It was late. That was all Daniel knew. Or was it? In the artificial light of the SGC, it was always hard to tell where one day finished and the next began, and it had taken a while for Daniel to become accustomed to this. At all hours of the day and night, there were people about, walking the corridors of the base, eating and drinking, working at their various tasks. At first Daniel had almost resented this. As an academic, he had relished the solitude that the night generally brought, the self-imposed isolation that enabled him to concentrate more fully on whatever he was doing. Night time was when you discovered who was really committed to study, as the waverers drifted off to bars and parties, leaving the bookworms like him behind. Then he had gone to Abydos, and everything had changed. There, the difference between day and night was so clear - when the sun rose, so did the people, when the sun set, after a long hard day's work, the people sat around and talked. Of the past, of the future, who was marrying, who was ill - Daniel had inadvertantly joined a community, in a way he had never felt part of anything before. On Abydos, Daniel was accepted, part of things. Back on Earth now, Daniel felt different - somewhere inside, he could tell whether it was day or night now on his adopted planet. If not regulated by an alarm clock, with no real stimulus from the sun within the SGC, if left to his own devices, Daniel lived by Abydos time. Waking when the distant sun rose, working through the Abydian day, then tiring as the sun began to set so many thousands of light years away. In his windowless office, Daniel put down the shard of pottery he was examining. Around him, the rest of the office was in shadow, lit by the light from his powerful desk lamp, focussed on the inscription he had been studying, as well as light from the corridor, shining through the frosted glass in the office door. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Daniel saw that it was after 3 a.m. He loved the quiet, the chance to immerse himself in his work, feeling grateful for the chance to be alone. As much as he cared for his fellow team members, somehow Daniel always felt a guilty sense of relief when he was finally alone, left to do what he did best. Even the years on Abydos had not changed Daniel's need to be alone at times. Sha're had recognised that, without ever having to be told. Daniel had been so relieved. In the past, there had been other relationships, not many, he had to admit to himself - none of them had been able to understand that sometimes he needed to be alone. All of them had seen a relationship with him as giving them some right to demand his free time be spent with them, as well as demanding contact and reassurance. Each relationship had followed the same pattern - initial intensity followed by a steady growth of misunderstandings and disagreements. None of them understood that sometimes words were too intrusive, that Daniel needed the quiet that he had come to rely on since the death of his parents. They had all wanted him to talk about it - he had refused. They had all demanded to be placed before anything he did - again, Daniel had refused. Each time, he had been left alone, but not the way he wanted. On Abydos, of course, it had been more difficult. The way that the tribe, his family now, lived, gave very little room for privacy, but somehow he had managed it. His self-imposed distance had been respected by all, it had come to the point where, if he was walking alone, staring into the distance, no one would approach him. Only if he invited them to speak with him, would any of them come close - that, Daniel supposed, was a mark of the honour they felt he had given the tribe by deciding to stay with them. Then it had all been wrenched away from him, in one long horrifying day. Sha're had been taken, and he had been dumped back into a world whose history he understood, but whose present day he could barely tolerate. He remembered the way it had been when he had first returned, the way he felt that everyone was looking at him. What was it he had said to Jack? "They don't know what to do with me. And I don't know what to do with myself." Somehow Jack had understood, had taken him in, given him somewhere to stay while he found his feet back on his home planet again. A friendship had begun so inauspiciously back on Abydos, between a desperate out of work anthropologist and a suicidal air force colonel - somehow they had 'clicked', connecting in a way that was hard to define. Daniel's stomach rumbled suddenly, making him wonder when he had last eaten something. He smiled at that, knowing how Jack would react if he discovered Daniel had been skipping meals again. For an air force colonel, Daniel thought with a smile, Jack sure makes a fine mother hen... Just as Daniel was reaching for the pad on which he had been making notes, to finish the sentence he had been writing, the lights went out. Not just the desk light he had been using, but also the light coming through the office door. It was as though someone had thrown a hood over his head, and suddenly Daniel felt the airlessness of his office begin to press in on him. The fact that his room had no windows had never bothered him before - he had never been one to sit and stare out at the scenery, having an interesting enough mental landscape to occupy him most of the time. Something about the office felt oppressive suddenly, and Daniel reached desperately for the nearby phone. Picking the handset up, he poked blindly with a finger at the buttons of the telephone. Nothing. All Daniel was conscious of was the way his heart was beginning to pound, the noise of every pulse seeming to echo through his brain. Not now... Daniel thought, ....I can't.... don't have time for this... Replacing the phone's handset none too gently, Daniel began to get up from where he was still seated at the desk. Forgetting for a moment how the desk was situated, the next thing Daniel knew was that he was falling, having caught a foot on one of the desk's wooden legs as he tried to get up too hastily. Then he was on the floor, heart still pounding, images of the past flashing before his eyes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Not so smart now, are you Einstein?" sneered a