Two Months Earlier...
Nobody can quite put their finger on it.
The whole base knows something is off. Rippled by the shock wave of two men who come back different than they left. Jack, a general, isn't supposed to go off world anymore in the first place.
Jack completed his solo mission, rescuing Daniel from an uninhabited planet he got stuck on. They walked through the puddle with nary a scratch. A little dehydrated, naturally. Daniel with a slight concussion.
But tying up their mission reports in neat little bows—the usual stuff of "I fell down a well, General" and "ancient ruins in a foreign language make for great reading when you're waiting for rescue, General."
The higher ups are pleased.
Those who know the friends, however, feel something in their world shift.
Daniel and Jack can't be separated for more than a day or they spiral into confusion.
The first time it happens, Walter finds Daniel in a supply closet. Eyes dilated too wide, repeating his question of, "this time? Jack? Which is it now?"
Getting the call, Jack had turned his plane around, running down the hall and shaking like a leaf in a stiff headwind.
The image is burned behind Sam's eyelids—
The general, coat tails flying, tie askew, jaw granite, and brow pulled low.
"Out of my way!" Jack shoves bystanders against the wall and puts track stars everywhere to shame. "Where is he? Danny?"
Mute, Sam points to the storage entrance beside her. Sweat teases off Jack's brow. He stops short, however, at the sight of his best friend, eyes unfocused, huddled in the corner. Daniel's hands shake where they hug his knees.
And every last inch of Jack softens.
It is such an abrupt, moving thing that tears sting Sam's eyes. Jack immediately lowers into a crouch. He clasps Walter's shoulder.
"Thanks, Walter."
Harriman nods, pausing his gentle reassurances to Daniel. "Anytime, sir. I don't think he's in the present yet."
Jack's eyes pool. "You have no idea."
Walter steps back but doesn't leave the closet. Neither does Sam. She shoos everyone else away.
When she turns back, Jack has crept forward with Daniel's head under his palm. It looks to be the only touch Daniel will allow, taut as a bungee line.
"I'm here, Daniel," Jack sooths in a caramel warm tone Sam has never heard from him before. Maybe one he used with his son. "Lookin' for some paper, hmm? Bet all this cement and technology threw you off."
Now that Sam has caught her breath, she too notices blocks of yellow paper strewn on the floor, clearly the reason Daniel came to office supply in the first place. She can picture it: Daniel with a box of paper in hand, dissociating, knees weak.
Jack's face falls when Daniel's ragged breathing speeds up.
The man's eyes are glazed, pained. "Jack?"
"Still right here."
The linguist's voice scales into something frantic. "Jack?"
Nearly vibrating with helplessness, Jack reaches forward and slips a hand onto Daniel's cheek.
Maybe it is the familiar callouses or maybe it is a private gesture. Maybe the general's hands are warm or the smell of cologne and sweat grounds Daniel.
Whatever it is, Daniel's eyes snap onto Jack and don't let go. "Jack. There you are. Oh…oh…"
Jack's breathing hitches. "Danny," he breathes.
The general's arms envelope Daniel like floodwaters, cradling the man to his chest. He rocks faintly.
Daniel doesn't fight the fierce hold but he doesn't cling back either, body boneless and weak. His nose does find its way to the left crook of Jack's neck.
Walter nods, and Sam envies that he understands something she doesn't.
"The SGC," says Jack. "You're here. I'm here."
"Four digits today?"
Walter bows his head at this. Jack's throat works. Sam hasn't felt this confused since astrophysics in first year.
"Yeah," Jack finally says. "We made it home."
Daniel blinks at last, after what feels like eons of blank staring.
Walter leaves and comes back with a blanket, which he wraps around both men. Jack doesn't notice, face buried as it is in the side of Daniel's hair. He whispers in what Sam belatedly recognizes as Norse. Not a language he knew before he went on this mission.
Jack has refused to return to Washington since. Rumours spread that he might give up his job.
At the very least, he requests vacation time.
Vacation time. To stay at the mountain.
Even Teal'c is baffled.
They sleep in separate quarters, sure. All very kosher to the untrained eye.
At first, Sam listens for nightmares, for whatever glossed over trauma must have occurred. She even catches Jack going into Daniel's room for a brief minute.
She pokes her head in and sees both men awake, sitting on the floor with their backs against the bed, eyes vacant.
Pale faced. Utterly silent.
That throws everyone off more than anything. The lack of sound. How Daniel and Jack have passed from fluid conversationalists to practically telepathic. How they communicate without being in the same room.
Once, Jack comes into the briefing room with a bandage before Daniel even realized he was bleeding. The back of his elbow, from some sculpture.
Landry and Cam look on in total, amazed silence while Jack cleans the wound and then exits with a salute and a lopsided grin.
