Agree to Disagree
Agree to Disagree
by Esther Jacobs
TITLE: Agree to Disagree
AUTHOR: Esther Jacobs
EMAIL: estherjacobs26@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: Missing Scene/Epilogue, Angst, Romance
PAIRING: Daniel/Other
SPOILERS: Menace (of course), The Broca Divide, Past and Present, Forever in a Day, Crystal Skull, The Curse, The Light
SEASON / SEQUEL: 5
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNINGS: None
SUMMARY: After the events in Menace, Jack still doesn't understand Daniel's feelings for Reese.
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVE: Heliopolis
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. We have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. Not to be archived without permission of the authors.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: For those of you who haven't seen Menace yet, I'll try not to spoil it for you, but I definitely don't think that Daniel or Jack could've left things as they were at the end of the episode. This is my first fic, so please be gentle.
Jack arrived at Daniel's apartment exactly half an hour after the debriefing had ended. Daniel was already there just as Jack knew he would be. The anthropologist had he ever heard Daniel describe himself as such before this whole mess with Reese? had fled from the Briefing Room before General Hammond had even finished saying "dismissed", and Jack was sure that he wouldn't come anywhere near the base until their two days of leave were over. But he needed to speak to him. Badly.
What the hell was he thinking, calling him what he had in the Gateroom? He'd never even heard Daniel swear at an inanimate object, let alone at someone who was supposed to be his best friend. Jack knew that Daniel was a civilian somehow that had never been plainer than it was today but he *knew* what a disaster Jack probably prevented by killing that robot. Surely, after all these years in the employment of the Stargate Programme, he must realise that the fate of Earth *had* to come first?
When he reached Daniel's front door he wasn't surprised to find it unlocked. He'd lost track of the times that he had tried to remind Daniel that he wasn't on Abydos anymore - that it wasn't safe to keep his door unlocked in Colorado but, for once, he was glad of the younger man's inherently trusting nature. He really wasn't in the mood to have to force his way in because he was sure that Daniel wouldn't want to see him and he knew that he wouldn't throw him out once he was inside that would just be rude.
Daniel was sitting on his couch, apparently staring out at nothing.
"Daniel?" Jack said. "Whatcha doin'?"
There was no answer from the man on the couch, so Jack sat down on the armchair opposite him sitting next to him while he was in this mood would probably be pushing it somewhat.
That sat in silence for what seemed like ages to an already-irritated Jack, who wasn't even sure that Daniel realised he was there. "You left the base pretty quickly, I was worried about you." Still nothing. Jack finally lost his temper. Daniel was obviously still blaming him for what had happened to Reese, but, really, what else could he have done? Like he said earlier, this was always the way it was going to end. "God, Daniel, you're acting like you were in love with her! You only knew her for two days!"
It worked. Daniel finally looked up at him, but Jack was shocked to see tears filling those piercing blue eyes. "I *could* have fallen in love with her." He whispered.
Jack sighed angrily. "She wasn't *real*, Daniel." Why was he acting like this? She was a robot! A machine, for Christ's sake!
"Yes she was!" Daniel choked back a sob. "She was..." And another. "She was beautiful." In her mind, in her heart, where it counted, she was perfect.
Jack shook his head in bewilderment. "She had the mind of a child and the body of a robot." He reminded him. "Exactly what kind of a relationship do you think you could have had with her?"
Daniel bowed his head and didn't answer. He already knew what Jack thought of Reese until this conversation, he hadn't referred to her as 'her' once; she was always 'it' or 'the robot' couldn't Jack see how upset she had been? How very alone she felt?
At Daniel's lack of response, Jack could feel what patience he had left evaporating. It had been a *very* long day, and fighting those Replicators which the robot had *created*, by the way had brought back some vivid memories of his last meeting with the little critters oh yes, and *they* were her fault as well, by the way! Why couldn't Daniel see what she'd done? Even the Asgard couldn't defeat her monstrous creations. Come to think of it, maybe this deja vu he was feeling wasn't simply about the Replicators...
"I can't believe that after everything that's happened I'm having this conversation with you again!" He spat out. "Does the name 'Kera' mean anything to you? You know, the 'Destroyer of Worlds'? What is it with you and mass-murderers anyway?"
