DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World
Gekko Corp, and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no
infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other
characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
TITLE: Small Graces: Daniel
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://rowan_d.tripod.com
RATING: Adult (18 plus)
ARCHIVE: All archives fine as long as you let me know.
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Daniel (in a weird way), Sam/Jack (in a
deeply implied way), Hurt/Comfort
SPOILERS: Nothing after Season 7
TIMELINE: Season 7, after "Fallen", before "Grace"
WARNINGS: Descriptions of torture and rape, sexual situations
SUMMARY: "He knew it was inevitable something would break her."

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a little darker than my usual, so be
warned and don't make assumptions based on my byline. This story
may be read as a stand-alone, but it is most likely there will be
three companion stories, each telling the experience from a
different character's POV, and filling in the events (Daniel,
Teal'c, Jack, then Sam).

Endless thanks to my incredibly fast betas: Teddy E (for reading
it without a paper sack), annaK (for making me do it right), and
Strix (for making me feel all warm and fuzzy and boosting my
confidence:))



SMALL GRACES: DANIEL
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2005



He knew it was inevitable something would break her. They had
all been through hell on some kind of endless repeat cycle for
years. Everyone knew they couldn't last forever. Even if the
moments between--of hockey games and blue Jell-O on Sam's nose
and beer and team night at O'Malley's with Murray in a cowboy
hat--were gold. They had each other. The world counted on them
every day. They got up and went to work, taping the pieces
together best they could, missing a few bits around the edges now
and then, but hoping no one would notice.

It was inevitable they would each shatter in their own time,
scattering the pieces too wide and too tiny to be patched
together in a couple of days with MacKenzie.

Daniel neared the break point himself a few times; ended up
sobbing in Jack's arms on the supply room floor, found himself on
the wrong edge of narrow ledges. But he managed the magical
cohesion born of need, and he healed what he could on the fly.

Teal'c nearly broke when he lost his Jaffa strength, when he
surrendered his symbiote. He rose again, whole in a different
way.

Sam took everything the universe threw at her. She withdrew or
bitched or swung from one to the other, but she never faded for
more than a day. She never broke.

P3X-925 shattered her. And even then it was hard to see.

They were all taken prisoner. A rogue Goa'uld neither the SGC
nor the Tok'ra had heard of, caught them off guard mere minutes
through the Stargate.

A Goa'uld who was a little less than sane, even for a Goa'uld.

A Goa'uld who took endless pleasure in the torture of his
prisoners.

A Goa'uld who was known for taking out his aggressions against
his lot in life (ruling a meager following on the outskirts of
the galaxy)--upon the women in his possession.

SG-1 was held captive for 11 days. Daniel and Jack and Teal'c
endured extensive pain, were strung up on crude torture devices
and left to bleed on cold and filth-ridden floors. Sam endured
the same.

And then more.

The Goa'uld--Summanus, according to his Jaffa, Roman god of the
night sky, night lightning--he tired of his male prisoners in a
few days. Sam--he took away.

He kept her chained in his private quarters. He used her as he
wished. Sam is physically strong, but a Goa'uld is stronger.
And she had hardly eaten for days. She was left at his mercy.

Daniel knows her official report barely scratches the surface of
her time in that room. He's not sure he wants the longer
version. The one on his desk made him cry.

Another SG team came for them on Day 10. The eight of them
fought their way out, escaped alive. Jack carried Sam out of the
stronghold, wrapping her in an Air Force issue blanket from Col.
Burton's pack to stop her violent shivers. She came fully
conscious before they reached the Gate, insisted upon walking the
last few hundred yards.

Jack's arm around her waist carried the bulk of her weight.

But she left P3X-925 on her own two feet.

They knew this mattered.

They have all grown intimately knowledgeable in the little things
that keep the damage to a minimum, the small graces that help the
tape do its job in the morning after.

Easy to see it should have been Teal'c's massive arms and steady
strength carrying the weight of their injured teammate out of her
private hell, not the fifty-something once-retired Colonel with
the failing knees. But this was another of those little things;
evident in Sam's white-knuckled grasp on Jack's tattered uniform,
and the endless depths to Jack's eyes when he looked at her cuts
and scars.

Daniel understands this.

He watches in the days that follow, while his friend tries to
paste the pieces back together.

The glue isn't holding.

Jack notices it first. He orders Carter grounded from Gate
travel for two weeks longer than the rest of them, but he doesn't
banish her to leave. He knows she shouldn't be alone, and she
shouldn't be idle. But Daniel is the one to realize this isn't
enough.

