“What of Daniel Jackson?” asked Teal’c.

Ska’ara replied easily, as if Daniel had stepped out to buy groceries, “I have not seen Daniel.”

“Do you know if he’s okay?” Carter asked.

“I do not know,” Ska’ara answered - again, like it was no big deal. “One named Oma did this.”

That startled Jack. “All of you?”

Then something happened - reality shifted, and they slipped into non-sequitir land, only Jack was still following. “I wish you well, O’Neill,” Ska’ara said. “You will not see me again. At least not for a while.”

Jack dismissed ‘I’ll miss you’ as inadequate and too final, and he failed to find the words to say how losing Abydos made him feel lost himself, like his journey with Daniel and Ska’ara was officially at an end, and he couldn’t bring himself to describe how he felt panic every time he wondered how the hell he was going to go on from here. So he just said, “Take care.”

“Do not fear,” Ska’ara said with a small smile, as if he’d heard the unspoken. “You will find your way.”

A ball one of the kids was playing with rolled up to Jack’s feet. He pondered Ska’ara’s words as he bent down to pick it up. “What do you mean by that?”

When he stood back up, everything was gone. The tents, the people. Even the landscape. Only Ska’ara stood there, and he took the ball from Jack as if he were flesh and bone.

“The Chappa’ai will remain until you leave,” Ska’ara replied. But Jack knew he hadn’t meant the Stargate that was standing over there in the desert, wormhole active and waiting. He didn’t need to reassure Jack that the Ancients weren’t going to strand them here on a dead world. They didn’t have the sense of humor for it.

The gate had never been Jack’s way, anyway. It was the transport, not the guide. When he turned back, Ska’ara was gone, and so was Abydos. And then, suddenly, he understood. His posture straightened just a little, and he spoke with a verve he shouldn’t have been able to muster on a day like this. “Let’s go home.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sir!” came Carter’s voice from down the corridor.

Jack turned away from the elevator to see her walking toward him, Teal’c just behind her. Both in civvies, as he was. Teal’c wearing - swear to God - a bowler hat and a sportscoat.

Carter cleared her throat as they closed the distance. “We were coming to look for you.”

Jack shrugged. “Found me.”

“We thought you might want to go for a drink,” she said, shrugging back at him. “At least, I’d like to, and Teal’c’s agreed to be designated driver.” She looked tired. Old. He guessed seeing a planet full of wonderful people leveled to dirt one sunny afternoon did that to a person. He made a mental note not to look in a mirror any time soon.

It struck him how much this was like that evening they’d all gone out to dinner together, just after Daniel had ascended, and in the corridor by the elevator Daniel had blown past everybody gently, and Jack had let them think it was just the air conditioning. It had even been around this time of year, come to think of it, but so much had changed since then. Like- “What about Jonas?”

“Um,” Carter responded, glancing to Teal’c, “he wanted to stay here and get started on translating the tablet with the Ancient writings.”

“Ah,” Jack said, reading the subtext: this was about Daniel, and Jonas didn’t want to intrude. Jack knew how he felt. “You know, as tempting as that sounds, I really just kinda wanted to go home.”

Carter very deliberately made an agreeable expression and said, “Okay. See you tomorrow?”

For half a second, Jack felt pleased she’d learned her lesson about pushing him to console her when they were both… grieving? She really believed Daniel was gone forever? “Actually,” Jack said, surprising himself a little, “let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How can you be so calm?” Carter asked. It wasn’t accusatory. Nor was it an appeal for sympathy. She just seemed to want to know. Probably hoping he had some great perspective that would make it go down easier.

Jack sighed. “I keep telling myself at least they’re not dead, Carter.”

She looked down at the table and fidgeted with the cuff of her sleeve. “And Daniel?”

Jack reached into his glass of beer with one finger and popped a bubble along the edge. “What about him?”

“”Well, he…” she began, apparently taken aback. She regrouped her thoughts and said carefully, “We don’t know for sure that he’s okay.”

“And we don’t know that he’s not,” he pointed out pragmatically.

She cocked her head, like she thought he was being deliberately dense. Which he was. “I can’t help but think… this might be it.”

What was the point in telling her it wasn’t? In telling her he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that Daniel was still around somewhere, somehow, and they’d find him? He could explain Ska’ara’s hidden message backwards and upside down, and she’d just think it was wishful thinking. Like they’d all thought about Sha’re’s message about Kheb.

“Just because he was unable to prevent the destruction of Abydos today,” Teal’c said softly, “does not mean any harm came to him.”

Carter turned a distressed expression on him. “He went to see Anubis, and that’s the last we heard.”

