They’re not speaking. 

Jack had ignored it for about a week, still feeling stubbornly confident that he had been right to shoot the replicator girl, and assuming that once they gained a little distance from the incident, Daniel would get over it also and admit that Jack had just been doing what had to be done. 

But he’s started to understand that something is different this time. As he thawed, his own frustration with Daniel fading, Jack had slowly realized that Daniel was just drawing further and further away. 

Their team hasn’t seemed to notice that anything is wrong - Daniel is playing the part of his normal self under the Mountain and out in the Field admirably, with skills Jack never imagined he had. The archaeologist says the right thing, makes the right jokes, smiles and laughs at the right times, he’s even shared a tent with Jack like they always have, without once causing Sam or Teal’c to even bat an eyelash. 

Nobody else has noticed the difference, but it’s all Jack can think about. His partner doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t argue passionately or fight for what he believes is right. He doesn’t ask for extra time to look at interesting things or share secret looks with Jack with laughter brimming just under the surface. He’s unfailingly pleasant to Jack but never looks him in the eye. He stays just out of reach of the casual touches that have become so commonplace between them. 

He hasn’t returned to Jack’s house while Jack was home, but he must have slipped in and out one day when Jack wasn’t home, because this week the colonel noticed a few key sentimental things that had migrated to his place are missing; somehow, the fact that he just left behind everything else he’d accumulated at Jack’s place over the years just highlights the missing items more poignantly. 

The one time Jack brings himself to go to Daniel’s apartment, mostly ready to try and fix, the door’s locked and Daniel doesn’t answer. Jack bangs on the door the third time and adds a growling demand, but when one of Daniel’s neighbors opens their door and leans out, glaring suspiciously, he leaves. On the way out he checks - Daniel’s car is still in its spot and the lights are on; Daniel had been choosing not to let him in. 

When he sat down and had a long think about it, a sober and uncomfortable one, he knows that he has no one to blame but himself. Daniel had warned him several times that he wasn’t happy with how Jack was treating him; he’d gone well out of his comfort zone to stand up for himself (instead of just everyone around him) and Jack had listened, claimed to understand, made empty promises, and then just gone on doing and saying the same things. He doesn’t need Daniel to say any of it again - he can replay their conversations and interactions in his head again and again, and he knows exactly where things had gone wrong. 

Jack just doesn’t know how to undo anything he’s done. If he were Daniel, he wouldn’t give him another chance either. Jack is shocked, actually, that Daniel hasn’t tried to transfer off of Jack’s team entirely. Of course, he can’t exactly tell the General why he wants a change - the first and only time the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy has benefited Jack - Daniel is stuck with him as long as it takes for Jack to figure out how to make things right. 

Jack misses him more than he thought possible. He’s grown used to having Daniel comfortably ensconced at his house, and the empty rooms echo at him. He has to stop keeping alcohol in the house because the urge to get drunk each lonely night so he doesn’t have to think and feel is familiar. Danny had pulled him out of this state the first time, and he pulls himself out inch by inch this time because his Daniel deserves better from him. 

After many nights of wishing he had the beer to help him along to blissful sleep, Jack decides that if Daniel won’t talk to him and take his apology, perhaps he can prove that he’s seen the error of his ways through his actions. He resolves not just to listen to Daniel in the field but to actively seek his opinions and act on his advice. 

Though he knows the thought is somewhat unfair, right now, he’s thinking that if he hadn’t been trying so hard to make Daniel happy, they wouldn’t be in this situation. He would never have left Daniel alone in any other circumstances, but their archaeologist had claimed he had nothing to offer on a tour of a city of this level of technological advancement, and he had begged to be left behind to try and talk to the scientists about the bomb they were building. Jack had known that that was code for “tell them about our history and the theory of the cold war and why this is a terrible idea”, but he’d given in anyway. 

“It’s a lethal dose, sir.” Sam’s words are echoing in his head. Staring down at the blank piece of paper in front of him, his gut clenches again; radiation is nothing to mess around with, and Sam wouldn’t have said that if she wasn’t sure, but he just can’t allow himself to believe it. Daniel has pulled through so-called fatal injuries before. 

They won’t allow this time to be any different. 

The General comes through into the conference room and they all start to stand, but he dismisses them to sit immediately. “As you were.” Jack sinks back into his seat, and his teammates follow suit silently around him.  “Dr. Fraiser tells me there's nothing more we can do for Dr. Jackson at the moment. In the meantime, tell me what happened.”

