Title: All-Seeing
Author: MissAnnThropic
Spoilers: season 6
Summary: Ascended Daniel returns to look in on his friends.
Disclaimer: I own nasing! Really, I don't. All you see here (that you recognize, anyway) is the creation of someone else. I take no credit.
A/N: I really don't know what to say to this... usually a comedy fic of this bizarre caliber is the result of sleep-deprivation, but I'd had plenty of sleep when I wrote this so I'm not sure how this was allowed to happen.
"Oma... I'm troubled."
"The ducks trade their feet for cucumbers."
"I know that I'm supposed to release my burden and give up my old, mortal life to reach a higher level of consciousness–"
"Spring water eats Greek."
"–but I can't stop thinking about my friends."
"Oink."
"I just... I know it's not really allowed but if I could just see them, just to make sure they're okay..."
"Tree leaves rain on ice fire."
"So, just a quick visit, just to check, then right back to the path to enlightenment, I promise."
"Bow chika bow bow."
"Um... right."
Daniel Jackson, the essence of the soul of Daniel Jackson, flew through space unfettered. The galaxy whirled past him in a veil of of black and white, then the Earth in its blur of blues, browns, and greens. Hidden, nothing corporeal or solid to hinder his journey as he unerringly found Colorado, slipped through solid rock into Cheyenne Mountain, and he was home. The SGC was unchanged. Daniel had missed it all so much.
Airmen walked through the corridors, past Daniel and through Daniel and there was not a hint of awareness their fallen comrade was there. Daniel's consciousness floated through the gray halls, living in his memories of another lifetime, then he knew where he would go first.
Nearly the moment he wished to be there Daniel's spirit was swirling in Jack's office, so frequently unused but still the photographs of Charlie like a fingerprint of Jack's presence. There was no sign of Jack.
Daniel flew to the commissary and there were old friends there, going about their human, mortal lives. Daniel drifted toward the coffee machine and lingered longingly a moment, but he did not stay. There was no sign of Jack in the commissary, either.
Daniel's ascended soul was getting peeved when Sam's lab turned up empty. No Jack, not even Sam. 'Perhaps they're out on a mission,' Daniel's light-strung thoughts mused, and he contemplated how he could go about finding out if that was the case. Materialize into something solid long enough to thumb through Hammond's papers?
Daniel transferred to Hammond's office and swirled to an airy stop when he discovered the commanding officer's office was not empty. Hammond, unlike Jack or Sam, was where he was supposed to be, at his desk.
Daniel felt an ache of the familiar to see the older man's gentle face. "General Hammond," Daniel whispered to himself on his astral plane, and he drifted closer to the seasoned Air Force officer. He looked intent upon his work.
"George, you have saved us from the Goa'uld!" Hammond's voice strained in a false soprano. His own timbre: "Think nothing of it! Child's play!" "Oh, George! You're so strong and brave! Please, as a token of our gratitude for saving us all, take me, I'm yours!" "No, no, I couldn't, Anise." "I'll do anything you want! Thousands of years of experience at your command!"
"Sir," Sergeant Davis knocked on the general's door briefly before sticking his head inside the office. Hammond swept his G.I. Joe and Indian princess dolls into his top desk drawer and looked up at the sergeant. "Yes?"
"Sergeant Siler needs to turn off the power to the auxiliary dialing computer for about half an hour to run a check on the equipment."
"Tell him to go ahead."
Davis nodded and started to leave when Hammond said, "Sergeant..."
"No, sir, I didn't see you playing with your dolls again."
"Carry on."
Daniel made his own retreat from the general's office just as Hammond's voice was intoning squeakily, "I want you, George..."
Daniel still couldn't find Jack and for the moment abandoned the search; his second stop was to look in on Janet. She'd done so much to try and save him, and she would take it as a personal failure that he'd chosen to move on to a higher plane of being.
The infirmary was quiet and Daniel cared enough about the people in his old life to be grateful for that. He lingered in the well-familiar room before he wafted toward Janet's office.
She was there, at her desk, looking over medical files. Daniel drifted closer and stared (as best one could stare without possessing eyes) at her face. Still so elegant and lovely, the face of an angel.
Daniel settled in closer to her, as though he might reach out and touch her once more, but he was not really there, not in the sense he used to be, and Janet did not break from her work to know he was with her.
