Title: Balance Restored
Authors: Brenda and ELG
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Summary: Although Daniel has been restored to human form and his memory is coming back there is something about his relationship with Jack that he still doesn’t remember.
Category: ER; smarm; angst. Slash tag to Fragile Balance.
Spoilers: S5, S6 and S7 spoilers. Specific mention of Meridian, Abyss, Changeling, Full Circle, Fallen, Homecoming, and Fragile Balance.
Series: Another 12 Days of Bunnyfic
Disclaimer: Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the authors. original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the authors.

Balance Restored

Jack O'Neill looked at the whiskey glass beside his bed and winced. He'd used to drink just a mouthful to warm him through before he went to sleep, but after Daniel's…death it had increased from a mouthful to a glassful, and the level of his consumption had certainly gone up a little again of late. He could admit now, although he would have denied it at the time, that after he'd lost Daniel he'd been seeking death as he'd sought it once before; cutting off from everyone else emotionally as he waited for the inevitability of cutting off from them physically. He'd thought piloting the X-302 with an about-to-explode Stargate on it had been almost a guarantee of oblivion but oblivion had eluded him. The next time he'd felt he was getting uncomfortably up close and personal with death, Daniel had returned from the astral plane to lend him comfort.

It had been maddening – for Daniel to look the same and yet be as non-corporeal as any ordinary hallucination. Everything had changed. And nothing. Daniel still looked the same, sounded the same, was very much the same person he had always been, except, for all his talk of being made of energy, he might as well have been a ghost. He wasn't someone Jack could put his arms around any more, or touch, or kiss. But it had been so good to talk to him, and Daniel had done all he could for Jack; bending the rules like Uri Geller with a malleable spoon; keeping him sane through the horror of Baal's torture, then whispering a possible solution in a meditating Teal'c's receptive ear; before nudging the doors open so that he could escape. But he was still this…new being who drifted formlessly through his higher plane; an angel without even the benefit of a fiery sword.

The meeting, for all its frustrations, had given Jack some peace. He could see for himself that Daniel seemed to be enjoying his new life as a karmic cloud of pixie dust. But it had also made the longing he had battened down flare up with new intensity. Try as he might – and perhaps he had never tried very hard – he couldn't adjust to a world that had no living Daniel Jackson in it, and in which the fourth member of his team wasn't the man who should have been beside his left shoulder, should have been sharing his bed, and his life.

And all the time he had been left wondering why Daniel had chosen at the end to ascend instead of accepting the life Jacob could possibly have given him; the life which meant he got to stay with Jack on Earth. Six years of friendship and when the same situation arose as they had met with on Ernest's planet – the chance of some great cosmic question being answered – Daniel had been too dazzled by the swirling possibilities that opened up to him to think of anything else. That was how much impact he'd made, in all that time, and all those missions, not to mention all those hours spent together…

Except, this way led the well-trodden road to his usual burn of righteous indignation. The time when he told himself that Daniel was thoughtless and selfish and had never loved him as much as Jack loved Daniel. This way avoided him having to face the reality that there had been a time when Daniel hadn't felt he'd achieved nothing with his life and was doing no good and literally might as well be dead for all the impact he was making. A time when Jack had listened to him and cherished him and had made it clear to him that his opinion mattered, that right and wrong mattered, that they didn't want to win this war against the Goa'uld by any means, but by the right means; that it was possible for a civilian archaeologist to have a role in the SGC that didn't mean every day was a compromise.

If Daniel had gotten to the point where he didn't think he'd achieved anything with his life and was more or less a failure who had needed to find his affirmation from Oma Desala, then what the hell did that say about the man who'd been sharing his life and his bed for the past few years? For a guy so smart and so stubborn, Daniel could be very lacking in self-esteem. Jack knew how that felt. Six years down the road and they had some dead Goa'uld to their credit, some liberated people, the beginning of a rebellion from the Jaffa, but it was still small potatoes, and the Tok'ra had been dancing this dance for centuries. So he had been feeling pretty much a failure himself. He'd buried too many good men not to get a little brittle and he'd gotten into a habit of resenting criticism, too sensitive to any murmurs of dissent from Daniel because he'd been feeling pretty insecure about some of their actions and achievements himself.

History had repeated itself, and just as he'd blocked out Sara when she'd needed him most, he'd ended up shutting out Daniel too. And the man had slipped through his fingers to a higher plane, shattering his heart and soul in the process.

And now Daniel was back. Whole and alive and human again. Jack kept reliving that moment in his mind when he'd seen him in his blue robes and their eyes had met and Daniel…hadn't known who he was. Except Jack suspected there must have been some flicker of something. He'd been too panicked when Jack walked into his tent; the way he always got when life was overwhelming him; scared of what Jack represented; as if he was chaos theory with a P-90 come to drag him back into something he'd successfully escaped. He'd tried to be understanding and calm when all the time he wanted to either hug him so hard his ribs cracked or shake him until his teeth rattled. Had Daniel chosen not to remember them? Had his sneaky subconscious intended to keep him ignorant of his past, hiding away with those nomads, living the simple life he'd been snatched from on Abydos once before; avoiding his past, present, and future as he lived in the gaps between the hours, the spaces between the man he'd used to be?

Then there had come that surrender to the inevitable; with them again but not yet of them. He hadn't even remembered Jack's name. It had hurt like a stiletto in his ribs to have to call himself ‘O'Neill' to this man to whom he had once been everything; and it had been sweet to hear Daniel call him ‘Jack' again. But it wasn't enough. He was greedy and he hated himself for it because, damnit, the man had been dead and lost to him forever, and now he was back, whole and human, and apparently at peace. He seemed to love them too, perhaps just out of instinct or habit or some residual memory. For all his struggles to remember who he'd been he was touchingly trusting in the way he did as they told him, followed his instincts and his conscience and focused on whichever of them most needed his help. There had been no residual memories of Jonas, and yet Daniel had doggedly set about helping him when he'd needed him; had even seemed to bond with the guy – something with which Jack, who'd never even attempted to bond with Jonas in a year of not trying and who was still feeling raw from Daniel's failure to remember him, still had a problem.

