One Month Later
Shelby runs into the infirmary, "Daniel's been exposed to radiation!" she exclaims.
"Well, don't you get near him!" Janet instructs her pregnant nurse as she runs out of the room. "Let's get him scrubbed down." Everything in her wants to take her husband into her arms, but she knows that that would end badly. She knows that that would just be putting herself in danger, and wouldn't help her husband. "Do we know what kind and how much?"
"It was a device housing an unstable radioactive variation of naquadah. We think his right hand was exposed to the equivalent of over eight to nine grays of neutron radiation resulting from direct contact. Full body exposure of over seven," Sam says.
"Oh, my God," Janet says. Her knees give way, and all she can hear in her head is the words, 'fatal, fatal, fatal,' like drum parade in her head.
Jack catches her before she goes down.
Hammond looks at Carter, knowing he's not going to get an explanation from the man's wife here.
"It's a lethal dose, sir," Sam says.
-0-0-0-
"I have to go take care of him," Janet says from her seat in her office.
"You can just sit here, there is nothing you can do for him right now," O'Neill says in an attempt to calm her down.
"I'm not a wilting flower. My husband is in there, dying. And I might not be able to figure out what to do to save him right now, but I sure as hell know that if I do nothing to save him I'm going to end up with a dead husband. And if that is going to happen I'm at least going to go and spend the last couple of hours with him."
Jack searches her eyes, and knows that he's not going to be able to stop her. So he doesn't try.
"Daniel," she says, walking over to her husband. She takes his hand now, because she can, "I've got a lot of people looking for a way to solve this."
He shakes his head, "Janet, we don't go running to our offworld allies every time an individual's life is at stake. And don't go telling me that this is any different, because my life is no more valuable than anybody else's."
"You're wrong. You matter more to me, and the kids."
"Well, everyone matters more to someone."
"What happened, Daniel?" she asks, because their oldest argument is making her sad right now.
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does, they said you tried to sabotage them. That doesn't sound like you."
"There was an accident. I guess the scientists figured the government would hold them responsible. I guess they figured it was easier to blame me," he says.
"Well, we're not going to let them get away with this."
"There really isn't much that we can do about this."
"Yes, there is," Janet says firmly.
"If they really want to blame me, denying it isn't going to change anything. Ten thousand years ago, a Goa'uld tried the same experiments that they're trying, and he nearly blew the entire planet to bits. I tried telling them that, they wouldn't listen. They're gonna build that bomb and nothing we say is gonna stop them," Daniel says.
Janet bite her lip, and debates between trying to convince her husband that everything that is going to be ok, and doing what her children need. She decides, as they always do, to go with what the children need. "I want to bring the kids here to say goodbye."
"Do it before you have to wrap me up like a mummy," Daniel says.
Tears start to fall down Janet's face, "I'm sorry," she says, trying to walk out of the room.
He catches her hand, "Janet, I've got to tell you something. I love you with my whole heart. And I want you to be happy."
Janet makes a token effort to pull away, but Daniel's hand holds her firm.
"Listen to me. If I die, I want you to be happy. Sha're said that to me before she died, and…"
"Daniel," Janet says softly.
"Promise me that you'll move on as soon as you feel ready to move on."
"And what if I never do?"
"Then that's ok too," he says, looking at her kindly.
"I love you," he says again.
"I love you, too," she says.
"You'd better get the kids here soon," he reminds her.
-0-0-0-
"Hi, Dad," Olivia says softly.
"Come here," he says, holding out his hands to her. The girl climbs up onto the bed with her, and Will follows suit.
"Mom said you are going to die, but that's not true, is it, Dad?" Olivia asks.
He pulls his kids closer to him, "I'm sorry, honey; it doesn't look good. Cass, can you come nearer, please?"
"I don't want to," she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot by the door.
"Ok, well, I want you to listen to some things. I love you guys so much, and I am so proud of you. And I am unbelievably sad that I am not going to see you grow up. But I know that you guys are going to be truly amazing. And I want you to never forget that I loved you with my whole heart."
He hears a sniffle from Cassie.
"Honey, come get a hug."
"It's not fair!" she exclaims.
"I know, this sucks."
"No, I already lost parents, Daniel! And then you choose to go play the freaking hero! Did you even think about what it would be like for us?" Cassie rants.
"I didn't want to die. I still don't. But I had to do the right thing. If I hadn't, a lot more people would have ended up dead."
"So?" Cassie asks.
"So?" Olivia says incredulously. "You don't seriously mean that!"
"I do! He's our dad, and we should matter more to him than a bunch of people that he's never even met," Cassie rants.
