ficpost: "Highest Wisdom, Deepest Love" Teal'c/Sam/Daniel
Title: "Highest Wisdom, Deepest Love"
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Grouping: Sam/Daniel/Teal'c
Other Pairings: Sam/Martouf (Jolinar/Martouf-Lantash), Teal'c/Shau'nac, Daniel/Ke'ra, Daniel/Sha're, and Jack/Sam mentioned as per canon.
Rating: NC-17
Timeline/Spoilers: After 4x05, "Divide and Conquer"
Notes: For my darling sage_theory in the OT3+ ficathon. Her requests are at the end.
Words: 4163
Summary: An error divine: a comedy in four voices. They live, regret, forgive, and reject.
Disclaimer: Totally not mine.
Highest Wisdom, Deepest Love
Sam tried to wander aimlessly to Teal'c's quarters, but she ended up moving pretty damn purposefully. She'd never needed so badly to talk to him, never needed to talk to anyone so badly. She'd already sat in Janet's office for half an hour, trying to explain, but Janet kept giving her funny looks, like she thought... but Sam didn't want to know what Janet thought of her. She was mourning the death of a Goa'uld.
But Teal'c would be able to -- might be able to -- understand. Because he had one of them inside him, knew what it meant to feel its thoughts, its influence, its reminders. When she closed her eyes and saw Martouf sprawled across the floor of the gate room, Sam felt she could never be human again. All she felt was Jolinar tangled in her mind. If she could have believed in a soul -- but she couldn't -- she'd think that Jolinar had taken hers.
She raised her hand to Teal'c's door, but, afraid of interrupting, she didn't knock, but waited, hoping he'd sense her, as if the Goa'uld in him could feel the Goa'uld in her. But nothing happened, so she stood there, three minutes, five minutes, waiting, trying to collect her thoughts. She kept imagining Martouf whispering her name, Martouf's hand on her cheek, and she choked on her tears.
"Hey, Sam. You joining us today?"
"Daniel." The last person she wanted to know about her grief. Daniel the good, whose hatred of the Goa'uld was surpassed perhaps by no one else's. Not the Jaffa, who hated them and needed them, and not the Tok'ra, who were secretly the same. She'd seen Daniel shoot young symbiotes point-blank, and seen him smile afterwards.
Daniel hated the Goa'uld, and she'd had one wrapped around her brainstem. Jolinar had died for her, but that was itself something so improbable that it was better off forgotten.
"Are you joining us for kel'no'reem?" Daniel asked, not bothering to knock as he opened Teal'c's door. "Teal'c's been teaching me. It's really a continuation of the meditation practices I learned on Kheb."
"Kheb," said Sam, stupidly. She'd just experienced another flash of grief. It came and went like lightening, leaving her temporarily blind.
"Where Sha're's son was," Daniel reminded her. "Where I thought I was enlightened?"
"Oh." She laughed a little. "Of course. That planet."
Daniel pushed the door open and ushered Sam in. She hadn't intended to meditate, but it seemed inevitable..
++
Kel'no'reem was possibly the most intriguing of the various meditation systems Daniel had encountered, if only because of the concrete effects it obviously had on Teal'c's well-being. He had been learning the practice with Teal'c since Sha're's death, hoping that the practice could heal a human heart the way it could a symbiote. So far, it seemed mostly unsuccessful, but he kept hoping. He settled down on Teal'c's floor, rested his hands loosely on his lap.
Teal'c was explaining the process to Sam, who'd never joined them before. He only-half listened to Teal'c telling her to focus on the center of her mind, to clear distractions from her thoughts. He wasn't ready to meditate yet, himself. He had too much to think about, too many unavoidable distractions. Work was piling up, and finding a resettlement planet for the Enkarans, which currently topped his list of priorities, wasn't close to being the most significant of his worries.
Sam was here. She'd just lost Martouf. And while Daniel's feelings towards Martouf were mostly unfavorable, he understood he'd meant something to Sam. And Teal'c had just lost Shau'nac. Those deaths together seemed to fill the room with a heady feeling of loss. Neither of them would cry -- they were warriors, and warriors never cried. But the unshed tears seemed almost more palpable for their being hidden.
If he sunk into meditation with Sam and Teal'c, he thought, would all their submerged grief float to the surface? He imagined the three of them underwater, Sam's blonde hair, recently grown longer than he'd ever seen it, floating around her face, framing it, Teal'c's strong arms pushing through globular water that was filled, Daniel now saw, with algae that didn't sting but clung to him, tangling in his hair, brushing past his hands. And when he looked up, far above them, great blobs of grief were visible just above the surface of the water, shimmering and indistinct from so far away. He reached towards his glasses, but they were gone, and his hand brushed Teal'c's as he swam by. When he looked, he saw that Teal'c had been crying.
++
Teal'c considered confiding in his teammates, but dismissed the idea again. He had wanted to tell them, much before, but so many other thoughts and worries filled their heads. MajorCarter's presence here proved that something unusual was bothering her; he knew that confessing her feelings for O'Neill must weigh heavily on her, but her feelings about Martouf's death likely overwhelmed even that confusion. DanielJackson's presence, less unusual, heralded no less grief. When he closed his eyes, when he thought of Shau'nac, felt her lips, he could imagine, in part, the grief of DanielJackson, an entity so real, it filled the room with its foul aroma.
Teal'c mourned for Shau'nac, but this was not the confession that longed to be shared.
