PART SEVEN

The workings of the metallic world started to become familiar to Jack after a few hours.  He sat, legs dangling over an abyss that fell floors below him, as he studied the many catwalks and paths that made up nine-eight-nine.  He wondered about the surface, if it was still toxic, or if it was possible for a human to live there now.  On the surface the clone would be close enough to his power source…. 

Jack shivered to shake that thought from his mind as he munched into his food.  It was getting late, Earth time, and he needed his dinner.  A Macaroni and Cheese ready-meal was the closest he was getting to food tonight.  He had thought about steak, the kind he could get at O’Malleys, with Walter, the owner, personally serving one of his oldest customers. 

/ Enough of the old / Jack told himself.  He was merely the longest serving customer that Walter and O’Malleys’ had.  Jack slurped the last of the tasteless meal from his metal bowl and set it aside, reaching back on outstretched arms to view the workings above him now. 

The clone moved almost silently along the catwalks.  He was by Jack’s side and preparing to sit by the time Jack even knew he was close by. 

“Oh, Macaroni and Cheese,” Daniel remarked, remembering the meal from his own field experiences.  “Always tasted like chicken, if I remember rightly.”

Jack smiled lopsidedly. “Only to you, Daniel.”

The clone snorted softly as he bowed his head with his smile.  He folded his arms on the railing and bent to rest his chin on them.  “I don’t miss that.”

“Do you miss anything?”  Jack asked as he mirrored Daniel’s sitting posture, his own whiskery chin resting on his bare arms.  Despite the size, the place was warm enough for Jack to shirk his jacket and get about in black t-shirt only.  The look seemed to appeal to the clone. 

Daniel turned and his eyes shifted over Jack’s face. “A few things,” he said, “But not a lot about Earth. I miss the others.” A strange smile lit his face.

Jack looked at him then cocked his head as he prepared to ask, “How did they die?”

Jack saw a flash in the blue eyes that he took to be annoyance that he’d changed the subject from the obvious tract that the clone wanted to take, that was, to talk about Jack.  With some coldness, the colonel thought, Daniel explained, “After you left and the others took off, Harlan, Sam and I pretty much kept together, fixing this place up.”

“What was Teal’c like?”

“Why do you care?” Daniel snapped; his words weren’t angry, just harsh.

Jack shrugged casually.  “I okayed his completion. I just want to make sure he didn’t get all Terminator on you all again.”

Daniel looked at him and his expression became gentler.  “Oh-” He seemed to blush before he said, “Teal'c was a lot better the second time.  No more little problems.”

Jack held the fixed gaze.  “Yet something killed him?”

“He,” Daniel winced a little, “He kind of got mangled in some machinery that went haywire. Harlan was beside himself.  Sam cried… I’d never really seen her cry before.. well, only with Cassie…” Daniel coughed softly then looked at the man beside him again. “That’s when Jack came back and decided to stay with us.”

The colonel shook his head, knowing how rueful his clone would have felt on hearing Teal'c’s death after deserting his team.  

“Just between you and me-” Daniel raised his brow and looked around conspiratorially as if he might be overheard.  “I think Harlan caused Teal'c’s death.  I think he was scared that the clone wasn’t perfect and would malfunction like before, so he just destroyed it.”

Jack swallowed and stared down at the metal beneath him.  “Pity. Teal'c’s mind would have housed some pretty valuable information. So would have Sam’s…”

Daniel nodded. “I know. But I’ve destroyed them now, so that they can’t be restarted and used against Earth.” Jack nodded, indicating his approval of Daniel’s actions.

The two men sat side by side for a few moments and Daniel never offered any further information about Sam. After a moment of companionable silence, the clone asked, “So you never thought to tell him – about how you feel?”

“Teal’c?” Jack tried to joke.

Daniel’s face darkened.  “Teal’c?”

“It was a joke…” Jack said plainly. It was clear that Daniel only had one thought on his mind.

“No,” Jack finally answered his question then fidgeted on the grille to get comfortable.  “I mean, it almost came up a few times. One time in particular..” He nervously caught his breath, not sure if he wanted to venture here – all this time he’d pushed these yearnings to the back of his mind – so was he really ready to let them out now?  He shot the man beside him a quick glance then told him, “I thought I’d lost him.”

Daniel nodded. “After the Nem incident-” When Jack looked pale the clone said, “Jack told me.”

