When Jack awoke,
parched and disoriented, in Daniel's spare bed, he didn't know what
stupefied him most. The fact he'd slept or the fact Daniel hadn't
booted his ass right out the door last night.
Way to go, O'Neill.
Seriously.
Did it ever, at any
point, actually occur to him that Daniel was not only shit-scared, but
absolutely mortified? Daniel blamed himself for Mirin, he hurt
for the people and for having to lie, he hated the fighting, his
friendship with Carter was teetering on the brink, ready to take down
the team and maybe all of them with it, and of course, just to really
round out the misery, every time he looked at Jack he was realising
just that bit more how completely he'd exposed himself.
Allowing another man
inside you, giving your body like that, it wasn't a small thing.
When you hadn't looked for it, hadn't wanted it and had to live with it
and the guy who did it, it was a terrible thing.
It might help if
Jack could forget for a while what it was to be buried ecstatic
balls-deep in Daniel and try, really, really try to keep in mind how it
was for Daniel, having Jack watching him and remembering this, how he
felt and tasted, smelled, the soft, breathy, pleasured sounds he made
in sex.
Jack untangled
himself from the quilt, rolled out of the bed and into the bathroom and
took care of business. Washed, brushed and more or less
straightened up, he slunk around to Daniel's bedroom door. After
opening it with infinite care, he stuck his head round the door and the
rest of him naturally followed. Blessing bare feet and Special
Ops training, he crept up to the bed. Daniel lay on his stomach,
his limbs sprawled. Hair deliciously rumpled, his face was turned
towards Jack, the grey light of dawn filtering through the blinds to
soften his perfect features.
How could I love you
more, Jack thought, his heart thumping painfully in the crush of
feeling, overwhelming, possessive and pitying at once. Daniel
looked so exhausted and they'd barely begun. Teal'c and Carter
would be here in an hour or so, to talk, to listen, decide what they
could. If they could. Jack didn't know if he would have a
team at the end of it but of one thing he was certain.
He sat on the bed as
Daniel frowned in his sleep and stirred, disturbed by Jack's presence
in space which was wholly his. His face was the first thing
Daniel saw when he opened red-rimmed eyes.
"I'll retire if I
have to," Jack said simply. "I let it all go on Mirin and what
was left was all you."
Daniel's face
quivered, then his fingers curled over Jack's.
They stayed like
that for a while, barely touching, quiet, until the room warmed and the
silence grew easy, something close to familiar. They were still
friends and there was still comfort here.
Startled by the
sound of his door bell, Daniel squinted at his alarm clock, trying to
bring the numbers into focus as he rapidly did up the last few buttons
on his blue shirt. He gave up then, tucked his shirt into his
slate grey chinos and trotted over to the bureau to put on his
glasses. It was barely six-thirty, which he guessed meant Sam had
gotten about as much sleep as he had last night. Combing
impatient fingers through his damp hair, Daniel headed out into the
living room.
Sam was there,
dressed to impress in her smart powder-blue leather jacket, a vivid
silky knit and tight jeans which looked as if they cost twice what any
of his did. She looked good until Daniel came close enough to see
her eyes, shadowed beneath the make-up she wore. The light
flooding in from the open doors to the balcony didn't flatter as she
frowned up at Jack and Teal'c, perhaps assessing their moods and
guessing at sides taken.
It was a familiar
space to Daniel, though not comfortable. He'd often been where
Sam was now, trying to figure out who was for him and who against, who
could be swayed to reason or would remain obdurate and impatient.
Then angry. Dismissive. Hurtful. He wondered how it
felt to Sam, to be on the outside, looking in.
How long had it been
since he was happily oblivious to all of this? When was it,
exactly, that Jack stopped listening to him? Since he had been
forced to question? Himself, most of all.
"DanielJackson,"
Teal'c greeted him, proffering a bag of doughnuts, still warm, which he
placed with all due ceremony in the centre of the table next to the
coffee pot, the scent of cinnamon heavy in the air. "Major Carter
did not eat," he informed them.
Daniel's stomach
growled loudly.
"Tell me about it,"
Jack muttered, plaintive eyes dwelling fondly on the bakery bag.
It was an
unobtrusive switch, deftly done by Jack, but when they sat, Daniel
found himself next to Jack and opposite Teal'c, not Sam. He
guessed it was some tactical thing Sam would read, but this wasn't a
game he played or chose to care for. He didn't have the
energy. Daniel confined himself to pouring coffee, sliding across
mugs, sugar, cream. Jack was deep in the doughnut bag, behaving
scrupulously normally. It didn't cover for the fact Daniel and
Sam hadn't found a word to say to each other, hadn't even looked at one
another.
