Brotherhood (21/27)

[nightspear]

Title: Brotherhood (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen.

Chapter1	Chapter2	Chapter3	Chapter4	Chapter5
Chapter6	Chapter7	Chapter8	Chapter9	Chapter10
Chapter11	Chapter12	Chapter13	Chapter14	Chapter15
Chapter16	Chapter17	Chapter18	Chapter19	Chapter20
Chapter21

XXXXX

Direct Orders

XXXXX

2 May 2000; Briefing Room, SGC; 1100 hrs

"Don't look so shell-shocked," Jack told Daniel as they waited for the general to join them.

Daniel didn't answer. He didn't try to look less shocked, either, because he'd only end up looking very angry, instead. Sam was busy staring at the table. Teal'c's expression only made Daniel feel worse, because he couldn't read it at all, which he knew meant Teal'c was feeling either very hurt or very homicidal or, quite likely, some combination of the two.

Sam stood up next to him, and he looked up to see that the general had walked in. Then, still watching Jack, he listened with growing fury as Jack explained calmly that he'd procured a device that could disable any weapons they'd seen so far.

"It should come in handy," General Hammond said, examining the device Jack had handed him. "Good work."

"Thank you, sir," Jack said. He sounded pleased. Daniel clenched his fists under the table.

"Major Carter, I'm impressed," the general added. "I understand you and Mr. Jackson took point in these negotiations. How did you convince them to share technology with us?"

Sam looked completely stymied. "Um," she said, looking up at Jack as if for instruction. "We, uh...we didn't, sir. The Tollan refused to give us any technology."

"Offered us a nice fruit basket, though," Jack quipped. Quipped.

"I'm confused. How did you get the device?" the general asked. When no one answered, he prompted, "Mr. Jackson?"

"Uh," Daniel said, too furious and lost to find the words to explain. "The--we--"

"I took it, sir," Jack interrupted.

Daniel had to look away as Jack explained what had happened. He used to think Jack was good at finding the line between taking his orders and trusting his own instincts, because Daniel, of all people, understood that sometimes disobeying an order was worth it. He wished Jack's instincts had followed regulation more closely this time.

"Colonel," the general said once he'd heard the full story, "you don't seem to understand how serious this matter is. You and your team have committed a court-martialable offence."

"To be fair, General," Jack said as Sam stiffened and visibly made an effort not to react further, "I did it. Carter and Daniel protested. And Teal'c...well, he really didn't say anything but I could tell he was opposed to my actions by the way he cocked his head and sort of raised his eyebrow..."

Daniel managed to remain in his seat without screaming. That was the best he could do.

And then the Tollan came for their technology.

...x...

"Your Eminence," Daniel said to High Chancellor Travell as she took the device back and prepared to leave, "you said during the negotiations that Colonel O'Neill could not speak for all people of this nation or this planet. We assure you that...that the theft of your property was neither condoned nor expected by this command or its leaders."

"Nonetheless," Travell said, watching Sam set the dialing protocol to return to Tollana, "the fact remains that this is a prime example of the necessity of the Tollan law you yourself appealed to the Curia to overturn. Given that Colonel O'Neill and his team are the leaders in this planet's relations, we feel it would be in our best interest to sever all ties now to defend our society."

"As you know, Colonel O'Neill has only recently returned from a...a long ordeal," Daniel tried, wondering where the general was--wait, but he was in his office; why didn't he come out to argue while Daniel floundered? "Under normal circumstances, this would never have--"

"Do you consider that an acceptable defense, Mr. Jackson?" she asked coolly. "That an officer of high rank allowed his judgment to be clouded long enough to commit a high crime even once? Or that your organization allowed such an officer to return to duty if this was to be the result?"

And Daniel had to admit, "No, Your Eminence, of course not. However--"

"The Tollan demand that the perpetrator of this crime be dealt with," Travell interrupted him. "We will allow Colonel O'Neill to be punished by Tau'ri law. We could have demanded the same of yourself, Teal'c, and Major Carter for standing by and allowing this to occur."

She was right, of course--if they hadn't stepped in to stop it when they'd known it was wrong, they were just as culpable, and she had every right to demand punishment. Daniel shut up, bowed slightly in acknowledgement, and gestured toward the control room. "For what it's worth, Your Eminence," he added dejectedly, "I'm very sorry this happened. Should the Tollan be willing to reopen relations with Earth, we and our leaders would be grateful."

As they made their way toward the control room stairs, Jack strode in, Teal'c following closely behind. "Well, look who's here," Jack said sarcastically. "Come to retrieve your vastly superior stuff? You know, it would be a lot more superior if it wasn't so easy to steal."

Finally (finally), General Hammond's voice came from his office to bark, "Colonel O'Neill! Get in here and take a seat!"

Daniel avoided Jack's eyes as the man loped past him and Travell. He needn't have made the effort, though, because Jack didn't try to look at him, either.

"I...I apologize again," Daniel managed to Travell, leading her the rest of the way down the stairs. Her usual smile didn't waver as she nodded regally and stepped through the wormhole.

XXXXX

2 May 2000; O'Neill Residence, Earth; 1400 hrs

"You sure you didn't have some translation to finish on base?" Jack said as Daniel followed him into the house.

"Why, do you want me to leave?" Daniel said.

He hadn't been serious, but Jack didn't answer.

Taking a deep breath, Daniel said, "Uh, do--are you--do you need me to do anything? You never got a chance to--"

"Will you give it a rest?" Jack snapped, and this time, Daniel didn't even know what he was supposed to have been doing wrong.

"You're angry at me?" Daniel retorted, deciding he wasn't going to pretend not to be furious anymore. "What happened today, Jack?"

"I got the lecture from Hammond," Jack said, calmer. "It's not your place to give me one, too."

Daniel lowered his pack to the floor by the table with more care than was absolutely necessary. It felt somehow like making a noise might break something--he wasn't sure what, exactly, but whatever it was, he didn't want it to break. "I thought my place was looking at things the way that a person trained for combat might miss"--Daniel ignored Jack's rolling his eyes--"but since my view today agreed with Teal'c's, Sam's, and the US Air Force's, I don't--"

"Give me a break," Jack scoffed. "If the US were serious about what's important, they'd've done something sooner."

He was missing something, that must be it. Daniel took a seat in the living room in front of Jack, only to have Jack stand immediately and walk away toward the kitchen. Daniel wondered if taking that personally would be reading too much into a simple action.

Still, Daniel followed him back into the kitchen and sat at the table instead as Jack opened a bottle of beer. "What's important?" Daniel repeated, as confused as he was mad. "I thought our ideals were important. Our laws, our principles--"

"Oh yeah?" Jack said, giving him an indifferent look that was worse than a glare. "Well, next time a Goa'uld tries to blow our planet up, you go ahead and beat them with your ideals."

"They're your ideals, too, Jack," Daniel said. "Our ideals are what separate us from the enemy."

"You know what else separates us from the enemy?" Jack said. "Big, honking guns that they have and we don't, technology to defend ourselves, ships that could've--" He stopped and took a drink. "But we've got none of that. If we get ourselves blown to hell, what good are those nice, shiny ideals of yours gonna be?"

"What." Daniel frowned at him, wondering if that was a reference to their inability to get a ship to Edora or find a way to get Jack out faster. Three months was a long time. "Jack, I know... Whatever this is, I--we all want to help. You don't have to...to retire and give everything up. This, today--that wasn't you. I know you must be angry about something--"

Jack snorted in disgust and walked away. Daniel took a minute before getting up to follow again. "Oh, I must?" Jack said, plunking down on the sofa again and looking at his chess set as if it were much more exciting than anything Daniel could say.

"Yes," Daniel said, wishing Jack would just look at him and acknowledge that something was wrong, "because the man I know would never have done that without a reason."

Setting his bottle down on the table, Jack said, "You know, you've got a lot of nerve."

Blinking, Daniel said, "What?"

"What is it, exactly, that you think you know about me?" Jack said.

At a loss for what to say, Daniel blurted, "You're the hero of Abydos."

It was the wrong thing to say. He'd known that before saying it, and Jack wouldn't appreciate hearing it, but that wasn't what Daniel had meant. There was still a part of him that would never forget the stories from his childhood, true, but more importantly, he'd had so much faith in Jack O'Neill--as friend and commander, not just legend--that he'd joined a military organization on another world to serve with Jack. They all believed in a cause, but Jack was, in many ways, the face of that cause and of what the SGC represented.