Daniel's head shot up, his eyes flashing with unusually unrestrained fury. "How dare you? I always knew you'd throw that back in my face. *Linea* and Kera were two different people. And what Reese did was an *accident*! This is all about you finding someone to blame, isn't it?" He realised suddenly. "Well, I'm not going to be your scapegoat, not this time. What about Sam? She's the one who insisted on keeping the Replicator that Reese gave me, hell, she's the one who brought Reese here in the first place! Oh, wait, I forgot, Sam can never do anything wrong in your eyes, can she?"
Jack was beyond fury at this point, he was absolutely livid. His heart was filled with an icy rage. "You know, maybe I was wrong about this being another 'Kera' thing. You've always had this problem with women: Melosha, Shyla, Sarah, Sha're. You don't want to be a boyfriend or a husband, you want to be a teacher! Well, guess what, *Doctor*, you've already tried that. And failed miserably!"
As soon as the words were out of his mouth Jack regretted them. Daniel never spoke of the academic career that had gone up in flames so dramatically before Catherine recruited him - and bringing Sha're up in a conversation was *always* a bad idea - but, God, he could just be so infuriating sometimes, and he had no right to bring Sam into this.
Daniel was astounded. For once, he was so stunned that he didn't know what to say. How could Jack - *Jack*, his best friend say such terrible things to him? More to the point did he actually believe them? He decided to give it one last try. He needed Jack to understand this although, right now, he wasn't sure why.
"You don't know what it's like," he whispered.
"Don't understand what what's like?" Jack asked softly, completely taken aback by the calmness in Daniel's voice. If their positions had been reversed, he'd probably be planting a bullet between Daniel's eyes right about now.
Daniel stood up and walked over to the window. Rain was streaming down the glass. How appropriate. It summed his mood up perfectly.
"What it's like to be responsible for the deaths of your parents. What it's like to know that you destroyed the very people who brought you into the world, who created you. And, worst of all..." The tears were back. Jack could see them spilling down Daniel's cheeks in the reflection in the darkened window. "Worst of all...to know that you've let them down. That they must be so disappointed with you. That you were...wrong."
The desperate hitch in Daniel's voice broke Jack's heart. Whatever the reason for it, his best friend was hurting, and he wanted nothing more than to take the pain away from him. But what could he possibly say in response to that?
"Your parents wouldn't be disappointed in you. Your theories were right."
Daniel let out a watery snort of laughter and shook his head. "No, Jack, I meant...what was the phrase Reese used?...*created* wrong..."
Suddenly, the tears weren't silent any more. Daniel was sobbing loudly, his entire body shaking, and Jack was there, holding him tightly, close to his chest, trying to offer him comfort and trying to figure out what the hell his friend meant.
The pair slid down to the ground, Daniel still weeping copiously. Eventually, Daniel fell asleep in Jack's arms, and Jack lowered him all the way to the floor. He guessed that Daniel had gotten even less sleep than he had over the past couple of days and was glad that he was finally getting the rest he obviously so desperately needed.
It also gave Jack a chance to try and figure out exactly what Daniel had meant about being 'created wrong'. He'd always known that the younger man had had some bad experiences growing up that some of the foster families he'd been placed with had been somewhat less than perfect but surely no one would actually try to make a young orphan believe that he was to blame for his parents' deaths?
"Oh, Danny." He whispered. "What the hell is going on in that head of yours?"
He was mentally kicking himself. He should have realised that something like this was going to happen when Daniel took Reese under his wing, right from the start. He'd *never* seen him disagree so strongly with Sam, not even during that memorable first debate on Abydos. There had obviously just been something about that robot that had enamoured her to him.
Who knows, maybe he actually did love her.
After all, stranger things had happened mainly to them!
Daniel began to stir a couple of hours later, he was too stressed, almost too exhausted, to manage to sleep for any length of time. Jack was clearly still there Daniel could hear the TV murmuring and he *knew* that that wasn't anything to do with him.
As he lay there on the floor of his apartment, his argument with Jack came back to haunt him. He groaned and sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands. He hated falling asleep crying, he always woke up feeling groggy anf stuffed up. Oddly, the fact that it seemed that he had cried himself to sleep in Jack's arms didn't bother him at all. Maybe that was because he'd done it before, or maybe it was because he knew that Jack wouldn't hold it against him. There was a lot about Daniel that the colonel didn't understand, but his tears always brought out Jack's most paternal instincts.
Jack must have heard his moan or seen his movements out of the corner of his eye. He hurried over and held out a hand to help Daniel up, strangely glad that Daniel didn't wave him away.
