Smaller Victories
Part One
by elfin
I’ve done some shitty things in my time. I wouldn’t class myself as
a particularly nice person.
But asking my best friend to give the order to destroy the sub I’m on is
probably high up on the list of bad things I’ve done.
At the time, I didn’t think. I don’t allow my heart anywhere near
any decision I make out there in the field. I was sure Teal’c and I
were about to be torn apart by those damn Lego bugs and I didn’t want it
to end like that.
He wouldn’t have appreciated sitting there, safe, in front of the bank of
monitors showing our deaths in graphic, full-colour detail, now would he?
But I’m just making excuses for myself.
I can imagine now how I’d have felt if the situation had been reversed.
Even if I didn’t have these… intense feelings that I’m having for him at the
moment, to give the order that would kill him would definitely be beyond me.
And to hear him ask me to do it….
How do I apologise for something like that?
Oh, he’s being his usual tough self. ‘No Jack, I’m fine Jack, really
Jack.’ Yada yada. I am not falling for a word of it. He’s
hurt. It’s all been too much for him and he’s closing in on himself
like I’ve seen him do a hundred times before.
The real killer is that he couldn’t be there. He’d have been fine
if he’d been right there on the sub with us, facing those replicator things
down the long barrel of a P-90. Like he’d have been as happy as pie
if he’d been able to beam aboard Thor’s Ship of Certain Doom just over three
weeks ago.
He doesn’t get that he’d scared the shit out of me when his appendix almost
exploded on PX-whatever the hell the place was called. Life’s bad enough
with the combined threats of the Goa’uld, alien technologies, invisible air-borne
viruses and all the other crap we deal with without your own body trying to
kill you.
It had been so fast. He’d looked ill the first night we’d camped out,
complained of stomach-ache, hadn’t eaten anything. I know he didn’t
sleep well that night. In the morning, just as we were setting off,
he threw up. I was worried enough to abort and turn us around.
We were a good day’s walk from the gate.
I think I must have run the last half-mile with Daniel over my shoulder!
By the time we’d hit the ramp he’d been unconscious with a temperature of
about a hundred and five.
Far more frightening than anything the universe can throw at us.
There was no way he was coming aboard Thor’s ship. When I went to
see him, just before I attempted to go fishing the first time, he could barely
get out of bed.
But, according to Hammond, he couldn’t be ousted from the control room the
whole time Teal’c, Carter and I were battling with the replicators.
Not until afterwards, when he knew we were safe and just unable to get the
damn gate working, he’d collapsed and had to be rushed to the infirmary.
Again!
I’ve warned him about this.
He shouldn’t have been with us out at the docks. He’d ignored Fraiser’s
advice about staying warm and calm and inactive for another few days.
Instead he opted for what was behind door number two! A twenty-four
hour mission from hell, in the cold damp of an abandoned warehouse, sitting
watching his two best friends getting attacked from all angles by high-tech
spiders.
I would have said that Daniel would be the death of me, and my hairline.
Even before I woke up gay one morning, I loved the guy. Who doesn’t?
The Unas love him and they’re not even the same species!
Daniel just has this way about him. He’s generous, selfless, totally
frustrating and completely impossible to command. Which, unfortunately
for me, is my job! You have to develop a whole new strategy to get Daniel
to follow orders. You have to make him think they’re for the good of
the team, for the good of the oppressed locals (if there are any) or for
the good of the universe in general.
If he thinks for one minute that the order is going to benefit none of the
above, forget it. He won’t do it. He’ll either go off and do the
complete opposite or he’ll argue about it until you find yourself telling
him to go off and do the opposite.
Okay, so he has me wrapped securely around his little finger.
Even tighter now, since I woke up this morning and realised I’d fallen for
him, hard and fast.
I am not exaggerating.
I have no idea what happened.
I woke with this wonderful warm feeling.
~
I was wrapped up in my duvet, rather than the more usual occurrence of waking
up, freezing, with the duvet on the floor.
I didn’t question it at first, just let myself bask in the peaceful warmth
of the morning.
I actually listened to the birds singing outside. They love to perch
on the top of my telescope mount, little feathered bastards. Anytime
I want to use the scope I have to clean up there first.
Then fleeting images from my dream started to come back to me.
