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Fic: A Thousand Memories
Title: A Thousand Memories
Author: Maharet
Category: Slash, Angst, Deathfic
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Rating: R.
Synopsis: "Here, we know who he really was...We owe it to him to
remember and keep his memory alive until the rest of the world knows
it, too."
Warnings: Tissue warning
A Thousand Memories
By Maharet
Jack signed the last page, closed the file and stacked it neatly with the others. He was reaching for the next document, the next responsibility, the next thing to do, before he realized his inbox was empty. He put the pen down on his desk, straightened it, then glanced around for something else to do. He picked up the pen and began to tap it against the desktop.
The phone rang and he jerked backwards, pen flying from his fingers and skittering across the floor. He dragged in a breath and found he had to take another two before he could pick up the receiver.
“General O’Neill,” he said.
“Uh, hello, sir.” Walter was tiptoeing again. He’d tiptoed around Jack all day, with the exception of the concerned glance he’d delivered when Jack had turned up for work that morning. Paperwork was good. Reading every line of a 10,000 word geology report about P3X-149 was good. Keeping busy was good.
“Sir, the General…uh, General Hammond is on line two, sir.”
George. Jack closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. He’d expected this of course, but it didn’t mean he was prepared.
“Thank you, Walter. Put him through.”
The briefest pause, then: “Jack?”
“Hello, sir.” This was going to be okay. If he could keep the formalities, the barriers, the walls, he could get through this.
“I just heard. God, Jack. I’m so sorry, so damn sorry.”
Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen Hammond cry; he had no frame of reference for the sounds currently in his ear. He had to fight the urge to pull the phone away.
“Thank you, sir,” he replied, concentrating on keeping his voice steady, holding out a hand to inspect for tremors. Keeping busy was good.
“I’ll be there for the memorial service.”
Memorial service, not funeral. There hadn’t been enough to bring back for a funeral -- Jack gasped, the grief slamming into him like a physical pain. He squeezed his eyes closed and counted: one, two, three, four, until he could breathe again.
“Jack? Are you there?”
“The memorial service,” Jack said. “Yes, of course.”
“Jack…” the general trailed off, his voice choking again, and Jack stared down at his free hand, pressing it against the desktop. He tried to force the trembling away, but it was slipping around the edges of his control. He felt his face contort. Nobody here called him Jack, not anymore.
“I’m sorry sir, I have to go.”
Jack hung up the phone gently; he didn’t want to sound rude.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, concentrating on breathing, but the knock at his door was enough to rattle him again.
Carter was the first person to come into his office who didn't tiptoe. Jack supposed people walking through hell together didn’t have to tiptoe. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her cheeks were dry and her back was straight. She cleared her throat, and her voice was only slightly rough when she said:
“The Archaeology Department would like to hold the wake at his house, sir.”
He nodded. People in hell could dispose of small talk; he couldn’t remember much small talk on Netu, and this was so much worse.
“They probably just want first dibs at his stuff,” she said, and almost managed the smile -- the right side of her mouth twitched upwards, then wobbled precariously. Two breaths and some hard blinking, and she regained a semblance of control.
Jack thought his next words through.
“I guess we need to clean the place up a bit, so people have places to sit.” He nearly managed the smile back at her.
It was her turn to nod. “Yes, sir,” she said, “neaten things.”
It was the first time he suspected that she knew.
~*~
He knew they had an inkling when both Carter and Teal’c seemed to assume he had a key to Daniel’s house.
Carter had parked on the street and they were sitting in the car, waiting, when Jack pulled into the driveway the next day. Getting the morning off work had been easy; Walter had seemed almost relieved when he’d called to say he had things that needed to be taken care of.
Teal’c stood, and his head was already bowed as Jack approached. There had been no time to talk after the bedlam that had been the return from P3X-228, and now there were no words.
Jack had always held fast to the fact that they’d had their ‘666’ mission, their horrendous body blow with Frasier’s death, and nothing could be as bad as that mission, ever again. Then SG-1 -- damn the whole ‘leader of the facility’ thing, still his team -- came back hot from 228, flanked by SG-3. He’d thought that the sight of Teal’c being carried semi-conscious and groaning on a stretcher was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. Then he’d focused on Carter, covered in blood and clearly in shock, but on her feet. She hadn’t been crying yet, but whispering over and over: “Oh, God, Daniel, sorry, so sorry, oh, please, Daniel,” and the wormhole was disengaging and no one had been saying they had to go back for Daniel. No one had been saying they had to go back for Daniel, right now, damn it...
