Category: Daniel/Janet
Rating/warnings, etc: PG-13, angst. Meridian AU. 2100 words.
Summary: Not the way it was meant to go.
Disclaimer: Stargate? Still not mine.
A/N: Another one written in India. For the 'Awesome' drabble-a-thon (Sunday's the deadline, people!) – prompt: 'giving up'.
Cole is back in the beta seat, yey! Unfortunately I'm too impatient (though in fairness I've got fic ideas stacked up like airplanes on a rainy day in Delhi) so she didn't get to do much more than read it through. Thank you, my dear, for suggestions for the ending.
2008 Isis Award winner - 1st place Daniel/Janet AU.
xxxxx
"Please, Jack. Tell Jacob to stop."
Jack blinks. Turns. "Jacob. Stop."
Daniel watches the scene, detached, a flush of relief running through him.
Colonel Carter's head yanks up. "Are you serious?"
"It's what he wants."
Thank you, Jack.
Jacob turns to look at Janet. She's looking at Jack, aghast.
Janet. I'm sorry. So sorry. Please accept this.
"How do you know?" she demands, anger replacing the shock. "Jacob, don't stop!"
No. Daniel tries to get Jack's attention again, but it's focussed on Janet, on the determined line of her face.
"I…just do," Jack finishes lamely. "Jacob, trust me."
Jack's expression is odd, a pointed look, but Jacob is concentrating too hard on working the healing device as Janet repeats her order. Daniel feels the situation spinning away out of his control. Oma is standing behind him. A moment of indecision, then he's reaching for Janet. She wavers in front of him, fading in and out.
"Vitals are up." The voice is far away, distorted. Pins and needles run through him, flashing fire across his skin and he can't make sense of it. His vision darkens.
"Oma…" he cries, but it only echoes inside his head as he's pulled back toward the figure wrapped in bandages, lying on the bed.
xxxxx
He hurts. Every day, everywhere. Even the forearm he no longer possesses hurts. He finds that particularly unfair. The painkillers Janet prescribes him help keep it manageable but there are good days and there are bad days. Today is a bad day.
He can't do what he used to do. And it's not just the pain, though that really doesn't help. It's trying to do everything with just a left hand. Typing. Handling delicate artifacts. Opening the goddamn coffee container. Janet and Sam have systematically made changes to things in his office and home so they are easier to open/hold/use, and he thanks them, but secretly he hates it.
And the forgetfulness. That's the worst. Black spots in his memory combined with the inability to retain new information accurately. He's spent months just sorting out the jumble of languages in his damaged brain.
He sighs, frustrated to the edge of anger. He's just forgotten the page number for this reference for the third time and flicking to the index with only one hand is such a bitch when the pages won't stay open on their own.
Today is a bad day.
He uses his elbow to keep the book open while he writes the number 146. Fortunately, learning to write with his left hand wasn't so hard. Like brushing his teeth, it was odd to begin with, messy, but with a bit of work… It doesn't mean he doesn't still try to reach for his pen with his right, though.
He scowls at his sentence and feels the book being tugged from under his arm. He looks up, not in the mood.
"Hey." Janet smiles at him gently, a tentative offer of help. He wishes she wasn't so patient. Then she would have taken the hint earlier when he'd snapped at her. He loves her, but he wishes she'd leave him alone on days like this.
"I had it." He mentally berates himself for his open hostility. A 'hello' would have been better.
"Yeah, I know, but…" She shrugs. "I know you don't like creasing the spines too much."
It's true. He attempts to smile, producing a wince instead. Close enough.
"Want to take a break?" Her tone falls just shy of begging. He knows why; it's been a while since they've had lunch together. Or drunk coffee. Or gone for dinner.
Or made love, his traitorous mind provides. He curls his shoulders against it, wishing it quiet. As always, he combats the wave of guilt with reason. He's been so tired, irritable, and the pain acts as a pretty effective mood-killer. If he had to explain it to the shrink that Janet has so carefully not asked him to see, he would say that he tries. That his intentions are good but it always ends up with softly spoken words and simply falling asleep in her arms. But the truth is some of the time he's too angry with her. He spends his days taking it out on inanimate objects, on himself and his disability, anyone but her.
"I've got to finish this." He indicates with his chin. She presses her lips together. "Really. If I leave, it's going to be impossible to pick up when I come back to it."
Her silence speaks volumes. She's learnt not to argue back as much as she once did, not to push him as hard, but he's also learnt to hear what she says when she deliberately stays quiet.
"Tomorrow?" he offers.
Her expression closes off for a second. Then she nods, face impassive. "Yeah. Sure."
She steps back, making to turn away, when she stops and softly, without accusation, asks him why he's giving up.
He snorts, taking it as an accusation anyway. He thought he was trying very hard to carry on as normal.
"Daniel. Please try."
Today is a bad day and today she's going to push. He can feel the residual anger coming back, coiling like electricity. He grits his teeth. "I am."
"Why is it always so difficult then?"
This time it is an accusation and it instantly makes her a conductor.
"You thought it would be easy?" he demands. "Stumbling through the work that I love, that I used to love, like a clumsy undergrad! I never asked for this!"
This is something that they have never ever spoken about. Jack's request, expressing Daniel's dying wish, and Janet's refusal to listen to it. First do no harm. But there was more to it than that.