He closed his eyes, felt for his symbiote, tried to touch its mind, but felt only cold rage. Whether it belonged to Teal'c himself or to the beast that longed to take control, he did not know, but he feared that if he let himself sink into a deep meditation, let their minds commune as they ought, the symbiote would kill him, if it could. He feared it could.
He hated it.
So he did not kel'no'reem, but watched his friends through eyes slitted open. MajorCarter's eyelashes fluttered against her skin as if she were in the light slumber she adopted when they were on another planet. The slightest sound would wake her, and she would be on guard, ready to defend herself, her teammates. Teal'c resisted the urge to wake her, and instead watched DanielJackson, whose brow was furrowed. He too then was unable to meditate; he was concentrating on some problem too deep and difficult to be forgotten easily.
The rage and grief of DanielJackson frightened Teal'c, and MajorCarter's grief, and his own rage.
Yet when he closed his eyes again, meditation came easily.
++
Sam got up to go first, but when she stood, Daniel bounded to his feet and Teal'c opened his eyes slowly and smiled, which was unusual and scary. She'd wanted to escape quickly, in no small part because she wasn't sure how to end this, how to say goodbye after sitting with these men for -- she checked her watch and gasped. Three hours.
"I've got work to do. I'd better..." she eased towards the door, and then stuck out her hand, like ending a meeting with an important dignitary. Daniel reached out to take her hand, but when he touched her hand she pulled it away and then, without using the rational part of her mind -- maybe using the portion of her mind that she'd accessed during kel'no'reem -- she pulled him into a hug. It was meant to be a quick hug, fraternal, but Daniel didn't move his arms, kept them wrapped around her tightly. She'd seen him hug himself to hold in tears or hold out questions, but hadn't realized how desperate he could be, how strong and tight his arms were when he hugged himself -- hugged her.
Teal'c kissed the top of her head gently, and whether it was a Jaffa ritual or an Earth one, or maybe just Teal'c, it was the right way to end the ceremony. When she walked back to her lab, her limbs were loose and her mind sharp and fresh. She thought she could see everyone's secret intentions written on their faces, measured by their stride.
++
Daniel had a dream, a dream of glory. Sam's golden hair rimmed by a golden crown, Teal'c her co-regent, himself advisor to the queen and king in purple robes of wisdom. He never dreamed of Jack.
He thought perhaps the kel'no'reem was making him more aware in his dreams, unlocking the secrets that Oma Desala had left in his mind when she abandoned him to Kheb and to Earth. He took to sleeping more regularly than he ever had, prompted by the feeling that he was working when asleep, not just resting. He dreaded laziness and sloth, but his dreams were full and fleshy, peopled by Sam and Teal'c and their Goa'uld's.
On a Friday afternoon of kel'no'reem, he saw Jolinar as a beautiful and beneficent ruler who, in quiet rages, could annihilate the rest of them. They loved her and watched her carefully, a dagger at her back a constant precaution. The nameless symbiote who lived in Teal'c grew up to be a shifty, backstabbing prince of the court, who played with grenades the way Jack played with his hacky-sack.
Other than that, Jack was never in his dreams. He never meditated with them. It seemed right. Sam thought they should ask him -- Sam could feel it too, the magnetic pull and pulse that kept them coming back to Teal'c's quarters, that kept them sitting quietly for hours then jumping to their feet at the same moment -- she said it wasn't right for a team to bond without the leader. But somehow, they never got around to telling Jack, and Daniel doubted Jack could have done it, sat still for hours, no talk, no fidget, just the three of them and their demons.
++
They all confessed together. It was fitting. Jaffa fought together and thus often sinned together, and reported their errors to their god as a unit, sharing equally the guilt, the blasphemy of failure.
They all knew rituals of contrition, DanielJackson most of all, but there was nothing sacred or careful or clean about that afternoon. MajorCarter, as usual, rose to her feet first, and Teal'c and DanielJackson noticed at the same moment that she had tears in her eyes. They rushed to wipe them away, but Sam pushed them aside, breathed deeply for a few seconds, then told them, softly, "I don't know why you let me do this with you."
DanielJackson looked at her quizzically, his eyebrows rising and his forehead furrowing.
"Today she -- it -- I couldn't stop thinking about her."
"Jolinar," Teal'c supplied, and she nodded.
"Her memories aren't usually so strong, but since I've started meditating, I can't get them out of my head. And there's so much evil... so much. She wants power so badly, she'd kill for it. Power for herself, for Lantash...." She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. "But she died for me."
DanielJackson had his arms around MajorCarter before Teal'c could move, but he joined them after a moment's pause, one hand on each of their shoulders. Muffled by DanielJackson's sleeve against her face, MajorCarter whispered, "I don't know how you love me."
"Why?"
"Because of the Goa'uld I had in my head. And... and because of Martouf."
"The Goa'uld you loved," Teal'c said, and his compassion for MajorCarter was stronger than the words' innate disgustingess.
"You didn't love a Goa'uld," DanielJackson told her. "You loved Martouf, the man who was kept... kept tame by the Goa'uld, kept trapped by it. I loved Sha're, even when Ammonet claimed her."
MajorCarter pulled away from them. "You don't understand. It wasn't just Martouf. I loved him. Jolinar did. I mean... she loved them both, Lantash too. You don't understand, but they really are blended. You can't love one without at least knowing the other. They're inseparable. Part of each other."