"Why don't you come over to the couch?" He suggested. "You'll be a lot more comfortable."
Daniel allowed himself to be pulled over to the couch before collapsing into it without a word. So much had happened over the past couple of days and he was really struggling to come to terms with it all. He'd always thought that a year with Sha're was much too short, but this...to fall in love with a woman and then lose her within forty-eight hours...it was unthinkable.
"Do you want me to get you anything?" Jack's voice cut through Daniel's dark thoughts and he looked up at him blankly. "Food? Coffee?" Anything to get you to open up a bit to me.
Daniel smiled weakly. After all the time that Jack and the others at the SGC who all said that they had his best interests at heart spent trying to wean him off his 'caffeine diet' of coffee and chocolate, the irony of his offer wasn't lost on him. Still, when he heard himself saying "Sure", he wondered where he'd found the energy to do so.
When Jack returned a few minutes later with two steaming mugs, which he absently placed on the coffee table in the middle of the room, he knelt down in front of his friend.
Daniel was staring at his knees, his hands twisting in his lap, and Jack's concern for him and what he had said earlier rose another notch. He lifted Daniel's chin gently, desperate to bring his friend back to the present, back to reality.
"Danny, can I ask you a..." His voice trailed off as Daniel's eyes met his. Tears were once again streaming down his cheeks, silent sobs shaking his lean frame.
Jack was astounded. Even after Sha're's death he hadn't seen Daniel cry like this.
"I couldn't talk." Daniel whispered brokenly.
Jack supposed that he should be able to make the connection, but there were so many times when Daniel's mind worked in ways that no one else not even Sam, most of the time could ever hope of understanding.
He guessed his confusion showed, because Daniel took a final shuddery breath and then began to speak.
"When I was a kid when we were living in Egypt I...I couldn't talk. I don't know what it was, I tried to make sounds, but I just...couldn't. I overheard my parents talking once, they were worried about me I mean, what kind of five-year-old can't talk?" He gave one of those self-depreciating chuckles that Jack hated so much. My mom said that I was...confused. That there were so many languages around me Arabic, English and Ancient Egyptian glyphs that I didn't know which one I was supposed to use. She wanted to get everyone on the dig to speak to me in English, but me dad said no. He said that I was..." He paused and closed his eyes for a long moment.
Jack realised that he was trying to hold back another torrent of tears, and part of him ached to tell him to stop talking about it, that it didn't matter. But another part of him the bigger part saw that it *did* matter. Whatever was haunting his friend had been buried for a long time and he was now being forced to deal with it.
If he didn't, who knew what might happen? Jack didn't think that he could bear a repeat performance of what Daniel had put him through because of the effects of that damn light of Daniel standing out there on his balcony...anyway, he really wanted to know what all this was about.
Daniel swallowed convulsively. "He said that I was just...lazy." He whispered. "That I was just...spoilt that I never had to ask for anything so I just didn't bother." His eyes flashed with something that Jack couldn't identify. "It wasn't that. It wasn't. I just...I didn't know how to make my throat work. If we'd been in the States, I guess I would have been taken to doctors and specialists..." He shook his head, seemingly irritated with himself. "But we weren't. We were in Egypt, in the desert, and I should have sorted it out myself. I should have been able to...to act like a normal human being." He let out a soft sigh. "But I couldn't. A month later, we were in New York. The exhibit in the Museum of Art was almost finished. Mom and dad just had to finish directing the assembly of the temple."
And then it hit him. Oh, God. He knew what Daniel was going to say, he finally realised why Daniel blamed himself why he thought that he had been 'created wrong'. He wanted to stop him, he really did. Forget his own selfish desire to understand, Daniel didn't need to spell it out any further. But he couldn't...get the words out.
Daniel was shaking again. Terrified yet determined to get his secret, finally, out into the open. "I saw the chain holding the coverstone begin to pull. I was sitting a couple of metres away my dad said it...wasn't safe for me to be any closer and I could hear the links creaking, straining against each other. I tried to call out them, I tried to warn them...but nothing would come out..." He was beginning to hyperventilate and there was nothing Jack could do to help him. Nothing except pull him close and hope that that was comfort enough to get them both through this. "Nothing would come out..." Daniel whispered on last time.
He didn't have any tears left, but Daniel was still shaking violently from grief and shock and not just a little bit of guilt. After a few minutes, he felt able to continue, but Jack wouldn't let him pull away.
