gedulah

The news had come over the databurst. Not the weekly one. Special. Somewhere between 'emergency' and 'normal', and Elizabeth had called Daniel into her office and told him what had happened, said that of course there'd be a memorial service here too, and from somewhere far away he heard his own voice saying (calmly, reasonably, implacably) that he'd like to go back to Earth, please.

The day is bright. The light is flint-hard, and everything is green and white and glittering (brass and bugles and stand to horse): DC is the terminator between North and South, more southern than northern, a chimera not belonging to either (he supposes he ought to call it "Columbia" now, since the District lurched into statehood as the fifty-second state last year) but it's spring. March. Almost twenty-three years to the day since something they later called (because the military, like Adam, names the animals) the First Abydos Mission. And just as he and Jack were welded irrevocably into something more than the sum of their parts on a planet a hundred light-years from home, two decades later (and a hundred light-years from its beginning) that partnership has been irrevocably sundered.

(Breathe.)

He avoids checking his watch, knowing the gesture will send the wrong signals to the professional minders scattered through the crowd. It's a funeral, after all. One shouldn't be in a hurry. (Jack's in no hurry. Jack's the Guest of Honor.) But he's spent those same two decades cultivating the clock in his mind (ticking down to destruction or liberation) until it's fairly accurate, and so he knows that no matter what clocks he's outrun between Atlantis and Earth, it's forty-one hours since Elizabeth gave him the news. Not thinking that long-etiolated bond would be, could be, enough to send him flying across two galaxies as if the hounds of a Hell he doesn't quite believe in were nipping at his heels. (Hell is other people. Hell is a very small place. There is no Hell, nor are we out of it.) Late to his last appointment, but he spent all the years of their cojoined life (his and Jack's, scratch one and the other bled) playing eternal catch-up, and he knows Jack will forgive him.

Or would, if he weren't dead.

(Breathe.)

Daniel forces himself to breathe evenly, ignoring his body's demand that he either hold his breath or suck air like a marathon runner crossing the finish line (and thinking about the jokes they all made about the five hundred meter Gate sprint each time they pulled their lives out of the jaws of Death isn't helping at all just now). He's in disguise, playing a role, playing the Great Game, but he only needs to do it a little while longer. Cake, he thinks desperately, performing a smoke-and-mirrors fan-dance for his (unimpressed) self to keep from standing up and screaming: cake is good and the cake is a lie and someone left the cake out in the rain.

Only he's the cake (rain of blood, reign of terror) and he's melting, melting... (Every Wizard of Oz reference that haunts the eternal interior monologue of his life is Jack's fault; it was a movie he'd never seen -- he'd had no taste for fantasy, for childish things -- until SG-1's first Thanksgiving together, because watching The Wizard of Oz was as much a Thanksgiving tradition -- Jack said, Jack said, Jack is silent as the grave now -- as parades and football and turkey.)

He could get through this a damn sight better if somebody hadn't thrown a bucket of water on him when he wasn't looking.

SG-1 had been the SGC's flagship team (first and best and lightning in a bottle) and their legend had grown not for the miracles they pulled off beyond the Gate: they'd become legendary for being alive, sane, functioning (though he'd been two of those things only intermittently), and it wouldn't seem like such a hat-trick except for the fact that so many of their peers and comrades failed to make it. The Stargate had devoured minds and bodies as hungrily as the Cretan Minotaur, but not theirs (not permanently, not then), and he'd come to believe in his own specialness (a thing he'd derided intermittently since his teens with greater and lesser sincerity depending on the mood and the moment). Hadn't he survived eight years of the SGC, thirteen years (if you follow Earth's calendar) of Atlantis without any visible cracks?

Unfortunately, somebody burned the Dorian Grey picture hanging in the attic of his psyche while Daniel was making his travel arrangements, and Mother Carey's chickens have come home to roost (the breadth of Jack's cultural references, spanning the high justice and the low, never failed to fascinate Daniel), and now he knows: unfair and unreasonable it might be, but he's no more special -- no luckier -- than anyone else.

It isn't that he's losing his mind. His mind (sanity) is a losing (lost) cause. He doesn't know exactly what comes next (He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands...) but he knows he'll be uniquely-incapable of facing it. Getting here without being arrested and jailed has taken everything he has left. Culture shock -- that mainstay of his life for almost half his life -- has segued smoothly into its bigger meaner cousin, and knowing that he's walking wounded, injured in the great and secret show that Earth's been putting on at home and (very far) abroad for the last two decades and more doesn't do one damn thing to make it easier to cope with.

(Breathe.)

He knows he's pulling off this last great impersonation because Sam is beside him, and she never looks over toward him once. Of course, Sam has more on her mind right now than the emotional landscape (where ignorant armies clash by night) of her former (very former) teammate. Because, you see, they're burying Jack today.

Jack changed both of them (a terrible beauty is born), and Daniel never saw the changes because he was too busy changing. Dying. Coming back. Surviving the catalogue of unbearable losses (his and everyone else's) that was so sweeping he was unable to call to memory the names of all the SGC's dead by the end of the second year of missions. (Jack had remembered -- or relearned -- all the names when he needed them, though Daniel knows Jack never for one moment forgot the numbers.)

Daniel wonders if -- on a day he doesn't think he'll reach -- someone will look over their whole history and ask: was it necessary?

There's no answer but "yes". Yes, and yes, and yes again, because the alternative to success had never been failure. It had been extinction, and when the stakes are that high, an unreasonable expectation of perfection may well, Doctor Jackson, be created in the minds of those who are trying to save the human race from extinction.

The first notes of "Taps", soaring mournfully into the clear air, catch him by surprise and he coughs on an inhale as he gets to his feet (Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.) He's been to enough funerals to expect the salute, but the measured volleys (of gunfire! his mind gibbers) still make him want to flee.

Almost as much as the sudden Brownian motion of the people around him.

(Breathe.)

He thought he was done, it was over, that this was as much as he had to do, but the bronze coffin gleaming (undraped now) in the sun (not actually bronze, or even steel -- though most of the spectators are meant to think so -- but a trinium/naquaadah alloy; the blue-grey sheen is distinctive and unmistakable) draws him forward. One last thing. One ritual observance to perform. (Funerals are for the living.)

He makes his way toward the casket. He doesn't know what he'll do when he gets there: the shade is fled to Tartarus (been there, done that) or Elysium (not Valhalla; Jack's commentaries on the sort of man who called himself a "warrior" and not a "soldier" had been scathing), and there is no parliament of the dead to whom he can address his last...

...what?

He doesn't know.

"You must be freezing," Sam says, and she's solemn and somber and still trying to cheer him up.

"No," he says (Breathe). "I'm fine, really."

There are people moving (around him, behind him) and the killer ape embedded in his DNA (not so far distant; he's been down this road before) wants to attack, defend, or just fucking flee while shrieking defiance and flinging feces, and he can't, oh, he can't...

Out of the corner of his eye he sees two people moving slowly toward the coffin; a woman and a young man in a dark suit. The woman is walking with a cane, leaning heavily on the young man's arm, and his mind screams out danger! and threat! so loudly that it takes him a moment to realize why. Dissonance. She's in uniform but she doesn't move as if she's in uniform, and her companion (in civilian clothes) is both alien and too-familiar, and he doesn't understand why, and the incomprehensible is danger red in tooth and claw.

It doesn't help that the Marine honor guard (guns! his mind gibbers; they have guns! they're armed!) moves (smoothly and fatally) from stillness to motion as the woman reaches them. The clatter of them grounding their rifles (moving moving moving too close) and returning them to their shoulders makes him choke, on the verge of whimpering out loud. Or grabbing the nearest weapon and shooting his way out of here.

"You're jumpy today," Sam says, and it takes him a moment to process the sheer inanity of her remark. He'd laugh if he had the oxygen. Sam doesn't see anything wrong. Sam doesn't see the danger. He has to get away from Sam before she sees that he's the danger (he knows he is, that's the worst, and knowing that Jack would find it both tragic and funny that Daniel had to shoot his way out of his funeral is not helping.)

"I thought they weren't supposed to move," he answers. (Breathe.)

"Saluting a Medal of Honor holder takes precedence," Sam answers. "Come on. Let's go say hi. You know her."

He doesn't know her. He doesn't know anyone. The past is a foreign country and in the country of Daniel there is only one citizen. His vision has tunneled to the point that only the coffin (flagless) exists now, his perception of the world around him vanishing in the desperate need to focus on just this one thing, a task that must be completed no matter what exists around him. It's the monofocus of the drowning, the dying (and he doesn't need to have his life flash past him in an antemortem review: been there, done that), and maybe he isn't dying (jury's still out) but he's at the point (he knows) that the chain of tasks ahead of him has grown so short (this is the chain I forged in life, said Marley's ghost) that he can afford to ignore everything else (new threats and old damnations).

And the young man who walked with the woman in uniform crosses his field of vision, going to the coffin (and Daniel feels a murderous irrational flare of rage, of jealousy, and fights his way to ongoing stillness, even though his shoulders are a rippling line of white fire and the wetness of panic-sweat, sick-sweat, is beading his skin with fever-dew). He's caught up in his own mind (blind and defenseless) for an instant, until self-preservation (breeding madness) forces his attention back to the world.

And the young man looks up (bowed over the coffin, his coffin, Jack's coffin), and Daniel thinks, giddy and relieved: this is it, it's over, because it's madness (and not the fun military kind) to see Jack, Jack, Jack looking back at him from those eyes.

He doesn't realized he's stopped (a body in motion remains in motion; a body at rest remains at rest; rest in peace, Jack) until something-someone-doesn't matter collides with him from behind (all the best attacks are launched from your blind-spot) and he gags on conflicting impulses: attack, flee, get where he's going.

His appointment in Samarra wins.

The metal of the coffin is warm beneath his hands (forged in the fires of alien suns, burning with their heat), and the wetness of his palms makes the polished metal slicker) and he really doesn't know what comes next. He bows his head, and the weight of the world, of the past two decades, of his own unquiet spirit, is a weight he can no longer bear. He feels it press him down where he stands, palms pressed flat against the coffin, and kinetic memory reminds him of other times, smooth unforgiving surfaces beneath his palms and Death's hot breath against his neck, and in his mind there's a vivid surreal image of battering his way in (bruised and bloody knuckles, wake the dead, a wake for the dead, awaken the dead) and he doesn't know what to do now (doesn't know what he's going to do next).

(not Jack not Jack whoever he is he isn't Jack too young too alive Jack is dead)

He wishes he could weep. He's fought his way here across light-years and galaxies, through crowds of people and crowds of his own ghosts, sacrificing every scrap of leverage he'd ever collected and the full stack of favors he'd been saving against a rainy day and even the last remnants of his own peace of mind (he'd had it once; he'd found peace on Atlantis, or something he could convince himself would suffice), for this. All to stand here-and-now in front of Jack's graveside and he has no idea why.

There's movement behind him, and he chokes (lightheaded with oxygen deprivation) on the words he wants to say: "Go away, all of you -- leave me alone! Leave him alone..." but a last agonizing spark of his sense of duty excoriates him, saying he owes it (to Sam, to Jack, to the whole fucking universe) to get away from here without a trace.

And he levers himself upright (feeling the weight of obligations unmet slide across his bones) and turns, and it's the greatest act of will he's ever offered up on the altar of an uncaring universe to simply stand (last stand, stand pat, stand and deliver) as the woman moves, and the man moves, and Daniel faces Sam, and his muscles ache with the effort of his desperate masquerade.

"You know I--" Sam is saying (but not to him, thank god, he doesn't have to fake his way through another meaningless web of words).

"Take it as read, Sam," the woman answers, and Daniel's mind spills out (from the card-catalogue of memory) epigraphs and monographs and citations on regional accent, idiolect, linguistic identifiers but he isn't listening and no one can make him.

"Good to see you, Carter, and for crying out loud let's get him out of this crowd." The man (sounds older than he looks not listening not listening not listening) has reappeared in his field of vision like the cards, scarves, rabbit from a magician's hat, and Daniel's in no mood for a game of Three-Card Monte staged by the experiential world.

Run. Hide. But it's too late; he can see himself (his true self, not the masks he shows the world) reflected on Sam's face. "Daniel?" Sam says, and in her voice are volumes, multitudes, fear and realization and shame and dawning comprehension.

"I'm fine!" he snaps (hearing the brittle destruction of capability in his voice and home, home, what's the address for home?) "I'm tired! I'm stressed! My best friend is dead! I've had a really long trip! And I--" He's at the edge of shouting, the rage hot and clear and obvious in his voice and oh god he can't let anyone know they'll lock him up they'll execute him he'll be a liability and even he can't keep track of the rhyme and reason of his interior monologue (he only hears the hysteria, the panic, and knows he has to lie, lie well, what's the right lie?) as he strangles himself to silence. "And I don't know who these people are. I'm sorry." (He isn't sorry, he'd shoot them both, all, right now if he had a gun.) "I'm sure they're friends of yours. I've been away for a long time." (Wrong words, wrong answer, Sam looks stricken but the woman with her -- who? how dare Sam introduce him to strangers on a day like today how dare she -- doesn't look anything but calm. It helps him drag up proper forms -- the glass of fashion and the mould of form -- from the booby-trapped treasure chest of his mind.)

"I'm sorry, um, Colonel," he says (his voice is hoarse and unreliable, as if he's been screaming, he remembers screaming for hours and hours and nobody heard).

The woman says something and he answers and he doesn't (can't) hear either side of the conversation. Suddenly she's touching him, and the contact makes him jump and shudder involuntarily at the wrongness of the presence of someone else in his long-delayed nervous breakdown built for one.

She says something else. Words. They were the altar at which he worshipped once, but Daniel isn't in right now (leave a message) and all his comprehension (doors of perception) are shutting down (solitary: exile, confinement) and he sees the world in strobe flashes of the Red Alert lights and he doesn't know why he lurches forward, doesn't see the boy, the man, who, who, who until he lurches into him, flesh recoiling from the alien touch (unnatural, why does he think that, why?)

More words (he'll check his messages later, wait for the tone) and then, suddenly, and Daniel doesn't count the cost of the miracle, it's Jack standing before him. Come on, Danny-boy. Hay foot, straw foot, let's go, and it's instinct, relief, to go, to follow.

Moving (and... we're walking...) and Sam is behind him, but it's okay, Sam usually walked drag in enemy territory after the first year or so, and movement clears his mind a little. Enough. "I'm Cameron Mitchell," and: "You are very tired, Dr. Jackson," and: "This is my business partner, JD Nielson," and then (familiar voice never heard before): "I know you remember our good buddy Loki." Messages from the storage buffer, downloaded now that he can pay attention to them, and he feels a sharp pang of regret that no, he isn't going decisively mad just now.

A thousand years ago (fourteen years ago) Jack was cloned (I can believe six impossible things before breakfast, the Red Queen said). And Cameron Mitchell (Heliotrope Flight, Snakeskinners, 302, they're calling this model Mongoose, (Jack said, Jack said) "CO2 levels are high. Headache. It's bad. Send aspirin. I estimate three hours. This is Digger One...") was the lead pilot -- Anubis, Earth, Antarctica, Ancients flashes through his mind -- and only survivor of the Snakeskinners after the battle. (He remembers a hospital room, the inevitable scents of sickness, a gauze-swathed body in a bed as he stammered out honest but insincere-sounding thank yous.)

His mind is turning back around to the subject of Jack's teenaged clone riffling the file-drawers of memory, but the week that happened he wasn't that far from the jarring shock of recovered self and most of his energy was spent on living a lie. (Another lie. The lie he was Daniel Jackson, SG-1, peaceful explorer, and hoping wishing could make it so.) He hadn't had a lot of attention to spare for what happened to the clone after the Asgard cavalry showed up the minute after the last minute, and somehow (his memory was reliable for the important things, unreliable for so many others) where "mini-me" vanished to in the wake of the captains and the kings wasn't a question that nagged at him hard enough to gain an answer.

There's nothing of that furious boy in this man. (But how would you know, Dr. Jackson? You're hardly a reliable observer.)

Not his problem, anyway.

Oh, god, he's tired.

The car's another shock. RHIP, Jack whispers in his mind, and Daniel thinks of Jack as a General, thinks of the last few times he'd seen Jack -- stars heavy on his shoulders -- and wonders again about all the ways in which Washington had changed him. Lincoln Town Car, black (but comely; and assonant association is going to have to take the place of rational thought right now because there's being a team player, and he's tried, but there are limits.)

To die, to sleep, or just to run like hell ("Last one through the Gate buys the pizza!"); none of these seems to be an option with Colonel Mitchell ("It's 'Cammie'") getting in and Sam getting in and JD Nielson standing there waiting with a patience that isn't disguised impatience, and Daniel stumbles through an excuse that sounds stupid even to him and JD parries it (brusque and matter-of-fact; not the arias of unreasonable exhortations Jack sang to let him save a little dignity). It's the lack of coercion (lack of familiarity) as much as the terrifying knowledge he's only minutes away from showing his naked self to the world that makes Daniel enter the car.

"When are you flying back?" JD asks him as he pulls the driver-side door shut (low and soft and hushed sickroom tones suitable for dealing with the crazy man but the part of Daniel that's still concentrating on survival and more than survival (something of the host survives) can still recognize that: no, not that, something but not that).

"My ticket's an open return," Daniel answers, while inside a part of him shrieks that he's giving up information, important information, tactical intelligence that the enemy will use against him. (He's his own worst enemy; it's friendlier that way.)

(Breathe.)

"I don't want to be any trouble, but maybe you could just drop me off at my hotel," he adds.

In answer he receives the snappy patter of the magician (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) and it's soothing, and it's maddening, and he's too tired to follow it. Filled with questions that aren't questions, that he doesn't need to answer. Rhetorical mode, where the speaker asks a question that can have only one answer. The short version seems to be "no", anyway, and by now he's actually looking forward with a species of anticipation to the exciting possibility that these aren't friends of Sam's, that Sam isn't Sam, that all three of them are monsters ferrying him to his execution.

(Mimosas on the sun deck.)

He wishes he could stop watching for threats and just let whatever's lying in wait take him.

*

That's pretty much the last thing he remembers. He's long been accused (by absent friends and current masters) of being able to do his job in his sleep, and it's true. It just means he doesn't remember what he did (easily, sometimes at all) when circumstances improve.

He obviously did something to leave him sleeping on a couch. (JD and Cammie's condo, his mind helpfully supplies, audience commentary from the MST3K version of his life.)

And one moment leads to the next (and he's fine, really, he was just tired; it's a lie but one he needs to pretend he can talk himself into believing), to another one of those steamroller conversations in which he discovers he's acceded to everything he thought he didn't want to give away, to a tense morning hiding away in the Mitchell-Nielson guest room (and he knows the place is armor-plated and lead-lined, but there are too many things that could beam in, insinuate themselves through the tiniest crack, send their siren call through steel and concrete) to an airplane (swing low, sweet chariot) flying back to Colorado Springs, where his mind circles obsessively around the latest life-defining irrelevant paradox: they buried Jack yesterday, put his body in the cold, cruel ground, and today Daniel is sitting on an airplane next to a man who used to be him.

He's not sure whether the fact that this doesn't disturb him says more about his life up until that point or his current state of mind. It's not the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him; far from it. It doesn't even make the Top Ten list. And even if it did, well, there's too much of him right now that's occupied in getting him through this without bloodshed. His own, or anyone else's. There are more people on this airplane than he'd see in an average week on Atlantis. There'd been more people in Washington than there were on most planets he's set foot on (all unwilling) in the last thirteen years. (Dammit, he'd been done, until word of Jack's death had called him back to the planet of his birth, the planet he hasn't set foot on in thirteen years and more, the planet he loves and hates with equal measure for what it's been and done to him.) His hands are shaking. They've been shaking all day.

The man sitting next to him hasn't seemed to notice, but Daniel somehow thinks that to be nothing more than a polite fiction. Jack would have noticed. Jack noticed everything, and always pretended he didn't.

The two of them had done some magic with his ticket at the airport. He gets the impression they fly often, often enough to be known to those around them (or at least to fake it well enough; Jack had always been good at making friends when he wanted). The first class cabin is comfortable enough (Daniel supposes, with the corner of his mind that can notice such things, the corner of his mind that isn't controlling his breathing and his desire to be out, away). The air's cool, which helps. Stale and dry, which doesn't. The man sitting next to him (JD, Daniel tells himself; he calls himself JD, not Jack, and names are important things) radiates heat. Daniel can feel it even through the six inches of air and space that separate their shoulders. Colonel Mitchell (you call me Cammie) is sitting across the aisle, chatting politely with the flight attendant as though they're old friends. JD has his laptop out, on the tray table in front of him, paying Daniel no conscious attention.

Daniel's tucked into the window seat, third row of three, the dividing bulkhead between first class and coach a reasssuring presence behind him. Back to the wall. Reassuring presence between him and the aisle, too. He doesn't know why his subconscious has settled on the two of them (on JD) as safe, as safety. (Yes, he does.) He supposes he should be thankful. He can't quite manage it. All he feels is a dim and distant sense of shame, of embarrassment, for how poorly he's conducted himself since the moment he set foot on Earth again, summoned back (home, but it hasn't been home for years).

It's worse when you know what's happening to you. He's always known that. Going mad is one thing; going mad and watching yourself take the trip is an agony. Since waking this morning with Cameron Mitchell's hand-knit (he's presuming) afghan tucked around him, his mind has been replaying his conduct from Colorado to here, again and again, watching himself and his failings in Technicolor surround-sound (is it live or is it Memorex) and trying to make sense of it all. He hasn't been having much luck. (Of course, it would be easier if he weren't falling apart.) The silence of his traveling companions is a mercy. It's also an agony. The reel of the last two days has been reeling over and over again, reaching the end of the spool, film flapping against the casing until the tiny projectionist in his hallowed hollowed halls grabs it and feeds it back into the theatre for another round of self-recrimination, and the quiet only feeds it. He's never had a problem living inside his own head, but this, this goes beyond any of his detractors' (and sometimes his friends') accusations of self-absorption and slides into the realm of the pathologically obsessed.

Maybe he'll have more luck silencing the endless replay once the truth of the matter sinks firmly in. He's an expert on the workings of his own mind (an infinite jest, but someone has to be) and he knows the feel of this particular tailspin (headspin) by now. There's something inside his mind trying to come to terms with something, bludgeoning him with its self-evidence, repeating the dry bones of fact again and again until it's willing to believe he's taken notice. He's missing something here, in all of this. He's missing a lot of things. (Jack.) Until he can figure out what it is, he doesn't think he's going to be able to break free, to slip the surly bonds of earth, or at least the ever-narrowing confines of what little slice of sanity he's managed to carve out and hold onto with hands that tremble the more for each time through the gag-reel of his own worst hits.

At least the two people at his side haven't seemed to notice. Small mercies.

They haven't said anything to make him feel ashamed. Or rather, they haven't said anything designed to make him feel ashamed. From the moment the traveling circus swept him up by the ringside (graveside) trailing a smoke-and-mirrors sleight-of-hand designed to force his attention away from how thoroughly they'd taken control of him (his travel his fate his sacred honor) they've been treating him with quiet competence and brisk assurance, adopting his cause for their own so wholly it feels as though he's known them for an eternity. (An eternity and beyond, in at least one case, brotherhood pledged all unspeaking over shared spilled blood on the sands of a world no one will ever walk again and he will not let himself think that.) He doesn't know why they seem to have decided to champion his cause as their own. (Yes, he does. Jack never would have let him leave Washington alone in the state he's in. Jack never would have let him get this bad to begin with.)

He looks out the window. The color of the sky behind it, distorted through the thickness of the double-paned plastic, is unfamiliar. Lantea's skies had been a richer, warmer blue. It's amazing, he thinks, how quickly you forget the color of the skies you were born under. Abydos's sky had been washed with white and gold, bleached bone of desert reflected in the burn of a younger and hotter sun. He can remember the color of Abydos's sky more readily than he remembered his own. It doesn't seem right, somehow.

None of this seems right.

At least he hasn't tried to shoot anyone yet today. Including himself.

The sound of Colonel Mitchell's -- Cammie's -- laughter drifts across the aisle that separates them. JD looks up at the sound, briefly, then looks back down at his laptop, unconcerned. Daniel feels every single motion, no matter how tiny, as a blow across his back, his shoulders. The exciting thing about certain forms of hypervigilant states, JD had said, just this morning, in the process of telling Daniel that he was going to have an escort back to Colorado Springs, is that the first thing to go is your judgment. It's not like panic. You can think through panic. This? You think that what you're doing is the most reasonable thing in the world. People get hurt. Not because you can't tell what a threat is. Because everything's a threat, and you've learned how to react to threats.

Daniel had been staring at him (too familiar not familiar enough), and JD had turned around from the washing-up he'd been doing and rested one hip against the counter and stared straight back. Not a challenge. Not a dare. Just an assessment, unfeigned curiosity mixed with a strange sort of empathy completely unlike any of the forms of empathy Daniel ever saw on Jack's face (but this man isn't Jack). Don't let it keep choking you, JD had added. Way I remember it, you always used to be willing to accept help from strangers, even when you wouldn't talk to anyone else. It'll help you to think of me as a stranger, go ahead.

He's trying. It's not working.

JD isn't Jack. JD could not possibly be less like Jack. JD is twenty-some-odd years old, long-haired and ponytailed, heavily tattooed, ears adorned with metal through lobe and cartilage and brow. JD's vowels come from Colorado by way of North Carolina and nowhere near Minnesota or Chicago. JD has none of Jack's mannerisms and none of Jack's chivalry and none of Jack's deadly grace. Graceful, yes, and in watching that grace Daniel can see the hints of movement that are enough to tell his lizard hindbrain that JD knows how to be deadly enough to protect him. (From what? he asks that hindbrain, exasperated with its endless chittering, and receives nothing more than outlook hazy try again.) But Daniel had always been aware that Jack was a dangerous man who'd learned to appear less dangerous, and Daniel had always been able to remind himself to see through that pretense, and JD's grace is something else entirely.

JD isn't Jack. But he was, once upon a time. Fourteen years ago, Daniel had just risen from the dead (a sentence he studiously avoids letting himself think) and one morning he'd woken up and they'd all gone into the Mountain to discover that Jack wasn't Jack anymore. A fifteen-year-old boy, with all of Jack O'Neill's memories, and they'd thought he was Jack. He wasn't. A renegade Asgard scientist; a clone, left in place of the original, sickening and fading and dying. And they'd figured it out in time, and called Thor, and Jack (the real one) had insisted that Thor take the clone and stabilize it. Him. JD. And the clone had gone off (Daniel had asked; Jack had demurred; Daniel hadn't pressed, still busy trying to remember the process of how to be human again) and never been heard from again, and now Jack is dead and Daniel is sitting on an airplane next to him.

Oh, God, Jack. I came back. You never asked me to, and I don't know if I would have if you had, but I did and I'm here and I don't know what to do next.

He's seen Jack, in-person and face-to-face, precisely once in the past thirteen years, when Jack had come to Atlantis on some inspection tour or another. (Cook's tour, Jack had called it, and laughed at all the Lanteans who thought he was there to stir the pot or wield the sword of the bureaucrat insufficiently propitiated, and the two of them had fallen straight back into the old banter as Daniel had unfurled for him the heart of the Lost City and, delivering it into Jack's keeping, had both treated it for any observer as though it were of no more account than a borrowed book. They'd known the truth. They'd always known the truth.) Atlantis, where Daniel had gone, never looking back, never turning his head to see whether Ariadne's thread was still stretched out unbroken behind him to lead him back to where he'd started, because he'd told himself (not promised; he's had enough of breaking promises to himself) that this labyrinth would be the last he'd walk. Atlantis, where he'd gone for peace and for healing and found neither, not the way he'd hoped, but at least there'd been some modicum of contentment.

Three days ago, he would have said that he would live out the rest of his days on Atlantis, her decks and walls cool beneath his fingers and his heels, bathed in light and rain and water, burying himself in the puzzle of history and knowledge and understanding. Three days ago, Jack had still been alive. (It's always three days, in all the myths, in all the legends. But there will be no Glorious Resurrection this time, for all that it's spring.) He still doesn't know why he's here. What pressing urgency was so important as to send him running through time and space to stand at that graveside, leaving every last patchwork piece that's been holding him together for the past decade and more cracked and broken and fading away as he watches them turn to smoke and mirrors. Funerals are for the living, but he's been dead often enough to know that Jack wouldn't know about his presence or absence, one way or the other. (Except Jack does know, sitting beside him, and JD had been as startled to see Daniel as Daniel had been startled to see JD.)

