Daniel had actually slept through most of his incarceration by Dr. Fraser and her team. He hadn't gotten much sleep on the howler's planet, and what little he'd gotten had been troubled. By the time his system felt sufficiently recovered to actually stay conscious for a little while, he was given the green light to leave the infirmary, though he was warned not to try driving anywhere.

Faintly he wondered if that mechanic had finally gotten his car fixed. It felt like a long time since he'd been telling that guy off for not doing his job, but really it had only been a few days, so he supposed that it would be too optimistic to suppose the car was repaired.

It took some hunting around to find where Fraser's staff had left his clothes. When the team got back, they had all been urged to shower, possibly with assistance if they needed it. None of them had taken that offer, but they had gotten cleaned up and been temporarily put into Fraser's favorite hospital attire until they were released. Jack, Sam and Teal'c had gone off in dirty clothes, but Daniel had been held long enough that his had been laundered and squirreled away in some cabinet somewhere. He managed to locate them, got dressed and then drifted off to his office.

There was always a period of time after a mission when Daniel felt sort of cast off, adrift and lost in a big ocean without a compass. It just took him a bit to get his bearings, to shift from running for his life through an alien jungle to worrying about whether he'd paid his electric bill on time.

On the way to his office, Daniel stopped by the mess and got a thermos of tea. He was a coffee guy at heart, but he'd learned from his parents before they died that tea could act as a natural antihistamine. Those hadn't been their words to him, but they'd taught him that it could bring relief. He'd carried that knowledge with him everywhere he went for years. Dr. Fraser had introduced him to other foods that could act as antihistamines fairly recently, but none were as effective as tea. In fact, tea often seemed more effective than medication, particularly once allergies were already in play. He'd stopped countless allergy-caused headaches in their tracks with a well-timed cup of tea.

By the time he reached his office, the fog that had descended on his mind almost from the start of the mission was clearing, and he didn't feel as fatigued as he had before. His sore throat persisted, but he knew the tea would take care of that given time and assuming he didn't get so absorbed in working on something that he forgot to keep drinking it.

Almost without really meaning to, he fell into thinking about the howlers. Not what had happened with them, or what they'd done to him or even what they'd wanted with him and his team. No, what drew his thoughts was the question as to where they'd come from, and why. What the Goa'uld had wanted with them, for surely it was the Goa'uld that had taken them out there.

The range of howler monkeys on Earth was mostly the northern parts of South America and Central America. The black howler monkey, the species Daniel was most familiar with, was almost exclusive to Brazil. The national language of Brazil was Portuguese. The odd thing was that Portugal's taking over of Brazil was relatively recent, within the last five hundred years. Ra, who had ruled on Earth, had been overthrown thousands and thousands of years before that. A few Goa'uld, such as Hathor, had remained in evidence... but the majority of them had been slain or buried or otherwise incapacitated long before the Spaniards or Portuguese showed up on South America.

And yet, regardless of what history seemed to indicate, a Goa'uld must have visited South America and taken human slaves, because -once identified- there was no doubt but that the language was Portuguese. Encountering familiar languages off-world was normal for Daniel, and he'd come to understand that it was important to know how the language had been used at the time the split off from Earth occurred in order to understand the changes it inevitably went through.

A resident of Brazil would find the "Portuguese" portions of the stone scrawl very difficult -if not fully impossible- to read, not only because the language on Earth had changed so much in five hundred years, but because it had also changed off-world, but in a different way. Recognizing the root language made it easier to narrow down the possibilities, but in the end Daniel had to treat most writings he found as if they had been written in languages which were dead on Earth.

Of course, if Sam was right about what the cylindrical device had been part of or used for, the alien howlers might well have been human once, before some Goa'uld had played musical chairs with their genetics. But they'd come to resemble howler monkeys far too closely for it to be sheer coincidence, hadn't they? Or was it the other way around? Daniel found it a little far-fetched to think that way, but he'd found that turning an idea on its head, however ludicrous it seemed, could sometimes start a new branch of thought, even if the idea itself was the wrong one and even more ridiculous upside down than right side up. So he pondered for a moment the possibility that howler monkeys had been essentially created from something else by the Goa'uld, or perhaps carted here from an alien world.

Possible, assuredly. Ra's cats were undoubtedly not the only animals Goa'uld had ever kept as pets and ornamentation. But if howlers had come here with the Goa'uld, what did that say about all the other apes, to which they were closely related? Daniel didn't know. Genetics wasn't his thing, so he couldn't guess how closely related apes were to one another. He also didn't know how similar -genetically speaking- the alien races they had encountered were to, say, humans. They got very little opportunity to study most alien lifeforms on that level.

