Journeys (4d/5)
Title: Journeys (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Part I a b Part II a b c d Part III a b c d e Part IV a b c
"How did I die?" Daniel asked a few minutes later.
"What--don't tell me no one's told you," Jonas said.
Daniel huffed. "Most of them seem to think reading mission reports is too traumatic for me."
"To be fair, I found some of them a little traumatic, and I didn't live them," Jonas said.
His display of nervousness last night probably hadn't helped, either. But... "I still want to know," Daniel said. "I have to know, Jonas."
"Well..." Jonas glanced out the doors, as if making sure no one was there, then said, "I guess that's fair. Okay. You know about the Goa'uld by now, right? The System Lords?" Daniel nodded, listening carefully and hoping something would sound familiar. "They were meeting to discuss a mutual threat. You got in disguised as a slave to one of the Goa'uld so that you could release a poison once everyone was there. It would've taken out all the System Lords at once."
"I'm a spy and an assassin," Daniel said, surprised at the thought and not a little dismayed. "And not a very good one, apparently, since there are still System Lords and I died."
"Well, no. Anubis wasn't at the meeting, and if you'd released the poison, it would've handed victory to him. So you escaped and found SG-1 trapped on a planet that was being attacked by Zipacna, one of Anubis's lieutenants. You, uh...let yourself be captured to get close enough and then released the poison and killed all the guards to let SG-1 escape, but you were fatally wounded, and an ally named Selmak was killed."
("I can save him," Selmak said.)
Daniel closed his eyes against the wave of guilt that crashed against him, then determinedly opened them again before the memory of being beaten on the ground could take over his thoughts completely. "Did you just remember something?" Jonas said.
"No," Daniel lied, then, as he waited for the phantom pain to subside, he amended, "Not much. I think I killed him."
"Selmak," Jonas said, looking curious. "Yeah, in a way, but no one faults you for it. Selmak's old host--the man closest to him--comes by sometimes, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't think badly of you. So you...you remember it?"
("I'll be fine," he said into the ship's radio as he held the vial loosely in his fist. "I've got a secret weapon, remember?")
Daniel rubbed his eyes, knowing he should feel encouraged but only able to feel disturbed. "Some." His last act had been to kill many people, including an ally. How could he be someone like that? "Are all of your missions like that? I don't remember being scared."
"That sort of thing happens sometimes, yeah," Jonas said. "You'd survived missions just about as dangerous many times before. And...you probably told yourself you'd make it because no sane person would do something like that otherwise."
"I'm starting to get the idea I wasn't all that sane," Daniel said. Jonas smiled, thinking it was a joke, but Daniel said, "No, really, I think I remember being...quite insane."
"Oh...well, that's possible, too. The SGC has faced its share of mind-altering substances and technology. You've probably been affected by some of that before."
Daniel put his head in his hands and laughed, not sure whether it was hysterically funny or just crazy. He couldn't believe he'd actually wanted this job, though his notebooks made it very clear that he had. When he finally looked up again, Jonas looked concerned--perhaps for his sanity--so he made an effort to control himself. "I'm not making a very good impression, am I?" he said. "This is all just so absurd."
"Hey," Jonas said, "your real first impression was pretty absurd, too. Impressive, though."
"That must be the...with Anubis...?"
"Nope. There was one time before that. I didn't actually see you, but I think Sam did, and it was common knowledge you'd been involved. Selmak's old host had blended with another Tok'ra symbiote, and that one's old host got...he...uh..."
Jonas trailed off. Daniel wondered what his expression looked like just then. He suspected that 'bewildered' wasn't strong enough of a word.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you," Jonas said.
"Sorry," Daniel said. "I've barely gotten to the Tok'ra in the reports."
"Don't worry about it," Jonas said with a friendly smile. "It's a lot to take in." He pushed himself back to the other desk. He nudged his computer off the screensaver--the image on the screen was now a stone from Vis Uban--but then said to Daniel, "I'm from a place called Kelowna. There was an experiment with a bomb that killed a lot of people and set off a chain reaction that pretty much destroyed the planet. I came to Earth, hoping the SGC could help when I realized my people weren't going to see reason."
"Oh," Daniel said. "Um...I'm sorry to hear that."
"Your notes were the first thing that told us the experiment was going to go wrong. It probably saved my life. I would've been right there otherwise, in the way. So that's part of why your name was just about the first thing I learned about this place."
"But I was dead," Daniel said. "I wasn't even in this place."
"Yeah," Jonas said, wrinkling his brow. "Actually, now that I think about it, that was sort of an invasion of privacy, since I've read pretty much everything about you except the really personal stuff that Colonel O'Neill packed away. I thought you were dead. Uh, sorry. I can give you my notes, though, when you get there--they pick up shortly after you Ascended."
"Thanks--and I don't mind your reading my notes," he said, holding up a journal. "I'm reading them, too. Is that why everyone seems to know so much about me?"
