Broken Wing
By JayEm

Take these broken wings
and learn to fly again…

~*~

Life and light sparked off into nothingness, the shattered remains of what had once been something wonderful. Not the greatest thing the watcher had ever known, but close. The concept of human love was difficult enough for the others to understand, that he would return again and again to keep the object of that love safe was nearly impossible for them to fathom.

Didn’t matter really, it was all over now. His love was safe and he could die in grateful peace if that was the price he had to pay to know it.

SG1 had been surrounded easily, too easily, and they’d fought well. Jack had been magnificent, leading the others and taking foolish risks to be sure his team would make it. The others passed through the gate safely, assured Jack would be right behind them, but Jack had seen the second group of jaffa approaching long before his team had disappeared. He’d known when there was still time to ask for help that he would have no chance of following the others into the already wavering event horizon. Only seconds remained before it would close, seconds in which the distance to be crossed - under the eyes and weapons of a wave of fresh and quite angry enemy - might just as well have been the widest canyon. Jack wouldn’t - couldn’t - make it and he knew it.

As the Jaffa advanced, the watcher knew he couldn’t hesitate this time. This time there would be no respite to struggle for Jack’s soul or to send subliminal messages that would bring help; it was much too late for any of that. This time, Jack would die without hope or redemption and they would be separated forever…and contemplating a universe without Jack in it somewhere was simply impossible.

So the watcher moved, pushed against the barrier between where he was and where Jack lay amid cover far too meager to save him. With a single thought the Jaffa were scattered before him in a heap of light and smoke, the power within him centering itself on the weapons wielded with such evil intent. He had never used this power before, though he had been sorely tempted. It hurt…though he had no corporeal form…it hurt so much….

Jack turned toward him, eyes squinting in confused recognition even as the watcher felt the first wave of his punishment, even as he felt himself set apart from the others with a sad, disappointed tolerance. The others had warned him after the last time he had manipulated the rules for what he believed to be the greater good. They had warned him even as they mourned the battle it cost him with his own spirit. So, more in sadness than in anger, they cast him asunder.

Daniel had just enough time to reach out to Jack, acknowledging in a much too brief moment of eye contact that the price was willingly and joyfully paid, then his soul seemed to scatter to the celestial winds and he was falling….

~*~

He was wasting time, but for that one glorious second Jack didn’t care….

It was Daniel. Unconscious on the ground, body drawn into itself in very real pain, but it was Daniel - so warm, so solid, so real…

It was something Jack had never really expected to see again, much less feel under his hands after being rescued at such a cost. Was it frying the Jaffa that did it, or saving Jack? Whatever it was, Daniel was back and Jack had no intention of letting him go anywhere without him again.

Unwilling to lose contact, Jack shifted Daniel around until he could lift the other man’s arms over his shoulder. Hefting his precious burden as carefully as possible Jack stood under Daniel’s weight and carried him quickly to the DHD, dialing one-handed as he kept both of them steady with a hip against the device, Jack had to remind himself to finally breathe again.

It all seemed so surreal…

One minute he’d been preparing to remember the Alamo and the next there had been a flurry of heat and light - and then Daniel was there standing in front of him looking slightly apologetic. For one long moment Daniel had stared at him with a gaze full of things they’d always left unsaid, then he’d keeled over and hit the ground with an ironically comforting and solid thump.

Nothing Jack had done to try to wake him had worked. Though there was no outward injury, Jack was pretty sure something pretty major had happened to change Daniel’s status from ascended energy to flesh and blood literally in the space of seconds. After the last time he and Daniel had met in Baal’s fortress, Jack had a sneaking suspicion the ‘others’ had finally caught up to Daniel and his manipulation of the rules. He could almost sympathize…if Daniel weren’t so pale and unresponsive. Blasting a troop of Jaffa had to be a lot bigger infraction of ascended rules than just whispering a few hints in a few ears to save the life of a friend.

Punching in his iris code proved a to be a fairly tricky maneuver, but Jack never once considered putting Daniel down. No way, not after all this time of missing the man like a piece of his own soul was Jack taking his hands off Daniel until they were both safely home again…and maybe not even then.

