waldos_writings: (Stargate SG1 fic)
[personal profile] waldos_writings
Title: From the Diary of Daniel Jackson - Emancipation
Posted on or about: August 11, 2000
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, eventually
Word Count: 2580
Summary: For the first time since the original Abydos mission, Daniel can start keeping a Journal again.

   
Okay, so I tend to say some stupid things.  But I swear sometimes, to hear Jack tell it, you’d think I was completely clueless about the world around me.  I’ve been listening to the radio a lot.  The music is soothing; it helps me get to sleep.  And the other day Sam was talking about a new CD she wanted to pick up and I mentioned the new song that I’d heard and liked and everyone looked at me funny.  Apparently the song I’d been talking about had come out over a year ago,  and therefore wasn’t ‘new’ anymore.  Well forgive me, I’ve been... out of touch for a while.  I wonder how many other things I’ve said that were... off, but no one’s called me on.  Even now that I’m back I feel like I’m still detached from the world.  When I am on the planet, I’m either inside a mountain or at Jack’s.  Unless Jack’s out trying to broaden my horizons.  How much broader can they get than living on another planet for a year?
   
Ah hell... I’m tired and being petulant.
   
We had two missions back to back.  For whatever military reason no one has bothered to explain to me, SG-1 pulled both our assignment and SG-2’s assignment while they find someone to replace Kawalsky.  I don’t see why they didn’t just pass down SG-2’s assignment to SG-3.  Or let the second in command of SG-2 take over and assign someone else to the team.  It’s not like we have enough viable planets yet for everyone to be busy.  But I’m just the civilian, no one has to explain things to me.  And I am sick to death of asking stupid questions.
   
A wise man once said, “There is no such thing as a stupid question, but the one that isn’t asked.”  That wise man obviously never dealt with the U.S. Military.  There are plenty of stupid questions, and I’m sick of the looks I get from Jack when I ask them.
   
I haven’t exactly endeared myself to Dr./Captain Carter either.  I don’t know if she just doesn’t like me or if I’m doing something to get on her nerves.  Okay, so on P3X-595 I laughed at her because she’d taken aspirin before we left and apparently it interacted with the local fruit juice resulting in her trying to take her clothes off.  But I wasn’t half as bad as the colonel was when it came to making fun of her when she sobered up - by that point I couldn’t really afford to be.  
  
I know my reaction in that Mongol camp didn’t help anything.  
   
Just because I understand how a culture works, doesn’t mean I agree with it.  I don’t think Dr. Carter gets that.
   
And as for ‘going native’ she might be surprised at some of the things I’ve worn and done in order to fit in with a foreign culture.  Not to mention what I’ve eaten.
   
Besides, she was pretty in that dress.  I know Jack and I were staring, but probably for different reasons.  Teal’c was too, but for all I know, he had never seen an Earth human out of uniform and it was just the uniqueness of the situation.  
   
Yes, Dr. Carter looked good, but I was just amazed by the workmanship of that dress.  Blue dyes are notoriously difficult to make in less than modern times.  Blue isn’t a color found overmuch in nature, so I was really curious to know how they got such a vibrant color.  And the amount of ornamentation and embroidery and decoration...  It seemed a little odd that such a dress would be given to a stranger they wanted to kill for speaking out of turn.  Of course, that was before we knew they were going to kidnap her and sell her to the leader of a rival faction.
   
I think Jack just wanted her.  I’ve spent some time with her on the base, and she turns most heads around there.  I can’t imagine how many heads she’d turn in that dress... well, I mean, even if it weren’t completely out of place on a military base.
   
We had a hell of an argument when we got home about what our place in the universe is.  I really don’t think gallivanting around the galaxy trying to modernize and westernize everyone is such a good idea.  I understand that these people are descendants of peoples from Earth.  Well, most of them are, as far as we know.  But for thousands of years they’ve been developing independently of what’s been happening here.  If anyone wants my opinion - which they rarely do - I’d say kick the crap out of the Goa’ulds, so that these people can develop on their own.  If they want to contact us and ask for help - fine.  But some of these people are perfectly happy with their lives and I think we should leave them be. Even if their lives aren’t what we’d call “comfortable” or “modern” by our standards.  Who says our standards are *the* standard?
   
