Mending Fences
By
Denise
Daniel ran for the elevator, sticking his hand into the closing door. "Sorry," he muttered as the doors jerked open, allowing him entry. He punched the button for Level Eleven, despite the fact that it was already illuminated and finally looked behind him to see who else was in the car. "Oh, Sam, hi."
"Hey," she said in return, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Going home?" he asked. She was dressed in her fatigues and he knew that she usually changed into civilian clothes, but not always. And it was a little after six, time for those trying to keep business hours to be heading home.
"No," she replied. "I just forgot something in my car."
"Ah." Daniel turned back towards the door, watching as the red numbers slowly ticked over. Right as the fifteen rolled up to fourteen, the elevator shuddered and jerked to a stop. Daniel automatically reached out, grasping at the walls to steady himself. "What?"
The lights blinked out and they stood in total darkness for a few seconds until the emergency lights snapped on, one lone light barely illuminating the car. "Sam?" he asked automatically.
"We've lost power," she said, reaching past him for the telephone in the control panel.
Daniel stepped back. "We, we or the base—"
"I don't know," she interrupted, one finger flipping the disconnect lever on the phone. "It's dead," she reported.
"That's usually not good," he said.
"No." She looked up, squinting to see in the darkness. "There should be a hatch up there."
"So?"
"So, we get up there, go through and see if we can get out," she said, glancing at him.
"And if the power comes back on and the elevator starts to move again?"
"We'll be fine."
"I doubt there's a light switch, we'll be groping in the dark."
Sam frowned. "Maybe if I can get the panel off I can get the doors open," she said, reaching for her pocket.
"I don't think we need to start destroying the furniture yet," Daniel said.
"I'm not going to destroy it," Sam said. "I'm just going to take the panel off."
"Sam just...let it be," Daniel requested, reaching out to touch her arm. "We're not in any imminent danger. There's no alarms going off. Let's just wait and see if Siler can get the power back on."
Sam sighed and nodded, frowning as she leaned against the side of the elevator. She crossed her arms over her chest and studiously stared...anywhere but at him.
Daniel sighed quietly, wishing that Jack was here so he could shout out 'I told you so!'. It wasn't his imagination. It wasn't him being sensitive. It was real.
Sam was avoiding him.
It had been going on for quite a while, ever since he descended and returned to Earth. At first, he didn't really notice. Yeah, she was acting a bit…odd. Then again, he was acting odd, what with his swiss cheese memory and all. He knew that there were a lot of faux pas that he committed, and was probably still committing as far as he knew.
He'd even thought that he'd offended her somehow. Of course, Jack had denied that. 'Daniel, you could dance naked on the hood of her car and you wouldn't offend Carter. Might piss her off if you dent it, but not offend. I don't even know if Carter is capable of being offended,' Jack had said.
And Daniel had believed him. He had no reason not to.
And so what if she had been a bit standoffish? A lot had happened in the past couple of months. Jonas went home, Jack got cloned, Teal'c nearly died…eventful was an understatement.
And Sam had been in the middle of all of it.
So Daniel hadn't taken it personally when she never seemed to have time to eat with them. He'd thought that it was only his imagination that she seemed to always have an excuse to leave them.
He wasn't imagining.
He glanced over at her, wondering if he should say something or keep quiet. Maybe she was just…having a bad…three months. 'Screw it,' he said to himself. What better time to try to talk to her than when she couldn't remember some vital experiment and vanish off to her lab.
"You've been avoiding me," he said, just blurting it out and jumping in with both feet. No one would ever accuse him of being bashful.
"What?" Sam looked over at him, her wide eyes and slightly guilty expression all the confirmation that he needed.
"It's okay. I mean, not okay but…I'm not mad or anything. I just don't know what I did," he rambled.
"Daniel, I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come on, Sam. You and Jack and Teal'c can be eating but as soon as I walk into the room, you come up with somewhere else to be."
"Daniel, I have a lot of stuff going on," she said. "SG-15 found that cache of goa'uld stuff two weeks ago. General Hammond needs me to review the reports of the other scientists and monitor their progress….I have a lot to do,"
"So much that you can't even look at me and are so desperate to get away from me that you'll destroy the elevator control panel?"
"Oh for Pete's sake!" She exclaimed. "For all we know the base is being invaded and here we are, stuck in an elevator."
