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brainofckTitle: Serial Rediscovery, December 17 to Present (This WIP is now final)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
muck_a_luck, posting in brainofck
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: R
Summary: Daniel has a run-in with the Trust, and can't remember anything about the SGC, particularly not SG-1.
Content/warnings: I feel a strong need to warn for amnesia!fic. Cause it is SOOOOO lame. But it's also fun. :)
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only.muck_a_luck and brainofck
Beta: The fantastically wonderful, brilliant, and speedygreen_grrl who makes every story she reviews better than it was. Thank you!
Prior chapters located here.
December 17
The air inside the trunk was stifling. He hoped they knew what they were doing when they locked two people in here. Daniel had been unconscious a while. Jack was just starting to worry when a deep groan told him Daniel was waking up.
"Where am I?" he asked muzzily. He struggled to sit up, cracking his head on the lid of the truck just as Jack yelped "Careful!" Daniel swore and collapsed back down, face smashed against Jack's chest.
"Sorry!" came the muffled apology. "Are we in a car? Oh, God! We're in the trunk of a car! Morrison shot me with a tazer! He's working with – "
"Daniel! Calm down!" Jack hissed.
Daniel did stop talking, but he continued to wriggle and squirm until he was facing away from Jack.
"Daniel, you should try to – "
There was a shattering sound.
" – break out the taillight." Jack finished. There was a second crashing noise.
Daniel wriggled some more, then he had a hand out one taillight and Jack was pretty sure he was trying to stick his foot out the other.
"Who are you?" Daniel grunted. "How do you know my name?"
"I tried to stop them from attacking you, so here I am," Jack figured the white lie was much, much easier than the complicated truth.
"How much did you translate, Dr. Jackson?" Morrison asked him for seemingly the hundredth time.
Daniel was woozy from being hit in the head so many times. His lips were split and bleeding. One eye had swollen shut. He just shook his head. How many times could he say he didn't know?
"You know, Dr. Jackson, our organization doesn't have any love for your boyfriend here." The guy they’d grabbed with him – O'Neill – was in even worse shape than Daniel. They had been kicking him earlier and Daniel had seen him spit up blood. And yet O'Neill kept needling them. He seemed to be trying to distract them from Daniel. It made Daniel feel confused and grateful and guilty that the guy had gotten involved in the whole thing.
"We're asking the wrong one," the other agent said to Morrison. "Jackson obviously doesn’t remember anything. But O'Neill does." O'Neill was giving the man the evil eye.
"He won't tell us anything," Morrison said dismissively.
The other man took his gun form his shoulder holster and pointed it right between Daniel's eyes.
"Oh, I think he will," he said, turning toward O'Neill. Daniel heard the crack of the shot and felt the spray of blood. At first he couldn't figure out why he wasn't dead. He hadn't felt anything at all. Then the unnamed agent collapsed to the ground.
"How'd you find us?" Jack asked as Sam unlocked his cuffs.
She chuckled.
"Another driver reported to 911 that an arm and a foot were sticking out of the broken taillights of the car in front of her. She actually followed you until an unmarked cruiser could take over. We picked up the police activity on our radios just as we found that the cabin had been hit. Teal'c and I got in on the action when they organized the SWAT team. Dad pulled some strings with some old hunting buddies."
"Jacob's here?" Jack asked, mostly to distract himself from the pain of trying to move under his own power. He got all the way vertical before he stated vomiting blood. He heard Sam yelling for help as he passed out.
December 18
Daniel sat quietly as the man in the weird leather outfit used his bizarre equipment to evaluate him. He was in the infirmary of some military facility deep under Cheyenne Mountain. It seemed strangely familiar.
When he had mentioned that to Jack, the man had made an oblique comment about how some memories must be too strong to completely erase.
Daniel was still reeling from the events of the last few days. He understood that something was wrong with him, and now he knew that Morrison was probably responsible. Apparently, Morrison had once been an agent of a rogue government agency called the Trust. Only he and a group of other Trust members had betrayed their own group, offering to aid and abet an alien invasion of Earth in exchange for positions of privilege and leadership after the aliens took over. It made Daniel's head hurt thinking about it. Or maybe that was the alien mind probe they were using on him.
He had read his journal on the flight to Colorado. At least it explained one thing. Ever since he woke up in the trunk of that car, he had been very, very aware the he must have had sexual relations recently. The only conclusion he could come up with was that he had been assaulted while he was unconscious. After reading his journal entries, however, he had to assume that he had entirely consensual intercourse with this Jack person who had been hovering all day, bullying nurses whose care he found to be not quite attentive enough, asking intrusive and presumptive questions of Daniel's doctors, and watching Daniel himself with wary attention.
