SG-1 Fic Divergence Part Three
Other parts here: Part One,
Part Two, Part Four
"So?" Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-1 picked up his fork and then put it down again.
"So." Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-A moved his wine glass two inches to the left.
"This is a little…"
"Unusual?"
"See, I was going to say 'awkward'."
Doctor Daniel Jackson of SG-A looked up at that and gave SG-1's O'Neill a reassuring smile. "It's only awkward if we let it be, Colonel."
Jack's return smile was chilly. "A little difficult for it not to be awkward, under the circumstances, wouldn't you say?"
Daniel kicked Jack smartly on the ankle and the man barely stifled a yelp of pain.
Glaring at Daniel, Jack deliberately dropped his fork on the floor, jerking his head at Daniel as he did so. As they bent down out of eye and earshot, Jack hissed accusingly, "You kicked me!"
Daniel hissed back, "Leave the other me alone. You're scaring him."
"Why? I'm not the one who wants to rip his clothes off and…"
Daniel held up a warning finger. "Don't go there."
"Too late, I think the other me already did." Ignoring Daniel's most withering stare, Jack added in a hiss, "And this is a complete waste of time."
"You only have to be civil for two more hours, Jack, I would have thought even you could manage that."
Jack and Daniel both straightened back up, gave each other another glare and then turned back to their dining companions with expressions of calm plastered onto their faces.
Sam said quickly, "So, Doctor Jackson, unlike our Daniel, you didn't pass through the naquada mirror on P3R-233?"
"No, that's right. We went there and Sam and I - I mean our Sam and I went in there and saw at once that it had to be some kind of museum because it was full of all those incredible specimens."
"A treasure chest of artifacts from diverse human cultures," Daniel put in quietly.
"But then Jack said it was time to go, so we left."
Jack frowned. "So - Doctor Jackson, let me get this straight, when…Colonel O'Neill told you to pack it up out of there, you went?"
The other Daniel blinked in surprise. "Of course."
"You didn't bitch about it? You didn't figure you needed to go and fill a bag full of things first? You didn't feel an overwhelming urge to go fiddle with that mirror rather than doing what you'd been told?"
"Well, no, I mean Jack had just told me the whole place could be radioactive and so…"
"Oh!" Daniel sat up straight so fast he banged his legs on the table, making the unused cutlery dance and everyone's wine slop against the sides of their glasses. "So - Colonel O'Neill told you why he wanted you to leave?"
"Well, of course." The other Daniel turned to the other O'Neill in obvious confusion.
The other O'Neill shrugged. "Teal'c recognized the symbol the Goa'uld had left warning anyone who came after them the place wasn't fit for anything except a microwave graveyard, so my first priority was to get my team out straight away. I told Carter and Daniel what was going on and we got out of there."
"But you told them why?" Daniel stressed. "You didn't, for instance, just say 'We're out of here' or," Daniel darted 'his' Jack a steely glance before turning back to the other O'Neill, "'Daniel I don't want to hear it.'."
The other O'Neill half-smiled. "Yeah, like Daniel would really respond well to that when he's just found a room full of artifacts. Even I could see what he had there was a significant find. The people there had basically done our work for us, going out and stealing from so many different civilizations and then obligingly labeling them for us." He glanced back at the other Daniel for confirmation and the man nodded emphatically. O'Neill went on, "So, once I'd got everyone home safely, we sent the Geiger Counter bunnies in to check that room out, and then everything was brought back and decontaminated. You had a lot of fun with that, didn't you?" He looked at the other Daniel fondly.
The other Daniel half-smiled as he looked at his plate. "Oh yeah, like a whole bunch of Christmasses had come at once."
The other O'Neill looked across at Daniel. "So, it didn't pan out that way for you then?"
"No. Not exactly." Daniel moistened his lips. "I got to go through the mirror, see the world destroyed and get shot in the shoulder by an alternative Teal'c. Which was another way to go."
The other Daniel gaped at him. "You didn't get to examine the Etruscan artifacts from what we think was P2Z-677?"
Daniel forced a bleak smile. "No, I never did. Our Medical Containment people just grabbed the mirror and nothing else. It was decided it was too risky bringing anything else back when we didn't know what it might do."
"We also got to save our world from being destroyed by Apophis thanks to Daniel going through the mirror," Sam said quickly. "If he hadn't, we'd all be dead by now."
The other O'Neill inserted the tip of the corkscrew into the next bottle of wine and began to twist the handle. "Sounds like it turned out well for both of us then."
"Doesn't it hurt?" The other Daniel looked across at his counterpart. "Getting shot by a staff weapon? The one time it happened to me I was dead before I hit the floor so I can't say I really felt it."
"Oh boy, yes," Daniel said then stared. "What? You've never been shot by a serpent guard?"
"Don't put ideas in his head," the other O'Neill said, pulling out the cork. He offered Daniel more wine. "There are some new cultural experiences that are better left untried."
"I couldn't agree more." Jack leaned across to Daniel and murmured, "No more wine, Daniel. You know you can't drink."
Daniel had been about to refuse a second glass but now he smiled at the other O'Neill and said, "Thank you," before giving Jack a glare in return.
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "So, how then did you know the co-ordinates to defeat Apophis?"
"We were sent a message Daniel deciphered telling us to beware the destroyers and the 'gate address they came from." O'Neill offered Teal'c wine politely which the Jaffa equally politely refused. He just raised his eyebrow at the Teal'c from his own dimension. "Can I tempt you from that kel no reem path of temperance and clean-living just this once, Teal'c?"
The other Teal'c tried and failed to suppress a smile. "No, O'Neill."
"You're too damned virtuous. Puts the rest of us to shame. Carter? You're not going to turn me down now, are you?"
The other Major held up her wine glass. "Depends on what you're offering, sir."
