Open Windows

Open Windows

Jackjunkie

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. This story may not be posted anywhere without the consent of the authors.

Daniel Jackson emerged from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex to a view of the sky streaked vermilion by the setting sun. He paused a moment, filling his lungs with the fresh mountain air, before threading his way through the parking lot. Daniel felt tired but content. The debriefing was over and he was free to go home to a hot bath and a comfortable bed.

Being held captive in Nem’s undersea dwelling and subjected to the alien’s memory scanning device had taken their toll. Daniel was exhausted - physically, mentally, and emotionally. Despite the difficult and painful nature of the mission, he was glad he’d been able to provide an answer regarding the fate of Nem’s mate. Even knowing she was dead had to be better than unending uncertainty. Daniel lived every minute of every day with uncertainty gnawing at him... never knowing, always wondering where Sha’re was, what was happening to her.

He pushed away the hurt, so familiar by now that it was becoming an old friend, and turned his thoughts again to the mission’s outcome. At least he had avoided the death his co-workers had all believed in, due to the false memories that Nem had implanted in their minds.

"Have a good evening, Dr. Jackson."

The words brought him out of his reverie. Blinking, he realized he’d almost walked right past General Hammond, who was in the act of opening his car door.

"Oh uh, thank you. You too, General." The blue eyes widened as they slid past the base commander and noted the window of the driver’s side door. "Oh no, did you have an accident?" He nodded at the edge of broken glass along the window’s bottom.

Hammond hesitated, then slowly answered the question. "Not exactly. Colonel O’Neill smashed it with a hockey stick."

"Wh-what?!" Daniel’s look of astonishment grew. "Jack smashed your window? On purpose? Even Jack’s not that crazy!"

Hammond directed a serious look at the young scientist. "It happened at your wake, son. The colonel took that pretty hard. Understandable, under the circumstances."

"Uh, y-yes, sir," Daniel stammered, too stunned at the revelation to manage a more intelligible comment.

"Good night, Dr. Jackson. This mission hasn’t been easy on any of us. I expect you to be fully rested before reporting back for duty."

"Yes, sir. Good night." Daniel watched the general get into his car and start the engine. Stepping back, he gave a brief wave as Hammond pulled out of the parking space and started down the mountain road. Walking over to his Explorer, he stood leaning against it, staring musingly after the general’s departing vehicle.

Daniel knew the other members of the SG-1 team had been disturbed at the thought of his presumed death. He considered them friends, and he could see they were plainly happy to see him when he’d surfaced on the beach of planet P3X-866, alive and relatively well. However, he’d been taken aback when Sam had told him they’d actually gone so far as to hold a memorial service for him. What really threw him for a loop was hearing that the colonel had said some nice things about him at it.

Daniel knew Jack thought he was a geek. A lot of the Stargate Project staff did. The civilian scientist didn’t exactly fit in with the military style.

Oh sure, O’Neill was grateful for his help in the fight against Ra on Abydos and in the SG-1 missions since. O’Neill took his responsibilities as team commander seriously and Daniel was a member of the team. He could tell the colonel didn’t always personally see the value in his scientific knowledge and interests, but accepted his contributions when relevant to the mission objective. Still, Jack had a tendency to treat him like a pesky tagalong, tolerated but not really on an equal footing with him, or even with Sam and Teal’c, who were also soldiers.

Not that Jack wasn’t friendly. A joke for every occasion, that was Jack O’Neill. Beneath the military exterior, beneath the smartass jokes, Daniel knew there was a human heart, one that had been wounded so badly by life - and death - that it had walled itself in behind layers of attitude as a defense mechanism. The attitude was protection - from feeling, from caring, or at least from showing those feelings. Once or twice a window had opened somehow in those walls, and Daniel had gotten a glimpse of the real Jack O’Neill, the Jack that had once connected with Sara, with Charlie, and then with Skaara. But never in his wildest dreams had Daniel suspected that he himself held even a tiny place in that heart.

Now he had to rethink everything he thought he knew about their relationship. He honestly found it hard to fathom that Jack would be so upset by thinking him dead as to lash out like that, damaging his commanding officer’s property. Of course Colonel O’Neill wouldn’t cope well with losing anyone under his command, but this went beyond a sense of responsibility or duty. This could only mean Jack cared - about him, Daniel Jackson. Jack O’Neill cared, felt genuine friendship for him... not just a responsibility for some geek the team got stuck with.

