DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment purposes and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author. Not to be archived without permission of the author(s).
Chapter 41: Major Samantha Carter
I hate seeing him so still.
Daniel's never still...
I want him to wake up now and be okay. I want him to smile the 'gee, guys, were you really worried about me' smile that never seems able to accept that anyone could possibly spare the time to be worried about him. Daniel's got a hundred different little smiles, almost all of them tainted by a ghost of self-deprecation...a simple lack of understanding of his own worth. Those little smiles alternately cause my heart to break for his sake or to work all the harder to chase those ghosts away.
Goodness knows Daniel's got more than his share of ghosts...
I hate watching his head turn away when emotions get too near the barriers he raised around himself when his parents died, barriers that grew stronger with every subsequent loss. Little by little he's been letting us behind those barriers, but there's still a hint of...something. Something that wants to let go, but is still just too damn reticent to let it happen. Something we've all subconsciously responded to and worked hard to dispel...
Three years ago I went to Abydos expecting to meet the incredible mind that had deciphered the Stargate in a fraction of the time the rest of us had spent scratching our heads over it. Up until that point I think that was all I expected to meet...I'd never stopped to consider the person beneath the intellect...and I distinctly remember feeling a rather superior disgust at the thought of such an obviously brilliant man wasting it all on a primitive planet light-years from Earth.
Then I met him.
Now admittedly I was a little clueless myself at the time. I'd always been so wrapped up in my theories and studies...not to mention proving myself to the Armed Forces good ole boy network...to have much of a social life (not counting Jonas, of course, and I'd really rather not count him at all). But after watching Daniel with his wife and his chosen family, I suddenly understood it all...and quickly discovered the amazing heart that came part and parcel with the package known as Daniel Jackson.
Those first weeks back on Earth put Daniel through a form of hell I had no reference for until my father was captured by Sokar. I only had to survive a few days of the startlingly painful uncertainty Daniel had to cope with for three years.
I don't know how he did it...
The enthusiasm remains only slightly dampened, the wonder barely muted, the openness only mildly tempered by a hard-won caution...the wit has definitely grown an edge but that's as much in response to the colonel's influence as anything else.
Daniel...our conscience, our voice, our friend.
No longer as innocent as he once was...if he ever truly was...facing life with agelessly wise eyes and an openness to all the wonders of the universe made all the more miraculous for the things he's had to survive. We need that wonder, that reminder to look at all sides of the equation...
I brush a hand through the scruff of bangs across his forehead thinking it possibly seems a little cooler than it had been when I first came in...
C'mon, Daniel, keep fighting and come back to us.