He’s never wanted to be at Jack’s bedside as much as he does right now, and there’s never been a worse time to need it. Bregman and his camera crew are still haunting the halls trying to get gossip and secrets, and if Daniel goes to his lover, he knows he won’t keep it together, and the last thing they need is for that vulture to get something incriminating on video, especially with the IOA lurking as well.
The words on the screen in front of him are unusually blurred. He’d walked out on Woolsey’s interrogation, despite the threat of being thrown in jail. There was a chance the IOA could do it, despite his status as a civilian, but with Jack still out after his surgery (he’d let himself go in for five minutes, a socially acceptable amount of time for an unconscious man who was merely a teammate), he found he simply didn’t care. Whoever sent Woolsey within hours of their return from P3X-666, they were looking for blood, and the leading questions indicated they wanted either Jack or the General, and Daniel wasn’t going to give them anything to use.
When he’d stormed out, Hammond had stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder and asked him to at least finish his official report to attempt to pacify the circling sharks. He had to know that they were sighted on him, but he was still looking out for everyone else. Daniel can at least finish his report. Trying to put the mission into words without letting any of it playback in his head, he starts to hash out words on the keyboard. It’s working, until Bregman blunders in and starts talking, ignoring Daniel’s clear signals for him to leave; and then he points at the camcorder.
Daniel freezes. He feels lightheaded and short of breath. He knows what’s on the camcorder, though he hasn’t bothered to download any of it. Wells. Jack. Janet.
He lurches across the room and snatches the camcorder up before Bregman can reach for it, slamming it down on his desk behind him and hoping rather viciously that it breaks. “I said now's not a good time. What part about that didn't you understand?”
“You got something on tape, didn't you?” The man sounds indecently eager, and Daniel’s tenuous hold on his temper breaks.
“Get out,” he snarls, walking towards the man, trying to channel Teal’c. “Get out!”
“Okay,” he holds up his hands, defensively, and backs away from Daniel. “I'm going. All right.”
Turning away, Daniel moves back over to his desk. He picks up the camcorder, aware his hands are shaking, and tries to decide what to do with it. Download it? Erase it? Wells isn’t out of the woods yet, and he doesn’t want to lose the man’s message to his wife but maybe he can erase the video and save the audio...it’s more likely to get declassified anyway.
“You know I, uh…I once did a piece on this war photographer. His name was Martin Krystovski.” Not quite able to believe the man isn’t gone, Daniel rolls his eyes and doesn’t turn around. “For about six months, he was with a unit in Vietnam, and…the day before he was scheduled to leave, the day before. He's out with a unit, and it was just a routine patrol. Or so they thought. But suddenly, the lieutenant pulled him down…and Krystovski…he hadn't intended to take a picture at that moment, but his hands were on the camera, and he hit the ground so hard that it just went off. And the picture captured…the lieutenant getting shot in the head. And Krystovski said to me—he said: ‘That bullet would have hit me—should've hit me.’ And he never showed that picture to anyone. Not for twenty-five years. But twenty-five years later, he got up one morning, and he looked at that picture. And he saw something that wasn't horrific. And he decided to tell the story because he realized that he hadn't accidentally taken a picture of a man dying. It was of a man saving his life. The picture I'm making, that I'm trying to make, is about what you people do every single day-”
Something about the story rings true. Whatever the motivations of slimy Kinsey and the IOA, Bregman at least is passionate about the truth and storytelling - things that a younger Daniel would have been whole-heartedly behind far more than he would have stood with the military. Present-day Daniel is less naive, understands the motivations and the reasoning of the servicemen and servicewomen he works alongside more often than not, but that doesn’t mean that younger Daniel was completely wrong either. He grudgingly turns around and studies the man’s earnest face as he keeps talking.
“-under extreme circumstances that no one can even imagine. And I don't know what happened out there. I'm sorry about what happened, whatever it was. And if you did tape something of it, that's not gonna change what happened. What will change is how you feel about it.”
