'Well I know, dear brother,
That the sand it falls away…
We chose our own roads
But no matter what the cost
No, nothing was lost—
You are my brother and with my brother I am found.'

"Brother" ~ Royal Wood and Peter Katz

Memory and reality blurred.

They threaded a silk wave, woven and smothering and pulling Daniel under.

His hands still pushed at the gun and he fought Hughes' attempts to shoot him again. His jaw was rebar, quivering and flexing.

He barely felt the acid in his shoulder over encroaching panic. Vala's mutilated body flashed before his eye.'

"Jack! Save Vala!"

Jack hesitated. He hesitated. Then he snatched Daniel around the waist and flung him back.

Spears hailed from the ceiling, from hidden facets in the walls.

And screaming. So much screaming.

"Vala! Vala!"

"How fitting," Hughes hissed in Daniel's ear where he knelt over Daniel. Blood pooled under their knees. "That we should return to PX-725. The planet that split you and Jack apart, where you lost your dear friend. We've come full circle."

Daniel's heart galloped. He'd lost sight of Jack. Why had Jack's mind sent them here, of all places?

Only the temple loomed over them, the entrance still stained with Cam's blood. Humidity choked the jungle air. This was an evil place, dense and empty of life.

Hughes' and Daniel's arms trembled. They hardly seemed to be moving at all but Daniel thrust his last ounce of energy into keep that gun away from his head.

"Revenge is all I have left, Dr. Jackson," said Steel. "Time to pay your dues."

I'm so sorry, Jack.

Brute strength was the only thing standing between Daniel and the end of the road. And his was fading. Fast. Death had finally arrived to claim the debt-ridden humans of SG-1.

Daniel closed his eyes and shoved.

CRACK!

WH-BANG! WH-BANG!

Bone gave under Daniel's waning adrenaline. Shocked, he opened his eyes to see Hughes' wide, surprised gaze. Daniel had broken his gun hand and the wrist joint.

It hung like a shepherd's crook…

Facing inwards.

As one, Steel and Daniel looked down at Hughes' stomach. Twin red flowers blossomed from his abdomen. The bullets burrowed in the temple at his back.

They met each other's eyes and for a millisecond, they were just two brothers fighting for their families. Daniel saw himself, saw the bitterness, saw the longing. Every broken crack in his hope.

They were equals.

Hughes slid sideways, hit the dust, and moved no more.

Cold flushed through Daniel's body. Something snapped inside his heart and he wondered, inside that secret room of his soul, if he should ever have opened the 'gate at all, if there was any point in the fleshly hubris of it all.

He shivered, wet with blood, and dragged himself, army crawl style, wincing for every few inches of ground gained. It left a long, scarlet trail in his wake.

"Jack? Jack!"

"There y'are, Danny…"

Daniel scrabbled over to where Jack lay on his back under a break in the trees.

The detritus sloped around Jack, air whispering with all the tenderness of a child.

More than a thousand years and Daniel wasn't sure he had ever truly seen Jack O'Neill, in full, until this breathless moment.

Jack, still in his leather jacket, stared at Daniel.

Daniel, body swaying, stared at Jack.

For one infinite minute, they were the only thing that existed. Daniel wondered how he had ever resented this man, the one who'd given him back a beating heart. The man he'd given back a will to live. To reject suicide.

So stunned, it took Daniel a minute to realize how fragile this was and yet how utterly unbreakable:

The only thing that gave them hope to live was each other. The only thing that could take it away was the loss of each other.

And suddenly, Daniel understood.

His chest buckled.

"All this time," Daniel sobbed, "you were looking for—"

"For you. You went away. I…I…couldn't find you. I couldn't find you. My hjartamogr."

"I'm here now," Daniel said, cupping Jack's cheek. He sounded years younger. "I'm so sorry, Jack, for blaming Vala's death on you."

"I chose you that day," Jack coughed. Daniel coughed too. Their blood mingled on the ground. "And I'd make that decision every time."

There are some emotions that defy name. A conglomeration of so many moments and actions that to label them would be disrespect.

Daniel experienced one then, making pliable every last centimeter of his face.

Jack trailed off, eyes glazed. "Danny? Where's Sam? We should be checking in with Hammond by now."

Daniel wept. He didn't have the heart to tell Jack that Hammond had died over five years ago.

Jack's eyes closed. Daniel pressed his neck for a pulse.

Nothing.

"No!" Daniel's body heaved with pain and sobs. "I did not search half of time and space for you to leave me now!"

He tried to pump Jack's chest, administer CPR, but his arms gave out.

"I can't do this without you…Even the 'gate I…never could…"

Daniel lacked even the strength to kneel. The pain in his shoulder vanished, a sudden cut off of heat and fire, and his heart rate slowed.

He stretched out beside Jack, head on his static chest. It was a weak embrace but Daniel held on with everything he had.

"Night's falling, Jack. Look. Here come…the…stars…"

Black closed in on Daniel. His eyes slid shut.

The world was a symphony with that ever impending fermata—their final cadence had come.

Those on Earth felt a ripple, Sam's suspended animation. Second hands on clocks stopped around the world. The universe breathed as one and Daniel's tears reflected the stars.

He shifted and something underneath him rolled.

The second Scrambler.

It was a weak hope. A dying man with a dying idea. The third layer of the Scrambler was the core, made of an unknown substance that neither he nor Jack had tried to touch. Daniel did what he had never dared in a thousand years.

