Rec Category: Episode Related
Categories: Jack and Daniel friendship, angst, drama, horror, character study
Warnings: detailed descriptions of canon torture
Author on LJ: katie_m
Author's Website: Katie M at AO3
Link: Soul May Look and Body Touch

Why This Must Be Read: Here is an exquisitely wincing exploration of Daniel helplessly watching Jack's very self disintegrate, both physically and mentally, during Abyss. Powerfully, painfully good.


Jack's still alive when he falls, but barely. He dies on impact, all his vibrancy flattening out into stained glass: hard-edged in spots, flowing out into the world in others, many-colored rather than blinding white like Daniel and Oma and the other Ascended spirits Daniel's seen. The world shifts around Jack, accommodates itself to this new presence, and within moments the scene at the bottom of the shaft looks like nothing so much as a stream flowing around an old, moss-covered boulder.

The thing that was Jack looks... finished. It's not as hard to look at as Daniel would have thought it would be, actually. Oma would be proud, he thinks. She's big into detachment from worldly concerns, except of course for those times when she isn't.