Jigsaw
by Taselby
Rated G
J/D
Snippet set during CotG. For Minxy, in payment for stumping the band, even though this probably isn’t what she wanted.
Not mine. No money, no harm, no foul. No additives or preservatives. This story was manufactured in a facility that also manufactures nut products, including tropical nuts. Please see a doctor if your symptoms persist for more than 7 days. Not a calorie-free food.
Thank you to elynross for the corrections.
It’s the rain that wakes Daniel up, the noise of it harsh and staticky, dry against his ears. It makes him think of television in the days before cable, unreliable aerials and blue light flickering through the darkness of the living room. Blue light flickering in the gate room, and the cold, harsh shudder of being pulled apart and thrown, a handful of bits, away from home.
It makes him remember golden firelight and the blast of wind-driven sand against stone, and a different kind of frisson altogether in Shau’ri’s arms.
Frisson, he thinks. From the Old French fricons, from the Latin frigere, to be cold. The language is contradictory and unsatisfying, but his mind is restless and he can’t let go of this think of better words. The room is cold. Shau’ri’s – Amaunet’s, he corrects himself, but the again the language is inadequate – eyes were cold.
And the rain sounds like an old movie. Static, from the Latin staticus, from the Greek statikos, from statos, to stand.
This concludes our broadcast day.
He wanders out of the guest room and into the empty spaces of Jack’s house. The desperate crowding of photos on the walls and surfaces only serving to highlight the lack of family here, and Daniel wonders if this house is where it happened, where Charlie was lost and Jack’s wife left and Jack agreed to let himself be lost on Abydos. He wonders if Jack stayed here in memory or penance, or if this is a new space entirely, filled up with the ghosts of his departed family.
The rain slaps against the dark windows. Daniel has to close his eyes and reach deep to find the sound of sand in it.
“Can’t sleep?” Jack’s voice comes from behind him, quiet and concerned.
Daniel lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, insanely grateful that Jack doesn’t ask if he’s okay. Right now the house is cold and his clothes feel strange and the bed is too soft and Shau’ri is gone and Daniel is an alien on his own planet. He might never be okay again.
He swallows and finds his voice, turning to see Jack, pale in the darkness. “The rain woke me.”
Jack doesn’t say anything at that, just nods and steps past him, sure-footed and aware of where everything is. He looks out of the window. Shadows from the rain on the glass leave creases on his face.
Daniel turns away and traces a finger over the textured edge of a picture frame. There is no dust. “You don’t have to do this,” he says at last, and from the corner of his eye, blurred out beyond the edge of his new glasses that dig behind his ears he sees Jack turn to look at him.
“Do what?”
Daniel ignores the question and pulls his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose. He can’t articulate what Jack is doing, how alike they are now. He wonders if it’s like the continents – if you took the pieces of his Jack’s lives and turned them just right, if they would fit together, the jagged edges matching, making something different, but whole. “I’m not fragile, you know. I won’t break.”
“No,” Jack says with certainty, blurred and half-lit in grey light by the window. “You won’t.”
Fin