For years, I had a vague plan to take on this challenge and suddenly became inspired during season 7. I should also mention that I actually started writing this during season 7, as well, soooo, ummm… let’s just say I got a little stuck three-quarters of the way through and abandoned all hope of ever finishing anything ever again. But! The muse suddenly perked up one day a few months ago and demanded that we finish this thing and we finish it now. Let’s hope it wasn’t misguided…

And I know this plot has been done before by other more gifted writers, and probably in many different fandoms, but hey, it hasn’t been done by me! I didn’t entirely stick with the challenge, but I’ve always wanted to write an action/adventure, Jack and Daniel friendship focused story and this just seemed the perfect way to do it. Besides, how else would you get those two to sit down and have an actual conversation? Forgive me for having a little too much fun at poor Daniel’s expense, but my motto has always been that laughter is the light that gets you through the darkest tunnel. And if you can’t laugh at your troubles, you may as well pack it in, right? Right. The extent of Daniel’s amnesia in this story is based on what we saw in Homecoming—still a little muddled—because by the time Fragile Balance came along, he was almost back to normal. Again, taking some liberties with canon, but that’s what makes fic writing so much fun! Anyway, we’ll see if it all works.

To my dear friend, Pough - I thought of you every time I adamantly avoided a lot of alliteration for anxious anchormen, and when I refrained from unnecessary SK’s. I even tried to throw in some poignancy for you, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. You will, however, see a thrum or two. Freya has taught me well - or maybe she's just so firmly embedded in my spinal column that I can't shake her. Not that I'd ever want to...

Last, but most definitely not least—A HUGE thank you to my beta for her encourange, support and brilliant suggestions. Sending you big hugs and permission to read all the CSI fics you want. You got me back in the groove and made me stay there, for which I'm immeasurably grateful. I certainly would not have been able to finish this without you, and the end is all yours, darling.

Sorry, I think I like writing author’s notes more than I like writing actual stories... so finally, widout further adooo, here goes!!

*****

"Go go go go!" Jack shouted to Daniel and forced his trembling legs to keep moving. Forced himself to run faster. His lungs burned. Sweat dripped into his stinging eyes, blurring his vision. Daniel fought to match Jack’s steps—their shackled wrists, Jack’s left to Daniel’s right—slowing them down, hindering their escape.

Green hued laser blasts filled and charged the cool air. One bolt caught Jack’s right sleeve. Blazing heat seared the skin of his upper arm. Then a stinging pain that caused the breath to catch in his lungs. Another blast streaked past his head, singeing his hair, the sizzling of discharged energy buzzing like angry hornets in his ear. Jack darted to the left, banging into Daniel, almost knocking his friend off balance.

Their pursuers were gaining on them.

If we can just make it into the forest... Jack thought with something frighteningly close to desperation, ten yards away maybe... just a little further...

"Trees," he choked out to Daniel, "head for the trees."

Daniel didn't waste any energy replying. He matched Jack step for frantic step, relying on his friend for direction. For the umpteenth time, Daniel wished he hadn’t lost his glasses in their initial capture.

Jack stumbled into a deep rut rendered nearly invisible by the heavy shadows, his right knee twisting with an agonizing stab. His shackled arm was painfully yanked forward when Daniel kept running ahead of him, unaware of Jack’s near-fall. Daniel faltered at the pull on his wrist, looked back, his face creased with fear. Jack managed to right himself, staggering forward a few steps, his leg screaming with pain from the bottom of his knee to the top of his thigh. He knew his knees weren’t cut out for this anymore—each step felt like a knife was being driven into the cartilage. Too much more of this and Jack feared he’d pop both knees right out, leaving him a helpless wreck on the ground, and Daniel tethered to him like an animal caught in a snare.

There, the trees are close—once we have some cover, we’ll have a chance, Jack tried to assure himself. Ignoring the pain, he forced himself into an all-out sprint, veering Daniel off to the right, closer to the forest. Almost there…

A burst of light flared in the corner of Jack’s eye. A wave of heat poured over his neck and shoulder. Daniel’s short cry of pain was startling over the buzzing of the blasts. Daniel stumbled forward, his legs buckling, the back of his jacket blackened and smoldering.

With his free hand, Jack reached over to grasp Daniel’s bound forearm, dragging him gasping and stumbling along until he regained his footing. There was no time for anything else. If they faltered, or if they fell, they were both dead. It was as simple as that.

Finally reaching the shelter of the trees, the two men tore heedlessly through the underbrush, their bodies thrumming with adrenaline and fear, their ragged breaths rasping in their ears, all senses hyper-acute. The pounding of their feet on the ground and the snapping of the branches sounded too loud, the green surrounding them appeared too bright. The cool air was pungent with moss and decayed leaves.

As they darted through the thick foliage, Jack and Daniel unconsciously matched each other’s steps, motions and changes in direction—their mutual instinct for survival connecting them as closely in mind as they were in body. They both darted a surprised glance backward when they heard a crash and the crunching of flattened twigs and branches. One of their pursuers had fallen, taking down the man in front of him and obstructing the two that followed behind. A cacophony of furious alien voices rang out, rustles and more breaking twigs broadcasting the struggle to regain footing.

Using the confusion to their advantage, Jack and Daniel pushed themselves harder, crashing and zigzagging through the thorns and branches, unaware of the damage to their exposed skin. It was difficult for Jack to orient himself to any sense of direction as they raced over roots and twigs, and stumbled into ankle-deep, stagnant puddles.

Jack heard himself wheezing with the effort to pull air into his taxed lungs. Black motes filled the edges of his vision, his heart stuttered and thudded painfully against his ribs and his mouth was filled with the thick, coppery taste of blood. The muscles in his thighs twitched and bunched with the onset of cramps.

Christ, even if they didn't get blasted to kingdom come, Jack thought he was going to have a damned heart attack, right here, on the spot. A quick glance at Daniel revealed him to be in nearly as rough shape. The younger man's cheeks were mottled purple, hair and face damp and beaded with sweat, features tight and pinched with pain.

Jack knew that they couldn't keep up this pace much longer.

Jack dared another look behind him and the foliage was so thick, he could no longer see their pursuers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close behind. Redirecting his attention ahead, he could just make out a dark shape that could be a cave, or at least some kind of shelter nestled against one of the hills.

"Over there... cave," he choked out. His mouth was so dry he could hardly force out the words.

"Where?" Daniel squinted into a dimmed blur of gray and green.

"Straight ahead."

They darted through a nearly impenetrable, tangled nest of thorns and nettles. Jack cursed when a sharp, gnarled thorn caught his ear, ripping open the delicate skin. Hot blood ran down his neck and into his collar.

The cave was smaller than it had appeared from a distance, not much more than a shallow depression along the incline, but it seemed at least large enough for the two of them. Jack all but shoved Daniel inside, and with his free hand, reached out to snag a heavy, pine-needled branch and snapped it off, dragging it in front of the entrance, concealing it as he ducked in after his friend.

To fit inside, they had to curl up their legs, sit shoulder to shoulder, their backs pressed tight against the rock. Jack’s thoughts raced as he tried to think of an alternate plan. If they were spotted, he and Daniel were sitting ducks. Jack supposed their shelter was shallow enough for them to be able to quickly dart outside again, if they had to, but he knew if they’d kept running, exhausted as they were, they would have been caught within minutes.

While Jack played out possible strategies in his mind, both men tried to catch their breaths, tried to hear any signs of their pursuers over the rapid pounding of their hearts. Both men peered through the branches, both praying that they hadn’t been seen.

Daniel dropped his head against the rough stone surface, his breathing ragged and uneven. Over the musty dankness of their enclosure, Jack could smell burned cloth and worse, scorched flesh. The acrid odor was coming from his stinging right arm and, he knew, from Daniel. Glancing at his friend, Jack saw that Daniel had twisted in an awkward position so his shoulder blade wouldn’t touch the rock. A long, ragged strip was burned through both Daniel’s jacket and T-shirt, revealing charred flesh.

Voices sounded outside. Harsh, staccato syllables in an incomprehensible alien tongue.

Jack froze. Daniel shifted his gaze just enough to be able to see through the makeshift door of spiny needles and twigs. Their pursuers stepped past their hiding place, a mere eight feet away. The aliens stopped, jabbering in angry tones to each other.

Daniel held his breath. Jack’s left arm held tight against Daniel's right one was rigid, iron-bar tense. One of the aliens turned in their direction, and Daniel forced himself to remain utterly still, fighting the instinct to duck down. For a terrifying moment, he thought the alien man's narrow, yellowish stare met his, the pale, cold eyes seeming to bore into his soul. Daniel’s heart skipped a couple of beats, a painful halt in his chest. His overworked lungs burned, screaming for air, but he didn’t dare breathe. He kept his thoughts carefully blank, his mind as still as his body, as though he could render himself invisible.

Beside him, Jack’s muscles tensed even further, his biceps trembling, entire body ready for combat.

A blood curdling scream almost caused Daniel to jump and he felt Jack flinch beside him. The alien guards shouted amongst one another, spinning in the direction of the sound, weapons raised. Ominous snarls and growls emanated from the thick foliage, as though the forest itself were coming to life and angry at the intrusion. The guards fired off a round of blasts into the expanse of green. Another shriek rang out over the blasts, followed by a rush of motion of what seemed to be two or three large, shadowy shapes, barely visible against the tangles of thorns and branches.

A chorus of threatening snarls sounded and the guards exchanged nervous glances, seeming to reach a unanimous decision. One of the men shouted a command to the others, and the group headed back into the underbrush, the same way in which they had come—albeit a little more cautiously.

Whatever lurked in the depths of the forest was evidently enough of a threat to render the escaped humans less important.

Once the retreating alien backs had completely disappeared and the sounds of their footsteps had faded, Daniel slowly let out his breath and his heartbeat resumed its frenetic pounding. His shoulder started throbbing in rhythm.

Daniel tried to look at the source of the pain, but their position and the location of the injury made it impossible. He had been so intent on getting away, not wanting to slow Jack down any that his mind hadn't even taken the time to register the full extent of the damage from blast that had struck him. Now that the immediate danger had passed, the searing pain seemed to overtake all else. Daniel gritted his teeth, swallowed hard against the thickness of his parched throat and tried not to think about it.

Daniel and Jack remained silent, their breathing controlled and quiet. Neither of them dared speak for a long time. Neither wanted to attract the attention of whatever other threat faced them in the depths of the planet’s alien foliage. It was enough to just catch their breaths, to allow their aching, trembling muscles a much-needed rest, and their minds a short reprieve from the brutality they had been subjected to over the past few horrific days.

Though his memory was still muddled and disjointed at best, this mission was Daniel’s first since Jonas had returned to his homeworld, and Daniel had been reinitiated into the SG-1. The pieces of the jumbled puzzle that made up Daniel’s subconscious were slowly falling into place, but like a puzzle, it was the outer edges that were forming first. The basics had somehow pieced themselves together and began to make sense. Pieces such as his combat training, linguistic skills and the normal reasoning and rationale that enable one to function throughout the day.

Unfortunately, the memories that make up a life were still too jumbled to form any sense of cohesion. The experiences, teachings and various injuries endured and survived in childhood. The indelible thrill of falling in love for the first time and the subsequent pain of first heartbreak. The triumphs and the inevitable failures, all which make up a lifetime, which make a person whole—those memories were still eluding him. Still present somewhere in his confused and scrambled mind, still waiting to be put back into place and formed into a clear picture when you gazed upon it.

Scattered memories, or not, Daniel had still been cleared for short off-world missions, something he’d been anticipating, eager to get back in the action. Even so, Janet, along with General Hammond, had insisted that Daniel not be subjected to anything too physically demanding or mentally taxing just yet. No alien threats, no gunfire, no undue stress, Janet had said in her no-nonsense voice—the one she seemed to reserve primarily for SG-1.

At the time, Daniel couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about—after all, he’d managed just fine on his and Jonas’s covert mission to thwart a Goa’uld mothership. An alien planet was a cakewalk in comparison.

And so the team had chosen P69-3J2 as the place for Daniel to get his feet wet again, so to speak. SG-3 had been to the location on numerous occasions—they’d discovered two mines that were ripe with minerals, and more importantly, to SG-1, the planet was uninhabited. Jack told his team that they’d do a little spelunking, Daniel could find some new rocks for his collection, and they’ll all be home in time to catch the Avalanche game.

Daniel had nodded in collective agreement with the rest of his team, but in truth, he’d had no idea what spelunking was, nor did he recall ever having a rock collection. Although, there were quite a number of geodes lining the bookshelves in his office, so maybe that was it. And, from Jack’s unbridled enthusiasm, Daniel assumed an Avalanche game was something he should look forward to, potentially dangerous though it sounded—all of which he didn’t have the heart to admit to Jack.

At any rate, Daniel would watch ten Avalanche games in a row, whatever they were, over his and Jack’s current situation.

So much for no undo stress or alien threats.

The planet had turned out to be far from uninhabited. Well, it was inhabited only when a previously unseen alien race made a prisoner transfer, which, given their usual luck, had coincided with SG1’s intended quiet mission.

Maybe the aliens had mistaken Jack and Daniel for escaped prisoners. Maybe the aliens wanted to add a few more humans to their various collection of species in the hidden compound to where he and Jack had been so violently taken. Who knew?

It had all happened so fast, so without warning, Jack hadn’t even had time to radio Carter and Teal’c, who were down by the river taking water samples. One minute Daniel and Jack had been heading toward a large cluster of what appeared to be ruins scattered near one of the mines. The next, a hulking, blurred figure had darted out from the underbrush.

Before Daniel could react, two very thick, very strong pairs of arms had grabbed him. One pair pinning his arms behind his back, the other pair wrapping around his neck, wrestling him to the ground. Daniel had heard shots fired off from Jack’s P-90 and he’d had just enough time to see a blurred figure whacking the back of Jack’s legs, buckling them, his weapon wrestled from his grip before he could fire off any further shots. Daniel couldn’t see much of his friend after that when Jack was surrounded by five pairs of legs, blows raining down on him from every direction as he went down under a flurry of fists, feet and sticks.