"Afterwards, when I was in the orphanage and I began to understand what was happening, I realised what a baby I was. What an awful, terrible thing I'd done. I forced myself to get over myself. It was painful, it hurt like hell, but I thought...I thought that if I could speak well enough to tell them I was sorry, that I'd talk now, they'd come back and take me home. That they'd forgive me and tell me they loved me again."
Oh, Danny...
"But they never came. Three years later, when the authorities finally tracked Nick down, he refused to take me and I was sent to my first foster home. After that, when I realised that even Nick didn't want me, I started thinking about what was wrong with me. And then I got it. My English still wasn't good enough." He looked at Jack with wry humour. "That's why I became a linguist. Why I've spent the past twenty-five years or so forcing myself to learn twenty-three Earth-based languages. Because maybe, just maybe, one day it will be enough and they'll come and take me home." He ran a hand over his face, brushing away the treacherous tears. "Pretty dumb, huh?" He concluded.
Jack was in utter shock. What could he possibly say to combat that much guilt carried for so long? Jesus. He thought that he knew what guilt was after Charlie, but this...how the hell had Daniel managed to survive so long with so much agony eating away at his heart and soul? No wonder he latched onto...
"Is that why you wanted to help Reese because you didn't want her to go through what you did?"
Surprised that Jack hadn't bothered to try and convince him that his deepest fears were totally unfounded, as well as incredibly stupid a fact which, he realised, he was very glad of - Daniel took a moment to regroup himself before answering.
"I've already told you, Jack, it wasn't just about helping her, I think I was in love with her. When I heard her use her first words in a totally alien environment to ask for her father, when I saw the devastation in her eyes, I saw myself."
"But..."
Daniel regarded him closely. "Isn't that what love is, Jack? Finding the other half of yourself? Finding someone who shares your soul; who can relate to everything you are and not judge you for it; who understands you inside and out? I looked into her eyes and I could see the fulfilment of all my hopes and all my dreams." He glanced away. "And you took that from me."
There was a heavy silence as Jack got up the courage to respond to the open challenge. It was obvious from his body language that Daniel was testing him, that he wanted to forgive him for this but still wasn't sure that he could.
He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry." His voice was gentle, soft, and he hoped that Daniel could hear the sincerity in it. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realise, didn't understand. You know me better than anyone on the planet you know that someone like me could never believe in love at first sight. But that doesn't give me the right to dismiss your feelings out of hand. I don't regret what I did I still believe that she posed a threat to Earth that we are in no way able to cope with but I went about it in the wrong way. I acted like a complete bastard to you and I shouldn't have. If I was in your shoes I don't think I could ever forgive me, but at the moment I'm hanging onto the fact that if you could forgive Teal'c for killing Sha're then -"
"It was difficult for me to forgive Teal'c, you know that, but what I guess you don't know is that the only way that I managed to do it was by realising that he killed Ammonet. He took the revenge that I would have loved to have taken on the parasite that killed my wife as soon as she entered her body. I was a fool for believing for so long that she could be saved. Sha're died a long time before Teal'c fired his staff at what used to be her body. What you did though..." He sighed. "You know what? Forget it. She's gone, but we're still here. I couldn't bear to lose your friendship as well as everything else that's happened today. I told you once that I wasn't okay, but that I would be, and I guess that stands today. Let me have this downtime to grieve for her, let me spend a couple of days mourning for someone I loved, for someone who loved me back and who has no one else to remember her, and then let's get back to fighting for the protection of the people whose lives you think you saved today."
Jack almost protested. He very nearly argued that he didn't *think*, he *knew*, but, luckily, he managed to bite his tongue. He'd gotten away with this lightly, much more lightly than he rightly deserved, and Jack O'Neill hadn't got where he was today by looking gift horses in the mouth. Once again Daniel's calmness and maturity amazed him, and once again he found himself marvelling at the resilience of a man who had suffered so much and yet still managed to forgive even the most unforgivable of sins.
There was one thing, though...
"Daniel, have I ever told you how proud I am of everything you've done, of everything you are?"
Daniel shook his head sheepishly, puzzled yet gratified for Jack's mushiness. Sometimes this paternal thing could help a thirtyfive-year-old orphan more than one would ever expect.
"Well I am. And I know for a fact that your parents, wherever they are, are proud of you too."
The End
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