(no subject)
Title: Down Here Among the Wreckage
Author: Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Warnings: Mature for language, violence, torture, non-con, adult themes, and some temporal meandering.
Categorization: AU, H/C, darkfic, tragedy, and apocafic for flavor. Team, Sam/Jack.
A/N: Special thanks to la_tante for the beta.
Part One-History
Part Two-Prodigal
Prologue
Chapter 1: What Once Was Lost
It’s been two years since Daniel last set foot on Earth. Two years since Anubis drove them into hiding like guerrilla revolutionaries. Five years since he watched Sam Carter walk through the gate with her father, part of him understanding even then that he might very well never see her again. But now it’s only been five minutes since he turned his back on the building she calls home, since she slipped a few precious words into the pages of his journal, five minutes since he finally accepted that she was well and truly lost.
The Sam Carter he knew and respected never would have refused to help, no matter what.
Daniel walks away from her house, her prison, her self-imposed exile. His two companions fall into single file on either side of him out of habit, although Daniel suspects this has more to do with their wish for silence. Cam leads them down the hill, trying not to look like he’s disappointed by Sam’s refusal to rise to the occasion. Daniel walks behind him, matching his step to the Colonel’s as Teal’c follows, sandwiching Daniel in the middle.
It doesn’t help.
Sam’s words pound in his mind in time to his steps and for the first time since this all began, Daniel begins to doubt this battle can be won. He begins to question what the hell they’re still struggling for.
Maybe there is some great truth to be found in Sam’s words, a mystery solved.
Some things you just don’t come back from.
Maybe they are fooling themselves that they can change anything. Anubis has already won.
They’ve reached the gate, and Daniel moves towards the DHD without giving the action much thought, punching in the glyphs for the Omega Site, but when the wormhole flushes into life, he knows he has no intention of going with them. Not right now. Not with these words still in his mind.
“You two go ahead,” Daniel says as his companions move up the stairs. “I’m going back to see Jacob.”
“Jackson,” Cam complains, dropping back from the event horizon. “You know it makes me twitchy when you insist on running all over the galaxy on your lonesome.”
Cam likes to think of them as a team rather than seeing himself as a babysitter set to the task of keeping his eclectic group of scientists and aliens from getting themselves killed. Mostly Daniel feels sorry for him. Cam doesn’t know what a real team is.
“Wasn’t really asking for your permission,” Daniel says, leaning back against the DHD.
Cam looks ready to lay in to him, but holds his tongue when Teal’c puts a restraining hand on his arm.
“We will see you when you return,” Teal’c says with a small nod before turning to step through the Stargate. Teal’c obviously gets that Daniel is one small push from complete meltdown and doesn’t want to be near ground zero.
Left without any other choice, Cam shoots Daniel one last look as if to convey how displeased he is, before stepping into the wormhole.
Daniel blows out a breath as the wormhole disengages and lowers himself to the steps. For a moment, he considers walking back up the mountain.
Some things you just don’t come back from.
“Did you find what you came for?” someone asks.
Daniel looks up in alarm, recognizing exactly how alone and exposed he is here, but the speaker is only Gairwyn. Looking at her, he doesn’t feel the warm familiarity she once might have evoked. It still feels like she somehow kidnapped Sam from them.
“You should have told us she was here,” he says.
She tilts her head to one side, and he has the annoying feeling of being analyzed, x-rayed by her clear gaze. “That was never my decision to make,” she answers, calm and obviously comfortable with her choices.
Daniel knows it would be easy to shatter that certainty. Just a few simple words. In his anger, he actually considers doing it for a moment, considers telling her that Thor is dead. That Anubis captured him and drained every secret from the Asgard’s formidable brain before killing him, scattering his consciousness like background noise in the vacuum of space so that no new body could ever contain it. That the majority of the Asgard died in a similar fashion.
Daniel looks into Gariwyn’s clear, faithful eyes and wants to destroy her. It may even be a kindness in the long run, to prepare her for what is coming. But he thinks of Sam, thinks of her tidy house and frozen tongue and can’t do it. He can’t shatter her perfect world.
“It is good that you came,” Gairwyn says when Daniel remains silent. “You will see.”