"Whose judgement are
you questioning?" Daniel asked her softly. "Yours? Or mine?"
Teal'c frowned over
this, tilting his questioning face towards Sam as she took a deliberate
sip of her coffee, the mug nursed between both hands.
"Before you answer
that, Carter," Jack said curtly, "I'd remind you that there were two of
us on Mirin. If you were up all night figuring maybe, just maybe,
Daniel was wrong, then you wasted your time."
"Is that what you
think of me?" Sam asked Daniel, not Jack.
"Sometimes," Daniel
admitted regretfully, feeling he had no choice to be honest. He
didn't want this to be adversarial, about anger or blame. The
team was supposed to be coming together, not splitting apart. The
only option they were left with was honesty if they were to go
on. Each of them had to know where they stood.
"When?" Sam began
defensively.
"Plenty," Jack
interrupted, taking a huge bite of his doughnut and gratefully toasting
Teal'c with the remainder.
Sam seemed genuinely
shocked.
Daniel shook his
head, staring down uneasily into his coffee mug, not understanding how
Sam couldn't see this in herself. He'd always thought it was the
tendency of any self-aware individual to be overly-critical, to be more
aware of flaws than strengths. It was what he did and he was
nothing out of the ordinary.
"I don't need to be
right!" Sam protested, getting upset. "Not - not that way!"
"You do not?" Teal'c
enquired mildly, inviting Sam to explain.
"Teal'c!" Sam gasped
in dismay.
"No, I know what Sam
means," Daniel interjected hastily, wanting to be fair. "I
understand. I really do. You - you get lost in the
science," he suggested shyly. It was a love, an excitement they
shared. There were other things too, maybe too unkind to
say. Sam's competitiveness was sharpened at times by what seemed
to Daniel to be a deep-seated need for approval, a core part of Sam's
makeup, the soldier in her not always in accord with the
scientist. Sam fitted the Air Force in a way Jack didn't and
Daniel never knew if he had the right to fault her for it. Her
need for structure, security and validation was an understandable one
even to a man like him, even though it wasn't a drive he shared.
He'd learned a long time ago to stand on his own.
Sam's face
softened. "You do, too," she offered tentatively.
This was something
easy in their friendship, the quality which helped them click in the
beginning. Neither thought the other obsessive, driven, geeky -
the epithets too often applied to people caught up in the pure,
fulfilling joy of research and discovery. It was the strongest
reaction people seemed to have to Daniel, even total strangers.
The irony was that Jack, one of the worst offenders, had seemingly
fallen for him despite it. At some point, he was going to have
ask Jack why.
"It isn't personal
with Daniel."
Even though Jack
sounded puzzled as he said this, as if he were just working this out
for himself, Sam stiffened up again, taking it as a criticism.
Reminding himself he
wasn't the only one with feelings, with an investment here, Daniel
gratefully gulped down some of his coffee and held his tongue.
Nothing would silence Jack when he had something to say.
"It is with you,
Carter. Personal." Jack still didn't seem angry. He
was thoughtful, assessing. "I guess the distinction got kind of
blurred for me there because it's not like you have any choice about
following my orders."
"Daniel does!" Sam
snapped, biting off the comment as if she instantly regretted it, with
a quick, almost apologetic look to Daniel.
He understood.
It wasn't easy on any of them to be so at odds. Conflict -
division - hurt. It had to, they were all too close and cared too
much. More than a team. A family was how he thought of
them. Home.
"DanielJackson
chooses to follow O'Neill," Teal'c reminded her, "As do I."
"This is not about
Daniel," Jack grated, firing up into his infamous pissed protector mode.
"Perhaps it is,"
Daniel countered, "for Sam." He looked hesitantly across at
her. "Do you think maybe we should just be absolutely straight
with one another? Small things can be important and how can
anyone change what they don't know?" It occurred to him as soon
as he'd said this that Sam wasn't free to speak out at all, that she
was the only one who wasn't, and he turned instinctively, appealingly,
to Jack, whose scowl slowly, slowly dissolved, apparently against his
will.
"For cryin' out
loud!" Jack hissed, tearing into another doughnut snatched at random
from the bag.
Taking this
embittered complaint as a 'yes', Daniel looked expectantly at Sam,
hoping she would feel confident enough to go on with what she'd been
about to say. Sam was assertive enough to speak up for herself in
any situation but she guarded her privacy as closely as Daniel guarded
his own. As much as she identified herself with the Air Force,
there were parts of her life, opinions and beliefs she kept strictly
separate.
"I understand the
difference between you two," Jack pointedly picked up the thread of his
own argument again before anyone else could speak.
