Archive of Our Own ^beta

It started, Jack supposed, as a bit of escapism: the dreams. His new way of grieving, perhaps, although he'd certainly never grieved like this before. When Charlie had died, he'd never imagined the everyday things; Charlie waking him up by leaping into his bed; Charlie coming home from school excited about a project; Charlie babbling about baseball and science and begging to stay up late that night for the telescope.

When Charlie had died, he'd had nightmares.

(The most awful, awful nightmares.)

When Daniel died, Jack dreamed .

ASLEEP

“Glad you’re awake,” Daniel quipped, shoving a shirt into his backpack. “Finally back in the land of the living.”

Ha. As if. Jack cursed his unconscious mind for thinking it was so goddamn hilarious.

“Yeah, yeah,” he snarked back. “I sleep in one time. Yuck it up.” He’d been up late that night, writing reports. Only he hadn’t, because this was his own little dream world, and in the dream world he and Daniel were - well, they were in a motel, and Daniel was already one cup of coffee down, and packing his pyjamas into a small travel bag.

It was better than the last dream he’d had of Daniel, though. The last dream had been awful; it had been the first dream after Daniel had died. Not so much a dream as a nightmare. The less said about it, the better.

“Waking up late? On the first day of our road trip? I’m insulted.” Daniel grinned, but it slipped into something more honest. “I never thought you’d agree, you know.”

Daniel had been angling for a road trip before he died. Not all of SG-1: just the two of them.

“Gee, Daniel, I just couldn’t miss out on hours of you geeking out over some old huts in the desert.”

Before Daniel died, Jack probably would’ve said no.

“Hours and hours and hours,” Daniel teased. “How on earth will you put up with me?”

Jack shrugged on his leather jacket and grabbed his bag. It was on the end of the bed: exactly where he expected it. It had a spare change of clothes, his toothbrush and a nameless but well-thumbed paperback novel: all the things he would normally have. He didn’t even have to pack it. It was just there.

Dream logic , he supposed.

“Let's go.”

The car they were renting was old and dusty, but it flowed over the roads: the kind that ran on forever, dark and endless. Just orange dirt and blue skies, as far as the mind could imagine.

Jack was driving, one hand on the wheel and the other out the open window, and Daniel was shotgun with his feet up on the dashboard. He was sure they must have talked about something - something about the scene had the air of comfortable silence between bouts of conversation - but he couldn’t for the life of him remember a single word that was said.

They drove like that for a while; Jack couldn’t tell how long. Time didn’t seem to matter at all. It was just him, Daniel, and the road.

“Where are we actually going?” Jack asked. He started tapping out a beat on the wheel. It began playing on the radio: he hadn’t realised the car had a radio, until that moment. Maybe it hadn’t been there at all.

Daniel turned towards him; he leaned into the corner of his seat like a reclining renaissance muse. “Where do you want to go?”

Jack snorted. “This was your idea. I’m just along for the ride, pal.”

Daniel frowned. Something might have flickered across his face, but - maybe it was just the clouds suddenly on the horizon. They were dark, angry: storm clouds, Jack reckoned. But they were gone just as quickly as he’d spotted them, vanishing behind a blocky mesa.

“How’s SG-1 been?” Daniel asked out of the blue.

“Really? Finally got a vacation and you wanna talk about work?”

Daniel scowled at him.

“Fine, fine. We’ve been on leave for about a week. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Planning for those new recruits coming in a few weeks; you know the ones. Green as the sky on PG7-336. All pretty dull.”

Daniel nodded along. He put his elbow out the open window, and started chewing on his thumb. Jack frowned. Daniel only did that when he was worried, but this was just a fantasy: what was there to worry about?

He leaned over and thwacked Daniel on the arm. “Hey, lighten up. You’re all doom and gloom! You should be enjoying our first vacation in -” oh, how long had it been - “what, six months? Our overtime is criminal.”

But even that didn’t help. Daniel just looked at him like the world was about to end.

“The world isn’t gonna end, Danny.”

That snapped Daniel out of it. One last contemplative look was shot Jack’s way, and then the storm clouds of his face broke into a sunny smile.

“Danny?” Daniel wrinkled his nose. “Really?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “We’re not on the clock anymore. I can call you whatever I want.”

“Oh, no -”

“- Danny-boy -”

“- No no no no no -”

“- Space monkey -”

“- Make it stop -”

“- Cupcake -”

“- What did I do to deserve this?”

And then they were both laughing so hard Jack let go of the steering wheel. The car kept driving straight along the road as Jack cackled, clutching his ribs, and then - oh shit - he remembered he was driving and he jerked to grab the wheel again. It took him a second to calm down; he’d almost forgotten it was a dream.

He let out one last chuckle, though, as Daniel was wheezing in his seat.

“What a pair we make, huh, partner?”

That set Daniel off again, chuckling. They passed a little time with silence, until they’d glance at each other and burst into laughter. Their chuckling followed them down the road like tumbleweed.

They both sobered up eventually, and Daniel rested his head on the window frame, arms crossed, eyeing Jack like a translation he couldn’t quite figure out. Eventually, he said “I’m glad you’re here, Jack.”

“Me too,” Jack smiled back, taking the change of tone in stride. Daniel got like this, sometimes: jumping from thought to thought, stuck in that big head of his. Jack often found it hard to tell how Daniel got from point A to point B, but over the years it had gone from irritating to endearing; it was one of his favourite qualities about Daniel, now.

Daniel picked his head up from the window frame and sat up straight in his seat. “I regret not doing this before.”

“Before?” Jack frowned. He worried at the steering wheel. “Before what?”

Daniel shook his head. “It doesn’t matter -”

But it did . It did matter.

“Daniel. Before what? What are you -”

The car was slowing down, rolling to a slow stop, and Jack had no idea why.

“Can we not talk about this? We’re out of gas,” Daniel snapped, and sure enough the metre was suddenly reading zero. “There’s a station a few miles off: look,” and sure enough there was - Jack had to lean over the steering wheel to get a good look at it - at the edge of the heat haze on the horizon. “You could walk there pretty fast, I’d recon.”

Jack frowned. “We could try pushing the car first, see if it starts up one last time. Coast for a bit.”

There was a smile on Daniel’s face; Jack didn’t understand why it was so sad. The sky was bleeding colour, and it fell onto them like rain. The first drops were falling onto Daniel’s cheeks, despite the car’s roof.

“No, Jack. I’ll stay here. You go on ahead.”

“Sure. Sure, okay.” He clapped Daniel on the shoulder, and then he turned and got out of the car. He slammed the door behind him, and started walking into the distance.

AWAKE

Jack woke up alone.

He got out of his harsh bunk blearily. It was 0700. Mission briefing at 0800; departure at 0900; return not scheduled for another 24 hours after that.

He showered. He dressed. He sat down at the briefing and pretended to listen. He caught “recon” and “exotic minerals” and “P3R-326”. It was all he needed to hear. He went back to his office to slog through the personnel files on his desk: new recruits, arriving tomorrow. He tried not to compare all of them to his team. He failed. They all seemed green as grass in comparison. Even the marines.

He went straight to the locker rooms to gear up for the mission. It was painfully silent as he went; he knew he wasn’t talking as much as he used to, and without Daniel…

He knew he wasn’t okay. Of course he wasn’t; his best friend had just died. Again. But even then, everyone else seemed to be faring far better than him. At least they could still talk, still say good morning to each other. Teal’c could hold a better conversation than he could, at the moment. Right now, he was just making the motions; he wasn’t passing Go, he wasn’t collecting two hundred dollars; he was barely able to wake up in the mornings.

“Are you alright, sir?” Carter asked cautiously when she got to the gate room. It was the first thing anyone had said to him directly that day. It stung.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to answer. Carter already knew that he wasn’t alright, and Teal’c, too; they both knew it damn well. Even SG-4, standing on the ramp with them, knew it. He just turned to the stargate, and watched the familiar blue ripples.

Without Daniel, there wasn’t any chatter as they climbed the ramp. They all felt the lack of him acutely.

It had only been a week.

ASLEEP

“Jack! You’re here!” Daniel pushed through a crowd of men, running, rushing, full of life and excitement. “I wasn’t expecting you!”

Jack quirked a smile. “I wasn’t expecting me, either.”

“Sure, sure,” but he was smiling. “You got me out of a pretty rough spot there, actually.”

He looked Daniel over; his clothes were all cargo trousers and linen shirt and dusty - so much dust - and was that blood staining the linen red? It couldn’t have been. On second look, it was brown: dirt. Same on Daniel’s neck, his cheek; Jack thought he saw bruises, but they were gone as soon as he laid eyes on them. A trick of the light.

“What kind of rough spot?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he lied. “Coffee?”

Jack let it slide; it was only a dream, after all. He himself was wearing his trusty leather jacket, despite the heat. “Sure. Where are we, anyway?” A tiny cafe, standing tables only. The cups were tiny, the coffee was thick as tar, the chatter around them wasn’t English, but Jack felt right at home. It felt like he was seeing a little bit of Daniel, brought to life.

“Giza, Egypt. 1991, or thereabouts.”

“A dig?”

Daniel smiled down into his coffee. “Yeah, a good one. Thought it’d distract from…” he trailed off, and Jack made a face - trying to egg him on - but Daniel just shrugged it off. “I wanted to see it again.”

“Show me around?”

They grinned at each other. The coffees only took a second to down, and then they were off, wandering down the close Egyptian streets. They were packed with people, all chatting in Arabic. Gossip; small talk; street vendors haggling over prices. Jack caught a glimpse of flashing trinkets as they passed, Daniel explaining the intricacies of the architecture and local foodstuffs and gesturing wildly all the way. Jack watched him instead of paying attention to the words; Daniel looked, for the first time in a while, happy.

“Jack?”

“Hm?”

“You’re not even listening, are you? I asked if you wanted any… no, you know what, it doesn’t matter.” He turned left, and Jack followed without saying a word. “I thought that, given our road trip didn’t work out, we could maybe see -”

“Wait wait wait, you remember that?” Jack hadn’t expected any kind of continuity in these dreams. He’d expected… he wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but Daniel remembering that wasn’t one of them.

Daniel frowned. “Of course I do. It wasn’t that long ago, Jack.”

“Of course,” Jack said, looking away. He didn’t want Daniel to see his confusion, or anything else. He was so busy avoiding Daniel’s gaze that he almost walked into someone, and he thought Daniel was going to say something else, but then they were turning into the next street and they were suddenly, inexplicably, at the great pyramids of Giza.

“Holy shit,” Jack said, “Those look fucking familiar.”

