Journeys (5d/5)
Title: Journeys (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Part I a b Part II a b c d Part III a b c d e Part IV a b c d Part V a b c
3 August 2003; SGC, Earth; 1000 hrs
Sam walked into her lab one morning to find Jonas frowning at her last naquadria conversion simulations. "Hey," she said, startling him into looking up. "So what do you think?"
"I think Daniel was right about the bomb test," Jonas said. "It would explain a lot, including why we've never found naquadria anywhere else."
She nodded. "I thought so. That opens up a new can of worms." And it meant that they might have a way of generating new naquadria, too, as long as they didn't go the way of Kelowna in the process. Sam saw piles of paper and lots of arguing about policy in her near future. "I want to put a pause on all naquadria research until we can decide exactly how we want to proceed," she added. "Do me a favor and tell anyone you know of who's working on it."
Jonas was quiet for a moment. "You know how they check my neural scans specifically for naquadria damage?" he said. "They should start doing that with the other scientists working on it. Most of them aren't field personnel, so I don't think they have the same medical requirements."
"Everyone here has been given those recommendations, and we're pretty careful whenever we work with naquadria--"
"Well, so were we," Jonas said, his tone as close to 'testy' as he ever got. "We weren't as advanced as you, but we understood radiation and shielding."
"That's true," she conceded. "All right, we'll have to revise protocols for that, too, but honestly, Jonas, we might have to phase out naquadria research altogether if we can't find a way to work around its instability. The risks are going to start outweighing the benefits."
"I think the crew of the Prometheus would agree with you there," Jonas said with a wry smile, and, just like that, any of his previous tension was gone.
A soft kick on the doorframe revealed Daniel, carrying what looked like a projector in his arms. "Am I interrupting?" he asked.
"Nah," Jonas said, straightening from his seat. "We were just talking about you, anyway."
Daniel raised his eyebrows as he stepped into the lab. "Really," he said.
"More like talking about your naquadria tip," Sam corrected. "We think it pans out. Now, are you going to tell us what that--wait, is that the Tok'ra holographic projector Martouf and Dr. Lee were messing with?"
"Yeah; they managed to get it to interface with the Tok'ra memory recall device," Daniel said. He set it down on a clear area of bench space. "I'm supposed to give it to you to see what you want to do with it."
"It interfaces with the what?" Jonas said.
Sam eyed the projector dubiously. "It's a little disk you attach here," she said, pointing to her temple. "It stimulates memory centers to enhance recall. I've used one on a Tok'ra mission before, but I'm pretty sure the only one we have is the one we usually use with the zatarc detector. We regularly checked all our personnel for zatarc programming--"
"Right, during the period after the Tok'ra treaty," Jonas remembered, nodding.
"--but we discontinued it after about a year when it seemed likely that the Goa'uld responsible for the technology had been killed by Martouf on his last mission for the Tok'ra."
"The disk we used for that still works as a memory enhancer when it's set correctly," Daniel told her. "Janet was there the whole time, so it was safe."
"You used it? I should've been there to monitor in case something went wrong," she said, letting some rebuke into her tone. "Bill was the last one fiddling with this, and you know how he is with safety precautions."
"Well, Martouf had finished most of the fiddling before we Ascended," Daniel said. "And some of my memories are private. Jack and Teal'c weren't there, either; only Janet." Before she could say anything else, he added, "As it turned out, we managed to stay mostly on less private thoughts, so if you're interested in seeing how the Goa'uld holographically project memories..."
"So that's really possible?" Sam said, more interested now. Jonas tilted his head, examining the projector. "Memories aren't usually straightforward or that sequential, are they?" Although she supposed it was possible that that was one of the recall device's functions: to make a collection of thoughts linear enough to be visualized on a screen.
Daniel shrugged. "I just spent an hour hooked up to this thing, and it seems to have worked." He tapped his temple where a tiny mark showed that he'd just had a disk attached to his head. "It was modified from a projector that was meant to be used as a recording device, too, and since no one has figured out how to erase its history except by overwriting it, you can probably play back what we saw this morning."
She looked up sharply and automatically glanced around to verify that they were the only ones in the room. "You don't mind? What's the recording of?"
"Nothing much," he said, not quite casual. "Abydos, mostly. It took a while to figure out how to focus on the right memories, though, so it skips around a bit." Sam wasn't sure what her face looked like, but it must have been quite excited, because Daniel smiled and said, "Like I said, you can look if you want. I thought you'd be interested."
Eager to see how it worked, Sam powered it on.
There was a blurry scene that made little sense until she realized that they were watching it from the point of view of someone sitting on a man's shoulders. A boy who looked like a younger version of Skaara ran ahead of them, tugging on a woman's hand.
"That's my mother and Skaara," Daniel said. "We were walking back. I'm sitting on my father."
"Aw," Sam said before she could stop herself. Suddenly, though, Skaara and Claire Jackson disappeared. "What is that?" she said, pointing at what looked like a black screen. Even as they watched, the darkness seemed to get nearer and nearer until the memory stopped altogether. "That black..."
"That's my village," Daniel said, watching along with them. "That's what it always looks like whenever I dream about it now. I can't remember what happens next in that memory." Sam grimaced, some of the excitement at the technology dying away as she realized what Daniel had been trying to do with this little experiment.
"So it's really..." she started, then stopped when another memory started.
This one was of the embarkation room, with Ferretti's original team and Daniel on the ramp--this must have been their first trip back to Abydos--but as soon as the memory reached the event horizon, it ended.
