For a brief second, when JD answers the door, Daniel nearly turns to run.

Come here instead, I'll make dinner, Cameron -- Cammie -- had said, when he'd proposed taking her to dinner as a token social gesture. (He remembers having manners; on Atlantis, when you want to say thank-you to someone, you bring them chocolate, or liquor, or a two-terabyte hard drive full of pirated new-release movies smuggled to Pegasus by willfully-complicit Air Force crew. This is not how you say thank-you on Earth. Different cultures evolve different gestures.) The thought of a restaurant (people, noise, motion) makes him want to claw his own skin off, but he dislikes the thought of accruing unrepaid social obligations even more, so he'd forced himself to call and make the invitation. Nothing said he would ever have to see her (him) again; the debt could have remained unpaid. But it shouldn't.

So he'd protested -- forcing her to feed him simply adds another check-mark to the eternal tallyboard that lives behind his eyes, rather than rebalancing accounts -- but she had stood firm, and that's how he finds himself standing on the front porch of a house that looks like it could serve as barracks for half the SGC and still have room left over. He hadn't stopped to think that if she and her business partner don't bother maintaining separate residences in DC, they might not do so here, either. He's been trying not to think of her business partner at all.

"Hi," JD says, unsmiling. He's standing in the doorway, one hand on the door, the other held (loose and unthreatening) at his side. He's wearing a pair of jeans and a plain white tank top. The jeans are loose and worn and frayed; the tank top is thin enough that it's probably intended to be an undershirt. Daniel can see the lines of his tattoos, bold and stark and black, through its thin fabric.

He feels overdressed. He'd been in their home in DC, seen what they consider acceptable house-wear; he shouldn't be surprised. (Should be grateful that JD bothered with clothing at all; their trip back to Colorado had been punctuated by JD bitching endlessly about the necessity of clothing; Cammie, wearing her dress uniform, had told him in language that nearly gave Daniel pause to shut up.) Still, Daniel's fashion sense is stuck in the Pegasus galaxy even if his belongings no longer are; he hasn't been able to bring himself to brave the trip to the mall to bring himself up-to-date on current fashion, and Internet ordering can only take him so far. He'd settled on chinos and a loose handwoven tunic that isn't too shocking to the modern American eye. (It's a masterwork, finely detailed and impeccably crafted, and the planet upon which he'd traded for it had been a thriving marketplace, and the only thing left now is a few hundred shell-shocked refugees.)

But JD is looking at him. Not impatiently; JD seems content to wait for hours, if need be, for Daniel to say something. So Daniel says something. "Hi." He thrusts out the bottle of wine he's clutching. "I, uh --"

JD takes it and nods. "Thanks. Come on in. Shoes off at the door."

The security here isn't as obvious as it is in the condominium in DC, but Daniel can tell by the way JD pushes the door shut behind him as he steps in that the door is made of something other than the standard materials. The beep of JD pushing buttons on the keypad barely registers; Daniel's too busy looking around him.

It's a beautiful house: open lines, wide doorways, high-end hardwood flooring. The front door opens directly onto the living room, which is nearly the size of his entire artist's-loft apartment. The walls are painted a warm and inviting cream; the three couches and several sitting chairs are all firm and covered in jewel-toned cloth, shades of blues and purples. The room's divided by means of furniture into three distinct areas, with clear walkways between them. One of the sitting-regions faces a plasma TV that would cover half the wall in a smaller room. One is built around a smaller TV, which is festooned with various add-on electronics. One (and the presence of an equally jewel-toned, hand-knit blanket thrown over the back of the couch makes him think it's the one that's most often used) faces the floor-to-ceiling windows all along the left-hand wall of the room, which overlook virgin forest sloping gradually down towards the back of the house (it's built into a hill, apparently); the view is breathtaking.

It takes Daniel a minute to realize that all three sitting areas are set up so that in no configuration, in no circumstance, will a person sitting anywhere in the room have his back to the door.

There's an open-archway door directly across from the front door; the configuration of furniture is such that there's a clear path from here to there. He can see a hallway beyond it, but from where he's standing, he can't tell where it leads. To the right, another door; that one, he thinks, leads to the kitchen. Everywhere he looks, there's another piece of artwork on the wall, another piece of sculpture on a table or a sideboard; at first glance, they define "eclectic", but the more Daniel looks at them, the more he starts to see a unifying theme. Quality. Each piece says something, even if he can't read what they say. He could spend hours with each one, like he could in a museum, but the collection here isn't the cold and soulless gallery-hanging that so many museums fall prey to; the placement simultaneously feels random and organic.

It doesn't feel like a showplace or a gallery. It feels like a home. Occupied and tenanted by a person (people?) who like fine things, no matter how random and whimsical those tastes might be, and who have the budget and the desire to indulge those likes. He's been in too many houses where the living room was a formal display parlor, and this isn't; he can feel the presence of people here.

JD is watching him. Still. Waiting. "Give you the tour later," he offers.

His voice kicks Daniel back into the real world, the one where he has obligations and social duties to discharge. "Thank you," he says. Kicks off his shoes -- there's a line of them stretching next to the door, his-and-hers, underneath the sideboard containing keys and mail and the rest of the detritus a hallway table often collects; he adds his to the end -- and squares his shoulders. "It's a beautiful house."

JD nods, unsmiling, accepting the compliment without taking credit for it. Daniel wonders which of them lives here -- if both of them live here -- and which of them is owed credit for the interior design. It doesn't feel like anything Jack would have ever --

He stops the thought before it can go any further, concentrating instead on the smells rising from the kitchen; the entire living room smells like a particularly high-end Italian kitchen, rich and redolent with the scents of garlic and basil and oregano and something he can't identify. There are noises coming from the kitchen, too, happy sounds of industry. That must be where Cammie is.

And indeed, a second later, her voice drifts out. "I know you ain't keeping Daniel standing in the foyer cooling his heels," she calls. "So you musta both been struck deaf, dumb, and blind out there."

JD's eyes meet Daniel's, and for a second, Daniel sees a glimmer of humor there, some echo of shared camaraderie from a life long gone: see what I put up with? It passes. JD turns his head and yells back, "He's scared to death of you, is all. Thought I'd let him ease into things."

"Um," Daniel says. He doesn't want Cammie to think it might be the truth. Cameron Mitchell is formidable (bright and brave and valiant and true) and generous and giving, and he thinks many men (and no few women) find her frightening, and he doesn't want her to think he might be one of them. He's not sure why. It just seems wrong. "I brought wine," he calls, instead.

An asynchronous thumping from the kitchen, and a second later, she pokes her head around the edge of the door. It makes him stop and stare. Last month (bad time, bad situation) he'd noticed, objectively, that she is beautiful. Here, in her own home, free and easy and happy, she is stunning. Her dark brown hair, cropped short the way Sam's has always been, is shot through with lines of silver just like his own is starting to be; her face, with its high cheekbones and strong nose, bears generous laugh lines, written deeply. But her face is lived-in, like this house is lived-in. She looks younger than he knows she must be.

She's smiling at him like his presence here is the best present she could have gotten. "Don't you worry," she says, firm and welcoming. "I know better than to hold his bad manners against you. Nielson, get lost. I'll call you when dinner's ready. Daniel, you come on and sit down in here and keep me company. Get you something to drink?"

"Water's fine," he says. He follows hard on JD's heels into the kitchen. Which is -- surprisingly -- about three-quarters the size of the living room, and divided into work area and eating area. There's a chest-height table with four padded bar-stool chairs in the corner, bare save for a vase of cheerful daisies and carnations. Fresh ones. The work area would not look out of place in a commercial kitchen: reach-in freezer, dual-width refrigerator, side by side; a six-burner range top; a dual set of baker's convection ovens; a flat grill. It's edged in on three sides by stainless steel counters. Daniel isn't sure, but he'd make an educated guess and say that there's at least a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of appliances and gear. There are stairs leading down in the far corner, and a sliding grate covering what looks for all the world like a cargo elevator next to the staircase.

JD pushes past him, leans over one of the countertops, sets the wine bottle down, grabs a handful of carrots from the pile Cammie had clearly been chopping, and dances out of the way as Cammie swings her cane at his shins. "Be downstairs," he says. "Don't work him too hard."

"Get," she says, waving her cane at him again. "Dinner in thirty."

JD skips down the stairs, disappearing with a series of well-timed thudding noises. Left alone with Cammie, Daniel doesn't quite know what happens next. "Can I help you with something?" he manages.