Daniel snorted. “Really? No awe and wonder? Just -”

“Hey, I’m awed! I’m wondered! I’m awed at how much they look like Goa’uld ships, and I’m wondering how the fuck they fly those things.”

Daniel put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “People thought I was insane, you know? For thinking that the pyramids were built by aliens. Well,” he said, gesturing in front of them, “You can see how absolutely wrong I was.”

“The resemblance is fucking uncanny, Daniel.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Gee, Jack, it’s almost like they were modelled after each other. I’m sure that the Goa’uld and the culture they were appropriating separately created the same structure and architectural style. Completely independently of one another.” Daniel brightened. “Actually, Goa’uld interference could be an explanation for how so many cultures worldwide created the same pyramidic structures: the Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Mayans -”

“Write it down for later,” Jack said. “You can geek out another time.”

Daniel raised his eyebrow. Jack felt like he was being judged. “I thought this trip was so that I could geek out over archeology to my heart’s content.”

“I never said that,” Jack scoffed.

“You did.”

“Didn’t.”

“Did.”

“Did not! This trip was because -” you’re dead, and I miss you . He’d been ready to gloat over Daniel for getting the last word, but suddenly all the fight had drained out of him. This trip is because I’d give anything to see you geek out over archeology again . “Fine, maybe it is, but I never said it out loud."

Daniel was grinning at him: he knew that he’d won. “Sure, Jack. Whatever you say.” That smug asshole.

“Smug asshole,” Jack sniped. “I’m nice to you one time, see what I get out of it.”

“Aha, so you admit it! This is the first time you’ve ever been nice to me!” Daniel waited for their laughter to die down before continuing. His tone was far more serious, but it was genuine: he meant what he said. “I missed you, Jack.”

“You gotta stop being so sentimental, Danny! One day it’ll -” be the death of you . He reconsidered. “You’re really saying you miss little old me? I’m flattered. Pull the other one.”

Daniel sighed; Jack felt like he’d missed something.

“Want to see one of the digs?”

Jack blinked: that had come out of nowhere. He hadn’t expected it.

“Sure, why not -”

Suddenly he was standing at a ledge with a ten foot drop below him. The earth was suddenly firmer and browner and less sandy. He jerked backwards - where the hell - he’d been at Giza - and damn him for forgetting that he was dreaming; all this banter with Daniel felt so real.

Daniel was laughing at him. “Come on -” he started climbing down a ladder - “Cha’hai!”

Jack squinted down at him. “Wassat mean?”

“It means ‘be without fear’ in Jaffa.”

“I knew that,” Jack groused. He kicked at the sand.

He hadn’t known that.

“Tell me about this dig of yours?” was a neat enough change of topic: it got Daniel going down a completely different and far nerdier train of thought. Apparently this dig hadn’t been at Giza. Nowhere near, in fact: it had been in Jordan. Jack couldn’t tell the difference. The sun had that same beating quality to it; they could have been in Arizona, or Australia, and he wouldn’t have known the difference.

Daniel was used to the heat, though. It didn’t stop him rambling on about the cuneiform tablets they’d found - which had ended up going into storage at the British Museum. Daniel seemed to have a stick up his ass about that; the tablets had been locked away just as he’d started translating them, and he didn’t have access to the archives.

“Well, I didn’t at the time.” He grinned at Jack. “I could probably get in now.” He paused, considering. “Do you think I could claim a flight to England as a world-saving military expense?”

He even showed Jack a few tricks of the trade: the way they carefully pried history from the earth with brush and gentle hands, and walked him through the cataloguing process. Jack took it all with good humour; he was good with his hands anyway, and he liked helping Daniel out. Jack even surprised Daniel with a little knowledge about pottery-making, which brought him a little too much glee.

Shame it was all his imagination, though.

“Look, Jack, I was wondering…” Daniel was looking at Jack like he was an ancient riddle to be deciphered; he did that a lot, but only when it was important.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Daniel looked up, and his eyes were so full of hope. “Do you want to stay?”

“Stay?”

“Here. With me.” In this weird, uncanny, dreamt-up version of Daniel’s personal heaven.

“God, Danny, I’d love to -” but -

AWAKE

He woke up alone in his damp, cold sleeping bag on P3R-326. It wasn’t raining anymore, which was a blessing, but he still felt sodden to his bones as he collected coffee from one of the marines from SG-4. He looked out over their little camp as he drank, automatically scanning the area for trouble. There was only the ‘trees’, the puddles, and the overcast sky.

It was a standard recon mission. SG-4 could’ve done it by themselves, but they’d requested Carter and she’d requested Jack and Teal’c. Hammond had only approved it because SG-1 was down a member and as a result unable to do solo missions. In actual fact he was just trying to keep them busy. He knew they didn’t know how to mourn properly: workaholics to the bone.

Perimeter checks were boring as hell on this planet, he decided. There really was nothing here - the ‘trees’ were sparse, and the terrain was largely flat. He could see the stargate about a mile off, a few rocks, and then just their camp and the geology team.

Looked boring as all hell.

He took a half hour watch scrutinising the horizon and trying to recall every type of fighter aircraft he knew, then swapped out with one of SG-4s marines. Swapping out was good; swapping out meant coffee and, more importantly, poker. To pass the time, of course. Jack would never encourage gambling on the clock, but… the nerds could play with their rocks and science gizmos all they wanted, but Jack’s people tended to get bored.

Teal’c revealed a ten and a seven, giving him a perfect straight flush. The marines groaned in unison - they’d lost a bar of chocolate each, but Jack had folded early and only lost a pack of mints - until their radios all crackled simultaneously with a “suspicious noise over the ridge”. Jack flicked an eyebrow at the two marines, sending them scrambling off to rendez-vous.

Teal’c waited for them to get out of earshot before turning his curious eyebrow on Jack. “You have been unusually subdued of late.” He carefully collected the cards the marines had thrown to the ground and assessed their contents before shuffling them back into the deck.

The cards riffled between them.

Teal’c let the silence sit as he shuffled, but broke it as he dealt the cards. “I had observed that you and Daniel Jackson were once again close.” He laid out a card in front of himself, and then one for Jack. “I had not seen such behaviour from you since before the death of Sha’re.” Another card for each of them. “I had hoped that this improvement would continue for the both of you.” He turned over the top three cards of the deck, and raised an eyebrow in challenge.

The cards whispered as he picked them up.

“Yeah,” Jack whispered. “I hoped so too.”

They played a round silently as Teal’c words sank in. Jack wasn’t like the rest of them - he wasn’t always so quick off the mark, especially when people weren’t being clear about what they meant - but it sounded like Teal’c almost approved. Approved of whatever Jack had been hoping for, that is. Approved of something that had never even happened, and now never would.

Jack studied the two kings in his hand. “What did you think was going on between me and Daniel?”

Teal’c smiled benevolently. “Daniel confided in me on this matter. I would not break his confidence, but I know that you are ‘merely friends’.”

Jack raised his eyebrows at his cards, and then at the ace, king and queen Teal’c had dealt between them. “If I’m hearing from you what I think I’m hearing… thanks, T.”

Teal’c nodded, and dealt another ace, and yeah, someone had definitely taught Teal’c how to force cards. This was getting ridiculous.

He raised the stakes anyway. “You don’t think Daniel is dead, do you?”

Teal’c hummed, and matched. “It is certainly possible. We have all mourned Daniel Jackson before, and I hope that one day we will mourn him again.”

Goddammit, why did Teal’c have to have such an excellent poker face?

“Yeah, because we all love it when Daniel comes back from the dead and dies the next day.”

“I merely meant that I hope he is alive, despite evidence to the contrary.”

He looked up at the green sky. “Me too, Teal’c. Me too.”

Teal’c had two aces. He won the round. Jack let it slide.

The marines came back eventually - “just some local wildlife, sir.” - and the poker quickly went from a fun distraction to a tedious slog. Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. There was only so much poker he could play with Teal’c and the marines before Carter and the nerds from SG-4 got bored of looking at rocks.

Carter chose that moment to appear over his shoulder, looking unduly cheerful. “That’s it for recon, sir,” she said. “We’re due back through the stargate in half an hour.”

Thank god .

“Roger that, Carter.”

From there it was packing up camp - or, more accurately, ordering some marines around to pack up camp. He was a Colonel; he was too old for these things; he got to sit around with his coffee and watch.

Hammond met them on their way back through the stargate. “Good,” he said. “Just in time to meet our new recruits.”

From there it was hurriedly debriefing and rebriefing. Jack had just enough time to write up his report before he got called into the meeting room - stacked high with the new recruits.

Carter had already started the introduction, so Jack settled at the back of the room and watched.

“Can our linguists, biologists or anthropologists in the group raise their hands?” Carter asked.

A few people tentatively waved.

Carter nodded back at them and gritted her teeth. “Alright. We’re sorry to report that Doctor Jackson - who was supposed to be leading the soft sciences introduction - is currently missing in action, and presumed dead.”

Hearing it out loud stung. His fists clenched but there was nothing to punch; not even Daniel could fight his way out of death. Jack certainly couldn’t do it on his behalf. That didn’t stop him from wanting to, though. All Jack wanted to do was find some Goa’uld to shoot that would make Daniel alive again.

Daniel isn't dead , something inside him said. Dying just doesn't stick with Daniel .

“That means,” Carter continued, “That I’ll be leading it instead. Now, I know this is unorthodox, but all personnel must sit through all introductions for all areas: even specialisations.”

Some nerd in the front row scoffed. “Why?” His badge read Doctor Bradshaw.

Jack was the one to reply. “You never know when this shit might save your life. Trust me.”

Everyone turned around to look at him. He probably should have stood up and made some inspiring speech, but he’d never been good at those and he wasn’t exactly in the mood for it. He waved them back to Carter.

She sped through an average recon mission, common emergency policies, and even handed out the procedure manuals which were now thick as bricks and getting longer by the day. Jack was planning on writing a short guide titled Stargates for Dummies - or perhaps Alien Invasion for Dummies, he wasn’t quite certain. Carter had initially named it the Departments’ Stargate Survival and Procedural Protocol Manual, but that was too long to remember.

Eventually Teal’c got invited up to the front to give his own introduction.

Jack mostly tuned it out. His thoughts were busy wrapped up in his dreams, in what Teal’c had said earlier. There was something minutely off about the dreams - something he couldn’t put his finger on - and it was bugging him. Maybe it was the way Daniel acted in them; it wasn’t what Jack expected. Perhaps it was his subconscious’ way of torturing him.

