AN: Some more angst, but hopefully you'll also see the humor here... Another strong language warning and heads up - there's a reference to something that seeme to be happening off camera in an ep that may have simply been wishful thinking for me. Please R&R!

Chapter Nine

Jack wound up on the couch. Sam wound up half on the floor and half on the coffee table.

"What the fuck was that?" Jack looked around, trying to process how he had ended up back on the couch.

"Ouch." Sam rubbed her arm and examined it stupidly for damage.

Daniel watched Sam curiously. "Can you feel pain?"

Sam frowned at him. "Apparently. Kind of takes the fun out of it."

But Jack had already forgotten about the falling and the not falling and the various reasons why. He was indignant as he responded to the question he hadn't been asked. "Of course I feel pain. Why the fuck do you think I've been drinking?"

Daniel sat back down. "I know you feel pain, Jack. I was talking to Sam."

Sam expected him to erupt again. Daniel, after he thought about how callous his words would seem to Jack, expected him to erupt again. But Jack bowed his head and said nothing. Sam and Daniel glanced at each other, unsure as to what to do. The truth was they were both used to Jack being a consummate, albeit somewhat disrespectful, professional at all times. They didn't ever see him so drunk he couldn't walk or so devastated he couldn't function or so hurt he actually cried. So when he looked up at Daniel, tears streaming down his cheeks, neither of them had a clue what to say. They sat there and stared at him, rather embarrassed by and intensely aware of their emotional shortcomings.

"She's gone, Daniel. Don't you get it? She's gone and it's my fault and all I feel is pain." His voice was so weak and raw that Sam knew all the whiskey in the world wouldn't be enough to numb him.

"Close your eyes, Jack." Daniel glanced at Sam, hoping he wasn't exacerbating things. "I can feel her. You just have to try."

Jack closed his eyes, but not in response to Daniel's words. He was trying to stave off the tears. "I should be able to feel her, Daniel. I loved her." His words brought tears to Sam's eyes, and a rueful thought as to when she was going to hear those words from him without an audience. Because, really, there was nothing like Teal'c and Janet and a Tok'ra or Daniel standing by to completely ruin the mood of a heartfelt declaration of love.

Daniel leaned forward, trying to focus on Jack rather than Sam. "You don't believe, Jack. You think when a person dies, they're gone. I don't believe that, not anymore. She's here. You have to believe it."

Jack's eyes opened again, allowing more tears to escape. "If she's here, why can't I feel her?"

Daniel's eyes were wet when he glanced at Sam. They hated seeing their friend in his current state. Daniel started to think he should back off, knowing that it would only make things worse if he kept twisting the knife in Jack's gut.

"Daniel, please, you're getting through to him. Keep trying." If Jack didn't start to believe in her and feel better, she was going to die. Again.

"She's here, Jack. I swear. If you've ever trusted me on anything, trust me on this." Daniel met Jack's hard stare for only a moment before he jumped to his feet. "Screw that! Don't trust me. Trust Sam. Would she ever leave you? Would she ever let you down?"

Jack cracked a smile and let out a horrible sound not quite like a laugh. "She'd die first." He flopped back on the couch and closed his eyes. "Oh, wait, she did."

Daniel looked at Sam and shook his head. It wasn't working. Jack was either firmly entrenched in his beliefs that there was no such thing as life after death or he really was as dense as he claimed to be. "You need to try here, Jack." He approached the couch, looking at Sam and inclining his head to tell her to get lost. She headed for the hall, giving Daniel the idea that she was leaving, but she hovered just around the corner, desperate to find out what he was going to say. Daniel sat down next to Jack, putting his hand on Jack's arm. "I just lost a very good friend, Jack. I don't want to lose you too."

Jack slowly lifted his head, staring first at Daniel's hand on his arm and then at Daniel's face. "Are you coming on to me?"

"No!" Daniel nearly flew across the room in his effort to get away. He looked up at Sam, who was leaning in the room from the hallway and giggling at them. "This isn't going to work."

Jack had no idea Daniel wasn't talking to him. "No, it's not. And I strongly advise you to keep your hands to yourself in the future." He was staring at his arm like he thought it was dirty.

Daniel looked to Sam for guidance. "Help me out here. Tell me something that's going to happen or whatever. Maybe he needs evidence."

Sam glared at him. "I'm dead, Daniel, not psychic."

"Then what good is being dead?"

She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes. "Not a whole lot which is why I need your help to get everyone to pretend I'm alive." She glanced at Jack, who was staring at Daniel with wide, frightened eyes. "Besides, he hates scientists and therefore he probably doesn't particularly enjoy the scientific method of proving a theory."

