I is for Inchmurrin
Janet Alphabet Soup for SG-1 Gen Fic which fignewton is briliant enough to organize. This story is due to her's--I wouldn't have come up with this without her L is for Lockdown, so consider this a companion piece to that.
Spoilers for Meridian. Janet and Hammond and not quite the day after.
I is for Inchmurrin
"Doctor, you wanted to see me?"
Janet looked up from the file she wasn't seeing, the paperwork she didn't know how to finish. Not this time. The urge to stand hit with automatic conditioning at the back of her knees, tugged at her shoulders for her to straighten. But Hammond was already waving her down as he shut the door behind him. Good, he knew this was off the record--she had a peace to make here. So did he, going by the look on his face. Shock mixed with awe, mixed with loss, mixed with god knew what else--the same tumbled inside her, and had to be showing on her face. So she closed the file, turned her chair, and started to reach for her lower desk drawer as the general spoke.
"I've seen some things in my time--we all have, but--" He broke off the words with a shake of his head. He sat down in the other chair in her office, sat as if weight and years and gravity and this day dragged him down into it. But the chair had comfort to give, physical comfort if nothing else. She'd seen to that when she'd first gotten here. Now he leaned forward, stared at his hands--and she made a mental note to get back on him about his diet. But not today. Not now.
Opening the drawer, she pulled out the only prescription she could offer for a day like they'd all had today.
Hammond's eyebrows lifted, and he sat back. She glanced at him, and then away again, because this was bending regs, and not something two officers still technically on duty could discuss.
Five years or so of working with the man--working for him, his medical CO--and she still had to guess about the line to walk. Jack O'Neill strolled it like a blind man, careless, unheeding--instinct perfect. But just now the colonel was walking the base like the rest of SG-1--like all of them who'd been in the isolation ward today. The walking wounded.
She put the bottle down with a thump on her desk, and pulled out paper dispensary cups.
Hammond's eyebrows stayed up, but interest and approval showed in his eyes, lit the pale blue from behind. "Inchmurrin?"
Efficient and brisk, she uncorked the bottle. "Almost as old as I am." She poured whisky into two cups, put the bottle down, gave one cup to Hammond and took the other.
Hammond stared at it, then lifted the cup. "To Dr. Daniel Jackson."
She repeated the name and they touched cups and threw back the shots. The whisky burned like smoke going down, exploded in an empty stomach like the sun coming out on a dark day. Lips pressed against the smoldering inside of her, she poured two more shots. Hammond's eyebrows inched up again, but he took the second shot.
"My family came from there--Inchmurrin. They put the 'I' in Fraser when they hit Ellis Island, or that's the family story. They took it in memory of the island they'd left. Daniel--Dr. Jackson…" Her throat tightened on the rest of the words. But her lips twitched once at the memory, and then pulled down with all she had to for this day's remembrance. But the whisky had loosened everything else.
"It's Innis Mheadhran in Gaelic, or Mirin's Island, he told me…" She stopped, had to swallow hard and she stared at the amber liquid in her cup. "It's in Loch Lomond and named for some saint, and the only other thing I remember is that he had all these stories, but he'd never heard the song…."
She couldn't tell the rest of it because she could still see his face back then--the hair too long for regs, the wide eyes behind the glasses, the bright flare in those eyes, the eager interest in learning something new. God, he'd died--had left them--wrapped like a mummy, but with his body crumbling, not preserved. They'd lost him because he never could resist that need to go poking into things, and they hadn't….
Clearing his throat, Hammond lifted his cup again. "It's not a bad thing to have stories to tell--a family needs its stories."
He drank, and she had nothing to say. So she lifted her cup and copied him, tossing the whisky back. The Latin aquae vitae had become uisge beatha to the Gaels--Daniel had told her that as well when she'd had him in here with a cup in one hand and deep loss in the other. Life's water to life's breath, and was that because it took your breath, he'd asked. He hadn't seemed to expect an answer, but after losing his wife, he'd looked as if all expectation had been drained from him.
The second shot went down smoother, but the cup, ruined now by drink, sagged. She tugged two fresh ones out of the stack. Hammond didn't stand to go or protest when she poured a third round.
It felt as if it must be her turn now, so she lifted her cup. "To the high road."
"To traveling together," Hammond offered back. She touched her cup to his, and they finished this round together. Then she put her cup down, and put her stare straight on him so she could tell him the truth that she couldn't admit to anyone else.
"I can't be glad the colonel stopped Jacob. If there was a chance…"
"Not enough of one. And I…I won't pretend I know how Jack knew that's what Doctor…what Daniel wanted. What he needed to do."
"But Jacob might have healed him. He could still be here!" She heard the begging in her voice, the denial, the anger quivering under everything else. Her fingertips shook with it, her head ached with the pounding of it. The colonel couldn't have known--but he had. What Daniel wanted.
What she couldn't accept.
Hammond stared back at her, clear-eyed. And the doctor in her wouldn't shut up. With his greater body mass, the general wouldn't feel the whiskey the same way she could--it wouldn't rip through him like a flame thrower through paper defenses.
"Monday morning quarterbacking?" he asked.
"We lost a man, sir." There, she'd said it. Had spoken the truth, or as much of one as they had. Daniel hadn't died, but they had lost him.
Hammond nodded, glanced down at his empty cup, then crushed it in his hand and tossed it into the trash. "Yes, we did. We let our guard down, got a little careless, and we had no choice left but to let him go. We let what we do everyday become a little too everyday and it damn well should cost us. Which means we have to do better. An expensive mistake like this damn well needs to produce some damn good learning."
He let out a breath, and she could scent the whisky on it--a smell of peat, of dark rich earth, and wood, and grains soaked so long they'd transformed into something else. Digging into her desk, she found breath mints that had been there too long. Covering our sins, she thought. And maybe they had to be covered back up when they'd been stripped down to bones.
Except she thought of how she'd stood in the back of her infirmary, watching two men talk, listening to one describe his coming death with unflinching certainty. They had lost too damn much this time. And she thought of the custom of sending someone off with a drink or three--Daniel, she knew, had respected custom. He'd understood that sometimes there was nothing to hold onto except rites handed from one generation to the next.
Leaning forward, she put the cork back into the Inchmurrin. Hammond seemed to agree with her decision for he stood. And she had to ask, before he left, because she needed far more than a drink, or even a long hour of cursing the world.
"Do you think we'll see him again?"
She had to ask because she could write down a time for when Daniel Jackson's heart had stopped beating, but what did she put for his transformation into--into what? Light? Energy? Something that, when she closed her eyes, burned on the back of her retina still. Something that had felt like Daniel in the room. Something that had left the iso ward, leaving them, and leaving her nothing of him but empty bandages on a barren bed.
Hammond paused at her door, and glanced back. The trouble eased from his face, leaving only weariness. But he offered up a twist of a smile. "Doctor, the one thing I do know after all this…" He waved a hand at the office, at her infirmary, at his command. "Never assume anything."
She gave a nod, put the whisky back in its drawer, and stood. "Guess we'll keep to the low road then, sir."
With a nod he left. And she sat down and opened the medical report that she had to finish and file.