"He's a civilian. He's not even military trained. So if I do put him on
your team, Colonel, I want you to look after him."
"Yes, sir."
Jack had presented the accolade to many other planets in the past, but this really was the most boring planet in the Stargate system. It was full of nothing but flowering shrubs, none of which were flowering. There was no naquadah for Carter to analyse, no inscriptions for Daniel to translate, and no aliens for Jack and Teal'C to shoot at. It was boring.
"Let's go home, campers," Jack said, after an hour or so of fruitless exploration. "I've had enough of … what is it?"
"P3X–254," said Sam promptly.
"Yes. That. Let's go home."
"Good idea."
Jack stopped in his tracks, and as he was at the front of their little group, the other three promptly bumped into the back of each other.
"Jack!" protested Daniel. "What did you do that for?"
Jack ignored the remark. "I could swear I heard it," he muttered. "I heard you, Daniel Jackson, agree with me. You actually agreed with me."
"Even I have my moments, Jack," Daniel said dryly. "I don't argue with you on purpose…. Oh, my God!" Daniel's voice became a panicked scream, making Jack, Sam and Teal'C wheel round in alarm.
"Daniel?" Jack couldn't see his friend anywhere. "Daniel!"
"Over here, sir," Sam called, beckoning her commanding officer over. Jack hurried to her side, and saw what she was pointing out. There was a hole in the ground here that had probably been covered with drifts of fallen leaves. Daniel's weight had dislodged the covering, and he had plummeted downwards into the deep hole.
Jack began clearing away some of the debris, cursing under his breath. Finally, he cleared the way to see down into the blackness. "Daniel?" he called, hoping to see his friend looking back at him.
Daniel lay in a heap at the bottom of the hole, eyes closed. To Jack's eyes, he was frighteningly still.
Sam had already dug out a long rope from the pack she was carrying, but Jack shook his head. "No good," he said. "If he's hurt, one rope won't be enough to get him out of there. Carter, Teal'C, you go and get help."
"What about you, sir?" Sam wanted to know.
"I'm going in there." Jack didn't wait for her to argue, just took the rope and attached it to a convenient non-flowering shrub. The sides of the hole were rugged, uneven rock, providing Jack with plenty of foot and hand holds. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed hold of the rope and began painfully making his way down. Sam stayed long enough to make sure he reached the bottom without incident, and then she and Teal'C hurried in the direction of the Stargate.
"Daniel?" Jack called. In the darkness, he couldn't quite make out what was going on. There was a light in his pack, he knew, and he'd thrown it down the hole beforehand, but he'd have to find it first. "Daniel?"
There was no answer. But Jack could hear Daniel's breathing, and carefully made his way across.
Daniel lay quite still, one leg twisted underneath his body in a strange position. His long hair had fallen across his face, but Jack could see his eyes were closed. "Danny," he hissed. "Daniel! Snap out of it!"
After a second, Daniel spoke, and Jack sighed in relief. "Jack?"
"Yep." After rummaging in the darkness for a while, Jack found the light. Days were short on this world, and in the short time since Daniel's fall, it was already beginning to grow dark.
Daniel blinked as the light shone into his eyes. "Jack?" he said again.
"I'm here, Danny."
"What happened?"
"You fell down a hole, Daniel," Jack said wryly. "The planet was boring. It was safe. And you still managed to get yourself killed."
"I didn't get myself killed," Daniel protested. Gradually, his mind and his vision were becoming clearer. "But…"
"But?"
"I think my leg is broken."
"I think so too." Jack had suspected this possibility the moment he saw the strange position Daniel had fallen in. "No, Space Monkey, don't move. Carter and Teal'C have gone for help. They'll get us out of here in no time."
"Yeah…" Daniel's voice was growing fainter again. He muttered a few unrepeatable epithets in two dozen languages, and then his voice faded into silence. His skin was absolutely pale, and that, along with the light colour of his hair gave him an almost ghostly appearance. Jack shivered. Along with the darkness on this world came a sharp drop in temperature. Daniel's hands were ice cold to the touch, and the team leader hoped help got here before he developed hypothermia. Jack had always been taught that in situations like this, it was best to keep talking. Why was it only at times like this he ran out of things to say?
Surprisingly, Daniel himself made life easier for his friend by speaking first. "Cold…" he said through gritted teeth. In any other circumstances, Jack would have made some sarcastic remark about scientists and their disturbing tendency to state the obvious, but instead, he said softly, "Now you know what Antarctica felt like!"