She points at the table. "Sit and keep me company," she says, peacefully, and walks over to take a glass from the cabinet. Cane-assisted; she's moving more freely today than she was the last time he saw her, but there's still no doubt she needs the extra help; the way she leans on it tells him that it's serving to replace at least half the function of her right leg, and he remembers the sight of her in tiny shorts and tattoos and winces. She's wearing a pair of cotton scrubs and a t-shirt, today -- he has the feeling that they're both trying to put him at ease, to make him feel welcome, and yes, all right, he knows he was a wreck the last time they saw him, but it still irritates him to think that they feel they have to change their behavior just to cater to him -- and it takes him a second to realize that her feet, bare against the floor, are missing several toes.

"I really can help," he tries again, and she gives him a raised-eyebrow look over her shoulder as she opens the refrigerator door, transfers her cane into the crook of her left arm, and fills the tumbler from a pitcher of water she takes from inside.

"Told you to sit," she says. Her voice is firm enough that he finds himself sitting before he even told himself that he would. She brings over the glass of water, sets it on the table in front of him. "I've got it all under control. An' nobody's allowed to cook in this kitchen until and unless they pass the test, so don't you worry yourself."

"I can follow directions. Or chop things," Daniel says, but the protest is pro forma; he doesn't think she's going to give in. Belatedly, he realizes that the thoughtless implications might be offensive; he doesn't mean to imply that she's less than capable. He'd spent about thirty-six total hours in her company (hers and his; Daniel will not think about that), but he hadn't once seen her try to do something and fail because of her physical limitations; he doesn't want her to think his offer of help is motivated by pity.

Or condescension. He'd traveled back from the funeral with them, and he'd been on high sentry and red alert the whole time, concentrating mostly on his own breathing and not flipping out, but even then he'd retained enough awareness of the situation around him to realize that to the outside world, she is either invisible or an object of helplessness that must be aided. His desire to help stems from none of these motives; he's just uncomfortable with being waited on, is all. He can't find the right words to make sure she knows this.

"My momma'd reach across the country and whap me if I put guests to work," Cammie says. "Still. I'm glad you could come. That you could get the time, I mean. Must be a pain, getting everything put back together after having been gone so long."

He finds himself laughing. "Oh, God, you have no idea," he says, and maybe there's something about the tilt of her head or the curve of her lips or the way she doesn't press him to explain more -- the way she doesn't seem as though she feels she's entitled to his innermost thoughts, the way she doesn't seem to be passing judgment, the way she doesn't push, doesn't even ask -- that makes him want to tell her, because he does. Opens his mouth and it all comes spilling out -- coming back to Earth; dealing with people; all of the changes in culture (it's amazing how much a culture evolves in ten short years; to anyone who lived it, the changes are seamless; to someone who's coming back after ten years away and isolated, they stand out vividly) that he's still trying to come to terms with.

Dimly, he's aware that what he's telling her is classified, that he shouldn't be saying a tenth of what he is, that he could be shot and killed for having this conversation. He's also aware that he must sound like a complete idiot. It doesn't matter. The psychiatrists and counselors have been trying to get him to talk to them for a month now; the specialists and decision-makers have been grilling him at every opportunity; he's put all of them off with the absolute bare minimum (and the shrinks with active mendacity) and made them all think that everything's fine, and they haven't pushed him more than a little to find out how badly he's lying to them. He tells her all of it.

She's a remarkable listener. Active enough to make him feel she's paying full attention to him; thoughtful enough to let him talk, and talk, and talk, without interrupting and without prying. The few sentences she offers, here and there, are gleaned from her experiences, her own trials and challenges; not to compare pains, but to share them. Anyone else, Daniel is positive, would have started backing away from the crazy man a long time ago. She just stands at the counter, and chops things, and lets him talk.

He doesn't even know where he'd been keeping all of it. Pent up, bricked up, back in the places where his conscious thoughts don't go. And up until fifteen minutes ago, he would have said that he'd have rather died than spill his secrets to a stranger. Except she's not a stranger, not quite. She reminds him a little of Teyla, bits and pieces, here and there -- not in the way she looks or the way she moves, but something about the wisdom written deep in her eyes.

Eventually, he stops talking, and when he takes another breath, he almost feels a little more free.

She comes over to the table to take the plate away and put it in the sink -- and he's a little baffled to find that there is a plate there, and it's empty now, and he casts his thoughts back and realizes she'd put an assortment of fruits and crackers and cheeses in front of him and he'd eaten the whole thing and not even noticed, and it isn't precisely that he hasn't wanted to eat lately so much as he just keeps forgetting. "Sounds to me," she says, "like you could use a native guide to this culture to help give you a hand to fit back in. An' I'm guessing you can't stand any of the people they got on hand to do it."

In the wake of his grand confessions, Daniel is starting to feel awkward. Not quite embarrassed -- there's still no cue, by word or deed, that she finds anything he's said shocking or unpleasant or horrifying -- but as though he's just made some ridiculous gaffe, like he's no more socially adept than Rodney McKay. On a bad day. "No," he says. "No. I really can't. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dump that on you. We barely know each other."

She waves a hand. Not dismissive, but setting-aside. "Needed to come out, an' I don't mind the listening. You'd think they could get counselors who don't suck, wouldn't you?"

Daniel laughs again, this time tinged with a touch of giddiness. "Oh, God, they never have. I've given up by now."

"Say it twice," she says, in perfect agreement. She reaches up to the cookware hanging over one of the counters, takes down a wok, and sets it on one of the burners, though she doesn't turn that burner on. It's reassuring, really, to watch her work: she moves with the capable assurance of a master at her art, wholly at home. Daniel has always respected competence. There's a pot of something simmering, covered, on the next burner over; she lifts the lid, releasing a burst of herb-scented steam, and stirs. As he watches, she scoops up some of the liquid she's cooking (soup? must be) and blows on it to cool it, then tastes. It garners a tiny unhappy noise, and she fetches down one of a number of unmarked jars to add more of whatever's inside to the culinary work in progress. "Still, though," she adds. "Seems to me like you're tryin' to learn a whole foreign culture by observation alone, nobody to give you a couple of cues. No wonder you're a little stressed."

"That's --" Daniel starts, and then stops himself. Because she's right. He hasn't been thinking of coming back to Earth in those terms -- entering a foreign culture and trying to adapt to it -- because it's ridiculous; he's from here. But she's right. He's been gone for long enough that it's as foreign as any other place he's ever been. Sometimes he feels like his life is one long case of culture shock, like he's a pinball of otherness careening from bumper to bumper as time goes on. He's been a stranger everywhere he's ever been, always chasing that elusive sense of home, never realizing until he leaves a place that he'd almost been starting to feel familiar there.

"You got any friends in the Springs?" Cammie asks.

Casual concern, and it isn't until he's halfway done answering that he realizes he is answering. "I have two friends in this galaxy, and one of them isn't even on Earth."

It sounds pathetic, spoken out loud like that. But it's true. There had been Sam and Teal'c and Jack, and now Jack is dead and gone (unto dust shalt thou return, and there's a coffin buried in Arlington and Daniel doesn't know what else it might contain, and he is not thinking about the man downstairs), and there are a few people on Atlantis that he might call friend (but Atlantis is far away, and they never really knew all of him, anyway, because there were so many things he never spoke of), and other than that, he's alone.

But she doesn't seem to think it odd. "So, now you have three," she says, with a decisive nod of the head, and he wants to laugh, because surely she doesn't think it can be that easy?

Apparently she does, though. "Feed you whenever you turn up," she says. "We eat around seven, most nights. You let me know what you like and don't like, an' I'll make sure I add it to the menu."

Daniel has a vague sense that somehow, in some way, he's being manipulated. It doesn't bother him as much as it might. He's sitting here, in this warm kitchen that smells like soup and a little like baking bread, with a pretty woman who's perhaps the first person since he set foot back on Earth who doesn't make him feel like a freak. He takes stock (of himself, of his feelings, of his surroundings and his reactions) and realizes that yes, perhaps she's right. Maybe it is that easy.

"I don't want to be a bother," he tries.

Cammie laughs at him. "Wouldn't invite you if you'd be a bother. Best to call ahead when you're leaving the Mountain, just to make sure himself and I aren't neck-deep in software and cursing at each other, but don't you think you should stay away just because you think you're too much trouble. Just as easy to cook for three as it is for two, an' I'm pretty sure nobody's bothered to see that you're doing all right so far. You don't come let me feed you a few times a week, I'll come looking for you an' drag you back here by the hair."

