D is for Daniel

He never looked up. His arms were always full of papers, thumbed through dictionaries and lexicons, dusty pieces of parchment full of letters and symbols that he was sometimes alone on Earth to know the meaning of. He read as he walked quickly through the corridors, unaware of his surroundings.

He never looked up. He walked straight ahead and people separated in his path, like Moses with the Red Sea. People excused themselves when he was the one who collided with them. "Sorry doctor Jackson," they'd say, as if though they had offended him. As if though it was their fault that Daniel wasn't paying attention.

His hair was always slightly disheveled, and he was so soft spoken you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a delicate flower. Not an ass-kicker who had survived unthinkable battle, and as his friends enjoyed reminding him of, had even beat death. Multiple times.

But Daniel was most interested in understanding. Battle wasn't what he craved, he craved knowledge. The ass-kicking was very much just an unfortunate side effect. Something he did to protect his friends, and to gain the knowledge which was his drug.

He never looked up, but collisions and sprains were never his fault. Because no one who knew doctor Jackson would ask him to change: He was reading, he was learning. And his, sometimes eccentric, brilliance and knowledge had saved the world over and over again.

So people stepped aside when he came walking, and didn't hold it against him if he knocked them to the floor.

He had important things to learn, the very universe depended on it.