Daniel seemed slightly more alert than he had been. "I already knew," he whispered. "I had to go and rescue you!"
Jack decided that if their habitual sharp-edged banter would keep Daniel awake and alive, then their habitual sharp-edged banter he would have.
"And what exactly was I doing this afternoon when I voluntarily fell down a hole?" he asked. "Might I suggest 'rescuing you?'"
Daniel laughed weakly, and Jack felt heartened at the sound. He didn't know why he had been so panicky to begin with. Daniel's condition wasn't at all life-threatening. He was in pain, and his body temperature was dropping, but he wasn't dying. And there was no enemy after them for a change. Sam and Teal'C had been able to make their way back to the Stargate without hindrance. Help would be here. All they had to do was just… hang in there. Which was all very well, Jack thought, but non-life-threatening as the situation was, it didn't mean he had to like it. It didn't mean he shouldn't be apprehensive.
"Why are we in a hole?"
The sudden inquiry jerked Jack out of his reverie. He gave Daniel an appraising look, and said, slowly and clearly, "Because… you… fell… in… it, Dr. Jackson. That's why."
"No, I know that," Daniel said quietly. "Why is there a hole here? Did someone dig it for any reason?"
"You know what, Daniel? I don't care about the hole. I care about us being in it. I care about you having a broken leg. That's what I care about." Jack said this with deliberate slowness, ignoring the fact his grammar was becoming increasingly shaky.
Daniel didn't reply. Jack looked at him and saw his eyes had closed. By the look of it, there would be no more conversation for a while.
Jack cradled his friend's head in his arms, and waited.
The next thing Daniel knew, he was being shaken gently. Opening his eyes, he was immediately dazzled by bright white lights. For a second, he wondered if he were really dying after all, and if this was his first sight of the great beyond, but he was soon dissuaded of this idea by Jack saying softly, "They've come to take us away."
"Daniel! Colonel O'Neill!" The voice was unmistakably Sam's.
"Take me to your leader," said Jack glibly under the glare of the searchlights shining down.
"Sir?" Sam had evidently caught this last remark, and was now understandably confused.
"Nothing, Carter. What kept you?"
"We were as quick as we could, sir," replied Sam, guessing rightly that the biting cold had had a slightly disorientating effect on the team commander. "How's Daniel?"
"He's… not so good," Jack replied, back in control of the situation now that help had arrived. He shook Daniel a little more, trying to make his friend open his eyes. Daniel responded slowly; the first shock of the bright lights had made him close his eyes again.
Up above, Teal'C, Sam, and most of SG-9 were busily constructing a makeshift rope harness to lower into the opening. As they did so, Sam shouted down the details of the plan down into the hole.
"We're lowering some ropes down, sir," she called. "We need your help getting Daniel out."
Jack guessed what she was planning without much difficulty, and when the ropes snaked down, he knew what to do. "Daniel!" he hissed. "Daniel!"
"Go away!"
Jack smiled; if Daniel were awake enough to be as stubborn as he usually was, he was awake enough to be of some help.
"Daniel, come on," he said sharply. "We need you to hang on. Can you do that?"
"Yeah…" The linguist's voice was fading again.
Daniel was dead weight. It was a slow, difficult process, but inch, by inch, they managed to haul him out of the hole. Once he was up and out and laid out on the ground, Sam surveyed him critically. The jolting he had received as a result of being suspended on a makeshift rope stretcher hadn't done him any good, but, Sam reasoned, it hadn't done him any harm either. She then turned her attention to Jack. It was a much easier task to haul him out, because he was willing to cooperate, no matter how much sarcasm he had to expend in the process.
Finally, the last member of SG-1 was above ground. "It's cold," was his perceptive remark, followed by a more widely appreciated, "Good job, people."
Sam grinned, and then directed her commanding officer's attention to Daniel. The resemblance to a ghost Jack had noticed before seemed even more evident in the light of the three moons this planet possessed. Jack raised his eyebrows. "People, let's go home," he said to everyone in particular.
Teal'C lifted Daniel in his arms without a second thought. The original team and SG-9 began their tramp back to the Stargate. As they went, Jack wished Daniel weren't so still. The cold was a good thing in one way, he decided; as long as he could see Daniel's breath rising like smoke, he didn't worry as much.
