SG-1: The Haunting (chapter 1)

[jmtorres]

Title: The Haunting: A Comedy of Spirit (1/7?)
Author: jmtorres
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: Uh, probably R for potty-mouth?
Summary: An AU of season 6.
An attempt at an explanation: Okay, so, an incredibly bizarre and dorky thing happened to me. niqaeli and I made an SG-1 vid for vividcon, which is about to premiere in ten minutes (because it is the first vid in show) and then I bunnied for a massive novel-length story which is. It is not the same story as the vid, it is sort of inspired by the vid.

This is the first chapter.

The Haunting: A Comedy of Spirit.

I. The House Guest from Hell

The worst thing Jack had to deal with was how Carter seemed to think he should talk about it. Jack could get around that just by pulling rank, but Hammond had also implied the suggestion that a team that had lost a member ought to go to a session or two. Jack had said, "It's not like he's dead," and the general had backed off.

Teal'c was easier to deal with. He would sit by Jack pointedly but silently, stoic and solid in that way that mere human machismo couldn't hold a candle to. Back in the early days, when they'd been evaluating Teal'c to determine whether he could be trusted to join SG-1 or not--or locked up, or dissected, there had been a lot of options on table that Jack had been unhappy about--Daniel had had a lot to say about warrior cultures and interpreting Teal'c's responses and the suppression of emotion to prevent show of weakness. Whatever. It meant that Teal'c didn't try to make Jack talk, and if he thought that Jack should be remembering Daniel while they sat together, sharing silence, well, Jack never really stopped thinking about Daniel.

Daniel gutted him: Jack wasn't even sure Daniel knew how much he'd been asking of Jack. Asking Jack to stop Jacob from trying to heal him. Asking Jack to let him go, when he didn't even know where he was going. Asking Jack to trust that everything would be fine, when it felt like nothing was going to be fine ever again.

This was the first time Jack had been out of the mountain Earthside since Daniel--since Daniel. The first time he'd be alone in his own house. He put his key in the lock and wondered if it would be easier without everyone bugging him, reminding him, or if it would just be harder to find distractions away from work. He had one distraction in hand already--a six-pack he'd picked up on the way home.

He pushed the door open and headed toward the kitchen. Daniel was on the couch in a white sweater, reading. "Hi, Daniel," said Jack without stopping.

"Hi, Jack," Daniel said without looking up.

Jack put the beer in the fridge, closed the refrigerator door, and leaned his head against it. He took a deep breath, determinedly opened the fridge again and took out a bottle. He popped the lid with the bottle opener on his keychain and took a slow swig. Then he walked back out to the living room and said, "Daniel, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"Reading a book," Daniel said.

"I can see that," said Jack.

"Zen and the Art of Bass Fishing," Daniel said, turning a page. "Sam got it for you as a joke one year, I think. It's good."

"Daniel," Jack said through gritted teeth.

Daniel looked up at him. "Yes, Jack?"

"You're dead," said Jack.

"I'm ascended," said Daniel. "Slight difference."

"Whatever," said Jack. "You're not supposed to be sitting around my house."

"Why not?" said Daniel.

"Aren't you supposed to be on some higher plane or something," Jack demanded, "being--"

"Zen?" Daniel suggested.

"Glowy," Jack said.

Daniel rolled his eyes and went back to the book.

"I'm going back in the kitchen," Jack announced, "and counting to ten. One."

"Because you're very, very angry?" Daniel asked.

"Two!" Jack called over his shoulder.

"Seriously, what's going to happen when you count to ten?"

"Three," Jack said.

"Okay, Jack, just calm down," Daniel said.

"Four," Jack yelled. "Five. Six." Daniel didn't interrupt him again. "Seven. Eight." Nothing. "Nine. Ten." He waited. Silence. Blessed silence. Almost as good as sitting around with Teal'c.

He walked back into the living room. Daniel said, "Do you feel better now?"

"Gah!" said Jack. "You shouldn't be here, Daniel, I saw you die--ah!" Daniel was clearly about to argue that one again, and Jack did not care. "With the glowy and tentacles and floating right out the ceiling--"

"Those," said Daniel, rising, "were not tentacles. And that representation isn't really any more accurate than this one--"

Jack poked Daniel's shoulder. It shut Daniel up. Jack's finger went clean through to the wrist. Daniel glowed around the edges of where Jack pierced him. Jack waved his arm sideways through Daniel's chest a few times, then once up and down from Daniel's head to his stomach.

Daniel gave him an exasperated look, said, "Yes, okay, you've made your point," and walked through Jack.