Jack had.  During one of their many talks together, before they admitted their feelings to each other, the Jack clone had told Daniel about his reactions at the Wake following the Nem incident.  He enlightened Daniel to his decision to retire and his run in with Hammond’s car window.  After much laughter at that, Jack had grown unusually serious and quiet.  It was then that he confessed to Daniel that his feelings were more powerful than they should have been for his friend.  Buoyed by that unexpected confession, Daniel admitted that while Jack and Sam were missing in the South Pole he felt like he’d lost someone very important in his life and the thought of not seeing him again devastated him. These confessions led to their first – hesitant - kiss, which led to their year and a half long relationship. 

“Obviously not,” Daniel said then pointed to Jack’s face, “If your expressions anything to go on.”

Jack closed his eyes and tried to come to grips with the fact that everything he felt up to the point of the synthetic being made were retained in the memory of the clone and that what he felt – up to that point - was probably common knowledge to this clone now.  “No,” he said quietly. “This was another time that we’d thought we’d lost him-”

“Oh?” Daniel’s forehead furrowed and without the glasses Jack noticed how pronounced his golden brow was. 

“We’d gated to Apophis’ ship and.. well.. he got pretty badly shot up,” Jack recalled quietly. 

“Apophis?”

“Daniel.”

“Oh!”

The memory of having to get up and leave Daniel behind on that mission cut Jack deeply.  It was what Daniel had wanted though, and Jack had to respect that his friend didn’t want him to stay and watch him die.  As Daniel had pointed out, they were all going to die anyway.. but Jack still felt haunted by the realization that, upon their return to earth after that mission, a big chunk of himself was left behind. 

The clone was right though, losing Daniel in the Nem incident made Jack acutely aware of his growing feelings for his good friend, but when - after this incident on Apophis’ ship - Daniel made his way across the room, seeming to only have eyes for him, Jack knew, then and there, that he was in love with his team mate.  He still cringed internally when he recalled the way he’d pulled Daniel into a hug in front of everyone else in the Gate Room that day.  Not the right thing to do, not the Military thing to do but it only thing he could do at the time.  It was hard, from then on, to keep his feelings hidden from his best friend – but he succeeded.  With a soft cough, Jack concluded with, “But he came back. We all made it back.”

Daniel blinked then tilted his head to look down at a railing a few floors below them. “You don’t seem too happy about that memory, Jack.” 

Jack lowered his chin to his arm and sighed when he said, “It was a hard mission.  That was when I killed Skaara,” he said, in reference to the conversation they had earlier.  “Twice.”

The clone blinked as he turned his face away from Jack.  They sat in silence for another short while before Jack pulled himself up to his feet.  Daniel tilted his face to look up at him.  “Where are you going?”

“First, I’m not made of whatever it is you’re made of and so that grille is hard on my ass, and second, I need to take a leak.” He looked around with his hands on his hips. “So if you’ve got somewhere you can recommend to me..?”

Daniel scrambled to his feet quickly then pushed his long bangs from his eyes as he tried to think of a secluded, suitable place for Jack to urinate.  “Umm, the third level has a room which we were never really sure what it was for.  It’s not too big but it does have something like a drain in it.”

Jack shrugged. “Lead on, MacBeth..”

“That’s MacDuff,” Daniel corrected him as they headed down to the third level together. 

*

As Jack stepped out of the room he was surprised to find the clone waiting for him right outside.  “You know,” he said as they went away from the room, “I wasn’t about to steal the hand towels or guest soaps.”

Daniel smiled and tilted his face slightly as he fell into step beside Jack.  “I’ve been giving some thought to what you told me..”

“About?” Jack asked as he narrowed his eyes.

“About Sha’re and Skaara.” The clone blinked then stopped walking and looked Jack directly in the eye.  “Well, Skaara mostly.  You see, the Skaara I knew was a sensitive young man, Jack.  I don’t mean sensitive as in ‘emotional’ but he was in tune with the feelings of others around him, and he really cared about his friends and about not hurting other people’s feelings. I can’t imagine what kind of hell it would have been for him, trapped inside that body, unable to stop the killer inside him from harming others.  It would be, quite literally, a living hell for him. You released him.  Then when Apophis brought him back, that would have meant waking up and knowing he had to face it all again. Can you imagine that?’

