The worst part about the replicator bugs is the sound they make. The high, never ending whisper of thousands of tentacles sweeping the submarine makes the hair rise on the back of his neck.

Eight-legged, mechanical monsters, running swiftly across the cabin floor, metal shells gleaming cold in the harsh light of the tiny camera. He can see them on the screen, hear them moving over the headphone, homing in on their target, hissing and screeching.

And there's nothing he can do to save the beloved body they climb and conquer. He sees the arms that have held him rise in a vain attempt to shield the vulnerable head, legs curling inwards protectively, sees strong limbs stretching out again, trying to reach him through the camera and the vast sea separating them, the beloved face turned towards him, and he can see it in his eyes that this time there is no escape.

And then he crumbles and stops moving, pierced by merciless stabs.

Only the screeching is left. High. Triumphant.

And then—

"Daniel, wake up."

Hands gripping his shoulders. Shaking him.

"Oh God."

"Just a nightmare, Daniel. Just a nightmare."

Over all the parchments of Egypt
I've scrawled my cries and hungers.
One hour of love's worth a hundred worlds—
I've thousands of hearts; here, burn them all.

Rumi

The trouble with these desert planets, Colonel Jack O'Neill thought as he surveyed the mass of red dunes covering the surface of P3X211, was that the sand got pretty much everywhere pretty damn soon.

He suppressed the urge to scratch the offending body parts, directing his attention towards the deserted settlement they had come for instead. It consisted of a row of low buildings grouped around the main attraction, a temple of considerable size. According to their number one archaeologist, Dr. Daniel Jackson, it was also extremely well preserved. Consequently, his team had been assigned the mission to check out the remains of the alien village.

The only one to object to their trip had been his second-in-command, Sam Carter, who had claimed that the planet was plagued with severe sandstorms on a regular basis. "Judging from the meteorological data we have about 211, we'd have only five hours maximum to get from the gate to the village, check out the temple and get back to the gate," she had said, but Daniel had been adamant about the unique opportunity to study the almost undamaged remains of the Babylonian settlement he had made out on the video footage. On the bright side, chances of running into any hostile Goa'uld or Jaffa on the planet were low, as Teal'c had assured him, and Teal'c, being a Jaffa himself, was usually right about these things.

A gust of wind sent a spray of the red sand swirling upwards, prickling the bare skin on his arms as he made his way back to the temple, cursing under his breath. They had been here for almost four hours. The next storm was approaching.

The solution Daniel had come up with regarding their time constraints had been to bring Nyan, his research assistant, along. They'd be able to make most of the limited time they had and Nyan would finally get the chance to work with him off-world. Nyan had joined the SGC only a couple of months before but he and Daniel were getting along fine, as far as Jack could tell, something which couldn't be said about his own friendship with Daniel lately.

He found Nyan filming the inscriptions along the outer wall of the temple. "You all right, Nyan?" he called out, taking off his sunglasses.

Nyan looked up. "Almost done, Colonel."

"Carter and Teal'c still checking out the village?"

"Yes." Nyan shifted his gaze back to the writings. Jack squinted. By no means was he an expert in ancient cultures, but the curious symbols on the wall looked suspiciously like …

"Cuneiform," Nyan said, beaming. "Akkadian. I think it's Standard Babylonian, but it could also be Old Assyrian. I'll have to consult Daniel on that."

"Ah," Jack said. "By the way, where is Daniel?"

"He's going through some of the storage rooms on the second floor of the ziggurat. Do you want me to get him?"

"No," he said. "But we can't stay here much longer. You pack up and wait for Carter and Teal'c. I'll go get Daniel." The wind was picking up, sending pieces of broken pottery hurling along the ground.

He hoped playing with alien artefacts would have cooled Daniel down a little. Daniel had been in a foul mood all morning. Actually, Daniel had been in a foul mood ever since the incident with the replicator bugs a few weeks ago, when Daniel had stayed on base with a burst appendix, and they had saved Earth from a squadron of mean, metallic Lego bugs without him. Something about Daniel had been odd when they had come back, but he hadn't been able to figure out what it was, and then the Lego bugs had made a reappearance on a Russian submarine and, as fate would have it, he'd had to order Daniel none too subtly to blow up the sub with him and Teal'c in it. How was he to know his favourite Roswell alien was going to be back in time and beam them out of the sub at the last minute, sparing him an anonymous grave in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. But since then Daniel had been off.

He finally found him in a small room crammed with fancy objects, staring at a six foot mirror standing in one of the corners. The mirror was reflecting only the objects scattered around the room, not the person in front of it, and Jack winced. He knew a quantum mirror when he saw one, and his previous experiences with them hadn't been too swell. He saw Daniel's fingers twitch and knew what he was thinking about.

"Bad idea," he announced.

Daniel jumped. "Jesus, Jack. I wasn't going to touch it."

"Time's up, Daniel." He picked up Daniel's backpack, which almost spilled over with fancy artefacts.

"Time's always up," Daniel grumbled, reaching for a square metallic box on the table behind him.

"This time it's not my fault," Jack pointed out, securing the straps over a number of clay tablets. He looked up to see Daniel mesmerized by a soft blue light the box was emitting sporadically.

"You think it's wise to touch that thing?"

Daniel scowled at him. "How am I supposed to find out what it is without picking it up and at least taking a closer look?" What he had failed to notice was that the blinking had become faster.

"Daniel, drop it," Jack ordered, but he was too late. A ray of blue light was already creeping up Daniel's sleeve. He tried to grab him, but the result was that the blue light started to scan him too, and then for a moment he thought he did see Daniel in the mirror, but before he could ask him what the hell he had been thinking about, the mirror in front of them flashed once.

She heard them even before she saw them.

"Daniel, that thing flashed."

"No, it didn't."

"Yes, it did."

"No, it didn't."

"Daniel, you're standing with your back to the mirror. Believe me, I saw it. It did flash."

"Jack, what do you have to do to activate a quantum mirror? You have to touch it. Did I touch it? No. Ergo, it can't have flashed."

"Maybe that box is some sort of remote control."

Sam Carter ducked her head to step through the low doorway into the storage room and found the two men glaring at each other.

"Sam, do we look any different to you?" Daniel asked, turning to face her. The lighting wasn't very good in this part of the complex and her main concern was the storm that was approaching.

"I don't think so," she said. "Sir? It's not safe to stay here any longer."

"My words, Carter," the colonel said, grabbing Daniel's backpack. "Dannyboy, we're out of here."

Teal'c and Nyan were already waiting for them at the entrance to the temple. The storm was building outside. She had to put on her sunglasses and breathe through a scarf in order to avoid the sand swirling around. Thankfully, they made it back to the Stargate before visibility became a problem, and Daniel hurriedly dialled up Earth. The wormhole burst forth and they stepped into the blue event horizon, dematerialising, materialising. Amazing. Crossing light years in space in the blink of an eye.

On the Earth side of the wormhole she found Sergeant Siler standing at the base of the Stargate ramp, staring at them, eyebrows raised.

"Nice tan, Dr. Jackson," he said. "Where have you been?"

"Hawaii," Daniel said, unblinking.

"Ever been there, Siler?" the colonel asked, stepping forward. "Nice beaches. Come on, surfer boy," he added. "Infirmary. Wouldn't want to keep Doc Fraiser waiting."

The first clue should have been Fraiser's insistence that his skin was too pale, Jack thought when he finally arrived in his office. Which it wasn't, he had checked that in the locker-room mirror. And he had escaped the Doc and her needles, leaving her fussing over Daniel's skin tone, which was apparently even worse. He agreed with her that Daniel should get out a little more often this side of the event horizon, but Daniel had just returned from a week downtime spent in Egypt visiting some old friends, and Jack didn't think he looked that unhealthy. That had been after he had seen off Teal'c, who had gone through the gate to Chulak for a long-awaited three-day vacation to visit his wife and son.

The kicker, however, came when he discovered that someone had rearranged the furniture in his office. And the weirdest thing of all was the picture hanging above his desk, which had been taken when he had met the President in 1993. It was him all right in the picture, but he didn't recognize the grey haired guy standing on his left. Either he was having a very bad day or they were not in Kansas any more. He prised the picture from the wall and headed out onto the corridor.

Studying the picture, he didn't see the airman heading in the opposite direction until they crashed painfully in mid-aisle. A bunch of folders went to the floor in a rustle, burying the airman underneath it. Jack didn't remember ever seeing him on base before. The kid looked awfully young, dressed in fatigues one size too big, with his short blond hair and smooth unlined face.

"You all right, Airman?" he asked, and the kid nodded.

"Fine, sir," he said in a high voice. "Didn't see you coming. Sorry, sir."

Jack blinked. The kid was actually a woman.

"So –" He searched her uniform for the name tag. "Jones. Want me to help you sort that out?" He squatted down beside her and started gathering up the mess of sheets strewn across the floor. They were covered with formulas and flow charts. Sciency stuff.

"Well, what do we have here?" another female voice said, and Jack looked up to find another officer he didn't know staring down at him, accompanied by one of Fraiser's nurses. The nurse looked vaguely familiar.

"Glad to see you back, Jack," the one he didn't know said, casually looming over him, hands in her pockets. Her brown hair was cropped short, too short for Jack's taste, brown eyes lined with little crinkles twinkling in a handsome sun-tanned face. Alvarez, the name tag on her uniform said.

"Colonel," the kid beside him acknowledged her.

Jack opened his mouth to ask her how the heck she knew his name, but Alvarez had already turned towards the corridor before he had figured out how exactly he should ask that question.

"See you at the debriefing." She turned to the nurse. "Come on, Barbara. Let's get those medical reports over with before the end of your shift. I hear you have a date tonight."

"Oh, I do," the nurse said winking at Jones, who had blushed a deep shade of red when Jack turned to her. "See you at eight, honey."

Jack wasn't sure if he should point out the finer details of Don't Ask, Don't Tell to these ladies, but before he could make up his mind he spotted a familiar redhead around the corner, carrying a welding torch.

"Siler," he called out, relieved. Sergeant Siler stopped, turning to face him.

"You'll manage, right?" he asked Jones and she nodded.

He got up and hurried over to Siler, extending the offending photograph to Siler's inspection.

"Who's that guy in the picture?"

"Sir?"

"Guy standing next to me."

"President of the United States, sir."

"The name, Siler."

Siler looked at him blankly.

Jack sighed. "I know I sound a little odd right now, but there's a very good explanation for this." There had to be. "Just tell me who that guy is."

Siler seemed to consider it, and Jack couldn't help the feeling that this was indeed a very bad day, when the sergeant seemed to have made up his mind.

"Well, sir, in that case," Siler began slowly.

Daniel Jackson tiredly rubbed his eyes, staring once more at the note on his desk in his handwriting he didn't remember having written.

Tell Nyan he was right about the papyrus from P3X244. Definitely Euboean Greek. The papyrus in question lay rolled up beside the note. He had checked it; the note was correct.

It had admittedly only been two days ago that he had come back from Cairo, but jet-lag or no, he was positive he would have remembered discussing the origin of the culture on P3X244 with his research assistant. It appeared as if once again he had stepped into yet another version of his life.