Even distracted, he noticed how that kid at the front - Doctor Bradshaw - was one step away from heckling. He was critical of the whole thing - Carter, the overzealous soldiers, Teal’c being an alien. He was trouble waiting to happen. Jack knew it; he’d seen guys like that before. Hell, to most of his superiors he’d been that guy.

He tuned back into Teal’c speech - he was talking about Stargate travel, now. “Travelling through the stargate for the first time may be an alarming experience, but you must stay strong.”

“Think of it like flying commercial for the first time,” Carter added, and the Earth-born recruits in the group nodded. The few alien recruits looked faintly lost. “Or, uh, don’t. You get used to it, is what I’m trying to say.”

Teal’c nodded. “It is as my people say: Cha’hai.”

“Be without fear,” Jack murmured, as Teal’c said the same to the new recruits.

Carter frowned at him. “What was that, sir?”

“Nothing,” he said, frowning. “Just reminded me of a dream I had.”

It worries him. There’s no way he could have remembered any of that Jaffa language - aside from “Kree!” - that had always been Daniel’s job. But Daniel - Daniel was -

He brushed it off. He didn’t want to think about it.

But, as Teal’c started going into detail of how staff weapons and zats worked, he couldn’t help but wonder. Could Daniel -

The claxon sounded, and half the new recruits jumped out their skins; Jack took a mental note of which half before he scrambled from the room.

“Unscheduled offworld activation, sir?” he asked Hammond at the control room.

“No, no, this was scheduled,” he said as SG-10 stepped through the stargate.

Jack realised, suddenly, that he’d half expected Daniel to stagger through the gate and make some quip about them forgetting about him - every time the gate had activated since Daniel had died, he had expected Daniel to walk back through it.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. He was getting twitchy. He needed to stop thinking about this; he needed a drink; he needed a night of goddamn dreamless sleep.

He stalked out of the room and to his office. There was nothing like filing reports to exhaust any anger that might be building in him. So he wrote and edited and signed until he had lost track of time, and then Carter knocked on his door.

“Colonel…” Carter said from the doorway. “Are you alright?”

Jack rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, just fine.”

She nodded - although she clearly didn’t believe him - and left. He leant back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.

“I’m doing just swell.”

ASLEEP

“Bringing her in to land,” Jack announced from the pilot’s seat of an airborne F-14.

“Roger that, Jack,” was the reply, because of course it was Daniel in the back seat, and of course Daniel could never call him Sir, not even in Jack’s wildest dreams. The words held a strange pressure in his ears, and he heard the feedback of the microphone static from his and Daniel’s radios.

Jack made sure the landing was smooth. As a mark of his good piloting, not for Daniel. Or Daniel’s comfort, because Daniel could be an anxious flyer. Definitely not for Daniel - not because he was soft on Daniel - no. Definitely not.

All their heavy flying gear vanished as they disembarked, and Jack found the two of them strolling from the aircraft hangar to a military training ground, chock full of new recruits. There were cadets running laps around the track, sweating in the dry summer heat.

“I can’t imagine you ever doing this kind of training,” Daniel remarked, watching the students intently, and then turning to Jack as though to size him up.

Jack shrugged. “Neither. It was so long ago I’ve mostly forgotten. Ages and ages and ages ago… say, you could probably dig me up like one of your fossils.”

Daniel laughed, and shook his head, which lifted some weight off Jack’s shoulders; he hadn’t realised he felt unsettled until just then.

Daniel was watching the grounds - Jack studied his profile, brightly lit in the golden setting sun, before following his line of sight - a group of cadets being lectured by their drill sergeant.

“Y’know, that ain’t so far off what we were doing with the new SG recruits earlier.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows. “I thought the new recruits weren’t due in for another two weeks?”

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and waved a hand. “They weren’t. It’s been… it’s been a while, Daniel. Forget I said anything.”

The confused look on Daniel’s face wasn’t worth it - dammit, he shouldn’t have said anything, he regretted it as soon as Daniel’s hurt confusion showed - so he scrambled for another topic.

“How about dinner? It’s on me. There’s a diner a few miles down the road.” A diner that wasn’t there in real life. In the waking world, this airfield was a hundred miles from anywhere; the diner was in another state. But hey, Jack could dream a little.

Daniel shrugged - “Sure, why not?” - and started walking for the door, but Jack stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

Jack stepped sideways, and slid into the red leather booth. He really should have driven, but - well, it was only a dream. All in his head, and all that. Why waste time driving when he could dream up anything?

Daniel didn’t even raise an eyebrow, he just slid in opposite.

A waitress came over with their food almost instantly, waffles and pancakes and glorious coffee, and Jack dove in right away.

“Come on, eat up,” Jack said around a mouthful of pancake. “You look like a man who knows where his next meal is coming from.”

Daniel twisted his fork around in his hand. He tried not to choke on a laugh, Jack could see it in the way his throat tightened, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word.

Jack wondered if - Jack wondered. Maybe Daniel wasn’t alright, in whatever afterlife he had ended up in. Jack couldn’t bear the thought of Daniel being miserable - maybe for an eternity, maybe til the heat death of the universe, or whatever it was Carter had been rambling about last week.

They finished their food and paid, and stepped outside into the empty parking lot. The diner vanished behind them, leaving them alone with the harsh streetlights and the indiscernible darkness beyond. It made Jack feel hopelessly lonely; he couldn’t imagine how Daniel felt.

Jack whetted his lips. “Daniel, I’m your CO -” no, that was wrong. He tried again. “I’m your friend, Danny. Your problems are my problems. Fuck, what’s that saying?” Jack scowled - he was bad at this shit. “What I’m trying to say is: no man is an island. Let me help.”

“Well, in that case,” Daniel laughed, huddling more into himself. “I’m a little cold, actually.”

Jack scrubbed roughly at Daniel's arms, trying to rub the warmth back into them and ignoring the tantalising muscle beneath. He shot Daniel an encouraging smile, and swung his leather jacket over Daniel’s shoulders.

“Jack -” Daniel started, but -

“- No, no, you wear it.” He smoothed it over Daniel’s shoulders. “It looks good on you.”

Daniel fiddled with the cuffs of it - almost admiringly - and then looked Jack in the eye with that scrutinising stare of his. Jack felt that he was being judged down to his soul - from the greying hairs on his head to the soles of his boots.

“Anything?” The single word was so solemnly earnest; Jack’s response came out a whisper.

“Anything.”

Daniel walked over to the curb and sat, listlessly. He tugged at the cuffs again. He looked up over the rim of his glasses; Jack, standing over him, could see how damp his eyes were.

“Jack, when you're not here… I have the worst nightmares.”

The hell? “What do you mean?”

Daniel took off Jack’s coat; he folded it neatly, and placed it on the curb beside him - where Jack wished he was sitting. But he had to see Daniel’s face: so sad, but Jack didn’t know why.

“Oh, Jack,” he whispered sadly. He ran his hand down the jacket reverently, and then pulled away. The idea of the jacket vanished beside him, and he looked Jack dead in the eye. “I wish you were real.”

Jack started. “Real? Danny? The hell d’you mean, of course I’m -”

AWAKE

Jack woke up alone, and everything finally slotted into place.

The dreams weren’t just dreams. They were more than that. They were Daniel’s dreams.

All this time he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop; Daniel was still alive.

Daniel was still alive .

God, how hadn’t he noticed before? Why had it taken so long to click? Carter would’ve figured it out in seconds, and Teal’c would never have been fooled - god, he was an idiot, he was delusional, he was -

Beating himself up for nothing. Daniel was still alive, that’s what he needed to focus on. Daniel was still alive, and Jack needed to find a way to save him.

But first he had to deal with the bigger problem.

“Sir, we can’t -”

Hammond stared him down, steady as a mountain range and just as stern. “Doctor Bradshaw will be going with you on this mission, and that's final.”

“Sir -”

“After this mission, I'll reconsider your concerns, but I really do think that Doctor Bradshaw is vital to the success of this mission.”

“No, you think Daniel is vital. This guy is - is -” Jack waved a hand - “Miles off Daniel. Light years off Daniel. He's green! He's incompetent! What if things go south, sir? What then?”

Hammond sighed. “Then you evacuate. You follow protocol.”

“Right, because that works every time.”

“Jack,” Hammond chided, and then sighed again. “Come on, son. Just this one mission.”

Jack stayed sullenly silent. He was sulking; he was great at sulking. He was becoming a goddamn master of sulking - “Fine,” he said, and turned to the door. “If that’s all?”

“Yes, son. Just give him a chance,” Hammond said. “And Jack? If we get Doctor Jackson back, I'll even let you say I told you so.”

“Thank you, sir,” but he wasn’t thankful, not even a little bit. He was fuming, and he marched his way into his next conversation with SG-1 - or what was left of it, without Daniel - with the bitterness of a man who knew his best friend was alive, but knew there was almost nothing he could do to help. If only Hammond would make the smarter decision - SG-1 always worked better when it was just their original members. Carter needed to see it too: “Daniel doesn't need a goddamn replacement, Carter!”

Teal’c was trying to mediate the whole situation. “Our team cannot be comprised of merely three members, and Daniel Jackson is -”

“Daniel isn't dead!” Jack yelled. “I know he isn't!”

Carter looked at him with such pity; he couldn't fucking stand it. “Sir, I know he's come back before, but… there was no Ascension, no Asgard, no Nox, no sarcophagus. He got hit with two zats. There's no coming back from that.”

He slumped into a chair; he ran a hand over his face. Two zats, yeah, but they'd heard the third. They just hadn't stuck around to watch.

Carter sat placatingly next to him. “What makes you think he's still alive, sir?”

Goddammit. He put his head in his hands. What didn't?

“I've been having these dreams.”

She frowned. “Dreams, sir?”

“More than dreams. It’s like -” he waved his hands in the air. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced before. He had no clue how to describe them; not a single goddamn one. It’s like those alternate dimensions , he wanted to say. Where everything is different but so deeply familiar. It feels so real . “It’s more than dreams.”

Teal’c raised an eyebrow at him.

Hee scowled back - “don’t look at me like that!” - but then the silence just made him stew, and he tapped his foot irritably. “What?”

“Merely - this is not the first time we have encountered mind-altering substances in our travels.” Teal’c tilted his head. “Perhaps you have encountered a drug of the unconscious mind.”

Carter leapt on the idea. “Of course! Maybe it’s -” and she started rambling off about some of Doctor Fraiser’s papers, and Jack lost the thread so quickly he turned instantly to Teal’c for help.

“Or,” Teal’c continued, “perhaps this is something more spiritual in nature.”

That brought Carter up short. “Are you suggesting -” she started, but Jack cut her off.

