Ice
It had been almost two days since the memorial.
No one had seen or heard anything from Daniel, and Jack was getting worried.
For thirty-six long tortured hours, after getting the brush off when he called to check on his friend, Colonel Jack O’Neill had been debating whether he should go find him. Jack was worried, but Daniel had always been so solid in the past (provided he was free from any psychotropic substances) that Jack thought he would just give Daniel some time to sort out his feelings.
Besides, O’Neill wasn’t very good at emotional stuff, and ever since the whole ‘ascension’ debacle, the two men had drifted a little apart. The death of your dearest friend can cause some issues. Jack’s soul had been shredded by Daniel’s death, but he’d still had a job to do. He’d struggled privately with his actions and his grief for a long time, but eventually he’d learned to move on with his friend mostly absent from his life. To have Daniel return, a changed being with a leaky memory…it was hard. It had been almost a year since Daniel had re-entered Jack’s life, but things were still a little odd between them.
Now, though, nursing a tall whiskey on the rocks, Jack decided he’d had enough. It’d been too long. He needed to make sure Daniel was ok. He picked up the phone and dialed without thought.
His own mind chastised him. ‘You’re drunk dialing, O’Neill…never a good idea…’
The phone connected, and Jack listened as the ring tone repeated itself four times before an answering machine picked up. As he heard his friend’s voice, Jack’s hand began to tremble slightly, and then he slammed down the phone, hard, becoming angry with himself. His conscience whispered insistently at him. ‘What are you thinking, O’Neill? You need to go find Daniel. He wouldn’t leave you alone at a time like this…’
It was right. Jack couldn’t sit any longer. He had to be sure Daniel was ok.
The Colonel stood, weaving slightly. “I must be drunker than I thought,” murmured a voice that Jack almost didn’t recognize as his own.
After he got his balance, Jack made another phone call and somehow managed to get dressed.
When a cab arrived a few minutes later, the driver didn’t have to honk. His passenger waited at the curb, and wasted no time with formalities as he climbed into the back seat. Brief directions were given, and the black car sped away into the night.
XXX
Twenty minutes later, a tall, grey-haired Air Force officer stood on a porch, his hand poised to knock on the door in front of him. After a moment’s hesitation, the hand did knock, loudly.
No answer came from inside the house.
The Colonel tried again.
Still nothing.
Daniel’s car was in the drive. He should’ve answered. Granted, it was almost midnight…maybe Daniel was asleep…maybe he just hadn’t heard…but Jack wasn’t buying it.
Something told Jack he needed to go inside. He pulled his wallet from the pocket of his weathered jeans and opened it. Inside, he found an extra key Daniel had given him in case of emergencies. He retrieved it, and unlocked the door.
As he made his way inside the house, Jack noticed that no lights were on. Anywhere.
It was completely dark.
“Daniel?” Jack experimentally called out in the darkness.
No answer.
Jack fumbled around for a bit, but finally managed to find a light switch near the door. He flipped it on.
The sight that greeted his now-seeing eyes terrified Jack O’Neill. He’d never seen Daniel’s place in anything other than pristine condition. That was mostly because Daniel spent so little time at home rather than because of an inherent neatness, but none of that mattered at the moment.
It didn’t matter because right now it looked like someone had been conducting naquadah experiments in Daniel’s living room. The archeologist’s precious books were scattered everywhere, pages torn in places. Papers littered the floor like confetti. A shattered coffee cup was laying near the wall of the kitchen, leaking its long cold contents on the floor.
The coffee table was overturned. Picture frames were turned down. Nothing was on the walls. Every piece of artwork that had once decorated the space was on the floor.
Jack stood in the doorway for what felt like an eternity, taking in the scene. His eyes slowly roamed over every detail, until one horrifying sight brought him out of his trance.
Daniel’s sidearm.
Looking out of place in its neatness. Sitting perfectly straight on the kitchen counter. Dead center. Nothing around it. No clutter, no mess. Just the gun-perfectly clean, silent, and deadly.
If Jack had been terrified before, he was panicked now. Adrenaline flooded his system, making him stone cold sober in an instant, and spurring his body to action. He tore into the house like a man on fire.
“DANIEL!”
Still nothing. Jack ran into the kitchen, dreading what he might find on the floor.
Nothing. Thank God.
As he about faced, Jack’s shoe hit something wet, and he fell, scrambling and sliding, to the floor.
Coffee. Jack didn’t notice as blood mixed with the caffeinated fluid from a gash on his hand as he caught himself, slamming his palms into the broken shards that had once been a mug. His fuel was pure fear now, and he was back up and running in a heartbeat.
He looked in the living room, the bedroom…still nothing.
Suddenly, his ears picked up a hissing sound, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. It was coming from the only room he hadn’t checked yet.
The bathroom.
‘Oh, God, no…’ thought Jack , as his long legs carried him to the source of the sound. His mind was reeling with frightened imaginings of what he might find.
