fic: Fighting The Darkness [gen, PG-13]

[tielan]

TITLE: Fighting The Darkness
SUMMARY: Daniel can only watch as Sam dies in Atlantis.
CATEGORY: drama, action-adventure, crossover with SG1
CHARACTERS: primarily Daniel, Elizabeth, and Teyla, although quite a few other people make appearances.
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Season One - The Siege I & II.
NOTES: This story began life as an entry for saeva in a long-ago genficathon. The request was for Daniel in Atlantis, and Evil Ancients. I never completed it. (Sorry, saeva!) It was intended as part of a sequel to my story 'Breaking The Siege', which was written during the hiatus between Season One and Season Two, and took the solution to The Siege in a somewhat different direction.

It's still not completed and never will be.

If you choose to read on, then keep this in mind! On the whole, I probably shouldn't post this since it's a forever-WIP, but 3,500 words that are just sitting around? Who knows - maybe someone else will be able to do something with it?

Fighting The Darkness

A cup of coffee steamed gently on the arm of the chair Daniel had appropriated from Dr. Beckett.

Around him, the Atlantis infirmary went about their duties, having done all they could to help. The hum of the machines surrounding the bed, the sound of footsteps coming and going, the cadence of medical voices in conversation and instruction, even the occasional raised voice, or yelp of pain from a patient - all were familiar to Daniel in his years as a member of SG-1.

Yet there were some differences in the surrounding sounds, slight variations that disconcerted him. The machines buzzed differently, calibrated to a different energy source. The footsteps were not the echoing stamp of boot against cement, but shoe against a linoleum-like material. And while the voices spoke in familiar terms, they were not the voices he expected to hear.

So much was different here. Not better or worse, merely unfamiliar to him.

He'd come to Atlantis on the Daedelus, in time to rescue the city from the Wraith. He'd entered the city of the Ancients with an eagerness that was barely restrained by the circumstances in which they arrived. He'd planned to do so much, study so much, in the three months that Jack had allotted for his stay.

Daniel sat and wondered how much of it mattered anymore.

Oh, he knew that it still mattered. The world didn't stop because bad things happened. History showed that; his own life showed that.

He sat and watched the steam curl gently up above the lip of the mug. Then he lifted his gaze beyond the rising steam to the woman who lay comatose in the infirmary bed. An IV drip ran into her arm at the elbow, just below the bluish-black bruise that marred the pale skin. She breathed slowly and surely, but Dr. Beckett had said that her heart rate was slowing as the hours passed.

And Daniel sat by Sam's bed and wondered what the hell he was going to tell Jack.

"I think I'm being quite generous, actually," Jack said, leaning back in his chair, unmoved by Daniel's protests at the timespan. "You've got three months to play to your heart's content."

"And you'll expect a full report when we get back?" Sam hadn't taken the time limit much better than Daniel, but her sense of humour was a little faster to recover than Daniel's.

Jack grinned. "Of course, Carter."

"Jack, I still think that three months--"

"Daniel," said his friend emphatically. "At the end of three months, you get back here and we'll review the situation. If you want to reapply for assignment to Atlantis, we'll discuss it then."

And that was as much leeway as Jack had been willing to give.

Daniel didn't know whether to be thankful that Jack and Teal'c were a full galaxy away, or sad that his friends wouldn't be here for Sam's end.

He almost wished he wasn't here to watch her fade into the night. Almost.

Footsteps paused by the bed. "Dr. Jackson?"

He looked up, met the quiet regard of Dr. Weir, and stood. "Dr. Weir."

"Any change in Colonel Carter's condition?"

"None." Daniel said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"We don't know what caused her lapse?" Her gaze was steady and green; calming, like the shift and swell of the ocean on which the city floated.

Daniel grimaced. "Dr. Beckett thinks it might be the naquadah in her blood reacting against the ATA gene." And Sam or I should have remembered that.

Then again, why would they? They were accustomed to Jack or Teal'c reining in their enthusiasm; used to their colleagues playing the watchdogs who thought of the longer-term consequences. Of course, as the commander of SG-1, Sam had learned that she couldn't always let her enthusiasm run away with her, but when faced with a city full of what Jack cheerfully termed 'toys', neither she nor Daniel had thought of something as familiar to them as her unique biochemistry.

