Thalassa
by Lady of Asheru
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Jack and Daniel
Category: Missing Scenes - but as this is also a Meridian/Revelations fixit, deathfic
Synopsis: Meridian/Revelations FIXIT *SPOILERS*
Date: April 2002.
Status: complete
Season/Spoilers: up to season 5, but particularly "Crystal Skull", "Forever In a Day","Meridian" and "Revelations"
Notes: Thank you so much to Ali and Quercus, for all their help and encouragement; I really needed the company on this one
Warnings: this has extensive spoilers and some dialogue from Meridian and Revelations. It is pretty sad, with intense situations, but it does have a happy ending, and there is no sex or violence involved. Occasional use of swear words.
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas
Run out the boat, my broken comrades:
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge -
Here we must needs embark againLouis Macneice ("Thalassa" 1st verse)
Embarkation
"Your spirit cannot be weighed," Oma had said, and Daniel could feel the truth of it, remembering standing beside Sha're's grave. "If my heart weighs more than a feather then my soul still contains sin."
He felt the gravity of his past life, all the petty acts and omissions, bearing down upon the scales. It seemed he had achieved so little, and there was so much more to be done. Yet throughout, his spirit had remained true to the quest, a small inextinguishable spark of good intention buoying him up.
"You can never reach enlightenment if you do not believe you are worthy," Oma had said, sending a fragment of poetry running around his brain.
"Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only."
If he had believed in God - any god, he could have let them measure the sum total of his life. But no divine auditor would help him here.
"The people closest to you have been trying to tell you that you made a difference. That you did change things for the better," Oma said. But who was to say that their view was the right one? What of all the people he had failed to protect; his parents, his wife, the friends he had lost? So many mirrors, reflecting back images of himself. He trusted none of them.
In the end, he was answerable only to himself, and he did not much like what he saw. His motivations had rarely been pure. He had machine-gunned a tank full of Goa'uld symbiotes in anger, and stayed his hand from using the Tok'ra poison at the Summit only in pursuit of a greater goal. It had taken Shifu, the product of his enemy, to show him just how destructive his hatred could be. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." And though he denied it, there was part of him that longed for death, in the absence of love to sustain him.
And that was the dark heart of it. He did not consider himself worthy of love. After Sha're, he had not thought that he would ever feel it again, yet slowly he had turned towards Jack. Of all the pointless, futile, irrational choices he had made, that had to be the worst.
How many of his actions had been devoted to the lost cause of trying to get Jack to notice him? If it had taken being left for dead on Klorel's ship just to get a hug, what would he have to do for a kiss? Even now, all Jack seemed to care for was Daniel's reputation, as if that had ever mattered. Yet still, Daniel felt that desperate desire to please. He had only to do the impossible, bring back strawberries in winter or an enchanted apple to finally, finally, be welcomed into that loving embrace.
He thought of the people of the Andes and the Atacama Desert, who saw death not as the end of life, but the beginning of a new and more influential phase, their ancestors lending assistance to the living. If he went with Oma, there was chance he would be able to protect the people he loved. For he knew in his heart, had known ever since stepping through the quantum mirror, that they were living on borrowed time. War was coming, and there seemed to be nothing they could do to avoid being drawn into the conflict between man, god and machine. There had to be a different way, something or someone they had missed, or all the lessons from history counted for nothing.
It wasn't like he had a lot of options. And he had been invisible before; hell, it seemed that he was becoming more so with each day he tried to fit himself into regulation boots, follow orders, carry a gun. As career progression went, ascension had to count as the fast track. His family had never been any good at playing the game by the rules. He thought of his grandfather, electing to stay on the planet with the crystal skull and its makers without a backwards glance. The SGC was one step up from a psychiatric institution, granted, but it was an institution none the less.
He had only to convince Jack that he was not giving up, letting go, deserting the ranks. Merely forming an advance party, scouting the territory somewhere…else.
"I think I can do more this way," he said, and for once Jack understood without the need for semaphore.
Returned to his body, he felt the dying flesh enclose him like a sarcophagus, and knew that he was suffocating. His breathing slowed, his lungs filling with water, and for a moment he panicked. "Let go," Oma whispered in his ear, and he exhaled, the last of his fear and regret carried out on that final breath. He half expected Sha're to appear at his side, but there was only Jack, atypically lost for words. Daniel looked at him, thinking of all the things he had wanted to say, if Jack had ever been willing to listen, but it was too late, it had always been too late for them. The embarkation room awaited, and he remembered telling Jack after Sha're's death, "There's something through the stargate that I still have to be the one to find." And then he was gone.
Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let every horizon tilt and lurch -
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church -
But let your poison be your cure.(2nd verse)
A ruined church
Jack poured himself a whiskey and knocked it back in one swallow, still irritated by the day.
Carter had been hanging round Daniel for far too long, he decided. All that touchy-feely emotional stuff had no place in a combat unit. When she'd collared him in the corridor that morning he could hardly get away fast enough.
