AUTHOR'S NOTES: We would like to thank Arren for her tenacious tense watch—Yes, and who is that ‘Ed’ person? Thank you so very much, Annie. Your cut? You got to read it first... We’d also like to thank Shanilka for her praise, her incredible patience (ahem!) and her great suggestions — glad you read it.

Be warned, folks. This is a post-'Meridian' story, which means Jonas is in this, and it was also written before we heard about season six spoilers. After seeing Meridian, we both wanted to offer the team (and our readers, we hope) some very needed healing and a little closure, but still make this very much an original SG-1 team story -- and that team, in our hearts, will always include Daniel.

Get up! Get up! Getupgetupgetupgetup.

He struggled to his feet -- bare, raw and scraped, bleeding and swollen. He regained his balance and kept running, stumbling over unseen obstacles, running more and more and more. Running over the hard, rocky, bright green mossy ground. Tearing through flowering bushes whose thorns tore at his skin and at his thin clothing.

Running to that place that would say he was safe, wherever the hell that was.

One breath for each stride, panting, gulping at air to fill his bursting lungs, his mouth slung open wide, baring his teeth, the muscles along his jaw line aching along with every muscle in his body.

Railroad spikes of pain drove through his knees, while his calves, knotted and clenched, sizzled from overuse. With every rut in the uneven ground, his ankles would turn over or inward, muscles would tear away, tendons stretch beyond their elasticity. His thighs were blocks of burning cement, and his hamstrings were drawn almost as tightly as his apprehension.

But he kept running, racing, sprinting away from them, from their voices, from the horror that he knew was just about to catch up with him. He could almost feel their hot breath on the back of his neck. Could almost hear them screaming his name over and over and over. He knew they were coming. He knew it was just a matter of time.

Faster! Faster! Oh, God.

In a split second he was down, his kneecap smashed into the ground, his forearms scraped against the ragged earth. The palms of his hands, already bloodied and throbbing, grappled against the putrid soil, grappled and clawed, trying to find the strength to keep going.

Ah! God! Get up! God! Get up, dammit! Go! Go! They're coming! They'll find me!

Running even before his hands left the ground, stumbling forward, tripping and falling, rolling back onto his feet, he kept going.

Sweat, maybe blood, dripped into his eyes, stung and blinded him against the already dim terrain. Branches waited for his arrival, waited with outstretched razor-like fingers to slice his skin, slap against his throat, cut into his eyes that couldn't possibly see the obstructions coming.

Dammit! My eye! Dammit! God! Go! Hu hu hu hu hu hu hu hu.

With each frantic stride his racing heart struggled to keep up. His windpipe threatened to close, pinched itself down until the intake of air was labored and filled with wheezes and rasps. He spit out the phlegm clogging his mouth, spit it out and tried to swallow, but his tongue was swollen and if he swallowed he couldn't breath and if he couldn't breath he'd fall and if he fell they'd find him and if they found him they'd…

Don't think! Run! Swing your arms, and your legs will follow. Simple physics. Run! Christ, run!!

Screeching creatures cried out warnings to him, or cried out to his captors, reporting back to the ones surely hot in pursuit. "Here! Here he is! He is here!" Tiny clawed feet skittered across the dirt alongside him, drafting off his wind, nipping at his bare ankles and feet. Screams and howls protested the invasion, stabbed at his hearing like attacking needles.

"Leave! Leave here!" they screamed.

Animals. Not people. Not...them. Go! Go!

Hu hu hu hu hu hu hu hu…

Stride, stride, stride, pump, pump, pump. breeeeeeeathe! Try to breathe! Try to--

Suddenly, there was no ground below him. Instantly, his hands flew into the air. His diaphragm smashed against the side of the opening. He was flung backwards and cracked his head against the other side, and then he hit the bottom in a clamorous thud.

And everything was quiet. And everything was still. And everything was dark.

And Jack began to feel the odd calm that washes over the damned.

*****

"Sir, we have to go back there!" Sam heard her voice wavering with emotion that threatened to spill over, rage in frustration and fear.

She glanced back at the recorded video of the MALP transmission, saw the gusting winds, icy sweeps of precipitation washing over the camera lens, momentarily obscuring the view of the planet. The sky was an angry silvery steel color, and the ground was one long expanse of ubiquitous snow. She had watched the recording countless times, looking for signs of life, signs of anything that offered hope.

"Major Carter," Hammond said, "you know I can't risk sending you back yet. The weather conditions are too unstable, and we don't even know if he's still alive."

"He is alive," Sam nearly whispered, still staring at the screen.

"Major, Colonel O'Neill has been missing for five days now. When the storm breaks, I will allow you to send a UAV to his location, but until then, there isn't anything we can do."

"He could still be alive and freezing to death out there, while we just sit here and do nothing!" Sam continued to protest, looking up at Hammond to see only regret on his face.

"I'm sorry, Major. I know these past few months have been...difficult." Hammond uncharacteristically placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently, awkwardly attempting to reassure her. "This is an extremely trying time, especially after what happened to Dr. J--"

"Yes, sir," Sam broke in. It had been nearly three months since they lost Daniel, and just hearing his name cut like a knife through her heart. She felt the tears rise up, her throat close tightly and her nose prickle uncomfortably. She had to get out there before she lost it completely in front of her CO.

"E-excuse me, sir. I'll be in my office if you need me." Sam stood, and darting one quick last glance back at the video screen, she turned and stumbled out of the observation room.

She reached the hall in a near run and brushed Jonas on her way out. She hadn't even seem him through the tears that blurred her vision and clouded her senses.

"Oh, sorry, Major Carter," Jonas said.

Sam heard Jonas's hesitant voice. "It's okay. It was my fault," she said, keeping her eyes averted from his as she tried to step past him. Jonas was indisputably at the top of her list of the last person she wanted to speak to right now.

"Any word on the colonel?" he asked.

"No." Sam looked away from the concern on Jonas’s face, kept walking.

Jonas had to nearly jog to keep up with her. "Major Carter, please, I realize that you’re extremely busy, but if you have just a moment, I wanted to ask you--"

Sam stopped him with an upraised hand. "Not now, Jonas. All right?" She knew she sounded far more abrupt than intended -- well no, she did intend it. She had a hard time dealing with Jonas. Seeing him made her miss Daniel all that much more, made her wish she'd never set eyes on Kelowna, never heard of naquaadria, no matter how beneficial the element was turning out to be.

The cost had been far, far too great.

She pushed past Jonas, felt the tears helplessly tumble down her face. Finally, she made it to her office, slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. She pressed her back against the door, leaning on it, allowing its solidity to support her weight, hold her up. She felt as if she would explode, go mad if there wasn’t some way to release the multitude of emotions raging through her.

She spun toward the table beside her, shoved at the piles of books stacked on its surface. They scattered to the concrete floor with muffled thumps. Kicking the book nearest to her, Sam watched it tumble across the floor, pages fluttering. She pounded her fists on the table, crying out at the sharp pain running up to her elbows.

The anger left her body in a rush, leaving only the grief. Sam pressed her back against the wall in the small space between the table and the door. She slid down to the cold concrete floor, pulled her knees up to her chest. She rested her folded arms on them, dropped her head into their shelter and sobbed brokenly, surrendering to the overwhelming sense of loss. The sense that her life was slowly unraveling.

When she looked up again after what felt an eternity, she felt drained, depleted. Her head pounded with pain from congestion, and her body shook, exhausted. The force of her tears had surprised her -- she had always prided herself on her composure, her ability to distance duty from personal life.

Except duty had blurred into her personal life, making it impossible to differentiate one from the other. Daniel had been her teammate, best friend and confidante all in one -- how was she to ever be able to fill that void? Or would she just have to learn to live with yet another laceration to her already wounded heart? Just like she'd had to learn to go on after her mother died, after all the other losses that had followed and nearly derailed her. Daniel truly hadn't died, she hoped, but it hurt just as much as if he had.

They had all endured far too many losses over the years. She wondered how many rends your heart could suffer before it became shattered beyond repair. Losing Jack now would be far too much for her to endure.

No, he's not dead. He's still alive. He has to be, she sternly told herself as she tried to pull herself together.

She slowly got to her feet, wincing at the stiffness that had settled in her spine. She realized that she was cold from sitting on the floor for God knows how long, and her hands were trembling slightly.

She went over to the coffeepot and reached for the canister beside it. She firmly refused to allow any thoughts of Daniel to surface, even though she couldn't count how many late night brainstorming sessions they had spent drinking endless amounts of coffee made from this very same pot.

As she pulled the canister of coffee toward her, a folded piece of notepaper dragged along underneath it. She picked up the paper, unfolded it with shaking hands. She recognized Daniel's precise printing and sketches. Daniel had written "remind Sam of tickets for the BNL concert," and had drawn a rough circle around the reminder. He had doodled curlicues and random scribbles around the circle, probably while impatiently waiting for coffee to brew. In his impatience, he had forgotten to pocket his own reminder, Sam figured, having to smile slightly through her tears.

She blinked at the note again, had to think for minute which concert Daniel wanted to remind her of. She suddenly remembered with a jolt -- a flash of them working in her office, a Bare Naked Ladies CD playing in the background, both of them humming along. They had planned to go their concert, which would have happened... God, a week after they had lost Daniel, Sam realized.

She knew too well how quickly and shockingly death or loss could take you by surprise. Steal your loved ones right out from under you with no regard for your plans, your dreams, and there was no getting used to it.

Sam felt the tears resurface, her throat ache. She pressed the paper against her heart, closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths.

She missed him. She missed him so much it hurt. For the first few nights after he had died, or ascended, or wherever the hell he’d gone, Sam couldn't close her eyes to sleep without seeing Daniel's burned and bandaged face. Only his eyes had been the same, surrounded by gauze, dulled by pain and drugs, but still his well-loved, familiar eyes.

Over the past five days, she hadn't allowed herself to think of what might be happening to the colonel. Her mind hadn't been willing to consider the possibility of losing him too. She realized that she desperately missed him, too -- the fear for him intermingling with her grief so that it was hard to separate the two emotions.

She had to pull herself together. Daniel was gone, irretrievable, but there was still hope for Colonel O’Neill. She knew she couldn't handle losing him too and she'd do everything she damn well could to prevent that. They would find him and bring him home.

He has to be alive. Please God.

She knew they always say that God never gives you more than you can handle. She wasn't one to pray, or to even go to church other than for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, but Sam clutched the piece of paper with the reminder of her lost friendship tighter, whispered a silent prayer. A prayer for her other lost friend, a desperate plea to keep him safe.

*****

Red and searing, the light hit his closed eyes. It slashed across his lids and stabbed into his brain like a switchblade The pain roused Jack from his unconsciousness and sent him scrambling from out of its intensity.

"O’Neill. John. Colonel," he rattled off, clambering across the dirt floor, scratching his way across the craggy, jagged rocks, slimy with dew.

He reached the cave wall, panting and breathless, shielding his eyes against the burning light, his hands shook and ached from the cold. He pressed his back into the stone abutment, pulled his knees into his chest and hid his face in his scraped forearms.

Only silence met him. Crashed down on him. Filled him with a sense of hyper-acuity. His hands began to tremble and his empty stomach began to clench.

"United States Air Force. Serial number 749-876-23-2199," Jack cried out from behind his arms. He waited for the demands he knew would be coming, for the pain that would surely follow that.

The last ruminations of his echoing voice careened off the cave walls and dissipated, leaving only the thick silence, punctuated by a constant drip of groundwater against the mossy rocks.

"Look, you rat bastards!" he screamed, "we’ve gone over and over this. I don’t know anything!"

His furious voice moved away, the echoes faded and were replaced with more silence. More time to set every nerve on edge. More time to allow the fear to spread throughout his ragged and torn body.

"I. Don’t. Know. ANYTHING!!" he screamed, grabbing his hair, flexing burning muscles in his back and arms. The sound of his own voice echoed harshly down the cavernous chambers of the cave.

ANYTHING! Anything! Anything....

His screams bounced off the cave walls, their reverberations assaulting him, taunting him.

The sound faded until he heard nothing but the faint dripping of moisture off the walls, plopping into small puddles around him. He heard nothing but his own ragged, harsh breathing and his heartbeat thrumming in his ears.

Jack pulled his hands away from his face cautiously. A beam of light cascaded through the opening in the ceiling. The light poured through the hole and threw a spot of daylight onto the dank floor while silt and dust filtered through its rays. Jack nervously looked around his confinement.

"Where the hell am I?" he whispered, through a throat raw and scraped. Gone were the corroded bars that left tiny, painful slices in his skin. Gone were the screaming alarms, the blaring klaxons, the shrill whistles. There were no ever-present beings slapping him, kicking at his bruised ribs and kidneys the moment he fell asleep. There were no needles penetrating the base of his spine over and over and over.

There was no one. No one and nothing.

Only silence.

And light.

Jack crushed shut his eyes and tried to remember. He wove his stiff fingers over the back of his neck and tried to pull up some information from his foggy recollection of the past days. Or maybe it was weeks, he thought.

"No, it’s been…uh…I’ve been gone for... This is..." he muttered to himself, desperately flipping through chunks of dissociated time, wading among the muddled sense of passing days in a futile attempt to come to an understanding.

He opened his eyes and stared into the light -- a column of milky translucence. Slowly, Jack raised himself from the musty ground and began to step toward the light. The bones and tendons in his feet and ankles violently protested the weight placed on them. The pain sent him immediately to his knees, where he found a new group of muscles and ligaments, bruises and cuts that burned and throbbed.

"Oh, God," he moaned, crumpling to the ground in agonizing pain. From his hips to his feet, every sinewy muscle, every strand of ligament, every bone screamed of pains unimaginable, unfathomable. Bones in his feet crushed together like ice in a blender; his knees pulsated with blinding misery, fulminant and unrelenting; the sockets of his hips seemed all together unstable, all together unable to support his weight, all together dolorous and weak.

So he lay panting on the floor while jagged rocks pressed sadistically into a body already suffering and overwrought from injury.

"Where are you now, you son of a bitch?" Jack cried out. He turned his face into the damp loam, its musty odor suffocating him. He coughed harshly against the mildewed air and felt the abused flesh surrounding his ribs and abdomen. Piercing agony, deep and grinding, shot straight through him, seized his breath, made screaming out impossible. Beads of sweat covered his body like a palpable blanket of pain.

"Shit," he groaned, carefully wrapping his serrated arms across his bruised chest. "God dammit!" he cried.

With no other recourse but to be still until the pain subsided, Jack lay trembling on the floor of the cave, looking up through the hole in ceiling.

"Where are you now, Daniel?" he whispered, swallowing against the pain. Jack closed his eyes as the negative image of the cave opening burned indelibly against his darkened vision. "See? I told you you weren’t really there. I told you. But no, you wouldn’t believe me," he said, moaning, his teeth chattering from the cold, sodden earth below him.

Jack groaned audibly while he slowly pulled himself into a fetal position. "Oh, God," he cried, cold and wet and in agony. "You weren’t there, Daniel! Just like you’re not here now."

*****

The harsh light of the video monitor filled the darkened room. Sam sat two feet from the screen, her hands clasped together and pressed to her lips. There had to be something in that video that she had missed. Something, anything. She grabbed the remote and slowed the images down to half-speed, scanning the screen for a subtle movement, a mound in the snow big enough to encase a body.

There was nothing.

She turned off the MALP video and wove her fingers across the back of her neck.

"I’m missing something," she said to no one. "There has to be something I’m just not seeing."

Sam grabbed the remote again and rewound the video to the beginning again. A crackled transmission began. A garbled blurring of cold terrain shone unsteadily on the screen. With each bump, the MALP’s transmission flickered, sent back a static-filled picture. Could the missing clue be lost in there? Could the one glimpse of the colonel have been lost by a poor reception? It was agonizing—the constant what ifs; the constant if onlys.

"Dammit!" she cursed, slamming the remote down on the table. She smacked the monitor’s console and switched off the images that were already etched deep in her memory. Sam strode angrily around the room, turning on the overhead lights, thrusting her hands deep in her back pockets, grinding her teeth, kicking her boot against a cabinet door. And then kicking it again. And again. She grabbed hold of the counter and kicked and kicked until a deep indentation formed. "Dammit! Where the hell are you, sir?"

"I don’t think he’s in there, Major," Janet said, standing in the doorway.

Sam stopped kicking but did not turn to face her friend. She let her head fall between her arms and took to kicking the toe of her boot lightly against the floor instead. "Well, he might as well be, because I can’t figure out where else he could be."

Janet stepped closer and leaned against the counter. "You’re exhausted."

"What’s new?" Sam responded caustically.

"You need to rest."

"So I’ve been told."

"Sam," Janet said, touching the back of Sam’s arm. Sam turned her face away from Janet, didn’t want her to see any more tears. "Sam, talk to me. What’s really going on?"

"I’m tired of crying."

"Me, too."

"You know, when we first found Cassie," she began, bringing a hand up to quickly wipe under her nose, "and I was so upset over her, I told Daniel that I knew I shouldn’t get too close, but that I had."

"That’s the military way," Janet said, empathetically. She turned around and rested her elbows on the counter.

"Yeah, it is. Well, Daniel looked at me -- you remember that look? The one that said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ -- and he said, ‘Who said that?’" Sam shook her head, pulled her mouth to one side and sniffed. "It never occurred to me until just then that, yeah, maybe it was okay to feel."

"Cassie misses Daniel," Janet quietly said, "and she misses Jack."

"So do I," Sam said.

"We’ll find him, Sam. But until then, you need to get some sleep," Janet said, grasping Sam’s hand. "You can’t fill the emptiness with work."

"That’s just it, Janet," Sam said, "there’s not an emptiness. It’s…there’s too much."

Janet shook her head, regarded Sam with wet, questioning eyes.

Sam pushed her bangs off her forehead and sniffled. "I wish I were empty. But I’m not. I have all these…feelings, emotions that have nowhere to go. All these…" she said, looking blindly through the room, seeing ghosts of memories of Daniel, of Jack in every corner. She dejectedly shook her head. "I don’t know what to do with all this anger I have over not being able to do anything to help the colonel, or with the love I have for Daniel. I don’t know what to do with all these feelings I have for Daniel, with all the feelings that I shared only with him. I don’t know what to do with them."

Janet pursed her lips tight together and knew exactly what Sam was saying. "I know."

"I go through my day and stupid things will happen. Stupid things like I’ll see someone who reminds me that I have to pick up my dry cleaning, which reminds me that I can’t find my red cardigan, which makes me think maybe I left it at Daniel’s apartment, and next time I see him, well, I’ll just ask him," Sam said, and then stopped, took two short gasps of breath and let what felt like a river of tears wind down her cheek. "And I have to remind myself over and over that he’s not here. That he’ll never be here again. And it kills me to think that I have to keep removing him from my every day duties, from my life… and…and every holiday I’m going to have to… He’s just not here anymore, and I wish I could understand that once and for all instead of having to remind myself everyday that he’s gone."

"And it’s worse now that Colonel O’Neill is missing," Janet said, handing Sam a tissue, taking one for herself.

"And it’s worse now that Colonel O’Neill is missing," Sam agreed, covering her face with the tissue.

"I know," Janet said, pulling the harsh tissue across her eyes, trying not to wipe all her makeup away with it.

Sam crumpled the soggy tissue in her hand, dabbed it under her nose. "It’s been three months, Janet. Daniel’s been gone three months, and I still talk to him as if he were in the room. Colonel O’Neill thinks…well, the colonel won’t even talk about him, so…"

"So basically you’ve got a double whammy of grief going on," Janet said, trying to infuse a small amount of levity in an attempt to ease Sam’s near-overwhelming sorrow.

"Yeah, you could say that," Sam said, nervously opening the tissue just to keep her hands busy. "I have to find the colonel, Janet. I can’t lose another teammate. I don’t think I have the strength."

