Sparrow
 
by Travelling One
 
email: travelling_one@yahoo.ca
website: http://www.travellingone.com/
Season: S8; AU-S7.
Related Episode: Fire and Water
Summary: This is an alternate ending, or AU, for Fire and Water. Sam did not undergo hypnosis when Daniel was left on Oannes. And so, no one went back for him - until now.
August 2005
 
It's not as though he hadn't thought about it, oh, every day twice a day for the past six years. Some days, though, were better than others. Some days he didn't think of it until the moon was up and he had only a few minutes left until sleep.
 
It's not as though he needed the reminder from a team that wanted to study the soil around the volcanic fires. Something about the purity of some mineral in the soil beneath the fires or something something something. He didn't want to hear it. Didn't care about the damn soil.
 
And no, he hadn't been about to allow another team to go to Oannes, another team to burn up and rekindle his nightmares, another team to figuratively bury only in his mind because nothing would remain of their bodies to be collected.
 
As nothing had remained of Daniel.
 
No, he hadn't needed all that to be brought up again, back to the surface, back to his hell, six years later just because there was something they'd discovered in some six-year-old soil sample that intrigued the Pentagon. Something they had never understood or needed, until now. No, if they hadn't needed it for six years, they could do without it, he reasoned.
 
And no. He didn't need to sit around this briefing room table listening to the excitement of some young over-enthusiastic newbie geologist, hearing about his team's finds, meaning they would have to go back even again, as though an hour's sample collection on a godforsaken volcanic world had not already been enough. But at least they had all returned alive.
 
This time.
 
"… mean, General?"
 
No. It didn't matter what his orders might be from up above; he would not put science above a team's life. A team in his charge. On his base.
 
"General? Are you alright?"
 
Hell no. "What?"
 
"General O'Neill. I asked what it might mean."
 
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant. I wasn't listening." And Jack really didn't want to hear. Didn't give much of a flying damn why anyone would want to return there. If they had seen what he'd seen, six years ago, lived through his hell and the hell of Samantha Carter for over half a decade, if they had known the man who had needed that memorial service which really had never put their souls to rest at all…
 
"Sir. The writing we found in the soil. Was that put there last time by SG1?" the patient lieutenant repeated.
 
"The writing?"
 
"Sir. The cuneiform. What was it for?"
 
"I'm sorry. What?" Jack couldn't get his head around that. What writing? No other team had yet gone back, not before SG8 last week. Was there indigenous life on that planet?
 
"This writing, General." Captain Hammersmith pushed the photograph towards O'Neill at the head of the table. This time they'd make sure to get him to look. "The writing in the sand, by the water's edge. Norman said it says something about Babylon."
 
Babylon
 
...Babylon…….
 
Yes
 
He wants to know if we're from Babylon
 
The world that built Babylon
 
He wants to know if we're from the world that built Babylon
 
Oh my god.
 
"I think he wants to know if we're from the world that built Babylon."
 
"Oh crap!" Jack's head shot up, his eyes wide, as he stared at Hammersmith, then at the team's linguist. "Lieutenant Stone, what exactly does that writing say?"
 
"It's a question. More or less, 'Do you know of Babylon?' and the word, 'Yes'," Norman Stone replied slowly. "Why? What is it for, General?"
 
Jack couldn't reply. If Daniel had written that… six years ago, oh God, then how would they have jumped directly into the water to flee the fire? Something was wrong, something that didn't make sense. They had had time to communicate by the water's edge with the indigenous population.
 
But in his mind there had been no one around but the four members of his team. Fire had struck barely minutes after they'd arrived, just after Carter had collected a few samples. They'd seen no one.
 
Contradicted now by the evidence in this photograph. The words echoed in his head, spoken by Daniel. "I think he wants to know if we're from the world that built Babylon." He recalled those words, suddenly as if they'd been spoken yesterday. And he saw someone - something - standing beside Daniel. Something he'd never remembered.
 
"That was written by Daniel." The words could hardly be forced out.
 
"When, Sir? For whose benefit?"
 
"For someone I never knew existed, Captain! We'll discuss this at another time. Dismissed."
 
"But General, we'd really like another look at - "
 
"Dismissed, SG8." Jack pushed back his chair in his semi-dazed state of shock, and headed for his office. He had to call Colonel Carter back from the Pentagon.
 
_____
 
"God, Sir. I can't believe we're doing this." And if it hadn't been for her sample retrieval recommendations, no one would have gone back at all. It had been hard enough for her even to suggest it.
 
"Neither can I, Colonel." Jack stared at the chevrons lighting one by one. His insides were a mess, quaking like a schoolboy facing the principal. He'd rather face a court martial, he thought, than reopen a missing persons case and find out what had really happened to Daniel Jackson. In some ways, he didn't want to know. Didn't want to know what could happen to a team member who'd been left behind for six years, left for dead without even a simple rescue or retrieval attempt. Why the hell had he told Hammond it was too dangerous to go back? And why had Hammond believed him? They'd given in, ignored their intuition, accepted their denial, and resigned themselves to grieving for Daniel.
 
But Jack was General now, and he could rescind that decision.
 
By now, Daniel was most definitely dead. What would they find? What new wounds would this tear open, what new nightmares?
 