This reminded Teal'c of something, but comforting MajorCarter was most essential. "I worshipped a Goa'uld," he told her. "I loved Apophis and believed him to be a god. I feared him as a man fears a god, and now the love I had is loathing. But I cannot excuse myself for the crimes I did in his name." He looked at DanielJackson, thought of Sha're. "Or the crimes I committed myself."
DanielJackson looked away when he responded. "I think we've all done things -- felt things -- we'd rather not."
MajorCarter nodded. When she looked up, her face was clear and her eyes wide with the freedom of confession and absolution. "Thanks guys," she said, then laughed under her breath, mocking herself for her easy gratitude. Then she took two steps towards Teal'c, paused, and pressed her mouth to his. It had been only a few months since Shau'nac, but he felt the same way he did the very first time he had kissed a woman, more years than MajorCarter -- Samantha -- had been alive.
++
Sam kissed Daniel second, and the softness of her lips, the gentleness of her hands, seemed to wash away the taste of Ke'ra, of Linnea, destroyer of worlds. She was tender and contrite, but she'd kissed Teal'c first, and waited now for him to do the same. He looked at her, tried to read her thoughts, but there was only a teasing half-smile on her face as she looked from him to Teal'c.
He wouldn't have. He loved Teal'c, but the love was far more complicated than hate, more painful than desire and contained both. Teal'c had killed Sha're, and that was unforgivable. He could work side-by-side with the man, could watch him in battle and rely on his protection, could even, cautiously, meditate with him, but to kiss him -- to kiss him -- would mean a vulnerability Daniel hadn't experienced since Abydos. Sam's kiss was healing, almost playful, but when he kissed Teal'c, he forgave him. The utter surrender of that kiss would join the list of moments that haunted his nightmares.
But then Sam kissed them again, and touched their cheeks, and Teal'c put a hand around his, strong and comforting, and Daniel experienced him, just for a moment, as a body, tall and beautiful, naked to the waist for meditation, shining in the candlelight and protecting him, the passion of Teal'c's long lifetime surrounding them all and keeping the world and its dangers out.
Daniel had just turned to experience Sam the same way when Jack barged in unannounced.
++
Colonel O'Neill was mostly confused, which was more difficult than his anger would have been. He'd taken her aside first, leaving Daniel and Teal'c to do God knows what in Teal'c's quarters while he talked to Sam in the VIP room. So far, though, all he'd said was, "If there was a memo about this, it definitely didn't end up on my desk," then buried his head in his hands. Finally he looked up. "Okay. You're going to try to explain this to me, in words of one syllable or less, and I'm still going to be confused and probably angry. But you're going to try."
Sir, I'm in love with them. That wasn't right. True, possibly, but not sufficient. She loved -- was in love with -- him too, although she'd never said it in so many words. Sir, Daniel and Teal'c were helping me work through some issues. That sounded like BS even in her head. "Sir, you wouldn't understand."
"I know." She waited. "But I figured I'd try before telling Hammond I need my team broken apart because of fraternization issues. I think we both know how he'd take that."
"Sir," she started, then touched her hand where Teal'c had pressed his lips just ten minutes earlier. If she concentrated, she could still feel the heat of his lips, the warmth in her fingertips.
"Carter?" he encouraged her.
"It's kind of a funny story, actually," she began. "After Martouf died, do you remember?" He nodded. "When I think about him dying, I feel the grief that Jolinar would have felt. It's -- eerie. It's wrong. And when Teal'c tried to communicate with his symbiote, and..."
"I remember."
"We've lost people, sir. Friends. Lovers. Family."
"I know." He looked at her intently but not threatening. He understood loss. Maybe he could understand healing. She took a deep breath.
"Do you understand the Stargate, sir?"
"That's your department."
"I know. That's it exactly. To understand about us, what we've been doing, you have to know about the Stargate. Not just the proton emissions, or the naquadah casing, but all of that, and what Daniel knows about its historical significance, and... and all of that, sir. And if you don't, then you don't really understand anything."
"And?"
"And so... we love... I mean, I love them. Daniel and Teal'c."
The Colonel muttered something under his breath, then said, "And they make you happy?"
"Happier than I've felt in a long time," she told him, and felt a rush of emotion so powerful she couldn't move for a minute. Colonel O'Neill looked at her thoughtfully for a long time, then sighed and gestured towards the door. "Happier than I've been in forever," she whispered to herself.
++
Daniel was just as incomprehensible as Carter, and Teal'c just gave him a look that said Hands Off. He expected incomprehensibility from Daniel, but had hoped the moment he'd shared with Carter by the za'tarc machine, when he'd felt almost honest, had meant something. Not that Jack had any hopes of there ever being anything in particular between him and Carter, but he thought maybe, on some level, they had an understanding. But obviously that wasn't the case.
"It's the thrall of the 'Gate, Jack," Daniel told him. "It's something, you could never experience, never even dream of experiencing."
Jack glared.
"I think what's happening between us is somehow connected to the races that chose us," Daniel said, excited, a man with a theory. "Teal'c is connected to the Jaffa, and the Tok'ra chose Sam, and then when Oma communicated with me at Kheb -- I think it's vital. An alliance between our chosen allies."
"And my special friendship with Thor...?"
"I don't know," Daniel said, and he puzzled over it for a minute, then broke in, "Maybe it's because you haven't tried kel'no'reem."
"I did that one time..."