This high up, he can see the clouds between him and the ground, white and fluffy, layers and strata of shale between him and the earth he set foot on for the first time this decade three days ago, the earth they put Jack's body into yesterday. Sam told him the story. Not enough of it, but enough, and if (as so many cultures have believed) the size of your honor guard in Hell is determined by the number of enemies you take with you, Jack's shade is feasting in glory tonight, except Daniel believes in neither hell nor glory. Still. If there's one thing he's learned in the past two and a half decades of living and dying and watching others die too, it's that there are good deaths and bad deaths and deaths he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy (he's died some of them) and he knows Jack would think his had been one of the good ones.

Next to him, JD stirs, looking up from the screen of his laptop, casual and nonchalant, and Daniel realizes that he's gripping the armrest-table between them so tightly he thinks he might leave the impression of his fingers carved into it. Daniel Was Here.

Oh, God, he doesn't know why he is. Why he traded what he'd found of peace and serenity (a joke more than anything else, shared among the Lanteans in the manner of whistling past the graveyard -- come to beautiful Atlantis, where it has been thirty-one days since someone last tried to kill us all -- but there had been truth underneath the grisly humor the way there has always been) to come racing back -- Not home. Not anymore. Earth hasn't been home to him for years, but he'd come running anyway, and he has no idea why and what he thought he might accomplish and why the time-delayed memo of twenty-five years' worth of trauma seems to have come surging and crashing down upon him in the space between one minute and the next, the minute his boot-heels hit his own and native land.

He has no idea what the hell he's going to do next. He has no idea what he thought his presence at Jack's graveside might accomplish. The only thing he knows -- here at thirty thousand feet, his back to a bulkhead, the reassuring heat of someone his subconscious has labeled as safety between him and any (Goa'uld Wraith Replicator) danger -- is that he's nowhere near ready to be doing this. Any of this.

He doesn't even know what 'this' is.

"Here," JD says to him, voice low and soft, calm like a lullabye. With his fingers, he nudges a plastic cup, full of ice and dark, syrupy cola, over to Daniel's side of the armrest-table. "Drink something. Bet your throat's dried out from all this canned air."

Food and drink had been a favorite topic of conversation among the short-timers on Atlantis; the true Lanteans had been there long enough to know that it wasn't worth the time and energy spent longing for a Snickers bar, had learned to just shut up and eat the green-corn muffins and the almost-hamburger and the near-bread the mess hall made out of tava bean paste, but those who were there for a shorter term of duty had always had their own lists: Sam Adams, McDonald's french fries, Smarties (American or Canadian), Coke. Every opening of the Gatebridge had brought a flurry of care packages injected into the underground economy of the city. (Daniel had amused himself for a year or two tracking the fucturations in the going price of a Hershey's Kiss.) He'd been given a single hoarded can of Coke as a "thank you for keeping us from being Wraith food" present a few years ago, and while he had never been much for soda in the first place, it had been so long that he'd drunk it just to see. He hadn't been able to finish the can: the sweetness had set his teeth on edge, cloying and artifical. He'd been on Atlantis too long.

He doesn't expect the taste to be any less repugnant now, but when he'd let JD and Cammie talk him into traveling back to Colorado Springs with them, when he'd submitted to necessity with no little ill grace, he'd vowed to think of them as native guides to an unknown country (which they are; he's known for years that culture shock is a danger no less than someone shooting at you; if he hadn't been running to keep a rendezvous with Death, he might have stopped to reacclimate himself a little more gently) and do what they tell him to do. So he picks up the cup (it feels odd beneath his fingers; they'd used mugs of ceramic or tin on Atlantis, washing them after each use, no room for disposable plastic life) and takes a sip. Nearly chokes on it. There's more alcohol than soda in there.

Whiskey, he thinks, coughing until tears form. Never his drink. Always had been Jack's, but he drinks vodka -- when he drinks at all -- and Jack had given up on ever getting him to appreciate the finer points of Scotch or whiskey over the years. It burns going down, sharp and clean.

At least it's something. He takes another sip. More cautiously this time. JD's right. His throat was awfully dry. The ice shifts and clicks against his teeth, and he tongues one of the cubes into his mouth, leaving it to melt there. It's so cold it burns. He's always thought it's interesting how the very cold and the very hot feel the same, to the nerves. One of the great mysteries of life. Once upon a time, he thought he might be able to solve some of them. Now, he's left sitting here wondering if he's going to be able to tie his own shoes tomorrow morning.

He's going to have to. He can't afford to become too dependent on help. He's here, and there are three people in this universe or any other that he can call on for help until the end of days, and one of them flew back to Nevada yesterday and one of them is halfway across the galaxy and (Sam says) hasn't been heard from in far too long, and they buried the third yesterday and Daniel cannot, cannot let himself think of the man sitting next to him as Jack, because if he does, he may throw himself at JD's feet and beg.

What now, Jack? What comes next?

No answer, but Daniel hadn't expected one. Somehow he thinks JD might have one to give, but he doesn't have the right to ask. Not anymore.

He closes his eyes, rests his forehead against the cool plastic of the window, and tries to wonder how long he'll be left feeling like a paranoid tourist on the planet of his birth.

*

The plane chases ahead of the sunset for what feels like hours. Daniel doesn't sleep; even the comfort of JD's presence can only go so far to quiet the monsters in his own mind, and every time he senses someone moving in the aisle, every time the plane hitches and shudders with even a hint of turbulence, his eyes snap open again and he has to try to calm his racing heart. But he drowses, a little, lulled by the clicking of JD's fingers on the keys of his keyboard and the soft rhythmic click of Cameron Mitchell's knitting needles drifting across the aisle. (An interesting contrast, the ultra-technological and the utterly ancient.) By the time the pilot announces final approach, he still hasn't figured out any answers. But at least he's close to being able to get off the plane and away from all these people.

(Back to the SGC, it'll have to be. They'll give him guest quarters. He can figure out ... something.)

Most of the plane stands up the minute they've pulled up to the gate and the captain has turned off the fasten-seat-belts light. The thought of rising to join them makes Daniel want to scream. Or vomit. The push and crush of people jostling each other in the aisles for access to the overhead bins makes him turn in the seat, press his back against the window (which doesn't help, but at least that way he can watch the aisle) and -- oh, God, breathe.

He's expecting his erstwhile travel companions to join the push and crush, wanting to get off the plane as much as he does (but oh, God, he doesn't want to join the herd of people in order to do it), but neither one of them move. JD's still typing merrily away, having pulled out his laptop again the minute the plane's wheels touched ground. (Daniel has had to spend nearly the entire flight most carefully not looking at the screen.) Cameron -- Cammie -- had slid her knees to the side to allow her neighbor to join the cattle call, but as soon as the man had squeezed past her, she'd pulled out her knitting again from where she'd stowed it in the seatback pocket.

The plane's almost completely empty, and the flight attendants are starting to pick up trash, before JD snaps his laptop shut and stands. Daniel has half a second for his subconscious to realize someone is looming over him, and then JD's stepping out of the channel formed by their seats and into the aisle.

"Upsy-daisy, Mitchell," JD singsongs, holding out both hands for her to take. "Rise and shine. The fuckwits have probably departed the jetway by now."

It helps, a little -- maybe -- to know that the wait wasn't for his benefit. (A little. Not much.) Cammie reaches up; she doesn't take JD's hands, but wraps her hands around the backs of his elbows, gripping his upper arms and fitting her elbows into his upraised palms. With his help, getting her standing takes less time and effort than it might otherwise have; she's wincing like every move is agony today, while yesterday she'd been halting and hesitant but stable under her own locomotion. Daniel watches the whole process with one part of his attention; the rest of his attention is occupied by trying to talk himself into getting up and joining the crush and push of people out in the airport proper.

"Be outta your hair in just a few," Cammie says, with a warm smile, to the flight attendant who's waiting.

"They know the process by now," JD says, laid-back and lazy. He lifts her to her feet as though she weighed no more than a feather, leaves his hands hovering under her elbows until she transfers her grip to the seatback in front of her and uses her cane to pull her carryon bag from underneath the seat.

Cammie snorts, reversing her cane and hooking the strap of her bag with the grip on the end, using it to lever the bag up to her waiting hand. (Daniel wonders why JD didn't just reach down and fetch it for her.) "Still don't mean we can't be polite."

JD reaches up to the overhead bins and pulls down his own disreptuable knapsack, slinging it over one of his shoulders, and takes down Daniel's duffel bag after, handing it to Daniel with a studied nonchalance. "And we have this argument every time we go through this, and I still maintain that it'd be more polite to just finish up what we're doing and get out of their way."

Another snort from Cammie. "Yankee manners," she says. "Never cure you, not if we both live to a hundred 'n fifty."

It's fascinating, really, listening to the two of them. They sound -- it's a shock, realizing -- they sound a bit like he and Jack used to, in the days past the days when the bickering had been in earnest, once Daniel had realized it was Jack's way of showing ease and trust. The sound of it is almost comforting, in a way. Familiar.

Whether they waited for her or they waited for Daniel, the gate area is nearly deserted once they clear the jetway (Daniel walks behind Cammie and JD: letting Cammie set the pace, he tells himself, and not using them as a shield against ... whatever might be lurking on the other end of the glass doors at the end of it) and Cammie lifts her hand from JD's elbow as soon as they're off the slight slope and into the terminal proper. It's as good a time as any to make his escape. (Because if he doesn't now, he's going to want to follow them home the whole way, and that's ... not a good idea. Really.)

So he hitches his bag up further onto his shoulder and says, "Thanks for the --"

That's all he gets out before JD turns and pins him with a look. "No," he says, simply.

Daniel blinks. "No?"

"No," JD repeats. "We're not doing this --" He flicks his wrist in between them, gesturing something Daniel can't quite read. "Thank-you, no-really, my-pleasure, bye-now thing. And we're not arguing about whether or not we're doing it, either."

Daniel opens his mouth to say something -- even he's not sure what -- and JD sighs. "We're in Denver, Daniel," he says, patiently. "Your options are taxi, which costs an arm and a fucking leg and requires you to go downstairs and push through the crush of people for the cabstand, bus, which ditto, which involves even more people, and which only departs on the hour and we just missed this hour's, or you call up the Mountain and wait for them to send some poor stupid airman down to pick you up, and that requires trading on favors I bet you haven't built back up lately and waiting for someone to come get you. Whereas we have a car, space in it, and it just so happens I still know the way up Norad Road."

The litany is -- oddly familiar. It takes Daniel a second to realize the reason it sounds familiar is that it's evoking the memories of the way Jack used to dismantle every single option available to them until they were left with nothing more than what Jack wanted to do. It takes him a second to realize what it's evoking, because JD's voice sounds nothing like Jack's used to, and JD's delivery is oddly careful, care-full, full of caring in a way Jack's never really was.

He's left staring at JD, in the middle of the airport terminal, uncertain as to what next. Jack would have taken him home. But Jack sold his house in the Springs thirteen years ago, at the same time Daniel went to live in another galaxy, and JD isn't Jack, and the whole damn planet is full of strangers.

The customer-assistance clerk at the gate is asking if they need any help. Cammie waves him off; she's watching JD and Daniel staring at each other with the look of someone who's trying to decide if she needs to say something.

"Come on," JD says, and his voice is quiet. "Let me drive you back to the Mountain. Least I can do."

There's an undercurrent of something in JD's voice, something Daniel can't help but find familiar even though it sounds like nothing Daniel's ever heard before. Some sense of obligation. It's Jack without sounding a thing like Jack ever did; for this, you can stay at my place and come on, let's get out of here and a thousand other casual invitations offered at precisely the right time, and he'd always wondered who Jack could have been if he'd been able to indulge that compassion from the very beginning instead of --

The boom sounds like thunder indoors and he's twitching, ready to dive for cover until he can stop himself at the very last second, because for twenty-five years people have been shooting at him and the fact that he's still alive means that his body's learned when to duck without consulting him for instructions. He's out in the open, though, and there are what feels like thousands of people nearby, and any one of them could be carrying a weapon, any one of them could be out to get him, any one of them could be (a Wraith a Replicator) a threat, and --

JD's hand closes around his elbow. It should be the wrong thing for him to do. It should be enough to send Daniel into screaming fits, into full-on defensive spasms, into lashing out and grabbing anything nearby that could be used as a weapon and fighting. It doesn't. It doesn't still his racing heartbeat or calm the tightness in his chest, but it does cut through the panic enough for him to think, enough for him to realize what's going on and what's happening. (The heating system, nothing more, just early spring in Colorado. It's only dangerous if you're caught outside in it in your underwear, Daniel.)

He takes a deep breath. JD steps forward, still holding on to him, stepping across Daniel's path and using that lever to turn him around, until he's standing with his back to one of the support columns and JD is in between him and the rest of the world. "Look here," JD says, voice low, bringing his other hand up to tap the bridge of his own nose, right between his eyes. "Right here. Focus. Just breathe through it. S'okay. We got you."

Daniel breathes. Stares straight at JD's eyes, warm and brown and concerned and competent, and dimly he notices that Cameron Mitchell has moved herself so her body is sheltering the two of them too, and he should be upset (should be ashamed) but as the burst of adrenaline starts to wear off, all he feels is tired.

"Yeah," he says, finally. There isn't anything else he can say. He's too weak to protest and somehow he's got the sense that JD is too stubborn to accept, and when you don't know what the hell to do next, sometimes it helps to have someone else there to tell you. Jack taught him that. A long time ago.

JD looks past him. "Mitchell --"

"Yup," she says, calm and quiet and competent just like JD is. She unslings her carryon bag from her shoulder, hands it to JD. "Meet you there."

JD adds Cammie's bag to his own burden and takes a step back. Daniel swallows heavily. Losing the shield of JD's presence sends the stab of panic back through his chest again, but he damn well isn't going to let it win. It's just an airport. He braved worse, three days ago, on his way to Washington. (Before it all caught up to you, his inner voice cheerfully informs him. Before you realized how dirty and smelly and full of people this planet really is. When you had a mission to complete.) He tells his little voice to shut the fuck up. He can think of this as a mission if he has to. (Mission goal: get Daniel to the parking lot without airport security noticing and detaining him, and yeah, okay, JD had been right. If he'd tried this on his own, he probably would have gotten shot.)

"Come on," JD says, taking another step backwards. "Chop-chop. Double-time march, we'll be out of here in no time." Daniel can't help but flick his eyes to Cammie; there's no way she could possibly keep up with what Daniel remembers as Jack's idea of double-time. (But JD isn't Jack. Just sounds like him. And doesn't. Oh, God, none of this makes sense.)

Cammie's right there to meet his eyes. She smiles at him, warm and beautiful. "Go on," she says, and adds, "You two get to warm up the car for me."

There isn't a bit of pity in her voice. There isn't a bit of pity in either one of them.

Daniel goes.

*

Daniel doesn't recognize the brand of car, but it looks like a Humvee mated with a sports car and had little luxury auto babies. "Noise," JD says, and waits two seconds before keying the car open from a distance. It chirps, and the engine starts. "Backseat's yours."

Daniel opens the door and climbs in. The seats are comfortable. The windows are tinted, too, and when he shuts the door behind him, the deep hollow thud tells him the quarter-panel isn't just molded fiberglass.

JD throws his bag and Cammie's into the hatchback-trunk, shutting it behind him with another thud. Opens the driver's door, climbs in himself. He sticks the keys into the ignition, but he doesn't take the car out of park; he turns around, draping his elbow up over the back of the seat, and pins Daniel with another one of those penetrating looks. "You wanna tell me why you let this get this bad?" he asks. It's not a question.

"I'm fine," Daniel says.

JD snorts. "And I'm Marie of Roumania, and if you reply back with 'I thought you were dead, Your Majesty', I'm gonna deck you. Seriously, Daniel. There has to be a reason. I'm asking you to tell me what it is." He pauses. "Or you can tell me to go to hell."

"I --"

It isn't that Daniel doesn't want to explain. He doesn't; that's not the point. It's that he can't explain, because he doesn't even know what it is he's feeling, what 'it' is that JD's calling 'so bad' (and he does know what JD means, because a week ago he would have sworn that he was fucking fine, dammit, and not in the way that he always says he's fine, which means that this little problem has been lurking there without any kind of sign, total fucking breakdown staved off by God only knows what or whom so well that he hadn't even seen any of the warning signs), and he stops talking and pushes his glasses up to his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting his eyes slip shut.

JD lets a couple of minutes of silence go by before he says, very gently, "Okay. Will you come home with us? Instead of going back to the Mountain? I don't think you should leap from the Lost City to guest quarters without some fresh air in between."

Jack always did hate guest quarters, Daniel thinks, a little bit hysterical, a little bit ridiculous. It makes him laugh. "I don't think that's a good idea," he says, a little wildly. "You've been -- You've been very kind so far. I don't mean to be a burden. And I do have to get back to the Mountain. I have to --" Figure out what the hell I'm going to do next. Figure out what the fuck I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Figure out something.

More silence. Daniel opens his eyes again, letting his hand and his glasses fall, and he has to blink, because in that half-second he can finally, finally see Jack in the man looking back at him, there and gone. It should disturb him. It doesn't. It only makes him feel aching and sad, because he missed his chance to say so many things to Jack that he always thought he'd be able to get around to someday, and now he won't, because this man isn't Jack even if he remembers having been him.

He's expecting further argument from JD, but all JD does is nod. Slowly. "Okay," he says. "One condition. You come over for dinner sometime next week. And I don't want to hear anything about 'burdens'." The faintest hint of a smile tinges the corner of his lips, one brief instant of smirk that blooms and fades in the blink of an eye. "Spent the past fifteen years releasing my burdens, I'm not gonna take on others now. You aren't a burden. Not at all."

For a brief instant, Daniel wonders what JD would do if he said no. Refuse to drive him to the Mountain? Kidnap him and drag him off somewhere? But there's a gentle rat-a-tat of warning on the front passenger window, fingertips and not knuckles, and then the door is opening and Cameron Mitchell is painstakingly climbing in.

He's willing to fight with JD when it's just the two of them. In front of Cammie, he has some small impulse to be on better behavior. So he closes his eyes, and he breathes out, and he says, "Okay."

"Okay, what?" Cammie asks, through the wincing and tiny noises of protest apparently inherent in getting herself settled. "Nielson, you bullying the poor man into something?"

"Only into dinner," JD says. "Fasten your seatbelts, campers. Time to see how close we can get to the Mountain without getting hauled in for questioning."

"We have Daniel for a hostage," Cammie says. "Daniel, you'll vouch that we're not terrorists, right?"

It's enough to tell him that they aren't working with the SGC. That the SGC doesn't know who JD is, even living right under their noses, and that makes sense, actually, because he can't imagine Jack not knowing how to disappear completely if he wanted to. And he does remember Jack's odd insistence (back in the day) that knowledge of his clone -- knowledge that his clone was a clone, not his own self -- be limited to SG-1 and Dr. Fraiser and General Hammond, no further, kept out of the reports and base gossip as much as possible, kept as one of the secrets SG-1 would take to their graves. (Some sooner than others, some again and again, and the thought hurts but it always has, no matter which one of them was doing the dying and being reborn.)

"Yeah," Daniel says, absently, resting his cheek against the tinted glass, feeling the coolness of its surface against skin that feels too hot, too tight.

JD snorts. "'Hostage' and 'not terrorists' in the same sentence. Good work, there."

"Shut up and drive," Cammie says, and the two of them bicker the entire way back to Colorado Springs, and Daniel lets the sound of it fill his ears and serve as (almost) a comfort.

They drop him just before the first checkpoint, and Daniel's a little startled to find that he's (somehow) not only agreed to dinner, he's agreed to a date and time -- Tuesday night, 1900 -- since he'd been intending to be comfortably vague about plans and silently slip away. (Although he's pretty sure that JD, at least, would remember enough about how to navigate the complex and Byzantine system of the Mountain's switchboard, enough to get through to a real live human who could chase him down, at least.)

He shows his ID to the guards. The shuttle doesn't run from the gatehouse to the door on weekends; they offer to call him a car; he declines. The walk does him some good. With the sun long since set, it's slipped down below freezing, and the sky is clouded over enough that he can't see any stars, but the heavy greatcoat he bought at the mall in his whirlwind rush to get to Columbia is enough to keep him from freezing to death and the pathway's well-shoveled. He stuffs his hands in his coat pockets and watches his feet as he walks. His head feels ... empty, he eventually decides. Not bruised. Just ... empty.

The ID Graham Simmons provided him when he'd stepped back through the Gatebridge gets him through the topside checkpoint without any problems. When he gets to the secondary screening on level 11, the airman on duty politely requests that he step aside and wait for an escort. It's deferential enough, no hint of anything suspicious, but Daniel still clutches the strap of his cargo bag and finds that the back of his head is quietly whispering him an escape route if he needs to take it. He still remembers enough of the ways out of this mountain if he needs them. There were more than a few times when it saved his life.

Always have a backup escape route, Jack had always said, and those lessons had seeped into Daniel's bones over the years so thoroughly that he doesn't even realize he's gauging the distance to the access tunnel until the second guard on duty nonchalantly steps between him and the tunnel door. Daniel makes himself breathe. They're not going to throw him into a deep, dark cell somewhere. They're not.

(There's a part of him, the same part that's making maps and plans, that's sickly glad he made a definite commitment to date and time for dinner with Cammie and JD, because if he misses it, if he's in that deep, dark cell, he knows JD will come looking for him. He tells that part of him to shut up. Paranoia may be a way of life, but it's also a good way to work yourself into a panic, and more panic is the last thing he needs right now.)

But the escort, when it arrives, is Graham and someone Daniel doesn't know, a woman with long red hair tied back in a ponytail (civilian; hair length is often the only way you can tell, here) and he might not know the woman, but he knows Graham. He still takes a step backward when the elevator discharges them and Graham comes rushing forward, and (dammit) he can see the woman taking note of this fact, watching him, and Graham comes to a standstill and glares at the guards on duty.

"You didn't --" Graham starts, then shakes his head. "Nevermind. Daniel, this is Dr. Fowler, she's your reintegration consultant. Come on, I've got you down in VIP quarters, not in barracks."

That's good news. It means he might actually have a chance of getting some sleep. (He's not as tired as he could be, though. He'd fallen asleep on Cammie and JD's couch after the funeral in his clothes and his shoes and slept sixteen hours straight through to the morning without stirring, no matter how much they'd moved around him. That should tell him something. He's not sure what.)

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Jackson," Dr. Fowler says. Her voice is a lyrical mezzo-soprano. Boston vowels, New York rhythms. "Call me Hillary. I'm the one who'll help you get all set up, if you decide that you're going to be staying."

She's a shrink. He can tell. The SGC's psychiatric staff have always had that fake empathy in their voices, a hearty note of you can trust me that says anything but. He finds himself contrasting it with the genuine empathy of Cammie's voice. Call-Me-Hillary falls far short. (He's known some competent psychiatrists and counselors over the years. The SGC hasn't ever had one.)

He makes himself smile at her, doing his best projection of calm and sane and perfectly fucking okay, no, really. And it's nice to see that he's still got it, whatever 'it' had always allowed him to pass his quarterly psych evals with flying colors, because he can see her relaxing a little at his implicit promise: I'll come along quietly. Making them think you're going to cooperate with them is always the first step to getting them to do what you want.

"Only if you call me Daniel," he says, and it's a click and a shift and it's like stepping into a familiar pair of old shoes: Dr. Daniel Jackson, Peaceful Explorer, charmer of aliens, negotiator of treaties, and that alone is enough to tell him that he's in enemy territory, because he would have otherwise sworn he was far enough gone that nothing could have brought him back from that brink of madness tonight. But he's always been able to fake it for the cameras when he's needed to. "Have we met? I'm sorry, I've been away for a long time."

Dr. Fowler smiles at him in return. "No, we haven't. I've been with the program for seven years now. I'm familiar with a lot of your work, though. Your translations of the material in the Ancient database on Atlantis have been very helpful."

"Oh," Daniel says, lightly -- careful, careful -- "I'm glad someone gets some use out of it. The social sciences department on Atlantis always mocked me for not concentrating on more useful things." Like things that would keep us from getting shot. Or invaded. Or blown up, and I don't mean by the bad guys. (Atlantis is beautiful. In nature, things are bright and beautiful as a warning mechanism.)

They chat about Atlantis through the elevator ride down to VIP quarters on 25. And it's a good thing that Daniel's clicked over into thinking of this as a mission, as enemy territory, because he's always been able to project the right image when important things are on the line. Graham leads him to the room that's apparently going to be his, and it takes Daniel a second to control his reaction when he realizes that it's the room Teal'c occupied for so long, but the door opens on a room like any other room down here, with no sign of who used to live here. He wonders if Graham remembers. (Graham probably does. Graham's been here for a while. It's probably, Daniel decides, Graham's way of trying to make him feel welcome. It's been years since Teal'c departed, and the room bears no trace of his presence, but maybe the walls remember.)

"I'll let you get settled," Dr. Fowler says, standing outside the door (he hasn't invited her in; it probably would be politic for him to do so, but he can't quite bring himself to do it). "Do you have some time tomorrow morning to sit and chat? Say, nine hundred?"

Tomorrow morning is Saturday. It amuses Daniel beyond all measure that she's going to have to come in on her day off to deal with one slightly battered archaeologist. "Sure," he says. "Whenever's convenient. I appreciate all your help in getting me back up to speed."

He smiles at her, wide and insincere, and apparently she's just as good (or as bad) as all the rest of the psychiatrists the SGC has hired over the years (they never could find people who were worth a damn), because she believes it (him) and leaves him alone.

With the door shut, he can breathe a little easier. (Breathe.)

He doesn't look at the camera in the corner. It lacks the little red light, but that doesn't mean anything. He's always known that the cameras at the SGC can be set to record without showing any signs that they're recording; Jack had made certain they all knew. (Thinking of Jack is like stubbing his toe on the furniture that rises out of nowhere in the night, in the darkness. He hasn't thought of Jack this often in years. Has he?) They're either recording him or they aren't, and either way, he has to behave as though they are. So he puts his bags on the bed (there are a few stacks of clothing there, too, BDU pants and t-shirts and underwear still in its package, and he bets it was Sgt. Browning's doing; Bobby's always been damn good at producing miracles on command) and takes himself into the bathroom.

He brings one of the t-shirts and the sweatpants Cammie-or-JD had laid out for him. (They'd insisted he take the clothes with him, when JD had run over to the Four Seasons to check him out and grab his stuff. "We have plenty," Cammie had said. "Be a while before your stuff can catch up with you." And it's true, and he wonders how she knows.) Underneath the Mountain (in the stronghold of his enemy, his paranoid inner voice tells him -- sounding a lot like Teal'c on a bad day -- but he orders it firmly to shut up, because the SGC is not his enemy; it only feels like the whole world is against him right now) he can shower without feeling like the damn boogeyman is about to leap out at him.

The hot water helps in one direction and hurts in another, because it makes him realize how much everything aches. He checks the medicine cabinet behind the mirror out of habit; in the quarters that had been his (all of SG-1 had quarters down here; he wonders who's in the ones that used to be his, that he's been put here and not there) he'd always been sure to keep a bottle of ibuprofen in case the rest of X/L had stolen all of his out of his desk. He doesn't expect to find any, but Bobby was apparently thorough; there's a (new) toothbrush, an assortment of toiletries, and a bottle of Advil. Like your very own well-stocked, government-run luxury hotel.

He takes three, cupping his hand under the running tapwater and using it to swallow them down with, and studies his face in the mirror. He looks more normal than he should. He may have a chance of pulling this off after all.

Into the sweats and t-shirt, and he walks out of the bathroom and turns down the bed and turns off all the lights and climbs into it. Odd, really. He feels secure here but not safe, not exactly, not precisely. (Yes, no, maybe so.) It isn't that there isn't any danger here. (Earth's first line of defense.) It's that the danger comes from people (danger always comes from people) who are supposed to be on his side. (Or he's supposed to be on theirs.) Or something.

Time to figure out what your next move is, Daniel.

Three options, really: go back to Atlantis, stay here at the SGC, quit entirely and go do -- something. And on the surface, Atlantis looks like the best choice; he has been happy there, nearly as much as he's been happy anywhere in his adult life. Friends (colleagues, fellow travelers), work (the Ancient database could keep him pleasantly occupied for decades), a place he's carved out for himself (over time, in blood: his own and others'). The city is beautiful. He'd never deny that.

