It feels odd to be standing in front of the Stargate dressed in a suit instead of combat uniform. Daniel has to resist the urge to pull out his paperwork and go over it again – but he knows the research and the talking points by heart, and another read-through isn’t going to change anything. They have high hopes that recently saving the entire Tollan world will give them a new edge to negotiations, but it will take a lot of convincing for the inflexible Tollans to change their policies and share the technology Earth leadership wants.

He sneaks a glance at his team. Seeing Teal’c dressed in Earth dress clothes is always good for a smile; he’s adjusted quite well to the standard SGC uniform and even some casual clothes for spending time with the team off-base, but his style choices in formal wear always feel a little bit like a step back in time. Jack and Sam, of course, always look great in their dress blues, but his eyes linger on Jack.

Their leader has been distant and grumpy since Edora. Well, more grumpy than usual. At first Daniel had been all aboard with the idea of giving him time – it was clear that something had happened with Laira, and they shouldn’t have been surprised. There had been chemistry between the colonel and the Edoran woman even before he was stranded, and a hundred days was a long time to be cut off. Still, Daniel was surprised and a little bit offended that Jack had given up as completely as his attachment to the blonde woman would have indicated – he had to have known the rest of SG-1 wouldn’t rest until they found a way to bring him home. 

He had been careful not to push; if he’d been incredibly lonely without Jack, well, it couldn’t have been anything compared to how Jack had felt stranded there. Daniel had had Sam and Teal’c, after all, and Janet and Cassie and the few other friends he’s made on base. But a few weeks and a few missions later, it had become a matter of quiet concern amongst them that Jack was getting worse, not better. 

On the last mission, Jack had so thoroughly chewed Daniel out over asking for a couple more minutes to study something, that even Sam had objected. Every time he tried to broach the subject of what was bothering Jack he’d been firmly rebuffed, so he’d stopped asking and just tried to pretend everything was fine, but he felt like the relationship they’d been building for four years is starting to slip through his fingers. 

The leader of SG-1 looks calm and composed now, as they prepare to step through and be escorted before the Tollan High Council, but Daniel can’t help but worry a little bit, and sort of wished the General was sending him with a diplomatic team instead. Jack wasn’t impressed with the Four Races’ reluctance to share their technology with Earth on the best of days, and most of his days lately have been a far cry from that.

Daniel is the primary negotiator for this treaty, and he’s prepared for something long and slow. The rest of SG-1 is mostly here for show; the Asgard may have insisted that Jack be the voice of the Tau’ri when they’d negotiated to add the Earth to their protected planets list with the Goa’uld, but the Tollans have no such reservations. He makes an opening volley with Chancellor Travell, pleading for a chance to be heard, and she grants it. He’s barely even gotten a chance to get started when Jack interrupts his speech, sounding typically irreverent. 

Daniel’s heart sinks, and he knows his shoulders hunch in a little as Jack gets increasingly belligerent behind him. Jack yanks them out of the negotiations abruptly, and they can’t do anything but follow him. Daniel might be their spokesperson for the negotiations, but Colonel O’Neill is their commanding officer and he knows the Chancellor won’t deal with him without Jack. He can only hope to go cool his friend’s temper and then return.

Hurrying down the hall beside Sam, Teal’c bringing up the rear, Daniel tries to stall for time. Unfortunately, Jack is in fine form today and having none of it. Daniel doesn’t want to push too hard, because the yelling Jack did on their last mission when he questioned orders is still a painful memory. But when Jack stops beside the sensor that had somehow disabled Earth and Goa’uld weapons on their last visit, he can’t not object to what he sees in Jack’s face. His ‘Don’t even think about it,’ goes completely ignored. Sam’s ‘Sir, isn’t this against regulations’ at least gets a response, but it doesn’t stop Jack from pulling the device from the wall anyway. 