"If the base was being invaded, there would be alarms going off and we'd hear them," Daniel said.
"If there were alarms going off. The last time we didn't even know we'd been invaded. There were no alarms."
Daniel glared at her for a few seconds then growled under his breath. "Fine. Do whatever you want," he said, suddenly lacking the energy to keep confronting her.
He stepped back to his corner of the elevator and slid down to sit on the floor. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He could use a nap anyway.
He could feel her staring at him but he deliberately kept his eyes closed. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe he was overreacting. Finally, he heard Sam move. She sighed before she joined him sitting on the floor. He kept his eyes closed as a wave of drowsiness washed over him. Without even realizing it, he fell asleep.
Mumbled moans woke him and Daniel opened his eyes. He looked over towards Sam, hoping that she'd wake herself.
It was probably an overstatement to say that he was used to his friends having nightmares, but it was certainly not an uncommon occurrence. And, apparently something that hadn't changed while he'd been gone. Sam started to gasp like she was in pain and Daniel pushed himself up, crawling over to her side. This wasn't a dream he recognized, but it was apparently one that was upsetting.
"Sam. Sam, wake up," he said, shaking her arm. She shook her head, her arms and legs moving restlessly. "Sam, come on!" he said louder, grabbing her arm. "Wake up!" he yelled, reaching for her other shoulder.
"NO!" her eyes flew open and she pushed him away.
Daniel fell back on his butt, one hand automatically coming up to defend himself. He knew that she – like Jack and sometimes Teal'c – could wake up not only ready for a fight, but sometimes already engaged in one.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're back at the SGC. It was just a dream," he said quickly, hoping to orientate her.
"Daniel?"
"Yeah, just a bad dream." He looked up cautiously, glad to see her getting herself under control. "You okay?" She nodded, closing her eyes as she struggled to control her breathing. "That must have been a bad one," he said. Sam frowned and looked at him as if the absurdity of his comment was insulting. "What I mean is…" he glanced at his watch. "I don't know about you but I just dozed off a half hour ago. It usually takes me longer to get into bad dream territory."
"Mmhm." She sighed and looked away, shutting down his attempt at conversation.
"Okay, what is it?" he demanded. "What did I do that pissed you off so much that you won't even look at me?" He got to his feet, taking a step forward to stand over her. "I'm sick of the cold shoulder. Tell me what it is."
"Leave off, Daniel," she said, glancing up at him.
"I'm not going to leave off," he said. "Tell me what I did or—"
"Or what?" she asked, getting to her feet. "You gonna throw a tantrum until you get your way? Or maybe you're going to run to the colonel and tell him that I'm being mean to you?"
"Sam—"
"No. You left Daniel. You LEFT! You ascended. While you were off glowing around the universe, life went on for the rest of us. We couldn't stop living while we waited for you to maybe come back one day." She took a step towards him. "You left us. You abandoned us. You moved on and we stayed behind. Don't act like you expected us to wait for you."
"Where the hell did you get that idea from?" he asked. "All I want to do is—"
"Is what? The past is the past, Daniel. And I don't think you could have changed it when you were all omniscient so you sure as hell can't now."
Daniel shook his head, caught off guard by the bitterness in her voice. "Sam…"
"We learned a lot of things while you were gone," she said. "Jonas found his way around Earth and how to save his planet. Teal'c's a bona fide leader among the Jaffa. The Colonel learned to trust Jonas."
"And you?"
"I found out just how stupid I'd been," she said bitterly. "I waited for you. I knew that you weren't really dead and that you'd be back and I waited. For months I kept hoping and…"
"And I never came," Daniel said slowly.
"Which was fine…until the colonel and Teal'c both talked about how you came to see them and…"
"Sam—"
"I'm not mad at you, Daniel. I'm mad at myself for being an idiot," she interrupted. "It's like one of those people that enter a contest and are so convinced that they'll win that it's all they can talk about and they're too stupid to see what fools they're making of themselves. At least I never told the colonel or Teal'c so I spared myself that humiliation."
Daniel sighed and covered his face with his hands for a second. "When I saw Jack he was in a cell. I don't know how many times he'd died already, but it was a few. I wanted to help him ascend so it would stop, but he wouldn't. He felt that he wasn’t worthy and he didn't even want to try. He begged me to kill him. He pleaded with me. I could do almost anything in the universe and he asked me for the one thing I just couldn’t to."