"So, what's the holdup?" Jack demanded, peering over Jacob's shoulder at the device that hovered over Daniel's body.
"The holdup is that Selmak's trying to find you some good news," Jacob replied testily. Then he began speaking in the other voice. Sam had explained to Daniel that her father hosted an intelligent alien life form that was attached to his brain and nervous system. Daniel found it extremely disconcerting when the creature took control of the man's body.
"Unfortunately, Colonel, there is no easy solution. The person who tampered with Dr. Jackson's brain did irreparable damage. There is no way to either restore his lost memories or to repair his current problem with the selective, recurring amnesia."
Selmak turned to Daniel.
"Dr. Jackson, you may either continue as you are, losing certain memories every day, or we can take a more radical path to permanently restore your mind's memory functions."
"Radical doesn't sound good," Jack muttered.
"No, it doesn't," Daniel agreed.
Selmak looked regretful.
"The only way to fix your memory formation permanently is to undo everything that was done to you by the Trust. However, once we reorder the necessary pathways, I am fairly certain that the result will be an almost completely blank slate."
Daniel just shut his eyes.
"So that's it," Jack said flatly. "Back to Texas for you, Dr. Jackson.
"No," Daniel said.
"What do you mean, no?" Jack replied. "You'll have a great life in Texas. You've got a department, research, students..."
"General Hammond offered me my old job as head of the Archaeology and Linguistics departments this morning," Daniel replied. "Obviously, I won't be able to participate in missions or go off world, but I can remember the work, just like I can remember alien languages. I'll just need daily assistance remembering the context. Which we know I can handle with written messages to myself. I can already tell that the work here is more interesting and important than anything I'll ever do in Texas."
Jack stared at him for a long, heavy moment.
"Come live with me," Jack blurted.
Daniel thought about his diary entries, meeting Jack's gaze unflinchingly.
"Thank you," he said.
"Sam will be so happy," Jacob said wryly, breaking the mood.
"Yeah, yeah," Jack replied with a smile.
February 2, several years later
"Thor, old buddy, old pal!" Jack yelled delightedly. "Long time, no see! How are you and yours?"
"The Asgard are quite well, O'Neill. As, it seems, are you." Jack would swear the little guy was smiling. "You are not in uniform?"
Jack bounced on the balls of his feet.
"Nope! It's been a crazy ten years or so, buddy. I can't wait to tell you all about it. But seriously. It's been a long time. We figured you guys were goners."
Thor inclined his head.
"It has indeed been a crazy ten years, as you say. In brief, we have defeated the Replicators and have come here as quickly as we could now that we have won our war, in hopes of finding something left to salvage here. We assumed the protected planets treaty would have failed long ago, after such a prolonged neglect on our part. And instead we find the galaxy free of the goa'uld, a Jaffa nation built and thriving, and Earth at the forefront of peaceful trade among the peoples of the Milky Way. Your success will be a legend amongst the Asgard, O'Neill."
"Aw," said Jack with a grin. "You always say the nicest things."
Thor made the little high-pitched humming noise that Jack figured was the Asgard version of a chuckle.
"But now that you're here, you should come and tour our new, civilian-operated, Earth Intergalactic Exploration Agency."
"Civilian control?" Thor repeated. "That is excellent, O'Neill. But I assume this means General Hammond is no longer in command? I hope he is well?"
"Oh, yeah! George retired about five years ago right after the program had to go public. The final fight with the goa'uld was pretty hard to miss from anywhere on, oh, the surface of the Earth."
"I am anxious to hear the entire story," Thor said. "Are you the leader of this facility now?"
"Leader?" Jack said, rolling his eyes. "If you can call it that. Most days it's like herding cats. Come on, Supreme Commander. I've got a special problem I've been waiting for years to get your help on."
September 28
Someone was shaking Daniel awake. It was too early to be getting up. He felt thick-headed, like he always did after a late night working. Then there was the stretchy – ew crusty – condition of his lower regions – not to mention the wet spot he had obviously slept in... He must have been doing more than research last night.