"You’ll find him, Sam. He’s out there, and you’ll find him," Janet told her, offering her a fresh tissue. "Why don’t you go to the VIP room and get some rest."

Sam blew her nose and wadded the tissue up with the first one. She tossed them into the nearby waste basket and nodded. "Yeah, maybe I should."

"Yeah," Janet agreed, rubbing Sam’s arm. "I’ll let the general know where you are."

"No," Sam suddenly said. "No, he has my beeper. If he needs me, he’ll beep me. I don’t want him to…On second thought, maybe I’ll stay here and…"

"No. That’s not an option," Janet strongly told her. "You need some sleep. General Hammond isn’t going to think any less of you if you take a couple hours to rest."

"But with Colonel O’Neill gone, I’m..."

"I know. It’s just you and Teal’c, but even Teal’c is in his quarters meditating. Come on, Sam," Janet said, leading her to the door.

Sam held her ground stubbornly, shook her head.

"Sam, you once told me that during the Gulf War you never slept better. Why do you think that was?" Janet asked, stepping in front of Sam.

"I was focused on the job," Sam said, wrapping her arms around her chest.

"Well, it’s time to focus again, Major, because Colonel O’Neill is counting on you. But you’re no good to him or yourself unless you get some rest," Janet told her.

Sam assessed Janet with her eyes, decided that her friend the doctor was about to pull rank on her and become the CMO who could order her to take some downtime, and if that were to happen it would have to be put in Sam’s record. No, that was about the last thing Sam needed, so she acquiesced and decided Janet was right.

"Okay. But just a couple hours," Sam stated.

"One full REM cycle, Sam. You need it," Janet said, her face softening. She began to leave the office.

"Janet," Sam called. Janet turned at the door to face her friend. Sam absently rubbed the back of her neck. "Thank you for being…" She looked away and shrugged her shoulders.

"You’re welcome. Sleep," Janet said, and she moved into the hall and back to her floor.

Sam turned her back to the door, clutched her arms to her stomach and wept the few remaining tears of the day.

*****

"Jack."

There was that voice again, calling him, taunting him, because it wasn't really there, was it? He groaned, cradled his head in his arms, tucked his legs further up against his chest. All he knew now was pain, everything, every muscle, every fiber of his being ached, throbbed with his heartbeat, tearing him apart.

"Jack, please get up. You have to keep moving."

Jack rolled his head from side to side in negation. No, he wasn't moving. Couldn't they see he couldn't move anymore? He wasn't going to tell them anything. He didn't know anything. How many times did he have to tell them?

"Don't know anything. Leave me alone." His voice came out weakly, hardly even aware that he was speaking. He had said those words so many times, so many times falling on deaf ears. They never listened, just kept at him relentlessly, shouting, hurting....

"Listen to me, Jack. It's me. It's Daniel. I know you're hurt, but you have to listen so I can help you."

"You're not here. You're not here, so I’m not listening anymore!" Jack found the strength to shout, to push himself up, gasping at the pain in his middle, his legs, his head. He huddled over his bent legs, his body shuddering, teeth chattering.

God, he was cold, he couldn't remember being so cold since, since.... he didn't know why he was cold. The cave was humid, cool, but not cold enough to explain the ice freezing his veins, numbing his limbs.

He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, his fingers twining in the coarse fabric of the ragged shirt he had been dressed in. The shirt was no more than a rag -- worn down to the bare fibers and peppered with holes.

"I am here, Jack. Please look at me. I'm right in front of you."

He raised his head slightly, saw only a white blur. The light from the hole in the ceiling poured down, casting a dust-filled spotlight over where Daniel’s voice was coming from. Why were they tormenting him with Daniel's voice?

"No, you're not. You're gone! I saw you. I saw you leave...." His words dissolved into a bout of violent coughing that sent stars scurrying in front of his eyes, his chest on fire. When he could speak again, he gasped, "Trick..."

"A trick?" Daniel's voice echoed somewhat curiously.

Jack darted a glance through the light, squinting at the blur. He thought he saw Daniel's face, saw that perplexed little frown Daniel always got when Jack said something nuts. The familiar blue eyes focused on him.

It sure looks and sounds like Daniel, Jack thought. He shook his head wildly, ignoring the flare of pain, and squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't going to fall for it, wasn't going to let them do this to him.

"This is a trick... to... to make me tell you.... something."

"Okay, maybe it is a trick," Daniel's voice said calmly. "Maybe they're just doing this to slow you down. If you stay here and talk to me for a while, they'll catch up with you and take you back."

No! Jack felt a wild surge of panic. He wouldn't go back. They'd have to kill him first. Daniel would never say something like that, so this wasn't Daniel. He was gone. Daniel was gone and Jack was all alone here. Alone unless they found him again...

"So let's chat, Jack. How are things back on base? How did you manage to get yourself in such a mess anyhow?"

Jack opened his eyes, startled by the sardonic tone. He looked at the white blur, then forced his gaze away. Didn't want to look. He wasn't going to listen. The voice was right, they were tricking him. They'd keep him talking, keep him from moving so they'd find him and take him back and he wasn't letting them take him back.

His exhausted mind tried to tell him that something wasn't quite right with this scenario, but he couldn't think what. All he knew was he wasn't going to let them find him again. Wasn’t going to let them find him to take him back, to have those goddamned sons of bitches pinch his skin, shove their sadistic needles into his spine…

"No!" he gasped as he shoved himself to his feet. "Not... going....to take me... back!" he choked out, then screamed as the torn muscles in his legs shrieked in protest. He stumbled a few steps, nearly fell, managed to keep going. He kept his eyes away from the white light. That mesmerizing light, that voice that sounded so much like Daniel it made him want to weep.

He ignored the light that followed him. Not Daniel....

One foot in front of the other, Jack, he told himself. That's all it takes. Left foot, right foot. One after the other. Not going back.

*****

General Hammond looked out over the embarkation room, his heart heavy and his spirit diminished. Two of his best men had gone through that gate and not come home -- Daniel Jackson and now Jack O'Neill. The loss of Dr. Jackson had been staggering, and the general wasn't at all sure the SGC would ever sufficiently recover. Whole throngs of people still traversed the concrete halls lost in a numbed fog, wondering where to turn with their questions, their data.

General Hammond knew their misdirection was partly his fault. Daniel hadn’t been the head of the department, but he was the hub, the one every other person in the departments of social sciences and history went to, relied on, tried to impress. With Daniel gone, they needed a leader, someone to step up to take over the responsibilities that Doctor Jackson once shouldered.

He knew the anthropology section was unstable and listless, that neither new work was being cultivated, nor current work being completed. In three short months, the SGC's archeology and linguistics departments had fallen behind a full year, and their inability to move forward was directly related to their lack of foundation.

General Hammond knew that. He knew, ultimately, it was his responsibility to refocus the group with someone who could coalesce the floundering staff. Someone who could find the right balance between compassion and discipline. Someone like Daniel Jackson.

"You'll never know what you meant to us, Doctor Jackson," General Hammond said, staring out at the still ring. "Especially now, when we need you more than ever."

"Excuse me, sir."

General Hammond turned from the expansive window to find Jonas Quinn standing in the door. "Yes, Doctor Quinn. What can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," Jonas said, padding over to the general. He opened a manila file, pulled from its clutch of papers a stream of processed data. "I’ve been going through some of the files I, well, absconded from Kelowna, and…"

"Are you finding your facilities acceptable, Doctor?" the general asked, interrupting.

Jonas stopped in mid-sentence, glanced nervously at the general, and then back down at his notes. "Oh, certainly, sir. They're the facilities are outstanding. I'm not sure, though, that..."

"What is it, Doctor?"

Jonas closed the file and pressed it to his chest. "It's nothing, sir. It's only been three months, and there are many adjustments to be made, both professionally as well as personally."

"There's something you need to know about these people, particularly SG1," General Hammond said, taking a seat at the head of the table. He motioned for Jonas to sit down also. "There are very few people in this program who chose to be here-Colonel O'Neill was pulled out of retirement in order to head up SG1. I, myself, had to put off retirement to take over command from General West. Teal'c, as you know, joined SG1 after he chose to abandon and renounce the life he was living. And Doctor Jackson, well, Doctor Jackson… that was a moment of pure kismet. The government had a rocket of a program, and Doctor Jackson supplied all the fuel. But he didn't want to be here, no more than he wanted to leave Abydos. All of us -- Colonel O'Neill, Teal'c, Doctor Jackson, and even I -- found ourselves here on less than acceptable terms. But each of us has come to feel this is our home. A refuge and safe haven. Each person in this mountain is a brother, a sister, a cousin, a friend, and when we lose one of those essential members, we lose a piece of ourselves." General Hammond clucked his tongue against his cheek and pressed the tips of his fingers gently together.

"And unfortunately, your arrival and Doctor Jackson's departure and the circumstances that brought on that exchange have left a bitter taste in our mouths. It isn't personal, Doctor. What you might mistake for anger or aggression toward you is really misplaced grief."

"I know that, sir," Jonas said, flattening his palms against the folder. "I only wish there were something I could do in order to alleviate the problem."

"Your time will come, Doctor. Just give it time," General Hammond said, rising from his seat. "Now, what is it you wanted to tell me?"

"It's nothing, sir," Jonas said, shaking his head. "It can wait."

"Fine," said the general. "If there's nothing more, then, I'll be in my office."

"Yes, sir," Jonas said to an empty room. He opened the folder, took out his data and pen, and circled the words "negative polarity."

*****

"Yup, pretty sure it's broken," Jack whispered, gingerly touching his rib, producing a stabbing pain even through the slightest touch. "Oh, God." From his prone position, he stared up at the dripping ceiling of the cave, his vision graying along the edges.

He sucked in a careful breath, leaned heavily on his elbow and forced himself to sit up. On top of all his other injuries, he didn't need pneumonia. His captors couldn't kill him, but pneumonia surely would.

"There is relief through the darkest section."

"I'm not listening," Jack said. He scooted back against the wall of the cave, pressed one hand against the rock formation and allowed the moisture to wet his fingers.

"If you look, you'll find what you need."

"Fine. Okay, listen," Jack croaked. "Not that I really think you're there, but if you are, I need to tell you something."

"I'm listening," Daniel said.

"If I knew you were going to start spouting out Oma Desilu-isms when you went all light show on me, I'd'a had Jacob heal you just so I could shoot you myself," Jack told him, pulling his hand from the wall and licking the moisture from his trembling fingers.

"Yes, I'm sure you would have. But, Jack, I'm not trying to be cryptic. I'm trying to tell you that if you go down that dark artery in the cave, you'll find an opening, and just outside that opening is a cluster of plants. Flowers, really. Similar to the plant valerian back on Earth. The--"

"That's the Daniel I remember," Jack mumbled. "Go ahead. Regale me with your prattle. Helps keep my mind busy."

"Yes, well, be that as it may, what I'm trying to tell you is this plant is used as a sedative. If you could just find the strength to get to it, it might-I don't know -- maybe it could help ease the pain a little," Daniel tried to explain.

"Well, that sounds great," Jack sarcastically added. "Tell you what, Casper, why don't you float on over there and rustle some up for me."

"Can't," Daniel said.

"Of course, you can't, because you're not really here," Jack coarsely responded.

"Jack, what do I have to do to make you believe I'm here and I'm with you?" Daniel asked.

"Produce a do-it-yourself frontal lobotomy kit, 'cause if I really start believing you're here, then I'm in worse shape than I thought." Jack slowly lowered himself to the ground and pulled his legs up to his body.

"You're cold," Daniel said.

"You're dead," Jack said.

"Kind of. Not entirely. Not… not at all, actually. Actually, I'm more alive than--"

"Daniel?"

"Yes, Jack."

"If I say I believe you're here, would you shut the hell up?"

Daniel stopped to think about his choices. "Jack, why didn't you beat me more in chess?"

Jack looked at him irritably. "Not gonna shut up, huh? Okay, maybe you beat me at chess so many times because you're a geek?"

Daniel smiled again, not at all put-off by the insult. "No, Jack -- I beat you at chess because you could never see the whole picture. You would focus so intently on the pieces themselves, without seeing the strategy behind the game. Not just your own strategy, but your opponent's. You have to see all the gray areas, be willing to sacrifice some players to attain your final goal. If you know your opponent well, you also have to guess what he's planning, what's in his thoughts."

"Daniel, if you really are here, which for the record, I don't believe you are -- I really don't think you came all this way from glowy land to give me a chess lesson." Jack shook his head, shifted against the rock. He tucked his hands under his arms and tried to stop shivering.

"No," Daniel continued patiently. "What I'm trying to tell you is you have to see the bigger picture in front of you. Yes, you saw my body die back in the infirmary, but you saw something more, didn't you? Something you couldn't explain. Something you probably haven't even talked about with Sam and Teal'c, right?"

Jack intently pondered the memory. "I saw, I thought I... talked to you... I wasn't sure...." he trailed off uncertainly. Remembered that goodbye in some otherworldly gate room three months earlier. Daniel had looked simultaneously terrified and excited at the prospect of stepping through that shimmering, indescribably beautiful open wormhole for the last time.

"That really happened, Jack. I brought you to the same plane of existence Oma had taken me to. I brought you there because I trust you and I trusted you to make the right decision for me. That you would let me go. And... I... also couldn't leave without saying goodbye to you first."

Jack wasn't sure, but it looked as if Daniel's features were becoming clearer, less translucent. He moved closer to Jack, so that his face was out of the light, and Jack could see that Daniel was smiling slightly, but his blue eyes looked sad, wistful even. Jack thought he detected tears in them, but that couldn't be right. Ghosts or hallucinations didn't cry, did they? Jack felt his heart start pounding, his thoughts whirling. He didn't dare speak just yet.

"Think back to when you got away from the Gi'lyens," Daniel continued, his voice soft, but persuasive. "I was there with you even then."

Jack stared at Daniel's familiar face, remembered when he had finally been able to escape his captors. They had been moving him back to his cage, when something... an energy appeared –everything had erupted in a whirlwind, the lights had exploded in a shower of sparks... they had let go of him in their confusion, and Jack had run, hadn't stopped running until he had stupidly fallen into a cave. Could it be…?

"Jack, I wish I could have stopped them sooner, but it took all the energy I had to create enough of a diversion to give you chance to get away. Please believe that I'm here, so I can help you now. Please."

"No," Jack shook his head again. "Look, I said goodbye once. If you came back just to do the sappy goodbye this time, you’re out of luck. I’m fresh out of sappy and I don’t see how you can help me when you’re supposed to be dead." Jack closed his eyes, gripped his side a little tighter in an attempt to ease the stabbing pain that came with each breath. "Besides, I let you go three months ago -- you can't be here, not after that. Not after what happened to you. God, there was nothing left of you that wasn't burned, and.…"

"I know, but I am here... What can I say to convince you?" Daniel broke in, seemed to think for a minute. "Okay, do you remember after Sha're died? It was about two weeks after her funeral, and I insisted on coming back to work, and I just lost it in the middle of a briefing? You came to talk to me. I was in my office and was embarrassed because you caught me crying, and I tried to pretend that I was fine?" Daniel said, relating the story in a tentative, nervous voice. Jack kept his eyes closed, tried to tune out Daniel’s persistent voice.

"You just stood there watching me, waiting until I calmed down," Daniel told him. "You pushed me into my desk chair and sat down across from me, and then you said, ‘Do you know what I'll always remember about Sha're?’"

Jack thought back to that nearly forgotten memory and was surprised when it came back to him in sharp focus. He remembered how Daniel had looked at him with tear-filled eyes, waiting for Jack to continue, to offer him some respite from the crushing grief. Jack could see Daniel so clearly—younger, but tired. World weary and wrecked. Jack pulled a hand across his eyes.

Daniel sensed that Jack was remembering the poignant memory. "You said, ‘I remember her bravery and her spirit and how much she loved you. That's what you have to hold onto. Grieve for her, remember her by keeping a place for her in your heart, but let her go.’ That’s what you said, Jack. That’s what you told me. I tried to stand up, dismiss what you were saying. I…I was a mess, but you held me down. You made me sit down. You made me listen. Do you remember what else you said? Do you, Jack?"

Jack draped his arms across his chest and lightly nodded his head.

Daniel swallowed hard against the knot in his throat. "You said, ‘You tried harder than anyone in his right mind would have to tried to save her, but now it's time to let her go. She's free now. Let her go, knowing that you did everything you could for her, otherwise it'll eat you from the inside out until there's nothing left. Until all you feel is that empty hole. Believe me, I know.’" Daniel kept his tear-filled eyes on Jack, hoping the memory would jog some sort of recognition. "You said, ‘And I'd hate to see that happen to you. Let me help you through this. We've been able to get through a lot together, so let me help you with this.’"

Jack opened his eyes again and stared at Daniel's face, shocked. He had never told anyone about that talk before, and that particular memory was something his exhausted mind would never have dredged up on its own. And, why would his mind recall that one moment that seemed to be an important one for Daniel? Was it possible that Daniel really was with him?

"Jack, now it's your turn to let me help you. I always trusted you with my life, so please, trust me now, okay?"

Jack saw something that almost looked like pain pinch Daniel's features, and he became even clearer, more in focus. Jack saw that Daniel was wearing a white flowing shirt, the faint translucence of his features made him look heartbreakingly young.

"Daniel?" his friend's name came out as almost a sob. Jack raised a wildly trembling hand, tried to touch him.

Daniel raised his own hand, and their fingertips connected. Jack felt his fingers pass through Daniel's, pins and needles shooting down his hand. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant. In fact, it almost gave him a surge of strength, a sense of warmth.

"I’ll be damned," Jack choked. "It really is you," he said wondrously.

"Yeah, it's me." Daniel smiled, a wide, happy and relieved grin that Jack had seen pass his friend's face maybe twice in the five or so years that he had known him.

"Well, you. . . you've lost weight," Jack said, returning Daniel's smile.

Daniel looked down for a moment, laughing softly. "That’s funny." He then waved his hand over his chest, indicating his body. "It’s just that… I'm not very good at focusing my energy yet," Daniel said almost apologetically. "It's hard to make myself. . . uh, look like myself – become more corporeal. That’s why you couldn’t see me before. I’ve been here with you all this time, Jack. Ever since you gated to L39-285 with Sam and Teal’c."

"I wish I could offer you a beer or something, but I seem to be out," Jack said, and then a stabbing pain shot through his gut. His eyes clenched shut and he slumped over to the side.

"Jack!" Daniel yelled, rushing toward him.

"I’m... okay," Jack said, pulling his legs into his body. "But I really, really could use a beer."

******

Her boots crunched on the heavy, wet snow. Flakes fell on her hair, on her face, chilling her skin. The air filling her lungs was cold, and she could see her and her team’s breath misting as they walked.

"It’s just like Minnesota, kids – only warmer," the colonel commented cheerily. He let out a whoop and ducked down to scoop up a handful of snow. Crushing it into a ball, he pelted the snowball at Teal’c, hitting the Jaffa squarely between the shoulder blades. Teal’c turned to stare at Jack, raising an eyebrow.

Sam felt her face break into a grin, then the feeling swiftly turned to one of fear. She wanted to yell out to the colonel to stop, to not move, don’t take another step, but she was paralyzed.

Colonel O’Neill kept walking, sinking nearly to his knees in the snow with Teal’c close behind. Sam tried to warn him, tried to plow through the heavy pack of snow to bring him to a halt, but all she could do was see that dopey grin of his. Watch him pick up another handful of snow just before his instincts told him there was trouble.

"Colonel!!!" she screamed, her voice muted by suspended time.

