Sorry guys – all I can say is that real life sucks. Here you go – if any one’s still interested!
Daniel hated funerals. He’d been to too many, seen too many people he loved put in the ground or sent into the fire. You would have thought that familiarity would have made the process easier, or at the very least allowed him to get through each one without the searing headache that suppressed emotions left and the tight hot aching behind his eyes. But instead it seemed to get harder each time rather than easier. The memorial service had been bad enough, standing there, swallowing angrily past the lump in his throat, eyes burning with unshed tears as the endless litany of those Janet had saved went on and on. On and on. Into a future that his friend had been robbed of. But this, this was killing him.
They had laid on the whole nine yards, the measured ceremony of honour for the fallen, with gun salutes and a folded flag given by a solemn faced General Hammond to a too still Cassie who sat in a crumpled heap on a chair by the graveside, as if only the handclasps of Jack and Sam stopping her from falling forward with the coffin into the open grave. Some part of Daniel felt an almost abstracted pain for her, poor kid, to see two mothers die in such a short lifetime, but the rest of him was still caught in the endless flashback of watching Janet die, over and over again, the whine of the staff weapon, the sudden shocking smell of burning flesh in his nostrils and the horrible beauty of her blood, so bright blossoming against the ground as he fought desperately to save her. She had looked up at him as he caught her, as she fell back against the ground, hazel eyes meeting his with a flash of that old amusement, as if she had scored this one up as a small victory in their eternal battle of wits and wills. Even as he had struggled to save her, frantically trying to staunch the bleeding her eyes had followed him, quiet, almost accepting as if the whole wretched experience was only a masque, a scene in a play at which she was a spectator. The look in her eyes had been so heart wrenchingly like how he had felt the first time he had ascended that for hours after she finally closed her eyes he had hovered beside her, refusing to let go of the hand that had rapidly cooled in his grasp, irrationally convinced that any minute now she would blossom into that other plane, rise up and change, leaving nothing earthly behind. It had taken both O’Neill and Carter to pull him away from her body, the older mans eyes red rimmed and his voiced gravel edged and raw. Carter had been even worse off, voice hoarse and rasping from crying, eyes swollen and narrowed. It had only been when he refused to let go of Janet’s hand that he had realised how close she was to losing it. Even so the shock of the slap took him by surprise. He stumbled back, hand instinctively reaching up to touch his cheek where the skin was reddening, staring at her in open mouthed shock. In all their years together Sam had never once hit him. Never. She faced him, a blonde valkyrie and he really looked at her for the first time since Janet had been shot that endless morning before. She looked so torn, so betrayed, that he felt a sudden stab of totally irrational guilt as he reached out a tentative hand and she burrowed into him like he was a lifeline. Her body was rigid in his arms and he gently rubbed a hand up and down her back as she breathed in the warmth of him, reassuring herself that this one of all her friends was still here. Eventually she pushed back and locked eyes with him, hands fisted in his lapels, giving him a little shake with each word, as though her sentences needed punctuation.
“Dammit Daniel! You’ll not do this to me. I need you to stay with us. For me. For us. I can’t lose you too. Not again.”
He had nodded in capitulation, shifting his gaze to that of the thin-lipped Colonel who had stood immobile near the door while his 2IC bashed some sense into their errant archaeologist.
“Do you promise?”
Sam’s voice had been clogged with tears, more had spilled down the sharp edges of her cheekbones and he had lifted a gentle hand to brush them away, meeting the demand in her gaze with as much reassurance as he had to give.
“I promise.” And in that moment he had met Jack’s gaze, and had silently promised them both, to always try to come back and never to do anything that would cause Sam to look at anyone else with the broken look she was giving him right now.
Which is why he could make himself stand this, the guns and the flag and the broken slump of Cassie’s shoulders under a mourning grey sky. Even though a huge part of him just wanted to turn and walk away, to forget about the Gou’ld, interstellar warfare and the fate of the planet and 8 years of funerals and all the parade of the honoured dead that were still dead, no matter how honoured. For Sam and Jack, Teal’c and Cassie, even Siler and David he would stay. And because he always tried to keep his promises.
“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”