When the meal was finally over, Daniel helped Dolores clear the table. He dried the dishes while she washed. Neither of them spoke. Dolores’ posture was so rigid it seemed as though she’d shatter into thousands of pieces if she let down her guard and allowed her emotions to show. Daniel kept his motions slow, kept giving her worried glances, but he wasn’t sure if Dolores was even aware he was in the same room.

Once the kitchen was cleaned, Daniel reluctantly followed Dolores to the living room to join Mr. Davies for some 'quality time,' as the man referred to it. Daniel felt he’d had his share of the man for one evening, and wanted nothing more than to escape to his room and lose himself in one of his books, but knew he was expected to participate in Mr. Davies’ facade of a happy family. Daniel took his usual place in the armchair in the back corner, as far away from Mr. Davies as he could possibly sit while still remaining in the same room.

The drone of the TV was a constant soundtrack to the reverberating tension in the room. Mr. Davies read his Wall Street Journal, scarcely even glancing up at the television. Daniel wondered why, if the man was reading, did he and Dolores have to watch the show, but he knew it was better to keep quiet, to keep his thoughts to himself. This was their tradition of family, anyway, or so it seemed—Mr. Davies would read, Daniel would ruminate, and Dolores would work on her embroidery.

The perfect picture of familial gatherings, if one didn’t look too deep beneath the surface.

In the far corner, Daniel stared at the newspaper, sending daggers of hate through the thin sheets. Hate for his dinner being ruined, hate for how the man had made him feel all these months, hate for the confining, controlling rules he was forced to live under. Hate for it all. So absorbed in his silent defiance, Daniel didn’t notice that another person in the room had not yet managed to shake the effects of the night’s dinner. Daniel was so busy making his own personal list of the injustices he had had to endure in the last months that he didn’t see the other person who had endured much more for much longer. Not until Daniel thought he’d share a look of disdain with Dolores, hope she’d just roll her eyes, like she was sometimes known to do. Shrug her shoulder, convey her understanding and the futility of it all in one gesture.

But she didn’t share Daniel’s expression. At the very least, he expected to see her attempt to offer him a smile, the kind she often did—an apologetic, meager thing. It was all part of the picture. But she didn’t smile. She didn’t even look at him. Not tonight.

Tonight, something was very wrong with that picture. Something was wrong with Dolores. Something worse than how she was during dinner. What was it? At first glance, he couldn’t tell. She was pale, but no more pale than usual. She sat, her knees locked, her back straight, a box of embroidery thread balanced on top of her sewing basket at her side. But something was different, and he couldn't quite ascertain what it was. So he watched her while she poked a needle through the back of the cloth, drew the string through, and then poked it back down. Over and over, hardly blinking. Daniel had marveled at the meticulous work many times. The pattern, so elaborate and intricate, held taut in its round frame. Daniel had picked it up once and found that the back was almost as pristine as the front, save for a grid of miniscule knots.

And here she was again, laboring over the design, but something was different. Something had changed. Daniel kept his eyes on her, watched the mechanical movement of her hand, in and out, the needle piercing the material, the thread sailing behind, back to front, front to back.

And that’s when he noticed. That’s when it became clear.

The back.

That was it. Threads drooped loose. Threads rounded over the frame. Threads bound against each other, a continuous loop up through the same hole, down through an adjacent hole. And at the edge, a blot of something red seeped through the cloth. Daniel focused on the light blue embroidery floss Dolores was using, and understood the flaw in her studied posture—with each pass, Dolores pushed the needle through the tip of her thumb, and with each pass, the light blue became more stained with blood.

Daniel shot a quick look at Davies, found him slack-jawed and snoring in his armchair, the newspaper drooped in his lap. Daniel pressed himself from his own chair, padded over to Dolores, and put his hand on her arm. She barely noticed. Daniel wrapped his hand around her fingers, pulled the frame from her tightly clenched grip. With her other hand, Dolores let go of the needle and thread and it fell into her lap, tracing a faint line of red against her gray skirt.

Daniel held her focus and tucked the needlework into her sewing basket. She blinked but showed no other reaction. Daniel took a tissue from his pocket and pressed it to her thumb.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a quiet voice, trying to read any expression in Dolores' dazed hazel eyes. When she didn't answer, Daniel called her name in a hushed, urgent whisper.

After a long, silent moment, Dolores' gaze shifted away from his. She blinked a few times, as though waking from a deep sleep. "Do you have homework to do?" she said in a barely audible voice.

Daniel shook his head. Dolores blinked again, her face lax, expression dull. "I think it's time for bed."

Dolores moved to straighten her hair, but her hand paused in mid-air, as though the limb had forgotten what she had had intended to do, then allowed her hand to drop in her lap again.

"Are you sure y—" Daniel began, his worry increasing.

"Sleep well, Daniel."

"But—"

"Shhh. Best not to wake Mr. Davies."

He thought he should say something reassuring to her at that moment. It felt odd that he, the kid, should be reassuring the adult, but Dolores seemed lost, frighteningly so. She wasn’t even really looking at him. More like through him, to some dark, distant place. Daniel worried his lower lip between his teeth, stole a glance at the sleeping man, and nodded.

"Okay," he whispered, letting go of her hand. Apparently, Dolores hadn’t learned the lesson he had taught himself about Davies, and Daniel somehow knew Dolores was in no shape to be taught that lesson. Somehow he also knew that it was safer for him and for Dolores if he retreated to the relative sanctuary of his room. There would be other battles, there always were. This one was over.

Daniel stole away to his room, creeping along the sides of the stairway, hoping not to find the loose, creaking board. His thoughts flew from the Davies’ home and to his past, a million miles away. A lifetime ago.

He opened to door to his bedroom, an expensively furnished place of false comforts that was no more a part of him than he to Egypt anymore. Daniel wondered if his parents somehow knew what had become of his life. He wondered where he’d be now if they were still alive. Sitting on the floor, leaning his back on the edge of a bed that had been assigned to him, rather than offered to him, Daniel wondered. Would he be in Egypt with the desert sand rather than suburbs surrounding him? Pyramids and the sounds of Arabic filling the air instead of angry, bewildered silence? Somehow he thought so. Somehow he’d go back, somehow he’d escape from this life thrust upon him. Somehow he’d live the life he was meant to live.

While the day’s light abandoned the room, Daniel sat on the hard, braided rug that protected gleaming, cold, oak hardwood flooring. He sat, uncomfortable, yet never moving, and wished yet another day away, promising himself that things would change, that he’d find a way to escape. Somehow, he’d find a way to leave it all behind.

There were eggshells on which to walk those next few days, but nothing of significance happened. Dolores was somewhat quieter, the small bandage on her thumb the only reminder of what had transpired a few nights ago. An odd calm washed over the house, strangely peaceful, but unsettling. The calm before another storm. Even so, with the rigid tension gone, at least for the time being, Daniel found he could once again concentrate on his one true passion—reading.

The escape his varied books offered him was like the return of an old friend. The written words describing worlds so far removed from Daniel's own as to be another planet, allowed him to pass the next few days in peace and temporary refuge, until one night, the calm passed and the incipient storm once again caught him by surprise.

When Daniel entered the living room with his father's journal in hand that night, and sat down in his usual chair in the corner, just like the last few nights, Mr. Davies didn't even glance up from his newspaper, and Dolores kept her focus on her needlepoint project. The red-dappled threads had since been removed, the back of the frame once more neat and tidy, as though Dolores’ fugue-state handiwork had never occurred. Only when Daniel took a long, close look at the pattern, he could still see a faint, pink-tinged stain marring the beautiful work. Dolores had tried to cover it up by adding extra stitches, but once he saw the flaw, Daniel couldn’t stop seeing it.

Daniel paged through his father’s journal, found where he had last left off. Within minutes Daniel immersed himself in his father's writings, the final entry made only one day before his death. Daniel had been doing some research of his own to be able to understand his father's findings and theories. A mystery was gradually unveiling, and with an exhilarating sense of accomplishment, Daniel found he was already beginning to understand some of the cryptic words. He only wished there were someone around who cared about the significance of his research, someone who could share his enthusiasm.

"What are you reading?"

The Egyptian word for freedom kept popping up in his father’s writing, and Daniel’s skin lit with excitement.

"I said," Mr. Davies repeated, "what are you reading?"

Daniel glanced up at the sound of Mr. Davies' voice. "Just my father’s journal."

"It’s just nonsense, more like it." The same old conjecture, Daniel thought. He knew Davies was saying it just to get a rise out of him, just like the bullies at school did, only with simpler words. Nope. Not this time, he thought. It wasn’t going to work.

Daniel continued reading, although the words failed to register meaning anymore, the comprehension of the symbols no longer vivid. He kept his voice calm, and said, "This is my father's journal from one of his last expeditions in Egypt."

Mr. Davies harrumphed, folded over his newspaper with a sharp snap of the pages. "Knowing about the ancient Egyptians will get you nowhere in life, son. I want you to put that away and read the newspaper." He picked up the financial section from the footstool in front of him and tossed the pages to Daniel. "There's nothing to be learned from those old books. The future is now. The only thing that counts in this world is money, young man. You can't make any money unless you know what's happening in the world right now, not 500 years ago."

Daniel let the fold of paper settle on his legs, resolute not to touch it. Deflecting the hurtful words about himself was one thing; hearing his father’s reputation being challenged was something else. From somewhere deep in his aching soul, Daniel found the courage to defend his mother and father. Daniel crushed his teeth together, forcing himself not to give into his anger and pitiful sadness, and said, "The Egyptian were around 3,000 years ago."

"Are you contradicting me?"

Well, yes, Daniel thought, but he saw no point in arguing. However, he wouldn’t let Mr. Davies besmirch his father’s name, either, nor the history of a people Daniel felt closer to than the man sitting across from him. He didn’t want to fight with the man, but he knew from past experience that nothing he could say at this point would end the conversation. Once Mr. Davies started in on him, Daniel knew there was nothing to do but to ride it out. Acquiescing for the sake of time, Daniel simply said, "No."

"No, what?"

"No, sir," Daniel said after a moment, refusing to meet the man’s unnerving gaze and futilely longing for the quiet of only a few moments ago.

Davies stared at the boy, watching for an opening to attack yet again, searching for that defiant gleam he had seen at the dinner table a few nights ago. Defiance that needed to be vanquished. Davies’s gaze was appraising, searching for a weakness the way a predator studies its prey.

Daniel tried not to fidget under the scrutiny, and finally dismissing him as an easy mark, or more likely, Daniel thought, as insignificant, Mr. Davies redirected his attention to his paper, glanced up and down the columns of his paper once again. He read for a moment and without even glancing at Daniel, said, "Now, why do you keep reading that garbage?"

"I'm studying it."

"Studying it," Mr. Davies scoffed. "For what?"

"Because it’s interesting, and…" Daniel started, but just as quickly clamped his mouth shut. Why waste his breath? And maybe if he didn’t offer the man too much information, Mr. Davies would tire of the conversation and return to his paper. Or so Daniel could hope.

"And, what?" Mr. Davies asked, crumpling the newspaper into his lap.

Daniel fought to conceal his growing apprehension. "N-nothing, sir. I’m just studying it."

"No, there’s more," Mr. Davies said, crossing his legs and peering at Daniel. "You started to say something. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s cowardice. If you have something to say, Dan, then say it."

Daniel felt his skin twitch with nervousness, his eyelids fluttering rapidly. "I-if... if I work ahead in my other classes, my guidance counselor says I can get a scholarship in a few years."

"Scholarship for what?" Mr. Davies crowed, slapping open his paper. "Studying something someone wrote thousands of years ago? What benefit is that for your future? And scholarships are extremely difficult to get, son. Many students—all of them much smarter than you, my boy—are applying for those same scholarships, and I have to add, they come from much better stock than yours." Satisfied that he had struck what would surely have to be a blow to the boy’s over-inflated sense of intelligence, Mr. Davies creased the paper in half and pinched the fold. "Connections are what get you ahead in this world—not charity. My influence may benefit you in that regard, but I won't help you to continue with that nonsense."

"It's not nonsense," Daniel protested, knowing he was setting himself up for further ridicule, but he wasn't going to back down now—especially after having been called a coward. No way. He took a deep breath and continued, "My guidance counselor said I have a good chance at many scholarships. She even showed me some applications."

Mr. Davies shook his head, closing his eyes briefly in annoyance. "Well, your guidance counselor is as big a fool as you are," he said, his voice dripping with condescension. "Now, it's true, given your…parental circumstances, you may be able to get a small scholarship that may see you through the first year or so, if you’re lucky. But for what? If you manage to complete your studies, you’ll have learned a useless profession that won’t earn you enough money to support a dog, let alone yourself."

"My parents did all right," he said in what he hoped was a confident sounding voice. "They were highly respected in their field, and they—"

"Well, the way I see it, their profession didn't seem to get them very far, now did it?" Mr. Davies arched an eyebrow at the boy, peering over his paper. His thin upper lip curled in a faint, but victorious smile at the undisguised shock then dismay passing Daniel's features. Time to drive the point home and rid the boy of this sudden insolence. "I believe they were killed fiddling around with one of their frivolous adventures."

"Graham…" Mrs. Davies whispered, taken aback by the level of cruelty in her husband’s words. For his part, Mr. Davies disregarded his wife.

"Th-that w-was an... an a-accident," Daniel said in a low, wavering voice, inwardly cursing himself for stammering, for letting on that the man was getting to him. Just like he always did. Mr. Davies ignored him, returned to his reading material. Daniel wanted to rip the paper from his hands, shove it in his face. Instead, he forced back his anger and his hurt. Daniel tried to return to the section in the journal he'd been reading. Tried to return to his escape, but nothing he did would still the rage and pain inside. "If my father were still alive-"

"Well, your father is dead. It’s time to get over that," Davies said, rattling his newspaper, creating a breeze. Daniel was sure he felt that cold air scrape through his empty and aching heart. Daniel sat breathless with stunned shock, profoundly wounded by Mr. Davies’ words. Mr. Davies, however, continued on. "So, I might add, are all the pharaohs. If that doesn't tell you something right there, I don't know what will," he said, scowling over the top of his newspaper. Dolores sat with her fingers pressed to her lips, the blood drained from her features.

Daniel's cheeks burned with humiliation and self-doubt at the casually spoken words. Any other time, those few sentences would be enough to shatter all Daniel's dreams and hopes for escape. He was determined not to let it happen on this night.

I’m a good kid, he reminded himself. I’m smart. His stomach churned with tension. Fear and anger simultaneously washed over him. No, he told himself, my parents weren’t foolish, and what they did wasn’t nonsense. It couldn't be true. The man was just trying to upset him, and Daniel wasn’t going to let the scathing words get to him. It couldn’t be true. He knew what Davies was doing. Daniel saw him do it to Dolores all the time. No, he wasn’t going to listen, wasn’t going to allow the man to beat him down anymore. It doesn’t matter what he says…

"Dan, what did I just tell you?"

Daniel gritted his teeth, ducked his head lower to the pages and wished the man would leave him the hell alone. "You told me to read the newspaper," he muttered without looking up.

"And?"

Daniel paused a moment, marshalling his courage before he spoke. "And I'll read it later." He knew he was pushing it, could all but feel the growing anger radiating from Mr. Davies, but couldn't seem to stop himself. In truth, he was surprised to discover that it felt good to challenge the man so openly.