Daniel was unable to help, unable to move as he helplessly watched his friend attempt to protect himself—tucking his head under his arms, curling up in a ball and taking most of the blows across his back. Daniel fought against the shockingly powerful arms pressing him face-first to the ground, cursing at Jack’s attackers, begging them to stop, stop, please stop. A fist crashed into the side of Daniel’s head, making the world waver out of focus for a moment.

Then, when Daniel could see straight again, he watched as one of the blunt-featured, massive aliens flipped a semi-conscious Jack onto his back and pressed some type of device against his chest. Daniel had heard the sizzling of discharged energy, caught a glimpse of Jack’s body arching and seizing in reaction, then slumping boneless to the ground.

Daniel had a terrifying moment where he thought Jack was dead, but his fears quickly transmuted to worry for his own mortality when the same treatment was applied to him. The device had seemed to stop his heart in mid-beat, every fiber of his being rendered aflame and he was grateful when the world went dark and faded into oblivion.

Daniel had woken in a primitive, iron barred, six-foot by six-foot cell. Jack was in a separate cell directly beside him.

For the duration of their captivity—Daniel wasn’t certain how many days it had been—they had been assigned the same two guards whom Jack had christened Hulk and Mini-Hulk, the latter due to the guard’s incrementally shorter and squatter stature to his partner. Said names, Jack explained to Daniel, were because he thought the guards were just as ugly as the Incredible Hulk and miles stupider. Daniel had wanted to ask who the Incredible Hulk was but didn’t want to detract from the grim pleasure the monikers gave Jack.

Every few hours, Hulk and Mini-Hulk would in turn, enter either Jack or Daniel’s cells while the other was forced to helplessly watch. Each man would endure the alien guards’ screamed interrogations, made all the more daunting and fruitless by the guards’ incomprehensible language. All of Daniel's attempts at rudimentary communication—sign language, rough drawings on the dirt ground—were disdained, earning him dizzying cuffs to the side of his head and hard slaps to his face.

Each of those sessions would end with the guards venting their frustration with what they likely perceived as Jack and Daniel’s lack of cooperation in the form of beatings with short truncheons. The beatings were never severe enough to cause serious injury, rather, they seemed to be more a painful intimidation tactic—a method Daniel found all too successful. In fact, whenever he heard the key clank in the primitive lock to his cell, Daniel’s mouth would suddenly turn dry as dust, his heart would begin to race and he’d have to clench his hands into fists to hide their shaking.

For the first time, Daniel began to understand why Janet had been so adamant about him not being placed in any stressful situations so soon after his de-ascension.

Daniel had tried to mask his fear from the guards and more importantly, from Jack, but the older man must have been able to sense it anyway, and had done everything he could to detract the guards’ attention from Daniel and onto himself. Something of which Daniel couldn’t help but feel a measure of guilt and frustration. He’d wanted to hold his own on this mission, not become a detriment.

Over the course of those endless days, they’d had nothing to eat but gritty, dry bread that somehow managed to stink and taste like rancid sawdust. They'd been given a bucket containing oily tasting water to drink that had caused their bellies to cramp and their throats and gums to become raw and inflamed, so they'd only sipped enough to stave off severe dehydration.

Neither had been allowed to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. Every time they’d closed their eyes, or their heads began to droop with exhaustion, the guards would scream at them in that harsh, alien tongue, jolting them awake. Sometimes the guards would hurl bucketsful of cold, filthy water through the bars, soaking them, shocking their exhausted bodies back into reluctant, shivering wakefulness.

The routine had altered one day when an extra set of guards appeared outside their cells and unlocked the doors. Jack and Daniel were hauled out by the scruffs of their necks. Two of the guards had grabbed them each in an arm-twisting headlock, the superior physical strength of their captives once more overwhelming them, holding them in place. A third guard, wielding a device that would put a blowtorch to shame clamped metal cuffs on the thinner, human wrists that were held in place by a fourth guard. Sparks flew, landed on and singed the skin of Jack and Daniel’s wrists, and the cuffs were welded together with swift efficiency.

Tethered together, wrists scorched, blistered and already chafing, a dazed Jack and Daniel were herded into a tunnel filled with about 50 captives of varying races and species—every two prisoners cuffed in the same manner. Daniel had managed to converse with a prisoner in front of them who had spoken an ancient dialect similar to the Abydonians’, and found out that they were all to be transferred to another planet for further interrogation. After that, the dark-skinned prisoner intoned in a weary, matter of fact voice, execution.

As Daniel translated the grim information for Jack, a riot broke out behind them. The numerous guards flew into action, tazer-like weapons of which Jack and Daniel had become all too well acquainted flashing and hissing, rendering their victims to insensate, semi-conscious tangles of limbs on the ground. The fallen captives quickly became trampled by their raging fellow inmates. The prisoners tethered to the unfortunate victims suffered the same fate. Guards’ truncheons rose and fell against a swarm of fighting, struggling bodies. The noise of snapping bones, shouting and electricity filled the air.

Jack and Daniel, along with groups of other prisoners took the opportunity to flee, frantically clambering over bodies, dodging guards, making it to the outside of the tunnel and ducking around the small crafts parked along the mouth. Daniel’s scrambled subconscious drummed up the realization that the crafts somewhat resembled the small Tok’ra transport ships on which he’d traveled more than one occasion. He also noted the prison compound had been built into a small mountainside, effectively hiding it from unsuspecting travelers.

Once in the startlingly fresh, cold air, the few other prisoners who had made it outside ran off in separate directions. Amidst the confusion, Jack and Daniel managed a good distance before they were given pursuit.

Huddling in their small rock enclosure, his body trembling with shock and overexertion, Daniel still couldn’t believe they’d managed to escape. He wondered how long it would take to find their way back to the gate. He wondered if Sam and Teal’c were all right and if his teammates were still searching for them.

He wondered if he’d ever see the SGC again. Though Daniel hadn’t been back there long, he was just starting to get used to the place and to his surprise, had even come to like it. He supposed it had become a home of sorts, and a home was something he hadn’t expected to ever have again.

He wondered if this strange way of making a living was all that much fun, after all.

*****

Leaning back against the cool stone wall of their hiding place, Jack decided that he was no longer going into any mission thinking it would be easy, or simple, ever again. Every time SG1 expected a quiet mission, they got psychotic aliens, man-eating plants, broken time machines, deadly plagues, or worse.

Nope, Jack was done with that mindset. Maybe they needed to start rethinking things—go into a mission expecting the worst, and you’d wind up bored out of your tree.

Jack made a mental note to start doing just that as soon as they got home.

If they got home.

Jack shook his head, furious with himself for allowing the negative thought to come forth. He’d get Daniel and himself home. This was a piece of cake in comparison to some of the missions they’d survived. He just had to form a plan and get them out of here.

"Hey," Jack whispered in the growing darkness and he felt Daniel jump—probably startling him out of near-sleep. Jack surmised that enough time had passed for their pursuers to be long gone. Or so he could hope. He wasn’t going to think about whatever was lurking out there in the trees that had scared the guards off. Not yet.

"Hey," Daniel whispered back after a moment, his voice raspy and barely audible.

"We should be okay if we lie low for a while longer. Just to be on the safe side."

"Okay," Daniel agreed. He was far too exhausted and achy to move anyway. "What about that… those things out there?"

"Probably long gone too."

"Oh, I hope so," Daniel muttered and shifted his position, trying to ease some of the pressure on his tailbone. A gasp of pain escaped his lips when the stinging in his shoulder blade pitched up a notch. His empty stomach roiled with nausea and he swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat.

Jack sat up a little straighter to look at Daniel's shoulder. "How bad?"

"I'm fine."

Jack slid his body to the right in an attempt to better assess the damage. "Yeah, right. Your clothes were smoldering five minutes ago, for cryin' out loud."

"It's not that bad," Daniel replied in an irritated whisper, trying to squirm from Jack's scrutiny.

Jack had to think for a moment how to best reach his friend in order to inspect the extent of his injury as crammed in as they were. He turned so that he was facing Daniel, unconsciously pressing down on the ground with both hands for leverage.

"Ow!" Daniel gasped out before clamping his teeth on his lower lip to stifle any further outbursts. On top of the pull on his shoulder, Jack's motions were twisting his wrist in an angle that no human wrist was ever intended to bend.

Jack realized what he was doing and carefully raised his left hand. "Sorry—just… move your arm with mine, relax your wrist," Jack told Daniel as he slowly began to bend his own elbow again. "There, that's it," he encouraged as Daniel, wincing, followed his directions and motions. "I just wanna make sure you're not bleeding to death here."

"I think I’d notice if I was bleeding to death."

"Shut up and hold still," Jack said in a voice far gentler than his words. Reaching over Daniel’s head with his right hand, Jack cursed under his breath when he couldn’t quite get the angle. Jack thought it was a good thing neither of them were claustrophobic, or things could get ugly. Resting his hand on Daniel’s good shoulder, he said, "Here, lean forward a little."

Daniel shot him an impatient glance, but obeyed. He shuffled beside Jack until he, too, was facing the older man. Sitting cross-legged, he leaned forward, bracing himself with his free hand.

Ignoring the hot, tight pain in his right biceps, Jack reached over and patted at the scorched fabric of Daniel’s jacket to ensure it had truly stopped smoldering. Separating the charred edges with his fingers, Jack could just make out the blackened, seeping flesh underneath. Daniel flinched and hissed in air through his teeth when some of the material that had seared to his skin pulled away.

Jack grimaced in sympathy, squinting in the dim light to inspect the raw, blistered wound. Small drops of blood welled in the center of the wound, but the periphery of the burn, which was about the length of Jack's hand, was blackened and cauterized from the intense heat.

Luckily, he surmised, the blast had only grazed Daniel, but it must hurt like a son of bitch. It would be too difficult to even attempt a bandage in their position, so Jack allowed the material to fall back in place. He patted his friend on the back of the head. "You'll live."

"Providing we don't get caught again," Daniel muttered into his lap.

"We won't get caught again."

"Right. And providing we don’t get eaten by… by something out there." Daniel slowly straightened up.

"We won’t," Jack asseverated.

Daniel, for the first time noticed the wetness along Jack’s right arm and the black edges of the tear in his sleeve. "Looks like you caught one, too."

Jack glanced at his arm. "Just a graze. Hardly touched me."

"Yeah, well, if it hardly touched you, why’s it still bleeding?" Daniel nodded his chin in the direction of Jack’s hand—trickles of blood were running along his wrist and creeping down the back of his hand.

Jack followed his gaze. "Crap. Must have started up again when I moved it."

After more shifting, cursing and wrestling with their bonds, Daniel managed to tear off Jack’s sleeve and fashion a makeshift bandage covering Jack’s upper arm, staunching the blood flow.

Sinking back against the cold wall, Jack peered out through the interstices in the branches again and tried to form a plan. Their resources were limited—well no, actually, they were nil. He and Daniel wore only their green, field cammos with long-sleeved, black T-shirts underneath. Their pockets had been searched and emptied. Vests, packs, wristwatches and GDO’s confiscated, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the boots on their feet. Both of them were hungry, dehydrated, exhausted, bruised and battered. Neither of them were even close to top form after what they’d been put through.

Maybe all their escape had accomplished was buying themselves a little time, a little hope, but Jack was damned if he was going to let those moronic leviathans catch them again.

Safe for the time being in the shelter of the small rock enclosure, Jack also knew he and Daniel were long past running on empty. Not to mention the cuffs on their wrists posing a slight, continual problem. He studied the dense, rough-hewn band of metal around his wrist, an equally thick, two-inch long bar connected to a matching band on Daniel's wrist. The band was tight against Jack’s skin, leaving no room to pull on the cuff.

With Daniel watching his motions and allowing Jack to move his hand along with his own, Jack laid his left hand on the ground, careful not to twist Daniel’s wrist again. Jack picked up a ragged sliver of rock, jabbed the sharp end into where his cuff joined the bar. A shard of rock chipped off. Then he slammed the rock against the bar itself and the rock skidded off the surface, slipping from his grip.

Cursing under his breath, Jack raised his hand to inspect the cuff again. It wasn’t even scratched from his efforts. The metal itself was dull and green-tinged, like no metal he’d ever seen on Earth, and it looked damned near impossible to cut off. His scalded skin itched and burned maddeningly from the friction against the metal.

"Sooo," Daniel breathed out when Jack was silent for too long.

"Sooo what." Jack blinked, startled from his thoughts.

"No chance of getting these cuffs off, huh?"

"Not unless you've got a blowtorch or two in your pocket."

"Sorry, fresh out," Daniel replied, his voice starting to slur with fatigue and now that the adrenaline had worn off, he realized how exhausted he was.

"Yeah, it looks like we're stuck with each other."

"Ha ha," Daniel replied without much enthusiasm.

"You know, this reminds me of far too many prison breakout movies."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, then after thinking for a moment, realized that he couldn’t recall if he’d ever seen any prison breakout movies. "Any one in particular?"

"The Defiant Ones."

Jack’s reply did nothing to jog Daniel’s memory. "Okay…"

"Old movie. Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis." Jack swallowed hard, trying to bring a little moisture to his parched mouth. "Two guys who hate each other shackled together. That’s all I remember of it. Way before your time, anyway."

"Oh." Daniel blinked, wondering if Jack’s reference to that specific movie was some furtive way of suggesting how he truly felt about their own relationship. Daniel, for his part, couldn’t recall much of his friendship with Jack, but he hoped that wasn’t the case. What little he did remember of his and Jack’s interactions consisted of a succession of arguments, or maybe they were simply good-natured differences of opinion. It was hard to tell. Daniel decided he’d have to ask Sam or Teal’c for more information on Jack when they got home.

"Was the movie any good?" Daniel asked, hoping for a little more clarification.

"Sure, it’s a classic," Jack replied.

"How did they get free of their bonds?"

Jack thought for a moment. "I dunno. It’s been about twenty years since I’ve seen it."

"Oh." Was Jack always this confounding? Daniel wondered not for the first time. He wished the other man would stop referencing movies and TV shows and start talking about anything that made an iota of sense. "So why did you mention it?"

"Just making conversation. You remember conversation, don’t you?" Jack said, irritation filling his voice.

