Anybody who knew the whole story -- both sides of the Great Divide -- would laugh to hear him say he doesn't hate his life, not that there's anybody he's going to say that to, considering he's never even mentioned that little fact to Mitchell, who's at least heard of the other side of the Great Divide and isn't as dumb as most people. Hey, no, scratch that. Mitchell's a damned smart cookie, another in the damned long list of things he's not going to mention aloud, even under torture, and unlike a lot of people he's got expert counsel on the vexed question of what he -- a man like I, a voice in memory says, posturing with fifties drag-queen archness and Anita Loos lips sunk ships and careers on the other side of the Great Divide but not here -- will and won't spill when the rowdy boys get out the pliers or the needles or the car battery and the alligator clips. No point in giving Mitchell a swelled head, although that would be difficult: the clarity of her self-image is id and ego (ergo and Urgo) and superego (and now they need a fourth for bridge) all seen under the brightest and most merciless internal illumination and constant self examination. He frequently accuses her of both god and martyr complexes but is it megalomania if you really are that good?

Add that one to the list.

Dear Mitchell, his darling girl, though he supposes they don't have either darlings or girls anymore (or won't in a few more years.) Their fucking loss. Even though the woman weighs half a ton (yes, all right: something reassuringly southward of an eighth of a ton, inaccuracy is often a survival trait) and is as sylphlike as a goddamned linebacker, there is something enchantingly nymphetlike about Mitchell. A shame that nymphets (in the fashion he grew up with them, once upon a time) have gone the way of the dinosaur, but so have a number of other charming customs, like slavery, infanticide, and bride-barter. (Yes and no, more or less, the glorious tomorrow they were all promised is always just out of reach.)

But in point of cold hard fact, if you want to really get his attention, Mitchell can keep her clothes on, add a flightsuit, and wrap a 302 around all that. That's a beautiful woman. Both of them. (And Mitchell would agree, and that's something on an entirely different "Don't Talk" list. The TSA -- which can bite him -- has "No Fly" lists, he has "Don't Talk" lists. A lot of them are conditional. Things can change.)

Always did, always have, and anybody who talks about a 'last' change in their life had better be using a Ouija Board to do it, because change is what you do. You'd better. He spent the better part of his life surfing the last wave to Mecca until one morning he woke up and it was the first day of someone else's life and carpe diem. And anybody who says they have no regrets has never had anything worth losing and hasn't taken a single risk. He's risked and loved and lost and spent a lot of time learning to swim (Jesus was a sailor) before he walked into Mitchell's life and kicked Schrödinger's Cat and realized they were going to build a life together. That was a surprise. Surprises are good. Mitchell is frequently surprising (Mitchell either needs a fucking keeper or one of those sparkly cat-toys on a stick to distract her; his opinion changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.)

And the two of them go skipping hand-in-hand merrily down the yellow brick road toward a miracle of rare device (he'll take a pass on the caves of ice this time, thanks, and so will she) but by the time he can officially and legally buy a beer in all fifty states, not only has he acquired a local habitation and a name (and a collection of relatives-by-proxy who make Mitchell look like a paragon of normalcy), but they're moving into their own personal pleasure dome (with a kitchen you could go roller-blading in -- assuming he was ever allowed in the Sanctum Sanctorum unsupervised -- and he only has to buy off two or three judges in order to avoid doing prison time because obviously IQs have dropped sharply in the building trades since he spent his summers carrying hods and making bricks without straw.)

He's worked damned hard for everything he has. Not the ones and zeros (lots and lots of zeros) in the accounts and the pretty toys and Nielson-Mitchell Solutions. They're nice to have; they're not the important things. The important things are what let him pass a mirror and stop and look (and it's not just without flinching; hell, he stops and admires the view), and they're inside. The same things (for values of 'same' including 'completely different') that Mitchell has, and she's worked just as hard for hers. Without that, the rest of the stuff wouldn't be nearly as much fun. Rich is better than poor any day of the week (he's been both: he knows.) Rich and happy is even better.

His happiness -- his life -- wasn't precisely purchased at great cost or sacrifice, but it was a calculated act on the part of a man who isn't -- by comparison -- either rich or happy. He feels no guilt at having what that man doesn't. But he values what he was granted and respects the giver. (Another entry on the eternal list of Subjects We File Under 'Omerta' until sometime about fifteen minutes after Gabriel plays a hot jazz version of 'Lullaby of Broadway'.)

