Journeys (2a/5)
Title: Journeys (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Part I a b
XXXXX
Part II: Ascension
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The debriefing was surprisingly short. Maybe it just seemed that way to Daniel, who parted ways with Oma after promising not to linger long, and then kept finding himself distracted by the flows of energy in the briefing room that he could actually see if he thought about it. He didn't know how long he'd spent playing and drifting along the SGC corridors, following a speck of dust being carried through the vents, before he returned to see everyone leaving the briefing room.
Sam was sad, he could see. Daniel had just touched Jack's mind, and Teal'c had walled himself away so stiffly that he wasn't sure how to proceed, so he turned back to Sam instead.
Daniel found her asleep at Martouf's bedside, where an elderly man slowly blinked his eyes open and stared at her without recognition. When Jacob stepped close to the bed some time later, Daniel wasn't sure if he was there because Lantash wanted to see Martouf, or if Jacob wanted to comfort Sam or if he was hoping she would comfort him instead.
Jacob backed away eventually. "We'll come back after we find the rest of the Tok'ra," he said quietly, though it wasn't certain whether he was talking to Sam or to Lantash. He draped a blanket over Sam where she sat, and, in sleep, she clutched at it tightly.
When he left, Daniel sat down on the bed and experimentally touched her shoulder. He couldn't tell whether she'd felt it or not, because he didn't seem to have hands and didn't know what he was actually doing when he imagined himself sitting, but he thought she looked calmer. Maybe he was fooling himself.
He sighed as he slipped gently onto Abydos.
...x...
"God-killer," people were whispering.
"No," others countered. "Not just a god-killer; a god."
Daniel stood watching his brothers as they guarded the Stargate. The conversation was hushed, subdued, tentative, and everything he didn't associate with his homeland. "There are no gods," one scoffed. "How many times must you learn before you believe it? Only tyrants."
"But not him," Nabeh insisted. "He is no tyrant. You saw it yourself--he died and was reborn into light. He rose over us, went through the pyramid."
"He spoke to Skaara," someone else said.
"I heard nothing. He was not even awake."
"Not aloud; his spirit."
"Yes, it must have been. O'Neill, too. They changed their minds so quickly. He did something."
"God-killer," someone whispered again.
And then, Skaara's voice cut through and said, "His name was Dan'yel."
Conversation halted. The men looked up to see Skaara at the entrance to the pyramid. "Skaara," Tobay said, wary, gentle, like someone speaking to a wild animal and not to one of his closest brothers. "Of course. We know that."
"Then you can say it when you speak of my brother," Skaara snapped, angrily snatching up a gun and opening the chamber. "Our brother, yi shay. You know he hates to be named in the stories. "
Instead, the men stopped talking at all.
"Did hate," Skaara corrected himself quietly. He stared at the gun he was cleaning and oiling with the intensity of someone who knew everyone was either looking at him or studiously not looking at him. His movements were harsh, too jerky, the way Daniel had seen him once after being freed from Klorel, when he had discovered that some of his best friends had died in the first fight against Apophis. The men knew it, too--they were nudging each other and asking with their eyes if someone should make him stop before he shot someone by accident.
"Skaara," Daniel said. "Calm down."
Skaara stopped.
Daniel perked up. "Can you hear me?" he said excitedly. "Can you..." He touched Skaara's hand where it lay still on the barrel of the gun. "I'm right here."
"Daniel."
He turned around, wondering if someone else had seen him, but it wasn't that. "Shifu!" Daniel said, recognizing his wise little brother. "It's you! Look--I think Skaara heard me--"
"Daniel," Shifu repeated, holding up a small hand as Skaara raised his head and looked around. "No. You cannot."
"What?" Daniel said. "Why?"
In answer, Shifu held out a hand. "Come with me."
...x...
Slipping from one place to another wasn't about moving fast, which Daniel had tried to do at first. He wasn't sure how he moved if he was immaterial, but he simply was somewhere and then somewhere else. Space wasn't the same when he could be so many places at once.
And sometimes, it was like he was everywhere, and it was incredible.
It wasn't until Daniel had gone to Earth that he'd realized how small Abydos and its population were in comparison to a planet like Earth. He had slowly come to the realization that even Earth was small, and then, one day, he'd sat in a Goa'uld death glider and stared at the Earth and understood that they were like nothing compared to the rest of the universe. Now, he knew that, compared to everything here, their world, their galaxy, their universe, their whole plane was tiny, barely even a speck from this height.
He couldn't see anything clear in that greater picture--though he could tell that, if he tried hard enough, it might resolve into meaning--and, for now, he turned away from the chaotic patterns in favor of more familiar ground.
He had just not-quite-died, he defended to himself when he felt cowardly for shying away. He was allowed some time to settle before branching out more than he already had.
