Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Letting the Days Go By

One of the things he found they'd all gotten used to so early on was how organic or simple some of the incredible pieces of technology they'd found looked from the outside. Lasers that could pulverize hundreds of people in one flash looked scarcely more complex than battery powered nightlights. Mind reading devices looked like light up stickers. That quantum mirror looked like a mirror with nothing but a children's toy to control it.

Occasionally, when training new recruits, something that fell to him more and more often, Daniel encountered someone who was convinced that every box, stick, smooth stone, and tablet was exactly what it looked like. It was usually a sign that they would wash out. What good did it do to recruit someone fluent, at least, as fluent as anyone could be coming from academia and not having made it through the 'gate yet, in ancient languages when they couldn't use any imagination. He was thinking of making a sort of test where he handed potential newbies a rock and waited to see if they could come up with twenty ways it might kill them. If they could make it past “getting knocked on the head” to dream up things like “secretly it's a pod of killer insects” or “produces a low level energy field that makes you go slowly insane” then they'd be hired. Fluency in goa'uld could be taught, after all. People who threw valuable tech into boxes because they were sure it was junk were probably untrainable.

That's why Daniel expected to get into a minor battle with Sam over the box they turned up on P3X-722. It was an abandoned planet and the box was left in a sort of warehouse of artifacts, probably things from the 'gate that the inhabitants left decades ago when they fled, probably from a goa'uld invasion, so there was no telling what the origins really were, though Daniel had a hunch it was Ancient, just from the organic look of the design. It looked almost like a large polished rock with a top, though it was light, almost like picking up pumice when you expect to get granite.

Sam had almost no interest in some box though. “All yours, Daniel. Did you see this?” She held up a round tube with all kinds of interesting wires.

“That looks like it might be that big honkin' space gun we've been waiting for, Carter,” Jack said.

“I'm not totally sure where the energy creation is coming from, sir,” she said, “but it's got some sort of perpetual power source that I think does have a lot of potential.”

“Excellent,” Jack said. “Space guns. Seems like a day well spent.”

Daniel half scowled, half rolled his eyes at Jack's single-mindedness, but no one objected to loading up the box along with dozens of loose paper files that might have held some clues to some of the things they found, so he didn't have anything to complain about.

Two weeks, and one errant mission spent wallowing in mud while they took endless soil samples in search of a trinium vein on a planet infested with biting butterflies, Daniel finally got to look over the box again.

Beth Martins was his new assistant. He hated having them, especially because it seemed to be nothing but a stepping stone to getting stuck on bigger projects once they'd mastered some of the various alien writing systems. Still, when they were as organized as Beth, he didn't mind so much. She had carefully sorted everything from the last several weeks into “things Daniel will want to play with before they leave for warehousing” and “things Daniel can get over not being able to play with before they leave for warehousing.” She actually labeled them that way too, which had gotten an actual, honest to goodness laugh from Jack, who had seen the now semi-permanent signs Beth put up in Daniel's lab.

He told her she probably had a future in managing over-enthusiastic anthropologists, but Daniel knew she had her sights set on a gate team. She already had goa'uld mastered and was working on getting up to something near Daniel's basic level of Ancient.

Jack was supposed to come by and check on his progress with half a dozen projects, but he hadn't shown up. Lately, Jack hadn't been as much of a fixture in Daniel's lab, which was both a huge relief not to worry what he might rearrange or mess with next and a bit of a disappointment when Daniel had realized it. Things with Jack had seemed strained lately and he wasn't sure if it was something he'd done or not. Jack was hard to figure out sometimes. Deceptively complex, Daniel supposed. Yet, he was a little afraid to put more time into the friendship. It might just encourage him to come break something in his lab.

He tried to put Jack out of his mind. A few days with no active missions meant lots of paperwork and projects could be caught up on. Daniel was hoping to finally get a chance to explore the box he'd brought back and he knew Beth was eager to watch.

“How's the Ancient coming?” he asked her.

Beth was short and mousy and very quiet whenever there were too many military people in the room. Daniel noted that she needed to get over that if she was ever going to get anywhere in the SGC. It had taken a good two weeks before she stopped jumping slightly every time Daniel addressed her. She was much more relaxed with him now, but she still looked nervous every time the military guys came in the lab, especially if they were well-known around the Mountain like Jack was.

“Okay,” she said. “I've been studying. Jan… that is, Dr. Aggarwal, was helping me. You should come out to trivia night with us some time. We had to stop going to the pub downtown. Some of the security guys didn't like us all drinking and, well, talking too much. You know. But Dr. Aggarwal runs it at his house now. It's really fun.”

He'd heard vaguely about his department's trivia night. That there were enough of them for large social gatherings kept surprising him. He'd recruited them all. And now they were a little clan. “Yeah, I should, I guess.” But he didn't think he would. He was sure he'd be welcome. He didn't know what was holding him back, he just knew he wouldn't follow up. Making himself socialize was always an uphill battle on some level, but it felt like an even bigger one lately.

He looked at the box. Sam had cleared it as “probably safe.” But there was something about it that made him curious. He was sure it was Ancient, but he couldn't figure out the purpose. Or why it had been saved by that other planet.

“What do you think of this?” he asked Beth.

“It's Ancient, I think. None of the symbols on the box are words from what I can tell though.”

He nodded encouragingly. “Just what I thought too. But what do you think?”

Beth stole a look at him, clearly trying to figure out what was the right thing to do or say to impress. “Um,” she said, “A code? It looks stylistically like Ancient but it isn't quite Ancient script. Maybe a related language? Or maybe accepted symbols like our skull and crossbones for poison? Did you notice the scratches?”

She went over to point out the subtle markings to Daniel. They were like little, almost unnoticeable dots around the box. “Seven,” Daniel observed, counting them up. “Maybe. It does seem to be a number the Ancients were fond of, though so are we, lucky seven and all. Or it could just be a coincidence.”

He began systematically going over the box. Seven little vials, almost like hourglasses. And there were lines. He pulled on gloves so he could touch.

“Hey, you got a sec?” Jack poked his head into the lab.

“Sure, just give me a minute,” Daniel said. As he ran his fingers over the lines at the edge of the box, something began to appear.

“Whoa! Do you see that?” Beth asked.

It was unmistakably words. Daniel cocked his head, thinking, trying to translate. “Something about seeking enlightenment. That might be ascension, though it doesn't say ascension. And walking in someone's footsteps. Walking a, it must be a measure of distance. Tracking maybe? Tracking someone?”

“It seems very colloquial,” Beth observed.

“You don't really know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes,” Jack quoted.

“Huh,” Daniel said. He ran his fingers along the side where the dots were. Suddenly all seven of the little vials tilted and he could see a sort of greenish liquid pour into them. “Um, guys...”

There was a flash of blinding light and he didn't know anything else.

Chapter Text

This is Not My Beautiful Wife

He was disoriented, but he knew the feel and smell of the infirmary all too well. The ache in his head told him he'd ended up there yet again.

“Don't move just yet,” Daniel heard Dr. Frasier's voice as he struggled to sit up and open his eyes.

“What happened?” Daniel asked, pulling himself into a sitting position, hugging his knees to him in the bed despite being told not to.

“As far as we can tell, that thing you opened simply knocked you out. Do you feel any different?”

“You mean other than the raging headache?” His head was pounding. It felt like he'd gotten a massive hangover without any of the pleasures of getting drunk. The light in the room was too bright as well. Definitely a migraine.

“Anything else seem unusual?” Janet asked, coming to hover over him, shining a light in his eyes and checking his pulse.

Daniel winced away from the light. “I don't think so. How long was I out?”

“Not long, less than an hour. I've barely had time to run any tests, but as far as I can tell everything is normal.”

“I guess that's a relief,” Daniel sighed. He was coming to himself more, shaking off whatever that box had done to him. Other than the headache, he didn't feel any side effects, though he had a sinking feeling about it, mostly because he suspected Janet would keep him there for much longer than seemed necessary. At the moment, he just wanted to crawl somewhere dark and take a nap. If he'd been out for an hour, it was nearly time to go home anyway.

One of the nurses came in, handing Dr. Frasier a report of some kind. She glanced at it and said, “Well, bloodwork all normal. I'll get you something for that headache, but then you should go home and get some rest.”

“Really?” Daniel had trouble hiding his surprise.

“I can keep you longer if you want,” Dr. Fraiser said, raising her eyebrows. “But I suspect I'd get an earful about it.” She gave him the sort of knowing smile that Daniel was sure was supposed to be a small joke between them though he wasn't quite sure why it would be funny that he'd complain to be stuck there. “Just be sure to call me if you experience any other symptoms.”

“Sure,” Daniel said.

Janet left and came back with water and pills for Daniel's pounding head, which he downed immediately.

“How's he doing, Doc?”

Daniel turned to see Jack in the doorway of the infirmary. He smiled. There was something so comforting about the way Jack always checked in on every scrape and scratch his team got.

“He seems fine,” Janet said. “If you'll excuse me, I've got to go deal with SG-3.” She hurried out of the infirmary room.

“I thought SG-3 were on standdown,” Daniel said, sliding out of the bed.

“They came in hot from 782,” Jack said.

“Oh,” Daniel said, rubbing his hands over his face and hair, which went spiky as he brushed his hands through it and then flat as he smoothed it down. “I must be misremembering. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“Never a dull moment. Can't even open a box without excitement around here,” Jack said.

“I hope I didn't scare Beth too much,” Daniel said.

“Who?”

Daniel slid down out of the bed. “Dr. Martins,” he said. “What did you do with the box?”

“I put Carter on it. She's got it in some machine, running some tests.”

“Humph,” Daniel said. “I knew she'd get interested in it.” His head was too foggy to care much, but Jack immediately picked up on the rivalry.

“It's not a contest to see who can get knocked out by the most artifacts, Daniel,” he said.

Standing up didn't help Daniel's headache and he had a momentary spell of wooziness before he steadied himself.

“Sure you're okay there?”

“Yeah. If the tiny tyrant released me, I think we can safely say I'll be okay.”

“You okay to drive?”

“You don't need to drive me, Jack,” Daniel said. “I'll be fine. Home isn't far.”

“I wasn't offering,” Jack said mildly. “I just didn't want to get in trouble with the other tyrant if you got in an accident. But if you're determined… just be sure to get some rest.”

“Yeah, I'm just going to get some books from my office.”

Daniel went to his office and looked for the stack of files that they had recovered from the warehouse with the box and the other artifacts and tech, but he couldn't find them. Apparently, not only had Jack gotten Sam to take the box, but everything from Beth's two Daniel piles was gone. He shook his head and thought about chasing those files down. They wouldn't do Sam any good anyway since she wouldn't be able to read them. He still wasn't sure he could, which was why they still hadn't been translated. However, with his head still a strong ache, he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be able to do any real work at home anyway and he might as well give up. He grabbed his keys instead and headed out of the Mountain to go home.

Knowing he'd do better if he ate something and just crashed in the dark, Daniel paused on the way home to pick up Chinese take out then pulled into his driveway. There were plastic toys left on the edge of his front lawn, probably from the kids across the street. He'd seen them running around toward the cul-de-sac, playing on bikes and having what seemed like a quintessential American childhood. He wasn't sure how old they were. Children were fine, though they were at least as foreign as the aliens he met on a regular basis in Daniel's mind. He hadn't had that sort of typical childhood and looking at it was always a bit anthropological to him. Not that he minded the toys. He barely managed to mow the lawn or take care of the house anyway. He'd been thinking about getting an apartment, instead, though moving was a hassle and then he wouldn't have room for his own collections or books. It was just as well that he'd opted for this place, not too far from the Mountain, neighbors who mostly didn't bother him.

He let himself in and didn't even bother to go to the bedroom. After shoveling half his container of kung pao down his throat, he drank more water and stretched on the sofa, never even bothering to turn on the lights. The brightness of the afternoon sun hit the back of the living room and it was already too much light. He fell asleep there almost immediately.

It was funny that he'd been thinking about the kids across the street. It must have bled into his dreams. He was back on Abydos and some of the kids kept climbing the walls and pulling back the tented walls where he was trying to read to Sha're. She fussed at them in Abydonian, telling them be quiet and leave them alone. Such a weirdly simple and mundane dream. He hadn't dreamed about Sha're in months.

As he stirred, he realized the sun had set but it didn't feel late. And, strangely, there was a certain smell of Abydos in the room. Not the dry heat of the desert, but the spicy curry smell of the food wafted across his nose. He'd tried sometimes to find that taste. It wasn't like the Egyptian food he'd grown up eating. The plants that made the spices were different, tangier, earthier, something. But this was that smell. It was so incongruous in his house on Earth that he woke up more, trying to shake out if it was the vestiges of the dream or something else.

Then something brushed against his leg and he jolted all the way awake, kicking out as an automatic reaction and hearing a giggle in response.

“Baba, Baba, Baba,” a little voice said from somewhere in the darkness at the foot of the sofa.

Another voice came from the direction of the kitchen, sharp and feminine, speaking Abydonian, echoing straight out of his dream. “Ari, get out of there right now you rascal!”

Daniel sat straight up, heart pounding, reaching for his glasses out of habit, but not finding them on the end table where he was sure he had left them. He went next to the lamp, clicking it on and feeling the warm light flood the living room.

Peeking from the edge of the sofa was a little boy with curly dark hair, tanned skin and blue eyes, wearing his glasses on his face. They were huge on his eyes and sat slightly sideways.

“I need those,” Daniel said, carefully, reaching out to take his glasses back.

“No! Mine now!” the boy said.

“Ari!” Daniel heard the woman's voice again. He felt naked to deal with this moment without his glasses, but he was increasingly sure whose voice it was, though his brain struggled to make any sense of what was happening, these worlds colliding impossibly.

“I don't care what these tau'ri think, husband. Sometimes I'd like to give him a good beating.” She abruptly switched to English, her voice not at all uncertain as she made the change. “Ari, give Baba his glasses back. What did we just talk about, ah? No waking Baba.”

Even though his brain knew Sha're was about to round the corner from the kitchen into the living room, actually seeing her, even blurred without his glasses, was a shock. She had on a long skirt and a sort of blouse with proper buttons, her wild dark curls tamed into a loose ponytail. It was so incongruous. He had never seen her in anything but her woven cotton dresses and robes, and then, later, in various goa'uld fashions. Even through the blurriness of his vision without his glasses, he could see that she looked so American. She also looked annoyed, though as soon as her eyes met Daniel's he could see her soften, see her expression becoming curious.

“O'Neill called to say yet again you got yourself in some trouble. Are you okay, Danyel?” She went back and forth between languages in a way that made Daniel feel oddly aroused and warm and proud. She had always been smart, he thought. If he had ever managed to save her, to bring her back, she could have come and fit in with him here.

“Je suis Baba,” the boy said, waggling his head and pointing to the glasses in an exaggerated gesture, as if to say, see, see my brilliant impersonation.

Sha're rolled her eyes and scooped the boy up, yanking the glasses off his face and handing them to Daniel. He could now see just how little the boy was. He had no idea how young, but he couldn't have been more than three.

“Time for bed,” Sha're announced, not letting the boy out of her grip. “Say goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” the boy said in Abydonian. Then he repeated it in Arabic, English, and finally Ancient, giggling the whole time.

“I'm going to assume he isn't swearing again. I think the two of you are trying to gang up against me,” Sha're said, sighing, pretending to be put upon as she left the room with the boy.

With his glasses on and the lamp flooding the room with light, Daniel could see a million details that would have tipped him off that something wasn't right if only he'd paid any attention when he came home. There were toys strewn in the back of the living room and children's books on an entire shelf by the window. The photos on the walls were all different as well, and Daniel noticed that artifacts were placed up high on top of the shelves. The rug was one he'd never seen. The lamp had a different shade. He must have been so out of it when he got here earlier.

When he had heard her voice, he'd had a moment of running through possibilities, fearful and disturbed. Was this a trap, a dream, a hallucination? Was it an alien trick? Was she a shape shifter? But there was one obvious answer and it was the one that seemed to fit best.

The house didn't look like his house because it wasn't his house. And that wasn't his Sha're.

For a moment, Daniel wanted to take the cowardly way out. He should just leave. He was intruding. The sheer domesticity of it all was overwhelming. Sha're and the boy… The boy who almost certainly was his son, or, the son of some other him.

Breathing heavily, he walked into the kitchen and grabbed the phone, hesitating for only a second before dialing the SGC and asking if General Hammond was still there. It wouldn't have been unusual for the general to have still been on duty. The clock showed that it wasn't quite eight in the evening. However, both Hammond and Jack had already left according to the duty officer. “Is Major Carter still there?” Daniel asked.

“Sir, who do you mean?” the duty officer sounded confused.

“Samantha Carter,” Daniel said, his heart sinking. He knew how different alternate realities could be. It was possible Sam wasn't even at the SGC. He had seen Janet and Jack before he left, and he remembered passing some other people he knew in the hallway before he left, but it was possible that this reality didn't have a Samantha Carter for him to call. No, Jack had mentioned her, he remembered.

“Colonel Carter is still in her lab,” the sergeant responded and Daniel was torn between relief, since if there was anyone likely to be able to figure this out it was Sam, and dread at having had his theory almost certainly confirmed.

When she picked up, Daniel wasn't sure at first what to say. “Um, Sam, it's Daniel. I'm… there's something really wrong going on.”

Sam's voice was obviously surprised. “Dr. Jackson?” she said and Daniel realized he had no idea what relationship his other self had with this Samantha Carter.

“Oh, yes, sorry. Look, that's just it. I'm not exactly the Dr. Jackson you know. Have you… do you know the quantum mirror?”

“You're kidding,” she said and from the flat tone of her voice, Daniel knew immediately that she knew exactly what he was trying to say. “But that thing is at Area 51.”

“That's not how I got here,” he said. “I think there's been a switch. Your Daniel Jackson for me.”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Well, come in, obviously,” she said. “How did you… oh, never mind. Just save it. I'll be here. And I'll call Colonel O'Neill.”

“Thanks, Sam… Um, Colonel Carter? I'll see you soon.”

“You're not going back,” he had not heard Sha're come in the kitchen, but now she stood behind him, hands on her hips, looking exasperated as he hung up the phone. He remembered this exact look from during their year together on Abydos. It was reserved for times when Danyel was being an idiot. He wished that he had taken the coward's way out.

“Sha're, I have to tell you something,” he said.

“No. Not until you eat. And sleep. O'Neill called and told me you had to and not to let you go back to work until you had, which is fine by me. You were away all last week and now you're passing out at work?” She moved to take a bowl from the cabinet and filled it with whatever it was that she'd just cooked, a warm stew of potatoes and vegetables swimming in a red sauce. It smelled delicious.

He couldn't stop himself from taking the bowl and sitting down with it at the kitchen table. Sha're rustled in the drawers for a fork, which she put in front of him. Before he could take a bite, he saw the bowl was some sort of plastic, lined with cartoon characters. It was the sort of thing you have when you have kids, he thought wildly, unbreakable plastic bowls.

“I'm not your Daniel,” he said, pushing on before she could interrupt. “I don't know what happened exactly. I'm so, so sorry I came here. I didn't know or I never would have, never would have put you through seeing me, having to meet me. Especially with...” he gulped, thinking of the little boy she'd just put to bed. “I was playing around with an Ancient box of some sort. We had no idea what it did. I opened it up, it flashed at me. Well, now I'm pretty sure it sent me into a different reality. It probably swapped me with your Daniel. Do you know about alternate realities? Basically, every point in time can branch into different points, making a world where things are a little different. Some realities are very different, actually. But we'll do everything we can to figure it out and get your… your husband home.”

Sha're tugged at a strand of curly hair that had fallen out of the very American looked ponytail she had it pulled back into. Her eyes narrowed. “This is the truth? Different realities, like through that mirror?”

He nodded.

“Well your Sha're would be not so happy if I sent you back without feeding you at least,” she said matter of factly. It was so amazing that she could adjust to such weirdness so easily. He bit back words about his Sha're and looked down at the bowl of food she'd presented him with. Giving what he hoped was a small smile, he lifted the fork to his lips and tasted, savoring the earthy taste of the spices. If he tried to talk about his Sha're, he was sure he'd fall apart.

“You brought the curry back from home?” he asked, tasting.

“Of course,” she said and settled into her chair, watching him. “Last week, after Ari and I visited father.”

He ate in silence for a few minutes.

“Your hair is too short,” she observed suddenly, seemingly without need for a reply.

Daniel didn't want to enjoy this moment as much as he did, but he found it so hard to stop himself. He ate, feeling how good it was to have food that wasn't the cheap takeout or SGC commissary food he usually relied upon. As much as she watched him, he watched her. She was plumper, just slightly, more like how Amaunet had looked in her body after giving birth. But it was more than that. She looked older. His Sha're was frozen in time while he had moved on and aged.

Halfway through the bowl, and he was sure he couldn't finish it, even though he loved the taste. “I can't,” he choked. “I'm sorry. I...”

“How did you know?” Sha're asked. “How did you know when you woke up that this wasn't your home?”

Daniel closed his eyes and hugged his arms to his chest. “My Sha're is dead. She died more than a year ago.”

“Oh, my Danyel.”

“You don't have to...”

But she had already moved the kitchen chair closer to him and grabbed his hand, pulling it away from hugging his chest to rest on the table with hers. “What happened to her? What about Ari?”

“We never… there is no Ari. My Sha're was taken as a host for Amaunet just after we dug up the gate on Abydos. After… a time, Teal'c killed her. She was trying to kill me. He did it to save my life.”

“Oh, my poor Danyel,” she repeated, gripping his hand.

“I need to go,” he said, standing up and pulling his hand away. “Thank you for the food. It was… delicious. Really.”

Before she could say anything else, he was on his way back through the living room, where he grabbed his keys and walked out the door.

In the shadows from the streetlight, he could still see the plastic toys left at the edge of the yard. Stupid, so stupid. It should have been a clue. They didn't belong to the kids across the street. As he sank into the driver's seat, he allowed himself just a moment to hit the steering wheel in frustration, not trying to hold back his tears any longer.

Fearing that Sha're might come outside after him, he only allowed himself a moment before starting the engine and pulling out into the night.

Back at the Mountain, Daniel found that a meeting with General Hammond was waiting for him. Colonel Carter was there, as well as Kawalsky, which gave Daniel a start, Teal'c, and two airmen he didn't know. Jack wasn't there, which made him strangely uneasy. It settled him to hear General Hammond say that Colonel O'Neill would be arriving shortly.

Daniel summarized the best he could. This wasn't his universe. It turned out they'd had an experience with the quantum mirror roughly the same time that he had. Colonel Carter had been the one who found it and went through it, to a reality where the goa'uld had already taken over Earth and enslaved people. She had been as lucky to escape as Daniel had when he visited the other reality, but without the bonus of extra information to bring back.

“If we have time, Dr. Jackson, I'd like to hear whatever intelligence you might give us,” Hammond said.

“Me too, sir,” Daniel responded.

“However, right now, I think our priority is getting our Dr. Jackson back,” Hammond added.

“I've just gotten a very long earful about that from his wife,” Jack said, stepping into the room, giving Daniel a long look that seemed designed to size him up. “What do we know?”

“I've been looking at the device that Dr. Jackson thinks transported him,” Carter said. “I can't make heads or tails of it, honestly. It looks more like a giant puzzle box than anything else. It's giving off radiation, like the mirror. There's a power source somewhere, but I can't figure out where. Beyond that, I have nothing. However, I assume you can just do whatever you did in the first place and go home.”

“That would be ideal,” Daniel agreed.

“What's the timetable on that?” Jack asked.

“As far as I'm concerned, we can just go do it right now.”

“Colonel,” Hammond said, addressing Jack, “why don't you spend an hour swapping notes with Dr. Jackson while Colonel Carter finishes any tests she needs to run.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said.

“Dismissed.”

As they left the room, Teal'c wished him luck but Colonel Carter gave him a suspicious look.

Once they had the briefing room to themselves, Daniel couldn't help it. “What's with that?” he asked, gesturing after Carter.

“You mean Colonel Carter?” Jack asked. “You've just never gotten along.”

“Sam's not on SG-1?”

“You kidding? No. And don't let her catch you calling her that. I'm pretty sure her eyes can fry your brain or something.”

“Jack!”

“Maybe not in your reality.”

“We're friends. Good friends.”

“Well it sounds like a number of things are different. Sha're called me.”

“That is so surreal to hear you say.” He clamped down on what emotion welled up inside him. There'd be time to process with his own Jack soon enough, he hoped.

“Goa'ulded, huh?”

“Amaunet. Ska'ara?”

“What about him?”

“Was he taken as a host too?”

“Good grief. No. What the hell happened back in your reality?”

For the next hour, they swapped notes. Carter might have been different, but Jack was strangely the same. It seemed like their realities had drifted apart from the first moment on Abydos, when apparently Daniel had managed to send everyone home long before they met Ra. But then their realities had drifted back together when they unburied the gate a year later.

This reality didn't have the Tok'ra as allies, but they'd somehow convinced the Tollan to help them a great deal more, it seemed. Jack implied that Sam had something to do with that. “She's off on Tollana all the time. They love her over there. Just as uptight and unemotional as those guys,” Jack said, offhandedly. It was odd to hear him so insulting about Sam, but it was becoming clear that she really wasn't the same here.

The Asgard were also sometime friends. Apophis and Heru'ur and the rest of the System Lords were all still out there, but somehow they kept defeating them. But other details were so different. They had most recently stopped Apophis with a virus that attacked goa'uld symbiotes. The rebel Jaffa had been given medicine against it. Biological warfare seemed like it was a major tactic for this SGC. They had never gone back in time to 1969. They'd never connected to a black hole. SG-1's scientist was a Major Ryan who Daniel was fairly sure didn't even exist in his reality. How could things be so similar and yet so different?

Finally, after exchanging a lot of gate addresses and names, which Jack got recorded on a tiny cassette, there was a lull in conversation and Jack said, “Okay. Well, nice to have met you, I guess.”

The device looked exactly the same, but immediately Daniel could see something wasn't right. “It's broken,” he said.

“Well, obviously,” Colonel Carter snapped. “So just do with it whatever you did before.”

“No, I mean, in my reality there was a piece here, with little crystals, like hourglasses. There were seven of them, all tilted. And this piece here,” he gestured, unwilling to touch the device, “was out and there was writing that appeared on it. It said, 'You cannot reach enlightenment without walking a mile down the roads that might have been.'”

“The Ancients were big on that sort of proverbial nonsense,” Carter said.

“Well, it was part of their research into ascension,” Daniel reasoned.

“There's no evidence that ascension was even real. We have no idea what happened to the Ancients.” She sounded so superior.

“Actually, in my reality, I met one of the ascended Ancients, Oma Desala.”

“You met someone on a supposed higher plane of existence? I think you were fooled.”

“You met someone too. And I don't think so. She took the harcesis and they vanished in a swirl of lights.”

“The what? Dr. Jackson, I would think you, of all people, would know how technology and alien life forms can use our lack of knowledge to manipulate us into thinking there's something supernatural going on.”

“You don't need to sound so patronizing. You weren't there. A harcesis is the biologically human child of two goa'uld. In this case, of Apophis and Amaunet. Before Sha're died, she asked that I find the child.”

“What in the world for?”

“To… take care of him. Sha're, my Sha're, was made a host to Amaunet.”

Colonel Carter looked like she wanted to say something, but then stopped herself. “Look,” she said. “This is the device as you, the you of our universe, were apparently messing around with yesterday. There's nothing different.”

“So… what does that imply? I mean, is it possible that the device was activated in my reality, sending me here and… presumably sending your Daniel to me, but without any action on this side of the equation?”

“How should I know? It seems like you got yourself into this mess, Dr. Jackson. Maybe you should try to get yourself out.”

Jack had apparently followed him and was now standing in the doorway. “Geez, Carter, have a heart, why don't you?”

“I'm not the one with a compassion problem, O'Neill,” she said, pushing her way out of the room. “I'll get McKay on this once he gets back from P3Z-458. Seems like it's not up my alley anyway.”

“So he's just supposed to sit around here and wait?” Jack asked.

“Who's McKay?” Daniel asked.

It was late so Jack got Daniel quarters in the VIP rooms. When he woke up, they were no closer to finding anything. For the next day, Daniel just hung around the base waiting for Dr. McKay to return. Apparently this Samantha Carter wasn't willing to help. General Hammond allowed him to do some of their Daniel's work translating and cataloging. Jack hung out with him all day.

Jack puttered around in Daniel's lab and they kept trading stories of their realities all day. Jack didn't seem too worried about his Daniel but he did seem to want to stay close. It was nice and reminded Daniel of his Jack from a couple of years ago, especially when SG-1 was new and they were still figuring out their rhythm and he was still hopeful and heartbroken about his Sha're. At one point, Jack even ruffled his hair. After supper, they played chess and Daniel discovered this Jack was better at the game than his Jack ever was. In general, this Jack and Daniel seemed to be better friends, which was interesting to find. Daniel considered Jack one of his closest friends, but they didn't always get along. This Jack had a much more easygoing attitude toward Daniel.

The next morning, Daniel found someone in his lab eating a pile of donuts and wiping the icing idly on his papers.

“Oh, good, you're here. So, as far as I can tell, the control crystals here are set with internal timers. It's emitting the kind of radiation we've come to associate with some of the quantum devices the Ancients left behind, like the mirror and that projector. And, here's the interesting part, this one seems to have a scan function, which implies that maybe it's keyed to the person who activates it, like you start it up and it chooses the reality based on who you are. It's really, actually, it's pretty fascinating. But here's the bad news. All the crystals are broken. See, that's why they won't extend. And Samantha left me a note that you thought there should have been another piece here, with writing that appeared on it? Yeah, that's nonexistent but there is a lot of dust in there, like, maybe it broke and then totally decayed. Sure, it's still emitting some power, but bottom line, this thing didn't send you here.”

He spoke a mile a minute and with Daniel on his first cup of coffee, it was all he could do to say, “Hi.”

“Oh, of course, you might not even know me! Or, maybe you do know me. Or, maybe I don't even exist in your reality. Or, maybe I don't work here, though that seems highly unlikely because I can't imagine that they wouldn't have needed to recruit me since I am the smartest theoretical physicist currently alive. Though, maybe you didn't know this, but I thought at one point about becoming a singer. It turned out I'm probably tone deaf.”

“You don't work for the SGC in my reality,” Daniel said.

“Huh. I wonder if the me from your reality can carry a tune. Oh, sorry, donut?” He held out the plate of blue donuts with sprinkles.

“No thanks,” Daniel said. “You must be Dr. McKay?”

“Oh, did I not mention that?”

Daniel shook his head. “So… basically what you're saying is, this thing is useless.”

“I can only theorize that the device in your reality sent you here. And now, you just have to wait.”

“There's really nothing we can do?”

“If we still had the mirror, but ours was sent to Area 51 and encased in solid concrete. And if we still had the projector, maybe we could help them out if we could find your reality. But, um, we accidentally blew that up. So, barring that, yeah, I think we just have to wait. It does seem disappointing that I'm not there in your reality. You've never heard of me at all?”

“I don't think so. I guess Sam will have to fix it then. I wonder how the Daniel from this reality is doing in mine.”

“Oh, you're making assumptions that I don't think you can make,” Dr. McKay said. “There are seven crystals each with a timer, right? I don't know that this was a two way swap.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that maybe our Dr. Jackson is in your reality – and, by the way, if he is and you call your Samantha Carter Sam then I'm definitely looking forward to his stories about her when he gets back – but more likely, this might be a more elaborate device than that. After all, think about the Ancients. We know they were researching ascension. And we know they believed there was some spiritual component to that. They wanted to get all deep and meaningful about their lives. Maybe that meant a pretty elaborate trip to other realities to see how things stood. I think it stands to reason, you know?”

Daniel did know, and that was depressing to think about. “I'm going to go get more coffee,” he said, leaving the lab.

The rest of the day passed pretty much like the one before. The following day, after hanging around his lab off and on all day, Jack sudden said, “So, Sha're's been on me to bring you over there.”

“But… she understands I'm not her Daniel?”

“Oh, she understands. She understands that you got all teary and looked like a little lost lamb.”

“God. She didn't say that.”

“Not in so many words.”

“Jack, I don't think I can do that.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I get it. But she was pretty persistent. I may have sort of promised to bring you over there and leave you for dinner.”

* * *

“This is a bad idea,” Daniel said, looking suspiciously at his house from the window of Jack's truck. They sat in the driveway but Daniel wasn't moving.

“She's really hard to fight,” Jack said, with a shrug. “Women.”

“Jack.”

“Just let her cook you dinner, Daniel. It won't kill you. I happen to know she's a good cook.”

“What about the kid?”

Jack laughed. “He's only three. They have no memory of anything from day to day at that age.”

“I know nothing about kids.”

“No one ever does before they become a parent. You're pretty good with kids if you're anything like my Daniel. Besides, you're probably the only one who can understand that kid. Who knew speaking a million languages was genetic.”

Daniel didn't move and finally Jack said, “Do I have to come over there and drag you out? Or, I could get Sha're out here. I'll do it.”

Daniel sighed and went inside to face the replica of his dead wife. He understood why Sha're was doing this. He didn't really understand why Jack was letting her, though he supposed she really had him wrapped around her finger. It seemed like she had everyone wrapped around her finger.

As soon as he walked in the door, Ari came out of nowhere and flung himself at Daniel's leg. “Baba!” he screamed. Then, he broke into a story about his day in which every third word seemed to be in a different language. They had gone to the little zoo and seen his friend Jayden but Jayden had tried to hog the Legos but then they had played hide and snakes, for a moment, Daniel was confused but then he remembered a similar game the littlest kids on Abydos would play. Everything with Ari was a strange mix up. Listening to the kid's patois was beautiful and strange. And Ari was so in his personal space that it was impossible not to touch him. Ari wanted to climb on him, to tickle him, to be tickled.

Sha're kept watch over them from the kitchen. She kept poking her head back into the living room. Daniel noticed that she was in a loose draped dress with her hair pulled up on the sides so it cascaded down, a little like his Sha're had worn it.

Dinner was more spicy yellow curry, this time with piles of fresh flatbreads and a heap of something green that had been stewed to death. It was really Abydonian.

Sha're served Ari on a colorful plastic plate with a colorful plastic cup filled with milk. They got real plates, plain white ones, and wine glasses with white wine.

“How did you learn to cook like this in an Earth kitchen?” Daniel asked. It tasted so much like Abydos. He remembered his Sha're cooking in the giant black pots with the other women or shoving the flat breads in the clay ovens in the afternoon.

“I learned. My Danyel found me cookbooks about foods like our home food. And I figured it out.”

“Of course you did.”

Ari had eaten about three bites of his curry and moved on to the bread. He was reaching for his third when Sha're scolded him.

“But Ma, your bread is super yummy. Delicioso.”

“You stinker. Put it back and eat your vegetables.”

“Do you worry about his language?” Daniel asked. “I mean, he hardly says a sentence all in one thing. And I keep hearing these snatches of Arabic and French and Spanish. Not to mention Ancient, which I know he's not exactly picking up on the street.”

“Ha! My Danyel is the cause of all this nonsense! He promises me that he will talk like a normal child once he gets a little older, but I don't even know anymore. Danyel will let him watch silly television shows, but only if he watches them in another language. And the neighbor children speak French. Their father is from Senegal. So he picks it up from them too. American children go to preschool soon, but I think Ari will never succeed because no one but Danyel can understand half of what he says. But Danyel says don't worry. Fitting in is for… oh, some saying. For birds?”

“For the birds.”

“More nonsense! But he says he never fit in on Earth so why should Ari. So I say, okay, let's go back to Abydos, but he says, no, it's not safe to stay for too long because the goa'uld have a price on his head. And I know he is right. Also, hot showers. And pizza.”

“And here I thought you were cooking traditional food every night.”

“Sometimes. But I have also found the lazy foods. Pizza already made that you just warm in the oven. And the food in metal cans. This world is so easy. But also so much. I love it and hate it.”

Daniel stirred his food and took another bite, savoring it.

“Ari! No! Eat your green vegetables!” Sha're popped Ari's outstretched hand that was reaching for more bread with a little finger flick that Daniel recognized as the tool of parents on Abydos for minor infractions. He'd also seen kids beaten. Ska'ara had told a story that rose the hairs on his neck about how Kasuf had beaten him twenty-four lashes with a rope after he stole a fresh wine jars from the stores and drank it with his friends, then smashed up the jars in a childhood drunken attempt to hide the evidence. He still had the thin scars from the beating.

Ari twisted his lips in annoyance and said, “Ouch,” but he turned his fork to he greens and shoved a bite in his mouth, opening it to show it off.

Sha're, seeming to sense that Daniel wondered said, “Danyel and I have come to an agreement. I can snap his hand when he misbehaves a little, but no lashings. He says the Tau'ri scientists found if you hit children they suffer problems.” She sniffled. “I can tell you because you can't tell him what I said. But I have come to agree. I don't think I could lash him. But I like to complain to Danyel when he's difficult.”

Daniel smiled. That sounded very much like his Sha're. Ari started singing a song, something from a television show, Daniel gathered. Finally, Sha're told him it was time for bed, and Ari asked Daniel to read him a story. He looked to Sha're, who smiled and nodded her permission.

Once the boy was settled into pajamas, Daniel found himself sitting with him reading a worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He'd forgotten how creepy the stories could be, but Ari seemed to eat it up.

When he finished, he found Sha're sitting just outside, listening from the hall. After she gave Ari a final kiss goodnight, she said, “I like to listen to Danyel read these stories. Earth has so many stories, so many peoples, so many languages and gods. I think Danyel reads them all for me as much as our son.”

“I should go back,” Daniel said.

“No, not yet,” she said, taking his hand.

“Sha're,” Daniel pleaded, seeing her eyes blinking at him and realizing that if he didn't stop her, she'd take the whole playing house thing to a place they really shouldn't go. “I'm not him.”

“I know.” She sounded annoyed, almost insulted. Then she switched to Abydonian. “Obviously you're not him. But anyone can see you need affection, you need love.” She hooked her foot behind his, her hips pressed to his thigh.

“I don't need a pity fuck,” Daniel replied.

“I know that's a crass word. This is not pity. This is a gift, given because I love you in any reality.”

“And what would your Daniel think of that?”

Sha're laughed and ran her hand up his back to his hair. “I do not think he can be jealous of himself.”

“We're different people.”

“Different people with the same heart, the same body, the same mind. Would you be jealous if I was your Sha're?”

“That's beside the point.”

“Trust that I know what I'm doing,” she whispered, letting her hand drift lower to cup his ass.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“You're not meant to be alone. Let me remind you of that. Let me try to take the pain.”

