Oh-three-hundred. Shit. Jack stared, hollow eyed, at the clock. Oh-three-hundred and he was still wide awake. Down the hall in the spare room Daniel huffed gently in his sleep, the sound preternaturally loud in the absolute silence of the house. Jack felt a surge of irritation: oh-three-freakin'-hundred and everyone on the god-damned planet was asleep. Except him and the odd night watchman.
Jeeze, this was hopeless. There was nothing more aggravating than lying, wide awake, staring at the boring dark, knowing that the only other occupant of the house was slumbering peacefully while sleep eluded you. He rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes with determination, willing himself to relax and slide over the edge.
Fuckin' hopeless. A scant five minutes and he couldn't stand it any more. He rolled out of bed, grabbed and climbed into his sweats, and padded through the dark and quiet house to the kitchen. The light blinded him when he flipped it on and he cursed under his breath as he blinked and squinted, waiting for his vision to adjust and come to terms with the change.
He looked round the kitchen in mild disgust, littered as it was with the detritus of last night's meal, and set to tidying it up for the sake of having something to do. Cutlery in the sink, cartons in the trash, table wiped down - didn't take long. He rummaged half-heartedly through the refrigerator: nothing much to be found, not with them just returning and all. Not that he was hungry anyway. A beer might have been good, but he'd had the last one with the Chinese last night. The bottle of soda in the door had been carelessly capped and was flat. Coffee was what he really wanted, warm and comforting in the small-hours chill of the kitchen - jeeze, it was cold. He needed something to wear on his top half. Nothing in the kitchen though, tidy and sterile now that the take-out cartons had been tossed out. Casting his mind about as his eyes roved around, he recalled the sweater carelessly dumped in the living room: Daniel's, not his, it would be too wide for him and probably not long enough. Still, any port in a storm: better than freezing his ass off, anyhow.
In the living room he groped around in the dark, unwilling to turn on the light and maybe disturb Daniel, until he found it by touch, lying in a crumpled heap at the end of the couch. He shrugged himself into it gratefully, revelling in the instant warmth and softness of the wool as it draped over his frame, smiling a little as he recalled the circumstances in which it had been dumped. Daniel at his house, hanging out after a mission. Separate missions this time, of course, but still, hanging out like normal. Like what used to be normal before their hormones fucked everything up.
Not for the first time, he wondered at himself for wanting to spend so much of his free time with Daniel, why he put himself through this, why Daniel bought into it too. It was like biting down on an aching tooth. You knew it was going to be painful, but the compulsion to do it was damn near irresistible. Having Daniel so near and yet so far out of reach was -- just plain screwed up was what it was. Like he really needed to be constantly testing his resolve in this way in his down time: he already knew he was strong-willed, he already knew he wouldn't crack once he'd made up his mind over something, he really didn't need to be constantly proving it to himself. His mood nose-dived a little further as he caught himself involuntarily running his hands over the fabric and he gave himself a mental shake.
Back to the kitchen again as he considered his options. Coffee probably wasn't too bright an idea. He needed the warmth, so didn't need the stimulation and decaff was anathema in this house: his lips quirked again as he thought exactly why. So, coffee was out, the soda was flat, the beer was finished, there was no milk and the only alternatives, whisky or tea, were unappealing. Not a whole lot of options left: damn it, coffee it was then. Wouldn't make much difference anyhow, he couldn't see himself getting any sleep tonight, not really.
Ten minutes later, sitting with his forearms on the kitchen table and his hands curled round the warmth of his coffee mug, he congratulated himself on his choice. It wasn't going to help him sleep, but it sure as hell made him feel better about being awake, gave him something to contemplate rather than letting his mind drift onto the topic of what was really bothering him.
But, as usual, once his thoughts had touched on the sore spot, his mind was trapped like a bird in lime. And, he thought ruefully, it fluttered about just as uselessly. Idly it replayed the events of the last mission in his head as he stubbornly refused to let it fast forward to the crux of the matter. But in the end it got there, same as it always did, no matter how he tried to prevent it.
Weird shit. Christ, he maybe liked the action but the weird shit surely was the downside. That was the most unsettling thing of the lot. Which made it all the stranger that he stayed in this particular line of work where weird shit was pretty much the main part of the job description. Not just ordinary, run of the mill, normal weird shit either, but occasionally really heavy, far out, bad trip sort of weird shit, stuff that reminded him of everything he hoped he'd left behind for good when he got straightened out after Iraq. His lips twisted in an ironic snort of laughter. Half assed or what? To persist in a fucking weird line of work when he hated, loathed, detested the really weird shit. And weird shit surely came no weirder than today's - no, yesterday's, now - little slice of life experience.