And he would get Daniel home, back to Fraiser and, no matter what, this time someone would fix whatever was wrong with him. The person who meant the most to him in the entire universe had just - almost literally - dropped out of the sky to save his ass, Jack would not accept less than a return of the favor.

As the wormhole blossomed and settled, Jack almost wished there was a way he could warn the SGC. No one was going to believe who he was bringing home. Taking a deep breath, Jack tightened his grip on the lean muscled leg and arm slung over his shoulder and headed through the gate. He had no intention of letting Daniel go now….

~*~

Sound, light, cold, pain….

Everything hurt at once yet there was no focus for the pain. His entire world was pain and no part of it would resolve itself into something he could make sense of. His nerves - he had nerves? - were aflame and his heart raced to fuel the fire even higher.

He had fallen; he remembered that much…and he had no idea at the moment if he was alive or dead…

Worse still, he wasn’t sure he cared….

~*~

Fraiser said Daniel was human again, confirming what Jack had known days ago on the planet. He wasn’t in a coma, she said, because he responded to stimuli…and Jack definitely figured screaming at every small touch to be responding. Between them Carter and Fraiser theorized it was like coming back from sensory deprivation. Daniel had been minus a physical body for months…no touch, no sensations, no bodily needs. Suddenly his fragile newborn senses were being assaulted by everything from the slightest breeze to the sound of too many voices raised in elation at his return.

Acting on that assumption, Fraiser had installed Daniel in an isolation room lined with makeshift soundproofing. The lights were dimmed to the bare minimum necessary to tend to Daniel’s needs and the harsh infirmary bed and blankets had been replaced with a tank of shallow liquid kept at body temperature. Daniel floated mostly freely, padded straps in place to keep him from sinking if he should become restless. Muted monitors checked on his internal functions reporting all data to the nurse down the corridor.

Fraiser said the idea was to control the amount of input Daniel was subjected to, and to reintroduce things gradually so as not to shock his senses. It seemed logical to Jack and the results, a peacefully resting Daniel, certainly seemed to bear out the theory.

If he’d only wake up…

Jack refused to leave Daniel’s side. Just as the other man had stayed by him during his torture and seen him safely home again, Jack would not leave Daniel to face his battle alone. Carter and Teal’c came by at regular intervals to help and, Jack had no doubt, drink in the sight of the friend they had thought gone from them forever. Jack smiled a little thinking that it was a good thing someone had thought to drape a light soft towel over Daniel’s groin area or Carter would be getting a much larger drink than was comfortable between two friends. Daniel’s modesty wasn’t exactly their highest priority right now, and goodness knew the cloth did little enough to conceal a damn thing, but Jack knew Daniel would appreciate it later. It was certainly less distracting from Jack’s point of view.

They all talked softly to Daniel, sharing thoughts and feelings of what they’d been through together as a team and what it had meant for them to lose him. All the stored up emotion of the past few months found a focus at last in the still, lean form floating gently on the water in the twilight stillness of the isolation room.

After his own recovery from Baal’s torture, Jack had told them all how Daniel had been there for him. Remarkably enough not one of them had ascribed it to delusion or wishful thinking on his part. It was what Daniel would do, they all knew it, so it was easy enough to believe that he had. Teal’c had shared his belief that something had touched his mind during meditation, nudging him toward the plan that had eventually freed Jack. After Daniel’s little out of phase jaunt courtesy of the giant aliens, they’d talked about the times when Daniel had almost communicated with them…Teal’c during kel’no’reem and Carter down in Daniel’s lab. Both Teal’c and Carter admitted the ‘ideas’ they’d come up with had the same flavor. Communicating in strange and subtle ways was nothing new to SG1.

Word had been sent to the Asgard, Tok’ra and Nox asking for help - the help Daniel had not considered himself worthy of the last time - but as yet no response had come. Fraiser readily admitted she was out of her depth…all she could really do was remove the excess distractions and hope Daniel could reconnect to his body again on his own.

