AN: Believe it or not, this was actually the first piece of the series I ever wrote. There was something very trance-like about this particular writing experience and I finished it in twelve hours flat, working through some heavy topics while trying to retain hope for the future. Hopefully you can experience that too!
Bon apetit!
"People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed: You're responsible for your rose...you alone will have the stars as no one else has them. In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing."
~The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
It is after the coffee has gone cold and documents are signed that he feels it. A pull at his gut and the weathered folds of his skin.
Pa-pum…pa-pum…
His cellphone rings.
"Hello?"
Carolyn Lam babbles something about "next of kin" and "ran away" and "can't find him." He mumbles a reassurance. Hangs up with a firm of his chin.
He gets his keys, leaves a note for his wife. Clothes fit easily in a single duffle bag, for he knows he won't need very many, not if they're going by the number of days left in this leaden and failing circus. He drives. And drives. Drives until he can't remember which way is up.
When he wakes, he's at the cabin, the lake. He doesn't stop to drop off his things at the cabin, just saunters down to the dock. When he's within sight of two patio chairs—
He halts.
A figure, sitting in the left hand chair, spiky hair greyer than he remembers, doesn't turn.
"Jack," says the figure.
Pa-pum…pa-pum…
Jack thumps onto the dock and sits in the other chair.
"Daniel," he says.
They stare at the lake. Whenever a particularly good gust of wind hits the lake, it bobs the dock enough for Jack to feel it rolling under his shoes, the arm rests of their chairs overlapping.
"Care to fish?" asks Jack.
Daniel polishes his glasses, even though he doesn't technically need them anymore. Not after the Scrambler fiasco. "There are no fish in this lake."
A silence. The archaeologist's eyes are cloudy to match his grey skin and milky blue irises. Gauze covers one hand where once sat an IV line. Jack smiles. He stands and returns with two fishing poles.
Daniel shrugs. "Why not?"
So they sit, poles in the water and toes tapping to an invisible beat, just like always, as if nothing has changed in the years since Daniel's retirement. Unspeaking until the sun kneels beneath the trees.
They trudge back up to the cabin then, Jack in the master bed and Daniel in the spare. Jack doesn't sleep. He keeps his door open and listens to Daniel breathe across the hall.
In the morning, he finds chemotherapy drugs in the trash bin.
"Daniel…?"
Daniel turns from his eggs on the stove, sees the pills, and shakes his head. Jack stands for a long moment with the putty lines of hesitation quivering around his body.
Then he nods. "Okay. We'll do this your way."
"Thank you," says Daniel.
Jack reaches over the counter to ruffle his hair. Daniel grins.
Their eggs are eaten on the dock. At some point in the afternoon, Daniel rests his head back. A long exhale, of fatigue and contentment, escapes his lips.
"I love the smell of spruce trees."
"Mmm," says Jack.
"The dragonflies dance sometimes," Daniel adds, eyes slipping shut.
"Do they?"
Pa-pum…pa-pum…
"And the performance is just for us."
Jack throws a fond look at Daniel for that. They stay outside, amidst this fantasia of earth and sun and short breaths, until the sun slips away. Jack wraps his jacket around the doctor and hauls him back to the cabin.
And he marvels, as one week of this slips by, then another, how little they speak. How little they need to. Their routine changes little. At all, really.
Balmy summer days allow them to spend each on the dock. Sometimes fishing, sometimes cards, sometimes Jack reading to Daniel, sometimes just watching whatever ballet the trees and dragonflies put on.
"You should do it," says Daniel one day.
"What's that?" Jack reels in his line.
"Put real fish in the lake. They'd breed."
Jack snorts. "Proof you should stick to dead cultures and leave biology to my wife."
Daniel sits forward. "Not possible?"
"Not really. They'd probably die without a stable food chain."
"Oh. Speaking of which, can you read some more of that book?"
"Dumas?"
"The other one."
Jack sets down his pole and picks up The Little Prince, nestled on Daniel's pile of blankets. He's pale and constantly shivering now. Jack takes a minute to assess his gaunt features and bloodless lips, realizing that he forgets Daniel is not a young man anymore.
"Jack?"
"Right. Sorry. Here we go…"
Jack only leaves once a week to buy groceries or meet with Sam. Not that Daniel really eats.
He comes back the fourth Saturday with bags in hand. Daniel is on the couch, a burrito of fleece throws. Jack dumps everything in the fridge and claps his hands.