But Jack didn't care so much what happened to himself or even to Carter, at the moment. What if Daniel was somehow alive? What emotional state would a friend be in, who'd been left alone with some indigenous water creature thousands of light years from home? Jack shivered, shaking the horrific thoughts from his mind. He'd never been one to ponder or dwell on the future; he was more a "cross that bridge when he came to it" kind of guy.
 
And he so didn't want to ponder the hurt when they found how Daniel had really spent the past six years. Or how alone he had really died.
 
_____
 
Her gasp was involuntary, but O'Neill understood. For he, too, saw the suns shimmering just above the dunes, looking like golden fireballs, saw Daniel burning, helpless.
 
"It's okay, Carter." But it wasn't. Nothing about it could ever be okay.
 
This place wasn't as hot as they remembered it, and the water had receded.
 
They reached the sand, reached the spot to which SG8 had directed them, not that it wasn't already ingrained into their deepest memories. And there, lo and behold, was that cuneiform writing, so untouched by wind or tide after all these years. As though fossilized, dedicated to the memory of an archeologist, preserved for history to correct itself.
 
No. Preserved for those who wrongly abandoned a friend, to realize their grim deeds. Retribution. Payback.
 
They ignored the mild fires spewing here and there around them. This time, they had come with diving gear. And no one, no one would tell the general he should not be going on an offworld mission. Not this time; no one dared.
 
Jack had been driven. A workaholic, burying himself in the SGC and fighting for every cause Daniel might have fought for. He had taken the position of general with only one consideration, under one condition; he would make sure that no one ever got left behind again - whether alive, or dead.
 
Only Teal'c had remained on an SG team, wanting to be near him, wanting to contribute to the defense of Earth. But his SG4 team was still offworld.
 
Jack was a diver; he'd always liked water, ever since he was a kid. Carter would wait on shore with Hammersmith, while he and Majors Miller and Kenwall went under with him. The best divers at the SGC.
 
And the waters shimmered golden and blue.
 
"Ready, boys?"
 
"Yes Sir."
 
Jack closed his eyes for just a moment, remembering only a vague figure and the words, "I think he wants to know if we're from the world that built Babylon." With that little frog bouncing around inside his belly, Jack finally gave the order. "Let's go find out what happened to Doctor Jackson." To Daniel.
 
_____
 
The tide was out, that much farther from the writing, giving them extra distance to walk but less to swim. But the water had gotten deep quickly, and they were diving down, down, but not so far that a person without gear would be harmed. Within a minute they'd found what they were looking for; an exotic ancient structure almost blending in with the lake bottom, built from corals and hematite and polished sandstone, and covered with moss and barnacles.
 
Built. Not formed; definitely unnatural. There were even transparent walls where one could peer inwards, or out…
 
…and see a long-lost friend, lying face up on an uncomfortable-looking lounger, long brownish-blond hair trailing over his shoulders.
 
His eyes were open, staring straight up.
 
Jack's heart went numb.
 
_____
 
Crystals floated sublimely
Strategically
in the parting Streams of Elegance
but only sometimes
Sometimes, sometimes, the bottom could be rocky but when there were two dozen
hordes trying to each make it to the same direction, there should have been some consistency, and
why did Lorraine
ever leave her husband? She didn't know that there was danger beyond, bubbles,
so many bubbles, and all were guiding him away.
Away, there was knocking at the door but there was no door, no exit, only for some if they were willing to do what Nem had done, so long ago,
why would anyone care anyway,
who was anyone and why would he even think of staying among all those bubbles
 
Four plus four equals four, no eight, eight plus eight really doesn't matter any more. Back to the buoys, back to the beach, back to the corridor
Where one can play on sand, write in sand
Without being invisible
Without being kidnapped
 
He ran up to the towel sprawled across the sand, bright towel full of Ojibwa designs
laughing at the antics of little Julian. The kids loved to play here at the beach, covering daddy with the sand, building castles around him. Castles, to hide strange water creatures and trap them in their nothingness before they could take daddy away.
 
And the waves struck the shore and bounced back, again and again, the warm blue waters reflecting all those little glittering crystals of sunlight, crystals of sunlight like the mimic people who dwelled in those yellow mountain valleys, only no valleys here, no underwater valleys, no underwater mountain caves where one might be trapped for years and years and infinity and Julian was laughing, think of Julian and why was there knocking on a door when the beach was outside? Today, at least.
 
Bring your mind back to focus
 
Focus on Julian
 
And why was something touching his arm… Julian felt real today, more so than before, watch it with that shovel, Julian
 
Daniel forced his eyes open, for the shaking was making him feel not so well. The motion of the waves had never done this to him before, not even when he went surfing. Not even when Annette was trying to rock the canoe.
 
Shapes were there with him. People. And they were saying something.
 
Unusual, for his daydreams to speak without him telling them what to say. You seem awfully real today, he told them but they did not seem to understand. I said, you seem awfully real today.
 
"Daniel?"
 
Yes, Daniel. Who else would I be?
 
"Can you hear me? Daniel?"
 
Jack has that worried look on his face, the one he always got when I said I was going to study by the water. Don't speak to any water creatures, he'd always advise, and I would just laugh. Why was Jack in that weird getup, as if he was checking out a submerged shipwreck? What was he into these days? Who are those others with him, fish-men? You told me not to talk to strangers, Jack, then look at what you go and do.
 