More likely, it seemed to him, the monkeys had been here, and the Goa'uld had "borrowed" them. But why use those as the model for genetic experimentation? It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? The alien howlers were much larger than their Earth relatives (if they were related), and possessed of fangs the likes of which no Earth howler had and few apes of any sort could compare with. They also built structures that were unlike those which certain Earth apes might design. If anything, the design was reminiscent of bird nests. But language and writing... apes could learn hand signs, could probably learn to read Daniel supposed... but... there was something distinctly familiar about their thought patterns. As he replayed events in his head, Daniel was more and more certain Sam was right. Somewhere back in their ancestral line, the howlers had been human.

Which meant that Jack, with his quips with regards to Planet of the Apes, had also not been far off.

It wasn't just scholarly curiosity that had Daniel in its grip; any information on the Goa'uld's history could provide more insight into their present. As far as Daniel was concerned, you couldn't know too much about the enemy. Even though Jack didn't understand it from the same perspective, Daniel knew that they were actually agreed on that point. This was a fragment of Goa'uld history, the value of which was inestimable at this time. Daniel had uncovered a lot about the Goa'uld that had seemed useless at the time he acquired the information, but it had saved his skin, not to mention his team -and Earth- more than once.

The phone rang. Absently, still lost in thought, he picked it up.

"Hello, Daniel."

Daniel bristled at the sound of the familiar, dreaded voice, and his mind snapped to attention. It was the voice, more than anything, that had crawled into his nightmares while he was still a kid. Not all nightmare monsters from his dreams talked, but all of them had that voice. To hear it here, at the SGC, was unthinkable, and for the moment he was more angry than afraid, but most of all he was confused.

"How the hell did you get this number?"

Instead of answering, the caller spoke, clearly reading, "'Sha're is gone, Jack says we'll find her. If anyone can, he can.' Who's Sha're, Daniel? And what or where is Abydos?"

Daniel felt his blood run cold. He closed his eyes, trying to breathe, to stifle the profound feeling of violation that washed over him as he realized where the caller was calling from, and how they'd gotten the number for his office at the SGC. It was in at least one of his notebooks at his apartment. The voice on the line was coming from his home.

"Get out of my house," he snarled.

"Now is that any way to treat an old friend? Daniel, really, where are your manners?"

"You were never my friend," Daniel said, then repeated, "Now get out. I mean it."

"Like you meant it before?"

"I'm not nine anymore," that was truth. "And I'm not afraid of you," that was a lie.

"See you when you get home, Danny."

The line went dead, but it was still several seconds before Daniel managed to hang up the phone. When he did, he was alarmed to see that he was shaking badly. He sat down in his office chair and tried to steady his breathing. Eventually he realized he was mangling a notebook in his hands and he made a conscious effort to stop, forcing himself to relax, to breathe slowly and deeply, calming his nerves.

Finally, mechanically, he laid aside the notebook, setting it on the table island in his office. The howlers could wait. Right now, he had a home invasion to deal with. It was a breach of privacy, home and sanctuary... and National Security.

Daniel was allowed to keep his private journals for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that nobody further up the chain than Jack knew about them. But they were also not exactly prominently displayed, and -to a thief- most of what Daniel had would look far more interesting than a few slim, leather-bound notebooks. Only someone who knew Daniel, knew his habit of writing journals, and wanted to read those would pick them up. Well, that or someone cleaning out his apartment because they thought he was dead. One of those.

But the information in those journals... admittedly they were mostly his personal accounts, not a bunch of security codes or extensive descriptions of tech, but there was enough in those journals to make some people squirm if the information ever got out. And Chianti knew Daniel well enough to realize that those journals weren't the notes for some fictional story he was working on.

It could never be said that Daniel had much of a life before the Stargate. Certainly since he'd joined the SGC, he'd had time and attention for little else. There weren't any old friends looking him up, no stray family members wanting to sleep on his couch. He'd never had to deal with anyone he knew finding out about the Stargate Program before, because there was no one. His whole life for the last three years had been based around trying to get Sha're back, and the way to do that had been to work for the SGC. It was all he knew anymore. Not that he'd ever really connected with the modern world to begin with.

He didn't even realize he'd gotten up and left his office until he ran shoulder-to-shoulder into someone in the hall. He hurriedly apologized, and kept going, not even sure where he was headed. The tech he'd hit barely even looked up to acknowledge him. Daniel was infamous around the base for running into people and dropping things when he was distracted, which was pretty much always. Base personnel were used to watching for him and usually managed to dodge him when he was on his way somewhere. However, subconsciously they were actually keeping an eye out for a pile of papers or notebooks being carried, and Daniel wasn't carrying anything right now.

