The Truth: Why Daniel and Cameron Look So Much Alike
"Carter have you seen Daniel? He's missing, again, I'm going to have to kill that kid if he's been killed again," Colonel Jack O'Neill raged, looking for his missing archeologist who had managed to get lost. Again. Finally, Jack spotted Daniel, curled up in a bundle on an altar of some sort. Daniel was in a beam of light which held him about three feet over the altar and he was dressed in a robe of a silk-like fabric, Daniel's uniform was in a ball in a corner of the room along with his glasses. "Damn it Daniel," growled Jack upon seeing this, "Why do you have to do this to us?" Jack occupied himself trying to pull the comatose Daniel out of the light while Major Samantha Carter and Teal'c came to the room.
"Damn it, Daniel, why do you have to do this to us?" Danny's father's last words rang through his head, twisted and warped, falling odd on his ears; he knew his father had not said those words, but that was what the boy heard ringing through his head as he watched the police and museum workers try to move what was left of an exhibit off of what was left of his parents. He had been trying to warn his father and he had caused the death of both his parents. Danny sat, crying into the sleeve of his sweater in the corner of the room. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up.
"Are you Daniel Jackson?" asked the police officer. The boy looked up at him, eyes red from crying and his ridiculously long hair falling into his eyes as he nodded slightly, wiping away a tear and sniffling. The officer took pity on Danny, and gave the poor boy a tissue. "I'm going to take you to your mother's house, okay?"
Danny looked at the officer, trying several times before he could talk again, his eyes glistening with fresh tears. "She died," he rasped out, choking on the words as the tears flowed freshly down the lines on his face as he pointed to the fallen stone in the other room, the stone that lay upon his parents.
The officer got down on one knee, making his eyes level to Danny's and wiping away the tears. He looked at the boy fondly, pushing that long sandy hair out of his face, "She didn't," he whispered to a confused and anguished Danny. "Your mother divorced your father when you were young, I know her well, she didn't want to leave you with your father, but he had a job and could take care of you better," Danny's eyes grew hopeful, even though still red and glistening with tears of fresh loss as he thought about his father and the woman he had always called mom.
"Will she..." Danny's rasping, harsh voice was lost as his throat grew too tight for the words to squeeze out and he took several deep breaths and a drink of water from the bottle one of the officers had given him before he tried again. "Will she take me?" he asked, the last word almost lost as his throat grew tight once more.
The officer smiled again, the way a father fondly smiles at his son when his son finally does something that they have been working on for a long time and the officer had to wipe a tear away from his own eye. "She's waiting for you at our house, Daniel," said Danny's step-father, the officer. Danny smiled softly, wiped the gleaming trails of tears away, and slid his small hand into his step-father's big, calloused hand.
"Daniel? Daniel! Com'on, Daniel, wake up!" a voice cut through to eight year old Daniel, and two realities suddenly crossed over, Daniel saw his step-father and a man he knew he should know, but he couldn't remember his name, but as suddenly as this came into view, it was gone again.
"Dan'yel!" a woman at the door of the house exclaimed as she rushed forward and murmured loving phrases in ancient Egyptian to the boy she had loved, the boy she had almost lost. She looked like her son, but her hair, once black, was streaked with strands of silver, and her eyes were just like Danny's, an arresting blue, framed with the red of sorrow that only tears bring out. She caressed the son she had thought she would never see again and cried tears of joy in seeing him again.
"Carol," said Danny's step-father, "Daniel's watered himself enough today, I doubt he needs any more watering," his words brought a smile to his wife's face and she ushered Danny inside.
"Dan'yel, it's so good to see you again," her voice had an Egyptian accent to it. "Welcome home, my son," she hugged a very winded Danny tighter.
"Carol?" a voice came from the top of the stairs, a little girl stood up there, looking at what was going on and looking very much confused. "What's going on?" she asked.
"Clara, this is your step-brother, Daniel, Carol's son," said Danny's step-dad to the girl. The girl seemed to accept this, but then she ran up another flight of stairs.