Dr. Weir was studying him. "You were excited by the possibilities of the city," she said. It was an oblique exoneration, but Daniel felt it painfully, and looked sharply away. "I'm used to the enthusiasm of some of the scientists on this expedition, Dr. Jackson. We've had issues spring from overzealousness just as much as neglect."

Daniel nodded, but his gaze was taken up by the waxen pallor of his friend, the fine blue veins that stood out so sharply across her eyelids, the shallow rise-and-fall of her chest as she breathed. Dr. Beckett had tried everything he knew and a few things he didn't, but nothing had changed her condition.

In the end, even the good doctor had been forced to concede defeat.

Janet could have done no more.

They'd wheeled away the scans and machines, hooked her up to the heart monitor, linked her to the IV, and left her to Daniel's watch.

That had been early this morning.

Now he faced nothing but the painful vigil as Sam slid from the pale edge of life into the murky darkness of death. It could take hours. Maybe a couple of days. But it would happen. Was happening. Even as Daniel watched, the heart rate slid down, slowing another notch. It had already lowered steadily through the day.

'No extraordinary measures' didn't cover this. Sam was dying and there was nothing that would stop it.

Jack would kill him when he found out.

"I'm sending both of you because I'm counting on you to keep an eye on each other." The dark eyes had glinted with wry humour and more than a little concern. "Besides, if I just sent one of you, you'd probably accuse me of favouritism."

Daniel didn't want to tell Jack that Sam was dying. He really didn't want to be the man to break that news to his friend. But who else was there to say it?

He just had to scrape up the courage to explain the situation to Jack. And right now, it failed him. He was tired. He'd hardly slept last night, too strung out by the events of the day to really relax.

"When was the last time you slept?"

He shrugged.

"Dr. Jackson, are you aware that I have the authority to order you to your quarters?"

Daniel managed a half-smile at her words, both gentle and determined. "I doubt I'm likely to sleep."

Her mouth quirked in sympathy. "But even the break from the infirmary will help. And tomorrow, we'll make the call to General O'Neill."

The call he was dreading.

"We?"

"She was under my leadership when this happened."

A determined spark flared within him. Daniel shook his head at her. "It's not your responsibility, Dr. Weir."

"It's not entirely yours, either. Colonel Carter is an adult woman, able to make her own decisions. She forgot, you forgot - in the end, it doesn't matter." He could feel her eyes resting on him, the gentle compassion she was extending to him. "You can't do anything for her right now, Dr. Jackson, but you will need sleep to deal with the General tomorrow."

She knew that much about Jack anyway.

Daniel nodded and turned away. Then he turned back and slipped his fingers into Sam's hand, squeezing gently and hoping she could feel it, wherever she was.

Then he followed Dr. Weir's instructions and went to bed.

--

He dreamed of the city, lying quiescent beneath the waves.

There were no noises now but the ripple of water beyond the shield. Atlantis was silent, still, abandoned.

Daniel walked through the corridors, feeling as though he were cocooned in a bubble, insulated from the city around him. His consciousness told him he was dreaming, that he'd passed through these rooms only hours earlier and met men and women coming and going about their duties. His dreaming body kept walking.

He passed rooms that he recognised, glancing at personnel quarters, storerooms and the outer labs as he drifted through Atlantis like a ghost of the Ancients. Without the power of an operational DHD, the city was lit by the curious 'water-lights' in the walls, giving off a dim, slightly eerie glow.

And yet he found it strangely comforting to stand in the stillness and shadows.

Daniel paused, looking down the corridor from which he'd just come.

This was as far as they'd shown him so far. Beyond here were parts of the city that they hadn't explored, either through lack of time or lack of resources.

Something - some memory or thought - made him walk down the corridor, heading for uncharted territories of the city. There were dangers, yes, but there were also things that no man or woman in Atlantis had yet found. Things that Daniel knew were here, echoing back to him and the vague memory of his time as an Ancient.

He had been an Ancient for a time, lived as one of them, thought as one of them. When he'd been returned to this plane of existence, he'd studied them, researched them, tried to find out more about the Ancients and their ways. It was more than pure intellectual curiosity. This was personal.

And here, in the city where they'd lived for tens of thousands of years, in the city which they'd ultimately abandoned for Earth, he could almost remember who he'd been, what he'd been as one of them.