Jack's lips pressed together for a second. "You know, I'm getting sick of that--"

"Not because I grew up hearing about O'Neill," he interrupted hurriedly. "Because...because of who you actually are, Jack! I told my brother you were nothing like the, the...the caricature of a hero in our stories, okay, I know that, but that doesn't change what you've done, and what you believe, and...and..."

Jack leaned back in that casual pose that Daniel had learned to interpret as dangerous. "You wanna know about the things I've done? You really want me to tell you?"

The warning was so strong there that Daniel didn't dare to say 'yes.' "If you hadn't cared about doing the right thing, you wouldn't have helped with all that the SGC's given to Abydos," he said. "You could've taken our naquadah and left us to--"

"I've got nothing against playing nice with the natives when they play nice with us," Jack said, "but sometimes it's not worth it. If it comes down to them or us, then I swore to defend six billion lives here. I'm sorry--I know how that sounds, especially to someone like you--"

"Someone...like me?" Daniel echoed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means my priority will always be this planet, Daniel! What do you think I mean?"

"And you'd leave another planet to be collateral damage, that's what you're saying?" Daniel shot back. And then, "Is that what you're saying? Jack?"

Jack took a slow sip of his beer. "I'm not saying I'd like it. But sometimes things have to be done that rub your ideals the wrong way, and someone has to do them."

Daniel tried to convince himself he was hearing this wrong, or that Jack was lying, because it seemed ludicrous, impossible, but why would he lie? There was no reason...except...wasn't it true? If it was six billion Tau'ri lives against a few thousand Abydonian lives, or a thousand Tollan lives, wouldn't Jack choose Earth? Wouldn't all of the SGC do the same? They did that all the time, after all, when they said a Goa'uld host could be sacrificed to save the lives that would be lost to the Goa'uld.

But if they went through this war thinking like that first and foremost, then what would make the Tau'ri any different from the Goa'uld when they won? One of SG-1's strengths was their ability to see another way--a better way--when the only obvious choices were the wrong ones. If this wasn't about their ideals and right and wrong, then it was only about power and who had more of it.

"I know you, Jack," Daniel started again, because he was running out of things to say. "I don't know what you're doing now, but it's not...you don't really believe--"

"I believe we're losing a war," Jack said sharply, "and I believe in doing what's necessary to win!"

"That's not true," Daniel said, but wasn't it? They weren't losing yet, but they were reaching a point at which Tau'ri tactics and technology were no longer a surprise; without better technology or a lot of help from their allies, they were going to start losing soon. But there, that was something... "We're can't win this war by alienating our allies. They can offer us--"

"What?" Jack said, deceptively mild, the kind that meant he was annoyed. "Friendship?"

"Yes!" Daniel said. "That's part of what this program is about--exploration, finding new knowledge, gaining the friendship of--"

Jack scoffed. "This isn't about making friends; it's about making allies, and if an ally isn't useful, then there's no point in having them around. We can't waste our time making friends with aliens."

Daniel looked up sharply, but Jack was rearranging the chessboard, and he couldn't see the man's expression to decide whether that was a deliberate strike or an unconscious thought that had slipped out. It would be self-centered and paranoid to think this was about him, surely, or people like him--

But if Daniel had been wrong about what Jack thought about this program, then he could have been wrong about anything else. Jack had initially taken him in out of pity or obligation, he knew that, but he'd thought--assumed--that had changed. Their relationship had never been one of equals; Jack was the one in power--his house, his planet, his team--and if he thought this program was about who had the most power, then where did that leave Daniel?

For years, Daniel had been taking this friendship almost for granted; perhaps he shouldn't have. After all, what did a multilingual alien boy have in common with a military officer more than twice his age who rolled his eyes at deskwork?

Daniel looked at the house key he was still holding in his hand. "Well. I don't, uh...I don't really know what I'm doing here, then."

"Ah, come on," Jack said. "You're a bright kid. You must've sensed some of this before."

Daniel sat very still, because he hadn't sensed anything like that--except once in a while when Jack was annoyed with the Tollan for hoarding technology, or with the Tok'ra for not helping when they could have, or...

Gods. What if he'd known all along and had been making excuses and refusing to see it?

"No?" Jack said. "Well, it's understandable. We don't exactly have much in common."

And there it was. We have ideals, Daniel thought. A cause, a duty, morals, right and wrong, and this, this, O'Neill and the kid who follows him around and argues with him in the halls...

"We do," Daniel heard himself say, but then stopped, because what if he was wrong?

"Can't think of anything?" Jack said after a moment. Daniel wished he'd sound mocking. Jack mocked him a lot. That would be normal. "Look. Don't get me wrong. You're not a bad kid--"

"No, stop," Daniel managed. He stood and picked up his pack, moving toward the door. He turned around, some part of him hoping to catch Jack looking guilty or insincere, only to see Jack looking between him and the door.

"What are you... I'm not kicking you out," Jack said, looking exasperated but nothing else.

"I need to finish a translation," Daniel lied, dropping the key on the table and heading to the front door. He stopped with a hand on the doorknob, remembering the night he'd sat here on the floor in freezing, sopping socks and had tried not to fall apart without Jack, because they'd all managed to hold together, true, but only because they'd had to to get him back.

When he turned back, Jack looked like he was trying not to yell at him. Daniel hated that look. When Jack yelled, Daniel could yell back--they worked that way. Otherwise, they were just a retired colonel and some kid he'd rescued and given charity who'd never taken the hint to go away. Daniel pulled open the door.

"I can drive you to base if you need to go back," Jack offered.

"No, thank you," Daniel said stiffly without turning around.

Jack sighed, sounding frustrated this time. "Don't be stupid--"

"I don't need it," he snapped, then stepped out before he said anything else.

The nearest bus stop was only a few minutes' walk from here. Before setting off, Daniel looked through the window and saw Jack standing there, but before he could think or hope that Jack had been watching out for him, he realized Jack had been in the middle of closing the blinds.

XXXXX

2 May 2000; Major Carter's Lab, SGC; 1800 hrs

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Sam said once he'd made it back to base and taken shelter in her lab. Daniel shrugged. "Did you have a fight?"

"That's one way to put it." Daniel leaned back in his chair and wished Sam would start working on something. Even if he didn't understand it, she had a sort of rhythm while working that was soothing. She was still waiting, though, so he said, "I just don't understand what happened!"

"Me neither," she said. "I tried to talk to Teal'c, but he won't even..." She shrugged.

"He didn't want to talk to me, either," Daniel said. "Did Jack say anything to you?"

"Yeah." She opened a drawer, closed it, then looked at the next one down. Daniel waited for her to stop opening and closing drawers until she straightened again decisively and said, "What do you know about the stuff Colonel O'Neill did before he joined the SGC?"

"The first time?" Daniel said.

"Between the Abydos '82 mission and the reopening," she clarified.

"Not...a lot," Daniel said, thinking that, for all he'd thought himself a good friend, he actually knew a rather pathetic amount about what Jack's life had been like. Rumor linked Jack's name with things like black ops, which Daniel had learned over the years was not exactly the same as special ops, which was also not exactly the same as white special ops. He'd thought that a lot of that was about connotations, though. "It's classified?" he offered.

"Hm," she said. "Yeah, I don't know much, either."

Jack's life was a blank in the years between Daniel's birth and the time they'd met fifteen years later on Abydos, but then, half the people here had stretches of their lives that they weren't allowed to talk about. Now, though...

("You wanna know about the things I've done?" Jack said.)

"Sam, what does 'black ops' mean?" he asked. "It's just something very classified, isn't it? It's not a... I mean, if Jack--"

"Well," Sam said, "put it this way--we have close to the highest clearance possible, and it's not high enough to know about some of the operations the colonel was involved in. They use the term to mean the operation was...extremely sensitive. So much that no one is allowed to know about it."

Uneasy about what that sounded like, Daniel said, "Well, I've gotten used to not knowing about things above my clearance." Except, when it was their friend and commander... "But you don't think he might have done things that were illegal, like this...stealing thing?"

"No. Well," Sam said carefully, "it's...a matter of how you look at things, right? If you're waging a war on another...say, another country, then obviously what our soldiers do on their soil is probably illegal in that territory."

Daniel frowned. "But...then...that's allowed by the military, even if it's..." He stopped. "That's not the same thing."

She gave him a look. "Think about the kinds of things you've done in the name of the SGC. A lot of the people on SG teams are special operators. Most of the exceptions are people like you and me: technical specialists who get a lot of special operations training within the program."

