We got back from the Land of the Touched-No-More. We were assembly-lined through medical but then, since all of us but Teal'c were more than a bit scratched and dented, the General scheduled our debriefing for the next morning.
I was just about to go home for a little shut eye when I found Daniel letting himself into in one of the VIP rooms on Level 25. I followed him in.
"You're staying here tonight? I thought Fraiser gave you the OK to go home?"
He switched on the lamp and sat on the bed. "She did. It just seemed pointless to drive all that way home only to turn around and drive all that way back first thing in the morning."
"Rest?" I asked.
"Work?" Daniel answered.
"Injured?"
"Pentagon?"
I had to give on that point. "So, what's the damage?"
"Uh – mild concussion. Cracked ribs. Deep bruises. You know, the usual. You?"
"Bruises. Headache. A lingering urge to say, 'Me Tarzan, you Jane'."
He smiled and pressed his hand to his chest and repositioned himself on the bed.
"Jack – when you were - changing - do you remember anything?"
I had intended to get to that, me trying to beat the crap out of him. I just thought I'd wait until we were both feeling a little better. "Daniel – look – you know I'm sorry. You know I wouldn't have -."
"No. Oh – no. That's not what I mean. I know you wouldn't – I just – do you remember what it felt like? What the change felt like?"
"Anger, aggression, some paranoia I guess. You know – the usual." I smiled but I wondered what he was getting at.
"I enjoyed it," he admitted. This I was not expecting. I pulled up a chair.
"This ought to be interesting," I said.
"Jack, it's not what you think."
"What could I possibly be thinking?"
He gave me a look but otherwise ignored my question.
"When I first started feeling the anger and aggression, well, I thought it was just a suitable response to the other males trying to beat the crap out of me."
"Yes, I'd call it a suitable response."
"Then of course, I tried to determine why I'd finally started changing when up until then I'd been immune to it."
"Of course you did." That's our boy.
"But then, just before the change completely took over, I realized that I liked it. I mean – I generally never lose my temper -."
"Never?"
" – and I'm not really a confrontational person –."
"Ever?"
He didn't seem to hear a word I said. What am I, alone in the room? Then he sighed in a way I was much too familiar with from him, too deep, too painful, and too much in his own thoughts.
"In archaeology, if you get impatient, if you lose your temper, you can lose history," he said. "If you pick up a four thousand year old papyrus and your hands are sweaty from stress, it'll degrade the papyrus and you'll lose whatever is written on it. If you move too fast at a dig or with too broad a stroke, you can destroy history."
Then his eyes kind of lit up and I knew I was about to learn, in probably minute detail, about some fascinating object that was no doubt older than dirt.
"I once found an amphora, from around 800 BC, in Turkey. It was perfect, it was beautiful, you could actually see the potter's fingerprints in the clay. But even though it was whole in situ, it was actually cracked into fourteen hundred and eleven pieces."
"Fourteen hundred and eleven pieces," I said. "You counted?"
"Well, yeah, of course." he answered, like it was obvious. "It was important to know."
"Of course it was."
"Putting it back together was frustrating, but I couldn't let the frustration touch the work. I couldn't so much as let it put a tremor in my fingers or all that work, all that history, would've been in danger. It's – it's -" he sighed. "I've spent my life modulating my emotions. It was just a nice change," and he said that with the sarcastic tone and expression it deserved, "...to not care about anything. To not worry about what might get broken. I just – I've never really felt that before."
"I have got to get you on a hockey team, Daniel. They pay you to break stuff there." But that wasn't what he needed. "And how are you now?"
"Tired. Exhausted, actually."
"Back to modulating?"
He looked down and folded his arms across himself. But he didn't answer.
"What about on Abydos? Did you modulate your emotions there?"
"Well, arguing with someone is actually an inefficient way to learn their culture, so..."
"Anger isn't the only emotion people are known to repress," I pointed out.
He looked at me, and looked at me. He looked at me like he'd suddenly frozen in place. He looked at me long enough that I raised my eyebrows in a look meant to point out how long it was.
Then he blinked and came back to earth. Almost literally, I'm thinking.
"I miss them. I miss everything about Abydos. And thinking that I may never -" His voice got rough and he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses and looked around the room before he looked at me again. "The work is pretty much all I have now. I can't risk it."
Yeah, the work was all he had. Right.
I didn't push him on it. I stood up and put the chair back, then tapped his shoulder and headed for the door.
"Get some sleep, Daniel. I think you're right, it's too far to drive home. I'm gonna camp out next door. If you wake up with the urge to go hunting saber tooth tigers, give me a holler."
"Uhh, sure?"
His brain was probably suddenly busy putting together the fact that there were no saber tooth tigers on the planet and therefore my remark had no relevance. I took advantage of that.
"And if you need anything else, let me know. Okay?" I didn't give him a chance to tell me he was fine and wouldn't anything. "I'll see you in the morning for breakfast."
"Oh – uh – yeah. See you in the morning, Jack. Thanks."
"You bet."
Ancient amphoras aren't the only things that need patience to put back together.
The End.