The threat is laughable -- there's no way she could possibly hope to manhandle him -- but her smile is infectious; Daniel finds himself smiling back. "I, uh," he says. "You really don't have to --"

She levels the spoon at him. "Hush," she says. He stops talking. She crosses the room (shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump) to stand in front of him; the height of the chairs means they're almost at eye level. She uses it to meet his eyes, squarely. "It's not right for someone to come home and be alone," she says. Her voice rings with conviction. "Bein' a human means we take care of each other. You're gonna smile at me, and you're gonna say 'thank you, Cammie, I'd love to,' an' you're gonna let me help."

Daniel doesn't know what she thinks she can help with. Then again, she's certainly demonstrated so far that she's willing and capable of dealing with him (and his little problem -- because she was right, JD was right, he never would have gotten back from Washington without the two of them there to run interference for him). And he's realizing that this house, this kitchen, is the first place that silent sentry in the back of his mind has actually felt safe since ... since their house in Washington.

Their. The thing he's not thinking about. The thing he's been actively avoiding thinking about. Because he's pretty sure (almost certain), from what she's said and what he's observed, that she doesn't live here alone.

And perhaps she can read his thoughts. "You look at me, Daniel Jackson," Cammie says, quietly but firmly. He realizes he's dropped his eyes. She lifts her hand, brushes the fingers against his cheek -- feather-touch, ghostly and insubstantial, but he can feel the heat radiating from her skin. It's the first time he can remember someone deliberately touching him in far too long, and he's suddenly aware of how close she's standing, of how she's leaning into him, of how she smells like herbs and spices with a faint undercurrent of fabric softener. The presence of someone else so close to him, so resolutely in his space, should make him nervous; it doesn't. In a way, it's comforting. For a minute, he's seized with the urge to turn and bury his face against her shoulder and wrap his arms around her waist.

He doesn't, of course. He just looks at her, and this close, he can see that her eyes are flecked through with a thousand shades of blue. "It's not right for anybody to be alone," she says. The crazy thing is, he can tell she means it. "We all got a duty to each other. 'Specially those of us who know what the score really is. You're hurtin' pretty bad. Let me help."

"Yeah," Daniel says, before he realizes that he's speaking. It's disconcerting. When she looks at him like that, there's a part of him that thinks he'll do anything she says.

She cups his cheek in her hand, one fleeting touch, and then lets go and steps back. He tries not to be disappointed. "Start by feedin' you," she says. "You look like you haven't eaten right in a month of Sundays."

"I really haven't," Daniel says, remembering a hundred meals, hastily-obtained, eaten on his feet and on the go or at his desk and barely noticed. Dimly, he realizes that he's actually hungry. The kitchen smells heavenly. Maybe that's why.

Behind Cammie, a timer dings. She turns, unhurried, and grabs a mitt; when she opens one of the oven doors, a burst of fragrant air spills forth, and she takes out two trays of perfectly-rounded, oven-browned rolls. Fresh-baked, he realizes. Everything in this kitchen was made by her own two hands. She sets the baking sheets on the range-top. "Fix that right up," she says. "Bowls in the cabinet there. Last door on the end. You fetch me down three, and I'll take care of letting himself know the first course is ready."

First course? There's enough soup in the pot simmering on the stove to feed an entire regiment, and enough rolls to do the same. But Daniel just nods and stands up. It's comforting, almost, to be given a task to complete, to participate in some way in the making of this meal. Like he's welcomed. Like he belongs.

He hadn't realized how much he'd been craving that feeling until he found the first stirrings of it. The SGC isn't his home anymore. Maybe it never was; maybe it was only the people who populated it.

He 'fetches down' the aforementioned bowls (and opens the drawer directly below; sure enough, there are spoons and forks and knives neatly segregated into sections; he selects three of each, not knowing what else the evening's culinary forecast contains but figuring they couldn't possibly go amiss; in most guest situations he wouldn't presume, but he has a feeling it won't be taken wrongly, here). Cammie steps across the kitchen to the section of counter that isn't part of the actual preparation area. There's a computer terminal there -- keyboard, monitor, no mouse; the monitor is old, battered, and black-and-white, and the interface she brings up is text-only. She pulls the keyboard closer, types out something quick and practiced without looking down at her hands. She types quickly. He's not surprised.

After a second's pause, she snorts (an amused and indelicate sound) and types something else. He looks over his shoulder to see her fingers flying one more time, a practiced chording of command keys, and the interface disappears and is replaced with a login prompt once more. "He'll be up in a minute," she says, and there it is again, the invisible and unacknowledged elephant in the room: him. JD. Jack-not-Jack, the ghost at the banquet; never shake thy gory locks at me.

His expression must change; she nods, once, firmly. "Him, and not," she says. "Treat him like himself. Not like anyone you ever knew. It'll be easier for you both, that way."

"Yeah," Daniel says. Not an agreement, really. He doesn't know if he can do that. But he knows she's right.

Downstairs, a door slams. A second later, JD comes bounding up the stairs. Jack never moved like that, so freely, so easily. He ignores Daniel, turns to Cammie. "Got it," he says. "I think. Gonna need an extra pair of eyeballs on my algorithms later to make sure I'm not over-engineering again."

Cammie snorts again. "Why is this night different than all the others," she says, and thumps across the kitchen floor towards the refrigerator. She winds up pausing at the point where her body occludes Daniel's line-of-sight to JD, for one brief second; he can tell her hands are moving, JD's moving in answering echo. ASL, he thinks. He never learned it. None of them had, despite all the times it might have been useful. He wonders what they're saying.

JD turns to Daniel. His face is bland, impersonal; there's nothing here to conjure old ghosts. JD is simply JD, a young man (late twenties now, but late twenties is young to Daniel, standing here at the end of years upon years piled on his shoulders), hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail, wiry body and barely-leashed energy. Daniel can't even see the shape of Jack under his skin, the potential for this man to grow into looking like the man he once knew. They wear different seemings. (A voice, remembered: when you're working undercover, you have to live the role. Be the person you're pretending to be. From the inside.) "What are you drinking with dinner?" JD asks.

Cammie answers for him. "Go ahead and open the wine Daniel brought," she says. "It'll go just fine."

JD's eyes flick back to Daniel. Waiting for an objection. Daniel doesn't protest; he only stands there, feeling awkward, the addition of a third party (of this third party) breaking the easy camaraderie he'd managed to find with Cammie. But JD only nods and turns to rummage in one of the drawers, bringing out a corkscrew. "Wine glasses to your left," he says to Daniel, and Daniel opens the cabinet and takes down three.

It isn't as awkward as it could be, though. Awkward, yes, but not cripplingly so. JD moves around Cammie in the kitchen with the ease of long practice as she puts the finishing touches on the meal (spooning soup into bowls, sprinkling grated cheese on top of each, piling the cooling rolls into a wire basket); he claims each bowl and basket the minute she finishes with it, bringing each to the table, operating on some unknown signal.

It reinforces something Daniel had noticed before (even through his ... distractions); they are supremely, confidently aware of each other. It's fascinating to watch, really. SG-1 had (once upon a time, a long time ago) been able to move around each other, in each others' space, like that. Towards the end, once they'd learned each other so thoroughly; it hadn't come naturally to them. They'd had to work for it. Cammie and JD do it like they've been doing it for years. Daniel wonders how easy it had been, for them to learn how.

He tries out a conversational starter (dimly he is aware that normal human beings have conversations over dinner; he's not sure what a normal conversation would sound like; half of their overlapping sets of knowledge are classified, and the other half touch upon subjects he'd rather swallow his own tongue than approach). "How long have you two known each other?"

"Too damn long," is Cammie's immediate response. JD makes a long arm around her to pick up the basket of rolls; she whacks his shins with her cane again as his hand detours to the pile of chopped vegetables waiting on the counter next to the range and snaps up a broccoli florette. "Hands off," she says. "For God's sake, Nielson, we'll be eating in three minutes, you're not going to starve."

"Waste away to nothing," JD says. "Skin and bones."

Cammie is unimpressed. "Well, sit your bony ass down at the table and I'll get food in you in another minute. If you stop gettin' in my way." She transfers her attention to Daniel, looking long-suffering. "Ten years I been puttin' up with his shit, to answer your question. We all have our burdens to bear."

"Some of us more than others," JD agrees. He puts the basket of rolls on the table, next to Daniel; this close, Daniel can smell them, yeast and flour and something else, faint and elusive. As Daniel watches, JD picks one up, juggles it briefly from hand to hand -- must still be hot -- before tearing it in half and popping one half into his mouth. Daniel can see the steam rising from the other half. "Still think I should've bought myself some genius MIT freshman instead of having to put up with you."

"Genius MIT freshmen don't cook," Cammie says. "And don't talk with your mouth full. Raised in a barn, hand to God."

