disclaimer: I own nothing
Trigger Warnings: This story contains mentions/allusions to: self-harm, self-destructive behavior, drinking (beyond recreational), anxiety, depression, borderline eating disorder, PTSD, and suicide. Nothing explicit.
Author's Notes: I am not saying that I believe SG-1 did all this to cope, but it could realistically happen. No beta. This was written for Mental Health Awareness Month and posted on Armed Forces Day.
If you need mental health assistance, call: 866-903-3787 (National Mental Health Hotline)
Please enjoy and note the warnings.
As a team and individually, they had been through a lot.
Traumatic things. Horrible things. Things that most people would never have dreamed of, let alone go through multiple times in a small handful of years.
But that was what being on SG-1 meant. You saw the bad stuff. You lived the bad stuff. And you went out and did it again because it was your job, it was your duty. It was up to you to protect the planet. None of them wanted to think of what would happen if they weren't there. It may have been an arrogant way of thinking, but once you had saved the world a few times, you started to think that maybe you and your team were the only ones that could do it. That could make sure that the outcome was the one that you wanted.
At least, that was how Daniel saw it.
They didn't really talk about it. Oh, they talked. They were there for each other. But at the same time, they didn't talk about it. Not the really bad things. Because that was human nature, really. You didn't talk about the bad stuff in hoping that it would just go away. It never worked.
But they all tried. Daniel knew that they did. They were all cleared, psychologicaly, to be doing what they were doing. But they did the bare minimum. Sometimes, they even lied through their teeth. Daniel knew that he didn't do that so much. But he knew that Jack and Sam most definitely did. Teal'c wouldn't lie, exactly, but the Jaffa knew how to conceal information like his life depended on it.
They didn't talk.
That was the problem.
They had coping mechanisms.
Daniel knew that he had his own. He would bury himself in work for days and only come up for air if someone dragged him out of it. But that was a sort of passive coping mechanism. It wasn't always what he went with. Sometimes there were days where a dark cloud just seemed to press down on his soul, a soul that by no right, really should have still been existing in this body, on this planet.
Depression probably was a common side effect of dying and coming back and doing it all over again. Daniel had reasoned that out. He had reasoned that out with Fraiser, once. He hadn't talked to her about it again.
The rest of the team was always good at pulling him out of it. Reminding him why he wanted to be alive and why being alive -even if he shouldn't have been- was a good thing. He remembered that he loved them. Usually, that was good enough. They were always there for each other, even if they didn't ask for the extent of the problem and didn't always know it. Unless there was a danger, Daniel knew that they ignored it.
They ignored it when he needed to bury himself in work for days on end, until he was practically collapsing from sleep deprivation, because that meant that he didn't have to dream.
They ignored it when Jack drank an extra beer or two or decided to just dump a bottle into whatever it was he was cooking. He was never 'drunk' drunk and he didn't hurt himself with it. They all knocked back alcohol, except Teal'c. Just beacuse Jack did it a little more didn't mean that it was a problem.
They looked the other way when Sam refused a meal or threw up after one. It wasn't often and she was fit. She was always in top form. So what if she didn't eat sometimes, even when they wanted her to? She was a grown woman who was confident in herself. It couldn't have been what it looked like.
If Teal'c needed to kelno'reen for longer than he usually did, shutting them and the world out, what did it matter? What if he did it more often and didn't talk? It didn't matter. That was what Jaffa were supposed to do. They didn't need sleep and kelno'reen was important to their health, to their staying alive. Who were they to question if he did more or needed it more?
If they all sparred harder in the mountain's gym than they really should have and walked away with aches and bruises and cuts, that was fine. Just blowing off some steam. Everyone did it. They didn't hurt anyone. If anything, they only hurt themselves. And that was fine.
Daniel often wondered when they had all stopped worrying about self destructive behavior and accepted it as a fact of life. Part of the routine.
They managed to keep it controlled. They didn't do enough for it to be a concern. No one thought that they needed to be yanked off the mission list or needed to be sent to the shrink. If neither of those two things happened, they were fine.
