Spoilers for "The Curse"
One Month Later
"He's dead," Daniel says unceremoniously as he enters the infirmary. His wife frantically tries to figure out the 'he' that Daniel could be referring to. If it were anyone involved with the Stargate program, she would know about it. But to be honest, her husband didn't exactly know that many people who were not a part of the Stargate program.
"Who?" she asks, taking a step toward him.
"Dr. Jordon."
"Oh, Daniel, I'm so sorry, what happened?" from what she remembered of the time that she met the man, he was not of the age where his death could be attributed to natural causes.
"I'm not sure. I only found out about it because Jack was reading one of the ridiculous tabloids that Teal'c likes so much. The story claimed it was the curse of Osiris."
"We're going to the funeral, right?" she asks.
Daniel pushes up his glasses, "Well, I'm going to go, but you don't have to if you don't want to."
Janet's eyebrows shot up, "You don't want me to go?"
"No, of course I want you to be here. I just didn't know if you wanted to be away from work and the kids for that long."
"I think we should bring the kids along," Janet says.
"Isn't William too little for a trip like that?"
"I thought you were going to let the doctor in the family worry about things like that," she reminds him.
-0-0-0-
The setting sun gleams off the tombstones in the graveyard as the funeral wraps up. It also shines in the bright blond tangle of hair of a very beautiful women. As soon as the service is over, she walks up to Daniel.
"Daniel, it is good to see you again," she says.
"Sarah," Daniel says simply.
Janet looks between the two of them silently a couple of times. Cassie looks between the two of them a few times as well. Then Janet puts out her hand, and says, "It's nice to meet you."
"Oh, right. Janet, this is Sarah," Daniel says quickly, looking at his wife.
"I inferred," Janet says slowly.
"I'm having a bit more trouble inferring your name," Sarah says with a smile.
"I'm his wife, Janet," she says.
Sarah snorts, "Janet Jackson."
"Yeah, I didn't take his name for exactly this reason," Janet says.
"Would you mind if I borrowed Daniel for a bit? To talk about old times and such?" Sarah says sweetly.
"I think the children would love to go along for a little walk," Janet says with a coy smile.
Cassie is getting as protective of her father as Janet is. She puts her hand in Daniel's and looks up at him with her best impression of doe eyes.
"Right, I just thought you might have wanted to shield your daughter from talking about death, but I'm sure you know best," Sarah says condescendingly.
"I saw my whole village die, I'm used to death," Cassie says flippantly.
Sarah blinks in show, not knowing what to do with that comment. Daniel gives Cassie's hand a squeeze in his. He knows that she is just trying to freak out adults. He did that himself sometimes when he was her age.
"So what exactly did happen to Dr. Jordon?" Daniel asks Sarah.
"The police said that there was a slow gas leak in the lab, and something must have caused a spark, the whole place went up, he was killed instantly," Sarah says, "We would have called you, but nobody knew where to find you," she says.
"That's… that's okay," he says. Maybe he should have called Sarah up, and left her his phone number, but he couldn't imagine this conversation going well. He couldn't imagine a way to answer the questions that Sarah would have in a way that she would believe.
"So what have you been up to in the last four years?"
"Five years, and I've been… busy."
"Really? I've looked for signs of you out on the fringes. There's been no papers, no research projects. It's like you fell off the face of the earth."
"Daddy does really important things," Cassie informs her proudly.
"Important things like saving you," Daniel says, smiling down at the teenager, who is acting more like a child today, even though he can't quite place the reason.
"I was never quite sure why you left," Sarah says, "You showed great promise."
"I was the laughing stock of the archeological community; I didn't think that I would be welcome."
"Are you joking? Even after everything that happened, Dr. Jordan never thought any less of you. You were his best student. He kept hoping that you'd find proof. Something to shut everyone up."
"No, he thought I was nuts," Daniel said softly. Even his own grandfather, the only family that he had, thought he was nuts, so why wouldn't his mentor? He could give the proof, if nothing was classified. But he's been in the Air Force long enough to know that everything is always going to be classified, that he's never going to be able to let anyone know about the wonders of the universe that he's discovered.