But his place in Atlantis had been built in no small part out of what he could do. He'd let his offworld qualifications -- a series of regular tests both physical and mental -- lapse over the years, out of some vague hope that they'd stop sending him through the Gate and let him have time to catch up on his other work, but Atlantis is a city far from home and neither Elizabeth nor Sheppard had ever fussed too much about the details. You can run, you can shoot, and you can talk, had been Sheppard's opinion. That's good enough for me. And he'd only been called in for emergencies, but Atlantis is full of emergencies, and it had been a rare month where he hadn't found himself geared up and gone to answer a call for something. If he goes back, it wouldn't be long at all; they'll have to use him. (You are the tool, whispers Jack's voice in his memory. Not what you hold, not what you carry. You. And it's up to you to decide how you're going to let yourself be used.) They always have. He's always let them.

And he knows, with some strange clarity welling up from the silences where all his decisions ultimately get made, that if he is a tool, he's a brittle and half-broken one, like a hammer dipped into liquid nitrogen and left to shatter the next time it strikes against something. He feels like an empty vessel, cracked and warped, as though his perpetual ability to do the next thing is a liquid that's been steadily draining from him over the years. As though this last desperate flight across two galaxies (at the beginning) and three time zones (at its end) has used up the last few remnants of his ability to stare the universe in the face and spit defiance into its jaws, burned away his ability to say no, you cannot have us. The thought of facing the Gate again, of being in a position where the fate of entire populations rest in his hands, of being shot at or chased or given deadlines or countdowns, makes him want to vomit or scream or drive his head into the wall.

The realization dawns on him, slowly, and he opens his eyes and stares into the Stygian darkness unblinking. It's an utterly new idea. It's what his subconscious has been trying to tell him for the past seventy-two hours. He can't do this any more. He's done. No more.

He remembers Jack and General Hammond talking in hushed tones when they thought no one could overhear about the men and women who'd simply hit their wall, reached the point where the thought of going through the Gate again threatened what fragile balance of sanity they'd all managed to win for themselves, and he'd never understood until this very moment what they'd meant by it. He'd always thought that of course anyone who could go through the Gate would want to. How could they not? (To seek out new life and new civilizations --) It took twenty-five years for reality to catch up with him, he supposes. He probably owes someone an apology. (If they're still alive to receive it.)

And if he stays here, at the SGC, they too -- whichever nebulous 'they' is in charge now; he actually doesn't know -- will want him to requalify. (He can hardly blame them. If he were in charge, he wouldn't want to pass up such a resource either, although he has no idea who's even really in charge here now, and who's going to be appointed to Jack's position in Homeworld, and he knows nothing about what kind of a man General Greg Napolitano, the latest commander of the SGC, is, when all is said and done.) He can probably put them off by saying that he's too old for a position on the front lines. (Truth, he supposes. He passed his fiftieth birthday a few years ago. Jack had sent him a bottle of Clairol on the next supply run.) There was always enough 'office work' (such a stupid term) to support additional research staff. He's pretty sure he could talk them into taking him back on in X/L. (He has no idea who's in charge of the Xenoarchaeology and Linguistics department now. He hasn't paid a single bit of attention to who sends the reports.)

But he's heard enough from various SGC veterans who'd transfered to Atlantis over the years (nothing direct, but the Lost City had been a small town in so many ways and gossip travels) to know that the SGC now is nothing like it once was. SG-1 scattered to the winds thirteen years ago (and Daniel is surprised to realize just how long ago that was; in his mind they are still and always SG-1, his core self-referentialism, the one label that's never let him down): they'd broken the back of the Goa'uld Empire (more or less -- more lately 'less', judging from some of the things that Bobby Browning told him, and either didn't know he was telling or wanted Daniel to know, during those three hours Bobby was updating Daniel's life for the twenty-first century) and been let to leave. Stand down. Mission accomplished.

And Sam had gone to Area 51 and Teal'c had gone to Dakara (and he'd asked Sam why Teal'c hadn't been there for the funeral, and Sam had made her lemon-face and said that it was complicated, and Daniel hadn't noticed it at the time -- too busy watching his mind melt in the sun -- but it's something he needs, needs to remember, because it's enough to tell him that there's something going on here, and he'll have to step carefully) and Jack had gone to D.C. (Columbia) and ... Daniel doesn't quite know who else stayed. Who else he could call on, if (when) he needed them. There are a few. Most of the people he used to serve with have left, he knows; crazy, dead, or crazy and dead (you pays your money and you takes your chances, and the house always wins in the end). Sam hadn't told him. Neither had Jack, in their correspondance back and forth over the years. But Bobby had let an awful lot of things slip, and Daniel hadn't seen many familiar faces in the halls. Old age and death and retirement and transfers; he could probably count the people who remember Dr. Daniel Jackson, SG-1, on both hands. Graham, a Major now, promoted from Gate technican all the way up to General Napolitano's XO, running everything with a deft and quiet hand. Bobby Browning, ruling over Records, his empire having expanded to include all support services. Colonel Reynolds, whom Daniel hasn't seen yet, but whom Graham made reference to. Maybe a few from X/L. No more than a few.

Enough to keep him from going crazy? (Crazier.) He's never been a social creature but the bonds of the SGC aren't social; they're communal, tribal, the shared consensus-reality of those who are walking the same insane path and the helping hand thrown out unstintingly because the giver of help knows the help will be returned. He'd had that on Atlantis. If he stays, he wouldn't have that here.

Or he could ... leave. Retire. Do something else. And that's cause for a whole different set of stresses, because not only would he have to figure out something to do, he'd have to be let to do it. There have been people who have retired from the Program over the years, true enough. None of them knew what he knows. If that's his plan, he'd have to make a clean break for it. Completely. Take thirteen years of untouched paychecks in cash on the barrel (that should be fun; dealing with banks can only have gotten worse over the years) and all of Jack's years of lessons in subterfuge and espionage and disappear completely, melt into the nine billion people on this planet and never surface again.

And, yeah, he has to admit to himself that he's spent the last three days on paranoid high alert, seeing enemies around every corner and behind every shadow. This isn't paranoia. They'd talked about it (once or twice, here or there, mutiny dissected over the breakfast table, the second one being planned after they'd found themselves forced to commit the first) and Jack had taken the time to drill them all. (And Daniel had fought against it, fought so hard, throwing around concepts like civil rights and fair trials and how he refused to be afraid of his own government, and just a few years later he'd been forced to admit Jack had been right all along.) If he's going to leave, if he doesn't want to wake up one morning with the NID (or whichever black-box agency has inherited their self-appointed mandate) waiting to escort him into the room with only one door, he'd have to disappear forever.

The thought makes him want to panic again. All of his options make him want to panic, and he's grimly suspecting that everything is going to want to make him panic, and if he stays he's going to have to face that panic every fucking day, pretend that he's just fine, and if he goes, he's ... going to have to do the same.

And Daniel would say that he doesn't have to decide this now, not when he's still on edge from having (had to be surrounded by all of those people) just come back from burying his closest friend in this world or any other, except he has an appointment with Dr. Hillary Fowler, reintegration consultant and staff psychiatrist, first thing in the morning, and he's going to have to walk into that appointment already knowing exactly what he wants to do, because if he doesn't, he won't be able to play it properly. (Smile for the cameras.)

He'd call Sam and ask her advice, ask her why she left to Area 51 instead of staying here at the SGC, except he's sure the phone lines would be recorded even if the VIP quarters aren't. He'd call up Teal'c, except the days when he could ask them to spend a quarter of a million dollars just so he could have a casual chat with an old friend are long gone. And if they couldn't even be moved to notify Teal'c of Jack's death -- and he's horribly afraid that's what it boils down to -- there's little hope he get permission to do it at all, no matter what diplomatic problem he invented. (Maybe he could wheedle his way into a position as the ambassador to the Jaffa. There's a thought.)

Can't ask Jack. Not anymore.

No, he's going to have to make this decision on his own, and none of the options are good ones.

Eventually, he falls asleep. He manages to stay there for twenty minutes before the nightmares wake him up again. It sets the pattern for the rest of the night.

*

When he finally gives up and admits he's not going to be getting any more sleep, Daniel gets up, splashes some cold water on his face (his eyes aren't red, at least, although the dark shadows under them are epic), and selects a book off the modest bookshelf in the corner to bring to breakfast with him. (He checks the frontispiece of it after a moment, deciding it looks familiar; sure enough, it's one of the ones he donated to the SGC's library when he was packing up his earthly goods to go to Atlantis.) There isn't a guard on the door when he opens it. He hadn't (honestly) expected there to be, but the fact that there isn't reassures him.

Nobody looks twice at him at breakfast. He doesn't recognize anyone in the commissary; they all look so (implausibly) young. Even the cafeteria workers are unfamiliar (although he's not entirely certain he'd recognize them as familiar, not after thirteen years); it leaves him feeling a little bit like he's just emerged from under Elf Hill. (He's a fair candidate for Tom O'Bedlam, at least if Dr. Call-Me-Hillary Fowler has her way, he suspects. Bedlam boys are bonny; they all go bare, and they live by the air, and they want no drink nor money. No thanks; he's done his time in the white I-love-me jacket, and he's not all that eager to repeat it. He'll be careful.)

When 0900 rolls around, he carefully closes the book (folding a scrap of napkin in it to keep his place; he never had read this one, a history of the Hittite Empire that actually isn't all that inaccurate, before he'd left) and goes to keep his appointment with the gatekeeper of sanity. (He's perfectly sane. He has a piece of paper that tells him so.)

Dr. Fowler's office is on level 21 -- the medical level, which would be a dead giveaway if he hadn't already put two and two together and realized her actual role. Thankfully, it's on the other side of the base from isolation room two. He still has bad memories of Iso Two; it's where he died, the third time. Fourth? He's lost track. (That should probably bother him more than it does.) Her door is open when he gets there; he knocks on the doorframe. She looks up from the paperwork she's reading (Daniel suspects it's his own file; he wonders if she has the expurgated version, or the one with all the classified details included) and smiles.

"Come on in," she says. "Shut the door. Sleep well, I hope?"

"Tossed and turned a bunch," Daniel says, lightly enough, as he does her bidding and comes over to sit in the visitor's chair. (Back to the door. Can't be helped. Can't let it show how much it bothers him, either.) "I'm used to sleeping with the ocean outside my window. The base heating system hums in a different key." (If someone had been watching his quarters on video last night, they wouldn't have missed the fact that he kept waking up. It's as good an explanation as any. Jack had always used to tell them that the best lies are built out of the truth: don't lie about your verifiable actions, lie about what they mean.)

It must work; Dr. Fowler laughs, closing the file folder and setting it aside. "I can imagine that must be tough to get used to, yes," she says. "So, have you thought about what you want to do? Will you be going back to Atlantis on the next run?"

And with that, they're off: an hour of "counseling" (Daniel got far more useful information out of Bobby Browning while Bobby was updating all of his papers and making his arrangements) about all of the changes -- in America, in the SGC -- in the last thirteen years, with some subtle (and not-so-subtle) prying into Daniel's state of mind. He'd suspected as such. It's a good thing he'd decided -- in the middle of the night, somewhere in between nightmares number twenty-five and thirty -- what he's doing.

He's staying. He doesn't -- entirely -- know why. There are good arguments to be mustered for all his possibilities, but this is the one that feels least wrong. It'll be miserable, of course. He'll be miserable. But it's the least he can do. (He doesn't know where else he could go.)

So Daniel laughs and jokes with Dr. Fowler, casual and unassuming, lighthearted and gentle and lies, all lies, and he steers her (so subtly she won't ever notice; he knows that much; he had her measure in two minutes of conversation) into thinking that he's fine, fine, fine. By the time their hour is up, she's told him far more about herself than he's told her about himself, and he intends to keep it that way. "I'll tell the General that you've decided to stay here," she says, finally, with the note in her voice that means their interview is coming to an end. "I'm sure he'll be glad to have your experience. I'm sure Xenoarchaeology and Linguistics can use you. You used to run the department, didn't you?"

"In between getting shot at," Daniel says, still lighthearted, still joking. "But really, I don't want to be a bother. I'm sure X/L has been running just fine under whoever's heading it up now." Please, God, don't put me in charge of anything. "I'd really be perfectly happy with a desk in a corner and the chance to catch up on some research. My list of problems I wanted to work on has always been longer than my arm."

Dr. Fowler pulls the file folder back over to her and opens it, scribbling down a few notes. "Were you thinking of requesting assignment to a Gate team?" she asks. "SG-27 is an exploration and research team that's been doing a lot of archaeology work lately. I'm sure they'd love to have you."

Thank God she's writing, and not looking at him. He's been doing so well at presenting exactly the picture he should be presenting (slightly absent, familiar, genial Dr. Jackson) that it's been like sitting over his own shoulder, watching his body laugh and talk and gesture without him telling it to, but that question would have been enough to give away the game, because he can feel himself freeze at the thought. (Breathe.)

It's a good thing he has an answer ready for it. "Oh, God, I'm too old for that," he says (makes himself say), and it comes out sounding note-perfect (thank fuck), and she doesn't even look up at the sound of it. It feels like dodging a bullet.

He gets out of there without giving anything away, and he knows he managed to pull it off when Dr. Fowler tells him to make an appointment with General Napolitano for first thing Monday morning. (Apparently the good General is a Monday-through-Friday leader. Daniel most carefully does not pass judgement.) Released on his own recognizance, he wanders up to 18 to take a tour through X/L. It's mostly deserted. Apparently his former department has slipped into being a Monday-through-Friday institution, as well.

There are a few people inhabiting various offices -- the one that used to be his is closed and locked, but the lights are on in the Fish Bowl, the storage room that was converted into cubicles for the translation and research corps, and there are a few people sitting with heads bent over desks. Daniel stops at the door and looks in. The Dr. Levant and Major Monroe Wormhole X-Treme action figures are still strung up on the corkboard at the door, in their perfectly-correctly-tied nooses of networking cable. Dr. Hosea -- academic specialty, the people of the Steppe Empires -- had brought the full set in and left them on the Fish Bowl table, where donuts and other baked-goods offerings were regularly left, one Christmas as part of an X/L manger scene. For nearly a year after that, every day had brought a new -- and sometimes pornographic -- tableau. Sam had finally snapped one Wednesday morning and tied them up. Jack had stolen the Grell action figure about six months later, in preparation for some elaborate prank on Teal'c that never reached fruition; the Colonel Danning figure had disappeared when Jack took over from Hammond as General, reappearing in various and sundry locales (usually when Jack least expected it; Daniel had been responsible for one or two of the poses). Levant and Monroe are still there after all these years, though. Somewhere along the way, someone added a border of authentic-looking POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS tape.

It's the first time Daniel can remember smiling and genuinely meaning it since he set foot on Earth again.

"Hi!" The voice startles him out of his reverie; he only doesn't jump because he's painfully aware that he's still on stage and on camera. The speaker is a cheerful-looking young man (too young; he doesn't look old enough to be here) in civvies: black hair, cut short, gold hoop earring in his left ear. "You lost, or are we just missing our memos again?"

Daniel makes himself keep the smile on his face. These are the people he's going to be working with; it's a good idea to make a good impression from the start. "Neither," he says. Sticks out a hand. (The thought of touching strangers is a torment. Still. Americans shake hands.) "I'm Daniel. Just back from Atlantis; I'm giving myself the tour."

He watches the kid for any sign of recognition at his name. There aren't any. That tells him something, too. "Dr. Bill Varnado," the kid says, shaking the proffered hand. "Polynesian cultures. Welcome back. How long were you afloat?"

Far longer than you've been legal to drink. "Oh, a while," Daniel says, vaguely. "Back now, though. I'll probably be joining you guys come Monday or so."

The smile he gets back is genuine pleasure at the thought. "Hey, good times," Bill (the thought of addressing this kid as 'Doctor' anything makes Daniel's head spin) says. "Dr. Rajaji will be glad for the help. What languages you got?"

The question makes Daniel want to laugh. He doesn't, but only because then he'd have to explain. "Oh, you name it," he says instead. "I've always been good with languages."

Bill's look sharpens. "Ancient?" he asks. "I only ask because, hey, Atlantis, and we've got this stele that we haven't been able to make heads nor tails of --"

"Sure," Daniel says. "Show me what you've got."

It's almost -- almost -- enough to make him relax: a problem to work on (the stele is actually written in Third-Modal Proto-Ancient, which Daniel hasn't gotten around to writing up a summary of yet and which is damn odd to see in this galaxy instead of Pegasus) and a place to work. (Bill lends him a desk in the back corner of the room, furthest from the door and the baked-goods-and-coffee table, right underneath the HVAC vent, so he'll freeze in the summer and roast in the winter; it was always the corner that filled up last, and right now, for Daniel, it's perfect, because it means he has his back right up against the far wall and he's facing the door.) He's scowling at the pictures (they're bad; whoever took them needs to go back through the fieldwork protocol training) and trying to figure out whether that's an aspect marker or just a smudge on the camera lens when he hears, from next to him, an astonished voice say, "Daniel?"

It does startle him, this time; he jumps, and nearly knocks over the stack of papers he's scribbling his notes on. (But at least that could be explained. He was concentrating. He always used to startle easily when he was concentrating, assuming he hadn't blocked everything around him out entirely.) When he looks up, the person staring down at him is familiar. "Nyan?" he says back, just as astonished.

Nyan looks older (of course), but not by much. "I hadn't heard you were coming back!" he says, clearly delighted. "Are you just visiting, or are you back for good?"

Heads are turning across the Fish Bowl, as deserted as it is. (That always was the downside to working in here.) "Ah, back for good," Daniel says, and then he pushes his chair back and stands up (not just so that Nyan isn't looming over him, really). "Have you had lunch yet? I'd love to catch up." And not have the entire room listening to every word while we do.

Some bit of recognition moves in Nyan's face. (Nyan always could read his mind. It was part of what made him such a perfect research assistant.) "Yeah, that'd be great," he says. (There's one corner of Daniel's mind that's noticing how colloquial his English has gotten over the years. Well, it's only to be expected. Nyan's lived here for -- what, nearly twenty years now? Or is it more?) "Come on, I'll buy."

The rest of the kids (they are all so young) pretend that they're not staring as Nyan leads Daniel out of the room. "I'm trying to keep a low profile," Daniel says, as soon as they're out of the room. "I thought it would be a good idea to --"

"I know exactly what you mean. They think I was born in the Northwest Territories," Nyan says, cheerfully. "And Sgt. Browning faked me a diploma from the University of Saskatchewan. It's amazing how much you can get away with by saying 'I'm sorry, I'm Canadian.'"

The thought makes Daniel think of Rodney McKay, abrasive and irascible -- it had taken two years before he and Daniel had reached some form of truce and another two years past that until he'd actually started to like the man -- and for a second he's hit with a wave of homesickness (but Atlantis was never home, not like Abydos had been; he'd never allowed it to be, because every home he's ever had has been destroyed) painful enough to make him stop walking. "I'm -- it's been a long ten years," Daniel says. "I don't know how much use I'm going to be."

Nyan's look is sympathetic. "Take your time," he says. "I'll cover for you as much as you need me to. Time for me to return the favor, you know?"

If Daniel had been intending to find the one person on base who could tell him everything he needed to know in forty-five minutes or less, Nyan would have been that person. (Nyan always used to be the clearinghouse of gossip. Editor and publisher of the base-gossip newsletter, in fact, including the annual Snakey Awards. General Hammond had always pretended not to notice. So many old traditions that Daniel had totally forgotten, until he was back here again.)

Nyan fills him in over lunch. It's not a happy story. X/L is running fine; that's not the problem. (The 'Dr. Rajaji' that Bill had mentioned is actually Dr. Anarghya Rajagopalachari, who has been In Charge, the poor woman, for six years now, and Nyan has nothing but good things to say about her.) No, the problems all involve General Napolitano. "He's a nice enough guy," Nyan says, playing with his fork. "He's just ... Well. He believes in the regulations. He really believes in the regulations."

It's good enough news for Daniel, he supposes, since if General Napolitano is that much of a stickler for the book, there's no way in hell he's going to get commandeered for a team and shoved through the Gate, no matter how bad the emergency. (The thought makes the palms of his hands clammy; he wipes them on his BDU pants, under the table, and hopes Nyan doesn't notice.) "That ... doesn't sound too bad," Daniel ventures, carefully.

Nyan makes a face. "You'll see," he says. "Last week, he sent out a six-page memo about all the things that were going to change, now that General O'Neill --" He cuts himself off, his eyes going wide and round. "Shit. I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Daniel says, feeling tired, feeling old. (I'm sorry, Jack. I'm trying. I'll do what I can. He wonders where the thought came from.) "He and Jack didn't get along?"

"They fought a lot," Nyan says. "I think ... I think General O'Neill wasn't the one to pick him, and I don't think he ever got past that. General O'Neill, I mean. They had ... different outlooks."

"Tell me everything," Daniel says, grim and determined, and Nyan swallows heavily and does.

It isn't awful. Not as bad as Daniel had been expecting, from the look on Nyan's face, at least. It's bad, but it's not awful. General Landry -- someone Daniel had known as little more than a name, but Jack had served with him, once upon a time, and it was amazing how much the thought had reassured him -- had replaced Jack; five years ago, General Napolitano replaced Landry, and apparently Jack and Napolitano have been fighting ever since. From listening to how Nyan drops his voice and looks around himself carefully to see who's listening, Daniel thinks it isn't common knowledge.

Nyan hates the man. That tells him something; that tells him a lot. He'd always relied on Nyan's instincts in the past.

"You have to get on the General's good side," Nyan finally says, leaning forward and dropping his voice even further. "You have to. He has a problem with women, I think, or maybe he's got a problem with people who aren't white, or aren't military, or something, but he and Dr. Rajaji really don't get along. And the department is ... Well. We keep losing people -- they keep retiring, or taking jobs elsewhere, or -- just not coming home, and the budget keeps getting cut, and -- Please tell me you're back to fix things. Please."

Daniel closes his eyes. The naked plea in Nyan's voice is plain. So's the fact that right now, he couldn't fix a flat tire. "I'm here because I don't have anywhere else to be," he says. It's a little more truth than he wanted to give. But Nyan's always understood him, and right now, Nyan's one of the friendliest faces he's seen here so far. "I don't think I can --"

The crash isn't really as loud as it sounds. Just some clumsy airman, dropping a tray full of dishes with a clatter and a bang, turning heads across the cafeteria. There's really no reason for Daniel to leap backwards, his chair turning over and skittering to the floor, groping for a weapon he isn't wearing and never will again.

At least he isn't the only one who does. (Small mercies.)

When he manages to calm his racing heart and stop and get a fucking grip, picking up his chair and setting it down and sitting back in it (and there are others doing the same, and it's nice, when you've gone crazy, to be in a room full of other crazy people, because if everyone's mad then nobody notices, and if he were feeling a little bit better he'd take note of who else is standing up and trying to calm themselves down but right now he's a little busy trying to convince himself that he's not about to get eaten by Wraith or something), Nyan is staring at him again, and this time the look is all too understanding.

"Oh," Nyan says, and his voice is small and a little bit sad, but it isn't the sadness of somebody who's had his great hopes disrupted. It's the kind of sadness that comes from seeing a friend hurting.

"I'm fine," Daniel says, a little sharper than he'd intended. He doesn't want sympathy. He doesn't want attention. Right now, he wants to crawl in a hole and die of shame.

"Yeah. You always were." Nyan looks down at his tray. Stacks his plates on it. Takes a deep breath, and Daniel can see the minute when Nyan decides to set aside whatever plans he'd started planning as soon as he saw Daniel was back. "Come on. There's -- There aren't actually a lot of people left who remember. I'll take you around and introduce you to people."

Daniel closes his eyes and makes himself breathe. (He doesn't particularly want to meet anyone right now. Right now, what he wants is a bottle of vodka and a nice locked room and nobody around him. But Nyan is trying to be kind.) "Okay," he says, when he opens his eyes again. "Just -- to everyone else, I just want to be ... Daniel." Not Dr. Daniel Jackson, SG-1. Not the guy who opened the Stargate. Not the guy who's been here since the beginning. Just ... Daniel.

(He's not sure who Daniel is. Maybe he never was.)

Nyan stands up. "Yeah," he says. He smiles a little, regretfully, and it isn't bitter at all. "I think I can guess why."

*

Daniel spends the rest of the weekend in the Fish Bowl, working on his translations. Or rather, that's what he does during the day. At night, he lies in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide which is worse, the nightmares or the sleep deprivation. (For now, the nightmares are winning. He's managing about four broken hours of sleep a night; it'll have to do. For now, at least.)

Come Monday morning, he checks with Sgt. Greene, General Napolitano's aide, to see if the General has space in his day. He is given an 1132 appointment. (And told not to be late or early. Apparently the General schedules his time down to eight-minute blocks. Daniel is, apparently, important enough to be accorded two of them.)

He passes by the briefing room on his way out of Sgt. Greene's office. The door's open. He remembers the days when the sight of the Gateroom through the glass windows used to thrill him or excite him or leave him breathless with possibility. Now, it just makes his chest go cold and tight, and he steps past it as fast as he can.

Back up on 18, the door to the office that used to be his is open. He can't help but look. Dr. Anarghya Rajagopalachari is a compactly-built Indian woman (South Asian, not Native American) wearing a bindi (of the traditional sindoor paste, not jewelry) that's mostly concealed behind the bridge of her glasses, with hair only slightly longer than Daniel's worn spiked with gel. She looks to be in her late forties, perhaps; maybe a little older. (He's always been horrible at estimating women's ages.) She's chewing on a pen, while both of her hands are flying over the keyboard in front of her. (Muttering around the pen, too. Daniel's not close enough to hear what she's saying, but whatever she's arguing, it's impassioned.)

She's clearly concentrating on something, and Daniel doesn't want to interrupt. The room looks different. (Obviously. It's not his office anymore.) She still has some of the miscellaneous knick-knacks he left behind him strewn about, though, and some few others that look familiar, too (the Vedic goblet on one of the shelves, Daniel thinks, might be one that he himself brought back from one of Kali's planets and logged into the SGC's artifact inventory), and he must wait a little too long or make some kind of noise or something. Or maybe she's just good at knowing when someone's looking at her.

"Hi," she says, around the pen, when she looks up. Doesn't stop typing, either. (Daniel's always been impressed by people who can do that.) She squints at him. "Are you looking for something? Did Lieutenant Barclay send you down here for the report I promised him? Because I've nearly got it, I swear --"

Someone crosses behind him in the hallway; it's enough to make him step into the office (so that he can take a step to the left and put his back to the wall and not to the door) even without being invited. The tile underneath his boot is still cracked and dipping in the center. He always had meant to ask the base maintenance staff to do something about it, and he'd never gotten around to it. "No," he says. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to interupt. I'm --"

She spits the pen out of her mouth, catches it neatly in one hand, and puts it down on the desk. "Daniel Jackson!" she says, with a clear overtone of delight to her voice. "I almost didn't recognize you. The photos make you look --" 'Younger', it's about to be, or maybe 'less rabid', but Daniel's face must give something away, because she stops in mid-sentence. "I didn't know you were scheduled to rotate back from Atlantis."

"I wasn't," Daniel says. "It was -- unexpected."

The look she gives him is a quick suspicious glance, but she doesn't press him further. And if she hasn't connected his sudden appearance from thirteen years beneath Elf Hill with the sudden death of Homeworld's patron saint and last remaining wholehearted champion, it means their legend -- his legend, Jack's legend, SG-1 -- has gotten more garbled throughout the years. On the one hand, it's a useful piece of knowledge: it means his urge to hide will be more possible. (Will be possible at all.) On the other hand ...

It isn't right. It can't be right. For someone who's been working here for years to fail to connect the death of the General commanding Homeworld Security with the appearance (hell-bent-for-leather) of someone from the depths of the Program's history... It should be more than enough for anyone who knew Jack moved up to Homeworld from the SGC, anyone who knows anything at all about how Gate teams work, to piece together the truth of why he's here. (He wonders, suddenly, if they've even told the SGC of Jack's death. But no. Nyan had known.) He isn't sure if it's Jack's secret history or his own that's been lost and buried to the grapevine of the Mountain, whether it's that there's no one left who remembers Jack used to be a team leader (used to be the Old Man of the Mountain) before he moved up to Homeworld, whether there's no one left who remembers Daniel Jackson used to be a part of SG-1, whether there's nobody left who remembers SG-1, whether things have changed so far beyond recognition he'll have to learn the culture from the start again. (No, Nyan all but told him he would, on that score.) No way to tell. (He isn't sure what he's hoping for, even. He doesn't have enough information yet to determine which would be best for his purposes.)