He opened a bleary eye to glare at his tormentor, who at least had the decency and foresight to be thrusting a cup of very hot coffee into Daniel's face, forestalling any grumbling. Daniel just groped for the cup and reached for his diary at the same time. It was so odd. He knew that he had been doing essentially the same thing every morning for years now, and yet he knew it was always a surprise when he read the explanatory letter folded on top of the journal.
The paper was worn and well handled, with several sections heavily hand-corrected.
Daniel paused to look at the picture, then the man himself, who had settled into the armchair in the corner with his own coffee. He was working on a crossword puzzle, occasionally snickering to himself.
He looked up to find Jack watching him. His husband. How the hell was he supposed to pretend he wasn't in shock?
"Just read yesterday's," Jack suggested. Though Daniel didn't know him, he seemed tense. Worried.
"Okay," Daniel agreed.
"Unfortunately, that's the best we can do," Thor said sadly.
"So I get all my memories back from before the Trust messed with my brain," Daniel said, "but you won't be able to salvage or reconstruct anything after that?"
"That is correct," Thor nodded.
Daniel was intensely disappointed. He wanted to remember Jack. He wanted it very badly. Every time he caught his husband watching him, he knew that all the insane things written in his journal were true. This man loved him. And Daniel loved him in return. He wanted a real memory of their first-time together. Of their wedding day. Of their entire strange life and relationship. But in order to make their relationship real, he had to be willing to give it up and have faith in himself that he would find his way back to Jack one final time.
"I want to go ahead with the procedure," Daniel said with certainty. Jack looked like he might be ill.
Daniel lay down in their bed. He had insisted.
"I want it to be as real for me as possible. If I wake up in our bed in our house, it will make it easier to accept the rest of it."
Jack wasn't sure that was true.
"Kiss me?" Daniel asked him, the sedatives were already kicking in, but Daniel sounded anxious despite the drugs. He was rotating his wedding band with his thumb, something he did almost every morning while reading his life from a handwritten manual.
Ignoring Thor and the medical staff assembled to assist him, Jack lay down in the bed by his husband and kissed him until he fell asleep.
He would have said no, but how could he when he wasn't sure he'd ever get another chance?
September 29
Daniel woke up in a strange bed in a strange place. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Jack, slumped in a big, comfortable-looking arm chair in the corner, clearly sitting vigil. Daniel groaned in anticipation of the pain of moving. He didn't remember what had happened, but he knew the signs of waking up in the infirmary.
Except the signs were all wrong, because when he started moving, he felt great. And when he sat up and reached for his glasses he could see clearly that he was not anywhere medical.
That was odd. He could see clearly. Had he slept in his glasses? He awkwardly pawed himself in the nose. Nope.
"Huh," he said, then noticed that Jack was watching him. Jack looked really worried. OK. Was he in an alien hospital off world, maybe?
"You finally had laser surgery this spring," Jack told him. He smiled tensely.
"No, I definitely didn't," Daniel said. "Where are we?"
Jack pointed to a stack of thick spiral-bound notebooks on the bedside table.
"You've got seven years of background reading to cover," Jack said. "Let me go make coffee while you get started."
When he came back, Daniel was sitting in the arm chair staring vacantly into space. Three different notebooks were open on his lap, stacked one on top of the other. His fingers were moving very lightly over the pages. Another of Daniel's mannerisms when reading these particular notes. Jack swallowed hard.
It's going to be OK, he told himself.
"Hey," he said.
Daniel's eyes refocused. He looked at Jack a long time, his cheeks coloring slightly, but his gaze not flinching away. Daniel was examining him, searching his face.
"It's a lot to take in," Daniel finally said. He was twisting his ring again.
"I tried to convince you getting married was a bad idea," Jack said, though it wasn’t what he really wanted to say.
Daniel nodded.
"So I read," he said, lifting the bottom notebook on his knees. He smiled weakly.
"I just want to be clear that I understand things are different for you now. We're starting with a whole different set of assumptions."
Daniel had that distant look again.
"Yes," he agreed. "You're retired. Even if you weren't, homosexuals can serve openly now. Our marriage is legally recognized, thanks to President Hammond. We own real estate together. A very different set of assumptions." Jack opened his mouth to say that wasn't what he meant, but Daniel waved him off. "I know," he said with a twitchy smile, lifting the journals again to remind him. "I read them all. Twice, actually."
Jack stood braced in the doorway while Daniel fell silent again. Finally, he said, "It's going to take a while to sort this out."
Jack nodded and left.
