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When Janet Fraiser examined Jack O’Neill, freshly shaven and tight-lipped as a clam, she diagnosed his depression and PTSD within the first two minutes. Then she met Daniel Jackson, as hapless as he was brilliant, and thought that combined, they would maybe make one functional human being.
She cleared them both for Stargate travel, for whatever it was worth- there weren’t exactly CDC guidelines on minimum standards of fitness for molecular reconstruction. But her mouth was tight when she handed over the reports to General West, and after a long look at her he asked if she had anyone to leave behind on Earth.
She thought of her parents, both dead before she graduated medical school, and the ex-husband who’d laughed when he’d left their final divorce hearing, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Funerals marched by behind her eyes, young men she’d patched together in the Gulf only to have them fall apart when they returned to the States. Mothers and fathers and spouses and children who had clasped her hands, thanking her for doing everything she could, even when it hadn’t been nearly enough. Even when it had still led to a fresh grave on too many sunny days. Somehow, it was always sunny. Her dress blues were starting to fade.
She shook her head. West ordered her to prepare supplies necessary to keep the team healthy and alive for an extended mission, possibly forever, and to report to base bright and early the day of their departure, after organizing her affairs.
An objection should have at least come to mind, but Janet said “Yes, sir,” turned on her heel, and left to carry out her orders.
Colonel O’Neill’s nostrils flared at the sight of her on the ramp, eyes flashing with every court-martial-worthy objection that could possibly be made. But he was a soldier, as she was, and he ordered his men to help her with her crates.
O’Neill’s job was to get them back in one piece. Janet’s job was to put them back together if he couldn’t. One of the men offered to help with her pack, guileless and earnest as he held out his hand, but Janet just hiked it higher on her shoulders and declined.
O’Neill had no orders for her beyond staying close by, an order she promptly disobeyed when Daniel got himself in a tangle with the local fauna. Head trauma, road rash, wound contamination- Janet catalogued her supplies in her mind as she ran after Daniel’s dust cloud, planning for every contingency. O’Neill bellowed for her to go back, but in the wind, Janet convinced herself she couldn’t hear him.
Miraculously, Daniel managed to free himself without a single scrape. Naturally, his next move was to walk straight into a possibly hostile settlement against orders, without waiting for backup, and Janet’s next thoughts were for clubbings and spear wounds. The supplies on her back could only cover so much.
As they entered the city, O’Neill’s men converged around her. Whether it was instinct, training, or just plain chivalry, Janet wasn’t in the mood to protest this time. Daniel stumbled into the spotlight, exclaiming about the eye of Ra, but Janet attracted a few curious glances which she met with fierce scowls. The air changed, and a native man grabbed her and found his jaw at the business end of O’Neill’s pistol before they all understood.
Once they allowed themselves to be safely ensconced away from the sandstorm, Kawalsky soothed himself by cleaning his gun. Janet unpacked and repacked her supplies, re-memorizing everything she had at her disposal and anything they’d have to return to base for. O’Neill sat by the tent-flap, smoking a mission-essential cigarette and doing a good impression of a statue.
“Hey, Doc,” Kawalsky eventually piped up after Janet repacked her bag for the third time. “You got a bandaid in there?” Janet pursed her lips and shot him a look. Of course she’d given them all a glance-over, even Daniel before he was dragged away to be adulated. No visible signs of trauma, no guarding, normal gait. No life-threatening medical needs, unless they were very good at pretending.
Janet glanced at O’Neill and started concocting excuses to check his vitals.
“Come on, you’ve gotta have something.” Kawalsky gestured to a cut on his arm, barely more than a scrape. “This is killing me.”
“Hm.” Janet grabbed his hand, made a show of examining his entire arm. “Not worth my bandaids, Kawalsky.”
There was a rustle from outside the tent, curious eyes peeking in at them. Janet shifted and tried to ignore them, thinking how she would react if a couple of aliens strolled into her neighborhood. O’Neill stiffened, eyes darting at every possible port of entry, but after a moment he relaxed again. As much as he ever relaxed, anyway.
The shuffles and whispers grew bolder, until bright little faces pressed directly up to the seams in the tent. Janet glanced at them, turned deliberately to her bag, then frowned. “Kawalsky.” She pulled out an alcohol swab and bandaid. “Show me that again.”
With instructions through gritted teeth and a forceful reexamination, Janet got Kawalsky to grunt and groan and whine over his almost nonexistent injury. Janet dabbed at the cut, carefully applied the smallest bandage she had, and conjured the kindest smile still in her repertoire. He blinked at her, stunned. “Does that feel better?” she asked, and tilted her head toward their audience. His eyebrows twitched with confusion, but he nodded, patted his arm, and smiled back.
“Thanks.”
Trauma didn’t discriminate between young and old, male or female, and neither, therefore, could trauma surgeons. She had been good with kids, before. Before the Air Force, before her first field amputation, before her primary patient population was dying young men and haunted older ones. She softened her face with a conscious effort, smiled at one of the boys, and pointed at a nasty, festering cut on his forehead. “Can you show me?” She held up her bag and pointed to Kawalsky, who finally caught on and patted his magically cured arm again. “I can help.”
It needed to be cleaned, and stitched, but Janet was generous with the lidocaine and Kawalsky made a big show of his grins and thumbs up, and with the other boys goggling at them Janet’s patient held resolutely still.
Once he was sewed together he ducked out of her hands and dashed off to show his friends, all of them jabbering incomprehensibly. Janet almost called him back, but her voice stuck in her throat as he gave her an odd little bow.
“Thanks, Doc.” A smile on a ruined face- a lethal dose of painkillers- the only relief she could offer anymore-
Conspiring amongst his friends, the boy disappeared into the village, whole and happy and at a far lower risk for sepsis. For one insane moment Janet wanted to chase them down, look them over head to toe, and patch up every imperfection she found.
But she wasn’t on this planet for the children, she was here for O’Neill, who would probably drown in his own blood before admitting the slightest discomfort, and Kawalsky and his grievously wounded arm. And Daniel, though she managed to miss it when he got himself killed and subsequently resurrected. She was busy being marched through a pyramid and manhandled into something that could maybe be classified as a garment, but probably wouldn’t win her any awards, except as a pin-up girl. The ancient, teenage-looking god leered at her and threw her in a cell, which was probably the best way it could have gone, on balance. But she envied O’Neill his uniform- turned out it was cold in space prison.
The contrast with the glaring sun- of course it was a sunny day, of course Janet would be forced to squint in the light as the latest failures of her care were lowered into the ground- made her skin taut and itchy. Daniel blinked across the platform at her, O’Neill and his men bound and kneeling between them, and not for the first time Janet thought that being dead was likely better than whatever horror was coming.
This time- for the first time- she was wrong. In a flurry of gunshots and screams, Janet found herself bundled into a robe and swept into a cave, where her slightly rumpled pack was waiting. From Daniel’s halting translation and the shouts and shoving, Janet deduced the rescue of her gear had been a group effort.
While Daniel caught up with his new wife- Janet didn’t miss the way his eyes bugged out, and shared a smirk with Kawalsky- Janet organized the nondescript cave into a functional infirmary. There were plenty of lacerations to stitch and deeper wounds to pack, instructions to mime and pain medication to administer. Her charges galavanted away to crowd around O’Neill’s sand diagrams as soon as she stopped their bleeding. Janet sighed and followed.