"Jesus," Jack yelped, spinning. "Maybe I should let them make me talk to someone," he told Daniel's retreating back, "because clearly I have gone completely froot loops, round the bend, stark raving nuts."

"What?" said Daniel. He was rummaging through the fridge. He'd opened the door, which didn't quite bear thinking about. When he shut it again, he had a beer in his hand and a cold slice of pizza in his mouth.

"I," said Jack, "can't quite grasp the fact that you're dead--it's just so damn unexpected, you know?--so some dark corner of my brain has coughed up, well, you, although why I would want to imagine you stealing my food--"

"Oh," said Daniel, taking the pizza out of his mouth. "No, Jack, no, I'm really here. My consciousness, anyway, not my full physical body, which is really neither here nor there. But Jack--"

"And yet," Jack said, "you're eating my pizza and drinking my beer." He made a grab, but his hand went through both Daniel's hand and the beer Daniel was holding.

"You've got your own beer," Daniel said, seeming baffled at the accusation.

"It's all my beer, Daniel," Jack said. "It's my beer and my food and my house and my goddamn head."

"You never minded before," Daniel said, leaning on the doorframe. It was, apparently, selective incorporeality.

Jack stared as Daniel drank. "You weren't a goddamn hallucination before, Daniel," Jack said. "You weren't dead."

"I'm not," said Daniel.

But Jack waved his hand at him and turned to go upstairs. "Don't follow me," he said. "I'm not dealing with you anymore."

"Okay, Jack," Daniel said, sounding more indulgent than annoyed.

Jack got about halfway up the stairs before he turned around and stomped back down. "And how is it that you can walk through me, but then you can raid my fridge and don't, you know, fall through the floor?"

Daniel got an odd, thoughtful look on his face for a moment, but it might have been pepperoni-related. After he swallowed, he shrugged and said, "It's kind of a balancing act."

"Right," said Jack, turning back. "And I was expecting a reasonable explanation from a delusion why, exactly?"

"I'm real, Jack," Daniel called after him.

"You're dead, Daniel," Jack called back.

Daniel left him alone that night, staying curled up on the couch with a handful of Jack's books. Jack found him there the next morning skimming something by Carl Sagan. Jack made coffee and tried to figure out all the questions he had to ask, but Daniel derailed him by not accepting the oversized mug when Jack offered it. He looked up, and his hand worked for a moment, but he didn't reach out to take it. "Just leave it on the table," he said.

Jack had never known Daniel to refuse coffee. It threw him.

"Are you coming to work," Jack said, though he knew it wouldn't exactly be to work, more, to the SGC as an alien wandering around on Earth whom Jack should really report the existence of. It was hard to think of Daniel as alien, but he was glowy and permeable, so if he wasn't an alien being wandering the Earth, then Jack was due a psych eval.

"I can't hang around the mountain," Daniel said. "It's too much of a temptation."

"A temptation to what?" Jack said, but he was grateful: it meant it was a lot easier not to seem crazy in front of other people.

"To meddle in the affairs of mere mortals," Daniel said, waving his hand. Jack couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

So Jack went to work and didn't say anything, and came home and Daniel was still there. He found Daniel's mug in the dish drainer, but when he tried to put it away, he found his fingers passed through it. What the hell: it had always been Danie's mug, for whenever Daniel was over. If only Daniel could touch it, who cared.

"You hungry?" Jack asked.

"I could eat," Daniel said.

Could he, now. Jack only said, "Chinese?"

Jack didn't bother changing the usual take-out order because there was apparently no point: Daniel would be eating half his food anyway. Jack didn't know where Daniel was putting it all and Daniel didn't volunteer any sensible explanation about the intersection of physical and metaphysical planes, so Jack decided not to worry about it and ordered extra fortune cookies, because they seemed to amuse Daniel an awful lot.

Most of the meal, Daniel was good about not making the food incorporeal before Jack had a chance to get any. Once, though, he got ahead of himself opening up cartons. "Daniel," Jack had to say, "did you just ascend the lo mein?"

Daniel paused with noodles hanging from his chopsticks, halfway to his mouth. "Yes, Jack, the lo mein has reached a greater understanding of the universe."

"Can you descend it?" Jack asked pointedly.

"Sure," Daniel said, with that sarcastic air of whatever you say, Jack. He stuck his chopsticks back in the carton and shoved it across the table.

Jack prodded the carton once to make sure it was solid before picking it up. He pulled Daniel's chopsticks out--they were Daniel's chopsticks, not the throwaway kind. Daniel had a pair of chopsticks carved from mastadge ivory, from the year he'd lived on Abydos, not that chopsticks were a traditional eating utensil on Abydos, though apparently Daniel had started a fad. I was a walking cross-cultural contaminant, he'd said, tone somewhere between disapproving of himself and flattered that his adopted people had embraced his quirks as well.