He gave her a wicked smile in return as he filled her glass. "Now, now, Major, keep it clean. Remember we have two young and impressionable Daniels here tonight."
"So you 'gated to Apophis' ship?" Sam put in a little impatiently, wanting to get the conversation back to parallel physics and its consequences. "The same as us?"
Discussing the details of the two missions, they seemed to be identical up until the moment when Jack had left Daniel in the corridor. "…so I left Teal'c to guard the corridor and…"
"Why Teal'c?" Jack demanded. "The corridor looked like being the safest place."
"Well, we just always have Teal'c guarding our rears on missions. He seemed the obvious choice. And it was lucky I did because three serpent guards came straight round the corner and I don't think anyone except Teal'c could have taken those guys out without getting shot in the process. Why? You did something different?"
Daniel looked at Jack's bleak face and said quickly, "Well, it sounds like the end result was the same. You blew up his ships and all got out alive and so did we."
Sam gave her other self a pleading look and the other women said, "Of course, we couldn't figure out the purpose of the mirror for a long time because we didn't realize the hand device was what activated it. They weren't made from the same substance and there seemed no obvious connection between them. I was struggling with it for years before I got it to work."
Jack said to his other self, "Did you go to Hadante?"
O'Neill nodded. "Yeah." He deliberately didn't look at his Daniel, keeping his gaze on Jack. "I think that's when the gray hair really started to kick in."
"Know the feeling."
The other Daniel frowned. "It wasn't that bad, Jack. I mean it was…creepy, but…" He shrugged. "We've been in worse situations, I never know why you and Teal'c always make such a big deal out of that place." He looked across at Daniel. "Jack just went into manic leader overdrive on Hadante. Talk about hit the ground running. He was so keen to get out of there, he wouldn't listen to a damned thing I told him."
Daniel put down the wine glass. "Ditto."
"I told him Linnea could be dangerous."
"I told our Jack the same thing."
"We were only there…what? An afternoon?"
"I know, would it have killed him to wait a little longer and try to find a safer way out of there?"
Jack and O'Neill exchanged an expressive glance. "Well, maybe we had our reasons," Jack said. "And, if you remember, Daniel, in that afternoon you managed to pick a fight with the biggest, ugliest guy on the planet and damn near get yourself killed."
"Oh, come on, you totally over-reacted to that place, Jack, and I can't believe you still won't admit it."
Jack and O'Neill exchanged another look. Jack said, "I'm sorry, I have to ask. What effect did Shyla have on…you know…didn't it cause any arguments between you?"
"Who?" said O'Neill.
"Who's Shyla?" the other Daniel frowned.
"Who's…?" Daniel looked at him in guilty astonishment. "You don't know who she is?"
The other Daniel shook his head, "No. Should I?"
"It doesn't matter," Jack said quickly. "Forget I asked. It was a stupid thing to bring up anyway."
"No. I need to know what happened," Daniel put in. "Are you telling me you never went to P3R-636?"
The other Jack and Daniel exchanged a glance of bewilderment and then the other Daniel sat up straight and looked guilty. "Oh God, Jack, that was the place where I stopped that girl killing herself and we all got thrown into the naquada mines."
"And this had slipped your mind?" Jack demanded.
"Well, we weren't there very long." The other Daniel looked at O'Neill. "What was it? Twenty-four hours?"
"Twenty four hours?" Daniel echoed. "We were there for days! I mean, they were in the mines, I was in the…"
Jack put a hand on his arm and stilled him. He addressed O'Neill: "The escape plan worked for you?"
"Yes." The man looked surprised that Jack even had to ask. "The second day, when they came to unchain us, Teal'c and I jumped the guards and we got the hell out of there. Carter and Daniel were in the infirmary for about a day afterwards because their blood sugar had dropped a little, but apart from that it wasn't too bad. Of course, it didn't do my knees a lot of good, but…"
"The second day?" Jack pressed. "Why not the first day?"
O'Neill frowned as he tried to remember. "Well, in our dimension the guard who was unchaining us took so long doing it the moment had passed. There was a time I did think about jumping him but Daniel was still chained up and he was really beat, there was no way he was going to be able to make it and I figured we'd get another chance if we just sat tight a little longer and the next day we did."
"But the next day he'd have been even more tired." Realizing that he was sounding way too agitated here, Jack cleared his throat. "I mean that was what I figured."
"Well, Teal'c and I helped Carter and Daniel out as much as we could the next day and I told him in plenty of time what we were planning to do so he was ready for it. And, let's face it they're both pretty tough and determined, aren't they? We were lucky, I guess, but it worked out for us and we got the hell off that world."
The other Daniel was looking at his counterpart's stricken face. "Did something different happen with you?"
"You could say that." Daniel put down his fork in a way that suggested he wasn't going to be picking it up again.
"What happened?"
"I screwed up," Jack and Daniel both said it in the same breath and then looked at each other.
Jack tightened his grip on Daniel's arm. "I screwed up. I rushed the escape, Daniel was still chained up and he damned near got killed. That bitch of a princess you both went out of your way to save got him addicted to the sarcophagus. It really messed around with his head but he still managed to persuade her father to let us go. So we all got to go home as well, just not as fast."
"That wasn't how it was, Jack," Daniel said quietly.
"Yes. It was."
Daniel looked across at his other self. "Jack's missing out the part about me leaving them down in the mines to nearly die of overwork for ten days while I played around with Shyla. Not to mention the moment when I put a gun in his face and nearly pulled the trigger."
Jack winced. "Danny, let's not do this now. I should never have brought it up. I'm sorry."
