Remember When
By Jmas

 

Remember when –
I was young and so were you

 

“Daniel?”

No answer, not even a nod of his head to indicate he hears me. A freight train could blow through right beside him at this moment and he’d probably never even bat an eye. It’s dangerous out here, a man should always be aware of his surroundings. But there’s a kind of charm to Daniel’s own personal brand of distraction.

I can’t even imagine being so intently focused on anything… it’s been over 30 years since I was that young, that secure that nothing could hurt me, that there was nothing out there that would dare. Then again, he has us, he knows we’ve got his six so he can afford to let us do our jobs while he gives his all to his own.

He trusts us to do that, to let him be free to concentrate on doing it right the first time.

Yeah, a definite charm.

Not that I’d ever tell him that.

 

Remember when…
We lived and learned, life threw curves

“Daniel! Get down!”

Did I really expect him to listen? Hell, did I really expect him to stay safely under cover while one of us was in danger? He was the closest after all, and it isn’t as if he’s the same naïve kid who tumbled out of the gate on Abydos so long ago. He’s grown, gotten too damn good at being a soldier for someone who never made the decision to become one.

All Teal’c and I can do is provide cover fire and hope while Daniel dives and rolls, coming up beside Carter, pulling off four shots into the enemy before hoisting her over his shoulder and heading back for cover, weaving and dodging like a champ.

Almost there, almost there….

They’re clear! Teal’c throws his grenade into the Jaffa on their tail and it’s all over in a sudden rush of silence.

Part of me wants to run over and give Daniel a good shaking for being so foolhardy, the other part of me is fighting to accept that this is Daniel and what he did is what any one of us would do in the same situation. But it’s hard to accept, hard to know we failed in him in some way. Once upon a time, at least one lifetime ago for Daniel, he trusted us to protect him. Now, he protects us more than capably. I miss that innocence, that charm, I think I called it.

No, nothing can stay the same, but I can’t help thinking there’s a part of our lives that’s the poorer for it even as I appreciate that if it weren’t for the changes we’d all be dead several times over by now.

Damn fine man, our Daniel.

 

Remember when old ones died and new were born
And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged

“They named the baby Janet….”

Daniel’s voice slurs a little, too much Southern Comfort, I suppose. My fault, but I’m not a bit sorry. When Daniel showed up on my doorstep, ostensibly to see if I needed anything during my recuperation, he looked like someone had just run over his dog and all its pups.

We haven’t had much time to talk since 666; he had that whole pressure from above to hand over the tape showing Janet’s death in living technicolor and I was half out of it on painkillers while my chest remembered how to be whole again. Then there was the funeral, and the memorial, and the whole taking care of Cassie thing.

I knew he was blaming himself, even before I saw him… after. I tried to talk to him then but the drugs put me out before I was ready and when I woke up he was gone. Nobody seemed to know where, but Hammond said that weaselly reporter guy had found Daniel and gotten his blessing to use the tape.

In the few minutes we had to talk before the memorial, Daniel said it was the right thing to do, a way of honoring who Janet was to us. I could see where he was coming from, but that didn’t keep me from watching him like a hawk during the service.

He was so closed off, refusing to meet any of our eyes, and I knew it was the only way he could hold it together. His heart was broken, maybe a little of his spirit, but he wasn’t the same guy he’d been three or four deaths ago, a widowing ago, even an ascension ago. This Daniel would never let his emotions out like he had back then, would never let us help him grieve.

Maybe that was our fault; we let him grow away from us over this past year since he got back. It was more than a little difficult to know how accept him back after a year of thinking he was gone forever… his other deaths had been so much shorter. Not to mention the memory thing.

For a while it was almost like he’d become someone else, someone I thought I knew but didn’t quite know anymore. It’s taken most of this year for me to get out of thinking he’d disappear again if I took my eyes off him, to remember he got me out of Baal’s hellhole even if he couldn’t give me the vengeance I wanted, to remember that, beneath that strangely distant gaze he sometimes wore, this was still the same Daniel I’ve always known and cared about.

