The Other Side of Reality
sequel to Back to
Reality by
Setcheti
Disclaimer: I
don’t own them, won’t even try. ;) No infringement to the copyright holders of Stargate SG-1 and related characters intended, this story
is for entertainment only and no money was made by the author.
Jack plopped down on his couch, feeling the worn springs sag accommodatingly under his weight but not being comforted by it like he usually was. He dropped his head into his hands, wishing he was as drunk as he’d just gotten Daniel – who was going to be cursing him in the morning, no doubt about it. But he’d had to do it, hadn’t he? After all, he’d tried repeatedly to get his friend to talk about the nightmares – shoma’ak, the Gou’ald called them – and Daniel had evaded every attempt with the excuse, “It’s not our reality so it’s not really important, Jack. You didn’t have another nightmare, did you?”
No, Jack hadn’t had any more nightmares; they’d stopped, for the moment, and he wasn’t going to worry about something he couldn’t control. Daniel was right about that part at least, it wasn’t their reality so blowing off what he experienced there wasn’t a big deal. But Jack had still had a nagging, instinctive feeling that he needed to find out what it was Daniel himself was seeing – and Jack O’Neill hadn’t gotten as far as he had by not listening to his gut. So when acceptable methods of extracting information failed, he’d resorted to the tongue-loosening powers of alcohol. And Daniel had talked. Oh, had he talked. And now he was asleep in Jack’s guest bedroom and looking forward to one hell of a hangover to take to work with him.
And Jack was out here, too sober and in possession of all the information he’d wanted…and feeling sick; literally, painfully sick. His shoma’ak experiences had mostly involved grief, grief and misunderstanding and a bit of alienation. But Daniel’s…Daniel’s had involved all of the above plus betrayal. By everyone he knew, including yours truly.
Jack knew he had it in him to be that much of an asshole – hell, he’d been that much of an asshole several times in his life. But only the once to Daniel, only during that one situation when they’d first gone through the Gate. And he’d apologized for that, when they went back; Jack had studied up on the science of linguistics as it pertained to archaeology during the intervening year, trying to find out exactly where Jackson had screwed up, and had discovered instead that the man had been well within the bounds of reason to expect that he could find the key to decipher the symbols on the other side once they got through. And lacking that even trial and error would have sufficed, given how much of the symbolism he’d already figured out. Daniel would have gotten them back, he’d known he could; he hadn’t been lying at all, not even exaggerating. He was a genius and he knew it, and he was perfectly, unashamedly secure in that knowledge.
All Jack was sure of right now was that he wanted there to be a cure for the shoma’ak thing, for Daniel’s sake. Because his friend’s nightmares were still going on, regularly. That would have bothered Jack anyway, but now that he knew what they really were it scared him shitless. What if one night Daniel didn’t come back? What if he got trapped in that other, horrible reality and had to stay there? Jack didn’t know if that could actually happen or not, but it was scaring the bejeezus out of him anyway. That other Daniel…they’d put him in a rubber room, his wife had become a Gou’ald and then tried to kill Daniel before in turn being killed by Teal’c, no one on the team or in the SGC had any respect for him professionally or otherwise, Jack had flat out told him they weren’t really friends…
The world of Daniel’s shoma’ak was Hell,
plain and simple. And he’d been going
there several times a month for almost a year, and he’d never said a word until
last night when Jack’s persistence and a large amount of alcohol had opened the
floodgates. A lot of little things were
making sense to Jack now in light of that poisonous deluge, little looks and gestures
and starts, fits of unexplained nervousness and insecurity – the flotsam cast
up by those too-regularly visiting tides onto the
Or maybe, just maybe, he did. And based on that, Jack made a command decision; he was a commander, he could do that. They were going to go to the base the next morning and find Teal’c and Sam and between the four of them they were going to figure out a way to solve this thing. Because Jack knew that if they put their minds to it, his team could solve anything.