Loki's Curse

by Jonah in the Whale

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asj/jonah/curse.php
Summary: Daniel's memory since descension is still scattered, and Jack struggles to accept that Daniel may never be fully returned to them. Meanwhile, SG-1 have a more immediate problem to deal with; Loki, and his backlog of mistakes
Info: 1) The Eminem lyric used has been deliberately misquoted for brevity's sake.
2) I haven't seen any of Season 6, except Abyss and Full Circle. If any events herein contradict Season 6 canon, then pretend this story is AU.
3) Also, I missed some earlier S7 eps, so I'm not actually sure canonically as to the state of Daniel's memory. I hope what I've written makes sense in the context of canon.
4) Ages used in the story are those established by canon in Seasons 1 & 2.
PERSONAL NOTE: I don't know what possessed me to write this. Not only have I not written in this fandom for closing on three years, but the only things I wrote were short humorous gen-fics. Now I've taken on a long, plot-and-angst-ridden, slash fic? I guess it's my way of doing the 'Daniel's back' happy-dance. I think it's out of my system now...

So Daniel had said to Jack, just before they packed him and Jonas off to Anubis' mothership.

At the time Jack had appreciated the sentiment, and distrusted the words themselves. How could Daniel, who had forgotten nearly everything anyone tried to remind him of, think he remembered enough? Remembering the concept of being on a team, remembering how to use a weapon, how to watch his own back, how to react under fire--that was what Daniel had meant by "I remember enough"; and maybe that was the kind of reassurance he thought Jack had needed, in order to have confidence in him to carry out the almost-suicide mission. Sure, it had been great that Daniel had gotten all that stuff back so quickly. Muscle-memory. Instinct and reaction. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't anything like enough.

Three months on, and Jack still wasn't certain that Daniel remembered 'enough'. Little things made him *almost* sure; the gradual reappearance of exchanged glances, of looks where words need not be spoken; confidences given and received. Being allowed to touch him again, too, that was a biggie; an occasional pat on the arm, Daniel no longer flinching as he had from Carter's touch on that planet that may not have been The Lost City but had at least returned to them what they'd lost.

But then something would fall between them; Jack would push too far to recapture a shared experience, and discover that Daniel didn't remember. Sometimes big things, usually small stupid things, but each time it happened he found it hard to resist examining Daniel, noting his stance and expression and gestures, trying to insist to himself that this was really *their* Daniel at the core, and not someone fundamentally unknown to him.

How much did a person need to remember of you, in order to stay your friend? If they remembered you only part-way, did the things they didn't remember not count anymore?

Worse, he was beginning to think even flakier stuff, such as; did people have an essence, or was memory essential to everything that made up a person?

This existential stuff made his head hurt. Or maybe that was just the acapella music on the restaurant speakers.

Jack watched Daniel across the table, twirling his fork through spaghetti. After getting it wrapped precisely around his fork, Daniel regarded it, then put it in his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully. "Hmm," he said, then reached for the parmesan cheese shaker and upended it over his spaghetti. Nothing came out.

The waitress who had been hovering nearby dived upon them. "Sir, I'm so sorry, I forgot to fill the cheese. I'll get you some more straight away."

Jack watched her go, shaking his head, before turning back to Daniel, who was looking a little bemused by the waitress's eagerness.

"Remember this place yet?" said Jack.

Daniel put his fork down and took another look around the restaurant. "This is not the place we got thrown out of?"

"No, because they'd throw us out if we ever went back there." Maybe they should try that. Maybe Daniel needed some sort of shock to the system, something to shake up all those wonky memories. "This is the place with the flirty waitress. You know? She's always coming on to you."

"If I recall correctly, you're always pointing out that this person or that is flirting with me, and usually I have no idea."

"But this waitress, she's so blatant, even *you* noticed the second time we all came here."

"Jack..." Daniel shrugged, and twirled his spaghetti some more. "Eating establishments are still blending together for me. I just don't remember which one has the steak, and which one has the lobster that Teal'c likes, and which one has the-"

"Come on. You must remember the chocolate sauce incident." At Daniel's sudden expression of concern, Jack grinned. "Order extra chocolate sauce with your dessert. Maybe it'll come back to you."

"I have this feeling I probably shouldn't."

"Aw, you're no fun."

"But seriously, it's probably not a big deal that I don't remember something like that. I'm more concerned that I've had to, for example, re-learn all the planet designations, which is something I'm sure I would have known."

"Everything's important, Daniel." Maybe you're more concerned about any areas of actual knowledge you've lost, but your friends are just as concerned about Daniel-the-person, Daniel the friend, the listener, the one who *knows* us. But Jack didn't say that. He was suddenly afraid it might be true, that Daniel's efforts to remember Jack, and Sam, and Teal'c, might not be as important to Daniel as it was to everyone else. And that made him feel... bad. "Memory all hangs together," he said instead. "Getting it back, it's like... like pulling on the loose thread in a sweater."

"Nice analogy."

"Thank you."

Daniel sighed. "I've lost my memory before, Jack. Back on P3R-118, when we had our memories overwritten so we would be willing workers in their little underground slave camp."

"So you remember that."

"Not exactly. I've been going through the old mission reports. The point is, if I've done it once, I can do it again. Pushing won't make it come any faster."

Jack felt guilty. Carter and Teal'c already thought he was too pushy. Now Daniel was saying the same thing. No one understood how Jack felt. "I just thought it couldn't hurt, being somewhere different from the SGC," he said. "Every time I look for you, lately, you're locked away in that lab of yours."

Daniel gave him a quick smile. "And this is different from before, how?"

"Okay, so you always were a workaholic, but..." but Jack couldn't shake the feeling that Daniel was hiding away from them. From him.

"See? I'm still the same person, Jack."

"I didn't mean you weren't, I just... I want to make sure you're okay, that's all."

Their eyes met. Daniel was looking at him so calmly, so solicitously, like Jack was the one with the problems here, and Daniel the one trying to help him out.

"I'm really okay, Jack."

Jack spotted the waitress returning, and gestured with his head in her direction. "Don't speak too soon. Heads up."

The waitress descended upon Daniel, apologising profusely, and eagerly commenced shaking cheese over Daniel's spaghetti. Daniel's eyebrows went skyward. "It's okay, it's okay," he said, trying to motion her out of his plate. "That's enough, honestly, that's enough parmesan."

"I'm sorry, is that too much? I know how you like parmesan, and I'm so sorry about forgetting it-"

"It's fine," said Daniel. "Really. Um..."

She put the cheese shaker down in front of him. "I'll just be over there, if you want me. Just wave! I'll see you straight away."

Daniel watched her go, then dropped his eyebrows and turned on the grinning Jack. "Is this usual behaviour for her?"

"Oh, yeah."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Come on, you don't remember this place even a teensy little bit?"

Daniel stirred the cheese into his spaghetti. He pointed towards a mark on the worn lace tablecloth. "I think I remember this particular stain. It reminds me of a serpent guard's helmet."

"Wait. You're saying you don't remember the menu, or the decor, or the waitress, but you remember a stain on the tablecloth?"

"Um. It's like..." Daniel took another mouthful of spaghetti, chewed, and grimaced.

Jack glanced at the waitress, who was flitting about near the kitchen door. He leaned forward. "Too much cheese?"

Daniel nodded. "Shh." He swallowed, and continued. "It's like when I first saw the SGC after you found me on P4T-3G6. I didn't recognise the place, looking at it, but when I closed my eyes, I knew how to get to certain places that I simply couldn't fathom with my eyes open. What I'm saying is, the bigger picture seems a lot harder for me to deal with, in terms of memory. It's like I have to find the details before I find the context."

"You called me Jim," said Jack. Petty, O'Neill.

"There." Daniel pointed his fork eagerly at Jack. "That's a perfect example. Looking at you, at all of you, I had absolutely no idea who you people were. Your names meant nothing to me. But when, for example, you came to talk to me in the tent, and I wasn't being overwhelmed by, by everything; something like listening to your tone, not your words but your tone, and, then, seeing the gestures you made with your hands... those sorts of things began to resonate more deeply within me. But at first I couldn't be sure. It was all so unbelievable, what you were telling me. But there was that resonance, that said I could trust you. It just took a week or so for my mind to overlay the sense details with words I could use to refer to them by. Like your names."

"Okay. I think I get it." Jack held up his hands. "I promise. No more pushing for tonight."

He ordered a second beer. He hadn't intended to drink--they had a mission tomorrow morning, after all. But he needed to relax, and two beers wouldn't kill him. Daniel's driving of Jack's truck back to base afterwards might, but he'd have to risk that. Nah... Daniel was a perfectly good driver these days. He'd just been a bit tentative the first couple of years, and Jack was never one to leave a joke alone.

Some time later, after Daniel had proven his survival instincts intact by *not* ordering any desserts with chocolate sauce despite Jack's urgings, they paid the bill and left. Jack knew he was sober enough to drive, but he was feeling very tired and didn't argue when Daniel asked for the keys. Off they headed, up to the base, having already decided to sleep there given their mission at 0700 the next morning.

A police car pulled up behind Jack's truck just before they started to climb the mountain.

"Daniel?" said Jack from the passenger seat.

"What?"

"What were you doing?"

"What do you mean? Nothing," said Daniel.

"Then why are there flashing lights behind us?"

"Oh," said Daniel, looking in the rear mirror, and beginning to slow down. "I wonder what they want?"

"Whatever it is, just try to hurry them up. I'm tired, and we've got that mission tomorrow morning. And don't tell them you've been drinking. Half a beer doesn't count."

"I'm not going to lie, Jack."

"No one cares about half a glass of beer."

Daniel pulled the car to the side of the road, and the police car pulled up behind him. While they waited, Daniel took his glasses off and rubbed them on his shirt. An officer approached the driver's side. "Good evening, sir," he said to Daniel, shining a torch through the open window into the car.

"Good evening," said Daniel, blinking in the light.

"Do you have your license on you, sir?"

"Yes." Daniel left his glasses in his lap and began searching in his pockets. "Somewhere here."

"Have you been drinking tonight, sir?"

"Yes," said Daniel.

Jack howled. "No!"

The flashlight shone in his face. "Are you all right, sir?"

"We're fine," said Daniel. "He's just my superior officer. In a sense."

"You're from the base up on Cheyenne?"

"That's right."

"How much have you had to drink, sir?"

Jack leaned over. "You're not going to make him walk in a straight line, or touch his nose with his eyes closed? Officer, Daniel couldn't find his nose with boxing gloves and a mirror."

"I had half a glass of beer," said Daniel.

"It's true," said Jack. "I keep coaxing and encouraging him, but he won't turn off the good path."

"Have *you* been drinking tonight, sir?" the officer said to Jack.

"Yes, I have. That's why I'm not driving, officer."

Daniel began proffering his driver's license. "Is there something wrong?" he asked the officer.

"We're doing routine checks on-"

**WHOOSH**

Jack and Daniel hung in a gravity-defying position for a moment, then both of them collapsed onto the floor on their backsides.

"Thor!" shouted Jack. "What have I told you about that!"

Daniel, unperturbed, was getting to his feet, pocketing his driver's license, looking around the wide, contoured room they had found themselves in. "Thor's ship," he noted.

Thor came around the side of the transporter-thing. "O'Neill, Doctor Jackson. Greetings."

"My knees are not up to this," Jack groused, climbing to his feet. "Ever thought about zapping your targets onto a mattress or something? We weren't exactly upright."

"A good idea. Next time," Thor promised.

"Next time. Who says there's going to be a next time? You owe me a beer. Several beers," Jack informed him. He turned to Daniel. "Can you see the headlines? I can see the headlines. 'Colonel and Archaeologist Disappear in Beam of Light. Cop Says; It was Aliens!'"

"Was this an inconvenient time?" asked Thor.

"What seems to be the problem?" said Daniel, shrugging everything off. Well, at least he had no memory problems with regards to the selfish behaviour of superior races, thought Jack.

"It seems a problem we had a short while ago was not sufficiently resolved," said Thor.

"Oh, a problem *we* had," said Jack.

"Jack." Daniel patted his arm briefly. "Which problem in particular?" he said to Thor.

"You remember Loki, and the experiments he was conducting," said Thor. "Unfortunately we did not, at the time, discover all of his transgressions. The Asgard Council have discussed it amongst ourselves, hoping we would have no need to involve the both of you; but agreement has been reached that there is no other course of action."

Jack dropped the posturing. This *was* important. Perhaps not so important that Thor couldn't have tried a more conventional means of communication first, but, as the saying went, you can't teach old dogs new tricks. After glancing at Daniel, he said, "This is all with regards to what?"

"If you'll come this way," said Thor, beckoning them to follow. "I have someone you should meet."

"This is not good," whispered Jack to Daniel.

"Loki made *more* of you?" Daniel whispered back.

"You look first. Then tell me if it's safe."

"Okay."

The door to another chamber slid back, and they stepped inside, Jack looking firmly at the floor. He heard Thor say, "This is who I would like you to meet. I hope you will be able to help him."

Daniel said nothing, for long seconds. Then, "It's not Jack. Uh... who is he?"

Jack looked gratefully up, to see standing before them a teenage boy, dark blond hair overgrown and a little unkempt, blue eyes flicking nervously between him and Daniel. "I'm Daniel Jackson," he said.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" said Jack, while Daniel went pale and wobbled backwards, so that Jack had to catch him to steady him.

****

They had Thor return them to the briefing room at the SGC. Jack's truck had probably been impounded; and if not, there would be cops crawling all over the area from which they'd disappeared.

"I have to do damage control with the General," Jack told Daniel, as they walked out of the briefing room, younger Daniel in tow.

"He doesn't start work until 6:00am."

"I know. I'm going to have to wake him up. You'll be all right with..." Jack gestured to teenage Daniel.

"I'll be fine."

Jack regarded the silent, wary youngster. "Take him to the commissary. The Asgard idea of food should be a human rights issue. And then you'd better see if the Doc is around."

"Okay," said Daniel.

"You sure you're all right? I know it can be a bit of a shock..."

"Really. I'm fine." Daniel gestured to his counterpart. "Are you hungry? We'll get something to eat."

Jack watched them go. There was something a little strange about it all. Well, aside from the obvious. From what he'd been told, teen-bodied Jack had been mixing in it right from the moment they met him, cocky and arrogant, pushing his case, having his say. Being Jack. He would have expected teen-Daniel to be full of questions, pushy in his Daniel-way, talking, trying to work things out. Maybe being in a different body had traumatised him in a way it hadn't with Jack. Daniel had always been more sensitive, he told himself, as he made his way to the General's office. And being in yet another form, after being ascended, and descended, on top of losing his memory, and becoming temporary host to some dozen other personalities just last month; it was all bound to be upsetting. Maybe the poor clone thought if he kept quiet, he'd wake up from the nightmare.

He phoned General Hammond using the General's office phone, and tried to explain the situation as briefly as possible. Fortunately the General was on base. Unfortunately, this made hardly any difference to the amount of time spent on sorting out a satisfactory solution. Various members of SGC intelligence and security had to be contacted. The press reports had to be obtained, as well as the incident report submitted by the police officer. Two ranking SGC officers had to drive down the mountain and check over the site of the 'abduction'. Jack's truck had to be located. A story had to be hammered out.

"Can't we just report my truck stolen?" Jack said from the other side of the desk to a now-present and correct Hammond.

"The descriptions given by the police officer of the truck's occupants match that of yourself and Doctor Jackson," said Hammond.

"Oh, come on. A possibly superficially inebriated guy with grey hair, and another guy in glasses--wait, Daniel didn't even have his glasses on, he'd taken them off to clean them. And it was dark. How accurate could they be?"

"The report says that the inebriated man called the younger man 'Daniel'."

"Damn. Why did I do that?"

"Why were you drinking, Colonel?"

"I had a couple of beers, General."

"Before a mission? That's not like you."

"Sir, I know my limits. Two beers still puts me under the safe driving limit--I just felt Daniel should take the wheel, as I was a little tired."

Hammond leaned forward. His words were authoritative, yet his manner was paternal. "It's a condition of travel through the stargate that no one consumes alcohol the night before the mission."

"I know that's in the rules, sir. It's also in the rules that we don't consume alcohol while on duty, and yet I can't begin to tell you the number of missions I've been on where we've joined the natives in their toasts to the tree spirits or whatever."

"I understand that, Jack, and I have no problem per se with you having a couple of beers. It just happens to be that lately you've been a little-"

Jack interrupted. "I'm a little stressed, yes. Can we not talk about this now? I want to get this sorted, so that I can see how Daniel and Daniel are doing."

The General sighed. "We've done all we can on this for now. It's down to the PR boys to minimise fall-out."

"Can I go?"

"I'd like to see the two Doctor Jacksons for myself. Where are they likely to be?"

Jack looked at the time, realised they'd been at this for a couple of hours, and that the Daniels would have done the tour of the commissary and infirmary already. Hammond phoned Daniel's lab and hit pay dirt. He directed the Daniels to go to the briefing room. After he put the phone down, however, it rang. The PR guy had news of Jack's truck; it was being held at the police station for processing. Jack was forced to spend some further time grousing about this, with the result that the Daniels beat him and Hammond to the briefing room.

"We've got a problem," said grown-up Daniel, as kid-Daniel hovered behind him.

"Just one?" said Jack. "The general and I have a whole mess of them."

"Sit down, everyone," said Hammond. "Now, Doctor Jackson, and," he nodded to teenage Daniel, "Doctor Jackson. Colonel O'Neill has filled me in on the initial story. Have you had time to visit the infirmary yet?"

"Yes, we've done that," said grown-up Daniel. "Physically, he's fine. We're still waiting for the results of the DNA analysis, so we're not certain if he carries any anomalies like Jack's duplicate did, but I assume since Thor was aware of that possibility, he would have fixed any problems of that nature already."

Jack found it hard to look at the younger Daniel as being Daniel. Not simply the fact that he looked ridiculously young and out of place, not his overgrown hair and smooth skin, and his skinny physique compared to their Daniel's toned body. It was more than the physical difference.

"Then this would seem to be simply a matter of finding some satisfactory arrangement for," the General nodded at young Daniel, "your future, I imagine."

"You know, there could even be an up side to this," said Jack. "All those teams who keep trying to borrow Daniel--well, now we've got a spare."

"You're not suggesting we send children, no matter what their knowledge, out into first contact situations, Colonel," said the General severely.

"You know I'm joking, sir."

Daniel--their Daniel--was interrupting. "Before you speculate any further--I told you, we've got a problem."

"So what is the problem, Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel--kid Daniel--appeared to be ignoring them, looking about the room instead. No, thought Jack, it wasn't only the physical difference. With teenage Jack, it hadn't apparently caused anyone too much effort to see Colonel Jack O'Neill in his behaviour and mannerisms. This Daniel, however, was too quiet. And wary. Jack could see the sideways looks they were all getting. Maybe it was just that he didn't have his glasses, and was having trouble seeing. Shouldn't affect his mouth, though. And the clone was fidgeting with his sleeves in a manner reminiscent of a depressed bird worrying at its own feathers.

"Watch this," said Daniel, before turning to kid Daniel. "Do you remember Sha'uri?"

"No," said kid Daniel. "I-I've told you, I don't know her."

Jack and Hammond exchanged glances, before Jack whistled. "This is... a twist."

"It's not just Sha'uri," said Daniel. "Daniel, do you remember any of them? Skaara? Kasuf? No? Nothing about Abydos at all?"

"A-Abydos, that's in Egypt." Young Daniel spoke quickly, but with a stutter, as though his thoughts were in hyperdrive and he couldn't quite slow them down to match the pace of his mouth.

"Yes," said Big Daniel encouragingly. "But not only in Egypt. Do you remember, um, Kawalsky? Charles Kawalsky?"

"No."

"Do you remember me?" Jack said to him.

Young Daniel turned frantic eyes on Jack. "No. I don't know you, not any of you. Including him!" he said, pointing to Daniel.

Hammond got the point quickly. "Son," he said, suddenly gentle, "what's the last thing you remember about your life as Daniel Jackson on Earth?"

"I don't know. I su-suppose I'd gone to bed. I'd been preparing a p-p-paper for my archaeology professor. Um, Sarah came by briefly, and... that's it. It feels like it happened just yesterday, but-but yesterday, I was on Thor's ship. So it couldn't have. "

"Is that the paper on Kherit-Neter and the errors of Eurocentric thought?"

"Kherit-Neter?" said Jack.

"The so-called 'necropolis'--thank you, Mr Budge--on the Giza plateau. The pyramids of Giza?" he added, as Jack continued to blank him. "Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure..." At kid Daniel's nod of recognition, Daniel told him, "We got an A minus."

"A minus? Why minus?" asked the kid.

"The Professor said, while our research had been thorough and our passion invigorating, our creative approach to the interpretation of certain unarguable 'facts' ultimately let us down."

"Those boneheads," said Jack, having recognised the code-word 'Budge', at least.

"Unbelievable," agreed kid Daniel, shaking his head. "So... S-Sarah, and Steven. I mean, I guess if wh-what you're saying is correct, then they must be..." he looked down, and rubbed the spot between his eyes again. "They must be older. Much older."

Actually, Sarah must be goa'ulded, and Stephen must be simply a psychotic asshole and *not* worth your concern. Jack found himself being blunt. "Sarah and Steven are no longer alive."

"What? But-but-but... but they're my friends. What happened? Are they part of this too?"

Daniel, beside him, had jerked at Jack's words. He looked uncertainly from Jack, to Hammond, as though not quite sure of the truth. Hammond himself was looking startled.

Jack was unrepentant. How could they even begin to tell the truth to the kid? "They got involved in something they shouldn't have," he explained to kid Daniel. "Some of the bad guys we deal with got to them."

Kid Daniel looked stunned. He blinked rapidly and looked down.

"I'm sorry," said Big Daniel to the kid, before glancing back at Jack once again, still looking uncertain.

"I'm okay." After a moment, kid Daniel rubbed his eyes, and raised his head again. He looked depressed, but mostly composed. Hiding it well, thought Jack.

"So, Daniel, how old are you, exactly?" asked Hammond, changing the subject.

"Twenty-three."

"You wear your age well," said Jack.

"Please, Jack," said SGC Daniel.

"I'm well aware I look about f-f-fifteen," said kid Daniel. "Thor explained to me about the experiments Loki was conducting. He explained about-ab-ab-about the SGC."

"What did Thor say when you didn't remember the SGC?" asked Hammond.

"I... well, actually, it's strange. It seems like..." everyone waited patiently while Daniel chewed on his lip and pushed at the bridge of his nose. Jack realised he was pushing at non-existent spectacles. "The only way I can explain it," Daniel finally said, "is that I *did* remember it at the time. But now, it's just like some science fiction story. I don't remember ever being here. No-nothing is familiar."

"In that case," said Hammond, "I should introduce myself properly. I'm General Hammond, of the Stargate Command. This is Colonel O'Neill."

"This is a m-m-military base."

"It is indeed."

"Air force," Jack specified.

"So... I joined the airforce?" That seemed to be the last straw for the kid.

"Daniel, didn't you explain anything to him?"

"It took me a while to figure out what the problem was," Daniel defended himself. "And then... I mean, where do I start? And, if he doesn't know, do you all really want him to know?"

"You're referring to security issues," said Hammond.

"Yes, but also, I'm thinking of his own best interests. I wish he didn't even know this much, it could already compromise his ability to have a normal life."

"You're thinking he's going to go out there, pick up where you left off, become the toast of the archaeological world?" said Jack.

"No, that's not what I... I suppose it might sound like that, but..." Daniel dropped his head abruptly and scrubbed his face with his hands. "What am I thinking? How could he ever hope to get away from the Stargate program?"

"Daniel?" said Jack, concerned. Daniel was sounding almost panicked. Daniel never panicked.

"I'm sorry," said Daniel, and looked up. He was flushed. "I'm really tired, I'm sorry. This has been a long night."

"It has, General," said Jack to Hammond. "And I hate to point this out, but we have a mission in," he looked at the clock, which said 4:00am, "three hours."

"Obviously, the mission will be postponed," said Hammond. "I suggest we break this up for now. Colonel, you and Doctor Jackson should get some rest. I'll inform Major Carter and Teal'c about the status of the mission."

"What about..." Jack indicated, "this Daniel?"

"I'm tired too," said kid Daniel, looking more cowed than anything.

"You can come with me," Hammond said to him. "I'll find somewhere for you for now. I want you to know, son, that Earth is your home, and we'll do our best to get you settled and happy. There's just a few things we have to work out first so, if it's okay with you, we'd rather not tell anyone who you really are."

Daniel bit his lip again. He was going to have a bleeder, soon. "Okay," he nodded. "Besides," he looked at Daniel, "I'm not him, anyway."

Hammond led the youngster out, and Jack quickly moved into Daniel's personal space. "What's wrong?" he whispered.

"Nothing."

"You were acting like a cornered rat."

"It's not every day you come face to face with your younger self," said Daniel, standing, but not looking at him.

"It happened to me."

"I know, and I don't know how you remained so calm."

"Hey, this is the SGC. We've even joined forces with our adult clones. There's nothing that we can't face, Daniel."

"It's not about what *I* can or can't face," said Daniel cryptically. Then he fixed Jack with a look. "You lied."

"What?"

"About Steven. He's not dead."

"Nope. Unfortunately not." Seeing Daniel turn away, Jack softened his tone. "Come on, Daniel, you think we could tell him the truth? What would be the point? I was just trying to protect him."

"You took advantage of my memory problems. I thought at first you were telling the truth."

Jack held out his hands helplessly. "I didn't know you didn't remember, Daniel. I wasn't taking advantage of you. I was doing damage control."

Daniel shrugged. "I remember now, I guess." Then he yawned, and looked like he was about to drop back into his chair.

Jack nodded towards the corridor. "Come on, bed." After waiting for Daniel to move, he followed him out of the room. Daniel walked slowly, staring at his feet, tension curving his back.

"Daniel," said Jack.

"Yes, Jack."

How to phrase this? "I'd never deliberately lie to you like that."

Daniel chuckled wryly. "That's very you, Jack. You'd never deliberately lie."

"I'm trying to be honest, here. Not unless I had a very good reason."

"So you've lied in the past."

"Under orders, yes. And hell, probably regarding injuries, my opinions, my feelings... I'm a fucked up person. I don't know what I can say, Daniel. All I can tell you is I've tried my damnedest to help your memories return."

Apparently a bit of self-deprecation went a long way. Daniel's back straightened a little. "I know that, Jack. You've been very..."

"Helpful?"

"Thorough."

"Pushy," decided Jack.

"I didn't say that."

"Everyone else has."

"Sincerely, Jack. You've been very thorough, and yes, helpful." Daniel glanced at him. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"About the duplicates. You didn't feel at all... responsible, when you realised that young Jack was you?"

Ah, now they were getting to the real reason why Daniel was behaving so skittishly. "What could I possibly feel responsible for, Daniel? It was Loki, not me."

"In the sense of obligation, I mean."

"Right. Well, you know, he was me. He had his own ideas. I'm afraid I didn't have much say in it."

They turned the corner in the corridor, heading for the far elevators. "I guess that's why I'm feeling... because Daniel is me, and yet not me. He's a me from a long time ago. Just when I was on the verge of either greatness, or disaster. Relatively speaking."

"He's twenty-three, right? The stargate was still years away."

"But all the research I did to formulate my theories as to the cross-pollination of Earth's ancient cultures, that started when I was twenty-three. That was when the spark came to me. When I first realised that I could see something that no one else had seen! I knew how important this discovery could be for our entire understanding of ancient cultures, and not only that, but for our entire understanding of the very foundations of modern civilisation-"

"Daniel, you're shouting."

Daniel put a hand to his head. "Right." He took a couple of deep breaths. "You know how you've been worried about my memory, Jack? Well, it's all flooding back now."

"You'd forgotten all this stuff."

"In a sense, yes," said Daniel, the palm of his hand kneading above his eye. "It all seems to be flashing back at me, rather too vividly."

"Well... sleep will help," said Jack lamely.

Daniel didn't reply.

They travelled via elevator to their usual sleeping quarters. Daniel leaned against the elevator wall, looking thoroughly drained. Jack wasn't sure what to say to him, so he pretended not to notice anything. He was good like that when it suited him, he thought sourly to himself, but couldn't bring himself to task for it.

Once they started up the last corridor, Daniel spoke again. "When you first met me... you thought I was a real geek."

"You were," said Jack.

"I was worse than that. I was completely cut off from people. Emotionally autistic. It was the only way to cope with the continual rejection of my theories by my peers, and not just my peers, but my friends. You see, at the age of twenty-three, I had friends. I had Steven and Sarah, people that I cared about, and who cared about me. Until the whole... anyway, I know what my duplicate must be feeling right now. Finally, he gets some people in his life who care about him and look like staying around, and they get wrenched away."

"I'm sorry, Daniel, but we couldn't tell him the truth about Sarah, and I don't see how knowing that Steven is still alive, only fifteen years older and a confirmed asshole, will make him feel better, anyway."

"I know, Jack. It's okay."

"That guy was so not worthy of you. Little worm."

Daniel shook his head. "It's okay," he repeated. "He'll deal with it. It's not like he's not used to it."

They had reached Daniel's door. Jack said, "You had a pretty crap life as a youngster, didn't you?"

"Oh, it wasn't bad. I had food, and clothes, and I had a library card to every library within an hour's bus ride... I was quite often happy, Jack. Don't look at me like that. I really really need to lie down."

Jack stepped aside to allow Daniel to unlock his door. "Well, sweet dreams," he said.

"I doubt it," said Daniel, and disappeared inside.

Jack took a moment to sigh expansively, and tromped off to his own quarters.

****

Jack slept later than he intended. His body didn't deal with alcohol as well as it once did. Not that he was hung-over or anything; just tired.

A knock at the door woke him up. Daniel, he thought. Perhaps he'd heard Daniel's familiar footsteps approaching as he still slept. Perhaps it was his style of knock. Whatever.

"Jack," came Daniel's voice. "Jack, it's me, Daniel."

"I know!" said Jack.

"General Hammond wants to see us."

Jack groaned and rolled over. What time was it?

"It's 9:00am," Daniel added. "As in, 0900."

"Did I ask that?"

"You didn't have to."

Jack snorted, and heaved himself off the bed, searching for the fresh uniform he'd cleverly laid out before he fell asleep. Not so cleverly, it was now in a crumpled heap on the floor. "I'll be along soon," he called to Daniel.

"I'll wait."

Jack emerged a little later to find Daniel leaning, eyes closed, against the wall. Sleep-standing, thought Jack. "Daniel. Daniel!"

Daniel jerked. "I'm awake," he said.

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Just then?"

"No. Earlier."

"Some," said Daniel.

They stopped by the commissary on the way, and Jack grabbed a sandwich which he'd all but finished by the time they arrived at the briefing room. Everyone appeared to be present except for the General. Jack nodded to Carter and Teal'c as he sat down, Daniel beside him. This was not an SG-1 meeting, this was a Stargate Command meeting; but usually these days, an observer wouldn't know the difference. SG-1 had for a long time been the inner circle of the SGC. Sundry PR managers and security officers today completed the numbers at the table.

Carter leaned across the table to say something, but was interrupted by General Hammond's arrival. "These are from today's newspapers," he said, passing around the pertinent pages from both 'straight' and tabloid newspapers. Jack glanced over the headlines.

*Car Occupants 'Beamed Up' Says Cop*

*Police Spokesman Denies UFO Theory*

*Secret Military Experiments With Star Trek Technology*

Fast work. "I take it you couldn't make it go away," said Jack, looking at the PR officer.

"With all due respect, sir, it's difficult to cover something up when it's seen by a credible witness. If you could have been more careful-"

"Oh, now I'm to blame for the fact that Thor thinks he's evolved beyond common courtesy-" Jack thought someone should ban the phrase 'with all due respect', or at least charge people with insubordination for using it. No one who meant to respect you said 'with all due respect'.

"Gentlemen," said Hammond. "Casting blame is not the purpose of this meeting. Major," he said to the PR officer, "could you bring us all up to date with the current situation."

Everything was as predicted. The patrolman was steadfast in his insistence that two people had been 'beamed up' right before his eyes. He was presently the subject of disciplinary action for making statements to the press without authorisation. The press itself was deluging the base with phone calls, asking for comments and enquiring about the two 'missing' air force officers who had, according to the patrolman, been in the truck. Jack's truck was still being held for processing.

They talked damage control for a while, Jack bored out of his skull, Daniel uncharacteristically quiet beside him.

"Any further suggestions?" said Hammond.

"Yes," said Jack. "Perhaps me and Daniel should go down to the police station, present ourselves, say 'hey everyone, here we are, we weren't beamed up'."

"That's an idea," nodded Hammond. To the PR guy he said, "What's your opinion on that?"

"We'd need to work out a cover story, something feasible, otherwise it would look too much like a cover-up."

"Which it is," Jack couldn't resist saying.

"Which we don't want to draw attention to," countered the PR guy.

Carter spoke. "What if the Colonel and Daniel confirmed the police officer's story, to a point?"

"What do you mean, Major?" said Hammond.

"I mean, if things they said correlated with the officer's story, without actually giving away the truth. That they were stopped by the patrolman, that they were asked to get out of the vehicle, that the patrolman told them he wanted the Colonel's truck for some sort of evidence and they would have to find their own way home..."

"It could work," said the PR guy. "That way, the onus is on the patrolman. He looks foolish, it all gets swept under the carpet. I like it."

"So we allow everyone to believe that the patrolman is lying?" said Daniel, the first words he had spoken thus far in the meeting.

"Not lying," said Carter. "Just confused, perhaps. I don't know, it was just a suggestion."

"I'm with Daniel," sighed Jack. Until Daniel had spoken, it had seemed like a good idea. "The patrolman's career would be shot to pieces."

"The patrolman's word is already lacking credibility," said the PR guy. "His career might be over anyway."

"Look, this is the USA," said Jack. "I think we're overestimating the general public's concern. We're allowing the fact that it's actually true to influence us. It'll blow over. The Agent Mulder types will believe, and yet won't be able to do anything, while the average American will just chuckle over their cornflakes."

"But they have your car, Colonel," said the PR guy. "How do we explain that?"

"Engine trouble. We left it behind, the cop must have found it."

"So the patrolman is lying again," said that irritating voice of conscience called Daniel.

"Okay. Somebody stole my truck, and the thieves passed themselves off as airforce officers," said Jack. "Is that better, Daniel?"

"I guess I can live with that," said Daniel. "Provided they don't actually pick anyone up for stealing your truck."

Jack checked his watch. "Right. Colonel Jack O'Neill just attempted to leave Cheyenne Mountain, only to discover that his car had been stolen from the carpark some time during the night."

"That's going to bring another set of problems, Colonel," said Hammond. "It's too difficult to steal a vehicle from base. The police are trying to retain credibility over this, and they'll look here for suspects."

"Perhaps, sir," said Carter, "you just woke up at home, and noticed your car missing."

"Won't they have tried to contact me already?"

Carter invented further. "You only got home from a mission late last night, you were so tired that you left your garage door open and your keys in the car, and fell into bed, where you slept like the dead."

"Great," said Jack. "So now I'm the one who looks stupid. I'm so pleased you're happier with this scenario, Daniel."

"Go and make that phone call, Colonel," said Hammond. "Use the secure line in my office so that your location can't be traced. Identify yourself first, and see what they say. Play it by ear."