The explosion of energy rocked the ground, sent sprays of snow volleying around her. She felt herself being ripped off her feet, the world slowly capsizing – everything happening in as if from far away, like a movie being played on the slowest speed. She hit the ground hard, the snow providing only a meager cushion as the air whooshed from her lungs. She heard muffled voices sounding through the harsh ringing in her ears. Her vision clouded, started fading to black…

No! Can’t pass out, can’t, can’t, can’t…

"No!"

Sam bolted upright, her heart hammering wildly in her chest. For a moment she expected to see the vast expanse of snow surrounding her, but all there was to see was gray. The gray walls of the VIP room, the colorful bedspread twisted around her body.

She shoved the covers away, slid to the edge of bed, running a hand roughly through her hair. She felt the guilt, the sense that she had failed him wash over her. They never should have left without him. The colonel would never have let one of them behind, so why had she?

Sam had failed him, she knew that, and she knew the only way to make it up to him was to find him.

*****

It started as a facial twitch. And then a short sob. His hand flinched at his side, his feet jerked.

Daniel sat next to Jack and watched him helplessly. "Jack."

Jack began to moan and cry out, his eyes tightly closed. His arms lurched forward, whipping the imprisoning air.

"Jack!" Daniel called out more forcefully. He wanted to jostle him, nudge him awake and out of the terrifying confines of Jack’s nightmare. Daniel’s non-corporeal state precluded that happening, but he could still raise his voice, try to bore into Jack’s mind using only the sound of his name. "Jack! Wake up, Jack! You’re having a nightmare."

Jack’s hand swung out and sliced through Daniel’s midsection. Daniel watched it pass with a wince.

"No!" Jack cried, flailing his arms through the air. "Ohhhh!"

"Jack!" Daniel yelled.

Two red-rimmed eyes, dark as bitter coffee, flew open. Jack searched the room frantically, desperate to find his bearings amidst the musty cavern. "Where am I?"

"You’re in a cave on the Gi’lyen’s home world," Daniel told him, propping his elbows up on his knees. "I’m here with you. Where…where were you, Jack?"

Jack turned his back to Daniel, curled into himself and put his icy hands between his knees. "I don’t know."

"You want to tell me about it?" Daniel asked, extending his outstretched arms past his knees.

"No," Jack said.

Daniel nodded. "You think you can get up and walk, Jack?"

Jack remained silent. Daniel nodded again.

"We ought to think about getting you out of here," Daniel said.

"Carter and Teal’c are coming," Jack said, his tone flat and cold.

"Yeah, they will. Eventually," Daniel said, not wanting to tell him how bad the situation really was. "But, don’t you think you could do something to expedite the process, like…getting up and moving?"

"I’m waiting for Oma to make me an offer," Jack told him.

"Oma’s not going to help you, Jack. Only you can help yourself," Daniel told him.

"How very twelve-step process of you, Daniel. Thank you for dashing my hopes."

Daniel frowned and clamped shut his mouth.

Jack felt his heart rate finally begin to calm down. The adrenalin in his system began to peter out. He slowly, painfully rocked onto his bruised knees, wincing at the burning pain. He rested his forehead on his arms until the overwhelming vertigo passed. He could feel his eyes shifting, always trying to find the balance, the equilibrium. A wave of nausea bubbled up in him, a festering, roiling cauldron of bile.

"You all right?" Daniel asked.

Jack remained hunkered over his arms, waiting for the sensation to pass. When at last it did, he pushed himself onto his hip and leaned heavily into the cavern wall.

Daniel looked him over -- ashen skin, pocked with bruises and scabbed over gashes. Jack looked as bad as he ever had, but Daniel knew better than to simply look at Jack and decide whether he could handle the task. Jack was nothing if not tenacious, even and especially in the face of overwhelming odds. Well, the odds were stacked. If there were ever an opportunity for Jack to showcase that O’Neill bravado, this would be it.

But each time Daniel came in contact with Jack, each time Jack’s hand passed through him, or Daniel’s hand into Jack, Daniel could feel a distinct lack of bravado. In fact, whenever he did experience Jack’s spirit, Daniel found it to be…diminished. The essence of Jack seemed withdrawn, cowering behind an anxious fear of possibility.

"Jack," he said softly.

"When I was a kid... when I was, oh, six, seven, I spent a week up at my grandparents’ house in Ely, Minnesota. I don’t know why. I mean, it was the middle of the school year. February, I think. One day I took a cardboard box, a string and a carrot out past the barns and set up a trap for a rabbit. Froze my ass off waiting. Finally, just about sunset, this snowshoe hare came hopping out of the brush. It saw my carrot and went after it. I pulled the stick out that was holding up the box and trapped my first rabbit," Jack said, holding his head in one hand. "When I lifted the box, you know what that rabbit did?"

"No. What?"

"Nothing." Jack said. He ground the palm of his hand into his eyes. "The stupid son of a bitch was too afraid to move. I don’t know what it thought I was gonna do, but it just froze in its place."

"What did you do?" Daniel asked.

"I picked it up, brought it back to the house and fed it some lettuce and bread," he said, matter of factly, shrugging his scraped shoulders. "And then I think my grandma made a stew with it."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Jaaaack."

Jack cracked a slight smile. "What? It was northern Minnesota. Those are good eats."

"Yes, I’m sure they are," Daniel said, pinching the bridge of his nose perfunctorily.

"Why…why do you do that?" Jack asked, flicking his hand toward Daniel. "Why do you still act like you have a headache? I thought being all…ascended meant you didn’t have to do all that anymore."

Daniel pulled his hand from his face and glanced at in inquisitively. "I guess I do it because…it’s what I do. I’m still me, Jack. Nothing’s changed. I’m still…just Daniel."

"Okay," Jack said, shifting his position off his throbbing hip. "Good to hear."

"What about you, Jack?"

"’Scuse me?"

"What about you? What has changed for you?" Daniel asked.

Jack dropped his chin into his knees and pressed his hand against the back of his neck. "I’m not the one trapping the rabbits anymore."

"I'm so sorry you had to go through this, Jack," Daniel said watching him with concern. "You're going to get home, but you have to keep fighting. You can't give up, all right?"

"I don't know if this is a case of mind over matter, Daniel. They... messed me up pretty bad." Jack said, flinched as a flash of those cold alien faces flickered across his mind. Their relentless questions, the never-ending pain. Sometimes they didn't even pause to let him catch his breath before questioning him again, hurting him again...

He angrily pushed the image away, tried to focus on Daniel. He hoped, prayed that this wasn't all still some endless dream and he'd wake up back in that cage again. As terrified and paralyzed as that rabbit had been.

"Wasn't... I wasn't sure if you’d still be here when I woke up, or if... if I had just dreamed you, too," Jack whispered, afraid of the answer that would come. That his escape, that Daniel was just a cruel dream.

"I'm here, and I'm not going to leave you. Not until we get you home." Daniel seemed to forget that he couldn't touch him and reached a hand out to try to brush the dirt from Jack’s face.

The tingling sensation was there again, giving Jack hope that Daniel was still real. He took as deep a breath as his injured ribs allowed. Tried to wrap his mind around the fact that Daniel really was with him, that Daniel truly hadn't died -- that he wouldn't have to face this nightmare alone anymore. Jack honestly hadn't expected to ever see his friend again, and the reality was overwhelming.

Jack pressed his throbbing head against the cool stone wall, let his jaw drop open to take in a deep shuddering breath, his eyes fluttering over stinging tears. "I guess it makes sense that you're somehow here. If I really were hallucinating, I would dream about say, Charlize Theron, or someone a hell of a lot better looking than you." He felt relieved to be able to summon some of the old O'Neill sarcasm. It gave him the sense that they hadn't broken him. Not yet. He closed his eyes wearily for a moment, allowed his tears to recede. He hoped.

Daniel gave Jack a moment. Knew Jack’s pain, fatigue and emotions were running intensely high. "It’s good to see some things haven’t changed," Daniel said softly, his brow crinkled in a worried frown. "Okay, so now that we’ve firmly established that I’m still really here and not a figment of your imagination, let me show you where to find the valerian."

"Better yet, Daniel," Jack gasped, pressing his hand tightly to his ribcage as a jolt jabbed through him like a knife. "Why don’t you be a pal and go get it for me?"

"Like I told you, I wish I could, but I’m sorry, I can’t. If I could pick anything up, I’d bring you to the gate myself and get you home, but I don’t know how to make myself corporeal. I’m not strong enough yet."

"Aren’t you supposed to be like Oma Desilu, or Shifu? They can do all kinds of cool stuff."

"No, I’m still weak, I guess. I don’t know how to explain this -- if it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real."

"Daniel -- " Jack paused to cough, gasping at the jolt of fire shuddering through his body. "What did I tell you about that Zen-babble mumbo-jumbo crap?"

"Sorry, it’s just so difficult to describe what it's like. I'm still me, it’s still my consciousness, my body even, but so much has changed, too. My body was so near death, my organs, my bones were all but disintegrating, and it’s going to take time for me to regain that strength, and fully become what I am now. I’m not even supposed to be here. We're not supposed to interfere."

"Well, for once, I'm glad you went against orders," Jack sarcastically said, shifting his weight off his bruised hip. He winced and groaned, his breath tremulous. He wiped the sweat off his brow and curiously looked at Daniel. "How did you know where to find me anyway?"

"I came through the gate with you, Sam and Teal'c on your original mission to L39-285. I'm sorry, I should have let you know that I was there right away, but it takes a great deal of energy to make myself appear in my previous corporeal state, and then you were all attacked. When the Gi’lyen’s took you, I wanted to stop them, and help Sam and Teal'c, but all I could do was follow them and see where they were taking you, and... and what they wanted from you."

Jack detected the faint waver in Daniel’s voice. God, had Daniel seen everything they had done to him? "Sorry that you’re getting in trouble with your new friends already... but, thanks... thanks for coming... for being here."

"Do you think you can walk some more?" Daniel asked worriedly.

"Guess I’ll have to, huh?" Jack wheezed, and his lungs spasmed, making him cough uncontrollably. He tried to gulp in a breath in between, felt the world waver for a moment, and a wave of nausea made him hunch further over his legs. Black spots pulsated in front of his eyes, he felt himself sliding sideways.

"Jack!"

Jack felt that weird pins and needles sensation again, startling him. He threw his hand out to stop his fall, heard himself crying out as if from far away. He managed to push himself back against the wall of the cave, and desperately tried to catch his breath.

"Jack, are you all right?" Daniel's voice was trembling slightly.

He pulled his eyes open to see Daniel watching him, his eyes wide, hands held out in front of him. Jack realized that Daniel had probably instinctively tried to catch him, tried to unsuccessfully touch him again. He could see the frustration and helplessness on Daniel's face.

Jack nodded after a moment, took in a sharp breath, "Just... just give me another minute."

"Okay."

He realized Daniel sounded as shaky as he felt. He felt the darkness creeping in his line of vision, the seductive temptation to just lie down, close his eyes and sleep. If he slept, he wouldn't feel any pain, but the fear that he would never wake again, forced his eyes open, forced words from his mouth. "Talk to me or something, Danny, keep me awake. What’s it like with all those glowy aliens anyway? – and if you start spewing that Zen crap again, I’ll figure out a way to hit you."

Daniel thought for a moment. "Um, well, it’s amazing Jack. There is so much out there that you can’t even begin to comprehend."

"Please tell me I’m not going to get ‘you’re such a primitive race’ from you too, Daniel," Jack ordered.

"No, Jack. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that…" he said, his blue eyes darting excitedly, "there’s so much of the universe that you can’t see, but it’s there. The knowledge, the sense of complete freedom, it’s... indescribable. But..."

"What? Lonely at top?"

"I don’t know," Daniel looked away for a moment -- his eyes looked sad, his expression wistful. "It’s... hard at the same time. So much of who I am, was, I mean, relied on the tangible. The tangible artifact, the written word. Being able to run my fingers over a carving in stone or on a piece of pottery. Using my mouth to sound out the unfamiliar words as I held a piece of papyrus so fragile it would crumple into dust if I didn't hold it carefully enough. I guess it’s just going to take a little getting used to."

"Yeah. But you can fly. How cool is that?" Jack joked, trying to pull the lost look from his friend’s blue eyes that was too visible, even through his own pain and exhaustion.

Daniel looked at him, then burst out laughing. "Okay, that is pretty cool. It’s not really flying though, it’s more like...levitating."

"Levitating, huh?" Jack shifted his position. The coldness of the stone was seeping into his bones, into his being. The dizziness and nausea seemed to have passed, and Jack thought he might be able to stand now.

"Okay, so how ‘bout we go find this flower you were talking about?" Jack pulled himself to his feet shakily, tried to ignore all the screaming and protesting of his nerve endings. He held onto the wall, panting from exertion, waited for Daniel to lead the way.

"Abandon this fleeing world, abandon yourself, then the moon and flowers will guide you along the way." Daniel said, waving an arm dramatically as he glided past Jack. He almost looked like he was walking, but his motions were too fluid to be truly walking.

"Daniel..." Jack warned.

"Day after day the sun rises in the east; Day after day it sets in the west -- on Earth anyway." Daniel darted a glance over his shoulder at Jack to make sure he was following.

Jack couldn’t help but notice the mischievous glint in Daniel’s eyes as he staggered behind him, clinging shakily to the rock for support.

"Knock it off, Jackson," he gasped, "or I’ll start quoting hockey statistics."

*****

She couldn’t sleep on base, not with so many distractions, so many "maybe if I just tried this" possibilities thickening the air. Sam grabbed her jacket and made her way out of the mountain.

Mechanically she drove through the familiar streets, barely obeying traffic laws, just doing what she had to in order to get to her destination. She propped her elbow up on the window of her car, rested her throbbing head in her hand, and drove silently.

She parked the car in the lot, grabbed her purse and practically stumbled from exhaustion into the building.

"Morning, ma’am," the doorman said, holding the door for her.

"Morning," Sam offered without looking up.

Up eight floors in a stale smelling elevator, out into the quiet hall, and to the door. Sam slipped her key into the lock and found herself back where she had come so often in the last months.

Back in Daniel’s apartment. In Daniel’s apartment that looked exactly as he left it. Except for the large fish tank that was missing from its usual place against the living room wall tucked in beside Daniel’s overflowing bookshelves.

In fact, that was how Sam found out Daniel’s apartment was still intact. A week after the ascension, Sam went to Jack’s house to try to talk with him. He’d let her in, but just as quickly told her there was nothing to talk about. Jack had left her alone in the living room while he walked back to the kitchen, as if he hoped she would give up and leave.

Since losing Daniel, the tears came too easily for Sam, and the lack of control made her angry. At the most inopportune times she’d find herself dripping with tears, unable to control her emotions. She had torn through her pockets trying to find one useful tissue. Exasperated, she had called out to Jack. "Sir, do you have a Kleenex?"

"Try the guest room. There’s a box next to the…" Jack began. Sam hadn’t waited for him to finish before she strode quickly to the first room down the hall.

She took the few steps to the bed and grabbed three tissues, using one to blow her nose, the other two to stuff into her pocket for the next time she needed them. She turned to throw the used tissue away when she noticed it.

"Ah, dammit, Carter," Jack said, just turning into the room, finding that Sam had discovered his secret.

"Those are Daniel’s fish," Sam said, surprised, taking one of the tissues from her pocket, her gaze still fixed on the colorful fish swimming obliviously in their self-contained universe.

"Yeah, well, yeah," Jack stammered, reaching for the fish food. He absently twisted and untwisted the top.

"Where’s the rest of his stuff, sir?" Sam asked, swiping the tissue under her nose.

Jack bent over, peered into the side of the tank and tapped on the glass. "It’s still there."

"At his apartment?" Sam blinked, thinking she hadn’t heard correctly. "I thought General Hammond said that everything was going to be packed up, moved out."

"Yeah, well, you know the Air Force, Major," Jack said, sprinkling flakes across the top of the water. "Orders get lost; forms don’t make it to the right department. It can be a mess."

"Sir, I..."

"Look, Major... Sam," Jack began hesitantly, unsure of how to explain his reasoning. His reasoning that he knew had nothing to do with logic or with duty, but with the irrational glimmer of hope that his friend might be coming back, "it’s not a big deal. I made the decision to keep the apartment status quo for a while, just, you know, just in case…"

Sam nodded. "I understand, sir."

Jack glanced at her quickly, then nervously lowered his eyes and fiddled with the fish food. He replaced it on the desk next to the tank and left the room, keeping his gaze carefully averted from hers.

Three months later, the fish were still at Jack’s house, and Daniel’s apartment was still status quo, just in case.

Sam ran her fingers over the numerous spines of Daniel’s shelved books, stopping at the one that edged out from the rest. Sam pulled that one out of the shelf and plopped down on the couch with it. She flipped through the pages until she reached the entry where she had last been.

February 21, 1999

I should have bought a twin.

Sam closed the book, clutched it to her chest, and looked around the silent, empty apartment that was still replete with Daniel's spirit. Even after three months, she still caught the occasional traces of the familiar scent of his aftershave. Still found the hastily scribbled notes to himself, tucked inside his books, slid in between the couch cushions.

She wondered how many times Daniel had felt lonely here, how many times he had thought of his lost wife and the life they were cheated. Sam remembered how Daniel once told her that when he found Sha're he would her bring to his new home, on Earth, maybe just for a while, to show her what his world was like. Sha're never had the opportunity to see the home he had made for her, never had a chance to share the space of that bed which was too large, too cold. Never had a chance to fill the emptiness in Daniel’s bed, or in his life.

Sam wondered if Daniel knew how cold her own life had become without him in it.

*****

They had been walking for what seemed a long while, and Daniel had lost all track of time. In truth, time no longer had the same meaning for him anymore, but he knew Jack was exhausted, growing weaker by the minute. He had to keep pushing him, make him keep walking before his strength gave out.

Daniel led Jack into a portion of the cave tunnels that may have once been used as a mineshaft. The tunnel smelled similarly of sulfur, old metal and things that had long ago crawled in the deepest corners and waited out their destinies of rust and demise.

He unconsciously wrinkled his nose, expecting his allergies to make an appearance, but just like all the other things that had changed, the allergies, along with his need to wear glasses, had disappeared. Daniel sometimes found himself forgetting the unbelievable changes to his body, his being. It was almost as if his body had been amputated or severed from his consciousness. Sometimes that reminder filled him with a sense of inexplicable discomfort, a sense of unease.

As they walked, the tunnel gradually became darker. In the distance, all he could see was inky blackness, but Daniel knew that it would only be dark for a short while.

It's always darkest before the dawn’s light, he thought wryly, deciding not to say it out loud though, for Jack's benefit.

"How are you doing, Jack?" he asked, looking at his friend stumbling beside him. "It's going to get really dark here, but just focus on me, okay? We'll be out soon."

He made out Jack nodding in reply. Even in the fading light, Daniel could see that Jack's features were bathed in perspiration, his skin ashen, the bruises and cuts standing out in sharp relief.

Daniel had been talking about anything that came to his mind to keep Jack alert, and Jack's replies were becoming less and less coherent, fading to muffled groans. He prayed that Jack could hang in there for a little longer, could make it to the gate. If he couldn't, Daniel realized that they both were going to be stuck on the planet.

"I wonder what they used these shafts for, huh?" Daniel said. "Did you ever go spelunking when you were a kid? Do they have very many caves in Minnesota? You know, I've been all over the world, all over the galaxy, and I never made it to visit Minnesota."

The tunnel curved slightly, and they were immersed in near blackness. Daniel heard Jack's sharp intake of breath.

"It'll be okay," Jack whispered. "Be okay...can get through this."

"Jack?" Daniel stopped to look at his friend -- he could just make out Jack's trembling form. The fear in Jack's voice sent a tremor of his own fear coursing through him. "Are you all right, do you want to sit down for a minute?"