“Look, Carter,” Jack snapped. “When I'm there - I think I'm dreaming. None of it's real, and I know it. And when I wake up it's worse, because then I start second guessing myself.”

“Sir?”

“It feels so real. I remember it like it's real. I just have no fucking clue if I'm right or not.”

“What about Daniel?”

Jack worried on that one. “Not sure. I think - I think maybe he thinks it's a dream too.”

“Well,” Carter said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

“What?”

“To find out if it’s real or not! Next time you're asleep, ask him something that you wouldn't know.”

He raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“I mean, we're about to start our next expedition, sir. You won't exactly have access to a library, or any of Daniel's notes. Ask him about a translation, or his latest theories about the Ancients.”

“Okay,” Jack said, slowly. “Okay, sure. What's the worst it could do?”

ASLEEP

“Doctor Jackson, what would you say about how your theory on Ancient language influences on Bronze-age cultures relates to the new paper on Proto-Indo-European morphology?”

Daniel smiled from the front of the lecture hall. He was leaning against an ancient oak writing desk strewn with his notes and papers. He was in shirt and slacks, with a soft knitted jumper - must’ve been autumn - and he looked the way Jack expected to see Daniel outside of work. He looked like a young, enthusiastic professor. He looked like this was the life he wanted to be living.

Behind him was a chalkboard covered in replications of Ancient writings; Jack remembered them. He remembered being able to read them, although the letters held no meaning to him now.

Jack looked around as Daniel started explaining - something about a Kurgan hypothesis and cultural migration, with lots of hand waving and terminology that went straight over Jack’s head - out the huge wood-framed windows. Leaves of deep reds and oranges filled the view - almost the colour of clay , Jack thought - and the autumn light filtered between them. It was picturesque. It was nice.

Jack turned to the rest of the hall; he felt out of place among the students, older and leather-clad as he was. He was wearing his old familiar jacket; the one he had lent to Daniel, in the last dream. Daniel was talking about phonemes now, whatever those were. There were academics scattered about - the room was about half full - some of whom were taking notes. None of them were distinguishable as individuals. They all had blurred features and vague dress. Jack frowned - he hadn’t really looked at any of the other people that appeared in these dreams - and then -

- and then he realised that he had zoned out. People were getting up and leaving, and Daniel had moved behind his desk and started shuffling papers into his messenger bag. Jack sauntered down to the front of the room, hands in pockets.

“So… good crowd?”

“Jack!” He looked up from his papers and grinned. “You’re back!”

He rocked back on his heels. The movement gave him a second to look out the window, to collect his thoughts.

He rocked back forward. He looked back at Daniel. He put on a smile, although not a particularly convincing one. “Yeah, back in town for a few days. Decided I’d drop in, see how you’re holding up.”

Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m good? I’m great! Grand, even, I’m -”

“Just swell?”

Something in Daniel’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. It’s busy work, but I like it.”

“More than SG-1?”

It was like the iris closing over the stargate; Daniel’s pleased expression cut off immediately.

Jack backtracked. “Sorry, sorry. That was stupid of me. Won’t bring it up again, promise.” He held his hands up - sorry, see? - and then put them back in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You know I'm not good at any of this academic shit, Danny.”

“Thanks, Jack.” He finished packing his papers into his bag and hefted it over his shoulder. “Walk with me?”

The walk didn’t last long; Daniel held the door open for him, and suddenly they were in Daniel’s office. It had the same wooden panelling as the lecture hall, and a cluttered desk. There were shelves stacked high with artefacts Daniel had found on his digs; there was a framed photo of SG-1 on his desk.

“Nice place you got here.” Jack poked at a clay pot on Daniel’s desk. “This real?”

“Replica,” Daniel said, dumping his bag next to the desk.

“I could make a better one.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows. “You can make - oh, of course you can.” He snapped his fingers. “Time loop, right?”

Jack winced, and nodded. “Time loop.”

Daniel’s nose wrinkled with amusement. “I can’t believe you chose pottery -”

“I was losing my mind, okay?” and then, “Don’t look at me like that!”

“I’m not!”

“Are.”

“Not.”

“Are.”

“Chess?” Daniel diverted, and sure enough, there was a small table in the corner of Daniel’s office: two comfy chairs underneath the window, and a beautifully carved wooden chess board between them.

Jack shrugged. “Sure. Bet I’ll beat ya this time.”

They sat and played out the opening moves. It was standard, for them; Jack pulled an idiot's opening just to hear Daniel laugh, but reset the game before Daniel could even claim the win. Daniel talked about archeology, Jack talked about planes, and they fell into an equitable silence for the first few quick, friendly games.

“Come on,” Jack groaned as Daniel reset the board after Jack’s second loss. They moved a few pieces in silence before Jack cracked. “Can we at least talk about something interesting if you’re gonna beat me at my own game?”

“I don’t know…” Daniel said, and then “Alright, alright! Stop giving me that look.” He smirked, and his knight took one of Jack’s pawns. “Imagine there’s a man stranded on a desert island, and he starts hallucinating. And, let’s say, he can only -”

“- Oh, god,” Jack groaned. “Please don’t tell me this is a conversation about philosophy. I can’t deal with philosophy, Danny.”

Daniel laughed brightly. “Sure, philosophy. I’m sure you can manage it.” He shook his head, and continued. “And let’s say our man on the island can only have one thing with him - one thing of the outside world. What should he bring? Maybe something practical, like a fishing rod or a stove or - I don’t know, a knife. Something like that. Or maybe… maybe he could bring something else: some creature comfort to keep him sane.” He was staring at Jack like he was begging him to understand what Daniel wasn’t saying.

Jack didn’t have a fucking clue.

He stared down at the board, and carefully moved his queen. Halfway across the board; unfamiliar territory.

“Why not both?” Jack mused.

Daniel frowned at him. He hadn’t been expecting that, and contemplated his defences. He deliberated heavily, castled his king, and sighed. “That’s going against the rules of the thought experiment, Jack.”

He snorted. “Rules? You made this in your own head, Danny. But I meant - what if there was something comforting and useful. Like, I don’t know…” he trailed off. He, personally, found a great deal of weaponry extremely comforting, but he figured Daniel wasn’t the same. He moved a pawn forward. “Like -”

“Like you?” Daniel raised an eyebrow, and neatly checked Jack’s king.

“Me?” Jack said, and swore, and moved a knight to intervene. “So I’d be stuck on the island with you - with our hypothetical guy?”

Daniel’s queen retreated as Daniel nodded, giving Jack some momentary breathing room.

Jack continued: “Do people count as things, though? I’d argue they wouldn’t, y’know… but if it was, hypothetically, you on this island, well - I’d help.” He looked Daniel dead in the eye. “You know I’d be there in a heartbeat.”

Daniel smiled. “I know. I was just… thinking of what you said last time we met. ‘No man is an island.’”

Jack snorted. “You remember that? Hell, Danny, I don’t even remember -”

And then, suddenly, he did. He realised that this was a dream - this was all in his head - but if Daniel was indeed still alive - and what Carter had said -

He bit his lip. It was a gamble, for sure, but he was a Colonel. He’d been through worse tactical fuck-ups. “Y’know, Daniel, Carter asked me something the other day.”

“Sam?” His face lit up. “I haven’t seen Sam in ages! How is she?”

“Good, good, she’s doing great. All that… science.” He thought of all the gizmos she’d been playing with the last month, and all the subsequent rants about the glories of science, and shuddered. “But she asked me if you knew… hell, I don’t even know. She wanted to know if you had a passphrase, if you ever died. Or if there was something that only you would know, that I wouldn’t.”

Daniel frowned, like that had been the opposite of what he’d been expecting. “Corinthians fifteen fifty four,” he said slowly, “She’d know what that means. But… Jack, I’m not entirely delusional.” His eyes were sharper than they’d been in a while. He looked clear-headed. Rational. He looked like he’d come to entirely the wrong conclusions. “I know this isn’t real. This is all in my head.” He smiled sadly. “Just a dream.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He hadn’t expected that at all. He felt suddenly stifled by the conversation, out of his depth; he shrugged off his jacket, and draped it over the arm of his chair. It gave him a second to think of what in the galaxy to say next. “Okay, so if this is a dream, and we're both here; why aren't Teal'c and Carter? Carter’d have cracked this whole thing wide open in minutes, and Teal’c would probably offer some brilliant Jaffa spiritual wisdoms that’d wake you up: what gives? Why me?”

Daniel rested his chin on his hand, and looked out the window. He glanced back at Jack thoughtfully as he played with the chess pieces; he kept reaching for one and then stopping - reconsidering - and lowering his hand back to the table.

He picked up his king, and ran his thumb over the carved crown at its head. He put it back down in the same spot, which was breaking the rules, really, but Jack didn’t mind. His eyes were locked on Daniel, wishing he could read him like a mission report and - for once - failing.

Daniel finally met Jack’s eyes. “If this really is my dream, then you already know.”

“Humour me.”

Daniel smiled sadly. “Well,” he said softly, “Maybe you’re my desert island guy.”

“Oh, you flatterer,” Jack deadpanned. “But I want to be on the same page here, Danny, this is a dream. I’m just dreaming it too.”

Daniel's fingers twitched over the pieces. “Oh, great, so I’m dying and I get to be comforted by you.” He moved a knight, and Jack took it.

“No, Daniel. I remember these when I wake up. I don’t think you’re dying. I think you’re alive.”

Jack’s queen moved his queen to the right, into position; he'd have a checkmate in three.

Daniel smiled sadly. His bishop retreated. “Optimistic of you.”

“No,” Jack said. “No, I know you. I trust you. You haven’t died yet, and you won’t, not if I have anything to say about it.” He boldly slid his queen all the way to the other side of the board - taking a castle, a key player in this whole game they were playing, and then -

Suddenly Jack was in checkmate; he’d been completely blindsided. He blinked down at the board in confusion. How had Daniel even managed that?

But Daniel was just staring at Jack with an intense and heartbreaking sadness. “I’m glad my hallucinations decided to give me you, Jack. I really am.”

Jack reached across the table for him - “Daniel, I’m real -”

“- Maybe. But I don’t think so.” Daniel pulled away, and stood, and smiled grimly. “I’m in the habit of hallucinating the people I love when I die.”

Daniel flicked over Jack’s king, and -

AWAKE

Jack woke up. Alone. Again.

His sleeping bag was cold and damp - there was dew collecting on its inside. He had just enough time to sit up and swipe a hand across his face before he heard the first sounds of muffled alarm from the rest of the camp, and then there was a hurried tap at the side of his tent.

Carter crept in without much more preamble. “Jaffa spotted one klick east, approaching our position. Gotta scramble, sir.”

