I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. Not so many one liners, but the plot progresses! (Yes, shocked me too.)
I disclaim. Muse yields the title. The brilliant writers of Stargate: SG-1 yield the characters.
Butterflies and Hurricanes
She looked thinner than he remembered; her dark hair bound back and her eyes shadowed with darkness that burned him.
Lightning bolts move slower than Daniel as he reaches for his once and future wife.
Monsoons rain less water than she weeps away.
Thunderstorms are quieter than his cries of joy as he realises she is solid, real, free.
Hurricanes exert less concentrated force than their first embrace.
One glance between them is enough to light the world on fire.
Their tears of happiness are enough to put it out again.
Meteorological phenomena, in fact, are entirely inadequate as similes for their passion. Suffice it to say that it would be easier to part Sam from a Naquada’h reactor, Janet from her needles, Jack from his P90 and Teal’c from his dignity than it would to prise these two a millimetre apart.
For Daniel Jackson, the whole universe was reduced to this place, this time, this kiss.
The others settled in and made themselves comfortable. Answers would be a while in coming, but they had all the time in the world.
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The brain patterns were flat. Daniel’s brilliant mind was gone. The warrior-scholar who had opened the Stargate and the Universe to an ungrateful world was lost. If it were any other member of the SGC but Daniel, Janet would have wept with her head on her crossed arms, knowing they were gone forever, but this was Dead-Again-Can’t-Keep-a-Good-Archaeologist-Down-Daniel. This man had survived more staff blasts, ribbon devices, cave-ins, bombs and Goa’uld torturing sessions than anyone she’d ever met. He had survivor tattooed on his butt, just above the large ‘Property of Jack O’Neill & SG-1, Return In Perfect Condition Or Else’. God help those who didn’t heed the warning. She had to remember that and keep faith in his obscene luck that so often brought him to the brink of death before pulling him back at the last possible moment.
Daniel completely failed to move as Nurse Ellen changed his IV bags and adjusted his central line. Janet caught her deputy carefully smoothing an errant lock away from Dr Jackson’s forehead and for the first time since she’d been called to the Gate-room, a smile flickered across her features. She didn’t say a word to the woman, but added another nurse to the list of Daniel’s admirers. He was, more in spite of his frequent visits to the Infirmary than because of them as the presence of an irascible Colonel O’Neill guaranteed that a comatose Daniel was still a difficult patient, the favourite charge of the staff. She’d seen grown women fight over who got to give him a sponge bath. Occasionally she’d pull rank and do it herself, if only to prove to herself that Daniel was healing from his latest injuries and that he wasn’t dying again.
“Doctor Fraiser.” It was the General and as he was using her title, she knew that it was a professional visit. She straightened up and adjusted her stethoscope as she turned to face him. “Doctor, is there any change?”
“None sir.” Janet wished she could offer him a crumb of comfort but like Old Mother Hubbard, her cupboard was bare. “I’ve done everything I can. Now it’s up to SG-1 and Daniel himself.”
“Keep me informed, Doctor,” for the briefest moment his gaze lingered on her face and she saw his concern for Daniel writ large. Her nurses weren’t the only ones to have a soft spot the size of Texas for the archaeologist. Then it was gone and the cold mask of command fitted safely back over his face. He couldn’t afford to play favourites any more than Janet could herself, but that didn’t mean his heart didn’t ache for his premier team.
The news from the lab wasn’t good. There were no venom or drugs in his blood. Whatever had done this to him couldn’t be traced with standard tests. She was beginning to fear it couldn’t be traced at all. Butterfly bandages in hand ready for the incoming SG-3, Janet allowed herself one last glance back at the still form and turned away. If the General could maintain his professional demeanour, so could she and Nurse Ellen knew better than to say so if she saw tears form in her superior’s eyes.
Her body might be active, her mind might answer the questions of the concerned SG-3, choosing the correct solutions to their various medical dilemmas, but Janet’s heart was in stasis, waiting for the news that would allow it to beat freely again.
“Janet!” Ellen’s professionalism was forgotten as she called out for help. Hammond and Janet both spun round to stare at the nurse. “It’s his skin!”
