AN: This chapter was probably my favourite to write and it references 7x18, 'Heroes: Part 2.'

tw: for a quick reference about a character's past suicidal ideations.


Jangle-splat.

"S'was a r'lly great…"

Jangle-skr-splat.

"R'lly great baker. Ever have her uh…umm…pu'kin bread?"

Jack is, you know, an Air Force colonel. A real one with stars on his dress blues and everything. He did more tours in the sandbox than he likes to think about and seen good men die by rogue bullets to the neck. He's fought aliens on other planets, come back from the dead, technically speaking—more than once.

And yet somehow the sight of Daniel playing corn maze around cars in the parking lot of the SGC still surprises him.

It's after midnight, meaning there's no else around at this hour; all the cars belong to night shift workers five storeys beneath their shoes. A chain link fence around the lot has kept Daniel from straying into trees or the brook chattering beside the road.

Over the peak of Cheyenne Mountain on Jack's right, a full moon blossoms from silvery clouds.

"Th' best," Daniel insists, apparently to himself.

Jangle-th-splat go his keys. Again. Daniel bends for the umpteenth time to retrieve them off the asphalt, flannel sweater hanging loose on one side. His clothes have been baggy a lot lately, something Jack only notes in this moment of staring at his friend's scarecrow figure. Only one set of shoe laces are tied.

"Uh…Danny Boy?" Jack recalibrates his planned checklist of diner takeout—home—beer—hockey game to tread up to his friend. Very carefully.

The caution is in part thanks to a healing thicket of bandages on his chest, meaning he can't move too fast, and in part to assess Daniel's mental state. Mainly because Jack's never seen him in this state before.

"Where's m' truck?" Daniel asks of the fence, the one he walks straight into.

Jack's mouth flips up on one side, slanted with worry on the other. "You don't drive a truck. You own a car."

Daniel notices him this time, turning at Jack's voice. A faint red line mars his cheek from the fence.

"Jack?"

"The one and only."

"Y' sure?"

"Absolutely." Jack doesn't know what it says about his life experience that he answers without a hiccup, used to bizarre questions from his sometimes equally strange friend. He steps under a lamp in the corner of the lot so he's lit up enough for Daniel to see. "Jack O'Neill, two Ls, at your service."

"What're you doin' here?"

Jack walks closer but stops when Daniel backs away, pace for pace. "Driving home for the night. Unlike you."

"Can' find m…my…"

The keys are about to slip from shaky fingers in an encore performance but Jack snatches them out of the air before they hit the ground.

"Oh!" Daniel gawps at them, even after Jack tucks the keys away in his back pocket. "There they are. Couldn't find m' keys eit'er."

"That's probably for the best."

"Y'ever have the…the cinnam'n buns?" Daniel nearly lurches into the hood of a parked SUV. Jack grabs him by the elbow until he stops swaying. "Hers were 'mazing."

Daniel's a bit skittish, rigid under Jack's hand, but he allows the touch once he lifts his head to examine Jack from behind low sitting glasses. As if to confirm for himself that this gray-haired apparition is telling the truth.

"…Jjjjjjack."

"Still me."

"M'kay." Daniel relaxes.

Jack's relieved about that—right up until Daniel relaxes a little too far and tilts at a wonky angle. His knees wobble. He catches himself on someone's side mirror before Jack can.

"Jack?"

"Yes, my inebriated linguist?"

Daniel's nose scrunches. "Her bread?"

Jack sighs. "No, Daniel, I never got to have any of her pumpkin bread. She brought me cinnamon buns in the infirmary once, though. How'd you even get out here on your own?"

"El'vator. Not…no drink'n fer me."

Yeah right. Jack gets in Daniel's space, just enough to gauge the bloodshot eyes, ashen skin, and pupils dilated far enough that they swallow most of the electric blue iris. Cold skin too, like his blood pressure tanked at some point.

His voice is pitched normally, however slurred, and digits on his hands tremble faintly rather than swanning around like Jack's do when he's had a few too many.

Plus, Daniel doesn't smell a lick like alcohol.

Huh.

Maybe Jack's judgement was hasty, especially in light of the fact that Daniel doesn't like drinking. He won't talk about why this is, but Jack's seen him tense up when drunk airmen argue or a playful thump on the back makes him jolt away…he can do the math.

"Even you couldn't possibly have gotten injured at a memorial party." Jack holds Daniel still with one hand on his friend's shoulder while his right shuffles the sweater back into place as a not-so-sneaky way to check for injury. Paramedics cleared Daniel almost seventy-two hours ago, but Jack's not sure he trusts this simple once-over. "The most dangerous thing there was Carter attempting to cut finger sandwiches with a laser."

