Author's Notes: And here it is...
What with all my 'puter troubles and just 'life in general'...it's a wonder we made it! I'm sure PHO wants to thank her beta, and she really does deserve a rest after suffering through hours of um...researching the final scenes of Need *grin*... I wanted to offer a special thanks to PHO... It's been a pleasure, Pat! As always and ever thanks to Brenda for betas above and beyond! -- Jmas
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment purposes and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author. Not to be archived without permission of the author(s).
Part 21--Epilog: Janet [by Jmas]
SG1 is standing at the gate almost like a group of strangers. Everything's still pretty raw and it's going to take some time for that to change. But as Colonel O'Neill reaches over to adjust Daniel's pack strap and receives a tentative smile in gratitude, I can't help feeling that they're going to be okay.
The team takes a visible collective sigh as the wormhole stabilizes and moves forward as a group, unconsciously moving to surround Daniel. It's an instinct with them, established long before any of this ever happened. There was never any real possibility that Daniel wouldn't return to SG1, at least not in my mind...it was only a matter of when. Daniel Jackson is as integral a part of that team as any of them, in some ways even more so. He's the drive, the heart...as Colonel O'Neill once said....the conscience. That team wouldn't survive without him, at least not as a team; I know that to be a fact.
Just before they disappear into the event horizon, I see Colonel O'Neill give his team a thumb's up. The gesture is returned by a nod from Teal'c, a smile from Sam, and a hesitant nod from Daniel. Daniel knows how close he came, how close they all came to losing everything that they had become...together.
I know the colonel is worried about what may happen when Daniel gets near that sarcophagus again, but I'm not...not anymore. Colonel O'Neill didn't see the look on Daniel's face when he woke up after that last scare; I'd been able to talk the colonel into taking a break for the first time in days and so he was gone when Daniel finally regained full consciousness. As I came through the door on my way to check his condition, I saw a look on his face that I hope never to witness again. He was lost...totally, completely bereft. He thought the colonel had abandoned him and it scared him to death. I know a little about Daniel's background, enough to know he got a raw deal as a kid, and things didn't get much better from there...Thinking that his team had given up on him must have felt like losing his family all over again.
And that's what SG1 is...family, more than family really. A family doesn't usually get to choose it's members. I don't know if they even realize themselves how unique they are. Feretti does, even Makepeace does...Sam filled me in on what those two did. Ev en Hammond knows it, in his own way. Hell, everybody on this base who's spent more than two hours with them knows that SG1 is something out of the ordinary in a business that by its very nature is extraordinary.
As they disappear into the shimmering Stargate, I realize that, to them, they just are a team, in every sense of that word...a family, in a way that many blood relatives can only aspire to...friends, in that soul-deep, always there in ways that few people ever find in one friend much less three. They don't have to talk about, they feel it. This experience may have tested those bonds, but I don't think there's a power in the universe that's going to break it.