Gigi Sinclair

I wanted Jack to leave me on the Goa'uld ship. I knew it was the smart decision, the best thing for the team, and probably the only way we'd be able to save the Earth. I still didn't expect him to actually do it.

Jack got a look in his eye right before he went, when he put his cold hand against my cheek. It was the kind of look my father used to get when I was acting up and he knew he would have to spank me, because this was Egypt in the 1960s and "time outs" hadn't been invented yet. They wouldn't have worked on me anyway, so my dad had no choice, even though it really did hurt him more than it hurt me. It looked like this was really hurting Jack.

Well, it wasn't like I was exactly thrilled, myself.

"I'll watch your back," I muttered. If I'd known he was really going to leave, I might have found the energy to say something a little more meaningful, like "save Skaara if you can" or "find Sha're", but I wasn't thinking about them. I wasn't thinking about the mission, and saving humankind and all that stuff. I was thinking about Jack, and how his heart always overruled his head in situations like these.

Only this time, Jack got up and walked away.

I sat, stunned, for a moment. Then I got my act together and dragged myself towards the sarcophagus. There was no way I was dying now. I had to live long enough to ask Jack what the hell he thought he was doing, leaving me behind.

***

Seven years, three months and twenty-one days before I left Daniel to Snakehead and Son, Frank Cromwell left me in Iraq. Lying in the sand watching the plane take off, I promised myself and God—because he wasn't dead by that time, just kind of twisted—that if I survived, I would never do that to any man. Later, I added "or woman, or Jaffa" to that. Sorry, Daniel. You just caught me on a bad day.

And if I never thought I'd leave anyone behind, I sure didn't think I'd die crammed in an alien glider with the Jaffa equivalent of Yoda. Things change.

When I told Carter to look up and see the beauty of the Earth one last time, I was reminding myself as much as her that our deaths would have some meaning. We'd saved the world, now we were going to join Daniel. I hadn't left him to die, I'd just given him a head start. Really, I'd helped him out.

Then the shuttle showed up and for once, instead of envying the astronauts for being smarter than me, fitter than me, more photogenic and stealing the job I'd wanted since I wrote a fan letter to Alan Sheppard in the second grade, I could have killed them.

If anyone other than Daniel had popped up when Hammond said there was someone waiting to see us, I would have probably killed him, too. And Hammond for good measure. So it was lucky Daniel showed up and saved me from going to jail, for multiple homicide, anyway.

I still skirted pretty close to some lines in the military sand when I threw my arms around him and pressed my face into his shoulder. God knows where "space monkey" came from. I was suddenly really grateful to those astronauts, though.

***

I'd never been as happy as I was when I saw Jack, Sam and Teal'c standing in the gate room. I think it's safe to say Jack was pretty pleased, too. For a brief, insane moment, I thought he was going to kiss me, and, relieved as I was that they were OK, I probably wouldn't have resisted.

Instead, though, Jack hugged me so tightly I thought he might crack a rib or two, then said, "Space monkey." Which I didn't get, but this was the kind of moment when that didn't matter. I'd ask him later. When I was asking him a few other questions, too.

Janet looked all of us over, spending, of course, the most time on me.

"I'll say it again, Daniel," she said, "I'd love to take a look at one of those sarcophaguses in person."

"Sarcophagi," I corrected automatically, then added, when Janet frowned a little, "I'll try to get you some video next time." I wasn't nearly as intimidated by Janet as Jack seemed to be, but that didn't mean there was any reason to piss off the woman with the syringes.

When Janet had released us, Jack clapped his hands together and said, "Anyone up for dinner?"

"I wish to speak with Master Bra'tac, O'Neill."

"And I'm pretty beat, Colonel. Can I get a raincheck?"

"Sure." Jack sounded a little disappointed. "Daniel?"

I was tired, too, but I knew sleep would be a long time coming. "OK. I just need to get my jacket." Jack's smile disappeared when I added, "Don't leave without me."