By the time he was in the elevator, Daniel had figured out where he was going, and why. He was more cautious when he emerged from the elevator, not worried about who might see him, but engaging the part of his mind he needed right now, the part that knew how to survive. Obstacle avoidance was in that part of his mind, and he maneuvered rapidly down the hall, rapidly dodging base personnel as he went until he got to the locker room. He hesitated at his own locker, not sure what he was doing made sense. But survival instinct took over and he opened the locker, retrieving the M9 he was permitted to carry on his person at all times. Jack had insisted that Daniel get a permit to carry a weapon on Earth, outside the SGC. He'd also insisted Daniel keep a weapon somewhere in his apartment.

At first, Daniel had resisted the idea of having a home weapon. But Jack had insisted that their work might easily come home to roost, or they could find themselves needing to become armed without having access to the SGC for any number of other reasons. The base had been virtually taken over by enough alien entities enough times that Daniel was finally convinced. He'd also discovered that, after finding himself facing deadly situation after deadly situation, where a firearm had been the only thing to stand between him and death, he simply slept better at night knowing he could reach a weapon.

He didn't like it, but it was true.

That gun was in a box in the closet in what would be the second bedroom in the apartment if Daniel hadn't converted the space into an office that attached to the master bedroom. Daniel didn't have to worry about children or other members of the household, but he kept his gun out of sight even if the closet was opened, and out of reach of anyone shorter than he was. He kept telling himself he'd get a gun safe, just to be extra secure about it, but he'd been so focused on what happened during missions that he had little time for anything else. On the rare days he was home, the last thing he wanted was to be reminded of the violent side of himself that had been revealed by the Stargate Program. Also he was usually so exhausted when he got home that he spent entire weekends sleeping.

His concern was that the gun might now be in the hands of James Chianti. He wasn't sure if Chianti would know how to use a gun if he found one, but he was pretty sure the man would try, and that might be worse.

The man had broken into his home, rifled through his things, and was lying in wait for him there. Daniel didn't want to use the M9 he'd picked up, but he knew survival depended on being prepared for the worst. And, if worst came to worst, Daniel was probably a better shot than a guy who'd been locked up in prison for over two decades. Daniel wasn't the only person Chianti had hurt, but he'd been a big part of the case that got the man put away. His past might be doing more than coming back to haunt him.

"Going duck hunting?" the sound of Jack's voice was so wholly unexpected that Daniel jumped, barely keeping a safe hold on the M9 as he turned to face his friend.

Jack was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, looking as if he'd been there since the dawn of time. Daniel knew Jack must have seen him go by in the hall, but Daniel hadn't noticed him.

"No," Daniel said, setting down the M9 and picking up the shoulder holster for it.

In the field, Daniel wore his gun at his hip. But in civilian attire it was generally best to keep guns out of sight, otherwise people panicked. So he had a shoulder holster, and a jacket that concealed it. And of course they all had M9s in their lockers. The small guns were easy to store there, and they all knew that it was best to have guns all over the base. If you got chased by an alien, it was good not to have to go all the way to the armory if you wanted anything bigger than a boot knife to defend yourself with.

Before his time at the SGC, Daniel would have thought the number of guns they had around was ludicrous and paranoid. But experience had made a wiser man out of him, and now he never quite felt safe unless he knew there was a gun somewhere within two hundred yards of him. Even then, the SG-teams often encountered aliens immune (or near enough) to bullets.

"Rabbiting then?" Jack persisted, continuing when Daniel ignored him, "Well it's not deer season and you can't catch fish with an M9."

"You've tried it?" Daniel asked, half-heartedly trying to distract Jack as he holstered the M9 and shrugged into the jacket it would be concealed beneath.

"No," Jack replied a little too quickly, and Daniel had a sudden, vivid image of a young Jack with a shotgun trying to shoot fish out of the lake.

He didn't feel loose enough to laugh about that, but shook his head to clear it. He started toward the door, but Jack stood leaning firmly in his way. It was clear from his eyes he was not distracted, and he knew Daniel was off to do something dangerous, and possibly foolish. It was no longer unusual for Daniel to be geared up like this when he left the SGC, but he didn't wonder how Jack could know. Jack just knew some things. Besides, Jack could read intent in Daniel's eyes just as well as Daniel could read it in his. The perks and drawbacks of knowing each other so well. The same almost psychic connection that had kept them together and all on the same page in the jungle now told Jack that Daniel was going off to put himself into a lion's den, and he wasn't praying to God before he went.

"He's in my apartment, Jack," Daniel said, "He's read my journals."

Jack didn't ask who Daniel was talking about. Despite time and various distracting events, Jack had not forgotten what Daniel had said about James Chianti. Daniel had known he would not. He also saw in Jack's eyes that Jack would not allow him to go alone.

