Episode Tag: S1 Singularity
Characters: SG-1, SGC, Cassandra
Themes: Pre-Ship: Daniel/Sam, Episode Tag, AU, Some H/C, UST

Challenge: LiveJournal’s SG Sequential Community
Prompt: The Last Promise by Azar (with references to ‘The First Doubt‘)

ESRB Ratings: Teen - Mild Violence, Language
Season: S1
Spoilers: S1 Singularity

Written: February 06

They walked four abreast: Captain Carter, Jack and himself in biohazard suits, Teal’c simply walking brazenly through the destroyed world.

Dead, they were all dead. Dead where they’d simply fallen in their day to day lives, life stolen before they could do anything about the oozing lesions or call for help. Bodies in the fields, bodies in the streets, sitting at their kitchen tables, in the booths they’d sold their wares, around pieces of monitoring equipment. Dead.

It was the most horrific thing Daniel had seen in his entire life.

“We’re supposed to tag the bodies we find with these.” Sam was handing out identification markers, a strip of hot-pink plastic that reduced these people to a barcode that listed the planet’s numerical designation and the order in which they’d come across their corpse. He ran one gloved finger over the cold information.

“They knew this would happen.” He could see a body laying just in the bend of the quaint dirt road they walked. They were going to have to lay one of these hot pink strips on him, taking away the last of who he’d ever been and leaving him just a fact and statistic for a Pentagon report. There wasn’t anyone left to tell them who he was otherwise.

Captain Carter’s follow up question was quiet. “The indigenous people?” In the breath between steps, Daniel had forgotten he’d even said anything out loud, but it was true: these people had known.

“They told me three months ago when we came here that ‘with the darkness would come the apocalypse’. It was part of their mythology. And what did we tell them? It’s just an eclipse and there’s nothing to worry about.”

O’Neill involuntarily lifted his chin as if bracing it against a blow. Daniel’s words were hard and cynical, not the usual fair for his insatiably curious puppy of an archeologist. It wasn’t a sound Jack was used to - or knew if he liked - coming from the much younger man. He liked Dr. Jackson’s innocents and naivety. An external good cop to his internal bad cop.

It… it let him have hope. But, Jack had to admit. This was a pretty hopeless situation. Even a bespeckaled Pollyanna couldn’t make lemonade out of the putrid fruit left out here for them to find.

“Hello?” Daniel and Jack looked up over the body they kneeled by. Who was Carter talking to?

“It’s okay, you can come out.” The men stood. Teal’c turned a dour expression in Sam’s direction.

“I— I know I must look pretty scary in this mask, but I’m not going to hurt you, it’s okay.” She had talked about looking for survivors, but Daniel hadn’t believed anyone or anything could have lived through… this. But there was movement in the bushes and you couldn’t deny that. It made his heart suddenly beat painfully against his ribcage.

Jack sent Teal’c to investigate. It made sense: the Jaffa wasn’t in a biosuit, his face and frame were left to their natural lines and contours and not the bright yellow bulk surrounding the rest of them. Yet Daniel immediately didn’t like that idea and fidgeted in nervous response. Not for Teal’c’s safety - for whoever he was going to approach.

But that was irrational and Daniel had to crush down his reaction against the large, dark man once more. Hadn’t he been proving himself these last few months? Hadn’t he saved Daniel’s life a few times a long the way? Neither of these things meant he trusted Teal’c, though, and that was something Daniel was always painfully aware of when off-world with the team. He wanted to… or. He thought he wanted to. Jack did. Sam seemed to. Daniel was just reluctant to hand his heart over to Teal’c so that the Jaffa could crush what little blood had been able to slip back inside these months back on Earth and inside the SGC.

Teal’c disappeared into the underbrush while the three of them gathered together. There was a brief exchange of glances when he bent completely out of sight.

‘No,’ Daniel mentally revised. ‘This is the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.’ Teal’c came back to the road awkwardly holding the hand of a dirty waif of a child. A little girl, maybe eight or nine, whose haunted eyes were beyond simple terms like “exhausted” or “shocked”. These others, they at least had escaped into death. She had had to live among them until they found her. And just how long had that been?

They stood by the great big telescope in the main military complex, the building the medical team had turned into a headquarters. Theoretically they were lead to believe it was a clean zone.

“Now, I don’t want to belittle what’s happened here, but if we just pack up and leave… SG-7 and all these other people would’ve died for nothing.” It was a quiet passion, one tempered against cool logic to be sure, but one Daniel was still coming to respect and admire greatly in the Captain Doctor.