"Are you okay?" he asked when Shifu finally brought them to some place that looked like Kheb. Daniel couldn't tell whether they were actually on Kheb, in whatever sense they could be on a physical planet, or if it was something drawn from Shifu's mind, or even Oma's.
Shifu folded his hands in front of himself. "Why do you ask this?" he said.
"I was...just wondering," Daniel said. "We never saw you again, and we...we worry. Your mother and I have been worried about you."
"I am well," Shifu said. "Daniel, has Oma not spoken to you of these things?"
"What things?" Daniel said.
"You cannot interfere in such a way as you did just then," Shifu told him seriously.
"I only said Skaara's name," Daniel said.
"Yes," Shifu said, nodding.
"But," Daniel said, confused. "But he was sad."
"And if he begins to believe that you are still present--if he spends his days hoping to see you again?" Shifu said. "He is mourning you. Let him mourn without fighting ghosts, too."
That made sense, Daniel thought reluctantly. He wondered whether he should care more that his brother was mourning him, but it was easier not to feel that when he wasn't standing on that plane and watching it unfold. His mind was clearer this way. And yet, even standing here... "I don't feel very enlightened," he said.
"This is not the end of your journey, my brother," Shifu said. "But you cannot reach enlightenment if you seek always to return."
Before he could ask where it was he was supposed to be--because surely he couldn't just stay here and be--another voice behind him said, "You need to go on."
Daniel turned and saw Oma Desala moving toward him. "On?" he repeated.
"You have reached a higher plane of existence," Oma explained. "It was your journey in life that brought you here, and it is your journey here that will lead you further. But you cannot go back. Learn to accept that, or you will remain still forever."
Acceptance. A necessary part of his job had been to accept new ways and cultures, but it could also be dangerous to accept without thinking. "I still don't understand any more than before," he said. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Perhaps you try too much," Shifu suggested. "From the moment I was born, brother, you have been trying to find something you could never find on your own."
"I was trying to keep you safe back then," Daniel said. "What else could I have done?"
"Nothing," Shifu said. "You did all you could do, and that is the good that Oma saw within you. Now, you must learn to see beyond the limits of the lower planes."
Daniel felt a flash of frustration. It was oddly comforting, as fleeting as the feeling was, even if he knew he was supposed to be trying to give up the things that had defined his mortal life. At least frustration was still a part of him.
Oma shook her head. "And did I not tell you to wait until I could explain to you?" she chided. "You disappeared as soon as I tried to find you."
"I wasn't hiding," Daniel said. When Oma didn't answer, he added, "Mostly. I had to see them. I had to check on them."
"And what would you have done to comfort them?" she said. Daniel opened his mouth to say he could do plenty, because it looked like he could make Skaara hear him--and Orlin had done it once with Sam, Shifu with Daniel and Sha'uri, and Oma with all of them--but before he could speak, she said, "You cannot interfere in their matters, Daniel."
"Why?" he said.
"Does the SGC meddle in the affairs of other cultures?" Oma said.
"Yes," Daniel said. "We don't try to, most of the time. But it happens anyway."
"And yet," she pointed out, "SGC makes an effort not to interfere with others' lives more than they have to."
That was true. And even so, more than a few thought the SGC did too much. "But I'm from their culture this time," he said. "It's not interference if I'm one of them, is it?"
Oma sighed. "Listen to yourself, Daniel. You aren't one of them anymore. You're one of us. You must accept that and let them live their own lives."
"There is much to learn," Shifu added.
"Okay," Daniel sighed. "I'll try."
...x...
Nonetheless, he found himself standing on Earth again after leaving Shifu and Oma's Kheb.
General Hammond found Nyan in the archaeology office, in front of Daniel's desk. "Are you all right?" the general said.
Nyan's hand hovered over something on the desk but was pulled back before he actually touched anything. He shook his head. "I don't understand what happened," he said.
Daniel stepped around them toward Robert's old desk. It wasn't Robert's desk anymore--it was a place for people to put things when Daniel's inbox overflowed, and it served almost as a filing area, but Daniel always thought of it as Robert's. One of these work areas would have to be cleared soon--they wouldn't hold empty desks in an empty office for dead men. He hoped that whoever was assigned to his desk was warned to stay out of Jack's way.
"I'm not sure any of us really understands it," the general was saying.
"Is Martouf going to die?" Nyan said. The two of them hadn't been close, exactly, but all the aliens on base shared an awareness that they were others, and that they had at least a little bit in common that the Tau'ri couldn't understand even if they tried.
General Hammond pursed his lips, perhaps looking for a tactful way to say 'yes.' "Eventually," he finally said.
"Sooner rather than later?"
"We've never seen quite this case before," the general said. "Martouf is an old man by human standards. But he was in near-perfect health before Lantash left his body, and he's getting excellent care."