"Dark...don't--" Jack moaned, swung him arm blindly, the limb passing disconcertingly through Daniel's chest. Daniel heard scuffling noises, Jack stumbling, falling to his knees, his breath quickening.

Daniel almost reached out to help him up, then stopped, wanting to shout in frustration. "Jack, it's okay. Focus on me all right? Focus on my voice."

"Don't take me back there, not yet... too soon... don't...don't... I don't know anything. I don't... don't...know!"

"Jack, listen to me. It's all right. I'm taking you home--"

"No! Not taking me back -- don't know anything!" Jack started hyperventilating, short sobs escaping between breaths. His bare feet scraped against the dirt as he pressed his back against the wall of the tunnel. He huddled there, pulling his legs up to his chest, rocking back and forth.

"Jack, listen to me. No one's going to hurt you anymore! I promise!" Daniel hunched down beside his friend, tried to get him to focus. Jack moaned, pushed further away from him. He gasped out something that sounded Arabic.

"Dammit!" Daniel cursed in frustration, cursed at the limitations of his new form. He would have given up the all knowledge now accessible to him just to be able to touch his friend -- to pull his mind from wherever he had retreated to. "Jack, where are you now? Talk to me!"

Jack shouted in what was definitely Arabic, 'I don't know anything!' He cradled his head in his crossed arms, his body trembling, lost in a nightmare world of flashbacks and pain.

Beyond Daniel's reach.

*****

Janet threw the towel around her neck and pushed open the locker room door.

"Sam?" Janet said, perplexed to see Sam staring in the mirror. "What’s going on?"

"Guys have it so much easier with their hair," Sam said, pawing through her blond tresses. She pushed her bangs to one side, and then combed them to the other side.

"Okay," Janet said, taking a seat on the bench next to her locker. She began to take off her cross training shoes, all the while keeping watch over her friend.

"I mean, think about it," Sam said, lifting a section of hair, spying a few coarse gray standouts. "They figure out early in life what works, and then they just keep it that way for the rest of their lives."

"Or until they go bald," Janet offered, throwing her sweaty socks into the bottom of her locker.

"Right," Sam agreed, "And even that becomes an option. Look at Teal’c. Oh, and Teal’c in hair—not such a pretty sight."

"Is there a reason we’re talking about men and their hair?" Janet asked, swiveling around to face Sam.

"It’s the best I can do with trying not to think about men," Sam said.

"Daniel and Colonel O’Neill," Janet said, finally understanding.

"Yeah, and about the Colonel," Sam started, turning away from the mirror, shoving her hands in her pockets. "What’s the deal with his hair? I mean, do you think he even owns a brush?"

"Not that it matters," Janet added.

"Yeah, I mean, it’s…it’s perfect. God, I could spend all day on my hair, and the Colonel, he gets out of bed and he’s ready for work. I hate that," Sam said, allowing herself a smile.

"And do you think anyone would be ogling at us if we let out hair go gray?" Janet tossed in.

"Don’t even say that word," Sam said, turning back to the mirror, combing through her hair again.

"Remember how long Daniel’s hair was when he first joined the SGC?" Janet said, joining Sam at the mirror.

Sam glanced at Janet and then back to the hidden grays at her temple. "Colonel O’Neill was always threatening to cut it off in the middle of the night."

"I…I kind of liked it long," Janet admitted. She pulled her chestnut hair out of a frazzled ponytail.

"Yeah. Me, too. He seemed so…I don’t know. Innocent?"

"Young?"

The two women found each other’s eyes in the reflection. Janet was the first to break out in the giggles.

"Jailbait," she laughed.

"Yeah, he was," Sam said, remembering those long bangs that fell over his glasses. And while she flipped through the pages of her memory, her smile began to ebb.

She could see it so clearly, the soft brown hair that at times hid eyes flickering with excitement, and other times veiled eyes exhausted with worry. Long brown hair that was so out of place on a military base, that flew in the face of acceptable decorum. Long hair that was cut shorter every time his grief grew longer. Hair that seemed too strident, too close to the scalp in the end.

"Sam?" Janet said quietly, touching her elbow.

Sam quickly glanced at Janet, and then went back to searching for gray hairs. "Maybe guys don’t have it as easy as I think."

The beeper attached to Sam’s waist began to buzz. Sam pulled it off her waistband and glanced at the message. "It’s Teal’c," she said, stepping to the phone on the wall.

"Maybe there’s word on the MALP?" Janet asked, watching Sam place the call.

"Maybe," Sam said. "Yeah. Teal’c. What’s up?"

"Major Carter, the MALP telemetry has come back, and General Hammond has agreed to allow a UAV launch within the hour," Teal’c said.

"I’ll be right there," Sam said, hanging up the phone. "We’re launching the UAV."

"Good luck," Janet told her while Sam ran from the room.

*****

Dark. It was always bad when it was dark. When they put the blindfold over his eyes, when they led him down the long corridor -- two left turns, one right, one left, and he would be taken into the room. To be questioned.

They never stopped. Sometimes they'd leave him alone for days, sometimes they'd bring him from his cell two, three times a day. Sometimes he wanted to tell them to just kill him and get it over with. Sometimes he'd remember Sara, remember Charlie waiting for him at home, in another world, another life, and pray for salvation, for rescue.

Major John O'Neill, United States Air Force. Serial number 749-876-23-2199. I don't know anything, I don't know. I can't remember. I wasn't privy to that information. I don't know. Fuck you, you prick -- I don't know anything...

The continually repeated words were a mantra, something to keep him sane, words so often repeated, he could say them in his sleep. Words that no longer had any meaning for how little they listened to them.

The questions, endless voices, coming at him. Disorienting because he couldn't see where they were coming from, couldn't anticipate the sudden pain, the jolts of electricity, the freezing water dumped over him, the kicks, the punches.

"Who was your commanding officer?"

"What is the next stage of attack?"

"What is the address for your home world?"

"What do you know of our race?"

"I don't know anything!" Jack screamed as the current of electricity shot through his spine, set his nerve endings on fire, made his mind retreat to a small corner of his subconscious to hide. Taking refuge in old and better memories. Waking up next to Sara, warm and safe, her breath tickling the back of his neck as she slept tucked up against him. Playing catch with Charlie. Taking him hunting and camping in the woods just like his own father had done with him. Jack remembered when he had caught his first fish and was too afraid to club it and kill it. His dad had made him do it anyway, scoffing him, "You're worse than your sister, Johnny!" He remembered how his dad had always called him Johnny when he was ragging him.

"Toughen up, Johnny. You're an O'Neill -- the fightin' Irish.... You gotta learn to how to be a survivor, Johnny. It's a mean and tough world out there, son."

He had tried to survive. Tried to save his spirit from breaking, keep his body from giving up. His cell was a small, filthy, six by six foot hole -- he could stretch out if he lay diagonally, but the smell was so bad. He got used to it at night, but every time they took him out and brought him back again, the stench would be the first thing to assail him. It made him want to gag, to cling to the edges of the doorway and beg them not put him back in there again, please... God, when would they stop?

The hole had become smaller, till it was no more than a cage. A cage for an animal, which he supposed he was to them. Their alien eyes watching him impassively, their reedy, oddly pitched voices and unfamiliar language filling his head, never allowing him rest, not even a brief respite.

He felt tingling, pins and needles in his arms, his hands. Felt a faint current of energy, a feather breath of air brush against the side of his face, cooling his fevered skin. Heard a familiar voice distantly calling his name.

"Jack...."

The voice gradually became clearer, more distinct.

"Jack, please look up, please listen to me!"

The voice sounded urgent, frightened. Whose voice was that? Not theirs, not the voices that brought the endless questions, the unrelenting hurt.

"Jack, do you know where you are? It's Daniel, Jack -- please answer me!"

Daniel. Daniel had been there one time. Daniel had told him to run, run Jack. Get away, please run. And he had. But he couldn't run anymore. They would find him anyway, they always found him, brought him back.

"Jack, come on, you're scaring the hell out of me here! Try to focus and listen to me!" Daniel ordered, knowing it was an exercise in futility.

There it was again--Daniel's voice. Jack wanted to look up, wanted to believe his friend was there. Wanted this to be over, but he couldn't move... they were back, questioning... hurting.

He rocked himself unconsciously, heard a soft moaning sound. He wasn't sure if it was coming from him, but he hated that sound. He wanted it to stop, so he remembered the words.

Major, no--Colonel John O'Neill, United States Air Force. Serial number 749-876-23-2199. I don't know anything, I don't know. I can't remember. I wasn't privy to that information. I don't know.

*****

"Thanks, Sergeant," Sam said, wiping her greasy hands on the towel.

"No problem, Major," Sergeant Siler said, returning his tools to the box. "Hope it works out for you."

"Yeah," she said, looking over the UAV, "me, too."

"Major?" General Hammond said, entering the embarkation room. "Are we ready for launch?"

"Yes, sir, I think we are. Sergeant Siler and I just installed the new heat sensor camera I’ve been upgrading. It should give us a much better sense of the landscape."

"Even through that snow?" the general asked.

"Yes, sir. That’s why I upgraded it. Even through three feet of snow, this camera should be able to detect the slightest differentiation in temperature," Sam said, sliding her hand along the wing of the UAV.

"Then let’s launch it," he said.

"Yes, sir," Sam said, giving the model one last check.

General Hammond strode up to the control room and directed the technician to dial out.

Sam passed her hand across the belly of the plane, making sure everything was closed, tightened, just as it should be.

"Do your thing, Uvvie," she quietly told the plane. "You’re my eyes. Don’t let me down."

"Chevron three is locked," came the voice.

Sam stepped back from the launch site, wiping the remnants of dirt and grease from her hands. Teal’c walked into the room and stood next to her.

"Were you able to add the new camera?" he asked, keeping his focus trained on the UAV.

"Yeah. I guess all we can do now is wait," Sam said.

"Chevron seven is locked."

The wormhole spewed forth, and when it receded to its undulating rest, the UAV shot into the center of it, disappearing silently.

"The monitor’s in the control room," Sam said, taking the stairs with Teal’c behind her.

The lieutenant in the control room brought up the transmission from the UAV onto the screen. All eyes trained on the bleak feedback from the programmed plane flying concentric circles around the vicinity of the gate.

"Every time I watch these transmissions I’m reminded of trying to watch TV when I was a kid before cable, you know?" Sam said to no one in particular, but talking anyway in a futile attempt to quell her nerves.

"I do not," Teal’c responded.

Sam looked at him, smiled, and then looked back at the monitor.

White. Nothing but white. Not even a gradation to show a line of tracks. The video images the UAV sent back were startling in their monochromatic representation. There was snow, and only snow.

Sam switched over the controls to the heat sensors.

The longer they watched, the more their eyes became shrouded with hopes dismissed. The longer they stared at the white screen, void of any life -- animal, human, plant -- the more they came to the brink of despair.

General Hammond looked on with sad, heavy eyes. He knew that sending the UAV was just a desperate last attempt to search for a man who could never possibly survive such harsh conditions. He knew he was going to have to explain to Kinsey why he gave permission to mount such an expensive mission just to find a body. He’d come up with something to explain it. It killed him that Kinsey couldn’t figure it out on his own.

Teal’c watched the heat sensors. Watched as they barely vacillated in their temperature readings. It was either dark blue or midnight blue. There was no heat anywhere near the gate. There was no heat anywhere for a helpless person to take shelter. There was no heat, and there was no Colonel O’Neill. Teal’c felt his guarded optimism melt away.

"This appears to be an exercise in futility," he sharply said, angered not with Sam, but with the bitterness of it all. Two lost team members within the last three months. Two friends, his first two friends on Earth, lost to the unapologetic universe. "I do not believe we will find Colonel O’Neill in this fashion."

"Well, what would you have me do?" Sam snapped back, spinning on her heels to glare at him. "Come on! Tell me, Teal’c! What should I be doing instead?"

"I believe we should be on foot looking for Colonel O’Neill," he said, lifting his chin to show his resolve.

"I’m sorry, Teal’c. I won’t allow that," General Hammond softly informed him. "SG-5 had a hard enough time on that planet before this weather system struck. The temperature readings from the MALP indicate –38 degrees Fahrenheit. There’s simply no way I’ll send you or anyone else into that kind of cold."

"With all due respect, sir, but if Colonel O’Neill…"

"Major, it may be time to face some hard realities here," the general said, directing his gentle gaze on Sam. "If Colonel O’Neill is out there, well, I don’t see how he could survive."

"He could. Sir. He did it before," she angrily told him, recalling her days in Antarctica with Jack.

"Yes, Major, I realize that, but there were two of you then. From what we know, Colonel O’Neill is alone, or has been taken by captors. We sent word to the Tok’ra and the Asgard asking for any information they might have, but frankly, I think we might have run out of time," he said.

"Permission to speak bluntly, sir?" Sam bitterly asked.

"Within means, Major," General Hammond told her, straightening his back, readying himself for her words.

"If anyone can survive out there, it’s Colonel O’Neill. And this…this giving up on him is bullshit, and he’d be the first to tell you that," Sam said, chewing her words ferociously.

"I agree with you, Major, but my point is I don’t think even Colonel O’Neill could survive this," the general said. "At this point, until we get word from our allies, I’m going to have to consider Colonel O’Neill MIA. I think it’s time you started accepting that fact."

Sam was stunned. She turned her attention to Teal’c, waited for him to speak up, defend her position. He did not. Sam hooked her hand on the back of her neck, crushed shut her eyes and ground her teeth together.

"Respectfully, sir," she said, "I can’t do that. I won’t do that." She glared at both the general and Teal’c. "Permission to be excused." General Hammond nodded, and Sam stormed out of the room.

Teal’c bowed his head deferentially to General Hammond and followed his teammate out of the control room. He silently strode behind Sam, following her to her lab.

Teal’c stepped into lab, his hands pulled behind his back. "Major Carter," he said softly.

"I know he’s... I know he’s out there, Teal’c. Call it intuition, call it…desperation, even, but I…feel it. He’s out there, and we’re not doing one damn thing to find him," she said, knocking her fist against her lab table.

"I feel his presence, as well," Teal’c said, crossing the room to stand next to Sam.

Sam took a deep breath, clutching the sides of the table for support. "Okay, let’s go over this again. We had just come through the gate. Colonel O’Neill said the snow and wind reminded him of Minnesota. We walked a few meters, and then…"

"Then there was an energy blast from under the snow," Teal'c promptly finished.

"Right, and I was knocked down, and you were knocked down, and when we came to…"

"Colonel O’Neill was nowhere to be seen."

"Yeah... gone," Sam sighed. "Just gone. No traces of him, no footprints, no signs of a struggle."

"That is correct," Teal'c said gently.

"We looked everywhere, didn’t we, Teal’c?"

"We did indeed."

"Could we possibly have missed him?" Sam looked up into Teal'c's somber eyes, hoping for an answer, a reassurance that she had done everything she could.

"I do not believe that is possible."

"The snow was deep, Teal’c."

"But not deep enough to hide a person, Major Carter. I believe the snow only came up to our knees. We would have seen traces of O'Neill if he had someone become buried underneath it. I believe we had taken every course of action possible at the time."

"Then tell me what you would do now?" Sam said, turning to him, pleading with him to guide her.

"What can we do?" he asked. "We are unable to return to the planet to search for him on foot, so therefore we are helpless to do anything further."

For the first time, Sam was able to look past her own fear and into Teal’c’s. Once again, they found they were bound by the breathlessness of the unknown, by the attenuated bonds of hope. Once again she wondered if, in the next few days, she and Teal’c would be glomming onto each other’s strength, or onto each other’s compassion and support. The sole survivors of SG1.

"First Daniel; now the colonel," Sam said. She pinched her lips together and shook her head. "It doesn’t seem worth it anymore."

"Major Carter," Teal’c said. "Perhaps this should be discussed at a different time, but in the event that we do not find Colonel O’Neill, I believe I will leave the SGC."

Sam stared at him blankly, profoundly shocked by his words.

"I swore my allegiance to O’Neill, to battle alongside him. I believe my battles would be best fought elsewhere," he said.

"Well, that’s a hell of an indictment of my leadership skills, isn’t it?" Sam said, glaring at him.

"My decisions are based only upon the imminent loss of my commander and friend, Colonel O’Neill. Your leadership of SG1 was never a factor in my decision," Teal’c calmly informed her.

"Yeah, but it’s not a ringing endorsement, either," she said, picking up a pencil off the desk and flicking it across the room.

"I will stay as long as you need my services, but then I believe I will return to Chulak," he said.

Sam paced angrily, occasionally throwing an angry glare his way. "You know what? Fine. You go ahead and do that, Teal’c."

"You are angry," he said.

"You bet I am!"

"These are difficult times, Major Carter," he added.

"Made even more difficult by those of you who are so quick to walk away and give up!" she yelled.

"I believe I will return to my quarters," Teal’c said, turning from her lab.

"You do that!" she snidely called. "Go forget everything. Pretend that the colonel, who saved your ass, isn’t out there, waiting for one of us!"

The passing airman quickly glanced in to see who Sam was yelling at, but just as quickly averted his eyes when he noticed the seething anger emanating from the major’s frame.

Jonas Quinn took in the expression of the passing airman while he rounded the corner into Sam’s lab. He kept his eyes trained on the young soldier, wondering what would make him slink away so quickly. When Jonas fully entered her lab, he turned to face Sam.

"Excuse me, Major Carter," he began, opening a file.

"Not now," Sam snapped, gathering her coat.

Jonas shook his head, frustrated with constantly being pushed aside, put off. "Well, if not now, when?" he demanded.

Sam glared at him, her anger and fulminating resentment toward him in full, unsuppressed display. "When I say it’s time. And now is not the time, Doctor Quinn. Do I make myself clear?"

"I understand, Major, but perhaps I should make it clear to you that I’m not going anywhere, and sooner or later, we’re going to have to work together," Jonas strongly told her, holding his ground.

"Let me tell you something," Sam said, stepping directly in front of Jonas. She squeezed her eyelids to menacing tight slits. "Daniel’s not here because of what he did for your people, and you almost let him be blamed for it. So you had a change of heart. Good for you. It doesn’t change the fact that my teammate and my friend is gone. Now Colonel O’Neill is missing. And I’m absolutely positive there is nothing you can do to change that."

With the tenacity of a cobra waiting for the perfect moment to strike, Sam bore down on Jonas, suffocating him with her acrimony. "Of all the people in the SGC who have died or gone missing, you I would never miss.

Her jaws twitched, and the veins in her neck throbbed. She didn’t move, just stood staring at him, forcing him to take the defensive.

Jonas coldly accepted her challenge, placed the file on her lab table, and stepped back. "How could you miss me? You don’t even know me." He slowly moved away from her, out of her circle of hostility. "For better or worse, I’m at your disposal, Major. Utilize my knowledge, or dismiss me -- whatever you chose. Personally, I have no stake in the matter."

"Get the hell out of my lab," Sam ordered, her voice growling with contempt.

Jonas turned into the hall, and Sam furiously slapped his file to the ground.

*****

"Don't ... don't know...."

Jack kept muttering the same words over and over again. Daniel was at a loss for what to do. In all the years he had known Jack, he had never seen him lose his composure, his strength, and seeing his friend like this was shocking, hard to take in. Daniel had absolutely no idea what to do.

Daniel had called Jack's name, shouted at him, tried to touch him, and nothing could penetrate the barrier of terror that separated them. He felt the anger, rage at what had been done to his friend fill him. He stood, wanting to vent his frustration, wanting to punch, kick something but he couldn't.

He couldn't do anything. And what was the point? If Oma had been able to impart one thing to Daniel, it was that anger never helped, it never could. It drained all the good, all the purity from a soul. It was an emotion of white hot intensity, of brilliant heat and passion, and could never sustain itself. It ate away at its carrier, leaving a soul empty, focused only on the grain of ire, unable to seek a resolution, until the fire consumed the carrier

Unfortunately, not all of Oma's teachings had fully sunk in, and he didn't think Oma had anticipated him having to deal with something like this so early in his education.

