Summary: Jack's and Daniel's thoughts.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: CotG, Forever In A Day, Maternal Instinct, Full Circle, Fallen/Homecoming.
Category: Angst (if I did this right)
Pairing: Daniel/Sha're, Jack/Daniel (pre-slash)

Archive: Sure, if you really want to, just email me first..
Disclaimer: As much as I do enjoy dreaming so, the characters of Stargate do not belong to me in any way, shape or form. If I did have such access, you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.
Warning: Not beta'd
Author’s Note: Firstly, this is all Stephicozar's fault. Blame her. ;) I *think* that there was a name for the village that Kasuf's people inhabited? Though I couldn't find any information on it. I guessed at Nagada, though it might not only have been mispelt, but also fanon too. If anyone feels an itch to make any corrections to this thing, I'll... thrown in an icon for the trouble? lol

Abydos

“Hey.” He offered his trespasser a beer as he made his way down to the floor to sit beside him. Momentarily ticked off as his knees seemed to crack loud enough for the neighbours to hear. “You do know I own a few comfortable chairs that we could be sitting on right now?”

“I know.” Daniel sighs, just before tilting his head back to take a swig. Given the time of day, the beer was probably swallowed on an empty stomach.

“So.” He wanted to know what the heck they were doing on the floor of his backyard porch.

Daniel looked up to the sky, noting that the sun was just starting to fade over the horizon, a star or two already twinkling overhead, “Where is she, Jack?”

A bit surprised, he assumed that Daniel had most of his memories returned, save for his sabbatical from this plane. He bumped his knee against his friend’s, trying to let him know that he wasn’t alone in this. Whatever this was. “What do you remember?”

“Everything.” He lowered his eyesight to the backyard, though Jack wasn’t completely sure of what Daniel was actually seeing. “At least I think I remember everything.” With a disparaged chuckle he admitted, “Honestly, I’m not entirely sure.”

“How ‘bout you tell me what you remember of her.”

“I know she’s dead, Jack!” He banged his head against the wall behind him to punctuate his little outburst, and then closed his eyes. His fingers started to pull on the label absently. Normally that nervous habit didn’t start until Daniel was three quarters through his second bottle.

“Tell me.” He had an idea of what was going on here. Though he still required Daniel to guide him through his apprehension.

“What happened to her when…?” He stopped to swallow hard, his throat constricted, making it all the more difficult to voice his thoughts. “When Anubis. destroyed. Abydos. What happened to her?”

Shit. He wished he saw this coming well beforehand, he could have prepared for a better answer other than, “I don’t know.”

“She was buried… on the south side of Nagada. But he destroyed everything, didn’t he.” He took another gulp of his beer, leading to a little cough, an almost choking sob. “She’s completely gone now, isn’t she? Her body obliterated with Abydos? She never ascended. Maybe Shifu was too young to understand about ascension at that point, but Oma knew. And she knew about… Sha’re… of-f whom she was. And yet, she couldn’t find a reason to help her ascend. I just… don’t understand that.”

He had his own questions about that issue. Eventually, when the timing was right, he would ask Daniel how Amaunet knew Oma. It wasn’t Sha’re who sent the child into hiding, as she didn’t have a choice in the matter. He’ll be forever grateful of the being that saved Daniel’s life more than a year ago now, but he didn’t trust her… it… them. The Ancients, or at the very least Oma, had dealt with the Goa’uld on a number of occasions, interfered on their behalf more than once. He still questioned why Daniel was saved by her. That was something that he still didn’t understand, and the only reasons he could come up with scared him.

Jack studied his friend’s pained face. The way his eyes were shut tight, how he bit down on his lower lip; every swallow made audible as he fought hard against shedding any tears. Jack couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if Sha’re had survived. If Teal’c shot her without critical repercussions, or if he merely ‘zatted her to unconsciousness. If they had brought her home alive, where would they all be right now? They were still in their honeymoon, when she was taken from him. He was never given the time to lower the pedestal he had built so high.

If. If things were different, he could have found Daniel sitting here drinking away his divorce. They could all have been celebrating the birth of Earth's first cross-planet child tonight, or as Jack confirmed by checking his watch, their anniversary in a month’s time. Instead of Daniel, Jack could have found himself consoling Sha’re. From sight alone, she knew. At the time, she was the only other person who could tell exactly how much Daniel had meant to him. It was written all over her face that day, blazing within her eyes. And if things were different, Jack knew that he would have been the one she’d have come to when things got tough.

Because, she knew. He felt his own throat begin to tense up. There was a very good reason why he didn’t like to play ‘what if.’

Daniel’s grip loosened on the bottle he held between his bent legs, letting it sink with a hard thud onto the wood planks they were sitting on.

“She’s gone.”

The End