Mr. Davies stared at him, his pale eyes somehow growing even colder. He fastidiously folded his paper, smoothed the front page as he set it beside him. Sliding to the edge of his recliner, he held out his hand.

"Hand me that book, right now."

Daniel tried to ignore the instant panic filling him and forced himself to look the man in the eye.

"No, sir." Daniel was aware that he was stepping over a line, risking god only knew how much punishment, but he would not back down. Some things were worth fighting for. At some point in his life, Daniel told himself, he had to stand up for what was important to him. Come what may, Daniel knew he had reached that point.

"Dan, I said, give me that book."

"It was my father's—"

"I know it was your father's. When you learn to do as you’re told and show the proper respect, you'll get it back." Davies glared at Daniel, hard and long, a dangerous, tightly controlled fury lighting his pale eyes.

Daniel, holding steadfast in his newfound allegiance to himself, stared back.

"Now, are you going to give it to me," Mr. Davies held out his hand further, "or do I have to come over there and take it from you?"

Daniel set his jaw in a stubborn line, returned his attention to the book. Though his hands were trembling so hard the pages rattled, he pretended to read and simply said, "I’m not giving it to you."

Dolores watched the exchange with fearful eyes. She lifted a hand in an ineffectual gesture, slid forward in her chair.

Davies darted his head in Dolores’ direction, pointed a warning finger. Dolores seemed to wilt and sagged back in her chair, only her widened eyes moving back and forth between her husband and Daniel.

Daniel resisted the urge to look at Dolores and kept his eyes fixed on his father's handwriting. The hastily scrawled words had become meaningless shapes, but somehow, they offered him courage. Before he even had time to react, Mr. Davies loomed over him, snatching at the journal. The man was able to move far more quickly than Daniel would have suspected—like a cobra striking. Daniel scrambled from his chair, grasping the book as tight as he could to his chest. Mr. Davies grabbed onto the bottom corner of the journal, and a frenetic tug of war ensued.

Daniel stumbled and heard a terrible ripping sound when the book was wrenched from his hands.

Mr. Davies held it up, the binding from the leather cover nearly torn off, the pages bent and wrinkled from their struggle.

"You didn't have to ruin it!" Daniel shouted, his eyes filling with angry, helpless tears.

Without warning, the flat of Mr. Davies's hand struck Daniel's cheek, snapping his head to the side. The force of the blow and subsequent explosion of pain caught him by surprise, and Daniel stumbled backward, falling over the armrest of the chair and landing in a tangle on the seat.

"Don't you ever use that tone with me," Davies growled at Daniel. He grabbed the boy by the upper arm and hauled him roughly to his feet. Pointing a long finger in Daniel's face, Davies added. "Do you understand?"

Daniel struggled with all his might not to cry out from the added pain of the bruising grip on his arm. Keeping his head averted so the man wouldn’t see the tears brimming in his eyes, Daniel fought to pull his arm free. Mr. Davies only tightened his grip, and this time Daniel couldn’t stop a yelp from escaping his lips.

Dolores gasped at the sound of Daniel’s cry and he shot her a frantic, silent plea for help. She pressed her hands against the armrests of her chair as if to stand, but then stopped, seemingly paralyzed with fear. Daniel understood, but at the same time, he felt a sting of betrayal almost as sharp as the blow to his face.

"You’d better answer me, right now, young man," Davies growled. The words were punctuated with a brisk shake, as though Daniel were a misbehaving dog. "I asked if you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Daniel choked out through gritted teeth, closing his eyes to trap the hot, burning tears.

"And your book wouldn’t have gotten torn if you had done as you were told. Maybe you’ll think about that the next time you decide to behave like a stubborn little brat." Mr. Davies released his iron grip, giving Daniel a hard shove in the direction of the stairs. "Now get up to your room. I don't want to see or hear from you for the rest of the night."

Daniel stumbled toward the steps before righting himself. When he turned once more to silently plead with Dolores to support him, all Daniel received was a mouthed "Go." Betrayed yet again, Daniel watched as the man returned to his recliner, tucked Daniel’s book beside him, picked up his paper again, and began to calmly read, as though nothing had transpired. Dolores retrieved her needlepoint, which had at some point fallen to the carpet by her feet. She held the frame in her lap, gazing down with tear-filled eyes at the pattern blurring into a watery kaleidoscope of color.

Even though he was trembling from head to foot, his cheek stinging, arm throbbing in time with his racing pulse, Daniel forced himself to stand his ground and took a few steps closer to Davies. He refused to cry even though his vision was blurred from the tears in his eyes. "Look… I… I won’t read it anymore, I promise. Please, m-my father left that to me. It’s…it’s…" the last words faded, choked when his throat tightened with emotion. It’s all I have left of him.

Mr. Davies raised an eyebrow again, but didn’t bother to look at him. "Dan, if you ever want to see your book again, I suggest you go to your room now."

Daniel glanced again at Dolores, but she kept her attention on her needlepoint, the frame shaking tremulously. He wanted to scream with frustration, with the sense of injustice. He knew any further protest would only make things worse, so he turned away, refusing to rub his burning cheek and bruised upper arm. He made his way up the stairs, his back rigid, shoulders trembling with tension.

As soon as Daniel was in his room, the tears began to fall, his chest tight and aching from the withheld emotions, his breath coming in hitched, barely suppressed sobs. He cupped his hand to his still burning cheek and took deep breaths, trying to calm down.

Daniel vowed to get his journal back, somehow. Even if he had steal it back. He refused to allow the man’s words to sway him. It was true, Daniel’s counselor had told him he’d be able to get any number of scholarships, and in that moment, Daniel also vowed that not only would he get one scholarship, he’d get multiple scholarships, just to spite the man. He’d go to college, work his ass off, get a degree, maybe two. He’d graduate, become successful and rich and famous. He’d buy a house much nicer than this one, and he’d show Mr. Davies just who was full of garbage and nonsense.

He could do it if he just worked hard enough. If circumstances only allowed him the chance. Daniel angrily swiped the tears from his face, held his breath a moment to stifle the sobs still wanting to come.

I’m smart. My parents were smart. I’m smarter than Davies will ever be. It doesn’t matter what he says, because nothing he says is true. I will prove him wrong, the newly defiant voice in his mind spoke up with sudden determination.

He had a plan, but first he’d have to stop crying like some scared little kid, and the only way he could think to stop was to get out of that place. He needed, more than anything else, to escape, to forget.

Darting a glance at his closed door, Daniel went over to the window, pushed it up, and carefully climbed outside onto the small overhang of roof. Reaching for the large tree branch close to the roof’s edge, he swung himself onto the sturdy oak, clambered down and ran across the street, heading for the park halfway down the block. Escaping.

He passed by the baseball field, spotted five teenaged kids hanging around by the bleachers. If he kept going, maybe they wouldn’t notice him.

"Hey, look! It's the little dweeb in our math class!" a male, pubescent voice shouted, the owner of which pointing at him.

The four other kids—a taller, blonde boy and three girls—turned in his direction, and Daniel froze, cursing, a wave of dread racing through him.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" the same boy chanted in a sing-songy voice.

Daniel glared at the kids, and a strange combination of anger and weariness filled him. Weariness from ridicule, from the fact that he could never seem to escape the bullying, the constant reminder that he didn’t fit in anywhere.

"Leave him alone, Brian. He's just a little kid," one of the girls said, offering Daniel a friendly smile. Maybe she could sense Daniel wasn’t going to buckle under their words, or maybe she only felt sorry for him.

"Come on over here, kid," the other taller, fair-haired boy said.

Daniel nervously licked his lips, stole a quick glance behind him. Maybe there was still a chance to get away from them. To not have to deal with any of this. He wondered if he made a break for it, would they chase after him? Even if he did get away, would he be able to live it down in school the next day? That thought made him take a deep breath and face whatever would happen next.

When he stepped closer, he saw that the kids were drinking beer, the yeasty smell heavy in the cool night air, two empty six packs already cluttering the bleacher steps behind them. The girl took a drag from her cigarette and offered it to him.

Daniel shook his head, his cheeks flaming. "N-no thank you."

The two boys guffawed. "Nuh-nuh-nuh-no thank you," Brian imitated in a mocking falsetto.

Daniel glared at the older boy. After what he’d just put up with from Mr. Davies, the teasing was too childish to even phase him. "What do you guys want, anyway?"

Brian started to jeer at Daniel some more, but the blonde boy elbowed him. "Shut up, man. You’re scaring the kid," he said in the infinite superiority of one all of fifteen-years old.

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, raised his chin. "I’m not scared," he said, trying unsuccessfully to pitch his voice a little lower.

"Good." The boy clapped him hard enough on the shoulder to make Daniel stumble a few steps back. "’Cause we aren't gonna bite'cha. What's your name again, kid? I'm Steve."

"Daniel."

"What happened to your face?" Steve asked, craning his neck to get a better look in the dim light. Clearly outlined on Daniel’s cheek was a bright red slash. Daniel’s hand flew to the spot.

"Nothing," he said.

Steve nodded and decided to leave it alone. He popped open a beer can and thrust it toward Daniel. "You want one?"

When Daniel merely blinked at it, Steve lightly thumped the can against Daniel's chest. "Go on, take it." Eyeing Daniel's blotchy complexion and puffy, bloodshot eyes, a flicker of sympathy, of unspoken understanding passed Steve's face. "You look like you could use one."

The girl who had spoken to Daniel earlier looked at Steve wide-eyed. "He's just a kid, Steve...."

Daniel glanced at her, but reluctantly accepted the can. Five pairs of eyes fixed on him, so he took a cautious sip. He tried not to shudder at the bitter taste, then took another longer swallow. He nearly choked, suppressed a cough, much to the kids' amusement. They laughed, drank from their own beers and renewed their conversation, accepting him in their ranks as though he'd passed some rite of passage.

Somehow Daniel managed to finish his beer, and somehow, sometime later, found himself halfway through another one.

After a while, his head began to buzz, his limbs became heavy, and his thoughts, for once, were muted, strangely distant. Slower even. Nothing mattered to him at the moment. Not his foster father, not the fact that Daniel didn't know how he'd make it through the next few years until he could go away to college and be responsible for himself. Nothing. The feeling was the closest thing to freedom Daniel had experienced in nearly as long as he could remember. He wished he could somehow make the feeling last.

As he headed back toward the Davies house—he could never call that place home—Daniel wished he could somehow hold onto the odd but pleasant feeling of being disconnected from his pain and unhappy existence. But then, he thought of what could happen the next morning. That night, even. What if Davies noticed that Daniel had sneaked out? What if he could smell the alcohol and cigarette smoke on him? Daniel’s stomach clamped down. His head pounded, his gut churned and he stumbled, managing to fall to his knees in front of a patch of shrubs before everything came up. He knelt in the cool, damp grass waiting for his stomach to stop heaving, his arm wrapped around his shuddering middle, his head pounding, eyes watering.

When he began to feel a little better, he staggered to his feet, ducked over to side of the yard. Carefully climbing back up the tall oak leading to his bedroom window, Daniel stepped onto the roofline edge. He wobbled a few times, his worn sneakers skittering on the shingles. He steadied himself by catching onto the slope of the roof, leaning his weight against it. The realization that he had nearly fallen was strangely distant, as though it could have happened to someone else.

The world wavered for a moment, and Daniel slowly sat down on the edge of roof just outside his still open window. He could hear muffled shouting and crying from the bedroom down the hall from his own. The Davies were arguing again. Daniel thought about going back inside before he was discovered missing, but found he wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to have to once again listen to Mr. Davies' anger, to Dolores' pain, so he reached over, slid the window closed, effectively shutting them out.

Despite the coolness of the air, the sudden quiet and stillness of the night were too inviting to resist. Daniel shivered from the cold, his bare arms pricking in goosebumps, so he pulled up his legs, wrapped his arms around them for warmth. Gazing up at a clear sky, the moon was a bright sickle against the inky blackness, the stars a vast canopy above him. A beckoning of freedom, a promise that there was more to this world than the Davies' house, and the incessant loneliness and uncertainty that was Daniel’s life.

As he watched the constellations, still feeling the effects of the alcohol in his system, Daniel’s fears receded to a quiet place in his mind. If he didn't allow himself to think too much, he hoped those fears would stay there. Strange, but not unpleasant waves of dizziness poured over him, causing him to list. When he closed his eyes, he saw his mother sitting outside alone under an arid, starry sky, the glass clasped in her hand, her sole companion.

And finally, Daniel understood.

In the morning, he'd woken with a slight headache and a dry, scratchy throat, but otherwise, he felt fine. He didn’t even remember crawling back through his window and getting into bed, but somehow, he must have managed. Once in school, the kids he'd hung out with greeted him with friendly hello's rather than the usual teasing.

Almost two weeks later, one night when Daniel got into bed, he felt something hard underneath his pillow. He lifted the pillow to find his father’s journal. Carefully opening the cover, he found it had been glued, the wrinkled pages smoothed out. Tucked inside was a note in Dolores' flowery script:

Blinking back tears of gratitude, Daniel chided himself for being such a baby, but the gesture had caught him by surprise, made him realize that Dolores was just as much a prisoner of fate or bad circumstances as Daniel.

He made sure to keep the journal with him all the time, hidden in the bottom of the knapsack he took to school, to ensure that Mr. Davies never saw it, and to ensure that Dolores’ gesture was never disclosed. Throughout the rest of his life he wondered how Dolores had explained the missing journal.

From that day on, though, he and Dolores became silent conspirators against Mr. Davies’ iron control.

Weeks and months passed in the Davies home. Daniel’s thirteenth birthday went by with the obligatory festivities, an outward show to friends and colleagues that Davies and his wife were good and caring parents.

With each passing month, with each passing ridicule, Daniel became more and more reliant on his friends in the park—something uncharacteristic for him. Daniel was used to relying only on himself, but the other kids offered him an unexpected but welcome distraction, an opportunity to tune out his own problems and listen to their self-important, alien teenaged angst, to which he pretended to understand and relate.

On the nights when the pressures of his foster home and his self-imposed academic load weighed on him, he’d sneak out and look for his friends. Most of the time, they were there, in the usual spot by the bleachers. Sometimes it was just Steve and his girlfriend. A few times, Daniel found only Steve there. Daniel tried to understand the unspoken connection he and Steve shared. Steve’s quiet sympathy made Daniel wonder what went on in the other boy’s expensive looking home but Daniel never asked. Just as Steve, after the first night, never asked any questions Daniel didn’t want to answer either.

Sometimes, even Steve wasn’t there, and the bleachers were silent and empty, appearing strangely forlorn under the illumination of the spotlights. On those nights, Daniel would wander the darkened neighborhood alone. He wondered what went on in those tidy, affluent rows of homes, just like he’d wondered about Steve’s. Were the people who occupied them happy? Were the homes safe and inviting with normal families inside, or did they share dark secrets of their own? As he walked by each house, faint light shining through the curtains and seeping into the night, Daniel felt separated from any sense of normalcy by a barrier far thicker than those windowpanes.

On the nights when he couldn't risk sneaking out and Mr. Davies was especially harsh with him, sometimes the need to settle his quaking nerves and quiet his racing thoughts became too great. Daniel would pace in his room, trying to calm himself, but always the knowledge that there was an easier way spoke to him. There was a calm waiting for him, a sense of freedom, if only he had the courage to go after it.