Jonas shrugged. "Word travels fast in a small, secret community, especially when you live in it. And most mission reports are open to other personnel, because people need to know the kinds of things that happen on missions in order to learn from them. We try to keep personal details out, but sometimes those details are mission-essential, or they're not hard to piece together."
"So everyone knows everything about everyone," Daniel summarized, a little daunted.
"In a way, but details are still colored by perspective, so take everything with a little caution." He shrugged again. "Which means you can ask pretty much anyone if you're wondering about anything, and you'll get some sort of answer, at least."
"But they all want me to be him," Daniel said, frustrated. "I'm..." He sighed, then confided, "It's nice to talk to someone who only knows me from records, because that's all I know of me."
Jonas grinned. "Well, I can imagine how that might be...difficult. But I'm sure other people would welcome it if you wanted to talk to them. In fact, once you get your memory back, you're going to rejoin SG-1, right?"
Surprised, Daniel said honestly, "I...hadn't thought about that. Do you want me?"
Jonas looked just as surprised in turn. "I meant in place of me."
"Why would I replace you?" Daniel said.
"It was your spot to begin with," Jonas said. "I've been the replacement for your replacement over the last half year or so--a lot of what I do has foundations in what you helped to pioneer."
"I'm not sure the rest of the team would--"
"Oh, I'm pretty sure they would," Jonas said, his cheery expression slipping for a brief moment before it returned.
Daniel frowned. "I barely know what's going on. I--I don't...I'm not--"
"You know what," Jonas said, "you're probably right. It's a little soon, huh? We can work that out later." He gave another quick smile and turned back to his computer.
"Can I at least help?" Daniel said, looking at the screen. "It seems I don't like being useless."
"Do you, uh...no offense, but can you help?" Jonas asked.
"Well, I understand that," Daniel said, squinting at the writing on the stone in the picture. "It's pretty clear what that says."
"Very funny," Jonas said, and then, "You--you're not joking. Wait, really?"
"Really. It's...actually very intricate," Daniel said, intrigued. He skimmed over the writing he could see, then added, "It's a fable, right? But if you stretch the metaphors just a little, all together it's basically a historical record buried in the specific word choice itself. It's very clever, actually--you'd need to know the language really well to get the subtleties."
When he finally tore his eyes away from the image, Jonas's mouth was open.
"What?" Daniel said.
"You can read this?" Jonas said, jabbing a finger at his computer. "That easily?"
"Sure--I don't seem to have forgotten any of the languages I spoke."
"No, no, Daniel," Jonas said, shaking his head, "you don't understand. You didn't speak this language. I mean, you probably knew more about it than anyone here, but you heard it spoken once and pieced everything else together through guesses based on derivations and logic...or, at least, that was what I'd always assumed. Are you saying you actually understand this now, just by looking at it?"
Daniel looked back at the screen. "Are you sure?" he said doubtfully. "I'm not making this up. Like...the city where you found me was only partially completed, yes? That slab there, to the...uh...left, marks a date when they stopped construction on that particular part of the city, and the larger one on the other side is a warning of the illness spreading throughout--"
"That's amazing," Jonas breathed.
"The main stone is more interesting, really," Daniel said. "It talks of another home and the battles that have been fought there. Somewhere far away. Uh...and lessons learned, which is the fable-like part."
"Wow," Jonas said. "It took me all morning to figure out just bits of it."
"I don't know how to explain it," Daniel said. "I just...looked at it, and I know what it says."
Jonas gaped at him. "Wait here," he said, standing quickly and holding a hand out. "Just...wait, I'll be right back."
As Daniel watched, bemused, Jonas rushed out of the office.
Then he rushed back with an armful of books. He set the first down in front of Daniel and said, "Read this line. Uh, the part not in English, right here."
Daniel looked down--Jonas was covering part of the page with one hand, but the rest of it was still visible. It took him a moment to figure out what language it was, much less what it said. "Is this...Sanskrit?"
"Yes," Jonas said. "Classical."
"I don't think I know very much Sanskrit," he said after some thought. "If I had a dictionary, I think maybe I could work it out, with time--"
"You've read this one, right, Panini?" Jonas said, flipping the book closed so that Daniel could see Ashtadhyayi written on the cover. "From your notes, I assume you read it more as a study of early grammatical theory than as a primer on this language, so that's consistent. Now this one."
He sighed but obediently looked, then said, "It's...East Asian. Something. Um. Hanzi characters? No, I don't know what that says--" The book was whipped away and replaced. "This is Egyptian Arabic, that's easy. And Greek, ancient--yes, I can read those. And this...Jonas, I wrote this--of course I can read it. What is this, a test?"
Jonas grinned and gathered all the books away. "Yeah. Come with me."
...x...
"Mr. Quinn...and Mr. Jackson," General Hammond said when they appeared in the doorway to his office. "What's going on?"