"Will do, sir," said Jack, and left the room for a few precious minutes of breathing time. On the phone to the police, he heard relief in the voice of the officer he was patched through to. It didn't sound like the patrolman from last night. Jack gathered they'd tried to contact him a couple of times at home. "I'm guessing you know the whereabouts of my truck?" he said to the officer. Yes, indeed, they did. The officer asked him to come down and fill out a statement, due to the fact that his truck had been involved in 'an incident'. Jack said he'd try to be there around lunchtime.

Back at the briefing room, Jack reported on the phone call, then matters turned to Jack's potential culpability in this whole situation. For the record, of course.

"Don't you get some sort of warning when this Thor is about to contact you?" the PR guy asked Jack.

"A few seconds before, I sometimes get this particular feeling," agreed Jack.

"Wasn't there anything you could have done?"

Daniel butted in. "Let me see. I suppose Jack could have used the time-honoured 'Look! There's a flying pig!' trick on the policeman, or perhaps he could have just hit the man over the head. What do you think, Jack?"

"We could have taken him along with us," Jack suggested to Daniel. "It was rude of us not to invite him."

"Thank you Colonel, Doctor," said Hammond, as though they had given food for thought. Hammond was too used to them to be ruffled, although the PR guy gave them offended looks.

After a little more discussion, things wound up. "This meeting is concluded," said Hammond finally, before adding, "SG-1, stay where you are."

Daniel perked up a little. They were getting to his problem at last.

"All this discussion about Thor," said Carter, when the PR and security people had left. "And our mission being postponed. It's true, then. Loki cloned Daniel."

"How do you know that, Major?" said Hammond.

"Janet told me. Don't worry, sir, she didn't tell anyone else. She wanted someone to verify her results, but given her orders for secrecy, she couldn't ask one of the other doctors."

"I am unaware of what we are discussing," said Teal'c.

"We'll take it from the beginning," Hammond assured him. "Colonel O'Neill, do you want to explain?"

"I'd be delighted to," said Jack, and did so. Daniel never once interrupted him. Jack resisted the urge to feel his friend's forehead for fever. "Anything to add, Daniel?" he said at the conclusion of his brief but functional statement.

"Basically, as Jack has just explained," Daniel said to Teal'c and Carter. "He's me, only his memories stop at the age of twenty-three."

"So he has no understanding of the SGC, or the Goa'uld," stated Teal'c.

"He knows what Thor explained to him. But he doesn't recall any personal experience of it, no. So how useful Thor's explanation actually is, is debatable."

"Do we get to meet him?" asked Carter.

"At the moment, he's with Doctor Fraiser, having more tests," said Hammond. "She'll bring him by when she's finished."

"I bet a teenage Daniel would be cute," said Carter.

"Wasn't I cute?" asked Jack.

"Yes, sir, but... you were very obnoxious, too, so the cuteness wore off."

"Pending the results of Doctor Fraiser's further testing," said Hammond, "we're working with the theory that somehow Loki's cloning process is responsible for the memory fault seen in the duplicate. Does anyone have anything to add to that?"

"That theory seems most likely," said Carter, "given that, as happened with Colonel O'Neill's clone, things didn't work out in a physiological sense exactly the way Loki had planned."

"I have a theory," said Jack. "Assuming that Loki abducted and cloned Daniel recently, what we're seeing could be a side effect of the memory problems Daniel was already having."

"A good point, Colonel. What do we know about the actual process of the cloning? Major Carter?"

"Well," said Carter, "we know Loki didn't simply use DNA. He was trying to get an exact specimen of the current state of the particular human, with memories and thought processes intact, rather than a simple 'clone' per se. Now what the Asgard do when they clone themselves is preserve the mind separately from the body, so that it can be transferred to the new form. But firstly, the Asgard physiology and body chemistry is different from ours, and secondly, we all know the problems they've been experiencing after thousands of years of cloning-"

"Carter-"

"Yes, sir. My point is, when you're talking about something as complex as the mind, the margin for error is very very slim. Just look at the existence of organic memory problems, and things like mental illness, and brain tumors, in our society. So the idea that the cloning process could produce faults is most likely. If, as Colonel O'Neill pointed out, Daniel was already having memory problems, then-"

"Wait a minute, you're saying the clone could have other problems?" said Jack.

"Yes, sir."

"There's another possibility, too," said Daniel.

"Go ahead," said Hammond.

"Well..." Daniel looked down at the table top, then to Jack. He looked troubled. He turned to the General. "Admittedly I'm no biologist, but... you remember the way Jack's duplicate began to physically degrade. Well, Thor fixed that. But what if, somehow, despite that, the duplicate's actual mind continues to degrade?"

"I can't see how that's possible," said Carter. "Not in such a systematic way."

"I can't see how any of it's possible," said Daniel. "And yet, it is. You see Daniel--my duplicate, that is--said something interesting. You remember, Jack, he said something like, he remembered the SGC when Thor initially told him about us. But at some point, he lost that 'knowing' and it became more like a science-fiction tale. He had lost the lived experience of it."

"He said that?" said Carter.

"Yes, I remember," said Jack.

The General nodded agreement. "You have a point, Doctor Jackson. But it will take time to prove."

"No, it won't," said Daniel. "If my duplicate is experiencing memory degradation, then," he glanced at Jack, "Jack's duplicate might be, too."

"Surely if the Colonel's duplicate was having problems, he'd have contacted us by now. We assured him he should do so at any time," Carter reminded them.

"Maybe not," said Jack.

"Sir, it would be in his own best interests."

"This is me we're talking about," said Jack, "at least, me in many ways. And perhaps, if I was making a new life for myself, I wouldn't want to contact you guys. I'd try to figure things out on my own."

"When did you last see Jack?" Daniel asked.

"We agreed we wouldn't see each other. Less... less *something*, that way."

"I haven't seen him since, either."

"Nor I," said Teal'c.

"No one's seen him," said Jack. "That was the point. New life. He's not even Jack O'Neill anymore, he's Jack Simpson." After 'The Simpsons', of course.

"Could you do that?" said Daniel.

"What?"

"Jack, he's *you*. Could you really walk away, from all of this, from all of us? I can see you thinking you could, for a while, but..."

"What, you think you're actually important to me?" teased Jack. The look in Daniel's eyes stopped his teasing cold. He looked around the table. Thoughtful silence seemed to have descended. He sighed, dropped his chin in his hand, regarded the table top. Could he have stayed away? Daniel, Carter, Teal'c, even Hammond... they were his family. The idea of having to create, from scratch, another family; he admitted he had no taste for it, not at all. The only way he could imagine dealing with the loss of his family would be to go far far away, from *all* people, not just familiar ones. He could see himself coping by living in a cabin in the wilderness, spending his days fishing. An old fantasy surfaced, that of returning to the uncomplicated life he'd had on Edora. But that was no longer a viable option, either; he'd long since recognised it as an escapist dream, finally abandoned at his own personal ground zero, Daniel's death and ascension.

Aside from all of that, could he have gone back to fucking *high school* and *not* gone insane? He'd hated it the first time round. Now he was an often-grumpy 46 year old. He hated the music, he had no interest in talking about sexual fumblings or role-playing games, he felt paternalistic rather than comradely towards teenage boys, and as for teenage girls... dating! God no! He was attracted to grown adults, not children. He couldn't imagine being suddenly thrust into a teenage body would change any of this.

He closed his eyes, put his hands over his face, and pressed. It didn't stop the feeling of threatening headache. "Has anyone checked up on clone Jack recently?" he said, hands still over his face.

"We've maintained a link with the foster parents," said Hammond.

"I was not aware duplicate O'Neill was in need of parental guidance," said Teal'c.

"In this country, we can't have people who look like teenagers running around without guardians," explained Hammond. "Even if they are former Colonels in the Air Force."

"So, where did he end up?" asked Carter.

"You remember Major Thredman?" said Jack. "He led SG-6 for a couple of years, until he was badly wounded in the line of duty and took medical retirement."

Carter nodded. "He retired a couple of years ago."

"We approached Matt Thredman and his wife about taking on young Jack," said Hammond. "Naturally, we couldn't tell them the truth. Instead we told them that young Jack was from off-world and considered an adult in his own culture, therefore used to being independent. They agreed to act as token guardians and allow him to live with them until he turned legal age."

"We did, after a lot of head-banging, manage to convince my duplicate that this was the only reasonable option," said Jack.

"In any case," said Hammond, "as far as we're aware, he's doing fine. Perhaps he's a little moody, but the parents don't think much of it. He is, after all, a teenager."

"He's *not* a teenager."

"As far as the parents are concerned, he is."

"But *we* know he's not. They wouldn't be looking for the right things."

"The colonel has a point, sir," said Carter. "If Jack's duplicate was losing his memory, it's likely he would be very confused. He could be acting out, but the parents would just assume it was normal teenage behaviour."

Jack looked up. "Why do we never think these things through properly?"

"To be fair, Colonel, these are not situations we have manuals and procedures for." But Hammond was looking troubled. "I'll ask Doctor Fraiser-"

"Ask away, I'm here," came Fraiser's voice from the doorway. "Sam, Teal'c, this is Daniel."

Carter and Teal'c greeted him in their particular ways--Carter with a smile and a wave, Teal'c with the head nod. Jack could tell by the look in Carter's eyes that she thought kid Daniel to be extremely cute.

"What's that on your forehead?" kid Daniel asked Teal'c.

"It is a tattoo, made of gold."

"Pure gold?"

"Yes."

"Y-y-you're not from Earth, are you?"

"I am not," said Teal'c.

Kid Daniel looked at Carter. "Are you from Earth?"

"Yes. I'm completely from Earth."

"Daddy's a Tok'ra, though," muttered Jack, and looked innocently at Carter when she swung around.

Hammond took control once again. "Please make your report, Doctor Fraiser, then take young Daniel back to his room in the guest quarters."

"I want to know, wh-what's going on," said kid Daniel.

"And you will, as soon as we figure out what's going on ourselves," said Hammond. "Doctor Fraiser?"

Kid Daniel hovered close to Fraiser, as she said, "The DNA analysis is back, and it's just as we'd expected. Daniel is Daniel. Also he has no physical damage or infirmity, other than the expected eyesight and allergy problems. There's no brain damage that we can see from the MRI. The base psychiatrist conducted a quick intelligence test, and he scores in the same range as our Daniel. What did you want to ask me just then?"

"If a person is experiencing a dramatic degradation of memory, what would their behaviour likely be?" said Hammond.

"Do you mean chronic memory loss, such as dementia for example, or do you mean the acute memory loss of amnesia?"

"I mean a person who is losing, over a period of weeks, large chunks of their life experience."

"You're referring to Daniel," she said, glancing at the duplicate.

"Yes. I'm also wondering about Colonel O'Neill's duplicate."

"Well, I can only speculate," said Fraiser. "I'd say in the circumstances you describe, the person would initially be withdrawn and irritable, and if it progressed, they would become moody, angry, probably depressed, certainly with self-esteem problems... is that what you were looking for?"

"Thank you, Doctor," said Hammond. "You may be dismissed." After Fraiser took kid Daniel away, he looked around the table. "Perhaps there's nothing to worry about, but we need to talk to young Jack as soon as possible."

"He'll be in school, sir."

"There's no need to pull him out of school. What's happened has happened. A few more hours won't make a difference. Do we have anything else to discuss at this stage?"

It appeared they had not. Hammond broke up the meeting, directing Jack to drive down to the police station. Jack suggested that while he was down there, he could pick up young Jack for questioning, as by the time he'd driven all the way down and made his statement to the police, it wouldn't be long before high school broke up for the day. Hammond agreed with him. "I'll contact the foster parents and ask them to get a message through to young Jack," Hammond told him as they left.

Daniel followed Jack into the elevator. "Up or down?" Jack asked him.

"I'm coming with you."

"Why?"

"You don't have a car. I do."

"Good point. Although I could use one of the base cars." Jack pressed the button for their sleeping quarters. He was not going to hang around a high school dressed in military garb.

"My car's got a better stereo," continued Daniel.

"Don't you want to go hang with your clone?"

"No, I do not want to 'go hang with my clone'," said Daniel. "I spent some time with him earlier, while you were sleeping. We're both rather bemused with each other. Although I did try to explain the circumstances of Sarah's and Steven's 'deaths' more satisfactorily."

"He still remembered them? Hadn't forgotten them?"

"It had only been four hours since we first questioned him. I doubt the memory degrades quite that fast. Broadly assuming Loki took me a few weeks before he took you, the rate of degradation is, very approximately, about a year per week. This time next week, I expect his memory will stop at the age of twenty-two."

"So, by your calculations, how old would Jack be?"

"We haven't any proof that Jack has problems, yet."

"*If* he had memory problems."

Daniel thought for a moment. "Remember, this is an extremely rough estimate."

"Go on."

"You can do the math."

"You've already done the math," said Jack. "Why waste my energy, too?"

Daniel capitulated. "He'd be around thirty-seven, thirty-eight," he said.

Good years, Jack remembered.

****

Jack dropped Daniel at a mall a few blocks from the police precinct he needed to attend. They didn't want to risk Daniel being recognised by the cop; bad enough Jack had to take the risk.

"Wear this," said Daniel, fetching an old boonie off the floor in the back seat.

"Why do you keep a boonie in the car?" said Jack, frowning at the hat Daniel had deposited in his hands.

"You never know when you might need one. Like right now."

"Why do I need a boonie right now?"

"It will disguise you."

"They're cops, Daniel. You can't put a hat on and hope they won't recognise you."

"We could stop at the Magic Mart and buy you a false moustache." At Jack's quelling look, Daniel added, "It was dark, and you were in the passenger seat, so even given that you were drawing undue attention towards yourself, I honestly doubt he'll recognise you if you pull the boonie down over your eyes."

"Well, thank you Daniel, I'll consider it. Now off you go... shopping."

"I'm buying clothes for Daniel," said Daniel.

"So go do it."

Daniel hopped out, and Jack drove on to the police station, parking in the visitors' parking. Before he got out, he considered the boonie. Sighing, he put it on. Despite what he'd said to Daniel, he actually agreed it was a good idea.

He announced himself at the front desk, and soon enough a young officer came down and brought him to a small room, giving him a form to fill out, and asking him some questions.

"So," said the officer, "you said you didn't notice the truck missing until this morning?"

Jack explained, in minimal detail, that he'd got home late last night, that he must have left his garage unlocked, and his keys behind in the truck.

"But if you left your keys in the truck, how did you get into the house?" asked the officer, obviously thinking he was clever.

Jack began pulling keyrings out of his pocket. He dumped the four separate rings in front of the officer. "House keys," he said, pointing to one, before pointing to the rest in turn. "Work keys. Sundry keys. Daniel's keys. I keep all my keys on separate rings. More organised that way."

"Oh," said the officer. "Who's Daniel?"

Shit. He hadn't meant to say that name. That was the name in the initial officer's report. A moment later, Jack shrugged it off. Daniel was not exactly a rare name.

"A friend," he said easily.

"You realise that insurance companies don't tend to pay out on claims where the keys were left in the vehicle."

"Has my truck been damaged?"

"Well, no."

"Then what's the problem? Can I get it back now?"

"No," said the officer. "It's currently being processed by our technicians. I need to ask you some more questions. Where were you around eleven pm last night?"

"Why?"

"We need to eliminate you from our investigation."

"You think I stole my own truck?"

"There's some discrepancies in our information," said the officer.

"Fine. I went out to dinner last night," said Jack, having already decided to ease into the untruths. "To a restaurant on Smith Street. I left around ten thirty, went home, went to bed. Woke up this morning, did the usual breakfast, newspaper, ignored my incoming phone calls because it's my day off, eventually decided to go out only to realise my truck was missing."

"So at eleven pm last night, you weren't anywhere near the route to the mountain?"

"Why would I be there?" said Jack. "I don't live anywhere near there."

"You work in that direction," the officer pointed out.

I could lean over this table and kill you with my bare hands before you'd even moved, kid. "Oh," said Jack, as if it had only just occurred to him. "Yes. Well, like I told you, it's my day off. I don't go to work on my day off. Most particularly, I do not go to work on the night before my day off."

"Who was with you last night?"

"A friend. Would you like me to give you his details?"

"For the record," said the officer, so Jack reeled off Daniel's contact details, emphasising that Daniel was 'Doctor Daniel Jackson', which seemed to impress upon the officer to a certain extent. People with PhD's did not go around getting abducted by aliens.

There was a knock on the door. "It's Officer Graham," came the voice.

"Come in." As the door opened, the officer interviewing Jack added, "Is this the man you saw last night, Officer Graham?"

Quickly, Jack put on his sternest, most Colonel-in-the-field-of-death expression and turned to face Officer Graham. Officer Graham stepped back, looked quickly away. "No, this man isn't the man from last night," he said firmly.

"Thank you, officer. You may go."

That concluded the interview. After grousing about not getting his truck back one more time, and hoping they caught the bastards who stole it, Jack left. It was around forty-five minutes since he'd dropped Daniel at the mall. He drove back there, and waited on a bench seat at the atrium in the centre of the mall, where he'd arranged for Daniel to look for him every half hour. The clattering of shopping carts and chatter of scores of voices faded gradually away. He'd been dozing for a while when someone sat down beside him, bumping into him. He breathed in without opening his eyes. Familiar Daniel scent. "Hi," he said, not moving.

"Hi, Jack. You've still got my boonie on."

"It allows me to sleep, while still intimidating people into not sitting beside me."

"So..." Daniel shifted plastic bags about, "you haven't been arrested, at least."

"No. They believed me. The officer who stopped us looked right past me."

"See, the boonie was a good idea."

"It was." Jack opened his eyes and pushed the boonie off the bridge of his nose. Shoppers, many of them women of varying ages, some with small children, wandered past his vision. They carried plastic bags, some translucent, showing the goods inside, others opaque, all the colors of the rainbow, emblazoned with store names. Their clothes, too, were a kaleidoscope of color. The colors washed in with the movement and sound, reminding Jack he had a headache. He looked at Daniel beside him. Daniel was familiar, dressed in a dark knit shirt and dark trousers.

"What is it with people and outlandish color?" said Jack. "Don't they realise how painful it is to look at?"

Daniel joined him in looking at the passing shoppers. "All this color is basically an expression of freedom," he said. "And the result of the assimilation of other cultures. We have an enormous amount of meaningless choice. We can choose what we want we want to buy, what we want to wear..."

"The Asgard are free," complained Jack. "And they don't," his eyes lighted on a particularly appalling specimen, "wear fluro pink stripes while standing next to a yellow ochre storefront and dangling a kid in orange and blue off their hand."

"The Asgard have evolved beyond the need for adornment and consumerism. They're happy in their own skins."

"Unless their name is Loki, in which case they're not happy unless they're stealing someone else's skin," said Jack.

"Well," Daniel patted his bags. "I've got some clothes for Daniel, anyway."

"Let me see what suffering you have wrought upon your teenage self."

"Jack, he's not going to want to wear X-Men shirts and," Daniel gestured to a young man walking by, mid-riff shirt exposing the piercing in his belly, "things like *that*, no matter what all the other kids are wearing. I've bought him some ordinary, comfortable clothes that he won't find too threatening, but will help him to blend in somewhat."

Jack was already going through the bags. White button-down shirt, dark button-down shirt, dark pants, a sweater. All a little preppy, but Daniel was right, the kid wouldn't stand out half as much as the real teenage Daniel probably had, given that Daniel had found clothes-sense only since he'd met Carter and Fraiser. "Looks good, Daniel," he said. "What time does this school get out?"

Daniel checked his watch. "Forty-five minutes."

"Time for something to eat, then?"

Daniel gathered his bags up. "Absolutely."

****

Jack hung an arm out of the window, tapped his fingers on the side of the car in time to the beat of the radio. His headache had receded during their late lunch, and he could only put that down to the company. Just hanging out with Daniel could centre him like nothing else. Strange, particularly considering that on missions, no one made him lose more sleep or put more grey hairs on his head than Daniel. A lot of that wasn't anything Daniel did, Jack admitted, it was just that all the nasties in the galaxy seemed to find Daniel irresistible, causing Jack endless worry. But when not on missions, hanging with Daniel, even if Jack technically had a job to do at this moment, was one of his favourite things.

Who could explain friendship? Theirs had survived, despite everything. It hadn't been the Goa'uld, the NID, the life-or-death situations that had nearly broken them, it had been Jack's spiralling hatred of it all, the spin-doctors, the false diplomacy, the Pentagon suits who wanted only to see new and exciting technologies, and didn't care shit about the people; not the SGC people who died procuring those technologies, not the people on other worlds, not the people subjugated by the Goa'uld; not any people, as long as their budgets balanced. No, they didn't care if Jack lost the faith of his teammates because he and Hammond had been secretly snowballed by the Pentagon into accepting a revised directive--"new technologies at any price", a directive brought about, ironically, because Jack had busted up their little black ops weapons-stealing ring. They didn't care that Jack would do what they said because he was a good soldier and he loved his country, they didn't care what Jack sacrificed in order to carry out his orders. And they certainly didn't understand Daniel Jackson; the significance of his knowledge of cultures and languages, the importance of his research, and the necessity of having someone on a first contact team whose special skill was not threat-assessment but a straightforward interest in other people and their lives. Daniel approached everyone the same way, whether primitive or advanced, or even Unas, and if it had been up to the military, Jack didn't have enough fingers to add up the number of cultures and worlds that would have been destroyed through ignorance--those little white men on the planet with the singing plants, the Salish world, and the good old Unas, just to name three. They wouldn't have wiped out so many Goa'uld without Daniel's contribution. Earth would have been taken over by Apophis years ago. They'd have made a deal with goddamned fascists on Euronda if it wasn't for Daniel. SG-1 wasn't just Colonel O'Neill and Major-Doctor Carter, like the Pentagon seemed to think. It was Teal'c, too, and Daniel. All of SG-1 had their areas of speciality--and together they completed each other, forming the team who, if Jack said so himself, was legendary across the galaxy and beyond for their achievements. The Pentagon didn't get that.

The Pentagon didn't understand friendship.

Even with Daniel being a contrary mix of vulnerable and keep-e-off since his descension, and his memory not fully returned, his presence here with Jack suggested something significant; that Daniel still turned to Jack when he was worried about something. Daniel might not be talking about his worry, but quite often you didn't need to talk about it, despite what psychologists, and a certain proportion of women, thought. You could just *be* with someone, and that was enough. Would Jack have survived Ba'al's continual torture without becoming a total head-case if it hadn't been for Daniel just being there for him? He doubted it.

Or was he projecting? Was Daniel really so comfortable with him? Did Daniel remember enough of their shared experiences over the years to count his friendship with Jack as something special, or was he here by default, because he still didn't feel he had a special relationship with anyone?

Nope, not going there, Jack told himself firmly. He needed to simply accept Daniel being here with him, and not pile on the baggage.

They heard the bell announcing the end of school, and almost immediately students began appearing.

"We stand a good chance of missing him," said Daniel, regarding the flood of teenagers with raised eyebrows.

"Hammond called me on my cell," Jack told him. "He said that the foster parents had got a message to the kid, told him to hang around the front and wait for us."

"Shouldn't we get out of the car?"

"I don't know what it will do to his rep to have two grown men turn up to collect him."

"You could get out by yourself."

"We'll wait. He'll be the kid staying put, looking about for someone. Easy to spot."

Sure enough, as wave after wave of students disgorged, a few hovered around the street entrance, looking up and down the road. Jack recognised one of them as kid Jack.

"That's him," said Daniel.

"Yep." Jack opened the car door, and stood out on the pavement. Before he did anything else, young Jack started walking towards them, so he dropped back into the car seat, leaving the door open.

"He doesn't look quite as cocky as he did," commented Daniel.

Jack, too, found himself scanning the kid for any of Doctor Fraiser's signs. The kid wore an oversized jacket and baggy jeans. His hair was effusive with gel. He looked cool enough, thought Jack, given his time and distance from the theory of 'cool', yet he stumped along the path, frowning, head down. He stopped before Jack's door.

"I take it you got our message," said Jack.

"Yeah. What do you want?"

"We want you to come with us, back to the SGC. Something's come up."

"I'm not supposed to get into cars with strange men."

"We're not strange," said Jack, hoping kid Jack was displaying evidence of sarcastic humor and not evidence of memory loss. "You know us."

Kid Jack nodded. "You're still strange."

"But you know us, right?"

Kid Jack rolled his eyes, and pointed to Daniel. "That's Daniel. You're the guys from the SGC."

"I am you and you are me," Jack couldn't resist sing-songing.

"Huh?"

"You know, clone? They copied you? You're a mini-me?"

Kid Jack stepped back. "What are you talking about?"

Jack and Daniel exchange looks. "Uh oh."

"Jack," said Daniel to the kid. "We really need to talk to you. Matt Thredman told us it's okay, if it's okay with you. If you would just come with us..."

But young Jack was backing off. "No way. I don't want to be involved in any more of your weird experiments."

"What do you mean, weird experiments?" asked Jack carefully.

"You never even mentioned Charlie!" Jack yelled at them. "Where is he? Why are you keeping me from him?"

"Oh, shit."

"I'm not going anywhere with you people!" And the kid ran off, into a knot of students. Jack vaulted out of the car, intending to follow, but his stupid knee decided it hadn't been given enough warning, and baulked painfully, forcing him to stop still. On the other side of the car, Daniel had popped out, but kid Jack was gone.

"I suppose we can pick him up at his foster parents'," said Daniel.

"Not today. We'd just scare him off. We've found out what we wanted to know, anyway."

They climbed back into the car.

"Well done, Daniel," added Jack.

"Me? How is this my fault?"

"No, dumbass." Jack cuffed him gently. "I mean the age. That's paranoid, Special Ops, married-with-a-kid, late thirties Jack if I've ever seen him. Or been him."

"Small consolation," said Daniel.

****

"And that was it? You didn't try to speak to him again?" said General Hammond.

They'd returned to base, and were currently attending an impromptu meeting with the General and Doctor Fraiser.

"I made a decision not to," said Jack. "Knowing me, knowing him, he's much less likely to co-operate if we keep at him. Give him a day or two to cool off, think about things, and I think he'll agree to meet with us, at least. Probably in neutral territory, but it's better than nothing."

"So he's definitely experiencing the memory degradation we observed in young Daniel?" said Fraiser.

"I think it's fairly clear. He's trapped in my late-thirties at the moment. Daniel, explain your theory."

Daniel explained his idea about the ratio of memory degradation to the passing of weeks. "I have to emphasise," he said at the end, "it's just theorizing with what we know so far. And I'm only guessing as to when my duplicate was created. It's possible, although not very likely, that he was created even before I ascended."

"That would work in our favour, then," said Hammond.

"And it's always possible that there's nothing exponential about the process--they could wake up tomorrow with memories only up to the age of five."

"Still," said Hammond, "given that Doctor Jackson's duplicate appears to have lost fifteen years or so in some sort of gradual progression, it seems that to the best of our capability we can extrapolate from that. Would you agree with that, Doctor Fraiser?"

"I think we have no choice but to assume that, at this stage," agreed Fraiser, "until we're able to contact Thor."

"And we know how the Asgard are about answering their phone-things," said Jack. "Never there when you need them."

"We'll keep trying," said Hammond. "In the meantime, Jack, you said you think it's safe to leave your duplicate alone for a day or two."

"Yes, I think it's safe. That is, of course, if he doesn't decide we're all really a bunch of alien impostors who stole his body and that of others in the military in order to attempt to take over the world, and consequently decide to take matters into his own hands by buying explosives over the internet and coming up here in the dead of night to blow the whole base up. What?" he added, as everyone stared at him.

"Do you think he would do that, Colonel?"

"How the hell should I know? He's certainly *capable*. But I can't tell you how this memory-thing is affecting his thinking ability and emotions. I don't have experience with that."

"We'll increase security around base," Hammond decided. "And put a twenty-four hour watch on the duplicate."

"He's Special Ops, sir. And he's already suspicious."

"I can't take the risk that we've got a time bomb walking around out there," said Hammond, getting to his feet. "Thank you, people. As always, keep me appraised."

"Where's Daniel?" Daniel asked Fraiser, as the General left.

"As far as I know, he's with Sam," said Fraiser. "The General won't allow him off-base, but he wanted to get some fresh air, so they're on the surface somewhere."

"Thanks. We'll page her," said Daniel. He turned to Jack. "Coming?"

"Yes. There's some questions he might be able to answer," said Jack.

****

They met Carter and kid Daniel up on the surface. While Daniel went to the kid, Jack beckoned Carter aside. "How is he?" he asked.

"He seems fine, sir."

"You think he's cute, don't you?"

Carter looked over at the two Daniels, who were gesturing at each other. "Sir, you have to admit yourself he's-"

"Cute?"

"Adorable," said Carter.

"His obnoxiousness hasn't surfaced yet, I take it."

"It's Daniel, sir."

"Daniel, as we both know, can be extremely obnoxious."

Carter nodded doubtfully. "It's hard to think of him as anything other than a teenager. I mean, I know there's a twenty-three year old inside, but it's hard to remember that, with the stutter, and the... he looks about twelve, sir."

"Well, you can leave him in our capable hands now."

Carter turned to go. "Sir, there is one thing I found out. Before Thor found him, he was being kept on another planet, in a small village or something. Very low-tech. They still used cattle to plough fields. He's not sure how long he was there."

"Thank you, Carter. That's useful information."

She beamed at him, and left. Jack wandered over to the two Daniels.

"I brought you some clothes, some non-military clothes," Daniel was saying. "They're in the room where you're staying."

"Thank you. Wh-wh-when can I get some glasses?"

Big Daniel turned to Jack. "He needs them, Jack."

"Even at that age?" When Daniel nodded, Jack said, "We'll take him into town tomorrow."

"How much worse do my eyes get?" kid Daniel asked Daniel.

"Not much, actually. They stabilised around the age of twenty."

"That's weird," said Jack.

"No. I'm astigmatic, mostly. They probably won't get significantly worse until I'm middle-aged."

"Kid, we have some questions to ask you," said Jack.

"I'm not a kid. I'm twenty-three years old."

"He thinks anyone below his rank is a kid," Big Daniel assured kid Daniel. "He even puts Teal'c in the collective category of a kid, and Teal'c is over one hundred years old."

"Thank you, Daniel. You've just been promoted, by the way, to adult. Temporarily. And kid," he said to kid Daniel, "you're going to have to get used to me calling you that. I get confused trying to deal with two Daniels. Actually, I get confused just trying to deal with *one* Daniel."

"He's a craggy old Colonel," Daniel explained helpfully.

Jack shot him a look. "Perhaps we could sit down while we talk."

They all sat in various postures on the ground, Jack with his knees up and elbows hooked loosely over the top, kid Daniel in the more self-protective form of that posture with knees up to his chest and arms wrapped tightly around, and Big Daniel comfortably cross-legged.

"I know you're having memory confusions," said Jack to the kid, "but we want to get some things straight, regarding how long you've actually been in that body, and where you've been all this time, etcetera."

The kid began explaining, haltingly, as though he was having trouble remembering. As Carter had indicated, Loki had transferred him to a colony of humans, where he had lived for a little while. He wasn't certain exactly how long, but he thought he had been there a few weeks.

"Why?" said Jack. "Why did Loki send you there?" Why didn't he have you destroyed, like the others? he didn't add.

"He suh, he said that, because of who I was... or m-maybe I said..." the kid broke off, shaking his head to himself as if trying to rattle his fragmented memories into line. "I asked to go somewhere where I could help people."

"Did the planet have a stargate?"

"No."

"Did you like it there?" asked Daniel.

"I was able to help them a bit," said the kid. "I didn't want to interfere in their way of life too much, but I helped them design a better p-plough, pro-pro-provided that they shared this knowledge with the other villages."

"How did Thor find you?" asked Jack.

"He just beamed me up one day. I was feeding the pigs, and suddenly I was on his ship. Th-th-that's when he ex-explained he could bring me home."

"And you understood what he was talking about, at the time."

"I think so, yes."

"And now you don't."

"No, not really."

"Wait," said Daniel. "If Thor had just explained this to you, how can you suddenly have not remembered? Unless the memory degradation suddenly accelerated."

"This was a month ago, a month since Th-Th-Th, since Thor th-thound me. Found me."

"Say that five times fast," said Jack.

"I can't even say it once."

"Since Thor thound me," tried Jack. "Nope, I can't either."

"You're saying Thor was out of range," said Big Daniel, ignoring Jack.

"That's what he said. He had to travel closer to Earth. He ha-had to stop on the way t-to help on another planet. It took some time. He asked me if I wanted to stay on the planet where he'd found me, b-but I said I wanted to come home, to the SGC."

"How old were you feeling then?" asked Daniel.

"I..." kid Daniel frowned at his knees, before looking up through his mop of hair. "I remember asking him what had happened to... th-that name you kept saying this morning," he said to Daniel.

"Sha'uri?"

"Yes. But..." he wrinkled his brow, "why would I say that? You showed me a picture of her, but I don't..."

"Do you remember asking about anyone else? Did you ask about Carter, or Teal'c?"

"No. I asked about Jack O'Neill."

"That's me," said Jack.

"But I don't recognise you."

"It's the grey."

Kid Daniel shook his head.

"Jack," said Big Daniel, "I think when Thor found him, his memory might have regressed to a point some time in the first year of the Stargate Program. I'd come back from Abydos, Sha'uri had been taken by Apophis, and I was consumed with looking for her."

"Why would you ask about me, and not Carter or Teal'c?"

"Well, I guess I'd begun thinking of you as a friend... but I still hardly knew Sam or Teal'c."

"If that's the case, Daniel, then his memory is not degrading in the way that you'd thought."

They both regarded kid Daniel, who, if possible, curled up around himself even tighter, eyes flicking back and forth between them. Jack could see what Carter meant about him looking twelve. He looked like a kid needing a hug, but Jack was sure a twenty-three year old Daniel wasn't any more easy with being touched than their Daniel was.

"If Thor, as Daniel said, found him a month ago," mused Big Daniel, "and if we assume at the time he was experiencing my reality during the first year of the Stargate program--that would put him around thirty-one, thirty-two--then..." he looked at Jack. "He's lost nearly ten years in the space of a month."

"That doesn't fit with your theory."

"No. I suspect the degradation is proceeding at an exponential rate, and not reducing by a constant like I previously thought."

"Daniel, you sound like Carter."

"I guess she rubs off on me."

"She doesn't rub off on me."

"Good, because I think I'd be very disturbed if you started talking about quadratic equations and the Special Theory of Relativity."

"I know the Special Theory of Relativity." Jack pointed to his badges. "Air Force Colonel."

"Yes, but you wouldn't drop it into casual conversation like Sam would."

"You're right," said Jack. "I tried; I practiced in front of the mirror for hours, but I never managed to work it successfully into my repertoire."

"You realise what this all means," said Daniel.

"Yes. I'll never get a date with a physicist."

Daniel shook his head, managing to look long-suffering, yet amused. "No, Jack. Be serious for a moment. It means we can't afford to leave your duplicate alone for too long."

"But you guessed his age spot-on."

"But given what young Daniel says, the mental age of the duplicates clearly drops ever faster as time goes by."

"Wh-wh-wh... duplicates plural?" stuttered kid Daniel.