"You'd seen combat before."

"It's not the same thing. What we do here is...well, it's more specialized. A different skillset. A different mindset."

"So...the bombing of Sokar, on Netu, for example," Daniel said. "That would have been...?"

"If there were an equivalent situation that applied to Earth-bound warfare," Sam said, "yeah, I guess that might be the kind of op Colonel O'Neill ran before. Just think about the times we've infiltrated an enemy camp or...or blown up a mothership."

"Right," he said. "But those were good things--I mean, to our point of view, yeah? They had to be secret at the time in order to...to complete the mission without alerting that enemy, but afterward, everyone with even the lowest clearance at the SGC knew about it. How can something Jack did for the Air Force on Earth be so secret even you can't know?"

She winced. "Well. It's...policy not to keep spreading it around. And...and, well, sometimes he's probably had to...get things done in a way that might seem unsavory to most people."

"We kill people," Daniel pointed out, "but we say it's for a good cause. We killed...thousands on those hatak, that first year, in order to stop their invasion, and then thousands more on Netu to assassinate Sokar... War is morally ambiguous by definition."

"Some things are more morally ambiguous than others," Sam said. "The Tok'ra were willing to sacrifice my father on Netu. They would have let us all die there if you hadn't forced their hand. We caused the deaths of Tok'ra operatives on Cimmeria when we rescued Shifu from there--"

"By accident!" Daniel protested, though he felt uncomfortable with that argument. "We'd barely heard of the Tok'ra by then, and only because Jolinar...you know."

"I know. But..." She took a breath and stared at the bench. "What if there were a situation in which we wanted to take an action that would anger the Tok'ra and felt that there was no other choice? What if they had a spy working for a System Lord, and...I dunno, and we had a team stranded there, and the only way for us to rescue them was to expose their spy, and the only way for their spy to keep his or her position was to let our team die? What would any of us do?"

"I--" Daniel blinked. "Are you--Sam, we'd...we'd find a way. That's what happened on Netu, basically, and we found a way!"

"Yeah, you held one of their operatives at gunpoint," Sam said wryly, though she didn't sound like she disapproved. "If that distraction had caught Sokar's attention, we might all be dead now, or, at best, we'd have lost the Tok'ra as an ally. I'm not saying that was wrong, Daniel, or that any of us would have chosen differently. But sometimes it's not obvious what's right, and results can be so important that the methods--" She made a face. "Hold on--I'm explaining this really badly. I don't want you to get the wrong idea..."

"Well, Jack wouldn't do something...wrong," Daniel said. But...

But he could. Jack had the skills for it, and he hated red tape, and sometimes he thought negotiating with people was nothing more than red tape, and he'd just told Daniel what his priorities were and Daniel hadn't even been able to argue with it...

Sam bit her lip. "I didn't think he would have, either."

"And you do now?" Daniel said warily.

"It's possible he's been ordered in the past to do things that some people would find...unethical," she allowed. "Think about it: in the beginning of that part of his career, in '82, he was sent to Abydos, and their orders were to destroy a planet full of people."

"He wasn't aware of those orders when he went. Only Colonel John Michaels had those orders. I mean, only the higher ranked officers knew about it, and." Daniel paused, not sure whether that made it better. For Jack, maybe. Right?

"Sure," she said. "But, see, SGC teams are...unusual in composition. A special ops team like ours is rarely commanded on the ground by a colonel. A captain would be more likely. That's the rank Colonel O'Neill held in '82, when he started being sent on special operations."

"Jack wouldn't have led people into something like...that," Daniel said, because the thought was unbearable. "Just because he could have doesn't mean he did. Or would."

Sam glanced at him. "Maybe not on that scale. But." She rubbed her forehead, wearing the familiar expression that said she wasn't sure whether she should be saying this about a superior officer. "Daniel, there are ten years blacked out on his record after that."

"But...but he's not doing things like that now," Daniel said. "Sam, if he was ordered to do something... But General Hammond wouldn't order him to... I mean, that doesn't mean he'd do unethical things on his own, against orders!"

Well, his brain insisted on reminding him, Jack does things against orders sometimes, when he thinks it's right. But still, disobeying the Tollan to save their lives from a Goa'uld attack was a far cry from stealing their technology for Tau'ri benefit. He supposed it all depended on what Jack's moral code was. Daniel had been so sure of what that meant before.

"Yeah," she said, picking up a pencil. "I didn't think he would."

"Sam," Daniel tried again. "You don't really think--"

"Honestly," she said, "I don't know what to think now. The things he said to me..."

Daniel sighed again and picked up one of the books on her table. Sam moved from one computer to another. He recognized a diagnostic running on not one but all of them, and he knew she was looking for something to fill her time.

For most of his life, the mythical US Air Force had been the heroic savior of the Abydonian people. Maybe his parents would have had a similar opinion as some other civilian researchers, but they'd allowed the stories flourish. Children--people--needed heroes. "So, these unethical missions," Daniel said. "They're sanctioned by your military? The...the government?"

Sam grimaced. "I really should have explained it better."

"No, actually, I think you made it pretty clear--"

"Is it wrong to kill a lot of people to win a war? How about assassinating an enemy? Is a preemptive strike wrong, or is it more wrong to do nothing and let them kill our people first?"

"And destroying Abydos back then would have been a preemptive strike against an enemy?" Daniel said, because he'd known about the nuke--of course he had; it was a central part of the story--but he'd never truly considered what it said about what the men had been willing to do.

"They didn't know there were people there at first," she reminded him. "Abydos is a bad example, given we went in without full knowledge of what we'd find."

"But the bomb was armed after they found Nagada and met the people," Daniel countered. "I know the story. Would you have done it, Sam?"

"Daniel, don't ask me that."

Caught unawares, Daniel blinked at her. "You...you would have?"

"I wasn't there," she said. "I'm looking at it in retrospect, from an outside perspective, and...and biased by friendships, with much more information than they had while in the field and under fire on that mission. The Abydos '82 team had orders..."

"So what was that you told me before about the military chain of command? That--that it wasn't just...mindless obedience? Is that what you would've said if-if you'd done it, that you had orders?"

"There are laws," Sam said. "There are... We're allowed--we're obligated to refuse orders that are illegal."

Daniel tried to decide how destroying a planet full of people wasn't an order that should be refused on moral or legal grounds. He'd always assumed Colonel John Michaels had been ordered to do it, but that Jack O'Neill never would have obeyed that order. Not Jack--Jack had fixed it with his parents.

So what had Jack done in those fifteen years that the government didn't want people to know? Stealing a small device off a Tollan wall seemed tiny compared to what he might have done. "Do you get court-martialed for disobeying an immoral order?" Daniel asked.

Sam clenched her jaw as she finished typing. "Not...if...you did the right thing. Daniel, c'mon, just let it go."

"Let it go?" he repeated incredulously. "I work for your military! Or should I ask the civilian researchers here about why they're so cynical about military command structure?"

"Ask them, then!" Sam exclaimed. "They're not the ones walking that fine line between doing the right thing and being dismissed for taking a half-step off, or...or getting killed out there because they hesitated a split second too long to think about it! We have our orders, Daniel, and we try our best, but it's not easy, all right?"

Daniel sat back and watched her work, her movements more agitated now.

After a minute, she said, "I would've thought you'd know by now that we're not like that."

"We were, though," Daniel said.

"What?"

"The--with the Tollan. Jack took their technology, and it was illegal, and no one stopped him. Teal'c could've, physically, especially if we'd backed him. None of us reported it at the debrief, even when we were asked directly, until Jack said it himself."

Sam swallowed. "I...I know," she said. "We could've been brought up on charges for that alone. But this is kind of a different scale of crime; it's not like he opened fire on them and we covered it up. I'm not saying it's all right," she added quickly when he opened his mouth. "We...we should've, okay? We would've, eventually--I'm sure--once we realized what was going on."

But it was complicated. That was what she was trying to say. It shouldn't be complicated to know what the right thing was, but it was, and the injustice of that was infuriating. The fine line Sam said they walked wasn't a clear one, and what if some people drew a different line to follow instead? "Jack said sometimes you have to do things that rub my ideals the wrong way," Daniel said, not meeting her eyes now. "And other things--other planets, even--are collateral damage."

She blinked. "You're interpreting his words too strongly."

Daniel threw up his hands. "It's almost an exact quote--I spent over an hour on the way here trying to think of another way to interpret it, Sam! Is that what black special operations means?"

"No, it's...not," she said uncertainly.