Daniel laughed softly. Of course Jack would never admit it. Since his return, Daniel hadn’t noticed any difference in his treatment at the colonel’s hands, and he knew that wouldn’t change - but it wouldn’t matter so much anymore. It wouldn’t hurt now that Daniel knew what lay behind the wisecracks. He could put up with Jack’s attitude easily now that he knew it was all a front.

He had to admit there’d been times he’d gotten pretty fed up with Colonel Jack O’Neill, times when he’d have liked to tell Jack off, or even haul off and slug the guy (okay, that wasn’t really likely to happen, but he’d thought about it). There wouldn’t be any need for that now... now that a broken window had shown him the truth. Jack was his friend - maybe a hard man to be friends with right now, but that was probably because Jack needed a friend so badly. Daniel intended to be that friend.

Smiling, he stretched, then climbed into the Explorer to head home. The sun had finished setting and there was a chill in the air, but Daniel didn’t notice, his new discovery warming him as he drove.

* * * * * * *

Jack walked through the hallways of the Cheyenne Mountain base in a daze. He kept up with the others, knowing his body was going through the motions, but somehow his mind just wasn’t connected. It was somewhere else, miles away, out there... on that exploded Goa’uld ship with Daniel.

Daniel was dead. Jack had accepted they were all going to die on this suicide mission, but they were going to die together. Watching his teammate lie wounded and dying, turning his back and walking away, going on with the mission minus one of the team... none of that had been part of the plan. Surviving without Daniel had not been part of the plan.

Leaving him behind had been one of the hardest things Jack had ever had to do. He’d seen enough battle wounds to recognize a fatal one, but as long as the scientist was alive, Jack did not want to leave him alone. It was Daniel who’d insisted, knowing nothing would make a difference for him now and not wanting to handicap the mission by slowing down the team. His final words still echoed in Jack’s mind: "I’ll stay and watch your back."

When O’Neill had instructed Daniel to watch their backs, he’d thought it was the safest position for the sole nonmilitary member of SG-1 rather than joining him, Carter, and Teal’c along with Bra’tac in the frontal assault on Klorel and his guards. He was tragically wrong, but the anthropologist had defended their rear like a hero. The colonel had no fault to find with Jackson’s actions as a soldier.

He so often had seemed to find fault with Daniel. He hadn’t more than half believed that alternate universe story or that there would be an attack on earth. Even after they arrived on the Goa’uld attack vessel, he’d snapped at Daniel for interfering with setting the C4 charges when his teammate was actually about to set another charge for maximum damage. He should have realized Daniel knew better than any of them how vital it was to stop this attack, having seen firsthand what it had done to the alternate earth. It was due to Jackson’s determination they were there with any chance of stopping the same thing from happening to their world.

Jack liked Daniel. For all his uncomplimentary remarks about scientists, he did respect the man’s knowledge and contribution to the team. Okay, the kid sometimes went a little overboard in his enthusiasm, but there was no reason for Jack not to cut him some slack. That seemed the least he could do to show his gratitude for saving his and his men’s lives on Abydos.

Yet in spite of the fact that he considered Daniel a friend, Jack still perceived him as something of a geek. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t mean any offense by it exactly, it was just the way Daniel was, or at least the way Jack saw him. The scientist was different from the other people he knew, most of whom were military men. Daniel was most definitely not that. Even Teal’c, strange visitor from another planet, sometimes seemed to have more in common with his fellow soldiers.

Perhaps without consciously realizing it, Jack had let that difference color his view of Daniel in a negative way. Jack didn’t believe he was prejudiced, or think that just because Daniel wasn’t a soldier he wasn’t a real man, but he guessed sometimes he did judge a man’s worth by the way he proved himself on the field of battle. Daniel had proven himself on Abydos, and O’Neill had accepted him then.

However, it was true that since SG-1 had started their missions Jack had frequently disagreed with Jackson’s method of handling a situation. The colonel needed to know he could rely on his teammates. He knew where Carter and Teal’c stood, and he knew what to expect from them. He never really knew what to expect from Daniel. He thought he’d known what to expect on this mission but Jackson had surprised him, first by setting that C4 charge and then by taking out three serpent guards in the course of saving their lives and their mission. Maybe it was time to stop expecting Daniel to be a soldier and start expecting Daniel to be Daniel. Only now it was too late. He’d had no choice but to leave the injured man behind on that deathtrap and now he was dead.

Jack thought back to another time when he’d believed Daniel to be dead: after their mission to P3X-866. It had turned out to be a false memory implanted in his mind. As always when he lost any member of his team, it had been a wrenching experience, alleviated by the immense relief at finding out it wasn’t true and having Jackson return alive and well.