Maybe he really shouldn't have bothered to come back, he thought miserably. Boarding the plane in Cairo, he had been tempted to stay behind, vanish in the hustle and bustle of the Nile metropolis. Or join his friends at their excavation at Al-Bahariya. His only problem would have been how to get hold of research grants, with his ruined reputation in the field.

Then he wouldn't have to go back to the SGC, he had thought, staring out of the window of the 747, as he had seen her vanishing in the distance, Al-Qahira, city victorious, Mother of the World. Back to reactionary die-hards whose only interests in the Stargate program lay in the acquisition of new, even more powerful weapons, who didn't even try to understand that the true potential of a gate to other worlds lay in the exploration, the exchange of knowledge with other races, other cultures. Back to his friends and team mates, Teal'c, Sam, and, back to Jack.

He didn't know when exactly Jack had become more than the best friend he spent his Friday nights with. It had happened gradually, over time, but one day, some time after Sha're's death, following a run in with a couple of Apophis' Jaffa on a planet covered with mist and bogs, when they had finally reached the gate, soaked, covered in mud, the Jaffa defeated, Jack had seized him in one of his bear hugs, burying his face in Daniel's shoulder. "We made it, Daniel," he had said, voice hoarse, and had kissed the side of his neck. He had lost his balance and they had tumbled onto the mossy ground, laughing, overjoyed at being alive, and a beam of light had broken through the fog, illuminating Jack's face, the warm brown eyes, the smile threatening to split his face, and that was when he had known that something had changed.

Maybe, he thought in hindsight, he should have told him just then. Maybe then Jack wouldn't have grown so distant. Instead, he had gone home, revelling in his newfound knowledge, telling himself that he shouldn't rush things, that he should wait and try to find out if there was any chance Jack felt the same. The one thing he hadn't wanted was lose him as a friend. Or maybe Jack knew that something had changed, and that was the reason why the hugs had stopped, why he had become harsh, almost cynical. He hadn't been the only one to notice. "Is it just me or is he playing dumber every day?" Sam had asked him.

Around the time his appendix burst he had decided that he couldn't go on like this, one way or another. Then Jack and Teal'c had been sent on a suicide mission to save Earth from an invasion of the replicator bugs, and all he had been able to do was watch them die. No, that wasn't correct. He had seen the bugs take over the submarine they had been on, had seen them attack Jack and Teal'c, and that had been when Jack had yelled at him to finally launch the torpedo and blow the sub, damnit, before the bugs started eating them alive. So he had done it, and it was only due to Thor's intervention that Jack and Teal'c were still alive. "I hear for once, you did follow orders," was all Jack had said when he had met him back at the infirmary, before Janet had rushed him off for yet another test.

The one guy who had been with him throughout the whole nightmare had been Paul Davis, SGC Pentagon liaison, flown in from Washington to keep track of the replicator threat. So he had ended up celebrating their victory with Paul, at his favourite French restaurant in Colorado Springs. Paul had proven to be charming, attentive, an engaging audience. "I'd really like to meet you again, Daniel," he had said over dessert, holding his gaze. So they had met again, three weeks later, for sushi.

Tonight should have been their second date, for that was what it was, Daniel was sure, at least for Paul. And why shouldn't he take what was offered, he had thought, it had worked before, and he had decided to invite Paul over to his apartment after dinner this time. Maybe he would get one Jack O'Neill out of his mind that way.

Except now it looked like he was stuck in another reality and from what he remembered from the briefing for this mission there were certain time constraints regarding the return to P3X211 to get back to the quantum mirror.

His eyes fell onto the envelope lying on his desk with the pictures he had taken during his week downtime in Egypt. Janet had asked to see them and had given them back to him after the standard post-mission physical. "I'm sure you had a wonderful time," she had said, smiling. "The only thing I don't understand is why your tan is fading so quickly."

Opening the envelope he couldn't help the unerring feeling that he might not find snapshots of Egypt inside. And he was proven right. Instead of Arabic bazaars, brown desert sand and half uncovered ruins he found himself staring at lush rainforests, tropical waterfalls and beaches of black and white sand. From one of the pictures, another version of himself smiled at him, dressed in a white muscle shirt, a bright sarong wrapped around his waist, leaning casually against a palm tree. The sarong looked comfortable, reminding him of the looseness of Abydonian robes. He was surprised to find Jack on another picture, in shorts and a green shirt, against the backdrops of a tree with large, aerial roots. It looked like he hadn't fallen out with Jack in this reality.

He found more pictures of Jack and himself, when he finally came across a sheet of paper stuck between two pictures. Hawaii, our honeymoon, it said, again in his handwriting. Since there was no one else on the pictures apart from him and Jack, there was no question as to who the happy couple was, and he groaned at the impeccable timing of fate, which decided to show him the one thing he couldn't have at the exact moment when he tried to convince himself he would be better off without it.

Another sheet of paper fell out from behind the next picture, which showed abstract stick figures carved into white stone that looked slightly familiar.

He couldn't help smiling, despite himself. Polynesian origin indeed.

The picture he stared at longest was one of him and Jack on yet another beach, the sun low over the horizon, almost but not quite touching the surface of the ocean, Jack's arm draped around his shoulders. The other him and Jack were looking not into the camera, but at each other, and he had to put the picture down with shaking hands.

When the knock at his door came, he was grateful for the distraction. Seeing who entered his office, face stormy, he was not.

"Daniel, what the heck is going on here?"

He noted that Jack was carrying a picture frame.

"Looks like you were right," he said. "This is an alternate reality."

Jack's gaze drifted to the stack of pictures on his desk. The romantic couple at sunset was still on top and Daniel grimaced slightly.

"Our honeymoon," he announced glumly.

"What?"

"Apparently, we're married in this reality."

Jack leaned forward to take a closer look at the picture before meeting Daniel's gaze, wincing.

"Yeah," Daniel said. "What was your first clue?"

Jack handed him the frame. It was a picture he remembered seeing in Jack's office, of President Clinton and Jack in his class A uniform. He didn't recognize the man standing beside Jack in this picture.

"Guy's called Harvey Milk," Jack volunteered.

"Well, that certainly explains a lot," he said, examining the picture closely.

"Daniel?" Looking up, he noticed Jack's mood was not improving. "Care to elaborate on that?"

"Harvey Milk," Daniel began, "was a San Francisco gay rights movement activist, who was assassinated in 1978 – well, obviously not in this reality. He was elected to the city's Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay public official in the United States. He was also instrumental in making the Castro what it is today. Both Harvey Milk and then-mayor George Moscone were shot one year later by fellow supervisor and ex-cop Dan White, who got off with a very mild prison sentence, by the way."

"And that's related to the fact we're obviously – married – here how, exactly?"

"I don't know. You tell me." He wasn't fast enough to save the Greek papyrus the other Daniel had been working on from Jack's inquisitive hands.

Jack studied the evidence that the inhabitants of P3X244 originated from the Greek island of Euboea closely. "I thought I was married to Carter in all those other realities."

"Where I am not even part of the SGC, Sam isn't military, Earth is run over by the Goa'uld, and more often than not you are dead by now," Daniel pointed out, snatching the precious papyrus from Jack's fingers, before he could start twiddling around with it.

"Who's dead?" They both turned to find Sam Carter standing in the doorway.

Daniel sighed. "Sam, we're not who you think we are."

She looked at him blankly.

"This is not our reality," he explained. "The quantum mirror must have exchanged us with the Daniel and Jack from your reality."

"What makes you think so?"

"For starters, we are not married," Jack said, waving a hand between them.

"You're not?"

"No."

"Oh boy," she said, eyeing them warily. "Well, it certainly explains why you're both a little pale."

"Shame you didn't notice that while we were still on the planet, Carter."

"Jack, there was a sandstorm," Daniel said. "We're lucky we made it back to the gate as it is."

"Daniel?" He saw Janet Fraiser turn round the corner into his office. "Do you know where –" She stopped short when she caught sight of Sam standing beside his desk. "Oh, honey, there you are. Cassie called. You won't have to pick her up on the way home. She'll stay over at Gena's tonight."

"Thanks," Sam replied, leaning forward to kiss her lightly on the lips.

"What? You too?" Jack asked incredulously.

"I guess it makes sense in a round about way," Daniel said thoughtfully. Jack's gaze was still riveted on the two women, his eyes starting to glaze over.

"Don't even think about it," Daniel said tersely. "You'd be toast."

"So," Jack said, clearing his throat. "You're …"

"Married," Sam supplied, lips twitching.

"Living with Cassie?"

"Living with Cassie and our dog in a nice suburban house, white picket fence. Nothing special. You were right," she added, turning to Janet. "There is something odd about them. They're from another reality."

"Sam, what about Sha're?" Daniel cut in, experiencing the familiar feeling of both dread and apprehension he remembered from his first missions through the gate, when he had still hoped that maybe this time they would find her. It had been such a long time. He had learnt to rearrange his life without her.

"Yeah, what about Charlie?" He supposed Jack felt the same about his son. At least he had had some sort of closure before Sha're died. He knew Jack still blamed himself for Charlie's death because Charlie had accidentally shot himself with Jack's gun.

"I'm sorry. They're both dead," Sam said. "And I don't want to push anything, but since our debriefing with General Hammond is scheduled for seventeen hundred hours anyway, shouldn't we better take this to the general?"

"Our numerical simulations based on the meteorological data we have indicate that this sandstorm closely resembles the other storms from 211 we've analysed prior to this mission, which means that it will increase in severity before it is likely to lose force," Sam Carter explained to SG-teams 1 and 12 and a slightly exasperated General Hammond in the briefing room fifteen minutes later. If Jack wasn't mistaken, the other people sitting around the solid brown table, with the possible exception of Daniel and Nyan, weren't getting where she was heading either.

"Carter?" he interrupted her mildly.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we won't be able to go back to P3X211 within the next seventy-two hours."

"What about our own mirror in Area 51?" He turned to the general. "Presuming your Daniel Jackson also made the trip through it in your universe."

"We had to destroy it after a different reality Dr. Carter and Major Kawalsky came through from an SGC that had been over run by Apophis," the general said apologetically. "We couldn't take the risk of a Goa'uld invasion from a different reality."

"Yeah, that also happened in our reality," Daniel said.

"So bottom line is, we're stuck here," Jack observed miserably.

"You could do worse, Jack," Alvarez said from her seat opposite him. Carmen. The woman in charge of SG-12 in this reality, the anthropological team around Daniel Jackson. Who apparently wasn't part of SG-1 in this reality. Jack's head was starting to throb.

"And your O'Neill lets his Daniel Jackson go off-world without him?" he had asked Carter incredulously on their way to the briefing room, when she had explained the make-up of his team in this reality. She had grinned.

"He trusts Colonel Alvarez. And one of you had to transfer to another team when you decided to get married. You know the regs." He supposed they were the same in most realities.

"And who's the cultural expert on SG-1 around here?"

She had been surprised by his question. "Nyan, of course. That's why he was with us on the planet. Daniel only joined us so we could make headway with the Babylonian settlement. Isn't Nyan part of the SGC in your reality?"

"Yeah, but we only picked him up a couple of months ago. He's Daniel's research assistant. He's doing fine from what I hear, but he's not Daniel."