It's normal. Daniel thinks; it's been so long that he doesn't have a point of origin against which to reference anymore. But the bickering is good-natured, and (he thinks) there's care underneath it. JD crosses the kitchen, walks over to the part of the counter with the computer terminal; for a minute, Daniel thinks he's going to log on, to leave himself some note, perhaps. But he doesn't; instead he reaches for the carefully-arranged set of pill bottles stacked next to it, his hand going unerringly for each of them in turn, building up a handful (five bottles; eight pills) and bringing them over to Cammie.

She takes them, absently, as she settles herself (slowly, carefully) at the table. Daniel watches her toss them into her mouth, all at once, and he winces slightly as she washes them down with a sip from her glass of wine. JD climbs into one of the two remaining chairs, pulling his feet up into his lap; full lotus, and Daniel marvels once again at his flexibility.

At his right, Cammie holds up her wine glass. "To coming home," she says, and Daniel fumbles for his own glass, realizing as he does that with those words she has transformed his awkward reintegration into this society from something that is an annoyance to something that bears no small bit of welcome.

The soup is heavenly. It actually tastes as good as it smells. It's been a while since he can remember food tasting this good.

Dinner is ... odd, in that it's less odd than he was expecting. Daniel had imagined conversation would be stilted, awkward; he'd imagined having to tiptoe around all the things that aren't being said, imagined stumbling into a thousand conversational minefields and having to back slowly out of the way of danger. It's not like that. Not at all. Despite the bickering -- and there's plenty of bickering, though it's all goodnatured -- Cammie and JD seem to have the knack of putting a visitor at ease. The entire soup course is taken up with stories of their various run-ins with the Secretary of the Navy (neither Cammie nor JD seem to have much use for the man; Daniel doesn't recognize the name, so he can't say one way or the other, but the attitudes Cammie describes are certainly familiar after nearly twenty years of working with the military in some form or fashion). By the time Cammie pushes herself out of her chair, slowly and laboriously, Daniel's almost started to relax.

JD doesn't get up and offer to help as Cammie clears the dishes. That seems odd; Jack would have. Daniel keeps stubbing his mental toe on the problem; Jack and not-Jack, wholly familiar, wholly alien. But the young man sitting across from him only looks like Jack for a few brief seconds, here and there, and it might be possible to forget. (Daniel does the math; JD must be in his late twenties by now -- twenty-six? Twenty-seven? -- but he looks younger, and Daniel wonders if that's something Jack always struggled with or if it's something unique to the way JD carries himself.)

Daniel's sitting with his back to the wall; both Cammie and JD seemed content to allow him the seat, without comment or even calling attention to it. It gives him an excellent view of the process as Cammie turns on the burner the wok is sitting on, adds oil, tosses in the garlic she'd pre-diced. "Won't be but a minute," she says, just as a timer dings. She grabs an oven mitt from the counter and opens the other oven, keeping a weather eye on the wok as she removes a baking pan. The scentmap of the kitchen changes; it's deeper now, darker and more earthy.

Daniel watches as Cammie adds the pile of carrots and broccoli to the wok, stirs, and turns back to the baking pan. "Body could use a set of plates," she says, mildly. JD leaps to his feet before Daniel can quite process what she's asking; he opens one of the cabinets and takes down three dinner plates, lining them up on the work-counter next to Cammie. Daniel speculates, briefly, why Cammie didn't simply reach up and get them herself; she and JD are of a height, so it can't be that she couldn't reach, and he can't imagine her designing a kitchen for herself (he has no doubt that this kitchen is hers, at least the work area) where she couldn't reach something so simple as plates. But JD simply moves himself around her as she opens a drawer and takes out a spatula, picking up the wooden spoon she'd been using on the cooking vegetables and giving them a desultory stir without needing to be asked.

Daniel's full of really good Italian-wedding soup (and home-baked rolls; they're the best bread he's ever tasted, hands down) and just a little relaxed from the half-glass of wine he's already had (not drunk, but relaxed, and it feels nice, like the un-knotting of things he'd only barely been aware were knotted in the first place). He props his chin up on his hand. "Can I help with something?" he asks.

"Naw," Cammie says, cheerfully. She's engaged in the process of carefully setting the baking pan down on the counter, only slightly hampered by the need to keep one hand free to use the cane to support herself; as he watches, she sets it down, takes off the oven mitt, and turns around, just as JD is stepping sideways and holding out the wooden spoon for her to take. A carefully choreographed dance, one that feels like it's been done a thousand times before. More than that. "Just putting the finishing touches on. Vegetables are better if they're done up right before they go on the plate."

As he watches, she adds the pile of thinly-sliced bok choi (it's one of his favorite vegetables; he's certain this must be a coincidence, as he can't remember ever mentioning the preference in Jack's earshot, certain it would have resulted in horrible jokes and teasing for months) and the bean sprouts that are waiting. She doesn't add any other seasoning, just steps back (as JD sidles back into the place she'd just been standing, apparently without cue, and takes the wooden spoon from her; Daniel is fascinated). "Hope you like chicken," she adds, as she transfers her cane back into her right hand and takes the few steps to bring her back over to the working counter. "It's what I usually feed people before I know more about what they like to eat."

"Chicken's fine," Daniel says. He's half-expecting some smartass comment from JD, some reference to banquets attended (and mocked) on a hundred different planets, but none is forthcoming. It makes him exhale, like he'd been holding his breath against a possibility that won't actually come to pass. Maybe Cammie's advice runs both ways; maybe JD has resolved to pretend he's a stranger to Daniel just as much as Daniel's trying to pretend that JD's a stranger to him. Surely, he's never seen Jack this at-home in a kitchen. "It smells good," he adds. "Really good."

Cammie glances up, tosses him another one of her beautiful smiles. "Good," she says. "Hope it tastes just as good. Nielson, I saw that, don't you dare put that back in the wok."

Behind her, JD makes a face, and instead of throwing the escaped carrot back in with the rest, pops it into his mouth instead. "And don't you roll your eyes at me," Cammie says. She can't actually see JD from where she's standing. Apparently she has eyes in the back of her head, though.

It's only a few minutes more before an artfully-arranged plate of chicken (breaded and apparently stuffed with something; he's not sure what, but that's definitely melted cheese spilling out of the side) and stir-fried vegetables is being set down in front of him. By JD; Cammie is putting the finishing touches on the last plate, which she brings over to the table, crossing the spot where JD had been just as JD moves out of the way. Their motions around each other are simple. Elegant.

Watching them, Daniel realizes -- just a faint stirring of suspicion, there and then gone again -- why he feels so comfortable here: the two of them are a team. Whole and bonded, capable of moving separately or as a single unit, knowing each other so thorougly they can predict each others' actions so subconsciously as to be barely aware they're doing it.

He'd had a team once. He doesn't anymore. He's spent the last eighteen years of his life covering someone's back and having someone walking point for him, having someone there behind him to guard him and watch out for him, and his first team is scattered and gone (dead and buried) and his second team is a galaxy away. He hadn't realized how much he missed it. But here, watching them, he thinks: these two, this team, are extending their hands and telling him they have him covered.

Then Cammie's sitting down next to him again, spreading her napkin back out over her lap, and the thought is gone. "Eat," she says, making a shooing motion with both of her hands. "Don't you wait on me."

Later, he can't even fully remember the remainder of the meal; all he knows is that the kitchen is comfortable and the food is incredible and the conversation is light and he actually feels safe. It seems like it's only a few minutes before JD is pushing his chair back from the table and standing to collect the empty plates. Daniel tries to do the same; JD puts a hand on his shoulder, faint light pressure. "Sit," he says. "I've got it."

Daniel subsides. "Everything was wonderful," he says, to Cammie. "I don't think I said. I'm sorry. I haven't been a very good conversationalist tonight."

"S'all right," she says, cheerful and mellow. "You were too busy eatin'. Which is fine by me; don't they feed you down in that mountain of yours?"

In his head, Daniel can hear the ghostly echo of Jack -- well, they call it food... -- and there's a part of him waiting to hear the ritual response from JD as well. But all JD does is come back for the second round of clearing off the table. "I'm assuming she's already threatened to cook for you more often," JD says to him. "Since she tries to feed anyone who doesn't run away fast enough. I were you, I'd take her up on it."

"Why, Nielson, a girl didn't know better, she'd say that was a compliment," Cammie says. "Better be careful. I'll think you're losing your touch."

"Anything but that," JD says. He puts the last of the dishes in one side of the dual sink, flips the sink faucet to the other, and begins running water, tending to the dishes with neat, quick motions. He raises his voice just enough to be heard over the water: "If it'll make you feel any better, I can call you rude names for a while."