“They’re my patients, sir,” Janet said when O’Neill scowled at her for even leaning in the direction of danger. She said it again when the battle was won, when the gate was open and she stared wistfully back towards the village. The Abydonians were back waiting for Daniel, who had promised to look after them and make them keep their stitches clean. He looked more at home in his robes, with sand in his hair, than he had surrounded by books on Earth.
“Yeah.” O’Neill studied her for a long moment, eyebrows working as he came to whatever conclusion he was brewing. “Shame you died back there.”
Shame, indeed- Janet Fraiser was KIA and given a memorial fit for a war hero on Earth. On Abydos, she tended to her charges, watched their wounds close and their spirits heal.
Supplies meant to keep a small team of healthy young men alive for a few decades dropped alarmingly quickly in the first few weeks. Skaara wanted to make moonshine, and Janet only said she’d help him if she got the best stock for sterilizing equipment. It went down like battery acid, but her needles had never been shinier. The healers of the community hovered over her shoulders, muttering amongst themselves, until Janet finally turned and asked, in the few words Daniel and Sha’re had managed to teach her, if they wanted to learn.
Turned out, when faced with the survival of patients they certainly would have lost otherwise, the healers were pretty quick studies. They forced Janet to keep up- Daniel couldn’t be with her every second to translate. She’d never had a head for languages, but necessity made her an earnest pupil.
Sha’re was always happy to help, whenever she could be pried away from Daniel. Janet rolled her eyes at their sappy antics, but never without a smile. Daniel was as obliging and helpful as he could be, but Sha’re was the one who taught Janet how to dress when her BDUs finally wore out, and cook and clean with minimal water consumption, and how to feel the shift in the air of an impending sandstorm.
There was far less commiserating than could have been expected- all Janet and Daniel ever worked themselves up to was occasional wistfulness. Janet, who had never been interested in family medicine, had accidentally appointed herself PCP of hundreds of people, and Daniel occupied himself studying ruins he marvelled over for hours. But sometimes, around a flickering fire, while Kasuf was snoring and pretending he wasn’t, they told Skaara and Sha’re about Earth. They could hardly believe the idea of a blue planet, of more water than land and the gigantic creatures dwelling in the depths. Machines that could carry your voice to the other side of the world and sweet, frozen milk, trees that stretched up ten times taller than any man and stadiums packed with ten times as many people as lived in their village- they would lean in whenever Daniel or Janet got lost in a memory.
Despite Daniel’s relative mastery of the language, there was no way to convey league sports, or defibrillators, or the swift, salty breeze of the ocean. Skaara didn’t believe snow existed and looked at Janet like she was crazy when she sighed over snow angels.
They were both insatiably curious- a trait Kasuf pretended hadn’t come from him- and wanted to understand everything Janet and Daniel told them as intimately as possible. Somehow, even with their combined lack of knowledge of any sport, Daniel and Janet ended up coaching opposing Abydonian baseball teams. Daniel, they found, was a decent pitcher, and with the proper length bat Janet could smack their rolled-up-cloth ball to the other end of the appointed clearing.
Most nights Janet laid on her pallet, staring at the ceiling, and couldn’t quite comprehend her life. But her long days full of patients, and mending, and baseball, and whatever else Skaara managed to drag her into, wore her out and left a pleasant ache in her muscles, and sleep was never hard to find.
She never meant to stay a year. Daniel didn’t like to talk about the Stargate opening again, whoever would come to look for them. Most of the time he could push it firmly to the back of his mind and live like he and Sha’re would live in peace forever. But there was a darkness to his eyes some evenings, and Janet recognized it as if it were her own reflected anxiety. Someone would come through eventually- Daniel had successfully opened Pandora’s box, and whatever lies Jack told on the other side, they wouldn’t hold forever. They weren’t intended to- Janet intended from the beginning to return when her patients were well.
But there were always more patients, and some of them didn’t get better, but many did. Janet got to pass them in the street and smile back at them and know that they were alive and whole because of her. Mothers handed her their babies to show how much they had grown, and thanked her for delivering them safely. An old man walked through the village for the first time in years, straight and tall in the brace Janet had fashioned for him. She went into their homes and left with spicy, warm treats. They called her Doctor Janet, and she learned all their names and maladies.
When a box of tissues came through the Stargate, Janet was forcing a broken bone back into place. Skaara careened madly into the room, babbling faster than Janet could hope to understand even if he had been speaking English. He was enlisted to hold traction, and by the time they made it to the temple Daniel was halfway through dialing Earth. He met her eyes, tilted the dusty tissue box to show her the message. With an impending sense of doom, Janet nodded.
The Jack O’Neill that came through the Stargate was a lighter man than the one she had sent home a year ago. His smile for Skaara was easy and warm, and though he kept his gun slung across his chest, his shoulders were a lot farther from his ears than Janet remembered. Once Daniel got everyone to lower their guns, Janet crept out of the shadows with Sha’re and handed her own weapon off to one of the boys. O’Neill’s smile dropped, but his eyes were soft.
“Doc.”
“Sir.” Janet ran a bold finger over the scar on his eyebrow and pursed her lips. “You didn’t keep this clean.”
“It busted open! What was I supposed to do?” Janet raised her eyebrows, hands on her hips, and every reckless young man who had earned himself a few of her stitches snickered around them.
“Colonel,” she said dryly, “how on earth did you manage to overwork your eyebrow?”
She didn’t get an answer. Daniel, seemingly eager to get their visitors on their way home, dragged them out as soon as the sandstorm subsided. Kawalsky snagged Janet to examine his scarless arm, and Janet was about to tell him she’d have to amputate when the Stargate whirled to life.
“You have anyone else coming?” Kawalsky swept her into the shadows and trained his rifle on the rippling wormhole.
“Not anyone we invited.”
In the shrapnel and dust and deafening energy blasts mixed with gunshots, Janet made her way to the floor and held pressure on the first gushing wound she found. There wasn’t visibility for proper triage- she packed the wound and laid the soldier’s arm over it before darting away to the next body.
Rami- their shortstop, the loudest laugh in the village- Janet had set his broken nose after he’d gotten a bit too fresh with the other team’s second baseman- his dull eyes stared, unseeing, at the bullets flying overhead.
Before she could make it to the next body, an armored hand snatched her arm and yanked her to her feet. Kawalsky screamed her name as a snake-headed soldier threw her through the Stargate.
Wherever they ended up, it was frigid compared to Abydos. Janet kept Sha’re and Skaara close, though it didn’t make her any warmer. Being tossed into a teeming dungeon was almost a relief- she examined both of them and determined they were physically intact. Mentally was another story, and Janet tucked Sha’re’s shuddering body tightly under her arm until she was ripped away.
The sun streamed through the small windows- it was always sunny- Janet clawed and yelled and begged to go instead and earned herself a dizzying blow to the head. Sha’re’s screams echoed down the stone corridor, Skaara hurled his body against the locked doors, and Janet blinked at the ceiling and convinced herself not to give into the creeping, nauseating darkness.