"Daniel can read Ancient," Jonas said. "Fluently."
The general frowned. "He was the closest person we had to an expert on the Ancient language. I know that he sometimes makes it seem as though--"
"No, no, it's not just that," Jonas interrupted, then added, "Sorry, sir, but I mean he can really read it. Unless his notes heavily downplayed the progress he'd made before Ascending...well, this is new. I tried a few other languages he didn't know before, and I think it's just Ancient."
The general looked at Daniel. "Seriously," Daniel said, still confused, "this is that big of a deal? There were things written in that language--uh, 'Ancient'--all over lots of things on the planet where you found me."
"It's also," Jonas said, "all over the tablet that led us to Vis Uban and, therefore, to you."
"Okay, well, that's...a coincidence," Daniel said, holding up a hand. "I can also read several other languages that had nothing to do with finding me."
"But the ability to read those other languages isn't something you apparently gained while residing on another plane of existence," the general said. Daniel bit his lip before he could say aloud that he was starting to feel like a puzzle that people were trying to solve and didn't appreciate that others seemed to be better at solving it than he was.
"Look, think about it," Jonas said. "One of the last things you told us while Ascended was about the Ancients."
"I haven't gotten there yet," Daniel said. "I don't know what the Ancients are."
"Well, we don't know a whole lot, either, but we just found out that before they Ascended, they left behind a city of the lost where they might have kept something we can use as a weapon. You were the one who told us that finding the city was more important than anything."
"City of the...lost," Daniel echoed. The phrase didn't mean anything to him, and it didn't really sound right, either.
"In fact," Jonas said, "there were two other devices that you thought were worth risking whole planets for, and you still said that the Ancient city of the lost was more important than those. Then we finally found the place where we're hoping to find Ancient technology, and you were there, able to read Ancient."
Daniel found both of them staring at him again. "I don't know what you want me to say," he said.
This time, the general turned expectantly to Jonas. "You might know something else, too," Jonas said. "In terms of languages, we'd need a few simple tests just to establish your baseline--"
"Tests?" Daniel repeated. The general's eyes flicked toward him, but Jonas seemed too excited to notice and went on.
"--but maybe you knew the secrets that you wanted us to find there. If nothing else, it would help the mission on Vis Uban if we had someone who can read the language easily. It took me two weeks to decipher enough of the tablet to find Vis Uban, even with the start your notes gave me. And you looked at a slab in a picture and knew what it said in two seconds."
"Mr. Quinn," the general said, "I understand, but I'm not sure that's the best idea."
"What? But sir..." Jonas started.
"Mr. Jackson has just barely returned from the city of the lost," the general said. "This soon, I'm not sure it's fair to--"
"Wait--wait a minute," Daniel said, "you think Vis Uban is the place where the Ancients put all their most advanced technology?"
Jonas looked surprised. "Well, its name does mean...'city of, uh...'"
"...of power," Daniel finished. "Yes."
"Right," Jonas said, furrowing his brow. "I can't imagine it's a coincidence that you desperately wanted us to find the city, and then we used the tablet you pointed out to us to find it and found you. In the Ancient 'city of power.' After you'd just left the company of the Ascended Ancients. There's just too much coincidence there."
"Well, maybe, but the Ancients could have had plenty of powerful cities and Vis Uban could have been one of them before it was abandoned," Daniel said. "I just don't think you're looking in the right place."
Now, the general leaned forward. "Why do you say that?"
"I don't know," Daniel said, confused himself. "I...just know that Vis Uban isn't the planet you're looking for. Can I see that tablet and your translation?"
"Well, it's classified," Jonas said, turning to the general, "which is why I wanted to ask permission to show you. But...maybe I was a little overenthusiastic."
"It's up to you, Mr. Jackson," the general said to Daniel. "I wouldn't force you to work before you're fully able to understand what that entails."
"I thought it just entailed reading a tablet," Daniel said, deciding that apprehension about being tested wasn't as important as his curiosity just now. "I can read. Can I read?"
The general looked at Jonas. "He can read," Jonas offered, looking like he was trying to look less excited and mostly failing.
"Fine," the general finally said. "Go and take a look."
XXXXX
19 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1900 hrs
"All right," Jack said, feeling a headache beginning to build behind his eyeballs, "so let me get this straight. You"--he pinned Daniel with a hard stare--"told us we had to find the city of the lost--"
"No, the lost city," Daniel said, sounding irritated. "It's not the 'city of the lost.' That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"But you said it was," Jack said, tired from a few days of fruitless search peppered with local stories about dogs and dancing monkeys that he suspected he was understanding wrong.
"No I--" Daniel said, then closed his eyes and let out a breath. "Look, you thought the tablet was about an incomplete city and therefore found Vis Uban, which is an incomplete city. But the tablet's actually about the lost city of the Ancients."