Her eyes flash. "Excuse me for wanting to keep you alive."
"Barely! I'm in chronic pain. I've lost chunks of my memory. I've lost my arm, in case you've forgotten surgically removing it!"
She pales in the gaping silence. Daniel feels his anger evaporate, leaving only the thudding of his heart in his chest.
"You're losing me too, in case you haven't noticed," she fires back, keeping her voice low.
And then she's gone.
Bad day.
xxxxx
The moonlight catches her shoulder and the tip of her ear as she sleeps. He watches for a long time. Wasn't love meant to be simpler than this?
He climbs in behind her, trying not to jostle her awake. She stirs and he freezes until her breathing returns to normal. He slips his arm around her ribcage, splaying his hand between her and the mattress so his fingers line up with her ribs and his thumb lies between her breasts. She mumbles and he feels the muscles move under her skin as she presses back into him. He relaxes. Nothing ever seems quite so bad when he has her in his arms. Arm. Whatever.
"Daniel?" She's still half asleep.
"Shhh, go back to sleep."
"Do you really wish it were different?" Now she's awake and he's never heard her voice so full of self-doubt before. Not that she's doubting her medical decision, just the personal reasons behind it. "I mean, not your arm… You wish I'd let you go?"
"Sometimes, yeah." She deserves honesty. "On bad days. Like today."
She is silent for a long, long time. He thinks maybe she's fallen back to sleep when she turns around under his arm.
"I'm sorry I couldn't fix you," she says, earnest and determined. "But you wouldn't just stand aside if something happened to me, would you? Not if you had the power to help."
He knows the answer, sees the logic. Understood her actions from the moment he regained consciousness. He shakes his head.
"Even if I asked you to stop?" she whispers.
He shakes a negative again.
"I'd do it again tomorrow." She's defiant and he has to smile. Even if she had to crawl on hands and knees to the end of the earth, she'd do it again tomorrow. It's one of the things he loves about her.
She sighs. "I'm always expected to wait for you – not just you you, all of you – and then patch you up when you come back hurt, and then just let you walk back out there to get hurt all over again. You wanted to give up then—" He starts to object, but she cuts him off, "—I'm sorry, that's the way I saw it. I don't know what you and the colonel were up to, but from where I was stood, it was too difficult for you to hold on and you wanted me to just let you go."
She pushes up to rest on her elbows. "And I can't, Daniel. I don't think I can ever let you go. Selfish, I know, but there you have it."
She is selfish when it comes to him. It's the one thing she's not selfless about. But then, he was a coward, so he reckons they might be even.
She leans down and kisses him soundly.
"Does that mean I'm forgiven?" he asks.
She raises her eyebrows. "You've not even apologised yet, Mister."
He does then, solemnly, knowing there'll be days when the frustration gets the better of him again, and he'll take it out on her. Because she was there. Because he knows she'll always see through his pain-induced temper and find it in herself to forgive him.
She kisses him again, slower. He closes his eyes and immerses himself in her surrounding presence. The feeling of her body against him, her hips pressed to his stomach. She scoots down, trailing kisses across his chest. She reaches his waistband and stops to sit up, straddling him and removing her slip.
He reaches for her, tracing her curves with his fingertips. "This is really hard for me," he confesses.
"This?" she teases, taking his hand and guiding it.
He gives her a look. "You know what I mean."
She sobers. "I think so. But I need you to talk to me. You've closed off and I feel like I can't reach you anymore."
The skin of her inner thigh is silky soft and he notes, not for the first time, that their bodies never have any problems communicating.
"I get so frustrated and then I get angry and, when it's bad, I blame you for putting me there. It's not the arm so much; I can still do all the important stuff." He elaborates, making her shiver. "But the memory gaps, the loss of clarity and sharpness and..." he blows out a breath. "Language is what I do, it's who I am. And to wake up to find some of it has gone, along with my ability to pick up new things... Makes me want to scream."
She nods, sorrow clouding her features, and he knows she gets it. Losing her hand or her extensive medical knowledge would mean the end of her career and he knows how devastated she would be.
She reaches down to the scarred skin at the end of his upper arm, feather light so as not to hurt him. "I knew, from the day I decided to become a doctor, that I'd have to make tough calls. I didn't think we could save you, and as hard as it was to deal with, it meant the decision was already made. But then Jacob... And then I knew the only chance you had was to get the bulk of the radiation as far from you as I could. That meant your arm. And that was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make."
Her hand is against his cheek. He turns his head to kiss her palm. He supposes that's how it's going to be. Sometimes, when he's hurting, he's going to blame her, and in return she's not going to forget the choice he forced her to make.
She moves against him and his body responds.
"I don't suppose we're done talking, are we?" he asks, as nonchalantly as he can.
She rolls her eyes. "No, we're not. But for tonight, yes. It's pretty late..." She fakes a yawn and there's a sparkle in her eyes that he hasn't seen in far too long.
He agrees, poker-faced, and moves to extract himself. A simple hip-grind stops him mid-motion. She grins wickedly.
Much later, with faint dawn light filtering through, he listens to her regular breathing and thinks about choice and consequence. Living with the consequences. It's a common feature of working at the SGC and it's what they have to do now, both of them, together. Together.
Some days he can be a real ass. But she loves him anyway, so he's going to keep battling through. Even on the bad days.