Danny heard a thundering noise and saw Clara run back down the stairs, not stopping where she had before, but continuing down towards Danny, Carol, and Danny's step-father. Behind Clara flew two other boys, one looked older than Danny, and the other looked about a year younger than Danny. "Dan'yel, my son," his mother said, "These are Gah'ary's children, Clar'ah, and Nath'han. This is your half-brother, Cam'ran," she said, most likely mispronouncing all of their names.
"Hi," Danny said softly, "I'm Danny," he mumbled down to his shoes, this had been a hard day, and now he had step and half siblings that he had never known about.
"Come on, Danny," said an eager Clara, Danny began to follow her up the stairs. "Let's go up stairs, I'll show you your room!"
"My room?" Danny asked, stopping, what had happened happened too fast for his real mother to have put together a room already.
"Yeah, Danny," said 'Nath'han', "Carol's had it ready for you as long as we've known her, just in case you needed to stay here, or if your dad let you come live with us," Danny's face darkened as 'Nath'han' mention the word "Dad", but he didn't see this and Danny said nothing, but he followed the others up the stairs.
"Carol," said Gary, Danny's step-dad, "I need to talk to you about Daniel," he wrapped his arms around his wife and led her into the kitchen to tell her about the incident in the museum.
"Colonel, what happened to Doctor Jackson?" asked a very upset General Hammond, looking at the three standing figures on the ramp. Colonel O'Neill had once more come through with a very unconscious Daniel in tow.
"I don't know, sir, but he should see Frasier, he's out cold and has been this way for the half hour it took to get him back to the 'gate," gasped a winded O'Neill. Daniel weighed a lot more than he had thought, even in the silken robes that they couldn't get off of him instead of the full garb that they had to wear every time they went through the 'gate.
"Understood, Colonel. Medical team to the Gate room," he announced on the PA system that went all throughout the base. The red headed Doctor Frasier ran into the Gate room with a stretcher and her normal group of medics who came with her to collect SG-1.
"It's Daniel," Jack said, relieved when Frasier took Daniel's dead-weight, comatose form off of his shoulders. "We don't know what happened, he was being held up in a beam of light like this when we found him. I don't know what he did, but he's been out cold for at least a half-hour" Jack elaborated.
"This is your room, Danny," said Clara. "Here's the bathroom, here's Carol's and dad's room, my room," Danny caught a glimpse of pink walls, a doll house, flowery bed sheets and dresses. "Here's Nathan's room, and here's Cameron's room," finally Danny found out his half-brother's name. "And this is the playroom," Clara said, stopping at the last door. She opened it and there was a flight of stairs behind it. "Come on, Danny, you'll love it!" she ran up the stairs after Nathan and little Cameron. Danny, caught up in the moment, ran up, finally feeling like he belonged somewhere.
Danny stopped at the top of the stairs, his jaw dropped, and his eyes welled up. "Mom says it reminds her of home," Cameron said softly behind Danny. Danny turned around and looked at Cameron.
"I'm sure it does," he said with a halting voice that caused Clara and Nathan to top what they were doing and look at him. To their surprise, they saw tears rolling down Danny's face and he began to cry softly. "I'll be okay," he muttered, his words caught on sticky spots in his mouth, the spots where his tongue clung desperately trying to hold back the sobs.
"Danny," Nathan said comfortingly, "What's the matter?"
Danny looked at Nathan and headed over to the Sphinx shaped couch where Nathan sat. "I used to live with my dad, up until a short while ago. He and my step-mom were putting together an exhibit at a museum today when," he stopped; his throat had closed up again. "It was like a building, from Egypt, the top slab was being lowered into place. I saw something and I knew that they had to get out right away. I called out to them, but I was too late. The chain holding the slab broke," Danny whispered, "They couldn't get out. It fell on them," Clara gasped, Nathan tried to comfort the crying Danny, and Cameron didn't understand what was going on. Nor would he until he was much older.