Finally, one night the need became greater than the fear, and Daniel stole downstairs and carefully opened the cupboard that held the man’s well-stocked, but largely untouched liquor cabinet.

The first few times Daniel was too nervous about being caught to do more than take one quick sip from the closest bottle he could reach. In time, however, as his anger and frustration grew, the quick gulps grew into long swallows to be replaced with water so he wouldn't be detected. The stolen respite was a small act of rebellion, a small way to establish control. To take back his peace and offer him an artificial courage.

Once he'd even swiped an unopened, dusty bottle of rye whiskey that had been pushed to the far back corner of the cabinet, at the time planning to share it with his friends. After a moment of reconsideration, Daniel decided to keep it for himself. He suspected the only common ground he shared with those kids was the desire for escape, the difference being the other kids desired escape from boredom and parental restrictions. Daniel’s need went far deeper than he himself could articulate, or even fully understand, and so he stashed the bottle on the rooftop by his window, tucked against the rain gutters. Sometimes on nights when he couldn’t sleep and self-doubt would plague him, he’d climb back out on the roof, watch the night sky and remind himself of his plan, steel his resolve to prove his foster father wrong. Sometimes, on the nights when he needed to dull both physical and emotional pain, he’d sip from that stolen bottle. Sometimes just knowing it was there was enough.

As time continued to go by, his fourteenth birthday passed in much the same way as his thirteenth one, and Daniel spent his days in a carefully controlled regimen of studying, of avoiding Mr. Davies as much as possible, and, he hated to admit, Dolores too. Watching Dolores only filled Daniel with a growing sense of despair. The more diminished she became, the more Davies seemed to torment her. A part of Daniel even became angry with her, angry that she didn’t do anything to protect herself. At first he tried to come to her defense, inadvertently directing added abuse toward himself, but those times were diminishing, as well. He could protect himself, or he could protect her. He couldn’t do both, not that he really wanted to--not anymore.

If he hadn’t been so focused on his studies, he figured he probably would have run away, tried to make his own way, but he was determined to fulfill his promise to himself. He only had two more years to go until he could apply for a scholarship. Two years. It may has well have been twenty for how unattainable it seemed.

Daniel was surprised to one night find his third stolen, hidden bottle empty, save for one swallow. The discovery both frightened him and sent a strange wave of panic through him. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to summon the courage to swipe yet another bottle—surely Mr. Davies must have noticed by now. Even more frightening, he wasn’t sure if he had the courage not to. He never had time to find out which fear would win out.

On a cold, damp autumn night, Daniel lay stretched out on his bed, textbook in front of him and he tried to ignore the constant throb of his wrenched shoulder and sprained wrist. Tried not to look at the bruises forming in the imprint of Mr. Davies’s thick fingers on the skin of his slender forearms. The tip of his tongue constantly flicked at the deep split in his swollen upper lip, tasting the blood that still seeped. The sharp, biting pain from the blow had faded, and now his mouth felt strangely numb, like the distant ache of Novocaine wearing off.

The house had become silent. Daniel hoped that Mr. Davies had vented enough of his anger for one night, but he knew from experience that silence didn’t always mean safety. Sometimes it just meant that the man was only gearing up for more, a thought that made Daniel’s stomach churn. He forced himself not to think about it. Forced himself to read another paragraph. Besides, it didn’t help to think about it. Never did. Months earlier he had given up on the thought of telling anybody. Who’d listen?

Just forget it, and study.

Finally, after reading the same sentence three times without comprehending a single word, Daniel gave up. Pushing up from the bed with his good hand, Daniel went over to the closet, took out a warm sweater and pulled it on over his T-shirt. Striding to the window, he angrily tore it open, then cursed when it banged loudly against the pane. He waited a moment, and just as he swung one leg onto the roof, he heard the click of the doorknob turning.

Daniel froze. His gaze locked on the opening door then on a startled face. He took a quick breath in relief that it was Dolores behind the door, and not her husband. Daniel noticed that her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks ruddy from tears. When she realized what he was doing, an expression of sympathy, and something almost like betrayal passed her haggard features. Daniel knew he should come back inside, but something rooted him to the spot—half his body outside with freedom beckoning, the other half still inside, still caught in a life he feared he'd never escape.

For what seemed an eternity, he and Dolores stared into each other’s eyes. Daniel was the first one to drop his gaze and he didn’t make any move to step back inside. Without saying a word, Dolores turned away, stepped back into the hallway and closed the door. With a heavy heart, Daniel climbed the rest of the way onto the roof, quietly sliding the window shut behind him, making a decision he didn’t realize at the time would change his life.

As he stepped onto the dampened lawn, he glanced back up at his window, half expecting to see Dolores’ shadow framed in the light of one of the windows, but there was nothing. For a moment, Daniel considered going back inside to see if she was all right. For a moment, he was ashamed of his betrayal, but instead of going back inside, Daniel turned away from the house, started down the street in slow jog, and by the time he was past the first two houses, he was running at full speed. Running so fast, his feet hurt as they slapped against the wet pavement. He didn’t stop until he reached the park. He didn’t even care if his friends were there or not, but Brian and Steve were both there. They turned, startled at Daniel’s rapid appearance as he skidded to stop beside them, panting from exertion.

Steve’s eyes widened at the sight of Daniel’s still bleeding and swollen mouth, and Daniel was grateful when the older boy didn’t say anything. Steve’s expression darkened, and not for the first time, Daniel could see something dangerous in his eyes. Anger, despair and rebellion.

Instead of hanging out by the bleachers, the boys headed for the street, Steve vibrating with a nervous energy that disconcertingly reminded Daniel of Mr. Davies when he was gearing up. The bitter smell of beer wafting off both boys was overlaid with a stronger odor – sweet yet sharp, pungent smoke.

Steve sauntered up to a car parked along the quiet, darkened street, Brian flanking him. Steve pulled a bent coat hanger from his pocket and began to jimmy it through the window casing. Daniel stood a few steps back, watching, wanting to protest, wanting to ask what Steve was doing, but he couldn’t find his voice.

Steve yanked the door open with a triumphant whoop, and he and Brian high-fived each other. Steve leaned into the car, and Daniel could hear the older boy tossing objects around in the car. Steve handed some things, which Daniel couldn’t see to Brian who stashed them in his pockets. Brian turned to hand a stack of cassette tapes to Daniel, but he took a hesitant step back.

Brian sneered at him. "What are you—chickenshit? I knew you’d be a fucking baby about this."

Daniel started to reply with something equally scathing, but he directed his attention back to the car when he heard a loud crack. Steve had broken open the locked glove compartment using a screwdriver. "Uh, Steve, I think we should-"

Even as the words left his mouth, Daniel saw red and blue lights flash, then a short wail of a siren. The police car had been sitting at the cul-de-sac directly opposite them, apparently in wait. Two officers stepped from the car. The boys all considered fleeing, but a sharp order from one of the officers halted them in their tracks.

It was almost laughable the way Brian reacted when the three were placed inside the police cruiser. His sniffling and crying disclosed his true nature. Steve, on the other hand, smirked and treated the entire indignity as though it were a common everyday occurrence. He tossed his long hair, chatted to the officers with a forced cheerfulness, but a constant, nervous laugh was the only indicator of his fear.

Daniel merely sat back and watched the porch lights of his neighborhood sail by. There was a moment when he thought he should be scared to be in a police car, surely on his way to some kind of discipline, but overall, Daniel only felt an odd sense of liberation.

When they reached the station and each boy was given an opportunity to call home, Daniel asked the officer to call Children’s Services, ask for his caseworker. The officer looked Daniel over carefully, his focus stopping for a moment on Daniel’s split lip. Should he have felt shame? Daniel wondered. Should he have covered the evidence of his abuse?

"George, can I see you a minute?" the second officer said, tapping his partner on the shoulder.

"Sure," George said, eyeing his arrestee. The two officers spoke briefly, nodding now and then, glancing at Daniel. Daniel didn’t care what they were saying. He only cared that his bruises and joints were beginning to ache.

"Well, kid, looks like you’re off the hook," the officer said, returning to his seat. "Your buddies said you had nothing to do with it. Still want us to call your caseworker?"

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"You’re not going to be charged with anything, you understand that, right?" asked the officer.

"Yes, I do."

The officer squinted, sizing up the young man. Good looking kid, he thought, except for that busted-up lip. He noticed Daniel massaging his wrist and saw a mottling of purple bruising barely concealed by the boy's sleeve. "Can I get you anything?"

"Do you have any aspirin?" he asked the officer.

"Yeah, sure, kid," the man said, reaching for his desk drawer without taking his eyes off Daniel. "You and your buddies get in a fight tonight?"

"No."

"How’d you hurt yourself?" he asked, dumping two tablets onto his desk blotter.

"I didn’t," Daniel told him, picking up the medicine. "Could you call my caseworker, please?"

"I got someone on it already." The officer handed Daniel a glass of water, which he took. "How’d you get beat up?"

Daniel put the glass down and closed his eyes, tired and wrung out from the entire evening. "I’m fine. I’m just tired."

"Uh-huh," the officer said. "Why don’t you want to go home?"

"I don’t have a home," Daniel told him, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Records show you live with a Mr. and Mrs. Davies."

"Not anymore," he said. There was no way he was going back there. He couldn’t go back there.

"Uh-huh." The officer sat back in his chair and piled his meaty arms across his chest. "There’s a cot in the other room. You wanna sack out for a while?" Daniel nodded, and the officer propelled himself up and out of his chair. "Then, let’s go."

Long after Steve and Brian’s parents had retrieved them, Daniel still waited for his social worker to arrive. He fell asleep just about the same time the aspirin kicked in, and when he woke up, his social worker was looking down at him. Sitting up quickly, Daniel swiped a hand over his eyes, tried to clear his sleep-fogged head.

"Daniel?" she said. Her hair was disheveled, clothes wrinkled, looking as though she’d just gotten out of bed. She fussed over the cut to his lip and the swollen bruise.

"I’m not going back there," Daniel whispered.

"You don’t have to," she said, and then explained to Daniel that she had called Mr. Davies before coming to the station. They had come to the agreement that it was time for Daniel to move to another foster home.

Daniel stifled a sardonic laugh. He could just imagine what the man had really said. He also could well imagine his social worker’s dilemma of what to do with him now. Daniel had become even more of a difficult placement – teenaged, too precocious for his own good, and a run-in with the law to boot.

Daniel’s case worker signed all the necessary papers, and he was released to her. Together they left the police station, and in the car she told him that he’d have to spend a few days, maybe a few weeks in a children’s shelter while he was reassigned. Daniel, his head resting on the cool door window, nodded.

Despite the circumstances, Daniel thought he should have been happy to be evicted from the Davies’s lives, to finally escape from a life he’d hated so much, but he found it hard to conjure up any emotion whatsoever. And it was a different kind of disconnected from the one he found in the stolen drinks. Oddly enough, he found himself no longer caring what happened to him. Where they placed him. None of it mattered. He was just tired. Too tired to think, to care what they did with him, and he didn’t mind staying at a shelter for a while. He could just tune out and let the world pass him by.

It was nearly dawn by the time he was checked into the shelter. Nearly sun-up by the time he was assigned a bed. When the sky began to lighten behind the bent, dusty metal blinds, Daniel finally fell asleep, too exhausted to dream.

Nearly a week of disjointed time had passed when Daniel’s case worker triumphantly informed him that she’d found him a new home. Before the unwelcome news could fully sink in, she drove him to a neighborhood far less affluent than that of the Davies’s. Many of those houses’ yards were unkempt, leaves strewn about, fences in need of painting.

They pulled up in front of a small house with faded blue paint on the siding, a few straggly looking flowers still managing to survive the autumn cold. Daniel followed his case worker up the cracked concrete steps, waited as she knocked on the door. It opened after a few moments of fumbling and shuffling noises.

Daniel squinted, trying to see past the gloom beyond the open doorway, trying to make out the silhouetted form of a tall woman. She greeted them, stepped back to allow them to come inside.

The woman introduced herself. Her name was Liza, or Lillian, or some name starting with an ‘L.’ Daniel didn’t really take note, or pay attention to the conversation between his new foster parent and case worker. It didn’t matter anyway. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the floor, watching the woman’s gray tabby cat winding around her legs, purring loudly, its eyes closed in apparent ecstasy. After his case worker had left and the woman showed him to his room, Daniel quietly thanked her and stepped inside. He sat down on the edge of the bed, turning his back slightly from her. She took the hint and left him alone.

Sliding from the bed and onto the floor, Daniel glanced around at his new surroundings. The heavily shadowed room was spare, the hardwood floor dull and scratched, the area rug upon which he sat was equally faded, nearly threadbare, but soft to the touch. A twin sized bed, narrow dresser and bookshelf took up the entire small space. Nothing adorned the plain white walls. Daniel noticed the paint was peeling in the corners and around the windowsills. The bookshelf was crammed with dusty books, books lined up, books piled on top. He skimmed the spines, but as soon as he saw the top row—The Hardy Boys Mysteries—he knew he needn’t look any farther. Books in foster homes were always the same—books left by other kids, books well-meaning adults thought children liked to read, books that nobody read but looked good when a caseworker showed up.

A square cardboard box with Daniel’s name written on it sat in front of the narrow closet. He supposed it contained his belongings from the Davies's home. Staring at the box, Daniel’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. He realized his entire life could be packed up in a box scarcely large enough for a television set. Squeezing his eyes shut, Daniel willed the tears away, forced back his self-pity.

It doesn’t matter what happens now, remember? he reminded himself, his fingers unconsciously plucking at the loose threads on the rug. It’s just another place. No big deal. You’ll get used to it, just like all the other places. You can take care of yourself.

Later on, the woman called him for dinner, but Daniel claimed that he wasn’t hungry, even though his stomach was growling. He was surprised when she didn’t make an issue of it and left him alone.

The next morning, he woke to find the box unpacked, the open closet doors revealing his meager wardrobe. His books were neatly arranged on the top shelf of the bookcase, transplanting the Hardy Boys to the floor. He wondered how he’d managed to sleep through all that.

Daniel licked his dry lips and took in more of the room, what there was to see. He looked out his window, which overlooked a small but shady backyard. He saw what he suspected was his new foster parent’s car, a beat up old Saab. Great, he thought. She’s doing this for the money.

He turned away from the window, and that’s when he saw it—his father’s journal laid out on the nightstand beside his bed. Seeing it out in the open seized the air in his lungs. He tore it off the nightstand and shoved it back into his bag.

"I hope you don’t mind that I put your things away," the woman said from the doorway. Daniel spun around, startled by the voice.

"I’m sorry," she said. "I didn’t mean to frighten you."

"No—I’m fine," he managed to croak out. Daniel glanced around the room, a little uncomfortable with having a stranger seeing him in his pajamas, even if it was her house. He pulled and stretched his T-shirt, ran a hand through his morning hair. She sensed his discomfort and turned away.

"Anyhow, I have some breakfast food—cereal, eggs, toast—whatever you’d like. Come on down when you’re ready," she said, and padded away before Daniel had a chance to answer, or thank her.

When he heard her steps reach a distant room, Daniel made sure the journal was well hidden, and poked his head into the hall, looking for the bathroom. He tiptoed to the bathroom, pulled the door closed as quietly as possible behind him, and looked at his face in the mirror. He studied the thick scab on his upper lip and the still evident, greenish-tinged bruise that had spread out over the bridge of his nose and mouth as impassively as though he were gazing at someone else’s reflection. Moving his hand to the chipped brass frame of the mirror, he ran his fingers over the cracks.

