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Pairing: J/D
Season: S8 or later
Episode: Fragile Balance
Rating: PG
Warnings: Character Death
Summary: he waited

My deepest thanks to Sheila for her friendship and understanding.

Second Self
by Night Spring


He read. Things he'd had no interest in the first time around. Things he hadn't thought important. Things he'd had no time for, then.

He had time now.

He marveled at how flexible a young brain was, how it absorbed everything like water and retained it all like carvings in stone. Had it been like this the first time around, and if so, how had he missed it?

He read. He kept fit.

He waited.

"It's a damn suicide mission, Daniel!"

"We've done suicide missions before, Jack."

"Yeah. And one time, you won't be coming back."

"We have to, Jack. There's no other way."

Jack bit his lips and turned away. "Okay," he said finally. "On one condition."

"What?"

"Take me with you."

Daniel stared at the books. Arabic, Latin, Greek... was that Chinese?

"Daniel?"

Oh, right. He collected himself. "Hi, Jack."

"Hi, Daniel," he said. "What do you need?"

"Well, um. That is. Er... You read all this?" A raised eyebrow greeted that question. "Right. Of course. It's just... I mean, they told me you were taking astrophysics. And engineering."

He smiled. "So?"

"Oh, okay. Well..."

"Daniel," he repeated. "What do you need?"

"Well, General O'Neill. Never thought I'd see the sight."

Jack squinted at his younger self. "And you," he tapped the file on his desk. "You've been busy."

"Hey," the other him shrugged. "Needed to fill the time, you know."

"Oh, don't be modest." Jack waved at a chair. "Never knew I had it in me."

"Well," his second self grinned as he sat. "You were always busy with... something."

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "Something."

It was not logical, Jack told himself, to be envious of himself. It was even less logical, he told himself, to be envious of a guy who was walking off to almost certain death.

But it was hardly logical to be sending the two people closest to him in the world off to their deaths.

And it was cold logic that stayed him, standing at the foot of the ramp watching them be swallowed up through the blue of the Stargate, when every inch of his soul screamed he should be the one to go.

"Daniel," he said. "Go."

"No!" Daniel grabbed his arm. "I'm not leaving you. I can't."

"Daniel," he said again. "He needs you back."

Daniel stared at him, frozen.

He raised a hand and gently cupped Daniel's face.

"Go."

The night wind was cold, but he didn't care.

Jack clenched his hand around the dog tags marked Lt. J. O'Neill.

Above him the stars stretched, endless as always.

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