Daniel tries again with a desperate, “Kinda crossing the line…” but a snapped out “Shut up, Daniel,” from Jack leaves him speechless. That isn’t the friendly banter they are known for, or even an exasperated Jack trying to get his point across. This is something new. The chasm between them seems to gape a little wider, and he follows the rest of the team silently back to the Gate.

They change out of their formal clothes and back into BDUs, but the atmosphere is tense and they don’t have a chance to talk about what happened before they’re sitting down around the conference table. Daniel exchanges several long looks with Sam, sitting next to him, but Jack sitting across from them prevents any real conversation about the incident. He has absolutely no idea what possessed Jack to steal the device, but he’s slowly starting to get angry about it. 

Jack’s blasé attitude when question by the general fans those flames, and the Colonel doesn’t give any explanation for what he did, leaving the General to attempt to fill in the blanks. Daniel doesn’t know what to do, so he makes a vague statement about not promising anything to the Tollans and glares across the table at Jack, giving him a chance to explain himself; but he says nothing, just looking expectantly back. Someone has to answer the General’s questions, so Daniel gives some stupid answer about the Tollan refusing to give them any technology. He can’t say anything else without incriminating Jack, so he falls silent, glaring angrily at the table so he doesn’t have to look at Jack or Hammond. At this point, he isn’t entirely sure why he’s not just spilling the whole sordid story, but every time he tries to open his mouth to rat Jack out, his heart lurches and he stops himself.

Sam is similarly speechless, but at least Jack still has the honor not to make her lie for him to a superior officer. When he finally opens his mouth Jack says a lot of things, awful things, but they are silent around the table as he digs a deeper and deeper hole. When the General starts to get mad, spreading the blame across the whole team, Jack defends them, but in the most disrespectful way possible. There’s absolutely nothing any of them can think to say as their team leader seems to blow up his career around them, and Daniel can’t help but notice that Jack won’t meet his eyes.

Daniel had always been such an open book. He kept his history close to the vest, his secrets buried deep, but Jack had never had trouble reading the emotions he wore on his sleeve. It was part of what made him so good with people – their allies never doubted that Daniel Jackson was exactly as good and pure as he seemed to be. Jack had been upset about Laira, for about a week after he returned from Edora. But being home with his team had reminded him what he was living for, and that had passed quickly as she faded from his memory again. It had been infatuation born of circumstances, not anything real. 

The representatives of the Tollan, the Asgard, and the Nox had come the second week. They’d lain their ultimatum about the SGC having to catch the technology thieves themselves at the General’s feet, and the Asgard had insisted that they only trusted Jack to do it. He’d argued hard with the General that he be allowed to read in SG-1, but he’d lost. Hammond said the rift between Jack and his team had to play as real, and that he didn’t think SG-1 could pull off the ruse of being alienated from the commander if they didn’t believe he’d gone completely off the rails.

Jack didn’t know what it said about him that the General thought he still could convince them that he was so corrupt. His training was good, but his black ops days were long abandoned. 

He had known that Sam and Teal’c would be easy to discourage, especially because Sam wouldn’t challenge his authority easily and while Teal’c might question him, he rarely even considered questioning Hammond. But Daniel…Daniel was tenacious and would take Jack’s apparent defection personally. He would remember the soldier from their first trip through the Gate, and fight tooth and nail to get his Jack back. So Jack started laying the groundwork for discouraging Daniel immediately, but with each brush-off and harsh word, he hated himself a little more. Their relationship was complicated enough as it was, Daniel’s unwavering trust hard-earned, and chipping away at that foundation was causing damage he wasn’t sure he was going to have the tools to repair. 

Interrupting the pitch Daniel has worked on for months is hard – snapping at him to shut up in the hallway as he ‘steals’ the device is even harder. Daniel’s blue eyes swim with hurt and bewilderment, even while he can practically feel the disapproval steaming off of Sam and Teal’c. In the post-mission briefing he is callous enough that he finally starts to see Daniel’s hurt and confusion turn to anger, and he hopes that it will be enough. If he can stoke his archaeologist’s temper enough to get Daniel to stay mad for a couple of days, maybe he can avoid him until it’s over. 