"And don't try to tell me there aren't people in high positions in your government who wouldn't agree with that sentiment. People in this mountain, even."

Sam stared at him but didn't deny it. "Well, that's...sure, there are people with that opinion. It doesn't mean they would pull the trigger when push came to shove, or that it's condoned by our President or the officers who give the orders. Daniel, you know I wouldn't...or Teal'c...and General Hammond would never agree to--"

"Yeah," Daniel said, remembering the disapproval in the general's expression when Jack had explained about the Tollan device at the briefing. Thinking of how the general hadn't said a word to any of them since then, wondering if he was mad at them but also wishing he would step in do something to just fix this. "Yeah, I know. It's just...yesterday, you would've put Jack on that list, too."

She sighed as she dropped into a chair on the other side of the bench. "Do you believe this? I'm expecting to wake up and find out it was a bad dream, because... God. You know the colonel at least as well as I do--"

"It doesn't make any sense, Sam," he said. "There has to be..." He stopped.

"...something else," she filled in. "Except I can't think of any other possible..." She stopped, an odd expression on her face.

"What?" Daniel said.

Sam glanced at him, then shook her head. "Nothing. It's, uh...just hard to believe."

"Yeah." And there was that doubt, because years ago, when Daniel had first returned to Abydos after months on Earth, hadn't Kasuf said he'd changed? And there was the guilty-sounding voice that said maybe Jack was still angry about Edora, that he saw their hold slipping in this war and had lost hope over the last months, gods, those months when he'd thought he was alone and no one was coming for him...

Daniel folded his arms on the table and dropped his chin on them, watching her stand and bustle around the lab until she said briskly, "Hey, sit up, will you? You're on top of my book."

XXXXX

3 May 2000; Briefing Room, SGC; 1000 hrs

"For what purpose were we summoned?" Teal'c asked as he entered.

"Filling in the team, I guess," Daniel said. SG-1 had worked without a fourth before, but no one was going to allow only three members if Daniel was the third. He wondered if he'd even be allowed to stay as the fourth.

"Who do you think it'll be?" Sam said.

"Ferretti, maybe?" Daniel suggested hopefully, because Major Ferretti was one of the people outside of SG-1 who accepted him easily as a qualified field operator. "Or maybe one of the junior officers, and you'll get command, Sam. You said most teams this size would be commanded by someone lower ranked than a colonel."

"I also said the SGC worked differently," she reminded him. "SG teams are designed to be able to maintain fairly extensive operations on different planets, on their own, if the situation calls for it. Most units need enough personnel who could take command of various aspects in such cases."

"Meaning that you need a high-ranking officer who can have command over any company-grade officers who might be there."

"Right. And in particular, SG leaders hold a wide range of responsibilities--combat, recon, assessment of and response to a hostile situation, materiel and personnel deployment and organization, diplomatic relations... For SG-1, especially--we don't know what we're going to have to end up doing most of the time, so they want as much experience as possible in direct command. And for diplomatic missions, it looks more respectful if we send someone high-ranked to liaise with a foreign government. They'll want someone higher than Major."

She was right, as it happened. Daniel should have guessed, too--with Jack gone, Ferretti was the second in seniority as an SG team leader if one counted by experience; he was lower than that by rank. Colonel Makepeace was first in both experience and rank.

Daniel understood the SGC and the military hierarchy, having spent two years trying to squeeze himself into it. Besides, the only time he'd served under Makepeace, he'd deliberately masked his intentions and left SG-3 looking foolish to the general, as they'd had to report that they'd let the civilian hitch a ride on an unplanned rescue mission. His position here was tenuous at best, if Makepeace's expression was anything to judge by, so he kept his objections quiet.

"I'm proud to join SG-1," Makepeace said to Sam. He didn't look at Teal'c or Daniel. "I hope you can learn to trust my command as much as you did Colonel O'Neill's."

"I'm sure we will, sir," Sam said for all of them, because she was second-in-command without Jack. Daniel decided that, if he didn't want to be kicked off the team immediately, now would be an unwise time to point out that he had a less than perfect record of following Jack's orders, much less Makepeace's.

"And Major Wade will be joining us, too," Makepeace said, "as our fifth member." Daniel narrowed his eyes--Wade, one of the newer personnel, had been about to join SG-3, and he spoke a few foreign languages and was learning Goa'uld. SG-1 had never needed a fifth before, and with Daniel on the team, they certainly didn't need a language specialist.

Wade nodded politely to them but didn't speak. It wasn't hard to guess why the marine was joining them now. "I'll see you all at our first briefing," Makepeace added.

Teal'c turned and walked away without a word.

XXXXX

7 May 2000; SG-1 Locker Room, SGC; 1000 hrs

"You stay on base," Makepeace told Daniel before the first mission. "Nice work on the pre-mission data analysis."

"What? Why? It's a standard recon," Daniel said, pausing in the middle of strapping on his holster. "Colonel--"

"It's a possible Goa'uld world," Makepeace said.

"So is every world from the Abydos cartouche!" Granted, this one was more likely than most--he'd said so himself in the pre-mission report--but that was always a risk.

"Well, it's too dangerous to send you out with just a zat gun."

Sam was keeping her head studiously down as she slipped into her vest; Wade was quiet, too, but his expression said he disapproved. Not caring what the other Marine thought of him, and unhappy enough to be reckless and argumentative, even to a commanding officer, Daniel pointed out, "I was going to take a nine millimeter, too. There's no reason for me to stay on base."

"Your assignment says that your CO can decide not to include you in the field if it seems too dangerous," Makepeace said impatiently. "I'm making that call."

"Then what's the point of having me on this team at all?" Daniel retorted.

"I don't really know," Makepeace snapped. "I'm telling you to stay here, unless you want me to make the J--Teal'c stand guard over you while we're there."

Daniel's eyebrows shot up. He looked at Sam, who'd stopped in the middle of zipping her tac vest, and Teal'c, who seemed ready to show someone exactly what he was capable of ripping apart without even needing a weapon. Wade suddenly looked uncomfortable, like he wasn't sure what to do with himself. "The Jaffa?" Daniel repeated, indignation piling furiously onto frustration. "Is that what you were about to say? What do you call us in your head--the geek and the girl?"

"Daniel," Sam admonished, her face pink.

"Jackson," Makepeace said, his tone allowing no room for argument, "I gave you an order. SG-1, let's go."

Wade walked out first, looking eager to get out of the tension. It took a nod from Sam for Teal'c to obey, and even then, he pushed the door open, intoning, "As you command, human." Sam closed her eyes briefly, then followed Makepeace out without another word. Daniel would have felt sorry for making it worse for her, except he'd decided that it was easier to be angry at her for not speaking up, if not for him, then at least for Teal'c, who had been her teammate for over two years.

He changed back out of his gear, then blew past Robert's startled face in the archaeology office, reached his desk, and found the appropriate forms.

"What's going on?" Robert said.

Instead of answering, Daniel finished and made his way to General Hammond's office. "Mr. Jackson?" the general said once he'd been waved inside.

"I'd like to withdraw from SG-1, sir," Daniel said.

The general looked over the transfer request papers carefully and said, "After everything you've been through, I didn't think you'd just quit, Mr. Jackson. I realize Colonel O'Neill gave you a lot of latitude; you have to know not every commander will do the same right away."

"My function is interpretation and translation," Daniel said stiffly, "and Colonel Makepeace has already found a replacement. Is he just not allowed to kick me off right away, sir?"

"I told him I didn't think it would be fair without at least a trial period," the general admitted, "but it is the right of the commanding officer to have a say in the composition of his own team."

"Well," Daniel said, "then with your permission, I'd rather not wait out several missions before he's allowed to tell me to get off his team when I could be useful somewhere else."

General Hammond pursed his lips, then placed the papers flat on his desk. "That might be best for now. Consider yourself off the team. You can be assigned to other teams until a more permanent position comes back up."

Daniel found himself in the control room when SG-1 returned hours later, just to make sure they were at least in one piece, and then left.

Sam met him on the way to the elevator. "Daniel," she said, catching his arm, "you--" She stopped and stared at the sleeve she was holding. "Why aren't you wearing our patch?"

"Why aren't you standing up to him?" he hissed. "Not even for Teal'c?"

"I can't; he's not doing anything wrong," she said quietly. "Just give him some time. Colonel Makepeace is a good officer with an impeccable record. He's just used to teams that are specialized for combat. You can't blame him for being uncomfortable with you at first."

