Jack knew from the moment he asked that the question was unfair. Daniel had once told him that he didn't want to die. Even with the death of Sha're, Daniel had too much life in him to really ever be suicidal. However much pain and grief he endured, Daniel always had this internal light that was too brilliant to ever be put out by sorrow. Daniel loved life, and he was scared to die. It wasn't fair to act like that wasn't true. But Jack couldn't help it.

It wasn't even all that strange. In the Air Force, Jack had known his fair share of guys who didn't want to die. He even knew one guy who was scared of flying, but was a first-rate pilot anyway and so, in the name of his country, he'd flown whether he liked it or not. That guy, certain every time he got on a plane that this time it would kill him, had done his service, been retired and gone off to fly commercial airliners or something. Another kid, convinced of his own immortality, had died at the start of his first mission in the field; he either hadn't checked his plane before takeoff or somehow screwed up, because it was eventually determined that he'd died because of a malfunction with the plane.

Daniel wasn't a soldier in the sense that he could get a field promotion, but Jack considered him to be the real thing, with or without a rank, because he served in the field. He followed orders (the genuine kind, the kind that really mattered in the heat of a moment), shot the bad guys, and dared fate to take him on. With weapons, words or whatever he had, Daniel fought to protect his world. In an office or in the field, he was a dedicated guardian of Earth, and he'd give his life for what he believed in, with the full knowledge that death could come any second of any minute in any hour, and he might have as little as a split second to act. Just like Jack, Daniel knew each beat of his heart could be his last, especially in this line of work. He was willing to take on that risk, shoulder that responsibility, offer his blood to the cause. To Jack, that made him as real a soldier as if he'd gone through boot camp and been given a rank.

Of course, some people would get mad at that. Soldier was for the army according to some. In the Air Force, it was Airman; but that was a rank as well, so that was just confusing. Besides, it wasn't fair to call Teal'c an Airman -despite his piloting skills- and it wasn't accurate either. And it certainly couldn't apply to Daniel. Jack didn't hold with the argument that soldiers were only for the army; you needed a generic term for military guys that included them all. When asked about it, Daniel had given a lengthy monologue on the origin of the term soldier. Jack hadn't really been listening, but he'd heard something about Latin root words and having pay, and it sounded like Daniel was basically saying soldier was about as generic a term as you could get, and its root word didn't even have anything to do with serving in the military. Jack wondered if Daniel would object to being called a soldier.

He'd decided long ago that he wasn't going to ask.

In any case, Jack didn't know where his questioning of Daniel had come from. As Daniel had pointed out, this wasn't the first time. It was unlikely to be the last. And Jack had offered up his own life a time or two; more than that if you counted his years of service in the Air Force prior to joining the Stargate Program. It wasn't hard for him to understand. But he'd asked anyway. The thing that really threw him was the silence that had followed the question.

Instead of saying he did realize his life had value, or "how dare you ask me that?" or something, Daniel had just stayed silent, just sort of stared at Jack like he didn't even understand the question. Maybe he didn't. Jack certainly couldn't say that he understood it, and he was the one who'd asked. Maybe Daniel couldn't answer because he knew Jack knew all this, understood it all, and was stunned that he could even ask such a ridiculous question. But there was a possibility that wasn't the reason for Daniel's silence, and Jack found that almost more worrying than the question itself.

Daniel didn't talk much after Jack's outburst, but it was a loud kind of silence, the kind you could hear better than a shout. Jack knew without having to see that, despite the hard work he'd put in that day, Daniel wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon. Jack was the first to bed down for the night, but he probably wasn't fooling anyone. A couple of hours after things got quiet, he sat up and looked around until he managed to make out Daniel's form in the shadows. He got up and went over.

"I don't want to die, you know," Daniel said in a low voice, "I never have. Well... except maybe while I was going through withdrawal after that thing with the sarcophagus."

"I know, Danny," Jack said, sitting down beside him.

"Not even when Sha're died," Daniel persisted, "Even then, knowing life would be hell without her... some piece of me wanted to die maybe... but I knew even then that I'd keep going somehow."