Jack stared into the passionate blue eyes.

Daniel’s lips moved slowly as he said, “Blowing that ship was probably the kindest act you ever did for him.”

“I shot him.”

“That seems to bother you more than blowing him up.”

Jack exhaled deeply.  “Blowing him up was.. different. I was away from the ship. I had no choice…but I saw his face as I shot him, Daniel, watched him crumple to the ground.  It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”

Daniel wrapped his arms across his body and bowed his head with a slight nod.  “I know your past, Jack.  You’ve killed a lot of people, for the sake of your country.  Seen a lot of faces..”

“They weren’t someone I cared about before..” Jack said grimly.

Daniel touched Jack’s arm with the flat of his hand.  “I know, Jack.  But you have to trust me, you did what was best for Skaara..”

The older man sighed, shrugged and then confessed, “It’s how I’m able to sleep at night.  I tell myself I did it for him.”

“And didn’t you?” Daniel said with a small confident smile.  

Jack met his eyes. “I did it for Daniel.  I had to choose.  I chose Daniel over Skaara.” They remained in a locked stare for a moment then Jack broke the intensity and walked away. 

 *

Harlan had hijacked SG-1 and created clones from them because the world in which he lived in was constantly breaking down.  It was, in Harlan’s words, too much for one man to handle alone, and now Daniel was living that truth. He sat at the computer while his nimble fingers sped over the keyboard, trying to remotely repair a problem in Sector 12, but he wondered if he wasn’t actually going to have to go and look into the problem himself. 

Jack’s boots clanged on the mesh floor as he approached from the other side of the console.  His face became illuminated as he moved out of the shadows and into the glow from the computer area.  Daniel instantly smiled as his companion folded his arms and leaned his chin onto the top of the computer screen.

Reaching over the front of the monitor, Jack tapped the screen with his finger and quipped, “Does this thing pick up Seaspan?” 

Daniel smirked but didn’t take his eyes off the screen as he worked. “You know, you used to say that a lot.”

“Yeah?” The colonel shrugged and started to play with an odd shaped something that was on the top of the computer monitor.  He figured it was something that had broken off a while ago – obviously not too vital or the clones would have fixed it by now. He put it back down as he commented, “Go figure,” with a burgeoning smile as he looked at Daniel.

“And that-” Daniel smiled to himself as his hands raced over the keyboard and successfully corrected the temperature problem remotely.

Finding that fascinating, Jack rounded the console and stood beside where Daniel was seated.  He folded his arms over his chest and crossed his feet at the ankles.  “What else did I say?” He asked, cockily.

Daniel shifted his gaze without lifting his head. The blue of his eyes was vibrant in the light of the screen.  “You used to say you loved me.”

Jack felt his heart tighten as he stared down at Daniel.  His mouth worked to say something but he remained mute. Daniel sensed that he’d made Jack uncomfortable and looked away shyly as he muttered, “I’m sorry.”

In the ensuing silence, Jack’s voice sounded loud, even through it was a hoarse whisper. “How did he do it?”

Daniel frowned and looked at him. He didn’t need to question what Jack meant because Jack clarified his cryptic question.  “How the hell did he get the courage to tell you how he felt?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Jack nodded wordlessly so Daniel got to his feet, jerked his head in a direction then walked off.  Jack followed him, unsure where they were going.  

After a climb through the guts of the complex they came to a small, secluded spot that over looked most of the complex.  Daniel climbed onto a railing then settled himself down onto it, his feet hooked around the mid rail for security.  Jack hesitantly peered over the railing Daniel was perched on, and winced when he saw the workings below disappear in depth.  He looked at the clone. 

“I see you kicked that height problem.”  He climbed onto the railing, and sat with his feet hooked on the mid rail also. 

“I guess so,” Daniel said wistfully as he gazed across the vastness.  When he sense Jack was settled beside him, the clone began.  “I used to come up here often when we were first stranded.  We all seemed to take time by ourselves a lot at the start, trying to work through the enormity of the whole thing.  Jack and Teal’c often went missing.  There was a time,” he said, then darted a look at the man beside him.  Jack sensed he saw jealousy in the eyes.  “I thought they went off together.”  He smiled as if he knew better now then lowered his chin to his chest.  “But I came to realize that Jack just needed.. time.”