Almost.

Now, as he moved through the corridors, he felt the tug of something drawing him on. A barely-felt need led him, step by step, room by room. It led him past wall sculptures of water and steel, past intricately-patterned doors, along walkways lined with metal railings and up and down stairs.

Daniel didn't know where he was going. He didn't question it. There were times in his career when he just knew things, when all the pieces fit together in his mind and he made the leap of intuition to reach the right conclusion. This was one of those times.

He just knew it.

At the last door, he paused. Bronze gleamed, old and tarnished by time; open to the elements while standing fiercely closed. He traced the carved letters of the Ancient writings that had been moulded into the door, and felt the tug of curiosity to see what lay beyond. But even as he reached for the door pad, he woke in his quarters, the sheets damp with sweat.

--

Ms. Emmagen moved through the city with the graceful confidence of a predator.

She reminded him a little of Sam.

Both women were easily dismissed at first. A woman in the military, a Pegasus native - nothing much of interest. But Daniel had seen the way the Atlantis personnel spoke to Teyla Emmagen, the respect in which she was held by the individual expedition members, and was reminded of Sam's stubborn persistence and ultimate acceptance among the SGC.

Daniel watched and quietly admired. He'd seen hundreds of races and cultures in his time travelling through the Stargate and thousands of women. Every culture bred its own kind of women, and Daniel had found something to admire in all of them.

Perhaps it was the lingering legacy of Sha're, but Daniel had learned to see beyond the cultural trappings that dictated a woman's place in her society. Clothing, social status and behaviour were no indication of the kind of person she was.

Sha're had taught him that with the strength that had seemed so out-of-place in her male-dominated, women-as-objects culture.

Certainly Teyla had never experienced the kind of life Sha're had lived as a daughter of Abydos. She was leader of her people, a capable fighter, and a guide to the local cultures here in the Pegasus galaxy - as well as one of Sheppard's team-members, and trusted.

They passed a group of scientists studying designs on the wall of the corridor, pointing at various inscriptions or stylistic designs. One of the scientists had come out with the Daedelus, and she nodded at Daniel as he passed. The other two were unfamiliar - presumably part of the original Atlantis expedition - and they glanced at Teyla and greeted her as they passed.

Although it wasn't officially indicated, Daniel had the feeling they'd just been cleared for further exploration. It amused him enough that when Teyla interrupted his train of thought, he was surprised at having missed the cues of a question in the making.

"Dr. Jackson?"

"Teyla?"

"Do you believe that Colonel Carter will wake up from her coma?"

Daniel settled for the truth. "I'm hoping." His dream had haunted him enough that he didn't sleep for the rest of the night, and morning found him sitting beside Sam's bed in a kind of fugue-state, lost wandering the corridors of the city in his mind.

He'd mentioned his desire for a walk to Dr. Weir, putting off her gentle suggestion that he call Jack back at Stargate Command. First Daniel wanted to see if anything would come of this hunch he had.

It was a slim hope, but better than nothing.

He'd brought Teyla with him, partly because she was a trusted participant in the Atlantis expedition, and partly out of curiosity. Dr. Weir and Colonel Sheppard both trusted her implicitly, and Daniel trusted their judgement, but he was curious about Teyla.

"You are close?" Teyla's dark eyes regarded him with disconcerting directness.

"We're friends," Daniel said. He was well aware that the rumours about Sam and him as a couple were making the rounds in Atlantis. After seven years working with her, they were familiar - and just as untrue now as they'd ever been.

"She was very excited to be here in the city of the Ancients." Teyla had spent some time with Sam; during the final stage of the siege, the two women had found themselves defending each other after Teyla's capture by the Wraith.

"She was. We both were." Daniel grimaced. Three months hadn't seemed like enough time to study everything that they needed to study - everything that the reports of Atlantis had given them. "As you probably know, we've been looking for this place for a long time."

"Dr. Weir told me," she said, her eyes lingering on the carvings and decorations of the wall. "In truth, to walk in the city of the ancestors is an experience my people never thought to know."

Daniel was used to encountering other societies. How those societies responded was always an education of some sort or another, but he was particularly interested in the Athosians. Their culture revered the Ancients and everything about them, and yet they had made friends and allies with the people who'd come into Atlantis - the city of the Ancients - and started taking it over.

