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.1.
It seems to Daniel that, if things were fair, saving the planet from Apophis’s motherships would give him a few bonus points to spend when it comes to getting his way—or, at least, getting out of bed.
“Another twelve hours, minimum,” Doctor Fraiser says, in a tone that won’t be swayed by things like points, or fairness, or the entirely rational argument that—
“I’m fine. That’s the whole point of a sarcophagus. I’m completely healed—and not for the first time, I might add.” This time, he wasn’t even dead when he got into it. That has to count for something.
“All the more reason to keep you under observation, to make sure there are no cumulative effects from being exposed a second time.”
It’s a reasonable point, but he doesn’t want to concede it. “How about six hours?”
“Twelve if you’re lucky.” When he doesn’t argue further, she seals her victory with a smile. “Now, are you hungry?”
He isn’t, if it’s MREs. “Is the mess hall open yet?” The entire base is eerily empty, still staffing back up after the brief closure.
“No, but we’re sending an airman up to NORAD to raid the sandwich machine. The tuna is surprisingly passable.”
A vending machine sandwich isn’t much more appealing than bagged meals, but he’s not likely to get a better offer.
The infirmary is quiet without the usual bustling of Doctor Fraiser’s absent staff. Daniel stares at the concrete wall across from him while he waits, bare except for the United States Air Force’s answer for interior decoration: a single poster of a fighter jet with the word TRIUMPH over it in capital letters.
They did that, against all odds. Whoever designed that poster will likely never know how close a thing it was.
Doctor Fraiser returns after a while with a sandwich in each hand. Daniel unwraps the one she gives him and pokes at the wilted lettuce leaf sticking out the side. It smells okay, at least. Passable, she called it.
“Did I ever tell you about the meals we used to eat on Abydos?”
“No.” Her voice turns gentle, the way people tend to sound when he brings it up. “You’ve never told me anything about your life there.”
That voice is one of the reasons he rarely talks about the simple things he misses. Sympathy makes it feel too final, like that life is already locked in the past, and like he’s foolish to hope he can ever recover it.
For some reason, though—losing Skaara, the tingling feeling of a sarcophagus that he last felt on Abydos, or the sudden memory of trying to explain seafood to his wife who had only ever lived in the desert…
For some reason, he wants to talk about it, and for some reason, Doctor Fraiser pulls a chair up to his bedside and listens.
.2.
It’s not that he enjoys spending time in the infirmary, but it happens often enough that he gets used to it. Happens too often, probably, because all the nurses know his preferred Jell-O flavors, he has a favorite bed, and Janet keeps a spare set of his prescription glasses in a drawer.
When they strike the right dose of painkillers—enough that he’s out of pain, not so much that he can’t read whatever language needs reading that day—it’s not so bad.
The company helps.
If Janet’s not busy, she lingers when she checks on him. Sometimes they trade stories. She rarely goes off-world, so he tells her about the planets he visits, and in exchange, she tells him about life on this one. Janet is looking for a house, with a yard for the “damned dog” she talks about too often to truly dislike. Cassandra’s reading now, almost at grade level, and is using her new skill to spoil the plot of their bedtime chapter books. They have seen Mulan in the theater five weekends in a row.
“At least,” Janet says, hopefully exaggerating. “Next time, I told her she’s bringing a friend and I’m watching the movie next door.”
Caught up in the warm haze of codeine and the way Janet laughs, Daniel almost volunteers to join her.
He doesn’t, because they’re the kind of friends who only spend time together incidentally. They share meals in the commissary sometimes, but it’s always spontaneous. They have never made plans to see each other outside of work.
He wonders why that is. The first answer that comes to him is I’m married, which is unexpected, because that has never crossed his mind once when he goes to the movies with Sam.
It’s his turn to say something, and he ends up with a graceless, “I guess… she must like that movie a lot.”
“There’s a scene in there that I thought would be hard for her to watch because of what happened on her home planet, but she still chooses it every week. Honestly, I expect it’ll be the same with the next movie, whenever we get to it.” Daniel doesn’t know if the fond look on Janet’s face is meant for him or her foster daughter, but he enjoys being near it. “Cassie likes to know how things end.”
Given everything that has happened in her short life, “I can understand that.”
“Me, too.”
“That was archaeology for me.” The words surprise him, because he doesn’t usually talk about that part of his life. He doesn’t usually think about it anymore, as he lives with a much fresher loss, but the visceral experience in the Keeper’s machines a month ago put his parents back in his head, and he hasn’t quite managed to get them out again.