"Let's get him out of here. We'll put my gear on him, I can swim to the surface without it."
 
"So can I, General O'Neill. He can use mine."
 
What? I've never made you a general, Jack. What's going on?
 
You seem awfully real today.
 
I said, you seem awfully real today.
 
But still they did not respond, and a frustrated Daniel said aloud, in a voice raspy and unused for a very long time, "You seem awfully real today."
 
And suddenly the three men stopped what they were doing and stared.
 
_____
 
"We are real, Daniel." Jack looked at the man lying there before him, on that awful glass or plastic arcuated table. A presence so familiar, yet so different. For some reason Jack had to squelch the image of fish being readied for filleting. He looked around the room; it looked like a lab, not a place he'd have been happy to have lived. Too dark; too many twisted contraptions, and all those bubbles, rising… he shuddered, shaking his thoughts away from six years of Carter's bubble phobia, then his own destruction of his fireplace. "Daniel? Talk to me. Say something." Something else. Something to let me know you're still completely with us.
 
"Why can't you hear my mind?"
 
But not that.
 
For a brief moment Jack was at a loss for a reply. "I'm not in your mind."
 
"So where are you?" Not even looking confused, Daniel seemed undisturbed, as though he had similar conversations every day.
 
Gently Jack placed both his hands on Daniel's shoulders, and gazed directly into the hauntingly strange, lucidly uncomprehending eyes. "We're here, Daniel. We've come to take you home." He paused. "You want to come home, right?"
 
Home. Which home would that be, Jack? Abydos today, or my beach in Oannes with the little adobe house? Maybe the SGC or my apartment on Earth? Your home in Minnesota? "You want to take me home." The tone was slightly skeptical.
 
"Yes."
 
"How? There's no way out."
 
"Of course there is. We pressed a bulb on the wall outside. It opened the passageway."
 
"Yes, you got in. But there's no way out. Don't you know I've been trying for years?"
 
An inaudible intake of breath, in light of the complacent attitude of a man who had been unable to leave his underwater prison. The strangled looks that passed between the three rescuers would have seemed almost comical, except that Daniel suddenly realized something. Shades of panic would never have been in one of his imaginings. He always made sure to include only pleasant thoughts, scenarios without conflict. Joyous, optimistic, normal.
 
So why were these people acting so strangely? Disquieted; the irony made him uncomfortable, uncertain. And so he reached out, testing, gingerly fingering Jack's arm. Being unable to sit up in that chair, he swung his legs over the side and stood, but the ghosts did not disappear. And the touch felt solid, his hold tightening. "Jack?" he queried tentatively.
 
The apparition whose arm he was grasping turned to face him again, staring at him in surprise. "Daniel?"
 
"Jack?" Something began to dawn; reasoning - and years of growing up on the knowledge and physics of Earth - permeated his logic. "You're… here, here?" Daniel's eyes went wide, sudden awareness forcing its way through his veiled wall. "As in, rescue mission kind of here?"
 
"Yes, we're here… here, Daniel."
 
"Oh my god." Daniel stared wide-eyed for a moment, the blue of his irises highlighted by the reflections of that eerie sparkle of water bubbles encased at intervals throughout the room. Then he lowered himself to the damp floor, vacantly preoccupied. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."
 
And something inside Jack ripped to bits, and he knelt down by his long-lost friend, placing a hand on the loose strands of hair hanging over Daniel's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he muttered, his voice breaking against his wishes. "I'm so sorry we took this long." Daniel had been alive, waiting. And they'd left him behind because Jack had been afraid to come back here. Why? "Who put you in here, Daniel? Where are they?"
 
"Oh my god."
 
"Daniel? Daniel! Listen to me. Where are the beings who brought you here?"
 
But years of looking out a window at fish that were free in all that water and longing, longing to be somewhere else, anywhere else, kept getting in the way of… Jack.
 
"What?" Daniel looked up, seeing Jack again, sitting right there beside him, and he clutched the arm in its wetsuit. "Nem? He's gone."
 
"Nem? Gone? Where's he gone?"
 
"When I told him his mate was dead, murdered in Babylon four thousand years ago, he killed himself. He killed himself, Jack, because of what I told him!" Daniel's eyes held shame, self-reproach, anger, fear. He should have lied that day. Should have made something up. Should have told Nem that Omoroca had died a heroine, after a long and fulfilling life. Should not have ended those four thousand years of waiting with sorrow; why couldn't he have lied?
 
"Daniel, when did this happen? How long have you been alone?"
 
Daniel's eyes seared the room, but what he was searching for had been missing for too long already. And then he saw Jack, and the others, and recognition returned. "What?"
 
Sighing, Jack patiently repeated, "How long have you been alone, Daniel?"
 
"A few days after he brought me here, he… I remembered what he needed to know. He did something to himself. Swallowed something, I think. I knew you wouldn't be coming back for me."
 
"God, Daniel, I should have. We should have come. I don't know why we didn't."
 
"I do. He programmed you. Made you believe I was dead, that it was foolhardy to return. It's okay; I never expected you to come." Daniel looked emotionlessly, but not unkindly, into Jack's face. "So why are you here now? Are you here?"
 
"Yes, Daniel. We're here. You've been alone for six years?"
 
Six years. Six? Surely it was more. A decade, at least. Daniel nodded, clinging more tightly to Jack's arm. If this wasn't real, it was the best hallucination he'd created so far, and he'd be damned before he'd let it go.
 