"Daniel—"
"I don't remember a lot about Teal'c," he continued, ignoring her. "A lot of it is really jumbled but I do remember that he knew he was going to die. In one way, he was even willing to die. As long as Junior ended up in Bra'tac, he didn't care." He shrugged and turned away for a second before turning back to face her. "You were dying. Nirti's machine had messed up so much…there was…a sarcophagus wouldn't even have worked. I never tried to get Teal'c to ascend because he can't. He's not ready and he won't be ready for a very long time. Too much guilt eats at him. You're not much better," he said, looking her in the eyes. "But while Teal'c is all guilty over things he's done, most of your guilt is over stuff you couldn't control. Like Martouf or Joe Faxon. Maybe it's because you get to fix everyone else's problems that you end up feeling guilty or responsible about stuff that wasn’t your fault in the first place."
"Daniel—"
"But that's not why I didn't come to you," he continued. "You were dying. And, actually, you should have died. But you didn't. You held on with every fiber of your being and you wouldn't let yourself die. You trusted Jack to get you out of there and you held on until he did. Jack and Teal'c both gave up hope. They were both ready to die. And willing. But you weren't. I didn't come to you because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't. I knew that the second you saw me you'd know you were going to die and you'd stop fighting and you couldn't stop fighting, because if you died, I think SG-1 would have died with you." The words spilled from his mouth almost as if he was rushing to get them out before he forgot what he wanted to say. And it left him breathless as he stared at her.
Sam stared. "Daniel, I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't. That's the point," he said. He shrugged. "Maybe I wasn't around as much as I could have been…"
"Daniel, you ascended…okay, not just to not die, but what good would it have been for you to ascend and then hang around all the time."
"I wanted to," he said. "But…there was so much I couldn't do. You don't know…" He sighed heavily and pushed his hands through his hair. "It is so hard to see things happening and not be able to do anything. I didn't want to stay away but I had to."
"Yeah," she said, laying a hand on his arm. "I guess it would be tough."
"It was hard to keep track of time," he said, sitting back down on the floor and she slid down to join him.
"Forgot to bring your watch?" she teased.
"I could never figure out the time zone," he said. "Sometimes I wonder if Oma didn't try to keep me off track."
"Did you spend a lot of time with her?"
"For a while. I don't know if she was keeping an eye on me or if she was trying to be nice."
"Eventually she left you alone though," Sam said.
"Yeah. I wish I remembered more. There's so much…I saw so much and I wish I could remember it."
"Oma must have her reasons."
"I guess." He shrugged. "What all happened while I was gone?" he asked, turning to look at her. "I mean, I know some of it but…What'd I miss?"
"Everything?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Everything," he confirmed.
"Okay, umm…first Thor came…"
Daniel listened, feeling himself relax as she spoke. The words weren't even as important as the simple fact of sharing and talking and the renewal of bonds long forged but long neglected.
"Out of phase bugs—" he started, stopping as the lights of the elevator flickered on, the sudden brightness making both of them wince. "I think we're getting out of here."
Sam got to her feet and he followed suit, both of them steadying themselves as the car jerked into motion.
"Yeah," she said. "You wanna go get something to eat?"
"I thought you still had work to do?"
She shrugged. "It can wait. Besides I still have a few months worth of missions to tell you about."
The elevator stopped and the doors opened into an empty and quiet corridor. "This is odd," Sam said.
"Huh?"
She looked at her watch and frowned before she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone, checking the time on it as well. "It was a little after six when we got in that elevator."
"Yeah," he agreed. He looked at his own watch and stared before looking up at her. "It's six fifteen," he said. She nodded. "I KNOW it said that it was six thirty when you woke up."
"It should be at least seven," she said. "A temporal disturbance?" she said.
An odd feeling washed over Daniel and he swore he felt a nebulous hand on his shoulder and heard the faintest whisper of a laugh. "I don't think so," he said. "At least not the kind you're thinking of." Sam stared at him. "Come on, I'll tell you while we eat."
He pushed the button to summon the elevator to the surface and ushered Sam inside placing his trust in Oma and grateful for her intercession.