Still Waters Part 2

[lokei]

Title: Still Waters (part 2)
Author: Lokei
Summary: Daniel went to the Black Sea to plumb its mysteries. This season, however, not all of those mysteries are ancient.
Word Count: 19,450
Rating: PG-13

Part one



"Doctor Jackson! Doctor Jackson! We've spotted something, we've got something! Come see!"

So Daniel levered himself off the deck and walked briskly to the monitors, ready for another weird rock face.

"It's a ship, isn't it Doctor Jackson? Not rocks this time, I really found a ship!"

Daniel couldn't help but smile at the intern. "You absolutely did, Ryan. She looks like a beauty, too." He turned back to the screen and leaned in over Mirré's shoulder to get a better look, pointing as he spoke.

"Cela--est-ce qu'on peut aller plus pres?" [[That over there-can we get any closer?]]

Mirré obligingly steered Otto closer to the area Daniel indicated, close enough so that Daniel could see the hint of ceramics through the hole in the ship's deck.

"Merci," Daniel murmured, already lost in conjecture. Off the cuff, Daniel would say it looked too recent to be what they were searching for--not surprising, as it was in the shallower reaches of the survey area. It was exciting anyway. There wasn't a known wreck marked already on his charts, which meant that barring any success with Daniel's target objective for this season, he'd still have a brand spanking new ancient toy to explore. Now, the season wouldn't be a total loss, no matter what.

"Take that, KMT," he muttered under his breath, then turned to face the expectant looks of his team. "Well," Daniel said slowly, watching some of the more experienced members of his team weigh the excitement of a find against the sheer amount of ground left to cover and fail to hide their burgeoning apprehension. He grinned. They could spare a day or two, flag it for later intensive study if the rest of their survey didn't pan out. "Looks like we should take a closer peek, don't you think?"

There was a simultaneous explosion of sound and motion as people cheered and headed for their respective stations. Mirré pulled Otto up high enough to get a panning shot of the entire wreck currently visible, and on the next workstation Matt Parkerson captured the image and started outlining it, the better to start an excavation grid. Ryan brought Daniel a chair and he plunked himself in next to Mirré, giving the man quiet instructions about where to start as soon as Matt had finished putting the grid over the image.

Daniel lost himself in the happy buzz of a fieldwork team in high gear. He ignored the pair fluttering around with cameras documenting the process, walked Mirré calmly through the 'flight plan' for the first pass with Otto, and was glad to see that Parkerson had taken Jack under his wing and was showing him how to work some of the digital modeling software they would be using to enhance the underwater imagery and build mock-ups of the wreck. Slowly, they started piecing together a picture of the wreck's size and condition, and identified areas for closer analysis. Daniel was itching to get a closer look--and at about 93 feet it was shallow enough that they'd be able to dive it without having to resort to using Meg.

So it wasn't until Daniel saw Sam that evening that he gave any of his mental energies back to the issue of Jack at all, and then he rather regretted that he had. Sam was looking concerned--majorly concerned, an expression decidedly at odds with the satisfied exhaustion on the faces of his team, who were just finishing stowing Otto for the night.

"Sam?" Daniel crossed over to where she was leaning against the railing and touched her elbow. "It's been a good day's work out here--a pity you slept through it."

Sam offered him a wan smile. "So I hear. The energy up here is practically palpable. Even my guys were practically bouncing when their shift got relieved." She rolled her head on her shoulders for a moment and Daniel winced to hear her vertebrae popping.

"That's a 'the Captain is stressed' sound," Daniel observed. "Do I want to know why?"

Sam reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a printout that had every appearance of an official military missive.

"Your flotsam is being implicated in an assassination," she said, facing right out over the railing and speaking so lowly Daniel barely heard her, even from a foot away.

Daniel uttered a few choice expletives in a handful of languages. Cursing in English was nowhere near as fun once you had all these other options. He opened the print out and scanned it quickly. In dry militarese, it stated that a suspected terrorist, his family including wife and three children, and two minor Turkish officials, one in the military, one in the government, had disappeared and their boat as well. Their last known position was not far from where the Cassiopeia had picked up O'Neill--and the final piece of information in the communiqué made Daniel's blood run cold.

While Hasam Abdul-Asiz was on the US terrorist watch list, this was not a sanctioned US military operation. Special Ops teams in the area reported one of their own went rogue within the time specified, and may be responsible for the deaths of the innocents connected to Abdul-Asiz. Any information on the whereabouts of Colonel Jack O'Neill is to be sent directly to...

Daniel turned his head slowly to face Sam, feeling like it suddenly weighed a hundred pounds.

“I don’t believe it.” He looked down at the sheet in his shaking hands, smoothing it against the railing to hide his tremors. “Sam, tell me you don’t believe it.”

The captain looked at him gravely. “There’s no date for their disappearance.”

“So…” Daniel thought furiously. “We don’t know whether they disappeared before or after we picked up Jack.” He frowned. “So what do we do?”

Sam sighed and held out her hand for the paper. Daniel passed it back to her, and she started to fold it, then changed her mind and crumpled it, tossing it into the water. They watched as it slowly got waterlogged and sank in the darkening water.

“We need to find out how much truth is in this report,” Daniel said quietly. “Sam, can we ask your dad?”

“That’s exactly what we can’t do,” she said bitterly. “Why would we, unless we knew something? And if your gut is right, and O’Neill is innocent, we’ll be delivering him to whatever elements are trying to discredit him.”

Daniel blew out a long breath, the exhilaration of the day leaving a hollow-making anxiety behind.

Sam gave him a rueful look. “Sorry to ruin your day.”

Daniel shrugged and leaned over a little, letting Sam sling a companionable arm around his shoulders because he could see she wanted to. “Can I possibly have an uneventful season, just for once?” he put a bit of whine into his voice to make her laugh, but there was some real annoyance behind it.

“Yeah, your record is rotten,” she retorted, drawing away and whacking him on the shoulder. “Fortunately, your research is impeccable.”

“Do I get dinner first?”

“How badly do you want to clear your flotsam?”

Daniel sighed. “Badly, but I’m not sure whether it’s for his sake or for mine.”

Sam turned to look at him fully. “What do you mean?”

Daniel shook his head. “Never mind. I’m going to go to dinner, because if I don’t people are going to wonder, and that’s the last thing we need. Can I borrow your cabin after dinner to do a little hunting?”