Captain Carter was more scientist then he’d ever be, and maybe rightly so as an astrophysicist. His own discipline was too muddled in grey where as hers was clearly recognizable in terms of black and white. But she was still a deeply compassionate woman with strong convictions and she didn’t want to think these people here had given of themselves for no reason. It was important to her that they didn’t.

‘Sha’re would have liked her.’ It came unbidden and unheralded into his thoughts and Daniel could only frown against it quickly. Yes, she would have, but he couldn’t think of his wife right now. If he did, the darkness might come and swallow him and right now he… he what. He needed to do something very important but like hell could he think what it could be.

Turning his head, Daniel could see Jack being persuaded by Sam’s argument. O’Neill sometimes couldn’t see beyond the blacks and whites, so it gave Daniel a measure of comfort to watch the colonel relent to her logic. And then something on Jack’s face changed so he followed it to look first at Sam and then—

The little girl shuffled into the room and then quickly wrapped her fingers around Captain Carter’s arm, hiding herself behind the officer in no uncertain terms. Again Daniel’s heart gave a painful crack against his ribs.

“Well,” Jack let Carter know sardonically. “You won’t be staying.”

It was decided Jack and Teal’c would stay, leaving Daniel and Sam to take their orphan back with them. Their orphan. Daniel couldn’t help but smile a little ruefully at his train of thought. SG-1: exploring the cosmos, saving the universe, taking in strays one mission at a time. Knuckling his glasses back up his nose, he added: ‘including its first one.’

They joined the small party of medical personal that was also returning, but it fell to Captain Carter and himself to suit the girl up and explain what was going to happen. It fell to them but also came naturally. Effortlessly.

The girl seemed to accept Daniel as easily as she had Sam, so while Sam talked and zipped the child in, Daniel bent to fasten her shoes into the plastic suit. When they were done and she was attached to the internal oxygen scrubber, looking every bit the space invader they did, she reached out and took both Sam and Daniel’s hands.

Again it just came… naturally. Of course she would. Of course they’d each hold on. Of course they’d formed a tiny, resilient chain of protection and comfort.

“On three,” Sam announced. Her blue eyes met his and for that one blink of time, Daniel could smile. Who knew what made children do it, but this one was no different as she swung her arms in tempo with the countdown. “One… two… three!” Daniel felt the girl’s hand in his squeeze tight one last time just before they hopped through the Stargate together.

Since Jack and Teal’c stayed behind, and Captain Carter was otherwise… occupied, it fell to Drs. Frasier and Jackson to brief General Hammond on the situation. They piped the feed from the security camera from the girl’s room into the conference room.

The report was hard hitting with some pretty ugly facts. Like the distinct possibility they were directly responsible for this disaster. Or the still haunting question of why no one called for help before it got to what it did. Hammond wanted to make absolutely sure there wasn’t the chance this virus was now lurking around the SGC, and it was up to Daniel and Janet to assure him. But Daniel couldn’t seem to draw his eyes away from watching Sam and their orphan. He did when he had to, his respect for the General real and firmly earned, but of their own accord, Daniel again and again found himself watching Sam work with and engage the mute little girl.

Posters and pictures were now up on the concrete walls, bright flowers in bright vases turning their faces up, and there was a snack of hot dogs waiting for them on the table covered with art supplies. The room couldn’t help being military issue, but it was at least trying to be something a little more approachable and less intimidating. Sam had even brought out some stuffed animals and one was a puppet she grinned down at. ‘Babar’, if his memory was to be trusted. Daniel grinned along with her unconsciously as she wiggled the stuffed elephant around. The captain had really gone all out.

Jack had made his point on the Blue Dress Mission: Sam Carter couldn’t help being a beautiful, intelligent, fascinating woman, and married or widowed, Daniel was still a breathing human being who was going to notice such things irregardless. It was just… it just seemed that, having the chance to see these softer impulses of Sam working with the girl…

Daniel wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, or what he was feeling, he just knew he had to mean something by feeling as he did. He wanted to claim it was simply his reaction to the disaster at hand and now his concern and humanitarian compassion for the little girl. But that wasn’t just it if he was going to be honest with himself.

In classic Jackson fashion, Daniel felt more guilty about not feeling as guilty as he thought he should. Watching Sam with the girl made his insides twist about warmly. And not exactly an unpleasant warmth. In fact, in ways he kind of looked forward to. Who knew Sam, she who wielded an M90 like it was a casual extension of her arm or designed reactors as a hobby could smile so brightly when picking up a hot dog?