Just about a decade ago now he waltzed into Mitchell's life lying by omission and implication and she called him on some of the things that weren't quite on the square and he came clean on others (a one-time-only offer, Need to Know -- because she did) but he won't give up anyone's secrets but his own so the rest of those cards he'll play close to his chest until Time turns them into aces and eights.

Change is the only constant and the house always wins in the end.

Case in point, as they say here on the Children's Hour (his own personal dreamcrossed Twilight Zone), on a fine spring day when Achilles and the Tortoise is conclusively laid to rest, neither glory nor length of days being available on the cafeteria plan of his or anyone else's life, the Great Divide healed forever, the two made one (reductio ad absurdum and his life is a Hail Mary play in the Theater of the Absurd.)

When the phonecall comes he gets what isn't even half a story, Daddy, but he speaks 'Carter' and he speaks 'military' and there's just one way to parse it when the words 'dead' and 'hero' appear in the same sentence. You'd think -- the century's l'entracte aside -- that the Pentagon would be reasonably safe. Not the sort of place where a Lieutenant General eyeing retirement could die in combat. (Whatever actually happened. He can get chapter and verse out of Carter later; either she knows now, or she's going to know, no matter what rocks she has to turn over.)

His strongest feeling is a sense of relief.

He's never wished Jack dead. But there are good deaths, bad deaths, (deaths you'd rather not come back from), long slow slides into living death. This one is better than a lot of them.

And Solomon Grundy died on a Monday (buried on Thursday) so they're airborne on Tuesday and it's COS to ORD to DCA (and their own jet would be more trouble and expense than it'd be worth -- much -- but it's hard to remember that between arriving at Air Terminal Point A and debouching (pale and wan) Air Terminal Point B and wasn't air travel supposed to be, oh, fast and convenient and stress free? He remembers hearing something about that, once upon a time). Following the usual arguments about checked luggage (for which you now have to pay and Harris Hanshue is spinning in his grave) they are on their merry way tra-la.

His darling girl is giving him space -- has been since he heard -- it's not so much that he's grieving (who'd'a thought the old man had so much blood in him; penny for the guy) as that the doors that have been locked since the angels took his racehorse away are open again; maybe it's his life he's re-evaluating, maybe not. Don't look back; they might be gaining on you; always damned good advice. Still. The witch-doctors and head-shrinkers and feelgood pop-psych pundits (he cordially loathes them all) say these days that children never really grow up until their parents die and they lose that last buffer zone between themselves and the Reaper (he's pretty sure none of those talking heads has ever had to wipe a buddy's brains out of their eyes and go on soldiering; that'll give you as much of an All Access Pass to the Sweet Hereafter as any man or woman could ever want) and he's never thought of Jack as his father (Christ, no); the question of the precise nature of their relationship is one better left unexamined even in a life he's devoted to examining every unthinkable thing; dragging the skeletons out into the light of day and making them dance. But death is death and it always means something (needs to mean something) and Jack's death leaves him ... different ... in a way he hasn't figured out yet. There's time. It's something he doesn't have to figure out alone: he has his sweet angel (mule) wingman and heart's delight and gadfly and fucking pain in the ass right here beside him to shore him up and kick his feet out from under him as circumstances require. (In peace there's nothing so becomes a man / As modest stillness and humility.)