"So you never made the first trip to P5X309? We picked him up almost three years ago, and he's been working with Daniel ever since. He doesn't have Daniel's expertise, but it's enough for a first-contact team. He has the same effect on alien races Daniel has. I don't know how they do it, but people instantly trust them."

"I guess it makes sense."

She had suppressed a quick smile. "If you want my honest opinion, sir, our Daniel's happy with SG-12. He can spend more time on digs and anthropological studies than he ever could with SG-1." She had hesitated briefly. "You know, it's good to see that there are other realities where we're not …" she had squirmed slightly.

"Engaged? Married? An item? You can say that again, Carter."

Then they had arrived in the briefing room and had taken their respective seats, and Jack had noted that this reality's General Hammond didn't look any different from his, even though his brow had been deeply furrowed in concern.

"… so the best option for everyone involved will be if we try to send you back to your reality after the sandstorm has abated," he heard the general conclude. "I'm looking forward to a thorough debriefing with both you and Dr. Jackson tomorrow to discuss the effects of differing events in our realities. In the meantime I'm sure your counterparts won't object if you use their offices on base and stay at their current residence in Colorado Springs. Any objections, Colonel?"

"No, sir." Not that they had any real choice there.

Just then Sergeant Siler burst in on the debriefing. "Sorry to interrupt you, General, sir. President Goldberg on the phone in your office, sir."

"Gentlemen," the general said, rising from his chair. "I hope you have a pleasant stay at our SGC. The debriefing tomorrow will be at eleven hundred hours. Dismissed."

"President Goldberg?" Daniel asked, pushing back his chair.

"Yes," Alvarez said. "She's been President since 1997."

"She?" Jack asked.

"Whoopi Goldberg," Carter explained, picking up her folders. "Granted, she's our first female President."

Jack's mind was whirling. "The actress?"

"Well, we've had Ronald Reagan," Daniel supplied helpfully, blinking at him, eyebrows raised.

"Thank you, Daniel."

He's fire
I'm oil
This smoke you see around him
Is me

Rumi

"Now I have to admit this is weird," Daniel said as they arrived at Jack's place. Jack dropped his keys beside the latest issue of The Advocate lying on the dining-room table. Both his living room and the dining area were lined with more bookshelves than he remembered ever putting there, and the walls were covered with fancy stuff he had seen in Daniel's apartment.

"Even my seventeenth-century Spanish rapier is here," Daniel said excitedly, walking up to the couch in the living room, inspecting the impressive piece of armoury hanging on the wall. "And the Minoan worship vase."

What made the scenario even more surreal was that the furniture looked entirely the same as in his own living room, the couch, arm chair, the coffee table. Stepping up to the fireplace he noticed that the photographs were not exactly the same as the ones he kept there. A picture of Charlie was prominent among them, Charlie in a green T-shirt holding a baseball bat, smiling into the camera. He had the same picture on his mantelpiece. It had been taken shortly before Charlie's eighth birthday.

But beside it an equally prominent picture stood, showing Daniel in a cream coloured sweater, arms crossed in front of his chest, leaning against a tree. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and was thoughtfully looking into the camera.

"Jack, this is amazing," Daniel said, and he turned to find Daniel sitting on the edge of the couch, bent over an open tome. "Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were never assassinated in this reality. Robert Kennedy became President in 1969 and was reelected in 1972. Martin Luther King became President in 1981, followed by Harvey Milk in 1989."

There were other photographs on the wall above the mantelpiece, ones he didn't recognize either. Daniel and him in hiking gear in the Rockies. Daniel and him in front of his cabin in Minnesota. Daniel on a camel in the desert. And finally one with Daniel in a black suit and him in dress blues, arms around each other, heads close, and no one had to tell him what that picture was about. It left him slightly nauseous, just the way the wedding picture the non-military Carter had shown him with her O'Neill had, and he wondered briefly if there was some crazy reality where a different reality Teal'c kept a wedding picture of them both on one of those medieval mantelpieces on Chulak.

"You realize that this means they‘ve never had Watergate. Nixon and Reagan never became Presidents here. They will have had someone more capable dealing with the AIDS crisis, and have you noticed the number of women and people from various ethnic minorities in this reality's SGC? They must have come a long way in issues of discrimination and hate crimes compared to us. Jack, are you listening?"

"Amazing, Daniel, no doubt." Jack turned to slide open the patio doors, letting in a light breeze of wind and the scent of freshly mowed lawn.

"Jack?" Behind him, the volume popped shut.

"Just checking if at least my backyard looks the same in all realities." He stepped outside.

His lawn stretched out towards bushes and trees just the way he remembered. Only the fence separating his garden from the next-door neighbour's was gone. He had never been close with the couple who lived there in his reality. He stepped out onto the grass when a basketball came flying his way, followed by a wiry ten-year-old boy, who abandoned his search for the ball the minute he saw him, running towards him and throwing his arms around Jack instead.

"Eddie, Eddie, they're back," the boy called out. Eddie was the name of his neighbour, if he remembered correctly, and the boy was Eddie's son. He remembered him from his reality. He had tried to talk to him on a number of occasions, but the boy had shied away every time.

"Is Daniel back, too?" the kid asked, beaming.

"Yes, he's inside," Jack said, deciding that playing along was his best option right now.

"Oh, can I come over later, Jack?" The kid was dragging him towards the line of bushes separating the two backyards, picking up the discarded basketball.

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," he said, sidestepping the twigs of hazelnut bushes. On the other side of the greenery he found another kid waiting under a basketball hoop attached to the side of his neighbour's house – boy or girl? Boy, he decided after a minute of hesitation, in spite of the short denim dress the kid was wearing.

"Ben, what's taking you so long?" the other boy called out, arms crossed in front of his chest, impatiently tapping his foot on the soft grass.

"Jeff, look. Jack and Daniel are back from Hawaii," Ben said excitedly. "And I'm going to sleep over at their place tonight."

"Wait a minute. Who said that?" Jack felt that the situation was getting slightly out of hand.

"You did. Before you left."

Before he could tell Ben that, unfortunately, things had taken an unexpected turn, Eddie stepped out onto the porch.

"Hey, the honeymooners are back," he called out. "How was Hawaii?"

"Hello, Eddie," Jack said. "Why don't I tell you about that another time?"

"You know I'm dying to see the pictures. And tapes. You made tapes, right?"

"You should talk to Daniel about that."

"Oh, I will," Eddie said. "By the way, is it okay if we set you up with Ben tonight? Nick and I have this birthday party we'd like to go to. Darlene's out of town, and basically, you're our last resort."

"I hate to disappoint you, but tonight is really not convenient, Eddie," Jack said.

"But you promised I could sleep over once you were back," Ben whined, hugging him, burying his face in Jack's shirt.

"Well, I guess if I promised," Jack said weakly.

"Thanks so much, Jack." Eddie sounded relieved. "We really appreciate it. We'll send him over after dinner."

Jack had been thrilled that his favourite pizza parlour also delivered in this reality, which accounted for the fact that he was currently wolfing down his last slice of pizza with relish. Daniel, who had made himself comfortable on the couch with a bottle of beer, reached for the remote, deciding the opportunity was perfect for a little cultural exploration. He switched on the TV and CBS came on with a news report.

"… AIDS was first discovered in the early eighties," the reporter said, "when right-wing activists tried to dismiss it as a disease of the gay male population, where it seemed to occur predominantly. However, it was soon discovered that HIV is a potential threat to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation or desire, and the Department of Health and Human Services launched a public information campaign in 1983. Today, with the help of a number of cocktails of potent drugs, HIV infection and AIDS have become for the most part manageable diseases, especially since the development of antiretroviral drugs with less side effects and the introduction of the new class of fusion inhibitors, approved by the FDA in the early nineties. A reliable AIDS vaccine is expected to become available within the next five years. HIV infection still remains a problem in third world countries, where, due to its high cost, highly active antiretroviral therapy is still not available to large parts of the infected population."

"Did you know that President Reagan didn't use the word AIDS in public until 1987," Daniel said. "That's two years after Rock Hudson died of it." Jack's attention was still focused on food. Daniel switched to another channel.

A black haired woman came into view, clad in what he supposed went as Roman or Greek battledress in the minds of Hollywood producers. "Oh, Gabrielle," the female warrior sighed, gathering a fragile woman with long red hair into a passionate embrace. "I have never loved anyone as much as I love you." The embrace became an even more passionate kiss, until the camera changed focus and moved to a full moon glittering in the night sky, pale orb mirrored on the smooth surface of the Mediterranean Sea.

"I don't remember ever seeing anything like that on mainstream American TV," Daniel said, "but maybe that's because I don't watch much television any more."

"You were the one who stopped coming over on Friday nights, Daniel," Jack pointed out.

That had been part of his ‘finally-get-over-Jack-and-maybe-get-a-life' plan, which obviously had failed miserably. "I know."

The sound of the doorbell saved him from having to elaborate on that.

"Ah, yeah," Jack said, getting up. "Daniel, we have an overnight guest, the kid from next door. His name's Ben."

Sam still didn't quite know what to make of the two men from another reality. At least the general had taken the news of the accident with the quantum mirror rather well. He had been amused rather than shocked by the whole affair, if she read him correctly. During the debriefing they had established that none of the parties in the wrong realities would be able to gate back to P3X211 within the next seventy-two hours, and since the other colonel and Daniel didn't appear to pose an imminent threat to their world, the General had decided to let them go off base. He hadn't refrained from informing them that open displays of affection were not regarded as appropriate behaviour between men in their current surroundings, and were in fact likely to get their counterparts into serious trouble, which in turn had confused the heck out of the other colonel and Daniel. In the end, Sam had agreed to take the other Daniel to Daniel's apartment in town before meeting up with the colonel and Janet at the colonel's house.

"So, did you unearth any well hidden secrets at the other Daniel's apartment?" the colonel greeted them as he stepped back from his front door to let them in.

"Well, he seems to have a weird sense of dress," Daniel said, putting down his overnight bag, leaning forward to drop a kiss on the colonel's lips. "Hi, Jack. Janet."

Sam didn't miss the amused twitch of Janet's lips or her appreciative glance as she watched Daniel strip off his jacket, taking in the black shirt and tight-fitting denims, the only items from Daniel's wardrobe that had met this Daniel's approval.

Apparently, the colonel hadn't missed her reaction, either.

"Just don't," he said, "tell him how cute he is. It will only go to his head. He's had them running after him since grad school. It used to be the same off-world. Goa'uld goddesses, alien princesses, bounty hunters, destroyers of worlds, you name ‘em, all they were interested in was how to get into his pants."

"Not true." Daniel glared.

"So?" Janet asked.

"So I've left him in the capable hands of Colonel Carmen Alvarez of SG-12."

"I transferred to SG-12," Daniel said, "in order to spend more time on excavations and the studying of alien cultures. And last but not least to marry a certain jealous, overprotective Air Force colonel who turns out to be an ungrateful bastard."

"Hey, babe. I didn't mean it like that."

"Of course you didn't."

"Come on, Daniel. That's not fair."

"Maybe we should go into that some other time. We have guests, you know."

"What do you think of them?" Janet asked her two hours later, fastening her seat belt as Sam pulled out of the colonel's driveway onto the main road. "They're not really so different from our guys, are they?"