He'd come face to face with himself. He'd never met himself before, except for on Harlan's planet, right at the start of this particular slice of weirdness, when it had been like looking in a mirror and talking to your reflection because they were all essentially still identical, hardly a divergent experience between them. Daniel had, had met another 'Jack O'Neill', but had never really commented on how he'd found him, except in the most non-committal ways. Which, in all fairness, had given him some inkling of what to expect, an asshole, pure and simple. Despite that, it had still rattled him more than he'd expected to meet himself after some divergent experience - and dislike himself virtually on sight for a cocky, smart-mouthed bastard with a pole up his ass. Surely he, of all people, shouldn't have had that reaction, despite being to some extent forewarned? After all, back at Harlan's place, the Daniels and the Carters had seemed to get along swimmingly and yesterday, the Teal'cs and the Carters had cooperated with few signs of antipathy.
What was more, he'd watched himself die yesterday. Not in any artsy, metaphysical, metaphorical way either. He'd actually watched himself die. Him. Or a pretty good facsimile thereof. Which was different, certainly. And while he had really died once before, he'd never had to watch it; it was just something that may or may not happen, an occupational hazard that he'd become pretty well inured to years ago, and to be quite honest, one that was never very far from his mind on a mission, any mission. It had hurt like hell for a moment or two and then - nothing. Jut a gap in his memories. Sure, it had been a bit strange to get resurrected quite so easily - not that he was complaining, he had to say, no sir - fact, he'd be more than happy to be resurrected any time he repeated the experience, unless it was by means of a sarc. He knew he'd kinda draw the line at that one and its implications.
As these things went, he had to admit it was a reasonably good death - noble, stoic, heroic even, certainly no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not that he'd have expected that from a pod person, he supposed, since they apparently felt no pain - but still... the sort of death he'd like himself, if it came right down to it. So they weren't much different in the end, he surmised. Except that he knew that deep down inside he wasn't noble or heroic, and certainly not stoic: just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill scared guy who most times managed to put up a good front through sheer adrenalin and spectacularly good luck and had made colonel because of it. So the bastard was one up on him there, too. 'Better' than him.
Despite everything, he'd tried to give himself - no, not 'himself', not really, not any more - he'd tried to give this thing that wore his face and his body and to some extent his mind, some comfort - and had failed miserably, he suspected. He shrugged, even though there was nobody there to see him: it wouldn't come as any great surprise to anyone that knew him that he had - failed miserably, that is. Actually, he'd known he had all along. He didn't rate high on the touchy-feely scale of freely expressed emotion, not even with himself. But even that wasn't the truth, not the whole truth anyway: 'Oh, is this the first time you've lied to yourself?' The mocking comment echoed through his mind, right on cue, and he shook his head irritably. He'd failed to give comfort because deep down inside he was glad. He was going back to being unique, thinking his own thoughts, living his own life, not sharing with anyone, and he welcomed it.
He stared into his coffee mug, watching the gradually lessening steam curling and rising from the surface of the liquid. It had shaken him more than he cared to admit, even to himself, to have had to be a spectator at his own death. He wouldn't have said that he was a superstitious man, but the space between his shoulder blades crawled with a sudden dread as he wondered if living once again through his own death and the deaths of his team didn't somehow bring the distinct possibility that it would happen in his reality a step closer to the realm of probability. And that thought scared him shitless.
Nah, wasn't gonna happen, not while he had breath in his body. But he, his other self, would have thought exactly that too, wouldn't he? They weren't any different in essentials. And look what happened to him. So he was basically kidding himself then, wasn't he? And you can't kid a kidder, not for long. When it came right down to it, all his determination never to leave anyone behind, always to pull his team through no matter what happened to him, to always keep them safe and bring them home, all of that didn't amount to a hill of beans. He had no say in the matter, none at all. Exactly how could he have forgotten that? Especially since the last time he'd been charged with looking after something precious, he'd failed so spectacularly? He didn't have any special pull with the fates. If anything, hadn't he proven they had it in for him?
He realised his fingers had tightened uncomfortably hard around the mug, the knuckles whitening, and he made a conscious effort to relax them, watching idly as the usual tan colour flooded back, before lifting the mug to his lips and tossing back half of the contents, pulling a face as the still-hot liquid scalded its way down.