"His mind--"
"He's very old, son," the general said, rather than explain that Martouf didn't recognize much of anything when he was occasionally awake.
Nyan seemed to understand not to push further. "And Daniel's really dead?"
"Not exactly."
"Then..."
"We don't know if he can come back," the general said patiently. "But he's in a better place."
"Really?" Nyan asked.
General Hammond nodded firmly. Daniel couldn't tell if he believed that, but the affirmation was for Nyan, anyway, not for himself. "I'm sure of it. And I think the last thing he would want is to have everyone unhappy, including you, Nyan."
Daniel almost agreed aloud, just to let someone hear, but he remembered Oma's words and decided to stay silent. Maybe she would leave him to his own devices longer if he was quiet.
Well, that wasn't what she had meant--listening to advice did not mean avoiding the advice-giver or staying quiet to stay unnoticed--but it was the way Daniel knew best after years of evading complete disobedience rather than truly obeying orders. Jack was the only commander who had understood that fully, and if he had been annoyed by it, he had come to value it, too. Daniel had the feeling it would take longer for Oma Desala to become accustomed to him.
And so, he decided again, the best way was to stay quiet and out of sight.
...x...
Sometimes, though, he couldn't really help it.
Jack was in Daniel's room in their house, methodically packing the books Daniel had accumulated over the years into boxes.
There were photographs on the bookshelf. In the most recent, Sam was scowling at Daniel while he grinned and held her laptop out of reach. In another, Teal'c held two fingers behind Jack's head like ears while Sam tried so hard not to laugh that her face was pink. And then there was an old one from when Daniel had been smaller and a little scared, swimming in a borrowed sweater from Jack and borrowed BDU trousers from base that were held up with a borrowed belt from Sam--Jack stood behind him with Sam and Teal'c on either side in front of a table of dirty dishes from dinner, Sam's arm out of frame as she held the camera out.
As Daniel watched now, Jack picked up the last one and started to put it into the box. Then he stopped and put it back. He started to turn away, then made a face and pushed it over sharply so it fell face-down on the empty bookshelf. He picked it up quickly, as if to check that the glass wasn't broken, then replaced it and turned the other two photos face-down, too, more carefully.
He walked swiftly out of the room, leaving the last box half-empty and still open. Daniel watched the door swing shut and knew Jack wouldn't be coming into this room often. Some people sought the past to reconcile the present; Jack pushed past aside to survive the future.
When Daniel followed him, he was sitting on the roof, nursing a bottle of beer and ignoring the telescope next to him in favor of looking up blankly at the sky. They had sat here together before, sometimes just to relax while Jack played with his telescope and Daniel read a book. Other times, they had come here seeking silence after a friend's wake or a failed mission or, in the early days, a particularly bad nightmare.
Daniel looked over his shoulder, though he knew he might not see any Ascended beings who might be keeping an eye on him. Still...
Jack set his bottle down on the railing. He started to sit back, but Daniel pushed the telescope, very slightly, so that it swung gently in one direction--against the wind--before reversing and landing in Jack's hand.
Freezing where he was, Jack stared at the telescope but didn't move his hand away. "Don't screw with me," he whispered, his fingers curling lightly around the telescope.
Daniel tapped the telescope once more, and then stood aside.
With an exhalation that was less laughter than grief, Jack shook his head and picked the bottle back up. This time, before he raised it to his lips, he tilted it once in salute. Daniel sat with him for the rest of the night and looked up at the stars.
...x...
Teal'c wasn't in kelno'reem.
"Here you are," Sam said when she found him in the gym.
"Major Carter," Teal'c greeted, not looking up from the barbell he was hefting. Daniel knew it was too heavy--no one else would notice the Jaffa lifting more than he strictly should, except maybe Jack or Janet, who kept track, but Daniel had spent enough time in this room with his friend to know Teal'c was pushing just a little too hard. "How is Martouf?"
She shrugged uncomfortably. "Same as before. We've been able to keep him alive--if another Tok'ra symbiote needs a host, it might be able to reverse the increased aging. We don't really know if or how that happens, though, so it might be permanent."
The chances that a Tok'ra symbiote even wanted to blend with a host as damaged as Martouf were low, anyway. She didn't say it, but Daniel was sure Teal'c heard it nonetheless.
"And your father?" Teal'c said.
"Going back to the Tok'ra," she said. "Trying to figure out what's going on, where they resettled, all of that. He'll come back and let us as soon as they know more. He's, uh...been a little testy, though, so...just so you know the next time he comes around."
That wasn't surprising--Martouf had been the cooler head while Lantash had offered passion, and Selmak's wry composure had kept Jacob's crankier tendencies in check. "They are in mourning," Teal'c said as an explanation.