Daniel explored the house. He liked it. Which only made sense, he supposed. That had been a bizarre series of days, according to his diaries, choosing and buying the house. He found Jack in his pottery shop. The mind boggled. He wasn't doing anything, though. His hands were still clean. He looked so much older. Seven years. It was a long time to have lost.
"Are we good together?" Daniel asked him.
Jack looked up from the empty spinning pottery wheel.
"It's hard to say," Jack replied. "For you, every day was the first day we met."
Daniel walked into the little room and took a seat on the stool at the glazing bench.
"I feel like someone else told you one of my oldest secrets," Daniel said. "And now you know it and have accepted it and built your life around it and I'm not even sure how I even feel about it and I definitely never planned for you to ever find out."
"I understand that," Jack said hastily. "We can deal with this however you want. Divorce. Sell the house. Whatever. The lawyer I talked to said we could probably get an annulment. We'll do whatever you want," Jack trailed off.
"Yeah, but that's the thing," Daniel said. "We have to do this. I went to sleep last night an I and I woke up this morning a we. With you. Nothing can undo the past seven years for you, for,” he waved his hand to indicate the rest of the world, “even if I can’t remember it.”
Jack visibly swallowed, his eyes falling back to the still wheel in front of him.
Daniel slid off the stool, closing the distance between them.
"I like the house," he said. Jack looked up. He was still strikingly handsome, even silver-haired and nearly a decade older.
"I think we should keep it," Daniel continued. Jack's eyebrows went up in surprise.
"I think we should continue sleeping in the same bed," Daniel felt his cheeks get hot. Jack was suddenly smiling. He surged to his feet, so they were standing nose-to-nose, though he clearly checked himself before wrapping his arms around his friend.
"Though I have no intention of putting out right away," Daniel protested, but he felt himself smiling, too. Jack's grin was turning positively wolfish.
"You almost never do. Intend, that is," Jack said, in a way that was completely not reassuring.
"Eventually, we're going to have to renew our vows," Daniel went on, but Jack did stop him then with a crushing hug and a kiss that left Daniel breathless and reeling.
What am I doing? he asked himself. But there really was no point. Just like Jack said. He had not walked out of their bedroom intending to say these things, but once he was in the same room with Jack he knew he wanted to try this. He couldn't ask Jack to rewind seven years, even though Daniel was certain Jack was true to his word and would do whatever Daniel asked him to do. No. It was better to jump in with both feet and trust that everything would be OK when he landed.
"Eventually, we're going to have to renew our vows," Daniel said, then it all faded to static. Jack was holding him and kissing him, and maybe it was their last first time, but Jack was sick of first times. He wanted to explore and share and remember. He was a little afraid, too. He had Daniel back now. Not the overwhelmed academic, displaced from a tiny Texas college archaeology department, but Daniel Jackson, peaceful explorer, conqueror of Ra and Unas alike.
He broke off the kiss and stared into Daniel's sparkling eyes.
"Did you see the upstairs?" he asked, grinning. "Did the movers ever hate you, getting all those books up there!" And he took his husband by the hand and dragged him up to their converted attic for the first time.
OMG TOTALLY DONE!!!!!! But if you're interested, all my stories, in order, from one page. Also, my fiction recommendations.
If such things interest or amuse you, I posted the handwritten raw draft of this chapter a few days ago.
Author's note: As I was musing togreen_grrl, writing this story has been a real experience in why it's bad to start before you know how to finish. I am tempted to go back and rewrite based on the ending. There are themes I could have tried to hit harder, emphasize more, so that the ending would have had more resonance. Still, if I hadn't started it, I probably never would have thought about it hard enough to come up with an ending. And no, I won't go back and revisit the earlier chapters. I've got a zillion things I want to write RIGHT NOW, and absolutely no free time, so this critter will stay the imperfect thing that it is, and new stories will be produced. Thanks for sticking with me for so long. Almost two years! I still can't believe it's done!
Author:
muck_a_luck, posting in brainofckPairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: R
Summary: Daniel has a run-in with the Trust, and can't remember anything about the SGC, particularly not SG-1.
Content/warnings: I feel a strong need to warn for amnesia!fic. Cause it is SOOOOO lame. But it's also fun. :)
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only.
muck_a_luck and brainofckBeta: The fantastically wonderful, brilliant, and speedy
green_grrl who makes every story she reviews better than it was. Thank you!Prior chapters located here.
December 17
The air inside the trunk was stifling. He hoped they knew what they were doing when they locked two people in here. Daniel had been unconscious a while. Jack was just starting to worry when a deep groan told him Daniel was waking up.