"It's still weird to see them act as a couple," Sam said. "I'm not really surprised about Daniel, but I have to admit the colonel comes as a bit of a shock."

"Because you didn't think he might swing both ways?"

"Something like that." She had to slow down at a red light.

"Have you ever been with another woman, Sam?" Janet asked.

She glanced over at her, but Janet's gaze was fixed on the traffic lights beyond the car window.

"No."

"Not even curious?"

"No."

"From model cadet at the academy to model Air Force officer straight away?" The lights changed to green.

"Well, have you?"

"Yes," Janet said. Sam changed gear and put down her foot on the accelerator.

"The first time was while I was still in college," Janet said. "Melanie Brooks. We had a pretty wild time. Then there was Diane Richmond in med school. She moved back to the East Coast after her exams and we somehow lost sight of each other." She smiled. "Best of both worlds, Sam."

"You never told me."

"You never asked."

They drove on in silence until Sam reached the junction to Janet's street. Janet turned to face her, eyeing her speculatively.

"Hey, Sam," she said. "Do you have anything planned for tomorrow night? I could fix us something to eat and we could spend a nice evening at my place, maybe watch some tapes."

"Sure. As long as Cassie and her friends don't hog the TV all night like last time."

Ben had accepted their somewhat feeble explanation that they had caught a weird bug at work and might act a bit strange, but it was nothing serious and it would pass, without further ado. And he had been the one to suggest a game of chess.

"Last time I played with Jack I won," he said, beaming, as Daniel arranged the pieces on the chess board. They had decided to set up the board on the dining-room table, leaving Jack to his own amusement with his bottle of beer in the living room.

"I let you win," Jack announced from the direction of the couch. "And you won't stand a chance against Daniel. He's too smart for his own good."

Ben ignored him, opening the game by moving a white pawn two squares forward.

"So, what did you learn in school today?" Daniel asked, following suit with one of his own pawns.

"Did you know there was a time when women were not supposed to wear pants or men skirts?"

Daniel smiled. "I guess that's hard for you to believe."

"I don't really like wearing skirts," Ben said. "But Jeff does. And Ms. Fisher told us about the Native American two-spirited people."

"Oh, really," Daniel said, surprised.

"Yeah. They have a male and a female spirit." The second white pawn found its place alongside its companion. "They learn they are that way in dreams and visions. In ancient times a two-spirited girl would learn how to fight and hunt with the men of the tribe and later marry another woman. And a two-spirited boy would wear women's clothes when he had grown up and maybe become a great shaman or healer. They were highly respected in a lot of nations. The other people of their tribe thought they had great spiritual powers because they were both male and female."

"And they teach you that in school?" Jack said. "Amazing."

"Not everything is as black and white as our culture would have it, Jack," Daniel said, jumping over his line of pawns with one of his knights. "Take for example the Sambia, a tribe living in the Eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. They recognize three sexes: male, female and kwolu-aatmwol, which roughly translates as ‘male-like thing transforming into masculinity'. They have a comparatively high incidence of children born with a deficiency in a certain type of enzyme, which makes them appear female at birth, but in fact they do have male genitalia which develop later in puberty when the testosterone kicks in. It's just our Western culture that tries to pin down every individual at birth as unambiguously male or female."

"The things you know, Danny."

Jack's voice was low from the living room. The soft snore coming from the direction of the couch two minutes later told them that he had fallen asleep.

He didn't wake up until they had almost finished the game. Daniel supposed that was just as well since Ben proved to be a bright kid, and it took him some time to finally checkmate the white king.

"What did I tell you?" Jack said, stepping up to them, bleary eyed.

"But it was close," Ben protested, and he was right. "Jack, can I have some ice cream?"

"I'll see what I can do," Jack said, taking off towards the kitchen.

Daniel set out to arrange the discarded chess pieces in their correct order, shivering despite the warm evening breeze wafting in from the open patio doors.

"You're cold," Ben said, noticing the goose bumps on his arm. "Why don't you put on Jack's sweater?" He pointed to a worn-out black sweater draped over one of the chairs.

"All right, we have chocolate, vanilla fudge and strawberry," Jack called from the kitchen. "Daniel, you want chocolate?"

"Yeah." He picked it up. His Jack had a similar one. He supposed the other Jack wouldn't mind.

"Ben?"

"I'm coming." Ben jumped up eagerly and rushed off towards the kitchen. "Can I have vanilla fudge and chocolate?"

"Sure." He heard the slide of a drawer opening and closing. Third drawer from the right; that was where Jack kept the cutlery in his reality.

"Is Daniel's illness contagious?" he heard Ben ask in a hushed voice. He dropped the sweater over his head.

"No. Why?"

It was warm.

"Because you haven't touched him all evening. You touch him all the time usually."

And smelled of Jack.

The door to the freezer flapped shut. "A couple of things happened at work, kiddo."

Jack sounded odd, he thought. Strained.

"And no, I can't tell you or I'll have to shoot you. But give it a few days and we'll be the old and boring Jack and Daniel you know."

He got up from his chair, picked his way down the few steps into the living room and settled slowly on the couch.

"You're not boring. You're just weird sometimes."

"I know. Listen, why don't you take this to Daniel? I'll be there in a few."

When Ben had safely put down the two bowls of ice cream on the coffee table, he jumped onto the couch and burrowed into Daniel's side, glancing up at him and smiling.

"I'm here, Daniel," he said.

"It's not as if we hadn't shared a tent before off-world," Jack said, staring at the king-sized bed in his bedroom. "Right? And we had to set up the kid in the spare room."

Looking around the room, Daniel noticed that it didn't differ much from what he remembered about Jack's bedroom. An additional wardrobe lined the wall adjacent to the bathroom, and a single bookshelf had been mounted onto the wall above the headboard, featuring an impressive number of volumes.

Drawing back the comforter, Jack froze. "Couple of newlyweds, huh," he said. "Maybe I should change those sheets." He turned to open the top drawer of the dresser standing beside the bed.

Daniel stepped up to the nightstand on the right, inspecting the books lined up above the headboard. He couldn't help smiling as he discovered the battered copy of The Joy of Gay Sex wedged between Fishing Minnesota and Hockey's Best Shots over what was apparently the other Jack's side of the bed. His side of the shelf consisted mostly of old issues of Current Anthropology and the American Journal of Archaeology, a few volumes of Camus, Sartre, and Arabic poetry. The Diwan-i Shams-i-Tabriz, Rumi in the Persian original, Hafez, Abu Nuwas. Nothing too surprising really. "Yeksaa'at-e eshgh, sad jahaan beesh arzad," he murmured under his breath, tracing a finger along the familiar volumes. "Sad jaan befadaaye aasheghi baad, eyjaan."

It had been wonderful to be back in Egypt, meeting up with old friends, even if it had been only for a week. "Daniel Jackson, secretive as ever," they had said, teasing, but there was no way he could tell them his dig sites tended to be on the other side of the galaxy these days.

He took off his glasses, placing them onto the bedside table. Fiddling with the strap of his watch, he noticed Jack still hunched over an open drawer, rummaging through its contents. "Guess those are yours," he said gruffly, and a pair of pyjamas came flying his way. The silk material was cool beneath his fingers, the fabric a deep shade of blue, reminding him of the glazed bricks of the Ishtar Gate of Ancient Babylon.

He unbuttoned his pants and stepped out of them, folding them neatly over a chair. A muffled curse from Jack had him turn around, and he found Jack fighting with an uncooperative bed sheet, scowling at him.

"Daniel, will you give me a hand here?"

He dreamed about the replicator bugs again that night. They were everywhere, burrowing their metallic legs into Jack, killing him. And he was sitting in some stupid make-shift control room, an eternity away, watching him die. He dimly registered that Paul was there, touching him, trying to talk to him. But there was nothing to talk about. Jack was gone.

"Daniel." Someone was jerking his shoulder. "Daniel, wake up."

Daniel prised his eyes open, groaning. He was lying in a strange bed, blanket tucked up around him. He could make out the silhouette of another body against the pale moonlight filtering through the curtains.

"It's okay, Daniel. Just a nightmare." He would never have thought he'd be so relieved to hear Jack's voice again. If only the shivering would stop. He tried to crawl deeper into the blanket.

"What was it about?"

"Bugs," he said shakily. "Replicator bugs. And you, on that sub." The shivering became worse. He tried to keep his teeth from chattering.

"Daniel?"

"It's okay. I'm fine," he said, but his voice sounded tiny, from far off, and he bit his lips.

"Oh, for crying out loud. Get over here, Daniel."

The mattress shifted, and then Jack's arms were around him. He turned to him, pressing his face into the hollow of Jack's neck, inhaling the familiar mixture of sandalwood, sweat and underneath it, the unique scent of Jack. He couldn't remember the last time Jack had held him like that. And then the sobs started to break through, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"It's okay, Daniel. We're here. We're fine." Jack rocked him gently.

"They were all over you, and there was nothing I could do."

Jack's arms tightened around him. "I know."

"And then you stopped moving and there was only static."

"Daniel, I'm here. You have to let go of that nightmare. That's not the way it happened. Thor beamed me out of there, right?" He clung to the reality of Jack's warm body, safe and sound and familiar beneath him.

"You told me to blow up the sub. You told me to blow up the sub with you and Teal'c in it."

Jack sighed and Daniel could feel his chest rising and falling underneath his head.

"Our mission was to prevent those bugs from taking over the world. I had no choice," he said tiredly. "That's our job these days, and you know it."

Daniel knew, and it didn't make things easier. But the low rumble of Jack's voice and the lazy circles Jack was drawing on his back were finally taking their toll, and he felt some of the tension leaving his body.

"Why don't you just go back to sleep?" Jack suggested, but he didn't release his hold on him, and Daniel felt himself drift off to sleep again, despite himself, resting his head on Jack's chest, listening to the steady, reassuring beat of his heart.

Today, you pulled me to you secretly
I grew wild, broke my last chains.
I am thousands of drunks together, not just one,
Mad, in love with all madmen.

Rumi

It was a bright sunny morning up on Cheyenne Mountain, the air crisp, still slightly chilly, but it was bound to warm up quickly. Unfortunately, his workplace Earth-side lay several hundred feet under ground.

Daniel followed Jack into the elevator going down to sublevel 28. He tried not to think of the embarrassing incident this morning when he had awoken to Jack's voice and had found that he had been humping Jack's leg in his befuddled state of mind. "It's not as if I were not terribly flattered, Daniel," Jack had said, but Daniel had heard the ‘but' and had fled to the bathroom and a cold shower. Neither one of them had mentioned the incident again. Instead, they had eaten breakfast, seen Ben off to catch the school bus, and had driven over to the SGC in silence.

The elevator stopped on level 23 to let Lieutenant Graham Simmons in.

"Morning, sir, Dr. Jackson," Simmons said, and the elevator doors slid shut.

"Lieutenant," Jack said, looking Simmons up and down, a cocky grin on his face. Simmons blushed to the roots of his dark hair. What Daniel couldn't quite work out was if Jack's behaviour was somehow related to the unfortunate incident this morning or not.

