TITLE: The Long Way Home

AUTHOR: D. C. Black

EMAIL: wolfquill@yahoo.com

RATING: PG, some strong language.

SUMMARY: Sequel to Shades of Grey: Jack isn't forgiven easily for lying to the team. In fact, he's starting to wonder if he'll be forgiven at all.

SPOILERS: Shades of Grey, A Hundred Days, Jolinar's Memories/ The Devil You Know, Forever in a Day, Pretense, Past and Present. Minor reference to my story "Fuse". (You can read this one without reading "Fuse"; in fact you may not notice the reference at all.)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Shiloh for stimulating conversation and the insight into the Edoran situation. Feedback and constructive comments always welcomed!

DISCLAIMER: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. In fact, I'm grateful for everyone involved in creating something this wonderful and complex that it makes me want to explore it further. Thank you all.

The Long Way Home
By D. C. Black

Jack O'Neill paused in the doorway to the armory workshop and leaned against the jamb, taking the moment to enjoy the sight of Carter and Teal'c murmuring head to head over a disemboweled zat gun. Teal'c pointed at something inside the weapon with a fine probe and Carter nodded excitedly, grabbing a probe of her own and tracing some line through the electronics. Teal'c nodded in turn, and Jack sighed, the release of another bit of the tension that he just couldn't shake since busting NID's ring of techno thieves. He should be happy. It was over. He was home. Maybourne, Newman and the whole gang were up on charges of high treason that should eliminate their influence forever. The Asgard were happy. The Tollan and the Nox were happy. Jack himself was a friggin' hero yet again...

"Colonel."

Carter's greeting drew him from his musings, back to the room before him. She sounded surprised to see him.

"We did not hear your approach," Teal'c added. They both stared at him from their positions at the workbench, swivelled on the worn, standard issue stools. Now that he was here, O'Neill didn't know what to say. Maybe he just wanted to see his people doing something normal, check in on them, hell, just be in the same room with them. He hadn't gotten to spend much time with any of them, what with the depositions and all. The lawyers on both sides kept him just about as isolated as Maybourne had, reliving the experience over and over, picking apart his every move, questioning everything he had said. His own voice on the illegal tapes Maybourne had made sounded like a stranger's, all stone and ice: Apparently not much of foundation there, huh?

Carter finally tipped her head, her jaw shifting in that impatient way that told the colonel she had other things on her mind than him. "Can we do something for you, sir?"

Yeah. Erase the last two weeks. Erase the slimy feeling the whole operation left me with. What he said was, "No. Not really. Just looking for Daniel." It was a convenient lie. He knew Daniel had checked out already and was probably at home with a good book by now.

Carter and Teal'c exchanged a private glance. They slipped off their stools and came together at the end of the workbench, a united front.

"Daniel Jackson has returned to his apartment for the evening. He does not wish to be disturbed."

"What do you want him for, sir? Maybe we can help?"

O'Neill looked from one to the other, wondering who exactly was leading this team lately. Daniel had made it clear in, oh, so many little ways that he hadn't quite forgiven Jack yet, and here were his subordinate officers closing ranks against him on the whim of a civilian. A petty, little, nasty whim, at that. Like Jack had had a choice about lying to them.

You had a choice about how, an equally nasty part of his own mind pointed out.

"Oh, no," Jack answered them. "Wasn't anything important."

There didn't seem to be much else to say. He stared at his teammates, they stared back at him. O'Neill knew he should just give it up and go home himself. But he really didn't want to do that. When he went home, he thought, and he didn't want to think any more. He kept coming back to -

"So," Jack said to forestall his own train of thought. "Whatcha doin'?"

"We are attempting to reprogram a zat'nik'tel so that it can be used for stunning only."

"Can I help?"

Carter gave a short laugh that clearly gave her opinion of the offer. Jack threw her the requisite insulted glare, and she made a valiant attempt to school her features back to something close to military decorum. Despite that, she said, "Only if you've earned a Ph.D. in electronics engineering while you were away."

... while you were away... The last few words held just enough reproach for O'Neill not to be able to miss it. Leave it to Carter to bring up one of those things he had been trying so hard not to think about: It wasn't just Daniel. They were all still pissed at him. Oh, they'd forgive him, eventually, he was sure... he hoped... maybe... but they had no intention of letting him off the hook any time soon. And the less time he spent with them, the easier it was for them to maintain that wall that kept him out. It was a bad enough position to be in as their commander. As their friend, he had no clue how to handle it.

