What felt like moments before, he’d been convinced he was going to die. He’d resigned himself to it, even, with the vague feeling that this might be the time he actually stays dead. Honest to god dead. Because yes, ok, he has a reputation for dying (much to Jack’s eternal frustration), but it never quite seems to stick. That should be reassuring, but it never is when it’s actually happening. Daniel’s struggling to come up with a lot of reasons to think they’ll pull out of this one. Maybe it’s because he’s so cold he can’t think straight, or possibly he already knows somewhere deep inside that his leg is a lost cause, or perhaps because he just watched Sam and Cameron walk away, even though they didn’t want to. They all know they have a better chance of making it anywhere without trying to carry him across the ice – they don’t even know where they’re going.

Maybe – and his feelings are traitorous here, it’s dangerous ground, but there’s not anything else to focus on instead – it’s because when they ran for the gate, he knew Jack was dead or dying on the ground, faster than the wound itself could have accounted for; he must have been poisoned by whatever was in the syringe intended for Ba’al’s symbiote. Jack’s order combined with Cameron literally dragging him out of the room had been enough to get him moving to the Gate an hour ago, but Cam stands no chance of getting Daniel to risk their lives now with his dead weight without the General’s terse orders to back him up.

If his teammates knew Daniel had already mostly given up, they probably wouldn’t have walked away so easily.

Time feels weird when you’re dying, and even though his watch shows only a half an hour has passed since they walked away, Daniel is mostly out of it when the submarine breaks through the ice. Hypothermia and shock will do that to you, combined with a tidal wave of grief. He knows he was coherent enough to tell his rescuers about Sam and Mitchell, to try to send help that direction, but he’s hustled onto the submarine and into the care of a medic fast enough that he knows they weren’t taking their human icicle particularly seriously, and once they’ve ascertained that he’s not a threat there are pain meds involved that make him start to question himself.

So his team can’t really blame him for wondering if they are a hallucination. The submarine crew had roundly ignored him, after all, and certainly hadn’t acted like they intended to surface to look for two more people they clearly don’t think are real…or still alive to be rescued. Even through the cacophony of noises the submarine makes and the haze of the drugs, it’s unmistakable even to Daniel when the submarine does begin to surface. Still, he doesn’t think he’d be hallucinating the amount of pain he’s in as his leg is thawing out, so as he rambles on to them (he knows he’s rambling, and there’s a vaguely concerned look on Cam’s face, but it takes too much time to think about what he’s saying through the haze to bother) he’s prepared to accept with some sort of grace that they are real, and that somehow the submarine had found them up as well. 

But then they’re both straightening from their worried crouch over his bed, with expressions his fuzzy mind can’t quite interpret. Sam clears her throat (looking – resigned?) and Cam looks – nervous? – but that can’t be right. Daniel shifts carefully to look over his shoulder and – it’s like his brain shorts out. It was fuzzy before, but it grinds to a complete halt as he stares at the familiar face that just entered the room.

(Because Jack is dead.)

(And Jack doesn’t belong on a submarine, anyway.)

A face with familiar brown eyes that meet his, but there’s no echoing recognition in them.

“Jack?” He hears himself ask, but the man doesn’t respond. He looks up over Daniel’s head at the rest of SG-1 and says something that vaguely sounds like a Jack sarcasm, but it falls incredibly flat when it becomes apparent even to the hazed mind of Dr.-Multiple-PhD-but-incredibly-slowed-up-by-drugs Daniel Jackson, that this Jack doesn’t know them.

Which, of course, actually makes sense, since Jack is lying dead somewhere on the Tok’ra homeworld. Where Daniel left him. So he can’t be here, with the rest of SG-1.

Maybe, he thinks, looking from Sam back to Jack, he really is hallucinating. There was no submarine, no rescue, he’s slowly freezing to death and his subconscious decided the best was to ease him into a final death was to bring him back to Jack. He’s not sure where the submarine factors into this equation, but even he doesn’t understand his own subconscious all the time and maybe it was because somewhere in the depth of his mind he knows submarines belonged in the time of the Achilles.

If his subconscious was going to bring him Jack for his last moments, surely it wouldn’t be like this. There would be no searing, persistent pain in his leg; Jack would know who he was; they wouldn’t have an audience even of well-meaning SG-1 teammates, much less an entire crew of Submariners. Surely he wouldn’t torture himself like that. If this was an end-of-the-road dream, he thinks it should be something more like him and Jack, alone, somewhere with a big library and a well-stocked fishing hole.

Which means it’s probably not a hallucination of his own making. Maybe a nightmare hallucination brought on by some sort of Goa’uld device?

