What Can Be Untied
Jul. 18th, 2011 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: What Can Be Untied
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 3953
Categories: friendship, drama, angst
Spoilers/Warnings: Episode-related: "Bloodlines" (1.12), "Need" (2.5), "The Other Side" (4.2), "Homecoming" (7.2), and the run of "Reckoning"/"Threads" (8.16-8.18). With a bonus "Moebius" bit. Spoilers for all.
Summary: Written for the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sg1friendathon: "Daniel, Sam. Five times they struggled to reconnect."
Note: Title from Joseph Joubert: "Never cut what you can untie." Thanks tofignewton for the beta.
“If we kill them when they are as vulnerable as they are right now, we'd be no better than the Goa'uld.”
Daniel says nothing at the debriefing about destroying the larvae. Sam doesn't call him on it, and he doesn't show surprise when she keeps her mouth shut. They get through the entire meeting without either one mentioning it, a kind of silent and unplanned if you won't, I won't stalemate.
Sam holds her tongue because she doesn't want surprise to slacken the general's face; doesn't want to see Colonel O'Neill torn between pride and disappointment; doesn't want Teal'c to wear that pained, guilty frown that followed him all over Chulak.
She isn't sure what keeps Daniel from relaying this particular truth. Whatever shock he might have felt over his actions has long since faded. He seems unrepentant and unperturbed, even defiant about the choice he made. It makes Sam's stomach turn. She can't quite bring herself to meet his gaze, though she can't stop looking at him like he's something she has never seen before. In a way, he is.
When the debriefing breaks up, she keeps her seat. Teal'c and the colonel head for the hallway, General Hammond retreats to his office, and Sam and Daniel are left alone for the first time since the mission.
Daniel is busily scooping up the spread of materials he used for his report, sweeping maps and reference materials and notes into a messy pile. Casually tapping the stack into order, he tucks it into a manila folder. He doesn't look at her, but she can tell from his body language that he is acutely aware of her waiting quietly beside him. The tidying up is just extra time for him to get his thoughts together, she knows. She lets him have it. She needs it, too.
When he is ready, he releases a slow, steady breath and turns to face her. He doesn't say anything, and she thinks his silence might be the strangest part of it all. She studies him, then, searching his face, meeting his eyes and trying to read what she finds there. She never was all that good at other languages.
“Why'd you do it?” There is no accusation in her tone, but the words weigh heavy.
“I didn't plan to,” he replies. He takes off his glasses and scrubs at his face with the palm of one hand. “I just—standing there, looking at those Goa'ulds, knowing what they would become, what they would do...” He settles his glasses back on his nose and fixes her with an intense stare. “However many larvae I killed, that's how many people were saved. And I can't regret that.”
“What about the Jaffa?”
“The Jaffa?” he repeats, confused.
“Every one of those larvae would have first been implanted in a Jaffa child, like Teal'c's son. The Jaffa are dependent upon the symbiotes to survive.” She holds his gaze, sees the concern growing there. “You killed Goa'uld, but you may have killed Jaffa as well.”
Guilt skitters across his face at the possibility of Jaffa deaths—Jaffa children in particular—but it doesn't linger. A tendril of doubt clouds his eyes, but the set of his jaw does not waver.
“There's no way we can know that,” he argues. “The Jaffa are too crucial to Goa'uld power—they won't just let them die before they're old enough to be useful. And we know that there have to be other larvae repositories like that one; they'll find more.”
“Maybe,” Sam admits.
He is studying her now, trying to figure her out in turn. “This is bothering you a lot more than it is me,” he says, surprise coloring his voice.
“It's just—I thought of you as our—our conscience. Now it's like you're just another hand on a gun.” She shakes her head. “I know you're the same person, that I've simply learned about something that was already there, but it...” She trails off with a shrug, unsure how to phrase what she feels. “I thought I knew you, understood you. This is like starting over.”
Daniel nods in a resigned way, and she sees in his expression the Daniel she expects. He looks pensive, a frown forming around his eyes, so Sam places a hand on his arm. She doesn't let go until he looks up at her and she can give him a small smile.
“We'll be okay,” she tells him, and she knows it to be true.
-00000-
“See, the Daniel I know would never have said that.”
Sam isn't surprised when Daniel appears in her lab the morning after their return. She is a little surprised by the hurt and annoyance that flash through her when she spots him in the doorway. She smothers the feelings quickly and while she can't quite find a smile, she does manage to hold back the scowl twitching behind her eyebrows.
