Title: Snuffed Out
Author: Bree
Rating: PG
Pairing: slight S/D tendencies, nothing serious
Spoilers: Meridian, Frozen
Summary: Sam commemorates Daniel’s birthday for the first time since he ascended.
Notes: Just a sad, weepy little piece written on Daniel’s birthday.
His name was still scrawled on her calendar.
Right there, second week in July, beneath the picture of a Harley Davidson on a hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Daniel.
Next to it she had affixed a gold star, the kind that Cassie used to get on her book reports at school. Sam and Daniel were gold-star kids as well, they always joked. The ones who try the hardest , though the answers seem to come to them the easiest. Stars would speak to her of Daniel for the rest of her life, she knew that now.
Sam took a sip of her coffee, holding the liquid at the back of her throat for a second before swallowing. She never forgot a birthday. She remembered making lopsided cakes for her father and brother on their respective birthdays, decorating the dining room with paper streamers, as if she could glue the three of them together with a party. But there was always something powerful, something important about making it through another year. And knowing that the people you love made it through right along with you.
Except when they didn’t.
She glanced at her watch. 12:15am. Colonel O’Neill was still in the care of the Tok’ra, and who could say if he had even woken up again from the feverish dreams that had claimed him. But he would. He always did. Snake or no snake, his wild eyes would fly open, that rough, weary grin would return to his face, and he’d be ready to grab his P90 and get back out there. To the stars. There had been a moment when she’d expected Daniel to wake up again, to blink sleepily at her and smile under his bandages, and to simply refuse to die.
Teal’c would be at the base, deep in Kel-nor-eem. Jaffa didn’t believe in celebrating the day of your birth, he had said so a thousand times. But last year he bought Daniel a winding Ferash candle on P4X790. You’re supposed to burn it on nights when the moon is full in order to purify your spirit. He left it on Daniel’s desk, but the archeologist had little trouble guessing who it was from. Daniel could read people. He never asked him about it, nor told anyone else about Teal’c’s birthday gift, until she dragged it out of him a week later. The memory still made her smile.
She had taken it from his office before Jonas got there. The Ferash candle was in her house now, sitting on a shelf next to the only picture of Daniel Jackson she kept out. There were plenty of photos of him in the mishmash collages decorating her lab, but here at home she only had one. He was at his desk, glancing sideways at her and smiling shyly, his face half-hidden in his hands, and his glasses caught at exactly the right angle so as not to hide his watery blue eyes.
Sam took a matchbook from her kitchen drawer and placed a few more of her own candles near the twisting brown wax of the Ferash. Here was a vanilla, a jasmine, and an apple cider. She arranged as many as she could find. There should be candles today. There should have been candles on a lopsided cake, served in the mess hall amid laughter and paper streamers. But a photograph and a birthday gift, one that had been passed from friend to friend to friend, would have to do. She lit the candles, and her eyes began to fill with tears. She wasn’t going to forget. Not today. Not ever.
“Happy Birthday, Daniel,” she whispered into the golden flames. The light danced over his face in the photograph, gleaming on the glass frame, illuminating the shadows.
Sam turned away as a gentle sob hit her. She stepped back into the kitchen and buried her face in her hands. A strange, soft breeze alighted on her neck, and she felt a wonderful chill pass through her. The ground changed . . . shifted.
She turned and gasped, jumping back and hitting the counter, but the gasp turned into laughter. All the candles were snuffed out, save one. The Ferash still burned, like a lighthouse in a storm, the single beacon of a soul that refused to die.
Sam glanced around, hoping that she could hold onto the moment, but he was gone. She was still laughing , though. Laughing through her tears.
She picked up the picture of Daniel and traced his image with her fingertips.
“And many more,” she said.
The End.