He is the one painfully aware she is going through the motions
and healing the physical wounds. She's doing all the therapy.
She barely has a limp, anymore, and her shoulder is regaining
full motion. She'll be cleared on her weapon in no time. She's
acting the good little solider like she always has, from day one
until the act can become real again--except this time...the
illusion is thinning, and the reality isn't coming together.

He is sitting in her lab, working late, pouring over a
translation from a techno-artifact SG-19 brought back and
urgently requires intel on. His arm is against hers, because Sam
is soft like that. She's never cared for personal space. Not
with SG-1. She has been staring at the calculations in front of
her for far too long. He taps the back of her knuckles with his
own. "Hey. You okay?"

She draws a slow breath, stares into space. For a moment, he
questions whether or not she even heard him. Then, she says,
softly, "My shoulder hurts." In all the years he has known her,
she has never sounded so small.

Two days later, he hears her in the Level 19 ladies' room,
throwing-up the first real meal he's seen her eat in days. He
hovers outside the door, both waiting to help (God knows how) and
guarding her privacy from passersby.

She is startled to find him in the hallway.

"You okay?" he asks. Again. It's starting to sound wrong to his
own ears.

She nods. Again. "I'm fine. It's just...a reaction to some of
the meds I have to take." Which is so close to 'could-be-true'
(pain-killers, antibiotics, post-rape cocktail), he doesn't have
the guts to call it a lie.

"Are you keeping Janet in the loop? Are you sure you're getting
enough to eat?"

"Yes, Dad," she says, and she attempts the grin and sweet blue
eyes that usually win her the world. But she has no spirit and
no humor to give, and her gesture is devoid of charm. She knows
it. She starts to walk away.

Daniel reaches out and catches two of her fingers in his. He
doesn't speak, only holds her gaze and her fingers and asks with
silence.

She melts a bit. He glimpses the cracks and maybe the whisper of
tears. "I'm fine," she says. "Really."

On Thursday, she walks out in the middle of a briefing; no
warning, just an apology thrown in the General's direction, and a
brisk and silent exit.

Jack looks at Hammond, his chair already shoved half back, his
thighs tensed to spring. "General?"

"Go, Colonel." Jack is out the door faster than Sam

Daniel and Teal'c talk to Jack a half hour later. He tells them,
in the quiet voice he uses when he doesn't want to hear his own
words, that Carter had a flashback. He sent her home early.

Daniel pulls off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose and
waits for the pain to go away.

He hears the slam of Jack's office door and feels sick at the
sound.

Teal'c's arms are clasped behind his back, and Daniel can hear
the rapid breaths. The alien across from him would rip Summanus
to shreds with his bear hands, given less than half a chance.

On Friday night, Sam doesn't answer her phone when Daniel calls
to ask her to dinner. She doesn't answer again when he calls
before bed. He grabs his keys and drives to her house.

He waits a while, but she opens the door. She's still dressed.
Tight jeans and a tighter tank top, an Oxford shirt loose and
hanging open around her. Her hair is soft and gently mussed
about her face. She has on a little make-up, and small gold
earrings that catch the porch light. He is always fascinated by
Sam in jewelry. He so rarely sees this side of her.

"Hey," he says, almost like an apology. "I probably shouldn't
have just...dropped by, but I tried your phone, and..."

She looks a little guilty, glances away. "Oh. Yeah. I...turned
off my phones, except for cell calls from the SGC."

Even now, she is the soldier, the warrior before all else.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah. I just wanted...some quiet, you know?"

"Yeah....you want me to...disappear?"

She shakes her head. "No." And he hears the first hint of a
tremor in her voice.

"Really?" His boyish insecurity shows before he can tuck it
away.

She brushes at her forehead with the side of her hand, then hooks
her thumb on her jeans' pocket. "All the hovering? It
actually...is helping."

He feels more like 'her Daniel' than he has in weeks.

Half an hour later, and Sam is lying on her back in front of a
golden fire, knees up and hands resting on her belly. He's
sitting beside her, one knee raised and wine swirling in his
glass. She's had a few glasses herself, but she's not drunk. He
knows his Sam too well. She's a little flushed, a little dew-
eyed and drowsy, but still able to recite the quadratic formula
if he asked or delineate the reasons she can't be in love with
her commanding officer.

He thinks he should stop with the wine himself, because he's
starting to wish he could swing around and rest his head on the
flat of Sam's stomach; he's having memories of Apophis and
Phoenician number systems and the tang of Sam's perfume.

Yeah. Sam Carter wears perfume. Even on missions. At least the
first day.

Sam lifts a hand to her forehead, rubs at the tension lines
there, and he starts to feel the tight knot in the center of his
stomach that cinches every moment he glimpses the hell eating her
from the inside out.