Life in the fast lane, life at thirty thousand feet; he's having a high old time. Mitchell isn't asleep; Mitchell is flying the plane by force of courteous will (she's a good flyer really, and doesn't mind flying with someone else in the Siege Perilous as much as some pilots he knows, but she's still a pilot -- will be till she dies, will be even if she never gets her hands on the stick of another bird -- and she pays attention). He's always been a philosopher at heart (hell, the fall'll probably kill you) and they're sailing to Byzantium once again (well, that's his life this side of the Great Divide and his own black camel) and in its own way, his life is a series of 'nots', because it's PBS, not Channel Thirteen, Julian not John (the punchline "he was in a band before The Beatles?" has been transformed by time into "wow I didn't know his dad was famous"; same song, different key) LSD, LBJ, DDT, even XTC, are the acronyms of generations lying down with the dinosaurs and you still record, but not onto records (that sweetly-nasty song of Aerosmith's probably doesn't make much sense to today's mallrats, though they know it, as today's Young Person often is enamored of the music of his parents' or even grandparents' generation; it's the only thing that's saved his ass a few times). In theory he first saw the light of day in 1988 (and all hail Beloit College for providing him with a handy checklist for his truncated life): no Evil Empire, unified Germany (he doesn't believe in the death of the one and he's always believed in the reality of the other and neither one is his problem any more, thank fuck) minivans and reality shows and raging censorship in every corner of their plugged-in lives (turn on, tune in, drop out isn't a superannuated proposition, it's the way we live now, who fucking knew, and while he's at it, who the fuck ever thought it was a good idea to censor student newspapers, for fuck's sweet sake?) while at the same time they can email Qatar and Da Nang from the cellphones they're allowed to take into class. If he didn't laugh at the world he lives in, his head would explode.

The monks who helped him value the life he was granted weren't mystics (just as well, since the other side of the Great Divide gave him an allergy to mysticism and -- for that matter -- monks) but they still believed in a universe where more things than your television and your email wanted to talk to you, each in its own special and giving way. Going too far down that road, though, would lead to having to buy a condo in a universe where the fuckwad who knocked Mitchell into next week on the jetway in DCA was a Post-It Note from his celestial answering service instead of just a Severe Weather Statement that he's tired and a dick. And, yeah, more ongoing proof that this is Planet of the Dicks, and they're visiting its capital. He hates Washington. There's a shock.

DC is a company town, just like Hollywood (the business of America is business, yeah, right) and Sam Clemens and Otto von Bismark both said much the same thing about laws and sausages. Of course, Otto also said that politics is the art of the possible, and it'd better be an art because there isn't much science to it, except maybe in the way that boxing's a science, the sweet science of hammering a half-naked man insensible with taped and padded fists while half-naked yourself. Do nothing by halves; moderation is for monks, and continence makes monkeys of us all. If charity means giving, I give it to you, but he'd been faithful, once upon a time (now and then) and still is, to everything that matters. (When the fall is all there is, it matters.)

Too much to hope for that they could get through today without hearing from Mitchell's family (they're like a combination of the KGB and Intourist; they're everywhere and they're cheerful) but if DC is a company town, then once you have eliminated the possible, whatever is left (however improbable), must be the truth, and if the truth is going to set you free, it needs to be on the side of the heaviest artillery, meaning that both their fucking phones are filling up with messages from the moment they turn them on again in the taxi, because half Mitchell's family is on-station here, beating swords into plowshares and sense into heads. Lt. Aeileyne Mavoureen Mitchell, USAF, is the sacrificial lamb (chosen by the drawing of lots to be point man for dealing with them while they're in town this time) and he really has to have a talk with dear Mitchell's family about their naming patterns one of these fine days, because by now he's used to the Southern custom of the evocation of the dead and the building of castles in the sky with a few keystrokes on a birth certificate but he really draws the line (as Mason said to Dixon) at names which combine half the punchlines of untold jokes (someone's father and maybe it was even his used to sing "Kathleen Mavoureen" back in a city he never grew up in during a century he barely saw and of course he doesn't know the song -- none of his generation does, certainly not a bastard slip that finds no root -- and if it did, hardly well enough to make jokes about it) and radical orthography and the past is an undiscovered country that discourages tourism, and he's fond enough of Mitchell's family to text little Kathleen -- who has no fucking idea why he calls her that -- back and tell her that no, they're fine, they don't need anything, they'll see her at the church (oh get me to the church on time), and half of Washington's going to be there, both sacred and profane, and by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion, and that night he does a lot of remembering -- not judgment day, because he doesn't, but it's time to pay a long-owed debt. To Jack, who never wanted to carry half the secrets he held; to himself, who kept two men's secrets and from this hour will only keep his own; to Mitchell, who never asked him for more than he needed to give, even when she might have been entitled to it. The rest of the story, and it's not the end of the tale, but the beginning: A to B to JD Nielson. It's a day and a half in the telling, from the moment they get through the door (too damned soon to be sure what he thinks of all of this, down where the dead men roll and logic is just a suggestion, but the longer he talks, laying everything out chapter and verse, the more he realizes it's a story he's wanted to tell. Once, and to just one person, because it's a story Jack would never tell -- couldn't tell it with fairness and accuracy and with the sort of kindness that isn't a lie -- and it took crossing the Great Divide and living in a foreign country and Cameron Mitchell to bring him to the place where he can, and it's a debt owed to all three of them because the living bear witness to the sacrifices of the dead) and she doesn't say a word the whole time, just listens to him with that fierce intensity of hers (enough to make a strong man weak and a weak man change his convictions but that's never actually been what's true; with Mitchell if you're up to her weight that's best of all, it's if you aren't that you break under the load of all that merry competence and pride) and he knows she hears it all. And eventually his tale is told (a sad tale's best for winter, but this is spring) and he packs the two of them off to bed (tomorrow is going to be seven species of hell) and she sleeps and he doesn't and soon enough the gray dawn is breaking and the horn of the hunter is heard on the hill (Oh! hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever? Oh! hast thou forgotten this day we must part) and he and Mitchell have a funeral to get to.

