Mirror Image

Genre: Friendship, Slash
Characters/Pairings: (AU!Jack/)AU!Daniel, Daniel, Jack
Notes: Written and posted to dreamwidth some time ago for the trope bingo fill: doppelganger. Set during Ripple Effect, with references to Heroes.

Mirror Image

"Why?" Daniel asked.

"Why what?"

Daniel blinked at the response from... himself... and looked at the relentless blue eyes that were both startlingly familiar and absolutely foreign to him. He had a brief moment of sympathy for anyone (Jack) who had ever asked him the same question when he was in a mood as pissy as this other Daniel currently was.

But he was not going to be deterred. It had taken over an hour to talk his own team into allowing him to talk to his alternate self and then he'd had to listen to the other Cam's bluster about not trying to pull another switch "because we'd know!" Even now that they were talking 'privately,' he could see Teal'c's shadow in the hallway outside the mess, just far enough away to give them some privacy, near enough to head off any potential trouble.

"Why were you willing to do it? This isn't like you."

His counterpart scoffed. "Like you, you mean. Or at least you'd like to think so." Daniel looked carefully at his other self. The obvious derision in his tone couldn't mask the pain in his eyes. The words, apparently meant to wound Daniel, were at least as hurtful to their speaker.

"You were willing to strand dozens of people, harm who knows how many other realities, make it harder for them to fight the Ori in their worlds. You can't tell me that you didn't have reservations."

"Ours is the only reality of consequence."

"Oh, come on, you don't believe that any more than I did when our Teal'c first said it."

"I don't really care about much anymore." The other Daniel's shrug spoke more of fatigue than apathy.

"But why?" Exasperation tinged his voice, making the other Daniel smile briefly.

"I always did have to know the reason." He shook his head and leaned forward across the table. "You really want to know? You think there's some noble cause underlying all this that you can find to make this better? Some reason that will make this palatable to your moral sensibilities?" He stared knowingly at Daniel, who bit back the instinctive denial. There wasn't much point in trying to fool himself. Because he did need that reassurance. He needed to know that the man sitting across from him, too similar to himself in too many ways, wasn't irredeemable.

It had been just weeks since he had sat in the briefing room advocating Khalek's execution, since he had pulled the trigger, since he'd gone home alone and stared at the mirror and tried to make sense of the fact that he didn't regret his actions. He'd gone to bed trying to pretend he didn't miss spending the night on Jack's lumpy couch after incidents like this when Jack would order him over and ply him with crappy beer and inane TV sports commentary or making fun of the Discovery Channel until he felt something close to normal again.

And he had woken up the next morning and gone back to the Mountain because he honestly couldn't think of another option. He had lunch with Sam and made the expected regretful noises about playing executioner, shot some hoops with Mitchell and Teal'c, wrote up his report and left it in Landry's inbox, and studiously ignored the little voice in his head that sounded a lot like Jack telling him that it wouldn't be so easily pushed aside.

And now watching his other self this past day - cold, calculating, unfeeling - had shaken him. Badly. What had happened to turn him into that? Right now, how far was he from his alternate self? Could it have already happened while he wasn't looking?

The other Daniel smiled coldly. "It's actually very simple:

"They killed him. And now I want to kill them."

"Killed him? Killed who?" Daniel looked at him carefully, catching the flicker of deep, dark pain before he caught himself and reined in the emotions, leaving a carefully crafted, neutral expression. And he knew. "Jack?"

The other Daniel blinked once, twice, his fist closing tightly where his hand rested on the table. He didn't answer directly.

"I take it you still you have your Jack?"

"Uh, yeah, he's alive, but he's not my Jack. We're not... I mean, we're friends, but..." Now it was Daniel's turn to try to mask his feelings.

My Jack. Daniel had hoped that Jack's move to Washington would let them finally put everything on the table and come to some sort of agreement about this whatever it was between them. But there was no time and Jack was pissed that Daniel was signing on to the Atlantis mission and Daniel was pissed that Jack had told him about the transfer with everyone else and apparently didn't even spare a thought to the role they had played in each other's lives for the better part of a decade. They'd barely spoken since Jack had moved. Nevertheless, Daniel had to admit that as each alternate team had come through the gate, he had looked for a Jack, wanting to see him and hear him, even if it wasn't really him.

The other Daniel's eyes were closed. "It was the Prior Plague. I couldn't even be there with him. I was stuck in the damn mountain while he was dying on the other side of the country.

"So, no, I don't give a damn anymore about what's right. I just want the Ori to pay. And then they can lock me up or do whatever else they feel is necessary." He opened his eyes and looked directly at Daniel. "Hell, they can execute me for treason if they want. It doesn't matter. Nothing does, without him."

The conversation haunted Daniel, playing on a loop in his head all through the trip back, through development and testing of Sam's plan, and through getting everyone back to their own realities. As he said goodbye to Janet and watched her walked through the gate, he felt that tearing emptiness again, as he remembered the hours where Janet was dead and Jack was unconscious and no one knew anything.

"I'm going home," he mumbled to anyone who was listening.

He walked into his empty apartment, barely better than on-base quarters, and poured himself a glass of wine. He turned the radio on, looked for an appealing book he hadn't already read a dozen times, and drank his wine. He stood in the doorway to his bedroom and looked at the bed, carefully made, days, maybe a week ago.

He carefully avoided looking at a mirror.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he grabbed the phone from the nightstand and dialed.

It rang several times and was just about to go to voicemail when the call connected. Fumbling, muffled sounds punctuated Jack's irritated, "What?"

"Jack, it's me." Daniel's eyes caught his clock. It was just after midnight, must be 4 AM there. He was robbing Jack of his last hour of sleep.

"Daniel?" The sleep was still rough in Jack's voice but his tone was awake, focused, worried.

Daniel stared at the carpet under his feet, uncertain where to go now that he'd picked up the phone. "I just... I have some leave coming and I'd like to see you. Talk to you. Do you mind a houseguest?"

There was a nearly imperceptible pause in which Daniel could almost hear Jack running through every report that had come out of the Mountain recently, trying to determine exactly how worried he needed to be.

Jack's voice was warm when he answered. "Come on out, Daniel."

Daniel let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and loosened his grip on the handset. "Can't get a flight 'till morning. Um, my morning."

"Yeah, I know." There was silence for a minute but neither one hung up. Finally Jack said, "Lay down, Daniel. Even your breathing sounds tired."

Daniel was reluctant to hang up, to break this fragile, newly restored connection. But he couldn't stay upright and found his head on his pillow almost without thought. He expected Jack to hang up now.

"Listen, I've been meaning to ask you about this thing I saw on TV the other night..."

Daniel smiled sleepily as he listened to Jack's outrageous retelling of some show leading its viewers through an Egyptian tomb. Well, probably it was the celebrity archaeologist who was really outrageous. After the third time Daniel opened his eyes and realized he had lost the entire thread of the conversation, he interrupted.

"I've got to hang up now. I'll see you tomorrow, Jack."

"I'll be here."