His thoughts circled back on themselves, setting up the perfect ambush. He'd disliked himself on sight, and it had apparently been mutual. And it had been compounded by what he'd later learned, just before his Evil Twin had shut down for good: in the pod person universe, he and Daniel had been... doing it. Screwing. More than that, they'd been an item, a couple, partners in every sense of the word. And that thought really stuck in his gullet, that that... impostor had taken his life and twisted it into something unrecognisable to him, turned him into... He bit the thought off savagely as his mouth twisted in distaste. His deepest, dearest fantasy had been taken to its logical conclusion and his doppelganger had apparently gotten away with it. Whereas he, well, much as he would like to, much as Daniel wanted to, he just couldn't take the risk.
Easy enough for him though, he thought sourly: no SGC, no military, no NID having wet dreams over the outside chance of tripping him up, no shrewd and observant CO commanding him. No weight of regulations and threat of discharge bearing down on his shoulders, no penalty for following his inclinations. No consequences. None at all, bar the obvious. Not even, apparently, any impact on the team. All the reasons and circumstances that had him trapped in a no man's land of wanting and denying and wanting even more, all of that crap neatly circumvented, and what he really wanted tied up in a nice tidy package and dangled just out of his reach, another frustration to add to a long and growing list.
Damn it, he hated the idea that he was effectively being led by his dick, in his own familiar universe or any other. And equally, he hated the obscure and opposite notion that he, the original Jack O'Neill, and therefore the only one who really counted, was somehow missing out. Was maybe less, alone, than he could be with Daniel. Was a spectator at his own life, lurking outside the house with his nose pressed up against the windowpane, wanting to join the party inside but not having the balls to knock at the door.
Absent-mindedly he took another gulp at his coffee. It would be so easy to cave in, to go down the same route himself, to finally take for himself what he judged to be his heart's desire, God knows he deserved some recompense for all he'd done so far. He shook himself angrily as the thought presented itself. It always made him impatient with himself, this ridiculous periodic mooning over Daniel like a lovesick puppy even as he drew back from taking the plunge and doing anything about it. He'd thought he was beyond all that crap many years ago - like in the tenth grade. Usually he could just ignore it, did ignore it, pushed it all the way down and got on with his life just fine, thanks. But then usually, he didn't watch himself die. That kinda had a way of focussing a guy's mind on stuff that would probably be better off left well alone.
He pulled himself together with a start as Daniel slid into the seat opposite his. He hadn't heard him coming. Correction, he'd heard him coming once - even now, the small, sardonic voice in the back of his brain that never switched itself entirely off had to contribute its sneaky postscript.
"Hey." Daniel's voice was thick, slurred with recent sleep, and he scrubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin, then up and through his hair.
"Hey," Jack replied, and marvelled at the normal timbre of his voice. Somehow, it wasn't a night for 'normal'. Then he scoffed internally at himself for sounding fey. "Sorry, did I wake you? I didn't mean to."
"No, not really. I was only dozing. I couldn't seem to sleep properly. Dunno why."
Daniel flashed him a sympathetic look before he got up and shambled over to the coffee maker and Jack knew at that point that he was lying. He wasn't going to call him on it though. "Ah. Me either."
He watched as Daniel rummaged in the cupboard for a mug, mentally battening down the hatches for the conversation that was pretty well bound to follow.
"You need a refill?" The question was tossed over Daniel's shoulder as he poured the steaming coffee into the mug.
"Yeah, I suppose. Thanks."
He took the new, hot mugful gratefully and wrapped his chilled hands back round it, resting it on the tabletop in front of him as he stared into it.
"Thinking about the mission yesterday?"
Jack shrugged, unwilling to answer for a moment, then thought, 'the hell with it' and replied, "What do you think?"
"I think you're thinking about the mission yesterday." It was said with a small attempt at a grin, but Daniel's eyes were wary.
"Right as usual, Dr. J." The light tone he was trying for didn't quite come off. It was close, but not perfect. When he glanced briefly up, Daniel was watching him over the rim of his mug.
"So how do you feel about it?"
Ah, The Doctor was 'in'. "Oh, pretty much the same as usual about any of the weird shit that happens to us." Jack hunched his shoulders over his mug. "You know how it is."
"No, actually, I, uh, I don't. Why don't you tell me?"
