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).

Chapter 4: Daniel

I can still hear Jack's voice before he walked away....

*'It was a pleasure doing business with you, Doctor Jackson.'*

I'm still having trouble figuring out how much of those dreams were dreams or if they were dreams at all...

Were they Sha'uri's projections onto my mind of what she thought I would do if...when...she died? Or was it me? Would I have quit SGC and run off to some remote dig?

Possibly....

A lot's happened since I returned to Earth...as much good as bad, but the bad was just so...bad. Too many times I've found myself questioning my own usefulness, my purpose beyond the obvious, as a part of the SGC. Gradually, I came to realize I did have one...sort of. Somebody had to keep those military minds from running roughshod all over the galaxy and taking what they wanted without considering the rights of others...or the rightness of doing it. But after a while I got tired of fighting those battles...all of the battles...or maybe I just got tired. From the first day on Abydos to the Nox and the Tollans to the fiasco on Hathor's world to staring down the face of death *(for the what, fifth or sixth time?)* in the person of that alternate reality Apophis...there've been too many uphill struggles, too many situations that stretched my nerves and resolve to the breaking point, too many mistakes that cost too many lives...

Jack doesn't think I remember that people died on P8X873 because I took off after Sha'uri...I wish I'd pulled back when Jack ordered us to. If I hadn't seen Sha'uri...those soldiers would still be alive....she'd still be alive.....

Just one more mistake on top of so many others....

How many times will it take for me to listen...?

For all the things I've been faced with in my life, I'd always been able to focus on the bigger picture....the reality beyond the reality, but it just seemed to get harder, to take more energy and effort to do it. I began to feel a coldness...almost a fatalism...settling over me that frankly scared me....

But at the bottom of it I had the team...

Jack, Sam, Teal'c....

Until the Linvris chamber and all the personal hell that followed....

I felt like a kid again; abandoned to the mercies of strangers who only thought to silence the overly-sensitive kid with the weird ideas and even weirder ways of expressing himself...

I just wanted to shut it all out, just like before, and...in a way...I did. Part of me shut down, or at least went into hiding. The part that had begun to unconditionally accept the friendship and support of SG1. Suddenly, the conditions reasserted themselves, and that part of me that I thought had gone the way of childhood fears just waited for them to let me down again...

The other part of me knows that it's unreasonable, feels guilty for even considering it...and most days that's the part of me that stays in control....

But then there are those other days....

The days when their abandonment cuts like a knife through my soul...and my one remaining lifeline, Sha'uri, isn't there anymore to keep me from drifting away....

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