“I realize this,” Teal’c said grimly, acknowledging Carter’s fears without fueling them. “But just as he was unable to stop Anubis, it may be that Anubis was unable to harm Daniel Jackson.”

“Stalemate,” Jack named it, thinking that was a pretty good analogy for the whole ascended lifestyle.

Carter shook her head. “It’s not Anubis I’m worried about so much.”

“Well, Oma wouldn’t hurt Daniel,” Jack started to protest.

“I know,” she agreed. “But the others… they wiped out an entire planet and left Orlin exiled there as punishment for helping them build a weapon.”

“Daniel was trying to destroy a weapon and save a planet,” Jack scoffed. “Maybe they confine him to his room without books for a couple of months, but they wouldn’t hurt him for that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Carter said. But it wasn’t in her nature to cling to hope. She worried about what she couldn’t control, and she’d never had much luck controlling Daniel.

“I am,” Jack said softly, and his voice sounded strange even in his own ears. He looked up to see Carter staring at him, and this was all he could give her. “We haven’t heard the last of Daniel.”

Carter smiled briefly. “Well, I didn’t believe you when you said we’d make it out of Antarctica, and you were right about that. Of course… it was Daniel who figured it out.” She sniffed and ducked her head.

Jack sighed. He wanted to help, but her pessimism and his optimism were like oil and water. They could be poured into the same small space, and still never affect each other in any meaningful way.

“It was just so hard,” she finally said in a choked voice, “seeing him again after all this time, but not really getting to talk to him. There was so much I wanted to say, and I… I thought there’d be time, so…”

It took her a minute, but neither Jack nor Teal’c dared interrupt. This was the most she’d shared of herself in ages, and they didn’t want to screw it up.

“…I wasted my chance feeling sorry for myself that he’d visited both of you, but not me,” she finally concluded.

Huh. Carter generally knew when she screwed up, but it was rare for her to say it out loud, particularly on personal stuff. One of Jacob’s little legacies: never apologize, never back down. “I don’t think that was his choice,” Jack said quietly.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Daniel Jackson only visited me after the ambush of Kresh’taa,” Teal’c put in, “as I lay near death.”

Jack nodded tacit agreement, glad for the chance to keep it vague.

Carter looked from one to the other of them. “So you’re saying he…”

“Had to keep it to a minimum,” Jack finished. “He said it was against the rules to even talk to us. I thought… I got a feeling he was around sometimes, but he only ever…” He made wiggly gestures with his hands.

“Materialized,” Teal’c supplied.

Jack nodded. “…when somebody was in dire straits. He probably visited you, Carter, just not so you’d know.”

The table fell silent. Of course, that was exactly what they were afraid Daniel was never going to do again after today, and that’s why Carter was worried. Teal’c was worried, too. There hadn’t been a thing they could even mistake for a sign from Daniel. For just a second, Jack wondered if he was fooling himself. But no. He wasn’t going to start doubting now.

“I was near death,” Carter pointed out suddenly, in a very soft voice. “On ‘367. Nirrti’s machine.”

Jack sighed. “Yeah, and you were surrounded by witnesses.”

“Or maybe…” she trailed off and stared at the table.

“Spit it out, Carter.”

She tapped her finger on the tabletop and spoke with careful poise. “Maybe he did visit, and he got a really good look at me and didn’t like what he saw.”

You’re a better man than that, Jack. “Daniel?” Jack blurted. “The guy who got a really good look at an Unas who took him home as a trophy dinner, and liked what he saw?”

“That was before he ascended,” she remarked. “Orlin said he could see into my soul. What if Daniel-”

Jack splayed his hands to cut her off in mid-sentence. “Orlin liked what he saw just fine, didn’t he?”

She looked embarrassed. “Yes. But…”

He sat back, frowning slightly. Either she was just paranoid, or… well, they had been alone - Sam, Daniel and Jonas - in the pyramid on Abydos while Jack and Teal’c tried to slow down, or at least irritate, Anubis’ troops. And Daniel had gotten a little pissy about her not telling Jack about the Lost City and Anubis being an Ancient. “Did he say something to you, Carter?”

She looked up. “Not really. That’s just it.”

“We were a little pressed for time,” he pointed out reasonably.

“I suppose.”

Jack tried to imagine anything that would’ve offended Daniel but not Orlin, assuming they’d both poked around in her head. “Look, Carter, do you have something to hide from Daniel?”

She scrunched her eyebrows together and hesitated. “Not from him specifically, no.”

“Well, there you go,” he said, gesturing like he was tossing her a frisbee. “We’ve all got things we’d rather not have anybody see.”

