The Importance of Past and Future

Those that worry about the future are fools. It is the present that matters.

Daniel turned the tissue box over, looking for some clue or suggestion. It appeared to be nothing more than a box of Kleenex, the first few sheets dampened by the melted frost from its trip through the Stargate.

"Kleenex," he said aloud. The word slid out of his mouth with a kind of uncertainty. He spoke little English these days, and the syllables tasted strange. He glanced at Skaara, who was almost hopping from foot to foot in his eagerness. "I suppose the boys nearly shot it. Nothing else came through?"

"No, nothing." Skaara's eyes gleamed, and he reached out a hand to brush against the tissue box again. "It is from O'Neer, yes?"

"I would imagine so." Daniel sat back on his heels, rubbing one finger absently along the slick cardboard of the box. It was smooth, and brightly colored; processed by machine, stamped out in conformity, produced in one of many patterns to suit the bathroom décor of any home. It looked out-of-place in the torchlit room, with its dusty shades of earth and burnished gold. The tissues inside the box were soft and pliable, nothing like the rough linen rag he kept tucked inside a pocket of his robes.

It frightened him, just a little, how very alien this prosaic piece of Earth appeared to him after all these months on Abydos.

"How long ago?" The soft voice from the shadows broke through his reverie, and Daniel looked up at Sha're. He rose to his feet and offered the tissue box to her for inspection.

"A few minutes, no more," Skaara said. "I came as soon as I could. I only stayed long enough to tell Ahrim that he was in charge, and to watch for anything else that might come through the Chappa'ai."

"We have some time to think about this, then," Daniel said absently, watching his wife's rough fingers catching on the tissue she'd pulled out of the box.

"But if O'Neer wants to return, surely that is a good thing!" Skaara protested.

"It could be," Daniel agreed mildly. "That's what we need to think about. Sha're and I will come soon. Go back and join the others, Skaara. Be careful. And if anything – or anyone – tries to come through, don't shoot just yet. Stay out of sight, and watch what happens."

Skaara hesitated, then nodded his head reluctantly and left the cartouche room to return to the temple.

As the sand sifted back to fill in the footprints Skaara left behind, Daniel and Sha're looked at each other for a long moment.

"Tell me what you are thinking, my husband," Sha're finally said, handing the tissue box back to Daniel. "Let me hear the music of your thoughts."

Daniel smiled at her, letting their fingers tangle before releasing his grip on her hand. "First of all, this is a message of personal friendship." He turned the box over and over, a cycle he felt reluctant to break. "They could have sent one of those probes they used when we first opened the Chappa'ai. Or, if that's not available, a radio camera. Or even a note, wrapped around a stone, explaining what is wanted."

Or a bomb. This message means they know that Jack didn't blow the Stargate. At least they're not just trying to finish what West began.

"Instead, they send this." Sha're nodded at the box. "It is a memory of your world, yes? Of what you were, and how you were." Her eyes twinkled at him. "Only one who cherished you would gift us with this, my husband."

"It wouldn't be Katherine, I think. It would have to be Jack. Skaara is right about that."

"Why not Katreen?" Sha're's tongue tripped over the alien name. "She held you in friendship, too."

"Because this isn't just a message of personal friendship," Daniel said. "It's also a joke. Do you remember Jack, in the last days before he went back to Earth?"

In the days after Ra was gone, and the bomb was gone, and Jack's deathwish was gone. In those final days when we determined what to keep, and what would go back… and who would go back.

Sha're's mouth quirked. "I do," she agreed primly. "And so we must decide. If this gift was sent in friendship, Danyel, what course should we seek now?"

Skaara's eager, open face had made his preference clear enough, but… Daniel balanced the tissue box in his left palm, weighing his choices. Should he send back a reply? Ignore it? Rebury the Stargate? Implications and possibilities chased themselves around his brain, trying to determine the possible risks and benefits.

What would happen to Abydos if they opened a dialogue with Earth? Was it reasonable to hope that the U.S. government would buck centuries' worth of habit in dealing with lesser, poorer societies? And even if there was no active attempt at exploitation, what would happen to the simple beauty of Abydos when the culture was invaded by a flood of alien mores, attitudes, prejudices… and technologies?

But there could be trade, whispered an enticing voice in his mind. The mines have lain untouched since Ra's death, but they could be reopened. Even if we do nothing more than allow Earth to mine the mineral for themselves, Abydos could benefit.

They could trade for food to supplement their sometimes meager stores. They could have access to medical assistance in times of emergencies. Antibiotics, to stop a simple wound from leading to septic shock and death.

Coffee. Toilet paper. Tylenol. Anti-histamines.

Modern medicine and methods, if Sha're conceives....

He glanced at Sha're, who looked back at him with half-lidded eyes and an almost sleepy smile. Her expression was enough to tell him what she thought. It was the same reaction she'd always had to his doubts and uncertainties over the past year, when he'd hesitated about some aspect of his new life. It was a philosophy that many of the people of Abydos had embraced in that exciting, heady time, when their destiny, for the first time in countless generations, was their own to shape.

Let us deal with today. Now is what matters, not what will be tomorrow.

He chuckled in answer to her unspoken words, and his fingers touched a coil of dark, lustrous hair before they moved to trace a caress across her cheek. "Let's go, then."

They left the room hand-in-hand, making the trek back to the temple in companiable silence. Then they were in the Stargate room, and surrounded by eager teenagers. He reached for a piece of charcoal, flipped the box onto its side, and began to write….

And eight years later, and fifty centuries earlier, he sat on the hot sands of Egypt over the graves of his three closest friends. He ran his fingers through the chain of Jack's dogtags, and watched a different Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill walking together in the distance, bereft not only of their era, but their very universe. In just a few minutes, he knew, he would stand, and return to the tent where a different Teal'c, who had neither tretonin nor access to a new symbiote, was waiting to join him in a final vigil before he quietly died free.

Hundreds had already willingly sacrificed their lives, through Daniel's own plans and efforts, to make sure a future in which his wife would be abducted and killed would come to be all over again. To guarantee that history would unspool to match his past, and that the future that belonged to this Sam and Jack and Teal'c – the one where Sha're and all of Abydos still lived, blissfully unpoisoned by the lethal touch of Daniel Jackson – would vanish into nothingness.

And he wondered, for the thousandth time, after everything she'd seen and suffered and surmounted, if Sha're would still believe that only the present matters, and that those who worry about the future are fools.

And if maybe, just maybe, she'd been right all along.