"And it didn't work too well. But now that you've met the Asgard, now that you know, maybe we could try again."
Jack thought about the scene he'd walked in on, the three of them standing in some strange tableau, hands touching. He thought he'd interrupted a kiss, but he'd been trying to forget the particulars and focus on the reasons.
"No," he told Daniel. Then, seeing the disappointed look on his friend's face, he said, "Nothing personal. It's just that the thing with you and Carter and Teal'c -- I don't understand. I don't really want to understand. But it makes Carter happy. And it makes you happy. And God knows what Teal'c's feeling, but it seems to make him pretty contented, too."
"So you aren't going to tell Hammond."
"This is strictly off the record," Jack agreed, and could see the relief on Daniel's face.
++
For most of a week, Daniel thought about it, pouring through notes he'd taken about the Jaffa and the Tok'ra and their alliances, thinking, during kel'no'reem, about Kheb and the powers he'd felt in his mind, the way Oma Desala had seemed to penetrate everything. He was sure that he was on the edge of a discovery, that the three of them were about to plummet into something ancient and terrifying and fascinating.
Then Sam finally invited them out for drinks. Sitting around a high table sipping beer with his friends was mundane compared to the things he'd dreamed with them, but somehow more satisfying. Without Teal'c, when they wore Anise's armbands, he and Jack and Sam had eaten a meal, and that had tasted better than any meal he'd ever had. But with Teal'c and Sam, intoxicated only by the beer they drank and the meditation they'd shared, even pre-packaged peanuts tasted new.
He finally realized that he was no longer tasting the grief that had lingered in his mouth for three years. Without that grief, the world and everything in it tasted pure.
They drank in silence for awhile, then Teal'c broke the ice by telling a joke he'd seen on the internet, which made them laugh, and they started to tell stories about the things they'd seen online while they were supposed to be working.
When Sam threw back her head in laughter at Daniel's description of a white supremacist who thought Apophis was "probably tall, most definitely white, and quite possibly the first true Aryan." Her neck was exposed for just a few seconds, and Daniel caught Teal'c looking at her too. He leaned across the table and stroked the patch of exposed skin, so carefully that he could feel the tiny hairs along Sam's neck. Her shudder against his finger was unexpected and just right. He signaled for the check.
++
In his quarters, they were always sober, but both Samantha and DanielJackson had drunk quite a lot of liquor, and Teal'c, too, felt like smiling and discussing trivial things. It seemed appropriate, after so many weeks of sitting in silence and thinking of everything, that they should finally talk of nothing.
Daniel's apartment was full of strange things to look at, but Teal'c looked only at Samantha, whose fingers were intertwined with DanielJackson's. He touched her shoulder gently and she spun around, enabling Teal'c to grab hold of her and sweep her into his arms. She laughed and hit him, clumsy from two beers, as he carried her to DanielJackson's bed, set her down gently. DanielJackson followed behind, watching eagerly.
"You guys start," Samantha said, sitting up. "Go on."
Teal'c had to lean down to kiss DanielJackson, and first he removed the glasses that covered his eyes, setting them on a table. He kissed Daniel -- Daniel. Though the formality of his address had become accustomed, an endearment in its own right, he felt now that the man he kissed could only be Daniel. Daniel, with whom he shared a lover. Daniel, whom he loved.
At first they kissed gently, but then, without saying a word, their kiss became intense, angry. Teal'c thought he felt Daniel's teeth, then knew he did, slipping gently, then roughly, around his tongue. He tasted blood and kissed Daniel harder, moved his tongue deeper into the other man's mouth, biting at flesh until he tasted Daniel's blood too. He felt Daniel's erection, pressing insistently against his own. He pulled Daniel closer to him, then turned them both, maneuvered Daniel onto the bed next to their Samantha.
++
Sam kept on losing track of where she was, which way was up, which down. She knew that Daniel was in her, that the lips that kept crashing into hers were Teal'c's, that she'd tasted two men's mouths and two men's members, but the spinny drunken room made it hard to tell who was who and which was which and where she needed to put her hand.
To the left was nothing; her hand moved through empty space until it fell again against Daniel's bedspread. To the right she felt an arm, smooth and muscular and hard -- Teal'c. She rested there, feeling the muscles carefully with each finger, then with the palm of her hand cupped against him. Both men -- she remembered now, two penetrations, two men she'd invited in, Teal'c in front because he was larger, Daniel behind because she wanted him there -- were moving fast and thrusting deep, and she could distinguish their moans from her own; they were deep and desperate, shaky and close to tears with wanting. But she had all the time in the world and more besides, and despite the stimulation that threatened to overwhelm, she felt curiously calm. She had two lovers and was well loved besides, and if she never climaxed, she'd ride them both forever.
Her orgasm came as a surprise, then, Daniel's hand reaching around her waist to touch Teal'c as he came and then finding her clitoris as an aftershock, like hearing a knock when the Colonel's head was already through the door. But she didn't think of him any longer, just rode the last tremors of her climax and then beached, rolling in the white smooth sand (Daniel's bed. She was falling asleep on Daniel's bed) with each hand held by someone larger. It was too peculiar, and she laughed, but the laugh was shushed with a kiss. Sam smiled her tongue into his mouth, too sleepy to know whose it was.
In her dreams she knew that Daniel and Teal'c were as different as Lantash was from Martouf, as she was from Jolinar -- as different and as similar.