After a moment's awkward silence, the other Daniel said suddenly, "You call him 'Danny'? Jack only calls me 'Danny' when we're…" He broke off abruptly, faked a very unconvincing coughing fit and got pounded on the back by the other O'Neill. The other Daniel kept his gaze fixed on the tablecloth as he said in a small voice, "Could I have another glass of wine, please, Jack?"
"I think you've had enough," the man told him good-humoredly, but he nevertheless reached across and filled his glass for him.
Sam was afraid to look at either Jack or Daniel and was aware of Teal'c sitting next to her studiously avoiding the space around his counterpart's ear.
Daniel risked a quick sideways glance at Jack and saw at once that the 'Danny' thing was bothering him a lot less than his own tactlessness in having brought up Shyla. Before he could think of a change of subject to make the man feel better, the other O'Neill said conversationally, "So, anyone? Your least favourite Goa'uld? And you can't all say 'Apophis' because that's just too damned easy."
Jack looked relieved at the change of subject. "Well, Hathor is at the top of my Most Happy She's Dead list."
"That bitch." The other O'Neill looked momentarily murderous.
The two Daniels exchanged a guilty glance. The other Daniel said tentatively, "Did she try to turn your Jack into a Goa'uld as well?"
"Right in front of us," Sam said, to save Daniel having to answer. "I was so happy when the Colonel turned her into a Popsicle."
"Yeah, that was fun." The other O'Neill shot a brief glance in the direction of his Daniel. "Payback always is."
"Well, I really hate Nirrti," the other Carter said.
"I'm with you on that," Sam nodded. "Another total bitch."
"Cronos," ground out the two Teal'c's in unison.
"Looks like Sokar barely made the top five." Jack finished his wine. "Boy will he be pissed."
Daniel leant across the table and looked at his other self. "I'm sorry, I have to ask. Is Sha're alive or dead in your dimension?"
The other Daniel looked at his half-empty plate. "Dead."
"I'm sorry."
The two Teal'c's looked across at each other in a brief moment of recognition and then averted their eyes.
"It's okay." The other Daniel made the effort to meet his counterpart's gaze. "I knew she was gone. I knew that was it from when she looked right through me the second time. Apophis said 'Kill the rest' and she didn't even blink. That's when I knew she was gone and Amaunet was in charge. I think I did most of my mourning a long time before she died. Now, I'm just relieved that she isn't having to endure that terrible half-life any more. But I knew from the beginning I'd never get her back. I knew she was gone."
Jack and Daniel both noticed the way the other O'Neill automatically put out his right hand and rubbed the other Daniel's back as he was talking, not even seeming to know he was doing it.
"I didn't," said Daniel.
The other O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"I didn't know I wasn't going to get Sha're back. I really thought I was."
O'Neill said again, "I'm sorry," but very gently this time.
"I was lucky," the other Daniel rallied. "I had Jack to get me through it."
"So did I," Daniel returned with emphasis. After a slight pause he said, "And Sam and Teal'c, and even General Hammond and Janet Fraiser did their best. I had a lot of people helping me get through it. I got through it." He read in the other Daniel's eyes that the man thought the assistance Daniel had been given had nevertheless been inferior to the support of 'his' Jack.
After another awkward silence, the other Daniel said, "Do you suppose there are any more of Machello's little booby-traps out there?"
"Machello?" Daniel looked up.
Jack was also on alert in a second. "You mean the psycho-slugs from the page-turning device?"
"Oh you've met those as well, have you?" The other O'Neill drained his glass. "Weren't they a barrel of laughs?"
Daniel shivered. "That was not a fun trip."
The other Daniel also looked pale. "You're telling me. I really thought I was losing my mind."
"The dead Goa'uld on the ramp."
"The event horizon in the closet."
"The Goa'uld trying to get into Jack."
"Oh that was the worst."
"The footsteps. The dead Goa'uld next to Teal'c." Daniel shivered again and then looked up to find the other Daniel and O'Neill frowning at him in perplexity.
"What?" the other Daniel said.
"When the others came to see you? You didn't hear footsteps?"
"No. What happened with me was that Doctor Mackenzie and Janet diagnosed me as having schizophrenia, but of course Jack wasn't buying that. He thought it was just stress."
"Absolutely," Jack nodded. "I thought the same thing."
"So they medicated me and put me in one of the VIP rooms."
"Same with me."
"And, obviously, Jack stayed with me to keep an eye on me and see that I was okay. And then I saw this Goa'uld climbing up his arm and with one part of my mind I knew it wasn't real but there was this other part thinking 'What if it is? This is my last chance to grab it.' So I tried to grab it and then Jack knew I was really having problems. I remember feeling really sick and faint, and him helping me lie down on the floor, and then there was all this yelling…" He looked at the other O'Neill. "And you remember this way better than I do so you ought to tell it."
The other O'Neill shrugged. "Well, basically, Mackenzie and Janet wanted to pack him off to a padded cell. They wanted to pump him full of drugs and lock him up for his 'own protection'. So, of course, I told them no way in hell were they doing that to Daniel. They could carry him back to the infirmary and they could find out what was wrong with him and they could keep damned well looking until they came up with a better answer than 'Daniel's a schizophrenic and it's caused by 'gate travel.'"
Daniel was afraid to look at Jack and yet he had a terrible compulsion to do so; it was like driving past an accident, even though you knew the sight of it would horrify you, something tugged at your left eyeball trying to make you look that way.
It was the other Daniel who happened to glance across at Jack and so saw the stricken look on his face.
Daniel saw his counterpart's expression change, the realization and compassion in those blue eyes which were suddenly turned in his direction. He knew he was probably looking a little pale and shaken as well. The other O'Neill was still talking. Telling them about all the tests he'd made Janet run, how they'd finally seen that little slug under Daniel's skin and realized that it must have gone into him in the Linvris chamber.
