(originally published on Livejournal)
People always tell you which memories matter. They arrange your past life with unashamed fingers, and if they were all from Earth they would be marking the priorities with their highlighters. As if you don't know which days you should remember. You do. It's not from the beginning of your story, because the beginning only serves your life when remembered as leading to the end.
You're barely a woman when the Goa'uld take you, your form barely filled out into pleasing curves when they come to rape your mind. You have no name for what you lose as the cold invades your body, and Quetesh is as sadistic as they come, but you can't comprehend this yet. She swallows your screams and smiles, and then you know: there's no such thing as privacy anymore.
Your whole body grasps for freedom when the Tok'ra try to give it to you. But from just out of reach in the middle of your spine to the quivering tips of your fingers, you can feel the itch of naquadah inch over your skin, and you wince and turn away with a tight face. Privacy? They've shed it gladly long ago. At the first chance you run away with nothing more than the soft-brown garments you steal from them. The burn of the naquadah no longer taunts, but even though your limbs move at your command alone you still feel trapped.
And the galaxy is full of people in traps of one kind or another. Brightly colored ones, laughing ones, ones full of big hearts and smiling and touches that are meant to be loving. Cultures love to bind their people, you learn, and it may differ more than the landscape on every planet but the core concept is the same. Groups chain you down, make you just like everyone else. They dig into your life with an eagerness they can't see in themselves, to make sure that you're fitting in. Sometimes they laugh at privacy.
So you give awkward smiles and back away, stay on the run. Run, run, until you don't have to surrender your space to anyone and you can breathe and not scream. After a year or two you realize that it's a never-ending run, just a circular trap. But if you're the one putting yourself in the trap, it's almost like freedom.
It's better than the nightmares that attack at night, leaving you trembling and curled up into yourself, hating yourself for the tears that leak shakingly from your eyes. Morning comes and you dress like a bounty hunter and swagger like one, and maybe if you were someone else you would feel the rush of freedom in your veins when the practical language tumbles easily from your lips. But you aren't someone else. Yet, you fake that you can feel it, and it feels good.
Years later, you end up on a ship. It's not much different from most ships in the galaxy, just metal and computer and people that you have to carefully beam to a tolerable wreck, but the man you save to provide you with information has an unusually beautiful face. It's why you keep him. Sometimes sex makes you freer than anything else in the galaxy; other times it feels like it drags you down into an abyss. You keep trying anyways, doing everything possible to help the outcome be that short blissful liberation that makes life worthwhile. You assume that this man will help with that.
He doesn't.
His name is Daniel, and when eventually you attack him with words to make him pull back all he does is push forward. You're afraid that he'll break through the emotional shield that is as close to privacy as you can create, and so you keep fighting back. Even if you make ridiculous moves and ridiculous mistakes. You've been doing this longer than he has, surely. Though it doesn't always feel like that.
Daniel doesn't let you go, and you wake up yet again with the ache of a zat in your bones, in prison. It doesn't faze you. For a second you remember Daniel's face, the expression of understanding making it something desirable beyond words. It's not full comprehension, but what use would that be? The next few minutes are for getting you out of this prison cell and away from these "Earthlings" forever, but that memory of Daniel's face stays with you.
Months pass after you escape. You live as it feels like you've always lived. Some days are good, some days are bad. Some nights you ride a warm stranger until you climax, some nights you wake up flailing from a nightmare that's scarier than anything from childhood. It's life. It's still not freedom. You doubt whether that has ever existed in anything other than a word.
Words, thoughts, ideas, are all pointless, you decide. Actions still matter. You start making an effort towards something, towards finding treasure. It's an accident, you tell yourself, that you find the tablet that leads back to the Tau'ri and to Daniel. There are hundreds of other objects you've passed by, but you think it's an accident that your ears pick up on the booming auctioneer advertising this one. You don't win the tablet, but you swipe it from the winner.
As soon as the Tau'ri let you through their Stargate, when Earth gravity is what draws upon your shield, you wonder if it was a bad idea. Everyone else in the galaxy, after a meeting with you, adjusts themselves to keep at a distance on a second encounter. They stand back, invisible walls around themselves, looking at you from under skeptical brows. You grin at them, because your wall was up first, so you still have the advantage.
