There are days when I really wonder if life will ever be too much for Daniel.
We left the cave, with Daniel going on about Shaka Kahn or whoever – whatever – that was we'd just left behind. How the Unas were advanced enough to have language and a social hierarchy, but apparently not so advanced that they'd bury their dead. With a canteen in one hand and an energy bar in the other, he kept up a steady stream of self-inquiry, oblivious to the news I had to give him.
We were about a quarter mile from the camp and I called a halt.
"Teal'c, Carter, you go on ahead. Daniel and I are going to take a minute."
"I'm fine." Daniel said. Completely oblivious. The others knew what I was about to do though and nodded agreement.
"We'll see you back at camp." Carter said. They left.
"Jack, I'm fine." Daniel argued again, chewing on a bite of his energy bar. "I mean, if you're worried about my health, don't you think it's more important I get back to my tent and my bunk?"
I hated to have to tell him this.
"Daniel, do you know that the lake here is swarming with goauld symbiotes?"
"Yeah, Shaka killed one. Then he ate it. He offered me part of it but -."
"Daniel." Let's not get off topic. Especially on to a topic like that.
"Jack?"
"Two members of the search party were infected with goauld. Hawkins and -."
"Oh." Daniel said abruptly. He didn't even let me finish. I guessed that he knew, but I had to know that he knew.
"They were killed Daniel. This morning. Teal'c killed Hawkins and I had to shoot Rothman."
"Oh. Oh, okay." He looked absolutely stunned. I could've left it there I suppose, but I felt compelled to explain.
"Daniel, he got hold of a staff weapon and shot Griff. I had no choice…"
"How is he?"
"What?"
"Captain Griff. You said – you said he was shot."
"He's okay. He's alive."
"Okay. Um – okay." Daniel looked down like he was trying to figure something out. He stuffed the rest of the energy bar into his shirt pocket and twisted the cap on the canteen so hard that his knuckles were white. "We should get back then, hunh?" Like suddenly a bridge had been washed out and he only needed to find another way across a creek.
"Yeah, we should get back." I agreed, but I said it to his back. He was already on his way. I thought he'd go right to his tent but his tent was right next to Rothman's and he stopped in front of that one. I stopped beside him.
"Where is he?" He asked. "Are they?"
"Griff buried them, out where it happened, near the lake." I could tell by the change of expression that Daniel didn't like this. I didn't like it myself. "Daniel, we had no idea if the situation was stable. Burying them was the right thing to do. I'm going to have Coburn contact SGC for a detail and an honor guard, and we'll bring them home."
Daniel processed this. "Oh." He said, again. "Okay. Okay." Then he went into his tent and zipped it shut.
When I went by a little while later to tell him the detail was on its way, the tent was open and Daniel was gone. Being pretty sure I knew where to find him, I headed toward the lake. I found him beside the two graves. Each mound of soil had a forked branch stuck in the ground at the head of it. Hawkins' marker held his dog tags; Rothman's had his glasses hanging there. I like to think of myself as a tough guy, but the sight of those glasses even got to me.
Daniel was crouched beside Rothman's grave, with his hand on the churned soil like maybe he was going to push it aside. I didn't think that would be a good idea but he didn't move his hand so I stayed where I was, a dozen yards or so behind him. I was there more to watch his six than to participate in his grief. The Unas might not be a threat anymore, but who knew what else was around.
Slowly Daniel uncurled from his crouch to sit on the ground, with his knees drawn up and his arms around his knees, staring at the grave. They were friends, everybody knew that. Daniel recruited Rothman for the SGC and truth be told, he was good for Daniel to be around. Neither man is – was – an extrovert, but put them together over an ancient text or broken pot, and they could talk for hours about every possible possibility. They always seemed to be on the same page. Granted Daniel is – was – smarter, but then he's smarter than basically everybody. But they were friends and now Daniel's friend was dead. Worse, I had killed him.
First Daniel started wiping his eyes and sniffing and for Kleenex he used the kerchief he'd been wearing instead of a hat. For someone who has lived with allergies all his life, I've rarely known Daniel to pack tissues. He took his glasses off and held them in one hand while he pressed that piece of cloth against his eyes and tried not to cry.