And that is what made him feel like he was betraying Sha’re: the fact he couldn’t stop himself from grinning at the video feed as Captain Samantha Carter of the United States Air Force joined the girl in finger painting. He really, really wanted to feel worse about how much he was looking forward to joining them when the meeting here was done. But… he just couldn’t seem to manage it.

“Please don’t go.” It was the first thing she’d said since they found her in the bushes. Sam had a phone call, and Daniel had come to stay with the girl while she took it, but now the girl was clutching at Sam’s arm again. Except there were words this time.

“Feel like telling me your name?”

“Cassandra.” The anthropologist in the room winced at the irony.

“Hi, Cassandra.” Samantha’s smile was soft as she fingered a lock of Cassie’s hair back behind her ear.

“I hurt.” Daniel took a step closer, concern pursing his mouth. Sam was all business.

“Where?”

“Here.” The girl tapped on her chest. It wasn’t a metaphorical pain, it was a real pain. Sam had Cassandra up in her arms and practically out the door before Daniel could react. He’d just take a message for the Captain; Area 51 would just have to deal with the fact she was busy.

The arrhythmia, the potassium deficiency… the naquadah-laced machine somehow collecting near the girl’s heart. It had been a long day with a long operation right at the end and Daniel was waiting outside Cassandra’s door when Sam finally came out. It was late. Or early, depending on how you wanted to tell time. Everyone was tired and the base at large was deserted. He had a book in his lap and it might have even looked like he was reading it, but he wasn’t. It was simply something to occupy his hands and the line of his sight while he worried.

“How is she?”

Sam was ready to brush Daniel off, brush anyone off. “She’s fine. Sleeping.” She was going to go back to her lab and sink her head in this problem and get Cassandra better. It’s what Sam Carter did best she told herself.

This other stuff, it wasn’t in her training. Sam had to do something, work on something. This ache in her heart was just a factor she didn’t know how to deal with.

Daniel stood up to follow, but it looked like he might have to give chase as well. He’d spent all this time keeping her at a friendly arm’s length and now all Daniel wanted to do was be right at her side. When you realized suddenly what you wanted out of life - or at least might want out of life - you tended to want to start it right away. He was nervous. “Uhm, if you’d like, I can sit with her tomorrow for a few hours.”

“Nah, we’re okay.” Again, more brusque then she meant to be, but… Sam bit her lips together as she looked up into Daniel’s blue, blue eyes. He gave her a quiet “Okay,” in automatic response, but it was whatever it was flickering behind his glasses that made her turn away again. It’s also what made her stop and turn back. If he seemed eager when he stepped forward, neither of them noticed.

“It’s just… I want to do this.” There. That should explain everything.

“Okay, but I guess what I’m saying is…” Was he ready for this? Was this the right thing to do? The right time to do it? And did Daniel really have a choice. Did your feelings ever consult you before doing what they wanted? Or did they just go off and do whatever it was they were going to do and towed you along behind after the fact. He licked his lips before trying to explain something he himself didn’t exactly get. “I guess what I’m saying is, you don’t have to do this… alone.”

The halls of the Cheyenne Mountain complex were so stark and utilitarian, molded and painted for function and nothing else. They ate individuality and spit back conformity. And yet, standing right here in front of her, with his soft voice and tender concern for her, for Cassandra, was Daniel Jackson. He defied everything the military had taught her, even while he stood there in his little soldier’s uniform.

‘I knew I’d like you.’ The memory bubbled up inside her as she reached out to touch his arm. “Thanks.” It was really all Sam could manage right now and even that was a struggle. So much threatened to overwhelm her, and now here was Daniel, Daniel after all these months….

Daniel wasn’t sure if she’d understood what he meant. What he really meant. Not that, well. Not that he really understood what he “meant”, but. He watched her move off down the hall with her determined steps.

Maybe this was just another way the Fates were looking to crush his spirit: show him how his heart could indeed love again but then move the finish line an improbable distance away. One blonde captain doctor’s step away at a time in fact.

“They used that little girl like a Trojan horse.” Samantha didn’t need to look at Daniel to know just how disgusted he was by the whole situation. That suited her just fine, it unified their cause. After her remote experiment all those floors down, where an entire lead room had been destroyed by the microscopic particles Cassandra’s body held in quantitative quantities — she’d reached new levels of disgust for the Gou’ld too. How could they do this! Was life really so… disposable to them?’

Hammond dismissed them so as to discuss options with the brass in attendance. Daniel didn’t even need to ask where Sam was going, he just followed a pace behind. Giving her room. Giving her space to grieve.