Janet had kicked them out of the infirmary. Really, she’d threatened to have Jack physically removed if he didn’t leave and let them get Daniel decontaminated and started on whatever treatment they had available to them. Jack hasn’t spoken since he stalked out, and neither Teal’c nor Sam has bothered to offer any platitudes. He can’t bring himself to speak now, either, and so he gives Carter a little go-ahead gesture. 

They lay out the situation as matter-of-factly as possible, from their arrival on Kelowna to the discovery that the Kelownans were building a bomb. He tries not to sound unhappy about how well Jonas and Daniel had gotten along, but he’s a little bitter about it because Daniel’s enjoyment of the other geek’s company had been a huge contributing factor to why Jack agreed to leave him at the research facility with Jonas Quinn. If he had listened to his head instead of his feelings, Daniel would have been with them in the city when the experiment went bad.

(Intrusive, insistent logic reminds him that in that case, they might all have blown up, but guilt overwhelms that logic.)

That guilt crests again, overwhelmingly, as Sam explains that they weren’t there when the incident happened. The anger is hot on guilt’s heels, as Jack remembers shouting down the Kelownan officials who were trying to take Daniel into custody as SG-1 rushed him towards the Gate, insisting that Daniel - their Daniel! - had been sabotaging the research project. He jumps into Daniel’s defense here reflexively, before Sam can explain what the Kelownans accused, even though the General is the last person he needs to defend Danny too. If anything, George Hammond has more respect for Daniel as a person than any of them. “Still, we don’t know.”

“Colonel,” the General says, impatiently, “what do you know?”

Jack looks a little helplessly back at Sam. “Sir, they're claiming Daniel tried to sabotage their research.” Her tone makes it clear that she thinks it’s a load of crap, but even hearing it out loud puts Jack’s hackles back up. 

“They're lying, General.”

The General is silent, looking around the table at each of them. Teal’c chimes in with, “I also do not believe this to be true.”

“They let us bring him back home on compassionate grounds,” Sam says quietly, though this is a vast understatement of the shouting and threatening Jack had done when they tried to hold Daniel under arrest, and the belligerent way that the Kelownans had let them go only under duress. He appreciates her subtlety. 

“The fact is,” he snarks, “they just didn't want us around there anymore.”

Carter, ever the good soldier, adds, “But they are demanding that he be returned to face the charges... if he survives.”

Which isn’t happening. Over Jack’s rotting corpse. Daniel is going to survive, and he’s never stepping foot on that godforsaken planet again. If the Kelownans want him, they’ll have to come to get him from behind the weight of the United States Airforce.

“What is Dr. Jackson saying happened?” The General interrupts Jack’s dark musings, and he and Sam look at each other, silent for a long moment, because this is the sticky part. None of them were there, and Daniel hasn’t exactly said anything in his own defense. They know the Kelownan story is a complete and utter lie, but they have no idea what happened and for whatever reason, so far Daniel hasn’t been very forthcoming. 

“Colonel?” the General snaps, impatiently, and Jack taps his pen on the paper in front of him a few times before looking up. 

“He hasn’t really said, sir. He’s already collapsed once from the radiation and it was very chaotic. We thought it would be best to get him into Doctor Fraiser’s hands as soon as possible.”

He holds George’s soul-piercing, I’m-not-buying-it gaze for a long minute, and finally, the General gives a single nod. “Well as soon as the Doctor will let you see him, you better get his side of the story. Dismissed.”

Janet takes one look at his solemn expression and wordlessly gestures him back to the last infirmary bed; Daniel’s usual spot when he spends time here. Feeling a little like he’s walking to someone’s execution, Jack meanders back to where Daniel is sitting up on the bed, staring down at his bandaged hands, and stops at the foot of the bed, clearing his throat.

“Hey,”

“Hey.” Daniel looks up, and there’s a distant expression in his eyes that makes the bile rise in the back of Jack’s throat. He always looks extra young in the stark white scrubs Janet keeps for infirmary patients. Feeling restless, Jack shoves his hands in his pockets. 

“So. They got you all deactivated.”

“Uh, yeah,” Daniel’s brows knit together and he frowns and then reaches up to touch his temples like he sometimes does when he’s got a migraine starting. “I’m not a threat to anyone else now.” To prevent himself from turning and walking out, to go drown his panic in whatever bottle he can find, Jack drags a chair to the side of the bed and sits down. Daniel swings his legs over the side of the bed and turns to face him, still looking far away and a little strung out. “Of course none of that matters, when it comes to radiation. I’ve already got a headache, and Janet says the nausea will start with a few minutes. She’s already got me on an IV.”