Daniel is vaguely aware, during the moments he tries to keep these slippery thoughts in line, of Cam trying to explain something to Jack and being brusquely ignored, while Jack moves around doing something behind him. 

Cam asks another question, to which Jack finally deigns to respond, and Daniel forces himself to focus, to look over at the second screen and see what everyone else is looking at behind his head. He knows what it is instantly, of course, though it’s not an angle he’s ever seen the Stargate from before. The whoosh is so ingrained in his memories he can almost hear it ringing in his head (behind the actual ringing – but he thinks that’s the drugs? Maybe the submarine sounds). Thankfully, Sam asks the question he can’t seem to get out, even though his brain demands his tongue speak the words. Because, damn it, Jack should be as familiar with that picture as the three of them. Even if he’s not their Jack, they have never encountered an alternate Jack that wasn’t somehow drawn into the Stargate program. More familiar than Cam, certainly, because even now Daniel’s willing to bet SG-1’s new commanding officer doesn’t have a fraction of the gate trips under his belt that Jack does.

Wait, astronaut?

That derails him again, and for a moment looking up at Sam he can see it, the iconic white spacesuit superimposed over his friend’s body and the light of excitement in her eyes that she gets when they find planets with science things on them. The marvels of engineering that went into space travel, marvels that occurred without any alien help or technology. He knows that once Sam had wanted to be an astronaut, before she was recruited to the Stargate program to sort out the pesky science details that turned his and Jack’s one-time Stargate excursion into a decade of SG-1 adventures.

Damn it, he has to focus. Shouldn’t the drugs be wearing off? He needs something to happen to trigger a nice adrenaline rush and speed that process up so he can help Sam explain.

He’s watching Sam, and he blinks her free of her hallucination-spacesuit and she’s just Sam again, in the desert BDU’s they’d all donned to go to Ba’al’s execution. They seem almost foreign on her now with her longer hair, she’s been growing it out again, she never did that when they were active in the field on a daily basis. He wonders if she knows something he doesn’t, about her next reassignment. Is she finally going to convince herself and Cam that she’s needed somewhere else in the program other than as a fulltime member of SG-1?

Focus, Daniel.

He catches a hint of something in her face as she says she’s not an astronaut, and he doesn’t have to see Jack’s face to know that went down about as well as a suggestion that not all Goa’uld are bad, or that they should pick up an extra mission instead of taking a weekend off to go to Minnesota.

Jack is saying something dismissive, shifting back towards the door, out of Daniel’s line of sight, and Daniel can’t stand it anymore.

(Can’t stand the thought of him walking out.)

“Actually, she’s telling the truth.” He interrupts, thinking of all the times he’s been able to insert himself before Jack can truly work up a head of steam about something, given them all a breather to work things out. Sam doesn’t look convinced that this is the best way to go about solving this issue but she looks away, clearly ready to see if Daniel can work any Jack-whispering magic to make this little confrontation go more smoothly.

“And who are you?” the words are a demand, but they’re also incredulous, like Jack can’t believe this random civilian person in a hospital bed would interrupt the military debriefing going on around him. It’s so...first-trip-through-the-gate-Jack that Daniel is startled into answering the question quite honestly, frowning at Jack as he stalks around to the foot of the bed to where he can finally get a good look at him.

“Daniel Jackson.” He’s stating the obvious, wondering if maybe this timeline’s Daniel has a different haircut, or grows a beard, or doesn’t wear glasses. Because Jack actually not knowing Daniel at all is not an option. “In the timeline where we come from, we’ve actually traveled to several hundred planets together.”

“’We’, as in you and…” Jack lets the words trail off with a frown.

Maybe, Daniel thinks, this timeline’s Daniel had never wanted to actually do any gate travel. Maybe they’re not close, he and Jack, because Daniel had stayed an Earth consultant. There had been timelines like that before. “Yeah,” he responds, more than a little stung, “In fact, in our timeline, I’m the closest thing you have to a best friend.” Because even in the circumstances where he hadn’t gone off-world as a full member of SG-1, he’d always been SG-1’s geek scientist, and all of the Jacks they’ve met have been in some way proprietary towards him in ways he’s always pretended to be offended by.

“Yeah,” Jack scoffs, and the fog clears with a horrible thrill of feeling he doesn’t want to identify when the rest of the man’s derisive statement hits home, “Yeah I’d buy that,” Jack says it with an eye roll, almost a sneer, and Daniel is aware that the pain in his chest might actually be worse right now than the pain in his leg. Jack doesn’t know him, at all, and the dismissiveness towards the idea that they’re even friends hurts so much it makes him desperate. Not all Jack’s and Daniel’s have been as close as his SG-1, but it has never been…this.