She told Skaara she was fine, and repeated the sentiment to Daniel when the cavalry got themselves thrown in prison with them. But the darkness swirled again when he couldn’t find Sha’re, when she couldn’t force the words out- your husband son brother father died this morning, after extensive attempts to save his life- and Daniel shook her by the shoulders as if to rattle them out. Skaara muscled his way between them, shouting about the sticky wetness on the back of her head she had hoped he hadn’t noticed. Daniel let go and apologized, absolutely horrified with himself, and somehow he ended up in Janet’s arms. His chin tucked into her shoulder and for a moment, one thing was normal and right.
It was a short moment.
Skaara was ripped from them next, even as Janet clung to him with all her might and begged to be taken instead. The snake-headed soldier hovered over her, seeming almost indecisive, before he flung her back and dragged Skaara away. This time, Janet welcomed the darkness, Daniel’s screams for his wife fading as she descended into nothingness.
She came to on a softer bed than she’d felt in months. A doctor in an Air Force uniform shone a penlight in her eyes, squinted at a CT of her head, and told her to rest.
Seeing as she was legally dead, rest was about all she was allowed to do. Daniel raged against her detainment, using words like “Geneva Convention” and “mercy mission.” Janet was the only one who could calm him down with words like “dereliction of duty” and “abandoning her post.” In the end, Hammond offered her a deal: start over with a new name, no medical license and no commission, or remain on base as a doctor on staff, after some remedial courses. There was never a choice, really- Janet stayed with Daniel. Someone had to make sure he didn’t kill himself trying to save his wife.
Dr. Andrews- the competent, if arrogant young CMO of the SGC- rolled his eyes and told Daniel to lay off the coffee. Janet stitched Daniel’s wounds, remarking about how nice it was not to have to reuse needles, stroked his hair, and told him Sha’re wouldn’t want him to work himself to death. He didn’t listen to either of them, but Janet felt better for trying.
When the entire base regressed into cavemen and Dr. Andrews holed himself up in his office, it was Janet who made the antihistamine connection. And when Dr. Andrews respectfully requested another posting, General Hammond offered the position to Janet. Jack stood just over the general’s shoulder and fixed Janet with a hard stare, as if daring her to refuse. When Janet was finally allowed off base, SG-1 took her out for a drink to celebrate her return from the dead and subsequent promotion. The bags under Daniel’s eyes were as prominent as ever, but his smile when they toasted her was real.
Janet didn’t really have the belongings to fill a house, but it gave her maintenance and yardwork, something to do with herself when she wasn’t on base. Which she was, most of the time, and most nights when she returned to her biohazard of a front lawn she cursed herself for wanting such a stupid hobby as home care and repair.
When Cassandra plopped into her life, the lawn mysteriously found itself mowed pristinely, though Janet could never prove how Jack had done it when he spent as much time on base as she did. She was a timid waif of a girl and she needed the grass, needed the one big tree in the backyard, something to curl her fingers into when her hands started to shake. Janet took her in as a temporary measure, as a doctor who knew her condition better than anyone. Her ribs had cracked under Janet’s hands, Janet had assisted in wiring her sternum back together once Warner found the bomb. She counted out pain pills and applied lidocaine patches, and rocked Cassandra when none of it was enough and all she wanted was her mother back.
By the end of the first week, Janet knew her heart would break when Cassandra did have to go. After the first month, she knew she couldn’t let it happen. She expected stern disapproval from Jack and a battle with Hammond, and almost cried when she got their unconditional support instead. The spare room at the top of the stairs became Cassandra’s room, the place to Janet’s right at the table was Cassandra’s spot, and her fridge filled with juice boxes and string cheese.
When Hammond delivered the news, his face was as somber as if his own heart was breaking. Daniel found her later, staring into a bowl of blue jello in the commissary, trying to figure out how she was going to piece her life back together.
“I can’t keep her,” Janet said in a flat voice before he could ask, before he even sat down. “The courts- I can’t keep her.”
“Well that’s ridiculous- why not? Do you need a character witness because-”
“There’s a couple.” Janet stabbed her jello with her spoon. “A high ranking couple, high enough to be read into her background. They’ve been trying to adopt for ages.”
“But Cassandra loves you.” Janet’s heart twisted at the heat in his voice, the righteous anger and determination. “She’s better off with you, she shouldn’t be taken from a place where she feels safe just because-”
“It’s out of my hands, Daniel,” Janet said sharply. “The lawyer said maybe if I were still married, and I had just as much to offer, but…” She tried to tell herself Cassandra would be better off with two parents, a couple who had longed for a child for years. It probably wouldn’t cause too much damage for her to lose her second home in three months, to take her from the people who loved her. She probably wouldn’t even miss the dog too badly, after a while. The mother they had lined up was allergic.
“So if you had a husband she could stay, but because you’re single they think she must be better off somewhere else?” Daniel asked, voice dripping with scorn. “That’s completely absurd. What did Hammond say?” Janet shrugged, thinking of the sorrow in the general’s eyes when he’d delivered the news. He’d given her a few weeks off, to help Cassandra prepare and transition, but Janet hadn’t been able to face going home yet.
“It’s out of his hands.”
“Well, that’s-” Daniel fell silent, face dark with anger and indecision. Janet stirred her jello into blue soup. Cassandra preferred the red kind, but she always went for the blue when Sam was over. How was she going to survive losing Sam?
“What if you got married?” Janet blinked, frowned.
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
Janet’s first marriage had been for love, for all the good it did her. The second was for love, too, in a way, only not for the groom. Janet made some vows in a courthouse that would be easy enough to keep- love, cherish, honor- if only because it was Daniel. The lawyers went at it like a cagefight for weeks, but in the end Janet got what she wanted- Cassandra Fraiser wasn’t going anywhere.
Neither was Daniel, for the time being. They had agreed it would be too suspicious to go straight for a divorce, and put a date on their calendar at home. Their first and last anniversary.
In the meantime, the study transformed into a claustrophobic little bedroom. Daniel even got a bed after a few months, once the home visits were done and Cassandra was legally Janet’s in every possible way. He insisted he was okay with it, with sleeping surrounded by piles of books that wouldn’t fit on the shelves, with moving everything he had just unpacked back into storage.
“What’s a year?” he said with a shrug. Janet gaped at his flippancy. He squeezed her hand, and Janet snatched hers back to hide the flush that crept up her skin at the contact. “I know Sha’re will understand. I think she’d be furious if I didn’t help you.”
And that was all well and good, but it didn’t solve the problem of Janet’s heart skipping a beat whenever Daniel casually introduced himself as her husband or held her hand at the dog park. She had lived with Daniel for a year on Abydos, had seen him every day, but Sha’re had been a very effective buffer. Janet had almost been able to ignore the bright blue eyes and shy, sweet smiles when they were for one of her dearest friends. But on Earth, they only served to remind her that she had been alone for a long, long time.
But she couldn’t shut him out, and could hardly keep Cassandra from growing close to him. They had explained that the arrangement was temporary, but Janet wondered how much it actually sunk in. Cassandra tackled Daniel with hugs and climbed him like a jungle gym, and when she had nightmares, half the time she made her way down to Daniel’s tiny room.
When Daniel died- reportedly- Cassandra shut herself in her room and refused to come out, even for Jack Jr. scratching on her door. Janet sat with her back to Cassandra’s door, face in her knees, and cried for one of the people she loved most in the world, and how he had never known it.