He didn’t need us quite so much as he had in the beginning, didn’t share as willingly, didn’t offer private thoughts quite so much, but then again we didn’t show him we needed him, didn’t share back, didn’t give him many chances to offer his thoughts because we weren’t offering our own.

After the service, I tried to take him home with me but he refused. I think he appreciated the offer, but he wasn’t ready yet. Tonight he is and I’m glad. He deserves support, deserves to be treated just like always… as family.

Speaking of family, I need to put this particular member of my family to bed. He’ll have a hell of a headache in the morning sleeping that way.

 

Remember when,
Thirty seemed so old
Now lookn' back it's just a steppin' stone
To where we are, Where we've been…

What a day this is….

Never thought it would happen, but there’s Daniel up on the stage looking all ‘aw shucks’ and flustered accepting a medal from the President for his heroic actions in defeating the Goa’uld, and the Replicators, and the Ori. He already got the Nobel for all the discoveries he made but could never tell anyone about while part of the program and damn if he didn’t look even more uncomfortable when he did that gig on Oprah. I think Teal’c is in love… with Oprah, that is.

Working in secrecy for almost 15 years has been hard for Daniel ‘the world deserves to know’ Jackson. He never complained once when everything he learned and discovered out there proved too controversial, too need to know, or too damn dangerous to share. He kept his hand in his field, the odd article here and there when he wasn’t dead, injured, in alien hands, or otherwise preoccupied with that big picture it sometimes seemed only he could see, but they know now. They know that Daniel Jackson, the man they dismissed as a fruitcake or erroneously scoffed as the man who said the pyramids were landing sites for UFOs, has been living history, has been meticulously documenting the diversity of cultures into the universe at large, the origins of myth, the basis of languages most of them never have or ever will know. He’s got enough material to write a library full of books.

I hear him at night in the house we now share, two old bachelors who never found love to equal what we’d lost, typing away or talking to the computer as it does the work for him when his hands grow tired. Don’t understand half of what he says, but that’s nothing new. It’s the voice that matters. The voice that long ago I learned to associate with purpose, with hope, with the wonder I’d lost.

It’s been a long road, but here at the end, and I do realize it’s getting close for me, I find I don’t regret one moment of the years since I watched the wiz kid with the long hair and apologetic smile tromp all over his peers’ ideas and open the universe to all of us. We’ve lived, we’ve lost, we’ve learned and we are far better people, this is a far better world than the one I wanted a first class ticket out of that day Kowalski came to offer me what was surely a suicide mission.

Daniel smiles at me as he descends from the stage, still a little flustered, but gracious, as always, in acceptance. I’ve got a catered dinner waiting for us back at the house and all the guys will be there: Bill Lee and his kids, Nyan and his wife, General Davis and family, Carter and Pete, Mitchell, Teal’c with Ryac and his family, Cassie, and so many more…even Thor said he might pop in. 
People Daniel loves and who love him just because he’s Daniel.

Reason enough when you think about it.

 

Said we'd do it all again
Remember when

Watching our guests dance and mingle in our great room, I have to smile at the man sitting next to me. He’s hovering but he thinks I don’t realize it.

Sometimes I think it’s a damn shame Daniel didn’t have kids, someone to pass those remarkable qualities on to. Then I figure that it couldn’t happen. A man like Daniel only comes along once in a great while, there’s just no way lightning could strike twice in the same gene pool.

Besides, who else would stick around and take care of me but him? No one else would have put up with me this long. I’d have dried up and blown away years ago, I’m convinced of that.

“It’s been a hell of wild ride, eh, Daniel?”

He nods gently, smiling that secretive smile he seemed to possess from the moment he de-ascended the first time. Son of a gun can still surprise me. It’s like he knows something I don’t. Then again, that’s nothing new. He always did.

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” he whispers, barely audible above the music playing on the sound system.

I shouldn’t be surprised to hear him say it, but I am.

He smiles again and takes my glass and his, heading for the bar. He doesn’t even look to know I’ve got his back in the crowd, trusting me to be there. I guess some things never change, slow down maybe, but never change.

A definite charm, yes, sir.