The words have the cadence of prophecy, the slight vibration of things to come. Once, Daniel might have been willing to believe.
“May the gods travel with you,” she says before turning her back on him and slipping back up the forest path. Only there are no more gods to walk with.
Pushing to his feet, Daniel dials the latest Tok’ra world, needing to speak to Jacob, needing to see it clear on his face that Sam really is lost.
That it really is all over.
* * *
There’s a slight buzz of activity in the Tok’ra halls when Daniel arrives, which is fairly unusual. The Tok’ra are a lot like the Asgard these days, a race with one foot already in the grave. A fate like that lends a certain amount of listlessness to a people. Daniel remembers that first hand.
He’d passed a tel’tac in the sands near the gate when he arrived, so he assumes this is the source of the current surge in energy. One of their agents must have returned, maybe with some big new piece of intel.
Daniel couldn’t care less.
He finds Jacob in his quarters, in the midst of packing a crate with what looks like fabric.
“Daniel,” Jacob says when he catches sight of him, sounding surprised and slightly alarmed. “I wasn’t expecting you back.” His eyes dart past Daniel’s shoulder.
Daniel follows the movement, finding nothing behind him but an empty hallway. He’s more interested in Jacob at the moment, anyway. Like the rest of the Tok’ra, he seems wound a bit tight.
“Is everything okay?” Jacob asks.
“You were right,” Daniel says, watching his face closely. “She wouldn’t help.”
Jacob nods his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Daniel,” he says. Only he’s not. Daniel can tell. It’s right there to see in plain sight, Jacob’s relief in the reaffirmation of Sam’s uselessness. Her insignificance. Her safety.
“You tried to warn me,” Daniel says through clenched teeth.
Jacob shifts. “Is there anything I can I do to help?” At least he has the decency to sound guilty. That’s more than Gairwyn offered.
“We still need to get our hands on more weapons to fill in the ground troops,” Daniel says, arbitrarily picking one of many, many things on his mental ‘To-Do’ list, because something still isn’t quite right and he can’t put his finger on it yet.
Jacob is distracted, looking up over Daniel’s shoulder again, staring at something behind him in a sort of surprise bordering on horror.
“I might be able to help you with that,” a voice says.
Daniel freezes, his eyes latched onto Jacob’s horrified face. That can’t possibly be who it sounds like. Jacob’s eyes drop away, more guilt, and Daniel has his answer.
Turning slowly, Daniel finds himself face to face with Jack O’Neill.
He’s leaner, much lankier than the man Daniel remembers, his unkempt hair completely grey now. But most out of place of all is the dark tattoo curling around his neck, spreading out like inky fingers from his spine, disappearing under his collar.
The first thing Daniel does is punch him in the face.
Either Jack has lost his edge or he’s purposely taking the hit. He sprawls on his ass, looks up at Daniel, and says, “Well, your left hook has certainly improved.”
Daniel wants to hit him again.
Jacob intercedes, stepping between them to press one hand against Daniel’s chest and offer the other to Jack.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Daniel says, watching Jacob pull Jack to his feet. “All this damn time. You told us he was dead.”
“I told you Anhur was dead,” Jacob corrects.
And now they’re playing with damn semantics. Daniel swears under his breath, moving a few steps away. God, of all days for this to happen. He was already way at the end of his rope, barely clinging to it for months. He rubs at his forehead in agitation.
“How?” he snaps, falling back on collecting information in a vague attempt not to lose it completely.
“Thor’s Hammer,” Jacob replies without hesitation, maybe trying to demonstrate his willingness to fess up. As if it makes any difference. But then Jacob’s words actually penetrate and Daniel halts mid-step. Thor’s Hammer. Cimmeria.
“Sam,” Daniel says, turning to Jack. “She saved you.”
Jack laughs, low and hard and somehow completely devoid of humor. “Do I look saved to you, Daniel?”
“You look alive.” That’s more than most people from Earth can say these days.
Jack’s lips twist into a smirk, but his eyes are completely flat. “Looks can be deceiving,” he says.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Daniel only realizes he’s said it out loud when Jacob puts a hand on his arm. “Daniel,” he warns, as if he’s stepped over some boundary. As far as Daniel’s concerned though, he’s the only sane person left in this room.
