'How long have I known you, brother?
Hundreds of lives, thousands of years.
How many miles have we wandered
Under the sky, chasing our fear?'
"Brother" ~ Lord Huron
When Daniel first materialized—picture skydiving without the parachute or even ground to fall towards—he thought Jack's failing mind had miscalculated.
Daniel, even standing, had to arch his neck back to see it:
A pyramid.
An honest to God, Giza-esque pyramid.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this one takes people to the distant past like the first Scrambler.
As per the first Scrambler, every man had to have a hand on the activator—Jack. Otherwise they couldn't make the trip with him.
It was almost comical to see three tactical men and a lanky software engineer palming Jack's arms.
Daniel had only been able to grab a fistful of Hughes' shirt but apparently that was enough. They all dematerialized in a show of golden dust.
Or maybe Jack just took us home and happened to land in modern Egypt.
Daniel turned. Then where were all the tourists? The archaeological digs and railings? The pickpockets?
There was no one around for miles. Only a long, sandy ramp. The desert landscape was completely undisturbed.
Then their chests began to quiver, their fingertips, their teeth. Lightning crackled in the sky.
Not lightning…
Suddenly Daniel knew when they were, with unfailing certainty. He knew.
"No. Nononono." He turned to Hughes. "We can't be here. We could mess up the past!"
Hughes sneered at him. "Exactly."
Daniel coughed again. Blood sprayed the sand. His sternum heaved. He stared at Hughes in a new light.
"Reilly deserves better," said one of the men.
Daniel's breath left him in a rush. "Reilly…You…you're Reilly Ackman's brother?"
Hughes' lips lifted but it wasn't a smile. "Welcome to the program, Doctor."
Daniel's mind spun. Ackman. One of the soldiers who'd accompanied them on that very first mission through the 'gate, sixteen years ago. He'd been left with another man overnight to stand guard.
I…I'm on Abydos. The realization came swift and blinding. Incense of the past clouded his eyes.
Daniel bowed his head to the sand, tears mixing with the crimson in his palms.
Somewhere, far in the distance, Jack and his own younger self were sharing a meal with Kasuf and the village. Daniel sobbed. In coming back to when he'd had everything—Daniel felt like he'd lost everything.
Steel was in a hurry. He hauled Daniel to his feet and ran them through a dark, ancient smelling hall at the front of the pyramid.
Hands bruised Daniel's arms where they rocketed his stumbling steps on. Daniel tried to call Jack's name but one of Hughes' men struck the archaeologist across his temple.
"Reilly!" Hughes rushed ahead.
The unmistakable whir of activated rings answered him: Ra's guards had arrived.
Everyone in the pyramid froze.
Then Steel screamed, breaking the ghastly spell. "Reilly! Reilly, hurry!"
A man came running in from the stargate's antechamber. He had Steel's lanky frame, the almost golden brown eyes, and for a moment the pangs of longing were palpably satiated.
Reilly's eyes bugged. "Lowell? What are you doing here—how—?"
"None of that matters now." Hughes gripped his brother's arm. He wept too. "I'm here to bring you home. It's going to be okay now because we can be a family again! Oh, Mom's missed you so much. But you have to come before—"
It only took a split second. Just enough time for an eyelash to brush a cheek. For Daniel to glance into the shadows. Distracted, Reilly and Hughes never saw the staff weapon aimed in their direction.
Daniel fumbled to his feet. "Look out!"
He charged forward and knocked a body out of the blast's line of fire before it landed on flesh. Someone shrieked. Chaos erupted as Hughes' men open fired, hollering commands.
Daniel opened his eyes and realized the person under him was the source of the shrieking.
"Reilly!"
Hughes bucked Daniel off him.
"Reilly!"
He scrambled over to Reilly where he lay on his back, side smoking and eyes unseeing. Steel screamed curse words that made Daniel blush, hunched over his brother and fingers on the hunt for a pulse they wouldn't find.
"Why didn't you save him?!" Hughes' grief was worse than any torture Daniel ever endured. Steel swung his fist back and landed a sloppy hit on Daniel's jaw. Daniel still reeled. "You loathsome excuse of a man! Why did you choose me?"
"I didn't. I just…"
"Everything in my life has gone wrong because of you! You opened the stargate." He kicked Daniel's stomach. "You insisted a group of men be sent through. You couldn't even die according to plan!"
Bent over, hand to his head, Daniel had a good—if spinning—view of Jack.
Or lack thereof.
For one gut splitting, world crushing moment, Daniel thought Jack had abandoned him here.
Then a shock of grey hair crawled past a column on all fours. Panicked eyes still sought something and Daniel would've given his left arm to know what it was. What had him so fixated?
