Summary; When you've died a hundred times, who knows when to mourn?
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Stargate Universe, nor the characters or ideas contained therein; this publication is not in any way used for the attainment of profit.
MIA.
Missing-in-Action.
Missing. An odd description for the man she had watched gunned down. Colonel Samantha Carter had been given the dubious honor of being present that day, and it had been she who had been on the Archeologist's six when the outlaw Jaffa force had struck. While the Go'uald were considerably weakened and distant, leaders with small forces remained, and the Jaffa of one particular petty Go'uald - Hapy - had ambushed them on a supposedly easy mission. It had been meant as a way to relax, a rare treat to celebrate the defeat of the Ori.
After everything, Daniel had been killed by a stray staff blast.
Mitchell and Vala had taken care of the small Jaffa group while she had kneeled beside Daniel, putting pressure on his wound even as blood seeped onto the forest floor, and she knew, by the wet gleam of his guts, that there was no saving him.
He'd smiled at her as he'd died.
She'd waited, hardly knowing what she was waiting for, staring at his still body - then she realized. There was no glow.
No Ascension.
They brought back his body. There were frowns - gasps, from a few newbies - but by general consensus his body was put in the morgue, and no funeral held for awhile. He was listed as injured.
The paperwork for bringing someone back from the dead was, General Landry explained, a nightmare. No one blamed him.
For the first week, people went about their business with hardly a second thought. Cameron had a few easy days while they waited for his scientist to return, Carter went to the labs, and Vala generally just harassed everyone at the base. And that was that.
The second week, people began to expect his return. Workers in archeology asked their temporary Acting Department Head if certain special reports shouldn't be set aside for Dr. Jackson's return. The man agreed; Jackson was, after all, the most expert archeologist they had. He wouldn't be pleased if his people missed anything.
By the month's end, SG-1 was taking missions with a rotating group of temporary archeologists on easy missions. Just until Daniel's return, of course. When Teal'c learned of Daniel's death during a visit to Earth, he was not angry about not being informed, and just asked to be updated when Daniel returned.
By the three months mark, people took to grumbling when Archeology was too slow. "If Dr. Jackson were here," they would say, "you'd work quicker".
But he wasn't there.
By the half-year mark, SG-1 received permission to return to the planet of Daniel's death. Maybe there was some object there that had stored his soul. They searched for two weeks in failure, finding nothing at all, and were finally distracted by more important matters.
One year to the day of Dr. Jackson's death, a memorial was held in honor of Dr. Jackson. No one from SG-1, past or present, attended the service.
In fact, no one from the Stargate program attended. It was a pretty small service. And, naturally, he was still listed as alive, just - missing. Presumed alive, naturally. Even on official registries he was listed as alive, and people were permanently hired to take care of his house and affairs for his eventual return. Because he would return. The thought of anything else was… preposterous.
"I'm sorry, but we're not having a memorial service for someone who's not dead…"
At the SGC, people began looking forward to his return again. Even Daniel didn't usually stay dead for much longer than a year.
Two years. Then three. On the day that marked the third-year anniversary of Daniel's death, Samantha Carter found herself at Daniel's grave, and she wondered at her lack of sorrow.
She had watched him bleed out before her very eyes… but smiling. Smiling. Because death wasn't permanent, was it? Not with Daniel, anyway. She'd watched him die before, right in front of her. She'd watched him painfully die of radiation poisoning, had been tricked to believe he'd been boiled to death on an alien world.
She recalled a time when Jack had been in charge at the SGC. When Daniel had supposedly been killed in the explosion of a replicator vessel. Jack had told that he 'wasn't falling for it this time', and refused to hold a memorial service. She remembered Daniel tumbling out of Jack's office, naked and extremely confused, only a flag around his waist preserving his well-trod upon dignity. The memory still made her laugh.
She considered the grave of Daniel Jackson… no. The place where his body had been buried. Not his grave, not really. The living didn't have graves. And Daniel Jackson hadn't died, not really. He never died.
She left, and never came back.
Five years. Ten. Twenty.
Decades after his 'death', a curious new member of the expansive Stargate Program would ask why the famous Dr. Jackson was still listed as an active member of SG-1, currently off world and captured - while the Head of Archeology was called the 'Acting' Head, and an empty, dusty office in that department was never used, despite being full or rare resource material. The veterans, with empty, uncertain smiles, assured her that it needed to stay that way; Daniel would come back eventually.
He always did.