Fic: A Storybook Childhood
May. 3rd, 2003 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galaxysoupFANDOM: Stargate SG-1
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Sam and Daniel friendship
SUMMARY: Epilogue for Crystal Skull
SPOILERS: Crystal Skull
A STORYBOOK CHILDHOOD
Sam let herself into Daniel's apartment and closed the door quietly behind her. She could see Daniel standing on his balcony, staring out across the city, so she went into his kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. That was what everyone did when they went to Daniel's. Sometimes it was strong enough to degrease an engine, but it was always hot. After she'd gotten out of the infirmary, before they'd found Daniel, one of the first things she'd done was make herself some coffee. Janet had been pissed, of course, but it made Daniel feel a little closer somehow, as if the smell of coffee would call him home from wherever he'd been sent.
She walked out onto the balcony and stood beside him, both of them sipping coffee and staring out at the skyline. Neither of them said anything for a while, because unlike the Colonel Sam recognized that sometimes Daniel just needed companionable silence. She needed it herself, from time to time. It was one of the reasons she and Daniel were close.
After a moment Daniel shifted slightly and took a deep breath. Sam recognized the signs. It meant he was ready to talk, ready to come back from wherever his mind had taken him. Three years with someone and you got to know things like that.
"Feeling solid again?" she asked, joking a little. She'd noticed him touching things with an almost surprised reverence after they got him back, reminding himself he wouldn't just pass through. The Colonel had made a point of hanging onto Daniel's arm the whole trip back to the Stargate, but whether it was for Daniel's comfort or his own Sam couldn't say.
Daniel gave a little smile and took a sip of his coffee. Sam sipped her own and blinked. It was almost strong enough to make her eyes water.
"It must be nice, that Nick knows you were right," she said. She was feeling her way. She remembered the touch of bitterness in his voice when he talked about Nick during the briefing and the toneless way he'd recounted his experiences while invisible, and wondered what it must have felt like to be discarded a second time in favor of the old man's quest. Frankly, she was surprised that Nick had gotten such civil treatment from the Colonel. They had talked briefly before Daniel's disappearance, mostly just to make sure Daniel had never said anything to either of them about a grandfather before, and she knew the Colonel tended to take a very dim view of people who mistreated children. Abandonment apparently ranked high on his mistreatment list.
Daniel frowned and didn't answer for a few minutes, just stood there and finished his coffee. Finally he turned to look at her.
"Can I show you something?" he asked.
"Sure," she said. He vanished into the apartment and she could hear thumps and bangs coming from his bedroom. She leaned against the balcony door, cradling the hot mug in her hands. She was more interested in the smell of the coffee than the taste, anyway. It was a Daniel smell. Eau de Coffee.
He came back into the living room and set something down on the coffee table, seating himself on the couch. She went over and settled herself next to him, looking at his quarry. It was an old green file folder, the kind with a string that wrapped around a little cardboard circle on the cover to keep it closed. JACKSON, DANIEL was written in authoritative blue ball-point pen right below a string of numbers and a New York Social Services stamp. Daniel traced the string with one finger and then rested his forearms on his knees and clasped his hands, so after a moment Sam set down her mug and opened the folder herself.
The first thing she saw was a yellowing Polaroid of Daniel as a boy. It couldn't have been anyone else, not with those blue blue eyes and that serious expression.
"You look scared," she said. She wasn't sure why he was showing her this, because Daniel's childhood had always been about as valid a topic of conversation as the Colonel's Special Ops career. She would have thought he'd show the Colonel, if he showed anybody.
"I was scared," Daniel said. "I'd lived my whole life up until that point in Egypt. I didn't know the first thing about America."
"That must have been weird."
Daniel nodded. "It was very strange." He paused for a moment, then added quickly, "But not bad. Just strange." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Sam turned another page, scanning the cramped writing with half her attention. Any other time she'd be milking this for all it was worth, asking detailed questions and getting Daniel to spill everything, but for now she had her sights set on trying to figure out what was going on in Daniel's head. It was a difficult enough task on a normal day.