Daniel gritted his
teeth. Sometimes he wished he could believe Jack was as dumb as
he liked to act out because he was so much harder to take when he did
things like this, his crassness disguising a subtle, effective
put-down. Oh, Sam could speak up, alright, just so long as she
remembered her place and who it was she was speaking to.
Was this what Jack
meant when he said he was different with Daniel than anyone else?
Sam didn't know Jack all that well, they weren't intimate, their
closeness that of colleagues and comrades, a distinction in his
friendships Jack made and Sam understood in a way Daniel didn't.
Maybe she didn’t know how Jack was with everyone in his life, but she
knew how he was with Daniel, the equality between the two of them not
extended to her. For someone as bright and capable as Sam, this
had to rankle. She accepted the chain of command, had said once
she couldn't imagine not being in the Air Force, but with Daniel freed
from many of the constraints which bound her, she had a daily reminder
of what she was denied.
It sobered
Daniel. Whatever changes he could affect in himself, it was
beyond his power to change Jack on so deep a level. Even Jack
didn't understand what it was about Daniel which allowed him to reach
Jack when no one else could. There had been plenty of times when
he would have walked away from Daniel if he'd been able to.
"Are we boring you?"
The sharp question
from Jack jerked Daniel from his reverie, flushing and discomposed.
"Daniel," Jack said
loudly, "does not take things personally. You do," he fired at
Sam. "You want credit for your discoveries, you want to be right,
you want to be best, hell, you want to be first."
Sam shot a filthy
look back at Jack but said nothing. She knew him too well to
interrupt him when he was in this mood. He wouldn't hear her
anyway.
Daniel had let
himself lose sight of how angry Jack was, with the Mirin, with Sam, and
his heart sank. Jack was dangerous like this, too apt to act and
damn the consequences. He would make his point, slam it home,
then he would cool down and rely on that charm of his to win you
back. Not this time. Jack had to be careful. Anything
he said here, he couldn't take back and he couldn't make right.
If they lost Sam, it would be for good. She would do anything for
them but if she had to, she would move on without them. She was
too focused, too goal-oriented not to.
"Respect,
credibility - those are important to you. I'm not saying there's
anything wrong with that," Jack added, quite genuinely. "It's
just who you are. A difference. You're a conformist."
"You are not,"
Teal'c retorted, darkly amused.
"I'm not attacking
you, Carter," Jack said with some sincerity.
Daniel guessed this
meant Jack's intent wasn't to attack, but his delivery was another
matter entirely.
"I'm trying to
understand the differences, how we could make Daniel feel the way he
does, why it's so often the three of us against him." Jack
shrugged deprecatingly, as if this didn't matter to him quite as much
as it sounded. "Daniel is our voice, he's what helps us find the
humanity in a situation, but where does that responsibility come with a
cast-iron guarantee he'll say anything we want to hear?
Ever? It's the antithesis of all we've been trained to do and for
damned good reason."
"Why is it always
about Daniel?" Sam asked before she could stop herself.
"O'Neill sees no one
else," Teal'c announced unexpectedly, his serene conviction silencing
everyone. He looked inscrutably at Jack. "When you and
DanielJackson are at odds, when you will not hear him, the balance of
this team is lost. Major Carter may agree with DanielJackson but
she must obey you, O'Neill. You know this."
Jack's sullen look
suggested he knew nothing of the kind.
"Thus two will
always side against one, whatever choice Major Carter might make were
she free to do so. Nor do I always agree with DanielJackson,"
Teal'c admitted fairly.
"You don't always
act when you do," Daniel reminded him, then he looked at Jack and
Sam. "Do you think I haven't thought about this? I
understand," he assured them, feeling it was inadequate, "I - I accept
this is the way things will always be."
"It is not the way
things always were, Daniel," Teal'c countered. "There are times
O'Neill will not hear you, though he should, times when I believe he
would have listened to you in the past. It is this which isolates
you from us."
"Everything that
happens on SG-1 is my responsibility," Jack acknowledged grudgingly
without actually answering Teal'c.
"Teal'c is right,
Sir," Sam backed him up, loyalty to her team, her friends, winning out
over her misery and angry defensiveness. "There are times you
won't hear Daniel, times you hear no one else."
Jack didn't like
hearing this, that much was obvious, but he didn't seem able to deny it.
"I'm not attacking
you, Sir," Sam parroted Jack with cool, deliberate irony. "It's
just a d-"
"Difference?" Jack
drawled witheringly. "You want to know the difference?