“Do you blame him?” The colonel snorted without much thought.

“Living for thousands of years had some positives to it, in my opinion...” Daniel cast his gaze around the emptiness.  “At the time.  Now-” He lowered his chin again.  “Now I can’t bear the thought of being alone that long.” 

“You’re not alone, Danny..”

The clone looked at Jack and said, in a soft voice, “He only ever called me Danny when he felt vulnerable about me.”

Jack’s mouth dropped slightly. Obviously this was a truth that the Jack clone had revealed to Daniel, so he couldn’t deny it. Instead, he agreed.  He touched his hand to the mid-length brown hair and swept it behind Daniel’s small ear.  The clone seemed to shiver at the touch then Jack trailed his fingers down the long throat.  “You were telling me about how you and he..”

Daniel seemed to catch his breath then he quickly turned his face away, and stared out at the metal again.  “Jack came up here one night. I was alone. Sam wanted to be alone..”

“Was this before or after her birthday?”

“After..”

“Ah.” Jack nodded. 

“I didn’t know he knew about this place.  He settled himself beside me, much like you are now, and he followed my gaze to the machines below us.  He asked me what I was thinking and I said that I was wondering about what my real self was doing.  Was he having a good life?  Was he even alive?”  Daniel stopped then turned to Jack once more. “We often wondered that.  At one point Sam asked why we couldn’t just go home and see, and if any of us were dead, well, couldn’t we just go and take over their life?”

“But you need the energy that’s here,” Jack said. 

Daniel wagged his finger then nodded.  “Sam was designing a portable pack for us, and we figured what better way to test it?  But, Jack told us that it was a negative as he’d promised you that he’d cover the gate.  And, well-” Daniel laughed softly - “I guess he just didn’t want to let himself down.”

The older man scratched at the side of his nose with his thumb nail as he listened quietly to Daniel’s low voice, echoed faintly in the silence.   “So we were up here in the rafters, looking down on the heart of the whole complex and I said to Jack, ‘ever think it’s going to be too much?  That maybe it’s better to just end it now and get it over and done with?’  He looked at me and said, ‘No.’ So simply.  I must have made some kind of face because he then told me he had a few things he really wanted to do before his time ran out.  I laughed, of course, because it seemed absurd. We all seemed so invincible.  Anyway I asked him what some of the things he’d hope to achieve were and he said that he was going to fashion up some street hockey sticks and teach me to play.”

Jack laughed as he shook his head slowly.  //Typical!// He thought to himself. 

“Did he?”

“Yeah, and I beat the crap out of him too!  All the time!” Daniel gave a deep throaty laugh and Jack felt himself harden just listening to him.  He suddenly felt a sting of tear in his nose over what he’d let slip through his fingers with earth Daniel. 

This Daniel and Jack had a life *together*, they laughed and loved and lived with each other yet he and Daniel were still pottering around in a deep friendship, unable to make it work beyond that.  He felt regret clamp his heart. 

“He was so gorgeous when he got angry.” Daniel gazed up at the rafters.  Jack blushed slightly as he looked away. “I bet you’re gorgeous when you get angry too,” he heard and turned to see intense eyes staring at him in such an unselfconsciously provocative way. 

“I guess that’s something you’d have to ask my mother,” Jack quipped dryly.

Daniel’s eyes scanned Jack’s rugged features lovingly.  “I don’t think I need to.”

Jack arched his brow and smiled, almost coyly. That made Daniel chortle, “Oh, god, you’re still gorgeous!” He said happily as he looked out over the complex again.

Jack felt good.  The way Daniel looked at him, the way he teased him, the way he was unabashedly flirting with him made him feel good.  Made him feel wanted. 

“I asked Jack what he thought his organic might be doing and he said that if he, you, had any brains you’d have retired.  I asked him why and he said that he was sick of living life to other people’s rules, that there were things he couldn’t do because of who he was in the Air Force.”

That struck Jack like a jab in his solar plexus.  He had been contemplating retirement lately, and the thought of telling Daniel how he truly felt was always a card he could play, if he felt confident in doing it.  He didn’t at the moment, and he wasn’t about to go from the Air Force just yet, but hearing that his clone had already worked out the life he needed to live, years before Jack managed it, shook the older version a little.

Jack pursed his lips as he cocked his brow slightly.

