Why Am I Here? by Morgyn Leri
Title: Why Am I Here?
Author: morgynleri_fic
Fandoms: Highlander/Stargate: SG1
Characters: Daniel Jackson/Jesse Collins, Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter
Author's Note: I actually drew very heavily from the Stargate episode "Fallen", with the dialogue lifted wholesale from a couple of scenes. So it's not so much an original scene as an interpretation of a scene already in existance, all from the point of view of Daniel/Jesse.
He settled onto his bed, leaning forward to rest his face in his hands, trying to still the racing thoughts in his head. The strangers had called him Daniel, but it wasn't the name he'd remembered while living here. Perhaps a name he'd taken later, after the memories stopped. After he'd... died.
A quiet sigh escaped him, and he grimaced as he recalled how it had felt. The pain of bullets hitting him, the darkness creeping across his vision. Someone calling his name, Jesse. Shouting with fear, trying to protect him with their words, but failing.
I wasn't the only one who died. Just the only one who came back. Why?
He couldn't actually remember coming back to life, not that time. His memories of his life before this planet stopped with that death, and he wasn't sure what he had become afterwards. What had happened when he'd been given that terrible curse of immortality. A curse, and perhaps a gift, but one that hadn't reassured him when he'd discovered its existance.
He lowered his hands, dropping his chin to his chest, thinking about what he'd done earlier in the day. Shamda would have been disturbed to find out what he had done. But he had to know how far this went. How much he could take, and still keep on living. Whatever had removed his memories hadn't taken away the curse.
Footsteps came from outside his tent, and he looked up, frowning slightly when he saw one of the strangers at the entry of his tent. It felt like the world lurched when he saw him, and the unbidden sense that this man wouldn't understand what he'd done any more than Shamda would.
"Please leave me alone." He held up his hand as he spoke, as if warding the man away. The wounds beneath his robes were still healing, scars pulling at the skin as they slowly vanished.
The man stood there a moment, leaning against one of the boxes that had been stored in his tent, watching him. "I'm Jack O'Neill," he said as he walked over to sit down, gesturing as he spoke to emphasize his words, "and barring some freakish similarity, you are Doctor Daniel Jackson."
The slight emphasis Jack put on the title confused him, wondering what was so important about that title. It wasn't his name, after all. He watched Jack a moment, shaking his head slightly.
"This tent is all I know," he murmured, feeling reluctant to tell Jack about his memories of Jesse Collins. "These people, they're all I know." He could see the conternation and faint annoyance play across Jack's face, the man's fingers tapping against his leg a moment. "Before I woke up in the forest, I don't remember anything." He paused, looking down at his hands a moment.
"I have tried... I have tried to remember who I was before." After I died, before I woke up here. He gave a small shake of his head before continuing, dismissing the thought. "Sometimes I think it's right there, floating in front of me... and all I have to do is reach out and grab it. I try..." He shook his head again. "... and it's gone."
Jack licked his lips, looking away as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He let out a sigh, a slight puff of air before he looked up to speak. "You were a member of my team, SG1. You're a friend of mine. Last year, you died." He said it all with a straight face, no trace of doubt in his eyes.
It wasn't a surprise. He'd died before. But... how? What had happened this time? Why couldn't he remember anything about being this Daniel Jackson that Jack said he was?
"I'm dead?" He gave Jack a skeptical look, wondering if anyone would believe him if he told them he knew he died. He remembered dying, but not being the man they thought he was.
Jack stared a moment before replying, the same expression, the faintest hint of exasperation mixed with disbelief and certainty. "Obviously not." Jack paused, his gaze flickering to one side, and back to his face. "You just sorta died. Actually, you.. ascended to a higher plane of existance." He gestured as he spoke, as if trying to erase the doubt that was clear on the face of his audience. "Last time I saw you, you were helping us fight Anubis."
"Anubis?" This was getting stranger and stranger. He'd helped some miners fight back against his father when he was Jesse, he remembered that. But he doubted that it was anything like what Jack was talking about.
"Yeah." Jack grimaced. "Kind of an over-the-top, cliche bad guy. Black cloak, oily skin, kind of spooky." Jack's voice trailed off as he reached the end of the description, seeing the confusion working its way back into his expression. "Anyway," he continued briskly, shaking his head a moment, "obviously since then, you've retaken human form somehow. I..." He paused again, the silence filled by the sounds of the camp around them.
"Actually, I can see how this might seem a bit unusual..."
He cut Jack off, wishing now that the man would go away and stop confusing him more than he already had. "A bit? Why am I here?" The second question came out without conscious thought, voicing the question that had repeated over and over in his mind after he woke up.
"Hey, why are any of us here?" Jack kept his tone light, trying to smile.
