Daniel had driven him home – whichever doctor had released him had apparently not OK-ed him for driving. He hadn't thought that O'Neill was fit to be released yet, either, but there'd only been one medical person who'd had the nerve to tell him to stay put.
And she was gone.
Dammit, that was his rescue mission, her death sat on his shoulders – he should have seen someone up that flank, he should have sent someone other than Daniel with her, who'd be more aware, more knowledgeable than a damned archaeologist of what was going down around them.
No, it wasn't Daniel's fault, he amended; glancing to his left to look at the person in question, whose attention was so fixed on the road that Jack had to wonder for a second if he zoned out until he saw the slight furrowing of the man's brow. It was his. He was in command, he took the blame – simple as that.
The Doc was dead – no more would the Napoleonic power mongerer tread the corridors and heal the sick with her regular miracles. Long rest her needles.
He was no genius, but he was perfectly aware that to be able to think as quickly as she had been able to, that Fraiser must have had an intellect to rival Carter's.
He hoped that Carter was ok – it kinda looked like she and Cassie were going to have to stick together on this one and help each other. The two of them had been through all sorts of crap in the past few years – they didn't need this. None of them needed this.
His thoughts were interrupted by the car pulling to a halt outside his house.
"Wanna come in for a beer?" he asked Daniel.
The younger man shot a look at him, not comprehending a reason for this sudden sociability. He wouldn't be given a reason, either. He had to be taking this pretty hard, Jack thought, even if he wasn't showing it. And in part, the not showing it was worrying his old CO a lot more than Jack would let on. He knew about not showing it – was an expert at it – and knew that somehow or other, it would have to come out eventually. He knew that Daniel and the Doc had been very close. How close, he'd never pried; he wasn't the sort to go poking his nose about in other people's business any more than he wanted other people to poke about in his, but he knew that at the least they were very good friends, finding in each other like minds – eternal curiosity, compassion, coupled with the intense desire to help and make things better. And a good listener when one of them couldn't make things better.
And he had to be beating himself up about the fact that he was there, and couldn't have done a thing to stop it. Jack had no idea how long it'd been before Daniel had made it through the Gate – he'd been passed out by that time and on a medical stretcher somewhere in the bowels of the SGC, but he could only imagine the look on his face as he informed General Hammond of one of his dearest friend's passing.
After appraising him for a few seconds, Daniel nodded. Jack grinned wryly, as far as Daniel knew, his purpose was to stop Jack from drinking himself into a stupor, especially since he was on meds. And that was fine with him. Pity would not be appreciated.
Making his way in, he indicated that Daniel should make himself comfortable in the lounge before making his way into the kitchen, wrinkling his nose a little as he opened the fridge door. Right – pizza it was. Grabbing two bottles of beer, he made his way back to the lounge, dropping in the seat adjacent to the sofa where Daniel was perched. Handing him a beer, Jack took a mouthful of his own drink before silently turning on the TV, searching for a programme to fill the silence that was pervading the house.
Not that his house wasn't normally silent, just not when Daniel was round. Normally there was a stream of incessant chatter that Jack couldn't filter out no matter how loudly he hummed. Today, Daniel just sat there, staring blankly at the hockey game that was on.
"I'm not good at this… this talking crap," Jack announced, after a few minutes of only the TV, waving his beer around vaguely to emphasise his point whilst steadfastly fixing his gaze on some point above and to the side of Daniel's head.
Daniel looked at him for the first time since he'd walked through the door. "I know, Jack," he responded, frowning slightly.
"Just so's you know," replied his friend, awkwardly. Apparently having said what he'd wanted to say he asked slightly more brightly, "Pizza?" Taking Daniel's non-response as an affirmative, he moved to the handy drawer that normally supplied most his dietary needs – those that weren't supplied by beer, anyway. Looking at his team mate, he decided that asking for any more input into the decision was probably futile, so fishing out his phone, he dialled and ordered a topping that he knew that the younger man liked.
"'Bout twenty minutes," he announced, flopping down back into the seat he'd vacated a moment before, wincing as he put pressure on his fresh bruising.
Daniel raised his eyebrow in concern. "You ok?"
"Yeah, sure, I just got shot," Jack replied, trying to ease the tension that seemed to be inexplicably creeping into the room, then winced as his words brought to mind another friend who'd just got shot. A look at Daniel suggested that his words had had the same effect on his friend – the pained look that had flashed across his face couldn't have been caused by anything else.
Jack let the silence envelop them, only interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Collecting the pizza, he returned to the lounge and placed it on the coffee table.
"You know, Jack, I'm really not hungry," Daniel commented.
"When was the last time you ate properly?" demanded the Colonel, knowing that he was being a mother hen but not particularly caring at that point. Sometimes it was justified, especially in Daniel's case.