He tried to calm himself, tried to think what to do. He heard Jack's muffled, incoherent mumbles, and the helplessness filled him again. All he could do was shout -- a wordless cry of frustration. Daniel felt energy stream from him, create a small gust in the still air. He focused intently on a few small rocks in front of him and furiously sent them skittering across the ground through the force of his will. One of the rocks hit the far tunnel wall, bouncing back violently, with more force than he thought himself capable of.

He stared at the rock, surprised, the anger receding. He hadn't been able to do that a few days ago -- move anything like that before.

"Dan...d-daniel?"

He spun back in the direction of Jack's slurred voice. Crouched in front of his friend again.

"Jack! Jack, can you hear me?"

"Wh--what... where... God, it's so dark... hurts, so... dark...."

"I know," Daniel said softly. "I know it's dark and I know you're hurting, but you have to wake up, Jack, please."

"Stop, stop, leave me alone... leave--" Jack pressed tighter against the rock as if he were trying to disappear into it. He turned his head to the side, resting it on his crossed arms and Daniel could see the tears streaking Jack’s face, shining translucent in the near darkness. "Charlie... watch where... where you're going... don’t want to have to fish you out... the lake...."

Dammit, Jack was gone again, Daniel cursed. He wondered if there was some way he could move Jack the same way he’d moved the rocks. He focused intently on Jack’s arm that was tightly clasped to his knees, tried to push it.

He saw Jack shift slightly, and encouraged, Daniel tried again. Jack’s arm slipped, loosening his grip and Jack’s head slumped onto his knees.

"Don’t remember, don’t don’t... stop... can’t go back...."

Daniel tried to nudge Jack again, but found he couldn’t focus. He was either becoming tired or his emotions were clouding his concentration. He took a deep breath, tried to reach his friend with only his voice again.

"Jack, they'll find you again if you don't get up now. You have to keep moving. I don't know how long it will take them to figure out what happened to you." Daniel hated having to remind Jack of the very real danger he was in. Felt a quick stab of guilt at the fear that passed Jack's battered features.

"Maj-- c-colonel... Jon...J...jack... O'Neill..." he whispered, the words barely slipping over his lips. His body’s accumulated trauma took precedence over his ability to process thought. And as his pain increased, his mind began to slow.

"No!" Daniel shouted when Jack seemed to be fading further away again. He forced his voice into an angry snarl. "Get up now, colonel! On your feet! That's an order!"

"Can't..." Jack whispered, but he struggled to raise his head, shifted his feet against the dirt.

"Yes you can!" Daniel urged. "Get up now. Your team is waiting for you -- you have to get to the gate. They're counting on you to find your way there, now get up!"

"Gate...."

"Yes! The gate! We have to get to the gate. Now come on, Jack. Open your eyes and look at me!"

Jack slowly lifted his head, let it drop back against the rock with a muffled thump. He opened his eyes with an effort, squinted at Daniel. "Daniel?"

Daniel wanted to sob with relief, but that could come later. "Yeah, Jack. I'm still here. You have to keep moving okay?"

"Wha... for..?" Jack slurred.

"Because I am going to get you home, that's what for. You have to get up, we're almost there." Daniel reached out to touch Jack’s tear streaked face. Even though he knew Jack wouldn’t feel it, he needed to touch him. The pain, confusion and fear on Jack’s face was ripping at his heart.

Jack flinched slightly, making Daniel wonder if Jack really could feel his touch.

Jack turned to face the rock wall, placed his hands against it. Using the rough surface for handholds, he slowly pulled himself up, groaning loudly, gasping in sobbing breaths. His legs trembled, knees nearly knocking together. Jack sagged against the wall, resting his forehead on the cool stone for a moment. His back heaved as he tried desperately to catch his breath.

"That's it. Just keep moving Jack, and we'll get you home."

"Daniel?"

"What?"

"Anyone ever tell you you're a stubborn son of a bitch?"

"Yes -- you have." Daniel moved closer to him. "Are you... back? I mean -- do you know where you are?"

"No," Jack whispered, his voice hoarse, thick with pain. "Some... some planet."

"Yes, that’s right," Daniel felt another surge of relief. Jack seemed to be coherent – for now. "You’re on the Gi’lyen’s home world."

"Why don't you... just...just get out of here -- go back to your new buddies, Daniel? We both know I'm not going to be able to make it to the gate," Jack said, his voice nearly inaudible.

"Because I'm not leaving you," Daniel said firmly.

Jack turned his head slightly to try to see him through the darkness and Daniel set his jaw determinedly.

"Besides," Daniel continued, shrugging, and felt somewhat embarrassed. "I need you to dial the gate. If you don't get to the gate, I'm just as stuck here as you are."

"This is some rescue," Jack murmured, leaning his face against the coolness of the stone again.

"Do you think you can walk now? It's not far, I promise."

"That's what you said... an... an hour ago." Jack pushed away from the wall, held his hands out to steady himself as he felt his legs wobble, threaten to give out.

"I wish I could be more help to you, Jack. I'm sorry," Daniel said, his voice wavering slightly.

"It's okay," Jack managed through clenched teeth. "Neither of us asked for this, did we? You never asked to nearly die and be changed into God knows what. I never asked to be tortured to within half an inch of my life. But we'll get through this, right?"

"Right."

"Even if it kills us."

"It’s not going to kill us."

"Not you maybe," Jack took a few shuffling steps forward. "You... seem to be immortal, even before you got turned into a Zen-spouting, flying flashlight, or something."

"Or something," Daniel smiled wryly, feeling an inexplicable twinge of sadness wash over him. Or something, he thought. Not quite human, not quite Ascended. Quite a leap for a guy who had just wanted to spend his life in an alien desert with his wife.

He pulled his mind away from his dark thoughts, focused on Jack again. "You’re going to be okay, Jack."

Jack nodded slightly, holding his hands out to the side for balance. "One foot, then the other...one...at a time... keep moving..." he whispered under his breath, his eyes drooping with fatigue, his features damp with perspiration.

Daniel walked beside Jack, careful to stay close and offer Jack whatever reassurances he could. He hoped that Jack was wrong and that he would be able to make the walk to the gate.

All Daniel had left was that hope, and he clung to that one meager reassurance for himself.

*****

She had stormed out of the mountain, leaving a trail of resentment and acidic anger. She had raced through the streets of Colorado Springs, pushing the limits of the law and her car’s engine. She had burst into her home, pitched her coat into the corner of the hall, slammed open the bathroom door, tore off her clothes, and viciously twisted on the faucet to the shower, stepping under its spray.

One by one the layers of anger and futility and desperation washed away. Each layer, heavy and burdensome, peeled off her, leaving her stripped of everything but the debilitating loss.

Sam sat in her shower, her head on her knees, crying until the water turned cold. Until the heat of her agony subsided.

And then she turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and wrapped her heavy flannel robe around her. She twisted a towel around her head, blew her nose and padded into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Numb and spent, she stood next to the stove waiting for the water to come to a boil. Maybe a cup of tea, she thought. A nice cup of tea with about three shots of scotch.

Sam was making her way to the cabinet above the refrigerator where she kept her alcohol when she heard someone knocking on her front door. She looked up at her clock -- 20:45.

"Just a minute," she called, striding to her bedroom, where she pulled off her robe and threw on a pair of sweat pants and sweat shirt. She stuffed her service revolver down the back of her pants, keeping her hand on the safety the entire time.

Her visitor knocked again.

"Yeah, I’m coming, just hold on a…" but before she could answer, she saw the face through the opening in the curtains. Stunned, she pulled out her weapon and laid it on the hall table.

Sam slowly opened the door and said, "Teal’c?"

"I hope it is not too late, Major Carter," he said.

"No. No. I…I was just going to have some tea," she said, opening the door for him. "Why don’t you…I mean, come on in."

Teal’c moved past her and stepped into Sam’s living room. He removed his hat and smoothed the brim absently.

"Can I take your coat?" Sam asked.

"I do not know how long I will stay," Teal’c told her.

"At least stay for a while. Have a cup of tea with me," Sam said. She reached out her hand to Teal’c. "Please. Stay for a while."

Teal’c thought about the offer, knew there was much to be said between them. He slowly peeled the jacket from his shoulders and arms, offered it to Sam, and nodded in gratitude.

"Teal’c, about today," Sam began, taking the coat and hat to the closet.

"Yes, about our last conversation."

Sam paused while hanging the garments to look at Teal’c. They had been crass, scornful words. Words said in the heat of the moment. Words meant for others, not Teal’c. Sam hooked the hanger on the rod and turned to Teal’c. "I’m sorry, Teal’c. I was out of line."

"It is I who should be apologetic," Teal’c said. "My…timing, as it were, could not have been less fortuitous."

Sam chuckled at his hyper-correctness. "So."

"So."

Those two repeated words reminded her yet again of her lost friends--Jack and Daniel. Their banter, their memories, were profusely present in the room. The two surviving friends smiled at each other, but the smiles couldn’t quite make it to their eyes.

"Have a cup of tea with me," Sam quietly said, extending her hand to Teal’c, this time in friendship.

Teal’c took Sam’s hand, so small in his massive grip. He covered her hand with both of his, nodded and followed Sam to the kitchen.

"I’m going to have a couple shots of scotch in mine. Don’t suppose you’d like to join me," Sam said, pulling out a chair for Teal’c at the dining room table.

"That will not be necessary, Major Carter."

Sam shook her head and stopped in the middle of the kitchen. "Look, Teal’c. We’re in my house. I’m in sweats. Christ, I’m not even wearing underwear. I think you can call me Sam."

"Very well," Teal’c said, one eyebrow lifting in a devilish manner. "Sam."

"That’s better. Oh, and you can lose the look now," she said, coyly smiling and returning to the stove, where the kettle was just about to whistle. Sam turned off the burner and took two mugs from her cupboard. "I have spearmint, Earl Gray, chai, black and, oh, I’m not really sure what this is. Daniel gave it to me a couple years ago. I haven’t had the nerve to try it. I think he said it’s buckwheat tea from Korea."

"Earl Gray will be fine," Teal’c said. Sam brought the mugs and the tea bags to the table. Teal’c opened his bag and placed it in his cup, offered to do the same for Sam, and Sam poured hot, steamy water over each.

"So, Teal’c, I don’t think you’ve ever just stopped by. What’s going on?" Sam asked, returning the kettle to the stove.

"There is something which has laid heavily on my mind lately, and I feel you are the only person who might understand," Teal’c said, pressing his hands flat against the oak table.

"Oh, yeah?" Sam said, reaching above her refrigerator for a bottle of scotch. "Can I assume it’s not about the latest installment of the Star Wars series?"

"It is indeed not," Teal’c said. Sam sat down in the chair across from him, pulled her tea bag out of her mug and plopped it onto the rim of the saucer. "This is about my inability to find rest through Kel no reem."

In the middle of unscrewing the top off the scotch bottle, Sam stopped. She stared at Teal’c, saw the great burden of pain he carried in his eyes. Sam put the bottle down and softly laid a hand on his.

"Kel no reem is my sanctuary. It is not only the time during the day when my symbiote grows stronger, it is when my body is at rest," Teal’c said, averting his eyes out of steely pride. "Since becoming a carrier of this symbiote, Kel no reem has been a cleansing, rejuvenating experience. When it is done, I am reborn. However, since DanielJackson ascended and Colonel O’Neill has… I find my sessions of Kel no reem leave me less than…" Teal’c paused to regain his equanimity. He pressed his lips together, jutted forth his strong jaw. Even so, a tear fell against his ebony skin, leaving a dark trail. "The mind and the body are connected, it is so. When the mind heals, the body does as well. However, I am finding that my soul…"

Sam gently stroked the top of Teal’c’s hand, slightly shaking under hers. She pulled a hand under her nose, sniffed and nodded that she understood. She knew.

"There is a pain in me that even the Kel no reem is unable to repair," he said, grinding his teeth together.

"Me, too," Sam said. She burrowed her free hand under Teal’c’s and pressed it between both her hands. "Me, too."

"I have lost many people close to me in my lifetime, but the loss of DanielJackson and Colonel O’Neill is perhaps too great, too quick. Perhaps I am not as strong as I once believed myself to be," he said, lowering his chin.

"No. It’s just too much, that’s all," she said. "They were…" The tense of her words caught in her throat, reminded her of it the reality of it all. "They were our friends and our family. And now they’re gone. I…I wanna believe Colonel O’Neill is alive, but…and I know I should be back at the SGC demanding we go back to the planet, but…"

"We have lost DanielJackson. We have lost Colonel O’Neill," Teal’c said, his voice hushed and crowded with emotion. "And now we have lost hope."

Sam nodded, pulled a shaking palm over her eyes. "Yup. I guess that’s it."

"Sam, I will not leave the SGC while you are a member," Teal’c said. "Please accept my apology for having considered it."

"No, you were right," she said. "Maybe it’s time to leave. Maybe it’s time to, oh, I don’t know, move on."

Teal’c carefully regarded her. "To where shall you move?"

"Don’t know," she said, patting his hand and smiling. "You think they may need an astrophysicist on Chulak?"

Teal’c warmly smiled back. "I believe Master Bratac would find your skills and unrivaled intelligence most advantageous."

"Then here’s to Chulak," Sam said, lifting her cup.

"To Chulak," Teal’c said, lifting his. They toasted their facetious plan, and set their cups back down on the table. Sam picked up the bottle of scotch.

"And here’s to Daniel," she said, pouring a jigger full into her cup. "And here’s to Colonel O’Neill. May they never be forgotten," she said, pouring a second shot into the cup, full with scotch and tea. "And here’s to our pain. May it find its rest."

"To our pain," Teal’c said, sliding his cup to Sam, who, surprised by his acceptance of it, poured the shot of Scotch into his cup. Teal’c pulled his cup back across the table; Sam poured a new shot.

"To our pain," she said, and the two drank to their misery and to the loss that seemed chasm-like.

*****

Jack felt the wave of terror crash over him again. He staggered, banged into the hard rock, barely managed to keep from falling. He pressed against the rock, a sharp edge dug into his spine, into the burned, stinging part of his flesh they kept pressing that thing that looked too much like a Goa'uld ribbon device on him. The searing pain it delivered had stopped his breath, made his heart seem to freeze in his chest, made agonized screams he could scarcely comprehend as his own tear from his throat.

"What is the address for your home world? Where do you come from? Who are you?"

The alien voices screamed in his mind, he sunk to his knees, buried his head in his arms.

"Tell us what we wish to know, and we will stop."

All the while, they kept the device pressed against his spine, searing jolts of agony pouring into him, setting his nerve endings afire, filling his senses, tormenting, killing....

Then they would start with the more old-fashioned conventional methods. Alien fists, alien feet clad in alien material....

Stopstopstopstopstop

He was paralyzed, couldn't move, could hardly breathe. "Stop."

"Jack, we're almost there, please, please hang in there."

He shook his head held safe in the shelter of his arms, he couldn't look up, he didn't want to see those faces when he looked up. He hated the dark, but it was safer than when he couldn't see them. That's when they would start... start on him again.

No, can't... don't look. If you don't look they won't be there... don't...don't look....

"Jack!" That familiar voice called him, the one that seemed to somehow be able to break through his stranglehold of terror. "It's okay, you can look at me. It's just me here -- it's Daniel. You're safe, and we're almost home."

Had he said that aloud? Not to look? Don't tell them anything. Do let them know how scared you really are don't...

He wasn't safe, he knew he wasn't safe. The tunnels, the corridors -- the hallway was endless. He always ended up being led down an endless hallway, the hallway of his nightmares, that led to what he knew would be his eventual end, or worse -- more of the same barbaric treatment.

"Two left turns, one right, one left... or... or was it one left turn and two rights? Can't... can't remember..." he whispered. The thought filled him with another wave of terror. If he couldn't remember, he couldn't prepare, he couldn't tell himself that he could get through it again....

"It doesn't matter anymore, Jack," Daniel's gentle voice told him. "We're not going there. You'll never have to go there again, I promise you. Everything's going to be all right. Only a little further, okay?"

Daniel. God, Danny what are you still doing here? I'm a dead man. Don't want you to see me die.

But Daniel had never lied to him, never lied to anyone, he realized. If he just kept following Daniel would he truly be okay? Was it still possible to get home?

He felt the terror slowly lose its grip on him. Felt it leaving him gradually, like water slowly pouring off him, down his shoulders, down his legs, until all he felt was the pain again, but the pain was muted, numbed, somehow. He felt the heavy exhaustion, felt his body trembling violently, his teeth chattering so hard his jaw ached dully.

He willed himself to raise his head. He held his breath, steeling himself for what terrors may have followed him from that endless hallway.

He blinked, tried to clear his blurred vision. No black, obsidian heavy lidded eyes. No foreign but terrifying voices with dark human eyes just as frightening...

...just Daniel's wide, blue eyes.

"Hey," his friend said softly, kneeling in front of him.

"Daniel," Jack choked out. He clutched his arms around his chest, tried to still the tremors. He felt his breath hitch in sobs, felt the tears of pain on his face that he was helpless to stop. "God, Daniel, I'm so tired."

"I know, Jack," Daniel's voice and cerulean eyes were filled with sympathetic tears of his own. "Just a little further, and you can rest all you want. You can rest in the infirmary."

"You... think... this is... going to make... me go faster?" Jack whispered.

"Oh, God, I hope so," Daniel told him, watching Jack carefully.

"Yeah, well…it does," Jack quietly told him, wishing he were in the infirmary at that very moment, tucked safe in crisp, white sheets.

Daniel raised his hand, pointed in the distance to his right. "See over there? It's light. We're almost out, and the gate is only a little bit away."

Jack nodded once, his head so heavy from fatigue that he wanted to drop it back into his arms and forget everything, wanted it all to just go away. But he couldn't forget, those horrible, coldly scientific eyes flashing across his mind again, threatening to hurtle him into the dark chasm again.

He summoned the strength for anger, forced the faintly-blue tinged alien features away. He wasn't going to let those sickly looking fish-belly white bastards be the end of him.

"Sons of bitches," he murmured.

"What?" Daniel asked, and then understood what Jack meant -- the Gi’lyens. Jack was responding now to what was around him and within him. Daniel needed to break through the haze, and he thought maybe a trip into the guttural was the ticket. "Yeah, they were…they were fairly ugly-assed bastards, weren’t they?" Daniel glanced at Jack who quirked a tiny smile. "But we’ve taken out worse, haven’t we? Right? I mean... they were bad, but we’ve taken out…worse assholes, right?"

Jack let his eyelids drift closed for a moment, and he chuckled softly, ignoring the stab in his ribs at the motion. "Who've you been hanging out with lately, Daniel? Ferretti and SG3? Or did Kawalsky ascend too, and is now giving seminars on vulgarity up there in night-light land? Language like that isn't going to go over all that well with... with your celestial buddies."

Daniel grinned. "Actually, I have."

Jack squinted at him, his mind far too exhausted to follow the leap. "Have what?"

"I have been hanging out with SG3. Well, just for a minute, when I tagged along with them back to base," Daniel told him, his voice almost apologetic. Seeing the look of non-comprehension on Jack's face he decided to let it go. "Never mind. I'll tell you all about it later, when you're home."

Daniel stood, and the lightness of the moment quickly passed when he saw the pain Jack was in.

Jack pulled himself up again and barely noticed that the pain was nearly gone. He felt numb, disassociated, as he stumbled a few steps behind Daniel, his eyes trained on Daniel's back, on the square patch of light gleaming tantalizing close.

But it may as well have been an eternity away.