Daniel made a sound in his throat, guttural and deep as Sha're reached her hand below his waistband and began to circle it around his hip.

“Shh,” she said. “Think of Ari. Come to the bedroom.”

“Keep speaking Abydonian,” he murmured in her ear, which was how he realized he was going to go with her. He didn't want to keep thinking. He wanted to listen to her and do what she asked.

She laughed softly. “Does hearing me speak make you think of our home on Abydos? Our first time together?”

It did. Hearing Sha're whisper to him in Abydonian made him think of all the nights they'd spent in tents or in the clay brick apartments, divided up with tapestries and cloth walls. You had to be silent to have sex in those places, and even when you were quiet, you had to accept that everyone was listening and could hear every little grunt, every hitched breath, every noisy thrust. So you whispered and pretended, and moaned into each others' mouths and breasts and backs, biting off your sounds. Apparently that's what you did when you had children in the house as well.

Sha're pulled him toward the bedroom she shared with her Daniel. It was Daniel's room in his reality and it didn't look so different, though the bed was bigger.

“Undress, Danyel,” Sha're whispered. They didn't have to whisper in here, once the door was closed, but she did it anyway.

As he stripped efficiently, she slowly slid herself out of the dress, which apparently was made of a stretchy fabric that she pulled aside, allowing the whole thing to slide right to the floor.

She had on a simple white cotton bra that was tight to her breasts, almost like a tiny camisole, but no underwear, which both surprised and didn't surprise him. No one wore undergarments on Abydos. It was strange to see her in a bra, though she reached around and pulled it loose, letting it, too, slide to the floor, then coming toward him.

“Oh,” Daniel whispered, a word from any language that needed no translation. He reached out to her and she let him slowly trace his hand over her, exploring, gently feeling his way across her skin. He brushed against her breast, then circled her nipple. She started slightly.

“They're sensitive,” she murmured.

So he moved his hand to cup her breast instead, feeling the weight of each one, heavy and rounded, squeezing them gently. He was getting harder from this, from touching her. He let his hands gently drift down lower, brushing over her slightly rounded belly and to her hips. His breathing was thick and heavy.

“Are you…?” he whispered.

“We haven't told anyone yet,” she said. “I hope it's a sister for Ari. And we'll name her after my mother, Heshta, and my Danyel's mother, Claire, who were both taken from us too young.”

“Oh,” Daniel breathed, laying a hand over her abdomen and just pressing, touching, feeling. That was the child of another reality, just a little bundle inside her belly.

After a few moments, he let his hands explore her again, finding all the things about her that were different and the same. She was rounder, softer, nearly everywhere. Four little stretch marks, like pale stripes, were along the bottom side of her abdomen, presumably from her previous pregnancy. Her breasts were bigger, the areola darker. Her hips were rounder. She even smelled different, more like American shampoo and soap.

He buried his face in her shoulder, kissing, tasting, moving toward where he cupped her breasts again. She tasted the same. And when he was pressed against her, her skin was the same pale brown, almost as light as his, but not as peach. As he drew back to look at her, her eyes were exactly the same, and her hair now fell around her face just the same, not ruined by some trip to an American salon. The little noise she made, somewhere between a moan and a laugh, was just the same as he stroked her in long movements, trying to feel all of her.

Without laying even a finger on him, she pulled him to the bed just by going there herself and laying down, stretching out on her back. He joined her, knees first, coming to kneel by her side. This was how they always began, he remembered. She was always so passive at first, just inviting, not ever the one to grab him or initiate the first kiss. He remembered on Abydos, especially at the end as he got wrapped up in unburying the gate and translating the cartouche room, how she never started sex, she would just tell him to come to bed and disrobe before him, waiting, wanting, so patient.

He eased onto his side next to her and tilted her head to him, letting their lips meet in an easy, loose kiss. It started very slow, her soft, thin lips meeting his in an almost chaste press. Then it escalated, tongues pressed against each other, Daniel sucking her bottom lip, Sha're turning her body to press against his.

He pressed her back to the bed then, breaking the kiss and beginning to kiss his way down her body. When he reached her belly button, he kissed all the way around her abdomen, brushing his fingers over her thickened middle and sighing.

She opened her legs to him on her own, inviting him wordlessly to slide between them. He positioned himself kissing along the inside of her thigh and then finally burying his face in her hair, smelling her, closing his eyes and remembering his wife. He couldn't help how the memory of what she liked poured into him. Their first night together, he had refused her without even knowing what he was turning down. He was so keen to learn the language, find writing, figure out a way home. Then, when he understood, they had lain together and he'd been so aroused, but he couldn't quite bring himself to take her virginity. He didn't know if he was staying and it seemed so wrong. When they did finally make love, he had wanted her to feel pleasure. He knew she said that she'd never been with a man before, but he didn't know if she'd ever orgasmed and he wanted to give that to her, especially before he took her. He had kissed her down to the insides of her thighs and then pressed his mouth to her just like he was doing now.

With one hand, he stroked around her lips, opening her. With his tongue, he teased her clit until his fingers felt her soften and the swell of moisture as her body began to climb toward release. Then he began to press his tongue into her in broad strokes. He kept a finger stroking the bottom of her opening, stretching her slightly. Finally, feeling her close, he sucked steadily on her clit and pressed two fingers inside her, cupping upward.

Her hand, which had been on his head, stroking his hair, pulled back and he felt her still, her breath held as she barreled toward a fast climax. Her thighs pressed his ears as she squeezed so he briefly sucked harder and was rewarded with hearing her call his name, pulling the sounds back and trying to stay quiet for the precocious kid sleeping across the hall.

Daniel withdrew the fingers and eased his mouth, just gently licking now. Seconds later, she moaned again and pressed his face away. In another second, she was up. She turned him and straddled him, pulling him inside her in one wet stroke. Now she wasn't the waiting, inviting woman. She was the one leading the action. She rolled her hips against him and squeezed.

He pushed his head back into the pillow and reached his arms up to touch her, but it was a chaotic touch, brushing his hands over her back and breasts above him. It was hard to focus when he was this close and she was so beautiful, so warm, so wet. She braced herself with her hands on his shoulders and slid his cock inside her, He felt the friction of the slide and enjoyed the view of her above him, her eyes closed, mouth open slightly, breath heavy.

It had been a long time since he'd been with anyone. Suddenly, unbidden, a flash of the last time he'd had sex pushed up into his mind from the place where he kept it buried. Hathor, stretched over him, not needing to hold him down, just taking from him what she wanted, and his own pleasure, disassociated from his mind, which was almost asleep. He choked back the memory and felt tears welling in his eyes.

“Danyel?” Sha're whispered. She eased her movements and looked down at him. “Oh, Danyel.”

She didn't know, couldn't have any way of knowing what memory had made him pause. He was still hard, still sheathed deep inside her, still feeling her movement, now slowed to a gentle thrust of encouragement, her hips just slightly moving as she stretched out and covered him, pressed her breasts and belly to his chest, letting her thighs stretch alongside his own. The physical pleasure of their connection was still there, but Daniel felt his emotions rage out of control.

“You can cry,” she murmured in Abydonian. “Give your grief to me. Leave it inside me and let me hold it for you for awhile.”

Daniel exhaled a long breath and felt himself sob dry tears. He couldn't stay like this, on his back. He remembered how much his Sha're had liked this, the almost role reversal they would find in the middle of lovemaking, going from him leading her to climax to her leading him. Taking another breath, he urged her to her back and flipped them slowly. In this position, he could blanket her and nuzzle his face to her neck and her ear.

“You are loved,” she said. “No matter what, I love you.”

He moaned and found he needed desperately to move again, to feel them joined. He pushed against her, grinding himself into her with a long, hard push. She sighed and he could tell she was glad. She ground her pelvis to meet him. He felt like he wanted to be inside her as deeply as possible. It was more than just sex, or more than just a need of his dick to be inside her. He, himself, wished he could crawl in her and release all his grief, all his tension and neuroses.

“Sha're,” he moaned. “Oh, Sha're.”

“Yes,” she said, in English.

They moved together like that, in sync, her movements matching his at every moment. A few minutes later, he heard her begin to pant and felt her second orgasm as she squeezed tight around his cock, her whole body tightening at once as she spasmed.

It was exactly what he needed to spill over the edge as well. He came, thrusting, a long, low growl that he didn't feel in control of emanating from his throat as he emptied himself in her. And for a moment, she was his wife, his Sha're, who could carry his grief and pain, who would be his forever, the mother of his children, his anchor in the universe.

Daniel fell asleep in her arms, feeling a sense of warmth he couldn't quite recall having felt in a long time.

At some point in the middle of the night, he woke and felt far too alert to stay in bed. It was unusual for him to feel any desire to get moving without the aid of caffeine, but after a few minutes, he knew he wouldn't fall back asleep. It had been both wonderful and heartbreaking to get a peek into his life with Sha're on Earth. A life where she'd lived, where they had the children she had desperately wanted for them, where she was happy and fulfilled, a life filled with both hot showers and Abydonian curries, fighting the goa'uld and family. It had never seemed to Daniel that these things could co-exist. Even the vision that Sha're had showed him just before her death had been nothing like this domestic bliss.

He carefully extricated himself from the bed, trying to be quiet, but of course she stirred. Unlike earlier, she didn't press him to stay. Her eyes fluttered open in the darkness and she whispered simply, “Goodbye.”

“Thank you,” Daniel said, though it felt cheap.

She reached out and squeezed his hand gently. “Be well, wherever you go,” she said.

Half an hour later, he was sitting on the lawn, watching the stars when Jack's truck pulled up.

“So,” Jack said.

“Don't bring me back here,” Daniel said. “Even if I never leave, I don't think I can do that again.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Jack. It was just so… you have no idea what it was like when my Sha're died. How long it took me to get some semblance of normal in my head, some sense of keeping it together.”

“Okay. Though you'll forgive me if I say you don't look like you have it together right now.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“She just wanted to help.”

Daniel smashed his fist against his knee, then against the dashboard.

“Okay, so, not so helpful.”

“I don't know if I'd say that. It's just… really raw now.”

They drove the rest of the way back to the Mountain in silence. Daniel kept trying to take in what he had done. He wasn't sorry exactly and he thought Sha're was probably right, that the other Daniel wouldn't be angry. He kept thinking about what she had said about not being lonely. And, strangely, he kept thinking about Hathor.

He hadn't made any conscious choice to be celibate for so long. He'd been married. Then there had been flirtations, several of them. But he'd never consummated anything. Had the fact that the last time he'd had sex it hadn't been his choice had anything to do with it? Daniel consciously avoided the word rape whenever he thought about what had happened with Hathor. They'd all been drugged, all done terrible things, experienced terrible things. In the end, nothing had come of it and now Hathor was dead, no longer a threat to any of them. He didn't feel victimized in the way he thought he should have if it had really been… that. But it had also strangely put him off sex in a way he hadn't wanted to acknowledge.

And now his long celibacy was broken. And he had a memory that could, maybe, displace the one of Hathor. None of that was exactly what Sha're had intended, but maybe it was what he was left with. She had very purposefully tried to close the door for him. To bid him goodbye. But one door closes and another opens. He ached. He wanted. He didn't even know what he wanted.

“You okay?” Jack asked as he parked the truck. It was still pitch black outside.

Daniel shrugged. “Not really.”

Jack reached across the seat and pulled him into a hug.

Daniel felt a sudden surge of a headache course through him. “Ugh,” he said, pulling back from Jack's comforting embrace. “My head suddenly felt like it was hit with a pound of bricks.”

“Should we get you to the infirmary?”

“Yeah, probably. Ugh. It's almost like...” Daniel made the connection in his mind. It felt the way it had felt when he had touched the device. “Oh, maybe… Jack, tell Sha're thank you… tell her… tell her she was right...”

“Sure. Hey, does this mean maybe our Daniel is coming back?”

But Daniel couldn't answer that. He felt back in the seat of the truck and everything went black.

Chapter Text

Don't Worry About the Government

He could tell the room he was in was bright before he even opened his eyes, bright and sterile. He could sense the recirculated air.

The light made him not want to open his eyes, knowing the headache that was pounding behind them, but he did it anyway, hopeful against hope that he was home.

“Hello, Dr. Jackson,” said a cold, unfamiliar voice. A young woman with short hair and a gray jacket was standing over him. She was short and looked impassive.

“Hello?” he asked.

“My name is Talla. I'll call your friends shortly.”

She had a sort of handheld computer that was emitting a small light. Daniel struggled to sit up and realized he was in a clothes that seemed like the sort of thing he'd wear out – a nice gray polo and a pair of light colored slacks. But there were wires attached to his forehead.

“Please don't touch those for the moment,” Talla said, not looking up from her device. A moment later, she approached him with another device and this one looked suspiciously like a needle.

“Wait,” Daniel said.

“This is just for your head pain,” she said impassively, injecting it in his arm before he could object further. Indeed, he'd never had a headache dissipate so quickly. Blinking, he looked around.

It looked like some sort of hospital, but it wasn't the SGC infirmary or the base hospital where they sometimes had to treat SG personnel. In fact, it looked so new and the equipment looked so strange that he suspected he might be off world. It was a big, open room, filled with empty beds and equipment. There was light shining in through windows all around. However, that didn't mean he wasn't back. Maybe he'd been wrong. What if the whole thing had been an elaborate hallucination? His team might have brought him off world to allies for help if he'd been in a coma. But then why would he be wearing these clothes? And it didn't look familiar.

Daniel wasn't sure if he should say anything or if he should just wait and see what would happen next. His indecision was solved when he spotted Sam and Jack coming into the room from around a corridor. “Hello?” he said, still so hopeful that this might somehow be his reality.

“Is it…?” Sam asked Talla.

“Sorry, no. This isn't your Dr. Jackson,” Tella said briskly. “His quantum signature is altered.”

“Well what are you going to do about it?” Jack demanded.

Suddenly another figure appeared from the other direction, a light haired young man in a gray suit, looking prim. “You should explain the situation to this new Dr. Jackson. Then I'm afraid we'll need to question him just like the previous one.”

“See, that's where we have issues, Mollem,” Jack said, looking angry. “I didn't much like your questioning.”

“You have to appreciate that this is a threat to Aschen security,” the man, whose name was apparently Mollem, said. “Especially the way the previous incarnation appeared at such an inopportune time.”

“I don't think he did that on purpose,” Sam said. “If the quantum dimensional jumps are like we theorized, then he wasn't the cause.”

Tella whispered something to Mollem, showing him the screen of her device.

“And what's that about?” Jack demanded.

“Guys, is it really necessary to talk about me like I'm not even here?” Daniel asked.

“You see?” Jack said. “That sounds like our Daniel!”

“But, sir, his quantum signature wouldn't lie,” Sam said.

“Carter, do you think that makes a rat's ass of a difference if they're taking him off to torture him?”

“Torture?” Daniel asked, feeling a little shocked. “Guys, where are we?”

“Take a few minutes to explain things before we assess him more fully,” Mollem said. “I'll give you some privacy.”

“Privacy with Aschen cameras everywhere!” Jack declared, gesturing upward toward the ceiling, where Daniel could see that there did appear to be what might be security cameras positioned in some of the ceiling panels.

“Sir, you're being paranoid again,” Sam said quietly. “Daniel, it's okay. We're on Earth.”

Tella pulled the monitor stickers off Daniel's head and arms. She and Mollem quietly left the area, leaving Daniel sitting on the edge of the bed with Sam and Jack standing.

“Okay, so this is Earth. But why do I get the feeling those two aren't local?”

“Exactly the problem,” Jack complained.

“I take it you haven't met the Aschen in your reality,” Sam said with a grin.

“Who are they?”

“A bunch of humorless supposed do gooders,” Jack said.

“They're a really advanced race we encountered about a year ago,” Sam explained.

“So, wait, basics first?” Daniel asked.

In the next few minutes, he got an earful from Sam, who bubbled on about how great the Aschen were and from Jack, who groused about their presence on Earth and how they were just generally too good to be true. It seemed that SG-1 was the same in this reality. Once they met the Aschen, they offered to help Earth by sharing huge amounts of their technology in stages. A treaty was negotiated and huge changes were underway. First of all, the Aschen had equipped Earth with much greater defensive capabilities and defeated several System Lords with them, thus ensuring that it was highly unlikely that they'd face the goa'uld any time the future. They had insisted that Earth move toward a world government structure and, miraculously, it was actually happening, with the UN turning into an actual governing body. This was in large part because the Aschen had also insisted that the Stargate program go completely public.

“All in year?” Daniel asked, incredulously.

“Exactly,” Jack said.

“It's been a busy year,” Sam allowed. “But now the next stage is beginning. This is one of the first Aschen medical facilities. They're going to be doing all kinds of screenings and they have vaccines for heart disease and cancer. Can you imagine that? A vaccine against cancer? I mean, Janet was telling me it isn't really a vaccine, but we're calling it that because it's a preventative. And they're working on adapting their anti-aging vaccine for the Earth population. It should be ready to roll out early next year. It will extend human life by decades.”

“Wow,” Daniel said. “That's… a lot to take in.”

“But enough about us, Dr. Jackson,” Jack said dryly. “Maybe you could tell us about your reality and, for example, what happened to our Daniel and what you're doing here?”

“Well...” Daniel began, but he was interrupted by Mollem, who arrived out of nowhere to urge Sam and Jack out of the room.

“Dr. Carter, perhaps you can go over the astronomical calculations for the latest shield technology,” Mollem said, in what seemed to Daniel a clear attempt to lure Sam out of the room.

“Of course!” Sam said, excitedly. “Daniel, don't worry about the Aschen. They're really good people.”

“Yeah, Daniel,” Jack said, in a way that let Daniel know exactly how much he believed that.

And then he was left alone with Talla.

“Perhaps you'd be more comfortable in the offices. I can order some food for you,” she said calmly.

As jarring as the exchange with Sam and Jack had been, Daniel tried to put himself in diplomat mode. He agreed that food would be good. Talla showed him where his shoes were and took him to another sterile looked white room but with chairs instead of beds like an infirmary.

For the next several hours, he answered Talla's questions about his reality and the Ancient device that he believed had brought him there, as well as the theory Dr. McKay had shared with him about what might be happening. Daniel felt more and more uneasy though. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something seemed off.

By the time the interview was finished, Talla calmly told him that his team had gone home and they would be keeping him there overnight but that he'd be free to visit with them tomorrow.

“However, they are all quite busy with important matters now,” Talla added, as if Daniel were a small child who needed to stay out of things.

* * *

Sam was so busy that Daniel didn't see her all day. In fact, it turned out that she had been whisked away on a new high speed rail transit the Aschen had helped them build. She was needed in Washington.

Teal'c was off world, helping the Aschen coordinate their attack on the goa'uld. Daniel didn't really understand what was happening with that. It seemed like it was happening at lightning speed from everything he was able to gather, though that wasn't much.

Talla solemnly had allowed him out that morning but ordered him to stay in the new compound. She had fitting his arm with a small tracking bracelet that would monitor his location, alerting security if he tried to leave, and give him access to the large screen computer databases that were positioned around the compound.

Having nothing better to do, Daniel wandered around the sterile new compound. The largest part was the hospital and vaccination center. However, there was also a security building and an enormous set of labs where apparently some of the scientific parts of the SGC would be setting up shop soon, mostly the biological research components. Everything about the place was a little too perfect, too bright, too symmetrical, too big, the lawns too green. It just didn't feel like Earth.

Around noon, Daniel sank onto a stool and began to read, pulling up newspaper archives about the program going public. There had been riots some places. Mass protests in Washington and several other cities. But mostly, life went on. It wasn't the grand catastrophe he had envisioned. It felt like something out of a novel. It was all so pat. Utopian. No goa'uld, human lives extended by decades, cancer cured, pollution cleaned up, green energy implemented everywhere. It seemed beyond impossible yet it was happening.

“Daniel?”

He looked up from reading about the Aschen's plan for ocean clean up and exploration to see Jack standing over him.

“Jack! Finally. I don't suppose we can get out of here?”

“Yeah. Secretary Hammond says I can escort you somewhere for dinner if you're interested.”

“Good grief. Is it dinner already?”

Jack took him to a Thai place they'd had takeout from in his own reality many times. It was nice to get out, he supposed, but Jack seemed annoyed and maybe a little antsy.

“So, no Aschen in your universe or dimension or whatever, huh?” Jack finally asked.

Daniel briefed him on the whole situation back in his reality and began running through missions. It was disturbing how closely their realities matched to a point. They had the same memories of missions, the same memories of Abydos. The Sha're of this universe had met the same fate as Daniel's Sha're. He thought of the reality he just left with a pang. Up to the point that this SGC had encountered the Aschen, everything seemed to match. It was like reminiscing with his Jack.

“When we were stuck in the 60's, I thought you fit in a little too well. For a minute, I thought I was going to have to tell Carter we'd be leaving you behind to get in touch with your inner flower child.”

“Oh come on, Jack. You're the one with the actual memories of 1969,” Daniel said, making a face at him. “You were the one who said the food was better.”

“It was. Probably less processed or something. Farm food.”

“Organic hippie gardener.”

Jack snorted.

The Thai place got noisier with people coming in for take out. Jack looked much more relaxed as they polished off pad Thai and drunken noodles. “Nice to talk to you,” he said. “My Daniel's been too busy helping implement all that Aschen… stuff.”

“As you seem pretty hostile toward them, I'm guessing you don't see eye to eye about it?” Daniel asked.

Jack shrugged. “You might say that.”

“I just don't get it,” Daniel said. “Why are they so generous? And so different from the other advanced races we've met? So willing to take on our enemies? I mean, even if they can take on the goa'uld, isn't it a risk for them?”

Jack's face was a mix between pleased and angry. “That's exactly what I keep saying!”

“Okay, but… I… I mean, the me here… must have a reason for trusting them?”

“Too much faith in alien intentions,” Jack shrugged.

“But Sam trusts them too.”

“They're giving her toys to play with. It's distracting. Besides, she's all up in it with the diplomats what with Faxon and all.”

“What? Who's that?”

“Joe Faxon. The lead diplomat negotiating on behalf of the president. He was some bigwig to the UN before this. The minute he saw Carter, he was smitten.”

“And she's… smitten back?”

Jack shrugged, which Daniel took to mean yes. He wanted to ask about this Joe Faxon more or what “toys” the Aschen had given Carter, but he sensed Jack didn't want to pursue it. He wondered if Jack felt rejected. Sometimes he felt Sam and Jack were involved in a complicated dance of purposefully not flirting that he couldn't quite understand.

He changed the subject. “It's so weird to be in a dimension where the Stargate is public knowledge. If I ever get back to my own dimension, I suspect it'll be the thing the NID is most interested in finding out about.”

“If you want things to stay interesting, you won't tell them about the Aschen,” Jack said. He picked at the last of the noodles on his plate, looking perturbed.

“Hey,” Daniel said, realizing something, “where do they come from anyway?”

“You mean their gate address?”

“Sure. I wonder why you went and we never did.”

“P4C-970,” Jack said. “Don't usually remember those things, but that one's pretty burned in my brain at this point.”

It rang a bell for Daniel, but it took a good minute for it to sink in as to why, at which point, his eyes grew wide. He instinctively looked around, as if to see if they were being watched.

Jack's eyes briefly narrowed then he looked away casually, gesturing to the waitress for the check. “Outside, at your six. Just standard surveillance. Can't hear us, I'm pretty sure. You know that address, huh?”

Daniel tried to school his expression to be casual. But apparently anyone watching was directly behind him so he was probably okay. “Yeah. We got a message not to go there. Under no circumstances go to P4C-970. It had your blood on it. We thought it was from the future.”

“The future, huh?”

“Yeah. Sam got it immediately. We were there, in the gateroom when the message came through the iris. It was too small to be held back. And her hunch was right. The ink came back as some new compound not yet in use. Forensics of ink, I guess. General Hammond locked it out of the dialing device.”

“Shit,” Jack breathed. He handed the waitress a credit card. “You don't have anything else?”

Daniel shook his head. “I almost didn't remember that.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He nodded and looked grim.

“What do we do now, Jack?”

Jack shrugged as if nothing was even happening. “Nothing for you. You go back and hope to dimension hop on home.”

“Jack.”

“Daniel.”

The waitress brought back Jack's card with a smile.

“You can't seriously be about to send me back to them,” Daniel said, feeling slightly desperate. “Also, I'm the only one who knows this.”

“You don't know anything else.”

“That I know of.”

Jack looked unsure for a moment and then said, “Come on. Keep up.”

They left the restaurant and went to Jack's truck. Jack kept smiling, talking about hockey, and Daniel marveling a little at his ability to stay focused when things were so tense. As they got to the truck, Jack opened the door for Daniel and reached an arm up to ruffle his hair. Daniel paused. Meanwhile, Jack's other hand came around to the bracelet on Daniel's wrist. In a swift motion, Jack had used a pocket knife to cut the thin plastic off Daniel. There was a moment of pause then Jack, walking around the truck to the other side, tucked it in the bumper of another car in the lot, one that they could see was about to be driven away. If Daniel hadn't been watching, he would have missed it.

In the truck, Jack turned on the radio, which was on the classical station, and said, simply, “Hopefully we can get to Hammond and at least tell him this.”

“Not much of security if you can just snip it off me?” Daniel asked.

Jack shrugged. “They're pretty trusting. It might have triggered something, but I don't think so. They didn't even have the NID on the parking lot. Pretty light surveillance.”

“What do you think their plan is?” Daniel asked. “I mean, we must have had a good reason – you must have had… or you will have… or, a version of you will have… a good reason to send that message back. And you couldn't do it alone.”

“Carter must have helped,” Jack said simply. “No other explanation.”

“Well, there are a million other explanations,” Daniel allowed.

“But that one is the simplest.”

“Yeah.”

“They seem… uptight but benevolent,” Daniel said. “What do they get out of setting up clinics?”

“They're about to shoot us all up with some drug we barely understand,” Jack said. “Seems like a good plan to me. We even built them the clinics.”

“But if I understand their technological level, they could just wipe us out with a few well placed bombs. Or if their understanding of biology is as advanced as it sounds like it is, they could probably just wipe us out with some sort of superbug. And, really, it begs the question, if they're so advanced, why wipe us out at all?”

“We're not nothing,” Jack said. “Think about how the goa'uld keep their worlds purposefully weakened.”

“Low population, agrarian,” Daniel said. “Yeah. I know. So, maybe it's an attempt to reduce us to that without wiping us out?”

“A lot of people on Earth,” Jack said. Then he paused. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I'll tell you when we get to Hammond.”

It was a few minutes later that they pulled up at a brick house with a long, sloping yard. There were purple ride on toys and a battered plastic play kitchen in the garden as well as two cars in the open garage. Jack didn't go to the front, but immediately led Daniel around to the back.

A woman in black sweatpants with her hair pulled back came to the back door when Jack knocked out a sort of rhythm. “Colonel O'Neill?” she asked when she opened the door.

“Nice to see you, Elizabeth,” Jack said. “We really need to talk to your father.”

She looked concerned, but she nodded. “Let me finish putting the girls to bed,” she said. “I'll get Ben to help you out.”

It took nearly an hour of waiting in the living room strewn with children's books before General Hammond arrived, or Secretary Hammond in this reality, Daniel had to remind himself. Daniel was reminded again of the previous dimension, where his house had been turned into a chaotic family home. The fact that he hadn't gone back to his own dimension seemed to lend credence to Dr. Mckay's theory that he would have to do this seven times. Or six times, because he was one of the seven realities? In any case, thinking about how many things could go wrong in a life like his was not exactly inspiring him in regards to this journey.

From upstairs, sounds of Hammond's granddaughters getting their baths and being put to bed drifted down the stairwell, little squeals and giggles. It was funny how this world had so much change and upheaval but life went on like normal for most people. It struck Daniel that without any evidence, people might be very resistant to seeing the Aschen as evil. Daniel didn't even know for sure that they were. For all he knew it was all down to a vendetta of his future Jack's that made him send that message through the gate. Except, that wasn't like Jack at all.

When Hammond arrived, Daniel was reading a children's novel about time travelers and Jack was solving a Rubix's cube over and over. He looked annoyed.

“Jack, this better be good. I see you have our missing quantum traveler here. There are a few people more than a little put out by his absence but I told them you boys were no trouble.”

“The house need an exterminator?” Jack asked.

“No one is watching my grandchildren,” Hammond said. He didn't look at Daniel and Daniel got the impression that he didn't really want to. He knew, surely, that Daniel wasn't his Daniel, after all.

“Just checking,” Jack shrugged. “You should hear what Dr. Jackson has to say about the Aschen home world.”

Hammond sat down on the chair across from the two of them. “Dr. Jackson, I was given to understand you came from a reality where you had never met the Aschen.”

Daniel sat up straighter. “That's right, sir. But when Jack told me the designation of their homeworld, I recognized the address. Not long ago, in my reality, we received a note from the future telling us not to go to the address that is apparently the Aschen world. The note was so small it went through before the iris shut. We know it was sent by Jack because it was streaked in his blood.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Hammond asked.

“No, sir!” Daniel said quickly. “I have no idea why we… why in my world Jack and probably some of the rest of us warned us not to meet the Aschen, but I have to believe it was for some reason.”

“I told you I had a bad feeling about those guys,” Jack said.

“Jack, your bad feeling is legendary in regards to the Aschen. And I can't help wondering if the two of you cooked this preposterous story up to try and derail what is likely the best thing that's ever happened to this planet over some vague personality clash. I'm sorry, Dr. Jackson. I can't imagine my Dr. Jackson doing that, but I don't know you.”

Daniel felt worried, but Jack looked relaxed. “Daniel here said something interesting. Something that seemed relevant. What was that, Daniel?”

Daniel turned and looked at Jack. “I don't know...”

“About how the goa'uld like their worlds.”

“Low population and primarily agrarian?”

“I'm not a genius about this stuff, but we've now met three worlds that are allied with the Aschen and all three are low population worlds full of farmers.”

“Which isn't all that unusual out there in the galaxy,” Hammond pointed out, though he looked more concerned by what they had to say.

“But,” Daniel said, thinking, “it's not exactly the norm in a vacuum. The worlds we've met up with that have been left alone by the goa'uld seem to be more urbanized and more advanced. They're not as advanced as us, but seeing as they were transplanted from Earth and started with a lower population base, that makes some sense. From what Jack was saying and what I managed to read today, it sounds like the corner of the galaxy where the Aschen live has been left along by the goa'uld for millenia. I would think that some of the worlds would be more advanced.”

“And there's also what that Mollem guy said the first time he visited Earth, about how our level of population of unsustainable,” Jack said.

Now Hammond looked actually concerned. “The Aschen have been nothing but kind to us,” he said, but he sounded less sure.

“You know something, don't you, George?” Jack asked.

Hammond shook his head. “You boys… Why don't you take Dr. Jackson fishing. That place we went three years ago. And I'll catch up with you tomorrow afternoon.”

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked.

“It's probably nothing. But it occurs to me I haven't taken a break to go fishing in awhile. That's all.”

* * *

The cabin Hammond had sent them off to was barely a shack an hour outside of town, though Jack claimed it wasn't much worse than his cabin in Minnesota. It was owned by a friend of General Hammond's and Jack took the key from the back porch and let them in, starting a fire in the wood stove with some half rotten wood stacked on the porch. It warmed up quickly, but both of them opted to sleep in the main room, huddled under blankets.

In the morning, Daniel wasn't sure what they would do, but Jack found a chess set so they spent the morning playing chess. Then Jack dug around in the attached shed and found the fishing poles. “No proper bait,” he said, “but we can use a bit of canned tuna.” That sounded like cannibalism to Daniel, but he let Jack lead him out to the small pond near the cabin and sat on a makeshift bench fishing.

“I'll have to tell my Jack that in some reality, he managed to get me to go fishing with him,” Daniel joked.

“Don't get his hopes up too much,” Jack deadpanned.

They didn't talk about the Aschen or what Hammond might be onto or the fact that it was likely the SGC was looking for them. Hammond knew where they were but hadn't turned them in. Jack was good at covering his tracks. Daniel hadn't been fully aware of whatever he'd done to keep them under the radar on the way there, but whatever it was had worked. And this place was well hidden from the roads. He guessed they were safe there.

But when the afternoon passed and General Hammond didn't show up, Daniel saw Jack begin to get antsy. Finally, he said to Daniel, “There's a convenience store up the road a few miles. Let's go grab something that can pass as dinner.” They'd been relying on the few canned goods left in the cabin. They obviously weren't going to last long.

When Jack pulled his truck up at the tiny gas station and convenience store, he sent Daniel in with the instruction to grab a few things and headed for an ancient pay phone on the side of the building. Daniel nodded. Inside, he bought up soup, thinking that Jack could eat it eventually even if they didn't need it at the moment and better safe than sorry. Then he grabbed an assortment of random nuts and several bags of junk food. A tiny box of Froot Loops.

When he got outside carrying three bags of random food, Jack was already back in the truck.

“Hammond's dead,” he said once Daniel had climbed inside.

“What?”

“Heart attack.”

“Jack… do you think…?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are we…?”

“Back to the cabin. I don't think we've been spotted. Good place to hole up for now. But we have to be outside Denver at 0600. We're meeting Carter.”

The night felt even grimmer to Daniel. They warmed the soup over the wood stove and said very little.

“Don't dwell on it, Daniel,” Jack finally said before they went to sleep. “You won't be here very long anyway. It's not your problem.”

“But it's a problem,” Daniel said. “It's bad for Earth. I mean, if we were looking for confirmation, we got it. I wasn't sure until...”

“It's not your fault,” Jack said.

They were both on the floor near the wood stove, blankets and sleeping bags stacked with pillows from the benches that stood in for a sofa in the cabin. Jack was still sitting, leaning against the table. He reached to where Daniel was stretched out on the floor and rested his hand on his shoulder. They stayed like that for a few minutes. Daniel breathed out slowly.

It had been awhile since Jack had tried to handle him like that. But it had also been awhile since Daniel had felt out of his depth. Most missions they went on, they both had a strong viewpoint and a sense of confidence about what they were doing. When it dovetailed, that was great. When they clashed, Daniel knew the sparks could fly. But even then, they had a level of trust. It was nice, he thought, to have Jack touch him again. The Jack from the previous world had been the same. They were both more friendly to him, which just reminded him the extent to which he and Jack were at odds lately. Even nicer than Jack's reassuring squeeze on his arm was being able to hand things over to Jack and know he'd take care of it. Daniel had no idea what they were going to do about the Aschen, but he knew Jack would take care of it.

“Go to bed,” Jack said after the moment had passed, removing his hand and laying down himself, with a finality to his tone that Daniel knew he had to obey.

Jack roused him well before dawn and he helped Jack cover their tracks in the cabin, putting everything back how it was in the darkness before leaving in Jack's truck. They stayed off the highway, Daniel noted. It was still well before dawn.

At a house that looked half abandoned with several older cars in the driveway, Jack pulled over and hotwired an older, nondescript sedan. He had Daniel drive the truck behind him for a couple of miles then left the truck parked behind an obviously abandoned older house.

“They teach thing kind of thing in special ops?” Daniel asked mildly.

Jack shrugged. He looked determined.

Just after sunrise, they pulled into a diner parking lot and strode inside. Sam was sitting in a booth reading some sort of technical journal. She looked both relieved and nervous to see them. “Sir,” she said.

“Carter.” Jack looked cagey, Daniel noticed and he realized with a start that he was feeling her out. He wasn't sure if she was on his side, but he had come to her anyway.

“It was so sudden,” Sam said as they slid in across from her. She looked exhausted. Daniel realized she must have taken that train back, which meant she had gone cross-country and back again in the scant time since he'd arrived.

“There may have been circumstances,” Jack said.

“Sam, we, um, the day before yesterday, we warned him about something I realized about the Aschen from my reality,” Daniel said.

“I read your debriefing report,” Sam said. “There was nothing. Are you saying you lied?”

“No. I didn't lie. I just didn't know. We just got a message through the stargate that came from the future telling us not to go to the Aschen homeworld. I didn't know that's what it was though until Jack told me the gate coordinates. We locked it out of the dialing device.”

Sam looked impatient. “I don't even know you, Dr. Jackson,” she objected.

“Just listen,” Daniel said. He tried explaining to her the same thing he'd explained to Jack and then to General Hammond. It was hard to believe that he was dead so quickly after their conversation. It couldn't be a coincidence. It just couldn't. Then he tried to explain the population issues. That raised her eyebrows briefly, which meant she did remember what a concern it had been for them, but then she looked hardened.

“I can't believe I'm even entertaining any of this,” she said.

“But you are,” Jack said.

“No,” she disagreed. “I'm not. I...”

That's when Daniel felt the mood shift. The waitress had been by to take their orders twice but Jack had just gotten them all coffee. She came by again, refilling the cup Daniel had quickly drained, looking like she wanted to ask again for their orders. They still had menus sitting in front of them. However, when Jack began to speak, she backed off.

“You didn't,” he hissed.

“I thought it would be for the best,” she said. “Especially for Daniel – our Daniel that is. He's going to get back eventually we think and he would find himself your prisoner, caught up in this paranoid delusion...”

“It's not a delusion...” Daniel started to argue, but Jack was already up and out of the booth.

“Now, Daniel,” he said.

Daniel stood, but they came face to face with a man in a suit with brown hair and a genial smile.

“Faxon,” Jack said, making the name sound like a curse word.

“Colonel,” the man said. He sounded perfectly friendly, but Daniel felt the undercurrent of tension.

“Sam, you've got to see that this is a pretty wild coincidence,” he said, turning back to Sam as she stood up from the booth. “At least consider the stakes here.”

She looked torn. “I know. But I...”

“It's too late, Colonel,” the man said.

“Joe,” Sam said, sounding unsure, “they really did have some… concerning points, especially about the overpopulation issues that I know were part of the talks with the Aschen...”

“Sam, nothing they're doing is going to… We're fully aware of the whole situation,” he said.

“Forgive me if I don't trust that,” Jack said. He was edging toward the door, Daniel noticed. He followed, but so did Sam and the man, whose name seemed to be Joe Faxon.

“Sir, don't do anything… We can work this out,” Sam said.

“Oh, can we?” Jack was looking around as he walked, he got out the door, followed by Daniel, then Sam and Joe Faxon. But as soon as they stepped away from the diner, Jack's arm flew out to the side. “Daniel, duck!” he shouted suddenly.

Daniel tried to react quickly, but Jack was quicker. As Daniel hesitated, Jack pushed him down and Daniel heard the shots ring out.

“No!” Sam shouted.

Daniel spun around from his crouch and saw Joe Faxon restraining Sam. Inside the diner, people had come to the windows. He couldn't even figure out where the shots had come from.