How many different homes had he been in over the past six years? How many times had he looked at himself in someone else’s bathroom? How many times had he said to himself, "This is the place, things will be better now"? How many times had he believed it?

Not this time.

He finished using the bathroom, wiping down the sink and countertops like he’d learned at the Davies—"This isn’t a barn, Dan"—and headed back to the room where he’d slept.

At the Davies he had been schooled in the proper usage of curtains—closed at 7pm, opened promptly at 6 am. Never too early or too late on either end. Standing in this new room, a room with soft curtains, casually allowing the sunlight and the moonlight to enter, Daniel wondered what new rules he’d have to learn.

It bugged him just a little that the woman had put his clothes away. They were his clothes, not hers, and he didn’t like having to search for them. He didn’t like that she’d gone out of her way to make him feel comfortable. He wasn’t comfortable. He didn’t want to be comfortable. He knew this was just a temporary placement. They all were. The agency did the best they could, but half the time they didn’t know what to do with him. Truth be known, he didn’t know what to do either.

When he did make it down to the kitchen, he stood in the doorway, his hands jammed in his pockets, waiting to be invited in. The woman scurried around the bright room, pouring milk in her coffee, and some for the cat. She pulled a dish from a chaotic cupboard tossed a piece of hot toast on it, all the while swaying to music playing from a radio in an adjacent room. Daniel’s eyelids fluttered, unnerved by the disorder, the lack of discipline, the higgledy-piggledy way she prepared a meal. There was something about it that made him nervous, that made him want to quiet the room, contain the disorganization. This was the kind of thing that could only lead to trouble.

"Oh, good morning," she said, spinning around toward him, not smiling, but her expression was open, inviting even. "What would you like?"

"Whatever you’re having," he said, slinking into the room. In the bright light of the morning sun shining through the windows, Daniel noticed that she was older than any of his previous foster parents. Her dark hair was shot through with gray, lines bracketed her mouth and crinkled the skin around her eyes. The tabby cat from the night before lay on top of the table, cleaning its fur. Daniel thought that couldn’t be very sanitary. But it wasn’t his house, so who was he to say what was what?

"Well, I’m having coffee and toast, but I would think a young man like you would need something more substantial," she said, swinging open the doors to the pantry. "I have some dry cereal…or I could make you some oatmeal. How about some scrambled eggs?"

"Cereal is fine," Daniel said, placing himself in a chair.

"Cereal it is, then," she said, handing Daniel a box. "The refrigerator is over there. Silverware is in that drawer. Bowls are up there. Make yourself at home."

Yeah, right, he thought, gathering up the milk and dishes. They always say that, until you do one thing that they don’t like, and all of a sudden it’s their home, not yours…

She brought her toast and coffee to the table and sat down across from Daniel’s seat. She sipped her coffee and stroked her cat, watching the young man step lightly around her kitchen. She understood this behavior, this caution and concern on the part of the child in a new home. Daniel was the latest in a long line of foster children she had taken into her home, but he would probably be her last. She was getting too old, and the kids were getting too unruly. She had thought about giving it up all together, but then Sheila, her friend in Children’s Services, called her up, begging her to take this one kid—"He’s a special one. Bright, quiet. He could sure use a little guidance." Guidance, she had come to know, was code for "He’s been in some trouble." Still…

"So, what shall I call you?" she asked, watching him take his seat.

Daniel frowned. Nobody ever asked him what he wanted to be called. They just called him what they wanted to call him. "It doesn’t matter."

"Sure it does," she said, dunking her toast in the coffee. "Do you prefer Dan-"

"No."

Her hand stopped midway to her mouth, the toast dripping coffee onto the tabletop. Here was something, she thought. "Okay, how about Daniel?"

He rounded his shoulders, embarrassed that he’d spoken so quickly. "Yeah, that’s fine."

"Good. And you can call me Lila, Daniel."

"Yeah, okay," he said. So her name was Lila, then. He realized that he hadn’t cared what her name was up until that point. Maybe he still didn’t. At any rate, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be here long enough for it to make any difference.

Daniel waited a moment for Lila to ask him another question, and when she didn’t, he poured himself some cereal. Occasionally, his eyes would dart toward her, uncomfortable with being watched while he ate. She got the message, and kept her eyes averted.

"Well, I guess now would be as good a time as any to talk about the rules of the house," Lila said, breaking off a piece of toast. "While you’re here, treat this house like your home. You’re not a guest; you’re a member of the household. Households don’t run on their own. We all have to pitch in, but don’t worry—I won’t expect you to do much. I mean, well, look around," she said, offering the evidence of her non-traditional house, "I’m not a stickler for cleanliness. I certainly don’t expect you to be, either. Your room is your room. I only ask that you don’t leave any food lying around in there. Zuzu here is getting fat enough." Lila scooped the cat off the table and plunked her down in her lap. "Aren’t you, Zuzu?"

Daniel listened, waiting for the list of demands and restrictions.

"And as far as anything else, my philosophy is that your main job is to be a student," she said, scratching the cat behind its ears. "Do the best you can, and ask me for help whenever you need it. Oh, except for math. I’m not going to be much help past geometry I."

Daniel nodded. It didn’t matter. Foster parents always said they’d be willing to help anyway they could, but they rarely did. Daniel figured out long before coming to Lila’s that he didn’t need anybody to help him with his homework.

"Anything else? Anything you’d like to know?" she asked.

Daniel straightened his posture and brought the spoon to his mouth slowly. "No. I don’t think so."

Lila watched him, his manners impeccable, his back soldier-straight. He was fully dressed, right down to his running shoes, his light brown hair neatly combed and slicked down into submission. She thought he looked terribly uncomfortable. It was a stark contrast to Lila’s own slouched posture and sloppy tracksuit she usually wore around the house. She rested her slippered feet on the seat of the chair next to her and pet her cat, wondering where this young man had come by such severe behavior.

There would plenty of time to talk, she thought. She picked up her coffee and took slow sips, enjoying the music that played behind her.

Though Lila, her cat and her cheerful home should have been the salve to help heal Daniel’s wounded spirits, he had learned the hard way that appearances were deceiving, and it was best not to trust anyone too soon.

Still, he did allow himself some ray of hope, a fragile optimism that maybe things would get better.

And in time they did. He had trouble sleeping the first few nights as he always did in a new place. When he was able to finally fall asleep, he was plagued by old nightmares that revisited him as they always did, too.

And so he resigned himself to sleeplessness, knowing from experience it was pointless to even try. Though his body was tired, his mind wouldn’t allow him to rest, and no amount of reading or distracting himself would change it. Those first few nights, he perched on the old trunk in front of the window gazing through the open curtains at the darkened, silent street.

He didn’t think about the Davies, at least not when he could help it. Just too much pain to sort through. One thing he did miss, though, was being able to sit out on their roof, watching the night sky. However, he didn't miss the circumstances that compelled him to the solitude of the stars.

He wondered how Dolores was. If she missed him. He missed her a little. Wondered if some of the tension Mr. Davies had unleashed on Daniel would increase two-fold on Dolores. A few times, Daniel had tried to summon the courage to phone her, but something made him stop every time he picked up the phone. Maybe, he thought, it was best to make a clean start. Maybe that time in the Davies’ house was something best forgotten anyhow.

He spent the first few weeks in Lila’s house peeking into rooms, not daring to go in. Something told him he needed to be given permission to enter certain parts of the house. One room, in particular, behind two French doors, intrigued him. The doors were usually shut, which told him he wasn’t welcome. He’d seen Lila sitting in the room a few times, late at night, usually. He tried to act casual, finding reasons to walk past the doors. It was an office of some sort, lined with books, dark and rich with colors.

"You can go on in," Lila said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Daniel turned to her, at once startled by her presence and her willingness to let him see her personal room. "Go ahead," she said, bobbing her head toward the door.

Daniel grabbed the amber cut-glass doorknob, turned it slowly, and let the heavy oak door swing open. The air was musty and old, and Daniel loved it. His feet carried him to the first case of books, most of them leather bound with gilt stenciling.

"My parents were teachers, like yours," Lila said, taking in the sight of wonder held in his eyes. "They were going to sell the house when they moved to Phoenix, but I decided to buy it from them."

Daniel nodded, a perfunctory show that he was listening, which he wasn’t, and while he did so he scanned the books on the shelf. Titles he’d almost forgotten stood before him—Agamemnon, Odysseus, The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. Authors like family members he hadn’t seen in years appeared to him—Malory, Heller, Henry Miller, and Plath. Ayn Rand rested against J.R.R Tolkein, who sidled up next to Bloom and Woolf. These were his parents’ favorites, and seeing them again awakened something inside him.

"Do you like to read?" Lila asked.

Daniel pulled an edition of Leviathan from the shelf, cracked it open and began sifting through the words. He remembered his father pouring over these words, in that kind of memory softened over time, yet remained redolent with the thought that somehow this was an important book. The archaic language, flowery and so vastly different than the books he trudged through at school, at first tripped him up. Soon enough Daniel had worked through the syntax and was reading for content. This was food for his soul. He pried open the spot where it had rested on the shelf and took its neighbor down, Four Texts on Socrates. He opened the book and was awash in a memory of his father tracing his son’s small finger over the words, reading them to the boy, all foreign and musical.

"That’s Greek," Lila said, witnessing Daniel’s cheeks and nose pinking up.

"Yes, I know," Daniel said, not taking his eyes off the text, even though the words seemed to waver and float.

"I have the English edition…"

"That’s okay," he said, turning the page. Here was the word Athens, and here was Republic—he remembered. His father’s hand was warm and dry, the skin on his fingers rough against Daniel’s. His voice was low and quiet, close to Daniel’s ear. "Andreia. Say it with me, Daniel. Andreia. It means courage."

"Andreia," Daniel said, touching the word.

Lila looked first at the page, then at Daniel, breathless that such an inconceivable thing had just occurred. "You can read Greek?"

"Kalos kai agathos."

Lila threw the dishtowel onto the desk and made a feeble attempt to find the word within the text. "Kalos what?"

"Kalos kai agathos."

"It means noble and good," Daniel whispered. He closed the book. He couldn’t read the words anymore. His eyes were too filled with tears.

"Who taught you how to read Greek?" Lila asked. Her heart wrenching, she raised a hand to Daniel’s back, resting it almost tentatively, half-ways expecting him to pull away, but he didn’t.

Daniel took a deep, shuddering breath, and whispered, "My father." He looked up and drew yet another book from the shelf.

Lila bit her lower lip and nodded. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what she had been told about his parents. "Um, your parents died when you were eight, right?"

"Yes," he said, holding but unable to open Le Petit Prince.

"You learned to read Greek when you were eight?" she asked, hoping her voice registered surprise, not shock.

"No," he said, and she was strangely relieved. "I was six."

"Six?" she asked. A few hundred questions popped into her head, but they were interrupted by the sounds of Daniel sniffling and clearing his throat. What she knew about this young man was sketchy, at best. She knew his parents had died in a freak construction accident, that they were teachers. She knew his last placement had turned ugly. She knew he was a good student—bright enough to have skipped a couple of grades, but his records read like a tour of central New York’s school districts.

And here he was, this lost boy, reading to her in a lost language, and it occurred to her that she might be the only person on Earth who knew he had the ability to do so. She immediately grieved the time lost to him, the years he could have been studying in a proper school, not just the basics, but the masters. She had known Daniel all of ten days, and already it was quite clear this was no ordinary young man. She never knew, however, just how extraordinary he was. Not until she felt his pain at excavating those stolen memories.

"And French?" she asked, pointing to the copy of The Little Prince in his hand.

"My mother spoke French," he said in a voice so quiet she could barely hear him. He passed her the book.

"Does that mean you can speak French?"

Daniel bit his lower lip, worried his brow, and shrugged. "I don’t know."

Lila nodded and let him pass by her, his eyes searching the books, his hands reaching, sometimes just to touch their spines. She opened the book up, its drawings just as fresh and sentimental in her mind as they were when she had first read it. She hoped the French she took in high school would at least allow her to muddle through part of the book, hoped it wouldn’t be inappropriate to delve that deeply into the young man’s intellect.

"Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes eules," she read, wincing at what she knew were some strange pronunciations. "Et c’est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner, des explications. Oh, sorry. Explica-see-yon."

Daniel looked at her, his eyelids fluttering, their rims red and puffy. "I don’t…I don’t remember, I guess."

Lila could hardly breathe. She couldn't take her eyes off his sad expression, off those eyes that held such secrets. She forced air into her body, and said, "Okay."

Daniel looked away, feeling that he should, feeling that he was about to cross that line with Lila. About to allow her in. He’d said enough for one day. More than he ever wanted to. He grasped hold of the cuffs on his shirt, twisted his hands, and said, "Thank you for letting me…um…"

"Any time," she told him. "You are welcome to come in here any time you want."

Daniel glanced up at her one last time, nodded, and was gone.

Lila sat the book on the credenza and pressed her trembling hand to her lips.

Late that night, Daniel, lying awake in his bed, heard a scratch at his closed door, pulling him from his tired thoughts. Climbing from the bed, he went to the door, opened it to find Zuzu, purring against his doorjamb. Daniel stepped back and she trotted into his room without prompting, and Daniel decided it was time for some stargazing. He climbed on top of the old trunk, which he had lined with a tattered blanket, and made himself comfortable, resting his elbow on the window ledge. Soon thereafter, Zuzu jumped into his lap, plunked herself down, and tucked her nose under her tail.

Daniel must have fallen asleep finally because he felt someone touching his shoulder, urging him awake by whispering his name. He blinked, winced at the stiffness of his neck, saw Lila looking at him, concerned. She gently urged him to stand and led him half-asleep to his bed, pulling the covers up snugly around him. Lila rubbed his arm, whispered good night. He felt the bed jostle as Zuzu settled in beside him, ignoring Lila's half-hearted scolding. Daniel felt Lila’s hand very lightly touch his hair, pulling a few errant strands from his face.

"Lila?" he whispered.

"Yes, Daniel."

It was probably a mistake, he knew, but something told him he could trust this woman. Something told him she might even appreciate what he was about to say. So he took a deep breath, looked her straight in the eye, and said, "The big people did not understand anything by themselves."

"I’m sorry?" she whispered.

"Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes eules," he said, embarrassed by his own knowledge. "That’s what it means. I’m sorry."

"You’re sorry?" she asked, feeling her heart break for him. "For what?"

"I knew what it meant."

"That’s okay. No apology necessary," she said. Her eyes began to burn with slow tears. "There was more, though, wasn’t there?"

"Yes," he said, crushing the top of his sheet in his hand. "And it’s tiring, for children, to always give them explanations."

Lila smiled, a tear thread across her cheek. "Yes, I’m sure it is."

The faintest of smiles broke over Daniel’s lips, and he urged himself to go one more step. "My parents taught me Arabic, too."

This new information caused Lila to pause. She merely blinked, shook her head, and whispered, "Well, I can’t help you there, bud. I don’t think I know one word in Arabic."

"Maybe I could…teach you," he said.

Lila bobbed her head up and down and smiled down at him. "Yeah, I’d like that." She stroked his soft hair away from his forehead and marveled at his knowledge, but more than that, at his capacity to trust. "I’d like that very much. But for now, it’s very late, so why don’t you get some sleep."