Sam seemed uncertain for a moment. Then, as if she couldn't hold it in any longer, she said, her tone almost belligerent, "What about you?"
"Of what do you speak, Major Carter?" Teal'c answered.
She gestured to him, at the perfectly normal sight of the Jaffa exercising. "You just lost someone, too. I thought there was a three-day mourning ritual for Jaffa on Chulak."
Daniel winced when Teal'c set a barbell back on the pins a little harder than necessary. "We are not on Chulak," Teal'c said evenly, sitting up, "and Daniel Jackson is not dead."
Sam shook her head angrily and began to walk out. Before she could, though, she turned back around. "So that's it?" she said. "No memorial, no body left, so we pretend it never happened? We're not allowed to..."
She stopped, but of all of them, Sam had always been the worst at hiding her thoughts when the look in her eyes screamed what she was thinking.
It was late in the evening, and there weren't many people in the gym. The few who were, however, glanced her way and then away again. She must have noticed, too, and she turned around and walked stiffly out of the gym without another word. It was a long time before Teal'c moved from where he sat. No one bothered either of them.
...x...
"Colonel," Sam said, jogging down the corridor to catch up to Jack. "Colonel O'Neill!"
Jack glanced back at her, so disinterested that anyone who knew him knew that all was not well but that he would pretend otherwise. "Major Carter."
"Could I have a word, sir?"
"Nope," he said, "unless it's about the asteroid heading toward Earth."
Daniel frowned and looked up toward the ceiling, only to berate himself for forgetting yet again that he wasn't really standing here on Earth and bound by the restrictions of being on Earth. By the time he'd decided he should find out what was happening, Sam was saying, "What? Asteroid?"
With a nod, Jack said, "Yep. Breaktime's over."
She stopped walking, looking lost. "But...we just lost Daniel, and..."
...and Martouf and Selmak, and her father was quieter than ever and Lantash apparently vacillating between trying to adapt to his new host and trying not to blame his new host for needing him to leave his old one. No one else had been as close as Sam to all of them, and no one else wanted to admit anything was wrong.
"We lose people all the time, Major," Jack said. "We move on. We've got a mission now."
"Jack," Daniel sighed, reproachful, as Sam's jaw dropped in disbelief.
"He wasn't just anyone, sir!" Sam said. "Couldn't we...isn't there--"
Jack stopped and turned to look at her. "We've got a mission," he repeated, his voice hard. "There's an asteroid heading for our fair planet that might kill us all, and I need you to figure out how to stop it."
For a moment, Daniel thought she was going to retort or even pull him physically to a halt. Instead, she fell silent, her fists clenched at her sides, and followed Jack to the briefing room. Duty came first for Sam, always, even when she hated it.
Daniel slipped away from the post he'd taken up here and looked with a sight he hadn't yet mastered, one that slid and shifted past him in a dizzying whirl of faces and colors and sounds that made less sense, rather than more, simply because there was so much. Taking a deep breath (even that was a construct of his mind, he reminded himself--no form, no lungs, no breath), Daniel focused on what his mind insisted was upward.
"Daniel," Oma said from behind him. He winced. "Look at me," she continued sternly, and waited until he'd obeyed. "If you can't control yourself and listen, the Others make you do so in a less gentle way."
"What did I do?" Daniel protested. "I didn't do anything this time. I'm just looking. Look--I can't even--I don't even know what I'm looking at."
She regarded him solemnly, and he wondered if it was a mark of how badly he was doing that even an enlightened being seemed a little annoyed at him.
"Is this wrong?" Daniel said. "Oma--"
"Don't tell me that you don't understand," she interrupted. "I've told you already, and you insist on disobeying."
"You've told me what not to do," he retorted, "which, by the way, I haven't done--I'm looking and not touching. But I still don't have anything to do. I mean..." He forced himself to back away, until he could see the lower planes, but was immediately confused again by the overload of thoughts and information and had to shake himself out of it.
"You've been on our plane for a very short time," Oma said. "It's only been a few days for them, and, therefore, for you. Give it time."
"Can you show me?" Daniel said. "I was going to see what this asteroid was that they were talking about--I won't do anything," he promised when she began to frown again. "But I have to see, at least. There's no harm in knowing."
Oma seemed torn between the hope that he was trying to adapt to this existence and suspicion of his motives. "All right," she said, and held out a piece of paper.
Confused, Daniel accepted it. "This...is a joke, right?" he said once he'd glanced at it. "Ascended beings get their information by memo?"
She shrugged. "This is your mind, not mine," she pointed out. "You were the one who wanted to know. I'd read it if I were you--it does one no good to ignore one's memos."
Oma Desala, as it turned out, had a very odd sense of humor.