Even when Daniel kept a cut open for over a week longer than it should have been after cutting it on a planet. When Sam's forearms bore deep indentations from her fingernails, ones that bruised. When Jack and Teal'c had bruised knuckles from sparring with each other a little too hard.
It was fine.
That was what they told themselves. What Daniel, even though he felt like he was sometimes the keeper for the team, accepted.
Even though he and Teal'c weren't officially part of the Air Force, they were military. They fought. They hurt. They bled. They died. It was all in a day's work. What they saw, that was fine. That was normal. What they did...they'd had no choice. It was what had had to be done. Good job, SG-1. You saved people. You saved a planet. You saved your planet. The military admires your bravery and how far you'll go to do what needs to be done.
Daniel often found himself wondering what would happen the day they went too far. The day they went too far for it rest easy on the soul. The day their souls were just shreds clinging inside the outline of a human body.
What would happen the day he didn't stop working so that he could sleep? What would happen the day Jack's 'one more' became one too many? What would happen the day that Sam finally stopped eating? What would happen the day that kelno'reen wasn't enough to keep Teal'c going?
He had turned these thoughts over and over inside his mind. He couldn't find an answer that was good. He knew that he should bring it up to the others. But that wasn't something that they did. If he brought it up, it was something that they were going to have to talk about. It was something that they were going to have to acknowledge. And that wasn't something that they did. What they did was keep an eye on each other's behavior and head it off before it became too bad. Too destructive.
And it wasn't all the time.
Daniel knew that they used that as an excuse. They didn't live their lives this way. It just happened, from time to time. After a hard mission. After something traumatic. After something that they'd had to do.
But just because it wasn't all the time, it didn't mean that it wasn't a problem.
They just kept pretending.
Pretending was another coping mechanism. Because if they pretended what their friends -the people that mattered most to them in any world- were doing wasn't bad, wasn't harmful, then they could pretend what what they were doing wasn't either.
It wasn't healthy, no matter how often it happened. Especially because Daniel knew that somewhere in the distance, there was a day where it wasn't going to be every now and then. There was a day where it was going to be every day. A day where he couldn't keep going. A day where Jack drank too much. A day where Sam ate too little. A day where Teal'c couldn't keep his symbiote alive.
It scared the hell out of him.
It scared Daniel because he knew that a few more missions where everything was too hard, too bad, they wouldn't come back. They implode separately and explode together.
They were soldiers. All of them, no matter what it said in front of their names. They had killed and been killed. They had saved and been saved. They had seen battle countless times. They had won and lost. They had lost friends. Others had given their lives for them.
No one talked about who was supposed to save the soldiers when the work was done.
No one talked about what to do when you had nightmares. Where your friend woke up drenched in a cold sweat beside you in the tent, but you pretended to be asleep because they wanted -needed- you to be asleep. Or when you heard, in the other tent, a breath that wasn't quite a sob, but carried more weight than one would have.
The nightmares were the least of their problems and Daniel found that laughable. Because if everything else had gone away, he would have been fine with them all having the nightmares they sometimes did.
Was it pathetic that was what he wanted? A day where the nightmares were the only problem? He wanted that because he knew that this was never going to go away. Not completely. Scars were left. But they could control how bad they were. They just...didn't.
Fraiser knew. At least, Daniel thought she had to have known. They were in control enough for their problems not to present in medical exams and files. But she was their friend and she spent time with them. They talked with her. And a few things she said, here and there, made it clear that sometimes she was worried.
Daniel knew that it didn't matter if they were okay most of the time. If they were laughing and joking and generally fine nine days out of every ten. The fact that, in that break down, one day existed where those horrible things happened, was bad. It meant that they weren't fine. Oh, most of the time they were. But there were times where they most definitely were not.
Where there most definitely was reason to be concerned. Where they made sure to drop by each other's homes, just in case. To make sure that person didn't go to far. To make sure that they got out of their own heads.
They took care of each other.
They just didn't take care of themselves.
Daniel idly thought about the irony of that. What was it that drove them to take better care of each other than themselves? What was it that drove them to believe the others were worth it, but they weren't?