"His heart rate just sky rocketed," Frasier said to one of the other nurses. "Get a sedative, STAT!" Janet Frasier looked at Daniel's comatose form and hoped that he would be okay; certain people would have trouble continuing with out him, although Daniel did have a learning issue, he couldn't learn how to die, and for that many people on base were grateful. The nurse handed Janet a needle full of sedative, which she injected into Daniel's IV line. She watched as his heart rate fell back down to a normal rate and thanked god that he was better.
Daniel was in the kitchen of his house, getting some stuff together, tomorrow was his 15th birthday and his mom and Gary were going to throw him an Egypt themed birthday party. Suddenly, Daniel's mom gasped out in pain in the sitting room. He ran into the room and saw her clutching her chest. "The phone, Dan'yel," she gasped out, she was in pain. Daniel felt the icy touch of fear find its way into his heart and felt a terrible feeling of loss. He ran and got the phone so that he could help his mom. As Carol called a doctor, Daniel sat with her, supporting her head, holding it in his hands. He felt the soft, downy, fresh grown coat of hair that barely covered his mother's head and felt tears run down his face in their now all too familiar paths. "An ambul'ynce will come shortly, Dan'yel, help me lay down," she said to her loving son.
"Y-y-yes, mom," Daniel stumbled, the words once more finding themselves caught on the spots where Daniel's tongue clung to the roof of his mouth. He cleared a path from the front door to her and then he sat there with her, holding her hand, until he heard the sirens that announced the ambulance. He ran to the door to open it for the paramedics, and saw Nathan at the top of the stairs. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and Nathan went back up the stairs. Daniel ran over to the door. "She's in there," he said, directing the paramedics towards his mother and he hoped that Nathan would keep Clara and Cameron upstairs.
The paramedics took Daniel's mother up to the hospital and Gary went with them. Daniel, Nathan, Clara and Cameron went over to their grandfather's house even though none of them really liked the idea of staying with Nick overnight. The next morning they got a call from the hospital, Carol was dead. She had a heart attack; Gary had said to them over the phone, there was nothing they could do for her. That was the last time any of them talked to him; he died on his way home from the hospital in a car crash. Daniel knew that Nick wouldn't take him or any of the others.
Janet was monitoring Daniel again. It had been three weeks since he had mysteriously lapsed into a coma while off world and Daniel was exhibiting signs of depression. Suddenly his heart rate sky rocketed, the third time since he had come back. Janet reached for some sedative when Daniel shot up to the sitting position.
"Mom!" Daniel yelled out suddenly, tears flowing in rivers from his eyes, "Mom! No," he sobbed. "Not again!" Daniel broke down and curled into a ball on the cot, sobbing for his mother, his step-parents, his father, and the family that should have been his until he died. "No, not mom, not Gary too, no, no, no!" he sobbed uncontrollably, his body racked by the intensity of his sorrow.
"It's okay, Daniel," Janet said, comforting him, "That was a long time ago, it can't hurt you, and you can't change it, it's okay," she said softly to him. "You might feel better if you calm down a bit, Daniel"
Daniel managed to stop crying and he looked at Janet with oddly distant eyes, "I do feel better now," he whispered and he once more was pulled into the deep embrace of the past.
"You are Daniel are you not?" the young man said.
"Yes, I am, who are you?"
"Who I am is of no consequence, but who needs you will be," the man was not being helpful at all.
"Who needs me?" Daniel asked.
"You will know," he said and suddenly everything blacked out.
"Janet?" Daniel tried to say, but his tongue was all fuzzy and kept flopping around in his mouth, getting in his way. Everything was blurry too, they must have taken his glasses off.
"Daniel?" Janet said, getting up and going to his bedside.
"I need to go," Daniel began, but he felt so light headed that he had to stop talking.
"Just take it easy, Doctor Jackson, you've been out cold for three days, you should take it easy," Janet said to Daniel.
"No, Janet, you don't understand," Daniel gasped out, "My brother is in danger!" As soon as he gasped out the heart rending message, he slipped back into the comforting hold of the darkness which lapped around his ears, holding him safe.