Author's Note : Sorry guys. This one is a bit short due to the way the scene breaks are. Next one would be longer. Promise.
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Jack gritted his teeth as he pulled himself over onto the third level, cursing under his breath as he did. The slopes weren't particularly dangerously vertical, rather easy to grasp, but after two climbs, then having to hike through thorny vines and more goddamn trees, the leader was beginning to tire.
The colonel hoped he was wrong. And that Daniel decided to take the stairs.
Please don't tell me he's climbing all this shit, Jack eyed the last miniature cliff to reach the top, the bridge a few miles away. He drew his hands into fists and reopened them again, trying to get circulation back in his aching fingers. Massaging his forearm, Jack calculated the distance and frowned.
No sign. There was no sign of him. Jack didn't find one footprint. No scuff mark. Nothing.
He was only gone a few minutes before us. He wouldn't have gotten ahead that far. Not with his concussion or sore ribs.
The colonel stomped through the thick underbrush with a scowl, wishing he had a machete so he could hack through all that, chop the vines to itsy bits. He could feel his feet picking up the pace as he thought of his friend, that dazed look on his face as they all reintroduced themselves to him.
Dammit, how could he forget about us? And how could he run off like that? What? He thought we were going to have him for lunch or something?
Jack paused at a tree to wipe his brow. He could still hear Daniel's voice during that attack. Too busy to turn around to assess his condition, Jack only heard the tremor in his friend's voice, but it was enough to paint a picture in his mind.
He never heard that voice directed towards them like that before. Ever.
Jack heard his stern voice, the 'Doctor Jackson' lecture mode as he called it. He heard his soft pleading voice when the young man made their case to friend or potential foe. The determined one when he tried to tell Jack about Apophis' impeding attack on Earth. And Jack heard the heartbreak, barely audible, but sorely felt in the young man's voice whenever he spoke of memories.
But never that fear, that vibrating tremor under the tone. Never that.
What the hell did he see? I wasn't like that before, was I?
Eyeing the sun above, he swore when he realized it was going to be mid-day soon. He was wasting time when he should be making his pursuit. Pushing away from the tree, Jack hiked on.
"My report said ten thousand."
The scientist, who looked more like a scraggly pup than this supposedly young prodigy, turned to look at him with a blank look on his face. But instead of demanding who he was, why he was standing there, Doctor Jackson went back to whispering excitedly to Barbara Shore.
Jack clenched his jaw. He was going to have a talk with Doctor Langford about this. Hiring baby faced geniuses who didn't have enough sense to pay attention to authority. The kind who would be gawking at some dusty, goddamn 'fascinating' thing while all hell broke loose.
Head in the clouds.
They were a menace to any mission, one that could get them all killed.
Jack skidded to a halt, groaning to himself. The carved stern face out of iron seemed to haunt him. Looking back, Jack wondered how Daniel put up with him. He never thought about that time much. It was too close to another time for him. Another time he wished he could forget as easily as Daniel did with them.
Not just a reminder of how different he was then but just how much pain he was avoiding since his kid's death.
Jack angrily thumped the sapling trunk next to him, making the leaves fluttering down.
That first mission, that disastrous trip through the Stargate. It was bad the moment he found out Jackson couldn't get his men home to when he encountered Ra. The only redeeming thing he gained out of the whole thing was he no longer cradled that damn nuclear bomb control like a tender lover.
"You gonna be alright?" Jack asked. He arched an eyebrow when he saw Jackson shyly looking back to Sha're. The woman smiled broadly at him as she stood there, realizing Daniel wasn't going to leave. And Jack wasn't going to make him.
"Yeah." Daniel turned back to Jack with a warm smile that made Jack blink in surprise. He could honestly believe Jackson would be okay here. He never saw the archeologist look more...at ease.
"And you?" the scientist boldly asked, his blue eyes studying him.
Jack tilted his head up, considering. Then, he grinned crookedly. Home had a comforting feeling to it again. He found himself savoring the moment he could come through that gate and find Sara and be able to look at her in the eye once more.
"Yeah." His smile grew wider. "I think so."
Then it hit him.
Daniel wasn't the only one who changed. Jack looked down at himself as if for the first time.
I did, too.
And suddenly, Jack realized he never told his friend this.
Jack hurried his steps. Pushing back the branches and vines, he nearly missed the scrap of cloth drifting by him, carried by the scented breeze. Reaching out with a hand, Jack caught it tightly in his fist. Opening his hand, Jack saw it was gauze. Bloodstains marred the former sterile white strip.
Daniel's.
"Daniel!" Jack called out, but got no reply.
The guy ran out on you. You expect him to come, tongue out and tail wagging at your beck and call?
"Jackson!" The colonel winced. Already, he wished he hadn't said that. It sounded…it sounded too much like himself two years ago. "Daniel!" Taking a step forward, Jack strained to see if he could spy the scientist lurking behind the trees. When he saw nothing, he threw the cloth down in disgust.
While it fell, his eyes automatically tracked it as it fluttered back down to his foot. Jack narrowed his eyes. The ground looked like something was scratched on it. He lifted his foot and saw he had stepped on part of it, smearing the top parts of whatever it was.
"What the hell?" The colonel muttered as he knelt. Carefully brushing away the gauze, Jack saw the thin grooved lines in the moist soil. He figured it couldn't have been too long ago, considering how the lines were still shaped.
The team leader noted a torn twig, cast off a few inches away, its tip dotted with dirt and knew these scrawlings were deliberate.
Wait a minute.
Jack leaned closer, practically on top of the symbols now as he counted.
Seven.
He could see seven shapes.
A Stargate address.
A glimmer of hope burned in Jack's mind. Did that mean Daniel was remembering? The man resisted the urge to sigh out of relief as he studied the top parts, smeared and distorted thanks to his boot. Biting his lip, Jack grabbed the stick and tried retracing the faint lines that seemed to stem from the symbols.
"Okay, I know these." Jack muttered. He eyed the first one, the squarish looking infinity symbol. "Uh, uh…ah crap…oh…Orion!" He grinned triumphantly. I knew they looked familiar. I told them that telescope wasn't just for the neighbors. They—
Jack's smile faded.
There was no Orion in the Stargate address for this planet.
Feeling around his jacket, the colonel pulled up the damp notepad. Carter and Teal'c had both scribbled down the address for home Daniel had deciphered before they split up. Flipping through the pages, Jack frantically searched for the latest entry for the address for home.
There.
It wasn't a match.
"What the—" Another symbol became familiar. Twisting his head a bit to see better, Jack could make out the shape of—
"Capricorn." Jack frowned.
"What the hell is this? Orion? Capricorn? Serpens Caput?" The man shoved the notebook back in his pocket. "What were you writing, Jackson? This isn't the address to go—"
Jack's mouth stopped moving as a memory teased his conscious. Looking down at the symbols again, Jack took the branch and tried tracing the rest of the symbols.
Taurus.
Monoceros.
Sagittarius.
And Earth.
He knew this address.
He knew this since he returned from the first mission. It was etched in his mind, the first thing that came up after months of living in an empty house, stripped of anything Sara owned.
Abydos.
"Oh God." Jack stood up in shock. "Abydos. Why the he…he wouldn't. He—"
"After we go through the Chaapa-ai, you have to bury it like you did before."
Daniel wrote out the symbols for Abydos. Not for Earth.
"Then in one year…one year…you take the cover stone away. I will try and bring Sha're home on that day. But if I don't make it back…if I don't—"
It wasn't an Abydosian year yet.
The Stargate.
The Stargate was still buried.
"Shit!" Jack blurted out abruptly and broke off in a run toward the last plateau.