Sam abruptly got to her feet. "Sir, I'm sorry to break up the party, but I think we should be going."
Jack also stood up. It seemed to take him a moment to find his voice. "Thank you, Colonel, for a very interesting evening. If our Carters can ever get this ectopic what-ever-it-is sorted out, perhaps we can meet up again."
***
Daniel was barely aware of anything except Jack as they made their way to the 'gate room. He knew how hard that last exchange must have hit the man. They'd both thought Jack had done everything he could to help him through that Linvris business given how far he was out of his depth, but now Jack would be thinking he should have insisted on Daniel being kept in the infirmary the way this other O'Neill had done. Daniel wondered if there was any way to convince the man he was actually glad now that…
"Doctor Jackson?" Daniel started as he realized someone had been saying his name gently for a little while now. He collected himself and looked up to find the face he saw in the mirror every morning gazing at him compassionately. "Can we talk?"
Daniel checked his watch. "Now?"
"Sam says we have a few more minutes. I think there's things you maybe need to know; things you might always wonder about."
Daniel nodded and followed his other self into an office which he realized was very like his own, except that dotted around the picture of Sha're on the desk were half a dozen photographs of the other Jack or the other Jack and the other Daniel together. He picked one up and examined it. It showed the two of them standing underneath the pyramids at Giza with their arms comfortably around each other's shoulders, hair disheveled by the wind. "This is nice. Were you on holiday?"
"I took Jack to Egypt last winter. Much to his surprise he had a pretty good time."
Daniel put the photograph back down on the desk. "I hope he didn't make you pay for it by watching a million hockey games while he explained all the stupid rules for the hundredth time."
The other Daniel gave a little smile. "Um - I've pretty much weaned my Jack away from the Friday night is hockey night thing."
"Really? How?" As the other gave him an amused glance, realization kicked in and Daniel held up a hand. "Okay, I get you. Don't tell me how."
"Don't you want to know how we got together?" The other Daniel prompted gently.
Daniel sat down on the other side of the long table and wrapped his arms around his chest. "I don't know. Do I?"
"Your Jack certainly seemed to have got the wrong end of the stick."
"He was just looking out for my - your - our best interests and he always thinks the worst of himself. Which, in this instance, meant that he thought the worst of the Jack in your dimension as well."
"That's what I told my Jack when I got back. I pointed out to him that if before we'd got together we'd traveled to an alternative dimension and found a Jack and Daniel who were together, he would have been the first person to leap to a whole bunch of erroneous conclusions about how that had come about. He'd have probably presumed the other Jack was a completely selfish bastard who'd emotionally blackmailed me into bed and was always making me do things I didn't want to do."
Daniel realized the other Daniel thought of him and Jack not as two people who were not together but as two people who were not yet together. He wondered if there was any point in putting him right about that, but then decided to hold his breath. This Daniel was clearly very happy with 'his' Jack and no doubt wanted to believe every Daniel in every dimension was one day going to find the same happiness with the Jack they knew. Why spoil the fantasy for him by pointing out that wonderful as it must be to have your best friend for a lover, that there were always losses to balance the gains?
Daniel said, "You were going to tell me how the two of you…got together?"
"Oh yes. You remember Nem?"
Daniel swallowed as the remembrance of pain tightened in his mind. "Vividly."
"You remember he said the memory device might be fatal?"
"Yes."
"That was when I realized I was in love with Jack. Because, I didn't care, I knew anything was better than never seeing Jack again. That I would definitely rather be dead than never see Jack again."
Daniel nodded. Not very different then. He'd had a vivid recollection of everyone who mattered to him in that moment: Sha're, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, and had come to the same conclusion, that life without them literally wasn't worth living. With this Daniel it had clearly just been focused on Jack - a tiny difference which had created a pretty significant divergence.
"And then you went home?" he prompted.
The other Daniel nodded. "But I couldn't stop thinking about that realization - that somehow I'd stupidly let myself fall in love with Jack and I was so scared and miserable, I can't tell you. It felt like the end of the world. I didn't know how I was going to go on working with him. I was so afraid he'd realize and hate me or despise me. I couldn't bear the thought of losing his…"
"Respect." Daniel said the word softly. Not even troubling to make it a question.
"Yes. Exactly."
"Well, I don't want to leap to any rash conclusions, but I'm figuring that didn't happen?"
The other Daniel couldn't repress a grin. "No. What happened was I couldn't bear it any longer. I got out of bed and went round to his place at three in the morning and told him we needed to talk. He was kind of weird with me at first - and I thought he'd realized, you know…Turns out when he'd thought I was dead he'd realized he was in love with me. So, he was thinking I must have noticed how odd he was behaving and come round to challenge him about it. Meanwhile, I thought he was being so off with me because he'd realized I was in love with him…Oh boy. Yeah. Took us a while to get that one sorted out, I can tell you."
"I can imagine."
"But once we had…" the other Daniel dropped his head a little but Daniel saw the flicker of that smile of remembrance. "Wow!"
Daniel smiled himself. "I'm happy for you. Jack's a very decent human being - in any dimension - and you seem to have yours particularly…well-trained."
"Well, he's always been pretty laid back and good-tempered," the other Daniel shrugged.
"Laid back?" Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Good-tempered?"
"And although he's not that interested in archaeology, he's always willing to listen."
"Really?" Daniel stared at him blankly for a minute before understanding hit him. "He doesn't want to…take it into the bedroom every time you start talking about hieroglyphs then?"
The other Daniel opened his mouth to say something then frowned. "Um…well…we do end up there quite a lot, but I don't think it's an avoidance tactic, or anything."
"No." Daniel kept his face a careful blank. "That wouldn't be Jack's way of handling a situation at all."
The other Daniel looked reassured. "No. It wouldn't."