“Damnit,” Jack swore. He was so close that Daniel could smell the blood on him.

“Oh my god, are you…?” Daniel started to ask, but Jack was already up and headed backward toward Sam and the man restraining her. Before Daniel could fully process or even come up to standing, Jack had Joe Faxon off Sam, an arm wrapped around him and a gun pointed at his head.

“Daniel,” Jack said tightly.

Daniel understood. He pulled out the gun that Jack had given him back at the cabin, the just in case gun that was now apparently in case. Earlier Jack had been trying to convince him that he shouldn't have tried to risk anything for this reality that wasn't even his own. Now, faced with the idea that he might die for this reality, for an unclear cause, and never make it back to his own dimension, he did admit to having a moment of regret before lifting the gun toward Sam.

“Please don't, Sam,” he said. “I really...”

Jack nodded. “She's knows I'd be faster than her.” He stared Sam down for a moment. She looked scared.

“Sir, are you hit?”

“Not now, Carter,” he said quietly. Then, shouting at the parking lot, where Daniel still couldn't see whatever it was that Jack had seen, he said, “We're going to leave nice and slow, all four of us.”

“I'm not going anywhere with...” Joe Faxon started, but Jack tightened his grip on the man's neck and he seemed to rethink what he was saying.

“I know how you like to keep things neat,” Jack said. “Offing four people who are all part of the public face of this whole endeavor wouldn't be very neat.”

Daniel heard a voice and from a distant spot on the far side of the parking lot, he saw one of the Aschen emerge from behind a black van. The man was in a gray suit and had a mild expression, as if the whole standoff was nothing more than a minor annoyance. Daniel remembered his name from his first morning in this dimension.

“Hello, Colonel,” Mollem said. “It might be neater than the alternative.”

For a tense minute, everyone stood there, perfectly still.

“Jack, what do we…?” Daniel started, but again, Jack was ten steps ahead of him, and so, apparently, was Sam.

Before Daniel could finish his sentence, Jack fixed his gun on Mollem, all the way across the parking lot and Sam disarmed Daniel in a smooth motion. Dragging Joe Faxon with them, the two of them made for the nearest vehicle, a blue minivan, diving behind it.

More shots rang out as Daniel struggled to follow them. By the time he made it to the van, they were inside and Sam, at the wheel, had the thing hotwired.

A bullet hit the side of the van and all of them flinched. Children's toys on the floor of the van rolled as Daniel shut the side door.

“Any time now, Carter,” Jack said, his voice strained. He still had a death grip on Joe Faxon and a gun pointed at him.

“On it, sir,” she said as the van pulled away.

“Daniel,” Jack said.

“Yeah?” Daniel wasn't sure what to make of any of this. Could they get away?

“Mind taking over?”

“Um, sure,” Daniel said. “But Sam took my gun...”

“Great,” he said, handing over the handgun. “I need to pass out now.”

As soon as Daniel had the gun, Jack basically did just that, slumping over on the back seat and breathing heavily.

“Shit,” Daniel said.

“You should really turn yourselves in,” Joe Faxon said. “This is all just a massive misunderstanding. And you, Dr. Jackson, this isn't even your reality!”

Daniel glanced around and spied, in the messy car, a roll of Duck tape with pink flowers on it. He used it to bind Joe Faxon's hands and feet, hoping he was doing a decent job. Then he passed the gun up to Sam, who was driving like a madwoman.

“Are we being followed?”

“Can't say for sure,” Sam said. “Shooting Mollem probably gave them pause.” She shook her head. “Oh, what have we done? I really hope...”

“Sam, sweetie, you've got to turn yourselves in,” Joe said.

“I have more tape,” Daniel said.

She snorted a half laugh, bitter and scared. “Do it.”

Daniel tore off a piece and stretched it over the man's mouth. He hadn't struggled as Daniel had bound his hands, but he now thrashed as he lost the one weapon he tended to rely on. Daniel understood that. He also expected to talk his way out of most situations.

* * *

The next few hours were a mess. Daniel checked Jack in the back seat and saw that there was a bullet hole in his leather jacket and a stain of blood spreading over his shoulder. He was nearly useless as a medic, so he and Sam swapped places, not even bothering to stop the van, but leaving it on cruise control as they changed on a country highway headed through the mountains. Daniel had the wheel for nearly half an hour before he was convinced they weren't being followed, at least not directly. He pulled over at an abandoned gas station, pulling around back.

“Shoulder hit,” Sam reported when he got out. It was midday and Daniel was exhausted. He wondered if he should steer them back to the cabin where he'd started the day with Jack. At least there was water there, and some food and basic supplies.

She had stripped off Jack's jacket and shirt and bound the wound. From where he stood with Sam just out of earshot of the van, they could see Joe still bound and taped in the front seat and Jack stretched out in the back. “I'm pretty sure it's nothing potentially fatal, assuming he gets medical attention. He roused earlier while you were driving. He just lost a lot of blood very quickly.”

“Where are we going to get medical attention?” Daniel asked.

“Well, there are hundreds of free clinics about to open up,” Sam said, darkly. When Daniel didn't say anything to that, she added, “I can't believe I'm trusting a cryptic message from a future in another reality, told to me secondhand by a man I don't even know.”

“You're not,” Daniel said. “You're trusting Jack – your Jack. And I think you're trusting your gut. What did Joe say that made you suspicious?”

Sam hesitated. “We really need to get Jack to a doctor. I threw my cell out the window right after we left Denver. But I'm thinking we can circle around. My sister in law is a nurse. I think I can get to her at work if we hurry. Then I can bring her here. We need to switch the van.”

“We can take a few minutes for you to question him,” Daniel said. “If it will help you be sure.”

Sam sighed. She walked over to the van and, giving Joe a warning, she pulled the tape off.

“You're only getting yourselves into worse trouble,” he babbled quickly. “And what if the colonel dies? That would be on your conscience.”

“I think Jack's okay with whatever happens,” Daniel said. He was rewarded with a grunt from the backseat, which made him feel relieved to think Jack was aware enough to participate. He had the sense that if they needed him, Jack would leap up and be on his feet in seconds. Maybe that was crediting him too much, but he'd seen him injured off world and recovered that fast.

“What did you mean when you said you were aware of the whole situation?” Sam asked. She looked troubled.

“Sweetheart,” Joe said, “you know how secret negotiations are. They're secret. You've been keeping secrets most of your adult life. Big ones that are now out. And you're still privy to all kinds of classified...”

“There's something in the agreement, isn't there?” Sam asked. “I remember when you were negotiating it… There was something that troubled you and you wouldn't say. And then you all agreed to it, didn't you? What did the Aschen want?”

“It's not like that. Look at our world!” Joe pleaded. His hands and feet were still comically bound in the colorful tape. “Environmental disasters, overpopulation, unsustainable growth! The Aschen promised to help us with all of that.”

“How were they going to help us?” Daniel asked.

“We had to become more sustainable,” Joe said. “It had to be done quickly. There were too many people to make it possible without...”

“Killing people with the vaccines?” Jack asked from his position in the backseat.

“No!” Joe said vehemently. “Nothing like that.”

“Then what?” Sam asked.

“If we could just lower the birthrate, cut it in half,” Joe said.

“Oh my God,” Daniel said, the answer suddenly dawning on him. “Forced sterilizations.”

“Not everyone!” Joe said. “And think about the trade off!”

Sam looked appalled.

“You don't know the trade off,” Daniel said. “Think about those worlds that the Aschen are currently allied with. What if that's their goal? To reduce us to that?”

“That would never happen,” Joe said. “It would take at least a century or more. Once the population is more under control, we'd go back to a more normal birthrate and...”

“The Aschen live longer than that,” Sam said. “It's nothing to them.”

A silence fell around the van as the reality sunk in. Even Joe looked worried.

“Kids, we might need to get Fraiser in on this,” Jack said, waving an arm to gesture to his bound shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said.

* * *

Sam was afraid to contact Janet, but she wasn't afraid to kidnap her sister in law as she got off work that evening. The four of them, with Joe still tied up, but now looking increasingly despondent, holed up in an empty storefront in a nearly abandoned strip mall on the outskirts of town. By nightfall, Jack was stable and filled with antibiotics and ordered to rest.

He didn't really rest though. The next day, Sam and Jack were both up and about, taking care of a million different things. Sam had ripped off Joe's taped bindings and handcuffed him to a pole instead. She and Jack left Daniel there with him the entire next evening.

Slowly, Daniel began to talk to him. He wasn't a bad guy, Daniel concluded. He was scared to death and in over his head being held captive by most of SG-1, and he had possibly sold out the planet to a bunch of aliens, but with good intentions, Daniel decided.

“What can they possibly do?” Joe asked more than once. “It's too late anyway.”

Daniel wasn't sure either, but early in the evening, Sam and Jack returned with greasy Chinese food and took Daniel aside, basically to tell him they weren't going to tell him anything.

“But maybe I can help,” Daniel said.

Jack shook his head. “We've now seen you blink in and out of existence twice and from what you told me, it's about to happen again. You're not reliable.”

“Do you think you'll be able to stop them?” Daniel asked. “Do you know anything else about their plans? Are we right to be suspicious?”

Sam glanced at Jack. “We have confirmation about the sterilizations,” she said. “It's in the vaccines. And we have Janet now too, but they don't know it.”

“That's good. Or not good, but...”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. We have a plan. In the meantime, we need to tie you up.”

“What?”

“Daniel,” Sam said, pleading, “if you become a different Daniel Jackson while you're alone with Joe, there's a good chance he could talk you into helping him get away. And while I don't think he would give us away exactly.”

“Oh, he'd sell us out in an instant,” Jack said.

Sam shook her head.

“Your engagement probably can't survive this,” Jack warned.

“You were engaged?”

“He proposed three days ago. I hadn't accepted yet,” Sam said. Then she almost laughed a bitter chuckle. “Obviously some things are more important. We'll deal with it later.”

“And for now, handcuffs, Carter?” Jack said.

Daniel sighed. He had actually been reflecting earlier that he was glad he didn't have to deal with the discomfort that Joe had in handcuffs. He had a headache coming on and sleeping with his hands bound wasn't exactly going to be comfortable.

Suddenly, the low ache in his head went from dull to sharp. “Ugh,” Daniel said, squeezing his eyes shut tight.

“Daniel, you okay there?” he heard Jack say.

Chapter Text

The Lady Don't Mind

The first thing he knew was that he was restrained. The restraints were loose enough for him to move a little, but tight enough that he could feel immediately that he wasn't likely to be able to escape. He thought he might not have jumped realities again. But then he realized he wasn't handcuffed and the air felt nothing like the air in the warehouse where they had been hiding from the Aschen. Plus, his feet were bound in addition to his hands. He realized he was gagged. He must have jumped.

Worst of all, he was pretty sure he wasn't home.

Daniel tried to push through the pounding in his head to make decisions of some sort. He was on his side, laying somewhere uncomfortable. There was something under his head. It seemed like it might be his own jacket, balled up. It was warm and the air felt damp. It was dark. Beyond that, he couldn't make any sort of assessment.

He moved to sit up and heard an involuntary moan rise from his throat. Not only that, but moving at all caused a loud rustling. If he had any hope of evading notice, he'd lost it. He tried to reposition himself.

“Need anything?”

The voice that came from behind him was Sam. He twisted, making a noise that he hoped approximated relief. She was there at least. She could explain what was happening. And she wasn't gagged, which might mean she could free him.

As he turned, he saw her in the soft glow of a lantern at her feet. She had a sort of round device that was disassembled around her and not only was she not gagged, she wasn't bound at all.

That wasn't the most shocking thing about her though. She wasn't in BDU's. Instead, she had on a sort of tight tan leather vest over a gray top. Her feet were in leather boots with a furry fringe.

“Sam?” Daniel tried to say, though it came out as a quizzical mmph.

“You certainly were out for long enough. I'm going to take the gag out, but we have to have a deal. No screaming. No yelling. You do that and the gag goes right back in. Got it, Dr. Jackson?”

Daniel nodded. He had no idea what could possibly be going on.

Sam came over and carefully removed the thick wad of cloth that was keeping Daniel from speaking. He found himself dragging in a deep breath after it was removed, wet and sticky and clinging from his mouth. “Drink first,” she ordered, holding his canteen up to his lips.

Once he'd sated his thirst, Daniel wanted answers. “What the hell is going on? And where are we? Are you going to untie me?”

Sam cocked her head at him. “Me first. You know me, right?”

“Of course I do, Sam. Or Major Carter. Or Dr. Carter. Or whatever you go by. And I assume you know that I'm Daniel Jackson and that I'm somehow, probably because of an Ancient device, jumping through several different realities. I had hoped maybe I'd landed in my own, but I have a strong feeling I haven't.”

“Sam is fine.”

“What are we doing here?”

“You came to help me with a little project but it seems to have gone all wrong. There are about a hundred Jaffa out there in the woods looking for us. So now we're all waiting it out. I think Selmak will be able to rescue us, but we'll see. All this making some sense?”

“Yes, as much sense as it could, I guess,” Daniel said. “But none of that explains why I'm tied up!”

“No yelling,” Sam cautioned.

“That was not yelling. That was speaking sternly.”

“The last Daniel wasn't too bad, but the first one who came through wasn't very cooperative,” Sam explained. She looked questioningly at Daniel. “Are you going to play nice and not try to get us all killed?”

“Sam, stop dancing around whatever it is. If you tell me there's a platoon of Jaffa out there, why would I leave or make a ruckus in here?”

Suddenly Sam's voice changed, becoming deeper and reverberating. “I suppose it depends on what you think of me,” she said.

Daniel nearly jumped, his hands pressing against the bindings. “You're a goa'uld,” he said. Then, seeing Sam's face fall, he corrected himself. “No, you must be Tok'ra. Are you… Jolinar?”

The expression on her face molded into a genuine smile. “Excellent, Dr. Jackson. I take it we have met in your reality?” the reverberating voice asked.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “But only briefly. You took Sam as a host unwillingly and then you tried to leave, but an assassin tracked you down. You died to save my Samantha Carter. It was because of your memories that my Sam was able to find the Tok'ra and her father became a host to Selmak.”

“I'm disappointed to hear that I perished in your reality,” Jolinar said. Then, Sam, resuming control said, “Me too, but thank goodness you've at least heard of the Tok'ra. The Daniel that hadn't completely freaked out on me.”

She had already moved to slash his tight bindings with a knife from her belt. Daniel stretched his arms and legs once he was free.

“So, we're just stuck here?”

“We've been working on using some of the spare parts from this goa'uld cloning device we took along with some of your SGC radio gear to try and jerry rig a way to contact my father, but it's really not going well. It's more a way to keep busy,” Sam admitted. “I'm sure he's worried since I didn't check in, not to mention that General O'Neill is bound to be worried about you. But it's hard to say when the cavalry will get here.”

“General O'Neill, you say?”

“That's right.”

“Jack's been promoted since my reality, I guess. So, if you're Tok'ra, I guess that explains the fashion choices.”

“When in Rome.”

“So… it's just us here?”

“No, actually. Teal'c and Martouf went to see about scavenging a better radio for me. They should be back soon if everything went okay. This cave is pretty well hidden and I think the Jaffa have mostly given up looking for us actively. The jungle is extremely dense out there. They have the gate beyond locked down though. And we lost our transportation.”

Sam offered Daniel some of the Tok'ra equivalent of an MRE, which was an interesting thing to try. They compared realities. It seemed in this one, she and Jolinar blended and Sam managed to convince everyone it was willing, which it apparently was eventually. She and Martouf were together, which was no surprise. The goa'uld enemies list was slightly different. It seemed that Ra was still around. It was his Jaffa that were out there patrolling. They'd killed Apophis ages ago though, as well as Baal and Sokar and Nirriti.

After awhile, Teal'c and Martouf returned with some spare parts and once Sam had kissed Martouf hello, everyone was introduced.

The rest of the day passed quietly as they all sat in wait. The cave was warm and damp. Mosquito like bugs the size of tiny birds flew in and bit Daniel's arms occasionally. They only seemed to leave Teal'c alone. Between the MRE's Daniel had and the dried food the two Tok'ra had, they had enough to last for several more days and there was a source of fresh water in the cave. It was obvious that they were all in for the long haul and prepared to wait it out for as long as they could.

Sam swore at the various bits of machines on the cave floor sometimes and eventually Martouf lured her away by whispering in her ear until she sighed and followed him off to another corner of the twisting cave where they had their sleeping rolls.

“Um, have fun, guys,” Daniel said.

He had hollowed out some small depressions in the ground and found pebbles so that he could play mancala, which he was teaching Teal'c. Apparently he hadn't brought cards and the only books in his pack were all for the translation Sam had dragged him along to do. Not exactly distracting reading. He had looked through his notes, but they didn't take long to read. At Sam's suggestion, he'd written out a page that explained the Tok'ra and that he trusted Jolinar in case there was another Daniel Jackson who came along not knowing the Tok'ra. However, in the meantime, there was almost nothing to do.

“I think they are wise to make the most of a poor situation,” Teal'c observed.

“As long as they're not too loud about it, I guess,” Daniel said.

“This is a most intriguing game,” Teal'c said, looking at the pebbles and counting out the holes. “It seemed simple but I am starting to see its complexities.”

“Maybe we can make a checkerboard next,” Daniel suggested. He wasn't all that into mancala, but it had been simple to create.

Teal'c also wasn't in BDU's. It turned out he had left the SGC to work with the Tok'ra most of the time. “Once O'Neill was no longer in the field, it seemed like a wise decision. Jolinar and Lantash have helped me foment revolution among my people in many clever ways.”

It surprised Daniel that the Tok'ra and the rebel Jaffa were such buddies in this reality, but he figured Teal'c probably deserved most of the credit, or possibly Sam.

Eventually, Teal'c took a watch and Daniel found a way to curl up and sleep.

The next day was a near repeat of the previous one. Time didn't have a lot of meaning in the cave. Martouf taught Daniel a game he had learned in his youth called jojo that also involved pebbles and a board, which they fashioned by drawing it on a piece of paper in Daniel's journal. He told Daniel about the planet where he grew up, a civilization that sounded Incan influenced to Daniel.

When it was night, Daniel took a watch at the mouth of the cave, which was obscured entirely by the vegetation, which they had piled up in order to cover the narrow opening of the cave. They took watch sitting crouched by the entrance, watching through the vines for any signs of movement.

When Sam came to relieve him, Daniel yawned and crawled behind her, switching places.

“Are you happy, Sam?” he asked.

“I assume you don't mean on this jungle planet.”

“No, just, in general. Being a host.”

“Yes. It's not something I ever would have chosen in a million years, but I can't imagine living without her now. She brought me to Martouf, who I love. And we blend our knowledge. She knows things about science that I only ever dreamed about. I get such a bigger sandbox to play in when I'm trying to fix something. That's thanks to her. We're a good team.”

“And you're okay with having left Earth? Left the SGC? And the military?”

“I feel sad sometimes about having left the Air Force. It was my life for so long. But we haven't left Earth or the program really. Martouf and I are there a lot. At least a few times a month. We're trying to make this alliance work.”

“The alliance we have with the Tok'ra in my reality is sort of fragile,” Daniel admitted. “Your father is great, but… a lot of the Tok'ra seem eager to use us when it fits them and not eager to help when we need them. Jack can't stand them. How did he take you becoming a host?”

“Oh, not well. He's finally seemed to accept it, but he was not happy with me for a long time. Last time I was on Earth for more than a few days, I took Martouf to meet my brother Mark and his kids. You know how the program is, now we need escorts all the time. Jack agreed to be ours. I said, I'm pretty sure this is way below a general's pay grade, but he insisted. I think it was good for us. He was more relaxed by the end of the weekend visit.”

“How did Martouf do with your brother?”

“Let's not even go there,” Sam said. In the darkness of the narrow entrance, Daniel couldn't see her face, but he was sure she had grimaced. “He called chicken an exotic bird and referred to the TV as an electronic entertainment device. I'm pretty sure Mark thinks I married some sort of mentally challenged guy. Later on, he asked me if I had support to help me with him.”

Daniel laughed. “Intergalactic romance problems.”

“Having the general there didn't really help with Mark either,” Sam said. “It was just weird to him that we had this presence trailing us around all the time, like our own weird Secret Service. I'm hoping we can dispense with that soon. I'd love to be able to show Jolinar some of the more beautiful places on Earth. I think we'd enjoy it.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, just visiting Mark and the kids isn't exactly getting the best of what Earth has to offer. Poor Mark. I know he thinks his family is a bunch of weirdos. I think it would be easier if Dad would come see them, but he refuses.”

“You'd even up the numbers,” Daniel said.

“Exactly. Though Jolinar is thinking that it wouldn't help much.”

“I know Jacob goes to visit them with you sometimes,” Daniel said. “In my reality, I mean. I don't know why exactly, but I think Selmak had something to do with it.”

“Ah, that would be nice,” Sam reflected. “I'd like to spend more time on Earth again. Having Dad there would be good. Maybe one day.”

“It sounds like becoming a Tok'ra has helped your work life balance,” Daniel said.

“It's perspective, I guess,” Sam said. “And knowing there time. She's just as driven as I was before. Together we're pretty focused, but she helps us see that there's no rush, that we can wait for it, whatever it is. We feel worried about the fate of Earth, but she keeps me pretty confident that we can keep the goa'uld at bay.”

The shifting pronouns fascinated Daniel. Was Sam a singular or plural now? She didn't even seem to know herself all the time, but she didn't seem upset by it. One of the massive mosquitoes flew into the crawlspace where Daniel was sitting. He smashed it on his cheek and felt the dampness of his own blood crushed. “Ick. These bugs.”

“What about you?” Sam asked. “My Daniel… well, he's been getting better about his work attitude since SG-1 broke up. I know he's seeing someone.”

“Oh?”

“Off world somewhere,” she said.

“Really?” Daniel was surprised. “And that's… how does that work practically speaking?”

“I don't know. I think General O'Neill lets him go without guard.”

“That doesn't sound at all like my Jack or my SGC. I try to go back to Abydos every once in awhile and it always takes a pile of paperwork and Jack would pitch a fit if I went by myself, even though I lived there alone for a year. Or, not alone, but… you know what I mean.”

“Yes.” Sam had already explained that Sha're in this reality had died not long after becoming a host. At least there had not been years of uncertainty for this Daniel, and no Shifu to chase after.

“I wonder where they met.”

“I think it's one of the semi-industrial worlds, so somewhere with no goa'uld, though I'm honestly not sure. Daniel hasn't talked much about him.”

“Wait, what? Him?” Daniel unintentionally let his voice get loud so he tried again, quieter. “It's not a woman?”

Sam chuckled. “I'm pretty sure it's a guy.”

“That's… um...” Daniel wasn't sure what to say. “Surprising. At least… surprising to me. Is he… I thought you said he was married to Sha're?”

“He was. But I know before he went to Abydos, his previous relationship was a man. Someone named James. I think he was another research assistant when Daniel was doing one of his Ph.D.'s.”

“I never even knew a James. Not in grad school anyway.”

“So you're not…?”

“Um, no.” Daniel's mind boggled a little. What a strange variation. “And Jack's not… I mean…” Daniel sighed. “Dating through the Stargate?”

“It does seem a bit funny. Dial up P3Y-249, I'm taking my man out on the town!”

Daniel laughed. “Makes going to the movies seem pretty lame. Why didn't you take me to another planet, darling? You must not care for me!”

Sam laughed. “Not that I've done much dating lately either. I just stumbled into a premade life partner, already joined at the hip.”

“Sometimes arranged marriage works,” Daniel said.

“It is a bit like that. How did this start? Oh yeah, yes, Daniel, we're happy.”

There was that we again. Daniel realized that Sam would never be lonely. It was a strangely comforting thought. Even aside from Martouf, she always had Jolinar.

Daniel retreated back to the cave and found his way to sleep. The next day was another repeat. He thought he was going to go crazy when he started to develop a migraine late in the night.

“I do have a healing device,” Martouf suggested as Daniel gripped his head. “However, I suspect this is not a naturally occurring headache.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel asked.

“Daniel Jackson, may I suggest you lay down?” Teal'c said.

“Oh crap, not again,” Daniel said, sinking to the cave floor.

Chapter Text

Memories Can't Wait

Daniel woke up with a strange sense of dread. This shifting realities thing was getting almost routine.

Before he even opened his eyes, he was pretty sure he was off world again, not in the SGC infirmary. The air around him was warm and he smelled exhaust and fumes everywhere. It was a relief to be out of the cave, but who knows where he was this time. It wasn't the Springs, it wasn't the Mountain, it was probably some off world city.

“Where…?” he stuttered. His head was pounding, though it didn't seem to be quite as bad as the last two times. He could stand it and now that he knew what was happening, he was determined to look around and get his bearings. Luckily, he seemed to be alone.

The room was slightly dingy and had the air of a place that had once been regal but had slowly fallen into disrepair. The furniture and style all looked very Victorian, but, of course, he'd been on many worlds where things seemed like Earth. It was funny how humans spread out everywhere and all invented things like crown molding and wallpaper and frames and bureau drawers, as if it was written into our DNA to do so.

He heard voices passing by in the hallway and he pricked up his ears. “...not going to go!” “...seen my black suitcase? It's missing and I need my shirt for the presentation...”

Daniel blinked. Maybe he wasn't off world. That was Arabic, just straight, normal Arabic.

Daniel sat up, pulling on his glasses and looking around. The glasses, which he found on the table had thick black frames. He could only imagine what they made his face look like. He looked down at his BDU's, which now seemed out of place if his suspicion was right. There was a window and he went to it and looked out.

He was almost certain he was looking at Cairo.

Glancing around the room, he saw a folded set of papers on the bedside table and picked it up. It was a thick letter. He could see from the text that it had several pages and several inks, meaning it was added to over time, with at least a few addenda. The him before this had started it in English, but had switched to Abydonian, presumably for secrecy. Off world languages were better than any secret code.

To myself,

This is to help fill in the gaps for my amnesia, which, I presume will keep coming and going, so to speak.

This is number four, and I assume that you're right behind me. In fact, I'm going to make a lot of assumptions. First, that you, like me, are a member of Stargate command, or whatever you call it in your reality, and that you know about alternate realities, as well as about other planets. I lived on one for awhile with my wife, who I really am hoping is okay, though there's no reason specifically she wouldn't be, it's just hard not to worry.

I assume we're going in order. I don't have any evidence for that, but that's my guess. I think we're all displacing each other in turn. I don't know why it's happening. Maybe you know. At first I thought it was just me thrown into this other universe but now I know there have been other ones of us also coming, one after the other. I need a quantum physicist to understand it all. Where's Dr. McKay when you need him? No SGC to ask for help us in this reality. Or, rather, maybe they're out there. Maybe one of the previous versions of us looked. I'm almost tempted to do it. Maybe you'll do it. Maybe it would be in the best interest of this Daniel, if he ever gets back here. If any of us ever do.

Since we're not part of the SGC in this reality, I felt like the best thing to do would be to just play dumb. I've told some of the guys on the dig that I had brain damage and get temporary amnesia. I felt like I was explaining a soap opera. I have no idea how the previous three versions of us (making assumptions again) handled all this. Abdul, who is the head of the local workers, seemed relieved to know it though, so I'm guessing we've all been acting strangely.

The quick summary of this reality to bring you up to speed. No clue if Catherine ever approached us here. We made an ass of ourself in academia with our pyramids and aliens theory. Now we're slowly ingratiating ourselves back into the fold. There's a dig led by Dr. Hollins. Remember that guy? Have him in your reality? Total ass. Our job is mostly translations. Hollins's Arabic is atrocious. We're supposed to be helping him oversee local labor too. He's borderline paranoid that everyone is ruining his dig. Maybe it's just dealing with marines for four years, but I think I've grown more of a tolerance for people mishandling artifacts. These guys aren't archaeologists, but they mostly know what they're doing.

The job isn't so bad. It's almost like a vacation. If we are going through realities one after the other, you'll have been stuck in that cave with that goa'uld using Colonel Carter's body, trying to talk us into believing her crazy story. It was a miserable three days for me, and I'm guessing it was for you. I've never much liked her, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. There's something rather simple about being in Egypt. Makes me think of my childhood. Apparently we have a couple of days off and I may go to Cairo, just to eat and walk and be.

Daniel read on as the ink changed.

It never occurred to me that the point of divergence from my reality could be so far back. There were so many things that are the same. The same schools, the same degrees, the same making an ass of ourselves over the dating of the pyramids. This poor Daniel, he doesn't know he was right. Of course, if he's jumped into some of the realities where he's at the SGC, then I guess he knows now. And at least he has Jack, or someone, to explain things to him. You just have this letter.

Before I left for Cairo, Hollins came to chat with me. Translations probably all wrong, blah blah blah. You'll probably deal with some of that if you're there long enough to get back to the dig. Just keep firm. I can't imagine it's good for this Daniel's career to have his name on a faulty translation, even if Hollins is determined to do it for some reason. Anyway, the point is that he asked would I be seeing my mother in Cairo.

I was drinking coffee (good Turkish style coffee!) and I think I actually spit some out. Hollins probably thinks we're insane. He probably thought that anyway, of course. I don't know about your parents, but mine died when I was eight. It didn't even occur to me that they might be living. I don't even know about father, but it seems mother is alive and well and has a small apartment in Cairo that she lets out seasonally and is still actively involved in digs. It's how we apparently ended up with this job. So, of course, I went through my things and found her information. It was probably a terrible mistake. I haven't even talked to her. I left a message on her machine. She called with a message for me to come by tomorrow, that she'd be home all day.

I hope I don't jump realities too soon. Honestly, if I wasn't living in hope that I'd get back to Sha're and Ari as soon as possible, then I'd want to stay here for awhile.

Thinking that if the pattern held, he'd be there for at least a few days, Daniel realized he would also be here long enough to see his mother. He went back to reading. The ink didn't change, but there was a clear break in the writing and a new tighter version of his own hand filled the rest of the page.

That was a disaster. I've probably made our mother, his mother, his Claire Jackson, think we're insane. And considering what Hollins said, I think that might be a really bad thing. I shouldn't have gone to see her. But I couldn't help it. She was alive. I had to see her. I should have just sat there and not said anything, not asked questions, but it was so impossible not to say something. I wish she could have known Ari. She would have loved being a grandmother.

Practically speaking, father died three years ago of a heart attack. It's so mundane. So peaceful. I can't really write anything useful about any of this. I'll do it in the morning before we meet for lunch.

The letter simply stopped. There had been no morning. In the night, he'd come and that Daniel had left. At least he had the clue about lunch. He turned the letter over then looked at the bedside table. There was his wallet and he saw a little note with the name of a cafe and a time. That had to be it.

This was going to be even more strange than seeing Sha're back in the first reality change.

The cafe was near one of the antiques markets, the sort of place where fakes and genuine finds sat side by side on shelves to be sold to different clients. There was a mix of tourists and locals wandering the streets. Daniel could smell the food and realized he was hungry. He hadn't eaten since before the jump and he hadn't eaten much back with Jolinar/Sam. The last thing he'd had was a rather flat MRE. The smells of the street food wafted to his nose and filled him with nostalgia.

He scanned the tables and didn't see her, even though he knew he was early. He sat and ordered, unable to wait, and began devouring a bowl of kushari and a kebab. Food and sense memories. He wasn't sure he was ready for this. Of course, could anyone ever be ready to see their dead mother decades later?

She found him before he spotted her, sliding into the chair across from him with her brow knit into a worry. She had a scarf draped loosely across her head that matched the blue blouse she wore. Her hair was gray and there were wrinkles around her eyes and hands. Her glasses were bifocals. He could see the different lenses in the midday light. But she was his mother.

He let go of the spoon and tried to pull his emotions under control, but he found he couldn't. His eyes were wet. Now he knew what the other Daniel had meant about what a mistake it was. There was no way to see her without letting loose a flood of inappropriate emotions. They were even more inappropriate for Daniel today since he had supposedly seen her just yesterday.

“Danny,” she said. She said it with uncertainly and just a hint of steel in her voice, as if to say, Danny, stop this now. If that was the intention, it had the unintended effect of turning his tears from blinking back dampness in his eyes to all out weeping.

“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “I've… Did I tell you I maybe got a concussion?” The amnesia story had apparently worked on some of the people at the dig, but it seemed absurdly lame to try it on his own mother, especially when he had no idea what had transpired between her and the other him the day before.

“No,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. She was still clearly torn between reaching out to indulge this and thinking he'd lost his mind and that she needed to keep a safe distance. “Did you get a haircut last night?”

“Maybe.” He ran his hand through his hair. He'd had it short for awhile now. He wondered how long the previous him kept it. Things like that didn't matter so much when he was around people from the SGC. But who could have predicted he'd meet his mother during all this reality hopping? “Concussions can make you more emotional,” he explained, using a napkin to wipe his eyes.

“When did you get this concussion? Did you see a doctor?”

“Last week some time. I probably forgot to mention it.”

“What happened? I heard from Bart that the dig was going well. I didn't hear you'd been injured.”

“Just hit my head. No big deal.”

She looked at him in a way that clearly meant that if he was in tears for no reason in the middle of a street cafe then it was probably not no big deal.

“I don't want to talk about it,” Daniel said, clamping down on all the emotions he felt raging out of control. This was harder than being stuck in a cave with Jolinar while Jaffa zeroed in on their position. “Tell me what you're up to.”

“Not much since yesterday. Honestly, Danny, I'm a little worried about you. All that talk about your father? And the… Danny? You took it off.”

“Took what off?”

“Your father's ring!”

It only took Daniel a second to understand what she was saying. Somewhere back home in a safe deposit box, he had his parents' wedding rings. He hadn't thought of them in years, even looked at them since before Abydos, much less used them. His Sha're had never come to live on earth. But obviously the version of him who was traveling ahead of him did have the rings. Daniel remembered the gold band Sha're had worn. How had he not even realized what it was? Of course he would have taken the rings out of storage to use. And of course Sha're would have been honored and touched to have an earth custom to follow. He wondered if they had a wedding back on earth, before Ari was born. He looked over at his mother's hand and there was the simple, thin ring that Sha're had worn.

When he didn't immediately respond, his mother continued. “I'm so hurt that you stole it from me, Danny. And I still don't understand. I know we haven't been that close these last couple of years, but I thought after you took the position working for Bart… I thought all that nonsense was finally behind you and you'd gotten in your right mind again. You're so smart. It's such a waste. But this… and babbling on about grandchildren...”

The other him hadn't been able to not mention Ari. Especially after she had spotted the wedding ring, Daniel could picture it clearly. He was missing his wife, worried about their son, worried probably even more about their unborn child, and heartbroken that his mother would never know her grandchildren.

That's what helped snap Daniel out of his emotional onslaught. This Claire Jackson didn't have any grandchildren any more than Ari was his own son. He didn't have a son or a mother. That was a sobering realization. As emotionally confusing as all this was, she wasn't his mother any more than she was the mother of the Daniel she'd met the night before.

“Mom, sorry. I think it must have just been the knock on my head. I can barely even remember half of what we talked about yesterday.”

“You got concussed last week, but you must have taken your father's ring months ago back in New York.”

“I… just as a keepsake. I'm really sorry, Mom. Please.” And what would she do when she eventually went back to the States and realized the ring was still there? He didn't even want to think about it.

She looked so displeased and unsure. Even knowing it wasn't really his mother he had disappointed, it wasn't especially fun to watch her eying him with such clear displeasure. Daniel braced himself for more questions, but she seemed content to change the subject. She asked about the dig, which, of course, Daniel couldn't discuss since he'd never been there. He deflected, trying to turn the conversation to her and it eventually worked. She talked about the students housesitting her apartment in Philadelphia, the fact that her knees were slowly going, interdepartmental arguing and funding cuts to archeology departments, and finally to work she managed to get her hands on in the field.

“I got to take a peek at Val Birkway's work in town last week. She gave me permission to come back and poke around. You should come with me this afternoon. She has some things in an undecipherable script, something no one has seen before.”

Daniel let her pay the cafe tab and walked with her out onto the streets. They wandered into the antiques market for awhile and Daniel was delighted to be there.

“I've forgotten how much I love Egypt,” he said, almost to himself. It had been five years since he'd been there. This was so fleeting. He was convinced now that the device that had started this would yank him along again, hopefully back toward home. Even as he drank in the smells and let his head fill with the language, he was saying goodbye.

“You've been here for months,” Claire chided, giving him another funny look. The whole meeting was just a series of funny looks. He wondered what had made her grow distant from her Daniel. She said they hadn't been close for years.

Daniel didn't take the bait. He looked through piles of papyrus and at glass shelves of figures. He paused, staring at one that seemed out of place. A clay figurine with the head of a cobra.

“Apep,” Claire said, seeing his interest. “Don't usually see that.”

“Also known as Apophis,” Daniel muttered. “The vilest god of all.”

“You sound almost as if it's personal,” Claire said.

Daniel shrugged, leaving the case behind to look through a series of early glassware.

Claire found them a cab and traveled across town, through the layers of smog and the loud honking of horns to where her friend's collection was being boxed up to be taken for study and cataloging. It was a huge number of artifacts. Daniel had gotten used to picking and choosing things off world, only taking the things that were most likely to tell an important story or illuminate some mysterious technology. It was wonderful to be somewhere with archeology done right, where everything's provenience was recorded in great detail, where tiny shards of artifacts and bits of ancient trash mattered as much as the prettiest pieces that would get the most attention in some museum collection.

His mother began going over the pieces, talking about the dig, what had been found where, why it was important. He could remember an echo of this from when he was a child. His parents, talking half to him and half to each other, lecturing to the first grade Daniel as if he was one of their doctoral students. He soaked it up now like he had then.

“What do you think of this?” Claire asked, holding up a fragment of a tablet.

The writing was mostly gone, but he immediately started translating, reading aloud the bits that were still intact. It was pretty mundane stuff, funeral rites.

“What's with the vowels?”

The vowel were Abydonian. He'd probably been doing it unconsciously. “Just some theories about pronunciations,” he mumbled.

“But you're still faster than anyone else,” Claire said and Daniel couldn't help himself from feeling a warm sense of pride spread through his chest. “Take a look at this, though.”

The second tablet was also scraped away, but it was much larger. Daniel bent down to examine it in it's crate, immediately intrigued.

“Val hasn't been showing it to many people. There are a few fragments of whatever this is. The one I know is from the 20's...”

“The Langford expedition,” Daniel said, sitting down cross-legged to get a better look at the tablet. He patted his pockets idly, wanting a pencil. He'd gotten used to have a tac vest filled with every bit of things he needed. Now he barely had a wallet and some cash on him. The letter was stuffed in his pocket, but he wanted to leave that alone.