The light of the moons was reflected off the red crystal in the DHD. Sam ran over the symbols in her mind, and dialled. It wasn't as easy for her as it was for Daniel, who had known the symbols since childhood, albeit in a very different context. But she knew them as the ticket out of many a bad situation, and seven chevrons later, the Stargate began to spin.
A few days later
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing! Leave me alone!"
"God, what's wrong with you, Daniel? Get out of bed the wrong side? Or did you fall over your crutches again?"
"Well, look who's forgotten to be sarcastic this morning. What's the matter, have you finally run out of things to say?"
"Oh, you haven't seen me properly sarcastic yet, Daniel Jackson. You just wait."
"Wait for what? Another dose of the fabled sarcasm of Jack O'Neill? If we could only get you to talk into bottles, we could probably sell it as paint- stripper."
"Why didn't I leave you down a hole when I had the chance?"
Jack was losing patience with Daniel. All right, so his leg was preventing from doing anything he wanted to, and he'd never been very good at doing nothing, and consequently he had a right to a degree of crankiness, but Jack himself had had enough of dealing with Daniel, who was in a black mood. Janet had him under strict orders not to leave Daniel alone, as his crutches had made him rather unstable, so Jack's mind began working overtime. The team's other scientist hadn't had to cope with a fractious archaeologist for days, he decided, and this was one thing he could put right…
Someone had left the door open. Sam could hear everything that was going on out in the corridor, and all morning she had listened to people passing, talking, laughing, crying, and in the case of a certain team commander, making sarcastic comments. Despite the fact she wasn't able to concentrate on her work, she was reluctant to close the door. It was her own private people pageant.
But the conversation Sam was now listening in on struck her as the most unusual so far, punctuated as it was by various clattering, crashing noises.
"For crying out loud, would you be careful?"
"I am being careful!"
"No, you're not! What d'you wanna do, break your other leg?"
There was a pause, and another clatter.
"There you go! My point exactly."
"Look, I'm all right. There wasn't any harm done."
"And that makes it quite all right." The speaker's voice was filled with deep sarcasm.
Suddenly, there was an even bigger crash and clatter, and a muffled cry. A moment's silence, and then two sharp, distinct thuds, as if objects were being thrown to the ground.
"What the hell…" came one of the voices, but it was forcibly muffled as if someone had put a hand over the speaker's mouth.
Sam had been so interested in listening to this audio pantomime that she was startled out of her wits when the door flew open with a crash. Sam turned to look at it in anticipation. There were only two people she knew who were capable of having this conversation…
Her commanding officer was standing there, with his hair standing on end and innocent expression on his face. These, however, were not the first details Sam noticed. The first detail she noticed was what the colonel was holding in his arms.
"If it were even a fireman's lift!" Daniel complained. Jack was holding him like a child, and he had to hold his head up to avoid hitting the door. "Jack, put me down!"
"Daniel," said Jack warningly. "You're not supposed to be putting any weight on your leg yet."
"I have a pair of crutches," Daniel whined. "I can walk with them!"
"Not any more, you can't," Jack said. "Trust me, Danny, it's safer for all of us if I just carry you. For crying out loud, I'm used to it!"
It was true Daniel had proved himself to be astonishingly inept on the crutches he had been given. However, Daniel evidently did not want to be carried. "It was embarrassing enough in the corridor," he complained. "Put me down!"
"Whatever you say, Danny-boy!"
There was a thump, and a few stifled words from Daniel's direction.
"Language, Daniel!"
Sam blinked, but as she saw Daniel was safely in a chair, she decided to ignore this whole incident as if it had never happened.
"Good morning, Carter," said Jack smoothly.
There was a long and awkward silence, which was only broken when Janet came into the room, holding a pair of crutches at arm's length. "Daniel," she said acidly, "I believe these belong to you."
"Thank you," muttered Daniel, slightly embarrassed. The doctor wasn't finished yet. "And how did you get here without them, pray tell?"
"Jack!" exclaimed Daniel indignantly. "Tell her!"
"He was… having problems," murmured Jack, not meeting the doctor's eyes. "So I… I…"
"What, Colonel O'Neill?"
"I carried him here."
Janet stared at him. "Colonel O'Neill," she said in disbelief, "you are meant to be taking care of Daniel. You are his commanding officer."
"This is Daniel we're talking about, doc!" protested Jack.
"Excuse me?" said Daniel sharply. "What do you mean by that?"
"You know…" Jack said helplessly.
"No, I don't. Tell me."