Daniel tries to shrug off the restraining hand, but Jacob just digs his fingers in, his grip like an iron band as he shoves Daniel out of the room. “I get it, Daniel,” he says when they are safely out in the hall. “I really do. But you don’t have the whole picture here.”
Daniel shakes off Jacob’s hand again and this time he lets him go. “Oh, I think I see perfectly clearly, thanks,” Daniel says, pacing away from the doorway.
“Daniel, use your damn head. Where do you think all that intel we gave you really came from? You think the Tok’ra, the handful of us that are left, have been focused on Earth?”
This actually penetrates the blinding anger that’s been building in Daniel all day. “What are you saying?”
Jacob hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Who exactly do you think discovered Anubis’ plans for Earth?”
Daniel is stunned. “But…”
“Jack has never stopped busting his ass for Earth, not for even a moment,” Jacob says. “Maybe not the way you wanted, but he did it the only way he could. So give him a break.”
“I can’t believe this,” Daniel says, pacing across the width of the hall. His hands are still shaking with adrenaline, his knuckles throbbing from their collision with Jack’s face. A reminder that of all the things Jack might be, at least he’s real. And alive.
“He was a Goa’uld, Daniel.” Jacob sighs, rubbing his head with his hand. “Maybe you think you have some tiny understanding of what that means, but I guarantee it’s even worse than you’ve imagined. He’s had to live with that.”
“Gee, Jacob, I wonder what it’s like to have to live with shitty things done to you by the Goa’uld.”
“Daniel,” Jacob says, shaking his head.
Daniel doesn’t really need to have it pointed out how irrational and petulant he’s being. Kicking at the wall, he leans against it with a sigh, his anger leaking away to an equally bone deep weariness. Being pissed off is exhausting. “I just don’t understand why he couldn’t come back.”
Jacob nods then, reaching out to clap a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s hard to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Or who doesn’t think there’s any point.”
Something in Jacob’s voice doesn’t settle right with Daniel. “Wait. What aren’t you telling me?”
“You’ll work it out soon enough,” he says in that annoyingly superior voice he’s obviously picked up from the Tok’ra over the years.
“Jacob, cut the crap.”
This brings a ghost of a smile to Jacob’s face.
“What?” Daniel demands.
Jacob shakes his head then, obviously finding something amusing. “Considering you haven’t seen him in five years, you sound an awful lot like him.”
But Daniel doesn’t want to think about how channeling Jack is sometimes the only way he gets through all the horror being thrown at him daily. Doesn’t want to admit that part of him is incredibly relieved to know Jack’s still alive, that he might be on their side once more.
Because none of that negates the fact that he is pissed and plans on staying that way.
“Just tell me,” Daniel says.
Jacob winces, scratching the back of his head. “It’s possible he’s not…completely all there, if you know what I mean. But then again, who is these days?”
Daniel holds up his hands. “Wait. Are you trying say that he’s, what, insane?”
Jacob just shrugs. His cavalier treatment of Jack’s dubious mental health is startling. But Jack doesn’t command his only daughter anymore, so maybe he’s allowed to not be overly concerned. She’s nice and safe on her pleasant world. Lucky Jacob.
“Do you trust him?” Daniel asks.
“He’s still Jack O’Neill. Just a little less sane.”
Daniel doesn’t find that particularly comforting.
“Look, Daniel,” Jacob says. “The bottom line here is that you need help and he’s in a position to offer it. We can worry about grudges later, if any of us are still alive.”
Great. Something to look forward to.
Taking a deep breath, Daniel forces himself to walk back into the room, to look Jack O’Neill in the eye and say, “Do you really think you can help us?”
Jack shrugs and for a moment, despite the strange clothes and dead eyes and possible insanity, he feels familiar. “I’m willing to try,” he says.
That’s something at least, right?
Some things you just don’t come back from.
Maybe Sam is allowed to be wrong. Or maybe the point is that there isn’t any going back, recovering what was. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still stumble forward, find a new direction. They have to try. Don’t they?
Daniel nods at Jack. “I’ll take you to see Reynolds.”