No such luck. The general calls him to give him a heads-up that Daniel’s left the base shortly after spending a few minutes closeted with Carter and Teal’c, and reminds him that he can’t let anything slip. Jack says a few very rude things in response, but the General ignores that and hangs up. Slumped in his living room, Jack tries to get a little drunk and hopes Daniel will just go home to sulk.

The doorbell rings, and he knows of course Daniel didn’t. He blocks the door with his body, and looks out, trying to put on an air of boredom and annoyance, braced for Daniel’s furious scolding. Instead, he gets soft-and-uncertain Daniel. All of the anger that the linguist had been building with Jack over the stolen artifact is fizzled to nothing, replaced by hesitation and concern. Because Daniel thinks the best of everyone, gives second and third and hundredth chances, and he doesn’t give up on his friends. Grudgingly, not wanting to cause a scene on the street, Jack lets him in, gets him a beer, and tries to ignore the way that Daniel looking uncomfortable in his living room fuels his self-loathing. 

Daniel is walking on eggshells, trying to de-escalate the conflict, and Jack has to act like an asshole. He’s under surveillance, he knows that, and he can’t be sure the house itself isn’t bugged. The kid’s big blue-eyed stare is on him like he can see into his soul, and Jack has to dig deep into his anger at whoever has been stealing from their allies and putting them in this position to maintain his cover. Daniel’s watching him like he’s some sort of puzzle, one of his dead languages, but not like he’s convinced. 

Damn it. He needs Daniel to stop looking at him like that. Like every word out of Jack’s mouth is a personal attack on everything he holds dear. Even when they’d first landed on Abydos and Jack had allowed his marines to blatantly bully Doctor Daniel Jackson, with fists and words, Danny had never looked at Jack like that. So he strikes with words deep, and hard; Daniel finally stops appealing to any hope of Jack’s better nature and straight up appeals to Jack on their friendship, his trust and his heart in his eyes, and Jack stomps on it. 

A deep hurt passes over Daniel’s face, an anguish that Jack recognizes as the kind of feeling that had led him to accepting a suicide mission to Abydos four years ago. The type of hurt that kills. And when he gets the urge to gather Daniel into his arms and take it all back, he takes a swig of his beer instead. Colonel Jack O’Neill of the United States Airforce has never felt smaller than in that moment. Daniel’s expression shutters, and he walks out of Jack’s house without looking back, and Jack thinks that when this is over, it will be a miracle if he still has a best friend.

The day he goes through the Stargate to ‘retire’ on Edora, Daniel doesn’t come to the Gate room with the others. They haven’t spoken since he left Jack’s house. He probably thinks he’s hidden, but Jack had placed him in the shadowy corner of the control room the minute he entered. He always knows where Daniel is; he’d developed a ‘Daniel-sense’ to keep track of their archaeologist after the very first mission. He also knows exactly what is going through the other man’s mind. Daniel is assuming that after everything, Jack is choosing the woman he knew for a hundred days over everything they’ve built together. Jack has to turn away and not look back, or he wouldn’t be able to force himself to walk away. He’s going to be added to the list of people who have abandoned Daniel Jackson, and Daniel will have every reason to never trust him again. 

And Daniel is the glue that holds his team together. His other teammates are good people, but the three of them are entirely too military and their choices reflect that; Daniel is the compass that steers their ship towards the right. He may be saving the relationship between Earth and its Allies, but he can’t help but fear that he’s destroying SG-1.

Daniel won’t quite look at him. 

Jack is almost completely certain that his claim of ‘drawing straws’ was a lie; he knows what Daniel looks like when he’s lying. The statement was delivered with a heft and timing meant to hurt, and Carter and Teal’c were careful not to actually say anything to agree or contradict when they backed him up; it’s not a lie to a commanding officer if you don’t actually speak.