I felt rather than heard someone come up behind me. Teal'c had followed us to this spot. He nodded me to Daniel, and I nodded my appreciation. With Teal'c on lookout, I could go to Daniel.
Would he hate me for staying? Maybe. But I'd hate myself more for leaving.
As I walked closer and he heard my footsteps, he sat up straighter and dried his eyes and put his glasses back on and tried to look like he wasn't crying. I took a seat near him, a little behind, so that he would know I wasn't getting a good look at his face.
"I just wanted to – I – thought – I wanted – I -." He stammered out the words, as though he had to explain why he was sitting next to his friend's grave.
"He was a good man." I said.
"Yes he was."
I almost said that he died trying to save Daniel, but Daniel didn't need any more guilt than I knew he was already heaping on himself. If Rothman hadn't gotten hold of the staff weapon, we could've over-powered him and the Tokra could've taken the snake out of him. Daniel no doubt was already wearing that 'what if' thin in his mind. I could've said, 'I'm sorry.' But I wasn't looking for Daniel's forgiveness.
"Do you think he knew?" Daniel asked. "When do you think he knew? I mean – did it just happen - today - or do you think it could've been anytime since we arrived here?"
He wanted to know when I thought Rothman had been snaked.
"I don't know. He seemed fine, even this morning. Maybe these goauld aren't advanced enough to fully take over a host. Or maybe Rothman was just too smart for the thing to totally figure him out."
I wanted Daniel to laugh, or smile, or something positive. He only put his head in his hands.
"We should get you back to the SGC." I said.
"No!" His head came up fast. "I couldn't – not right now – I couldn't – talk to anyone."
"Okay." I could understand that. It'd be one thing if he could Gate home and just hide himself. But he'd have to go through a medical check and a debriefing and too many people offering condolences. He'd gone through that only a year ago with Sha'are. I could understand him not wanting to go through it again right now.
"Not you." He said, suddenly.
"Not me?"
"Not you that I don't want to talk to." Apparently that sounded as jumbled to him as it did to me, so he tried again. "I don't want to not talk to you." Then he gave a frustrated sigh.
"I know what you mean Danny. And I knew you didn't mean me."
He nodded and wiped his eyes, then pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes under his glasses. He was trying not to cry again. I was close enough to put my hands on his shoulders, and I just held them there, wanting to give Daniel all the support I could. I mean out there in the open where Teal'c was watching us and anybody else could just walk right up.
Speaking of which…
"Daniel, the funeral detail will be here in about ten minutes."
He nodded again, and eventually said, "Okay," and didn't move, and we stayed there until I heard the detail approaching us. Daniel heard them too; he lifted his head and turned to the sound.
"Maybe we should give them some room." I suggested.
"Is it bad?"
"What?"
"Robert – does he look bad? Or – or - ?"
If I told Daniel the truth, he'd want to see Rothman. If I didn't tell him the truth, the image he'd create in his mind would haunt him the rest of his life.
"No, he doesn't look bad."
"I'll stay."
"Okay, but we still need to give them some room."
"Okay."
I stood up first, totally ignoring the angry screams of disappointment from my knees, then I helped Daniel stand and we walked around to the far side of the graves. SGs 4 and 13 waited for us on the edge of the clearing, waited for me to give them the signal that it was OK to begin.
I know Daniel doesn't know this, and someday he might find it funny, but he has an almost mythic level of respect among the SG teams and SGC personnel. Any one of us would die to save any of the other of us, but Daniel evokes a special feeling of concern and respect. Some of it is because he opened the Stargate, some of it is just because of the string of bad luck that he trails wherever he goes. Some of it – I don't even know where it comes from. But I can tell you that that detail would've stood there forever waiting for Daniel to be ready to move from Rothman's grave.
None of that would matter to Daniel of course, especially right then, as we stood waiting for them to disinter our friends and colleagues. They laid out the body bags near the graves and hefted their shovels, and still looked to me to give the signal that it was OK to start with Daniel still standing there. I looked at Daniel, but he didn't take his eyes off Rothman's grave, so I nodded that they could start.
The first thing they did, Hebowitz took the dog tags and glasses off the tree branch markers. He gave me the dog tags and held the glasses out to Daniel. Daniel didn't take them at first and I was going to take them for him, but then he reached for them.