"I've worked too hard to be told I'm not good enough to be in the field with my team, except to...what, stand at the 'gate while the Jaffa stands guard over me?" Daniel said.

Sam winced. "I know, but don't just resign yet."

"I'm not waiting for him to force me off," he threw back. "Sam, c'mon. You know Makepeace. How long do you think it'll take for him to replace Teal'c, too? How long before he decides you don't look like the typical man under his command?"

"Jesus, Daniel," she breathed, glancing over her shoulder, as if to make sure no one had caught that. "There's no reason to think--"

"Really?"

"Really! What if there's more to--what if there's something else going on?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked. "What something else?"

"I don't..." She bit her lip and dropped her gaze for a moment. "I don't know. Nothing. I just mean...what if we end up needing you for something? It's happened before."

"What good am I going to do you from my office that I couldn't do on another team? You've got Major Wade now, and he's...actually quite good at Goa'uld and some of Earth's languages. You were the best team without me before; you'll still be the best team without me."

"But that was when we had..." She stopped again. She looked around them, then whispered forcefully, "This isn't you, Daniel; you're being rash, and...and impulsive. If Colonel O'Neill were here, you'd never--you'd have fought for--"

"Well, he's not here, is he?" Daniel snapped angrily. "I would fight for you and Teal'c and...but not just for a patch with a number." Makepeace's face appeared around the far end of the hall, so Daniel stopped by the elevator, searching his pockets. "Dammit, I left my card on my desk--"

"Here," Sam said softly, swiping her ID for him. "Daniel, give it some thought. Some time. Okay?" He escaped into the elevator before he had to face her wounded expression, too.

XXXXX

11 May 2000; Control Room, SGC; 0900 hrs

"P5C-768," Sergeant Harriman announced. "Edora. Chevron one--engaged."

Daniel folded his arms. Sam and Teal'c were in the 'gate room, as were the general and even Janet. Daniel almost wanted to walk away, the way Jack was walking up the ramp without turning around to see them, but part of him was still certain that it was a misunderstanding--Jack was going to turn around at the top of the ramp and say he was just kidding.

Jack walked through the event horizon. The wormhole closed. Daniel walked away and wished he'd never mentioned retiring on Edora after all.

"Mr. Jackson," Major Pendleton said, passing him in the halls, "SG-5 leaves in an hour."

"Yes, sir," Daniel said. "I'll be ready."

XXXXX

13 May 2000; PK5-207; 0900 hrs

SG-5 was a first-line research team. They were, therefore, experienced at exploring new planets, but they specialized in ones that looked from telemetry like they could be good research sites, or places that the engineers wanted to examine. They ran into hostiles sometimes, but they weren't one of the teams that usually walked deliberately into combat. They were, however, very used to accepting temporary researchers, and Daniel had an advantage of experience over other civilians if they ran into combat, too. They were generally easy-going and straight-forward, and Daniel fit in with them well enough to pass.

"So, Daniel," Lieutenant Dean Barber said as they made their way back to the Stargate after an easy, two-day reconnaissance and salvage mission, "what do you make of this?" As Captain Lithell reached the DHD and started dialing, Barber reached down to the FRED to pull out one of the stone carvings they'd found as they walked together toward the open wormhole. "I mean, look at how it was carved. Have you ever tried stonework before?"

Daniel looked more closely. "Not really..."

"Look how it's cut against the grain. If the structure is as crystalline as it looks, that should cause some flaws, and considering how smooth it is..."

"There are tests we can run to make better guesses about the carving techniques used," Captain Lithell put in. "Jackson, have you ever used the SEM?"

"The S...what?" Daniel said.

"Scanning electron microscope. We can use it as a way of looking at surface features on stone."

"Oh, I've read about that," Daniel said, recognizing the term now. "There was an article earlier this year--well, it was about crystal skulls, but they were using the same technique. You mean the...making a mold of the surface and--"

"Yeah, that's what I mean," Lithell said, looking amused as they walked into the wormhole.

"Crystal skulls?" Barber added. "You reading up on pseudoarchae--?"

...x...

13 May 2000; Embarkation Room, SGC; 0910 hrs

"--ology these days?" he finished as he stepped out.

Daniel shrugged. "I was reading some works by a certain researcher and kept stumbling across it, so I looked it up. Besides, Dean, this program was founded on so-called pseudoarchaeology."

"Point. Lab 4 on Level 20," Barber added to an airman, carefully handing over their find to go through the standard decontamination protocols. Daniel handed his sidearm over absently and stood for the radiation checks. "I can show you how the 'scope works, Daniel, and a few things about the material structure. It's really pretty interes--"

Someone cleared his throat loudly. Daniel looked up, noticing that Major Pendleton had finished reporting to General Hammond.

And Jack was standing at the bottom of the ramp.

"Dismissed, SG-5," the general said. "Mr. Jackson, we'd like a word, please."

Daniel waited for SG-5 to walk past him and looked from Jack to the general, lost. "Why?" he said.

The general looked surprised. "You've been requested to return to SG-1, under Colonel O'Neill's command."

"D'you miss me?" Jack said.

Did you miss me. That was it?

"The Tollan won't be happy that we failed to punish the perpetrator of high crimes against them, General," Daniel said, because what else was there to say?

"C'mon," Jack said, gesturing him down the ramp.

Daniel eyed him and didn't move.

"There was no crime on the part of Colonel O'Neill," General Hammond said when they were still there several seconds later. Jack's expression turned more uncertain as the general explained, "This was an operation planned out with my knowledge and with the knowledge of the Tollan, the Asgard, the Tok'ra, and the Nox."

"Uh-huh," Daniel said. Planned. It had been planned. Jack was innocent.

"Technology has been stolen from all of those peoples over the past few months. It wasn't until the last few weeks that the Tollan and the Asgard have both procured evidence that we, the SGC, have been stealing technology from them."

Daniel couldn't help glancing at Jack, remembering how betrayed they'd all felt watching Jack take the Tollan disarming device.

"We convinced them that it must be the work of a group from outside the SGC," the general continued, "so they agreed to hold off action against us, provided that we apprehended the criminals ourselves."

"Then...on Tollana..." Daniel said, turning to Jack, "that was planned."

"Yeah," Jack said. "And then the rogue group--they were an NID offshoot--decided I had the right sort of moral code and recruited me."

"Because you thought Sam or Teal'c or I might have been the real criminal," Daniel said flatly.

"Because your reactions had to be genuine," General Hammond said. Daniel couldn't tell if he felt apologetic or satisfied or if this was just something the military did. Maybe this was one of those black operations Sam had talked to him about, he decided--one of the ones the military could deny telling Jack to do if it didn't work--and it hadn't involved nuking innocent civilians, but it still hurt because Daniel had been able to believe it could have been so much worse--he'd begun to believe it of Jack. He wondered what Sam and Teal'c thought and whether he was the only one who felt like he'd been gutted a few times over the last several days. "The Asgard insisted that Colonel O'Neill be the only one involved."

"They like me," Jack reminded him with a sheepish half-smile and a shrug.

Daniel nodded, shifting uncomfortably. "So the appeal Sam and I drafted for the Tollan...we only did that so Jack could..." He gestured toward the Stargate. "That was all to trick us."

"There was no choice," the general said. "But I wasn't lying when I said your recent work on diplomatic matters has impressed me."

Daniel had nothing to say in answer to that.

They'd been doing good, he told himself. There had been criminals to catch, and Jack and Hammond had caught them. Jack was the face of the SGC to the galaxy, but Hammond was its head, and they'd done what their jobs had demanded of them. There was no reason for Daniel to feel like the ground had become suddenly tenuous under his feet.

"It's good to be back, I'll say that," Jack said, trying to inject energy into the conversation. "Just got back last night, you know."

"Who was it?" Daniel said, not answering either of them. "Who was heading the rogue NID operation?"

"Oh, you're gonna love this one," Jack said.

And since it was something to do with the NID and Jack sounded so very smug about it, Daniel guessed, "Colonel Maybourne?"

"Maybourne," Jack said at the same time, then blinked. The general exchanged a look with him, smiled at both of them, and left, gesturing for them to leave the embarkation room, as well. Daniel finally stepped down the ramp to follow them. "Anyway, I guess it was a mistake to put Maybourne back into the thick of things after the foothold incident. He had one of the Goa'uld communication balls--"

"The ones they told Sam they never managed to reverse-engineer?" Daniel clarified.