Next: Omega
Author: Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Warnings: Mature for language, violence, torture, non-con, adult themes, and some temporal meandering.
Categorization: AU, H/C, darkfic, tragedy, and apocafic for flavor. Team, Sam/Jack.
A/N: Special thanks to la_tante for the beta.
Part One-History
Part Two-Prodigal
Prologue
Chapter 1: What Once Was Lost
It’s been two years since Daniel last set foot on Earth. Two years since Anubis drove them into hiding like guerrilla revolutionaries. Five years since he watched Sam Carter walk through the gate with her father, part of him understanding even then that he might very well never see her again. But now it’s only been five minutes since he turned his back on the building she calls home, since she slipped a few precious words into the pages of his journal, five minutes since he finally accepted that she was well and truly lost.
The Sam Carter he knew and respected never would have refused to help, no matter what.
Daniel walks away from her house, her prison, her self-imposed exile. His two companions fall into single file on either side of him out of habit, although Daniel suspects this has more to do with their wish for silence. Cam leads them down the hill, trying not to look like he’s disappointed by Sam’s refusal to rise to the occasion. Daniel walks behind him, matching his step to the Colonel’s as Teal’c follows, sandwiching Daniel in the middle.
It doesn’t help.
Sam’s words pound in his mind in time to his steps and for the first time since this all began, Daniel begins to doubt this battle can be won. He begins to question what the hell they’re still struggling for.
Maybe there is some great truth to be found in Sam’s words, a mystery solved.
Some things you just don’t come back from.
Maybe they are fooling themselves that they can change anything. Anubis has already won.
They’ve reached the gate, and Daniel moves towards the DHD without giving the action much thought, punching in the glyphs for the Omega Site, but when the wormhole flushes into life, he knows he has no intention of going with them. Not right now. Not with these words still in his mind.
“You two go ahead,” Daniel says as his companions move up the stairs. “I’m going back to see Jacob.”
“Jackson,” Cam complains, dropping back from the event horizon. “You know it makes me twitchy when you insist on running all over the galaxy on your lonesome.”
Cam likes to think of them as a team rather than seeing himself as a babysitter set to the task of keeping his eclectic group of scientists and aliens from getting themselves killed. Mostly Daniel feels sorry for him. Cam doesn’t know what a real team is.
“Wasn’t really asking for your permission,” Daniel says, leaning back against the DHD.
Cam looks ready to lay in to him, but holds his tongue when Teal’c puts a restraining hand on his arm.
“We will see you when you return,” Teal’c says with a small nod before turning to step through the Stargate. Teal’c obviously gets that Daniel is one small push from complete meltdown and doesn’t want to be near ground zero.
Left without any other choice, Cam shoots Daniel one last look as if to convey how displeased he is, before stepping into the wormhole.
Daniel blows out a breath as the wormhole disengages and lowers himself to the steps. For a moment, he considers walking back up the mountain.
Some things you just don’t come back from.
“Did you find what you came for?” someone asks.
Daniel looks up in alarm, recognizing exactly how alone and exposed he is here, but the speaker is only Gairwyn. Looking at her, he doesn’t feel the warm familiarity she once might have evoked. It still feels like she somehow kidnapped Sam from them.
“You should have told us she was here,” he says.
She tilts her head to one side, and he has the annoying feeling of being analyzed, x-rayed by her clear gaze. “That was never my decision to make,” she answers, calm and obviously comfortable with her choices.
Daniel knows it would be easy to shatter that certainty. Just a few simple words. In his anger, he actually considers doing it for a moment, considers telling her that Thor is dead. That Anubis captured him and drained every secret from the Asgard’s formidable brain before killing him, scattering his consciousness like background noise in the vacuum of space so that no new body could ever contain it. That the majority of the Asgard died in a similar fashion.
Daniel looks into Gariwyn’s clear, faithful eyes and wants to destroy her. It may even be a kindness in the long run, to prepare her for what is coming. But he thinks of Sam, thinks of her tidy house and frozen tongue and can’t do it. He can’t shatter her perfect world.
“It is good that you came,” Gairwyn says when Daniel remains silent. “You will see.”