Jack wondered if the chopsticks in his hand were those chopsticks, or some manifestation Daniel had given form with his awesome, glowy powers--like the stupid white sweater, which he wore constantly. There was--it could have just been noodle grease, on the chopsticks, but Jack said, "Daniel? Is this your spit?"

Daniel, not put off by Jack's confiscation of the lo mein, was chowing down on a potsticker. He said, "What, like you ever cared before?"

"No, I'm just fascinated," said Jack, "by how you're made of energy and have no body yet still manage to get spit on your chopsticks."

"If you want, you can think of it as an ectoplasmic manifestation," Daniel said cheerfully.

"Yeugh," said Jack, dropping the chopsticks back in the carton. He shoved the lo mein back across the table to Daniel. Daniel picked it back up and dug in with gusto, and Jack had the strange feeling he'd been played. "Asshole."

That night, Daniel came upstairs with Jack, told him to shove over, and climbed into bed with whatever book he was reading. It was weird, but half the weirdness was in how weird it wasn't. They'd never shared a bed before, but they already had sides, because they'd shared a tent for five years.

The other half of the weirdness was that Daniel glowed in the dark.

"I'm turning out the lights," Jack warned Daniel.

"Okay," said Daniel, turning a page unperturbedly.

So Jack turned out the lights, and after a few moments, Daniel started emitting a soft, warm luminescence, like candlelight. Jack stared as Daniel adjusted the book on his lap to catch the full glow of his chest better.

"All right," Jack said, rolling over and reaching for the lamp. "I can leave the lights on."

"You don't have to," Daniel said.

"Yes, I do," Jack said, and buried his head under a pillow.

It would have been more bearable if Daniel ever actually slept, but apparently higher beings on the ascended plane didn't need sleep.

Jack noticed that Daniel was bringing his own books over--whether he'd exhausted Jack's books or just decided they weren't worth the read, Jack wasn't sure. "I could take the pick-up over to your apartment," Jack offered. "Box up your library and haul it over."

"No, this is fine," said Daniel, "I can run over whenever I want something else."

But within a day or two, they broached the idea, in the mountain, that Daniel's lease would have to be broken, that Daniel's apartment would have to be cleared, that Daniel's things would have to be put into storage. "You know, he's not really dead, exactly," Jack said, experimentally. They'd all seen Daniel go up in smoke, but Jack was the only one Daniel had spoken to. They'd believed him at the time, but Jack was curious whether they'd developed any doubts.

Teal'c regarded him with a raised eyebrow. What Hammond was thinking, Jack couldn't tell, except that he was definitely thinking something. That was the look of a worried CO and Jack knew that worrying a CO was a bad idea. Carter sighed like Jack had said something painful and told him, "Maybe, sir, but I don't think he's coming back any time soon, either."

What Jack said next was probably a phenomenally bad idea, in terms of not upsetting Hammond and Carter and Teal'c, but honestly, so was Daniel flitting in and out of the base to steal his books back, and Jack knew he would. "We don't have to take up space here with all his junk, anyway," Jack said. "I've got room at my place."

Carter looked at Hammond, and Hammond didn't look back for more than an instant, which meant they'd already been talking. The last time Daniel had been dead this long, Jack had put a hockey stick through the general's driver side window. All things considered, Jack thought he was doing better this time around, but he could see where they would be concerned.

"Any classified material will have to be returned to base, of course," said Hammond, "but if you'd like to store the rest of it, that should be fine."

"Okay," said Jack. "Great."

"Then you'll meet up at Dr. Jackson's residence at 0800 tomorrow morning," Hammond instructed them.

Jack told Daniel about clearing out his apartment that evening, and Daniel said, grumpily, "I'm pretty sure I've got enough money saved up to pay rent for a few more months."

"Yeah? And?" said Jack. They were out on the roof, Jack at the telescope, Daniel seeming content to lie back and look at the stars without any aid. "You expecting to go back there? Become human again, need a place to crash other than, you know, here?"

"Well, no," Daniel admitted.

"Aren't you supposed to have, what was it, released your burden?" Jack asked. "Not be tied to your material possessions?"

"I'm not," Daniel said, sounding annoyed. "I mean, not specifically. I'm all right with not owning things. That's a separate issue from experiencing the physical."

"Well, obviously, or you wouldn't keep drinking my beer," said Jack. "What are you doing, Daniel?"

"I can tell you what I'm doing tomorrow, I'm coming with you," said Daniel.