Jack sighed, and said to the kid, "Yes. You aren't the first copy of an SG-1 member we've encountered. Hell, for all we know, Loki cloned the whole damned set of us."

Daniel shuddered. "Don't say that. Can you imagine a younger Teal'c? He'd believe he was still Apophis' First Prime."

"I was joking... sort of."

"No, it's a valid point. We have to consider that there could be others."

"Who else got cloned?" asked kid Daniel.

"I did. Maybe you'll get to meet him." Jack stood up, popped his knees audibly. "Sun's going down. We should go in."

"I'm dying for a shower," agreed Daniel. "Come on, Daniel."

Kid Daniel uncurled, and stood up slowly. "I'm a prisoner here, aren't I? Sam said I wasn't, but I am."

"You're not a prisoner, exactly," said Daniel. "But it's true that you can't come and go as you please. I know you're going to disbelieve me, but it's honestly for your own safety. There's something wrong with your memory, and you need to stay where there are people who might be able to fix it."

"Doctor Fraiser did-didn't think there was anything she could do."

"But the Asgard can help," said Daniel firmly. "We just have to wait for Thor to respond to our messages."

****

More meetings. At least they'd been able to eat dinner first, so Jack wasn't dying of hunger. He was, however, extremely tired. Daniel wilted beside him, hunched and staring into his cup of coffee, having delivered his report on the latest information gleaned from his duplicate.

"So you're saying that there's more urgency than we thought with regards to the disintegration of the duplicates' memories," said General Hammond.

"Yes," said Daniel, "it would seem I assumed some sort of arithmetic progression, when in fact it seems to be more of a geometric progression. Or even completely random."

"Then I'm sorry, Colonel O'Neill, but we need to get your duplicate to co-operate with us. Not in a few days, but immediately."

"But sir-"

"Colonel, this is not up for discussion."

Jack knew if he argued further, Hammond could easily delegate someone else to the task. So he compromised. "Then might I suggest that Daniel and I try again tomorrow. This time we'll make better arrangements. In retrospect I can see that the whole 'get in our car' routine might have come across as a little threatening."

"Doctor Jackson and yourself didn't have much success last time."

"Strangers would have even less success. Sir, I know him. You know I do. Daniel and I should be the ones."

Hammond considered it, then gruffly gave the go-ahead.

Discussion turned to implications of the existence of other clones.

"It's possible," said Carter, "although if you remember Loki's explanation, he hadn't been in the vicinity of Earth for long, so the idea that he would have had time to clone any more people seems unlikely."

"Maybe he had more than one cloning set-up," said Jack. "He could have done more than one at a time."

Carter shook her head. "No. We saw no evidence of that. I think it would have increased his chances of detection too much."

"Daniel Jackson," said Teal'c.

Daniel's head snapped up. "I wasn't sleeping," he said defensively.

"When together we interrogated the others on this planet who had been taken by Loki, all remembered some aspect of the experience. Do you remember nothing?"

"Good point, Teal'c," said Hammond. "Doctor Jackson?"

"Oh, the four green globes, the buzzing around like insects," said Daniel.

"Then you remember," said Teal'c.

"No, I... I'm just repeating what those people said. I don't..." he put his fingers to his temples. "There's nothing like that in my head."

"But his memories are still all jumbled up there," Jack reminded the others. He thumped the table with his fist. "Damn that Loki! He probably screwed up Daniel's memory even more."

"Does anyone else remember an abduction experience?" Teal'c asked.

"Me?" said Carter. "No, I don't remember anything like that."

"Nor do I. Therefore, it is likely we have not been cloned."

"But Daniel doesn't remember," said Jack, "and yet he was cloned."

"All the people myself and Daniel Jackson spoke to remembered something of their experience. Perhaps Daniel Jackson's inability to recall is, as you say, due to his current memory problems."

"Or maybe Loki abducted a hell of a lot more people than we realise, because most of them never remembered anything."

"No, I think Teal'c is right," said Carter. "Loki never seemed concerned with erasing the memories of those he returned. I think he decided we weren't mentally advanced enough to bother with."

They debated it back and forth for a time, until General Hammond motioned to regain the floor. "Doctor Jackson, Colonel O'Neill; what did Thor say to you exactly, when he handed duplicate Daniel over to you?"

"Not much," said Daniel. "I remember him apologising for Loki's audacity. I was kind of in shock, actually."

Jack could elaborate further. "He said that, after further interrogation of Loki, Loki had revealed to him there was another clone--a mistake, he said. Loki had taken Daniel by mistake."

"What did he mean by that?" asked General Hammond.

"I assumed he meant that... I don't know, he accidentally took Daniel?"

"How can you accidentally abduct someone?"

"How should I know? Maybe he pressed the wrong button."

"Wait!" said Daniel.

"What is it-"

"Shh! Everyone." Daniel closed his eyes. "There's something," he muttered. "Something..."

Everyone waited nervously. Jack held himself still, so as not to let the slightest urge to fidget escape. Daniel's brow wrinkled and smoothed, and he bit into his lip like his fifteen year old counterpart.

"There was a night," he said slowly, "about three months ago... a little before Jack was abducted." He opened his eyes and looked at Jack. "I was over your place. I developed a migraine but you'd had a couple of beers and didn't want to risk driving me home, so you put me in your bed."

"Oh," said Jack.

"What is it?" said Carter.

"You're saying," Jack said to Daniel, "that you were in my bed... and Loki assumed it would be *me* in my bed, and he chose that moment to zap you up."

"Did you lose any time?" Carter asked. "From what Colonel O'Neill said, he'd lost the entire week that his duplicate had been in his place."

"I think someone would have noticed if a fifteen year old claiming to be me was wandering around the SGC," said Daniel.

"Right. I forgot."

"Now that you mention it, though, I did wake up at one point, feeling like I was in some sort of bad dream, but I must have gone straight back to sleep again."

"Perhaps Loki realised almost immediately that he had the wrong person," said Carter. "That he'd taken someone other than Colonel O'Neill. So he put you back then and there, rather than experiment further."

"And no one else," said Hammond, "has had any experiences like this."

Carter and Teal'c reiterated that they had not.

"Then it seems reasonable to assume, given Doctor Jackson's explanation for why he was taken, that Loki was telling the truth when he said he'd made no more."

Soon afterwards, they all staggered off to their respective quarters. At least, Jack and Daniel did. It had been a long, long day.

****

Jack awoke early, with a plan. Before stopping for breakfast, he made his way to the General's office, guessing that Hammond would be up. Hammond didn't sleep any better than Jack when there was an on-going situation to deal with.

He was right. Hammond was at his desk, coffee and croissants before him, hanging up the telephone.

"Sit down, Jack," said Hammond, dropping the 'Colonel' as he often did when they were alone. "I've just spoken to one of the SFs assigned to the surveillance of young Jack. He hasn't moved from the Thredman house all night."

"That's good," said Jack. "They *are* watching the front and the back?"

"Yes. And his bedroom window."

"Let's hope his suspicions haven't been aroused. Otherwise you'll need someone assigned to every door and window in the house in order to secure it."

"I don't plan to keep this up indefinitely. We need him brought in here as soon as possible."

"I was thinking about that last night," said Jack. "In between occasional bouts of sleep."

"Go ahead."

"There's one weakness that I, or rather, that Jack has." Jack shook his head to himself. "Kids," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Jack's weakness. It's kids. Always has been, even before Charlie's death. I think we should let him meet Daniel."

"He's already met Doctor Jackson."

"No. I'm talking about Daniel junior. Kid Daniel. Loki's little mistake."

Hammond settled back into his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"At the moment," Jack continued, "Jack junior is extremely paranoid. He's regressed to the state where he's entirely lost touch with any comprehension of the true mission of the SGC. I've been trying to put myself in his place, and the way I'm seeing it is he's looking in the mirror and he's in an undeniably fifteen year old body with a whole lot of memories that shouldn't be there. Yet because those memories are influencing his point of view, and because at the age of thirty-seven or whatever his brain is at I could never have accepted there was such a thing as cloning, one thing will suggest itself. That he's been brainwashed. That he's in the right body, but something's fucked with his mind. *That* I could easily believe, if I was him."

"Ahem. Sorry to intrude." Daniel was framed in the partly open door.

"Come in, son," said Hammond.

Daniel slipped inside. "I couldn't help overhearing. Sorry."

Jack jerked his head to indicate it didn't matter, while Hammond explained, "Jack proposes taking your duplicate along with him when he goes to collect young Jack."

Daniel was instantly on the same page. Propping a hand on the back of Jack's chair, he said, "That could work. We'd be offering to include young Jack rather than coming across as secretive and authoritarian."

"We weren't secretive and authoritarian yesterday," protested Jack.

"To him, we probably were. 'We know you're having some problems, now get in the car...'"

Jack conceded the point.

"Have you spoken to your duplicate this morning?" Hammond asked Daniel.

Daniel continued to lean on Jack's chair. "Briefly."

"How does his memory seem?"

"Honestly, I can't really be sure. Given my own memory problems, I have a hard time recalling specifics of particular times, but as far as I can tell he hasn't regressed obviously from the point he was at yesterday."

"Where is he now?"

"Sam seemed happy to take charge of him. They're having breakfast right now."

"She thinks your clone is cute," said Jack.

"She thought your duplicate was cute, too," Daniel told him.

"She did?"

"Until he went all, 'That's *sir* to you, Major', on her."

Hammond's phone rang, and he picked it up. "Hammond. Yes?... stay on him, but be careful. Thank you, Major." As he put the phone down, he said, "Your duplicate is on the move, Jack."

"Through the front door?"

"Through the front door."

"Good. Doesn't sound like he suspects anything. Pray your men keep their distance, General. I don't want to screw up our chances of bringing him in willingly."

"How do you intend to approach him?"

"First, I need to speak to Matt Thredman," said Jack. "Then, providing I sense a good trust between him and Jack, I'm going to use him to set up a meeting. Somewhere public, so the clone won't be threatened more than he has to be. Then Daniel and I will swoop in, dismiss Thredman, and introduce kid Jack to kid Daniel. Then we'll explain everything."

"Doctor Jackson?"

"I agree with Jack's plan," said Daniel.

"Good. Make that call, Colonel."

****

Jack always kept his promises, especially to kids. And yes, people in their early twenties still counted as kids. So the second place they went to, after stopping off at Jack's house to pick up something, was to an optometrist's. Jack hung out in the car while Daniel took kid Daniel, dressed in his new clothes and looking not completely preppy thanks to the military bomber jacket he wore over the top, into the shop. A while later they came out.

"They've taken his prescription," said Daniel, getting back into the car, "and we can pick the finished glasses up on the way back."

"You okay, kid?" Jack asked the kid. He was climbing into the back seat, kneading at his forehead with one fist.

"A headache," he said.

"Want some Tylenol? Daniel, do you have any Tylenol?"

Daniel fished on the floor of the back seat and came up with a packet of Tylenol. The kid washed down a couple with the help of Daniel's water bottle.

Thredman had agreed to pull Jack out of school and meet at a well-known Mexican cafe. "Let's hope the little brat shows, and doesn't run off instead," said Jack, as Daniel began driving towards their destination.

"Does he know who he's going to be meeting?"

"I told Matt Thredman to be straight with him. Honesty is not only the best policy, it's the only policy when it comes to copies of me." Jack glanced in the back to check on the other Daniel, but the kid appeared to be asleep, his head curled into the crook of his arm. "You sure you gave him Tylenol, Daniel? Not Ultram, or Darvocet, or whatever else Fraiser has supplied to you in frequent and ample quantities over the years?"

"It was Tylenol, Jack."

"Because he's out. KO'd. No, don't look! Keep your eyes on the road."

Daniel aborted a glance over his shoulder. "He probably didn't sleep well. It wouldn't surprise me, given the circumstances."

Jack said softly into the back, "Hey, Daniel. Kid. You awake?" No response. Jack settled back into his seat. "So, the stuttering. Is that the fifteen year old vocal chords, or the twenty-something personality?"

"It could be either," said Daniel. "Can I ask you something?"

"If you turn right here," said Jack.

Daniel obeyed. "How do you feel about... about your younger version?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you look at him. Do you see yourself, or..."

"No," said Jack. "I don't really remember having that face, except from photographs. He feels more like a nephew, or something. Obviously there's things I know about him, that we share, but... he's got his own life now. We diverge. He's not me."

"I look his face, at Daniel's face, and see..." Daniel's mouth twisted. "At first, on Thor's ship, I didn't recognise him. Not until he said his name."

"If it makes you feel better, I didn't exactly recognise my duplicate when I first saw him."

"It's more than that. You see, while I've been trying to get back memories of my time at the SGC by reading mission reports and the like, I haven't exactly been eager to get back memories of my late childhood. But now it's all flooding back, whether I want it to or not. I wasn't... I guess I wasn't very happy at that age."

This was better than the 'I had my library cards so I was happy, Jack' of two nights ago. "School?" said Jack, knowing there was more to it, but not wanting to push.

"School, and... and everything. Just being generally alone was the worst, really; no parents, no siblings, no friends... it's hard at that age, even if you're naturally a loner, like I was. There's still something wired into you, a need for contact, a need to share something, even a simple exchange of words with someone other than a teacher or librarian."

"Your foster parents?"

"They were nice, it's just that I went through a few sets of them." Daniel braked for a set of lights. "Sorry. You don't need me talking about this, I'm pretty sure I remember telling you this stuff in the past."

"We've got to exercise your memory," said Jack. "I know you were in temporary care at first, while they were tracing your grandfather..."

"Yeah. Then when Nick didn't work out, they had to put me in a different temporary home until they could find a more permanent situation. Then the permanent home they found for me-"

"Green light," warned Jack.

"-well, those people were charged with neglect a couple of years later." Daniel stomped a little too hard on the accelerator as he took off. "I could look after myself, but the other kids they were fostering just ran crazy, all the time. Someone eventually noticed.

"Then there was another couple, who took off back to Italy, as was their perfect right considering they'd been fostering kids for many many years, but it did leave me without a home again. By the time I was fifteen, I was being placed in homes with troubled teens, because those were the only sorts of teens they generally had to deal with. When I was accepted into University two years ahead of my peer group, that was it. I was out of the system for good."

"Ten out of ten for recall," said Jack, but gently, not jokingly. He wouldn't joke about things like crappy pasts.

Soon afterwards, Daniel parked the car down the road from the cafe. "We're twenty minutes early," he said, looking at his watch. "So do I get to find out what you brought from your house yet?"

Jack picked up the plastic bag at his feet, and pulled out a photo album. "I figured he might be more convinced of our story if he could see some sort of photographic proof. His face to mine."

"Let me see."

"You've seen this stuff before."

But Daniel had already taken it from him. "I don't have that many photos of myself when I was younger," he said. "People's photograph albums are fascinating. They're an everyday example of how we like to make myths around ourselves." He opened the cover. "There's no baby photos."

"No, the photos of me up to the age of twelve are in another album."

"I remember. Of course, you wouldn't need those."

"You're not going to look through the whole thing," said Jack.

"I'll be quick."

Anything, Jack decided, if it would help Daniel's memory. He checked on kid Daniel in the back. The kid hadn't moved. He breathed slowly and deeply.

"Sam's right," said Daniel.

"What about?"

"You were cute when you were young."

"And I'm not cute now?"

Daniel looked at him, and grinned brilliantly. "Honestly, Jack. You don't really want to know whether I think you're cute."

"Huh," said Jack, pretending to sulk. "Fine."

Daniel scanned a couple more pages.

"You were pretty cute, when you were young," offered Jack.

Daniel glanced into the back seat. "You think so? None of the girls at my school seemed to think so."

"Like you took any notice of girls."

"You're right. I didn't have much time for girls." Flick, flick. "This ends at 'Jack, age 19, with his new/old car'."

"There's a bunch of loose photos in an envelope at the back. No, don't pull them out. We'd better go in."

Jack stuffed the album back into the bag, then they tried to rouse kid Daniel, eventually succeeding somewhat. The kid sleep-walked from the car into the cafe after them. Jack had a strange feeling that something was not right.

"Where am I?" said kid Daniel, looking around him. They told him, but he didn't seem satisfied. "Wh-What am I doing here? I've go-, I've got to get to class."

"No, you don't have classes anymore, remember?" said Daniel. He waved towards a corner table. "Come on, let's sit here."

"But-"

"Daniel," said Jack to the kid. "Take a seat. We'll sort this out." The kid obeyed, and Jack continued. "You remember our conversation this morning? Me Jack, and Daniel here, and you, all decided to come into town. First we took you to the optometrists, and now we've brought you here to meet someone. Remember?"

Kid Daniel's face showed struggle. "I... I remember the opto-to-tometrists. Now that you mention it. I... it's hard."

Big Daniel asked the question that had clearly been bursting to come out since the first 'where am I?' "How old are you, Daniel?"

"I'm nineteen. Di-did I lose my glasses? I cuh, I cuh, I can't afford to lose another pair."

Yesterday he'd been twenty-three. Now he was just nineteen. Four years of memory loss in less than a day. Or even in just thirty minutes--Jack suspected it had happened between the optometrists and here. What if they hadn't woken the kid up? Would he have lost more of his memory? Glancing at Daniel, he saw that unfamiliar panicky look. He'd always wondered what it would take to get Daniel to panic. Was it concern for the kid, or was he frightened of coming face to face with his past again? Maybe a bit of both.

Jack looked at his watch. Kid Jack could be here any minute. They had very little time to try and patch up kid Daniel's memory.

Fortunately, the others were late, and also fortunately, the fact that kid Daniel had been with them just prior to his memory degrading seemed to make it easier for them to reinforce the tentative memories of the last couple of days in his mind. By the time kid Jack arrived with the former Major Thredman, he seemed somewhat consoled.

"Hello, Thredman," said Jack, rising to shake Thredman's hand.

"Sir. I mean, O'Neill." Thredman walked with a cane. He was in his mid-thirties, yet shuffled like an old man due to the wounds he'd sustained in the off-world attack. "Hello, Doctor Jackson."

"Hello, Matt," said Daniel.

Kid Jack hung back, eyeing them all suspiciously.

"Look, Thredman," said Jack, "you know what the SGC's like. We can't explain to you what's going on, but we need to talk with young Jack."

"I understand, sir. I'll just go sit over there," said Thredman, pointing to a table across the room.

"Order up. It's on us," Jack told him. "And you don't need to call me sir."

"Why can't he stay?" said kid Jack.

"Don't worry. He'll just be over there," said Jack. "Come on, sit down. Order whatever you like."

Kid Jack sat down next to kid Daniel. "Who are you?" he said to the kid.

"I'm Daniel."

"What, we've got two Jacks, and two Daniels? Sounds like a party. Where's the mixers?"

Jack sighed. "Let me tell you a story about my young friend Daniel here. Two nights ago, Big Daniel and I-"

"Big Daniel?" said Big Daniel.

"It's easier that way. Big Daniel and I were visited by our old buddy Thor. The Asgard. Does that name ring a bell?"

Kid Jack only glared at him.

Big Daniel butted in. "Did you happen to read in the newspapers yesterday about a police officer who saw two people get 'beamed up' by a possible UFO?"

Kid Jack looked puzzled. "Yeah, I remember reading that."

Daniel leaned his elbows on the table and hunched his shoulders forward, in a posture of confidentiality. He dropped his voice to match. "Well, we're going to let you in on a big secret, and I hope you won't tell anyone, but that was us. Trust me, Jack and I do not enjoy being beamed across the galaxy at the whim of self-styled superior races, but we like it even less when we arrive to find that one of their maverick operators has made yet another clone of one of us."

"A clone? Oh, come on." But kid Jack was looking more receptive.

Despite popular opinion, Jack did have a good understanding of when to shut up. He ceded the floor to Daniel and signalled a waiter.

****

Kid Jack didn't buy it, but he had managed to listen without making too many smart-mouth comments. Possibly that was because he was consuming a huge quantity of tacos, but whatever.

"Okay," he said, at the end of Daniel's explanation. "So you're saying, I'm not a fifteen year old with weirdass memories of someone else's life--I'm actually that someone else, in a fifteen year old's body."

"Think hard," Daniel implored him. "I know the threads are all getting lost in there, but somewhere-"

Kid Jack snorted. "It's just ridiculous."

"Take a look through this," said Jack, throwing across the photo album.

"What's this?" But he began looking through it. "Looks like me. Oh look," he said, pointing to a picture. "So I do have a mom."

"You did," said Jack. "Mom and Dad died a few years ago."

"I suppose Sara's dead, and Charlie, too."

"Y-you know a Sarah?" asked kid Daniel.

"I married a Sara. If I can believe my memories."

"I have a f-fr-friend called Sarah. Only they told me she's dead now."

"Why am I not surprised?" said kid Jack.

Jack filled him in. "Sara's still alive, Jack, but we split up a long long time ago. Charlie... there was a terrible accident."

"It's all right," said kid Jack, shaking his head sadly. "I figured it wasn't my memory, anyway." He flicked over a couple more pages. "Hey, these photos look familiar. This writing in it, it's mom's."

"Yes."

Kid Jack continued slowly through the album, kid Daniel looking over his shoulder. "You're nosy, aren't you?" he said to kid Daniel, but when the kid backed away, he added, "No, it's all right. You can look."

Hammond had made it clear they had to entice Jack back with them, otherwise more extreme methods would be used. Jack prayed that kid Daniel was beginning to work the Daniel Jackson magic. It had already saved one O'Neill, a long time ago.

Kid Jack came to the end, the frown on his face having increased once he came to the photos age sixteen and upwards. "Look in the envelope at the back," Jack told him. "They keep going."

Those photos were shaken out, and kid Jack went through them, placing each on the table as he finished with it, where it was picked up by kid Daniel and examined. Mostly Jack in various phases of his Air Force career, with only a couple of candid shots. A clear progression, through the years, the lines appearing gradually on his face, his hair growing duller, and then turning grey.

Kid Jack placed the last photo, from two years ago, taken on some off-world mission or another, on the table. The next item in the progression was, obviously, Jack's own self, sitting here in a Mexican food cafe.

The kid said nothing; nor did he look up.

Kid Daniel spoke. "It's true."

"Photos can be faked," said kid Jack, unconvincingly.

"I've done research on f-fuh-fakes, the archaeological world and the world of rare books are f-full of f-fuh-fakes. The quality a-a-and vuh-variety of these ph-photographs, p-partic-ticularly of the older ones, the camera types, the different papers, th-the yellowing-"

"Okay. Calm down, kid," said kid Jack. "So it's co-incidence. He happens to have looked like me, when he was a kid."

"When are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours?" said Jack. "Our explanation is the only one that makes sense, and you know it."

"Jack," said Daniel, in his best 'you're being undiplomatic' voice, before addressing kid Jack. "I understand you feel you have little reason to trust us, but you know that something's not right with you, and I don't see what you have to lose by accepting our help. At the moment I'd imagine you're very confused and frightened; certainly my counterpart is. What we want to do is bring you back to the SGC with us; we have all manner of resources to call upon there, not just the Asgard, but the Tollan, the Tok'ra--all these races with advanced technology and scientific knowledge, who might be in a position to provide a solution."

Kid Jack shook his head, but more in confusion than denial.

"If you don't want to do it for yourself," said Jack, indicating kid Daniel, "spare a thought for him. He's even worse off. He's lost--how many years, Daniel?"

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen years of his life. If we have the both of you, together, the thing that's causing all this to go on might be so much easier to pick up."

"Jack's right," said Daniel. "If we have some point of comparison, we could solve this much sooner."

Kid Jack looked at kid Daniel. "What do you think?"

"They've been honest with me."

Kid Jack thumped the table in frustration. "I don't know. I don't know what to do. This is driving me crazy."

"Jack, please," said Big Daniel. "We want to make this better."

"How could it be worse than it already is?" added Jack.

Kid Jack looked at kid Daniel again. Perfect timing, as kid Daniel was looking all big-eyed and imploring at him. Jack just knew kid Jack couldn't resist that, any more than he himself could.

"All right! I'll do it. Happy?"

Jack felt like kissing both Daniels. They'd double-teamed kid Jack like pros. Trying not to let the relief show on his face, he said, "Let's go talk to Matt Thredman, explain to him what we're doing. You'll want to pick up some clothes and things."

Matt Thredman was happy to release the kid into the SGC custody, despite minimal explanation. The advantage of having placed kid Jack with someone who knew the mysterious ways of the SGC had never been more apparent.

****

Back on base, the kids were shuffled off for more tests, in the unlikely chance that their further memory losses--Jack was apparently now thirty-four--had manifested itself in their blood or brains.

General Hammond congratulated Jack and Daniel on achieving their objective, and informed them that, although they had still to reach Thor, the Tok'ra had sent them a message that Jacob and Selmak would pay them a visit some time that evening. "In the meantime," he said, "the duplicates are to be in the custody of at least one member of SG-1 at all times."

"Babysitting duty," said Jack. "Don't worry, sir," he added, with a meaningful glance at Daniel, "I'm used to it."

After Fraiser had finished with them, Daniel and Jack took the kids to the guest rooms. Kid Jack set up his Playstation--Jack supposed he sublimated his military instincts into the games, or something--while kid Daniel collected some books from Daniel's lab and seemed happy to curl up in a chair nearby.

"We'll do two-player," said kid Jack to Jack, handing him a second control. "This is an easy one. The object is to basically shoot the crap out of anything that moves."

"I can get with that," said Jack. "Cool shirt, by the way." Kid Jack wore a faded Ramones t-shirt with tour dates from 1981 on the back. "Where did you find that old dinosaur?"

"Fifty cents at a garage sale. I can't stand the music the kids of today listen to. Boom-boom-boom and 'bitches they-come-they-go, Monday thru Sunday yo', I mean, what kind of rhyme is 'yo'? It's bullshit."

"What is that?"

"Eminem."

"Oh. Him. I am in complete agreement."

"You have no idea how much high school sucks," kid Jack informed him. "If what you're saying is right, and I'm your goddamned clone, I'd like to know whose wise idea it was to send me back to fucking high school."

"Your wise idea," said Jack smugly.

Kid Jack pursed his lips, then proceeded to beat the shit out of him at Playstation combat. It was a little demoralising. After three thrashings in a row, Jack escaped to his office, leaving Daniel to babysit. While he was grimacing over paperwork, Teal'c came in.

"You have returned," said Teal'c.

"We have," said Jack.

"General Hammond said your duplicate came willingly."

"Well, willingly is stretching it a bit," said Jack. "Daniel and Daniel double-teamed him with their reasonable-unreasonableness, and their dual imploring expressions--you know the one, the 'pleeease, Jack'."

"How is Daniel Jackson coping with his duplicate?"

"He's doing fine. Mostly fine. I think he's not sure how to act around his clone, whether he should be brotherly, or parental, or disinterested..."

"And you are not experiencing this confusion with your own duplicate?"

Jack shook his head. "No. Me and my duplicate had time to sort things out the first time. He feels to me like a distant relation--someone you share blood with, but he's your father's brother's daughter's kid, you only see him once a year during Christmas, and all you can do is comment on how he's grown."

"Hmm," said Teal'c. He sounded disbelieving.

"Look, Daniel's probably going stir-crazy up there, with that Playstation screaming at him. Do you want to take over babysitting duties?"

"Where would I find them?"

"In the guest quarters... know what, I'll come with you." Jack felt like stretching his legs after being stuck in a car half the day, and decided to bring Teal'c up to date on the way.

They arrived in the guest quarters to discover Jack had abandoned the Playstation and was roaming restlessly around the room, with both Daniels observing him covertly from behind their books.

"Cool, you've brought the big guy," said kid Jack. "If we go and get that girl I remember you hanging with, we can play 3-a-side basketball. I know you've got a court."

"My knees don't do basketball," said Jack.

"Oh, come on, Jack, it might be fun," said Daniel.

"You want to play basketball?"

Daniel put his book aside. "I haven't had time to get to the gym for a few days. I'm feeling a little... tight."

Jack decided, in the interests of Daniel's 'tightness', that perhaps basketball was a good idea. "Know where Carter is?" he asked Teal'c.

"I believe she is in her lab. I will find her, and meet you at the basketball court."

"Thanks, buddy. Jack," he said to his duplicate, "you won't be able to get up to the court by yourself. Security and all that. We'll just go change and pick you guys up here, okay?"

"Cool. Come on, Danny," said kid Jack to kid Daniel. "Put the book down."

Kid Daniel was shaking his head. "No, no I don't play."

"Come on. Anyone can bounce a basketball."

"Not me."

"Then all you have to do is throw it to me."

"I cuh, I can't throw it, either."

Big Daniel hovered in the doorway, watching kid Daniel worriedly. "It's okay," he said to the kid. "You used to throw a basketball around with the kids in the Gruber home. Remember? You can do this. It'll be fun."

Jack knew what the problem was likely to be. Kid Daniel, with his intelligence, his glasses, his skinny frame... he was the sort of kid who always got picked last on the team, who sat on the sidelines the whole game, never able to find out what all the fun was about.

"You can be on my team," wheedled kid Jack. He pointed to Big Daniel and Jack. "Look at them! We can take them."

"I'll just let you down," said kid Daniel, but he stood up. "A-a-an I doh-doh-, I don't have any clothes."

"Borrow some of mine," said kid Jack.

Big Jack and Big Daniel left them to it.

"He'll be all right," said Daniel firmly as they walked down the corridor, more to himself than to Jack. "Once someone actually lets him play, he'll probably even enjoy it."

"You didn't get much of a chance, at school."

"I wasn't adverse to sports," said Daniel. "When I was younger, I played the usual ball games, tag, etcetera... after my parents died, I just didn't have much energy for a while, and then I threw myself into study and all those sinful things that the jocks won't forgive you for... how about you?"

"I was pretty good at sports," mused Jack. "I liked to be active. Didn't like to train, though. Practice bored the hell out of me. Sports are supposed to be fun, a chance to unwind. Unless you're getting paid for it--and I was never going to be good enough to get paid for it--what's the point? They shoved all that stuff about having pride in your school down my throat until I gagged on it all and just quit."

"So you weren't a jock."

"Hell, no. I hated the jocks." Jack jerked his thumb back the way they'd come. "That's what I hated about them. They wouldn't give kids like young Daniel--like you--a chance. The jocks were always so pumped up on their own achievements, like they were some sort of divine beings. You know how I feel about people with delusions of divinity."

"That's interesting. I've always seen you as pretty competitive."

"I just know what to be competitive about," said Jack. "Like this game. We're going to show those kids!"

****

Kid Daniel, being half a head shorter, didn't exactly fit into kid Jack's clothes, except for the shoes. The NBA shirt he wore hung halfway to his knees, and the shorts halfway to his ankles. Jack knew the fashion these days was baggy, but... he tried not to laugh.

"You guys had better start praying," Jack said to the kids when they arrived at the court. "Cause we're not giving any quarter, you hear?"

Kid Jack threw the ball at him--hard. Jack only just got his hands up in time. "Maybe you'd better get some practise in," he said. "Teal'c!" he shouted, as Carter and Teal'c entered. "You can play, right?"

"I am familiar with the rules," said Teal'c.

"Then you're on our team."

"That kid is so pushy," Jack complained to Daniel. He noticed Fraiser had come along. Instead of a stethoscope around her neck, she had a whistle. "What are you doing, doc?"

"I'm off duty, so I volunteered to referee. And I want to see your butt kicked by your teenage duplicate. Sir."

"You wish," said Jack. "Come on, Carter, you're with us. What are you like as a basketballer?"

"I haven't played for a while, sir," said Carter, "but I'm sure I remember the fundamentals."

Kid Jack outlined the schoolyard 3-a-side rules for them, and then Teal'c and Jack squared off as Fraiser threw up the ball.

Teal'c won it, and passed it off to kid Jack, who'd gotten away from Jack. Damn! The kid took it all the way to the end and tossed it in the basket. "Two points for us!" he announced.

"Yeah, yeah. Daniel," Jack directed, "it's your turn in the middle."

Daniel faced off against Teal'c. As the ball went up, he got a hand on it, but Teal'c did too, and the ball skittered off to the side, down Kid Daniel's throat. The kid grabbed at it reflexively, and stopped.

"Pass it!" yelled kid Jack, breaking away once again from Jack. Kid Daniel obeyed, and kid Jack swooped it up with one hand, bouncing it while holding his other hand out to keep Jack away.

"Come on, you little tyke," taunted Jack. "Take me on."

Kid Jack passed it to Teal'c. Daniel intercepted it, passed it to Carter, who took it down the other end for a basket.

"Two all!" announced Fraiser.

At first, Big Jack's team appeared to have the upper hand, but at the end of a hard-played hour, the kids and Teal'c had gained the ascendancy. Jack found himself strangely pleased with kid Jack; the opposition team's total was almost entirely due to kid Jack and Teal'c, but kid Jack kept including the under-confident kid Daniel in the game, passing off to him, verbally encouraging him, hi-fiving him every time he had a hand in one of their baskets. The guy might be an arrogant little S.O.B., but he was a good leader. It dawned on Jack that people said the same thing about himself. Except for the 'little' part.

Jack admitted to himself he was playing a touch light on, wanting the kids to win. He thought Carter and Daniel might be doing the same. Seeing the look of joy and excitement on the face of kid Daniel as he participated, somewhat clumsily but wholeheartedly, made Jack warm all over. Feeling good was more important than winning.

Eventually he called game over. "You guys can keep playing, but I'm finished."

"Then I declare the winners to be young Jack's team," said Fraiser, and tooted on her whistle some more, like she hadn't wielded it enough throughout the game already.

Kid Jack high-fived Teal'c, then thumped kid Daniel enthusiastically. "How about that, huh? We creamed them."

"I wouldn't say 'creamed'," said Jack.

"Pureed, slaughtered, wiped the floor-"

"Another five minutes, and we'd have had you."

"We whipped your asses."

Jack grinned despite himself. "I was never that annoying," he assured his teammates.

Carter and Daniel exchanged looks, but wisely decided not to comment.

****

Jacob dropped by, as he'd indicated, that evening after dinner.

"It's hard to credit the arrogance of the Asgard that did this," he said, looking at the two duplicates.

Coming from a Tok'ra, that was rich.

"To be fair," Daniel explained, "Loki was an outcast. These weren't sanctioned experiments."

"You'd better tell Selmak and I all about it," said Jacob. "Right from the beginning. We received your message about Jack's duplicate being cured of the physical problems he was experiencing, but it wasn't very detailed."

Carter and Daniel explained the story, while Jack cracked his knuckles, and the kid versions of Jack and Daniel played endless unwinnable games of tic-tac-toe. Jack was jealous. He couldn't play tic-tac-toe in a meeting. Neither should kid Jack, either, only it seemed his duplicate could get away with such behaviour, just because he was in the body of a kid.

Jack concentrated instead on trying to dislocate his thumb by wriggling it. *Crack*. Nearly.

A hand imposed itself over his. "Jack."

"Want to play tic-tac-toe?" he whispered to Daniel. Daniel smelled nice. Not that he didn't smell nice usually, but they'd all had showers after the basketball game and Daniel had recently acquired some particularly enticing orangey spicy soap. He'd have to filch it while Daniel had his back turned next time.

"No, I do not want to play tic-tac-toe," murmured Daniel, releasing his hand. "If you know how to play it, then it's unwinnable."

"How about scissors-paper-stone?"

"Doctor Jackson," General Hammond began, and Daniel's attention was commandeered once again.

