Kagami Pt. 1
Kagami Pt. 1
by Amanda Shatirah
Summary: Daniel finds a childhood friend. But is that all she is?
Category: Action/Adventure, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Other
Season: Season 5
Pairing: Daniel/other
Rating: 13+
Warnings: minor language
Author's Notes: My first fic, and no I don't own anything or anyone except the character Sara Rhys. Please review generously!
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 12/21/05
Kagami
(Set sometime in Season 5, obviously before "Meridian"!)
Prologue
Rameses the Great was not happy.
He had every reason to be happy, or so it would seem. He was Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, commander of the richest, most advanced and powerful nation known to man. He had dozens of wives, hundreds of concubines, immeasurable wealth, and was worshipped as a god by his people, worshipped as his Great Ancestor Ra, god of the sun, had been worshipped during the time he had honoured the people by descending to Earth to rule them. But that had been a long time ago.
And now, Rameses was not happy. He was, however, determined to do something about it.
The guards in the doorway parted slightly to allow a small, slender woman to pass intothe inner chamber. Despite her size, Amenirdis was feared by the guards and all the servants of the Pharaoh's court. Rumours circulated that she was a daughter of the god Ra himself, if that were possible, and yet she was unknown to anyone outside the palace walls.
Yet before Rameses, she lowered herself to the floor. "My lord, you summoned me?"
The Pharaoh turned and regarded the submissive form.
"Rise," he commanded. Rameses contemplated the woman before him. She was, in a way, Rameses' closest confidante, perhaps the only being on Earth who knew all the terrible secrets he did. They were related, in a manner, and Rameses knew that Amenirdis was the only person with whom he could entrust this task.
"I have a mission for you, my cousin," he said after a time. "The Hebrew slaves are spreading lies and rumours about me, and it seems their prophet is taking credit for all the harm that has befallen Egypt of late. They wish for me to free them so they can follow their so-called prophet to a distant land."
"I have heard the stories, my lord Rameses. They should be punished for their blasphemy against their god."
"Amenirdis," he lowered his voice, "you and I both know the secrets of the gods, but sadly it is not within my power to challenge their lies. I may have the memories of Ra, but the powers of the gods are fading over the generations, and I can no longer control Ra's magic. It is only my lineage that keeps me on this throne, cousin."
At this Amenirdis' eyes flashed, and she moved to her Pharaoh's side. "My lord, in time Ra and the other gods will honour us again, and your rightful powers will be restored to you." It was said as a perfunctory consolatory statement, but it caused Rameses to look upon her with renewed anger.
"Idiot, do you think I don't know of your plotting against my line? I know the secrets, cousin, all of the secrets, even yours. Ours is a shared, miserable memory, and our kind only knows tyranny and deceit. Still, my cousin, I am going to give you your chance," Rameses eyes sparkled, if they did not glow.
"I am listening, my lord."
"No one outside the palace knows of you, and I have kept your existence secret to all but my inner circle. Not even that traitor Hebrew who calls himself a prophet knows you."
"That is true, my lord, you and your family have honoured your word in granting me asylum on this planet since our lord Ra left us."
"And yet you desire the rights of the gods, and now is your chance."
"My lord?" Amenirdis' eyes flashed and her voice changed in her confusion.
"I will bring you a Hebrew slave of your choosing, my cousin. You will leave your present body, take the slave, and infiltrate the Hebrews as they leave Egypt. I know the slaves, they claim a religion but they are weak in their faith in their unseen God and can easily be led astray again. This, my cousin, will be your task." Rameses smiled at her. "I will give you some of the tools of Ra to help you, but you must choose wisely when and how to reveal your power. If you plot well, cousin, you may even convince them to worship you."
"And what of my present host?" asked the intrigued Goa'uld. She was desperate to restore herself to her rightful place as a deity of the people, and would drag these Hebrews to the ends of the Earth if that were what it took.
Rameses eyes went up and down the woman's form, "As you wish, cousin, she may die if you prefer, or I may keep her, if you prefer, although she'll likely have gone mad and will be useless as a concubine once you leave her. Another nameless grave will go unnoticed..."