Daniel wasn’t certain if he should be equally peeved by Jack’s impatience, or offended by it. One of the side effects of amnesia, he figured. You never knew how to react to a situation. "Yeah... uh... I suppose." He shrugged with one shoulder before continuing, uncertain, "Okay, one more question... since we’re... having a conversation, and all..."

"Yeees, Daniel…" Jack shook his head, trying to clear the fog of exhaustion filling his head. He forced his fatigue and frustration to a manageable level when he heard the unmistakably hesitant note to Daniel’s voice.

"Who’s the Incredible Hulk? Was he… uh… some Goa’uld I haven’t read about in our mission reports yet?"

Jack had to think for a moment where that had come from, then remembered their guards. How could he forget them—he was fairly certain they would be revisiting him a time or two in his nightmares. Then he almost had to laugh at the thought of a snaked Hulk. Actually, no, come to think of it, that would be pretty nasty.

"Hulk’s a comic book character," Jack explained in a patient tone. "Well, a TV show character, too. Those guards just reminded me of the TV show version."

Daniel furrowed his brow both in reply and confusion.

"Ask Teal’c to show you his video collection when we get home," Jack added. "T-man loves the green guy."

"He’s green?" Daniel scrunched his face even further with puzzlement—their guards hadn’t been green, they were more of a sallow, yellowish complexion—but then an image flashed in his mind. "Wai-wait, is this hulk guy related to someone, or something named Chaka?

Jack shifted his position—each of his bones ached and every square inch of him felt bruised—at the same time, he wasn’t too tired to be pleased that Daniel had retrieved another piece from his past. "Nope. Chaka’s your Unas buddy—who’s a different shade of green, by the way. Kind of looks like a walking, seven-foot tall iguana. Bad breath. Lots of teeth, big claws. A little scary, but you two seemed to get along swell."

"P3X-888," Daniel blurted, sitting up a little straighter, aches and pains momentarily forgotten. "I read that mission report last week. That was a good one. But… why do you think I was able to communicate with a walking iguana, or rather, an Unas, but not those guards?"

"Like I said, they were beyond stupid. The walking iguanas, on the other hand, were smarter than they looked."

"Well, I did have a better… grasp of things back then, too."

"True," Jack agreed, "but you did do your usual peaceful explorer routine with those guards. I think they were more interested in using us as punching bags than chatting, so don’t worry about it."

"Okay," Daniel said softly, although he couldn’t help but wonder how ‘off’ his linguistic skills now were. Not much point in worrying about it anymore. Like Jack said, those guards had been pretty stupid - Daniel’s goldfish were more responsive than those guys had been. Even though his thoughts were churning, Daniel’s eyelids began to grow heavy, and his thoughts dulled to a senseless hum.

Jack noticed Daniel’s head nodding with exhaustion. "Why don't you rest for a while?"

Jack’s voice broke through the haze, and Daniel blinked, trying to clear his muddled senses. "I'm okay—"

"No you're not," Jack interrupted. "Neither am I. We're both long past being okay, and when you're tired, you make stupid mistakes. We gotta rest when we can, so rest, Daniel. I'll wake you when it's time for your watch."

Daniel tried to force his eyes fully open and failed. He wanted to protest, but couldn’t think of a reason that would make any sense. "Well… maybe just for a minute," he muttered, his bruised and aching body already heavy and numb with the onset of sleep. Cold moisture seeped into the seat of his pants and the back of his jacket, only adding to his misery. Attempting to find a comfortable position on the damp ground, he leaned as much as he could on his left side. Jack stretched his arm out, giving Daniel room to move and easing the pressure on his shoulder.

In the dim light, Jack watched as Daniel slumped heavily against the cold stone and his breathing began to slow into the pattern of deep sleep. Redirecting his gaze to the darkening forest once more, Jack wondered how they were going to get out of this in one piece. He wondered if Carter and Teal’c had brought the cavalry yet. He wondered who had won the Avalanche game he’d be so looking forward to—after all, he had fifty bucks riding on that game.

And not for the first time, Jack wondered if maybe he was getting too old for this whacked-out job of his.

*****

Daniel was having that dream again. He knew he was sleeping, and he knew it was a dream, but he couldn’t make himself wake up. He was floating, a strange, yet familiar sensation of weightlessness, no, a sense of nothingness that made up his entire physical being. A sensation of knowing everything, of being everywhere all at the same time made up his entire consciousness. A sensation that was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. And fleeting.

The nothingness all at once became solidity, energy transmuting to flesh, blood, bone and single-mindedness. He slammed back into his body with the terrible force and shocking pain of hitting the ground after a fall from a great height.

And that was always when he woke with a jolt, and a cry of terror caught in his throat. His eyes flew open to darkness. His heart jackhammered in his chest, panicky breaths rasped in his ears and his limbs were as heavy and cumbersome as though they belonged to someone else.

He’d had the dream nearly every night since returning home, only Daniel knew it wasn’t really a dream. It was a memory. One his mind wasn’t quite ready to fully grasp.

"You all right?"

Jack’s voice broke through the dark, through the vestiges of lingering fear. Daniel tried to scrub his hands over his face and was met with resistance. Their situation came back to him in an unpleasant rush. Daniel could only nod in reply.

"You were muttering something that sounded like the Ancients babble."

"Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. Looked pretty… intense."

It was so dark in the cave that Daniel could scarcely make out his friend’s silhouette. "I can’t remember any of it," he said a little too quickly.

"Okay," Jack said in a soft, surprisingly gentle voice, as though he had detected the falseness to Daniel’s voice but was letting it go for the time being.

Their breaths misted around them like smoke in the night and Daniel didn’t remember the cave being this cold when they’d first ducked inside. He wondered how long he’d been asleep. His clothing was damp, clammy and clinging to his skin. Wrapping his free hand around his chest in an attempt to hold in some body heat, he said, "Why didn't you wake me sooner?"

"You weren’t out for very long. The sun’s just gone completely down."

"How are we going to find our way to the gate now?" Daniel asked, aware that he sounded almost petulant, but they had no idea where they were, or how far away the gate even was.

"Once we get out of here, our eyes will adjust," Jack answered in what Daniel thought was an unusually patient tone, or maybe he was just too tired for anything else. "There's a moon behind those trees over there. Carter said the nights were about sixteen hours long here, so it’s probably not even that late in the day."

From the shuffling beside him, Daniel knew Jack was pointing, but couldn't see the other man’s arm well enough to make out the direction.

"We should start moving again," Jack said.

"But you didn't get any rest—"

"I'm fine," Jack interrupted, his tone curt, brooking no room for argument. "And I did rest. Just didn’t sleep. But we gotta get moving—take advantage of the dark to get as far away from the compound as we can. It’s a long walk to the gate." Or at least I think it is, his mind added.

There was, in truth, no way of knowing if they could even find the gate again. Hell, they could be on an entirely different planet from the one in which they’d started, for all Jack knew, but he thought the trees looked the same. Well, the trees looked pretty much the same on every planet they’d been to, but a guy could always hope, couldn’t he?

Jack slid forward to push the branches away from the entrance to their enclosure and crawled out with Daniel right on his heels. Daniel straightened his cramped legs, his spine popped, his thigh muscles ached and trembled. Like Jack had said, it didn’t take long for Daniel’s eyes to adjust to the moonlight. He glanced at Jack, catching the older man’s wince and the way he tried to take most of his weight on his left leg.

Jack tilted his head back to look up at the sky and the halo of moonlight peeking out from behind a thick patch of trees, etching their highest branches in an inky silhouette.

They started to walk and each man felt a tug on his wrist. Jack glanced over his shoulder with a questioning frown and could just make out an equally confounded frown on Daniel’s face.

"This way," Jack whispered, pointing in his intended direction with his right hand.

Daniel shook his head, pointing in a direction vaguely west of Jack’s. "I think we should go this way."

"Daniel, the gate was alongside the river, and the river is this way."

"How do you know that?"

"Trust me on this. I have an internal compass, and I know that the gate is that way."

"How do you know your internal compass translates the same on this planet as it does on Earth?"

"What?" Jack squinted at his friend, trying to read his expression in the darkness. He wasn’t sure if Daniel was serious, or not—a fairly common occurrence since Daniel’s memory loss.

"I'm just saying your sense of direction could be off."

"My sense of direction is never off."

Daniel started to cross his arms out of habit, but Jack held his hand rigid at his side. Daniel had to settle for wrapping only the left one over his chest in a show of defiance. "Well, I think it’s this way," he insisted, straining to move against Jack’s stubborn resistance.

"Have you forgotten that you have a slight case of amnesia?"

"I don't know—you tell me," Daniel shot back. "It's hard to remember what you’ve forgotten."

Jack stared at him, then scrunched his features with confusion and irritation. "And I say again, what?"

Daniel thrust out his jaw and glared at Jack. "I’m just saying, my memory loss hasn’t affected my sense of direction any."

"Oh, come on!" Jack started to wave his free hand in frustration and stopped at the twinge in his upper arm. "You still get lost trying to find your office."

"I do not."

"Do too. I seem to recall Carter and Teal’c having to search for you in the sub-basement levels on more than one occasion." Jack saw Daniel open his mouth and raised a warning finger. "Aht! That’s it! No more arguments! Who's the colonel here? Huh?"

"Ji—"

"It's Jack, for cryin' out loud."

That's what I going to say."

"No, it wasn’t."

"Was."

"Daniel..." Jack growled in a low, warning tone.

"Jack—"

"Yes, he finally gets it!" Jack bounced on the toes of his boots. "Jack. As in Colonel John Jude Francis O'Neill." Jack tapped himself on the chest for further emphasis. "I am the colonel, and I’m telling you we're going this way."

Daniel closed his mouth and pouted, apparently at a loss for a rebuttal. Jack smiled to himself and started walking, savoring his small triumph as Daniel followed, his defeated posture communicating that he so didn’t agree with this.

"Jude Francis?" Daniel questioned after a long moment, as Jack had expected.

"Never mind," Jack hissed through gritted teeth. Of all the people to be tied to… He yanked on their cuffs, pulling Daniel along like a dog on a leash. He caught Daniel’s sharp wince and felt a pang of guilt. He’d almost forgotten about Daniel’s injured shoulder.

Jack took a breath and forced himself to get a grip. It wasn’t Daniel he was angry with, it was himself. For allowing them to get captured, for getting caught in this ridiculous situation when it was exactly the last thing either of them needed right now. In a gentler tone of voice, and relaxing his tethered arm, Jack said, "Come on, we gotta keep moving, we don’t know if those bastards are still out there, or not."

Daniel nodded in reply and followed a step behind him as they ducked through another thick scrub of thorns and underbrush. As they walked the air only seemed to grow colder and the night darker as the sky became overcast with sullen, gray clouds, obscuring the light of the moon.

Despite the abuse that had been inflicted upon them, Jack had to admit that Daniel was holding up remarkably well under the strain of the past few days. Better than Jack had anticipated, even, and he had to admit a measure of pride in his friend’s resilience.

Although walking practically hand-in-hand was something Daniel hadn’t quite gotten the hang of yet. Now that the immediate danger of their situation had passed, the unconscious fluidity of their conjoined motions was gone.

As they negotiated the dark underbrush, Daniel kept stumbling against Jack. Their feet kept tangling together, nearly tripping them. Daniel would stifle the gasps of pain when his injured shoulder continually banged into Jack’s. Jack would curse under his breath at the pull on his knee, and try to ignore it, but his patience was wearing thin. He tried to keep his focus on what little he could see of the moon and what visible moss he could see on the trees, constantly scanning for hostile movement in the foliage.

A faint scattering of stars winked in and out behind the heavy cloud cover and the sight of the alien constellation sent an unexpected pang of longing for home through Jack. Droplets of chilled moisture filled the air, the threat of rain imminent, and his and Daniel’s breaths misted in a fog around them.

As they negotiated the alien terrain, Jack hoped his sense of direction was correct—it usually was, but the darkness and the complete unfamiliarity of the planet was disorienting. Jack could hear rustles in the trees, saw darker shadows passing through the shelter of vegetation, but the height was too low to be their alien captors. He could only hope that whatever had made that horrific screaming noise earlier wasn’t interested in humans.

His and Daniel's boots collided once again, and Jack stumbled, cursing at the renewed flare in his knee. "Dammit, Daniel," he ground out through clenched teeth, the pain too intense for him bite back the reprimand. He grabbed onto a tree for support, leaning his weight on his good leg, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the pain to recede to a manageable level again.

"Sorry," Daniel muttered for what Jack estimated to be about the twentieth time. Jack opened his eyes to see that Daniel’s gaze was fixed on the ground, squinting against the darkness.

"Just pay attention, will ya," Jack hissed in a sharp tone.

"I am paying attention."

"Well, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it," Jack grumbled, his anger fading as the pain in his leg abated. He reached down to massage the knee, wincing, but he thought it would hold out, providing Daniel didn’t crash into him again.

There was another loud rustle in the trees. A sharp snap of twigs. A guttural shriek pierced Jack's eardrums. The fine hairs on the back on his neck stood on end and he jumped back to an upright position.

Both men froze, their gazes fixed on a shadowy form no more than six feet in front of them. A low rumbling growl, the rustling of leaves and branches, and it was gone.

"What the hell are those things?" Daniel whispered, his eyes wide, unconsciously moving a little closer to Jack.

"I don’t think we want to know," Jack answered. Christ, that thing had sounded big, he thought, suppressing a shudder. "Come on, let’s keep moving." Jack resumed the pace he had set, only this time with a great deal more caution. Daniel kept close, his eyes fixed on his boots, a small frown of concentration creasing his brow.

Taking a slight lead and beating a path for them, Jack estimated that they’d managed about a mile before Daniel plowed into him again. Jack’s knee twisted and flared once more, and with it, so did his temper. He stumbled, then wheeled in his friend’s direction, his anger near explosive. "Daniel, for Christ’s sakes! If you do that one more time—" Jack broke off his threat when Daniel jumped back as far as their tether allowed him to, startled by Jack’s strong reaction, his arm stretched out almost full length, as far away from Jack as he could get.