“Of course. I’ll be on the bridge if you need anything,” Sam assured him. “You know where I keep the chocolate.”

Daniel grinned. “Don’t worry, I guard the secret like the treasures of Amon-Ra.”

She snorted. “You’d better. Let me know as soon as you find anything.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

Daniel pivoted and headed for the lower decks, pondering how he was going to recapture the euphoric mood of half an hour ago and sustain it through dinner, with Jack sitting oblivious at his elbow. It seemed wrong to leave the man in the dark about the tarnish to his reputation, and yet if there was any truth to it, Daniel was a whole lot safer to leave Jack in the dark until he and Sam had worked up a plan. Neither option sat particularly well in his gut, and Daniel found himself swerving towards the showers instead of the mess hall.

Reflecting momentarily how much better it was to have a shower on a vessel which did not require you to pump it by foot in order to get a stream over your head, as on the windjammers Daniel crewed out of Maine, the archaeologist picked up his towels and other necessities briefly at his room and decided to go have a long hot think. Fresh water might still be a precious commodity, but he was frugal enough most of the time to feel no pangs about shower-assisted pondering now.

The evening shift were come and gone already, leaving behind just the faint odor of standard soap and steam, and Daniel headed gratefully for one of the silent stalls. He didn't really want to face anyone, especially Jack or Sam, until he'd figured out how he wanted to approach this problem.

Sam was right that Daniel's gut told him to trust the military stray--there was a kind of forthrightness in Jack's gaze that spoke of a life honorably lived. There was also that odd moment from before, the conversation about faith, which suggested that perhaps Jack was disillusioned by the service he had pledged to. Disillusioned enough to go rogue? Disillusioned for the right reasons or the wrong ones?

That was the material question--what might Jack have felt driven to do? How did he end up in the water, injured and abandoned? Surely he had had a team with him for whatever the operation was. Daniel thought about the clouds that passed over Jack's expression when the topic of his rescue was broached and frowned as he scrubbed furiously at his hair. He let himself get distracted from the problem by the smaller issue that his hair was growing out to the point that the wind and sea spray could wreak incredible havoc with it, even though it wasn't anywhere near as long as it had been when he was Ryan's age.

Back to Jack, though--why exactly was it that Daniel trusted him, or wanted to? Gut instinct was one thing, but there was, if Daniel was being honest, at least some chance that this particular instinct originated slightly lower than that. The organ in question twitched at the recollection of Jack sprawled on his bunk and Daniel scowled down at himself.

"Remember Sarah? You don't get a vote," he muttered. "You've been wrong before--rarely but spectacularly."

How, then, to go about this. Daniel still hated the idea of skulking around Jack's back, not letting the man know he was under suspicion until the eleventh hour. He equally didn't know if tipping Jack off to the report would cause further issues or put anyone on the expedition in danger. He thought not, recalling the easy way Jack seemed to have meshed in with the crew--but perhaps the man was simply a consummate actor?

Daniel groaned and knocked his head gently against the wall, leaving his forehead pressed to the metal and letting the water stream over his shoulders and down the backs of his legs. Why had Sam left this up to him anyway? He was an archaeologist, not a damned military operative. The biggest dance of bullshit and carefully culled facts he ever had to spin was usually in front of a grant committee, and the stuff he usually researched had all been dead and therefore decidedly un-dangerous for several hundred years.

And yet Sam knew Daniel really well--having yanked this man from the sea, Daniel felt responsible for him, and as the head of the expedition, doubly so. That there was an undercover military thing going on under Sam's aegis was not reason enough for her to challenge his authority to decide what to do about their guest, whatever his provenance.

Mind you, life would have been a hell of a lot easier if Jack had turned out to be a lost idiotic tech diver or a merman with aspirations to being human. Daniel's fertile imagination painted him a life-size picture of that last scenario and he sighed in resignation--there was simply no divorcing attraction from all the other considerations here. All Daniel could do was acknowledge it, and move on. And try not to think about bare-chested colonels hefting tridents and wearing crowns of starfish. Seriously. He'd been out on boats and absorbing ancient mariner cultures for just way too long.

He would get out of the shower, track down Jack in the mess hall, eat dinner, and invite Jack to join him for a confidential stroll...somewhere. And then he'd ask some more about the whole injured and alone business, and then together they could borrow Sam's computer and try to hunt down the truth, assuming Daniel got the answers he was looking for.

If not, plan B. Whatever that was.

= = = = = = =

They ended up at Sam's favorite spot by the stern, where the noise of the engines and the wind blew all your words off into the wake like a trail of verbal breadcrumbs, dropping into the sea.

"So, what's got your goat, Daniel?" Jack leaned against the railing and it changed his height just enough that he was looking slightly up at the archaeologist instead of evenly eye-to-eye. Daniel spared a moment to wonder just how this man could read him so well after a handful of days when some of his team still couldn't after years, and then forged on.

"Jack--that Turkish ship--they weren't just harassing us. Sam got a report about some officials that went missing in a boat not far from where we picked you up. There's suspicion of foul play."

Jack regarded him steadily, waiting for Daniel to finish his thought.

"Jack--the message Sam got mentioned your name. You've been reported as having gone rogue."

Jack tilted his head to one side and gave Daniel a long look before breaking the silence.

"And you decided to tell me because..."

"I don't know when their boat disappeared. I don't know whether you could have even been in position to do anything about it. But even if you could have, I don't believe you're the sort of person who would take out two Turkish officials and an innocent family to get at a suspected terrorist. In fact, I think you're the sort of person who would have a problem with that. So I don't know why you ended up in the water hurt and alone, and I don't know who's responsible for the missing boat and the people on it, and I don't know what we're going to do about it all, but--" Daniel cut himself off, realizing that his voice had been getting tighter and faster and that he'd barely taken a breath since he started.

"But?" Jack prompted, and there was a hint of softening at the corners of his eyes and lips.

"But I want to be right about you," Daniel said quietly. "And I thought you should know."

Jack nodded. "There somewhere private on this boat?"

"Sam said she'd let me use the computer in her cabin. It's secure."

"I want to tell you what I can about the mission and how I ended up where you found me."

Finally. Daniel smiled slightly. "I'd like to hear."