They talk for about fifteen minutes. She tells him (out loud) that he should call her 'Ana' or 'Dr. Rajaji' (she has obviously given up on trying to get Westerners to pronounce her full name properly; he earns points by managing to do so), that she's been in charge of X/L for six years now, that she was recruited straight out of a tenured professorship at Harvard, and that her field is Indo-European Studies, but she prefers administration, which is why she's never petitioned for a place on a Gate team. She tells him (without telling him) that she's smart, capable, good at playing politics, and utterly unqualified to hold a position on a Gate team. He tells her (out loud) that he has no interest in taking her job, that he's just looking for a quiet desk somewhere to do some uninterrupted research, that he'd prefer to stay as anonymous as he can, and he tells her as little else as possible.

By the time they've finished their talk, she's a lot easier with him. She tells him she'd be happy to have him in her department. He asks if there's any chance he could have an office of his own. (Working in the Fish Bowl would drive him crazy in no short order. Crazier.) She says she's pretty sure she can swing something. He offers to take a look at some of their oldest translation backlog. She tells him to be careful, because she's likely to take him up on that. It's a delicate dance, but he's pretty sure he made it through.

The General's harder. General Greg Napolitano turns out to be of a type Daniel's known for most of his adult life: white, male, sixtyish, balding and trying to hide it under a toupee, with the perpetual squint of someone who's been staring at papers for years and trying to avoid admitting he needs glasses. If Daniel had met him socially, he'd still have known the man was in the military; he has the presumption of command that some highly-ranked military men get over the years, the kind where everything around him is a problem to be solved and resources to be ordered around. The first words out of his mouth, when Daniel walks in for his appointment, is, "Well, this is irregular." It doesn't get much better after that.

Still, by the end of their scheduled sixteen minutes (and the General uses fifteen minutes and twenty seconds of it), Daniel has talked the General into believing that he's talked Daniel into staying on with the SGC and helping X/L with their translation backlog. By the time he leaves, he has been cautioned that "things are different around here now" (he's well aware of that by now, thanks, and he's pretty sure he's looking at most of the reasons why), that the General will tolerate no "cult of personality" (and Daniel has memories of some of Jack's best rants to guide him on what precisely that means to a military man), and that he won't receive any "special treatment". He assures the General he isn't looking for any. He's not sure if the General believes him or not.

The one good thing to come out of it is that General Napolitano apparently is willing to let him continue to live on base, until he finds an apartment, at least. It means he isn't being told to gather his things and get out. (Of course, it also means he has to find an apartment to rent. He hates scouring the classifieds for a decent place to live, and every single one of the online rental sites are concentrated on apartment complexes, which he'd rather shoot himself than live in. Maybe he can bribe Bobby to find him a place.)

He's told to work something out with Dr. Rajaji about where his talents would best fit. He doesn't tell General Napolitano that he and Dr. Rajaji already came to an agreement; he figures that's Dr. Rajaji's problem. If he's lucky, he won't have to deal with the General at all. If he's lucky, he'll be able to sit in his office with the door shut and do translation all day instead of having to work on cultural briefings for Gate teams. Without having to acknowledge that the Gate is even down there. (He is most studiously not looking out the window of the General's office. He's seen the Gate a hundred thousand times, he tells himself, he doesn't need to see it again, and he knows it for a lie the minute he tells himself but it's a lie he's got a lot invested in believing.)

If he's lucky, he'll get through this without going crazy.

He ignores the part of him that tells him it's already too late and pastes his very best smile on his face, going to seek out Bobby to throw himself on Bobby's mercy for the last remaining details. Bobby says he's happy to help. Bobby says he'll take care of everything. Bobby also asks about the car Daniel signed out from the motor pool to get him to the airport last week. It had totally slipped his mind; he'd parked it in long-term parking at the airport and promptly forgot about it. (He'd had his reasons.)

"I can drop you over to pick it up, no problem," Bobby says. "I can just take a long lunch."

No amount of Daniel's protest will make Bobby drop the idea, and so Daniel resolves himself to heading up through all the checkpoints and signouts and security waystations to emerge, blinking, into the sun. He's trailing along behind Bobby to the parking complex (Cheyenne Mountain is apparently supposed to be on standby status now, NORAD having moved to Peterson when the SGC outgrew its alotted space; Daniel wonders how they explain the fact that the mountain's clearly tenanted, that the parking lots are still full, but he figures it's not his problem anymore, thank fuck) when Bobby says, out of the blue, "I don't mind, you know."

Daniel blinks and wishes he'd remembered to find a pair of sunglasses. "Mind?"

"Giving you a hand. You've been gone a long time. They should have a whole program set up to reintegrate people who are coming back, but, well. They don't. I'm kind of it. So I don't mind giving you as much of a hand as you need." Bobby indicates his car when Daniel's about to walk past it. "I think you're the only one who's actually stayed on Atlantis that long without coming back, right?"

Bobby asks it as a question, but it's not a question. Bobby knows damn well that Daniel's one of the few people who were still left on Atlantis from the early years; about the only people who have been there longer are a double dozen survivors of that terrible one-way mission, the one Daniel had wanted so badly to be on and Jack had stopped him from joining. (He never asked Jack why not. He never asked Jack why Jack let him go a year later.) Bobby also knows that Daniel's one of the only ones who hadn't bothered maintaining a life on Earth in stasis while he was on Atlantis; there's a whole subset of Records that's concerned with paying bills and working as proxy for people who are stationed on Atlantis and want to keep the threads of their Earth life up-to-date. (Rodney McKay, Daniel knows, has been steadily paying rent on an apartment he uses for no more than three weeks out of every year for fifteen years.)

"Yeah," Daniel says. "I am."

Bobby doesn't say anything else, just looks at Daniel out of the corner of his eye. When he drops Daniel at the gate to long-term parking, though, he says, "Let me know what else you need help with."

It's not an offer. It's an order. It's nice to know that there are still some people at the SGC who care about making sure people come back okay.

It costs Daniel nearly two hundred bucks to get the car out of storage, but he doesn't mind. It's not like he's been using a penny of his paychecks for the past thirteen years; he hasn't actually looked at his bank account balance, but it's probably ridiculous by now. He has to sit in the parking lot for a good ten minutes, trying to convince himself that he does remember how to drive a car, before he can trust himself to put the car into gear. No amount of telling himself that he managed to drive himself to the airport helps. (He doesn't actually remember doing it. That should probably concern him more than it does.)

It's a little better once he gets moving, at least, and on impulse (not impulse, instinct), he pulls the car into the parking lot of a strip mall he remembers. The giant electronics store is still there. He talks to himself sternly for a good ten minutes, telling himself that it's important to have things that aren't provided by the SGC -- a laptop, a cell phone -- and that the SGC can't eavesdrop on (just in case), before he can make himself open his car door. (He doesn't let himself think about what the steps after these steps are. One foot on the ground at a time, Jack had always said. First do something. Then do it better.)

He has no idea what he should be looking at, in terms of electronics; he's been away too long. He solves the problem by finding the youngest sales associate who looks the most comfortable with the technology, a Latino kid who looks like he's probably still in high school, and telling the kid to pick out the gear the kid would buy for himself if money were no object.

What Daniel gets is a pile of boxes with incredibly high price tags on them. The tour of his soon-to-be-new posessions (when you care enough to send the very best) starts with a tablet the size and thickness of a magazine with an alarming tendency to flex and bend (the first time the kid demonstrates by rolling the whole thing into a cylinder, Daniel nearly chokes, but apparently it's a design feature) and, he is assured, the ability to withstand 'anything'. (If the kid had seen some of the 'anything' he's seen in the past ten years, he might not be so quick to make that statement. Daniel had been famed on Atlantis for finding new and inventive ways to utterly destroy laptops, even the ultra-rugged notebooks the Atlantis expedition had been equipped with. McKay had threatened to equip him with a chisel and stone tablets after the time he'd accidentally unhooked a laptop on a spacewalk.)

The kid asks if Daniel intends the laptop for desktop or mobile use. He isn't exactly sure, but the same impulse that had him stopping in the first place has him answering, "Mobile." (Apparently his subconscious knows better than he does what he's here for.) It's enough to give the kid the next step, and after a few more questions Daniel has the next level of his gear assembled: a keyboard without any wires (Daniel supposes the laptop will simply read its mind), a long thin tube that turns out to be the external monitor should Daniel wish a larger working space (you pull it down like a windowshade and prop it up on something). There are a few other things that are apparently vital to turn the laptop into a passable on-the-go workstation; the kid says they're not necessary, but would be helpful. Daniel tells him to keep going.

Cell phone. Daniel hasn't been paying attention to trends in consumer electronics for a while, but he has noticed enough over the years to know that cell phone designs (and which model is the popular new thing sported by all fashionable young geniuses everywhere) are cyclical, from ultra-small and specialized to ultra-large and diversified. They're in the ultra-small phase right now. The phone the kid shows him is the size of an old-fashioned pack of gum and apparently has just as much computing power as the laptop itself. It, too, unfolds (Daniel is beginning to wonder if he missed an origami craze somewhere). The kid shows him how to dial, where to listen, how to store data on it, all the ways in which it can contact people: SMS and email and web. (Daniel is old-fashioned; all he particularly cares about is that his phone acts as a phone.)

He takes the cell phone gear. He takes the laptop gear. He signs a phone service contract on the spot -- two years of service, payments auto-debited from his bank account -- and carefully memorizes the number he's assigned. (He resolves, right there and then, that he will not give the SGC the number. They can find out, of course, without much effort even, but if they do, it'll be proof enough that he was right to suspect them in the first place.) Daniel hopes the kid gets commissions; he's pretty sure, judging from the eagerness with which the kid keeps trying to get him to buy more stuff, that he does. (Or maybe the kid just takes his responsibility to outfit Daniel seriously.)

Once he's paid, Daniel moves his chattels over to the customer service desk and begins dismantling each piece from its box. ("You guys recycle, right?" "Um, don't you want the boxes?" "What for?") He's just spent a small fortune on personal electronics, and it all fits in a single large shopping bag once it's out of its boxes. (O brave new world it is, and he's still not sure which connotation of the phrase he means.) He leaves that bag in the trunk. When he closes the latch, he's expecting to feel satisfaction, some sense of achievement from having finished a task he hadn't wanted to undertake, but as he stands in the parking lot next to his loaner car (open air, visible from all sides, no hiding place: he feels like a mouse in the center of a field with eagles overhead) he knows (from the part of his mind Jack trained over the years, the part that sits behind his eyes and watches) his task isn't finished yet.

Dammit.

His hands clasp the steering wheel as he pulls out of the parking lot and he'd worry that he's making turns and stops without conscious thought (do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law and over the years he's learned to judge the motives of others by how much they want to interfere with his own free will; it says something that he's had to develop a hierarchy of mind control over the years) but it isn't the hazy, someone-else's-life quality of watching someone else control his actions; it's the calm confidence of someone who's been well trained. He pulls into the parking lot of the bank after having taken the most indirect route possible. He's positive he wasn't followed. Or, if he was, they've gotten better over the years. (He doesn't stop to ask himself who they might be; he's known a hundred different them since first he came to Colorado Springs, and even on Atlantis there had been them to worry about. He remembers when he didn't separate his life into us versus them. He remembers when there were more us, too. Absent friends.)

He knows why his subconscious sentries have brought him here, to this bank (not his). O brave new world indeed.

The safe-deposit box is one of Jack's old caches. Left for emergencies: untraceable cash and easily-smuggled gemstones and unregistered weapons; spare IDs for them all, left in neatly numbered sealed packets, and envelopes with brief coded phrases scrawled on the outside to identify in what disaster circumstances they should be opened. There are caches across the country -- some of which Jack gave them all the keys to; some of which Daniel knows he never knew -- for emergencies of all sorts, from the easily traceable (the safe-deposit boxes are under Jack's own name; Daniel and Sam and Teal'c have -- had -- official access, written down in the gatekeepers' logbooks) to the anonymous (there are caverns and caves in the hills of the Springs, and not all of them have been turned into tourist parks yet).

(When Jack had shown them all, Daniel had sneered and Sam had looked confused and Teal'c had been quietly approving, and Jack had smiled his sorrowful smile, the one that strangers never got to see, and told them all he hoped they'd never have to use them.)

You can't have a cell phone activated without showing ID these days, even for a prepaid burn phone, but there's a place he knows (Jack knew) that will take cash and not compare the face on the ID to the face that's holding it too closely. Even if they did, it wouldn't be a problem. The ID in these packets is good enough to pass a far more detailed scrutiny. (Made by a pro, after all, and not Bobby Browning and his boys.) Daniel shuffles through the envelopes until he finds his coded number. There are more packets here than there were in the days when it was just SG-1 and a few trusted allies included in Jack's professional paranoia, and Daniel wonders who's been added to Jack's inner circle in the past thirteen years, whose faces lie behind the numbers he doesn't know. He won't unseal someone else's tamper-resistent envelopes, and there's no one left he can ask anymore.

Five envelopes for him. He flicks them out like a hand of cards; they're numbered (most solid cover to least solid, Jack's voice whispers in his memory; take the least solid one you need and leave the rest for emergencies later, and it's gotten even more pressing now, because Daniel's realizing that whatever he takes won't be replenished; he never knew Jack's contacts and Jack had never offered them up). He takes the second and fourth. Unless things have gotten drastically worse over the years (a charmingly plausible thought) #4 will stand up to a cursory run by the police (not that he's planning on a run-in; still, Jack would rise up from his grave if Daniel didn't have at least one alternate set of papers on him at all times) and #2 will be solid enough to travel on. Possibly more.

His hand hovers over #1. It will, he knows, match his fingerprints and DNA in the national databases, have a credit history and a set of professional qualifications and, for all he knows, a perfect record of paying taxes. A perfect new self to step into. If he's going to run, that would be the envelope he should pick up.

Not yet. Not until you have to.

There's a logbook sitting on the very top of the box, ciphered records of visits, of who took what and who left things to replace them. Daniel flips through the last few pages; he's never know anyone else's codes and Jack is the only one who can (could) decrypt them, the only one who had the other half of the key each of them held to encode their notes, but even the handwriting isn't familiar in more than half the cases. He spots Jack's bold austere block-caps in a few spots. (Not many. The most frequent visitor is one of the sets of handwriting he doesn't recognize.) It's harder than he would have expected to tear his eyes away from it, and he rests his fingertips over the top of it and breathes deeply against the lump in his throat.

There's part of him that's tempted to fully empty the box, destroy what he can't use lest the bank drill the box when Jack's estate stops paying the tab and discover the scraps and pieces of so many lives here. He hasn't been keeping up with US law, but he's pretty sure there are at least half a dozen felonies spread out on the table here. It wouldn't be hard for him to smuggle the remaining contents away; someone's been here since the last time Jack restocked, and both the unregistered weapon and the ammo for it is missing. Cross-cut-shred the notes and the IDs that aren't his -- they're duplicated in the other caches -- and move the gems and unmarked bills into one of the caches in the hills. What stops him, after a few minutes of thought, is the knowledge that Jack isn't -- wasn't -- that stupid and never believed in his own immortality; there will have been provisions made. He takes two hundred in cash and ciphers his own entry into the logbook (it's amazing how quickly all the old codes come back to him), and he doesn't look through the envelopes of instructions for any one marked "in the event of my death".

It's mid-afternoon by the time he gets back to the SGC with all his new gear -- both registered and unregistered -- and he realizes, as he's signing back in through the secondary screening on level 11, that he's trying to have eyes in the back of his head, waiting for the gentle tap on the shoulder that will preface being led away to that deep dark hole. Get a grip, he tells himself, pushing the pen back to the security guard and submitting his handprint for verification. These are the good guys. They're on your side.

The fact that he has to tell himself three times before he can make himself get into the second elevator tells him just how little he really believes it.

He's headed for level 18, intending to go find Dr. Rajaji and see if she's managed to rearrange things so that he's got an office to call his own yet. (And that's going to work against his desire to blend in and be anonymous, because he knows there are probably people who have been toiling in the Fish Bowl for years without getting an actual office, but fuck it; can't be helped. He'll think of something to explain it.) The elevator stops at level 14, though, and Daniel is too busy pressing his shoulders against the side of the elevator to make sure that whoever gets into it with him won't somehow get behind him to notice who it is at first. When the other man says "Daniel!" with clear delight, Daniel blinks a few times, and the man he's staring at turns from a stranger into Colonel Nathan Reynolds.

Reynolds has gotten older and greyer (but haven't we all?), but he seems otherwise all right. Daniel braces himself for a flurry of greetings and handshakes and back-slapping, and sure enough, Reynolds starts forward. Daniel can't help but flinch, though, and Reynolds changes the motion into a step back and a lean against the opposite wall of the elevator so smoothly it's like he'd planned it all along.

Daniel can't help but sigh inwardly. Can everyone see that he's this on edge? (Apparently not everyone. He managed to fool the shrink with no problems. Then again, around here that isn't saying much.)

"I'm sorry about Jack," Reynolds says. Means it, too. There's a note in his voice that's been absent in most of the condolences Daniel's been offered so far, not only of genuine regret but also of understanding. Not I'm sorry to hear about General O'Neill's death, cool and formal, measured for political gain, like he'd received in Washington; just the quiet understanding of someone who's been cheating death himself for a long damn time. The sound of someone who understands that around here death is sometimes just a state of mind; the sound of someone who knows all the old jokes. (SG-1, the team that comes back from the dead to bitch about its own funeral arrangements.) Hearing it, Daniel realizes that he's been missing it all along and only noticed the lack when he found it again.

"It was the way he wanted to go," Daniel says. And for all that he's been muttering platitudes of his own in response to the platitudes he's been getting, for all that it's the same thing he would have said (had said) to the black-suited Washington spooks or the old men in their dress blues, well, it's true, and Reynolds will know it.

"Damn right," Reynolds says, nodding firmly. "Go down shooting and just forget to come back up again. Hey, listen. They wouldn't let us out to go to the funeral, but a few of us are getting together tonight at my place to drink a toast to the old bastard. The ones who remember him, at least. You gonna be free to come join us, or are you leaving on Atabyrus tomorrow? Wouldn't want you to have to deal with hyperspace hung over, if you were planning to take the long way back, take some time to catch up on sleep instead of just bridging back."

Daniel had lost track of the schedule; he hadn't actually known that Atabyrus was leaving tomorrow. They haven't managed to shave much off the three-week transit time to Pegasus, but it's been mostly a moot point, since the Gatebridge has been stable for quite some time now. Atabyrus makes the run twice a year, to bring supplies that won't fit through the Gate and the few people who choose to take the long way to Atlantis.

"No," he says. "I'm ... not going back to Atlantis, actually."

He braces himself for the questions that will surely follow, but all Reynolds does his give him a look, deep and penetrating. "Good," he says. Daniel gets the impression that he means it. "Can I put in my claim on you early, then?"

It's a compliment, really. SG-3 is a ground forces team, all-Marine, tasked with backup, SAR, and small-unit combat. The last thing they should need is an archaeologist. Apparently Reynolds has forgotten that Daniel is actually a civilian; it's the only thing that Daniel can think of. Either that, or Reynolds thinks that eight years of SG-1 is enough to break in anyone.

The thought still makes him want to panic. (Being in the elevator isn't helping.)

"Dropped my quals a while back," Daniel makes himself say, light and casual. "Too old to go running around the galaxy anymore."

Reynolds snorts. "Yeah, aren't we all." The elevator door opens on the corridor of 18; Reynolds gestures Daniel out, and Daniel grits his teeth and goes. (It's only Reynolds. Having Reynolds at his back has always been okay.) Reynolds sticks a hand in front of the doors to keep them from closing. "If you change your mind, I want it on the record that I get first dibs. Kovacek is going to try to talk you into it too. His current egghead's apparently giving him fits. Anyway, you still remember where our place is, right? Haven't moved. Probably start getting together around 1900 or so. Diane and I would love to have you."

"We'll see," Daniel says. The thought of being around people makes him want to claw off his own skin. But at least the type of people Reynolds is talking about, the old veterans of the SGC, would understand. He just doesn't particularly want to show them.

Reynolds's face says he understands far too well. "See you then," he says, and takes his hand out of the door.

The only thing that makes the rest of the afternoon bearable is that Dr. Rajaji has found him an office (about the size of a broom closet -- in fact, Daniel thinks he remembers it actually being a storage room, once upon a time -- but it's his and it has a door). He spends the rest of the day with the door shut, moving the furniture around so that he can see the door from where he's sitting.

Once he's done, he sits in the desk chair and stares at the doorknob for a long damn time. Then he gets up, rearranges the furniture again so he can see the door from where he's sitting without being immediately visible when the door opens, and he curses himself, because he knows it'll show up on the security cameras. But he feels better once he's done it, and that's what really counts.

By Tuesday morning, Daniel is aware that the rumor mill is already grinding. He's pretty sure Nyan had something to do with it, because the story being bandied about is one that he can live with: his brand-new co-workers believe that he's just back from having spent a few years on Atlantis, and before that he'd been working in the private sector. Nobody connects him with the Dr. Daniel Jackson whose name is all over the X/L resource materials, or if they do, they don't mention it. (Or maybe the resource materials have been rewritten enough time over the years that they aren't using any of Daniel's old work.) 'Jackson' is a common enough last name, and he already knows that the SG-1 legend has been muted over the years. General Napolitano had made it clear enough that the SGC's institutional memory had been rewritten to downplay the heroism angle; Daniel would have been more miffed, except he's never wanted to be considered a hero. Anonymity is more comfortable, after all.

He'd given some thought to going to Reynolds's house Monday night -- not out of a desire to actually be there (he'd rather put out his eyes with hot pokers) but more out of a desire to avoid questions about why he hadn't been -- but decided against it. News of his return had apparently been prime gossip at Jack's wake, though, because all through Tuesday, his office is graced with a steady stream of visitors: Eli Benton, Stan Kovacek, Grace Walker, Evan Sanchez, all the others he remembers from his days in harness. All of them are quietly glad to see him. None of them miss the way he's arranged his office furniture. None of them blink twice at it, either.

Kovacek and Benton both ask Daniel if he'll join their teams (Kovacek is commanding SG-16; Benton is still in charge of SG-9). Walker (2IC of SG-22; she could have had her own team years ago, Daniel knows, and knows she still doesn't want it) promises to tell him everything about all the current teams -- and, by implication, the current team leaders -- so he can decide which one he wants to petition for a slot on. Sanchez (commander of SG-8, engineering and humanitarian aid) recommends SG-4, the current flagship team: exploration, first contact, and diplomacy just like SG-1 had always been. ("Volsky's a good guy -- no Jack O'Neill, but he's a good guy, and you deserve a slot on the flagship if you want it," Sanchez explains, earnest and full of entreaty, and Daniel doesn't have the heart to say that he doesn't give a damn about what he should deserve.)

None of them say anything when he tells them all that he's planning on a nice quiet desk job, but they all get that look, the look he'd skipped Reynolds's get-together in order to avoid, and Daniel grits his teeth and recites every alphabet he can remember, backwards, to keep from giving too much away. By lunchtime, he's feeling limp and exhausted from constantly fighting off panic at the thought of a position on a Gate team. (They mean well. He knows they mean well. But going through it over and over again isn't helping.)

He considers the urge to lock and barricade himself in his office over lunch, and finally decides he's allowed everything but the 'barricade' part: he gets a tray from the comissary and brings it back to his office. When he comes back, the voice mail light on his phone is blinking. He has to stare at it for a few minutes, because Dr. Rajaji had explained that X/L runs on email and not on the telephone, and he can't think of anyone who could have called him.

When he checks the message, it turns out that apparently JD isn't the only one who remembers how to wend his way through the switchboard, because the message is from Cameron -- Cammie -- Mitchell, her voice bright and cheerful, reminding him that they're expecting him at 1900, that he doesn't have to bring anything with him, and that he should call if he's going to be late.

For a minute, he's tempted to call her back and tell her that he will be late. Tell her that he won't be coming at all. Tell her that he's going to hole up in his quarters for the next six years and never set foot outside the mountain again. (Tell her he's going to disappear tomorrow and never be heard from again.) But he'd come out of the conversation on the ride back from the airport with the understanding that Cameron Mitchell treats hospitality as a sacred duty, and he does owe them both a debt of gratitude for getting him back from Washington without getting arrested, and he has the sense that if he cancels, it will be an act of supreme rudeness.

And Daniel would be willing to be rude to a stranger -- it wouldn't be the first time, after all -- but Cameron Mitchell is no stranger; he's owed her a debt of gratitude for a decade and a half, even if he'd only barely remembered it for most of that time. (Only survivor of an attack that nearly reduced the Earth to rubble. Saved SG-1's collective ass, buying them time enough to get Jack to the Antarctic outpost and unleash the weapon they hadn't known was there, and Daniel had visited her in the hospital afterwards, and the pale wrecked woman he'd seen there had no resemblance to the woman he'd met again only a few days ago, vibrant and alive.)

And as for her business partner (life partner? Husband? Daniel had looked, but he hadn't seen any signs) -- well, JD is strange, but he isn't a stranger, and there's a part of Daniel that knows he's been rude to Jack so many times that one more could hardly damn him if he wasn't damned already, but there's a bigger part of him that knows he owes Jack so incredibly much that sitting through one meal with Jack's abandoned clone couldn't even begin to balance the score.

He stops on his way out of the mountain to buy a bottle of wine. Cammie may have said he didn't have to bring anything, but he can't bring himself to arrive empty-handed.

The address Daniel had been given is just outside Colorado Springs proper, in the midst of a swath of uncleared land. He misses the turn for the driveway twice; the mailbox is half-occluded by an overgrown shrub and parts of a lingering snowbank, and the turnoff is a muddy, pothole-ridden mess. He's just ready to turn around and head back to the mountain, call Cammie and JD and say that he'd gotten horribly lost, when he goes around a curve and there's a bump and he's suddenly on a smooth, winding driveway that looks more like a private road. There's no remaining snow or ice on it, and the trees are clear-cut for twenty feet on either side.

It feels like Jack. Hide in plain sight, then make sure your approach is defendable. Daniel can spot a dozen places where he could set up an effective ambush if it became necessary.

The house is on a couple dozen acres, easily, judging by how long the driveway is. Daniel parks the car next to the house itself, which is on the crest of a gentle hill. There aren't any steps in evidence. The sides of the house are rough-hewn timber, and there's something about it that reminds Daniel of the house Jack used to live in, but it's nothing he can put his finger on. It's big. Big enough that two people would rattle around in it. He wonders whether they built it or bought it. (Jack had built the house he'd lived in for so long, Daniel knows, in that year when Daniel had been living on Abydos and Jack had been on the long slow road to recovery. He'd mentioned it once, and Daniel had asked where he'd learned construction, and Jack's eyes had gone distant over his bottle of beer and said it had been a long time ago.)

When he rings the doorbell, it's Cammie who answers, leaning on her cane. She's dressed in a pair of soft, worn grey sweatpants and a pale pink tank top; its spaghetti straps don't hide any of her scars, or the fact that she's not wearing a bra, and its neckline makes it plain that no matter her age, she doesn't need to wear one if she doesn't want to. Her face crinkles up into a smile of delight when she sees him. "Told you that you didn't need to bring anything," she says, instead of a greeting. Daniel doesn't mind. It feels like she's just continuing a conversation that had been briefly put on pause.

"It's just a bottle of wine," he says. "For the house." Mindful of the fact that she needs that cane to walk, he doesn't thrust the bottle at her; when you only have one hand that isn't occupied, the last thing you want to do is fill that hand with something that someone else could carry. He breathes out. His breath puffs in the chill night air. He's vaguely aware that it's quiet out here, isolated and abandoned and beautiful. The only thing he can hear is the sound of a single bird in the distance, starting in on his courting early.

"Well, come on in," Cammie says. She steps back, holding the door open for him. "Shoes off at the door, under the table. Mind you don't leave anything on the floor anywhere I could trip on it; it's the one house rule."

The doorway opens up straight on the living room, which is light and airy and open, with high wood-beamed ceilings and a rustic, homey feel to it. The furniture is arranged to form small conversational nooks; the pathways between them are wide and open. There's art and sculpture everywhere, and they aren't the kind of knick-knacks that are mass-produced in factories for soulless people to hang in their homes. Living in Pegasus teaches you how to recognize quality when you see it, and every piece he can see is almost certainly one-of-a-kind.