I had a sudden vision of Daniel, eight years old, standing in the museum as they pulled the cover stone off his dead or dying parents, being handed their glasses, or some material part of them. I saw him after Sha'are died, helping prepare her body for burial and Kasuf handed him a lock of her hair because he'd heard that it was an earth custom. And now his shaking hand reached for Rothman's glasses.
How much more could Daniel take before life got to be too much for him? I saw it happening, his hand didn't take a good enough hold and the glasses started to fall. I caught them right out of Daniel's hand then I forcibly turned him and made him walk far enough away that we were out of earshot of the shovels digging up the bodies.
Daniel didn't protest, he didn't balk, he didn't hesitate, he just walked where I pushed him and stopped where I let him. He didn't look at me, he stared into the distance, until I pulled open a pocket to slip the glasses and dogtags into.
"Can I have those?" He held his hand out for the glasses, but his hand was still shaking, so I just skipped the part where he dropped them and tucked them into his pocket for him.
"We should get you back to your tent." I told him.
"No. No – Robert came looking for me – I – I should wait for him. I want to wait for him." He looked around like he'd lost something. "He'll need his glasses for the funeral."
"I put 'em in your pocket."
"Oh. Oh. Okay."
Then he looked at me like he was waiting for something else.
"Daniel?"
"Jack?"
"Maybe you ought to sit down."
He shook his head like I'd actually been giving him a choice.
"Daniel, you had a hard night and you're having a bad day. Sitting down would be preferable to falling down."
He blinked a few times and then turned away from me. Behind him I could see that Teal'c was still shadowing us at a discreet distance. I let Daniel walk away from me, as long as he stayed within a few strides. He paced back and forth, keeping his head down, until Teal'c walked into the clearing with us.
"O'Neill, SG4 is ready to proceed."
It was at that point that Daniel hurried behind a tree and threw up. I waved Teal'c back to his discreet shadow position and went to Daniel. He had one arm around a thin tree, keeping himself semi-upright, half bent over, retching. When he was done, I handed him my canteen.
"We can wait 'til they're gone." I told him. "You can see him – later."
"I want to go with him."
"Are you sure?"
"I've seen dead people before." He said. Snapped at me actually. It didn't bother me.
"Are you sure?" I asked again. Daniel didn't answer me right away. He drank some water out of my canteen and capped it and handed it back, head down.
"He'd do it for me."
"Daniel - ." What? What did I think I should say to him, or could say to him to make this any easier? His eyes were red, he was starting to shake. Did either of us think he could make the walk to the Stargate following behind the bodies?
"Jack?"
"When you're ready to go back, I'll tell Hammond to make sure people leave you alone." That sounded kind of lame, but it was all I had at the moment.
"Somebody's going to have to clean out his office."
"I'll help you."
He nodded and closed his eyes and I got ready in case he was thinking of collapsing. But after half a minute or so he opened them again, looking straight at me.
"I'm OK."
Right, and I'm a Morris Dancer from British Columbia. I didn't say that of course, I figured he meant he'd gathered himself for the walk ahead of us. What happened after that remained to be survived.
"I'll be right beside you."
He nodded and headed for the clearing. He reached out to touch Teal'c's arm as he passed, and Teal'c bowed his head in response then fell in behind us. I had that vision again, of an eight year old boy, suddenly an orphan, leaving the museum where his parents had just died, walking into a strange, painful future. What went through his mind then? What was going through his mind now?
SG4 and 13 stood grouped around two litters, draped with two American flags. Daniel stopped and Hebowitz nodded to the litter at his feet, meaning that was Rothman. Daniel took a really deep breath and didn't let it out.
"We'll follow." I told them.
It was a quiet procession that made its way to the Stargate. Daniel kept up with no comment, not one falter, despite all he'd been through in the past twenty four hours. At the Gate, he dialed earth. SG 13, and Coburn and his men and I flanked the stone steps and saluted as SG 4 carried the flag draped litters into the event horizon. Daniel followed them up. He stopped on the top platform and looked at me, waiting for me to join him. I stepped up beside him and put my hand on his back and we crossed the threshold.
I don't think about it often, but on occasion it hits me that back in the day Daniel opened the Stargate and I was the first one through. Usually it feels like ancient history but sometimes, like now, it hits me and I wonder if some general force in the universe expands or contracts each time we step through again.