"Janet..." Daniel said in his ethereal, mute voice, "I want you to know that it wasn't your fault."
Janet blinked and sighed.
Daniel longed to reassure her with a body, one she could touch and heal and tend, but he was bound by air and light. He looked more tenderly upon Janet's face.
"I know that you don't believe it was my choice..."
Janet shifted and scratched at her butt crack.
"You didn't fail me..."
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
"You were always there to put me back together and patch me up, and I wish I'd told you when I had the chance how much I appreciated everything you did for me... for all of us."
Janet brought her hand up to her nose, sniffed her fingers, then wedged her index finger into her nostril and began to dig.
"I always had faith in you, always knew I'd be okay once I got back to the SGC and you took over..."
Janet pulled her finger free of her nose, studied the excavated find on her fingertip, then wiped it on her pant leg.
Daniel, had he a throat, would have cleared it. "So... I know you can't hear me, but I still wanted to tell you that you were always such a comfort, and a good friend."
Janet leaned to one side in her chair and farted.
Daniel frowned and slipped away. Now only one thing left to do... find his old teammates.
Daniel passed through the walls and doors like he used to pass through air. He went to Teal'c's quarters first; it was a fair bet the Jaffa would be there.
Daniel had expected candles, dim lights, and the sense of peace and concentration that seemed to live in Teal'c's quarters, so even Daniel's imminently advanced mind was disappointed when he soared into Teal'c's room to find it not ringed with glowing candles. The lights were on, as was the television he and Sam had gotten the big man when he first arrived on Earth. Daniel's attention moved first to the television, drawn by its sounds and pictures.
Daniel watched only a few seconds of a music video before the female singer's voice was joined by a baritone in the same room. Daniel whirled and his eyes fell on his Jaffa friend. Teal'c was watching the television and singing along as he danced.
"I'm a genie in a bottle...," he spun on his ankle-bracelet-adorned heel and swished the gold tassels of his sheer mesh skirt with a wiggle of his hips, "...you gotta rub me the right way..." Teal'c clapped his hands together over his head and shimmied like Barbara Eden from 'I Dream of Jeannie'.
Daniel only gaped long enough to see the gold dusting of glitter painted over the Jaffa's bare torso before beating a hasty retreat. Since he didn't have legs he couldn't actually run, but in his past life he would have knocked some people down in his rush.
Daniel hovered in the hallway a few moments, baffled. He had best finish what he came to do and get back. This was not his place anymore, he had to release his burden. This was his burden, to fear his friends were not all right, and to be free he would have to know they were doing fine in his absence.
That left Jack and Sam.
Daniel wanted to see Jack more than anyone. Jack had been the greatest friend he'd ever known in his former life, he'd been the one to free him from a fate trapped in a broken, poisoned body. Jack would also be the one most likely to become self-destructive in his grieving. He would take responsibility for Daniel's 'death' because he'd been one of Jack's 'kids'.
Daniel drifted down the hallway of on-base quarters. He knew the way to Jack's room almost without thinking. Daniel realized with sudden clarity how much he missed every little detail of the SGC. He imagined he would continue to miss everything, and everyone, despite his status as a newly-ascended being. Oma would not be pleased to learn her new pupil was so stubbornly holding on to his former existence.
He would try, but he could not imagine abandoning the friendships he'd made as Daniel Jackson so easily.
Daniel reached Jack's quarters and slid through the closed door into a dark room.
From the bed came Sam's hoarse voice crying, "Oh, JACK!" in an orgasmic scream.
Daniel only briefly made out the shape of two sweaty, rocking, naked bodies, one blonde, the other gray-haired, before he shot out of the room like he'd been set on fire.
Daniel didn't stop fleeing until he was out of the SGC, away from Earth, hurtling through space and planes and suddenly in the presence of the tendril-of-light form of Oma Desala.
"Daniel..." she murmured in her wise, matronly voice.
Daniel basked in the wise light of Oma's essence and he spoke truly. "Oma... all-knowing, all-seeing sucks!"
"Ding, ding, ding!"
END
A/N (again): First, yes, the part with General Hammond was a shameless nod to "Spaceballs", because if you don't love that movie you take life way too seriously :)
Second... come on, at least give me enough credit to admit everyone does strange stuff when they think no one's watching (granted perhaps not as strange as Teal'c, but he's a Jaffa, what do you expect?).