Jack’s eyes find the mass of tubes and wires he’s attached to and he thinks in denial, but you look fine. It must show in his face, because Daniel keeps talking, rattling off the symptoms of radiation poisoning as if he’s memorized it from the textbook. He probably has. “The nausea will be followed by tremors, convulsions, and something called ataxia. Surface tissue, brain tissue, and internal organs will inflame and degrade, I believe that's called necrosis.” Daniel’s refusing to look directly at him, eyes sliding away almost as soon as they lift each time in a classic sign of Daniel not saying what he’s truly feeling. He’s laying out the sequence of his own death in a matter-of-fact, emotionless tone that makes Jack want to punch something. “Now based on the dose of radiation I got, all that will happen in the next ten to fifteen hours, and if I don't drown in my own fluids first, I will bleed to death, and there is no medical treatment to prevent that.”

He looks up ever so briefly right at the end, but he doesn’t hold Jack’s gaze. The colonel has to swallow hard. “Maybe not that we know of.” They have allies. Powerful, advanced races who all genuinely like Doctor Daniel Jackson. Someone will know how to fix this. 

“Jack, we don't go running to our off-world allies every time an individual's life is at stake.” They do when it’s Daniel. Jack lifts a finger, intended to say so, but Daniel pins him with a solid look for the first time and plows over his half-formed objection, “And don't go telling me that this is any different, because my life is no more valuable than anybody else's.”

Daniel looks away first when Jack doesn’t respond. Jack knows Danny won’t accept the idea that his life is, indeed, more important than most everyone else’s around here. Daniel knows that Jack will ultimately do whatever he thinks is necessary, and that won’t include not asking everyone possible for help. They argue silently about it, and Jack figures he wins when Daniel looks away first.

Changing the subject, he asks, “What happened?”

“It doesn't matter,” Daniel scoffs.

“Yes, it does.” He keeps his tone low but very firm, and it draws Daniel’s startled eyes back up. “You didn't try to sabotage anything.” Daniel would have argued to his very last breath, until Jack physically dragged him back to the gate, to try and convince them that the bomb was a bad idea. But he doesn’t have a sneaky bone in his body, and he wouldn’t have solved the problem by sabotaging their project.

Jack might have, but that’s a different story altogether. Everyone already knows that Daniel’s a better man than Jack O’Neill.

“There was an accident.” Daniel looks up at him from beneath his lashes, clearly already knowing that Jack’s going to be less than impressed with his vague response. But he looks and sounds so...discouraged...that Jack can’t find it in himself to press the issue. Daniel never did deal well when other people failed to live up to his high expectations for them. Jack certainly has failed him plenty of times in the past, and he knows that quiet, self-sabotaging, don’t-make-a-fuss-of-your-hurt tone. The General can come to try to resist Daniel’s puppy-dog eyes himself.  “I guess the scientists figured the government would hold them responsible. I guess they figured it was easier to blame me.”

“And you're okay with this?” Just because he knows what’s going through Daniel’s head doesn’t mean he hates it any less. 

“No!” A quick glance up from those bright blue eyes, a flash of indignation that warms Jack’s heart, but then Daniel’s staring down at his lap again. “But there's not much I can do about that.”

“Yes,” he tries to keep the growl out of his voice, he does, but the tone of giving up that Daniel’s already adopted is making him mad.  “There is!”

“If they really want to blame me, denying it isn't going to change anything.” There’s a certain amount of truth to that, but it just grinds Jack’s gears for them to blame Daniel for their own scientist’s overconfidence and mistakes. But Daniel’s not done, and Jack gets a little bit more insight into what happened while they toured the city. Daniel must have made some progress on the translations before everything went to hell. “Ten thousand years ago, a Goa'uld tried the same experiments that they're trying and he nearly blew the entire planet to bits. I tried telling them that, they wouldn't listen. They're gonna build that bomb and nothing we say is gonna stop them.”

This is why Daniel isn’t fighting harder. Jack can see it - the guilt of not being able to convince them to stop, of not being able to save all of those people, is like an iron cage around Daniel’s heart. He can’t bring himself to fight the blame of the Kelownans, because he feels like he deserves their disgust for failing to protect them from themselves.

