A/N: Welcome to the Silent Spacemonkey AU. In this 'verse, Daniel is mute due to various contributing factors. All will be explained sooner or later. Probably. This is my first fic (yay!), so please be kind, but I welcome concrit!
This particular piece is a series of one-shots from early in the series meant to set up the dynamics of SG-1. I have several longer stories in the works, although I can't guarantee that I will post with regularity, and for that I apologize in advance.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.

"Give every man thy ear but few thy voice" –Polonius, Hamlet Act I Scene 3.

Stargate (1994 feature film)

Daniel gaped at the metal contraption that had been placed in front of him and O'Neill. All in all, he was having a pretty surreal week, but for some reason this took the cake.

/A bomb?/ he signed. /Why did you bring a bomb?/ Daniel knew O'Neill wouldn't understand him, but sometimes he signed his thoughts anyway, an old habit.

"Um… yeah."

Well, thanks, Daniel thought. That was enlightening. Wait. /Did you understand me? Do you know ASL?/

"Yeah, I had a cousin who was Deaf," O'Neill mumbled, trying not to attract the attention of the living statue in front of them.

/And you're just telling me now? I didn't have to write everything down? …/ Daniel was speechless- well, more so than usual. Really, why would someone do that?

"Look, can we talk about this later, maybe when we're not about to be killed?" Jack hissed through his teeth. The statue-person was approaching them, but Jack's attention was drawn by the creepy children who kept staring at them. Damn, how old were they?

Then everything—except the bomb, thankfully—blew up in their faces. They never really got back to that conversation, what with Daniel's death and resurrection and the rebellion they ended up inciting. But Jack noticed that Daniel was much more comfortable when he could sign instead of writing out his every thought on that small notepad. After his actions outside the pyramid, the rest of Jack's team had begun to respect him as well, further setting him at ease.

Jack was a little disappointed when Daniel chose to stay on Abydos, but it seemed like he had a pretty sweet deal here. The locals thought they were heroes and he had a wife at whom he was looking like she was a cold beer on a hot day. Seeing the two of them so happy together made Jack long for home and Sara. He knew he had to fix things between them and, though Charlie's death would probably always hurt like his heart had been ripped from his chest, they could only move forward. As Jack's grandmother used to say, "Life is for the living." And who knows? Maybe he would see Daniel again, in this life or the next.