Jack took a few more deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He prayed for the legendary patience of Saint Francis. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, exasperated instead of furious. "If you’d just watch where you were going instead of staring at your boots—"

Daniel blushed and ducked his head, both mortified and furious with himself for slowing them down and impeding Jack. "Sorry… I can’t… it’s just so dark," he said, his voice low, self-conscious.

With the softly spoken words, Jack remembered a previous mission, years ago, when Daniel had lost his glasses and forgotten to pack a spare pair. The younger man had managed well enough without them during the day, but when night fell, it was another story. When it had come time for Daniel’s watch, Jack noticed how cautiously Daniel had walked toward him, stumbling a few times, holding his hand out to brush along trees and fallen logs for direction. It wasn’t until he was close to the campfire where Jack had sat waiting for him that Daniel could find his way. Daniel had tried to hide the fact, but Jack realized that his friend hadn’t been able to see squat until he was close to the fire.

Crap, Jack thought, realizing that Daniel would no sooner admit to having trouble with his night vision now, as he would have then.

"Come here," Jack sighed and nodded his chin. Daniel blinked at him but stepped closer beside him, watching Jack with a wary eye. "You'd think that Oma would'a fixed your eyes when she kicked you out of la-la land," Jack muttered more to himself than Daniel. "Okay—didn't you ever walk hand in hand with your girlfriends, or with Sha're?"

Daniel stared at him with a quizzical frown, the one that always signified he thought Jack was completely nuts and was too polite to mention the fact. Or maybe Daniel simply couldn’t remember any of his previous girlfriends.

"You gotta find a rhythm," Jack explained. "Match your steps, until it becomes unconscious."

"Jack—"

"Aht! Don't 'Jack' me," Jack broke in, then he realized what he’d just said. "Never mind… But then again, at least you’re still getting my name right. What I’m saying is, quit staring at the ground and follow my lead. It’s in my own best interests not to let you walk off a cliff, so trust me."

He glanced at Daniel, waited for the tentative nod. "Piece of cake," Jack assured him and careful of his damaged knee, took an exaggerated step, which Daniel clumsily followed a second later. Then another step that he almost met. Daniel kept his blurred focus on Jack’s boots, timed his steps with Jack’s and they soon assumed a cautious rhythm, which after a short while, led to a more fluid gait, marred only by Jack’s painful limp.

"You know, I still can't figure it out…" Daniel began, then his voiced faded with uncertainty.

"Figure what out?"

"Well, like Janet said, physically, I’m exactly the same as I was before my… my ascension. I mean before the radiation poisoning, which is a good thing, of course," Daniel said in halting, careful words, as though he wasn’t sure he should be telling Jack any of this. "My near-sightedness, I still have my appendectomy scar and the one on my chin that I don’t remember how I got." Daniel darted a shy glance at Jack, then his gaze fell back to the ground. "Everything’s the same, but my memories. Or rather, lack thereof… Teal'c thinks that maybe Oma was ordered to erase my memories as some sort of punishment, but maybe she cheated, and only did it temporarily so that my memories will return on their own, in time."

"Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me," Jack shrugged. Teal'c had voiced those same suspicions to Jack not too long ago. "What's the problem, then?"

"I... I just don't understand why I can easily remember some things, and other things... important things are... just beyond my grasp. And the harder I try to reach for them, the less I'm able to remember."

"So stop trying so hard. Let it come on its own," Jack said, then thought for a moment. "Okay, you know when you lose your car keys? And the more you search for them, and the more pissed off you get, the less likely you are to find them? I figure this is sort of like that. Think about something else for a few minutes, and then, bam!" Jack snapped the cold fingers of his free hand. "You suddenly remember you left your keys on top of the fridge. Sometimes, you even find that you left the keys in the fridge."

Daniel shot Jack a confused look but said, "I'll try that... I guess." Maybe the gist of what Jack was saying was even true. Maybe if Daniel just let the memories come forth, unbidden, like they had with Sha're, it would all sort itself out, on its own. Although he suspected that maybe a part of him simply didn’t want to remember.

Back on Vis Uban, he'd been hesitant to claim his identity, fearful of discovering what sort of man he had once been, what sort of failures that man may have committed. A part of him had even relished the idea of starting fresh. His mind and his life a clean slate. He still couldn’t comprehend the fact that he’d once existed among such powerful beings as the Ancients, yet the deep, almost unconscious part of his mind suspected that the experience hadn’t been all it was cracked up to be. And maybe, like Jack said, it was best to stop worrying about it. It wasn't as though Daniel could go back and change anything, could he? He supposed, for now, he should be grateful to just be alive, back among the living and breathing once more. Too bad that was easier said than done.

Jack glanced at Daniel and even in the darkness, he could see Daniel’s eyes becoming distant, wary, like they had been back on the planet where they had found him. Familiar, but strangely shuttered eyes.

"If you must know, it’s for the saints," Jack blurted out, changing the subject, wanting to break through the awkward, troubled silence. "My middle names, I mean."

Daniel nodded. "Saint Jude—the patron saint of lost causes and cases despaired of. And Saint Francis of Assisi. Champion of justice, patron saint of animals and the environment. One of the better off saints."

"See? Now that’s more like it." Jack smirked, perking up at that. "Random bursts of useless information. I missed that. And I bet you didn't even have to think to remember any of that stuff, either."

"No, I didn't," Daniel said, both surprised and heartened by the realization. The knowledge had been suddenly clear, suddenly there, as though he'd never forgotten it. "So why did your parents name you after three saints, anyway?"

"Ah, it was a great guilt trip for my mother," Jack said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. "She was a master at them. Whenever I messed up, it was always, ‘Poor Saint Francis would be so disappointed, John.'"

Daniel tried to imagine Jack as a kid and smiled when he found it wasn’t too difficult. A lot shorter, brown hair instead of gray. Same short attention span, same attitude.

Their conversation faded as Jack guided Daniel through the trees, only speaking to warn his friend of branches and upraised roots. In time, Jack could feel his fingers growing numb from the cold, the assorted bruises and welts on every inch of his body throbbed with a dull, relentless ache. His eyes burned and his thoughts and reactions began to dull as one branch after the other smacked him unaware in the face.

The air held a faint, but new ozone scent, and the sound of water slapping against rocks startled him—they had finally reached the river. Jack also realized that he’d been nearly asleep on his feet. Now that they had found the river, his senses weren’t too dulled to recall that the water had been flowing upstream by the gate, so all they had to do was follow its downward path and they’d be home in no time.

Or so Jack could hope, and hope was all they had at this point.

Reaching the river’s edge, Jack carefully sat down on the cold ground—his knees would never tolerate crouching at this point. Daniel knelt beside him and they scooped some cold water in their already chilled hands. Taking a cautious sip, the water was icy, clean, and the best thing Jack could ever remember tasting. His body greedily screamed for more, but Jack forced himself to drink slowly, cautioning Daniel to do the same. They’d been without for so long, too much would only make them nauseous, and the icy temperature of the water would only chill them further.

When Jack had taken in as much as his empty stomach could handle, he and Daniel both struggled to coordinate their movements in getting back to their feet. When Jack carefully pressed his weight on his right leg, his knee instantly buckled and he sat back down hard on the ground with a startled, pained yelp.

Daniel barely managed to suppress a cry of his own when Jack’s plummeting weight yanked his shoulder, pulling taut the seared, blistered skin. Half falling, half-kneeling in front of his friend, Daniel rested his free hand on Jack’s shoulder and could feel the older man trembling with pain and exhaustion, his breathing rapid and shallow.

"Jack, are you okay?" Daniel asked, then shook his head at the stupidity of his own question. Of course Jack wasn’t okay. But to his surprise, Jack nodded, eyes squinted, mouth drawn in a tight grimace.

"Yeah, just tried to get up too fast," Jack gasped around panting breaths.

"Maybe we should take a break," Daniel suggested in a careful voice, fully expecting to be met with stoicism and resistance. Again, he was surprised when Jack slowly nodded once more, features still clenched with pain.

"Tree over there," Jack added after he’d caught his breath, motioning in the direction of a massive cedar like tree. Even with his terrible night vision, Daniel could see that the lower portion of the huge trunk was hollowed out and would offer them some protection from the elements.

Reaching his left arm around the back of Jack’s waist, Daniel helped him stand. Jack stumbled, falling against Daniel’s chest, resting his full weight on one leg. He put just the heel of his other foot down, and leaning as little on Daniel as possible, they hobbled to the protection of the tree.

Sinking back down to the ground, Jack huddled in the surprisingly warm shelter, and the sweet smell of wood and sap surrounding him offered him a pleasant reminder of his cabin. Jack told himself that he’d close his eyes for just a moment and then they’d get moving again, but exhaustion overcame him before his conscious mind could even attempt to fight it off.

Jack’s body slumped to the side, his head coming to rest against Daniel’s shoulder as sleep so heavy as to be unconsciousness overtook the older man.

*****

A roaring sound overhead jolted Daniel from the sleep that had caught him unaware. The deep, rumbling bass of engines seemed to thrum in the center of his bruised chest and in his eardrums.

Leaning forward, Daniel had to crane his neck to see past the sheltering branches to catch a glimpse of the sky. Two dark, rectangular shapes nearly cloaked by heavy clouds passed his line of vision. Translucent, blinking, yellowish lights were the only discernable features permeating the gloom of the night. Daniel could only assume and hope the twinkling, shadowy shapes were the alien transport ships heading for the gate.

"Let’s hope that’s the last we’ll see of our hulky friends."

Jack’s voice sounding close to his ear startled Daniel again, and he glanced at his now awake friend. It was still too dark to clearly see the older man’s features, but Daniel thought Jack sounded stronger.

"You think they’ll leave through the gate?" Daniel asked, returning his gaze skyward to follow the dirty white tendrils of smoke streaking the indigo sky.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. Those ships don’t look built for long range space travel. They’ll probably be long gone by the time we find the gate."

If that were true, Daniel wished those plumes would stain the sky, painting a trail he and Jack could follow to their own passage home. But even as the thought filled his head, the streaks were already beginning to dissipate, the remaining lines smudging and fading into the darkness of the night.

With a gasp, Jack shifted his position beside him, and Daniel allowed his gaze to fall from the sky and his thoughts to return to their present situation. He slid forward, giving his friend room to move.

As Jack attempted to get his feet under him, he found his limbs weren’t quite ready to obey. Resting his free hand on the hollowed trunk for support, Jack steeled himself for the arduous task of standing. He didn’t know which hurt more—his thousands of various bruises, aching ribs, stiffened spine, torn muscles, burned arm or trashed knee. Glancing at his leg, and squinting against the darkness, Jack could just make out his pant leg stretched painfully tight over the swollen joint. As though the sight of the injury had rekindled his already overactive nerve endings, his knee began to throb in agonizing rhythm to his heartbeat.

Okay, the knee definitely hurt the most, Jack decided. Moving very slowly, he stretched his leg out, panting from the stiffness that had almost locked the joint into immobility. "Crap," he breathed out with pain and frustration.

"Maybe it would be better if I got out first?" Daniel asked, watching his friend with a worried expression.

Jack could only nod in reply, afraid that if he spoke, his voice would come out in a less than manly whimper. Daniel carefully edged out in front of him, mindful of his own battered limbs. Straightening as much as their joined hands allowed, he offered Jack his free hand in assistance.

Instead of taking the proffered hand, Jack reached up to grasp firm hold of Daniel’s forearm—there was only so much concession to weakness he’d allow—and pulled himself up, taking most of his weight on his trembling left leg.

Letting go of Daniel’s arm, and standing half-hunched over, Jack held himself still for a moment, testing if his joints would hold together for a just a little while longer. For the first time in years, he said a silent prayer to St. Jude. If ever there was a lost cause, Jack couldn't think of better candidates than Daniel and himself in their current predicament.

After a few moments where nothing buckled or sprang gaskets, Jack fully straightened, thankful to Saint Jude for obliging him for the time being. He held an extra measure of gratitude for his tough Irish lineage, or at least the one his father had always bragged interminably about. Just this one more mission, Jack promised himself, and as soon as they got home, he’d take a nice, long vacation, partaking in activities no more strenuous than popping the tab on his beer can and pressing the buttons on the TV remote.

And once fully vertical, another urgent bodily function demanded his attention. "Uh, Daniel—really gotta take a piss now."

"Sure," Daniel said, waving his free hand in a dismissive gesture then remembered. "Oh."

"Yeah, ohhh." Jack raised their joined hands and performed a mock politician’s wave.

Daniel scowled in reply. If he’d thought their situation was awkward before, well, then this little extra indignity took the prize. He followed as reluctantly as their tether allowed as Jack limped toward a patch of shrubs, at the same time, keeping a close eye on his friend in case he stumbled.

Once they were nearer to the river and away from the shelter of the tall trees, an icy wind whipped at their tattered clothing, causing them both to shiver and hunch their necks into their collars against the elements. The night had only grown colder and damper. Neither man allowed himself to fully ponder upon how bad things would get if it started raining or snowing.

The sound of splashing on leaves followed momentarily, awakening Daniel’s own bladder with sudden urgency. and he cursed under his breath. He turned his back, fumbled at his fly, cursing again when his cold numbed, trembling fingers wouldn’t cooperate with a procedure he didn’t normally perform with his left hand. The ridiculousness of their situation once again struck him. "God, what do you think Sam and Teal’c would think if they could see us now?"

"Oh, we’d never live it down," Jack intoned as his zipped back up.

"Yeah." Daniel’s eyes widened and he fumbled with his own zipper again. "I just thought of something…"

"What?"

"When and if we do get home, and we go through the gate like this…"

Shivering with both cold and dread, Jack closed his eyes for a brief moment. "I can just see it now…"

"What?" Daniel stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Ah, you know. S&M jokes, porn videos and plastic handcuffs in our lockers..." Jack shuddered. "I don’t even want to think about what else Ferretti, Siler and their buddies will come up with…"

Daniel winced at the thought, although S&M was another thing he’d have to look up when they got home. From the sound of it, he didn’t think it was anything very pleasant.

"Yeah, well…" Jack shrugged and hobbled toward the river and found a rock along the edge tall enough for him to perch on but still allow him to reach the water. "We’ll worry about it later."