When SG-1 fished him out of the ocean and he sauntered into her office, still dripping, Janet could have smacked him. Instead she drove him home in frosty silence, cooked his favorite dinner, and pretended not to hear Cassandra telling him she’d heard Janet crying for him at night. His eyes flicked to her then, brow furrowed, and she wanted to scream that of course she had cried, of course she’d been devastated. Did he really think he was so worthless he didn’t even deserve her tears?
After dinner, while the three of them cuddled close to watch Beauty and the Beast, Daniel’s hand found its way to Janet’s over Cassandra’s shoulders. Janet’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t jerk away. She hooked her thumb over his and didn’t look at him, but she saw his form relax out of the corner of her eye.
Six months after she’d married Daniel and five months after she’d adopted Cassandra, another date crept up on the calendar. It wound the tension in Daniel’s shoulders and stewed in his silences in the evenings, and only Janet’s scolding brought back his smiles for Cassandra, if for no one else. A year to the day since they’d left Abydos, Daniel requested permission to go back, and Janet insisted on going with them.
“They were my patients, sir,” Janet pleaded. Hammond listened with a furrowed brow, hands steepled on his desk. “I know the people, and Dr. Jackson shouldn’t have to go alone.” And he didn’t- when the gate opened to Abydos, Janet laid her hand on Daniel’s arm for a brief moment before they went through together.
They found Kasuf, apologized for failing him and Sha’re, and the bottom dropped out of Janet’s stomach when he tried to prove them wrong. Sha’re pleaded with Daniel to look at her, and Janet held her when Daniel darted out, back towards the Stargate.
“It’s all right,” Janet soothed, stroking Sha’re’s hair and twisting awkwardly around her swollen belly. “He’s just upset.”
“He does not- he does not love me anymore!” Sha’re wailed, and Janet’s heart cracked. She found Daniel in her old room- if it could be called a room in a tent- and smacked him upside the head before he could get a word out.
“What is wrong with you?” she hissed, anger burning past the despair and confusion in his face. “In case you missed it, that is your wife out there, and she needs you!” Daniel floundered, burying his face in his hands to avoid her eyes.
“I can’t- it’s all my fault- everything Apophis has done to her-”
“Daniel Jackson.” Janet grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at her. “We both know this may be the last time you ever see her.” Rebellion flashed in his eyes and Janet rejoiced at the sight, convicted as she was that she was speaking the truth. “And you are treating her like she’s dirty. No wonder she thinks you don’t love her anymore!”
“Of course I love her!” he protested, jerking away from her hand. “I just-” Tears welled in his eyes, and Janet’s fury faded. “I don’t know what to do.” As easy as breathing, Janet folded him into her arms, and Daniel wrapped his arms around her middle like a lifeline. He buried his face in her stomach, tears soaking through her shirt, and Janet rubbed his back until the shaking stopped.
Daniel hugged Sha’re, kissed her, told her he was sorry. Another layer of stone settled around Janet’s heart, but she smiled.
She had imagined delivering their baby, had assumed back then that it was only a matter of time. Daniel held Sha’re’s hand and kissed her brow, and promised to find her again. Janet held up a dark-eyed baby boy and Sha’re smiled briefly before her eyes glowed blinding white. Later, once Amaunet had returned to Apophis, convinced the baby had been stolen, Janet did a full examination and determined the boy was completely healthy.
“Try to find him a nursing mother if you can,” Janet instructed, fussing over his swaddle as he squirmed in Kasuf’s arms. “And don’t hesitate to send us word if you need anything.” Kasuf promised, shoulders heavy with the renewed loss of his daughter. Janet kissed the baby’s head and whispered goodbye. Daniel refused to look at him, no matter how much Janet pleaded.
She did a lot of pleading the next few weeks, urging him to eat, to slow down, to take something to help him sleep. Cassandra clung to Janet’s side, watching Daniel with wary eyes as he retreated into himself. It was like he started the grieving process over again, only with less hope this time. He threw himself into his work, chomping at the bit for every assignment he could wheedle his way onto, and barely spent a night at home for months. Janet let it go, trusting him to come to her when he was ready, but all her restraint went out the window when Cassandra came to her in tears and said she’d had a nightmare and found Daniel’s door locked.
Janet pounded on the door, fury rising like bile in her throat because Daniel could shut her out if he wanted, but he would not cause her daughter anymore pain when she’d already suffered so much. “Daniel Jackson,” she growled, “so help me, I will break down this door.” She was ready to make good on the promise, had taken a step back to aim a kick at the door, when the lock clicked and it swung open.
“I don’t know if you have the body mass for that.” All the fight bled out of Janet at the sight of him, shrunken and lifeless. His room was a mess of papers and dirty clothes, strewn in a tangle across what little floor he had. His bed was a rumpled nest, but he didn’t look like he had slept in weeks.
“Daniel…”
“Not right now, Janet, please. I just…” He huffed out a breath and collapsed onto his bed. Janet stepped into the room, picking over the detritus to stand in front of him, arms crossed. “I’m coping.”
“I love her, too, you know,” Janet said softly. She meant Sha’re, but Cassie, too. Two people who bound them together, who needed them at their best. Daniel covered his face. “She wouldn’t want this.”
“Well we can’t ask her, can we?” Daniel said sharply, and Janet didn’t answer. He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Cassie.” Daniel tilted his chin to frown up at her. Janet raised her eyebrows and considered sitting next to him, carding her fingers through his hair and holding his hand. He would let her, she knew. She stayed where she was. “She needs you, too. I know-” -you’re not her father, you didn’t sign up for forever, this was never meant to last- “-you won’t be here forever, but you’re here now. Unless-” She swallowed and shuffled her feet. “-if you want to move up the timeline, I understand.”
“What?” Daniel blinked, and his eyes widened when he understood. “No! I-” He cleared his throat and sat up, folding his hands in his lap.
Truthfully, they had already missed their first deadline. They had silently agreed not to mention it, and an appointment had appeared on the calendar for six months later without a word from either of them.
“I don’t want to leave,” Daniel admitted. “If that’s okay. I think being here is the only thing keeping me sane.” Janet cocked an eyebrow, sent a pointed look at the madman’s scribblings littering the floor.
“You have a funny way of showing it.” Daniel cracked a tiny smile, and Janet’s heart felt lighter as she returned it.
Six months passed, and again they found themselves unable to make their appointment. Their divorce lawyer didn’t even seem surprised anymore, just put another date on the calendar several months down the line. Between black holes, body swaps, and singing plants, they found themselves incredibly busy. And that was on top of Cassandra’s rapidly filling social calendar, which Janet decided she really couldn’t manage without Daniel as a bonus chauffeur. Moving him out would be too inconvenient, and it wasn’t as though he wanted to leave.
When Daniel had a supposed schizophrenic break, Janet was surprised at how much her life grinded to a screeching halt. It wasn’t as though he always came back through the wormhole unscathed; he’d spent plenty of nights in her infirmary. But this was something she couldn’t fix, couldn’t guarantee that anyone would. She refused Cassandra’s desperate requests to go see him but didn’t follow her own advice, and seeing him locked in a padded room, muttering to himself, hurt her more deeply than she would have expected. It was as though part of her was locked in there with him.
Janet decided not to examine the feeling.