“Val wants to bring all the scraps of this script together. She's working on a paper about them, I know. I have no idea if she's close to deciphering it...” Claire paused, her eyes sharp as she bent over the large stone. “You can read it, can't you?”

Daniel looked up, surprised. Had he been mouthing the words? “Um… why would you think that?”

They were interrupted by a voice at the doorway. “Excuse me, but no one is supposed to be in here.”

Daniel stood, looking toward the door.

“Oh, Dr. Jackson,” said a short young woman with an American accent. “I didn't realize it was you. Dr. Birkway said to let you look at anything you wanted and answer any of your questions.”

“Beth,” Daniel said, surprised, but instantly recognizing his one time assistant.

“I'm sorry, do I know you?” she asked as she walked around the tables of crates to where they stood next to the tablet.

“Oh, sorry, um, Daniel Jackson.” He extended his hand.

She shook it, but he sensed the recognition and was reminded at how his name was still infamous in some circles, synonymous with academic implosion and crackpot theories. The irony of his own assistant in his own reality, someone he hired and was in the midst of training, someone who he'd had to break in past the point where she was so in awe of him that she spent the first week practically giving a squeak every time he asked her a question now literally turning her nose up at him wasn't lost on him.

“The one who...”

“Yep, the one who,” Daniel said, laughing. “But as it turns out, I was right, so there's that.”

“Danny!”

“Sorry, Mom. Do you have some paper and pencil? I want to jot down the translation on this thing in case it's important.”

She pulled out a notebook with a little pen from her bag and handed it to him. “You can read it.”

He shrugged. “I don't suppose anyone will believe me, so it's rather moot, don't you think?” There was something about seeing the Beth of this reality that made him feel like acting like a pompous jerk. He wasn't sure what had gotten into him, just that he was thrilled his mother was there, but more thrilled this wasn't his life. Thank goodness for Catherine.

The tablet was in goa'uld, the script running horizontally. He jotted it down, leaning the notebook against his knee as he wrote. There was a large crack in the center of the stone, obscuring a great deal of the text. Still, he got down what he could. It was interesting, about a weapon, which would certainly interest Jack. Maybe there were big honkin' space guns right on Earth.

“Can you tell me more about where this was found?” he asked Beth.

“No,” she said, looking annoyed. “Look, Dr. Birkway is working on research on that tablet specifically. It's her find and...”

“I'm not interested in publishing it,” Daniel said, standing up and brushing his pants off.

“Forgive me if I don't believe that,” she replied.

“It's for some consulting I do,” he said. “Trust me. You can keep the tablet and whatever you think it says. I'm just trying to figure out a little context. Was it found near Giza, perhaps near where the Langford expedition did their work back in the 20's? Any mentions of Ra around the tablet?”

“No, you're completely off. It was found much further south and all the associated mythology was around Hathor.”

Daniel gave a shudder. “Okay, good to know. Hathor, huh? At least I know what happened to her. Specifics?” He supposed if Dr. Birkway was doing the same work in his reality, they could likely find it easily enough, but if she wasn't, then there was no way to know.

“You're just as much of a nutcase as everyone says,” Beth accused. “You should be in a padded room.”

“Been there, done that,” Daniel replied. But then when he looked at his mother, he regretted it, regretted compensating with sarcasm. He'd been picking up all of Jack's bad habits, he supposed. He wasn't supposed to be doing his job here, he was supposed to be fitting in. This behavior wasn't really fitting in with trying to ingratiate himself back into the academic community.

Claire cleared her throat. “That's all published already,” she murmured, holding the map. Daniel cocked his head and quietly added the location from the map to the note he'd jotted down, then he ripped the paper out and shoved it in his pocket, handing the notebook back to his mother.

“Thanks.”

“I think you should leave,” Beth said.

“Wait,” Daniel said. “Just tell me this, was there anything else found with the tablet? Maybe a sort of bracelet with a jewel that hangs in the center of the palm of the wearer? Or… anything unidentifiable? Anything that seemed completely out of place?”

“That's rather vague,” Beth replied, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Just… if there was anything else with this script on it, especially any mysterious artifacts, then it could be potentially dangerous.”

“We know how to follow proper safety procedures.”

“Does that mean there were more things?”

“It's not any of your concern. I think I asked you to leave.”

Daniel looked around the room at the crates and artifacts in various states of being packed up. He didn't immediately see anything, but that didn't mean anything in a maze of random bits and pieces like this. “They're going back to the states?”

“Val's based in Philadelphia, at the university,” he heard Claire murmur to him. Daniel filed that away, but really, did he need to worry? In his reality, he increasingly kept his ears to the ground about digs that might turn up bits of things that might be dangerous or of use to the SGC. Maybe someone was doing that already in this reality.

Or maybe there was no SGC in this reality. Maybe they never got the 'gate to work without his help translating. Or maybe they made it to Abydos and then never made it back. There was no telling. He needed to find Jack.

“But there was a piece of jewelry not unlike the one you described. How did you know about it? I've never heard of another piece like it and no one has even laid eyes on it outside of our group.”

“Just a hunch.” That there was a ribbon device found confirmed that the site would be worth looking at in his reality if no one had excavated it. He wondered what the weapon was. Knowing Hathor, it was probably something nasty. Probably not a bomb, probably something more subtle. Of course, there might be nothing there. Whatever it was, it wasn't like she had immediately gone back for it when she took over the SGC.

“That's some hunch.” Beth looked torn. Her arms were still crossed and she obviously still wanted to kick them out, but she was also interested. “What do you know about the writing?”

Daniel shrugged. “Nothing,” he lied. “You were right. We should probably leave. Nice to meet you, Dr. Martins.”

“I never told you my name,” Beth said, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Sure you did,” Daniel said, kicking himself, but heading for the door.

Claire followed him outside, through the hallways and outside again.

“Sorry if I messed things up with Dr. Birkway for you,” Daniel said. “It's probably hard having a nutcase for a son.”

“Val's an old friend,” Claire said. “But, Danny...” She stopped herself. “It's hot, even for Cairo. Come back to the apartment with me. I don't know why you were even staying in a hotel in the first place.”

He let her take him back home in another taxi. The air conditioning of the banged up car felt beautifully cold after the heat of the late afternoon. He stared out the window. He'd done exactly what the previous version of himself had done after telling himself he wouldn't. He hadn't tried to fit in at all. This wasn't his life or his reality. It wasn't his place to interfere or mess up his life. He had to work on the assumption that he'd get back to his reality and so would this version of him. He wouldn't thank him for ruining whatever chances he had left.

The letter he'd left for himself was in one pocket and the note about the potential goa'uld weapon was in the other. He'd need to update the letter. And to add an apology. He could only hope he would understand.

The taxi ride took awhile, during which they were mostly silent. At the corner in a little market, Claire poked her head in and emerged a moment later holding two Cornettos and handing him one.

“It is hot,” Daniel said, tearing into the ice cream and starting it on the walk up to her apartment.

“Oh, my knees don't like that flight of steps any more,” she complained as she unlocked the door.

It was a tiny space. They sat and ate their ice creams, Daniel reaching the little cone of dripped chocolate long before his mother.

“Your sweet tooth,” she rolled her eyes. “If you don't watch it… Though, actually, you look like you've lost weight.”

“Being in the field,” Daniel said, as if that would explain any physical differences between himself and her Daniel.

“How are you able to read that script?”

“I'm really not.”

“Danny, if you could publish… Obviously not from Val's findings, but there might be other things out there. You mentioned the Langford expedition. I know of another from the 60's back when your father and I were involved in the UNESCO work to remove everything from the flood zone. That one is just sitting in the archives somewhere… I'm sure we could track it down. And there are probably others.”

The hope in her voice was just crushing to him. She obviously still believed in him, even if he had been made a laughingstock. And she had such high expectations for him. What must it have been like to grow up with his parents and their expectations? He had never before seen any up side to their deaths whatsoever. But now, he had a sudden fleeting thought, at least I didn't have to ever impress them. At least I never disappointed them. He shook it off, feeling almost guilty for letting it cross his mind.

“Mom, I can't publish this stuff. First of all, no one wants to touch anything I do with a ten foot pole. And more importantly, it's really not stuff anyone is ready to know.”

“What does that mean?”

“It's hard to explain.”

“So explain it!”

“You know, I'll bet in a few days, I will have forgotten anything I saw on there anyway.”

She was silent for a minute. She pulled the loose scarf off her head and got a bottled water from the kitchen. “Danny, please tell me this isn't more of your alien nonsense.”

“Mom, what am I supposed to say to that?”

“You're supposed to say no it doesn't.”

“Then, no. It doesn't.”

“Danny, you're behaving very strangely. You know I don't… It hurt me what you said, you know. So offhandedly. There was never a padded room. Your father and I were just trying to do our best. And after what happened with… with everything, it seemed like the only option.”

It took him a second to put all the pieces of what she was saying together. Every single thing in this reality was just catching him in such an odd way. He had deflected Beth's comment with one about a padded room, a memory he didn't much like to revisit. He didn't like it in part because it was, in and of itself, a terrible experience to be drugged and out of control, but also because everyone had been so quick to believe that gate travel had somehow caused him to become schizophrenic. It reminded him a little too much of Professor Jordan telling him they ought to lock him up if he really went to deliver that lecture about the dating of the pyramids. Was she saying that they had locked him up?

“You had me institutionalized?” He said it like a question but his mother heard it as a statement.

“I thought you said you were over this resentment, Daniel,” she implored. “When I saw you six months ago back home, I thought we'd finally gotten past this.”

This was why they weren't close? Daniel remembered walking out of that lecture what seemed like a lifetime ago. What would have happened next if Catherine hadn't been there to try and take him to see the Stargate? At the time, he had just had a huge fight with his mentor and broken things off with his girlfriend, telling her that if she didn't have any faith in him, he might as well pack up and leave, which meant he was also about to be temporarily homeless, without a job or any real prospects of one. He could vaguely remember that he'd planned to go get very drunk but Catherine had interrupted that.

“Danny?”

“Geez, Mom, just let me think.”

“You seem… confused, darling.”

He was confused, but not for whatever reason she thought. Great, not only had he ruined whatever chance the Daniel of this reality might have of getting back into archeology, he'd also apparently made his mother think he was certifiable. And to think he'd been half joking with himself about how he probably looked crazy. This wasn't much of a joke.

He wanted this not to hurt. He reminded himself again that this wasn't his mother. This wasn't his Claire Jackson. But it was a peek into a different timeline. If his parents had been there when his academic career had imploded, would they have helped him, stood by him? And the answer was apparently not really. They would have committed him. How long had this Daniel been institutionalized? Had he had a real breakdown or was it just because of his alien theories?

And if Daniel was right, that alternate version of him was now being jerked through alternate realities too, meeting Jack O'Neill, meeting actual aliens, going through the gate, maybe learning how to speak goa'uld. What would he do when he got back?

Could any of them even get home?

Daniel realized he needed to make this all up to the other Daniel. And the only way he could think to do that was to get him into the SGC. He wanted so badly to be home himself.

“Daniel, you know I don't want to say this, but you really seem like you may need a little extra support right now. I wouldn't be a very good mother if I didn't say something.”

“I'm going to go out,” he announced. “Mom, I love you, but I'm not in the right place to talk about this with you right now.”

“I'm worried about you,” she said. “Where are you going? Cairo can be dangerous.”

“You know, I'm a grown man. And I've… had plenty of life experience. I'll be fine.”

“But where are you going?”

Daniel wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. He'd never had anyone he loved try to control him like this, so irrationally. Was this what it was like to be a normal teenager, he wondered, having a parent try to lay down the law when you're so sure you're right and they're wrong. His own early teen years had been spent cramming to get out of school and foster care faster. His later ones had been spent emancipated without anyone who really gave much of a damn about him. Of course, the difference here was that he actually was a grown up.

“I'll come back later. I promise.”

He probably shouldn't have promised, he realized on the walk down the steps. He might not even be here, though that seemed unlikely at this point. He seemed to get at least two days and he was still in his first.

He bought another Cornetto at the corner and ate it as he wandered through the streets for a little while, letting himself get a little lost and end up in an older, slightly rougher part of town. For a minute, he wanted to stay there, pick a fight. He wanted someone to assume he didn't speak Arabic so he could prove them wrong, or someone to assume he was an easy mark because he was a foreigner, which he wasn't. But people seemed to leave him alone.

He came to his senses and got himself oriented, coming to a main road he knew and reminding himself how to get back. He could go to the hotel he had woken up in and retrieve his things, if nothing else. He hailed a taxi, but it wasn't until he was in it that a totally different plan began to take shape.

Back in his reality, if they found anything relevant to the gate or the history of the goa'uld on earth, anything direct, like technology or goa'uld writing, the Air Force would step in and buy it or take it. If the hand device made it back to the States and if anyone identified it, it would be forfeit to Dr. Birkway anyway. He couldn't get away with taking the tablet, but he didn't need to. The hand device and any other tech that Beth Martins had been keeping from him would be enough to be his other self's ticket into the SGC of this reality.

Daniel knew how the military worked. If the other Daniel went to them spouting off about all the stuff he knew, they might lock him up or work to discredit him. And now that he knew that his other self had spent time in a mental institution of some sort, he'd need to work doubly hard to prove himself. Having tech in hand would be a good first step.

And this was the only thing he could think of to apologize to his other self for the havoc he'd helped wreck here.

First, he needed to confirm that the program existed. He needed a phone. The taxi dropped him off at an internet cafe not far from the warehouse where Dr. Birkway's finds were being prepared to ship. Daniel spent a little while looking up phone numbers and looked at his watch. Early morning back home. It should be safe to call Jack, so he did.

Jack picked up the phone and for a moment, Daniel felt an odd sense of calm. It was Jack, Jack's voice. He wanted to tell him he'd seen his mother, that he wished he could just go home. But, of course, that wasn't his Jack at all.

“Hello?”

“If I said to you, Stargate, would that mean anything to you?”

“Who is this?” Daniel couldn't immediately tell from Jack's voice if he knew anything or not.

“Someone from another reality. Just answer the question. What do you do and does it have anything to do with the Stargate?”

Daniel had already looked Jack up, knew he was a colonel, knew he was still Air Force in this reality. There was something about Jack and the Air Force. He was always Air Force, no matter what the reality, Jack had wanted to fly planes.

“I don't know what you're talking about. I work at a facility that oversees deep space radar telemetry.”

Daniel laughed. “Oh, that's beautiful. Thanks for that, Jack. I'll be in touch.” He clicked down the phone.

Knowing for sure that the Stargate was safely under Cheyenne Mountain and that Jack was part of the program gave him a boost. He spent a little time updating the letter to himself, being sure to apologize and talk about the artifacts he was gathering. He downed two cups of Turkish style coffee, thick and sweetened. He went to the hotel and checked out, taking the small bag of belongings with him. Then he set off to see what the state of the warehouse was.

When he got there, Beth Martins was still at work. He debated waiting, but then he decided that he may as well try a more direct approach. He wracked his brain for anything he could remember about Beth. She had mentioned a guy she was starting to see, but that was in Colorado. Surely she wouldn't know him now. He knew where she'd gone to school, knew her mother was a nurse, which was why she was befriended some of Janet's nurses right off the bat, knew she had grown up in Virginia, knew she liked when they had meatloaf in the commissary, mostly because she seemed to be the only one in the whole place who did. It wasn't a ton to go on, but it was something.

“Dr. Martins?” he said tentatively as he poked his head into the room. The guard at the gate had remembered him and let him by, but he was pretty sure Beth could call him pretty quickly.

“You?” she said. “What are you doing back here?”

“Please, I promise, I just wanted to apologize for my behavior before.”

She looked nervous. “I can call the guard.”

“I know.” He waited.

“Consider your apology delivered then.”

“Okay, good. That's good. Can we maybe start over? I really am not usually so rude.”

He didn't think she was going to accept the offer. She had no real reason to. However, after a moment of looking suspicious, nervous, and confused in turns, she said, “How did you know my name?”

“Truth?”

“Of course.”

He had to be careful here. He needed a lie and he needed to mix in a dusting of the truth. Lying had never been his strength. He usually did better with convincing people about outlandish truths. On the other hand, the one time he had really failed at that, he'd lost his whole academic career.

“I'm waiting.”

“I'm sorry, I am terrible at lying. I have an idea, but you'll have to trust me.”

“And why would I do that?”

“I am unable to come up with a single reason.”

Beth shook her head.

“But, wait, look. We have met, you just wouldn't remember. I know you're from Virginia, that your mom was a nurse,” Daniel began to list everything he could think of about her. He wished he'd gone out to that trivia night she'd invited him to. Maybe he would have learned something else about her. Why hadn't he gone anyway? There had been a time before when he kept denying himself happiness and connections because Sha're was out there, suffering, and it didn't seem right that he should allow himself anything beyond intellectual pursuits and work. Now it was like a bad habit.

Beth looked suspicious, but she kept listening. “You could have found all that out pretty easily. That doesn't prove we've ever met.”

“No, I know. Okay, you're being patient and I know you have imagination. I never would have hired you otherwise.”

“Hired me?”

He sighed. “In another reality.”

“In a what? Oh my gosh, I heard you were crazy, but this takes the cake.”

“I know,” Daniel said. “There's no reason for you to believe me. But it's true. I'm not from this reality. I'm from another reality where Daniel Jackson works for the Air Force as a translator. I deal with alien artifacts mostly. And you're currently my assistant who I'm training to go out in the field.”

“The field for alien artifacts being...”

Daniel grimaced. “Other planets.”

“Wow. You don't seem dangerous so I'm going to give you the courtesy of calling Dr. Birkway who I'm pretty sure can call your mother, who I'm pretty sure will have you taken out of here in a straitjacket.”

Daniel sighed. “Here's what I can offer you,” he said. “I'll teach you to read Goa'uld.”

“And what's that?”

“The script on the tablet.”

“You're going to teach me to read a made up language?”

“It's not made up. You can see it on that tablet right there.”

“But you can't read it.”

“I can. And I can teach it to you. Though, since I did a little research and realized that the program I work for exists in some form in this reality, I predict that if you try to publish it, they'll step in and stop you or hire you or both.” Beth was shaking her head. “But, wait!” Daniel said. “Just… if you don't believe me about the realities and alien artifacts and whatever, it doesn't really matter as long as the translation makes sense, right? If you have enough examples, I can show you it makes sense. And you can find the other examples out there. I know of a few others you can probably find. I can almost promise Dr. Birkway isn't onto the key to this. You could steal her thunder. Or,” Daniel added, seeing Beth's disgusted look, “you could help her. Let her take the credit. She'd be indebted to you. I don't care what you do with it.”

Beth looked torn so Daniel put his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. “I know you're curious.”

“I think I should call Dr. Birkway,” she said.

“But you're not going to.”

For the next three hours, Daniel found himself sprawled on the floor with Beth teaching her something he had already taught her in another reality, without the benefit of the syllabary and dictionaries he'd been creating for the last several years. He started backwards, explaining the translation for the fragment on the tablet, then the pronunciation for it, and then from there, he began at the beginning, teaching her the writing system.

Beth had a tall pile of notes in front of her and looked awed. “If this is a delusion, it's a pretty elaborate one,” she said.

Noticing the darkness outside, Daniel looked alarmed. “Oh crud. I told her I'd come back. What time is it anyway?”

It wasn't as late as he had feared. However, Beth agreed to meet him the next day as well and said Dr. Birkway would be away so they could meet there again. She had to finish crating everything and he offered to help.

Daniel felt only a tiny bit guilty as he pretended to wander aimlessly among the crates, located the right one from the catalog and then pocketed the hand device, covering it up again. With any luck, they wouldn't figure out it was missing for weeks, if not months. He knew how it was when everything went to a university or a museum. It took eons to sort it all out. The device sat snug in his pocket.

“Which way are you going?” she asked after locking everything up.

“Oh no,” Daniel said. He knew the general direction of his mother's apartment, but he hadn't memorized the actual address and he didn't know it. He had all his things from the hotel, but looking through his letter and wallet didn't yield any answers.

“Don't you think you're carrying this thing a little far?” Beth asked.

“Not only do I not know her apartment's address,” Daniel said, “but I don't even have a mother. My parents died when I was a child. It's been quite a shock to meet my mother as an adult, even though she's not really my mother. Alternate realities.”

“Of course,” Beth said in a voice that said she was humoring him. “You know, maybe I'd better go with you to find it.”

Despite his protests that he'd be fine and could probably find it without too much hassle once he retraced his steps, she insisted on taking the taxi ride with him. She was staying not too far away, she said. He decided to let her come along.

It only took them about twenty minutes of wandering around before he found the apartment building. As they walked, Beth asked questions about his reality and he answered, usually against his better judgment. “I think I'd be better off lying, but everyone tells me I'm terrible at it.”

“Is alternate me a good assistant?” Beth asked.

“You're actually one of my best,” Daniel said. “I'll be sorry to lose her, but I suspect she'll get moved to SG-11 soon. They need a cultural specialist. And they're a good team. I know that alternate you is looking forward to your first trip through the gate.”

“Like I said, this has got to be the most elaborate delusion ever created. You should write it down like a novel or something. Forget archeology.”

“I suspect if I did that, the US government wouldn't let me publish it.”

“Oh, of course,” Beth said, placatingly.

“You say that now, but you stuck with me for that whole Goa'uld lesson and you know you want more.”

Beth looked sheepish. “It feels wrong to take advantage of a lunatic, but if your delusions cracked that thing...”

Daniel shrugged. “Living for a year on another planet speaking a variant of Ancient Egyptian helped crack that.”

“Oh, you've lived in space too then?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, but Daniel was starting to find it sort of funny. The whole thing was funny. He had told her mostly because he was such a rotten liar, but he found he sort of enjoyed her deadpan dealing with him. He couldn't think how any of it could really hurt him, especially if everyone already thought the Daniel of this reality was a little crazy. And it had worked. He had the hand device and if he could convince the him of this reality to use it as a ticket through the stargate, then maybe that would be a good thing.

She walked him up to his mother's apartment. When they got there, she flung the door open before they'd even finished the first knock. She was on the phone and hung up quickly.

“Danny! Where have you been!”

“I'm fine,” he said. “See, safe and sound. I even got my stuff from the hotel room so I can stay here.”

Claire Jackson looked frantic and Daniel felt guilty for worrying her.

“He was mostly with me,” Beth interjected. “Showing me that writing system.”

“Oh.” Claire looked unsure and Daniel could imagine what she was thinking, that if he really had cracked it, he was a fool to give away the credit by telling a lowly post-doc of Dr. Birkway's. He should publish it himself. On the other hand, if Beth was taking him seriously, then maybe that was a good thing.

“It's okay, Mom,” Daniel said. “Really. I'm fine.”

“He couldn't remember the address,” Beth said.

Daniel sighed.

“What do you mean you couldn't remember my address. You've been here a dozen times.”

“Ah, but,” Beth said, “not in this reality, apparently.”

“Thanks, Beth,” Daniel said, sarcasm dripping. “I thought we had a deal.” How could he have not seen it coming? Jack was always telling him he was too trusting. She had literally threatened to tell on him to his mother the moment he'd gone back in there. Any guilt he felt about stealing the hand device vanished.

“I never said I wouldn't tell you mother this stuff. You really should get help, you know.”

“This reality? What in the world are you talking about?” Claire Jackson asked, the lines around her eyes creasing.

“He told me a very elaborate story about being from a different reality, where he works with alien artifacts and visits other planets. He said the mystery script is an alien language.”

Daniel shook his head and ran his whole palm down his face. In his attempt to get some leverage for his alternate self, he'd only managed to make things massively worse with his mother. He wasn't sure if the hand device had even been worth it, though he was going to be sure to carefully secret it away for the himself of this reality anyway. “Thanks again, Beth,” he said. “Maybe leave now? And forget about tomorrow.”

“To be fair,” Beth said, “he does seem to have deciphered he script. Daniel, you probably just fit it into your delusion. You can see that. It's incredible work.”

He looked at his mother, who was pale and wan. “Why here, Danny?” she said. “Why here? If we were home, I could call Dr. Smythe and tell him you've had a break. You could get the help you need right away.”

At this point, Beth excused herself and Claire walked her out to the landing. Daniel sank down on the sofa, not sure how to fix this, but sure that he had to do so. It was probably a blessing they were in Egypt. She was right that she couldn't force him into an institution when they were abroad, at least, he didn't think so. He probably couldn't go back to the dig, but if he wanted to get away, that would be easy enough. Oh, what had he done? In the last reality where he was in Egypt, the alternate Daniel Jackson had been killed by a massive goa'uld airstrike. Part of him perversely wished Apophis would suddenly show up in a mothership now. It would at least solve one problem.

When his mother returned, she looked so distraught. He hated that he had done this to her.

“Look,” Daniel said. “We're stuck here for now. I know… or, I don't really know you at all, but I suspect, that you're thinking about phone calls right now. To… whoever that doctor that you mentioned is? I assume that's his psychologist? And you're probably thinking about flights back home, right? But it's past business hours. There's very little you can do at the moment. So at least let me talk to you. I doubt I can convince you, but I don't know what else to do at this point.”

Claire burst into tears. “Oh, Danny, it's never been this bad before. What happened? Have you gone off your medication entirely?”

“Oh, there's medication? Good grief, of course there is.” Daniel shook his head. “I mean, is he actually schizophrenic? Or is this only because of his wacky theories? Or did he have a total breakdown after he was laughed out of his position? Because that I can understand. If Catherine hadn't found me...”

“Danny,” she pleaded. “You're disassociating. Talking about yourself in the third person.”

“Can you just sit?” he asked. “I want to try and explain. And… honestly, even if you don't believe me, I barely got to know my own mother. It would be sort of amazing to be able to talk to you about myself.”

“I am your mother!” She locked the door and came to sit next to him on the sofa.

“Both my parents were killed in an accident when I was eight. They were installing an exhibit at the Met and one of the large stones wasn't being properly set and it fell and crushed them. I was right there. It was terrible.”

“Danny, what a horrible story to imagine about yourself!”

“It's not my imagination. Listen to me. Just, suspend disbelief for a minute and listen. After my parents died, I went to foster care. Nick refused to take me. And, speaking of asylums, well, that's another story. It was fine, I guess. I got emancipated at sixteen and went to college. I think my path through school must have been remarkably the same as your Daniel's. I also did my research and concluded that the dating on the earliest pyramids was likely incorrect. I also presented a paper about it that led to me being laughed out of the room. But when I left, Catherine was waiting for me. Catherine Langford.”

“Of the Langford Foundation?”

“Oh, does the Foundation exist here too, then? That's good to know. It's not the Langford-Littlefield though?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Anyway, Catherine took me to a secret military base where she was working with scientists to make something called the Stargate work. It's a large ring that creates a stable wormhole between two locations. At the time, they thought it only went one place. Now, we know it's a vast network throughout the galaxy. A previous evolution of humans that we call the Ancients built and seeded the gates on hundreds of worlds. I helped them translate how to use the gate and we went through it. The military wanted to determine if there was a threat on the other side of the gate and eliminate the threat. Too many things happened to explain, but we found a whole group of humans, from Earth, living there, still living like the ancient Egyptians, still speaking a language that's a derivative of Ancient Egyptian. I got married there, sort of by accident, to a woman named Sha're. And when the military left, I stayed and lived there on the planet with them for a year.”

“Oh, Danny,” Claire said. “This is…

“I know, I know.”

“You said that name yesterday. Sha're.”

“Ah, so that's part of the problem. The me yesterday was yet another Daniel Jackson from yet another reality. I messed around in my lab with something we found on another planet, something built by the Ancients, the Gatebuilders. I probably should have known better, it's beyond too late now. I'm traveling to different dimensions now, and each version of me is traveling ahead. It's like, we're all in a line shifting down. I only got here early this morning. God, what a long day! But I visited the world of the Daniel Jackson from yesterday. He eventually brought his Sha're back to Earth. They have a son, named Ari, who is, I don't know exactly, maybe three years old? And Sha're is pregnant again with their second child. They seemed very happy. He – the Daniel who was here yesterday – left me a note. You can read it if you want. I know he was heartbroken that you couldn't meet Ari. You see, his parents died when he was eight as well.

“But my Sha're was killed, less than a year ago. She had been taken away from me and became a host to a sort of parasitic alien species called the goa'uld. We tried for three years to find her, but in the end, my team found her trying to kill me and they killed her before she could succeed.”

Claire shook her head. Daniel could tell she wasn't buying any of this, but she had calmed down, interestingly.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” Daniel said, carefully. “And I'm not a danger to myself. If you can stand to just wait, maybe wait two days or so, then you'll get a whole new Daniel Jackson. Maybe it will be your son, though one of the scientists in the first reality I visited thought there were seven of us, which would mean you've got two more to go. But you could just stay with us and wait. And then, hopefully, you'd get your Daniel back.”

His mother let out a long, sad sigh. “I wish your father was still with us.”

“Me too. I would have loved to meet him. I don't suppose… do you have any photos?”

“Any photos of your father?”

“I don't have that many. And I never saw him older, obviously.”

“Oh, Danny.”

“Come on, Mom. Work with the delusion. Help me out.”

She got up and went into the bedroom. Daniel went to the kitchen, rummaging in the tiny refrigerator. He found some cheese and a loaf of bread, which seemed like enough as far as food went. He was hungry. Then he began looking through the drawers.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for wherever you keep the knives. I just want to cut some cheese. I didn't really eat supper.”

She looked at him warily. “In the block on that shelf. You know that, Danny.”

“Didn't, but thanks.”

She had in her hands a framed photo. He could tell it was from a few years before. She didn't look that different, and stood with his father, whose hair was gray and middle was paunchy. His glasses were frameless, so different from the oversized ones Daniel remembered from his childhood. His father's arm was around him and he looked happy. His face wore a wide grin. The Daniel in the photo had his hair still in that floppy style, but perhaps even longer than Daniel had ever let it get. It was partially over his eyes. He didn't look unhappy, but he seemed slightly off, as if he wasn't really there.

“Wow.” Daniel breathed, staring at the image.

“At his retirement,” she said. “Surely you remember.”

Daniel shook his head. “I wish I could take this with me,” he said. “I've been trying to squirrel things away, but I keep leaving things behind. I left my glasses in the last reality. Thank goodness I ended up with these. What I really need is my tac vest filled with everything I usually carry off world. Journals, pens, plenty of pockets. Well, maybe not my gun.”

“You carry a gun?”

“It's necessary. I wouldn't have believed it myself the first time Jack handed me a weapon, but, well, let's just say that while I don't think I'll ever be the sort of guy who polishes his sword lovingly and names it, I have the experience to understand why some men do.”

“Danny...”

Daniel took the hunk of cheese and a chunk of bread to the sofa. He bounced his feet as he sat. He was trying to act as calm as possible. It was a negotiating tactic. If he could normalize his behavior, maybe she wouldn't call in the cavalry, whatever that might be. And if he could stall her, maybe he could figure out a way to fix this and set it right. What happened when he shifted between realities? Maybe if she could actually observe him do it, that would be proof enough. He knew that in the first shift, there had been a flash of light around him. Maybe that happened every time. What an idiot he was not to have asked in one of his previous stops.

She came to sit across from him in an overstuffed chair. She looked so nervous, like he was a bomb about to go off.

“I'm going to sit here and eat and you can ask me anything you like. And then soon I want to go to sleep. It's been a long day.”

His mother, who was not really his mother, regarded him carefully and silently. After awhile, Daniel started talking a little, mostly about science, about the physics of the gate, the astronomy, then about the gate symbol system and dialing addresses, which he thought his mother might find interesting. He borrowed a pad of paper and drew a few out, showing her the Abydos address. He talked about the stellar drift problem that Sam had solved so quickly when he first showed them the cartouche room on Abydos. Basically, he rambled about his own life and history, calmly, as if she was a long lost friend he was trying to connect with.

Claire Jackson couldn't seem to help herself when he started drawing the gate symbols. She was interested. So then he talked a little about the Egyptian gods and how many he had actually met, though talking about Apophis made him feel tired and think about Sha're, which didn't really help the calm demeanor he was trying to project.

“Tomorrow, I'll show you some of the goa'uld script. And maybe Ancient too. It has Latinate roots but the writing system is totally different. You'll think it's interesting.”

* * *

When Daniel woke up in the morning, he could hear the quiet sounds of speech filtering from the other room. He stood up from the sofa where he'd slept and went to the tiny kitchen, looking for coffee but there only seemed to be several boxes of tea packets. That was beyond disappointing. He shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. He supposed a tea based jolt of caffeine was better than nothing, but it was hardly what he wanted.

Standing, waiting for the kettle to boil, he couldn't help but hear his mother's voice in the tiny apartment. She had the door to the bedroom mostly closed, the phone line trailing across the floor.

“...nothing like himself… No, just the opposite, strangely calm. But that was more disturbing, Doctor. It was nothing like four years ago…. No… No… Yes… I'm not sure. Doctor, I'm not sure what to do...”

Daniel felt guilty eavesdropping but he wasn't sure how to stop when the sounds drifted through the apartment's thin walls. He tried to make a show of being awake, running the water in the sink, closing cabinets. His mother's voice faded briefly then he heard her leave the bedroom.

“Dr. Smythe would like to talk to you,” she said, handing him the phone.

Daniel sighed and took the phone. Through the crackly international connection that he was sure was costing a fortune on this old phone line, he heard a man's deep voice.

“Daniel. How are you? Your mother's been explaining things a little.”

“I'm fine. Dig's going well. Not sure what's wrong with her, but really, nothing amiss here. Got a small concussion on the dig the other day, but no big deal. That's pretty much all.”

“You don't really sound like yourself.”

“Well, you have me on an international call before I've had my coffee so I'd be surprised if I did sound like myself.”

“Coffee? I thought you had given it up.”

“Someone convinced me to give up coffee? That really would be crazy.”

“Your mother said you've been saying some pretty interesting things.”

“That's interesting because I really haven't.”

“Now, Daniel, it's been awhile, but I can't remember you ever lying to me like this.”

“That you know of, Dr. Smith.”

“Daniel?”

Daniel could see his mother looking at him curiously and suddenly had a hint he'd said something wrong. It was too early and he wracked his brain and realized. The psychiatrist's name was Smythe, not Smith. To think he, of all people, had made such an error.

“Still here.”

“Can you let me chat with your mother again, please?”

He handed the phone back to his mother, who quickly retreated to the bedroom again, pulling the old-fashioned set with her. He poured himself hot tea and sipped. At least it was hot and bitter. That was something.

“Sorry,” Daniel said when she came back into the room, looking anxious. “It was Smythe, not Smith, right?”

She furrowed her brow. “Danny...” She shook her head. “He says you've had a break with reality. He's talking about schizophrenia.” She sounded scared.

“Mom,” he said, “just humor me and tell me what happened to your Daniel five years ago. Here, can I make you a cup of tea? You're obviously a fan.” He gestured to the giant box of assorted tea sachets in the cabinet.

She nodded hesitantly and settled on the sofa. “Mel and I were so worried about you after your fight with Dr. Jordan. And then you broke up with Sarah. He went to Chicago to find you and realized you hadn't paid your rent, were about to be evicted but hadn't done a thing about it. You were holed up in there, the door was barricaded...” Her voice choked. “You were convinced people were out to get you, government people, I think. It didn't make any sense. You said it was your theories, it was aliens. It was nonsense. And you were so frantic. You screamed at your father. You weren't eating, weren't taking care of yourself. We didn't have any choice, darling.”

Daniel shook his head. “I wonder. Maybe Catherine did approach me, or, rather, the Daniel from this reality. Maybe he refused to go with her. Or maybe it wasn't Catherine. Maybe it was General West. Or even Jack.” He snorted. “Who knows what the Jack of this reality was like four or five years ago, but if he was anything like my Jack, he'd have been an intimidating, rude jerk. Maybe… Maybe Jack even threatened him. God, Jack, you can be such an ass sometimes. I wonder. I mean, I know the program exists here. I called the Jack in this reality and he spun me our exact cover story. Deep space radar telemetry.”

“Who's Jack?”

“Jack's… my best friend? My CO?” Daniel wondered himself who was Jack to him. There weren't really words for the relationship they had. Jack was person who saved his life in so many ways. But they weren't close lately. It wasn't anything he could sum up in a few words.

His mother's already confused face went more confused.

“Commanding officer. Military speak. I forget how ingrained it gets. I'm civilian, but on a frontline team chain of command matters. Not that we ever agree. I'm not very good with chain of command, honestly.”

“Danny, I wish you'd stop this. I wish you'd make some sense.”

He cocked his head. “I would, Mom. I'm a terrible liar, but I would happily try if I thought it would make any difference. But I think no matter what I do, you're going to call the dig and tell them to fire me and then drag me back to the States and get me doped up as fast as you can. Except, it won't be me by then, it'll be another Daniel, hopefully your Daniel, but he won't deserve that. And he'll have just been through a lot. I can manage holing up, waiting to be attacked by the Aschen or being miserable in a cave with three aliens for a few days, but I'm starting to worry a little about how's he's going to do with it all.

“So, sorry. I can't. I think the only way forward is to keep talking. I mean, you've got to see that some of this doesn't add up. I don't have Dad's ring anymore, for example. That was on the previous Daniel who was here. And, besides, it's still sitting wherever you left it back home because it's not from this reality anyway. And I'm hoping that maybe you can see me shift. I have no idea what it looks like, but the first time there was a flash of light apparently so that would be something. So far, I've only ever jumped realities alone or with people who know about all this alien weirdness. But maybe that would be something.”

He downed the rest of his own tea and poured his mother's cup now that the kettle had heated again. “But we can hang out and talk today. I'd like that. I'm hoping a way will present itself. It's like when I'm helping negotiate with a new civilization and things are stuck. I try to look for another solution, one that we haven't seen before. Also, I'll teach you goa'uld, if you like. That's the mysterious writing system. I'm fluent in several dialects.”

She seemed so scared, but she agreed to stay with him. She called and basically got him unemployed, which wasn't great, but Daniel figured it was one of the least bad outcomes to come out of this whole mess. He sat and wrote an apology to the Daniel from that reality along with advice about getting employed at Stargate command. He wrapped the hand device up and did his best to keep it secret but also get it to the him of this reality. His mother promised to give it to the “real” Daniel, which was clearly her playing along, but it was the best he could do.

It was funny, but he couldn't imagine himself happy without the gate. The whole history of the program was tied up in his life and he felt like his life was the program. A Daniel without a Stargate to go through was pointless. But then that thought made him a little depressed. The Daniel who was married to Sha're wouldn't say that, he was sure.