"I'd like that," someone says. It takes Daniel a second for his ears to catch up to his brain and realize it was him; when he does, he can feel the flush spreading across his cheeks. "Dinner, I mean. Not the -- I mean --"

But Cammie's smiling at him, her chin propped up on both her hands, and she looks utterly delighted. "Happy to have you," she says. "Anytime. I mean it. We've got a conference call with China tomorrow night that means we'll just be nuking something from the freezer, but Friday's good. Seven or so? Or is that too early?"

"No, that's fine," Daniel says. There's a part of him, eternal and perpetual censor, wondering: is it all right? Are they just being polite? Am I making a fool of myself? Do I really think I can handle interacting with people after a day at the Mountain? It's a quiet voice, though. He makes himself smile at Cammie, is rewarded with a broadening of her smile back at him. "Thank you. Is there anything I can bring?"

"Ice cream," JD says, immediately. "Ben & Jerry's. Phish Food."

"New York Super Fudge Chunk," Cammie corrects, just as immediately. "Frozen yogurt."

"Listen, Mitchell, just because you eat that fake shit doesn't mean the rest of us can't have taste," JD says.

Daniel can't help but laugh. "How about I bring some of each?" he suggests.

Cammie beams at him again. "Now, there you go bein' all reasonable," she mock-complains. "You're gonna take away all our fun."

"We'll figure out something else to bicker about, I'm sure," JD says. He places the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, dries his hands off on a towel. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got places to go and people to do. Daniel, it was good seeing you again. Glad you could make it. Mitchell, you need me to pick up anything on my way back in, you text me."

Daniel's a little surprised by it -- he hadn't exactly been looking forward to a night spent in JD's presence, but once he'd gotten here it had proven to be ... almost comfortable -- but he just nods. Wonders if it's their attempt to get him out of the way, but Cammie seems content to stay put at the table; she's reaching for the last of her glass of wine, sipping from it. "Don't do anyone I wouldn't do," she says. "Could use a couple rolls of paper towel, but they can wait until tomorrow."

JD nods and slips from the room. Daniel can just see him heading for the back of the house -- maybe to change, if he's going out, though why would he be going out at this time of night, on a Wednesday night no less? Then his brain catches up with him and rewinds the conversational bits his ears had glossed over: people to do, not things to do, and anyone instead of anything. He can feel the tips of his ears going slightly red.

Apparently JD has a sex life. That answers the question about whether he and Cammie are involved.

"You still got room, we got cookies," Cammie says, setting her wineglass back down again. "Could start up a pot of coffee, too."

"Let me," Daniel says, quickly, standing up. "Please. You've done so much already. Just point me to where things are."

He expects a protest, but all he gets instead are directions to where the coffee beans and grinder are kept. "Cookie jar's to your right," she adds. "Your choice of lemon bar, oatmeal raisin, or chocolate lace."

He sneaks a peek into the jar as he brings it over to the table. They aren't store-bought. He somehow hadn't thought they would be. "You're an incredible cook," he says. "Have you always been interested in it?"

"Started helpin' my Momma 'fore I could walk," she says. "Well, all right, she'd really just put me in the babyseat on the counter, but still. Everybody in my family knows how to do for themselves; Momma'd bean you if you didn't." She grins at him. "I can rewire a house an' fix the plumbing, too."

It's a safe enough topic of conversation, and he asks her the polite questions (startled to find that he's actually interested in the answers -- not just small talk, not just diplomatic pulse-taking; he discovers himself actually wanting to know more about Cameron Mitchell's history and worldview, wanting to know what made her the person he sees here today) as he goes through the motions of making coffee. She's got a younger brother (named Ashton; two years younger, Air Force colonel, teaches at jump school, has four children and, apparently, an entire base full of boys and girls who love him and are terrified of him all at once) and a whole passel of cousins and aunts and uncles and assorted relatives he can't keep straight. She speaks affectionately of them, though, with a sort of exasperation that makes it clear that she loves them, she just can't always stand them. There's something deeper there, but it's not his place to pry. Not yet.

She's just in the middle of telling some outrageous story about growing up (he will not believe that her childhood involved that much exposure to mid-range explosives) when JD pokes his head back in the kitchen. "Email from Lee Hsien Yao, came in about half an hour ago," he says, to Cammie. "He's got some questions about section 17 of the contract, wants us to clarify before the call tomorrow."

Daniel can't help but stare. JD had gone to change. He's wearing black leather pants, and there is absolutely no doubt in Daniel's mind that there is nothing underneath the pants but JD. He's changed his shirt, too; now it's some opaque, clingy material, also black, that goes from his throat all the way down to his wrists. With the tattoos hidden, JD looks younger. His hair's down, and it floats around his collar. It makes him look younger still.

He's wearing eyeliner. Black. And black studded leather bands around his wrists and throat. He looks like a riot waiting to happen. He looks nothing like how Daniel ever pictured Jack O'Neill possibly looking.

Something in Daniel's head goes click, and a few scattered pieces fall into place. He's very proud of himself. He doesn't drop the coffee carafe.

"Hell," Cammie says, just one soft grumble. "A'ight, I'll take care of it before bedtime. You get on out of here before you get tempted to sit down for 'just five minutes'."

JD sketches a salute (lazy and sloppy and two-fingered and there is something in the back of Daniel's head, skittering against the corners of his mind the way a cat's claws skitter on a hardwood floor, because it's the salute of a man who's never been within five miles of the military in his entire life) and comes across the kitchen floor on quiet feet. For a second Daniel's tempted to press himself back up against the counter, get away away away, but JD's not coming near him; he's heading over to the table, where he dips his hand into the cookie jar and comes away with three cookies, one of which he stuffs in his mouth. "Don't stay up too late," he says, around the crumbs in his mouth. "You know you turn into a pumpkin at midnight."

"Get," Cammie says, and swats his ass.

JD grins at her. Actually grins, and ruffles her hair (earning him another swat) before stepping away. "I'll tell Carlos you said hi," he says. He nods to Daniel (Daniel doesn't return it, paralyzed by realization and suspicion and confirmation) and saunters back out of the kitchen again. A minute later, Daniel can hear the front door shut.

"Drama queen," Cammie mutters, under her breath. Then, louder: "Milk's in the fridge, sugar's in the cabinet just above your head, right next to the mugs. Don't know if you take either."

"Yeah," Daniel says. His own voice sounds loud in his ears. He takes a deep breath, feeling his lungs expand, feeling his chest rise and then fall again, concentrating on the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. So. JD is (apparently) gay. That explains why Daniel's been having trouble figuring out what kind of relationship he and Cammie have. It's all right; Daniel can deal with it. Integrate it into his worldview. It's just a fact.

His hands are shaking.

"Yeah," he says, again. "Can I get anything else while I'm over here?"

"Nope," Cammie says. "Cup'a coffee and a few of these cookies will do me. I can give you the grand house tour as soon as I work up enough oompf to move again."

She's watching him; he can tell. But it's not the same kind of look he's been getting from everyone in the Mountain (a combination of that's Dr. Jackson, he's the one who -- and poor bastard looks like he's gone over the edge, and it's been getting on his nerves since the moment he came back to Earth, and he hasn't realized until this very minute). It's just the look of someone who wants to see if he's all right, with the (unexpected, surprising) undercurrent that yes, she expects him to be.

So he takes a deep breath, and lets it out again, and as he does, he's startled to realize that it's the truth. He is all right. It was just a surprise, is all. Now he knows.

(Was Jack -- no. Don't think about it. Separate people. Separate lives.)

He makes himself smile at her. It feels awkward on his lips, but he's trying. "You don't have to," he says. "Not if you're tired. I mean. I don't know how much work dinner was, but it was probably a lot. If you're not feeling well --"

He hears himself heading for a conversational disaster (she is physically impaired; it is a fact of her life and something that must affect her in a thousand ways every day in ways he can barely imagine; he doesn't want to be the person who places unreasonable demands on her, but he doesn't want to be the person who automatically assumes she can't do something, either) and makes himself stop before he can -- quite -- get there. Still, she's shaking her head, and he has a sudden stab of panic, wondering if he's made a fool of himself. "S'all good," she says. "I got good days and bad days. Today's one of the good days. House is a fucking barn, but I'm good to tromp all over it with you for a while. Wouldn't've offered if I weren't." Her smile turns a little more gentle, a shade more understanding. "It's all right, you know. You don't gotta pretend like the cane's not there."

It's been a long night, and he's still feeling a little bit raw from the shock. He turns around and leans up against the counter. "I don't want to offend you," he says. "I don't -- I remember, you know. How it happened. We never thanked you." The words have been lurking somewhere on his lips since the first moment he saw her in a tank top and shorts with scars and tattoos making mockery of the lines of her legs. Guilt. Not guilt about being the survivor, not guilt about needing to call on her to make that sacrifice, but guilt that he and his walked away from the aftermath alive and well while she didn't walk away from the aftermath at all.