"'S really nice," Daniel muses, hand in a listless wander over Jack's chest, "what Sam s…said. In th' gate room."

Jack can't help a wince when the heel of Daniel's hand hits a spot just above his abdomen.

"Sssssorrry." Daniel's brow beetles.

"That's alright. Your coordination isn't exactly winning any awards at the moment."

"It hurt?"

Jack hesitates, doing some musing of his own about whether Daniel will remember any of this in the morning. "A bit. Burns suck."

"Yeah, they rrr…" Hitch. "Really do."

The association hits Jack a split second later than it should, when Daniel's watery eyes jazz square back and forth across Jack's chest. Pain lances through the diaphragm burns for a different reason.

Jack squeezes the back of Daniel's neck. "I'm fine. I'm sorry for how many people you've had to watch…I'm sorry."

"Had a headache."

Another beat of quiet. Jack's mind parses through this. "Okay…?"

"Took a' asp…asp-asssp—"

"Aspirin?"

"Yeah!" Daniel points in triumph. "That's it. Siler's."

Suspicion—and dread—creep through Jack. "Danny, did Siler actually hand you the Aspirin?"

"N…" Another peek through the lenses. Daniel checks on Jack's face as best he can with what Jack guesses is a wicked case of double vision. "No. Said I coul' haff one from his med'cine stash in the barracks."

"Did you bother to turn on a light when you foraged through Siler's infamous pill bag?"

"No. Hur' my eyes. Had a headache," he repeats, as if Jack somehow forgot Daniel's key point in the last thirty seconds of this conversation.

Digging deep for the strength to remain calm, Jack spreads his fingers into a placating hand. "Let me guess, you grabbed a white bottle with a blue label on it?"

"Yyyyyep."

"Daniel—Siler gets seizures, petit mal mostly, from one too many concussions on this job. He takes special medication for it."

Daniel squints at him. "Okay."

"On top of that, you popped an antihistamine before the memorial service. Remember? Because of all the flowers."

Daniel's eyes widen. "Tha'ss why the moon is ringin' real loud."

"Yes, that's why the moon is ringing." Jack tries to sigh but it ends in a soft expression. He's glad there's no else around to see it. "You're a little high at the moment, me thinks."

"Though' maybe iss ringin' for her."

Jack skips this sentiment entirely. "Mixing medications can be lethal, especially two so strong."

The watery eyes get dangerously full. "'S why it hurts."

Jack pauses from rooting through pockets for his cellphone. His grip on Daniel's shoulder tightens. "What hurts?"

Daniel sniffs. "In here."

Rather than point to his heart, like some poignant ending to a poignant movie, Daniel gestures to his stomach.

"How badly? When did it start?"

Daniel shrugs. "Din' hurt at first, 'til I got out here."

Jack finds his Nokia in record time after that, phoning downstairs to engineering's main line. After a harried conversation with Siler—"No, sir, the medication shouldn't cause any adverse side effects other than wooziness, low blood pressure, and impaired motor function. I take a low dose anyway. No need to pump his stomach. When he's coherent, tell him I'm sorry about the mix up."—then the infirmary, they determine that Daniel will probably recover with a good night's sleep and a few litres of high electrolyte fluids over the following hours.

And food. Real food.

Jack finally hangs up, feeling he's aged ten years in the span of that ten minute conversation. His hands shake too, where he rubs them down his face. "Did you eat tonight?"

Daniel's off looking at the fence again. "Had some egg salad s'ndwiches. I think."

"That's a good start. The only thing worse than drugs in your stomach is drugs on an empty stomach. We might not need to run to the hospital if we can get you settled from here."

Daniel doesn't reply. A quiet Daniel is not a healthy Daniel, in Jack's experience, so he shifts the grip from Daniel's bicep down around his back to shepherd him towards the middle of the lot. Daniel goes without protest, but his eyes remain pinched.

"I'm walking and talking, Daniel."

"Y' got blasted."

Jack's voice drops to a hoarse murmur. "Yeah…yeah I did. I'm okay now."

I'm glad you didn't see me go down.

But then again, Daniel wouldn't have to imagine what it must have been like. The way flesh smells when it's curdled into the air on flecks of ash and smoke. How people shout and shriek but you don't hear it after a while because the nerve endings in your body are louder. He's not only lived it but—

"A truck!" Daniel brightens once Jack leads his newborn calf steps to the pickup. It breaks him from dark thoughts. "There i' is."

"This is my truck, Danny."

"'S what I said."

"How you've survived this long is a miracle." Jack's grumpy declaration is met by a hand in his hair.