Claire Jackson was clearly nervous about going out for anything, but they had to eat so she relented and Daniel was happy to eat more good Egyptian food. He babbled on about his life, trying to keep up the sense of normalcy he was trying to create. He asked her about her life and about his father, about the work they'd done for the last decades, decades they'd never had in his reality. At first she looked dismayed at every question, but after awhile she seemed to begin to relax and started answering his questions. They talked about recent finds, about things being repatriated, about a former student of hers doing research in Peru.

There was a strange moment when she talked about an exhibit she had helped curate about New Kingdom treasures and Daniel made an offhanded comment about Akhenaton. After a strange back and forth, he came to understand that Amenhotep had never changed his name to Akhenaton and never turned Egypt to sun worship.

“Okay, that's the weirdest thing I've heard yet.”

“Weirder than aliens?”

“Oh, you made a joke!” Daniel smiled broadly. “Yes, so much weirder. It's like, my reality and this reality have been clinging together for not just years or decades but millennia. They diverge and then come back together and then diverge. You'd think that something so big as to be in the historical record many, many centuries later would be big enough to disrupt everything that leads up to you and me and, I don't know, Madonna, the Beatles, Stephen King, President Hayes, just everything.”

“Rutherford Hayes?”

“No, the current president, Henry Hayes.”

That was how he found out Hayes wasn't president. Even worse, Kinsey was.

The longer this went on, the more Claire Jackson seemed to accept it, though she booked tickets for both of them back to the US for a week later. It was the soonest they could go without spending a real fortune and gave her some time to close up the apartment and put on hold a few things she'd been doing.

They wandered through the touristy area around her apartment. At a little used bookstore, Daniel found a tattered copy of A Little History of the World in German, which he bought and spent much of the afternoon reading, enjoying the chance to peek into the differences between universes.

In the evening, his mother asked would he be willing to talk to Dr. Smythe on the phone and Daniel groaned. “I really hate psychiatrists.”

“Why?” She had stopping wincing at every mistake he made, every strange comment. He could tell she had on her anthropologist hat. He was under study.

“When you're an orphan with a genius level IQ who freaks his teachers out and watched his parents die in front of him, they send you to see shrinks, pretty regularly as it happens. They were always so patronizing. When I was a kid, I always thought the social workers and the psychiatrists and even most of my teachers were just jerks. As an adult, I can see they were just doing their best, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I think about them.”

She obviously wanted to ask why he's made up this elaborate lie for himself but she refrained. “Surely you can see it's different now?”

He sighed. “Sure. But gut reactions are gut reactions. And I had an unpleasant experience more recently. A couple of years ago, a tiny piece of alien tech got implanted in my head. It made me see things, hallucinate. It was some pretty disturbing stuff. They locked me up. I really was a danger to myself and others then. I only spent about two days there before they figured it out. Or, rather, I figured it out when the thing basically crawled out of my ear. But it was the whole nine yards – straitjacket, white padded walls, copious drugs, and a locked door. Thank god Jack listened to me. But now any time any of us are sent to Mackenzie, the shrink who wanted to throw away the key on me, I still feel like punching the guy. And it calls up all my bad feelings about other psychiatrists too.”

“You smile when you mention Jack,” she said.

“Do I? Huh. Jack is good. Jack is infuriating sometimes, but we work well together, in a funny way.”

“So about your doctor…?”

“I really don't think you should waste your money on the call. Your plan is to fly you and whoever I am at that point back home in just over a week. If you're still convinced, then take him to the good doctor.”

She seemed thoughtful. “Danny… I've never seen you be so...”

“Reasonable?”

“Maybe.” She looked dubious. “You don't even talk like you. It's scary.”

“I'm not me. What about my offer to show you goa'uld? You can steal the credit out from under Beth Martins or Val Birkway and publish it yourself.”

She narrowed her eyes, but agreed to listen. He dug out the rubbing he'd taken of the tablet Dr. Birkway was shipping back home and began. By bedtime, he'd made headway, showing her the similarities between Ancient Egyptian and the basic structure of the writing system.

“You really can read it.” She probably said it a dozen times before she turned in.

In the morning, Daniel asked could they take a taxi over the pyramids. His mother groaned that they were too touristy and what was the point, but Daniel shrugged. “I don't want to be trapped indoors. It's something. I can't remember the last time I went. Grad school probably. I took Sarah Gardner there once when we were here on a dig. We pretended to be tourists and asked the guides really stupid questions in very slow English. It was the sort of stupid thing you do when you think you're in love.”

“Sarah was a nice girl.”

So on the taxi ride over, he heard how the Daniel of this reality had ended things with Sarah in even more spectacularly horrible fashion than he had, which he wouldn't have believed even possible, though he supposed if he'd had a nervous breakdown, that did explain things a little. Then his mother asked hesitantly about whether he had anyone in his life. It was one of the first times she'd asked anything so forward. He wondered if maybe she was starting to actually believe him.

“There's no one,” Daniel said, with a shrug. “Sometimes I miss my wife. But I haven't really even dated since she died.”

“Aren't you lonely?”

Daniel shrugged again. “I have my team. I'm really busy with work.” Then he deflected, which he couldn't believe he was doing when she was finally seeming to have an interest in him as him. “What about your Daniel? Is he seeing anyone?”

“No,” she replied. “That's part of why I worry about him.”

The pyramids were the pyramids, closer up or in the smoggy distance from the city. They walked around the camels and the tourists and the vendors trying to hock garbage in a dozen languages. But Daniel found it all oddly comforting. “I wish we could go to Aswan.” He shook his head. “Gosh, I think I'm just trying to dive into nostalgia. I remember you and Dad showing me Abu Simbel at night without any tourists when I was little.”

When they got back to her apartment, she seemed more interested in learning goa'uld so he took her through it, getting farther than he'd gotten with Beth.

“I do wonder… where did you...” but she stopped herself. “I'll have to get more examples of the script.”

After dinner, Daniel was tidying up the tiny kitchen, his mother telling him with curiosity where everything belonged, when he felt a sudden, stabbing pain behind his eyes.

“Oh, crap. Mom. I have to sit down. It really was good. Please don't… please don't blame your Daniel when I'm gone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm pretty sure...” he didn't even make it to the sofa, but sank down in between the kitchen island and the living room.

“Danny!”

And then everything went black.

Chapter Text

This is Not My Beautiful House

Was it his imagination, or were the headaches getting slightly better each jump between realities? He had passed out again, and he was sure he was somewhere new, but this time, he woke up feeling only slightly groggy.

He knew before he even opened his eyes that he wasn't in Egypt and wasn't off world. He was somewhere close to home, he was sure. It's funny how your senses tell you these things before you're even fully conscious of them.

He pulled himself up. He was on a sofa and someone sat across from him, a hand outstretched with his glasses, or, at least, the glasses he had taken from the previous Daniel, the one in Egypt. They'd come with him.

“Colonel Jack O'Neill,” the man across from him said. “Nice to meet you, latest Daniel Jackson.”

“Jack,” Daniel groaned. “Don't be a smartass.”

“Well how am I supposed to know if you know me?”

“I know you, Jack.”

“Nice glasses,” Jack said as Daniel adjusted them to look around.

“They're not mine. I mean, they're mine, but another mine. I seem to have pilfered them.” He breathed out, feeling the vague familiarity of being on Earth, probably in the Springs. “We're home?”

Jack had looked hesitant but now he looked slightly hopeful. “Danny?” he asked, quieter than before.

“Um, I don't… I don't know. I don't think I'm back to my own reality yet. I have a theory… Actually it was sort of Dr. McKay's theory. I don't suppose you have him here?” Daniel stood up, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He wanted to look around and get his bearings.

“Of course you have a theory,” Jack said and Daniel could hear the exasperated edge to Jack's voice, which was funny and calming. He'd been through three realities without Jack and each one had felt a little incomplete. It seemed wrong that they should be not friends, not working together in any reality. “Sit down,” Jack ordered. “Coffee. And Migraine medicine. I have a pot of the really good overpriced dark roast shade grown whatever waiting for you.”

Daniel chuckled a little. “I guess all the Daniel Jacksons like their coffee strong.”

“And immediately after waking, even if they just passed out,” Jack said.

While Jack was in the kitchen, Daniel looked around. Was this his house? He could see a shelf of his books on one wall, so it must have been his. He spied a shelf with a little Egyptian jar sitting in a place of honor in the middle of one shelf. Even though Jack had told him to sit, he stood back up. It was nothing special, just a tiny earthen jar and it hadn't been treated all that well over the last few decades. Daniel remembered his parents giving it to him, this tiny museum worthy little piece. He idly picked it up and ran his fingers over it.

He heard Jack re-enter the room. “They're dead here too, aren't they?”

It was a sign of how good their friendship was that Jack didn't have to ask who he meant. “My Daniel's parents died when he was a kid.”

Daniel set the little vase back in its place on the shelf and turned to face Jack, who was standing there with his hands full.

“Take the pills with water before I'll give you the coffee,” Jack said, handing him two small white pills and setting a glass of water on the table next to the shelves. Daniel looked at them and recognized the medicine as the headache blasters Frasier was always giving him after a bad migraine and swallowed them dutifully, downing the rest of the water as well then setting it back down on the shelf.

“I was a good boy, do I get my coffee now?”

Jack handed him a large mug of steaming black coffee. Just the smell was a relief. “Are you sure you're not my Daniel? You're… much more like him...”

“Last two realities had no coffee. Well, Egypt had coffee, but the Turkish kind, which I love but it's different from this and there was no coffee at my mother's apartment, just tea. Before that, I was stuck with some Tok'ra in a cave for three days. Not even the good kind of Tok'ra cave. The Tok'ra don't like coffee.” He sipped. “Oh, this is heavenly. No coffee and no Jack in the last two go arounds.”

“It's your favorite.”

“I don't think this is my reality though. This isn't my house in my reality. At least… this is my house?”

“You live here.”

Daniel let out a long sigh. “Oh well. But I have a theory. Have you been debriefing all the Daniels?”

“Debriefing?”

“At the SGC? Stargate command? Or whatever it's called in this reality?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought it would be best if they didn't know. So far, we've managed to keep them off our backs.”

“Oh. What does that mean?”

“This is the bit where we swap Jack and Daniel life stories, huh?”

“There is a stargate in this reality, right? I mean, there must be. How else could we have ever met and become friends?”

“Good question. Okay, yes, there's a stargate. I'll keep it brief. I'm getting better at that. Four years ago, you and I went through the gate with a team of airmen.”

“To detonate a bomb,” Daniel said.

“Not exactly. It was an option. We ended up killing Ra. You got married...”

“Sha're.”

“Good, so far, we match?”

“Seems to.”

“Okay. You sent the rest of the airmen home and we stayed in Abydos...”

“We? We who?”

“We, Daniel. You, me, Abydos.”

“You? You lived on Abydos?”

“For a year. Until Apophis showed up. His Jaffa shot up a bunch of people, including Sha're. That's when we unburied the gate and came back to Earth.”

“Sha're died then?”

“Yes.” Jack sounded tentative and Daniel realized the last version of him there was still married to her, with a son and a baby on the way.

“She became a host in my reality.”

“Oh geez.”

“But she's dead now. Teal'c killed her.”

“The last Daniel mentioned him too.”

“No Teal'c here. Does that mean you're not allied with the rebel Jaffa at all?”

“As far as I know, there are no rebels among the Jaffa in our reality. About three months after we came back through the gate, we took a naquada enhanced bomb to Chulak and killed Apophis.”

“Wow.”

“We had a few run ins with Heru'ur and Nirrti before the program got turned over to the NID.”

“No.”

“Currently, the head of the Stargate Program is General Maybourne.”

“Shit.”

“I see you have one of him too.”

“He's a real piece of work. Luckily he's only a colonel. And a disgraced one at this point.”

“That does sound lucky. This one is also a real piece of work. Current mission is basically teams run through the gate, steal everything they can get their hands on, stay under the radar, get out fast. Which is why, six months ago, I retired for good.”

“Oh. And me…?”

“You and Sam are still there. You've been running an operation for Joe.”

“Joe is…?”

“Joe Faxon, Sam's fiance, politician.”

“Oh. Weird. I just met him in another reality. One of the good guys?”

“I know that politician and good guy don't exactly go together, but Sam's convinced he's on the up and up.”

“What are we doing exactly?”

“I try to stay out of it.”

“Oh?”

“I said I try, not that I succeed. Mostly you're just gathering intel. Joe's currently a senator. He's being talked about for vice president.”

“Can you imagine Sam as First Lady?”

“This is exactly what I'm saying.”

Daniel gripped the mug and moved back to the sofa. “So… let me get this straight. Sam and I still work for the SGC… the program?… but Maybourne is the head, doing all the sneaky, horrible things that Maybourne does, and we're trying to… what? Bring things down from the inside?”

“Basically.”

“So you and Sam have been keeping the alternate Daniels away from Maybourne?”

“Bingo.” Jack sat down in the chair across from Daniel.

“This might require a second cup of coffee.”

Jack smiled. It took Daniel by surprise how relaxed this Jack was. His Jack often seemed laid back, but there was usually a tightness to him that this Jack seemed to lack. All his emotions seemed much closer to the surface. Daniel could see when he was sad, like when he realized that the right Daniel still wasn't back, or when he was amused, like just then.

“So, what's the plan then?”

“My plan?” Jack asked, leaning back in the chair. “I have some yardwork out back I need to get done. I have to go to a baseball game this afternoon. The retired life.”

“Oh.”

“Don't worry, Daniel. Sam's coming over any minute. She'll give you the full debrief and info swap, I'm sure.”

Daniel finished the last of the mug of coffee with a great gulp. “There's really more coffee?” He stood up and wandered toward the kitchen, pausing to look around as he went. The house was different from his cluttered house back in his reality, where everything was thrown up on shelves wherever he managed to find a spot for it. Things were so much more meticulous. But it was more than that. There were things here that didn't feel like him mixed all together with his things, a large photo of an aerial view, a cheap painting he didn't think was all that attractive, a basket of crossword puzzle books sitting by the sofa.

The kitchen was tidy and recently redone with granite countertops and shiny appliances. Daniel was surprised that he had chosen this house. It was the home of someone who liked to be home, who liked to cook and keep things neat. He began to feel slightly uneasy looking around. He found the coffeepot still warm and refilled his mug then leaned against the counter, taking in the kitchen.

Next to the refrigerator was a large white board and notice board covered with various calendars and notes. There was a photo of a blond teenage boy and a school calendar for a high school in town with dates circled in red. Little notes with more dates and events were pinned to the board as well. Daniel set down his mug and leaned forward. Suddenly, he wanted to look around the house.

He walked back into the open living and dining room. There was a stairway to a basement and a hall to what looked like the back bedrooms.

“Can I help you?” Jack said, looking at him mildly.

“Jack… do you live here too?”

Jack glanced at his watch. “That's a new record, I think, Dr. Jackson. I finally had to explain to the last one that there was nowhere for me to go home to other than here.”

“And what's...” Daniel stopped. He had been about to ask what their relationship was, but that was absurd. They were roommates. He pushed any thoughts of what the Tok'ra Sam had told him out of his head. This was Jack, after all. How many times had he crashed at Jack's house after pizza and beer? It actually made a lot of sense. Besides, there was a bigger question in his mind. “Jack, who's the boy on the bulletin board in there?”

“That's my son, Charlie,” Jack said.

“Charlie is… Charlie's alive?”

“Charlie isn't alive in your reality?”

Daniel hesitated. “When I first met you, you were hoping to die on Abydos because Charlie had shot himself with your gun.”

“Holy shit,” Jack said. “That's...”

“Yeah.”

“Well, thank god, but Charlie is alive and well in this reality.”

“But you still broke up with Sara.”

“We weren't meant to be together.”

He said it like it was no big deal, but Daniel knew how much his Jack had loved Sara so he couldn't stop himself from saying, “I'm sorry.”

Jack actually laughed. He really was different from the Jack Daniel knew. Looser, more open, even with the weirdness of an alternate reality version of his best friend in front of him. “Well, the other you is not.”

“What?”

Jack shook his head. “Forget I said anything. We all get along fine. You can come to his baseball game this afternoon if you want, if Sam's all finished with you. Practice pretending to be my Daniel. I have a feeling Sam's going to try and rope you into something tomorrow at the office anyway. You've been calling in sick for so long, I think Maybourne's on the verge of asking for a doctor's note.”

“I guess if Sam gets me up to speed...”

Jack stood up abruptly, looking tired and disappointed again. “I'm going to go get that yardwork done so I can shower and make lunch before I go out. Make yourself at home.”

Daniel watched him go, feeling unsure of himself. This wasn't so bad, just being at home. However, every reality was like a new test. He could never just be himself.

That reminded him that he wanted to map some things out. Rummaging around in the kitchen, he found a yellow legal pad an a pen and began writing out all the different realities he had visited. The box back in his own reality had seven little hourglasses inside it, the sands all moving at their own speed. If he was right, then there were seven realities he had to visit, seven Daniels he had to get to know, to walk a mile in their shoes.

Suddenly, he wondered if the saying was literal. Except, he realized, he never walked a mile in the reality with the Tok'ra and he probably walked ten miles in the reality with the Aschen, if not more. And what was a mile to the Ancients? It couldn't be literal. But why did the time change? Was there something he had to do in each one? Was he even the one who was driving this whole thing? But if, back in his reality, they had figured out how to make him jump between realities, why didn't they keep moving him faster? Why leave him in Egypt for three days? Why leave him in the cave for two? Why leave him with Sha're for a week? And how long would he be here, in the world where Stargate command was run by the NID?

He was jotting down other things about each reality, how long he spent there, state of the stargate program, how many people he encountered, when he heard the door open and Sam's voice.

“Jack? Daniel?”

“In here,” Daniel said.

She looked so much like his Sam. She was in tight jeans and a leather jacket and Daniel could tell from her mussed hair that she had probably come by motorcycle, another similarity with his Sam. The last Samantha Carter he had seen hadn't really been Sam. She had been Jolinar, a blended Sam. He couldn't stop himself from giving her a big grin.

“Hey,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “I don't suppose…?”

“Not your Daniel.”

“Well, I had to ask. You looked so happy to see me.”

“The last you I met was two realities back and you weren't exactly you.”

“I heard I was a goa'uld,” she said.

Daniel shook his head. “No. Tok'ra. Jolinar, the Tok'ra who took you as a host for a few days in my reality.”

At Sam's slightly blank look, Daniel said, “I take it you don't have the Tok'ra as allies in this reality?”

“One of your doppelgangers tried to explain them to me,” she said. “It's just hard to believe there are good goa'uld out there, or that I'm one of them. Or that my dad… Well, I'd love to have him still around, but not as a snakehead.”

“It's different,” Daniel said.

“Would you want to be a host for one of these Tok'ra?” she asked.

“Yeah, point taken. But the you who was a host seemed happy.”

“Forgive me if I'm a little dubious,” Sam said, pulling up a seat next to Daniel at the bar between the living room and kitchen.

“So… Jack said you'd want to do some debriefing?”

They dove into talking about the differences in their realities. It seemed like this Earth had gotten incredibly lucky overall. Daniel wasn't sure how they'd managed to fly under the radar so well. It seemed like they left more destruction in their wake than any other Stargate program, yet Earth had never come under attack and the goa'uld barely seemed to know the Tau'ri existed. As far as Sam could tell, they didn't know their gate address, or, if they did, they didn't know the Tau'ri had unburied the gate and were traveling and marauding their way through the galaxy.

Daniel tried to get Sam to see the benefits of finding allies like the Asgard, but Sam kept shaking her head. “It's good intel, Daniel. I'm filing it all away for later. But right now, the main thing is to get the gate out from under NID control. Joe is working on getting it under civilian authority, but that might mean taking the program public. Really, until we get Maybourne out of there, everything else has to wait.”

Daniel wasn't sure that Sam was right. If they kept doing these bank robbery style missions through the gate, eventually some system lord was going to get on to them and figure out the Tau'ri were active. However, from Sam's perspective, it was so academic. Daniel decided to hold back about telling her the address for Tollana or the Nox or some of the other places where they'd gained allies or technology. He didn't like the idea of Sam going through the gate to raid Tollana for their cannons. It seems like asking for trouble for this world. He did warn them about the Aschen, since that was fresh in his mind. Sam had a couple of gate addresses that didn't ring a bell for him, places they'd found abandoned worlds and interesting technology.

“So, tomorrow, I don't think we can extend your sick leave any longer. Mayborne has a pile of stuff that only you can translate and he said something implying that he'd come check up on you himself if you didn't come in. Don't worry – I don't think he would. Jack would probably try to slug him again. And if he sends any NID goons over here, Jack made it clear he wouldn't be held accountable for his actions. But, well, I think you're going to have to pose as our Daniel tomorrow with me.”

“Unless there's another jump first.”

“I honestly hope not, unless it's our Daniel returning. You seem like you'll do fine. You seem… remarkably just like our Daniel. The last one was a bit of a mess.”

“I think he was just freaking out about his wife,” Daniel said, pulling the yellow pad where he'd scrawled his notes to rest between them on the bar. “And seeing the alternate reality version of our mother. At least, if I'm right.”

“No, that sounds like him.”

“Okay, then look at this. It's all the realities I've visited in the last weeks. I want to see if this is the pattern of Daniels who've appeared.”

They went through the list, discovering that Daniel's theory seemed to be correct. The Daniels were all moving from one reality to the next in a line. Sam was intrigued at Daniel's idea that there might be exactly seven Daniels, but there was no way to know. The four Daniels who had proceeded him were from the five realities he had visited, but that didn't mean there weren't hundreds more to go.

“I've been trying to figure out a way to get into Area 51 and do some research with the quantum mirror,” Sam said. “However, we think some NID experiment may have destroyed it. I haven't been able to locate it and when I brought it up to the general last week, thinking that if we could smuggle you in – the you who was here at the time – we might be able to set all the Daniels right – Maybourne was really cagey about it. I think it might be gone. That, or it's in use in some way I don't even want to think about.”

“Maybe Maybourne has it? Maybe Maybourne is using it somehow. You know, Sam, this reality… you all seem like you've been a little too lucky. I wonder what else Mayborne is using that might be over at Area 51.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Figuring out half of what the NID get up to is going to be someone's life work once we take them down. I guess maybe they have some piece of tech that's keeping us safe, though it's also possible we've just been lucky.”

“Who's lucky?”

Jack emerged from the kitchen door, looking sweaty and grimy from the yard. He grabbed a soda from the fridge and opened it, leaning against the other side of the kitchen bar across from Daniel.

“We are,” Sam said. “Best reality ever, this Dr. Jackson says.”

“That's not exactly...”

“I never doubted it,” Jack replied mildly, winking at Daniel in a way that made him stop trying to object. “So, anything interesting?”

Sam shrugged. “Classified, unless you'd like to come back to work, colonel.”

“No thanks, major.”

Sam grinned. “I think he'll be perfect tomorrow though. He's more like our Daniel than any of the others so far. I briefed him a bit. I think he'll be able to fudge his way through tomorrow. I don't know why Maybourne would suspect him anyway. He really just wants the text on these tablets SG-2 brought back translated to see if they explain how to work the mystery device they found. As long as you can do that, I think we'll be fine. You can fake having a nasty cold.”

“Plenty of experience translating mystery device instructions,” Daniel said.

“See?” Sam smiled at Jack. “Like our Daniel.”

Jack set his soda can down on the counter and looked over Daniel. Daniel had a funny feeling as Jack's eyes met his, like he was being assessed and coming up short. “Not exactly.”

“I didn't mean...” Sam stuttered. “I know you're worried, Jack...”

“I'm going to go shower off.” Jack walked around the bar and toward the back of the house. As he disappeared down the hall, he said, “Come see if you can play the part at Charlie's game in an hour.”

Sam glanced at Daniel, her face worried. She jumped off the stool and ran down the hall after Jack. Daniel could hear her voice, clipped and worried. “Jack, is that really the best…?”

He couldn't hear Jack's response coherently, only that he sounded angry and upset. Then he heard Sam again. “It's a totally different set of skills though! And a totally different risk! So what if Charlie thinks he's acting weird! If Maybourne...”

Again, Daniel couldn't hear Jack's quiet tones, only Sam's response. “You don't have to put yourself through this, Jack. Let me take Daniel home with me… Who gives a shit what the NID thinks? They'll think you had a fight.”

“Go away, Carter,” Daniel heard Jack's voice now, closer, probably in the hallway. “Unless you're going to follow me into the shower.”

A moment later, Sam re-emerged from the hallway. Daniel wasn't sure if he was supposed to pretend he hadn't overheard anything or if he was supposed to ask what was going on. This Jack was very like his Jack and yet not like his Jack at all. His Jack made him feel alternately infuriated and amused, but always safe. This Jack kept giving him that feeling, but also making him feel off balanced, like something wasn't right in the world. Of course, something wasn't right. He was in the wrong reality and this Jack's Daniel was off in the wrong reality as well.

“Sorry,” Sam said, looking dismayed. “I wouldn't have really followed him into the shower.”

That wasn't the response Daniel expected so he laughed. “In both of the other two realities we visited because of the mirror, you and Jack were married. Or, I guess, engaged in the one I visited.”

“Me and Jack?” Sam's face looked a mixture of horrified and amused. “In your reality are we…?”

“Oh no,” Daniel said quickly. “He's your CO. I mean, don't get me wrong. You flirt. But I really don't think you'd ever… you know, act on it. And the first reality I jumped into – the Daniel that was here before me – you and Jack apparently hated each other. And you couldn't much stand me either.”

“I guess there's a reality for every possibility.”

Daniel shook his head. “I hope I don't have to find that out firsthand.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“So,” Daniel said, “what is it Jack wants me to do?”

“He wants you to go with him to Charlie's baseball game and pretend to be his Daniel. He said if you can fool the PTA, you can fool anyone.”

“That doesn't sound so bad. He's probably right that playing the part is a good idea, especially if the NID might be watching.”

“Maybe. I just think… it's hard on him. He misses Daniel so much. He's so scared he isn't coming back and frustrated that he has no clout in the program anymore to try and do anything. He has to just sit back and wait for me and some stranger version of you to manage to solve this. Or some other reality to fix it.”

“I really think my theory is right. That there's only one more reality until your Daniel returns and we all get home.”

“I hope so, Daniel. I just don't know what he thinks it's going to accomplish to have you there. And Sara will be there, I'm sure.”

“Jack… said we get along?”

“Sure. I think she and Daniel are friends. And while she doesn't have clearance, I know she knows there's weirdness with the program. She has let all kinds of weird stuff pass over the years, I think.”

“Okay, so challenge one, fool Sara. Challenge two, fool Maybourne.”

Daniel could hear the water running in the back of the house. He stood up and looked around, his eyes moving over the mix of his own things and Jack's, his own taste and Jack's taste, melded into one seamless household that seemed to make sense. It gave him the oddest feeling.

“I still think there's no reason for Jack to put himself through it,” Sam argued. “What good does it do him to take you out to make you play the good husband when he's heartbroken and scared inside? If his Daniel isn't coming back, it's prolonging the agony and the mourning. Even if he is, I think it's likely just making it worse in the short term.”

Daniel had frozen where he stood, his mouth agape. “Sam, what did you say?”

“That I think taking you out just makes it worse for him.”

“Noooo,” Daniel said. “I mean… What? I mean… What!”

“Are you okay?”

Daniel shook his head. “What exactly is my relationship with Jack here?”

Sam pressed her lips together tightly. “I thought you… Talk to Jack. I'm out of here.”

“Sam!”

“I told Joe I'd call him after work.” Sam was already shoving her notes into her purse and grabbing her keys off the counter. “I'll give you a ride tomorrow morning. Sometimes we do that. I have a better car anyway.”

“Sam!” Daniel felt a sense of panic rising inside him. This reality had felt almost right. This Jack had felt familiar and comforting. Now he felt like this was more out of sync with reality than the Aschen slowly sterilizing everyone or Sam wearing furry Tok'ra boots. It was more out of place than his mother nagging him about his career. More out of place than the little boy who babbled at him in half a dozen languages.

Sam shut the door behind her and Daniel heard the shower stop in the hallway. He wasn't sure what to do. Part of him felt cornered. He wanted to be someone who could take this in stride, but he obviously wasn't. So what if this was a different reality. It wasn't him. It wasn't his Jack. But, still.

Daniel could see Jack pass by in the hallway, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Feel free to catch a shower yourself, Daniel,” he said. “Towels are in the cabinet above the toilet.”

Daniel found he did want to take a shower. He hadn't had one the entire time in Egypt and he felt grimy and unwashed. It was a warm day out. He would be more comfortable if he showered, shaved and changed. But somehow doing any of that in this house that belonged to the other Daniel, who was apparently married to this other Jack, seemed so invasive and personal. He felt so vulnerable.

Daniel wasn't sure how long he stood there, trying to figure out what to do before Jack re-emerged from the back bedroom, short graying hair still wet, barefoot, wearing khaki pants and still buttoning up a casual black short sleeved shirt. “Daniel?” he said.

“Um...”

“Cat got your tongue?”

Daniel still had no idea what to say.

Jack sighed. “Go get a shower, Daniel. Your closet is the one on the right in the bedroom. You'll feel better and then we can talk in the car.”

Daniel obeyed like it was an order off world. Jack may have exasperatedly complained many a time that he didn't follow orders, but he really did, most of the time. It was the only way he could make himself move now. Listen to Jack. Time to stop gaping and do what Jack says. Shower, shave, get ready to go out.

The bathroom was expansive with a walk in shower that steamed hotter and harder than any Daniel had ever lived with. Daniel felt funny going in the bedroom, but once he saw Jack wasn't there, he closed and locked the door. Unlike the shelf-lined walls of the living room, the bedroom was almost empty of adornment. The bed was a king size, neatly made with clean white sheets and a blue quilt. There was a pile of magazines on one side of the bed, a stack of academic journals and notebooks on the other. There were two closets. Despite Jack's instruction, Daniel accidentally opened Jack's first and was met with the sight of neat hangers and carefully folded slacks. His own closet was a jumble of bins and hangers. He put on the first thing he found, a plain shirt and a pair of nice jeans.

“We should head out soon,” Jack said when Daniel unlocked the bedroom and walked back into the living room.

“Jack...”

“Daniel.”

“Sam said… she said...”

“Spit it out.”

Daniel ran his hand over his face then through his drying hair. He gestured firmly, but didn't have any words to go with it. Finally, he wrapped his arms around his chest and said, “Married?”

“It's a contract between two people who agree to love each other and share a home. And I thought you were an anthropologist, Dr. Jackson.”

“Jack!”

“I take it you're not an item in your reality.”

“I'm straight,” Daniel said. “My Jack's straight!”

Jack shrugged, as if that didn't mean much. “So you think.”

“What about don't ask, don't tell?”

“Don't ask what?”

“It's the policy about gays in the military.”

“Never heard of it. Sounds stupid.”

“Okay, not a thing in this reality. And same sex marriage is?”

“For a couple of decades.”

“Wow. That's… different from my reality. Same sex marriage is, I think, just in a couple of states. Massachusetts. There's a battle about it in California right now. I wonder where the point of divergence is. I mean, I don't know a lot about gay rights but it seems like we're not that close to same sex marriage everywhere. I wonder if there are differences that go really further back, like a greater acceptance of same sex relationships in history, maybe even dating back to ancient cultures. Like, in Roman times...”

“You're doing that thing where you babble,” Jack observed, standing up and grabbing his bomber jacket from the back of the sofa.

“Jack… are you sure this is such a good idea? I don't know that I can play this part. I have no idea how to… I mean, I'm not really…”

“All you have to do is sit there with me and watch my kid pitch a few innings, Daniel. It's not a fucking gay pride parade.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” Daniel said. “I just meant… Sam said Sara would probably be there. Your Sara?”

“Probably.”

“So?”

“So it'll be a good test of your acting abilities. Get your glasses and your shoes.”

The drive was short and quiet, to a high school outside town Daniel had passed by without thinking many times. Now he thought, every time I pass this place, I'm going to think this is where Charlie would be in school if he was still alive. He was pretty sure this would be Cassie's school in a year when she was a freshman. And he was going to meet Charlie. Would he be able to tell his Jack about meeting the teenage Charlie or would it just be too painful?

As Daniel glanced at the driver's seat, where Jack was humming along with opera, he realized that was only half the trouble of trying to explain anything about this reality when he got back to his own.

The baseball game wasn't crowded. There was a concession stand where teenagers stood around, lights shining onto the field that was rapidly dimming in the early spring light, and half empty stands filled with kids and parents. A couple of young kids darted between Jack and Daniel as he followed him into the stands. They were waving sticks around and a bored looking teen trailed after them, yelling that they'd better not disrupt the game or get hurt.

Daniel watched as Jack quietly greeted people in the stands who obviously knew him. Some nodded to Daniel too so he nodded back, as if he recognized them.

“Jack!”

A woman with shoulder length sandy hair and a school baseball cap beckoned them over. Sara, Daniel thought. He had met her only once, years before, when an alien had impersonated first Jack and then Charlie. It hadn't exactly been much of an introduction, but he remembered what she looked like. Her hair was different now.

“Hey, Daniel,” she said as they sat in the bleacher row above her. “You got new glasses.”

“Sort of by accident,” he said.

“Well, I like them,” she declared. “Dark frames. You look sort of like a hipster.”

“He looks like a geek,” Jack said, his eyes out on the scoreboard.

“Jack,” Sara admonished, rolling her eyes. “Don't listen to him.”

“What'd I miss?”

“He got a base hit in the first,” Sara said, then they launched into talking about Charlie and baseball, the team, the season, the other kids. Daniel felt safe to ignore them and just watch the game and try not to freak out.

When Charlie came up to bat, Sara turned around to watch and Jack reached over to Daniel and casually ruffled his hand through his hair. Daniel stiffened. It was exactly the friendly, thoughtless sort of gesture of affection his Jack would have given him, especially when they were first friends. It had been awhile, Daniel realized, since Jack had randomly ruffled his hair or squeezed his shoulder or patted his back. Daniel glanced over at Jack, but he had withdrawn the hand and was watching the game.

It was so strange to see this boy that he'd only ever known in a few photos from around Jack's house grown up. And he was grown up. He was as tall as Jack. His hair had been shaggy when he was little, but it was now short, with an almost military precision. He was tall and lanky and thin, like his father, but with Sara's light hair. He stood with great confidence and swung the bat with control, hitting three foul balls and finally getting walked. Daniel could see the pride on Jack's face as he watched Charlie jog onto first base.

“He's graceful,” Daniel said.

Sara looked back and smiled at him and Jack practically jumped, looking over at Daniel in surprise then taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. Daniel tensed but tried to relax.

The rest of the game was mostly quiet. Sara and Jack clapped intermittently with the crowd. Jack yelled boo loudly at the umpire when he disagreed with a call on another kid. They talked about Charlie's grades in math, Sara's step-kids, who were younger, and the death of someone on the local police force that they both knew. It was idle conversation between old friends, used to being partners in raising their kid. It was so strange to see for Daniel, who knew how much his Jack had loved Sara and still beat himself up for what happened between them, not to mention what happened to Charlie. It was strange to think that in a reality where Charlie had lived, they had other problems. They'd still been driven apart for totally different reasons. But they obviously were okay together, happier and more comfortable than his Jack was with his Sara.

Their one disagreement was about a camping trip Jack was supposed to take with Charlie and some of his friends.

“I told you I can't do it, Sara. End of conversation. Something came up.”

“Something came up. You're retired, you know. You can't use work as an excuse.”

“I'll take them in a couple of weeks if this situation is cleared up.”

“Situation? Jack, you're going to have to do better than that. Daniel, help me here?”

Jack gave Daniel a look not to interfere so he shrugged his shoulders. “There's something I needed Jack's help on. A project at work.”

“See.”

Sara fumed. “You're defending him? And I know you're lying.”

“I'm not,” Daniel said, surprised.

Sara looked exasperated and got up and left for the better part of the inning.

“That's because of me, isn't it?” Daniel asked quietly after she'd been gone for a minute. “I'm the something that came up?”

Jack shrugged. “Don't worry about it. Sara will get over it. Charlie will get over it too.”

“You don't have to stay here for me,” Daniel said. He spoke quietly so no one around them would hear, and he couldn't decide how it made him feel that this meant he was leaned into Jack, practically whispering in his ear. “My Jack would give anything to be able to take Charlie camping again...”

“Dr. Jackson, shut up. You're not going to guilt trip me with a dead kid from another dimension.”

That did shut him up. He leaned away from Jack and they sat mostly in silence, watching the game, with Jack occasionally agreeing with the other spectators about a call or a play. Daniel had never watched much baseball. It hadn't been part of his youth, not with his parents in Egypt or New York or later in foster care. He knew it was supposed to be a slow game, but he had no idea it was quite this leisurely.

After Charlie struck out, Jack stood up saying just, “Be back in a few,” leaving Daniel alone when Sara returned.

She sat next to him instead of in her seat below. Daniel tensed, unsure if he had any idea how to play this role without Jack there to give him some sort of clue. They had a shared history of some kind. She might expect him to know people, places, things that they had in common and he had no basis for talking about any of them. Anything he said would be faked.

“Okay, what's up?” she asked. It was clear she was a cut to the chase person.

“What do you mean?”

“He ditches Charlie for the last two weeks and cancels the camping trip. And look at him. I know that man and that's the look he has when his head is in some really screwed up space.”

“Is it?”

“Did you two have a fight or something?”

“No.” Daniel hoped he could keep all his answers short and simple.

“Well, tell him to cut it the hell out, Daniel. I thought we were a team on this.”

She seemed to expect some response so Daniel gave a very noncommittal nod.

“Is it really some work thing?”

“Yes. Basically.”

Sara sighed a long, annoyed sigh. “Deep space radar telemetry my ass, Danny. I don't know what you guys get up to over there but when he retired he told me he was going to be around for Charlie more and you promised me you'd hold him to that.”

“I am. I will. This really is super temporary. I think just another week.”

Sara looked suspicious. “I've had years of lies from him, but you I trust. A week?”

“I can't promise. I just… It's just a guess.”

“You know what a mess their relationship was. And you know what a good place Charlie is in now. Don't let him screw this up, mister.”

Jack walked back up into the bleachers, holding an instant coffee for Daniel and a soda for himself.

“Thanks,” Daniel said, taking the little cup from Jack. He gave the slightest questioning look that Daniel understood immediately. It was, are you fooling Sara? Daniel gave a tiny nod in response.

“You're lucky you have such a good husband to vouch for you,” Sara said, shaking her head. “I've got to go. Bill's having some sort of late night dinner emergency with the kids. As in, he fed them too much pizza and Katie is barfing it up. You'll give Charlie a ride home? Or just take him back with you guys?”