***

Since Daniel was the one who'd clawed his way back from the dead, I figured it was only fair that he got to pick the restaurant. I expected him to want Tibetan curried eels or some other weird shit, but instead, he said, "Let's get a pizza." I waited for the punchline, but he just added, "Pepperoni, I think." Maybe those sarcophagus things fuck with your mind as well as your body. I wasn't about to complain.

We picked up a couple of pizzas—pepperoni, as requested—and brought them back to my place. We sat in silence for a while, chewing and looking at the TV, although I wasn't really interested in the personal lives of Chicago nurses, and I didn't think Daniel was, either.

Finally, when the silence got to be too much for me and the TV switched to a fabric softener commercial, I said, "I'm sorry, Daniel."

He didn't look at me, and he didn't ask what I meant. "It was the right decision."

"It's never the right decision." Not if you're the one getting left behind.

Daniel dropped his pizza crust onto his plate and wiped his hands on a paper towel. "The mission was a success, Jack. We saved the Earth."

"We didn't save Skaara."

Daniel looked at me. The fabric softener commercial changed to one for some kind of weird-looking women's product, and I stared at the pizza box. "I know it was hard for you to see him like that," Daniel said, quietly.

Hard was an understatement. Years ago, on that first Abydos mission, Skaara had been my substitute Charlie for a while, the kid who showed me life could go on. Then, he grew up and died with a snake in his head. "I wish it had been me instead." Just as I wished I could have taken Charlie's place on the end of that gun.

Daniel raised his hand from his lap, like he was going to ask a question in class, then stopped. The hand hovered there for a second, until the nurses show came back on. Then he brought it down on my leg, right above my knee. "I know you do, Jack."

***

Sha're gave me something I'd never had, but Skaara gave Jack what he'd lost. I knew he'd loved Skaara, and I wanted to comfort him, but since I didn't know where to begin, I just put my hand on Jack's leg, which didn't come close to expressing anything, although it did help me identify some of what I'd been feeling.

When I came through the gate at the beta site—the alpha site, they call it, in this universe—I was met by a lot of very anxious people.

"Dr. Jackson?" I recognized a few of them, including a group of military scientists Sam and I sometimes collaborated with. "What's going on?"

I didn't have a clue, but I did have faith in Jack and my team, so I forced a smile. "I think things are going well. We might be able to go home soon." I was planning on going home immediately, anyway.

"I had to leave my husband and children behind," one of the scientists, Dr. Marie Gilbert, said, her eyes wide with shock, pain, or both.

I patted her on the shoulder and tried to dredge up one of the more appropriate platitudes people had flung at me when I first lost Sha're.

"Try to be strong," I finally told them, because it seemed the least banal thing to say, then I left.

I thought about Marie Gilbert and the others as Jack and I sat in his living room. When the show finished, I glanced at my watch and was about to phone for a cab when Jack said, "I shouldn't have left."

I sighed. I didn't mind him feeling a little guilty, but enough was enough. "Really, Jack, you didn't have any choice."

"There's always a choice." Jack frowned and looked at his empty beer bottle like he could refill it through sheer force of will. "People are always walking out on you."

"Not because they want to."

"Would you stop arguing? I'm trying to apologize."

"And I'm trying to tell you there's no reason."

He looked up at me angrily, and I scowled back. Suddenly, I realized how close we'd come to losing this time. If I'd taken a few seconds longer to get to the sarcophagus, if I'd forgotten even part of the alpha site address, if Jack or Sam or Teal'c or Bra'tac had made a tiny mistake, if the shuttle hadn't launched in time, everything would have been different. There were so many variables, and if one hadn't turned out exactly right, we might have still saved the Earth, but we might not have survived. When I thought about it like that, the odds against Jack and I being here together seemed so overwhelming, for a second, I was speechless.

Jack, though, always had something to say. In this case, it was, "Fuck, Daniel," which he, interestingly enough, followed up by putting his hand on my shoulder and pressing his lips against mine.

***

I kissed Daniel because of the Colorado state lottery. And, I have to say, after fifteen years of buying tickets, it was the most I ever got out of that damn thing.