"I know," Jack repeated, thinking about the way he'd handled it when his own world had come crashing down, how he would've been dead if not for Daniel; not only because of the dangers they'd faced, but because it had been his personal mission to die back then.

They'd been over this before, of course. With luck, they'd go over it again. That's how it was in real life, some subjects you just sort of revisited every so often, almost as if to make sure they were still there, that nothing had changed. Jack guessed maybe it was a part of human nature, a pathetic way of trying to keep tabs on reality to make sure it wasn't doing something sneaky while you weren't looking, a subconscious testing to be sure the people you thought you knew were the same ones you'd thought you'd known the day before, and the day before that. Of course, given what SG-1 did for a living, Jack supposed it was only natural that they would do it more often than regular people, because they knew firsthand how sneaky reality could be, and how easy it was for the people they knew to be replaced when they weren't looking.

"Daniel," Jack said, "Sometimes when I open my mouth, a whole lotta stupid comes out."

"I know," Daniel replied, a soft smile in his voice if not in his eyes.

"You know I didn't mean-" Jack began, but Daniel interrupted.

"I know."

"Good," Jack nodded, and then found himself at a loss for what to say, so instead of saying anything he just shut up, and the two of them listened to the alien night for awhile.

Finally, Daniel broke the silence, his voice shaky with unaccustomed hesitation when he said, "I don't know why I'm still afraid of him."

"Who?" Jack asked, almost as startled by the words themselves as their content, "Scarface the Ape Lord? You'd have to be crazy not to be scared of him."

"No, not him," Daniel said, and made as if to clarify, but then instead just closed his mouth without saying anything further.

"Chai Tea?" Jack asked, reflexively getting the name wrong on purpose even as surprise washed through him.

"Chianti," Daniel corrected, just as reflexively, "And yes. Him."

Jack both did and did not want to hear the details. He knew it would be bad, but he also was dying to know what the hell this James Chianti could possibly have done that would instill such fear in Daniel where no one and nothing out here had been able to. Not Apophis, not Ra, not anybody had managed to paralyze Daniel with fear like the sound of some human guy's voice on the line.

"Daniel, you're on an alien planet, possibly about to be eaten by monkeys, probably getting some sort of dietary deficiency from eating nothing but fruit, and you're worried about some old civilian guy back on Earth who knows your phone number?" Jack asked incredulously.

"I know," Daniel nodded unhappily, "But it's just how I feel."

"Daniel, for cryin' out loud!" Jack managed to exclaim quietly but emphatically, "You're not a kid anymore. You have military-grade weapons training and experience in the field. Even if this guy is dumb enough to show up in your apartment, you have the right -and the ability- to defend your life and property. He can't do anything to you. Not anymore."

For perhaps the first time ever, Daniel was quiet in the face of Jack's anger.

Finally, very quietly, he asked, "Then why am I still so afraid?"

Jack felt his heart break a little inside, not just because of the deep personal fear Daniel was expressing, but also the almost childlike innocence in the question he'd asked, as if he actually thought Jack had an answer. Daniel had to know that he didn't. As leader of SG-1, he was supposed to have all the answers, but Daniel knew full well that was a frank impossibility. In fact, a lot of the time it was actually Daniel or Carter or Teal'c who had most of the answers. Yet there was still voiced a gentle trust, a faith that Jack had the ability to answer all questions, and to make all wrongs right.

In their first year as a team, Daniel had gone missing and been thought dead. In clearing out his apartment, Carter had found the collection of journals Daniel had made, one for each planet, each mission, surprisingly organized and detailed for someone who always seemed to forget time and space when he was in the middle of solving a problem or making a discovery.

Jack remembered with perfect clarity the line Carter had read aloud that day.

"Sha're is gone, Jack says we'll find her. If anyone can, he can."