She shakes her head. "No thanks necessary for doing my duty," she says, and the mood of the kitchen has turned serious without being somber. She pushes herself back from the table a little, holds out one leg, pulls up the scrub pants so he can see the ink covering (not covering at all) all the places where bone broke skin. "Won't say it doesn't suck sometimes. But it is, and you can't change what is. Shouldn't ignore it, either." She smiles again. It really is amazing how much it transforms her face. "It's all right if you look."

Daniel takes a deep breath. It's a little amazing to find how much Cameron Mitchell's good opinion means to him. He's careful to make sure he doesn't lift his eyes back up to her face too quickly or too slowly. "Your tattoos are pretty," he says. "What do they mean?" He has no doubt they mean something.

Her smile, when it comes this time, is thoughtful, and he wonders what she's thinking. He spares a second to wonder if he's gained or lost points, gives up when he realizes that he has no way of knowing either way. "They're for helping me to remember the good things," she says. "We get a little more time, I'll get into more detail than that."

"I'd like that," he says, softly. Because, yes. He would.

She fishes a cookie out of the cookie jar and nibbles at the edge of it. "Coffee's done," she points out. For a second he thinks she's changing the subject on purpose, because she doesn't want to talk about it. Then he realizes that his hands are still shaking, just a little, and thinks: no. She just doesn't want to say anything that might make me uncomfortable, not right now at least.

So he turns around and takes down two mugs, pours them full of coffee, brings them over. Doubles back for the milk and sugar. She adds a tiny amount of each to her coffee, he notices, and nods approvingly when he does the same. "Thank God," she says. "Somebody to be on my side in the coffee wars."

"Coffee wars?" Daniel asks.

Cammie grimaces. "Himself drinks milk and sugar with a little bit of coffee added. I keep tellin' him that's against some kind of international treaty on the proper treatment of the coffee bean."

Daniel can't suppress the shudder. "That's just wrong," he says.

She nods, firmly. "That's what I keep tellin' him. But it's just thing four hundred an' thirty on the list of things we've fought about, so by now I've given up hope. Maybe with a third party on my side, I can gain some ground."

Daniel sets his coffee mug down with a soft click. "Tell me about the two of you," he says. It's not quite a question, nor is it an order; request for information, maybe. If he's going to be a visitor here -- and he will be, or at least he hopes he will be -- he needs to be able to see JD as JD, no more and no less than what he presents himself as. He has the feeling that Cammie might be the only person in the world who can give him the pieces he'll need to build that picture. He doesn't think JD ever will. And if his motives for wanting to be here revolve around Cammie -- and he has no doubt that they do -- it's still clear to him that the desire to spend time with Cammie means that he will also have to learn to be comfortable spending time with JD.

"He saved my life," she says. It's so plain and matter-of-fact that it takes him a second to realize what she's just said. She wraps her hands around her mug of coffee and studies him. "When he came to find me, I was about, oh, three good weeks away from setting my head down and just never getting back up, an' he gave me something to live for again. Saved each other, we did, that first year, an' by the end of it, we were as near to married as I ever thought I'd get. Don't know what I'd do without him in my life. Love him to pieces. Don't mean I don't want to slap his stupid self silly five days out of seven, though."

Daniel catches his eyes drifting up to the door JD had disappeared through. "But he's..."

"Queer as football bats," she says, cheerfully. "Don't change a thing."

It's the part Daniel can't reconcile. Jack had been married, Jack had girlfriends and lovers and the thing with Sam that Daniel had never understood (and never -- quite -- stopped feeling broody over; it wasn't that he begrudged either of them an inch of happiness, but he'd never quite shaken the suspicion they'd been slowly shutting him and Teal'c out, tying themselves up in knots over each other and the knowledge they could never consumate their desires, physically or emotionally, and there'd been a part of Daniel that wanted to shake them both and tell them to just get the hell over it and stop falling further into each other; it was small and petty of him, and he'd felt terrible over it, but it had been just another one of the many reasons why a fresh start on Atlantis had appealed). Jack loved women. Daniel had never seen a single cue to make him think otherwise.

And maybe -- maybe -- he could believe latent and subsumed bisexual urges, perhaps; maybe he could believe that a chance to start over, a chance to reinvent himself, had let Jack -- let JD -- try acting on impulses he'd never had before but had no good reason to deny to his new self. But this isn't experimentation. From what Cammie says, it's redefinition. JD has chosen to identify as homosexual, has chosen (from what Cammie has said) to identify solely as homosexual, and that's the part Daniel keeps sticking on. He doesn't think sexual orientation is a matter of choice, but that would leave no other option but to believe that JD -- that Jack -- had been living a lie. Or is living one now. Daniel's not sure which one would make him feel better.

Cammie's watching him, and he has the sudden sense that his face is an open book to her. "And as for the details of that," she says, carefully, "you'd have to ask him. If there's a problem, I mean."

"No," Daniel says, quickly. "No. I mean -- it's none of my business." He looks down at his mug of coffee, decides he doesn't really want any after all, sets it aside. "It really isn't. And I don't have a problem. Not at all. It's just ... not what I was expecting."

She purses her lips, is silent for a minute. (He watches the emotions move over her face. He can see them -- magnificent in their scope -- but he can't tell what they might be; she isn't trying to conceal them, but he has no frame of reference, and she's unlike any woman he's ever met. He doesn't want to assume.) "I'm tempted to leave this be," she finally says. "Because it's not my business. Because it's something you find uncomfortable. But Momma always said that it's better to pull the bandage off in one clean rip, and I don't like leaving something to fester in the shadows when you can haul it on out into the light."

When she pauses -- to wait for his agreement, to summon her thoughts -- he braces himself. "Go ahead," he says. He doesn't let himself speculate about what she might be about to say. He doesn't want to think about it ahead of time.

And sure enough, she surprises him. "He's not Jack O'Neill," she says. "Came from him. Remembers being him, in a way, I think, though we don't ever talk about it. I told you to think of them as separate people, because they are. You keep looking to see if you can find pieces of O'Neill in him, you'll drive yourself crazy. I ain't sayin' it isn't weird, 'cause it is. Our lives are weirder'n snake shoes half the time. But the reason you're so nervous around him is because you keep expecting him to be the man who was your friend, and he's not. Don't try to make him be. He's himself."

Daniel opens his mouth to say something -- agreement, protest -- and what he says instead is, "I'm not sure I know how."

She nods, slowly. "Tough as hell, yeah. I could do it, 'cause I didn't know him. Before, I mean. Not as anything more than to look at. Sam -- well, Sam has problems, and it's not like I lost a friend over everything that's happened so much as she's just drifted away. You? I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, or how you can do it, or if it's even possible. All I know is, to you he has to be a twenty-seven-year-old queer boy named JD, who just happens to know a little more about you than the average stranger might, and sometimes reminds you a little bit of an old friend."

She chews on her lower lip for a second. Watching it, watching her, Daniel thinks about friendship, and about the meaning of personal history, and about whether the fascination he feels for this woman (and oh, he is fascinated by this woman) is motive and means enough for him to overcome the faint unease he feels whenever he looks at JD and sees something that shouldn't be there.

All he can do is try.

"What do his initials stand for?" Daniel asks. It seems like something he should know. But she shakes her head.

"Gonna have to ask him that one," she says, and sets her own mug of coffee aside. "It's not my place to tell his stories. They're his."

It's something he can respect, has to respect. He himself is a private person (all behavior tonight to the contrary, and he's still not sure why he's opened up to Cammie as much as he has; a combination of safety and security and familiarity, the way she reminds him of people he's trusted, and oh, he misses Teyla and her wisdom so much); he always knew Jack was a private person as well. They'd never had the sort of involved conversations some people think necessary for friendship. They'd simply understood each other.

Or misunderstood each other. Too often, and too wholly, for it ever to be a comfortable friendship; they'd had everything in common and nothing in common, all at once. Sometimes Daniel wondered if they would have been friends at all, if it hadn't been for that first disaster and triumph of a mission. They'd stared each other down and taken each other's measure, decided they liked what they saw and realized they were bound together for better or for worse. Daniel would have died for Jack (had, more than once), and he'd always known Jack would have died for him. He'd known Jack was his friend, his comrade, his brother-in-arms. He'd just never been sure, half the time, if Jack had liked him.

He wonders, suddenly and sharply, if Jack had truly known why Daniel had gone to Atlantis, and whether or not Jack had blamed him for leaving or if Jack had died knowing that all he would have had to do was say the word and Daniel would have been at his side again. But even if Jack had understood, Jack never would have made the call.