He looked at his memo, which was written on paper bearing a letterhead that looked a lot like the very-familiar Department of Defense ones, until he looked closer and saw:
DEPARTMENT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
DUTIES EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Higher Plane, Universe
"Very funny," Daniel said.
"I thought so," she agreed.
...x...
"We have to do something," Daniel said once he understood what was happening.
"Daniel," Oma sighed. "How many times will I have to tell you?"
He imagined the asteroid moving toward Earth, SG-1 sailing toward it in a half-repaired teltak. "But the System Lords cheated. You saw it--they're cheating and trying to fool the Asgard and break the treaty, and over six billion people are going to die! SG-1 doesn't even know what they're dealing with."
"If they cheat, does that make it right for you to do the same?" she asked.
"But why would it be cheating?"
"There are rules," she said.
"Well, they're stupid rules," Daniel said.
"Should've asked to see the contract before you signed up," Oma said.
Daniel blinked, thinking that that expression in itself was proof that he wasn't the only one who snooped around the lower plane. "I was busy dying at the time," he said, feeling sullen and a bit apprehensive about what else he might have missed in his haste.
She was unmoved. "That's how it goes. Can't change it now."
"So...so we just stand around but can't do anything," Daniel clarified. "Is that it?"
Oma folded her arms and gave him a severe look. "You're making this difficult on purpose," she said. "I used to think Jack O'Neill got so infuriated with you because he was being stubborn. Now I'm starting to understand how he felt."
"Did I...just get insulted by Mother Nature?" Daniel said, thinking that Jack would have been impressed. "What do we do, then, other than contemplating our navels?"
"You don't have a navel anymore," she told him. "If you'd slow down and listen for once, maybe you'd stop leaping to wrong conclusions. You of all people should know that nothing is that straightforward." Daniel looked back, as if he could see the naquadah-loaded asteroid careening toward Earth. "Don't you trust your friends?"
"Well, yes," he said, turning back to her. "But they're...not in the best state of mind right now." And that was true, but in fact, he thought Sam probably worked more efficiently in times like this, when she had a problem to stop her from thinking about worse things. Jack would just be sharper than normal and Teal'c quieter; they weren't in the best frame of mind, but it didn't mean they weren't functioning. Still... "They don't know--"
"How many times have you and they stumbled on something that was previously unknown?" she asked rhetorically. "And how many times have you succeeded nonetheless? Trust them, Daniel. It's their world now, not yours, and it's up to them to stop it."
Daniel sighed. "Okay. Fine. Maybe you're right. So it's, what, against the rules to do anything to help them using the advantages I have from being on this plane?"
"Exactly," she said intently. "Yes, Daniel."
Surprised at the emphasis in her answer, Daniel stopped and thought about what he'd said, and how that was different from what he'd asked before. "Using...the advantages I have now," he repeated, and Oma smiled very slightly. "Oh. So..." He paused again. "But I can't...not be like this. Everything I do would be done as an Ascended person."
"Listen carefully," Oma said, for perhaps the twentieth time since he had Ascended. For perhaps the first time, Daniel shut up and listened carefully. "I didn't make you Ascend."
"Yes you did," Daniel said.
Oma gave him a look.
"I mean...go on," he said.
"You Ascended," she continued. "You. Anyone with the will could have done it."
"Not without knowing it was possible," Daniel said. "I wouldn't have known that without you."
"And if I had been alive on the lower plane at the time," Oma said, "I could still have told you all of that. Teaching about Ascension isn't something that one must be Ascended to do."
"So you weren't breaking the rules by doing that," he said, "because you weren't using any...specially enlightened powers to do it."
She tilted her head. "You're starting to get the idea."
Daniel turned to the side and found another note on his desk, reading, 'Teltak from Revanna was successfully repaired. SG-1 has launched to intercept asteroid. ETA: seven days. Asteroid is expected to collide with Earth in approximately nine days.' Below that was a summary of how and where and when and who, along with the chances of success.
When Daniel looked up, Oma was still watching him. "Daniel," she said, more gently, "it's hard for everyone to accept this at first, but you are no longer part of life as you know it."
"I know that," he said, but he couldn't help a feeling of dejection even as he said it.
"You cherished your life deeply," she said, "even in your darkest moments. You knew every time what the chances were of dying, but it still feels unfair to have lost your life so young."
Daniel swallowed. "I don't regret what I did," he said.
"But you haven't accepted it yet," she said.
"I have," he said, not even sure whether or not he was lying this time.
"It's all right. It takes time--Ascension is a journey, not a single step. Sooner or later, you'll learn to accept this existence and everything it entails. The more you resist, the harder that journey will be."
"I'm not resisting."
"You are," she said. "And now you're lying to yourself."
He didn't answer.