"You're not alone any more."
 
Alone. Alone; that was all he'd ever been able to think of. If he couldn't find a way out, and he couldn't, alone was all he would ever know again.
 
Defeated but never ready to give up, never ready to accept the fate of replacing Nem in a wait of a lifetime, until one day perhaps someone might stumble upon him and he could ask, what fate Jack O'Neill, what fate Samantha Carter, and do you know of the world we call Earth? He'd close his eyes and follow the daydream to whatever happier places it might lead.
 
He needed to be happy again.
 
…you're not alone any more…
 
"Then we're all trapped." Frowning, Daniel considered this scenario, intent on discovering its truth. Why would he make up such a dismal daydream, one with no happy ending? If this was not real, why would his mind create this version of his present in the first place? Surely he could have brought Jack to the beach, introduced him to Julian. And yet, he knew that to trap his hallucinations down here with him was a way of never having to let them go….
 
"We'll find a way out, Daniel."
 
"There isn't one."
 
"Yes, there is. That Nem thing; he came up onto the shore. We saw him. How did he get out?"
 
_____
 
Jack accepted the fact that Daniel wouldn't let go of him, following him aimlessly, endlessly, around in his quest to check out the surroundings. He could understand that, and it was okay. Six years of his own hell had taught him that Daniel's solitary confinement had to have been far worse than anything he had managed to endure. And to be honest with himself, he was thrilled that Daniel didn't hate him. Thrilled to have him here, beside him, at least half sane, speaking and alive and able to be touched. He would face himself later, deal with his own demons, after Daniel was home and warm and safe.
 
For Jack hated himself enough for the both of them. The hardships that could have been avoided, lost moments and months and years, all because he hadn't been able to overcome alien mind tampering. For a friend, he should have known better. He should have come back here regardless of the risks.
 
All those first months, expecting Daniel to just strut back through the gate, knowing - believing - they were just in denial. Death was death and burning was burning and Daniel wasn't coming home. What might they have accomplished in those lost years, had Daniel been with them? What peoples saved, what Goa'ulds destroyed? What missions made more pleasant by his company?
 
Jack could answer that one. All of them.
 
All of them. "Daniel?"
 
"Jack?"
 
"Just checking."
 
O'Neill could see why Daniel had been trapped. That thing had died without giving Daniel any working way to open the doorways, and Jack despised him for that. Good thing the creature was dead, or he would have wasted no time putting a bullet through its brain by now.
 
So far, they'd had no success in finding out how to open any exit from the inside. The window they'd come through seemed to be one way in, like a wormhole. But that creature had gotten out, of that he was certain. Daniel had written those scribbles to someone, and Jack remembered a presence. Something had come out of the water while they'd watched.
 
An alien something, and Daniel had been kidnapped by it. And they'd let it keep him.
 
Jack felt weighted down inside as if the seawater was filling him, flooding him, squeezing at his heart until the pressure would be too much to endure.
 
They'd been so young then, so new to this. They hadn't known any better.
 
And Daniel just clung to his apparition, afraid to let go and have it melt into the bubbles. Bubbles that often took him to other lands, meeting other people - always friendly - until his mind could process and accept no more and he would again see only the bubbles, inside a lonely old old cold dark laboratory lost to all worlds.
 
Jack, I'm here! I'm here…
 
I'm here.
 
But it had been a call, a dream, as futile as trying to phone home, and each day he'd lay himself down in that room that never changed, never grew warmer, never grew light, eternity blending into tomorrow and tomorrow there would again be no rescue, for everyone he had ever known believed him to be dead.
 
And sometimes he'd turn on that device, lasers sending signals to his brain, and create a happier existence for himself.
 
But now Daniel had almost nearly convinced himself - practically, almost - that these really were real people. They had substance. He knew what real people felt like, or he had once known, until mind and machine had conjured up other realities and he'd convinced himself those were real too. But now he was awake with his eyes open, which had not so often happened before while he was fantasizing. He'd spent most of his waking hours doing just that, over the years, but none of his visions were quite as sophisticated as this. Maybe he was just reaching a new level, getting really good at what he'd learned to do. Maybe he'd accidentally activated something else built by Nem, holographic, built in order to keep a four-thousand-year-old mind from going insane.
 
"No beard?" Jack looked Daniel over, looked at the hair pushed behind an ear, some strands still trapped back inside a string. He saw the ragged, loosely fitting torn camo pants and beige t-shirt, the bare feet.
 
"Did for a while, but it bothered me. I've used my pocketknife," Daniel explained, wondering why a hologram would ask. Why would it even care? "It's not sharp any more," he added, and Jack almost smiled.
 
Almost.
 
"Are you hungry?" That would demonstrate a real difference between an apparition and the real thing. He could watch the nutritional green jelly be devoured. "There's food." Daniel opened a drawer in the wall, one of many many compartments, in hopeful anticipation. Years ago, he'd been afraid this supply would run out and he'd starve to death. But soon he'd realized the supply must have lasted four thousand years already; what was one lifetime more? With its pumps sucking in seaweed and small fish, water and nutrients from the ocean, the machines did whatever they did to keep the processing of food and oxygen forever intact.
 
"Uh, no, I think I'll pass. Ask those two." Jack indicated Miller and Joel, wrinkling his nose at the slimy stuff.
 