Daniel seemed to be intact as the person he'd once been; the person he'd been when Jack first met him; a lot of the darkness and unhappiness washed away by the strange process of being turned from flesh into energy and then back into flesh again. There was a sweetness about him that made the breath catch in Jack's throat sometimes; the way he was so trusting; so concerned for them all; yet showed no hesitation about risking his neck or getting his hands dirty on a mission.

The sense of humor was still there, the quick wit, but the sharpness had gone; perhaps the snappy comeback still came to him just as fast but he softened it now. He was still as brilliant, still as liable to lose himself in the possibilities of ideas, but they were fascinating to him also, in a way they had ceased to be, Jack suspected, in the past. He had always loved them, of course, would have died for them, couldn't bear to think of losing them, but he didn't think they had been as much to him all the same as they seemed to be now. They had been family to Daniel, and like family had become something occasionally restrictive; dead ends that had to be evaded for him to find himself again. Now, they were these people he remembered through rose-tinted post-ascended memories. He looked at them and they were wonderful to him. Jack suspected they probably looked at him in the same way; he certainly couldn't get used to having the guy back and Carter seemed to be in the same mental place of needing to check on him ten times a day to be sure he really was back for good this time. He'd noticed Daniel was more touchy-feely than he'd used to be, but as tactile with Teal'c and Carter as he was with Jack. That irked him a little. He was afraid that in Daniel's warm mushy feelings for the three of them, he was loving them all equally, whereas, petty though it undoubtedly was, Jack really needed Daniel to love him best.

Still, it was churlish of him to feel so much sadness after he had been given back his best friend and the man he loved, alive and well and finally happy. But he did feel sad all the same. Daniel didn't remember that they had been lovers. He seemed to remember that Jack was someone he loved, certainly; remembered trusting Jack and believing in him in a way that had taken the object of that trust and belief aback. It certainly hadn't looked that way to Jack and yet that was how Daniel remembered it, which raised a whole barrel load of questions about whether that was the way it had always been. Had Jack contributed to driving his friend and lover away by resenting Daniel for losing a faith that it now seemed Daniel had never actually lost? There were so many questions like that and they would probably never be answered. Through Daniel's misty memories and Jack's realization that perhaps some things were probably better left undiscussed, a lot of things would never be examined too closely; and perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it was all for the best that the past should be less important than the present and future. Daniel seemed to think Jack was pretty wonderful, not to mention someone whose word should be trusted, someone wise and kind and…good. Looking into Daniel's eyes these days was very like looking into Daniel's eyes in the past and seeing someone reflected in them who Jack wanted to be but wasn't sure he truly was.

But there was no recognition there of what they had been to one another; no flickers of memory of all those days and nights they'd spent together. Daniel had remembered how to use a zat gun, but he hadn't remembered a single kiss they'd shared; a single whisper in the darkness; hadn't looked at Jack O'Neill and seen the man who had been his lover, only the man who had been his friend.

That was a wound that time would no doubt heal. It was sweet indeed to have his friend back again and that friendship was even more dear to him now than it had been in the past. If this was all they would ever be to one another then it was still a great relief to have Daniel back; he wasn't going to stop giving thanks for that for a very long time. But although he was certain the wound of being forgotten would heal, at the moment it still felt very fresh and very raw, and, at three in the morning, it needed to be soothed with either whiskey or tears.

Well, he had cried too many damned tears over Daniel. O'Neill picked up the glass and drained it. But even as the alcohol trickled a warming path to his guts, he wondered why a love that had evidently been so insignificant and so unmemorable to Daniel still burned such a fire in Jack O'Neill's heart.

As the phone rang, Jack checked his nightstand knew who it had to be. Only insomniacs and teenagers were still awake at this hour. He picked up the phone. "What now?"

A pause before a too-familiar voice said, "So, has he remembered yet?"

Jack glowered at the receiver. "You shouldn't even know about stuff like that at your age."

"I know everything you know." The mixture of exasperation and mockery was one he could all too easily understand. "And anyway, you owe me one, I covered for you."

Jack sat up in bed so he could shout into the phone more comfortably if it became necessary. "At the time, if you remember, you thought you were covering for you."

"Hey, Daniel must have thought it was a little odd too as he didn't mention having been there the night before, or that he was the other person eating Chinese food with you. If they'd ever got around to dusting those beer bottles for prints you would have had some ‘splaining to do."

"Why?" Jack countered. "What's wrong with inviting a friend around for dinner?"

"A friend whose boxers are in your bedroom drawer?"

"Maybe he didn't recognize them." Jack had wondered that himself ever since his new ‘nephew' had told him about the events he'd missed. John J Junior had snatched the underwear out of Daniel's hand pretty fast by all accounts, but there was still a chance Daniel had recognized it. One of the maddening things about Daniel's current condition was that there was no way of knowing what he remembered or didn't remember, or pretended not to remember or truly didn't remember, or never would remember. After a pause he said, "You know as well as I do that when Daniel came around for dinner, that's all we had – dinner."

"Much to your disappointment."

"It's nothing to do with the sex, damnit, it's just that he doesn't…remember."

"And you hoped you were a little more memorable than the Asgard?"

"Damned straight." Jack grimaced. "Or not so straight. Did he really remember Thor?"

"Afraid so." A pause before his clone said conversationally, "So, are you going to tell him?"

"None of your business. Okay? You may have memories of…stuff you have no business having any memories of, but you're fifteen years old and you need to go and date girls."

"I am dating girls."

"You are?" Jack thought about dating a fifteen year-old girl and it made him feel like nothing other than a pervert. "Isn't that…weird?"