They walked to Sam's cabin in companionable silence, and when Daniel had locked the door behind them, he turned to find Jack sitting quietly in one of Sam's 'guest' chairs, regarding him with a warmer look than he'd yet seen. Daniel felt himself flushing and turned quickly towards the computer in the corner, dropping into Sam’s chair and adjusting the height automatically. He shot a grin over his shoulder. “Sam hates it when I do that.” He was about to pull up the search engine when a soft ‘Daniel’ brought his attention back around to his companion.

“I want to tell you about the other day first,” Jack said. “Before we get into the other stuff.”

Daniel leaned forward in his chair and fixed his eyes on Jack.

“It was an unusual mission from the start,” Jack began, not fidgeting or looking away, letting Daniel see the emotions cross his face. “I was on loan from another unit in a different area-I can’t tell you about that part, but the salient point is that the team I was working with wasn’t mine. Most of them seemed to know each other, maybe all of them did, they’d worked together before, though they weren’t nearly as tight as the team I was used to. We didn’t get our assignment until we’d already been deployed, with only the barest details to figure out what gear we’d need. That’s not the first time it’s happened to me like that, but I admit I wasn’t real happy about going blind into a situation with a team I didn’t know. I was in charge, but not, you know?”

Daniel nodded and Jack’s shoulders relaxed incrementally. The colonel continued.

“So we got dumped basically in the middle of nowhere, with all this gear and our sealed orders, and when we opened them it looked standard: recon on the target, looking for evidence of illegal activity in international waters, capture and contain if possible.”

Jack frowned in recollection. “We found him, alright, and not without a bunch of skulking around by trying to look harmless.”

Daniel snorted. “I take it some people were not as good at that as you are.”

Jack grinned. “Noticed that, did you? I knew you were too smart for your own good.”

Daniel smirked and gestured for Jack to go on.

“So we found him, and figured out his pattern for sailing, and that he was planning to sail the next day, so we figured we’d set up an ambush. We bugged his boat, headed out on the water to be able to stay in range, and then it all went to hell.” Jack scrubbed a hand across his hair. “We were getting the intel we needed, we were ready to go in, and then we hear all these kids on the bug. Bastard brought his kids to a drug and weapons deal.” The disgust in Jack’s voice matched the way Daniel’s skin was crawling.

“The team-especially Rollins, the captain, who was a major ringleader-wanted to go in anyway, but I said ‘no.’ I don’t hold with any op that endangers innocents, especially kids.” Jack shifted in his chair. “Rollins tried to argue with me about it-I wouldn’t have it. He kept arguing, and basically the whole damn team mutinied. Snuck up behind me and whacked me, knocked me overboard. This would be the point where I was damn glad I had already done my gear check,” Jack added dryly. “I spent a long time in the water, don’t know exactly how long ‘cause my head was fuzzy as hell, and at some point I passed out.”

Daniel nodded. “Jan reckoned it was around seven hours, could have been longer. You were lucky we got to you when we did. Your air was almost out, not to mention the whole hypothermia thing.”

Jack shivered. “Yeah. When I was awake, I was trying to last the air, use my snorkel instead while I was doing the safety tuck and roll, but when I could feel myself getting worse, I switched back to the reg. Seemed smarter.”

“So you think the team went through with the mission without you?”

“Must have. And if it went down badly, then I was a convenient scapegoat. Presumed lost during the op, casualty of a bad mission, whatever you want to call it.” Jack looked tired. “Could be they decided to make it go worse than it had to, to help cover up the insubordination. Having someone ‘go rogue’ gives the hierarchy plausible deniability too.”

Daniel growled. He was used to a certain amount of amusement and even derision from some of his colleagues, but the idea that someone would frame another academic to make him look like a fraud was anathema to him. That anyone would frame Jack was equally so.

“So we need information,” Daniel said. “When did the boat disappear, and how. Whether the people are truly dead or just disappeared. Whether there’s any evidence that can clear you so it’s not a case of competing stories.”

“Because if the whole team’s in on it, there’s five voices against one,” Jack finished grimly. “Not good odds.”

Daniel grinned just a little. “Long odds are what I do.” He rolled back to the computer and pulled up the local news outlets, as well as the BBC and NPR. Jack scooted his chair so that he could look over Daniel’s elbow and watched intently as Daniel sifted through the news from the last several days. Daniel could feel Jack’s regard as he switched from the screen to Daniel’s face and back again, but he focused carefully on his search, chasing a few incredibly vague reports that were of no help or specifics at all, and finally tracking down the transcript of a radio report from one of the local news stations. Daniel worked through the language issues carefully, and then rapped on the desk excitedly when he got it.

“I found it. The last communication from Abdul-Asiz to someone on shore was on the morning we picked you up-after we saw you in the water. So he was still alive and cruising when you were playing shark-bait.”

There was a rising hope on Jack’s face, but then it flickered out. “Yeah, but we had plenty of delayed charges in our gear. So there’s nothing to prove that I didn’t set charges and blow the boat later on a timer or remote switch.”

Daniel scowled. “While you were unconscious?”

“Timer wouldn’t care.”

Daniel sighed. “Damn.” He looked at the report once more and quickly sent it to Sam’s personal printer, complete with timestamp. “Better than nothing,” he said in response to Jack’s raised eyebrow. “I don’t think there’s anything more we’re going to be able to find this way-we should probably head out.”

Jack nodded. “I’m sure the captain would appreciate having her cabin back.”

Daniel folded the printout and stuck it in his back pocket as they headed to their bunks on the next deck. Better than nothing, he thought again as he and Jack nodded their good nights and went to their separate rooms. The words struck a chord in him, and he dropped to his bunk, thinking hard. In moments, he was up off the mattress once more and across the hall, knocking on the door and letting himself in before the sound had finished bouncing off the wall.

“We can do a lot better than nothing,” he announced. Jack, who had been in the middle of taking off his sweatshirt, emerged from beneath the cotton and blinked at him.

“Huh?”

Daniel gestured at the cabin around them. “We’re sitting in and on a floating lab. We’ve got a reasonable idea where the boat disappeared, right? We’ve got all the equipment we need to get at it if it’s on the bottom of the sea, even if it’s way down there. That’s what Meg was designed for. So we go find it and find the proof we need that you were completely uninvolved. Clear your name and turn in the scum who ditched you.”

Jack blinked at him again, looking utterly stupefied. His reply was not at all what Daniel expected.