Disappointed and suspicious when they all declined his hospitality, Daniel tried to remain convinced that his visitors would not suddenly go poof and vanish. Reality doesn't work that way, he reminded himself. But it had been a long time, a time when thoughts were all that had mattered, all that he'd had to rely upon, and he'd already seen things he could never explain. He'd seen crystals speak, seen a cloaked city hovering up in the sky. Seen snakes bore into people and live in their bellies, seen a friend grow into an old man in mere days. He was here on an alien planet, for goodness' sake, captured by a creature that had been born at least four thousand years ago. Sometimes reality just didn't hold water any more, no matter how well this structure did.
 
"Jack?"
 
"Daniel?"
 
"Just checking." And his hold on Jack's arm tightened further.
 
_____
 
They couldn't find a way out.
 
Or rather, they knew which way was out, but nothing would open any of the doorways and let them through.
 
"I've tried," Daniel reminded the others who were now sitting against a wall looking irritated with themselves, trying not to show any panic. In a brave and daring move, Daniel had finally let go of Jack's arm. He had closed his eyes, counted to twenty, and taken his chances. But when he looked again, regained some courage and opened his eyes to what may have turned out to be the heartbreaking sight of renewed isolation, the three men were still there. "I tried touching everything. I tried prying open the metal doors. I tried smashing the window, but it's only a force field. I tried to cut the power, but could never figure out how. That probably would have just trapped me here in the dark with no food or heat or air anyway," he added, observing the men he couldn't believe were answering him out loud. That had been another clue; they still couldn't hear his thoughts.
 
They can't hear my mind. Fairly convinced now that this rescue mission was real, probably, he risked a further explanation. "I tried to blow the place up by turning the memory device up full blast without me in it." He shuddered, recalling the smoke and odors, but all he had succeeded in doing was blowing a circuit and living with a bad smell for several days. The chair had been too hot to sleep on, though. Five nights on the hard damp floor had taught him to appreciate even that deformed slab.
 
"How did this Nem get out, then?"
 
Jack, if I knew that... "Maybe the settings were configured to sense his EM energy. Or some chemical in his breath. His touch. His, or his species."
 
With eyes narrowed, Jack stared at his friend in disbelief. So no matter what controls you'd found, you'd never have gotten them to work. "Crap."
 
"I'm sorry."
 
"For what?"
 
"For getting you trapped here too." Not sorry to have the company, but truly sorry for you. I wouldn't wish this place on anyone.
 
"We're not trapped, Daniel. Carter's waiting for us. Hopefully when we don't show she'll send for another dive team." Hopefully. Or they may just consider us MIA and cut their losses.
 
But no; not Carter. Not with him being a general now. They wouldn't leave him behind.
 
Right?
 
At the mention of Carter's name Daniel's eyes brightened, and then they closed. "And they'll get us out, how?"
 
"They'll open the door from the outside, and we'll leave."
 
"And if it just works one way, like a wormhole? Nem told me I could never leave this place." The sharp pain at hearing those words had never left him.
 
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." And get Carter to blow this damn place to hell.
 
_____
 
But they knew one thing Daniel had not known.
 
That humans could open the doorway from the outside.
 
And if that could be, then the inside must be accessible by humans too. Where was Carter when you needed her?
 
And so Jack and his team continued their search, looking in and on and over and under everything in these four underwater rooms, rooms filled with tangled webs of tubes and circuits and vines and equipment that looked like nothing recognizable from a human perspective.
 
And Daniel argued that Nem had just touched that wall bulb, and it had worked. And Daniel had touched the wall bulb, and it had not worked. But even in his pessimism, he hoped that Jack would notice something he had neglected all these years, and he discovered that optimism did still lie inside him, somewhere, deeply hidden, crying to get out.
 
The others finally agreed to try the food, several hours later, out of desperation as they had no packs or supplies of their own. They had not intended to be down here this long. And at that moment, when Daniel saw the gel physically disappear into their mouths amidst the scowls and disgust and some spitting, 'Crap, that tastes like old fish. Or like crap', he knew these people were real.
 
And deep within, something warm and terrifying and heartbreaking wrenched around in his gut.
 
_____
 
"So you slept on this thing?" Jack rose from the curving platform, his back already aching after only minutes of endurance. "Ow. Or, might I ask, how?"
 
"Well, it was better than the narrow plank Nem expected me to lie on. Or the damp floor," Daniel shrugged. "You get used to it."
 
Jack observed the room. Like you get used to eating that slimy mass, with no fresh fruit or pizza or beer? Like getting used to feeling damp all the time? Or getting used to having nothing to read or watch or listen to? No one to talk to but yourself? And all he said was, "Yeah."
 
"General?" the call was from the other room - one of the other rooms - and then Darby Miller appeared in the doorway. "Um," he tossed a glance towards Daniel. "Can I talk to you, Sir? In private?"
 
Jack crossed the room into a chamber seemingly meant to be a… well, he had no idea, but it was full of squishy roundish transparent blobs nesting on the floor, inside of which were more damn bubbles. And an odd-looking skeleton partially uncovered on a platform in the corner. "What have you got, Major?"
 
"We found the decayed body of Nem, Sir. Daniel must have covered it, a long time ago."
 