The fine thread work of veins was glowing golden beneath the skin. They swept up from his ankle and across the rest of his body, the tracery perfect in its anatomical detail. Then the glow wasn’t just golden but silver and purple, amethyst and sapphire, emerald and ruby. Daniel was exuding colour bright enough to make a rainbow weep itself away in envy. He had been a glowing energy being before but this was different, this was a violent mix of outrageous colours that would make 1980s’ fashion designers cry “Too much!” It spread across skin and reached his hair, his face an eerie sea green that highlighted the intensity of his eyes, and changed him from a blonde to a blue. Then the colours shifted and he was a kaleidoscope of shades.
Janet and Ellen watched Daniel for the next hour and saw colours adorn the human skin that were never found there outside of sci-fi movies before. The only constant was his hair. While the rest of him went through every conceivable variation of shading, his hair stayed a sapphire blue.
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The days passed easily, washing away the aching agonies that Daniel had at one time believed to be his eternal companions. Shau’ri was herself and his own. The Haven, as it turned out, was somewhere that seemed impossible to dislike. The sun shone hot, but not burningly so. The skies were blue but the rains came when needed and fell gently like lover’s caresses on the skin. The ground was fertile provided you kept near the river and didn’t mind the prevalent vegetation of highly pollinated flowers. There were springs that provided drinking water and they had even discovered an area of woodland beyond the Haven. The seasons were mild, the crops grew well and there was even a plant that resembled tea.
It could have been a world of fire and rock and pain and Daniel would have been happy. He was with Shau’ri. As it was, the benign world seemed to smile blessings upon them and Daniel’s happiness transcended to bliss.
He thought he might be dead because except for a single year on Abydos, his life has never offered him such joy. Despite missing SG-1 and Earth, coffee, chocolate and anti-histamines, the thought doesn’t trouble him much. It wasn’t like he had never been dead before. He didn’t think he’d been infested with a Goa’uld, Sam had certainly been in her own mind when Jolinar had taken over her body, but perhaps a heavenly afterlife would be impossible without Shau’ri.
Shau’ri. Even now he could barely let her out of his sight. There was magic in her movements, her hair was strung with starlight and her eyes glittered with the promise of eternity. They were going to have their happily ever after, even if it was when they were both dead. Yet part of him still believed that she could be snatched away from him at any moment.
Mandras and the others laughed at them, at the way Daniel would do anything for her. She felt unworthy of a love that had followed her into the grave when she was cursed by the gods and would ask him for nothing, but received the slightest token of his affection as the greatest gift. They were only children and like children they were both wise and foolish, Mandras said, his 300 year experience as a Goa’uld host leaving him far older in spirit than them despite twelve-year-old boy’s body.
Walking back with her now from the City, the capital and only city of this state needed no other name, Daniel wondered again if he was in fact dead. Solar flares could explain the time travel, but everything else was impossible. The sun couldn’t bring the dead back to life but here she was. They could transfer him back through time, but time and space? He was in Greece, but it wasn’t really Greece. It was the mass of city-states that would one day resolve into a full country. He was living in the past. He was living history. He was also living prophecy, a guarantee that if this land was Ancient Greece, then it was also Earth and that one day he would walk across it as a younger version of his current self, declaiming Homer to a laughing Sarah.
Homer had once meant only Odysseus, wine-dark seas and fearful gods. Now it brought to mind Jack and even with Shau’ri’s hand in his, Daniel could long for and miss his best friend and the two other members of SG-1.
For the first eight months, he had spent every day by the Stargate, waiting for the rest of SG-1 to come for him, looking for a way to return. Shau’ri had gone with him, refusing to be left or leave for a moment, and had worked nearby, tilling the earth with arms that held her husband tender-fiercely at night, listening to her Dan’yel talk of the worlds he had visited, planning a life back on Earth and learning of her son, Shifu. She worked the ground and he tried to translate the writings he had found in the City’s library, stopping occasionally to help her work or to kiss her, incapable of having her so near and not in touch.
They gave up when he finished the last of the translations relating to the Gate and realised that the DHD was gone, destroyed by an ex-host terrified of anyone opening the Stargate and bringing the Goa’uld upon them decades before. He left a message for anyone who came looking for him, tucking the note inside the plastic envelope that had held his last Kleenex. They visited it still, looking for signs of others, but Shau’ri’s garden slowly reverted as they found life in the Haven more and more engrossing.