"Yeah. Either someone was lying to Carter, or the researchers didn't know everything. Maybourne had a couple of his own engineers, you know. We didn't get him--"

"You didn't get him?" After all that.

"He must've been tipped off," Jack said, "but at least he'll never be put into a position of power again. And his contact here at the SGC was Robert Makepeace."

Daniel stopped in the doorway. "What?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "Never thought it'd be him."

Even that hurt, Daniel found. He hadn't liked Makepeace at all, but the man had been a colonel in the US Marine Corps, a senior officer in the SGC, and a commander who had fought and won many battles against Goa'uld forces with his own team. And he was a traitor. "Well. I suppose you didn't know him as well as you thought," Daniel said, continuing on.

"Ah...yeah," Jack said, loping forward to catch up. "Listen, that stuff I was talking about in my house--our house," he corrected himself, looking nervous, even though it was Jack's house and both of them always called it that. "Um...the place was bugged. They were listening, maybe watching us. I had to keep up the act."

Logical. Reasonable. Consistent with the data. Daniel nodded, biting his tongue hard.

"I had to get you to leave," Jack went on. "Maybourne knows a lot about you, you know that. He wouldn't've tried to approach me if you'd still been there, or if he thought I was sympathetic to your ideals--"

"My ideals," Daniel said.

"Our ideals," Jack said quickly. "Definitely...our. Why do you think I tried so hard to get you to stay on base that day instead of coming home? I argued to keep you out of this whole mess somehow, but there was no way...we knew you wouldn't leave it alone. So I had to keep up the act and convince you to leave, which..."

"No, it's..." Okay? Not really. "I understand," Daniel said. "Orders. I had a talk with Sam about this."

"Wait, you two knew it was an act?"

"No," he said, and immediately, he wondered if she'd known. Had Sam played the dutiful airman because it was her job, or had she realized, too, that Jack had been following orders and decided not to tell Daniel? "We were, uh, talking about...morality. What it's acceptable to do."

Jack winced almost imperceptibly, as if he knew exactly where that conversation had gone. And then Daniel wondered if there had been another reason for using Jack other than the Asgard's wishes--if the house had already been bugged by then, it must have been bugged before. What if Maybourne had known more about Jack's moral code and previous actions and had been watching and hoping for a chance to recruit anyway? What if the Tollan debacle hadn't been what caught the NID's attention--what if it had been just the push over the edge after fifteen years of redacted missions Daniel wasn't allowed to know about?

"And obviously, what I said about us having nothing in common..." Jack started, then looked frustrated. "I had to get you to leave. That's it."

No, Daniel thought. That wasn't 'it.' There had been truth in there, and they both knew it. "Right," he said, stumbling for words. "Yeah, obviously, it's...you don't have to...yeah, I, uh, I know."

"Yeah?" Jack said. "Because I feel kinda... I appreciate your sitting through so much of that crap before you walked out. And then I kept imagining you getting mugged on the street on the way to...w-wait--where are you going?"

Jack had stopped at the SG-1 locker room. "I'm in SG-5's room," Daniel said, pointing. "I have to return equipment and go through some analysis with Captain Lithell and Lieutenant Barber, anyway."

"Bu--the--ah...right," Jack said, somehow looking like he'd slumped without actually moving at all. Something in his expression, perhaps. "I'll...catch up with you later."

XXXXX

13 May 2000; Archaeology Office, SGC; 1300 hrs

It felt almost like an ambush, except that Daniel had known Jack would be waiting for him as long as the archaeology office was empty. "Hi," he said.

"Hello," Jack said. Daniel folded his arms and leaned back against his desk. "Do we need to...?"

"I get it," Daniel said.

"O-kay," Jack said, "because..." He stopped. "Okay. Is there something...?"

Daniel rubbed his eyes, not wanting to ask but needing to know--"You've done things like this before."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "I told you once, didn't I? You go undercover, you end up having to do some distasteful things."

"I'm not...I get it, Jack," Daniel repeated stiffly. "No one died, the criminals were caught, the Tollan and the Asgard won't sever ties with us. Success. Fine."

"Clearly, not fine," Jack said slowly.

"Well, I'm just wondering how distasteful your orders have to get before you decide they're too distasteful to follow."

"It doesn't work like that," he answered, impatient and offended. "Nothing I've done over the last couple of weeks was illegal; whatever it looked like, I had direct orders to steal things with the knowledge of the people from whom I was stealing."

"Not this time, then. What if you'd been asked to do something worse?"

"For--what do you want from me, Daniel?" Jack exploded, pushing the door shut.

"An answer!" Daniel nearly yelled back, then lowered his voice. "I want to know whether this can happen again"--Jack opened his mouth and Daniel raised his voice again over it--"because this is my job now, not just a temporary, personal mission, and I want to know if I picked a life where any of us can be ordered to--"

"No!" Jack interrupted, just as angry now. "But there are missions that need to get done. You can refuse if it's too damned distasteful for you; some of us don't have that luxury!"

Daniel clamped his jaw together, tapping a finger against the top of his desk.

Jack let out a quick breath of air, pacing. "And sometimes, maybe that's a good thing," he said, slightly more calmly. "That's your job. It doesn't mean you get to judge me for doing my job so you don't have to."

"Oh, please," Daniel said, pushing himself away from the desk. "You think it's easier for civilians? You have your orders. If we do something wrong, then we should have known better, except you people think we're such...such soft-handed innocents that we can't be trusted to do our job because we're not military, even though we've been out there risking our lives and making those decisions with you, and we're not trusted to have a valid opinion outside of following your orders in the first place!"

"'You people?'" Jack repeated, his face darkening. "Now I'm one of--"

"Aren't you?"

"When did you stop being one of us?"

"I never have been," Daniel said, and while he'd always known there was a separation between him and everyone else for several reasons, part of him hurt to understand it fully. "I've tried for years to be one of you people, and then I found out what that means!"

"It means I did what I had to do to get you out of my house," Jack said angrily. "Do you know what covert means, Daniel? It means no one is allowed to know--for my safety, for your safety, for the SGC's protection, and for the sake of the mission. I was protecting you, Daniel!"

"What if you'd been with Colonel Maybourne's team and he gave you an order?" Daniel said. "You can steal technology for the cause, yeah? Can you fight an innocent person guarding it? What if you had to kill him, or what if it was five people?"

"That didn't happen," Jack said. It wasn't a yes. More importantly, it wasn't a no.

"What if you could kill Apophis and his armies, but you had to destroy a planet to do it?"

"What the hell? That's not even relevant to--"

"It is!" Daniel snapped. "It almost happened with Ra, didn't it? My people! My family! That's how all of this started, and it could happen again--what if someone gave you that order? Someone could give you that order. I have to know where you draw the line, Jack!"

"There is no line, Daniel!" Jack exclaimed, leaning forward until Daniel barely stopped himself from flinching. "It's never as simple as drawing a line that'll fit everything, so it's up to us to figure out where it goes every damn time. You wanna know what happens when someone gives me that order? I take Merrin to the playground."

Daniel almost took a physical step back. They'd never spoken of Orban in the months since the Averium SG-1 had witnessed. Daniel had followed orders to help a man take away the mind of a child, and they would never agree about who had been right. But hadn't Daniel told Sam less than two weeks ago that SG-1's answer to an order with no right choice was to find another way? Both of them had disobeyed orders in the past to do what they'd thought was right, and they'd both also followed orders that had felt wrong.

Jack backed off, walking agitatedly to the door, but he turned around instead of leaving, spreading his hands. "So are you gonna work that out with us or leave us people to blow up the next civilization we find?"

Daniel wasn't sure how something could sound like an invitation and an insult and a demand for an apology all at once. And because there was no way to answer all of that all at once, he started, "I don't think you're right all the time--"

"Surprise," Jack scoffed, his expression defensive again. "But next time you start arguing a point of semantics in the middle of a firefight--"

"See?" Daniel said, gesturing sharply. "That's what I mean! When have I ever done that? None of the civilians here would, and if they did, I'd be the first to recommend that they be kept firmly behind a desk, and Robert would be right behind him!"

"I didn't mean it literally, for cryin' out loud!"

"But it's what you think! We're not stupid or naïve or, or--or incompetent just because we don't wear a rank on our lapels and say 'yes, sir' to every--"

"And we're not mindless, amoral killing machines because we do!" Jack retorted. "You think civilians are the only ones who get crap around here? Wake up, Daniel! You're a walking definition of gray areas--you should know better than anyone that nothing is as simple as black and white."