So there had been no time to talk, and now there were no words. Teal’c stood outside Daniel’s house, his head bowed, and under the façade of dignity was the savaging self-loathing of the survivor. Jack had told and been told: explosives do not discriminate. They could amend that to ‘alien explosives do not discriminate’ now, for all the difference that made. It was nobody’s fault -- nobody that could be punished, anyway -- which meant everyone got their own shard of guilt to keep.
Jack nodded to Teal’c, nodded to Carter. Before he could think too much -- thinking was bad -- he turned and walked up the path, onto the porch and unlocked the door of Daniel’s house.
Inside, it wasn’t as bad as he’d dreaded. It was Daniel’s house, with Daniel’s things in it, but the house and all his things were just waiting for Daniel to come home again.
By unspoken consensus, they started in the living room. The mountains of books tall enough to cause concussion, they divided into smaller stacks against the walls. The paper they tried to put into coherent piles; like by like, carefully, because it looked neater. Not because Daniel was going to come home soon and be pissy they’d messed with his stuff. Not because they all thought, just a little, he might be coming back.
Every now and then, they would pick up something and exclaim over it, a shared memory, and for a few seconds it somehow didn’t hurt quite as much. And every now and then, they would pick something up and Jack would put it in his bag. He was the only one who’d brought bags, several of them, and he went along Daniel’s shelves, taking back his books.
Carter paused at the bookshelves, at Daniel’s journals. Jack watched her brush her fingers over the spines, then in a series of deliberate, precise movements take them in small stacks from the shelves and put them on the coffee table. She swiped almost wearily at her eyes and looked at Jack.
“They’re not mine, Carter,” he pointed out quietly and she shook her head.
“I don’t care. He’s not coming back, not this time, and NID’s going to want them, and I couldn’t bear that --.” She inhaled sharply. “Besides, he wrote everything in those notebooks, or probably everything.”
Teal’c was already kneeling at the table, taking the journals and tucking them carefully into Jack’s bag next to the rest of Jack’s books.
Carter turned in a slow circle, looking around the room, and Jack knew what she was seeing. The casual acquaintance wouldn’t have noticed, but the order inherent in Daniel’s clutter was disrupted. The space Daniel had made in his life for Jack was empty now, and no amount of shifting or realigning could cover it up.
Carter wasn’t crying when she turned to face him, but her voice was choked when she said:“For the record, sir, I think this sucks.”
He had to pause and swallow before he could nod his thanks. “Noted, Colonel.”
By unspoken consensus, Jack did the bedroom alone.
He opened the door with his eyes closed. It was stupid, but out of everything that’d had to be done over the last few days, this was going to be the hardest. He turned his head to one side and opened his eyes to blue. They’d never talked about why he’d picked that particular shade of blue for the walls, but he hoped Daniel knew… had known.
Again, Jack closed his eyes and crossed the room by memory. God knew they’d done that often enough -- no, not going there either. He made it to the chest of drawers, then realized he was going to have to put the bag down somewhere, and that meant looking at the rug, at the quilt, at --.
“Oh, fuck it,” he told the empty room, refusing to dwell on how strained his voice sounded, and dropped the bag to the floor. There were twenty stars on the quilt that covered the bed. They’d counted them once, together, just because. And one morning Daniel had woken him up by kissing the outline of each star covering Jack’s body…
He could find a way to sweet talk the rest of the bedroom furniture out of the house later, but the quilt was coming with him, right now.
He folded it carefully and placed it at the end of the bed, leaving the neutral sheets exposed. He could put the bag on the bed now, and start packing by rote: shirts, pants, underwear, and he could cope with this. He could.
Mind blanked by the ritual of packing, he walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light.
It was the toothbrushes that undid him. The hand reaching out to take his brush from the rack started to tremble. It was such a tiny thing, but it was the first thing he’d ever left at Daniel’s, that and his razor. The fact it was a hundred toothbrushes ago, back when Daniel had been living in the loft, didn’t seem matter. There were tears slipping down his cheeks and he clenched his jaw against the sobs that were fighting to escape. His knees buckled and he pivoted fast, slumping down on the toilet lid so he wouldn’t have to see himself cry in the mirror.
~*~
At some point while he was crying in the bathroom, a wall came down in Jack’s mind, distancing him from the rest of the world. He stood and watched as his hands picked up his shampoo bottle, razor and toothbrush and rolled them up in his towel. He was aware of the thought that he was only going to need to buy one of each from now on, and somewhere far away, it hurt.
He was aware of Carter and Teal’c’s soft questions when he came out of the bedroom, and the glance they exchanged when they thought he wasn’t looking.
