TITLE: From the High Ground
AUTHOR: MissAnnThropic
SUMMARY: Daniel couldn't save him any more than he had, couldn't curse him any more than he already had, either. Set in Season 6.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.

'My friend is dying. How can you sit by and watch this?'

'Wisdom is often buried in the haste of action, losses alone are measured in inaction.'

'Jack's dying.'

'The journey along the Great Path is both long and short, each traveler arrives when meant to arrive.'

'I can't sit here and do nothing. My best friend is going to die and we can help him, YOU can help him.'

'Each life is its former shape, release your burden.'

'I don't know what you want from me. I have to help Jack.'

'Two paths on different planes are not one.'

'I won't let you let him die.'

'You must release your burden.'

'What does that mean?! What?'

'The candlelight flickers on the distant shore, but the sound is lost.'

'Jack is going to die!'

'You must release your burden.'

'I can't.'

'Only you can judge the worth of your soul.'

'My soul is worth nothing if I have to forget my friends, ignore their pain, accept their deaths when I can do something to stop it.'

'Burdens come in many gentle guises.'

'If you're trying to tell me I have to renounce my past life... I'm sorry, I can't do that.'

"The neurological deterioration has stopped. His brain patterns have stabilized. He's not going to die... not from the Ancient knowledge downloaded into his brain, anyway."

"I know."

"You've saved him, Daniel, but... you didn't fix him. Are you going to?"

"I can't do more than I have... I did everything I could."

"You can't fix this?"

"No."

"Daniel... if this is about interfering... you've already stepped in, why not finish what you started?"

"You don't think if I could put Jack right I would? This isn't about Ascended Codes. I'm beyond the rules now but I don't know how to fix it... I could only... integrate it, eliminate the incompatibility of Jack and the Ancient knowledge. It's the best I could do."

"At least... at least he'll live."

'Hey, Jack.'

'Daniel... not that I'm not grateful or anything, but when am I going to stop speaking Ancient?'

'You aren't.'

'I must not have heard you right.'

'Jack...'

'You're a so-called higher being. Just wave your hand or wiggle your nose or whatever you do.'

'Jack... being ascended doesn't make me all-powerful. I don't know how to change you back to the way you were before.'

'You mean the Asgard can do it but you can't?'

'The Asgard could do it, the Ancients can do it... I just can't.'

'Then get Oma over here to fix it.'

'She won't help... I went against her to save your life.'

'The Asgard then... now that I'm not knocking on death's door I'll track Thor down and get him to–'

'Jack... it's more complicated than that. After what I did... had to do to save you... you're beyond Asgard technology now. You can't just undo what I had to do... I can't explain why but trust me, you'd need an Ancient, someone wiser than me, to reverse what's been done.'

'Measure twice, cut once.'

'You could put it that way.'

'Daniel... there's stuff in here I don't want. I don't want to know this, I don't want to speak nothing but Ancient. I can't work like that.'

'I know... and I'm sorry. I wish there was more I could do.'

'Where are you going?'

'I have to run, Jack. Oma will have to punish me for defying her. I can't stay, this is the first place she'll look for me. I just had to stay long enough to know you were going to be okay.'

'Where will you go?'

'I don't know.'

'You're just going to leave me like this?'

'There's nothing else I can do. I'm sorry.'

'Daniel.'

'What is it, Jack... I have to go.'

'Take me with you.'

'What?'

'Take. me. with. you.'

'I don't know where I'm going, Jack... you're better off here.'

'I can't talk to anyone, I can't even write down what I want to say to them in any language they understand. My head's crammed full of Ancient knowledge; sooner or later the NID will come for me. Wherever you're going has to be better than that.'

'Jack...'

'Daniel.'

Daniel burned bright while Jack cast a shadow.

It was barely a shelter, a rock wall on one side, cloth propped up by sticks on two others, the fourth of their miserable hovel open to the cool night air on an unnamed planet. Jack only asked after the names of the first two planets they'd fled to... that was well twenty planets ago.

Only Daniel had to hide; Jack was only the victim to them, livestock unwittingly damaged by unrestrained keepers, an unfortunately crippled steer. Oma would never say as much, but then again most of what she said could be interpreted more ways than one.