Words jumped out at her: Uncommunicative. Socially Awkward. Withdrawn.
She raised her eyebrows. "'Mentally below average'?"
Daniel looked embarrassed. "I spent the first year trying to figure out what was going on, so I didn't really pay that much attention in school. I nearly gave my teacher a heart attack when she realized I wasn't as dumb as everyone thought."
Sam laughed. She could imagine Daniel's teacher listening with an open mouth as a nine-year-old Daniel lectured her on heiroglyphic phonemes. Daniel smiled uncertainly, and she turned another page and kept going.
"How many families did you live with?" she asked as more words jumped out at her: Difficult to Place. Abnormally Intelligent. Withdrawn.
"Oh, I moved around a lot." He said it flippantly, but she could hear a hollow undercurrent to his voice. "Some kids ended up with one family for a long time, some got shuffled around a bit. It's just the way the system worked."
She turned another page. "That must have been tough."
"No, it wasn't that bad. Once you understood the rules it was fine."
"The rules?" she asked, turning another page.
"Every family had their own rules. There were little ones, like wash your hands before dinner, put away your toys, keep your shoes off the furniture. Then there were the big ones. Every family had at least one big rule you had to figure out and pay attention to or you'd get in trouble. Don't let the dog out, don't bother Mr. Plummer when he has one of his headaches, don't forget to say your prayers. That sort of thing."
Sam nodded. This she understood. "Yeah, we did that too. 'Don't ask Dad where he's been for the past week' was probably the biggest one."
"That makes sense."
Sam turned another page. Daniel read over her shoulder.
"The Monaghans," he said. "They were a nice family. Mrs. Monaghan had a great sense of humor. She was always playing practical jokes. Drove Mr. Monaghan crazy, but the rest of us loved it."
Sam turned another page. "The Rothsteins," Daniel said. "They lived in the tiniest apartment you can imagine. There were four kids including me and we all shared a bed. You had to learn to sleep heavily or you'd wake up whenever anyone so much as twitched."
Another page. "The Ferrises. They had a really neat dog named Ridley. He would do tricks for bites of tuna fish sandwich."
"The Hoeldtkes. They had a neighbor who was a priest. I used to help him translate Latin sermons into English."
"The Dubeau family. Captain Dubeau worked for the Army." Daniel smiled at her, and suddenly Sam understood. Daniel couldn't tell the Colonel because he would tease and be offended on Daniel's behalf for all the things Daniel had missed that the Colonel thought were integral to having any kind of childhood at all. He couldn't tell Teal'c because Teal'c wouldn't understand. He told Sam because he knew she would listen. He wanted her to know what his childhood had been like, all of it, and he wanted to know that he hadn't had it that bad, not really, that it was okay Nick left him behind because he'd done well for himself on his own.
She turned another page. "I bet that helped, moving around that much," she said, and Daniel gave her a quizzical look. "If you'd stayed in the same kind of place for your whole life, you probably wouldn't be as tolerant of people's differences. You wouldn't be as good an anthropologist." She didn't mention his instinctive ability to roll with the punches, which spoke of an adaptability far beyond what most people ever had to know.
Daniel's face lightened a bit. "No, I guess not," he said.
She turned another page. Daniel went still beside her. "The Coleman family," he said evenly. "Mr. Coleman used to lose his temper sometimes."
She turned to look at him, and he gave her a rueful smile.
"It wasn't that bad, really. Mostly he'd just smash things. It kind of scared the other kids, though, so we all used to hide in the closet and tell stories. Pretend we were camping in a cave or something. Most of them had never heard any of the myths I'd grown up with, so it was fun to tell them those. Almost like being back on one of my parents' digs, but without the campfire."
"Did you ever get hurt?" Sam asked softly.
He looked down. "Not often. Sometimes one of the other kids would spill some milk or something and Mr. Coleman would get really angry. I'd be afraid that he'd do more than just yell and storm around, so I'd pull a Jack."
Sam gave him a blank look. He looked embarrassed. "Get him mad enough at me that he forgot about everyone else."
