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stargateficrecPairing: none
Category: Jack and Daniel friendship, gen, humor, drama, hurt/comfort
Warning: original character death offscreen
Author on LJ: unknown
Author's Website: Sam Walker at The Grove
Link: A Rock and a Hard Place
Why This Must Be Read: This fic holds a special place in my heart as one of the first Stargate stories I ever read. The author notes that it was inspired by the observation that Sam and Jack got to freeze together in Solitudes, and Teal'c and Jack got to freeze together in Tangent, but Daniel and Jack never got to go through that particular bonding experience. The actual freezing in this story isn't quite on that level, but the friendship vibes are pure satisfaction.
Told entirely from Jack's POV, the story opens with our colonel laid up in the infirmary. When Jack realizes that something has happened to Daniel off-world, he cadges his way onto Ferretti's team and goes to join the search and rescue effort to get Daniel back safely to the SGC. While Sam works on creating a scaffolding to reach Daniel and Teal'c tries to reach him through sheer physical will, Jack remains in constant radio contact with Daniel, offering rock-solid moral support to enable him to hold on until the rescue effort succeeds. There's no real enemy here, except mischance and the inherent dangers of off-world travel. That, in itself, gives an extra sense of realism to the story.
Everyone is perfectly in character here. From Janet to Ferretti to each member of SG-1, the dialogue and reactions flow so smoothly that the reader can easily visualize the story taking place as an episode on the show. The literally fingernail-biting anxiety of the penultimate scene is tense and all too realistic. And with Jack's POV so perfectly portrayed, the story is a delight from start to finish.
The world narrows down to me and the radio, and Daniel’s increasingly scattered recitation of whatever I can think to ask him about. We cover grad school, Abydos, Linear A versus Linear B, and some guy named Ashur-something-pal who is NOT to be confused with Ashur-something-else-pal. Carter’s still having no luck, and on the rare occasions when she comes into the tent for something and happens to overhear Daniel’s straggling monologue she leaves looking close to tears. Fraiser doesn’t seem to know who to hover over since the person she really wants to be hovering over is stuck down a cliff, so she mostly ends up wandering aimlessly in and out of the tent absently biting her fingernails. Me, I’m just trying really hard to convince myself I’m helping somehow.
It suddenly occurs to me that the pause in Daniel’s lecture about the Eleusinian mysteries, which are just as mysterious to me now as they were before Daniel started talking about them, has gone on for way longer than it should have.
"Daniel?"
Nothing.
"Daniel!"
"I’m h-h-here," he chatters finally.
"Daniel, you have to keep talking." There’s a pause where my heart makes a concerted effort to crawl up my esophagus. "Daniel?"
"T-t-too tired," he mumbles. "Sorry. Too t-tired. C-can’t can’t think."
"You don’t have to think," I say, and I don’t even try to keep the desperation out of my voice. "Just keep talking."
"D-demeter" he pauses. "D-demeter I c-can’t r-remember."
"Okay. Okay." I rack my brain for something he can do without thinking. "Conjugate caleo."
"Ha ha," he says weakly. "And p-people think you’re d-dumb."
I may have spent a lot of my enforced stay in the time loop goofing off, but even I couldn’t avoid picking up a little Latin here and there. Caleo means to be warm or hot in Latin.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-20 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-20 08:16 pm (UTC)Yep. Great teamy goodness, great Jack and Daniel friendship, great Jack voice. Happy sigh... time to go read it again, I think!
Yay!
Date: 2006-06-21 12:29 am (UTC)Re: Yay!
Date: 2006-06-21 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:12 pm (UTC)As for my reccing something you haven't read already... Well, I suppose I can but try. It's not *my* fault we both have impeccable taste in fic.