"But if we give him something he can't deny, he'll have to admit it."

"Daniel, this is Jack! He'd swear that the moon was made of cheese if he thought it would piss you off."

Jack cleared his throat, trying to get Daniel's attention without admitting that it very much appeared Daniel was having a conversation with a hallucination. "Um, Daniel, if you don't mind, could you ask Teal'c to relieve you cause you're crazier than I am and it's freaking me out."

"I got it!" Sam ran across the room and grabbed Daniel's shoulders. "Just before you got here, he could see me. He almost kissed me. You couldn't know that. You weren't here."

Daniel grinned. "Jack, you were going to kiss Sam when I knocked. How would I know that if she didn't tell me?"

Jack shook his head. "You probably looked in the window and saw me. Are you stalking me too?" Jack squirmed in his seat, uncomfortable with the notion that Daniel had hit on him and was peering in his windows. There were things about his friend that he absolutely didn't want to know.

"If I'd only looked in the window, I might have thought you were kissing anyone. How'd I know it was Sam?"

"Who else would I be kissing? And I wasn't kissing her. I was thinking about it. Besides, she's dead so she wasn't even really here."

Daniel glanced at Sam. Sam shrugged. "Sam, give me something only you would know."

Sam searched her brain and realized, after taking a full inventory, that she didn't really know the love of her life all that well. Rather than admit it, she went back over everything from the start. "The day we met I challenged him to arm wrestle."

"The whole base knows that."

Sam frowned. "Remember when I got that alien virus and I tried to seduce him in the locker room?"

Daniel looked confused. "No."

"Exactly, cause you weren't there." Sam smiled. "He told me liked the tank top I was wearing."

"That little gray one that barely covered your chest? He might have mentioned that." Daniel looked embarrassed while Sam looked irritated. "Ok, so the whole base knows that too."

Sam's face colored red at the thought. She sat down on the couch. "I need to think harder." She grinned, the words calling to mind something else. "When we were in Antarctica, I snuggled up to him because we were freezing and he really enjoyed that."

"They found you all snuggled up to him, Sam, so again with the whole base knowing."

Sam waggled her eyebrows. "No, no, Danny, he-" She cleared her throat and winked at him to get her point across. "Really, really enjoyed that."

It was Daniel's turn to blush. "He thinks I was just hitting on him. I should probably not reference that unless I want to get my ass kicked."

Sam was mad, because not only had she thoroughly embarrassed herself, but because she'd done it for no good reason. "Oh, wait, when Jack and Teal'c were stuck in Apophis' Death Glider and they almost died, he reached for my hand when we ringed them aboard the cargo ship."

"I know, Sam, because I was there and even if I hadn't been, your father was and we're back to the whole base knowing."

Shaking her head despondently, she slumped down on the couch and propped her feet up on the coffee table. "I've got nothing. I don't know a damned thing about him that no one else knows."

"No?" Daniel sat back down in the arm chair.

"Nope."

"That's really depressing."

"Tell me about it."

Jack cleared his throat again. "Daniel?"

"Yeah, Jack?"

"As much fun as it is to watch you have a conversation with yourself that makes less sense than most of the conversation you have with me, can I interrupt you for one second?" The lack of alcohol was seriously undermining Jack's ability to be quiet and withdrawn.

Daniel nodded, pretty sure he was going to wind up getting his head examined again. "Sure, why not? It's a pretty frustrating conversation anyhow." He glared at Sam, rather disappointed that she hadn't come up with something.

"Where did that come from?" Jack was pointing at the seat beside him, the seat that Sam was occupying.

Daniel looked perplexed. Nothing looked different to him. "What?" He checked with Sam, but she could only roll her eyes.

"She had her phone with her on the trip, Daniel. She was pissed off at me because it wouldn't work up in the middle of fucking nowhere."

Daniel realized Jack was talking about the phone sitting next to Sam whose pocket it had fallen out of when she flopped down on the couch. He felt like a psychiatrist as he leaned forward and smiled. "Where do you think it came from?"

"She had it with her on the plane, Daniel. The plane that crashed and smashed her into a billion little bits."

Daniel shivered, only feeling slightly comforted by the fact that Sam was sitting in front of him and didn't physically appear to be smashed into a billion little bits. "So?"

Jack looked up at Daniel. "So how did it get here?"

Daniel looked at Sam. "Do cell phones have souls, Sam?"

Sam picked it up, flipping it open and checking for service. "For the amount of money I paid for it, it had damn well better come with a lifetime of free calls in my next incarnation."

Jack glanced at the phone for a second and then looked right back at Daniel. "Daniel?" His voice was a whisper, wavering with terror. "Is it levitating?"