"Carter and Teal'c will be there," Jack said, not sure how to ask the question.

"They won't see me," Daniel said firmly.

"Okay," Jack said, with about the same amount of lip he'd given the general. "Great." Jack eyed Mare Ibrium through the telescope for a few moments, then added, "Yeah, but why?"

"Why what?" said Daniel.

"Is it because I really am crazy?" Jack asked. "And I'm just sane enough to recognize the fact and try to hide my insanity?"

"Huh? Oh," said Daniel, sitting up and hugging his knees. "No. Well, sort of. Not exactly."

Jack turned away from the telescope. "And all this time you've been insisting you're not a delusion," he said.

"I'm not," said Daniel. "But for the purposes of, ah, plausible deniability, I have to, um, conceivably be."

"I beg your pardon," said Jack.

"I'm not really supposed to be talking to anyone; it's sort of against the rules," said Daniel. "I can get away with talking to one person because, well, honestly, as long as it's just one person, that person could be crazy. Sorry. I just can't be part of objective reality on your plane, and if more than one person can see me, then..."

"Why aren't you supposed to be part of objective reality, exactly?" Jack asked.

"Because people aren't supposed to have confirmation of the existence of other planes and higher powers," said Daniel. "People are supposed to figure out the great truths of the universe by making themselves open to possibility, not by having proof and lessons handed down by those who went before. That's part of why Oma Desala's so cryptic, with the zen koans. She tries to make people think, not tell them what to think. The great unknown out there," said Daniel, waving his arm at the sky above them, "it's supposed to be unknown. Mysteries of the universe."

"Are they still unknown to you, oh great higher power?" said Jack.

"A lot of them, yes," said Daniel. "I'm still learning. There's--there's a lot to learn, Jack."

"Okay," said Jack. He put his hand back on the telescope, and Daniel lay back against the roof, looking up--but Jack didn't look through the eyepiece, he just sat there watching Daniel. "So out of everybody in the world you get to pick one person to cheat and talk to and you pick me. Why?"

Daniel turned his head to look at Jack without sitting back up. "Do you actually want me to answer that?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" Jack asked warily.

"It's just that you weren't exactly dealing well with me being gone," said Daniel, in a rush, "and I didn't think you'd want to talk about it."

"I was handling it fine," said Jack.

"Yes, okay, my point exactly," said Daniel, putting his arms behind his head and looking back skyward. "Never mind."

"So you dropped in on me because you thought I was having a hard time," Jack said.

"Obviously, I was confused," said Daniel. "I mean, you, miss me? How would that happen? You don't even like me. No, I apologize, it's clear that you don't need me around at all."

"Well, no, I don't need you," said Jack, trying to figure out how to contradict Daniel without admitting to the sick feeling at the thought of him being gone. He wouldn't, would he? "That doesn't mean it's not, uh," he struggled for an appropriate word. "Nice," he said, wincing as it came out of his mouth, "having you around."

Daniel smiled a little. Jack could see the curve of his mouth in profile. "I missed you too, Jack," he said.

"Aha," said Jack, relieved. Daniel had just been yanking his chain. Jack had been pretty sure, but--yeah, it was nice to hear something besides sarcasm come out of that mouth once in a while. "There's the real reason. You couldn't live without me."

"If it makes you feel better," Daniel said.

"It does," Jack said cheerfully, and went back to stargazing.

Jack drove up to the mountain to pick up Teal'c in the morning, and Daniel rode with him, but declined to come on base. "I'll meet you at the apartment," Daniel said. He wasn't looking at the entrance, he was looking up the mountainside. Jack couldn't tell if Daniel had a genuine interest in nature or if he was just avoiding the SGC and the temptations it represented.

"You sure?" Jack asked. "It's a bit of a hike."

"I think I can make it on my own, Jack," said Daniel. "You know. Phenomenal cosmic powers."

"Itty bitty living space?" Jack quoted back.

"If I make a comment about your head, you'll take it the wrong way, won't you," Daniel said.

"Hey!" said Jack.

"Are you addressing me, sir?" said the sergeant at the gate.

"No, sorry," said Jack. When he looked back, Daniel was gone.

Teal'c was waiting in his version of civvies, which today included a dark grey derby hat. It was just subtly off, but it would have been impossible to explain to Teal'c why. "Hello, Murray," Jack said, which was as much of a comment as he dared.

"Hello, Colonel O'Neill," said Teal'c. "Are you well today?"

"Fine," Jack said, "and you?"

"I fear we face a difficult task today," Teal'c said.

"Hey, it's not like we have to face down a squad of Jaffa," Jack said.