"What do you think?" the clone countered. After a pause, he said, "I'm not quite the same as you. I mean – I was – but Thor did something when he…fixed me. I think he tried to make what Carter calls the biological imperative more dominant than the… Basically, as I feel like a fifteen year old I'm getting more like one every day."

"You still have all my memories though?"

"Oh yeah. All your memories. Including the ones where Daniel and I…"

"You mean Daniel and I don't you?"

He could almost see the brat shrugging. "Not in my memories."

"I don't even want you thinking about him like that!"

"What's the problem? Afraid of the competition?"

Jack gritted his teeth. "Oh yeah, right. I feel so threatened by a skinny kid with zits who Daniel wouldn't touch with the long end of a pole."

"Why not? I'm you, remember? Only with better knees and less mileage."

"You're not me. You're a clone. You're not even a good clone. You're a botch up job. And you're a teenager. What Daniel and I have isn't to do with… It's not something anyone else can come along and hijack just because they have some of my DNA."

"All of your DNA actually, but you're right." A pause in which he could almost hear the teenager sighing. "I don't even want him… I just… remember what it was like to want him. But that was you and I'm not really you. Not any more. But I do know how you feel about him, which is something nobody else does, and if you don't tell him, I think you're out of your mind."

"He has to remember by himself." Jack sighed and slumped back down in the bed. He had slept in this bed with Daniel beside him so many times and yet apparently when Daniel had walked into this room there had been no memory triggered, even when he'd picked out a pair of his own boxer shorts that Jack hadn't been able to bring himself to get rid of. Still nothing. On the night they'd had Chinese together, a few times he'd noticed Daniel looking at him with a strange expression on his face and had thought he was about to remember, but then Daniel had shaken his head and looked away.

"I'll give you a week."

"Or what?" Jack straightened up again. He didn't trust this kid; he knew just how damned sneaky he could be.

"I may have to start asking Daniel for help with my homework…"

It took Jack a few moments to realize he was yelling abuse into a telephone that had been hung up on the other end.

He slammed the receiver down, and when that wasn't satisfying enough, gave his pillow a thump that would have given Teal'c pause, then dropped his head back down. Damn, this was frustrating. He'd gone from thinking he'd lost Daniel forever, to having vague 'feelings' that he was around somehow (although at the time he'd put that down to grief and some desperate wishful thinking on his part), to seeing and talking to him (not to mention throwing a shoe through him), to actually getting him back alive, well, and in the flesh. He should be the happiest man on earth. There was no question having Daniel back was like regaining a particularly precious piece of his life that had been missing for a year. In that regard he was the happiest man on earth: Daniel was alive, he was safe, he was back.

But it hurt to realize Daniel didn't remember him. Obviously Daniel remembered some things as they had fallen back into their old verbal patterns fairly quickly, and he was remembering more bits and pieces about his old life every day. But he hadn't remembered everything. There was a place inside Jack's chest that ached every time Daniel looked at him now. Before -- before they'd ever gone to Kelowna, before Oma deSala had come to take him away -- when Daniel looked at him, there was a expression in his eyes that was only for Jack O'Neill. No one else had that privilege. When he caught Daniel gazing at him now, though, he usually wore a faint frown like he was trying to solve a particularly tricky puzzle. That's what he was to Daniel now: a puzzle. And he couldn't give Daniel the answer. You don't just tell someone who had lost their memory, 'Oh by the way, we were lovers.'

Jack draped an arm over his eyes, sighing deeply. Along with the undeniable joy of having Daniel back again, he'd been forced to face some less joyous prospects: what if Daniel never remembered their relationship? Or what if he remembered, but he'd changed in his year away and decided he no longer loved Jack in that way? Was this the way his life was going to be from here on? Would he never again feel the strong warmth of Daniel's arms holding him through the night? Hear the sound of Daniel's voice as he whispered things in a dozen different languages in his ear? Or feel his soft lips nibbling a path across his body? Or see the expression Daniel always wore that was a mixture of concentration and wonder as he was devoted all his concentration to mapping every inch of Jack's body with his long, slender fingers…

Hard now, and aching, Jack moaned, his hand moving automatically to grasp his erection and give himself some relief. The sound of the phone's strident ring tore a snarl from his lips as he snatched the receiver from the cradle. "Listen to me, you little sonofabitch --"

"Jack?"

The sound of Daniel's tentative voice was like a splash of ice cold water over his overwrought body. Drawing a shaky breath, Jack swallowed hard and managed to force out a fairly normal, "Daniel?"

"What was that about--?"

Jack flicked a hand. "Wrong numbers. Been getting them all night," he lied. He pushed himself up in bed. "What's up?" he asked, worried. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." There was a long pause, and Jack could almost see him nibbling his lower lip. "Can I come in?"

Jack glanced over at his clock. "It's kind of late to be out driving streets you still don't remember all that well," he said slowly. Daniel didn't even remember where the local Starbucks was, and he didn't like the idea of him driving around aimlessly at this time of night. He swung his legs out of bed. "Why don't I come over there?"

"Actually, I'm already here."

"Here? As in…here?"

"Here, as in on your front porch." There was another pause, then a hesitant, "Can I come in?" Jack heard him take a deep breath over the phone. "I've…remembered something."

Jack supposed a starving panther sighting a wounded gazelle could possibly have made it to the front door faster than him, but he frankly doubted it.

His speed seemed to take Daniel by surprise. He jumped as Jack wrenched open the door, then gazed at Jack's t-shirt and shorts in some confusion. "I'm sorry I woke you up."

"You didn't." Jack waited for Daniel to make some move to come inside but he just stood there. He was dressed in jeans and a baggy gray top under a dark jacket, the belt on the jeans cinched on a new hole Daniel must have made himself, the end of the belt flapping loose; even the sight of that piece of leather draped across Daniel's groin was arousing to Jack in his current state. Jack pulled the door open wider in what he hoped was obvious invitation. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Thanks, Jack." Daniel gave him a shy smile and it was unbearably sweet but oh so painful too. That was the way Daniel had looked at him in the good old bad old days when they hadn't known each other very well.

