Author: otter
Summary: Left with nothing on the edge of nowhere, and beginning at the end.
SG-1 | Jack/Daniel | R | May 2004 
Jack listened to the insistent racket for at least a few minutes before he woke up enough to realize that the noise was coming from outside. He stopped groping for an alarm clock that wasn't there, and reached instead toward the floor, searching for a boot that he was pretty sure was somewhere in the vicinity. He cracked one eye open just far enough to make out the too-bright sunlight pushing around the edges of the window frame, then took careful aim, pulled back his arm, and fired. The boot hit the rough wooden shutters with a satisfying clatter, and the bird that had been sitting on the window sill squawked indignantly as it flew away. He could hear the beating of its wings, heavy and frantic as it strived for altitude. Jack rolled over and thought about going back to sleep, but the bird had taken his dreams with it when it went, and he only managed to doze fitfully before offering up his surrender to the waking world.
He dragged himself out of bed and pulled on his BDUs without bothering to wake up entirely; his eyes were still half-lidded and heavy when he staggered outside into the blinding glare of sunlight on snow. The air was cold and sharp, and when he inhaled it rubbed against the back of his throat like a snake seeking entrance. New snow had fallen during the night, melted a little, then frozen over again; when he stepped on it, the ice on top cracked like creme brulee and made little crackling, creaking noises under his boots, like styrofoam.
There was a multitude of footprints marking the snow already, as if an entire regiment of Jaffa had been creeping about in the still morning, but Jack could hear the faint sound of laughter coming from the fallow fields behind the cabin. He shoved his hands under his armpits to keep them warm and trudged around the structure, following the traces of previous passage.
He nearly took a round to the head when he came around the corner, and even as he ducked out of the way and the shot exploded against a tree behind him, he was imagining his name on some killed-in-action roll in the depths of the mountain, with the words "Friendly Fire Incident."
Jack crouched and ran for a safer location, namely the woodpile against the back wall of the cabin, where Daniel was sprawled out on top of the logs, apparently snoozing. Out in the field, the combat continued without pause, neither side noticing that they'd nearly taken out their commanding officer. Teal'c and Carter were lobbing snowballs at each other with purposely atrocious aim.
Jack seated himself precariously on the woodpile, shoulder to shoulder with Daniel, and stuck out an elbow to nudge his companion in the ribs.
Daniel grunted and said, "I'm awake." His eyelids crept upward, just far enough to make him look not quite unconscious.
Shrill laughter drifted in from the field, and a sound of impact that may have meant a direct hit. Jack looked up just in time to see Carter abandoning the long-range salvos in favor of close-quarters combat, tackling Teal'c and bearing him to the ground. He didn't look to be putting up much of a fight, even when Carter sat on his chest and crushed a snowball all over his knit cap.
Jack sighed with a disgusted undercurrent and said, "I'm beginning to reevaluate Teal'c's position with this team. What kind of Jaffa gets beat up by a girl?"
A languid half-asleep smile preceded Daniel's answer, and he squinted out toward the action, although there was no way he could really see what was happening without his glasses. "You know Sam," he said. "She fights dirty."
Carter illustrated the point by putting Teal'c in a headlock and shoveling handfuls of snow down the back of his pants. He started fighting back after that, and Jack could almost swear he heard a very unmanly yelp. Jack shook his head and nudged at Daniel's knee with his own. "Hey, I'm off to see the wizard. Want to come?"
Daniel shrugged and hauled himself up from his makeshift armchair, brushing dirt and wood chips from the seat of his pants. He hollered, "We're going!" in the general direction of the war zone.
Carter shouted back, "Okay!" If she'd planned to say more, it was cut off when Teal'c sent her head-first into a snowbank. Her muffled laughter followed the two non-combatants until they hit the edge of the forest, and then the trees swallowed up the sound.
Somewhere deeper inside the woods, out of sight, there was the creak of a burdened tree limb, and a crash as the weight of snow and ice wrestled it to the ground. A big black crow -- maybe the same one that had woken Jack -- watched them from the bare branches of what looked like an oak. The snow groaned under their boots.