He retaliated in kind when, stepping out of the elevator, he caught sight of a nurse he recognized from his own reality, a woman with the most beautiful complexion he had ever seen, a warm golden note underlying her dark, chocolate brown skin. "Morning, Barbara," he said with his most winning smile. "Nice to meet outside the infirmary for once."

"I can't really say we don't miss you, Daniel," she said. "But you're right. We haven't seen much of you since your transfer to SG-12."

When he turned round, he found not only Jack but also another female officer scowling at him.

"Hello, Jones," Jack said. "This is your girlfriend. Do something."

"Not yet, Colonel," the female officer countered. "And he's your husband."

"It isn't fair on the nurses," Jack complained, dragging him away from the two women further down the corridor. "They all have a crush on you anyway. Don't encourage them."

"And what were you trying to prove with Simmons?" he asked, frowning.

"Just wanted to make sure I still had it," Jack said, grinning. "See you at the debriefing, Daniel."

It admittedly did make sense to compare notes on where various SG teams had been in various realities, Jack thought as he sat in the briefing room listening to Carter explaining the current situation with the Tollan, Tok'ra, Asgard and other alien races in this reality. Not that they had found many differences. Their realities seemed to be pretty close as far as intergalactic diplomacy and the fight against the Goa'uld were concerned. And so far Daniel had been doing most of the talking, which had left him some leisure to follow his own musings and indulge in his favourite pastime, Daniel watching.

Daniel's flawless skin was still nicely tanned from the beaches of Maui, cerulean blue eyes shining under incredibly long eyelashes as he passionately explained the anthropological implications of their various encounters with alien cultures.

"We were able to help out the Tollan with a few powerful herbal remedies from P3X101," he said, expressive eyebrows raised. "They had been looking for mind-altering drugs for some sort of religious ceremony; they weren't very specific about the details."

P3X101. Warm water lapping at his body. A light wind caressing his skin, sending the hair on his chest tingling pleasantly. He relaxed into the drowsiness, decided there was no need to open his eyes, welcomed the veil which had cast itself over his mind, past and future mingling into a blur.

Rich, perfumed air filled his nostrils, unlike any fragrance he had ever smelt before. And then the water became more animated, the sound of rhythmic ripples telling him someone was approaching. He was not surprised when fingers brushed his thighs in a feathery brief touch and warm hands came to rest on his chest and stomach and began to play lightly with his chest hair. The scent, he knew the scent of the other, but couldn't quite place it, overburdened as it was with the fragrances in the air and the strong sweet scent of the purple berries he had eaten before he had decided to take a swim in the warm waters of the shallow lake on the seemingly uninhabited planet.

Something wet and warm flickered over his chest, searching and finding a nipple, and he groaned. The other chuckled lightly, and the tongue left the nipple and moved further down, dipping into the hollow of his navel, tracing the tender skin on the junction of leg and torso, until warm breath ghosted over his cock. He felt himself harden and stirred slightly, lifting his leg to give that incredible tongue better access. He must have groaned again, because he felt a strong arm gripping his shoulder reassuringly, grounding him, before the tongue began to trace the length of his cock and he shivered. It never left him, teasing him, warm lips closing around the tip, and he bucked into the touch, only to be restrained by a strong grip on his hips.

"Easy," a familiar voice murmured, Daniel's voice, he registered dimly, and his hands searched him out, finding hard muscles under taught skin, gliding over an arm, biceps, strong shoulder, over a lobeless ear onto a soft stubble of hair, and he tried to guide the head down again towards his groin.

"Now," he said, but his voice came from far away. Daniel laughed softly but obliged, and wet heat closed around his cock, moving up and down, releasing him in favour of the tongue lapping at the head, one hand moving further down to cradle his balls, before the mouth closed around him again, taking him all the way in and he groaned. The world started to spin when he felt his balls draw up, and knowing he was going to come he screamed his release.

He heard the sound of a body moving through water when he became aware of his surroundings once more. Cool hands turned him over, gliding over his back, moving down to part the cheeks of his ass, and he felt Daniel's tongue pressing against his hole, hot and insistent. He felt something slick pooling down his crack, before Daniel entered him, stretching him wide, felt Daniel's skin cool against his back as he gave in to his urgent thrusts.

"Mine," Daniel growled as he came shuddering inside him.

Rolling over onto his side, opening his eyes, he became aware of the red bird-like animal hovering above them in the alien sky. It was looking down on them, poised motionless in midair, bright wings shimmering, illuminated by the light of an alien sun.

What are you doing? it seemed to ask.

"We call it love," he explained to the creature.

"Colonel?" Slight exasperation was colouring the general's voice.

"Sir?" he said, coming back to the harsh reality of the SGC briefing room, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, Earth. Shifting in his seat to accommodate the growing hard-on in his pants, he caught Daniel's knowing smile. "You haven't been to P3X101? I highly recommend visiting that planet, sir. Nice vegetation. Wildlife isn't too bad either. Your people will have a blast."

It turned out this SGC's anthropology department had considerably more staff than his own, Daniel discovered to his delight. Apart from Nyan, Robert Rothman and a few of his other research assistants, there were quite a number of people he didn't know. One of them was Brian Silverberg, with whom he was currently sitting at a desk in the anthropology lab. Brian was a linguistic anthropologist, slightly younger than Daniel, who had joined the SGC shortly after the second mission to Abydos. They were discussing the culture from P3X244, the one the papyrus Daniel had found on his desk the day before originated from.

"Are you sure the script is authentic Euboean?" Brian asked him, brushing his arm lightly as he reached for the alien text. "Couldn't it be also the Euboean variant carried over to the Italian peninsula and subsequently adopted by the Etruscans and Romans?" He caught Daniel's gaze, smiling.

"We should check that," Daniel said, "but I think it's a fairly early style, so it's more likely that the people living on P3X244 originate from Euboea itself."

Brian was sending out signals, but Daniel wasn't sure if he was coming on to him or if the people in this reality simply had a different understanding of personal space from what he was used to. Not that he didn't welcome this kind of attention right now, he thought, steering his chair towards Brian's in order to take a closer look at the papyrus once more, accidentally brushing Brian's thigh with his own in the process. Brian grinned.

Looking up, he found Carmen Alvarez standing in the doorway, arms crossed in front of her chest, watching them amusedly.

"How's it going, kids?" she asked, casually walking over to them.

"We're doing fine," Brian said. "Daniel says the people from 244 probably really originate from Euboea."

"And if Daniel says so, that's how it is."

"Yeah, usually," Brian said.

"Aren't we lucky to have you then." She winked at Daniel, before resting a hand on Brian's shoulder. "Ready to head home, honey?"

"Sure. Just give me a minute, babe."

"Excuse me," Daniel said bewildered. "You two are an item?"

"Yes," Carmen said. "Why?"

"I thought you were … Never mind."

"What? Gay?" she asked. "We don't really think in those categories any more, Daniel."

"Then you've come a long way."

She shrugged. "Maybe we have."

"Since you brought it up, Daniel," Brian said, gathering his notes. "Are you involved with anyone in your reality?"

"It's not as if I hadn't had my share of relationships with men and women, believe me," Daniel said. "But there hasn't been anyone since Sha're died."

"But there's someone you have in mind?" Carmen asked.

"Well, yes. But things are slightly different where I come from. The question is not what I want but what I can have."

Carmen shook her head. "That's bullshit, Daniel. The question is always what you want."

"Okay. So I want Jack."

"And what does Jack want?"

"I don't know. He was trying to come on to Graham in the elevator this morning."

"Unfortunate choice," Brian muttered. "Or rather, fortunate probably."

"Graham has had a crush on Jack for years," Carmen explained.

"That's funny," Daniel said. "I swear he has a crush on Sam in my reality."

Brian grinned. "Maybe he has a thing for authority figures."

"Look who's talking," Carmen said, affectionately tousling his hair.

"I know."

"No, I think the whole trip is just a major ego boost for him right now," Daniel mused. "Now it's not just the women on base getting all worked up over him but also the guys. Or so he thinks. I guess that's one way of coping with another reality."

"How did I end up going shopping with you guys?" Cassie asked, shaking her head as the automatic doors to the Chapel Hills shopping mall slid open.

"Your mom's busy?" Jack suggested.

"We were going to the mall anyway," Daniel said. "The other Daniel needs some new clothes. Are you sure he's not bigger than me?"

"He always wears clothes two sizes too big," Cassie said, dragging them towards Dillard's, "whereas your shirt …"

"What?"

"It clings."

"Jack?"

"Looks okay to me."

"Thank you, Jack."

"Any time, Daniel."

He had never seen Mr. O'Neill at the mall before. The trouble was, Mr. O'Neill had obviously seen him, and what was worse, he had seen him with Jeff.

"Over here, Jeff. They won't find us behind the table." Ben crouched down low and watched Jeff hurry over to him.

"That was close," Jeff said, falling down beside him. "Can you still see them?"

Ben slowly raised his head and peered over the stack of T-shirts in front of him. He ducked down low again quickly when he spotted Mr. O'Neill casting a searching look in their direction from the shop entrance. "We'll just have to wait it out," he said.

The first memory he had of their scary neighbour was when he had seen Mr. O'Neill smashing a car window with a hockey stick shortly after they had moved to Colorado Springs three years ago. His dad had stepped up to the dining-room window looking out over their neighbour's drive. "What is the world coming to these days," he had said, shaking his head. "You stay away from that crazy man, Ben, you hear me?" When he had looked up again his dad had already turned back to the kitchen. "Darlene, how long does it take to actually cook a steak? I have an appointment at five-thirty." The other thing Ben remembered about that day was the bluish bruise on his mom's face below her left eye from when she had run into a door.

"You think it's safe to go back out there?" Jeff asked beside him. He carefully raised his head, but noticing the familiar outline of Mr. O'Neill's friend at the entrance, he pulled back quickly. "Not yet."

Ben actually liked Mr. O'Neill's friend with the glasses. He used to stop by Mr. O'Neill's house every Friday night. Sometimes he waved at Ben, looking out of the dining-room window, and sometimes, when his dad wasn't home, Ben waved back. But a few weeks ago, the visits had suddenly stopped.

"You think he's going to tell your dad?" Jeff asked, tugging at his shirt.

"God, I hope not."

"I still don't understand why he doesn't want us to meet. Just because I have two moms instead of a mom and a dad. It's great to have two moms!"

"I don't get it either. At least we have Aunt Sally."

"Yeah. When's she gonna pick you up?"

"Four-thirty."

When Ben checked the shop entrance for the third time, Mr. O'Neill's friend was gone.

"I swear it was Ben," Jack said emphatically, catching up with Daniel in front of Foley's.

"Right. But obviously he doesn't want to talk to you," Daniel said, frowning. "He looked downright panicky, not to mention Jeff."

Jack stared back to the shop entrance behind which Ben and Jeff had vanished. "Daniel, I don't like this. Maybe I should talk to Eddie about him."

"Jack, you can't. Something's wrong, I agree. But this is not our reality. You can't interfere. You don't know what caused him to react that way in the first place."

"Damnit, Daniel, that kid is unhappy."

"Look, if it makes you feel better, write a letter to the other Jack," Daniel suggested. "Maybe he can do something about it."