"Where am I?" he asked muzzily. He struggled to sit up, cracking his head on the lid of the truck just as Jack yelped "Careful!" Daniel swore and collapsed back down, face smashed against Jack's chest.
"Sorry!" came the muffled apology. "Are we in a car? Oh, God! We're in the trunk of a car! Morrison shot me with a tazer! He's working with – "
"Daniel! Calm down!" Jack hissed.
Daniel did stop talking, but he continued to wriggle and squirm until he was facing away from Jack.
"Daniel, you should try to – "
There was a shattering sound.
" – break out the taillight." Jack finished. There was a second crashing noise.
Daniel wriggled some more, then he had a hand out one taillight and Jack was pretty sure he was trying to stick his foot out the other.
"Who are you?" Daniel grunted. "How do you know my name?"
"I tried to stop them from attacking you, so here I am," Jack figured the white lie was much, much easier than the complicated truth.
"How much did you translate, Dr. Jackson?" Morrison asked him for seemingly the hundredth time.
Daniel was woozy from being hit in the head so many times. His lips were split and bleeding. One eye had swollen shut. He just shook his head. How many times could he say he didn't know?
"You know, Dr. Jackson, our organization doesn't have any love for your boyfriend here." The guy they’d grabbed with him – O'Neill – was in even worse shape than Daniel. They had been kicking him earlier and Daniel had seen him spit up blood. And yet O'Neill kept needling them. He seemed to be trying to distract them from Daniel. It made Daniel feel confused and grateful and guilty that the guy had gotten involved in the whole thing.
"We're asking the wrong one," the other agent said to Morrison. "Jackson obviously doesn’t remember anything. But O'Neill does." O'Neill was giving the man the evil eye.
"He won't tell us anything," Morrison said dismissively.
The other man took his gun form his shoulder holster and pointed it right between Daniel's eyes.
"Oh, I think he will," he said, turning toward O'Neill. Daniel heard the crack of the shot and felt the spray of blood. At first he couldn't figure out why he wasn't dead. He hadn't felt anything at all. Then the unnamed agent collapsed to the ground.
"How'd you find us?" Jack asked as Sam unlocked his cuffs.
She chuckled.
"Another driver reported to 911 that an arm and a foot were sticking out of the broken taillights of the car in front of her. She actually followed you until an unmarked cruiser could take over. We picked up the police activity on our radios just as we found that the cabin had been hit. Teal'c and I got in on the action when they organized the SWAT team. Dad pulled some strings with some old hunting buddies."
"Jacob's here?" Jack asked, mostly to distract himself from the pain of trying to move under his own power. He got all the way vertical before he stated vomiting blood. He heard Sam yelling for help as he passed out.
December 18
Daniel sat quietly as the man in the weird leather outfit used his bizarre equipment to evaluate him. He was in the infirmary of some military facility deep under Cheyenne Mountain. It seemed strangely familiar.
When he had mentioned that to Jack, the man had made an oblique comment about how some memories must be too strong to completely erase.
Daniel was still reeling from the events of the last few days. He understood that something was wrong with him, and now he knew that Morrison was probably responsible. Apparently, Morrison had once been an agent of a rogue government agency called the Trust. Only he and a group of other Trust members had betrayed their own group, offering to aid and abet an alien invasion of Earth in exchange for positions of privilege and leadership after the aliens took over. It made Daniel's head hurt thinking about it. Or maybe that was the alien mind probe they were using on him.
He had read his journal on the flight to Colorado. At least it explained one thing. Ever since he woke up in the trunk of that car, he had been very, very aware the he must have had sexual relations recently. The only conclusion he could come up with was that he had been assaulted while he was unconscious. After reading his journal entries, however, he had to assume that he had entirely consensual intercourse with this Jack person who had been hovering all day, bullying nurses whose care he found to be not quite attentive enough, asking intrusive and presumptive questions of Daniel's doctors, and watching Daniel himself with wary attention.
"So, what's the holdup?" Jack demanded, peering over Jacob's shoulder at the device that hovered over Daniel's body.
"The holdup is that Selmak's trying to find you some good news," Jacob replied testily. Then he began speaking in the other voice. Sam had explained to Daniel that her father hosted an intelligent alien life form that was attached to his brain and nervous system. Daniel found it extremely disconcerting when the creature took control of the man's body.