"Is that just semantics?" Carter said. "Or are you saying the Ancients really lost one of their own cities?"
Daniel shook his head. "No--the Ancients made it lost so that no one would find it."
Jack glanced at Jonas, who shrugged, looking disappointed but not surprised or even in disagreement. Apparently, he'd already thought this through before the three SG teams on Vis Uban had been recalled to base. "Colonel, I went back over the tape that showed him giving us the tablet," Jonas said. "He did say the 'lost city,' not the 'city of the lost.'"
"But you were following his notes," Jack said. "Which said 'city of the lost.'"
"I didn't think it was a big difference," Jonas said, grimacing in apology.
"The notes are wrong," Daniel said. "I must have made a mistake back then. I'm certain of what the tablet says now, and all I know is that it's. Not. Vis. Uban."
"So where is it?" he said. He would overlook the fact that Daniel had been willing to surrender Earth for that damn tablet and the fact that they'd spent weeks looking for the damn city, as long as Daniel told them where it actually was.
Daniel looked around the table at Carter and Teal'c before turning back to Jack. "Did I just say 'all I know...'?"
"Colonel," Hammond said sharply when Jack felt his hands clench into fists. "Mr. Jackson's given us his revised translation and Mr. Quinn concurs. Let's clean up on Vis Uban and move on." He stood and returned to his office.
"Oy," Jack said, and started to leave.
"Colonel--" Daniel said.
"It's Jack," Jack snapped, and then, "What?"
There was a long pause in which Daniel frowned a lot. "Never mind," he finally said.
...x...
24 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1750 hrs
For the next few days, Daniel spent hours at a time in Skaara's room, and more than once, Jack went to the archaeology office to find him firmly ensconced between large and delicate objects in the archives. Jonas had taken to giving Jack a nervous glance from his desk and declined to weigh in.
It didn't escape Jack's notice that Daniel sidled out to feed the fish once he thought Jack was no longer in view, which made him think rather uncharitably that Jonas hadn't even known Daniel and the two geeks were fast friends already. Jonas was covering for Daniel while Daniel hid from Jack, and that...well, that was just wrong.
They were even training together in the gym--Daniel had the edge through experience, but he got distracted easily while fitting pieces of his memory together. Jonas had a tendency to hesitate, too, in the heat of the moment, which Daniel had never done, and while Jonas was getting better at that, it would take more than a few months of off-and-on training to gain the kind of unflinching instinct that someone learned from being drilled in Jaffa-style combat since puberty.
So Jack busied himself with reports and stacks of MALP data and news from the Tok'ra and Jaffa until Carter ran up to him one day and said, "Colonel O'Neill! It's Daniel. He, um..."
"Where is he?" Jack said sharply, recognizing her tone for danger.
"Near the gym, sir, I think he's hiding in the men's room--"
"What happened?" he asked as he followed her.
She took a breath, then said, "He went to keep Skaara company during PT. Teal'c says he was fine--he stayed after Skaara was done to talk and ask questions, and then when he was leaving, he panicked at something and just ran. Teal'c and Jonas are there now, but..."
"Okay," Jack said, and pushed the door open.
"...me alone!" Daniel's voice snapped from somewhere inside. Jonas, looking anxious, pointed at the far stall. Jack stepped past him and could hear Teal'c's low voice, but it was too quiet to make out the words over Daniel's, "No, stop it! Just--"
Teal'c was crouching on the tile floor, but Jack held up a hand to stop him from saying anything and said casually, "Hey, Daniel."
"Please. Go. Away," Daniel said. His voice was muffled--more than the stall door could account for--and Jack imagined him huddled in a corner with his head buried in his knees.
"Um..." Jack raised his eyebrows at Teal'c, who raised one in return and shook his head to say he had no idea. "No, I don't think so. Why don't you come out of there."
No one answered.
"Floor's pretty dirty," Jack tried. "I assume you're sitting on the floor. You used to do that a lot--the bathroom part's new, though."
Daniel mumbled something.
"What was that?"
No answer.
"D'you just remember something?" Jack said.
"Leave me alone," Daniel said, and this time, his voice cracked on the last word.
Jack rubbed a hand over his face. "Okay," he said briskly. "I'll give you a choice. You can tell me what's wrong, or I can have Teal'c give me a boost over the door and we can both sit inside a tiny little stall until you tell me anyway. Trust me--it'd be awkward."
There was a bark of hysterical laughter punctuated by a shaky gasp of breath in. "Who are you?" Daniel said.
Suppressing a pang at the idea that his voice hadn't been enough to breach the recognition barrier, Jack said, "It--it's Jack O'Neill. Jack."
"I know that. I mean...who..." He stopped again. "What do you want?"
"Well..." Jack said, "Right now? I'm hungry, so I'd kinda like a steak, but that's not really the point."