Jack slithered his chair a little closer to kid Jack. No one was paying him any attention, they were all busy speculating on the mechanism of memory decay in the duplicates and how it could be fixed, and he had no opinion to offer. "Hey," he said to his duplicate. "That game is unwinnable, you know."

"We know."

"How about I challenge you to a bout of scissors-paper-stone?"

"Okay," said the kid. "Ready? One, two, three."

The kid had a stone; Jack had scissors. Then the kid had scissors, while Jack had paper. Then Jack had a stone, and the kid had paper. Three losses in a row. Damn.

"One, two, three," they murmured together, and Jack produced a stone again, while the kid produced a finger pointing straight at him. "What's that?"

"A gun," said kid Jack.

"There's no gun."

"There is now."

"Cool. Stone smashes gun. I win."

"Shit," said kid Jack. "Okay. One, two, three." A gun again.

Jack had paper. "Paper covers gun," he said.

"No, gun shoots a hole through paper."

"I don't think so."

"This is a P-90. Paper does not cover it."

"Looks like a .22 to me. Paper no problemo."

"Okay. Rematch." This time, the kid produced a stone, while Jack stuck with his paper.

Cool. Jack two; the kid three. He was gaining ground.

"Use rain," Daniel whispered in his ear.

"Huh?"

"Rain. It pulps paper, wears away rock, rusts gun and scissors."

"There's no rain," Jack whispered back.

"There was no gun, either."

Daniel had a point. Jack turned back. "One, two, three." Then he waggled his fingers at kid Jack's gun.

"What's that?" said kid Jack.

"Rain. Rain rusts gun."

"Oh, for crying out loud."

"You started it. One, two, three. Sorry, kid, but rain also pulps paper." Four vs three. Better and better.

Kid Jack consulted with kid Daniel for a few moments, before signalling he was ready to start again. Jack figured between them they'd come up with something to counter rain, so, on three, produced paper. Kid Jack held his hand, fingers spread, palm facing.

"What the hell is that?" said Jack. "A starfish?"

"It's a sun. Sun degrades paper."

"Fine. One, two, three." The kid gave him sun again. Jack grinned, holding his fist backwards. "Gotcha. Moon! Moon eclipses sun."

Beside him, Daniel burst out laughing. He put his head down in his arms and shivered with mirth.

"Daniel Jackson," said Teal'c, surprised.

The kids were laughing too, but all attention was on Daniel, who had never lost it like that before, particularly not in a meeting.

"Doctor Jackson?" said Hammond. "Colonel O'Neill?" he added.

"Me?"

Daniel, his face still buried, waved a hand. "I'm fine. Sorry."

Hammond continued to regard Daniel, his obvious concern mirrored on Carter's and Teal'c's faces. "Perhaps we should reconvene tomorrow morning," he said.

Daniel lifted his head, his good humor abruptly dissipating. "What about them?" he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand, pointing to the duplicates with the other. "Daniel lost four years in twenty-four hours. He can't afford to wait another twenty-four hours."

Selmak spoke. "We can offer, as we did last time, to put them in stasis, until such time as we can come up with a more permanent solution."

"Freeze me?" said kid Jack. "Like Han Solo?"

"Don't you remember, we had this conversation last time," said Carter, but it was clear Jack had no recollection.

"I don't want to be frozen," he insisted, even when Selmak explained that the procedure was not like cryogenics as he understood it.

"And like I said last time," murmured Daniel, "if I have to throw you through the goddamned wormhole myself..."

"What do you want to do?" Hammond addressed kid Daniel.

It was clear kid Daniel had been swayed by kid Jack's fear. "I... I don't know. Maybe... maybe we could see, tomorrow. Maybe I wo-won't lose any more memories."

"And maybe you'll wake up a five year old," said Daniel, all humor gone. "You both can't just hope this is going to go away. That somehow your memories are going to stall at a point appropriate with your bodies. You have to make a decision."

"What would you do?" said kid Jack to Jack.

"Me? I'd..." Daniel was glaring at him. "What? You want me to lie to them? I don't know what I would do! What would you do?"

"I'd opt for stasis," said Carter, as of course she would.

"Daniel?"

Daniel looked unhappy. "You're right. I just don't know what I'd do. I would hope someone would have more sense than me, and would force me to co-operate. I mean, Jack, when it came down to this last time, I swore I'd drag you kicking and screaming through the wormhole. And I would." He looked at the duplicates. "I would. You've got until tomorrow morning to make your minds up, but that's all I'm giving you."

"Hey, I came here voluntarily," said kid Jack.

"I'm sorry, but this is stupid. You wouldn't refuse surgery under anaesthesia if you had cancer or something--this is the same idea. You'd just be put to sleep for a while." Daniel looked around the table. "I would do it. If it came down to that, I've made up my mind, and I would do it." He stared back at kid Daniel again. "Please."

"Okay," said kid Daniel.

"No!"

"Hey. Settle down," Jack told his protesting duplicate. "It's his decision. Maybe it'll knock some sense into you."

"Danny, you can't let them do this. It's not safe. It can't be safe."

Jacob had switched with Selmak. "Before anyone gets too excited, we have to go back and get things ready. This will take some time, so it will be morning here before we can begin the process, anyway. Perhaps, young Jack, you should go and sleep on it. Okay?"

Kid Jack was looking completely gobsmacked. "Danny," he said again. "You don't know these people."

Poor kid Daniel was torn between his new buddy and protector, and the trust he'd built up with SG-1 who, as he'd said in the cafe, had thus far been completely honest with him.

"Like Jacob says," said General Hammond. "I think it would all be best if we reconvened in the morning. A good night's sleep would do us all good."

"Daniel," ordered Jack, referring to his teammate. "You take young Jack up to his sleeping quarters. Carter, you take young Daniel." His implication was clear; keep them separate. When they'd left, Jack said to General Hammond, "You realise we're going to have to put a full guard on Jack."

"I do realise this, Jack. We had to do the same last time, as well."

"As I recall," said Teal'c, "he easily escaped from our custody. Perhaps I should go and assist Daniel Jackson for the moment."

"Good idea, Teal'c." As he left, Hammond said, "Jack, I need you to round up a team of marines and brief them on the necessity of making sure duplicate Jack does not escape. Meanwhile I'll take our guest to the gate."

"Yes, sir," said Jack.

****

Jack did not escape during the night. Even so, the next morning, no one looked like they'd slept any. SG-1 and the two duplicates ate in the briefing room, for privacy from the rest of the base, and in order to be ready the moment Jacob returned.

Duplicate Jack appeared to have no stomach for food. They'd allowed him near kid Daniel this morning, once they'd re-established that kid Daniel fully intended to be put into stasis. The kid had lost another four years overnight--he was currently fifteen, matching his body--but he'd remembered, with a bit of prompting, the events of the previous day. Kid Jack was working on him, but half-heartedly. He appeared frightened at how his new friend had nearly forgotten him overnight.

"Remember basketball yesterday? How we kicked their asses?" he pleaded, and kid Daniel eventually smiled at the memory. "You were great," kid Jack assured him. "You can be on my team any day."

Kid Jack, although he was admitting nothing, had also clearly regressed further. They were surprised he hadn't needed prompting to remember his new comradeship with kid Daniel.

"Memory is a funny thing," Daniel had said, when he and Jack had met earlier with General Hammond. "Perhaps it's the one good thing that's happened to him in the past few days, and he's clinging to it."

"I wish he'd cling to the fact that we're trying to help him, not make him suffer." Jack sighed. "Maybe it would be a good thing if he regresses further. The younger he gets, the more malleable he might be."

"Is that likely?" Hammond had asked.

"No idea, sir. I always had a problem with authority, but maybe if we can get past the Special Ops days, he'll be less paranoid."

"Are you saying we should leave him alone for now, and not force him to go with the Tok'ra?"

"What do you think, Daniel?"

"It's all guesswork, isn't it?" said Daniel. "The only measurement we've got to go on is Daniel's loss of memory. Theoretically, Jack could have several weeks left before he regresses as far as Daniel has. In a way, the younger he is before he undergoes stasis, the better for his assimilation back into society as a fifteen year old. From what I've observed, he hasn't made a successful mental adjustment to the body he's living in."

"Looking back," said Jack, "I think the reason he originally chose the whole high school route was to distance himself from me. You know, forging a separate identity."

"It wouldn't surprise me," said Daniel. "Anyway, the short answer is, we just don't know. And all this talk of stasis is assuming that Thor can even do anything about the memory loss. You could talk to Janet again, General, but I'm sure she'd say exactly what I've just said."

"For the moment we won't force him," decided Hammond. "We'll just have to keep monitoring him closely."

In the briefing room now, Hammond said to kid Jack, "have you thought any further about the Tok'ra's offer?"

"Can we just forget it for a while? Maybe I can see how Danny copes with it."

It sounded cowardly, but Jack knew that, however successful kid Daniel's stasis was, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to kid Jack's ultimate decision. He was just stalling, making excuses.

From down below, the sound of the stargate activating emanated through the room. "That would be Jacob," said Hammond. "Young Daniel. Are you ready?"

Daniel finished toying with his breakfast. "I'm ready."

Hammond stood up. "Then come along."

"Can I go with him, see what it's all about?" said kid Jack.

"I don't see why that's necessary."

"I won't be any trouble, I swear. Put me in handcuffs. Have me escorted by a contingent of marines."

Hammond looked reluctant.

"Look," wheedled kid Jack, "maybe when I get there, I'll even decide I want to go in the deep freeze after all."

"Sir," said Carter, "I'd be willing to act as his escort. I'd welcome the opportunity to spend time with my father."

"I'll see what Jacob says," said Hammond. "The Tok'ra are necessarily secretive these days, as you know. Perhaps they won't want any extraneous people witnessing this."

The whole group trooped down to the gate room, except for Hammond, who joined them after giving the cue to open the iris. Jacob came through a few moments later.

"Everything's ready," he said. "Are we doing one or two?"

Hammond explained the situation to him. Jacob, after consultation with Selmak, agreed to allowing both his daughter and kid Jack to accompany him. "That will save me coming back," Jacob said. "I'll just get Sam to relay the report."

A couple of minutes later, they watched the kids and the two Carters step through the wormhole and disappear.

"It's done," said Hammond. He didn't sound confident.

****

Daniel had escaped to his lab. Teal'c had gone to work on his strategy manual for defending against the Goa'uld in all manner of combat situations. Apparently there was more successful procedures than usual SG-1 method of insult your target, get captured, then manage your escape through a lot of dumb luck, blowing up the base/ship/planet behind you.

Jack went to his office, and spent half the day on the phone. General Hammond must have been out of his office, because all sorts of mind-numbingly stupid calls were coming his way. The pen-pushers at the Department of Defence had suggestions to change the security procedure for unauthorised gate activations. For no reason at all, since the current procedure worked fine. Someone else wanted him to justify why they needed another anthropologist. Surely they could just use a cadet instead, since they were cheaper? Some Pentagon suits wanted to know about the progress they were making on attempts to retro-engineer various bits of alien technology. They had budget concerns, and they needed results.

The police still wouldn't let him have his truck back.

After lunch, he stretched his legs via Daniel's lab. Daniel sat at his desk, enlargements from a camera or camcorder scattered across his desk, a couple of large and wrinkled reference books at his elbow.

"Seven views," he muttered to himself, "seven viewed, seven seen... seven *something* at the mountain. From the mountain. Seven saw from the mountain. Seven views from the mountain."

"The penitent man will pass, the penitent man will pass." said Jack. "That's something I've noticed about archaeologists."

"Hmm?"

"They talk to themselves all the time."

"What other archaeologists do you know?" said Daniel. Participating, but not looking up from the book.

"Well, there's Indiana Jones..."

"He's not real."

"You know that?"

"Yes I know that, Jack. And yes, his real name wasn't even Indiana. They named the dog Indiana. I do have some knowledge of popular culture from my youth." All without looking up.

Jack hadn't intended to distract Daniel, he'd just wanted to walk somewhere. Suddenly, he didn't want Daniel to be busy. The last couple of days of hanging with Daniel had been an anomaly; ever since Daniel had been back from the higher plane, he'd been locked in his lab, always reading, reviewing old mission reports, relentlessly working on translations. It was clear he thought if he just kept pouring knowledge into his brain, it would, if not help him remember his time as an ascended being, at least help him remember his time as Daniel Jackson of Earth.

"I bet Indiana Jones is what *really* made you want to be an archaeologist," prodded Jack, hoping to get a rise. In Jack's opinion, Daniel's memory was far more likely to be consolidated by interaction with people. Even antagonistic interaction, if he could get no other kind.

"Hardly," said firmly-bookwards-looking Daniel.

"Hey, there's no shame in it. I nearly became an archaeologist, too."

"To the best of my memory, that is grossly untrue," said Daniel. "Live, lived, to live on... the seven who saw from the mountain lived, or will live on... this tense is strange..." He scrabbled on the desk for a set of handwritten notes, glancing at Jack. "I should know this. This is so frustrating." He turned back to the translation. "The seven who viewed from the mountain lived on... what did they view? There's something I'm not getting."

"Well, *I'm* getting a headache."

"Then go see Janet. Go somewhere. And please be careful with that," said Doctor eyes-only-for-my-notes-Jackson.

Jack put the wooden statuette he'd been fiddling with back on the shelf. "Hey, you knew. You remembered."

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean, you knew I was playing with one of your..." Jack looked at the statuette for inspiration, "... things, without even looking."

"That's not a memory, Jack. I've had countless opportunities to observe this habit of yours since I've been back at the SGC."

"Oh." Jack glared at the statuette.

"Although, I do confess that one of my strongest memories about you *is* that exact same habit."

"So, since we're on the topic of your memory, how is your memory? You said being around kid Daniel was causing things to flood back." Jack perched himself on the front of Daniel's desk and poked about in the pen-holder.

"I've told you. It's continually improving."

"But is it *back*?"

Daniel finally looked up. He sighed, and met Jack's eyes. "I don't know, Jack."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"The problem is, I need to rely on my memory to remember if there's anything I don't remember... you can see the problem. It could all be back. Or there could be large chunks of my life experiences and personality still to be revealed to me."

"Uh huh. Kind of a reverse-Ancients-infodump. Only instead of feeling like huge chunks of yourself are being buried, you're unearthing."

Daniel was still looking at Jack. "I remember that. I do. That was... surreal. You were... you were..."

"Quiet?"

Daniel smiled. "Yes. And I remember thinking at the time, if anyone had said I'd have Jack O'Neill, speechless and helpless before me, relying entirely on my help... it would be an opportunity to take advantage of. But seeing you suffer like that was... hard."

"Some good came out of it."

"A lot of good came out of it. For a lot of people." And then Daniel slammed the book shut. "Which is why it's so frustrating not to be able to remember. To remember being ascended, to remember the things I must have learned during that time. All the people I could be helping right now, all the things we would know, be able to do... and I can't access any of it. Buried in me somewhere could be the knowledge of how to help young Jack and Daniel. And it's useless."

"So, still nothing from the plane of higher existence."

Daniel leaned his elbow on the book, jammed his fist into his chin. "I think part of the problem is that there's nothing to trigger me. I can be triggered into remembering one of our older missions by reading the pertinent reports, for example, but there's no point of reference for my experiences while ascended. There's nothing I can read, there's no artefacts I can look at, there's no one here who can remind me of anything, except for the whole situation with Anubis and the Eye of Ra, which is sort of starting to come back to me now that I've talked with everyone about it. If there was just something *else*."

Jack ritualistically arranged Daniel's pens. "Well..." He broke off, not sure if he wanted to pursue it. He could feel Daniel examining him.

"What is it, Jack?"

"You visited me."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you appeared to me." Jack glanced at him. "While you were still ascended."

Daniel smiled. "You're saying I dropped around one day to share pizza and watch a hockey match?"

"Something like that," murmured Jack. He quit fiddling with the pens, and looked away. "The kind of hockey match where I was the puck."

"Jack... what do you mean?"

"Doesn't matter."

"No, really. If you tell me, maybe something will trigger in my memory."

"Hell, I was probably hallucinating at the time, anyway."

"Jack, you can't just drop something like that on me and not tell me."

"You're the one who keeps telling me not to push."

"I've never said that."

"No, but you've thought it." Jack still hadn't looked at Daniel.

Daniel's voice speeded up, shook a little with earnestness. "I admit I've thought it, but I've never said it, because even though it's frustrating sometimes when you're pushing and nothing's happening in my head, I still *want* to, Jack. And especially if I could remember something else from when I was ascended, that could trigger a watershed. Like with Daniel, my duplicate; just by encountering him, I've recalled much of my childhood. Please, Jack."

Jack made eye contact again. "You've been going through the mission reports from when you were gone, right?"

"Actually, I'm still going through the ones from when I was actually here."

"Well, when you do... if you read something that makes you think, 'If I was an ascended being and knew Jack was going through this, I'd be there...' that's probably the one you want."

Daniel looked him over carefully, almost intimately, and Jack had to force himself not to look away. "Something happened. To you. Something bad? And I was there?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Daniel. Not if you don't remember."

"Okay. I see what you mean," said Daniel, nodding slowly. "If I'm not triggered by the events in the report, I probably wouldn't remember."

"Exactly."

"Well, I... I'll tell you if I figure it out."

"You do that." Jack looked down at his hands, which had formed into tight fists at some point. Willing himself to relax, he stood up. "Better let you get back to work."

Daniel automatically picked up his translations again, still watching Jack. "Does anyone else know? That you saw me, I mean?"

"No. I made an off-hand reference months after the fact to having seen you at some point. It wasn't something I felt like discussing." Jack went to the door. "Catch you later, Indiana."

"Let me know when Sam comes back, will you?"

"Will do," said Jack, leaving to go back to his in-tray.

****

It was late afternoon when Jack got the call that Carter was back.

"Is she alone?" he asked the gate technician.

"Yes, sir. She's definitely alone. General Hammond wants to see you in the briefing room."

"Can you let Doctor Jackson know?"

"Yes, sir. General Hammond has already instructed me to inform him, too. As well as Teal'c."

So kid Jack had done it, thought Jack, making his way to the briefing room. Kid Daniel's bravery must have swayed him. He hoped everything had gone all right with the freezing--or whatever it was that stasis actually involved. Guess he'd soon find out.

Carter looked tired. Worse than tired; she slumped in her chair, pale and red-cheeked, her hair tangled with worry-knots.

"Everything all right?" said Jack. "The stasis worked?"

"It seems so," said General Hammond. "We'll wait until Doctor Jackson and Teal'c arrive, but I will tell you that young Jack did not return."

"So the tech said. Is that a problem?"

"I'm so sorry, sir," said Carter. "He got away from me. He got away from all of us. He escaped through the stargate to an unknown address."

****

Carter told her story to the sober group around the briefing room. Her father had taken them to meet with the Tok'ra who would be performing the stasis. The process had been explained to the two duplicates, and Carter had taken notes for the SGC records. Then they'd prepared young Daniel for the procedure. It had been sweet, she said, the way that young Jack had stayed so close to him, reassuring him, being a support, even though young Daniel had seemed perfectly composed. It had all taken more time than Carter had expected, but as far as she could tell, young Daniel hadn't lost any more time.

Then came the stasis procedure. When it was over, and Daniel's state of being alive but suspended had been confirmed, they'd left the chamber.

"Jack was subdued after that," she said. "I suggested maybe he should go for a tour of the base. I left him in the company of two Tok'ra, and spent some time catching up with my father. Well, I didn't think there was anywhere Jack could go, sir. The Tok'ra have their own security arrangements, he wouldn't have been able to wander off."

She shook her head, and looked up at Jack, her expression devastated. "I'm sorry, sir. The fact is, I allowed myself to forget he was a highly trained field operative. I kept thinking of him as a fifteen year old boy."

"It's okay, Carter," said Jack. "We all keep underestimating him. The fact is, we should have cuffed him, and used the marine contingent like he said. The little bastard was probably laughing up his sleeve the whole time."

Carter continued. "The Tok'ra, on the other hand, were well aware that this was Colonel O'Neill in a fifteen year old's body. Perhaps a slightly regressed Colonel O'Neill, but still... the Tok'ra are used to appearances being deceiving and I think that accounted for how young Jack was able to get away so easily. He basically just swaggered up to the Tok'ra guarding the DHD and said that since I had decided to spend some time with my father, he was cleared to return to Earth."

"But he didn't have a GDO for the iris," said Hammond.

"No, sir. But the Tok'ra wouldn't have noticed that. They cleared him to dial, and he did, and he left."

"And they have no idea where he went?"

"None, sir."

"Did he have anything in the nature of supplies with him?"

"Not that I know of. But he was wearing that overly large coat, sir. He could have collected things like food in the pockets and it wouldn't have been obvious."

"How did he know how to dial out in the first place?" asked Jack. "If he can't even remember his years at the SGC-"

"Sir, I..." Carter looked deeply distressed; Jack felt sorry for her. "Well, he was curious when we arrived, and I demonstrated. I pointed out the glyphs for Earth, and the point of origin, and told him how to activate it. I swear I only showed him Earth's address. I also explained that he should never try to go to Earth by himself, because the iris on the gate would kill him instantly."

"There were no unauthorised gate activations?" Jack asked Hammond.

"No."

"Okay, so that's good news. He's not splattered across the iris. Where else could he have gone?"

"All I can think of, sir, is that he pressed seven glyphs at random, and took his chances."

"That would be suicide," said Jack. "He's smarter than that. No, somehow, he got his hot little hands on a reasonably safe gate address, and took a calculated risk."

"How would he have found out that sort of information?" asked Hammond.

"He's asked me a lot of questions over the past couple of days," said Carter. "He expressed a particular interest in non-hostile planets. But sir, I referred to them by their names only, 'The Land of Light', or 'Cimmeria', or 'Orban'; I didn't use the designations we'd given them, and I gave no indication of the glyphs."

Daniel spoke. "Young Daniel was in my lab several times. I was supervising him, of course, but it's always possible he saw something I had lying around."

Jack shook his head. "No, this is not something Jack did by chance alone. I think at this point that, rather than speculating, we need to search his room here; and if that turns up nothing, then we have to search the Thredman's home."

"I'm so sorry," Carter repeated for the tenth time at least.

"Major Carter, no one is blaming you," said General Hammond. "I take full responsibility for not providing an appropriate escort. Colonel, I'd like you to conduct a search of the duplicate's quarters--both duplicates' quarters--and report back to me when you've finished."

"I don't think we're going to find anything," Daniel said to Jack when Hammond had left.

"Me neither, but we have to cover the bases." He looked down at Carter, who hadn't moved from her seat. "Don't beat yourself up, Carter, okay?"

She gave him a wan smile. "I'll try not to, sir."

As suspected, no notes had been left in either of the duplicates' rooms to indicate where kid Jack had gone. Because it was now evening, it was decided to wait until tomorrow to descend on the Thredmans' home and turn it inside out for a clue that Jack knew wouldn't be there.

****

The Thredmans were reluctant at first, but in the interests of finding kid Jack, acceded to the request by Colonel O'Neill and the rest of SG-1 to search their home.

"I don't understand what you're looking for," Thredman said, following Jack around. "What's happened to Jack?"

Jack fed him the story they'd all worked out. "Basically, we think he took an unauthorised trip through the stargate. We're not sure where he went."

"You said he was from another world. Maybe he went there."

"No," said Jack. "His other world has been completely wiped out." In a sense.

"Why would he do it, then?" asked Thredman.

"Jack's upset. He's worried about a friend of his. He's homesick. He's not in his right mind."

"He seemed okay to us," countered Thredman. "A bit moody, but all teenagers are moody. He's a good kid."

"He is. I guess, because he's a good kid, he was hiding a lot of his problems from everyone."

"Is he going to be all right?" Thredman sounded genuinely upset. Clearly, he'd got used to having the kid around.

"I'm sure he's fine," said Jack. "We just have to find him, that's all. So anything you can think of, anything he said, anything that to you might not even make sense or seem important... we need to know."

"I don't think there is anything. He didn't talk much about his past."

"Try to think," Jack urged. "Daniel!" he called.

"What?" came Daniel's voice from somewhere in the house.

"I need you!"

"Coming!"

Thredman leaned towards him. "Sir, I wanted to declare... I have a small collection of Playboy magazines in my garage. It's just, after my injuries, I had some problems..."

"I understand, Matt. I'll be in charge of the garage search," Jack promised him. Poor guy, having people go through all his secrets.

When Daniel appeared, Jack explained he wanted him to pick Thredman's brain. Not in those exact words, of course. Daniel would do his best, and meanwhile Jack, who knew kid Jack best of all, would be able to use that knowledge to figure out where the kid would hide stuff--if the kid had hidden anything of use.

The search took hours, because Jack made them go through every single room thoroughly, putting everything back the way they'd found it. Then they'd started on the garden. By mid-afternoon they'd amassed all of kid Jack's school notes, his school diary, and a small pocket-book in which it appeared he'd kept a patchy personal journal and which Jack had found underneath a loosened strip of carpet under the dresser in the kid's bedroom. They thanked Thredman and left, promising to keep him informed.

Back at the base, they began going through the stuff. Jack took the journal back to his office. A lot of the pages had been ripped out, probably written on and destroyed. Nothing about gate addresses or safe worlds. The second-last entry, dated a week ago, read;

'I think I'm going crazy. Just what I need, on top of everything. The kids at school already think I'm weird, or are just plain freaked. Like, some guy at school picked a fight with me and I nearly killed him with just a jab of my fingers to his neck. He fell down and passed out, but no one could say I'd done anything other than push him away when he tried to pound on me, so I didn't get in trouble. But now there's rumors I know some weird secret kung-fu and not to mess with me. My teachers hate me because I think they're full of shit and tell them so. The jocks hate me because I won't join their stupid basketball team. The geeks run away, the popular kids think I have way too much attitude. And I don't understand why it freaks me out when girls come anywhere near me. It feels wrong, somehow. Maybe I'm gay. No, because I don't want any of the guys anywhere near me, either. Ms. Chandler is more my type, and she's got to be forty.

'I can push the crazy stuff away if I concentrate, but at night, all I can dream about is my wife Sara and my son Charlie, and when I wake up, there's no wife and no son, and I'm just a fifteen year old kid...'

The page had been ripped off at this point.

Jack turned the page to the last entry. The kid had obviously written it after he and Daniel had tried to pick him up from school a few days ago.

'At least I've figured out I'm not crazy, or if I *am* crazy, then someone's made me that way deliberately. I think I've been brainwashed. If I try hard, I can remember being underground, at the Air Force base on Cheyenne, in this secret command place called the SGC. I had tests done, and they took me-'

More page ripping. Damned paranoid kid.

'-but at the same time, inside me something said, 'you can trust this guy'. And it freaked me, because he's part of the whole conspiracy, how can I trust him? The memory that says he was nice to me, that he was always straight with me, that could easily be implanted, to make me all co-operative when they want me back.'

At first, Jack thought his duplicate was talking about him, but then he realised the kid was referring to Daniel.

'Thing is, he wasn't the one pushing me, it was that older guy who was pushing me. And then that Daniel guy spoke, and he said something like, 'only if it's okay with you' and I just snapped, because I wanted to trust him again, only *nothing* is okay with me, and I ran.

'And now I keep having this weird flashback of that Daniel guy lying in a hospital bed, covered in these really really bad burns, mummified in bandages and dying in front of me, and it feels so real, and it really really hurts. And this other thing; I'm in this pit, or something, and I'm so afraid, and I know there's been terrible pain before and there will be terrible pain again, and there's Daniel again, standing there with me, and I'm looking at him, feeling him radiating inside me like he's some sort of guardian angel. It's too weird. I miss him. I want it all to go away.'

"Found anything?" Daniel, in his doorway. The expression on his face became concerned. "Jack, are you okay?"

"Just reliving old times," said Jack, but the flippancy didn't come out right.

Daniel came into the room and sat in the chair opposite Jack, looking at the journal upside down. "Who tore all the pages out?"

"The kid. Being paranoid, I guess. There's nothing in here." Jack closed the journal up. "I think I know why he decided to come back with us without a fight. Seems he had persistent memories of you as someone he could trust."

"He must have got those from your memories."

"Maybe. But I think some of them were his own, too. From when you all thought he was the real Colonel O'Neill and I was sleeping on Loki's ship somewhere in space." Jack fiddled with the journal. "So, how about you guys? Find anything?"

Daniel shook his head. "There's nothing in any of his writings. Just as we suspected."

"Wherever he is, it's obvious to me he was planning to go for good. He hasn't got a GDO, he doesn't know the address of the Tok'ra to ask for help-"

"Jack, if he went to, for example, the Land of Light, they have a way of contacting us in an emergency."

"He's not going to use it," said Jack with certainty. "He has planned this out, he's left no trace, and he is never coming back. I know it, Daniel. This is not the kin to a suicide's cry for help--he was desperate, but not depressed, not in that way. He just wanted control over his life. All these memories, that seemed not to be his any longer, they were wearing away his control. The idea of going into stasis--that pushed him over the edge, I think. It would have been the ultimate surrender of control."

"I think I can understand how he feels. I know how I feel about sarcophaguses, even after all this time. The idea of abandoning your control like that, particularly if it's your only option... it's frightening."

Jack nodded. Thank god for Daniel, anyway.

"Are you sure you're okay?" said Daniel. "You're looking at me kind of..."

"Just..." Jack didn't know. "Just appreciating you, I guess."

"That's a novelty."

"I mean it, Daniel, I really do appreciate you."

Daniel's eyes widened in surprise--the 'I never expected you to say that' rather than the 'I didn't know you appreciated me' type of surprise, Jack hoped--before ducking his head and examining the edge of the table. "I, uh, appreciate you too, Jack. Sincerely."

Of course, there was always an awkward silence after such pronouncements. Jack broke it quickly. "So, you hungry?"

"I-I-I guess so."

Aw, how cute. Daniel was stuttering, just like his duplicate. Jack stood up. "Then let's go see what's for dinner, huh?"

****

They were all desperately in need of downtime, but no relaxation was forthcoming. The next morning, they had to begin the futile effort of contacting--which usually meant visiting--the various safe worlds they had catalogued over the years, hoping to find duplicate Jack on one of them. This was not a speedy task; the MALPs still had to go through, in case any of the worlds had been visited by the Goa'uld or had some other disaster befall them in the meantime. Then they had to be monitored for some time. Then once they went through, they couldn't just do the old, "Hi, did a kid come this way yesterday? No? See ya!" Even if the people said no, they hadn't been aware of the stargate activating, they still had to consider the possibility that the activation had gone unnoticed. Tracks would need to be searched for, sweeps would need to be done. The uninhabited worlds would be the worst. Kid Jack could hide, watching them search, and they might never be able to find him.

The gate techs worked through the night, sending MALPs through, checking readings. The first SG search team to depart went to the Land of Light. With only a limited number of MALPs, only a limited amount of missions could be run that day. SG-1, with Teal'c and Jack being experienced trackers, scored an uninhabited world for their mission. They prepared to leave mid-morning, once everyone was satisfied with the MALP's readings.

"Unless we're lucky," observed Daniel as they waited for the gate to dial, "this is going to be a long process of trial and error."

"How many worlds do we consider safe?" enquired Teal'c.

"It depends on your definition of 'safe'," said Carter. "There are many worlds that I wouldn't consider entirely safe, but might be worth the risk to the duplicate. Since we have no way of knowing how he managed to come by the gate address he used, we have to factor quite a large number of worlds into the search."

The last chevron locked and the wormhole opened. "SG-1, you have a go," said Hammond through the speaker.

They stepped through the wormhole.

This was a fallow planet. A major catastrophe, possibly a series of meteor strikes, had apparently hit the planet thousands of years ago, according to the geological team who had originally visited. The former settlements, as far as had been ascertained, had disintegrated, the people and large animals long wiped out. The air, however, was breathable, the water clear, and plants, some sprouting flowers, had begun flourishing once again. Insects could be heard, and Jack knew from the old field reports they'd examined earlier that there was reptilian life about. It would be possible, theoretically, for someone to subsist off the land for a time.

"Check for tracks, everyone," he ordered, as the wormhole disengaged behind them. He would carry out the protocol of the search, but he knew kid Jack wasn't to be found here. No reason for thinking that; just a feeling.

After finding no tracks, they split up into pairs and spread out, scouting the area surrounding the gate. Jack and Daniel headed upriver, checking for signs of trampled undergrowth, or broken branches, or, hell, even a man-made shelter or something. The clayish earth along the riverbank showed only the trespass of reptiles and snakes and other small creatures.

"Jack," said Daniel after a while, "I think we're wasting our time here."

"Of course we are."

"I've been thinking." Daniel's words were thoughtful, measured. "About the nature of memory. How unstable it is. How our duplicates seem to forget, incrementally, such a large amount of information about themselves, yet at the same time, are still able to forge new memories. I mean, doesn't that seem impossible?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for example. When we approached Jack outside his school, he'd forgotten ever being a Colonel with the SGC. And yet, he did recognise us. But, he'd forgotten he was your duplicate. All these things seem contradictory to me. It seems to me he should either have forgotten everything; or, if he was going to remember you and me, then he also ought to have remembered he was your clone, even if he no longer had the lived experience of the SGC. Or something. Am I making any sense?"

"Yes," said Jack. He thought of kid Jack's journal. He thought of kid Jack's clear memory of Daniel dying of radiation exposure, his obvious trauma and pain at the memory, even though his consciousness had been stalled at the age of thirty-seven, seven years before he'd ever experienced the event. Perhaps he should have shown the entry to Daniel, but he hadn't wanted to compromise the kid's privacy any more than it needed to be.

"I think..." Daniel faltered.

"Go on, I'm with you."

"I think it's something in your head."

"No longer with you."

"We're not going to find him like this. I think he's using something, some co-ordinate, some planet, that's in your head. That you, that he, would have clearly remembered. Despite everything."

Jack's pace slowed to a halt. Daniel looked certain, yet uncertain. Certain he was right, and uncertain of his reception, Jack guessed. He drove the stick he'd been carrying into the ground.

"That's what's wrong about this," said Jack. "Why we're not going to find him like this. I think you're right, Daniel." He waved a hand, encompassing the river, the foliage, the stargate currently hidden in the distance. "I've never been to this world before. Jack wouldn't come here, not somewhere he hadn't threat-assessed to the best of his ability for himself."

"So, what should we do?"

"Finish out this mission," said Jack.

"But-"

"It's our obligation." At Daniel's disappointed look, he continued. "I have my orders, Daniel, and it shouldn't take more than a couple more hours. Then we'll debrief, and we'll discuss your theory during that debriefing. At the very least, we can convince the General to concentrate on the worlds I've personally visited."

"Okay. I'm with you."

"Look, Daniel, it's a good theory--I'd even say it's the correct theory--but it's not going to help as much as you think," Jack warned. "The trouble with isolating specific worlds is that I have a whole head full of gate co-ordinates, with particular attention to safe and semi-safe worlds, in case they should ever be needed in an emergency."

"I know it's not going to be easy," said Daniel, "but at least it's not going to be so totally random as this."

****

No kid Jack. Mission a bust. Return, quick medical, debrief. No sign of kid Jack on any world visited so far by any team. Daniel's theory discussed. All planets visited by Colonel O'Neill bumped up the order of worlds to be searched. Finally, dismissal. 1500 hours.