John J Junior had told him Daniel was the one who'd gotten it straight away. All it had taken was one exasperated yell of his name and Daniel had recognized him at once; and from then on he'd treated him the same way he treated him when he looked every day of his usual years. Jack was…Jack to Daniel, and physical appearance wasn't as important as the personality inside. In Daniel's response to Young Jack, the boy had insisted, was the proof that alone of all of them, Daniel would still love him when he was old. Make that ‘older' – the kid was already developing a teenager's disdain for the gray of hair and weak of knees. Daniel had been supportive and caring and only made the kind of wisecracks he would have made to the usual brand of Jack O'Neill. And he'd worked his shapely ass off to try and understand what had happened.

‘Less of the ‘shapely',' Jack had told the kid shortly, but he'd gotten the gist. The guy who had been a fluffy cloud for the past year, who hadn't even recognized him a few short weeks before after returning to his human form, had somehow felt a connection to Jack that had transcended mere physical appearance and age. Yet for all that he couldn't remember that they'd been lovers. How weird was that? What really worried Jack was the suspicion that Daniel could remember what he wanted to remember and that therefore their being lovers was something Daniel just wanted to forget.

"Come in." He gave him what he hoped was a warm welcoming smile, but he suspected there was a sadness in his eyes whenever he looked at him that made Daniel uneasy.

Daniel smiled as he saw the kitchen table. "You cleaned up."

"Hey, even I'm not a slob all the time."

He fetched a beer for himself, aware that he had been drinking a few more of them than usual ever since Daniel had drifted through the ‘gate in a haze of white light and left him with an emptiness in his guts it had felt like nothing could ever fill. As he made to get a beer for Daniel he thought of the other times they'd sat here drinking beer together, from the first time he'd brought him back from the SGC to that terrible occasion when he'd had to pretend to be someone he wasn't to get him out of the door, to that strange dinner they'd shared where Daniel had kept looking at him with that spaced out look on his face and that frown denting his brow. He decided he couldn't bear to sit down with all those memories that Daniel didn't share and made coffee for Daniel instead – even though it was three a.m. and probably the last thing the guy needed was more caffeine in his system.

"Here you go."

"Thanks. And I know. That you're not a slob all the time, I mean."

Jack darted a look across at him. "You do?" It was a little pathetic how needy he was for these memory fragments from Daniel; like shards of something broken washed up on a beach.

"My memory is pretty good these days." Daniel was still huddled in his clothes. That coat was too big for him. Nothing seemed to fit just right and that was probably because they'd had to buy him so much stuff in a hurry. Jack had been permitted to keep the artifacts. Daniel's journals, his books, everything in his office, had been considered of vital importance to the SGC and preserved intact. Between Hammond and himself they had managed to get a lot of Daniel's other possessions treated as of military significance and so worthy of salvage, but the clothes had been another matter. A few things Jack had kept himself, just because he couldn't bear to let them go; but when you dropped naked from the skies onto an alien world one of the things you tended to need quickly was a new wardrobe and Daniel had been no exception. So he'd been taken out to a clothing store he hadn't remembered, still blinking in confusion at this brave new world which had given birth to him but which he didn't entirely recollect, and had been told to buy himself clothes for all weathers. It had been fascinating to see that his taste had stayed pretty much the same. Watching him, full of bittersweet relief that he was back and alive and regret that things weren't the same between them now, Jack had been relieved to see that the post-Ascended Daniel picked the same kind of clothes the pre-Ascended Daniel would have chosen. Perhaps that meant his taste in people would also have remained the same. His taste in friends. And more than friends.

"That's great." Jack forced an encouraging smile. "Fraiser said it would come back quicker if you didn't try to force it."

"I feel like I pretty much remember everything now." A hesitation as Daniel searched Jack's face for confirmation and got a careful blank. His gaze dropped to his coffee. "Almost everything."

Jack sat down carefully, trying to keep his voice level, to not be angry with Daniel for having chosen to forget something that was so precious to Jack. They weren't the same and they never had been. Given the chance to ascend, Daniel had jumped at it; even Jack hadn't been enough to anchor him to the Earth and the chance of life Jacob offered. He'd wanted to know everything his whole life and that was what Oma had seemed to be able to provide. The answer to all those questions. The perfect bait to lure someone like Daniel to a higher plane. Had he been angry with him for leaving? Did the sea tend to be a little on the salty side? But even the anger hadn't stopped him comprehending Daniel's reasons for taking what Oma offered him. Perhaps it had even turned out for the best; damaged as Daniel had been by the radiation, perhaps Jacob would only have been able to drag him back to some kind of half-life, an invalid who could never step through the ‘gate again, whereas Oma's repair job had been complete. The only price she'd asked for it was…everything that made him a human being except the essence of who he was; his humanity something he had kept even after he had become energy instead of flesh and bone.

And then she'd cast him out. Although Jack did think that in her own way she'd done the best she could for Daniel. As he could take nothing of the Ancients with him she couldn't even give him any clothes, he presumed that had been the reason for his nakedness, anyway. Unless it had been some kind of psychological ploy to make the people who found him be nice to him; Daniel naked as a newborn baby possibly eliciting the same care and protection and infant would receive from strangers. Personally he thought it was a damned silly risk to take with someone who looked the way Daniel did naked. The people who'd found him had turned out to be princes, one and all; caring honest people who had taken in this stranger without a memory and clothed him, fed him, sheltered him. He felt a debt to those people he didn't think he could ever repay but he was still pissed with Oma. He didn't care how damned omniscient the Ancients were meant to be, Daniel could have been picked up by entirely the wrong kind of people and, vulnerable as he'd been, that just didn't bear contemplation.

He took a sip of his beer. "You were saying you'd remembered something else?"