"You're just a little accident-prone, you have to admit, Daniel," Sam said tentatively.
"A little?" Jack began, but both women hushed him with waves of their hands.
"Um… why are you here?" Sam asked, partly because she was trying to change the subject, and partly because she really wanted to know.
"Don't mind me," Janet stated. "I'm just going. Daniel, if you do anything like this again I'll refuse to treat you ever again, do you hear me?"
She left.
"So she said and vanished, as Homer was so fond of remarking," Daniel said calmly. Jack stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. Sam, who had understood the allusion, smiled. "Colonel O'Neill," she said, "with all due respect, please leave my lab. I'm trying to work."
With a practised sigh, Jack moved towards Daniel, who gave a soft cry of alarm and tried to draw back.
"Leave Daniel here," said Sam calmly.
"But how come he…" Jack began. Off their looks, he added, "Never mind. I'll just go…"
He suited the action to the word.
Once he had gone, Sam and Daniel exchanged smiles. "Are you going to be all right, Daniel?" she asked.
Daniel nodded. "I'll survive."
Sam thought to herself how typical of Daniel this remark was, and she expected him to continue talking, but he kept his silence for what seemed like hours, staring at a point somewhere on the ceiling. It wasn't often he could happily sit doing nothing, and it was only now Sam realised that Daniel was in a rare dark mood: quiet, introspective, and vaguely depressed. She supposed it must have something to do with his enforced inactivity, but it wasn't pleasant to have him in one of his 'blue moods' as she mentally categorised them.
"Daniel," she said softly, "what's the matter?"
Daniel didn't answer for a few seconds. Then, he turned to look at her, and from the dreamy look in his blue eyes, Sam thought she had called him back from somewhere far, far, away.
"Nothing," he said quietly.
"No, there's something," she said. "I know you, Dr. Jackson. There's something wrong."
Daniel smiled a little at that. "You won't leave me alone, will you, Sam? I was thinking, well, I know what it feels like now."
"What?"
"When I was on Abydos, I set a lot of broken legs."
Sam could understand this. Despite his love for the past, on Abydos, Daniel had almost been like a messenger from the future.
"They didn't understand what I meant at first. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things about me they didn't understand."
"Like what?" Sam wanted to know.
"My allergies, why I thought it was a good idea to boil drinking water, my obsession with old writings, my blue eyes…"
Sam laughed. "If I know you, you made them understand in the end."
Daniel laughed sadly. "Yeah…"
"You miss them, don't you, Daniel?" Sam was startled at this insight her brain had suddenly provided her with. She suspected she might have just reached the heart of the problem.
"I miss Sha're," Daniel said with a sigh that could almost have been a sob. "I miss them all. I miss my entire life."
Sam stayed quiet, and listened.
"When I left Abydos, I always thought it was just for a short time, you know? But one year became two, then three… And then Sha're… died. And after that I've never gone back.
"I thought one day I would go back to my real life. But I'm afraid… this is my real life."
Daniel's voice faded away then, and he clearly wasn't going to say anything more. Sam didn't say anything. She knew there wasn't anything to say. Daniel should have lived happily ever after. But this wasn't a story. Daniel's happy ending had turned sour, and there wasn't a thing that could be done about it.
There was a silence. Sam's computer hummed and the clock ticked.
Finally, Daniel broke the silence. "Sorry," he said, smiling sadly. "I was getting maudlin on you again."
"Hey, what are friends for?" Sam replied.
Daniel stared at her. Then, he said neutrally, "Sam, do you know anything about the meanings of names?"
Sam was startled by this apparent change in the subject, but she fell in readily with what he was saying. "No, not really. Do you?"
"I'm a linguist," he said, "so I should, but I don't really. My own name has several meanings. It means "as God is my judge' but it also means 'beloved.'"
Sam thought briefly about Hathor, and then asked, "What about my name?"
"Your name has an ancient meaning, Sam," Daniel said, amusement in his voice.
"Well?"
"It's Aramaic. It means 'listener.'"
Sam turned sharply. "Daniel?"
"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thanks for listening."
The door flew open with a crash. It was Jack, trying not to look like a mother hen. "Daniel," he said guardedly, "The doc told me to take you down to lunch. And if you insult me on the way there, I shall shoot you myself."
Daniel grinned. "Sam? Coming?"
"Sure," she replied, standing up.
On the way out, Daniel tripped over his crutches and went flying. Jack and Sam exchanged glances.
