Summary: Set in season 5 initially. Prequel to Jackson Junior -- Daniel really was there for Sam when he was gone.
Rating: Teen
Category: UST
Genres: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Drama
Warnings: Canon torture from season 5-6
Spoilers: Stargate movie, seasons 1-7
A/N: Originally posted on before my account got hacked, but it wasn't a part of Jackson Junior. Had a think about it, and felt that it would fit in with later events in that series (esp. Commanders; story number four)

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Sam stood in the most Daniel-like room on the planet - his office. Some of his books and journals were still on his desk, waiting for a perusal that would never come, not from the one man who knew them inside out like they did him, the man who knew how to treat them with the utmost care and respect. She gazed around the room, needing to feel closer to him after watching him... what had she watched him do? After the Colonel had bizarrely stopped Selmak from healing everyone's favourite Archaeologist, the man had turned into glowing yellow energy and promptly rose through the ceiling.

To distract herself, partially from her own grief, she directed her anger and pain at the Colonel... mentally at least. How could he have given up on Daniel like that? Daniel would never have given up on any of them like that, but the Colonel appeared to have forgotten all of that when he had callously stopped her father. If Daniel had given up like that, all of them would be dead more times over -- her and the Colonel would most certainly have frozen to death in Antarctica had he not made a crucial realisation that led to them being saved, and the discovery of the second 'gate. Taking that into account, how could the Colonel have just given up? Sam couldn't understand, and in all her grief, she didn't want to. She didn't want to hear the Colonel telling her afterwards that he had wanted it. This was Daniel they were talking about! That man never gave up!

She clutched his journal, remembering his long fingers running up and down the spine while it was closed as his mind ran through multiple and manifold loops and over equally so hurdles, his brow furrowing in thought as he wrote down his many mission-related, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic observations as he sat in a forest, a rocky outcrop, a desert camp, a cave... a dungeon. Inside this particular one were archaeological field notes of the architecture encountered on the planet whose sun had threatened to destroy it, only to be saved at the last minute by the Asgard. Her distant gaze grew as she remembered that particular mission - how stubborn the locals had been in their beliefs, how equally stubborn Daniel had been in trying to convince them to go through the 'gate to a safer world...

It was then that she remembered the dispute between the Enkarans and the Gadmeer, the latter of whom the Colonel had decided, despite the decision not being his to make, that it was their time to die to let the Enkarans live, even willing to disobey orders to carry out that decision. She had wept as zero hour approached, knowing fully well that not only would the chances of an entire civilisation be extinguishd should the generator explode, but also that Daniel would have died too - he had been on board the ship, looking for an alternative to bloodshed; a solution that would suit both sides. And he had found it, in true Daniel Jackson fashion - highly effective with no fatalities.

It had really struck home then how different and yet the same she and Daniel were. Despite them both being scientists and needed on SG-1 for their expertise, he wasn't afraid to tell the Colonel, or anyone else for that matter, that they were wrong, to stand up for what was right, regardless of the cost to himself, regardless of his own fear. She couldn't do such a thing. She had been brought up in the military, brought up to respect the command structure and to follow it, regardless of the consequences - to trust her superiors no matter what. She was a soldier, but he... well, he wasn't. Her early days with SG-1, under Jack O'Neill's command, had showed her that if she wanted her voice to be heard in that manner, she would have to fight, and it just wasn't worth it to her, to constantly have to battle within the command structure when they had to battle with the Goa'uld and Replicators. They couldn't afford the friction for such a monumental task, so she followed, only voicing her tactical opinion when absolutely required.

She closed her eyes and for a fleeting moment, she caught a whiff of his scent -- the unique scent that was, just like the rest of the room, oh-so Daniel. It was the same scent that comforted her with its presence as they worked together through the night on the latest intergalactic conundrum, a scent that was just like him, that spoke of solid, silent comfort. Even when soaking wet and covered in alien mud after being caught in a surprise downpour off-world and chased by the indigenous fauna... or sometimes flora, or when sweating profusely after a desert expedition, the scent remained, an underlying reminder and source of comfort. When she smelled that iconic scent of an age now gone, strange as it sounds, it made everything seem better, seem alright again no matter how bad they had been.

It was hard to put into words, but it was like a fusion of sandalwood and rose, the dust of a library of ages, of knowledge and things unseen. It was just something that was quintissentially Daniel...

Just like the pair of glasses that she now held, holding them up so that she could see through them. Through those same lenses, he had seen things both so indescribably beautiful, and equally horrifying in a single lifetime. She was reminded of the amount of hurt and pain that he had endured - the loss of his parents, his abandonment at the hands of his sole surviving relative - his grandfather no less who had abandoned him once again in favour of the giant aliens he had once spent many years in pursuit of, his rocky childhood within the foster care system, the scorn he received for his seemingly far-fetched ideas, the loss of his wife and brother-in-law to the Goa'uld; his wife's pregnancy, again by the Goa'uld... The list was endless.