As it reached for the doorknob, Jack’s hand hesitated, and his body ground to a screeching halt. His panicked search had led him here, but now he didn’t know if he really wanted to see what might be behind the door.
Jack took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He had no choice. He had to do this.
As the door slowly opened, Jack was hit with a rush of freezing air, and his knees buckled, sending him crashing to the hard tile floor. An anguished cry ripped its way out of Jack’s chest, and he blindly crawled forward to the shower.
When his hand touched the plastic curtain, Jack ripped it back with a force that brought the whole thing clattering to the floor. As he untangled himself from the vinyl sheet, freezing cold water drenched him and everything else in the room. Jack hadn’t thought to turn on the light, and the soft glow spilling in from the hallway only barely illuminated the small space.
It was more than enough for Jack to see his friend, though, and what he saw shattered him into a thousand pieces. It was like a spear made of equal parts pain and joy had been thrust though the Colonel’s chest.
Daniel was alive!
He was rocking himself back and forth on the floor of the shower, the frigid water pouring over his naked body like a waterfall. His legs were bent up in front of him, and his arms wrapped themselves tightly around his knees. His hands and face were red and raw, his knuckles bleeding.
He didn’t seem to notice Jack. His eyes were open, despite the onslaught from the water, but they were vacant, haunted, and unseeing. Occasionally, Daniel’s mouth would move vaguely, but no sound came out.
Jack wanted to shout out his relief, but the state of his friend also hurt him more than anything he could imagine. Questions and guilt immediately began their assault. How could he have let this happen? Why hadn’t he come sooner? Why hadn’t he known? He had failed his friend, and now Daniel was paying the price.
Jack reached for the shower controls, turning off the water. He touched his friend, lightly, to let him know he was there. There was no response. Daniel’s skin was ice cold and clammy. It felt thick, like some sort of gelatinous slime. Jack noticed then that Daniel’s lips were the color of a calm spring sky; a shade of blue that would have been pretty in any other context, but that only served to heighten Jack’s anxiety now.
A second surge of hormones brought O’Neill to his feet. He knew he had to get Daniel warm.
Jack hefted his friend out of the tub, slipping only a little on the wet floor, and set Daniel upright on the toilet seat. Daniel still did not respond in any way, and Jack was getting very, very worried.
Jack whipped two towels out of the rack on the wall, and started vigorously rubbing Daniel from head to toe. The bloodied hands got bloodier, and the raw skin chafed and reddened, but Jack didn’t care.
He had to get Daniel dry and warm.
He had to…he had to…he had to…Jack was like a man possessed. He never stopped to think to call an ambulance or anything else. He just acted, no thought involved.
After several minutes of Jack’s toweling, Daniel was dry. He was still freezing, but he was dry. Jack roughly ran a towel over Daniel’s now spiky hair one more time, and was rewarded for his efforts with a blink and a slight hitch in Daniel’s breathing.
Jack immediately knelt in front of his friend, his face only centimeters away from Daniel’s.
“Daniel?”
No answer.
Jack repeated his question, louder this time. “DANIEL!”
Daniel seemed to suddenly notice Jack for the first time. His head moved backwards, away from the face in front of him. His eyes widened. He stopped breathing for a second, his face a mask of confusion and fear.
Jack knew his friend didn’t recognize him. He shook the younger man’s shoulders, hard, and looked him directly in the eyes. “Daniel, it’s me. Jack. Jack O’Neill. Remember me?”
Daniel’s expression didn’t change for several long seconds, but gradually the light of recognition came into his eyes, and he found his voice. A weak, tortured whisper came from his lips.
“Jack?”
The single word started a thousand actions. Jack crushed Daniel to himself in a nearly bone-shattering embrace. He hugged his friend as if life itself depended on his grip.
Only after several seconds did Jack remember he was soaking wet. His hard work to dry his friend was getting undone. He let go of Daniel reluctantly, realizing his work wasn’t finished.
Daniel was beginning to shiver violently, which Jack took as a good sign. Jack had spent enough time outdoors in Minnesota to know that you only shiver for a while. You stop when you get really cold. Daniel’s body had been so frozen it hadn’t even known it needed to try to make heat before now.
As the shakes began in earnest, Jack did the only thing he could.
“Daniel? I’m going to go for a minute, ok? I’ll be right back.” Jack spoke as if he were comforting a sick child. He didn’t need to, though. Daniel was already back in that world of comfortable numbness he had so briefly escaped. He didn’t notice Jack leave. His eyes were vacant again, the light gone out of them.
Jack ran from the room, slipping a little on the water yet again.
He sprinted through the house, turning on every light, as if he could chase away the demons here with mere lamps. He found the thermostat and cranked it up. He threw back the blankets on Daniel’s bed and quickly found some extras, adding them to the ones already there.
