CATEGORY: Humor, friendship
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I'm making absolutely no money from this.
NOTES: This fic was written for Dragonsinger, because she wished. (Okay, she was probably looking for shippy, but this is what the characters wanted and they nearly always win...) Stexgirl gave me the idea while describing her fic about about Jack's regrets. Thanks to Medie for the read-through and encouragement.
"Do you ever wish you hadn't gotten this job?" Sam asked, idly stirring her coffee and staring out the window at the snow that drifted lazily down. The diner's door slammed open, bringing in a breath of clean, cold air, and a trucker looking for a meal.
"Sometimes," Daniel said. He frowned at the newspaper on the table. "What's a nine-letter word for a fish no longer extinct?"
The snow was accumulating. Sam sighed. "Coelacanth. Just think: We could get aboveground more often, see the sun in...less exotic locations."
"I get sunburned and so do you." Someone put a quarter in the jukebox and it began to play 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine.' Daniel scribbled in a few more words.
"I could keep fresh vegetables in my fridge and actually cook them before they rot."
"You can cook?" Daniel looked up.
Glaring, Sam mimed pouring her coffee over his head. She saw his grin as he went back to the puzzle.
"Blackface show. Eight letters."
"Minstrel. Why do you even bother to get the Sunday paper? When was the last time you had a chance to do the puzzle?" Sam leaned back and let the waitress plop their breakfast on the table.
"I'm doing it now." He shifted the puzzle to the side so he could eat and write at the same time.
"Yeah, but mostly it goes to waste." Maple syrup made a satisfying puddle as she drowned her pancakes and sausage.
Daniel shrugged, eating a few bits of omelet. "That's life."
"You're not usually this resigned."
He looked at her. "Maybe it's just too early for me to be consider the question of whether we'd have been better off staying home. At least let me eat before we hit the deep philosophy."
Sam ate for a few minutes, reading the puzzle upside down. "12 down is Waterston," she said, swirling a piece of sausage in syrup.
"Hmm." Daniel filled in the answer. "I don't know much about actors."
"I've seen him a couple of times in Law & Order. It's always on, no matter what time I get home, and I can watch the series out of order. He's probably been in movies or something, but I wouldn't know."
Daniel looked up, wiping a dribble of egg off his chin. "You'd rather see movies than do what we do?"
"Of course not." The waitress refilled her coffee cup and Sam added more sugar, drinking some. "It's just that sometimes I wish we had time for normal things. So much of our life is totally abnormal."
"True." Daniel shrugged. "'Yellow and absorbent is he'?"
"Either Spongebob or Squarepants."
Daniel blinked. "How'd you know that?"
"Huh? Oh, my nephew wanted one of the DVDs for Christmas. I'd never actually seen it before, but I ordered off I watched an episode so I'd know what I was giving him."
"Hmm."
The door opened again, letting in a group of laughing teens who poked each other and generally goofed off. One of the girls had palmed a handful of snow, which she managed to shove down the neck of the blue parka of the boy next to her.
Sam chuckled into her coffee as the group settled at a table, still squabbling amicably. Glancing over, Daniel looked back at her. "Bring back good memories?"
That made her stop laughing as she twirled her cup in her hands. "Not really. I was always too serious, too focused. I don't remember spending too much time hanging out like that." Scowling, she looked at Daniel, expecting pity.
One side of his mouth quirked. "I could put some snow down your shirt, if that would make it up to you."
"No, thanks," she said, the laugh surprised out of her.
"That's what I thought." He leaned over the puzzle again, idly eating a piece of wheat toast and getting crumbs all over the newspaper. "Fake newsman is Stewart. Which means the first letter of 'The Saint' is a T."
"Simon T-something," Sam said, fiddling with a spoon. "Not religious saint. The modern Robin Hood of crime. Do you have any other letters?"
"The next to last letter--of seven--is possibly an A. Unless Aristophanes is wrong. Where do you know this Saint guy from?"
"It was a TV show. My dad didn't approve of a thief as hero, but I liked it anyway. I'll remember his name in a minute."
Daniel scribbled a few more words in the lower left corner as the waitress removed his plate and poured more coffee. He thanked her with an absent smile and Sam hid a grin as he failed--for the millionth time--to notice how that smile made the waitress and at least three other women in the diner melt.
"What would you be doing if you weren't here?" Daniel asked as he wrote in 'Adar' and 'remote.'
"Probably deep space telemetry."
"And you'd still be working through the weekends and most nights, wouldn't you?"
She started to deny it, but Daniel knew her too well for such a lie to be worth the trouble. "Sometimes it just seems like the work will never end."
Daniel put his pen down. "Someone has to do it. And you do it very well, you know that."
"Yeah. I..." Her eyes drifted to the teens, who were singing off-key with the jukebox, which was inexplicably playing 'When the Saints Go Marching In.' "Templar," she said.
For the first time, real concern was in Daniel's eyes. "Uh..."
"The Saint. In the crossword? I've just remembered that his name was Simon Templar."
"Oh." Daniel blinked twice, then filled in the answer.
"And I know that we're good at our jobs and what we do is necessary. But sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes it's not enough to keep down the what-ifs, the maybes, and all the other regrets." She stared down at the table, moving her coffee cup through a small pool of water, writing invisible equations on the table.
"Regrets."
There was an odd tone in Daniel's voice and she looked up to see an odd smile on his face as he looked at the puzzle. "Daniel?"
"43 Across. The answer is Miller."
"So?"
"The clue is author of 'The Ride Down Mount Morgan' and the answer is Arthur Miller."
"So?" she asked again, frowning as she wondered what he was talking about. "You're not going to compare us to Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman,' are you?"
"No. I've actually read 'The Ride Down Mount Morgan,' that's all."
"Okay. Well, I've never heard of it."
Daniel grinned at her. "Just another benefit of a liberal arts education. I don't remember much, but one character says, 'Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.'"
Sam tried the phrase out. "The right regrets. Isn't it pessimistic to assume you'll have regrets?"
"I don't remember the context in the play, but no, I don't think it's pessimistic at all. If you have no regrets at all, have you really lived?"
Sam had to look down, away from Daniel's worried eyes. "No, I guess not."
"And?"
"And," she said obediently, "we're going to end up with the right regrets."
"Sam?"
She looked up into his still-worried expression. "I'll be okay, Daniel. But just because they're the right regrets doesn't necessarily make them any easier to deal with."
"But you're not dealing with them alone, right?"
"Right." Sam patted his arm. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Any time, you know that." His full, warm smile made her melt just a little. "Now," he glanced down, "who wrote Die Fledermaus?"
Sam laughed and Daniel shook his head in pretend annoyance as the waitress poured them both more coffee. The door swung open and Jack and Teal'c pushed through, shaking off a fine coating of snow.
"You didn't wait for us," Jack growled as he slid into the booth beside Daniel and pulled the crossword in front of him. "Not only have you guys eaten already, but you've probably gotten all the easy answers done. Why'd we even bother to come?"
Teal'c nodded at Sam and turned to Jack with his subtle teasing look. "I believe we are here because you said the base pancakes are not nearly as good."
"It's true, sir," Sam said. "They're not as good."
"Well, we're certainly not here for the company." Jack waved at the waitress, stealing Daniel's coffee cup.
Daniel yelped. "Hey, no coffee theft! We're in a diner, get your own."
"Oh, but yours is so much better."
Leaning back, Sam chuckled at Daniel's outraged response, which involved waving hands and a treatise on the benefits of getting your own coffee in a restaurant.
Maybe the right regrets wasn't such an impossible goal to achieve. And Daniel was right, she wasn't doing it alone.
--end--