The words have the cadence of prophecy, the slight vibration of things to come. Once, Daniel might have been willing to believe.
“May the gods travel with you,” she says before turning her back on him and slipping back up the forest path. Only there are no more gods to walk with.
Pushing to his feet, Daniel dials the latest Tok’ra world, needing to speak to Jacob, needing to see it clear on his face that Sam really is lost.
That it really is all over.
* * *
There’s a slight buzz of activity in the Tok’ra halls when Daniel arrives, which is fairly unusual. The Tok’ra are a lot like the Asgard these days, a race with one foot already in the grave. A fate like that lends a certain amount of listlessness to a people. Daniel remembers that first hand.
He’d passed a tel’tac in the sands near the gate when he arrived, so he assumes this is the source of the current surge in energy. One of their agents must have returned, maybe with some big new piece of intel.
Daniel couldn’t care less.
He finds Jacob in his quarters, in the midst of packing a crate with what looks like fabric.
“Daniel,” Jacob says when he catches sight of him, sounding surprised and slightly alarmed. “I wasn’t expecting you back.” His eyes dart past Daniel’s shoulder.
Daniel follows the movement, finding nothing behind him but an empty hallway. He’s more interested in Jacob at the moment, anyway. Like the rest of the Tok’ra, he seems wound a bit tight.
“Is everything okay?” Jacob asks.
“You were right,” Daniel says, watching his face closely. “She wouldn’t help.”
Jacob nods his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Daniel,” he says. Only he’s not. Daniel can tell. It’s right there to see in plain sight, Jacob’s relief in the reaffirmation of Sam’s uselessness. Her insignificance. Her safety.
“You tried to warn me,” Daniel says through clenched teeth.
Jacob shifts. “Is there anything I can I do to help?” At least he has the decency to sound guilty. That’s more than Gairwyn offered.
“We still need to get our hands on more weapons to fill in the ground troops,” Daniel says, arbitrarily picking one of many, many things on his mental ‘To-Do’ list, because something still isn’t quite right and he can’t put his finger on it yet.
Jacob is distracted, looking up over Daniel’s shoulder again, staring at something behind him in a sort of surprise bordering on horror.
“I might be able to help you with that,” a voice says.
Daniel freezes, his eyes latched onto Jacob’s horrified face. That can’t possibly be who it sounds like. Jacob’s eyes drop away, more guilt, and Daniel has his answer.
Turning slowly, Daniel finds himself face to face with Jack O’Neill.
He’s leaner, much lankier than the man Daniel remembers, his unkempt hair completely grey now. But most out of place of all is the dark tattoo curling around his neck, spreading out like inky fingers from his spine, disappearing under his collar.
The first thing Daniel does is punch him in the face.
Either Jack has lost his edge or he’s purposely taking the hit. He sprawls on his ass, looks up at Daniel, and says, “Well, your left hook has certainly improved.”
Daniel wants to hit him again.
Jacob intercedes, stepping between them to press one hand against Daniel’s chest and offer the other to Jack.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Daniel says, watching Jacob pull Jack to his feet. “All this damn time. You told us he was dead.”
“I told you Anhur was dead,” Jacob corrects.
And now they’re playing with damn semantics. Daniel swears under his breath, moving a few steps away. God, of all days for this to happen. He was already way at the end of his rope, barely clinging to it for months. He rubs at his forehead in agitation.
“How?” he snaps, falling back on collecting information in a vague attempt not to lose it completely.
“Thor’s Hammer,” Jacob replies without hesitation, maybe trying to demonstrate his willingness to fess up. As if it makes any difference. But then Jacob’s words actually penetrate and Daniel halts mid-step. Thor’s Hammer. Cimmeria.
“Sam,” Daniel says, turning to Jack. “She saved you.”
Jack laughs, low and hard and somehow completely devoid of humor. “Do I look saved to you, Daniel?”
“You look alive.” That’s more than most people from Earth can say these days.
Jack’s lips twist into a smirk, but his eyes are completely flat. “Looks can be deceiving,” he says.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Daniel only realizes he’s said it out loud when Jacob puts a hand on his arm. “Daniel,” he warns, as if he’s stepped over some boundary. As far as Daniel’s concerned though, he’s the only sane person left in this room.