He goes to the locker rooms to shower off the physical and metaphorical grime of the rogue unit’s base, and when he emerges Daniel has already left the base. Jack wants to go after him, but he’s delayed by having to report to the General, as well as the Tollan, Asgard, Nox, and even the Tok’ra before he can also slip away. 

The light is still on in Carter’s lab. He stops in the doorway, looking in as she putters with something the rogue unit had brought back that the Asgard hadn’t taken. She smiles at him, a little reserved but for all intents and purposes seemingly over it. “Do you need something, Sir?”

“Ah,” he hesitates, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to read you guys in. But, orders, you know?” 

“Yes, Sir,” she agrees. “Teal’c and I understand.”

He works hard to contain the wince, knowing he doesn’t succeed entirely. “Did you happen to speak to our Doctor Jackson this afternoon? Know where I might find him?”

Sam slowly sets down the thingamajig she’s working on and leans forward, hands on her worktable. “He’s pretty upset. I don’t know what you said to him the day you retired, but I think he believed you. Sir.” A lot of the forgiveness is gone from her tone, and it’s as censorious as it can be without being outright insubordinate. 

“God, Major, I know.” Jack wipes a hand over his face. “I can’t grovel if I can’t find him, alright? Save me some time traipsing all over Colorado Springs tonight looking for him.” Sam stares at him for a moment more and then shakes her head. 

“I would tell you, Sir, but I’m not sure. He didn’t want to talk to Teal’c or I before he left either.”

When he finally finds Daniel, Jack thinks he should have known all along. He checks Daniel’s apartment first and upon coming up empty there, spends a couple of good hours driving around looking for the archeologist’s distinctive car. It’s only when he thinks to call the base and make sure that Daniel hadn’t returned that he learns that while the good doctor is not at Cheyenne Mountain, his vehicle never left. That prompts a niggling suspicion and he drives to his own house. It’s a weird habit, but Daniel almost never drives to Jack’s (why would he, when the next time he leaves it will probably be in Jack’s truck on the way back to base?). 

The windows are dark, but he’s not expecting to find the kid inside. There’s a distinct bite to the air and any other time Daniel would have been found curled up inside with a coffee and whichever book he’d carelessly forgotten the last time he was over, maybe even with a welcoming fire started in the fireplace. The last time Daniel had been in the house, though, Jack had torn into their friendship without quarter, so the younger man has fled to somewhere untarnished by recent events.

He doesn’t want to go into the house first and give his quarry a chance to reconsider and slip away, so he digs in the back of the truck for the blanket he keeps there for emergencies and also finds an extra jacket. Tucking them under one arm, Jack climbs up the ladder to the roof, feeling an immense sense of relief and also a rush of affection when he spies Daniel in the second lawn chair, curled up impossibly small into his BDU jacket to ward off the cold. The figure doesn’t stir as he crosses the roof. Jack wonders if he’s fallen asleep, but when he comes around to the front of the chair to wrap the wool blanket around him, he’s pinned down by a very awake set of pale eyes. 

“Hey, kid.” The corner of his mouth tilts up in the smallest of smiles, and he goes through with tucking the edges of the blanket in around Daniel even as the gaze of SG-1’s conscience dissects him expertly. When he draws back from this task, Jack shrugs into the extra jacket himself and takes the other chair, pulling it around so he faces Daniel instead of being side-by-side. 

For all that Danny had done everything he could not to look at Jack’s face earlier today under the mountain, he’s staring at him now. Jack leans forward and put his elbows on his knees, holding his friend’s gaze patiently while Daniel searches for whatever he’s looking for. After what feels like an eternity, the linguist’s blue eyes break away and he looks up towards the sky. It’s a clear night, and dark out here at Jack’s in a way it never is at Daniel’s apartment, and the stars and planets above are crisp and clear. For a while, they both just look at the stars that are so far away, yet so close with the Stargate. 

“You left us,” Daniel’s voice is soft, but with silence pressing around them it feels like a shout. “For Laira.” There’s an unusually blatant dislike in his voice for a woman who had been nothing but welcoming and kind under terrible circumstances, but Jack doesn’t think now is the time to analyze that puzzle.

