NOTE:
Hello! I know this plot has been WAY overdone but I have been wanting to do this for a while and i figured that the aftermath would be different with Danielle rather than Daniel. Anyways, I own nothing. Enjoy!
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Danielle didn't like chairs.
Perhaps a petty and small object to dislike, but she disliked them all the same. The Abydonians didn't have chairs. Abydos is, or was, her home. She respected their culture and grew to love it, even the small quirks. And that included a dislike of chairs. The floor was more natural, closer to the center of the planet. Closer to where they buried their dead. Chairs were unnecessary and created a sense of separation, isolation.
So as Danielle slammed her door to her office she kicked the chair aside, deeming it an unnecessary piece of furniture. The floor was more down to earth. Made her feel alive and more at home, even if the cold, disconnected grey floor was a disturbing contrast to the beautiful warm sand and dirt on Abydos.
She slid down the wall, feeling the jolt of slight pain through her body as she hit the floor. She had just lied. Lied to her friends, her family.
Actually, technically, that wasn't true. She had deceived them.
The slightly teasing glint in her eyes as she told Jack they had drawn straws, and the nods of acceptance at the right places during his clumsy apology had all been fake. She had become very adapt at lying when she was a child, going through the foster care system. She was very good at telling half truths, hinting to things, making people infer lies for themselves before she even had to utter them herself.
She had no bad intensions in mind, she just wanted them to back off. She understood that they were protective, well, Sam and Teal'c were. But she wanted some space. She just wanted alone time to decompress. To process. The scene at his cabin still rang in her mind, defecting back at her as if from a nightmare.
She almost knocked on his door. Almost. Hesitating mid-knock, she dropped her hand and checked the doorknob. It was open. Considering herself invited inside, she opened the door, keeping one hand inside the front of her jacket so it could rest on her hand gun. If Jack was under the influence of an alien entity or even just being blackmailed she needed to be prepared. Three years on a front line field team had taught her that lesson the hard way.
The door swung open and she made her footsteps as quite as possible as she walked in the house, her boots only making slight noise on the floor.
"Jack?" She called out into the house, "Jack, you there?"
The correct response would have been yes, because she knew he was there. Where else would he be? He had nowhere to go. Whenever he felt vulnerable or angry he either went to a bar, hid out on base, or hid at his house. He rarely went to a bar. Danielle knew he liked to drink in private when he was brooding. He wasn't on base, Dani had checked with Sam before she left about that one, so he had to be here.
Danielle had come at night. She wasn't sure why she had decided to, but for some reason she felt safer. Dani had come to his cabin with a mind set on a ass whipping or a heart to heart whythehelldidyouresignyouasshole talk. And she had no intension of leaving without that talk. Heart to hearts felt more open to her with the cover of darkness. She couldn't see his face as well and he couldn't see hers as well either. The perfect cover for an extremely less then pleasant conversation.
Her finger tapped out a rhythm on the handle of her gun as she glanced at the stairs that led up to the roof. She sucked in a short breath and tested the first stair, nodded at it's stability, and walked up the staircase swiftly with no noise. Still, when she spotted the back of Jack's head while he stared at the night sky, Danielle knew that he knew she was there.
He spared a short glance in her direction as she pulled up the nearest chair and sat down in it, grabbing a spare beer sitting on the railing.
"Did I say I was sharing?" He raised an eyebrow and turned away, taking a pull from his own beer.
"Did I say I was asking?" She retorted, popping the cap of the beer open with a snap.
There was an arduous silence as Jack went back to staring at the sky.
"Why?"
The single word whispered into the void of silence was understood instantly by the man sitting next to her, but being purposefully obtuse was his specialty.
"Why what?"
Danielle sighed, "You know damn well what I'm talking about, Jack." Why did you steal it? Why didn't you give it back? Why did you leave without a single damned word?
He sighed and quirked a small smile at her that didn't reach his eyes, "To protect the earth."
"Bull shit."
"Well what more do you want from me?" He snapped.
She turned to face him more fully, "The truth."
Another long silence, then, "The pentagon, the government, isn't giving us enough leeway, enough freedom to actually do our jobs. We can't protect the earth by being nice. Asking the aliens to pretty please not blow us up isn't gonna fly."
"Well stealing sure as hell isn't the answer."
"Why not? Got what we needed."
"Our allies are the ones we need. We don't need their technology, we need them!"
He scoffed, "Oh, please. We aren't given the resources to do what we need to do to expand the project and defend our planet."
Dani stared at him, "Expanding the project?" Her eyes narrowed, "What aren't you telling me?"
He took another swig of beer, "The pentagon was going to authorize two off world bases that would be defenses against the Goa'uld. I would lead one."
"And they changed their minds."
Jack's mouth twisted into something not quite a smile as he raised his bottle in a mock salute, "You always were a quick one."
"Is this all because of that? All out of spite? That does not sound like you. You aren't the one to do something this drastic for petty revenge. And you aren't the one to steal things instead of making allies. This isn't you. I know you."
"Guess you aren't as bright as you thought. Don't know me that well after all, do you, princess?"
Danielle wasn't sure how she felt. She might have been angry, sad, or just plain out indifferent, but at the moment she couldn't feel it. Her ears ere ringing. She could feel each beat of her heart pound against her chest. She had to know.
"So, this whole friendship thing we've been working on…"
She waited with bated breath for his answer. He licked his lips and leaned back in his chair, "Guess there isn't much of a foundation after all, is there?"
At that moment every defense mechanism she possessed kicked into action. All emotions were pushed to the back. All but anger.
"I guess it was a complete waste of time to bring you back from Edora, princess." She snarled.
His face was cold. No emotion present but a trace of cruel condemnation, "Guess it was."
"Have a nice life." Her growl was pure animalistic rage and she poured her beer out on the deck, letting the glass drop to the floor, smashing into smithereens. Dani quickly stomped down the stairs and slammed the door on the way out.
She could feel tears pushing the edges of her will and pricking at her eyes. Digging out her car keys, she chirped them and hopped smoothly into the driver's seat, speeding off as fast as she could. She stared straight ahead, grey at the edges of her vision and Jack O'Neill in the rear view mirror.
Dani dropped her head onto her knees and felt a single tear trickle it's way stealthily down her face.
She felt like she should hate him for what he did. He lied and he deceived them for weeks. He cut into their souls with no remorse, no sense for what he was getting himself into, no sense for what he was damaging beyond repair.
But Danielle didn't care about that. No, she didn't mind the lies. She cared that he knew what to say.
Trust was her thing. Not that she was good at, but the thing that haunted her nightmares and badgered her while she was trapped in a waking state. Her parents had left her, not on purpose but they had left all the same. Her grandfather decided to abandon her. Countless foster families gave up on her. Dani was tricked too many times to count by other kids, by other people. She had been hurt too many times to not be cautious, and the time that she opened up, that she trusted Jack, he had found every one of her insecurities and pushed them into the open. And she didn't like that one bit. He had used her. He had betrayed her trust, not by lying to her, but by using her against herself.
So Danielle sat on the cold, hard, disconnected floor and decompressed. She let herself go for a while. And she knew Sam and Teal'c and Jack would figure out she was still extremely pissed off and the latter would try to fix things, but she couldn't deal with him right now. She didn't think she could deal with him at all anytime in the near future and be civil. She was a walking, talking mess of emotions and did not have any intension whatsoever of going near someone who would set her off.
So she sat.
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NOTE 2:
I hope you enjoyed the story, the next chapter will be posted tomorrow! Please review if you have any thoughts at all about the story or how I could improve it. Thanks :)