"Unfortunately, Colonel, there is no easy solution. The person who tampered with Dr. Jackson's brain did irreparable damage. There is no way to either restore his lost memories or to repair his current problem with the selective, recurring amnesia."
Selmak turned to Daniel.
"Dr. Jackson, you may either continue as you are, losing certain memories every day, or we can take a more radical path to permanently restore your mind's memory functions."
"Radical doesn't sound good," Jack muttered.
"No, it doesn't," Daniel agreed.
Selmak looked regretful.
"The only way to fix your memory formation permanently is to undo everything that was done to you by the Trust. However, once we reorder the necessary pathways, I am fairly certain that the result will be an almost completely blank slate."
Daniel just shut his eyes.
"So that's it," Jack said flatly. "Back to Texas for you, Dr. Jackson.
"No," Daniel said.
"What do you mean, no?" Jack replied. "You'll have a great life in Texas. You've got a department, research, students..."
"General Hammond offered me my old job as head of the Archaeology and Linguistics departments this morning," Daniel replied. "Obviously, I won't be able to participate in missions or go off world, but I can remember the work, just like I can remember alien languages. I'll just need daily assistance remembering the context. Which we know I can handle with written messages to myself. I can already tell that the work here is more interesting and important than anything I'll ever do in Texas."
Jack stared at him for a long, heavy moment.
"Come live with me," Jack blurted.
Daniel thought about his diary entries, meeting Jack's gaze unflinchingly.
"Thank you," he said.
"Sam will be so happy," Jacob said wryly, breaking the mood.
"Yeah, yeah," Jack replied with a smile.
February 2, several years later
"Thor, old buddy, old pal!" Jack yelled delightedly. "Long time, no see! How are you and yours?"
"The Asgard are quite well, O'Neill. As, it seems, are you." Jack would swear the little guy was smiling. "You are not in uniform?"
Jack bounced on the balls of his feet.
"Nope! It's been a crazy ten years or so, buddy. I can't wait to tell you all about it. But seriously. It's been a long time. We figured you guys were goners."
Thor inclined his head.
"It has indeed been a crazy ten years, as you say. In brief, we have defeated the Replicators and have come here as quickly as we could now that we have won our war, in hopes of finding something left to salvage here. We assumed the protected planets treaty would have failed long ago, after such a prolonged neglect on our part. And instead we find the galaxy free of the goa'uld, a Jaffa nation built and thriving, and Earth at the forefront of peaceful trade among the peoples of the Milky Way. Your success will be a legend amongst the Asgard, O'Neill."
"Aw," said Jack with a grin. "You always say the nicest things."
Thor made the little high-pitched humming noise that Jack figured was the Asgard version of a chuckle.
"But now that you're here, you should come and tour our new, civilian-operated, Earth Intergalactic Exploration Agency."
"Civilian control?" Thor repeated. "That is excellent, O'Neill. But I assume this means General Hammond is no longer in command? I hope he is well?"
"Oh, yeah! George retired about five years ago right after the program had to go public. The final fight with the goa'uld was pretty hard to miss from anywhere on, oh, the surface of the Earth."
"I am anxious to hear the entire story," Thor said. "Are you the leader of this facility now?"
"Leader?" Jack said, rolling his eyes. "If you can call it that. Most days it's like herding cats. Come on, Supreme Commander. I've got a special problem I've been waiting for years to get your help on."
September 28
Someone was shaking Daniel awake. It was too early to be getting up. He felt thick-headed, like he always did after a late night working. Then there was the stretchy – ew crusty – condition of his lower regions – not to mention the wet spot he had obviously slept in... He must have been doing more than research last night.
He opened a bleary eye to glare at his tormentor, who at least had the decency and foresight to be thrusting a cup of very hot coffee into Daniel's face, forestalling any grumbling. Daniel just groped for the cup and reached for his diary at the same time. It was so odd. He knew that he had been doing essentially the same thing every morning for years now, and yet he knew it was always a surprise when he read the explanatory letter folded on top of the journal.
The paper was worn and well handled, with several sections heavily hand-corrected.
- Hello,
As you know, you are in your own bed in your own house.
Now for the recap.
You have permanent brain damage that causes you to have certain, very specific problems with your memory. The man in the bed next to you – or in the kitchen, or already gone to work – is Jack O'Neill. That's his picture, by the bed.
Daniel paused to look at the picture, then the man himself, who had settled into the armchair in the corner with his own coffee. He was working on a crossword puzzle, occasionally snickering to himself.