Daniel kicks off his shoes where Cammie directs him to. "Give you the tour later," she says, still and quiet at his elbow. (It makes him realize just how much he's been on edge in the Mountain; nearly everyone he's spent time around over the past few days fidgets in some way. Cammie doesn't.) "For now, though, c'mon into the kitchen and sit with me a spell. I'm just putting the last touches on dinner, but the appetizers are ready to come out of the oven. Himself will be along in a few."

Daniel tries to remember his manners. "Can I help with something?" he asks.

Cammie shakes her head. "Nothing to help with," she says. "Had everything all made up already, mostly. I'm just snapping the last of the green beans, and by the time I handed 'em over to you I could be done with 'em myself." She gestures to the doorway that leads to the kitchen. "Just come sit an' keep me company."

She doesn't wait for his nod, just limps into the kitchen. When Daniel had seen her at Jack's graveside, he hadn't been paying much attention -- hadn't been able to pay much attention -- and once they'd brought him back to their condo, he'd spent most of the time alternately sound asleep and freaking out; after that, they'd been traveling, and travel is stressing even on fully able bodies. This is the first time he's gotten the chance to watch her move under somewhat-decent conditions: her own home, with things arranged for her maximum benefit. He finds he's cataloging her injuries as she does: it's the right leg that she can't seem to put much weight on, and she uses the cane to replace its function, but her left leg drags along behind her a little haltingly as she walks, too; there's something wrong with her control of her left foot.

He looks down; her feet are bare, no socks or shoes, and she's missing the two smallest toes on the left foot and the pinky toe on her right. The stumps are smooth, long-healed. Her other toenails are painted electric green; her feet look well-kept, like she's used to pampering herself. The lines of her ankles are graceful despite their scars; he can just see, peeking out from under the cuffs of her sweatpants (ragged and unraveling like she cut them to suit), the edges of the complex tattooed artwork that adorns her legs, bold and beautiful with its vivid reds and blacks. He'd seen it before, just as he'd seen JD's -- neither of them had bothered much with a nod to modesty in their own house back in DC -- but he hadn't quite looked, not closely enough to be able to remember what the iconography is.

The kitchen, when he follows her into it, is just as homey and welcoming as the living room. The table is round and tall, tucked in the corner; there are four stool-chairs strewn around it, with their seats at around hip-height on an average-sized human. Cammie waves a hand at one of them. "Have a seat," she says. "If you gimme that wine, I'll decant it and let it breathe a bit before pouring. The main course is chicken, not red meat, but neither of us is a snob about wine pairings."

Daniel hands over the wine and sits (choosing the chair that's tucked back in the corner so he can sit with his back to the wall, watching the door, watching Cammie). "You have a lovely home," he says, after a minute, watching her fuss with bottle and corkscrew, over in the actual kitchen portion of the kitchen. (More well-appointed than some restaurant kitchens he's seen.) "Thank you for inviting me over. How long have you lived here?"

"You're welcome," Cammie says. She pours the bottle of wine -- a nice Syrah; Daniel had just told the sommalier in the wine store to grab whatever, and the man had been effusive in his praise of this one -- into a glass decanter, bringing it over to the table to set it down. "And -- oh, about eight years or so, give or take. Wasn't this nice when we moved in. We bought for the land, not for the house; tore down most of the shack that was sitting here and redid the rest. We're sitting in what used to be most of the actual old house." The smile she gives him is inviting. "We expanded. A lot."

It could be an opening for him to ask questions -- how did you meet JD; how long have you two been together; how 'together' are you. He doesn't ask any of them. He props his chin on the palm of his hand, watching Cammie as she moves, graceful and at ease despite her physical limitations. She shuffles back over to the stainless-steel counter, props her hip against it and her cane against her hip to open a cabinet, take down three wine glasses, and tuck their stems between the fingers of her left hand. He thinks about offering to help her carry things over to the table, and then thinks twice. He's always hated it when people catered to his limitations, actual or perceived; he can only imagine how tired she must be of it.

"Whatever's cooking smells good," he finally says. She doesn't seem to want to fill the empty space between them with conversation, and he doesn't, really, either -- she isn't the kind of person who seems to need chatter, and yet the silence doesn't feel cold, just comfortable. Like he's been here a thousand times, and he and Cammie know each other well enough that they don't have to talk, just be silent with each other. It's a rare ability. He can't remember the last time he's met someone who had it. (Teyla. But Teyla was special a hundred ways over.)

She looks over her shoulder, smiling at him, as she stirs something in a small saucepan on the range. "Pear an' walnut an' gorgonzola-cheese tarts for an appetizer," she says. "And stuffed chicken breasts for dinner -- they're in the oven baking right now; that's probably what you're smelling -- with garlic-butter green beans, and I used up the rest of the pears to make a pear-and-almond torte for dessert."

"You really didn't have to go to all the trouble," Daniel says.

She shakes her head. "No trouble at all," she says. "I like cooking. Really. Be doing this even if you weren't here; it's soothing."

Watching Cameron Mitchell in the kitchen, Daniel thinks, is somewhat akin to watching a master artist at work. She takes the saucepan off the burner and drops a handful of what must be pear slices into it, then dons an oven mitt and takes a baking sheet of small phyllo-dough cups, presumably stuffed with something, out of the oven. As he watches, she plucks slices of pear out of the saucepan (they emerge coated in a thick ruby-colored sauce of some sort) and adorns each tiny tart with a slice. She works quickly, deftly, balanced with most of her weight on one hip and her cane leaning against the counter. Her hands are swift and competent as she adds each finished tart to a plate; when she's done, instead of washing her hands, she licks the sauce off her fingers one-by-one and then wipes her hands on her sweatpants.

"Pomegranate syrup sauce on top of 'em," she says, bringing the plate over and setting it on the table. "Eat as many as you want, really. Lemme whistle up himself an' let him know the food's on."

Whistle she does, literally; she leans out of the kitchen door and lets out a quick sharp whistle through her teeth, then comes to settle herself in the chair next to him, taking a tart for herself. They're good. Incredibly good, sweet and sharp and savory all at once, and Daniel burns his tongue on the one he eats and goes back for another anyway. He's not sure who's going to eat all this food -- there are about thirty tarts on the plate between them -- but it's the first time he can remember food actually appealing to him since he returned to Earth.

JD puts in his appearance a minute or so later, coming in from the living room area (and therefore, since he hadn't been in the living room, the rest of the house must be that way). Daniel doesn't flinch when he comes in, but only because he'd been braced for it. JD's dressed about the same way as he had been in their condo in Washington: a pair of khaki cargo shorts and not much else. (Daniel could grow to feel overdressed in this household quickly; he's wearing more than either of them by about five pieces of clothing.)

JD's tattoos are just as stunning as they were last time Daniel saw them; this time, Daniel can pay a little more attention. Strong black lines, a number of symbols Daniel can't identify, even more that he can identify but can't tell what they mean to JD. The centerpiece of the front work is the glyph for Earth, just underneath the hollow of his collarbone; it's bracketed by two sentences. Both written in a stylized Farsi calligraphy -- none of the pieces of JD's ink are in English -- that it takes Daniel a long time to realize is writing instead of the same symbolism that lies elsewhere. (One of the sentences, Daniel eventually decides -- squinting at it -- says, roughly, where you come from can never be taken away. He can't quite puzzle out the other one; he doesn't want to stare too long.)

Two other things he notices now that he hadn't noticed the last time he'd seen the two of them. One, JD's nipples are pierced, threaded through with silver barbells that barely peek past the edges of his nipples; the light of the candles that Cammie has placed on the table glimmer in reflection against them. Two, there's a black silk cord around JD's neck, and strung on the cord are six brightly colored rings, arranged in rainbow order. It takes Daniel a second to remember what they mean. It's been years since he's had to remember so much of this culture's iconography.

Pride rings.

It doesn't -- precisely -- shock Daniel. Startle him, yes. He'd never imagined Jack to be anything other than heterosexual -- a husband, a father -- and he's almost certain that if Jack had been bisexual, Jack would have trusted him enough to tell him. Maybe Jack hadn't known. Maybe JD hadn't realized until he'd carved out a life of his own. Maybe it's just a sign that JD isn't Jack, that there are some things JD has and is and does that Jack never would have.

Maybe all of the above. He won't ask. He won't be so rude. JD isn't Jack. He can't presume on his friendship with Jack to ask JD prying questions.

Cammie is watching him out of the corners of her eyes; he can see her watching him as she reaches for another tart, as JD slides into one of the other two chairs and does the same. She's noticed him noticing, and is looking for a reaction; he can tell. So he doesn't let himself show one. He just eases a napkin out of the napkin-holder, spreading it in his lap, and eats another tart. They're good. Warm and comforting and brilliantly flavored, and the kitchen is warm too, and he's starting to realize that this is what it feels like to relax.

"Lizard stowed?" Cammie asks JD, which Daniel doesn't understand at all, but he lets it slide. If they've been living together for this long -- and he wonders, again, what their relationship is, whether JD's wearing of the pride rings means that he and Cammie aren't anything more than just business partners, and if that means that Cammie might not be seeing anybody, but he still doesn't want to ask -- they probably have a whole host of verbal shortcuts and household vocabulary.

"Yup," JD says, mouth full already (he'd shoved two tarts into it as soon as he'd sat down). He looks over at Daniel. "Good to see you. Any trouble finding the place?"

"Missed the driveway twice," Daniel says. "It's very ... missable."

JD grins at him. It's an expression Daniel never saw on Jack's face; it makes it easier to look at JD and see JD, not Jack, in a way that all the earrings and tattoos don't. "Kinda the point, yeah. From the road it looks like nobody lives here. We like it that way."

"Yeah," Daniel says -- an unspoken understanding that he knows precisely what JD means; the look JD gives him tells him that JD knows he saw all the ways in which the driveway was designed to be defended if necessary. (Once upon a time, Daniel had thought Jack was just constantly being paranoid; after a while, he'd come to realize Jack simply believed in good planning; a while after that, he'd stopped noticing it or thinking about it at all, because Jack had instilled it in the rest of them and it was just the way things were.)

"Later on, if you're interested, Nielson'll show you the trick he cooked up to make sure that he never has to shovel or plow it, too," Cammie says, cheerfully (Daniel is beginning to suggest that Cammie does everything cheerfully).

"Laziness, the mother of invention," JD says. He eats another tart. Daniel is beginning to realize why Cammie made so many; JD's eaten at least half of them himself so far. "Give you the grand tour after dinner. Way Mitchell cooks, we'll need to walk it off, anyway."

It's odd. Daniel is sitting in the kitchen of two strangers (although they're not quite strangers, are they really?) and realizing that he feels more comfortable here than he has in ... a while, really. Even on Atlantis he had always been braced for danger, waiting for someone to come running and tell him that there was some disaster impending that only he could help them solve. Here, there's just a kitchen full of warmth and light, with two people who are relaxed and at ease, trying to put him at ease, with candles and flowers (a mixed-flower bouquet of red and yellow, bound up with a bright scarlet ribbon around the vase) on the table and good food in front of him.

He doesn't contribute much to the conversation -- Cammie and JD, after a round of small talk, launch into a discussion of some problem that's apparently taking up far too much of their work time; listening to them, he realizes they're talking as though they're responsible for some huge project, and he remembers Cammie mentioning that they make software for the military -- but he can tell that's all right, too. They slid sideways into talking about work after reading some subtle cue that he doesn't feel up to conversation; it isn't done to exclude him, but to set him at ease. And it does. They're not ignoring him; they're just trying to tell him, without coming out and saying it, that he doesn't have to be witty and entertaining. They'd apparently be quite content to let him sit here at their kitchen table and eavesdrop on their work conversation and eat good food.

It's like taking his first clear and painless breath after weeks of pneumonia; it's like realizing that the muscles in his shoulders have finally unknotted, and Daniel realizes, as he sips the glass of red wine that Cammie poured him, that his shoulders are unknotting, and more than that, he realizes just how tense they had been. He feels comfortable here. It helps that both of them are still and quiet. No fidgeting; their motions are slow and smooth and easy, telegraphed well in advance, and their voices are low and rhythmic. Lulling.

Eventually, JD pushes his chair back from the table with a sigh. "Lizard check," he says (are they raising amphibians in the backyard, or something?) "How long to dinner, Mitchell?"

Cammie squints at the kitchen clock. "Fifteen minutes?" she hazards. "Maybe twenty. You got time."

JD nods. "Back in a few, then. 'Scuse."

He takes himself out of the kitchen with a nod to Daniel, and Cammie pushes herself up out of her chair as well, reaching for her cane. (There's a hook on the wall that she propped it against; apparently, the chair she's in is her usual.) Between the wine, the peace, and the company, Daniel is actually as close to relaxed as he can remember being in a long time; he watches her move, and after a few minutes, he realizes that what he's really watching is the way the muscles in her arms flex and shift (beautiful competence) as she snaps the ends off the last of the green beans and fetches down a skillet from where the cookware is hung above the center island counter.

"Are you sure I can't help with anything?" he asks. "I'm hopeless in the kitchen, but I can follow instructions."

She smiles at him again. "Told you, baby," she says. "I got everythin' under control. You just sit there an' rest up. Can't have been getting a whole hell of a lot of sleep since you got back; the dark circles under your eyes got dark circles of their own."

"It's just weird," Daniel finds himself saying. "I miss the sound of the ocean. I hadn't thought I would, but I do."

"What's Atlantis like?" Cammie asks. And it's a question Daniel's been fielding right and left since he set foot back in the SGC, curious men and women looking for tales from the front lines, but Cammie doesn't mean it like that. She's just inviting him to share stories of where he's been, tell her all the things he loved about the city he'd called home for ten years, and he finds, after a minute -- clearance be damned -- that he is.

JD comes back into the kitchen while Daniel's looking for the words to describe the way it feels when you walk out onto a balcony in the middle of the night, underneath more stars than you've ever seen anywhere in your whole life, to stand there while tropical breezes brush your cheek and the city lights up all black and silver beneath your eyes. Daniel almost stutters to a stop -- Jack always used to tease him about his long rambling monologues and anything that even hinted at poetic phrasing -- but JD doesn't say a word. Doesn't even look at him strangely. Just crosses the kitchen and comes in behind Cammie, opening the refrigerator and taking out two sticks of butter to set them on the counter where Cammie can reach them, and then comes back over to the table to sit back down.

"It sounds beautiful," JD finally says, when Daniel runs out of words.

"It always was," Daniel says. "Even when it was trying to kill us again."

There's a little lingering amusement in the back of JD's eyes; the edges of his lips tilt upward, tiny ghost smile. "Keeps you on your toes," he says, and it is-and-isn't Jack's familiar teasing, but the one thing it absolutely isn't is malicious. It's JD's version of the same quiet invitation-to-talk that Cammie had extended, Daniel realizes, and just as non-directive. If he wants to talk, they'll listen. If he doesn't want to talk, they won't hold it against him.

So he tells some of his happier memories from his years on Atlantis -- the smell of bread fresh from the oven in a tiny market on M66-191; the bruises from Teyla's stick-fighting lessons; the delight of puzzling out a piece of the Ancient database that had been eluding him for years -- and eventually he realizes that he's been talking nonstop for long enough that Cammie has placed plates brimming over with food in front of them and sat down again. Dinner is just as good as the appetizers were -- chicken stuffed with some kind of grain and cheese, then breaded and baked; green beans sauteed with butter and candied walnuts and whole cloves of garlic -- and Daniel is chasing the last roasted garlic clove, rich and tangy, around his plate with his fork before he realizes that he's eaten everything on the plate. (So has JD, who had twice as much food to begin with; he's moved on to finishing Cammie's green beans, and Daniel wonders where he puts all that food, since he's skinny as a rail.)

"And I've been talking your ears off," Daniel says, when he realizes it. "I'm sorry. I should let you get a word in edgewise."

They both shake their heads before he's even done saying it. "Enjoyed listening," Cammie says, firmly. "An' it sounds like you haven't had anyone to really listen to you for a while."

Daniel's about to protest -- he'd had quite a few friends on Atlantis; Teyla, in particular, had always listened to anything and everything he had to say -- but he stops himself before he can, because he realizes that in some real way she's right. Even Teyla, who'd always been a true friend, had always been preoccupied with something through their long years of friendship: administration or mediation or just plain survival. This is the first time he can remember in a long time when the people who are listening to him are just listening, not listening and doing something else at the same time, not thinking about six things at once while listening to him as a seventh.

Right now, all either of them have on their minds is Daniel and what he's saying, and the fierce vast attention they're paying him is somehow teasing free thoughts he hasn't been conscious of having. He hadn't realized he'd remembered half of the stories he's telling. Apparently his mind has been saving details for a while, waiting to show them to him once he has some quiet moment to process the thoughts, and Cammie and JD are both good at 'quiet'.

He's startled to realize that he feels better, having told the stories. It's easy to remember all the bad things about Atlantis, all the moments and hours and days of sheer terror or mortal peril, all the creative ways in which Pegasus can think up to try to kill you. He wouldn't have thought to remember the way the light of two moons skips over the surface of inky dark water, mirroring your reflection back up at you when you gaze down over the edge of the balcony; he wouldn't have thought to remember how beautiful sunrise is, over the east pier.

So he doesn't protest. "Thank you," is all he says, and JD gives him that ghost-smile again and rises to clear the table.

"Sit," JD says, when Daniel makes to follow. "Guests don't clean."

"You have to let me do something," Daniel says.

Cammie laughs, softly. "And he ain't a guest," she says. (Daniel can't explain, even to himself, the feeling he gets at that thought: half comfort, half panic.) She leans back in her chair, apparently content to sit and watch while JD cleans up; Daniel has the sense that this is a familiar division of labor. "Wanna make a pot of coffee, baby? Could use some with dessert."

"Oh, God, I don't think I'm going to be able to eat another bite for at least the next two days," Daniel says. (Cammie laughs, as he'd intended her to do; she takes it as a compliment, which is certainly what he'd intended. Cammie's artistry with food surpasses that of many gourmet chefs whose restaurants Daniel ate at, once upon a time. Compared to Earth food, it's a marvel; compared to Atlantis food, it's sublime.) He stands up. "Point me at the coffee maker and the beans."

JD piles dishes in the sink while Daniel's puzzling out the settings on their coffee machine (which has more buttons and dials and gizmos than the Starship Enterprise); when Daniel looks up from his task, JD's slipped out of the kitchen again. He wonders where JD keeps going, but it's none of his business. "Mugs are in the cabinet right above you," Cammie says, once the coffee's started brewing. "I'll take a cup, an' I know himself will, too. Leave extra room in his. He drinks milk an' sugar with a little bit of coffee in it."

That's odd, and curious. Jack had always taken his coffee black. Daniel wonders how many other points of difference there are, and when he catches himself wondering how long it'll be before he can bring the topic up with JD, how long it'll be before he feels comfortable making reference to why JD seems so easy and familiar with him, he realizes that he's already thinking as though he's going to be coming back. As though he's going to be spending more time here, with the two of them.

It should make him panic (and there is, as expected, the tiny flutter of panicked wings beating in his chest and throat). He's spent years and years shedding social ties and avoiding picking up others. Having people who are close to you means that you're granting Fate hostages to fortune, that you're risking losing the people close to you, and Daniel doesn't think he could live through that kind of loss again. Even Teyla, the closest thing he's had to a lover in longer than he'd care to think about, had never been anything more than a warm friend who occasionally welcomed him into her bed, out of friendship and not out of passionate, world-moving love. But for the past few days (the past long while, really) Daniel has been a stranger in a strange land with all men's hands set against him, and this is the first place he's felt comfortable in a very long time.

It's nice.

It's more than nice. It's safe. He hasn't had to remind himself to breathe slowly and evenly, hasn't had to try to talk himself out of an impending panic attack, since he walked through their front door.

And it's as though thinking that alerts the universe that it's falling down on its duty to fuck with him, because he hears the sound of quick footsteps pattering through the living room, and it's not the quiet footfalls of JD, who makes just enough sound when he's walking to be heard and nothing more. Daniel finds himself whirling around, setting his back to the counter, his mind automatically clicking over all of the things within reach that could be used as a weapon -- a third person in the house is not only cause for alarm, but he's painfully aware that Cammie is sitting here with him in the kitchen too, and Cammie can't defend herself -- but Cammie doesn't seem worried at all. She just sighs, deep and shifting.

"Told you you needed to stay in your room, lizard," Cammie says, a note of firm command in her voice, and Daniel's trying to calm his racing heart (breathe, breathe) as a little girl pokes her head around the kitchen door.

She looks to be somewhere between six and nine or so -- Daniel has never been good at guessing children's ages -- with long brown hair held back with two plastic barettes and bright blue eyes a shade or two darker than Cammie's; she's wearing a pink t-shirt with 'Empress of the Known Universe' across the front, and a pair of red pajama bottoms that clash horribly. "I wanted a cookie, Mama," she says. Her voice is thin -- children's voices almost always are -- but not as high as it could be; she's going to sound like Cammie when she grows up.

Daniel makes himself breathe. So. That's where JD's been going: to check on Cammie's daughter.

JD is five steps behind -- Lizard? (That can't be her name, Daniel thinks. He wouldn't put it past JD, but Cammie, he thinks, would have more sense.) JD stoops and gets one arm around her waist, picking her up with about as much effort as he'd pick up a feather; he hauls her up to hold her upside-down against his chest with that arm, and she squeals (delight, not protest) and does her best to kick off his head. "Sorry," he says, sounding long-suffering. "She chewed through the ropes."

"Just for that," Cammie says, still using that tone of firm command, "I should make you skip dessert. I told you to stay in your room, bug. Mama and Daddy have company; you know the rules."

"But Mama," the girl says, still upside-down and squirming. JD shakes her a little. Daniel nearly bolts forward to see it, but JD's got a firm grip; she doesn't go anywhere.

"No 'but Mama' out of you," Cammie says. "Nielson, you wanna use the handcuffs this time, or should we just bolt her in?"

"C'mon, Lizard," JD says to the wiggling bundle held up against him, ducking one flying foot with the ease of long practice. "If you're lucky, she'll let you out of there next week."

The sounds of the girl's squealing drift back through the living room as JD carts her off. It sounds much quieter once they're gone, and Daniel can't think of anything to say to fill the silence that isn't utterly inane. ('Is she yours?' 'No, we're just holding her for ransom, but we don't think they'll pay.') So he turns around again (the adrenaline spike is starting to wear off, thank fuck) and pours three cups of coffee. The interruption was long enough to let the coffee finish brewing, at least.

When he brings the mugs over to the table, Cammie sighs (a little bit fondly) and wraps her hands around the mug he brings her. "Sorry about that," she says. "She's usually got much better manners, but she's also got the Elephant's Child's own curiosity, and strange people in the house is enough to override everything we've taught her about grownup time."

"I --" Daniel says, and then falls silent.

Cammie smiles up at him. "Go on," she invites. "You can ask."

"It's really none of my business," Daniel suggests. Because, no, it isn't. Cammie has a daughter; Cammie had not mentioned her daughter; this is none of his business. He resists the urge to ask if Cammie's still seeing her daughter's father. He resists the urge to be upset that Cammie hadn't mentioned the child's existence up until now. She doesn't owe him anything. Neither of them do. He's grateful for the time they've given him already. He shouldn't have let himself think about asking for more.

"Pfft," Cammie says. "Wouldn't've invited you over to the house if I wanted you not to ask. Just figured I'd give you at least one quiet night before being besieged. She's a handful and a half." She gestures for him to sit back down; lacking any particularly compelling reason not to, Daniel does. "Try our best not to be those parents who can't stop talking about their precious darling, but you can go ahead an' ask; I can see you wanting to."

If she can see him wanting to ask, it means he's slipped enough to lose control over his expression. He tries to find it again, and starts with something safe. (Mostly.) "How old is she?"

"Eight," Cammie says, promptly. "And a half, if you ask her, but really only eight and two months. Counting off the seconds until she can get her first tattoo. We had to compromise an' promise she could get her ears pierced at ten, although I dread the day when she decides she wants other piercings too. You look around enough, you'll spot the baby pictures. Or I could drag out the albums and bore you, but I try not to do that to people who don't really really want to see 'em, since other people's kids are ugly monsters." She grins at him.

And, well, he finds himself smiling back at her. She's easy to smile at. "I'd love to see the baby pictures," he says, which is actually even (mostly) true. He doesn't have a lot of experience with children, but he's never minded them; he's always been awkward around them, not like Jack always was --

Oh, God, Jack. JD. Charlie. If he'd been looking for proof that JD and Jack aren't the same person anymore, this would be it. Jack had always loved children, been easy around them, been comfortable with them. Daniel had always thought Jack must have been an excellent father. And Jack's son had died horribly, and Jack had considered it his own fault, and now JD is living in a house with his partner and her daughter and obviously taking on at least some of the co-parenting duties, and there hadn't been any of that familiar, deeply-hidden agony in his eyes.

It is none of his business.

But Cammie's grinning happily at him (and that was why he'd asked; she listened to him talking about things he loves; he wanted to return the favor); she gets up and thump-thumps her way into the living room, coming back a few minutes later hugging a fabric-covered photo album to her chest. She sets it down on the table in front of Daniel. "Now, you're allowed to get bored after half a second, if you want," she says. "All you gotta do is say; don't you try to be polite."

She drags her chair right next to him (dimly he's aware that she smells like flowers, but the scent isn't cloying, just light and refreshing; he also realizes, after a second, that her proximity isn't making him nervous at all) and opens up the album. The first picture is of a (very) pregnant woman who is not Cammie, with Cammie herself and JD standing with one arm (each) around her. "My pregnant picture," Cammie proclaims. "That's my sister-in-law, Cindy Lou. Greater love hath no woman than to go through childbirth for her crippled sister, lemme tell you."

Daniel isn't quite sure what to say. "Your, ah, er, sister-in-law was your host mother," he finally says, after flailing for a few minutes. He looks down at the picture. All three of them are laughing; all three of them look delighted. Something nags at the back of his mind. He can't quite figure out what it is.

"Yup," Cammie says, still cheerful, still happy. "Seein' as how the doctors told me just bein' pregnant -- much less delivery -- would probably leave me in that damn wheelchair for life. Still not exactly sure how himself managed to talk Cindy into it, but, well, she's always said she doesn't mind bein' pregnant, or even the delivery much, it's just the first six months she usually wants to drown 'em. But the buglet didn't give her much fuss at all. She was up and around until the last possible second, an' we were lucky to get to the hospital in time. First pangs to delivery, no more'n an hour and a half."

She turns the page. The next picture is the same woman -- Cindy -- in a hospital bed, flipping the camera (or the cameraman?) her middle finger and holding the other hand over her face to block the shot. Cammie is sitting in a chair next to the bed, her cane in her lap, looking up at JD, who is holding a blanket-wrapped bundle and looking down at it. The expression on his face is halfway between awestruck and thunderstruck. Daniel swallows heavily.

"Cindy'd kill me if she knew this one was in the album," Cammie says. "Threatened to take the camera away from Ash -- that's my brother -- and make him eat it if he took a picture 'fore she got a chance to do her hair an' her makeup."

The tangle of Cammie's relatives is more like a thicket, Daniel knows, from hearing her talk about them so far. "So Ash is Cindy Lou's husband?" Daniel asks. His eyes fall on the picture again. It can't be saying what he thinks it's saying. "JD looks ..." He can't think of a way to categorize that expression tactfully. "Confused," he settles on.

"Yup, my brother," Cammie says. "Ash is three years younger, Cindy Lou's a year younger than him. They've got ..." She pauses. (She couldn't possibly have to think about this, could she?) "Four of their own, by now. An' I wouldn't call himself 'confused' so much as 'tryin' to figure out what the fuck he's done and whether or not he's gonna regret it'."

What JD's done? Surely she can't be suggesting ...? Of course he knows it isn't impossible. It's just unlikely. They don't behave like -- JD was wearing --

She turns the page again. By all rights, there should be a formal posed hospital shot in here somewhere -- he's only vaguely sure of the protocols, but he's had baby pictures thrust upon him by coworkers before at various points -- but the next shot is a closeup of the baby in Cammie's arms, wrapped in a clearly-handknit lacy shawl of some soft-looking grey wool, and the look on Cammie's face, gazing down at the baby, is reverent. "Himself calls this one 'madonna and child'," Cammie adds. "That's usually when I hit him again."

