1.

He can hear Cammie screaming -- she's hurt; he's hurt her JD won't forgive that -- he locks his hands at the back of his skull, spreads his elbows wide -- no threat no threat no threat -- he'll make it easy for him -- sinks to his knees will it be quick JD owes him nothing (stranger) it's only fair -- he hears Cammie screaming-

A hand on his skin jars him, and everything goes black.

"You were dreaming," JD says quietly.

"Cammie," he says. He can feel her pressed up against his hip, but the dream-logic is insistent. (Hurt. Dying.)

"W'hu'z'nt?" she mutters fuzzily, shifting, on her way to awake, roused by the sound of her name.

JD reaches across him to touch her. "Go back to sleep, Mitchell," he says (not loudly, but firmly) and she subsides.

One of the strangest things (about the two of them with each other; Daniel keeps lists in his head -- organized by category, or else they'd run far too long) is that he's never heard either of them address the other by anything other than last name.

JD rolls out of bed and heads for the bathroom. When he comes back, he pauses by the bed. "I want coffee," he says quietly. "You?"

And one of the nicest things about his current living arrangement is that nobody ever asks him if he's okay. He glances at the clock on the wall (blue LED letters six inches high) and sees that it's 0345. And he doesn't have to be up by five so he can get through the checkpoints and geared up by 0645 to hit the Commissary by seven and his 'where are we going that they're going to try to kill us today briefing' an hour later, but coming back to the SGC is, in its own fun way, déjà vu all over again, and even though his days are nine to five now, instead of (technically and they never were) 0700 to 1600, he knows he won't be able to get back to sleep now.

He came back to Earth in March. It's June now. March into April was a month's leave filled with a hundred things. The reorientation briefing he'd bailed out on when he arrived (a week of gentle reintroduction to the Wonders of Earth designed for SGC/IOA personnel who have been living offworld for more than six months). His debriefing on The Situation In Pegasus (which took two weeks, but a lot of it was essay questions and the rest was an hour here and an hour there with various specialists around the SGC, and very little of it with the SGC's new master, General Napolitano). Finding an apartment, leasing a car (not only are they all smart these days, most of them are hybrid electric and if he doesn't plug the one he bought in to recharge it, it phones him up to yell at him, which is creepy beyond his power to express), getting his worldly goods out of storage. Starting up his life again.

And everybody should have a hobby. For March and April and May, his was staying out of the Secured Psychiatric wing of the Academy Hospital. Thank god for the Internet. When he left, he would have had to do so many things in person (shop for an apartment, open a bank account, shop for a car); now he doesn't. By the time he started back at the SGC (in the sense of working; he'd spent about half his leave quartered there), he was ... almost back to normal. As long as he avoided crowds (mostly). There weren't a lot of crowds in a secret military base under a decommissioned military base. Thank god. He couldn't spend weekends there, though. General Napolitano was a firm believer in The Book (a mythical object that in this case meant that civilian consultants were strongly-discouraged from clocking overtime without good reason).

He didn't like his apartment, and he didn't sleep well there, but it was the best he could find (defining 'best' in his Very Special New Way). No high-traffic complexes full of kids. No cheery suburban bungalow with nosy neighbors (he's tried that). The best available compromise was an artist's loft in a half-renovated warehouse downtown. Steel doors, freight elevator, and the windows were all painted shut, but he had a single room about thirty feet by a hundred and twenty feet with a toilet-shower-sink-hotplate-fridge crammed into one corner, and he bought a bed and a chair and something to hang his suits in and promised himself he'd fix the place up and unpack later. Or move.

But the place he ended up moving (a thing he would never have predicted) was in with Cameron Mitchell and her business partner, because she called him a few weeks after he got back (got his number from Sam) to see how he was settling in, and he'd known he owed her some gesture of civility (such as a groveling apology) for all she'd done for him, and he'd offered to take her (and her business partner, a belated afterthought) out to dinner and she'd laughed and invited him to come to the house.