He looked away, squinting slightly at the light from outside, but said nothing. He wondered if Jack actually knew why he asked the question he did. Not, "Why am I on this planet?" or "Why did I come back from being ascended?", but "Why can't I die?" Though I do wonder about this ascending to a higher existance. If I can't die, why did I chose to ascend?
Jack sighed. "Honestly, I don't know," his voice took on the note of conviction it had earlier, "but you gotta trust me. You are Daniel Jackson. Think of it this way: out of all the planets in the galaxy, why this one, if not for us to find you."
He could see Jack gesture at the edges of his vision, movements that emphasized his words. He wondered if Jack always talked so much with his hands as well as his voice. "So you're saying a higher power had a hand in putting me here?"
"I don't know. That was generally your department."
Silence fell, and he looked away, pressing his lips together as he turned over Jack's words in his mind. Maybe what he said, that he was this Daniel Jackson, was true, and that life could fill in the gaping hole in between dying as Jesse, and waking up here to become Arrom. A gap that felt too large to be spanned by a single lifetime.
After a few moments, Jack sighed, and left. He could hear him say something to the woman who'd come with them, and he shifted towards the cushions on his floor, reaching for a straw to light another candle, waiting. He doubted the woman would leave him be to think, though if asked, he'd be unable to say why.
"Can I come in?"
He looked over at the woman as she stood, bent to look into his tent, considering a moment. At least she had asked, instead of coming in without asking, like Jack. He leaned forward to blow out the candle he'd just lit before sitting back.
"Sure."
He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she settled onto the floor, the weapon she carried cradled in her lap like other women would hold a child. "So..." She trailed off, looking uncertain as he turned his head forward again, his gaze on his hands instead of her.
"What did you say your name was again?"
"Samantha Carter. You used to call me Sam."
"Yeah, well, like I already told Jim..."
"Uh, Jack." She closed her eyes a moment, and he wondered why. Did it bother her a lot to hear Jack's name mangled slightly?
"Jack?" He rolled his eyes slightly, shaking his head. "Yeah. I told him."
"I guess what I don't understand is you aren't dying to know all about who you are."
Because who you remember me as isn't who I've always been.
"I am..." He tilted his head back slightly to gaze at the ceiling. "...and I'm not."
Wanting to know about the lifetimes of memories he was missing, and uncertain if he wanted to know who he'd been. He hadn't been the best of people as Jesse. Better, perhaps, than his father, and the men he'd hired, but he hadn't done everything he could. He didn't think so, anyway.
"See, it's the not part..." Sam shook her head as she spoke, and he interrupted, trying to give her a sense of what he was feeling, without telling her about what he was, or the memories of Jesse that he still had.
"What if I don't like who I was?" A lifetime like Jesse, only less involved than he was then. Less able, or less willing, after dying trying to help those miners. Trying, and failing. "What if I don't want to be that person?" He paused, wondering for a moment if the worst that could have happened for him was to be uninvolved. "What if I don't have it in me to make up for something I've done wrong?"
Sam stared at him for a second with confusion. "I have to admit, that never occured to me."
He nodded, looking away.
"Look, we all thought we'd lost you at one point. It was one of the hardest things I've ever been through. You were... you are... brilliant. One of the most caring, passionate..." She paused, as if trying to find the right words to convince him of what she said. "You're the type of person who would give his life for someone he doesn't even know."
I have given my life for someone else. Jesse died to help a group of men he never should have known, or cared about. I shouldn't. He didn't voice his thoughts, though he turned his head back towards her, his gaze directed towards the candle he'd lit and extinguished.
"Well, that doesn't sound so bad." He wondered if dying for someone meant more if you couldn't get back up again.
"If you had one fault, it was that you wanted to save people so badly, you wanted to help people so much, that it tore you apart when you couldn't make a difference."
"That actually sounds kind of hard to live up to." It was an image of him that made him think of Jesse's friend Duncan. A thought he'd have to explore more later, perhaps.
"All I know is that if I were you, I would definately want to get to know me... you."
He looked back over at her, a bit of a smile on his face. "I get it."
"Come back with us. Let us show you who you are instead of just telling you."
But you can't show me all of who I was, because you don't know all of who I was. Just a lifetime, as Daniel Jackson. A lifetime more than I know of myself. It would be good to know at least who I was most recently.
"I'll think about it."
She didn't respond for a moment, then he heard a quiet, "Okay," and movement, as she stood to leave.
~ ~~ ~
He could hear them talking as he packed the few items he wanted to keep with him, lifting the small bag to his shoulder before stepping out of the tent.
"What of Daniel Jackson?"
The tall man with the golden symbol on his head, he thought he'd heard him called Teal'c, looked at Sam as he asked the question, and Daniel spoke up in answer. He wouldn't find any answers here about who he was, or what he was.