"No mystery, Jack. 'S cause we're not done yet."

That's quite literal light years away from the rebuttal Jack expects. He prods Daniel into the passenger's seat and just blinks at his friend. It's tempting to pass off this statement as the product of Daniel's barely-with-it brain, but then again this is the most coherent thing he's said to Jack all night.

Daniel is also lucid enough to buckle his own seatbelt. In theory.

"Gimme that." Jack watches his disjointed fumbling—Daniel misses the slot a solid five times—before he reaches across Daniel's waist and clicks the buckle tight. "This is like herding a sloth, you know that?"

"Sloth?"

Jack grins, despite himself. "Because you're slow moving at the moment but you still keep missing the tree."

While it is rather nice to have a docile Daniel who actually does what Jack tells him for once, the miles-away eyes and uncoordinated fingers send a chill down his spine.

"Sloths ar…aren't native to Col'rado, Jack."

"Of course that's the piece of information your brain bumps on." Jack waits for Daniel to finish whatever ritual he's doing with the hand in his hair, waits for the gentle touch and long fingers to retreat, before stepping back. "You good?"

"Good as a' inchworm."

"I'll take that as a yes."

Once Jack closes the door, runs around to the other side, and buckles his own seatbelt…he doesn't move. Can't move. Keys hang from the ignition but he doesn't turn them.

Maybe it's the sound of them breathing, so audible suddenly in the smaller cab space. Maybe it's the smell of hummus and bean casserole lingering on their clothes. Maybe it's the salty aftertaste of tears they haven't let anyone see.

Whatever it is, it keeps Jack firmly in his seat, hands on either side, for a full, hushed two minutes. Jack and Daniel sit in the dark, in the utter stillness of Cheyenne Mountain's shadow at one in the morning. They just breathe.

Then Daniel's arms slowly wind around his middle.

"Still hurt?" Jack asks, just above a whisper to avoid breaking the peace.

"Sam…" Daniel's eyes flick around. "Sam tried t' make pum'kin bread for the wake. It…it wasn't the same."

This isn't even remotely an answer to the question—but at the same time it is.

Jack understands in one rude clap. He palms Daniel's stomach. "Grief does funny things to us, huh?"

"Feel sick."

"Yeah, bud. I do too."

The drugs have certainly run amok in Daniel's body, but Jack sees now that this is not what made him ill. That he felt this way long before he looted Siler's stash in the dark.

"You need a bucket or anything?"

"Not tha' kind of sick."

Jack hums, nodding. Instead of green, Daniel's skin has taken on a gray pallor, especially with all the shivers. Daniel hugs himself tight for warmth and comfort and Jack's not sure he's ever felt so lost.

It can't be true, it can't be. Losing Charlie is the worst Jack has felt in his whole life, compounded by wanting to kill himself. He felt so lost he didn't want to find home ever again.

Until a gangly, bespectacled academic irritated him into seeing that maybe dying is not the best solution. Maybe there's more to live for.

"Maybe we're not done yet." Jack says it aloud, like they're in a confessional booth. Or perhaps it's just Jack and he's been dumping his woes onto Daniel for years.

"Tha'ss…that's what I'm saying." Daniel shivers so hard Jack hears his teeth clack.

"Hang on." He unbuckles to crane around in the back storage area. "Here. This should help."

Daniel accepts the old mustard corduroy jacket without a word, musty smell and all. Jack grabs one of Daniel's wrists, icy to the touch, and helps thread it through the sleeve. Daniel figures out the one closest to the door on his own.

They don't even attempt the buttons; Jack just folds the lapels over each other and Daniel's self hug does the rest. Jack's gut does some odd acrobatics upon seeing that Daniel's chest isn't broad enough to fill out the jacket.

"Lived this long caus'a you."

Jack's back to blinking. He shifts so he can face Daniel. "You've also nearly died because of me, in case you don't remember."

But Daniel's on a mission now. That face is one Jack's seen a million times, high or not.

Daniel shakes his head, which must set him dizzy enough that he plants a hand on the centre console between them. "No—y'make me wanna keep…keep going. Keep bein' excited 'bout life."

Oh, that's…oh.

Jack pats Daniel's hand—also very carefully, like it might explode. "Ditto, kiddo."

Daniel's makes a face. "Not a kid."

"Uh-huh."

"'M a respe'ted arch…archeo…linguist."

"A linguist who can't tell Aspirin from Valium or whatever it was."

Daniel's mouth droops. "She was ex'ssited 'bout life too. Not sure the…th' tape captured that."

Jack's nerves buzz, from the back of his elbow to a sore spot behind his heels where he fell. Up and down in high voltage arcs. It keeps him firmly rooted for three heartbeats.

