mific: (SG1 stargate)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] stargateficrec
Show: SG1
Rec Category: Alternate Universe - canon divergence
Characters: Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Sam Carter, Teal'c, Janet Fraiser, others
Categories: Gen
Warnings: For violence and character death (Daniel's ascended after the radiation poisoning). 
Words: 73,746
Author on DW:[personal profile] rydra_wong
Author's Website: see the DW fic tag
Link: Walked Right Out of the Machinery on Wayback (all as one fic), or on DW as separate chapters.
Why This Must Be Read: This is a classic SG1 novel-length story, reccd here nine years ago so this is a reminder, and to add the Wayback link. It goes AU from canon after Jack gets snaked with a Tok'ra in 'the Abyss'. The story is partly plotty action/adventure, and partly Jack and the symbiote grappling with a traumatic, messed-up blending. At the fic's start Jack has repressed what's happened and we see his confusion. It's an amazingly well-written story in tight third person POV. I re-read it every few years - highly recommended. 

Summary: Stargate SG-1 season 6 AU. The one where Ba'al's Jaffa got there thirty seconds faster.
There is no "both of you," he wants to say; it doesn't work like that.


"Does it bother you?" Daniel says from behind him, in that oh-so-casual tone that means he thinks he's got something. "I mean, that we've been talking in Goa'uld for the past ten minutes." 

"No we haven't."

Okay, so maybe it's not one of his finest ever conversational moments. Daniel ignores it anyway, ploughs on remorselessly. "You see, Jack O'Neill doesn't understand Goa'uld."

"Hey. I can say kree in five different languages." He pulls his knife and begins gutting the critter before the meat can spoil. Weird creature, neither fish nor fowl. Intestines spool out in steaming purple coils over his hands. He doesn't like knives so much these days (careful) but you can't skin a lizard-rabbit with a zat.

The woods smell wet and harsh, like wild garlic.

"You know there's something wrong here. You know this doesn't make sense."

The thing about Daniel is – is, was, yadda – he's never believed there were things it was better not to know, safer not to examine too closely. Just like he never quite got that there are things you shouldn't touch. Daniel wants to see everything in perfect light, imagines infinite radiance instead of the merciless white light of an operating room: no shadows, no dark corners, nowhere for a wounded thing to crawl and hide.

"Daniel, let me explain something to you." He lets the knife dangle between his fingers, sheened with blood and scales, and looks up from where he's crouching. "You're dead. You're a hallucination. You're my hallucination. Of course I can understand what you're saying."

"I'm not dead. Not, ah, as such." Daniel pinches at the bridge of his nose, the place where his glasses would rub, if death wasn't a cure for near-sightedness (who knew?). "We've been over this."

Empirical facts. The human body cannot survive exposure to over thirty sieverts of radiation (and he should have gone with him to the research facility, he should have – ).

The human body cannot survive planetfall in an escape pod with malfunctioning inertial dampeners, organs rupturing, bleeding out inside so fast, blood pressure dropping lower the harder he drove the heart and not enough oxygen reaching the brain, slipping away in the blackness in pain and fear and he should have done, he should have said, he should have known how to say goodbye –

"Ascension is a myth," he snarls. "A superstition fostered by the Goa'uld to keep the Jaffa subservient."

"Yeah." Dry, appraising. "That didn't even sound like you."

Cut.


Date: 2020-12-11 02:13 pm (UTC)
princessofgeeks: (Default)
From: [personal profile] princessofgeeks
This is in my top five fanfic of all time in any canon ever. Thanks for the reminder.

Date: 2020-12-11 09:26 pm (UTC)
cofax7: climbing on an abbey wall  (Default)
From: [personal profile] cofax7
this is one of the best-written stories in any fandom. It's SO GOOD.

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