I’m gonna miss them.

It wasn't a hesitation in his resolve, only an acknowledgement that the people he was leaving behind were important to him. He'd shared five years of his life with them, good times and bad.

Was it wrong to miss them? Surely not.

The things he'd known before would pass away - but he didn't regret knowing them. These people had enriched his life, shown him new things, taught him new ways, made him grow.

And he was giving it all up to step into the uncertain state of ascension.

He was giving up his friends.

They'd said their pieces to him, each in their own way with their own words...and now it was his turn.

His own turn to say goodbye.

They'd been two men working together on Abydos that first time through the wormhole - two men with no background, no common ground, and no future.

Looking back at it, Daniel was amazed they'd survived that first mission to Abydos.

During those days, they'd developed respect for each other's capabilities; and maybe something approaching rough affection for one another. After the wormhole was shut down and the Abydos gate buried, Daniel did wonder what had befallen Jack O'Neill upon his return to Earth. He wondered if the glimmer of hope Ska'ara planted had survived in the man who'd arrived on Abydos with nothing beyond a desire to die.

And then a year later, Jack O'Neill returned through the Stargate, and the peace of Daniel's world had fled into the wormhole with Apophis and Sha're, never to be fully regained.

At first the kindness of taking Daniel home - taking him in - had been accepted without thought. It wasn't until a month later that Daniel realised the act of taking the displaced archaeologist had been far out of Jack's comfort zone; around the time Jack had begun prodding Daniel 'out of the nest', so to speak. Jack O'Neill was a private man and wished to remain that way.

Daniel would miss Jack; from the sarcasm of the friend to the focused intensity of the mission commander and all the shades in between. Jack O'Neill's personality had layers upon layers, the tissue of old scars building up on his soul, and Daniel doubted anyone had ever truly understood the man in all his complexity.

Over the years, the relationship between them had developed from acquaintances to team-mates, and from team-mates to friends. They'd never be 'best buddies' - there were too many differences in the way they saw things to ever reconcile fully - but they were friends of the best kind. Men whose similarities of purpose, duty and responsibility were greater than the sum of their differences. Two people who didn't always like each other, but cared about each other nevertheless.

Mistakes were made, feelings were hurt, but they dealt with that and moved on.

They'd argued and fought and disagreed and sulked afterwards, and then they'd made up or put it behind them and got on with the business of saving the world and being there for each other and their friends and team-mates.

Having glimpsed hints of the worst of each other, they'd still managed to call each other friend.

And Daniel would always treasure both the strength and the frailty of their friendship.

I’m proud to have had your friendship, Jack. Even if you were a terrific pain in the ass at times.

Yes, he knew.

Sam. Sister and friend, study-buddy and jump-start for trains of thought he'd never been able to share with anyone. From the moment he matched minds with her amidst the Abydos cartouche, Daniel knew he'd found a kindred spirit, someone else whose mind worked swiftly and surely through patterns that left other people with headaches.

In Sam, he'd found someone whose passion to know burned as brightly as his own - although her flame was tempered by the constraints of the military code in which she'd been trained. She, more than Jack, had gotten him through the months after Sha're's abduction. In his own way, Jack had tried to be there for Daniel, awkwardly supportive and concerned, but Sam was the one who could give Daniel what he needed: something to think about other than how they were going to find Sha're.

Her brilliance astounded him at times - delighted him at others. It had been years since he'd had someone with whom to strike intellectual sparks, and who didn't laugh at his crazy theories. They grew close enough that there'd been gossip. Stupid gossip.

Sam had reminded him of Sha're a lot, and at first, Daniel had wrung his brains trying work out why. They looked nothing alike, they thought nothing alike, they came from totally different cultures, and if anyone else had met the two women they'd have considered them worlds apart.

It took him nearly two years to realise that it was the inner core of strength and beauty that Daniel loved in each woman - one as wife and lover, one as sister and friend.

He would miss Sam's focused intensity, and the way they meshed thoughts so easily. He would miss the shared understanding that it wasn't easy to be brilliant and different from the crowd; the bond of similarity with each other; her smile and her laughter, and the knowledge that even if Sam wasn't comfortable with her own emotions, she was comfortable with Daniel's friendship and easy openness.

Over the years, they'd drifted apart and together and apart and together: family who cared, but whose affection was easy and constant even when their disagreements were strong.

They'd shared laughter and knowledge, danger and excitement; they'd disagreed, sometimes strongly, sometimes mildly. They'd banded together against Jack and Teal'c to gain leverage in an argument, proved each other right, proved each other wrong, and provided an adult sibling relationship neither had ever had before. And now it came down to her tears beside his bed. Tears he couldn't wipe away - because he was the reason for them.