Looking after Daniel was hard work.
*fin*
"Yes, sir."
Jack had presented the accolade to many other planets in the past, but this really was the most boring planet in the Stargate system. It was full of nothing but flowering shrubs, none of which were flowering. There was no naquadah for Carter to analyse, no inscriptions for Daniel to translate, and no aliens for Jack and Teal'C to shoot at. It was boring.
"Let's go home, campers," Jack said, after an hour or so of fruitless exploration. "I've had enough of … what is it?"
"P3X–254," said Sam promptly.
"Yes. That. Let's go home."
"Good idea."
Jack stopped in his tracks, and as he was at the front of their little group, the other three promptly bumped into the back of each other.
"Jack!" protested Daniel. "What did you do that for?"
Jack ignored the remark. "I could swear I heard it," he muttered. "I heard you, Daniel Jackson, agree with me. You actually agreed with me."
"Even I have my moments, Jack," Daniel said dryly. "I don't argue with you on purpose…. Oh, my God!" Daniel's voice became a panicked scream, making Jack, Sam and Teal'C wheel round in alarm.
"Daniel?" Jack couldn't see his friend anywhere. "Daniel!"
"Over here, sir," Sam called, beckoning her commanding officer over. Jack hurried to her side, and saw what she was pointing out. There was a hole in the ground here that had probably been covered with drifts of fallen leaves. Daniel's weight had dislodged the covering, and he had plummeted downwards into the deep hole.
Jack began clearing away some of the debris, cursing under his breath. Finally, he cleared the way to see down into the blackness. "Daniel?" he called, hoping to see his friend looking back at him.
Daniel lay in a heap at the bottom of the hole, eyes closed. To Jack's eyes, he was frighteningly still.
Sam had already dug out a long rope from the pack she was carrying, but Jack shook his head. "No good," he said. "If he's hurt, one rope won't be enough to get him out of there. Carter, Teal'C, you go and get help."
"What about you, sir?" Sam wanted to know.
"I'm going in there." Jack didn't wait for her to argue, just took the rope and attached it to a convenient non-flowering shrub. The sides of the hole were rugged, uneven rock, providing Jack with plenty of foot and hand holds. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed hold of the rope and began painfully making his way down. Sam stayed long enough to make sure he reached the bottom without incident, and then she and Teal'C hurried in the direction of the Stargate.
"Daniel?" Jack called. In the darkness, he couldn't quite make out what was going on. There was a light in his pack, he knew, and he'd thrown it down the hole beforehand, but he'd have to find it first. "Daniel?"
There was no answer. But Jack could hear Daniel's breathing, and carefully made his way across.
Daniel lay quite still, one leg twisted underneath his body in a strange position. His long hair had fallen across his face, but Jack could see his eyes were closed. "Danny," he hissed. "Daniel! Snap out of it!"
After a second, Daniel spoke, and Jack sighed in relief. "Jack?"
"Yep." After rummaging in the darkness for a while, Jack found the light. Days were short on this world, and in the short time since Daniel's fall, it was already beginning to grow dark.
Daniel blinked as the light shone into his eyes. "Jack?" he said again.
"I'm here, Danny."
"What happened?"
"You fell down a hole, Daniel," Jack said wryly. "The planet was boring. It was safe. And you still managed to get yourself killed."
"I didn't get myself killed," Daniel protested. Gradually, his mind and his vision were becoming clearer. "But…"
"But?"
"I think my leg is broken."
"I think so too." Jack had suspected this possibility the moment he saw the strange position Daniel had fallen in. "No, Space Monkey, don't move. Carter and Teal'C have gone for help. They'll get us out of here in no time."
"Yeah…" Daniel's voice was growing fainter again. He muttered a few unrepeatable epithets in two dozen languages, and then his voice faded into silence. His skin was absolutely pale, and that, along with the light colour of his hair gave him an almost ghostly appearance. Jack shivered. Along with the darkness on this world came a sharp drop in temperature. Daniel's hands were ice cold to the touch, and the team leader hoped help got here before he developed hypothermia. Jack had always been taught that in situations like this, it was best to keep talking. Why was it only at times like this he ran out of things to say?
Surprisingly, Daniel himself made life easier for his friend by speaking first. "Cold…" he said through gritted teeth. In any other circumstances, Jack would have made some sarcastic remark about scientists and their disturbing tendency to state the obvious, but instead, he said softly, "Now you know what Antarctica felt like!"