Once again, Daniel doesn't follow that etiquette. He sends his emotional shield out towards you until the two clash, and as much as completely guarded people can, you fight. You use words and body language, smiles and hand gestures, none of them meaning quite what they seem. Every distracting flick of your fingers is to hide, not a cheat, but a readjustment of your defenses. You can tell that Daniel can read a little of this, but he's flustered to a point where he doesn't see through enough. It gives you the confidence to stay.
And you aren't sure why. Does the why matter? You don't think it does. This is a job, it's life, and they're all just there.
It stops being life when you die in a distant galaxy, when the flames break through your shield and you're not yourself anymore because you're fire now in death. And then you're Ori and life. And when you're supposedly your own alive self again, and Daniel is cradling you in his arms over the charred circle of stone, you realize that it was a Goa'uld encore performance in the span of a few minutes. You shiver and shake, but it's easy to raise your shield as soon as you're away from that circle.
The shield's a little damaged now, and Daniel takes advantage of that, even if he doesn't know that he is. He keeps drawing near you, as if responding to your behavior. It's supposed to warn people away with exaggeration, but he keeps inching closer, and if he gets too close you won't be able to keep him from breaking through. You don't know what that means.
You're trapped with the Tau'ri for longer than anyone planned, and life is a panoply of joy and fear. Daniel and his people have no privacy—they have no shields to keep others out. You watch them stand so close together that you can't see why they aren't crying out with the invasion of self. They don't, and eventually, frustratedly, you want to know why. You don't tell yourself that you want to know how more than anything, because you can't admit that you don't want to be afraid of traps. Everyone should be afraid.
Daniel keeps treating you like one of his people, even if he wouldn't say so. He keeps drifting into your space, crashing towards you, and your shield keeps flickering and losing power. Your desire to retain it wanes and doesn't halt when you see that his desires for you have changed, and that only sends you into panic when it looks like he might slip in when you're not paying attention. You're so certain it will hurt when someone breaks in for good that you don't count all the costs before taking the tel'tak to the Supergate.
You strain to juggle different shields in the Ori galaxy, with Tomin and the resistance, and when you finally warn the Tau'ri and they listen and they get you back, you look the same to them. With pain and hopeless love you birthed a daughter who's poised to rule the universe with a soft touch that will kill—but you have your walls still.
Maybe Daniel has sensed that they're truly weak now, though. Maybe he's still changing because of you. Because when he looks at you with trust, with belief that you won't exaggerate too far anymore, you don't pull back. He's drawing closer, but it doesn't feel like an attack any longer. You're slipping out from under your own shield, failing to recharge it, hoping that there's no elaborate trap as you try to imitate the Tau'ri and their unshielded behavior that doesn't get them hurt.
The day that Daniel smiles at you when you're handed the team badges, his gift to you even if he pretends it's not, the last of the shield wall comes crashing down. You may keep on behaving as if it's still there, but it's not. You give up privacy for the freedom of not needing it. You're one of the team, and they're not a cage to keep you confined.
And the sacrifice doesn't kill you.
That day, the day when the not-date turned into the team-date—you mark it in your mind with a big bright flag to overshadow the artificial ones that people have placed on other memories. You only have to close your eyes to see the flash of friendly smiles in a circle, the warmth of encouraging eyes keeping your hands from trembling as you gingerly touched the black-and-silver patches in the box. Mitchell and Teal'c slapped them on your shoulders, and the impact shot through you, an earthquake of trust that sent your back-up shield crashing to pieces. Close your eyes a little more, and you can remember your own smile as you raised your glass, and drank toasts until you were probably far too uninhibited. There have been days when the consequences of that event have hurt, and days when you think you've made a mistake, but the anniversary holds true and golden.
And when eventually nearly every day is a day when Daniel swings you into his arms and smiles before he kisses you, understanding flows alongside love and passion in both of you. Understanding that giving up the fear of losing self was a harder first step than anything else could be.
Choosing that memory as your important anniversary is only an afterthought when you live it every joyous day.