Now, I’m not going all Star Trek on everyone - I don’t believe a non-interference directive is needed, but we should probably ask before we just troop in and rearrange their entire society.
   
Dr. Carter is pleased that she managed to start a women’s lib movement on that last planet, but I don’t think she understands the cultural implications of what could happen there.  Just because it worked here, doesn’t mean it’ll work there.
   
And of course she goes off on this tangent about how I don’t think women deserve equal treatment.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  But I don’t think enforced change is the best way to get that equality.
   
I have no idea what Jack thinks of all this.  He just stood and watched us argue.
   
I’m questioning - again - my fitness to be out there pretending I know what the hell is going on.  I was able to talk to the people on  P3X-595 pretty easily.  They were descendants of the Bedouins, if I had to guess.  They spoke a language that was remarkably like modern Arabic and they were able to tell us that what Sam was going through would wear off over night and that we were blessed to have ... well, I guess the closest word would be ‘nymph’, in our pack.  I don’t think Dr. Carter would appreciate being called that, so I kept that to myself.  I was just glad that Dr. Fraiser was able to figure out that it had something to do with the fact that she had taken a couple of aspirin right before we’d left and that the fact that her bloodvessels were dilated allowed for more of the agent - whatever it was - to get to her brain.
   
I didn’t tell anyone that I think my antihistamines reacted with that stuff too.  It wasn’t quite in the way Dr. Carter did - thank god - but I had the weirdest dreams that night.  When we made camp, Jack put Dr. Carter in one tent with the order that she was not to come out with out permission and a damn good reason, then he put Teal’c on watch.  Which meant we shared the other tent.
   
I was actually kind of glad of it at first.  Jack knows I’m having nightmares now.  I’m not sure how he figured it out, but he asks me every morning how I slept.  Not just the casual “how’d you sleep?” that most people ask their guests.  He actually waits until I’m looking at him and he has this intensity to him that lets me know he knows something’s up.
   
I usually lie anyway.  Tell him ‘fine’, and he lets it go, but I know... I know he knows.
   
I didn’t have a nightmare that night.  Rather wish I had, it would have been easier to explain.     I think I was 16 the last time this happened...
   
Why am I writing about this?  I don’t even want to think about this.  I was so... humiliated.
   
I had hoped that I had been quiet, but I don’t have that kind of luck.  When I was aware of anything around me, I knew I was facing Jack; I could hear him breathing.  When I got brave enough to open my eyes, I could see him looking at me.  I don’t blame him for opening the little window flap thing in the tent - it was a beautiful night, great sleeping weather - but I really would have preferred it to have been pitch black right then.
   
I should know better by now than to expect Jack O’Neill to have the grace or maturity to ignore things like this.   He didn’t... tease, as such... he just kind of... smiled and asked if it had been Sha’re I had been dreaming of.  I remember muttering something like, “yeah, I guess,” but the truth is, I don’t have a clue who I was dreaming about.   Or even if it was any one person in particular.  Like I said, I think I was having some sort of reaction to the local ‘apple’ juice.
   
I wanted to crawl in a hole and not come out for a long, long time when Jack threw my pack at me the next morning and said something about figuring that I’d rather get dressed before getting out of my sleeping bag.  He had taken last watch and was waking everyone up, so he just threw the bag at me and left again, which I was very grateful for, since I didn’t have any kind of pithy remark that would have saved me from the utter embarrassment I felt over the whole thing.
   
God, Jack, wouldn’t the decent thing have been to just ignore it -  ignore me?  You don’t seem to have problems ignoring me when ever I want to tell you about whatever it was you bring me to these planets to tell you about.
   