He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her how much he'd appreciated her friendship and patience with him - but his burned lips wouldn't move, and his melting flesh couldn't sustain the breath to say the words he wanted to say.

Daniel didn't know exactly when he forgave Teal'c for selecting Sha're to go to Apophis, only that he'd done so by the time he watched Teal'c's facing the Cartegan Cor-Ai. The emotion he'd felt then was greater than injustice at watching a man standing before a 'kangaroo court', or frustration at a team-mate facing what would most likely be his death, but the dismay and grief at the prospect of losing a friend.

If their initial interaction was tense with the knowledge of Sha're's possession, their friendship developed as they studied the details of the Goa'uld society and culture, and the place and role of the Jaffa within it. Over the next three years Daniel's respect and affection became firmly cemented in the integrity of the one-time First Prime, and their friendship had remained strong and constant. Even Sha're's death at Teal'c's hand had not destroyed it.

Each was an 'outsider' in his own way and that drew them together in complex ways that Daniel had never really analysed - only accepted. With the benefit of hindsight, Daniel could see that while Jack and Sam belonged to the USAF, complete with reasoning, thinking, and rules, Teal'c was an alien on Earth and Daniel was a civilian in a military installation. As with Jack, Daniel had little in common in personality with Teal'c; their common ground was experience and history.

Teal'c understood the loneliness that came from taking a stand based on what you believed. As Daniel had clung to his theories of aliens and archaeology, so had Teal'c stood firm in the belief of his people's right to choose to be free of the Goa'uld. And, like Daniel, Teal'c had been justified in his belief as other Jaffa looked at the one-time First Prime and began to dream of freedom.

Teal'c had been the one who best understood Daniel's drive to find Sha're. While Jack shared the purpose of retrieving Ska'ara, Teal'c comprehended the depth of feeling and the connection Daniel felt towards his wife with the understanding of a man who had once loved as deeply and thoroughly as Daniel had loved Sha're. He understood the desire to retrieve that connection, and the grief that came quietly to Daniel when Sha're died.

Alone of all his team-mates, Teal'c had shown a genuine and prolonged interest in Daniel's studies. While Sam had her own discipline, and Jack preferred to keep his mind free of 'clutter', Teal'c read several of Daniel's books, journals, and papers in an attempt to better understand the influence of the Goa'uld on Tau'ri culture - and how the Tau'ri culture had developed since the Goa'uld were cut off from Earth.

As SG-1 taught their friend about modern culture, Daniel taught Teal'c about ancient Earth culture. In return, Teal'c showed Daniel that the time was not always right for action, and that there was a time to speak and a time to remain silent. Of course, Daniel wasn't necessarily a very good student. He regretted that now.

He would miss his friend and protector, sometime question-asker, sometime question-answerer. Teal'c had been a source of peace and wisdom amidst the frenetic rush of life at the SGC; a reassurance that people could change and that the days of the Goa'uld were numbered. He would miss Teal'c's understated humour, the different perspective on matters Daniel couldn't see from within Earth culture, and the constancy of belief which Teal'c held in the rightness of their purpose - to defeat the Goa'uld and free the Jaffa.

And so he and Jack stood on the ramp leading up to the Stargate which this time led not to another world, but to another life. Another kind of life.

"I'm gonna miss you guys..." There was no hesitation in what he was doing - it was the right thing. The best thing - even though he knew Jack, Sam, and Teal'c, Hammond, Janet, and Jacob wouldn't see it the same way.

Still, there was regret and longing. A desire for things to return as they had been, and the same acknowledgement that nothing would ever be the same again.

"Yeah," Jack said in typically O'Neillian gruffness. "You too."

They knew they were talking about more than themselves. Although Sam, Teal'c, Janet, Hammond, and Jacob weren't present in this dream state, the sentiments were for them and from them as well - the people who'd shared Daniel's life in so many little different ways - his family.

"Thank you," he said, and meant it so strongly that there was an instant when his throat choked up. "For everything."

Jack nodded. "So…what? See you round?"

"I don't know." And with that statement, Daniel suddenly realised how vast the universe was - how incomprehensible. From this point onwards, the rules changed, the universe changed. What he'd understood he no longer would, what had been a mystery would now be revealed.

Truly, he didn’t know.

He gave Jack one last smile, his eyes suspiciously bright, and turned to face the Stargate through which Oma had walked.

Behind him, Jack called: "Hey, where are you going?"

Daniel turned back and shrugged faintly. "I don't know."

And when it seemed Jack had nothing more to say, Daniel set his shoulders and walked up the ramp and into the unknown beyond.