I'm walking round the SGC with an archaeologist gone Native American Indian.
How did this happen? Well, we were due to ship out in a couple of hours, so I dragged my archaeologist with me to check out our gear. Daniel's getting good about this now, after so many years, but I dragged him along anyway.
I happened to be looking in his direction when Daniel picked up his soft, camouflage green hat, and something fluttered to the ground. I could see what it was in a second. A feather. It was long, downy, and absolutely pure white. There was no way it could have got in his hat by accident. Someone had to have put it there. It'd been a while since I'd seen one of those in this context, but I've been in the military for years. I know what that means.
And by the look in Daniel's blue eyes, he knew, too.
Dammit, Daniel! Even if he was... which he isn't... he's a civilian, for crying out loud! He doesn't deserve this! Standing there, watching my friend holding his hat in one hand and the feather in the other, I was suddenly angrier than I have any right to be.
All right, I'm going to be honest here. There were times when I thought... perhaps Daniel really wasn't cut out for this. His unique methods of dealing with communication problems aside, he isn't military. He doesn't have the mindset. Nothing we do is going to get around that. And the stuff that has happened to him... there was his little tryst with Hathor, for example.
But there's something I will never forget. When I was standing there, in a gold hallway in Apophis's ship, watching Daniel quietly bleeding to death, I knew then he had more than enough courage to see it through to the end. There was nothing I wanted more than just to pick him up and get the hell out of Dodge. Failing that, I wanted to lift him up and hold him; not let him die here, alone.
But I couldn't do either of those things. I was a soldier on a mission and I couldn't do either of those things. I knew that. Daniel knew that. So I left him.
After we came home from saving the world, I found out that they sent the jacket Daniel was wearing at the time to the NID at Nellis. I have no idea what they wanted it for... apparently it was something to do with the sarcophagus... but the point is, I took a look at it before they sent it. It's absolutely soaked with blood through and through, and the thickest part is by the hole. It's a perfect, circular hole, with clean edges where the material has just melted away, and you can see exactly where it would be on a human body. Daniel could live through that, see his friends leave him to die... and come through it all and understand why I did what I did.
"Daniel," I said, looking at my friend who was looking at a white feather, "do you know what that means?"
Way to go, Jack. If he doesn't know what it means, do you want to tell him? And anyway, if he didn't know what it means, would he be staring at it with that hurt look in his eyes?
Daniel looked at me, smiling sadly. "Yes," he said. There was a silence of a few minutes, and I had absolutely no idea what to say. But Daniel did. He lifted the feather in one hand and let it balance on his outstretched fingertips. "Ma'at," he said softly. "The white feather of truth and justice."
I stared at him. What?
"The ceremony of Ma'at comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead," Daniel went on. "The white feather was weighed in one side of the balance, and the dead person's heart was weighed in the other side. If they balanced, the dead person's soul was permitted to live forever."
Why the hell was he telling me this? I looked at him, saw the feather, and suddenly realised why he was holding it the way he was. With it balancing on his fingertips like that, I could see how delicately it was balanced. I don't have a clue about these things, but somehow, the white feather of truth and justice... I liked that. That description fits Daniel. While I'm busy shooting everything that moves, he's searching for truth and justice in a big galaxy. Sometimes he finds it, and sometimes he doesn't. But he has the kind of courage that goes with that, the courage to go on looking for truth and justice when the aliens with the glowing eyes have reduced the fighters and warriors to dust.
"Ma'at," I said, watching Daniel smother a smile as I pronounced it wrong, and I wished I knew who it was who did this, who dared imply anything like this about my archaeologist.
Suddenly, I had an idea. Taking the feather, I twisted Daniel's long hair round it, ignoring his protests, and took a step back.
"You look like Hiawatha," I told him.
"And whose fault is that?" was his reply, trying to untwist his overlong hair from the feather, but I reached out and lightly slapped his fingers away. "Leave it," I said. "It suits you."
Daniel stared at me like I'd gone crazy. Then, suddenly, he laughed, swore at me in Abydonian (and he thinks I don't know what he's saying when he does that!) and we left, walking into the Gate room.
Everyone could see me and Daniel and the rest of SG-1 as we waited for the seventh chevron to lock. Everyone, probably including the person who put that feather in Daniel's hat.
But everyone could now see that true courage is not a man with a gun. True courage is walking through Stargate Command with a feather in your hair.