“How so?” Janet has been standing next to his bed throughout their conversation, ostensibly checking readouts while they chat, but now she puts pretense aside and sits on the edge of the bed.
“My parents were archaeologists, too. It was something familiar, after they died. At every foster home, I’d find the closest library and check out the whole Ancient Egypt shelf.”
There’s no surprise on Janet’s face when he mentions foster care, even though he has never mentioned it to her directly before. Sam might have, after P7J-989, because she wanted to know the rest of his story after his parents died, and he never asked her to keep it a secret. He has wondered a few times if he should tell Janet or Cassandra, wondered if anything about his experience would be helpful to either of them, or if he’d be intruding.
Janet says, “It must have helped you feel close to them.”
“It did, but…” Looking back now with an adult perspective, Daniel can see a more layered desire behind his obsession with ancient tombs. “I think it was more than that. There was a comforting finality to studying life and death from that distance. I could see photos of ancient burial sites, read about rituals they hoped would secure immortality, the mythology around honoring the dead… but no one’s still grieving. It all happened thousands of years ago.”
“You knew how the story ended.”
“Yeah. Or… well, so I thought.” He waves a hand, gesturing in what he thinks is the direction of the Stargate, and all the planets beyond it where so many long-dead civilizations continue to exist.
Janet chuckles. It feels nice, being able to make her laugh. “Well, I think I’ll let Cassie keep her less complicated Disney ending for now—although I’m sure she would love to hear more about the real Imperial China, if you want to tell her.”
It’s not his area of expertise, but since joining SG-1 and seeing the breadth of what is out there, he has made a point of trying to know a little bit about everything. “I’d like that.”
“I think she’d like to hear the rest of it, too. It might help her to know she can talk to you.”
The invitation sits warm in his chest. “Okay.”
She gives him a little smile, then stands up. “I’d better get back to it. Let one of us know if you need something.” She squeezes his hand before she goes.
The contact is brief, but it stays with him. She touches him often in the course of medical exams, but that’s always precise and efficient. This felt different, something appropriate for a personal conversation that has left him feeling a little raw… but grateful, at the same time, for the chance to share something important.
.3.
He’s grateful for it again, half a year later, when he’s trapped in Ma’chello’s dying body, because that’s the personal anecdote that convinces Janet that he really is Daniel Jackson.
He can feel life fading from him, and none of the drugs she puts in his IV seem to be helping. “There’s only so much I can do,” she apologizes, but she stays close by.
“It’s enough,” he says, in a voice that’s not his.
She doesn’t sound like herself either, her voice full of more emotion than he’s used to. “I can’t promise that, Daniel.”
That’s not what he means, though he lacks the energy to say it. It’s enough, even if all their collective efforts can’t keep him alive. It’s enough to know that she recognized him, even like this.
To know that no matter when he goes, or how, if it happens in her care, he won’t be alone.
.4.
After Sha’re dies, Janet bakes him a casserole and a chocolate cake.
He’s in enough of a haze, sleeping on the couch and eating at all the wrong times of day, that he doesn’t actually know how or when the covered dishes arrived in his fridge. Janet could have sent them with one of his teammates, all of whom have keys to his apartment. The only reason he knows they came from her is that there’s a card taped to the tin foil, signed by both Fraisers.
That, and the food is homemade, and Janet is the only friend he has on this planet who can cook.
It’s after nine o’clock when he finds it, because it took him that long to get hungry enough to look for something to eat. After he’s done, even though it’s late, he’s lonely enough that he decides to call Janet and thank her.
Cassie’s the one who answers. “I’m soooo sorry, Daniel. Do you need a movie? Snacks? You can borrow my dog, if you want company.”
Her go-to comfort suggestions make him smile, and it has been a few days since he has done that. “I’m all set on snacks. Thank you for the cake.”
“That’s not me. Janet always makes chocolate cake when someone dies.”
“Really?”
“She’s in bed, but I think she’s still up.” There’s a blast of sound, Janet! so loud Cassie must have barely covered the receiver, followed by footsteps.
Eventually, after more shuffling and muffled conversation, Janet greets him and asks how he is.
He’s not really sure, so he doesn’t answer. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t,” she says, so pointedly Daniel can fully picture Cassie still nearby. In the background, he hears what sounds like a door closing. “It’s good to hear your voice. We’ve been worried.”
“I know. I’m okay.”
“Sure, eventually. No one’s expecting you to be okay right now.”