And it's morning in America, and having praised Caesar, it's time to bury him (Doug called it wrong twice, in song and story; America follows Cincinnatus, not Augustus, and old soldiers die). Mitchell's in full rig, Medal too, and it's a damned heavy weight, because it's filled with ghosts, and ghosts weigh more than living souls (he's known it, proved it, set it aside, and so has she; it's a weight you never forget -- not if you're good -- but they're neither of them in active service so it's a weight that can be given into others' keeping; just not today) and the part of him that grand slam doubled and redoubled hearts on the sleeve is insisting that no matter who it is that's going into the cold cold ground today he's the one who should be in uniform is a part of himself he locks up tight until he has the time to kick it back to the other side of the Great Divide where it belongs. Not wanted on voyage. This voyage anyway. Sooner or later, as the man says, you will know, and there's a part of him that's now had one of Life's great questions conclusively answered but knowledge isn't commutative.

Car to the church. It's full; half brass -- enough to start their own orchestra -- half suits, enough minders-with-earpieces around to give him a good idea of who's in at least some of the suits (ex-Presidents get Secret Service detail for life; Hayes and Jack were friends) and there are ushers conducting everybody to their seats (bride's side or groom's side? I will be a bridegroom in my death) and the eulogy makes the Dear Departed sound like a helluva fellow who flew a desk all his life and died in his sleep. But oh God, a true American and a man's a man for a' that. Good thing the poor suffering bastard's dead; the funeral would've killed him. (When they're ringing your curtain down, demand to be buried like Eva Peron.)

Then off to Arlington (last prayers, last rites, if two rights don't make a wrong try three, on the other hand, two Wrights can make an airplane and that's what got them into this mess in the first place; slipping the surly bonds of Earth because Man's reach must exceed his grasp and they went slipping through a slide zone to discover that there was war in Heaven and the situation was excellent); at least the graveside ceremony is short, though the cocktail hour afterward (sans cocktails, and what is this world coming to?) will probably go on forever. He and Mitchell sit in the back. Grass everywhere (bring the flamingos, they'll play croquet) and it's just easier all round to be at the back of the house when the flags are being given out and the band begins to play, boys, the band begins to play. Carter looks like she wants to shoot somebody. That's cheering.

And then the bugler's playing "Taps" and he feels a sharp urgent need to oh God make it stop, as if he's the one being played into his grave (he who plays with a sword plays with the devil and there's always a piper to pay.) But it's not and he isn't and just a few minutes more and they can be over the hills and far away, maybe adding Carter to their shopping cart so he can grill her in peace, or maybe taking a raincheck, because Mitchell looks wiped (he's the only one who could see it), and a day of up and down in Air Force fetishwear isn't doing one goddamned good thing for her spine (that was a damned bad fall and he thinks longingly -- not for the first time -- of possessing the happy magic power to visit assholes with the precise impairment of the person they're shoving out of their way), but there's one last thing to do before they toddle off to the hot-tub with the blender-drinks and the party hats. "Come on," he says. "Let's go say what needs to be said."