The next one showed a terrified young Daniel being chased through the desert sand by a mastadge with a broken harness, with Skaara chasing after them both, only to be swallowed up by the same blackness as they reached what should have been the naquadah mines. And then--
"Well," Daniel said casually as he switched the projector off. "That's that. There were a few others that got overwritten. I was hoping a more objective look would help, but it's really just not there anymore. You can play with the projector though."
"Do you want to keep experimenting with it?" Sam offered, examining the projector again. "I can help--maybe if we adjust some parameters, you'd be able to access more memories."
"No," Daniel said.
She frowned. "You don't...even want to try again?"
"It's gone," he said, nodding at the projector. "That's it. Trying again isn't going to help--at some point, it's just denial and a waste of time."
"What about something else? You didn't look for the lost city or anything?" Jonas said.
"I started to," Daniel said. "Nothing happened except a headache."
"Well, maybe," Sam said again, "if we adjust some--"
"And even if I do remember all the secrets of the Ascended Ancients, I'm not sure any of us should know," Daniel said.
Sam raised her eyebrows. "Well, that's a change," she said cautiously. "You seemed to want to remember it before."
"That was before I remembered what happened when Shifu came here," Daniel pointed out.
"The Harsesis?" Jonas said, looking confused--he only knew what little the reports said about Shifu. "I thought nothing ever came of that incident."
"Exactly," Daniel said.
"We're not asking you to divulge everything," she tried. Daniel definitely remembered something about his time on the higher planes--he had to, if he'd remembered Erebus, and facts about naquadria and whatever had happened between him and Teal'c and the colonel during that time. "You could just pick and choose the information that's important, with the help of the memory recall device."
"That's what we told Shifu," Daniel said firmly. "I found out I was wrong then, and I'm not going to risk trying that device any more. Besides, if I remember too much, even without telling everyone else, who's to say I won't become the next Anubis?"
Jonas laughed, thinking it was a joke, then trailed off. "You're serious?" he said uncertainly.
Daniel looked at him. "I will not consent to further experimentation with a memory enhancer concerning memories I lost as a result of Descension," he said. "So. 'Bye." He nodded to them and left the lab.
"What happened when Shifu was here?" Jonas asked her. "I'm missing something."
"It's...a long story," Sam hedged, though she felt like something was still being held back. "But maybe he's right. Remember that fight on Abydos? Imagine that kind of power, but more, and letting the knowledge of how to use it fall into the NID's hands, or even our own hands..."
"Too much potential for abuse?" he said, not quite sounding convinced. "Okay. If you...say so."
"Jonas, do you mind finishing this up on your own?" she asked, pointing at the simulation displayed on her computer screen. "I need to..." She gestured vaguely in the direction Daniel had gone. "I'm sorry. I know this is probably sort of weird to you--"
"No, sure, of course," Jonas said. "I've gotten used to weird."
...x...
"Mackenzie's given me approval to rejoin SG-1 fulltime," Daniel said when she appeared at his office door. "A lot of what I don't remember, I still know. Either I never lost the factual knowledge, or I've just done a good job studying after my Descension. Probably a bit of both."
Sam raised her eyebrows. "I don't think Mackenzie's ever signed off on you before," she said, "not without an argument."
Daniel shrugged. "Something about being tortured to death and killing an army on the way down seems to have made people stop thinking of me as a kid. It's either that or the Ascension."
She couldn't tell if he was trying to provoke her, because this was also his style of sharp joking--although it was often the same thing. She nodded and perched on the edge of Jonas's desk. "They made you talk to Mackenzie?" she asked.
"It was my idea," he said.
Sam blinked. "It was what? You never would've, before, not without being ordered to."
"He's the one who suggested using the memory recall device to try to remember about Abydos."
Oh. Mackenzie was an expert in psychiatric neuroimaging. Maybe projection of memories fell under that category, too. "What's he say about the results?"
"That I respond to it like someone with irreversible brain damage," Daniel said. "My semantic memory about Abydonian life is relatively intact; it's just episodic memories that are gone, which is why they don't show up on the projector--you can't watch a scene play out if all you have are isolated facts out of context."
Sam tried not to wince. There weren't many phrases that managed to frighten her more than 'brain damage.' "Are you okay?"
"Sure."
"You really don't mind not thinking about what might be left in your brain?"
Daniel took off his already-clean glasses and wiped them carefully with his shirt. "It's not like I don't think about it," he said. "I remembered Erebus while meditating, and I won't stop trying the same way. But not with a memory probe. Moral risk aside, if the Others did this, who knows if they would step in to stop me from using Goa'uld tech to artificially seek out memories?"
Sam decided she didn't like the Others very much right now, except maybe Orlin and Martouf if they counted as Others. "That's a good point," she allowed. "But you know you can talk to us, too, right, if anything's going on?"
Exasperated, he insisted, "Sam, nothing's going on! I'm sorry if I'm not the--" He stopped. Not the same, he'd almost said. She'd been thinking it lately; they all had. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing--well, I...just..." Sam said, not completely sure how to articulate it. Daniel raised his eyebrows. "When I said you wouldn't have gone to Mackenzie before, I didn't mean anything by it. I was just worried."
"I know," he said.
"I won't bring it up again, then," she said.
Daniel chewed his lip. "Look, uh, Sam..." He stopped, then started again. "Am I...different?"
Swallowing hard--it wasn't like she hadn't been thinking it--she said, "You don't need to be comparing yourself to what people are saying. There's no question that you're who you are."