“But you’ve already taken a couple of days out of your schedule to spend time on this wreck which is too new to be what you’re looking for, and you’ve got a short season on top of it because you’re sharing with Carter’s research agenda. If we go back, that’s at least three more days out of your expedition. If we found anything it could finish your season right there. Why would you do that?”

It was the archaeologist’s turn to be confounded, not to mention nearly incoherent. “Why would I do that? Why would I-what do you think I-you think shipwrecks and flooded settlements are more important than your life and career?” Daniel crossed the few steps to get within Jack’s personal space, royally and righteously annoyed. “What the hell kind of person do you think I am? Are you an idiot?”

They stared at each other for a long, tense moment, in which Daniel had just enough time to think that a) it was probably not smart to antagonize someone who could likely kill him with a paperclip, and b) somewhere along the line he had lost all doubt about Jack’s innocence.

And then Jack kissed him.

It was not a movie-star kind of kiss, that was for sure. Jack’s hands reached up to cup his face but managed to bend over Daniel’s right ear in a sort of painful way, and their lips initially made more of a crunch than a press. Still, within a moment they’d figured it out, and Daniel found himself chest to chest with armful of wiry, warm colonel, whose hands had migrated to his waist and the back of his neck, while Daniel's own hands had seemingly of their own volition taken a firm hold of Jack's hips. The kiss went from demanding to exploring--a still closed-mouthed but oh so sweet slide until Daniel felt like one giant bundle of vibrating nerves all focused on a few inches of mobile, motivating skin.

So intent was Daniel on the sensation of Jack's lips against his own, that when the other pulled away to speak, Daniel saw the words form on his lips but made very little sense of them.

"A good one," Jack said.

"Huh?" Daniel blinked and shook his head, but didn't let go of Jack's jeans.

"You asked what kind of man I thought you were. I think you're a good one--possibly one of the best," Jack chuckled, annoyingly articulate for a man who had just driven all coherency out of Daniel's usually erudite conversation. Daniel had no idea what to reply to a statement like that.

So he kissed Jack back, thoroughly and this time with tongue. Daniel concentrated on his task with all his enthusiasm, and when he finally drew back, it was highly satisfying to see Jack looking as dazed as he had felt just a few minutes before.

Daniel grinned. He considered pointing out that if this worked, he’d have essentially rescued Jack twice, but figured that a tough, clever military man might have pride issues with that. He winced as the corollary occurred to him.

"What?” Jack backed up and sprawled on the bunk, grinning up at him lazily.

“You’re in the military-couldn’t this get you in trouble?”

Jack leaned up far enough to snag Daniel’s wrist and pull him down with surprising ease onto the bed as well. Daniel tried hard not to land on anything vital-Jack already took up most of the tiny mattress, and Daniel easily took up what was left, plus a fair amount of Jack’s available surface area.

“I’ve been framed for an assassination I refused to commit-you think the fact that I find you edible is going to cause me problems?” Jack said dryly, nipping illustratively at Daniel’s ear.

The archaeologist manfully avoided squirming, and instead retaliated by rolling fully on top of the prone man and executing a long sinuous roll of his body, chest to hips to toes. Then he did it again.

Jack groaned. “Where did you learn that?”

Daniel smirked. “And the man calls himself a scuba diver.”

Jack got his arms around Daniel and muttered, “The dolphin kick was *never* that much fun in swim class.”

Daniel brought his face down so his lips brushed Jack’s ear. “Then you’ve been doing it wrong.”

Jack shuddered and made a concerted effort to recapture Daniel’s mouth, which the archaeologist allowed with pleasure, finally breaking off several long minutes later to try to reassert a little reason into this interlude, however unwelcome.

Jack raised his eyebrows at him and Daniel found himself thinking that he shouldn’t be able to interpret an expression like that after knowing someone a handful of days.

“We should probably be focusing our energy on trying to clear your name,” Daniel said, unable to get all the reluctance out of his tone when he saw Jack stretching provocatively underneath him. “Keep from getting distracted.”

“Plus, you barely know me,” Jack observed shrewdly, and Daniel flushed, but couldn’t really protest.

“I think I ought to come clean with you,” Jack added, not making any effort to let Daniel go-quite the opposite, in fact, as he drew them back together again on the bunk. “I had heard of you before you turned up and rescued my shivering butt.”

“Oh?”

“Standard procedure, going into an unknown area. Wasn’t my turf, so I asked a man I trusted-Hammond, good guy all around-about other players in this location. He told me there was a civilian archaeological team in the area, led by a real stubborn son of a gun, all brain with the balls to match.” Jack paused. “His words, actually, were more like ‘a very determined young man with an unswerving dedication to his theories, despite significant opposition.’”

Jack grinned and Daniel waited quietly for the punch line. Jack’s face went serious again.

“I was ready, when I found out who you were, to find an overbearing academic zealot. All the stuff I could dig up on you pointed that way. But from the moment you asked that nurse for water in his own language, I knew that wasn’t the way it was going to go down. You’re right, I don’t know your favorite color, or how your parents died, or the books you like to read, or whatever, and you’ve still got only my word about who the hell I am-but I like the guy in this cabin with me. I like him a lot. And insane as it sounds, I trust him. Eventually I know the real world’s gonna intrude some more on whatever it is we’ve got going here, but I don’t want to let it do that yet.”

Daniel blinked several times. “Indigo. A cave-in, when I was ten. And just about everything-I try to read a few literary classics a year but my shameful indulgence is rereading Tolkien, frequently.” He leaned down and kissed Jack softly, no tease or tension behind it, then grinned. “And that was a lot classier speech than the ‘I could die tomorrow, neck with me one last night, baby’ cliché. I’m impressed.”

Jack blew raspberries into Daniel’s neck and the archaeologist collapsed onto him, laughing.

“I will have you know, you are not the only one who’s a fan of the classics,” Jack informed him with very theatrical hauteur. “You happen to be squishing a lifelong Dickens fan.”

Daniel rolled some of his weight off the other man, who promptly took the opportunity to roll over on top of him instead.

“Gotcha.”

Daniel looked up at the laughter in Jack’s face and was hit with a sudden sucker-punch. He didn’t love this man yet-but all of a sudden he could see how he could, someday down the line. “Dickens, mmm?”

“Sure,” Jack settled himself in the V Daniel made of his legs and let his fingertips tangle with Daniel’s. “Because he recognizes that a lot of the world is shitty, but good things happen to the good people in the end.”