*****

Sam ran her finger against the smooth surface of his desk, over the back of his leather chair. She turned to face his framed badges -- brightly colored manifestations of training and bravery.

"It was an honor serving with you, sir," she said.

For five years she had served as his 2IC, studying his command, understanding that at any time she could move into his place. She had done it before, taken over the command when he was grounded or incommunicado. It was what she had trained for her entire military career.

Taking over command of the SGC’s flagship team under these circumstances was not what she ever wanted.

Her thoughts dulled, her heart heavy, she walked from Jack’s office to her lab, trying to decide if she would be continuing her career in the bowels of the mountain, or if she would respectfully ask for a transfer. Maybe NASA had something less stressful. Or maybe she would go fly that kite -- or knit something.

The very thought brought a smile to her face. The thought of the colonel, exasperated by her focus, brought a sense of comfort and warmth to her. The thought of the colonel checking in on her, careful not to press his concern for her made her feel such respect.

The thought of the colonel.

She hardly made a wake of air while she moved through the corridors of the SGC. Hardly gave off any energy signal at all. Turning into her office, Sam grasped hold of her chair and anchored herself to its metallic rigidity.

Was it over? And if it was over, who would want the mess of a lab she was leaving behind?

Sam stooped to pick up the file she had thrown so bitterly to the floor. She swept the papers into the folder and picked it up. She placed the file on her desk and noticed the header: "The Counter-Polarity Effect on Naquaada With the Introduction of Naquaadria." Sam glanced at it momentarily and then placed it on the stack with the rest of her files.

Files. Tons of files. Stacks upon stacks of research that she would never be able to get to, but thought she could happily live out her time with the Air Force attempting to do so.

A niggling worked its way through her mind. Sam looked around her lab, filled with state-of- the-art technology. A place she thought of as home as much as her house. This lab, this place of discovery and wonder -- this is where she belonged. Not out there battling an endless war. Let the Marines do that. No, she belonged in the lab where she could do some good. Something beneficial, something real.

Sam strode out of her lab in search of General Hammond to discuss her desire to end her career with SG1 while continuing her career with the SGC.

*****

Daniel emerged from the tunnel, watching and waiting for Jack to join him. Daniel feared that Jack would be unable to climb the short incline to the surface, and if he couldn’t make it, what could Daniel possibly do to help Jack? He watched with bated breath as Jack slipped, scrabbled and clawed at the rocks until he finally managed to pull himself up to the surface, his limbs trembling wildly. Daniel tried not to notice the bloody footprints Jack left behind on the sharp rocks, tried not to notice Jack's wheezing, short gasps of breath

Jack half stumbled, half crawled onto the grass, before straightening again, nearly sighing with relief at the feel of the warm grass below his battered feet. The ground had spent an entire day absorbing the sun’s radiant heat, and Jack wanted nothing more than to fall down, sink into that heat, let the sun cover him with its warmth.

The gate stood about 30 feet ahead of them, barely visible behind the copse of trees and bushes. The air smelled blessedly clean, heavy with humidity and redolent with foreign, spicy scented blossoms.

"Can you see the gate?" Daniel asked Jack, his heart gripped with fear that his friend wasn't going to make it, even after getting him this far. Jack's face was clammy, a sickly shade of gray his lips blue, flecked with blood. He looked nearly unconscious on his feet, his eyelids fluttering.

"Get to gate..." Jack murmured, took shuffling steps slightly to the right of where the gate lay.

"Jack, open your eyes and look at me," Daniel ordered.

Jack stumbled, then tried to open his eyes, looked at Daniel through his lashes.

"That's it," Daniel encouraged. "Just keep following me -- we're almost there."

Somehow, Jack managed to follow him, remain upright, managed to step up the DHD. He gazed at it blearily as if he couldn't remember its purpose.

"Jack, you have to punch in the address for home -- I'll show you." Daniel pointed to a glyph, and after a moment, Jack raised a wildly trembling hand, pressed down, gritting his teeth in concentration. After pressing the seven glyphs in succession, he then laid both hands on the center crystal, leaning on it more than pressing it, gasping from the exertion.

*****

Sam's head popped up at the shrill sound of the alarm for unscheduled off-world activation. The sound rang through the base, rang through her head, sending a rush of mingled fear and hope coursing through her, making her heart seem to skip a beat. She looked wide-eyed at Teal'c sitting across from her in her lab, and their eyes locked, a silent, mutual question communicated between them.

What if it's Colonel O'Neill?

The both jumped up from their chairs, ran to the control room, dodging personnel, obstacles in their path almost blindly, their thoughts focused on only one thing.

Sam rushed up to Hammond who was studying the computer terminal intently. Jonas stood at his other side, a file folder in his hand.

"Sir, what's happening? Who...." Sam let her voice trail off, not daring to fully articulate the wild surge of hope filling her.

"It's an off-world activation. No signal or code, so we have no idea who it might be," Hammond said.

"Sir, you have to open the iris. It might be Colonel O'Neill."

"I agree with Major Carter," Teal'c rumbled behind her, standing so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

"And, it could be hostiles," Hammond reminded her.

"But what if it is him? We both know how resourceful Colonel O'Neill is!" Sam said, hearing a tinge of desperation creep into her voice.

"Major, as much as I'd like to believe that Colonel O'Neill is alive -- you saw the UAV transmission. It's highly unlikely he could have survived the elements for this long."

"Sir, please!" Sam gave in to the desperation, the hope no matter how unfounded it may be. "We can't just give up on him. I... we can't! The colonel is your friend too, General. What if it is him, and we just left him there at that gate -- alone, to-- to die?! Please, sir."

Hammond watched her, his eyes softening. Sam saw the barely suppressed glimmer of hope filling her CO's eyes, saw the dilemma playing across his features. After a moment, his mouth tightened slightly, his shoulders squared in resolution.

Hammond turned to Simmons. "Open the iris." He then spoke into the microphone to the guards below. "Base on full alert."

Sam held her breath as the iris opened, her gaze fixed on the wormhole shimmering behind it.

Please, God, let it be him.

She felt frozen in place, her hands clenched into fists, fingernails digging into her palms.

The wormhole stood open, rippling gently, no sign of their unscheduled visitor.

*****

Daniel wanted to hug Jack when the wormhole activated, exploded its energy forth. Jack watched the wormhole, looked around at the platform wild-eyed, as if seeing it for the first time. His features clouded with terror again and he stumbled backward, instinctively fumbling at his side for a weapon long since confiscated.

"Nonononono, not going with them, not..."

"Jack, you have to go through the gate! Now! Come on Jack, you can do it!"

"No.... no." Jack shook his head weakly, sat down heavily on the bright yellow-green grass, his legs tangling beneath him bonelessly. He fell backward, onto his back, arms flung out to the side.

"Jack!" Daniel quickly moved to crouch beside his friend.

God, Jack, please don't do this. Not now, we almost got you home, please....

The desperate litany and prayer played frantically through Daniel's mind. He cursed under his breath, ran his hands, his useless, goddamned futile fingers over Jack's body, looking for a sign of life.

"Please, Jack, don't do this!" he nearly shouted. He blinked back tears of anger and fear, focused on Jack's chest. It was rising and falling jerkily, sporadically. Jack's breathing was barely audible. His lips were slightly parted, his features slack.

"No!" Daniel cried out. He watched Jack's horribly battered face for another moment, then turned to look at the shimmering, waiting open wormhole. He turned back to his friend, knew what he had to do, but could he leave Jack?

Please hang in there, Jack. Please.

Daniel didn't even want to consider the possibility that the Gi'lyens would return. He stood again, giving himself no more time to think, to change his mind, and ran to the platform, toward the wormhole.

He jumped through the gate, and as he hurtled through, before he felt the energy pull at his new, intangible form, almost melding with him, he had a brief moment to wonder if the iris would be open on the other side, and if he would be able to pass through it or not.

*****

The observation deck and control room were completely silent, all eyes trained on the gate. Finally, Sam thought she saw the color of the wormhole lighten from its silvery blue to near white. A figure seemed to materialize, step onto the ramp, his hands held up in front of him as if anticipating an obstacle, or guards on the other end. His features were obscured by the opaque light shining on him, no, emanating from him. The light slowly faded and his features became distinct.

Sam felt her body suddenly go numb from shock, from disbelief.

Oh, God. This wasn't possible was it? This couldn't be....

Hardly aware that her brain had made the decision to move, she found herself tearing down the stairs to the gate room, her feet clattering on the metal steps, her heart racing. She was vaguely aware of Teal'c behind her, close on her heels.

She ran into the gate room and skidded to an abrupt stop behind the guards. Teal'c lightly bumped into her before quickly stepping to the side, narrowly missing bowling her over.

"Daniel?" Sam nearly whispered, her gaze locked on the figure still standing at the same place on the ramp, his hands still slightly raised peaceably.

He turned his head in her direction and his face lit up with a happy, almost relieved smile. "Sam, Teal'c."

Sam stumbled closer, stepping up the end of the ramp. "Daniel, is it really you? I can't believe… how…what are you…" She stopped, shaking her head in amazement, unable to form a coherent sentence, her throat tightening with emotion.

Daniel gave her a small, gentle smile this time and nodded. "Yeah, it's me. Listen, Jack’s in trouble."

"Jack? He’s…he’s not here," Sam told him, shaking her head, unable to make the jump in logic.

"I know. He’s back there, where I just came from. He’s in bad shape," Daniel said, and then he looked out over the field of guns and canons bearing down on him. "You think maybe you could call off the cavalry?"

From the control booth, General Hammond grabbed the microphone and ordered, "Stand down!"

The guards lowered their weapons, stepped back.

Daniel rushed down the plank, motioning for Teal’c and Sam to follow him. "Guys, I wish I could stay and talk to you--I have so much to tell you--but I have to get back to the planet. Jack is there, and he's alive, but he's very badly injured."

"Where is he?" Sam asked, striding purposefully to keep up with Daniel on his way to the control room.

"He’s on the Gi’lyen’s home world," Daniel said, and then glanced back to see their confused expressions. "I’ll explain it all later. But for now, Jack is on a different planet than the one where you became separated. He just dialed the gate, but he was too weak to step through it. I-- I couldn't help him anymore. You have to gate to the coordinates I'll show you and bring him back yourselves. I would have brought him myself, but I couldn't -- I can't do anything more to help him."

Sam realized that Daniel was near panic, guilt and helplessness on his face. His hands twitched nervously, running them through his hair, pulling on the loose shirt he was wearing.

"We'll have to wait until the wormhole disengages before we can do anything," Sam reminded him.

"There isn’t time, Sam," Daniel said, peering deeply into her eyes. "Disconnect it, shut it down somehow, anything, but…he can’t hold on much longer."

Sam’s pulse raced. She swallowed hard. "Okay. We’ll figure it out. Give me the coordinates to where he is," she said.

Daniel nodded, then turned to the dialing terminal. Sam moved close beside him. Daniel indicated a glyph, "You'd better write this down, because you'll have to redial it as soon as I go back and when the wormhole disengages."

"But Daniel, you can't go back until we redial anyway--" Sam objected.

"Yes, I can, actually. Being non-corporeal has some advantages, I guess. I can't activate the gate yet, but I can travel both ways."

"Dr. Jackson?" Jonas said from the doorway, a look of disbelief on his face.

Daniel spun quickly to face the voice. "Oh, hi. Yeah. Long story."

"Yes, I’m sure it is," Jonas said, his eyes fixed in confusion.

"Daniel," Sam said, trying to gain Daniel’s attention. Daniel pointed toward the terminal.

"Is there anything I can do?" Jonas asked, sensing the emergent quality of the situation.

"No, there isn't!" Sam barked, glaring at him angrily.

Daniel’s sight bounced between the terminal, Sam and Jonas who slunk out of the control room.

"Daniel," Sam urged.

"Right," said Daniel, shaking his head to clear his exploding thoughts.

Daniel pointed to each of the glyphs in succession, and Sam quickly wrote them down. She tried not to notice Daniel's finger passing through the monitor as he tried to tap on the screen.

Looking up from the screen, Daniel stared into Sam's eyes, and she saw the fear in them. "I have to go now. Please hurry. Jack's not going to hold out for much longer."

"Daniel, but--"

"I'll see you soon, okay?" And then he was gone, a trail of brilliant light rushing through the stairwell passage, up the ramp and threading through the eye of the event horizon.

Sam spun around. "We have to disengage the gate."

"Major," General Hammond began, regarding her incredulously, "you know that’s not possible. Not from our end."

Sam rose sharply from her seat in front of the monitor and began to pace. "There has to be a way. Colonel O’Neill’s still alive, right? And there was no way he was supposed to be alive, so statistically speaking, it’s a new ballgame, I guess."

"This same predicament has stopped us before, MajorCarter," Teal’c added. "In every variation that we have tried, nothing has ever worked."

A phrase popped into her mind with the brilliance of an object being lit by a strobe light. She grabbed the intercom and blurted out the words. "Doctor Quinn, report to the embarkation room immediately," she ordered, and then she remembered a most important element. "And bring your research on naquaadria."

"Major, would you care to explain?" the general said.

"Sir," Sam began, running from the control room to the gate room, "Jonas has been going over some of the files he brought back from Kelowna, and one of them is research the scientists had been doing on reversing the polarity of naquaada."

Teal’c, Sam and General Hammond rambled into the gate room, just as Jonas flew in through the side door, a pile of precariously bundled files held precariously in his arms.

"But it’s my understanding, Major, that the research is just that -- research," General Hammond said.

"Yes, sir, that is my understanding as well, but there must be some practical application in that research," she said, taking the files from Jonas and scattering them on the floor. "Basically, it’s our only hope, sir."

"What are we looking for, Major?" Jonas asked, joining her on the floor.

"Any information on the negative polarity effect on Naquaada by the introduction of naquaadria," she said, rifling through the papers and data.

Jonas flipped pages, pushing aside unimportant files, until his attention was directed to a gathering of words hidden below a file. He pulled the page out from under the mess and began to read. "…with the introduction of naquaadria, the properties of naquaada begin to nullify, thereby enabling the polarity of the element to reverse." He raised his eyes to Sam. "Is this it?"

Sam grasped the data out of his hands. "Yes," she said, scanning the page. Her fingers followed every word, every calculation. Jonas handed her another page, which she took and quickly digested. She laid both pages on the ground and hunched over them, devouring the words. "Did your researchers do any experiments?"

Jonas dug through the piles and scatterings of papers and came up with a new folder. "Yes. Here," he said, handing Sam the file.

"Major, is there anything we can do?" General Hammond asked, leaning over Sam’s frantically studious form.

"Um," she said, finishing a line of text, "yeah, there is. Get Siler and the electrical staff. Thank you, sir."

General Hammond raced to the control room.

"Jonas, I need you to bring…" Sam began, taking out a pen and frenetically scribbling out a formula. She checked her figures and nodded. "Yeah, I need two grams of naquaadria. I need it now."

"Certainly," Jonas said, pushing himself off the floor and running out of the room.

"Teal’c?"

"Yes."

"Teal’c, I need you to take go to my office and bring back the naquaada reactor on my desk,"

Without responding, Teal’c sprinted through the room and down the corridor.

Sam feverishly sorted through data, scratched out esoteric numbers and symbols, a language of precision, of theory, of hope.

"Major Carter," Siler said, entering the room with a squadron of airmen behind him.

"Siler, I need you to wire the gate for an energy input," Sam said, running her hands through her hair while she pondered her findings.

"Ma’am?"

"Look, Sergeant," she said, glancing up from the papers, "Colonel O’Neill is on the other side of that event horizon, and he can’t shut it down from his side. We’re running out of time, so…"

"Let’s move it," Siler ordered his team. The electricians ran with their tools, their carts of electrical wire to the gate, ready to implement a non-existing plan, and ready to implement it with complete confidence.

"We’re going to hook it up to the naquaada reactor and hit the gate with a few thousand watts of energy," Sam said.

Sam picked up her papers, keeping her eyes glued to the figures while she pushed to her feet. She blindly stepped toward the gate, up the ramp, slowly and carefully. "I hope this works, Colonel."

"Major?" Jonas said, stepping carefully into the gate room, a petri dish held gingerly in his hands.

"Great," Sam said, taking the specimen from him.

Siler rested a ladder against the side of the gate and began to climb, a skein of multi-colored wires looped over his shoulder. "What is it we’re trying to do, Major?" he asked, pulling an end of a wire from the mass.

"If my calculations prove correct, and if the Kelownan’s research holds water, we should be able to create a fusion between the naquaada nuclei in the event horizon and the naquaadria nuclei that I’ll be introducing into the naquaada reactor. The result should be a nullification of the event horizon."

"Sounds good," Siler said, twisting and crimping the ends of the wire which he had attached to the side of the gate.

"Sounds theoretical," Sam anxiously offered, looking over the work being done to the gate.

"That, too," Siler said.

"Major, have you given any thought to what would happen if you completely nullify the gate’s ability to activate?" General Hammond asked, stepping to her side.

"Yes, sir."

"And?"

"Well, sir, then we’re screwed."

"Point taken, Major," General Hammond said. "I’ll be in the control room. Keep me apprised, Major."

"Yes, sir," Sam said, inspecting the specimen of naquaadria.

"The scientists on Kelowna were very familiar with naquaadria, Major. I think you’ll find their research…beneficial," Jonas said, keeping a safe distance between himself and Major Carter.

"Let’s hope so," Sam said, stepping closer to the event horizon.

Jonas lowered his eyes, once again feeling the tense rebuke from Sam.

"How’s it going, Sergeant?" Sam asked, calling up to Siler.

Siler looked over his team of electricians, scurrying over and around the gate, attaching cables to its receptors. "We should be ready when you are, Major."

"Good to hear," Sam said.

The doors to the embarkation room burst open, and a metal cart with the naquaada reactor on top followed by Teal’c rushed through the opening. Sam rushed down to meet him.

"Let’s get it over here," she said, guiding Teal’c to a spot near the base of the gate. When it was positioned correctly, Sam began the arduous process of introducing the naquaadria to the fusion chamber. "I’m going to have to recalibrate the settings before I begin the process. Teal’c, could you give me a hand here?"

"I can indeed," Teal’c said, throwing his hands and his assistance into the frenzied work.

A flurry of activity surrounded the gate and the reactor. Wires and cables were crimped, spun and draped over the hoop. Electricians trailing heavy, insulated lines led their conduits to the reactor site. Sam and Teal’c worked breathlessly to connect the lines, mating them in fashions never before seen in any electrician’s handbooks.

"Are we ready?" Sam asked, stepping back from the octopi of wires and leads.

"The gate’s wired, Major," Siler announced, pulling the ladder away from the side, ordering his team to step away from the Stargate.

"Sir," Sam shouted, garnering General Hammond’s attention in the control room. "I think we’re going to give it a shot."

"You have a go, Major Carter. Proceed at will," General Hammond called down to her.

"Okay, well…" Sam said, taking a deep breath. She began to flip switches, causing the reactor to whir and hum. "Every theorem is there to be proved. Let’s make this a principle, shall we?"

The air in the gate room became charged with energy, both from the reactor and from the personnel standing expectantly in the room. No one dared to breathe lest the faintest movement disturb the coalescence of the two elements. Sam’s eyes darted over the reactor, hoping to catch any unforeseen glitch before it became a problem.

The undulating pattern of the event horizon, placid and rippling, blinked, then it spluttered. Heads turned to view the incredible sight, awestruck by the phenomenon.

"I think it’s working," Sam cautiously said.

"I believe it is," Teal’c said, gazing in wonder at the dissipating event horizon.

With a flash, the surface tension disappeared, leaving the viewers an unobstructed view of the back wall. Sam quickly shut down the reactor, and the ominous hum of the machine intoned a descending glissando.

