Archive of Our Own (BETA rev. 2101)

The ruins were desolate, water-logged.

They worked on the edge of what once must have been a towering cliff, but was now only a ridge a few dozen meters high. The city built on the edge is abandoned now, but it had been there for at least a thousand years: there were loom weights and broken pottery, but also the debris of much more advanced technology, and a vast ganglia of aqueducts that must have once kept all the water at bay. The humidity was intense. Every surface seemed to drip, as if the planet itself were sweating. It wasn't the first place they looked for the Ark, and now it looked like it wasn't going to be last: they were shipping out that day, empty-handed.

*

Daniel lay on the couch of Jack's Washington apartment mid-morning. The coffee table was covered with reams of paper, a cup of cold coffee, a half-eaten bagel. Real food tasted strange after weeks of MREs. He thought about his transition from scholar to treasure-hunter. It made him wonder if perhaps Moroni was an Ancient, and if Daniel wished hard enough, would he appear to lead him to the Ark? Sleep deprivation tended to make him morose.

Dumb luck has been on their side too many times to hope for any more Ancient intervention. He looked out the window, at an impressive view of the Washington skyline on an overcast day. He tried to imagine how it would look different ruled by the Ori.

*

"I think they're going to take me off of this one, Jack," Daniel said into the heavy black phone they had to use to make phone calls out of the mountain. "I've been wrong too many times. I see it in Landry's eyes when I talk to him."

The silence that followed was too long; it made him wonder if Jack already knew something he didn't.

"We'll see," Jack said.

It wasn't the reassurance that Daniel would never admit he was looking for, but they'd been together too long for that sort of thing. He nodded as if Jack could hear him.

*

There were always plenty of grunts along to do all the physical labor, but Daniel had never been able to stand around while other people were working. So he always pitched in, lugging boxes, opening crates, even though he could always tell he annoyed the commanders, getting in the way of some pre-set system he wasn't privy to, but no one ever said anything.

The new crop of PhDs were there, three this time, all white men in their thirties, all soft-looking and inappropriately confident. They were talking amongst themselves, trying to look like they were doing something important, but Daniel knew they were faking.

He never thought he would get tired of this, but he was, he was tired.

*

Daniel woke up in a panic. The glowing red numbers on Jack's nightstand read "3:17". He felt like he'd almost had an idea, but by falling asleep, it was going to slip away from him. He'd been barely dozing; his body was still on what the airmen called 'West Africa Time', a euphemism for gate-lag whose nuances it had taken him a long time to parse.

He was embarrassed to be back here, on Earth, in Washington, in this bed, without having achieved his objective. He felt like he shouldn't have many inhibitions in front of Jack, considering, but still, it stung, being wrong, again�"failing�"although he knew that was the least of it of course, with the fate of the galaxy in the balance. And Jack, he was sure, didn't think less of him.

*

They didn't send him with a whole crew this time; it was just Cameron and Vala, and Daniel suspected Jack might have called in some sort of favor for any of them to be here at all.

Cameron and Vala believed in him, one hundred percent. For that, Daniel wondered if they should be pitied. Vala believed in him because she thought a lot of him personally, and for her, character was the most important criteria in anything. Cameron believed in him because Daniel was part of the team, and because SG-1 meant something to him that it never had and probably never would mean for anyone else again.

At the time, there were seventeen different expeditions looking on seventeen different worlds. At first, Daniel felt guilty for hoping that none of them would find it first, but no amount of mental self-discipline seemed to rid him of the desire, so he finally accepted that even when it comes to the enslavement of a galaxy, most people couldn't help but interact with the world (with the universe) at the level of his or her own experience. And besides, in the end, actions were what mattered: he was putting in his eighteen-hour days, sleeping in the dirt. Living on MREs and not showering, as Vala always pointed out.

The lead they were working from was a flimsy one: the temple they were excavating in some ways resembled ones dedicated to an obscure group of sister-gods whose ritual objects may have once included the Ark, since they were thought of, at least in some times and in some places, as 'guardians of truth'. Which was, of course, way too many contingencies, but truthfully, Daniel had pulled off more with less before.

They'd been there two and a half weeks. Four days away from pulling up stakes. They'd excavated parts of an atrium, a nave, and a vaulted area that Daniel theorized was once a reliquary for some very large object, long since removed. The day before they had started on a room that may have been a library, or the equivalent of a sacristy. Daniel couldn't decide if he was hopeful or not, if he was hopeful simply out of pessimism fatigue.

When it happened, it was almost cartoonish: it looked exactly like the picture, down to the smallest detail, even after all this time. When he pulled it out of its dark little cubby, dust wafted up dramatically. He shouted for Cameron and Vala and they'd come running.

They helped him carry it into the open air, into the sunlight for a better look. They looked happy but unsurprised, and Daniel could tell they didn't fully comprehend the weight of his relief. Cameron patched a signal through to the mountain.

Daniel heard the words as if from a distance. He stood in front of the Ark, watching it closely, as if by concentration he could make sure it wasn't too good to be true. He laughed at himself for thinking about Jack's reaction only seconds after thinking save the galaxy. But he couldn't help it: Jack's smile was handsome even over the phone, and he was always the first person Daniel thought of to share his excitement, his victories, his joy.