He still looked a bit unhappy and defensive on top of it. "So what's wrong?"
Sam managed a smile. "Nothing. I just have a lot of questions left."
"Like what?" he asked.
"Nothing you need to worry about."
"It's my head, Sam, and you've been annoyed about something for the last few weeks, so..."
"I'm not annoyed," she protested. He raised his eyebrows, looking unconvinced. "I just really...want you to be okay," she said, sounding silly to herself.
"I am," he said.
She bit her lip. "If you need--"
"I know," he said. He finally gave her a smile. "Really. I do."
"You are different, you know," she said, and his smile started to fade.
"People change," he said.
"I saw you wailing on a punching bag yesterday," Sam said, straightening a pile of paper on Jonas's desk. "On your own--not with Teal'c or Colonel O'Neill or anything. It was strange. Not like you." When he'd been younger, she might not have been surprised to see him go to the gym to punch things if he was upset, because young men could be hotheaded and Daniel had been quick to action, except that he hadn't been like that; he would have gone to fume in the library instead. Yesterday had been different--a methodical, calm workout, nothing that would leave unnecessarily bruised knuckles or strained muscles. As if it were normal, except it wasn't.
Daniel shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "Physical requirements were upped sometime in the last year."
"It's been a long time since you've had any worries about passing physical requirements."
"Well, I figured," he tried again. "You know. Jonas and I are both staying on SG-1, right?"
"Yeah," Sam said. Aside from avoiding the tricky question of how to split up parts of a team like SG-1, there were advantages and practically no downsides--an extra man on a team their size was a twenty-five percent increase in numbers, not to mention the extra brains.
"But we're still a combat team, at least sometimes. I don't want you and Jack and Teal'c having to look back all the time to make sure I'm keeping up."
"We don't do that--" She frowned. "Because we need to keep an eye on Jonas, you mean. Look, he is combat-ready. No one is on SG-1 if he needs to be babysat."
"Sam," Daniel said. "Jonas said he was going to start bringing a live handgun for the first time next mission, because he usually brings a zat or an intar. Erebus was an exception. He isn't even as good at hand-to-hand or marksmanship as I am, and I'm worse than the rest of you."
It felt uncomfortable to be defending Daniel's replacement to Daniel, but Sam said, "Yeah, but you need to think about who that's in comparison to. You had years; he's had months."
"I'm not saying he's not good enough. It's just that we now have three science or culture specialists on a five-man team, and I think it'll work, but battles aren't going to avoid us. Jonas is good at a lot of things, but until he stops hesitating before he throws a punch..."
"You don't have to protect him," she said, but she understood it, too. They'd all felt that way about Daniel when he'd first joined. Daniel had been too quick to jump in rather than too hesitant, as Jonas sometimes was, but everyone's learning curve was different. "And it's not like he's taken your place and you need to find a new one. You don't have to worry about that."
"No, I know," he said. "We have our strengths, that's all--"
"And since when have you wanted to count fighting among one of yours?" she said.
"This isn't about what we want," Daniel said. "It's what we need as an entire team and...and what we are. Did you forget that my dying act was a botched assassination attempt that I turned into a massacre, in which Selmak and Martouf became collateral damage?"
Taken aback at the choice of phrasing--and more than a little hurt, because Daniel always knew the harshest way to lash out--Sam found herself saying, "I'm not the one whose memories need work," and then wanted to shrivel up and take it back.
Daniel started to stand up, then stopped and looked away instead. "I'm...I'm sorry. Sam. I shouldn't've said that."
Sam rubbed her forehead and moved toward the door to push it shut. "God. Me neither. You're the one who died. I'm not the one it happened to," she said, leaning back against the door.
"Sure you are," Daniel said quietly. "I bet it lasted longer for you than it did for me."
A lump appeared in her throat. "I'd rather not think too hard about how long it did last for you," she said, remembering the flashes of broken and burnt skin she'd seen behind an infirmary curtain. Daniel chewed on his lip but didn't flinch or move toward her; Sam wished she weren't constantly comparing this Daniel to the one from before. She stepped away from the door, pulled another chair closer to him, and sat. "Is that what all of this is about?" she asked. "You think you need to be ready for some 'next time?'"
"It was just a punching bag," he said. "You've established a balance, the three of you and Jonas, and I want to make sure I'm adding to it instead of tipping it one way or another. You don't need two junior teammates on SG-1."
"Anyone who survives what you did in your first couple of years is pretty damn experienced," she said. "And Jonas might be relatively new, but he isn't naïve."
"After Kelowna, and...and what Nirrti did to him?" he said. "Of course not."
"You don't need to shield him from this life, and you can't, anyway. I know--we tried with you."
"I know. But." Daniel folded his hands and leaned forward. "Put it this way. I've been thinking. How did you feel after the summit where I was supposed to kill the System Lords?"
"I...cannot believe you just asked me that," Sam said.
"Not about me or Martouf or your father. About the mission."
"Missions go wrong," she said, not sure where this was leading. "It happens."
He shook his head. "Do you remember when we first found Cimmeria? We were so excited at the possibility that someone else might be out there who could fight the Goa'uld. This last time, we had months of preparation, a lot of allies, years of training, a perfect opportunity...we had tangible reason to believe we could actually bring about the end of the war, and it was just another mission. We hoped, obviously, but when it went wrong, and the System Lords escaped, and Anubis rose, and half the Tok'ra were slaughtered...was anyone even surprised?"