Daniel steps into the room tentatively, wariness and something like shame reining in his usually more exuberant entrance. She studies him as he carefully leans against the lab table. Knowing him as she does, she imagines this is not his first stop of the morning. The colonel he'll save for last, so he has probably already spoken with General Hammond and Teal'c, possibly even with Janet. Sam finds herself strangely pleased that he rates her apology so high on the priority list, then mentally berates herself for such a thought. He has no need to apologize; she hopes she can make him understand that.
“Sam,” he finally blurts out, “About what I said, I'm sorry. I never should ha—”
Sam cuts him off. “It wasn't you, Daniel.”
He frowns at her. “Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn't,” she says firmly.
“Sam.” He draws her name out in a heavy sigh, and she wonders if he has already been through this conversation a few times today. He leans heavily on the table, ducking his head slightly. “Everything I said was honest. I didn't lie and I didn't just make it up—what I said was what I thought. I know you said that the Daniel you know wouldn't have said such things—”
“And I meant it,” Sam cuts in.
Daniel looks up at her then, and his expression is so pained it almost washes away the memory of another Daniel standing in the same spot, throwing around lab equipment and spewing biting truths. And falsehoods, whispers a voice in the back of her mind. She focuses on the Daniel here now, keeping her face as calm as possible so that only her words get through to him.
“The Daniel I know never would have said such things,” she says, and she can see his face fall. “He might have thought them, but he would never have said them.”
“But I did,” Daniel presses, guilt and shame lacing his voice.
Sam lets herself slip back to that moment between Daniel saying what he had and her realizing what it meant. The beginning of the moment was shock, the end was a growing worry for her friend—but in between there had been a bone-deep hurt. The emotional slap to the face tingles still, an echo in her skin. Only friends know how to slice down that far, and Daniel had always been good with words.
“I won't pretend it didn't hurt,” she tells him, “that what you said wasn't painful to hear. And that's something I'm going to have to deal with. But I've already forgiven you, Daniel.”
“Just like that?”
“You weren't yourself.”
“I'd argue that I was more myself than ever. No inhibitions, completely unfiltered Daniel.”
“And I'd argue that without our filters, we aren't who we normally are.”
He catches her eye then, the ghost of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. She almost smiles back. The conversation has begun to sound like one of their regular verbal tennis matches, the lobbing of ideas and arguments between two intelligent and affable colleagues. But the memory of wounds inflicted—however superficial—lingers, and Sam can't make her lips curve. Daniel senses the same, and all hints of amusement drain from his face. He straightens up in a sudden, jerky motion and shoves his hands in his pockets. With his posture and his floppy hair, he seems incredibly young, and she almost relents and tries to lighten the mood. Then something inside her squeezes gently, and she decides that she's done all she can and that, just this once, she needs to let her own aches heal first.
Daniel starts out of the room with a lowered gaze. She stops him with a hand on his arm, unable to let him leave with such a weight still on his shoulders.
“I've forgiven you,” she says again, not looking at him but with sincerity lacing every word. “Give me time to get over it.”
He looks at her for a long moment before pulling out of her grip. His arm twists at it slides through her grasp and his hand finds hers. Their fingers intertwine for a moment, warmth and understanding passing from palm to palm, then Daniel lets go and strides out into the hall
-00000-
“I'm not defending him, Daniel. I happen to agree with him.”
Sam comes to him two days after they get back from Euronda.
Daniel is hurt and a little disappointed in her, though not exactly surprised. Sam had sided with the military argument before, but normally she was more careful with her choices when faced with such suspicious circumstances. Pondering the outcome, though, he wonders if a bit more skepticism on her part would have changed anything.
She finds him in his lab. He jumped into translations after they returned, burying himself under words so he doesn't have to think about what almost happened, what did happen, what they almost did, what they might have done, what they did do. Sam ghosts into the room and lowers herself into the chair across from him without a word. The fluorescents behind her turn her hair into a halo and the glow from his desk lamp puts pinpricks of light in her eyes that look like tears. He rubs at his own eyes and leans back in his chair, ready for the discussion she needs to have.
What is on her mind is also all over her face, from the wrinkle of a frown between her eyebrows to the lip that she keeps worrying between her teeth. He knows her well enough to understand the battles that she goes through off-world, her own desire for technology (and the pressure from up the ladder) warring with the voice inside that tells her something isn't right. This time she got it wrong, and things ended badly. It will keep her up at night.
She stares down one of his reference books for a minute or two before she speaks.
“It was too good to be true.”
There is resignation and disappointment in equal measure in her tone, along with a healthy dose of self-reprimand. Daniel sighs and leans his elbows on his desk.