"He's going home."
Author: morgynleri_fic
Fandoms: Highlander/Stargate: SG1
Characters: Daniel Jackson/Jesse Collins, Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter
Author's Note: I actually drew very heavily from the Stargate episode "Fallen", with the dialogue lifted wholesale from a couple of scenes. So it's not so much an original scene as an interpretation of a scene already in existance, all from the point of view of Daniel/Jesse.
He settled onto his bed, leaning forward to rest his face in his hands, trying to still the racing thoughts in his head. The strangers had called him Daniel, but it wasn't the name he'd remembered while living here. Perhaps a name he'd taken later, after the memories stopped. After he'd... died.
A quiet sigh escaped him, and he grimaced as he recalled how it had felt. The pain of bullets hitting him, the darkness creeping across his vision. Someone calling his name, Jesse. Shouting with fear, trying to protect him with their words, but failing.
I wasn't the only one who died. Just the only one who came back. Why?
He couldn't actually remember coming back to life, not that time. His memories of his life before this planet stopped with that death, and he wasn't sure what he had become afterwards. What had happened when he'd been given that terrible curse of immortality. A curse, and perhaps a gift, but one that hadn't reassured him when he'd discovered its existance.
He lowered his hands, dropping his chin to his chest, thinking about what he'd done earlier in the day. Shamda would have been disturbed to find out what he had done. But he had to know how far this went. How much he could take, and still keep on living. Whatever had removed his memories hadn't taken away the curse.
Footsteps came from outside his tent, and he looked up, frowning slightly when he saw one of the strangers at the entry of his tent. It felt like the world lurched when he saw him, and the unbidden sense that this man wouldn't understand what he'd done any more than Shamda would.
"Please leave me alone." He held up his hand as he spoke, as if warding the man away. The wounds beneath his robes were still healing, scars pulling at the skin as they slowly vanished.
The man stood there a moment, leaning against one of the boxes that had been stored in his tent, watching him. "I'm Jack O'Neill," he said as he walked over to sit down, gesturing as he spoke to emphasize his words, "and barring some freakish similarity, you are Doctor Daniel Jackson."
The slight emphasis Jack put on the title confused him, wondering what was so important about that title. It wasn't his name, after all. He watched Jack a moment, shaking his head slightly.
"This tent is all I know," he murmured, feeling reluctant to tell Jack about his memories of Jesse Collins. "These people, they're all I know." He could see the conternation and faint annoyance play across Jack's face, the man's fingers tapping against his leg a moment. "Before I woke up in the forest, I don't remember anything." He paused, looking down at his hands a moment.
"I have tried... I have tried to remember who I was before." After I died, before I woke up here. He gave a small shake of his head before continuing, dismissing the thought. "Sometimes I think it's right there, floating in front of me... and all I have to do is reach out and grab it. I try..." He shook his head again. "... and it's gone."
Jack licked his lips, looking away as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He let out a sigh, a slight puff of air before he looked up to speak. "You were a member of my team, SG1. You're a friend of mine. Last year, you died." He said it all with a straight face, no trace of doubt in his eyes.
It wasn't a surprise. He'd died before. But... how? What had happened this time? Why couldn't he remember anything about being this Daniel Jackson that Jack said he was?
"I'm dead?" He gave Jack a skeptical look, wondering if anyone would believe him if he told them he knew he died. He remembered dying, but not being the man they thought he was.
Jack stared a moment before replying, the same expression, the faintest hint of exasperation mixed with disbelief and certainty. "Obviously not." Jack paused, his gaze flickering to one side, and back to his face. "You just sorta died. Actually, you.. ascended to a higher plane of existance." He gestured as he spoke, as if trying to erase the doubt that was clear on the face of his audience. "Last time I saw you, you were helping us fight Anubis."
"Anubis?" This was getting stranger and stranger. He'd helped some miners fight back against his father when he was Jesse, he remembered that. But he doubted that it was anything like what Jack was talking about.
"Yeah." Jack grimaced. "Kind of an over-the-top, cliche bad guy. Black cloak, oily skin, kind of spooky." Jack's voice trailed off as he reached the end of the description, seeing the confusion working its way back into his expression. "Anyway," he continued briskly, shaking his head a moment, "obviously since then, you've retaken human form somehow. I..." He paused again, the silence filled by the sounds of the camp around them.
"Actually, I can see how this might seem a bit unusual..."
He cut Jack off, wishing now that the man would go away and stop confusing him more than he already had. "A bit? Why am I here?" The second question came out without conscious thought, voicing the question that had repeated over and over in his mind after he woke up.
"Hey, why are any of us here?" Jack kept his tone light, trying to smile.