"I do love you more. Cassie, if it were a choice between you and them, I would have picked you," he says, locking eyes with her.
"I've already lost enough," Cassie says.
"I know it," he says.
"Now shut up, because this is the last time that Daddy gets to talk to us," Olivia says.
Daniel starts to cry.
"I'm sorry," Olivia says.
"It's not your fault. And it's ok to cry, and to be angry, and to feel whatever you are going to feel. I want you to be able to grieve however you need to. And I will love you no matter what."
"Even from heaven," Olivia asks.
"Oh, there is nothing in this world or the next that could stop me from loving you," he says. "Listen, I want you to take care of each other. It's going to be a rough for a little bit. I want you to help your mother with the chores. And be extra-nice to each other."
"Miss 'ou," Will says.
"I'm going to miss you too," Daniel says giving him a kiss.
-0-0-0-
"Lightning flashes, sparks shower, in one blink of your eyes you have missed seeing," the face says.
"Right. What did you mean when you said my fate is in my hands?" he says, referring to another dream-soaked memory that he had.
"When the mind is enlightened, the spirit is freed and the body matters not," Oma says.
"You're talking about ascension, right? Rising to a different plane of existence. Are you saying that I could do that? Become like you?" he asks.
"You must complete the journey you began at Kheb. Only then will you be able to find your way to the Great Path," she says.
"What do I do?" he asks. He isn't sure that he wants this, but he knows for a fact that he doesn't want to die.
"Release your burden," she says.
"Okay, well, consider it released. What's Step Two?" Daniel says, with a falsely cavalier voice.
"A tall man cannot hide in the short grass."
Well, Daniel is a tall man, and he knows that he isn't getting away with anything, "You know, I really, I don't have time for one of these kind of conversations."
"One cannot reach enlightenment by running from death."
"Tell me what to do," he insists even though he is pretty sure that he won't be able to hide his true feelings from her.
"Many roads lead to the Great Path. Only the willing will find their way," she sooths.
"Okay, well, I'm willing. So let's go. I mean, you know, do your thing. Glow me," he says quickly.
"The river tells no lies, though standing on the shore, the dishonest man still hears them," Oma says with an accusation in his voice.
"Right. I didn't think it was gonna be that easy," he says with a roll of his eyes.
Daniel finishes the flashback of his actions with the bomb, and turns to Oma to say, "Millions could still die." He really wishes that the ascended being would stop this. They had so much power, why didn't they do anything with it?
"The future is never certain. You saved many without regard for your own life," she says, sounding impressed.
"I could have destroyed the device," he says with regret. He doesn't really want to die. But if he does, he at least wants to make sure that his life is going to mean something.
"You believe your journey is still not over."
"Yeah, well, I have some kids who kind of rely on me. It's not like I can just go flitting off to the next adventure. Especially not when I'm not entirely sure what the point of my journey so far has been. I mean, if this is about being honest with yourself, I believe my entire life has been a failure."
"Why do you feel you have failed on your journey? You opened the Stargate for your world," Oma asks.
"I cracked the code; a lot of other people made it work," he says.
"The very next thing you did was help free the people of Abydos from evil."
"Well, it's not like that turned out so well. I couldn't leave it alone. I was the one that unburied the 'Gate. What happened to her was my fault. I couldn't save Sha're. Every Goa'uld I helped eliminate, another one took its place. Maybe I did something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything."
"These tasks of which you speak were great challenges. Perhaps they were even impossible to achieve."
"Does that absolve me?"
"You feel your journey must continue until you have found redemption for these failures?"
"All I'm thinking about is the fact that my kids are going to grow up without a father, and I'm leaving Janet. Please. I don't like begging, but for them I will. Please don't let me die."
-0-0-0-
"Anyone can reach enlightenment. Anyone prepared to open their mind as you did when you first came to Kheb," Omma says to Daniel.
"They're trying to save me. They're healing me, I can feel it," Daniel tells her. He can feel the healing device, and the hope and prayers of his family binding him to this world, to this journey.
"Then your journey will continue as before," she says.
And then he feels pain. The unbelievable pain that Oma has been shielding him for a long time.
And he doesn't have any regrets.
"Janet," his voice sounds hoarse even in his own ears.
"Honey," she says in a terrified voice.
"I'm not going to die."
"Well of course not," she comforts.
He laughs, "No, this isn't some make-you-feel-better kind of crap. I'm really not going to die."
And he sounds like her husband.
"He's right," Jacob says as he looks at the light coming from the healing device.
And Janet flings herself over him, and starts to weep relief.
"Ah, my skin feels like it's on fire!" Daniel protests.