+++++
Meg asked for D/T/S with canonical plausibility, angst, and team bonding, and without character death.
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Grouping: Sam/Daniel/Teal'c
Other Pairings: Sam/Martouf (Jolinar/Martouf-Lantash), Teal'c/Shau'nac, Daniel/Ke'ra, Daniel/Sha're, and Jack/Sam mentioned as per canon.
Rating: NC-17
Timeline/Spoilers: After 4x05, "Divide and Conquer"
Notes: For my darling sage_theory in the OT3+ ficathon. Her requests are at the end.
Words: 4163
Summary: An error divine: a comedy in four voices. They live, regret, forgive, and reject.
Disclaimer: Totally not mine.
Highest Wisdom, Deepest Love
Sam tried to wander aimlessly to Teal'c's quarters, but she ended up moving pretty damn purposefully. She'd never needed so badly to talk to him, never needed to talk to anyone so badly. She'd already sat in Janet's office for half an hour, trying to explain, but Janet kept giving her funny looks, like she thought... but Sam didn't want to know what Janet thought of her. She was mourning the death of a Goa'uld.
But Teal'c would be able to -- might be able to -- understand. Because he had one of them inside him, knew what it meant to feel its thoughts, its influence, its reminders. When she closed her eyes and saw Martouf sprawled across the floor of the gate room, Sam felt she could never be human again. All she felt was Jolinar tangled in her mind. If she could have believed in a soul -- but she couldn't -- she'd think that Jolinar had taken hers.
She raised her hand to Teal'c's door, but, afraid of interrupting, she didn't knock, but waited, hoping he'd sense her, as if the Goa'uld in him could feel the Goa'uld in her. But nothing happened, so she stood there, three minutes, five minutes, waiting, trying to collect her thoughts. She kept imagining Martouf whispering her name, Martouf's hand on her cheek, and she choked on her tears.
"Hey, Sam. You joining us today?"
"Daniel." The last person she wanted to know about her grief. Daniel the good, whose hatred of the Goa'uld was surpassed perhaps by no one else's. Not the Jaffa, who hated them and needed them, and not the Tok'ra, who were secretly the same. She'd seen Daniel shoot young symbiotes point-blank, and seen him smile afterwards.
Daniel hated the Goa'uld, and she'd had one wrapped around her brainstem. Jolinar had died for her, but that was itself something so improbable that it was better off forgotten.
"Are you joining us for kel'no'reem?" Daniel asked, not bothering to knock as he opened Teal'c's door. "Teal'c's been teaching me. It's really a continuation of the meditation practices I learned on Kheb."
"Kheb," said Sam, stupidly. She'd just experienced another flash of grief. It came and went like lightening, leaving her temporarily blind.
"Where Sha're's son was," Daniel reminded her. "Where I thought I was enlightened?"
"Oh." She laughed a little. "Of course. That planet."
Daniel pushed the door open and ushered Sam in. She hadn't intended to meditate, but it seemed inevitable..
++
Kel'no'reem was possibly the most intriguing of the various meditation systems Daniel had encountered, if only because of the concrete effects it obviously had on Teal'c's well-being. He had been learning the practice with Teal'c since Sha're's death, hoping that the practice could heal a human heart the way it could a symbiote. So far, it seemed mostly unsuccessful, but he kept hoping. He settled down on Teal'c's floor, rested his hands loosely on his lap.
Teal'c was explaining the process to Sam, who'd never joined them before. He only-half listened to Teal'c telling her to focus on the center of her mind, to clear distractions from her thoughts. He wasn't ready to meditate yet, himself. He had too much to think about, too many unavoidable distractions. Work was piling up, and finding a resettlement planet for the Enkarans, which currently topped his list of priorities, wasn't close to being the most significant of his worries.
Sam was here. She'd just lost Martouf. And while Daniel's feelings towards Martouf were mostly unfavorable, he understood he'd meant something to Sam. And Teal'c had just lost Shau'nac. Those deaths together seemed to fill the room with a heady feeling of loss. Neither of them would cry -- they were warriors, and warriors never cried. But the unshed tears seemed almost more palpable for their being hidden.
If he sunk into meditation with Sam and Teal'c, he thought, would all their submerged grief float to the surface? He imagined the three of them underwater, Sam's blonde hair, recently grown longer than he'd ever seen it, floating around her face, framing it, Teal'c's strong arms pushing through globular water that was filled, Daniel now saw, with algae that didn't sting but clung to him, tangling in his hair, brushing past his hands. And when he looked up, far above them, great blobs of grief were visible just above the surface of the water, shimmering and indistinct from so far away. He reached towards his glasses, but they were gone, and his hand brushed Teal'c's as he swam by. When he looked, he saw that Teal'c had been crying.
++
Teal'c considered confiding in his teammates, but dismissed the idea again. He had wanted to tell them, much before, but so many other thoughts and worries filled their heads. MajorCarter's presence here proved that something unusual was bothering her; he knew that confessing her feelings for O'Neill must weigh heavily on her, but her feelings about Martouf's death likely overwhelmed even that confusion. DanielJackson's presence, less unusual, heralded no less grief. When he closed his eyes, when he thought of Shau'nac, felt her lips, he could imagine, in part, the grief of DanielJackson, an entity so real, it filled the room with its foul aroma.
Teal'c mourned for Shau'nac, but this was not the confession that longed to be shared.