"Jack!"
"Where is he?" Jack wailed.
Where is who?!
Daniel didn't realize he'd screamed this out loud until Jack's hands snapped to the Scrambler. He sat at the base of the column and began twisting the orbs.
"No!"
Hughes and Daniel said it in unison, surging forward.
The pyramid was a swath of chaos. Staff fire singed Daniel's arms, the tips of his hair. One shot off a corner of his eyebrow.
"Jack!" He made it just in time to grab Jack's ankle.
It was Daniel's first physical contact with Jack in two years.
A strangling hand grabbed Daniel's hair and then the pyramid disappeared in a swirl of amber light.
"Oof!"
The men landed with a thump, though it wasn't as hard or jarring as the first time.
Abydos' dry night was replaced with grass under Daniel's cheek. It was cool and long, due for a mowing soon.
Drizzle spattered over strange grey shapes at crooked angles in the field they'd materialized in. The gentle rain beat a tympani against oak leaves and the smooth stones.
Tombstones. They were surrounded by the peaceful, nothing silence of a cemetery.
Daniel turned at the smell of burnt flesh. Ackman knelt, surrounded by the three dead soldiers. Smoke steamed from their chests, backs, and faces.
Daniel's gaze shuttered. "I'm so sorry, Steel."
Steel removed a Glock from his waistband and pointed it at Daniel's forehead. The barrel of the gun quavered.
"Say that again and you'll be worse than my friends here. You don't deserve a death so quick."
"He was your brother," said Daniel.
Hughes' nose balled in fury. "Two years. Two years of planning for that moment and you chose me instead…it didn't…I wanted…Reilly wasn't supposed to die."
His index finger twitched on the trigger.
Daniel didn't blink. He gazed into Steel's eyes and saw his own of two years ago. Eyes that had hated Jack for what he did.
For the choice he made.
Jack's shuffling mutters broke the stalemate. Both men turned to see him kneeling by a headstone, a tiny white one. Fresh flowers and a golden teddy had been nestled beside it.
"Charlie," Daniel breathed. "Of course. Charlie is what he's been looking for all this time."
Jack caressed the stone but his brow was stormy. He kept glancing around and his lips again mouthed something.
"He's here, Jack." Daniel dared a step closer, even with the gun now prodding his back. "Hjartamogr—heart son. He's right here!"
Jack shook his head and wailed the Norse hybrid word, picked up from their earlier travels.
"Maybe he's trying to find Charlie from a time when he was alive."
Daniel never got to find out if he was right, because just then the sound of a truck engine caused them to jump. A hush gripped both men when they saw what it was—
From around the corner squealed a vintage 70s truck. Sitting at the wheel?
A sixteen years younger Colonel Jack O'Neill, hair uncut but in his dress blues, a little red eyed from visiting his son. Daniel almost didn't recognize him.
Hughes lit up. "Maybe you can be of use to me after all, Doctor."
Daniel eyed the gun warily.
"If I'm not mistaken," Hughes continued, "O'Neill is heading for the mountain, to meet you for the very first time. Take him out of the equation and the SGC will be in a rather big tizzy, don't you think? A dead colonel never looks good. Maybe they'll even open an investigation."
"What are you talking about?" Daniel snapped. He wondered if he could disarm Steel before the man could shoot him in the back.
Hughes didn't even hear him. "All of that will discourage further exploration. Dr. Jackson, distraught I'm sure, will be put on leave. He'll never get to work with the cartouche system again. My brother's life will be spared…"
"You don't know that," Daniel insisted. "Reilly might still die on a different mission, or right here at home in a car crash, for all we know."
"Shut up!"
Daniel was still trying to figure out how all of this tied together when Steel raised the gun. The truck zoomed towards them, headed for the main road. It was a point blank shot, less than six feet away.
In that instant, several things happened simultaneously:
Jack—real, present day Jack—clutched at his chest and collapsed in the grass.
His other hand squeezed and the Scrambler activated.
Daniel wrapped both hands around the barrel of the gun in a desperate, last ditch tactic.
WH-BANG!
Daniel collapsed on top of Jack, dragging Steel down with him. The golden light sucked them away and Hughes screeched.
Silence reigned over the cemetery once more and Colonel Jack O'Neill drove to get his haircut, being none the wiser. Oak trees fluttered in the breeze, watching over three dead men around a child's tombstone and a soggy teddy bear.
It was their last guard post.
Daniel, however, was in too much pain to appreciate this fantasia, even when they rematerialized several thousand light years away—
The bullet had lodged in his shoulder.