Sam nodded. That particular tactic of the Colonel's used to scare the pants off of her, until she figured out what he was doing and why. It still scared her, of course, but now it was almost endearing.
She waited a moment for Daniel to continue, and realized that was probably all he would ever say. For Daniel, it was over and done with, a thing of the past. It had to be.
"You learned to protect other people," she said softly. It was true. Daniel had learned to sacrifice himself for others, the way he'd done so many times since then. It was another thing that scared her, scared all of them, but at the same time she could never really get that mad because deep down a guilty part of her was glad someone cared about her that much.
It was a Daniel thing.
Daniel finally turned to look at her, one of those split-second smiles flashing across his face. She turned the page. Another word: Loner.
"It wasn't a bad way to grow up," she said, and maybe it was even true.
"No," Daniel said. "A little lonely sometimes, but not a bad way to grow up."
"It taught you to be independent." She had a feeling independence was something Daniel had had since the day he was born; independence, stubbornness and a thirst for knowledge, probably the only things he really had in common with Nick.
"Yeah." He turned to face her and she closed the folder. She hadn't read all of it, but she guessed from the look on Daniel's face that she'd seen the important parts. She wanted to ask about Nick, to see if he had ever even tried to connect with his young grandson, but she could feel the fragility of the acceptance Daniel was clutching at and there was no way she was going to destroy that for him.
"It really wasn't all that bad," he repeated. She could feel his gaze like a physical thing, unnerving, alternately making her want to turn away or give him a hug.
"So there's no reason to be mad at Nick. Not really."
His voice wasn't the voice of Daniel Jackson, double PhD. It was the voice of Jackson, Daniel, telling stories in a closet to his frightened foster siblings.
"No," Sam said, taking a sip of cold coffee so strong it made her tonsils cringe. Maybe they weren't safe in a closet and maybe she wasn't a foster sibling, but she could tell stories with the best of them. "There's no reason to be mad at Nick."
Daniel smiled faintly and wound the string around the cardboard circle on the file folder.
"Well," he said, "it's all okay then."
FINIS
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Sam and Daniel friendship
SUMMARY: Epilogue for Crystal Skull
SPOILERS: Crystal Skull
A STORYBOOK CHILDHOOD
Sam let herself into Daniel's apartment and closed the door quietly behind her. She could see Daniel standing on his balcony, staring out across the city, so she went into his kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. That was what everyone did when they went to Daniel's. Sometimes it was strong enough to degrease an engine, but it was always hot. After she'd gotten out of the infirmary, before they'd found Daniel, one of the first things she'd done was make herself some coffee. Janet had been pissed, of course, but it made Daniel feel a little closer somehow, as if the smell of coffee would call him home from wherever he'd been sent.
She walked out onto the balcony and stood beside him, both of them sipping coffee and staring out at the skyline. Neither of them said anything for a while, because unlike the Colonel Sam recognized that sometimes Daniel just needed companionable silence. She needed it herself, from time to time. It was one of the reasons she and Daniel were close.
After a moment Daniel shifted slightly and took a deep breath. Sam recognized the signs. It meant he was ready to talk, ready to come back from wherever his mind had taken him. Three years with someone and you got to know things like that.
"Feeling solid again?" she asked, joking a little. She'd noticed him touching things with an almost surprised reverence after they got him back, reminding himself he wouldn't just pass through. The Colonel had made a point of hanging onto Daniel's arm the whole trip back to the Stargate, but whether it was for Daniel's comfort or his own Sam couldn't say.
Daniel gave a little smile and took a sip of his coffee. Sam sipped her own and blinked. It was almost strong enough to make her eyes water.
"It must be nice, that Nick knows you were right," she said. She was feeling her way. She remembered the touch of bitterness in his voice when he talked about Nick during the briefing and the toneless way he'd recounted his experiences while invisible, and wondered what it must have felt like to be discarded a second time in favor of the old man's quest. Frankly, she was surprised that Nick had gotten such civil treatment from the Colonel. They had talked briefly before Daniel's disappearance, mostly just to make sure Daniel had never said anything to either of them about a grandfather before, and she knew the Colonel tended to take a very dim view of people who mistreated children. Abandonment apparently ranked high on his mistreatment list.