Jack sighed, and didn’t bother packing up camp the way he normally did. A scramble was a scramble, which meant shoving on your boots and hauling ass to the stargate. Fuck, and this was supposed to be the new recruits’ first mission; SG-5 had two green members too.

Doctor Bradshaw was complaining loudly: about the damp, the cold, the urgency. It grated on Jack’s nerves; it was gritty and irritating as island sand under nails.

It wasn’t long - crawling through the brush, coffee-less - before the Jaffa were practically on top of them. Jack had never been more glad for camouflage gear in his life.

Alright , Jack thought, and started gesturing to the team: enemies to our 10, move to the stargate, 3 o’clock, be stealthy about it . Carter was busy making faces at him and tapping her watch, and gesturing behind them, and Jack had no idea what that was about, and then -

Doctor Bradshaw tripped, and fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

SG-1 stopped and stared.

Then the firefight started.

The Jaffa had heard Doctor SG-1s-Doom drop like a stone - if a stone was loud as a landmine going off, and just as likely to get them killed - and they turned to the noise instantly.

SG-1 was already ducking for cover - what little cover there was - Jack yelling orders and firing shots over his rock. He was counting zats and staff weapons as their blasts went overhead - Doctor Bradshaw fell to the ground - and counting bullets as they fired from his gun, tallying his reserves. He only had two magazines left - down went a major from SG-5 - and they were - strategically - in a shitty position: halfway up a hill, with little cover, and their backs undefended - shit, who was watching his back -

Jack saw a flash of light in the corner of his eye, and that was it; he was out for the goddamn count.

BETWEEN

“Don’t be so tense,” Daniel whispered in his ear. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

The cameras flashed like bombs; their shutters clicked like gunshots.

Jack woke up to live fire; alone; no backup. He thought - for a second - that the concussive bangs were just in his head, ricocheting in his skull, but no, he was in the middle of a firefight. He groaned, and pushed himself onto his elbows and wormed his way to cover; behind a pillar, or maybe a wall; he had no clue. He had no goddamn clue.

It was out of the way of the lights, in any case, though they still flickered at the corner of his eye -

- from where he had his head pressed into Daniel’s shoulder.

Daniel was smiling for the cameras, but he looked a little worried around the eyes. He pressed his lips to Jack’s ear: “You alright there?”

Everything felt wrong - he felt dizzy - he felt like he was falling - like Daniel’s arm around his waist was the only anchor tying him down. He saw red when he closed his eyes, and flashes when he opened them.

“We can get out of here, if you want. Just say the word.”

He felt like he was slipping away. He was going under; he was taking off. “No, no, Daniel - something’s wrong -”

“Jack?”

He was alone, there was no back-up, his head was pounding -

He fired off a shot at the Jaffa in front of him, swinging around to hit the one behind. He hoped they’d stay down, he was praying they would stay down. He stepped forward -

- tripping over the blood red carpet.

“Woah! Steady there,” Daniel said. He grabbed his arm and pulled him up straight, and let Jack lean against his side. A pillar of support. “This is -” a goddamn whirlwind. Jack felt spun around - directionless - a compass needle wandering in circles.

“Look, Daniel, I’m in real trouble.” He turned away from the cameras; he turned towards Daniel. “I’m in some really deep shit.”

The picture-perfect smile dropped off his face. He understood instantly. “How deep?”

Jack licked his lips. He could feel sweat trickling behind his starched collar -

- he could feel blood trickling down the back of his neck -

“It’s real bad, Danny. I’m concussed, I’m not sure if I’m awake or dreaming or what, I’m just -” lost without you .

The horde of paparazzi was so loud; they sounded like gunshots, like yelling, like a goddamn warzone.

Daniel was still looking at him with all the intensity of a hurricane pooled into a person. “Will this help?”

It felt completely out of touch with the scene around them; the oversaturated, shutter-blurred backdrop of the red carpet, the glamorously dressed movie stars and the paparazzi with their muzzle-flash cameras. It was completely wrong; Daniel pulled a knife from his pocket.

It was a standard army issue blade, but with a fabric-wrapped handle. It was Daniel’s knife, Jack knew. Daniel had been carrying it when he died.

The colours felt faded by contrast, but it felt real. When Jack wrapped his fingers around the handle, it felt realer than anything.

He was alone, but someone was watching his back.

“- Colonel O’Neill, on your -”

“Thank you, Danny,” he said. “I think you’ve just saved my goddamn life.”

He dropped his arm from around Daniel’s shoulder, flicked his wrist -

- and the knife buried itself in the Jaffa’s throat.

He looked around for Daniel - he felt alone - he felt like a bobble-head in an earthquake - his head felt like it was gonna fall of its goddamn rocker -

“Danny?” Jack tried to look around for him, but his brain was a spinning top inside his skull.

A hand landed on his shoulder, but it was Carter, blurry face swimming in and out of concern. “Colonel? Are you alright?”

“No,” he groaned. He lost his balance, and fell back against the wall. He’d half expected to fall against Daniel, because that’s where Daniel had been, just a few seconds ago. But no, that was the dream; this was reality. He fell through where Daniel had been and his shoulder cracked hard against the stone.

Carter had her hands at the back of his skull, and she was swearing. She almost never swore. “Sir, there’s a lot of blood -”

“- got hit by a goddamn…” except he had no idea what he’d been hit with. A camera?

“- I need you to tell me your name, rank, and today’s date.”

He fumbled his hand to the side. He pulled Daniel’s knife from the Jaffa’s neck. He turned it over in his hands. He stared at it with a singular focus. It was definitely Daniel’s knife - the knife he used for cutting rope, prying up tablets, cleaning out carvings - and he’d gone and got blood all over it.

He wiped off the blood with trembling hands, and slipped the knife into the matching sheath on his belt. Gotta keep it safe for Danny , he thought.

“- lonel? Colonel?! Oh, goddammit, we’re evacing! Back through the stargate, now! Someone call a goddamn medic -”

Daniel slid up behind him with a smooth smile and a smoother arm around him. “So, how'd you like the movie?”

They were taking the back exit from the cinema, slipping quietly out of view of the other celebrities and into the shadows. Jack instantly felt more comfortable in the Employee Only corridors with their stark walls and bleached floors than he had in the lavish atrium.

He raised an eyebrow. Daniel was looking at him like that , and he was asking about the goddamn movie? “It was amazing. Fantastic. Prodigious.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “You could just say you didn't like it.”

“No, really,” Jack smiled at him, genuine. “You were amazing. You really saved it at the end, there.”

The side-street they stepped onto was dark and humming with neon lights. It was drizzling with rain - the drops settled like diamonds on Daniel’s suit - but there was a cab waiting for them, and they slipped gracefully into it, and settled on the back seat: shoulder to shoulder.

“Do you ever think -”

“No,” Jack interrupted, “Never,” and Daniel snorted and elbowed him in the ribs.

“You know -” Daniel started, and then cut himself off. “Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like, if we’d never joined SG-1? If things had been… different.”

“What, like those… weird dimensions, on the other side of the mirror?”

Daniel laughed - “Through the looking glass,” and sobered. “No, I meant… if we weren’t so military. Maybe if SG-1 had been a civilian operation from the start, or - or maybe if the world was different, and we could be -” and then he shut his mouth, frustrated and sulking and silent.

Where the hell had that come from?

He had no idea what Daniel was trying to tell him; he wanted Daniel to keep going. He kept his mouth shut.

“I'm just not certain I can keep waking up inside a world that… we're at war, you know? I'm not a soldier, Jack. I’m not a pilot, or some famous actor - I'm a goddamn archeologist.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Danny?” He scrambled for it. He had no idea. He knew Daniel wasn’t talking about the organisation of SG-1, but - “Do you want to… leave SG-1?”

“No!” Daniel scowled. “No, that isn't it at all - I'm trying to say - I -” He settled back into a frowning silence. Jack had never seen Daniel at such a loss for words.

So, wordlessly, Daniel reached across the seat between them, and held his hand.

The cab pulled up to the curb, and Daniel pulled him out into the rain. They weren't in the city anymore; they were in the middle of nowhere. Jack wasn't certain what kind of nowhere it was. It could be desert, or forest, or mountains, and he didn't know - didn't care. All he knew was that he was standing in the pouring rain, getting soaked to the skin.

With Daniel.

They were still holding hands. Daniel's palm was warm against the rain, although in dreams he didn't really feel the cold; temperature wasn't something his mind could fabricate. Daniel was warm, though. They were standing very, very close.

Jack thought he was maybe starting to get what Daniel was trying to say.

“Danny -”

Daniel choked on a laugh. “You're the only person in this goddamn galaxy who’s allowed to call me that.”

And yeah, Jack got it.

Daniel smiled at him: a tiny, hopeful thing. “We’ve had this coming a while, huh?”

“Too long,” Jack said, and kissed him.

It rolled over them: the rain, the thunder, the lightning. The explosive light and brilliant sound. It was like galaxies crashing together; it was like getting struck by lightning; it was the exact opposite of -

AWAKE

Waking up alone.

He bolted upright, filled with that electric energy for those precious few seconds between dreaming and waking where he was convinced Daniel could still be alive. But he wasn’t. Daniel was dead, and if he wasn’t he was as good as - captured and imprisoned by Goa’ulds - and Jack sagged forward, arms around his knees, and let himself sob.

After the month he’d had, it was pretty goddamn cathartic.

“Colonel O’Neill? Jack? Are you alright?” Doctor Fraiser rushed over.

“God,” Jack said hoarsely, scrubbing the tears from his face, “Can’t a guy lose his shit in peace?”

She softened. “I’m sorry, sir, but you were knocked unconscious in the escape from our last mission. You had a pretty serious concussion, as well as -” and Doctor Fraiser was off, listing every single break, bruise and sprain. She berated him for them, as always, and did the usual tests, and after a few minutes she let him be.

“Doc? Can I have one last request?”

“Yes?”

“Could you fetch my combat gear for me?”

She thwacked him with a stethoscope.

“Oh, come on! I’m not gonna use it!”

So no dice on that front. She just made him do concussion tests until she figured out just how bad the concussion was - because he definitely was concussed, no doubt about it, his head was pounding - and then she was finishing up and giving him the usual warnings and cautions. And then, blissfully, she - with one last warning look - left him alone.

Carter and Teal’c swung by not long after. It was the usual sickbed conversations: how are you, sitrep, paperwork, don’t work too hard, more paperwork and get well soon. Carter, at least, brought him the crappy novel from his bedside table, which would at least pass the time.

Just as they were about to leave: “Oh!” Jack remembered, suddenly. “Carter! I did that thing you told me to.”