voice from the darkness. "Let me out of here," Daniel heard himself say, barely recognising his voice, it was so full of terror. "What's wrong, worm?" the voice sneered again. "Don't like the dark?" Daniel did not bother to answer this, realising that to speak would be encouragement for whatever might happen next. Instead he concentrated on calming his breathing and heart rate, trying to forestall a full-blown panic attack. A pounding noise, not his heart, but coming from the darkness, interrupted his efforts. "D'you reckon the geek's fainted?" the voice from before inquired of someone. "Nah. Just too scared to speak," replied another voice, one he had not heard before. "Give the box another couple of kicks, he might start talking again..." Thump. Daniel realised then, for the first time that the voice was right, and he was inside some kind of box. Thump. The blow echoed hollowly, and Daniel reached out, straining to find the scope of his confinement. There. His fingers grazed against splintered wood, brushed against the struts holding a box of some sort together. Thump. Daniel's eyes strained in the darkness, looking for a chink of light, something to give him a clue on how to get out of here. Nothing. Thump. Daniel's heart began to pound again, as fear overtook him, and his mind took him back even further. Back to a scene he had tried so desperately to forget for so many years. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Even then, Daniel had loved museums. All those things to stare at, reminding him of the stories his parents had told him. Daniel sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand at the dust, thinking at the way the other children had laughed at him in kindergarten. Just because he'd never heard of Little Red Riding Hood... I know who Hatshepsut was, Daniel thought proudly, and she was real, not some stupid story... And here he was, off school because of a cold, allowed to tag along with his parents as a special treat. All Daniel knew was that his parents were important, that they had interesting things they did, went to interesting places, and he got to go too. All of that made Daniel feel really special, and different to the other children at school. That was something he had gotten used to. The way that even the teachers stared at him sometimes, like they couldn't quite make out what he was, just because he knew things he guessed they didn't. And then there were the other children. They laughed at him, called him a teacher's pet, because he generally had an answer, and knew about things they didn't. Most of all, Daniel hated when he had to go into the playground, knowing what would happen next. Some of the time, his teacher would let him stay indoors, curled up in a corner with a book, while she did whatever it was teachers do - engrossed in whatever world Daniel was discovering this time, he wouldn't even look up from the page long enough to watch. But sometimes he had to go outside. Then it would happen, as surely as the sun rose and rain fell. No matter how hard Daniel tried to keep himself to himself, to make himself invisible like Bilbo Baggins, they still saw him. Then it would start. First the name-calling, then, if he did not react to that, Daniel would often find himself pinned to the ground, wriggling with frustration while he was humiliated in some way by a larger child. Mud down the back of his neck, a handful of grass shoved into his shorts, there were a variety of tortures inflicted on him, but Daniel tried to remain unaffected by them all. It did not take long before he ceased to struggle, ceased to react to the worst that a small child's imagination could devise in terms of names, ceased to provide any entertainment at all for the bullies. In his mind, Daniel retreated to the world his parent's had decorated for him, with tales of warriors and druids, hidden treasures and quests. There, Daniel felt secure somehow, like he was part of a secret brotherhood, one that would protect him no matter what. He felt safe. Daniel stared into the glass case in front of him, gawping slightly at the mummy that was there. He loved this gallery, he had always loved the Egyptian exhibits more than any other - they held some strange magic for him, always drawing him back to them. It all seemed perfect. Gods and goddesses, pharaohs and queens, the ongoing work of the temple, the day to day details of ordinary life, all lay in the cabinets here. In the background, Daniel could hear his parents' voices, as they directed the workmen assembling stones for a new exhibition. His parents. The centre of his life. The people who knew everything there was to know about anything that was important to know. And he was here with them, where he always wanted to be. Suddenly, in a moment, everything changed, and Daniel's life changed with it, irrevocably. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Back in the darkness of the box once again, Daniel shuddered at the memory - it had taken many years before he had even been able to talk about his parents, and for a long time he had denied their deaths had even taken place. Now he recalled it all too clearly. The terrible sounds, the chain snapping, the awful rumble of stone, his mother screaming, the silence that had fallen as the dust settled. Daniel wrapped his arms around himself and began to sob, rocking gently back and forth in his distress. From outside the box, Daniel could hear laughter, but suddenly he didn't care any more. What did it matter anyway, what anyone thought of him? All that mattered was that he survive, and to do that he needed to be alone. If he was alone, if he didn't get too close, then he couldn't be hurt. The only people who could hurt him, really hurt him, were the people who were closest to him, so if he immersed himself in the past, then he would be safe. These were just bullies, in the same way that there had always been bullies in Daniel's life. Instead of humiliating him in the public arena of the playground, these chose to humiliate him privately, but their methods were the same. Just like his passivity had frustrated those bullies he had experienced all those years ago, it would help him now. Pulling his glasses off with one hand, Daniel scrubbed furiously at his eyes with the other, all the time ordering himself to stop crying. It would all be okay. The bullies would get bored if he didn't react, then it would all be over. For now, anyway. What little attention Daniel had been paying to the sounds from outside his confinement told him that the laughter had stopped. Silence had fallen and suddenly Daniel realised that he was alone. Terror overtook him then, and he began to thrash about, hands and feet flying in all directions, on his way to a major panic attack. After a few minutes of frenzied activity, a sudden lethargy overtook him, and Daniel lay still again, heart thumping loudly as if trying to escape its own captivity. All that exertion had opened a tiny gap between the lid and the box itself, and a tiny shaft of light made its way into the darkness around him. The fear Daniel was feeling, the terror of being trapped, of being somehow buried alive, began to recede as Daniel's brain processed the hope of escape. