AN: This story is set two years after the end of Millennium's Children, or five-ish years after the end of the show.
Not necessary to read that one first, but it does heavily reference the 'Scrambler,' a time travelling device Daniel and Jack encountered during a rescue mission.
'I fell asleep down by the stream
And there I had the strangest dream:
Down by Brennan's Glenn there grows
A briar and a rose.'
"The Briar and the Rose" ~ The Cottars
"And then it exploded?" The new technician, Steel Hughes, was bug eyed.
Walter Harriman nodded, smug. "Exploded. All over the car."
Hughes shuddered.
They stood in the control room, waiting for a three am diagnostic to finish.
Hughes yawned.
Walter frowned at him. "How did you get the graveyard shift again?"
"How did you?" the rookie technician shot back. "You're always here. Come to think of it, you've asked for this shift every weekend in the four months since I started here."
Walter shifted defensively. "I like being here when it's quiet. What's your excuse?"
Hughes deflated. "My wife and I are expecting but we don't want to know the gender. I need all the extra income I can get."
"Congratulations," said Walter.
"Thanks. Mind if I…?" He pointed a thumb over his shoulder.
Walter waved him away. "Nah, go ahead. I could use a cup too."
"Decaf?"
Walter's eyes narrowed. "Don't you dare."
A parting laugh faded down the control steps. Shaking his head, Walter plunked at his station and fiddled a moment with the dials—a maestro eliciting art from his performers. Brow furrowed, he experienced the silence's colors as one does an exotic bouquet.
Then the view through the window arrested him. He sat motionless, a fond brushstroke of a smile adorning his face. He never tired of looking at the 'gate. It too had seen much, had witnessed their struggles and their victories.
A soft noise on the stairs behind Walter had him perking up.
He turned and dropped his clipboard. "G…General O'Neill?"
The man wore his infamous leather jacket over an old Air Force T-shirt and red flannel pants. His eyes were bright, too bright. Glazed and pained.
"Step aside, Walter."
Walter stiffened. "Sir, if I could get you some help, maybe a chair, we can sort out—"
Jack whipped out a black device and Walter crumpled to the floor under hot streams of pain.
The coffee stains looked like chain mail now against the birch wood desk. Daniel Jackson made another link when his phone rang and he set down his mug. He did a double take at the caller ID. His eyes bulged behind his glasses and he scrambled for the receiver.
"Sam?"
"Daniel." Her relived sigh came through like a fragrant breeze in Daniel's spirit. "I wasn't sure what the time difference is between Colorado and Cairo. I could only find your office number…"
"No, no! Now is a great time. It's always a great time for you."
A beat.
"You're working late aren't you?" Sam's amused smile was palpable. Suddenly Daniel was breathing easier and he wondered how he'd breathed at all without her.
"Err…technically it's morning now. Points for that?"
She laughed. "I thought you took this job to work less. Eighteen months away from the gate and you're still a work-a-holic."
Daniel went red but his smile dropped. "Curating one of the world's most prestigious museums isn't exactly a holiday."
"I know."
An uncomfortable silence settled. Daniel shifted and rubbed a sweaty palm along his knee.
"It's amazing to hear your voice," he admitted quietly.
"You too." Her voice was just as small. "We miss you so much here."
"How does running Cheyenne Mountain suit you?"
At her sharp inhalation, Daniel straightened. The motion upended a cup of pencils. "Sam? What is it?"
All at once, Daniel realized the implications of a call like this. The urgent timing. Late at night. He'd received enough of these calls in his life. His heart rate quickened.
"Sam? Did something happen to Teal'c on Chulak? Cam—?"
"No. Heavens no, Daniel. Nobody died. I'm so sorry for…we just don't know what to make of the footage and I thought you should…I mean, you of all people…it's practically your right…"
Daniel bit his lip. "Sam. You're scaring me. Slow down."
He wasn't sure how—the line was utterly silent—but he knew the exact moment Sam teared up and started fighting it. Something hushed, unspeakable, swelled between them.
"Sam?" he asked, soft.
She gave a sharp, wet sniff. "Have you been feeling nauseous lately?"
Daniel blinked. "What? What does this have to do with footage?"
"Headaches?" she pressed. "Trouble sleeping?"
