Onus - Summary: This is a tag to Heroes.
- Pairings: None (despite how this starts).
- Not to be archived elsewhere, please. - T.O.
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- She released her hold on him as he slowly stepped back. She'd allowed her emotions to rise to the forefront again, but after all the bottled up frustrations and sadness over the past two years, she knew there had to be a change in how she communicated with her teammates. If Daniel's death had been the tip of the iceberg, Janet's had been the meltng point.
- The colonel's near-death had unsealed her control and given her the emotional momentum to realize that she no longer wanted to keep her thoughts closed in.
- "After going through that with Daniel, I didn't think I could go through it again with you. That was all I was thinking of out there, sir. Myself, and how I… how I needed you around."
- "You're a survivor, Carter. You'll always make it, no matter what."
- "Colonel… sir, we've been together as teammates for seven years. I think of you as my superior officer… but also as a friend. You're my friend, sir, or I'd like to hope you are."
- "We're friends," Jack confirmed.
- "I'd like to be around for you to talk to, if you need someone. I'd like for you to think of me that way."
- "I do."
- "I need to call you 'Colonel', but I want… I want to ... sometimes, maybe...." but still she couldn't bring herself to say it.
- O'Neill smiled. "You can call me Jack."
- "Off base."
- "Off base. You always could have." Noting her uncomfortable posture, he was unsure of what to say. "How are you doing?"
- "About Janet?" Sam glanced at her shoes, not really seeing. "Not so good. She was a close friend."
- "I know." Jack turned away, sat down on the bed. "I sent Daniel in with her. I should have sent Teal'c, or Major Donahue." Someone who would've been on the lookout for danger; someone who might've fired first.
- Sam nodded. She wouldn't verbally second-guess the colonel, but she had been thinking the same thing. But what-ifs never succeeded in changing the past, nor in appeasing one's sense of guilt or grief.
- _____
- Daniel paused behind Sam and Jack. This was their first private moment together since the memorial, if one could call the commissary private. But no one else was at the coffee machine; the room was nearly empty so late in the afternoon.
- "How are you, Sam?" Daniel had not been unaware of the close bond between the scientist and the CMO.
- Carter turned slowly, gently blowing the heat from her steaming mug. At first she wouldn't meet Daniel's eyes. "I miss her."
- They had all grown close to Janet, a relationship that had begun to develop with the adoption of Cassandra. "I know. I'm so sorry."
- "I know. It's not like you could have done anything." Sam cringed at the sound of her words. Just what had she meant by that?
- Daniel's head perked up at the remark.
- "I'm sorry too, Daniel," Jack cut in. "I should have sent a nurse or medic in with her, and more airmen. Your duty isn't to be part of a med team."
- Would a medic have been able to save her? Those words were meant to soften the pain, Daniel knew that intellectually. But emotionally he heard the misgivings, and the stabbing in his heart renewed itself. "Are you two blaming me?"
- Carter, already sorry for what had sounded like the petulance of a child, broke into a rapid apology. "I don't …I don't… I didn't mean it to sound like that, Daniel."
- "Because you should." Daniel stared now at Sam, then at Jack, his eyes filled with pain and self-recrimination. "Not because I couldn't stop it; I wasn't aiming a weapon, I was holding an IV bag. And not because someone else might have saved her life. But I was the one who was there; if we had just changed places after rolling Simon over, the blast would've hit me."
- Realization hit both Carter and O'Neill at the same moment, a realization that while they had subconsciously had misgivings that Daniel was neither superhuman nor omnipotent, he had very consciously been blaming himself. And all they could do was watch him turn and leave the room.
- Jack guiltily met Sam's eyes. "We were blaming him."
- "I didn't mean… god, I didn't mean to."
- "Neither did I."
- Sam looked at her friend, her superior officer, her team leader alive and well, and knew that while she had watched him get hit, while she had thought he had died, Daniel was seeing Janet get hit, knew she had died. Sam had run to the colonel, had felt his pulse, and had had hope for his survival. But Daniel had felt Janet's pulse and had known that she had been murdered beside him. Sam remembered the calls, the cries; she'd been horrified, stunned, shocked at the news. But Daniel had witnessed it.
- "Have you actually talked to him since we got back?" Daniel had dropped by the infirmary to check in on Jack. But they hadn't mentioned Janet.
- "Yes, after we… no… not really." Carter had talked to Daniel, but not about feelings, not about anything more than trivial. Had they been protecting themselves, denying their pain, or wallowing in it too openly to admit? And there had been that relief for the health of Colonel O'Neill.
- "Neither have I."
- Carter's eyes filled with unsteady hurt.
- "Let's go find him." Jack touched her elbow, and nodded towards the exit.
- _____
- Daniel was not in his office, nor in the briefing room. He was not to be found in the labs, and Teal'c had not received a visit from Jackson any time that day.
- They tried the infirmary, in case he was in there reminiscing with some nurses, but the on-duty staff just shook their heads and suggested the OR. "He was in there earlier, before the memorial."
- But the OR was black. This was not a place carrying pleasant memories, and Jack avoided it at all costs. He could only imagine Daniel would do the same, since the memories of his death had returned to him.
- "He's not here." Jack turned to leave.
- "I am."
- Hesitating for a moment, Carter and O'Neill moved slowly towards the quiet sound. Still they could see no one, nothing in the shadows.
- "Where are you?" Jack spoke softly, as though breaking the stillness would crack the walls of the room and send it crashing down around them.
- "I'm not really sure."
- They could see the shape in the shadows, and Sam moved in on one side, sitting down against the wall, as Jack slid down on the other.
- His hand brushed against Daniel's, and Jack wiped the moisture on his pants. Daniel had been crying.
- Carter found the nerve to speak up first. "I would never have wanted it to be you, Daniel. Don't you ever think that."
- "We went through it once for you, Daniel. We never want to do that again."
- The voice was quiet, flooded with anguish. "Jack, I saw her get hit. I knew she was dead. And… and I heard Sam yelling that you were hit too. I saw Janet, and I felt myself shrinking inside, dying inside, for you, for Sam, for me. Janet was dead, I thought you were dead, and I knew what Sam was going through at that very moment because it was the same thing I was going through. In the twenty minutes it took to get us out of there I remember thinking, the Goa'uld got us this time. They won. I thought I'd lost everyone."
- Daniel felt an arm slide around his shoulders from the left, and then another around his back from the right. As hands tightened on his arm, on his waist, he knew the two simple words would carry him out of there, keep him moving on.
- "You didn't."
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