"You're a genius," Janet pipes up.
At least this family doesn't think he's nut. Well, maybe Will will, they haven't exactly had the discussion yet if they're going to let the little boy in on the secrets of the universe. Cassie knows, because she lived offworld. The O'Neill children know varying varieties of the truth, but telling their baby would technically be breaking the law.
Unless Janet did it, and then it wouldn't be so much a breaking of the law as a court-martial-able offense.
"I have to admit. I thought you didn't come back because of me," Sarah says.
Daniel looks eyes with his wife while he says, "No. No, that's not it."
"We could have ended it better than we did," Sarah says in a voice that is much too sultry for Daniel's family's tastes.
"Maybe. The truth is, I got caught up in something… incredible," he says, letting his eyes fall on his wife and children, and let the double meaning flow through them.
"You found something, didn't you? Something that supports your theory? Tell me. Come on," Sarah says.
"That would be classified," Janet says.
"But he can still tell me," Sarah says in a sultry voice.
"Okay. Let's just say… that what the world knows about ancient Egypt barely scratches the surface. The truth is more incredible than any of us ever imagined," he says with a smile.
"I want to show you something back at the lab," Sarah says.
"That sounds great," Janet says happily.
"Oh, this is some very technical material. Not the sort of thing a layperson and a child would be interested in," Sarah says dismissively.
"Actually, I love to see what Daddy is working on," Cassie says.
Daniel gives her a surprised look. She's never called him 'Daddy' before. She's called him Dad plenty of times, but 'Daddy' is a new one.
"And there is nothing that I love more than Ancient Egyptian artifacts, our house is full of them," Janet adds cheerfully.
"Ok, I guess you can come along," Sarah says, with disappointment clear on her face.
-0-0-0-
"Something's missing," Sarah says.
"Are you sure?" Daniel asks.
"Positive. A gold amulet. Daniel, I've got to find it," she says.
"Ok, I'll go talk to the curator."
Cassie is sitting in the corner, reading, after having touched all of the museum-quality pieces with the reverence that could only come from an archeologist's daughter. William begins to fuss. Janet juggles him around, and sits down to nurse with a blanket covering herself.
"I have to admit that I was surprised to see Daniel with two kids. I never thought of him as the domestic type."
Janet smiles, secure in the knowledge that she knows her husband better than this overconfident women before her, "Daniel really wanted kids."
"I'm sure," Sarah says in a way that clearly implies she doesn't believe it.
"When I met him he was terrified that he couldn't have kids. He tried with his first wife. In fact, I think Daniel's pretty much been trying to become a father since the day the two of you broke up." Janet doesn't say that the reason he wasn't domestic when he was with Sarah was because of her, but it's well and completely applied.
"I wonder if he knew that he had to give up being an archeologist in order to do it," Sarah says with equal bite.
Janet is about to argue with her, to tell her that Daniel didn't give up anything to be a father.
But he did, he gave up everything to be a husband at least, but not a husband to her.
And then, he gave up being an archeologist, anthropologist, linguist, and everything else he'd gone to school for years and years for. He hadn't given that up for her, or his children. But he gave that up for the Stargate.
"He's doing something amazing."
"Right, he's military," Sarah says with sarcasm.
Janet laughs, "He may be a consultant for the military, but I wouldn't exactly call him military."
"So he's a translator," Sarah says, shaking her head, "He could be so much more."
"He is so much more than a translator," Janet says.
-0-0-0-
"Janet, there is something decidedly Ra-like going on here," Daniel says cryptically as soon as he returns to Dr. Jordon's office a few hours later.
"These artifacts are from Osiris and Isis," Sarah corrects.
"I know, and I'm going to have to borrow the Isis jar and take it back to my lab for some more research."
"And where exactly would this lab be?" Sarah asks with a quirked eyebrow.
Daniel glances at his wife, not quite sure if this is the sort of thing that he should share. She gives him a nod.
