Baby, It's Cold Inside

Series: None

Season: 7 (Tag for Lost City)

Pairing: Jack/Daniel

Category: Drama, Angst, Dark

Rating: R

Spoilers: Lost City

Warning: non-graphic slash

Disclaimer: The Stargate universe and its inhabitants are the sole property of MGM et al. I don't own them. I just like the play with them.

Daniel's thoughts after Lost City.

XxXxXxXx

It was late. It was dark. It was getting cold, none of which Daniel cared about…or would have if he had actually noticed. The fact that it was the middle of the night in Colorado held absolutely no interest for him. His thoughts weren't in Colorado; hadn't been for the better part of a day. Sitting, curled up in a chair on the back deck of Jack's house he stared out into the night without seeing. His mind was trapped, held in stasis in the Antarctic with Jack. A continuous loop of "find the lost city, save Jack" had been running through his head for hours.

It was a mess. There was simply no other way to put it. The mission that had disintegrated into a catastrophe only to be resurrected as a hair brained scheme and then mangled into a wild goose chase had completely come apart at the seams in the end. Ok, maybe not completely. They had saved Earth from Anubis. That was something. It was a lot, really. It just wasn't enough.

They had all been uneasy about the situation, but there had been no alternative. There was nothing anyone at the SGC could do to save Jack. They'd been down that road already. Hunting down the Lost City had been their only choice. Even Jack had been unnerved by it, but then Jack was always uneasy about hair brained schemes. Fly by the seat of his pants missions were not his favorite things. To be honest, Jack had been truly scared, not that he had actually come right out and said it. Jack never admitted to being scared. He'd been sarcastic, nonchalant, and had refused to talk about anything even approaching the concept that he might not survive this time. To the causal observer it might have seemed that he was treating it as just another day at the SGC, but Daniel knew better.

The morning before they headed off world to start their wild goose chase Jack had been determinedly standoffish. Every time Daniel had opened his mouth to say something Jack had given him a warning stare. The one that said any attempt at a mushy conversation would be derailed before it began so don't bother. If they said the words; if they attempted anything that could be remotely considered good-bye then it made the whole thing real and Jack wasn't ready for it to be real. It was hard enough to deal with as a hypothetical. He'd even gone so far as to chase Daniel out of the house early to avoid the temptation, though his excuse had been that he wanted to get ready for work in peace "before starting another lovely day of having people stare at me like some science experiment in a Petri dish and ask me how I'm feeling every ten minutes". Daniel had agreed and headed for the door, but not before Jack had grabbed him and held him tight for several long moments before finally turning him loose, refusing to look him in the eye when he did.

Somewhere deep inside Jack had known, but he hated sappy, sloppy, emotional scenes more than he feared the idea of leaving without saying good-bye so he'd flat out refused to have one. Actually, Jack hadn't really left without saying good-bye. Daniel had found the note lying on the bed when he came home. The crisp, white envelope that bore his name had been perched in the middle of the comforter and for he had no idea how long he had stood in the doorway, rooted to the spot, staring back at it. He didn't need to open it to know what it said. Aveo amacus.

It was what had led him to wander out to the porch in the first place, holding it in his hands, wanting to open it, but afraid to read it. He'd been dividing his attention between it and the dark horizon for hours and somewhere along the line had simply decided not to open it. It wasn't really good-bye so he didn't need to read it. Jack wasn't really gone because they were going to find a way to save him so it wasn't good-bye. He'd read it when Jack was back in his arms. They could curl up together somewhere and Daniel could open it and read it aloud just to watch Jack squirm at the tenderness, affection, perhaps even sappiness of the wording. After all, Jack had written it thinking he wouldn't be back. There was no telling what he had said in the privacy of their bedroom under the impression that he wouldn't have to live down the embarrassment of whatever sentiments might spill out onto the page.

Maybe it said nothing, but "good-bye". Maybe it said everything he'd ever wanted to say, but had been afraid to. Either way it was going to stay sealed until they found a way to break him out of stasis. And for the record there was no "or" in that statement. Daniel was not willing to leave a clause that he would read whatever it said on the condition that they couldn't free Jack. No matter how long it took they were going to find a way and until they did that letter was going to stay tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

Daniel forced himself up from the chair with an annoyed huff, pausing in mid stride as his cramped legs complained about the sudden movement. Jack shouldn't have had to leave him a note because he should have been the one with the ancient's encyclopedia in his head. It should have been him. If he'd jumped a second faster. If he'd taken a minute to plan a mild distraction to capture Jack's attention even if only for an instant. If he'd argued a bit less forcefully for the idea to do it in the first place…or a bit more forcefully that Jack shouldn't be the one to take the risk…it would have been his head clamped in the vice-like grip of the repository. It would have been him staring at the lights and collapsing in a heap on the ground. It would have been him sitting in the damn chair having the life drained out of him. It would have been him frozen in stasis rather than freezing his ass off on the back porch in the middle of the night.

One more time disaster had struck someone close to him and he'd been helpless to do anything about it. The last narrow escape had killed Janet right in front of him. He was not about to let that happen again. Not when he actually had a chance to do something about it.

Grabbing his jacket Daniel stuffed his arms into the sleeves, snatched his keys from the table, and yanked open the front door. He wasn't doing anybody any good moping around the house when he'd only come there to sleep in the first place. If he wasn't going to sleep then he might as well get back to work.

Find the Lost City – save Jack.

Find the Lost City – Save Jack.

Find the Lost City – Save Jack.

Please, let us save Jack.