Daniel gave him an understanding smile. “We got to talking about missions we’d been on.  Eventually, he told me how he felt after I went missing on Nem’s world and about the wake-”

“I broke Hammond’s car window,” Jack said, with a nod of remembrance. 

Daniel looked deep into the chocolate-brown eyes. “You wanted to retire then…”

“I thought I’d lost you,” Jack said softly, drawn to Daniel’s gaze. 

The clone leaned a fraction closer.  “That’s what he said, right before he kissed me-” he said, in a voice barely more than a whisper.  Seconds before their lips met Daniel sensed Jack slipping off the railing and his super-reflexes reached and grabbed the falling man before Jack could tumble out of reach.

“HOLY-” Jack yelled, his voice echoing around the complex, deafening after the relative quiet they’d been engulfed in. He hung by Daniel’s grip on the front of his black t-shirt only and swung like a pendulum while the clone grappled to secure himself from dropping into the depths along with him.

Once he had a firm grasp on the rail with his free hand, Daniel gritted his teeth and started to pull Jack back up.  The colonel assisted by reaching up, gripping Daniel’s forearm with both his hands and using his legs to find any purchase he could on the ramp.  Once Jack could reach the railing he hugged it to his chest, lodged his feet into the metal support beneath the ramp and climbed back over.

Daniel never let go of him until Jack was safely on the right side of the railing.  Only then did the clone climb off the side and stand, letting go of the partially ripped top.  Jack looked at what had been his lifeline then he smoothed his hands over the torn and rumpled material as he said, “Thanks.”

Daniel smiled. “I wanted you to fall for me, Jack, but not quite like that!”

The older man laughed, spurred by relief, and commented, “Ah, well, careful what you wish for, Danny!” He put his hand over his heart then gave a low whoop sound as they made their way from the area.  “So that was how Jack fell for you then?”

With another soft laugh, Daniel crinkled his nose and said, “Something like that.”

After a few more steps, Jack said, “No, seriously though, that was it? That was when things…” He paused when Daniel turned back to look at him.  “Started between you?”

The clone tilted his head slightly.  “Nineteen months ago.”

“And how many days,” Jack joshed lightly then was surprised again when the clone turned to look at him.  

“Twenty-four days, sixteen hours,” he reported, without humor. Jack nodded dumbly.

They didn’t talk as they made their way towards the computer area once again.  The MALP was close by and Daniel pointed in the direction of it as he settled behind the computer screen.  “It must be getting late. Are you tired?”

“You sleep?” Jack asked.

“No, I don’t but you need to.”

Daniel got up from the seat and went with Jack to the MALP.  As Jack tugged the bed roll and other items from the supplies he asked the clone beside him, “Is there some place I could go? Somewhere out of the way?”

Daniel nodded and took some of the items from Jack’s arms.  “Come this way,” he said, going ahead to lead the way.

Jack watched the slim figure walk ahead of him, watched the svelte ass inside the enticing black outfit. “So,” he blurted out without thinking, “It was that easy for him, huh?”

The one in the lead looked back over his shoulder as he turned the corridor.  He knew what Jack was referring to.

“Actually, Jack had been flirting with me a bit up until that point, but I never really understood.  I thought it was wishful thinking on my part.  I mean, come on, what would Jack ever see in me?”

“Before the cloning?” Jack interrupted.  “I mean, you thought this, before we came here?”

Daniel blinked and gave a slight nod.  “Before, and after.”

“So Daniel thinks..?”

The clone fixed his attention onto Jack’s eyes.  “He thought exactly what I thought at that time, which was, Why would anyone as gorgeous as Colonel Jack O’Neill have any interest in a geeky scientist, considering how much he hated scientists.”

“Holy-” Jack groaned softly. 

“I don’t know what he thinks anymore,” Daniel lied.  He could see, clearly in his organic’s eyes, how Daniel felt. “But I soon found out that Colonel Jack O’Neill had a very big soft spot for one geeky scientist..”

“Still does.”

Daniel seemed to bristle at that but then he smiled convivially. “Then he should tell him.”

With a shake of his head Jack said, “Ain’t gonna happen.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Daniel told him flatly. 

Jack stared at him then said, “Oh, I think I do.”

The clone closed his eyes and shook his head. “No way.” He stopped at a doorway, shrouded in cloth. 

<End of part 7 >