Daniel looked at his watch to hide a smile. "I really think I have to get going."
"So?" Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-1 picked up his fork and then put it down again.
"So." Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-A moved his wine glass two inches to the left.
"This is a little…"
"Unusual?"
"See, I was going to say 'awkward'."
Doctor Daniel Jackson of SG-A looked up at that and gave SG-1's O'Neill a reassuring smile. "It's only awkward if we let it be, Colonel."
Jack's return smile was chilly. "A little difficult for it not to be awkward, under the circumstances, wouldn't you say?"
Daniel kicked Jack smartly on the ankle and the man barely stifled a yelp of pain.
Glaring at Daniel, Jack deliberately dropped his fork on the floor, jerking his head at Daniel as he did so. As they bent down out of eye and earshot, Jack hissed accusingly, "You kicked me!"
Daniel hissed back, "Leave the other me alone. You're scaring him."
"Why? I'm not the one who wants to rip his clothes off and…"
Daniel held up a warning finger. "Don't go there."
"Too late, I think the other me already did." Ignoring Daniel's most withering stare, Jack added in a hiss, "And this is a complete waste of time."
"You only have to be civil for two more hours, Jack, I would have thought even you could manage that."
Jack and Daniel both straightened back up, gave each other another glare and then turned back to their dining companions with expressions of calm plastered onto their faces.
Sam said quickly, "So, Doctor Jackson, unlike our Daniel, you didn't pass through the naquada mirror on P3R-233?"
"No, that's right. We went there and Sam and I - I mean our Sam and I went in there and saw at once that it had to be some kind of museum because it was full of all those incredible specimens."
"A treasure chest of artifacts from diverse human cultures," Daniel put in quietly.
"But then Jack said it was time to go, so we left."
Jack frowned. "So - Doctor Jackson, let me get this straight, when…Colonel O'Neill told you to pack it up out of there, you went?"
The other Daniel blinked in surprise. "Of course."
"You didn't bitch about it? You didn't figure you needed to go and fill a bag full of things first? You didn't feel an overwhelming urge to go fiddle with that mirror rather than doing what you'd been told?"
"Well, no, I mean Jack had just told me the whole place could be radioactive and so…"
"Oh!" Daniel sat up straight so fast he banged his legs on the table, making the unused cutlery dance and everyone's wine slop against the sides of their glasses. "So - Colonel O'Neill told you why he wanted you to leave?"
"Well, of course." The other Daniel turned to the other O'Neill in obvious confusion.
The other O'Neill shrugged. "Teal'c recognized the symbol the Goa'uld had left warning anyone who came after them the place wasn't fit for anything except a microwave graveyard, so my first priority was to get my team out straight away. I told Carter and Daniel what was going on and we got out of there."
"But you told them why?" Daniel stressed. "You didn't, for instance, just say 'We're out of here' or," Daniel darted 'his' Jack a steely glance before turning back to the other O'Neill, "'Daniel I don't want to hear it.'."
The other O'Neill half-smiled. "Yeah, like Daniel would really respond well to that when he's just found a room full of artifacts. Even I could see what he had there was a significant find. The people there had basically done our work for us, going out and stealing from so many different civilizations and then obligingly labeling them for us." He glanced back at the other Daniel for confirmation and the man nodded emphatically. O'Neill went on, "So, once I'd got everyone home safely, we sent the Geiger Counter bunnies in to check that room out, and then everything was brought back and decontaminated. You had a lot of fun with that, didn't you?" He looked at the other Daniel fondly.
The other Daniel half-smiled as he looked at his plate. "Oh yeah, like a whole bunch of Christmasses had come at once."
The other O'Neill looked across at Daniel. "So, it didn't pan out that way for you then?"
"No. Not exactly." Daniel moistened his lips. "I got to go through the mirror, see the world destroyed and get shot in the shoulder by an alternative Teal'c. Which was another way to go."
The other Daniel gaped at him. "You didn't get to examine the Etruscan artifacts from what we think was P2Z-677?"
Daniel forced a bleak smile. "No, I never did. Our Medical Containment people just grabbed the mirror and nothing else. It was decided it was too risky bringing anything else back when we didn't know what it might do."
"We also got to save our world from being destroyed by Apophis thanks to Daniel going through the mirror," Sam said quickly. "If he hadn't, we'd all be dead by now."
The other O'Neill inserted the tip of the corkscrew into the next bottle of wine and began to twist the handle. "Sounds like it turned out well for both of us then."
"Doesn't it hurt?" The other Daniel looked across at his counterpart. "Getting shot by a staff weapon? The one time it happened to me I was dead before I hit the floor so I can't say I really felt it."
"Oh boy, yes," Daniel said then stared. "What? You've never been shot by a serpent guard?"
"Don't put ideas in his head," the other O'Neill said, pulling out the cork. He offered Daniel more wine. "There are some new cultural experiences that are better left untried."
"I couldn't agree more." Jack leaned across to Daniel and murmured, "No more wine, Daniel. You know you can't drink."
Daniel had been about to refuse a second glass but now he smiled at the other O'Neill and said, "Thank you," before giving Jack a glare in return.
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "So, how then did you know the co-ordinates to defeat Apophis?"
"We were sent a message Daniel deciphered telling us to beware the destroyers and the 'gate address they came from." O'Neill offered Teal'c wine politely which the Jaffa equally politely refused. He just raised his eyebrow at the Teal'c from his own dimension. "Can I tempt you from that kel no reem path of temperance and clean-living just this once, Teal'c?"
The other Teal'c tried and failed to suppress a smile. "No, O'Neill."
"You're too damned virtuous. Puts the rest of us to shame. Carter? You're not going to turn me down now, are you?"
The other Major held up her wine glass. "Depends on what you're offering, sir."
