Happy Birthday Abyssis
Way back over the holiday season,
abyssinia4077 posted a list of holiday wishes. I said I’d do #4 for her. I can no longer see the entry, but I believe #4 was something along the lines of a deep, thinky, review of one of her stories.
I haven’t been very active in fandom lately, and I’ve been even less thinky. Something to do with spending most of my day dealing with a nine-month-old and his various bodily fluids, I’m sure. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Still, I wanted to produce something, even if it isn’t quite what she had in mind and it’s horribly late.
So, in honour of your birthday, Abyssis, here’s a not-very-thinky, not-really-a-review, not-really-useful set of random thoughts about your Weep Not for the Past. (original fic posted here).
Weep Not For the Past ("Threads" tag) (975 words)
Daniel wasn't even gone long enough for his office to acquire dust (any more than usual), much less be given to and re-organized by someone else. He must have had a heck of a time finding everything after his first descension, between Jonas’s unavoidable reorganization and his own not-quite-back memory. After he'd been cleared by whichever doctor was currently reigning in the infirmary (they've been rotating doctors since Janet and he really should take the time to learn their names, but they're usually gone so quickly and he's more tired than he used to be) Oh, ouch. Love that. and found his clothing still in his locker (still bearing skin cells from his last body and how is it that he doesn't find that weird?), making the weirdness impressive for even a jaded sci-fi fan. Excellent. Poor Daniel. it felt natural to return to this room, entombed beneath the Earth, like any other dead person would have been by now surrounded by journals of his past and ancient scrolls and artifacts from around the galaxy. Nice inclusion of Daniel’s journal’s with all the rest of the history.
Soon he'll have to report to Jack (who understands when Daniel needs some time alone to get his head straight because of personal experience neglecting to give him that time, no doubt.), he'll have to face Sam (who has more shadows under her eyes than when he left) I love how you have him notice that, even if he doesn’t yet know why they’re there. and the guilt he knows she'll feel, ‘Oh, good. My father died, I broke up with the man I was supposed to marry, and the replicator double who humiliatingly tricked me tortured and murdered one of my closest friends. Could this day get any better?’ and he'll have to congratulate Teal'c (who he expects to no longer be everpresent) on his long-awaited victory. Someone needs to write crack!fic where Teal’c secretly locks himself in his quarters to do a Jaffa touchdown dance. For now he needs to ground himself back into his life, center his thoughts, work through his latest visit to the higher planes. Soon they'll all have to figure out what's next.
The half-finished translations don't attract his interest any more than the blueprints from the Antarctic base he was trying to piece together, so instead he sets himself to tidying up. I like how his brain can’t get intellectually interested right now, so he turns to a basic chore to clear his head. Books and scrolls and notes and odd sheets of paper were scattered on every surface, leaning in their shelves, from the months when he was always too busy dealing with the next crisis to find time to store them away. I wish I had this excuse. Well no, actually. On second thought I guess I don’t.
He was juggling Suetonius's De Vita Caesarum (and is he ever glad they've never found a Goa'uld impersonating Caligula Ugh. No kidding.) in one hand and Tacitus's Ab Excessu Divi Augusti in the other and trying to not drop a very poor translation maybe the translator was just trying to inject a sense of humour into dear old Livy? of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita while shelving them among Pliny and Ovid and Virgil and Cato (he had this theory, since Ancient appeared to be a precursor to Latin, that maybe he could find a clue in one of these texts to other Ancient sites on Earth Good theory.) when a cough at the door almost made him drop them all. Daniel couldn't say who he was expecting when he turned, but it certainly wasn't the man he found.
"Bra'tac! I hadn't realized you were still here," he said, forcing cheer into his voice he did not feel. The reaction seems true to me, though the ‘he did not feel’ part seems a touch redundant. "Congratulations on a great victory for the Jaffa."
"It has been long in coming," Bra'tac acknowledged, stepping in and looking around at the overflowing shelves. "And there is still work to be done. We have much to thank you for."
Daniel froze, watching his thumb rub over the face of a Roman emperor. Tiberius looked up at him, image frozen in copper thousands of years ago. Oh, very nice. Daniel’s very tactile (with objects), and this sort of thing makes his emotional state and his voice shine through. "No, not really. You and Teal'c, you should be the heroes." Deep down, he was too tired - of the fighting, the accolades, of losing everything over and over again. If history had taught him anything, it was that even when heroes were remembered, they rarely lived to see it. Plato had written that only dead men see the end of the war. Daniel was dead several times over but deep down, he couldn't really believe this would be an end. Did you mean for that to read like that? My brain wants to see either ‘there would be an end’ or ‘this would be the end’. It’s possible your way; it just has what I find an odd connotation.
Suddenly Bra'tac was in front of him, hands gripping his shoulders until Daniel looked into his eyes. And here we have someone who’s tactile with people. "A warrior should celebrate his victory, not mourn it. What is wrong?"
"Do the Jaffa have history?" Oh, great question. Daniel asked him instead, holding up the books. "Rome was a great empire on Earth two thousand years ago - stretching to the edges of their known world. History remembers it for its art and poetry, for new methods of government, and for its mighty armies. Don’t forget its fashion sense. But the empire collapsed, just like every society does in time. Something people need to be more aware of than they are. The reason we know about it, the reason we still know the names of people who lived there, is that these men took the time to write it down."
Bra'tac shook his head. "The Goa'uld had no use for a Jaffa who was not devoted to either worshipping them or fighting for them and no use for truth to be preserved for the next generation. I wonder if the Goa’uld ever need help in the propaganda department. Must be hard for an infallible deity to spin a devastating loss. We have no scholars like yourself or those who wrote your books, but we still have history passed from father to son. And the heroes we remember are not false." Can the heroes be true if their battles were hollow?
Daniel looked down at the books in his hands, thought about other books in this office about other civilizations, none of which mention alien interference and false gods. "I've always believed these words," he tried to explain. "Historians like these - reading them and understanding them, searching for all the other clues to explain our past and where we came from was my life's work. But since we opened the Stargate, I've learned that so much I thought was true was a lie. Oh, ouch again. You’ve done a good job at showing a non-religious crisis of faith. And now, with the Ancients -" Daniel stopped. He could still remember Kheb and the look on Bra'tac's face at entering such a holy place. Oma and the other Ancients may have destroyed any faith he had in them, but there was no need to do the same to Bra'tac. Nice sensitivity even in his turmoil. "I don't know what to believe anymore."
Bra'tac examined him closely, then placed his hand on Daniel's chest and Daniel imagined he could feel his heart thudding against his ribcage beneath the man's palm. I love this image. "Believe in this. And believe in those who would stand by your side." Without another word he turned to leave, but stopped at the door.
"What is it?" Daniel asked.
"I was just remembering a young, wide-eyed scholar I once underestimated," Bra'tac answered, before slipping into the hall and out of sight. Ah, Bra’tac. Such a sentimental old softie. Y’know, for being the only man in existence who can totally pwn Teal’c.