After a while he realized they were dating. She encouraged him to make advances (he didn't want to presume; it didn't even occur to him until after they'd negotiated the asked-and-answered process that anyone might not want to take her to bed if they were given the chance) and after he'd been a frequent guest (home and dinner table and bed) for several weeks (and admitted that no, his apartment probably never would be ready for guests, ever) she and JD had apparently taken a meeting and invited him to move in with them.

He sleeps better here.

Most of the time.

Tonight is not one of those nights.

He sighs, and gets up, and goes into the bathroom, and plucks his robe off the door, and follows JD into the kitchen. Every room in the house can have its lighting adjusted from a glow too dim to do more than navigate by (barely) to a light brighter than desert noonday. The kitchen is dim; only enough light to pick out the shapes of furniture and the objects on the counter. JD has eyes like a cat. JD is 28 years old. JD has all of Jack O'Neill's memories up to twelve years ago (the point at which he was made) so he remembers almost as much about Jack as Daniel does (more -- if you want to be completely accurate, actually -- since he remembers Jack's life before the SGC) and he remembers nearly all of the time Jack and Daniel spent together (sleeping, waking, arguing, getting shot at, getting tortured, death and resurrection), and he is not Jack O'Neill.

"Sit," JD says. "Coffee'll be ready in a minute."

Daniel sits down at the table. The kitchen isn't quite familiar enough yet for him to be able to negotiate it at this light-level. JD transfers the sugar bowl from the counter to the table, adds spoons, takes the milk from the refrigerator (JD stuns his coffee into submission with so much milk and sugar that he might as well simply drink caffeinated coffee-flavored milk and be done with it; Cammie abuses him roundly for his preferences, Daniel doesn't), takes down two mugs and pours them full and sets them on the table. Last of all he takes a plate from the cabinet, opens the cookie jar, piles the plate high with cookies, and brings it the table, sitting down.

JD eats like a hummingbird -- which means: constantly. The number of calories he packs away in any given day is stunning. Metabolism set permanently on 'high', Daniel thinks. These and other variations on a familiar theme (he thinks of wearing the Atoniek armband), and it's both a shock and a relief to find that the theme isn't familiar after all, because Daniel can't imagine Jack ever having made his living doing something technical with computers (Jack was not stupid -- god help you if you thought he was -- but his intelligence hardly lay in a technical direction), and when JD goes out on dates (which JD does) the people JD dates are male.

Okay, that was a shock. But if he'd needed anything (else) to convince him that they were two different men, that had been it.

JD sits down across from him, adulterates his milk, grabs two cookies off the plate and stuffs one (whole) into his mouth. Daniel selects one more sedately. When Cammie is not on a work deadline, when she's feeling good enough to spend an extended period in the kitchen, she cooks and bakes (and cooks ahead; the freezer is filled with things she's cooked that only have to be microwaved).

He wonders if they're supposed to be having a conversation now. (Though actually JD has never, at any time in the last three months, shown the least desire to have a Deep Meaningful Conversation with him, something for which Daniel is profoundly grateful.) He isn't sure what to say. This isn't the first time he's had that nightmare (he doubts it'll be the last, either), though it's the worst so far. And even here and now, it's hard to shake the conviction that it's true: he hurt Cammie. Therefore JD will kill him. He wonders if it's actually all just a complicated form of death-wish.

The coffee helps. ('Dreams teach.' Yeah, right. 'Careful, we don't want to learn anything from this.') "I would never hurt her," he says, aloud.

"You got nothing to worry about, then," JD answers, reaching for another cookie.

2.

Whiteness.

"Don't touch him."

JD's voice.

"Daniel. Can you give me your hand?"

He has no idea where his hand is. But he must manage to do something, because he feels JD's hand in his, strong and warm. "Breathe," JD, says, and Daniel finally manages to unlock his chest muscles enough to suck air. He's clutching JD's hand hard enough that his own fingers ache.

"Open your eyes," JD says quietly, and when he says it, Daniel can.

He won't look at JD. He won't look at Cammie. He staggers out of the bed, into the bathroom -- barely getting the door shut -- and throws up.

There are a lot of things he'd like right now. Most of all, for the last half hour to have not happened. He gets to his feet, rinses his mouth, brushes his teeth, grabs the mouthwash and pours some into a cup...