Daniel frowned and didn't answer for a few minutes, just stood there and finished his coffee. Finally he turned to look at her.
"Can I show you something?" he asked.
"Sure," she said. He vanished into the apartment and she could hear thumps and bangs coming from his bedroom. She leaned against the balcony door, cradling the hot mug in her hands. She was more interested in the smell of the coffee than the taste, anyway. It was a Daniel smell. Eau de Coffee.
He came back into the living room and set something down on the coffee table, seating himself on the couch. She went over and settled herself next to him, looking at his quarry. It was an old green file folder, the kind with a string that wrapped around a little cardboard circle on the cover to keep it closed. JACKSON, DANIEL was written in authoritative blue ball-point pen right below a string of numbers and a New York Social Services stamp. Daniel traced the string with one finger and then rested his forearms on his knees and clasped his hands, so after a moment Sam set down her mug and opened the folder herself.
The first thing she saw was a yellowing Polaroid of Daniel as a boy. It couldn't have been anyone else, not with those blue blue eyes and that serious expression.
"You look scared," she said. She wasn't sure why he was showing her this, because Daniel's childhood had always been about as valid a topic of conversation as the Colonel's Special Ops career. She would have thought he'd show the Colonel, if he showed anybody.
"I was scared," Daniel said. "I'd lived my whole life up until that point in Egypt. I didn't know the first thing about America."
"That must have been weird."
Daniel nodded. "It was very strange." He paused for a moment, then added quickly, "But not bad. Just strange." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Sam turned another page, scanning the cramped writing with half her attention. Any other time she'd be milking this for all it was worth, asking detailed questions and getting Daniel to spill everything, but for now she had her sights set on trying to figure out what was going on in Daniel's head. It was a difficult enough task on a normal day.
Words jumped out at her: Uncommunicative. Socially Awkward. Withdrawn.
She raised her eyebrows. "'Mentally below average'?"
Daniel looked embarrassed. "I spent the first year trying to figure out what was going on, so I didn't really pay that much attention in school. I nearly gave my teacher a heart attack when she realized I wasn't as dumb as everyone thought."
Sam laughed. She could imagine Daniel's teacher listening with an open mouth as a nine-year-old Daniel lectured her on heiroglyphic phonemes. Daniel smiled uncertainly, and she turned another page and kept going.
"How many families did you live with?" she asked as more words jumped out at her: Difficult to Place. Abnormally Intelligent. Withdrawn.
"Oh, I moved around a lot." He said it flippantly, but she could hear a hollow undercurrent to his voice. "Some kids ended up with one family for a long time, some got shuffled around a bit. It's just the way the system worked."
She turned another page. "That must have been tough."
"No, it wasn't that bad. Once you understood the rules it was fine."
"The rules?" she asked, turning another page.
"Every family had their own rules. There were little ones, like wash your hands before dinner, put away your toys, keep your shoes off the furniture. Then there were the big ones. Every family had at least one big rule you had to figure out and pay attention to or you'd get in trouble. Don't let the dog out, don't bother Mr. Plummer when he has one of his headaches, don't forget to say your prayers. That sort of thing."
Sam nodded. This she understood. "Yeah, we did that too. 'Don't ask Dad where he's been for the past week' was probably the biggest one."
"That makes sense."
Sam turned another page. Daniel read over her shoulder.
"The Monaghans," he said. "They were a nice family. Mrs. Monaghan had a great sense of humor. She was always playing practical jokes. Drove Mr. Monaghan crazy, but the rest of us loved it."
Sam turned another page. "The Rothsteins," Daniel said. "They lived in the tiniest apartment you can imagine. There were four kids including me and we all shared a bed. You had to learn to sleep heavily or you'd wake up whenever anyone so much as twitched."
Another page. "The Ferrises. They had a really neat dog named Ridley. He would do tricks for bites of tuna fish sandwich."