So: Cammie is correct. Jack is dead. The man who lives here underneath this roof, the man Cammie lives with and works with and considers her teammate (because they are a team, a team just like SG-1 was a team, and maybe the bond between Cammie and JD is somewhat akin to the bond he and Jack had had, once upon a time, and maybe it isn't, but either way, he knows without having to ask that they're a pair, bonded and inseperable; "near to married", Cammie had said, and he can tell she means it in the sense of standing united against the world) is not Jack. He's JD. His own person, with just enough shared history so that Daniel won't have to guard every word out of his mouth to avoid making reference to secrets he's kept for over half his adult life.

He can work with that.

"I'd like that tour of the house," he says, out loud. "If you're up to offering it."

She reaches for her cane, which she's left propped up against the side of her chair. "Sure am," she says, accepting the change of subject. "You might as well get to know the place, since I'm hoping you're gonna be spending some time here."

Daniel still isn't sure why Cammie would want him to (objectively speaking, looking back at the evening -- at the entirety of the time they've spent together in each other's company since he met her, in fact -- he hasn't exactly been making a very good showing of himself), but she seems utterly set on that point. And he's already realized that what Cameron Mitchell wants, Cameron Mitchell gets. So he listens and nods as she takes him through the tour, and part of him is watching the house itself and all the features she's pointing out, while part of him is watching her.

The tour starts in the kitchen. The stairs and the elevator go down to their basement storage and their office complex, she explains, and she doesn't offer to take him down there and show him; from the way she says it, he thinks she means more that she doesn't want to take him through their work space than that she doesn't want to negotiate the process of getting down there. He can respect that. He doesn't expect her to show him everything; they're still functionally strangers. But she takes him through the living room, lets him stop to stare at the art (his eyes keep coming back to the piece hanging next to the wall, a stormy and tempestuous abstract done in greys and blues and violets; he can't tell what he sees in it, but there's something, and it stirs memories of sunrise over Atlantis's east pier) before proceeding into the hallway beyond.

She moves slowly, but balanced with grace and poise. There's no doubt that if something took the cane away from her, she wouldn't be able to walk -- or at least not easily -- but after a few minutes, he almost forgets it's there to begin with. It takes him a few minutes to figure out how to pace her without feeling like he's rushing ahead or deliberately and ostentatiously slowing his steps, but after a few minutes, he falls into step with her without it feeling too uncomfortable. From there, all he has to do is remember to give her enough room.

Beyond the living room and kitchen (which, taken together, span the entire length of the front of the house) is a hallway, one that also runs (he thinks) the entire length of the house. It stretches out and turns at both ends, looking like the hallways form a U. She takes him down the left side. "We bought the house seven years back," she says, as they move down its length. She waves a hand at one door. "Bathroom, by the way. Anyway, we bought the thing and gutted it -- tore out all the interior walls, moved them around until they were where we wanted them. Took forever, and sometimes I think we still haven't gotten rid of all the sawdust, but it was easier'n building from scratch. Only barely, but still. Whole place is designed from the ground up to have pretty much anything you could possibly want -- wired for ethernet in every room, up-to-date electrical systems, you name it."

Now that she mentions it, he notices the strip of electrical outlets running along the baseboard, even in the hallway -- more than he's ever seen in one place in his entire life, one every five feet, along a strip that looks like it might be lighting. "That makes sense," he says. The words are small-talk, but he actually does find that he's interested. He's always known that to truly understand a culture, you look at the things they build, and the things Cammie and JD have built here tell him that they pay attention to the small details.

She smiles at him. "Means you don't ever have to go far to plug your laptop in, yeah," she says. "Which is a big plus."

They reach the end of this arm of the hallway. Moving so slowly, Daniel has time to actually look at the things around him. The walls are painted the same cream color as the living room, which harmonizes with the hardwood floors; there's a shelf, a few inches deep, made out of what looks like the same wood used for the flooring, running the entire length of the hallway. It holds more sculptures, some pottery; none of it is kitchy or mass-produced. There's art hanging on the wall, every few feet -- painting, photography, framed textiles -- and he resolves that he'll ask her more about them sometime, because he's still fascinated by the prospect of what each one of them says.

They round the corner toward the back of the house. (She puts a hand out against the wall, for support or for balance, and he tries to unobtrusively stay out of her way; he'd offer her his arm, but he's not sure if she'd take it and he doesn't want to offend her if the offer would be unwelcome.) Daniel blinks, because the hallway that stretches out before them is longer than he thought it would be. There are doors on either side of it, all of them closed. He wonders if the house is shaped like a giant box, but that seems like it wouldn't make sense; the rooms on the inside would have no windows.

That would be a tragedy, because the view is amazing; there's a floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the wide hallway, all the way in the distance, and the view is stunning, even in the growing-twilight gloom. Forest, and hillside, and the remnants of snow. He sees the dark glimmer of what looks like water, whisper-still in the gloaming; a lake, and he wonders if it's on their property or not. He can't see any other houses. Somehow that seems fitting.

She's watching him stare out at the vista; her head's cocked to the side, and she's smiling. "That's the other reason we didn't buy property and build," she says. "Couldn't beat that view." There's the faintest hint of smugness in her voice, and he thinks she enjoys watching people react to seeing it, watches seeing whether or not it will affect them. Daniel's been living, for the past ten years, with some of the most breathtaking scenery anyone could hope to feast his eyes upon. This doesn't match it, but it comes close.

"It's -- gorgeous," he says. Words aren't quite adequate, but he hopes she knows what he means anyway.

"Yes," she agrees. "Some people who've been here don't think it is. I feel sorry for them."

"So do I," Daniel says, and it comes out sounding heartfelt and sincere, and hearing himself say it, something eases in his chest. He can still find things like this beautiful. He'd been beginning to wonder if anything would be able to strike him like this ever again.

"Come on," she says, after another long minute of silence. "House isn't as impressive as the view, but I like to think it comes close."

She takes him down the hallway, slowly, opening doors and ushering him into each room by room. There are doors on either side of the hallway; the first one she opens for him is on the right, against the outside wall. It looks like it was designed to be a bedroom, but now it holds two comfortable-looking easy chairs, an assortment of well-placed lamps, and a working table that has a covered something he thinks might be a sewing machine. The walls are all covered in glass-fronted cabinets; the cabinets are stuffed with a breathtaking assortment of fabric and yarn in every shade of the rainbow. He can't quite discern any particular organization.

"This is my sanctum sanctorum," Cammie says, dryly. "As you might have guessed."

"You knit," Daniel says. He's not quite surprised, not exactly -- she seems like the type who'd find satisfaction in making things with her own two hands -- but handcrafting feels more like it belongs to the set of behavior he's labeled in his head as belonging to Pegasus. Everyone who'd been on Atlantis for more than a few months had taken up some kind of craft as a hobby, as something to do with their hands during downtimes or as a distraction from the pressures of a life led in constant peril, as a way to augment the goods that could be requisitioned from Earth or traded for. Even he had dusted off long-rusty knitting and mending skills, learned over dig-campfires in his youth. But here, making things is a quaint affectation; it's a bit incongruous to see all this evidence of industry. He realizes, only a second too late, that his words might have come out sounding judgmental, disapproving.

But she's nodding. "They put the needles in my hand when I was young enough they had to watch me to make sure I didn't put out an eye," she says. "Been knitting ever since. You ask nice enough, next pair of socks I knit can be all yours." She grins. "Blanket in the living room, the one made out of the silk, is mine. The eyesore in the condo in DC, though, I take no responsibility for. My sister-in-law Cindy knit that one, so you're allowed to call it hideous if you want."

Daniel thinks back to the living room where he'd first realized he felt comfortable around them, summons up a memory of the most hideous colors that could be thrown together and not make one's eyes actually bleed. "It really is," he says. "Please tell me that was deliberate."

Cammie nods, still smiling. "Girl's incapable of putting colors together to save her life. Or maybe she isn't, 'cause anything that ugly has to be deliberate. Come on, we got a lot of house to cover."

He takes one last look around him. The room feels like her, somehow -- tidy and well-ordered, but with warmth and vibrancy -- and he tries to fix it in his mind; there's things to learn about her from it. He's somehow convinced that the fact she's willing to show it to him is a good sign. Like she's offering up these pieces of information, giving him hints and clues as to who she is and what she values. His quarters on Atlantis had spoken of him. His apartment here is a blank cipher, nothing more than bare functionality. He hadn't quite realized how sterile it really is, until this very moment. He hadn't cared much, either.