Something thumped inside--Daniel, tipping his head back against the wall behind him.
When no answer came again, Jack asked, "Did you knock yourself out?"
"No," Daniel snapped.
"I'm just asking," Jack said. "Listen, whatever answers you're looking for, I'm telling you, it's not in the toilet."
"Shut up. For once, could you stop--"
"All right!" Jack said quickly. "Okay. Hey! Will you calm down!"
"Stop yelling at me!" Daniel yelled.
"I'm not yelling!" Jack yelled back.
Something hit the door hard with a thump that rattled the flimsy hinges.
Jack stared. "Did you just throw something at me?" He lowered his head to peek under the door and saw one socked foot and a sneaker lying on its side. "You threw your shoe at me!"
"Well, it didn't hit you," Daniel said.
"Daniel," Jack said.
"Jack!" Daniel said.
"Great," Jack said. "Now we got that off our chests, why don't you come out."
"Why don't you go away."
"Okay--look. Stay in there if you want. Teal'c and Jonas are gone"--Jack turned and waved at them to go away until they both slipped out the door--"and Carter's guarding the door, so it's just you and me. I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're sitting in there."
"I don't even know you!" Daniel said, his voice rising. "Why would I want to tell you anything?"
"Because I know everything about you," Jack said. "Well, not everything. But I know you just remembered something, right? Something bad. And anything that bad...well, chances are, I was there for it, too."
Daniel sniffed once but didn't speak.
"I could start guessing," Jack offered. No answer. "All right. You were in the gym. I assume you were working out with Teal'c." A thought struck him. "Is this about Teal'c?" He really hoped it wasn't; they had enough complications as it was.
A soft, slithering sound came from inside the stall.
Jack frowned. "Did you just shake your head?"
"Yeah," Daniel said. He cleared his throat.
"You know, this whole...non-verbal communication thing...works a lot better when there's not a door between us," Jack pointed out.
Daniel went non-verbal.
Jack looked around, then slid down the side wall to sit against the wall, turning to face the row of stalls and listening for any signal that might mean he should do something. He'd seen his share of people get spooked by some trigger or other, whether it was the distant whir of a helicopter or the crush of bodies jostling against each other in a crowd. A military base like the SGC would be chock full of reminders for Daniel, good and bad.
Finally, Daniel said quietly, "Why do I call you Jack?"
"Because...that's my name," Jack said.
"No one else calls you that. I thought you were my commanding officer, and that's...that's not how it works. I know that much."
"I wasn't always," Jack said. "You call Major Carter 'Sam,' too, even though you take orders from her in the field when I'm not around. Well, did. The point is, we're..." He gestured with a hand, then remembered no one could see it. "...friends. First."
"Nothing makes sense," Daniel mumbled.
"Maybe I can make some sense of it," Jack said patiently. "Can you at least tell me what happened today? Just now?"
"I don't know. I don't--I can't...mph." The muffled sound was back.
"You know what? That doesn't really matter," Jack said worriedly. "It could've been anything. Someone familiar, a noise...doesn't matter, all right?" The only answer was the sound of slow, deliberate breathing. "You all right?"
"Fine."
"So..." Jack said. "Still 'no' to the coming out, huh."
There was a shifting sound and another quiet thump.
"You keep doing that, you're gonna give yourself a concussion," Jack said.
"Why would I--"
"I'm joking," Jack said. "Well, mostly. You really shouldn't keep banging your head on the walls. Your brain's enough of a tangle at the best of times--"
Daniel made a frustrated noise. "Why is everything a joke to you?"
Jack winced. "It's just...it's what I do. Whistling in the dark."
After a pause, Daniel said, "I don't know what that means."
"It's okay," Jack said. "You'll remember."
"What if I don't?"
"You will."
"And if I don't?" Daniel said tightly. "What if I'm not the person you think I am anymore?"
"You are," Jack insisted.
Daniel sucked in a sharp breath and pressed, "No, Jack--what if I'm not?"
It wasn't until then that Jack understood. "You're still Daniel Jackson," Jack said. "All right? You do these little things... You probably don't even notice them, but they're there. Everything else, you can learn again. We can teach you again. Hell, you're remembering tons of stuff every day already."
"But you wanted your friend back," Daniel said.
Jack stretched his legs out in front of him. It took a moment before he could say, "Yeah, I did. And you know what? I got him. It'll be okay. But I don't know what to do, either. So you gotta tell me what's going on. Start with today. What happened a few minutes ago?"
"I had to get away," Daniel said, his voice starting to shake, just a little, like a picture that trembled at the edges because the person holding it up was shivering. "It's not... I didn't remember anything, exactly, not like in the dreams. I just...it's all the time, I keep seeing things, or...or hearing them, and I don't know why it bothers me or makes me think of something else, but it...does."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Not all flashbacks come with full picture." There was no answer to that. "You don't have to be embarrassed," he added. "If that's why you're not coming out, I mean. No one thinks anything of it. And besides, it's just me in here."