He sets down his wine glass and stretches out on the rug beside
her, knees up, parallel with hers. They talk about their first
apartments, and Lieutenant Carlson's rusty blue Toyota, and how
Daniel's paper boy almost knocked his elderly neighbor off the
porch one morning with a mis-aimed Wall Street Journal. And Sam
seems to be relaxing into the conversation. Smiling, almost, for
fleeting moments.

So, she catches him completely off guard when she rolls into him,
wraps her long arms around his neck, and cries like he has never
heard.

Daniel holds on hard and buries his hand in her feather-soft
hair. He kisses the taut tendons in her neck. "Sam. Oh, God,
Sam. It's okay. It's okay." But it isn't, he knows it isn't.
It's hell on Earth, it's Jolinar on Netu, and there's nothing Sam
can do but keep breathing until it fades enough she can see the
light again.

She presses her strong, soft body to his and he won't let go.
She's trembling from deep inside. "He's all over me," she
whispers, and her breath prickles his neck and his ear. "I can't
get him off of me..." Daniel can barely sort the words from her
hoarse sobs. His teeth ache.

"He's not here, Sam," he says, with all the confidence he can
find. He speaks into her hair, breathes in her ear. "He's not
here. Just us. Just my Sam. That's all I feel, all I smell.
Just...you."

She pulls back to find his gaze, arms still around his body, and
blue meets blue in the midnight firelight. He has less than a
moment's warning as her gaze drops to his mouth, before she
pushes forward and covers his lips with hers.

She tastes like wine and ice cream and sunshine on wooded
planets. He's dizzy and lost before he scrambles back to his
senses and pulls away with the pop of lost suction.

"Sam?"

"What?" She's breathless and tearful and her shirt is off her
shoulders and he is viscerally aware of the deeply beautiful
woman touching so much of his body.

"Sam, this isn't...you don't want this. Not now. Probably not
ever."

"Why? You don't..."

He combs his fingers through her hair again, swallows the lump in
his throat as he feels the flush of heat in her tear-stained
skin, remembers her lips on his forehead when he was a hundred
years old. "No, it's not...it's...because it's us, Sam," he says
simply. "And because you...want someone else," he says, with all
the kindness he has.

The tenderness rips down the last of her walls. She's crying
again, she's like a child clinging to him, and he wants to hold
onto her and never let go. But instead of speaking, instead of
apologizing or reasoning or telling him she knows he's right, she
pulls his mouth down to hers and kisses him hard and deep. Her
leg wraps around the back of his, and he's suddenly far far too
aware that the erection he could hardly avoid is pressing up
against the crotch of Sam Carter's jeans. Heat is radiating off
her in waves and her hands are gripping his clothing, pinching
his skin, and he has never felt this much of her at once. He's
drowning in Sam Carter. It's his Sam all around him, the arms
and legs and stomach and breasts he works beside each day, yet
he's in a world he's never been in before, because those last few
inches mean the world, and Major Carter's gone and Samantha is
driving her tongue down his throat and smearing her tears on his
cheeks and sliding her hands beneath the shirt tail she has
yanked from his slacks.

"Sam, stop!" He hates how hard he has to pull away. The last
thing on Earth he wants is to hurt her.

"Don't," she pleads. "Don't. Daniel, please don't..." Her
fingers are clinging to his shirt, and she's pulling his shoulder
close to her face, breathing in his skin.

"Don't what, Sam?" he asks, still as gentle as his panting breath
will allow.

"Don't...leave me alone."

"I'm right here, Sam. I'm not going anywhere."

"No, I...I need you."

"Sam. We can't do this. You're not ready...and you don't want
me. Not... Sam, you're not the kind for casual sex. I know
this, don't try to tell me otherwise. And you're not in love
with me. But you are in love with someone else." They're not
supposed to say this out loud, never out loud, but this is the
last desperate edge and nothing can be held back without risking
more loss.

She shakes her head against him. "No, I..." am not too drunk to
list the reasons I can't be in love with my commanding
officer...

"Yes, Sam. And he loves you. And I can't--"

"But you love me, right?" She is looking up at him again. The
wide-eyed child who lost her mother.

Oh, God. "Sam, I--"

"No, not like...but just me. Samantha Carter. I'm someone you
love, right?" And it's the hidden whisper of genuine question in
her voice that finally breaks his heart. Breaks his will. How
could she have fallen so far when everyone was watching?

Instinct takes over. He combs his fingers through her hair,
caresses her damp cheek. "Sam. There is no one I love more."
He realizes with something of a jolt, that his words are true.
She's his family. Jack and Teal'c and Sam.

"Then be with me," she whispers, sniffing and brushing at her
nose like a child.