“I’m fine,” he heard his voice say, and he was aware of the thought: Just like Daniel, you sound just like Daniel. The pain was much closer this time, enough to make him bite his lip, hard, but the wall held firm.
The barrier was still in place as he drove into work that afternoon, as he read paperwork, answered the phone, fielded questions from the Pentagon and said placating things to grieving people.
He recognized this wall well enough: this had happened during the culture shock of returning from Iraq, and it had gotten him though Charlie’s funeral. Now it was going to get him through Daniel’s memorial service.
~*~
Jack stood at parade rest between Carter and Teal’c in front of the Stargate while person after person stood up to speak about Daniel. No one was fidgeting, no one seemed bored. There weren’t any jokes about how many times they’d done this before. The crowd stood silent and listening. They seemed to get comfort out of the ritual, but Daniel wasn’t really there -- pomp and ceremony had never really been his thing.
Ferretti stepped up to the podium, and Jack listened.
“Dr. Jackson had been here from the beginning -- he was the beginning, really.” Ferretti paused and smiled a little. “No Dr Jackson, no ’Gate travel. I figure he’s saved most of our asses a couple of times over, too.
“But the rest of the world doesn’t know that, won’t know it for a long time. To the rest of the world he was just a crack-pot archaeologist. That’s why things like here and now are so important. Here, we know his job wasn’t deep space telemetry, and we know he was right. Here, we know who he really was, as a person, a work colleague, a friend. We owe it to him to remember and keep his memory alive until the rest of the world knows it, too.”
Jack’s hands ached, and he glanced down to see they were clenched into fists at his sides. He wasn’t even aware he’d started to take a step until Teal’c caught his elbow, stopping him from moving forward. Even here there were secrets, here there were lies, and despite the wall shielding the worst of the impact, a part of Jack’s mind was screaming.
Jack knew he’d spoken at some point – he remembered looking towards Carter from the podium, seeing the tears on her face. He couldn’t remember what he actually said but it didn’t matter, because Daniel wasn’t there.
The ’Gate was opened to send the memorial wreath through and for a moment the vibrations thrumming through the floor were enough to shake his mental defensive wall.
Daniel had been running late for the mission to P3X-228; the ’Gate had already been dialled by the time he had jogged into the embarkation room, apologizing, weighed down under a pack containing God-knew-what.
Jack had been in the control room, leaning into the microphone saying, “SG-1, SG-3, you have a go,” and Carter had been saying something in Daniel’s ear. Daniel had laughed, and was still smiling when he turned his head to pick Jack out from the crowd of faces above. Jack had smiled back, raising a hand in farewell and then Daniel was gone, up the ramp and gone, gone, gone…
The wormhole closed, and the memorial ceremony was over. Jack’s body shook hands with people, his mouth making polite conversation. The wall held until he left the gate room. He could feel the cracks start in his trembling hands as he retreated to his office. By the time he locked his door and turned the lights off, his breathing was a series of tight hitches, and he had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stay silent.
~*~
That was one of the perks of being the beginning, Jack thought as he turned off the headlights and killed the engine of his truck. Everyone knew who you were.
It had taken an hour before Jack had felt strong enough to go to the wake, and cars were doubled parked all the way down the street. People Jack barely recognized were spilling out of vehicles, up the path and into Daniel’s house.
Jack fought his way inside, attempting a head count. His math skills were telling him there were at least a hundred people here, but his ears were halving that number, then quartering it. That was one of the downsides of being the beginning: everyone felt it when you were gone. Everyone.
He paused inside the living room doorway, watching. The wall had shielded him from other people’s grief as well as his own, and now Jack could see how shattered people really were. A lot of them were staring down at their hands, twisting things in their fingers. Talk was at a minimum, and he was pretty sure he heard mention of the weather off to his right.
There was a soft cry behind him and before he could turn he was being jostled aside by a young woman heading straight for the fireplace, tugging a man along behind her. Jack thought he recognized her from one of the science labs, but she was taking one of the statues off the mantelpiece as reverently as an archaeologist, handing it to her friend and talking animatedly, if softly.
Jack watched, captivated by her hands shaping the story and the smile in amongst her tears. Then, just for a second, she forgot herself and laughed, a quiet chuckle of memory, but it didn’t take much to carry. People froze, staring, or found somewhere, anywhere else, to look. The woman’s face was reddening and she was ducking her head. Jack wanted to march over there and join in, because if the pomp and ceremony of the memorial service hadn’t been Daniel’s thing, then this horrible silence was his even less. Jack took a step forward, but someone else was closer and they were asking a question, smiling hesitantly at the couple, and it was okay.