Sam looked at Teal’c and then at Siler, momentarily at a loss for the next step in the process. It came to her in a quick burst, and she sprang to action again. "Let’s get those connections off." Hands began to work arduously to remove the cables.

"Sir, as soon as the last line is disconnected, dial up the gate using the coordinates Daniel gave us," Sam called up to the general.

"Will do, Major."

"Let’s move, people!" Siler ordered, torquing his wrench at a breakneck speed, disengaging the cables from the gate.

The clatter of metal tools against the side of the gate, the voices raised in hurried instruction, filled the room. When at last the final conduit was disconnected, Sam whipped her face toward the control room and yelled, "Now, sir!"

The lieutenant at the computer briskly programmed in the sequence, calling out the engaged chevrons with controlled apprehension.

"Come on, Daniel," Sam whispered, keeping her eyes peeled on the spinning gate.

Teal’c stood expectantly next to her, his hands in tight fists against his side.

"Chevron seven, engaged!"

A pause. A moment of terror-filled stillness. A transient cessation of optimism, and then the glorious burst of the wormhole punched through the room, reaching out and receding, ready to accept a traveler.

Would there be residual effects from the naquaadria’s polarity? Would the wormhole be able to reintegrate a traveler?

The rushing form of Teal’c forced the questions from simply the empirical to the practical, and every person watching gasped in fearful anticipation. The suddenness of Teal'c charging up the ramp, jumping through the newly established wormhole without hesitation negated any speculations on whether they should risk testing it first.

Sam stood watching the rippling event horizon, stunned by the speed of Teal'c's actions and his rapid-fire decision to risk his life to save his friend.

After five seconds, the statement came. "The traveler is through," the lieutenant announced, perfunctorily.

"Shut it down!" Sam ordered, and seconds later the event horizon disappeared to reveal the blank back wall again.

Sam wrapped an arm around her waist and clenched her opposite elbow, squeezing tightly in order to stop the trembling in her hands. What next? she wondered. What should be the next logical step?

"Call the infirmary," she shouted, realizing that the colonel would need immediate medical attention. "Tell them to send a medical team to the gate room."

The lieutenant in the control room relayed the message, sending the orders throughout the base.

"Do you think he made it?" Jonas asked, staring into the empty ring.

"I have no idea," Sam said, keeping her wide, expectant eyes drilled to the gate.

The quiet and acute tension pressed into Sam’s ears, their cilia bristling in an attempt to accept more sound, any sound. Sam’s need to hear the whine of the rings turning was intense. Her desire to see an incoming wormhole explode into the room incredible, overwhelming.

Finally, the clang and cacophony of a gurney and the running team members from the infirmary began to fill the room with a different sound -- the sound of impending trauma.

"What’s happening?" Janet asked, coming to a stop at Sam’s side.

"We’re waiting," Sam told her. "We managed to disengage the wormhole from our side, and now we’re... waiting."

Janet’s face mirrored her level of confusion. "I’m sorry? You disengaged an in-coming wormhole? I thought that couldn’t be done?"

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding but never taking her eye off the still chevrons, "so did I."

"What’s on the other side?" Janet asked.

"Not what. Who."

Janet stared at Sam. "Colonel O’Neill?"

"Yeah."

Janet shook her head and swallowed hard. "I don’t understand."

"Daniel came through and told us the colonel’s on the other side," Sam objectively told her.

"Daniel. Daniel came through the gate," Janet skeptically said.

"Yeah, it’s a long story," Sam said, glancing at her friend quickly, offering a guarded smile.

The nasal thrum of the gate activating permeated the room, making her jump.

"It’s coming from the coordinates Dr. Jackson gave us," the sergeant at the controls called down.

"Teal’c," Sam said, reaching a nervous, shaking hand up to her neck, waiting, waiting for him to pop out of the center of the surface. Waiting for the nightmare to end. Knowing she was still deeply involved within it -- that it may not end with Teal'c's emergence. That they still could lose the colonel.

In that moment of heightened anxiety, the placidity of the gently fluctuating surface grated on Sam’s nerves already raw from the sleepless, torturous hours of the past week.

"Jesus Christ, let’s go!" she cried to no one in particular.

Janet laid her hand against Sam’s back, empathizing with her frustration.

And then, almost as if she were imagining it, Teal'c stepped through the gate. A bundle of grey and dirty beige cradled in his arms.

The colonel. He was home. His limp body, torn and bruised and being carried by Teal’c, was back in the SGC. Where he belonged.

The medical team rushed up to meet Teal’c and to take possession of the man whose status had instantly changed from MIA to patient.

"Colonel? Can you hear me?" Sam asked, scrambling to his side and taking his lifeless hand. She let her eyes take in Jack’s pale, ghostly skin tone, his lips cracked from dehydration and abuse.

"Get him to the infirmary. Move, people!" Janet ordered, helping to whisk the colonel out of the embarkation room, the medics already working on his still form as they ran.

Teal’c stepped to her side, breathing heavily, his hands still outstretched and strained with the phantom weight of his recovered friend.

Sam’s body shook. Her breath came in short gasps, the adrenaline rapidly leaving her. "He’s home. Oh, my God, he’s home." She reached a hand to Teal’c, needed to feel the reality of it in his grasp.

"He is very weak," Teal’c reticently said, taking Sam’s hand. "But he is home."

The two stood paralyzed at the base of the ramp, their eyes staring at the empty doors leading to the infirmary.

Jonas saw the concern and fear etched in their faces, saw the intense connection they had for their CO, and wondered if he’d ever know that kind of camaraderie again. He lowered his eyes and slipped out of the room silently.

"Oh! Daniel," Sam said, turning to Teal’c. "Where’s Daniel?"

"He is resting. He will be here shortly," Teal’c told her.

"We should go to him," she cried, spinning around to face the event horizon.

"He is well, Major Carter," Teal’c assured her. "You need not worry."

Sam lowered her chin and raked a hand through her hair. "Okay," she said, nodding. She began to feel helpless against burgeoning tears. Sam raised her head and called out, "General, keep the gate opened for a few minutes. Daniel’s…Daniel’s coming home."

"Will do, Major," General Hammond replied.

Sam brushed a hot tear aside, took a deep breath and smiled at Teal’c. "He’s home. The colonel is home."

****

Sam stood outside the infirmary room doors, watching with frightened expectation while Janet and her triage team scurried around Jack’s ravaged body. Sam’s eyes filled with tears as she took in the bruises and cuts on Jack’s bare forearms, the pallid, bloodied skin, the filthy clothes.

The medics moved in closer, crowding around him, so her gaze settled on Jack’s bare feet, the only part of him that wasn’t obscured by their ministrations. His feet were black with dirt, dried blood, and crusted with damp grass and moss. The blood still flowed listlessly, trickling onto the pristine white of the sheet, standing out like a brand, a scream.

"Pupils are sluggish but responsive, pulse is weak, respiration shallow..." Janet recited the list of traumas inflicted on Jack’s body.

That Jack was in the warm security of the SGC’s infirmary was a gift unto itself. But Sam couldn’t help feeling angered and afraid by his condition, couldn’t help damning the people or things that did this to him and the horrible series of events that had produced such an outcome.

When it came down to it, though, she had to settle for the fact that he was home. That Colonel O’Neill was with his own again--in whatever condition--that was enough. It was more than she thought could possibly be expected a few short hours ago, so she decided to take what was given, be thankful for it, and pray to God that the colonel could just hold on a little longer. At least until she could say how sorry she was for losing him in the first place. At least until she could apologize for giving up on him.

"Sam," came the voice behind her. Sam spun around and took in the wondrous view -- Daniel.

"Daniel," she quietly said, her voice wavering with tension, fear, and joy. "Daniel." She stared at her friend, mesmerized by his presence, by the sheer fact that he was alive. Daniel was alive. Now that she had time to react, for the reality to set in, she had no idea what to do. She wanted to laugh, cry, throw her arms around him, but she stood transfixed, uncertain how to act around him. Uncertain of how she was feeling, even.

Daniel smiled sweetly, but there was worry in his eyes. "It’s me."

Sam shook her head. "How can this be possible? I didn't get a chance to ask you before, but... how--"

"I took near-corporeal form so that I could help Jack, but it takes more energy than I’m used to producing so…"

"So, you won’t be staying long?" Sam said, hoping she hadn’t guessed correctly.

"I’ll stay for a while," he said, nodding slightly. He looked deeply into Sam’s eyes, quirked his lips into a sad smile, his eyes bright with a shimmer of tears, and said, "It's so good to see you, Sam. To be able to talk to you." Daniel looked down, bit his lip and sniffed. Nodding his head, he said, "I’ve missed you. More than you’ll ever know."

"Yeah," she responded, wiping a hand under her eyes, never taking her eyes off of him. She nodded and smiled, tried to act nonchalant, but the truth was it was shocking having Daniel so near. Shocking and wonderful. She had let her chances go when he was alive to tell him how much he meant to her. She knew this was a gift, and she was determined not to let this opportunity go.

Sam felt tears run down her face but at the same time her heart lifted. She felt a smile stretch across her face. "Daniel you have no idea how much I've missed you, too. I never thought I'd see you again."

"You know I’m not that easy to get rid of," he said, raising his eyes slightly, tilting his head and letting out a soft laugh.

"I know," she said. Sam found a deep sadness welling up inside her, coursing upwards into her throat and her eyes. "I wish I could…I wish I could just touch you, you know?"

"Me, too," he said, squinting away his own tears. "I don't know how to make my... body solid yet."

"Okay," Sam said, accepting what she had. "It’s enough that you’re here."

"It is indeed good to see you, DanielJackson," Teal’c said, rounding the corner. He bowed respectfully to his friend.

"Teal’c, it’s good to see you, too," Daniel said, tipping his chin to the Jaffa.

Sam glanced at Teal'c to see a tear running freely down his own face. She knew exactly the calliope of emotions running through his heart. She reached out and touched his arm.

"Doctor Jackson," General Hammond said, shaking his head slightly at the incredible sight before him.

"General," Daniel said. "Thanks for keeping the gate open for me."

"Anytime," the general said. "Anytime at all."

"Daniel," Sam began, "how did you…when did you…"

Daniel nodded, understanding what she was saying. "I -- uh, I followed you on a mission." He shifted slightly, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the floor.

"You did? How?"

"SG3 was on the same planet I was on. Oma was showing me the ways of the Path. Existential stuff, really. Fascinating, but…I wanted to see you guys, so I kinda cut out of class, as it were. I hitched a ride back with them through the gate. You were briefing for your next mission, so I... uh, tagged along. I’m sorry."

"No, God, don’t be sorry, Daniel," Sam reached out toward his face to get him to look at her. "Thank God you did, and you were with the colonel. But why didn’t you let us know you were here, on base, and then on the planet with us?"

Daniel looked at her finally, and she was relieved to see that the embarrassment had faded. "I was going to. I really shouldn’t have come on base like that, but you know me..." he trailed off, shrugging.

"Yeah, that sounds just like you," Sam smiled, glancing at Teal’c and General Hammond who all shared the same knowing smile.

"I was going to let you know I was there, but then all hell broke loose," Daniel said.

"You are speaking of our time on the planet where we last saw Colonel O’Neill," Teal’c stated for clarity.

"Right. Yes," Daniel said, bobbing his head up and down.

"So you were there the whole time, and saw everything that happened?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. I was – I did," Daniel told her.

"Then perhaps you can tell us what happened to O’Neill after the explosion," the general said.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, Daniel, what happened after the explosion? Once we came to, Colonel O’Neill was gone. We looked everywhere for him, but... he was gone. We had no choice but to go back. A storm broke out and we weren’t prepared for that kind of weather. I didn’t want to leave him behind, Daniel, but I had no other choice," Sam told him, her voice wavering, filled with regret.

"Sam," Daniel said, reaching out his hand habitually, knowing he wouldn’t be able to make contact, but still trying to calm her, "I know you didn’t. The Gi’lyens took Jack because they assumed he was the leader, not just of us, but also of our entire race. The Gi’lyens, it turns out, are, well, stupid." Daniel smiled wryly at the thought before continuing.

"The Gi’lyens?" General Hammond asked.

"The Gi’lyens were trying to colonize L39-285," Daniel said.

"The planet we were exploring," Sam added.

"Right," Daniel said, nodding. "Seems there’s a mineral indigenous to that planet that the Gi’lyens need, and when you guys showed up, well…"

"They saw us as a threat," Teal’c said, taking up the conversation.

"Exactly."

"But we couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a couple seconds," Sam said. "I mean, our clothes weren’t even dusted with snow yet. Where did they take Colonel O’Neill so fast?"

"They took him through the gate. They took Jack to their own home world to... to interrogate him," Daniel said frowning.

His words sent a tremor of fear for Jack through Sam. Daniel looked down, crossed his arms tightly across his chest in such a familiar mannerism it wrenched Sam's heart to watch him.

She understood the unspoken message, what Daniel didn't want to tell them. That Colonel O’Neill had been tortured. She unconsciously reached out to touch Daniel's shoulder as much for her reassurance as his, and flinched when her hand passed through him, her fingers tingling.

"I’m…I’m sorry, Daniel," she said, pulling her hand quickly away.

"It’s okay. I know it takes a little getting used to," he said shrugging. "So," he continued, wanting the attention off of him, "they took Jack through the gate to their planet while you were unconscious. I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I tried, but being like this—" Daniel waved his hand over his body, pulling at the billowy shirt, frustrated. "I couldn’t do anything except try to remember the address to their home world and follow them through."

Sam waited for Daniel to continue. Instead he looked down, struggling with his emotions. "You were with him?" Sam asked. "You were with the colonel when…" She paused, then called his name when he seemed to be drifting, his thoughts elsewhere. "Daniel? Daniel, we need to know."

Daniel’s face shot up, his eyes closed, hands clenched into fists. "They put him in a cage, Sam, and they tortured him, they kept.... I could hear him screaming, but I couldn’t do anything to stop them."

"My God," Sam watched Daniel with eyes brimming full of tears.

"What was their purpose for this?" Teal’c asked.

"They wanted to know why he came to the planet. What it was he was after," Daniel told them. "I’m sorry, you guys. There was nothing I could do. By the time I managed to…reincorporate myself, Jack was pretty well…" Daniel bit down on his lower lip, then dropped his head, averting his gaze again. "They hurt him. They hurt him, Sam."

"But you got him out; you got him home," Sam said, glancing into the infirmary and taking in the blur of frenzied activity.

Daniel nodded once, took a deep breath. "Well, Jack got himself out. I managed to create a diversion and told him to run. I stayed with him the day or…two it took to gain his strength after his escape, but he walked to the gate himself."

"I’m sure it helped him knowing you were there," General Hammond said.

"Maybe," Daniel said.

"I know it did," Sam said, catching his eye, making him look at her. "Thanks for bringing him back to us, Daniel."

He nodded and took a deep breath, trying to regain control of his racing thoughts.

"Dr. Jackson, I don’t know how long you can stay with us, but I really do need your full report of the events. If you wouldn’t mind…"

"Certainly, sir," Daniel said. "I’ll stop by your office after I…"

"Of course," the general said, acknowledging the concern they all shared for Jack. "Keep me informed of his condition, Major."

"Yes, sir," Sam said.

"Teal’c," General Hammond said, and then he strode away to take care of the business of running a military base.

"I believe I will take my leave as well," Teal’c said.

"I’ll see you before I leave," Daniel said.

"I am certain of it," Teal’c told him, tipping his head.

"Teal’c," Daniel began, "Thank you for…for showing up."

Teal’c bowed and turned away, adjourning himself to seek Kel no reem.

When they were alone, when the pressing sounds of the infirmary swirled around them in their silent corridor, Sam turned once again to Daniel. "When I thought we’d lost the colonel forever, I didn’t know what to do with myself -- if I could deal with it. Not so soon after losing you."

"Jack’s going to be okay, Sam."

"I hope so," she said, wishing she could hug Daniel. Lord knows she needed a hug, and she figured Daniel could use one, too. Daniel still had his arms wrapped around himself looking near tears. "I’ve missed you so much, Daniel. It just hasn’t been the same around here without you."

Daniel looked up at this. "I’ve missed you, too. As amazing, incredible and unbelievable these past few months have been, I’ve…I’ve missed this." Daniel waved his hands around the room, indicating the SGC. "But most of all, I’ve missed you guys."

"That’s why you came back?"

"Yeah. Before your briefing, Sam, when I came back, I... I saw you crying in your office -- just... just for a minute, then I left. I wanted to say something to you but I didn’t know what to say." Daniel redirected his line of vision to Jack. Watched the medical team carefully turn him, watched the sheet that had been modestly draped over Jack’s midsection slip a bit over his bruised hip. Daniel tented his brow, sniffed. "Oma teaches us we must grieve each in our own time. I didn’t want to…interrupt that time."

"It’s just been hard, that’s all. The colonel won’t even talk about you. He gets angry every time I even mention your name."

"Jack’s never been good at talking about his feelings. He's suffered too many losses already -- losing Charlie nearly killed him, both spiritually and physically. I think he blamed himself so much for what happened to Charlie and thought about all the things he should have done differently, that it nearly destroyed him. With me, it's probably just easier for him to deal with it if he doesn't allow himself to think too much. But Sam," Daniel looked at her intently, his blue eyes wide, "please, don’t be sad anymore. I’m okay."

Sam met his intense gaze, and despite what he had said, found herself bursting into tears. But they were tears of relief, tears of tension built up for far too long. "I’m sorry," she gulped out in between sobs, hiding her face in her hands. "I wasn’t going to do this anymore."

Daniel moved closer to her, placed his hands around hers. "Sam, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine. You guys are going to be okay. You're still a team, you still have each other. And you know what?"

Sam shrugged, wiped away a tear. Daniel lowered his chin and smiled at her.

"I’ll be with you, Sam. I’ll always be right here," he said, stepping even closer to her, luminous tendrils of light spilling from him, trailing around him, passing into her body, her mind. Filling her with the warmth of Daniel’s spirit and the complete reassurance of his love.

Sam closed her eyes, allowing the serenity to encompass her, heal the rends in her grieving heart. She saw a vastness of space, bright, gently flowing beings of light surrounding her. For the briefest glimmer, she felt a complete sense of freedom from the confines of her body, from her own individual perceptions. She felt safe, she felt limitless.

"Always, Sam. Always," Daniel whispered through her mind, and the incredible sensation dissipated as the soft sound of his voice broke through, nearly startling her.

She opened her eyes and found him smiling at her. Sam shook her head, unable to completely comprehend what had just happened.

"I don’t understand, Daniel," she said, weeping, overwhelmed. She realized she was trembling and had to lean against the wall for support. "You’re here, right?"

"I am, but I’m also with you when I'm not…here," he tried to explain. "You are always with me when I think of you, when I remember you -- therefore when you think of me I am always with you. When I think of your smile, of Jack… being Jack, or admire Teal’c’s strength – at that moment we're together. We are all one."

She looked up to see him smiling slightly, trying to grasp what he was saying. She was struck by how young, how vital he looked, in spite of the obvious fatigue pinching his features. She was grateful for that. Seeing Daniel whole, vibrant again helped to erase the horrible image of his burned face from her mind.

"Okay," she said, nodding, accepting the impossible once again. Even if it were a dream, it was the best one she had had in months, and she could live with that. "Okay. I think I get it."

"Okay," Daniel smiled again, then tilted his head slightly, hesitating for a moment. "Can I ask you a favor, Sam?"

She nodded, surprised, moving away from the wall. "Of course – anything."

"Could you… keep my journals for me?" he asked softly. "It would mean a lot to me knowing they’re… somewhere safe, you know… just in case I ever want to--"

Sam’s eyes widened and she wondered for a moment if Daniel knew she had been reading them. At the same time, she realized that by asking her to keep them, he was giving her permission to read them. He was openly sharing his deepest thoughts with her. "Of course I will," she finally answered. "I’m honored that you asked me to."