Daniel seemed slightly more alert than he had been. "I already knew," he whispered. "I had to go and rescue you!"
Jack decided that if their habitual sharp-edged banter would keep Daniel awake and alive, then their habitual sharp-edged banter he would have.
"And what exactly was I doing this afternoon when I voluntarily fell down a hole?" he asked. "Might I suggest 'rescuing you?'"
Daniel laughed weakly, and Jack felt heartened at the sound. He didn't know why he had been so panicky to begin with. Daniel's condition wasn't at all life-threatening. He was in pain, and his body temperature was dropping, but he wasn't dying. And there was no enemy after them for a change. Sam and Teal'C had been able to make their way back to the Stargate without hindrance. Help would be here. All they had to do was just… hang in there. Which was all very well, Jack thought, but non-life-threatening as the situation was, it didn't mean he had to like it. It didn't mean he shouldn't be apprehensive.
"Why are we in a hole?"
The sudden inquiry jerked Jack out of his reverie. He gave Daniel an appraising look, and said, slowly and clearly, "Because… you… fell… in… it, Dr. Jackson. That's why."
"No, I know that," Daniel said quietly. "Why is there a hole here? Did someone dig it for any reason?"
"You know what, Daniel? I don't care about the hole. I care about us being in it. I care about you having a broken leg. That's what I care about." Jack said this with deliberate slowness, ignoring the fact his grammar was becoming increasingly shaky.
Daniel didn't reply. Jack looked at him and saw his eyes had closed. By the look of it, there would be no more conversation for a while.
Jack cradled his friend's head in his arms, and waited.
The next thing Daniel knew, he was being shaken gently. Opening his eyes, he was immediately dazzled by bright white lights. For a second, he wondered if he were really dying after all, and if this was his first sight of the great beyond, but he was soon dissuaded of this idea by Jack saying softly, "They've come to take us away."
"Daniel! Colonel O'Neill!" The voice was unmistakably Sam's.
"Take me to your leader," said Jack glibly under the glare of the searchlights shining down.
"Sir?" Sam had evidently caught this last remark, and was now understandably confused.
"Nothing, Carter. What kept you?"
"We were as quick as we could, sir," replied Sam, guessing rightly that the biting cold had had a slightly disorientating effect on the team commander. "How's Daniel?"
"He's… not so good," Jack replied, back in control of the situation now that help had arrived. He shook Daniel a little more, trying to make his friend open his eyes. Daniel responded slowly; the first shock of the bright lights had made him close his eyes again.
Up above, Teal'C, Sam, and most of SG-9 were busily constructing a makeshift rope harness to lower into the opening. As they did so, Sam shouted down the details of the plan down into the hole.
"We're lowering some ropes down, sir," she called. "We need your help getting Daniel out."
Jack guessed what she was planning without much difficulty, and when the ropes snaked down, he knew what to do. "Daniel!" he hissed. "Daniel!"
"Go away!"
Jack smiled; if Daniel were awake enough to be as stubborn as he usually was, he was awake enough to be of some help.
"Daniel, come on," he said sharply. "We need you to hang on. Can you do that?"
"Yeah…" The linguist's voice was fading again.
Daniel was dead weight. It was a slow, difficult process, but inch, by inch, they managed to haul him out of the hole. Once he was up and out and laid out on the ground, Sam surveyed him critically. The jolting he had received as a result of being suspended on a makeshift rope stretcher hadn't done him any good, but, Sam reasoned, it hadn't done him any harm either. She then turned her attention to Jack. It was a much easier task to haul him out, because he was willing to cooperate, no matter how much sarcasm he had to expend in the process.
Finally, the last member of SG-1 was above ground. "It's cold," was his perceptive remark, followed by a more widely appreciated, "Good job, people."
Sam grinned, and then directed her commanding officer's attention to Daniel. The resemblance to a ghost Jack had noticed before seemed even more evident in the light of the three moons this planet possessed. Jack raised his eyebrows. "People, let's go home," he said to everyone in particular.
Teal'C lifted Daniel in his arms without a second thought. The original team and SG-9 began their tramp back to the Stargate. As they went, Jack wished Daniel weren't so still. The cold was a good thing in one way, he decided; as long as he could see Daniel's breath rising like smoke, he didn't worry as much.