Daniel nodded and felt her hand brush against his cheek. He whispered good night. He vaguely heard Lila leave the room, and he turned on his side, snuggling against the furry warmth beside him. Before sleep fully took him, Daniel began to allow that hope to grow, to believe that maybe he’d found a place he could be safe for a while.

Over the next few months, Daniel forged an unlikely friendship with Lila, who treated him as though he were a favorite nephew, and the arrangement suited Daniel just fine. Lila told Daniel that she had been married once, a lifetime ago, a mistake she would not be repeating. She’d never had a desire for children of her own, telling him that the world was full of kids who needed homes, and she’d been happy to provide one.

Lila was fascinated by Daniel’s interest in ancient Egypt and would bring home books she thought Daniel would like, and Daniel would in turn regale her with everything he’d learned from them. They’d sit for hours in the study, the dust in the air shimmering like tiny jewels. Daniel did teach Lila some Arabic, both of them giggling when Lila sometimes mispronounced or forgot the words. She didn’t really have a good ear for languages, but her enthusiasm more than made up for it, and Daniel discovered that he had another talent—a gift for teaching, for helping. Something he suspected would never have come to light had he not met Lila. His hopes for a safe harbor were finally granted, and the newfound stability helped ease the constant tightness that had settled in Daniel’s chest and shoulders until finally, one day, he realized it was gone.

Lila had placed a few calls to private schools in the area, friends of her parents. She told them about her latest foster child, and inquired about scholarships. Her inquiries were usually met with skepticism, but upon meeting the young man, skepticism turned quickly to wonder, and Daniel was offered not two, but three scholarships. Within a week, he was enrolled, placed in classes three years beyond public schools, and seemed to thrive under the new arrangement.

Daniel’s need to stifle and drown his fears also eased, yet the temptation sometimes remained. Luckily, his obsession with studying proved to be a satisfying substitute, and he buckled down even harder, never forgetting the promise he’d made to himself—that he was going to make it in this world. Maybe one day he could even do something important enough to change the world for the better.

On his sixteenth birthday, Daniel asked if he could take the GED, which would enable him to leave school early and enter college. So it was that one weekend he took the GED, and the next took the SAT. A month later, he was a high school graduate with a combined score impressive enough for him to choose any university in the country. A prideful part of him gloated over the fact that he’d proven Mr. Davies wrong. The fact that Daniel had grown over six inches that year was another victory. He was no longer a helpless little orphan with nothing to his name. With the scholarships, he finally had something he’d earned all on his own, and no one was going to take it away from him.

The day he left for college, Lila hugged him, kissed him, and told him that if he ever needed anything, she should be his first call. Daniel agreed, and found, for the first time in his memory, that he was going to miss his foster mother. When her arms relaxed her hold on him, Daniel increased his hold on her.

"Thank you," he managed to say.

Lila had no words, only clung to him.

As he settled into his new college life, Daniel again felt the outsider, still much younger than his peers, his inquisitive mind just as alien. For the most part, he didn’t mind. He was used to it. Socializing had never been high on his list of priorities, anyhow. Fraternities held no interest for him, nor did the games or rallies. They were a waste of time, too much alpha-male posturing for his liking anyway.

Some of the guys in his dorm thought it was funny to give the teenager a beer or a shot of tequila. They laughed and watched Daniel down the drinks, at the same time, gulping down the contents of their own numerous bottles and glasses. Eventually they would pass out, and when they did, Daniel would empty their bottles of liquor into his glass. He’d toast to them all, the lot of them. Each lightweight, who never realized "the teenager" could drink them all under the table.

He’d kept in touch with Lila for a while, but as his life became busier, the contact was less and less frequent. Plus, much to her surprise, Lila had met a man, and Daniel could tell it was time for her to take the next step in her life. He was happy for her. She deserved someone nice, someone who could take care of her for a change.

Daniel found a small group of fellow archaeology and linguistic students who welcomed him in their academic circle. His intelligence and talent for languages was beneficial to their study sessions, and his gentle, curious nature gradually endeared him enough for them to include him in their social circle, as well.

Many of those study sessions ended with all of them hitting the campus bars and parties, and for Daniel, with freedom came unexpected but exhilarating irresponsibility. In time his friends forgot how young he really was (the fact that he’d put on thirty pounds and topped six-feet tall didn’t hurt), and so when he could easily hold his own with each one of their drinks, nobody gave him a second look. The chance to break free from restrictions, the fact that he was on his own was undeniably liberating. The massive amounts of alcohol he and his friends consumed once again offered Daniel the chance to break free from his shyness and doubts.

His first few terrifying, but life-affirming sexual experiences were clouded in hazes of alcohol, smoke and blaring music. The encounters with girls older and much more experienced than him, girls whose names he was later embarrassed to admit he didn’t even recall.

He’d been able to prevent his newfound social life from interfering with his studies for a time, but after too many parties in a row, too many missed classes, and one forgotten mid-term exam, Daniel’s actions began to catch up with him. When he’d received a notice from his academic advisor for a meeting, Daniel’s heart began to pound, and the fear that he may have blown all he’d worked for almost made him physically ill. In fact, he’d had to duck into the men’s room on his way to the advisor’s office, taking deep breaths, fighting back the urge to vomit. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was still his raging hangover. At any rate, he was terrified.

He’d reported to his meeting, listened to a lecture on how close he was to losing him scholarship. As the advisor spoke, Daniel’s hands began to shake and he clenched them into fists to hide the fact. He was made to sit through "We took a chance on you, Mr. Jackson. There are a certain number of professors in this department chomping at the bit to see you fail. Don’t let your own lack of judgment be your downfall and their celebration."

Daniel's chest tightened in that familiar ache. He kept his features contrite, repentant, promising to buckle down, to study harder. He told his advisor that he just wasn’t used to being on his own yet, and was still adapting, hoping to play his youth and inexperience to his advantage, playing on the man’s sympathies.

He was let off with a stern warning, which was more than enough for Daniel. The fact that he’d almost thrown everything away in his first year filled him with a sense of failure, of sheer disgust with his lack of control. He remembered the determined, proud 12-year-old boy he had once been. The boy who had made that vow to prove everyone wrong, and Daniel knew he couldn’t let that resolute part of himself down.

Daniel’s focus once more became single-minded. Nothing mattered but getting those degrees.

And he did.

In turn, he was rewarded with discovering another insatiable thirst within him. A thirst for knowledge. A hunger to solve mysteries deemed unsolvable by others lacking the right amount of imagination and determination. And Daniel would be the one to unlock them.

Professor Jordan had taken Daniel under his wing at that point, and Daniel’s enthusiasm and boundless energy offered the older man a new joy for his profession. In turn, Daniel learned everything he could from the professor, recording every story, every theory in his journal. Over the years, the two developed an easy friendship based solely on their common insatiable curiosity.

As time went by, Daniel refused to be swayed by the many nay-sayers who scoffed at or even ridiculed his work and his theories. Even when he’d met Sarah, who loved him unabashedly, with all her heart, the thirst remained all-consuming. Nothing else mattered but translating that stubborn, elusive piece of text, dating that crumbling shard of pottery, or proving the relevance to his theory on the true origin of the pyramids.

When Sarah finally gave up on him, a part of him missed her, regretted turning his back on someone he cared about, but his goal was larger than life, larger than anything human contact could offer. In truth, the very concept of a permanent relationship was alien to him. Even Professor Jordan was disappointed in him, heartbroken, as Stephen had later bluntly informed Daniel. The older man had tried to counsel Daniel, suspecting he was straying off-track, but Daniel, lost in his obsession, found the concern cloying, distracting even, so he began to distance himself, not allowing anyone to divert him from his goal.

In time, as Daniel deep down suspected it would, the life he’d worked so hard to build began to totter, crumble around his feet. Its foundations as fragile as some of the ancient pottery he held in his hands.

The grants were no longer coming in. Many of his more controversial dissertations were no longer being accepted for publication. Daniel once again sought his old solace—a shot of vodka in his morning coffee to steady his shaking hands and wavering confidence. A small glass in the evenings so he could tune out the incessant rambling thoughts filling his mind, a swallow from a bottle of whiskey, just enough to be able to sleep at least a few hours a night. He was careful to restrict his intake to just those few times in a day, and thankfully his willpower remained strong.

He ignored the rumors that found their way to him, as they have a way of doing. Rumors that he was losing it. Genius is one step away from madness, don’t you know? Some of those jibes came from the very people Daniel had first befriended in his early scholastic days.

Who knows? Maybe he was losing it. Daniel knew he wasn’t a very good judge of what was deemed normal behavior, but strangely enough, none of it really mattered to him. His obsession mattered more. He knew with an unwavering certainty that his theories were right, he just had to find a way to prove them.

For the first time, Daniel found he could empathize with his grandfather. Was this what it had been like for Nick before he’d checked himself into the hospital? That thought alone gave him reason to need an extra shot that night. And then one more.

It all came to head at the end of Daniel’s fateful lecture, and his dismissal from tenure. Luckily, he hadn’t had much time to dwell on the fact or he probably would have been in danger of ending up on the streets—as much of a vagabond as Mr. Davies had always treated him.

On a cold, rainy day, as dismal and gray as Daniel’s spirit, his savior arrived in the form of Catherine, offering him a new mystery to unravel. The Stargate was the ultimate challenge, an immense combination lock to which only Daniel had the key.

The offer, at the time, had at first seemed bizarre, shady even, but when Catherine asked him, 'do you want to prove your theories are right?’ the one thing Daniel wanted more than anything, would have done just about anything for, well, that had pretty much clinched it. He suspected he would have taken the offer based on those words alone, even if he hadn't had anyplace else to go.

And, on that secret military base, Daniel had in fact, proven his theories. Unfortunately, he had solved the mystery too quickly to fully quench his yearnings. He didn’t want it to be over yet.

When he managed to bullshit his way onto Jack’s exploration team, it was not only in the desire to feed his hunger for the new, the unexplained, it was also because he had nothing to go back to. He couldn’t leave that base with nowhere to go, with no goal in mind. The fear of going back to nothing—his life in ruins—was far greater, far more terrifying than anything that could have laid at the end of that wormhole.

At the time, Daniel hadn’t even considered that he had no idea how to get everyone back. In truth, he’d almost hoped that there was no way back.

What he had no way of knowing was that his life would truly begin on Abydos. All the years of searching on Earth, of wondering what his life might have been, of matriculation and theorizing—here, in the arms of a woman who had never heard of his own planet, here he found a home.

His own home. To his surprise he came to realize that home wasn’t a place, and it wasn’t a structure. It was a feeling of belonging, of being accepted. It was a feeling of freedom.

It was also the happiest, most joyful place he had ever known, and when joyful, most of the men usually became drunk on Abydonian wine. Strong stuff, with a kick, Daniel spent many jubilant nights with his new friends and family, and just as many quiet days nursing his thumping head.

One night, when the wine had been poured, Daniel decided the men in his village needed to be taught a traditional Tau’ri song, one suitably appropriate for such a night. He gathered them around, his robes slopping over his shoulders, his glasses askew on his face. Abydonian wine, he discovered, affected his speech in a most peculiar way, as well as affected his ability to keep his glasses on straight. He didn’t really understand why, but that was a mystery for another time.

"So," he began, clapping his hands together and finding them strangely numb, "there’s this song. It’s sung to the tune of ‘Do Your Ears Hang Low?’, which, of course, means absolutely nothing to you." Daniel looked around at the blank faces in front of him, watched one of the men fall over completely. The men waited in rapt, albeit drunken attention. Daniel closed his eyes, hummed a few notes to find an acceptable pitch, and began. "Doooo yoooooour balls hang low? Do they dangle to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot, can you tie them in a bow? Can you throw them over yer shoulder, like a Continental soldier? Do your ballllllls haaaaaang loooooooooooow?"

The men stared at him, some smiling politely, others pulling their hands across their numb lips. Daniel looked around in confusion. No one was laughing. He pushed his glasses up, and said, "You do have testicles, right?"

"Danyel," Kasuf cried out from across the tent, "you are doing it again! The wine has stolen your tongue!"

Daniel stared at the slightly oscillating figure of his father-in-law, and then understood what the man was trying to say. He hadn’t realized that he’d reverted to English. "Oh, I didn’t translate it! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh," he said, digging his fist into his hip, his hand to his forehead. "Oh. Oh. Oh, okay. So…yes, I can do that. Okay. Yes." Daniel strode around the room, making the corrections in his presentations. "Yes, okay. So, I’m fairly sure the translation is correct. I’ll sing it first in Abydonian, then in my language. Or maybe…No, first in Abydonian, then…Yes, okay, I’ll sing it to you a couple times, and you try to follow along, go it?"

And so he began again, hoping his translation of an English euphemism would work. When he reached the end, the men howled, slapped their thighs, and lifted their cups to Daniel. Daniel laughed with them, downed a few cups more of the biting liquid, and began again, complete with hand gestures.

An hour later, every man in his village could sing both the Abydonian and the English version.

Years later, when a young Abydonian boy walked up to Jack and asked, "How they hangin’?" in perfect English, Daniel pretended he had swallowed a bug and walked away hacking up a lung.

But after time, the Abydonians settled back into their routines. However, Daniel, having no routine, found one in drinking. With each meal, he downed a cup full of the wine, and each time his thirst needed to be quenched, his glass was filled again. Sha’re laughed it off, at first. Then she began to ask the other women in the village if their husbands drank so much. Finally, she conspired with Ska’ara to remove the wine from their tent all together, and whenever they were at a meal to keep the wine far from her husband.

The plan worked for a day or two. But as his body rid itself of the alcohol, his temper increased. He and Sha’re had their first argument and Sha’re stormed out of their tent in a blur of flying black hair and whirling robes. Instead of going after her, Daniel tore apart their tent looking for the jugs but there were none to be found.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, Daniel invited himself into his neighbors’ tent—an elderly couple who sometimes struggled with their daily chores. Daniel offered to help the older man with the mastaage pen and when they worked up a sweat and a thirst in the stifling heat, he knew that eventually the wine would begin to flow. When the man’s wife poured them their drinks as Daniel knew she would, he made sure to slow his sips, to allow the alcohol to take effect before accepting another proffered glass.

It was too easy to build up a tolerance to the potent, alien wine, and Daniel realized he had to be more careful.

Sha’re continued to hide the wine jugs and kept a close eye on him when he left the tent, so under the ruse of the village requiring something more medicinal than wine for treating and sterilizing wounds, Daniel remembered an old recipe he had read for concocting moonshine. He appointed Ska’ara as his helper and together, in the map room, a place Sha’re rarely visited, Daniel brewed up a large barrel’s worth.

The plan worked well—the moonshine was potent enough to be used for medicinal purposes, and it offered Daniel a respite when he felt the familiar need coursing through his veins. One day though, the plan backfired. He had become enthralled with the glyphs adorning the walls of the map room, suddenly realizing their significance. In his wonder and excitement, he must have refilled his cup too many times because he’d lost all track of time. When he stepped from the room, the stars were out, moons shining brightly. Only there were double the amounts of moons than there should have been. Daniel found it difficult to find his footing in the shifting sand and fell a number of times before he somehow managed to make it back to their tent. He didn't quite remember the entire walk, or how long it had taken.