Daniel doesn't think about himself. He doesn't even see
himself! He would never look at one of my oldest friends dying in
front of me and see only an opportunity," he spat, "A science paper
with his name on it."
"Wh-what?" Daniel
stammered as Sam jerked back in reaction, as if she'd been slapped.
"That is an extreme
example, O'Neill," Teal'c rebuked him sternly, frowning.
"Sam?" Daniel tried
to ask as Jack shouted over the top of him, arguing furiously with
Teal'c, their voices battering at Daniel as he tried to reach Sam,
willing her to meet him, to connect.
Closing her eyes,
Sam turned her head away from Daniel. She was white to the lips.
"Jack, please,"
Daniel pleaded urgently, distressed for Sam and this reminder of her
callousness, however unthinking and aberrant it had been. He knew
what it was to lose himself, he shared that energy and passion, but he
- he saw people. Hoped he did. He was sorry for Jack too,
seemingly still not able to let this go. Keeping score was ugly
but sometimes Jack was and no one knew it better than he.
"Please," he whispered confidentially, appealing directly to
Jack. "This isn't helping."
"Then what will?"
Jack demanded, still glaring at Sam's bowed head.
"I don't know!
I only know that people are dying and it's our fault!" Daniel cried.
"My fault, you
mean," Sam contradicted him steadily.
"You can be so blind
sometimes, so rigid." Daniel took off his glasses and rubbed the
bridge of his nose. He was so tense, he felt as if his head were
pulsing. "As if what you know is all there is." He slumped
in his chair, shaky and anxious. Splintering. "How many
times have I been right, Sam? How many times have I put you on
the path you didn't see?" he appealed to her. "You make those
pronouncements with so much authority, people listen and trust and you
can be so wrong."
"Do you think it's
easy?" Sam asked him, her voice shaking. "Everyone looking to me,
needing not just the answer but my belief in it? With the base at
risk, the gate and all our lives on the line, the whole damned world,
they're looking for that certainty, they demand it of me and they
deserve it. I won't let them down. I can't!"
"You don't." Daniel
picked up his glasses, turning them nervously between his hands.
"When you're right. What about the times you're wrong, Sam?
You're too certain. Too cautious. Sometimes, arrogant."
"And you're
reckless, naïve, overly-passionate and question everything!" Sam
retorted. "Everything we do, everything we are. Everything
that matters. You make us question. You make us doubt."
"We try to do the
right thing," Daniel reminded her. "All of us. We have
enough differences, enough strengths that we each contribute, enough in
common that we complement, we balance. We're a team, Sam, part of
something greater than each of us alone, something I've never had
before, something I've learned from you!" he argued passionately.
Weren't they all supposed to learn, to grow?
"The balance has
been lost," Teal'c soberly reminded them.
"Because I didn't
question and you did," Sam told Daniel bitterly. "Daniel isn't
perfect," she snapped, turning suddenly to Jack. "He's let us
down before now, made mistakes which hurt us, and he's still on the
team. Remember Shyla?"
"You don't know
anything about that, Carter," Jack denied icily, glowering.
"I know Daniel got
us into that situation in the first place after he impulsively exposed
our position. I know he was completely out of his depth dealing
alone with Shyla's manipulations and he let himself get addicted to the
sarcophagus, almost getting us killed in the process," Sam said
determinedly.
"You seem very
certain," Jack purred, sleek and seething. "Is there any room in
all that certainty for the part I played? Breaking out of that
prison without ensuring all my team were out of the shackles?
Without even checking? I walked away and left Daniel.
Me! None of us even looked back to see if he was safe, if he
could follow. He got out of his depth because I got him killed!"
he hissed savagely. "Does that compute? The roof fell in on
him. I put him in the sarcophagus, not Shyla."
"So you accepted him
back onto the team because you felt guilty?" Sam looked sick at
heart, hating having to fight, cornered and regretting everything.
"I accepted him back
onto the team because I trusted him."
"You did?" Daniel
blurted out.
Jack's head snapped
around. "Of course I did!"
Daniel was shaking
his head, his denial instinctual. "Not always, Jack. Not
even close. If you did, I wouldn't," he faltered. He
wouldn't have started to question, to doubt. He wouldn't have
looked at Sam, his friend, and found he got nothing back. He
wouldn't have been faced, feeling as if his heart were punched out, by
a man he didn't know, cutting into him with accusations that it was
never over with him. It wasn't about him! His team - his
friends - had closed ranks against him, only Teal'c caring to reach
out, Jack and Sam impossibly cold and distant. It had taken him
too long to understand he couldn't reach them and to withdraw, to see
that he was with them but not of them, not any longer. A
necessary adjunct, nothing more, as if all their mutual history had
been erased. They hadn't even seen him.