They make their way toward the coffin -- slowly, because everyone present is required to salute the Medal, which means Mitchell has to return the salutes -- and they're ambushed by little Kathleen (who works at the Pentagon, but not -- allegedly -- on E Ring), and who hasn't got a single thing to say to either of them that she couldn't stand up and say in church no matter what she may actually know (what did you know and when did you know it?) They promise to check in before they fly home; he wonders if it's really that infeasible to move Nielson-Mitchell to Tibet.

And then he's standing at the head of the coffin, and he grits his teeth as a ghost that Jack (even and especially Jack) had buried deep (Jack's secrets were all things he didn't speak of, not things he didn't know) rises up from a dead man's memory and oh God, worst fucking possible time to think of Charlie, to think that the Asgard-enchanted twice-magicked flesh he wears is roughly the age Charlie would have been if he'd lived, but it was the first thing he'd thought of that day, the first sight of himself in a mirror and looking into that pure serene, his mind staggering under the impossibility his own life had become: Charlie. He's thinking you can rest now, you can sleep now and his whorefucking traitor memory is sending him to a yellow nursery in a town he's never seen; a crib and a mobile and the scent of baby skin. Not him, goddammit. Not his. They belong to the man who gave him the chance for everything else. He reaches out and touches the surface of the coffin (metal and sealed and a good death, Jack, must've been) and bears his witness and gives his thanks.

Then he looks up.

There's a man in a suit standing next to Carter twenty feet away and it's not 'a man', it's Daniel and the Great Divide is sealed but he's far from whole because a whole library of things he sent to the Dead Letter office are suddenly present company; he's thinking za'tarc and too much sarcophagus and Ma'chello's Goa'uld-killers because Daniel looks rabid and he can tell from the way Carter's moving that she hasn't picked up on it at all, still thinks it's her old friend Daniel, not Daniel-the-human-time-bomb and how many times did Jack have to defuse it and what is it this time and Daniel isn't even supposed to be here, and Daniel stopped when he saw him (I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night) and Carter didn't, bumps right into him and Daniel's head whips around (looking for a gun) and he staggers forward (not so much clumsy and off-balance as trying to do and not-do too damned many things at once and he's on High Alert and for how long, O' Lord, how long?)

"Jesus," he says softly, and only Mitchell can hear (Johnny has gone for a soldier, but Daniel dragged his fucking heels and he'd been sure Daniel would do it until the Last Trump and beyond and what the hell happened and why didn't anyone see?)

"Yes," she answers (understanding and benediction and if she doesn't see the whole she sees enough and permission to throw myself on this live grenade, sir? Permission granted, lieutenant) and they're moving but it's too late because the raree show has reached the coffin and all he can do is get himself between his loved one and the war's desolation and he wishes to hell there were a Clue Machine somewhere around here so he could buy one because he would really (really) like to know what's going on.

And Daniel heads for the coffin like it's some kind of homing beacon, like he's come all the way from Atlantis just to get here (I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade) and Mitchell turns toward Carter and Daniel braces himself, both hands flat, against the coffin, as if his next move is to try to lever it open and climb inside (To die: to sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, and the Western Literary Canon can just fuck off right now because he has other fish to fry and quick because they're all going to end up in gig, the rubber hotel, or six feet under within the next ten minutes if they aren't all somewhere else when Daniel's head explodes.)

Mitchell's trying to get them moving, but Carter's just a touch too shellshocked to pick up what she's putting down. "Good to see you Carter and for crying out loud let's get him out of this crowd," he snaps. And then (oh, yeah, that's Carter all over and time cannot wither nor custom stale) she turns to Daniel and practically hands him a nine-page single-spaced memo with the subject line: "Greetings: Your Friends All Believe That You Are A Dangerous Lunatic."