Oma placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know it's confusing. Perhaps it will help to think in terms of what your choices are--what paths you have to choose from. Right now, you can linger and watch your friends in their cargo ship...or you can trust them to do their job and come with me to learn what it is you can do as you are now. There are so many wonders you haven't seen."
Daniel bit his lip and looked down at the desk again. The memo was unchanged. There were more spread around--like an inbox overflowing with things he wanted to read about things going on all throughout the SGC and the rest of the galaxy.
Resisting the urge to reach for one of them, to focus again on what he would have done in life, Daniel turned away. "Okay," he said to Oma. "Teach me."
She smiled. "Come with me."
XXXXX
It wasn't exactly a surprise that stores of knowledge manifested in Daniel's world as an odd mix of the SGC base library and an Abydonian cavern, one of the ones used for the few rebels who had dared to pass on literacy and knowledge during the Goa'uld's reign.
But it was comforting--all the most familiar places to him, filled with books and scrolls and tablets, and he had quite literally all the time in the universe to peruse them. While Oma seemed to spend most of her time on Kheb, either waiting for people seeking enlightenment or simply meditating by herself, Daniel made his library his own safe haven among the strangeness of the higher planes.
Some of the books he found were on concrete topics, the kinds of things he might have read in a physical library, like histories of cultures that the Others had watched over and helped to flourish. Languages, stories, myths, histories, literature...
Most of it, though, wasn't in words at all, at least nothing he could easily grasp, and it was that part that Daniel found most intriguing and most maddening all at once.
"Why does it have to follow this cycle?" he asked Oma one day when she came to see him. "What you teach your people says that something has to go wrong before we can try to make something good happen."
"You're oversimplifying it because you're frustrated with your limitations," she answered.
Daniel sighed. "I guess so," he conceded.
"Nature keeps itself in balance all on its own," she said. "It doesn't need--or want--interference. Occasionally, of course, something will happen. It's usually a coincidental combination of more things at once than anyone on the lower planes can perceive, but we need to give a little nudge then to restore the balance."
"What, like...like a world being destroyed?" he said, not quite able to stop thinking about the asteroid nearing Earth. "Would that warrant interference?"
She gave him a pointed look. "Do you remember the Vorash system? If the Others interfered in matters as small as the destruction of a world--or even a solar system--your team might be dead now and Apophis might be alive. You cannot have it both ways, and we cannot change events to suit only one view, or one planet or one race. Perhaps you should be glad we didn't decide to reset certain balances."
Chastened, Daniel looked away and tried to think of what was larger than that. Maybe it would take...the destruction of a galaxy, or a reality, or a plane. That was the point, though, he supposed--they thought in small terms on the lower planes in comparison to what the Others could do. "Well, how does this nudging work, then?" he asked.
With a smile, she said, "You're not ready yet."
"What, the Others don't trust me in matters of cosmic coincidence?'
"No, they don't," she said. "It's not that simple. It's the very nature of nature: when you perturb it, it perturbs you back, and you're lucky if it doesn't upset something even worse in the process. As it is, the entire collective of Others must decide together when and how to nudge anything at all."
"But there has to be something we can do," Daniel said. "We have all this power, Oma--"
"I seem to remember," Oma said, "a certain dream you shared with Shifu's biological mother--a dream that showed you just how dangerous it would be to have too much power and to deem yourself suitable to decide how to use it. I've watched you, Daniel--I know you took his lesson to heart at the time. Has that changed now?"
"No, of course not," Daniel said, "but...but as long as we know something is happening, choosing not to do anything is just as much a decision as choosing to do something. If you know about something, then inaction is no better and no worse than action; it just takes less effort."
She stared at him for a moment, then tilted her head. "You could say that," she said.
"I am saying that," he said.
"Then you need to be aware that not everyone would agree with you."
"These 'Others' you've mentioned before?" Daniel said.
"Yes," she said. "Other Ascended beings."
"So...if I did something...if!" he added when she began to look wary again. "Hypothetically. If I broke the rules and tried to continue being good instead of evil and actually did something"--she folded her arms--"the Others would stop me? Or punish me?"
Oma nodded once. "Don't give me that look," she said.
"I'm not giving you any--"
"It's not cowardice," she said. "It's not negligence or sloth. It's responsibility."
One of the countless memos spread on the next desk said that a devastating religious war had broken out on a planet--far from Earth, not even in the same galaxy--between peoples advanced even beyond the Asgard. Nuclear weapons like those known on Earth were child's play to those people--civil war could easily destroy all life there. Pointing, Daniel said, "Letting hundreds--maybe thousands of people die when we could save them is being responsible?"
"Fine," she said, crossing her arms. "Let's play. We could stop that particular war somehow--we could find some way to protect the people on the losing side so they won't be exterminated. Let's say we do that. We save those eight and a half million people--"
"Eight million?" Daniel repeated numbly. He hadn't realized there were that many at risk. He looked again at the desk, and suddenly it was filled with notes about plagues and wars breaking out on a hundred planets in a hundred galaxies.