Daniel took another nervous sip of coffee. "I… It's a little difficult to separate dreams and reality sometimes. I go to sleep and I dream of the past and I wake and I remember a little more. And then, during the day, the new memories either grow and become true memories or they fade again and I wonder if they were…always dreams."

Jack took another sip of beer and then another. "I don't think I understand but, hey, I don't think that's the way you're telling it, I just think maybe it's something only someone whose been through the experience you have can understand."

Daniel kept looking at the table as if it were the most fascinating thing in the room. "False memories are something that can be created unconsciously by others or by yourself when you're in a vulnerable and receptive state. I would currently classify my state of mind as both vulnerable and receptive. I want my life back. I want my past back. I want to know who I am and if it turns out I did something wrong I want to make amends for it."

"You didn't do anything wrong." He hadn't meant to say it so savagely but the thought made him angry; perhaps because he'd blamed Daniel himself. They were meant to stop Anubis getting the Eye of Ra and defend the people of Abydos and they'd ended up doing neither. But it hadn't been Daniel's fault. He'd given it his best shot, just as they'd given it theirs, and they'd failed. And he'd been cast out of his idea of Paradise as punishment for breaking the rules. The Ancients had beaten him up enough for what he'd done; Jack wasn't in the mood to see Daniel trashing himself.

"I wish I could believe that."

"My word isn't enough?" He looked him in the eye.

Daniel returned his gaze unflinchingly and Jack wondered if it was his imagination or if there really was something like longing there. "I remember you were always pretty nice to me, Jack. Even when I didn't deserve it. So, maybe on this your word isn't enough."

Jack downed another swig of beer. "If that's how you remember it, you still have a way to go before your memory is firing on all cylinders, Danny boy."

A look of surprise and pleasure flickered across the other man's face and Jack could only gaze at him for a moment and think how insanely young he looked. If this was what being turned into energy then back into human form did for the complexion then everyone ought to try it. Daniel had always been beautiful but he was radiant now in a way that had nothing to do with the inner glow that came from being an energy being. There was a light inside him that hadn't always been lit in the past. "Do you remember me calling you that?"

"Yes." A brief pleased smile from Daniel; the way he looked when something truly touched him. "I remember the first time you called me ‘Danny' and I liked it so much but I thought afterwards maybe it was just because you saw me as a…a kid. But I still kind of liked it."

Jack thought back to those first missions. He remembered being exasperated by the man across the table from him, and proud of him, and scared for him, and drawn to him, and always, always aware of him. His brilliant wayward genius who knew so much about some things and so frighteningly little about others. It had taken a long time for them to find out what they were to one another; all they were to one another; to realize they were the missing pieces of the other's fractured soul. "You used to drive me nuts." He pointed to his hair. "I'm only gray because of you."

"It suits you." Daniel's smile was gentle. "It's distinguished."

Jack finished his beer and put down the bottle. Sweet though these reminiscences were they needed to cut to the chase; get back to what Daniel had been trying to tell him. "Are you saying you're chasing the memories so hard you don't know when you find them if they're real or not?"

Surprise flickered briefly in the familiar blue eyes. "Yes. Some of them feel more like dreams. They may just be things I once wished for. Not things I ever really knew."

Jack felt his heart begin to beat faster. "What kind of things?"

The self-hugging was strange to see again. There were so many little gestures of Daniel's he'd missed once he was gone; he'd close his eyes sometimes and try to remember exactly the way his face looked, the way his voice sounded; to think of a phrase of his and play it over in his mind the way Daniel used to say it; a little gesture of the hands. A few things had kept playing in his memory like a stuck record: Daniel in the padded cell trying to tuck hair behind his ear that wasn't there any more; Daniel hugging himself; Daniel moistening his lips; blinking… And now here was the real thing. The real Daniel Jackson descended and alive and human and warm to the touch.

Daniel averted his eyes and spoke rapidly: "When I was here with the – clone version of you we were going through his – your – belongings, trying to find out why what had happened had…happened. I opened some drawers at random and one of them had your underwear in it. I picked up a pair of boxer shorts and… I recognized them. I thought they were mine. I thought I remembered wearing them. I thought I remembered you…"

That wasn't exactly a blush but there was a hint of color on his cheekbones that was at least a second cousin to a blush. Jack knew he ought to help him out but his mouth was dry and his heart hammering too fast for speech.

"Then you – the clone you – took them from me and the memory was gone. And it didn't make any sense anyway. But I started wondering if I'd used to…daydream. I remembered us being…equals, friends, but there was this depth of connection there… Did I…? When I first met you maybe…? Did you ever get a sense that maybe I had a…crush on you?"

He was definitely blushing now and Jack thought how brave he was to ask that question. He knew he ought to pick his words carefully but he just wanted to fill the silence quickly with something heartfelt and honest. "I don't think you felt anything for me, Daniel, that I didn't feel for you."

That was a good look to have put on the face of someone you loved. He really did light up for a minute there but then Daniel grimaced. "Well, maybe you wouldn't know. Maybe I hid it from you? I think I may have had fantasies… Daydreams I never shared with you…"

Jack's throat was so dry he could hardly get the words out. "You're not remembering fantasies and daydreams, Daniel, I swear. That isn't how it was."

Daniel blinked at him in confusion. "Then what is it I'm remembering?"

Sweat had gathered in Jack's palms during Daniel's halting disclosure, and he rolled the beer bottle between his hands as he both stalled for time and wrestled internally with himself. Everyone had agreed it would be better for Daniel to remember things for himself. In fact, Fraiser had insisted on it. Jack had made sure he was around Daniel as much as possible to encourage the memories and to celebrate with him when they came through; and if they were of the less pleasant variety he gave what support he could while Daniel dealt with the emotional fallout that came with the newly restored memory. He had played by Fraiser's rules and hadn't fed Daniel any information, but no one knew what it cost him every night when Daniel gave him that shy little smile then went his own way while Jack came home to his empty house and bed. It was hard not to be angry, disappointed and bitter; Daniel had come home, but why hadn't he come home to him?