His mouth opens without his permission in the end, the electricity of a person's absence neutralizing the already supercharged cage around his heart. Not that Daniel's ever needed to knock it down. Jack handed him the keys long ago and pretends, just for show, that he's surprised every time Daniel shows up.

"I watched the tape," says Jack, very low.

I heard you screaming. The sounds will haunt Jack until the day he dies, he knows full well.

Daniel bends to brush his nose across the jacket's lapel. He breathes in the scent. "Hope it did her jus'ice."

"It did, Daniel. It did."

At the precarious angle, his glasses slip down even farther. Balanced like a feather upon his nose, ever so fragile and uncertain. Will they stay or will they fall?

"Jack, 'm glad you're…that you didn't…"

"Sshhh." Jack soothes his friend not because Daniel's about to cry, but because his eyes have that thousand-yard quality Jack doesn't ever want to see. The sound works and Daniel's gaze refocuses. "I didn't die, Daniel."

"You're the first one." Daniel's voice cracks. "Ev'one who gets blasted, they don' make it."

"I did."

"Barely."

Jack leans closer. "I'm right here."

"They a'ways leave in the end."

It's unclear even to Jack exactly when his hand landed in Daniel's hair, but the role reversal calms him at once. Daniel too, whose jaw closes with a click.

"I'm not leaving you behind, Danny." Jack's voice slips back to that whisper, for he fears speaking any louder will leave him a mess. "I'm sorry for what you went through. What she went through. Both three days ago and four years ago."

Daniel's fingers curl and uncurl, hidden within sleeves that are too long for him.

In a knee jerk reflex, Jack takes the hand off Daniel's hair and pushes up his glasses with two fingers.

Daniel finally makes direct eye contact.

"Not ever," Jack reiterates, vehement and soft. "Even when you don't need me anymore."

Daniel's brows fly up above his glasses. "Won' be soon."

"Just you wait."

"Okay," says Daniel, and Jack's reminded that for all the emotions raging through them both—he still has a drugged friend sitting next to him who can't tell a truck from a car. The responsibility and privilege of that hit him afresh.

Jack also knows Daniel could never have had this conversation in his right mind, not this open and without much more dancing around the grief before running headfirst into it.

"How does steak and hockey sound?"

"I don' wan' my steak on ice. S'pposed to use a puck."

"No, Mr. Three PhDs." Jack tries to sound firm and fails miserably. His mouth fights a smile. "I mean we'll eat steak and watch a game of hockey."

"Oh."

Daniel thinks about this for an absurd amount of time, long enough for Jack to pull out from the employee entrance and down the highway. More buildings and streetlamps pop up as he heads towards the town's favourite diner.

"Medium."

"What's that?"

Daniel repeats it slowly, and to see him try this hard is so endearing Jack almost pulls over to dig out a camera. "Wan' my steak medium."

"Sounds like a plan."

By the time Jack picks up their takeout and turns into his driveway, Daniel's half asleep and muttering to himself in Portuguese. Jack considers replying with the few words he knows, just to startle his friend. But the joke dies on his lips when Daniel wakes, right as the engine shuts off, and looks at him with those too-dilated eyes. Too trusting.

"Home?"

"Yes, dear sloth. We're home."

"Night."

Jack snorts. "Gold star. You got it in one, it's dark out—night time."

The truth of it smacks him a minute later, when he helps Daniel stumble out to his feet. They begin the hilarious but monumental task of climbing the porch steps.

"Night," Daniel says again, patting the truck's tailgate, voice guileless. It piques Jack's curiosity, if this a glimpse into what tiny Daniel was like before life dealt him a cruel hand.

Next, Daniel taps the porch. "Night."

With both arms full, Jack takes a mental photograph of the moment. He vows to never tell anyone this story. They'd never believe him anyway.

Then Daniel looks up at a splatter of stars overhead. They're not as bright, with the big moon, but Daniel gets a wistful, wrung out sponge of a look on his face and Jack holds his breath.

"Night, Janet. Hope y'r happy up there."

Daniel keeps moving, as if by some superpower he can make it inside without faceplanting. Jack hardly has the presence of mind to stop him, struck dumb by the words and the warmth of his friend against his side and frigid spring air.

Wonder seeps into his skin like a balm, cooling the fire ignited inside his chest at the sight of the casket. He breathes for what feels like the first time in two days. It's only a split second, just a moment, but Jack sees his own life from outside it, how much he's been given…

And how much they have left to do. To witness. To love.

He too glances at the stars.

"I'll take care of them, Doc. Long as I can."