They missed another appointment, their lawyer stopped answering their calls, and Janet and Daniel gave each other painfully awkward looks when Dr. Carter came through the wormhole and looked at Jack like he was every constellation in the sky. They didn’t need to speak- when all was put to rights, Janet invited Sam over to see Cassie and Daniel took Jack out for drinks.
“It’s sad,” Janet said later, whispering so as not to wake Sam on the couch. “I can’t imagine how she- the other one- must have felt, seeing him and knowing he wasn’t really hers.” But it soured her mouth like a lie, even as Janet tried to squash the feeling. No version of Daniel had ever been hers, she had exactly nothing in common with the other Sam Carter. But sleep eluded her later, and she stared at the ceiling thinking about other worlds and infinite possibilities. In this world, Daniel loved Sha’re.
In this world, he lost her anyway.
Janet knew when he trudged back through the gate with a covered litter suspended between him and Teal’c. But she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel- her patients needed her. She stitched and bandaged and soothed frayed nerves, clasping familiar hands and accepting grateful hugs. It was good to care for them again, to remember that as out of her depth as she frequently was in the SGC, she had managed to do some good somewhere. Her white coat squeezed her shoulders, constricted her, and as she kissed the forehead of a child she’d delivered she half-wished for her old shawl. She was almost wistful for the sand that found its way into every crevice and the blinding, beating sun.
When the last Abydonian stepped back through the wormhole, Janet found Daniel exactly where she expected, exactly where she privately thought he belonged. Desolate and broken, he looked up at her from the couch in her office as if she were the only flickering light in a raging storm. Hot tears prickled behind Janet’s eyes, and Daniel opened his arms. Their tears soaked each other’s shoulders and they clung to each other, shaking and sobbing, and despair threatened to swallow Janet whole. After what felt like hours he finally broke away, and there was a moment, less than a second- his lips were so close- her friend was dead-
The moment ended. Daniel rested his head on her shoulder, and Janet slung her arms around him, shaken at the surfacing impulse she’d kept buried for so long.
“She wanted me to find the boy.” Janet frowned.
“What?” Daniel straightened up to look her in the face.
“Sha’re. Before she… she told me to find him. She said it was important.”
“Of course it is.” Janet tilted her head, smoothed a mussed tuft of hair sticking out over his forehead. “He’s her baby.”
“No, it’s-” Daniel sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.” Janet burned with questions, but she kept her mouth shut. She took Daniel’s hand and leaned her forehead to his, and he closed his eyes and sagged against her. “Thank you.”
Janet didn’t ask what for. Her hand wandered up to the back of his neck and threaded into his hair. “Of course.”
Daniel didn’t really think of Janet as his wife. Of course he called her that to keep up appearances, but in the privacy of his mind he had his wife, and he had his wife-wife. He knew Janet felt the same- she avoided calling him her husband if at all possible, and still flushed sometimes when forced to introduce herself as his wife. It would have been insulting, if it hadn’t been the arrangement from the beginning. Daniel was grateful for it- her attitude kept any confusing feelings from cropping up just due to forced proximity. Janet was his friend, and he loved her, but he wasn’t in love with her.
Of course he noticed her, he’d have to be blind not to. Her dazzling smile, deep brown eyes, soft, dark, hair- there was nothing not to like. Which was what he told himself when other men gave her a second look at the dog park or the grocery store, though it never calmed the hot, fluttery feeling in his belly. It was protective instinct, he knew, nothing more. A brotherly feeling.
Ke’ra was as opposite Janet as he could get- blond hair, blue eyes, taller stature- and he wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty or not that he noticed her, too. She made her advances, and in some distant part of his mind he realized he didn’t have a wife to be loyal to anymore, except he did, except he didn’t- whether he should have felt it or not, guilt curdled in Daniel’s chest the second Ke’ra pressed her lips to his. He closed his eyes, thought of Sha’re, and for the briefest moment thought of Janet, and broke away stammering apologies. When she turned out to be Linea he was almost relieved at the concrete, definitive reason not to be attracted to her. That, and the way Janet’s irritation spiked palpably when Ke’ra clung to him for reassurance, begging for answers. Sha’re had been her friend, and here another woman was hanging all over him. Of course she was annoyed.
Urgo noticed Janet too, fished memories out of Daniel’s head and shimmied with glee. “Your wife! Oh, kiss her kiss her kiss her! I’ve never kissed anyone before!”
“Shut up, Urgo!” Daniel growled, and Janet blinked, taken aback by the venom in his tone. Daniel gave her an apologetic grimace, and she smiled and squeezed his arm.
“Come on, how can you not kiss her?”
None of Urgo’s requests were relayed to Janet, obviously, but if Daniel found himself slightly fixated on Janet’s lips that was no one’s business but his. And Urgo’s, though Daniel tried to ignore that part.
“You love her, you want to kiss her, you want to-” Daniel blocked out Urgo’s impromptu song, resisting the urge to snap again. Janet understood what was going on, but he still didn’t like her startled look whenever he spoke to thin air.
“Your pleasure hormones are all over the place!” Janet exclaimed later, sounding fascinated as she looked over lab results. “No wonder you all struggled so much to block him out, he’s essentially dosing you with uppers to try to get his way.” Daniel nodded once, trying not to consider how Janet’s voice had deepened and rolled over the word “pleasure,” it was really just her normal cadence. Urgo clapped his hands and waggled his eyebrows, and Daniel groaned.
“Honestly, I’m surprised you were able to resist at all.” Janet looked at him over his results, eyes wide and guileless with discovery. Daniel coughed.
“Yeah, me too.”
She was still his doctor, despite all professional ethics and regulations, and that was how she stayed professional as Daniel snapped and snarled at an invisible man. But she was also his friend, which was why when she burst into laughter about it over their kitchen table, Daniel couldn’t help a small grin in response.
She was something beyond a friend, too, but Daniel didn’t tread too far down that path.
When his appendix burst- of all the things to knock him down- her cool hand on his forehead was the only thing to break through the haze of pain. She talked to him, told him he’d be all right and home with Cassie, soon, and in his drug-induced stupor Daniel thought that Janet was home, too.
His tiny room should have felt confining, Cassie’s demands on his time should have been irritating. But it was just his life, the way Abydos had been- he was here, he’d made his place, he belonged. The chair across from Janet’s was his, he was in most of the photos on the wall, his favorite cereal was in the pantry. When he was on world he drove Cassie to piano lessons and softball practice, and he bullied SG-1 into going to her recitals and games and clapping louder than anyone. Jack threw in a few whistles and Cassie flushed to the roots of her hair, beaming, and Daniel’s chest swelled at the idea that he had been part of that. Janet gave him a brilliant smile as she cheered beside him, and Daniel’s heart gave a pleasurable squirm that he was part of that, too.
Somewhere in the midst of lying to the state of Colorado and fighting for his life on the daily, he made a good life, and as more divorce appointments passed, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Divorce was inevitable, always had been, this was never meant to be a marriage- a family- that lasted. He had no right to lock Janet in a false relationship when a hundred other men would line up in a second to give her everything and he could barely give her anything. But she seemed content enough with their family movie nights and swapping driving duties. She drew smiley faces on her chicken scratch grocery lists and made his favorite foods after bad missions, and Daniel thought it would be far too easy to stay forever and let her settle for whatever it was she got from him. Which was entirely wrong, but entirely tempting.