And he walks away. Daniel turns to download the footage, and though he still doesn’t think Bregman should have it, he doesn’t destroy it.
“I’ve been ordered to turn over the tape.”
He should have just destroyed it. Jack would say he had fallen for the man’s sob story hook, line, and sinker. Daniel doesn’t turn around right away, contemplating the futility of saying ‘what tape?’. Only his vast affection for the General keeps his mouth shut on that or anything else caustic and angry.
“Look,” Hammond says gently, treating Daniel patiently and kindly as he always has. “I'm not happy about it either. I could fight it. The tape could get lost or accidentally erased, these things happen, but I'm not going to do that. You know, I had that little weasel of a man thrown out of here, but in light of the NID's latest investigation, I'm starting to think maybe there should be a record of what goes on here beyond the classified reports.”
Slowly, Daniel turns to face him, taking a good look at the man’s face. What he sees is that Hammond really doesn’t want to give Daniel an order he might not obey (he’s always been careful to avoid that, unlike Jack) but that the tape is going to Bregman one way or another, no matter how the General feels about it. “And you trust Bregman to portray that?” Daniel asks, feeling more than a little bitter that he’d bought the man’s story and then the snake had turned around and gone behind his back to get what he wanted anyway.
“At the moment,” George says regretfully, “I have no other choice.”
He delivers the tape and, confident that the crew will be rushing off to view it immediately like the leeches they are, hurries to the infirmary. Jack, in respect to his rank and the fact that he was unconscious, has been sequestered in a private ward and Daniel slips inside, closing the door behind himself and leaning on it with a sigh. When he looks up, Jack is watching him.
Jack is awake.
“Hi,” he breathes, crossing quickly to the side of the bed. “They weren’t sure how long you’d be out. I wanted to...but Bregman and his cameras are still all over the place.”
“Just woke up,” the colonel replies, voice gravelly, “and you’re here. Good timing.”
“Oh,” the true meaning of ‘just woke up’ hits Daniel hard and he sways, swallowing hard. “Jack…”
“Woah, hey.” Jack comes alert quickly, grabs his hand, the only part of him he can probably reach the way he winces at even that movement, and tugs. “Sit down. You’re pale. Did you skip getting checked out?”
“No. I’m fine,” he opens and closes his mouth several more times, but doesn’t have the right words.
“You don’t look fine.” Jack keeps insistently putting pressure on his hand and Daniel lets himself be tugged down onto the side of the bed, feeling cold all over. “I’m alright, Danny.”
“Yeah, you’re okay,” Daniel lifts Jack’s hand and folds it between both of his own. “It’s...oh, god,” his throat is getting tight but Jack’s frowning now and he pushes through. “I-it’s Janet. We lost Janet.”
“What?!” Jack pulls his hand out of Daniel’s to try and get leverage, struggling to push himself upright against the pillows and the bandages. “Which team is going after her? Did Carter and Teal’c go?”
“No, Jack, wait!” Daniel puts both hands as gently as he can on his partner’s shoulders, helping him up into a sitting position but not letting him up off the bed. He can feel the hot tears in his eyes, struggling to keep them back as he says, “She’s gone. S-she took a staff blast, high, and...she w-was dead before we even got back to the Gate. I couldn’t save her.”
“You did everything you could,” Jack responds fiercely, firmly, his voice sounding jagged. “I’m sure, whatever you could. Not your fault,” his warm hands come up to either side of Daniel’s face, pulling his forehead down to meet Jack’s, thumbs brushing somewhat ineffectively against the tears gliding down Daniel’s cheeks. “Not your fault.”
“I w-was getting out the s-stupid camera,” Daniel confesses. “To record a message f-for Wells’ wife. H-he was hurt pretty bad, Janet wasn’t sure h-he was going to make it, t-that he was stable enough to move. If I’d just b-been watching around us instead…”
“Simon Wells, whose wife is about to have a baby?”