“Yeah.” The silence stretches out, and he doesn’t want the call to end yet. Cassie’s comment made him curious enough that he asks, “Is there a story behind the cake?”
“It’s sort of a tradition, in Texas, for funerals. I know you already had that on Abydos, but… there’s so little that the rest of us can do, you know?”
“I know.” Sam came by earlier—or maybe yesterday—and tried to do his laundry, of all things. Teal’c has been keeping a distance that he doesn’t need to, but Daniel understands the respectful gesture behind it. Jack brought beer and stayed around long enough to drink one, mostly in silence. The few half-sentences he offered reminded Daniel just how well Jack understands when loss is too big for words.
Daniel likes words, though, and Janet is more comfortable with them than Jack will ever be, so he takes a breath and says aloud the ones that are weighing on him.
“I keep thinking it’ll be easier this way.”
“Because she’s not suffering anymore,” Janet fills in—not like a question, but like it’s the only thing he could possibly mean. Like she’s a doctor who has seen people die and knows that it’s sometimes the only relief left. “You don’t have to feel guilty for that, Daniel.”
“Do you remember… you told me once how Cassie used to like knowing how stories would end before starting them.”
“Yes, I do. She still reads the last chapter first.”
“Maybe it’s easier that way.” For years, the hope that he would find Sha’re and recognize what he found has been pulling him along like a rope. It’s only now, with the relief of its absence, that he can feel the bruises it left around his throat.
He’s not sure how much longer he could have survived it. He’s not sure how he’ll survive it now, searching for a child Sha’re didn’t have by choice.
He has been lonely for years, grieving a woman who was still alive. Now, when he thinks about his future…
He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to live with it, if he ever falls in love again, having to hope that it won’t end the same way.
Janet is quiet for a long minute. Her voice is softer when she asks, “And what if you had known the ending?”
“What, would Jack and I have killed Ra, knowing what would happen? Would I have opened the Stargate to begin with?”
Assuming he matters at all, in the grand fate of things. In two other universes, Sam and Catherine figured out the Stargate without his help, and those Daniels died in ignorance. He can never know what happened to those Sha’res.
“Or more personally,” Janet prompts.
Daniel thinks about the year he spent loving his wife, before the years he spent searching for her, before the rest of his life he will now spend without her. A calm settles over him, and it feels like he can expand his life on Abydos into days or hours, can look in from a distance on every happy minute—and the frustrating ones, the funny ones, the unspectacular moments where they lived a simple life together that he thought would last forever.
Even now, knowing it couldn’t, that he would end up alone in an apartment that the real Sha’re will never see… “I wouldn’t change it.”
“Good,” Janet says, and Daniel feels something lift, one layer of grief amid all the ones still to go.
“Thank you.” He scrapes his fork on the plate, collecting the last streak of icing. “For the cake, too.”
“Get some sleep if you can. We’ll keep the phone on.”
After he hangs up, he feels exhausted, like he can sleep instead of the fitful rests he has been taking around the clock. He puts the plate on the nearest stack and heads straight to his bedroom, not even stopping to brush his teeth.
For one night, he thinks even his doctor would approve of falling asleep with the lingering taste of chocolate in his mouth.
.5.
They’re taking shifts.
Daniel is never comfortable being on this side of a hospital bed—not when it’s Jack or Sam or Teal’c, but especially not now. He’s used to being the one lying between starched white sheets, hooked up to tubes and wires, either dying or not.
Not is the latest prediction, though Janet’s prognosis gets worse the longer she stays in a coma. She hasn’t regained consciousness since taking a staff blast up close on P3X-666, but after nineteen hours of surgery and three days on ECMO, she’s breathing. After another day of intensive care in the SGC, she was deemed stable enough for transport to the Academy Hospital for an indefinite stay in the ICU.
The move is good, Daniel knows, because her daughter can be with her more easily, but he doesn’t like the silent if that nobody says out loud. Cassie can be there if. They’re taking shifts, so someone Janet knows will be with her, if.
If she wakes up. If she dies.
The list of volunteers is long, with all the lives Janet has saved over the years. Sam puts Daniel’s name into the schedule without asking him first—along with Teal’c, and then Jack once he recovers—and Daniel quickly realizes the weekend and afternoon times she chose for them aren’t random. She doesn’t want Cassie to be there without them, if.
