Summary: Earth is in a lot of trouble, and Daniel feels that Jack needs to come back home.
Rating: R
Spoilers: It's a tag to Season Seven "Lost City 2", so pretty much anything prior should be considered spoiled. Particularly: "Enemy Mine", "Meridian" and "Thor's Hammer"
Category: Action/Angst Pairing: J/D

Archive: Um... well it's not done yet...
Warning: None so far. Next installment(s) will deal with a very temporary character death.
Author’s Note: Huge thanks and kudos to QuinGem for betaing. Any and all mistakes are mine.

To Be
part one

//Aveo ... amacuse.

"Good-bye."//

That was not going to be it. No way was that the end for the Colonel, for Jack, his best friend. Not if Daniel had anything to do about it … but therein lay the problem. At this moment there wasn't anything for Daniel to do. At least nothing that wouldn't be deemed highly destructive.

Daniel was in his office, trying hard to concentrate on the video footage from P3Y-447, the planet that SG-14 was analyzing for a possible Theta site. That was SG-14's mission when the President had decided to shut down the Stargate program for an over-haul. After the attack from Anubis and a little prodding from Dr. Weir, the President decided that the team should continue their analysis. It was now understood by the majority of those in power exactly how much Earth needed to prepare itself for potential Goa'uld attacks from space. The Stargate may be an easy window if the Goa'uld ever found a way to bypass the iris, but it wasn't the only way. And Anubis proved that the Tau'ri were not as strong as they should be. At least, not if they wanted to win again.

If it wasn't for Jack, he wouldn't have been so frustrated and losing his focus right now. He would have been dead.

Five minutes into the video and Daniel's mind was already wandering elsewhere, which was a good indication of how much Jack's latest predicament was affecting him. He'd handled stress before, a major portion of his job dealt with stressful situations at least once a week, if not more. There have been countless examples of exactly how well Daniel could handle his own, so why was he having so much difficulty now? There was a small difference that he had no choice but to acknowledge; in all of those other situations Daniel had a focus to help solve the problem. This time, there was nothing that he could do.

OK, so maybe nothing wasn’t completely true. There was something. But there wasn’t a chance of it being approved of by the latest command structure. Heck, if Hammond was still in charge, he wouldn't have approved of it either. And to be honest, Daniel wasn't all that sure that it could work.

Daniel stopped the tape and hit rewind while getting up off his stool and heading for his coffee maker. This footage was serious, at least where SG-14 was concerned. Ever since that fiasco with the Unas, a good number of the SG teams were wary of moving onto second or even third production phases without good ol' Dr. Jackson checking out the grounds for any signs of a threatening culture. Daniel threw a lot of these requests to his staff. They were more than capable of registering whether the designated mining site had any signs of any type of cultural activity, threatening or otherwise. The JCS decided that should an SG team feel that an assessment would be required, it had to be given Dr. Jackson's sign of approval before any mining production was shifted onto the next phase. He had a feeling that a lot of the off-world analysis teams took advantage of this decision. Obviously, it was a loop-hole in their favor. If they sent footage to his office, and something happened off-world and he had to admit to himself, something always happened, the blame would fall on Daniel's shoulders should he have given the go and had not foreseen any indication of a hidden threat. Problem was, if the "threat" was hiding really well, the chance of Daniel finding them in the footage was slim to none. If the team that was currently on the planet couldn't see it, how was Daniel supposed to do so with an amateur video on a 15" screen?

The tape had finished rewinding, so Daniel sat back down with a fresh cup of coffee. He grabbed the remote, exhaled a long breath he had no idea he was holding and pressed play, hoping that this time he could fully concentrate on the short, thirty-four minute video.

A few groups truly believed that we had fought against one of God's angels and Earth in its entirety was now doomed to hell. According to these groups the Tau'ri should have let Anubis take over Earth in God's name, because that was obviously God's wish. Luckily the more popular masses didn't believe this notion to be true, but it only took one person to strategically place a bomb within a battleship assembly line. The Air Force doesn't want to take any chances, thus they're going to build their force off-world. SG-14 had requested Daniel's help because they weren't too sure whether or not they had recently uncovered a burial ground. So now he had to write up a report to explain that at this very moment, SG-14 was standing in a pile of dung. And as long as a fence was built to keep the migrant cattle out of the training field, the USAF and the recently constructed Global Air Force will have one less problem to handle should this planet be chosen.

He really should be finding a way to help Jack.

The Tok’ra currently have no efficient way to help Jack out. All they could provide was a less than stable stasis pod, but he’s already in one that was hopefully stable. The Tok’ra and liberated Jaffa have been able to keep Earth apprised on the whereabouts of the once-missing Asgard. They had soon found out why the SGC couldn’t reach the Asgard just a few days ago, and why we still can’t reach them today. Just before Anubis had made his way to conquer Earth, he had set the evolved Replicators out of their time-distorted bubble. He must have found out about them through Jonas Quinn and constructed a way to release them. The entire Asgard fleet is currently fighting a very hard battle for survival, and there isn’t any sign of what Thor’s position is in all of this. For all we know, the Tau'ri’s favorite little grey butt is dead. And if the Asgard can’t defeat them, the remaining Replicators will most likely make their way to Earth next. We are the ones that eventually trapped them for what was supposed to be forever, after all.

Jacob is personally keeping close tabs on Ba’al. And Bra’tac is setting out tomorrow to infilitrate the ranks of Yu. The fact that Earth annihilated Anubis and his entire army is not going to keep either Goa’uld System Lord in hiding for very long. In fact, the complete opposite would hold true. Both are corroborating their intelligence at this moment to determine what had happened to Anubis. How was it that the Tau'ri could do, what they could not? And when they don’t find sufficient information about Anubis’ demise, they’ll be heading for Earth.

And Jack was still in the deep freeze, with no conclusive time of getting out soon. Even if he wasn’t in stasis, he probably couldn’t accomplish a second performance.

Earth was so screwed.

At this time of day, not many people would require Daniel’s assistance. He finished up his report and closed up his office. Once he dropped off his analysis, he head for SG-1’s locker room.

He finally had something to do.

(click here for next part)