Once silence fell again, Daniel couldn't figure out where the argument had led and how they'd gotten to here. "What do we have in common, Jack?"

"For the last time, it was an act!" Jack burst out.

"Maybe it was," Daniel said defiantly. "Maybe you just did what was necessary, and...and maybe I can understand that. Fine. So answer the damn question."

Jack stared at him. At first Daniel thought it was the language--he didn't swear in English often. Then Jack stared a little longer, and he couldn't pretend it was anything but a lack of answer. Daniel nodded, plunging his hands into his pockets and waiting for Jack to walk away.

Instead, Jack said, "A mission, a team--for cryin' out loud, Daniel, three years! That doesn't count?"

And it was true--there really was very little other than circumstance that they had in common. Maybe that was enough, but... "I need to know something," Daniel said. "Which one of us was the suspect?"

Jack had the gall to look confused for a moment before realizing what he meant. "None of you, Daniel; we didn't have one."

"Really?" Daniel challenged. "Maybe not Sam, but two aliens, one of whom used to be First Prime to an enemy and the other of whom is an impulsive child who was off-world for weeks just a few months ago, living with two former hosts--you're honestly going to tell me Teal'c and I weren't the main suspects?"

"They didn't tell me who the suspect was, if they even had one," Jack said defensively. "And--"

"Did you suspect us, Jack!"

"--and I told them none of you would be it! It's just that it would've looked a lot more suspicious if all of us turned at once, and your reactions were what really sold the whole thing."

Then the rest of them had been part of the plan, too. They'd been used, like Jack had been, but they hadn't been allowed to know about it. Jack had used them. He'd had to make Daniel leave the house, he'd said, but he'd known, too, exactly how to do it--how to manipulate Daniel into it--without even having to say 'get out.'

More than anything, that was why this hurt, Daniel thought. General Hammond--their general--had ordered Jack to turn on them. And orders or no, right or wrong, ruse or paranoia, Jack had done just that.

"Carter's worried about you," Jack said. Surprised, Daniel looked up. "Says you've been pissed off. A lot. Apparently, Teal'c's been spoiling for a fight, too, but he can take care of himself. You weren't here when I got back, and I was afraid you'd gone back to Abydos..."

"I left Abydos."

"Well, you've left here before, too."

"I came back," Daniel said, trying not to grit his teeth, because he could have stayed on Abydos with his family. Jack knew what that meant to him, and yet, Jack's name was all it had taken to pull Daniel away from them, perhaps for good. "I have a job here, and it's not just to be an extension of your team. I gave my word to serve the SGC, and I'm not going to run back home even if I can't be SG-1. General Hammond knows my position here isn't temporary anymore. Everyone knows it now. I was here doing my job for the last four months, Jack; you weren't."

Jack's fists clenched, and if Daniel had been any calmer, he might have felt guilty for saying it. None of that was Jack's fault. He'd only meant that he had stayed even though he'd known Jack might be gone forever, but he didn't speak up to clarify. He wasn't going to be accused of being less than completely committed to the SGC, not after what he'd chosen to give up. "Well," Jack said finally. "I just want to know you're not about to have a meltdown if I give you an order you don't like."

"So I should just take an order and accept it, no argument allowed, is that it?" Daniel snapped back.

Jack stabbed a finger toward him. "You want to dish crap out at me, go ahead, but don't leave Carter in the crossfire. And what the hell do you think you're doing, mouthing off to someone like Makepeace? Jesus, Daniel, the man was dangerous, and he's never liked you, and that was before he was Hammond's senior officer on base. Were you trying to get on the XO's bad side?" Daniel looked away, because he did have to apologize for snapping at Sam. "Now," Jack said, more quietly, "I won't ask what's going on with you, because I know it's been rough. But you're better than this."

"I'm better," Daniel echoed, almost wanting to laugh at the irony of that argument coming from Jack now, of all times. He'd thought they were both better, together.

"If anything happens to me or anyone, that sucks, okay? But you take it in, and you move on. You know that by now. One person's actions can't--"

"Jack, don't you understand?" Daniel interrupted. "Teal'c turned for you--he turned on his life, his wife and his son, his god. I left my family because I believed in you--in what you...meant to us. What did you think was going to happen if you took that away? And you wonder why we might be upset?"

There was a long silence as he forced himself not to look down, made himself look Jack in the eye and see the hesitation that flickered in Jack's returning gaze. "That's not... You can't make this about me. I won't be here forever, Daniel."

Shoving that uneasy idea aside, Daniel said, "It's not that. Jack, you're the man we followed here. Whether or not you're physically here, you know what you represent. To Abydos, to the Jaffa. To us. We trusted you and your ideals, and if that can't be trusted, then we came to Earth for a lie. Do you get it?"

Jack looked uncharacteristically uncertain. "That's not fair," he said.

"I know," Daniel said honestly. If there was one thing he'd learned in the past year, it was this. "As it turns out, a lot of things aren't fair. They just are."

When there was no response, he turned and passed an eye over the documents left on his desk. An unfinished translation, a list of newly found artifacts to catalogue, notes for the negotiation with the Tollan... Daniel pressed his lips together and opened a drawer. He opened the wrong one first, then opened the one below to push his papers inside.

"You keep a weapon in your desk?" Jack said, catching the first drawer before it could close and hide the zat'nik'tel from sight. "Since when?"

"Since the Mountain was locked down three months ago," Daniel said, picking up the zat. Jack raised his eyebrows. "It took two days for SG units to identify and contain some creature that had come back through the 'gate with another team. Routine precaution--harmless, as it turned out--but no one knew which level it was on, so everyone certified to carry a weapon was expected to be ready and alert. And I was technically SG-1 at the time, so even though we'd been stood down..." He gestured. "It's signed out in my name and registered to this office. You can check with the armory if you're concerned."

"I didn't mean--" Jack started. "I'm sure it's in order, I trust...you." The end of the sentence trailed away.

Daniel fingered the weapon and set it back down where it would be easy to grab quickly. "Jack. We're at war--all the time, technically. I know things can't always be ideal."

"I did my job," Jack said warily. Daniel nodded. "Then are you still angry?"

"You just came back a few hours ago, Jack," Daniel snapped, "and expected me to..." He looked away and deflated, feeling oddly exhausted. "I've...realized a lot of things these last couple of weeks."

He pushed the drawer shut and didn't know whether to look up.

"All right," Jack said at last. "Well, I'm back now--the team's back to how we were before."

Before. Nothing had been remotely normal for nearly half a year, and things were changing so quickly that Daniel was startled to realize he wasn't sure what 'normal' was supposed to be for them anymore. "What about Major Wade?"

"He's taking over command of SG-3," Jack said, and even that was a blow. Makepeace was--had been--the only officer other than Jack who had kept command of the same SG team since the start of the program. Dozens of SG personnel were alive only because Makepeace had led SG-3 through fire to rescue them. He'd served well--or so Daniel had thought, and now it was just one more thing he couldn't be certain about. "So. No missions for us four this week. Next briefing is the Wednesday after that. Hammond never processed your transfer papers--he knew this was all temporary. You still want off?"

Daniel sighed. "I've never wanted off," he said quietly.

"You left your key on the table at home," Jack said suddenly. He stuck a hand into his pocket and placed something on Daniel's desk.

"I remember that," Daniel said, but what he remembered most was the realization that a place he'd come to think of as a home was Jack's, not his, and that there would always be a vulnerability implicit there. The office was safer. Here, the desk was his. He belonged here as long as he kept earning the right to it, and he earned it each day. It was harder to claim a right to something someone gave him out of kindness rather than merit.

"You coming home?" Jack said, as if reading his thoughts. "We're off duty this afternoon."

"I've got work."

"Daniel..." Jack said, looking frustrated.

"I've got work!" Daniel insisted, gesturing toward his desktop. "There was a huge backlog by the time you were on Edora, and then everyone was busy. And there's an Asgard...they sent us something like...like a Rosetta Stone after the summit last year, and since I've worked on Asgard script before and I'm supposed to be on the team of the only person the Asgard trust, that's my responsibility, too. So I'm trying to put together an Asgard dictionary and grammar, and working on the Ancient tablet we found on Abydos, along with the rest of our normal--"

"Are you kidding me?" Jack said. "You don't think that counts as overworking?"

Daniel set a hand firmly on the surface of his desk. "I follow two chains of command, Jack, and you're not in this one."

Jack looked like he was going to yell something back, and then stopped, looking confused. "An Ancient tablet on Abydos? When did that happen?"