He and Daniel each scrubbed the icy water over their faces and necks, took long, slow sips to quench their thirsts and fool their hunger-cramped bellies into satiety. The paltry moonlight reflecting off the water offered enough illumination for Jack to see the crosshatching of shallow cuts from their mad dash through the underbrush marring Daniel’s features. The scratches were vivid against the blue-tinged bruises and barely scabbed over contusions. Jack figured that he probably looked just as bad. Oh, yeah, they’d never live this down when they got home…

"Crap."

"What?" Daniel glanced around, wondering if Jack had spotted something in the trees.

"This just sucks, that’s all." Jack pressed his nearly numb hand to his aching side as he sat up straighter on the rock, unable and unwilling to take in any more of the icy water.

"Yeah." Daniel agreed, at the same time thinking Jack seemed more disheartened than he’d expected him to be in circumstances such as their present one. "But we’ve been in worse situations than this before, right?"

Jack rasped a hand over the rough stubble on his bruised and scratched face. "Oh, yeah. Way worse." Before too much stiffness set in again, he carefully pulled himself to his feet, Daniel following his motions, ready to offer support. As he took a tentative step, Jack had to grind his teeth against a sharp wince of pain.

It was true they’d been in much worse predicaments over the past seven years, but Jack couldn't recall ever feeling this wrecked while still remaining conscious and ambulatory. Not that he’d ever admit to that. Forcing a casual, one-shouldered shrug, he stretched his spine and said, "The back’s just not cut out for sleeping in trees anymore. Always makes me cranky."

Daniel nodded but the frown creasing his features betrayed that he wasn’t buying Jack’s tough guy act any.

A half-hearted forage through the bushes for anything edible proved fruitless. It was too late in the season for berries evidenced by the few withered, frost-eaten husks remaining on some of the branches. The river was far too cold for them to wade in an attempt to scrounge for any fish, or what served as crustaceans on the planet. Jack reasoned he and Daniel were cold and battered enough without adding frozen feet and instant hypothermia to their miseries.

And so they decided to make do without. They had plenty of water to keep them going for the time being, and it couldn’t be that much further to the gate, Jack told himself, another half day’s walk at the most, right?

*****

It seemed as though he and Daniel had been walking forever. Trapped in some hellish limbo of traveling and traveling and never reaching your destination. The scenery never even changed, never offering any distraction. Jack supposed this was what a hamster on a wheel felt like. That is, a hamster that had gone a round with the family cat and somehow managed to survive.

And the gate was nowhere in sight.

A reluctant sun was making its appearance in the distant horizon, lightening the sky from deep indigo to a murky slate blue, but the reprieve from the long night did little to bolster Jack’s spirits. The air held the kind of damp, icy chill that seeped into the very marrow of your bones and didn’t let go, and Jack’s world had become a miasma of pain, cold and fatigue so deep as to be soul wearying.

He had lost all track of how much time may have passed, but Jack estimated they’d been walking for a good six or eight hours, broken up only by short rests. And each time they’d stopped, Jack was finding it more and more difficult to pull himself to his feet and get moving again. Daniel hadn’t complained once, but his movements and reactions were sluggish as his own exhaustion fully set in, his occasionally stumbling steps a clear indication of how cramped and cold his abused muscles were becoming.

Their conversation was sparse, the cold dulling their spirits as surely as it numbed their bodies.

The air whooshed from Jack’s lungs when he slammed nearly face-first into a tree. He didn’t even protest when Daniel painfully crashed into him, caught off-guard by Jack’s sudden stop. Jack realized he’d been walking half-asleep. Scrubbing a hand over his burning eyes, he mentally chastised himself for the lapse.

"Jack?" Daniel’s voice was breathless, worried.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack muttered, glancing around at their interminable surroundings, "awake now." All he could see in the distance were the same rolling hills and the identical hazy, murky purple mountainous ranges staining the horizon. He had no idea anymore if they were even walking in the right direction.

"Maybe we should take another break," Daniel said, his words coming out somewhat slurred.

Jack shook his head and resumed his pace, and Daniel had no choice but to follow at the tug on his chafed wrist.

"We gotta keep moving while we can," Jack explained, his voice roughened by fatigue and exertion. He didn’t want to admit that if he sat down again, so soon after their last break, he was afraid he’d never be able to get up again. "We’ll stay warmer that way, too."

Daniel only nodded in reply. He couldn’t seem to stop shivering despite the fact that they were walking at a fairly steady pace. His head throbbed in time with his heart rate and he tried to ignore the constant stinging of the burned skin on his back, tried to think of warmer places. Then came a faint memory of Abydos, tantalizingly close to the surface. A memory of sand and intense, but soothing heat. The kind of heat that made you forget what it had ever felt like to be cold.

"So… wonder who’ll get the cup this year."

Jack’s muttered comment reluctantly pulled Daniel’s thoughts from warm sand, sunshine and returning memories. ""What cup?"

"What cup?" Jack waved his hand in mock dismay. "The cup. The Stanley Cup, the Holy Grail of all cups."

"Well, actually, the Holy Grail is more myth than reality," Daniel said, unconsciously falling into the pre-amnesia, rapid-fire, soft tone of voice he’d always reserved for briefings and lectures on whatever he deemed necessary at any given moment. The information once more streamed unbidden from his subconscious. "The grail is sometimes rumored to not even be an actual cup, but more of a platter—"

Jack momentarily paused in mid-step. Who would have thought trying to have a conversation with an amnesiac would be this difficult? Then again, at least his off-hand comment had pulled them each from a pre-hypothermic stupor. "Daniel, forget the Grail."

"I thought that’s what we were talking about," Daniel said in a wounded tone.

"No, we were talking about hockey." Jack mimed swinging a stick with his free hand and bit back a curse at the flare of pain in his biceps. "You know, the Avalanche game, sticks, pucks? We talked about it before we left?"

"Oh." Daniel blinked, his eyelids heavy. So that's what an Avalanche game was, he thought. "Why didn’t you say so?"

"I did say so."

"No, you didn’t."

"Did."

"Didn’t. You were being obtuse," Daniel retorted, pursing his lips in a near pout.

"I’m never obtuse."

"Oh, please… it’s like… like you expect everyone to read your mind all the time."

"Daniel, even if you could, you wouldn’t want to be able to read my mind. Besides, you always used to be able—" Jack cut off what he was about to say.

"Be able to what?"

To know what I was thinking without having to spell everything out, Jack thought with something close to grief, then pushed back the thought. Daniel was coming back to them, it was going to take some time, like he’d tried to reassure Daniel. He just had to keep reminding himself. "Never mind," Jack said, shaking his head. "Just… forget it."

"I do remember hockey," Daniel protested, trying to make amends for a slight he wasn’t certain of committing. "Sam and I watched a game last week, and it’s really not all that complicated. It was even… mildly entertaining. I suppose."

Jack smirked. Good old Carter. "Hey, coming from you, ‘mildly entertaining’ is an improvement. You always used to say that hockey was just an excuse for grown men to strap on skates and pound the shit out of one another."

"I said that?"

"Yep." Jack ducked under a low-hanging branch flanking the riverbank. "Watch your head," he warned Daniel.

"Doesn’t sound like something I would say," Daniel muttered.

"You have, on occasion, used the odd monosyllabic word, you know."

Daniel made an irritated sound in reply and lapsed into silence again, shivering so hard Jack could feel the tremors reverberating through their cuffs, or maybe Jack was shaking just as hard. The strain was taking hold of both of them and Jack wasn’t certain how long it would be before all-out hypothermia began to set in, if it hadn’t already.

They had to stay alert, stay focused and the only way to do that was to keep talking.

"So… Arthur and the boys…" Jack began in what seemed a feeble attempt, even to himself. "All that dying and searching and… questing was for a platter?"

"Well, not just any platter," Daniel immediately replied, tired and sluggish though his thoughts were becoming.

Jack raised his hand in an exaggerated, snappy salute. "We are now no longer the Knights who say Ni."

Daniel stared at him, mouth slightly open, ready to launch into another diatribe on Jack’s obtuseness.

"Sorry—just slipped out," Jack said with an apologetic one-shouldered shrug. "Of course you probably don’t remember that either," Jack added quickly. "Monty Python. Few years ago, we were laid up after a mission and you and I watched it about ten times in one week." Jack waved a dismissive hand. "It’s not important."

Daniel nodded, but he suspected that it was, in fact, very important. At least to Jack, anyway. Something they’d shared. A wave of despondency hit him and not for the first time since he’d returned home, Daniel couldn’t help but feel as though he were an imposter trying to fill a better-liked man’s shoes. Taking a deep breath, he tried to push the disheartening thoughts aside, and for lack of anything better with which to change the subject, for the third time in as many hours, he asked, "How much further do you figure it is to the gate?"

"Coupla… maybe five miles?" Jack answered, not realizing that he kept giving the same answer to Daniel’s same question every time he’d asked.

And with each mile, the terrain became more rugged, and they had to either edge around or clamber over small boulders to stay along the riverbank. The added strain on Jack’s knee transmuted the throbbing pain to an angry, white-hot agony. It was so constant, he’d almost become used to it. Almost.

The fact that the river was becoming shallower as they walked was something Jack didn’t want to think too much on.

Jack heard a skitter of rocks and Daniel stumbled beside him. Glancing at his friend, Jack noticed that the cuts and bruises on Daniel’s face were the only color against the stark white of his skin, and his lips held a decidedly bluish tinge.

Jack bit back another wave of anger at their predicament. He should have had both of them back home by now, not wandering around, near frozen to death, with Jack only guessing, praying that they were heading in the right direction.

The terrifying thought that maybe he’d been leading them in the wrong direction all along seized hold of Jack and wouldn’t let go. And if his fear were true, then they could easily die of exposure out here, and his team would have no idea what had happened to them.

Damned stupid way to go, Jack thought, and that possibility only surged his determination. He was getting them home, one way or another. And they were going the right way, Jack could feel it in his gut. The gate was just much further than he’d anticipated. Besides, it wasn’t as though he and Daniel were walking at a good clip as messed up as they were. It was just going to take a little longer to get there, that’s all. Jack told himself that they just had to stay focused, stay positive.

"So that new research assistant of yours," he said, snapping his numbed fingertips to get Daniel’s attention. The motion brought a twinge of pain to the shocked nerve endings in his fingertips. God, it was too damned cold out here, he thought with another wave of something close to despair, then pushed it aside once more. "The one that replaced Nyan, transferred a week ago. What's her name?"

Daniel tilted his head and blinked a few times. "Chantal?"

"Yeah, Chan-tallll…" A faint smile curled over Jack’s lips as he drawled out the syllables, turning the name into something more fitting for a stripper than a research assistant. "Never met a science geek named Chantal before. Not that she looks like a geek. In fact, she looks more... hot."

Daniel stared at him, his brow furrowing. "Really? You think she's hot?"

"It’s not a matter of opinion—she’s indisputably hot," Jack said, nodding for emphasis. "Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed."

"Well, I uh… not really—"

Jack gaped at his friend in amazement. "Jeez, Daniel, get your glasses prescription checked!" Daniel opened his mouth to reply but Jack beat him to it. "She’s single, right?"

Daniel had to think for a moment then remembered Chantal distracting him one day by precariously perching on the edge of his desk, blocking his light as he’d tried to write, and informing him that she was newly divorced and ready to start dating again. "Yeah, she’s single. Why? You wanna ask her out?"

Jack scrunched his features in an expression of rapidly diminishing patience. "No… I mean, you should ask her out. Once you’re a little less…" he waggled his fingers by his temple, "you know… less loopy. Fully compos mentis."

"Why?"

"Why?" Jack echoed, shaking his head. "Maybe you should get something else checked out there, Dannyboy," he added, raising his eyebrows.

Daniel’s mouth dropped open, wounded pride flaring when Jack’s implication fully took hold. "Th-that’s working just fine!" He paused when he realized what he’d blurted out, feeling his cheeks and even his ears reddening. "I—I mean… she… I… never mind. Not that that’s any of your business, or anything. And besides, when’s the last time you’ve been out on a date?"

Jack flashed a smug, grating smile. "Oh, I get plenty of action. Don’t you worry about that."

"Oh really? Action involving something other than this?" Daniel raised Jack’s shackled hand and gave it a slight shake.

"Har har," Jack threw back his head with mock amusement. "Funny guy. Speak for yourself." He thought for a moment. "Hey, you’ve been gone for a year. How would you even know…"

Then he remembered how Daniel had appeared like some celestial, Zen-spouting apparition in that horrific torture chamber of Baal’s. If Daniel could come and go wherever and whenever he pleased like he had done then… like he had done when he’d appeared on base, trapping Jack in an elevator of all places, and then on Abydos… How many other times had Daniel come around, keeping an eye on all of them like some ghost who couldn’t quite leave behind his earthly attachments?

No, no, Jack was not going there…

Besides, Jack was fairly certain those times Daniel had come to him during his terrifying imprisonment hadn’t really happened. Jack had been badly messed up then, from the horrific, mind-numbing agony of his torture sessions and Baal’s gleeful enjoyment of Jack’s torment. Then the shock of the repeated sessions in the sarcophagus resurrecting him like some ungodly version of Lazarus—all that traumatic shit had to play tricks on a guy’s mind, Jack reasoned.

No, he had desperately needed consolation and a reprieve from the endless pain he’d been subjected to, and Jack’s mind had simply conjured the one person with whom he’d always trusted to share his fears and his secrets. Daniel.

Daniel hadn’t really been there with him. Had he?

"I am kind of technically her boss, you know," Daniel continued after a long moment, as though he hadn’t heard Jack’s last protests, his own ruminations rendering him oblivious to his friend’s inner turmoil. "Aren’t there any regulations against that sort of thing, anyway?"

Jack rasped his cold hand over his stubbled chin, relieved to be distracted from those horrific memories, ones that still kept him awake on far too many nights. "Only if you’re military."

"Well, still…" Daniel paused, narrowly avoiding banging into Jack when the older man ducked a low-hanging branch and stumbled over a large rock. "It would be awkward and a conflict of interest… or… or something."

"Why don’t you just admit it?"

