Trap Door, by Zephyr (PG)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: Daniel Jackson

Pairing: none
Category:  Daniel Jackson, gen, character study, angst
Warnings: reference to canon character death
Author on LJ: unknown
Author's Website: Zephyr at StargateFan
Link to Story: Trap Door 

Why This Must Be Read:  Season 5 was a painful year for both Daniel and his fans, and many of my favorite fics from S5 are from writers I've already recced this month, so I'm going to kinda scoot past it. One angsty Meridian fic, one humorous one (black humor, anyway), and two character studies that could probably go in any later season, but I'm arbitrarily putting in S5 just because.

You have to give the writers credit (or maybe you don't) for making the SGC such an unfriendly place to Daniel by the end of S5 that he was willing to go with Oma in Meridian. This painful little stocktaking of Daniel's five years at the SGC, written by Zephyr in stark first person POV, sums it up all too neatly: one loss piled on top of another, including the loss of his true self. The final line, a direct quote from Meridian, will simply make you wince, because it makes all too much sense.

Short, bleak, and painfully honest, Zephyr's ficlet gives us a good look at Daniel's state of mind before he took that last walk up the ramp.

The second year was better in some ways, in others not so good. A year of new allies and old enemies, loved ones still lost then found and lost again. Another year older and still no closer to my ultimate goal.

We were closer - strangers became colleagues, became friends, became family.

Finding Sha’re was a hope fulfilled, her child was not. At least not then. Teal’c’s words knocked the panic and blind prejudice from my head and made me see that she was in no way to blame for what had happened - the consequences of becoming ‘Beloved’ of the Goa’uld being different for her than they were for me. We might have saved her then, Teal’c and I, if I had behaved like the loving husband I thought myself to be, instead of the jealous lover. But I was able to hold her, to tell her that I loved her, would always love her.

The third year was a year of old allies and new enemies. A year of despair and joy.

Losing my mind, losing my wife, losing my friend who had claimed that he was no friend at all, losing my only living relative. Losing the last of my innocence in a cage in a far away place. Dying is easy, being tortured is not.

The only happy memories are of Skaara and his nephew. Sha’re’s son - a nameless child being cared for by a nameless race.