Not many, she didn't have to tell him. Grieving, maybe, for a dozen reasons, but not surprised--more resigned. "You were crushed when Cimmeria didn't live up to what we'd hoped," she reminded him. "I remember you hiding in my office after that. You can only live on that roller coaster for so long."
"But why?" he insisted. "Sam, we walk through wormholes. To other planets across the galaxy."
Sam had to smile and conceded, "Well, yeah. I guess that's true."
"The point is, we don't even think about it anymore, good or bad. Jonas still thinks everything's amazing, and...and why shouldn't he? When did all of that become just routine for us? Maybe we've forgotten what it was like at first, and we need to remember it better."
"I miss this," she blurted. Sometimes, she didn't recognize him anymore--the kid she'd let into her lab had turned into someone else, as kids were wont to do--and sometimes, he was exactly the same person who had literally been dragged into this world and had taken it by storm with crazy ideas and passion for what he thought was right. "We missed it, when you were gone. You were part of what we all had in common, you know, even when you were little. And then, afterward, we got tired."
"Maybe you needed a Jonas Quinn," he said, not quite teasing.
"We wanted you," she said tightly. "Not that he...but it wasn't the same."
"Well, you've got us both now," Daniel said. "It'll be fun. Jonas and I have a bet on how long it takes for the two of us to make Jack say 'for crying out loud' the next time we find ruins of an Ancient city. He says ten minutes, but he underestimates me." She laughed. "Maybe we need someone who still always thinks it's all new and exciting at the end of the day. And...and maybe I'd like him to stay that way."
Sam had been that person, once. Teal'c had grown up around Stargates; the colonel had been too cynical at the start of the SGC. But she'd done her share of gawking in wonder, and by the time the shine had begun to wear off, Daniel had jumped onboard and taken over that role. He had always argued that their intentions and attitudes were important, not just their results, and all morality aside, maybe it was what kept them fresh and sane, too.
"You mean you don't want him to have to, oh, say, infiltrate a Goa'uld conference and try to murder the people inside," Sam said.
"You know what I realized during that summit?" Daniel said. "I thought it was all the same--you want someone dead, you kill him. It shouldn't matter how. If guards had been there, it would have almost been easier. But it's not the same when you're lying, and they're sitting, unarmed, talking, and you just have to push a button but you're in no immediate danger... I mean, I would've done it, but it was...different."
"Yeah," she managed.
"What do you think that is?" he asked, sounding honestly, coldly curious. "I don't think it's cowardice. Morality? Why is the morality barrier higher for one case than for another?"
"I don't know." She'd never been in that exact situation before, but she'd had to lie on missions. She didn't like to think too much about Fifth, the Replicator they'd tricked and manipulated, who hadn't been a threat yet and had been an innocent. What had made them think it was okay to send Daniel to spy on and kill the Goa'uld, knowing that innocents would be collateral damage?
"I think it's because the idea of killing is repulsive to us on some level," he told her, as if they were debating the merits of this microscope versus that one. "Immediate personal danger makes the act seem less unacceptable."
"Daniel," she said.
"The funny thing is that I argued as hard as anyone for us to take the mission," he added thoughtfully. "I didn't understand that it would be different. It made sense at the time. Logical."
"Daniel," Sam said.
Daniel looked down at his desk. "Do you want that to be Jonas next time?" he asked.
"Of course not," she said stiffly. "I didn't want it to be you, either."
"I remember."
Finally jumping on the conversation, she said, "And I remember we sent you to kill the most powerful of our enemies without backup and then let you die saving us."
"Sam," he sighed. "That wasn't... You know I'd do it all again. Exactly the same, except faster. I'm...sure Selmak would have agreed. Any of us would've done it."
She ignored that. "You know what else I remember about you?"
He didn't answer, so she leaned closer to him.
"I remember how much it hurt you when you couldn't do anything to help people," she said. He stared intently at his desk. "I remember you knelt to Apophis to pray for his host, because you thought it was right, while I stood by and watched because I wouldn't even have considered doing it."
"You always had the worst Egyptian accent of all of us," he quipped.
"You know that's not what I mean. You spent so long dreaming of killing him, and you still picked mercy. Shifu and Oma chose you, Daniel. That means something. You gave Martouf peace--you gave me, Lantash, and my dad a bit of peace. That's the person I remember. Maybe...maybe we made you into someone who can be a spy and an assassin, but that's not who you were. There was a stretch of time when I thought it was going to tear you apart, when you kept having bad missions--you just had to do something to help, and I could see what it did to you every time you couldn't. We needed that on our side. You gave us that."
"That was a bad year," he said, smiling faintly the way only people like them would smile at the thought of bad times. Then he smiled a little wider. "I'm probably not even thinking of the same year that you are."
Sam found herself smiling back. "We don't exactly have good years around here."
"Good days," he offered. "Even stretches of them, on occasion."
"Yeah," she laughed, glad to see him joking, even though there was nothing amusing about it. "I'm just saying, you're a good person. You try to do good things."
"I know that."
"Yeah?"
"But it not enough," he said, his expression saying that he knew she knew it, too.
"If it ever becomes enough, you've already lost," she told him. "That's you, too. So don't ever think we need you to be anyone but yourself. You don't have to become a...a miniature Teal'c just because we have another civilian with us now. You're not just a role on the team."
"I know," he said. "But sometimes I am. No, Sam, that's just--SG-1 is...it's who I am, too."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it is." And, when it came down to it, it was who the rest of them were, too. "Just remember what that means. We're SG-1--we explore."