"Great, so he had a decomposing body to contend with, along with everything else. Why the privacy, Miller?"
 
"Well, Sir, I didn't want to remind him of it, General, it's obviously been a long while. But there's something else." Miller opened his palm to reveal a thin, nearly invisible layer of lacy tissue, fibrous finger tips with a light webbed overlap at the ends. "It looks like a layer of skin or clothing but I'm thinking it's not natural, Sir, as it's the only bit that hasn't decayed. It's almost like a partial glove. But that thing - Nem - wasn't wearing it. The body was rolled right on top of it, as though he'd removed it intentionally. I'm thinking..." This may have been what activated the doorway under his touch. He saw the same hope in O'Neill's eyes.
 
Jack lifted the thin bluish-tinged transparent filament from Miller's palm, turning it delicately in his own. The slight tingling seemed to be more than just imagination. "And we were able to get inside here because…?"
 
"Nem probably locked the door only from the inside to keep Daniel from leaving, Sir. And this might be the key."
 
To keep Daniel from leaving.
 
For six years.
 
Double crap.
 
_____
 
"So Daniel could have left here six years ago." If he'd chosen to disturb a rotting corpse. But by the time the body had decomposed enough to reveal the glove tips beneath it, Daniel would have long since turned his attention elsewhere.
 
"Yes Sir, and I'm sure he checked it out. But there's no reason for Daniel to have noticed this, especially in his initial state of shock. I doubt it would have looked any different than the rest of that thing." With a grimace he turned to look again at the skeleton; had the creature once had a bluish tinge?
 
"Don't tell him, Miller."
 
"Sir? What should I tell him?"
 
"Tell him…. I don't know. Tell him you reprogrammed the exit. Tell him -"
 
"He'll read the report, sir."
 
"Major, I'm General now. The reports come to me. And I'm telling you to change yours."
 
"Yes Sir."
 
"Go give that thing a try, Major. Let's hope it works without that creature's DNA."
 
"Yes Sir."
 
They turned back into the main room, out the doorway, almost bumping into Daniel. Kenwall was standing beside him, his face drawn tight.
 
Daniel's look was dark, haunted.
 
The voice subdued, barely audible, he seemed to look straight through Miller. "You don't have to change the report, Major."
 
To the young major's credit, Jack noticed, without hesitation Miller responded, "Thank you, Doctor Jackson."
 
Jack locked eyes with Daniel, and for a moment years passed between them, fluttering as if through a wormhole, back in time. To long ago, when a friend had never come home, lost to the real world.
 
I'm sorry, Daniel. More than you'll ever realize.
 
"You're wrong, Jack," the sound of his words was hollow, almost ethereal in this eerie place. "I scraped some skin from his palm and fingertips a few days after he died."
 
"He'd taken it off. There's no way you could have found it." Jack's own brittle voice was foreign to his ears.
 
"I heard him faintly call my name. I went, but it was already too late." Daniel turned towards the shadows, watching Kenwall and Miller. "He would have given it to me." He was going to let me leave.
 
And then the sight of Miller suddenly sticking his arm through that invisible barrier, into the water beyond that was not flowing into the room but held back in its own personal event horizon, brought the past and present together in the name of reality, a reality mixed with the surreal and bizarre.
 
For a moment everyone just stood there, staring, lost in their own versions of past and present and regrets and promises. Then Miller turned to face the others, looking directly at Daniel. The raw truths of the pain and hope mingling in the man's eyes forced him to look down at the shimmering reflections on the floor. "It's time to go home, Dr. Jackson." He'd known the man only mere hours, but could already feel both his sorrow and strength.
 
Without giving the chamber another glance, the place where he'd spent the past six years but never thought of as home, Daniel turned to follow Miller and Kenwall through the portal.
 
"Wait, Daniel. You can use my gear." Jack's voice was gentle but urgent.
 
Daniel stopped his forward movement, never turning around. "Aren't you coming with us?" Frowning, Daniel again questioned his reality.
 
"We're not too far under. I can manage."
 
"Then so can I."
 
"I'm a swimmer, Daniel. How long can you hold your breath?"
 
"I was here for months with a decaying corpse. I can hold my breath, Jack." And without waiting another moment, Daniel walked through the window that had held him back and kept him trapped for six years, and he shot upwards.
 
_____
 
The sunlight dazed him. Guided to the shore by some hands or many, it was all Daniel could do to keep from sinking back into a fantasy, Julian on the beach with his sand tools, Daniel mesmerized by the colours and the warm breeze, the sunlight glittering on the water and the sand, the blue sky speckled with frothy white waves. Clouds; those were clouds.
 
Carter saw the first man surface, finally, and radioed Hammersmith to cancel that second dive team. She saw them coming, one extra person with no diving gear, a person with long flowing hair in the center of the expected SGC trio, and her breath hitched.
 
"Daniel."
 
The look on Daniel's face was one of incomprehension, then shock, as Sam pulled him into her arms, tears escaping down her cheeks unhesitatingly. "Oh my god, Daniel." I'm so sorry. We left you behind, we left you behind.
 
"Sam."
 
When his eyes opened once again and the warmth of arms receded, he saw the water that stretched before him into infinity, water that had surrounded him but this is what it had always looked like from above, from the position of untrapped. From a normal perspective.
 
Normal. Was there such a thing?
 
And there… there was the writing… You know of Babylon?
 