"Ph.D., huh? Teal'c, you got one of those?"

"I do not. However, every Jaffa is intimately acquainted with the workings of his weapons."

"I see."

"Colonel." Carter dropped the probe pointedly on the workbench and took a step forward, thumbs hooked in her belt loops. "Why did you really come here, sir?" Behind her, Teal'c waited for the answer with his patented raised eyebrow.

O'Neill squirmed, dropping his gaze and jamming his hands in his pockets. He just wanted their company. He just wanted to be with people he trusted. People who left him feeling strong and on the side of the right. Honorable people. People he felt comfortable with. People he - He just wanted things back the way they were before he'd - okay, admission here - hurt them all. How could he tell them that without looking like a wuss? How could he reveal that much vulnerability and still command them tomorrow? The two things had always been mutually exclusive in his experience. A soldier just couldn't have questions about where his commanding officer's head was at. Even if Jack was falling apart at the seams, he didn't have the luxury of letting them see it.

He looked up again at his beautiful major and his steadfast Jaffa and wished Maybourne a thousand painful and slow deaths. "No reason." He shrugged and turned from the room. "G'night," he threw over his shoulder and was gratified to at least hear a duet of "Good night, Colonel," follow him out.

#

O'Neill raised his fist to knock on the door and hesitated. It was late, after 11 p.m. and they all had an early call tomorrow for their first mission since he'd been reinstated. Daniel was probably asleep. Where I should be. But he'd already been home since seeing Sam and Teal'c, already tried turning in early. Sleep wouldn't come. Not even after five sleepless nights in a row. The uneasiness he'd felt since going undercover kept it just out of reach, like an itch that kept moving every time O'Neill tried to scratch. Elusive. Infuriating. Exhausting.

"Ah, what the hell."

Daniel couldn't get much more pissed at him than he already was. Jack rapped on the door, forcefully enough to wake a sleeper on the other side. The sound echoed in the quiet hall, and Jack felt a pang of guilt over possibly waking the neighbors as well. But Jack really needed... What? His mind asked him in annoyance. What is it you need? And what makes you think Danny's going to give it to you?

O'Neill had no answers. After a long minute, he heard rustling from inside the apartment. The knob turned and the door opened under Daniel's hand. The archeologist was already in sweats and ready for bed, but he held a bottle of strawberry kefir in one hand and had a book ... I knew it ... tucked under his arm. So he hadn't been asleep yet. Good. That was one less thing to deal with.

Daniel's brows rose as he realized who had disturbed his evening. "Jack," he said in surprise. "What do you want?"

"I'm not sure, to tell the truth. Talk, I guess," Jack answered. The words sounded familiar. In the next heartbeat he realized why. They had had this conversation already, but it had been Daniel at Jack's door, waiting to be invited in. Jack decided to go with that and repeated what Daniel had said to him next. He nodded at the bottle in Daniel's hand. "Got another one of those?"

The echo of the past didn't escape Daniel. He frowned, suspicion pursing his lips as his jaw worked, as if he were trying to decide which of a dozen emotions to let loose.

"Feel like sharing?" O'Neill added, not waiting for the affirmative that might not come. Daniel's larder was usually pretty empty. There was a real chance he didn't have one for a guest.

"Kefir? Sure," Daniel said at last, putting the same limits on Jack that O'Neill had on him a few days ago. No promises of anything more than basic hospitality. He stepped aside and Jack entered the apartment, feeling out of place. Yet another sickening warp of reality he could hate Maybourne for. Like a stranger, he waited for Daniel to lead the way further inside, and followed him to the kitchen.

"I can make coffee, if you'd rather have that," Daniel said, setting down his book and plucking a curvy bottle of the yogurt drink from his fridge. He placed it on the table near O'Neill.

Jack picked up the bottle and twisted off the cap. "This'll do." He sniffed it tentatively. It smelled of berries and bananas. He could deal with that, although yogurt itself wasn't usually high on his list. Usually, it wasn't on his list at all, but tonight he didn't feel he had a right to ask Daniel to go out of his way. Daniel's skeptical expression was his only comment. He walked back to the living room, dropping onto the sofa and watching as Jack took a seat opposite him.

"So," Jack said with a lot more lightness in his tone than in his leaden spirit. He forced himself to sound as if this were any one of a hundred times they had sat here together. "Ready for tomorrow?"

