DISCLAIMER: I do not own any Stargate characters, ideas or themes. They all belong to MGM. I'm just playing with them a little.
Summary: Every possibility, every choice I had ever made, even choices I hadn't, led to an entirely different life until I could no longer tell reality from its alternates.
Rating: T
Spoilers: Every which way from Sunday. The entire Stargate franchise is open season. Can't really warn you cuz that would ruin the surprise, now wouldn't it.
Author's Note: From here on out, things get a bit crazy and sad. So be ready...
Title: The Many Paths of Daniel Jackson
By: Every Me Every You
Chapter 5: Awareness
It was my fault. I had been the one to want the aerial survey and now I was staring down at a badly wounded man, Airman Simon Wells, struggling to do anything I could to make him more comfortable despite how bad things looked.
Janet was knelt down beside me, treating the wounds and trying to offer some semblance of comfort in the face of the racket going on around us.
"Okay, you're gonna be fine," I assured as Janet worked.
"That son of a bitch! He came out of nowhere! He shot me in the back," Wells cried out. I needed to distract him from that train of thought quickly.
"Just talk about something else right now, Simon. Uh, what's going on at home right now?" I asked, anxiously stealing glances at Janet to see her diligent concentration on the man's injuries. If anybody could save him…
"Uh, my…wife…is pregnant," Wells announced.
My God, really? I felt my drive to get the man home go up even higher. Something about leaving a child without a father really kicked me in the gut. Not surprising, considering my own past. "Yeah, that your…that your first?" I wanted to help as much as possible, but I wasn't sure if there was anything I could really do. I felt more like I was in the way.
He nodded at me, trying to hide his pain.
"Congratulations," I said. I truly couldn't help but identify with the child.
Wells winced, crying out as Janet examined his wound. I was just thinking how bad this looked, but Janet shot me a reassuring gaze and then shot one at Wells.
"That's good, at least you felt that."
Just then my radio crackled to life. "Colonel O'Neill, our position is being compromised! We're not going to be able to hold the Gate for long!"
I looked to Janet, and she keyed her radio, shaking her head. "Colonel, I'm gonna need more time to stabilize this patient. He can't be moved yet!"
"Go without me! Leave me!" Wells pleaded. There was no way. Nobody got left behind. Janet and I both knew that. We would carry him home even if he was dead. Either way, he was making his way back.
"Nobody is going anywhere," Janet told him gently.
"I can't believe I'm not gonna see my son," Wells whimpered. He was panicking and I needed to find a way to keep him calm so Janet could do her job as quickly as possible.
"Okay. Just stay focused. Stay focused. Y-y-you know it's a boy you're gonna have, right?"
He nodded, then groaned in pain. "Tell me the truth. I'm not gonna make it, right?"
"You're gonna be fine," I tried again, taking the IV bag Janet was handing me and holding it up.
"Doctor Jackson? Please-please-please, just let me just tell my wife—Let me tell my wife that—" Wells cried out, becoming more and more agitated by the second. I looked at Janet and immediately knew that she was thinking what I was thinking. I nodded to her. I was going to allow him to tell his wife for himself and I explained that to him as I handed Janet the IV bag, which she slung over her shoulder and dug into my backpack, pulling out the camera I used to record my archeological findings.
The minute the camera was on him, Wells began to cry. I wasn't having such an easy time myself. My mind kept flashing with images of Sha're and I laying on the ground inside of a tent as she used her final words to tell me she loved me.
"I'm so sorry about this. Ah! I love you so much…God, I-I just-I just wanted…" Wells began, but then something Janet did to help stabilize him through Wells into further pain and he began to scream at me. "Oh God! God! Shut it off! Shut it off! I don't want her to see me die! Please! God!"
Janet leaned over Wells, brushing his hair away from his face and spoke gently but forcefully to him as the sounds of a firefight raged around them. "Simon. Simon! Look at me! You are not going to die, okay? I did not come all the way out here for nothing. Now, I've stemmed the bleeding. We're going to get you on a stretcher. We're going to get you home with your family in no time, okay? Now you hang in there, Airman!"
As she spoke, I could see Wells' fears begin to quell. Janet was good at that – at making you feel calm and cared for when you were injured and scared. She was not only an amazing doctor, but she was a damn good friend to have. When she cared for you, she made it her personal mission to keep you safe, sound and sane no matter what you had been through.
I admired and loved her. And that's why, when I happened to spot a Jaffa standing at the ready, with his staff weapon poised to shoot the good doctor, I jumped in her way, shoving her out of the path of the staff blast.
As I made the decisive motion, I knew that I was tipping the cosmic scales, paying back for all of my failures, my failures to my team, to Sha're, to Oma. I was making a split second decision to save a life that would undoubtedly go on to save many more lives – certainly more lives than I ever could.
The pain of the blast was the last thing I felt before death took hold.