Daniel kept watch over Jack like a child watching over a sick baby bird found in the yard. Fragility bled from too-thin skin, wafted sickly on hot exhales, oozed from pores like toxin. To energy, to light, the human form was flimsy and unclean. Those first nights, Daniel told himself he hovered above Jack for the greater vantage point, to better watch for danger to his sleeping friend, but the bigger truth was Daniel was afraid to touch Jack. His imperfect flesh, his mortal, inert form.

Birds, even chicks, were covered in microscopic mites. It wasn't the bird's fault, but it ensured the child kept contact with the animal to a minimum.

'Anubis will just find someone else.'

'Sooner or later, maybe. It won't be easy for him; he got lucky capturing you.'

'Lucky him.'

'You're special, Jack... different. The Asgard have always known it.'

'The head-sucker thing isn't Asgard technology.'

'I know... but the Ancient repository can detect the same thing in you the Asgard do. Something in your genetic code activates Ancient technology.'

'Spare me the science. So how long before Anubis finds another human to stick in that thing?'

'I don't know. The genetic abnormality is rare. Maybe he'll never figure out how to scan for it. Maybe Oma and the others will do something about it before he finds another receptacle for the information he wants to get at.'

'You really think Oma will do a damn thing?'

'I don't care.'

'You always care, Daniel.'

'I used to.'

'...'

He wasn't entirely Jack anymore. He was part Ancient, part something closer to Ascended Daniel. They were both other than what they'd been when friendship was paramount, their closeness sacrosanct. Daniel was better than human, and Jack more than human. Both were less than who they'd been a lifetime ago for their wisdom, the price of higher being.

Jack loathed this facsimile of a life. Daniel couldn't save him any more than he had, couldn't curse him any more than he already had, either. Daniel accepted that Jack's smile was from another time, a past life for both of them.

Daniel had seen a thousand looks that said 'I hate you'... he couldn't remember any look that said 'thank you'.

At some point caution was passé. Jack feared little. He knew Daniel would employ colossal powers to protect him. Jack was everything Daniel had to lose except himself; he'd already broken ranks to save Jack once... it was small rationale to extend its scope to mundane, mortal perils. Jack's guardian angel had a vengeful streak and short fuse, and Jack was as close as any person could come to untouchable. Impunity set in. The rest was apathy. Jack taunted death; Daniel worried sometimes how long he could hold it at bay.

As long as he had to.

'Do you want me to find out if Anubis replaced you?'

'Why?'

'...'

'Can you even do that?'

'I could try... if you want.'

'... I don't care.'

'You used to.'

Daniel's first foray into taking solid, humanoid form was like sticking his toes in the ocean for the first time. Curiosity, sensation, leaping back when the waves slid up the shore like backwash trying to grab him.

A single candle burning might as well not burn at all, only the light of many can cast warmth.

Daniel crammed his unbridled energy into a six-foot prison for one lowly reason... loneliness.

Physical form felt like lead, the air was monstrously thick. He couldn't float through it, weave among its subtle currents. He was hideous, lumbering... corporeal.

Jack lay on the stained cot in what passed for a seedy hotel room on this world. It was midday outside, dank shadows inside. Jack was on his side, asleep. Jack slept like the wounded, hands tucked between his knees, shoulders hunched, face pressed into the pillow, expression tight. Breathing looked like a chore just because his weak human form required him to literally draw in air. Nothing passed through him, not light nor wind. A roadblock of matter, a little lighter, or enough force, and nothing more than a mote.

Daniel shuffled closer to him and maneuvered his density-ridden form on to the bed with Jack.

Jack's eyes opened at the jostling and he watched Daniel. The look in his eyes blank, his body unmoved.

Daniel lay on his side facing Jack. The bed was so narrow they were forced to touch knees. Daniel blinked preternaturally perfect blue eyes at Jack.

Jack watched Daniel, unreadable expression unchanged, then he blinked once, twice, and closed his eyes. He burrowed his head deeper into the pillow, ducked it closer to his chest, closer to Daniel.

Daniel shifted closer, closed his eyes and leaned into Jack's presence. Like a pocket of fever the man's body heat emanated across the distance between them and Daniel concentrated on the feel of it. It wasn't the pure heat of ascended light and energy, but it was warmth.

Daniel could mimic the shape and form, but he couldn't fake body heat, a heartbeat, breath. Jack had learned to sleep against a corpse-like shell.

Daniel once came upon Jack with a knife in one hand, drawing a dark red line down the palm of the other.