Their conversation rippled out into the rest of the room, and here was Daniel, in all these people relaxing around his house, slowly opening up. The ripple was becoming a wave, and all at once people were talking, sharing, remembering.
Jack circled the room, adding to conversations. Dr. Lee was describing a slightly exaggerated extraction from Central America when Jack felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. Hammond was standing behind him, his expression so full of compassion and sympathy Jack wondered for a moment if he’d known.
“That was a damn fine speech you gave, Jack.”
“Thank you, sir.” Over Hammond’s shoulder, Jack caught sight of the doors leading to the backyard and the darkened deck beyond. For a moment, Jack’s throat tightened and he had to cough, pressing his hand to his mouth far longer than was necessary.
“Excuse me,” he whispered.
He headed for the kitchen. He had to nudge past people to get to the drawers and find a box of matches, then had to sidestep people to get back into the living room to hunt out a candle.
Everywhere there was Daniel; he was in the little kids running down the hallway, completely unaware of the situation; he was in the man laughing in the kitchen and in the woman with the statue in the living room. Jack didn’t know half of these peoples’ names, but it didn’t matter; they’d loved Daniel, and that was more than enough.
The deck was empty -- it couldn’t have been more than forty degrees outside -- and Jack was careful to slide the door closed to keep in the heat. He walked across to the table in the dark.
The umbrella was tightly wrapped against its pole. Jack had done that, thinking … thinking that they probably weren’t going to use it again until the weather warmed back up. He tried to ignore the fact his hands were once again trembling as he tugged at the ties and pushed it open.
The little block Daniel had put under a leg to stop its wobbling had come loose at some point and the table rocked slightly when Jack sat down. It took three matches and slightly burned fingers to light the candle. The flame wavered, then held strong. He cupped his hands over it, trying to warm them.
He ran a finger lightly over the warped sides of the candle created by hours of burning. The candle was just thick enough for Jack to wrap his hand around, and the light glowed purple through his spread fingers.
“Hey, Daniel,” he said softly. The rising noise level from inside kept him grounded. “That’s some wake you’ve got in there.”
He touched the pole, remembered the long-gone sticky residue of spat pits. “Sorry, buddy, couldn’t get any watermelons this time of year. I did try.”
His voice stalled, and he had to clear his throat and brush at his cheeks. He glanced down, realizing he’d wrapped his arms around his body, and gave a little choke of laughter.
“I’d follow you over, if I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he said, “but I guess you’d be pretty pissed off.”
Jack brushed his fingers over the redwood boards of the table, the shadowy pits in the wood shrinking and expanding as the candle flame swayed with the breeze.
From the vantage point of the deck he could see part of the sky, and the stars were cold pinpricks of light. Not so idly, he checked for shooting stars, but if anything was moving out there, he couldn’t see it.
“Ah, Danny,” he whispered. “It’s gonna suck without you, you know.”
There was a swell of laughter from inside the house, and somehow it wasn’t at all mocking. Jack found himself smiling just a little.
“But when I do come over, I’m going to find you, so you’d better be waiting for me, ’kay?”
The breeze was stronger now, battering at the flame and making him cold even with his jacket. He licked his fingers, preparing to snuff the candle, but his hand hesitated over the flame.
When Jack went back inside he carried the lit candle with him, into the warmth and light of the house.
~finis~
Notes: This fic was inspired by Devra's fic 'A Thousand Tomorrows'
(http://www.area52hkh.net/asd/devra/thoutoms.php.) This fic will
make a little more sense if you read that first, but it's not
essential. Actually, you might want to read 'Tomorrows' *after*
you've read this one -- Devra treats our boys a lot nicer than I do!
So, many thanks to Devra for the encouragement and the beta, and
thanks to Jude for the beta and the loan of the quilt (the story of
which can be found in this fic:
http://www.area52hkh.net/asj/jude/designs.php.) I couldn't have done
this without you two!
Author: Maharet
Category: Slash, Angst, Deathfic
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Rating: R.
Synopsis: "Here, we know who he really was...We owe it to him to
remember and keep his memory alive until the rest of the world knows
it, too."
Warnings: Tissue warning
A Thousand Memories
By Maharet
Jack signed the last page, closed the file and stacked it neatly with the others. He was reaching for the next document, the next responsibility, the next thing to do, before he realized his inbox was empty. He put the pen down on his desk, straightened it, then glanced around for something else to do. He picked up the pen and began to tap it against the desktop.