In his urgency to get some sort of acknowledgement from the man standing in front of him that will make sense, he starts throwing things out there that he definitely is not running through any sort of brain-to-mouth filter. “Okay. You’re from Minnesota,” he starts with but no, no no no, that’s too easy. That’s probably in his personnel file, common knowledge even. He grasps for something more personal, something not everyone knows, and lands on: “Eleven years ago, your son accidentally shot himself with a loaded 9mm he found in your closet…” He’s intending to then explain how shortly after he and Jack had gone through the Stargate the first time, with everything that meant, but he doesn’t have the chance.

Too late, he hears Sam’s sharp intake of breath, and then Jack is interrupting him, furious, grinding Daniel to silence. “Alright. Stop it.” In retrospect, that was the wrong thing to try, in this setting, and even his painkiller-addled brain knows it. “Stop it, right there. My kid is fine.” He – what? He can’t do anything but stare as Jack yells at him. “He’s at home, and he’s fine! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Somewhere in the part of his mind that knows they are in some actual trouble right now, he’s remembering some of Sam’s lectures about what she believes to be true about alternate timelines and other universes and paradoxes and theories, and thinking maybe he should go back to keeping his mouth shut. But most of what rational thought he can still conjure is trying to figure out what to do with the information that in whatever world they’re in, this world, Charlie isn’t dead. What does that mean for Jack? Is he still in black ops? Is he still – oh man, is he still married? Daniel’s never been clear what was the final nail in the nail of the coffin that houses Jack’s first marriage – the job, or the loss of their son. This is a Jack that Daniel doesn’t know, and that’s terrifying because he really though that no matter what, Jack would be an ally to them. A confused and reluctant ally, perhaps but he hadn’t really considered a world where things were so different that he and Sam (Jack’s science twins) wouldn’t be able to talk Jack around to their side when it mattered.

Over his head Sam is trying to smooth over Daniel’s blunder; however unintentional it was and no matter how sorry Daniel is now, has already blown Jack up. He’s yelling over her, and when he says ‘you people’ like that, Daniel thinks he might throw up. Leg that needs amputating aside, the pain of losing Jack all over again (and that’s not logical, he knows that, he knows that’s not what’s happening, but try to telling his stomach and his head that) is worse. And that’s a lie too. The organ that’s actually failing is located somewhere between his head and his stomach, and it feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest. There’s the adrenaline he was looking for earlier to clear the residual drug out of his system. Too little, too late.

“Jack, please –“ he tries again, and he’s aware that his voice isn’t quiet steady and his eyes are downcast. He can’t bear to have the look he knows is currently on Jack’s face be the last thing he remembers, even if the alternative is remembering him forever dying on the ground in the Tok’ra pyramid. Even Jack dying for them is a better final image than this complete rejection.

“And stop that!” Jack interrupts his plea sharply, silencing Daniel again, and Sam and Cameron are silent behind him. Jack turns in the small quarters to the door. Sam makes a final attempt to get him to listen, appealing to his military side instead of their relationship to him, but he ignores her. After he stalks out, they are still and silent, and can hear his instructions to the submariner outside the door; all pretty reasonable for people in their situation until the end. He has to know they can hear him, when he calls them ‘freaks’ and stalks off down the hall.

Their Jack has a lot of slightly derogatory nicknames that are actually a form of affection, but maybe that makes it even harsher when he means it.

Left together, they have a couple of hours to themselves. Cameron and Sam discuss what should be said and told and done, but Daniel can’t bring himself to participate in the discussion. He nods and responds when they force the issue, but mostly he pretends that the pain and the medication are getting to him again.

They’re not fooled. They know him too well. Sam’s holding his hand when she’s perched on the side of his bed, and for a while Cam’s resting his hand on his shoulder. The friendly contact helps, and they know he’s listening, even if he’s not participating.

Eventually, they all have to sleep. Exhaustion sets in hard, and they have no idea what’s going to happen next. There’s a single chair in the corner that Cameron collapses in, and Sam lays down next to Daniel on the medical cot; god knows they’ve shared closer and less comfortable quarters, and he welcomes the idea of not being alone. He sleeps, but it isn’t restful.

He dreams of his Jack, but with this Jack’s words and actions still haunting him every bit as much as the fact that their Jack is probably dead, they’re not pleasant dreams.

He doesn’t bother to speak to them when they’re transferred off of the submarine into the custody of some distinctly unfriendly looking people, but they can see him watching them go.

There’s a short plane flight, but the people accompanying them discourage anything but the most basic and banal conversation. They’re separated from there, keep isolated. He doesn’t know where Sam and Cameron are, but his own interrogations start before he can even get out of the hospital bed after they amputate his leg, so he doesn’t really want to think about their treatment. Presumably, people recovering from major surgery get more consideration than healthy military personnel; he just hopes it’s not too bad.

