A/N: Warning: reflection on a character's canon experience of rape.
I'd like to thank my lovely sister Emmeebee for her time spent as a sounding board and beta.
Through his experience accompanying his small team of military personnel into dangerous situations across the galaxy, Daniel had learnt rather quickly how to swiftly identify a good hiding place. Complete concealment in the environment was not the only criterion to consider; it was also imperative to take comfort into account so as not to risk moving at an inopportune moment. A ditch with dense shrubbery was almost always preferable. Sometimes, though, the best hiding place was one that was so mundane that it was easily overlooked.
The bed that Jack had arranged to be moved into Daniel's designated office space wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but no one would expect one of their resident geniuses to be hiding underneath it. The simple piece of furniture had been there for so long that it seemed to meld into the background. Should anyone actually find him there, he didn't know how he would justify his current location.
From his position, he could see the base of one of the bookcases that were strategically placed around the room. Most of the shelves were stacked to the brink with a wide variety of books: archaeology, history, and linguistics, but also the stray physics textbook that Sam had left after a joint study binge on their then-current mission focus. Some shelves displayed miscellaneous artefacts while others held simple mementos that had been gathered on their missions and subsequently released from quarantine.
The brightness of the artificial light and already re-established routines felt like an insult. Something terrible had happened and he could only watch as his world seemed to automatically forget and heal itself. That is, with the exception of Daniel himself.
None of that mattered, though. Not really. For, in those dreadful moments, all that he saw was her.
He had known instantly that the goddess in front of him had become his sole focus in life. He had previously longed to be valued: first by a family and then by the academic community that had long spurned his contributions. The coming of Hathor had fulfilled that deep felt desire. In all of the many moments that he had been under her spell, she had been more than he had ever thought possible.
He had wanted her.
It was those mixed feelings that were causing the most dismay for Daniel. He had been raped. Admitting it within the confines of his own mind helped. However, for every recriminating thought, there was an accompanying memory of acceptance, bliss, and desire. It was hard to feel like a victim when you remembered willingly participating in the act. How could he claim to be traumatised when he had enjoyed it at the time? When he had been too enamoured with her to stop her from escaping?
He had thought he understood the prevalent sense of self-blame that victims of rape often felt. Despite this knowledge, however, he found himself unable to cease criticising his own behaviour; being aware that he wasn't to blame for her actions didn't assuage his feelings of guilt.
Daniel had never felt so weak. As a civilian within a military environment that valued strength to such a high degree, he had always felt physically inferior to the others. And Jack, for all that he was a good leader, had difficulty understanding Sam and Daniel's intellectual passions. Even on the best of days, Daniel felt like he had to fight for respect, and that contrast only seemed larger in the wake of everything that had happened. Jack's unyielding strength felt like a very painful foil to Daniel's feelings of violation and humiliation. After recent events, how could Daniel ever feel worthy of his team?
He plucked a small piece of fluff from his sleeve before releasing it with a flick of his fingers. Hathor's spell had reawakened and magnified doubts that he had long since suppressed. Throughout his desperate search for Sha're, there had been occasions when his resolve had waned. His feelings for her had grown substantially during their time on Abydos. Yet he was not oblivious to the others' concerns, especially that of Doctor Carter, regarding the nature of their meeting. Those doubts, however small and seemingly ephemeral they originally were, would now never be answered. Given the recent influx of new emotional attachments, there was no longer any accurate way of determining whether his memory of their fleetingness was as impermanent as the piece of fluff or whether they had the potential to become something more.
Perhaps not, he mused. More than likely, probably not, his rational brain offered. Recent events were warping his perception of past events and empowering those little, nagging doubts that had always existed but were now much more resounding.
That, more than anything, was the reason for his current seclusion. He still possessed very clear and tangible memories of how Hathor had twisted his relationship with Sha're. And that, for a person who drew his identity solidly from eras past and events bygone, thoroughly unnerved him.