The phone rang and he jerked backwards, pen flying from his fingers and skittering across the floor. He dragged in a breath and found he had to take another two before he could pick up the receiver.
“General O’Neill,” he said.
“Uh, hello, sir.” Walter was tiptoeing again. He’d tiptoed around Jack all day, with the exception of the concerned glance he’d delivered when Jack had turned up for work that morning. Paperwork was good. Reading every line of a 10,000 word geology report about P3X-149 was good. Keeping busy was good.
“Sir, the General…uh, General Hammond is on line two, sir.”
George. Jack closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. He’d expected this of course, but it didn’t mean he was prepared.
“Thank you, Walter. Put him through.”
The briefest pause, then: “Jack?”
“Hello, sir.” This was going to be okay. If he could keep the formalities, the barriers, the walls, he could get through this.
“I just heard. God, Jack. I’m so sorry, so damn sorry.”
Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen Hammond cry; he had no frame of reference for the sounds currently in his ear. He had to fight the urge to pull the phone away.
“Thank you, sir,” he replied, concentrating on keeping his voice steady, holding out a hand to inspect for tremors. Keeping busy was good.
“I’ll be there for the memorial service.”
Memorial service, not funeral. There hadn’t been enough to bring back for a funeral -- Jack gasped, the grief slamming into him like a physical pain. He squeezed his eyes closed and counted: one, two, three, four, until he could breathe again.
“Jack? Are you there?”
“The memorial service,” Jack said. “Yes, of course.”
“Jack…” the general trailed off, his voice choking again, and Jack stared down at his free hand, pressing it against the desktop. He tried to force the trembling away, but it was slipping around the edges of his control. He felt his face contort. Nobody here called him Jack, not anymore.
“I’m sorry sir, I have to go.”
Jack hung up the phone gently; he didn’t want to sound rude.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, concentrating on breathing, but the knock at his door was enough to rattle him again.
Carter was the first person to come into his office who didn't tiptoe. Jack supposed people walking through hell together didn’t have to tiptoe. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her cheeks were dry and her back was straight. She cleared her throat, and her voice was only slightly rough when she said:
“The Archaeology Department would like to hold the wake at his house, sir.”
He nodded. People in hell could dispose of small talk; he couldn’t remember much small talk on Netu, and this was so much worse.
“They probably just want first dibs at his stuff,” she said, and almost managed the smile -- the right side of her mouth twitched upwards, then wobbled precariously. Two breaths and some hard blinking, and she regained a semblance of control.
Jack thought his next words through.
“I guess we need to clean the place up a bit, so people have places to sit.” He nearly managed the smile back at her.
It was her turn to nod. “Yes, sir,” she said, “neaten things.”
It was the first time he suspected that she knew.
~*~
He knew they had an inkling when both Carter and Teal’c seemed to assume he had a key to Daniel’s house.
Carter had parked on the street and they were sitting in the car, waiting, when Jack pulled into the driveway the next day. Getting the morning off work had been easy; Walter had seemed almost relieved when he’d called to say he had things that needed to be taken care of.
Teal’c stood, and his head was already bowed as Jack approached. There had been no time to talk after the bedlam that had been the return from P3X-228, and now there were no words.
Jack had always held fast to the fact that they’d had their ‘666’ mission, their horrendous body blow with Frasier’s death, and nothing could be as bad as that mission, ever again. Then SG-1 -- damn the whole ‘leader of the facility’ thing, still his team -- came back hot from 228, flanked by SG-3. He’d thought that the sight of Teal’c being carried semi-conscious and groaning on a stretcher was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. Then he’d focused on Carter, covered in blood and clearly in shock, but on her feet. She hadn’t been crying yet, but whispering over and over: “Oh, God, Daniel, sorry, so sorry, oh, please, Daniel,” and the wormhole was disengaging and no one had been saying they had to go back for Daniel. No one had been saying they had to go back for Daniel, right now, damn it...
So there had been no time to talk, and now there were no words. Teal’c stood outside Daniel’s house, his head bowed, and under the façade of dignity was the savaging self-loathing of the survivor. Jack had told and been told: explosives do not discriminate. They could amend that to ‘alien explosives do not discriminate’ now, for all the difference that made. It was nobody’s fault -- nobody that could be punished, anyway -- which meant everyone got their own shard of guilt to keep.
Jack nodded to Teal’c, nodded to Carter. Before he could think too much -- thinking was bad -- he turned and walked up the path, onto the porch and unlocked the door of Daniel’s house.
Inside, it wasn’t as bad as he’d dreaded. It was Daniel’s house, with Daniel’s things in it, but the house and all his things were just waiting for Daniel to come home again.