As long as he was trying- engaging with Cassie about her day to day life, cleaning up around the house, picking up dinner when she was too tired to cook- Janet seemed happy to forgive his foibles. All he really needed to do was listen to her.
Not listening to Janet was about tantamount to suicide, so it made sense he only committed that particular crime when he felt invincible. The armband virus sang through his blood like adrenaline and alcohol and success, and Janet watched with a deepening frown as Anise collected data. Anise seemed delighted with the results, but Janet only grew more irritated. She was possessive over her patients, Daniel knew, protective to the point of ferocity. It wasn’t surprising that she bristled whenever Anise put him through his paces or adjusted her monitoring equipment. Anise blithely brushed off her concerns, Janet swelled with righteous anger, and Daniel watched, bemused, as Janet talked herself off a furious ledge several times a day.
The guilt came later, once the armbands were gone and took the heady rush with them. Janet confined the three of them to the infirmary and ran every test in the book. She took Daniel’s labs herself and refused Anise access to the results, muttering under her breath about experimental integrity and staying away from people’s husbands. Daniel barely noticed the remark at first, caught up as he was in self-flagellation. It only sank in later, when the infirmary was dark and his thoughts were free to race. Daniel’s mind slammed to a halt.
“Jack,” he whispered, and got no response. “Jack!”
There was a great snort, and then- “What?” He sounded irritated, but Daniel couldn’t spare a neuron to care.
“Does Janet like me?”
After a long pause, Jack only repeated, “What?”
“I mean, as more than friends.” The next pause was even longer, and Daniel almost thought Jack had gone back to sleep.
“Daniel, you are the smartest, stupidest man I know.”
“But-”
“For crying out loud, Daniel, go to sleep!”
Really, it was a possibility he should have considered before now. They had lived and raised a child together for nearly three years, it was possible he wasn’t the only one with slightly confused feelings. But it still seemed unlikely- Janet? Having feelings for him beyond platonic? Surely he would have sensed it before now.
Like when he was still married. Or when they had been grieving his wife, her best friend. Sure, Jackson.
Another divorce appointment came and went, but for the first time, Daniel questioned her about it. “Hey, if SG-7 hadn’t all come back with strep throat from hell I’d have been all yours,” Janet said with a shrug, then reconsidered. “Or- well- you know what I mean.”
“It just never seems to line up for both of us,” Daniel said slowly, watching her closely as he handed her another tomato to slice. Janet ducked her head, suddenly very focused on her cutting board.
“No, it doesn’t. I’ll make more of an effort next time, I promise. You’ve stuck this out longer than I ever expected, I’m sorry.”
“No, Janet, that’s not what I’m-”
“That’s enough tomatoes, could you wash and peel a few potatoes?” And he did, his work flowing into hers with simplicity that didn’t require words. The nature of their lives- life?- together was such that they didn’t often need words to understand each other, but Daniel still found himself drawing Janet into conversation as a habit. He liked talking to her, liked understanding her a little more every time.
And he did understand her, or at least he thought he did, better than anyone else. He knew the lines around her mouth when she was frustrated, the precision of her long fingers as she drew up medication, the laughter in her eyes when Jack grunted and groaned about yet another examination. He knew her compassion, her grit, her heart- it was all precious to him. But that didn’t mean he was in love with her.
Right?
Karlan wasn’t in love with anyone, there wasn’t time for all that in the grueling, deadly day to day of the power station. Sometimes he shared a smile with Kegan and thought maybe there could be more to life than darkness and steam, but her eyes were the wrong shade of brown. She was too tall, and though he managed to draw a rare laugh from her, his chest didn’t soar at the sound. Sleep was fitful and hard to come by- Jona beckoned him to follow, Thera trudged ahead with a huge pack on her shoulders, Tor shoved him out of the way of an explosion of sparks, and in his dreams it all made perfect sense. Warm brown eyes and a blinding smile, cool hands threading her fingers with his- a little girl throwing her arms around him-
Janet, he knew when the dam finally broke, when he knew his name was Daniel and he didn’t belong underground on this freezing planet. Cassie. Other memories came later of Sha’re and Abydos and his parents, and Daniel tried not to think about why they hadn’t been first. Dr. Warner examined him when they got back but Daniel could barely answer his questions, eyes on Janet as she shone a bright light in Sam’s eyes and listened to her heart. Her movements were jittery and her skin had an unhealthy gray tinge to it that Daniel imagined matched his own after so long out of the sun. She drove him home in silence, knuckles white on the steering wheel, and for once Daniel couldn’t think of a single word to say. Cassie leaped into his arms and Janet finally smiled, stunned and exhausted and relieved and absolutely beautiful, and something monumental lodged in Daniel’s chest.
He didn’t know what it was, but he was ready to admit it was there.
Only when he died- again- and Janet chucked him through the wormhole in a last-ditch effort to save him, was Daniel finally able to give it a name. He circled around it, performing mental gymnastics fit for a gold medal to avoid the actual word, the terrifying truth of it. He wrote her letters on Loran’s beach planet- it was the only way to calm his spinning mind. His confusion and longing and fear filled notebooks, and still it wasn’t adequate. Jack called him Socrates and Sam gave him worried looks, and Daniel felt the ocean breeze and wished Janet were beside him. His mind slowed down when she was there to decipher it for him.
He wrote about her hands, the wonders and mundane miracles they performed- surgery and stitches and soothing away Cassie’s nightmares. Her eyes and the multitudes within, how even when her face remained perfectly composed her eyes betrayed her. He filled pages about her smile and the way it calmed frightened, agonized airmen, how it warmed Daniel to the brim, how it crinkled the skin around her eyes when it was real and left it smooth when she was trying to hide something. Her genius, her kindness, her perseverance- Daniel scribbled through notebook after notebook, and decided she couldn’t see any of it.
In the end, he composed one letter, barely more than half a page. Janet was drawn and diminished when SG-1 returned. She examined them closely, but with very little of her usual banter. Jack nearly bounced off the stretcher, eager to get back to duty, and Sam’s fingers twitched as she asked about experiments she had left unfinished. Daniel sat quietly under Janet’s hands and asked if she was all right, and her responding smile didn’t reach her eyes.
He left the letter on her nightstand, and it took all the will in every cell in his body not to ask if she’d seen it. She didn’t mention it as they settled back into their routine of groceries and piano lessons, but every once in a while he felt her eyes on him as he helped Cassie with her homework or put away the dishes. Anxiety and impatience crawled under his skin, but he didn’t push her.
There were moments- Daniel pitching Janet a real baseball and her hitting it out of their backyard, just to prove to Cassie they could do it- holding her purse when she broke a heel in the parking lot- pushing a cart behind her and humming along as she sang under her breath, deliberating over varieties of apple- that he thought he saw a glimmer of something in her eyes, something weightier than they’d ever acknowledged. But just when Daniel thought she was on the brink of saying it, her face would shutter, and she’d retreat to Cassie and the chores and her work.
Downloading Sam’s consciousness back into her body with a jury-rigged defibrillator really should have been a highlight of Janet’s career, a once in a lifetime, award-winning event. Instead it was par for the course- Janet performed a medical miracle, Hammond and SG-1 thanked her, and everyone went on with their lives. But she didn’t brush it off the way she normally did, didn’t wave away the gratitude and manufacture some reason to stick Jack with a needle only to graciously release him at the last second.