But Jack couldn’t admit the depth of his feelings then, to himself or to Daniel. It was far more comfortable to fall back into the old way of holding the kid at arm’s length and treating him like a pest. Jack couldn’t afford to admit how much Daniel was coming to mean to him. He couldn’t open himself up like that again... to caring, to losing, to being hurt. He couldn’t ever again face going through what he’d felt when Charlie died. He couldn’t even bear to let Sara in after that, so he’d compounded his own loss by losing her as well. He’d tried to open up again with Skaara, but he had been lost to him too. It was better not to risk any more losses.

Jack had come to that decision without taking one thing, or one person, into account. He hadn’t been able to prevent Daniel from insinuating himself past the walls Jack had built to block everyone out. The man just would not be blocked. Now that Daniel was lost to him again, Jack finally understood how much he’d come to count on his friendship, his fierce loyalty to the team, his undying faith in people including a certain old cynic, and even his babbling lectures. He’d never told Daniel how he felt... and now it was too late. If only he had another chance, he was sure he’d act differently this time. He’d show his true feelings. He would not let Daniel doubt either his friendship or his respect. It was too late, though. He’d already thrown away his second chance.

Jack shifted his attention back to his surroundings as he walked into the embarkation room with his surviving teammates to the sound of applause from the SGC staff waiting there. Lifting his hands slightly in acknowledgment, he tried to force a smile. They’d accomplished their mission and saved the world, and against all odds had come through it alive and returned safely to Earth... only without Daniel. So it had turned out not to be a suicide mission after all. If only... but it was no use thinking that way.

He said good-bye to Bra’tac, who was returning to Chulak. He tried to concentrate on the success of the mission. Daniel’s mission. Daniel had given his life to saving this planet, and Jack wasn’t going to deny the validity of that sacrifice. Daniel did not die in vain. Jack would carry on in spite of this giant hole he felt inside and open himself to his own second chance at life. It wasn’t such a bad day after all. He had to believe that.

Now General Hammond was speaking. "SG-1, there’s someone who’d like to see you."

Now what? Jack braced himself for some dignitary’s congratulations, but the general was smiling as he stepped aside. Hammond wouldn’t look that way unless...

No, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Jack did not even want to dare think it. He couldn’t take another dashed hope.

Someone was pushing his way through the crowd facing them. As the soldiers in the front row parted, a sight emerged that O’Neill had never expected to see in this lifetime. There he went again, doing the unexpected. When would Jack ever learn?

He stood frozen in place, shock and joy and disbelief warring within and all fighting for expression through his tearing brown eyes. He was jolted out of it by Sam’s exclamation.

"Daniel!"

It was Daniel - Jack couldn’t begin to imagine how, but obviously healed and whole and here on Earth back at SG Command where he belonged, with his team, with him. Daniel paused, looking almost hesitantly at his team leader, as though unsure what to do next.

Jack drank in the sight of him, from the unmilitary long hair to the fatigues which had never really suited him. There was a slight smile on Daniel’s lips and a guarded look of anticipation in the blue eyes behind the glass lenses, as though he wasn’t quite sure of his welcome. Didn’t he understand how happy they all were to see him, how happy Jack was? Then again, if he only had O’Neill’s words and actions to go by, how could he know? Dammit, Jack would make very sure Daniel never had cause to doubt again.

Shaking his head in wonder, Jack felt his smile grow wider and wider and did nothing to stop it. There would be no walls today, only windows. He let the joy and welcome he felt shine clearly from his eyes as he walked straight to Daniel and pulled him into a fierce hug. Laughing as he felt the solid reality of him, Jack couldn’t prevent just one wisecrack from slipping out. "Space monkey," he murmured as he tousled the long hair and pulled back to get a good look at his friend. "Yeah!"

The joy Jack was letting himself feel magnified and reflected back to him as Daniel’s happy smile and beaming eyes radiated his own feelings at this unqualified acceptance.

Jack stepped aside as Sam moved in for her own hug and Teal’c approached to clasp Daniel’s hand. Jack’s feelings brimmed over as he hugged Sam and pulled his team into a close circle.

Jack would not throw away this new chance. He would watch out for his friend. He did not want to lose him again. He would not lose an opportunity to let Daniel know his friendship was valued... he was valued. He would make damn sure Daniel never again had cause to doubt his acceptance into the team or into Jack’s life.

Not a bad day at all.

THE END

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