A bark of something between a laugh and a sob came from behind the door, and Jack realized that that wouldn't mean anything to Daniel, that it was just Jack.
"I know it's been...rough," Jack said evenly. "And you're...it's like you're trapped now, right? Or that's how it felt before? That's why you had to get away. It happens to all of us. But Daniel, hiding in there is not the solution."
"It smelled like blood," Daniel said in a small voice. "And it was...it was hot, and my leg hurt..."
"Are you hurt?" Jack said immediately.
Daniel seemed to think about it, and then, "No. I don't know why I said that."
"How about this: I know SG-12 got back around then," Jack said. "I heard they'd just run into a Jaffa patrol, and someone got winged in the fight. They might've walked past you on the way to the infirmary. I bet Lou Ferretti said 'hi'--he usually does--"
"Yes. I looked over. Saw them."
"Maybe that was what set it off."
"There was so much blood," Daniel insisted, sounding dazed by the idea. "I thought it was going to...to choke--"
"You might've been thinking of something else, too," Jack said. "A memory, but just part of it."
"Part of a memory."
"Sure. Like...this one time, you were with a team--Coburn's--and got ambushed. I wasn't there. You were shot in the leg. So. Just now, you caught a whiff of blood, probably some metal and gunpowder, you were tired from working out, someone yelled 'Jackson'..." An abrupt intake of breath told him he was right. "It reminded you of something else--maybe that fight, maybe just the general feeling--and your nose got all confused."
Daniel laughed weakly. "My nose got confused?"
"Your brain," Jack said firmly, "is a strange place, Daniel. If it can confuse the smartest brains in this galaxy, it can confuse your nose."
A snort answered him.
"All right, that doesn't matter," Jack said. "You've gotta stop thinking about it. Just...look around you--you know where you are. You're fine, there's no blood, there are no weapons or enemies around. It's just you and me, on base. On a...bathroom floor. Okay?"
"Okay," Daniel said. He coughed. "No, I'm...I'm fine."
"Good," Jack said. "Now will you open the damn door?"
For a while, Jack thought he was going to have to start over and try something else, which would probably involve breaking down the door. And then a rustling sound came from inside the stall, and Daniel pushed the door open, his face pink.
"Hello," Jack said cautiously, pushing himself back up to his feet as well.
"We've done this before," Daniel said, but like a question.
"Um...no," Jack said.
"It feels like we have."
Jack took the last few steps toward him, dropping an arm around his shoulders, only hesitating a moment because he still wasn't completely convinced that he'd feel a solid person under him. "Maybe something like it. Today, you just freaked out a little bit. Got confused. No big deal."
"I must have been a very unbalanced person," Daniel mumbled. He wasn't leaning into Jack, but then, that was par for the course, too. He wasn't pushing away, which would have to count for something. "The things I keep remembering..."
He shivered. Jack automatically started to pull him closer, but Daniel pulled away instead, looking embarrassed as he folded his arms.
"With the things you saw? You were pretty balanced," Jack assured him, sticking his hands into his pockets for lack of anything better to do with them. "Lots of good people wash out of this program, and you were one of the elite."
"I remember that was more or less an accident."
"No way I would've let you stay that long if you hadn't turned out to be pretty damn good."
"I made mistakes," Daniel said. "The Ancient city. And whatever I did to get...like this."
"Well, yeah," Jack admitted. "When you were wrong, sometimes, you were really wrong, but when you were right, you were really right, too."
"Do you think I lied?" Daniel said, looking at the floor. "About the Lost City. Maybe I gave you enough clues to find Vis Uban because I wanted you to find me."
"Never thought of that," Jack said honestly. "Doesn't sound like something you'd do." Daniel opened his mouth. Jack cut him off with, "You did your 'selective truth' routine there at the end, yeah, but an Ancient Lost City full of knowledge and power is not something you'd joke about or use as an excuse. Ever."
"But then how do you explain the coincidence of finding me there when it was the wrong--"
"Don't ask me," Jack said. "Maybe Oma pulled a few strings. I don't really care--and you know what? I don't even care if you were all enlightened and everything; it's better this way. The other way sucked a lot more."
Daniel gave him a long look. "I remember things about you," he said. "I just don't always know how they fit."
Shrugging uncomfortably, Jack said, "Yeah, well...it was complicated, kid." The word 'kid' sounded wrong as soon as it came out, though--he'd barely used it at all for years, and the person who had died for them and then come back to life was tall and muscular and pensive and no longer looked anything like a kid.
"Kid," Daniel echoed, as if the same thought were occurring to him, but then he asked, "Do you think I'm the same age as I was before I Ascended, or did I come back a year older?"
Jack blinked. He turned and looked at Daniel, who turned and looked at him and blinked back. "This is about the driver's license you never got, isn't it?" Jack said.