Chapter 1
Mrs. Woods was tired. It was the week before final exams and the University library had been full of students since opening. Mrs. Woods hated exam time. Normally the kindly librarian loved her job, it was quiet and yet sociable, she got to meet lots of interesting people, guest lecturers and researchers from all over the world would come to use her books (and they were all "her books") and ask her help. But normal, undergraduate students were not exciting, interesting people, and Mrs. Woods was tired of explaining for the nth time that day how to use the computerised online catalogue to a fourth year student who really should have figured it out four years ago. No, normal undergraduate students bored Mrs. Woods. She much preferred the exciting, interesting people. People like that nice Dr. Jackson, for example, who right at this moment was sat only four tables away, buried in some heavy, ancient volume, drinking coffee in flagrant violation of the No Food or Drink sign above his head. But today, she was even too tired to appreciate the exciting, interesting people. Especially like the very elegantly dressed Arab lady now at her desk. It was only five minutes to closing time (with exam season extended hours, Mrs. Woods was very tired) and yet this woman was demanding access to the Far East Archives.
"I'm really very sorry, miss, but the archives closed one hour ago, and the desk will close shortly. You'll just have to come back tomorrow." Mrs. Woods gave one of her more simpering smiles. She felt sorry for these Arab women in their long clothes and headscarves. Oppression, that's all it is, she thought to herself. Still she does wear it well... and such good English too.
Dr. Sara Rhys looked at the woman's condescending expression and wanted to poke her eyes out, but instead counted to ten, made a quick prayer for patience, and began again.
"You don't seem to appreciate what I'm saying. My name is Dr. Rhys, I've just arrived from London to give a series of lectures in the Asian Studies Department. I have a lecture in the morning and was promised executive access rights to the archives by my boss. Now it seems he didn't put the paperwork through in time, but I still need to access those archives. I'm sure you can make an exception, I have my staff card and my passport here if you like."
Mrs. Woods, an avid Anglophile, looked at the card and the British passport with interest but as she doubted the woman across from her knew any members of the Royal Family, she was not inclined to change her stance.
"I'm really very sorry, Dr. Rhys, but our policy clearly states..."
"Croeso i Colorado Springs," a soft male voice offered from behind Dr. Rhys. She turned to see a rather scholarly-looking man smiling shyly. "Perhaps I can be of some help?" he offered in what sounded like nearly perfect Welsh.
Dr. Rhys was amused, it was not everyday she was caught out for her Welsh accent, she had worked to cover it up in most situations since she'd moved to London, but at times of stress and jetlag...
"Well, if you happen to be able to get me into the Far East Archives..." she began.
"Mrs. Woods," Daniel Jackson said, turning his attention to his favourite librarian, "I don't think it would be a problem for me to take our guest upstairs for an hour or so, after all she has a lecture to present and you wouldn't want her to be unprepared would you? I mean, the reputation of the university..." Daniel played expertly into Mrs. Woods' sense of pride for her employer.
Mrs. Woods, as usual, caved. "Well, providing you accompany her, I suppose it would be all right. But please take care when you lock up."
"As always, Mrs. Woods," Daniel replied respectfully at the older woman.
"I'm Daniel, by the way," he reverted to English as he led Dr. Rhys towards the staircase to the second level where the archives were housed.
"Sara," she replied, looking at him curiously. Unusually for an American, he hadn't offered his hand, which to her indicated that he had some understanding of Arabic customs. Something she hadn't expected in this small town.
"Well, I must apologise for the way this library is organised," Daniel seemed embarrassed. "They've got the Arabic archives lumped in with everything from Asia, be it China, India, Thailand. I guess Orientalism may have gone out of style, but its legacy lives on in the library catalogue system!"
"Oh, well, actually it's the Japanese archives I'm after," Dr. Rhys admitted shyly. Daniel was taken aback but covered his surprise. "I'm here to give a series of lectures on the lost treasures of the Shrine of Ise," she continued.
"Amaterasu's mirror and all that?" Daniel asked with a very odd look in his eye.
"Yes," Sara was surprised, "are you a Japanese studies student?"
He laughed, "No, not me, well I do speak a bit of the language, but it's not my specialty. I've had a few encounters with, erm, mythical relics, in my line of work though."
Sara thought that a very odd statement. Encounters with mythical relics? Whoever this man was, he must have an interesting job. But, she smiled to herself, nowhere nearly as interesting as her own!
"Are you originally from Wales, then?" Daniel was curious. Rhys was such a typically Welsh name, and yet the woman's dress immediately marked her as a somewhat upperclass Egyptian, or maybe Jordanian? He knew there was a sizeable Arab population in the UK, but most were first generation and spoke broken English. Their children often had slightly unique accents as well, perhaps from years of going back and forth between countries. Such a strong Welsh lilt was unusual.
Sara smiled, "Well spotted. I was born in Egypt, actually, but my father is Welsh, from Aberystwyth. When my mum passed away we went back for good, I was about nine or ten then."