“Yes, it was. That's why you jumping on the bandwagon so quickly bothered me.” He shakes his head slightly. “Nothing is ever that good.”
“We had to try,” she gently counters.
“I know,” he says, “but not the way we did.”
He acknowledges the lingering irritation he feels, but doesn't let it grow. Sam will retain enough guilt about what happened without him adding his anger to the mix.
“We made a mistake,” she quietly says.
“Yes, you did.” Daniel chooses his words carefully.
She looks up at him, a question in her eyes. “But we fixed it.”
Daniel remembers what they discovered, the shock of who the Eurondans were and what they were doing. He remembers the sickening realization that they had almost helped facilitate a genocide. He remembers that they may have caused one anyway.
And he remembers Jack's calm face as he ordered the iris closed, and the single thump that sounded before the Gate shut down.
“No,” he says, “I'm not sure we did.”
-00000-
“Samantha Carter. Was there ever anything between us?”
“Us—? Uh, no. No, not in that way. We—we were really, really good friends.”
This new Daniel feels strange to her. Then again, he no doubt seems strange to himself, as well. She tells herself that's the real problem. He's still figuring himself out, getting everything back in order, getting back to Daniel, and that's why they aren't quite connecting.
He tries his best, smiling and being amiable as if he believes—but does not remember—that is how it should be.
He's still Daniel. That much is clear once he regains his memories and gets his feet back under him. The more he remembers, the more he seems like the friend she lost. But there are changes, too, subtle differences that don't disappear with time. He isn't the man he used to be. It's like losing a favorite comfy sweater and finding it again, only to discover that it doesn't fit anymore. The difference makes her tentative, has him aloof, and they don't click they way they once did.
The changes make it easier for her to be angry.
She had known—she had believed, same as the others—that Daniel wasn't really gone. Discovering that he had made the rounds to everyone but her was a little upsetting. He visited Colonel O'Neill. He visited Teal'c. He never came to her. She'd needed him, too.
Those thoughts get louder and louder in her head, no matter how much she tries to silence them. And when Daniel suddenly plops down beside her at a table in the commissary one day, she isn't able to pull back the glare on her face before he gets the full force of it. He looks at her in surprise, eyebrows rising so far they almost disappear into his hairline.
“What did I do?” he asks warily. He is still settling, and she knows he's stumbled across a few unforgotten grudges or overdue apologies since his return.
“Nothing,” she says, quickly attempting to school her features into a more neutral expression.
He isn't fooled. “I did something, or didn't do something, didn't I?” He sips from the coffee mug in his hand and watches her. “Tell me so I can fix it.”
She flaps her hand as if to brush it away. “It's nothing and it's stupid. Forget about it.”
“It can't be nothing and be stupid,” he argues, the half smile he wears so him that she half wishes this had never come up. “Sam,” he softly cajoles, “what is it?”
She tries to clamp down on all the words and feelings that are fighting to rush out of her, but she can't. There is something in his voice that makes her want to say all the things she's kept inside, makes her want him to know exactly how she feels. So she asks the one question that's been burning inside of her.
“Why didn't you ever visit me?”
He frowns in confusion, so she barrels on.
“You appeared to Colonel O'Neill when Ba'al captured him, you showed up when Teal'c was dying—” She looks up at him and shakes her head. “You never came to me.”
“I might have,” he points out. “I don't exactly remember anything from when I was ascended.”
Sam shakes her head again. “I didn't see you, Daniel.”
“And that's the only kind of visit that counts?” He's wearing the smile again, the one that used to work like an ice breaker, pushing through her bad feelings and solemn moods with ease. Now it only makes her long for things that are no more.
“I waited for you to visit, for you to just appear one day to say hi,” she tells him. “Turns out you did. It just wasn't to me.”
He doesn't know what to say and she has nothing left to say. They sit quietly, staring at their coffee cups, thinking solitary thoughts.
-00000-
“I was made in Samantha Carter's image. I know what she knows. I feel what she feels.”
It isn't Sam's fault. He doesn't blame her.
Sam isn't the one who captured him, who invaded his mind, who used him and tossed him aside. Daniel knows this.
But the person—the machine—that killed him was wearing her face.
Daniel saw into the replicator's mind, knows well enough what was lurking there. He sifted through the information, the motives, the plans and he knows how little that person resembled his friend (he ignores how much she did resemble his Sam—the meticulous organization, the chilling genius, the unflagging determination). He knows this, but all that knowledge does not obscure the fact that it was Sam's face he saw when he opened his eyes. It was her face that he saw before the world went dark. (Again, says a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Jack.)