By unspoken consensus, they started in the living room. The mountains of books tall enough to cause concussion, they divided into smaller stacks against the walls. The paper they tried to put into coherent piles; like by like, carefully, because it looked neater. Not because Daniel was going to come home soon and be pissy they’d messed with his stuff. Not because they all thought, just a little, he might be coming back.
Every now and then, they would pick up something and exclaim over it, a shared memory, and for a few seconds it somehow didn’t hurt quite as much. And every now and then, they would pick something up and Jack would put it in his bag. He was the only one who’d brought bags, several of them, and he went along Daniel’s shelves, taking back his books.
Carter paused at the bookshelves, at Daniel’s journals. Jack watched her brush her fingers over the spines, then in a series of deliberate, precise movements take them in small stacks from the shelves and put them on the coffee table. She swiped almost wearily at her eyes and looked at Jack.
“They’re not mine, Carter,” he pointed out quietly and she shook her head.
“I don’t care. He’s not coming back, not this time, and NID’s going to want them, and I couldn’t bear that --.” She inhaled sharply. “Besides, he wrote everything in those notebooks, or probably everything.”
Teal’c was already kneeling at the table, taking the journals and tucking them carefully into Jack’s bag next to the rest of Jack’s books.
Carter turned in a slow circle, looking around the room, and Jack knew what she was seeing. The casual acquaintance wouldn’t have noticed, but the order inherent in Daniel’s clutter was disrupted. The space Daniel had made in his life for Jack was empty now, and no amount of shifting or realigning could cover it up.
Carter wasn’t crying when she turned to face him, but her voice was choked when she said:“For the record, sir, I think this sucks.”
He had to pause and swallow before he could nod his thanks. “Noted, Colonel.”
By unspoken consensus, Jack did the bedroom alone.
He opened the door with his eyes closed. It was stupid, but out of everything that’d had to be done over the last few days, this was going to be the hardest. He turned his head to one side and opened his eyes to blue. They’d never talked about why he’d picked that particular shade of blue for the walls, but he hoped Daniel knew… had known.
Again, Jack closed his eyes and crossed the room by memory. God knew they’d done that often enough -- no, not going there either. He made it to the chest of drawers, then realized he was going to have to put the bag down somewhere, and that meant looking at the rug, at the quilt, at --.
“Oh, fuck it,” he told the empty room, refusing to dwell on how strained his voice sounded, and dropped the bag to the floor. There were twenty stars on the quilt that covered the bed. They’d counted them once, together, just because. And one morning Daniel had woken him up by kissing the outline of each star covering Jack’s body…
He could find a way to sweet talk the rest of the bedroom furniture out of the house later, but the quilt was coming with him, right now.
He folded it carefully and placed it at the end of the bed, leaving the neutral sheets exposed. He could put the bag on the bed now, and start packing by rote: shirts, pants, underwear, and he could cope with this. He could.
Mind blanked by the ritual of packing, he walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light.
It was the toothbrushes that undid him. The hand reaching out to take his brush from the rack started to tremble. It was such a tiny thing, but it was the first thing he’d ever left at Daniel’s, that and his razor. The fact it was a hundred toothbrushes ago, back when Daniel had been living in the loft, didn’t seem matter. There were tears slipping down his cheeks and he clenched his jaw against the sobs that were fighting to escape. His knees buckled and he pivoted fast, slumping down on the toilet lid so he wouldn’t have to see himself cry in the mirror.
~*~
At some point while he was crying in the bathroom, a wall came down in Jack’s mind, distancing him from the rest of the world. He stood and watched as his hands picked up his shampoo bottle, razor and toothbrush and rolled them up in his towel. He was aware of the thought that he was only going to need to buy one of each from now on, and somewhere far away, it hurt.
He was aware of Carter and Teal’c’s soft questions when he came out of the bedroom, and the glance they exchanged when they thought he wasn’t looking.
“I’m fine,” he heard his voice say, and he was aware of the thought: Just like Daniel, you sound just like Daniel. The pain was much closer this time, enough to make him bite his lip, hard, but the wall held firm.
The barrier was still in place as he drove into work that afternoon, as he read paperwork, answered the phone, fielded questions from the Pentagon and said placating things to grieving people.
He recognized this wall well enough: this had happened during the culture shock of returning from Iraq, and it had gotten him though Charlie’s funeral. Now it was going to get him through Daniel’s memorial service.