He gave her a wicked smile in return as he filled her glass. "Now, now, Major, keep it clean. Remember we have two young and impressionable Daniels here tonight."
"So you 'gated to Apophis' ship?" Sam put in a little impatiently, wanting to get the conversation back to parallel physics and its consequences. "The same as us?"
Discussing the details of the two missions, they seemed to be identical up until the moment when Jack had left Daniel in the corridor. "…so I left Teal'c to guard the corridor and…"
"Why Teal'c?" Jack demanded. "The corridor looked like being the safest place."
"Well, we just always have Teal'c guarding our rears on missions. He seemed the obvious choice. And it was lucky I did because three serpent guards came straight round the corner and I don't think anyone except Teal'c could have taken those guys out without getting shot in the process. Why? You did something different?"
Daniel looked at Jack's bleak face and said quickly, "Well, it sounds like the end result was the same. You blew up his ships and all got out alive and so did we."
Sam gave her other self a pleading look and the other women said, "Of course, we couldn't figure out the purpose of the mirror for a long time because we didn't realize the hand device was what activated it. They weren't made from the same substance and there seemed no obvious connection between them. I was struggling with it for years before I got it to work."
Jack said to his other self, "Did you go to Hadante?"
O'Neill nodded. "Yeah." He deliberately didn't look at his Daniel, keeping his gaze on Jack. "I think that's when the gray hair really started to kick in."
"Know the feeling."
The other Daniel frowned. "It wasn't that bad, Jack. I mean it was…creepy, but…" He shrugged. "We've been in worse situations, I never know why you and Teal'c always make such a big deal out of that place." He looked across at Daniel. "Jack just went into manic leader overdrive on Hadante. Talk about hit the ground running. He was so keen to get out of there, he wouldn't listen to a damned thing I told him."
Daniel put down the wine glass. "Ditto."
"I told him Linnea could be dangerous."
"I told our Jack the same thing."
"We were only there…what? An afternoon?"
"I know, would it have killed him to wait a little longer and try to find a safer way out of there?"
Jack and O'Neill exchanged an expressive glance. "Well, maybe we had our reasons," Jack said. "And, if you remember, Daniel, in that afternoon you managed to pick a fight with the biggest, ugliest guy on the planet and damn near get yourself killed."
"Oh, come on, you totally over-reacted to that place, Jack, and I can't believe you still won't admit it."
Jack and O'Neill exchanged another look. Jack said, "I'm sorry, I have to ask. What effect did Shyla have on…you know…didn't it cause any arguments between you?"
"Who?" said O'Neill.
"Who's Shyla?" the other Daniel frowned.
"Who's…?" Daniel looked at him in guilty astonishment. "You don't know who she is?"
The other Daniel shook his head, "No. Should I?"
"It doesn't matter," Jack said quickly. "Forget I asked. It was a stupid thing to bring up anyway."
"No. I need to know what happened," Daniel put in. "Are you telling me you never went to P3R-636?"
The other Jack and Daniel exchanged a glance of bewilderment and then the other Daniel sat up straight and looked guilty. "Oh God, Jack, that was the place where I stopped that girl killing herself and we all got thrown into the naquada mines."
"And this had slipped your mind?" Jack demanded.
"Well, we weren't there very long." The other Daniel looked at O'Neill. "What was it? Twenty-four hours?"
"Twenty four hours?" Daniel echoed. "We were there for days! I mean, they were in the mines, I was in the…"
Jack put a hand on his arm and stilled him. He addressed O'Neill: "The escape plan worked for you?"
"Yes." The man looked surprised that Jack even had to ask. "The second day, when they came to unchain us, Teal'c and I jumped the guards and we got the hell out of there. Carter and Daniel were in the infirmary for about a day afterwards because their blood sugar had dropped a little, but apart from that it wasn't too bad. Of course, it didn't do my knees a lot of good, but…"
"The second day?" Jack pressed. "Why not the first day?"
O'Neill frowned as he tried to remember. "Well, in our dimension the guard who was unchaining us took so long doing it the moment had passed. There was a time I did think about jumping him but Daniel was still chained up and he was really beat, there was no way he was going to be able to make it and I figured we'd get another chance if we just sat tight a little longer and the next day we did."
"But the next day he'd have been even more tired." Realizing that he was sounding way too agitated here, Jack cleared his throat. "I mean that was what I figured."
"Well, Teal'c and I helped Carter and Daniel out as much as we could the next day and I told him in plenty of time what we were planning to do so he was ready for it. And, let's face it they're both pretty tough and determined, aren't they? We were lucky, I guess, but it worked out for us and we got the hell off that world."
The other Daniel was looking at his counterpart's stricken face. "Did something different happen with you?"
"You could say that." Daniel put down his fork in a way that suggested he wasn't going to be picking it up again.
"What happened?"
"I screwed up," Jack and Daniel both said it in the same breath and then looked at each other.
Jack tightened his grip on Daniel's arm. "I screwed up. I rushed the escape, Daniel was still chained up and he damned near got killed. That bitch of a princess you both went out of your way to save got him addicted to the sarcophagus. It really messed around with his head but he still managed to persuade her father to let us go. So we all got to go home as well, just not as fast."
"That wasn't how it was, Jack," Daniel said quietly.
"Yes. It was."
Daniel looked across at his other self. "Jack's missing out the part about me leaving them down in the mines to nearly die of overwork for ten days while I played around with Shyla. Not to mention the moment when I put a gun in his face and nearly pulled the trigger."
Jack winced. "Danny, let's not do this now. I should never have brought it up. I'm sorry."
After a moment's awkward silence, the other Daniel said suddenly, "You call him 'Danny'? Jack only calls me 'Danny' when we're…" He broke off abruptly, faked a very unconvincing coughing fit and got pounded on the back by the other O'Neill. The other Daniel kept his gaze fixed on the tablecloth as he said in a small voice, "Could I have another glass of wine, please, Jack?"