He looked away, squinting slightly at the light from outside, but said nothing. He wondered if Jack actually knew why he asked the question he did. Not, "Why am I on this planet?" or "Why did I come back from being ascended?", but "Why can't I die?" Though I do wonder about this ascending to a higher existance. If I can't die, why did I chose to ascend?
Jack sighed. "Honestly, I don't know," his voice took on the note of conviction it had earlier, "but you gotta trust me. You are Daniel Jackson. Think of it this way: out of all the planets in the galaxy, why this one, if not for us to find you."
He could see Jack gesture at the edges of his vision, movements that emphasized his words. He wondered if Jack always talked so much with his hands as well as his voice. "So you're saying a higher power had a hand in putting me here?"
"I don't know. That was generally your department."
Silence fell, and he looked away, pressing his lips together as he turned over Jack's words in his mind. Maybe what he said, that he was this Daniel Jackson, was true, and that life could fill in the gaping hole in between dying as Jesse, and waking up here to become Arrom. A gap that felt too large to be spanned by a single lifetime.
After a few moments, Jack sighed, and left. He could hear him say something to the woman who'd come with them, and he shifted towards the cushions on his floor, reaching for a straw to light another candle, waiting. He doubted the woman would leave him be to think, though if asked, he'd be unable to say why.
"Can I come in?"
He looked over at the woman as she stood, bent to look into his tent, considering a moment. At least she had asked, instead of coming in without asking, like Jack. He leaned forward to blow out the candle he'd just lit before sitting back.
"Sure."
He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she settled onto the floor, the weapon she carried cradled in her lap like other women would hold a child. "So..." She trailed off, looking uncertain as he turned his head forward again, his gaze on his hands instead of her.
"What did you say your name was again?"
"Samantha Carter. You used to call me Sam."
"Yeah, well, like I already told Jim..."
"Uh, Jack." She closed her eyes a moment, and he wondered why. Did it bother her a lot to hear Jack's name mangled slightly?
"Jack?" He rolled his eyes slightly, shaking his head. "Yeah. I told him."
"I guess what I don't understand is you aren't dying to know all about who you are."
Because who you remember me as isn't who I've always been.
"I am..." He tilted his head back slightly to gaze at the ceiling. "...and I'm not."
Wanting to know about the lifetimes of memories he was missing, and uncertain if he wanted to know who he'd been. He hadn't been the best of people as Jesse. Better, perhaps, than his father, and the men he'd hired, but he hadn't done everything he could. He didn't think so, anyway.
"See, it's the not part..." Sam shook her head as she spoke, and he interrupted, trying to give her a sense of what he was feeling, without telling her about what he was, or the memories of Jesse that he still had.
"What if I don't like who I was?" A lifetime like Jesse, only less involved than he was then. Less able, or less willing, after dying trying to help those miners. Trying, and failing. "What if I don't want to be that person?" He paused, wondering for a moment if the worst that could have happened for him was to be uninvolved. "What if I don't have it in me to make up for something I've done wrong?"
Sam stared at him for a second with confusion. "I have to admit, that never occured to me."
He nodded, looking away.
"Look, we all thought we'd lost you at one point. It was one of the hardest things I've ever been through. You were... you are... brilliant. One of the most caring, passionate..." She paused, as if trying to find the right words to convince him of what she said. "You're the type of person who would give his life for someone he doesn't even know."
I have given my life for someone else. Jesse died to help a group of men he never should have known, or cared about. I shouldn't. He didn't voice his thoughts, though he turned his head back towards her, his gaze directed towards the candle he'd lit and extinguished.
"Well, that doesn't sound so bad." He wondered if dying for someone meant more if you couldn't get back up again.
"If you had one fault, it was that you wanted to save people so badly, you wanted to help people so much, that it tore you apart when you couldn't make a difference."
"That actually sounds kind of hard to live up to." It was an image of him that made him think of Jesse's friend Duncan. A thought he'd have to explore more later, perhaps.
"All I know is that if I were you, I would definately want to get to know me... you."
He looked back over at her, a bit of a smile on his face. "I get it."
"Come back with us. Let us show you who you are instead of just telling you."
But you can't show me all of who I was, because you don't know all of who I was. Just a lifetime, as Daniel Jackson. A lifetime more than I know of myself. It would be good to know at least who I was most recently.
"I'll think about it."
She didn't respond for a moment, then he heard a quiet, "Okay," and movement, as she stood to leave.
~ ~~ ~
He could hear them talking as he packed the few items he wanted to keep with him, lifting the small bag to his shoulder before stepping out of the tent.
"What of Daniel Jackson?"
The tall man with the golden symbol on his head, he thought he'd heard him called Teal'c, looked at Sam as he asked the question, and Daniel spoke up in answer. He wouldn't find any answers here about who he was, or what he was.
"He's going home."