"Oh, and Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Jack…tell him I appreciate him taking care of my fish," Daniel said, and then hid his smile from Sam.

Sam slightly turned her head and began to blush. "I guess we didn’t know what to do with…"

"I know. Thank you," he said, nodding. Daniel couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Didn’t want to take them off of her. He simply took her in, smiled, let his vision fall on every feature. And then he really noticed how tired she looked. How tired and sad she must be. "Sam, it’s all over now. You don’t need to worry anymore."

"I know," she said, trying to find her own smile. "It’s going to take some time, though."

"And some sleep," Daniel offered.

"That, too," she said. "I’ll be okay."

"I know you will," Daniel said, reassuring her with a nod. "Listen, I'm going to have to leave as soon as Jack wakes up and I say goodbye to him. Jack’s going to be okay physically, but he’s going to need help overcoming everything that has been done to him. Don’t let him pull away from you. He’ll try to be the tough as nails colonel, but he’s going to need you and Teal’c."

Sam agreed. "We’ll get him through this."

"And, Sam..." Daniel trailed off hesitantly, as if choosing his next words carefully, "try to cut Jonas some slack, okay? What happened on Kelowna wasn’t his fault," he said softly, his voice nearly a whisper.

Sam flushed slightly at the gentle reprimand. "I’ve tried... it’s just... when I look at him..."

"...you see what happened to me," Daniel finished for her, understanding.

She nodded. "Daniel, for the first few weeks after you’d…left, I couldn’t think of you without seeing you in pain, without seeing you covered in those horrible bandages, and every time I saw Jonas, I blamed him. I know it’s not fair, but that’s how I feel."

"Sam, what happened on Kelowna was a stupid mistake -- an accident, and I made the choice to go in there. I knew the consequences of my actions, so if you’re going to blame anyone, blame me."

"I could never blame you, Daniel," Sam told him firmly, shaking her head. "You saved everyone on that planet, and yeah, I’ll admit that I was angry with you for sacrificing yourself, but I could never blame you. That’s part of who you are, and I know that, but still, I don’t have to like what’s happened."

"No, you don’t," Daniel agreed. "But you have try to get past it, for your sake, more than his."

Sam nodded, wiped the tears from her eyes, from her cheeks. "Easier said than done," she said. "And for what it’s worth, if it weren’t for Jonas, we may not have been able to shut down the gate. How’s that for irony?"

"Really?"

"He brought some research files with him when he expatriated. One of the memos was on the reverse polarity of…It’s not important," Sam said, catching herself before sailing into a technical discussion. "Anyhow, it was Jonas’ research, really. Without it…"

"That’s…that’s great, Sam," Daniel said, furrowing his brow, nodding, sympathetic with how much it hurt to admit that Jonas had played an integral part in her life.

"Sam," Janet said, opening the door to the infirmary a smidge, "the colonel…" Janet's eyes widened, her mouth hanging open in mid-sentence. "Daniel?"

"Hi, Janet," Daniel said, smiling. "Why don’t we talk later?"

"Oh, you can count on it," she said. "We’re taking the colonel to surgery. He has some internal bleeding. I’ll call you when we’re done."

"Okay. Thanks, Janet," Sam said.

Janet turned to Daniel, shook her head, staring at him incredulously. "Daniel. God, it’s great to see you."

"Thank you," Daniel smiled. "It’s good to see you, too."

Janet returned his smile, then stepped back into the infirmary. Sam looked through the door.

"He’s gonna be fine, Sam," Daniel assured her.

Sam glanced over at Daniel, his presence assurance enough that all was well. "You’ll stay until he’s out of surgery?"

"Sure. I’ll go talk to the general in the meantime."

"Daniel?" Sam said, her voice shaky and hoarse.

"Yeah," he said.

Sam smiled and the tears resurfaced. She looked at him for a long moment, cocked her head to the side and cried some more.

"I got it," Daniel said, assuring her, blinking back tears of his own. "Me, too."

*****

Daniel could feel himself diminishing. Remaining in such a cohesive form was depleting his energy, already severely strained. He needed to shift, to slip into his more basic self—one of energy and thought. He was afraid, though, that if he did, he’d miss the opportunity to talk with Jack. It was a chance he was just going to have to take.

Letting loose of the constrictions of formation and shape, Daniel passed into the other plane, the plane of emancipation.

"It’s about damn time," Jack said.

Daniel spun toward the voice. "Jack?"

"Yeah. Freak-city, huh? I mean, here I am, and…there I am," Jack said from his chair beside the infirmary room bed. He gestured toward the body lying in the bed. "Kind of understand how you felt a couple months ago."

"Yeah," Daniel said, closing his eyes and trying to concentrate. "Um, okay, now I’m confused."

"Come on, Daniel," Jack said. "It’s not all that difficult to figure out."

"Well, for the sake of argument, why don’t we say it is, and you can fill me in," Daniel said, looking at his hands, his reincorporated body parts.

"My body is there, fairly messed up, and my spirit is here. I guess my spirit got bored of just lying there, so it went for a walk. I guess. At least that’s what I’m going with for now. In any event," Jack said, trying to sound nonchalant, but Daniel could see the trace of apprehension in Jack's dark eyes. Jack waved his hand through the air, "welcome to my…plane."

A wave of fear washed over Daniel. "Jack, you’re body is... you’re injured, but you’re not... Jack, are you telling me you’re..."

"Dead?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows. "No, I don’t think so. No, I’m just…hanging out, as far as I can figure. Something tells me I’m in limbo."

"Not something," Daniel corrected him, beginning to understand. "Oma."

"Oma, Uma, Oprah—you know, whatever," Jack said. "So, this is how you’ve been spending your days lately? Just…" Jack spread out his hands slowly through the air.

"Well, it’s a little more complicated, but…" Daniel shook his head.

"With you, it’s always complicated," Jack said.

Same old Jack, Daniel thought with a smile.

"Yeah, I am," Jack answered. Daniel stared him down. Jack shrugged.

"I think I liked it better when I got to the plane first and had to explain the ground rules to you," Daniel said.

"Yeah, this plane-shifting business can be a real bitch, can’t it?"

Daniel dropped his chin to his chest and smiled. "I’ve missed you, Jack."

"Which part? The irascible good nature, or the salty good nature?" Jack asked, leaning toward Daniel smiling.

"Yes," Daniel laughed. "All of it." Daniel’s laughter began to lessen while the next statement came to the fore. "Jack, I want you to know how much I appreciated what you did for me that day."

Jack wrapped his arms around his chest and bounced on his toes. "Well, I know you wouldn’t have wanted to keep going that way. You had other plans."

"Yes, I did," Daniel said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"So, I guess we’re even," Jack said, cocking his head to the side, catching Daniel’s eye.

"How do you figure?" Daniel asked, keeping his eyes rapidly blurring with tears lowered

"I helped you get where you wanted to go; you got me home. We’re even."

"We’ll never be even, Jack," said Daniel. He glanced up at Jack, squinting against the tears. "That’s not how it works. I didn’t do this as a favor, you know?"

"I know, Danny," Jack said, nodding.

"I never kept track of what I thought I owed you, or what you owed me."

"Me, either."

"For what it’s worth," Daniel began, feeling the long, emotionally draining days creeping into his voice. He rubbed a hand against his jaw. "For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say…" Daniel lowered his face and sniffed, took a long, deep breath and tried to regain his composure.

"Thank you, Daniel," Jack said.

"Right. Exactly," Daniel said, pointing to Jack. "That’s what I was trying to say."

"No," Jack said, turning to face his friend. "I’m saying thank you. Thank you, Daniel," he said, and then a smile as bright as morning shone across his face. "Thank you for everything." Jack’s eyes sparkled with grateful, melancholy tears.

Daniel smiled back. He pressed his lips together and tried to speak. Tears crept down his cheeks, over the upturned corners of his mouth. He bobbed his head up and down, turned away, nervously laughed. He turned back to Jack and wiped a hand across his face. "I really miss you, you know?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "Me, too."

Daniel sniffled a few times and then smiled almost shyly. "This is... this is strange," Daniel said softly. "I mean, strange for us, even."

"Way strange," Jack agreed, and their gazes locked, each of their eyes speaking volumes, silently communicating the depths of their bond. Slowly, they turned their attention to the silent body, wires and leads seemingly the only thing mooring it to the infirmary room bed. Machines softly hummed, beeped, recorded the strong output of life not yet ready to end.

"You’re gonna be fine, Jack," Daniel quietly offered, taking in the sight of the IV lines filling the dehydrated body with fluids and nutrients, pain medication and antibiotics.

"Oh, yeah," Jack agreed. He looked down at the face that seemed years older than the one he had seen in the mirror the morning before the mission. The hair seemed grayer, the wrinkles more prevalent. Gone was the cocky assuredness, replaced by features softened by sleep and cessation of pain. "Oh, yeah. I’ve seen worse."

"Have you?"

Jack locked eyes with Daniel again, knowing his friend understood him on many more levels now. "They start to build up, you know? The bad times. The injuries. They start to build up -- not just your own, but the people you care about, you know?"

"Yeah," Daniel said, holding tenaciously onto Jack’s focus. "I know."

"Daniel," Jack said, lowering his eyes, uncomfortable with the subject. "When I’m done… poltergeisting, will I remember this conversation?"

"You’ll remember the essence. Maybe not the words."

"Like that time in the gate room," Jack said.

"Right," Daniel said, stepping closer.

"Well, if I don’t, for…whatever reason, I want you to know how much I appreciate what you did for me."

"Jack, we’ve been over this. You don’t…"

"No, Daniel. Let me say it, okay?" Jack said. "I never said it enough when we were still…there, so I’ll say it here. Thank you. I can be an incredible pain in the ass…"

"I think you’ve said the same about me."

"Great minds and all," Jack said, quirking a lopsided grin. "Seriously, I would have died back there if you hadn’t tagged along. And I’m fairly sure I’m not a candidate for your flight school."

"Don’t count on that, Jack," Daniel said.

"Anyhow..." Jack shrugged. "Thank you."

"You’re welcome," Daniel said, smiling.

Jack felt an odd sensation course through him. A warmth, a cascading shower of soft light. "This is…strange."

"It’s your spirit, Jack. It wants to return to your body," Daniel told him, nodding his head toward the wounded body. "It needs you now. It’s time to heal yourself."

"Can I?"

"Not without help," Daniel told him, watching Jack watch him. "Let them help you, Jack. Let Janet and Teal’c and Sam in, okay? Don't shut them out anymore."

Jack closed his eyes, began to sink into the lush ambience of visceral life. "They’re worried about me."

"Yes, they are."

"I don’t want to scare them."

"You won’t. The only thing that could scare them is if they lost you. Don’t let them lose you, Jack. They need you now, more than ever."

Jack’s eyes opened slowly, calmly. He glanced over to Daniel and smiled. "Guess I should be going." Daniel nodded. "Don’t be a stranger, okay? I mean, don’t be any stranger than you already are…"

"Okay," Daniel whispered. "I will come back again, very soon."

"Good," Jack nodded, and smiled gently. "Hey, Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I’m gonna want to see you when I wake up. Make sure this isn’t a dream."

"I’ll try," Daniel said. "You need to go, Jack. Don’t worry. Everything’s gonna be fine."

Jack stepped toward the bed, reached out his hand to grasp the tangible hand marred with cuts and bruises.

"Jack?"

"Yeah, Danny?" Jack said, pulling his hand away.

"I already asked this of Sam -- but try not to be too hard on Jonas. He's lost things in this, too. I don't blame him for anything. Some things just happen as they're meant to be. He may have made mistakes, but he's trying to redeem himself, trying to find a place for himself in a situation he had never anticipated."

"Yeah, ya kinda can’t help feeling sorry for the little weasel," Jack said.

"Jaaaack…" Daniel said, running a hand through his hair. "Anyhow, I seem to recall that you thought the same of me there for a while."

"Hey, somebody had to," Jack said.

"You mean with Sha’re and all?"

"No," Jack said, "because you couldn’t hold your liquor."

"Ah…"

Jack reached again for his hand, resting it a breath away. "See you on the other side."

"See ya, Jack."

With a touch, Jack’s spirit commingled with his flesh, and his journey toward recovery began anew.

*****

Sam moved closer to Jack’s bed when she saw him begin to stir. His eyelids fluttered and he pulled his eyes open for a moment, his gaze distant and unfocused. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but weariness won out and they drifted shut again, his lashes dark smudges against his pale cheekbones. His fingers loosened around hers as he lost consciousness again, but she held on.

We’ll get you through this, she silently promised him, rubbed her thumb gently over the back of his hand.

She looked up from Jack’s bruised face to Daniel, standing on the opposite side of the bed. Daniel watched Jack sleep, the relief on his face, in his posture almost tangible. He looked even more exhausted, drained. Sam wondered what the two friends had been through together back on that unseen planet. She realized that she would probably never really know all the details of what they had endured, but seeing the colonel so battered, and surprisingly vulnerable underneath the tubes and stark white bandages, she could imagine how greatly Jack had relied on Daniel to help him find his way home.

Daniel noticed her watching him, and raised his eyes to meet hers for a moment. They were bright with tears. He blinked slowly, as if he was having as much trouble keeping his eyes open as Jack had been.

"He’s going to be all right, guys," Janet told them, moving beside Sam to fuss with the assorted lines trailing from the neck of Jack’s gown. "I have him heavily sedated, but his respirations are regular, his pulse is strong. We’ve got the infection under control. Let’s let him rest," she said, laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder gently.

Janet looked over at Daniel, also noticing the exhaustion on his features. "Daniel, are you all right?"

He kept his gaze on Jack, not seeming to have heard her question.

"Daniel?"

He looked at Janet, slowly, hazily. "What?"

"I asked if you were all right," she repeated gently.

He nodded. "Yeah, I’m just tired. It’s hard to maintain this... this form for so long," he said, running a hand through his hair, then pausing to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

Sam lowered her tired eyes and softly laughed.

"Sam?" Janet asked, hearing Sam’s laughter.

"I’m sorry, it’s just that…well, all of a sudden I could hear Colonel O’Neill asking if Daniel needs a new set of batteries," she said, covering her mouth to hide her smirk.

"Yeah," Daniel said, smiling. "He would say that."

They shared a moment of levity, a moment when they could release the tension of fear, of waiting. Small chuckles softly punctuated the room, signaling a silent memory of Jack O’Neill’s warped humor.

Sam stepped away from the bed, keeping her gaze fixed on Daniel. He looked down at Jack’s still form again, reached his hand out toward Jack’s scraped hand. Daniel’s own hand was becoming more and more translucent with his growing fatigue. She could see the colonel’s flesh glimmering through Daniel’s long fingers.

The reminder that Daniel was no longer entirely... human hit Sam like a jolt. She knew that it meant they would have to say goodbye to him again soon. She could only hope that it wouldn’t be so hard this time. That she would be able to learn to get through the day without him, without what had been his constant and cherished presence – something that she hadn’t fully appreciated at the time.

At least now he knew how much he meant to her -- to all of them. Maybe now it would be easier for her to let him go, knowing that he was alive and he was safe. He was free, she realized, recalling that short, but indescribable glimpse of the other world Daniel had shown her through his own eyes.

He looked at her again, and Sam saw the unspoken words on his face. He had already said his goodbye to her. There weren't any more words necessary. She just had to hold onto the belief that he would always be with her, no matter where he was.

Sam watched Daniel’s motions, the faint, familiar frown creasing his brow, the trace of a slouch to his posture, as if memorizing him – taking a mental snapshot. One to replace the terrible image of his last day on base. His last day as a man of flesh and bone.

"Okay, people," Janet said, startling her. Janet touched Teal’c’s shoulder, "a few more minutes, and then it’s time to let him be."

"Okay," Sam said. "Thanks, Janet."

"Thank you, Janet," Daniel said, nodding.

"Great to see you, Daniel," Janet said again, and then she left them.

Sam raked her fingers through her hair. The roller coaster ride of emotions she had been on had wrung her dry, and if she hadn’t been so intent on being there for the colonel when he woke up, and knew that her time with Daniel was so limited, she would have ordinarily felt an overwhelming urge to escape – to be alone and gain control of her emotions.

"How long has it been?" she asked, turning her watch on her wrist, trying to make out the face.

"He has been in the infirmary for eight hours," Teal’c said.

"Sam, I need to go soon," Daniel said. "I wish I could stay, but..."

"Wait," Sam said, her eyes wide. She stared intently at the colonel’s face. Daniel and Teal’c looked on the scene as well. Jack was awake.

Jack looked up at a ceiling, his vision faintly blurred, the pain muted, muffled within a blanket of numbness. He smelled the familiar smell of antiseptic, soap and something else he couldn’t distinguish.

He was lying on a bed, not hard rock anymore, not the sharp wires digging into his flesh, slicing it mercilessly. But he knew he was dreaming, knew he was still back there, with them. He began to moan, to cry out in pain, to cry out in fear of the imminent torture.

"Janet!" Sam called, taking Jack’s hand.

Janet rushed back into the room, lifted Jack’s wrist in order to feel his pulse. "Colonel? Can you hear me?"

A soft voice, a face appearing in his line of vision. Dark brown eyes looking into his. Searing light in his pupils. He flinched, turned his face away. That face, that voice wasn’t the one he had been expecting. He held his breath, steeled himself for the inevitable appearance of the face that always brought the pain. The horrible, fathomless eyes that reflected only Jack's tortured features as they stared impassively at him. The reedy voice with its endless questions.

Jack moaned softly. He wanted the other voice that had been there with him before. The one that had pushed the demons back.

"Daniel..." he whispered through a throat raw, scraped and dry as the deserts in the Gulf, dry as that sterile room where...where... He closed his eyes again, squeezed them shut. Felt a groan of pain, of fear escape him.

"I’m here, Jack. It’s okay, you’re home now. You’re safe."

He started at the words. Felt his heart lift at the sound of the voice he had been waiting, hoping to hear. The voice that had kept them from coming back. He turned his head toward the sound, tried to open his eyes.

"Dan..." he tried to choke out his friend’s name, hoping he would hear him anyway. If only he weren’t so tired...

"Yeah, it’s me -- it’s Daniel. You did it Jack. We got you home."

Jack pulled his eyes open finally, his gaze in line with Daniel’s face. "I thought... thought I…was dreaming."

"No, you weren’t dreaming," Daniel told him.

"Daniel... I... wasn't sure... if... we talked... if we said...goodbye...already," he coughed, his eyes drifted shut again.

"No," Daniel said softly. "I promised you I wasn't going to leave until you were safely home and until you woke up so we could say goodbye for real this time."

Jack nodded, too tired to look at Daniel again, but hearing his voice was enough. "Home?" he dared to whisper, to believe.

"Yes, you’re home. You’re in the infirmary, and you’re safe now. Sam and Teal’c are here, too."

"It’s good to have you back, sir." Sam’s shaky voice floated across the colonel’s consciousness, then the sentiment repeated itself in Teal’c’s deep rumble.

Jack nodded shortly. He allowed himself to believe Daniel -- Danny hadn’t lied to him all this time. Allowed himself to take comfort in the sounds of his team’s voices. He was home. He was safe.

"Tired..." he whispered.

"It’s all right. You can sleep now," Daniel told him.

Jack tried to nod again, felt the darkness encroaching but first there was one more thing he wanted to say to his friend. He wasn't sure if he had already told him -- but it was important to make sure he told Daniel that one more thing before he had to go....

He forced the words from his dry, aching throat. "Dan...iel…."

"I know, Jack," Daniel said softly. "You’re welcome."

Jack smiled, knowing that Daniel understood. Jack felt Carter's warm fingers curl around his own, and he grasped them, allowed the dark to take him now.

He knew this dark was safe.