"You believe Sam,
Jack. You accept her certainty, you trust," Daniel said
drearily. "You don't learn, though. You haven't learned to
trust Sam less or me more. You question me and not her. I
feel I have to prove myself to you every time. To all of
you. I don't have that acceptance, I don't have your
certainty. Sometimes, I don't even have your attention. It
wears on me."
"Is that why you
left us?" Sam asked intently, searching his face.
"You left me,"
Daniel contradicted. "You were right there and I was alone.
I - I could never figure out why. What I did."
"Daniel," Sam
protested, whispering and achy, blinking furiously. She dashed
her fingertips beneath her eyes, her face working. She knew what
Daniel meant. Knew it exactly. "It wasn't you. Never
you. Just - a mistake." She glanced at Jack and away.
"A grievous error of judgement," she added coldly.
Teal'c turned to her
and she met his gaze, something passing between them, something private.
"You know what my
problem was," Jack told Daniel flatly. "You knew on Mirin."
This left Daniel
without a word he could say in response.
"I have lived longer
than anyone here," Teal'c spoke softly into the silence. "I have
seen and done much in my life which has changed me, made choices which
have darkened my soul and for which I bear a burden of guilt and
responsibility. I am not the man I once was nor am I the man I
once dreamed I would be. The man I am lives and will die
free." He smiled gently at each of them. "Are your choices
any easier? We have found and lost friends and allies, and even
each other. None of us are what we once were. I have
changed. Have not you?"
"He's right," Sam
sighed. "We've grown together over time and sometimes grown
apart. The team has evolved because we have. I'm - I'm
harder than I was," she confessed, fidgeting nervously. "Not so
open, not so curious. Staying alive means more sometimes than
living." She sat back, rubbing the edge of the table, thinking
while they all watched her and waited. "I feel more a soldier
than a scientist."
"We fight a war,"
Teal'c reminded her. "Our fate is uncertain each time we step
through the Stargate to a new world. We do not know if we will
find friend or foe. Trust has grown between us over time, but it
may be that-"
"Familiarity breeds
contempt?" Jack interrupted abrasively. "We know each other's
faults and we're less tolerant of them."
"Not all change is
welcome," Teal'c agreed, looking straight at Daniel.
"No," Sam agreed,
comprehending his meaning without difficulty. "It isn't.
Daniel has changed too. Part of me expects him to cover my back,
relies on it, and part of me hates to see what it's doing to him.
Like I've failed somehow."
"I feel this also."
"I'm not a
pacifist," Daniel objected. "I knew what I was getting into."
"Did you?" Sam's
eyebrows rose. "Did any of us?"
"We're a combat
unit," Jack stated. "Hammond was right about our purpose being
muddied. We started out as a combat unit with an intelligence
officer who happened to be a civilian, a linguist and
archaeologist. I knew that going in. Daniel proposed and
the President agreed that we would assess the scientific and cultural
value of each mission, which blunted our focus in the pursuit of
military advantage through the acquisition of allies and advanced
technologies. Our remit may be exploration and first contact -
essentially communication, but Teal'c is right, we never know what
we're walking into. Every time we wind up in a shit storm, I'm
less inclined to ask nice the next time."
"I agree with
Daniel," Sam piped up. "But I also agree with you, Sir."
"Can you reconcile
the two?" Daniel asked her.
"Not always."
"It seems to me that
our missions have changed over the past couple of years," Jack stated,
turning a little towards Daniel. "We're no longer a first contact
unit. We shouldn't even kid ourselves that we explore any
more. All we do is firefight. Too many battles, off-world
and here. We have to face-off to scum like Kinsey, Maybourne and
Simmons, we have to compromise and make deals. Off-world, our
allies, and I use the term loosely, are only interested in winding us
up and setting us off. When it's our turn, when we need help, the
Tok'ra, the Tollan, the Nox, even the Asgard, they all sing the same
damned tune. Can't and won't," Jack frowned darkly. "We go
off-world and find ourselves in one catastrophe or war zone after
another. When did that become the function of SG-1? SG-2
and SG-3 were assigned to carry out tactical missions, not us. It
isn't just the tactical focus we have now, on and off base. I see
our mission assignments revolving more and more around Carter's skills
and abilities, on hard science and technology, while SG-5 and SG-11 do
- what? We're just one more team among many now and even Hammond
knows it. We've lost our edge, we've lost what made us stand
apart from every other team." Jack smiled at Daniel just a
little, regretful and reflective at once. "We've lost Daniel."