I remembered a road running through the desert. I was driving along
it, in my jeep, and Daniel was in the passenger seat. We were talking,
laughing. And then we were sitting at these traffic lights that were
on red despite there being no other car for as far as the eyes could see.
It was good being out there on the road. It was good having Daniel to
share it with.
And then I remembered the part that turned my whole perspective of myself
on its head.
With the engine idling at that red light, I leaned over and kissed Daniel.
And he kissed me back like it was natural, like he was expecting it!
Okay, so it was just a dream. The real Daniel would probably have
tried to remove my balls with his fingernails.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. See?! That’s where all this thinking has
got me!
I haven’t thought this much in years. Not this emotional, ‘from the
heart’ stuff.
I can do command decisions under the most dangerous of circumstances.
I can order men out on missions when I know one or two of them might not be
coming back. I can make up my mind on a course of action in the time
it takes a hostile to tighten his/her/its finger on a trigger.
But when it comes to my emotions, forget it! I am not in touch with
them. We don’t speak. Sometimes we send Christmas cards.
Admittedly since Daniel came along I’ve been forced to acknowledge that
I do at least still have feelings. They haven’t been great ones, but
they’ve reminded me – he’s reminded me – that I am still alive.
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t.
Like yesterday when I had to stare down the lens of a camera and tell Daniel
to kill us.
To my credit I realised, as I’d said it, the pain I must have caused and
I attempted to defer the command to Major Davies. But I should have
known that spineless muppet wouldn’t have acted, not with Daniel sitting there
all teary-eyed right next to him.
I know, I know. That’s unfair. The last thing Daniel would have
done was show weakness right there in front of all those people. He
would have kept up the façade and the agony would have only shown clear
in his eyes.
But Mr Wonderful wouldn’t do anything to upset Daniel and jeopardise that
absurd belief he has that Daniel will, one day, go out on a date with him.
Not a chance, Major. Especially not now.
My second revelation of the morning, by the way, was that I’m pathologically
protective and ridiculously jealous.
On the protective side, I’m bad with all my ‘kids’. Daniel knows that
the three of them are stand-ins for Charlie. I lost one child, so I
guard my team with the possessive nature of an over-baring parent. I
need to have them all there, together, and in one piece. Doesn’t matter
what danger we’re facing just as long as we face it together.
On Thor’s ship, and again on the sub, we weren’t together. Daniel
was missing on the ship and neither Sam nor Daniel were on the sub.
Not that I’d have wished it on anyone. But the point is they’ve grown
used to us being together, as much as I have. They’ve come to depend
on it as much as I have.
Right back at the beginning, when Daniel and I were first introduced, he’d
lost everything. His parents were dead, his grandfather hadn’t wanted
him, he’d sacrificed his apartment to fund research that everyone laughed
at and his one important lecture had been mocked and abandoned by those he
most respected.
I’ll never know why, but he holds me responsible for him finding happiness
on Abydos; a place where he belonged, a family who would love him. Maybe
above all, the proof that he was right. Not that he can tell anyone
but that’s the thing with Daniel; he doesn’t need the glory. He knows,
and that’s enough for him.
You’d think it would have to be enough for us all now. We’ve saved
the world so often it’s starting to get old and we can’t go into the local
bar and demand free drinks like superheroes.
But Sam’s got her Dad, Teal’c has his family and his mentor. Hammond
told me one night that he tells his granddaughter and she thinks he’s telling
her made-up stories.
Me – I got Daniel.
Only now I find I want him more than I’d realised and that’s where the jealousy
part comes in.
Sometimes, in the past, people have mistaken protectiveness for a slight
jealous streak in me where Daniel’s concerned.
I feel a need to set the record completely straight. Major Davies’
life has never been in any danger (well, not often, and not as much as it
is in right now!). Those Unas are always trying to steal my archaeologist
and I ain’t having that. And I arrested Makepeace and his cronies cos
that was my job and my duty not because he’d allegedly clocked a feel of Daniel’s
taut backside in the showers that one time.
But now I’m finding myself thinking things like, what if Thor and Sam hadn’t
saved our butts yesterday and my grieving Daniel was left in the comforting
and not completely innocent hands of Major Wonderful Davies?
I’m wondering what I’m gonna be like on missions. Nothing will ever
put my team in danger, but I have some hefty concerns about the fate of any
alien trying to get its slimy flippers on my Danny.
My Danny?!
Somebody shoot me?
~ ~ ~
part two