Cassie is still going to school during the day and is sleeping at Sam’s house at night. In between, she’s at Janet’s side... but not literally. There’s a chair on each side of the bed, but she doesn’t sit in them. She’s restless, in and out of the room, chatty about everything except this. During Daniel’s shifts, they split snacks from the vending machine and Cassie does her homework, always with her back to the bed.
“Look at this,” she says, rooting through her open backpack and tossing him a paperback. “This is what they have us reading this month in English. Can you believe it?”
It’s Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, and Daniel needs a moment before he can speak.
“The teacher told me I can read it later, like that’ll be any better.”
Daniel thumbs the edge of the book, fanning the pages. He has never read the novel inside, but the cover is enough of a blow. He puts it face-down on the pile of textbooks on the floor. “You don’t know how this story ends yet.”
“Yeah, I know.” She rolls her eyes. Then she pauses her fidgeting, going still for the first time since Daniel walked in the room. “I know. But like—they all end the same way, right?”
Daniel doesn’t know how to counter her fatalism. He might have slipped back onto the mortal coil not that long ago, but the people he loves haven’t fared as well.
“My parents,” she continues. “Your parents. Sha’re. This is just…” She gestures with one hand like she’s swatting away the rest of the sentence. She doesn’t give him any time to come up with a comforting response before pushing out of her chair. “I’m going downstairs for a coffee. Call me—you know.” If. She rolls her eyes again.
The door swings closed behind her, and Daniel exhales, a long sigh. After a few minutes alone, he crosses the room to sit in one of the chairs next to the bed, where Janet is quiet and still except for her breathing.
“I don’t know how much of that you heard,” he says, “but we could really use some good news about now, so if you’re waiting for the right moment…”
She doesn’t take him up on it. He picks up her hand gently, careful not to dislodge the IV in her arm.
“Actually, I do have good news.” He already told her once that the airman she was working on in the field when she was shot survived his injuries and was discharged to continue recovering at home. He figures it’s worth repeating before adding on that, according to the congratulations card making its way around the SGC, his wife just had a baby girl.
He continues for a little while, sharing whatever unclassified gossip he can think of, until he finally says, “I’m running out of things to tell you.”
It feels like a lie.
He’s running out of things to tell her like this, when she can’t answer him. When it might be too late to say anything he really means. When saying, Thank you, for everything, would feel too much like conceding defeat.
He tries for another honest thing, but only gets out the first two words. “I wish…”
If this is how it ends, he wishes he’d done things differently.
There have been dozens of moments over the years when their relationship felt balanced on the edge of something deeper. He thinks even one sentence from either of them could have tipped it over one way or the other. At the very least, they would know.
She never said anything, and neither did he.
He’s so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice that Cassie is back in the room until she flops into the chair on the other side of Janet’s bed.
His surprise to see her in it must show on his face, because she explains, “You looked really pathetic sitting here by yourself.”
“Oh, well. Thank you for saving me from that.”
She makes a wordless noise of acknowledgment and then drinks coffee. Her face is turned conspicuously away from the bed.
So far, in their shifts spent together, he has taken Cassie’s lead in conversations, going along with her flights of avoidance and not pushing her to talk about why they’re there. This time, though, he asks, “Why don’t you want to look at her?”
He fully expects her to blow him off—and to sound just like Jack when she does it—but instead, she seems to give his question serious thought.
“She doesn’t look right. I mean—obviously.” Cassie sets her coffee cup on the floor. After another moment, she picks up Janet’s hand, mirroring him. “I keep seeing other people. That doesn’t seem fair to her.”
“Maybe not, but I think she’d understand.”
“Yeah.” Cassie starts moving her hand an inch off the bed and back down, taking Janet’s with it in little bounces. “She was pretty messed up for a while, you know. After… you.”
He remembers very little from the last days of his pre-ascension life. He mentioned that once, around a campfire with his team. From the looks on their faces, he decided that’s probably a blessing. “I hear it was a pretty ugly thing to watch.”
“No,” she says, with a you idiot look she also learned from Jack. “Because it was you.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that, but his chest hurts. He saw something like that in Janet’s eyes after he came back, something that made him want to get closer and ask, Who are you to me? Who are we to each other?
He waited instead, assuming his returning memories would contain the story behind that feeling, but the memories that came back were all more of the same: Wanting to get closer… and waiting.
Cassie adds, “Maybe that’s something to think about, if she wakes up.”
He nods, a silent promise.
Cassie picks up her coffee and changes the subject, but she doesn’t move away.
They sit there together, talking, until Sam comes to take her home.
.+1.