Jack bristled, opening the front door of his house. Even the appreciative looks he had been getting from two sergeants — male sergeants — when he had checked out of the mountain hadn't been able to improve his mood. If Daniel had waited another half hour they could have left together. Instead, when he had come back from his last meeting with the general, he had found a note on his desk saying Carmen was taking him home early and he shouldn't go looking for him on base when he was done. The note hadn't specified if ‘home' meant Carmen's place or Jack's place, which frankly had pissed him off. Not that he had anything against Colonel Alvarez in particular, but he still had a hard time imagining the other O'Neill letting his Daniel go off-world with other SG teams permanently.

Draping his leather jacket over the hall stand, he noticed the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. At least that meant that Daniel had been talking about his place. Grabbing a bottle of beer out of the fridge, he walked over to the living room and plonked down onto the couch. He took a swig and switched on the TV, surfing the channels, but he didn't find anything that held his interest. Looking down at his street clothes, he decided it wouldn't hurt if he changed into something more comfortable.

On his way to the bedroom he passed the bathroom and found the door slightly ajar. Daniel was still showering. He was just reaching for the door knob, when he heard a moan coming from inside.

He shook his head, grinning. The decent thing to do would be to close the door, let Daniel have fun, and tell him later that on some days, colonels got to leave the mountain early too.

But Daniel moaned again, and he found himself opening the door another inch, peering inside. Daniel was standing inside the shower stall, water running down his nicely toned body, back towards Jack, stroking himself. What he wasn't prepared for was that Daniel also had two fingers up his ass, and he felt himself grow hard watching Daniel fuck himself. It didn't take a conscious effort on his part to step inside and shuck his clothes. He hesitated briefly in front of the shower stall, opening the glass door. Daniel froze.

"Daniel," he said hoarsely. He watched Daniel's hands abort what they had been doing and move up to the faucet, turning off the constant drizzle of water.

"Jack," Daniel said, and he could see the blush spreading across Daniel's neck. He stepped up behind him, pressing his groin into Daniel's butt, arms coming round to close around his chest, hugging him tight, and Daniel groaned.

"Can I…?" he asked against his neck and Daniel nodded.

"Condoms?"

"Bottom shelf of the wall cabinet," Daniel said. "That's where I found the lube."

It didn't take him long to find a package and he tore it open, rolling the condom over his dick. Stepping back into the shower, he grabbed the bottle of lube Daniel held out to him, coating his dick with the silky liquid. He guided himself into position, pressing inside Daniel's body until he was buried balls deep in Daniel's ass. Daniel was incredibly hot and tight, head falling back against his shoulder, groaning. He had barely started pounding into him when Daniel came, clenching around him. He sped up, thrusting harder until he could feel the climax building, and he came inside him, moaning and cursing. He was still trying to catch his breath when Daniel moved and he pulled out. Daniel turned round to face him, eyes dazed, tongue flickering over his lower lip, shit-eating grin threatening to split his face. He was aware of Daniel's gaze never leaving his body when he turned on the water, and he hurried up, casting one look back at him as he left the shower stall, left Daniel to clean up alone.

The water streaming down his body was warm, soothing, a wet caress. Opening his eyes, he watched the spray hitting the creamy tiles, saw the cubicle fogging up. His very own hammam, he thought as he leaned against the tiles, giddy with joy, light-headed, slightly sore – it had, after all, been awhile, he thought – and he felt it bubbling up, felt it streaming out of him.

And then he saw him, saw the dervish whirling, biyaa biyaa dildaar-e man dildaar-e man; saw him twisting and turning, oh come, my beloved, tumbling and swirling, round and round. Oh come, oh come! You are the soul of the soul of the soul of whirling! Oh come! You are the cypress tall in the blooming garden of whirling! And he joined him, laughing; the whirling, see, belongs to you, and you belong to the whirling. What can I do when Love appears and puts its claw round my neck? I grasp it, take it to my breast and drag it into the whirling. And he leaned into the spray, breathless, exuberant.

Stepping out of the shower stall, wiping the fog off the mirror with a towel, he found himself looking at his own reflection, smiling, eyes shining. Not exactly seduction as he had planned it, but it seemed to have worked.

He found Jack in the living room, sprawled on the couch in front of the TV, beer in hand, staring numbly at a long distance phone call commercial.

"So," Daniel said. "What was it like?"

"What?" He saw him reach for the remote, surfing the channels until he found a sports commentary.

"Fucking your best friend?"

"Good."

He wondered if maybe he hadn't acted on his feelings any sooner because he had seen it coming all along.

"And does this change anything?"

"Hell, Daniel," said the love of his life, "we both needed to get laid."

He was glad he had taken the time to dress completely after the shower as he blindly reached for one of the jackets draped over the hall stand.

"Those Friday nights," he said, pausing at the front door. "I never came for hockey, Jack."

Cassie found a dejected Daniel Jackson standing on the front steps of their house when she opened the front door.

"Hi," he said. "Can I come in?" It had to be the other reality Daniel Janet had told her about who had come through the gate with another reality Jack.

"Sure. But my moms are out."

She opened the door wide to let him in. His eyes were red rimmed, and there were shadows under his eyes, she noticed as he passed her.

"Everything okay?"

He smiled weakly. "Not exactly."

But he didn't say anything else as she led him into the living room. His gaze drifted from the open slide doors leading out into the garden to her bare feet.

"I was outside," she said. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Water would be nice."

"Sam's out on a run with the dog," she called from the kitchen, pouring him a glass of water from the fridge. "And Janet's at the SGC. Night shift."

Daniel was gone when she came back. Stepping out into the garden she noticed him standing on the lawn gazing up at the big willow tree with her old tree house just visible through a mass of leaves. She handed him the water and slouched onto a garden chair.

"Thanks." He sat down on one of the other chairs lining the round plastic table.

"Do you still go up there sometimes?" he asked her, pointing at the weathered structure.

"Yeah, it's nice."

Jack had built the tree house the year after she had come to Earth from Hanka. "With a tree like that in your backyard you gotta have a tree house," he had said. "That's another Earth rule for you." She had loved it, nestled as it was between solid branches, hidden from sight by a mass of silvery green leaves that rustled when a light wind came up. It smelled fresh up there, green, an earthy tang she remembered from her early childhood. Sometimes she still went up there, in the night, when you could see the stars blinking through the roof of leaves. And she would end up wondering what might have happened if Sam hadn't brought her to Earth, if Sam and Janet hadn't adopted her right away, if she had grown up in another culture, on another planet. Or maybe, she thought, as she stole a glance at Daniel perched on the edge of his chair, in another reality.

"Is it weird, stepping into another version of your life?" she asked him.

"I'm getting used to it," he said with a wry smile. "Jack isn't coping too well."

"What happened?"

He stared into his glass. "We had a fight."

"About what?"

He looked up at her, eyebrows raised. "I'm not sure I'm supposed to tell you."

"Why?"

"Because you're …" He bit his lip.

"What? Too young?" She leaned forward in her chair, scowling. "I'm not a kid, despite what you may think, Daniel Jackson from another reality."

"No, I guess not."

She reached for her cocktail glass on the table, remembering what Janet had said last night. "They may not be married, but they surely act as if they were. I don't get it." She couldn't shake the feeling that that was part of the problem. "I'm probably more experienced than you are," she added, sipping at her virgin Pina Colada.

"Right."

"Don't look at me like that. I'm over the age of consent."

"And that would be?" He sounded tired.

"Fourteen." She had forgotten that it might be different in his reality. "What's it where you come from?"

"Now that depends," Daniel said, brow furrowing. "In some states it's the same for everyone, sixteen in a couple of states, eighteen in California. Then there are states like Nevada where it's sixteen for opposite-sex partners and eighteen for same-sex partners. Fourteen states still have anti-sodomy laws. So does the military."

"What kind of logic is that?"

"Don't ask me."

If that was also part of the problem, and she guessed it was, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened.

"So, you had sex," she guessed.

"Yeah,"

"And?"

"There is no and. That's the problem."

She watched a butterfly dancing among the flowers of jasmine and heliotrope shrubs, settling on the blue drooping clusters of wisteria flowers twining around the porch railing. It fled when a gust of wind sent the leaves swirling, sent sweet vanilla fragrances wafting across the lawn.

"How about you?" Daniel asked. "Are you seeing anyone yet?"

"Did Sam tell you about Gena?"

"Your girlfriend?" He shook his head.

She sighed. "It's actually more complicated than that. You know Dominic? We went on a camping trip in Pike National Forest, like, four months ago, Gena, me and Dominic." She drew up her legs under her chin. "Let's just say a couple of things happened and we've been together ever since."

Daniel blinked. "A threesome?"

She shrugged. "Just don't tell my moms or Jack, okay? Any Jack. There's only so much a fifteen-year old girl can get away with, even here."

So Daniel was sulking. Big surprise. Jack stared at the collection of video tapes piled up beside the VCR. But Daniel was smart. Sooner or later he'd figure out that one hot number in the shower wasn't going to change anything between them. He'd come round eventually. He always did.

Surprisingly, it looked as if at least one O'Neill in the universe had finally gotten round to watch Star Wars. He decided it wouldn't do any harm if he'd be the second one. He popped the tape into the VCR, grabbed his beer and settled down on the couch.

The shimmering, blue-green surface of the sea came into view, followed by a quick blurry swirl before a stretch of white sand came into focus, populated with people, set against palm trees. Not the beginning of Star Wars, if he ventured a guess. It looked more like someone's home video, ‘someone's' being the operative word. He considered switching the VCR off again and picked up the remote, when the camera aborted its sway along the beach and zoomed in on two gorgeous blondes applying sunscreen to each others' immaculately tanned skin.

"Well, lookee here," a familiar voice said off screen, and Jack recognized as his own, even though it sounded different, slightly higher, from the way he knew it.

One of the blondes raised her head and said something to a broad-shouldered, lightly tanned guy behind her. Jack squinted at the screen, but the faces remained a blur. The guy shook his head and shrugged apologetically.

"Daniel, what are you doing," screen Jack grumbled, and Jack squinted again because he hadn't recognized the guy as Daniel.

The camera followed Daniel making his way through the cluster of people, colourful towels and surfboards. He was carrying two ice-cream cones, sunglasses tucked on top of his head, chest and nicely toned pecs glistening with perspiration. He jerked his head following the shrieks of a bunch of kids jumping over the waves in the surf, the wind ruffling his short hair. Completing the turn, he revealed a strong muscular back slightly red from a sunburn almost healed, grey Speedos hugging the perfectly round butt tightly.

"Damn, how did I get so lucky," screen Jack said, and Daniel turned again, speeding up and smiling into the camera.

"They didn't have double chocolate. You'll have to make do with regular, Jack."

"Fine by me, Daniel. I'm not the chocolate addict around here."

Daniel's tongue flickered over the chocolate head of his ice cream cone. Blinking into the camera, he proceeded to lick away the lines of melted ice cream trickling down the cone. Jack felt the roof of his mouth go dry.

"Daniel, I love you," screen Jack blurted out.

"Thank you. I love you, too, Jack. Now put down the camera and eat your ice cream before it melts all over my fingers. Not that I'd mind terribly if –"

"Daniel?"