"What's a driver's license?" Daniel said blankly.
Jack searched his face suspiciously for another moment, but couldn't find anything. "Never mind," he said. "Hey, did I ever mention we used to live together sometimes?"
"Well, that would explain the laundry dream," Daniel said.
"You had a dream about laundry?" Jack said in disbelief.
Daniel was still looking at him oddly, like he was trying to figure something out, but in the end, he only shook his head and said, "Never mind."
...x...
31 May 2003; O'Neill Residence; 2130 hrs
"I know this place," Daniel said the first time Jack took him out of the Mountain. "Do I?"
"You should," Jack said, trying not to react. He tossed his coat on a chair. "You lived here a lot of the time."
Without looking, Daniel hung his coat casually on a hook by the door. Jack didn't push his luck by asking him how he'd known the hook was there. "Do you ever worry," Daniel said thoughtfully, "that living in such close and personal proximity with a subordinate might make you unable to maintain objectivity in the field, or that, as a person in authority, you might not remain impartial?"
Jack gaped at him. "You're going to lecture me about objectivity."
"Why do you say that?" Daniel said, tearing his eyes away from where he'd apparently been cataloguing every visible inch of the house. "I feel like an objective person."
"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Jack said. "I seem to remember you stepping in at every choice I made to argue that it just wasn't fair, or--"
"Being objective and being in disagreement are not mutually exclusive," Daniel said, tilting his head. "Objectivity is about treating equal entities or ideals equally. We disagree sometimes on the treatment that should be applied to each equal individual, yes? Or whether or not two things are equal. What I meant was, would you be able to sacrifice the person you live with--"
"No," Jack snapped. "End of sentence. That's the way it works. The four of us...it was different. Especially with you. Hell, you used to run to Teal'c's room when you had nightmares."
"Teal'c also used to punch me a lot," Daniel said. "I'm not saying it's something that should be changed, necessarily; I'm just trying to regain a feel for the team's dynamics."
Jack scowled. "In case you've forgotten, you've had your moments of putting me, Carter, and Teal'c in front of entire solar systems, not to mention what you'd do for your brother and sister. And you'd do it again, too, without blinking, and so would I."
"My sister," Daniel echoed, and Jack remembered belatedly that he might have forgotten, after all.
"Her name's Sha'uri," Jack told him.
"I had a dream about her." Before Jack could say anything else, though, Daniel leaned closer to something on the mantle. "Sara," he said, pointing to a photo of her and Charlie. "I met her once. But I don't think I ever met..." He broke off. Jack held his breath, but Daniel only glanced toward him once and finished, "Charlie. I remember."
"Okay," Jack said. "Good. I guess."
Daniel looked down the line of pictures, then backed away to stand with his hands in his pockets.
"There are a few more in your old room," Jack said when he didn't say anything else. "There's at least one picture of your brother and sister that I know of. That one was taken on Abydos, right in front of the Stargate. Maybe it'll jog your memory."
"Okay," Daniel said.
Jack eyed him for a moment, wishing he'd do something else that made it obvious he knew this house, or that it felt like home somehow. When he only waited, Jack nodded. "This way."
When they reached the spare room where Daniel used to stay, though, the first thing he zeroed in on was a different photo. "This must be my mother," he said, bending to look more closely at an old black-and-white that Nick Ballard had left behind.
"You recognize her," Jack said, relieved.
But Daniel frowned. "No. Just a logical... Why haven't I remembered anything about my parents?"
Jack looked back at the photo. "Well. This is a... It's an old picture. I didn't even know her back then."
"So did she look very different when she died? Aside from being dead, of course."
Uneasy, Jack cleared his throat, reminding himself that even a normal Daniel could be perfectly diplomatic and overly blunt by turns without even noticing it. Daniel was still studying the picture. "Well," Jack said. "No, not a lot. Little older. Different clothes, no glasses. You know."
"Huh," Daniel said, and put it back on the bookshelf to reach for the next one.
"You know what," Jack said, "I'll give you some time to sort through these. You remember where things are in the house if you need them?"
"I'll be fine," he said, not looking up. "'Night."
...x...
Jack found Daniel in the living room around three in the morning.
"Hey, Jack," he said in a normal tone of voice as he paged through a newspaper on the table. "I have no context at all to understand this at anything but a very superficial level, but--"
"What are you doing up?" Jack said.
"Why does 'Vice President Robert Kinsey' sound familiar to me?" Daniel asked instead of answering.
Jack finished shuffling his way toward the sofa and flopped down on it. "He was Senator Robert Kinsey before you went glowy,"
"Senator," Daniel said. "Robert Kinsey. Senator Kins--oh. Oh."
"Yep."
"What does the Vice President do?"
"Not much."
Daniel folded up the paper again. "Good," he said firmly.