“It wasn’t real. It was just the only way I could get access to the Gate. I would never have stayed on Edora.”

“Those weeks leading up to the Tollan summit….” Daniel doesn’t even finish that thought, and Jack has to close his eyes for a minute before he can respond. 

“I’m sorry for almost everything I did since Edora. I didn’t mean any of it.” Words aren’t enough, but words mean a lot to Daniel.

“You should have trusted us.” And by ‘us’, they both know he means ‘me’. Jack opens his mouth but before he can actually form a sound, Daniel is shooting an absolutely searing look in his direction. “and don’t give me the bullshit about orders that you gave Sam and Teal’c. You bend and manipulate orders to suit yourself all the time.”

“It wasn’t about trust. You know I trust you with my life.” The still deeply hurt and highly skeptical look he gets then convinces Jack he better keep trying to find the right words. “I trust you to always do the right thing. I trust you to save my life, or Teal’c’s, or Carter’s. I trust you to save the Earth. I trust you to look for the peaceful solution to every problem, and usually find one.” He has Daniel’s full attention, that much he knows, though the other man’s gaze is averted, and his chin tucked defensively. “Danny, the only thing I don’t trust you with is yourself.”

That, finally, gets a reaction. “Ja-ack,” Daniel’s head shoots up and he’s scowling, irritated. Which is a heck of a lot better than wallowing in despair. 

“Daniel,” he drawls, leaning forward again to force eye contact. “I had no idea what kind of compromising positions I was going to have to put myself in. The General and I had no idea Maybourne would make it so easy for us – I was expecting months of doing, at best, very questionable things before we could nail them to the wall.” Someone, somewhere, was looking out for Colonel Jack O’Neill when they wrapped the whole thing up in a matter of days, before the sour feelings he’d left with his best friend had a chance to become permanent. “There wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting even a single speck of whatever dirt I was going to have to roll in to touch you.”

“I could have played along. I can look after myself.”

Jack can’t help it. He actually laughs out loud. 

Daniel actually gives him a tiny, sheepish smile, but it fades quickly back to uncertainty, and Jack can almost see the self-hug he’s wrapped around himself under the blanket. “You really didn’t mean any of it?”

“No, of course not. But we had no idea what Maybourne would be able to get bugged, and there was no way they’d approach me unless they thought I’d severed all ties to the SGC and he’s had a lot of time to study us. The break with you had to be more convincing than my fallout with Sam, or Teal’c, or the General.” This is what it’s going to come down to – whether, having taken it all to heart, Daniel can believe it was all Jack’s acting skills. If he chooses to go with the idea that ‘everything has a kernel of truth’, their friendship might never recover. 

Inexplicably, but in a twist of fate that encompasses everything Doctor Daniel Jackson is, Jack watches guilt sweep across his friend’s face. “I should never have believed you could go rogue. God, Jack, I’m sorry. What kind of friend does that make me?”

Right then and there, Jack makes a promise to himself to figure out how to offer Daniel more affirmation on a regular basis. How he turned this into guilt instead of being mad at Jack, he will never understand. “You didn’t believe me Daniel, trust me, you made me work for it. You were very persistent. I spent two weeks making sure I could make you believe me. This is absolutely not something you should feel guilty about.”

“So we’re…solid.”

“Yeah, we’re solid.” Jack sits back into his chair, relaxing second by second. They sit quietly for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Jack is close to dozing; it’s been a long few weeks. They should go inside, out of the cold, but the living room is still full of bad ghosts. 

“Jack?”

“Hm?” There’s a scrape of something being pushed over to his chair, and he looks down at the telescope case and then up at Daniel. 

“Show me Abydos?”

That’s a familiar request. Daniel can give you the entire encyclopedia article on each planet they visit, but he’s hopeless at finding them in the night sky himself, so he relies on Jack for that, and he often asks for him to find Abydos in particular. 

Maybe, by some miracle, everything’s going to be ok.