Jack looked at Daniel from the corner of his eye, tucked his hands into his pockets, and said, "You must hate this weather, huh? All this snow."
Daniel blinked and looked around, taking in a white-washed world that must've looked like a impressionist painting. "What makes you say that?"
Jack waved a hand in a vaguely all-encompassing gesture. "Oh, you know. Egypt, Abydos; you seem like a desert kind of a guy."
Daniel grunted out a, "Hmm," and snapped an icicle from a pine bough as he passed. "Egypt was only until I was eight, you know. I lived in New York and Chicago after that, which aren't known for their arid desert climates. And Abydos was... special circumstances. If we'd known that the Stargate could take us to so many worlds, I might've opted for one of the tropical-paradise ones, at least."
Jack said, "Hmm," too, and added, "Yeah, me too. We could've skipped the 'fighting the Goa'uld' thing and gone straight to the pina coladas."
Daniel smiled and discarded the broken remains of his half-melted icicle. "So, Teal'c's leaving today."
Just hearing the words made the planet seem colder. Jack hunched his shoulders and toyed with a little bit of lint in his pocket. "Yeah." His face felt frozen in a scowl, and he wished he had some better cold-weather gear. They hadn't planned on being around this long.
"You should talk to him, before he goes." Daniel wiped his dampened fingers on his BDUs; the moisture left little splotches of darker green, like watercolors. "Maybe apologize for being such a--"
"Jerk? Idiot? Asshole?" Jack wanted nicotine, intensely. He hadn't smoked in years, so he supposed it was a case of not knowing what you had until it was gone. "I'll clear it up." He plucked a long, fat pine needle from a tree in lieu of a cigarette, and held it between his teeth.
"He's running out of Tretonin," Daniel said, quietly. "He can't stay here."
Jack mumbled, "Yeah, I know," just as softly, and the sight of the Stargate's graceful arch between trees helped save them both from further discussion on the topic.
Daniel cleared his throat as he moved toward the DHD, as if he were planning on speaking to someone, and he had to lean over with his face close to the dialer to bring the glyphs into focus. He pressed each one with deliberate care, then put his hand on the center crystal. The Stargate's inner track spun easily, the chevrons lit up and engaged, but the whole thing shuddered to a stop on the seventh chevron and didn't move again. After awhile, the Stargate reset itself, and the lights in the chevrons faded as if they'd never been disturbed.
Jack sighed and whipped his knit cap off his head just so he'd have something to do with his hands. His P-90 dangled down the center of his chest with no tangible threat to eliminate. Eventually, Daniel turned and led the way back toward the cabin.
"Sam and I were running numbers this morning," Daniel said, "and we think that the weather's going to get colder within the next few weeks."
Jack ruffled his hair vigorously with one hand and indulged in some happy thoughts about alien tropical paradises were the water was endless turquoise and the fish were always biting. "How cold are we talking?"
"We aren't exactly sure," Daniel said, with a shrug that said they were sure enough, and since they were geniuses Jack ought to just take their word for it. "We're thinking very cold. Like Siberia-cold." He paused a moment, just to let that sink in. "We're going to need to look at our options."
Jack nodded, and tugged his cap back on, low over his eyes and covering his ears, as if to block out Daniel's voice of reason. "Any goa'uld planets are out, obviously," Jack said. "The Alpha Site's gone."
"It'll need to be a place with some sort of civilization," Daniel added. "Or we'd have to start completely from scratch with basic survival stuff. It'll also have to be a community that's pretty enlightened about women, or Sam would be miserable. It has to be somewhere we can settle comfortably. Maybe for good."
They trudged along silently for awhile, staring at the ground under the pretense of watching for icy patches. The crow was still where they'd left it, but it was on the ground now, poking its beak over and over into the snow, looking for snacks. Jack kicked a rock half-heartedly in the bird's general direction, but it landed a few feet short; the crow clacked its beak as if it was laughing at his aim.
They paused at the edge of the woods, and Jack stared out at the cabin, and the two figures of their friends, who were now sprawled out in the snow, panting. Well, Carter was panting. Teal'c was just sort of laying there in that zen way that he had. "We're both thinking of the same place, aren't we?" Jack said. It wasn't really a question so much as a request for confirmation.