"I can see why," Daniel says, without thinking. The picture is ... beautiful. She's beautiful, looking down at the baby in her arms with awe and wonder. Her face has the same soft glow as a Renaissance painting.

She tosses him an amused look. "Why he calls it that? Or why I hit him? No, don't answer that, you'll just tie yourself in knots tryin' to think of somethin' polite to say."

Another pageturn. Another photo. This one is clearly later; the child's face has lost that new-baby redness and is starting to actually look like something other than a squashed lump. That's not the most astonishing thing; the most astonishing thing is that the photo is clearly unposed, the baby sleeping on the bare chest of an equally-sleeping JD, both of them on the couch that Daniel thinks is one of the ones out in the living room. JD's hand, even in sleep, is resting on the baby's back, guarding her from rolling off him. She has one of her tiny, tiny hands resting just beneath the Earth-symbol at his throat. "I got revenge by insisting I add that one right after," Cammie says. "The two forces of nature in my life, both asleep at the same time for once. Only time I've ever seen himself sack out willingly, much less in the middle of the day, was during first teething. He and Libby'd nap like that for hours."

There's a lump in his throat, but Daniel finds himself (irresistably) smiling. "You'll have blackmail material forever," he says.

"Perpetually," Cammie agrees. "I'm saving it up to use as a bargaining chip in adolescence. Whose adolescence, I'm not quite sure yet."

She turns the page again. This one is someone else's handiwork, because all three of them are in the picture: the baby (Libby, Cammie had said) is in a carry-sling against JD's chest, looking older and bright-eyed and more alert (and her hair is starting to come in, a warm brown that's all too familiar). Cammie's leaning over, captured in a precise moment of mid-game of "got your toes". The background is some kind of whitewashed wooden furniture, perhaps a porch swing. "She would not settle unless he was holding her for a good six months," Cammie says, her voice full of fond exasperation and love. "I was beginning to despair whether I'd ever get a chance to hold our daughter for more'n ten minutes."

She shoots him a sidelong glance, amused and affectionate. "An' you're being very polite in not asking, an' don't think I don't notice it."

"I'm sorry," Daniel says, quietly. (Meaning it.) "I didn't mean for you to notice. She's very beautiful. It isn't any of my business who ..." His voice trails off. "You all look very happy," he says, even more quietly. He can hear the wistfulness in his voice; he wonders if she can. Home and love and belonging and family. JD and Cammie have that. It's impossible not to believe that JD is the father of Cammie's child. Was impossible, even before Cammie's tacit confession. The evidence before him doesn't lie. 'Our daughter', Cammie had said. True in every way. True, Daniel thinks, even if the biological father had been some anonymous sperm-bank donor. But he obviously wasn't.

The lump in Daniel's throat is growing thicker. He swallows more heavily against it. Stupid, really, to mourn something that wasn't even his to lose in the first place. Upset at the loss of a possibility, maybe.

Cammie reaches out and rests her hand over his wrist. Her hand is warm; Daniel finds himself not flinching from it in the least. "No fuss if you wonder," she says, gently. "Got plenty of people wondering about us anyway. Ain't what you'd call a normal family, not by any means, but there's not much normal about any of us on our own, now is there?"

Her voice is gentle and easy; her eyes are daring him to face up to all of what she's saying. Who she is. Who JD is. Who JD is (was, has been) to Daniel.

"An' just in case you're wondering," she says, with an eerie sort of insight, "the reason I kicked the Lizard out of the kitchen an' banished her to her room before you got here isn't that we didn't want her to meet you, or you to meet her. Just wanted a chance to have you all to our lonesome before we introduced you, is all. Well, that an' the first thing Momma told me when we accepted delivery: Mitchell children are hellions. Ain't polite to someone new to keep the kids underfoot at first visit. Else he'll never want to come back. An' I do hope you will come back."

Daniel smiles a bit through the lump in his throat (thinking of the Athosians, the Athosian children, silent as smoke and dangerous as adders one minute, laughing and shrieking through the hallways the next). "I guess so," he says. (None of them normal, no.) And facing up to who she is, well, that's easy. And that JD is isn't the difficult part (Daniel had put him out of mind for a while, but he'd never truly forgotten his existance), but who he's become ... that's more difficult to reconcile. With where he came from. Whom he came from. When Daniel had first known him, he'd represented himself as a copy exact in all but age. And now ... he isn't.

He's not sure what that makes either of them. He's not sure what (if anything) JD's life, JD's choices, say about Jack. (Nothing, surely? Because if this, then ...)

Daniel sighs. There are things Man might not have been meant to know. It's hardly something that's ever going to be an issue in his current life. Jack is dead. JD ... has a family. "I'd like to come back," he says. (Because: yes. He does. If they want to have him, and aren't just being polite. God, he can relax here.) "I promise not to be too intimidated by ... Libby, you said? I admit, I did almost think her name might really be ... Lizard."

Cammie slides her hand down his arm until she's gripping his hand. She does it so quickly, so deftly, that he's a little startled to find that it ... doesn't bother him at all. It feels nice, actually. "You are welcome back here at any time, for any reason, for no reason at all, with any or no notice, eternally," she says, clearly and distinctly, speaking with the peculiar emphasis Daniel's always tried to listen for that says the speaker genuinely means it and isn't just saying the polite thing. "I hope you'll think of this as a place where you feel comfortable and welcome and at home, because that's how we intend it."

Then she squeezes his hand, and the odd sort of almost-ritual feel dissipates a little. "An' yes, the name on her birth certificate is Elizabeth Samantha Nielson Mitchell. I call her Libby. Himself calls her Bug, or Lizard, or occasionally Nuisance. Or 'dirty knees', which is all too often the truth. She'll answer to any of 'em, so if you call her 'Lizard', she won't hardly notice."

"I think I'd rather call her 'Libby'," Daniel says, instead of all the other things that are swirling around in his head at her offer. Things that are (probably) more honest: that he isn't fit for civilized company right now, much less the company of children. That it's a generous offer, but he thinks Cammie is insane to make it. That there are limits to the bonds of ... whatever bonds she thinks they share. Or even that they do share. Or that he-and-JD share (at one remove, eternal and undying).

That even though she's crazy to make the offer, he won't be able to keep himself from taking her -- them -- up on it, and he can't help but think that she's going to regret it someday, sooner more probably than later, and he already knows he doesn't want to call the attention of the uncanny fates down upon this generous and perfect (crazy) (perfect) household. (Jack always used to call him a stormcrow. One of those jokes that was both funny and not funny at all.)

He should walk away. Right now. Before he gets tempted further. (It's tempting. Oh, God, it's tempting.)

But he makes himself smile at her, sweet and adamantine, the preface to making his polite excuses and fading away to leave them undisturbed by what perils he might bring, and she looks at him. Looks at him, and he thinks she might actually recognize the smile for what it's hiding, for what it really is. For what he was about to say. "Family's got a lot of practice in bringing people in for a gentle landing, baby," she says, and oh, God, her presumption should annoy him, just like every time someone has started to pry or nudge at him since he got back has been annoying him. It does. A little. And it doesn't, and he couldn't say why. "Ain't nothin' better at it than babies an' homemade cookies an' family an' love. Just 'cause the people who sign your orders have forgotten what kind of care they should be giving don't mean all of us have."

And then it passes, and she's lifting her hand from his wrist, reaching for her cane to lever herself out of the chair. "I'm assumin' you'd like a coffee refill with dessert," she says, over her shoulder to him. "An' you'd better brace yourself, 'cause the Lizard knows I didn't mean it about the no dessert thing, an' the minute I bring out the torte an' the cookie jar, it's brace yourself or be trampled."

Daniel wants to say that he's fine. (He isn't, and he knows that damned well.) He wants to say that the people who sign his orders don't owe him any kind of care. (He knows they do; Jack always said they did, owed it to all of them.) He wants to say that it isn't Cammie's business to take up the slack for people who've fallen down on the job. (He knows damned well she doesn't see it that way, any more than he would, any more than any of them would.) He isn't sure just yet what he wants to do about her offer (promise), but he can't resent it: in twenty-five years he's absorbed too much of the concept of fraternitas -- not in the military esprit de corps way, but in the way that anyone and everyone ever involved in the Stargate Program belongs to a secret brother-and-sisterhood that not only owes one another, but has the right to call upon one another. (What he'd been missing at the SGC since he stepped back through the Gate, except in too-few scattered moments from the people who'd been there long enough to remember. The fact it hadn't been more widespread is troubling, he suddenly realizes. Beyond troubling. Fucking terrifying.)

So all he does is say: "Yeah. More coffee'd be great. And consider me braced."

Cammie brings everything back over to the table with the ease of long practice with dealing with dealing with things one-handed: the cookie jar wedged in between her left arm and her bosom, her left palm wedged into the handle of the coffee carafe, her fingers holding a pie-pan in which lurks a golden something that's not quite a pie, with pear slices layered atop it. She puts down the pie pan first, then the cookie jar (massive), then the coffee carafe. "Off to the races, then," she says, and twists her lips to produce that very effective come-and-get-it whistle as she turns back to fetch plates and forks.

Daniel's not sure what he's expecting -- thundering herds of elephants? -- but he braces himself for anything (hating the fact that he has to, that this unexpected haven has become so suddenly uncertain, hating himself for thinking it), knowing that to react (to overreact) would be poor return for the hospitality he's received. (And unfair to the child, at that.) What actually happens is that a very calm little girl appears at the door to the kitchen again, stopping just inside, looking up at Cammie. "May-I-come-into-the-kitchen-with-you-and-your-guest-Mama?" she rattles off (clearly having been practiced).

"Yes, you may, Bug," Cammie says. "Libby, this is Daniel. Daniel, baby, this is Libby."

He's not sure whether to get to his feet to greet her. That would lead to too much disparity in their heights. But to remain sitting strikes him as terribly rude. He settles for getting to his feet and crouching down to bring himself to her level. "Hello, Libby," he says. "I'm very pleased to meet you."

She inspects him with grave interest, and steps forward, holding out her hand. "Pleased-to-meet-you-too-Daniel," she says, sounding a little breathless. Daniel shakes her hand formally, then rises up out of his crouch (his back really hurts, dammit; too much too little too late too soon) as she turns away to her mother, opening negotiations about type and number of cookies. As he settles back into the chair (repressing a wince of relief) he looks up. JD is standing (lounging) in the kitchen doorway. His expression is to complex to decode, but when he notices Daniel's eyes on him, it resolves into a smirk. Half entertained by Daniel's awkwardness, half (Daniel suspects) eternal delight in Libby.

"--if you eat them at the table, like the civilized damn human being you're doing a damn good job of pretending you are," Cammie finally winds up, and Libby beams (and oh God it's not Cammie's smile) and squirms up into the last of the stool-chairs. It really should be too high for her, but she wiggles into it without a problem, settling down.

"I see you went straight for the blackmail material," JD says, nodding to the photo album still on the table as he passes by it and snags a double handful of cookies for himself. (Cammie does not try to constrain his cookie intake, Daniel notices.)

"Hush," Cammie says, quellingly, bringing over a stack of dessert plates.

JD nudges Libby's chair a bit closer to the table as he passes -- protectiveness, yes, but not the paranoia of overprotectiveness, and Daniel wonders, suddenly, one quick rush, about what JD thinks about in the middle of the night, what kind of fears he wakes up fearing, whether or not he worries -- but no. It's not his business. "Hush yourself, Mitchell," JD says. Pleasantly enough. Still certainly not the sound of a husband or a lover. (They call each other by last name. He hadn't quite realized up until now. He hadn't been listening for it.) JD takes the plates from Cammie, setting them on the table, and then turns away to go pick up his own coffee mug. (Probably cold by now -- Daniel poured it for him a good fifteen minutes ago -- but he doesn't seem to care.) "She did tell you that looking at baby pictures wasn't required payback for dinner, right?"

"I asked to see them," Daniel says. Just a touch of defiance. (He doesn't want to be drawn into playing emotional chess with this man. It's nearly irresistable.)

JD nods, unsmiling, bringing his coffee mug back over to the table. "Good taste," he says. "She skip over the madonna-and-child shot, or did you get the full tour?"

Oh, should he just flee into the night now? Or tastefully commit seppuku after dessert? If JD is going to bait him all through it -- but no; it's not taunting; it's just light teasing, really. "The shawl was lovely," Daniel says, dryly.

Strangely enough, that does earn him a smile: full, intense, blooming over JD's face like sunrise. It fades quickly, but it was still there. "The baby, too," he says, and Daniel's not sure, but he thinks there might be a message there. Under the words. He can't read what it is, but it feels like JD is trying to tell him something. (Once upon a time Daniel would have been able to read it effortlessly, without even realizing he was doing it -- but no. Not with him.)

"Libby, honey," Cammie says, bright and cheerful, settling herself back down at the table and pulling the pie tin over to start cutting slices of the torte, "after you have your cookies, why'n't you go drop your daddy in the lake."

"Okay, Mama," Libby says, kicking her feet against the legs of the chair. "But he told me I have to wear a life vest when I do it."

She can't be serious. Can she?

"You have a lake?" Daniel asks. (May as well change the subject.) He thinks of offering to drop JD into the lake for Cammie (and Libby), but if they took him up on it, JD would probably feel he was allowed to object, and even the thought of that makes Daniel start to panic. (Oh, yes. He's perfectly fine. Sure he is. He's about a month -- he thinks -- from a mandated SGC rest cure in the secured wing of the Academy hospital, and he has no idea how he's going to avoid it.)

Libby perks up at the question, though, all unknowing of the thoughts going through his head. "It's a pretty lake," she says. "The next time you come over, if it's light outside, I can show it to you. I'm not allowed near it in the dark."

"And why's that?" Cammie prompts.

"Because I'm a trouble magnet and if I drown in the lake, Daddy'll kill me," Libby recites, note-perfect.

JD laughs. "Careful, lizard," he says, cupping the back of her head with one hand for a brief touch. "You don't want Daniel calling Social Services."

Libby breaks off a piece of cookie and nibbles on it. "Mama says Social Services would take one look at me and sell me at auction, and then she could come and buy me back."

"Mama also thinks we should stop giving Daniel such a poor impression of our parenting skills," Cammie says. "Or lack thereof. Nielson, I brought over the coffeepot to pour my refill, forgot to grab the sugar an' cream. Make yourself useful."

"I'd like you to show me the lake," Daniel says (committing himself, in that moment, to a return visit to Chez Nielson-Mitchell, no matter how uncertain he might be about the prospect; you don't break commitments you make to children). "And, just for the record, I promise I won't call Social Services." He picks up his fork and tries the slice of pear torte Cammie has cut for him. It's fabulous.

Libby beams. Light-up sunshine smile, like JD's best angel smile magnified fivefold, like he's just made her entire week. (Was he ever that young?) "I'll show you my frogs," she promises. Then, having finished her last cookie, she turns to Cammie. "May-I-be-excused-from-the-table-Mama-so-I-can-go-read?"

"Yes, honey, you may," Cammie says. "Say --"

But Libby's already turning back to Daniel. "It-was-very-nice-meeting-you," she says, just as rote recitation but heartfelt (Daniel thinks) nonetheless. She slides back down the chair. (JD takes half a step forward when her head nearly hits the table, but stops himself before he gets in her way when it's clear she's going to miss.) She pads, slowly and sedately, out of the kitchen.

"Frogs," JD says, amused. "High compliment there."

"I'll remember that," Daniel says. (And it's said with a certain amount of irony, to match JD's tone, but he will remember it; he might not know much about interacting with children, but he's always believed that the most important thing to do is to treat their desires and beliefs seriously.) "She has lovely manners," he adds.

"She's a nightmare," Cammie says, cheerfully. "We been tryin' to civilize her. Good to know some of it sticks when it counts." She consults JD about something with her eyes. Daniel can't read the conversation there (and it annoys him to know that he can't), but whatever it is, it results in her easing herself out of her chair again, reaching for her cane. "An' I'm just gonna go make sure she hasn't gotten herself into my romance novels again, even though I took the stepstool outta the library. I'll be back in just a bit, baby."

It shouldn't feel so monumental to be left alone in the room with JD, but it does.

JD slides into the chair Cammie vacated, cutting himself a generous chunk (nearly a quarter) of the pear torte. "So," he says. "You win me a hundred bucks, or do I owe Mitchell?"

"Hard to say without knowing the terms of the bet," Daniel says. (He tries not to remember the eternal and Byzantine series of bets that used to run in the SGC, including the notorious Dead Pool; he'd been one of the few people to collect from it twice before he'd been banned. The SGC is the only place where the formerly-deceased is the one to claim the money, half the time.) "Without knowing, though, I'd have to go with the idea of you owing, ah, Cammie."

JD doesn't bother with using a fork for the pear torte; he balances it on his fingertips like a slice of pizza and takes a bite. "She said you'd ask about the Lizard's ancestry -- or at least strongly hint about it -- before three pictures. I said you'd hold out all night if she didn't flat-out tell you. I'm guessing you won me beer money."

It could be light and airy -- is light and airy, in tone and delivery at least -- but the cadence of it is familiar. (More familiar if Daniel closed his eyes -- no, maybe not. It isn't the physical appearance that keeps JD as his own separate person inside Daniel's head. At least, not only.) It's an invitation to ask questions, or at least to say whatever's on his mind, or (at the very least) to make some witty comment that will let JD intuit what's on his mind.

It's utterly familiar, and utterly alien.

"Don't ask, don't tell," Daniel answers, lightly. (Oh, God, will his brain never stop running his mouth without consulting his common sense? He hopes JD doesn't think it's mockery.) "I didn't ask. And she didn't tell. She did drop a pretty broad hint, though. So I suppose -- technically -- you've won." He pries one of the pear slices off the top of the torte; he is full, but they're good. Soaked in brandy, most likely. "I didn't think it was any of my business. It really isn't," he adds. (Curiosity isn't enough reason. The desire to know -- for insufficient reason -- if Cameron Mitchell is currently free of romantic entanglement. It's not like he has any reason to want to know. Cammie is fascinating and beautiful and Daniel is about as likely to be capable of entering into any sort of romantic liaison as he is to be capable of flying by flapping his arms.)

"Never let it stop you before," JD says. The hearkback to a younger (older) (more innocent) time. "Shouldn't let it stop you now. You're too polite to ask her, and you're too creeped out to ask me, so I'll just break all the rules and tell you. No. We're not." His fingers come up to lightly rest on the pride necklace hanging around his neck: unconscious habit or conscious cue, Daniel can't tell. "But Mitchell wanted a kid, had even before the accident, and ..." He shrugs, one shoulder rising and falling, his ink writhing against his skin. "She's gotten shit on enough in this life or any other. Figured I'd break the streak a little." He puts down his chunk of torte (nearly half demolished) and pulls the cookie jar over to him, idly rooting through its bounty until he unearths an implausibly-delicate-looking confection of rolled up chocolate lace (with just a little bit of cookie holding it together). He breaks it in half. Half of it winds up in front of Daniel. The other half disappears so quickly Daniel has to wonder if he palmed it. "And besides," he adds, mouth full. "The Lizard's handful enough for two people. And more."

JD's just flushed enough conversational hares from covert that Daniel could spend the next ten minutes bagging them. In order: true, he never let it stop him before (something JD ought to have no way of knowing), but it's been an instructive fifteen years and he's learned the virtues of silence. True again: Cammie's gotten what Sam often called "the fuzzy end of the lollipop" when she deserved so much better. (Deserved to walk away from Antarctica hale and whole, deserved not to see all her comrades buried, just for starters.) The 'no, we're not', Daniel isn't sure how to answer at all -- not because it isn't his business (JD has just made it his business), but because he doesn't (yet) know if-and-how it matters to him, that 'not'.

So he settles for answering the last part. Part of it. "She seems like a happy child," he says. (Bright and well-loved and happy, and Daniel feels a sudden and immense furious desire to fight tigers on Libby's behalf, so that she will always stay that way.)

There's a quick, fierce flash in JD's eyes. The look of a father protecting his child; the look of a man who would let planets explode and continents crumble if it would mean one fraction of a percent more safety for one bright and happy little girl. (Daniel's seen that expression before, on a face so much older and more weather-worn, and half the time it had been followed by the helpless collapse of realization that there was nothing to be done.) Then it's gone again. "Mitchell's fault," JD says. "Her circus raises 'em right."

True enough, Daniel supposes, since he's seen evidence of Cammie's parenting skills demonstrated before him, both directly and by implication (for a child capable of putting on manners for company is a child that has received excellent instruction). But -- perhaps -- irrelevent. Because the man sitting before him would move heaven and earth to ensure his daughter's happiness. He doesn't need to have known Jack, to be able to see that. Having known Jack (oh, Jack) only makes it more apparent.

"I would have guessed anyway," Daniel says, and it surprises him to hear some quiet note in his own voice. "She looks like you."

That earns him another sort-of smirk. (JD-in-code, Daniel decides.) It's approval. It's pleasure. Daniel has the sense (nothing new there) that he's being weighed-and-measured, but this time (unlike another time, another man, at least two decades past) he isn't sure what for. (Not sure, either, how he'll know when he's passed, or if he cares. Only he knows that he does care.)

"Just as well," JD says. "Pretty sure Cindy Lou was thinking hard about swapping AJ for her a while back. Two boys," he adds (Daniel knows he looks confused), "and no girl in sight. Third one was a girl, though. To everybody's great relief." He gets to his feet, puts the lid on the cookie jar, carries it back to the counter. "Shall we rejoin the ladies?" JD asks, and the combination of archaic phrase (barely even 20th century, and here they are, already well into the 21st) and Millennial chassis is a flashpoint of cognitive dissonance that actually makes Daniel laugh.

He gets to his feet, bringing cup and plate to the sink. "Of course."

"Word of warning before we retire to the drawing room," JD says. "Don't let the Lizard challenge you to a game of chess. Especially do not let her talk you into spotting her a knight. She's rated." He snorts. "Higher than I am, even." His eyes narrow, as though thinking of something. "But we haven't tried her on go yet. You keep up your game?"

"Chess, checkers, go..." Daniel answers. "Also parcheesi, mah-jong, scissors-paper-stone, horseshoes, and cat's cradle. There wasn't a lot else to do when the power-grid was mostly down."

JD smiles suddenly, and it's a closed-lips, cat-that-ate-the-canary look. "Poker?" he inquires. Innocently. Completely innocently.

"A friendly game?" he asks, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. "What do I have that you could possibly want?" (For god's sake, Jack, you know I've always been lousy at cards.)

"Figured I'd break you in gently before herself manages to get her hooks into you," JD says, bringing the rest of the dishes over to the sink and just tossing them in. (I know damn well, Daniel, but I'm doing you the favor of pretending I don't, and it is a favor, damn him, and -- no, let it go.) "Sit the bug in your lap while you play, if you'd like. Mitchell and I suspect she's telepathic. Or empathic, at least. Or else she's just damn good at odds."

He doesn't gesture them to the living room, though, where Daniel can hear the sounds of Cammie's low voice, Libby's higher one, drifting in from. He stands, in the center of the kitchen, in this house that is his, theirs, oh, God, home.

Daniel tries to summon suitable polite conversation. "That's good, I guess," he says. Inane. He kicks himself even as the words pass his lips. He tries to keep himself from shying away from the presence of JD, the knowledge of JD, the evidence of him staring Daniel right in the face.

JD doesn't take a step closer, but somehow Daniel's left feeling like he has. "Before we go back out there," he says, his voice dropping low, barely audible. And no, it's not a change of subject. And it is. And it isn't. "Just wanted to say. What Mitchell said about home, earlier? Goes double. Come back tomorrow. She likes feeding people. And with us, you don't have to pretend."

The reality of the situation comes crashing down on him again. They'd been alone in the kitchen when Cammie had made her offer. That means JD had been listening, somehow, and that means JD had thought he was enough of a threat, enough of a person of interest, to listen in, and he thinks that the two of them have planned this, all of this, and it makes him want to scream. Daniel scrubs both hands over his face, pushing his glasses up. Presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He wants to burst into tears. He wants to howl. He can't do this (can't live on Earth, can't come back to the SGC, can't walk out on the SGC, and there's no place else to go).

He'll manage. He'll survive. It's what he does (even when he can't see how from where he's standing). Hay foot, straw foot (I had a good home but I left). "Good," he says, forcing himself to lower his hands and open his eyes and then reach up and settle his glasses in place. "That's good. I --" (Don't want to be any trouble.) "Okay. Yeah. Thanks."

There's a second, a brief second, where JD's hand comes up, halfhearted, before falling again. And there's a part of Daniel's brain that knows that gesture. (Jack had never been ashamed of hugging, of touching, but he'd always seemed so hesitant to offer, after those first few years, and Daniel had never been able to understand why, what had changed, what had happened, and there's still a part of him, barely scabbed over -- oh, God, Jack -- that still wonders what he did to make Jack stop.)

"One step at a time," JD says, quietly. "It's how I did it. It's how she did it. It's how you'll do it too."

Daniel's spent nearly twenty-five years at the war, where he's lived (and come back from death) and kept other people alive (sometimes; too rarely, in thought and memory) by little more than force of will. It's what keeps him from lashing out now, when the ugly (irrational) flare of temper wants him to tell JD that he, that he and Cammie, have never, never, never had to survive what Daniel has had to survive, have never had to come back from a place as far away as the place Daniel finds himself in now. It doesn't even matter if-and-whether it's objectively true. He stands very still, breathing, until he's sure he won't just say something. "Yes," he says (when he can trust his voice to stay level and even). "One day at a time."

And JD just looks at him, quiet and thoughtful, for a long minute. "First step is," he finally says, "next time you want to take a swing at me as badly as you just did, you go ahead and do it."

He's turning away, then, light and unconcerned, and Daniel balls his hands into fists (not angry, not furious, he is just fucking fine goddamnit) and breathes. "I don't want to hit you," he says. (Wants nothing more. Wants -- he doesn't even know what he wants.)

JD shrugs. Not even looking at Daniel. "Tell me to fuck off and die in six languages, then. Either way. Fuck's sake, Daniel, get it through your damn fool skull. You. Aren't. Alone. Whatever you need. Whatever. If that's Mitchell feeding you cookies or you taking a swing at me or our daughter showing you her frogs. Whatever."

"Why?" Daniel asks, and he knows his voice is giving away everything he doesn't want it to (bitterness, anger) -- everything he doesn't want to be there. He doesn't want to feel anything. He doesn't want to be numb. He wants to be empty. "I didn't realize you were running a charitable institution." (So you think you're ready for an institution, Dr. Jackson? the mocking voice says inside his head, and he knows the day will come when it's so loud he can't drown it out -- his own personal home-grown Goa'uld.)

JD, however, refuses to rise to the bait. He crosses his arms across his chest and props one hip back against the counter. The body language is all wrong. (All right.) "Because you're already ours," he says, firm and resolute. "Were the minute we laid eyes on you. Even if I haven't seen you in years. Even if you didn't realize it. Because you're a human fucking being. Because there aren't enough of them around anymore. Because nobody should have to fucking put up with the shit you're carrying. Because it shouldn't have to be like that. And God damn it, it never used to be."

The half-facade -- already imperfect, already cracking -- breaks for that one instant, and Daniel can see a fury buried deep in JD's eyes, the same fury he damn well knows, the same fury he's seen a thousand times before.

Then it's back to being resolute, almost clinical. "Because I'd really rather not have to bail my oldest friend I just met last week out of jail. Or the morgue. Or just find out when I get a phone call in the middle of the night again."

"Nobody would call you," Daniel says. (Turning his back, leaning on the counter, so he won't have to see, even though turning his back on JD makes every nerve in his body scream an alert. And doesn't. It's a night of contradictions, and he hates each one of them.) When all else fails, go with a baffling and utterly misleading array of indisputable facts; it's always worked in the past. "There are a lot of things that shouldn't be the way they are -- that are the way they are." (I'm fine.) (Yeah, no, really. Just ignore the sucking chest wound.) His mouth twists, a smile with no humor: he may be the only audience for his eternal internal stand-up routine, but at least he's an appreciative one. "And operational procedures change over time. I'm sure I'll ... get with the program eventually." (Oh yeah, he cracks himself up. He really does.) He frowns for a moment, thinking. "You don't bail people out of the morgue."

"And the Good Witch Glinda is going to come and tap you with her fairy wand and make you all better any day now," JD counters. (The thrust of the argument and not its irrelevancies; that alone is familiar, much less the reference.) "Daniel. Look at me."