It occurs to me now that he never woke me up to take a watch.  I wonder if I’m supposed to do these things too.  I’m getting better with the pistol, but I’m still not good enough to actually take it with me through the ‘Gate.  Which, by the way, is perfectly fine with me.  If I didn’t think Jack was getting reports on my shooting scores, I’d stay bad on purpose.
   
Of course, if I can’t shoot straight at something attacking us, there’s very little point of me keeping watch.  One more reason for Jack to think of me as the stone around his neck.
   
One of these days I may actually learn to think before I talk.  I insisted that I be put on a field team, but let’s face it, they could get on just fine without me.  Teal’c knows how to talk to as many indigenous peoples as I do.  Anything that needs to be transcribed could be brought back through to me or pictures could be taken...  I want to do this.  I want to learn all of the languages and customs and cultures that we’ve been hypothesizing on for the past two hundred years, but knowledge for the sake of knowledge just isn’t a viable reason for me to be slowing down the team that’s looking for my wife.
   
I’ve gotten to the point where I try really hard not to think about her if I can avoid it.  A couple of the other SG teams have brought back some stuff they want me to poke at, so between that and our own missions, I try and stay busy.  I hate myself for ... accepting her loss, but I can’t function to look for her if I keep thinking about her.  
   
I’m not sure that made sense, but there it is.
  
 Jack’s made me his little pet project.  Dragging me out for a beer when we leave the base or getting tickets to a football game or something to try and keep me busy.  Make me less of a nerd.  How in the world am I supposed to tell him that I appreciate the gestures, but that I don’t like either of those things.  We are such disparate people.
   
Okay, he did do one thing that shocked the hell out of me.  He somehow found out about a museum exhibit opening in Denver and got us tickets.  It was a traveling Egyptian exhibit and, as he put it, we were going to heckle and nitpick.
   
I honestly expected him to be as bored there as I was at the football game.  (How sad is it that I speak about 25 languages, can explain games that are thousands of years old and hundreds of years lost, but I can’t grasp the rules of American football?)  Anyway, Jack seemed to have a good time at the museum.  The anthropologists who set up the exhibit explained that Ra was a benevolent god whom the people worshipped freely and Jack coughed loudly.  I laughed a little, but no one else got it.  Which, I suppose is a... good thing.  I think Jack was secretly looking for any Goa’uld technology that someone else might have dug up, but we didn’t  find anything suspicious.
   
Anyway, he let me drag him through a few of the other exhibits and prattle on about the cultures and artifacts and stuff.  I don’t think he was really listening, but it was okay.  I was really touched that he made the effort at all.  I had a stupid, “He really likes me!” moment when he gave me the tickets.  God, I can be such a dork sometimes.  I had to borrow a suit coat, and of course it was a bit too big.  I’ve gotten my first pay check, so I’ve been able to get some clothes and a few other things, but I never really anticipating needing a suit anytime in the near future.  Olive drab seems to be my life at the moment.
   
I almost told Jack I didn’t want to go to this thing since it would mean going back to borrowing all his stuff again and I really didn’t think he wanted to go, but... I mean, he went to all that trouble to find out about the exhibit and get us invited and all.
   
I guess I’m glad I went.  Ah, hell... I know I am.  We had a good time.  It’s kind of weird moving through society knowing that we hold a secret they could never even imagine.  I wanted to correct some of the translations of the hieroglyphics on the scrolls they found, but that would mean explaining *how* I knew they were wrong.  Besides, it would probably be a little rude and presumptuous.  
   
I never thought I’d agree with the military on much of anything, but maybe people are better of going through their lives without knowing about the Goa’uld.  No one else needs the pressures we have of trying to find a way to stop a race who had space flight before we could cross an ocean.
  
 Jack should come looking for me soon to get ready and go home.  We’ve been on the base for the last three days and I’m probably going to go blind when I see daylight again.  Jack said something about getting pizza or Chinese on the way home and so help him, I’m paying this time now that I finally can.
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