The bright cinnamon scent -- the same scent that was on Cammie's breath in bed as she leaned over him -- sends him reeling back to the toilet. There's nothing in his stomach to throw up this time, but he tries (oh god he tries) because now the entire bathroom reeks of cinnamon mouthwash, since he's spilled the whole bottle into the bathroom sink. When he's got his stomach under control he staggers to his feet (holding his breath) and rummages through the medicine cabinet for some Vicks. He slathers it over his upper lip and into his nose until he's pretty sure he won't be able to smell anything, then cleans up the bathroom.

He rinses the empty mouthwash bottle until he's pretty sure he's being compulsive, then he throws it in the trash. Brushes his teeth again. Several times. There's a bottle of something blue under the sink that says it's wintery fresh. He gets it out and uses it.

Earth six months. Here four months. Fine most of the time until there's a sudden 'oh yeah/oh no' moment and one of the puzzle blocks of his subconscious shifts and suddenly the world is filled with monsters. (A common enough response of the human psyche to severe or protracted stress to be called 'normal,' and personally Daniel could build a better human psyche out of a ball of string and some tin cans, because this one really sucks. And there aren't any tin cans any more. Everything is in plastic, even 'canned' soda (for civilian use; the military still uses metal), and the first time he tried to open a can of Coke out of a vending machine, all he managed to do was tear it in half.) What the hell is he supposed to say to Cammie about what just happened? Especially considering the fact he really doesn't have much of a clue about what did. If his mind is going to start ambushing him in what he laughingly calls his own home, it may be time to call it a day here.

He realizes he can't stay in the bathroom for the rest of the night (win, lose, or draw), and opens the bathroom door.

He's never seen either of them be anything other than honest (brutally frank, shatteringly rude) with each other, and from the beginning they've been equally-honest with him; the only tactful considerations he's been extended when his shortcomings are being enumerated are that they aren't (at least some of the time; depending on what's under discussion) listed at the top of the speaker's lungs and he doesn't have to talk about them. But he doesn't get to evade them, either, and that's why -- when he leaves the bathroom -- both of them are there and nobody is tactfully feigning sleep.

JD raises his eyebrows questioningly. If Daniel's found something new that's going to make him react before he thinks (JD actually said, a while back, that shifts like this in the mental landscape were all part of the healing process, and the bitter disgust in his voice had reminded Daniel that Jack's experiences were still inside that skin even if Jack wasn't), they need to know what it is in order to make accommodations. Daniel shrugs helplessly, shaking his head. "I don’t -- I really have no --"

"Well, I won't say it didn't suck, but don't you worry yourself about it none, baby," Cammie says briskly. "If it don't happen again, no harm no foul. It does, we can start figurin' it out."

And the beautiful thing is, she means it.

JD bounces to his feet (like Tigger, JD bounces everywhere, Daniel has long since decided) and gestures grandiloquently at the bed. "Just because you pitch a fit doesn't mean I'm sleeping in the middle."

Daniel actually smiles at that. (So much more comforting, really -- and he has a basis of comparison -- to be mocked for pitching a fit than soberly and solemnly drugged and locked in a padded room.) He climbs into bed. JD turns off the lights.

And when he's back in bed, tucked in between Cammie and JD (both of them in close; closer than the three of them ever sleep at night), on his side, facing Cammie, JD puts an arm around him, and Daniel takes JD's hand and holds it.

3.

November is not (actually) bleak (eight months on Earth, six months in the Nielson-Mitchell petting zoo) but it raises the interesting question: when the two of them go home for the holidays, is he going to go with them? Thanksgiving is the end of this month, and Christmas is the following month, and both holidays are command performances for them, and have been for years.

It leads to one of the few times (he can, oh, pretty much count them on the thumbs of one foot, and that's one of Cammie's pet expressions, and she has -- they both have -- wound themselves both so deeply into his life) where they all discuss his problem head-on. In the last eight months he's flown to DC twice, and it was brutally uncomfortable, but he flew military and stayed at Cammie and JD's townhouse and went to and from the places he needed to go in a chauffeur-driven car and aside from being irritable the entire time (something he might have been anyway, considering it was Washington and politicians) he'd been okay both times.