And he hadn't known because Daniel hadn't talked to him--really talked--in months, and now they were standing here shouting at each other like Jack hadn't been part of the only thing holding Daniel together over the last couple of years.

"Yeah," he said. The word came out clipped, sharp, and he took a breath. "Skaara and I were...very excited when we found it. It was a...a really big thing. There's just been no time. I guess I never got to tell you about it."

"Are you gonna tell me now?"

"You don't have to pretend you're interested."

"I wanna hear about it!" Jack insisted. "I missed a lot on Edora."

Daniel looked up and found Jack looking thoroughly miserable under the anger and offense he still wore, because Jack had been used, too--the only difference was that he'd known about it, and that it had happened right after he'd finally come home after thinking he'd never be home again. "Yes. Okay. Just...not right now. I need to finish...well, my report from today, and Dean Barber was going to work on some things with me."

Jack fell silent. "That wasn't me," he said after a moment. "All of that. You know it wasn't."

"I know," Daniel said, despite the part of him that said it had been Jack--it was the part that said the mission came first, even before his team. The priorities were clear to Jack: his mission, then his team, and then himself. And there wasn't really any way to fault him for that, not really--Daniel understood the mission superseded the individual--but he couldn't quite manage to drop it. Being hurt by an enemy was one thing; knowing a friend was willing to do so was quite another, whether or not it was for the cause. Knowing that Jack had lied to them to protect them instead of trusting them to watch his back like they were supposed to...

Because they'd done that for him, after the incident on Tollana. They could've--should've stopped him from stealing the device, should've protested more, should've reported it at the debrief, and they had stayed silent. We would've, Sam had said, once we realized what was going on...yet, for nothing but loyalty and despite knowing it was wrong, they given Jack the benefit of the doubt until the story had come out. Daniel wasn't sure even now that it had been the right thing to do, morally, but they had and would again. Jack could have trusted them, and he hadn't.

Daniel didn't know what to feel. He swallowed. "Are you...are you okay?"

For a minute, there was no answer, and Daniel wondered why he was having such a hard time today meeting Jack's eyes. "Yeah," Jack said.

"You should go home and get some rest," he said, not knowing what else to offer. "You don't have to wait for me. You've had a long..." Day? Week? Year?

"I'm sorry," Jack said quietly. "I would never have said those things--done those things if I didn't have to."

Daniel looked up again. "I'm sorry, too. I should never have believed you would have."

"Well, that was the point," Jack said. "If you hadn't believed it, it wouldn't've--"

"That's not an excuse," Daniel said tightly. "We're a team. We know each other better than this. I thought."

"I knew you well enough to find a way to keep you safe from this," Jack said.

"Then you could have found a way for us to help," Daniel said. He took a deep, slow breath. "Do you trust us or not?"

"Don't be stupid," Jack said, because the answer was 'yes,' but he meant that he'd never doubt any of their loyalties or good intentions. That wasn't what Daniel meant. "It's not about that."

"No," Daniel allowed. "It's about what'll happen next time."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Next time?"

"You think there won't be a next time?" Daniel said. "Apophis has an enormous army, we killed his queen and son and turned his general, and he hates us. A lot of powerful people hate us, and we don't have a strategy to win. You think things will run smoothly from now on?"

"Well, that's grim," Jack started. "I--"

"You trust us," Daniel said again. "Jack, that's what has to happen next time. We trust each other, and then we help."

Jack was staring at him with a look on his face that Daniel didn't recognize. "Yeah," Jack said, although it sounded like an acknowledgement of the sentiment, not an agreement. Daniel couldn't tell if he agreed.

"It's over," Daniel said. "Now. It's over?"

"Yeah. So can we...?" Jack started to gesture toward the door, then stopped and dropped his hand.

"Sometime later?" Daniel said. "Tomorrow, maybe--"

"I can wait," Jack said. "I'll drive you home when you're done with the...whatever you're doing. I don't want you walking--geez, it's gotta be almost an hour's walk down Norad to the closest bus stop. C'mon."

"I wasn't going to walk to the bus stop tonight," Daniel said.

"Daniel, look," Jack started, and then he stopped. "Come on," he said again, more quietly, and this time it sounded like 'please.'

And so, because he'd largely been making excuses, and because he was not going to be kicked out of his home because he was hiding from Jack, and because Jack had made an offer and bargaining rituals everywhere dictated that Daniel had to match the offer with his own, Daniel sighed and said, "I...can ask Dean to show me the microscope on Monday. Just let me get some things to work on at home."

"I can wait," Jack said, but, "You sure?"

No. "Yes," Daniel said. "Just give me a minute. I'll, uh...I'll be right there."

"Are we good?"

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"Are you lying?"

Yi shay. Daniel pushed down a surge of irritation and said, "Maybe."

"You want me to grovel?" Jack said. Daniel looked up in annoyance, knowing things turned into jokes with Jack and hating it just then. "Yeah, I wasn't gonna. But I'll...let you talk about naquadah all day. Or rocks or whatever."

"I've just got a lot to think about," Daniel said, not taking the bait.

"Are we going to be...?" Jack's finger bounced between himself and Daniel.

"I'm on your team," Daniel said. "We have to be." He'd meant it as an affirmative, but Jack's expression made him add, "We've both been through a lot worse, Jack."

And, once he thought about it, there were a lot of arguments he and Jack had over and over because they'd never agree, or ones they avoided for that reason, and they managed just the same. He'd told Jack that the choices they made were based on what they couldn't bear to lose. Surely he could swallow some disagreements for that.

The idea of losing a friend for something that he himself couldn't be sure was wrong...they couldn't let that happen. But it didn't mean things had to--or could--stay exactly the same.

"Good," Jack said, sounding cautious.

"I want to start sharing the bills at the house," Daniel said.

Jack looked surprised for a few moments before understanding dawned. "Daniel, it's your home whether or not--god, it's--"

"Then I can start paying my part, at least. What's wrong with it, if it's really my home and we're both adults?" he challenged. "Maybe sometimes I want to go home instead of going to your home."

"I'm not gonna throw you out," Jack said. "Ever. You don't have to pay a rent for that."

Daniel almost said, 'And I should just trust you on that?' because he did, but he'd rather trust Jack because he trusted, not because he had to. There was more strength in the choice than in the obligation. Daniel didn't have control over much in his position and on this planet and with his age, but he could hold onto things one by one. "It's more fair this way," he said, starting to gather together what he'd need if he was going to spend the weekend at the house.

It took a long time before Jack answered. When he did, he said, "You took care of everything for the last three months."

"Then you take the next three, and we can alternate after that," Daniel countered.

Jack pulled open Robert's top drawer--the one Robert always forgot to lock--and tried to play with the stapler. Daniel took it away, put it back, and slammed the drawer shut. Jack withdrew. "If it'll...make you feel better," Jack said.

"Yes."

"Okay," Jack said, and even though Daniel knew the agreement was only to stop the argument, to humor him, he could accept that, too. "So..." Jack started, then twirled a finger in the air, then stopped. "So..."

"Do you want to know about that chamber we opened on Abydos?" Daniel said. "I wanted to show you at the time, but obviously... I mean, I can tell you about it if you want."

"Yeah, sure, I want to hear," Jack said.

"Are you lying?"

"Nope," Jack said, and Daniel still thought it was a lie, at least a little bit, but it was an gesture, too, an offer to listen to what Jack would think was boring data they'd collected on Ra's useless Goa'uld devices and an Ancient tablet they knew nothing about. The least he could do was accept it. "Tell me about it on the way home?"

"Yeah," Daniel said. "Yeah, okay. Just let me turn this in--I'll meet you on the surface."

Daniel waited for Jack to come out of the office before turning around and deliberately locking the door behind them, knowing Jack would see him do it and wonder if it meant anything. Mostly, Daniel just suspected Jack would try to pull things back to normal by joking or playing small pranks, and he wasn't in the mood to find a Post-It note with a joke in his drawer this week.

"Right," Jack said, a little stiffly, but didn't mention anything else. "Meet you up top."

---

From the next chapter ("Caged"):

This seemed to be good enough for Daniel, who continued talking and occasionally remembered to translate in between asking Nyan about how they'd found the Stargate (by accident), what they knew about the Stargate (that it was just a legend--except that it clearly wasn't), and why Nyan was so excited about it (it proved that the Bedrosians were completely wrong about this holy turf war they'd been fighting with the Optricans for decades...)

"Whoa," Jack said, alarmed.

"Uh," Daniel said nervously.