“Indeed,” Teal’c said heavily. “My own misdeeds may have been exposed to Daniel Jackson when he came to me on Kresh’ta. But I feel certain his capacity to forgive only increased with his ascension.”

Something was nagging at Jack, though, now that he’d acknowledged to himself Daniel’s snippiness with Carter. He still wasn’t convinced there was anything to it - when Daniel got focused, he could be downright rude - but he had the sense something was jumping up and down and waving its arms in front of him, and he wasn’t seeing it.

Carter started peeling the label off her bottle of beer. She did it very neatly, starting with a corner instead of a bubble. “Sir, may I ask when it was Daniel came to you?”

Jack stared at the table. He could feel both of them watching him curiously, and suddenly it felt childish to keep it to himself. They wouldn’t prod for details, once he named the occasion. All he had to do was say the words. Just say ‘em. Any day now.

Teal’c turned to Carter and spoke softly. “Daniel Jackson would not have allowed one of us to die alone in the clutches of a Goa’uld.”

Carter’s head jerked from Teal’c to Jack. “Is that it?”

Jack’s mouth felt too dry for talking, so he just nodded. And took another drink of his beer.

Carter’s face softened, all the worry leaving it. “I’m… glad, sir. That he was there for you.”

Jack bit the inside of his cheek hard, on the side of his face that was angled slightly away from his teammates. He stared up at something above the bar, making it look idle, like daydreaming. Anything to keep from crying. Anything to keep from remembering those few hours when he thought Daniel had abandoned him after all, and realized there was something worse than what Ba’al was doing: something that could break him even faster.

“I believe Daniel Jackson also came to me during that time,” Teal’c suddenly piped up.

“What?” Jack asked, startled.

Teal’c had that thousand-yard-stare he’d gotten when they were trying to break past the Sushi Monster’s fake memories about Daniel burning to death on that beach. Ironic, the similarity of circumstances. “I was in kel’no’reem when I constructed the plan to inform Yu of Ba’al’s outpost. The idea came to me quite suddenly.”

“You think that was Daniel?” Carter asked. When Teal’c nodded once, she looked thoughtful. “You’re right - it does sound like one of his.”

“Devious,” Jack agreed.

They both looked at him sort of funny.

“What?” he asked. “Daniel and I were always the sneaky ones. You two are more…” He sailed a hand straight out in front of him.

Carter sat up suddenly, not looking at Jack. “Damn it.”

Jack gave her a minute to continue, then said,“Damn what?”

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “I thought I was so clever when I realized there was more to Kanaan’s relationship with Shaylin than… just the job. That was Daniel, too, wasn’t it?” She asked him like he’d know. More importantly, she asked hopefully. She wanted to believe Daniel had visited her, in any capacity. He couldn’t blame her.

Jack tilted his head, making like he was thinking about it, even though he wasn’t, because he couldn’t stand to, and he had no more idea of the timeline for his little visit to the seventh circle of hell than they did. “Could’ve been,” he said in the end, because that much was true. Daniel had known what Jack knew. And he’d known there was something about a lo’tar of Ba’al’s.

“I just wish,” Carter mused, “I shared your certainty that he’s still… okay.”

And Jack just wished he could help her. He really did. But then it came to him - what Daniel had been saying when he got all indignant with Carter in the pyramid. You didn’t tell him? “Carter?”

“Sir?” she glanced up.

“Did you ever tell Daniel,” he asked slowly, “what Orlin said about the others and their rules?”

She blinked owlishly. “It was in my report.”

“I know.” He waved a hand over the table. “But that was pretty abbreviated, compared to what was on the surveillance tapes.”

Her eyes got a faraway look - she hated being reminded that she’d been spied on. “I’m sure we talked about it. I don’t remember specifically, but… I’m sure he asked.”

Jack wondered. Because he remembered Daniel leaving his body behind, and saying I think I can do more good this way. Had he had something else in mind, or had he not seen the fine print that said he wasn’t allowed to do them any good? Fine print Carter had read from Orlin. Didn’t tell him that, either?

“Why?” Carter asked.

Jack shrugged, a cover story forming as easily as a thought. “Just thinking that Daniel knew the rules. He knew what he could get away with.” After all, maybe he’d just been ticked that she hadn’t passed on the Lost City intel with the level of urgency he thought it deserved.

She nodded wearily. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“This time,” Jack assured her. Because Ska’ara had promised. Do not fear, O’Neill, he’d said to the unspoken worries. You will find your way. And if Jack had learned anything over the past year, it was that his way - his guide, his searchbeam - was Daniel.