Yes.
 
The one word that had spiralled him into oblivion and sealed his fate. It had haunted him for a decade, although Jack said it was only six years.
 
"Let's go home." The voice surfaced from somewhere; whose voice, he had no idea nor did he care.
 
In his daze he followed the apparition-rescuers, sensations blending into one whole, an intermingling of the senses that left him breathless. When the wormhole shot outwards he shuddered, a strange warmth of hope tingling inside. "We used to go through this together."
 
Placing a hand lightly on Daniel's shoulder, Jack looked sideways at his friend. "Yes, we did."
 
And with Sam holding onto his arm and Jack following closely at his side, Daniel returned home.
 
_____
 
The bombardment of sensations overwhelmed him; a crystalline protective shield erected over six long years shattering with a lack of control that he had fought to establish and stabilize since he had unknowingly been left behind. People, voices, machinery, sounds, lights, movement. Everywhere movement, and Daniel didn't know whether to cower under the blanket in his VIP room or to take a healthy breath and face his leftover soul. He had nightly dreamed of this for centuries, or what amounted to solitary infinity, but he had never dared daydream of again seeing Cheyenne Mountain. No, his daydreams had been of people, and simple life. Nothing that would remind him of his days past, and bring pain and sorrow. And so he had not created a world with Sha're, or Sam or Teal'c, and rarely with Jack.
 
And now he didn't know what to do with the reality.
 
A knock at the door brought him face to face in a breath with his present surroundings once again. And a face popped into view, one he could still not become used to seeing.
 
"Hey. How ya doing?" The nonchalance was a performance, and it took concentration.
 
"Jack. I'm… getting used to being here." Here. Here. Here.
 
"Good. Hungry?"
 
"Um…"
 
"Good. Let's go."
 
With a courage of proportions he could only generate via the physical support of the man waiting for him, Daniel nervously accepted the invitation.
 
_____
 
"No."
 
"For crying out loud, Daniel, you need to eat something other than rice pudding."
 
"Why?"
 
"Because you've eaten nothing but slush for years."
 
"Anything else makes my teeth hurt."
 
"What about that toast?"
 
"Tastes like sand."
 
"And the fish?"
 
"Smells like Nem."
 
"So you're only having rice pudding?"
 
"I might try potatoes tomorrow."
 
_____
 
That first surge of blind panic had seized him and swept him to pounding on the walls, grasping knobs and buttons and then knobs and the same buttons, again and again. He had hoped, trusted; prayed that his knowledge would be enough to satisfy Nem, who would then allow him to return home.
 
But Nem had bellowed and shuffled off, and Daniel had left him alone to deal with his pain in private. Four thousand years of pain to match his own single one without Sha're.
 
And then he heard Nem calling his name, calling out to him, the faint sound vibrating hollowly across the chambers.
 
The last thing he had expected was to find the ocean-dweller dead, eyes staring blankly in desperate sorrow, and Daniel had been sent first into a euphoric panic, then into a terror hatched in the realization that he could not get out of this place. The water beyond the windows was as much an illusion as each of his days, taunting, untouchable, beckoning, so near and yet so far, and he despised it.
 
In his grief, Nem had forgotten about him.
 
Daniel clutched the pillow deeply to his chest and watched the shadows swaying in the luminescence of the single candle, an offering by Teal'c to combat the strangeness of these new surroundings. In his frequent moments of sudden wakefulness this night, it was this pillow that had saved him.
 
In that initial half hour when he had first awoken, not remembering, not knowing where he was, the softness of the pillow had brought a surge of realization that this place was no longer his musty dank underground world, and he was no longer on the hard pre-formed conchoidal fractures of a fiberglass lab table. Snuggling into the pillow, feeling the softness, the warmth of the blanket creasing underneath his chin, he had known for sure he was home. He'd clutched that pillow to himself the moment Jack had led him into this VIP room.
 
It's an Air Force-issue pillow on a military base, Daniel. To me, not so soft, Jack had skeptically proclaimed.
 
"You want too much, Jack", Daniel had replied, and he could still see the look of shock and understanding spreading across the other's man's features.
 
But this hour the pillow wasn't enough; this time he could not stand the shadows, the grimness of the colourless room, the underground air, the silence. This time his mind would not carry him far enough away from the rotting corpse of Nem, the being who had left him without unlocking the door. Trapping him for the knowledge that he had not wanted to hear. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
 
Daniel pulled the broken lace from around his wrist, the last remnant of the boots he'd discarded four years ago, and tied back his hair. Then he felt around for the slippers they'd left for him, grabbed the pillow and the blanket, and headed out to where the stars might tell him what he'd been missing.
 
_____
 
There had been no belief in what his mind knew to be true; no matter how panicked he was, he would open the doorway into the water eventually. If not tonight, then tomorrow. He would sleep, and then try again. Sleep, and perhaps awaken with a clearer mind.
 
But the following day had brought no success, and a frantic Daniel had tried everything he could think of to get out of that place. The doorway just would not open, just would not open.
 
Yet all Nem had seemed to do was touch the bulbs - bulbs that would not work for Daniel; why??
 
Nerves had kept him awake for most of that second night, but the third night was the worst. Fears had begun to take hold that he would not ever be able to leave this place. "Jack!" he had called, out of frustration, out of anger, out of desperation. But Jack was not going to send a team out looking for him, not ever, for Jack believed him to be dead.
 