He closed his eyes, felt for his symbiote, tried to touch its mind, but felt only cold rage. Whether it belonged to Teal'c himself or to the beast that longed to take control, he did not know, but he feared that if he let himself sink into a deep meditation, let their minds commune as they ought, the symbiote would kill him, if it could. He feared it could.
He hated it.
So he did not kel'no'reem, but watched his friends through eyes slitted open. MajorCarter's eyelashes fluttered against her skin as if she were in the light slumber she adopted when they were on another planet. The slightest sound would wake her, and she would be on guard, ready to defend herself, her teammates. Teal'c resisted the urge to wake her, and instead watched DanielJackson, whose brow was furrowed. He too then was unable to meditate; he was concentrating on some problem too deep and difficult to be forgotten easily.
The rage and grief of DanielJackson frightened Teal'c, and MajorCarter's grief, and his own rage.
Yet when he closed his eyes again, meditation came easily.
++
Sam got up to go first, but when she stood, Daniel bounded to his feet and Teal'c opened his eyes slowly and smiled, which was unusual and scary. She'd wanted to escape quickly, in no small part because she wasn't sure how to end this, how to say goodbye after sitting with these men for -- she checked her watch and gasped. Three hours.
"I've got work to do. I'd better..." she eased towards the door, and then stuck out her hand, like ending a meeting with an important dignitary. Daniel reached out to take her hand, but when he touched her hand she pulled it away and then, without using the rational part of her mind -- maybe using the portion of her mind that she'd accessed during kel'no'reem -- she pulled him into a hug. It was meant to be a quick hug, fraternal, but Daniel didn't move his arms, kept them wrapped around her tightly. She'd seen him hug himself to hold in tears or hold out questions, but hadn't realized how desperate he could be, how strong and tight his arms were when he hugged himself -- hugged her.
Teal'c kissed the top of her head gently, and whether it was a Jaffa ritual or an Earth one, or maybe just Teal'c, it was the right way to end the ceremony. When she walked back to her lab, her limbs were loose and her mind sharp and fresh. She thought she could see everyone's secret intentions written on their faces, measured by their stride.
++
Daniel had a dream, a dream of glory. Sam's golden hair rimmed by a golden crown, Teal'c her co-regent, himself advisor to the queen and king in purple robes of wisdom. He never dreamed of Jack.
He thought perhaps the kel'no'reem was making him more aware in his dreams, unlocking the secrets that Oma Desala had left in his mind when she abandoned him to Kheb and to Earth. He took to sleeping more regularly than he ever had, prompted by the feeling that he was working when asleep, not just resting. He dreaded laziness and sloth, but his dreams were full and fleshy, peopled by Sam and Teal'c and their Goa'uld's.
On a Friday afternoon of kel'no'reem, he saw Jolinar as a beautiful and beneficent ruler who, in quiet rages, could annihilate the rest of them. They loved her and watched her carefully, a dagger at her back a constant precaution. The nameless symbiote who lived in Teal'c grew up to be a shifty, backstabbing prince of the court, who played with grenades the way Jack played with his hacky-sack.
Other than that, Jack was never in his dreams. He never meditated with them. It seemed right. Sam thought they should ask him -- Sam could feel it too, the magnetic pull and pulse that kept them coming back to Teal'c's quarters, that kept them sitting quietly for hours then jumping to their feet at the same moment -- she said it wasn't right for a team to bond without the leader. But somehow, they never got around to telling Jack, and Daniel doubted Jack could have done it, sat still for hours, no talk, no fidget, just the three of them and their demons.
++
They all confessed together. It was fitting. Jaffa fought together and thus often sinned together, and reported their errors to their god as a unit, sharing equally the guilt, the blasphemy of failure.
They all knew rituals of contrition, DanielJackson most of all, but there was nothing sacred or careful or clean about that afternoon. MajorCarter, as usual, rose to her feet first, and Teal'c and DanielJackson noticed at the same moment that she had tears in her eyes. They rushed to wipe them away, but Sam pushed them aside, breathed deeply for a few seconds, then told them, softly, "I don't know why you let me do this with you."
DanielJackson looked at her quizzically, his eyebrows rising and his forehead furrowing.
"Today she -- it -- I couldn't stop thinking about her."
"Jolinar," Teal'c supplied, and she nodded.
"Her memories aren't usually so strong, but since I've started meditating, I can't get them out of my head. And there's so much evil... so much. She wants power so badly, she'd kill for it. Power for herself, for Lantash...." She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. "But she died for me."
DanielJackson had his arms around MajorCarter before Teal'c could move, but he joined them after a moment's pause, one hand on each of their shoulders. Muffled by DanielJackson's sleeve against her face, MajorCarter whispered, "I don't know how you love me."
"Why?"
"Because of the Goa'uld I had in my head. And... and because of Martouf."
"The Goa'uld you loved," Teal'c said, and his compassion for MajorCarter was stronger than the words' innate disgustingess.
"You didn't love a Goa'uld," DanielJackson told her. "You loved Martouf, the man who was kept... kept tame by the Goa'uld, kept trapped by it. I loved Sha're, even when Ammonet claimed her."
MajorCarter pulled away from them. "You don't understand. It wasn't just Martouf. I loved him. Jolinar did. I mean... she loved them both, Lantash too. You don't understand, but they really are blended. You can't love one without at least knowing the other. They're inseparable. Part of each other."