"The Hoeldtkes. They had a neighbor who was a priest. I used to help him translate Latin sermons into English."
"The Dubeau family. Captain Dubeau worked for the Army." Daniel smiled at her, and suddenly Sam understood. Daniel couldn't tell the Colonel because he would tease and be offended on Daniel's behalf for all the things Daniel had missed that the Colonel thought were integral to having any kind of childhood at all. He couldn't tell Teal'c because Teal'c wouldn't understand. He told Sam because he knew she would listen. He wanted her to know what his childhood had been like, all of it, and he wanted to know that he hadn't had it that bad, not really, that it was okay Nick left him behind because he'd done well for himself on his own.
She turned another page. "I bet that helped, moving around that much," she said, and Daniel gave her a quizzical look. "If you'd stayed in the same kind of place for your whole life, you probably wouldn't be as tolerant of people's differences. You wouldn't be as good an anthropologist." She didn't mention his instinctive ability to roll with the punches, which spoke of an adaptability far beyond what most people ever had to know.
Daniel's face lightened a bit. "No, I guess not," he said.
She turned another page. Daniel went still beside her. "The Coleman family," he said evenly. "Mr. Coleman used to lose his temper sometimes."
She turned to look at him, and he gave her a rueful smile.
"It wasn't that bad, really. Mostly he'd just smash things. It kind of scared the other kids, though, so we all used to hide in the closet and tell stories. Pretend we were camping in a cave or something. Most of them had never heard any of the myths I'd grown up with, so it was fun to tell them those. Almost like being back on one of my parents' digs, but without the campfire."
"Did you ever get hurt?" Sam asked softly.
He looked down. "Not often. Sometimes one of the other kids would spill some milk or something and Mr. Coleman would get really angry. I'd be afraid that he'd do more than just yell and storm around, so I'd pull a Jack."
Sam gave him a blank look. He looked embarrassed. "Get him mad enough at me that he forgot about everyone else."
Sam nodded. That particular tactic of the Colonel's used to scare the pants off of her, until she figured out what he was doing and why. It still scared her, of course, but now it was almost endearing.
She waited a moment for Daniel to continue, and realized that was probably all he would ever say. For Daniel, it was over and done with, a thing of the past. It had to be.
"You learned to protect other people," she said softly. It was true. Daniel had learned to sacrifice himself for others, the way he'd done so many times since then. It was another thing that scared her, scared all of them, but at the same time she could never really get that mad because deep down a guilty part of her was glad someone cared about her that much.
It was a Daniel thing.
Daniel finally turned to look at her, one of those split-second smiles flashing across his face. She turned the page. Another word: Loner.
"It wasn't a bad way to grow up," she said, and maybe it was even true.
"No," Daniel said. "A little lonely sometimes, but not a bad way to grow up."
"It taught you to be independent." She had a feeling independence was something Daniel had had since the day he was born; independence, stubbornness and a thirst for knowledge, probably the only things he really had in common with Nick.
"Yeah." He turned to face her and she closed the folder. She hadn't read all of it, but she guessed from the look on Daniel's face that she'd seen the important parts. She wanted to ask about Nick, to see if he had ever even tried to connect with his young grandson, but she could feel the fragility of the acceptance Daniel was clutching at and there was no way she was going to destroy that for him.
"It really wasn't all that bad," he repeated. She could feel his gaze like a physical thing, unnerving, alternately making her want to turn away or give him a hug.
"So there's no reason to be mad at Nick. Not really."
His voice wasn't the voice of Daniel Jackson, double PhD. It was the voice of Jackson, Daniel, telling stories in a closet to his frightened foster siblings.
"No," Sam said, taking a sip of cold coffee so strong it made her tonsils cringe. Maybe they weren't safe in a closet and maybe she wasn't a foster sibling, but she could tell stories with the best of them. "There's no reason to be mad at Nick."
Daniel smiled faintly and wound the string around the cardboard circle on the file folder.
"Well," he said, "it's all okay then."
FINIS