"I think you've had enough," the man told him good-humoredly, but he nevertheless reached across and filled his glass for him.
Sam was afraid to look at either Jack or Daniel and was aware of Teal'c sitting next to her studiously avoiding the space around his counterpart's ear.
Daniel risked a quick sideways glance at Jack and saw at once that the 'Danny' thing was bothering him a lot less than his own tactlessness in having brought up Shyla. Before he could think of a change of subject to make the man feel better, the other O'Neill said conversationally, "So, anyone? Your least favourite Goa'uld? And you can't all say 'Apophis' because that's just too damned easy."
Jack looked relieved at the change of subject. "Well, Hathor is at the top of my Most Happy She's Dead list."
"That bitch." The other O'Neill looked momentarily murderous.
The two Daniels exchanged a guilty glance. The other Daniel said tentatively, "Did she try to turn your Jack into a Goa'uld as well?"
"Right in front of us," Sam said, to save Daniel having to answer. "I was so happy when the Colonel turned her into a Popsicle."
"Yeah, that was fun." The other O'Neill shot a brief glance in the direction of his Daniel. "Payback always is."
"Well, I really hate Nirrti," the other Carter said.
"I'm with you on that," Sam nodded. "Another total bitch."
"Cronos," ground out the two Teal'c's in unison.
"Looks like Sokar barely made the top five." Jack finished his wine. "Boy will he be pissed."
Daniel leant across the table and looked at his other self. "I'm sorry, I have to ask. Is Sha're alive or dead in your dimension?"
The other Daniel looked at his half-empty plate. "Dead."
"I'm sorry."
The two Teal'c's looked across at each other in a brief moment of recognition and then averted their eyes.
"It's okay." The other Daniel made the effort to meet his counterpart's gaze. "I knew she was gone. I knew that was it from when she looked right through me the second time. Apophis said 'Kill the rest' and she didn't even blink. That's when I knew she was gone and Amaunet was in charge. I think I did most of my mourning a long time before she died. Now, I'm just relieved that she isn't having to endure that terrible half-life any more. But I knew from the beginning I'd never get her back. I knew she was gone."
Jack and Daniel both noticed the way the other O'Neill automatically put out his right hand and rubbed the other Daniel's back as he was talking, not even seeming to know he was doing it.
"I didn't," said Daniel.
The other O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"I didn't know I wasn't going to get Sha're back. I really thought I was."
O'Neill said again, "I'm sorry," but very gently this time.
"I was lucky," the other Daniel rallied. "I had Jack to get me through it."
"So did I," Daniel returned with emphasis. After a slight pause he said, "And Sam and Teal'c, and even General Hammond and Janet Fraiser did their best. I had a lot of people helping me get through it. I got through it." He read in the other Daniel's eyes that the man thought the assistance Daniel had been given had nevertheless been inferior to the support of 'his' Jack.
After another awkward silence, the other Daniel said, "Do you suppose there are any more of Machello's little booby-traps out there?"
"Machello?" Daniel looked up.
Jack was also on alert in a second. "You mean the psycho-slugs from the page-turning device?"
"Oh you've met those as well, have you?" The other O'Neill drained his glass. "Weren't they a barrel of laughs?"
Daniel shivered. "That was not a fun trip."
The other Daniel also looked pale. "You're telling me. I really thought I was losing my mind."
"The dead Goa'uld on the ramp."
"The event horizon in the closet."
"The Goa'uld trying to get into Jack."
"Oh that was the worst."
"The footsteps. The dead Goa'uld next to Teal'c." Daniel shivered again and then looked up to find the other Daniel and O'Neill frowning at him in perplexity.
"What?" the other Daniel said.
"When the others came to see you? You didn't hear footsteps?"
"No. What happened with me was that Doctor Mackenzie and Janet diagnosed me as having schizophrenia, but of course Jack wasn't buying that. He thought it was just stress."
"Absolutely," Jack nodded. "I thought the same thing."
"So they medicated me and put me in one of the VIP rooms."
"Same with me."
"And, obviously, Jack stayed with me to keep an eye on me and see that I was okay. And then I saw this Goa'uld climbing up his arm and with one part of my mind I knew it wasn't real but there was this other part thinking 'What if it is? This is my last chance to grab it.' So I tried to grab it and then Jack knew I was really having problems. I remember feeling really sick and faint, and him helping me lie down on the floor, and then there was all this yelling…" He looked at the other O'Neill. "And you remember this way better than I do so you ought to tell it."
The other O'Neill shrugged. "Well, basically, Mackenzie and Janet wanted to pack him off to a padded cell. They wanted to pump him full of drugs and lock him up for his 'own protection'. So, of course, I told them no way in hell were they doing that to Daniel. They could carry him back to the infirmary and they could find out what was wrong with him and they could keep damned well looking until they came up with a better answer than 'Daniel's a schizophrenic and it's caused by 'gate travel.'"
Daniel was afraid to look at Jack and yet he had a terrible compulsion to do so; it was like driving past an accident, even though you knew the sight of it would horrify you, something tugged at your left eyeball trying to make you look that way.
It was the other Daniel who happened to glance across at Jack and so saw the stricken look on his face.
Daniel saw his counterpart's expression change, the realization and compassion in those blue eyes which were suddenly turned in his direction. He knew he was probably looking a little pale and shaken as well. The other O'Neill was still talking. Telling them about all the tests he'd made Janet run, how they'd finally seen that little slug under Daniel's skin and realized that it must have gone into him in the Linvris chamber.
Sam abruptly got to her feet. "Sir, I'm sorry to break up the party, but I think we should be going."