"I watched myself die yesterday Daniel, how do you expect me to feel about it? That was weird shit by any definition of the words. Meaning of life stuff, ya know?" And he'd heard about Daniel's death too, and the knowledge had rocked him, not least because of its unemotional delivery. That fact alone had made him realise that what was lying in front of him was a bona fide twin, identical in all the essentials. Funny, he hadn't quite believed it until then.
"I notice you're not answering my question."
"Yeah, well."
Daniel said nothing, just dropped his eyes to his mug again, and in the extended silence it suddenly occurred to Jack that simply hearing about Daniel's death had been worse than actually seeing Sam and Teal'c go down. And there was another brick in the wall that he was taking cover behind: he could never allow himself to value one member of his team above another. His command was important to him, his rep as a commander was important to him. He was certain he'd never willingly surrender that, not even for Daniel, and honest enough to be equally certain that he couldn't trust himself not to, not if he got in any deeper. And hey, he might be crap at this relationship shit, but he'd learned enough in the space of a long and varied career to recognise that if he did surrender it, it would leave no foundation to build on.
The small of his back was chilled where the borrowed sweater had ridden up. He looked across at Daniel, watched him staring into his coffee, watched him tug at the slightly-too-tight neck of the sweatshirt he was wearing - his, he noticed; Daniel must have borrowed it the last time he stayed over - and for a moment he saw them both as an outsider might: two middle-aged men, sitting drinking coffee at the kitchen table, wearing each other's clothes. Normal, domestic, comfortable even. No undercurrents - except that the fit of borrowed clothes wasn't quite right. The metaphor wasn't lost on him.
"They were doing it, ya know." It burst out of him, and damn, he really hadn't meant to share that little nugget of intel with Daniel, or anyone else for that matter. But he was hurting and for one self-pitying moment he wanted company.
"What?" Startled blue eyes were raised to his from across the table.
Now that he'd started, he couldn't backtrack. "Our Evil Twins. Yours and mine. Fucking like minks apparently. They went dark side almost as soon as they came to terms with being pod people. He told me. Just before he died - smartass bastard wanted to get one up on me, I guess. Thought he was going to score points off me because there were no consequences and all bets were off."
"Jack, you can't possibly know his motivation --"
"Trust me. I know," Jack said darkly. "I could read him like a book."
"I suppose you could at that. And did it work out for them?"
Daniel was genuinely curious, no ulterior motive apparent: Jack gave him a long, assessing look to make doubly sure of that before he answered, grudgingly, "Yeah, so he said."
"Well then."
"'Well then'? That's it? It doesn't bother you?"
Daniel shrugged and didn't answer.
"Daniel? Daniel!"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes, it matters."
"Why?"
"It was more weird shit, that's why. Yet another point where he and I overlapped. Another bit of my life that I can't call my own. Shit, I didn't even think it was possible - for a machine, I mean."
"But that's not what's really bothering you."
"Yes... no... fuck, I don't know." Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I fucking hate this meaning of life crap, almost as much as I hate - hated - this pod person stuff." He broke off, staring into space, long enough for Daniel to wonder if he was going to clarify his train of thought.
"And I fucking hate the thought that he was rubbing my nose in all this wasted time. I hate being made to look stupid, but I hate to be made to look stupid even worse when it's by a fucking machine, a collection of circuits and hydraulics or whatever the hell drove the bastard."
"I see. You prefer to make yourself look stupid as a matter of policy."
"Yes... no! That's not it... not exactly. Can we just drop the subject, please? I shouldn't have brought it up."
Daniel shrugged. "No, you shouldn't, and we could – but that's not going to help, is it? It's just going to go to ground in your subconscious, become yet another bit of emotional baggage. Why don't you just admit it? You're jealous."
Jack tried for incredulous. "Of a machine? You have got to be shitting me!"
But Daniel just carried on speaking softly, without rancour, ignoring the loud interjection. "Oh, it's not the only reason you didn't like him," he shot Jack a wry look. "I'm quite well aware of just how... odd you found it to suddenly encounter a twin - but he probably felt exactly the same. Had to have, when you think about it. In fact, he probably felt worse, seeing as he was the copy. Doesn't alter the basic fact though. He was you. And you're jealous because they had what you've decided we can't have."
"No!" But it was a lie. Jack knew it even as he said the word, and knew that Daniel would call him on it too.
Daniel's eyebrows went up. "'Wasted time'?" he quoted back. "Significant word choice, wouldn't you say, Jack?"
Jack suddenly felt very tired. "Daniel, we've been through this. We can't, whether we like it or not. "
"So you say."