"Admit what?"

"That you’re too chickenshit to ask her out." Jack smiled, enjoying egging his friend on. It almost felt like old times.

"I am not."

"Are."

"Not." Daniel shook his head in frustration. "Look… Jack… She’s not my type anyway."

"Riiight," Jack said. "I’m sure you’ve forgotten that you don’t have a type. Female, single, human… yeah, that pretty much does it for you."

"Jack…"

"You do remember what to do, right?" Jack blurted.

Daniel slowed his steps to give Jack a horrified look.

Jack raised a placating hand, equally horrified by what Daniel was probably thinking. "Whoa! Hey! I meant with making the moves on a woman. You know… dating… courting…" Jack winced at that last word. Way to make yourself feel even older, O’Neill. "I mean… I’m just saying I could give you some pointers, is all. When you want. Not necessarily now, in this case."

Daniel couldn’t help a soft laugh at Jack’s discomfiture. At the same time, he was absurdly touched by his friend’s concern. "Thanks, Jack," he said with a shy smile. "Maybe I’ll take you up on that one of these days." Daniel paused and it was his turn to feel a twinge of embarrassment. "For now, it’s… well, it’s hard enough to just make it from one day to the next, you know? I mean, back home. It’s been a little…"

"Weird?" Jack helpfully suggested.

"Well, I was going to say confusing, but yeah, weird too." Daniel nodded, ducking his head.

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "Definitely weird. But then again, weird is the nature of our business. You’ll get used to it."

"If you say so."

"Maybe I should ask Chantal out, seeing as you’re not interested…" Jack mused.

"Well, she did say she wanted to date again," Daniel offered.

Both men froze in their tracks when they heard the loud snap of a breaking branch somewhere in the near vicinity. Nothing followed for a long moment, then Daniel jumped, and Jack instinctively tried to raise his hands in a defensive posture at the sound of a long, lowing, inhuman cry. A cry that sounded far too much like the creatures that had scared off their alien guards.

"Shit," Daniel whispered under his breath, his heart beating a rapid staccato against his ribs.

"Yeah," Jack agreed, all senses alert. He motioned to Daniel with his free hand that they should find something to use as weapons. Slowly reaching down, Jack’s fingers found a broken branch, its edge jagged enough to be used as a spear. Daniel snatched up a sharp rock.

The cry transmuted to a deep, rattling, threatening growl.

"Keep your eyes open," Jack warned.

The growling grew louder. Trees rustled, more twigs snapped. A short, coughing snarl overlaid the sounds of movement. Something large rushed through the trees, seeming to head right toward them. With an odd sense of finality, Jack and Daniel braced themselves for an attack, for a sudden flurry of monstrous claws and teeth. They each raised their poor excuses for weapons.

Another crash in the underbrush, a dark shape became visible and the creature veered off sharply and unexpectedly to the left, disappearing back in the camouflage of the dense foliage.

Each man exchanged an incredulous ‘what the hell just happened’ look. They could hear the animal moving further up the riverbank. Jack suspected that the creature was tracking and baiting them, waiting for the right moment to attack. At least that was the only reasoning that made any sense to him. He wondered for how long they had been followed and could almost feel the beast’s eyes appraising them, the back of his neck tickling with apprehension and threat.

Still on alert, Jack slanted another glance at Daniel and said in a low voice, "I’d give my left nut for a zat gun."

"Me too," Daniel whispered, wide gaze still fixated on the trees.

"Okay, deal. You give yours. We only need one zat, I figure."

Despite the danger of their situation, Daniel snorted a short laugh. He figured the combination of exhaustion and tension must be making him giddy.

"Maybe so long as that thing knows we’re here and we don’t it startle it, maybe it won’t attack," Jack said.

Daniel nodded, agreeing with the logic, although he thought that was what you were supposed to do with bears—or at least that was what he’d seen on a TV show about a week ago. Well, maybe it worked the same way with shrieking alien creatures.

They cautiously picked up their trail again. Any thoughts of taking a break were quashed, neither man willing to risk being caught unaware by the creature while they rested and were in a more vulnerable position. Jack’s movements were tensed, his eyes continually scanning the forest, but as they walked, the only sounds were that of their footsteps on the loose, rocky ground, the gurgling flow of the river and the sharp wind rustling the leaves.

Daniel could only hope the creature was long gone and had found something else to eat.

Following slightly behind Jack and tracing the older man’s footsteps, ears attuned for the slightest growl or distant snap of a twig, Daniel once more thought that the dry desert heat of Abydos would feel like paradise right about now. And the Mastaages, the indigenous beasts he vaguely recalled, sounded nice and docile, not a single claw or sharp tooth to be found.

And then, with a jolt, he remembered what Teal'c had told him about what had become of Abydos. How it was now a desolate wasteland, all traces of any civilization so efficiently erased it was as though its history and its people had never existed. And with that thought, another image of the alien desert came to light. This time, it was a clear, unsettling image of gunfire, destruction and Daniel's own sense of impotent, utter fury.

Teal'c hadn't given him any detail on everything that had transpired, nor did the Jaffa mention much of Daniel's involvement in the attempt to save Abydos from Anubis's forces, but a niggling sense of failure, of unrealized grief was present in the back of Daniel's mind. Close to the surface if he wanted to grasp it. But instead of trying to reach for the memory, as he normally would have done, Daniel pushed it to the back of his subconscious and told it to stay there.

*****

The murky sunlight had begun to fade to the onset of dusk as the two men rounded a sharp bend in the river. Jack nearly ran headlong into Daniel’s back when the younger man stopped dead in his tracks, staring straight ahead. Somewhere along the way, Daniel had taken a slight lead with Jack taking the six, keeping an eye out for any sign of their predator. He followed Daniel’s gaze and his stomach dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of his boots.

"Oh, this is just great!" Jack threw his arms up in frustration, moving Daniel’s arm along with his own.

Daniel blinked at the shallow trickle of water that had been the river they had been following for so long for direction. The thin stream meandered between the rocks and down a sharp, 30-foot drop—what had likely once been a raging waterfall.

Moving closer to the edge, Daniel and Jack could see the water drizzling down the rocky edge to continue as what could generously be described as a lazy stream that all but dried up some twenty feet later.

The end of the line, so to speak.

Jack tore a hand through his hair, turned and hurled the spear he’d been carrying against a tree in frustration, and shouted a rapid-fire succession of curses.

"Jack…"

Fuming, Jack ignored his friend and began pacing in a tight circle around Daniel, not even noticing Daniel turning along with him like a spoke in a wheel, struggling to match his pace.

"Jack!"

Red-faced with anger, furious with himself for losing their way, Jack stopped in his tracks to face his friend. "What?!"

"The gate could still be close by."

"Or it could be two hundred fucking miles from here!" Jack shook with a combination of fury and cold, his chin trembling, hair and clothes still damp from the rain that had fallen a few hours ago.

"So are you saying we’re lost?" Daniel couldn’t resist adding in a slow, careful tone.

Jack stared at him, took a ragged breath and tried to calm down. "No, no. No, we’re not lost. I never get lost," he insisted, shaking his head. "This is just… a slight hitch in plans."

"Oh, is that what you call it?"

Jack pointed a warning finger. "Daniel, don’t start. I’m sooo not in the mood."

"All right, fine," Daniel said around chattering teeth. "Okay, we both know that the gate was near the river, or a river, right? What other landmarks do you remember seeing?"

"Trees," Jack snarled.

"Right, trees," Daniel agreed, ignoring the angry, sardonic tone, bouncing on the toes of his boots. He winced when his toes twinged with numbed pain. "What else?"

Jack looked around, calmer. "Um... rocks."

"Okay, rocks!" Daniel raised a finger. "Big rocks. I remember those, too."

"And..." Jack paused and closed his eyes, trying to will the location of the gate in his exhausted mind. "There was a cleared area covered with stones, about 15 feet in diameter surrounding the platform."

"Yes! Sam even commented on it. And there were those ruins not far away, either," Daniel added. "So we look for a clearing in the trees, and, or some ruins. Piece of cake, right?"

"Right," Jack said as more of a defeated sigh than agreement. "Piece of cake." With Daniel following unquestioningly, Jack stumbled to where he had thrown his makeshift weapon, retrieved the stick and again stepped closer to the cliff edge.

The steep drop at least offered a view of the horizon and the vast forest surrounding them. Jack thought he could make out a brownish indentation in the endless stretch of dark green far too many miles in the distance. The indentation maybe signifying a wide, stone platform, but that could just be wishful thinking.

Daniel pointed in its direction, the clearing noticeable enough for him to be able to make it out, even without his glasses. "Do you think that might be it?"

"Could be." Jack said, keeping his eyes fixed on the area. Then Jack spotted something else. Alongside the indentation was a thin, meandering line bisecting the trees. A gleam of bluish white, of water. His gaze followed the line and it came close to connecting with the meager stream of water below them. Jack allowed himself to feel a twinge of hope.

The only problem now was, how the hell was he supposed to climb down a damned cliff in his current condition?

Jack didn’t have long to ponder his current dilemma when another problem immediately presented itself—a shadow darting in his peripheral vision. Jack wheeled in its direction, causing Daniel to stumble beside him until he could match Jack’s motions.

Daniel opened his mouth, and Jack thumped his and Daniel’s hand against the younger man's chest, halting his query. Daniel froze and looked in the direction in which Jack’s gaze fixed.

Daniel sucked in a breath when he saw emerging from the trees a brown-furred, heavily muscled animal that resembled a hyena mated with a Chulakian creature Teal’c had described to him once. The animal’s motions were measured, intentions lethal. The large, prehensile paws were tipped with razor-sharp claws, and when it opened its mouth to snarl at them again, it revealed sharp, snaggled teeth. The irises of its eyes were red-tinged, appearing oddly maddened, rabid, even.

The word berserker popped into Daniel’s mind but he couldn’t comprehend the meaning just yet.

Jack remained motionless save for the tightening of his fingers on the branch he held. Daniel slowly pulled the sharpened rock from his pocket, at the same time, despairing of how pathetic a means of defense it would offer.

Jack locked his gaze with the animal’s hungry, baleful one. A low rumbling emanated from its throat that set the fine hairs on the back of Jack’s neck on end. Muscles tensed, he whispered to Daniel to start moving away from the cliff edge, but he didn’t dare avert his gaze from the animal to check that Daniel had nodded or even acknowledged him. As one, they took a cautious step to the side. Each of them held their free arms upraised in warding-off positions.

The creature watched them closely, head ducked low to the ground, then without warning, sprang. On pure reflex, Jack and Daniel both tried to dodge the attack, both wheeling in opposite directions and were pulled up short by their shackles, causing them to stumble into one another as they frantically tried to coordinate their movements. Their confusion would have been comical had their situation not been so deadly.

The creature bulldozed into Jack’s side, its hot breath seeming to singe his skin, the volume of its victorious shriek making his ears hum. He fell hard against Daniel knocking him off balance and all three pitched to the rocky ground in a tangle of limbs and slashing claws. The back of Jack’s head connected with an outcropping of rock. Stars exploded in front of his eyes and the world began to fade to black.

Teeth gnashing, the animal snapped at Jack’s throat. Daniel punched the rock he still held in the side of the animal’s skull, stopping the snapping jaw a mere hair’s breadth from the vulnerable skin of Jack’s neck.

The animalistic scream of pain was deafening as the beast twisted away from them, claws scrabbling and raking at their legs. At the sight of its gore-streaked face, Daniel realised with a strange mingling of horror and triumph that he had managed the gouge the animal’s eye with the makeshift blade. Daniel hauled himself to his feet pulling a bleary Jack with him, never taking his eyes off the injured animal.

In their struggle, he didn’t realise how close to edge of the embankment they had come.

The creature shook its head, swiped a massive paw over its eye, and then pounced once more. Without thinking, Daniel stepped slightly in front of a weaving Jack, and raising their conjoined hands—Jack was too out of it to put up much resistance—Daniel punched up at the animal’s underbelly, propelling it backward, behind them.

The animal snarled in outrage and twisted in mid-air. Daniel yelped as the long claws first raked his cheekbone, and then one back paw clamped around his left shoulder, razor-sharp claws tightly embedded in muscle, skin and the ragged material of Daniel’s jacket. But it wasn’t enough to stop its descent.

Twisting and yowling, the creature pitched headfirst over the embankment, pulling Daniel onto his back and carrying him skidding along with it.

Jack was yanked off his feet, landing heavily on his backside with a startled grunt. The combined weight of Daniel and the beast from hell pulled Jack onto his left side, dragging him a few feet before he managed to catch hold of a tall rock with his free arm. He glanced up to see Daniel’s head and one shoulder dangling over the edge of the embankment, his right arm stretched taut with Jack's, the heels of his boots scrabbling for purchase on the ground. Without thinking, Jack let go of the rock and grabbed hold of Daniel’s leg, by the knee.

Daniel screamed when the beast’s claws slid free from his skin and clothing, and he had a terrifying upside down view of the animal plummeting to the rocky ground below. Gravity and momentum pulled him forward, and he tried to sit up, tried to pull himself back up, all to no avail. His struggles only caused him to slip further. He felt Jack’s tight grip leave his leg, his body slid sideways over the edge and then he was falling.

Another ragged scream tore from Daniel’s throat when his plummet stopped short by the tether to his wrist. The pain in his wrenched wrist mingled with the agony of his arm damn near ripping from its socket—Jack, somehow, the only obstacle impeding his descent.

Cursing, calling Daniel’s name and praying all at the same time, Jack had let go of Daniel’s leg when he’d felt them both going over. He’d flung out his free arm to grasp hold of an upraised boulder just on the edge of cliff, hugging it to his upper body as though it were a life preserver. Which he supposed it was, with a wry twinge of morbid humor. He yelped at the pull on his wrist and shoulder when Daniel slipped a little further.

Bracing his chest and digging his feet into a depression in the ground behind him, Jack managed to secure their position, ignoring the fact that his left arm felt as though every muscle, bone and tendon were ripped to shreds.

