Fic: Late

[butterfly]

Title: Late
Summary: Samantha wants help. Daniel already gave it to her.
Timeline: Set during Moebius (part 2). Well, it's pretty much speculative at this point. Part of the set that I have going on.
Warnings: Angsty. Some S/J. A touchy subject.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to (take a deep breath) MGM-UA, Worldwide Television, Showtime, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions, the Sci-Fi Channel and Stargate SG1 Prod. Ltd. Partnership.


Samantha stared at Daniel, who was speaking softly to a beautiful woman. No one that she'd seen before, not that that meant anything. Daniel seemed to know everyone around here. After almost four years, Jack and Samantha still only knew a handful of people, pretty much permanently handicapped by their very loose grasp of any dialect of Egyptian, ancient or otherwise.

Everyone that they could talk to was a pupil of Daniel's, a bright-eyed crusader who spoke of Daniel in glowing terms. Daniel had saved them all from Ra, Daniel had survived torture where his friends had not, Daniel had taught them all that life was more than endless worship.

And now Daniel was the one that they looked to, even for the smallest things.

Like that woman, who hadn't taken her eyes off Daniel's face the whole time that Samantha had been watching.

"Am I interrupting?" Samantha asked. The woman moved away from Daniel, her face flushing. She said something in Egyptian, something that made Daniel reach out to her and murmur something in return. He smoothed the back of his hand over the woman's cheek and Samantha shifted, trying not to look pushy. She knew that Daniel had 'shared his tent' with any number of women over the years and she really didn't want to get into any of that with him.

After a few moments, the woman seemed soothed and she headed past Samantha toward the entrance of the tent, without a single look in Samantha's direction.

"I'm going to assume that this is something important," Daniel said. God, she wanted to smack him when he acted this way. Not that she'd ever dare, but, boy, she wanted to. In the first year or so after they'd arrived, she'd could remembering thinking that this man was inferior in so many ways to the warm and generous man that she'd met back in her own timeline. She'd thought that he was so cold, so dismissive.

She still thought that about him, some days.

"Yeah. It's important." She knew that her tone was clipped and sharp, but Daniel got harder to take over the years. Even more so now that Teal'c was gone. "I have a problem."

He raised an eyebrow, reeking disdainful impatience.

"I need to talk to... a doctor," she said, her words tumbling out. "But I don't know any. Not that speak English."

"What about?" Daniel asked, so very casually and she wanted to hate him for that. And while she could hate him for other things, this, his very careful distance, was the one thing that she couldn't hate him for, not anymore.

"I hadn't thought that it would be an issue. It's been four years, so how can it be an issue now? We should have known right away, so I figured..." Samantha locked eyes with Daniel and she thought she saw the tinest bit of horror in them. "I figured maybe he was shooting blanks. Never wanted to ask."

"You're not pregnant," he said, finally, and with such certainty that she would swear that she felt her heart stop. He rubbed between his eyebrows, for a moment, and she could almost see that other Daniel in him, the slightest shadow of human feeling. "And you won't be. So stop worrying."

"How can you know?" Samantha asked, taking a step backwards.

"Take a guess, Sam." His voice was so incredibly tired, like he'd finished a twelve-mile run. And he'd called her 'Sam'. No one had called her that since her dad. "You're smart enough to figure it out."

"No," she said, her voice just a whisper. "You couldn't have."

But he could have. He was their guide. He was the one who'd let them know what to eat so that their systems would have an easier time adjusting. He was the one who'd introduced them to the dozens of little daily rituals that made up life here.

Daniel looked at her again, a strained half-smile on his lips. His eyes were bright and blue and so very old, like diamonds, forced into beauty by time and unbearable pressure.

"You didn't even ask," Samantha said. She'd spent a thousand or more sleepless nights wondering if she'd be able to deal with it, how it would even be possible, considering how delicate their situation was, and it had all been pointless. Her feelings about it had been rendered moot. Like she'd needed another reason to hate Daniel Jackson. "How could you not even ask?"

"I couldn't take the chance that you'd say no."

~fin~

Comments

[lerefuge.livejournal.com]

Gah! I have been thinking about this, and I have the impression that Daniel could have killed himself to preserve the timeline, except he can't because he had the responsibility of making sure Sam and Jack dont screw up. He can't trust them, obviously. I am pretty sure he'd be ready to do anything for that, but of course, he wouldn't use any brute force unless very necessary... and even if this is very cruel, I can see him do it because it sort of reaches a limit of brutal force that I totally see Daniel using. It hurts, it's tough, but it's so good. I guess I should feel sympathy for this AU Jack and Sam but damn.. I really don't.

Gah, you good :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

It's definitely something that would come up, one way or another.

Thank you.