Right now, it was just the two of them, though the night nurse would be along at regular intervals. Carter had stayed while Jack showered, shaved and grabbed a quick bite from the commissary to fortify him for the ‘night shift’. It seemed to be accepted that Jack would stay by Daniel’s side; a cot had magically appeared in the corner within hours of Daniel being moved into the room, and when he didn’t venture out food was sent in. To be honest, Jack didn’t care what people made of it. If he was broadcasting his emotions over the SGC intercom system so be it, he was where he needed to be. Nothing else mattered more.

Sitting now with his chair pulled up to the tank and his head resting on his crossed arms against the rim, Jack studied the quiet face floating only inches from his own. The five-day beard look was definitely something he could get into in other circumstances, but the excess hair only made Daniel look incongruously younger…a potential fetish Jack didn’t even want to think about analyzing because neither of them was young, not anymore.

They’d wasted so much time denying what they had between them. Jack knew he’d been the worst for it, blustering through what he now called his denial days and all round making an ass of himself. Thankfully he hadn’t caused any irreparable damage either personally or professionally - Carter was way smarter than he was, no doubt about it. Still unable to cross the line between what he had always believed himself to be and a man who definitely had the hots for his younger - and quite male - best friend, Jack had held up the ‘for the good of the team’ card for all he was worth. And Daniel had let him. From the moment one look had lingered a bit too long, Jack had known Daniel wasn’t having nearly as many issues with his feelings…but then Daniel was Daniel, eternally accepting of things that were good and right and real. Hell, he accepted Jack; that was a miracle all on its own. He loved Jack, an even greater miracle.

It was a time for miracles. Jack hadn’t even realized it was Christmas Eve until Feretti expressed slightly inebriated glad tidings after asking about Daniel’s condition. The entire SGC was celebrating Daniel’s return, not even allowing that Daniel would not return completely. They believed in him, and in SG1, to make it happen.

Reaching out to tentatively stroke Daniel’s pale cheek above the beard, smiling at the sheer pleasure of being able to touch the other man once again, Jack whispered, “It’s Christmas, Daniel What better time to come home…?”

The cosmic level irony of the time of year and Daniel’s situation didn’t escape Jack. Angels were supposed to earn their wings at Christmas, not break them. While Jack didn’t equate the ascended with the kind of angels the priests talked about, surely they’d both approve of the reasons Daniel had chosen to fall….

~*~

Touch that was no longer pain…soothing, loving…

Somewhere in his now much calmer existence, Daniel realized he couldn’t be dead if he could feel. He couldn’t be dead if he was hearing the treasured voices he’d missed so terribly for so long. One voice most of all, saying all the things he’d never thought to hear.

If he wasn’t dead, neither was he quite alive…he just couldn’t seem to find his way. He wanted to go back, to see the faces behind the voices, to see a certain pair of warm brown eyes look at him with all the love he could hear at last in the rich rough voice as familiar to him as his own….

He wanted to go home…

~*~

The silence should have been oppressive, but to Jack it felt just right. There were only two of them in the room, the sound of the water and the light sighs of their breathing were peaceful and calming. It was an almost perfect moment of togetherness, if only Daniel would open his eyes and recognize that perfection as well.

Jack continued to caress the other man’s cheek; encouraged that Daniel wasn’t reacting as if it caused him pain. It was just a slow tender touch of one calloused finger over the soft skin above the stubbled jaw yet almost erotic in its sheer intensity. Jack poured every bit of the love he felt - and the loss he had known when Daniel was gone - into the simple act of caressing three square inches of skin.

Jack had never been much for prayer, but he did it then. He’d always had a strange relationship with faith. In his childhood, it had been a matter of daily life, the church on the corner the center of almost everything both in and out of his home that he remembered as good. Life in the military had both tarnished and strengthened those early lessons - a dose of reality that left him rethinking a lot of things he’d previously believed - and losing his son had nearly shattered them. But Jack still believed in his own personal way. Considering what he was asking, in light of what the church he’d grown up in believed, he wondered if he should worry about being struck down for even thinking about it. But he’d split from ‘church’ religion a long time ago, and the God he had come to know would never condemn deep abiding love between any two people.

While he knew better than to make deals with God, he wasn’t above making promises. All Jack could promise was to love Daniel, to cherish every moment they were allowed, and to spend that time replacing the many sadnesses of their lives with the kind of joy he knew only love could bring. It was an easy promise to make; it was all he had wanted for years even when he hadn’t known what he wanted at all.

