TITLE: Hope

AUTHOR: OXBastetXO

SPOILERS: In the Line of Duty, Bane, Message in a Bottle, Holiday

SEQUEL/SEASON INFO: Right after Holiday

RATING: PG

SUMMARY:  Daniel tries to come to grips with what happened when Machello took over his body.

CATEGORY: Epilog, Angst, and Smarm

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Got the idea for this from Emily Dickenson's poem Hope Is A Thing With Feathers

Showtime and MGM/UA owns Stargate: SG-1 and all there in. I'm just borrowing them for a bit, and I promise to give them right back when I'm done. Well, most of them, I might just keep Jack and Daniel for a bit longer.

Hope Is a Thing With Feathers was writing by Emily Dickenson, I'm just borrowing it for reading material.

Hope

by

OXBastetXO

Daniel sighed and slumped back on the couch. This had been a day for the record book. Not one book he particularly ever wanted to read, let alone write in, but write he had.

Daniel Jackson, world oldest man, or at least had been as of eight hours ago.

Now, here he was sitting in the Den of Jack's house as if nothing had ever happened. Yeah, right.

Down the hall he could hear his friend happily splashing away in the shower. Reveling at being back in his own body. Daniel remember the ride home. Jack had filled him in on what had happened while he had been in the infirmary. About how Sam using him and Teal'c as guinea pigs to try to figure out how Machello's machine worked. Then about how he started feel sick and Teal'c had to lead him through some Jaffa ritual meditation to contact the infant Goa'uld Teal'c carried to fix what was wrong as Jack put it. What had Jack said it was called...."kel'noreem." Jack said it was 'sweet'. That had made him chuckle. When Jack had asked what was so funny, he had to explain that he had heard of meditation call all kind of things before, but just never 'sweet'. Then he had asked Jack what it was like getting in touch with his inner Goa'uld. Jack hadn't taken that well, he just glowered at Daniel and threatened to make him walk home.

Daniel took sip of his coffee and looked down at his hands. They were young hands. Strong hands. Hands of a man in his prime. Just few hours before, he had been looking down at the wrinkled, arthritic hands of a man so ancient he barely imagine. Daniel took another swallow of his coffee as something started to stick in his throat.

"Even if you had this body back, you would never find her."

Daniel set his coffee cup down on the coffee table and slid off his glasses. Wearily, he rubbed his face. He was tired and his head hurt. Janet said they were side-effects of the mind transfer. The only effects. 'Yeah, tell me another one,' he thought darkly.

He could still see Machello staring at him, though his own eyes. The look on his face, cold and calculating. Did he ever look like that? A small shudder passed through him.

"You will never find her."

Daniel pushed his way to his feet and walked over to the mantle. For a long moment, he stared at the pictures and mounted metals Jack had there. One picture caught his eye. It was of SG-1, it had been taken in the Embarkation Room shortly after they had been reunited after stopping Apophis and Klorel's ships from destroying Earth. Daniel smiled fondly at the picture. They were all standing there, goofy grins plastered all over their faces. Well, most of them. Teal'c was smiling, sort of. That had been a good day. Daniel sighed. The good days seemed to be getting farther and farther apart anymore.

First it had been Sam. It had almost been too late when they had realized she had been taken over by a Goa'uld. If Cassy hadn't sensed it, they might have lost her. Daniel could still remember that sick feeling in his stomach when he had gone down to question her.

"You care for Samantha Carter as well, do you not?"

"Yes, I do. Very much."

"Then why has it been until now that you have come to see her?"

Why had it been? He knew the answer. Fear. He couldn't face the prospect of losing Sam to the Goa'uld like he had lost Sha're and Skaara. He had lost so many people in his life. He wasn't sure how many more he could.

Fortunately, events had worked they way they did and they still had Sam. Their Sam.

Then there had been the thing with the sarcophagus. Daniel felt a stab of guilt when he remember what had happened, what he had almost done. He closed his eyes and bit his lower lip as memories washed over him like a dark wave. He had made it through that with Jack and the other's help.

Then they had almost lost Teal'c to of all things, a bug.

Jack hadn't been left out either. There had been the alien globe they had brought back. The device had impaled him, pinning him to the wall. They tried so hard to free him, but it hadn't been meant to be. The globe hadn't been a message device like they thought I had, but a sort of life boat for the aliens themselves. Daniel could still feel the frustration of trying to decipher the device knowing his friend, his best friend's life hung in the balance. But like all the other times, thing had worked out, if just at the last possible moment.

They were a trifold sword, he thought. The sword was made by folding the steel in on itself. Forging and re-forging it in intense heat and then plunging it into cold water. Forcing the metal to become stronger by adversity. They had become stronger by adversity.

But when did the metal stop being strong and become brittle?

Daniel walked back to the sofa and sunk down into it again.

"You will never find her."

"I will find her! I will...find......."

Daniel winced and rubbed his left arm as the memories replayed through his mind. He could still feel the searing pain that had shot through his chest and down his left arm. Janet had called it angina. Pain caused by the ancient heart trying to pump life into a fail body.

He could understand Macalli's anger and frustration, but it still didn't give the alien the right to his life. He may have lost his wife to the Goa'uld, but it didn't mean that Daniel would never find Sha're. He had too.

Tears misted his vision and Daniel angrily rubbed at his nose with the cuff of his sleeve. It was his life! He was the one that was supposed to live it!

He took a deep, shuddering breathe trying to calm himself down. He looked down at the coffee table and frowned. There was a slim, little book laying there he hadn't noticed before. His curiosity peaked. Jack wasn't the kind to just let books lie around. Magazines, yes, but books were a different matter.

He picked up the little book and flipped it open just reading at random.

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

"Hey, you ok?"

Daniel looked up to see Jack in a pair of old sweats standing in the doorway. His hair still standing out in wet spike all over his head.

"Yeah," Daniel said, quietly. He rubbed his nose on the cuff of his shirt again.

"Sara gave me that," Jack said nodding at the book. "Our anniversary right before....before Charlie died."

"Never thought you would be much of one for poetry," Daniel said looking up at him owlishly.

Jack gave him a crooked smile. "Always had a bit of thing for Dickinson." He shrugged.

Daniel nodded.

Jack's eyes narrowed studying him. "You going to be ok?"

Daniel smiled, clutching the little book. "Yeah, I going to be."

*fin*

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