She takes him back out into the hallway, and opens a door on the other side of it. From the layout of the house so far, Daniel's expecting it to be an interior room, no windows, but it's not; the windows open out onto what looks like a courtyard. As he watches, some sensor registers that the falling darkness has grown dark enough, and clicks on the well-placed floodlights outside. He can see thoughtfully-landscaped space beneath him, surrounding a long but narrow swimming pool; the way the landscaping is set up, it looks like the pool just springs forth from trees and flower-beds. There are a few pathways through the miniature bower; they're paved, not cobblestoned. The room they're in is now the second story, thanks to the slope of the land; he can see dark windows on the other side of the courtyard, and realizes that the back half of the house surrounds the courtyard and half-encloses it, like a crab's pincers.

The room they're in is mostly bare. "This is just the spare room," Cammie says, dismissively, but as soon as Daniel tears his eyes away from the oversized windows and the padded window-seat beneath them, his eyes are caught by the bookshelves lining the walls. They're not completely full, but they're well-stocked anyway. "Overflow library -- the real one is on the other side of the house -- and general place-to-put-stuff. Don't think I don't see you trying to read those book titles, mister."

Daniel laughs. "I can't help it. It's pathological." He tilts his head, reads spines. A motley assortment; popular science, memoirs, philosophy, history. He's startled to see a fairly-respectable shelf of linguistics texts, and even more startled that they look well-used. The organization scheme isn't one he'd use, but it at least makes sense.

Cammie leans against the wall, taking her weight off the cane and balancing one-footed like a stork. "You see anything you want to borrow, you just say the word. Have to check them out of the library database first, of course. It's worth my life to let a book out of here without himself knowing where it's going."

Daniel turns his head, raises an eyebrow at her. That's a surprise. It isn't that Jack never read anything -- Daniel had seen the basement of Jack's house, which contained a modest but nontrivial library, mostly history and military tactics -- but Jack had always teased him about his book-collecting habits. Just another point of difference. He'll have to keep it in mind. (Stop thinking about Jack. JD isn't Jack. JD is JD.)

So he smiles, and says, "I'll take you up on that. I've been doing most of my reading electronically, for the last ... really long time. I miss holding books." (True. Being an intergalactic hero means that you can persuade the powers that be to bend the weight limit for what you're allowed in the 305's holds, and he'd taken clear advantage of that, but Atlantis's common-use library had been mostly full of casual fiction, crumbling paperbacks passed from hand to hand; escapism, and he'd always known it, and he'd always wished he could lose himself in fantasy worlds and has never learned the trick.)

"I can imagine," she says, with an easy nod of her head, and pushes herself off the wall. "Think you'll like the actual library better, but that one's on the other side of the courtyard."

The next room (back across the hall, on the outside of the house instead of overlooking the courtyard) is an audiovisual room, set up with theatre seats, blackout curtains, and a projection screen. There's a stereo system, too, complete with record turntable and racks of CDs and LPs. The other wall is a DVD library. It looks like a movie buff and an audio enthusiast got together and designed their ideal space, and then a rich person went and built it.

Which might not, come to think of it, be far from the truth.

"I'd take you through and show you all the neat stuff in here," Cammie says, "except last time I was in here unsupervised I apparently moved the listenin' chair half an inch to the left and disturbed his perfect listenin' experience, so unless you wanna defend my honor with pistols at dawn when he next sits down, we'd better just move on."

It makes him laugh. Something about her delivery, or the quirk of her eyebrows, or the way she seems to be inviting the laughter. "I bet you never threaten him when he moves things in your room, right?" he teases.

"'Course not," she says, sounding indignant, and for a minute he thinks he might have stepped over a line, until the faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes peeks through. "I just hit him; I don't bother threatenin' him first."

The rest of that wing of the house is mostly unremarkable -- another bathroom, and a guest room on the courtyard-side that reaches further back into the courtyard than the rest of the wing, making the shape of the house somewhat like a hollow square with a bite out of the top of it. ("This is where we put the people we like when they come to visit," Cammie says, and when Daniel asks where the people they don't like get put -- ignoring the question of why they would host someone they didn't like -- she points unerringly out the windows and into the gloom, where he can just see the faintest outline of an outbuilding. "Garage," she says. "Used to be a horse barn. There's a two-bedroom apartment over it.") Since they've run out of house on this side, she takes them back down the hallway they came down. She's moving more slowly, now, and she's got her hand up against the wall the whole time they walk, not simply when she needs a bit more balance.

Daniel tries not to notice it. "It's a wonderful house," he says, as they walk. It is. It's also, quite clearly, several million dollars' worth of improvements and architecture. He doesn't ask how they financed it; it's none of his business.

"It's home," Cammie says, simply and plainly. "You're welcome over here any time you'd like."

He thinks she means it. Most people, when they make an invitation like that, bear with them an undercurrent: you're welcome any time you'd like, as long as it's convenient for us, or you're welcome any time you'd like, as long as you don't try to take us up on it. She doesn't. She simply means that if he chooses to arrive here, at any point he chooses to arrive here, they will open their doors and let him in, whatever the cost or the inconvenience. It should make him feel better about life. It doesn't; it just, suddenly and inexplicably, makes him angry.

"Why?" he asks, stopping in his tracks. They're right in front of her knitting room; she curls her hand around the edge of the door-frame. "I mean, I'm not saying I'm not grateful, because you've been very kind and very welcoming and I appreciate it, but -- why? What do you get out of it? Nobody could possibly be that -- that nice."

Dimly, he realizes he's probably making a fool out of himself, but it doesn't matter. Once upon a time, he believed (remembers believing) in the inherent goodness of mankind. Once upon a time had been a long time ago, and the road between there and here is littered with the wreckage of situations that had started out with someone doing something that appeared selfless. He's learned not to trust altruism by now.

Sometimes, he thinks that's the saddest part of this life he's found himself living: that he's forgotten how to allow people to be kind to him.

He's ready to back up, ready to apologize (surely she is neither Goa'uld spy nor Asuran sleeper agent nor bounty hunter nor the representative of any one of a hundred peoples who bear a grudge against the New Lanteans for any manner of slights real or imagined), but she holds up a hand before he can. "Because they threw me away when they were done with me, too," she says. "And someone was very kind to me, and it's time for me to pass that forward."

It's ridiculous. It's ludicrous. He hasn't been thrown away; he spends ten hours a day with people battering down his doors to ask him questions, and he lectures Generals and Cabinet members and delegates from the IOA alike with impunity, and he has useful and valuable work that needs to be done and he's the only one who can do it. More than that, the people in charge recognize that he's the only one who can do it. There are a number of very powerful men, in Washington and elsewhere, who will leap to give him what he asks for, even now.

And nobody cared enough to make sure you have a place to live and remind you to eat dinner, now did they? his little voice (the bastard) points out to him. And how easy has it been for you to convince them that you're just fine? They don't look too closely at their heroes; if they do, they'll start to see the cracks underneath.

Shut up, he tells it. Shut up. I am fine.

But Cammie seems to be no respecter of his inner voice. "Come on," she says, and pushes herself upright again. He's about to say something when she seizes his hand in her free one, draws it into her own. For a second he fights off a stab of panic (bound, trapped, held), and then it passes and there's a beautiful woman holding his hand. Her skin's warm. "Still got the other half of the house to show you. The real library, and the master bedroom, and the master bath, which is a marvel of modern engineering, let me tell you, and then we can go back to the kitchen and maybe I'll say hell with it and break out the ice cream."

It takes a second for his brain to catch up, to stop throwing adrenaline into his bloodstream like there are tigers lurking around every bush and waiting to pounce. "I thought you were out of ice cream," he says.

She tugs on his hand a little, and starts moving again. She doesn't drop her hand when she does. It takes him a second to adjust his balance for the way her weight moves back and forth as she walks, the way she pulls a little more heavily on his hand than someone else might, and he almost stumbles before he can work out a way to match her pace. "That's what I wanted himself to think," she says. "You'll learn quick enough. You want any chance of having ice cream for dessert, you gotta hide it."

Daniel makes himself stop wondering about motive and motivation. It isn't as though she couldn't lie, after all; no matter what she says, he'll never be able to get an answer he trusts completely. But he doesn't think she's lying to him. The little voice in the back of his head that's been long-since trained into being a paranoid bastard isn't even suspicious of her. (Much.) Maybe she is exactly what she appears to be (sensitive, fascinating, giving woman) and maybe she isn't, but either way, he won't figure it out just by asking.

So he smiles at her again, and tries not to notice the way his thumb has automatically started stroking patterns against her skin. "Tell me what flavors you like and he hates," he says. "I'll bring some just for you."

It's a start.

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