He opened the door slowly and heard Cassandra’s ragged coughs, saw Sam flinch with each. The woman stood with her arms folded stiffly around herself and it was all Daniel could do to not take her up in his. The compulsion carried him so far as to make his palms itch for the tactile contact. But he kept his distance, sliding his hands into the safety of his pockets. He couldn’t— not now, too fast. Not appropriate. Other things you told yourself when too scared to make that all important First Move. They kept their conversation soft, but it didn’t lack for emotion because of it.

“I know I am supposed to be detached.” Sam’s blue eyes wouldn’t stop filling with tears. It made her voice raw and sound like she wasn’t in control of herself. And really, Carter had to ask if she was.

Instead Daniel asked softly, “Who said that?” It was such an innocent, naive question and yet brilliant in its clarity and sincerity. Who had said she wasn’t supposed to feel, not supposed to experience the world. When did the word ’solider’ turn into ‘passive observer’? In her USAF training manual, of course.

Her short laugh was more self deprecating then mocking of his conviction. “I forget sometimes you’re not military.” And he wasn’t. He was almost a walking, talking, breathing antithesis of everything she’d dedicated her life to. But that never mattered when it came to Daniel. Not really, not where it counted. His strengths and convictions had buoyed her when the air force’s straight and unyielding lines had let her down. Like they did here, now.

“Greatest nation in the world and we can’t cure one little girl.” Sam had to bite off a second, bitter laugh at herself.

“This has nothing to do with our country, Sam. It’s bigger then either of us. So much bigger. So much more then any of us has had to really, truly face before. Literally.” His mouth turned up into a sad smile. “But that doesn’t mean we give up. And it doesn’t mean it’s your fault if we… can’t… not our fault.” No, they could very easily lay the blame at someone elses’ feet over this one. But that wouldn’t make her feel any better. Cassandra’s small body flung itself side to side again in a spasm of coughs and Sam couldn’t stop herself from choking on a sob.

His steady resolve crumbled. Daniel’s hands on her shoulders were gentle and tentative but insistent as they turned her towards him. She resisted at first and wanted to resist more. What she needed to do was get a hold of herself, get a grip so she could deal with the situation in the cool and collected detachment it required to be solved. Let her training take over because emotions were sloppy and could lead to mistakes. She couldn’t afford to give in to what Daniel was offering.

But she was human, and she was tired and he was so gentle with her when she curled against him. “Oh, Daniel,” Sam cried against his shoulder. His hands ran smooth circles down her back and against the nape of her neck, arms holding her close and lending her what strength he could.

He laid his cheek against the top of her hair gently as she let it all out.

From that moment it was just accepted that Daniel was Sam’s quiet shadow. Accepted by those on base, and by one another. He lurked in her lab, huddled against door frames as she spoke with people, and stood right at her shoulder when the worst of her orders came down from on high.

Jack O’Neill wasn’t as dense as he liked to pretend he was and saw it for what it was right away. It had been his suggestion to take the girl to the abandoned nuclear silo, but it was Daniel’s hard gaze he found himself avoiding. Sam didn’t even look at him: she had the orders so that’s what she did. Jack didn’t really know which one was worse to deal with.

There was a special forces detail with them, but it was Jack, Teal’c and Daniel that waited by the elevator shaft for Sam. She was taking Cassandra down through the solid rock. To die. It hurt them all, but it hurt some more than others.

Teal’c and Jack busied themselves while they waited by looking at their boots, but Daniel–

“Jack, she’s going back down.” He repeated it with a panicked note of urgency. “Jack, she’s going back down!”

“The hell she is.” The colonel pounded the intercom. “Captain Carter?” Nothing. “Captain Carter!” Still nothing. “Carter!” Daniel hovered over Jack’s shoulder. They watched the elevator numbers grow with mounting, sickening horror. Sam was back on the 30th level.

“Colonel, I’m staying.” Her voice sounded thick, thicker then the old radio system could account for. But calm.

“Negative.”

“Sir, she’s awake.”

“Oh, God.” It was out before Daniel could stop it, a hand dashing through the back of his hair in nervous habit. ‘No,’ he thought. ‘No, Sam, don’t do this. Please. Not now, not after I just…’ But he knew she would. Knew she’d lock herself down in an abandoned silo with a little girl who’d been turned into a bomb.

“Captain Carter, I am ordering you to get back up here. Right now.” But Jack knew a determined woman when he heard her.