That one line had been enough to reveal to Jack how deeply Daniel had trusted him even then. He felt guilty at having heard that private thought, but even more so whenever he couldn't find a solution, when he didn't have an answer, when he couldn't fix what was broken. Each time he felt like it was a betrayal of that trust Daniel had placed in him, yet each time Daniel either didn't seem to notice the failing, or forgave it at once. Even though in the end they had found Sha're too late, to Daniel it seemed most important that they had found her at all. So Jack knew he had to answer the question, even though the only answer he had was really no kind of answer at all.

"I don't know, Danny," he whispered, "I just don't know."

Aside from the brief conversation with Daniel, the night passed quietly for Jack. He did eventually manage to go to sleep. When he woke up, the morning had dawned gray and foggy, and he couldn't be sure about the time of day just by looking at the overcast sky.

It was cooler than the previous days, but not frigid. Mostly it was just extremely damp. Daniel was up and fretting over his notebook, trying to find a way to keep the moisture from seeping into the pages and ruining whatever notes he'd made. Carter and Teal'c were also up, looking at a loss for what to do.

Jack knew Teal'c must be feeling pretty useless by now. Jack felt that way too. At least Carter was able -with her technobabble- to do something. All Jack and Teal'c could do was wait. Jack had tried talking to the monkeys, but they had either ignored him or thrown things like pebbles and twigs at him and scolded in loud voices. Not only was Jack feeling useless, he was feeling cramped and confined, bored and not a little bit stir-crazy. He supposed that was the real reason he'd been picking on Daniel yesterday, not that it was any excuse. Danny was doing the best he could, Jack knew.

Glancing at Daniel, Jack saw he looked more his usual geeky-nerd self, with hair wild, glasses slightly askew, bent over a notebook as if it contained the secrets of the universe, and he realized that Daniel had actually accomplished a lot yesterday, even if it hadn't been what Jack had been hoping for. Jack also noted that the antihistamines were doing him some good, even though Daniel always said it was best to take them before you needed them. It was funny, Jack hadn't even really noticed how flushed Daniel's face had been looking until it stopped being that way, and had only subconsciously noticed how frequently Daniel stopped whatever he was doing to cough or clear his throat or sneeze.

Looking up, Jack saw the monkeys that were usually hanging out up there were not immediately in evidence. At first he wasn't sure where they'd gone, then he spotted one near the trunk of a tree, looking miserable and trying to keep out of the worst of the wet. There were fewer monkeys overhead than usual, and the few there were seemed to be trying to hide from the fog. Jack supposed he'd probably hide from fog too if he was all covered in hair, especially since they probably had the type that went all fuzzy in humid conditions. Jack's hair tended to go flat when it got wet, but Daniel and Carter's hair tended to get all kinked up and in their faces unless they were thoroughly and completely soaked.

After years of listening to Jack extol the virtues of short hair, Daniel had finally started keeping his shorter. Though Jack wasn't sure if it was in response to the advice, or because a few years in the field had taught Daniel that hair in the face was always a bad thing. Or maybe he was just becoming more self-aware, and realized the slightly disheveled look didn't do well for him when it came to first impression with natives.

Carter's hair was always changing, but ever stylish and feminine, without sacrificing utility. Even so, it was long enough that humidity made it go unruly, in what Jack privately though of as the cutest way possible. He was pretty sure Carter would kill him if he told her he thought it was cute when her hair refused to cooperate with her. It was the sort of thing that would annoy her, especially coming from him. They'd long ago agreed to stay professional, and such a comment would be a technical breach of that agreement. She'd have to be angry with him, there would be no other choice for her.

Sometimes Jack envied Daniel his lack of attraction to Carter, and her equal lack of attraction to him. Jack sensed that, even had he not been married to Sha're, Daniel would never have anything but team camaraderie and almost sibling-like affection for Carter. Carter clearly felt the same for him. Besides, Daniel lacked a military rank. It gave the two of them the ability to be completely free in their interactions. Daniel could say just about anything to Carter, without having to think about whether it was appropriate, and she could respond in kind.