Sam was frozen,
sitting rigid and watchful, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"Daniel's right in
what he said to you, Carter," Jack went on, not troubling himself to
turn to look at her. "He asks questions you don't, he has ideas
you dismiss, he puts you on the path you don't see. All of us, in
fact. Ironic how easy it is to see that sitting here and so hard
to see at the time." Jack nodded at this, satisfied with his
assessment. "You have the ideas, Daniel, but it's Carter who does
the talking, it's Carter everyone remembers."
"You're holding me
responsible for that, Sir?" Angry incredulity sharpened Sam's tone.
"Not so long ago we
were ass-deep in frozen naquadah on our very own re-run of
'Armageddon'," Jack said almost absently, still staring at
Daniel. "I remember you giving up, Carter, telling us it couldn't
be done. It was Daniel who came up with the solution.
Daniel. He asked the question, started to tell us his solution,
but it was you who took over. You did his talking for him and you
were still talking back on base."
"That isn't
important," Daniel insisted stubbornly, his chin tilting proudly,
deeply uncomfortable at encroaching on something so very personal to
Sam, so difficult for her. He wasn't driven to be the best and
the first, to win approval, he didn’t need external validation the way
Sam did. He was anxious for her, not wanting her to be hurt any
more than she had been and tried to turn the subject. "The flow
of ideas, the truth. Learning and discovery. That's what's
important, Jack!"
Jack's face softened
as if he got this, as if it meant something to him. "Did you
credit Daniel during the briefing, Major? Or in your
report? I don't recall."
"General Hammond was
interested only in the result, O'Neill," Teal'c answered before Sam
could. "He did not care who found the solution, only that it was
successful and the Earth was saved. He congratulated us all."
"I care," Jack
calmly countered. "Who remembers the contribution Daniel makes if
we don't?"
"I do," Daniel
mumbled, not meaning to.
"I guess that makes
it even more galling that even we treat you like a flake. Carter
included."
Daniel found it so
difficult to stand against Jack when he was this compassionate, this
understanding.
Jack turned on Sam
suddenly, proving his empathy was reserved for Daniel alone. "You
should remember, Major. You should know. Is there a problem
here? Is this what you mean by working well together?"
"It is not!" Sam
denied fiercely. "I would never steal credit from Daniel, never!"
Daniel's face
twisted, an involuntary response. He dropped his head quickly,
covering by pulling his mug towards him. He didn't want to say,
he didn't want it to show. Sometimes, it did matter. A
lot. Sometimes, he needed Sam to know. It hurt him, bottled
up inside until it exploded out in a dream and lesson in which he took
such pleasure in Sam's pain, a pain he'd enjoyed inflicting, some part
of him, buried deep, believing she deserved it.
Sam in the dream
stepped in and took over from him, Hammond turning so easily to her and
not to him. Jealousy and competition. He was not proud he'd
seen Sam most in those terms, failing to find the great goodness in her
character, the many qualities about his friend he valued and
trusted. He wasn't proud.
"Daniel?" Sam
whispered, stricken, her eyes pleading with him.
"Not
stealing." He wasn't quick enough to cover his reaction and now
he could do nothing but face her. She was a person of such
integrity but she was also human. Fallible, no matter what drove
her. "You get - sometimes you get a little lost."
"For what it's
worth, Carter, I agree with Daniel," Jack backed him up. "I don't
believe for a second you did it deliberately or that you even
knew. Daniel is not good at the personal stuff so he'd be the
last one to tell you he had a problem and Teal'c and I usually glaze
over at the touchy-feely pat-on-the-back stuff," he shrugged.
"Unless it's for
you," Daniel contradicted sarcastically. "Then it should never
get old."
"Touché,"
Jack acknowledged, his face lighting into a wicked grin. "Take
time for a little personal assessing, Carter," he ordered fluently.
This, coming from
Jack, left Sam choked and furious.
"There are
consequences, Carter," Jack sternly asserted, visibly unimpressed by
her response. "Not for you but for Daniel. Your judgement
is not called into question but Daniel's is. He's the one who
winds up isolated, sidelined even." He looked steadily at each of
them, thinking again and none too happy with his conclusions.
"I don't know how
the focus of the team has become blunted, why everything that favours
the skills which Carter, Teal'c and I have has to come at Daniel's
expense," he mused aloud, talking more to himself than to them.
"The Stargate
program used to be the greatest endeavour of man, it used to be your
life," Jack reminded Daniel, genuinely perplexed. "Both of you,"
he added generously, sparing a momentary glance for Sam. "I never
believed you could be planted in front of a panel of alien text and all
you'd see was months of tedious boring tediousness, Daniel. I
remember a time you'd be thrilled and it wasn't even that long
ago. Unless you get right in our faces, telling us nothing we
want to hear, it's like we don't see you any more," Jack was soft with
apology. "I don't know how or when I let that happen."