He doesn’t have an exact idea of how long they are questioned, because he doesn’t really know how many days he was out for surgery and recovery and from there he is moved eventually to a room without windows and all indicators of time passing (sleep times, meals) are under the many different interrogator’s control, but he has some idea that it’s been forever (when he finds out it was only five days, that’s both a comfort and a new low).

Sometimes he misses the hospital room, because it had a window.

Sometimes, he daydreams that a friendly face will come and actually listen and take them seriously. He can only assume that his teammates are being asked the same thing over and over and over, like he is. He’s repeated it so many times, it starts to lose meaning. He refuses to keep repeating it, directing them to watch their own damn tape.

It’s the worst when he dreams of Jack.

He thinks it might be the worst when they do, finally, FINALLY get a friendly face, someone who believes them, but then he learns that believing and helping are not the same.

 They’re mostly left to their own devices on the flight away from the detention center – which had apparently been in Alaska – back to mainland USA. There’s a complete of military personnel, of course, and they would probably have been prevented from making any sort of plans or plots, but they don’t even try. It’s all caught up to them, and after having spent the last week trying to convince absolutely anyone to listen to them they are speechless and overwhelmed.

He holds Sam’s hand, for a while, because he thinks it might be comforting for one of them. He’s too numb to draw any comfort from it, but maybe she isn’t.

If he didn’t have such an excellent memory, he wouldn’t remember every caveat of the contract that is read to him before he’s given an address and left to hail a cab with money he was given, because he certainly isn’t really listening to the person who reads it to him. He doesn’t have a way to contact Sam or Cameron, and it turns out that “prior authorization” for them to meet up isn’t likely to be given. He manages to get one phone call, around the holidays, but he knows it’s being monitored and what would they say anyway? None of them have been able to start new lives here.

Not lives that mean anything.

Daniel still dreams about Jack, and as time passes, sometimes they’re even good dreams.

He tries to write this timeline’s Jack letters, but they’re returned to sender with no real indication of whether his keepers are intercepting them, or Jack is sending them back. It seems a little petty, even for Jack, to return them instead of throwing them away…but he remembers Jack’s voice when he said his son had died and he reminds himself that this isn’t his Jack.

He writes the letters anyway. They’re almost like his journal, which he won’t let himself keep here. He considers burning them when they come back. He has them memorized, after all.

 They’ve burnt through Plans A, B, and gone on to C in fine form, SG-1 style, as if they haven’t spent a year languishing at opposites ends of the country. He stops counting after that, but he does get the vague idea that the people in this timeline might be slightly more receptive to their warnings after this.

He stops counting plans after they reach Russia.

It seems too easy, for them to be able to skip back through Ba’al’s time machine and fix everything, but he lets himself feel hope for the first time in a long time. Teal’c doesn’t know them any more than this timeline’s Jack had, but Sam doesn’t fumble the initial negotiations with him the way Daniel had fumbled them with Jack, and this time he knows how to back her up, instead of send them all down in flames. 

It’s somehow, after everything, still a surprise when he’s caught by the staff blast. All these years and how he hasn’t managed to be killed is the better question, but he actually thought maybe he’d make it through this disaster. He’d even started to ponder, in the very back recesses of his mind, if it is time to actually retire from active duty. 

His last thought is for Jack. His Jack. Because now they will either both be dead, or if Sam and Cameron pull it off, perhaps they will both live. He can apologize for all of the times he’s died on Jack, because now that he’s been on the other side he understands why Jack was always so upset about it.

 Jack is irreverent as ever waiting for the extraction of Ba’al, and Daniel positions himself with several human and Jaffa buffers between them on purpose. It’s not that he’s not sympathetic, but he thinks they should show a little more respect for the Tok’ra ceremony and he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from scolding the General in front of everyone if he stood beside him. Better to take the distance now, and get up close and personal…later. 

It’s never been a comfortable thing to watch, but there’s a sense of satisfaction when it’s over. A sense of closure.

Until a few weeks later, when he receives a packet of letters in his own handwriting from a lawyer who says his firm was instructed to deliver them on this day and year. He does burn them when he’s done, this time, because he knows he probably shouldn’t have sent them in the first place. Daniel’s actually a little impressed with his past self for throwing caution to the wind and doing it anyway – clearly more influence from Jack than from Sam.

That thought makes him smile.

But when he leaves the base for a long weekend at Jack’s cabin, he knows there’s one person he will tell, and he’ll probably even make that apology for all the times he scared years of Jack’s life away, and all the times he probably will in the future.