At least it settles the question of whether or not it's really Daniel. People who didn't know him well never believed he was capable of throwing tantrums worthy of a tired five-year-old. Gentle Daniel, meek and mild, because he could also call down the righteous wrath of God's Own Thunder on someone who actually deserved it: no matter who, no matter the cost to him. Right now the fit he pitches is a hybrid. Or maybe this is the way Daniel is now; he hasn't seen the man in twelve years. It does make two things clear: Daniel knows he's slipping over the edge (and can't do a fucking thing about it; that's always the worst), and Daniel has no real clue who he is. So the next time Daniel starts moving (somebody came up behind him; damned stupid deskbound jackass and he should be grateful nobody else can see it or they'd have to shoot their way out of here and he knows damned well Jack would be entertained by the send-off but still) he moves in close (too close, he knows, for comfort, but he needs to block Daniel from knocking Mitchell ass over teakettle) and that gives him the chance to clue him. "I know you remember our good buddy Loki." Yeah, okay, assuming Daniel can remember his own name right now. It's a stretch. He's always been the sort to take a lot on faith, though (faith is believing what you know ain't so).

He can tell Mitchell's moved out of range, so he steps back. He cuts a glance with her, apologizing with his eyes. The edge of her mouth quirks: You're an asshole, Nielson, you know that, right? He nods slightly. Yeah, bitch, every day of the week and twice on Sundays. "Come on. Car's this way."

He lets Mitchell set the pace, puts himself on her off side; Carter's finally gotten with the program enough to take drag and that puts Daniel in the rocking chair and if he went offworld in a galaxy far far away that's where they would've put him (where SG-1 put him at least in blissful theory and no battle plan survives contact with the enemy pretty much goddamned ever and say it twice for a line of march) and it's as much of familiarity as they can give him within ninety seconds from a standing start using everyday objects you might find around the safety and privacy of your own home. It doesn't even take much chivvying to get him into the back of the barge (doors shut but he doesn't pop the locks -- not if he doesn't want to be cleaning blood and brains off the upholstery for the next fucking week).

Mitchell has one way of dealing with the Crazy People (minds lost stolen or strayed, boxing the compass from a National Tragedy to a Royal Pain In The Heinie, but no fault, no fear, no shame); he has another. In the end it all comes down to a long game of bait-and-switch (a shell game, and which cup is the one we ardently desire to have pass away, O' my Father, and which was filled at Mel's Lethe Drive-In?) and the two of them bitch and bicker during the whole drive back to the condo, the Punch and Judy Theater of Conditional Sanity, Free Inoculations Here. It's a standup routine he can perform in his sleep. Just as well. The intermission's going to be over soon, curtain about to rise on the second act, and he needs to figure out how to play it. By the time their sweet chariot has carried them back to their home away from home, Daniel's papered over the cracks well enough that you could (if you wanted) pretend you hadn't seen what you thought you'd seen when floating o'er the gardens and pastures green. (Daniel will be fine, Daniel's always fine; these and other lies our parents tell us) because failure of compassion is a buzz-word free pass that was trendy about the time he was/should have been attending High School; a repurposed all-purpose term used to cast old-school bloodymindedness in a more neutral light, the passive voice, and the still small voice of conscience, along with all other inconvenient vices, has had the ever-loving life choked out of it on some darkling plain somewhere, as if it's merely a failure of nerve, failure to thrive (as they used to say when terrified poverty-line mothers took the babies they couldn't afford to raise and starved them to death) failure to buckle down, Winsocki, buckle down, you can win this one for the Gipper...

Not this time.

He doesn't doubt that whatever Daniel and his people were up against (he knows the broad strokes, of course), on paper at least they've been winning most of the battles; but in Atlantis, just like here, it's the individuals who lose their private little wars. So it's up and up and up into the sunlight, and our sermon for today is upon a text from The Epistle to the Paranoids: "Behold, I send you forth as wolves in the midst of fucktards -- go thou well-armed and armored --" and he and Mitchell keep up their doubles act the whole way (more fun than tennis, right up there in the Top Ten with sex, although yeah, okay, it's near the bottom of the list).

Twelve years since he first saw the light of day, ten years since Daniel last saw the light of Earth, just about nine years since the first time he saw Jack (again, having spent two years clawing his way up out of the Pit and then he stood on the far side of the Great Divide and there was the Promised Land hail and hallelujah and which side are you on, which side are you on I'll stick with the union till every battle's won) and he never once asked about Daniel. He never had to. He'd always known he was Jack's hole card, the In Case Of, last resort, last trump, and in case of emergency break glass, and he knew just how bad things would have to be for Jack to call in that marker. They never got there. (Might yet, but he's pretty much on his own now for deciding if and when to toss his hat in the ring; if nominated I will not run.) But because of that, they'd kept in touch (across the miles, under the table), violating the National Security Act here and there and now and then. Jack told him that Daniel had gone to Atlantis, and when, and why (when you need a tool isn't the time to find out it's going to break in your hand).