"I'm coming too," Jack said unnecessarily.

"Jack..." Daniel tried feebly to think up a protest.

"You're not allowed to drive, Danny," Jack said, going to his locker and pulling out his own holstered M9, which he checked before strapping on the holster.

Jack knew exactly where Daniel kept the box for his weapon. When Daniel had been unsure of the best place to store it to not only keep it from being easily discovered but also give him easy access, it had been Jack he'd turned to. Jack's remark at the time was that he dared any would-be burglar to tell the valuables from the junk in Daniel's apartment. But even though it was the sort of joke he usually would have made, he didn't even suggest leaving the gun box amidst all the other 'knickknacks and whatchamacallits' that were crowded onto every available surface in Daniel's apartment.

He knew as well as Daniel that the box the M9 was kept in looked pretty innocuous. One thing Jack had told him was that the way to keep people out of your stuff was to make it look, as he'd put it "Damned boring. Which shouldn't be hard for you." There was nothing about the box to suggest its contents were anything other than just the same kind of thing that was in every other closet in the apartment. Even though he regularly checked the M9, Daniel allowed an amount of dust to collect on the box so it matched the rest of the stuff in the closet, all of which looked as if it had been haphazardly stuffed in there and forgotten. And it had, all except for that box.

Jack also knew that anyone who'd found the journals might well have found the gun also.

"Besides," Jack added, "Your car is still in the shop anyway."

Daniel opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again. In truth, he was glad of the company. In truth, he knew Jack was right. In truth, he did not really want to meet this lion in his living room alone.

"Alright," He sighed, "Just so long as you don't make me clean his blood out of my carpet."

"Your carpet is covered in rugs, Danny," Jack reminded him, pulling on his jacket as they headed out of the locker room.

"Yes, and they're not machine washable," Daniel tossed back.

"Why would you ever put something on the floor that you couldn't wash?" Jack asked.

"I'm not really home that much and I don't get many visitors even when I am," Daniel responded.

Jack thought that over and nodded slightly.

They fell into an awkward silence as they rode the elevator to the surface, saying nothing further until just before the doors opened.

It was funny to think that a man who actively practiced ignorance the way Jack did somehow knew so much. Sometimes Daniel wondered how he'd gotten to have a friend such as Jack. He knew how their lives had intersected, of course. The Stargate. Sometimes it seemed like he'd never really been alive, never really even existed before he first saw that massive ring in the missile silo.

Daniel had never really fit in on Earth, he'd never belonged much of anywhere. He'd forged only a few friendships, most of which he'd been unable to maintain because of his obsession with his work, and also the internal fear that none of the people around him really liked him much, and the sure feeling that all he would do in the end was make their lives miserable, dragging them down with him as he destroyed first whatever hope he had of a personal life and then his professional career.

But with Jack, Daniel wasn't afraid. Jack had already been to his lowest point, and Daniel had been there to witness it. Nothing he could do or say could ever equal that. In essence, Daniel felt safe around Jack because he knew he couldn't hurt the older man any more than he'd already been hurt, and he also knew that Jack would never pretend to like him if he didn't. Jack didn't have it in him to be nice for the sake of politeness. In fact, he seemed to take it as a personal challenge to be as unmannerly as he could get away with in almost any given situation. It was a huge pain in the neck to deal with, especially in the field, because Daniel often found himself working twice as hard to make a good impression on others. But it also provided him with a significant amount of security.

Jack was just who he was. No pretense, no games, just honesty. Not that Jack was always open about what he was thinking or planning, he wasn't. But his opinion of any given person was always plain for all to see. He would not be coming with Daniel if he didn't care. Unlike with everyone else, Daniel never had to wonder -not once- if Jack was really his friend. With Jack, that was never a mystery. You just knew, or he'd find a way to make sure you knew exactly how he felt about you.

To the untrained eye, Daniel seemed actively defiant towards Jack's authority. He argued fiercely, and sometimes loudly. He was not a natural follower, and he especially didn't fit in well among military personnel. But there was an unspoken agreement between them. At the end of all things, when all that could be said was said, Daniel would follow Jack anywhere, no matter how dangerous or terrifying. For Jack, and virtually no one else, Daniel would condescend to play the good soldier when it counted. It was a privilege Jack had earned, and one he knew better than to abuse.

People listening with their ears would always and forever hear nothing but conflict between them, because the truth of who they were and how they thought of each other was spoken in their silences.

Jack led. And Daniel followed.

"Thanks, Jack," Daniel said softly.

Jack pretended not to have heard him and did not reply, but in his silence, Daniel heard his answer.