If that memory—the image of one Sam floating on top of the other, a smile and a cold stare—haunts him still, it's to be expected. It was Sam and it was not Sam and all the other times she has been Sam and not-Sam fill his mind until he has a difficult time seeing her clearly. After all they have been through, this should be easier. But he can't help feeling like he's taken a fist to the stomach (a sword through the chest) when he looks at her sometimes.
His emotions are haywire and his reactions are off kilter and everyone notices. Sam notices. He can't stand the hurt in her eyes, the guilt that lingers there like a shadow. He can't stand the jumpiness that threatens him at random. His mind is crowded with Sams that don't belong, and he has to sort them out.
He's staring and he knows it, but he's determined to shake the shock that still races through him if Sam comes up on him suddenly. So he stares, intent and unwavering, papering the image of this Sam—his Sam—over the top of all the other imposters bent on confusing him. He stares, and eventually Sam stares back. She looks away quickly, discomfort and that smolder of guilt coloring her cheeks, but he studies on, memorizing her as she is, remembering her as she has always been. Eventually, she breaks the silence.
“What is it?” she asks, self-consciously brushing a tendril of hair behind her ear, not quite looking at him.
“Nothing,” he replies.
She turns to him them, an eyebrow raised in question, half smiling. The corner of his mouth curves in response.
“I'm just getting you solid in my mind again.”
She is confused for a second, but his meaning comes to her like a flash of lightning. She turns back to her work with a frown, a bit of sadness darkening her eyes. Daniel can tell that she is uncomfortable, that she feels ashamed and guilty. She believes it to be her fault. She might be right. But he doesn't blame her.
He just needs a little longer to see her as Sam again.
-00000-
BONUS: Moebius, Daniel and Alt!Sam
She isn't his Sam. He isn't her Daniel. But they aren't complete strangers.
Her sense of humor is more to the front, not having been suppressed by the reserve of military life. Instead of geeky joy a growing light in her eyes, it is a constant current of her being. She is slightly more open, slightly less jaded. She doesn't carry the weight or the memories or the experiences, but the same kindness and intelligence and spine of steel are behind that familiar face. In some ways, she reminds him of the Sam he met on Abydos all those long years ago.
Sam and not-Sam again.
He, in contrast, feels sharper around the edges, wearier and bitterer. The same unwavering sense of right is there, the same desire to know, even more to do, but he's gained a wariness that eluded him in his younger days. And, somewhat disturbingly, he's become accustomed to seeing his friends come and go. He lost them, now he has them again. They're different, but so is he.
She isn't his Sam, but any Sam (any Jack, any Teal'c) is better than none at all. He lived with that truth for five years before this alternate SG-1 appeared through the desert sands. He'll take whatever team he can get. He misses them too much when they aren't around.
So he patches up the wounds from losing them (and tries to ignore how familiar it feels, how easily the stitches fit into place) and slowly works at starting over again.
It is strange at first, this Sam's reactions and choices often clashing with the Sam he remembers. He doesn't know her yet, and he has to keep reminding himself of that when he expects one thing from her and gets another. In some ways, the bits of her that are the same make the parts that aren't that much more discordant. He struggles some days, frustrated and aching for his Sam, tired of having to try so hard at a friendship that used to be so easy. But he always comes around, and everything he learns brings him one step closer to something like what he once had.
He tells her about herself, anecdotes around the fire at night, long stories on hot days full of arduous chores, simple observances of the differences and similarities of the two women who are and have been his friend. He does the same for Jack and Teal'c. He can hear his Sam faintly in his ear, worrying over the implications. But there's no harm in telling these friends of the people they were and will never be. Tales of a future that was and has never happened and is yet to come are just stories tossed to the wind.
And if he doesn't quite know how to take this gentler, more naïve Sam, he does his best. And if she's a bit surprised by his occasional bite and sullen moods, she comes to understand them quickly enough. He works at accepting her, she works at healing him. Eventually they find even ground.
They are sitting outside one evening, watching the sun melt behind the dunes, when she turns to him. Her words are quiet, not wanting to draw attention from Jack and Teal'c, who are in discussion a few feet away.
“I'm not her, am I?”
Daniel releases a breath. In the fading light, all of her features are muted, and it's easier to picture her as the the Sam he lost. He studies her for a moment, and she accepts his scrutiny with endearing aplomb.
“No,” he eventually says. “But you're close enough.”
“Close enough for what?”
Turning back to catch the final bit of sun sinking beneath the horizon, he takes her hand in his.