Jack also stood up. It seemed to take him a moment to find his voice. "Thank you, Colonel, for a very interesting evening. If our Carters can ever get this ectopic what-ever-it-is sorted out, perhaps we can meet up again."
***
Daniel was barely aware of anything except Jack as they made their way to the 'gate room. He knew how hard that last exchange must have hit the man. They'd both thought Jack had done everything he could to help him through that Linvris business given how far he was out of his depth, but now Jack would be thinking he should have insisted on Daniel being kept in the infirmary the way this other O'Neill had done. Daniel wondered if there was any way to convince the man he was actually glad now that…
"Doctor Jackson?" Daniel started as he realized someone had been saying his name gently for a little while now. He collected himself and looked up to find the face he saw in the mirror every morning gazing at him compassionately. "Can we talk?"
Daniel checked his watch. "Now?"
"Sam says we have a few more minutes. I think there's things you maybe need to know; things you might always wonder about."
Daniel nodded and followed his other self into an office which he realized was very like his own, except that dotted around the picture of Sha're on the desk were half a dozen photographs of the other Jack or the other Jack and the other Daniel together. He picked one up and examined it. It showed the two of them standing underneath the pyramids at Giza with their arms comfortably around each other's shoulders, hair disheveled by the wind. "This is nice. Were you on holiday?"
"I took Jack to Egypt last winter. Much to his surprise he had a pretty good time."
Daniel put the photograph back down on the desk. "I hope he didn't make you pay for it by watching a million hockey games while he explained all the stupid rules for the hundredth time."
The other Daniel gave a little smile. "Um - I've pretty much weaned my Jack away from the Friday night is hockey night thing."
"Really? How?" As the other gave him an amused glance, realization kicked in and Daniel held up a hand. "Okay, I get you. Don't tell me how."
"Don't you want to know how we got together?" The other Daniel prompted gently.
Daniel sat down on the other side of the long table and wrapped his arms around his chest. "I don't know. Do I?"
"Your Jack certainly seemed to have got the wrong end of the stick."
"He was just looking out for my - your - our best interests and he always thinks the worst of himself. Which, in this instance, meant that he thought the worst of the Jack in your dimension as well."
"That's what I told my Jack when I got back. I pointed out to him that if before we'd got together we'd traveled to an alternative dimension and found a Jack and Daniel who were together, he would have been the first person to leap to a whole bunch of erroneous conclusions about how that had come about. He'd have probably presumed the other Jack was a completely selfish bastard who'd emotionally blackmailed me into bed and was always making me do things I didn't want to do."
Daniel realized the other Daniel thought of him and Jack not as two people who were not together but as two people who were not yet together. He wondered if there was any point in putting him right about that, but then decided to hold his breath. This Daniel was clearly very happy with 'his' Jack and no doubt wanted to believe every Daniel in every dimension was one day going to find the same happiness with the Jack they knew. Why spoil the fantasy for him by pointing out that wonderful as it must be to have your best friend for a lover, that there were always losses to balance the gains?
Daniel said, "You were going to tell me how the two of you…got together?"
"Oh yes. You remember Nem?"
Daniel swallowed as the remembrance of pain tightened in his mind. "Vividly."
"You remember he said the memory device might be fatal?"
"Yes."
"That was when I realized I was in love with Jack. Because, I didn't care, I knew anything was better than never seeing Jack again. That I would definitely rather be dead than never see Jack again."
Daniel nodded. Not very different then. He'd had a vivid recollection of everyone who mattered to him in that moment: Sha're, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, and had come to the same conclusion, that life without them literally wasn't worth living. With this Daniel it had clearly just been focused on Jack - a tiny difference which had created a pretty significant divergence.
"And then you went home?" he prompted.
The other Daniel nodded. "But I couldn't stop thinking about that realization - that somehow I'd stupidly let myself fall in love with Jack and I was so scared and miserable, I can't tell you. It felt like the end of the world. I didn't know how I was going to go on working with him. I was so afraid he'd realize and hate me or despise me. I couldn't bear the thought of losing his…"
"Respect." Daniel said the word softly. Not even troubling to make it a question.
"Yes. Exactly."
"Well, I don't want to leap to any rash conclusions, but I'm figuring that didn't happen?"
The other Daniel couldn't repress a grin. "No. What happened was I couldn't bear it any longer. I got out of bed and went round to his place at three in the morning and told him we needed to talk. He was kind of weird with me at first - and I thought he'd realized, you know…Turns out when he'd thought I was dead he'd realized he was in love with me. So, he was thinking I must have noticed how odd he was behaving and come round to challenge him about it. Meanwhile, I thought he was being so off with me because he'd realized I was in love with him…Oh boy. Yeah. Took us a while to get that one sorted out, I can tell you."
"I can imagine."
"But once we had…" the other Daniel dropped his head a little but Daniel saw the flicker of that smile of remembrance. "Wow!"
Daniel smiled himself. "I'm happy for you. Jack's a very decent human being - in any dimension - and you seem to have yours particularly…well-trained."
"Well, he's always been pretty laid back and good-tempered," the other Daniel shrugged.
"Laid back?" Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Good-tempered?"
"And although he's not that interested in archaeology, he's always willing to listen."
"Really?" Daniel stared at him blankly for a minute before understanding hit him. "He doesn't want to…take it into the bedroom every time you start talking about hieroglyphs then?"
The other Daniel opened his mouth to say something then frowned. "Um…well…we do end up there quite a lot, but I don't think it's an avoidance tactic, or anything."
"No." Daniel kept his face a careful blank. "That wouldn't be Jack's way of handling a situation at all."
The other Daniel looked reassured. "No. It wouldn't."
Daniel looked at his watch to hide a smile. "I really think I have to get going."