It's an order. It shouldn't be an order. It shouldn't be able to be an order.

Daniel turns. JD is staring at him. He is suddenly, unerringly, back to being completely a stranger, a man Daniel has only met once before, except he looks an awful lot like a friend. (Gone, now. Gone a long time ago, and Daniel pushed him away, because Daniel pushed them all away.)

"Lie to me as long you want," JD says. "I can still see straight through it. But you goddamn know I'm right. Stop lying to yourself."

If I stop lying to myself, I'll shatter, Daniel thinks. And there's nobody left to pick up the pieces. He's been tagged with the label 'unstable security risk' so many times in the past that it became a joke, because (back then) it was never true. It isn't funny now that it is, because Daniel knows where unstable security risks go. (The lucky ones, the ones the NID doesn't have an interest in, and he doesn't even know if there's still an NID, or if it still loves him best of all, and that really should worry him more than it does.)

"What do you want me to do?" he asks, and his voice is weary. (All he wants -- all he really wants -- is a safe place to sleep, a place where they can't get him -- and JD thinks he's been lying to himself, but he hasn't been. He's been watching or trying not to watch his mind unspooling for all the hours and days since he walked through the Gate back to Earth, words and thoughts and concepts dissolving like sugar in his morning coffee, and the only thing that amazes him, dimly, is that nobody in charge has noticed yet. Always assuming they haven't.)

Something moves in JD's eyes. Something dim and distant and -- Not pity. Never pity. But it could almost be, in the right light.

"Take a year-long sabbatical from the program, move out of guest quarters, and move in with us," JD says, swiftly. So swiftly Daniel knows, realizes, he's been working the conversation around to it for at least the last few minutes. "You won't do it. So, compromise candidate. You put in for the last twenty years' worth of leave you haven't taken. Or at least, oh, five, six weeks of it. You come stay with us through it. Keep your claim on the guest quarters if you need to, to feel like you have a retreat if things get too much for you. Spare bedroom's all yours. On the other side of the house from the Lizard's room. No morning sun. Just -- come stay with us." His lips tip upwards, ever-so-slightly. The expression's starting to look familiar. "Let Mitchell feed you."

"She could just open a restaurant," Daniel mutters. Buying time. It's hard to believe the offer is serious. It's impossible to believe that it isn't. He's seen Jack take in waifs and strays and orphans (he's been all three, in his time) so many times over the years that he should have been expecting it. (He suspects a part of him has been expecting it, since the moment the traveling three-ring circus swept him up at Jack's graveside and carried him along, and the fact he isn't protesting as much as he knows he should be tells him that his subconscious has been quietly maneuvering him around to being ready to accept the offer when it came.) Still. He can't -- he shouldn't --

"Daniel." JD's voice is quiet. Compelling. "You're two steps from cracking. Step and a half. And you know it, and that's the worst part. You're screaming for the help. You know you are, or you wouldn't be here right now; you'd've tucked yourself up under the Mountain and let yourself die of papercuts instead. The fact you haven't means that you know you're in trouble, and you're reaching out for the one thing you've seen since you got back that reminds you of the way things used to be. We can -- we will -- help you. We can fix this. At the very least, we can field-patch it enough to get you to the point where you can fix it yourself. You've just got to take the first step by agreeing to let us."

Daniel pulls his glasses off his face and tosses them on the counter. Buries his face in his hands, scrubbing them viciously across his cheeks. "I shouldn't --"

"Daniel." There's a naked plea in JD's voice. In the silent darkness behind his closed eyelids, Daniel can admit he sounds exactly like Jack would have. "Say yes. Please. Just say yes."

Daniel hesitates. The prospect of taking time away from the SGC -- time out from the whirlwind that is his life, time to brace himself (for impact) before going back, is alluring. He really hasn't taken a vacation in years; his banked leave would be enough to cover a six-month sabbatical if he wanted to take it. The amount of work he needs to do to get up to speed again at the SGC is mind-numbing. On the other hand, it will be just as mind-numbing two months from now. And they weren't expecting him back at all, so they can't be relying on his being there. A month to catch up on everything in the field that isn't classified. That would help. A lot.

He isn't sure what help JD thinks they can offer. What they both have claimed, in their own way, to be able to offer. What's wrong with him isn't something that can be fixed; he's seen enough cases of Program-related trauma to know what can't be cured must be endured, and he's almost certain this is one of the uncurables. But there was never anything Jack didn't know about endurance, and no matter how much JD has left Jack behind -- if he has -- Daniel thinks that lesson would be one of the ones that lingered. Jack was always good at caretaking. Four weeks off would let Daniel figure out if there's anything left for him to save.

And (oh, God) he thinks he could sleep here. That alone would be worth the price of admission. He takes his hands down and sighs. Throws his pride to the wind and commits himself. (Bad choice of phrase.) "All right," he says, through his fingers. Some brief speck of pride (his deadliest sin) makes him add: "But you understand -- it's only because of the frogs."

He feels as if he's just jumped off a cliff without a parachute.

And JD smiles again, and it's wholly unique. No echoes, no old ghosts. Just a beautiful young man, happy, peaceful, serene. "Don't tell the Lizard that. She keeps trying to get Mitchell to let her bring one in the house."

Daniel isn't sure what to expect when he returns to Cammie and JD's house Thursday afternoon. He'd hesitated over what to bring; JD had made it clear that he'd be welcome to move in, completely and permanently (he doesn't examine that request too closely; either they'd invite anyone into their house, which says something about them, or this is something they're only doing for him in particular, which says something about him, and either way he doesn't really want to explore it), and there's a part of him that wants to say oh God yes: let someone else take care of it, let someone else take care of him. But he's painfully aware that his subconscious has settled on Cammie and JD as safe, as safety, and he knows exactly why, and he also knows that JD has a life of his own (not Jack's) and it isn't fair to try to force him into the position of taking care of one errant archaeologist.

Eventually, he settles on two suitcases: one of clothes, one of books. Most of the clothes still have the store tags on them. (Bobby Browning again. Forget owing the man chocolate and alcohol; Daniel owes him a vacation somewhere tropical and perhaps a new car. The rest of his personal effects will come back from Atlantis once Atabyrus makes the return run, and Bobby said he might be stuck in guest quarters under the Mountain, but there was no reason he should be stuck wearing BDUs the whole time.) The books are mostly on loan from X/L; half of them used to be his, deeded to the department when he'd left for Atlantis twelve years ago, and the other half are new acquisitions. Bobby's got a good sense of what Daniel might like to read. Daniel hopes Bobby charged it all to him instead of the SGC. (On second thought, he changes his mind. The SGC owes him a lot more than a few books and a new wardrobe.)

General Napolitano had been encouraging about his plan to take a month off before coming back to work. "Use up some of your leave," the man had said, clapping Daniel heartily on the shoulder (Daniel had frozen: don't give yourself away). "That sounds like a great plan. We'll figure out what to do with you when you get back, don't you worry, Dr. Jackson."

That's what Daniel's afraid of.

Daniel stands on the front porch for a long minute before he works up the courage to ring the bell. (You could just get back in the car and keep going. Jack always used to think highly of Central America as a destination when one wanted to disappear.) Cammie's the one to answer, so quickly that Daniel wonders if she'd been sitting and waiting for him to arrive. "You come right on in," she says, holding the door open for him. Today, her tank top is soft grey, and her sweatpants are olive. "I'll take you straight back to your room, an' you can get settled for as long as you'd like before we toss you into the deep end of life in the fast lane. You had anything to eat yet?"

Cammie is excellent at "still" and "quiet", but Daniel still has to beat back panic at the thought of questions. Any questions. "Ah, no," he says. He hasn't been able to force himself into the commissary more than once or twice, and even then only to dash in and grab whatever's pre-made and ready to take out with him, when someone else isn't there to force him; he's mostly been relying on midnight raids to the vending machines, when nearly everyone else under the Mountain is asleep. The dinner Cammie fed him the other night was one of the only real meals he's had since he got back. Earth food tastes wrong to him; he imagines he can feel the chemicals and the preservatives spreading across his tongue, oily and artificial. "But you don't have to --"

Go to any trouble, he's about to say, but Cammie's already shaking her head. "I was just about to start lunch for the masses," she says, and something must show on Daniel's face, because she hastens to add, "and it wouldn't be any hardship at all to make you up a tray and bring it into your room. Nielson's down in the office working, an' Libby's with him. We usually eat lunch downstairs, but that doesn't mean you have to."

"I really don't want to be any trouble," Daniel says. (This was a bad idea.)

"You'll be less trouble than either of them," Cammie says, firmly. "Come on."

The room she leads him to is off on the right side of the house, tucked far away at the end of the hallway. She opens the door for him, precedes him in, gets straight out of the way and to the side. She doesn't say anything at the way his eyes rove around the room, adding up everything. Two doors inside, both open. One leads to a walk-in closet. One leads to a bathroom. The lights are on in both of them. There are a stack of towels and a leather-bound folder on the foot of the double bed, a half-empty bookshelf against one wall, and a beat-up looking old computer monitor and keyboard set in a recessed hollow next to the door.

"Consider this home for as long as you want to," Cammie says, firmly, setting both hands on her cane and leaning against the wall. "I'm gonna let you get settled in here -- if you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen, an' you can come and find me. The folder's got everything you need to know about the house in it. You need anything before I go?"

The thought of being alone -- even in a strange place -- sounds much better than having people (even Cammie) around him; the endless parade of people arriving at his office to have "just a minute of your time" in the past few days hadn't ceased. It's unspeakably rude, of course. But Daniel can't bring himself to care. "Ah, no," he says. "Thank you," he remembers to add.

"No trouble at all, baby," Cammie says, brightly (lying through her teeth, Daniel suspects; his addition to the household has to be a disruption). "I'll send a tray in as soon as lunch is ready."

She closes the door behind her with a gentle snick. Daniel stares at it for a few seconds, and then crosses over to lock it behind her. It makes him feel better.

It's quiet in here. Not too quiet, just quiet, the sound of excellent soundproofing. Guest quarters in the Mountain -- despite being under tons of rock, and that isn't all too comforting either -- always sound like the thrum of the HVAC, the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the sound of conversations going on in the hallways outside. Here, Daniel can hear the soft chirping of some bird outside the house (there are no windows in here, he realizes, suddenly, which is odd, and he wonders why) and nothing more.

He feels as though he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He re-settles his suitcases at the foot of the bed -- Cammie hadn't offered to take them from him, and he hadn't expected her to; she has her hands full enough with just herself -- and stares down at the folder she'd said had everything he needed to know about the house. He opens it. It reminds him (and the thought almost makes him laugh) of the Guest Services folio available in any decent hotel; it's printed on the same glossy paper, and it looks like it's been re-used, since there are a couple of idle scribbles in the margins, the marks of someone testing a pen to get the ink flowing. That makes him feel a little better: clearly, he isn't the first guest here, and clearly they haven't gone to too much trouble to make him feel welcome. Or at least, not trouble that they hadn't already gone to for someone else, sometime in the past.

He flips through the sheets of paper -- instructions on how to run the bath and shower (complicated, but -- he thinks, studying them -- possible to figure out by trial and error), how to get out to the courtyard if he wants to use the swimming pool (into the kitchen, down in the cargo elevator or down the stairs, out the back door), where everything is in the kitchen. Laundry details. Instructions for getting his laptop set up on the house wireless network. The section on climate and lighting control in his room is four pages long, and it involves the terminal and keyboard in the corner. They've apparently computerized their house.

Tucked in past the last page, its edge peeking out past the neat edge of the three-hole-punched notes, is a loose sheet of paper, a note from Cammie (he assumes; the handwriting is feminine) assigning him a username (his initials) and initial password for the house network, telling him to use that instead of the guest login that's in the booklet. He stares at it for a minute and then sets it aside.

Then -- hating himself, hating himself for feeling like he has to do it -- he opens every drawer, walks into the closet and the bathroom, checks every wall, notes where all the vents are. Then he uses the bathroom and washes his hands. No windows in there, either. The little voice in the back of his head is (almost) quieting down. Almost.

Enough to let him actually look around him, at least. It's a nice room. (Suite, really.) The bathroom he's in is large enough, an L-shaped room designed to accomodate the presence of the closet next to him, about the size of two bathrooms in a regular house. It's decorated in a vague Eurasian-fusion style: hardwood floors (like every other room in the house), wood-beam ceiling, stainless-steel-looking cables with lights strung on them overhead. There's a tall bathtub (glass-fronted steel), ofuro-style, with a stepstool in front of it to assist in climbing in; next to it is a walk-in shower, glass-sided, with a teak shower stool in the corner. Three of the walls are a soft cream color; the fourth, behind the bath and the shower, consists of grey-blue tile, with water spilling silently down its face behind the ofuro. A series of waist-high houseplants in brightly-colored pots trail along what Daniel thinks is the wall that leads to the center courtyard of the house.

The bedroom itself is equally (proportionally) large, with all the standard furniture: dresser, bed, nightstand, table (that can be used as a desk) and two chairs, bookshelf. He inspects the books that are already there: an assortment of both linguistics and archaeology texts, all of them appearing previously read. Whoever picked them out has good taste. He pulls his suitcase of books over next to it and shelves the books he brought with him (discovering, as he does, that the Sumerian dictionary he brought with him is already duplicated on the shelf). That done, he's about to repeat the process with his clothes when there's a knock on his door.

The sound makes Daniel jump -- dammit -- but he crosses the room and throws open the lock (and whoever's on the other end of the door is going to hear it, and know that he felt like he had to lock himself in, dammit again). It's JD standing there, wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweats cut off at the knees, carrying a tray piled high. "Behold, Mitchell sends lunch," JD says.

"Ah, thanks," Daniel says. He holds on to the door, feeling helpless, wondering what he should be doing. "Would you -- like to come in?"

JD shakes his head. "Thanks, but I need to get back to work pretty quickly." He holds out the tray; Daniel takes it. Turkey club sandwich, a small salad bursting with color (grapes and pears and bleu cheese and four different types of lettuce), a heap of rough-cut homemade potato chips in a bowl with a napkin underneath to soak up the oil. There's a thermos of coffee, big enough to hold about four cups or so, and a tiny pot of cream and one of sugar. "Make yourself at home as much as you'd like," JD adds. "Dinner's usually around seven, and you're also welcome to join me and the Lizard for evening meditation after dessert."

Daniel knows he's staring. He can't help it. "Meditation?"

Quick flash of half-smile. "The local Zen center and I have had several differences of opinion; I practice at home. We've got more than enough room for three in the zendo if you want to join us. Probably a good idea if you do, but it's up to you. The Lizard won't disturb you by squirming; kid's got more patience than you'd expect. Anyway, if you need anything --"

"Yeah," Daniel says. "I know." Pause. "Thank you."

JD only nods. "Bring the tray back to the kitchen whenever you get a chance." He shuts the door behind him.

Daniel stares at the door for a minute. Then puts the tray down on the table and crosses back to lock the door.

The food is surprisingly good. Not surprising that it's good; he's eaten Cammie's cooking, and he knows she's excellent in the kitchen. No, the surprise is that he notices it's good. He's all the way through the salad, and most of the way through the sandwich, by the time he notices that he has an actual appetite, instead of just putting the food automatically into his mouth the way he's done with every meal other than the other one he ate here.

Meanwhile, he's pondering JD's invitation. Try as he might, he can't reconcile the thought of 'Jack' and 'meditation' in the same sentence, but after all, hadn't he reminded himself (over and over again) that JD isn't -- wasn't -- Jack? And it's none of his business. None of this is. They've been generous enough to open their home to him, out of some sense of misplaced loyalty (and he remembers the days when anyone attached to the Program could call upon anyone else attached to the Program, no questions asked -- no bands playing, no flags flying -- for anything they needed, and he stops himself from thinking about that further, because that way lies madness). He agreed to come stay with them (in a moment of weakness -- oh, God, this is going to be a disaster). He doesn't need to disrupt their lives any further than he already has.

Lunch really is excellent. (He can think about food. Food is a safe enough subject.)

When he's done, he puts the tray on top of the dresser to get it out of the way, takes out his laptop, plugs it into one of the power outlets on the strip running around the baseboard. (There's another strip below it; looks like lighting.) He still isn't quite used to the weight and flexibility of the machine; the ones they had on Atlantis were the older, more bulky variety, for durability's sake. Or the touchscreen interfaces that the Ancients used themselves. It only takes him a few minutes to get set up on the house network. When he opens his browser to start scanning through back issues of the Archaeological Institute of America's newsletter (for the past twelve years -- all right, he's been getting his copies in email on Atlantis, true, but he hadn't exactly had time to read them), he's presented with, not his homepage (set to Wikipedia), but a proxy server to log on again.

He enters his username and password again. His browser forwards him to a portal, slick and professional-looking. The top menu bar says "Hello, Daniel!" There's everything -- a calendar (today's events highlighted beneath it, including 'conference call w/Pentagon, 1330'; 'Libby - aikido, 1530'; and, he notes, 'Daniel moving in - sometime around noon') and a menu widget (dinner tonight is apparently planned to be Middle Eastern mezze, and he wonders if that's for his sake; he clicks the arrow for tomorrow, where he finds out that lunch is grilled cheese and dinner is Thai curry and lemongrass soup).

The center frame is a webmail-style system. One message, from Cammie. He clicks on it. It's a repeat of the instructions for how to control the lights and heat in his room, an explanation of all the widgets on the portal and how to use them. (He can, for instance, apparently tell whether or not the laundry machine, located off the kitchen, is in use without having to get up; there's also a webcam installed in the pantry, so he doesn't have to get up and stare at the available snacks for fifteen minutes before deciding what he wants. Their library contents are online, too, and apparently each book has some kind of tracking chip in it, because the library software will tell you where in the house each book is.)

Her style, in writing, is more formal than it is aloud, but she closes out the email with "Please don't worry that you're being rude if you want to stay in your room and catch up on sleep for a while; in fact, I hope you find it comfortable enough to do so. If Nielson and I both forget to tell you, there's a spare set of keys to the front door in the top drawer of your dresser, and you can ask or email if you have any questions."

For half a second, he's tempted to email her back with Just one; why the hell am I here? But instead he just powers down his laptop. A nap sounds good. (Oh, God, he feels like he can sleep in here.)

He's expecting to toss and turn before he falls asleep, but to his surprise, he drops off immediately, just as quickly as he'd fallen asleep in their DC condo. His subconscious sending him a message, maybe. All clear; stand down. His dreams are confused, fragmented, the way they have been the (few) times he's managed to sleep since he returned; he remembers a flash of Libby's tiny body, Wraith-fed, and one of JD striding towards him, eyes flashing like a Goa'uld. His mind won't let his body wake from them, and he feels like he's falling, drowning --

The sound in his ears resolves into knocking. "Daniel?" JD's voice, pitched loudly enough to be heard through the door. Oh, God, was he screaming? "You awake? Dinner's in ten."

"Okay," Daniel manages, his heart pounding, his hands slippery with sweat. He rubs them on the covers. "Um, thanks."

"No problem." Pause. "No big deal if you're late."

"Thanks," Daniel says again, hoping that his voice is even enough to pass muster. He gets out of the bed, heads into the bathroom, runs cold water in the sink. His eyes look puffy and swollen and red. He looks rabid. Well, there's nothing to be done for it. He runs one of the washcloths under the water, applies it to his eyes, makes himself breathe. Just a dream. It was just a dream.

Just a dream, like all the others he's been having.

He hesitates when he gets out of the bathroom. He'd changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt to nap in, and he can't decide whether to change back into less casual clothes for dinner. Eventually he decides to switch the sweatpants for a pair of khakis, but leave the t-shirt on. They hadn't given him any inclination that he should dress for dinner, and neither Cammie nor JD had been dressed up earlier, and they both seem to believe that clothes in the house are more of an annoyance than anything else.

They're both in the kitchen when he makes his way in, and he was right about the clothing issue; neither of them have changed for dinner. Cammie's just taking something out of the deep fryer (the first private kitchen he's ever seen that has one); JD is filling glasses from a pitcher of ice water, at the counter. "Have a seat," JD invites him, without turning his head.

Daniel makes himself breathe. He stands in the doorway. "Can I do anything to help?" he asks.

"Got it all taken care of, baby," Cammie says, bright and cheerful. "Just sit yourself on down." She's transfering the contents of the fryer into a napkin-lined basket; they look like kibbeh. She adds the basket to a large circular tray (and Daniel remembers the lunch tray in his room, which is still in his room, and kicks himself for forgetting), which already has half a dozen baskets and bowls and dishes: falafel, hummus, baba ghannouj, shakshouky, lebneh, shawarma, tabouleh, fatoush, various kebabs with the skewers still in. "Nielson --"

"On it," JD says, grabbing the tray and carrying it over to the table. He makes a long circle around Daniel, but it could (Daniel thinks) be natural.

Cammie opens the oven and takes out another basket, this one full of pita bread that had apparently been left there to stay warm. "An' whistle up the Lizard, too," she says. "Daniel, I mean it on the sitting. Just pick a chair, it don't matter which."

Daniel sighs. The room is warm enough, at least, and it smells good, and Cammie's calm brisk patience (beautiful competence) is doing a lot to dispel the last pieces of the dream. She brings the basket of pita bread over to the table and sets it in the center of the table, next to the tray full of mezze dishes, then turns back to the stove and -- huh, yes, that is a cezve, or to be precise, two, boiling on the stove; Cammie takes both of them off the heat, and Daniel notices that three demitasse cups are waiting for the coffee to be poured in. She pours one cup from one of the cezve, brings it over to the table. Not in front of him; she puts it in front of one of the other chairs. "You don't want that one," she says. "It's çok şekerli." Heavy sugar. Her accent is ... tolerable.

"I like sugar," JD says. He leans over the railing in front of the stairs. "Libby, dinner!"

There's a thump-thump-thump up the stairs as Libby comes flying up; Daniel is bracing himself for there to be a small, erratically-moving object in his field of vision, but she sees him and immediately slows to a sedate walk. "Hello, Daniel," she says, politely.

Daniel looks at Cammie or JD for a cue, doesn't get one. "Hello, Libby," he says, figuring that answering politeness with politeness never hurt.

"Grab the water glasses, Lizard," Cammie says. "An' Nielson, you come carry the other two coffees."

Libby reaches up to the counter, which is just past her head. She picks up two of the four glasses of water JD had filled. JD detours around her with the hot coffee in both hands, swinging his hips with the easy slide of someone who's used to tracking and correcting for the trajectory of a small child. "Sir's coffee," he says, leaning over the table -- and the mezze -- to set Daniel's down in front of him from the front instead of approaching from his side. Daniel sighs. Well, he can put up with feeling like a fragile idiot for a while if it means that the back of his head won't be screaming danger at him. And at least Cammie and JD seem to know how to keep from setting off those little bits of panic, even if Libby's too young to.

But Libby's moving slowly too, although in her case it might just be due to having her hands full. She brings both glasses of water over to the table, which is slightly higher than she can comfortably reach. "Daddy, can you please--"

JD reaches down and takes the glasses of water from her, hands one to Daniel and sets the other down at one of the other places (Cammie's, Daniel is assuming; it has the other demitasse of Turkish coffee, the one that wasn't made extra sweet. Unless Libby is learning to drink coffee early.)

"Thank you, Daddy," she says, and turns back for the other two glasses.

"Are you sure you don't --" Daniel starts, putting his hands on the table to push himself out of his chair and go to offer help.

JD throws him an amused look. "Sit, Ubu, sit," he says.

"Good dog," Daniel mutters, and subsides. (JD is too young to know that joke. Dammit.)

It's only another few minutes until everyone's settled at the table. Cammie folds her hands on the table in front of her. "Will you say grace, Bug?" she invites. That startles Daniel a little; Cammie hadn't offered grace when it had just been the three of them having dinner the other night, and he hadn't known she was devout. But maybe she's trying to teach Libby.

Libby folds her hands and bows her head. "Bless this food and our family who has gathered to eat it, Lord, and bless Daniel who has come to live with us, and help us to remember all those who have no food to eat. Amen."

"Amen," Daniel echoes, startled -- he hadn't been expecting to be named -- but his manners are too good to let it go by without the proper response. Cammie joins in. JD doesn't.

"Grab somethin' and pass it," Cammie says, then, fitting action to words with the basket of pita bread.

The food is excellent. There aren't any utensils on the table, either, which takes the question of whether or not Daniel should eat the food properly or Western-style out of consideration; he notices that all three of the others eat with their left hands tucked in their laps, which reassures the back of his mind as well. It's lulling, almost. Familiar.

He's not certain what sort of conversational topics are acceptable at dinner -- say, had any good dreams lately? I had a doozy -- but Cammie takes the question out of his hands. "What'd you learn today while I was on the phone with the Pentagon, Bug?" she asks, turning to Libby. (Daniel's pretty sure that normal households don't include the phrase "while I was on the phone with the Pentagon" as part of the dinner conversation.)

"Daddy taught me how to solve -- I've forgotten what they're called, Daddy." Libby looks chagrined.

"Linear equations in one variable," JD says, not looking up from his hummus.

Libby nods happily, her pigtails bouncing. "Like x plus two equals six! X equals four."

Daniel blinks. He hasn't exactly been keeping up with modern pedagogy, but he's pretty sure eight-year-olds aren't supposed to be learning algebra. But JD only nods as well. "X minus three equals seven?" he says.

Libby frowns, and her eyes go distant for half a second. "X equals ten!" she says.

"Nice," Cammie says, approvingly. "Did he tell you what the trick is?"

"Yup," Libby says. "You can't let one side be uneven, but X is like Greta Garbo and likes to be alone." Daniel's lucky he isn't drinking anything when she says that. It takes him a second to puzzle through her words, but he's pretty sure she's talking about the principle of balancing equations and isolating the variable. "He promised me that next week he's gonna show me how to do it with two letters."

Daniel's trying to keep the surprise off his face, but apparently he's not doing a very good job of it. "She likes math," JD says, chasing a piece of shawarma around his plate with a piece of pita. "Carter drops by now and then to tutor."

"Really," Daniel says. "She hadn't mentioned."

Libby nods again. "Aunt Sam says that numbers are pretty," she says. "And they are." She looks down at her plate, suddenly nonchalant, the very model of the perfect coquette. "I could show you how pretty numbers are, later, Daniel. If you wanted."

He's touched by the offer. More than touched, really; it's something about the earnestness with which she says it. He's opening his mouth to say something when Cammie reaches over to pat Libby's arm, gently. "You leave Daniel alone for a little while, Bug, an' let him get settled in."

"It's okay," Daniel says, quickly. "I'd -- I don't mind. I'd love to see some numbers, Libby. Maybe tomorrow?" Libby beams and applies herself to her dinner again. Cammie looks at him, with a you don't have to look on her face. "It really is okay," he tells her, trying not to think that maybe the cause of that look is her not wanting him around her daughter. That couldn't be it, could it? She wouldn't have invited him back if that were the case.

He's probably not fit for the company of children, anyway.

The rest of dinner is much the same: Cammie asking Libby what she learned in aikido (something called ikkyou; JD asks for a later demonstration), JD and Cammie talking about their work (he gets one word in four), Libby chattering on about what she read today (he nearly chokes when he realizes she's describing the plot of Hamlet; she must be reading one of the adaptations). None of them ask him any questions, although Libby directs remarks at him once or twice (apparently wanting to make sure he doesn't feel left out of the conversation; her manners, he has noted before, are excellent). It reminds him that he brought a present for her; he'll have to seek out Cammie's (or JD's, but probably Cammie's) permission to pass it along. (He was going to bring something for the house, but he's fairly certain they would have told him not to bother. He's almost certain that giving presents to their daughter will be acceptable, though.)

Eventually, dessert (pistachio baklava) is finished, and Libby is starting to squirm in her chair. "May I be excused to go read, Mama?" she asks. "Or is it my night to help with the dishes?"

"No, that was last night," Cammie says. "You may be excused. Your daddy's doing the dishes tonight."

"I'll help," Daniel says, quickly. He really doesn't want to be a bother.

"I should tell you no," JD says, cheerfully. "We usually don't put 'em to work until the second day. But sure, gimme a hand." He reaches over and steals the other half of Cammie's baklava. She slaps the back of his hand -- he'd eaten four pieces already, and she just the half of one -- but he doesn't let it go, just pops it in his mouth and rises to start stacking plates.