"As you say," said Teal'c, and remained blessedly silent for the rest of the ride out to Daniel's place.

Carter was already there, unfolding boxes for them to pack Daniel's belongings into. "I thought we could sort as we go, sir," she said. "I'll have a classified box in the living room, you can start boxing stuff you're taking to your place over there." She held up a box she'd marked with an X. There was a nervous downturn to her mouth, and Jack couldn't tell if she was just upset about Daniel or if she was worried about him on top of it.

"That sounds sensible and... organized," Jack said.

Daniel said, "Start two boxes, Jack, we can pack things you're actually storing and things I'll want to get out."

Jack tilted his head and refrained from asking why Daniel couldn't just go digging through the boxes non-physically. "I'll just go start packing books, shall I?" he said.

"Keep an eye out for journals and reports," Carter said.

It was quiet and tense and would have been awful enough without Daniel around; with him there, it was surreal. Daniel kept flitting around trying to watch what everyone was packing, and stealing things out of Carter's boxes to put in Jack's. Twice, Jack had to take Daniel's Abydos journals over to Carter. "He must have made copies," said Jack, wincing at the weakness of the excuse and hoping Carter didn't notice how even all the scratches and creases in the leather were the same.

"Of course, he'd want to back up any data he recorded," Carter said. Jack thanked his stars Carter's scientist instincts came up with that one.

The third time Jack found the Abydos journals in his box, he glared at Daniel, reached in, and found his hand went right through them. Daniel smirked at him. Jack glanced over his shoulder to make sure Teal'c and Carter weren't watching, then gave Daniel the most expressive what the hell? hands he could manage.

"Copies," Daniel said. "Thanks for the idea."

Which was not really what Jack had wanted to know: mostly he wanted to know how they didn't fall through the box and how other stuff would stack on top of them. Or in the same space as them. But he couldn't ask.

Eventually Jack threw in the towel and went to help Teal'c in the kitchen.

After nearly an hour in uncomfortable silence, Jack heard something that sounded suspiciously like a sniffle from the other room. He was debating whether to check on Carter or leave her be when Daniel came in and said, "Jack, you'd better come."

He and Teal'c found Carter sitting cross-legged on the floor, hunched over an ancient-looking tome, knuckles in her mouth. "You okay, Carter?" he asked inanely.

"Fine, sir," Carter bit out, then stuffed her hand back in her mouth to stifle a sob.

"Ah, shit," said Jack, easing down on the floor beside her and putting his arm around her shoulders. He could feel her shaking. Teal'c sat down on the other side of her and rested his big hand gently on her head, his arm over Jack's.

Daniel knelt invisibly in front of Carter and put his hands over her hand where she gripped the book, although it was clearly a pass-through touch, as Jack could see his palms glowing where they skimmed her skin. "I'm sorry," Daniel whispered. "God, Sam, I'm sorry, I wish--" He threw Jack an anguished look, and Jack squeezed Carter's shoulders, because it was all he could pass on.

Carter pulled herself together after only a few extremely painful minutes. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I, I didn't mean to--" she said, dabbing at her face with the back of her hand. "I know this must be hard for you, too, sir."

She was looking at Jack, but Jack took a moment too long to answer and so Teal'c said smoothly, "Daniel Jackson is greatly missed."

"Yeah," said Jack, pulling his arm free. "It's so hard, with Daniel gone." He was eyeing Daniel as he said it, but he managed to flatten most of the sarcasm out of his tone by muttering.

Carter and Teal'c exchanged a glance, and Jack didn't want to know what that meant. "We should get back to packing," she said.

"Right," said Jack, getting back up.

It took all afternoon and evening, several trips with the truck, and a great deal of Jaffa strength to get everything hauled over to Jack's and down into the cellar. Jack thought about offering Carter and Teal'c dinner when they were done, but Daniel was clearly itching to start setting up bookcases and Jack didn't know what to say to either of them. When Carter said, "I think that's everything," stuffing the last X-marked box into the backseat of her car, Jack said, "Okay, see you tomorrow."

Carter straightened up to look at him. "Okay, sir," she said, sounding a little uncertain.

But Jack didn't see her tomorrow, because when he dropped by the general's office to ask where they were headed when SG-1's seventy-two hour stand-down was up, Hammond said, "Jack, why don't you take a week or two off. Go fishing, or something."

"Okay," Jack said, not an acquiescence, more a question. "I'm fine, you know."

"Of course," said Hammond, patronizingly. What the hell had Carter said to him? "And I'm sure you'll be eager to get back to work after your leave. Go on, son. Take the time."