"I always have trouble sleeping," he tried to joke.
"No pain or dizziness? Think, Daniel."
"No, er." Daniel's forehead scrunched while he dutifully thought through Sam's questions. "No, I don't think so."
His eyes widened. "Wait a minute. I woke up with chills and night sweats yesterday. Made it so I couldn't eat this morning. I thought it was just stress at the time. How did you—?"
"The link between you and Jack or whatever it is. I thought it might still be active. He used to sense a migraine coming in that head of yours before you did."
An edge, new these past two years, advertised her displeasure at Daniel.
But Daniel didn't hear anything after Jack's name. His eyes shuttered with an arcane melancholy.
"Jack?"
"Daniel, he isn't—"
"Jack?" Daniel asked again.
There was a heavy thud from the other end. Maybe Sam had set down a coffee pot or her laptop or maybe she'd punched her microscope. Faint PA sounds revealed she was still on base. Still in her office.
Just like me.
This hesitation from Daniel's dear friend was one of the most unnerving things he'd ever experienced. He felt his world tilt at an ungodly angle. Air couldn't rush into his lungs fast enough.
"Sam, where is he?"
"We don't know."
"Is he even alive?"
"We don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I should make that our motto. Get some T-shirts printed and wear them at Air Force soirees to make the higher ups uncomfortable."
This time Daniel heard the hurt. Sam's desperation. Cairo didn't usually experience earthquakes but it must have been a small one, Daniel thought, because he was the only thing shaking. He took off his glasses and realized he was crying.
"Daniel?"
"Sorry," he rasped.
"Where was that word two years ago?" But her voice was tender. Full of love. "You need to come back."
"Why me?" Suddenly Daniel was on his feet. "Why not Teal'c or Landry or—"
"Because only you can make sense of what I just saw on this footage," said Sam. To anyone the words were even, but Daniel heard the quaver. It took an enormous amount to break Colonel—soon to be General—Samantha Carter. Daniel had only seen it once or twice. Now he was hearing it. "Nobody knows him like you do, at the level you do. This is bigger than what happened two years ago."
Daniel gripped the desk. However, he found himself nodding, though a bright flare of stubbornness blinded the flashbacks in his mind's eye. The shouts. The blood. The blood—in his clothes and dirtying his shower for weeks.
"I'll be home soon."
"Thank God," said Sam. "I can pick you up from the airport."
"That would be great. Thanks."
Only when Daniel hung up did he replay the words to himself.
"It's not true," said Daniel to his packed office. His words died in the balmy air. "I didn't mean it. Egypt is my first home. Always has been."
His office kept its silence.
Small shocks are sometimes the worst. They have the power to accumulate. One big shock and you're done for the day. Caput. It's a weird relief.
Daniel received a small shock when he walked up the stairs and into the SGC briefing room. It was more cluttered than he expected.
His second shock came when he realized that, for the first time in his life, he had just classified people as clutter:
Men in staunch navy uniforms, holding tape recorders and setting up a TV in the corner and making bad coffee and murmuring in low voices like at a funeral. It shook Daniel in a way he couldn't fathom. All these people. With that one sight, this had turned from a concerning mystery into an emergency.
Hairs on the back of his neck shivered.
A small, warm hand between his shoulders got him moving. He wasn't doing this alone.
The men stood. Daniel glared at a man sitting in the corner and he too stood. They all seemed to eye Daniel with a cocktail of amazement and wariness.
"General Carter," said one.
Sam stepped out from behind Daniel. "Gentlemen, at ease. And I'm not a General yet. We had to postpone tomorrow's ceremony."
Daniel winced. Sam had put her life, her career, on hold for this. Daniel realized that he probably wouldn't have been invited to Sam's ceremony at all if it weren't for this breach of security.
He took several long breaths until his eyes stopped prickling.
Once everyone was seated at the table and someone handed Daniel a Styrofoam cup of that stupid coffee—things must be bad…I don't even want coffee—Sam cleared her throat. Daniel's stomach plummeted.
She had a jaw of granite and a wash of respect for her overcame Daniel.
"Sirs, I've agreed to let you watch this footage on one condition…" Her eyes flicked ever so briefly to Daniel. "That you hear what Dr. Jackson says with impartiality and sincerity."