And more or less, that's what he was.
 
Trapped, in this underwater mausoleum; confined with only himself to talk to and no living being knowing he was there.
 
So he began to talk to Jack.
 
Sam was a confidante who didn't belong down in this miserable place, nor could she have thought of anything he hadn't already tried. He couldn't allow her to fail, to fall into his trap of depression. Teal'c was a warrior with a heart, but loyalty and honour could not help him here. No, neither Teal'c nor Sam were ever invited to spend time here, to come to dinner, to look around. Not even to explore; they would remain forever at the SGC, doing whatever Hammond needed them to do, and continue being perfect.
 
But Jack was a rescuer, never leaving a team member behind. Jack was allowed to come; allowed to see this place and make jokes at their attempts to get out, allowed to see Daniel at his worst. Yes, those times when Daniel screamed and threw things, when he slid depressed down the wall, huddling in a messed-up heap without moving for hours, and even those times when he cried, Jack was allowed to stay and know his secrets.
 
Know his inner soul that wanted only to be home with his friends. That wanted only for them to know that he was here, still alive, and always waiting.
 
But he knew Jack wasn't really there. No one was, not even a lonely four-thousand-year-old alien water creature.
 
So in the end, giving up was easier and stronger than hope, and soon having even Jack around had done nothing but hurt, a hurt that came with the knowledge that his old life was still out there, somewhere, if only somebody - anybody - knew where to find him. A longing he knew would never materialize, and the pain was too much to bear.
 
And so Jack was left behind. Left to live out the rest of his life on Earth, to keep company with Sam and Teal'c, instead of being invited to the beach when Julian was around.
 
But Daniel decided that little Julian would love this place. He could watch the bubbles and make up rhymes, watch the underwater life float past without being judgmental, for kids could see the wonder and adventure in all things. Julian would not come without Annette, but Annette loved being here with Daniel.
 
And so his most regular visitors were not of the world he had left behind. They were not of the world that had forgotten him.
 
The sky was clear and black, punctuated with the tips of thousands of candles. Daniel gaped in awe; this sight may have seemed commonplace to him years ago but he couldn't imagine why. This view to the beyond was like nothing he had tried to remember.
 
In the chill air he placed his blanket below and around him, and the soft pillow under his head. Then he lay flat on his back, pulled the blanket to his chin, and swam in the heavens.
 
_____
 
"Okay, I looked everywhere on base twice, and then finally tried nowhere on base," Jack approached and plunked himself down beside the man being woken from a partial nights' sleep. "They said you'd passed through security a few hours ago. What are you doing here?"
 
"Waking up, I imagine." Daniel turned over, thrusting his arm under that soft pillow, and closed his eyes. Tubes and fish and bubbles again circulated across the darkness under his lids.
 
Wasn't that Jack's voice? In the here and now, real real real, and sometimes hoping becomes reality and no one gets left behind, even if it takes six years. The pillow beneath his face told him for sure this wasn't Oannes.
 
Jack watched in almost-silence. His fingers softly, absent-mindedly, traced along the contours of the upper edge of the blanket, careful not to intrude or disturb. "You okay?" He could guess what Daniel needed out here. Space, air, trees.
 
But Daniel didn't even nod.
 
There were birds somewhere in the treetops, and a breeze rustled the leaves until their underbellies shone white. A squirrel darted halfway up a tree trunk, squirmed around until it thought it was hidden, and peeked out at them from the opposite side.
 
Jack watched it watching Daniel, and he watched Daniel watching now with his eyes scouring the woods.
 
Everything here was a miracle to the younger man. His very presence here was a miracle.
 
Daniel sat up abruptly, his attention fixated, and the blanket fell to his waist. "Jack, look!" Even in emphasis, his voice was quiet.
 
Worried that there might be a bear, or a coyote, Jack's vision pierced through the trees. But the squirrel had not been frightened away before the sudden movement, and he could see nothing unusual. "What?"
 
"There!"
 
Jack's gaze followed the pointing finger. "That? It's a sparrow, Daniel." Hopping at the foot of a tree trunk. No predator; not even a bird of prey, a soaring eagle, hawk, or even a colourful jay.
 
"It's beautiful."
 
"It's a sparrow. It's little. And brown."
 
"Yes. And it's free."
 
Jack's breathing stilled, and the air became a holding ground for thoughts and moments, moments lost that would never be returned. He paused, his prepared retort frozen on his tongue. "So are you," he finally contributed.
 
"Yes," Daniel nodded. "So am I."
 
And Jack couldn't bring himself to look, to see the honesty and forgiveness in his friend's eyes, but he knew it was there, knew there was more there than he deserved. He reached out with his hand, finding Daniel's.
 
Daniel accepted the warmth and the sincerity in the touch, and he lay back down, allowing the pillow to cradle his weary mind, his hair softly caressing his cheek. With all the words that were bent on pouring out, all the fearful hours and days and months that needed to be released, demons exorcised, anger forgiven, all he could think to say was, "Thank you."
 
And Jack just squeezed the hand resting under the blanket, staring intently at the sparrow as it hopped from branch to branch before flying off further into the woods. Then he took a deep breath, rubbed away the wetness under his lashes with his free hand, and sighed. "Welcome home, kiddo. It's good to have you back."
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