"You remember Kinsey," Jack said, "but not the fifteen bucks you owe me?"
"You remember fifteen bucks I owe you from over a year ago?" Daniel countered, and then, "A buck is a unit of currency, right? I can't imagine owing you animals."
Jack snorted.
"Did I wake you?" Daniel said. "I didn't mean to."
"Nah. I'm just not used to hearing you creep around at night anymore."
Daniel stilled. "Oh."
"It's fine," Jack said, not wanting to admit that, for a while, he'd woken up at night with a burning sense of dread and gone to check on Daniel, only to find an empty bed in a dusty room. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to feel about it now. "Couldn't sleep?"
"What do you know about MRI?" he asked.
Jack raised his eyebrows and had to remind himself that apparent non sequiturs were sometimes perfectly logical in Daniel's mind. He hadn't realized until recently just how much he'd missed feeling like he was falling into a middle of a conversation, knowing that all he had to do was follow along and let Daniel lead him to whatever convoluted conclusion he'd drawn. "I know you had another one yesterday. I know Fraiser's been saying you look fine. Otherwise...not much other than that it scans your head and makes a picture of your brain. What'd she say this time?"
"Dr. Fraiser--"
"You call her Janet."
Daniel paused, very briefly, but Jack had suffered through enough of his rapid-fire sentences to know that even a brief pause meant serious thinking was going on. "Janet said there were certain trends in my fMRI that are often seen in cases of functional amnesia," Daniel said, now folding the newspaper and pausing curiously on the crossword puzzle.
"Well, we knew that," Jack pointed out.
"It's not quite consistent with someone who's very rapidly regaining his memories, although it's really hard to make any sort of definite conclusion."
Jack watched him squint at the crossword. "You're worried that you're still missing something. Well, we knew that, too. It's a work in progress."
"You think it'll come back?"
"What's 'it?'"
"I don't know," Daniel said. "I'm the amnesiac, remember?"
"Three down is 'spaniel,'" Jack told him, because it was easier than answering the question. Daniel looked up from under his eyebrows but obligingly filled it into the puzzle.
"You were always better at these puzzles than I was," Daniel commented, but there was a question in his eyes when he straightened.
"Yeah, well, did you have cocker spaniels on Abydos?"
"I don't even know what that is."
"Exactly," Jack said. "So...nothing's actually wrong with your MRI, right?"
Daniel shook his head. "No large sections of my brain seem to have died, if that's what you mean. She's thinking of setting up a time to try that high-resolution, directional...something scan she and Anise put together, but even that might not tell her much, since I've never been in that scanner, so they don't have anything to compare it to."
"They're still looking for damage?" Jack said.
"They're looking for something," Daniel said. "Jack, I learned all the nuances of the Ancient language at some point while I was Ascended. That means I came back different somehow. It has to mean whatever happened during that time isn't completely gone from my mind, and if we could regain that knowledge..." He shook his head. "I hear that Anubis has the knowledge of an Ascended being. We could use that kind of intelligence to even the playing field."
Jack leaned back and studied his earnest expression. "Funny that you'd put it that way."
Furrowing his brow, Daniel asked cautiously, "What do you mean?"
"You were Ascended," Jack said. "You knew...the secrets of the universe and the meaning of life or something, and you're losing sleep thinking about how to use it to kill Anubis."
"Don't you want to?" he asked.
"Well...yeah," Jack said.
"So what's the problem?" Daniel said, looking honestly confused.
What happened to you up there? Jack thought.
Besides, they'd tried to coax knowledge out of Shifu before Daniel and Sha'uri had stopped them. He wondered if Daniel had remembered that yet and if his opinion would change when he did.
"And," Daniel added, his eyes lighting up, "can you imagine what else could be left in my brain? The Ancients found a way to convert themselves into energy, Jack. They built the Stargates, they had the most advanced human civilization we've come across to date... It could be the most important historical discovery... And the Lost City! If we could only find it, just think what they might have left behind for later generations to learn."
"Right," Jack said. "That, too."
But even as he started to breathe a sigh of relief--Daniel, in the end, was still himself--Daniel added, "Robert once thought we'd found the greatest historical discovery in the history of the SGC, and it didn't turn out very well."
Jack winced. "You remember that." What Jack remembered was shooting the SGC's head archaeologist and finding Daniel trussed up for dinner, courtesy of an Unas.
"Be careful what you wish for?" Daniel said wryly.
"Never stopped you before," Jack pointed out.
"I guess not. But it makes you wonder if I should have let it stop me sometimes."
Jack wasn't sure what exactly the 'it' was that they were talking about, but he said, "Nah. You wouldn't be you. Besides," he added, "that's what I'm here for."
Daniel tilted his head, studying him. "Yeah, maybe," he said, nodding once as if he were saying 'definitely,' and Jack wondered if their lives had simply become a series of one maybe after another.
Continued in Part V: The Journey Home