"And now," she went on, "the tide of the war has turned. Which side did we pick, again? Why did we pick them? Because we liked them? Because they were losing?"
"Oma, come on--now you're simplifying it for the--"
"To be honest, that part's not important right now," she interrupted. "We saved their lives, full stop. We stopped their petty little war. It really is petty, isn't it, fighting over whether or not a voice from above told them to fight."
"I didn't say it was petty--"
"And yet you don't think they have the right to fight in the name of their god," she said. "You, who have spent years fighting a war about gods. So if we just add another voice...there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Just another voice for them to fight over."
"I don't accept that there's no hope for them," Daniel said. "People aren't always doomed to repeat their own history to their own detriment."
"You don't even know who they are."
"It shouldn't matter! They deserve to live--"
"And if we help them keep living," Oma said, "and they kill someone else?"
"You can't damn an entire people because you think they couldn't live up to your moral standards," Daniel said. "People have to be given a chance."
Oma shrugged. "All right. Say we step in, and there's peace throughout the land. What shall we do next? Maybe...stop an artificial supernova that would destroy all life in a solar system?"
Since Daniel had been with SG-1 the time that they'd created their own artificial supernova and wiped out the Vorash system, and since Oma clearly knew about that incident, he said, "We were trying to kill Apophis, and we made sure the system was uninhabited first."
"Ah," she said, nodding. "Because the Jaffa killed in the explosion didn't deserve the second chance that, just a minute ago, you were so willing to give to a people you have never met before? Or because the non-human life on those planets didn't deserve to continue living? I would have thought that distance from your human form would allow you to see more objectively."
The thoughts churned uneasily in his mind, but Daniel shook his head. "I don't regret my part in that."
"And if I had been like you," Oma countered, "I wouldn't have regretted stopping you then, to save the lives of thousands of Jaffa and to preserve dozens of species of life that were wiped out--forever--in that blast. Your friend Teal'c has a wife and a son. How many Jaffa lost a father or a husband in that battle? Surely that would be a worthy reason for us to interfere?"
"That's not..." Daniel started, but it wasn't like it wasn't true.
"You should be grateful, Daniel Jackson, that we do not always deem it right to stop the atrocities that mortals commit."
Daniel stared at her, not sure how much of this was what she really thought and how much was for the sake of argument, to drive in a point. "But if you did step in," he said, "those atrocities wouldn't have to happen in the first place. If someone had stopped Apophis from killing people to begin with, there would have been no supernova. You could make things better."
"Better for whom?" Oma said. "When did you forget that nothing is entirely black or white?"
"So...you're saying we shouldn't have destroyed Apophis and his fleet?"
"Not at all," she said. "It was a dispute among the people living on that plane, to be solved by people living on that plane. You and your people did what you thought was right in defense of yourselves and your ideals. The Others and I didn't have the right to judge. Daniel, you're not even the same species as they are anymore, not in any practical sense. In life, would you have stopped a jackal from killing and eating a hare simply because it was a violent act?"
Daniel wished that made less sense. "No," he said. "But. That's nature."
She pointed. Daniel followed her finger and flinched as a squadron of men on Earth was killed by enemy soldiers. She turned his gaze, and he saw a crowd of people on Juna, dancing, laughing. "So is all of that," she said. "Everything in nature is part of nature. Even what mortal beings call artificial technology is simply their slow discovery of the natural rules that we know so well. Who are you to decide you know what is best for them?"
"But," he said, recognizing the arrogance in his line of thinking but unwilling to let go of it completely.
"Think about it," she advised.
...x...
Daniel thought about it.
And then he sought out Oma again and said, "Something's still missing. There's something you're not telling me."
"What might that be?" she said.
"Kheb," Daniel said. "What you did on Kheb couldn't possibly be considered something a human could have done without being Ascended, and you killed about a thousand Jaffa that day."
"I think it was more, actually," Oma said. She folded her arms, raising her eyebrows.
"Well...and then, there was all that...stuff," Daniel said, waving his arms inarticulately. "You made me think I could light candles with my mind and move things without touching them. Even you can't claim that was anything but an Ascended being's manipulation of a mortal to--"
"To what?" she said. "To guide your thoughts toward the conclusion you were already seeking in the absence of a voice you could hear?"
"Oh, come on," he scoffed. "You've talked to me on other occasions without all the subterfuge."
"Yes, I have," she said. "In your mind. When you were three-quarters dead and not even conscious anymore."
Daniel paused. "Okay," he conceded. "Bad example. But Shifu and Orlin have talked to people directly. You even had a disciple at Kheb. You could have talked to me through him."