"I did notice that. I've done a bit of exploring in my time."
"So are you done?"
Daniel became very still. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Sam took a breath and said, "You just seem...awfully ready to concede things lately. The four Eyes, strategic decisions, your memories of about a billion things...and you have good reasons, I know, but you were even willing to give up your place on the team. We asked the general to let all of us stay together--even Jonas spoke up for you, because you didn't."
"I'm not allowed just to be happy where I am?" he said quietly. "Not being pulled somewhere else for once, looking for something I'll probably never find?"
A few years ago, she would have wanted nothing more than to let him find peace. Months ago, she wouldn't have cared how he was, as long as he came back. Now, she would rather that he take the hard way rather than the easy, if only because he was losing an important part of being himself if he didn't. "I don't think you're even looking for anything right now, except maybe for a fight where you can do something," she said. "And I think you need more than that."
"I have SG-1," he said, and until she'd heard him say that, she would never have imagined that that could ever be the easy way out for anyone. What was an insane adventure for most people was a familiar, ordinary lifestyle for him. "Sam, that's all I have right now."
She reached out to squeeze his arm. "And we can be that for you," she said, "for now. But you've got to find something, or we're going to lose you again. I want Daniel Jackson at my back, not just some fifth member of SG-1, no matter how good he is at his job."
Daniel touched his bare wrist, where he had once worn a bracelet from Skaara to remind him of his home. He had lost it years ago, but the motion was still familiar, and, for a moment, Sam could still see the fourteen-year-old boy she'd shepherded into her lab with a fountain pen and a notebook and a book about constellations. "I'm not even whole, Sam," he said. "I'm missing half of my life."
"The part that matters is still here," she said firmly. "You can't stop, and you can't just...go with the flow, even if it makes things easier. That's not you." She'd seen him fired up over Erebus, and she knew that all it would take was a whiff of an exciting new project to perk his interest in it, but those were just dots without a line to connect them. Daniel's mind went to dangerous places with perilous schemes when there wasn't something pulling him back into line.
"I'm trying," he said. "I probably remember everything I'm going to, but I can't tell when I've gone too far or not far enough. It's...it's..."
"I know," she said. "You're not the same as you were before, and it might take time to find where you stand and where you want to stand. We're gonna need time. But you're the one who made me look at things from the other side and push past all the things I thought were boundaries. I'm not going to let you settle for 'enough.' Ever. I just want you to know that."
He caught her hand on his arm and nodded. "Okay," he said, pulling back. Before she could say anything else, he said, "I never asked you about your father."
Sam paused, still leaning on his desk with an elbow. "Uh. You know he's alive. Right?"
"No--yeah," he said, shaking his head. "I know. There are just so many people I should or want to ask about, and I didn't think of him until we were experimenting with that--"
"Oh, he's the one who brought that holographic projector here in the first place," Sam remembered, starting to smile. What was it about time that made the most complicated things in the past seem so much simpler than the present? "What was that--four years ago?"
"Something like that," Daniel said, tentatively smiling back. "Just before you took out Seth."
"We," she corrected. "Definitely a team effort on that one."
He shrugged. "If the ribbon device fits," he said. She snorted and backhanded his arm lightly. Time could also make the frightening things seem less so. "How is he these days?"
Sam almost said, 'good,' as the easiest generic response, then said honestly, "We don't see him much, but when we do, he's pretty stressed. There's always been tension between us and the Tok'ra, and it's starting to show within their ranks, too. It probably doesn't help that it's...you know, Dad and Lantash."
Daniel grimaced. "Not exactly a calming combination," he agreed, but his eyes stayed fixed on hers. "But I wasn't talking about politics."
Sometimes, when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, she could still see the blinding, captivating light of Ascension. She'd seen it too many times--first Oma, then Shifu, then Orlin and Daniel and Martouf--and the sight that had awed her at first had become an incomprehensible mix of relief and despair. "It was hard on him," she said, meaning not just the political tension but Martouf and Selmak.
"What about you?" Daniel said.
"Wasn't easy," she admitted, the way she could never say to the colonel, because he was her superior, or to Jonas, because he still looked up to her sometimes. "But I wasn't alone."
He folded his arms around himself. "I wish I'd been here," he said, almost like an apology.
"Me, too," Sam agreed, meaning, it's okay.
"I haven't found a real project yet," he said abruptly. "If you want to play around with the projector sometime, I can help you get started. Or if you've got unidentified devices lying around, I can look for their controls and you can make them work better. If you want."
It wasn't until she heard that that she realized she had been waiting to hear it for a long time. She and Daniel drilled together with weapons, but what she really loved was fiddling with technology beside him. "Yeah," she said eagerly. "Wanna go now?"
"Sure," he said.
On the way, he asked, "How's Cassie?"
Given what he'd said about the people he kept remembering to ask about--the loose ends he'd left behind--she said, "C'mon, let's get to the lab and I'll fill you in. We've got a lot to catch up on."
XXXXX
5 August 2003; SGC, Earth; 2300 hrs
"Hey," Jonas said when he stopped by the office and found Daniel at the fish tank. "You about done for the night?"
Daniel looked up as if surprised and held up the can in his hand. "Just feeding the fish," he said. "What were you doing?"
"Late briefing," Jonas said, dropping onto their couch with an oof. "There was a routine first-contact mission we took a few months ago--we're sending in a new team and they needed a rundown of customs, language, courtesies, history..."
"Is something going on there?" Daniel asked.