“Close enough for me.”
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 3953
Categories: friendship, drama, angst
Spoilers/Warnings: Episode-related: "Bloodlines" (1.12), "Need" (2.5), "The Other Side" (4.2), "Homecoming" (7.2), and the run of "Reckoning"/"Threads" (8.16-8.18). With a bonus "Moebius" bit. Spoilers for all.
Summary: Written for the
sg1friendathon: "Daniel, Sam. Five times they struggled to reconnect."Note: Title from Joseph Joubert: "Never cut what you can untie." Thanks to
fignewton for the beta.“If we kill them when they are as vulnerable as they are right now, we'd be no better than the Goa'uld.”
Daniel says nothing at the debriefing about destroying the larvae. Sam doesn't call him on it, and he doesn't show surprise when she keeps her mouth shut. They get through the entire meeting without either one mentioning it, a kind of silent and unplanned if you won't, I won't stalemate.
Sam holds her tongue because she doesn't want surprise to slacken the general's face; doesn't want to see Colonel O'Neill torn between pride and disappointment; doesn't want Teal'c to wear that pained, guilty frown that followed him all over Chulak.
She isn't sure what keeps Daniel from relaying this particular truth. Whatever shock he might have felt over his actions has long since faded. He seems unrepentant and unperturbed, even defiant about the choice he made. It makes Sam's stomach turn. She can't quite bring herself to meet his gaze, though she can't stop looking at him like he's something she has never seen before. In a way, he is.
When the debriefing breaks up, she keeps her seat. Teal'c and the colonel head for the hallway, General Hammond retreats to his office, and Sam and Daniel are left alone for the first time since the mission.
Daniel is busily scooping up the spread of materials he used for his report, sweeping maps and reference materials and notes into a messy pile. Casually tapping the stack into order, he tucks it into a manila folder. He doesn't look at her, but she can tell from his body language that he is acutely aware of her waiting quietly beside him. The tidying up is just extra time for him to get his thoughts together, she knows. She lets him have it. She needs it, too.
When he is ready, he releases a slow, steady breath and turns to face her. He doesn't say anything, and she thinks his silence might be the strangest part of it all. She studies him, then, searching his face, meeting his eyes and trying to read what she finds there. She never was all that good at other languages.
“Why'd you do it?” There is no accusation in her tone, but the words weigh heavy.
“I didn't plan to,” he replies. He takes off his glasses and scrubs at his face with the palm of one hand. “I just—standing there, looking at those Goa'ulds, knowing what they would become, what they would do...” He settles his glasses back on his nose and fixes her with an intense stare. “However many larvae I killed, that's how many people were saved. And I can't regret that.”
“What about the Jaffa?”
“The Jaffa?” he repeats, confused.
“Every one of those larvae would have first been implanted in a Jaffa child, like Teal'c's son. The Jaffa are dependent upon the symbiotes to survive.” She holds his gaze, sees the concern growing there. “You killed Goa'uld, but you may have killed Jaffa as well.”
Guilt skitters across his face at the possibility of Jaffa deaths—Jaffa children in particular—but it doesn't linger. A tendril of doubt clouds his eyes, but the set of his jaw does not waver.
“There's no way we can know that,” he argues. “The Jaffa are too crucial to Goa'uld power—they won't just let them die before they're old enough to be useful. And we know that there have to be other larvae repositories like that one; they'll find more.”
“Maybe,” Sam admits.
He is studying her now, trying to figure her out in turn. “This is bothering you a lot more than it is me,” he says, surprise coloring his voice.
“It's just—I thought of you as our—our conscience. Now it's like you're just another hand on a gun.” She shakes her head. “I know you're the same person, that I've simply learned about something that was already there, but it...” She trails off with a shrug, unsure how to phrase what she feels. “I thought I knew you, understood you. This is like starting over.”
Daniel nods in a resigned way, and she sees in his expression the Daniel she expects. He looks pensive, a frown forming around his eyes, so Sam places a hand on his arm. She doesn't let go until he looks up at her and she can give him a small smile.
“We'll be okay,” she tells him, and she knows it to be true.
-00000-
“See, the Daniel I know would never have said that.”
Sam isn't surprised when Daniel appears in her lab the morning after their return. She is a little surprised by the hurt and annoyance that flash through her when she spots him in the doorway. She smothers the feelings quickly and while she can't quite find a smile, she does manage to hold back the scowl twitching behind her eyebrows.
