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sg1friendathon for the prompt: Daniel and Jack. Five things they never told anyone about their first trip through the gate.
Includes lots and lots of spoilers for Stargate: the Movie and some references to Shades of Grey and Meridian. ~1,850 words. Rated PG.
Left Unspoken
1.
Daniel, Jack thinks, deserves the respect that he's earned at the SGC these past few years.
It wasn't always easy for him, especially at the beginning. Jack remembers how angry General Hammond was when he first met Daniel, seeing him only as the civilian who got his people killed when Apophis struck. Jack needed to talk very fast in order to get Daniel onto that subsequent mission to Chulak.
By now, though, most of the military personnel have a lot of respect for Doctor Jackson: the man who opened the Stargate, who went on that first mission to Abydos and got the team back home, who figured out stellar drift and the Asgard and a thousand other cultural and archaeological details that help the SGC survive. Jack is glad, for Daniel's sake, because in the outside world of academia, Daniel's name is still vilified for ignoring conventional wisdom to seek out the actual truth. Daniel deserves to be admired for the things he gets right.
Of course, as Jack knows only too well, Daniel is also capable of being completely and spectacularly wrong.
But he doesn't tell anyone about his first experience with Daniel's mistaken assumptions. He never mentions Daniel's blithe assurances to General West that he would easily find the symbols to get them back from Abydos on the other side of the Gate, only to discover - much too late - that Ra banned reading and writing on Abydos, and there were no written records to uncover. He says nothing about Kawalsky being the one to finally discover the faded cartouche in the catacombs under Nagada with the carved symbols to Earth that lacked that crucial final chevron. Daniel did figure it out eventually, after all, with a little help from Skaara's excited doodles and an extra leap of intuition.
But it's something Jack always remembers: trust Daniel's instincts and knowledge. Respect his opinions. He's usually right.
But never forget that he's also sometimes wrong.
2.
"What happens after we die, Doctor Jackson?"
Daniel didn't sign up for the role of SGC's spiritual advisor; that task is better suited to the chaplain on Level 16, whose schedule is usually booked solid. With the explosive mix of the ordinary strain of military life combined with the challenging contradictions of alien contact, it's only natural for people to struggle with questions of doubt and faith. Still, despite the chaplain's dedicated staff, it often happens that the men and women who go through the Stargate, who personally experience its horrors and wonders and losses, try to seek answers from the guy who died and came back to life.
It's other civilians, for the most part, but there are also several military personnel who wander into his office, discreetly close the door, and hesitatingly ask him impossible questions.
"Is there life after death?"
"Is there a Creator out there?"
"How much does dying hurt?"
"Did you go to Heaven?"
Daniel can't really answer them, but he's a master at deflection and allowing his listeners to interpret his words to mean what they want to hear. He's not sure if he believes anything himself, but he admires those that find comfort in their faith and sees no reason to contradict them. If the Stargate has taught him anything, it's that they don't know all the answers, and probably never will.
Sometimes, when the questioner turns beet red and stares down at the floor, Daniel tries to reassure. "It's okay to wonder," he tells them, even as he admits that he remembers very little and doesn't have much to relate. "You're not the first one to ask." And he'll talk lightly about some of the questions he's been posed until the awkward moment passes.
But Daniel never, ever breathes a word about the very first person to ask him what happens after death. He never tells anyone about the night after their victory on Abydos, when Sha'uri went to attend a ceremony with the other women and Jack pulled him aside. He will never say a thing about Jack's stammering, stumbling questions, his hoarse voice barely over a whisper, as he begged Daniel to tell him what he remembered from the time he was dead. What he saw, felt, sensed.
...Who he met.
3.
While Daniel isn't the only civilian to walk through the Stargate, he is the one who does it most often. None of the other SG teams include a civilian as a regular member, although Daniel hopes that General Hammond will accept his recommendations and get more experts out in the field at some point in the near future. So it's hardly surprising that whenever there's a clash between civilian and military, between scientist and soldier, the men and women in the various science departments come to him for suggestions in dealing with the military personnel.
As he listens, sympathizes, commiserates, and advises, there's a common refrain that he often hears: "You're lucky, Doctor Jackson. Colonel O'Neill may be a little scary, but he is a much easier guy to deal with."
Daniel smiles noncommittally at that statement and only sighs at how often Jack forces him to pack up his tools before he's finished off-world. He knows that a little mutual grousing enables him to be on their side, even as he gently points out the need for military discipline and safety when they're literally on the front lines of a war.
What he doesn't mention, though, is that Jack hasn't always been as willing to listen as he is now. He doesn't talk about the cold, hard-eyed colonel he met during that first mission to Abydos; the one who deliberately planned, with brutal efficiency, to kill thousands of innocent civilians so he could take out Ra with them. Charlie's death might have pushed Jack over the edge, but that edge was always there to begin with: harsh pragmatism, a killing instinct, the willingness to step across the line for the sake of the mission, even at the expense of lives.