And here they all are (what family doesn't have its ups and downs?) and it's Anno Domini 2015 and the last twelve years have vanished like the cake left out in the rain (the cake is a lie) and he spent so fucking goddamned long learning to be someone else, learning Could Have Beens, and some are grand and some are startling and in some cases the remake will just never be a patch on the original but suddenly it's ten and twelve and fifteen, seventeen, twenty years ago and Daniel, for God's sake and it's okay, Danny, I've got you and he isn't dead and he would have (should have) had the strength to walk away (even if he hadn't been him) and now a past he cut loose has risen up like Leviathan from the Great Deep and he's back in the belly of the whale, the belly of the beast, and --

And he doesn't have one fucking clue what to do now, so he leaves Daniel sitting on the couch and follows Carter and Mitchell off to the bedroom. Meets Carter coming the other way; she looks wrecked, but it's normal-people normal-wreckage (oh, yay, one less immediate crisis) so he keeps going, stripping off along the way, because this place is a goddamned oven. Mitchell's on her way out of her Blues; almost as complicated as getting them on and he'll need to run them down to the concierge to get them to the drycleaner the moment there's a spare ten minutes.

"Yeah," he says (Mitchell's said something, but it went straight to buffer, whatever the hell it was). He rubs a hand over his face. "Yeah. I want to fix it. Took one goddamn look at him and it was like ten years went away boom. It's fucking with me."

Part of him wishes he hadn't handed over the keys to the castle so thoroughly over the past 48 hours (not just the keys, but the blueprints, and the passcodes to the security system besides) though that's a bit of locking Netherby Hall after Fair Ellen's been stolen, because Mitchell's had the map to this particular labyrinth for years (ball of wax and ball of yarn and winding sheet and trail of bread-crumbs and he thinks of dark Germanic forests filled with gnomes and ghouls and wicked witches and Icarus flying too near the sun and bye baby bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting, to get a little rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunting in and summer is i-cumin' in and fear no more the heat of the sun and golden lads and girls all must and not on his watch (fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!) )

"One of us should tell him he ain't travelin' back by himself; jumpy like that, he'll trip somebody's radar and wind up in some TSA black pit from now until the end of time," Mitchell says, brisk and practical and yanking him out of his own black pit before he loses the way back to the exit (life as existential drama and man as useless passion; chance would be a fine thing if the house didn't keep shaving the dice). "Or until the SGC comes to bail him out, and wouldn't he just love to explain that? I'm allowed to put the uniform back on to travel -- we can get him back home safe. He got anywhere to go?"

"I don't know." Home is where, when you have to go there, but there's no one left to take Daniel in. They buried Jack today, they buried Abydos a long time ago ... Atlantis is where he's been, but if it were home, he wouldn't have come alone today. "I'll find out," he says. (Daniel doesn't know him -- that's true enough -- but twelve years ago Daniel was willing to have deep meaningful conversations with anyone as long as they were alien enough, and he may just qualify.) "Right now, the best thing to do is to convince him it's okay to get some goddamn sleep." (Ten or twelve or twenty years' worth, with time off for being dead.)

"Drug his food, if I have to," Mitchell says (brave and bright, bright and brave), and that's one less worry, because he'll back Daniel against the Goa'uld fleet (circumstances having borne him out, yes and no, more or less), but he'll back Mitchell against Daniel. He grabs a pair of hiking shorts (enough Supplex and cargo pockets to go backward around the world twice) and drags them on before heading back out into the living room. Might as well wear enough clothes not to scare the natives.