Shau’ri planted a pomegranate tree in the place where Mandras had first found her Dan’yel, delighted by the fruit, and he never had the heart to tell her of Persephone’s fate. She cared for it as if it were the child they knew she might never bear, yet Daniel felt a shiver of cold dread whenever he looked at it.
Shau’ri had a cure for that. As love made a child grow strong and wise, she said it would do the same for their tree. It became their place, their sacred grove, and whenever Dan’yel lost sight of her, he would look to the west towards the tree and see her sleeping beneath its heavy boughs, a wood nymph caught napping.
She teased him about his habit of watching her sleep and the teasing would turn to play and other things and Dan’yel’s cold feeling would be forgotten until the next time he saw the tree outlined in red by the setting sun, its dark fruits turned bloody by the light.
“Dan’yel!” Mandras was calling him and he could he smell the stew from his resting place by the Haven’s wall.
Carefully wrapping his journal in its protective cloth and pushing it deep into his pocket so that it lay warm against his breast, Daniel shook away his feeling of foreboding and turned his back on the setting sun.
If he’d known what was coming, he would have cut the accursed tree down and burned it to ash, scattered the ash on the sea and salted the earth where it once grew, but hindsight is 20:20 and even on the best of days Daniel could only claim vision of 6:8.
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The trip back to the Gate was uneventful with Teal’c taking point, Jack carrying the funeral urn and Carter watching their six.
Every five or six steps, Jack would make sure to jerk the funeral urn just enough to rattle the snake inside. Rattle the snake – Daniel would have appreciated that one.
“Carter, dial us up.” The god-not-snake hissed at him again, cursing him in language to make a marine blush. The Colonel was special ops though. It would take language to make a linguist blush to ruffle him.
Jack stopped for a moment and jiggled the jar. “Hey, snake-thing.”
Again the creature hissed “Shehhehehesss ‘Thing’?”
That he could still piss wannabe-snake-gods off in only three words pleased O’Neill immensely. “You said you put Daniel into his ‘living death’. What does that mean, exactly?”
The snake is still cursing. “He’s with his wife.”
“Yeah, that’s the bit that’s confusing me.” Jack has to resist the urge to shake more but the snake-thing is being cooperative and antagonising the only thing that knows where Daniel’s mind is would probably bring the combined wrath of Carter and Janet down on his head. “Cause Shau’ri’s dead and Daniel isn’t.”
Jack could have sworn he heard the snake sigh in exasperation. “His spirit has gone further down its road to the Great Path. He will return when his wish is fulfilled. My venom will provide him with the necessary passage home.”
The wormhole whooshed to life and the whole of SG-1 felt the tension in their spines relax a fraction. They were going home with a possible cure for Daniel.
Stepping into the Stargate, O’Neill felt the pot begin to shake and then it exploded, leaving cuts on his hands. Even as he was divided into atoms, he heard the snake-thing spit, “So long, suckers.”
The tiny purple body vanished into the event horizon.
SG-1 dove after it and were confronted by some very confused Marines on the other side.
There was no sign of the snake thing and with it went all SG-1’s hopes for a cure for Daniel.
Fraiser had no good news for them and they were left to linger by his bedside and hope against hope that their friend would prove his nickname correct and pull through by himself.
The myth would later say that it was now that the shadow fell over the SGC and that their souls were lost to darkness because they had lost the light that had led them to a better way.
Daniel had always hated that part or would when he heard it much later and in another place from a personage he had himself dismissed as myth. Too modest, too self-abnegating, too damn humble to realise his own worth, he hid his light beneath a bushel that saved his blushes but did sod all to hide the fact that his goodness burned like the sun at noon.
Truth was that the SGC wasn’t the same without him and that SG-1 would never be the same if they did not win their archaeologist back. Jack was so grumpy that grown captains cowered at his approach, Carter worked until she had exhausted every avenue of possible scientific thought to save him and Teal’c walked around with an expression that suggested that Junior was giving him permanent indigestion and that the favour was returned. The SGC had lost a favourite son and nothing would alleviate that loss but the return of Lazarus from the grave, and it would take nothing less than a miracle to achieve that.