Catherine Langford knew him back then, of course, but while he'd treated her rudely on base, she hadn't witnessed him arm a nuclear bomb only a half-day's walk away from an entire village of helpless slaves. Ferretti and Kawalsky knew the truth, but Kawalsky was also Special Forces, and Ferretti, a more junior officer at the time, tended to accept Jack's assurances of necessity.
No one else remembers Jack from that bleak time in his life. And while Daniel knows that their shared experiences on Abydos changed Jack - and, perhaps, even healed him - he can never forget the man that Jack had been. It's not for him to talk about; he owes Jack that much. But he'll always remember it.
Later, after bitter words are exchanged and Daniel walks out of Jack's house with an acrid taste in his mouth, the memory of that behavior on Abydos rises up before his eyes, an unwanted specter from the past. Sam and Teal'c have the luxury of denial at Jack's behavior, he thinks, because they never saw him like this. But Daniel did, and it's too easy to see that same man now.
4.
Most people in the SGC know that Daniel died on that first mission to Abydos. That much, at least, is written down in the official report, even the original one that Jack gives West. It's the second official report, after Hammond forces Jack to admit the truth, that tells a more complete story: Doctor Jackson was killed during the Abydos mission by a staff weapon, then brought back to life with Ra's sarcophagus. It rarely gets discussed outside of official channels, but Stargate Command, like any other military installation, thrives on rumor and scuttlebutt. Daniel Jackson is the civilian who opened the Stargate, went on the first mission, and died... and then came back to life. It's part of his legend, and it only increases as his personal death toll rises.
But that's really all anyone knows, and Jack never tells why Daniel died that first time.
Everyone simply assumes that the untrained civilian was caught in the crossfire of battle, just as Freeman, Reilly, Porro, and Brown were. They don't know that he had the chance to back away, to dive to the polished marble floor of the throne room, to leave Jack to his foolish attempt at killing Ra and stay safely alive. But that's not what he did, and Jack never tells anyone how Daniel literally threw himself between Jack and a staff weapon, arms flung wide in a desperate attempt to shield him, still shouting protests when that lance of fire burned a hole straight though his heart and left him dead. Daniel died to save his life, and Jack knows that the subsequent rebirth in Ra's golden box of tricks will never erase that sacrifice.
Jack never puts his reasons for his reticence into so many words, perhaps not even to himself. He knows Daniel is happier that his self-sacrifice is unknown, especially in the early days, when that little bit of knowledge would hardly convince an already-skeptical Hammond to trust him to stay safe off-world. It remains unspoken, beneath the surface.
But when Jack stares into the amber depths of a late-night glass of whiskey, a week after their return from Kelowna, he finally admits that by saying nothing, part of him hoped that Daniel might somehow lose that deadly impulse to save another person's life - or even the lives of everyone on an entire planet - by hurling himself into harm's way and taking death upon himself in someone else's stead.
Too bad, he thinks morosely, that it didn't work.
5.
Neither Jack nor Daniel tell anyone about the impossible friendship that was forged between them on the burning sands of Abydos. They never speak of the way initial hostility and contempt for one another's viewpoints yielded to wary respect, or how that regard was seared permanently into place by the blasts of two staff weapons: one wielded by an enemy, the other inexpertly by a friend. They say nothing of how a colonel and a civilian, stranded on an alien planet, found their way to mutual understanding.
When people do ask about that first Abydos mission and how they achieved their victory, it's easy to make jokes about chocolate bars and chicken dances and sand-surfing behind mastadges, to speak of translation breakthroughs and a courageous native population. Jack never fails to give Sha'uri and Kasuf full credit for their essential roles; Daniel always mentions Kawalsky and Ferretti and Skaara's boys, who kept Ra's guards at bay for long enough to give Kasuf time to lead the Nagadans to battle and gave Jack and Daniel the precious moments they needed to stop the armed bomb from being sent back to Earth.
They mention all these things, but they don't talk about unexpectedly brutal honesty, about surprising humor, about trust and faith in the most desperate moments, about a startling synchronism of thought and action that defeated the Supreme System Lord in the wake of the Abydon rebellion.
No, neither one ever says anything about their friendship... But then, don't have to.
Everyone already knows.
sg1friendathon for the prompt: Daniel and Jack. Five things they never told anyone about their first trip through the gate. Includes lots and lots of spoilers for Stargate: the Movie and some references to Shades of Grey and Meridian. ~1,850 words. Rated PG.
Left Unspoken
1.
Daniel, Jack thinks, deserves the respect that he's earned at the SGC these past few years.