But visiting Cammie's family (JD's family-by-adoption) means flying commercial (with a transfer; Asheville isn't a hub, so they usually fly Denver to Atlanta to Asheville) then spending three days (Thanksgiving) and seven days (Christmas) in a very crowded house packed with four generations (minimum) of extraordinarily boisterous people.

"Thanksgiving and not Christmas?" JD says.

Cammie snorts. "Oh, yeah. You explain that one to Momma. Jackass."

"We'll tell her he ran off and joined the circus. Daniel?"

"I don't kno-o-ow," he sing-songs, staring up at the ceiling, tossing a pillow into the air and catching it. He's as careful navigating the challenges of his emotional landscape as Cammie is navigating her physical one. For pretty much the same reason. He doesn't want to trip and fall either. (It's an unfair comparison between his impairment and hers. He'd never say it aloud. He's still trying to come to terms -- emotionally, yes -- with the concept of an invisible injury that you can't quantify, much less tell when it's getting better or worse.) He catches the pillow, replaces it on the couch, sits forward. "I don't know," he repeats quietly. "I'm sorry." He rubs a hand over his face, shoving his glasses up. (He could get the surgery now, but he's worn glasses for a long time. He's comfortable with them.)

He could say that he has no idea of what's going to turn any day into one that leaves him anything from just a little jumpy to completely unable to concentrate to needing to get somewhere absolutely private and stay there and wait, but that isn't true. The problem is, he's got an idea, all right, but sometimes the things do and sometimes they don't. He never likes crowds. Unless the day has started badly though, he can usually deal with them if he has to and as much as he has to.

Strangers approaching him from behind is only mildly annoying. He doesn't permit it.

It's fairly easy to avoid fireworks displays. And thunderstorms never used to bother him -- though thunder sometimes makes him nervous now -- but the first unexpected display of sheet lightning this summer had him down behind the couch and reaching for his gun (he will reach for a phantom 9mm until his dying day, he thinks), but neither Cammie nor JD had laughed.

And sometimes none of those things will bother him too much and sometimes it will be something from completely out of the blue, something that seems completely illogical. Like a clown with a handful of toy balloons who'd been wandering around the edges of a street fair. Or this car (but not that one) appearing out of his blind spot while he's driving, and suddenly he'll have to resign himself (all over again) to the truth that his 'fine' is just a temporary illusion that's been shattered once again.

He sighs. "I think it would be just as well if I didn't go," he says.

And he isn't expecting hysterical recriminations (they will both roundly abuse each other, and are far more gentle with him), but he's a little surprised when Cammie only nods. "You're plannin' on livin' on takeout while we're gone, think twice, 'cause that whole freezer's gonna be full'a food an' I'm gonna count it all goin' an' comin' an I will know how much oughta be gone. Jus' don't you be stayin' here on account a you think you'll make me look bad front'a Momma, 'cause the whole rest'a the Family's batshit crazy -- even like Nielson here, that should give you some idea."

"He probably wants to get a few decent nights' sleep without having to listen to you snore," JD says.

"Fine talk from a sumbitch who could etch glass with the power of his adenoids," Cammie shoots right back.

Daniel settles back into the couch to listen as the bickering escalates -- zero to sixty in under ten seconds. Conference over, decision made. A little disappointing (disappointed in himself; he'd like to be better now, right now, and the desire for everything to be All Better Now indicates that yeah, okay, maybe he's willing to concede that there's something to be better from), but it's (he thinks) the right choice.

And a few days later they're out together (all three of them) at the mall (because there are a couple of things Cammie wants and she doesn't want to wait for the Internet to deliver them). And he hears JD swear, and looks down, and there's a silvery flash moving by his foot.

And his first thought is Replicators, and he turns quickly, heart racing, but no. It's only some kid's radio-controlled toy car. It crashes into the brick planter and flips over, wheels spinning and grinding.

Daniel takes a deep breath and hurries to catch up to the others. He doesn't feel the need to look back to be sure the car hasn't turned into a Replicator, either. He knows it hasn't.

Next year, he thinks, and he feels a confidence in making that promise (if only to himself) that he would not have felt last week, last month. Next year, I'll go with them.

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