My eyelids fluttered open only to slam shut again at the site of the bright lights hanging over my head. I heard movement to the right of me and could see the light dimming behind my eyelids.
"Sorry Daniel," Sam's voice came to me through the haze and din of my last vision. "I didn't realize the lights would bother you and I couldn't see my book."
I opened my eyes and turned to look at her with a slight smile.
"I didn't expect you to be awake so soon," she explained, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.
Something was wrong. And it wasn't just her expression that told me so. Her hair was much shorter and much lighter than it had been earlier today. Much more like it had been in the past.
I began to panic. How long had I been out cold this time that she had taken the time to get a cut and color?
"Um…what landed me in here?" I asked, as my other concern occurred to me. When I had fallen asleep, I had been in the lab on the couch. Now I was back in the infirmary.
Sam looked startled by the question as she settled back into the chair she had brought to my bedside. "What do you mean, Daniel?" Her eyes narrowed. "What is the last thing you remember?"
"I remember going to sleep on your couch after talking to Vala and then I had another vision and then I woke up here," I explained. I shrugged, my body suddenly erupting in pain with the action. This was the moment I was sure something was wrong. I was not this hurt before I fell asleep.
"What?" Sam glared at me. "God, I was afraid of this." She jumped to her feet and rushed to the intercom. "Please page Dr. Frasier to the infirmary."
Ok. Now I was freaked out.
"Dr. Frasier?" I forced myself to sit up in my bed despite the pain that shot through my insides as I did. "Is she okay? Is it the staff blast I'm being treated for?"
I couldn't straighten things out in my head. The last things I remembered before becoming unconscious were too varied. I could swear I had died taking a staff blast for Janet and at Vala's hands…I could swear I had just fallen asleep on the couch in Sam's lab.
Sam dropped back onto the chair, running her hands through her short blonde hair and scrubbed her hands over her face before looking back up at me. "Daniel, you were exposed to radiation on Kelowna. A deadly dose of radiation. Do you remember that?"
"Of course I do," I grumbled. "I mean, how could I forget? But that was years ago?"
Sam sighed. "Daniel, what are you talking about? That was a couple of days ago. Who is Vala? Why do you think you're here?"
"I'm sorry," I played along, trying to be sure what was going on here. This must be another one of my visions. But I couldn't remember my visions when I was in one of them. So just what in the hell was going on here?
I shook my head as though trying to clear the cobwebs and used my memory of the event. "I got a little confused. Had some really weird dreams. But I don't remember much after being unconscious here, now that I think about. What happened?"
Sam heaved a deep sigh of relief, taking a hand and smoothing it over my forehead, which felt alarmingly raw. "My father healed you using the Goa'uld healing device. You were pretty close to dying, but he healed you as well as he could. It took a lot out of him. He promised he'd be back to try again, but I'm afraid he didn't heal you completely. I don't know how long your better condition will last or if it even will. We have to wait and see."
A deep dread spread through my heart. This was exactly what I hadn't wanted. This was why I had taken Oma's path. I wanted death or ascension but certainly not this in-between "wait and see" situation.
I took a deep breath and it rattled through my lungs followed by excruciating pain. "Oh damn, Sam!" I whimpered, losing the battle where I was trying to sound like I was fine. "I need some more pain medication!"
Thankfully, Janet rushed into the room with a vial in hand, ready to administer some. "It's okay Daniel," she soothed as she injected a sedative into my IV. "You're going to feel much better in a few minutes, I promise."
As I stared up at her and Sam's faces, the fuzziness that was beginning to set in almost immediately from the sedative made their faces look almost angelic. All at once, I was sure I had made the right choice sacrificing myself for Janet. She was definitely more valuable than I was.
When I woke up, I was much more clear on everything that was going on. Janet believed that maybe my confusion was some sort of side effect of the medication they'd had me on. Either way, everything made a lot more sense when I had woken up.
The following two years went by in a slow moving drag of doctors visits, pain and anti-nausea medications, blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants, Jacob's healing device and consulting jobs at the SGC that were given more out of pity than out of real necessity, I was sure. But the Leukemia that had developed within days of my supposedly heroic efforts on Kelowna never went away. In the end, I had died surrounded by my family, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Janet and General Hammond, in the military hospital near the base.
I was 39 years old.
When my eyes flickered open again, everything was cloaked in dark, which was a refreshing change from constantly waking up to infirmary lighting. I looked around the room but I couldn't see a thing. My eyes hadn't adjusted to my surroundings as of yet and I was left, floating in confusion, unsure of whether or not this was a vision or reality.
"Jack? Sam? Vala?" I called out, just in time to hear a woman sigh beside me in the bed and the rustling of sheets.
Sam's couch didn't have sheets. So, vision then…
"Daniel?"