"Jack?"

Daniel's hesitant voice brought Jack's head up. Daniel was watching him with an expression that was both anxious and mildly alarmed. Jack wondered with a start how long he'd been sitting there in silence while Daniel's anxiety level climbed. Fuck this. He'd seen that look on Daniel's face far too many times over the years, and he was damned if he was going to sit here and let him worry over not knowing what was real and what was fantasy in his life. Daniel was starting to remember...them. Whether he wanted to remember was something Jack had come to acknowledge he was going to have to face up to and accept.

"What am I remembering?" Daniel repeated, his eyes searching Jack's face for clues.

Setting the beer bottle carefully aside, Jack took a deep breath, then reached out and gently laid a hand against the side of Daniel's neck, somewhat encouraged when the man didn't flinch at the contact. Daniel was staring at him, his eyes huge behind his glasses, but his expression had become very still. "You were remembering this, Daniel," he said quietly, and leaned forward, pressing his lips against Daniel's in a brief, gentle kiss. When he pulled back, he watched as Daniel's eyes slowly opened and he blinked a few times as if bringing Jack into focus. For some reason that brought back the memory of Daniel batting his eyes at Aris Boch, the bounty hunter, and he felt a new wave of sweet sadness wash through him, wondering if that was something Daniel would ever remember and a memory they could laugh over and share again. Sitting back in his chair, he held his breath and watched Daniel for some kind of reaction.

Daniel raised his hand as if to touch his lips, then let it drop again. "I don't remember that," he said finally, his tone somewhat puzzled.

Jack felt his heart drop like a rock into his stomach, and he closed his eyes, swallowing hard as bitter disappointment flooded through him.

"Maybe we'd better try it again." Jack's eyes flew open, but there was no teasing in Daniel's tone. The little frown between his eyes that always appeared when he was concentrating very hard was much in evidence, and Jack found himself frozen to the spot as Daniel slowly moved closer. A warm hand was laid against his neck in an exact duplication of Jack's move, and a pair of warm, soft and very familiar lips were pressed firmly against his. It was the most automatic thing in the world for his lips to open of their own accord as a tongue briefly slipped into his mouth and the kiss deepened. Jack was breathing hard and his eyes were a little wild as Daniel pulled away and settled back in his chair. For a long moment there was silence between them. Then Daniel nodded, apparently satisfied. "That's more like I remember."

"You --?" Jack took a big gulp of air. "You remember?" His voice sounded strangled, but hope was fluttering its wings in his chest like a caged bird trying to escape.

Daniel was staring fiercely at his fingers, which were gripping each other so tightly his knuckles were white. When he began talking his voice was so low and his words tumbling out so fast Jack could barely distinguish them. "Anything can trigger a memory. Sometimes it's a smell or a sound or something I see. But what seems to work best for me is tactile sensations." He gave Jack a quick look from under his lashes as if trying to judge whether Jack understood that. "When I hold something or touch something." Jack watched, mesmerized as Daniel's tongue slid along his lower lip as if he were trying to taste what was there.

"Well then," he said finally, forcing himself to speak slowly and carefully, "maybe we'd better try some more of that touching stuff again?"

Eyes wide, Daniel gave his head a little jerky nod.

Smiling, Jack got to his feet and, feeling like a stage director setting up a scene, motioned for Daniel to do the same. Obediently, Daniel stood facing Jack, his breathing fast and shallow. Moving slowly, Jack cupped the back of his head and gently brought their lips together. As he teased his tongue between Daniel's lips he heard a soft moan from the other man, and then Daniel was pressed against him, one hand finding his head, his other arm locked around Jack's back to keep him in place. While one part of Jack's mind was sending up fireworks at Daniel's reaction, another part reminded him that Daniel had been incorporeal for a year and denied any sense of touch during that time. His reaction now could simply be the response of a touch-starved body suddenly being offered what it desperately wanted. That unwelcome thought made him firmly but gently pry himself away from Daniel, who was trying to wrap himself around Jack's body, and take a step back so they were no longer touching. Daniel made a whimper of protest as his eyes slowly blinked open.

Jack swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. "Daniel, I don't know if you're actually remembering --"

"Your hair," Daniel blurted, reaching out to lightly touch some silver strands. "I remember what your hair feels like."

Jack wondered why it was they so often ended up having conversations about his hair. Although it was true Daniel had always seemed to enjoy playing with it, rearranging it, nuzzling it and smelling it when they were lying sleepily tangled together in bed.

"And I remember..." Daniel stepped forward suddenly, embracing Jack and burying his face in his neck. Jack heard him inhale deeply, then exhale slowly with a breathed, "Oh, god, yesss."

Having Daniel in his arms again, feeling his warm, hard body pressed against his, the scent of the man wearing the same aftershave he'd worn before he'd ascended -- because Jack couldn't bear to discard the bottle in his medicine cabinet -- was almost Jack's undoing. Please remember, he begged silently. Please, please remember, Daniel. There was a sniffle at Jack's ear, and Jack didn't think he was just taking in his scent any more. "Hey," he soothed, and gently pulled back, framing the other man's face with his hands. Sure enough, Daniel's eyes were damp and his lashes spiky.

"I don't think there was a time I wasn't in love with you, Jack," Daniel confessed, his voice a little thick.

Jack had to clear his throat a few times before he was able to answer. "Well, if you remember that, then you certainly remember I loved you twice as much."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"Not."

"Did."

"You couldn't possible love me twice as -- mmpth."

When Jack finally released him to breathe again, he murmured against his lips, "Now do you remember?"

There was a pleasing flush covering Daniel's skin that wasn't so much a blush as an inner light come to the surface. Seemingly robbed of the ability to talk for the moment, Daniel merely nodded, an unbearably sweet smile on his face, his eyes shining with happiness.