"You can't just pretend this isn't happening," she'd said, and he'd brushed her aside, desperate to escape those eyes as bright as Bambi's. He'd headed for the armoury and the reassuringly familiar task of cleaning his gun. There was work to do, and he was eager to do it, had already told Hammond that SG1 was perfectly capable of operating without Daniel until a replacement was found. It really wasn't such a big deal; it wasn't even as if Daniel were dead, exactly, just transferred to another unit. One without uniforms and with no obvious chain of command. Daniel would be right at home.
And in truth, it was almost a relief to have him gone. With Daniel there was never a short answer, a right choice, a quick decision. Every damn thing had to be held up to the light and examined from all angles, even Jack. And there were dark corners that Jack did not want examined too closely, least of all by Daniel.
The arrival of Freya had been a welcome diversion. He laughed mirthlessly to himself, pouring another drink. Who'd have known the Asgard had been unable to have sex for 1000 years. Hell, there was always someone worse off than you. And Daniel would have appreciated the cosmic irony of it - Thor's people unable to reproduce except by the equivalent of photocopying, locked in mortal combat with the Replicators. If there was a guiding force at work in the universe, they had a warped sense of humour. Unwished for, he remembered Daniel describing the Goa'uld eating their own young, explaining their declining numbers. He started to feel more than a little sick, and barely managed to get to the sink before throwing up. He ran the tap and rested his head against the tiles. Now was not the time for weakness, but then when had it ever been. Wearily, he stuck his face under the tap and held it there, before crawling up the stairs to bed.
Lying naked under the covers, there was no longer any escape from the unpalatable truth. He had driven Daniel away, had taken a savage pleasure in squashing every attempt at even the smallest intimacy. He'd put him down, shut him out, treated him like a small but irritating pebble in his boot. And half the time he hadn't even known why he was doing it, certainly not at first. There was just something about Daniel's shy, hopeful expression that made him feel like lashing out. Keep away from me, I will only bring you harm. Unnoticed, a solitary tear slid down the side of Jack's cheek.
You really are one fucked up son of a bitch, Jack O'Neill, he thought, his heart hammering in his chest. Daniel was better off this way; whatever pain he'd caused him was nothing compared to the agony he'd have suffered if even once Jack had given in to temptation, pinned him up against the nearest wall and stopped that argumentative mouth with a kiss, only to shut him out again. Because there was no future for them, there never had been or could be. More alone than he had ever been, Jack put his head in his hands and wept.
Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.(3rd verse)
Our end is Life
Things they do not tell you about the Afterlife, thought Daniel. The first was, sadly, that enlightenment was relative. Even here, he still had only glimpses of the greater forces at work in the universe. The cogs and levers of celestial machinery had been laid bare, but still an unseen hand moved them.
He had come to understand a great many things; he saw the actions of man and his enemies for what they were - mere petty squabbles in the playground of the Ancients. He saw entire civilisations rise and fall, the birth of stars and their slow collapse. For the ascendant, time and distance had no meaning, being no longer anchored to revolutions round a sun. It seemed to him that they were the lesser for it, no longer appreciating the terrible beauty of a single life span, each passing moment lost, never to be regained.
"The universe is vast, and we are so small," Oma had said. Yet within the tiny microcosm of a single heart, all the mysteries of the universe were concealed. How could the beauty of the stars compare to that most rare and wondrous thing, the experience of love returned? His spirit ached for it, and would not be quieted.
"Not all the answers you seek are within the power of the ascendant to disclose," Oma had said, smiling her Mona Lisa smile.
And he discovered that the Great Path doubled and redoubled upon itself - it was possible to go back, without losing who or what he now was. He had not expected to find the universe so generous. He turned towards the distant sun that still held him in its thrall, compelled to offer Jack one last chance to redeem them both.
"Come back to us when you are ready," Oma called after him, her voice trailing after him in the starlight.
He alighted on Jack's veranda, taking a moment to admire the night sky while the semblance of flesh coalesced around him. It felt strange to be corporeal again, though still without a heartbeat. He flexed his fingers experimentally, just for the pleasure of it. Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath followed by the sound of breaking glass. He turned round to find Jack standing, whiter than he was, at the entrance to the house, a broken wine glass at his feet.
"Oh, god, Daniel, is that you?" Jack said, and Daniel thought that he looked older, dark shadows under his eyes. He could sense the terrible hope and suspicion at war in Jack's mind, and underneath it all, miraculously, the bright wellspring of love. Daniel opened his arms wordlessly and Jack walked into them, holding Daniel so tightly Daniel could feel Jack's heart beating loudly enough for them both. Jack's eyes filled with tears, and Daniel kissed them away, murmuring low words of reassurance. Whatever Jack was afraid of wasn't going to happen; he wasn't going to leave, Jack wasn't going to hurt him, he was here now and it was all going to be all right. And Daniel took up the burden of desire gratefully, his spirit lighter than a feather, all dreams restored, all hopes renewed.