The commercial says, in that small writing at the bottom of the screen, that odds of winning the lottery are something like 37 billion to one. Sitting there with Daniel, it occurred to me that those were pretty much the same odds against our mission succeeding. And we did succeed, so I guess we won the lottery. And when you win, you celebrate, right?

OK, so it wasn't quite that simple, but nothing with Daniel is ever simple. He can turn pissing against a tree on an alien planet into a three day long lecture on American imperialism. More than that, he can almost convince you, usually around day two and a half or so, that he's making sense. And that's the real kicker. Daniel makes sense, even when he doesn't, which is probably why he's so good at what he does. I know it's why he talked me into leaving him on that goddamn ship, and I wanted him to believe me when I said I was sorry about that. So I went the non-verbal route.

"Jack?" I hadn't thought far enough ahead to wonder what Daniel's reaction might be to this new strategy. He didn't do much, except blink at me and twitch his nose once. He reminded me of that witch on the Sixties sitcom, but he didn't make me disappear. Unfortunately.

"Yeah." I sat back and wondered if I'd finally hopped the last train to a mental health discharge and a new career asking strangers for money on street corners.

Daniel pushed up his glasses. "I, ah, I should probably go."

"Yeah," I repeated. No sense in both of us ending up on the street corner. He'd steal all my business.

But Daniel stayed where he was. For a long time.

"Well," I finally said, after I'd decided I should be happy he'd taken it so well, "We've got an early start tomorrow, so I guess I'll turn in."

"Jack." The hovering hand returned. This time, it landed on my shoulder. "I trust you."

I looked at him. "I trust you, too." I did. If I hadn't, I'd have left Carter in the hall, and I'd have been saying this stuff to her. Only maybe not, since I doubted Carter knew the address of the alpha site off by heart, and anyway, this was Daniel. He was different.

And he was proving this by staring at me like I'd just told him the sun shone out of his ass. "Thank you." He sounded so touched, I felt kind of bad I'd never mentioned it before. Had I?

If I had, I thought, I would have remembered this kind of reaction. Daniel slid his hand across my shoulder until he reached my neck, then he moved up to put his hand against my cheek, touching me the way I'd touched him before I walked away, when I wanted something to remember him by. Daniel licked his lips, then moved in to brush his tongue against mine. "I trust you," he repeated, right before his mouth brushed against my ear and I pulled him closer. He didn't try to stop me. In fact, he encouraged it so much, two minutes later, we headed for the bedroom like we'd been doing it all our lives.

***

Jack picks his moments, all right, but I admit, he usually listens to me when it counts.

The next morning, as I lay in his bed watching him get dressed, he said, "When we find Sha're…"

"Cross that bridge when we come to it, Jack." Cliché or not, it wasn't a bad philosophy. There's no point, I'd learned, in living for some imagined future. You have to take advantage of the here and now.

The here and now turned to me, his fatigues half-buttoned, and I couldn't help but remember the happy, surprised look he'd had when I kneeled in front of him. Sha're had used a similar look in a similar situation, and it made me wonder just why people expected me to be bad at sex. "Listen, Daniel, I, you know, I meant what I said. Last night," he added, in case, I suppose, I thought he was referring to three weeks ago or that last mission on P7J-290. "I trust you."

Never let it be said that linguistics is just about words. "I trust you, too, Jack." I had, I thought, probably "trusted" him for years, at least since that Kleenex box came through the Gate.

Jack sat on the edge of his bed and put his arms around me carefully, like he was afraid I would run away or explode. It was too early for both, so I hugged him back. "We have to keep this quiet, Daniel." In any other circumstances, I would have snapped that I did know a little something about military rules. Now, though, I just said, "I know." Then, trying to sound conversational, I added, "So that means we're going to keep it up?"

Jack laughed, his breath ruffling my hair. "When you win the lottery, you don't give it back. Unless you're an idiot." I didn't know what he meant by that, although I could kind of surmise, but it reminded me of something else I wanted to ask.

"Space monkey, Jack? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jack pulled away and looked at me for a moment, like he was thinking about it. Then he smiled and said, "Fuck if I know."

Nice to know that, even after all this, we were still on the same page.