Daniel suspected that Sha're had been furious with him when he finally did turn up. Again, he didn't quite remember, but he did recall when the nausea had finally overtaken him. Daniel barely made it outside the tent before he violently emptied the contents of his stomach onto the sand. He couldn’t stop even when there was nothing left but bitter acid, and he tasted blood in his throat. And even when the acid and bile stopped coming up, he was wracked with dry heaves that left him shaking, huddled in a miserable ball on the cool night sand. He was unable to stand, unable to help Sha’re drag him back inside.

Panicked, Sha’re had called for the shaman to help her husband. The man looked Daniel over, then chuckled once he smelled the alcohol wafting from Daniel’s clothes. He had helped Sha're bring him inside, then had given Daniel a vile tasting herbal concoction to drink, telling Sha’re that no illness other than greediness had overtaken her husband.

Daniel had been sick for days with what he supposed was a severe case of alcohol poisoning. Nothing stayed in his stomach and the worst headache he could ever recall seemed to split his head open. He had to keep a cloth over his eyes, for even the dim light streaming inside sent bolts of agony through his retinas.

"This is madness, husband," Sha’re had told him, sweat pouring from his body, his eyes glazed. He twisted his limbs up close to his body, shivering in the Abydonian summer. "The drink has summoned a demon in you. Your body does not wish it to be so." She wrung out a wet cloth and wiped it across his brow. "Shhhh, husband. Be still."

He couldn’t believe the pain, the nausea, and the fear. Terrible, irrational fear. He couldn’t seem to stop crying, and for what reason, he had no idea. Arabic and English, Japanese and German all blended together, a one-themed elegy to his miserable condition.

What was worse than the nausea and the pain, was Sha’re’s quiet disappointment in him.

"Calm yourself, husband," Sha’re would say, stripping her husband’s body of the rank clothing.

"I’m cold," he would moan, winding his arms around his chest, huddling under the blankets.

"Shhhh, Danyel." The young bride covered her trembling husband with animal pelts, fed him sips of tea from her own hands, cleaned him when he became apoplectic, and reassured him when he cried out in humiliation.

"Shhhh."

Then one day, Daniel opened his eyes and saw his new bride sleeping on a stack of sackcloth on the other side of the tent. And then Daniel began to cry again.

"What have I done?" he asked himself. He shielded his swollen eyes from the rest of the world and wept for the ruination he had brought onto himself and to this innocent young woman. "What have I done?"

"Here, husband," she said, offering him a bowl. "You must return the goodness to your body."

Daniel looked into the bowl, the contents of which seemed to have more substance than he did. With no dignity left on which to call, Daniel wept. "I’m sorry, Sha’re. I’m…I’m sorry. Please forgive me."

She gathered him in her arms and cradled him there, this still foreign man whom she had brought into her tent.

"I’m sorry, Sha’re," he choked out between the quiet, helpless sobs. "It’ll never happen again. Please forgive me," he implored. In his thoughts, Daniel vowed to never touch the moonshine again. Never take another sip of wine, even during celebrations. Daniel began to fear not only for his sanity, but for the weakness within him that had allowed this to happen. That he had allowed his familiar outlet for escape to become a need.

It never did happen again. In the days and weeks that followed, Daniel resolved that for the rest of their lives, he would never pick up another cup of wine. In those tentative days, Daniel made restitutions and apologies to his neighbors, begged his father-in-law to forgive him, and publicly announced that he would bring only honor to his new home, which is what he did.

Despite his vow, on the day of Sha’re’s cousin’s wedding, someone pressed a cup of wine in Daniel’s hand. After a moment of indecision, he raised the cup to his lips, took a careful sip. He nursed the small cup for the entire affair and was silently pleased when that one cup was enough. He no longer felt the need to down an entire jug. Daniel felt a surge of relief, and he had to admit, pride that he had wrestled his ‘demon’ under control once more. And so he continued with his new life, finding that the contentment and love he had found was enough.

That is until Jack O’Neill and the Goa’uld converged on his home, his sanctuary. In a few short days, all that he had come to rely on was obliterated, and in its wake Daniel found himself back on Earth, a place in which he scarcely could find any comfort. A place where, once again, he didn’t have a home.

Jack had offered him a place to stay that first night, and Daniel couldn’t help but think he was too old for a new foster father. Foster fathers usually didn’t offer Daniel beer, either. He declined the first beer, remembering his promise to Sha’re, but when Jack began to question him, Daniel relented, rather than have to own up to his humiliating tale. So he nursed that beer, strangling the neck of it with all his might, hoping to lose the want, the need for more in his stories.

"So, have yourself a little party, did ya?" Jack asked, sipping from his bottle.

Daniel smiled at the memory. "Oh, yeah. Big…big party. They treated me like their savior," he said, allowing himself this moment of happiness. "It was, um…embarrassing."

"It’s amazing you turned out so normal," Jack said, his voice dripping with condescension, but Daniel knew the truth. Daniel knew what Jack didn’t know, that there was a time when things were decidedly abnormal. When everything he’d ever wanted was shifting away from him, like loose desert sand.

"Well, if it wasn’t for Sha’re, I probably…" But he couldn’t go on. Anyone who needed to know about his terrible secret knew about it, and those people had forgiven him. Jack didn’t know, didn’t need to know, and Daniel certainly didn’t need his forgiveness. "She was the complete opposite of everyone else," he told Jack, taking a seat on the couch. "She practically fell on the floor laughing every time I tried to do some chore that they all took for granted. Like, um, grinding yaphetta flour. I mean, have you ever tried to grind your own flour?"

"I’m trying to kick the flour thing," Jack said.

Daniel laughed, a nervous laugh, born of guilt and secrecy. He popped the bottle to his lips, a show of camaraderie, and laughed again. "This is going straight to my head," he lied, and took another sip seeing as how he felt no ill affects from the first few sips. Maybe it had been long enough. Maybe he could still handle a few drinks now and again.

Maybe he was lying to himself. He felt his skin break out in a cold sweat, and a panic swept over him. He had to get out of there, or he knew this one beer would turn into two, two would turn into a case, and then the promise he had made to Sha’re would be gone. And he needed at least one thing to remain.

"What time is it anyway?" he asked, suddenly on his feet. "I must have…gatelag, or something."

"Daniel, for crying out loud, you’ve had one beer," Jack told him, having no idea the sting in his words. "You’re a cheaper date than my wife was."

And there was Daniel’s out—a chance to escape being the subject, of being under the microscope for a while, and when the pressure lessened, so too did the desire to empty not just the bottle in his hand, but every bottle in the house. His out was to question Jack about his wife, about his life. Shift the focus, and shift his mindset. That’s all he needed. A distraction.

It became his saving grace, taking care of others, watching out for everyone else. Besides, that had always come naturally to him. For some reason, people always implicitly trusted him right from start, which made it all so much easier. If he threw himself into those endeavors, he didn’t have to think about himself. He could remove himself from his own life. Jack could never understand why Daniel was always running into trouble. Of all people, Jack should have understood Daniel was only trying to run away from his own trouble.

But try as he might, sometimes trouble found him. Try as he might, he found escaping his demons was impossible, even in another galaxy.

It just kept falling, over and over. All he could do was stand by, impotent and immobile, just like he had when he was a kid. A wire-sharp image of that one chain link breaking, that slab crashing down on his parents, again and again and again. Twenty-five years had passed, and it should have been his right, his goddamn right not to have to hear those screams anymore! It should have been his right not to have to question the culpability of his eight-year-old self. Of his parents. Of his mother. It should have been his right.

When they returned to the SGC, Daniel all but ran to his office, locked the door, and threw himself into his chair. It was the one place in the entire world where he’d be safe—and that was no accident. His office was never to be less than a place of purity in erudition and strength in intellect. It was a place to think, a place to learn, a place where he could do what he did best.

Okay, second best, he thought, and that’s why he never brought anything but coffee into the office.

Not that he didn’t have plenty of opportunities. Every Christmas, he and the other three member of SG-1 were given bottles of their favorite spirits. Daniel always accepted them gratefully, if not perplexed. He took great pains not to drink in front of his colleagues, so how was it they knew what he liked to drink? Of course, the answer was "Whatever you got." He’d shake the gift-giver’s hand—usually Siler’s—and walk off with the gift box, smiling. He’d walk it right to the nearest bathroom, where he’d pour the contents down the toilet and flush, usually twice—after all, you could still smell the Scotch after the first flush. Or at least Daniel could. He’d carry the box back out of the bathroom, nestled in his arm, and once again thank Siler, and thus kept his office completely free of any alcohol. Always.

Not like he didn’t know where to find a drink on base if he needed one. He knew where every hidden bottle was in every office, storage area and locker. He knew because he had an eye for it. He’d be in the locker room and see a curiously stacked pile of manuals way at the top of someone’s locker. Sure enough, there’d be a pint. He knew. He knew because he had hidden so many bottles in his younger years. It became an art. He was very good at it.

And so he locked himself in his office, and wished someone would barricade him in, because if there was ever a time in the recent years that he needed a drink—not wanted, but needed—it was this day. There was a live current scorching him from the inside out, his thoughts tripped over themselves, always agonizing and bursting with anger, with panic. He needed to get out of his head, and the only way he could do that was to…

"Daniel?" came the voice and then the soft taps on the door. "Daniel, you in there?"

Maybe if he didn’t answer they’d go away. So he sat, his entire body abuzz with tension, and he mouthed the words "leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Why, he asked, couldn’t the default he turned to when under duress be something different? Why did his mind, his body cry out for a drink?

"Come on, Daniel!" Jack crowed, slamming his hand against the door. "I know you’re in there."

It would have so much easier if, say, when really upset his mind would scream, "God, I have to have a piece of fruit." But of course it didn’t.

"Go away, Jack," Daniel yelled back, although his hands muffled the sound. A long silence followed, and Daniel was almost sad that Jack had left. But that changed the second he heard his door unlock. Daniel spun his chair around and charged the door.

"Now, wait!" Jack said, his hands and his passkey held up in front of him. "Before you start in, I did this out of…concern."

"Concern," Daniel repeated, his fist ready to punctuate the word in case the edge in his voice didn’t do the job. "Concern. For me."

"Yes, you!"

"Yes, well," he said, turning away from Jack, scraping his hand through his hair and to the back of his neck, "I’m fine. Thanks for coming. You can leave now." But all he heard was the door shutting and Jack’s feet shuffling through his office. Daniel swung around, ready to beat the hell out of Jack if he had to, but one way or another he’d get the man to leave.

"Here’s what I figure," Jack said, completely disregarding the fire in Daniel’s eyes. Jack rested his hands on the edge of Daniel’s lab table and bunched his shoulders up around his ears. "We—you and I—just got rogered, but good. Not Carter, not Teal’c. The two of us. In my family, we had a saying…"

Daniel knotted his arms across his chest and unlocked his jaw just enough to let the words pass by. "Misery loves company?"

"No, misery loves whiskey, but, whatever, every family’s different," Jack said, pushing away from the table, his hands in his pockets, looking beaten down, tired, and lost. "What we do—this job---sometimes it doesn’t make a whole helluva lot of sense to me. Usually, I don’t think about it. I give it a minute, if it doesn’t come to me right away, then it’s not worth my effort."

"You must have an enormous amount of free time," Daniel cracked, feeling his bones flair with the pain of anger and need.

"What I’m trying to say here, Daniel," Jack said, inoculating his words with a certain amount of bitterness, "is that we’ve had a rough day. You’ve had a rough day." He lay his eyes on Daniel, unmoved, and squinted. "I’m reaching out here!" he said, waving his hands between them.

Daniel sucked in his lower lip and shook his head, felt the tightness in his back and shoulders. "Look, Jack, I appreciate the thought. I do. But I’m fine. Really. I just need to sort this out by myself. I-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s always about you, isn’t it?" Jack said, screwing his face up into an expression of anger and despair. "What I’m trying to say—what you’re soooo not getting is this," he said, and then even Jack could hear the pathetic tone of his voice. Daniel blinked and waited for the conclusion of yet another one of Jack O’Neill’s tirades. "Look, Daniel, I need to get seriously drunk, but I don’t want to do it alone," he finally said, speaking in a low, soft voice, as though embarrassed about admitting such an uncharacteristic vulnerability.

"Drunk," Daniel said, almost laughing at the irony. Here he was hiding out in his own alcohol-free zone, and it had come to him. Surely it was a sign.

"What I’m talking about is a six-pack, every bottle open, in a line, waiting to be emptied," Jack said, envisioning the scene as if it were before him. He could almost taste the first sip. "Oh, and you can have one, too."

"That’s very generous of you." Daniel unwound his arms as well as the iron grip on his resolve. Maybe if Jack were with him watching how much he drank then he’d be okay. That was it, then. He was sure Sha’re would understand. He was sure one beer wouldn’t do anything but possibly calm him down, which he really, really needed. "One six-pack?"

"You think you’ll need more?" Jack asked, standing a little straighter.

"Um, well, no," Daniel said, knowing full-well at some point it wouldn’t be about how much he wanted, but about how many he could get. No, he’d stick with the plan: one, maybe two beers with Jack. Let Jack have the rest, and try to make every sip count.

"Okay, then," Jack said, spinning toward the door, but when Daniel didn’t seem to be following, he looked back and said, "You coming?" Jack urged Daniel on with one wave of his shoulder.

Over the years, Daniel had come to know the difference between wanting and needing, and from the looks of things, Jack needed. So Daniel nodded, recognizing the deep, barely disguised pain in Jack’s dark eyes. Violet shadows smudged the skin beneath those eyes, making Jack look much older, making him look world-weary. He nodded, and disregarded the klaxons in his head that screamed, "Stop!"

"Yeah, I’m coming."

The swiftness with which they were able to leave the mountain, stop at a convenience store, and be in Jack’s living room was dizzying for Daniel. He had followed Jack through the streets of Colorado Springs, all the time denying the voice in his head that he should take the next right and go home. "Go home!" his mind seemed to scream at him, followed just as loudly by, "No! Jack is counting on you. Don’t let him down."

No words were said walking up to Jack's front door. There was silence in the house, as well. Daniel poured himself into Jack’s hearthside chair, resting his aching head on the back. He could hear the jangle of full bottles, a sound so different than empty bottles. Daniel could discern between the two—practice. He closed his eyes and repeated to himself that he would only have one or two, that’s all. One or two.

Jack sauntered into the room, his fingers hooked around all six beers. He placed them in a row, popped the top off two and handed one to Daniel.

"I can’t," is what he knew he should have said. "I’m under a tremendous amount of stress, and if I start drinking I may not stop." But Jack jostled the bottle his way, and that one tiny movement was all it took to brush aside Daniel's conscience.

The feeling of the cold glass bottle in his hand was equal parts comforting and terrifying. The yeasty smell wafted into his nose, and it was like his bloodstream had been jumpstarted. Perhaps it was enough just to sit with the bottle and smell it, kind of like a dieter who chews their food but never swallows. No, that wasn’t dieting, he decided. That was an eating disorder, so what would smelling a beer instead of drinking it be?

The bitter liquid filled his mouth, flowed down his throat and settled with a pleasant heat in his stomach. He savored that first sip, as much for its effects as for the time it afforded him. He held tight to the neck of the bottle, and wedged it between his legs, licking the taste of the beer from his lips. "Slow…"

For the most part it worked. By the time Daniel finished his first beer, Jack was on his way to his third. Which made Daniel wonder about Jack’s drinking habits. It also made Daniel wonder if he hadn’t been too paranoid about his own. He reached for a second beer the same time Jack opened a fourth.