It was eleven years ago this month that Mitchell was shot down; ten since she walked out of the hospital under her own power, and in all that time Carter hasn't learned to look at her without flinching (but Carter was always shit with people -- hell, all four of them were; the SGC's rabbit's foot and out-of-the-hat and lucky Magic 8-Ball (reply hazy try again), trailing behind them dead marriages (dead children) and shattered relationships (shattered lives) and it was nothing short of a fucking miracle that any of them could get out of bed in the morning (including the ones who didn't sleep, or who considered sleep a suggestion that only applied to other people) let alone come to work and get their game on and save the princess, save the world, and the fact that they did it day after day for six solid years to his personal knowledge and the poor suffering bastard they planted today put in another year in harness and one in the Big Chair before they kicked him upstairs is the real miracle in the whole smoke-and-mirrors pageant and it's the one everybody's going to miss when they write the history books, because history is a tale told by an idiot just to begin with) and Daniel doesn't manage it either, but he makes a decent job of cashing the reality checks Mitchell hands out. He manages to express a desire for a glass of water (meaning Daniel's trying to be polite and not put anybody to any trouble and it's just as well because he's not letting Daniel in the same room as a cup of coffee again until oh, say, next fall and he grabs the tail end of that thought as it goes skipping merrily through his fevered brain (I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls) and lets it drag him off into the kitchen because Jack let Daniel go and Daniel's never been his on any terms (express or implied) to worry about and if you aren't your own man, whose are you (better to die on your feet than be a dead jackal) and he stares into the refrigerator (a cold white box) and his life is (all of his lives are) mapped and compassed by cold white boxes of sarcophagi and briefing rooms and operating theaters.)

Mitchell reaches past his shoulder and snags a bottle of water out of the fridge. She pushes it toward his chest; his hands come up automatically before it touches him. He hears the stamp of her cane on the floor as she pivots, hand on his shoulder, turning him to face the music (and the band played "Waltzing Matilda" and one of the things on the Top 100 List of Things He Likes about Mitchell: her hands are always cool.) "Go on. Go talk to him." (It's a good thing he keeps lists, because otherwise there are days he'd contemplate either murder or the life of a wandering mendicant monk.)

"Mitchell, I --" He wants to explain, let his hair down and they can all be girls together, because right now he's wondering (and now at last there's nobody home to answer the phone) about the real reason Jack let Daniel go. Or (really) why he let him stay away -- he knows why Daniel went; Daniel wanted off the line, but he wasn't off the line in Pegasus either, so why not come home to the land of cable and bookstores and decent coffee? How much of that was Jack? Any of it? Was out of sight a damned sight better than seeing that eternal reminder (and no, not merely of ungovernable Mattachine delights, but of all the other unrecoverable renunciations: friends and family and a comfortable beloved life and I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the Ghost, and he wishes its pattern were stranger to him than it is; the poet lied; all men are islands, usually dayspas run by Dr. Moreau.) But Carter's right on Mitchell's heels.

"I said get," Mitchell says. (Cruel to be kind and throw your heart o'er; failure is obviously not an option, and, as they used to say back when all the best people burned crosses instead of bras or flags, the woman has two things on her mind and the other one's hats, only Mitchell doesn't wear hats, so the smart money's on lunch being on the table in thirty along with select biographical extracts coming soon to a theater near you.) He walks out into the living room.

Daniel's asleep.

He's finally leaned back against the couch, and he's chin-to-chest; no matter how exhausted you are the position's good for twenty minutes tops before your internal sentries remind you that if the situation's bad enough for you to be sleeping sitting up, you really ought to be awake. He moves in closer; in the old days, Daniel's personal space bubble varied from eight inches to eighteen feet contingent on the weather, who you were, and whether he'd had his coffee yet: depending on who Daniel's backbrain (which is batshit crazy and searching the couch cushions at this very minute for any spare grenade launchers somebody may have lost boys and girls let's not forget) has decided he is, he's got a chance of buying Daniel more than a short nap. So he moves in close, standing right next to him, and when Daniel's breathing doesn't change at all he touches him (moving slowly enough that his body heat telegraphs the move, but he doesn't make the touch tentative because that's the quickest way to wake up somebody who isn't twitchy; everybody's programmed to expect spiders the size of toasters to fall out of trees and there's a really good reason why they all emigrated from the Neolithic to the Jet Age) and still no reaction (so Daniel's subconscious has either put him on the Trusted Vendor List, or he's actually in a coma, or he's dead, pick one) so a hand under his shoulder and one under his calf and a firm careful pivot and that suit is never going to be the same again but hell it's not his money and the sunlight is slanting in through the windows and he's standing letting the cables sleep (the angels weep) and adam and steve and riverrun

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