That wasn't usual. Daniel had been chased off enough planets for desecrating holy ground than he cared to remember.

"Teyla, do your people have any problems with us?"

She appeared startled by the questions. "There are always conflicts between people, Dr. Jackson."

"Yes, I know that. But," Daniel gestured, "we're in the city of the Ancients. I mean, to us it's just a...a city with a lot of interesting things to look at. But to your people, it's...an icon." Except she wouldn't know what an icon was. "A symbol. It has meaning beyond its actual existence as a functional object." And she wouldn't understand that either.

However, when he opened his mouth to continue, Teyla nodded. "I understand. In answer to your question, there are some of my people who would wish that Atlantis had not been found. However, your people are better suited to discover its secrets than ours. We..." she paused, "We have not the technology, nor the skill of your people, to develop in the ways that you have."

Daniel half-grimaced. "It was probably more the fact that we had a couple of thousand years of uninterrupted time to develop the technology. No Wraith cullings and no Goa'uld attacks."

"This Goa'uld," Teyla began. "They were also the enemy of the Ancients - like the Wraith?"

"Yes."

She nodded, but kept her thoughts to herself as they made the last few turns and paused at an intersection. "This is as far as we have managed to explore," she explained. "There are rooms beyond which the architectural experts says are structurally unsound, and Dr. Weir does not permit exploration in those rooms."

"Which, I imagine, causes some consternation for the scientists," Daniel murmured. He could just imagine McKay's reaction to that edict.

"You wish to go into this area," Teyla stated.

There was little point in lying. And Daniel got the feeling that, even if he had lied, Teyla would call him on it. "Yes."

"Why?"

Again, Daniel pondered just how much of the truth he should tell. "Last night, I...dreamed of this city - of this corridor. Now, I know that it was just a dream, but I'm wondering if maybe it was more - if maybe...there's something here."

She didn't look as though she thought he was crazy. That was a start. Her eyes studied him, then studied the passageway which beckoned him on. At last, she said, "Not all the corridors of the city are safe, especially after the Wraith attacks."

"I know," Daniel said. "And you don't have to come along. I don't know if anything will come of this, really. It's just a hunch - a dream."

Her mouth curved a little at the edges. "Dr. Jackson, before the siege of the city, I dreamed of a Wraith walking through the corridors, feeding off the people who lived here. I thought they were just dreams - it was only once the hiveships drew near that we realised that there was a Wraith in the city that was linking with my mind, causing me to dream." She regarded him with a steady, solemn gaze and gestured down the empty hall. "Dreams may be more than we imagine."

Daniel couldn't quite help the quirk of approval that tilted his mouth. It seemed instinct had won out and he'd picked the right guide to take him through the city.

He followed the corridors of his dream, moving with the growing certainty that he was here for a reason, walking this city for a reason. Sam's illness was just the catalyst: Daniel had arrived in Atlantis for a purpose, although he didn't know what it was just yet.

And then he stood at the door with its bronze bas-relief of Ancient lettering.

Half-awed that he'd been right about this, Daniel turned to look at Teyla. "I dreamed this."

Her smile was small but oddly conspiratorial. "Dreams may be more than we imagine."

"In Atlantis, certainly."

Daniel traced one hand across the door, almost reverently, and turned to explain something about the lettering on the door.

He caught a glimpse of a white, fanged face, had a moment to wonder how Teyla had changed--

Then he stumbled back as she grabbed him around the waist, hauling him away from the Wraith that emerged from the storeroom. She spun and blocked the Wraith as it tried to attack him and Daniel had never seen anyone move so fast--

"Call Colonel Sheppard!" Teyla said, tossing him her headset as she grabbed the Wraith's wrist and twisted.

Daniel pulled on the earpiece, tapping his way through the channels as Teyla fought the Wraith. He watched her as she ducked and dodged her way in and out of the creature's reach; saw the blows that landed on it - and the blows that landed on her.

"Colonel Sheppard? Daniel Jackson here, Teyla and I were just attacked by a Wraith."

"A Wraith? Where?"

"Uh, city outskirts." Daniel silently cursed that he hadn't kept an eye on where they were going, trusting to Teyla's knowledge of the city to guide them.