This reminded Teal'c of something, but comforting MajorCarter was most essential. "I worshipped a Goa'uld," he told her. "I loved Apophis and believed him to be a god. I feared him as a man fears a god, and now the love I had is loathing. But I cannot excuse myself for the crimes I did in his name." He looked at DanielJackson, thought of Sha're. "Or the crimes I committed myself."
DanielJackson looked away when he responded. "I think we've all done things -- felt things -- we'd rather not."
MajorCarter nodded. When she looked up, her face was clear and her eyes wide with the freedom of confession and absolution. "Thanks guys," she said, then laughed under her breath, mocking herself for her easy gratitude. Then she took two steps towards Teal'c, paused, and pressed her mouth to his. It had been only a few months since Shau'nac, but he felt the same way he did the very first time he had kissed a woman, more years than MajorCarter -- Samantha -- had been alive.
++
Sam kissed Daniel second, and the softness of her lips, the gentleness of her hands, seemed to wash away the taste of Ke'ra, of Linnea, destroyer of worlds. She was tender and contrite, but she'd kissed Teal'c first, and waited now for him to do the same. He looked at her, tried to read her thoughts, but there was only a teasing half-smile on her face as she looked from him to Teal'c.
He wouldn't have. He loved Teal'c, but the love was far more complicated than hate, more painful than desire and contained both. Teal'c had killed Sha're, and that was unforgivable. He could work side-by-side with the man, could watch him in battle and rely on his protection, could even, cautiously, meditate with him, but to kiss him -- to kiss him -- would mean a vulnerability Daniel hadn't experienced since Abydos. Sam's kiss was healing, almost playful, but when he kissed Teal'c, he forgave him. The utter surrender of that kiss would join the list of moments that haunted his nightmares.
But then Sam kissed them again, and touched their cheeks, and Teal'c put a hand around his, strong and comforting, and Daniel experienced him, just for a moment, as a body, tall and beautiful, naked to the waist for meditation, shining in the candlelight and protecting him, the passion of Teal'c's long lifetime surrounding them all and keeping the world and its dangers out.
Daniel had just turned to experience Sam the same way when Jack barged in unannounced.
++
Colonel O'Neill was mostly confused, which was more difficult than his anger would have been. He'd taken her aside first, leaving Daniel and Teal'c to do God knows what in Teal'c's quarters while he talked to Sam in the VIP room. So far, though, all he'd said was, "If there was a memo about this, it definitely didn't end up on my desk," then buried his head in his hands. Finally he looked up. "Okay. You're going to try to explain this to me, in words of one syllable or less, and I'm still going to be confused and probably angry. But you're going to try."
Sir, I'm in love with them. That wasn't right. True, possibly, but not sufficient. She loved -- was in love with -- him too, although she'd never said it in so many words. Sir, Daniel and Teal'c were helping me work through some issues. That sounded like BS even in her head. "Sir, you wouldn't understand."
"I know." She waited. "But I figured I'd try before telling Hammond I need my team broken apart because of fraternization issues. I think we both know how he'd take that."
"Sir," she started, then touched her hand where Teal'c had pressed his lips just ten minutes earlier. If she concentrated, she could still feel the heat of his lips, the warmth in her fingertips.
"Carter?" he encouraged her.
"It's kind of a funny story, actually," she began. "After Martouf died, do you remember?" He nodded. "When I think about him dying, I feel the grief that Jolinar would have felt. It's -- eerie. It's wrong. And when Teal'c tried to communicate with his symbiote, and..."
"I remember."
"We've lost people, sir. Friends. Lovers. Family."
"I know." He looked at her intently but not threatening. He understood loss. Maybe he could understand healing. She took a deep breath.
"Do you understand the Stargate, sir?"
"That's your department."
"I know. That's it exactly. To understand about us, what we've been doing, you have to know about the Stargate. Not just the proton emissions, or the naquadah casing, but all of that, and what Daniel knows about its historical significance, and... and all of that, sir. And if you don't, then you don't really understand anything."
"And?"
"And so... we love... I mean, I love them. Daniel and Teal'c."
The Colonel muttered something under his breath, then said, "And they make you happy?"
"Happier than I've felt in a long time," she told him, and felt a rush of emotion so powerful she couldn't move for a minute. Colonel O'Neill looked at her thoughtfully for a long time, then sighed and gestured towards the door. "Happier than I've been in forever," she whispered to herself.
++
Daniel was just as incomprehensible as Carter, and Teal'c just gave him a look that said Hands Off. He expected incomprehensibility from Daniel, but had hoped the moment he'd shared with Carter by the za'tarc machine, when he'd felt almost honest, had meant something. Not that Jack had any hopes of there ever being anything in particular between him and Carter, but he thought maybe, on some level, they had an understanding. But obviously that wasn't the case.
"It's the thrall of the 'Gate, Jack," Daniel told him. "It's something, you could never experience, never even dream of experiencing."
Jack glared.
"I think what's happening between us is somehow connected to the races that chose us," Daniel said, excited, a man with a theory. "Teal'c is connected to the Jaffa, and the Tok'ra chose Sam, and then when Oma communicated with me at Kheb -- I think it's vital. An alliance between our chosen allies."
"And my special friendship with Thor...?"
"I don't know," Daniel said, and he puzzled over it for a minute, then broke in, "Maybe it's because you haven't tried kel'no'reem."
"I did that one time..."
"And it didn't work too well. But now that you've met the Asgard, now that you know, maybe we could try again."