Shower time. Jack got into the cubicle next to Daniel. "Daniel," he said, after a few seconds. "I've forgotten my soap. Mind sharing?"

"In a minute, Jack," came the reply. "I'm still using it."

"Whenever you're ready." Jack shampooed his hair and let the water pound into his back. After a while, a hand appeared over the top of the cubicle, dangling the pump of body-wash solution Daniel had taken to using. Jack took it, squirted some into his palm and sniffed it. Delicious.

"I want it back," Daniel warned him.

"What are you saying, I'm cheap enough to steal your soap?"

"Yes, since you've never figured out where to buy soap other than at a grocery store."

"Jesus Christ," came a voice from further down, one Major Salter from SG-4. "I get enough bitching from my wife without having to listen to you two!"

Jack grinned to himself, and made liberal use of Daniel's body-wash solution, before dangling it back over the cubicle.

"Jack, you've used half the bottle!"

"Daniel, you're exaggerating."

"You did it deliberately, just to annoy me."

"Tell you what, I'll do you a deal. I'll buy it off you."

"So, you're going to steal my body-wash by proxy, simply because you're too lazy to get your own."

"I take it back!" shouted Major Salter. "You two beat my wife hands-down!"

In the cubicle beside him, Daniel shut the water off, and swung the door back. After a little while, Jack switched his own shower off, rubbed quickly at his wet hair, towelled elsewhere perfunctionarily, then went out to the locker area. Daniel was just pulling on trousers over his boxer-briefs. Water trickled down his back from his damp hair. As Jack rummaged in his own locker, Daniel sat down on the bench seat to dry his feet.

"I'm going home tonight," Daniel declared. "I want to cook. Actual food. I want to eat, and hear only the sound of my own cutlery clinking. In between, I'm going to sit on my balcony. Just sit. Barefoot."

"Sounds pleasant," said Jack.

"I feel constricted from my head to my toes."

"Then it'll do you good to get away from here. Even if it's just for one night." Jack finally managed to find a clean pair of underwear. He really needed to pick up some supplies from home. He put on underwear, t-shirt, pants, and sat down, drying his hair a little more. Daniel was still sitting across from him, damp-haired, shirtless and barefoot. He looked like a model for some upmarket men's lifestyle magazine. No longer the narrow, soft archaeologist Jack first knew; this Daniel was fit, toned, capable. Jack had the strangely arousing idea that, if they got into a wrestling match, Daniel could probably take him.

"You going to sit there all afternoon?" he said.

Daniel picked up his towel again, rubbed at his hair in unconscious imitation of Jack. "No. Just considering what to cook. How about you? You're staying up here?"

"Not much choice. No truck."

"Still? What are they doing with it?"

"Hoping an alien pops out when their backs are turned, I suppose."

"I could give you a ride," offered Daniel.

"Don't want to put you out."

"You wouldn't put me out, Jack."

"Even after I used half of your soap?"

"Oh, you still owe me for that," said Daniel, making a poor job of looking threatening. Fit, toned, capable, but unless cultures or lives were at stake, about as scary as a puffer fish.

****

With the breeze through the car window ruffling his hair, Jack mused idly, first in his head, then out loud. "What say we get Loki to run off another clone of me, that way we can pretend we've found kid Jack, and we'll all get downtime."

"I think," said Daniel, "that a universe with three Jack O'Neills running around in it would become quickly unstable and collapse in on itself."

"Really?" Jack looked at Daniel. "You're joking, right?"

"Of course I'm joking."

Jack picked at a hole appearing in the cloth at the side of his seat. "You're getting a hole in your upholstery here."

"That's because you keep picking at it."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"I only just noticed it!" protested Jack.

"Trust me, Jack, you may only just be aware of it, but you've been picking at that spot since the police took your truck away." Daniel, however, did not sound annoyed, only amused.

"Oh." Jack quit poking at the hole. "Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"This might be a dumb question, but... how come clones don't get that 'temporal distortion' thing that people get when they go through a quantum mirror?"

"Actually, I asked Sam about that."

Cool, so it wasn't a dumb question.

"She said," Daniel continued, "that it was something to do with how parallel universes have a different type of matter to ours. Or something. If they didn't, they'd all collapse in on each other, therefore there would be no parallel universes. So you can have a clone of a person in the same universe, because they're all made of the same matter. But with parallel universes, if one part strays into another, like someone going through a quantum mirror, the 'true' person already in that universe, simply by their presence, begins cancelling the other person out."

"I get it."

"Ask Sam, she's the expert."

"Nah, I'd never understand her."

"I'm sure you would if you really listened."

"You told me what I wanted to know."

"You're picking at that hole again."

Jack snatched his hand away and folded both his arms across his chest. "Why do you think Thor hasn't been in touch yet?"

"I imagine he's a very busy person, Jack. Just as we never have time to properly attend to all the problems we encounter on other worlds, I'm sure he has a lot of things to attend to that we know nothing about. He took the time to bring my duplicate to us; I'm sure he doesn't wish that effort to be wasted. He'll be in touch when he can."

"I suppose it would be kind of redundant at the moment, considering we've lost one of the clones."

"We'll find him."

Jack couldn't see how, but he appreciated Daniel trying to reassure him.

"If we had Jack back right now," said Daniel, "I'd say to him, 'Fine, don't go into stasis, just turn into a vegetable right before our eyes, it's entirely your choice'. And I'd mean it. It's funny how we're so unwilling to compromise until it's far too late for any kind of solution at all."

"*You* can say that to him," said Jack. "Meanwhile, I'll be clapping him in leg-irons and marching him off to the Tok'ra with a contingent of marines."

After making sure he had some sort of food at home--Jack informed him he had meals in the freezer--Daniel dropped him off. Jack put the photo album back in the cupboard with the others, then went through his house, opening windows, airing the place. The house sat on a large block; space all around, quiet neighbours. Thinking of Daniel's words, Jack took off his shoes and socks. After grabbing a beer, he wandered out to the back porch, and flopped down in a deck chair. Birds calling in the trees. The rustle of leaves. Hum of traffic in the distance. Familiar. Unchallenging. Irrelevant to his survival or emotional state.

Tension drained out of him. He fell asleep, dreaming of Daniel wiggling his bare toes on his balcony.

****

Daniel picked him up bright and early the next day.

"Sleep well?" Jack asked him, as they drove off.

"Not bad."

"Feeling less constricted?"

"A little less."

Despite his non-committal answers, Daniel seemed less weary than he had the past couple of days. His manner seemed calmer, the shadows under his eyes less pronounced. Jack guessed the past few days had taken their toll, not only physically, but mentally. And emotionally. Daniel clearly had an emotional investment in the welfare of his clone. Initially Jack had assumed this was because the clone *was* himself, that having him around brought up a whole load of baggage from his past that he'd rather not have to remember. But Daniel had treated the kid like an individual, concerned for his feelings not as an extension to his own, but in the kid's own right. Sure, there was something personal in his desire for the kid to have a better life than he'd had--but ultimately he wanted it for the kid's sake, and not as a means to heal himself.

"You're looking at me," said Daniel.

"Just thinking," said Jack nonchalantly, tearing his eyes away. His heart ached suddenly. He tried to ignore it. It was a mere fact that he couldn't have it both ways; couldn't have SG-1 as his family without accepting that pain sometimes came with that degree of closeness. He couldn't fix Daniel; the truth was, he'd never been able to fix Daniel. Pain loves Daniel, he thought. Pain had long ago burrowed into Daniel. The traumatic events surrounding him continued to grow, and pain continued to feed. Jack sometimes wondered how Daniel had anything left in him to give to others. Maybe the events of the last few months had finally sucked him dry.

He looked back at Daniel again. It was selfish to want a sign, to *need* a sign that Daniel still cared for his best friend Jack, rather than his workmate Jack. But he couldn't stop the persistent feeling that Daniel didn't want to remember their friendship. What if losing his memory on descension had been his choice? Being Daniel, if he believed he'd be of more help to others by loosening his emotional attachments to SG-1, he could easily have chosen to do so. Daniel had long ago accepted it was his place in the universe to improve things for all the enslaved, subjugated and abused.

Jack found himself wishing for a few unexpected Jaffa on today's mission; he could do with the work-out.

Less than two hours later, they were on another planet. One of SG-1's older first contact missions, it was inhabited by a pleasant society of democratic agrarian folk. Obviously clued in by the MALP sitting at their stargate for the last few hours, they had prepared a feast. The village head, with his two off-siders, met them, before escorting them along the path from the stargate to the village, people lining the path on both sides and calling greetings. All very nice, but Jack wasn't in the mood for socialising and feasting. A quick question had elicited the information that no one, as far as the villagers were aware, had come through the stargate recently. Personally, Jack would be surprised if kid Jack had pulled this world out of his memory--he barely remembered it himself. However, given that the stargate was housed in a temple at some distance from the village, it was theoretically possible that kid Jack had slipped through without anyone noticing.

"Daniel, Carter, you do the feasting, find out if there's been any strangers claiming to be from another village, or anyone noticing someone sleeping in their barn, or whatever. Teal'c and I will poke around."

"Okay," said Daniel. "But..." He trailed off.

"But what?"

"I know we have to find Jack, but..." then he said, very softly and quickly, "it's just that you'll offend them if you don't join the feast."

Jack sighed.

"I think," added Daniel, "that they'll be much more open to letting us 'poke around' once we've shared a meal with them, and explained the necessity of our mission. There's no point in rushing--we can't go on another mission until tomorrow, anyway."

"Fine. Let's feast," said Jack. Daniel was right; no matter how quick they were, SGC safety procedures--not the least of which was the necessity of post-mission medicals--would only allow for a team to undertake one trip through the wormhole per day.

Jack directed Daniel and Teal'c to one of the long tables, while he and Carter took their place at another. Carter was always just as willing as Daniel to make nice with the natives; she could cover for the grumpy Colonel. And this way he could give Daniel a break from him. He felt that he might have been suffocating Daniel lately, pushing him too much to remember things, hovering unnecessarily. So he feasted half-heartedly, allowing Carter to do the explaining and questioning, only occasionally dropping in a clarifying comment. According to the villagers, there had been no strangers sighted nearby, no signs of any camps not accounted for by known hoboes, all missing chickens had been accounted for by foxes, and the only people chased out of barns lately had been an amorous young couple.

Wondering how Daniel and Teal'c were doing, Jack looked over at their table. Teal'c looked about as comfortable as himself. Daniel he couldn't see at all; too many heads in the way. Jack found that even more frustrating than feasting while in a bad mood.

Eventually the feasting wound down. Jack had elicited permission from the village head to look around. Not everyone had attended the feast; Jack particularly wanted to talk to the village children, who might have noticed something the adults had missed.

"Carter," he said, as they walked, "how does Daniel seem to you?"

"Well, I know his memory still hasn't returned fully, sir. It's frustrating for him, but I think he's coping."

"But how does he seem *to you*, Carter?"

She looked puzzled, but earnestly tried to reword her answer, anyway. "I think he's adjusting as well as can be expected, sir."

Jack repressed the urge to growl. He supposed Carter couldn't be blamed for his own lack of clarity. "Do you think he's happy?"

"As happy as can be expected, given-"

"Stop *expecting*, Carter, and just answer." Jack knew he wasn't being fair; he didn't care.

"He's where he wants to be, sir. He said so. He feels that he chose to return to where he could do the most good. As you know, while he was ascended, he was virtually powerless to help anyone. Given Daniel's personality, sir, that would have been insufferable. As a contrast to that, he's happy."

"So you're saying he's not really happy. Just as a contrast, and according to expectations."

Carter bought a clue. "He's still a part of us, sir. That hasn't changed."

"So you think he's still our Daniel?"

"He's still our Daniel," said Carter confidently, before adding, "He just needs time."

Carter was right. Time. No amount of pushing, no amount of wishing, no amount of wanting, was going to put Jack back in his rightful place in Daniel's mind. Daniel needed to do that by himself. And if, whether his memory returned fully or not, he chose not to do that, then Jack had to accept it. He *had* to accept it.

The mission being a bust, Jack lingered after the debriefing to talk to Hammond. He wanted to be fully up to date on the status of all missions. Also, he wanted to avoid bumping into Daniel in the showers, or anywhere else. Jack told Hammond that he thought Edora, Laira's world, might be a good bet. Hammond explained he'd had a MALP stationed there for the past twenty-four hours. Given the instability of the asteroid field surrounding Edora, he had wanted to be certain it was safe to send a team through. Jack requested to be that team. Hammond refused, telling him he was too emotionally involved in Edora, that if he wished to visit, he could do so at some later date when things weren't so hectic. Jack concurred, with secret relief. Edora had too much baggage associated with it.

When he arrived in the showers, Daniel was long gone. In the cubicle he got into, however, Jack could smell the lingering scent of Daniel's body-wash.

****

Another day, another planet, another fruitless search.

When SG-1 arrived home through the wormhole, they found Hammond waiting at the foot of the ramp. "Good news, SG-1," he said. "Thor has been in contact."

Jack wanted to feel happy. But with kid Jack still out there, somewhere, he felt only irritation. Thor, as usual, had the worst timing.

"How soon can he get here?" Jack asked.

"Within forty eight hours, according to our best calculations." Hammond looked them over. "Might I suggest you all take tomorrow off for a well-deserved rest. SG-8 are returning from downtime then and can assist in searching for the missing duplicate."

Jack nearly refused, but looked his team over first. Drooping shoulders, tired expressions, a miasma of defeat shrouding them. "It's probably a good idea," he agreed.

"I'm happy to keep going," said Daniel, backed by nods from Carter and Teal'c.

"No," decided Jack, but with a heavy heart. "We're standing down. No arguments. Now off you all go and see Fraiser." As they stilled their protests and trooped off, he said to Hammond, "What about you, sir? You've worked harder than any of us over the past week."

"I won't be coming onto base until tomorrow afternoon," said Hammond. "More time away than that, I can't afford at the moment."

"Maybe I could come in tomorrow afternoon, and you could take the whole day for yourself."

"No, Jack." Hammond shook his head; the traditional captain going down with the sinking ship. "Now, go join the rest of your team."

****

Jack found Daniel sitting on a bench in the locker room, fully dressed in his civilian clothes and reading a book.

"Downtime, Daniel," he reminded him.

"I was waiting for you."

"How come?"

"You don't have a car."

Yes. That. "Let's get going, then," said Jack.

On the way down the mountain, Jack asked him, "So, how are you spending tomorrow? Sitting on your balcony again?"

"Possibly. I've brought those translations with me I was working on the other day."

Jack didn't bother to emphasise 'downtime' again; he knew that Daniel actually enjoyed the challenge of a difficult translation. "I'm going to get home and light up the barbeque. Steak, onions, tomato... want to join me?" He said it before thinking. Habit. He expected Daniel to say no. It wouldn't mean anything; in the past Daniel didn't always say yes.

"Okay," said Daniel.

"Okay?"

"But I'm not sleeping in your bed."

Jack's eyebrows scurried skyward.

"No offence," added Daniel, "but being abducted by your Asgard worshippers by mistake is not my idea of fun."

"Oh. Right," said Jack, relieved, and yet strangely unrelieved.

****

Jack methodically rolled paper, arranged kindling, and added a couple of larger chunks of wood to the pile underneath the metal plate. After regarding the arrangement for a while, he nodded in satisfaction, and lit a match. First paper, then kindling, was consumed. Once the larger pieces began to catch, he put more wood on.

Daniel watched him from the edge of the porch. "How soon before the temperature's right?" he asked.

"Give it a while." Jack went into the house, cut a lemon in half, grabbed some newspaper. Back outside, he rubbed the cut side of the lemon over the steaming plate, before wiping it down with newspaper. Then he poked at the burning wood. Daniel just sat and watched. This was a good sign. He must remember, somewhere in his shaky memory bank, how seriously Jack took his barbequing preparations.

"We should start chopping things up," he eventually decided, and Daniel rose and followed him into the house. Jack prepared meat, while Daniel cut up vegetables in large, flat pieces. Then Jack took everything and arranged it on the hotplate, standing over it with long-handled tongs and stirring through the onions occasionally. Delicious smells of good food, of charcoal and smoke, heightened the usual anticipatory responses in his mouth and stomach. Daniel remained in the kitchen, gathering plates, cutting bread, pouring water. He emerged after a while, putting things down on the outdoor table, then returned to his place sitting on the edge of the porch, bare feet on the grass. At some point he'd rolled up his sleeves. The setting sun picked out highlights in his hair, touched his skin reverently. He looked golden.

"Daniel," said Jack.

"Hmm? Plates?"

"You got it."

Daniel got up, fetched the plates, brought them over to Jack. Jack served up, and they each took a plate back to the porch. Daniel had set up their places at the round table so that they could both look out over the garden. It was nice, hanging with a friend, eating leisurely, watching the shadows lengthen. They sat for a time afterwards. Jack listened to the birds calling their fellows home. He glanced occasionally at Daniel, half-inclined speak, but each time the look of pure contentment on Daniel's face stopped him. Eventually it got too dark to make out Daniel's expression, so Jack got up to switch the porch light on.

Daniel sighed, and began to gather things up. "I'll do the dishes."

"Thanks." With the aid of the porch light, Jack went down to damp the fire, and clean the hot-plate.

Back in the house, he noted Daniel had tidied the kitchen, right down to taking out the garbage. He found him sitting on the couch, flicking disinterestedly through the TV guide. The TV wasn't on.

"Coffee?" said Jack.

"Hmm. Yes. Please."

Knowing Daniel liked the real stuff, Jack pulled the pack of grounds from his freezer, and soon the kitchen was filled with the aroma of brewing coffee. He brought the mugs out, gave one to Daniel, and sat on the other side of the couch. They both blew on the coffee, then sipped. Jack didn't speak. He didn't want to break the spell that seemed to have fallen over them. If not speaking was the key, he could do that.

Daniel put his mug down on the coffee table. "I understand why Jack did what he did," he said. He stayed silent for a while, before adding, "That fear, of not knowing who you really are. Or believing you are one person, when everyone is telling you that you're someone else."

Jack thought back to P3R-118, the planet where their memories had been overwritten and they'd been turned into slaves. The weeks after that, as their memories had returned, had been confusing.

"I've been lucky," continued Daniel. "I've had people helping me, people who I can trust."

"Jack could have trusted us," said Jack. He wasn't in the mood for cutting his clone any slack at the moment. "I gave him my direct line, he knew he could call us if anything happened."

"But it probably didn't seem to him like anything was happening at first. He would have been trying to assimilate into his new life, trying to forget the SGC. He wouldn't have been alarmed when things began fading. He probably thought it was a sign he was adjusting. It would only have been when his lived experience of the SGC dropped away completely, and memories of Sara and Charlie came to the front of his mind, that he would have become confused. By then, he would have lost a lot of the context for what was happening."

"He remembered you dying, of the radiation exposure," said Jack.

Daniel startled. "How do you know that?"

"I read it in his journal."

Daniel nodded, and looked back down at his feet. "I suppose traumatic memories linger longest." He looked at Jack, as if something had just occurred to him. "My death. We never dealt with that, you and me."

"What's to say?" shrugged Jack. "You died. You ascended. You descended and called me Jim."

Patiently, Daniel reminded him for the nth time, "I forgot everyone, Jack. Everyone and everything."

"I know," said Jack, but he couldn't help that it still hurt. It had taken him a long time to get over Daniel's 'death'--knowing that Daniel still existed, somewhere, didn't make it feel anything less like a loss to him. A terrible irony that true healing had come at Ba'al's hands; tortured to death repeatedly and yet, afterwards, once back home at the SGC, his recovery had been swift. That recovery had been entirely due to Daniel. By manifesting himself and by staying with him, Daniel had healed more than the psychological scars of Ba'al's wounds; he had healed Jack of a deeper despair. Daniel had not gone away for good; when things for Jack had been at their darkest, Daniel had been his light.

And then Daniel had been thrown back, back into the physical world, with his memories stolen. And the healing that had sustained him had dissolved in his own fresh--and irrational--hurt at being forgotten.

"To put it in context," said Daniel, "you didn't remember me, either, on P3R-118."

"I know, Daniel. Memory sucks. It lets you down when you need it, and thrives on airing the bad stuff over and over."

"I tried to avoid the bad stuff... but I couldn't. I found that if I wanted to remember anything, I had to accept the bad with the good." Daniel sighed wearily. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

"I wasn't... " I wasn't meaning you, he had been about to say, but he supposed Daniel was bound up in a lot of his bad experiences over the years. Usually through his many untimely deaths. "It's not your fault," he said, instead. "And hell, I've put you through enough too, over the years."

"I know. I'm seeing it in 3-D most nights."

Jack felt the urge to hug him, and suppressed it. Once upon a time he'd been allowed to hug Daniel. Hugging Daniel had been his domain. Not anymore. Another sucky thing about memory; it couldn't replicate the feel of his friend in his arms.

So he joked, "SG-1; the team that dies together, stays together."

"Actually, we've only done the group-death thing once."

Jack didn't say, 'you remember'. Jack was never going to say that again. Daniel could go at his own pace, as far as he was concerned. "The Nox," he said. "Funny how they never wanted us back."

"It says something when people bury their stargates forever after you've visited."

"We sucked back then," said Jack.

"We really did," agreed Daniel.

"It is, in fact, completely amazing we've survived this far."

They grinned at each other. It didn't make up for the no-hugging thing, but a smile from Daniel was still worth bunches.

Daniel yawned, and sat up off the cushions. "I should go, if I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel."

"Stay here," said Jack. "I swear I won't let the aliens get you."

"This is just so that you can have my car at your disposal tomorrow, isn't it?"

"Damn. Busted," said Jack.

Daniel settled back on the couch. "Okay," he said.

****

In the morning, Jack woke up first, and started the coffee. Not long afterwards, he heard the toilet flush, then Daniel, dressed only in his underwear and one of Jack's t-shirts, wandered into the kitchen, eyes barely open. In one hand, he clutched a blanket loosely around his shoulders. Jack thrust a mug of coffee into his other hand. Daniel made an unintelligible noise that could have been thank you, and sleep-walked out of the room again.

"Careful, it's hot!" Jack called after him. He fixed his own coffee, and sipped it while putting a couple of eggs into a pot of water to poach. Then he poured cereal into two bowls, added milk and spoons, and took the bowls to the table.

"Daniel!" he called, since Daniel was not in sight. "Daniel, breakfast!" He went back to the kitchen to fetch his coffee, before returning. "Daniel, get in here right now!" Honestly, Daniel was worse than a six year old. Jack had the experience to know.

Daniel eventually appeared, and, without actually appearing to see anything, sat where Jack pointed. He'd nearly finished his coffee, at least. Hopefully his IQ would begin to appear at some point soon. The blanket dropped from his shoulders as he began to eat.

Jack finished his own cereal, and went to check on the eggs. While cooking toast, he was joined by a semi-compos-mentis creature seeking more coffee. Daniel's eyes were mostly open now, and he had both hands free, having left the blanket at his chair. Hopefully he wouldn't burn himself. Of course he wouldn't burn himself, O'Neill! Daniel managed to pour coffee most mornings all by himself.

Eating was another matter, however, and Jack ordered Daniel and his coffee back to the table, before picking up the ketchup in the crook of his elbow and bearing two plates of eggs on toast. One empty plate and half a cup of coffee later, and Daniel met his eyes for the first time that morning.

"Thanks, Jack."

"Anytime, my peach." He grinned when Daniel didn't even react to the silly name. Still not so awake, after all. To be fair, Daniel was usually reasonably alert when they had a mission or something else important happening. He could even wake up without the assistance of coffee, if absolutely necessary. No, as far as Jack was aware, he only acted like this around Jack. At least, he hoped. He didn't want Daniel wandering around in front of Carter in his underwear. Or any other person. If that was strange, then so be it. Daniel in his underwear was Jack's alone.

Ordering Daniel to go get dressed, he briskly collected up the breakfast things.

****

Jack and Daniel arrived on base the next day to find out that Thor was due some time later that morning. True to form, the first they knew of Thor's arrival above Earth was that split-second tingly feeling.

Daniel looked at Jack. "Er..."

Jack grabbed Daniel's arm. The flash, the nothingness, then they were on Thor's ship. The ground lurched beneath them. They found themselves grabbing onto each other for support, then falling over. Fortunately, they bounced when they hit the ground. As the bouncing wound down, Jack got his bearings. It seemed Thor had taken his advice, and provided a mattress-type-thing to zap them onto.

"Hi, Thor," said Daniel, sounding quite cheerful despite being sprawled in an ungainly heap. He hopped up, and put out a hand to help Jack.

"Greetings, friends," said Thor, coming over to them. "I apologise for not responding to your call sooner, but I was committed to assisting one of my protectorates with an urgent problem."

"That's okay, we understand," said Daniel.

Thor beckoned them towards seating. "I understand by your messages that the duplicate is suffering problems. Please explain this to me." Daniel gave Thor a run-down of the memory problem. Thor sounded concerned as he said, "I apologise for not noticing any signs of this."

"My duplicate didn't know himself, so there's no way you could have known," said Daniel.

"Where is he now?"

"The Tok'ra have a stasis-thing," said Jack. "His memories dropped down to the age of fifteen, so we had no choice."

"I am familiar with the technology," said Thor. "A little primitive, but it is reliable in the short term. Everything seems clear enough, in theory. We stabilised the body; now we have to stabilise the mind."

"We do have one problem," said Daniel. "Jack's duplicate."

"He is suffering the same effects," guessed Thor. "It would be simple enough to fix both at once."

"It would, except that at the moment we have no idea where Jack's duplicate is."

"How did this happen?"

"He ran scared," said Jack. "He thought he was being brainwashed by the SGC. He used the stargate to escape, and we have no idea where he went."

"Our theory is that he used a stargate address in Jack's head," said Daniel. "Currently, we're checking all the safe worlds that SG-1 has ever visited."

"I cannot remain here for long," said Thor. "I have obligations in other places. I will need time to do research into the memory problem, but once I am certain of the procedure, then the duplicates will need to be ready. If your duplicate has not been found by then, O'Neill..."

"It's okay," said Jack. "It's his own fault."

"If we find him later, we could always put him into stasis until Thor returns this way," said Daniel reassuringly.

"Stasis is only a short-term solution, but it would be your best option, if the memory leakage is this severe," agreed Thor.

"So you understand how this could be happening? How to fix it?"

"I have a theory. I shall need to run some trials. For now," said Thor, getting to his small feet, "I will return you to your world. When I am ready, I will call upon you again. It may be a couple of your days before I do so."

"You always know where to find us," said Jack. "By the way, you know that buzzy tingly feeling you get when you're about to be beamed up..."

"Yes?" said Thor.

"Can you make it last a little longer? Say, half a minute."

"Is there anything else?"

Jack thought of his truck, all abandoned in the police station. If Thor turned his beam onto it... nah, Daniel would never go for it. That one would have to wait until he and Thor were alone.

"That's all for now," he said cheerily.

**WHOOSH!**

They reappeared in Daniel's lab. One of the science geeks was staring at them, white-faced, blinking.

"Wha-wha-wha... Doctor Jackson, I didn't know you were in here," blubbered the scientist. "I-I-I-I-I was looking for you..."

"Here I am," said Daniel.

The scientist gawped some more, then ran away.

"Strange," said Daniel.

Jack laughed. "Daniel, that poor guy just saw us materialise out of thin air."

"Oh. Right. But I don't understand why that should make him run away."

Of course Daniel wouldn't. Daniel would never run away from anything new, mysterious, or strange; often, Jack thought affectionately, to his detriment.

Grinning, Jack said, "Let's go report to Hammond."

****

The next two days were torturous. Waiting, more waiting, and dealing with the Tok'ra. The Tok'ra were asked to be on stand-by. Naturally, the Tok'ra had problems with this. Jack was happy to leave that one to Carter. SG-1 themselves were on stand-by, unable to leave the base. Doc Fraiser was on stand-by. Meanwhile other SG teams came and went on missions, unsuccessfully searching for kid Jack. Jack was there when SG-8 returned from Edora. He had considered Edora a possibility, and was disappointed when they too reported no sign of the kid.

Finally, Thor sent word that they could awaken kid Daniel from stasis. By this stage, the Tok'ra had been brought around to a co-operating point of view, so SG-1 were able to gear up immediately while they waited for Jacob to come and escort them like they were naughty children. Doctor Fraiser would accompany them.

"Carter," said Jack, "I'm deferring to you on this mission. I am not talking to any Tok'ra except Jacob. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir. I understand, truly."

"Jack, they weren't responsible for losing your duplicate," said Daniel. "They couldn't have known."

"I think he's referring to what happened when he blended with a Tok'ra symbiote last year," explained Carter.

Daniel jerked to attention. "What? Jack did what?"

"This happened when you were ascended, so you might not know. The Colonel was dying of a virus we had no cure for, and the Tok'ra offered to save his life in return for his carrying a symbiote whose host had died and they needed to get information from."

"What?" repeated Daniel. He looked at Jack, eyebrows aloft.

"I wasn't in my right mind," said Jack. "The virus was attacking my brain."

"Right. But you would have died without it, right?"

"Oh, I very nearly died because of it," drawled Jack. The stargate began to activate, and he added, "Let's not talk about this now. Or ever. Okay?"

"But-"

"Daniel. Not now." He ignored the looks Daniel kept shooting him. This was exactly what Jack had feared. Daniel didn't remember a damned thing about his time as Ba'al's plaything.

The Tok'ra IDC was announced, and Jacob came through the stargate. Immediately the wormhole closed, the gate began dialling out to the Tok'ra world, and soon they were walking up the ramp and disembarking on the other side.

Once on the Tok'ra planet, they were quickly ushered to a lab-type room. Kid Daniel lay serenely in his little stasis box, which looked like a glass-topped coffin. Jack found it eerie.

"How's he doing?" he asked Jacob.

"As I've told you at least ten times, Jack, we've been monitoring him closely. He's fine."

"Okay." Jack looked around at his team. "Let's wake him up."

They stepped back against the wall, and several Tok'ra moved in to reverse the stasis. Jacob stayed with them, explaining the process. "He'll be a little woozy at first, like someone recovering from a strong anaesthetic," he said.

"And his memory won't have degraded further?" asked Doctor Fraiser.

"No. The stasis basically stopped him in time. To him, it will seem like only a few seconds have passed, when in reality it's been a week and a half."

"So, no dreaming or anything?" said Jack.

"No," said Jacob.

Eventually, the Tok'ra scientists declared that the reversal had been a success. Doc Fraiser stepped forward to check his breathing and heartbeat for herself. Then she hooked up a fluid bag to the kid, as Jacob had earlier indicated the kid's digestive system might be a little nervous for a while.

"I don't suggest we move him just yet," Fraiser told them. "An hour while the IV runs through won't hurt."

"How are you feeling?" Jack asked the kid.

"Where's Jack?"

"We don't know."

"How long..."

"Nine, ten days."

"Feels like... no time at all," said the kid.

"Honey, just lie there and rest for a while," said Fraiser.

"We've managed to be in contact with Thor," Daniel told him, "and he seems to think he knows what's been causing the problem with your memory, and how to fix it."

"Hence, us waking you," said Jack.

The kid tried to prop himself up, looking around at them all. "Wh-where's Jack?"

"You said that already," said Jack. Seeing the question was about to be repeated, he added, "He ran away."

"Wha-wha-what d-do you mean?"

"I guess he was scared of the stasis."

"I remember. Wait." Kid Daniel searched his pockets. "He said... here. He said to sh-sho-show you this, when I woke." He held a folded piece of paper out to them.

Daniel took it and opened it. For some seconds, he was silent.

"What is it?" said Jack.

Daniel met his eyes. He looked astounded. "He's on Edora."

"What?"

"Jack. He left a note, so that when we woke Daniel we could... he's on Edora, Jack."

"But SG-8 *went* to Edora. He wasn't there!"

Daniel shook his head. "Maybe he'd somehow convinced the people of Edora to lie for him. I don't know. Jack, we have to go now. We have to find him, and get him to Thor as soon as possible."

"Okay, after we take kid Daniel back to the SGC we can-"

"No time. We have to go now."

"We can't go now," said Jack.

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Because! An asteroid could have hit the gate. You know what that place was like."

"I'm going," said Daniel, beginning to walk off.

"Daniel! You're not going by yourself, and that's an order!"

Daniel stopped. He took a deep breath. Jack waited with interest to see what he'd do.

He turned to face Jack, meeting his eyes. "You're right," he said. "But... if I go to the SGC, I could get General Hammond to send a MALP through. That way we could be ready-"

"Okay." Jack held up a hand to forestall any more arguments, before turning to Carter and Teal'c. "You two, say and help Doc Fraiser with the kid. Daniel and I are returning to the SGC."

****

Edora. Of all the places the little brat had to go, it would be Edora. Jack's little old depression fantasy; that when he retired, it would be to Edora. That he could pick up the ordinary, uncomplicated relationship he'd had with Laira, and be content. In reality, he knew it could never be so. Earth continued to trade with Edora for their precious naqahdah resources but the truth was that, despite his promise to Laira to return, Jack himself had never been back. Early on, he'd intended to, but found he couldn't bring himself to walk through the wormhole. He'd cited a dizzy spell and taken himself off to see Fraiser instead. Since then, he'd turned down any mission to Edora. Carter had gone there, to do the whole treaty thing, but not himself.

He looked at it on the screen in the SCG control room. It looked ordinary enough. The MALP showed the path from the gate, with the village just a smudge in the distance. All appeared well.

"So can we go?" said Daniel.

"Hold on a minute, son." Hammond turned to Jack. "Are you sure it's wise for just yourself and Doctor Jackson to go?"

"I think it's the only chance we'll have of finding anything out," said Jack.

He and Daniel had worked a theory out while walking back to the Tok'ra stargate, and now Daniel explained the theory. "If Jack's duplicate is there, then he must remember something of Edora, however dimly. If he'd, for example, said that Jack O'Neill wanted them to hide him and that they weren't to give him up to anyone including the SGC, I think the Edorans would follow that."

"You're probably right," agreed Hammond. He looked searchingly at Jack. "You're okay with this?"

Jack knew what he meant. Hammond had stopped offering Edora to him after the third time he'd been turned down. "Fine, sir," he said.

Daniel flitted impatiently beside him. "So can we go?"

"You have a go," said Hammond.

Jack and Daniel left the control room and went down to the stargate. Once the gate had been dialled, they went through. A couple of Edorans, unfamiliar to Jack, were approaching the gate.

"You have come back," said one.

"Is Paynan here?" Jack asked.

"What is your name?"

"Jack O'Neill. This is Daniel Jackson."

The two Edorans exchanged looks, and nodded to each other, before motioning that Jack and Daniel should come with them. They could see the village on the path up ahead. It had been entirely rebuilt, and most of the people had returned. The numbers had been swelled over the years with refugees from other worlds that the SGC had brought to them. That was probably why he didn't recognise their two escorts.

Jack found himself slowing down.

"What is it, Jack?" murmured Daniel.

"I haven't been back. Well, except for the undercover mission years ago. But I only stopped long enough to dial out to the NID base. Didn't see anyone here."

"Don't we have a treaty? I thought you helped with that."

"No. Carter did that."

"Oh." That could be Daniel's memory problem, but it was equally likely he'd never known. He'd been more than a little pissed with Jack around that time, after the whole undercover ops rogue-NID-team thing.

"I asked her to come with me."

"Who?"