"So I know. Daniel, why are you pushing it? You know all the reasons as well as I do."
Daniel's mouth was set in a stubborn line. "Because it's important. It's important to me and I think it's important to you too - not that you'll admit it. Although you're the one that brought it up."
"I'm not going to fight with you about this. Not now."
His mouth twisted as Daniel replied, "I don't want to fight about it either. I just struggle to understand why being military means you can't have a life outside of that."
"The Program, regulations--"
Daniel threw up a hand. "Don't! Just don't quote regulations at me. When did you ever pay any heed to regulations that didn't suit you?"
"I follow orders though."
"Again, only to the letter when you agree with them."
Jack acknowledged the hit with a small quirk of his lips. "That much we have in common, I suppose. Okay then, try this one on for size. I took an oath."
"Which you've upheld. Which you always do uphold." Daniel was silent for a second, before he added softly, "More than any one human being should be expected to."
"But that's not the point, Daniel." Jack closed his eyes for a moment, rallying his thoughts, groping for the right words. "I have to stick with it. I took an oath to serve my country and bought into all its implications when I took it; just my tough luck it's expanded into serving my world. We get it on, we get found out, and I get busted - what it really means is that I've turned away from the fight. I can't do that. Minor infractions, they're all very well, they happen, but this? This is too big. It just doesn't work like that."
"Ah. The 'Beau Geste' approach: duty above everything."
And there it was, the gulf that lay between their outlooks and attitudes. Or was it the moat he was entrenched behind? Unsettling thought. Frustration bubbled up and Jack spoke sharply.
"Don't mock this, Daniel. It's defined who I am and what I've done for most of my life, it's important to me. I can't just dump it without a second thought."
Daniel's mouth shifted into an expression of - what? For once, Jack couldn't read it.
"Sorry. I know that. I didn't mean to be flippant, really. Well, that's not strictly true, I guess I did, but it was dirty pool. Sorry. But you're not indispensable. No one is."
Jack spoke slowly. "No. No, I'm not. I'm not arrogant enough to think that. But I'm arrogant enough to know I'm damned good at what I do and I'm valuable. I have to stick with this: anything else just isn't me."
Daniel's murmured rejoinder was lost in the depths of his coffee mug and Jack ignored it, too bone-tired all of a sudden to bother pursuing it, reluctant for this conversation to carry on. He felt poised on a knife-edge: weird, weird feeling. More weird shit to add to the sum total of weird shit in his universe. Just one little word and he could get what he wanted, one little phrase and he could stop feeling so damned rootless, one whole sentence between him and all he felt he really wanted, needed... and one huge, honkin' price tag attached. He couldn't have it. Nobody could have it all. Wasn't ever gonna stop him wanting to have it all though, not deep down. He needed to think it over some more. Who knew, he could maybe find some way to reconcile the irreconcilable, find some compromise without compromising himself... nah, he was kidding himself again.
Daniel sat very still as Jack pushed himself to his feet and said abruptly, "I'm going to bed. I need some sleep or I'm not gonna be worth squat in the debriefing this morning and Hammond will have my ass. You?"
"No. I'll stay up for a little longer." Daniel didn't raise his head as he spoke, just stared at the mug in his hand. "I'll make sure the lights are out and the coffee machine's off."
Jack gave a small smile. "Thanks. Okay, see ya in the morning then. 'Night."
Daniel looked up at that, and when he spoke, his tone was intense.
"What would you do if I really pushed it?"
Good question. What would he do? Even as he asked himself, he knew: more than likely he'd cave, fall into water that was way too deep for comfort, and then worry about consequences in the morning. Or, probably worse in the long run, accept the consequences, fall in, and happily drown. Whatever, he couldn't see a way forward, not any way that satisfied him: it offended his tactician's soul.
"I don't know. I only know I trust you not to push it, not that hard."
It was Daniel's turn to acknowledge a bull's-eye, and he did with a duck of his head, before scoring another one of his own. "This can't go on for ever, you know. Something has to give."
Jack took a breath to refute it, agree with it, he wasn't sure which, but Daniel kept on talking. "Just so you understand that. This whole 'star-crossed lovers' thing... it's too clichéd to keep going long term, you know? Too much of a strain, and too ridiculously adolescent at our ages."
No argument there. Jack pressed his lips together and sighed as he turned for the door. "Yeah, I know. G'night, Daniel."
"Yeah, 'night Jack."
END