Daniel steps into the room tentatively, wariness and something like shame reining in his usually more exuberant entrance. She studies him as he carefully leans against the lab table. Knowing him as she does, she imagines this is not his first stop of the morning. The colonel he'll save for last, so he has probably already spoken with General Hammond and Teal'c, possibly even with Janet. Sam finds herself strangely pleased that he rates her apology so high on the priority list, then mentally berates herself for such a thought. He has no need to apologize; she hopes she can make him understand that.
“Sam,” he finally blurts out, “About what I said, I'm sorry. I never should ha—”
Sam cuts him off. “It wasn't you, Daniel.”
He frowns at her. “Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn't,” she says firmly.
“Sam.” He draws her name out in a heavy sigh, and she wonders if he has already been through this conversation a few times today. He leans heavily on the table, ducking his head slightly. “Everything I said was honest. I didn't lie and I didn't just make it up—what I said was what I thought. I know you said that the Daniel you know wouldn't have said such things—”
“And I meant it,” Sam cuts in.
Daniel looks up at her then, and his expression is so pained it almost washes away the memory of another Daniel standing in the same spot, throwing around lab equipment and spewing biting truths. And falsehoods, whispers a voice in the back of her mind. She focuses on the Daniel here now, keeping her face as calm as possible so that only her words get through to him.
“The Daniel I know never would have said such things,” she says, and she can see his face fall. “He might have thought them, but he would never have said them.”
“But I did,” Daniel presses, guilt and shame lacing his voice.
Sam lets herself slip back to that moment between Daniel saying what he had and her realizing what it meant. The beginning of the moment was shock, the end was a growing worry for her friend—but in between there had been a bone-deep hurt. The emotional slap to the face tingles still, an echo in her skin. Only friends know how to slice down that far, and Daniel had always been good with words.
“I won't pretend it didn't hurt,” she tells him, “that what you said wasn't painful to hear. And that's something I'm going to have to deal with. But I've already forgiven you, Daniel.”
“Just like that?”
“You weren't yourself.”
“I'd argue that I was more myself than ever. No inhibitions, completely unfiltered Daniel.”
“And I'd argue that without our filters, we aren't who we normally are.”
He catches her eye then, the ghost of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. She almost smiles back. The conversation has begun to sound like one of their regular verbal tennis matches, the lobbing of ideas and arguments between two intelligent and affable colleagues. But the memory of wounds inflicted—however superficial—lingers, and Sam can't make her lips curve. Daniel senses the same, and all hints of amusement drain from his face. He straightens up in a sudden, jerky motion and shoves his hands in his pockets. With his posture and his floppy hair, he seems incredibly young, and she almost relents and tries to lighten the mood. Then something inside her squeezes gently, and she decides that she's done all she can and that, just this once, she needs to let her own aches heal first.
Daniel starts out of the room with a lowered gaze. She stops him with a hand on his arm, unable to let him leave with such a weight still on his shoulders.
“I've forgiven you,” she says again, not looking at him but with sincerity lacing every word. “Give me time to get over it.”
He looks at her for a long moment before pulling out of her grip. His arm twists at it slides through her grasp and his hand finds hers. Their fingers intertwine for a moment, warmth and understanding passing from palm to palm, then Daniel lets go and strides out into the hall
-00000-
“I'm not defending him, Daniel. I happen to agree with him.”
Sam comes to him two days after they get back from Euronda.
Daniel is hurt and a little disappointed in her, though not exactly surprised. Sam had sided with the military argument before, but normally she was more careful with her choices when faced with such suspicious circumstances. Pondering the outcome, though, he wonders if a bit more skepticism on her part would have changed anything.
She finds him in his lab. He jumped into translations after they returned, burying himself under words so he doesn't have to think about what almost happened, what did happen, what they almost did, what they might have done, what they did do. Sam ghosts into the room and lowers herself into the chair across from him without a word. The fluorescents behind her turn her hair into a halo and the glow from his desk lamp puts pinpricks of light in her eyes that look like tears. He rubs at his own eyes and leans back in his chair, ready for the discussion she needs to have.
What is on her mind is also all over her face, from the wrinkle of a frown between her eyebrows to the lip that she keeps worrying between her teeth. He knows her well enough to understand the battles that she goes through off-world, her own desire for technology (and the pressure from up the ladder) warring with the voice inside that tells her something isn't right. This time she got it wrong, and things ended badly. It will keep her up at night.
She stares down one of his reference books for a minute or two before she speaks.
“It was too good to be true.”
There is resignation and disappointment in equal measure in her tone, along with a healthy dose of self-reprimand. Daniel sighs and leans his elbows on his desk.