“You told them. That’s all you can do,” he says sternly; quietly. Daniel doesn’t respond or even look at him. There’s nothing Jack can do to lift that guilt. When they were together, before he shredded what was left of their relationship, he could have chased away Daniel’s guilt. But even if his archaeologist was physically well enough for such activities, which he clearly isn’t, (Jack’s been watching him get paler and shorter of breath even as they’re sitting there), he doesn’t have the right to do anything like that anymore. Once, Daniel had trusted him with his heart, and his soul, and his guilt, but Jack had burned it all down. 

Standing, he takes a chance and reaches out to rest his hand on top of Daniel’s head, burying his fingers in the familiar soft brown hair. “Whatever happens to Kelowna is not your fault, Daniel.” There’s a quiet noise from the man in front of him that isn’t quite disagreement but certainly isn't a resounding agreement. Jack gives the hair beneath his hand just the slightest affectionate ruffle and then has to clear his throat to say gruffly, “Get some rest. You need your strength. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

When Daniel doesn’t protest that Jack doesn’t need to come back, he realizes that Daniel honestly believes he’s going to die.

Jack’s world feels like it’s about to implode at any minute, he’s walking around only half-aware of what is going on around him, but everyone else is moving forward. He drags himself away from the infirmary only when he’s summoned by the General. Daniel is asleep, but his periods of being awake and lucid are growing shorter and less frequent, and it takes the order from the General to remove him from their boy’s bedside. 

Carter is presenting her findings about the immense value of the new element, but he can’t get excited about her science-speak when he knows its discovery might have come at the cost of Daniel’s life. They haven’t been able to reach the Asgard, Jacob and the other Tok’ra are incommunicado, and the General refuses to try and retrieve the one sarcophagus they have a location for. Daniel had defended that decision, passionate about not wanting anyone to die to try and save him, even though he could barely keep his eyes open to make the argument. 

He’s drawn out of his dark thoughts when the General says, “by now their government believes Dr. Jackson was trying to sabotage their research.”

“It's a lie,” he protests, “they're using Daniel as a scapegoat.”

Hammond is calm even in the face of his anger. In almost any other circumstance, Jack would be admiring his restraint. Now, it just makes him madder. “Still, you said he was vocal in his disapproval of their project before the accident. None of this bodes well for diplomatic relations.”

“Why are you talking about diplomatic relations?” he can hear his voice rising. “This is Daniel's life.”

Sir, I know how you feel because I feel the same way,” Sam tries to talk him down, and he can’t help but wish she knew how wrong she was. Sam is a good friend of Daniel’s, but she doesn’t feel a fraction for him what Jack does. Still, like Daniel, Sam is a better person than Jack. She can see past the value of one life to what the new element might be able to do for all of Earth. “But I cannot stress enough how valuable this element could be.”

“I will draft a letter to the Kelownan leaders,” the General begins.

“General,” he’s interrupting, something he gets away with only because George has a soft spot for all of SG-1 that becomes a black hole of leeway for Daniel,  “you cannot capitulate to these people! They are lying bastards!”

“Their government doesn't know the truth.”

“So, we tell them!” Jack casts for any other option, even knowing already that even if the General agreed, Daniel would never agree to go back and throw the Kelownan scientists under the bus just to clear his name. He has a healthy-sized skepticism of the trustworthiness of government entities, and he’s already made it clear to Jack that he doesn’t trust this one to do right by its citizens. If clearing his name means putting others in danger, he just flat-out will never agree to do it.

“They will have little reason to believe us over their own people, especially when what we're forcing them to admit would be a major embarrassment.” George is being incredibly patient, with a calm response to Jack’s anger. In the very back of his mind, Jack makes a mental note to bump up the quality of booze he gifts the man at Christmas. He really could not ask for a better commanding officer. “It will put them at too great a disadvantage in further negotiations.”

“Sir! You cannot admit Daniel is guilty.” Jack could never live with that.

The look Hammond gives him makes Jack feel about 13 years old again. “Give me some credit, Jack. I will tell them that we did not order any such action and do not condone its obvious intentions, both of which are true. Hopefully, we can lay the groundwork for further diplomatic negotiations which will eventually result in an amicable trade for the naquadria. I'm ordering you to deliver the letter.”

He goes to the planet, and he technically carries out his orders. He delivers Hammond’s letter. And then he goes to see Jonas Quinn, because Daniel had seen something in his Kelownan counterpart. Jack just sees another government lackey, but he takes a leap of faith and chooses to trust Daniel’s judgment. 