"SG-14's trying to start up relations," Jonas said. "You know the drill. Nothing big. I'm all done now, though; the rest is out of our hands."
"Good."
Jonas watched as he put the fish food down carefully and wandered toward the coffeepot. There was a sort of care to everything Daniel did these days that was different from the reflexive grace of muscle-memory that he had carried just after Vis Uban--it wasn't clumsiness, exactly, but rather a hyperawareness of where his limbs were, as if he needed an extra moment to find his balance and make sure he wouldn't step too hard or too lightly on something. Maybe that was just the way he was--everything about him, Jonas found, from his words in a speech to his bullets at the shoot range, was studied and well-aimed.
"I've never kept fish before," Daniel said absently. "They're much easier than human babies."
Jonas couldn't help laughing at the image. It was almost impossible to imagine this Daniel Jackson carrying the Harsesis infant around base with him, though records and talk said that it had happened once upon a time. "Yeah, well, I considered keeping a couple of babies in a tank on your desk, but then I thought, 'fish would be easier to feed.'"
Shaking his head, Daniel held out a clean mug, offering, "Want some?"
"I don't know how you can drink that at"--Jonas looked back to see the clock--"eleven at night."
Daniel shrugged and poured his own cup before sitting back down. "It relaxes me."
"Because that's what stimulants do," Jonas said.
"I'm studying. Some of us actually need to read things more than once to remember them," he pointed out. Jonas rolled his eyes but didn't dispute the point--Daniel could write dictionaries and grammars from scratch like no one else could, but Jonas could memorize them faster. He couldn't wait until they got a chance to work out a puzzle together. "Hey, you can go to bed--I can get the last of your paperwork for the day started, and you can finish it in the morning."
"What about you?" Jonas said, tempted to call it a day. "Still catching up on reading?"
"Mm-hm," Daniel said. He took a sip of coffee and added casually, "I never realized how many people I never knew, until I looked up the current teams' compositions and couldn't tell who was newly recruited and who'd been killed in action during the last year."
"You know," Jonas said, leaning back and not much fazed by this kind of thing anymore, since he suspected it was partly just Daniel's way--conscious or not--of testing people, "you're kind of creepy sometimes."
"You know," Daniel answered, not stopping his reading, "you're kind of cheerful sometimes."
"I try my best," Jonas said, grinning when Daniel looked up without raising his head, his eyes peeking out over the tops of his glasses. There was a trick to dealing with Daniel, he'd found--it had a lot to do with understanding what was a joke and what was deadly serious, because both could be equally disturbing or amusing and be said exactly the same way, but how one answered determined how much respect one received in return. Jonas suspected he was lucky they'd met and become tentative friends before Daniel had remembered to be cynical and generally disconcerting. "So...we've got a mission coming up. Excited?"
"Ecstatic," Daniel deadpanned, though Jonas thought his lips might be twitching. "This one's... P3X-289? Or am I thinking of another one?" He opened a folder partway, tilting his head to see the top page.
"No, that's the one. It's got a toxic atmosphere," Jonas prodded. "And a dome."
Daniel snorted and let the folder fall closed. "Are you seriously excited about that?"
"Well, not the toxic part. Still. This one looks interesting."
"Do you want to take point if we meet people inside that dome?" Daniel asked.
"Oh...you have more experience..." Jonas started. "I mean, it's up to you. Whatever you think best."
Daniel nodded. "We'll fall into place when the time comes," he said, seemingly unconcerned. "If you recognize the language, you talk; if I figure it out first, I'll talk. I'm sure it'll be fine."
Jonas nodded again, a little relieved. "You really don't mind my sticking around?"
"You have at least as much right to the team as I do. I should be asking you if you mind me."
"No, of course not," Jonas said. "I always wanted to meet you. Not that I thought I ever would." Daniel gave him a polite but very distant smile and looked back down at his notes. "And do you know how hard it is to be SG-1 without someone actually good at diplomacy?"
Still reading something, Daniel said, "My idea of diplomacy was blurting things and hoping that aliens liked me enough to go along with it. I only looked diplomatic next to Jack. You worked as a government representative to your people and to outsiders. You're the one with training."
"Uh-uh," Jonas said, shaking his head. "No, see, but that's not enough. You know what I was to them?"
Finally, Daniel looked up, his expression wary, "I shouldn't judge just from reports..."
"Go ahead," Jonas said. "You can say it."
"You were their pawn," Daniel said, turning his full attention to Jonas for the first time tonight. "You trusted them, so they trusted you to do what they wanted."
Jonas dropped his eyes. "I don't even know which you mean by 'they'--"
"It is possible to be played by elements of both sides, Jonas," Daniel said.
"Thanks--that's encouraging," Jonas said. He flopped back against the couch again, spreading his arms across the back.
Daniel didn't apologize for being blunt. "People want to trust you," he said instead. "I read the Pangara reports. It's important to have someone about whom the other side isn't immediately suspicious, and it's good not to be someone about whom others should be suspicious."
"I thought that was your job," Jonas said, only half-joking.
"It depends on who the other side are," Daniel said, and considering how many of their major enemies knew his face, that was a good point. "The point is, it's not a bad quality."
"Look where it got me back home," Jonas said. "Being likeable isn't the same as being a good diplomat--knowing when to push and when to pull back, especially in new and unknown territory, that's what matters." Jonas was good at making friends; Daniel wasn't, as it turned out, but sometimes one had to be a little harsh and not just firm, and that was the one thing Jonas had tended to shy away from on Kelowna. His forte was in talking to people and encouraging them to talk back; Daniel had experience in challenging rules and closing deals.