“I'll give him a ride,” Jack said, tightly.

“I'm sorry I'm screwing that up for you,” Daniel said as they watched Sara walk down the side of the bleachers and hop off.

“Not your fault.”

“But...”

“Not your fault, Daniel. Also, hey, you apparently passed. I give you permission to go with Carter tomorrow.”

“I never needed your permission.”

Jack snorted. “So you think.”

The game ended a half an hour or so later. Charlie's school won and Daniel was a little fascinated that nothing happened in the final inning at all. “This game is so weird,” he commented, which earned him a strange look from Jack.

“My Daniel likes baseball,” Jack said.

“Oh. I just… I never saw it growing up.”

“Huh.” That huh said a lot, but Daniel didn't follow it up, just filed it away for later.

They waited another half hour for Charlie and Jack chatted with some of the other parents. The anthropologist in Daniel felt like he was observing a different world. It was the world of parents and it apparently involved a lot of waiting and small talk.

When Charlie came out, he immediately launched into a play by play discussion of the game with Jack that was animated and cheerful.

“Where's Mom?”

“She had to go home. Katie threw up.”

“Ugh. The brats. Let me go home with you guys.”

Jack shook his head. “Sorry. I'll take you to grab a burrito on the way home. Your mom said you didn't get much dinner earlier.”

“You can't take me back to a house where everyone is throwing up. That's so unsanitary. Please. I have all my homework done and everything.”

“Charlie, no.”

“You missed dinner and my nights for the last two weeks. Come on.”

“Jack, maybe...” Daniel tried.

“Daniel,” Jack's eyes flashed at him in warning.

“See, it's okay with Danny. It's already late. Just let me crash there. That burrito place is closer to your place anyway.”

“It's not a big deal,” Daniel said, quietly. Probably because of how he'd seen his Jack suffer without his son, he couldn't imagine doing anything to come between them, even for such a short time.

“Thank you, Danny!” Charlie said, embracing him in a half hug of his shoulders that reminded Daniel so much of Jack's casual gestures of affection. He dashed ahead, lugging baseball gear and an overstuffed backpack.

Jack didn't look at him, just shook his head as they walked toward the car. “You were supposed to listen to me, Dr. Jackson.”

“And I'm guessing your Daniel always does such a good job of that?”

Jack looked back at him but didn't say anything.

It turned out Charlie was a talkative kid, such a contrast from the way Jack tended to wait for others to do the talking. He flitted from subject to subject the whole way home, then as they ordered burritos, and then as they ate at the bar between the kitchen and the living room. He talked about school, some girl he had a crush on, baseball, history class, then back to baseball again. Finally, Jack sent him off to bed and admonished him to stay off the Playstation and get a good night's rest.

Daniel yawned. It had made him happy to watch Jack with Charlie. And while Jack had been annoyed with him, he had clearly relaxed as Charlie dominated the conversation and Daniel just quietly stayed out of it.

“So… where should I…?”

“Seriously? You're the one that brought him home,” Jack said. “You sleep with me.”

“But...”

Jack shook his head. “He'd notice if you slept on the couch or the spare bedroom, which is in the basement right next to his room, by the way. Just come to bed, Daniel. I promise not to try anything,” he added quietly. “You're not exactly my type.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, but the joke did relax him. He brushed teeth and found a pair of seemingly little used pajama pants to sleep in with an old T-shirt. Jack raised his eyebrows and climbed in bed in his boxers then switched off the light on what was apparently his side of the bed.

Daniel sat down on the edge of the bed, but he didn't turn the light out yet.

“Charlie seems great.”

Jack grunted in agreement.

After a moment, Daniel said, “Tell me about him. The other me. What's he like?”

After a minute, Daniel didn't think Jack was going to respond, but then, without turning around, he said, “He's a lot like you.”

“Presumably we all are.”

“No. I've now gotten to know more Daniel Jacksons than I ever expected to. You're more like him than the others.”

“Really?” Daniel wasn't sure why this surprised him so much, but it did. He was curious.

Jack groaned and rolled over, propping himself up in bed to look at Daniel. “The last one was a jerk. He had zero ability to focus. I don't know how he ever got anything done. Unobservant, so basically the opposite of you, or of my Daniel. He practically had ADD.”

“He's a sleep deprived dad,” Daniel defended. “He left me a note in the last jump.”

Jack snorted. “Don't defend him. He was the worst. No, actually, that's not true. They're all the worst. The first Daniel who jumped in was scared of everything, so not brave like my Daniel. And, of course, didn't know a thing about the Stargate.”

“Well that's hardly his fault. He had a nervous breakdown after he was laughed out of academia,” Daniel said.

“Great, and a crazy person to boot.”

“Don't call him that.” Daniel hoped against hope that he had somehow managed to right that reality, though he doubted it.

“Who else? The second one was just a jerk. He didn't talk like my Daniel. He was all terse and clearly thought he should be in charge. The one after that was lazy. Sam wanted his help placating Maybourne and he refused. He sat on the sofa there for four days and watched National Geographic specials and read novels. I can't imagine my Daniel refusing to help anyone. I practically have to drag him away from every stray alien thing off planet that blinks at him too sweetly. So far, latest of the Daniel Jacksons, you're the only one who seems anything like the mold I'm used to. I should have known you'd drag Charlie home. It's exactly what Danny would have done.”

Daniel smiled. Jack's eyes met his for a moment and locked there before he looked away. “So what's your Jack like then?”

“Oh,” Daniel said. “Well, um, a lot like you.”

Jack harrumphed.

“No, really. He acts gruff and dumb, but it's a facade. He's kind and smarter than he lets on. He tells jokes to dissolve the tension. He gets exasperated with me and the way I, as you say, take in strays. But really he wants me to. He wants me to be the team's conscience. He's maybe a little more tightly wound than you. Or, you're a little more emotional? I can read what you're feeling more easily. He keeps it closer to his chest.”

“Or maybe I'm just a wreck at the moment because the love of my life is out there alone, without me to protect him.”

“Maybe.” Daniel wasn't sure what to say exactly. He could see Jack was hurting. He didn't know if talking more would make it better or worse, though he was too wired to sleep and wasn't even sure he could sleep in this bed with this Jack. It was their marriage bed, which made a sort of hysterical giggle rise in the back of his throat that he had to keep clamping down on every time he thought of it. He'd slept in tents with his Jack off world many times, but this was different.

Jack's eyes were closed, but he was still propped up, as if the conversation was still going on. He was clearly not really ready for sleep either. Maybe he was wired too. “How did it start between you?” Daniel hated that he couldn't let his curiosity lie, but it had always been one of his greatest failings.

Jack's eyes flickered open but he took a long time to answer. “It was just always there,” he said finally. “There wasn't some clear moment. It just happened.”

It was such an unsatisfactory answer that Daniel had to bite down to stop himself from objecting. He was sure Jack wouldn't say more, so he was surprised when Jack seemed to read his thoughts. “I know that's not the answer you want,” Jack said. “When we went to Abydos on that first mission, I was hurting. My marriage had just broken up, my wife was moving out, I'd lost custody of my kid. I didn't know if she'd ever even let me see him again. It was my fault. I was screwed up over a bunch of things that happened when I was black ops and I trying to prove something to myself about my masculinity that apparently involved a lot of hard liquor and a lot of affairs. And then here was this mission, this chance to go down in a blaze of glory, and that seemed to be the right thing to do.”

Jack paused. “In your reality, you married Sha're and stayed on Abydos while I went home?”

“I thought you were going to go repair things with Sara,” Daniel said. “But you couldn't. It was too late. I didn't see you again for a year, and that was when Sha're, my Sha're, was kidnapped and taken as a host.”

Jack shook his head. “We killed Ra. Then Danny, with that brilliant brain, deciphered the gate. And he's standing there with his new bride, dialing up the gate address to send everyone home and he says to me, stay here. So I did.”

Daniel couldn't stop himself. “What about Sha're?” he asked.

“Sha're,” Jack sighed. “She was...” he broke into Abydonian briefly, which shocked Daniel, though it made sense if he'd lived there for a year, “...the most perfect woman.” Jack looked as heartbroken about her as Daniel sometimes felt, which also jarred him. “She and Danny were happy. And life was just so simple. Danny had been right. I was right to stay, to clear my head, to get over all the bullshit that was driving me forward all the time, making me self-destruct. So one night, after we'd been there for months, I was sitting at the fire with Ska'ara and his friends and Sha're took my hand and led me back into the bed where Danny was laying. And then she just left me there. We didn't make love that night, he just held me. But I guess that was a beginning, of sorts.”

Daniel felt his breath quickening in some strange mixture of disbelief and arousal. “She approved? And he was… he was interested? It didn't bother him to be unfaithful to his wife?”

“Daniel, just believe me that we were all happy there. Sha're didn't feel betrayed.”

Daniel finally laid back in the bed. There was something about the intimacy of sharing secrets that made him relaxed enough to finally think he might be able to sleep there. “I'm sorry,” Daniel said.

“You really don't like baseball?” Jack asked.

“I really don't know a thing about it,” Daniel replied. “You, the other you, is always trying to introduce me to hockey.”

“My Daniel had foster parents and one set, probably the only good ones of the miserable lot, were rabid Red Sox fans.”

“Not me. You said he had foster families plural?”

“You didn't?”

“No. I mean, there were a couple of families at first. I barely remember them. A family with tons of kids, all coming and going all the time, while we waited to hear if Nick wanted me, which he didn't, of course. Then another family while they looked for a better placement. But those were just a couple of months each. I was with the Millers until I was emancipated at 16.”

“Good people?”

“They were fine. They were older and I was their only charge. Jim was a teacher at a community college. Mary was good about advocating for me to get ahead in school so I could finish sooner. I loved them in a way, I guess. I mean, they weren't really demonstrable people. And they never tried to adopt me, which, maybe I was hurt by that at one time. Jim had a stroke very unexpectedly when I was fifteen and Mary died not long afterward in a car accident. That's when I got emancipated before heading to Chicago.”

“Danny wasn't so lucky.”

“Yeah?” Daniel leaned over to look at Jack. He hadn't thought about the Millers in a long time and he rarely thought of himself as lucky. They were placeholder parents, not real ones. Some kids found families in foster care, whether they were the “forever families” that his case worker liked to talk about or just the sort that you find in life, people united in love. Daniel always felt like he'd found a safe shelter and not much more. Then they had died and left him as well.

“There were a lot of them,” Jack said. “He doesn't like to talk about it much. There were a couple that knocked him around. One that was religious zealots, didn't like his very anthropological take on religion at a young age. The worst was when he was thirteen. Foster brother raped him.”

“Oh my god,” Daniel said, his breath catching, surprised at Jack's bluntness about it. He didn't think he'd ever been so grateful for the Millers.

“That shit is walking around somewhere,” Jack said, quietly. “Sometimes, when other crap happens to Danny, all the shit I can't control, like when he broke his arm off world or when he was missing for three days, cornered by Jaffa before they could sneak back to the gate, I feel like finding him and killing him in his sleep.”

“Jesus, Jack.” Before he thought too much about it, he reached over and gripped Jack's bare arm.

Jack closed his eyes but didn't shrug Daniel off. “I would never do it,” he said. “Danny made me promise.”

Daniel sighed and slid down in the bed. He moved his hand.

“Danny lived in some institution for awhile after that. And then he started school early. Scholarship. Some friends of his parents helped him out. And he spent a bunch of time acting out, finding himself, lots of drugs and sex, the way you're supposed to do college.”

“I guess I did it wrong then,” Daniel said.

Jack grunted quietly. “You and me both.”

“I guess we really are different,” Daniel said.

Jack closed his eyes and slid down in the bed. “Go to sleep, Daniel. You're just making me miss my husband and his particular fucked up problems more.”

Daniel didn't think he'd be able to sleep, but he reached over and switched off his light, positioning his pillows more comfortably. After not too long, he heard Jack's breathing deepen and even out, the sounds of sleep. It was strangely comforting. He tossed and turned a little, but before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.

In the predawn light, Daniel felt stirring in the bed and realized he was plastered against Jack's back, his face pressed into the pillow at the nape of his neck, his arm halfway across his chest. He wasn't ready to wake up, but Jack was moving and the embarrassment was about to force him fully awake, but he could hear Jack chuckling quietly as he stirred, his breath becoming uneven.

“Maybe not so different,” Jack whispered. “Go back to sleep, Daniel. I know you're not ready to get up.”

As he slipped out of the bed, Daniel felt Jack draw the covers back up over him and brush his hair off his face gently. It was probably his state of half waking, but it didn't feel anywhere near as strange as he thought it should have and he fell back asleep despite himself.

Eventually, he woke up and wandered into the bathroom, then into the living room where he found Charlie dressed and ready for school, sitting at the bar with a thick math textbook in front of him.

“Coffee's ready,” Charlie said.

“Ugh,” Daniel managed as he staggered over toward the coffeemaker. Jack had apparently left a mug out for him, which was lucky because he had no idea which cabinet to look in, which might have looked strange to Charlie.

“Where's Jack?” Daniel asked as the warmth and caffeine flooded his system, waking him up more properly.

“Not back from his morning run yet,” Charlie said. “I wanted to go too, but he was too early for me. Besides, math.”

“I thought you said you finished all your homework.”

“Forgot about this,” Charlie said. “But that's okay. I'm basically done. I can copy Ashley's for the last two on the bus. She owes me.” He shut the textbook and began to pack up the overstuffed backpack.

Daniel was afraid to say anything else to him so he stood in the kitchen, drinking his coffee, letting himself wake up all the way. Life was so surreal now. He was used to a strange schedule, being off world for days or even weeks then being home, embroiled in research. But this was something more. He was different people from day to day or week to week. He hoped his theory was right, that he wouldn't have to do this much longer.

Charlie turned the barstool toward the kitchen. “Hey, Danny, can I ask you a question?”

“Mmm.” Daniel sipped his coffee and tried to be vague.

“Is everything okay? You were really quiet yesterday. And I haven't seen you guys for a couple of weeks.”

“I'm fine. Just tired. Work stuff.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He sounded disappointed. Daniel wondered what the other Daniel's relationship was like with Charlie. He was his step-father, he realized, with a slight jolt. He wasn't just Jack's husband, he was tangled in Jack's family relationships fully, conspiring with Sara, talking baseball with Charlie. It was so strange.

“Sorry,” Daniel said. “I'm just not feeling like myself lately.”

Charlie shrugged, such a Jack gesture. “Mom says that whatever you do over there at the base is probably some kind of crazy special ops thing.”

Daniel sputtered into his coffee. “Oh she does?”

Charlie shrugged. “Well, you are kind of badass.”

This was the funniest description of himself he'd ever heard. He was still laughing when Jack came in the kitchen door.

“What's so funny?”

“Your son is hilarious,” Daniel said.

“Charlie, get out of here,” Jack said. “The bus will be there and I'm not driving you.”

Charlie groaned but began loading his stuff up. Daniel wondered what Jack was like in high school. He'd never thought about it before, but now he was curious.

“And you,” Jack said to Daniel. “Carter will be here and I'm not driving you either.”

“Yes, sir!” Daniel said, draining the last of the coffee in his mug.

Charlie laughed. “Bye, Dad.”

* * *

Daniel felt nervous about going into a version of Mountain run by the NID, but Sam was so cheerfully confident that he decided it would be okay. And it did seem to be okay. There were a lot of little differences. All the offices were in different places. His lab was smaller. The patches on everyone's uniforms were different. He kept passing people with different haircuts. He passed Sargent Siler in the hall and he sported a long scar on his cheek.

However, Sam wasn't wrong that things were pretty straightforward. Once she had him at his lab, he could see what was prioritized and began working his way through the stack of images that needed translations. There was a set of pillars from SG-10, some computer stills from SG-8, a recorded message for him to listen to from SG-4.

Around noon, Maybourne came strolling into his office, looking smug. It was disconcerting to see him in General's stars. Daniel didn't have much sense of military rank even after all these years, but he'd come to understand the weight that Hammond carried as a general and to respect how he used his political clout in a measured, just way. Maybourne with that kind of power made Daniel very uneasy.

He asked Daniel how he was feeling and Daniel had the sense he was being sized up as he acted like he was mostly recovered from a nasty flu bug of some sort. After a minute, Maybourne moved on to Daniel's work and seemed delighted that he'd gotten so much done. He reshuffled his pile around and told him what had the highest priority for him. Daniel complained about how the context was missing for several of the translations in the pile.

“I really can't give a full translation if I don't have the whole picture,” Daniel complained.

“Oh, Dr. Jackson, just do the best you can,” Mayborne said cheerfully. “I have every faith in you.”

Something about Mayborne's tone made Daniel even more uncomfortable. If he had come in and been nasty or something, it would have fit Daniel's conception of the man and he probably would have just gotten through it. Something about Mayborne's friendly manner made him even creepier.

“What's your deal?” Daniel asked and then, trying to cover and make it seem more natural, he added, “I mean, you seem… too nice today.” It was a lame finish. Daniel was kicking himself for having said anything. Just play the part and get out of here, he reminded himself.

But Mayborne looked happier than ever. “You're such a fast worker, Dr. Jackson. Anything to keep you happy.”

Daniel really didn't know what to make of this, but Mayborne went on. “I just think you have so much to offer. I want to make sure you stick around. And that you take advantage of everything the SGC has to offer.”

Daniel muttered, “I don't even know what you're talking about, Mayborne.”

Maybourne laughed. “How are things with Jack, by the way? Such a good old friend, but I never get to see him anymore.”

“Jack's fine.”

“And you're happy with him still?”

Daniel shifted uncomfortably. He couldn't figure out what Mayborne was trying to insinuate or imply. It was such a strange conversation.

“Never mind,” Maybourne said, still sounding happy. “I have a 1300 massage schedule in my office so I have to go. Ta ta.”

After that confusing exchange, Daniel went to find Sam in her lab. She looked just as confused as Daniel when he told her about Maybourne's amused behavior and cryptic questions.

“He usually comes in and hits on me then tells me to get back to work,” Sam shrugs. “As far as I can tell he never visits Daniel if he can help it. Daniel can't not argue with him and Maybourne hates it so he stays out of his way as much as possible. I've even seen Maybourne get up and leave a briefing and wave off that it's not important just because Daniel is about to talk. It infuriates Daniel to be treated so dismissively.”

“That just makes his behavior stranger,” Daniel said. “Do you think he knows?”

“I don't know how he could. You look physically identical to our Daniel.”

“But maybe he has something. What if he does have the quantum mirror?”

“Like I said, it's possible, but I don't think so. When I checked into it, it was supposed to be at Area 51.”

“So you think there's no way?”

“Well, I wouldn't entirely discount it. This is Maybourne. And the NID. But… the risk of that thing is huge. And even if he had it, how would that tell him? You came a totally different way. From what you told me, the box in your reality is what's running this Daniel jumping show.”

Daniel agreed, but he still felt uneasy while he worked that afternoon. None of the work was especially interesting. The computer screen stills were useful, something about DNA, but not of interest to him. He wasn't sure if they'd be any good to the scientists either. When Sam came to get him to give him a ride home at the end of the day, he was happy to get back into civvies and get out of there. Before he left, he grabbed some books that he didn't recognize to give him something to do at home.

On the drive, Daniel couldn't help himself from asking about the other him and Jack. Curiosity kept getting the better of him.

Sam thought his interest was funny. “The last two Daniels did not want to talk about it,” she told him. “Jack told me I might need to take the last one away because he was such a homophobe.”

“Seriously?”

“I don't think it was that bad. He was just wigged out. But it's funny for me because the first time I met you, when we re-established the link and went back to Abydos, you two were already a couple. I can't imagine you not together. You're… Jack and Daniel. You guys belong together.”

“Don't we fight? Jack – my Jack – and I fight all the time.”

“Of course you fight. You bicker nonstop, especially when we were all still going off world together and there was some threat. You always want to explore more, see more, help people, take risks. Jack was always there holding you back, telling you not to touch things.”

“That does sound like me and Jack.”

Sam laughed. “Does it upset you because you're also freaked, just dealing with it better than the last Daniel, or does it upset you because it feels oh so right?”

Daniel sputtered slightly, to Sam's amusement.

“Is there anyone in your reality? I mean, I know you said your Sha're also died.”

“About a year ago. I haven't dated anyone since if that's what you mean. I mean, a few flirtations, but it never goes anywhere. I cut it off, I guess.” Daniel paused, wanting to change the subject. “It sounds like you're happy with Joe.”

“Very,” Sam grinned. “Jack likes to tease me about becoming a political wife and I admit that it's the one drawback right now. But I think we'll work it out. Right now, our goals are the same. Get the NID out of the program, take the program public, get the program working again. We're both pretty committed to it. And to each other.”

When he got home, the door was locked so he used the key he found in his bag to let himself in. There was a note on bar from Jack that he was out running errands. Daniel still hadn't really fully explored the house so he took the opportunity to poke around in the basement. It was really only a half basement. There were windows around the edge, letting in plenty of light.

The room that was Charlie's was the largest, with an unmade double bed, a TV, and big dresser. It was messy, with baseball posters, a pile of T-shirts, and stacks of comic books and sports manuals. Daniel almost laughed at the space. Stick a poster of a half nude woman up and it would have been the most stereotypical teenage boy room he'd ever seen.

There was a cozy den with a giant L-shaped sofa and a fancy speaker set up. Video games were shelves in plastic boxes on a shelf and Jack's medals and military commendations were on the wall. It was the most Jack room in the house, Daniel realized. In the rear, across from the bathroom was a guest room, decorated with what was obviously outcast furniture. With a jolt, Daniel realized most of it was his. This was finally shelves and bedding he recognized as his own. Obviously it was his from before.

Daniel continued looking around in the bedroom, but when he opened the bedside table on his side and found sex toys and lube, he shut it firmly and decided to go read. He'd only been on the sofa for a few minutes with the books he'd brought home when the door opened.

He expected Jack, but it was Charlie, lugging his baseball gear, waving out the window.

“Hey,” Charlie said, brightly.

“Hey?” He hadn't expected him, but he wasn't sure what to say exactly.

“I know, I know, but Mom said it was fine. The brats are still throwing up. There's no reason for me to catch whatever they've got.”

“You really shouldn't call your sisters the brats.”

“Step-sisters.”

“Does Jack know you're staying tonight?”

“I know it's not you guys's night,” Charlie said, which said to Daniel that no, Jack didn't know, “but what's the saying? Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission?”

“I'm staying out of that,” Daniel said.

Jack arrived home just a few minutes later. He dragged Charlie outside to chat, but he looked mollified when they came back in. “Get your homework done,” he ordered. “I'll put in dinner.”

“I saw Grandma's stuffed shells in the fridge,” Charlie said excitedly. “Dinner!”

“And here I thought there would be leftovers,” Jack groused.

While the pasta baked, Jack put on opera and went between the kitchen and the bar, helping Charlie with physics homework. When dinner was almost done, Charlie called Daniel from where he read on the sofa to help him with a paper for history class about Norse mythology.

Daniel helped while Jack watched from the other side of the bar. He could feel his eyes on him as he talked to Charlie about restructuring the thesis of the paper. When Charlie looked down, Daniel couldn't help himself, he looked up at Jack, laughter in his eyes and said, simply, “Thor. Always Jack's favorite… of the Norse gods.”

Jack gave him a puzzled look and Daniel realized his reference would have been for his Jack. This one had never met the Asgard.

A few minutes later, as Charlie cleaned up his school things and took them to his room, Jack said, quietly, “Thor, huh? Nasty snakehead in your reality then?”

“Um, no, actually. He's one of the good guys. Not goa'uld. Asgard. If you ever manage to get Maybourne out of there, you should try to contact them. Thor loves Jack. Named a ship after him.”

“A whole ship, huh?”

“I think it got blown up.”

“Something got blown up?” Charlie reappeared at the top of the steps.

“Set the table,” Jack commanded, in his most military voice.

Apparently Charlie knew not to question his father when he used that tone. Daniel opened the fridge and then glanced in the pantry. “Wine with dinner?” he said to Jack.

From the sudden stillness in the room, Daniel knew he'd made his first real mistake in front of Charlie. Jack began moving again after just the briefest second, but Daniel had felt the tension rise. Charlie, standing by the table, facing away from the kitchen, was oddly still with the plates.

Jack was at his side in an instant. “No,” he said. “Very funny, Daniel.”

Daniel flashed him a look that he hoped conveyed how sorry he was for whatever the slip up had been. Did the other Daniel not drink? Did Jack? Was this a rule to do with Charlie? He had no idea.

“I'm getting water,” Daniel said.

Jack was uptight throughout dinner and Charlie was clearly annoyed by it. He kept trying to pester his father into conversation, so Daniel kept taking over, but he realized he was failing. Charlie brought up politics, but most of the people he mentioned either had different positions or didn't seem to be famous in Daniel's reality. One senator Charlie mentioned seemed to be in a different party than he was in Daniel's reality. The conversation didn't move forward very well. Then Charlie wanted to talk baseball, but unlike the Daniel of this reality, he had no idea how to respond so the conversation was pretty one sided. Finally, Jack relaxed a little and threw Daniel a bone, stepped in to talk about the Cubs' chances that year. It was a relief.

Daniel praised the stuffed shells, which seemed like a safe subject.

Charlie grinned as if Daniel's praise of the meal was a joke so Daniel asked, “What?”

“We know it's your favorite. Dad only ever makes it special for you. Like, if you had a fight and need to make up.” Charlie practically gave him a wink, wink sort of look that made Daniel feel a cross between embarrassed and amused.

Jack looked annoyed, but he managed to smile at Daniel.

As they cleared the plates, Charlie suggested a movie night and ran downstairs saying, “I know you have a pay per view credit!” before either Jack or Daniel could object.

“I stepped in something earlier, didn't I?” Daniel asked.

“I don't drink,” Jack said. “It's part of the reason my marriage broke up. Part of why I thought Sara would never let me near Charlie again.”

“Oh, so you're...”

“An alcoholic? I don't know, Daniel. I never went to rehab, just Abydos.”

“They had a lot of alcohol there.”

“That stuff was strong. But I didn't have much after the first few times. My Daniel told me I'd be happier if I stopped and he was right. And then, when we came back here, he told me if I wanted to see my kid, I'd never drink again. And that was a pretty powerful motivation.”

“I hope I didn't just totally screw that up for you,” Daniel said.

Jack shrugged. “Me too.”

“I picked a movie!” Charlie yelled from the bottom of the basement steps.

“But I'm thinking it'll be okay,” Jack added, looking toward the steps.

“He adores you,” Daniel observed. “I mean, how many teenage boys are eager for casseroles and movie night with their dads? I think you should just feel lucky.”

“Oh, I do,” Jack said.

The movie was inordinately stupid. It featured a former Saturday Night Live actor doing a character with an impossibly bizarre accent, trying to solve crimes. A romantic subplot with a beautiful woman who could barely act rounded out the whole thing. Daniel found himself hoping this movie hadn't been made in his reality.

Charlie obviously enjoyed it. He laughed at the inane jokes. When the actress came on screen the first time he said, “Oh yeah. She's smokin' hot.”

About halfway into it, Daniel couldn't stop himself and began commenting on the absurdities of the film. After he hadn't been able to hold back a few times, he said, “How is that even a joke?” and Charlie threw a pillow at him.

“Enough complaining!” Jack said. He grabbed the pillow from Daniel's lap and tossed it back at Charlie. In doing so, he'd closed the gap between them on the oversized sofa. Now he was right up against Daniel's back. Casually, Jack put his arm around Daniel and pulled him backward a few inches into a light embrace. Daniel felt utterly stilled inside. He didn't move. Instead, he found himself relaxing into Jack's arm and then, slowly, into his chest. He realized, after about ten more minutes of the movie's almost offensively bad jokes, that if Jack's purpose was to shut him up he had succeeded.

At least, he succeeded until the actress was supposed to be undercover speaking Russian. Daniel groaned. “That doesn't even make any sense.”

“Bad Russkie?” Jack asked.

“It's nonsense. Surely other people who speak Russian will see this film.”

“You have to suspend disbelief,” Charlie defended.

“Like how we have to suspend disbelief that she's into that jerk of a main character?”

“Hey, sometimes the dork gets the girl!” Charlie said.

“He's probably twice her age,” Daniel said.

“Nothing wrong with a little age gap,” Jack commented, giving Daniel's hair a toussle.

“Ew, guys,” Charlie said. But Daniel could see it was perfunctory. It was, I'm supposed to be grossed out by the sex lives of all adults, and especially my parents. But he actually smiled at Jack as he said it. Daniel felt a weird feeling go through him.

A moment later, he pulled away from Jack and stood up. “I give up on this thing,” he said.

“It's short, almost over,” Jack said.

“I'll see you in a bit,” Daniel said. “Goodnight, Charlie.”

“'Night, Danny,” Charlie said.

Daniel could hear the sounds of the movie then what he assumed was a video game through the big speakers in the basement den. Two days in this reality was really messing with his head. He tried to read on the sofa some more, but he couldn't concentrate so he let himself outside, onto the small porch off the kitchen.

He thought he was happy with his relationship with Jack, his Jack. But being here had made him miss the early days. He remembered how Jack had taken care of him when Sha're was first taken, how Jack had taken him home with him after that first horrible night, how they had talked and Jack had hugged him and let him cry. He remembered how Jack had held him when he went through withdrawl after Shyla's sarcophagus. He remembered how Jack had constantly checked in on him, checked his pack, patted his shoulders, watched his back, especially off world.

Now things were different. He was different. As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't the same person who had stepped through the gate on that first mission. He'd been so cocky, so sure of himself and everyone else be damned. Now he'd been around the block, or around the galaxy, a few times. He knew he could make mistakes. The times he'd screwed up or let people down were bad. Lives could be lost. When you went through that, you either lost your cockiness or your humanity.

He'd also somehow accidentally become a solider. He could remember the first time Jack handed him a gun, how strange it had felt to have this weapon of destruction in his hand. And how Jack had been the one to take him to the range, teach him what he needed to know. It had now been years since he'd had Teal'c show him how to handle himself in a fight. He didn't just roll over anymore. He could hold his own.

Then Sha're had died and something in him had died too. He could barely remember the last time he'd even really thought about a romance. Sure, right after Sha're died, Kira had been there, but it hadn't gone anywhere. It had turned into more of a moral question than a romantic flirtation by the end. Since then there had been a couple of times he'd felt a little vibe of interest from some woman or other, he might have even returned it, but then he usually cut it off, dove back into the work. He thought about sex, sure. But even that was on the back burner. He thought about what Sha're had said in the first reality, about moving on. It was so hard. So hard to want to move on. It was so much easier to hibernate, to cocoon himself in work, in excavating bits of relics and reading bits of scripts. It was so much easier to bury oneself in the past than live in the present. When he surfaced, it was to fight for something big, something real, some planet's rights, some person's life. But the idea of taking time out from that to fight through the awkwardness and do anything for his own life seemed so pointless.

And then there was his friendship with Jack. It felt like something had died in that too. But it was uncomfortable that the realization about that should come as he visited a world where Jack was deeply in love with him. Was he actually titillated by that or did he just miss the friendship he had with his own Jack? Or, was there something there he had never realized? And if so, whose side was it on?

Daniel had climbed up on the edge of the low porch to dangle his legs on the side. He found that he was actually close to tears. If he'd been home, he would have never come home on a day that he was feeling like this, all sorry for himself and pathetic. He would have stayed at work late, because there were always more things he could be doing, and he simply wouldn't have felt this way.

He heard the door behind him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Whatcha doing out here?”

Daniel exhaled slowly. “Feeling sorry for myself.”

He felt Jack approach and place his hand on Daniel's back, just lightly. “Come feel sorry for yourself inside. It's cold out here.”

“It's awkward to have to go in and sleep in your bed.”

Jack didn't move his hand and Daniel stayed still on the porch rail.

“Awkward because you couldn't stand it or awkward because you liked it.”

“The latter, I guess.”

“Hm.”

“I don't want anything from you,” Daniel defended himself. “It's not… like that,” he finished lamely. He felt almost as much connection to this Jack as his did to his own. Everything about that was confusing and he kept blocking his mind from letting himself think any aspect of that connection might be sexual, but he felt like Sha're had woken it up in him again. He had turned off sex so much that it didn't even seem like an option and then she'd pulled him into her bed, the one she shared with her Daniel and made love to him. And now sex was back, suddenly an option again because she had said it should be. She wasn't even his Sha're. And this was Jack. Another man. Daniel's thoughts went round and round. This was apparently not the only world where he was open to dating men. What did it mean about him?

Jack removed the hand and pressed his face to Daniel's back and wrapped his arms around him. Daniel stiffened and then felt himself relax, almost against his will, his body going still again.

Jack chuckled. “God, you're just as touch starved as my Danny. I always think it's because he didn't get loved enough as a kid. You go all still every time I touch you. It's so fucking exactly like Danny. It's like you're savoring every second of it, afraid that if you move, I'll stop, I'll take the touch away.”

Daniel's breath hitched and he recognized the feeling he was experiencing. It was loneliness. He felt so lonely most of the time. He was okay with it. He'd been lonely most of his life. That year with Sha're had been the one time he hadn't felt lonely. And here was the life of another Daniel Jackson who had managed to make himself not at all lonely.

“I think I'm jealous of your Danny,” he said with a laugh that forced itself out to hide the emotions that were coursing through him. “Also, no offense, but I could really use a good drink.”

Jack pulled away, took the touch away. “Come on to bed,” he said. “When you're ready, that is. I promise to touch you, but not too much.”

Daniel almost asked if his Daniel would be jealous, but he remembered what Sha're had said and wondered if it was true of himself all the way around. Would this Daniel, who was apparently so like him, feel jealous of him if he slept curled up in Jack's arms? Would he in his place? Daniel didn't think he would, but he wasn't sure he wasn't just rationalizing, just rationalizing the whole thing, from Sha're to this.

Still, after a minute, he followed Jack inside and stripped to his boxers, sliding just the loose plaid pajama bottoms back on from where he'd thrown them in the closet that morning. Jack was already in bed and had a crossword puzzle in front of him. It was all so completely beyond domestic. This Jack and Daniel had a teenage kid in the house. Surreal didn't even begin to cover this reality. And what did it say about Daniel that ending up in a cave with a friend controlled by a parasitic alien or dealing with an alien race attempting to manipulate humanity were par for the course but a happy marriage with a teenage step-son was surreal.

He climbed in bed and Jack immediately put the crossword down and turned out his light. Daniel followed. He lay still on his side on the other side of the bed from Jack. It was long minutes before he felt Jack roll over toward him and wrap an arm around him, coming to rest next to him. Daniel let out a slow exhale of breath and felt that deep stillness return inside his chest. He often fell asleep tapping his toe, running out all the extra energy and thoughts from the day. But as Jack held him, he found he just quietly drifted off.

When he woke in the morning, he was sprawled on his side against Jack, who was on his back, his arm cradling Daniel's head, his hand on his back. Jack was sitting partially up on his pillows, a paperback Stephen King novel in his other hand. As he woke, he became aware of two things. First, the smell of coffee was in the room, strong enough that just the aroma triggered a sort of Pavlovian echo of alertness. Second, that his morning erection was pressed into Jack's warm thigh.

He rolled away, extricating himself and mumbling, “Sorry.”

Jack chuckled. “Coffee's on your side table.”

Daniel rubbed his face over with his hands. “Thanks,” he said, sitting up. “So you got up…?”

“And then climbed back in bed? Yep.”

He sat up and sipped the lukewarm coffee. “And I, um…”

“Dr. Jackson, don't worry about it. I know how that body of yours operates.”

If he had been any more awake, he would have turned bright crimson. As it was, he took another long drink of coffee and fled to the bathroom.

In the living room, Charlie was playing a handheld video game and eating a bagel. Jack came out of the bedroom in pajamas and picked up the paper. As Daniel continued letting the caffeine flood his system, he toasted himself a bagel as well and watched Jack and his son. As weirded out as he was when he first realized that this Jack and Daniel were married, he found this was the reality he could most get used to.

The doorbell rang and Charlie jumped up to get it. It turned out to be Sara, who said she wanted to give Charlie a ride to school. Daniel felt uncomfortably underdressed for company in his undershirt and khakis. He had only halfway dressed. But Sara seemed fine with it. When Jack went downstairs to look in the laundry for Charlie's uniform, she sidled up to him in the kitchen and said, “He seems more relaxed. Things better?”

“Um...” Daniel said.

“Leave Danny alone, Mom,” Charlie said. “He's still on his first cup of coffee.”

Sara sighed and went to quiz Charlie about his homework.

“Can I stay here again tonight?” Charlie asked as Jack returned with the washed uniform.

“No,” Jack said.

“No,” Sara confirmed. “The girls aren't throwing up anymore and we didn't catch it. I want you home after the game tonight.”

Charlie groused a little, but he finished packing up. He came to the kitchen to grab an apple, which he stuck in his mouth, giving Daniel an impromptu hug as he passed him on his way back out. Daniel reflected that he had really inherited a lot of Jack in his demeanor.

After they left, Daniel finished getting ready.

“So, we're at 36 hours, give or take,” Jack said while Daniel waited on Sam to arrive to give him a ride.

“Sounds about right,” Daniel said, though it felt like he'd been in this reality a lot longer.

“Tomorrow might be too much to risk.”

“Do you think? I've been in a lot of these realities for a lot longer than two days.”

Jack hummed thoughtfully. “I don't want any Daniel ending up in there at the mercy of Maybourne. You may be able to take care of yourself, but I don't know about these other ones.”

That thought put Daniel on edge a little, but the day was a near repeat of the previous one. Maybourne didn't visit Daniel in his lab again, but he did pass him in the hall and repeated something like what he had said the day before, about being so glad for Daniel's quality translation work. Daniel again was unsettled by him, but he couldn't put his finger on anything actually being wrong.

Sam asked if he minded working late and Daniel was grateful for the distraction and said so. When she dropped him off at home, Jack was back from Charlie's game and eating a late dinner.

“Saved you a plate,” Jack said, gesturing to the kitchen.

As Daniel sat down with the rice and chicken he smiled at the realization that he hadn't eaten takeout. “I wonder if my Jack can cook,” he said.

“Probably. Sara was terrible in the kitchen. Everything she ever made was burned. I was always more natural at it and I got better, at least when I was around.”

“Oh, actually, now that I think about it, my Jack ends up charring everything too much on the grill.”

“Danny says I do too,” Jack admitted. “He has no appreciation of well done.”

“Is that actually something that can be appreciated?”

Jack changed the subject. “Anything new today?”

Daniel told him about Maybourne's weird friendliness and Jack insisted that it didn't sit right and Daniel shouldn't go back for one more day.

