Four years. Four years since he'd left this place, swearing he'd never come back. Four years since the fight that had that had driven him away from his only family. Ego, pride, and pure Ballard stubbornness had gotten the better of him.
Daniel shook his head and opened the door to what had been his grandfather's home. The dirty little family secret. Crazy granddad in the mental hospital. Crazy grandson exploring the universe. The last remaining members of what had once been a respected and admired academic family. Now they would only be known as the family who believed in aliens. Eccentric geniuses with emphasis on eccentric. The Grey Gardens of the archaeological community.
"May I help you, sir?" the woman behind the desk asked.
"Yes, hi. I'm Daniel Jackson. I'm Nick Ballard's grandson." He leaned on the chest-high counter, signing in.
"Oh, um," the woman behind the partition faltered trying to hide her panic. "Dr. Ballard isn't here," she admitted hesitantly.
"I know," he assured her. "He was with me. But, uh, he passed away. I need to do whatever it is I need to do," he fumbled through the lie. With any luck, they would chalk it up to grieving.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Jackson," the receptionist stood up. "Let me get the doctor for you."
While she was away, Daniel found himself staring at the security doors that separated the residents from the outside world. He had always wondered why people would voluntarily check themselves into a place like this. After his experience being forcibly committed a few months ago, the idea of going through those doors terrified him. At least Nick and the others had the option to leave if they chose, but the doors still locked. Last time he was on the other side of doors like that they were locked and he was stuck. Trapped. Drugged. Scared. What had it been like for Nick living there? How bad had it been for him to seek refuge here? To know that this was where he belonged?
"Daniel," Dr. Steger greeted him warmly, distracting him from his paranoid nerves. "It's been a long time."
"Yeah," he agreed guiltily shaking Nick's doctor's hand.
"I'm sorry to hear about Nick. He was a great man."
"Thank you."
"Did you get a chance to work it out?" Dr. Steger asked, leading Daniel into the hospital through those terrifying doors.
"We did, actually," Daniel said truthfully.
"I'm glad to hear that." They walked the familiar route to Nick's room. "Is that the…" Dr. Steger let the words death certificate go unsaid as he gestured to the file folder tucked under Daniel's arm.
"Um, yeah, it's everything I have." He offered the documents the SGC had prepared for him. "I don't know if it's the right stuff."
Dr. Steger glanced through. "This is fine," he assured him. "We have you listed as next of kin, so this should be simple. I'll have the paperwork brought to you to sign." He put his hand on Daniel's shoulder. "Do you want help packing his things?"
After years of treating Nick, Dr. Steger knew a great deal of the intimate details of his life: the loss of his daughter, the guilt he associated with choosing not to adopt his grandson, the fear he'd ruined the boy's life by trying to protect him from his own delusions, somehow still dragging him down the same path.
"I'd actually like to do it myself," Daniel said.
"We'll get you some boxes, then."
"Oh." Daniel glanced around the room looking at all the knick-knacks, trinkets and books. "I didn't even think of that."
"You've had more important things on your mind. Take all the time you need."
Daniel thanked the doctor as he left the room with the file, leaving Daniel alone with his grandfather's possessions and memories. Looking around, the first thing he picked up was his favorite picture. He couldn't remember where or when it had been taken, but he was small, cheeks round with baby fat, clinging to his mother's back as she stood next to her father. Three generations of Ballards. Nick, Claire, and her Aap as she called him. Dutch, for Monkey, always climbing, always exploring.
Next to it, in a matching frame, was him, just him, living up to his pet name up in a tree confident with youthful exuberance, standing on a branch with a toothless grin. Behind that one, adult Daniel on his first dig as a doctor of Archaeology with the same grin, that same exuberance, that same confidence.
All the pictures in Nick's room were of him, Daniel realized. There was a leap from when he was eight- before the accident, climbing trees to when he was fifteen, holding a high school diploma wearing a UCLA baseball cap. The picture he had sent to surprise Nick with his good news. College-bound, ready to continue the family tradition. How had he never noticed? Nick's entire life to choose from, and he showcased Daniel for his visitors. Was he that self-absorbed that he'd glanced right over them as a given. As some sort of birthright? How had he not seen it all along?
It was Nick's way of supporting him. Of being proud of him. Of saying what the two of them spent the better part of two decades dancing around.
"Idiot," he chastised himself, sitting on Nick's bed and starting to gathering his things to pack.
There was a small pile of pictures on the bed ready to be packed when an orderly arrived with several boxes for him. Daniel carefully started placing pictures in the box.
There were no houses in the background, no picket fences, no little league. Everything was deserts and jungles, pink sunburned cheeks and priceless artifacts trusted to tiny six-year-old hands.
"Hope there wasn't a symbiote in there," he mumbled to himself looking a picture of him and the canopic jar he got to catalog all by himself- his first artifact. At the time, he had been lead to believe he had found it while "helping" at a dig. Now, he was certain it had been planted in the loose sand waiting for Professor Aap to find it. No sharp edges to cut his pudgy hands on, sturdy enough for him to get a grip on it.
He blinked away tears that always showed up when he thought of his parents. How they managed to raise him and teach him while traveling the world. Living for months at a time in tents, modern nomads. When his parents had died, he'd expected to swap deserts for the jungle, Nick's territory. Instead, he'd been left in a different jungle with strangers. Buildings blocking the sun, concrete preventing digs, trees you weren't allowed to climb. Children who thought he was weird instead of adults who thought he was endearing and adorable. New parents who didn't understand him or know what to do with him, instead of real parents who encouraged him and challenged him. Thrust into a world he didn't know how to navigate or fit into.
That was why he threw himself into academics. Everything there had rules and order. And the most important reason: the sooner he finished, the sooner he was free to return to his real home. Back to the deserts, to exploration, to digging, to discovery, to his roots.
To his family.
That hadn't worked out too well for him.
He and Nick had struggled to get along after Nick left Daniel in New York. The younger doctor kept pushing himself into his work; it was the only thing that made sense to him. The only thing they connected on. The only thing they agreed on… to a point. Then it became the final straw that demolished the small family home they had cobbled together.