Daniel does not believe in ghosts. He said that to Jack once, and Jack (he thinks) seemed surprised, as if someone whose head was stuffed with so many irrelevant improbabilities and things which his academic peers had considered lunacy must also embrace the ridiculous. But Daniel is (has always been) a scientist, sifting facts and regarding them clear-eyed and without preconception (it's what got him into all this trouble in the first place, more than a quarter of a century ago now.) And so he does not believe in ghosts or Heaven or the resurrection of the dead. More or less. To qualify that last statement properly on the basis of his experience would take a while, as he's seen minds transported into computer matrices and back into their medically-"dead" bodies again; has himself dissolved into a ball of energy (twice) and re-incorporated into flesh; has died (and been unborn) more times than he likes to count. Between six and a dozen, depending on which rubber yardstick you care to use (that's one of Jack's favorite expressions; Jack wasn't a man to bestow material mementos mori, but Daniel keeps a number of his pet phrases evergreen in the library of his memory.)

But to cut to the chase, dead is dead. This life is all there is. You might make yourself nearly-immortal (with the aid of a sarcophagus and an alien parasite); you might Ascend and become metahuman; you might survive yourself as a perfect immortal robot copy, but none of those things (actually) count. There's no storming of Heaven, because there is no Heaven at all. Nor Samsara, Elysium, Swarga Loka, Nirvana, Jannah, Fields of Aaru, Valhalla, a thousand other names for a nonexistent place. There is nothing, not even a sleep and a forgetting.

Jack O'Neill is dead.

He's actually okay with that. It's been three years since he came running back from Atlantis to the graveside of a man with whom he had an unfinished conversation, knowing it could never be finished now. Knowing that all that was left was to keep faith with the dead. It might seem inconsistent (given his firmly-held beliefs on the fact that the dead are, well, dead), but it isn't. He's an anthropologist as well as an archaeologist (as well as a soldier in a secret war, but he's laid down his gun now, ain't gonna study war no more), and he knows that rituals are for the living. The living keep faith with the dead for their own sake, and for the sake of those as yet unborn. For the sake of Civilization itself. If Daniel knew anything at all about Jack (and he did know; he knew all the truly important things), it was that Jack would die (had died) defending the ideal of Civilization itself. Not for nations or rules or laws, but for the shining hope that had summoned Teal'c to his side in a Goa'uld dungeon, that had kindled the faith of the Asgard in the Tau'ri. He'd always sworn he was a cynic and a pragmatist, and Daniel had always known he wasn't. He'd kept Jack's secrets, as Jack had kept his.

And now they're here.

It's the first time he's visited Jack's grave since that day, though he's been back to Washington any number of times. SGC business. For the last year, Nielson-Mitchell business. He's a free man now, free of the chains of duty (the chains of pride), and he thinks that's what makes it possible.

The grave is well-tended; an old grave now. Anonymous as much as any grave in Arlington is (in Flanders Fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row). Name and rank and birth and death and deep in the earth below, a sealed high-tech coffin.

Next year the Program goes public. Officially. At long last. What JD calls the "Cone of Silence" is already leaking like a sieve (Daniel thinks, randomly, of coffee filters); this will probably be the last time he'll be able to make a visit like this without being stalked by reporters wanting "the true story." He couldn't tell it even if he wanted to. If you weren't there, you'll never know. (It's hardly a new complaint, he knows perfectly well.)

He reaches out and touches the marble marker. What would he say to Jack if he could? It's a conversation he actually can't imagine having. He hasn't seen Jack in thirteen years. He's in love. With Cammie. With JD. And JD isn't Jack O'Neill (is/isn't/is/isn't - the eternal card-flip goes on, ignored, in the back of his mind; to acknowledge it would drive him mad); so the metaphysical conversation Daniel wants to have must be had here, with an evoked figment of his imagination, not around a dinner table in Colorado Springs.

I'm fine, Jack. I'm happy. I did the job, and I let it go. I'm in love. I'm loved.

Enough, he thinks. For him to say. For Jack to know. If it were possible. He strokes the top of the marker absently for a moment more, then shoves his hand back into the pocket of his jacket and turns away. Places to go. Things to do. A life to live.

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed...

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