"Laira. Remember Laira?" How could Daniel remember Edora, and not Laira?

Daniel blinked, then something seemed to trigger. He nodded.

"She said no," said Jack.

"And you came back to us, instead of staying," said Daniel, as if it was that simple.

Daniel was right. Jack had chosen. He had no regrets. What he'd had on Edora had been a case of making the best of a lousy situation. He and Laira hadn't loved each other; but they'd liked one another, and they'd both been lonely, missing something they'd once had with former spouses. He supposed his reluctance to return was simply that he felt bad for being able to shake Laira off so easily. It didn't fit with his picture of himself as loyal. Yet he knew he'd no more abandoned her than she had him. He and Laira had deserved their time together. She had since healed from her husband's death, and remarried. He'd gone on, fighting the Goa'uld and saving the world.

A lone woman stood at the entrance to the village. Jack firmed his pace, until they reached her.

"Hi, Laira," he said. "I believe you've been keeping someone safe for us."

"Hello, Jack. It's good to see you."

"You too," he said, honestly. She looked good. Vital. Happy. "I don't know if you remember, but this is Doctor Daniel Jackson."

They greeted each other, and Jack fell into step beside her as she took them into the village. "The boy came to us through the stargate nine days ago," she said. "He said we should protect him, and hide him from all who might seek him, until you came for him. Was that right?"

"That was right," Jack assured her.

"He is your son?"

"No."

"He looks a little like you."

"Distant relation."

She nodded. "There's something wrong with him."

"What do you mean?"

"Something with his mind."

"We know," said Jack. "We're going to heal him, and he'll be all right. We can't stay--the healing has to be done as quickly as possible."

"I understand," said Laira. She explained that kid Jack had been staying with her son Garan and his wife, and took them to their house. They found kid Jack sitting on the bank of the river running behind the house. His clothes were torn and muddy. As they got closer, they could see tear tracks on his face. Jack caught Daniel's eye, and motioned him to go forward by himself.

"Jack," said Daniel to the boy. "It's Daniel. Remember? From Earth." He continued to approach, speaking softly, soothingly. "Jack, we've found out how to help you. There's no need for you to go into stasis."

Kid Jack didn't move. He continued to stare bleakly out over the river.

"Jack, please listen to me. Come back with us, and we'll help you." Daniel crouched down on the riverbank near the kid. "Daniel is asking for you. He really wants to see you."

"Daniel?" Kid Jack had finally registered something.

"Yes. Your young friend Daniel. Remember him? He told us where to find you. You gave him a note, before you came here."

Kid Jack fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a polaroid. He showed it to Daniel. Jack squinted to see over the distance.

"That's right," said Daniel. "That's you, and Daniel. Come back with us. Please." He held out his hand to the kid, and, still clutching the polaroid in his left hand, kid Jack reached out with his right hand. Daniel pulled him to his feet, and patted him on the shoulder. "Everything will be all right," he said, coaxing the kid to walk with him.

Jack himself breathed a heavy sigh of relief, running a palm over his head and down to his neck. Thank god for Daniel. He just hoped the kid hadn't regressed too far. "Thank you for looking after him," he said to Laira. "We really appreciate it. If you need anything..."

"We have the treaty," she told him, smiling kindly. "Our worlds are friends. We do not need any compensation."

He gave her a quick hug, which she accepted. He looked over her shoulder at Daniel the whole time. Hugging Laira wasn't anywhere near the same as hugging Daniel, but Jack was used to that.

****

Back at the SGC, Jack had Daniel escort the kid to Doctor Fraiser, while he saw Hammond in the General's office. Hammond brought him up to date; kid Daniel had been taken onto Thor's ship approximately forty-five minutes ago.

"When we sent young Daniel through, we made Thor aware of the fact you were collecting young Jack," said Hammond.

"Good, so... can we get a message to him that we've got Jack here now?"

"I'll do that," said Hammond. "Thor may not respond immediately, given the nature of what he is doing."

"I expect that."

"Can you tell me anything about the status of your clone at present?"

"No, sir. I didn't dare question him; he was skittish enough."

"Then we'll have to wait for Doctor Fraiser," said Hammond.

Jack edged to the door. "I'll just..."

"You may," said Hammond.

Jack took off for the infirmary. He found Daniel waiting outside a curtained-off bay and beckoned him away.

"He's severely traumatised," said Daniel. "Much worse than Daniel was. I guess Jack had a few extra years to lose. Plus, he would be remembering parents, family, friends. Daniel on the other hand was used to being on his own."

"You know how old kid Jack is?"

"Eighteen."

"Thank god," said Jack. "I thought he was about six."

"Janet thinks he's suffering post-traumatic stress disorder--or," Daniel added ironically, "I guess that would be simply traumatic stress disorder, in these circumstances."

Jack went back to the curtains and peered in. Kid Jack lay on a hospital bed, attached to pulse and blood pressure monitors, which Fraiser was observing. Perhaps seeing his reflection in the monitor, she turned around, and nodded. Jack entered.

"He okay?" he asked her.

"As long as he stays calm," she said. "I don't want to give him anything, not without knowing what Thor will be doing. Rest is all I can prescribe for now."

Kid Jack seemed to agree. He lay still, eyes closed, dressed in one of the infirmary gowns. Someone had cleaned his face.

Jack went back outside the curtains again. "I guess we should hang around," he said to Daniel. "Thor could be calling at any time."

"I was planning to."

"I just wanted to say..." Jack rubbed his hands through his hair. "That was good work you did, Daniel, getting him to come back with us."

Daniel ducked his head.

"You know me," added Jack. "No patience. I'd have ordered him, and he'd probably have run off into those damned caves, and we'd never have found him."

"I know you, Jack. You'd have brought him back somehow," murmured Daniel, before passing through the curtains, presumably to sit by kid Jack.

Somehow, sure. But not the way Daniel had. He was beginning to wonder if all Daniel Jacksons imprinted on all Jack O'Neills in some way. Fraiser came out of the bay and Jack asked her if he could go in.

"If you're quiet," she told him.

"Hey! How come you tell me that and not Daniel?"

"That's rhetorical, I take it," said Fraiser smartly, and walked away.

Jack fetched himself a chair and pulled back the curtain a little in order to sit down. "Hey, kid," he said.

Kid Jack rolled his head on the pillow, and looked at Jack.

"Won't be long, now," said Jack. He found himself wondering exactly what the outcome of Thor's fix-up would be. Would it simply halt the degeneration? Would it also erase the events since they'd been cloned, so they'd start with a clean slate? Without the latter, Jack didn't see how kid Jack was going to benefit. He looked like a shell shock victim. Eighteen was too young to suffer like that; he'd carry the burden for the rest of his life. Jack had known plenty of men who, having undergone mental torture, were never the same again.

Kid Jack closed his eyes again, and there was silence for a time. Then Jack began to get that tingly feeling. He looked at Daniel. Yes, it appeared he was not alone. Way to go, Thor! he shouted in his head. Tingle tingle tingle. Shouldn't something be happening by now?

"You know, I think I prefer it with the split-second warning, not the thirty second warning," Daniel murmured to him.

"Hey, you'll thank me for this when you're on the toilet one day and he decides to drop by."

**WHOOSH!**

Jack and Daniel fell over on the Asgard mattress-thingy. Kid Jack, still in his hospital bed, whumped down more gently onto the floor. Jack had the sneaking suspicion Thor was meeting all his requests, not in order to be friendly, but to amuse himself.

"Hi, Thor," he said, pretending he was perfectly okay with being bounced around upon a mattress by a superior being on a regular basis.

"Hello, O'Neill, Doctor Jackson."

"Hi," said Daniel. "How's Daniel? Is he okay? Did it work?"

"He's recovering," said Thor. "I'll take you to him in a moment. First, help me with this one."

"This is Thor," Jack told kid Jack. "He's the one who's going to fix you up."

"Where's Daniel?" asked kid Jack, struggling to get out of bed. He didn't seem too concerned about the fact that a little grey alien was hanging around.

"Uh, Thor, I think we better let him see his little friend first."

"Very well. His friend has also been asking for him."

Daniel helped kid Jack out of bed--and to tie his hospital gown more modestly--and Thor led them through to the next room in the ship, where kid Daniel, also in an SGC hospital gown, was lying on another mattressy-type-thing on top of what could be a bed.

"Daniel!"

Kid Daniel lifted his head groggily. "Jack?"

"Daniel. You're okay." Then kid Jack looked unsure. "Are you okay?"

"Tired," said kid Daniel.

Kid Jack patted nervously at kid Daniel's arm. "They didn't hurt you?"

"No. I th-think you can trust them, Jack."

Kid Jack screwed up his face, as though in pain. Then he nodded, and turned to Thor. "I'm ready."

"O'Neill, you and Doctor Jackson may remain here. Please don't disturb me for the next hour."

"We'll stay right here," said Jack. "Wait. If there's any way you can, you know, make him fifteen while you're at it? At the moment, he's got my eighteen year old mentality."

"I'll do my best."

Thor left with kid Jack, and Jack settled himself on a thing poking out of wall that could have been a seat or could have just been a thing. Meanwhile, Daniel was looking down on kid Daniel, looking concerned.

"He's okay, isn't he?" said Jack.

"He looks okay," offered Daniel. "But I don't suppose we'll know for sure until... how do you feel, Daniel? Apart from tired."

"Sore head," said Daniel.

"I guess that's to be expected. Can I ask you some questions?" When kid Daniel nodded, Daniel continued. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"That's a good start," said Jack.

"Shh, Jack. Do you know where you're living right now?"

Kid Daniel thought hard. "N... no."

"Is that good or bad?" asked Jack.

"I don't actually know. Can you remember living anywhere? At all?"

"I was staying in... in a muh-military base? And we..." kid Daniel frowned. "There was a big suh-circle, of water, and..." he broke off again, looking confused.

"Before that? Anything?"

"The Castles," said kid Daniel, suddenly.

"What, he lived in a castle?"

"No, their names were Castle," said Daniel. "Do you know who I am?"

"Daniel."

"And him?" he said, pointing to Jack.

"Jack. Big Jack. He p-played buh-basketball with us."

"You're doing good," said Daniel encouragingly. More questioning elicited the information that kid Daniel remembered only in dream-like images being on the world Loki had sent him to. It seemed most of his memories soon after being cloned were gone, or disintegrating. More recent ones only remained. Daniel's lived experiences until the age of fifteen, however, appeared to be intact in his duplicate.

"We can work with this," Daniel said to Jack, as kid Daniel dozed for a bit. "If he's stable at this point... I wonder if I could go and beam up General Hammond..."

"No. Thor said we were to stay here."

Daniel came over and sat next to Jack on the seat-thing. "We never worked out a story for them. We were so busy trying to contact Thor, and contact the Tok'ra, and find Jack, that we never worked out a plan for the rest of their lives."

"We couldn't, not until we knew what Thor's fix-it actually involved," said Jack.

"I suppose. But we could have extrapolated, and developed different plans-"

"And wasted a lot of energy we didn't have in the first place. You're starting to sound like Carter."

"Oh." Daniel steepled his fingers, and held them up to his lips.

"And if I have to have a type of geek babbling mumbo-jumbo at me, I'd rather your type of geek than hers. No offence to Carter, god love her."

"I suppose I just feel personally involved. That's not a good thing."

"No, Daniel. It's a good thing." Jack tried to catch his eye, but Daniel was staring at kid Daniel. Jack sighed, and leaned his head back against the wall of the ship. "We'll sort it all out. The important thing is to make sure the kids are okay."

****

True to his word, Thor returned in an hour, with kid Jack gliding across the floor beside him on what Jack assumed was a superior version of a hospital gurney. It looked exactly the same as the thing kid Daniel was lying on. Thor made a motion with his hand that settled kid Jack's gurney beside Daniel's, then he checked a panel on the side of kid Daniel's.

"Vital signs are good," said Thor. "The procedure appears to have been successful for both duplicates."

"How soon before we can take them back to the SGC?" asked Jack.

"You should wait a while, until the O'Neill duplicate has awoken. After that, your own doctors should be able to monitor them."

"Thor, I was wondering," said Daniel. He explained his observations on the status of kid Daniel's memory, before asking, "Given that they're now immature humans, how best would we explain to them these conflicting memories?"

"A difficult question," said Thor. "Unfortunately I could not risk erasing their most recent memories. Even if I had, there would still be the problem of dates, and memories of people who no longer exist or who have aged greatly since they last 'remember' seeing them."

"Neat summation of the problem," said Jack.

"Thank you, O'Neill." Thor beckoned them closer, before pressing a button on the wall. A shimmering effect interposed itself between them and the kids, before everything turned to normal. "Now we can speak freely, without being heard," said Thor.

Jack put out a hand to where the shimmering had occurred, but could feel nothing. He noticed Daniel doing the same.

"Firstly, I would not tell them that they were clones," Thor said. "Humans still have a long way to go before accepting this technology."

"We know."

"Would they remember families?" asked Thor.

"Daniel wouldn't," said Daniel. "My parents died when I was eight. I was raised in various foster homes. My only living relative is my grandfather, but at that age he'd basically disowned me."

"And you, O'Neill? If it helps, I believe I managed to fix your duplicate's memory at the age you suggested."

"Well, thanks for that. That'll work better for him being in that body, anyway. But as for family, I had a mum and a dad. No way around that."

"Are they still alive?"

"No."

"Other close relatives?"

"Spread all over the place. I guess at that age, I kept in touch with a couple of cousins, but we weren't really friends."

"There's no way around it," said Daniel. "Any explanation we come up with is going to sound science-fiction."

Jack indicated Thor. "You think?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, they've seen you too," said Daniel to Thor.

"Okay. Aliens abducted them, and kept them for many many years," said Jack.

"That could work," said Daniel.

"Right. Just what the world needs--two more budding UFO theorists."

"Your people believe in aliens, don't they?" said Thor.

"Some," admitted Jack. "The whackoes."

"Whackoes?"

"People who are a bit..." Jack tapped his head.

"Actually, many people who believe in alien abduction and UFO visitations are considered quite sane," said Daniel. "Some of them, given the antics of people like Loki, are even telling the truth about their experiences."

"Thank you, Agent Mulder. But let me ask you, do you want kid Daniel to be growing up believing that stuff?"

"I think it's the only explanation that's going to make logical sense. How else can we explain the missing time?"

"I don't know. How the hell are we going to explain that you're Daniel Jackson and I'm Jack O'Neill, and they're Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill, and if they hadn't been abducted by aliens, they'd have been the same age that we are today?"

Daniel sighed. "I guess... I'm not happy about them finding out they're clones, but fabricating a story is going to be much harder than telling the truth."

"You may find that to be the case," agreed Thor. "I had forgotten how complex the idea of one's place in society is, when one lives over such a short period of time. I'm afraid I can be of no help to you in this matter at all."

"Kid Jack's waking," observed Jack. Tentatively, he walked forward, but there was definitely no invisible force field in the way. "Hey," he said to kid Jack. "Headache?"

"Yeah."

"What's your name?"

"Jack O'Neill. Jack Simpson?" He frowned. "I have two names. Why do I have two names?"

"Things are gonna seem a bit strange for a while," said Jack. "Just ride with it for the moment, okay? How old are you, by the way?"

"Fifteen."

Jack pointed at Thor. "Good one."

"You may take them back to your SGC now," said Thor, after checking the panels on the beds again.

Jack went over to rouse kid Daniel, leaving the more difficult kid Jack with Big Daniel, since he'd shown such a touch with him.

"We should have thought to bring some clothes for them," said Daniel.

"Is the temperature unpleasant in here?" enquired Thor. "I have it adjusted to your humans' room temperature."

No, Thor wouldn't quite get it about the semi-naked thing. "You staying around up here for a bit longer?" Jack asked him.

"I will begin travelling in approximately twenty-four of your hours. That should be ample time to establish that all is well."

"Thanks, we appreciate it," said Jack.

"Yes, thank you once again for your help, Thor," said Daniel. "Hopefully now the kids can get on with their lives."

"It was nothing," said Thor modestly.

****

Thor beamed them all back to the infirmary. Fraiser, on cue, came out of her office, followed by Carter. "How did everything go?" Fraiser asked, wielding a thermometer and making for the nearest kid.

"Hop up on the bed, Danny," Jack told the kid. "Let the scary lady do her thing."

"Colonel," Fraiser reproved, before poking the thermometer in the kid's mouth. "Get Jack up on the other bed," she instructed.

"I have a headache," said kid Jack. "And I'm tired. That's all."

"You're both staying in here for tonight," Fraiser told him. "Sam, find the other nurse on shift, tell her to bring me some Tylenol. Colonel, Daniel, please stop hovering."

"We should probably..." Jack pointed Daniel to the door. "The General will want to be brought up to date." Turning back a moment, he looked at the two boys on their respective beds. "Will you kids be all right? Carter will stay with you for a while. And I'll get the big guy who was on your basketball team. Remember Teal'c?"

"I remember," said kid Daniel.

"Shall I get him?"

The kid nodded vigorously.

"When do I get my bed back, Colonel?" said Fraiser.

Jack remembered they'd left a gurney up on Thor's ship. "Er... see you guys later!" he said, ushering Daniel out with him.

Since it was now evening, they correctly guessed they'd find Teal'c in the commissary.

"They are both well?" asked Teal'c.

"Seem to be," said Jack.

"Janet's running tests right now, I assume," said Daniel. "They'll still be the same as they were before Thor's intervention, but at least they won't be losing any more of their minds. Hopefully."

"Jack seems a little more lively," said Jack.

"He does, actually. I think it comes from being around more 'familiar' people again. My duplicate, for instance. They seem to have bonded."

"That would be understandable," said Teal'c. "They are like two warriors in enemy territory, who must rely for their very survival upon each other, or fall divided."

"Not exactly enemy territory here," said Jack.

"As a metaphor, Teal'c's right. That kind of bond can be very powerful..." Daniel trailed off, looked at Jack who was looking at him indulgently. "Oh. Right. Abydos. You and me."

"Teal'c and us," agreed Jack.

Daniel cleared his throat. "So, Teal'c, we were hoping you wouldn't mind visiting with them, so that everything's not stranger for them than it has to be..."

"Would they not have forgotten me?"

"You're the guy who helped them kick our asses at basketball. Of course they haven't forgotten," said Jack.

Teal'c almost smiled. "Then I will go." He immediately took his tray, threw most of his dinner in the garbage, and left.

"He's just a big softie," said Jack. "Come on. Let's go report."

They continued on to their destination. Daniel had that painfully thoughtful expression on his face which meant he was sorting something out in his mind. Something personal, judging by his unconscious gestures. Jack even saw a brief self-hug. He hated that gesture for what it meant; Daniel, the kid that no one had hugged, not since his parents died. Kids needed hugs, even big kids, otherwise they grew up not being able to reach out themselves. Their Daniel had finally, in his time at the SGC, learned to accept that people cared for him, but it had been a long, hard road. Maybe now, at least, things could be different for kid Daniel.

"Jack," said Daniel, as they neared Hammond's office. "Could you... there's something I want to..."

Jack eyed him. He was certainly agitated about something. "What's up?"

"Nothing, I just..."

Jack jerked his head. "Go on. I'll suffer the wrath of Hammond."

"Thanks, Jack. Come see me after?"

"Uh, sure, Daniel. In your lab?"

Daniel nodded, and turned back the way they had come. Jack continued to Hammond's office, wondering.

****

Some time later, Jack knocked on the door of Daniel's lab and entered. Daniel was seated in one of his swivel chairs, facing away from his computer and looking at nothing in particular. He didn't look up, even when Jack pulled a seat over and sat near him.

"Meeting in the briefing room at 2100," Jack told him.

"That's late."

"It's only in another hour or so. We have to concoct a story for the kids."

"Right." Daniel swivelled idly. "So... you had a Tok'ra in your head."

Jack sighed. "Yes. And as I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"I found the report. I read it."

"So you know everything, then."

"I also read what happened to you in Ba'al's stronghold."

"Like I said; if you read the report, you know everything there is to know."

Daniel sucked at his lower lip. Then, meeting Jack's eyes, he said, "You said to me, a week and a half ago, that you'd seen me while I was ascended. That something bad had happened to you, and that I'd appeared to you while you were going through it."

Hope rose in Jack. "You remember being there?" Dammit, hadn't he sworn to himself just three nights ago that he wasn't going to say 'you remember' again?

Daniel's expression changed to one of regret, and he looked down once again. "No. It's just that I can't think of anything worse than being tortured repeatedly to death, and continually revived. I couldn't have stood by and done nothing, if I'd known."

He didn't remember. Disappointed, Jack said, "Well, actually, that's kinda what you did do."

"How do you mean?"

"You know--the whole, 'I can't do anything, Jack, I'm ascended now', which to me would seem to defeat the whole purpose of being a higher being, the whole not being able to do a goddamned thing to help anybody."

"Jack, I can't remember, okay. So don't yell at me, when I don't even know what you're talking about."

"I'm not yelling at you, Daniel," said Jack, embarrassed that he had been, "I'm just telling you what you said. I was being tortured to death, then revived, then tortured to death again, and you said you couldn't interfere. You said you'd be no better than a goa'uld if you did."

Daniel's mouth twisted. He nodded to himself. "Well, yeah. The whole 'playing god' thing. I guess I can see my point."

"There you go," said Jack, waving a hand dismissively, hoping Daniel would just drop it.

"No. I can't believe I could have stood by and watched you get tortured. I-I couldn't, I couldn't have done that. I must have... I was there, I came down to be with you even though I'm pretty sure that's not exactly allowed...I must have..."

"Oh, quit it, already. You gave me a solution. Told me you could ascend me."

"I did?" Daniel nodded firmly to himself. "Well, that's good. That sounds like it could have been a solution."

"Daniel, I'd just been screwed over by the Tok'ra under the guise of saving my life--I wasn't going to go through any more 'saving' crap again."

Daniel met his eyes earnestly. "But Jack, this was me. You could have trusted me. I wouldn't let you down like the Tok'ra."

Jack looked away. He trusted Daniel. That wasn't an issue. But ascension was for people like Daniel--good people, honest, caring, peaceful people. If someone like Jack could ascend, someone with murder in his heart, there was something wrong somewhere. What was the first thing he'd done when he escaped from Ba'al's cell? Tried to beat a guard to death. Daniel wouldn't have done that. No one worthy of ascension would have done that.

"There was another way," said Jack.

"What other way? I wouldn't have been able to break you out, Jack--that's the interference thing again."

"I asked you to kill me."

"That doesn't sound like a good option."

Jack grinned wryly. Oh, Daniel. It really *was* you, wasn't it? "You wouldn't do it," he told Daniel. "I told you I was about to give everything up to goddamned Ba'al, and you still wouldn't let me die."

"Jack, I... look, I can't speak for my state of mind at the time, but I can't see how you dying, for good, is a better solution than ascension."

"It was my choice, Daniel. You know I couldn't kill myself--Baal would have just revived me again. I needed you to help me."

"If I offered you ascension, then I was making you absolutely the best offer I could possibly give."

"Ascension-smension," said Jack.

Daniel was shaking his head, a strange smile on his face. "God, Jack. I can't believe you could have ascended with me, and you didn't."

"You know I couldn't have done all that 'open your mind' thing, anyway."

"You could so have."

Jack went for casual. "Hey, it was probably all just one big hallucination."

"Is that what you really think?" said Daniel, fixing him with a firm 'do not kid around with me' look.

He should have known Daniel wouldn't let him get away that easy. Jack paused to weigh his answer. "No. It was real. Just before I escaped, you came to me. You told me you knew that Sam and Teal'c had come up with an answer, and to be ready. And you were right."

"I wonder... I should talk to Teal'c."

"Yeah. Maybe you went and whispered in his ear, or something. There you go, Daniel. You did do something."

Daniel had swivelled so that his profile was to Jack. His shoulders were hunched over and he was chewing on a thumb. He looked like an overgrown kid.

Jack didn't want to feel for Daniel right now. He had a headache; he was tired; he was sick of this whole place. And he was hurt. It hurt that Daniel didn't remember any of this. It had been so important to Jack, that Daniel had been there for him in one of his darkest times; that, despite what he was saying now, Daniel *had* helped him, had comforted him and kept him human, and it wasn't Daniel's fault he apparently believed in Jack enough that he thought ascension was actually the best option.

The hurt took over. "So, you remember nothing," he said to Daniel's hunched form. "I guess that means it didn't happen. You were never there."

"No, Jack. If you remember it, then it happened."

"But *you* don't remember it," insisted Jack. "Isn't that what we're saying to the kids? You know, they *remembered* all these rich lives as Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill, but hey, now most of their memories are wiped out, so none of that happened anymore for them. And the bits they do remember, like Jack remembering you dying of the radiation, and him remembering you watching over him while he was being tortured to death, hell, that just didn't happen, kid, so live with it!"

"Young Jack remembered that too?"

"It was in his journal."

Daniel swivelled back to face him once again. "Jack, I am so, so, sorry. If I could have stood in your place while you suffered like that, I would have. If I could have done that, at all, even if it meant breaking the rules... I would have done that. But I wouldn't have been corporeal. I wouldn't have been able to take the blows for you."

"Jesus, Daniel," said Jack, shocked by the suffering he could see in Daniel's eyes. "That wouldn't have been a solution. Instead of me getting tortured, you get tortured instead?"

"What do you want me to say, Jack? What do you expect of me?"

"I don't know, Daniel!" Jack dropped his head into his hands, and pulled at his hair until it hurt.

Daniel's voice washed over him, his tone the same as it had been in Ba'al's cell, no walls between them, no defences. "Jack, I remember so many things about you and me. I remember going through sarcophagus withdrawal, and how you were there for me. I remember you were the one who came to get me out of the padded cell when I was infected with Ma'chello's Goa'uld-killing devices. And I remember seeing your face on the monitor, when you and Teal'c were on that Russian sub, about to be overrun by replicators. You asked me to kill you before they ate you alive. So I gave the command for them to fire the torpedos. Jack, you asked me to kill you, and I was willing to do it. If I didn't do it while you were being tortured by Ba'al, I must have held out some hope that you could be saved. How could I let you die, when there was hope?"

Daniel's chair squeaked as he shifted his weight. "So I don't remember it. But Jack, I remember so much of our history together. I know what we mean to each other. And because of this, I can know, through your words, what it meant when I stayed with you in Ba'al's fortress. Your memories are real, and they matter, and through them, I have life. Everything that you suffered was real, everything that you felt, that you saw--and that includes me. Please don't let this problem I'm having with my memory take that away from you."

Jack could feel tears rising in his eyes. Fortunately, his head was still in his hands, so Daniel wouldn't be able to tell. He needed to get out of here. He didn't deserve Daniel's care, his concern. He didn't deserve that special tone in Daniel's voice, that tone that meant love.

Abruptly, he stood, turning quickly, nearly knocking the chair over in his haste to get away.

****

2100 hours. The "let's get our stories straight" briefing. Hammond, SG-1, and the Doc--knowing Fraiser, she'd sedated the kids, so it was probably safe for her to leave them alone.

"I agree that, if possible, we should not tell the duplicates that they are clones," said Hammond.

"Any explanation that we offer, though, is going to have bizarre elements about it," said Carter.

"We know that, Carter," said Jack.

"I'm just saying, sir, that perhaps the truth *will* be the only option."

Jack was tired, unhappy and headachy, and had gone through this already with Hammond earlier. "Would you like to know you're a clone? How did you feel about Harlan and his own personal SG-1 once you'd gotten over how fascinating it all was?"

To her credit, Carter didn't snap back at him. "I didn't like it, sir. I just don't see what else could make logical sense."

"How about this abduction story of Colonel O'Neill's?" said Hammond.

"As Colonel O'Neill himself said, the two duplicates think of themselves as Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill, and they have a whole history of memories which support that. We can't tell them that they're anyone else and expect them to believe it. Secondly, the dates they have for everything will be completely wrong."

"Hence the abduction theory. Missing time," said Jack.

"The fact still remains, two sets of people with exactly the same names and birthdates and places of birth-"

"So we don't tell them our last names! Teal'c may have called me O'Neill once or twice in their presence, but that's about it. Nothing memorable."

"I have Doctor Daniel Jackson on my door," said Daniel. "Daniel saw that."

Jack didn't look at him. "He might have forgotten."

"You're missing the larger point, sir," said Carter, infinitely patient. "We can't keep the past from them. Being young and curious--particularly Daniel, I'd imagine--they're going to want to prove things for themselves. Even a school project on researching family history could be a disaster. They're going to keep finding that, underneath everything, there is another older Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill who seem to have first ownership of everything they remember."

Jack's head was really hurting badly. "Doc, do you have any Tylenol?" he said to Fraiser.

Without a blink, Fraiser produced a packet from her pocket. She must have slipped it in there after feeding them to the kids. Jack reached his hand out. Daniel did the same.

"Major Carter, you've convinced me that the story is untenable," said Hammond.

"What about Thor?" said Jack. "How do we explain the little grey alien?"

Hammond looked around the table. "Does anyone have any alternative suggestions to the truth?"

"No *good* alternatives," said Carter.

"What is the truth, anyway?" said Jack, before swallowing the pills with his glass of water.

"The truth as we would tell it to them," said Carter, "is that they are reproductions of two employees of the USAF, cloned by a renegade scientist from a more technologically advanced race of beings who live elsewhere in the universe. Something went wrong with the cloning process, and they were reproduced as fifteen year olds, with the memories of their more mature counterparts. Their bodies began to break down at the cellular level, but we managed to fix that with the help of more responsible members of the technologically advanced race. Then their memories began disintegrating, which is why they have confusing memories, but fortunately we were able to fix that problem, too."

"Sounds like a malpractice suit to me."

"Colonel-"

"My head hurts, sir."

"The quantum mirror," said Daniel.

"What do you mean, Doctor Jackson?"

"Perhaps we could tell them about the many universes theory, and that they were the last survivors of their particular universe. They found a quantum mirror and escaped through it to us, just before their world blew up."

"How do we explain why they didn't experience entropic cascade failure?" said Carter.

"Well, we don't need to tell them about that side-effect. Although, it would be the perfect explanation for why their memories have been so confused. Perhaps we needed to enlist the help of this ancient race of beings to stabilise them in this universe. Perhaps, because they were in a universe where their counterparts existed, our memories started bleeding into theirs."

"Can anyone see any flaws in Doctor Jackson's story?"

"I still don't see what's wrong with the truth," said Carter, a little testily. "Either way, we're exposing them to secrets they're not really mature enough to handle."

"I'm saying this for the last time," said Jack. "I do *not* want the kids to think they're clones!"

"Sir, I think you're taking this very personally. They're young and adaptable-"

"Carter, do not argue with me on this!"

"People! If you'll please calm down," said Hammond. "Teal'c, do you have any opinion to offer?"

"I do not wish to antagonise O'Neill further," said Teal'c.

"So you're in favour of the truth."

"I am. However, my experience of life is as Jaffa, not as Tau'ri."

"What do you think of Daniel's quantum mirror idea?" Jack said to him.

"It is perfectly serviceable," said Teal'c. "Perhaps it would even be easier for them to accept."

"I don't think so," said Carter. "Cloning technology is something the average person can believe in. Alternative realities are not."

"Doctor Fraiser?"

"I'm concerned about what they remember of their time as clones," said Fraiser. "The more they remember, the less likely it is that we can come up with any alternative explanation."

"From my questioning of Daniel," said Daniel, "the only unshakable memories he's given voice to are of the last day before stasis. I imagine it's similar for Jack. He remembers Daniel because he had a photograph of the both of them, and I believe he kept reminding himself of what they shared. Which is why he remembers Teal'c and Sam and us, because we all played basketball with him and Daniel."

"Perhaps, but I don't think we can truly be sure of what they do and don't remember," said Fraiser. "And, sorry Sam, but in my opinion, Daniel's quantum mirror idea seems no more or less bizarre than the truth."

"I like the quantum mirror idea," said Jack. "It's tidy. Simple, tidy. If there's something we don't want to answer, we just say, 'Sorry kids, that must have happened in *your* universe, not this one'."

"Perhaps," said Teal'c, "we should consider asking the duplicates for their stories."

"Huh?"

"That's a good point," said Fraiser.

Daniel was nodding. "People are naturally inclined to try to make sense of their situation, particularly when it seems bizarre. The whole foundation of cultural beliefs, in any society, arises from the need to make sense of things."

"I suggest we all sleep on this," said Hammond. "Tomorrow, we'll separate the duplicates and see what explanations they've worked out for themselves. In the meantime, if they should ask any questions, tell them we're still trying to understand ourselves what has happened."

The meeting broke up, and they all went their separate ways, as if by tacit agreement. Hammond went to his office, Fraiser to the infirmary. Teal'c caught the first elevator. Carter lingered, and took the second. Daniel simply disappeared; behind Jack one moment, then gone the next. Jack went to the commissary for a late snack, saw no one, and retired to his own quarters to sleep.

****

The interviews were conducted in two of the secure observation rooms, so that General Hammond and Teal'c could lurk behind the glass and observe. Carter and Daniel interviewed kid Daniel. Jack and Fraiser had kid Jack to deal with.

Kid Jack seemed very subdued compared to his former self. Of course, he was now a fifteen year old boy, not a necessarily paranoid Special Ops Major/Colonel. Yet Jack remembered that, despite disliking high school--and, okay, there was also his little problem with authority figures--he'd been a pretty well adjusted sort of teenager. He guessed the state of depression and fear which they'd found kid Jack in wouldn't go away overnight.

They started with the simple stuff. Name, age, date of birth.

"Why do I have two names?" said kid Jack.

"Try to think about it," said Fraiser. "Why do you think you have two names?"

"Wait. Jack Simpson is my foster name. I was living with foster parents." Kid Jack looked deeply saddened. "My parents are dead, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Jack. At least he could truthfully answer that.

"How?"

He couldn't, however, answer that. "Look, I know you've got questions, but we can't answer them at this stage," said Jack. "Honestly, we're trying to figure out what's going on here, too. Do you remember what happened yesterday?"

Yes, he did. He described being found, going through the stargate, being on Thor's ship, seeing kid Daniel again. No problem with answering questions. He clearly thought he ought to trust the United States Military. "I wouldn't trust cops," he had said earlier, "but I guess you guys are okay."

"Why were you on Thor's ship?"

"I had a problem. He was fixing it."

"What sort of problem?" prodded Fraiser.

"Memories. I had the wrong memories."

"Okay, that's good," said Jack. He was thinking of altering Daniel's idea slightly to a 'quantum stargate' story. Hell, the kids knew about stargates already, and he could just get Carter to babble at them about singularities and folds in the space-time dimension and parallel universes, until they were willing to believe anything just so they could get her to shut up.

The information he and Fraiser elicited from kid Jack would certainly support a 'quantum stargate' idea. As they'd suspected, the kid's memory for much of his time as a clone was either lost, or in pieces. He had little idea of how long he'd been on Edora. He thought it had been several weeks. Most of what he did remember was so mixed together and out of order, that the kid seemed desperate to be told this was all some terrible nightmare, and he could now go and have a normal life. When asked what he thought had happened, he could only shake his head. No mention of being a clone came into it.

Comparing notes at the debriefing later, Daniel and Carter said that kid Daniel's understanding of things was very similar.

So Jack explained to everyone his quantum stargate theory.

"But there's no such thing!" exclaimed Carter.