Daniel hastens to do the same. "Dinner was fabulous," he says, to Cammie. "Ah -- and so was lunch. I'll get the tray from my room. You, uh, don't have to go to any trouble like that for me tomorrow --"

"No trouble at all," Cammie says, pushing herself up to her feet. "I'm usually bringing trays downstairs anyway; it's not a big deal to send Nielson with one in another direction. Thanks for eating dinner with us tonight. I know you're exhausted, and Libby's a handful."

"She's charming," Daniel says, quickly. "She's not a bother at all."

Cammie laughs. "An' you're very polite to say so. Don't feel obliged to babysit, really. If she's bothering you, just tell her that you're busy an' she should come find one of us. Just be gentle with her when you tell her to run along."

"I will," Daniel says. "Be gentle, I mean. I -- she's very polite, really."

"Mitchell's fault," JD says, still sounding cheerful. "I'd've chained her to the floor and thrown her scraps of meat three times a day. Mitchell thinks children should be civilized. By force, if necessary."

Cammie snorts. "You've seen Cindy and Ash's brood," she says. "I didn't wanna get stuck with one of them. Daniel, I can get your tray, you don't mind."

"No, I'll take care of it," Daniel says quickly. He tells himself it's because he doesn't want her having to walk all the way down the hallway, not because he doesn't want her in his room. It's not his room. It's the room that she -- and JD -- are being generous enough to lend to him for a month. (He has no idea what they think is going to happen in a month that will make him fit for human companionship again.) "I have something else I need to get, anyway."

It only takes him a minute to find Libby's present, well-wrapped in a length of cloth; he'd liberated both present and cloth from the personal collection he'd bequeathed the SGC when he'd -- left. (Nyan had helped him dig them both out again that morning before driving him over.) He brings both tray and present back into the kitchen, and deposits the tray on the counter. "I wanted to give this to Libby," he says, holding out the cloth-wrapped bundle. "If it's all right with you two, I mean. Careful, it's heavy."

Cammie tosses a look at JD that Daniel can't read, but accepts the bundle, unwrapping it carefully. It's a carved Mixtec nephrite jade sculpture, in the shape of a frog; Daniel inherited it from his grandfather. It's whimsical enough that he thinks Libby would find it appealing. "It was the only thing I could find in the shape of a frog," he hastens to explain, seeing the expression on Cammie's face. "And it's durable enough that it shouldn't be a problem. I checked; there's no sharp edges."

He's about to say never mind, forget it -- it is a silly thing to propose giving a child -- when Cammie wraps it back up and nods, firmly. "She'll love it," she says, the smile dawning on her face. "An' that's very kind of you. I won't say that you shouldn't have, because you know damn well you shouldn't have, but you're sweet."

"Go give it to her now," JD suggests, elbows-deep in sudsy water. "Not only will she love it, it'll get you out of doing dishes. Left past the living room, second door on the right."

Daniel thinks about protesting. He hadn't meant to get out of doing the dishes, and he isn't -- quite -- sure that it'd be appropriate for him to be alone in a room with Libby (come on, Daniel, what are you going to do? flip out and throw the frog at her? He's a little scared that yeah, he might). But JD and Cammie are both looking at him expectantly, and, well, what else is he going to do? He brought the present to give it, after all.

"Okay," he says, and makes his escape.

The referenced door is closed, and Daniel can hear music (something he can't recognize) and a little-girl voice singing along with it on the other side. He stands there for a long minute before knocking softly enough that she probably won't hear him (what's the matter, Daniel, afraid of a little girl?) The music cuts out. "Who is it?" Libby calls.

"It's Daniel," he says to the door, feeling a little silly. More than a little silly.

A second later, the door opens. Libby looks up at him soberly. "You can come in," she says.

"Ah, thank you," he says. The room is ... well, the parts that aren't purple are hot pink, and the parts that aren't hot pink or purple are glittery. Or have feathers. But at least it's tidy; there's nothing on the floor (which is, Daniel thinks, rather unusual -- he has little experience with the bedrooms of small girls, but he knows he remembers hearing various parents in the soft-sciences departments on Atlantis gripe about getting their children to clean their rooms, and Daniel thinks again about how JD and Cammie had both cautioned him against leaving anything where it could be tripped over, and knows that it's because of Cammie's injuries). He gets a grip of himself. He's here to deliver a present.

"You can sit at the table," Libby says, waving a hand. The table in question is sized for an eight-year-old -- everything in the room is -- and the chairs aren't exactly comfortable, but Daniel's sat in worse places; he gets himself down into one of them (they're wooden, at least, not plastic, and they don't have that uncomfortable bucket-seat scoop to them) with a modicum of wincing. Libby watches him, waiting until he's settled, and then sits down on the rug, a good four feet away from him, folding her feet up into lotus position and folding her hands into her lap. She's about as still as a statue.

"I brought you a present," Daniel says, when she seems content to just sit there and wait for him to say something. He bends to put the wrapped sculpture down on the rug in front of her. "It's awfully heavy, but I wanted to give it to you. I thought you'd like it. It's okay if you don't, though," he hastens to add. "I just saw it and thought of you."

Libby's eyes light up, and she moves to dive on it. Then stops herself before she can get more than partway through the lunge (Daniel holds himself very still when she moves) and modulates her action to reach for it more sedately. "Thank you," she says, before she even unwraps it, which Daniel finds charming. She unfolds the cloth, carefully -- it's a bolt of fabric that the Chechyenaba people of P3X-812 once threw in as lagniappe on one of SG-1's trade missions; Daniel probably shouldn't have taken it, but they still have hundreds of ells of the stuff even now in the trade-goods storeroom and nobody will miss it.

Daniel holds his breath (and is a little amused at himself to find he's doing it; it's just a present, but he does genuinely want her to like it) when she gets to the statue, but he doesn't have to wait long for a reaction. "It's a frog!" Libby says, delighted, and looks up at him. When she smiles like that, he thinks, conscious of a sudden pain in his chest, she looks exactly like JD. Like Jack. "You gave me a frog!"

"I figured that you shouldn't have to go all the way down to the lake to see your frogs," he says. "It was made a long time ago by a people called the Mixtec. They lived down in what's Mexico now. It's made out of jade, so you have to be careful with it, and that's why it's so heavy, but the Mixtec were some of the most skilled artisans of the time." He flushes, just a little. "Ah -- an artisan is --"

"Someone who makes things," Libby says, nodding along. "Pretty things. Like Grandpa and Uncle Roy and Uncle Bayliss made me my tables and my hope chest and Daddy made me my bed." She looks down at the sculpture, runs her hands over the top of it. "Do you think maybe some other little girl used to touch it like this? When she was little?"

Daniel's chest is aching. "I'm sure she did," he says. "The Mixtec word for 'frog' is la'va. And the word for 'girl' is li'li."

Libby giggles. "Li'li!" she says. "That sounds funny. But not as funny as Arabic does. The Arabic for 'girl' is binit. And 'frog' is dufda'a."

Daniel blinks. "Ibta'rafi arabi?" he blurts, automatically. You speak Arabic?

Libby nods, pigtails bouncing. "Mama u baba b'jerboo yahkoo gud'dami," she says. (Mama and Daddy try to talk in front of me.) "I know Spanish, too," she adds, back to English now. "They tried that first. After sign language, but that one was easy. They're onto Chinese now, and I only know a bit of that so far. It's not fair."

Daniel's head is spinning a little. He's always known that children who grow up hearing multiple languages spoken to them are excellent at sorting out which words and grammar belong to which language, and Libby's still just at the edges of the natural-language-acquisition window; of course JD and Cammie, if they wanted their daughter to grow up with a linguistic advantage, would try to give her as much language exposure as possible. Hadn't he ranted to Jack enough times about how any child exposed to multiple languages equally -- not just a single secondary language -- before the age of seven or eight, as he had been, would have an incredible linguistic advantage most children lack? "Ah, I guess it's important for your parents to be able to say things to each other that you can't hear," he tries. "Sometimes they might not want to worry you with things."

"It's still not fair," Libby says. She touches the frog again, examining the carving. "But I didn't say thank you! Thank you."

"You did," Daniel says. "And you're very welcome."

"Will you help me put it on my bookshelf?" Libby asks. "I'm not allowed to have things on the floor. But I want to be able to see it!"

Daniel stands up. (Slowly, and a bit creakily. The chairs are a bit tough to cram himself into.) "Sure," he says. "Why don't you show me where you want to put it?"

Libby stands, just as slowly and carefully. "Over here," she says, and leads him to a bookshelf that's overflowing with books. "Let me just --" She takes down a double handful of books, shoving them hither and yon; Daniel takes the obligatory look, as he has never been able to resist peering at someone else's bookshelves, and then blinks and looks again. A complete set of Twain's short stories, the complete Sherlock Holmes, the Qur'an, Bullfinch's Mythology, Shakespeare's plays, and a copy of Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms, mixed in with some thinner Young Adult titles. All of them much past her age level, even if not past her (presumed) reading level. (Oh, God, she'd been talking about Hamlet at dinner. Is she reading the original?)

"There," Libby says, proudly displaying the space she'd made for the frog. She steps sideways, giving him plenty of room. He sets the carving into the space she'd made for it. "Thank you," she says, again. "Is it --"

She stops, bites her lip. "Is it what?" Daniel asks.

She looks up at him, dubiously. "Is it okay if I give you a hug?" she asks. "To say thank you. Mama told me I shouldn't bother you, but you brought me a present."

There is absolutely no malice in her. And no danger, either. (She reminds him, a little, of some of the Athosian children, quiet and sober, adult before their time; childhood is a modern Earth concept, one not found anywhere else Daniel has been over the years.) "I think that would be okay," Daniel says. He kneels down next to the bookshelf, feeling his knees crack. She waits until he's done moving, and then steps close; she waits until he holds out his arms, and then comes up against him, putting her arms around his chest and tucking her head under his chin. She smells like soap, and strawberry shampoo, and like fresh air.

"Daddy said that a lot of bad things had happened to you," she says, against his chest. "But that you're home now and you'll let us take care of you. I'm glad you came to live with us. Mama and Daddy are good at taking care of me. They can take care of you, too. I'll help. I promise."

She's warm and soft and utterly unthreatening, and Daniel is helpless in the face of such an earnest declaration. Even if JD had apparently told his daughter about his little problem. (Although, honestly, Daniel can't blame him. It wouldn't be fair to Libby if -- something happened.) "Thank you," he says, quietly. "I --" Oh, God, what does he say? But he doesn't want to discourage her. Even if he hadn't promised Cammie he'd be gentle with her, this little miracle deserves to have her good opinion of the world preserved as long as possible. "I don't know how long I'll be living here, but I like it here already."

Saying it, he realizes that -- yes. He does. He feels awkward and not fit for human company and totally out of his depth (on Earth, with people), but he's been aware, since he stepped through the door -- since he stepped through the door for the first time -- that he feels calm and quiet here, almost comfortable. (Almost.) He's gone eight full hours -- five of them asleep, even, and yeah, okay, the dream sucked, but he's been having nightmares every time his eyes closed since he got back and at least this one he didn't wake up screaming from -- in this house and hasn't had to stave off panic once yet. That's very nearly a miracle.

Libby steps back, after one last squeeze of her arms. And Daniel thinks he should be uncomfortable with being touched, should be shying away from the contact -- he'd even almost twitched the few times Cammie touched him, the other night, and those were just the lightest of touches to his arm, fully telegraphed in advance -- but he finds himself thinking that an earnest hug from a little girl is -- quite nice, actually. He doesn't remember having ever been that innocent, but he resolves, right there and then, that he will move mountains and bury bodies to keep that innocence intact for as long as possible. "Are you gonna come sit zazen with me and Daddy tonight?" she asks him. "It's good to just be still for a while."

He could use a little bit of stillness in his life right about now. "I don't know," he says. "Maybe in a little while, okay?" He still can't picture JD and meditation in the same sentence. JD -- Jack -- always seemed as anti-mystic as they come. He wonders how it came about. And, well, he hates himself a little, but he's not above asking. "How long have you been doing it?"

Libby plonks herself back down on the carpet, tucks her legs up underneath her in the lotus position again, and reaches for the cloth he'd wrapped the frog in. He's about to tell her that he'll take it back with him so she doesn't have to worry about it when he realizes that she's examining it carefully, trying to see how it's put together; as he watches, she drapes it around her shoulders, and he realizes, a bit bemused, that he appears to have given her two presents. It isn't hot pink or purple -- it's a sedate series of tans and greys -- but it appears to be an acceptable cape. "Daddy started me sitting with him as soon as I knew I was an I," she tells him. "He's better at it than I am, though. He's been doing it forever."

'Forever', to a child, just means 'longer than I remember', Daniel knows, but that's still interesting. "Meditation is really common, actually," he says, thinking about all the cultures that have developed it over the years, thinking of a forest of candles set out underneath a mountain and the stillness of kel'no'reem. "The oldest religion --" on Earth, he thinks, but he doesn't say -- "that practices it is Vedic Hinduism, you know."

Libby brightens. "Like the Bhagavad Gita!" she says. "Mama read that to me."

"Like the Bhagavad Gita," Daniel agrees. (Privately, he wonders what else she's read. And whether or not Cammie skipped over the more -- adult parts.) "And most religions have some kind of meditation --"

He's a little startled when she doesn't interrupt him -- in his experience, most adults find one of his lectures boring -- but instead just listens as he lectures, playing with the edges of the fabric, and occasionally asks him a question. An intelligent question, one that indicates that she's actually listening, and the more he talks, the more she leans in closer to him, like she's listening with her whole body. It's nice, really. She seems interested, or at least not bored, and the more he talks, the more he finds himself relaxing.

Eventually, he hears the sound of whistling coming down the hallway (JD; wryly, Daniel wonders if JD is actually in the habit of whistling as he walks or if he's just trying to signal his approach; he can't quite bring himself to be embarrassed or offended, though). "Zazen time, bug," JD says, sticking his head in the door. He doesn't seem surprised to see Daniel sitting down on the carpet with Libby. "Then it's lights out, so say goodnight to Daniel now."

Libby turns to Daniel. "Goodnight, Daniel," she repeats, obediently. "Will you tell me more stories tomorrow? Please?"

"I'd love to," Daniel says, helpless before the request. "If your parents say it's okay."

Libby turns back to JD. "Can I, Daddy? Please? I promise to be good and ask Daniel if I'm being a pest first --"

"You're not a pest," Daniel says, quickly. Looks at JD. "She really isn't. I don't mind. Really."

JD nods. "If Daniel doesn't mind, then, yes. Now go light the incense. I'll be along in a minute."

Libby beams happily and gets up -- carefully, one part of Daniel notices -- to leave the room, still wearing the Chechyenaba cloth around her shoulders as a cape. The minute she's out the door, Daniel can hear the thudding footsteps of a child skidding down the hall. JD lingers in the doorway, looking down at Daniel. "Need a hand to get up?" he asks.

Daniel groans. "I think I might need a backhoe." But he pushes himself up without making JD come in to get him. "She's -- something else," he adds, as he climbs to his feet.

"Our little miracle," JD says, fondly. "She loved the frog, I'm sure. Did she say thank you?"

"Twice," Daniel says. "Or maybe three times." He bites his lip, looking for a way to say it. "She seems -- really smart."

JD snorts. "We're doing our best to keep her from noticing. If she doesn't think it's something unusual, she won't get weird about it. So we just play a lot of games." His eyes sweep over the room, over Daniel. "You sitting in on zazen with us? You're welcome to, you know."

It's the second time JD's invited him -- and the third time he's been invited, if you count Libby's artless query -- and he thinks that's a cue. But he doesn't think he can bear being in a closed room with incense and other people right now. "How about tomorrow?" he offers, instead. (How about never?)

JD just shrugs, one shoulder rising and falling. (Daniel is utterly fascinated by the way his tattoos move with him. It's excellent artwork.) "Sure. Up to you. Happy to teach, though. Or -- I'm sure you remember the trick."

From long nights spent with Teal'c (too few of them), he means, and Daniel knows it, and he suddenly needs to be up and out of JD's space. But JD is in between him and the door. He takes a deep breath (breathe) and settles his eyes on the fishtank on top of the dresser. "I didn't know you did," he says.

"Spent a while in residence at a Zen monastery up in the Pacific Northwest," JD says. "Back when. It helped. A lot." And it can help you, too, is the undercurrent, but JD doesn't say it.

Then he's stepping back, out of the doorway. "Mitchell's in the kitchen; I think she has coffee," he says, over his shoulder, as he turns to go. "If you don't feel up to it, don't feel like you have to. If I don't see you, sleep well and I'll catch you in the morning."

"Yeah," Daniel says. He waits until the sound of JD's footsteps have faded in the hallway to leave the room.

Cammie is in the kitchen -- he can hear her typing at the kitchen table -- and he smells coffee. He stands just outside the door for a minute, talking sternly to himself. Eventually, he tells himself that he can deal with five minutes, for politeness's sake. Five minutes, one cup of coffee, and then he can take the cup of coffee to his bedroom -- the bedroom -- and lock the door behind him.

She doesn't look up from her laptop when he comes in. "Bring over the pot when you pour yours, please an' thank you, I could use a refill," she says, absently.

Daniel pours himself a cup, brings it over to the table with the carafe. She already has the milk and sugar out with her. He refills her mug for her, which earns him another murmurred thank-you, and puts the pot back on the heater; she's still frowning at her laptop when he turns back --

And stops dead still. He hadn't noticed when he came in, or when he'd brought his mug and the pot over -- he'd been concentrating on his hands, making sure they wouldn't shake -- but the entire back wall, behind her, is semi-transparent. Floor to ceiling. It's snowing outside, lightly, the last gasps of a desultory March storm, and the floodlights catch the flurries and reflect them. It's --

There's a lot of outside out there.

He makes a noise. He must make a noise, because Cammie looks up, suddenly, and swears. Her hands fly over the keyboard; a second later, the wall turns opaque again, and looks exactly like it had looked earlier. He'd swear it was painted cream. (It looks like every other outside wall in this house. Fuck. Do all of them ...?)

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Cammie is chanting. She's pushing herself up from the table, and he shakes himself, once, sharply (like a dog shaking off water) and realizes that he's plastered himself back up against the counter. His hand is gripping the handle of the carafe again, hefting it like he's about to throw it. She holds her hands loose and open at her sides, not even holding her cane. "Daniel, baby, I am so sorry. I didn't think. I wanted to check the weather, an' I forgot to turn the windows back down."

"It's your house," Daniel says. His voice sounds distant in his own ears. "It's all right." (Breathe.)

"Dammit," Cammie says. "Come on, sit down. I'm sorry."

He looks down at the carafe in his hands. Replaces it on the burner, moving very slowly and deliberately (keeping Cammie in the corner of his field of vision; she's positioned herself, he thinks, so he can). "I'm okay," he says. A lie. She can see it's a lie, but what else did she expect? She knew he was in bad shape. (Yeah, the little voice taunts him. Bad enough shape to try to defend yourself from a window. Good going there.) "I'll just -- I can go and get my stuff and be out of here --"

"What?" Cammie blurts. Shuts her eyes. Opens them again. "Baby, please don't go anywhere. Please. Just c'mon over and sit down, an' I'll show you how the windows work, if you want. Or we can just drink coffee. There are cookies."

Something about the hint of upset in her voice penetrates the adrenaline haze. She doesn't sound angry at him. She sounds angry at herself. He looks up at her, and his confusion must be written in his eyes, because she nods, once, and then (wincing visibly) pulls herself back up into the chair she'd been sitting in. She closes her laptop and sets it aside. "Please," she repeats, and Daniel takes a step (intending to go and pack his things; dammit, he should have known he wasn't fit for civilized company) and then another and a few steps later he realizes he's standing next to one of the chairs, trying to keep an eye on both her and the walls (windows) all at once.

"They're programmable," Cammie says, quietly, watching him. "Everything from full walls to traditional window-sized windows to completely transparent. We were gonna keep 'em as walls until you were feeling a little better."

And it all crashes over him. "Oh, God, I shouldn't be here," he says. "I shouldn't be anywhere. I shouldn't be anywhere near people -- you shouldn't have to -- to coddle me -- I shouldn't be anywhere where I could hurt someone --"

Cammie picks up her mug of coffee. Holds it in both hands, moving slowly and carefully (dammit) to drink from it, sets it back down again. "You listen to me, Daniel Jackson," she says, firm and unyielding, for all that it's gentle. "I would not let you into my house with my daughter if I thought you were a danger. An' neither would Nielson. You're a lot jumpy an' a lot fucked up right now, an' that is not your fault, an' I don't wanna hear one more word about you leaving, all right?"

"You don't know that," Daniel insists. His knuckles are white where they're gripping the back of the chair. "You don't know me --"

But JD does. And doesn't. (Thirteen years since he's seen Jack. Fifteen since he saw Jack's clone -- not JD then, not JD yet. A hell of a lot can change in fifteen years.)

"I know what I need to know," Cammie says. "I know the important things. I know you're worth it."

"No, you don't," Daniel says. One hot rush of words. She can't know that about him, and she can't know how bad it is, and she can't know how much time and effort helping him -- if she even can help him, which he doubts; he doubts anyone can help him -- will be.

Cammie cocks her head, looking at him. "Are you gonna stand there an' call me a liar?" she asks.

It feels like she's punched him in the stomach. "Cammie, I --"

She shakes her head. "No," she says. Still gently, but still with that iron-steel core. "You listen to me, all right? You listen to me, and you believe me, because I have never lied to someone who lives underneath my roof and I'm not gonna start with you. They fucked you up but good, baby, and it's not right and it's not fair, but it's nothing to be ashamed of. Any more than I oughta be ashamed of missing three toes, or about this." She tugs the collar of her tank top down a little more, tips her head back, traces the thin white line of her tracheotomy scar, lets her fingers trail down to the top of the thick ropy scar between her breasts. "Just so happens that your scars ain't as visible. That don't make them less real. And you don't get to be ashamed of them, or think they make you less of a decent human being. Only thing you gotta be ashamed of is if you push away people who can and will help you."

"It's all in my head," Daniel says, low and vicious. Ashamed of himself. Ashamed of his reactions. Ashamed of the tears that are gathering in the back of his throat, of the way his breath is high and tight in his chest, of the way he's still ready to jump out of his fucking skin if something so much as moves wrong around him.

Cammie shakes her head again. "No," she corrects. "It's in your brain. It's not in your head. In your head means it's imaginary. In your brain means it's chemicals and bad experiences. You look at me, Daniel Jackson." She waits until he does. Her eyes are incredibly blue, and incredibly brutal, and the kindest he's ever seen. "This is not imaginary, and it's not shameful, and it's not impossible to deal with. You just gotta know what you're doing. And we do."

"I --" Daniel doesn't have any words. He can't have any words. He's spent his entire life living and sometimes dying by words, and right now, he couldn't put two of them together if there were a gun at his head.

Of course, if there were a gun at his head, he could make the person shoot him and this could all be over.

"My cousin came back from Pakistan and lived in the attic for two months," Cammie says. Her voice has gotten very neat and precise; she's lost the drawl she usually carries around with her. "My uncle spent seven years as a POW in Vietnam and for ten years couldn't stand being anywhere near the smell of cooking fish without going into flashbacks. You are not the first person in the history of the world to have this problem, and you are not going to be the last, and you are not broken because of it, and you are not fucked up beyond repair. You are hurting. The fact that you are still worried about hurting other people means that there's still a you in there. And this is somewhere you can find him again."

Daniel turns away. He can't face down that edged compassion. Can't face the thought of what she's saying, and so he lashes out, knowing he's doing it, hearing himself, hating himself. "So I guess you're the bad cop, then, right? JD invites me to live with you, you yell at me until I listen?"

Cammie sighs. Picks up her mug of coffee again. "No," she says, against it, and the drawl has started to creep back into her voice, which has taken on an overlay of exhaustion. "We'll both talk with you whenever you want. Or leave you completely alone. Baby, we will give you as much or as little help as you're ready to take from us. We're not here to be your therapists, or your parents, or your guardians. We're here to be your friends, and a safe space where you can catch up on your sleep, get a whole bunch of good meals, and see if you can find your still small voice again."

Daniel laughs, one harsh sharp bark. He can't not; he lifts his hands to his face and scrubs at it. "Yeah, you know, the problem isn't so much listening to the still small voice as getting it to shut up," he says. But it's more weary now, and he can hear it. The adrenaline burst is wearing off; right now he just feels tired. (And ashamed.) "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Apology accepted," Cammie says, quietly. "You're gonna say worse. An' I'm gonna say worse right back. You can say anything you want to say to me, Daniel, at any time, at all. As long as you're kind to Libby."

"Oh, God, yes," he says. "I -- she -- you --" He runs out of words. Turns around again. She's watching him, carefully but not at all warily, and he feels tired and stupid and slow. "I'm sorry, Cammie," he says, and this time he almost means it. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm saying. I don't even know how to start to fix this."

Her eyes never leave his. "Do you want to?"

"What the hell kind of a question is that?" Daniel blurts. "I -- of course I want to fix this. I --" Want to be able to face the thought of leaving the house without panic; want to be able to see motion in the corner of his eye and not reach for a sidearm he isn't ever going to carry again; want to be able to see the outside and not have to sit down and breathe into a paper bag. Want to be able to sleep the night through. (Want to be able to live without having to look over his shoulder for the men in the white coats or the NID or the IOA or whatever three-letter agency they use these days to handle people who have become a liability.)

"When Nielson first knocked on my door," she says, "I was about three days away from deciding it was time to give up and die. Had to close all my meds away in the kitchen cabinet so I didn't see them there tempting me. It took him, oh, about four months to talk me into rejoining the human race again. And I'm not gonna lie to you, Daniel, you're much worse off than I ever was, an' it's gonna be that much harder for you. I won't pretend this is gonna be easy. It's gonna be a hell of a lot of hard work, and it's gonna be mostly inside your head, and you're gonna be the only one who can say whether or not you're trying hard enough, because Nielson and I get accused of telepathy an awful lot but we don't actually read minds. You gotta decide, right now or soon enough, that you care about yourself enough to put the work in. Because I can tell you right now: I do. And so does Nielson. Hell, so does Libby, even though she doesn't know what happened or what's wrong with you, just that you went through a lot of the same things as her Uncle Ash or her Uncle Patrick or her Uncle Spence. We, all three of us, give a shit about you."

He's about to protest that they have no reason to. She holds up her hand to stop him. "Don't say it," she says, quietly. "Yes, I met you a little over a week ago. But I know you a hell of a lot better than you know me, and you know why."

And yeah. She does. And he knows why.

(There's a man sitting in the other room who is-and-was-and-maybe-always-will-be his best friend in this world or any other, and his best friend is dead -- they buried him a week ago -- and he hadn't seen Jack for thirteen years before then, and he knows that if Jack had seen him face to face in the latter half of those thirteen years, if Jack had been able to look into his eyes and see this, Jack would have hit him over the head and kidnapped him to that damn cabin in Minnesota and made him deal with this before it got this bad, and dammit, that's why he never came back on leave until it was far too late. Except it isn't. Or is it?)

"I care about you," Cammie repeats. "Nobody should have to go through any of this alone. And I wasn't ever under that Mountain, but I was close enough to by God know how it works: you let someone else carry the weight for you when it's gotten too hard to carry it on your own. And he owes you a hell of a lot, and his debts are mine and always will be. You have a home here. You have a family here. You have help here, and you always will, and you just have to decide it's all right to take it. You haven't yet."

Another near-protest. Another hand held up, signaling stop, as easily as though she'd said it. His head is reeling; he feels bruised and fragile and sore. "I know you're here," she says. "And believe me, I know exactly how much that cost your pride, and I know the only reason you agreed to it is because Nielson bullied you into it. And I'm glad he did, and I hope he'll keep doing it. You're worth every damn inch of the effort, Daniel, and you will be the whole way. We all owe each other a whole heap of loving kindness. Just so happens you're in need of more of it than most. And it's there for you for the asking, and even if you don't know how to ask. You don't believe anything else I've said to you, you believe that."

Then she's pushing herself out of her chair again, limping painfully over to the counter with her cane in one hand and her mug of coffee in the other, taking one last sip before she dashes the liquid out in the sink. She limps back, unplugging her laptop cord, coiling it around her left hand. "Breakfast's at seven," she says. "If you sleep late, I'll leave a basket of muffins in the oven for you. There's a white noise generator on the shelf in your closet if you think it'll help. Sleep well, baby. I'm glad you're here."

She tucks the laptop under her left arm and makes her way out of the room, circling around Daniel on the way, and he can't think of a thing to say to stop her as she goes.