"Right," said Jack. Take the time to what, exactly? "Who am I to turn down a vacation?"

On the way home, Jack turned it over in his head and eventually figured out Hammond was worried he'd try to quit again, like he had back in the first year of the program. Hammond was counting on him sitting on his ass for two weeks and being so bored out of his skull that retirement would sound like a really lousy idea. It wasn't a bad plan--it was just completely unnecessary. It hadn't occurred to Jack to quit. Daniel would have undoubtedly given him hell about it.

Daniel wasn't around the house when Jack got home--Jack didn't know where Daniel fucked off to when Jack was at work, but apparently he was only bothering to show up when Jack was there. Jack got his fishing tackle out, threw some clothes in a bag and some beer in a cooler, and wondered whether he needed to leave Daniel a Gone Fishin' note or if Daniel would be able to find him. "Phenomenal cosmic powers," Jack muttered to himself, and took off without leaving the note.

It was nearly midnight by the time Jack got up to the cabin. The light was on when he drove up. He thought about his gun in his bag, and then decided it really wasn't necessary. Or remotely useful, considering his guest was already dead. He went in and said, "Hi, Daniel."

"Hi, Jack," said Daniel.

"You didn't wanna join me on the drive?" Jack asked.

Daniel shrugged. "I was busy," he said.

"Busy with what?" Jack asked.

"Busy," said Daniel.

"With things you can't tell mere mortals about," Jack said, tapping the side of his nose.

"Don't be like, that, Jack," said Daniel, rolling his eyes.

"Then just tell me," said Jack. "Busy with what?"

"Ascended... stuff," Daniel said.

"Okay," said Jack. "Well, I'm gonna hit the sack. Good night."

"Night," said Daniel.

In the morning, Jack couldn't remember if Daniel had gotten into bed with him, but then, the mattress wouldn't have moved if he had. Daniel was already up, making coffee, which was potentially sweet but mostly bizarre. It was real coffee, too, not whatever freeze-dried instant stuff Jack had left at the cabin. Jack hoped Daniel hadn't robbed the local store. Daniel let Jack have most of the pot, as he never would have in life. He seemed as happy to just inhale as to drink, leaning on the counter breathing in the same mug of coffee after Jack had had three and a bowl of oatmeal besides.

It was raining that morning; Jack looked out the window at the sheet pouring off the eaves and said, "Well, fucked if I'm going fishing in that."

"Isn't rain good for fishing?" Daniel asked. "Doesn't it make fish... come out or something?"

"Yeah, but I put up with enough of this at work," Jack said. "I want to voluntarily go sit in the wet woods why, exactly?"

"Hm," said Daniel, with his mouth quirked.

Later in the day, Daniel disappeared from the cabin. Jack hadn't seen him leave, didn't know where he'd gone, but looked around for him anyway, because it felt weird to be Earthside and not have Daniel over his shoulder. Daniel was a big boy, he could take care of himself, it wasn't like he was going to get eaten by a bear, but even so, wouldn't have he said something if he'd been taking off for long? I'm sorry, Jack, Minnesota is more boring than even little old enlightened me can handle?

Eventually, Jack found Daniel down on the pier, looking up at the rain. "You're not wet," he said, surprised.

Daniel looked at him and grinned. After a moment, rain drops splattered on his hair and face. His sweater, bafflingly, remained pristine.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, over the roar of rain hitting water.

"Getting wet," said Daniel.

"Okay," said Jack. "I'll be inside."

The next day dawned clear and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Jack had his suspicions about that one.

They went fishing, sitting out on the pier on Jack's creaky and slightly collapsing lawn chairs. Daniel was still in the white sweater, which Jack thought was a stupid choice for anything outdoors, except for how it didn't quite matter since mud and pond scum could go right through Daniel. Still, after they'd had lunch (grill cheese sandwiches; no fish in sight yet) the temperature climbed to somewhere in the eighties and Jack said, "Daniel, aren't you hot in that thing?"

"Huh?" Daniel said. "Oh. Inappropriate clothing manifestation?"

Jack gave Daniel a look. Jack himself was in jeans and a t-shirt. He'd had his jacket on in the morning, but he'd left it slung over a chair inside after lunch. "Is it snowing on the ascended plane?" Jack asked.

"No," said Daniel, frowning slightly. The sweater dissolved. Daniel ended up in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops--all still eye-piercingly white, although the palm tree pattern on the shirt was beige enough for contrast. "Better?" Daniel asked.

"Uh," said Jack. "Sure." He wondered if the angelic look was intentional.

Sometime past four, it got hot enough that Jack stood up and started stripping. "Do you still float?" he asked.