Taking the dishes to the kitchen, Daniel said Sam felt it would be best if he could do just one more day, especially since they didn't know what the next Daniel would be like and since she was due to go off world in a few days anyway.

“I think one more day will be fine,” Daniel said. “Then I can sit around here and wait to jump to the next reality.”

“So eager to move on.”

Daniel was tempted to say that this reality had been his best stop so far, though it really didn't have too much competition. Seeing Sha're and his mother were so painful, even if they were good. Being stuck in that cave and watching Earth dominated by the Aschen weren't exactly in contention.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, sorry.” Daniel scraped the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. “Just lost in thought. Um, I'm hopeful there will be one more reality for me and just one more Daniel here before yours returns.”

“That would be nice.”

“It's late. I think I'll turn in,” Daniel said.

“Go ahead. I'm going to take care of a few things. I'll be in a bit.”

“Oh. I, um, thought maybe I'd just take the guest room.”

“Do what you like,” Jack said.

“I just thought… this morning was sort of awkward...”

“No matter what you do, Daniel, it's awkward.”

“Yeah.”

An hour later, Daniel found himself again in Jack's bed. Jack slid in next to him and Daniel could almost feel his smile in the darkness of the bedroom.

“I have no idea why I'm here,” Daniel whispered.

“Danny was always the one dragging me along, making me realize things,” Jack said.

“I don't think I have anything to figure out.”

“Really?”

* * *

Daniel left in the morning despite the annoyed looks Jack kept shooting at him over scrambled eggs. “I'll be fine,” he insisted. “Home for supper. Time's not quite up yet. And I'll fake sneeze a bunch before I leave to cover for the next Daniel. Then, hopefully, only one more Dr. Jackson until your Danny comes home.”

Jack grunted, a sort of humph that seemed to imply he didn't think much of Daniel's optimism. Daniel grinned and then, before he could talk himself out of it, he kissed Jack on the cheek, then turned away, not meeting his eyes as he grabbed his briefcase and went to put on a jacket and shoes.

“It's been… interesting pretending to be your husband,” Daniel said from the hallway.

“Have a nice day at the office, dear,” Jack said and Daniel could almost hear him rolling his eyes. He smiled. Surreal. He was both dreading and beyond ready to leave.

Sam was cheerful in the car, talking about her fiance and their overthrow the Stargate Program political plans. That seemed normal. So did the long elevator trip into the Mountain and the pile of work on his desk. Daniel had the good coffee buzzing through him though and was looking forward to a final night in this reality before getting whisked off one more time. He could only hope it would be as simple a trip as this one. No hiding in caves. No being on the run from do gooder aliens playing some sort of long game. No long dead loved ones.

By lunchtime, Daniel had translated a pile of backlog as efficiently as he could, hoping to keep this SGC, even though its mission was a little askew, as on track as possible. That's when the SF's unexpectedly showed up in his office.

“General Maybourne wants to see you,” one of them announced.

“Okay, let me just finish this one...”

“Now,” the other one said, striding across his lab and grabbing his arm.

That's when Daniel started to get worried.

He wondered if he could alert Sam somehow that something had gone wrong, but he couldn't see how. And anything he might do that would alert Sam would also alert Maybourne that something was going on with him. He might be able to play this out without any real issue.

When he got to Maybourne's office though, his hopes sunk. The SF's practically shoved him through the door, a move that seemed unnecessary since he was cooperating. Immediately, he saw Jack and Kawalsky handcuffed and on their knees, another SF with his sidearm pointed at them.

“Dr. Jackson!” Maybourne said cheerfully. “Some old friends came to see you.”

“Jack? What are you doing here?” Daniel asked. For a moment, he wondered how Jack had gotten there. He'd said goodbye that morning and everything had seemed okay. But then he realized this wasn't his Jack. Or, that Jack wasn't his Jack either. He inwardly kicked himself. This was another Jack. Most likely it was the Jack from the only reality he'd seen so far that still included Charlie Kawalsky, the first one he visited.

“Yes, Jack, tell us what you're doing here?” Maybourne said.

“You bastard. Let us get our Dr. Jackson then let us go,” Kawalsky said.

“Let us go?” Maybourne asked mockingly. “So you can muck up the whole thing?”

“Come on, Maybourne. You know we were just here to rescue him. You can have yours back.”

Maybourne chuckled. “You assume so many things that are incorrect, Jack. First, that this is your Dr. Jackson.”

Daniel looked between the two of them. He didn't want to agree with Maybourne and was pretty concerned about where this was going, but he was right. He give a miniscule shake of his head as Jack looked at him closely.

“You see?” Maybourne said, sounding smug, or more smug than usual. “I'm afraid you found the wrong reality.” He leaned back in his chair. “As for my Dr. Jackson, honestly, I've been thinking of keeping this one. I quite like him. And I think he's developing a fondness for life here.”

Daniel tried to stay still and not react, but inwardly he began to panic. What did Maybourne know and how did he know it?

“Perhaps you're surprised, Dr. Jackson? But I really do know everything that happens under my roof. You have nothing to worry about though. You've been doing such good work. You're so focused and efficient. I love it. It's why I think you should stick around.”

“Stick around?” Daniel asked. “Are you serious?” Did Maybourne think he was running this show? He was just get dragged around on the tour of realities.

“You should see what I have to offer.”

“You're a madman, Harry,” Kawalsky accused.

Daniel looked back at the two of them, held prisoner and down on the floor. Jack looked mildly annoyed, which didn't surprise him. Jack was always at his best under pressure. He raised one eyebrow at Daniel and Daniel suddenly had the feeling he should stand back.

“What exactly are you offering?” Daniel asked.

“See!” Maybourne sounded delighted. “I knew you'd at least want to know!”

Jack and Kawalsky acted so quickly that Daniel hardly knew what had happened. Kawalsky jumped up and knocked the gun out of the hands of the SF and Jack elbowed him in the nose, knocking him out. Maybourne looked alarmed and reached for his desk, but Jack was there in a flash. He and Kawalsky knocked Maybourne to the floor.

Daniel, realizing that there were several more SF's, not to mention Maybourne's various support staff, right outside the door, turned and locked and deadbolted it before Maybourne could call for help. It turned out to be mostly unnecessary though. By the time Daniel rounded to the back side of Maybourne's desk, he realized that Jack had knocked him out.

“He practically just fainted,” Kawalsky said, looking surprised.

“He was always a coward,” Jack said. “Keys are in his front pocket, Daniel.”

Daniel fished the keys out of Maybourne's pocket and unlocked the two of them. It had all been far too easy, but he realized they were stuck in Maybourne's office with no way to escape, meaning it wasn't as easy as all that.

“He was right,” Daniel said, as Jack fastened the cuffs onto Maybourne. “I'm not your Dr. Jackson.”

“Got that,” Jack said. He sounded tight and disappointed. “What's your world?”

“Um… I work for the SGC, Kawalsky died early on in the program's history, Dr. Carter and I are friends, Sha're was host to Amaunet, though she's dead now, Hammond is the general, um...”

“You were the first one,” Jack said.

“Ah, yes. Your reality is the one where Sha're lived, right?” As Jack nodded, Daniel asked, “But how did you get here?”

“The keys?” Jack asked.

Daniel handed him the key ring he'd taken from Maybourne's pocket. Jack went to the door that led, at least in Daniel's reality, to one of the conference rooms that General Hammond used for briefings. In this reality, it turned out to be a little different.

The room was filled with computer equipment and monitoring screens. Some sort of elaborate database was open on several of the monitors, filled with color-coded cells of information that Daniel couldn't immediately figure out. On one wall was a giant screen that was obviously not local, as Jack would say. Daniel suspected from the unusual shape and style that it might be Ancient. It was currently blank. But one item Daniel did recognize immediately. The quantum mirror was sitting in the middle of the room.

“He has the mirror,” Daniel said. “What is this room?”

“Alternate reality monitoring station,” Kawalsky said. “Far as we can tell, Harry's been keeping tabs on a lot of realities.”

Daniel could immediately see the reasoning. And that it explained a lot about this reality. “It's how he's keeping Earth safe,” he said, slightly in awe. “This reality… things are… they've been too lucky. I think Maybourne's been gaming things out based on other realities and seeing what happened in them. It lets him send SG teams to take the tech they need without getting in trouble. God, it makes so much sense.”

“Seems like cheating to me,” Kawalsky said.

Daniel looked at Jack, who shrugged. He knew they were both thinking the same thing. Who wouldn't cheat in order to keep their planet safe?

“So you came through the mirror for me… thinking I was your Daniel.”

“Sorry about that,” Jack said.

“That's okay,” Daniel said. “But I can't go back with you. I think...” Daniel suddenly felt a wave of pain run behind his temples. “Shit. Not yet.”

“What's wrong?” Jack asked.

“I'm about to… to go. At least, I think I am.”

“We'll take you with us,” Jack said immediately. The mirror has a force field protecting it, but it's disabled.”

“No!” Daniel said. “I'm convinced now that Dr. McKay was right. There's only one more reality. We should all finish this out. You should go back.”

“But what about you? What about Maybourne?”

“Shit,” Daniel said again. “Call… call Jack. He'll take care of things. I mean...”

“I know what you mean,” Jack said. He looked torn.

“Please, Jack,” Daniel begged. He felt a sharp pain run through his head and then he didn't know any more.

Chapter Text

Life During Wartime

When Daniel woke up, he was in a pile of hay and he could feel his sinuses objecting vehemently.

“I don't suppose there's coffee?” he asked. “Or antihistamines?”

Opening his eyes, he saw Sam sitting in the light coming from an open window. She was holding a P-90 and her eyes were fixed on some point in the distance. It looked like they were in a small barn. He could see Sam's pack behind her. Her hair was mussed and she looked tired.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey. I take it you're yet another one?”

“Yeah,” Daniel breathed. She still hadn't looked over at him. “Sam? Situation?”

She breathed out a long sigh. “Okay. You know me. That's good. The one who didn't know me was a jolt. It's a start. Situation.” She glanced back in at him. “We're in Montana, hiding out from the Jaffa. They made us back in Vancouver last week so we've been trying to move fast.”

“The goa'uld are on Earth?”

“For about a year.”

“Jack? The Stargate? Teal'c?”

“Teal'c? The Jaffa? One of the other Daniels mentioned him. No Teal'c. He's not one of the Jaffa I've run across. The gate is in the hands of Baal, but we're pretty sure he's fighting it out with some of the other system lords for control, thus the Jaffa activity everywhere. Jack's dead.”

Daniel thought of the Jack he had just left as well as the Jack in his own reality and his heart clenched.

“Before you ask, Hammond's dead. President Hayes is dead. Kawalsky's dead. Ferretti's dead. Makepeace is dead. Nyan's dead. Your last three assistants are probably all dead. Catherine and Earnest are dead. If I don't mention someone is alive, you can probably just assume they're dead.”

“Mayborne?”

“Oh, god, I hope he's dead,” Sam said. She turned toward him. “Okay, so… you're a keeper. I'll take anyone who can make a joke right now.”

“Sam, I'm so sorry.”

“We're supposed to meet up with Mark here tomorrow and get to the resistance cell that's based back in Colorado. Back into the serpent's nest.”

“Mark, like your brother Mark?”

Sam nodded. “He and some of his cop buddies are in the resistance there. But it's tough going. The goa'uld took out most of the major cities. Mark only got out because I warned him to get out of Denver. His wife didn't make it, but he did manage to get the kids to safety. Some place for kids, this world.”

“All the cities?”

“Most of them. The Jaffa are busy setting up temples and weeding out resistors in smaller cities. But the whole economy has collapsed and canned food's starting to get scarce. We're going to have to become a nation of farmers again, I guess.”

“So… no coffee then?”

Sam leaned her gun against the wall. “I haven't had coffee in two months.”

“Shit. I liked the last reality way better.”

Sam began to laugh. “The one where you're married to Jack? Sorry, some of the Daniels have needed to process. You know, in between being shot at with staff weapons and all.” She was practically giggling. She seemed almost hysterical, laughing despite sitting at a window perch on watch against their death.

“It wasn't that funny.”

“Hey, if it would bring back Jack, hot showers, and the Stargate, I'd take any reality. I hope my Daniel has a chance to go there. He should take full advantage of everything it has to offer. And then I hope he tells me all about it in great detail.”

“Well, there's a chance he's there now,” Daniel said. He laid out his theory about the seven realities and how they were all moving through them.

“I don't know if I should be glad he'll be back or sorry,” Sam said.

They talked for awhile longer, Daniel telling her about his reality and a little about what happened in the realities he'd visited. Sam told him more about the invasion of Earth. He asked about their various allies, but it seemed they hadn't ever made contact with the Asgard and they hadn't heard from the Tok'ra since they lost the gate. Daniel couldn't believe Jacob would abandon Earth, but Sam looked bitter when it came up, so he stopped pressing.

“Can you take a watch?” Sam asked. “Mark should be here at 1600 or so. I'd love to catch some sleep.”

So Daniel took the P-90 and sat at the window. His head was killing him, but he found a funny assortment of stuff in the pack Sam said was his: a bottle with unmarked pills, two cans of creamed corn and a can of pumpkin with pie spices, a copy of War and Peace, and two smashed breakfast bars. He decided he could wait on food and drained what was left of his canteen instead. Then he took the copy of War and Peace and started reading while he sat at the window.

Mark arrived in a beat up truck at dusk, only a few hours late. Daniel had never met him in his reality and Sam hadn't said if he was supposed to pose as the Daniel of this reality or not so he stood there sort of stupidly while Sam hugged her brother.

“What's your problem?” Mark asked him.

“Oh, of course. You'll love this. That's not actually Daniel,” Sam said.

Mark drew his gun, which made Sam laugh again. “He's not a goa'uld, Mark. He's from another dimension.” She began the same hysterical laughing she'd done earlier. Mark slugged her arm. “What are you on?” he asked.

She laughed again. “Nothing, but I'll take anything you've got.”

Daniel couldn't decide if he liked this version of Sam who seemed so close to the edge. In the truck, they managed to convince Mark that he really wasn't the Daniel he knew. Sam began to go on about multiple dimensions and quantum theory and she sounded much more like the Sam he knew. Mark clearly tuned her out but when she got to a pause, he said, “Just when I thought shit couldn't get weirder.”

They drove for four hours before getting to a cabin on a remote road where Mark pulled off. They had stayed off the interstates, which Sam told him were mostly bombed and difficult to navigate and they only passed a few cars and a few bicycles. Hitchhikers lined some of the roads, carrying tents and pushing random things like shopping carts or strollers filled with goods. People looked so desperate and tired, wearing an odd assortment of clothes.

“They're trying to get to Canada,” Sam said when she saw Daniel watching. “Fewer Jaffa. I guess even the goa'uld can't be everywhere.”

“But we're headed back to Colorado?” Daniel asked.

“Can't kill as many Jaffa in Canada.”

At the cabin, Sam jumped out to check the perimeter, but Mark called her paranoid.

“My paranoia's what's keeping us all alive,” Sam said.

There were two young guys at the cabin, both resistance, both former army guys. Sam refused to call them by their names, introducing them to Daniel as Grunt 1 and Grunt 2. Daniel thought they'd be angry, but they apparently knew her.

“I have the moonshine, flygirl,” Grunt 1 said.

After dinner, which consisted of rabbit and the creamed corn from Daniel's pack eaten over candlelight because apparently most of the power grid was completely down and it wasn't worth wasting the gas on the generator, Mark announced he was going to bed, and Sam and the two grunts proceeded to get about as drunk as Daniel had ever seen anyone get.

At first, they were happy drunk. Grunt 1, whose name was Adam, hit on Sam relentlessly and she flirted back, flashing him her bra at one point, and he howled when he saw that there was a knife stuck in there. Grunt 2, who never bothered to offer his real name to Daniel, did some of the things people do when they're showing off drunk, balancing spoons on his nose, juggling an assortment of wadded up old rags poorly, and showing that he knew all the lyrics to half a dozen rap songs that Daniel didn't recognize.

But as the evening wore on, the happiness turned to war stories. Adam told about luring two Jaffa into a trap and slitting their throats then pulling out their symbiotes and slicing them in two. Sam told a story about rigging a staff weapon to kill half a dozen Jaffa at a checkpoint on a highway in Kansas. After they got away, they found the arm of one of the Jaffa in the back of their truck, severed by the explosion. It only got more gruesome from there. Grunt 2 began to tell a story about his sister, and Adam told him it was “too fucking sad.” It turned out she had been turned into a host to infiltrate his resistance cell. Grunt 2 had to shoot her in the head.

Daniel had drunk a little of the proffered moonshine at the start of the evening, but he didn't feel like he had any right to drink with these three. He didn't have any of their pain or war stories. As they became more and more maudlin, finally descending into talking about all the things they missed like hot showers and Simpsons episodes, Daniel decided he couldn't take it and went to look for a bed.

As he quietly opened the door to the back bedroom, he heard Mark's voice. “If you don't go back in there, then I'll have to. Take her to bed before something bad happens.”

Adam had just made yet another pass at Sam, but Daniel thought she could probably take care of herself and said so into the dark where he could only just see Mark's outline in the bed.

“I'm not all that afraid he'll rape her,” Mark said and he said it in such a way that rape sounded like a minor annoyance, a fact of life in this new world. “I'm much more afraid she'll kill him when he inevitably tries something. And she'll laugh about it, but it won't be particularly funny.”

So Daniel went back in and when there was a lull in the drunken conversation, he put an arm around Sam and asked her to come to bed. Adam looked thoroughly pissed and Daniel himself was beyond shocked when Sam basically crawled into his lap and said, not bothering to whisper, her mouth close to his ear, “I'll go if you can carry me.”

Daniel reflected that four years ago there would have been no way he could have lifted Sam, at least not without a lot of effort, but now he grabbed her legs, letting her wrap her arms around his neck and found she was a weight he could carry without breaking a sweat. He took her to the bedroom that didn't contain Mark, a tiny room with nothing but a twin bed, where he set her down. She grabbed at him and Daniel thought for a second that she was about to kiss him. He wasn't sure what to do with this Sam who was so unlike his, brazen and angry and grieving. But she didn't kiss him. Instead, her breath thick with the moonshine she'd polished off with the grunts, she said simply, “Stay.” It wasn't a sexual plea, it was just a plea to not be alone.

Daniel didn't feel like he had the right to deny any of the people in this reality anything reasonable they asked for, not after hearing those war stories or watching the refugees on the roads walking toward Canada pushing their belongings in old shopping carts. He pushed Sam over and squeezed his body into the space that was left, taking the pillow and letting her rest her head on his chest, her arm and leg draped over him.

When he woke up the next morning, the grunts were still passed out on the floor, the sofa cushions under them awkwardly. Grunt 2 was drooling liberally on a throw pillow he had hugged to himself. Sam had risen just before him and by the time Daniel was out of the bathroom, she had a beaten laptop in front of her and was hard at work on something technical.

Daniel found Mark outside, plucking several wild turkeys he had shot before Daniel even woke up.

“I'd offer to help, but I have no idea how to do that,” Daniel admitted.

“You really aren't Daniel, are you?” Mark said. “I taught you this six months ago back in Colorado. You guys had me convinced, but when she went to bed with you I thought surely it was really you and my sister's fucked up sense of humor was pulling my leg.”

“Nothing happened,” Daniel said. “So… Is the Daniel of this reality sleeping with her?”

Mark shrugged. “Sometimes. Better sex than alcohol, right?”

“How bad is it?” Daniel asked. He didn't mean the goa'uld or the earth or the invasion. He meant Sam, how bad off was she.

“She's in there writing some program to hack into alien devices,” Mark observed. “I'm pretty sure she doesn't even have a hangover.”

“So she's still Sam.”

Mark dropped a finished turkey into a bucket and picked up another from the ground. “I think she used to fake being normal. Really successfully, mind you. She had me fooled. I'd see her every few months and she'd have on skirts and high heeled boots and talk about pedicures with my wife, like she wasn't off fighting aliens. Not that we knew it back then. But now, what's the fucking point? Why bother even trying for normal?”

At midday, the three of them got on the road again, leaving the grunts behind. Sam took the jump seat in the back of the truck and stayed on her laptop, changing the power supply twice to ones in a bag she had in her pack and literally tossing the used up ones out the window of the truck onto the side of the road.

At dusk, as they passed by the southern edges of Yellowstone, Daniel was at the wheel when he saw lights up ahead.

“Shit,” Mark said. “Jaffa checkpoint. Turn off the road. I think we spotted it in time.”

Daniel turned off the road onto a dirt side road. They spent the next three hours hiking in the dark to a spot a few miles back where Sam hot wired an SUV that was abandoned on the side of the road and they added the siphoned gas they had to it. They had to drive another hour back north before turning south again on another road.

Sam thought it was funny, just like everything. “We should have stayed and killed them,” she said. “There are two staff weapons in the gear boxes in the truck. I could have rigged one.”

“More severed arms,” Daniel said dryly.

“Now you're thinking like one of us,” Sam said appreciatively.

“I just want to get back to camp,” Mark said.

There was no safe place to stop, so they drove through the night and into the next day. The checkpoints were apparently few and far between. They didn't meet another one and by trading off the driving, they made it through the mountains and south of Colorado Springs, to a spot in the middle of nowhere, off a dirt road off another dirt road.

There was a tiny cluster of cabins and tents there, like a makeshift village. Daniel could see a few dozen people there, all at work on some task or another. As they pulled up, guys who were obviously guards approached, holding zats and assorted other weapons, pointing them at the SUV.

Sam climbed out of the back seat and one of the guards, a slightly stocky guy with spiky blond hair dropped his weapon and grabbed her in an embrace. “I didn't think you were coming back,” he said.

“Course I came back, Pete,” Sam replied, letting him draw her into a kiss.

Daniel stepped out of the front seat, but as soon as he did, Pete let go of Sam and walked up to him and decked him, hard, his fist slamming into Daniel's jaw. It came out of nowhere. Pete clearly knew what he was doing too. He shook his fist off like it was an annoyance, but Daniel's jaw stung and he thought it might be broken. But Pete wasn't done. While Daniel reeleed up, trying to recover, Pete swung again and again Daniel was too slow to react. This punch landed on his eye and Daniel could feel it swelling shut immediately.

“Pete!” he heard Sam cry and there was another thud as she took him by surprise from behind, knocking him to the ground.

“He puts your life in danger for no good reason,” Pete said from the ground.

“I'll fuck whoever I want whenever I want,” Sam announced, kicking him.

This was not the well-organized resistance that Daniel had expected, if he had expected anything.

“Hey, cut it out! And don't go stalking off before you get checked, Sam. You know the procedure.”

The voice was familiar and through the haze of pain from being sucker punched, Daniel looked up and saw a tiny figure with reddish hair and a stethoscope approaching them with some sort of old fashioned looked little machine in hand.

“Janet?” Daniel said. “Sam, you didn't tell me Janet was still alive!”

“Daniel?” she asked. Daniel knew that tone of voice. It was the quietly questioning his sanity tone of voice.

Several of the guards fixed Daniel in the sight of their weapons at Dr. Fraiser's hesitation about his identity but Sam told them to stand down. “Quantum mirror like weirdness,” she told the doctor.

Janet was taken aback, but she proceeded to hold the little humming machine to the back of Daniel's head and neck.

“What…?”

“Portable dopler. Meant for checking a baby's heart rate. Not as good a goa'uld detection device as the x-rays and MRI's back at the base, but we've learned to compensate.”

Daniel nodded. Despite the fight, everyone went on with their business as Janet checked the three of them in turn, pronouncing them clean. Pete stood to the side, looking petulant. As soon as Sam was cleared, she grabbed her gear and her laptop and stalked toward one of the cabins. Pete tried to follow her, but she shoved him saying, “Fuck off, I have work to do.”

“Who is that?” Daniel asked.

“Cop buddy of mine,” Mark said. “They took up right after we set up camp here six months ago. He's… a bit of a romantic, believe it or not.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows, clearly showing his disbelief.

“Life during wartime,” Mark said. “I think Pete thinks it'll all be worth it somehow if he can say he found the love of his life in the midst of this shit.”

“I don't have any ice, Daniel, but I may have a cold pack somewhere,” Janet said. “Come on to the infirmary and I'll see about your face.”

Daniel followed Janet through the camp. It was muddy and disorganized, at least to the outside eye. It looked like there were about a dozen cabins, some of them further into the woods and up the dirt road. In between, on evened out patches of land, there were large pitched tents. It had rained some time recently so the mud was everywhere. They passed someone spreading a sort of mulch to soak it up. Behind a couple of the cabins, on the rocky soil, people were trying to plant gardens, though Daniel wasn't sure if they would have much luck. This wasn't the best spot to try and farm anything. He doubted it would be anywhere near enough to feed the community.

The infirmary turned out to be the front room in a cabin that Janet said was all hers. She had the door locked and opened it for him. It was homey and much cleaner than anything outside. The foundation was solid and Janet made him leave his now mud soaked boots on the porch.

After she'd found a cold pack and broken the seal so the chemicals could mix and chill, Janet brought him hot tea, though she said it was actually just local wild roots.

“It's not terrible. Something to drink other than water.”

“Thanks.” Daniel took it and settled himself on the metal folding chair she'd provided for him.

“So… I'm going to take Sam's word for this, but I'm somehow doubting you found a quantum mirror while taking the kids to Vancouver.”

So Daniel gave her the gist of what was happening to him for the last few weeks. Janet listened in a way that he didn't feel like anyone had during the whole, wild experience. He'd been debriefed and swapped stories, but Janet had a bartender's ear or a psychologist's, not that Daniel had ever really felt much trust for psychologists. He felt calmer just telling her all this stuff, about his own reality, about where Sam was a Tok'ra, about being married to Jack, about seeing his mother.

In turn, after a lot of talking, she told Daniel about the mission Sam had left with the Daniel of this reality to accomplish. They'd taken Cassie and a bunch of the other kids, including Mark's son and daughter, to Vancouver to hand them off to a group going up to Alaska. It made Daniel think of the London blitz, people sending their children to safety, just hoping they'd be okay without any real assurance that the people taking them would be able to take care of them or love them the way they did.

So they talked about the resistance and the goa'uld. It seemed so heinous and yet so random. They'd heard that some places had been mostly spared, others decimated or destroyed. Now Baal had the Stargate and that made him a target for the other system lords, some of whom had attacked other parts of the Earth. Janet talked in almost numbed tones about how the Jaffa were gearing up for war.

Finally, Daniel felt like he could broach the subject of Sam. “She seems almost… I mean, I didn't know this Sam before, so I don't know what she was like, but if this was my Sam...”

Janet assessed things in her cold doctor voice. “She seems unbalanced?”

“Maybe a little.”

“She really hasn't been the same since the colonel died.”

“Jack?”

“The whole camp is really not the same without him. He...” her calm, measured voice broke for a moment and Daniel impulsively leaned over to give her a hug. “They got to him, Daniel. Made him a host. While we were all standing around wondering what could be done, thinking about keeping him tied up, Sam pulled out her sidearm and put a bullet in his head.”

“Wow.”

“Wow indeed.”

There was a long pause where Daniel sat wishing there was some sense of something beyond bleakness that could come out of this reality, but he didn't find anything really.

“What is this plan Sam's working on? She wouldn't talk about it on the ride.”

Janet shrugged. “Something between her and Daniel – our Daniel. I think it had to do with the Tok'ra. She can't quite believe Jacob really has abandoned them. I can't either, to be honest. And she was raiding labs for chemical equipment. I know she sent some of the marines off to clear out a high school chemistry classroom and a pharmaceutical company in Arizona. But what that means, I have no idea.”

“She doesn't share?”

“Not with me.”

Daniel spent the rest of the day in the camp, mostly sitting on Janet's front stoop with his battered copy of War and Peace. He watched as people came in to the makeshift infirmary with minor injuries and realized that at least some of them were from infighting amongst the people in the camp. It was really a lawless place. He wondered why Mark and Janet, who seemed like they were still so sane stayed with this, especially having sent their children away.

Most people seemed to know him, but Daniel ignored most of them, and that seemed to fit their expectations fairly well. Around evening, a young, wiry black guy with a shaved head found him and said they had the equipment up and running and they should go out.

The guy, whose name was Toby, turned out to be a sound engineer. He'd scavenged piles of radio equipment from radio and television stations and rigged up a van that was basically a high powered mobile broadcast vehicle. Most nights, Toby explained, he took the show on the road, moving around so that they couldn't be caught by the Jaffa.

“It's like Pump Up the Volume,” Daniel laughed when he saw it. It turned out Toby had never seen it, but he got the reference.

“Are you screwing with me that you're from another dimension?” Toby asked about twenty times. He dragged Daniel to Sam to double check that everything was okay, and Sam had looked up briefly and said, “Oh yeah, go out and do your little Radio Free America thing. He's fine,” and that had apparently been good enough for Toby.

“I'm really from another dimension,” Daniel said again.

“Don't go telling that shit on the air though,” Toby said as they descended the mountain out of camp. “People are having enough trouble believing that the goa'uld are snakes.”

Toby drove them around, winding through the mountains and then further and further afield. He explained that on a clear night they'd have a good range, maybe even several states. “People tune in, man. You know they do.” Toby had been spray painting “Radio Free America” on billboards or, sometimes, just a tag that said RFA. Daniel, he explained, was his most popular feature.

“Just do your thing. Talk about the goa'uld and, you know, all that mythology stuff.”

So Daniel, sitting in the back of the van as it bumped along, tried his best to do what Toby asked. He rambled for almost two hours about everything he could think of about how the goa'uld and the system lords used mythology to control people, about the stargate and the Ancients, about the physiology of the goa'uld, about their origins and the first races they took as hosts like the Unas.

Apparently he did a good job because at some point Toby waved to the back and told him to wrap it up. They swapped and Daniel took the wheel on the way back while Toby read off tidbits of news they'd gotten. It all had to be sort of oblique. They couldn't say where anyone was hiding out or what the resistance had done, though there were several notes about places the resistance had struck down the Jaffa. Toby finished with an extensive list of people who were, “alive and reaching out for their loved ones.”

It was the first thing that Daniel had done since coming to this reality that hadn't made him feel like an outsider and a bit like suicide might be the best option in this world. Toby was clearly pumped up as well. As they finished the drive back into camp, he asked about Daniel's reality and about the Stargate and worlds Daniel had been to. Daniel liked him. He was happier, more cheerful than anyone else he'd encountered so far.

“How are you keeping it together?” Daniel asked as they pulled into camp in the deep darkness of the wilderness, the guards approaching with torches and flashlights. “Did you lose people?”

“I lost everyone,” Toby said. “But, hey, what can you do?”

They were all just laughing at the darkness, Daniel realized. Still, he was happy to have done something, something that wasn't keeping Sam from killing some random army grunt or trudging away from a Jaffa checkpoint with loads of equipment.

After Janet checked them, the guards went back to their posts and Janet told them both to go get some rest, and told Daniel that he had a room in the cabin next to the tent where Sam had set up her impromptu lab was. He stumbled along the muddy paths with a flashlight she lent him and finally found it, going inside and finding the bedroom, one among several, all occupied. There was an irregular sized bed and a pile of books. It seemed too early to go to sleep, but the batteries in the flashlight were dying so he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Daniel didn't fall fully asleep, just dozed slightly, hearing all the various noises of the camp, including people singing and arguing out in the woods between the tents. Someone came in the room and he sat up, fumbling for glasses and light.

“It's me,” Sam said.

He felt the bed shift as she sat on the edge of it. “My program for hacking the rings on the mother ship is written.”

Daniel didn't say anything. She said it like he knew about the plan, like he was her Daniel and not a stranger who she'd demanded carry him to bed two nights before.

“I'm going to go do it tomorrow. I'm taking Pete. I think that's probably best anyway. He'll watch my back better than you can. He knows the terrain. And, really, he's expendable.” She laughed. “He'd die for me in an instant, but I can't...”

“Sam...”

“I know you're not him,” she said. “But I don't especially care right now.”

She climbed over him, pulling the covers down and sliding down over him. He realized with a jolt as her legs brushed his that she was already out of her pants. As his hand moved to her side, he realized with a second shock that she wasn't wearing anything but her T-shirt, which she now shed.

“Sam, I'm really not him,” Daniel said, voice strangled. He'd never had anything like this with his Sam. They didn't even have a flirtation, a chance of this. They respected each other and he'd be lying to have said he never noticed her, but only in the passing way you notice everyone you know well. She was like a sister to him.

Except now she was naked except for a T-shirt, her breasts pressed to his chest through the thin fabric and a dampness against his thigh where her legs straddled him.

She didn't say anything else, just waited, so patiently, barely moving, as if she was daring him to say no. Her face was pressed to his neck and he could feel her breathing against him, her warm breath coming in and out, brushing against his neck and earlobe. He could smell her body, the dirt of the road, the sweat, what was likely a fresh batch of moonshine on her breath, and something he couldn't identify, some smell that just said woman to his body, to his whole self all the way down to his cock, which was absolutely not listening to his brain telling him this was a terrible idea.

When he didn't move or say anything for a very long time, she reached down to take his erection in the palm of her hand. She exhaled with what seemed like relief at finding him hard and ready. There was a brief moment when he felt he could still object, should object. But he didn't. Instead, he let out a small moan. God, what was wrong with him? And what was with this whole jumping through realities? It was like the box had sent him on a journey of sexual discovery, but some of the discoveries weren't things he felt he wanted to know, like the sounds Sam made during sex.

Once she knew he was hard, she didn't hesitate. She pulled his boxers down, not even all the way off, just sliding them off enough to free his erection and balls. Then she mounted him, guiding him inside her in one slick motion.

He moaned again. Sam laughed her slightly hysterical laugh, clearly not concerned about who else in the cabin might hear them. Feeling his black eye, Daniel hoped Pete wasn't one of the people bunking in a room next door. However, before he could spare much of a thought about it, Sam ground down on him and he lost the ability to think straight, losing himself in the sensation.

Daniel didn't think he'd ever had a woman ride him quite the way Sam did. For one flash, he worried he would think of Hathor again, but then the sensation of her on him drew him back to reality and the memory faded. He'd had plenty of sex in this position, but there was something about the way Sam ground against him over and over, pulling him in deeper, pushing him into the sagging mattress, that was different. She clawed at his chest and curled her toes around his ankles as she moved. After a few moments, Daniel was worried he was going to come too soon, which would defeat the purpose, which was to get her off, not him.

But while it felt pleasurable, it also felt strangely empty. It was nothing like the cathartic sex he'd had with Sha're. He wanted to finish, to have it be done, but Sam was in her own world, moving against him, in control, feeding her own pleasure, using him however she could. With what brain cells he could make work in this state, Daniel realized that this wasn't really about him, whether it was the him of this reality or the him of another reality. It was about Sam holding on to something of the past, losing herself in that.

As those thoughts came bubbling up, Daniel sensed that what she really wanted was to be able to give up the tight control she had to have in this ruined world, to lose herself entirely in the past, to release everything to him. Without warning, he broke her rhythm and flipped them so that her back was pressed into the mattress. He slipped out of her as they moved and she groaned, but he gripped her knee and forced her legs farther apart, pushing back in as hard as he could all at once.

Beneath him, she shuddered and he heard her say, without that hysterical note in her voice, a quiet, “yes.”

He grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head and had the pleasure of feeling her body loosen while her hips rose to meet him, rolling herself against him desperately.

He changed his angle, trying to angle himself to rub over her clit as he pushed into her hard. He'd hardly been at it for more than a couple of minutes when he felt a deep shudder run through her. She was close, he could feel it in the way her breathing came fast and hard, in the way her legs stiffened and her head tilted back. He pushed her wrists again, reasserting control and feeling her push back against him. Then he bent over and nuzzled his face into her neck and bit, hard.

Beneath him, Sam let out a long moan and he felt her tighten and briefly stop breathing. She thrust against him, letting out a long, deep sigh so he pushed back, releasing her wrists so he could better support himself.

Now that she had come, she stayed there panting, squeezing him inside her, her body loose and wet. The urgency he had felt earlier when she first mounted him was all gone. Now that she had her released, a part of Daniel wanted to just stop, to withdraw, to say, hope that helped you, Sam, but I'm not really in the mood to finish.

However, another part of him knew she was poised, waiting for him to join her in release. And his dick was beyond ready. He ceased all pretense of moving for her and thrust hard in his own rhythm. It only took seconds before he felt his own release, warm and wet inside her. And then, surprisingly, felt her let out a low moan of pleasure again, her body not going tight, but her muscles squeezing his dick as he finished, joining him in what was obviously an echo of her earlier orgasm.

He collapsed on top of her and they were still for a long time. She seemed more relaxed than she had at any point since he arrived, seeing her stiff and watching at that barn window. They shifted slightly sideways to let her breathe, but she held him and he didn't bother to withdraw. They had not used a condom so there was no point. He might as well stay joined and let himself go soft inside her, which he did eventually. By then, she was breathing evenly, her body twitching slightly with the early stages of REM sleep.

* * *

When Daniel woke up, Sam was leaving, getting dressed.

“Thanks,” she said when she heard him moving. The edge was back in her voice, as if the thanks was funny.

“You're welcome,” Daniel said. He couldn't even make a pretense that the sex had been for their mutual benefit. She didn't seem to mind though, as she hooked on her bra and pulled on the same jeans she had been wearing for days.

As Daniel sat up and put on his glasses, he saw a sealed glass container on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was big, perhaps two or three gallons large.

“And that is…?” Daniel asked.

“Symbiote poison.”

“It's what?”

“It's a Tok'ra invention. They've been working on it for years, at great risk. Dad gave me the recipe.”

“So you really do have a plan.”

“Of course. Plan: kill all the bastards down to the very last one. That's enough for the whole state if I can disperse it from that hovering mothership. If they don't act fast, it'll even get into the vents at the SGC and take down every single motherfucker in the gate room.”

“This is what you did with the remnants of a high school chemistry lab that Janet told me about?”

“Chemistry isn't my thing exactly, but I didn't have to invent the stuff, just create it. I had a few things that were better than the high school lab.”

“You think you can do it.”

“I think they're getting complacent. The economy is a mess, people are attacking each other for the last bits of food, fighting over the last bullets for their guns. The Jaffa have started to treat the Tau'ri like the base savages we are. They aren't expecting anyone to know how to hack into the ring transport or have access to Tok'ra technology.”

“So… you have been in touch with Jacob.”

“Sometimes. He thought I should get Mark and the kids and just leave six months ago. He thought he could probably get us a cloaked al'kesh and get us out of here. But I told him to fuck off. So he gave me this instead. I'm pretty sure Selmak wasn't happy.”

“Does Mark know?”

She shook her head.