Then comes the ticking.
Daniel sleeps with a loud analog clock next to his ear.
Only once Sam catches Daniel weeping, when someone steals the clock. Jack lambastes an asinine sergeant for that. Who is mysteriously unemployed the next day.
Each morning, Jack has to touch everything in his quarters until that haunted look in his eyes dissipates.
Yet their routines don't change.
To the unfeeling supervisors, Daniel completes his duties with more efficiency than ever. Jack even does some pro bono work. Cameron, Sam, and Walter try to convince Landry one day that something is very, very wrong, but he doesn't see it.
Daniel and Jack pass their psych evaluations with flying colours, with only a post-it note that both men are, "a little drained."
Once, in a truly bizarre episode that everyone remembers and no one talks about, Daniel and Jack choose to have lunch in the cafeteria. Which isn't so bizarre—
But their glaring match with the Lucky Charms is.
Each man has a bowl of the sugary cereal on his plate, no matter that it's four in the afternoon, along with fudge and blue Jello. Sam wants to be concerned about their diet if she isn't so happy that they're finally eating.
She catches a snippet of their hushed conversation—
"I thought this would help," Jack laments.
"Me too. I wanted it to ground us…"
Jack huffs. "Why do we miss mutton legs so much if they were rotten? Like, all the time."
Daniel takes off his glasses to massage his nose. "All I know is the sugar feels…wrong."
"Daniel?"
"Jack?"
Jack purses his lips. "Remember that Narnia book? The one where the kids grow up to become kings and queens and live to be over forty years old but then they suddenly come back and have to do elementary school all over again?"
Daniel hides his face in his hand. His eyes are red and very bright.
"No magic door for us this time," he says, voice like a reed.
Sam goes cold then. These aren't the same men.
Even if she doesn't know what happened she knows that it changed them. Or…wore them down. Like she's looking at elderly Daniel and Jack in their younger bodies.
Jack isn't as fiery, doesn't get riled up so easily.
Cam tries to rib Jack about his weak basketball arm. Jack just throws the man a sad smile and says, "you'll understand someday. Thanks for pointing it out, though. I'll work on that."
Cam is too stunned for a comeback.
Daniel and Jack do enjoy being with people, though. Especially if someone is a little tipsy and starts a drinking song at lunch even though everyone is on duty.
When Sam sees how this comforts them, like some transcendent ritual, she buys a mammoth decanter of bourbon and keeps it in the staff lounge.
Sometimes Daniel sits with Teal'c and burns up old photographs. Teal'c, despite his concern, lets Daniel do so. Sometimes Daniel falls asleep on the floor and Jack, sweating, pounds on the door.
When Teal'c opens it, Jack immediately deflates upon seeing his friend. He sits next to Daniel and takes deep breaths.
Every time.
This goes on for a solid month.
It is small consolation, but Daniel is now somewhat pliable, no fight or fire left in him at all. He mutters over old texts and doesn't fight Sam when she wraps her arms around him from behind, kissing his shoulder.
He just nods and says, "hello."
So she tries to do it every day. To infuse life into the spirit that is stripped of all pride, good and bad.
Sam finds Daniel one morning in a startled Cameron's quarters, conked out on the floor with a hand on the colonel's wrist. On a pulse point.
Cam, eyes wet, covers the archaeologist in a blanket and pats his back. They leave him to sleep.
The sixth week, Landry approves Daniel's first mission back.
Daniel makes it halfway up the ramp, all geared up, peppy as can be during the briefing. Cam and Teal'c laugh softly beside him at one of Vala's wild stories.
And then Daniel stops at the event horizon.
He quietly asks Sam: "What year is it?"
Sam, eyes wide and darting from his shaking hands to Landry at the control window, gently squeezes his arm. "It's the twenty first century, Daniel. You're safe."
Daniel thanks her with a warm nod, straight faced once more.
And then he turns on his heel. Walks away from a stunned SG-1 and doesn't look back. Landry later agrees to his request of a desk job.
By the eighth week, Jack gives up pretense and asks for retirement. So, of course, the Air Force throws him a huge bash, complete with outdoor venue.
Sam drives over with him in the truck, just the two of them, though Jack often checks on Teal'c—well, Daniel—in the car behind them.
"Isn't it amazing, Carter?"
Sam leans closer. "What is, sir?"
"Jack," he corrects. "I'm not on duty anymore."
Sam blinks. "Jack, then. What's amazing?"
He smiles, really smiles. Full broad view of teeth and all. "That we find each other in this time and this place, out of the thousands of planets and time periods. Amazing! Absolutely unreal! And a lot of them suck, you know that?"
Sam, throat thick, has no reply.