When he was done, Jack started back to the bathroom, stripping down to his somehow still dry underwear as he went.
There was only one way to warm Daniel. Jack had no pangs of self-consciousness about what he was about to do as he rounded the corner to retrieve his friend. He hoisted the shivering man into a fireman’s carry, only then remembering that he’d been hit with a staff blast only a few days before. Jack gritted his teeth and ignored the pain in his side and abdomen as he carried Daniel down the short hallway to the bedroom. He threw his friend on the bed without ceremony and then ever-so-gently tucked Daniel under the covers, climbing in beside and behind him without thought.
Jack held Daniel against himself for what seemed like hours, willing the trembling to stop. Daniel had moments of near lucidity, in which he would mumble things like ‘should have been me’ and ‘why her’ and ‘what did I do wrong’ and ‘I can’t get clean’, but mostly he just shivered.
The shivering slowly became less violent and less frequent, though, as Jack shared his body heat with his friend and massaged the younger man’s muscles and blood back to a more normal temperature.
Finally, abruptly, the shaking stopped. It took Jack a second to realize that Daniel wasn’t moving anymore. Jack’s feet stopped their slow motions that had been attempting to warm Daniel’s toes, and his ears listened hard for the sounds of Daniel’s breath while his hand checked for a pulse.
The heartbeat was strong and regular. Daniel was breathing fine.
Jack’s own heart skipped a beat then, as he suddenly realized Daniel was warm. His heart was beating, he was breathing, and he was warm.
A breath of relief escaped Jack then, gently cascading over Daniel’s neck and shoulders.
“Jesus, Daniel…don’t scare me like that.”
At the sound of Jack’s voice, Daniel started a little, flinching his shoulders in a little spasm.
Jack’s stomach clenched into a small knot of nervousness as he realized the position he was in. If Daniel was conscious, he might find it disconcerting that Jack was spooned up against him, nearly as naked as the day he was born. Jack’s voice carried a slight tremor when he next spoke.
“Daniel? You awake?”
Daniel’s response was a confused whisper. “Jack?”
A steady voice answered him, calmly reassuring. “Yeah.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just came to check on you…seems you needed it…” Jack’s voice died away then. He was remembering the condition in which he’d found his friend, and suddenly his insides lurched. He couldn’t help thinking of what might have happened if he’d come by just a little bit later.
Daniel merely grunted in response. “Huh.”
Anger flared up in Jack and replaced his nervousness and fear. He was royally pissed that Daniel would put himself in harm’s way like this. Mad beyond belief that Daniel wouldn’t reach out for help. That was Jack’s MO, not Daniel’s! What had Daniel been thinking? As these thoughts swirled around in Jack’s head, another all-consuming rage was building on top of his already dark mood. What Daniel had recently experienced was enough to turn hardened combat veterans to oatmeal, and while Daniel had come a long way in the toughness department, he was still a gentle soul, and this type of thing hit him hard. Jack became overpoweringly enraged at himself for not seeing this coming. For not preventing it. Jack felt it was his job to look out for Daniel, no matter what, and he knew he’d failed miserably. Jack’s rage found its way out of his body by taking control of his tongue, and Jack attacked Daniel with questions. “What the hell were you doing, Daniel? I find you in the shower cold as a fish, beat up, mumbling to yourself, not even noticing that the hot water ran out a long time ago…what’s going on? Why didn’t you call someone?”
Daniel only became more confused by the questioning, and he started to babble.
“I…um…I…Jack…?”
“Yeah, Daniel. I’m here. It’s ok.” Jack realized Daniel was still not fully aware of what had happened in the last few hours, and was probably still in a state of shock. His anger abated as quickly as it had come. Jack concentrated on comforting his friend. He could deal with the anger, and everything else, later.
Daniel was still mumbling to himself nonsensically. “Yeah…ok…”
Jack continued to speak softly to the younger man, and his hand involuntarily began to rhythmically stroke Daniel’s hair, in an attempt to comfort him. “Ok, just rest, Danny…just rest. It’s gonna be ok. Sh…just rest.”
Daniel’s body slowly relaxed as Jack’s tenderness took effect. “Yeah…ok…oh, shit.”
Jack was surprised by the curse. He pulled his hand away with a jerk. “What?”
“My house is a wreck, isn’t it?”
Jack snorted a laugh. “Yeah, it kinda is, Dannyboy.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll clean it up tomorrow. It’ll be ok. I promise.”
“Ok.”
There was a long, quiet break then before Daniel sleepily murmured a question. “Jack?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“You gonna be here all night?”
“Oh, yeah. I don’t have anywhere to be but here.”
Daniel’s response was a hint of a whisper on a soft breath. “Thanks…”
Jack tightened his embrace, knowing beyond all doubt that he wasn‘t going anywhere anytime soon, and answered with a murmur of his own, as sleep claimed both men.
“Anytime, Daniel, anytime.”
The End
