"Renaissance: Q is for Quickening"

[marzipan77]

Title: “Renaissance: Q is for Quickening”
Author: marzipan77
Fandom: SG-1
Pairing: None
Rated: T+ for language and memories of violence
Summary: A series of fics beginning at Daniel’s descent back to Earth from the Ascended Plane. Chapter by chapter, these fics, about 1000 words each, beginning with “A”, will explore Daniel’s attempt to regain his memories, his mortal existence, and his place within the SGC and on SG-1.
Warnings: Angst/Emotional Whump/Memories of Death
Disclaimer: I don’t own Stargate, or Jack, or Daniel, or anything but my cats.
Written for the Alphabet Challenge on the Stargate Drabbles List.

Summary: Jack and Daniel – a quickening of memory.



… Despair… fear … loss … the unfamiliar feel of heavy cloth against his skin, green fatigues he’d hoped never to wear again … memories of pale, lifeless faces – children, really – robes bloody against the stone floor … she was gone, stolen … his fault … breath felt like flaming knives in his chest … they’d all touched him at the end, touched him as if he was precious … they were wrong-

“Hey.”

Brown eyes mirrored his sorrow, echoed his bottomless grief …

It was just an intersection of grey corridors, identical to a dozen others he’d already passed in his short journey from the infirmary. He’d probably walked through it, unheeding, only a few minutes earlier. Now it struck him motionless, his mind filled with words and images, with smothering feelings of panic and confusion, and an ugly, yawning hole where something – someone – had been ripped from him by violence. He watched his fingers reach out to touch the rough wall, blinked up at the dim lighting, the stripes blurring into muddled tangles that did nothing to lead him from a maze of memories into his own identity.

He almost expected to see a hunched figure here, barely holding himself up against the wall, hands deep in the pockets of ill-fitting clothes, long hair falling forward to hide his face. Alone.

… “You’re not in any position to make demands, Jackson” …

The man who’d called him ‘son.’ Hammond. He’d been there as soon as Daniel had stepped from the shimmering veil of blue within the stone ring – the Stargate. His eyes had smiled, welcomed him. But, at another time, on that same metal ramp populated by the dead and the injured, that same man’s eyes had been cruel, cold. ‘Jackson.’ Him. Robed in sand, long-haired, demanding. Him. And beside him-

… Tall, fierce, his own shoulders held straight against losses he refused to forget, refused to acknowledge …

Jack.

Daniel turned and met the same brown eyes. The lines around them had deepened, but the same shadows of loss hovered behind the dogged intensity and the easy humor.

… “Hey” …

“Hey – you okay?”

A familiar weight on his shoulder transferred warmth from Daniel’s skin to flow deep into his bones, suddenly filling up the emptiness that had been all that had defined him since his awakening. It quieted his ache to understand, soothed his need to remember, and held him, breathless, in the tender grip of affection. One word – one touch -

… “Hey” …

… “They don’t know what to do with me, and” …

“And I don’t know what to do with myself,” Daniel moved his lips in tandem with the heartbroken ghost of his memory, finding himself stepping easily into the younger man’s shadow.

A soft snort preceded a smile that subtracted years from those eyes. “Well, as much as I’d like to get out of here and share a couple of beers, we’re gonna have to wait.” The hand on his shoulder shook him gently. “Warner was always a pushover, but Doc Frasier is a whole 'nother story.”

Jack ushered Daniel down the hallway, their steps matching in a familiar rhythm.

… “Have a little party, did ya?” …

… “This is going straight to my head” …

… “You’re a cheaper date than my wife” …

A familiar rhythm of words, as well. Easy, shallow quips that hid deeper messages sent and received, that allowed them to fill the vacuum between them with offers of comfort and support never spoken aloud. The sting of loss still bit, its teeth sharp and jagged, tearing at him - at them both, Daniel realized – but once, in a quiet room, next to a stone fireplace, holding a bottle in clammy, shaking hands, a fragile peace had begun to grow up around them, strengthened and nurtured by a friendship rarely examined, rarely defined. Daniel felt an answering smile on his own lips.

“I’m not sure I like beer,” he offered.

A shoulder brushed his. “You? You love beer. Just something else I’m gonna have to remind you about.”

“Like the fifty bucks you mentioned before?”

“See, I knew you’d remember the important stuff.” Hands sketched patterns in the air in front of them. “Not welching on bets. Beer. Hockey.” A momentary hesitation, a slight tensing in the lanky form beside him warned Daniel that the next casually uttered words were important. “My name.”

… a painfully stiff figure, expression frozen between sorrow and rage, short hair bristling, uniform starched, smoke curling in front of narrowed eyes … “I’m in charge - Colonel Jack O’Neill, here,” … a brilliant smile, hands reaching to draw him close in a desperate, thankful hug … “O’Neill, with two ‘Ls’” … panic, flight, a dark room, a crouching figure … “do you want to kill me?” … “I’m Jack, it means-” … waking from too many journeys through darkness to the same face … “Daniel?” …

Jack.

Samantha Carter called him ‘sir,’ or ‘colonel.’ Teal’c called him ‘O’Neill.’ Daniel knew the connections they all shared ran soul deep; he knew it, even without memory, without the wealth of past events and images that shaped friendships and built unbreakable bonds. But his bond with this man ran the deepest, through life and death, past gaping wounds both physical and emotional. Trampled by loss, shredded by anger, frozen by distance, yet forged stronger by time and respect. And love.

Never easy, but comfortable. Never simple, but firm. Never without cost, but held so dear. Daniel carefully paced in the footsteps of that younger self and grasped tightly to that bond, to the lifeline offered so casually so long ago by one broken man to another.

He wanted to stop, to reach out and look into those dark eyes, to speak words of gratitude and wonder and friendship. But his hands dived into his pockets, shoulders shrugging, and his mouth closed before a breath escaped. No. That wasn’t their way.

“Hmm,” he started, drawing his brows together as if in fierce concentration, “it begins with a ‘J’.”