“Yes,” Daniel agrees, startled though he knows at this point he shouldn’t be that Jack knows way more about his men than he ever lets on.
“Frasier probably gave you the go-ahead on that, or she didn’t object. Am I right?” Daniel nods slightly, limiting his movement since his head is still resting against Jack’s. “And there were supposed to be two other airmen with you, watching out for both of you. Not your fault, kid. Come here,” Jack slides his hands down, leaving a trail of warmth against Daniel’s cold arms, starting to wrap his arms around him. Daniel takes a shaky breath, moving to sink into Jack’s offered embrace, but voices just outside give him a split second of warning before the door opens, and he leaps up off the side of the bed and away from his partner as a nurse walks in.
“Colonel, you’re awake!” the woman says brightly, with a smile, and Daniel steps further away even as he rubs at the wetness on his cheeks, averting his face from her.
“Daniel, hang on-” Jack ignores the woman and reaches out a hand towards him but Daniel is already out of his reach and shakes his head, pasting a smile on his face, reminded by the nurse’s sudden entrance that the base is an even less safe place right now than usual.
“I have a meeting,” he lies, “I’ll see you later, Jack.” Turning, he slips back out the door the way he came, past another nurse and a doctor, and makes his escape before Jack can try to evade the medical staff.
After he gives Bregman back the tape, the man and his crew stick around until after the memorial. That means Daniel still feels like he’s walking on eggshells, avoiding the camera crew himself, and Jack isn’t as recovered as he was pretending to be, so he gets pinned back down in an infirmary bed himself. The doctor trying to take Janet’s place ‘refuses to let the Colonel die on his watch’, and won’t clear Jack to leave the base or go back on duty. Daniel doesn’t want to go home to his own empty house, so he sleeps on base as well, on his office couch as often as a real bed.
It’s a full seven days, which pass mostly in a self-inflicted haze of caffeine and sleep deprivation before the camera crew gets the final interview they want with Jack and then packs up and leaves the base. Jack finds him in his office, reading the same page of half-translated Goa’uld over and over again because, by the time he reaches the bottom of the page, he’s forgotten the beginning. Jack appears without him noticing in front of his desk and leans forward over the papers. He jerks, startled, and blinks up at his lover.
“Oh. Jack.” Daniel flushes just a little, feeling the warmth up the back of his neck and ears, because he’s been avoiding Jack. He still wants his comfort too much to try to be casual around all the eyes and ears of the mountain. Plus, who knows how long Jack has been standing there watching him?
“Daniel,” Jack is studying him and misses nothing - not the dark circles under his eyes, not all the extra empty coffee cups, not the barely touched plate of dinner a concerned Sam had brought by hours ago. “How long has it been since you slept?”
He shrugs. He was lying down about eight hours ago, but with all of the nightmares, he can’t say how much actual sleep he has been getting. Jack looks unimpressed, scowl written across his face, but as Daniel watches with interest the colonel takes a deep breath and then his face softens.
“Bregman’s gone. Camera crews are gone. Let’s go get some sleep.”
Daniel considers this, mind feeling sluggish, but shakes his head. He feels like he should say no - something is holding him back, but it takes him a minute to put it into words. “Sleeping together on base is still careless.”
“I don’t care, right now,” Jack replies cheerfully, holding out a hand imperiously. Which is...incredibly tempting, but the small part of his brain still functioning on full insists they shouldn’t, so he just frowns bemusedly up at Jack, who sighs again. “New doc still wants me under supervision, he keeps saying. So...supervise me.” he clicks his fingers and holds his hand out again.
He should hate that. He always makes a fuss when Jack gets Airforce officer-y in matters pertaining to their personal life. Maybe it’s the exhaustion speaking but...he doesn’t hate it.
With Jack, he might actually sleep with no nightmares. Without Jack, he’ll just read this parchment another dozen times and then pass out and not get any rest.
Daniel stands up and takes his hand.