It wasn't always easy for him, especially at the beginning. Jack remembers how angry General Hammond was when he first met Daniel, seeing him only as the civilian who got his people killed when Apophis struck. Jack needed to talk very fast in order to get Daniel onto that subsequent mission to Chulak.
By now, though, most of the military personnel have a lot of respect for Doctor Jackson: the man who opened the Stargate, who went on that first mission to Abydos and got the team back home, who figured out stellar drift and the Asgard and a thousand other cultural and archaeological details that help the SGC survive. Jack is glad, for Daniel's sake, because in the outside world of academia, Daniel's name is still vilified for ignoring conventional wisdom to seek out the actual truth. Daniel deserves to be admired for the things he gets right.
Of course, as Jack knows only too well, Daniel is also capable of being completely and spectacularly wrong.
But he doesn't tell anyone about his first experience with Daniel's mistaken assumptions. He never mentions Daniel's blithe assurances to General West that he would easily find the symbols to get them back from Abydos on the other side of the Gate, only to discover - much too late - that Ra banned reading and writing on Abydos, and there were no written records to uncover. He says nothing about Kawalsky being the one to finally discover the faded cartouche in the catacombs under Nagada with the carved symbols to Earth that lacked that crucial final chevron. Daniel did figure it out eventually, after all, with a little help from Skaara's excited doodles and an extra leap of intuition.
But it's something Jack always remembers: trust Daniel's instincts and knowledge. Respect his opinions. He's usually right.
But never forget that he's also sometimes wrong.
2.
"What happens after we die, Doctor Jackson?"
Daniel didn't sign up for the role of SGC's spiritual advisor; that task is better suited to the chaplain on Level 16, whose schedule is usually booked solid. With the explosive mix of the ordinary strain of military life combined with the challenging contradictions of alien contact, it's only natural for people to struggle with questions of doubt and faith. Still, despite the chaplain's dedicated staff, it often happens that the men and women who go through the Stargate, who personally experience its horrors and wonders and losses, try to seek answers from the guy who died and came back to life.
It's other civilians, for the most part, but there are also several military personnel who wander into his office, discreetly close the door, and hesitatingly ask him impossible questions.
"Is there life after death?"
"Is there a Creator out there?"
"How much does dying hurt?"
"Did you go to Heaven?"
Daniel can't really answer them, but he's a master at deflection and allowing his listeners to interpret his words to mean what they want to hear. He's not sure if he believes anything himself, but he admires those that find comfort in their faith and sees no reason to contradict them. If the Stargate has taught him anything, it's that they don't know all the answers, and probably never will.
Sometimes, when the questioner turns beet red and stares down at the floor, Daniel tries to reassure. "It's okay to wonder," he tells them, even as he admits that he remembers very little and doesn't have much to relate. "You're not the first one to ask." And he'll talk lightly about some of the questions he's been posed until the awkward moment passes.
But Daniel never, ever breathes a word about the very first person to ask him what happens after death. He never tells anyone about the night after their victory on Abydos, when Sha'uri went to attend a ceremony with the other women and Jack pulled him aside. He will never say a thing about Jack's stammering, stumbling questions, his hoarse voice barely over a whisper, as he begged Daniel to tell him what he remembered from the time he was dead. What he saw, felt, sensed.
...Who he met.
3.
While Daniel isn't the only civilian to walk through the Stargate, he is the one who does it most often. None of the other SG teams include a civilian as a regular member, although Daniel hopes that General Hammond will accept his recommendations and get more experts out in the field at some point in the near future. So it's hardly surprising that whenever there's a clash between civilian and military, between scientist and soldier, the men and women in the various science departments come to him for suggestions in dealing with the military personnel.
As he listens, sympathizes, commiserates, and advises, there's a common refrain that he often hears: "You're lucky, Doctor Jackson. Colonel O'Neill may be a little scary, but he is a much easier guy to deal with."
Daniel smiles noncommittally at that statement and only sighs at how often Jack forces him to pack up his tools before he's finished off-world. He knows that a little mutual grousing enables him to be on their side, even as he gently points out the need for military discipline and safety when they're literally on the front lines of a war.
What he doesn't mention, though, is that Jack hasn't always been as willing to listen as he is now. He doesn't talk about the cold, hard-eyed colonel he met during that first mission to Abydos; the one who deliberately planned, with brutal efficiency, to kill thousands of innocent civilians so he could take out Ra with them. Charlie's death might have pushed Jack over the edge, but that edge was always there to begin with: harsh pragmatism, a killing instinct, the willingness to step across the line for the sake of the mission, even at the expense of lives.
Catherine Langford knew him back then, of course, but while he'd treated her rudely on base, she hadn't witnessed him arm a nuclear bomb only a half-day's walk away from an entire village of helpless slaves. Ferretti and Kawalsky knew the truth, but Kawalsky was also Special Forces, and Ferretti, a more junior officer at the time, tended to accept Jack's assurances of necessity.