Daniel nodded, using the bottom of the bottle to wave at the notebooks spread across the coffee table between them. "I put together a few things to take with us ..."

Jack's breath caught around a mouthful of the cloying drink. Us. There was still an 'us.'

Daniel went on without noticing the reaction. "... notes on Sanskrit, a couple of ancient Hindu texts. There's a really fascinating passage I found just tonight, as a matter of fact, about a plain of bones where goddesses threw lightning from their palms."

Jack tipped his head, seeing, for once, what had caught the other man's attention. "Ribbon devices?"

"Could be. The survey team reported few of the skeletons had any visible marks of violence. Except for the burned patches... " Daniel put a finger in the middle of his own forehead, his expression grim. "...right here."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

Jack watched as his friend's gaze lost it's focus on the present, sinking into the memories of the times he'd been assaulted by Goa'uld with the hand devices, of the time when his wife, Sha're, had used the weapon to communicate with Daniel, to warn them the Harsesis was on Kheb, and to say good-bye. It hadn't been all that long ago, five or so months. An eternity to a career soldier with a dangerous posting, but not long enough for a new widower to recover from the loss, not just of his wife, but of a whole life with a people who valued him. There were still moments when Jack could see how fragile Daniel's defenses against the grief were.

And no wonder. Every time he turned around lately, something was reopening Daniel's wounds: Jack's insistence that he face reality and accept that Sha're had sacrificed herself for the Harsesis. Kasuf sending him Sha're's stuff. Ke'ra returning to Vyus without even the memory of the brief time they'd shared. Apophis showing up alive and well on Netu, then drugging him with that Blood of Sokar shit, dragging out every memory of Ammonet's and Sha're's deaths looking for the boy Apophis had fathered in Daniel's wife. That was a biggie. Then Skaara crashing on Tollana and asking them to speak for him at Triad. Jack could barely imagine the pain from that Daniel had to overcome. Oh, yeah, he'd been happy to have freed his brother-in-law from that snake Klorel, but Jack was sure the tears that fell, while Skaara greeted them as his own self at last, hadn't been entirely of joy. To learn, finally, that there was a way to remove a Goa'uld and free the host, when it was a just a few months too late to make a difference for Sha're... There was way too much of 'might have been' in the whole affair.

And after all that, I tell him we have no friendship. It was bad enough Jack had been absent for most of that time, trapped on Edora after a meteor strike buried the gate there. Jack hadn't taken that well, himself. He had never thought until now to ask Daniel how he had dealt with it. Jack had been too damn happy to be home...

Home. The image shivered through him as a distant ghost of what he wanted, what he'd had just two short weeks ago. What he'd risked for the fate of the galaxy, not cleanly in battle, but in a foul miasma of lies and betrayals.

Returning to the present with a shudder, as if he needed to physically shake off the memories, Daniel added tiredly, "I'm hoping the inscriptions on the monoliths will confirm my theory. Of course, if it does, we have to wonder how a story from P7J-887 got into Hindu lore."

"Or how a Hindu legend got re-enacted on P7J-887."

Daniel gave him a sharp look, as if he hadn't thought of that.

"See? I have been paying attention," Jack quipped in response, unsettled to be one step ahead of the scientist. Daniel was rarely that distracted. "I hang out with you eggheads much longer and my IQ will start going up."

Not reacting at all to the joke, Daniel placed the bottled yogurt carefully on the coffee table, away from his notes, then folded his hands in his lap. O'Neill braced himself.

"Jack?"

"Daniel?"

"What are you doing here?"

Keeping the demons at bay.

O'Neill didn't say it aloud. For a long time he didn't say anything at all. Finally he put his own bottle on the table next to Daniel's and used both hands to scrub at his face, as if he could grind away the feelings he'd been left with, echoes of the fear that had curdled in his stomach the deeper he'd gotten into Maybourne's plot. He couldn't stop thinking of the consequences the whole time he'd been building the charade. He'd never done that before. When he'd been in black ops full time, he hadn't cared about consequences. There had just been the job, and he'd have said anything or done anything he'd had to to get it done. He'd never cared about what anyone thought of him, not even Sara. He'd kept her in the dark, separate from it all, while he played the good husband, and Sara had accepted that, or so he'd thought. Even Charlie, the one true light in his life back then, hadn't changed his attitude. His son had been so young, a reward for coming home alive one more time.