Daniel has never kept regular hours, even before he spent time on planets with varying lengths of day, and so the sun is rarely enough to wake him up in the morning. Normally, his solutions are either a loud alarm or having someone shake him—gently, when it was Sha’re, and much less gently when it’s Teal’c waking him up for the next watch off-world.
He doesn’t need either of those when he sleeps at the Fraiser house on a weekday. It’s a toss-up which will wake him first: Cassie yelling Mom! Where’s my—? across the house as she gets ready for school, or Janet telling her to stop yelling, equally loudly and without a trace of irony. He’s not going to be the one to point it out. He learned quickly and well to keep out of certain mother-daughter conversations, especially ones that happen while anyone is in a hurry.
It's nice, too, to be ignored while they go about their routine. He’s maybe not yet a member of the family, but he’s no longer a guest. No one is laying out breakfast, because he knows where to find it. He doesn’t have to rush, if he’s on downtime, because nobody minds if he spends an hour or two in their house alone, and he knows where to put the spare key after locking up.
Downtime, this time, is a strict forty-eight hour embargo after a narrow escape on P4K-881. He suspects he would have spent the night in the infirmary if a member of the SGC medical team weren’t able to personally supervise him in a much more comfortable bed.
He rolls over, mindful of bruised ribs and every aching part of his body, in no hurry to get up as he listens to the bustle of activity downstairs. Cassie will go to school, Janet will come back to the bedroom to kiss him goodbye, and if he ever makes it out of bed, he’ll let their beloved old dog out one more time before he leaves.
He drifts in and out to familiar sounds: the thump-thump of paws on the stairs, the front door, Cassie’s new-used car starting in the driveway. Much better than a morning spent under twenty-one stories of concrete, listening to Janet’s staff stock triage carts.
When Janet comes into the bedroom, she’s not in uniform, but in a t-shirt and shorts. Instead of the quick kiss he expects, she climbs back into bed with him.
It’s strange enough to fully wake him. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course. You look cozy, that’s all.”
For the first time since waking, he looks at the clock—it’s past nine, and Cassie and Janet are usually both out the door by seven-fifteen. “Are you skipping work to take care of me?”
“You must’ve hit your head harder than I thought.” She strokes her fingers through his hair. “It’s Saturday.”
“It is?” He thinks she should give him a break on that one. As far as he knows, P4K-881 doesn’t even have Saturdays. Janet’s schedule is more consistent than his, barring an emergency, but it’s not like either of their jobs are restricted to the usual nine-to-five.
“All day long.” She drops a soft kiss on his forehead, then snuggles under the covers. “Cassie’s at the coffee shop until 1500, and I have nowhere important to be. You picked a good day to earn yourself a medically-mandated lazy morning in.”
He ignores the twinge of protest from three or four muscles as he shifts position to face her, then reaches out to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Are you saying you wouldn’t blow off your professional responsibilities to spend the day in bed with me?”
“Hmm… I might consider it.” She kisses him, and his heart picks up speed. Waking up in her bed is becoming familiar, but some things always feel new. “Life is short, after all.”
It’s an easy phrase to hear now—in a way it never used to be, too weighted down with a heavy history. It took close to a month for Janet to fully come out of her coma, and three more of rehabilitation to recover from all her injuries. Halfway through that time, in a quiet moment he’ll never forget, she said, Life is short, Daniel, and then he kissed her for the first time.
Her eyes are serious, though, so he says, “I’m fine, you know.”
“I know you are. It’s a little harder now, that’s all.”
He can imagine—and fortunately, imagining is all he’s had to do. Janet hasn’t traveled off-world since returning to duty, and he doesn’t enjoy thinking about how it will feel the first time she does. “If it gets too hard… I want you to tell me.”
He doesn’t expect her to ever ask him to step back from the front lines for her. She signed up for a paycheck from the United States military long before he did, after all. It feels important, though—maybe more for himself than for her—to realize that he would.
That this matters, more than being the first to unlock new secrets of ancient worlds, more than a lot of things. For however long they have… “Life is short, right?” He strokes her cheek, her skin soft and alive under his thumb.
“Hopefully not.” She brings her hand up to cover his, then turns her head to kiss his palm. “But I love you, and it’s worth taking a morning in bed when we can, just in case.”
His heart rate ticks up again, that flutter of love and desire that he hopes will last a very long time. “We should do it again when I feel better, so we can make good use of it.”
She smiles, and he feels it against the palm of his hand. “This seems like a good use to me.”