"Float?" asked Daniel, bemused.

"Yeah," said Jack. "It's a decent swimming hole. Arguably? A better swimming hole than a fishing hole, to judge by the catch."

"I float," Daniel said, though he hadn't gotten up yet.

Jack reeled his line in and set the fishing rod down on the pier. He was down to boxers and dog tags: that would do. He dove in. The water was cool and green and much more pleasant than the muggy air.

When he came up, Daniel was sitting on the end of the pier, cautiously dipping his toes in. His feet made a golden light where they intersected with the water, not quite as blinding as when he intersected with solid objects. "I think I could catch more fish this way," he told Jack, amused. Silvery shapes darted through him, attracted by the light.

"There's fish in this pond?" Jack said.

"You know, I wouldn't be tempted by rubber worms, either," Daniel said.

"You coming in?" Jack asked, dog-paddling. "Water's fine."

Daniel unbuttoned his shirt, and set it aside. He had dog tags on underneath it, just like Jack, just like he had had whenever they went offworld--but something looked not quite right about them. Jack was too far away to tell what, exactly. Then Jack forgot about it because Daniel slid into the water, which rippled not quite as much as it should have, and the whole pond turned green-gold. Daniel's head bobbed back up and the glow localized.

Daniel didn't have to be wet but he was, hair soaked flat and droplets clinging to his eyelashes. Jack swam closer, fascinated. Daniel let him get close enough that Jack was forced to give into temptation and splash him in the face.

Daniel ducked half-heartedly, as if realizing the futility of that move, spluttered, wiped his eyes, and splashed Jack back. As if he were solid, as if he were really there. What followed was very raucous and silly and scared all of the fish away entirely.

Jack relented when Daniel flopped onto his back, his soaked shorts comically puffed out with trapped air and his arms stretched out to either side as if he might embrace the sky. He was laughing, kept tilting his head back too far in the water and having to jerk back up as he laughed. It was the first time Jack had seen Daniel laugh since he died. Jack tried to remember the last time he'd seen Daniel laugh before he died, and came up blank.

Okay, so their lives could kind of suck. Had it really been that long since Daniel had laughed?

Jack pulled himself up onto the pier to open another beer, and Daniel joined him, sitting on the edge with his long legs swinging off the side, lighting up the pond. Jack could see Daniel's dog tags now--stainless steel, like his, on an ordinary ball chain, like his, black silencers, like his. But the second one, on the four-and-a-half-inch loop, wasn't in English. It was in hieroglyphics.

"What do your tags say?" Jack asked, jerking his chin toward Daniel's chest.

"My ID, presumably," Daniel said, but obligingly flipped the English one up to read. "Jackson, Daniel, 132-68-5789, glow positive," sounding simultaneously bored and incredulous, "no preference. And the home symbol, the pyramid with the sun over it."

"Huh," said Jack, because that wasn't standard--not the glow positive and definitely not a stargate symbol. "How 'bout the other one?"

Daniel glanced it and said, "Same."

"It's in hieroglyphics," Jack protested.

"Abydonian glyphs, to be specific," said Daniel.

"So what do you mean, same?" Jack asked.

"Name and other identifiers, et cetera," said Daniel.

"But there's so much more on there," said Jack. "You told me once, those things are picture-whosits, they're whole words, not letters."

"Pictograms," said Daniel. "All right," he said, and thumbed the silencer off the tag to read the edge--only what Jack noticed was the notch, the kick-your-teeth-in notch they'd stopped putting on dog tags in the seventies. Jack's dog tags had a notch. Daniel's, the ones he'd been issued by the SGC, didn't.

Then Daniel started reading and Jack forgot to ask. "Daniel Jackson," Daniel read, though it had the softer sound, the way Skaara might say Dan'yel. "Son of Melburne Jackson; son of Claire Jackson née Ballard; grandson of Nicholas Ballard. Husband-and-widower of Sha're, daughter of Kasuf; brother-by-marriage and brother-not-of-blood of Skaara, son of Kasuf--it's an Abydonian term for an intensity of friendship," Daniel added, "the brother-not-of-blood concept. Son-by-marriage and son-not-of-blood of Kasuf." Daniel flipped the tag over, and Jack had time to think, okay, not standard embossing then, before Daniel read on, as quickly as before. "Brother-not-of-blood of Samantha Carter, brother-not-of-blood and brother-in-arms of Teal'c of Chu'lak. That's a Jaffa-specific concept there," Daniel said, and paused a moment before he read on, "Brother-not-of-blood of Jack O'Neill. Student of Oma Desala. Protector of worlds. And the Abydonian home symbol, the other pyramid, with the line out the top."