She frowned, struggling to remember, and then raised her eyebrows at him. “You dreamed again?”

“Only every goddamn night. He said, uh - damn, what was it - Corinthians fifteen… fifty four? Whatever the hell that is. He said you’d know what it meant.”

Carter frowned, and reached for Jack’s bedside table. There was a bible in the drawer, and she flicked through it deftly. The page she settled on seemed to haunt her.

“Oh god,” Carter said as she read. “Daniel isn’t dead.”

Jack leaned over. “Wassit say?”

Teal’c read aloud over Carter’s shoulder: “Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Carter sat down heavily on the next bed over. “I can’t believe it - we watched the zats hit him. What did we miss?”

Teal’c looked nonplussed as ever, merely adding “I believe Sergeants Siler and Davis-Harriman will now be owed vast amounts of money from many other officers.”

Jack barked out a laugh that he instantly regretted - ow, ribs - “Of course there was a pool. Damn, I should’ve dibbed in.” He still could, actually, if he was quick about it.

Teal’c looked at him. “Are you certain that Daniel Jackson is indeed alive? One passage of this book is not enough to convince me.”

Jack got a glint in his eye; he had an idea. “Teal’c, buddy, could you grab my combat gear for me?”

The knife really was Daniel’s.

He hadn’t quite been able to trust his memory - he’d been concussed to high heaven and back - but it really, really was. Daniel had gotten a scrap of fabric from some enthusiastic planet years ago, and he said it was traditional, that a million ancient cultures wrapped handles that way - that it was comfier.

And there it was, sitting amongst Jack’s weapons like it belonged there.

“But that was on Daniel when he -” Carter cut herself off. “You couldn’t have gone back for it.”

“I know that,” Jack whined. “I didn’t. He gave it to me in a dream, and then I was holding it. This was during our little escape from Goa’uld central.”

Carter grinned. “Then he’s alive!”

Teal’c nodded thoughtfully. “Now he must only remain that way until we can launch a rescue.”

“It’s Daniel,” Jack said, looking down at the bloody knife in his hands. “He’ll make it. He has to.”

ASLEEP

In this dream, they woke up together. They were in Jack’s bed, which was in Daniel's apartment, with his tags and Daniel's glasses on the dresser. It was Daniel's bookshelf in the corner; the history books and astronomy guides sat side by side.

Daniel was in bed next to him, eyes closed softly, and Jack cursed himself for loving a dead man; he cursed his brain, for making him see Daniel in the way he'd only dreamed of when Daniel was alive. He wondered if they could have this, if Daniel ever returned.

“Mornin’,” Daniel murmured.

“I love you,” Jack whispered back.

Daniel opened one sleepy eye. “Oh?”

“I just -” he pressed a hand to Daniel’s cheek, ran it down his neck, wrapped an arm around him entirely - “I just wanted to say it. Wasn’t sure if I ever had before.”

Daniel curled against him, tucking his head under Jack's chin. “You did. You did in every way that mattered.”

They stayed like that for an eternity. The comfortable dawn light streaming over them never waxed or waned, although the curtains did flutter softly in the breeze; everything just stayed constant. Daniel fit perfectly into his arms, all that smooth skin and strong muscle. Jack had wanted this for so long, he’d almost say he missed it. Except this had never happened, in real life. He ignored that thought.

This dream was soft, and warm, and completely perfect.

Daniel pulled away for a second, just enough for the softest kiss. “I wish this were real,” he said, running his knuckles down Jack's jaw to rest under his chin.

Jack couldn't help but lean into it. “Me too, Danny.”

Daniel smiled; Daniel looked like he was about to cry.

He kissed him. He couldn’t help it; he hated seeing that expression on Daniel’s face; he couldn’t bear it.

“Go on, Danny. Go back to sleep.” He held Daniel closer. He wanted to save the moment. He wanted to take a photo of this - him and Daniel, curled up in bed together, cosy and warm - and tuck it into his breast pocket, close to his heart. He wanted to pull this moment out in his darkest hours, smooth out its edges, and wish for a tomorrow where he could have this again.

“Don’t wanna,” Daniel said, although it was pressed into Jack’s skin half-heartedly. He was already halfway back to sleep. “Falling asleep means waking up.”

It made no sense, except it did; suddenly, it made all the sense in the world.

Jack was wide awake; Daniel was falling asleep.

“Danny?”

“Jack.”

“Do you -” he didn't want to ask. He didn't want to break this pretence he'd been holding up; that this wasn't real; that this was all in his head. “Daniel, do you know that you're dreaming?”

AWAKE

He woke up alone, but he had one full second to believe it; for a moment, he thought Daniel was asleep next to him. He thought the sunlight was streaming over their bed, that Daniel would open one sleepy eye and whisper good morning with a voice quieter than a page turning.

When he reached out and Daniel wasn’t there, he felt it like a bullet through the heart.

He wanted to go back - he wanted to roll over and fall right back into Daniel’s arms - but his alarm went off, and damn the SGC, damn it all.

There was work to do - there was always more work at the SGC. Dr Fraisier had them come in for routine testing; SG-12 came back from a mission with information from Bra’tac, passed along a network of loyal Jaffa; there was an incident with the central air conditioning system, sixteen bottles of chinese take-out soy sauce and Davis-Harriman’s birthday that was better left untold.

And on top of all that, there was the onboarding for the new recruits; there were twelve of them in total, all finally evaluated and ready to be assigned. Only four had been deemed ready to be on an SG team, so the rest were for ground control, guard duty and mechanics work.

Dr Bradshaw was still in the infirmary, and kicking up a fuss about it. He was reacting just as Jack had expected: not dealing well at all. He wasn’t cut out for the SGC, and Jack was already mentally writing the report about it. He was gonna drop it right on Hammond’s desk.

He did, that afternoon, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth before Hammond was saying “It’s not that I don’t want to, son, but -” he was rebuking a rescue mission for Daniel - Jack had never felt angrier, burning inside - “- We don’t know where the hell he is! He could be anywhere on the stargate network, or on a ha’tak off it!”

He quelled his anger - he had to - and started pacing. Dammit. Dammit . Well, there was also going against orders; he was already half-planning a rescue attempt. All he had to do was gate to Chulak to find Bra’tac, and from there -

“What do you recommend we do, Colonel?”

He stopped. “Well, for starters,” he spat, spinning on his heel, “we get that idiot Bradshaw off the team.” He swung his hand to the report on Hammond’s desk. “And then, well…” He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Hammond nodded shrewdly. “Of course. You’re dismissed, Colonel. Take care.”

So Jack nodded and turned, but he stopped at the door. “Hammond?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Told you so.”

BETWEEN

He was kneeling in a Goa’uld prison, and damn if it wasn’t familiar. What was unfamiliar was the lack of pain, and the fact that Daniel was kneeling opposite him. There were Jaffa guards lining the edges of the room. There was blood on the back of Daniel’s head, and his left pupil was blown wide while the other was left bloodshot. Daniel was in chains.

Jack was free. Jack put his hand on Daniel’s cheek.

“Jack?” Daniel said, slurred and disoriented. “Jack, is that you?”

“Heya, Danny,” he whispered.

Something’s wrong , Jack thought.

“Oh, good,” Daniel said faintly. “I’m dreaming.”

But was he? This dream was different; this dream was different because it felt real.

It reminded Jack of the first dream he’d had after Daniel had died. Daniel had been in a cell, burned and bleeding: tortured. He had begged Jack to tell him that it wasn’t real, that it was all just a dream. All Jack had been able to do was sit with Daniel and hold him, and tell him that he was there.

No, Daniel, I don’t think you are , he wanted to say, but he couldn’t make himself say it. It felt cruel. “I’m here,” he said instead. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

“I’m glad,” Daniel murmured. “I never have nightmares when you’re here.”

They shared their broken smiles until the Jaffa unchained Daniel and dragged him from the room. Jack made an attempt at stopping them, but they didn’t acknowledge him; couldn’t see or hear him; he was like a ghost. The Jaffa guards shoved Daniel down the corridor and into the next room, but Jack could only follow along hopelessly behind. He felt useless.

Daniel was muttering to himself: to Jack. Jack couldn’t really make sense of what he was saying - half of it wasn’t in English anyway - but seeing Daniel like this was breaking him.

“It’s alright, Danny,” Jack was saying, over and over and over again, “I’m here. This -” he choked on the words. “This isn’t real.” Lies had never tasted so foul in his mouth.

The Jaffa dumped Daniel into a sarcophagus, and Jack could only watch as it started to glow.

And then Daniel was standing next to him, hale and healthy and confused.

“Jack? How are you here? Why are you here?!” Daniel was suddenly angry. Seething . At Jack.

He was baffled. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Daniel yelled. “This is the nightmare! This isn’t real.”

He threw his hands up in the air, and then turned aside - away from Jack, like he couldn’t bear to look at him. He took a very deep breath, pushed his glasses onto his forehead, and ran his hands over his face. It calmed him, just a little. He put his glasses back on, and straightened them.

He looked Jack dead in the eye, and explained it as simply as he could: “This is what I dream when you’re not here, Jack; this is what I dream of when I wake up.”

Jack looked around the room - a sarcophagus had been moved from the grand halls the Goa’uld lords frequented, and into a dimmer, duller room. There was no gold plating here - just cold, hard stone. He thought of the room next door, with its chains buried into the floor. He thought of the Jaffa standing watch, and the table of tools that had been behind him that Daniel - unconsciously - hadn’t wanted him to see.

“God, Danny -” but there was no time for questions, nor feelings, and he shifted himself firmly into a higher gear. He was a Colonel. He should damn well act like it. “How do I get you out of here?”

Daniel let out a breath. “You don’t.”

“What?! Daniel, if you think I’m leaving you behind -” you’re wrong. I’m never leaving you behind again.

Daniel cut him off. He was rough about it, too. “You need to get out of here, Jack, before they find you too.”

Jack threw up his hands. “Daniel, we talked about this.” He drew out his words, trying to emphasise his point as much as he could. “I’m not really here.”

But Daniel’s eyes were still mismatched, and the sarcophagus had only just started humming behind them. He’s still concussed , Jack realised. I’d just got through to him, and now he’s convinced he’s dreaming again .

“What if something terrible happens?” Daniel whispered. He was scared and dazed, and Jack didn’t like it one bit.

He opened his mouth - to say what, he wasn’t sure, but anything to try and snap Daniel out of it - but Daniel’s imbalanced eyes widened.

Jack spun round.

“Really, Danny? Of all the things you had to dream up: an Unas? Really?”