~*~
Jack stood at parade rest between Carter and Teal’c in front of the Stargate while person after person stood up to speak about Daniel. No one was fidgeting, no one seemed bored. There weren’t any jokes about how many times they’d done this before. The crowd stood silent and listening. They seemed to get comfort out of the ritual, but Daniel wasn’t really there -- pomp and ceremony had never really been his thing.
Ferretti stepped up to the podium, and Jack listened.
“Dr. Jackson had been here from the beginning -- he was the beginning, really.” Ferretti paused and smiled a little. “No Dr Jackson, no ’Gate travel. I figure he’s saved most of our asses a couple of times over, too.
“But the rest of the world doesn’t know that, won’t know it for a long time. To the rest of the world he was just a crack-pot archaeologist. That’s why things like here and now are so important. Here, we know his job wasn’t deep space telemetry, and we know he was right. Here, we know who he really was, as a person, a work colleague, a friend. We owe it to him to remember and keep his memory alive until the rest of the world knows it, too.”
Jack’s hands ached, and he glanced down to see they were clenched into fists at his sides. He wasn’t even aware he’d started to take a step until Teal’c caught his elbow, stopping him from moving forward. Even here there were secrets, here there were lies, and despite the wall shielding the worst of the impact, a part of Jack’s mind was screaming.
Jack knew he’d spoken at some point – he remembered looking towards Carter from the podium, seeing the tears on her face. He couldn’t remember what he actually said but it didn’t matter, because Daniel wasn’t there.
The ’Gate was opened to send the memorial wreath through and for a moment the vibrations thrumming through the floor were enough to shake his mental defensive wall.
Daniel had been running late for the mission to P3X-228; the ’Gate had already been dialled by the time he had jogged into the embarkation room, apologizing, weighed down under a pack containing God-knew-what.
Jack had been in the control room, leaning into the microphone saying, “SG-1, SG-3, you have a go,” and Carter had been saying something in Daniel’s ear. Daniel had laughed, and was still smiling when he turned his head to pick Jack out from the crowd of faces above. Jack had smiled back, raising a hand in farewell and then Daniel was gone, up the ramp and gone, gone, gone…
The wormhole closed, and the memorial ceremony was over. Jack’s body shook hands with people, his mouth making polite conversation. The wall held until he left the gate room. He could feel the cracks start in his trembling hands as he retreated to his office. By the time he locked his door and turned the lights off, his breathing was a series of tight hitches, and he had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stay silent.
~*~
That was one of the perks of being the beginning, Jack thought as he turned off the headlights and killed the engine of his truck. Everyone knew who you were.
It had taken an hour before Jack had felt strong enough to go to the wake, and cars were doubled parked all the way down the street. People Jack barely recognized were spilling out of vehicles, up the path and into Daniel’s house.
Jack fought his way inside, attempting a head count. His math skills were telling him there were at least a hundred people here, but his ears were halving that number, then quartering it. That was one of the downsides of being the beginning: everyone felt it when you were gone. Everyone.
He paused inside the living room doorway, watching. The wall had shielded him from other people’s grief as well as his own, and now Jack could see how shattered people really were. A lot of them were staring down at their hands, twisting things in their fingers. Talk was at a minimum, and he was pretty sure he heard mention of the weather off to his right.
There was a soft cry behind him and before he could turn he was being jostled aside by a young woman heading straight for the fireplace, tugging a man along behind her. Jack thought he recognized her from one of the science labs, but she was taking one of the statues off the mantelpiece as reverently as an archaeologist, handing it to her friend and talking animatedly, if softly.
Jack watched, captivated by her hands shaping the story and the smile in amongst her tears. Then, just for a second, she forgot herself and laughed, a quiet chuckle of memory, but it didn’t take much to carry. People froze, staring, or found somewhere, anywhere else, to look. The woman’s face was reddening and she was ducking her head. Jack wanted to march over there and join in, because if the pomp and ceremony of the memorial service hadn’t been Daniel’s thing, then this horrible silence was his even less. Jack took a step forward, but someone else was closer and they were asking a question, smiling hesitantly at the couple, and it was okay.
Their conversation rippled out into the rest of the room, and here was Daniel, in all these people relaxing around his house, slowly opening up. The ripple was becoming a wave, and all at once people were talking, sharing, remembering.
Jack circled the room, adding to conversations. Dr. Lee was describing a slightly exaggerated extraction from Central America when Jack felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. Hammond was standing behind him, his expression so full of compassion and sympathy Jack wondered for a moment if he’d known.
“That was a damn fine speech you gave, Jack.”