“Yes, it was. That's why you jumping on the bandwagon so quickly bothered me.” He shakes his head slightly. “Nothing is ever that good.”
“We had to try,” she gently counters.
“I know,” he says, “but not the way we did.”
He acknowledges the lingering irritation he feels, but doesn't let it grow. Sam will retain enough guilt about what happened without him adding his anger to the mix.
“We made a mistake,” she quietly says.
“Yes, you did.” Daniel chooses his words carefully.
She looks up at him, a question in her eyes. “But we fixed it.”
Daniel remembers what they discovered, the shock of who the Eurondans were and what they were doing. He remembers the sickening realization that they had almost helped facilitate a genocide. He remembers that they may have caused one anyway.
And he remembers Jack's calm face as he ordered the iris closed, and the single thump that sounded before the Gate shut down.
“No,” he says, “I'm not sure we did.”
-00000-
“Samantha Carter. Was there ever anything between us?”
“Us—? Uh, no. No, not in that way. We—we were really, really good friends.”
This new Daniel feels strange to her. Then again, he no doubt seems strange to himself, as well. She tells herself that's the real problem. He's still figuring himself out, getting everything back in order, getting back to Daniel, and that's why they aren't quite connecting.
He tries his best, smiling and being amiable as if he believes—but does not remember—that is how it should be.
He's still Daniel. That much is clear once he regains his memories and gets his feet back under him. The more he remembers, the more he seems like the friend she lost. But there are changes, too, subtle differences that don't disappear with time. He isn't the man he used to be. It's like losing a favorite comfy sweater and finding it again, only to discover that it doesn't fit anymore. The difference makes her tentative, has him aloof, and they don't click they way they once did.
The changes make it easier for her to be angry.
She had known—she had believed, same as the others—that Daniel wasn't really gone. Discovering that he had made the rounds to everyone but her was a little upsetting. He visited Colonel O'Neill. He visited Teal'c. He never came to her. She'd needed him, too.
Those thoughts get louder and louder in her head, no matter how much she tries to silence them. And when Daniel suddenly plops down beside her at a table in the commissary one day, she isn't able to pull back the glare on her face before he gets the full force of it. He looks at her in surprise, eyebrows rising so far they almost disappear into his hairline.
“What did I do?” he asks warily. He is still settling, and she knows he's stumbled across a few unforgotten grudges or overdue apologies since his return.
“Nothing,” she says, quickly attempting to school her features into a more neutral expression.
He isn't fooled. “I did something, or didn't do something, didn't I?” He sips from the coffee mug in his hand and watches her. “Tell me so I can fix it.”
She flaps her hand as if to brush it away. “It's nothing and it's stupid. Forget about it.”
“It can't be nothing and be stupid,” he argues, the half smile he wears so him that she half wishes this had never come up. “Sam,” he softly cajoles, “what is it?”
She tries to clamp down on all the words and feelings that are fighting to rush out of her, but she can't. There is something in his voice that makes her want to say all the things she's kept inside, makes her want him to know exactly how she feels. So she asks the one question that's been burning inside of her.
“Why didn't you ever visit me?”
He frowns in confusion, so she barrels on.
“You appeared to Colonel O'Neill when Ba'al captured him, you showed up when Teal'c was dying—” She looks up at him and shakes her head. “You never came to me.”
“I might have,” he points out. “I don't exactly remember anything from when I was ascended.”
Sam shakes her head again. “I didn't see you, Daniel.”
“And that's the only kind of visit that counts?” He's wearing the smile again, the one that used to work like an ice breaker, pushing through her bad feelings and solemn moods with ease. Now it only makes her long for things that are no more.
“I waited for you to visit, for you to just appear one day to say hi,” she tells him. “Turns out you did. It just wasn't to me.”
He doesn't know what to say and she has nothing left to say. They sit quietly, staring at their coffee cups, thinking solitary thoughts.
-00000-
“I was made in Samantha Carter's image. I know what she knows. I feel what she feels.”
It isn't Sam's fault. He doesn't blame her.
Sam isn't the one who captured him, who invaded his mind, who used him and tossed him aside. Daniel knows this.
But the person—the machine—that killed him was wearing her face.
Daniel saw into the replicator's mind, knows well enough what was lurking there. He sifted through the information, the motives, the plans and he knows how little that person resembled his friend (he ignores how much she did resemble his Sam—the meticulous organization, the chilling genius, the unflagging determination). He knows this, but all that knowledge does not obscure the fact that it was Sam's face he saw when he opened his eyes. It was her face that he saw before the world went dark. (Again, says a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Jack.)
