two inch thick medical file.

By the time they left, Lorne was smirking. “Do you need me to hold your hand?” Lorne asked.

“Bite me,” Tony suggested.

After that, Tony wasn’t sure he even noticed what his body was doing. They went back to the bullpen and he cleaned out his desk. Gibbs’ metals were all waiting in the bottom drawer, and Tony ran a hand over each before loading it into his box. Lorne was much more efficient with Gibbs’ desk, but he checked every single item inside and out, so it took him just as long.

Tony was vaguely aware of Tim and he traded a couple of barbs with him, but then before Tony could blink, they were back in the parking lot, getting into the military issue car Lorne had checked out. Tony put his box in the trunk with the one Lorne had of Gibbs’ belongings.

“We missed the lockers in the training room,” Tony said as he got in the passenger side.

Lorne glanced over. “Is there anything in there you need?”

Tony shook his head. “Work out gear. We have plenty.”

Lorne nodded as he started the car and pointed it toward Andrews. They were taking a military flight, so not even Tim or Abby could trace their flight plan, not even if they tried. Tony suspected they wouldn’t. He hoped, anyway.

No one spoke until they were on the highway. “You okay?” Lorne asked, his voice gentle.

Tony looked over, surprised at the question. “Fine. Why?”

Lorne shrugged. “You did a hell of a job in there. That couldn’t have been easy, pushing them away.”

Tony closed his eyes. Lorne wasn’t supposed to be smart enough to see through Tony’s act. “I did what I had to do. They aren’t part of this fight.”

Lorne didn’t answer, and for that Tony was grateful. After a while, Lorne turned on some soft jazz, and Tony gave himself a little time to mourn the loss of this life. He wasn’t sorry. He’d choose Gibbs and Samas any day of the week, and he understood how important the fight against the goa’uld was—both for the onac homework and for Earth. However, he would miss Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. It was a life that was worthy of a moment of silence as it passed.