Feeling a stinging in his eyes, Jack produced a smile of his own and said what he'd been wanting to say ever since they found Daniel with those nomads. "Welcome home, Daniel."

***

Feeling more than a little uncomfortable about taking advantage of a semi-amnesiac, Jack suggested that if Daniel wanted to stay the night and didn't want to sleep on the couch, they could share the bed in a not-touching-each-other-too-much kind of way. Daniel smiled in relief, and Jack didn't know if it was the relief of not being rushed or the relief of getting to share a bed.

It was strange to lead the way upstairs, wondering as he did so exactly how much Daniel remembered. He kept wanting to say, "Do you remember when we made out here? Do you remember telling me about Sha're just over there…?" Some of the damned myths Daniel had always been jabbering about in the past must have stuck because he refused to look over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs. Did he really think Daniel was going to be lost to him if he did? Left in the Underworld of his living room like a gender-bended Eurydice? It was as absurd as his behavior when he was a child avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk in case he broke his mother's back with a careless stumble. Nevertheless, he didn't look back until he heard Daniel follow him into the bedroom and even then as he finally dared to glance over his shoulder there was a breathless moment when he thought he would turn into a shimmer of white light and disappear once more.

Daniel must have seen the flicker of fear in his eyes because he stepped forward at once, saying softly, "I'm here, Jack. I'm back."

Jack waited for him to say: "I'm here...I'm really here." He could see him in his mind's eye sitting across from him in that damned anti-gravity chamber, dressed like he was about to play in a cricket match. Looking so beautiful. Being so untouchable. Then he looked back at Daniel's face, almost afraid to reach out and touch him in case he turned out not to be real. "You don't remember that, do you?"

"Remember what?" Daniel looked confused and a little anxious. He gazed around the room. "I remember here. I remember…us."

"Nothing from after you…died?"

"No." Daniel kept gazing around the room, a smile tugging at his lips, a look of peace on his face. "I guess I should try to as I may have learned a few useful things during that time, but I've been more focused on trying to remember…" His little hand gesture indicated the room, Jack, the world he'd left behind.

"Oh, this is definitely more important." Jack found a smile for him, despite the pounding of his heart, and essayed a casual shrug. "I think that whole meaning of life stuff is kind of overrated." He reached out, tentatively, and then with sudden fierce decision, taking Daniel's head in his hands and kissing him again, deep and passionate, needing to feel the warmth of his lips against his mouth again, the proof that he was no dream.

Daniel came up for air breathless and blinking dreamily. "Oh yeah… it's definitely coming back to me now."

"You know I missed you, right?" Jack almost made it an accusation.

Daniel nodded slowly. "I do now." He nodded at the bed. "Can we continue this conversation in there?"

"Sure." Jack pulled back the coverlet and got into bed, watching the way Daniel took off his clothes with a weird mixture of shyness and a half-hearted attempt at a striptease that was very endearing. Jack had kept his own shorts and t-shirt on and wasn't surprised when Daniel did the same. It was a strange sensation to feel shy in front of one another. There were so many memories of this bed for him, taking each other for granted in it while Daniel read one book and he read another and they both grunted at one another companionably from time to time. And then there was the sex. A lot of memories of that too. White hot sex and red hot sex and make up sex and the slow comfortable kind that they could make last half the night. He wondered how much of that Daniel remembered. Going by the way Daniel was avoiding his eye and had that faint flush of color on his cheekbones, quite a lot. Daniel got under the covers and then gave him another smile, shy and beguiling at once. "I remember…" A cute little tilt of the head and nose wrinkle. "A whole lot of things."

He lay down with his head on the pillow studying Jack's face as if trying to memorize it. Jack reached across and touched his mouth. "Are you staying this time?"

"If I don't get killed again." A definite glimmer of humor in those bluer then blue eyes but Jack wasn't ready to laugh about fatal doses of radiation turning the insides of the man he loved to mush now or at any other time.

"That's New Rule Number One: No dying on duty or off."

A frown dented Daniel's forehead. "I didn't actually decide to get myself killed."

He personally thought that was debatable but he wasn't going to discuss it, forging ahead sternly: "No dying. No being kidnapped. No being snaked. No being turned into an energy being with or without your consent. No sex with aliens. No saving other worlds at the risk of your own life."

"Um…Jack, isn't saving other worlds kind of what we do for a living?"

Jack thought it over for a minute, remembering all the times when he had put his own life on the line for the sake of people he barely knew, and then grimaced. "Okay, scratch the last one, but the others are non-negotiable."

Another cute nose wrinkle. He'd missed those. Missed so much. That skin. Those eyes. That mouth. Oh God, how had he managed without that mouth. He leaned across gently in preparation for kissing him, keeping his eyes open this time so he could see the way Daniel closed his, obligingly parting his lips in readiness for Jack's tongue. They kissed and it was as sweet as any kiss they'd ever exchanged.

"So, it's agreed then?" Jack tried to sound tough but it wasn't easy when all he wanted to do was pull the younger man to him and hug him until his ribs creaked.

Daniel protested faintly, "You're much sterner than I remember."

He stroked his hair back from his forehead; the soft hair he'd missed so much. "I just think it would be better for both of us if from now on you did exactly what I said. At all times."

That really was an old-fashioned Daniel Jackson smile. "You do know that's never going to happen, right?"

Jack shrugged in acknowledgement. "Hey, it was worth a try."

Daniel was still gazing at him as if he was a beautiful sunset, all golden and gleaming and only to be glimpsed for this moment before it was gone. "So, tell me what happened while I was gone. These rumors about you and Thor…?"

"That isn't funny."

Daniel did a passable impression of the Asgard's voice: " ‘You are our choice, O'Neill.'"

"He doesn't sound anything like that!"

"I hear he dropped in a lot while I was away."