"And that's the same, is it?" Jack said.

Daniel fit the silencer back on the tag. "It's my name. My full name, the way I would give it on Abydos, with all the people I belong to."

"Huh," said Jack. The people Daniel belonged to. He thought about how he felt about sharing Daniel with all those other people and decided not to comment. "Didn't hear anything that sounded like 'glow positive.'"

Daniel rolled his eyes and didn't deign to answer.

It was another four days of lazy fishing and swimming and beer-swilling in the sun before Jack got around to asking again, "Daniel, what are you doing?"

"I'm fishing," said Daniel.

"Yeah," said Jack. "But what are you doing?"

"What do you mean?" said Daniel.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Jack asked. "You know, here? Now that you're all ascended and shit, what are you doing?"

Daniel fiddled with a fishing rod for a moment, biting his lip. "I'm," he said slowly, "becoming one with the Earth."

"Okay," said Jack. "That's... I don't know what the hell that means but it sounds more like what you... should be doing?" Jack scratched his ear and stretched his legs, waiting. Daniel didn't elaborate. Jack said, "So what the hell does that mean?"

"I'm trying to figure out how to explain," Daniel said. "This is sort of literal and sort of not. It has to do with the scale of our awareness and ability. Ascended beings--we're too vast to operate in the detail of human lives. We're sort of... planet-sized."

"You don't look planet-sized," Jack said, eyebrow up.

"This is, um, an avatar, an aspect," Daniel said. "There's a lot more of me than you can see. I encompass a lot, but this is--this is me paying attention to right here."

"Sort of like paying attention to your toenail?" Jack asked.

"Something like that," Daniel said.

"Okay," said Jack. "So I'm a toenail and you're a planet."

"Size of a planet," Daniel corrected him. Jack noticed he didn't correct the other half of the statement. "Only metaphysically. Sometimes ascended beings roam the universe and try to learn everything--well, you can become vaster that way. But sometimes ascended beings attach themselves to a specific place--young ones, apparently I have much yet to learn--" Jack could tell he was quoting someone, mocking someone. "Earth is actually kind of odd, there's more than one ascended being associated with the planet. I'm not sure why. I guess it was special to a lot of people over the course of time."

"So you've made friends?" Jack asked.

"Not exactly," said Daniel. "They're ascended beings further along the path than me--thousands of years older than me. They're here, but they're not where I am. They're," Daniel said, doing the little head tilt he used to use when trying to explain bizarre other cultures in small words to Jack, "on different planes. I'm just on the ground floor."

"So what happens when you become one with the Earth," Jack asked, "and all its... many floors?"

"If you attach yourself to a place, completely and thoroughly, and I'm not all the way there yet," Daniel said, "there's things you can do to protect it. That's important to me, that's what I want."

"Good plan," said Jack, though it sounded a little vague. "These other ascended guys on the upper floors, are they supposed to be protecting us? Where the hell have they been the last couple of years?"

"They've been here," said Daniel. "It's just that the further you get along your journey, the more your priorities shift. There's sort of wider view, that I can see intellectually but I haven't absorbed yet. It's like, okay, the oldest ascended being I know about here, she's older than I've been able to figure out, actually. If the goa'uld showed up to bomb us off the face of the planet, or if the human race started a nuclear war or something--she would probably care that some kind of life survived--bacteria, something. Because as long as something survived, all kinds of life could eventually flourish here again."

"That's a completely not useful way of protecting the planet," said Jack.

"Then take someone who's been here, say, ten thousand years," said Daniel. "He's probably a little more invested in the human race. In the face of a similar cataclysmic event, he'd care that humans weren't entirely wiped out, that there would be some survivors."

"Please tell me that you would care about more than that," said Jack.

Daniel nodded. "I wouldn't want disaster to strike in the first place, of course--but I'd also want to see the human race triumph; to see more than the survival of the species, to see the survival of human civilization."

"And me," Jack said.

"And you," Daniel said, "though I'm told that that's only because I knew you before I was ascended and eventually individual lives will matter less to me."

"You know, that doesn't sound like a super enlightened point of view, there," Jack said.

"To value the society over the individual?" Daniel said.

"Okay, when you put it like that," Jack said, "maybe."

"It's the scale thing again," Daniel said.

"It's hard to care about your toenails," Jack said. Daniel snorted in reply.

After a few more days, Jack headed back to the mountain, and life went on. SG-1 went on missions offworld and Daniel didn't show his face. Jack came home to a cold beer and Daniel on the couch. Things were almost approaching equilibrium when the other shoe dropped.