"I'm finished two hours early! We can have all afternoon at the dock. Let's go!"
"I don't think I can," says Daniel.
A strange hush settles over the room, one that's very much like two children trapped in a snowstorm or locked in a cellar. The general's jaw works.
Pa-pumPa-pumPa-pumPa-pum—
Jack reaches down and hooks his arm under Daniel's knees, the other around his back. He's light. Daniel lolls his head on Jack's chest and Jack props his chin on the tickling spikes of hair.
"Thanks," says Daniel.
"Anytime."
And after that they don't return to the cabin, even to sleep. Jack retrieves a battalion of pillows and swaddles his beloved friend in the dock chair.
"Comfy," says Daniel.
Jack's smile doesn't reach his eyes this time.
"I feel old," says Jack.
"Me too."
"You linguists should come with a warning label: copious carrying involved."
Daniel pats Jack's sun spotted hand. "You've carried me off a lot of battle fields."
"So have you." Jack flips his wrist to squeeze Daniel's hand. "This time is no different."
The days pass quicker then, somehow. A blur of nights on the dock and Daniel's shallow breathing and Jack swiping his eyes when Daniel isn't looking.
They stare often at the stars.
"Like frosting," says Daniel.
"Frosting?" asks Jack, because he knows exactly what Daniel means. He just wants to hear him say it.
"The stars…they're like icing sugar. Decoration, you know?"
"They're icing on your cake," Jack whispers.
Daniel suddenly, all at once, stops shivering. And Jack almost regrets the words—like they gave Daniel permission—but he can't because they're true. This distant view of stars really is a view of Daniel Jackson's life, what gave it meaning.
Jack realizes he voiced this aloud when Daniel frowns.
"'S not true."
Daniel shakes their twined hands. Looking down, Jack can't tell where his fingers start and Daniel's end. Aged against middle aged. Thick digits pressed to spindly, artistic ones.
He wants to say things, then. A lifetime of heartfelt words he felt too foolish to express in the moment. But Daniel's grip loosens in sleep. Jack gently removes the glasses and thumbs his friend's sallow cheek.
"Life's too short for pride," he murmurs, finally, an admission.
Pa-pum…pa…pum…
An owl hoots in a tree above them, chorusing with loons and bullfrogs singing away on the water. Frosty starlight swirls in the droplets that fall to Jack's lap.
They never really let go after that.
In the coming days, their contact is fluid, ever present. A hand on Daniel's shoulder, the archaeologist's head on Jack's knee, their sock feet in each other's laps. Water laps at the dock, gently rocking two friends who don't read anymore. Poles lay abandoned.
It is one night, clouds obscuring all but a slice of moonlight, that Jack feels a brush on his cheek. Daniel's eyes are wide where he holds Jack's tear on his finger. Jack ducks his head.
"You're wrong, you know."
Jack lifts his chin at the whisper.
"We both didn't have much to live for," Daniel continues. "But I found home that day."
Jack shakes his head. "You…"
He chokes on the words. He winces and closes his eyes. Daniel's hand is suddenly there, rubbing what's left of Jack's hair.
"It wasn't my wife, not my work, not the truth about our civilization, not Abydos…" And now Daniel is the one whose breath cracks in his throat. He pushes on. "I would trade all of it for the day we…"
Jack gulps shuddering breaths. Daniel ruffles his hair in a reciprocation of the million times they've done it to him.
"You beautiful oaf," says Daniel, a smile in his voice.
The air thrums and Jack swears he hears the stars vibrating. All at once, he's in motion. He latches a hand in the back of Daniel's sweater, pulling the man so his legs are across Jack's knees.
It's a long time before Daniel moves of his own accord, hours. When he does, it is to place his ear on Jack's chest.
"I can hear your heartbeat," he says.
Jack buries his nose in Daniel's shoulder. "Me too."
They stay like that, a tangle of Daniel and Jack. Jack feels it again, a tug. This time the tug strips them of their titles.
Just Daniel and Jack. Never just the one, always both.
"Jack?" Daniel's fingers crimp in Jack's shirt front.
"Mmm?"
"Can it stay like this?"
"Always has," says Jack.
And like their hands, Jack can't tell where he starts and Daniel ends. He wonders if they're not the same thing after all, a looped ball of flesh, hope, and devastation. Half a country or light years away, Jack senses it—
Pa…pum…pa…pum…
"You didn't bring me home, Daniel. You are…"
Daniel tilts his head back and his eyes catch what remains of the moon, turning it into sapphire flames. Jack can't finish his thought. Daniel, with what strength he has left, palms Jack's cheek.