"Cheyanne Mountain."
"I don't understand what the military would want with an ancient artifact," she says with a sigh.
Two Days Later
"Cassie, sweetie, I'm going to be going back to Chicago for a couple of days, you be good for your mother," Daniel says giving his daughter a hug.
"Please take me with you," she says, wrapping herself around her father.
"Cassie, before, it was mostly over a weekend, and you only missed a day of school. I don't know how long I'm going to be gone for for sure, and I don't want you to miss too much school."
"Then Mom should go with you," Cassie says decisively.
"Babies shouldn't travel that much, and your mother has to stay with Will as long as she is breastfeeding."
"I don't want you to go see Sarah without mom there," Cassie says with a frantic look in her eye.
Daniel is suddenly glad that he planned on leaving for the airport an hour early; this allows him to have enough time to have this conversation with his daughter.
He moves over to the couch, and pulls his daughter down on his lap. "Honey, I would never cheat on your mother."
"But you used to date Sarah, didn't you?"
"I did," Daniel says with a nod of his head, "But that doesn't mean that I still love her. Your mother is the only woman that I love, besides, of course, my kids," he says, tickling her gently.
"But if you don't love her, and you know that she still loves you, why are you going to be around her?" Cassie asks nervously.
"Because I need another look at the artifacts in the lab," he says.
He can see that Cassie looks unconvinced, and knows that he's not going to get out of the conversation without him being afraid of something. His only choice is whether or not he wants his daughter to be more afraid of him leaving her family, or of a Goa'uld.
"Honey, there is a Goa'uld on the loose, and I have to stop it. You're going to have to trust that I am not going to let anything happen between us. I care way too much about your mother to let that happen. I also care way too much about you and your brother to risk my marriage. This is all about business."
Cassie considers for a minute, "Ok, but you've got to be mean to her."
"Honey, I may not like her anymore, but that doesn't mean that I have to be mean."
"But you do have to be meaner to her. It's like in 'Into the Woods', when Red Riding Hood says that 'nice is different than good'," she says, referencing her current favorite musical.
He tilts his head at her, and says, "When did you get to be the wise one in the family?"
She smiles back and him, and leans over to kiss his cheek.
"I'm always going to be there for you, kiddo," he assures her. In his time as a foster child, he saw enough traumatized kids to know that her acting more childlike is a reaction to deep-seated fears.
Cassie smiles at him, "Have fun."
And Daniel knows that he made the right choice when he told Cassie about the Goa'uld. They have made this little girl feel so safe that she isn't alarmed that her father is chasing a Goa'uld.
Three Days Later
Janet had been married to Daniel for months before she realized that the man had nightmares.
I mean, she should have known. He'd certainly had enough trauma in his life to supply nightmares for a thousand years.
Now, whenever his body goes tense with the waking from a nightmare, she wakes up.
"You ok?" she asks softly.
"Yeah," he says, but she knows that that doesn't mean anything. He always says yes.
"Sarah?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"It's ok, to be sad that she's a Goa'uld, Daniel. You were in a relationship with her. This is just like Sha're, you're allowed to feel bad about it."
"I'm more selfish than that," he says slowly.
"You're anything but selfish," she says slowly rubbing his arm.
"She knew I was right. For once, one of my colleagues actually knew that all of my theories were right. And then…" he stops.
Janet looks down.
"See? Selfish! I came up with a brilliant idea. I was called crazy for coming up with a brilliant idea. And I still want people to recognize my theory!"
"Someday, they will," Janet says.
He smiles at her, "Cassie was worried I was going to go off with Sarah," he says.
Janet stares at him.
"There wasn't a chance in hell," he tells her.
She smiles at him, and he doesn't miss the relief in her face.
"You're all I need," he tells her.
"Dido."
Note: I felt like I had to make Sarah and Janet have a super-catty thing go on here. Usually, I don't have women do these things, because in my experience they just don't. But Sarah and Janet are both pretty territorial from what we see. And honestly, who wouldn't fight over Daniel. (I know that I would.)