Teal'c, of course, always seemed to carefully weigh and measure each word he intended to say before he spoke, regardless of who he talked to. He often seemed puzzled by the rapid-fire way the rest of the team bantered back and forth, as if saying the first thing that came into his head was so alien to him that he could not fathom how they were able to talk so quickly. As he sometimes envied Daniel's freedom in saying whatever he thought to pretty much anyone, Jack also wished he had a modicum of Teal'c's self control. That ability to hold his tongue regardless of how badly he wanted to say something, or to say it all with little more than a tilted head or raised eyebrow.

Seeing Jack was sitting up, Carter came and crouched next to where he was.

"There aren't many guards out there today," she said in a low voice, "I don't think they like the wet. They seem to like Daniel, so he's keeping an eye on them."

Jack glanced at Daniel anew. He noted that Daniel was very close to the gate, a lot closer than the monkeys had ever tolerated Jack's being. Close enough to see through the openings in the thorn enclosure for sure. It explained why his notebook was getting so soggy; he had less than half his mind on it, and wasn't really paying much attention to what he was doing, only to what he looked like he was doing. He was doing a fine job of it, good enough that even Jack had been fooled for a minute.

"Sir," Carter added when Jack remained silent, "Teal'c and I agree that this may be our best chance."

"Chance?" Jack inquired, purposely playing dumb.

Carter indulged him, "At escape, sir."

Jack leaned his head back, and started to pretend to think it over. In fact he'd already thought it over. And over. And over again. He'd had nothing to do in here but worry about Carter and Daniel and think about escape. They knew the route they'd taken from Alien Stonehenge, and knew how to get back to the Stargate from there. Even if they hadn't, Teal'c for sure knew. Jack also knew that the gate of the enclosure was pretty flimsy, if only the monkeys would let them work on it for awhile. In fact, with a pair of knives (which they had), they could eventually cut through the wall and slip out that way. The problem was their overseers, who would observe that kind of activity.

But maybe not with fewer monkeys clinging to tree trunks, trying to avoid the wet. Maybe with that advantage, they could make a hole and get out. But for how long? Would the monkeys chase them en masse? Even a single howler would be strong enough to take down any one of them except possibly Teal'c. And the howlers were fast in the trees, Jack remembered. Daniel had finally begun to make some inroads to understanding, and perhaps building trust. An escape attempt was likely to burn that bridge for good. Fine, if they escaped, but what if they didn't make it? Then what?

"And what does Daniel say?" Jack found himself asking.

Carter and Teal'c thought this was their best chance. Their opinions, individually and collectively, carried a lot of weight with Jack. But if Daniel was going to throw a temper tantrum about it...

"He doesn't," Carter replied, then amended, "I mean he hasn't said anything."

With Daniel, you could never tell what silence from him meant. Sometimes it meant he was looking for the right time to pitch his argument. Sometimes it was wordless consent. If there was a time to pitch the argument, it was now, so Jack decided to wave Daniel over and have it out with him if that's what was needed. Carter politely went to the other side of the enclosure, where she could pretend not to be able to hear them. Teal'c was there already, in obvious anticipation of the possible confrontation. Selective deafness was a useful (though sometimes annoying) trait that all members of SG-1 possessed.

"Jack," Daniel said when he came over.

"Daniel," Jack replied, as Daniel sat down and carelessly laid his notebook aside.

Jack took a long, appraising look at Daniel. It was harder to tell with the glasses, especially with their cracked lens, but he looked guarded, wary. That wasn't usually a good sign. Clearly he was well aware of what Jack had brought him over here to talk about, but wasn't going to say it himself.

"You gonna argue about this?" Jack asked.

"No," Daniel replied with surprising quickness.

That in itself was worrying to Jack. The last time he'd been so swiftly agreeable, with this same look in his eyes, had been when he had first accepted that they would have to kill. That they might even have to kill Skaara in order to protect Earth. It had been necessary, but Jack had always felt the world had done Daniel a grave injustice by taking some of his innocence and idealism that day. The Earth was better off, and the team was better for it... but what about Daniel? Jack knew the answer to that.

"But you don't think it's the right decision, do you?" Jack pressed.