Daniel freed a hand to reach up and run his fingers through Jack’s hair, skating carefully around the edges of his healing bruise. He was still riding this inexplicable wave of proto-tenderness, and could only regret the timing of the whole mess. “The best of times and the worst of times,” he murmured, almost to himself, but of course the other heard him and nodded, tracing his own free hand over Daniel’s shoulder and down his chest.

“Tell me about it. And you weren’t all wrong with the ‘last night on earth’ crack, either,” Jack frowned. “If we do go after the missing boat, you’re putting your whole expedition in danger. Who knows who might still be hunting around that area-at the very least the Turks won’t be happy if they catch us, and they’re hardly the only players involved. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Daniel wondered briefly if his personal caution had gone out the porthole with his professional ambition. What was it he’d been saying in the shower about certain body parts not getting a vote? “I’m sure.” He ran a finger over the scar that bisected one of Jack’s eyebrows and smiled, knowing the colonel was asking more than one question at once. “Twice over.”

Jack ran his hand up Daniel’s chest once more, this time under Daniel’s shirt. “Glad to hear that.”

= = = = = = = =

In the morning, Daniel called a council of war. He sat down with Sam, Jack, and Mirré in the captain’s cabin and laid out his plan.

“Alright. We’ve got Jack’s coordinates for where the missing yacht was at the point when he was separated from his team.” Daniel unrolled the appropriate chart and poked at it. Mirré raised an eyebrow.

“Deep water, I know,” Daniel replied. “That’s going to make it a little more difficult, but also makes it less likely that there’s been any post-disappearance tampering. We’re also lucky that this is a recent wreck-it’s going to be a lot less covered by silt, seaweed, and general muck.”

“Assuming there are any identifiable pieces left,” Sam interjected gloomily. “If it’s been blown to smithereens we’re going to be out of luck.”

“But none of us heard an explosion, and sound carries really well over water,” Daniel rejoined. “Something that big we probably would have heard, we weren’t that far away.”

“So what’s the plan, Daniel?” Jack tapped the chart.

“Circular search,” Daniel said, scribing a widening spiral out from the point which Jack had indicated. “Standard S&R, just like you learn in your certification dives-but with Otto instead of a safety line. Sam-how fast can we get there?”

“By mid-morning, maybe lunch time. We don’t want to go too fast because we don’t want to attract a lot of attention if we can avoid it.”

Daniel looked over at Mirré. “You’ve been very quiet, my friend.”

Mirré raised an eyebrow. “I am disturbed by this evidence of treachery. I will gladly assist.”

Jack pantomimed shock. “You speak English?”

“Indeed.”

Daniel chuckled. “Mirré just prefers French, though that too is an adopted language.”

Jack just shook his head while Mirré looked smug. “Figures.”

= = = = = = =

It was late afternoon when they found it. Daniel had left the Parkersons on the Petrel, with Ryan and a number of the rest of his international crew, working on the wreck. It would be a tight fit for them for a day or two-the cabin on the Petrel was tiny, and eight was going to be a squish, but no worse than any of them had survived before. It was easier to say that the Cassiopeia was going to be at the mercy of Sam’s scientific survey for an extra shift than to try to come up with a better cover story, and this way the fact that Daniel and Mirré stayed behind was odd but not overly so. Matt and Kelly were fabulous field archaeologists, and had both been jonesing for some independent work anyway.

But finally, after hours of painstaking search-and-recovery-style care, Mirré's cautious hands directed Otto's headlights on the hulking, bittersweet beauty of the downed private yacht, a motorized behemoth so anathema to Daniel's idea of what was right in a ship, but beautiful nonetheless for the redemption it promised to the man standing at his side.

There was no sound from Jack, and Daniel looked over to see a haunted, angry expression on the other man's face. Daniel had that urge to reach out in comfort again, and this time didn't deny himself. He put a gentle hand on Jack's bicep, lifted it away, and then settled it again when Jack gave him a weary smile.

"I didn't actually think we'd find it," the older man murmured. "Especially not so...intact."

Mirré guided Otto to a new vantage point and Daniel winced. "Apparently she didn't go down without a fight, though." There was a series of gaping holes all along the exposed section of the hull.

Jack was squinting. "No way I can figure out how that was done without a closer look."

"Then it's a good thing we've got Meg, isn't it?" Daniel said, already turning to give Sam the signal, and she ordered the combined team of her crew and Daniel's remaining few to start getting the manned sub ready to go. Daniel turned back to Jack and Mirré. "Time to suit up," he said. "Mirré, nous revenons dans dix minutes." [[We’ll be back in 10 minutes]]

The sub pilot cracked his fingers and nodded, gesturing to his back up to come take over controlling the remote so that he could change for the sub trip.

In the appointed time, all three of them had returned to the top deck, shivering a little in their lightweight clothes under the breeze.

"It gets toasty in there, you said?" Jack looked dubiously at the hatch to the sub.

"Three of us in a sub that size? Yeah. Body heat plus all those electronics--we'll be fine." Daniel let Mirré get himself settled first, and then gestured for Jack to hop in to the sub. When the two of them were inside, Daniel turned for a last word to Sam, but the captain beat him to it.

"Keep your radio on, will you?"

Daniel smiled. "We will. Constant chatter, you know me. Keep the recording going?"

"Absolutely. And when we figure this out, we're going to have to figure out who to get it to, you know. Can't send it to Dad because of the whole partiality thing--he'd be suspect."

"I have an idea about that," Daniel leaned forward and Sam took the opportunity to give him a quick hug.

"Good luck down there."

Daniel nodded, stepped in, and pulled the hatch shut behind him.

= = = = = = =

"So," Jack said conversationally, nose pretty close to glued to the porthole on the starboard side. "Just how deep are we going?"

"Approximately four hundred feet, O'Neill." Mirré's voice was somehow deeper when he spoke English than when he spoke French. Daniel had never quite figured out why.

"Good thing you've got lights on this bucket."

"Indeed."

Daniel sighed into his headset and heard Sam chuckle from far above them.

[Long ride, Daniel?]

"You have no idea," he muttered. "And we're only at 150 feet." Interested in trying to get something useful out of the conversation, Daniel pitched his voice so that others in the cabin could hear him as well.

"Jack, what exactly is it we're looking for? Any theories yet on how the boat sank?"