When we hit the ramp on the other side, the litters were being carried out of the Gateroom, and General Hammond was waiting. He came up the ramp to meet us.
"Dr. Jackson, I'm so very sorry about Dr. Rothman. He was a good man and an invaluable asset to the SGC."
With my hand still on Daniel's back, I could feel him literally beginning to roll up in on himself. He managed to mutter, 'Thank you' down to his hands and his feet, and I knew I had to get him out of there.
"General, I'm going to get Daniel to the infirmary, have him checked out. He's had a pretty hard twenty four hours."
"Of course. Why don't we schedule the debriefing for tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred? Dr. Jackson, if there's anything I can do…"
Daniel nodded and I said 'thank you' and we walked to the infirmary. Fraiser was there of course. I pushed Daniel to a far bed and pulled Fraiser over to talk with me.
"Listen Doc, Daniel's really on the edge right now." I kept my voice low so Daniel couldn't hear me, even though he probably knew what I was telling her. "He said he doesn't want to hear people saying they're sorry or making a big deal, so if you can keep the chit chat to a minimum?"
"Certainly Colonel. I'll have you both out of here in no time."
I was done first, but I hung around until she sprung Daniel. From behind his curtain I heard her tell him that he was all done and then she came out to me.
"He's been given a mild sedative. He should eat something and then get some sleep."
"I am all over that Doc." I told her.
"Good. He's all yours."
She left and I walked to Daniel's curtain.
"Knock knock."
"Yeah."
I opened the curtain to find that Daniel had somehow buttoned his dogtags into his shirt, and he wasn't having a lot of luck unbuttoning them again. The gouge on his face had gauze taped over it.
"Need some help?"
"No."
He sat on the edge of the exam table, struggling so hard to get the button unbuttoned, I thought he was going to rip the buttons right off the shirt. I would've reached out to help him, but I'm attached to my hand and prefer that it stay attached to me. Daniel looked so stressed out I wasn't sure he would take kindly to even helpful interference.
Finally the button came out of the buttonhole and the dog tags went under the t-shirt and the fatigue shirt got buttoned up again. He looked up at me and in that micro-nano-milli-split-second, I could see that he both started and finished mapping out the entire rest of his day – clear Rothman's office, write up a report on the Unas, maybe a shower, maybe some food, maybe some rest much later on in the day after he'd wrung every last bit of guilt out of and back into his system.
"You can take care of all that later." I informed him. He blinked at me in surprise, like he didn't know I can read his mind. "Right now all you need to accomplish is shower, food, and sleep."
"I have to -."
"Take a shower, get something to eat, then get some sleep."
"I want to go to his office."
"By way of the Commissary."
"By way of trying to understand that he's dead."
I couldn't argue with that. OK, I could, but since I'm the one who made Rothman dead, I didn't want to argue about it.
"We'll grab some food and take it to his office, all right? You've hardly had anything to eat since who knows when and most of that you left back on the planet. You know what Fraiser does if I don't take care of you right."
"What does she do?" He asked, completely baffled.
"She gives me that look. I hate that look. That look scares me."
So I got a half smile out of Daniel with that at least.
"You don't need to babysit me."
"No, babysitting would involve buttoning your shirt for you correctly – ah – made you look!"
He raised his head again from the front of his shirt and I'm sure would've scowled at me if that sedative wasn't kicking in. If we waited much longer to get a move on, I'd need a wheelchair to get him anywhere.
"C'mon, grab your jacket, let's hit it."
*SG*SG*
We stopped at the door to the Commissary but there was a lot of discussion going on – as there usually is when there's a death – about what had happened on the planet. I couldn't make Daniel go in there.
"I'll order take out." I told him and we kept going to Rothman's office.
Daniel and Rothman were a lot a like, but the one place they differed was in how they kept their office. Daniel has piles of papers everywhere. Orderly piles, but piles nonetheless. And artifacts. And books. And journals. Rothman's workspace looked practically antiseptic. Not a book, a paper, a pen out of place.
I remember what it felt like to walk into Charlie's room that first night after he died. Getting zatted doesn't hurt as much as that did. Daniel only calmly surveyed the room and then took a deep breath.
"I guess I'll have to check with Central Stores for some boxes. The translations he was working on, I can take over. What's not related to any missions I'll take home, maybe send to his parents."