- You came to live with Jack
However, as you can see reviewing the earliest entries in Journal 1, you fall madly in love with Jack everyday. As you have probably also already realized by now, you and Jack are lovers.
Jack is completely devoted to you and long ago you decided to pretend that you remember your life together to try to make things more normal for him. He pretends you aren't pretending and things aren't too awkward.
I suggest you review the last week or so of entries to get up to speed, then go with the flow.
Good luck!
Daniel
Addendum: And brace yourself – you got married two years ago (10, 12/24) when President Hammond signed the National Marriage Rights Bill into law.
He looked up to find Jack watching him. His husband. How the hell was he supposed to pretend he wasn't in shock?
"Just read yesterday's," Jack suggested. Though Daniel didn't know him, he seemed tense. Worried.
"Okay," Daniel agreed.
- I am never going to believe this tomorrow.
Jack tells me that tomorrow I'm going to meet Thor. Yes. That Thor. Thor, the Norse God. Thor, who is apparently the prototype for anal probing aliens. Thor is representative of an alien species known as the Asgard. He's an old friend of mine apparently. About a year ago, Jack managed to consult him about my memory problem and a team of Asgard scientists has been looking for a way to restore my ability to correctly form long-term memories without turning me into a vegetable first.
According to Jack, they think they've found a solution. Today, I get to find out what it is.
"Unfortunately, that's the best we can do," Thor said sadly.
"So I get all my memories back from before the Trust messed with my brain," Daniel said, "but you won't be able to salvage or reconstruct anything after that?"
"That is correct," Thor nodded.
Daniel was intensely disappointed. He wanted to remember Jack. He wanted it very badly. Every time he caught his husband watching him, he knew that all the insane things written in his journal were true. This man loved him. And Daniel loved him in return. He wanted a real memory of their first-time together. Of their wedding day. Of their entire strange life and relationship. But in order to make their relationship real, he had to be willing to give it up and have faith in himself that he would find his way back to Jack one final time.
"I want to go ahead with the procedure," Daniel said with certainty. Jack looked like he might be ill.
Daniel lay down in their bed. He had insisted.
"I want it to be as real for me as possible. If I wake up in our bed in our house, it will make it easier to accept the rest of it."
Jack wasn't sure that was true.
"Kiss me?" Daniel asked him, the sedatives were already kicking in, but Daniel sounded anxious despite the drugs. He was rotating his wedding band with his thumb, something he did almost every morning while reading his life from a handwritten manual.
Ignoring Thor and the medical staff assembled to assist him, Jack lay down in the bed by his husband and kissed him until he fell asleep.
He would have said no, but how could he when he wasn't sure he'd ever get another chance?
September 29
Daniel woke up in a strange bed in a strange place. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Jack, slumped in a big, comfortable-looking arm chair in the corner, clearly sitting vigil. Daniel groaned in anticipation of the pain of moving. He didn't remember what had happened, but he knew the signs of waking up in the infirmary.
Except the signs were all wrong, because when he started moving, he felt great. And when he sat up and reached for his glasses he could see clearly that he was not anywhere medical.
That was odd. He could see clearly. Had he slept in his glasses? He awkwardly pawed himself in the nose. Nope.
"Huh," he said, then noticed that Jack was watching him. Jack looked really worried. OK. Was he in an alien hospital off world, maybe?
"You finally had laser surgery this spring," Jack told him. He smiled tensely.
"No, I definitely didn't," Daniel said. "Where are we?"
Jack pointed to a stack of thick spiral-bound notebooks on the bedside table.
"You've got seven years of background reading to cover," Jack said. "Let me go make coffee while you get started."
When he came back, Daniel was sitting in the arm chair staring vacantly into space. Three different notebooks were open on his lap, stacked one on top of the other. His fingers were moving very lightly over the pages. Another of Daniel's mannerisms when reading these particular notes. Jack swallowed hard.
It's going to be OK, he told himself.
"Hey," he said.
Daniel's eyes refocused. He looked at Jack a long time, his cheeks coloring slightly, but his gaze not flinching away. Daniel was examining him, searching his face.
"It's a lot to take in," Daniel finally said. He was twisting his ring again.
"I tried to convince you getting married was a bad idea," Jack said, though it wasn’t what he really wanted to say.
Daniel nodded.
"So I read," he said, lifting the bottom notebook on his knees. He smiled weakly.
"I just want to be clear that I understand things are different for you now. We're starting with a whole different set of assumptions."
Daniel had that distant look again.