The colonel made a noncommital noise and Daniel sighed again. "Okay, how about a list of what gear you were carrying, to the best of your memory?"

"Mine, or the team in general?"

"You specifically first: we can cross-reference it to what you had with you when we picked you up. Then anything you can remember about what the team had."

"Daniel, I was the nominal leader of the op. I wrote the gear list."

"So what you can remember is all of it. So much the better." Daniel had decided before even getting up this morning that it was likely Jack would be tetchy today, and that ignoring any resultant sarcasm would be the smart way to go. At 250 feet and dropping however, his patience was already a little strained. Daniel let himself think about just how sweet the noises were Jack had made last night to block the grumbling now.

Fortunately for both Daniel's state of mind and state of body, Jack interrupted these pleasant musings and obliged by reeling off the list, speaking slowly enough that the folks on the surface would be able to record it intelligibly. It was an impressive list, and took them all the way to 350 feet. Daniel kept a close eye during the recitative on the gauges, playing back up for Mirré, who didn't need it but always appreciated the professional courtesy which made Daniel play co-pilot every time. This was just another excavation in so many ways, only a little more current than Daniel was used to. All the other rhythms were the same.

Even so, when the barque loomed before them out of the darkness, Daniel still had to catch his breath. 'Missing' was just so much euphemism--people had died in this wreck, not hundreds or even thousands of years ago, but mere days. They were messing about in a murder scene, an archaeologist, a pilot, and a Special Ops colonel mucking through what should rightfully only belong in a Robert Ludlum book.

Jack gave a low whistle. "How close can we get?"

Mirré gave him an offended look and whispered "C'est une questionne tres stupide" under his breath. Daniel was pretty sure he was the only one that heard that, and he bit back a grin. Stoic, Mirré was. Patient, not so often. [[That’s a really stupid question.]]

Daniel had a lot of trust in his favorite pilot, but he still couldn't help holding his breath as Mirré edged them closer to the first of the holes in the planking. "It looks...blown inward." Daniel didn't have better descriptors than that, but Jack was nodding.

"Yep. Charges were probably placed on the outside of the hull by divers underneath. Carefully done, too. Looks like this one was placed to take out the engine, and those ones up there to make sure that enough water got in fast enough that they wouldn't be able to save themselves. I can't make any sure pronouncement from here, but probably there's a hole on the other side to take out the emergency power supply."

"Where would that be?" Daniel asked.

"Not exactly sure. Scoping out the boat wasn't my job, it was Descenza's. We weren't planning on blowing the boat, anyway, I was only interested in where the possible entry points would be if we wanted to do a snatch. I remember something about the generator and battery being on the opposite side from the engine block, but that's it."

"So if you were blowing the boat, you wouldn't know where to put that charge?" Daniel repeated carefully. Jack looked up at him from his spot by the window.

"No, I wouldn't. It'd be guesswork at best, and I'd have found some other way to disable communications if it were me."

"So we need to try to check that out."

"If it's not too buried, yeah. Can we get closer to that next hole?"

Mirré brought them closer and Jack continued to narrate his suppositions, supported by Daniel's own observations and an occasional quiet word from Mirré. Daniel, at Jack’s request, wielded Meg’s robotic arms and picked up several samples which Jack hoped would prove something about the explosives used, and their firing devices. How, Daniel wasn’t quite sure, but Sam assented that the sample cases would be taken charge of by her team as soon as they surfaced, to prevent any suspicion of evidence tampering. The whole thing was making Daniel slightly giddy with the unrelenting tension and enforced caution-so when Sam radioed down again to say there was another unidentified ship coming up on the radar he couldn’t help but bark a slightly hysterical laugh.

“Of course there is,” he choked into the radio. “Jack, have we got everything you need?”

Jack frowned. “I hope so. We should get going.”

Sam’s voice came over the radio once more. [Getting a move on would be good, guys.]

Mirré cursed inventively-Jack looked inquisitively at Daniel, who forbore to translate-and started the ascent as soon as Daniel had stowed the last samples and the sub’s gathering apparatus. They rode up in tense silence, and Daniel couldn’t help but stare at Jack, who watched him back with an equal weighted regard. Based on what Jack had said, there was really no way that a single person could have carried out the sabotage as it had been executed-but whether there was anyone off the Cassiopeia who would back them up? That was where Jack and Daniel’s latest hair-brained scheme came in.

“Trente metres,” Mirré informed them tersely, and Sam radioed in once more. [[30 meters.]]

[Uh, Daniel? There’s another ship up here.]

“You mentioned that, Sam.” Daniel wondered briefly if the tension was cracking Sam, too-unlikely since she was a seasoned officer, but still…

[I mean another one, Daniel. As in two ships headed our direction at speeds which are not making me happy.]

“Huit metres,” Mirré reported. [[8 meters.]]

“We’ll be right there, have the crane ready for us.”

= = = = = =

Sam ran a tight ship.

That was the only thing Daniel managed to think for several minutes as her crew worked in nearly silent, impressively accurate speed to bring Meg aboard and unload both her cargo and passengers, bundling the samples from the wreck to some unspecified secure location, and forming a tight ring around Daniel, Jack, and Sam where they stood on the bridge.

Lou Ferretti was there too, pointing at the oncoming blips on the radar. “Turkish,” he said of one, and “Unknown,” of the other.

Daniel looked at Jack, who merely shook his head. Apparently he didn’t know whether their plan had gotten in motion in time or not either.

“Have either of them hailed us?” Daniel asked.

“Not yet,” Sam said. “Ferretti, get us out of the area, not too hastily.”

Daniel had a flashback to the last time he’d watched Return of the Jedi.

“Fly casual,” Jack muttered, and Daniel grinned, recognizing the same line he’d been thinking.

“Keep your distance, but don’t look like you’re keeping your distance,” Daniel added as Lou looked at them both as if they were utterly insane.

On the radar screen, both blips adjusted course to intercept the Cassiopeia on her new heading. Daniel closed his eyes and contemplated whether it was worth praying to any of the gods he’d studied.

Sam’s communications guru swung around from her console. “Captain-the Turkish ship is demanding that we reduce speed, and stop to allow their boarding party.”

“In French?” Sam guessed, voice weary.

The communications officer blinked, but before she could reply, the radio crackled again, and when she spun round a second time, her voice was full of wonder. “Captain-the other ship is hailing us as well-it’s the USS McFaul.”