If that memory—the image of one Sam floating on top of the other, a smile and a cold stare—haunts him still, it's to be expected. It was Sam and it was not Sam and all the other times she has been Sam and not-Sam fill his mind until he has a difficult time seeing her clearly. After all they have been through, this should be easier. But he can't help feeling like he's taken a fist to the stomach (a sword through the chest) when he looks at her sometimes.
His emotions are haywire and his reactions are off kilter and everyone notices. Sam notices. He can't stand the hurt in her eyes, the guilt that lingers there like a shadow. He can't stand the jumpiness that threatens him at random. His mind is crowded with Sams that don't belong, and he has to sort them out.
He's staring and he knows it, but he's determined to shake the shock that still races through him if Sam comes up on him suddenly. So he stares, intent and unwavering, papering the image of this Sam—his Sam—over the top of all the other imposters bent on confusing him. He stares, and eventually Sam stares back. She looks away quickly, discomfort and that smolder of guilt coloring her cheeks, but he studies on, memorizing her as she is, remembering her as she has always been. Eventually, she breaks the silence.
“What is it?” she asks, self-consciously brushing a tendril of hair behind her ear, not quite looking at him.
“Nothing,” he replies.
She turns to him them, an eyebrow raised in question, half smiling. The corner of his mouth curves in response.
“I'm just getting you solid in my mind again.”
She is confused for a second, but his meaning comes to her like a flash of lightning. She turns back to her work with a frown, a bit of sadness darkening her eyes. Daniel can tell that she is uncomfortable, that she feels ashamed and guilty. She believes it to be her fault. She might be right. But he doesn't blame her.
He just needs a little longer to see her as Sam again.
-00000-
BONUS: Moebius, Daniel and Alt!Sam
She isn't his Sam. He isn't her Daniel. But they aren't complete strangers.
Her sense of humor is more to the front, not having been suppressed by the reserve of military life. Instead of geeky joy a growing light in her eyes, it is a constant current of her being. She is slightly more open, slightly less jaded. She doesn't carry the weight or the memories or the experiences, but the same kindness and intelligence and spine of steel are behind that familiar face. In some ways, she reminds him of the Sam he met on Abydos all those long years ago.
Sam and not-Sam again.
He, in contrast, feels sharper around the edges, wearier and bitterer. The same unwavering sense of right is there, the same desire to know, even more to do, but he's gained a wariness that eluded him in his younger days. And, somewhat disturbingly, he's become accustomed to seeing his friends come and go. He lost them, now he has them again. They're different, but so is he.
She isn't his Sam, but any Sam (any Jack, any Teal'c) is better than none at all. He lived with that truth for five years before this alternate SG-1 appeared through the desert sands. He'll take whatever team he can get. He misses them too much when they aren't around.
So he patches up the wounds from losing them (and tries to ignore how familiar it feels, how easily the stitches fit into place) and slowly works at starting over again.
It is strange at first, this Sam's reactions and choices often clashing with the Sam he remembers. He doesn't know her yet, and he has to keep reminding himself of that when he expects one thing from her and gets another. In some ways, the bits of her that are the same make the parts that aren't that much more discordant. He struggles some days, frustrated and aching for his Sam, tired of having to try so hard at a friendship that used to be so easy. But he always comes around, and everything he learns brings him one step closer to something like what he once had.
He tells her about herself, anecdotes around the fire at night, long stories on hot days full of arduous chores, simple observances of the differences and similarities of the two women who are and have been his friend. He does the same for Jack and Teal'c. He can hear his Sam faintly in his ear, worrying over the implications. But there's no harm in telling these friends of the people they were and will never be. Tales of a future that was and has never happened and is yet to come are just stories tossed to the wind.
And if he doesn't quite know how to take this gentler, more naïve Sam, he does his best. And if she's a bit surprised by his occasional bite and sullen moods, she comes to understand them quickly enough. He works at accepting her, she works at healing him. Eventually they find even ground.
They are sitting outside one evening, watching the sun melt behind the dunes, when she turns to him. Her words are quiet, not wanting to draw attention from Jack and Teal'c, who are in discussion a few feet away.
“I'm not her, am I?”
Daniel releases a breath. In the fading light, all of her features are muted, and it's easier to picture her as the the Sam he lost. He studies her for a moment, and she accepts his scrutiny with endearing aplomb.
“No,” he eventually says. “But you're close enough.”
“Close enough for what?”
Turning back to catch the final bit of sun sinking beneath the horizon, he takes her hand in his.
“Close enough for me.”