The light of the moons was reflected off the red crystal in the DHD. Sam ran over the symbols in her mind, and dialled. It wasn't as easy for her as it was for Daniel, who had known the symbols since childhood, albeit in a very different context. But she knew them as the ticket out of many a bad situation, and seven chevrons later, the Stargate began to spin.
A few days later
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing! Leave me alone!"
"God, what's wrong with you, Daniel? Get out of bed the wrong side? Or did you fall over your crutches again?"
"Well, look who's forgotten to be sarcastic this morning. What's the matter, have you finally run out of things to say?"
"Oh, you haven't seen me properly sarcastic yet, Daniel Jackson. You just wait."
"Wait for what? Another dose of the fabled sarcasm of Jack O'Neill? If we could only get you to talk into bottles, we could probably sell it as paint- stripper."
"Why didn't I leave you down a hole when I had the chance?"
Jack was losing patience with Daniel. All right, so his leg was preventing from doing anything he wanted to, and he'd never been very good at doing nothing, and consequently he had a right to a degree of crankiness, but Jack himself had had enough of dealing with Daniel, who was in a black mood. Janet had him under strict orders not to leave Daniel alone, as his crutches had made him rather unstable, so Jack's mind began working overtime. The team's other scientist hadn't had to cope with a fractious archaeologist for days, he decided, and this was one thing he could put right…
Someone had left the door open. Sam could hear everything that was going on out in the corridor, and all morning she had listened to people passing, talking, laughing, crying, and in the case of a certain team commander, making sarcastic comments. Despite the fact she wasn't able to concentrate on her work, she was reluctant to close the door. It was her own private people pageant.
But the conversation Sam was now listening in on struck her as the most unusual so far, punctuated as it was by various clattering, crashing noises.
"For crying out loud, would you be careful?"
"I am being careful!"
"No, you're not! What d'you wanna do, break your other leg?"
There was a pause, and another clatter.
"There you go! My point exactly."
"Look, I'm all right. There wasn't any harm done."
"And that makes it quite all right." The speaker's voice was filled with deep sarcasm.
Suddenly, there was an even bigger crash and clatter, and a muffled cry. A moment's silence, and then two sharp, distinct thuds, as if objects were being thrown to the ground.
"What the hell…" came one of the voices, but it was forcibly muffled as if someone had put a hand over the speaker's mouth.
Sam had been so interested in listening to this audio pantomime that she was startled out of her wits when the door flew open with a crash. Sam turned to look at it in anticipation. There were only two people she knew who were capable of having this conversation…
Her commanding officer was standing there, with his hair standing on end and innocent expression on his face. These, however, were not the first details Sam noticed. The first detail she noticed was what the colonel was holding in his arms.
"If it were even a fireman's lift!" Daniel complained. Jack was holding him like a child, and he had to hold his head up to avoid hitting the door. "Jack, put me down!"
"Daniel," said Jack warningly. "You're not supposed to be putting any weight on your leg yet."
"I have a pair of crutches," Daniel whined. "I can walk with them!"
"Not any more, you can't," Jack said. "Trust me, Danny, it's safer for all of us if I just carry you. For crying out loud, I'm used to it!"
It was true Daniel had proved himself to be astonishingly inept on the crutches he had been given. However, Daniel evidently did not want to be carried. "It was embarrassing enough in the corridor," he complained. "Put me down!"
"Whatever you say, Danny-boy!"
There was a thump, and a few stifled words from Daniel's direction.
"Language, Daniel!"
Sam blinked, but as she saw Daniel was safely in a chair, she decided to ignore this whole incident as if it had never happened.
"Good morning, Carter," said Jack smoothly.
There was a long and awkward silence, which was only broken when Janet came into the room, holding a pair of crutches at arm's length. "Daniel," she said acidly, "I believe these belong to you."
"Thank you," muttered Daniel, slightly embarrassed. The doctor wasn't finished yet. "And how did you get here without them, pray tell?"
"Jack!" exclaimed Daniel indignantly. "Tell her!"
"He was… having problems," murmured Jack, not meeting the doctor's eyes. "So I… I…"
"What, Colonel O'Neill?"
"I carried him here."
Janet stared at him. "Colonel O'Neill," she said in disbelief, "you are meant to be taking care of Daniel. You are his commanding officer."
"This is Daniel we're talking about, doc!" protested Jack.
"Excuse me?" said Daniel sharply. "What do you mean by that?"
"You know…" Jack said helplessly.
"No, I don't. Tell me."
"You're just a little accident-prone, you have to admit, Daniel," Sam said tentatively.
