Homecoming
by Charis
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: Ilana asked me for Daniel on Abydos. Vaguely in or after late seventh season.
It should feel like he is home, coming back to these familiar expanses of sand and sun. He wonders briefly if the time spent ascended dulled his memories, but things have come back with the months, and yet this world which features so prominently in his memories is strange to him. Maybe it's the lack of familiar faces; he grew up fairly transient, and home was always defined by people rather than places. Even here, it was her presence that made it home, rather than the dunes.
No Sha're here, greeting him with a kiss. No Skaara, teasing him. No Kasuf, watching fatherly pride.
No home.
The sand is gritty between his fingers as he lets it fall, and when the last of it is gone, he dusts his hand off on the fatigue pants. That same transient lifestyle taught him to hold things dear while they were there and, ultimately, to let them go. He's never been good at the latter, but he's beginning to learn. It took a wasteland to show him beauty, and the loss of everything to open his eyes.
As he heads back to his teammates - his erstwhile family - he begins to smile.
- finis -