This time... this time consequences were all he saw, and they'd made him queasy from the start. If he had failed, not only would Earth have lost valuable allies in their secret war against the Goa'uld, but the three people he had come to love - this time the word slipped past his defenses before he could stop it - most in this world would live the rest of their lives believing him to have been a traitor himself. Maybe not legally a traitor, but he had seemed to betray everything they all stood for, including their friendships.

Especially their friendship.

The creeping sense of abandonment he'd felt since he'd been back curled around him. If one of them had pulled this kind of stunt on O'Neill, he doubted very much he could forgive the hurt. Not deep down, where it counted. Talk about fragile.

When he looked up, Daniel was still watching him, patient and curious and unnervingly detached. Jack lurched to his feet and began pacing a short circuit behind the chair, his teeth grinding in frustration at his own inability to say the things he felt. His own inability to risk it all by asking the question he needed answered most, like Daniel had risked so much coming to him for answers that Jack hadn't given him.

"You didn't really draw straws, did you?" he blurted finally, coming to a stop and gripping the back of the chair. That was not the question. That was just plain asinine, but there was no way to take back the words.

Daniel smiled a very amused, infuriatingly uninformative smile. He considered for a moment, taking a drink of yogurt and replacing the bottle. "No," he said at last, keeping his gaze on the table and notebooks. "No, we didn't. I actually got voted into it. Sort of. Sam didn't think it was proper for her to see you. Teal'c and I didn't have a clue what to say. In fact, the vote was that none of us would talk to you for a while. We were all way too angry."

"But you came anyway."

Daniel looked up, meeting his eyes. Jack felt pounded by the pain and the fury in the normally unassuming blue gaze. "I had to know, Jack. I just couldn't believe you'd do any of that without a reason." Now Daniel was on his feet, putting distance between them, as if to protect Jack from his rising temper. "I could have accepted that you'd grown frustrated and impatient. I could have accepted that you thought the brass was, what? Not being aggressive enough. I could have accepted that diplomatic channels were just too damn slow for you, all of a sudden. That you were that frightened of the Goa'uld. That you resented the Tollan arrogance that much. That you'd made a mistake we'd all have to live with. I could even have accepted that you just didn't want to deal with any of this any more and wanted to be kicked out. God knows I feel that way every other minute of my life!" Daniel spun on him, speared him with laser focused wrath. "What I could not accept was that you wouldn't explain it to me! You owed me that much!"

Jack bit his lip, his fingers digging into the upholstery of the chair back until he thought they'd break. He'd seen Daniel angry before. He'd seen the man raging and even murderous, and he'd seen those emotions turned on him. But when they'd fought, Jack had always felt he'd been right and had the ammo to match the scientist argument for argument. Now he had nothing. Daniel was right. Jack owed him, not just for saving his life all those years ago, but for bringing Daniel into the SGC, for creating the circumstances that had changed his life and cost him his wife.

"You're right," he said softly, but if Daniel heard, he ignored it, taking a step closer, reaching out in his anger as if he would strangle O'Neill if he'd been within reach.

"How could you shut me down like that! I didn't believe for a minute that bull about having no foundations. I have never, never been that wrong about any one. I couldn't afford to be!" Daniel paused, offense adding to the accusations. "And do you know what hurt most? That you thought I would believe it. That you used that one thing... just to shut me up! After all we've been through! Jack, how could you think I'd believe that?"

Jack forced his fingers to release the chair. He smoothed the pocks in the fabric as he spoke, watching his own fingers move as if they belonged to someone else. The sense of abandonment surged. Daniel hadn't even shown up to see him off to Edora for his supposed exile, the kind of vengeful act O'Neill himself would have indulged in. "Maybe because I would have believed it if things were reversed."

Daniel froze. "What?"

Jack glanced up, then away from Jackson's stare quickly. Now that the truth was out, he'd left himself no where else to go. "I guess I don't have the faith in people that you do. Or the faith in myself. Oh, yeah, as a soldier, sure. But not as a friend." He managed a limp grin and another glance at Daniel. "I haven't had all that much practice."

For a long time the whisper of Jack's fingers against the upholstery was the loudest sound in the room. He kept smoothing the heavy material long after the indentations were gone. Then a pillowy thump made him jump as Daniel dropped onto the sofa again.

"Neither have I."