It wasn’t a nice Unas, either. Armoured to high heaven and bedecked in weapons: an Unas Assassin. Ha, try saying that five times fast.

He dodged a blast from a staff weapon, and then he was too busy running for his life to listen for a reply.

It was strange, the landscape of this dream. One moment they were in the corridor of the Goa’uld prison - the next an alien village - then a corridor of the SGC - the next a Goa'uld ha'tak - then the corridors of Jack's high school - a university Jack didn't know - a grocery store - Daniel's living room - they were all blending into each other like flicking through channels too fast for any of them to really register.

Daniel tripped - Jack tried to grab him - and suddenly there was no surrounding at all. Everything was hazy and staticky, and fading fast. It was like pixelation; it was like visual snow; it was like the channels had stopped altogether, and the screen was slowly going black.

“Daniel,” he said, suddenly scared - scared out of his mind, scared out of his soul; there was no way. “Daniel, are you dead?” Or, more importantly: “Are you alive?”

Daniel looked poleaxed. “I don’t - I don’t know.” He looked as scared as Jack felt, looking around at the darkness they were floating in. “I’ve been dreaming for so long now.”

Jack swore. “Just tell me where you are; wherever you are, I’ll come get you.”

Daniel’s fist clenched in the fabric of Jack’s jacket. He pulled Jack close. Jack wrapped his arms around him; it felt like the least he could do. He let out a shaky breath into Jack’s collar.

“Jack, I think I might be alive.”

Jack squeezed his eyes shut tight - he squeezed Daniel closer - and tried to imagine themselves into a space. Anywhere. God, he wanted to be somewhere safe, but anywhere would do.

When he opened his eyes, he was in the gate room at Stargate Command.

He pulled back, but kept his hands on Daniel - he needed to be touching him, right now.

“Alive is good.” Jack slapped him on the shoulder. “If you’re dead, I’ll kill you myself.”

Daniel laughed, hoarsely, and Jack took a moment to look at his eyes: “You back with me, Lois? You were concussed for a second there. I’m hoping that sarcophagus fixed you up a little.”

Daniel nodded - he looked a lot more together than he had before - and raised an eyebrow. “Lois?”

“Lois Lane. I can’t let you be Superman.”

Daniel didn’t have time to laugh: the Unas stepped through the stargate behind them.

Jack didn’t waste his breath on saying anything funny; he sprinted for the armoury. The door opened without the need to input his codes - the benefit of his forgetful imagination, no doubt - and then he was throwing a handgun to Daniel and grabbing himself a zat’nik’tel. They needed to get out of there before they got cornered. It was a good thing this phantom SGC was empty, otherwise he’d be having a lot more imaginary problems on his hands.

So they sprinted through the SGC in the formation they were far too used to. Run, hide, shoot, repeat. The Unas was walking forward like a tank - nothing they were doing could knock it down.

There was a break in the running and the blasting and the shouting, and Daniel took the moment to lean against the wall behind him, and tilt his head up to look at the concrete sky.

“Y’know, I’ve never had dreams like this before,” he panted.

Jack said “Neither,” as he reloaded his sidearm.

“I like them, though.”

“Me too.” Jack leaned around the wall that was sheltering them, and fired off a few shots. “Not this one, though,” Jack added. “Sorry to insult your brain, Danny, but this one sucks.”

“What makes you think it’s my brain? Could be yours. Could be both of us -”

“You’re the one with the concussion -”

And then they ran into a dead end.

The Unas marched into the end of the corridor behind them and loomed.

None of Jack’s zats did anything. Nothing seemed to be able to stop the Unas as it marched inevitably towards them. It was a storm on the horizon. It was an unstoppable tide growing closer and closer - as inescapable as a goddamn tsunami. Jack felt like he was firing his bullets into a cresting wave. It was a commando, a freight train, a goddamn tank - and it grabbed Daniel by the throat -

- and Jack couldn’t take it anymore.

He made it all go away.

The Unas was gone; the walls of the SGC were gone; everything was gone. They were standing in the middle of a desert island.

“Daniel,” he was shaking, fingers trembling, adrenaline running through him and making him believe it, with his whole heart. “You have to wake up.”

“No!” Daniel tried to jerk out of his grip.

Jack held on. He felt suddenly angry, righteous with it. “Seriously?! Daniel, that’s the kind of shit inside your head -” he gestured angrily at where the Unas had been. “You can’t keep that up, Daniel, I can’t stand it! Now isn’t the time for disobeying orders -“

“Wherever I am, Jack, when I wake up - you won’t be there.” He swallowed. His eyes were shining. “I’ll wake up alone. I can’t live without you. I’d rather - I’d rather dream.”

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? They’d both rather have lived the dream where they were together - even if together meant running for their lives - than live the life where they were miserable apart.

Jack pulled Daniel closer, and pressed their foreheads together. He tried to think of something clever to say, something funny, but he came up blank. Honesty it was, then. “I love you,” and a romantic gesture sprung to mind like a bouquet of roses; he pulled his tags over his head and pressed them into Daniel’s hand, but that was stupid - sentimental - so he pulled the zat gun out of its holster and handed that over too. Might as well hand over his entire goddamn heart while he was at it.

He kissed him, one last time, just because he could, and Daniel leaned into it, hopeful and scared.

“I’ll be there, Danny. I’ll find you. Wherever you are, I’ll find you. You just gotta wake up.”

AWAKE

Daniel woke up alone.

It was dark. It was cramped. He was in a sarcophagus; he knew it instantly. He could feel it thrumming in his bones: the overuse of it; the addiction creeping in. Dimly, he remembered pain - hazy and tidal and intense - and it wasn’t hard to piece it together; they’d zatted him to keep him unconscious, and as soon as the damage had become too much they’d dumped him in a sarcophagus and started all over. It was safer than leaving a member of SG-1 awake.

But he was awake now.

He had Jack’s dog tags tangled around his fingers; he had his index on the trigger of the zat gun.

Jack was waiting for him.

He swung the sarcophagus open from the inside, taking down the two Jaffa guards with a precise shot each. He gave each of them a follow up, just to be sure. He didn’t like killing, but the only thing on his mind right now was Jack. He had to get back to Jack. He had to look Jack in the eye and tell him that he loved him, without it being a dream. He needed to get back to Jack, or he’d die trying.

Body thrumming with energy - he felt jittery and buzzing with it - he ran to the control panel and opened the door to the corridor. He snuck along impatiently, dipping behind pillars and into alcoves when he heard guards, heart pounding in his ears. He held Jack’s dog tags close, draped around his own neck. He could almost hear his own thoughts zipping through his brain; he had to get back to Jack. He had to.

They caught him; of course they did.

In his defence, it took them over an hour, but they still caught him. He had managed to make it all the way to the Tel’tak scout ship bay. A small group of guards had accosted him two corridors away, but he’d looted a staff weapon by then, and the alarm had sounded - they knew he was missing, no doubt about it - and he’d had no choice but to run for it; straight into the phalanx waiting for him in the landing bay.

They threw him back in a cell, and when he slept he didn’t dream of Jack; he didn’t dream of anything at all.

AWAKE

Jack hadn’t dreamed in a week.

He was antsy about it and he knew it; he was acting worse than he had when he plain thought Daniel was dead. This was worse. This was so much worse. Knowing that Daniel was out there, escaping from Goa’uld, alone, probably recaptured by now or worse -

He was trying not to think about it.

He was failing.

Not even his work could distract him. He spent all of that day’s briefing tapping his pen against paper and absently listening: SG-1 was still on scheduled leave, the new recruits were settling in nicely, Doctor Bradshaw was arguing about his reassignment, there was a zat gun missing from the armoury - and that made Jack twitch a smile; he couldn’t stop himself.

“Something funny, Colonel?” Hammond had that look on his face: the one where he thought he knew what was going on, but was almost in on the joke.

So Jack shook his head and said, “Just a dream I had, General,” and Carter and Teal’c both turned to stare at him. But that wasn’t the time, they knew it wasn’t the time, so they let it be.

Every hour that passed, Jack’s dread grew. There had to be some way of finding out - he had to know , for pity’s sake - if Daniel was really dead. Again .

But there wasn’t one. He couldn’t think of anything. The only way they’d been keeping contact for weeks had been such volatile things as dreams.

So he slogged through his paperwork, and beat up a punching bag, and at the end of the day he went home. He tried not to think of Daniel kicking his shoes off at the door, or standing by his fireplace, or making coffee in his kitchen, but it was futile; he couldn’t stop. So eventually - after a half-drunk beer and an ignored hockey game - he gave up and went to his bedroom; it was the only room in his house where Daniel had never been.

There were still traces of him. Jack pulled his leather jacket out of the closet. He ran his fingers over the seams - the soft supple leather of it - and buried his nose into the lining like he could somehow find a trace of Daniel there. Even though Daniel had never worn this jacket in the waking world - even though he rarely ever saw it.

Jack lay down to sleep and pulled the jacket over himself like an embrace. Even so, he could not sleep. Not for lack of trying; he seethed into his pillow for hours, eyes stubbornly closed, but - he was thinking about Daniel. Of course he was thinking about Daniel.

It was more than that, though. Daniel reached some central part of him, buried under the layers of his work and his duty, deeper even than his grief. It was the deep truth that he couldn’t bring himself to admit; that he was scared of waking alone.

Dragging himself out of bed the next day was a herculean effort. He’d barely slept, and what little he’d had was dreamless, and he’d watched sunrise crawl through his window.

Carter knew it as soon as she laid eyes on him. “Are you alright, sir?” she asked, cautiously. It was the first thing anyone had said to him directly that day. It stung just as badly as it had weeks ago, when the wound of Daniel’s not-death was still fresh; for him, it still was. He’d lost Daniel again that very morning.

Jack hung his head. “I think Daniel might be dead.” He felt gutted out and raw to admit it; his voice was hoarse.

Carter looked sympathetic. “No dreams, sir?”

“No dreams.”

She didn’t know how to console him, so she pointed him to Teal’c in the training room. Teal’c didn’t know how to help either, but he let Jack box with him until he was tired and shaking, and that was a kind of help in and of itself.

Teal’c left him with a clap to the shoulder, and strong encouragement that Jack wasn’t in the mood to hear. He collapsed at his desk, and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t run from his thoughts forever.

God, the paperwork was gonna kill him. He was exhausted, and he really should grab a few hours in his bunk while he could, but… he didn’t really want to sleep. Not when he wasn’t dreaming of Daniel. He put his head in his hands, and tried to rub the tiredness from his eyes.