"Sam, I love you, of course, I love you, but this isn't what you
need right now. You need to--"

"What I need..." She's shaking so badly, he wants to crush her
to him until the tremors quiet. She's like a leaf in the wind
and she's supposed to be a warrior and it's china hearts and
crystalline glass and she's delicate and blond and fragile and
God, Sam... "What I need...is for the last person inside of me,
to have been someone I love."

Three deep breaths in the golden light and the silence. And then
he's kissing her as hard as she kissed him before. His hands are
up under her tank top and her skin is like velvet and he pulls
her against him, rolls her on top of him and her weight is solid
and real and tender.

This is wrong. This is right. None of it makes sense anymore.
But it's Daniel and Sam, and she's home to him in so many ways.
She's the best friend he's ever had and he will not let her
down, not like this. He is scared that he is letting her down
with every needy touch of his hands, but he doesn't see any other
way this can end tonight. The hard truth is, Sam's hitting rock
bottom and he's the only soft thing left between her and the
cruel gravel ground.

He tries not to notice the sharp stones ripping his back even as
he cushions her softness above.

Their progress is hard and fast. Gentle and desperate and
clinging. They tear away only the clothes they have to. She
wants him touching the length of her body every moment. She
wants his hands on every inch of her skin. Wants his imprint to
melt the cruel touches and wipe her clean. He knows it won't
work, but if it helps even a little...

Her jeans have been shoved away, and his hand is inside her silk
panties. Sam Carter wears silk panties, but he doesn't want to
get too involved, not in that way, because he's doing this for
her; he has to remember his best friend has been tortured and
repeatedly raped and she's crying out for help. He's helping her
the only way he knows how; that's all.

He hopes he can bring her to climax with his hand, break her
drive, before he has to carry things too far. But she won't have
that and he knows it. Sam's too smart. She told him what she
needs, and he wants to say it's wrong, but a part of him
understands too completely.

He surrenders to her tugs at his pants, and he positions himself
above her.

"Condom," he says.

She shakes her head, "No. Skin." But then, "Wait....yes... I
know you're clean, Daniel. Besides trusting you, I know you've
been cleared in Medical, but...I... They still have to test me
again, in a few months... I can't get pregnant, I've had the
shot, but you..."

He shakes his head, kisses her again. "No. You're okay. He was
Goa'uld. He wouldn't have anything we need to worry about."

"We can't be positive, we can't..."

But this he understands; knows this is why the food hasn't stayed
down. This part he can give her. He grabs her chin. "Sam.
Look at me." She complies before she can think. The good little
soldier following orders. "There's nothing--poison--in--you.
Not you."

Her eyes fill. "Daniel..."

He silences her with one hand on her lips, one sliding across her
clit, and she closes her eyes and gasps. Gradually, he eases his
length inside her, and she doesn't have the strength to push him
away.

She's so wired and so strung out and emotional, it doesn't take
her long to be far-gone aroused. She almost loses the thread a
few times. He can see her mentally jump from her living room
carpet to the black floor in her nightmares, see her threatening
to shove him away, then forcing herself into the present, sinking
into the arousal. He tries not to watch too much, but she's
beneath him and her skin is painted in firelight, and she has her
head back, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes tight as she
pants for breath; she looks just as he knew she would. So
beautiful. So purely feminine. But, he's seen her tortured, and
he knows there is always a similarity. The anthropologist in him
knows this is where sado-masochism comes from. The man in him
doesn't want to believe.

She pulls him against her and claws into his shoulder as she
nears her climax. His is just around the corner. He hasn't done
this in a while, after all, and he's skin on skin inside the most
beautiful woman he's never kissed.

He knows she needs to go fast, before she can get mixed up in the
memories, while she can still stay in the present and reclaim her
life. He knows, in the end, she needs Jack. He knows this
desperate need is the very reason she's not on the other side of
town tonight. She loves Jack. A lover's touch should be washing
away the hate. But he knows she doesn't want the opposites to
meet. He understands she never wants Jack and the nightmare
messed up in her head. But Daniel's different. Tonight she
needs to make love to her best friend, not her coveted lover.
She's not in love with Daniel Jackson. He wishes he could be
certain of the same in return. But tonight is not about him. It
can't be.

He's letting this happen. Seven years and they've never let
anything cross the lines. None of the foursome has broken the
rules. They've never let the powder-keg explode. But Daniel's
letting this happen, and he knows it's not the end of the world;
hopes it's not the end of their world.

She comes like a hurricane and screams past his ear and digs her
nails into his back. He climaxes inside her, because she holds
him tight to her hips and won't let him pull away. She wants his
mark inside her. Wants to wash it all away. He gets it.

They end in tears. But she still doesn't let go.

Neither does he.

Because Sam Carter's falling tonight. And he's the only soft
thing between her and the ground.

*****

rowan_d1@yahoo.com