Looking back now, I find it hard to imagine the way that I was feeling at the time. If I was feeling anything, that is. The primary thing that leaps to mind when I recall that time in my life is the numbness, the sense that I would wake up some time soon and it would all just be a terrible dream. But time went on and I didn't wake up. They say you never know what you've got till it's gone, and those words have burned in my heart for the past two years, for a variety of reasons. I don't believe that I'm still the person I was back then, so sometimes looking back is like watching some movie, watching someone else speak lines that are horribly familiar, but not recognising the man who speaks them. When they came, the men in uniform, for the first time, something inside me grasped at what they were offering like I was drowning. I guess I was. I needed something to take away the numbness, to give me a much-needed reason to carry on living - I sure as hell couldn't think of one on my own. So, when they came, I tidied myself up for the first time in days, maybe weeks, and went where I was told to go. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Another secure underground base. I'd been in so many of those that I hardly needed anyone to show me where to go - the layout varies very little, I've found. The further down you go, the more important the work, that seems to be the general rule. What was I letting myself in for this time? I didn't know anything of what I might be asked to do, as the men sent to get me were under orders to tell me nothing, and I wasn't expecting anything more from them. I'd been there myself, had been one of those men, so I knew not to even ask. All that seemed clear was that this was a suicide mission, and that was fine by me. I had nothing to live for anyway. That sounds really stupid and self-centred now, when I think of it. I'd left behind my wife, who I loved dearly - she was hurting as much as me, but I just couldn't see it then. All I could see was my guilt, my responsibility, both of which blinkered me to any consideration that anyone else on the entire planet might possibly be hurting as much as I was. Throwing myself into a suicide mission seemed a really good idea, and that's got to give you a clue about where I was at the time. Isn't hindsight wonderful? If I knew then what I know now, I wonder how differently I'd have behaved, whether I would have done anything some other way, looked for alternatives? Probably not. It's a waste of time to ponder those kind of things, I've always thought. I once heard it described, by someone much cleverer than me, as the 'tyranny of the oughts', all those things you ought to have done differently, ought to have said differently, but you never did. Go too far down that particular road, and it'll make you crazy. So, do I regret the way things went? Sure. Would I have done things differently? Maybe. And that's all I'm prepared to say. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Civilians. God save me from them. Give me the structure of the military any day. At least, in amongst the rules and hierarchy, the mindless bureaucracy, you know where you are. You know who's in charge and who isn't, the way things can and can't be done - that's a comforting thing when you've been in the kind of situations I've been in. Not that I haven't ridden roughshod over the rulebook myself more than once in a while, but that's another matter.... So, I found myself in a room full of them. I had an idea what this whole project was about, and I knew some of the names from their dossiers, but nothing could have prepared me for the chaos I was stepping into. I saw the way they looked at me when I walked in, saw the pigeon-holing start the moment they saw my haircut. I'd been in similar situations before, and knowing how their minds were working gave me the control. They were all alike. Tweed jackets, sensible clothes, normal haircuts. I guess that's why I noticed him at first. There was something about him that wasn't just how he was dressed. It was something in his eyes. A certain life and light that the others, as intelligent as they might well be, just didn't have. Might never have had either. Except maybe the grey-haired woman, who seemed to be in charge - there was something similar going on in her eyes, so similar that for a moment I suspected they might be related or something. It was the light of discovery I suppose now, thinking back - it was probably the same light that was in Archimede's eyes when he came flying out of his bath shouting 'Eureka', before running naked down the street. This one young man had solved the puzzle, to the annoyance of the others in the room, and his elation was evident. Such an innocent though. He made me feel ancient, all the wounds I had received in the service of my country, wounds I'd got while he was still in school, seemed to begin to ache. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Why? Why the hell did he have to do that? I kept thinking, over and over again. I was career military, I'd seen people die before, in more appalling ways than I dared to start remembering, but nothing had prepared me for that. He was a civilian, for god's sake, so it was my job to keep him safe - it wasn't up to him to protect me. We weren't even friends, so I couldn't even use that as an excuse. It was just who he was. Someone whose first thought was to save another human being from harm, even if it cost him his own life. Someone who would do that for someone who he knew didn't even like him. No hesitation, no thought, just action. I was ashamed of myself for the things I'd thought about him, the things I'd said, the things that I'd let my men say. Later, I would come to see that this was no one-off gesture. It was Daniel, it was in his nature. Despite all the terrible things that had happened to him to date, let alone those still waiting for him in the future, this was the kind of man he was. And I envied him for it. I'd written him off too early, I discovered later. Some contraption of Ra's was able to bring him back to life, to give me a second chance, a chance to make up for what he'd chosen to do for me. But at the time I just felt devastated, torn apart in a way I never thought I'd feel again. Why? Surely it was just another in a long list of pointless deaths I'd witnessed at close quarters.... Even as I knelt there, in the raging heat of the Abydos sun, kneeling in the certainty that a painful death was coming to me and my men, his was the last face I expected to see. But there he was, unkempt as ever, heading down the stone ramp towards us, one of those alien staff-weapons gripped a little unsteadily in his hands. I knew then what Ra wanted him to do, the price he was being asked to pay to assure his loyalty - all of this passed between us in an unspoken moment. For myself, I felt nothing. After all, one way or another, I had come to this desert planet thousands of light years away looking for a grand gesture, one last way of serving my country, laying down a life which no longer had any meaning for me. But for my men, and for what such an act would do to Daniel, I felt something - it was that which prompted me to look up at the face of our would-be executioner as he came towards us. I wouldn't beg, though - nothing Ra could do to me would give him the satisfaction of seeing me crawl for even a scrap of mercy from that creature. I knew that none would be forthcoming, and I saved my breath. That was when I saw it. Just a flash, the merest glint of light, reflecting off the lens of Daniel's glasses. The momentary hesitation as it hit his eyes, that made me realise he saw it too, and my brain lept to the conclusion that help was somehow on the way. Even in rescuing us, Daniel couldn't shoot to kill. I never wanted that to change. Since then, time and circumstance have forced a terrible change upon my peaceable friend, a change I hate to contemplate, and that change has diminished us all. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Coming back seemed more than strange. I'd never expected to set foot on Earth again, in fact I'd planned to go out in the proverbial blaze of glory. Giving my life for my country, my planet, and destroying its biggest threat so far at the same time. What more could any soldier ask for? There wouldn't be enough of me left for a military funeral, of course, even if there were some way to go back to that planet, but there were very few people left to mourn my passing anyway, so that didn't really matter to me. It was as though I'd been given a second chance at life, and I didn't know what to do with myself. Somewhere along the line Sara had left me - I'd left her in all but body when Charlie died, so I couldn't find it in my heart to hate her for it. She'd been suffering too, and I hadn't thought of her for a moment, so what right did I have to ask her for another chance? In the next two years, I had a lot of time to think. The military didn't have the same appeal - I was getting older, and my skills didn't fit in so well to what was happening. I've always been something of a warrior, and there seemed to be little use for that in the future - computers were clearly the way the military was going, and I didn't want to be any part of that. So I retired. Spent my days pottering about and thinking, my nights studying the stars. I'd always been interested in astronomy, even from when I was a child. It was somewhere I could escape, imagining myself out there amongst the galaxies, away from the realities of life. And now I had another reason to be interested - I had been out there in person, far from the planet I was born on, somewhere I'd always imagined being, but had never dreamed would happen. And if my telescope ended up aimed towards a part icular area of space, looking for one star more than any other, who was to know? Sometimes I wondered what it was like for Daniel, there on Abydos. Sometimes I envied him, sometimes I missed him. Ridiculous, right? I hardly even knew the man, and I was missing him? Occasionally someone would phone, maybe Ferretti or Kawalsky, and we'd talk about what had happened. Not too much, and not in detail, in case someone was listening. Paranoia has been a constant companion for me, and has saved my life on a few occasions, so I wasn't about to change my way of life that much. When I looked up at the stars, I wondered what Daniel was doing. Whether he was happy there, whether I should have let him stay, as if I could have made Daniel do anything he didn't want to.... I wondered if he looked up at the stars too. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Then they came again, the men in uniform. In the night, this time, while I was up with my telescope, staring off into space. Not looking in Daniel's direction - it was the wrong time of year, and the star I thought of as his star wouldn't be visible for a few more hours. "I'm Major Samuels," the oiliest one said, interrupting my studies. "Air Force?" I asked, not bothering to look up - I knew the answer already. "Yes, sir. I'm the General's executive officer," he replied. "Want a little piece of advice, sir? Get reassed to NASA. It's where all the actions going to be. Out there." Finally I looked up at them, they asked me to accompany them and mentioned the Stargate project, so I figured it was a good idea to go. Back in the base, I could see that nothing had changed in the past two years - everything had been put into mothballs, as far as I could tell, but apart from that it all looked the same. Finally I was ushered into the general's office. Behind the desk a compact man with receding reddish hair looked up at me. If I was stupid, I'd have dismissed him as not being a threat, but Mrs O'Neill never raised any stupid children - his eyes alone were enough to tell me this man was someone to be reckoned with, someone who had become a general the hard way. "General Hammond, Colonel Jack O'Neill," the oily guy, Samuels introduced us. "Retired," I added, when he finished speaking. "I can see that," the general said, a southern drawl coming across clearly. He was trying to be nice, play it friendly, one career soldier to another - from the moment Hammond started speaking, I was suspicious. How much did he know? How much did he suspect? Or was I just being paranoid again? "Me, I'm on my last tour. Time to start getting my thoughts together, maybe write a book." Hammond was still talking, and I disciplined my mind to pay attention to the man. "You ever think of writing a book about your exploits in the line of duty?" he asked, looking up at me from where he sat behind his desk. "Ah, I've thought about it," I said, "But then I'd have to shoot anyone that actually read it." Silence greeted my remark. "That's a joke, sir." It was then he got down to business, like I'd been waiting for, taking me down into the infirmary to look at a corpse - at least, that was what I found out I was there for when we got there. "Anyone you know, Colonel?" Hammond asked, fixing me with the palest blue eyes I've ever seen "They're not human," prompted a doctor who was examining the corpse in question. He seemed out to try and impress the brass and I couldn't let that one lie. "Ya think?" I drawled, for the benefit of all present. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Then Hammond finally cut to the chase, telling me some story about aliens coming through the 'Gate - seems they'd killed a number of airmen and gone back through the 'Gate dragging another along with them. At first I wondered what that had to do with me, then Hammond started saying the alien's eyes had glowed - this wasn't even hearsay, Hammond had seen it himself. It felt for a moment as though my world had been turned upside down. How could Ra still be alive? We blew up his ship, we watched it explode in the atmosphere, and nothing could have survived that, alien or not. But if Hammond was telling the truth, and despite my paranoia, I had no reason to think otherwise, then what the hell was going on? Hammond was talking again, asking me something, and I dragged my mind back from my pondering to listen. "Are you sure he's dead, Colonel?" the general was saying. I felt a small stupid smile attach itself to my face, as I came up with a snappy answer. "Unless he can survive a tactical nuclear warhead blown up in his face, positive." He doesn't know, I thought, he might suspect that my report didn't tell the whole story, but that's all they are - suspicions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From there on it was downhill - the general had suspicions alright, and he was determined to test them out, to test me out and see what he could find. "You didn't like Daniel Jackson, did you?" the general asked, looking hard at me. "Daniel was a scientist. He sneezed a lot. Basically he was a geek, sir." That was leaving a lot out, just about anything that made Daniel special, and I knew it. What business was it of theirs anyway what I thought of Daniel? That was between me and him, and I had no intention of spreading it all out for them to look at. "So you didn't have a lot of time for him," Samuels sneered, and I sort of lost it. "I didn't say that. He also saved my life and found the way home for my men and me. A little thing like that kinda makes a person grow on you, if you know what I mean." I doubted that he did. Samuels struck me as someone who had never really risked anything, so how could he understand the debt that I owed Daniel? That Daniel was the person I had thought more about over the past two years, apart from Sara and Charlie? He couldn't, and I had no intention of letting him even suspect that something more than he knew was there. The next thing I knew, we were in the 'Gate room, and the general was planning to do something terrible, something that I had to stop. Not just for Daniel's sake, but for all the people on Abydos, I couldn't let them send that device through. Last time, we had only killed Ra and his guards - this time it would be genocide, and I for one couldn't live with that on my conscience. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, I confessed. Told the general that, while the report I'd written after the Abydos mission was essentially true, it didn't tell the whole story. He was a big enough man not to gloat, I'll give him that, but I didn't miss the satisfied look he gave me either. He had won, his suspicions were confirmed as truth, but he wasn't going to rub salt in the wound either. So we sent an unorthodox kind of probe through the 'Gate, one which told Daniel exactly who was sending it without a word being exchanged. All I hoped was that he was around to receive it, to understand who it was from, and know that, after all this time, he was about to get visitors. "Now what?" Hammond asked. "Now we wait," I said, sounding more confident than I felt. "If Daniel's still around he'll know what the message means." "So what if the aliens get it?" That was Samuels, intelligent as ever. "Well, they could be blowing their noses right now." I couldn't resist another gibe, hard as I might try. "They could be planning an attack," Samuels said, jumping back at me. "Oh, come on, Samuels. Let me be the cynic around here, ok?" Then we waited. And waited. All the time I was thinking about Daniel, about Skaara, the others we had left behind on Abydos - with a little help from us, they had overthrown their god, and had it all been for nothing? Were we even going to get a reply? For all we knew, Abydos was little more than a smoking pile of ruins, filled with the corpses of the people we had left behind. Whoever it was who had come through the 'Gate, and I refused to believe it was Ra, despite all evidence to the contrary, I knew the Abydonians would not have given in easily. After thousands of years as slaves, the seeds of freedom had been planted too deep to be rooted up easily. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, after all that, the box came back. Covered in the frost from its transit through the 'Gate, the words Thanks. Send More written on the side. That was Daniel alright, no doubt about it. And that was the start of it all again. I was back on active duty, back with Ferretti and Kawalsky, back stepping through the Stargate once again. This time it would be different, this time we had our orders - find out what was going on and bring Daniel back with us. He wouldn't like that idea, I knew that without even giving it a second thought, but orders were orders, this time anyway. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was like stepping back in time, coming through the Stargate into that chamber again. Except this time it was occupied, by Daniel and his 'boys', who were guarding it 36 hours a day, or so he later said. I guess that I'd thought about what it might be like, going back to Abydos, even though I knew there was no way I could make it happen. But in my dreams I had visited there more than once, just checking up, you know what I mean? Daniel may have saved my life, but there was something about him that made me feel responsible for his well-being, even when galaxies separated us. And now I was really there, I didn't know what to do, what to say. Not a problem I've faced too often in my life, I have to admit. What do you say anyway, to someone you've thought so much about, without it sounding stupid? At the moment I saw him, I couldn't think of a single thing. All I could think was how right Daniel looked, how at home, and about the way I'd worried about him, his ability to be a part of this strange new world. This time he was the one welcoming strangers to his planet. "Hello. Jack," that was all he said, looking at me with those eyes that seemed to know exactly what was going on inside my head, if only he could put his mind to it. Then I saw Skaara and recognised a chance to avoid embarassing myself by saying something inane. As I pushed past Daniel to get to Skaara, I saw something flicker in the blueness of Daniel's eyes, something that looked like hurt, but I purposefully ignored it. I embraced Skaara like he was the one I had been thinking about all those nights watching the stars, putting my heart into greeting him as if that way I'd start believing all I felt for Daniel was the same kind of friendship I felt for this kid. Didn't work. Damn. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So many things changed in the next couple of days. Daniel lost something important, a home and a family like he had seemed never to before - I saw the way the Abydonians said their farewells to him, touching him like they wanted a piece of him to keep in their hearts in his place. He was a part of them, in a way he had never truly seemed a part of anywhere else. There was something there in his eyes, a certain coldness, a quiet desperation I had seen so many times before in the eyes of men and women who had gone to war. That look was so incongruous with the man I knew, that it makes me shiver a little to think about it. Daniel has always been single-minded, that's both his greatest gift and his worst character flaw rolled into one, but this was different. This was the look of a man who is slowly drowning and knows he is going down - each time he goes below the surface, he doesn't know if he will breathe again. All I could hope, as we returned to the SGC, was that Daniel could keep on breathing, keep on looking, and that I could give him whatever help he needed. On reflection, what more could any friend do? ~fin~

Disclaimer : Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is written for entertainment purposes only - no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story-line are the property of the author - not to be archived elsewhere without permission.