"I think we are," Daniel said. His breath floated in front of his face in little tendrils that reminded Jack of ascension and made his chest hurt.
"Okay," Jack said. His own breath was the smoke from the last cinders of hope that were dying in his belly. "Okay."
---
"Jack?" A hand touched his shoulder, light and feminine, familiar. Those fingers had touched that flesh before, and elsewhere. He still knew her smell, even after all that time. "Jack. It's time to get up."
He blinked his eyes open as if he'd been awake all the time, and found her face very close to his, smiling that soft-edged smile that only mothers knew. He managed to mumble, "Fair day," but it came out more like "furduh."
Laira laughed and threw open the curtains to let in the sun that was just cresting the hills. "And a fair day to you, Jack. Breakfast is on the table. Your friends had thought to let you sleep, but I--"
Jack howled his outrage and scrambled from the bed, pulled on his BDU pants and t-shirt, slipped his feet into his boots but didn't lace them up. On his way out the door he gave Laira a loud, firm kiss on the cheek, and then he dashed out in pursuit of vengeance.
Daniel was just scooping the last of the eggs onto his plate, but at least he had the grace to look guilty. Carter was all smug smiles as she polished off what was clearly the last of the redberry jam.
"Mutineers," Jack declared, as he took Daniel's egg-laden plate from his hands and loaded it down with flatcakes, which thankfully seemed to have been produced in excess. "No respect for the chain of command."
Carter still didn't seem the slightest bit shamed, she just smiled brightly around a mouthful of bread and attempted to mumble something. Daniel -- who apparently had added Carter-ese to his exhaustive list of languages -- translated, "I think the last of the military decorum went out the window last week when you got hammered on Haynan's moonshine and started kissing everyone."
"Don't forget the songs," Carter added, intelligible now.
Daniel winced and stole a bit of egg from Jack's plate with his fingers. "If only I could."
Jack grunted in his best caveman fashion and hunched over his food a little as fair warning to Daniel that further theft could result in loss of digits. Laira swept through, all benevolent smiles and sunny disposition, and went right out the front door, no doubt on her way to feed the chickens.
The minute she was gone, Carter leaned in close over the table and said, "Garren told me she's been spending a lot of time with Haynan."
Daniel mirrored the pose and hissed back, "Yeah, but Colin's got that undying-love-from-afar thing happening."
Jack coughed and said, "So, think we can finish the house today?"
"Colin's too young for her," Carter said.
"They're not even as far apart as she and Haynan," Daniel argued.
"Yep, the roof's almost done," Jack said, gaining a little in volume. "It'll be ready for habitation soon."
"I don't think Colin's her type," Carter said with a huff, as if Daniel had suggested that there was no such thing as gravity. "Seems to me she likes her men ol... der." She realized her mistake halfway through the word, and stuttered to a stop, blinking at Jack as if she couldn't quite believe that he hadn't exploded yet.
Jack very calmly chewed the last of his flatcakes and considered a proportional response. He was formulating a plan involving the livestock troughs and cold water. Carter stared at Jack, Daniel stared at Carter, and by the time Jack finally swallowed, put down his fork, and said, "You are *so* dead, Carter," she was already bolting out of her seat and heading toward the door.
Jack might've caught her, except that Daniel shouted, "Run, Sam!" and tackled Jack around the waist. Their bodies slammed into the floor at the same time the door thumped shut.
Jack said, "Ow," and Daniel said, "Yeah," and neither of them seemed to have any big ideas about moving anytime soon. Daniel's breath puffed out against Jack's cheek, and he said, "You know, I'll bet we can finish the house today."
Jack groaned, and let his head fall back against the floor.
---
The first time around on Edora, Jack had decided that the Edorans were good people primarily because they knew how to party. There were parties for weddings, barn-raisings, births and harvests. There were parties to celebrate the birth of a prize calf or to christen a new canoe, because once a man had poured half a gallon of local hooch down his throat and found himself surrounded by pretty girls, it didn't seem that there was much of anything *not* worth celebrating.