He knew that for Jack, Teal'c, and Sam, it was the soldier thing. Soldiers were supposed to be fine. They weren't supposed to talk about this. This wasn't supposed to happen to them. When you signed up -or, in Teal'c's case, were born to it- they didn't tell you about what came after. What the things that being a soldier, protecting your country could do.
Of course, their situation was unique. Most people didn't go running through an alien gateway to other planets across the galaxy to explore and to defend Earth. They didn't fight the aliens that wanted to kill and/or enslave their world. They didn't die and were then revived through alien technology. Or took a jaunt they couldn't remember through the higher planes of existance.
He turned these thoughts over in his mind. He didn't think that they were broken, exactly. But there were definitely pieces of them that could be fixed. None of them wanted to die. Not anymore.
Daniel could still remember the day Jack had found him sitting on the edge of his balcony, going through withdrawl. Daniel remembered his own fear and horror at having done such a thing. He hadn't been ready to die. But his brain had decided that it might be a good idea. His body. He remembered how on that first mission, Jack hadn't intended to come back because of Charlie. But he knew that Jack didn't want to die anymore.
There were moments where you wanted to die, where you were being tortured. Where you were willing to give your life for something else. Suicide missions. But even with everything that they had been through and done, Daniel knew that none of them wanted to kill themselves.
So they weren't suicidal. They were just self destructive. It still wasn't good. Daniel knew that self destructive behavior was bad and often masking pain and emotions that people didn't know how to get through. Didn't know how to get help for. Because owning up to it meant you had to admit that something was wrong. You had to admit it and carry the shame of that with you. The shame that you weren't okay. That you needed the help.
He wondered when humans had decided that needing help and asking for it was a shameful thing.
He turned these things over and over in his mind. He could only think of one thing that he could do about it. The one thing that they didn't do.
Daniel stared at the ceiling in his bedroom. The irony of all this was that what had prompted him to start thinking about it was that he had finally slept after working himself into exhaustion. He had woken up very late, but that was okay. It was a day off. No where to go and no where to be. Which was why he had started thinking about it.
As if on cue, his cellphone rang. Daniel reached over and picked it up, hand bumping against his glasses as he grabbed it. He flipped it open.
"Hello?"
"Daniel. Where are you?" That was Jack.
"In bed."
"Well get your ass out and over here."
"Why would I be doing that?"
"Movie day. Remember?"
No, he hadn't actually. But he must have agreed to it, because Jack wouldn't have been calling him about it otherwise.
"Okay. I'm on my way."
Daniel hung up and ran his hands over his face. Then he grabbed his glasses and got out of bed.
He dressed and headed over. He hadn't eaten anything yet, but he knew that there would be food at Jack's. Jack always believed that their movie marathons should be accompanied by food and beer.
When he got there, Daniel let himself in. They were allowed to do that with each other's houses. At this point, it didn't matter, and he liked that they had the closeness that allowed them wander in and out of each other's homes more or less at will.
Stepping into the living room, he received greetings from the other three.
"Daniel!"
"Finally."
"Greetings, Daniel Jackson."
"Hey, guys."
Daniel trailed his gaze over them all. Everything was how he had expected. It was afternoon -which was acceptable considering that he had only gone to bed at about four in the morning- and there was a pizza box sitting on Jack's kitchen table. Beers and plates sat on the tables in the living room.
It looked normal. But if he looked closer, he could see the little signs.
Jack looked to be on his second beer, though he was clearly pacing himself. Sam had pizza on a plate in front of her, but it was untouched. She was picking at the label of her beer instead of drinking it. It was hard to tell with Teal'c, but Daniel could tell that he was tired.
"Don't just stand there, Daniel. Grab some food and make yourself at home. We can't start without you." Jack said, sounding slightly annoyed.
Daniel shook his head, taking a breath. He had to do it. It was a scary prospect, but one of them had to do it and he had a feeling that he was the one that was supposed to.
"Guys. We need to talk."
Author's Note: Uhh...too dark?
I didn't post on a Friday, mostly because I spent Friday thinking it was Thursday. The next chapters of 'What Makes a Mother' and 'Come Now, Little One...' will be up in the next few days.
Feedback is very much appreciated on this one.
Please review!