Daniel found her in her office once the excitement fizzled out, once Sam’s mind had been declared intact and she was free to get some sleep. Janet stared into a cup of coffee, blank reports lying open on her desk.
“Hey,” Daniel said softly, and shut her office door behind him. “How’re you doing?” Janet blew out a long breath.
“I don’t really know anymore.” She gave him a mirthless smile and wrapped her hands around her coffee. Hands in his pockets, Daniel made his way around her desk and draped an arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him as easily as ever, and it soothed his skittish heart.
“You seemed upset.” Janet shrugged, head tucked against his waist, and Daniel rubbed her arm.
“You’ve all died so many times, heaven knows I should be used to it by now. I don’t know why I’m so shaken by this one.” She never showed it on base, but it came out in her tight hugs for Cassie and the extra servings doled out for SG-1 when they came over for dinner. Daniel picked up extra chores and driving duties, apologetic even when he hadn’t been the one to die, chasing a real smile from Janet until some tension finally rolled off her shoulders.
“She was right in front of me.” I am here I am here I am here. “And I almost let her go.” She frowned at nothing, and her hand crept up to cover his hand on her shoulder. She squeezed hard enough to bruise.
Daniel’s mind flashed to the calendar, color-coded and cluttered with softball practice, doctor’s appointments, and field trips. Their hopefully last divorce appointment loomed weeks away, somehow more final this time. Janet had arranged coverage weeks in advance, and Daniel’s one day of leave had been submitted and approved. There was no power on or off Earth that could keep them from that court room this time.
“Janet.” She looked up at him, tired and trusting, and he traced his eyes over the curve of her cheek, the line of her nose, her sharp chin and full lips. It didn’t hit him like a wave, love and lust and wonder didn’t crash over him in a torrent. It was all already there, and with a sense of surrender, Daniel finally let himself see it. He stroked a strand of hair over her ear and nudged her chin with his knuckle, and when he leaned down her eyes fluttered closed.
He pressed his lips to hers, soft and questioning and unsure. He was almost surprised that it felt nothing like he’d imagined- she was her own kind of wonderful.
Janet wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and kissed him back. Her lips parted and she craned her neck, tugging him firmly down to her level. Before Daniel lost all reason, he started drafting another apology email to their lawyer.
The smell of her skin, the feel of her lips on his and her thumb brushing his neck- Daniel filed it all away, savoring each sensation. When he finally broke away for air he had to straighten up, for fear of his back getting stuck in that position, and Janet’s fingers briefly tightened around his neck before she let go.
“Daniel…” A flush crept up her neck and Daniel’s lips tingled with the urge to kiss it. He wondered if her skin would feel hot there, or more sensitive, and he gulped as possibilities flashed before his eyes.
“Sorry, I- uh, that was killing my back.” Janet frowned, too strung out for his idiosyncrasies, and Daniel held out his hands. After a wary pause, she took them. Daniel pulled her to her feet and into his arms, and kissed her again so fiercely her feet left the ground. A surprised noise got lodged in her throat and Daniel kissed it away. With a clattering sound he barely registered, Janet’s pumps slipped off her feet and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Daniel groaned into her mouth, stumbled a few steps, and set her down on her desk. It freed up his hands to roam over her back and skate the spaces between her ribs before wandering down to her hips and thighs. Her muscles played under his hands, firm under smooth skin, and Daniel took a brief detour from her mouth to trail kisses down her neck, following the darkening flush.
Janet’s heels pressed into the backs of his thighs, drawing him as close as possible. “Better?” she asked, barely more than a pant. Daniel’s hands crept under her white coat. Not for her blouse- not yet, and not here- but closer to the warmth of her skin.
“Mm.” His lips lingered over her pulse point, and one of her hands fisted in his hair. Daniel grinned, kissed his way up her neck and jaw and back to her lips. “Much.”
And it truly was so much better, now that he was allowed to touch her he never wanted to stop. They barely made it through their front door anymore before he chased her up the stairs to help her change out of her uniform. On the rare occasions Cassie was out after school and didn’t need their attention, Janet didn’t often get the opportunity to change into anything else- if she was cold, Daniel had plenty of ways to warm her up. She matched his passion kiss for kiss and touch for touch, a blazing hot glory bundled away in his bed. Or, more accurately, her bed- he didn’t spend much time in his little room anymore.
Nothing else changed, outwardly. They still lived together, still called each other husband and wife, still treated Cassie like the daughter she was to both of them. But in the private moments, Daniel found a whole new world. The brush of his hand on her back after a briefing, a quick kiss in the commissary over lunch, his hand on her thigh when he drove her home- it bowled him over sometimes, that this had all been in his reach for so long and he had been completely blind.
After Sam blew up a star and knocked one hundred twenty-five years off their daunting journey home, Daniel’s hands didn’t stop twitching until he saw her face. He had too much time to think on the Goa’uld ship, hours spent staring at unfamiliar stars and trying to convince himself he would see Janet and Cassie again. His wife. His daughter. He had called them that for years but the words only landed in his gut when they were out of reach.
Cassie didn’t release him for hours and he watched a blurry stream of bad tv movies until her iron grip on him loosened. Her attitude towards Daniel’s job bordered on blasé, but the relief in his eyes when she flung the door open had spooked her. Daniel stroked her hair as she nodded off against his shoulder, and half-carried her up the stairs when Janet declared in a whisper that it was time for bed. “Hey, Cass?” he asked softly once he’d pulled her covers up to her chin. “You know I love you, right?” Cassie cracked one bleary eye open before she rolled over, burrowing deeper into her covers.
“Yeah, I know.” Daniel hovered over her for a moment, watching her blankets rise and fall with her breathing. Just as he turned to go, a tiny voice reached him from under the covers. “I love you, too.”
Janet was waiting for him in their bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the bed with one of his t-shirts hanging off her shoulder. She hummed when he kissed her, threading her fingers up into his hair and leaning back to draw him down into the bed with her. He braced his knee against the mattress and broke away, and he smiled when she pouted. “Don’t go anywhere.” He slipped away to brush his teeth and scrub his face, luxuries he never appreciated so much as when he’d gone without them for several days. The bathroom smelled like Janet’s shampoo and he felt her eyes on him from the bedroom and when he returned to her, stripped to his boxers, she drew him flush against her and didn’t let him get away this time.
Later, when his t-shirt was crumpled on the floor and Janet was half draped over him, Daniel trailed one hand up and down her spine. Head tucked into his neck, she traced little circles on his scalp and let out a deep sigh.
“Janet.” Her thumb swept over his ear, and with a low groan she found the strength to turn her head. Daniel smiled and kissed her forehead. “How would you feel about being my wife? For real, I mean?” Her forehead crinkled where it was pressed against his jaw, and her hand trailed down to rest on his shoulder.
“I would say it’s a bit soon,” she said, and cleared the impending sleep from her throat. “But then again, I don’t know what you’d call whatever we’ve been doing the last four years.” She propped her chin up on his chest. “Is there a word for that, Mr. Linguist?”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘improbable.’” Janet snorted and laid her head down again. Her hand migrated to his chest and rested briefly on his beating heart before it continued to wander over his skin, tracing up and down in a haphazard pattern.
