Look to the Heavens and Number the Stars, by Minervacat (PG-13)

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Greetings! I'm pleased to rec the Gen category this month, starting with a rec I've been waiting for ages to make!

Rec Category: Gen

Pairing: none

Categories: gen, original character, episode related, team, Janet Frasier, Jonas Quinn, Daniel Jackson, character study, angst

Warnings: spoilers through S9, including references to canonical character deaths

Author on LJ: minervacat

Author's Website: when the floods roll back

Link: Look to the Heavens and Number the Stars, parts one and two, and The Silent Language of the Star (a companion fic)

Why This Must Be Read: I read this fic – and later, its companion story – and they completely blew me away.

…That’s not enough? :)

Minervacat introduces us to a superbly-realized original character, Claire, who is recruited to the SGC by Jack at Daniel’s behest. Claire slowly takes over the staggeringly difficult task of cataloging the artifacts that accumulate over the years. With time, she befriends the characters we know and love – especially Janet, her main source of gossip, and Daniel, who never returns her books. Yet Minervacat cleverly evades the Mary-Sue trap for Claire; this original character remains quietly on the sidelines, interacting only enough to be a part of the story without interfering in the events as we know them, or knowing more than she should.

Covering some seven years of SG-1 history – including a fascinating side-trip into the AU of Moebius – these two fics are elegantly written, with just the right touches of humor and distress to make Claire amazingly real.

A librarian at the SGC, with all that entails. Both these stories are too wonderful to be missed!

(Reccer's note: The author posted the fic with a rating of R; when I asked her why, she said she didn't remember. :) Since there's nothing to warrant that rating, I'm reccing it here as PG-13.)

 

Jackson was there the day she shrieked and flung the H volume of the Library of Congress classifications across the room, barely missing something that looked like a flower pot and crushing the chalky rocks that SG-4 had brought back to her the week before.

While Claire was panting and clutching the edge of the desk, Jackson had picked his head up from the tablet he'd been studying, ambled across the room and fingered the pieces of broken chalk. "I guess you need a better system," he said.

Claire said, "There is nothing in library school that prepared me for this."

"There's nothing in the world that prepares you for this," Jackson said. "I'm fairly certain those rocks really were just chalk, if it helps."

"It doesn't," Claire said. "Look, I love the Library of Congress as much as the next librarian with a hard-on for classification, but I just have to say, I don't think they're what we need."

Jackson smiled, cat-like and self-contained, and said, "Now you're getting the hang of it."

"The hang of what?" Claire said.

"I'll send some people in to help you," Jackson said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. No one at the SGC ever answered questions directly, and Claire was almost getting used to it. "One an afternoon, specialists in a variety of fields. You know how to build a taxonomy. Build one."

He disappeared again, taking the tablet with him, and Claire knew she wasn't going to get it back. She picked the H volume up off the floor, swept the remains of the chalk into a box, and sat back down at her desk.

Later, Claire used the H volume to prop up a desk that O'Neill broke in the aftermath of Kelowna.