"What?"

"Shut up and get your cute butt over here."

"Oui, mon colonel."

Jack sat on the couch a long time after he had turned off the TV. His first thought was that if the raging hard-on he was currently suffering from was anything to go by he was in deep shit.

His second thought was where the hell did Jack O'Neill keep the booze in this reality.

He found the whiskey in one of the side cabinets. A green bottle, three quarters full. Laphroaig, Single Islay Malt Scotch Whisky, the label said. He didn't bother to look for a tumbler, but took the bottle over to the couch, opening it and sniffing at the contents. A peaty, iodine scent met his nose. He took a swig, wheezing at the strong oily liquid burning a fire down his throat.

Outside the wind was picking up, sending branches of the rowan trees flapping wildly. He watched the clouds gathering in the sky, taking swigs from the bottle, wondering, some time later, how much time had elapsed, when the room had darkened and the bottle become half empty. He briefly considered if he should stop drinking, but decided against it. His gaze travelled to the line of photographs on the mantelpiece, slowly drifting in and out of focus.

Charlie was waving at him from his frame. Look, Daddy, and he waved back, hand faltering when he saw Daniel beside Charlie shaking his head, smiling sadly. That's not going to solve anything, Jack. And Jack looked away, remembering the last time he had got stinking drunk, on a planet light years away, understandably, since he had already been stuck there for three months, and had finally come to realize that no one was going to come to his rescue anytime soon.

Edora hadn't been bad, but he had missed the SGC, and he had missed his team. Carter with her brilliant mind, always overanalysing the situation; he was sure she'd have found a way to unbury the gate if she had been in his place. Teal'c, whom he trusted with his life, in spite of the snake the big guy was carrying around in his stomach, and Daniel, alternately annoying little shit or best buddy to hang out with. Most of all he had missed Daniel's wide-eyed wonder. Daniel would have been thrilled by the way the Edorans had started from scratch after their means of living had been destroyed by meteor showers. A simple culture, but warm people, Laira, Garan, Paynan. Daniel would have felt at home with them, he was sure, like he had felt at home on Abydos. He looked at the whiskey bottle in his lap, tearing at the label with his fingernail. Hell, he simply had missed Daniel.

Did that mean there was a side to his relationship with Daniel that had escaped him until now? He wasn't sure any more. Not after the incredible sex he'd had with Daniel in the shower. All in all it figured that there would be some reality where he and Daniel got it on, he supposed, in spite of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, not to mention the no fraternization rules.

He took another swig, cursing the quantum mirror with its doorway to other realities, showing him versions of his life he didn't want to see. Why couldn't the damn mirror have taken him someplace nice? Someplace where there wasn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? You're a witch, Daniel, he thought, what have you done to me?

He looked up when he heard the first rolls of thunder approach. Outside the light was fading quickly, flashes of lightning illuminating the darkening sky. It would start raining soon. An incessant bang against the side of his house had him get up, cursing. He staggered towards the patio doors.

A powerful gust of wind hit him as he slid open the glass door. The earth swayed as he walked in the direction of the recurring sound, stumbling in the dim light of his backyard. His last thought was that maybe he should have brought a flashlight, before something hit him on the side of his head and everything went black.

Sam Carter's evening at her friend Janet's place had started out with a cocktail of orange juice, apricot brandy and gin, served on crushed ice; and one of Janet's home-made vegetable lasagnes.

Not paradise, but close.

It turned out it was just the two of them since Cassie had a sleepover. The dinner conversation proved to be one of the strangest conversations with Janet she had ever had.

"I haven't been exactly lucky with guys since I got rid of that husband of mine," Janet said, sipping at her glass of Chianti.

"My track record is not exactly something to write home about either," Sam had to admit.

"A fiancé who goes dark side on a primitive planet and tries to play God."

"I don't know what I ever saw in that guy."

"Potential alien boyfriend number one who unfortunately belongs to a civilization that doesn't want to share knowledge with us because we're not advanced enough."

"Narim, right? He did keep the cat I gave him as a farewell present."

"Potential alien boyfriend number two who goes by the name of Martouf and who, due to his Tok'ra nature, shares his body with symbiote Lantash, and you can never be sure if what he sees in you is really you or not his long lost soulmate Jolinar."

"Come on, you have to admit he's nice. The only trouble I see with a Tok'ra boyfriend is that the Tok'ra are so damn secretive about everything."

"And is it just me or are you getting a little hero-worshippy about the colonel lately."

"No, I'm not," she protested.

"You do realize there is a pattern there. You have a tendency to go for men you can't have."

"And?"

"I don't know, Sammie." Janet smiled mysteriously. "Maybe you've been looking in all the wrong places."

"You mean, like, a guy here on Earth?" she said. "Well, I guess there's always Graham Simmons. Daniel says he worships the ground I walk on."

"No." Her smile deepened. "I mean the wrong gender."

"You're kidding."

"Maybe what you're looking for is something entirely different. A woman."

"Janet!"

"You have to admit it makes sense."

She guessed it was only natural that they ended up on the living-room couch, both slightly drunk, her head in Janet's lap, when Janet started stroking her hair.

"You're a very beautiful woman, Sam," Janet said, and kissed her.

She didn't quite remember how they made it to the bedroom, but she remembered the soft curve of Janet's body under her searching hands, her long brown hair lightly tickling her skin, and Janet's radiant smile as she felt her hands moving between her legs, opening her, felt little ripples flushing through her, strong ocean current carrying her along, gaining force, until she climbed on top of the wave and let it carry her towards the shore, unstoppable, breaking at the point of highest energy, white foam coalescing, mingling with the salty air, breaking once more against the sand, finally rolling out onto the shore in soft waves.

Maybe she had arrived in paradise after all.

'Come to the spring garden,' they said,
'Its air is song; you can't hear the crow.'
In my soul there lives a marvellous painter
Who paints on each crow-feather a thousand gardens.

Rumi

Jack woke up disoriented, head throbbing. Room spinning slightly, he recognized the white sheets of a hospital bed. The racket someone was making nearby was ringing in his ears and he groaned. Blinking against the bright light of the room, he found Daniel sitting beside his bed leafing through a brochure. Daniel looked up.

"You all right?"

"I've been better." He rubbed tired eyes. "What happened?"

"You don't remember? There was a thunderstorm last night. Eddie and Nick saw you stumbling around in your backyard. You got hit by a loose plank from the observation deck. They said you went out like a light. When they couldn't find me in the house they called the ambulance and phoned Sam and Janet."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I was at Janet's place, and technically, I'm your next of kin."

"Ah."

Daniel smiled briefly. "They took you here and did an X-ray and a CAT scan of your head, but they didn't find anything. Apparently you were lucky, minor concussion, nothing serious. The fact that you were unconscious for so long is apparently for the most part due to the amount of alcohol they found in your bloodstream. It might also be the main reason for your headache right now. What have you been drinking?"

"Scotch. Something beginning with L. It was good."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Anyway, Janet says they'll probably release you in a couple of hours, so we can return through the Stargate on schedule." Daniel returned his attention to the brochure in his lap.

Jack looked down at his hands lying on the white covers. "Listen, about what happened last night –"

"No, it's okay. You don't feel the way I do. I understand that. I'll get over it, eventually."

"Daniel, you don't understand squat."

"What?"

Jack sighed. "It's not the thought of you and me … How do you think it would affect the team if you and I … if there were an ‘us'?"

"Maybe it would be better for all concerned if I transferred anyway."

"Daniel?"

"What? Are you saying there could be an ‘us' if I wasn't part of SG-1? I'm civilian, in case you haven't noticed. You're not the only one paying special attention to my security. Sam and Teal'c do that, too."

"Technically, you're still under my command."

"No, I'm not. Technically, you're my boss."

"That's the same goddamn thing."

"Listen, from what Sam tells me, this reality's Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson got together while both were still on SG-1. It's against regulations, I know. Sam says she thinks the general knew, but turned a blind eye as long as the team functioned as a whole. Which it apparently did. They only decided to make the whole thing official after the incident with the ruptured appendix and the replicator bugs. It wasn't until then that one of them had to transfer to another unit. That isn't an option for us anyway." Jack groaned.

"So how's your head?" Daniel asked, turning over a page in the magazine he was reading.

"Fine. My head's fine." Jack rubbed his face with both hands. "What'cha got there?"

"It's a brochure on how to adopt children. Sam gave it to me. Apparently the other you and me are considering adopting a child once the other you retires from active duty. It sounds good. I'd do it if I were them." He looked up. "Did you ever think about having another child after Charlie?"

Jack evaded his gaze, focussing on the creamy white of the ceiling instead. "When I was stuck for three months on that planet with the meteor showers, Edora, there was this woman, Laira. She wanted another child and I didn't know if you were ever going to find a way to get through to me. So I slept with her, once. The day after that Teal'c came through the Stargate."

"And you never wanted to go back to find out if she had become pregnant?" Daniel asked.

"I think I'm better off not knowing," he said. "If I knew I had a kid I might want to stay there, except I don't think I could do it. I kinda missed Earth there."

"Yeah, no pizza, no hockey, no Simpsons reruns on TV, not even Sam or Teal'c or –"

"Daniel, the guy I missed most on that planet was you."

"Oh."

"So, you think this thing between us might work?" he asked, risking a glance at Daniel's face.

Daniel frowned. "You're really serious about this?"

"Yes," Jack said.

He saw Daniel searching his face for a moment, before Daniel slowly nodded and he felt Daniel's hand close around his on the bed cover. "We could give it a try." He was looking at him, gaze unwavering.

Daniel's hand was warm in his. "Okay," Jack said.

And that was that.

Daniel listened to Jack's breath evening out, just audible over the low voices floating in from the corridor, studying the familiar outlines of his face, the lines now smoothed out by sleep and exhaustion. A face that told the story of a lifetime of covert missions, of battles on alien worlds, lost and won.

No joy have I found in the two worlds apart from you, Beloved. Many wonders I have seen: I have not seen a wonder like you. Seven hundred years, and so little had changed. You didn't get to keep Shams, Rumi, he thought, but I got to keep Jack.

"Yes," he called out softly as someone knocked on the door.

It was one of the nurses. "Hello," he said. "Is your husband still asleep?"

"He woke up about half an hour ago," Daniel said. "We had a little conversation. I think we're going to be fine."

The ray of light filtering through the drawn curtains wouldn't leave her face, touching her, filling her whole body with warmth. Sam stretched languorously, burrowing deeper into the crumpled satin sheets, blinking. The other side of the bed was empty.

She turned over, listening to the sound of running water coming from the adjacent bathroom and couldn't help smiling. She felt light, for once at one with the universe. Any universe, she thought drifting back to sleep, an infinite number of universes.

The soft clinking of china woke her up next. Opening her eyes, she saw a tray resting on the mattress beside her, filled with croissants, fruit salad and two steaming mugs of coffee.

"Hi." She found Janet looking down on her, dressed in a silk bathrobe, smiling hesitantly. "How are you?"

"I've never been better," she admitted, sitting up.

"So my theory was right?"

"Your theories are always right," she said, watching the way the sunlight changed the colour of Janet's hair from chestnut to auburn to cinnamon.