"I've tried to
change, to stay with you." Daniel's fingers twisted
nervously. He wished he didn't have to expose so much of himself
but with all Sam was facing, could he offer anything less? He
didn't want to lose her. "I never know if I've changed enough or
too much. It's never right. I'm never," he faltered on the
brink of self-pity. "I think sometimes you'd be better off
without me, if you took another military officer, a linguist, someone
who would see what you see, who would be with you and not
against. And then something will happen, and you'll need
me. I can't walk away from you so I do what I can. Sam is
challenged, you all are, and I - I try to be content."
"It is not enough,
DanielJackson," Teal'c said sadly.
"No," Jack said
strongly, "It isn't." He sat back in his chair, cold and
collected, quite decided. "We're a team of four, not of three and
it's about goddamned time we started acting like it. Hammond is
giving us a chance, all of us," he emphasised, looking significantly at
Sam, who was deathly quiet. "He wants us sharp and focused, fulfilling
our primary mission objectives: first contact and exploration."
"We can't go back to
the way we were." Sam cleared her throat. "We're not those
people any more."
"We can move on,"
Jack offered. "What's happened here - Mirin - was in a way a
wake-up call we needed. How much longer could we have gone on
without these tensions exploding? We're all feeling the strain,
this much is finally obvious even to me. We are getting hardened,
more defensive and less willing to extend help to others which we've
learned through experience won't be reciprocated. If the way the
team is now is the way any of us wants it to be, if we want to continue
on with our emphasis on tactical and technological missions, then we
can transfer to another team without prejudice." He was deadly
serious. "Hammond has made it clear SG-1 will go on and that
Daniel will be part of it. The rest of us have to choose."
"I will remain with
SG-1." Teal'c bowed his head, unperturbed by Jack's ultimatum.
"It's my team," Jack
snapped, visibly annoyed that Teal'c had beaten him to the punch.
"I can make nice with the natives," he informed Daniel, not wholly
convincingly, "and I enjoy nothing better than a poking around with you
in old ruins." Having smoothly reduced Daniel to speechless,
scarlet-faced confusion, Jack turned his attention to Sam.
"Major?" he invited.
"Is it me or
Daniel? Or is there room for us both?" Sam said directly.
"Both," Daniel said
at once.
"Both," Jack
agreed. "If you can work together."
"I thought we could
but apparently I've been wrong about a lot of things," Sam snapped.
"We all have blind
spots, Carter, even you," Jack drawled cynically, not giving an
inch. "Yours compromised everyone here, the general and the SGC,
and ultimately, will help kill a whole lot of people. You can
learn from it or you can let it take you down."
Jack was relentless
when he started, they'd all seen him get this way before. Daniel
could pull him out of it, sometimes. Before. He'd been
here, with Jack in his face, using everything he could to hurt
him. Sam had seen this too, but now it was her. Jack had to
know what his approval meant to her, it was a needed constant she could
measure herself by. He would know but it wouldn't stop him, not
until he was done. Daniel couldn't reach Jack and Sam couldn't
take it, she wasn't like him, Jack had never left her devastated.
"That's enough,
Jack! Enough!"
He was splintering,
the pain in his head like a live thing, shoving away from the table to
stumble drunkenly out to the balcony, bracing his hands against the
cold brass rail, bowed low as he gulped in clean air. He sensed a
presence behind him but was too far gone to react, folding his arms and
dropping his head down to rest.
"All those people."
It was Sam,
abject. Appalled.
"I can't stop
thinking. I shouldn't." Her voice broke and she too gulped
in air, moving up to stand at Daniel's side. "I wouldn't have
done anything differently, Daniel. I've turned it over and over
in my mind, talked it through with Teal'c a dozen times and still,
there's nothing I would change. Nothing I could. I did my
best. It was for you and the colonel, I couldn't do anything
less. It would still be wrong. I'm wrong."
It didn't feel to
him that Sam wanted him to reassure her. She just needed to say
this to someone and the habit of trust went deep between them.
Some things she could only say to him, some experiences she couldn't
share with Janet. They weren't the same. Team was family, a
family Sam chose, and she gave herself to it entirely.
No one knew what
they'd been through together or what they were to one another.
Daniel didn't want to give any part of it up. If he and Sam could
only meet half-way, find again the empathy and excitement they used to
share in discovery.
He straightened up,
saying nothing, staring out at the waking city, his vision dancing.