I started wondering if Fraiser shouldn't have given Daniel that dose of sedative. He didn't need to be sedated, he needed to feel.
"Daniel?"
"Jack?"
"It's OK to be angry."
He looked at me like I'd suggested he start flying.
"I'm not angry."
"Maybe you should be."
He shook his head and set his jacket on the desk.
"I'm okay. I'll get through this. I just have to – figure this out."
Figure what out, I wondered. You don't 'figure out' death. You accept it, deny it, fight it, challenge it, grieve over it, even sometimes take a grim pleasure in it, but you don't figure it out.
Then it occurred to me that as an archeologist and an anthropologist and a – that other thing that he is that I can't spell - Daniel needs everything to make sense. He can't toss anything aside as a 'oh well, we don't need to care about that' fragment. Every single sliver adds up to the whole for him. Everything has to make sense. He needs to be able to figure everything out.
So he also needs to know that he can't figure everything out.
"I'd be surprised if you're OK Daniel. In fact, that would worry me."
For an answer, Daniel swept everything off the desk onto the floor in one clean movement. There wasn't a lot to fall; his jacket, the desk calendar, a stapler, one of those cubes of notepaper, and a paperweight that was supposed to be ancient and valuable but only looked like petrified horse hockey to me. Like I said, not much, but it's the gesture that counts.
"There – is that better?" He asked sarcastically.
"It's a start."
As a few sheets of the notepaper swirled down onto the floor, Daniel stood there staring at the – well, I couldn't exactly call it a 'mess'.
"Is Robert alive again now?" Good, he was angry. "Is Sha'are? My parents? God Jack, don't you think I would've taken that museum apart brick by brick if it would've brought my parents back?"
"Choking your feelings down like a bad pill doesn't make them alive either."
He said something very rude to me then, suggesting something that I not only find repulsive, but I believe is physically impossible. He started to walk past the desk to get away from me. He stepped on his jacket and something crunched under his boot.
Uh oh.
He stopped like he'd seen a rattler and bent down to pick up his jacket. Slowly he pulled open one of his pockets and pulled out what was inside.
The broken fragments of Robert Rothman's glasses.
He sat heavily on the desk and stared at the broken frames and popped lenses. I shut the door to the office and sat next to him. I took note of the fact that out in the hallway, Teal'c still stood guard over Daniel.
"I'm gonna lose you too, eventually." Daniel said.
"Yes you are. One day when I'm ninety and you're only in your forties, one day you will lose me." There was no point in saying, 'no, not ever.'
"It'll happen before then. You'll retire or transfer or get promoted, and you'll be gone."
"I've found that friendship is very elastic."
He kept staring at the glasses.
"Are we making any difference at all Jack? All the planets, all the battles, all the death – have we made one stinking bit of difference?"
"Yes we have. We've given people hope. I think that's the biggest difference anyone can make."
He chewed on that a little bit.
"Do you know what Robert's favorite joke was?" He asked me. I tried to hide my enormous surprise that Rothman even knew jokes, much less had a favorite.
"No."
"What did the tailor say to the Greek philosopher?"
Sounds like a barn burner.
"I don't know – what?"
"He says, 'Euripides?' and the philosopher says, 'yeah, Eumenides?'"
I admit, it took me a moment to get the joke, but then I laughed and Daniel smiled.
"I'd be angrier Jack, but I know Janet slipped something into the antibiotic shot she gave me for the scratch." He gestured at the bandage on his cheek.
"Yeah, she's sneaky that way." I put my arm around his shoulders. "Let's find you a bed and I'll snag us some food from the Commissary."
"Yeah."
One thing remained to be said.
"Daniel – you know if there's any way I could've not shot Rothman, I would have."
"I know. I do know that."
He pulled the broken glasses up to his chest and wiped at his eyes, then he started to cry and I pulled him closer to me. I wondered who held him when he was eight and crying for his parents. I don't see Nick doing it, but I hope he did. I hope someone did, someone who cared about Daniel and hurt for him.
When he stopped crying, when the sedative finally got the upper hand, I told him again we needed to find him a bed. He nodded and when we stood up, he carefully slid the broken glasses into his shirt pocket. We left the office, and I shut the door behind us.
the end