Author's Notes:  A continuing series...at least ten total...on the complexity and simplicity of friendship.

DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions.  This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment purposes and no money was made from it.  Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended.  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.  Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.  Not to be archived without permission of the author(s).

He was such a dork...and God knows I was in no mood to be very charitable back then...even to myself.

I was a total ass. The limit of my compassion toward Daniel at that point in time extended only so far as what would keep him in one piece to get us back home from Abydos. Part of me wouldn't have minded a bit watching Feretti and Kowalski knock a little sense into the four-eyed sneezing hope that was Dr. Daniel Jackson.

Then he got killed for me...

Talk about a kink in your world-view...and admittedly my world-view was pretty screwed right about then anyway. A whole lot of ugliness had gone into making me that way, but in the end even I realized that I alone had let myself go down that road.

So a long, cold night trying to sleep standing up in waist deep water had me thinking maybe, just maybe, there was more to Daniel Jackson than I'd taken the time or interest to look for.

His smoking body taught me more than his gentle words ever could have. Things like giving everything for the sake of an arrogant bastard who was only there to get himself killed in the first place. Things I'd known and believed in a long time ago, but managed to forget along the way to Abydos. Daniel's sacrifice reminded me of some of those things; stirring memories of the person I had been...so long ago...

A person...I realized just before returning home...I really wanted to become again.

I'd made a good start on it in the year I was retired. I'd managed to find some contentment...an understanding with myself, a way to cope with...everything...and still be 'me.' The 'me' I'd been before Black Ops, before Charlie...left.

Then Apophis came...and Samuels...and Hammond with his bomb intended to blow up the good people of Abydos...including Daniel. I tried to protect them and almost wound up getting them killed. Thank God Hammond is as good a man as he is under that uniform or they'd be nothing but toast right now.

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if that bomb had gone through...

No, as bad as things got for Daniel after we came back for him I know he wouldn't have wanted that...

God, he looked so lost that first night.

Lost and alone and so totally bereft...

I couldn't just leave him there, holding up the wall like he was supporting the weight of every one of the twenty-eight floors above him.

I took him home and in the dark hours of that first night back, I found something in Daniel Jackson that I not only liked, but wanted to keep around me. He was just so...open...to everything. In the midst of his own pain and uncertainty, Daniel found the time and the caring...the charity of spirit...to give a damn that my own marriage was just as hopelessly cut apart as his. It 'mattered' to him at a time when anyone else would have been totally lost in self-pity.

I liked that about him...still do.

For all the garbage he's had to deal with, he doesn't let it pull him under.

Time after time I've watched him pull it all together and do the right thing...when it would have been so damn easy to just break down and give up. Not the right thing according to Colonel Jack O'Neill. Not the right thing according to ubiquitous regs of the US Air Force and its little offshoot called the SGC. Not even the right thing according to the US, by God, of A Constitution. No, I'm talking about 'the' right thing...that cosmic-universal harmony, way-beyond-civilized, ultimate-sacrifice, no-matter-that -he's-hurting-and -scared-shitless-right-down-to-his-soul kind of right thing.

Look at what happened with Nem. For all the pain the old fish guy put Daniel through, Daniel still tried to make nice with him. I mean for Pete's sake the kid had nightmares for weeks afterward. He tried to pass the whole thing off as 'not too bad,' but we knew. Screaming, shaking night terrors told us it was pretty damn awful.

Then there was the whole thing with Teal'c. I mean...Daniel did the one thing I never would have expected when he accepted Teal'c not only as a member of the team...but as a friend. I'm not sure I could've done it in the same circumstances. It took some time, and I wasn't totally sure until the business with the Hammer...but against every odd I'd've given on it...it happened. Teal'c would have given his right arm and a dozen other body parts up for Daniel even then. Now, it's not so much the protector-warrior-guilt trip thing as a genuine respect for each other. Even after the thing with Sha're, Daniel accepts Teal'c easily into his very elite circle of friends.

There are very few people he trusts with a portion of his heart and his soul. There's me, Carter, Teal'c, Feretti, Fraiser and, surprisingly enough, Hammond. That one was a real shocker to me. Hammond was such a total hardass at first where Daniel was concerned. The general was totally convinced Daniel was an accident waiting for a place to happen and had no place on off-world missions. Boy did Daniel burst that little bubble, proving time and time again he not only had a place...he was essential.

The first time we thought he was dead...the second if you count Ra...when the whole Stargate thing was new and scary and bigger than any of us had ever imagined, I said Daniel had made the SGC happen. At the time I think I was talking about the fact he'd opened the thing in the first place. But after we got him back and I watched him go toe-to-toe with the general, the NID nitwits, and the senator from hell...not to mention snakeheads and other assorted aliens I realized just how true that statement was.

Daniel made...makes...SGC 'happen'. We've learned a lot from his highly evolved humanity. We learned to look at the big picture in a world full of Kennedy's and Samuels' and Maybourne's and Kinsey's. To look beyond a world that trained us to check our humanity at the door and get the job done. Daniel shows us everyday through words, actions and very fine example how to get the job done...and still remember the universe consists of more than just the party line mission statement of acquiring what we need to defeat the Goa'uld or any other threat that might come down the galactic turnpike.

I didn't really understand how well I'd learned that lesson until I found myself spouting a load of garbage for Maybourne's benefit. It made me sick inside to hear the voice of the son of a bitch I used to be. There'd been a time early on when I believed exactly those words...and fought tooth and nail against any deviation from that mission. It was a relief to discover the words and the feelings really were a lie to me now...and had been for a long time.

I'm not saying Daniel was the only reason for the change, but he was a damn big part of it. I lied when I told him I couldn't relate to him. I relate to him in ways I could never have imagined four years ago when he sneezed his intellectual way into my life. I hate that lie, hate the reasons for telling it, hate the look it earned me...the hurt, confused let-me-help-you-through-this-Jack look that even up to the last minute wasn't completely giving up on me.

Thankfully that charity of spirit thing is still in place...he forgave me. He made me pay a little while, but he forgave me and I swore to myself to work a little harder at keeping anything like it from ever happening again...to be a better friend.

Back to Stories Page