"Jack," he whispers.
Jack holds the weak hand against his face. "Daniel."
They exhale a long breath together.
Daniel slurs something. Three words.
"I know," says Jack. "Me too."
Jack doesn't mean to fall asleep, lulled by the warm, sickly weight of his friend and the windless night. When he opens his eyes, the day is already humid.
Daniel is not.
Jack places two fingers under the cold jaw. Nothing.
Pa…pum…pa—
The tug stops.
Jack does not blink. He doesn't hear the loons or the cicadas. He does not feel himself start to shiver.
But the sound of frogs grows fuzzy and the dragonflies are harder to see, even the ones inches from his fingers. He listens for the sound of his heartbeat but it is gone.
His world is silent.
And then, with a stab of fire through his chest, Jack falls to his knees on the dock. He yells. Something about blowing up a planet and guns and little boys and stupid archaeologists and wanting to live again and Daniel's smile like AED paddles on his failing soul.
His fists bloody from pounding the dock. At some point a light summer shower has started, the first rain shower in weeks. Jack watches crimson weep away from the static pushing in his chest, between the slats, and into the lake.
And Jack has never felt so alone.
A rainbow pirouettes over the trees only for Jack to curse it around a sob.
He collapses back in his chair. Shakes Daniel's cold hand, to feel ice seeping through each pore and into his veins.
He knows, in that moment, he can't keep this up much longer. Not by himself. When the sun begins to set, Jack feels it:
He feels the moment his blood pressure rises and he clutches his chest. The muscle inside his body ceases pumping. Jack gasps out a note.
"Daniel?"
A lanky figure kneels beside Jack, twenty years younger than the body in the other chair.
"I'm here," he says. "Janet and George too. You're late."
But Jack doesn't care about anything else except the face not a hand's breadth from his own. Spiky hair and all.
"Daniel. I'm so sorry! I never told you how…how I kind of did die on that first planet. Came back with a new heart."
Daniel smiles, even with his teeth, and suddenly…
Pa-pum! Pa-pum! Pa-pum!
"I know," says Daniel. "All of it."
It's still raining but Daniel isn't wet.
Jack leans forward, eyes shining. "Ascended?"
"Not this time. The Dawn is come!" says Daniel. His gaze is so affectionate it winds Jack. "Come on, slow poke. Let's go home."
Jack stretches his palm on Daniel's chest and mirrors his words from years ago. "I already am home."
Daniel laughs, a pealing sound, and they rush away in a swirl of golden light. Jack and Daniel.
Always both.
Teal'c finds them the next day and calls Sam, who is back on Earth within four hours. They stare at the two bodies in the dock chairs.
The silence that governs the lake is pure and absolutely unbearable for over ten minutes, Teal'c's eyes open during his mouthed words over the two men and the loon has gone quiet to complete this effervescent, shining silence.
Then comes a low wail, Sam's cries over their clasped hands.
"They wouldn't let go. Even in…in…"
Teal'c cocks his head. "They are not here, Samantha Carter. Heart brothers do not leave each other behind, even in death."
Sam stares at the mortised fingers. Then she nods.
"I married him but I feel like we're all really…"
Teal'c kisses the crown of Daniel's head, then Jack's. Like a blessing.
"Family," he says.
Black cars and a truly impressive crowd huddle around two white gravestone set underneath a willow tree, where they've been buried next to Cam and Vala. Sam steps forward and rests a pair of dog tags on the headstones. Her wedding ring is on a chain around her neck.
Walter is next, releasing his bundle of Abydonian glyphs.
Teal'c comes last in a long procession, setting a fishing pole on the right and a pair of round glasses on the left. He murmurs a Jaffa prayer. Sam links his arm.
Then, at last, they are the only ones left.
A gusty breeze whips the willow branches in a dance. Sam checks, but the trees beside them are windless. The pair gape at this phenomenon, isolated around them and the willow.
"Farewell, friends," says Teal'c, and Sam knows his tears will come later, when they're alone and drinking expensive wine from Jack's cupboard.
Sam kisses her palm and raises it to the wind. She swears she feels a familiar, rough hand squeeze her fingers.
"Go home, Jack," she whispers. "See you soon."
The wind flutes into a laugh, two voices beating as one.
FIN
Written in 2016.