Fingers scrabbling at the face of the embankment, dirt and pebbles raining down on him, Daniel didn’t even feel his fingernails breaking or the splinters digging into his skin when he managed to grasp hold of a gnarled, exposed tree root. Pedalling his feet on the loose rock, one toe found a tenuous foothold. Clinging to the cliff face, gasping and trembling, the blood roaring in his ears, it took a moment for Daniel to register that Jack was shouting his name over and over.

Carefully raising his head, he realised that Jack’s face was only a few feet away from his—the length of their conjoined arms. Jack’s face was twisted with pain and exertion, his body crammed up tight against the boulder he held in a death-grip.

Daniel managed to gasp Jack’s name in reply, then cursed when his boot slipped, his shoulder and wrist flaring with renewed searing pain, his entire arm aflame. His legs kicked and twisted as he tried to find anything to cling to.

"Daniel, hold still, goddammit!" Jack ground out. "I’ve got you, just quit moving around so much!"

Daniel tried to listen, but his vision was greying around the edges as the pain from the pull on his arm nearly caused him to pass out, and he couldn’t let that happen. Jack couldn’t pull him up by himself. Not like this.

Gritting his teeth, sheer stubbornness forcing away the pull of unconsciousness, Daniel struggled to find new footholds. Then, one knee found a depression that he could press his leg into, and the other foot found a loose root that might hold him for a few more seconds.

Glancing at up Jack, he saw that both his and Jack’s wrists were bleeding heavily. Trails of blood ran down Daniel’s forearm, and Jack’s blood trickled from his fingers and onto Daniel’s, their blood mingling together. Blood brothers, Daniel thought giddily, wondering where that sudden memory had come from.

"Daniel, can you push yourself up?" Jack gasped, bracing himself tighter against the boulder, chest and left shoulder pressed so hard against the rough surface he was certain he’d have bruises there for the rest of his life. "Use your legs, push yourself up, and I’ll pull you the rest of the way."

Daniel gasped out what he hoped Jack would take as a yes, and tried to raise his lower leg to a new foothold. His foot skidded and scraped, his other leg nearly slipped from its niche, but he managed to keep hold. Left arm trembling with exertion, he managed to raise himself a few inches, doing a near one-armed chin-up. He found another crumbling foothold and clung to the edge, afraid to move, to even breathe.

Once Daniel seemed to be holding his own for the moment, Jack twisted his body to lie sideways, boulder pressing hard into his battered ribcage. He shifted his legs until he found a rock he could press his feet against for extra leverage, right knee screaming in protest, but he scarcely took notice. Shifting his upper body, Jack inched his right hand as far as he could reach toward the edge.

"Jack!" Daniel shouted in alarm when Jack’s motions jostled him enough to nearly lose his tenuous grip.

"It’s okay, just hang on!" Jack scrabbled his fingers in Daniel’s direction. "Can you reach my hand?"

Daniel looked up, squinting. All he could see was a hand-shaped blur a few feet from his head. "You’ve got to be kidding me," he panted. "If I let go, we’ll both go over!"

"We’ll both go over anyway in about three seconds! Reach for my hand."

Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, every muscle shuddering with exertion, then nodded. "Okay, on three."

"On three." Jack braced himself and readied to pull for all he was worth.

"One," Daniel said in a wavering voice, his legs threatening to give out. He found another foothold high enough to maybe give him enough momentum to push up. Maybe…

"Two," Jack continued, groaning as he stretched his right arm as far as he could reach.

"Three!" Daniel shouted and pushing up hard with his legs, let go of the root and flung his arm in Jack’s direction. Somehow, Jack managed to catch hold and clung to Daniel’s hand in a grip that threatened to crack Daniel’s knuckles. Jack pressed his feet hard against the rock, straightening his legs with an agonised shout, at the same time, praying that his leverage would hold them both.

Daniel dug in his own legs, rocks crumbling and disappearing under his feet, but somehow, his head cleared the edge, then his chest and then he found himself lying face-down on solid ground, one foot still dangling over the edge.

For a long time, the only sounds were that of each man trying desperately to catch his breath, to take stock of what had nearly happened.

Jack was the first to move. He urged Daniel to come away from the edge—their struggle was one he had no intention of ever repeating. In a daze, Daniel sat up enough to slide forward a few feet on his backside—his legs were far too rubbery too allow him to stand. Blood from the slash on his cheekbone smeared the entire left side of his face in a ghoulish mask.

“What the hell stupid kind of stunt was that, huh?” Jack scolded, then softened his words by wrapping his shaking free arm around the back of Daniel’s trembling shoulders and pulling his battered friend to his chest. Daniel’s blood seeped into Jack’s sleeve, but he was too relieved they were both still alive to care much about anything else. “Did you forget that you can’t fly anymore, for cryin’ out loud?”

"S-sorry," Daniel stuttered, closing his eyes and leaning into Jack’s warm, comforting embrace for a moment. "I d-don’t think th-the A-ascended t-technically f-fly, though—"

"Shut up, Danny," Jack said in a soft, affectionate voice, then moved his hand enough to brush the dirt and pebbles from Daniel’s hair. "It was a rhetorical question."

"Okay," Daniel said agreeably enough, but Jack figured the younger man was too dazed to be following much of the conversation, anyway. Taking shallow breaths, Daniel tried to sit up again, and wincing, said, "I think I might have dislocated my shoulder."

Jack shifted his grip to Daniel’s shoulder then gently manipulated the arm. Daniel hissed in pain, but the limb wasn’t dislocated, probably badly strained though. The slashes from the creature’s claws on his left arm were deep and weeping copious amounts of blood. Jack cursed under his breath.

He used scraps of what was left of Daniel’s sleeve to wrap the gouges and mop up the blood staining his face—luckily, the cut wasn’t deep and would scab over fairly quickly. Another dampened scrap of cloth was used to try to clean up their badly abraded wrists—the metal of the cuffs wasn't even dented, Jack noted with dismay.

An attempt to clean up their other various scratches and scrapes didn't merit much success, and when Jack finally gave up on the task, both men were far too battered and exhausted to walk any further, or even contemplate how they would climb down the treacherous slope. Instead, they shuffled over to a drier place along the riverbank, collapsed against the meager shelter of a cluster of boulders.

Daniel curled up tight against Jack, wounded arms tucked around his middle, his eyelids fluttering shut, pain and shock taking hold. The younger man was still shivering, even long after he’d fallen into a fitful sleep.

At some point, Jack thought he heard the distant humming of a small engine, but it was near impossible to differentiate sounds from the loud buzzing in his ears and the deep ache in his skull. For once, he found it difficult to conjure any of his earlier forced optimism, and so he didn’t allow himself to think at all.

*****

By the time they reached the bottom of the cliff face, both men were trembling, drenched with sweat that instantly became chilled, leaving their skin and clothes damp and clammy. It had begun to drizzle again, droplets of freezing rain, and an icy mist filled the air.

They’d decided to make the arduous trek down the cliff before the sun went down again, neither man willing to spend the long night huddled along the cliff’s edge where more creatures may have been lurking and catch them unaware. Even though he and Daniel found a less steep place to negotiate the climb, Jack’s knee had finally locked into grotesquely swollen immobility, and he’d been forced to make his way down more by sliding on his backside than actually walking. Toward the end of the slope, Daniel had to position himself in front of Jack to keep him from doing a free fall down some of the more treacherous portions, this fact combined with his growing weakness, filled Jack with a mingling of fury and helplessness.

Once on level ground, they limped over to the stream. Something dark and boneless lay draped over the rocks. It took a moment for Jack to register that it was the body of the creature that had attacked them. Its mouth was frozen in mid-snarl, gore-smeared tongue lolling, huge paws splayed as though it had still been trying to run in mid-fall, sightless red eyes open and glazed.

Both men paused to study the soggy carcass of the creature that had nearly killed them. Jack was too exhausted and in too much pain to summon any characteristic humor or comments on how roast beast would taste pretty damned good right about now. Not while the gate was still so far away, as unattainable as the fabled Holy Grail.

A few feet up, they found a bush with a number of remaining withered berries, and despite the moldered, pulpy texture, each man wolfed them down as though they were fresh, sun-ripened strawberries.

It didn’t take long to find where the river picked up again in earnest. More and more, Jack found himself leaning heavily on Daniel to remain upright as they staggered along the riverbank. Between gasping breaths, Daniel's teeth chattered with an incessant, white noise that would have irritated the hell out of Jack had he not been so tired. His eyes burned and he found it difficult to form a coherent train of thought, and so his focus became single minded—keep going, keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how much it hurt.

When his legs gave out, Jack didn’t even have time to try to catch himself, or warn Daniel. Though he tried, the younger man was too worn out, his arms too battered and strained to be able to stop his friend’s fall. Jack’s knee twisted as he landed hard on his side, the pain so startling, it took the breath from his lungs. When his vision grayed and his stomach roiled, Jack wasn’t certain whether he’d pass out, puke up his moldy meal of berries, or both. After a moment where neither of those things happened, he managed to roll onto his back, teeth gritted, hands clenched into tight fists.

Daniel collapsed to his knees beside him, shuddering with cold, pain and fear. Daniel’s shoulder had started bleeding again, the blood shockingly warm against his chilled skin. He gasped out an apology to his friend for failing to catch him, and then could only watch helplessly as Jack blinked back tears of pain and fatigue, breathing hard, looking completely done in. Deep shadows rimmed his dark eyes, making them appear bruised, weary beyond reprieve.

As he hovered over Jack, Daniel’s face filled with raw, undisguised concern, and his friend’s distress told Jack more about how bad off he was than any words could have.

"You know, Daniel, I’ve never admitted this to anyone before, and if you breathe one word of this if… when we get back…" he broke off to catch his breath, swallowed hard to contain his frustration at the growing limitations of his aging body. "I just... I don’t think I’m cut out for this anymore."

"You’re just tired, Jack," Daniel said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.

Jack shook his head and closed his burning eyes for a moment. "Five years ago, I could have taken that... that overgrown hyena with one hand tied behind my back." Jack glanced down at his cuffed, lacerated wrist. "Well, you know what I mean."

"I know..." Daniel softly said. "But once we get home and get patched up, you'll be fine in no time—"

"No, I’ve known this for a while now." Jack looked back up at the sky. The sun had fallen behind the trees, and darkness would come soon. "Always thought I’d go down with my boots on long before I’d have to worry about… parts wearing out. The only thing worse than a has-been, is a has-been who won’t admit the fact."

"You're not a has-been."

Jack shook his head again. "I’ve retired before. It wasn’t so bad," he added, not allowing Daniel the chance to offer to him any further platitudes because Jack didn't want to hear them. "You watch football all day. Mow the lawn once in a while. It's not so bad."

He wondered whom he was trying to reassure, Daniel or himself. At the same time, he wondered why was he admitting all this. Maybe it was the fact that Daniel’s memories were still so scrambled he wouldn’t see this as uncharacteristic. Ordinarily, Jack would rather submit to having his fingernails pulled out with pliers before admitting to weakness, or defeat, but here it was—a single, pointless mission with nasty aliens and even nastier wildlife bringing him to this epiphany. To the admission that it was time to face some harsh realities.

"Jack, we need to stop… just… just for a while." Daniel’s features set in an odd contrast of determination and resignation. "It won’t take long to find something we can use for shelter."

Jack met his friend’s intense gaze, the blue of his eyes vivid against the paleness of his skin. Blood soaked the makeshift bandage on Daniel’s shoulder, but there was nothing to be done about that.

"At least we’ll be warmer and drier," Daniel added in a soft voice, his exhausted eyes never leaving Jack’s dark, regretful ones. Jack could read the unspoken acceptance on Daniel’s face, and was grateful to him for not vocalizing what they both knew to be the truth.

Jack once again closed eyes that were burning with more than fatigue, needing to break the intensity of their gaze, their mutual understanding. When he thought he had his emotions under control enough to open his eyes again, he glanced back up at Daniel just as the younger man was swiping the back of his hand over his bruised face.

"Help me up," Jack ground out, raising his free hand, which Daniel grasped. "Let’s look for some shelter."

It took a few minutes, but Daniel was able to find a large fallen tree, its end resting on a tall cluster of boulders. The tree's breadth was wide enough to offer them some shelter, and the boulders held it high enough for them to duck under. The ground beneath the tree's shelter was drier, protected from the continual drizzling rain.

Daniel and Jack rested their backs against the rough boulders, the smell of moss, damp wood and the ozone of water surrounding them. Daniel pressed tight to Jack’s side, trying to preserve some of their body heat. The sun had lowered further in the horizon, and the deep blackness of the night would soon be upon them.

Jack’s head nodded with exhaustion and Daniel decided to let him drift off to sleep. What harm could it do, at this point? Jack was so beat up, the least Daniel could do was let him rest. Daniel decided he would stay awake, keep an eye on his friend, protect him if need be.

That was the plan, anyway...

...Daniel’s head snapped up when his chin hit his chest. He woke to the deep blue shadows of twilight and the sounds of heavy rainfall. It took a moment for his surroundings and his situation to register. His head was as heavy as though it were encased in cotton, leaving him muddled, disoriented. Shifting his position, each muscle twinged and his right arm was completely numb.

Then the sound of rasping breaths drew his attention to Jack, and Daniel struggled to clear his head. Jack had turned onto his side, facing Daniel, shivering intermittently with each breath, his body pressing their shackled arms into the ground. Daniel reached over with his left arm and gently shook Jack’s shoulder. The older man muttered in his sleep and turned his face into Daniel's shoulder.

"Jack, I’m sorry… but you have to wake up for a minute." Daniel tried to shift his position enough to be able pull his numb arm out from under the older man’s weight, but the motion only sent a renewed wave of pain through his strained, burned shoulder. "Come on, Jack, wake up." It took a few more shakes to rouse the older man, and then Jack woke with a start and a startled gasp.

"Wh—" Jack groaned. "Gah…"

"Hey," Daniel whispered around his raw throat.

Jack rasped a hand over his face, teeth grinding together until every ache and pain settled into a somewhat manageable level. "I keep hoping that every time I wake up this place will turn out to be some long, godawful nightmare," Jack muttered, rubbing his eyes hard in an attempt to pull away the lure of sleep.

"Me too," Daniel agreed, and carefully slid his arm out now that Jack was no longer lying on it, groaning with the effort to move the deadened limb.