"No more than usual – " Jack realized Daniel was smirking at him and that this was good; gaining in confidence with each moment in this bed; slipping back into the old comfortable routines of teasing him affectionately. This was very good, in fact. He leaned forward to kiss him again, a slow kiss this time, tongue seeking entrance, wrapping itself around Daniel's while his fingers gently circled his cheekbones. Daniel returned the kiss gently, curiously, tongue exploring while his fingers furrowed a path through Jack's hair. Then as they paused for breath, Daniel kissed his jaw, then his neck, before kissing a trail down to his chest. He pushed up Jack's t-shirt to better explore his chest, fingers stroking the graying fuzz there gently before he put out his tongue and began to lap at Jack's nipple.

Jack realized he was going to be in big trouble if Daniel kept doing this. He had lots of ideological objections to jumping the bones of someone who only a few hours before had thought their entire relationship was a weird dream he'd been having. Unfortunately his body just remembered that it was way too long since he and Daniel had been naked together and wanted to get happy as soon as possible.

"Um…Daniel…?"

A tongue lapping maddeningly across his nipple in a way that proved Daniel wasn't just faking having gotten his memory back.

"If you keep doing that, I'm…"

Another maddening lap of the tongue and then Daniel was kissing lower, curious, fascinated, rediscovering old scars; the padding over the rib cage, the soft fuzz below his navel. Long fingers closed on his shorts and began to tug them down. Voice rising along with another part of his anatomy, Jack said breathlessly, "I don't think you're ready for…"

Daniel glanced up at him and smiled. "I think you are…"

Then the shorts were tugged decisively down from his hips and his…interest in the situation was exposed to the world and the warm wet curiosity of Daniel's eager mouth.

The jar of the phone made Jack jolt; meaning he was taken in even deeper by that incredible mouth, those fingers kneading his hips slightly increasing their pressure. He gasped as the waves of pleasure fizzled through him, then as the annoying sound of the phone threatened to rain on their parade, snatched it angrily from its cradle. "What?"

"Just wondered if he'd remembered yet."

That was a damned annoying voice. In fact how had he survived his teenage years without anyone killing him? Growling from deep within his chest, Jack said, "Hang up now or I'll tell the NID you know everything I know and as you're only a damned clone no one cares if they experiment on you just for fun."

"Hey, instead of directing your latent hostility at me – who is you, by the way – why don't you…?"

"And why don't you just…?"

No. That wasn't the kind of invitation one should extend to a fifteen year old boy; even if he did have a forty seven year's old consciousness in his head. And anyway finishing that sentence was going to be tricky for other reasons. The urge to moan was almost overwhelming. Daniel had just taken him in even deeper, and was massaging his thighs in a way that seemed to increase every spasm of pleasure from his cock tenfold, like sunlight through a magnifying glass. He had made several half-hearted protests about Daniel not rushing into something he wasn't comfortable with, and although on the whole since his return Daniel had been sweet, affectionate, and apparently convinced that doing what Jack had said had once formed part of his repertory, his stubborn streak was obviously still present and correct. He'd certainly paid not a second's notice to any of the faint sounds of objections Jack had whimpered at him. Some change in Jack's breathing must have alerted the person on the other end of the phone.

"Is he…?"

"Go away," Jack hissed through gritted teeth.

"Just tell me if he's remembered yet?"

Jack felt his body begin to arch, pleasure building, not because of the sensations, although the sensations were incredible, but because this was Daniel, returned to him, whole and alive and doing things he was sure no fluffy cloud could ever have done, and therefore human, and his. His Daniel – remembering with astonishing accuracy and skill exactly how to play the erogenous zones of a now naked Jack O'Neill like a concert violinist handed his favorite Stradivarius and told to extemporize.

"Hang up or I'll shoot you myself," Jack ground out.

Daniel pulled back again to let him teeter from the edge of climax for the fifth or sixth time, giving him a sweet little smile as he did so. As if he too was enjoying doing things it simply wasn't possible for a non-corporeal entity to do. As he did so the unmistakable soft sucking sound of mouth leaving straining head filled the room.

"Hanging up now," the voice on the other end of the phone said quickly. "And… congratulations."

Jack groped blindly for the place where the handset was and replaced it just as Daniel lovingly licked the end of his cock. "Great," he managed faintly. "I get you back from the dead and the first thing you try to do is kill me."

Daniel licked his cock again, gently, and the expression in his eyes was very tender. "Well, I could have told you a hundred times I'm here and real and not going anywhere again, but I definitely remember you being much more of ‘show' than ‘tell' kind of guy. And I'm thinking this is something ascended beings probably don't do."

Jack swallowed. "Not in my experience." He made to lean forward, wanting to touch Daniel as Daniel was touching him but a hand in his chest stopped him emphatically, and he was pushed back down onto the bed.

"I can't let you do all the work…" he protested faintly.

Another look from under those eyelashes that did nothing to dim the throbbing in his happily aching cock. "I'm doing what Mackenzie told me."

"He told you to do this…?"

"To concentrate on the positive memories in the hope of coaxing them naturally back to the forefront of my mind." Daniel breathed gently on Jack's groin. "Now, keep still and let me work on my therapy."

The tongue licked lovingly up his cock again; not even trying to arouse, just fascinated by the sensations and the flavor of Jack's body and Jack's reactions to sensation, and a hundred times more arousing because of it. Daniel was giving him the same kind of attention he gave faded etchings and crumbling ruins; wanting to touch him and taste him and experience him and study him as if he was some new discovery that held the key to the mysteries of the universe. As if he was as fascinating and seductive to that ever-curious mind as a universal language or path to higher consciousness. As if a forty-seven year old colonel with knees that acted as barometers for approaching storms was the most beautiful thing Daniel had ever encountered in a lifetime of studying the secrets of the past, present, and future of the whole swirling cosmos.

"I remember you always used to like it when I did this…" Daniel murmured before opening his mouth again.

And then Jack saw a white glowing light all over again that had absolutely nothing to do with ascension to a higher plane of existence and everything to do with Daniel proving he was not only back but his memory was in perfect working order.

The End