There’s no way Daniel spent several days with this man and didn’t make an impression. If he’s got anything like their linguist’s moral fortitude, Daniel taking the blame for any of this won’t sit right. Jack just needs to plant the seed of doubt and finish what his best friend started. Lay out the plain truth in a frank way that Daniel would never have been able to do before Jonas had seen firsthand what the radiation did.

He tells Jonas that the bomb won’t work unless they use it. He can see the horror in the boy’s eyes, having just watched two of the scientists die so painfully, as he imagines the people who would die that way if his government uses the bomb. Task completed, he heads home. Back to Daniel.

When he finally makes it back to the infirmary, Daniel is completely covered in bandages. Even his face is wrapped up like a mummy; only his mouth, eyes, and fingertips peek out of the bandages. Every breath is labored and loud, and the many monitors show readings that aren’t nearly as high or as steady as he knows they should be. 

Jack doesn’t want to see Daniel like this. He almost walks out, despite his promise to come back when he got home. But Daniel’s quiet voice rises from the sea of white bandages.

“Hey, Jack.” It’s soft and full of understanding. Right then, he knows that Daniel would forgive him if he walked away right now. He wouldn’t hold it against him if he couldn’t stand it. Ironically, that’s what gives him the strength to stay.

If he was dying and afraid, Daniel Jackson would never walk away from him, even though Jack has given him every reason to hate him.

“Hey,” he returns, and then very slowly lowers himself into the chair someone has left next to the bed.  “I uh, I just wanted to…” He has to look away, blink back tears he refuses to shed. He has no right to make this any harder on Daniel than it already is. He doesn’t even have any claim on him anymore other than friendship, and even that is tenuous. “I'm really bad at this.”

“Yes, you are.” Daniel agrees with him, but Jack can hear the smile in his voice. He’s teasing Jack. He’s trying to lighten the mood. Daniel Jackson is dying, painfully and fully aware, and he’s trying to make Jack O’Neill feel better.  “I hear that Sam thinks the naquadria might be an important discovery.”

“Yeah, apparently. If we can get some.” Daniel nods, eyes closing. He can’t quite seem to keep them open. Janet had already warned Jack that he probably was only going to get a couple of minutes at a time of awareness - the number of drugs she has him on just to keep him in a modicum of an illusion of comfort would probably put down an elephant. “For what it's worth, I tried to get your point across to Jonas.”

“He's in a tough position,” Daniel rasps out. He’ll have forgiven Jonas Quinn for not standing up for him, just like he’s forgiven Jack every stupid, bone-headed, bastard thing he’d ever done, right up until the end of their relationship.

Jack leans forward. “You're not gonna take the fall for this. I don't care what's at stake.”

“Why do you care?”

It sounds defeated. Resigned. Jack would trade places with him in a heartbeat, and he’d agree to suffer this pain that Daniel is suffering for the rest of eternity if he could take back everything he’s ever done that contributed to this moment, where Daniel Jackson does not believe that he would do anything for him.

That he loves him.

That he, Daniel Jackson, is worthy of that kind of unconditional love. 

Jack thinks of every time when he could have supported Daniel and lifted him up, and instead, he let his demons drag them down. Even time when he questioned him, second-guessed him, humiliated him, and Daniel forgave him. When he pushed so hard that even Daniel had had enough, and Daniel left him, and in turn was left with nothing.

Jack would change all of it, in a heartbeat, but he cannot. But even more so, he cannot bear that Daniel might die here tonight without understanding that as stupid and flawed as Jack is, he loves him with every fiber of his black soul. 

The words choke him because he can’t say them. He can’t take Daniel into his arms because his skin is blistering and falling off under the bandages, but under the cameras of the base, he can’t declare his love. He flounders, mouth open, trying to find the words.

He can’t give him the personal declaration of love that he deserves, and that will be a regret he already knows will haunt him until the end of his own miserable life. But what he can do is offer him the professional respect and admiration he has always stubbornly, stupidly kept in the silence of his own brain. He told Daniel he didn’t trust him, and that was the end of their relationship. It was also the biggest lie he ever told.

“Because, despite the fact that you've been a terrific pain in the ass for the last five years, I may have, might have, uh, grown to admire you a little, I think.” 