When that didn’t work, he crossed his arms on his desk and rested his head on them. He took an indulgent second to groan, and closed his eyes -

ASLEEP

- and then when he lifted his head he felt awful, like the aftermath of a zat blast - limbs shaking, head pounding, like he’d learned forbidden knowledge and it was banging at the walls of his skull fighting to get out - and when he blinked blearily around at his strange dream-office his eyes landed on Daniel, who looked just as bad as Jack felt. He wondered if it was some of Daniel bleeding over into his own mind; he wondered if the dreams were more than just a mental connection.

“Jack!” Daniel grinned. He looked exhausted, but he also looked real , in a way he hadn’t in the dreams before now. Before, he’d looked normal - unusually so - always put together and proper and strangely lethargic. It was almost as if the knowledge that he was dreaming had taken away some part of his will to live.

Now he looked exhausted - there were bags under his eyes - and he was bloodied and bruised and singed, but he looked hopeful. There was a spark to Daniel, always, and that had been gone, but it had returned now.

Jack stood up from his desk, and pulled Daniel in for a hug.

“I thought you were dead.”

Daniel snorted, and pressed his face against Jack’s shoulder. “Even I thought I was dead. They really, really want me alive.”

Jack pushed away so that Daniel could see the expression on his face; eyebrow raised, disbelieving.

“They had me under, Jack,” Daniel sighed. He looked Jack dead in the eye. “They were keeping me alive, but I wasn’t supposed to wake up. Not unless they wanted me too.”

“Why would they…” but then he realised. Daniel was probably the biggest source of information on the Tau’ri that there would ever be. He was a gold mine, if only they had the right interrogator. “Oh, Danny.”

“Don’t,” he replied. “I can’t deal with it right now. I can’t crack yet. You can feel bad later, but right now I’m getting out of here.”

Jack nodded. “Alright, understood.” He’d been there before. In the middle of an escape there was no time for emotions. You couldn’t let yourself break or you’d never get out alive. “So, how can I help with the old great escape?”

Daniel huffed, and pushed his glasses up his nose. It was funny that he did that, even when he was dreaming; the motion was so unconscious that it bled over into sleeping. “I don’t know the coordinates for the world I’m on, if I’m even on one. I could be on a ha’tak for all I know.” He paused, and shifted on his feet. He looked up hopefully. “I don’t suppose you have another zat on hand?”

No, he didn’t, but he did have his sidearm. He handed it over without a second thought.

Daniel grinned, checked the clip and the safety, and then reeled Jack in for a kiss. It started soft, but then Jack leaned into it, and then Daniel was pushing him backwards against the desk and grabbing at Jack’s clothing and kissing him so hard Jack could barely breathe. He reached for the tags around Daniel’s neck - his tags - and used them to pull his head down into a better position. God, he wanted this, he wanted Daniel , but that had to wait. Daniel pulled away with a breathless grin.

He looked alive .

“I’ll be out soon, I swear. I can do it this time. I’m gonna gate out to Chulak; I’m gonna escape, get to Chulak, and then I’ll be home. Wait for me.”

Daniel vanished, and -

AWAKE

Jack woke up alone in his office. He picked his head up off his desk. There was paper sticking to his face, and the lamplight blinded him for a second. He blinked it away and checked his watch, wiping sleep from his eyes with the heel of his palm.

He went to the men’s room. He splashed water on his face. He went back to his office, and stared at his desk. Had Daniel really just been here? Had he really just pushed Jack against that desk and kissed him?

Belatedly, dazedly, he checked the holster at his side.

His sidearm was gone.

He grinned.

He picked up his paperwork and a pen, and walked jauntily to the control room. A few officers shot him strange looks on the way; he didn’t care. He knew they expected him to still be mourning, but Daniel wasn’t dead.

He wondered if they’d made a betting pool this time.

There was a seat off in the corner of the room, unoccupied, and he claimed it. One eye on the stargate, one eye on paperwork that he wasn’t reading.

Davis-Harriman was giving him a weird look. “You have a perfectly functional office, sir,” he said.

“I’m waiting on a call.”

Davis-Harriman looked confused, but he didn’t press the matter. People tended not to argue with SG-1’s strange tendencies.

He checked his watch again: it had only been thirteen minutes. He started doing the maths in his head; he’d never managed an escape in less than half an hour, even with a team supporting him. Singlehanded, he supposed he could manage it in an hour, maybe less, but this was Daniel, and he'd said it himself; he wasn’t a soldier.

But Jack had been the one to train Daniel. He’d been the one to teach Daniel how to shoot. He’d taught him basic wilderness survival, not that he’d needed the desert training, and a little tactics. Stealth, when he could. They’d escaped from a million alien prisons together; he trusted Daniel with his life. He trusted Daniel to make it out alive.

So an hour then, maybe more, especially if Daniel was being careful, then gating to Chulak, asking for help, and maybe medical assistance, if he needed it - hold that thought. He didn’t like thinking about Daniel being injured. So getting to Chulak, and then home.

It had only been twenty minutes.

His knee started bouncing.

How long could he wait?

After five more minutes, he realised that he’d been reading the same line of the report over and over again.

After ten minutes, he gave up on the pretence of paperwork entirely. He stared at the stargate instead; he’d forgotten how beautiful it was, after using it so regularly for so long. It really was magical, if you didn’t have a Carter trying to explain all the science mumbo jumbo.

Once, after a year or two on the stargate program, he’d asked for a list of planets they’d been to in relation to charted stars. He’d taken the list home with him, and spent an evening on the roof with his telescope ticking off the tiny pinpricks in the sky he’d visited. It had felt marvellous, at the time: it had felt unbelievable. Here he was now, though, half a decade later. Where had his life gone?

After twenty minutes, Carter came by. She seemed worried about him: even he could tell.

“Change of scene, sir?”

“My office was starting to drive me nuts,” he said back. His heart wasn’t really in it and she knew it.

“Sir -”

He waved her off. “I’m fine, Carter. Gimme an hour and I’ll be right as rain.”

He hoped an hour would be enough.

He checked his watch. It had been twenty two minutes.

God, an hour?

After forty five minutes, the gate activated. Jack was out of his seat in a second, but it was scheduled; it was SG-7, returning from a mission to PR2-636. Jack sat back down. He felt like his nerves were about to leap out of his goddamn skin. He hadn’t been this jumpy in his life; not even when he’d come home from Iraq.

It had been fifty minutes, and the gateroom techs had escalated from “weird looks” - which was standard procedure, with SG-1 - to “asking him if he needed anything” - which made him feel like he was missing something. He was just about to stand up and leave - telling Lieutenant Simmons for the fifth time that he was just watching, really, when the stargate activated.

“Unscheduled gate activation!” Davis-Harriman yelled.

He was on his feet before the alarm started blaring. “From where?”

“Chulak, sir. Bra’tac’s authorisation code is coming through. Opening the iris now.”

Jack was already out the door: already down the stairs. He was in the gateroom as Daniel stepped through, and he was pulling Daniel into his arms before anyone else had even realised who the traveller was.

“I knew you could do it,” Jack murmured against Daniel's neck. The chain of Jack’s dog tags around Daniel’s neck bit into his lip, and he grinned.

“Couldn’t have done it without you.”

They lingered like that. Jack desperately wanted to kiss him, but they were in the gate room - they couldn’t - so he settled for one last pat on the back and a beaming grin. He looked at Daniel properly; he was tired, clearly, and a little singed at the edges, but he looked okay. He looked happy. He was grinning back at Jack, almost blindingly.

“Heya, Danny,” he said, and Daniel was just about to reply when Hammond rushed in, an emergency medical team in tow.

“Doctor Jackson?” Hammond gaped. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

Daniel waved off the medical team “- I’m fine, I’m fine -” and smiled at the general. “I’ll explain in debriefing, but… Jack was right. I wasn’t dead. They were keeping me alive in a sarcophagus, for interrogation.” The smile dropped, a little. “I didn’t reveal anything, though,” he added at Hammond’s worried look, and Jack’s, “I didn’t say a goddamn thing.”

But first he had to go through medical. All the new recruits were stopping to gape at him - being new to the SGC meant they weren’t used to this kind of thing, yet - or to slap him on the back and congratulate him on another death if they were stargate veterans. When he got to the infirmary the look on Doctor Frasier’s face was priceless; she looked like she’d seen a ghost, and then she grinned at Daniel and said “You really can’t stay down, Doctor Jackson,” and started the standard medical check.

Jack knew he probably should have left. He needed to sort out his story for the debrief. He needed to go get Carter and Teal’c so they could join the celebration. He needed to take his paperwork back to his office, and report Daniel as officially found: no longer M.I.A.

But he wanted to stay at Daniel’s side; he couldn’t take his eyes off him. So he stayed, and Daniel’s grateful smile was worth it.

Jack barely remembered the debriefing, only that Carter and Teal’c were overjoyed, but not so much when they heard the story - the amended story. He left out the dreams almost entirely, talking mostly about the Goa’uld that had captured him, what little information he had gained while imprisoned, all that jazz. When asked about the dreams, Daniel only smiled and said “Jack talked me through it.”

Like it had been that simple.

Jack was okay with it, though.

They both ignored the money changing hands as they ascended the levels and went by unspoken agreement to Jack’s car. They climbed in, and Jack wound down the windows as they drove out. Daniel was riding shotgun beside him, feet up on the dashboard, and Jack hung one arm out the window. 

It was no roadtrip, but hey, the world wasn’t going to end. They had time to plan that, now, if Daniel wanted, time to think the rest of their lives through.

Driving out of the mountain felt like an exhumation from his grief. He had been entombed in its stone, earthed in the walls. He felt like he hadn’t left the SGC in months. It felt like leaving a coffin, and this was his first breath of fresh air.

The next morning, Jack woke up, and he wasn’t alone.

Daniel was lying next to him, grinning. His hair was spiked and askew - a little longer than he normally kept it, nowadays, but Jack thought it was adorable. He looked a little like a disgruntled hedgehog. Daniel laughed at that, when Jack told him.

Maybe later they would get out of bed and share a shower, and everything else that came with the awkward song and dance of sharing a bathroom. Maybe Jack would put Daniel’s toast and coffee on - the fancy stuff he kept, just for him - and Daniel would fry up Jack’s bacon, and they’d sit together at Jack’s table and smile over their coffees and kick each other under the table. Maybe everything would be okay.

But the sun wasn’t up yet, and they had time. Jack ran his hands over the miles of smooth skin, and marvelled; he felt like he was floating on some perfect paradise island; Daniel would always be his desert island guy. Daniel rubbed his hand up and down Jack’s back, and Jack couldn’t help but think Daniel was thinking the same thing he was:

This was all he could have ever dreamed of.

THE END