Daniel struggled to wake up. He had a growing headache, obvious signs of caffeine withdrawl. He fumbled for his underwear and then his pants. His shirt, which he had never gotten around to removing, felt plastered on in the damp chill of the morning. His jaw still ached and his right eye was practically swollen shut. Daniel imagined his face looked like a total mess.

“Sam… I'm worried about you. I know you're paranoid about safety, but you're also… angry and reckless.”

Sam ran a hand through her hair. It was longer than Daniel could ever remember seeing it in his reality, grown out practically to her shoulders. She turned and smiled at him.

“You're sweet. But you don't know me. You're a complete stranger. Come back and talk to me after you've watched your planet fall to the system lords. And even then, only if you've put a few dozen notches on your bedpost for killing Jaffa. And I mean in a way where you can literally wash your hands in their blood.”

“Jeez, Sam.”

She leaned toward him and kissed his good cheek then giggled. “You were the only one that got it.”

Daniel wasn't sure exactly what he got. His headache was morphing into something more blinding and he realized he was about to jump again. He patted his jeans to make sure his tiny sheet of notes was still there, but it was probably too late.

“Umrph,” he said, staggering back to the bed. Then everything went blank.

Chapter Text

This Must Be the Place

It was Jack's voice he heard first. “Is that you, Daniel?”

Daniel struggled to sit up. “Not too fast,” Dr. Fraiser said and he saw Janet hurrying over. The infirmary. He was in the infirmary at the SGC.

“I'm fine,” Daniel said.

Jack snorted. “You hear that? He's fine. It might actually be our Daniel.”

“Indeed. Our Daniel Jackson is fond of saying that everything is fine regardless of how he feels.”

Daniel looked up to see Teal'c standing nearby, watching him intently. These were all good signs. The SGC, the infirmary, Janet, Teal'c, Jack alive and well.

“I might be back?” he said.

“I have a checklist!” Jack said brightly, as if he had almost forgotten. “It's fill in the blank. The Stargate is...”

“A stable wormhole that we use to travel to other planets?”

“Correct. Very good, Daniel. The general in charge here is…?”

“Hammond.”

“Excellent.”

“How many of these are there, Jack?”

“Only about fifty. It's definitely painless. More painless than a post-apocalyptic goa'uld invaded Earth.”

“Ugh,” Daniel said, rubbing his temples. His eye was still swollen shut and his jaw still ached.

Janet brought him water and migraine meds, which he gratefully took and kept answering Jack's questions, which were occasionally interspersed with Teal'c's, all confirming that he was really and actually home.

Carter came in then, looking hopeful and happy. “The box closed itself up. So it's got to be him, right, Sir? Daniel, that's you, right? Whoa, that's a serious shiner. But you're our Daniel, right? Who gave you that?”

“The boyfriend of one Sam Carter.”

As he looked at her, he felt a deep blush rise in his face unbidden. Crap. Was this going to happen every time he saw her from now on? He glanced at Jack. He hadn't felt anything uncomfortable about seeing Jack even after anything that had or hadn't happened in that reality.

“Oh,” Sam said. “Um, not my boyfriend.”

“Daniel Jackson?” Teal'c asked.

“I'm okay,” he said. “I'm just really glad to be home.”

Janet shooed them all out to finish giving him an exam and even the annoyance of that seemed like a relief after the last reality.

His headache persisted worse than previously until he realized that he hadn't eaten in a long time, opting not to take the remnants of canned goods and hunted squirrel away from people at the camp so Janet sent for something from the commissary to be brought down.

“I understand General Hammond will be giving you a full debrief, probably over a few days,” the doctor said. “Other than the headache, which seems like it was par for the course, and that black eye, which I put something on earlier and is just going to have to heal itself, you seem fine. But is there anything else I should know as your doctor before I let you go?”

“My jaw got punched too,” Daniel said. “Same time as the eye. I think it's okay though.”

“I already did an X-ray and didn't see anything, but I can check again.”

“No, don't bother. It feels better today than yesterday.”

“Anything else?”

Daniel ran through his head about the foods he'd eaten and the things he'd been exposed to. There had been nasty mosquitoes in that cave with Jolinar but that was now more than a week ago. But there was something else.

Daniel mumbled, “I, um, may have had unprotected sex in a couple of those realities.”

Janet raised her eyebrows. “Do I even want to know?”

“You really don't. I don't even know if I want to know.”

Janet was all business but tried to be delicate. “Was it...”

“It was consensual,” Daniel said. “Basically.”

She raised her eyebrows again, but otherwise kept her face calm. “And are you worried about anything in particular?”

Daniel thought of the Sam from the last reality and how unstable she was. “Um, it's probably all okay, but one person, well...”

“I'll spare you the lecture,” she said. “But I must say, Daniel, it doesn't seem like you.”

“That's just it. I wasn't really me.”

* * *

The debriefing with Hammond took a solid week, meeting every morning before the general began work on other things he had to oversee. He made it clear that he was doing it personally to try and keep the NID out of it. Apparently Kinsey and some of the other rats were keen to find something useful. They'd spent most of their time with the various other Daniels trying to keep the NID out of their hair.

“After seeing what this place was like run by Maybourne, I'm really glad you did that,” Daniel said. In the debriefing, he gave as much detail as possible about the Aschen, the fallout from the program going public, the world with the cave, the various machinations of goa'uld in different realities, the invasion of Earth, and all the other things he thought they'd want to know. He said as little as possible about his mother, Sha're, Ari, the fact that he had been diagnosed with various mental illnesses in another reality, Sam's instability in leading her rebellion on Earth, and his relationship with Jack. He didn't mention that they'd been married and was relieved when Hammond didn't ask.

At lunch, Jack came in to pester him while they stayed on planet for Daniel's debriefing. It made for more than a month that SG-1 was stuck not on missions. Teal'c had gone to Chulak twice. Sam was clearly thriving with piles of work, but Daniel could see that Jack had gotten antsy. He had accompanied SG-2 out twice briefly, but mostly he was at odds and ends without his team to command.

Daniel watched as Jack did his typical thing of fiddling with everything that caught his eye in Daniel's lab before walking out, headed to the commissary. Beth Martins, who had kept everything moving with such precision that Daniel was pretty sure she was about to be moved out and he'd have to train a new assistant, asked if she should chase him out next time he came in.

“That's okay, Beth,” Daniel said and he couldn't stop himself from telling her then about the alternate reality version of her that had chased him out of the warehouse of artifacts in Cairo.

“I can't believe we crossed paths in another reality,” she said.

“Egyptology isn't exactly a huge field.”

“I guess. That dig is probably actually happening. I had an offer to go be Birkway's assistant last year. Surreal. But still, think of all the infinite possibilities. You'd think it would be more likely that every reality you visited would have been completely different.”

“I think maybe these were connected. Or maybe there's something connecting them. Or maybe the box actually picked six other realities for me especially.”

“It's above my head. But knowing I can kick people out of somewhere, I might have to eject Colonel O'Neill. He drives me crazy. I can't imagine he doesn't do the same to you.”

“Sometimes,” Daniel admitted. But the truth was he looked forward to Jack visiting him, urging him to eat something in the commissary, engaging him in conversation then pretending not to listen. He didn't let himself think about the fifth reality where Charlie had still been alive and he'd been married to Jack. It was too much to deal with so Daniel shoved it in a box.

Besides, he felt like dealing with everything that had happened with Sam in the apocalyptic reality had to come first. Daniel had been matter of fact about most things when he'd debriefed with General Hammond, but he had left out a few things. When the general didn't mention that the Daniel from the fifth reality was married to Jack, he decided not to bring it up either. And he didn't see the need to talk about his days with Sha're or how Sam had slipped into his bed. Plus, he hadn't talked to his team about much of it.

The first mission he was cleared to go on, he and Sam found themselves working together to translate some text around an abandoned goa'uld lab, probably one Nirrti had left behind in her search to manipulate human DNA. Daniel was doing the translating, Sam was filling in the scientific jargon the best she could. Sam asked him about a thousand times if he was okay because he kept getting distracted. Finally, he said, “Can we go out and talk? When we get back home?”

Teal'c, who was standing nearby at the door standing guard had raised an eyebrow and Daniel quickly busied himself with his notes.

“Sure,” Sam said, sounding calm but curious.

Later, as they walked down the ramp in the gateroom, Sam said, “Thai food, in an hour?”

“I want Thai food,” Jack said.

“I do not think you are invited, O'Neill,” Teal'c said, cocking his head at Daniel.

Sam rolled her eyes at the men and left to hit the showers.

“It's not like that, Teal'c,” Daniel said. “Just some things about the Samantha Carters of other realities that I really need to talk about. With just Sam,” he added to Jack.

“Don't mind me then,” Jack said, though he looked annoyed, as they filed into the infirmary for their quick post-mission checks.

Dinner was awkward at first, but Sam was patient. He worried that telling her what had happened was selfish. It was about alleviating his own discomfort, but it would likely just put it on her when it wasn't like she had done anything wrong, or, really, anything at all. But he had a feeling she could handle it. And that if he didn't talk about it, they'd grow apart, which was something he couldn't really stand.

So he told her everything. He told her about the Sam who hated him so much, the two Sams happily dating the same politician who might or might not have been apt to betray the Earth, the Sam who was happily joined with Jolinar, the Sam who was broken and drunk who crawled into his bed for rough sex. And it made things more awkward, but they talked and kept talking until the Thai place was ready to close for the night and they had to be kicked out.

“I won't apologize for what she did,” Sam declared as they leaned against Daniel's Jeep in the parking lot.

“I don't expect you to.”

“What was it you said Teal'c told you? This reality is the only one of consequence? It really is.”

“The others are stuck in my head though.”

“Daniel, I think that's what that box was supposed to do. It was supposed to send you off to experience a bunch of might have beens and, I don't know, learn from them, I guess. The Ancients were on a quest to understand themselves and reach ascension, right? Well, maybe they thought something like this was part of it. But you can choose to ignore them and live the life you're actually living.”

“Sure. But… what if they made me not like this life as much?”

“We're not talking about the Earth filled with goa'uld where I'm a drunken, reckless wild woman, are we?”

“Maybe not anymore.”

She sighed. “Are you saying you're not happy here? Not glad to be back?”

“Every time I felt anything when I was out there, I told myself… the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. You know, that any temptation that I felt by any of those other lives was just because it was different, not because it was better. And even in the world where my parents lived, there was a downside. I thought, okay, my world has its own good things – and bad ones – but enough good ones and that they're my good things. And then I didn't really feel tempted. I just wanted to get home.”

“But now?”

“Now that I'm back, I can't help seeing all the things I hate about everything. Mostly about myself.”

Sam was quiet for a little while. “You can change anything you want to change. Now you're back here, it's your reality.”

Daniel nodded. “Change is hard.” He looked at Sam, hoping that he'd done the right thing in explaining what had happened between them. “Are we okay?”

Sam pulled her keys out of her purse. “I don't know about at this exact moment, but in a week from now, I promise, we're good.”

“So, we're not good now, but in a week you'll be over it?”

“Yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying. Maybe not a week exactly. I just meant give me a little time.”

“I'll take it.”

And she was right. For about a week, they exchanged funny looks and apologized for stupid things too much, but after a little while it came right again and Daniel realized they were okay. It had just taken time. And he was right to have told her.

On the other hand, things with Jack got worse. When Daniel was first back, Jack had been in his lab again nearly every day, puttering around with his stuff, annoying Beth. But in the month since he'd returned, he saw less of him again. And, worse, the box in his mind where he kept trying to lock down all thoughts of that fifth reality kept trying to come loose. They invaded his dreams. He dreamed about the house he had shared with Jack. He dreamed about the way Jack held him as he slept and then woke up, alone in the bed, sweating and confused. He dreamed about Sha're, who whispered to him to let go.

* * *

“Daniel Jackson, I noticed that you felt the need to discuss what took place between yourself and the Samantha Carters of other worlds with our Samantha Carter. Do you not need to discuss what happened between yourself and others with those people in this reality?”

They were off world again. This time waiting for some negotiations to be concluded. SG-8 had mostly wrapped them up with this world, who had technology that was all based on bio-engineering. There were air ships attached to flying animals, giant beasts trained to dig holes, plants that carried messages through their twisting vines from home to home. It was a fascinating place and some of the SGC scientists were downright giddy about getting hold of some of the technology. Daniel had been needed to look back at some of their history and see if they could be traced back to Earth, something they were interested to learn about.

“You were only in two of the realities I visited, Teal'c,” Daniel said. “In one, I hardly saw you. In the other, you had thrown in with the Tok'ra. I mean, you were still working with the SGC, but you were following Jolinar and Martouf because apparently you felt an alliance with the Tok'ra would be more beneficial for the Jaffa. There didn't seem to be as much animosity between the Jaffa and the Tok'ra there as here. But your reasons seemed sound. You sounded very much like yourself. We played a lot of mancala while sitting around waiting to be rescued.”

“There were no other differences?”

“Well, you had a little beard. A, um, different one than the one you tried out before.”

“Ah, that sounds much like a TV show O'Neill insisted I see. In their alternate reality, everyone did indeed have beards. Most interesting.”

“Yeah, it's sort of a cliché at this point, I guess.”

“Still, this was not the conversation I meant. Should you not attempt to ease the tension between yourself and Colonel O'Neill as you did with Samantha Carter?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. “Surely you jest, Daniel Jackson. It is plain to everyone that something happened between yourself and the O'Neills of the other realities. I understand that clearing the air is needed in situations like these.”

“Sometimes, I guess.”

“Then should you not take Colonel O'Neill to dinner as well?”

“It's complicated, Teal'c.”

“It does not seem complicated to me, Daniel Jackson.”

Daniel told himself he would simply get over it. Then came a mission where they were separated from Jack by a group of angry villagers who thought their “god” needed to be appeased through sacrifice. Even though it was only for about an hour, they thought Jack might be dead. And even though the worst he suffered was a twisted ankle, Daniel found himself on Jack's doorstep late that night.

Jack opened the door and looked at him with that blank, bemused look he got sometimes. “Daniel?”

Daniel met his eyes and then turned around. “Never mind, Jack,” he said, walking back to his car.

“Oh for Christ sake,” Jack said, not moving from the doorway. “Are you really going to make me chase after you? Because I have a swollen ankle here.”

Daniel paused in his path back to the driveway. “I don't even know why I came.”

“Well it was for some reason. Just come inside.”

Jack sounded resigned, tired. It was late. Daniel was practically vibrating with energy that had nowhere to go. Even though he thought it was probably a mistake because he had no idea what he was going to say, what he was even needing to say, he followed as Jack hobbled over to the sofa, trying to avoid putting weight on his foot.

Jack had obviously been watching TV. There was a beer on the table and the remnants of dinner on his plate, still on the coffee table. Daniel realized with a jolt that it was stuffed shells and it gave him a wave of hysteria.

“You cooked that,” he laughed. “Your grandmother's recipe.”

“I just reheated it from the freezer,” Jack said, settling himself back on the sofa and propping his bad ankle up on the table, where a pillow was already waiting for it.

“You cooked that for me in… one of the other realities.”

“Oh. Well, wasn't me.”

“I know… I just meant...”

“I know what you meant.”

Daniel stood there, looking at the plate, looking at Jack, trying to figure out where to start.

“Sit down, Daniel. You look like you're about to jump out of your own damned skin.”

Daniel laughed again, but he sat in the chair across from the sofa.

When he didn't say anything, Jack finally said, “So, I guess we're going to talk about it?”

That took Daniel by surprise. “Talk about what?” He barely knew what he wanted to talk about and he had no clue what Jack would mean by it.

“Oh, don't play dumb. Take it from the master, you're terrible at it. Are you sleeping with Carter?”

“What? No. That's what you think?”

“I think something happened between you two in one of the universes and that things weren't right between you two and now… something changed.”

“God, no. I… Look, something did happen between me and Sam in the last reality, the one where Earth was occupied by the goa'uld. She was a mess, just profoundly fucked up.”

“And you slept with her?” Jack sounded judgmental, like Daniel had taken advantage of the profoundly fucked up Sam.

“No. I mean… yes. She climbed in bed with me naked one night and, honestly Jack, it was hard to say no to her. She was just hurting so much. Hathor aside, it was probably the worst sex of my life. I mean, I got off, but I don't think I could say I enjoyed it. And then when I got back, I was worried it had screwed up my relationship with Sam, who I love to death. And if it had done that, it really would have sucked.”

Daniel couldn't read the expression on Jack's face. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Jack look quite like that. Was it jealousy? He knew that sometimes Jack and Sam flirted, that Jack loved Sam at least as much as he did, though if you had asked Daniel, he would have said Jack loved Teal'c too. Jack loved all of them.

“But Sam and I talked. And we're okay. Besides, I didn't come to talk about that. I didn't especially ever feel like you needed to know any of that.”

“But you told me anyway.”

“You asked. I wasn't hiding it from you. It was just… something between Sam and me. But we're over it and it's not going to screw up the team or anything like that.”

There was a pause. Daniel had been taken so by surprise with Jack's question that he realized the conversation had gone off the rails before it had even begun. He wasn't sure how to right it.

Finally Jack said, “Then I guess you're here to talk about the other reality then. The one where we're married.”

Daniel felt all his jitters come crashing back at him. “You knew! You knew and you didn't say anything? Hammond didn't say anything about it in the debrief either.”

“He told me all of two seconds after getting here. The moment Janet left us in the infirmary alone. I told him to shut up and keep it to himself.”

“Don't tell.”

“And no one asked. Just easier for everyone.”

“For you, you mean.”

“Yes, Daniel. Easier for me. And for you when you got back.”

Daniel twisted in his chair. He felt like he was about to jump out of it. “But you didn't bring it up with me when I got back.”

“What the hell was I supposed to say? Besides, I thought, Daniel, mister lets talk everything to death, is going to want to talk this to death with me. So when you didn't, I thought, okay, we're letting it lie. Fine by me.”

Daniel couldn't take it anymore. He stood up out of the chair, but he didn't have anywhere he wanted to go, so he ended up just pacing once in a small circle before turning back to Jack and wrapping his arms around his chest.

“It wasn't just… I mean… Gah.”

“What the hell happened there?” Jack said. “I read the report. Maybourne, the mirror. But what happened with that other O'Neill? He must have done something to you to make you this wigged out around me all the time.”

“I'm not…” Daniel sighed and paced his circle again. “I'm not wigged out by you, Jack. I don't know how to explain that reality to you. Did the other Daniel tell you about Charlie?”

“What about Charlie?” Jack didn't move much, but his whole seated posture changed.

“He was alive, Jack. A teenager. A freshman in high school. The other Jack took me to see him play baseball.”

“That was his idea of a good date?”

Jack was obviously trying to deflect, but Daniel could see how tight he was, how he wanted Daniel not to tell him, yet also was dying for Daniel to tell him.

“What's easier here for you?” Daniel sank back into the chair. “You have to tell me. Do you want to hear it or do you want me to keep it to myself. I still don't know if seeing my mother was worth it, honestly. I mean, I'd do it over in an instant, but it was also hard. And… it's not really your son. I know that. You know that. Just like that wasn't really my mother.”

Jack was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “Tell me.”

“He looks like you, like a young, spindly version of you. His hair is lighter. It's short. He's tall too. If he grows any more, he'll be taller than you. He pitched the baseball game, or half of it. I don't understand baseball much, but he hit well too I guess. Jack and Sara seemed really proud. Like, assessing him honestly, talking about his chances of playing in college, but also just proud of him. He was graceful on the field. Jack helped him with his homework… he came home with us after the game. He didn't know I wasn't the Daniel he knows, of course. He stayed the next night there too. He wasn't supposed to. Jack didn't want him there with me, a stranger, but he had trouble saying no to Charlie. And Charlie, oh, Jack, he loved his father so much. You should have seen him, how his eyes looked to Jack to see what he thought of everything, how he basically worshiped his dad. And Jack… Jack obviously would do anything for him.”

Daniel paused but when Jack didn't say anything he went on. “His room was a wreck. And he was only there sometimes, so I'm guessing his room at his mother's house was even messier. He and Jack watched a movie, played video games. I helped him with a paper for English class. I think he's a good student.”

“He was...” Jack's voice broke slightly. “He was okay with his dad being… gay?”

“It was a different world there. Same sex marriage had been legal everywhere for years. No military restrictions. I think it would have been weird for him not to have been okay with it. Or, I guess, if he hadn't been okay with it, it would have been about his parents not being together, the way kids can be angry about that. But he obviously loved that Daniel. He hugged me, just, out of nowhere, before he left for school.”

Daniel felt his foot bouncing, his energy moving. “It was so completely surreal, Jack. You have no idea. I mean, maybe you do. I don't know. But it was so surreal for me. But you were happy. I mean, you, or he – the pronouns are maddening with different realities. He was pissed that his Danny was missing, but it was obvious that you were happy otherwise. And you and Sara even were happy. You sat and talked at the baseball game. She was affectionate. She cared about you. Or, about him.”

Daniel looked at Jack, who, he realized, was fighting back tears, looking off in the distance. “Damn it, Daniel, this is not the conversation I thought we were going to have,” he swore. His voice was angry but Daniel could hear the hurt in it, buried deep down. “I need another beer for this.”

Daniel went to the kitchen and dug out two beers from the fridge and opened them. When he handed Jack his, he said, “That Jack didn't drink. I asked for wine with dinner and there was nearly a nuclear meltdown in the house.”

Jack looked surprised but he took the beer and drank it, letting himself be distracted. “Is that what you needed to come talk to me about? About Charlie?”

“I don't know,” Daniel said, running his finger around the lip of the bottle. “No. Or, yes, partly. It just seemed like you should know. He, I mean, the other me, really didn't say anything about Charlie?”

“No. But I didn't mention him either. For all he knew there was no Charlie in this reality in the first place.”

“True.” Daniel tapped his fingers on the cold beer. “I almost didn't tell you. It seemed too hurtful. But I kept thinking, Jack should know that somewhere out there, Charlie did get to grow up.”

Jack didn't say anything, but Daniel could hear his breath, moving unevenly, the way you breathe when you're holding in tears, holding back emotions, cramming them into your chest were they can be a physical pain instead of a weepy loud one.

“Jack, it's okay to cry,” Daniel whispered.

“Yeah,” Jack said, without conviction, his voice still uneven, his breath still hitched.

“I want...” Daniel whispered, finding that he was literally shaking. “I want to hug you.”

Jack didn't respond so Daniel didn't stop. He moved to the sofa and wrapped his arms around Jack, who bowed his head into Daniel's arm. He could feel a slight shake, but Jack never starting bawling or anything. He just stayed like that for what seemed like a long time. Daniel felt profoundly sad but also profoundly peaceful touching Jack.

Eventually Jack lifted his head and Daniel reluctantly released his grip, coming to rest on the other side of the sofa, his leg now bouncing electrically with excess tension.

“I'm sorry,” Daniel said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

After a minute Jack said, “So that's what happened between you and him? You played house? Helped raise his kid? Ate the food he cooked you?”

“Slept together,” Daniel said. As Jack stiffened, Daniel said quickly. “No, just… literally. I slept in his bed. Charlie was there and it sort of seemed like I had to.”

“And that's what's upsetting you? Or was it Charlie?”

Daniel shook his head. “It was everything. It was… Jack, I don't think I've ever felt so lonely in my whole life as those four days.”

“Sounds like it was the opposite of lonely.” Jack sounded wistful, which surprised Daniel, but he knew the tone of voice, understood it, because he felt it too.

“That's it, though. I was… not jealous exactly, but it was everything I don't have in my own life. It was family, kid, love, companionship… and, for him, the other me, sure, sex, I guess. But the other stuff was the real heart of it all. And I don't have any of it. I have… what? Purpose? A mission? Which is good. I believe in the mission, in the program, the gate. It's important. But it was so much to be faced with this world where I had all this other stuff too. Not instead, but in addition, even if it was under Maybourne and with a whole bunch of other baggage at the gate. But that's neither here nor there.

“And it's weird, I know. I didn't feel that in the first world. Sha're was there, and they had a kid. He was adorable too, Jack. And...” Daniel couldn't stop himself, he stood up, his energy spiking again. “We made love. She brought me home, she put Ari to bed. It was… God, Jack. She wasn't the same as my Sha're anymore. She had aged, changed. Her body was different. I mean, you know in the abstract that childbirth changes a woman, but… And it was our child. Or, his child. But somehow that made it more… more everything, more beautiful, more heartbreaking.

“But it was a farewell. She was saying goodbye. Saying to me, it's okay to move on. Go, be happy. Let me go. And then I get to that world with you, where I'm married to you, of all people, and suddenly it hits me just how lonely I am. When I was with my Sha're on Abydos, that was the only time I haven't been lonely in my whole life. So it doesn't seem weird to me that I should be lonely. I mean, God, what a fucking pity party my whole life is sometimes. Orphan boy, rejected by his grandfather, never adoptable, laughed out of his career, wife kidnapped and tortured for three years only to end up dead.”

Daniel paused for breath as he circled his way around Jack's living room. But now that the words were spilling out, he couldn't seem to stop them. He hadn't known what he needed to say. Now he was saying everything, it was all pouring out of him.

“But in the reality where my parents lived, I was still lonely, still laughed out of academia, and worse, my own parents committed me to an asylum. But in a way, that reality just reinforced it for me. Me, Daniel Jackson, am doomed to be alone. So what Sha're said go forth and be happy, find love. I'm not meant for it. I'm meant for loneliness. But then, boom, I'm in this world where I did find love, did get married. And how completely fucking weird that I'm married to you.

“He was so like you, Jack. And it was creepy how he knew me. He knew just how to touch me...”

Daniel couldn't see Jack stiffen on the sofa at that. He was too busy circling, ranting, babbling.

“He found me outside on the second night and he said that I was like his Daniel, that no one touched me enough as a child, that I was touch starved. He wrapped his arms around me. And then he said again that I was like his Daniel, his Danny, that if he touched me, just brushed against my hand, ran his fingers over my hair, hugged me quickly, that I went totally still. That I was afraid if I moved, he'd take the touch away. And, oh, god, he was so right.

“Jack, I've never felt so calm sleeping in his arms. Maybe that year on Abydos. It was bliss. But this was almost that. It was pretty close.”

Daniel circled back around to face Jack, standing still, almost shaking, tapping his fingers against his pockets. “Why don't you touch me anymore, Jack? You used to pat me on the back, hug me when things went wrong or we got away from some trouble safely. And in those other realities, the one with Sha're, the one where we were on the run from the Aschen, you were there and it was like old times. You were affectionate and… even before I got to that reality I was feeling… I don't know how to say this… But now it's like… I don't know. You don't do it.”

“You want me to hug you more? That's what this is all about?” Jack sounded incredulous.

“No. Yes. Damn it. I don't know!” Daniel resumed his pacing. “No, it's not what this is about. I don't know what this is about. I mean, I know I wanted, I needed actually, to tell you about Charlie. And I knew there was more. I just… I don't know what all the more is. And yes, I guess, if I'm honest, yes, I miss your touch. He was so right about me, Jack. He was so right about me craving touch. I never even realized. And now, I see you every day, sometimes coming by to keep me company, but mostly just staying out of my way, all business as we go through the gate or sit across from each other in briefings. And I crave your touch, Jack. I don't even know why. I don't know what it means.

“It's so weird. Weird that it should be you. Weird that it's another man. And I don't even know that it's sexual because I'm sure you're feeling threatened by that. But maybe it is. I mean, not maybe. It is. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I know it's true. In the third reality, Sam who was blended with Jolinar said that Daniel was seeing someone who was a man. And that freaks me out. I know there's this infinite number of permutations out there of each of us. There were things that happened in the past of the Daniel who was married to Jack that… well, bad things, things that never happened to me. But still, if you assume we're all genetically the same, all the versions of me, and there's some basic genetic component to sexuality, then… Except, maybe it's not that straightforward. Ha, straightforward.”

“Daniel, you're babbling,” Jack said sternly. “Sit down, stop pacing. I've never seen you so worked up. If I had Fraiser here, I'd ask her to give you a Valium.”

Daniel laughed hysterically and he was reminded of fucked up Sam, Sam who laughed at everything horrible. But he listened to Jack and sat back down on the other side of the sofa from Jack.

Jack sighed. “I feel like I needed to be way more than drunk for this whole conversation.”

When Daniel didn't get up to get him another beer, Jack said, bluntly, “Daniel, have you ever been with another man?”

It wasn't at all the question he had expected. He shook his head no. “I don't know what stupid rumors swirled when I was at my geekiest civilian stage, but no.”

“No rumors. You were the grieving husband.”

“Yeah. Hmph.” Daniel shook his head, shaking out the tension in his neck. “Honestly, my sex life hasn't been all that… I mean, this conversation is so fucked up in every way. Going to college when you're still really young isn't exactly the best way to fit in socially. I sort of missed out on a lot of the whole co-ed scene, I guess. I did eventually… I mean, I had relationships, a couple that were longer, mostly in grad school. But they were always women who liked me for my work or my brain, I guess. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and the sex was all fine I guess, it just wasn't the connection I think I wanted. And then I there was Sha're and that connection was right, was so good, but it's gone and I can't explain what it was anyway.”

Daniel couldn't help but repeat himself. “This conversation is so fucked up. Alternate realities.”

“Well, I have.”

“What?” Daniel whipped his head up, staring at Jack. “You have what?” He was so sure he had not heard that right. That it couldn't be right. That, if Jack was really telling him this then down was up and up was down. It was one thing to know that the Jack in some other reality was gay, or bi, or at least a little bent. It was something else to know this applied to his own Jack, the Jack who had been intent on dying on Abydos, the Jack who had saved his life countless times, the Jack who had showered next to him on base or slept in a tent next to him.

“Been with another man. First time was at the Academy, but I've done it, one night stands mostly, off and on since then. Not too often. Discretion is kind of important. And it's been awhile. I mean, it had been awhile since I'd been with anyone at all.”

“Oh my god.”

“So if you're questioning if there's some genetic piece to who you sleep with, maybe. I don't know.”

“What does it mean that it had been awhile?”

Jack breathed out long and slow. “I'm afraid to tell you this, Daniel.”

But Daniel had already figured it out. “You slept with him. Or,” he laughed, the hysteria bubbling up again as he remembered his own word choice earlier, “you fucked him. The me from that reality.”

“I didn't set out to. It just… sort of happened. He was missing his Jack and I… well, I was missing you.”

“Oh god.” Daniel hugged his arms across his chest again.

“It was a mistake. The minute it was over, I felt like a complete cad. He didn't feel an iota of guilt.” Jack rolled his eyes. “He was also fascinated by the homophobia of our reality. Wanted to know all kinds of stupid things about don't ask, don't tell.”

“Do you think he's out there now, confessing it to his husband?” Daniel couldn't stop the laughter.

“Maybe.”

“Sha're said that I didn't have it in me to be jealous of myself. That's what she said when she took me to bed in the first reality. And, you know, I think it was true. I'm not… I'm not angry at you about it.” Daniel laughed, but then he became serious again. “Jack, did you fuck him because he was there or because he was me?”

“Mostly the former. But the latter is how I knew it was a mistake.”

“Jack?” Daniel said.

“I guess we're putting all our cards on the table, huh?” Jack shook his head and adjusted his propped up leg.

“Does it hurt?” Daniel asked, noticing Jack shift and gesturing to his ankle.

“It's fine. Numb mostly. Fraiser shot me with something.” He finished shifting. “Look, I don't want you to get the idea I'm pining away here for you. It's not like that. Or like every masturbatory fantasy I have is you. Again, not like that. But I can't say I'm not attracted.”

Daniel felt his lips almost involuntarily form into a nearly silent, “Oh.”

“I remember the moment you said, to that whole room of military brass, that you could figure out the return address and get us all back. I was so stuck in my own head that I wasn't feeling anything then, but for just a second you pulled me out of it. I thought this guy is something. It was probably one of the most attractive things you've ever done.”

“I was so full of it.”

Jack nodded. “Totally. But, it worked for you. You asked why I stopped touching you. That attraction is why. I'm a physical guy. I touch everything. I know you think I'm not self aware enough to know I'm doing it, but I am. So when you were first back, it was like, okay, Daniel needs a friend and here's how I show friendship. Except somewhere along the line I got worried that I liked to touch you a little too much. There wasn't one moment, I just thought, okay, I should cut this out.”

“Oh.”

“That way you go still when you're touched, at least by me, I noticed it too, but I didn't think it was what the other O'Neill apparently thought. I thought it was you waiting it out. Enduring it. I thought maybe you weren't a physical guy. Some people don't like to be touched. I started to think I was harassing you. Sometimes you're practically giving off a don't touch me vibe.”

They were silent for awhile. It began to feel like maybe the conversation was over, the hard parts anyway.

But then Daniel seemed to come to and instead of his own thoughts pouring out, he had questions. “What about Sara? Did you love her? Did she know? And how could I not know this about you? This is so fundamental, isn't it? And what do you mean about a don't touch me vibe? Or about your fantasies? Some of them do involve me?”

“Slow down,” Jack said. “I loved Sara, you know that. And yeah, she knew. We didn't talk about it, but that was always our problem – I would never talk to her about anything. As for what you know, I cover it up, Daniel. It's the military. I have to. Do you really think it means you don't know me? I refuse to believe you're that kind of guy.”

“I'm not, you're right. It's just… jarring.”

“You're giving off a don't touch me vibe right now, you know. You just move so fast. And you keep your arms crossed, or your legs, your head down. I get it now, you don't know you're doing it.”

“I could probably get all psychological about it. It's probably a defense mechanism.”

“Probably,” Jack allowed.

“You didn't answer my last question.”

“Oh, you noticed. Yes, Daniel, I have thought about you in bed. But I don't want you to get a whole thing about it, for it to make you uncomfortable. But it's probably too late since I screwed some alternate reality version of you, which is exactly why I felt like an idiot after I did it.”

“Maybe,” Daniel whispered. “I don't know.”

“You still haven't really told me why you're here. I mean, beyond to fuck with my head even more than all those other Daniels already did.”

“I'm sorry, Jack.”

Jack shifted his leg so that it wasn't propped up any more and scooted not very gracefully down the sofa, closer to Daniel. “Geez, Daniel, you're practically shaking,” he said as he wrapped an arm around him.

Daniel breathed out and his fidgeting fingers and tapping foot stopped. Jack pulled him into his chest and laughed. “So, not a subtle signal for me to leave you alone.”

“No,” Daniel whispered. After a moment, he settled himself with his head leaned against Jack's chest, his body bent slightly. As Daniel relaxed, Jack laid his hand on Daniel's back, just resting it there.

“God, what are we doing?” Daniel asked.

“Either I'm comforting a good friend who's going through a rough time or we're engaging in the most chaste foreplay of my life.”

Daniel felt a hysterical laugh rise again, but it dissipated as he voiced it. They stayed there for what seemed like a long time. Slowly, Jack began to move his hand, stroking Daniel's back and then up to his hair, running his fingers through it. It had grown out a tiny bit in the last few months. Daniel was probably going to get it cut again soon, but Jack played with it, just idly running fingers over his scalp and feeling the softness of the hair running under his palm.

Finally, Jack moved his hand to Daniel's chin and tipped his face up, moving them apart a little and looking into Daniel's blue eyes. “I think you should come to bed with me,” Jack declared. “I think you want to. I think that's why you're here.”

Daniel stiffened but Jack didn't let go, cradling Daniel's cheek with his hand, stroking the side of his face with his thumb. “This is the last overture I make,” Jack said. “The moment we go in there you're in the driver's seat.”

“You can't put me in charge,” Daniel said with just a hint of despair. “Nothing will happen.”

For the first time all evening, Jack grinned, his eyes brightened and he looked at Daniel with hunger. “So we're doing this.” It was a statement.

“Oh my god,” Daniel whispered, looking into Jack's eyes. “Yes?”

Jack stood up and hobbled on his swollen ankle toward the bedroom. Daniel followed. After a few minutes of swapping time in the bathroom, where Jack loaned him a toothbrush, they each climbed in bed, having stripped to boxers.

Jack settled on his back and Daniel was reminded of the Jack from the other reality in his posture. Then Jack reached out and brushed his hand against Daniel's bare shoulder and the little bit of skin contact made Daniel sigh. The giddy hysteria he had felt earlier had mostly subsided. It was strange to be in his thirties and about to discover this new thing about himself, something he'd never much suspected. But when he looked at the covers draped across Jack's middle and up his chest he realized that what he was feeling was a hesitant curiosity mixed with arousal. It was strange to think Jack wanted him this way and had more experience than him, a lot more. He had a sudden flushed memory of his first night with Sha're, how sexy her forthright curiosity had been. What a bizarre role reversal.

But he felt her blessing. He closed his eyes and held the memory of that first reality he visited with her in his mind then let it drift away.

He thought of all the realities he had visited after, places where he had seen the might have beens. He gave a long sigh.

“This is the only reality of consequence.”

“That's what Teal'c keeps telling me,” Jack said, turning his head to look at Daniel.

“Sam said it too, after… after she and I talked.”

Settling into the bed, Daniel turned on his side and fitted himself next to Jack. He placed his hand lightly on Jack's bare chest, feeling his breath as his chest rose and fell. He leaned forward and pressed his lips in a tentative kiss to Jack's. It was a tame kiss. Lips met and Daniel was surprised at how soft Jack's thin lips were, how well they molded to his. They pressed, mouths opened slightly, and Daniel pulled back, unsure of himself.

“That was nice,” Jack said, encouragingly.

“I don't want to be lonely anymore,” Daniel said, suddenly desperate. “That's why I came. I don't… this is good. I can't believe this… it's crazy. But the main thing is I don't want to be alone anymore, whether we do this or not.”

“Then don't be,” Jack said. He turned to his side, moving his hand to rest on Daniel, looking intently at him and seeming to invite another kiss.

“Okay,” Daniel said. He leaned forward into Jack's embrace, bringing their bodies together and then finding Jack's mouth to fit it to his own. It felt like falling, like jumping off a cliff and plunging downward toward the ocean, just waiting for the cold water to hit him and overwhelm him and spit him back out.

But then he felt the mild arousal he'd felt earlier kick itself up and course through his body and straight to his dick. They shifted, the kiss deepened and Jack pulled Daniel up over him, pressing bodies together in an embrace. Daniel felt his heart rate speed up as he became aware through the haze of his own desire mingled with mild panic that Jack was, indeed, just as aroused as he was, and probably more.

“Oh,” Daniel breathed, breaking the kiss and looking down. He was braced on one arm, his chest against Jack's, his legs tangled with Jack's, thighs and erections pressed together.

Jack's eyes had been closed and as they flickered open, Daniel felt awash with relief and more happiness than he could remember feeling in a long time.