Everything about it Daniel liked--the explosion of air and aroma when the cap was turned; the feel of the slick sides of the bottle; the clank of the bottle cap hitting the coffee table—all of it. But especially the warmth that dribbled through his arms and legs. The dots of anesthetized skin that pocked his skull. The clarity and unhurried pace of his thoughts. God, what was so wrong with this? he wondered.

"I haven’t had a beer in a long time," he admitted to Jack, who simply nodded. "I’d forgotten how much I liked it."

Jack glanced up at that, surprise etching his features. Daniel realized his slip with a start. "Oh, well, ummm, relatively speaking. I mean. It’s… it’s been a while…you know…" Daniel brought the bottle to his mouth for one last draw, and so he wouldn’t have to say anything else. God, how he had missed this feeling, slight as it was. His muscles began to relax. The twitching in his eyes went away. Every sip brought peace, and he had a head full of turmoil.

Far off in the kitchen—or was it only in his memory? —Daniel heard the distinctive sound of ice cubes tinkling in a glass. Again the warning bells went off in his head, but the melody they produced with the jangling ice cubes was delicious, like hand bells during a snowstorm. It was ever so faint, but he heard the glug glug glug of something being poured out of a bottle. Twice.

"Yeah," he mumbled, knowing that that was a sound that signaled a peace treaty in his head. Daniel slid the empty beer bottle onto the table next to the others and plunked back in his chair, his hand on the armrest ready and waiting to accept a drink. He hoped Jack would have cut-glass tumblers. He always liked the feel of those in his hand. His professor, Dr. Jordan, had those. He thought someone else did, too, but he couldn’t recall just who at the moment. But Daniel had many memories of sitting in his professor’s home, along with Stephen and Sarah, drinking cocktails out of such glasses, discussing their theories, tearing each other apart.

"Good, Daniel," he remembered his professor saying, only loud enough for Daniel to hear. The old man would reach across the table and fill Daniel’s sparkling glass with more of the drink, and Daniel’s chest would nearly burst with pride. "Well done, Daniel."

Each memory started out clear, and each ended rather viscid. But always the heavy-based glass with diamond cuts in the side, and always filled with deep, rich liquor. It made the liquor look like jewels, like liquid gems. The etched glass also made it easier to hang onto once his fingers started losing their tactile ability.

Without asking, Jack placed the cup in Daniel’s hand. Sure enough, cut glass, cold and not quite slick with condensation. Just enough liquor and ice in the glass to give it a good swish, but not enough to spill over the side. Daniel liked it just fine. He took a quick sniff and smelled cheap rye whiskey, topped with ginger ale. Daniel was surprised. Jack had always been a fan of the more expensive Irish brands, claiming it ran in his blood.

Seeming to read his thoughts, Jack shrugged, then sank heavily into his chair. "I’m out of the good stuff. Forgot to buy some more. I figured the beer would be enough." Jack pulled a hand over his mouth. "Guess I was wrong."

Daniel nodded and sat slumped, fatigue and almost forgotten grief washing over his body. He took a sip from his glass and the taste immediately transported him back to that long ago roof ledge, alone under a starry sky. The taste of rye, even masked with ginger ale, always made Daniel feel thirteen years old again, and tonight, considering the circumstances of their mission, it was oddly fitting.

Jack took a sip from his own drink. "Bye, bye Miss American Pie…" he softly sang under his breath, his voice fading before he took another longer, deeper swallow. "You know how many times I went over that mission in my head?" Jack suddenly asked, his words slurred. He tossed back the contents of his glass. "How many times I’d wished I’d held off that order for two seconds longer? Two seconds. Sometimes that’s all it takes to make all the difference in the world."

Daniel nodded in understanding. "I know." God, he knew. In his mind, he'd replayed the last few seconds of his parents' lives more times than he could count. If he’d only reacted a few crucial seconds earlier. If he’d been paying attention, would his warning have been enough to save them? He’d replayed those few seconds in his head so many times it had nearly driven him crazy, but it never changed anything, did it? Thoughts were just thoughts. They had no power to change anything.

"You know what I don’t get?" Jack said, sloshing around his drink, looking off into the distance at something only he could see.

"What?" Daniel asked, not really paying attention to Jack. Instead, he focused on watching the reflected flames dancing across his glass, sparkling in varying shades of red, gold and orange the exact shade of the setting suns on Abydos.

"Why that mission? Why that particular incident in my life? God, Daniel, I have so many regrets, so many things I’d like to do over, I can’t even begin to count."

Daniel glanced up at that. Even in the fog of his pleasant buzz, the pain in Jack’s voice took Daniel by surprise. He didn’t know what to say in reply. His eyes locked with Jack’s as he watched his friend’s dark eyes brighten with emotion.

"If I had the choice to go back and change one thing, it wouldn’t have been that. If there was one person I could go back and save… it would have been... been my…" Jack shook his head, pressed his hand hard over his eyes.

My son.

The unspoken words hung heavily between them.

Daniel blinked against tears stinging his eyes. Parents and their children, how they unwittingly hurt each other. What the children do to destroy their parents, what the parents do to destroy their child—it never ended. What had he to learn from his parents’ death? What could he have known about them that might have changed things? We are our parents, and our parents are us, he thought, and if that’s so…

"Just a little boy," Daniel whispered, unaware that his quietly spoken words were oddly fitting for both his and Jack’s thoughts while a bubble of a memory surfaced in his head.

The water in the tub kept getting colder and colder, and he kept calling his mother, but every time she passed the bathroom, she’d just look in and mumble something. And he’d call to her—"Mom, can I get out now?"—and when he began to shiver, he climbed out on his own, all of five years. The rest of the house was quiet, and Daniel knew his mother was asleep on the couch, the thing that always happened soon after she began stumbling around the house. She must be so tired, he remembered thinking.

It wasn’t until he was in college that he realized his mother wasn’t tired all those years. It wasn’t that she didn’t care that the water was cold or that the rice had boiled down and was burning.

Daniel pressed the cold glass against his forehead and asked Jack to fill it again.

"I mean, don’t get me wrong—I regret that mission, but…" Jack shook his head while he poured two fingers of straight rye in Daniel’s glass. He replaced the bottle on the table and slumped back down onto the couch. "God…" Jack dropped his head, shook it as though to clear it from thoughts of what could have been, things he was powerless to change no matter how greatly he wished for it.

"There was nothing you could have done," Daniel said, although to whom, he wasn’t quite sure. His attention wove over and under the threads of time, picking up a string of Jack’s regrets here, a string of his own there. Over and under, over and under, until his head began to spin. Missions and mistakes, all part of the pattern.

Jack had had enough introspection. It was futile, at best, excruciating, at worst. He found his way to his feet, a tentative hold on the vertical, and grasped Daniel’s shoulder hard as he passed. Daniel wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of friendship, or if Jack merely needed the support to stay upright.

Daniel lightly touched Jack’s hand before he let go. Jack muttered something about going to bed, and disappeared. Daniel heard a door close, and he sank back in his chair. He had enough presence of mind to hope that Jack would be able to sleep it off. Be able to forget.

We should all forget, he decided. Forget that mistakes happen. Forget that sometimes they actually did happen for a reason. That sometimes, when you should have been razor sharp to make crucial decision, you weren’t, and then mistakes happened, and the worst part was when only you knew.

"God," he whispered, rolling the sweating glass over his brow. "Oh, my God…"

And so one voice had turned off, and another one had turned up. He no longer heard the voice of reason, only the voice of recrimination.

"God, Mom…"

The bottle he and Jack had been drinking from was still half full. He didn’t want to drink the rest of the liquor, knew he shouldn’t, but every time he blinked, every time he tried to close his eyes, he saw that slab crashing to the ground. In the silence of the darkened house, he could still hear the echoes of his parents’ screams in his ears. He could still hear his own troubling, burdensome questions.

Before he had another moment to contemplate, Daniel reached for the rye, poured more into his glass and took a long swallow, squeezing his eyes shut against the burn in his throat. The liquid pooled in his stomach, and a barely perceptible heat spread through him. Daniel set down the bottle, took a few deep breaths, cradling his heavy head in his hand for a moment.

Taking the glass and the bottle with him, Daniel moved from the chair to the couch and sank into the soft cushions. Sitting alone on Jack’s couch, Daniel slowly sipped from his glass, refilling it more than once, but forcing himself to stop before finishing the bottle. His eyelids began to droop, and when he allowed them to close, he was relieved to see nothing but black. In the silence of the room, there was just that—silence. No screams, no regrets, no questions. Just silence.

Daniel slid down the couch until he was curled up on his side and allowed the welcoming darkness and silence to take him. His breathing slowed; his thoughts slowed; the regrets slipped away.

"Daniel."

Daniel brushed his hand through the air, hoping to rid himself of this one last distraction.

"Daniel, get up."

"Shhhh…."

"Come on, Daniel!" Jack barked, kicking the legs of the couch. "Get up."

Daniel pulled his tongue off the roof of his mouth and crushed his palm into his eye socket. "I just got to sleep, Jack. I’m tired. Let me sleep."

"What the hell were you doing all night, then?" Jack asked, picking up empty glasses and bottles from his coffee table.

"All night?" Daniel said, letting his legs slop over the side of the couch. He dropped his head into his hands and wrestled with his memory. "No. I just had a drink with you. You went to bed. I had a couple more drinks…"

"Looks like you had more than a couple," Jack said, lifting the near empty bottle of rye—well, it was pretty much empty, there wasn’t enough for even a shot. Jack picked up the empty beer bottles, hanging each one off the tips of his fingers, and when he did they clinked together.

Daniel pried open one eye and took a blurry look at the noisy bottles, at the large bottle of rye he had emptied, but when?

"God," he mumbled, knowing what had happened, even if he couldn’t quite remember it. Not counting that slip on Abydos, it had been years since it last happened, but he was well aware of the signs—empty containers, loss of time, a feeling like he was still much too drunk to meet the day. "Oh, God…"

"Yeah, well, I’ll make coffee. You go get cleaned up. Our country awaits our service, hung over or not…"

"I’m sorry, Jack," Daniel said, truly and shamefully remorseful for what he had done.

"Don’t worry about it. It was a tough night for…" Jack started and stopped. Best to let sleeping dogs not cross over that bridge, he thought. "Just hit the shower. Coffee’ll be ready in a minute."

"I’m so sorry," he whispered, not to Jack, but to Sha’re for that first broken promise. He whispered his penance, and hoped somehow his words would reach her, because he knew she’d know he had betrayed her again. He only wished the betrayal had at least eased the ache in his heart—that it had been worth it. Instead, it had only made it worse. And what was worse still was the fact that Daniel had three weeks until his next schedule mission. Three weeks of evenings all to himself, alone with nothing save the recriminations.

Well, he reasoned, one betrayal usually led to another, didn’t it? What difference could he make to Sha’re in these next weeks anyway? He’d always known that he didn’t deserved her and so Daniel decided to become the worst possible image of himself he could muster. When he was outside the SGC and safely within the privacy of his own home, he set out to prove it by throwing back drink after drink after drink.

Never enough that anyone at the SGC would notice. His guilt belonged to his personal hours, not his business hours. He didn’t know if it were lucky for him or for the helpless slobs on the other side of the event horizon those three weeks that they weren’t scheduled for any off-world missions. Which suited him fine, because he had decided on a regimen for his time, one that required strict adherence if he didn’t want to allow his so-called private life to overflow into his professional one.

He’d go to base, shuffle through his paperwork, come home, a fifth of Scotch, a sharp cut glass and the bowl of ice set on the coffee table before him—no more, no less. Only that which was required to paste on a good veneer of peace. On those nights when he’d have to stay late in the mountain, he’d buy the Scotch or the gin or the rye (if he was feeling particularly miserable) at the nearest liquor store and begin to drink it on the long drive home, just so his schedule wouldn’t be off—home by seven, drunk by ten, awake by six, sober by…Sometimes that varied. Work all day, and begin again.

It was a well-crafted schedule, which left little or no room to question anything.

Until the morning before the mission to Shyla’s planet, the place of Daniel’s second broken promise and betrayal of Sha’re. His phone would not stop ringing, and his beeper refused to stop beeping. Finally, in the middle of the night, Daniel tore off the covers and pitched his beeper across the room.

That’s when he noticed the sunshine flooding the room.

"Shit!" he said, searching through his bedding for his watch. "Dammit, where is it?"

And then the phone was ringing again. He ripped it off the hook. "Yes! Hello! What?!"

"Daniel?"

He looked around the room, breathless, his fingers knotted in his hair. "Sam?"

"Where are you? We’re scheduled to leave in forty-five minutes."

"Shit…" he cried, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder, jumping into whatever pants he could find on his floor. "Aaahhh, the electricity must have…I don’t know…Shit! Does Jack know?"

"Well, yeah. He’s been trying to call you, too."

"Shit!" Daniel fumbled with the phone while tearing his hand through a shirtsleeve, inside out. "Okay, look, I’ll be there…Um…Shit!"

"Look, don’t kill yourself getting here. I’ll find a way to stall. There’s always a diagnostic I can run," she said, although he could hear the impatience in her voice.

"I’m sorry, Sam. Tell Jack…Tell him…"

"I know. You’re on your way."

"I am." With that, he ended the call, ripped off the shirt that wasn’t cooperating, and jerked a T-shirt over his head instead. He threw on his polar fleece jacket, scooped up his phone, his beeper and his keys, and was out the door.

An empty fifth of Scotch, a glass and a bowl of water were left behind.

In retrospect, he did have one good thing to say about being stuck in the naquaada mines—everyone else looked and felt as miserable as he did.

So when he did finally come back to the SGC, there was no way that any of them knew that his symptoms were not only from the sarcophagus, but also for the fact that his body craved alcohol, the way a diabetic craved insulin.

He needed so much in those days, he couldn’t even distinguish between what that might be. He just knew there was a buzzing in his chest and head, like a nest of highly angry hornets. Something had to give. Someone had to give. What he wouldn’t have done for a drink, for one more moment in that amazing box, for…God! Let me out!!

After that, he couldn’t really recollect much, something for which he was grateful, but he vaguely remembered breaking down and sobbing in Jack’s arms. Scarcely recalled three pairs of arms pulling him free from Jack’s embrace, lifting him then strapping him to a gurney.

The first few days after that passed in an endless nightmare of pain, the feeling that his skin was on fire, that thousands of ants were biting him all at the same time. That if they didn’t let him go back to the sarcophagus, let him have one drink, he would surely die.

"Can’t you see that I’m dying?!" he’d scream at them, but of course they couldn’t see. They had no eyes. Their limbs were serpents biting at his fingers and toes. Their clothing sheets of lava.

He’d wanted to die in those first few days. He couldn’t stand it anymore after a few nights. When Jack came into his isolation room to baby sit him as he’d been doing right from the start, Daniel had begged and pleaded for Jack to just let him die. If Jack wouldn’t let him go back, then it was more merciful to just shoot him.

One of those endless nights, he’d dreamed about sand and heat. In the distance, Daniel could see a sarcophagus, lid open, waiting for him. All he had to do was reach it. Only no matter how far Daniel slogged through the deep, shifting sand, his breath rasping in his lungs, the intense sun burning relentlessly down on him, he never came close enough to reach it. With each step he took, he sank further into the sand until it was up to his chest. Then his chin, then over his head, and when he opened his mouth to scream, it filled with sand, granules heated from the sun pulling into his lungs, choking him, drowning him.