"It's not some straightforward equation to be balanced," Daniel said.
"But I think I stand too far on one side of that balance sometimes," Jonas confided.
Daniel was silent for a while, considering, then admitted, "I don't know where I stand on it; I'm not really sure of a lot just now. But we never know off-world. You notice things about people that others don't; that's a good place to start if you want to know whom to trust."
"Hey, if we're talking about gaining trust, speak for yourself--you've pulled at least as many undercover SG missions as anyone else."
"And if we need to gain people's trust to get close enough to poison them, I might be an asset. I'd like to think that's not the end goal of most of our diplomatic missions."
Jonas grimaced at the edge he heard in the words. "Come on," he said. "I've heard about you, and I've read everything you've negotiated for Earth. It's not just undercover stuff--"
Daniel sighed and put down his pen. "Jonas, listen, this isn't a competition. You've studied my work, and now I'm studying something you finished and memorized this morning over breakfast. You pull and I'll push, yeah? You can...help Sam solve some technological problem and the rest of us will cover you, or Jack and I can lean hard on a foreign official and rely on you to keep an eye on public opinion. That's what this is--do your part, and we'll be there for the rest."
"Yeah," Jonas said, looking at his feet.
"Okay?"
"Yeah," he said again. "Okay." When he looked up, Daniel had pulled one foot onto his chair and was hugging his knee to his chest. Jonas grinned. "Very inspirational."
Daniel rolled his eyes, but, before he could squeeze out a smile, he said, "Speaking of your diplomatic training, what exactly is the situation with Madrona now?"
Jonas managed to keep his expression in place and said, "No one's started a civil war, which is a good sign. The surviving Kelownans, Tiranians, and Andari have merged into a single country that they're calling Langara. With some help from the Madronans' climate control and some aid from us via SG-9, they're rebuilding."
"It must be hard."
"Yeah, going from technology almost as advanced as Earth's to the bare bones of something resembling infrastructure--"
"I wasn't talking about them," Daniel interrupted. "You don't go with SG-9 when they check up on Langara, do you?"
Jonas shrugged. "They don't want me there. Which is probably, well, a good thing, since there might be some bloodshed if SG-1 went instead. The colonel might murder someone."
"Yeah, Jack has this irrational lack of tolerance for blatant treachery," Daniel said flatly.
Jonas felt his eyebrows creeping upward in surprise. He knew what the rest of SG-1 felt about Kelowna--there wasn't a lot of comfort to be found in that whole mess, but his team's support helped--but hadn't realized that Daniel felt the same way. Then again, Daniel spat out random facts from his Ascension once in a while, usually without noticing it, including the information about naquadria, so maybe there was some unconscious hostility left behind there, too.
Besides, the one thing about the real live Daniel Jackson that didn't seem to match up to the rumors was that spark of passion and indignation about injustice that he was reputed to carry around. Jonas hadn't really seen that, aside from the brief flurry of action just when he'd remembered about Rya'c and Bra'tac on Erebus. But maybe that spark was still there, just as keen but quieter, not quite as brash as the stories about the teenaged prodigy seemed to imply.
"I'm pretty sure he'd rather we left your people to rot," Daniel was saying. "Something about helping people who are actively holding an unjustified grudge against one of ours. Luckily, General Hammond thinks withholding all humanitarian aid would be cruel and unfair to the majority of the people who didn't even know there was such a thing as a naquadria bomb."
"I get it!" Jonas snapped. "I hate it. What do you want me to say?"
Daniel set his chin on his knee and continued watching him. "So you do get angry. I was starting to wonder."
Jonas deflated. He'd found early in his career that being vocally angry was both uncomfortable and unproductive, but he supposed Daniel, who seemed to seek out confrontation deliberately, probably had a different view of the matter. "I don't think about home much," he said. "What's the point, you know?"
"I know," Daniel said, this time with a hint of sympathy in his tone, and of course he would know a bit of what it was like, even if their situations were completely different. "I am very sorry about what happened. Do you miss people from Kelowna?"
"Not the ministers," Jonas said wryly. "But I had friends there. I know what you're thinking--I was wrong about the project and the people I was working for, so maybe I'm wrong about--"
"That's not what I was thinking," Daniel said. "I'm sure your true friends knew you weren't a traitor. Whether they would to speak against your government on your behalf..."
"Yeah," Jonas said. He shook his head. "I don't know that I would have spoken up."
Daniel tilted his head. "It's a difficult situation," he said tactfully, because lack of formal training didn't mean he hadn't learned how to be diplomatic once in a while. "But some people are worth being trusted, and for the ones who aren't..." He raised his eyebrows. "The team won't let you down. I think you know that by now."
Jonas let himself smile, grateful for the sentiment. "I think I do." A thought struck him while he searched for a less uncomfortable topic, and he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Hey, so, now that we're teammates, we've gotta have each others' backs, right?"
"Yeah," Daniel drawled. "I think I just said that. Why, what do you want?"
"Do you know Jacquie Rush very well?"
For a while, Daniel didn't answer. Then he blinked and said, "Who?"
"You know," Jonas said. He looked over his shoulder, but not many people were wandering around at the hour, and certainly not Jacquie. It wasn't meant seriously (mostly)--he'd been through this once with Sam and was going to ask the woman out on a date sometime, really, he was, and he just wanted to see what Daniel's answer would be, anyway. "Lieutenant Rush. She's a nurse in the infirmary."