He stammers through the admission, hating himself for how poor it is, but his efforts do not go unrewarded. Daniel manages to open his eyes, looking right at Jack, fighting through the pain...and he smiles. The first time he’s really smiled since they came back through the Gate, and it’s warm and true. The way he used to smile at Jack all the time, before. 

“Now that's touching.” Still teasing, holding Jack’s eyes; his gaze says all the things he doesn’t have the strength to say. I forgive you. I love you. I don’t want you to worry about me.

“This will not be your last act on the official record.” Jack bites out, but he knows that Daniel can see the things he doesn’t say, too. The promise that he did respect him, that he did love him, and that with those feelings comes a refusal to let anyone sully his name, even to save the world. Daniel wouldn’t approve, but he doesn’t have the strength to argue, because his eyes are slipping shut again, the sedatives dragging him back off to dreamland.

He stays at Daniel’s side after that. Though the younger man only wakes for a few moments every couple of hours and becomes increasingly less coherent, Jack’s presence when he does awaken has an obvious calming effect on him. Each time he lapses back into unconsciousness, it takes Jack longer to fight back the helpless tears of anguish and anger. 

The Daniel Jackson effect is still going strong outside of that sterile room, though, and Jack isn’t really surprised when Jonas shows up, bearing what he could steal of the naquadria. Now, finally, they get the truth of why Daniel is dying. What he would never have told them himself -  that when everyone else was fleeing to safety, worried only about their own survival, including the leader of the Kelownan experiment, Danny had run straight towards danger. Someone had acknowledged the bomb might explode, probably wiping out most of the country if not the planet. Daniel could have fled with the leader, radioed the team immediately, and they most likely would have made it through the Stargate to safety. 

Instead, he had jumped through a glass window into a room filled with radiation that had already appeared to have killed four scientists, to try and save a country full of people he didn’t know from Adam. 

Even after that, he wouldn’t even admit that’s what he had done. He would have died letting them believe it was just some wrong place, wrong time sort of accident. 

Jack has to walk away, and when he leaves his office again, it’s going to take days to repair the things he has destroyed and try to sort through all the papers he tore up and left strewn across the floor. None of their allies have come to save Daniel, and they don’t have anything to fix this.

Jacob Carter arrives in the eleventh hour. He doesn’t bring a lot of optimism, no easy cure that Earth simply doesn’t have, but he does bring some hope because he brings Selmak, and the ability to use the healing device with much greater skill than Sam. Jack and the General brief him as best they can on the way to Daniel’s side, and then Jack settles at the back of the room and watches.

Selmak says they won’t be able to bring him back entirely, but Jack is with Sam. Even Daniel in some physically diminished capacity is better than no Daniel at all. They need him. He is the soul of the SGC, and without him, they risk being much less than they could be. The Asgard have said they have potential as a race, but everything they’ve ever given Jack credit for has been because Daniel made him better.

In one long blink of his eyes, he finds himself in the Gate room, with Daniel standing unbandaged and whole before him. “Daniel?” he queries in faint surprise; everything is glowing slightly and there’s a strange woman in a pale suit standing on the ramp.

“Yeah.”

Jack looks over at the woman again, then back to Daniel who is staring at him, mouth open and eyes wide. Somehow, despite the utter helplessness he was feeling moments ago in the medical ward, Jack feels light and very calm now. “Did you want something?”

“Yeah.” Daniel frowns, and then his jaw clenches stubbornly and he lifts his chin just a little. “Tell Jacob to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm ready to move on.” 

“You just giving up?” Jack wants to scream, to yell, to fight, but the strange calmness keeps him from doing any of that. 

That….and he has no right to keep Daniel here. He knows that he has given his partner every reason to want to give up and move on. He can imagine a future where Daniel is stuck on a cane, with a wheelchair, left on a ventilator. Unable to explore the galaxy or even the archaeological finds here on Earth. Losing his strength and vitality and purpose. Unable to articulate all of the words he has jumbled up inside his brilliant oversized brain.

No. They have no right to heal him if they cannot make him truly whole. If he does not want to return to his potentially ruined body. 

“No.” Daniel’s eyes go a little soft, and he gives Jack the tiniest hesitant smile. “No, I'm not giving up, believe me.” Trust me, Jack. 

He looks over at the woman on the ramp, and Jack follows his gaze. While they watch, she changes into a familiar glowing ball of energy, and disappears into the ether, leaving behind an open wormhole where before there was just the empty Gate framework.