"I did," she said.
"You tricked me! You made me think I was...powerful enough to protect Shifu."
"You tricked yourself," she retorted. "Don't blame me because you saw what you wanted to see instead of what I was trying to tell you. I didn't force you to do anything; you acted by yourself."
Daniel didn't think Ascended people were supposed to get as frustrated as he felt now.
"Fine, then," he said. "But what about the lightning you used to kill those Jaffa chasing us?"
"Ah, well," Oma said. "You're right about that one, I admit."
"It's not exactly something a human could do just by thinking," Daniel said. "So?"
She took the book he had been reading and carefully replaced it on a bookshelf. "There's a lot about me that you don't know, Daniel," she said, perusing the shelf of things he hadn't read.
"You...have the authority to do things like interfering?" Daniel guessed.
Unexpectedly, she laughed, a soft, short sound. "Not at all."
"Then what?"
"What do you know about Kheb?" she asked. "I don't mean the myth of Setesh hunting Harsesis or the myth of Isis hiding her son Harsesis there. What do you know about the history of the place--the actual planet?"
"I know..." Daniel started, then admitted, "Nothing, really--just old human and Jaffa legends."
Oma gave him another tight smile and pulled a book down for him. "Here's a hint," she said.
...x...
Daniel read the book until he grew frustrated with it. There was a straightforward history in there, stretching back far before Osiris had ever sought Kheb as a refuge from Setesh. He read about Kheb's creation by the Ancients--whoever they were--and the subsequent abandonment of the planet for its lack of material resources, long before the first Jaffa had even been engineered. Still, especially here, a straightforward history was never the whole story, and no matter where he looked, it felt like there was always something missing.
Halfway through, he stopped for a break and turned to look back down on the SGC.
Sam, Jack, and Teal'c had saved Earth from the asteroid.
Perhaps he shouldn't have worried--there wasn't much he could have helped with, anyway. Teal'c had noticed that their teltak wasn't landing properly, Sam had found that their estimates of the rock's density had been terribly wrong, and then they'd discovered the naquadah core hidden within. From there, it had simply been a matter of figuring out how to prevent the collision itself, but Daniel wouldn't have worried about that. They were SG-1. It was what they did.
It was easy enough to check and see for certain that that was Anubis's first attempted attack on Earth. The soon-to-be System Lord was testing the SGC and the Asgard.
Another memo below that said that SG-1 was resisting all attempts to find a fourth member.
Daniel remembered how hard it had been to convince them to take a translator with them before he had joined. The four of them had needed time to figure each other out, but finally, they had fit. Popular belief at the SGC was that the original three-man SG-1 had been saving a place for Daniel, training him to be their perfect fourth, and while it hadn't been a conscious decision, sometimes Daniel thought they had been waiting to complete each other, too.
Nyan volunteered to be next on the list. His skill set overlapped with Daniel's, and SG-1 owed him their lives--maybe he realized that that might give him an edge over other officers who were turned down for the position. Daniel hoped Jack wasn't still yelling at people for not being able to predict his thoughts, because Nyan wasn't the type to yell back and would be more hurt by the hostility than Daniel would have been.
"You were going to school," Daniel said to Nyan, watching the Bedrosian struggle through too much work as he tried to pick up as much of Daniel's slack as he could while training to fit the physical requirements of being a member of SG-1. "You already sent in your applications. You don't have to do this."
"Are you talking to lowers again?" Oma said.
Daniel sighed and turned around. "Would it do any good to ask you to stop sneaking up on me?"
"Are you?" she pressed.
"No," he said, gesturing to Nyan, who clearly didn't hear. "See? Just...talking to myself."
Oma watched for a moment, and then nodded. "All right," she said.
"You know," Daniel said, curious, "I always thought you were sort of...omniscient. You can know everything that's happening. You can see anything. Right?"
"I can see where people are anytime I choose to see," she said. "But it doesn't mean that I know why, or that I'll be able to predict what they'll do, unless I have enough familiarity with them. I can know, but it doesn't mean I understand."
"Wow--I think I'm getting better at understanding the things you say," he said.
She raised her eyebrows. "Don't flatter yourself; it was an easy one. Besides," she added, her tone shifting subtly, just enough to catch his attention, "it's a big universe, and that's just one of the many planes. I can't be everywhere at once."
"Even you, huh," he said.
"Nor can the Others. We can't see everything at any given time."
Daniel frowned, wondering if there was some message in that. "Are you saying--"
"So?" she interrupted, glancing at the book on Kheb. "Do you understand yet why I was able to kill the Jaffa on Kheb?"
"Um..." he said.
"Keep looking," she said. "Figure that out, and you'll get a little closer to understanding the Others' rules."
Continued in Part IIb...