"Yes," he agreed. "You're retired. Even if you weren't, homosexuals can serve openly now. Our marriage is legally recognized, thanks to President Hammond. We own real estate together. A very different set of assumptions." Jack opened his mouth to say that wasn't what he meant, but Daniel waved him off. "I know," he said with a twitchy smile, lifting the journals again to remind him. "I read them all. Twice, actually."
Jack stood braced in the doorway while Daniel fell silent again. Finally, he said, "It's going to take a while to sort this out."
Jack nodded and left.
Daniel explored the house. He liked it. Which only made sense, he supposed. That had been a bizarre series of days, according to his diaries, choosing and buying the house. He found Jack in his pottery shop. The mind boggled. He wasn't doing anything, though. His hands were still clean. He looked so much older. Seven years. It was a long time to have lost.
"Are we good together?" Daniel asked him.
Jack looked up from the empty spinning pottery wheel.
"It's hard to say," Jack replied. "For you, every day was the first day we met."
Daniel walked into the little room and took a seat on the stool at the glazing bench.
"I feel like someone else told you one of my oldest secrets," Daniel said. "And now you know it and have accepted it and built your life around it and I'm not even sure how I even feel about it and I definitely never planned for you to ever find out."
"I understand that," Jack said hastily. "We can deal with this however you want. Divorce. Sell the house. Whatever. The lawyer I talked to said we could probably get an annulment. We'll do whatever you want," Jack trailed off.
"Yeah, but that's the thing," Daniel said. "We have to do this. I went to sleep last night an I and I woke up this morning a we. With you. Nothing can undo the past seven years for you, for,” he waved his hand to indicate the rest of the world, “even if I can’t remember it.”
Jack visibly swallowed, his eyes falling back to the still wheel in front of him.
Daniel slid off the stool, closing the distance between them.
"I like the house," he said. Jack looked up. He was still strikingly handsome, even silver-haired and nearly a decade older.
"I think we should keep it," Daniel continued. Jack's eyebrows went up in surprise.
"I think we should continue sleeping in the same bed," Daniel felt his cheeks get hot. Jack was suddenly smiling. He surged to his feet, so they were standing nose-to-nose, though he clearly checked himself before wrapping his arms around his friend.
"Though I have no intention of putting out right away," Daniel protested, but he felt himself smiling, too. Jack's grin was turning positively wolfish.
"You almost never do. Intend, that is," Jack said, in a way that was completely not reassuring.
"Eventually, we're going to have to renew our vows," Daniel went on, but Jack did stop him then with a crushing hug and a kiss that left Daniel breathless and reeling.
What am I doing? he asked himself. But there really was no point. Just like Jack said. He had not walked out of their bedroom intending to say these things, but once he was in the same room with Jack he knew he wanted to try this. He couldn't ask Jack to rewind seven years, even though Daniel was certain Jack was true to his word and would do whatever Daniel asked him to do. No. It was better to jump in with both feet and trust that everything would be OK when he landed.
"Eventually, we're going to have to renew our vows," Daniel said, then it all faded to static. Jack was holding him and kissing him, and maybe it was their last first time, but Jack was sick of first times. He wanted to explore and share and remember. He was a little afraid, too. He had Daniel back now. Not the overwhelmed academic, displaced from a tiny Texas college archaeology department, but Daniel Jackson, peaceful explorer, conqueror of Ra and Unas alike.
He broke off the kiss and stared into Daniel's sparkling eyes.
"Did you see the upstairs?" he asked, grinning. "Did the movers ever hate you, getting all those books up there!" And he took his husband by the hand and dragged him up to their converted attic for the first time.
OMG TOTALLY DONE!!!!!! But if you're interested, all my stories, in order, from one page. Also, my fiction recommendations.
If such things interest or amuse you, I posted the handwritten raw draft of this chapter a few days ago.
Author's note: As I was musing to
green_grrl, writing this story has been a real experience in why it's bad to start before you know how to finish. I am tempted to go back and rewrite based on the ending. There are themes I could have tried to hit harder, emphasize more, so that the ending would have had more resonance. Still, if I hadn't started it, I probably never would have thought about it hard enough to come up with an ending. And no, I won't go back and revisit the earlier chapters. I've got a zillion things I want to write RIGHT NOW, and absolutely no free time, so this critter will stay the imperfect thing that it is, and new stories will be produced. Thanks for sticking with me for so long. Almost two years! I still can't believe it's done!