"Jack, I've known for a long time we'd probably have to fight our way out eventually," Daniel replied, the words sort of tumbling over each other in his rush to get them all said without interruption, "The howlers are too unpredictable, too violent. Sooner or later, one of us is going to be seriously hurt, maybe even killed. We can't keep on like we have been. I know that."

"But," Jack insisted.

"But," Daniel conceded, "I don't like our chances. I think these howlers are going to tear us apart."

Jack nodded thoughtfully, "Well, we've been in worse situations."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, "But our luck is bound to run out someday."

"Yeah well..." Jack fumbled for something to say, and concluded lamely, "Maybe not today."

"Maybe not," Daniel said, but he sounded doubtful.

Rather than go for the gate, even though the ties that held it shut would be the easiest to cut, SG-1 opted for the more discreet option, cutting a hole in what could be considered the back of the enclosure, not directly across from the gate, but slightly off to the right. The idea was that they wouldn't be in the direction a howler coming through the gate would be looking, so they might have an extra split second to start "acting casual" if their party did get crashed.

Daniel and Carter acted as lookouts, and also as distractions if necessary. The howlers had so far been most interested in Daniel, but Carter secondarily, so if he alone wasn't enough, maybe she would be. In any case, there were only two knives, and Jack didn't anticipate their having to switch off. Of course, ideally the howlers wouldn't come visiting today. But Jack never planned for ideal, he only hoped for it.

After he and Teal'c had been at it for about an hour, he heard a low rumble, instantly recognizable as thunder. The sound disturbed the howlers, who chattered at the sky nervously. In their fear of the storm, they appeared to have forgotten SG-1 entirely. The first rumble was almost immediately followed by another, louder rumble, and Jack found himself thinking about the fact that he'd really prefer not to go running through the jungle in the midst of rain and fog.

Even aside from the howlers and whatever else might be out there, it was easy to get lost in fog, to slip on wet leaves and mud, to become disoriented by the bright flashes of lightning that usually accompanied such weather. Jack felt worry pricking at him as he thought about the four of them trying to make the miles home in the middle of a storm, the potential ferocity of which he was currently in no position to measure. Perhaps the howlers were justified in lowering their guard. Only fools would do what Jack was about to ask his team to do.

He didn't entirely realize he'd stopped working with his knife until he noticed Teal'c looking at him.

"O'Neill?" his deep voice spoke the name as a sentence, and Jack heard all he didn't say.

"Am I crazy or is this a bad idea?" Jack asked quietly.

Teal'c was silent for a lengthy moment, and then said, "Would it not be more foolish to remain captives to creatures which are provably hostile and of unclear origin or intent?"

There was no need for Teal'c to glance significantly at Jack's bitten hand, or Daniel's lacerated and bandaged arm, Jack did that himself as Teal'c spoke. The reality was that they both needed medical attention. Aside from the broken bones Jack was in possession of, both he and Daniel were at severe risk of infection because of the environment and lack of proper first aid supplies. Even the minor wounds inflicted by the thorns were dangerous in the dirty, humid jungle environment. Any open wound was a bad thing, but especially under these conditions.

"But Daniel's been making progress," Jack said slowly, doubtfully.

"Daniel Jackson would be the first to admit that that progress has been slow and of unpredictable result," Teal'c pointed out, and Jack had to admit he was right.

How long did they wait, how many times did they risk injury before they said enough? How much time was too much to take? Daniel had already made his opinion clear, though it was equally evident he was thoroughly unhappy about the side he'd landed on. A linguist, a historian, an explorer, Daniel resented that the right answer in this case was to flee with questions unanswered, mysteries unsolved.

That Daniel of all people had admitted this was their best chance said something. No one knew better than Daniel what their chances of communicating with the howlers were. No one knew more intimately the feel of the howler's savage bite. Daniel had spent the most time with them, and so knew them best. His first choice was always to seek to learn, to know, to discover, to connect with other cultures. That he abandoned that choice said he didn't see it as a feasible option. An idealist fueled by a realistic but chronic optimism, it took a lot for Daniel to see something as hopelessly bad or dangerous.

It was time to go.