Jack looked up to see Daniel pinching the bridge of his nose before replacing his glasses on his face. The linguist met his eyes and this time Jack couldn't look away. Daniel looked too tired, and vulnerable, and uncertain all at once. "That's why I got so angry. I'd already lost Sha're. You have no idea how much it hurt to lose you, too. No matter what happened, you were a rock, a touchstone. And you were gone. Again. And this time there was nothing I could do about it." He sighed. "Last time, I could at least bring Sam coffee while she built the particle beam."

Daniel's self depreciation brought a smile to O'Neill's face. From the mission reports, he knew Daniel had done a hell of a lot more than that while Jack had been trapped off world. Not only had he badgered every space faring race they knew to rescue him, but the refugee Edorans would have rioted if Daniel hadn't been there to reassure them they hadn't been kidnapped, as Paynan had warned. "I wondered how she got it done so fast."

"I wouldn't let her sleep. Not that she wanted to anyway." Daniel considered him for a long moment. "None of us could let you go. And for you to just throw it all away after we'd worked so hard to get you back... I guess we overreacted. I guess I overreacted."

"Wow," Jack breathed, a bit overwhelmed to have his team's point of view laid out before him, at his own importance to them. He slipped around the chair he'd mutilated and lowered himself into it. For lack of anything else to say, he added, "Feel better now?"

Daniel blinked, then leaned back against the cushions, taking the question at least half seriously. "Yeah. Yes, I do. Thank you," he answered. "You?"

"Oh, yeah. Much better." To Jack's surprise, he did feel better, as if the slime of the past two weeks had been burned off in the heat of Daniel's outburst and the ash washed away by the need that rivalled Jack's own. He felt clean and relaxed for the first time in two weeks. Exhausted, but centered again, as if the earth had stopped shifting under his feet. "So. We're okay here?"

"I am if you are."

"We're okay."

Nodding, Daniel pushed to his feet and stepped over to an antique chest fronting one book shelf. He opened it and pulled an arm load of blankets and pillows from inside, dumping them all on the couch. "I don't know about you, but I've got an early call tomorrow. The boss is a real ogre when I'm late, so I'm turning in."

"You mean General Hammond."

"Right. Hammond," Daniel deadpanned. As he turned toward his bedroom, he made sure Jack caught the rolling of his eyes that refuted his agreement.

Jack grinned and stood to stretch, appreciating the invitation of the blankets on the couch. He felt like he'd just come off a week of survival training and didn't really want to drive across town to his own bed. There was one more thing to do tonight, though. "Hey, Daniel."

The archeologist, sans glasses, reappeared to lean in the bedroom doorway. "What?"

"You didn't overreact. I was a royal prick, and you had every right to be pissed."

Daniel cocked his head. "Yeah. You're right. I did."

O'Neill flinched at the far-too-easy agreement. "Won't happen again."

A small, sad smile flashed across Daniel's lips. "Until the next time Hammond gives you an order."

"No, I mean it. Next time, I'll know you won't believe me anyway, so I'll have to find a better way."

"Thanks." The linguist's mobile features put on a quick show as he considered the possibilities. "I think."

"Anyway, I'm sorry. For all of it."

That, Jack suddenly realized, was why he had come here in the first place. Apologies didn't come easy to him. Avoidance was more his style, just act as if nothing had happened and time would settle things for him one way or another. But Daniel deserved more than the half-assed attempt he'd made when he'd first returned. Even if this evening had ended in the disaster Jack had more than half expected, Daniel would have deserved that much. So did Teal'c and Carter. One down. Two to go. And now he could believe his other two teammates would come around as well.

"Wow," Daniel echoed, his eyebrows climbing in astonishment. "Did I just hear an actual apology from Jack O'Neill?"

"Better take it. Might never happen again."

"I'll take it." This time, Daniel's smile was so familiar, so unabashedly affectionate, that Jack could at last forgive himself. He fidgeted under the weight of the emotion, the innervating relief, and Daniel laughed softly. "Good night, Jack."

O'Neill waited until the other man had disappeared inside his room, before sitting down to untie his boots and kick them under the coffee table. He stripped to his boxers and shook open the blankets, then stretched out on Daniel's sofa, testing it for comfort. A little short for his long frame, but it would do. His eyes closed and he felt the ease of real sleep melt through him for the first time since Hammond had assigned him the black op. Now, finally, it was over.

He was home.