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, Daniel concentrated his efforts on the area where the light was coming in, and was soon rewarded by some movement. Finally, the lid shifted completely, falling to the side with a satisfying crash. Grasping the edges of box, and wincing slightly at the splinters digging painfully into his hands, Daniel was able to pull himself out of the box. Trying to rub some life into his cramping legs, Daniel looked around himself, squinting at his surroundings. As he had suspected, he was in the basement at the university, and the box he had been stuffed into a few hours earlier, in such an undignified manner, was a packing case. Now that the circulation had been restored, Daniel took a few tentative stteps towards the door. As he reached it, he paused for a moment, afraid that his tormentors were waiting outside, alerted by the noise he had been making, waiting for him to emerge. They would jump on him again, and the next round of humiliations would begin. Taking a shaky breath, Daniel reached for the door handle, and turned it. The door swung open easily, with a loud creak. Daniel froze, waiting for the mocking laughter to resume. Nothing. Letting out a breath he had been holding, Daniel left the basement, wondering what would happen next. Never, for a moment, did he believe that this episode would be the end of things - he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "You can't stay here, son," said a kind sounding voice from somewhere above Daniel's head. All he was aware of was the sound of his own sobbing, and the hand that brushed his hair gently. Not the hand he wanted to feel.... He knew somehow without being told, with a wisdom far beyond his age, that that hand was gone forever. In the minutes that had passed since the procession of appalling noises, the ones he heard over and over again in his mind, other people had arrived. His safe place was no longer his alone. Something terrible had happened here, and he would never feel quite the same about museums again. Glancing up, through the tears, Daniel could see one of the statues in the gallery looming over the head of a grey-haired man who was standing over him. The expression of sorrow and pity on the man's face was too much for Daniel then, and he focussed his attention on the statue instead. Anubis, Daniel's mind supplied. In his imagination, the jackal-headed god's statue stared down at him with a look of scorn. Such a baby, it seemed to say, blubbing there in front of everyone. Sniffing back the tears, Daniel stared back at the statue defiantly. He continued to stare at Anubis, as, all around him, police and paramedics tended to the injured, and began the search for his parents' bodies. Despite the noise that they made, Daniel was oblivious to it all. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Hey, are you okay?" The voice cut through the darkness, to where Daniel lay. Where am I? Daniel wondered, momentarily disoriented. The beam from a flashlight played across Daniel's face, and he winced at it as it struck his eyes. Instinctively, Daniel pulled a hand up over his eyes to shade them, squinting between his fingers to try and make out who it was who spoke. It was not a voice that Daniel recognised, and for a moment he was a tormented student again. "Dr. Jackson?" the voice came again, as Daniel was still trying to gather his wits together. He knew where, and more importantly when he was. The sense of relief that swept over Daniel was overwhelming for a moment. "We had a power outage, sir," the voice continued. "Are you okay?" Not waiting for a response the voice, calm and with a slight accent, carried on. "We're doing the rounds of the offices of all personnel that are signed in - we got the phones working a while back, and when you didn't answer, the sergeant sent me down to check on you." It was then that Daniel noticed the hand the man was stretching out to him, and he grasped it swiftly, allowing himself to be pulled up from his undignified position slumped on the floor. Suddenly, the lights came back on. Daniel's head almost instantly began to pound, as his eyes were flooded with light. He heard a slight chuckle from his unidentified companion, who had been just as surprised, it seemed, by the brightness of the artificial light returning. "If you're okay," the voice began again, and Daniel turned his head from contemplating where he had been lying to the source of it, "...then I'll report back. Do you need a medic, or something?" Smiling at the young man he now saw standing in front of him, Daniel wondered if he had ever been that young and full of life. The private was young, maybe 19, eyes sparkling with the excitement of something interesting happening on the long night shift. "I'm okay," Daniel said, "just tripped, that's all..." "I'll get off then," the private said, tossing his final words over his shoulder as he left the office, "if you'll be alright on your own..." "I'll be fine," Daniel replied, "thank you." Better than I hope you ever have to know... Daniel thought as he watched the door close. ~fin~

Disclaimer : Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is written for entertainment purposes only - no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story-line are the property of the author - not to be archived elsewhere without permission.