Which was why the house, so newly completed that it still smelled of fresh timber and nails, was absolutely packed with carousing Edorans. Jack had declared himself an old man fairly early on in the evening and retired to the long kitchen table, where he could watch the action with a drink-softened smile on his face and not have to expend any kind of effort beyond blinking lazily in the lamplight and occasionally lifting his tankard for another sip of Haynan's rot-gut liquor.
Carter was across the room on one of the big couches -- a housewarming gift from Benno -- completely unconscious thanks to a long night of drinking and a longer day of work. Daniel had been suckered into the middle of the room, which had become an impromptu dancefloor, and was in the process of being blindfolded. Jack remembered that game, and smiled when Daniel ended up with a girl under each arm. Jack suspected that the ancestors hadn't guided them there.
Haynan grunted, lowering himself onto the bench on the opposite side of the table. He held out a pitcher and sloshed its contents suggestively, then used it to refill Jack's tankard. He turned to watch Daniel for awhile, too, and laughed at the man's awkward attempts to master Edoran dance steps. Finally Haynan said, "I place the blame on your shoulders."
Jack squinted at him -- Haynan seemed to be getting fuzzy around the edges, and Jack thought that perhaps Haynan ought to stop drinking before he got any fuzzier -- and said, "Huh?"
Haynan's smile widened, and he jerked his chin in Daniel's direction. "That one isn't the least bit put off by my irritable old man act. I try to brush him off and he just keeps asking his incessant questions."
"Aaah," Jack said, with a sage nod. He wasn't sure if the nod came out right, because his head was starting to feel like it wasn't connected anymore. "Yeah, sorry about that. He's sort of grown accustomed to cantankerous. He probably feels like you're encouraging him."
Haynan huffed and knocked back the better half of his own drink. He said, "I suppose so. He has the most curious questions, though. Just this morning he was asking me about our 'societal sexual taboos.'" He gave Jack a weary, supplicating looking. "'Societal sexual taboos,' Jack. Something needs to be done."
Jack blinked. Out on the dance floor, Naitha and Garren had taken Daniel's hands and were spinning him around and around and around. Jack wondered if they'd messed up in the construction of the house, because the floor seemed to be slowly tipping. "Like what?" Jack managed to say.
Haynan laughed into his drink, and the sound bounced and amplified in that little space and came out sounding more than a little bit like a snorting bull. "I don't know, Jack," he said. "But he seems to have a serious interest in the idea of men bedding men. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought he was offering." Haynan got up, and the bench he'd been sitting on scraped against the floor. He slapped Jack on the back, which almost sent the colonel tumbling. "Don't worry, Jack," Haynan said, with a wink. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."
As it turned out, though, he didn't have to. By the time everyone had left, Daniel had already gone to bed. Jack dragged Carter off the couch and up the stairs to her room, then managed to stay on his feet long enough to find his own bed and collapse into it. The next time Jack woke, the whole world was dark and quiet, and Daniel's hands were on his body, and Daniel's lips were on his throat. When Jack reached up to touch Daniel his hands were met with warm, bare flesh.
Daniel murmured, "Shhhh," even though Jack hadn't said anything, and then their mouths locked together. Daniel tasted like stale moonshine, and his hair smelled like wood smoke. They were both half-drunk, their hands fumbled on each other's flesh, and they jostled each other with their elbows and rested their weight in the wrong places and got everything wrong.
It was the best sex Jack had ever had, and when it was over he got to bury his nose against Daniel's shoulder to keep warm.
---
When Jack found him, Daniel was ankle-deep in mud, attempting to coax a very pregnant horse into the dry barn by pushing on her backside. He'd obviously had little success in the effort so far, because he was covered in mud and the mare looked pretty impassive about the whole thing.
Jack tugged down on the hood of his slicker to keep the rain out of his eyes and leaned against the paddock fence, where he could watch the ongoing struggle without getting himself any wetter. "I could be wrong, Daniel," he hollered, "but it looks like you're losing."