= = = = = = =

There was absolute pandemonium on the deck of the Cassiopeia. Parties from both the McFaul and the Turkish ship had come aboard within moments of each other, already shouting about national security and respect for the citizens of a sovereign nation and god only knew what else. Apparently the Turks wanted them arrested, the Navy wanted them escorted to a neutral port, and there was a whole kerfuffle about whether or not there was anything valuable collected from the crime scene. There was a knot of people all commingled, surging towards where Daniel, Mirré, and Jack stood, and none of them were at all happy looking.

“Think this might be the end of your archaeological season, Doctor Ballard-Jackson,” Jack sounded regretful. “If nothing else, you’re very likely to be losing some of those lovely international commendations and letters of support from the local governments.”

Daniel knew that-had known it was a possibility from the moment he proposed this crazy plan. Somehow, he no longer really cared. There might be next season-there might not. There were always options.

He smiled, a quick-vanishing quirk of the lips directed only at the man standing beside him.
“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done,” he murmured, knowing from the flash of Jack’s eyes that the Dickens fan had caught his reference. Theatrical, maybe-the guillotine was perhaps a bit too strong a metaphor for what Daniel was doing to his professional ambitions, but not by much.

Jack surreptitiously squeezed Daniel’s hand, tucked close up to his side, and they turned to face the music.

Which, when it appeared in the form of a stout, balding man with a fierce expression and kindly eyes, was not at all what Daniel had expected, but exactly what he’d hoped for.

“My name is General George Hammond,” the man’s booming Texas voice rang out over the chatter and caused a brief stillness to fall on the deck. “I’m here to take Colonel O’Neill into protective custody as a material witness in cracking a criminal organization we’ve been after for years.” The man’s lips tilted up slightly and he nodded at Sam, who’d finally fought her way through the crowd to stand just behind Daniel’s shoulder.

“My compliments on your successful operation, Captain Carter, and my greetings to your father when next you see him. I’ll expect your full report when your crew is done with their analysis.”

All right. So not exactly what he’d hoped for. Daniel looked from Sam to the General and back again. “Sam?”

“Classified, Daniel,” she grinned ruefully. “Small part of a big sting. I didn’t know your flotsam was involved with the whole thing until the coded message came in with the McFaul’s hail a few minutes ago.”

Jack looked at Daniel. “Flotsam?” he complained.

Daniel shook his head. “Not my idea.” He looked at the General and frowned. “So Jack-“

“Colonel O’Neill was not informed of his role in the proceedings,” Hammond said, crossing his arms. “A decision with which I vehemently disagreed. No one is more pleased than I that circumstances worked out the way they did.”

“I think it’s safe to say I am,” Jack snapped, discarding the clownish petulance for something far more bitter. “I was set up to be the fall guy? Was getting me conked in the head part of the plan, here? What if Daniel hadn’t happened along?”

Sam coughed and looked sheepish. “Technically, I’d been ordered to be on the lookout for suspicious activity in this area all night. It was just kind of luck that Daniel’s shift had taken over by the time we found you.”

“It was the best back-up I could manage, Jack,” the Texan general sounded apologetic, but Daniel was furious to the point of actual physical vibration, mostly on Jack’s behalf.

“Easy, Daniel,” Jack murmured in an abrupt about face, putting a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s the way the cookie crumbles in this job.”

“It’s rotten,” Daniel said scathingly, turning away from the lot of them and heading for the sanctuary of the interior decks, tossing his remarks over his shoulder. “And I don’t know how the hell you can justify sticking up for a hierarchy that put you in danger, without your knowledge and without real back-up. I expect better from the so-called ‘land of the free.’”

Ignoring the protests from the assembled masses on the deck, Daniel ducked inside and stalked to his cabin, fuming. Jack as bait, Sam as blindly obedient soldier, Daniel as dupe-none of them had exactly shown to advantage in this situation, and it made him sick, hot with anger and embarrassment and downright unadulterated fury at the way they had all been used for some grander operation, like a whole bunch of chess pieces.

He locked the cabin door behind him and crashed heavily on his bunk, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Sam would get rid of the intruders on the Cassiopeia. Jack would go back to the USS McFaul with General Save-the-Day Hammond, which admittedly had been part of his and Jack’s plan when they called him in the eye-breaking early of the morning this morning, but not like this-and Daniel would go pick up his wandering scientists, pack up his bags, and go home to New England with half a survey, no academic vindication, and probably several letters of complaint from the Turkish government.

And no Jack.

Daniel contemplated that for a while, until there was a knock on his door.

“Daniel?”

It was Jack. Daniel said nothing. Jack continued to speak to him through the door.

“Look, Daniel. I’ve got to go-Hammond’s smoothed stuff over with the Turks, and Carter’s promised her report to Hammond, who’s promised it to the Turks, probably sanitized, and I get my reputation and my position back, and the whole crazy thing’s gonna be swept under the rug. Probably hasn’t hit American news yet anyway, so there’s very little they’re gonna have to do.” There was a long pause before Jack continued.

“You’ve got a lot of right to be angry, just for you. I can’t tell you what it means that you’re mad for me, too. And I can’t tell you how I appreciate everything you’ve given up to help me out. Look, Daniel, I-“ A sigh, and then a shout from further down the hall. “Yeah, I’ll be right there! You probably heard that-they’re all interested in packing off, pronto. You don’t have to see me off or anything, but, I just needed to say thanks. And, you know, I don’t know. I’ll write, or something.”

There was a shuffle at the door, and a soft thunk as if Jack were leaning his forehead against it, and then the sound of him moving up and away along the corridor.

Daniel closed his eyes and tried very hard not to think about laughing brown eyes or literary classics or the feel of soft, silvering hair beneath his fingertips.

It was over.

= = = = = = = = =

Epilogue: Two Years Later

“Coil that rope down smartly, Bennett, we don’t want to trip any of our guests,” Daniel said as he headed towards the wheel of the Grace of Maine.

“Yes, Captain,” Bennett saluted him and Daniel rolled his eyes. There was one every year-some fresh-faced kid who thought Daniel hung the moon, for one reason or another, or was simply so enchanted by his surroundings that he got caught up in it all like some wild-eyed romance. Archaeology, windjammers, didn’t matter. Daniel smiled ruefully. He could hardly blame them.