He’d woken screaming, gulping in air as though he’d truly been drowning in sand, in his own need, his heart pounding so hard his chest ached. Strong hands gripped his upper arms shaking him. He heard his name being shouted over and over again and struggled to pull himself from the dream, the terror.

"Daniel, come on! Wake up!"

The hands moved to grip his face, one taking firm hold of his chin. Daniel’s eyes flew open and he stared into dark eyes. It took a moment for him to realize they were Jack’s eyes. He was simultaneously grateful to Jack for being there to pull him from his nightmare and wishing he would go away so Daniel could just get this dying over with alone.

"It’s okay," Jack said in a quiet, soothing voice, his hand stroking Daniel’s sweat-dampened, tear-stained face. "It was just a dream."

Daniel shivered even though he was drenched in sweat, and the compassion in Jack’s voice and in his touch was what undid him. He tried to choke back a sob, but he was too tired, too worn out. He began to cry, hoarse rasping sobs tearing from his throat. Jack tried to comfort him, tried to put his arm around him, but Daniel pulled away, ashamed of his tears, and the fact that his skin ached and burned so excruciatingly that even the slightest touch was agony.

Jack didn’t touch him again, only sat beside him on the floor Daniel had somehow ended up on. The room was nearly empty, containing only a cot and a small adjoining bathroom, almost like a prison cell, and Daniel supposed he deserved it. Jack watched while the tears poured down Daniel’s face as he rocked himself in an attempt to ease the pain. Jack began to murmur meaningless words of comfort, even telling him jokes in an attempt to distract him.

In those long hours, Daniel wanted to tell Jack the truth. Wanted to tell him that it wasn’t just the withdrawal from the sarcophagus that was killing him. That he wanted a drink so badly he was willing to do just about anything for it. He had even been willing to shoot his best friend—that much Daniel remembered, and his capacity for darkness terrified him.

Daniel wanted to tell Jack. But he couldn’t.

He was afraid the confession would shatter something he and Jack shared. For some reason Daniel couldn't fathom, Jack was able to empathize with this strange addiction, but Daniel wasn’t sure Jack would be so understanding about the drinking. He knew Jack’s sympathies only went so far. How could Daniel even expect Jack to empathize with the fact that Daniel had let it become such a huge part of his life?

No, Daniel couldn't tell him. He’d ride this out, even if it almost killed him.

And then he’d be better. He’d put it behind him. He knew he’d never be able to live through this kind of pain again. Yes, he had learned his lesson, all right. This pain, this agony would ultimately be worth every moment. Yes, he had finally learned his lesson.

Unexpectedly seeing Sha’re again after a long, endless year only to have to leave her behind once more would have been enough to send him off the deep end again had Daniel not been left with a sense of hope that she could still be saved. At least he finally knew that Sha’re was still his beautiful wife even with that parasite within her. She was so strong, much stronger than Daniel had ever been.

That final look she had given him before stepping through the gate seemed to say, "I’m all right, Daniel. Wait for me, and don’t give up on me. We will fight this demon and win."

In that moment when their eyes had met, he was filled with a terrible sense of shame and remorse for his actions since the day he’d first said goodbye to the Abydonians. He promised to make it up to Sha’re—she deserved so much more than he’d ever been able to give her. He’d prove himself worthy of her, and he vowed to one day safeguard her child as though he were Daniel’s own. Daniel could only hope his returning gaze had shown her all this. That it had lent her some hope of her own.

Daniel was certain it was hope alone that saw him through the next year, which passed by in a blur of so many missions gone wrong he wondered how all of them had managed to hold onto their sanity.

Well, Daniel, more or less. The time he’d spent trapped in a nightmare cell of stark white, like pure nothingness, was a place he’d feared he’d become forever trapped. Lost time in a haze of terror so complete his mind still shied away from thinking of it. And so he didn’t. It was easier that way.

Daniel thought he’d coped reasonably well during the times of the chaos within his team that followed. Too many missions gone awry, too many words that shouldn’t have been spoken, and words that should have been. There had been too much going on to be able to dwell on any past regrets, or indulge in old coping mechanisms. Too much to do.

He thought was doing just fine, had everything under control until that fateful day on Abydos once more. He’d never imagined that the last time he’d see Sha’re alive would be at their home, the one place where she should have been safe.

On the day Sha’re died, and Daniel’s hope had died along with her, he’d been in too much shock and pain from the ribbon device to fully comprehend what had transpired. Even when Jack had wheeled him into the cold, sterile, metallic room where they’d taken her body, all the while feeling a strange sense of deju vu, Daniel’s mind still refused to comprehend the implications of what had happened. From even fully taking in the grayness, the stillness of her beautiful features.

It wasn’t until nearly a week later when Janet had released him from the infirmary that Daniel finally understood. That everything that mattered to him had ended.

When they’d returned from her funeral, Daniel evaded his friends’ concerns, their invitations to stay with them. All he wanted was to be alone.

On the second day of his alienation, he was steeped in what seemed like an endless landscape of things that had ended. It was that moment when he remembered another thing that had died with Sha’re—his promise never to drink again. It just didn’t seem to matter anymore whether he was sober or drunk, and if he had to live with that much pain, then, by God, it was going to have to get past the alcohol first. Ten minutes later, he had taken one hundred dollars out of his account and was off to the liquor store. No need for fancy cut-glass tumblers, and no need for ice, Daniel paid for as much alcohol as he could buy and carried it up the stairs to his apartment, where he began to drink it straight from the bottle.

The first few swallows made him cough, made his throat burn and lungs sear, but he kept drinking. He had to fill the churning emptiness with something. Had to tune out the incessant voice reminding him that he had failed her. That his life was rapidly amounting to one big failure.

He drank nearly an entire bottle in one night.

He’d woken at 4:00am and had become so sick he feared he’d ruptured something in his stomach, but the fact that he’d been able to sleep even a few hours made it worth it.

When that bottle was gone, he dipped into his bag and started on another one. When those bottles were gone—they lasted only three days?—he took out another hundred bucks and bought another bagful. It wasn’t like he needed the money to buy his wife a present or…or a proper wedding ring. No, he didn’t need to do that anymore. What the hell was he going to do with all that money he had been saving? No, Sha’re was gone, and he had nowhere to go, and nothing to save for, not anymore. He didn’t even want to save himself.

And so he’d continued for two weeks. Some days, he felt too nauseated to drink anything, and those days were spent in a blur of sleeping, pacing, trying to distract himself, his head throbbing and aching with scorching pain. Finally, he’d give up and start again, only it wasn’t helping, and the confines of his apartment were starting to make him antsy, almost claustrophobic.

Two nights ago, which felt more like an eternity, he’d ventured out into the cold rainy night and had tried to drown his sorrows in that seedy hole-in-the-wall bar, but of course it hadn’t helped. All he’d succeeded in doing was alerting Jack to just how messed up he was.

Following the second night at Jack's house, Daniel had woken in the morning feeling muzzy, disoriented. He couldn’t figure out where he was until he’d sat up in bed and looked around. The plain furniture and sparsely decorated room suddenly became as familiar as Daniel’s own. Jack’s guestroom—lord knows Daniel had spent enough nights in this room. Even though he’d slept straight through the night, he still felt exhausted, unable to focus. His broken hand didn’t even twinge and Daniel took a moment to wonder about that.

Then he remembered the pills he’d taken. Three times the dosage he had been instructed to take. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Pulling himself from bed and dragging himself to a standing position, the world wavered for a moment, and Daniel’s legs nearly buckled.

Holding onto the walls for support, he made his way to the bathroom and took a hot shower, hoping to clear his head.

Jack was waiting in the kitchen for Daniel, and when he did finally appear, Jack handed him a cup of coffee. When he’d finished his coffee, Jack had retrieved Daniel’s jacket, and Jack held his own car keys in his hand. Jack was keeping his promise, and despite his trepidation of the night before, Daniel was greatly relieved. Relieved that Jack didn’t want to talk anymore, relieved that he didn’t have to ask to be taken home. Relieved that Jack didn’t feel the need to walk him up to his apartment. His apartment was a satellite of his mind—a place where secrets were safe. Unless you were careless enough to let others in. He had almost let Jack into this innermost thoughts. Somehow he had managed not to. Keeping Jack out of his apartment turned out to be a much easier proposal.

As soon as Daniel stepped inside, finally safe from Jack’s too perceptive scrutiny, for the first time, he saw the disorder, the chaos strewn about his normally tidy home. Daniel realized his place wasn’t the sanctuary it was supposed to be. When he was a kid, Daniel couldn’t wait to have his own home. A place where he could do whatever he wanted, a place where anyone was welcome, a place to be safe.

Except, the truth was, his home had become a place not only to hide out, but a place he had to keep hidden from others. Somehow, that ruined it. Somehow, he had made his home the embodiment of his secret, and no home, no matter how small should ever be reduced to that.

When he’d ventured out onto the balcony, the only place that didn’t contain the evidence of his downfall, that was when the realization hit him the hardest. That was why he hadn't wanted to go back inside, even when the medication had started to wear off. Daniel’s nerve endings had suddenly felt charged. He was still exhausted, but such a need rushed through him. A need he had to fight off. He couldn’t keep this up, but he’d made a promise to Jack, a new promise, and he fully intended to keep it.

Sitting alone on his couch, Daniel saw something in the photograph he had never seen before. He got to his feet, holding his good hand out to steady himself before taking the photo down from the shelf.

Next to his mother on that slab of cement, almost obscured by a flap of material in her skirt, was the glint of the sun’s rays sparkling off the rim of a glass. A sharp, cut glass tumbler, just like the ones Daniel always liked so much. Each gash in the tumbler refracted the light, and the thing sparkled. Daniel couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before.

What was more, he couldn’t believe he’d never realized that he’d been following in his mother’s footsteps in more ways than one. There were a lot of things he hadn’t seen before. A lot of things he couldn’t handle seeing anymore.

His fingers grazed the image, and he sniffled, swiped a hand under his nose. He placed the photo back where it belonged, and stood motionless in his cluttered apartment.

When the phone rang, Daniel jumped, startled. His nerves and muscles no longer seemed to be vibrating with adrenaline, now he was just tired. Everything felt heavy, leaden. His head throbbed with a dull, relentless ache that matched the one in his hand. The answering machine had been set to pick up after one ring, and Daniel didn’t bother to try to catch the call. Sam’s voice came on after a moment.

"Daniel? Are you there?" A long pause. "Daniel, pick up!" Another pause. "Okay, well, you’re probably sleeping, so I’ll call you later. The colonel told me about your hand, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and if you needed anything."

Sam’s voice paused again. Even as dazed as he was, Daniel thought it was funny that even off-duty, Sam couldn’t call Jack by name.

"Well, I’ll talk to you later, okay, Daniel?" Sam’s voice sounded again. "Make sure you eat something, all right? Bye."

The machine clicked and shut off. Daniel probably should have picked up, but hell, he’d just spent two days with Jack fussing over and lecturing him. Sam would only fuss even more and in his brittle state, Daniel knew he couldn’t handle that.

But Sam had a point—maybe he would feel better if he got something to eat.

Stumbling to the kitchen, Daniel had a look in his fridge. Nothing there but a half-empty tub of margarine, a slice of pizza moldering on a plate, some stale bread.

Making a quick decision, Daniel pulled open the cupboard above the fridge, the one that had tempted him all day. He was astonished to find nothing but almost empty bottles. A swallow of vodka, a ring of scotch darkening the bottom edge of the ornate bottle. A couple of other empties whose labels he didn’t bother to read. The knowledge that his stash was gone sent a wave of pure fear through him. Whether the fear stemmed from the fact that he had nothing to drink, or from the fact that he’d drunk so much, he didn’t know. All he did know was he had to get out of his apartment. Now.

He stumbled to the bedroom, and pulling on a heavy sweater and baseball cap to cover his still damp hair, he headed for the door, went outside to walk to the corner store. He’d pick up something fast, something with too many calories and too little substance. Something that would fill the void.

As he strolled through the aisles, he walked past the coolers. Paused at the cases of beer. A voice in his head screamed at him to keep moving, but he was rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on the brightly colored boxes.

It was only beer, one six pack wasn’t enough to set him over the edge again, was it? Maybe he’d only drink two, toss the rest. No, he wouldn’t do that. Keep going, he told himself.

He yanked open the insulated glass door a few steps up, a plumb of fog exploded out, and Daniel reached in. When his arm came back out, in his hand was a frozen pizza. He didn’t bother to look what kind of pizza he’d grabbed. It didn’t matter anyway. It was high in protein, easy enough to make. He could do that. And maybe some macaroni and cheese. He yanked open a second door and grabbed a red box, glittering with ice crystals. He took a deep breath and found he was already beginning to feel better, stronger.

Strengthening his resolve, he walked up to the cash register. He was surprised when his good hand began to tremble so badly he nearly dropped the frozen pizza and TV dinner he held.

The young cashier, who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, noticed the cast on his other hand. "You need some help?"

Daniel offered her a flustered smile as he placed the items on the counter. "No, I’m fine. Thank you."

"Will this be everything?" she asked as she began to ring in his purchases

Daniel nodded, blinked against a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness pouring over him. He stumbled and grabbed onto the counter to steady himself.

The girl stared at him with wide, fearful eyes, as though she was afraid he’d puke all over her clean counter, or pull a knife on her.

"Sorry, it’s been a… a rough few days." He smiled shyly, pushed up his cap and glanced at her from under his eyelashes, raising his injured hand in explanation. "The pain medication makes me a little dizzy."

The cashier visibly relaxed. "Oh, right. I have bad reactions to medication, too. How did you hurt your hand?"

Daniel shrugged, glanced down at the hand in question. "Just a little home renovating mishap. Stupid accident, really." He tried to smile at the girl again, but was still trembling so badly he wondered if she could see it.

"That’s too bad," she said. "I dislocated my shoulder once—it hurt like hell."

Daniel nodded, licked his dry lips, and before he could reconsider, he said, "Um, actually, I did forgot one thing. Be right back." On legs that felt ready to buckle at any moment, he strode quickly back to the cooler, grabbed a six pack of the beer and returned it to the counter. He kept his thoughts carefully blank, refusing to think about anything but getting his purchases home.

The cashier bagged his groceries, handed the plastic bag to him, then helped tuck the six pack under his left arm.

"Thank you," he said, offering her another faint smile. He was dismayed by the fact that even his voice was shaking and wondered how he was going to get home.

No, he could do it. All he’d have was one beer when he got home. One would be all he needed to help him ride this out. Two at the very most.

He knew he was breaking yet another promise but people make promises all the time—friends make promises to friends, husbands to wives, lovers to lovers. Mothers make promises to their sons that "it’ll never happen again." Funny how sons learn to make the same promises.

Besides, what Jack didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

The girl blushed and gave him a sunny smile, her eyes brightening with interest and attraction, but Daniel was oblivious to it. His only concern was getting back home and drinking himself into some semblance of normalcy.

"Take care of that hand, okay?"

"I will."

Daniel pushed open the door and headed back outside into the cool twilight. Facing his demons could wait one more night.

*****

Chapter 4: 'Reparations'

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