Daniel tries to shrug off the restraining hand, but Jacob just digs his fingers in, his grip like an iron band as he shoves Daniel out of the room. “I get it, Daniel,” he says when they are safely out in the hall. “I really do. But you don’t have the whole picture here.”
Daniel shakes off Jacob’s hand again and this time he lets him go. “Oh, I think I see perfectly clearly, thanks,” Daniel says, pacing away from the doorway.
“Daniel, use your damn head. Where do you think all that intel we gave you really came from? You think the Tok’ra, the handful of us that are left, have been focused on Earth?”
This actually penetrates the blinding anger that’s been building in Daniel all day. “What are you saying?”
Jacob hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Who exactly do you think discovered Anubis’ plans for Earth?”
Daniel is stunned. “But…”
“Jack has never stopped busting his ass for Earth, not for even a moment,” Jacob says. “Maybe not the way you wanted, but he did it the only way he could. So give him a break.”
“I can’t believe this,” Daniel says, pacing across the width of the hall. His hands are still shaking with adrenaline, his knuckles throbbing from their collision with Jack’s face. A reminder that of all the things Jack might be, at least he’s real. And alive.
“He was a Goa’uld, Daniel.” Jacob sighs, rubbing his head with his hand. “Maybe you think you have some tiny understanding of what that means, but I guarantee it’s even worse than you’ve imagined. He’s had to live with that.”
“Gee, Jacob, I wonder what it’s like to have to live with shitty things done to you by the Goa’uld.”
“Daniel,” Jacob says, shaking his head.
Daniel doesn’t really need to have it pointed out how irrational and petulant he’s being. Kicking at the wall, he leans against it with a sigh, his anger leaking away to an equally bone deep weariness. Being pissed off is exhausting. “I just don’t understand why he couldn’t come back.”
Jacob nods then, reaching out to clap a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s hard to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Or who doesn’t think there’s any point.”
Something in Jacob’s voice doesn’t settle right with Daniel. “Wait. What aren’t you telling me?”
“You’ll work it out soon enough,” he says in that annoyingly superior voice he’s obviously picked up from the Tok’ra over the years.
“Jacob, cut the crap.”
This brings a ghost of a smile to Jacob’s face.
“What?” Daniel demands.
Jacob shakes his head then, obviously finding something amusing. “Considering you haven’t seen him in five years, you sound an awful lot like him.”
But Daniel doesn’t want to think about how channeling Jack is sometimes the only way he gets through all the horror being thrown at him daily. Doesn’t want to admit that part of him is incredibly relieved to know Jack’s still alive, that he might be on their side once more.
Because none of that negates the fact that he is pissed and plans on staying that way.
“Just tell me,” Daniel says.
Jacob winces, scratching the back of his head. “It’s possible he’s not…completely all there, if you know what I mean. But then again, who is these days?”
Daniel holds up his hands. “Wait. Are you trying say that he’s, what, insane?”
Jacob just shrugs. His cavalier treatment of Jack’s dubious mental health is startling. But Jack doesn’t command his only daughter anymore, so maybe he’s allowed to not be overly concerned. She’s nice and safe on her pleasant world. Lucky Jacob.
“Do you trust him?” Daniel asks.
“He’s still Jack O’Neill. Just a little less sane.”
Daniel doesn’t find that particularly comforting.
“Look, Daniel,” Jacob says. “The bottom line here is that you need help and he’s in a position to offer it. We can worry about grudges later, if any of us are still alive.”
Great. Something to look forward to.
Taking a deep breath, Daniel forces himself to walk back into the room, to look Jack O’Neill in the eye and say, “Do you really think you can help us?”
Jack shrugs and for a moment, despite the strange clothes and dead eyes and possible insanity, he feels familiar. “I’m willing to try,” he says.
That’s something at least, right?
Some things you just don’t come back from.
Maybe Sam is allowed to be wrong. Or maybe the point is that there isn’t any going back, recovering what was. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still stumble forward, find a new direction. They have to try. Don’t they?
Daniel nods at Jack. “I’ll take you to see Reynolds.”
Next: Omega