The steady rainfall echoed in Jack’s ears, an incessant shushing noise, and he was grateful for their makeshift, but adequate shelter. Struggling to sit up further, the world did a sickening loop as dizziness struck. Jack let out groan and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping, waiting for it to pass.

"Jack?" Daniel leaned forward to try to see his friend amidst the shadows. All he could see was Jack hunching forward, arm clutched around his midsection. "You okay?"

"No," Jack ground out. He took a few deep breaths through his mouth until the vertigo and ensuing nausea gradually passed. "But I’ll live," he amended. "For now, anyway."

"Okay." Daniel leaned back against the rock. He tried to flex his right hand, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder, his fingers brushing against Jack’s. They were so numb with cold and lack of circulation that he couldn’t tell which fingers were his, and which were Jack’s.

"Ow… wh—" Jack protested the odd, distant pull on his wrist and realized what Daniel was doing. He reached over with his free hand, and pulling their joined hands onto his upraised leg, began to in turn, massage each of their hands, trying to restore the cut off circulation.

Daniel winced and let out some pained protests of his own, but gritted his teeth and allowed Jack to continue what he doing.

Jack worked on his friend’s hand in silence. For a long time, the only sounds were that of their ragged breathing, the rustle of the wind in the leaves and the steady drum of rainfall. The sounds were disconcerting, mournful in their monotony, and as Jack felt the feeling return to his fingers and a corresponding warmth filled those of his friend’s, Jack’s thoughts drifted to dark places he wasn’t ready to visit.

"You know, Hammond keeps suggesting we go on these team-building exercises," Jack said, his voice breathless, wavering with the force of his shivering, but he needed to talk, needed to keep those thoughts at bay. "Just for fun, he says. Something always came up, for which I’m grateful, I may add, and I’m fairly certain that this mission and all this... togetherness should make you and me exempt from all future exercises, don’t you?"

"I guess..." Daniel began, uncertain, huddling in what was left of his jacket. Like most of Jack’s random bursts of conversation, Daniel was uncertain as to where this one was going, but was willing to play along, just for something to talk about, something that would offer distraction. "What does one actually do on team building exercises anyway?"

"Ah, you know… get sent off on some stupid obstacle course, work together, try to problem solve without ripping each other’s heads off… learning to get along better—all that bonding crap."

"Okay…" Daniel said, puzzling over that. Sounded like an odd way to encourage morale, but then again, the military had their own strange way of doing things, as he had already discovered. "In that case, I’d say we’ve done all that and more in the past few days."

"Definitely."

"What about Sam and Teal’c, though?"

"Ah, they can go on their own," Jack said, his raspy voice dismissive. "It’ll be good for them to gain a little independence. Leave the nest."

Daniel thought for a moment. "Did General Hammond suggest team building because... there were problems?"

Jack rested his spinning head against the stone, and tried to stop shaking. "Problems?"

"With the team. Our team. I... did we... even like each other? I mean... you and me? I... well, I sort of remember us arguing a lot of the time."

Jack tried to ponder the hesitant question around his aching skull. "Well, 'like' is kind of a strong word," he said, the line of conversation taking a far too awkward turn for his taste and present miserable state. "We tolerated each other. Sometimes. Mostly, we drove each other nuts. That's how we've always been, but we pull together when it counts."

Daniel frowned—that hadn't been quite what he was expecting to hear. He'd suspected, maybe even hoped that this strange connection he and Jack appeared to share held more significance than merely working on the same team. Apparently, that wasn't the case, after all. He pulled his legs tighter against his chest, and shivering, tucked his free arm in the space between his legs and belly, ignoring the pull on the gashes to his shoulder.

Jack turned his head to make out Daniel ducking his head down and curling himself up, occupying as small as space as possible, all of a sudden becoming very quiet and still.

Dammit, Jack thought, regretting his glib comments. After everything Daniel had been through, he deserved better than off-hand, macho posturing bullshit. And after everything Jack had been through—having been forced to watch his best friend dying piece by agonizing piece right in front of him. Spending the past year regretting not having the guts to admit to a dying man how much his friendship had come to mean to him—how much it had fucking hurt to let him go. And here he was, granted a second chance, an opportunity and the time to speak with someone miraculously returned from the dead. A chance to say all those things he had thought were forever left unsaid.

Jack thought it just was damned unfair to have been granted this second chance only to drag Daniel by his shackled arm straight back into death’s cold embrace. Despite that, or maybe even because of it, Jack decided he owed it to both Daniel and himself to cut the crap and be honest, for once. After all, this may be their last chance.

"Daniel." Jack sat up straighter, ignoring the reawakening of various pains the motion caused. He waited until he could make out his friend's head turning slightly in his direction. "Forget what I said a minute ago. You and me… we were always worlds apart, in everything we did… but in time we came to respect each other's opinions. And yeah, we argued. Yeah, we drove each other nuts. And we probably both wondered sometimes why the hell we even put up with each other. But one thing was always certain. One thing I never doubted. You were…you are the best friend I’ve ever had. That's never gonna change, all right?"

Daniel fully looked at Jack, and in the growing darkness, could just make out the strength of his friend’s conviction and the stark truth behind his words. A sudden sting pricked behind his eyes, and Daniel squeezed them shut for a moment to keep the tears from falling. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard before trusting himself to speak. "All right," he said with a faint but grateful smile. "Thanks, Jack."

"Yeah, well..." Jack shrugged, uncomfortable. "You're welcome." After all, there was only so much bonding a guy could take in a given moment, all second chances and last chances, aside.

Spurred on by the change in Jack's demeanor, Daniel decided to take a chance of his own. "I just… sometimes I wonder if I'm anything like I used to be… before my ascension and supposed death, I mean. That guy Sam described to me back on Vis Uban sounded a little hard to live up to."

"What guy?" Jack asked, losing Daniel's train of thought.

"Me. The type of person Sam says I used to be, anyway." Daniel paused, collecting his thoughts. "To be honest, she kind of scared me a little. Made me out to be this… noble hero type."

"Ah, I wouldn’t worry too much about that," Jack said, at the same wondering what exactly Carter had said to Daniel back in that tent. Whatever it was, he knew it had been the clincher in convincing Daniel to come home with them. Although Carter sometimes did get a little overly enthusiastic when pitching an idea, so he didn't blame Daniel for feeling a little spooked. "You do know that Carter has a tendency to exaggerate, right?"

"Really?"

"Well, maybe a little," Jack amended at the slight, but unmistakable disappointment in Daniel's voice. "But whatever she said, you are still the same guy you used to be. And take my advice here—when and if we get out of this, there’s no harm in losing that save the world, hero complex you had going on. All good intentions aside, it's been a little self-destructive. Trust me on this one."

"I do trust you," Daniel said, then dropped his gaze, caught off guard by the admission.

"Little good that trust did you, huh," Jack muttered more to himself, then looked down at his ruined knee. He was so cold he could scarcely feel the bone-deep pain anymore, and was grateful for that small relief. "I should have been able to get us home."

"You did your best, Jack," Daniel said, a heaviness stealing over his heart at the quiet self-recrimination, and at his own remorse. "We both did. That’s all anyone can expect of himself. If… if this is it… if we don’t get home… there’s nothing to be afraid of. One thing I do remember is that death is only the first step in another journey."

Jack rested his head against the rough stone again, but kept his gaze on Daniel even though it was now almost too dark to see his friend. "You’re not talking going all glowy again, are you?" Jack paused for a moment to press his hand against his aching ribcage. "I wasn’t up for ascension the last time you offered it to me, and I’m not up for it now, so don’t get any ideas."

Daniel frowned. "I offered you ascension?"

Jack nodded. "You probably don’t remember that... " Jack started, uncertain if he should even tell Daniel of that time with Baal, and so he chose his words carefully. "I wasn't sure if it even really happened myself, but you... the ascended you, I mean... you were there for me when I needed a friend, when I needed help, and I’m grateful to you for that. But when my number’s up, it’s up," Jack said, making a short slashing motion with his free hand. "I mean that. No more Tok’ra symbiotes, no sarcophaguses, and definitely no ascension. I was never much for spiritual stuff, but if there’s a chance at any afterlife, the conventional, old-fashioned one I was brought up to believe in is the one I’m sticking with."

"Okay," Daniel said, nodding. "I can understand that." And he did. Tradition was important, and so was holding firm to your beliefs. Sometimes, it was all anyone had to hold onto.

"Just wanted to be clear on that…." Jack added, his voice quiet, raspy, thoughts dulling with each word he spoke. "Just in case Carter and Teal’c have trouble finding us… you know..."

"I know," Daniel whispered, his eyelids growing heavy. "And we’re clear, Jack… on everything." He pressed tighter against Jack without realizing it, his body’s need for warmth taking over. He was too cold and too worn out to even shiver anymore, and his respiration began to slow as unconsciousness beckoned. Neither man was aware that at some point, the fingers of their still cold numbed, bound hands had twined together in an unconscious need for warmth and comfort.

In short time, Daniel’s head nodded, came to rest on Jack’s shoulder and his breathing became so quiet, Jack wasn’t certain he was even breathing at all. Before Jack began to drift off himself, he realized that this wasn’t such a bad way to go, after all. He still had his boots on, and his faculties still remained more or less intact. He only wished he didn’t have to take Daniel along with him, and that regret cut far deeper than any of his injuries ever could.

While he knew in his heart that Daniel didn’t blame him for any of this, even still, in the last few moments of consciousness, Jack tried to find a way to forgive himself.

****

Even though he was shivering hard enough to make his bones hurt, the first sensation Daniel became aware of was warmth surrounding him. Then the sound of someone calling his name, and a warm hand tapping gently at his face. He opened his eyes to see Sam's concerned gaze fixed on him, her face pale in the darkness. She smiled and tucked his sleeping bag tighter around his battered shoulders.

Daniel glanced to his right, as had become habit over the past few days, to see Jack bundled in an identical sleeping bag, only a tuft of gray hair visible.

Two more faces appeared in Daniel’s line of vision—Teal'c and Feretti. Three more men stood off to the side—the rest of SG-3, Daniel assumed, but it was too dark, and his vision was too blurred for him to identify them.

"Hi," Daniel managed, to which Sam broke into a wide grin.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" She cupped her hand against his cheek as though testing the temperature of his skin. Her hand was blessedly warm, and he missed her touch when she lowered it again.

Daniel frowned and had to think on the question for a moment. "C-cold. Tired. Hurts."

"I'll bet," Sam agreed, her eyes soft and bright with sympathy. "We'll get you home in just a minute."

"Wait… Sam..." Daniel whispered, remembering something.

She leaned down closer to better hear him.

"You w-wouldn't happen to h-have br-brought along a blowtorch, w-would y-you?"

Sam frowned, puzzled, then glanced at Teal’c who raised an eyebrow. "No, why?"

Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head—it was worth a try, anyway. He tried to wriggle the cold fingers on his right hand but they were too stiff. Their sleeping bags were left unclosed to accommodate their bonds, he realized when he felt the rough metal of a zipper biting into his skin.

Jack’s fingers twitched against Daniel’s. The older man shifted beside him at the motion to his wrist and peered out from the warm cover.

"Colonel?" Sam looked over to him.

Jack had to blink a few times to ensure that he wasn’t merely imagining his 2IC. He wasn’t quite ready to believe in their salvation—not when death had been so near. "Carter?"

"Yes, sir." Carter gave him a relieved smile. "We found you guys just in time. The two of you are pretty banged up and hypothermic, but you’re going to be all right. We—"

"H-how’d you f-find us?" Jack rasped, too muddled to follow that much conversation at one time.

"It was the UAV," a deep voice rumbled over Jack’s head, and he realized it was Teal’c who had spoken. "It recorded your progress by the river. We then followed it until we found your tracks, O’Neill."

Jack nodded. "Thanks, T." Jack’s gaze shifted until he found the gate and the sight sent a wave of relief through him. He should have trusted his team to find them in time, but still, this one had been too damned close. Glancing over to Daniel, he noticed that his friend was looking wide-eyed around at his surroundings, as though he, too, was struggling to accept the reality of their rescue.

"Hey, Daniel." Jack waited until the younger man’s gaze found his. "Piece of c-cake, huh?"

"Yeah," Daniel nodded and smiled faintly, "… p-piece o-of cake."

Jack returned his friend’s smile, then redirected his focus to the gate. The way home. For whatever reason, he and Daniel had been granted yet another chance and there was a measure of gratitude in that. Jack wasn’t too muddled from the cold to decide that once home and back on his feet, more or less, he was going to sit back on that vacation of his, and amidst watching endless amounts of games, maybe he’d do a little soul searching, as well. Maybe this ordeal had been meant to tell him something. Maybe it was time to for a new direction. Jack decided he’d think of all that later. It was all too much to take in. He and Daniel were both alive, both safe, and for now, that was enough.

While the two SGC teams spread out stretchers and prepared to lay both men side by side on them, Feretti crouched down beside Jack and flashed him a smarmy grin. "So, sir, can’t wait to hear what you guys got up to these past few days."

"F-feretti," Jack ground out around his chattering teeth.

"Yes, sir?"

"Du-d-don’t even s-sstart."

Feretti smirked. "Yes, sir. I’ll wait till you’re back on your feet, first." He then realized Jack had fallen back to sleep. "I'm glad you're okay, colonel," he added softly to the unconscious man, then glanced at Daniel. "You too, Dr. J."

Daniel nodded and huddled deeper into the warmth of the blankets, but he didn’t think he’d ever be warm enough again.

Coordinating their movements, Feretti and Teal'c slid Jack onto the stretcher, and two members of SG-3 did the same with Daniel.

Momentarily, Daniel felt himself being lifted, but he kept his bleary focus on Jack, who was carried close enough beside him that Daniel couldn’t even feel the pull on their connected hands. Daniel knew those bonds would come off shortly after their arrival in the infirmary, but their shared ordeal connected them indelibly. And that was a strangely comforting thought.

His eyelids drifted shut just before they were carried through the wormhole, and Daniel allowed sleep to pull him under once more, trusting his team to take them the rest of the way home.

~ finis ~