“Thank you, sir.” Over Hammond’s shoulder, Jack caught sight of the doors leading to the backyard and the darkened deck beyond. For a moment, Jack’s throat tightened and he had to cough, pressing his hand to his mouth far longer than was necessary.
“Excuse me,” he whispered.
He headed for the kitchen. He had to nudge past people to get to the drawers and find a box of matches, then had to sidestep people to get back into the living room to hunt out a candle.
Everywhere there was Daniel; he was in the little kids running down the hallway, completely unaware of the situation; he was in the man laughing in the kitchen and in the woman with the statue in the living room. Jack didn’t know half of these peoples’ names, but it didn’t matter; they’d loved Daniel, and that was more than enough.
The deck was empty -- it couldn’t have been more than forty degrees outside -- and Jack was careful to slide the door closed to keep in the heat. He walked across to the table in the dark.
The umbrella was tightly wrapped against its pole. Jack had done that, thinking … thinking that they probably weren’t going to use it again until the weather warmed back up. He tried to ignore the fact his hands were once again trembling as he tugged at the ties and pushed it open.
The little block Daniel had put under a leg to stop its wobbling had come loose at some point and the table rocked slightly when Jack sat down. It took three matches and slightly burned fingers to light the candle. The flame wavered, then held strong. He cupped his hands over it, trying to warm them.
He ran a finger lightly over the warped sides of the candle created by hours of burning. The candle was just thick enough for Jack to wrap his hand around, and the light glowed purple through his spread fingers.
“Hey, Daniel,” he said softly. The rising noise level from inside kept him grounded. “That’s some wake you’ve got in there.”
He touched the pole, remembered the long-gone sticky residue of spat pits. “Sorry, buddy, couldn’t get any watermelons this time of year. I did try.”
His voice stalled, and he had to clear his throat and brush at his cheeks. He glanced down, realizing he’d wrapped his arms around his body, and gave a little choke of laughter.
“I’d follow you over, if I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he said, “but I guess you’d be pretty pissed off.”
Jack brushed his fingers over the redwood boards of the table, the shadowy pits in the wood shrinking and expanding as the candle flame swayed with the breeze.
From the vantage point of the deck he could see part of the sky, and the stars were cold pinpricks of light. Not so idly, he checked for shooting stars, but if anything was moving out there, he couldn’t see it.
“Ah, Danny,” he whispered. “It’s gonna suck without you, you know.”
There was a swell of laughter from inside the house, and somehow it wasn’t at all mocking. Jack found himself smiling just a little.
“But when I do come over, I’m going to find you, so you’d better be waiting for me, ’kay?”
The breeze was stronger now, battering at the flame and making him cold even with his jacket. He licked his fingers, preparing to snuff the candle, but his hand hesitated over the flame.
When Jack went back inside he carried the lit candle with him, into the warmth and light of the house.
~finis~
Notes: This fic was inspired by Devra's fic 'A Thousand Tomorrows'
(http://www.area52hkh.net/asd/devra/thoutoms.php.) This fic will
make a little more sense if you read that first, but it's not
essential. Actually, you might want to read 'Tomorrows' *after*
you've read this one -- Devra treats our boys a lot nicer than I do!
So, many thanks to Devra for the encouragement and the beta, and
thanks to Jude for the beta and the loan of the quilt (the story of
which can be found in this fic:
http://www.area52hkh.net/asj/jude/designs.php.) I couldn't have done
this without you two!
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Carter turned in a slow circle, looking around the room, and Jack knew what she was seeing. The casual acquaintance wouldn’t have noticed, but the order inherent in Daniel’s clutter was disrupted. The space Daniel had made in his life for Jack was empty now, and no amount of shifting or realigning could cover it up.
and I like:
Jack’s body shook hands with people, his mouth making polite conversation.
Wish I knew the canon well enough to get the references to Netu, watermelons, etc!
"Math" is the American version of "maths" (I assume SG uses American English): His maths skills were telling him
Possibly too many dashes (or whatever they're called? -- ), especially at the ends of sentences?
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The Netu thing is from an ep I actually haven't seen yet (shame on me) about a planet they end up on that bears a very close resemblance to the classic Hell, but the watermelon thing came straight out of Devra's 'A Thousand Tomorrows'fic. I really only expected other Alpha Gate list members to get that one.
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Also, I love your perty paragraph breaks:
~*~
Neat!
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The paragraph breaks are perty. unfortunately, I cannot claim responsibility for them. I get my slash fics archived on the Alpha Gate website and doing ~*~ means they're automatically transformed into line break thingies when they're put on the site. less work for the archivist.
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In that case: you should write more!
Seriously, this is very good.
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