Bowing his head, Jack brushed his lips over Daniel’s forehead sealing his words with all the solemnity of a sacred vow. Sacred and unbreakable, he meant it with all the power and love in his soul.

A droplet of water on his nose startled Jack.

What the…?

Sitting back he saw only Daniel, as he had been for days now, still and unresponsive as he floated in the tank. Jack watched as each steady breath expanded and contracted the lean muscles of Daniel’s chest and stomach. He had no idea where the water had come from but it clearly hadn’t been…

And then he saw it…

The tiniest flicker of movement in Daniel’s fingers, as if he were reaching out for something. Without even thinking, Jack touched Daniel’s hand, grinning like an idiot as the fingers faintly grasped his own.

“Daniel?”

The hand clasped his a little tighter. Though still terribly fragile, it was the first independent movement Daniel had made since he had reached out to Jack on the planet before he’d collapsed. Jack just held on to Daniel’s hand, using the other to cautiously stroke Daniel’s face again, trying in the gesture to bring Daniel back as if his warm fingers could thaw his frozen love just like in the fairy tales.

“Come on, Daniel, it’s time to come home…”

Jack studied the still face he loved more in that moment than he could ever have thought possible. Tears began to swell, threatening to blur what he needed so badly to see. Daniel’s eyelids opened cautiously, as if testing the environment to see if it was going to hurt again. When it didn’t, the eyes opened fully, the clear blue gaze meeting his in blessed recognition that left Jack sighing in relief.

Daniel’s lips moved but no sound came out, Jack supposed it was too soon to expect everything to work just right, but he had a lot of experience at lip reading where Daniel Jackson was concerned…not to mention a little random mind reading.

“H..hommmm…?” It was hardly a breath of sound, but Jack knew what Daniel was asking.

“Yeah, Danny, you’re home.”

A bare nod answered him, a twinge of a smile. Squeezing Jack’s hand again, he asked, “Hoome…?”

The distinction wasn’t lost on Jack. Three was home and then there was ‘home’. Over the past months of a life without Daniel in it, Jack had come to understand his life had been shattered when he’d let Daniel go without a word. He’d been lost in a special kind of hell reserved for fools who gave up the other half of their soul, and the only home their soul could ever know with someone they loved. Without Daniel in his life, Jack hadn’t even been at home in his own skin. He’d functioned, sure, gotten the job done, but half his heart had left with Daniel and nothing could make the pain of it any better.

“Oh, yeah, definitely home.”

A smile twinkled up at Jack as Daniel looked him over as if he were the most interesting thing in the universe. Unable to resist either the twinkle or the need to reassure Daniel in a way that left no room for doubt, Jack bent down to touch his lips against Daniel’s in the gentlest of kisses. A light pressure in return told Jack that more and more of Daniel was waking up and remembering what it was like to possess flesh and bone and exquisitely sensitive nerves.

With a second kiss for good measure, Jack drew back to meet Daniel’s eyes again. A single tear had gathered at the corner of Daniel’s eye and as Jack watched it rolled down into the water below him.

“Daniel?”

They obviously had a long way to go before Daniel was communicating fully again, but Jack recognized the look Daniel gave him now. A look full of the same things he had seen there in those brief seconds of eye contact after Daniel had saved Jack’s life on the planet. Love, joy, peace…no matter what the cost, it would always be a price easily and freely paid. Without making a sound, Daniel was telling Jack how much he loved him.

“Me, too, Daniel…” he whispered. “God, I love you…”

Pressing his lips to the hand he held in his, Jack was well aware that the road to getting Daniel all the way back was only beginning. Daniel had to relearn everything about living in a world full of sound, color, light and sensation from the ground up all over again. But this night - this silent, wonderful Christmas night - was both an end and a beginning….

The sadness and separation of the last year was over; and while Daniel might be a little wounded right now, his wings of ascension clipped and broken, they’d learn to fly again together, each completing the other until they created a whole Jack had no doubt could soar higher than any angel ever dared.

*Fin*