My eyes closed against the sound of the sweet, lyrical voice of my dead wife. Tears filled my eyes and spilled over onto my cheeks. This whole thing, from beginning to end, everything about these visions were pure torture. I just wanted to come back to the real world, where things were relatively quiet and peaceful and where I was simply waiting for the next tragedy to happen, rather than living through past ones or having the reality of what I lost thrown in my face.
A light went on in the room. My bedside lamp. The bedside lamp that had sat on the bedside table of an apartment that had been sold years ago when I had died. And yet, here I was sitting, bathed in the light of that lamp, looking into the wide, chocolate-brown eyes of my wife, who was staring at me in concern.
"Daniel, my love, why do you cry? Did you dream of bad things?"
I took a deep breath. "Yes Sha're. I dreamt of bad things for you and in turn, bad things for me."
She sat up a little more in bed, turning to face me and placing a gentle hand on my cheek. "You had the dream again? The one where the Tok'ra weren't able to save me after Teal'c shot me? The one where I died?"
My breath hitched in sharply. God, this was exactly like what Sha're had fed me through the ribbon device. Had that really ever been a possibility? I had never known. I had always thought it had just been a figment of my imagination.
"Yes. That's the one," I remarked, the sound coming through raspy and clouded by my tears.
"Well, I'm not dead, Daniel," she whispered, clearly disturbed by my reaction as I rubbed my eyes and the bridge of my nose as if it could make this all go away. "I'm right here."
She wrapped her arms around me and I shuddered at the feeling. I couldn't help how violently I reacted when I shoved her away. I just couldn't allow myself to believe it was real.
If I did, it would be too difficult for me to wake up.
"You're not real! You're not real! You're not real!" I shouted. I didn't even recognize my voice as it screamed. Sha're looked on in horror as I jumped to my feet and clapped my hands over my ears to tune out her shouts.
Suddenly, one of the mysteries surrounding the artifact became clear in my mind.
I only realized it as I covered my ears, slammed my eyes shot and continuously shouted, "You're not real!" until I bolted up from the couch and dove off, tumbling to my feet, still in the same pose, still screaming my mantra.
"Daniel!" Vala yelled, grabbing my face in both of her hands and shaking me a little until my eyes had opened and I was focused fully on her. Her raven black hair, her slate grey eyes, her furrowed brow, her full lips.
I dropped my hands from my ears and let out a harsh, ragged sob.
My eyes left hers for just long enough to make out Sam, Jack, Teal'c and Mitchell perched around the lab table in front of several Chinese food containers through my impaired vision. My eyes returned to hers then, and I sniffled sharply.
"Where are my glasses?"
"What?" Vala asked, clearly thrown off by my question. "Um, here." She said, pulling my glasses from where they hung off of the front of her shirt and placing them on my face gently. "Daniel? What the hell just happened? Why did you wake up that way? Who isn't real?"
I stared at the desperation in her eyes and suddenly realized I couldn't look at her with the memory of Sha're so fresh in my mind.
I turned towards the rest of the group. Every one of them regarded me with worry.
"Daniel, what happened?" Vala tried again.
I wiped at my eyes and turned back to the table where the artifact rested, taking off towards it and ignoring her question.
"Daniel?" Jack asked, examining me.
I held onto the table, propping myself up against it. "I just became aware of my visions during my visions. I know I'm there. I just got a healthy dosage of the day Janet died, dying of cancer after not ascending after Kelowna, and, hey Sha're being alive even knowing it was all fake. All a vision."
"Damn," Mitchell muttered. "Just…damn."
Silence permeated the room. I settled down in my seat and looked at the artifact. Throwing myself into my work had always been the best therapy for me. There was no reason why it couldn't help now.
"Ok," Vala breathed, "someone's going to have to explain what half of that just meant."
"No," I sighed. "No. No, you won't. I just need to get back to work. I just need to figure this out so I can turn this off now."
"Alright Daniel," Sam comforted, pulling her chair up closer to the artifact. "Let's get to work now."
We settled in and just as I had begun to translate, Vala interrupted. As always. Only now it was much less annoying.
"I'll give you some of the beef and broccoli that was ordered for you but claimed by me if you tell me what has you so worked up."
I looked at her, letting out yet another deep sigh. "I figured it out. These visions I'm having, they are why the 155 men in the temple killed themselves. The effects of the device drove them insane. And if I don't stop them, the visions, I'm going to lose my mind as well."
Teal'c, Mitchell and Jack stopped eating. Sam looked up from her work. All eyes were on me. And then, thank God, Vala broke the tension with her incredibly useful irreverence.
"Well then, we better get to work. Because I came here for a reason and I'll be damned if you're going to hang yourself from the roof of a temple under my watch."
I'd be damned if I was going to hang myself from the roof of a temple. But if I didn't figure out the answer to this puzzle soon, the balcony of my apartment was looking like an idea I may be revisiting sooner rather than later. And I wanted to try to avoid that.
TBC...still a few chapters left...but we're building to an ending. About halfway through.