Jack thought about the scene he'd walked in on, the three of them standing in some strange tableau, hands touching. He thought he'd interrupted a kiss, but he'd been trying to forget the particulars and focus on the reasons.
"No," he told Daniel. Then, seeing the disappointed look on his friend's face, he said, "Nothing personal. It's just that the thing with you and Carter and Teal'c -- I don't understand. I don't really want to understand. But it makes Carter happy. And it makes you happy. And God knows what Teal'c's feeling, but it seems to make him pretty contented, too."
"So you aren't going to tell Hammond."
"This is strictly off the record," Jack agreed, and could see the relief on Daniel's face.
++
For most of a week, Daniel thought about it, pouring through notes he'd taken about the Jaffa and the Tok'ra and their alliances, thinking, during kel'no'reem, about Kheb and the powers he'd felt in his mind, the way Oma Desala had seemed to penetrate everything. He was sure that he was on the edge of a discovery, that the three of them were about to plummet into something ancient and terrifying and fascinating.
Then Sam finally invited them out for drinks. Sitting around a high table sipping beer with his friends was mundane compared to the things he'd dreamed with them, but somehow more satisfying. Without Teal'c, when they wore Anise's armbands, he and Jack and Sam had eaten a meal, and that had tasted better than any meal he'd ever had. But with Teal'c and Sam, intoxicated only by the beer they drank and the meditation they'd shared, even pre-packaged peanuts tasted new.
He finally realized that he was no longer tasting the grief that had lingered in his mouth for three years. Without that grief, the world and everything in it tasted pure.
They drank in silence for awhile, then Teal'c broke the ice by telling a joke he'd seen on the internet, which made them laugh, and they started to tell stories about the things they'd seen online while they were supposed to be working.
When Sam threw back her head in laughter at Daniel's description of a white supremacist who thought Apophis was "probably tall, most definitely white, and quite possibly the first true Aryan." Her neck was exposed for just a few seconds, and Daniel caught Teal'c looking at her too. He leaned across the table and stroked the patch of exposed skin, so carefully that he could feel the tiny hairs along Sam's neck. Her shudder against his finger was unexpected and just right. He signaled for the check.
++
In his quarters, they were always sober, but both Samantha and DanielJackson had drunk quite a lot of liquor, and Teal'c, too, felt like smiling and discussing trivial things. It seemed appropriate, after so many weeks of sitting in silence and thinking of everything, that they should finally talk of nothing.
Daniel's apartment was full of strange things to look at, but Teal'c looked only at Samantha, whose fingers were intertwined with DanielJackson's. He touched her shoulder gently and she spun around, enabling Teal'c to grab hold of her and sweep her into his arms. She laughed and hit him, clumsy from two beers, as he carried her to DanielJackson's bed, set her down gently. DanielJackson followed behind, watching eagerly.
"You guys start," Samantha said, sitting up. "Go on."
Teal'c had to lean down to kiss DanielJackson, and first he removed the glasses that covered his eyes, setting them on a table. He kissed Daniel -- Daniel. Though the formality of his address had become accustomed, an endearment in its own right, he felt now that the man he kissed could only be Daniel. Daniel, with whom he shared a lover. Daniel, whom he loved.
At first they kissed gently, but then, without saying a word, their kiss became intense, angry. Teal'c thought he felt Daniel's teeth, then knew he did, slipping gently, then roughly, around his tongue. He tasted blood and kissed Daniel harder, moved his tongue deeper into the other man's mouth, biting at flesh until he tasted Daniel's blood too. He felt Daniel's erection, pressing insistently against his own. He pulled Daniel closer to him, then turned them both, maneuvered Daniel onto the bed next to their Samantha.
++
Sam kept on losing track of where she was, which way was up, which down. She knew that Daniel was in her, that the lips that kept crashing into hers were Teal'c's, that she'd tasted two men's mouths and two men's members, but the spinny drunken room made it hard to tell who was who and which was which and where she needed to put her hand.
To the left was nothing; her hand moved through empty space until it fell again against Daniel's bedspread. To the right she felt an arm, smooth and muscular and hard -- Teal'c. She rested there, feeling the muscles carefully with each finger, then with the palm of her hand cupped against him. Both men -- she remembered now, two penetrations, two men she'd invited in, Teal'c in front because he was larger, Daniel behind because she wanted him there -- were moving fast and thrusting deep, and she could distinguish their moans from her own; they were deep and desperate, shaky and close to tears with wanting. But she had all the time in the world and more besides, and despite the stimulation that threatened to overwhelm, she felt curiously calm. She had two lovers and was well loved besides, and if she never climaxed, she'd ride them both forever.
Her orgasm came as a surprise, then, Daniel's hand reaching around her waist to touch Teal'c as he came and then finding her clitoris as an aftershock, like hearing a knock when the Colonel's head was already through the door. But she didn't think of him any longer, just rode the last tremors of her climax and then beached, rolling in the white smooth sand (Daniel's bed. She was falling asleep on Daniel's bed) with each hand held by someone larger. It was too peculiar, and she laughed, but the laugh was shushed with a kiss. Sam smiled her tongue into his mouth, too sleepy to know whose it was.
In her dreams she knew that Daniel and Teal'c were as different as Lantash was from Martouf, as she was from Jolinar -- as different and as similar.
+++++
Meg asked for D/T/S with canonical plausibility, angst, and team bonding, and without character death.