"We've something in common, then," Daniel stated, "I spent most of my childhood in Egypt, my parents were archaeologists," he finished by way of explanation.
"Archaeologists?" Sara was curious. Her dad had many friends amongst the ex-pats in Cairo, many of whom were 'into' archaeology, but there had only been one family for whom it had been a profession. "Your parents didn't happen to know the Jackson family, did they?"
Daniel stopped and looked at the woman next to him hard. The Jackson family? Then it all clicked, the name, the accent, and the nagging familiarity of the face in front of him.
"Oh my God - you're not Uncle Haroun's daughter, are you??"
Sara just stared, open-mouthed. Uncle Haroun? There were few people other than her own cousins who referred to her father as Uncle. Suddenly she had a flash of a pale, bespectacled young boy in her parents' sitting room in Cairo, a young boy she had adored as a brother, and who had become lost to them years ago. When her eyes cleared, she looked at this stranger in front of her and saw the boy, all grown up.
Why hadn't she seen it before? Danny Jackson, her childhood playmate, son of her father's best friend and neighbour in Cairo, was stood before her. The long-lost Danny Jackson.
"Ya salaam!" she exclaimed without thinking, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "Danny? Oh my God, I thought - where have you been?" Sara could barely control herself from pulling the man into a fierce hug.
They sat down on a nearby bench to fully absorb what had just happened. "Baba heard about your parents," Sara finally said. "Poor baba, he was gutted, and he wanted to find you and bring you back to Cairo to live with us." Daniel smiled at that. He had fond memories of "uncle" Haroun. Had it not been for Sara's father, Daniel would have spent the first years of his life speaking only Arabic, but Haroun had seen to it that the children of himself and his American Egyptologist neighbours knew both languages equally well. Many an afternoon had been spent in Haroun's sitting room, eating "Welsh cakes", drinking tea, and listening to the BBC World Service on the shortwave radio.
"But then you disappeared into the system, as they say," Sara continued. A brief shadow of a painful memory flickered across Daniel's face, but he quickly replaced it with a smile.
"Well, seeing as how you weren't really related, it's not likely the authorities would have let your dad take me anyway, but I'm really touched to know I wasn't totally forgotten!" Daniel tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like an ironic snort.
"Ya, Danny, Baba still remembers you often," Sara wanted to comfort her old friend, but then decided to change the subject. "What are you doing now, anyway?"
"Me?" Daniel raced to remember the cover story. "I'm working here in Colorado Springs. I'm doing advisory work for the military."
"You? Military?" Sara's single left eyebrow rose in a manner that made Daniel nearly choke. "Funny, I would have thought you more like your parents, you know, digging in the sand looking for-"
"-mythical relics," he finished her sentence, and smiled. "Well I did complete studies in archaeology and linguistics, and that's what I advise on. You know, getting them to avoid bombing valuable libraries in Iraq, stuff like that."
Sara looked at him closely. It didn't sound very likely, after all Iraq had already lost how many valuable libraries so either Daniel was lying, or he wasn't doing his job very well! But she was in no position to probe too much. And it was late.
"Well, if you have time, do come to my lecture tomorrow," she changed the subject.
"Oh my God, the archives!" Daniel had completely forgotten the reason for their being upstairs in the university library well after closing time. He had promised Mrs. Woods one hour, and more than half of that was gone.
"No worries, I know exactly which book I need," Sara was calm as she got up and walked the aisles looking at the spines of all the books. "Yep, here it is. Shall we, then?"
She watched with amused curiosity as Daniel pulled out his keys and let them out of the dark building. As he locked the door behind them, she said, "Ya, Danny, you come by my flat tomorrow evening, inshaAllah, and we'll phone Baba together. He'll be so happy to hear your voice."
"I'd like that, inshaAllah," Daniel replied, easily slipping into his old habits of mixing Arabic expressions with English, a habit picked up from his parents and Uncle Haroun. "But I'm not sure if I'm free - my job can be a bit, ah, unpredictable. Look, Sara, I'll give you my card, give me a call in the evening, if I'm not at work, I'll be free to come for a visit."
She took the card, said her thank yous and goodnights, and turned to walk back to her on-campus guest quarters. As she walked, she looked at the card for the first time. Dr. Daniel Jackson, PhD. Specialist Civilian Advisor. Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex?!
Sara stopped dead and turned to see Daniel driving away in his car. Well, she thought, it looks like you'll definitely see me tomorrow, Danny.
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Kagami Pt. 1
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