Teal’c came up to stand besides Daniel. The irony here, of course, being that Daniel had been so afraid to trust this man, he’d given his trust to someone else. And now that someone else was committing suicide several hundred feet below him. The Fate’s weren’t just Gou’ld, but more-sadistic-then-usual Gou’ld who made it great sport to grind his very soul under their heels.

Jack looked at his watch and then back up at Daniel and Teal’c. “Alright,” he sighed. “Why don’t the rest of you guys clear out.” The three men exchanged a quick round of glances. Yeah, that was really going to happen.

O’Neill shook his head in emotionally deflecting cynicism. “Right.” Of course they’d all stay and potentially die together. None of them were very bright like that.

Jack eyed the seconds counting down on his watch. Daniel watched Jack watching his watch. Teal’c closed his eyes and respectfully gave his thoughts to CaptainCarter. They all flinched when Jack’s watch went into its frenzied alarm.

Shouldn’t there have been… Daniel looked around a bit. “I don’t feel anything.”

“We could’ve been wrong about the time.” Jack was ever pragmatic, but even he could hope against hope. Especially— especially if Daniel was suggesting it. Teal’c had his own flavor of hope; he arched an eyebrow high as he watched O’Neill and DanielJackson speak.

“We could have been wrong, but what would’ve happened.”

It was Jack’s place as commanding officer of SG-1 to reach for the radio, but it was all three of them who crowded around the wall mounted speaker. “Captain Carter,” Jack asked. “Can you hear me?”

One heart beat.

“Captain Carter.”

Two heart beats.

“Sam?”

“We’re fine,” echoed up from hundreds of feet down. “I’m fine, Cassandra’s fine. It didn’t happen. Nothing happened, sir.” Jack asked her how she knew and Sam tried to explain, but Daniel couldn’t hear. The rush of blood in his ears was too loud.

Daniel all but thumped Teal’c chest-to-chest in explosive adrenaline, settling instead for some quick sharp jabs to the Jaffa’s arms and shoulders in excited release. Teal’c had another arch of his eyebrow - this was perhaps the most camaraderie DanielJackson had ever showed him.

There was a whine of cable. The elevator was crawling back up towards the surface.

They were at the park. Jack had given Cassie a dog. Daniel could only imagine how thrilled Janet Frasier was going to be over that.

Jack was now trying to explain his riballed ‘old dog new trick’ joke to Teal’c, but the Jaffa was lost. Impeccably dressed for such a casual outing, Daniel mentally noted, but even sharp duds couldn’t help the situation. Teal’c took the leash when Jack offered it, but that didn’t exactly help either. Warrior scowled at warrior while the pomeranian did everything she could to get in the way.

The whole thing was too much and Daniel had to laugh. Scowling warriors scowled at him now, but it only made him laugh harder. He turned to see if the girls were watching - they’d let Sam and Cassandra have a moment on the bench - but saw that they’d moved on to the swings.

Daniel’s laughter was warm and rich and poured down Samantha’s spine like butterscotch. Something sweet and decadent, something you tried to measure out because you told yourself too much was bad for you but that you heaped on anyway when you didn’t think anyone was looking. That was Daniel’s laughter. That was… Daniel.

She looked up to see what could be so funny and met his eyes halfway across the playground. Behind him she could see the colonel trying to step out of a tangle of dog and leash and Jaffa, but Daniel was quite safe in his distance, hands casually in his pockets while his boyish grin still turned his mouth up. They held each other’s eyes for a moment more before Daniel broke it off with a bashful turn of his head.

Sam didn’t understand what this new ‘thing’ was between them, but she knew she liked it. Wanted more of it. Could even maybe let herself…. Neither of them had really spoken about it, but she knew they would. In time. In their own way, in their new language. Right now, they just sort of let it move between them of its own accord.

It made her feel safe, this… thing. Comfortable. Comforted. Something she didn’t know she didn’t have until suddenly she discovered it quietly standing at her shoulder in one of the darkest moments of her life. Sam knew she could always rely on her team, but relying on one’s team and letting them hold you while you cried were two very different things. And not just hold you but hold you.

“Cassie!” Jack beckoned her over with a wave of his hand. He had to teach her - and Teal’c - how to properly throw a frisbee. This was apparently another very important Earth rule to go with every Earth kid’s dog.

“Janet’s going to kill him.” Daniel came up besides her, reaching out to still the bouncing chain of the newly abandoned swing.

“Probably.”

Sam took the swing’s chain out of Daniel’s long fingers and jerked her chin towards the seat. “Sit down.”

Daniel arched an amused eyebrow but did as he was told. “Your turn,” she informed him as she began to push.

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