He opened it.


Daniel pressed the glyphs and the device's hood retracted with a whir.

And for the first time in his life, he felt fear. Not of death, though that was guaranteed and sealed the moment he opened the Scrambler. No one survived looking into its depths.

No, his fear wasn't of life ending—

But of the stars.

For the first time, Daniel Jackson glimpsed the created cosmos and arcane terror wrenched through his body.

The dirt disappeared and all around him was only the frosty, speckled theatre of time and space. They, the stars and galaxies, were in him. He was them. Starlight burned through every inch of his cells.

Daniel's mouth opened in a long scream, layered with voices. As if he were all the Daniels who had ever lived at once: the higher pitched tone of his eight year old self watching his parents die, his present, agonized self, his elderly self at the end of a lifetime he never got to live.

Daniel wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to believe that Time was a line.

Suddenly an anchor was there, thumb linked with Daniel's thumb, fingers wrapped over his knuckles as if they were about to arm wrestle.

Daniel stared in awe.

The very ends of Jack's hair glowed. Reds and oranges and blue and purples seeped from every pore and his eyes swirled like planetary rings. It was blinding to look at.

SpaceTime tried to tear back what was its own, but with hands linked, minds linked, it could not claim either Daniel or Jack.

All at once, Daniel heard the cacophony. Noise. The vibration of every star and hue and the very hum of Jack's inner life. Jack's grief was the most painful thing Daniel had ever experienced. He screamed again.

Jack didn't open his mouth, but Daniel felt the thought in his fingertips and in his nostrils and the follicles of his hair:

"Danny."

It pulsed in time with cosmos, clear as a PA system in Daniel's brain but soft as a lullaby. Daniel probed into the space where Charlie used to be, trying to soothe whatever was causing this pain.

The space wasn't empty anymore.

Daniel's eyes snapped onto Jack's.

"I…I'm there," Daniel vibrated, shocked.

Jack's answering hum was so pleased, proud in a fond way, that no words did it justice.

Their hands melded together in a flame of orange and rose light. The humming beats of their spirits were in perfect harmony.

Down to the last nook of Jack's heart, his being, Daniel saw his own fingerprints all over it, each one lovingly preserved.

Daniel reached out.

So did Jack.

Daniel shed tears of light, every drop plinking into a new star. They too matched Jack's heartbeat.

"You are my heartbeat," came Jack's hum.

The moment their souls touched, the galaxies exploded. Death shrieked back. For the first time in human history, earthly eyes glimpsed Time and came back alive.


Silence had the last word, the last laugh, for so long that it could have been an eternity.

When Daniel finally opened his lids, it was to see himself sprawled on his left side beside the Time Scrambler. Shattered fragments littered the dirt.

His limbs weighed more than he ever imagined. He lay there like a man paralyzed.

Then brown eyes met his blue across the sand. Jack lay on his right side, not three feet from Daniel where the blast had thrown them apart.

They stared at each other.

Their cracked lips had healed and Daniel no longer felt his bullet wounds. His lungs were clear. The pain in his ribs and palms had vanished. Daniel had lost his glasses at some point but suddenly no longer needed them. Every grain of sand was microscopically in focus.

The two men only had eyes for each other, their bodies glowing faintly.

They didn't blink.

They hardly breathed.

But under Daniel's skin, he sensed Jack's pulse.

Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum.

Daniel slowed his breathing so it matched that rhythm. Jack smiled faintly.

They lay there until the earth cooled. Daniel almost couldn't fathom it, linear time, measured days. It seemed like child's play.

Jack smiled again, as if he'd heard this thought. He probably had.

At last, when the sun was almost gone, a faint tremor in Daniel's limbs woke him from the trance-like stupor.

Jack responded immediately. He shuffled over on all fours, all traces of the drug vanished. He touched Daniel's forehead with his own.

"Danny."

The archaeologist's cheeks lifted in a messy, sincere grin. This time real tears came.

"Jack."

Even the names had a heartbeat. Daniel marveled that he'd never heard it before.

"You saved my life," said Jack. "Hughes would've gone on drugging me. He…he gave me the passcodes for the base, used my therapy appointments to plant the idea that if I found another Scrambler I'd find you."

Daniel shook his head. "You saved my spirit."

Jack's eyes shone. "Takes one to know one."

Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum.

Daniel reached up. Jack met him half way, pulling him into his arms and thumbing the tears from Daniel's eyes.

"I think it's time to retire."

"You are retired," huffed Daniel into Jack's shoulder. "But you need a break, that's for sure. Go fishing in that fish-less lake."

Jack cradled the back of Daniel's head. "That's not what I meant."

"Maybe it is time," said Daniel quietly. "For me to…"

His voice trailed off after a moment.

Neither could find their feet. Despite being healed, they were weak. So they sat on the ground and hugged each other like the world was ending.

It had, after all.

Suddenly, Daniel felt old around the eyes. So old it didn't have a title. "Are we going to make it, Jack?"

Jack was silent for such a stretch that Daniel gave up waiting for a real answer. They huddled on the jungle floor for hours, Jack's fingers hooked into the fabric of Daniel's bloody shirt, nose in his hair.

The stars sang quietly and Daniel's ears resonated with the sound of it all.

"You're here," said Jack finally. "That's always been good enough for me."

Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum.


I cried writing the end of this chapter, the insular profundity of their simple, messy friendship.