Endless
Endless
by aces
Summary: Shau'ri had been dead forever.
Category: Angst, Missing Scene/Epilogue, POV
Episode Related: 310 Forever in a Day, 311 Past and Present
Season: Season 3
Pairing: Daniel/Share
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I 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 author(s).
Archived on: 07/05/03
It was just something I decided to write at one in the morning after not-quite-watching "Forever in a Day" again. It's always interesting what falls out of your head in the wee small hours, isn't it?
ENDLESS
When he woke up, Shau'ri was dead.
When he went to her funeral on Abydos, Shau'ri was dead.
When he came home and after a week's leave went back to work, Shau'ri was dead.
Shau'ri had been dead a long time.
They didn't know. They didn't know he'd already lived through her death, that he'd already consigned Teal'c to an unforgiven hell, and resigned from the SGC, and spoken at her funeral, and had visions of her haunting him, and come back to the SGC, and forgiven Teal'c. They didn't know he'd already lost her, and found her, and lost her again, in an interminable cycle.
When his team dragged him back through the Gate and away from that planet where his wife had been killed by the hand of one of his friends, he was numb.
He didn't know how to mourn her a second time--he hadn't mourned her properly the first time, in the dream, but now her loss was doubly distanced from him, and he didn't know what to do. He simply did not know what to do.
Shau'ri was dead. She'd been dead forever.
He could avoid the numbness with Ke'ra. He could believe that Shau'ri had been dead for months, not weeks, with Ke'ra. He could avoid the waiting grief that felt like it shouldn't bother coming at all, with Ke'ra. She was an escape, a break, a hole to dive into and hide.
Shau'ri was dead.
They couldn't understand why he'd just been going through the motions. They couldn't understand why he'd never even approached crying, or mourning, or grieving, in any way at all. They couldn't understand why he just accepted things the way they now stood and went on with his work and said nothing and almost seemed to act as if everything were normal.
They couldn't understand that he'd already gone through that entire process and that going through it again merely made no sense.
"Shau'ri is dead," he told the bartender. He spoke the words carefully, especially her name, letting it linger on his lips like brandy.
"I'm sorry," the bartender said neutrally. "Who was--she?" he faltered on the pronoun, belatedly realizing the oddity of the name.
"My wife," said Daniel.
The bartender tossed him a sharp look and paused in front of him, eyeing his drink now with obvious suppressed concern. A wry little smile tugged at Daniel's lips but didn't make much effort to pull them anywhere. "Don't worry about it," he said and tossed back the rest of his drink. "She's been dead forever."
"Should I call you a cab, sir--"
"Don't worry about it," a new voice cut in, and a new body slid onto the stool next to Daniel. "I'll take care of him."
"Yes, sir," said the bartender expressionlessly, and went to the other end of the bar.
"She hasn't even been dead a month," Jack said conversationally. Daniel did not turn to look at him.
"Yes, she has," he said steadily instead and wished he'd gotten another drink before Jack showed up, because he knew Jack wasn't going to let him get another one now. "She's been dead for months and months. Possibly even years. That last `I love you' was just a little dying spark before the final, complete end." He wasn't even sure which death was real. Not that it made any difference.
Shau'ri was dead.
"No, Daniel," Jack said, and his voice was soft and tired and not at all demanding. "She died less than a month ago. I'm sorry."
Daniel shrugged. Jack's "sorry" would never be enough. Nor would Teal'c's, or Sam's. Nobody's would be. Shau'ri was dead.
"Shau'ri is dead," he said aloud again, trying out the words, seeing how the phrase sounded. He wasn't sure if he felt Jack wince next to him or not. He still hadn't looked at the colonel. There wasn't any point in seeing his friend's face, the expression in his friend's eyes. No point.
"I'll take you home, Daniel," Jack said in an attempt to let the issue go. "Come on. Let's go home."
"It's not home," Daniel said. "It's an apartment. Or the mountain. Or your place, or Sam's. It's not home."
"Dammit, Daniel." The words were pushed out on the wave of a sigh, barely spoken over Jack's breath. "I honestly don't know what to do with you."
Maybe at some other time Daniel would have laughed at that. But right now he was still too numb.
"I already mourned her," he said confidentially to his empty glass that he still held in his hands. "I lost her in a dream, and then I woke up, and it was the reality. So you see, there's no point."
"What?"
"I lived out a lifetime of dream dealing with her death, and now I'm awake and I don't see the point in doing it again. So Shau'ri is dead."
Jack had a hand on his back, making small circular motions. He'd comforted Daniel that way before. But Daniel didn't need comforting now. He was numb. He was past grieving, or he hadn't even gotten that far yet. It was hard to tell anymore.
"Shau'ri is dead." The words were getting harder to say each time, so he kept saying them, curiously, in an attempt to see what would happen. Perhaps the words were making it less a dream, more a reality. Words were powerful, Daniel had always known that, which was why he was usually so careful with them. "Jack, Shau'ri is dead."
Still the soothing hand rubbing his back. "I know, Daniel," Jack said, and Daniel didn't know if his friend was watching him or looking down at the bar top too or what. "I know."
"I know it too," Daniel said, and he found he was biting his lip, as if he were trying to keep something bottled up inside. He didn't know what. "So why don't I feel anything about it? Why does it seem so unimportant?"
Jack's breath hissed inward, and there was a pause in the circular motion on his back. "You haven't had time to process it," Jack told him finally, with difficulty, it sounded like. "It's okay. It's--it's part of the process."
"I've had time to process it, though," Daniel said, and he was still biting his lip, teeth pushing down. "I've had loads of time. Too much time, it feels like. It feels like everyone else hasn't had time to process it, and they expect me still to be processing it, and I've already moved beyond that, and. . ."
The rubbing was harder, more forceful, digging into his shoulderblade. It hurt. "I really did cry for her," and his voice sounded lost and small and not a good enough excuse for not caring about his wife's death. "In the dream. I cried and was angry and grieved and saw her everywhere I went because she was calling to me. And then I woke up and watched her die and didn't feel anything."
"Stop it, Daniel," Jack's voice was quiet in its command. "Just stop."
"Stop what?" he asked. He was hurting his lip. "Shau'ri is dead, Jack. Dead. Dead. Dead." He felt something wet sliding down his cheek, tickling at his skin. "Shau'ri. . . Shau'ri is. . ."
Shau'ri was dead. She hadn't been dead forever.
Jack pulled him into a hug, a huge hug that didn't make the strange, numb hole in his chest disappear. But Jack's shirt absorbed the water sliding down his cheeks, and finally he could stop biting his lip so hard as whatever it was let itself be slowly released.
"My wife's dead," he cried.
Now both Jack's hands were on his back and rubbing in soothing circular motions slowly. "It's okay, Danny," he was saying in that too-soft voice that hurt Daniel almost as much as biting his own lip had, "just let it go. Let it go. . ."
He sat up eventually, and slid off his barstool, and Jack led him out to the truck and drove him back to his own place, saying Daniel didn't need to be alone in his apartment tonight. Daniel fell asleep on Jack's couch and didn't dream of Shau'ri calling out to him. He woke up early the next morning with a slight hangover and went home to shower and change before going to the base, and he did some translation work and didn't think about Shau'ri's death.
He was still numb, because Shau'ri had been dead forever.
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