"A little?" Jack began, but both women hushed him with waves of their hands.
"Um… why are you here?" Sam asked, partly because she was trying to change the subject, and partly because she really wanted to know.
"Don't mind me," Janet stated. "I'm just going. Daniel, if you do anything like this again I'll refuse to treat you ever again, do you hear me?"
She left.
"So she said and vanished, as Homer was so fond of remarking," Daniel said calmly. Jack stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. Sam, who had understood the allusion, smiled. "Colonel O'Neill," she said, "with all due respect, please leave my lab. I'm trying to work."
With a practised sigh, Jack moved towards Daniel, who gave a soft cry of alarm and tried to draw back.
"Leave Daniel here," said Sam calmly.
"But how come he…" Jack began. Off their looks, he added, "Never mind. I'll just go…"
He suited the action to the word.
Once he had gone, Sam and Daniel exchanged smiles. "Are you going to be all right, Daniel?" she asked.
Daniel nodded. "I'll survive."
Sam thought to herself how typical of Daniel this remark was, and she expected him to continue talking, but he kept his silence for what seemed like hours, staring at a point somewhere on the ceiling. It wasn't often he could happily sit doing nothing, and it was only now Sam realised that Daniel was in a rare dark mood: quiet, introspective, and vaguely depressed. She supposed it must have something to do with his enforced inactivity, but it wasn't pleasant to have him in one of his 'blue moods' as she mentally categorised them.
"Daniel," she said softly, "what's the matter?"
Daniel didn't answer for a few seconds. Then, he turned to look at her, and from the dreamy look in his blue eyes, Sam thought she had called him back from somewhere far, far, away.
"Nothing," he said quietly.
"No, there's something," she said. "I know you, Dr. Jackson. There's something wrong."
Daniel smiled a little at that. "You won't leave me alone, will you, Sam? I was thinking, well, I know what it feels like now."
"What?"
"When I was on Abydos, I set a lot of broken legs."
Sam could understand this. Despite his love for the past, on Abydos, Daniel had almost been like a messenger from the future.
"They didn't understand what I meant at first. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things about me they didn't understand."
"Like what?" Sam wanted to know.
"My allergies, why I thought it was a good idea to boil drinking water, my obsession with old writings, my blue eyes…"
Sam laughed. "If I know you, you made them understand in the end."
Daniel laughed sadly. "Yeah…"
"You miss them, don't you, Daniel?" Sam was startled at this insight her brain had suddenly provided her with. She suspected she might have just reached the heart of the problem.
"I miss Sha're," Daniel said with a sigh that could almost have been a sob. "I miss them all. I miss my entire life."
Sam stayed quiet, and listened.
"When I left Abydos, I always thought it was just for a short time, you know? But one year became two, then three… And then Sha're… died. And after that I've never gone back.
"I thought one day I would go back to my real life. But I'm afraid… this is my real life."
Daniel's voice faded away then, and he clearly wasn't going to say anything more. Sam didn't say anything. She knew there wasn't anything to say. Daniel should have lived happily ever after. But this wasn't a story. Daniel's happy ending had turned sour, and there wasn't a thing that could be done about it.
There was a silence. Sam's computer hummed and the clock ticked.
Finally, Daniel broke the silence. "Sorry," he said, smiling sadly. "I was getting maudlin on you again."
"Hey, what are friends for?" Sam replied.
Daniel stared at her. Then, he said neutrally, "Sam, do you know anything about the meanings of names?"
Sam was startled by this apparent change in the subject, but she fell in readily with what he was saying. "No, not really. Do you?"
"I'm a linguist," he said, "so I should, but I don't really. My own name has several meanings. It means "as God is my judge' but it also means 'beloved.'"
Sam thought briefly about Hathor, and then asked, "What about my name?"
"Your name has an ancient meaning, Sam," Daniel said, amusement in his voice.
"Well?"
"It's Aramaic. It means 'listener.'"
Sam turned sharply. "Daniel?"
"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thanks for listening."
The door flew open with a crash. It was Jack, trying not to look like a mother hen. "Daniel," he said guardedly, "The doc told me to take you down to lunch. And if you insult me on the way there, I shall shoot you myself."
Daniel grinned. "Sam? Coming?"
"Sure," she replied, standing up.
On the way out, Daniel tripped over his crutches and went flying. Jack and Sam exchanged glances.
Looking after Daniel was hard work.
*fin*