"How do you know? Frankly, the idea that this is just a big freak accident seems something the kids are desperate to accept."

"I agree with Colonel O'Neill," said Hammond.

"As do I," said Teal'c.

Jack tried not to fall off his chair in surprise. Both Hammond and Teal'c? Agreeing with him?

"From my observations of the interviews," continued Hammond, "the two duplicates are clearly bewildered and desperate for some kind of explanation as to what has happened to them. Clearly, they are aware that certain things have happened, that certain things for which there is no conventional explanation have occurred. Such as the existence of stargates, such as the meeting with Thor. Colonel O'Neill, if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting something similar to Doctor Jackson's quantum mirror idea, only without the need to incorporate the extra element of the quantum mirror."

"Exactly," said Jack. "Yes, Carter?"

"But how did they come upon the stargate in the first place, in order to be caught in a dimensional tear?"

"They went on a school trip to Russia and got lost?"

"Your story still raises more questions than it-"

"Okay! How about a quantum Asgard beam? Some Asgard was trying to suck someone up one day, on the edge of a black hole where all the stretchy time hangs out, and somehow the beam got stuck, and it sucked up these two from an alternative universe!"

"But that's not possible-"

"We don't need to prove it, it just needs to make enough sense to make the kids happy!"

"That's actually sort of karmic," said Daniel. "After all, this started with Loki accidentally beaming me up instead of Jack."

"The only drawback I can see," said Fraiser, "is they'll still have that element of hope. That somewhere out there, is the world they came from."

Daniel argued Jack's case. "Daniel's parents are dead; he knows that. And Jack now thinks his parents are dead. I don't think it would take much to convince him that his parents had only recently died on his world, and that he'd just met Daniel in a foster home or something, when they got beamed up. Obviously they won't remember that, but it would be easy enough for them to believe they'd just forgotten, along with a lot of other things."

"It seems cruel," said Fraiser.

"Kid Jack already believes they're dead," said Jack. "It's much more cruel to give him false hope all over again."

They all kicked Jack's latest idea back and forth a bit more, until finally even Carter admitted that her biggest problem with Daniel's quantum mirror idea had been the introduction of the quantum mirror itself, and not the actual idea. More time was taken to iron out all the kinks, so that they all had the story straight.

General Hammond congratulated them all on an excellent bit of teamwork--and it *was* teamwork, Jack reflected, Carter the logical naysayer having forced them to come up with a better mousetrap, so to speak--and they turned to the next problem: what to do with the kids?

"Matt Thredman will take Jack back, no problem," said Jack. "Maybe we can convince him to take on kid Daniel too."

"The problem with that, Colonel, is that your duplicate is no longer a grown adult in a teenager's body. He's going to need looking after. I don't know if Matt and his wife would be willing to take on the care of one, let alone two traumatised teenage boys."

Ideas were tossed out, and discussed; the foster care system, boarding school with guardianship during school holidays, relocating them to another world. Nothing was agreed on. Hammond told them he'd look into the options further, and broke up the meeting. Fraiser wanted to keep the kids in bed for another day, so a decision wasn't urgent. Somewhat urgent, but not totally.

"Jack."

Jack paused on his way to the door, stepping back to allow Carter and Teal'c past him. "You guys go ahead," he told them. "We'll follow you." Then he turned to Daniel. "What is it, Daniel?"

Daniel's eyes looked puffy, like he hadn't had much sleep. "Are you okay, Jack? Last night..." he trailed off.

Jack looked Daniel over. Puffy, bloodshot eyes, and a reddened nose--like he'd been blowing it a lot. "Did you take your allergy meds this morning?"

"Yes, Jack."

Daniel had a smudge of something near the top of one cheekbone, just below the rim of his glasses. Jack licked his thumb, and reached out to rub at the area. Flakes of crusted skin. Like tears. Allergies sometimes made Daniel's eyes water.

Daniel was holding himself very still, even forgetting to blink. Jack didn't look into his eyes, but concentrated on what he was doing. Then he briefly cupped his hand to the side of Daniel's face. Only then did he meet his eyes. "I'll be fine, Daniel," he said, gently. "You know me."

"Then... then I know you won't necessarily be fine," said Daniel.

"I'm a survivor," said Jack. "Come on," he added, turning away. "We've got to go break the story to the kids."

****

SG-1 gathered around the two beds, Carter sitting on kid Daniel's bed, Daniel and Teal'c sitting in chairs, and Jack leaning against the wall. Fraiser stood beside Jack, while Carter explained the story in her ultra-logical style, sounding completely like she believed it herself. She assured them they really were fifteen year old boys, who had somehow, possibly through the temporal distortion occurring when matter from one reality crossed into another, become plagued by memories not their own but belonging to their older counterparts in this universe. But all was fixed, now.

"How come you didn't tell us this before?" said kid Jack.

Carter looked to Daniel for help, and Daniel answered, "There wasn't much point in explaining until we were sure your memories were stabilised." Note the Doctor Jackson style of not actually lying, just omitting the truth. Daniel, Jack knew, hated lying, and was not comfortable with this situation. However, Daniel also agreed with Jack that telling the kids they were merely clones would be even worse than lying.

The kids had more questions; all manner of things from how many stargates there were, to would they ever get to go home?

"Colonel," whispered Fraiser.

"Yeah?"

"You're going to kick a hole in my infirmary wall if you keep doing that."

"Good," Jack whispered back, continuing to knock his heel into the wall behind him. "I want to get out of here. I *need* to get out of here. I feel like I've been stuck on this base for a month."

"It hasn't been that long."

"It's been two weeks. One day off isn't enough. I've got a permanent headache, and I can't breathe! This air sucks. And I'm getting claustrophobic. The walls are starting to close in. I feel like any minute I'm going to snap-" Jack realised his voice and his kicking had gotten a little loud. He further realised that everyone in the room was staring at him.

Daniel spoke. "Maybe I should take Jack out for some fresh air."

"Please," said Fraiser.

Jack soberly allowed Daniel to escort him out of the room, but as soon as they were clear of the infirmary he took over, hustling Daniel along with him to General Hammond's office. "The sooner we get the kids sorted out," Jack told him, "the better."

"What do you mean?"

"They were asking what happens to them now. I want to be able to give at least one of them an answer." At the General's office, he requested permission to go and speak to Matt Thredman in person, on behalf of the SCG.

"You're hoping he'll take in both duplicates?" enquired Hammond at the request.

"Kids, sir. We should get used to calling them kids. I don't want them to hear that word duplicate, or clone, or anything."

"Point taken, Colonel. You and Doctor Jackson have my permission to speak to Matt Thredman on behalf of the SGC. And please take the rest of the day. There's no need for you to return to base."

"Thank you, General." As they left, Jack informed Daniel, "You're driving."

"Obviously, since you didn't manage to convince Thor to retrieve your truck," said Daniel.

Actually, Thor had seemed to go for it. Daniel had been the party-pooper.

****

Soon enough they were heading down the mountain. It was just after lunch--for those who had actually eaten lunch. This meeting wouldn't take that long, and then they'd have the entire afternoon off.

Nice, but it felt token. It *was* token. Jack couldn't wait to get a few days in a row, so that he could get the hell away from the mountain, the Springs, the whole damn state.

He dialled Matt Thredman from his cell phone and found him to be home. "Thredman will be waiting for us," he told Daniel.

Daniel nodded. After a minute, he said, "I hated having to lie to them, Jack."

"I know. You did a good job."

"Right. With luck I'll soon be an expert."

"You know that's not what I meant."

Daniel winced. "Sorry," he said.

"Don't worry about it. We're all very stressed. I'm still a little embarrassed about throwing a hissy fit in the infirmary. That's very out of character for me. And don't give me that doubtful look. I don't habitually throw hissy fits."

Daniel cleared his throat. Then he sneaked another glance back at Jack. Jack grinned at him. "Why are you grinning at me?" said Daniel.

"I'm yanking your chain, Daniel."

"So you-"

"I'm man enough to admit I've gotten a little pissy, on infrequent occasions, over the years," said Jack. "Usually involving the Tok'ra. I just love the way you humor me over these things. That little look, that clear of the throat. It's so... " Well, cute, but he wasn't going to say that.

"Jack, did you... did you call me a peach the other morning?"

"Why would I do that?"

"You're right. It's nothing."

"Would you like me to call you a peach, Daniel?"

"Shut up, Jack," said Daniel, but a smile had been coaxed from him.

****

Thredman led them into his living room, offering them seats on the couch and seating himself in an armchair. "So Jack is okay?" he asked for the second time.

"Like we said, he's doing good," said Jack. "Much better."

"Then when is he coming home?"

"Probably in the next couple of days, if all goes well."

"We wanted you to be aware," said Daniel, "he might seem a little different. More withdrawn, moody. He's had an upsetting time."

"You said that he'd gone on an unauthorised trip through the stargate. What exactly happened?"

Jack fielded the question. "Well... you know how the whole 'top secret' thing works. He'd had a shock over something, and just took off. Let's just say, we weren't originally sure of the status of his parents, but we've found out for sure they're dead."

"Jeez. That's too bad."

"He knew he wasn't going home again, anyway, it's just... he's been dealt a few blows. The situation we saved him from in the first place wasn't over like we'd thought."

"Okay. I accept that you can't tell me everything," said Thredman. "We've just been worried, Mandy and I. We've kind of taken to the kid."

Daniel leaned back on the couch, until his mouth was near Jack's ear. "I've found Jack O'Neills sort of grow on you," he murmured.

Jack tried to ignore the warm feeling pounding through him at Daniel's words. Stupid; he knew Daniel liked him. "That's really good to hear," Jack said to Thredman. "We just wanted to make sure that you were prepared for him to be a bit, or a lot, moody, and maybe he's not going to be so independent as he was, either. He's going to need some time."

"We're looking forward to having him back," Thredman assured him.

"Great." Now all they had to do was bring up the subject of the extra kid. "Uh, we can also say that we found another kid from his world, a friend of his, called Daniel."

"Daniel?" said Thredman. "A Jack and a Daniel?"

"Go figure," said Jack. "Anyway, we've got the problem of figuring out what to do with him, too."

"Whoa. Wait." Thredman leaned back in his chair, held up his hands. "You're asking me to take on another kid?"

"We understand fully if you can't, but thought we'd ask," admitted Jack.

"I don't know, I just don't know." Thredman tapped his knees worriedly. "Mandy and I... well, since Jack's been around, we've considered fostering other kids, because... well, you know I'm sterile, and the adoption list is huge. But... we figured on a younger kid. Not another teenager."

"If it makes any difference, Daniel's a really good kid. Really quiet. Much better behaved than Jack. You'd hardly even know he was around."

"Jack." Daniel was shaking his head. "That isn't fair to Daniel. If he gets the support he needs, he might turn out quite differently from... from how he is at the moment."

Jack nodded, before turning to Thredman. "This kid Daniel's parents died when he was quite young, so he's been through a few foster homes. Back on his world, that is."

"Look," said Thredman, "I understand why you're asking me, I do. I know it would be hard for these kids out in the normal foster system, when they've been through the stargate and lived on other worlds and everything. I just... I'd have to discuss it with Mandy."

"Of course. Take all the time you need." Jack rose to his feet. "We should go."

Daniel stood too, but started talking at Thredman a mile a minute. "Obviously the USAF would compensate you for Daniel, in the same way they're compensating you for Jack. And you could call on us any time you had problems. Look, I'll give you my cell phone number, if you have any questions now, today, tonight, any time, just call me." He pulled a pen and small notebook from somewhere on his person, and scribbled on it.

"Daniel?" said Jack.

"Perhaps you could meet Daniel first, before you decided." Daniel handed the furiously scribbled number to Thredman. "Even if it doesn't work out with Daniel, we really appreciate everything you've done for young Jack."

"Okay. Look, Doctor Jackson, I can't promise anything, but I will talk to Mandy."

"I appreciate it," said Daniel.

"We do," agreed Jack. "We'll keep in touch, let you know when Jack's feeling ready to come back to Earth, so to speak." Hands were shaken all round, and Jack and Daniel left.

"What was that all about?" Jack asked him, as they got in the car.

"What?"

"You were pretty quiet, then suddenly you were all dynamo Daniel."

"I don't know, I just..." Daniel started up the car, and pulled away from the curb. "I want Daniel to live there. Matt's a good person, and he obviously cares about Jack."

"Yeah. That was touching."

"Secondly, I want Jack and Daniel to stay together. If Daniel had a brother, someone of his own age he could share a bond with... I think that could make a big difference to him."

"I don't want to split them up, either. As weird as it is to think of our fifteen year old selves as friends..."

"They're not us, Jack. Not anymore."

"I guess not."

"Their personalities have already been affected by recent events; their lives are already moving on different paths."

"Hopefully better paths," agreed Jack.

****

The next day, Doctor Fraiser declared the boys fit for release. "They've suffered no physical ill-effects, and their memories appear completely stable," she said in the mid-morning meeting. "Whatever Thor did, it did the trick."

"As you know, sir," said Jack to Hammond, "Matt Thredman is more than happy to have Jack back. We're still not sure where he stands with Daniel."

"Have you spoken to Matt Thredman today?" inquired Hammond.

"Just before I came here. He and his wife discussed it, but they're understandably antsy about having two teenage boys in the house."

"It would be better if we could keep them together, if possible," said Carter. "I mean, it seems to me that they've bonded, and it would be really sad after everything they've been through if they ended up living on opposite sides of the state."

"I agree with Major Carter," said Teal'c. "They are, effectively, brothers in arms."

Carter nodded at Teal'c's words. "Perhaps there's an option other than Major Thredman for both of them. If we claimed they were real brothers; well, surely in the foster system they like to keep families together?"

Daniel was shaking his head. "Even if they were blood relatives, it's unlikely they'd be accepted by the same family. It just doesn't work that way, particularly not when you get to their age. Younger kids from the same family can get placed together, but foster parents can be wary of the 'double-trouble' mentality when it comes to teenagers in the system."

"I think we should wait and see what Thredman does, first," said Jack. "I asked him if, when we brought Jack home to him, he minded if we brought Daniel too. I told him we'd just say we were showing Daniel where Jack would be living, so that when he wanted to visit... anyway, Thredman was okay with that. I get the feeling he could be persuaded, sir."

"We don't want to force him to do anything he doesn't want to do," said Hammond.

"Oh, he'll want to. When he meets the kid, he'll want to."

"If it came down to it," said Fraiser, "I'd take him. God knows I'm not there enough for Cassie, sometimes, but it would be better than the insecurity of the foster system. Cassie has already met him; she thinks he's adorable."

"Thank you, Doctor," said Hammond. "It's an option we'll keep in mind. Colonel, why don't you contact Matt Thredman again and arrange to return young Jack to him."

"Will do."

"Any other matters to attend to?" Hammond looked around. "Everyone, dismissed."

Kid Jack had several willing hands helping him pack the small amount of things he had brought with him to the SGC. It was just as well, as he was clearly too nervy to do anything for himself.

"What if I don't remember this guy, or his wife?" he said, pacing around his room in the guest quarters, tapping the table, the bedpost, the cabinet.

"It doesn't matter. He's expecting you to be a bit flaky," said Jack, packing the kid's Playstation into a box.

"But what if I don't like them?"

"You liked them the first time."

"What if they don't like me?"

"They like you a lot, Jack."

Kid Jack looked disbelieving.

"Truly," said Daniel. "They've been contacting the SGC daily, wondering when you're coming back."

Carter zipped up a gym bag. "That's all your clothes, Jack, folded and ready. Anything else?"

Kid Jack looked at Kid Daniel, who was hugging himself over by the door. "What about Daniel?"

"He's coming with you to say goodbye," said Jack, not wanting to get the kids' hopes up.

"Why can't we stay together?"

"Because things don't always work the way you want them."

Perhaps that was a little harsh. Kid Jack looked like he was about to cry.

"Jack." Big Daniel took the kid by the shoulders. "Jack," he repeated, waiting until the kid looked up at him. "You can still see each other whenever you want. You don't need to live together to stay friends."

Kid Jack simply looked away, and copied kid Daniel in the self-hug thing.

"Come on, kids," pleaded Jack. "You're both tough, you can deal with this. Matt and Mandy Thredman have invited us all for lunch, you don't want to make them feel bad when they're trying to help, right?" He bent a little so that he could look in Kid Daniel's face. "I promise it will all work out, even if I have to take you in myself. Okay?"

Kid Daniel looked up from the floor. The eyes that met his were those of a scared kid, trying very hard to pretend he was fine and capable by himself. "You would... you..."

"I want you, okay? Carter wants you. Teal'c wants you. The doc wants you. We all want you. We just don't want to be selfish--we want to find the best option for *you*. Please let us try, and if we totally suck, we'll work something else out. Okay?"

Kid Daniel stared firmly at the floor again, but his arms dropped slightly from his self-hug. Jack decided to risk it, and gave the kid a hug. He hadn't hugged a kid since... since a long time. Kid Daniel felt fragile, partly because he was light-boned, partly because he didn't relax fully into the hug. He relaxed a little, though, more than Jack had expected. This kid needed to be hugged a lot more often.

He stepped back, and patted the kid on the shoulder. "We'll work it out," he assured him.

Kid Daniel nodded vigorously.

"Carter, Teal'c, time to say goodbye to Jack," said Jack over his shoulder.

Teal'c stepped up to kid Jack. "We should play basketball together soon," he said.

"Sure. Maybe you can come down to my school and show those jocks a thing or two," said Jack. He held out his hand, and Teal'c shook it.

Then it was Carter's turn. Carter hugged him. Kid Jack looked gruff, and pleased. Then Carter hugged kid Daniel, too, although it was likely he would be returning. Jack guessed she'd wanted to do that for ages. Carter still thought the kids were cute.

"Off we go, kids!" called Jack, not wanting things to get too emotional. There'd be enough of that later at the Thredman house, when the kids were separated.

"I was not aware until now," Teal'c deadpanned to Carter, "that O'Neill knew the correct meaning of the term 'kids'."

"Hey, you're all still kids to me," Jack informed him. "My grey hair gives me rank. Now, I believe the General has given you all a week's downtime. Use it wisely."

****

On the drive down, the two Jacks and two Daniels discussed how much to tell the Thredmans. "Stick with the story that you're refugees from another planet," Jack told them.

"What other planet?" asked kid Jack.

"Doesn't matter. They won't ask."

"Matt Thredman was a major at the SGC," Daniel explained, "and he's aware of the need for secrecy. As far as he's concerned, it's your own business."

"Besides," said Jack, unable to prevent his flippancy entirely, "if Thredman knew he had charge of a mini Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson, he might be uncomfortable. Technically, we outrank him."

"We're not you," insisted kid Jack. "We might be your quantum doubles or whatever, but we're our own people."

"You are," agreed Jack. "But it might be hard for the Thredmans to understand that."

"How about our names?"

"You're Jack Simpson. That's what your ID says. Cool? Daniel can be... I don't know. We can get you ID in any name you want. How about it, Danny?" he asked the kid.

"Um..." said kid Daniel. "Ballard."

"Your mother's maiden name, right? Perfect. Jack Simpson and Daniel Ballard. That's not too obvious, is it, Daniel?" he asked Big Daniel.

"I doubt Matt knows much, if anything, about my past. It's not something I publicise."

"Good." Jack looked into the back seat at each boy. "Now remember what General Hammond said. You guys can't tell anyone any of what you've seen, or where you've been. We don't want to compromise the safety of the planet. You understand that, right?"

Kid Daniel nodded, but kid Jack had to be the smart-mouth. "Spending the rest of my life in the loony bin is not part of my plan."

Soon enough, they pulled up outside the Thredmans'. Kid Jack stayed in the car, looking through the window, as Jack got out to fetch his things from the trunk of the car. The kid still hadn't moved when the Thredmans came out of their house.

Jack looked at Daniel, who had come around to help him with the kid's possessions. "This could be a problem," he whispered.

"Wait. He's getting out."

"Matt!" shouted kid Jack, and ran up to Thredman. They did a weird fist-punching manoeuvre that was clearly a personal thing between them, and then Jack accepted a kiss on the cheek from Mandy.

"Look at that," said Jack, pleased.

Kid Jack was beckoning the Thredmans over to the car. "Daniel!" he called. "These are my foster parents."

Kid Daniel slipped out of the car and watched, blinking nervously as the Thredmans approached. Kid Jack made introductions, and kid Daniel stuttered a greeting. Both Thredmans shook kid Daniel's hand in turn. Jack strained and thought he could make out an expression of interest on the Thredmans' faces, but maybe he was just hoping too hard.

Kid Jack pulled kid Daniel along by the jacket. "I'll show you my room," he said, bouncing off across the grass.

Matt Thredman came up to Jack, beckoning for the box of stuff Jack was holding. "He seems okay. Not moody."

"Just wait until we have to separate them," muttered Jack.

"I'll go and get lunch ready," called Mandy.

"I'll help," said Big Daniel, thrusting the gym bag he'd collected from the trunk at Jack and following Mandy into the house. He had a determined set to his face. It was clear he was going to work on Mandy on kid Daniel's behalf. Go Daniel, thought Jack.

"Let's get this stuff up to Jack's room," said Thredman, and Jack followed him up to the house. As they walked through to the back bedroom, he couldn't help looking around with a sense of guilt, remembering how SG-1 had gone through every inch of this home just under two weeks ago. It had been with consent, and they hadn't found anything embarrassing (except for Thredman's few tame Playboys, the last dated well over a year ago) but it was not a thing anyone would have enjoyed happening to them. It had made Jack absolutely certain, if he'd had any doubts at all, that the Thredmans were the perfect family to foster the boys. They'd given up their right to privacy, caring only that SG-1 did everything they could to find Jack.

It seemed a part of kid Jack's attention was always on the eventual separation. Except for trips to the bathroom, kid Jack didn't let kid Daniel get more than a few feet from him. Not that kid Daniel was exactly trying to get away. Watching them eat elbow-to-elbow at the lunch table, Jack wondered who was more worried about who. Kid Jack, so anxious for his buddy; and kid Daniel, so anxious because of kid Jack's anxiety. They were a pair, all right.

Jack himself paid a lot of attention to kid Daniel, trying to impress the Thredmans upon him. They seemed to appreciate kid Daniel's attempts to be social, despite his shyness and stutter. Jack knew kid Daniel was being uncharacteristically sociable in order to cheer kid Jack up, and not because he thought he might have a chance of staying, but since the Thredmans seemed to believe he was anxious on their behalf, Jack didn't correct the impression. He could also see the Thredmans observing with interest the friendship between the two boys. See! Jack tried to send telepathically to them. You can't let them be split up!

"The kids can help Big Daniel and I with the dishes," announced Jack when lunch was over. He could see the Thredmans wanted time to talk to each other. After a token protest, they permitted their guests to clean up, while they disappeared into the main room. Daniel started washing cups and plates while the boys dried, and Jack cleared everything off the table.

Once everything was tidy, he sent the boys outside. After exchanging identical looks of trepidation, they complied. They knew it was time for the adults to make decisions regarding their futures.

The Thredmans looked up as Jack and Daniel entered the main room.

"All done," said Jack.

Matt Thredman took a deep breath, and looked at his wife, before saying, "We've talked it over, and we've decided. We'll take young Daniel."

Jack couldn't stop the stupid grin he knew was coming over his face. "That's great. That's really really great."

As Daniel offered his own gratitude, Jack went to the back door, eager to see the looks on the boys' faces. "Hey! Come inside a minute!" he called.

Kid Jack rolled his head in long-suffering fashion. "Go outside, come inside. Make your mind up. Aren't you supposed to be a Colonel?" He was nervous as hell. Kid Daniel was breathing like a bronchial old man. Jack hoped he wouldn't pass out before he heard the news. Or pass out afterwards, for that matter.

"Daniel." Mandy Thredman called the boy over to her. "Matt and I have been discussing something. We were wondering if you'd like to come live with us too?"

Kid Daniel's eyes went wide behind his glasses and, as Jack had feared, he began to wheeze harder.

"Yes yes yes!" cried kid Jack. He clutched kid Daniel in a brief and fierce hug, before turning to the Thredmans. "You guys are the greatest!" he announced, hugging Mandy, and thumping Matt on the arm.

"Affectionate kid," observed Daniel.

"He is. I was," said Jack.

Mandy, having recovered from kid Jack's affection, had turned her attention back to kid Daniel, who hadn't said anything. "Do you want to?" she pressed. "We'd love to have you, and I'm sure Jack would too, but if you don't want to..."

"No. No," he wheezed. "I wuh-, I wuh-, I want to. Th-Thank you."

"Daniel! Use your inhaler!" Jack ordered the kid.

"He doesn't have a bed. We have to go buy a bed!" shouted kid Jack.

"And you, Jack, settle down! Or the government will put you on Ritalin for the rest of your schooldays!"

Eventually, some semblance of calm was restored, mostly because Jack and Daniel decided they should leave, and let the new family become acquainted. Jack roughly ruffled kid Jack's hair, before succumbing to the urge to give kid Daniel another hug. The kid still didn't relax, but Jack was sure continual positive reinforcement would change that. As he straightened, he noticed Big Daniel watching them, a wistful look on his face. Jack turned to Mandy and whispered, "Young Daniel's been a little neglected in the past. Make sure he gets plenty of hugs."

"I'm sure we can manage that," she smiled.

Downtime had officially started.

****

Just after they left, Jack got the call he had been waiting for forever. His truck was now available to be picked up. "Yes!" he said, thumping the dashboard. "Those sons of bitches have finally stopped pissing around."

"Who was mentioning Ritalin earlier?" said Daniel.

"Can you take me to pick it up?"

"No problem."

Uncharacteristically, Jack dozed off. The next thing he knew, they were driving into an underground parking area. He stared puzzledly out the window. Looked a little too familiar to be the police station. He realised why soon after, when Daniel parked the car. This was Daniel's apartment block.

"Daniel?"

"Hmm?" said Daniel, hands still on the steering wheel, looking zombie-like out the windscreen at the blank wall in front of him.

"You were going to drop me at the police station."

"Oh. Sorry, Jack."

But Jack had already changed his mind. "No, don't worry about it. You look exhausted. I'll get a cab."

"No, that's... I'm okay to drive."

Jack hopped out, and shut the door. After a few seconds, Daniel got out the other side.

"You look fucked," Jack informed him.

Daniel blinked at him. "Uh..."

"Go take a nap."

"Jack-"

"Daniel-"

"-you don't look any better than I feel."

This was probably true. Jack found himself resisting the idea of catching a cab, then driving all the way from the police station where his car was being held, and back to his house.

Daniel caught his hesitation. "Stay for dinner."

"We only just had lunch."

"I'll cook."

"After you nap."

"Okay." Daniel began to get back in the car.

"Daniel. Nap."

"But there's no food-"

"Take-out."

"No. Real food."

"What do you want?"

"I was thinking chili-"

"Great. I'll go buy, you go sleep." Jack came around and held out his hand. "Keys."

"I need to get in my door."

"Easy fixed," said Jack, and took him up to his apartment, letting him in, firmly reminding him to sleep, and returning to the car. There was a grocer's just down the road. Arriving back at Daniel's apartment without falling asleep at the wheel, he put the groceries away.

Daniel had crashed out on his sofa, a book face down on his chest. Jack looked him over. He'd kicked off his shoes, but still wore his glasses. Although he'd seen Daniel often enough passed out under, or over, a book with his glasses still on, Jack didn't think it could be comfortable. Carefully, he hooked his fingers around the arms of the glasses, and pulled them off.

Daniel stirred, and muttered something.

"Shh," Jack told him, lifting the book from his chest.

Daniel sighed, flopped an arm over the place where the book had been, and subsided into sleep again. Jack watched him for a while longer, then decided he could do with a nap, too. He kicked off his shoes and went to lie on top of Daniel's bed, dreaming of Daniel sleeping.

****

Jack woke to muted chopping and clinking sounds. He glanced at Daniel's alarm clock. 5:15pm. He'd slept for an hour and a half. He lay listening to the sounds from the kitchen for half a minute, before getting up.

"Good sleep?" Daniel asked, looking up from a pot from which delicious aromas were beginning to emanate.

"Surprisingly. You?"

"Mmm."

"How long till dinner?"

"Jack, you can't possibly be hungry yet."

"Couldn't I?" Jack came up behind Daniel and tried to take the stirring spoon out of his hand and edge him aside at the same time. Daniel resisted, planting himself firmly and gripping the spoon hard.

"Go away," Daniel told him. "It's only just gone on the heat."

"It'll be hours," moaned Jack.

"Not hours."

"I know you. You always decide it needs just a few minutes longer. And another few minutes. And another few-"

"Hour and a half, maximum," conceded Daniel.

"Want to play a game?"

"What game?"

Jack thought. What game didn't Daniel whip his butt at? "Snap," he said.

"Snap," said Daniel, matching his inflection.

"Scissors-paper-stone?"

Daniel chuckled. "No."

"Okay. Chess."

"You suck at chess," said Daniel.

"I 'suck', huh? Come on. I'll bring it in here, and you can stir with one hand, and play with the other."

It was a ploy. Jack didn't have the patience required to play chess well, but give Daniel something to occupy his mind and his hands, and his mouth always felt left out. Which was why he talked to himself when translating. And why he sometimes became almost open with his innermost thoughts and feelings when he played games like chess.

Jack cleared a space and set the board up on the counter near Daniel, white in front of Daniel, black for himself. Before long, Jack had captured a couple of pawns, while Daniel had knocked off the same, plus a knight. Still, it was early days yet.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked Daniel casually, after Daniel had covered over the chili and was concentrating fully on the game.

"Just... about the boys. I think everything turned out--for once--really well."

"Yeah." Jack took another of Daniel's pawns. "It'll still take some time--Jack's got to get over his parents, and Daniel's got to get used to all those hugs-"

"Hugs?"

"I told Mandy Thredman to make sure he got plenty of hugs."

"He's going to be overwhelmed."

"That's the plan."

Daniel captured Jack's queen's bishop. "We have to keep a check on them, though. After what happened last time..."

"Good point. I'll make that recommendation to General George."

"George." Daniel tapped himself on the forehead. "I forgot. I was going to call him."

"I did it already, after I got back from the store." Jack studied the board. Daniel was encroaching steadily, luring him into picking off pawns while positioning his major pieces for maximum ambush potential. He had no idea how Teal'c and Daniel managed to make one game last for hours. "Don't you have to stir the chili again?"

Daniel straightened up and picked the stirring spoon off the plate it rested on. "I'm watching you."

"What are you saying? I'd move the pieces?"

"Like you never have before."

"We all have our tactics," said Jack. "You're playing against a highly trained SF here."

Daniel snorted. After stirring the chili, he returned to the game. He said nothing for a while, but concentrated on obliterating Jack from the board. Eventually; "Why Edora?"

"What about Edora?"

"Why do you think Jack chose to go there?"

"I'd class it a safe world," said Jack.

"But I'm wondering why Edora in particular. Its memory must have stayed strong in your mind, for it to have stuck in Jack's. Why would you... is it because of Laira? What you had with her?"

"So you remember the whole Laira thing now."

"Yeah. I... I think I kind of pushed it... I don't know." Daniel's glasses had slid down his nose; he pushed them back up. "I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't realise what you had with her was so significant."

"Because I chose to come back."

Daniel stared at the chess board. "It sounds selfish, I know."

"No. You tried to talk to me about it a couple of times, but I made you back off." Jack sighed. "Your move."

"Right." Daniel swooped on Jack's second bishop, and put it carefully aside, keeping his fingers on it for a while. Then he sneaked a look at Jack. "So, Jack choosing Edora was just... chance."

Jack in turn swooped on Daniel's rook. "Yeah. No. Sort of. I guess I'd harboured this fantasy, once upon a time. Whenever all the plotting and the Goa'uld chasing and the NID stuff got too much, I would sometimes think of Edora." Jack examined the piece he'd just captured. "How simple things had been there. How it would have been if I'd stayed. How it would be if I retired there."

Daniel jerked at the words. "You're not thinking of retiring?"

"One more death outta you, and I might have to consider it again."

"I don't plan on dying anytime soon."

"Oh, you never plan these things," said Jack. "You always spring them upon me for maximum effect, just when I start to get comfortable once again that you might be staying around."

"You're changing the subject."

"The point is, it was just a dumb fantasy I used to have. Like looking for the Wizard of Oz. Things weren't going well for a long time, between you and me, between me and the team, and I needed something. You know how it is, Daniel. Sometimes you wish you could go back."

Daniel nodded. Jack saw the loss of Sha'uri in his eyes. "Sometimes you do. But you can't."

"But you can't," agreed Jack. "Then you died--as you are wont to do--and did the whole ascended thing, which in some way was almost worse than you just straight out dying--I mean, I'd rather have you ascended than dead, but with it came the whole hope thing, and I didn't know if I could do that again. So I thought about retiring. That's when I realised Edora had become kind of my Emerald City, which meant that, metaphorically, I'd made Laira into the Wizard, the person who could give me answers, who could shelter me. But the Wizard, as you know, is not really a Wizard. He merely causes you to see yourself more clearly."

Daniel was leaning awkwardly on the counter, as rapt in Jack's words as a kid being told a bedtime tale. "So, you stayed."

"Yes. I guess somewhere, deep down, I knew I couldn't get rid of you that easily."

Daniel gave Jack an affectionate look. "It's nice to know you care."

Jack quit fiddling with the chess piece. "Damn. Chess is supposed to make *you* more open and revealing. Not me."

Daniel being Daniel, he took the hint and didn't question Jack further, instead turning his attention to the chessboard. "Oh. You took my rook."

"Sure did."

Daniel took a deep breath, and shifted a knight into place. "Check mate."

"No way!"

"You fell into my trap."

"Me taking the rook was the trap?" Jack pointed an accusing finger. "You distracted me at a crucial moment."

"You're SF trained. You should know better."

Jack growled. Daniel's eyes smiled at him, before he turned to pick up the stirring spoon again.

"How long?" asked Jack.

"Fifteen minutes."

Jack began packing the chess pieces away. "You want something to drink?"

"I put some wine in the fridge earlier."

"White?"

"Sauvignon blanc."

Cool. White wine equalled mellow Daniel.

****

Daniel was good at spicy dishes. The chili was perfect. They ate in front of some crappy lifestyle program on TV, trying to outdo each other in sarcastic commentary on the perky presenters and the shallow stories. Tips for a longer life? Ask Apophis. Want a great holiday destination? Try Hadante, the prison planet.

"Or how about that one with the giant insects, that attacked Teal'c," said Jack.

Daniel waved a hand excitedly, like a six-year old bursting with the correct answer. "The Goa'uld pleasure resort. The one with the addictive light."

If Daniel could joke about it, Jack was all for that. "Postcard perfect," he agreed. "Memories to last a lifetime. Or at least, those few days until you drop dead."

"Which is, of course, technically a lifetime, albeit a dramatically shortened one."

"They need to do a segment on tips for coming back from the dead. You could host it."

Next up, a segment on decorating ideas to add that touch of stylistic consistency to one's living quarters. They agreed that even Chronos showed more taste and refinement.

"That throne, though..." Daniel shuddered. "I think, on the whole, I prefer Apophis in the style-stakes."

"Apophis never learned that big and shiny merely means he provides a bigger target," said Jack dismissively.

"Sokar I think displayed a certain grasp of function and form."

"Yeah, he went all out. The sulphur, the heat, the stink..."

