Scratch, by Aces (PG-13)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: Episode related

Pairing: none
Categories: episode related, gen, Daniel Jackson, Jack O'Neill, Jack and Daniel friendship, team, drama, angst, hurt/comfort
Warnings: violence, some disturbing mental imagery
Author on LJ: wishfulaces
Author's Website: Aces at Heliopolis
Link: Scratch

Why This Must Be Read: This powerful post-Into the Fire fic gives us a slowly unravelling Daniel, as he tries to cope with the helplessness he felt on Hathor's planet and a subsequent mission in which the necessity of killing in self-defense takes on a new, more disturbing intimacy. His nightmares twist and warp themselves into increasingly awful mutations, until even his waking hours are haunted. How can he keep going when the price of survival feels too high?

Jack tries to be supportive, as does the rest of SG-1; but Jack himself is fighting the unbearable memory of the ultimate invasion, and it's all he can do not to give in to his own urge to "scratch" – both literally and figuratively – at the phantom scar on the back of his neck. Both Jack and Daniel need to confront some stark truths before they can finally get back to what approaches normalcy in their lives.

This isn't Daniel-as-hurting-pacifist, but Daniel-as-hurting-human being, which is infinitely more satisfying. Scratch is a gripping, well-written story that you're sure to enjoy – even as it makes you wince.
 

 

Not gonna make it.

The thought was shaken, pushed, into his thoughts, and he was almost more stunned by that than anything else in this battlefield. He had fallen after being hit--or had he fallen and then been hit? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter.

Things had spiraled so quickly into hell upon waking to find his friends weren't actually dead, and he wasn't actually in the future. Worst of all surely was Jack, afraid, being taken over by a Goa'uld. The memory of Jack's pained and mortified face was burnt permanently into Daniel's neural pathways and would no doubt be the last image he would see many times right before waking up from dream-disturbed sleep. But there was confronting Hathor, and being taken prisoner, and escaping their jailers only to be caught here, before they could even reach the Gate, to add to those future nights of memory. He should have been used to the fast-moving craziness, he should have been used to the idea of "Instant Chaos: Just Add SG-1." But then, he'd never had a reason to become used to seeing Jack, afraid, being taken over by a Goa'uld.

"Daniel!" Sam yelled, and she was looming over him, a pale slip of a ghost in the surrounding dark screaming chaos. Last he'd seen of her she'd been hunched over on the ground, hands clamped over her ears and looking bereft without a weapon in her hands. It was fine for him; he was used to being the only one not throwing some kind of weapon around; but this was Sam--she should've been wielding one of those M16s toted by the Marines, and it only unnerved his already-battered sensibilities even more. She spoke more softly now, grabbing for his arm to help him up. "Daniel, let's go."

He felt her levering him upward, but he didn't want to move, and the realization was literally stunning.

Not gonna make it.

They'd been in grim situations before. Mortal Peril was their call sign, surely. No-one else could ever be as determinedly optimistic as Jack on a Very Bad Day, and yeah, Daniel himself was sometimes known for his less-than-stellar pessimism (he had not been whining in that cell on Apophis's ship when they'd all woken up blinded from the shock grenade over a year ago, he liked to remind himself on occasion), but this--this was different from either of those extremes. This was a new feeling of panic-tension. This wasn't even pessimism, or survivor's guilt, this was--what was this?

Not gonna make it.