Disclaimer - MGM/Gekko/Double Secret own them.
Set in season seven, anytime you want after 'Homecoming'. Spoilers for 'The Movie', 'Children of the Gods', 'Cold Lazarus, 'Tangent', 'Descent', 'Abyss', 'Fallen' and 'Homecoming'. Suitable for all.
Feedback would be loved.
Oh look! It's a mini-fic!
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Some days, it was like Daniel had never been away. They'd go through the gate, meet new enemies or old allies; fight the Goa'uld, play with technologies they didn't know enough about (her dad may have been right, but she wasn't about to tell him that), and worked as if they'd never been apart.
A whole. A cohesive unit. SG-1.
On other days, he forgot things. Never anything big, never anything that put their lives in danger; but still, he forgot things. How Teal'c liked his coffee. How *he* liked his coffee. What her favourite colour was. What Colonel O'Neill's first name was (though Sam half-suspected Daniel 'forgot' that purely to annoy him).
Today was one of the other days. And as she watched Daniel sleep a few feet away, she couldn't help but wonder if that given all he knew now - or, as it were, what he *didn't* know now - if he thought it was worth it.
"You're thinking again."
Her head jerked to the right, studying the form lying on the ground on the opposite side of the fire. Eyes closed, body relaxed: looking for all the world (well this world, anyway) as if he were asleep.
It was an old joke between them. Maybe too old.
"Sorry," she murmured, "I'll try to make less noise next time."
There wasn't much effort to her distracted response, something that he was apparently all too aware of.
"Whatcha thinking about?" His eyes were still closed, body unmoving.
She considered saying nothing; she considered actually saying "Nothing." She considered a lot of things.
"Do you think it's been worth it?" She asked, half-expecting him to open his eyes yet somehow still not surprised when he didn't. "I mean fighting the Goa'uld, protecting Earth - that's a no-brainer. But on an individual level. A personal level. Has it been worth it?"
The responding sigh was long, and heavy. "I always love these little chats of ours, Carter. We don't have them very often, but they're always guaranteed to give me a headache."
Smiling for the first time in a while, Sam lowered her head slightly. "Sorry sir."
"Nah," he finally moved; or at least his left hand did, lifting up to wave off her apology. "It's probably a good thing. Someone around here has to make me think from time to time." Lowering his hand again, he tapped his fingers on the ground. Even in the firelight she could see the frown creasing his forehead. "In my opinion," he eventually said, "It's been entirely worth it."
"So given the choice, you wouldn't change anything?"
"I wouldn't say *that*." He argued. "There are certain things...certain events...that I wouldn't ever want to relive."
Kanan. Ba'al. He didn't even need to say it.
"But..." he continued, before pausing and going completely off-course. Metaphorically, anyway. "You never knew what I was like before the Stargate program, did you?"
Not personally. "Daniel said you'd turned your back on the worl-"
"I was suicidal, Carter. 'Turning my back on the world' is Daniel's fancy way of saying that more than once I put a loaded gun to my head."
There was nothing she could say to that: nothing at all. She was stunned he'd even told her. Suddenly shivering, she tucked her legs closer to her body.
He kept talking. "But then I got ordered to go through this thing called a 'Stargate'. Met Daniel. Met Skaara. Kawalsky, Ferretti; eventually General Hammond, Teal'c, and...you." For the first time since they'd started talking, he opened his eyes, his head tilting, his gaze impacting against hers. "And it is *so* worth it."
Suddenly she wasn't cold anymore. In fact, quite the opposite. "I know it's weird when Daniel forgets stuff."
Sam blinked, a little surprised. Maybe he'd just been having the same fears she had.
"But if you asked him, he'd say the same thing. It's painful; sometimes it's downright horrifying...but it's worth it."
There were a lot of things she wanted to say; a lot of memories his words provoked. Eventually, only one thing came out. "I'm surprised you told me...about before the program. About you being..."
Rolling onto his left side and propping the side of his head up on his hand, his mouth formed a familiar lop-sided grin (something else that provoked a lot of memories). He shrugged. "Things change."
That they did, she mused as she smiled back.
And sometimes they stayed the same.
~FINIS