"He could have worked a little harder on the torture, though. That wasn't quite up to the standards I'd expect from hell."

"You just can't get the staff these days," said Jack, shaking his head. "What about Ra?"

"Ra's assimilation of technological advancement into an amorphous veneer of Ancient Egyptian wasn't particularly convincing to me."

"I was pretty convinced by the 'great fireball in the sky' effect."

"Actually, that was us."

"That was us? Genius."

After washing up, Jack poured them both a second glass of wine, and hunted out Daniel's playing cards. "My turn to win," he announced.

"Cribbage?"

"No. Gin." At least Daniel had a transparent strategy in gin. He just kept throwing out high cards, even if they were pairs, until he had all lows. Jack scorned such conservative behaviour. His strategy was to poach Daniel's discards. Daniel knew this, and had to balance his desire to throw away high cards with the expectation Jack would pounce on them. This meant Jack could be amused by a whole lot of sighing, frowning, and eyebrow gymnastics. Daniel *so* did not have a poker face.

He made up for this by having a poker voice, full of pronouncements such as, "You're throwing that out?" and "Interesting" and "I know what you're collecting" all in the same mildly curious tone, which always messed with Jack's head and caused him to take back discards and break runs, which Daniel usually wanted him to do. Still, if there was a game Daniel was bad at, it was gin. Even though Daniel's strategy caused him minimal points loss, it didn't advance him up the score-pad too quickly. A few good hands in a row, and Jack usually trounced him.

The moment of reckoning came after half an hour of play. Daniel went out, and announced his cumulative total for the edification of Jack. "Three hundred and twenty," said Daniel. "I believe we agreed that the first to reach three hundred wins?"

"Okay, so you won," said Jack, gathering up the cards and shuffling again. Daniel hadn't won, of course; Jack had simply lost dramatically. An occasional side-affect of the big-points strategy. "I know something you won't win."

Daniel looked tolerantly at him. "And that would be?"

"Snap."

"You get violent when you play snap." Daniel looked at the wine glasses on the table before them.

"We'll play on the floor."

"What about your knees?"

"My knees feel great. Do you want another glass of wine?"

"Er..."

"Come on. We may as well finish the bottle."

"Okay."

Jack refilled their glasses, and came back out. Daniel was crosslegged on the floor beside the coffee table, shuffling cards. After placing the drinks on the coffee table, Jack sat down facing him.

And the game began. Jack liked playing snap with Daniel, not because he always won, but for the many side benefits. Such as getting Daniel to smile. Or even giggle. Such as getting to hit him--in the nicest possible way. Such as Daniel hitting him back. Hey, a touch was a touch, and from Daniel, any touch was a rare thing. Daniel needed to be encouraged, just like kid Daniel.

"Snap!" said Jack. And, "Snap!" And again, "Snap! Come on, Daniel, you'll have to do better than that."

"I'm just getting warmed up." Daniel took an unthinking gulp of wine and began to concentrate fiercely.

He won the next snap. Jack slapped his hand over Daniel's too late. He felt Daniel's knuckles underneath his palm. After squeezing, he backed off. "One to you," he said.

Snap! Snap! Snap! Daniel's hand over Jack's went gradually from the cool of the wine glass, to the warmth of stimulated flesh. His expression relaxed, and his smile began appearing. And then a laugh. Needing an encore, Jack was forced to lose a couple of rounds to keep Daniel in the game. He taunted, teased, and snapped to his heart's content, and Daniel lapped the attention up. Eventually, Jack's competitive streak took over. Daniel had one card left. The last card was always a snap, regardless of whether it was a pair or not. Daniel readied himself to put it down. Their rules stated you could only snap with your opposite hand, which had to remain at your side until the card had been put down. Daniel had no chance of beating Jack to the snap, of course, but it wouldn't stop him trying.

Card down. Hands forward. Jack felt the cards under his hand, Daniel's hand coming to rest a little too late over his. "Snap!" he shouted. He slapped his other hand over Daniel's. "I won! Say it. I won."

"You won," agreed Daniel. He didn't ask for his hand back, but rather reached awkwardly across his body with his other hand to pick up his wine glass. "Here's to Jack O'Neill, who retains his title as Snap Champion."

"What's my prize?"

"Uh... the opportunity to gloat despite losing at two other games tonight?" As Jack let go of his hand, Daniel began to get up.

"Where are you going?"

"Bathroom."

"Winners first," said Jack, and pulled himself off the floor.

"Okay. Coffee?"

"No, and I don't think you should, either. If you're tired, go to bed."

Daniel looked at the clock. "But it's only nine."

Jack went to the bathroom, and came back, sure that he'd find Daniel in the kitchen making coffee. Surprisingly, Daniel had heeded his advice, at least partially. No coffee anywhere. Instead, he had turned on the TV and was flicking through channels. Seeing Jack back, he headed off to the bathroom. Jack took up the remote and tried to find something to watch, eventually settling on a samurai movie, because the fighting sequences looked cool.

"What are we watching?" asked Daniel, returning, sitting down on the couch beside Jack.

"Dunno. Something in Japanese."

"You're staying, aren't you? I mean, you can't pick your car up now, and-"

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm so fucked, I don't think I can move."

"Good," said Daniel, and relaxed.

Jack leaned over and grabbed their nearly empty glasses. "Finish your wine," he said, handing one to Daniel.

"Is the bottle empty?"

"Yep."

"That must be why I feel... buzzed."

"Like I always say, you're a cheap date."

Daniel finished his wine and squirmed on the couch until he felt comfortable, resting his feet, still in socks, on the coffee table. No bare toes today. Well, Jack could be patient when it suited him. Morning was sure to bring rewards.

They lazily watched the movie. Jack didn't really care what was on the screen, he was just enjoying the feeling of being completely exhausted, mildly intoxicated, and not having to go into work for the next week. And enjoying the idea that Daniel, sitting right beside him, was feeling the same, except that Daniel was possibly more than mildly intoxicated. Glancing at Daniel from time to time, he began to suspect his friend had fallen asleep.

"Daniel?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you happy?" asked Jack.

"Mmm-hmm."

"Not just now. I mean, in general."

"As happy as anyone is, I suppose," said Daniel, glancing at him.

Jack was suddenly curious. "Were you happy before?"

"Before when?"

"Before you ascended."

Daniel thought about it. "I think, actually, I'd have to say I'm happier now."

"Even if you can't remember being ascended?"

"Yes. I've come to the conclusion that if I'm supposed to remember, then I will. Whining about it won't change anything. The only regret I have is that I wish I could remember seeing you, and Teal'c."

"So you don't remember visiting him, either."

"No. He's told me what happened. He told me it doesn't matter that I don't remember, because, well, you know Teal'c. He was a slave to the Goa'uld for so long, he learned to treat love and hope as precious cargo, something to be wrapped small and hidden deep inside. He says he put the memory of me there, and nothing would take it away from him."

"Told you. He's just a big softie," said Jack.

"He also says he remembers getting the inspiration for how to give you a fighting chance to get out of Ba'al's fortress. He says he was meditating, and he felt my presence, and the plan to enlist the aid of Yu dropped into his head. He says it was me who gave him the idea."

Jack sat up a little. "So that's where you went off to."

"I... I went?"

"You left me," said Jack.

"You're talking about being in Ba'al's prison."

Jack looked down at the remote control in his hands. "Yeah." He tried to say something else, but nothing came out.

"You don't want to talk about it."

"I... " I called your name, Jack wanted to say, and you weren't there. I needed you, and I never knew until now what you'd had to leave for. That you'd had a very good reason for doing so. I trusted you, but I never knew, and you know how I hate all the not-knowing stuff. He didn't say any of that. He shrugged, like it wasn't that important. "You left for a long while at one point, but then you came back," he said. "You said there was something you had to do. That must have been it. Nudging Teal'c. The timing fits."

"Jack, like I said two nights ago, please don't let the fact that I don't remember any of this take it away from you. I mean, does a child remember their first few years of life? No, but that doesn't mean those years weren't important, to the child or the parents." Daniel seemed to collect himself. "Sorry, bad bad analogy-"

"No, you're right, Daniel. I think it was... I just... I'd never been vulnerable like that in front of anyone except Sara. And even with Sara, I just closed off. She didn't see everything of me like that. But you saw everything."

"That would have been hard for you."

"It was, and it wasn't. Because... I don't know, because it was you. I don't know, Daniel." Jack found himself turning the sound down on the TV. He immediately wanted to turn it back up, much louder. But he didn't. "Because despite everything, all the crap that's gone down between us over the years, you still, for some crazy reason, actually give a damn about me. In Ba'al's prison... you were so open with me, it was like you were being tortured too. And you said you had faith in me. You had faith. In me. I thought because you didn't remember, that it meant you'd lost that; that it wasn't true, that it was never true."

"Jack, no. I have so much faith in you, it's... it's sometimes really frightening."

"I'll bet. I can't imagine where you get it from."

"From who you are." Daniel leaned forward, earnest and urgent. "I know we've had clashes of opinion, and we're always going to have clashes, but I can't lose that core of understanding, Jack. I know you, I know the Jack O'Neill deep inside, and you can tell me all you want that I shouldn't have these feelings, that you're not worth it, but it's never going to change, Jack."

Jack smiled wryly, shook his head. "What am I going to do with you, huh?"

They held each other's gaze for a moment, until Jack had to pull away from the honesty of Daniel's expression.

"I'm so sorry, Jack."

"It's okay, Daniel. Teal'c has it right. It's something that was precious to me, and your not remembering doesn't change that. You remember most stuff now, so you've got-" he waved his fingers back and forth between them "-*us* inside you, and one piece dropping off doesn't invalidate the whole *us*ness thing."

Daniel's expression turned thoughtful, and he settled back into the couch, his gaze aimed somewhere middle-distance. "That's what I mean about being happier now, as opposed to before ascension, even if I don't remember every single thing about before. You see, after Sha'uri's death, I lost perspective. I kept wanting her death to mean something, but the meaning kept getting further and further away, even when we found the Harcesis child. I think at the time I was trying to 'go back' in a sense, even though logically I knew I'd already gone too far beyond. So... it was like I was stretched across time, with pieces of Daniel Jackson littering the passing years, with most of me still looking for Sha'uri, even though she was long gone, her body one with the sands of Abydos.

"Descension, for me, has been a process of rebuilding, of re-learning myself; of learning, perhaps for the first time, who I really am. All the parts of me that I'd lost throughout the years have, ironically, through my amnesia, been returned to me." He put a finger to his mouth momentarily, pulling on his lower lip. "What I'm trying to say is; I'm glad the past is coming back to me, because I wouldn't want to lose you, or Sam or Teal'c, and I wouldn't want to lose my memories of Sha'uri, and those gifts which she gave to me. But things must move forward. Things must... change, because without change, there isn't life."

Daniel turned to look at him. "You're not asleep?"

"No," said Jack. "I'm listening."

Daniel held his gaze a little longer. Then he leaned forward and kissed Jack.

Jack didn't move, although he might have blinked. "What was that, Daniel?" he said, calmly.

Daniel smiled, a little sadly. "The wine, I think." He pulled away, leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on fists. "I am so tired."

Jack patted him on the back. "Bedtime for you, my friend."

"Bathroom first."

Daniel got up and staggered to the bathroom. Jack decided to go turn the bed down, because knowing Daniel, he'd just pass out on top of it. Just as he finished, Daniel appeared in the doorway, blinking at him.

"Glasses," said Jack, holding out a hand. Obediently, Daniel took his glasses off and gave them to Jack. "Now, get undressed, and get in. Capisce?"

"Yes, Jack." He began pulling off his sweater, and Jack turned to go. "Wait. Jack-"

"I'm going to watch the rest of the movie."

"But where are you going to sleep?"

"In your spare bed."

"You can't." Daniel paused in his undressing. "It's got things on it."

"So I'll move the things."

"No. They're in a very precise order. It took me hours to get the pattern right." Daniel picked up one of the many pillows from the bed, and came forward. "You can have my bed. I'll sleep on the couch."

"But I'm still watching the movie," Jack pointed out.

"I am so tired, I really don't care. If it managed to keep me awake, it would be a miracle." Daniel dropped the pillow, and began peeling his socks off.

Jack shook his head. "You sort it out, Daniel. I'm going to watch the movie." He deposited Daniel's glasses on the coffee table and sat back down, expecting Daniel would just pass out tired on his bed.

Daniel didn't. He came back out, dressed in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt, with a bundle of bedding. Stubborn little son of a bitch. Jack shook his head. Rather than move to the armchair, which was on the wrong angle for the TV, he sat down on the floor in front of the couch. Behind him, Daniel arranged his bedclothes on the couch, and crawled into them.

"Night, Jack."

Jack turned the sound off on the TV. Not like he needed to hear it, anyway. It was in Japanese, after all. He reached around across his shoulder, patted the nearest part of Daniel. A knee, possibly. "Night, Daniel."

Daniel's breathing evened out quickly. After a while, Jack stopped pretending to watch the movie.

He turned to look at Daniel. Daniel was curled up awkwardly, the couch not nearly big enough for his long legs, but he seemed to be sleeping deeply. His gaze was drawn to Daniel's mouth, a little open. He had nice lips. A full bottom lip, just a little pout. He'd seen those lips forming endless run-on sentences, sucking on pencils, puckered in thought; but he'd never expected to feel them on his own. For a moment, he wished Daniel was awake, his expressive eyes open, looking back at him, so that he could see right inside Daniel. Except then he couldn't look at Daniel quite this openly. The compromise for this freedom was to not be able to know the truth those lips had tried to convey to him.

Possibility one; a friendly kiss. Daniel just now had been a little emotional, a little drunk, a lot relaxed with his buddy Jack; friendly was a distinct possibility. Right? He hadn't made a big deal out of it, after all. And things still felt completely normal between them. Surely if Daniel had meant the kiss in any other way, things would feel different?

But Daniel had talked about change, and moving forward. In that context, it could easily be the other sort of kiss. And how many guys did he know who kissed their best buddies on the lips? And there was that sad sort of smile Daniel had given him, when Jack had basically asked, however nicely and politely, 'what the fuck was that?'

He turned away again, folded his arms over his knees, closed his eyes. Now out of sight, out of touch; and yet Jack could still feel Daniel's presence. Some kind of sixth sense, some other part of him. They'd always had a strong sense of each other.

If Jack was honest with himself, he could go there. He could consider Daniel as more than his best friend. Some part of him already did, and had for a long time. That part of him had staked a claim long ago on Daniel. He'd been respectful enough of Sha'uri, because he loved what she'd given to Daniel in that year he'd spent on Abydos. He'd never have encroached on her territory. But once Sha'uri had died, he'd stepped up. Someone like Ke'ra, even if she hadn't been the Destroyer of Worlds, wouldn't have stood a chance against him if she'd tried to hang around.

He didn't need to look into Daniel's eyes to know what he, Jack O'Neill, thought. The truth was, Daniel was beautiful to him. Most of the time, he could ignore that--but ignoring it didn't negate the truth. It wasn't about his appearance, because Jack had seen Daniel horribly disfigured and it hadn't changed his feelings. It was about the person trapped inside the limits of that body; the person who had saved Jack's life once and then, when he couldn't do it again, tried to save his soul; the person who believed in Jack more than he believed in himself, who had put up with Jack's pushy behaviour for the last few months, who had coaxed the shell-shocked kid Jack from Edora without raising his voice much above a whisper.

Thing was, his and Daniel's relationship was almost too complex. It had gone through so many striations over the years, that Jack was occasionally surprised it hadn't broken apart. Surely any attempt to change their relationship could cause it to fracture irrevocably? Or was Jack simply clinging to other people's beliefs about friendships versus relationships?

What had been Daniel's message in that soul-bearing of his? Forget the baggage. Love the past for what it has given you and taught you, and let it go.

It was a pass, O'Neill. Daniel definitely made a pass at you.

The next logical question; what are you going to do about it, O'Neill?

Jack sighed, leaned back against the couch. He could feel Daniel's blankets behind his head and shoulders, but not the solidity of Daniel himself. He needed to pee. He needed sleep.

He climbed to his feet, and stretched. Before he switched the TV off, he looked down at Daniel. The hugging urge came over him, but he was used to ignoring that. Instead, he reached a hand out, and with his fingertips, carefully brushed Daniel's hair off his forehead. The hair flopped back, so he did it again. Then Daniel's breathing changed, so he stopped. Went to the bathroom, cleaned his teeth with a new toothbrush from the cabinet, stripped down to t-shirt and underwear, and got into Daniel's bed.

Daniel must have changed the bedding the last time he stayed here. The sheets did not smell anywhere near enough of him.

****

He woke up because someone turned the light on. He groaned, blinked, and squinted about. It was the bedside light, and Daniel was standing beside it, rubbing an eye and looking down at him.

"Jack," he said muzzily. "You're in my bed."

"Yes, Daniel. I am."

"I just went to the bathroom, and... Jack, are we sleeping together?"

Jack groaned again. Clearly Daniel, given his typical M.O., had got up to go to the bathroom, not fully awake, and had consequently forgotten he was supposed to be sleeping on the couch.

"Shut up and get in, Daniel. And turn that thing off."

"Sorry," said Daniel humbly. He switched the light off, and went around to the other side of the bed. The light was still on out in the hall, dim enough so that it wasn't annoying, but enabling him to see a little. The mattress shifted under him as Daniel clambered in. "You're on my side," Daniel said, informing him rather than challenging him.

"Do you want to swap?"

"No, stay there." Wriggle wriggle.

Jack ought to be used to sleeping with Daniel by now, they'd shared tiny tents often enough. But the ground didn't tend to undulate the way a bed did. Still, the sounds were familiar; small sighs, a sniff, a couple of little groans as Daniel settled. A final long sigh. Daniel's knee bumped against Jack's leg, but he pulled it back.

Jack waited a while, until he thought Daniel might be asleep.

"Daniel?" he said softly.

"Mmm?"

Okay, so he was still awake. "You know that kiss you gave me?"

Daniel's breathing changed, but he said nothing.

Jack let his voice be simply curious, with no weight behind it. "What did you mean by it?"

Still nothing. Yet with that sixth sense thing, he could tell Daniel was listening. Daniel was watching him, and listening.

"I didn't mind," he continued. "I'm just... was it really the wine?"

"No. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you," said Daniel.

Okay. That answered intent, but still not what type of intent. Jack realised Daniel had passed the metaphorical ball back to him. Yes Jack, I kissed you, but my intent isn't yours to know unless you meet me halfway. He could push Daniel, if he wanted; Daniel wouldn't lie to him. He might refuse to answer, but he wouldn't lie, and a refusal would indicate the truth, anyway. But Jack knew the honorable thing to do, if he really wanted to know, would be to bend a little.

"Sorry," said Jack. "You're trying to sleep." The third option, aka wriggling out.

"Jack..."

"Daniel?"

Daniel sighed. "Nothing." He rolled over, onto his opposite side, no longer facing Jack.

"It's okay, Daniel. It doesn't change anything between us."

Silence. Then, "No, I didn't suppose it would."

The silence stretched. Neither of them moved.

"Daniel, you know I love you, right?"

Daniel's answer was thick with sadness. "Yes, Jack."

Dammit. Jack rolled to face Daniel. In the dim light from the hallway, he could see Daniel had curled protectively in on himself, his curved back the only accessible part of him. Propping himself up on one elbow, he reached out his opposite hand, placing it firmly on Daniel's shoulder, pressing his fingers gently into the muscles. Palpable tension. His fingers trailed a path up to Daniel's neck, and began tracing the tendons there. Easier to touch than to talk. Touch was honest. His hands on Daniel's skin. Daniel's kiss. Words enfeebled everything.

"Jack..." said Daniel, hoarsely.

"Shh." He stroked Daniel's jaw, felt the grain of stubble against his fingers, then moved back to the soft skin on his neck, behind his ear. For a while, he just stroked, listening to Daniel's breathing. Then Daniel moved, his hand reaching up to still Jack's.

Jack waited.

Daniel shifted carefully onto his back, still holding Jack's hand. Their bodies almost touched. Jack tried to see his expression, but in the poor light he could barely even make out Daniel's face.

Daniel let go of Jack's hand, but then with his own hand reached up and touched Jack's face. Jack wondered if he could see any better. Unlikely--Daniel needed glasses at the best of times. He wouldn't be able to see the way Jack was looking at him. Perhaps it was just as well; Jack wasn't sure his face could reflect his feelings fully.

Daniel traced the side of his face, down to his jaw, then up. Down, then up. Then he took a breath. He leaned up, and touched his lips to Jack's. Soft, brief, but intent unmistakable. Then he drew away again, both face and hand, and waited.

For a moment, time stretched. Jack hovered on the edge, feeling uncertainty gaping below him. Thoughts, fears, questions, only a second away from overwhelming him. He couldn't see Daniel's face. He needed to, and he couldn't, not in this darkness.

Daniel, he thought. He said it to himself several times. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. Feelings of trust, love, acceptance, began to radiate out from the name, supporting him, giving him strength. He still felt uncertain, but eased downward, hoping in the poor visibility he wasn't about to miss. And he kissed Daniel, for the first time. Gently, like Daniel had kissed him, just a touching of his lips to Daniel's, a shift in pressure, then the slide of his upper lip over Daniel's as he began to pull away. There.

Apparently, that was all the encouragement Daniel needed. His hand came back, firmly on the back of Jack's neck this time, and he pulled Jack down. Daniel's tongue slid against his, firm but quick, gone again; and Jack, feeling the jolt run through his body, chased after it, cupping a hand firmly against Daniel's face and diving into his mouth. Their tongues met, and Daniel responded to Jack's commandeering of him by arching his body closer, his arm slipping around Jack and underneath his t-shirt, his leg sliding under Jack's knee. And by making the most exciting soft moans that went straight to Jack's groin.

"Daniel," he whispered, coming up for air.

Daniel breathed heavily. "Jack. Are you...?"

"Am I..."

"Are you okay with this?"

Jack deliberately slid his hand under Daniel's t-shirt, spreading his fingers over his ribs. "Way more than okay," he said, leaning down for more kissing. He felt like a man who had desired a cheese sandwich, faced with a smorgasbord; he suddenly wanted it all and didn't know what to try first. More touching, he decided, and pulled away a little, giving himself room to explore along Daniel's stomach, over his pectorals, touching a nipple for the first time.

"God," whispered Daniel, arching upwards.

Jack hiked Daniel's shirt up more, and, skimming one nipple with his fingers, licked the other experimentally. So small compared to a woman's, yet obviously so very very sensitive. Daniel moaned. Jack continued to play, and Daniel writhed against him, tried to rip Jack's shirt off.

Jack pulled away. "Daniel. Daniel."

"What? No, I liked that. Don't stop."

"Take off your shirt."

Daniel rushed to obey.

Jack took his own off, then leaned back on the bed, reaching for the bedside light. If he was going to do this, if he was going to have sex with Daniel--a rush of blood slammed into his already aroused cock at the thought--if he was going to have sex with Daniel, he wasn't going to do it half-assed. He wanted to see Daniel's face when he came.

Daniel closed his eyes as the light came on. The bedclothes hid his body from the waist down, but Jack could still see plenty to interest him. Daniel was half-sitting up, his t-shirt now off, one of his nipples all shiny from Jack's mouth. His lips were reddened, fuller than Jack had ever seen them. Jack put a hand out, touching those lips. Daniel blinked, and looked Jack up and down.

"Jack. I know you might have trouble with this-"

"Not having any trouble, Daniel," said Jack firmly, and to prove it, kicked the bedclothes off their legs so that neither of them could deny what they were getting into. Jack's erection was clearly outlined in his boxers, while Daniel was so hard, his cock lay straight against his belly, the head peeking above the waistband of his pyjamas. Jack reached down and placed his palm over the length, massaging, pushing the pyjamas down further. Daniel made an unintelligible sound, and pulled Jack down for more deep kissing, his tongue matching the relentless exploration of Jack's hand.

"I didn't mean this, exactly," Daniel finally said, as Jack pulled away to undress him completely. "I mean, I think this is why I came back."

Jack, at Daniel's knees, paused. "Why you... came back where?"

"Down here. To Earth."

"*This* is why... Daniel, that's crazy."

"No, Jack." Daniel began kicking his pyjama pants further down his legs, and Jack rallied to tug them off the rest of the way. "I've done a lot of thinking about what you said happened in Ba'al's fortress. How I offered you ascension, and you said no."

"I did." Jack took in the length of Daniel's naked body, skin glowing golden in the light, heart knocking visibly in his chest, the reddened tip of his cock poking out from the foreskin. Beautiful. Daniel, exposed. All for him. He licked his lips.

Daniel propped himself up on an elbow. "Jack, I can't imagine you not in my life. Think about it; if I knew you were being tortured by Ba'al, then clearly I'd been watching over you in some way. Maybe that was good enough, at first. But... to see you suffering, and not be able help, that would have... " He trailed off, expression riveted, as Jack deliberately flicked the waistband of his own boxers down over his thighs, allowing his cock to spring forth. "Um," said Daniel, and his tongue flicked out to lick his upper lip.

Jack took that as encouragement, pulling his boxers off the rest of the way, before stretching himself out beside Daniel and beginning to caress him slowly and thoroughly from shoulder to thigh.

"Jack?"

Jack kissed his neck. "Yes?"

"I think... I think I wanted you with me, Jack. But... mmm... but you, being you, wouldn't join me. You wanted me to kill you instead. I... " he shuddered as Jack ran fingers along his erection. "I-I think I had to come back for you. I think that's why I'm here. We're on the cusp of something, Jack."

"Mmm. I can feel it, Daniel."

"You can?"

Jack took hold of Daniel's cock, began manipulating the foreskin up and down the shaft. "Right here, Daniel."

Daniel sighed, sliding an arm underneath Jack, turning into Jack's grasp. With his other hand, he began stroking down Jack's body, playing with his chest hair, his hand moving closer to Jack's erection with each sweep. Jack found himself involuntarily arching each time Daniel's fingers trailed over his belly.

"You were supposed to be with me, you were supposed to ascend," murmured Daniel. "Just like all the Abydonians did. I mean it, we're on the cusp of something. Mmm. That feels... god. Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I lost my train of... what I'm saying is, you didn't believe in yourself, you... you just didn't have faith. I have faith in you, but *you* don't have faith in you."

"You were an angel in heaven, and you came down to Earth just to save my soul?"

"I know how it sounds." Daniel, an expression of intense concentration on his face, swept his hand once again over Jack's stomach.

"Daniel, for chrissake, just touch me already."

As if he'd only been awaiting an invitation, Daniel spread his fingers a little wider, and trailed them over the head of Jack's cock. Jack hissed in a breath, his hips jerking involuntarily. He was rewarded when Daniel moved his hand lower, running his fingers deftly down the sides of Jack's erection, caressing his balls with an intuitively gentle pressure, before moving back up to grasp just below the head. He squeezed, again with that same intuitive gentle pressure, then began stroking the shaft, alternating his rhythm between medium blissful and excruciating slowness.

Jack, for his part, left off Daniel's cock for a while, smoothing the skin where thigh met hip, slipping a hand beyond to Daniel's ass. In between, they kissed. Lots of kissing. Jack found himself so eager for both Daniel's mouth and Daniel's clever hand that somehow he allowed Daniel to manipulate their positions and ended up lying on his back, one of his arms trapped uselessly between their bodies, his other one caressing wherever he could reach--Daniel's silky hair, the sexy knobbles on his spine, his perfect ass.

"Daniel," murmured Jack.

"Jack. What... what is it?"

"You're so fucking sexy."

Daniel breathed erratically. "God, Jack. If you could see yourself..."

"I can see, Daniel. That's my cock in your hand, there."

Daniel simply moaned.

"You like that, Daniel, huh?" Jack trailed his fingers down over his tailbone to the muscles of Daniel's ass. "Do you like this, Daniel?"

Another moan. "Yes, Jack."

"What do you want, Daniel?"

"Keep doing that."

"This? Or this?" Jack couldn't reach fully around, but stretched his fingers as much as possible to caress one butt cheek. Daniel's muscles clenched under his hand.

"That. That. Mmm, Jack."

"Do you want me to suck you?" Jack knew in the back of his mind he was too exhausted for anything elaborate, but Daniel's responses to his words was so amazing he just had to say it. "Daniel? Do you want me to fuck you?"

Daniel gasped and bucked against his side, before rolling on top of Jack, elbows either side of Jack's head, trapping their cocks between their bodies. He looked down, panting, staring deeply into Jack's eyes. "You want to?" he asked.

"I want to do everything, Daniel. This isn't a one-time deal, here. I don't do casual."

"I know, Jack. I just never thought you'd actually... desire me."

"Well, I hope that thing poking you in the belly is convincing you otherwise."

Daniel looked down at the thing poking him in the belly, then swiftly slid down Jack's body and took the tip into his mouth. Wet heat, and a too too clever tongue. Jack's head arched back.

"Jesus! Daniel."

"What?" Daniel stopped to say, before sucking him in once again, lips sliding along the shaft, tongue swirling, over the head, then pressing along the underside; and then the sucking, a vacuum of silky wet pleasure that threatened to blow Jack's head off. Jack didn't know where to look. If he closed his eyes, the sensations overwhelmed him. If he opened them, the sight of Daniel's lips on his erection threatened to push him over the edge at any moment. He had to stop him. On second thought, who would be crazy enough to stop Daniel making love to their dick?

"Daniel. Daniel, please." He moaned as Daniel pulled his mouth off in one long sloppy kiss.

"What, Jack?"

"Come here."

Daniel looked unsure. "Wasn't that any good?"

"Are you kidding me? It was too good. Get your ass up here."

"Okay." Daniel climbed him immediately. Apparently 'ass' was the motivating word.

"You're going to kill me," Jack informed him, before Daniel took over his mouth. Taste of Jack's precum in Daniel's mouth. Call him peculiar, but it was incredibly hot. Their dicks thrust together, before Daniel shifted his weight to one elbow and reached between their bodies. With his sensitive fingers, he began manipulating both their cocks together.

Jack's orgasm had receded momentarily, but now it began building again. Every sound Daniel made reverberated in his fiercely pumping blood. Combine that with Daniel's cock against his, and Daniel's relentless fingers, and Jack didn't think he could last much longer. He could tell Daniel was close, too; the rhythm of his hand had become fast and even, and his mouth was too occupied with breathing and making a series of soft anguished moans to do any kissing.

"Daniel," whispered Jack. "Come for me, Daniel. Come for me." Cupping a hand on Daniel's mobile ass, he slipped a finger in between his cheeks, massaging over the ring of muscle there. No objections from Daniel. In fact, the way he pushed back into Jack's hand suggested encouragement. Jack moved up to press on his perineum, before slipping back. The sweat of arousal had made the skin slick; Jack teased his finger easily inside Daniel's opening.

Daniel shuddered, and plunged his mouth against Jack's. "Jack," he cried, and pulses of hot wetness spurted between their bodies. Daniel came and came, murmuring into Jack's mouth, his semen rubbing into Jack's cock as he continued to jerk Jack and milk himself. Then he slid his weight to the side, and buried his head in the pillow beside Jack, breathing heavily. His hand still worked spasmodically on Jack's cock, but he was definitely going to be useless for a while, so Jack brought his hand over Daniel's, and jerked himself to orgasm in a few quick strokes.

"Daniel," he found himself murmuring as he came, and Daniel lifted his head. Face almost slack with wonder, he watched Jack shoot all over his belly, pulse after pulse, like a goddamned teenager.

"Wow," said Daniel.

"Ungh," said Jack.

Daniel smiled beatifically, and kissed him deeply. "You're a mess," he said, looking down at two loads worth of semen on Jack's body. He lifted his hand to trail a pattern on Jack's sensitive belly.

"Cool," said Jack, tremors running through his stomach muscles.

After a while, Daniel wriggled away briefly to get some tissues off the bedside table--good thing about him being allergy-boy, always plenty of tissues to hand--and dropped them on Jack's chest. Together, they cleaned him up, then Daniel pitched the wad in the direction of the bin. Then he pulled the blankets up.

"You okay?" he asked, smoothing the hair from Jack's forehead.

Jack regarded Daniel's face. That look--the purest essence of Daniel. Eyes dazzling, face glowing, lines all smoothed away by the most perfect look of happiness... and it was all directed at Jack.

"Way more than okay," said Jack, and pulled him into a hug. All the fears for their friendship he'd been carrying around for months had melted away, perhaps sweated out in their lovemaking. His worries all seemed bizarre now. Daniel was Daniel, all the way through; he had never been just a stranger, even without his memories. Even if Daniel had never regained his memories, Jack was certain Daniel would be someone he'd want to get to know all over again--once he'd gotten over himself and his stupid fears about not existing if Daniel didn't remember him, like he was some metaphorical tree falling unnoticed in a forest. People, Jack decided, were not either essence *or* memory, they were both; and even if, now, Daniel's memory wasn't perfect, at his core he was still Jack's Daniel--his dearest friend, very probably his soul mate. Someone who ought to know better than to care for Jack, who deserved better; and yet, Jack was the one he'd picked. Jack was too old to expect himself to change, but he could at least have confidence in Daniel's judgement if not his own. Okay, so Daniel had some weird idea he had descended to the material plane in order to save Jack's soul... what had he meant by that, anyway?

"Daniel? What did you mean when you said we're on the cusp of something?"

Daniel, one arm warm and heavy around Jack, murmured, "The cusp of sleep?"

"Earlier," said Jack, himself hovering on the cups of sleep. To keep himself aware, he stroked the arm Daniel had draped across his chest. "You were talking about how the Abydonians had ascended, and being on the cusp of something..."

"Mm. It's something I've begun to feel, deep within me." Daniel spoke softly, his mouth close to Jack's ear, his body comfortingly solid against him. "Now that I know everything that's happened in the last few years--either through remembering, or talking to people, or reading reports--it all seems to add up to something... something I can't quite see, that exists in a place almost beyond memory. A profound sense of anticipation. Something big, something the size of the very universe, is ahead, and somehow I feel I'm involved."

"So, you don't mean you descended only because of me," said Jack, relieved.

"You're a part of it. I think if you'd ascended with me, I'd have stayed ascended. Or we'd both have been thrown back together."

"Put my money on the latter."

"The point is," Daniel shifted, kept his arm around Jack but moved his head off the pillow, "from what you and Teal'c have told me, I wasn't entirely happy with my role as an ascended being. It sounds to me that, whatever I did to get thrown back--and it's pretty obvious that whole confrontation with Anubis was more than enough to make that happen--I went into it knowingly and deliberately. I have to trust myself that I really felt I could do more good if I was just an ordinary man again. Even if it meant losing my powers, risking death once again in a mortal body, abandoning my journey of self..."

"No idea what it is, then?"

"No. Not what, nor when."

"So you're saying, there's nothing concrete we can check. There's no planet we can go to, there's no translation that holds the key. This is just a feeling you have."

"Just a feeling," agreed Daniel, putting his head once again down on the pillow.

Jack continued to stroke Daniel's arm, listening as Daniel's breathing evened out. Just a feeling. Well, if there was one thing he'd learnt about Daniel--a thing he might have resisted often enough, but knew within his heart--it was that he could trust Daniel's feelings.

Jack drifted off to sleep, Daniel all around him, in his breath, his ear, his heart; even the light from the beside lamp against his eyelids speaking Daniel to him.

He could wait.

THE END