Daniel replied by smiling wanly then picking up a slice, looking at it as if Jack had demanded that he eat a goa'uld. He'd been busy since his return to the planet; he'd made sure that he was busy, either running around after that film crew, or checking on Sam to make sure that she was ok, or checking on Cassie, or looking at the video of that city, or anything, anything at all, to stop his mind analysing what had happened. And tonight, he was going to make sure that Jack was ok, another plot his mind had come up with to stop him replaying in his head what had happened. He really didn't need the camera when the pictures in his mind were so crystal sharp.
They ate in silence, broken only by the commentator who was excitedly telling the country that this game was shaping up to be the game of the season. Neither man cared – neither was really watching it, letting the flickering image in front of them mesmerise them to draw them away from their different, equally morose thoughts.
"Gonna check on Carter and Cass," announced Jack eventually, walking over to where he'd dropped his phone, and dialling Fraiser's number. Even that brought a flash of pain to him.
Daniel watched as he paced while the phone rang. He even had enough about him to idly wonder if Jack realised that he was pacing. "It's O'Neill," he practically barked into the phone, presumably in response to someone answering – probably Sam. The conversation faded as Jack wandered outside into the cool evening air, leaving Daniel alone and off base for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime.
Now, with no one to distract his thoughts, nothing to hold him back, he finally let the mixture of guilt and grief wash over him.
It should have been me. There was no way that it should have been Janet – her function wasn't to take life, but to save it, so where was the logic in having her vibrancy cut short by a staff blast? It just seemed wrong, that someone who had dedicated her life to prolonging, to improving health was the victim of such a thing. She was the SGC's miracle worker, not even second to Sam, really. Time and time again she'd manipulated her medical training, wading far out of her area of expertise, and pulled off a minor miracle. How could Daniel forget that? It was normally him, after all.
She was so dedicated, though. She would work tirelessly, neglecting her own wellbeing if she thought that she could help someone – even if she didn't, she'd still try her hardest. She'd had a core of iron that refused to bend to anyone when it came to her patients – face it, if she could cope with Jack in a bad mood, and any trip to the infirmary generally put Jack in a bad mood, then she was made with a will second to none. How could someone so alive be gone? It seemed so impossible that it could be extinguished by something as trivial as a stray staff blast.
It just wasn't fair. Daniel would have left behind so much less than her – Janet had a daughter, for a start.
Cass. He'd hardly spoken to her since she'd heard. He knew that Sam was spending a lot of time with her. And more than likely take legal guardianship of her, but it didn't mean that he shouldn't have been round to her, checked up on her more often. She needed them all. He'd let her down, really, and by doing so he'd let Janet down. He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture so characteristically Jack that he nearly laughed out loud. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he was surprised to find moisture at the corner of his eyes that he hoped hadn't been there when Jack left. He didn't know which reaction would have been worse – if he'd ignored it uncomfortably or if he'd expressed genuine sympathy. He decided to decide that it would have been ignored, until the nagging feeling made him change his mind.
Jack hung up with a sigh. He'd managed to speak to both Carter and Cass – both women, his subconscious supplied, though he refused to acknowledge that. God knew she'd been through enough that by any culture's standards she was mature for her age, but still in Jack's mind she was the little girl that had clung to Carter all those years ago after losing her mother. Guess it wasn't so different this time around, he thought wryly, the fact that the two of them had each other making him feel a little bit better about this whole sorry mess.
He couldn't even say that Fraiser wasn't a field officer, because he knew that she'd had plenty of field experience prior to the SGC – one of the reasons that he and Hammond had picked her out of the candidates for chief CMO was her reputed calm under extreme situations. Turned out that that reputation wasn't even half the story.
Gazing off into the middle distance for a second, he then turned and made his way inside, wanting to check on Daniel. Closing the door softly enough to not disturb him, but loudly enough to make him aware of his presence, Jack stepped into his lounge. The sight that greeted him had to make him smile even with his gloomy thoughts.
Daniel was now lying on his couch, obviously asleep judging by the way he was clutching the cushion like a giant teddy bear. The thumb that was slowly making his way towards his mouth was a bit of a giveaway, too. Jack would never admit, even under gunpoint, that he found the sight kinda cute. The glasses knocked askew just completed the look, as did the legs curled up to his body.
Hesitating for a moment over whether to wake him to throw him in the spare bedroom or to just leave him, Jack decided that there was no way that Daniel would go back to sleep once awake. So he walked silently over to his friend before gently plucking the glasses from his face, careful not to disturb him. Noting what looked like tearstains on them, he moved to the kitchen and washed them before placing them on the coffee table in front of his face, so that they would be the first thing that he saw when he awoke. Fishing out a blanket from his room, he gently draped it over his exhausted friend, noting that Daniel looked incredibly innocent asleep – especially since he now was actually sucking his thumb. Restraining the urge to create photographic evidence for blackmail purposes, he took one last look at the grief stricken man in front of him before retreating to his own room to toss and turn, sleep eluding him until the pre-dawn hours, his turmoiled thoughts his only companion.