Daniel paused long enough to give Jack a good view of his middle finger, then tried a different tactic, stepping to the side a little and giving the horse a sound whack across the flanks. She reacted to that, but not by moving forward; she just swung her head around to look at him with a peculiar look in her eyes, like she was deeply disappointed in him and personally offended by his rudeness.
Jack shouted, "Just came to tell you I didn't have any luck."
Daniel waved a hand at him in a 'I hear you but I don't really care right now' sort of way, then slogged up to the horse's head to try leading her into the barn. Jack wasn't sure how long he could keep watching without laughing uproariously, which he was pretty sure would have a very negative effect on his sex life, so he just waved back instead and wandered off again.
He found Carter in Durin's house, the both of them bent over some sort of hand-drawn blueprint -- looked like waterworks to Jack -- and neither of them even bothered to look up when he knocked on the half-open door and invited himself in.
"But if we run this one off in this direction," Carter was saying, "we could build a common structure here, to tide everyone over until we can get some real plumbing happening in all the houses."
Durin frowned. "What sort of common structure?"
Carter smiled, all bright white teeth and radiance like the sun was coming out in that rustic little cabin. "I'm thinking along the lines of a sauna. Or a jacuzzi." She looked up, like she was only just noticing Jack there, and said, "What do you think, sir?"
Jack said, "Definitely jacuzzi," and then did his best drooling-Homer-Simpson impression, which wasn't that good at all. "I just stopped by to tell you that I went out for the regular attempt at check-in; I wasn't able to connect."
She blinked at him and said, "Oh. Okay, sir." Then she turned back to Durin and her waterworks.
Jack went back out into the rain, and wondered what to do with himself. In the end he went back to the house, fetched a couple of carrots from the root cellar, and returned to Biggar's paddock, where Daniel was still engaged in the eternal struggle with the obstinate horse. Jack gave the animal one carrot, then waved the other one at her and walked toward the barn. The horse ambled along behind, as if there hadn't been any annoying man shoving at her backside for the past hour, and shuffled obediently into the foaling stall, where she accepted the other carrot with calm dignity.
Daniel stood just inside the barn door, wiping mud out of his eyes and glaring at the horse. Jack looked at him and thought that since the Jacuzzi Plan had not yet been put into action, Jack would just have to take the man home and give him a long, leisurely bath in the simple tub back at the house.
Daniel looked up at him and smiled, and was clearly thinking the same thing.
---
Over dinner, Jack said, "Do you realize we've been on Edora for a hundred days?"
Daniel and Carter both looked up from their meals and gave him puzzled expressions, and he thought that his love for them might actually be dangerous because it made his heart hurt. He felt like it might swell right out of his chest, cartoon-style.
"It calls for celebration," Jack elaborated. "A party, at least."
Carter laughed and waved her fork at Daniel. "He just wants to get you drunk again."
Daniel flushed and waved his fork back. "You're just jealous that you didn't think of molesting him first."
Jack cleared his throat to get their attention again, and tried not to think about how Daniel tasted when intoxicated. "We need to make some changes around here," he said. "Considering we're going to be sticking around."
The others both knew what it meant, what that subtle surrender would cost them all. But they didn't talk about how Earth's Stargate might be buried, or Earth itself might be gone. Nobody mentioned that they'd probably never know, and that was the worst part. They just let a little time pass in silence, contemplating their navels or their peas or whatever they wanted to contemplate, and they got over it, more or less.
Carter looked up and waved her fork again, this time somewhat menacingly, at the both of them. "Yeah, changes," she said. "Like you guys have to warn me when you're going to get all porny in the shared bathtub. I may be scarred for life."
Daniel snorted around his not-quite-potatoes.
"I was thinking more along the lines of me calling you Sam," Jack said. "And you calling me Jack."
Sam said, "Deal," around a mouthful of bread, then stole the last of the loaf before Daniel could get to it. A scuffle ensued in which Daniel was able to liberate none of the bread, but he did end up capturing a fairly large chunk of Sam's fish. She retaliated by imposing an embargo on gravy.
Jack watched them, and smiled, and thought that a part of him would never let go of what he left behind. But it wasn't a part he needed.
The end