Walking easily along the freshly holy-stoned deck, he ran an approving, caressing hand along Grace’s railings, enjoying the brisk wind that ran rampant through his hair and promised a beautiful day’s sail. Assuming he got all his passengers loaded before the wind died for the afternoon, that was.

Grace of Maine was a windjammer in the classic 1880’s style, an eighty-foot beauty that had survived the perils of mechanization to a new life as a sometime-racer, sometime-cruiser for the New England tourist set. Cargo space had mostly been converted to cabins, and Daniel had fallen for her the first time he crewed her, years ago. Last year, when his old friend Ray had decided he just couldn’t captain her any more, Daniel realized he’d found a use for the hush money the military had paid him for his role in the Black Sea operation, and a way out of an increasingly unrewarding career in the field. Now, Daniel squired tourists around the bays of coastal Maine with a crew of sail-bums and people born into the wrong century, and worked on his latest folklore and mythology text when the weather turned too harsh for sailing.

Now he was just waiting for the last party to arrive-his booking secretary, Jenna, had informed him just an hour ago that someone had booked the last free berth, and handed him the updated list before scurrying off to deal with other issues shore-side. Something to do with postcards on order, Daniel thought, but he didn’t care. Now what had he done with the list? He yelled for Jon, who’d been greeting the families, couples, and single wanderers all afternoon.

“Jon! Have we got everyone aboard yet?”

“Just waiting on one-captain’s cabin berth,” Jon yelled back, after flipping through the manila folder he’d wedged between the bilge pump and the cabin’s side. Daniel snorted and went to check his charts-if the wind stayed fair, maybe he’d head around the outside of the nearby islands, give this group a taste of the open sea for their first day’s sail, then duck back into protected water for the evening’s dinner and anchorage.

He heard what he assumed was the last passenger arriving, but wasn’t paying much attention until a shadow fell across the charts he was studying. Glancing up, readying his ‘welcome aboard’ speech, Daniel froze into a weird half-crouch.

Unless Kelsey had slipped something into this morning’s ship-board porridge, the man standing in front of him, rocking a little on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets, was Jack O’Neill.

“Captain Jackson, I presume?” Though the tone was meant to be friendly, even flippant, Daniel thought he saw a flash of worry in those well-remembered brown eyes. He straightened up.

“Colonel O’Neill,” he replied coolly, disliking the feeling of suddenly being caught in ambush.

Jack held up a finger. “Retired,” he corrected.

Daniel’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”

Jack nodded. “It took me a while to get out, but I managed it. That thing, when I met you-it was the last straw. Hammond helped me take down not only the shadow ring the brass were after, but then a bunch of the brass that had set up the sting that way. Seems General George had a similar reaction to yours-‘a callous disregard of human life and precious resources’ was I think the way he termed it.”

Daniel nodded slowly. “Good man.” He took a deep breath and put the compass down carefully on the charts before looking up again. “So you’re here for a cruise?”

Jack hefted the duffel at his side. “Called last minute, heard there was one spot left for the five-day trip. Empty probably because it was expensive-Captain’s cabin, they said.” He cocked his head. “They didn’t tell me where the captain goes if I book it, but I figured I’d take the chance.”

Daniel thought there was probably innuendo intended in that statement, but ignored it. “You only get a piece of the cabin, I’m afraid. Shall we go stow your gear?”

He led the way down into the galley area, past the pump-shower and the stove to the tiny eating space. “The original captain’s cabin took up this whole stern here,” Daniel gestured to the area behind the steering column. “The captain before me figured that some people who needed the extra head-room would be willing to pay a premium for it, instead of bunking further forward. So he sectioned off a third for a guest cabin, and the other two-thirds are now mine.”

Daniel took Jack’s bag from him and went to put it in Jack’s cabin, realizing his mistake only when the now freed ex-colonel decided that that meant he was allowed to poke his head in Daniel’s berth, to which the door had unfortunately been left partially open.

Daniel followed Jack into his own cabin, a protest on his lips that died when he saw where Jack’s gaze was riveted.

Oops. Busted.

“You got them after all,” Jack said quietly, and Daniel moved up to stand beside him.

“Yeah, I did,” he answered at the same volume. ‘They’ referred to three postcards taped above Daniel’s tiny shipboard desk-one from Egypt, one from Japan, and one from South Africa, each addressed to Daniel, saying nothing on the back except, “Jack.” Each of them had come with a parcel, brown-paper wrapped, no return address, carrying a book of legends from that country. The books now sat on the shelf just over the postcards.

“You never let me know how to get in touch with you,” Daniel said softly, but not without lingering bitterness. “You wrote, but never let me write back. What was I supposed to think?”

Jack turned to face Daniel and opened his arms tentatively, with none of the grandiose bluster Daniel had half-expected. “Couldn’t figure out how to make it work, before,” he said as Daniel took a small step forward. “Couldn’t see how you’d want to, until I got out.”

Daniel took another step forward and pulled Jack into his own arms.

“You were smarter when you’d just been cracked on the head,” Daniel said fondly, the last of his long-held hurt draining away like so much stale bilge water in the face of Jack’s real, warm presence.

“Story of my life,” Jack quipped, relief in his voice and in the way his arms tightened around Daniel. He tucked his face into Daniel’s neck and Daniel tilted his head to accommodate him, closing his eyes.

Jack’s lips brushed Daniel’s pulse, lightly, then again. Daniel felt the deck move under his feet. He savored the feeling for a moment, and then his eyes flew open.

“Jack,” he said.

“Mmm?” Jack bit softly at Daniel’s jaw. “Kissing you-earth moved,” he muttered, intent on his task.

Daniel laughed. “Not to disparage your technique-oh-at all-“ Daniel batted somewhat ineffectually at Jack’s roving hands. “But that wasn’t-mmmm-that wasn’t you. That’s the wind and the tide picking up. I have a ship to sail.”

Jack frowned and stepped back. “Daniel-“ he paused, the question in his eyes, unwilling to force his company on the captain, and equally unwilling to ask. Daniel felt that punch to the gut once more, and knew how he had to answer, remembering the passage out of Sinuhe’s story he had quoted to Jack when talking about the treasures he sought under the waves.

“For today, my heart is satisfied.” Daniel held out his hand to the wanderer in front of him, finally understanding for himself what Sinuhe’s words meant. “Stay.”