The Serpent's Lair

Daniel Jackson jerked awake as the car jolted to a stop. His eyes blinked open slowly to a watercolor world of blurred lights and darks. He forced himself to blink quickly, his hand coming up to adjust his glasses, only to find he wasn't wearing any.

The world finally came into focus, and Daniel realized where he was. And who he was with. He turned slowly, afraid he was still on that ship in that machine dreaming all of this. Please, he thought frantically, Don't let this be another hallucination.

A soft voice brought him back to the real world. "Daniel?"

Jack's head was tilted a little, his brown eyes narrowed in concern. He was real. They were alive. Daniel couldn't even process it. "You OK?"

They both winced at the question, and O'Neill shook his head apologetically. "Right. Let's get you inside into a real bed, alright?"

The anthropologist stifled a huge yawn as he opened his car door and stepped out onto Jack's driveway, attempting to stretch out the cricks in his muscles. He was ridiculously glad that Jack hadn't just dropped him off at his dark, lonely apartment instead. "What time is it?"

The colonel scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked at the watch on his wrist. "…Late. Or really early." It took him a moment to find the right key on his chain. He fumbled in the dim light to unlock his door. "C'mon, we can make up the guest bed for ya." He stepped inside and flicked on the lights, heading for the kitchen. "Hammond throws a heck of a party, huh?"

Daniel flopped onto the couch without bothering to take his shoes or even his jacket off. "Yeah. I guess we deserved it, right? You don't save the whole planet every day."

Jack leaned into the doorway to shoot him an incredulous look. "Daniel, have you paid any attention to the last year of your life?"

The younger man chuckled weakly and managed to sit up a little. His gaze focused absently on an old picture of Jack with his son on the far mantle. He well remembered the first time he'd seen it, when Jack had told him about Sara leaving and they'd still been reeling from the losses of Sha're and Skaara. It seemed like a century ago; had it really only been a year? Just a year of the planet-hopping, the crazy hours, the friendship, the death-defying feats and discoveries?

No, it had been two years, really-- for him and Jack, at least. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he'd set foot on Abydos that first time. They'd come far since then in some ways, and not at all in others. Daniel took a second to appreciate that regardless of what they did, they still always managed to end up in this living room again.

He blinked and returned to the present as Jack sat next to him on the couch. The older man sighed tiredly and rubbed a hand over his face. "Some day."

Daniel huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh and sank back into the couch; his head tipped backwards to look at the ceiling like it was suddenly too heavy for his neck. "I wouldn't mind never doing that again."

"Yeah," O'Neill agreed softly. There was something in his voice—a somber, charged stillness that hadn't been there a moment ago—that caused Daniel to look up and find his friend sitting with his arms propped up on the knees, one hand trying to massage the obvious headache away. "...It wasn't fair."

The anthropologist's brow wrinkled. "What?"

The colonel shook his head, then repeated more clearly "It wasn't fair."

"What wasn't?"

"That we got rescued! I leave you to the freakin' Goa'uld and their exploding ship with a hole in your shoulder and then I get a shuttle! How the heck does that work?"

The sudden outburst made Daniel sit up and gaze at his distraught friend with new appreciation. He spoke soothingly, as if to a child. "It's not your fault, Jack. I would've slowed you down."

"I left you to die, Daniel."

A kind of deep coldness seemed to permeate Daniel's bones. He wished that Jack hadn't said it aloud, the word that carried the weight of guilt and accusation for both of them; wished they'd never talked about it. He hadn't realized. It had been easy for him to suggest abandonment, even to accept it as he felt the blood leaking out of him onto the floor. He was only now starting to realize how hard it must have been for Jack to actually do it.

Jack left him to die. The words felt heavy in his brain.

Amazingly enough, though, that wasn't the part of their day that Daniel had a problem with. He hadn't died. The worst part was when he'd been told that everyone else had.

"For a while, I almost wished I had," he admitted softly. Jack looked up in surprise, but Daniel missed it because he was staring off into space. "I got back to the SGC and you weren't there. I couldn't believe that after all of that..." he shook his head helplessly. "I thought I was the last one, Jack. I didn't...I don't know what I would have done if the rest of you were dead." The ice in his bones thawed even as he said it; it was OK. They were alive. He looked back to the silent man beside him. "So I'm glad that you got that shuttle, Jack. Because without it-" He let the sentence linger, the horror of that afternoon still too fresh in his mind.

The colonel stared at him. He hadn't thought of that. He sank back onto the couch, now fully appreciating the situation as his guilt more or less doubled. Maybe tripled. His shoulders slumped a little with the metaphorical weight of it all. He'd left Daniel twice, and even though it all worked out it still hurt him like a physical weight to think about it.

Jack gave a heavy sigh that hung in the somber silence like a ghost before it dissipated. "Crap, Daniel, I'm sorry."

"Me too," the younger man said with an attempt at a smile. At Jack's silent question, he clarified, "For getting shot. For making you guys do all that thinking I was dead."

Jack's hand came to rest on his shoulder. His words were light, but his tone was serious as he sad, "Apology accepted. Just don't ever do it again and we'll pretend it never happened."

Daniel smiled weakly, the expression aborted halfway through to make way for a huge yawn. He ended up leaning against Jack's side by the end of it, his eyelids starting to droop from exhaustion. "We're alive," he informed Jack blearily.

O'Neill looked down at his friend's head and smiled softly despite himself. They were alive. The world was saved, they had time off to goof around, they got lunch with the president, and they were alive.

"Yeah," Jack agreed softly. He could tell Daniel was already asleep from the rhythm of his breathing, and with a long sigh he let himself relax into the sofa cushions, his friend still propped against him. "Good day."

Author's Note: I'm baaack! I'm sorry for the hiatus (or whatever the heck that was), but I can now say with some certainty that posting will resume. If you have mentioned an episode in a review, it is being written. I have a list of about fifteen eps that all have at least something written in them. Please, give me more! As long as you request, I will write. As always, Ren is my writing salvation--particularly in this piece, because without her help in adding some very important details to this conversation, it wouldn't have been as emotionally fulfilling for the characters (or us!).

As always, tell me how you think I did. Cheers!