“Do you feel like we’re moving too fast?” she asked quietly. Daniel shifted, dislodging her only for a second before he wrapped both arms around her and buried his nose in her hair.
“Maybe if we weren’t coming up on our fourth anniversary.” Janet smiled against his neck.
“What a mess,” she sighed. Daniel shimmied back just enough to look her in the face, and he swept a hand through the curls flowing down to her shoulders. She traced a finger down his jaw to his chin, smiling softly as he scrutinized her.
“But you’re happy, right?” he asked, and it took a monumental effort to keep a tremor out of his voice. “Are you happy?” Janet grinned and kissed him, long and slow, and Daniel almost forgot his question by the time she broke away.
“Very happy,” she promised, and he believed her straight down to his bone marrow. “You?”
“Incredibly happy.” He kissed her forehead. “Feliz.” He pressed his lips to her neck and shoulder, punctuating each word with another kiss. “Sásta- laimingas- masaya-” Janet hitched a leg over his hips and he rolled her onto her back to trail kisses down her chest. She arched into his touch and despite his mastery of nearly thirty languages, Daniel found there were no words to adequately describe how deeply content he was.
He should have paid closer attention, should have forced himself to look past his own nose. He had been a child in a family with bigger problems than his happiness, and long before Cassandra he had promised himself he would never put another child in the same situation. They never neglected her- no matter how far Daniel let his head float off to the clouds, Janet lived and breathed for Cassandra. Even after their worst spats it was evident- to everyone except Cassandra- that Janet would lay down her life for her in an instant.
But for years, Cassandra had been the center of their lives, the primary reason they were a family of three at all. When priorities reshuffled, it rocked the foundations of the world they had made for her.
Janet called him a worrywart and told him that no matter how many languages he studied, he would likely never master teenage girl. Cassandra rolled her eyes in sullen silence at the dinner table and slouched off with Jack Jr. as soon as she was excused, and Daniel found that he missed her. The wide-eyed child, the vibrant girl she had become, even the sarcastic teenager that had been emerging. Whenever the door slammed behind her he felt bereft, no matter Janet’s reassurances that this was exactly the stage where she should grow away from them, grow beyond them.
“Be patient,” Janet instructed, and Daniel chose not to mention the last screaming match Cassandra had goaded her into. “And be here.” She gave him a rueful smile and shrugged. “All we can do is be here, still. No matter what.” And despite the shouting and frosty silences that weren’t really resolved, just forgotten, that was what they did. They couldn’t force her to talk, or to listen, but they were there if she wanted to. She railed against her safety net but it was still present, still checking to make sure she slept and finished her homework, and drilling that if she chose to terrorize the streets of Colorado Springs she should at least make sure to do so with a friend with a driver’s license. Cassandra always rolled her eyes at that one, and Janet threatened to drive her herself, and miraculously, a suitably licensed friend appeared.
Intellectually, Daniel agreed that the best they could do was love her fiercely no matter how obnoxious she became, and to give her space to breathe and time to grow. On a baser level, when she passed out on the porch, space and time were not concessions Daniel was willing to make anymore. She was taller than Janet, now, but she still felt small and fragile when he scooped her up in his arms. Janet cradled her head with aching tenderness, stroking her hair out of her face as Daniel tore a smoking streak to Cheyenne Mountain.
He wanted to shake her, as her fever spiked and her body was racked with tremors and she insisted they could never understand. “Try me!” he wanted to shout, until she wrapped her mind around the concept that maybe he could understand if she would just tell him. Instead he sat with her as she slept and wiped a cold cloth over her face and neck. He returned from Hanka with potentially life-saving artifacts in hand and no idea of how to use them, and as Janet worked herself past the point of exhaustion Daniel realized he had never felt more useless. Janet, at least, could apply her considerable skill and years of experience in attacking the problem. All Daniel could do was be there for both of them.
Janet’s hand shook in his as he wrapped a bandage over her burn, wincing every time she flinched. He murmured apologies for his clumsiness, for Cassie’s behavior, for the all encompassing terror eating away at both of them. Janet gave him a tight smile and returned to Cassie’s side. Nirrti burst through the window- very overdramatic, but that was a Goa’uld for you- and Cassie screamed, and Janet threw her own body over Cassie’s. Daniel was the idiot who’d let Nirrti on the base in the first place. Jack tried to take responsibility, but Daniel knew better and criticized himself harshly for it. He couldn’t make Cassie better, but he should at least be expected not to make matters worse.
It wasn’t worth trying to explain to Cassie- she’d roll her eyes at best, or try to absolve him at worst. So Daniel just sat with her, cooling her flushed forehead and soothing her through her frequent nightmares. General Hammond put up the issue of Cassie’s life for debate, and Daniel said they’d sacrifice his daughter over his dead body, and after that no one found anything else to say. Until the alarm went off paging Hammond to the holding cell, and Daniel found Janet as close to exploding as he’d ever seen her.
“Then I should remind you,” Hammond said in a deceptively light tone, “that the woman holding a gun to your head is Cassandra’s mother.” Janet hadn’t fired a gun in years, on offworld missions Daniel had never seen her sidearm leave its holster. But she wrapped two steady hands around the grip and aimed point-blank at Nirrti’s head, and Daniel believed with his entire heart that Nirrti was about to die.
The idea didn’t cause him much distress. An instinctive, irrational part of him wished Janet had been allowed to do it anyway, after Nirrti healed Cassandra. One less Goa’uld in the galaxy wouldn’t cause too much grief. But Hammond let her leave, and for a moment Daniel looked forward to meeting her again. The self-defense case worked a lot better if the deceased was not being held captive at the time. Daniel tried not to think too hard about it, disturbed by his complete lack of reservations about killing anyone, even the snake who had almost murdered Cassandra.
It wasn’t worth worrying about Nirrti when Cassandra was alive and well and Janet was beaming as she wrapped her in her arms. Daniel sidled in next to Janet but didn’t insert himself, content to watch Cassandra’s fingers dig into Janet’s shoulders and Janet press a kiss to her forehead. Daniel ran a hand over Cassandra’s hair and smiled when she peered at him over Janet’s shoulder. She reached one arm for him and his eyebrows jumped up, but he gently squished in next to Janet and wrapped his arms around both of them.
It should have been too much- his arms didn't reach all the way around both of them- but somehow it was just right.
“Can we go home?” Cassie asked, muffled in Daniel’s shoulder. Janet kissed her head and rubbed her back.
“I’d like to observe you for a few days,” she said, and Daniel practically heard Cassie’s eyeroll. Janet pulled back just enough to take Cassie’s face in her hands. “And then, yes. We’ll go home.”
Cassie sighed. “The food here sucks.” Janet pressed her lips together to hold back a smile, and Daniel ducked towards Cassie’s ear.
“I might be able to make some arrangements,” he said. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Janet. “At great peril to my own life.” Janet rolled her eyes and Cassie smiled.
“Aw. For me?”
“Of course,” Daniel said, and played up a scoff that she’d even ask. “Anything for you.”
Cassie’s smile widened, and Janet beamed at them, and Daniel’s heart squeezed as he looked at both of them. He didn’t need to go anywhere to go home- home was right here.