"I couldn't say,"
Sam murmured, "not with the colonel there. I guess I've been
blind to a lot of things because I truly never meant to hurt you.
I didn't know that I was. Don't you trust me enough to tell me?"
"It isn't like that."
"No?"
"I don't have your
certainty, Sam."
She looked around at
him, upset and uncomprehending. "Not enough to be mad at
me?" She couldn't believe this and then she saw something in
Daniel's face she hated and it hurt her like hell. "I didn't
think I had to say the words. I always thought you knew!
I'm a better person for knowing you, Daniel. I love you."
She didn't dare to touch him, her hand simply slid closer to his on the
rail. "Be certain!" she said fiercely.
Daniel didn't know
what to say, didn't think there was anything he could say. He put
his hand over Sam's.
"I'm fairly certain
of you too," Sam acknowledged sweetly, accepting.
On an easier day,
she might have hugged him but this was the best they could do.
"Do you want to stay
on the team, Sam? Can you?"
"Can I?" Sam
parroted, bitterness apparent. "It was made clear to me this is
not my choice. I," she paused, picking her words, "hurt the
general too. And Janet." She choked up again, fighting her
emotion, her failure. "I can't quit and I can't stay. I
want to stay but it feels wrong. Like the command the general
offered me. I'm scared, Daniel. Scared to stay and scared
to go. I can't run from myself, the colonel is right about that
at least, whatever else he - never mind," she changed the subject
hastily, hot resentment flaring for a moment. "I have to deal
with this, try to work out what to do."
It was difficult for
Daniel to empathise with Sam when he couldn't even remember the first
time his belief in himself had been stripped from him. It was so
long ago. He'd been knocked down so hard and so often he was
never quite sure himself why he didn't stay down. Stubbornness,
maybe.
"Learn," he
suggested tentatively. "Don't rationalise, Sam. Don't
excuse. Failure is also potential for growth and
self-realisation. You need to find the strength to stand alone,
to take risks with yourself and to be wrong. If you measure
yourself by any standard but your own," he suggested delicately,
"ultimately you'll fail. Don't look at other people, look
within." God, did he sound like one of those self-improvement
books?
Sam's head was
quirked towards him. She was at least listening.
"Most of us don't
have the abilities or the advantages you have or the reinforcement I
guess you've always enjoyed for your hard work. It's a part of
your core identity but not the best part." Could he be any more
direct than this? "You thought we were good, Sam, but we weren't,
not always. I don't want to have to fight again and again for
your belief because you won't take a risk for me, because you're
measuring yourself against an impossible external standard and caution
is safer than censure."
"Is that what you
think of me?" She read the answer in his face, moving her hand
out from under his to fold her arms across her chest. "My ego is
bigger than both of us, is that what you're saying?" She glanced
back into the apartment, scowling. "The colonel seemed to think
so."
"I need to work with
you, Sam, not against," Daniel explained patiently. "That's all
I'm saying. It's not about me and it shouldn't be about you, but
about both of us. We're not in competition."
"Not any more," Sam
said almost to herself, "I lost."
Daniel was too tired
to ask what she meant by that. Intellectually, he could
understand what a blow to her it was to be the one selected to leave
the team if they couldn't resolve their differences, but he didn't know
what he could do for her. This was a crisis of confidence he felt
she needed to see through herself. Maybe when she could think
more clearly, Sam would be able to articulate not only what she needed
from him but what she could give.
They would all have
to give. Daniel was far from perfect, he was causing his own
tensions in the team but he'd taken as much as he could and he needed
something back. He had to have Jack's support and he had to have
something more from Sam than she had been able to give for a long
time. She had to effect some changes in herself, at the least
recognise the need, or he didn't know where they could go from
here. He just couldn't do this anymore.
"Will you help me?"
Sam asked, nakedly vulnerable.
"You know I will,
any way I can."
"I don't want to be
cautious, Daniel." She was blinking hard suddenly, the threatened
tears close once again. "I want to be with my team."
"Then start with
this." Daniel looked gravely around at her. "You tell me
you love me, you tell me to be certain."
Sam was stiffening
up, her face growing wary again.
"On Mirin I asked
you to trust me, Sam, to have faith in my judgement. You didn't
agree and you didn't question your judgement, only mine. Could
you not have checked into my concerns for me, for no other reason than
we’re friends and I needed it from you?"
She didn't know what
to say to him, didn’t know where to start, her mouth working
soundlessly.
"I believed you
could. I was ready to die, believing it." He shook his
head, still very far from understanding all that had happened. "I
was wrong, though, and I don’t know what to do with that."
It was very clear to
them both that Sam didn't either.
Back to Part Three / On to Part Five
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