So much pain, so many tears, and yet he was the first person to offer comfort, not seeking any for himself; always the first to give than to take; the first to lay his life down for what he believed to be the right thing. She sighed as she remembered the man who had once been so full of life, lying in the Infirmary, slowly and painfully dying, his organs liquefying. And yet, he hadn't complained, just accepting it as a result of what he had done - that beautiful, selfless, heroic gesture that went unappreciated by the people who he had laid his life down for. That angered her, and if the Colonel hadn't returned to Kelowna with a letter from his superiors, she would have gone to acquaint their posteriors with the business end of a P-90 in all her grief-stricken rage.

She had watched him in his last moments, and almost told him how she had felt about him. He had changed her. Just by knowing him and travelling with him, she had realised how cold, how ritualised she had been. He had taught her to stand up for what she believed in. Simarka had been the first test of that. She had fought for Naya's freedom, freedom from death by her father's hand for simply falling in love with the 'wrong' boy. That small victory had changed the societies of that planet forever, the women gaining more freedom in the process, taking the first step to becoming equals to their male counterparts instead of pleasure machines, baby pumps and domestic servants.

She really did see what mattered now - the people that they had encountered, the lives that they had touched. Sure, their standing orders were to search for technologies to aid their ongoing fight against the Goa'uld, but that didn't mean pillaging the galaxy. To really gain results, they would have to make alliances, even amongst the most unlikely of people.

She wistfully thought of how she had taken so long to realise her feelings for him. She had fallen in love with him before they had met, reading the report of the first mission, hearing Catherine Langford wax lyrical about that delightful young man with a heart of gold who had taken her necklace as a good luck charm, and then returned it to her via the Colonel when he had chosen to stay with his new family. She put those feelings aside when she witnessed his grief, first-hand, at losing Sha're, and how he had searched for her during his first years on SG-1, the hope of bringing her home wavering by the end of the second year when he had to let her go once again after delivering another man's baby, and then, months later, when he had found her again for the last time, officially becoming a widower.

She had forced those feelings down and comforted him as his best friend, offering her comfort and hope, just as the Colonel and Teal'c had. The feelings had come to the fore many times since then, but she had forced them down again. She had loved many since, but nowhere near as much as she loved him, and that scared her. Not only did the depth of said feelings scare her, but the fact that they hadn't shown any signs of dwindling despite all the adventures and skirmishes that they had come through, the places that they had seen, the people they had helped, the enemies that they had fought. They had come through it together - the Colonel, him, Teal'c and her, and yet she still had her feelings for him.

One thing that really hurt her, almost but not quite as much as the loss, was that the mountain had just carried on, business as usual. Missions happened, SG teams went about exploring planets; sometimes returning injured and/or returning with new technologies, and artefacts that would now be looked at by someone else - someone not quite so open-minded and brilliant; the Tok'ra and Asgard called in for assistance despite the former rarely answering calls for help... Where had they been when he was dying? They could have helped him, especially after everything he had done. Business as usual. Such a brilliant man had died and yet the world hadn't taken notice, not even the one world who should have due to them directly benefitting from his sacrifice.

Typical military detachment. She had grown up to respect the military, but at the moment, she was finding it hard to reconcile it with her overwhelming feelings of grief. Teal'c had opened up a little to her, but the one man who really should be opening up to her, a fellow Air Force officer, hadn't. He had shut himself away, not wanting to talk about his unlikely best friend, and she felt alone. Well, she would feel even more lost and alone had it not been for Janet who understood how hard it was to reconcile personal feelings with being in the military.

Right now, she didn't care. All she wanted was to have him back, right here working away at a translation, looking at the minimal archaeological notes in one of SG-3's mission reports, or talking non-stop about his latest theory. Oh, how she missed him. She would give anything to have him back in the land of the living, back on SG-1, back here so she could hear his voice again - his proper voice, not the one that he had had in his last hours, the one strained by his internal ordeal.

Unknown to her, the object of her thoughts stood right beside her in a cream sweater and brown trousers. He gazed at her, his eyes softening with sadness and guilt at her grief for him, and he reached out a hand, smoothing her cheek. She couldn't feel him of course, but it made him feel better in some small way. In all the promises of moving onwards and upwards, he had forgotten her, forgotten how his loss would make her feel. To be honest, he hadn't thought that she would be this hurt. He was aware of Jack's and Teal'c's grief, and how they had suppressed it, but it was a shock to the system, or ascended equivalent, to see her so moved, so overwhelmingly sad that he longed to hold her, to reassure her of his presence.

Only, he couldn't. He had chosen his path - there was no turning back. As he heard a chiming noise in his ear, a gentle reminder from his mentor, Oma DeSala, that he had to leave, he whispered, "I'm right here Sam, I never left."