"I'm so sorry. I know better. I'm a doctor, you think I should at least be able to figure out not to inflict pain on someone who just about died of radiation sickness a few minutes ago."
"It's ok, pain is better than the nothingness," he tells her.
One Day Later
Daniel had been three when he'd seen his first mummy. They'd just moved from Greece to Egypt, and his parents stopped at the museum of Cairo and the Pyramids before they went to the dig.
The sarcophagus was half open, and Daniel can remember seeing a whole lot of gold, and cloth, and not being able to make sense of it.
"Daddy, what is that thing?" he'd asked.
Melborn had been lost in a translation, so it took a minute to answer. Three-year-old Daniel had patiently shifted from foot to foot waiting. And then his father had said, "Son, that's a person."
Daniel remembered being awed and confused by the comment. He'd thought there was a living and breathing person underneath all of that cloth. He'd thought it must be hard to sit as still as the man in the gold and cloth was sitting. He thought that it would be odd to have all these people walking around you look at you, and the things around you, while you just lay there and didn't say a word to him.
And now, now he was a mummy. And people were bustling around him, doing their jobs, and looking at him to check his vital signs. It was every bit as odd as he imagined it would be when he was a child.
But he isn't dead, and considering how close to death he was not that long ago, that is enough for him to be grateful for.
He hears his wife sit down next to him. They left him eye-holes, but he can't really see anything through them. So he has to rely on his other senses. And he smells his wife's shampoo over the disinfectant that all the nurses and doctors use on their hands.
"I came back for you," he tells her.
He can tell by the way that she jumps that she thought he was sleeping. "What do you mean?"
"I was kind of far-gone for a while there. In some sort of in-between place. Oma took me there; you remember Oma?"
He waits in silence for a second but his wife neither confirms or denies it. He figures she probably nodded her head, not realizing that he wouldn't be able to know she did it. He doesn't want to make her feel bad by bringing it up, so he just presses on. "Well, in this in-between place, she was offering me ascension. I didn't get all the details, but basically it sounded like…"
"You'd become like her," Janet breaks in.
"More or less."
"So you had the chance to be an all-powerful deity, and you gave it up for me? Daniel!" his wife scolds. "Don't you know that I love you as much as you love me? You told me that you wanted me to be happy after you died. Well, I want you to be happy too! Even if that means that you died."
He is unbelievably touched by what she's saying. But he knows that part of it is her ignorance. She's been blessed. The only deaths she's known are the easy kind, the kind where they are old, and ready, and slip away without protest. Except, of course, the deaths that she's seen in the infirmary. And even then, when Janet Fraiser goes up against death, the odds are that death is going to lose.
She doesn't understand the way that grief will change you, make you cold. That a part of you dies with the person, and that it can't be reborn again. Janet doesn't know what it is like to long for death yourself, even if you don't believe in an afterlife. To think that non-existence would be better than being alone. To wish you'd never been born, because the pain is too much.
She's strong, but he isn't sure she's that strong.
"I wouldn't have been all-powerful, and I came back for the kids as much as I did for you."
"Daniel, you're in pain," Janet says.
"Aren't you glad I choose to live?" he asks with a voice laced in accusation.
She pauses, "I am. I just worry… we won't be enough."
And Daniel thinks back to the day in the museum when he was only three years old. His father had told him how all the statues in the tomb were servants that were to be woken and wait on the king's ever need in the afterlife.
The idea of hundreds of little men running around alive had delighted Daniel. He'd asked if he could have just one to take home as a friend.
And his father had said, "They're priceless artifacts, Danny, not toys."
And little Danny had envied the mummy for one long second. Because he had so many friends, and Daniel had none, only two parents who were so often too busy to play with him.
And now, he was the mummy, and that's why he hadn't chosen death. He wasn't alone anymore.
"Janet, do you realize that this, I mean our family, it's the first time that I ever felt like I belonged? My whole life I've been searching for something to give me meaning, and I've found it. There is nothing else, nothing in the cosmos that would make me feel it more. I choose this, because I couldn't live without you anymore than you could live without me."
Janet makes a little gasping sound, and he desperately wants to hold her, but the wrapping is preventing him, so he does the next best thing. He says, "Oma tried to get me to say that I was amazing."
"Well, if omnipotence can't get you to crack, I might as well give up."
"Oma's got nothing on you, Janet. I am amazing," he says.
Janet's squeal attracts the attention of some of her nurses who are giving her very strange looks. "That's the most romantic thing he's ever said," she tells him.
"Oh, honey, he was talking 'bout himself, not you," one says with sympathy.
Janet stops trying to share the moment with anyone but her husband. She gets as close to touching him as she can without causing him pain, and says, "Yes, you are amazing."