"Oh," Daniel said. He frowned. "Does she have light brown hair?"
Jonas rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like fifty percent of the people on this base."
"I think it's less than that."
"That's not the point. Do you think you could put in a good word for me?"
"A good word?" Daniel repeated, a confused look settling onto his features.
"You know," Jonas said.
Clearing his throat, Daniel looked back down at his desk. "The nurses don't like me any more than they like you."
"But all the medical people think you're fascinating," Jonas said, wincing when he heard himself. "I think they want to study your brain," he added.
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "They actually have your precognitive brain tumor in some lab."
Jonas sat up. That was news to him. "Really," he said. "Where is it?"
"No, Jonas, you can't have it," Daniel said.
Grinning, Jonas said, "Fine. Still. Do you think you could, uh, find out if she'd be receptive?"
"You realize I'm probably the least qualified person on this base for that task?" Daniel pointed out. He'd gone back to reading the file on his desk, scratching his head and very firmly not looking up, until Jonas realized--
"Are you blushing?" Jonas said incredulously. Daniel was startled into straightening. Jonas laughed. "You're blushing! I made Daniel Jackson blush!"
"Shut up," Daniel mumbled. For the first time in...well, a few weeks, at least, he looked his age rather than like one of the hardened veterans around here. "Jonas, you're ridiculous."
"I'm ridiculous? Let me introduce you to your life's story, Mr. Kettle."
"Kettle?" Daniel echoed.
"You know," Jonas said. "There's an Earth expression about the kettle calling the teapot black. I think that's what it was. Or maybe it was a frying pan...anyway, it's about hypocrisy."
Daniel frowned. "I haven't heard that one," he said. "Teal'c told me one about a short and stout teapot, though. Janet's daughter taught it to him."
"Was it about hypocrisy?"
"Actually, I think it was about boiling water."
"Why--" Jonas started.
"I have no idea," Daniel said, though Jonas was gratified to see that he was actually smiling a little bit this time.
"Well, you, me, and Teal'c...we aliens've gotta stick together in the face of Tau'ri madness."
"You're not talking about an alien conspiracy, are you?" Daniel said.
Jonas laughed aloud, throwing up his hands. "What, is that some kind of inside joke? That's exactly what Teal'c told me the first time I said that to him."
"Well, we aliens have done some rather controversial things here," Daniel said. "Has Sam told you about General Bauer and the naquadah enhanced--"
"Nuclear weapon, yeah," Jonas said. Despite feeling recently like he should prove himself able and professional--as the newest, as well as the one being allowed to stay even despite Daniel Jackson's return--he found himself leaning forward, hoping just a little bit for the kind of reminiscing story that he sometimes heard from more experienced personnel. "It's a good thing you guys tried to slow it down, even if it didn't help. I should know first-hand what happens when people don't question authority."
"I guess you would," Daniel said thoughtfully. "It's a fine line, though--a dangerous one. I don't think I fully realized that at the time."
"Is that, uh...why you don't want to keep looking for the knowledge of the Ascended Ancients?" Jonas asked carefully. "Dangerously fine lines?"
Daniel drew his eyebrows down low over narrowed eyes. "There's no telling whether there's anything to remember, anyway, or how much would be useful. And yes, I don't know if it would be safe."
And since everyone from Sam to Colonel O'Neill to Teal'c to General Hammond accepted that as 'good enough,' and since Jonas knew there would always be something he was missing with regard to Daniel, he didn't push it any further. Besides, for all they knew, if they kept trying the memory device, Daniel's brains might turn into energy and dribble out of his head or something. "Okay," Jonas said, "but...it doesn't bother you, not knowing...you know...that much?"
"It doesn't matter how I feel about it."
"It matters to you," Jonas said. When Daniel didn't answer, he pointed out, "I am allowed to be interested in your wellbeing. I know I'm the new guy here and you're Daniel Jackson, but you also just said the team's what we can always count on."
"I don't need you worrying about me," Daniel said.
"Well, tough," Jonas answered, for lack of anything more pithy to say. "I'm not going away. No one understands what you went through, but no one understands Kelowna, either, and they still try to make me talk or...or..."
"Yeah," Daniel said.
"You should have fun more often," Jonas decided. "You're kind of depressing."
To his surprise, Daniel laughed, then stopped, looking equally surprised. Apparently, that had been the right thing to say, because Daniel set his feet--already without boots--on top of his desk and wiggled his toes. "No promises," he said, and this time, it was a joke.
"What was it like in the beginning?" he asked, trying not to sound too eager and knowing he was probably failing. "When the SGC was just starting?"
"It was...frustrating," Daniel said, leaning back in his chair. "Different from how it is now--we were focused on different things. What was it like joining SG-1 when I was dead?"
"Weird," Jonas said emphatically. He thought about it, then added, "And really cool. No offense--it wasn't personal." Daniel grinned. Jonas decided that he'd try to make that a more common sight--being the newest guy on the team didn't mean he couldn't look out for his teammates, too.
"I never welcomed you onto the team," Daniel said abruptly. "I wasn't sure it was appropriate, really, and you don't need my blessing, but--"
"Welcome back," Jonas said before he could finish. "I'm looking forward to working with you."
Daniel picked up his mug of coffee and gave him a mock salute. "So am I. Now, either finish your paperwork, or give it to me and go to bed. We've got a lot of work ahead of us."
Concluded in Epilogue: Beginnings