"Coffee?" Janet asked, brown eyes shining.

"Daniel, drink up. At this rate we're never gonna make it to the SGC on time."

"I wasn't the one to suggest we shower together in an effort to conserve water," Daniel said, glaring at Jack.

"Ah, yeah. That probably didn't work."

"I'm positive that didn't work. And that may also be the reason why we're fifteen minutes behind your assiduously worked out breakfast schedule," he went on, sipping at his second cup of Colombian dark roast. If Jack thought making out in the shower at seven-thirty in the morning was a good idea, he'd have to live with the consequences. Jack groaned.

"You know, there's one thing I'd still like to know," Daniel continued unhurriedly. "Where is Carmen in this reality? She's obviously not part of the SGC."

"Ask Davis."

"Paul is here?"

"No, he's back in Washington. But I ran into him on base yesterday. He's pretty much the same guy we know. I'm sure he can track her down," Jack said, eyes pleading.

He reached for the coffee pot once more.

"Honey, can't you drink your third cup of this magic stuff on base?" his husband asked exasperated.

"Bye, Sam, Janet," Cassie called out, grabbing her backpack and the overnight bag, hurrying for the front door.

"Young lady, you haven't had breakfast," Janet called out.

Sam smiled over her buttered toast. That was the Doc Fraiser tone that had half the SGC personnel scared stiff. Apparently not one Cassandra Carter Fraiser.

"I'm not hungry."

"What's the hurry?" Sam asked, curious.

"Gena's picking me up in exactly two minutes."

"Is it okay with Sandra and Mark if you're staying over at Gena's again tonight?" Janet asked, pouring herself a cup of green tea.

"They're at a conference in Chicago over the weekend."

"Oh, are they?"

"Yes. What is this? The Salem witch trial?"

"Honey, we just want to make sure everything's fine," Sam said as she heard a car honking outside.

"That's it," Cassie said. "I'm off."

Sam watched Janet get up and walk over to the front windows, drawing back the curtains to reveal a red convertible pulling up on the curb. She caught a glimpse of Dominic on the back seat and saw Cassie hop in on the passenger side, leaning over to kiss Gena on the cheek, before the car took off, wheels screeching.

"You think she's ever going to tell us about her little ménage ŕ trois?" Janet asked.

Sam stepped up behind her, putting her arms around her waist, breathing in the sweet mallow scent of Janet's hair. "She thinks we'd be scandalized if we knew."

"I still remember the day you brought her to the SGC," Janet said, leaning back into her. "We thought she was a living time bomb. A twelve year old girl."

"She's growing up, Janet."

"Not our little girl any more."

Sam smiled, holding her wife tight. "She'll always be our little girl."

It was a tired Paul Davis that greeted him on the other end of the line, when Daniel called Washington from his office at nine-thirty.

"Hi, this is Daniel Jackson, the other Daniel Jackson," he said. "We somehow missed each other yesterday."

"Hello, Daniel," Paul said. "I had to take an earlier flight back. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes. Can you find out the whereabouts of one Colonel Carmen Alvarez?"

"Sure," Paul said. "Give me a minute."

Daniel picked up a pencil lying on his desk and started doodling around with it.

"Who is this Carmen Alvarez in your reality?" Paul asked.

"She's the team leader of SG-12, the anthropological team I'm on," Daniel said. "Apparently, she isn't part of your SGC." He supposed she might be in another part of the Air Force in this reality.

"I was supposed to meet the other Daniel the night you came through the gate," Paul said conversationally.

Meet, Daniel thought, as in a date? "And?" he asked carefully.

" We've only met twice," Paul carried on. "And I'm not sure what will come of it anyway. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm just convenient for him right now to finally get over someone else."

"Is he that obvious?"

"No, but I was there with him on the Russian sub. He was pretty obvious to me."

He considered telling Paul that one of the things he had found in his tour of the other Daniel's apartment was a stack of snapshots of Jack. It had been in one of the nightstands, along with a photo book of male nudes in duotone. He was sure there hadn't been any pictures of Paul. Then he decided that the other Daniel would have to sort out his love life on his own. Besides, it was probably not safe to go into details on official phone lines anyway.

"Ask him," he said to Paul. "He'll tell you."

Silence fell between them, before Paul finally found something.

"There she is," he said. "Carmen Alvarez. But she isn't part of the Air Force any longer. Discharged on account of homosexual conduct in 1989. Current residence Burlington, Vermont. I'm sorry, Daniel."

"Is that what they do with gay personnel in your Air Force?" Daniel asked, disbelieving.

"Unfortunately, yes. Things have changed somewhat since 1989, but not much, not enough. Has anyone told you about Don't Ask, Don't Tell?"

"Sam mentioned that policy. To be honest, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

"It's kind of schizophrenic. But we do have a couple of support groups for gay people in the military."

"I guess that's at least something."

"Yes," Paul said. "Sorry about your friend."

"You're not the one to blame."

"Do we know each other in your reality?" Paul asked.

"Yes, you're our Pentagon liaison, pretty much like here. You were also a guest at our wedding." He winced. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No, it's okay," Paul said. "It was nice talking to you, Daniel."

"Thanks."

"When are you scheduled to go back through the gate?"

"Three p.m. our time," Daniel said. "That's fifteen hundred for you military people."

Paul chuckled. "Listen, say hi to the other me when you get back."

"I'll do that."

"See you around, maybe?"

"Probably not. But thanks, anyway."

"Any time."

"Teal'c, what are you doing here?" Jack called out when he spotted the familiar outline of his favourite alien at the base of the Stargate ramp, dressed in one of the brown robes they wore on his home planet.

Teal'c slightly inclined his head. "I have just returned from Chulak. General Hammond has informed me of the unfortunate turn of events."

"Ah, there's nothing like a nice vacation in a different reality," Jack said pleasantly. "How's your wife and kid?"

"They are fine."

"You know, I don't understand why you don't bring them here," he went on. "I mean, in my reality, there'd be NID morons all over them the minute they got here, but these people seem kinda cool with different lifestyles."

"Drey'auc does not wish to leave Chulak," Teal'c said solemnly. "She says it is her home world even if it is currently ruled by false gods and she intends to raise Rya'c in his culture. However, if I am willing to join the Tau'ri in their fight against the Goa'uld I am welcome to do so."

"That's tough luck."

"Indeed."

He watched Carter and Daniel emerge from one of the side corridors, talking animatedly.

"… and you're sure you've got everything you brought with you?" Carter asked Daniel.

"Yes," Daniel said, stepping up to them. "Hello, Teal'c. Nice to see you. I'm afraid it's also good-bye."

"It is good to see you, too, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "I am certain Major Carter will inform me of everything that has occurred."

"Don't worry, Teal'c. I will," Carter said before she turned to Jack. "Sir." She saluted him smartly.

"Major."

He watched her throwing her arms around Daniel.

"Bye, Sam," Daniel said, smiling sadly.

"Bye, Daniel. Take care."

This time the air hovering over the red dunes of P3X211 was motionless.

They were already waiting for them, sprawled on the steps leading up to the second floor of the temple. It was more than surreal. Jack's step faltered.

The other Daniel's head was resting in the other O'Neill's lap and his counterpart was slowly stroking Daniel's hair.

"You're late," the other O'Neill said, squinting at them.

"But you've made it." The other Daniel smiled, getting up and walking over to them. "So, you are us."

"Yes," his Daniel said. "Amazing, isn't it?"

The other Daniel came to a halt inches in front of him, hesitantly reaching out his hand, and lightly tracing his Daniel's lower lip with his thumb. "Oh, but I am beautiful," he said and, leaning forward, kissed him.

Jack felt Daniel stiffen beside him.

"Don't tell me you never wanted to do that," the other Daniel said, drawing back.

"Actually, I've thought about it," his Daniel said. "I just never thought I'd get the opportunity to do that sort of thing."

"All right, that's it," the other O'Neill cut in, scowling at his own Daniel. "Show's over. I don't do the sharing thing. Not even with another version of yourself." He took his Daniel's arm. "You," he said to Jack, turning back, "better keep an eye on that one."

"It's obviously your Daniel who needs looking after," Jack protested.

A smile lit up both Daniels' faces at the same time.

"God, don't you just love it when they go all alpha male?" the other Daniel said. "It's such a turn-on." To his great astonishment he saw his Daniel blush beside him.

He cleared his throat. "Daniel, I think we're needed elsewhere."

Turning back one last time from the top of the stairs, he found the other Daniel staring after them, an enigmatic smile on his face.

"There's nothing like spending a nice quiet evening in your very own backyard," Jack said, drawing up a deckchair. Daniel was already unfolding the second one.

"With nice company," he added, reaching for his glass on the pavement, "and my favourite Irish whiskey."

Contented with his work, Daniel lowered himself onto the chair, wincing slightly.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Jack grinned smugly. Oh, the joys of being in love. A colonel in the U.S. Air Force, forty-seven years old, bad knees, and he still had it, as last night had proven. And this morning. And this afternoon. He most definitely still had it. Even the dull ache currently residing at the base of his spine couldn't take anything away from that.

Daniel shot him an angry glare. "There's no reason for you to start gloating. I wasn't the one screaming down the place last night."

And who knew Daniel had such a talented tongue. The twenty-three plus languages should have been a clue, but still. He raised the whiskey tumbler, marvelling at the warm amber tones of his beloved Bushmills swirling around two ice cubes. Life was good.

"You know," Daniel said, nestling comfortably into the deckchair, "if this were a TV show and we were just characters, this would be a good place to stop. Leave it at the happily ever after and skip the actual relationship part with the endless arguments we're bound to have."

Jack smirked. "Oh, I don't know. They'll make for great make-up sex."

"I'll get back to you on that." Daniel closed his eyes, beautiful face turned upwards to catch the last rays of the evening sun.

"So, Dannyboy," he said, taking a sip of the spicy, mellow liquid, wallowing in its sweet tang of fruit and oak before it pleasantly burned down his throat.

"Yeah?"

"The TV show. What kind of music would you choose for the final credits?"

"I think that's fairly obvious," Daniel said, smiling, and started to hum a familiar tune.

Jack sat there watching him for a long time.

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true …

Notes: Many thanks go to Ali and Sharon, who did a wonderful job betaing this piece. Note that the story was written before the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling from June 26, 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, that U.S. sodomy laws are unconstitutional. For an overview of the legal situation of GLBT people worldwide go to ilga.org and lambdalegal.org.

Finally, the Persian lines Daniel quotes when he discovers a volume of poetry by Rumi in the other Jack and Daniel's bedroom is a transliteration of the Persian original of the last two lines of the poem which precedes Part One. A more literal translation reads: An hour of love is worth more than a hundred worlds— / Let a hundred lives be offered to love, O soul. The translations of Rumi I have chosen are by Andrew Harvey, who calls them recreations rather than translations.

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, the Sci Fi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions, and probably a whole bunch of other people. I do not own the characters and indeed am only playing with them for a little while. I am not making any money from this and I'm still paying for everything I own so there's very little point in suing me. No copyright infringement whatsoever is intended. The story is for entertainment purposes only. At least I hope it's entertaining. The original characters, situations and story are mine. Please check with me first if you want to archive or link to this story.

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