Daniel blinked. He knew this feeling—he was missing something.
Something big. Something pivotal.
And apparently he could solve it.
Sam wasn't one to mince words. Jack always liked that about her. She didn't say another word before popping in the footage and turning on the television screen. Grey static replaced the black.
Then a familiar embarkation room, seen through the control room window, replaced the static.
Daniel wanted the static back.
He stiffened in his seat, leaning forward, adjusting his glasses even though he could see just fine.
Jack, in all his flannel and leather glory, bounded into the control room. He electrocuted Walter using a low grade Taser. With a quick, practiced motion, he typed in a set of coordinates. The gate began to spin.
Jack threw the Taser to the floor and raced for the stairs.
After a minute, he reappeared in the gate room, dead center. He stood for one endless, quivering moment in front of the ramp. He wore his leather jacket, sleep bottoms, and…
"Slippers?" asked one major.
Sam's lips thinned into a long, white line. "We think he bolted straight from his house about thirty minutes away. Clearly he was in a hurry. His truck is currently sitting in its old, usual spot in the parking lot, backed in and everything."
No one said anything after that.
Jack shouted something—Daniel saw the man's hands tighten into desperate fists—but his back was to the control room camera.
The usual whoosh meant the gate coordinates had worked. The embarkation room shimmered.
And still Jack didn't move. He ran a hand down his face and wobbled, unsteady, up the ramp. Then he stopped again, just at the horizon.
Why did Jack hesitate, Daniel wondered, when he'd started with such urgency? When he'd run out of his house still in his pajamas?
Finally, he glanced back once, where Walter slumped in his chair, and grimaced. This time, the angle was perfect to see Jack's face.
'Daniel,' he mouthed.
It was a car battery jolt to the chest. Daniel actually spilled his coffee in a huge splash onto the table. No one paid any notice.
At last, Jack stepped through the event horizon.
Sam stopped the footage, her shoulders a tense curve. She turned to the table with raised brows.
The silence was deafening, even though the footage had been completely silent. Two star generals around the room were slack jawed.
"What the hell was that?" asked Daniel.
"I was hoping you could tell us," said Sam. "O'Neill used his old ID card—which he was supposed to have returned when he retired—and knocked three other staff unconscious on his mow to the gate room.
"I'm less concerned about the breach of security than the fact he did this with such precision." Sam ticked off points on her fingers. "He chose the least busy time of day. There was a back-up Taser and knives in his truck. He had all the right codes ready to type in at each level, even though some have changed since he was general. I'm not even going to think about how he got those…"
"Yet he left the house in slippers," Daniel finished.
"Exactly," said Sam. "It doesn't add up even without the deliberate use of your name."
Daniel had to swallow a thick knot in his throat as his mind replayed the image.
All at once, anger at Sam flared inside him. How dare she make him watch this with an audience? On purpose—knowing he couldn't censor his reactions in front of these people.
As soon as it came, Daniel deflated. He would have done the same in her position. She was even more desperate than him.
This was wrong. So wrong. The base was trained against invasion plots.
But how do you protect against the one man who knows those security protocols best? Jack had even designed some of those security protocols.
Daniel's mind spun and, true to these past two years…since that day, a spike of loathing accompanied thoughts of Jack.
The press of an oncoming weeping fit ballooned in Daniel's chest. That was certainly a new feeling. He covered his face with a trembling hand. Nobody paid that any notice either.
"Does Teal'c know?" asked a general sitting at the far end.
Sam nodded. "I've called and told him the situation, but he's currently caring for his granddaughter at the moment. He'll return here in a few days."
Her voice was all business, but underneath the table she squeezed Daniel's knee. It granted Daniel strength to face the room.
"We don't know where Jack is?" Daniel hated that his voice wavered. "He's lost? And we're just sitting here?"
Sam's lips quirked up on one side. It was a bitter expression. "Oh…we know exactly where he is. Or, where he was. A search of the planet with those coordinates revealed a campfire and smooth tracks leading back to the gate, so we know the general and his slippers were there."
Something about the way Sam's lips twisted tipped Daniel off.
"Where?" he asked his friend quietly. "Which planet?"
Her face fell. "The one where you found the Scrambler."
Daniel's cheeks lost all color.