DISCLAIMER: All 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 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.
"See you later, Jack!" Daniel called, waving to the colonel as they parted to go to their respective cars. His words were met with a wave. Jack looked as beat as he himself did. It'd been a long, tedious day of cataloguing and puzzling over technology from their most recent mission. Not all of working at SGC was excitement and adventure. Far from it.
Jackson fumbled in his pocket for his keys, and nearly dropped them in his typically clumsy way before he managed to get the key to the lock. He had to work on his coordination the lack of it was starting to show up in his injury count on Stargate missions.
Driving home there was bad traffic again. Jeez. You'd think urban civilization would have gotten it together by now. But no. War, poverty, and rush hour constantly demonstrated that global culture was lacking. And every radio station he flipped to was playing the same lite rock songs over and over again. Why hadn't anyone ever thought of starting a decent radio station like folk music? Maybe it was his time on Abydos, but lately he had a really weird longing to listen to the pseudo-Egyptian music that had been played there. If only he had managed to get a tape of it but Jack probably would have done a search and destroy on the tape, anyways. He'd hated that music.
The thought made him smile, even stuck in traffic as he was.
Later that evening The grocery store
Dressed in civilian clothes Stargate logos on his jacket raised too many unanswerable questions he wandered the aisles of the supermarket. He hadn't realized until then how much the maddening detail of research work actually wore him out. Right now he didn't feel like cooking anything for dinner. Of course, that was why the concept of leftovers had been invented, but he'd never really gotten in the habit of stowing food away. Often as not it went bad before he returned from the next offworld mission. So, no leftovers that made tonight's entrιe instant macaroni. With prepackaged salad thrown in as an afterthought, for nutritional value.
The line at the checkout counter was long, and he glanced over the magazines situated to catch the eye of bored shoppers. Most of them had the same contents: a mishmash of news that seemed incredibly trivial, stories about movie stars whose meteoric rises to fame he had somehow managed to miss, and 'everyday folk' articles about people across the country with vaguely unbelievable stories to tell. He decided to forgo reading any of them. He couldn't help feeling a little, uncharacteristically condescending towards the people who snapped up that kind of crumbs of glory. Their worlds were so small, so limited. They didn't know the extent of the universe they lived in, and they couldn't care less. And worst of all they never fully recognized how lucky they were to live stable, safe lives with no possibility of sudden, indescribably loss and no constant threat of danger. There were times he wanted to tell everyone he could reach about the Stargate and the worlds beyond Earth, so that they would realize the miracle of the universe they were living in, where such things could exist. Then he would realize that the very thing that made their lives stable was their not knowing, and he wanted them never to find out, so the security of their existence could be preserved and they would never know the pain of the nightmares that came to him and all of SG1. The nightmares of faces lost forever and threats they knew too well nightmares where you woke up crying, and nightmares where you woke up screaming.
Almost mechanically, he let the cashier ring up his items and bag them. He paid up and headed back out to the parking lot. The sun was starting to set. He couldn't wait to get back to his apartment and finally relax. It seemed some days that there was a tension in him, a feeling of delayed action, so much so that he had to force himself to unwind at the end of the day. He wondered if it was like that for the others.
Sighing at the unpredictability of his thoughts, he tossed the groceries in the back seat and headed off to to his apartment. He wished there wasn't that hesitation between "headed off to" and "his apartment", that second when he wanted to say "home" and couldn't bring himself to. Home was on the other side of the universe, and a broken home at that. Yet still, there was the pause, telling him that someday soon he would have to choose whether or not to transfer the title of home and all the affection and security it carried, to his place on Earth. Already the title of "family" had begun to insert itself into his thoughts of Jack and Sam and Teal'c. That was enough domestic confusion for a lifetime Daniel Jackson, without a family for most of his life, now with two! The thought of being so accepted into two groups should have been heartening. It was not. Every time he dared to let himself slip into that mentality of caring and being cared for, he felt a stab of built, as though simply by that trespass into the realm of happiness he was betraying Sha're and Skaara. He couldn't even remember their faces. That was crazy, wasn't it? He dreamed about them every night, but in the daylight hours couldn't recall more than a hazy blur where there should have been the precise way that Abydos shadows and sundown fell across Sha're's face.
When you spent every day risking your life with a group of people, it was bound to make you feel strongly for them. But he hadn't thought that anything could make him forget Sha're. He wasn't ready to forget her, or to have her replaced
God. He was thinking about her as though she were dead.
He closed his eyes and gripped the steering wheel harder. The trick was to concentrate on the road, on the radio, on whatever kept his thoughts earthbound and far from Sha're. When had that avoidance become part of his after hours routine?
Later his apartment
He threw together the macaroni and transferred the salad from its plastic bag into an equally plastic bowl. It looked rather dubious about its status as dinner, so he pulled out some vinaigrette that smelled okay (although he remembered stashing it in the fridge before leaving for P3X083 three weeks ago) and sprinkled it liberally over the wilted greens. It half-heartedly attempted to liven the meal up.
Macaroni, salad, and a tall glass of water were all transferred to the table in front of the TV. One searching hand found the remote control, and at the press of a button noise and color filled the room. It made the place feel less empty, somehow, less lonely, and it inundated him with images of a planet his own and yet unimaginably distant from the world(s) where he spent his days. Entranced, he sat and ate and tried to absorb all that was thrown at him events of dire importance to people on the other side of that invisible barrier that kept him from ever truly being of earth again. Anyone watching him would have seen the constantly moving light of the TV reflect off his face in the darkened apartment, making it paler than usual and a screen for all the violence and technicolor mayhem of the modern world. The image a solitary figure on a worn couch, drowning in the sea of flickering images catches in the mind. The light, the dark, the confusion and the understanding and above all the loneliness, play out a loop of life over and over again until, late at night, the TV finally goes dark.