No one else remembers Jack from that bleak time in his life. And while Daniel knows that their shared experiences on Abydos changed Jack - and, perhaps, even healed him - he can never forget the man that Jack had been. It's not for him to talk about; he owes Jack that much. But he'll always remember it.
Later, after bitter words are exchanged and Daniel walks out of Jack's house with an acrid taste in his mouth, the memory of that behavior on Abydos rises up before his eyes, an unwanted specter from the past. Sam and Teal'c have the luxury of denial at Jack's behavior, he thinks, because they never saw him like this. But Daniel did, and it's too easy to see that same man now.
4.
Most people in the SGC know that Daniel died on that first mission to Abydos. That much, at least, is written down in the official report, even the original one that Jack gives West. It's the second official report, after Hammond forces Jack to admit the truth, that tells a more complete story: Doctor Jackson was killed during the Abydos mission by a staff weapon, then brought back to life with Ra's sarcophagus. It rarely gets discussed outside of official channels, but Stargate Command, like any other military installation, thrives on rumor and scuttlebutt. Daniel Jackson is the civilian who opened the Stargate, went on the first mission, and died... and then came back to life. It's part of his legend, and it only increases as his personal death toll rises.
But that's really all anyone knows, and Jack never tells why Daniel died that first time.
Everyone simply assumes that the untrained civilian was caught in the crossfire of battle, just as Freeman, Reilly, Porro, and Brown were. They don't know that he had the chance to back away, to dive to the polished marble floor of the throne room, to leave Jack to his foolish attempt at killing Ra and stay safely alive. But that's not what he did, and Jack never tells anyone how Daniel literally threw himself between Jack and a staff weapon, arms flung wide in a desperate attempt to shield him, still shouting protests when that lance of fire burned a hole straight though his heart and left him dead. Daniel died to save his life, and Jack knows that the subsequent rebirth in Ra's golden box of tricks will never erase that sacrifice.
Jack never puts his reasons for his reticence into so many words, perhaps not even to himself. He knows Daniel is happier that his self-sacrifice is unknown, especially in the early days, when that little bit of knowledge would hardly convince an already-skeptical Hammond to trust him to stay safe off-world. It remains unspoken, beneath the surface.
But when Jack stares into the amber depths of a late-night glass of whiskey, a week after their return from Kelowna, he finally admits that by saying nothing, part of him hoped that Daniel might somehow lose that deadly impulse to save another person's life - or even the lives of everyone on an entire planet - by hurling himself into harm's way and taking death upon himself in someone else's stead.
Too bad, he thinks morosely, that it didn't work.
5.
Neither Jack nor Daniel tell anyone about the impossible friendship that was forged between them on the burning sands of Abydos. They never speak of the way initial hostility and contempt for one another's viewpoints yielded to wary respect, or how that regard was seared permanently into place by the blasts of two staff weapons: one wielded by an enemy, the other inexpertly by a friend. They say nothing of how a colonel and a civilian, stranded on an alien planet, found their way to mutual understanding.
When people do ask about that first Abydos mission and how they achieved their victory, it's easy to make jokes about chocolate bars and chicken dances and sand-surfing behind mastadges, to speak of translation breakthroughs and a courageous native population. Jack never fails to give Sha'uri and Kasuf full credit for their essential roles; Daniel always mentions Kawalsky and Ferretti and Skaara's boys, who kept Ra's guards at bay for long enough to give Kasuf time to lead the Nagadans to battle and gave Jack and Daniel the precious moments they needed to stop the armed bomb from being sent back to Earth.
They mention all these things, but they don't talk about unexpectedly brutal honesty, about surprising humor, about trust and faith in the most desperate moments, about a startling synchronism of thought and action that defeated the Supreme System Lord in the wake of the Abydon rebellion.
No, neither one ever says anything about their friendship... But then, don't have to.
Everyone already knows.
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Thanks so much for writing. :-)
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2. I love that the first person to question Daniel about life after death was the one who needed most to know whether he'd meet his son again. And that after that painful moment, Daniel had to deflect from answering future questioners.
4. Too bad, he thinks morosely, that it didn't work.
Seriously!
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And poor Jack. Nothing stops Daniel from dying.
Glad you liked. :)
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Something that especially caught my attention is this: "...a startling synchronism of thought and action". Wow, what a perfect (and succinct!) description of what, for me, is one of the most complex and interesting aspects of their relationship.
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And I'm glad you liked that line. For me, one of the best scenes in the movie is when the two of them simultaneously look up at the sound of Ra's ship departing, turn to stare at the bomb, turn to look at the rings, then turn to one another and chorus, "I have an idea." ::sighs happily::
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