'Jack, what are you doing?''

'Just checking.'

Jack curled against a cold husk, learned to wake up holding air and light, because he had nothing else. No one else. Daniel had saved him to live like this.

Old habits never completely faded. Jack maintained the title of the elder of the two... Daniel was an Ancient.

A new planet, a new nightfall, and Jack wandered off like he had so many times before.

Daniel watched Jack walk away so many times, fall into some planet's twilight shadows. Daniel never followed; Jack would never walk away for good. Daniel had more power than Jack could hope for but still the older man felt responsible for Daniel. No more than Jack would have intentionally left his loaded gun in an unlocked drawer, he would not leave Daniel. Daniel was his eternal charge, his shouldered burden, and a part of Jack could not stop himself being the protector. Daniel let him go with the certainty of a child looking after his father, the safety and certainty of a son staving any fear of losing Jack forever. Daniel would stay where Jack had left him, like some unnatural toddler in a shopping mall, and Jack would come back to him. Some things were law with them.

He liked that Jack couldn't leave him. Couldn't escape him. He wanted to feel bad for thinking that, but he was an ascended being on the run from his own kind, the very beings that had kept radiation poisoning from meaning a horrible, permanent death. Fugitive for choosing human over enlightened. They saw that as a flaw. He had nothing now except Jack, his responsibility to him, to both of them. Friendships weren't made to survive trials like this. Jack couldn't even speak to another soul outside of Daniel; Ancient was the epitome of dead languages. It meant Jack would always come back, even if one day he was sick at the very sight of Daniel in all his forms. Jack would always come back.

A part of Daniel that never stopped being an orphan loved that.

Daniel never felt right being able to bump into walls, bang his shins into furniture, brush against unclean people on the street. It was like crawling when he knew how to walk, like rolling in raw sewage of his own free will.

He figured it was worth it to feel Jack curled against his back at night, tendons and skin and blood in all their visceral grotesqueness pressed to him for the sake of company. Even the filth was a reminder, and Daniel and Jack had only memory.

Daniel remembered before, when Jack's body was a comfort in all its detail. When Daniel had been merely human. When Jack could sweat and bleed and be without seeming dirty. When Daniel could sink into everything Jack O'Neill was and find nothing to make him look away. Daniel clung to what it used to be like touching Jack, feeling peace and security in the older man's solidity, his heat. He tried to convince himself it was the same now, that it wasn't something bordering on vile.

Daniel had no words, in the countless languages he'd known before and the plethora he knew now, to describe what it was like to be able to just rise. To grab for sky and catch it, become it. His energy form made even a fugitive free.

Yet still, so many times Daniel was sure he'd trade that ability to be able to put his arms around Jack, hold him, and feel the unity of flesh and blood to flesh and blood. For all the power of the Ancients it came down to craving something as simple as a hug. Maybe a human touch, living flesh, would make a difference. Maybe Jack would look at him the way he used to look at Daniel Jackson of SG-1.

Daniel knew an ascended being could choose to retake human form, give up the air and sensation of being pure energy for skin holding in fallible organs, a mind with limits based on precious, finite neurons. It was an option.

Daniel wasn't ready yet to be that unclean again.

On a hot world, sweltering with a jungle-like humidity, Jack and Daniel sat on a sixth-story balcony window sill. The sticky heat made Daniel think of sweat glands, the oily, salty secretions of the human body.

Jack stared into the distance. His feet dangled over the ledge, teasing the perilous drop with disinterest. Daniel's posture mimicked Jack's, down to the lazily swinging feet, but Daniel could fall a hundred times like this and never die... he could fall a hundred times and never hit ground. Jack could fall once and break.

Daniel turned to look at Jack. Gray hair unkempt, jaw grizzled with stubble. Jack was thinner than he used to be, almost gaunt. The human body succumbed too easily, the mind surrendered. Frailty. Even someone as strong as Jack, as resilient, folded. A weakness that was so sad, so much a plague to living creatures.

In the rising dawn light Daniel could see a point on Jack's throat where soft, vulnerable skin pulsed lightly in time with Jack's heartbeat.

Daniel sat, almost hypnotized, and watched Jack's carotid thump.

Daniel, on impulse, reached out and took Jack's wrist in his cool hand. Jack's eyes flickered once down to the distant ground and Daniel's hand tightened.

END