“You remember Oma?” Daniel asks, wrinkling his nose and giving Jack a look of still slightly embarrassed consternation that Jack can’t help but find overwhelmingly endearing. Daniel’s not still guilty about the last time they saw this glowing Oma being, because they’d been in a better place then and Jack had taken care of that guilt, but he’s embarrassed that it had gotten him spanked. For almost five years he willingly sought out discipline as a form of guilt relief at Jack’s hands, and here he is about to die, and he’s still embarrassed about it.

It’s just….so Daniel. “Sure,” Jack chokes out, and he knows there’s a slight waver in his voice. 

“I think I can do more this way.” There are tears in Daniel’s eyes, and the hardened colonel can feel a corresponding prickle behind his lids. He tilts his head, but he can’t form any words. Daniel will understand the unspoken - Are you sure? 

“It's what I want,” Daniel insists, biting his lip. “I have to go now. Everything's gonna be fine.” Who is he reassuring? Himself or Jack? Jack needs it. He’s not ready to let go. He had committed to fixing things. He’d been allowing himself to dream again of getting Danny to forgive him and growing old together. Retiring from the Stargate and splitting their time between hanging out at the cabin and jetting around the world to all of Daniel’s favorite exotic places. “Please, Jack,” Daniel whispers, “Tell Jacob to stop.”

It’s what he wants. Too little, too late, but the ultimate sign that Jack has changed, can respect Daniel in all ways, is to do as he’s asking him to now. He blinks again, and they’re back in the infirmary, the whirring hum of the healing device still powered up in Jacob’s hands. 

“Jacob,” he says, and though his voice is low, everyone looks his way. “Stop.”

“Are you serious?” Jake looks flabbergasted. 

Jack can’t believe it himself, but he remembers Daniel’s plea. Please, Jack. He nods once at Jacob. “It's what he wants.”

The Tok’ra looks around, but he doesn’t find anyone willing to contradict Jack. Even though they all knew that Jack and Daniel had been having some disagreements lately, Jack had always been Daniel’s next of kin from the moment he stepped back through the Gate after Abydos. They don’t like it any more than Jack does, but they trust him even now to know what Daniel would want. He has always been the expert in Doctor Daniel Jackson. Jacob looks at Janet again and snaps, “Someone else want to tell me what to do?”

Janet is crying, face crumpled, but she doesn’t give Jacob what he wants. “Just let him go,” Jack says quietly, and with one last look over at the colonel, Jacob gives in and the device goes dead. On the bed, Danny exhales once and the machine flatlines. “Colonel?!” Janet exclaims, horrified, but before Jack second-guesses himself, Daniel starts to glow. A bright orb just like Oma Desala rises from his body and ascends towards the ceiling, all eyes in the room transfixed by its beauty and the calm serenity they feel in its presence.

And then he’s back in the slightly blurry gate room, Daniel standing before him glowing even brighter than before. He’s openly crying, the tears making silent trails down his face. “I'm gonna miss you guys,” he says quietly.

“Yeah,” Jack forces himself to smile. He can give this to Daniel after everything - he can make this peaceful. If this is death, and ascension isn’t real, he can make it nice. Even if it breaks his own heart. “You too.”
“Thank you,” Danny whispers, swallows, and gives him that sweet little smile that Jack has been missing for months. I forgive you, that smile says, I love you. I’m sorry. It’ll be okay. “For everything.” 

“So…” Jack can’t say ‘goodbye’. If he says the words, acknowledges it, he won’t be able to go on without Daniel. “What?” he says instead, barely audible, “see you around?”

“I don't know,” Daniel says, but it’s in a voice filled with childlike wonder, as if he just realized this was happening. The same look he gets when he’s presented with a challenging translation or a good puzzle. He turns away from Jack and walks up the ramp, to the open wormhole. Right before he can step through, Jack can’t help it. 

“Hey,” he calls out, and Daniel turns back. Jack knows if he said ‘don’t go’ right now, Daniel would try to stay. He would try to stay, and he would probably die. They both know Selmak hadn’t been making any progress with the healing device. Even if he can prolong Daniel’s death, he won’t be able to bring him fully back. Instead of begging him to stay, Jack forces himself to ask, “…where are you going?”

“I don't know,” Daniel says again, but he’s pleased. Off on another adventure. He gives Jack one more smile, and then he walks through the Gate without looking back again. He disappears, and Jack is back in the infirmary with his body, hoping desperately that it wasn’t all a hallucination.