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Now by the firelight on the first anniversary of Daniel’s arrival amongst them, a year of uninterrupted bliss, they spoke of their experiences as hosts. Daniel called it therapy. The others only knew that speaking began to bridge the abyss of pain that they had endured and brought them a step further toward healing their wounded souls.
“The Gods,” how well they knew them to be false gods, but yet the memory of worship lingered, harsh and unconquerable, “they made me watch as they murdered my family, torturing them until they begged for death, killing them and then reviving them in the sarcophagus, killing them again and again until they broke and their souls fled and though their hearts beat and their wounds healed, they were no longer alive. I only wish that theirs were the only deaths I witnessed, the only atrocities I could not stop, but they were only the first.”
Daniel knew this story too well, but it still gave him shivers to hear Mandras tell it.
The boy goes on, dry-eyed and unsmiling, relating a fragment of what he has endured, drawing the poison from his soul drop by drop. “The day I died and came here was not the happiest of my life. Until I was here, I had forgotten happiness. It was a release though, a freeing of the spirit I will never forget. For so many years I prayed, and then I stopped praying, stopped hoping and accepted my fate as a vessel for the demon, the false-god that stole my life and my family.”
Mandras smiles slowly and it is as the rising of the sun after a long, terrible night to Shau’ri. Her own imprisonment was the longest night she’d ever known. It is noon for her soul now and she hopes the darkness has passed forever. “This is not life I would have wished for, but it is enough.”
The words are true for all of them, for none would have chosen this existence so far from all that is familiar and beloved, but compared to before, this is paradise. Each has their own word for it, but the most familiar to Daniel is Jeptha’s, for he calls it the Garden of Eden and Heaven.
However, as everyone knows, even in the Garden of Eden there is danger. Beneath the pomegranate tree is a stone and beneath the stone is a hollow. The hollow waits but is no more than a void, and Nature hates a vacuum.
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Jack was pacing, a tiger trapped in a cage too small for its magnificence. Sam had to stop watching him; he was making her even dizzier than no sleep and only snatched mouthfuls of food already had. Teal’c remained his usual stone-faced self, but those who knew him could see the tension in his ebony frame. The Jaffa was not a happy bunny.
“SG-1.” Hammond let the file drop to the table with a soft thud. Only years of training stopped him from sighing. “Any news on Dr. Jackson’s condition?”
There, he’d said Dr. Jackson, as if he was just another employee, not Daniel the young man he’d come to admire so much and seen suffer terribly far too often. Somehow that didn’t distance the pain at all.
“No, sir.” Hammond found himself wondering when Sam had begun to look so worn. He made a mental note to put all four of SG-1 on stand-down as soon as this later crisis was over. He deliberately made himself ignore the possibility that there could only be three of SG-1 left to stand-down. The other would be lying down, permanently. He winced internally at the thought. Clearly he’d been spending too much time with Jack.
Sam noticed the slight grimace flicker across her commanding officer’s face and wondered if he had indigestion. The meatloaf in the cafeteria was certainly bad enough.
“You requested our presence, General Hammond.” Teal’c actually sounded impatient, well impatient for him anyway. He had barely left Daniel’s bedside for the week he had been mostly-dead and he already seemed edgy after mere minutes away.
The others stared at him for a moment in shock, but his face was now impassive.
“Yes,” Hammond cleared his throat and glanced down at the folder before him. This wasn’t going to be a good conversation. He’d primed his adjutant to ring the Big Red Phone if the shouting went above 15 decibels. “We’ve received a message from our allies amongst the Tok’ra. There’s a threat made against Earth and SG-1 is the team best equipped to deal with it.”
“A threat, sir?” When had Jack become so good at barely-veiled insolence? The words were venomous. George knew that for Jack the only threat that mattered right now was the one that had damaged Daniel and vanished into the Stargate.
“The Tok’ra informed us of a rising Goa’uld power, one who believes that conquering Earth is the first step along the path to becoming a System Lord.” Hammond laid the file down before him and folded his hands together on the table, leaning forwards against the length of his forearms as he spoke. “Her name is Minthe and she poses a serious threat to us. Her fleet of motherships are approaching and she will be arriving within the next week. I’ve spoken to the Tok’ra and both they and I believe that SG-1 are the only ones that can stop her.”
“Oh fer cryin’ out loud.”
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