Teyla swung the Wraith into the doorframe of the room Daniel had hoped to explore. "The north-western wing," she said. "We took the first stairs."

Daniel relayed this and got a curt reply. "We're on our way. Hold tight."

The channel fell silent. Teyla thumped the Wraith around more - and was hit more than a few times herself. Daniel pulled out his gun. Thank God, he'd thought to pick up something from the armoury before he'd headed out here.

Her breathing was laboured; the Wraith had gotten in a couple of good hits. Anyone else would have been vanquished by the Wraith mere minutes into the fight. The Athosian woman was still fighting.

Daniel hoped she kept fighting long enough for him to get a decent shot. He held the gun and waited, watching for the right moment...

Then Teyla grabbed its arm and swung the Wraith around, using her body and grip as the pivot, and her leg as an obstacle with which to trip it. The creature sprawled along the length of the walkway as she stepped back. "Shoot it!"

Daniel complied.

Nearly a full clip later, he paused, watching it as it shifted around in what probably passed for death throes among the Wraith. He spent the last few bullets in its skull, aiming for the eyes. Even the Goa'uld couldn't do much with shattered brain-matter; he didn't imagine the Wraith were that different.

Teyla waved his weapon down, and tentatively approached the Wraith. A subtle tension left her shoulders and back as she pronounced, "It is dead."

Daniel felt a momentary relief, then a thread of apprehension. "You're sure-- Never mind." He caught her look. She'd been born and bred in this galaxy; he'd been here all of two weeks. He would trust that she knew when a Wraith was dead. "Are there likely to be any more?"

"Not in here," she said. "Any others would have emerged by now. Although it is troubling to find even one..."

He peered into the room the Wraith had vacated, careful to check that it was empty and that there was nowhere that a Wraith could hide inside.

Daniel sniffed and winced. There was an odd, musky scent to the room that stung the nostrils. "How did he survive for so long without...uh...sustenance?"

"He most likely went into hibernation," she explained. "If he had fed sufficiently during the siege, he would have enough energy to last him for up to a year."

"Could he have transmitted our position to the others?"

Teyla considered it as she stepped into the room. Daniel took that as a sign that he could follow her in. "If there were any Wraith ships close to this portion of the galaxy, it is possible," she admitted. "If not..."

"Then there'll be another set of hiveships on their way to Atlantis in weeks."

She nodded and looked around the small room. "You said you saw this room in a dream, Dr. Jackson."

"Call me Daniel, please." He was getting tired of being 'Dr. Jackson-ed' all through Atlantis. Only Sam called him 'Daniel' - even Dr. Weir kept having to correct herself, and she'd known Daniel while he worked in the Antarctica base. "And I saw it in a dream - well as far as the door - but nothing inside."

It was a small room - perhaps half the size of one of the personal chambers. But the panels and arrays of this room were nothing like the sleeping rooms.

There was, however, a large raised area, like a table in the middle of the room, which had the kinds of indents and hollows that indicated it had been made for a human body. A gurney of sorts, Daniel surmised.

Teyla indicated it. "This was made for someone to lie in."

Daniel circled the table, trying to stifle the growing anticipation in him. "It's the Ancients' version of a healing device," he said, working by intuition rather than knowledge. The memories of his second 'stay' with the Ascended was nothing more than a vague blur of images and understandings, jumbled together, but it was more than he had from his first 'stay' with them.

She indicated the markings along the angled slope down from the main area. "I have seen these patterns of markings before in other places of the city. Dr. Weir says they indicate healing or health."

He nodded, noting the pattern and absently translating them in his mind. "We could use this to help Sam," he murmured, almost to himself.

"If it was not broken and corrupted," Teyla said looking down at the base of the table.

Daniel crossed over to her side the room and winced.

On this side, the base of the gurney was ripped open, the destruction hidden by the angle of the table as Daniel had entered the room. Slim crystal cards lay scattered and shattered at the opening, and a small roughly ovoid device blinked red, white, and green lights at Daniel.

"What is that?"

She answered him, even as footsteps and voices were heard outside - Colonel Sheppard and the reinforcements. "A Wraith device."

- never to be continued -

NOTES: I can't even remember where this was going. I think the gist was that Rodney ends up working out the Wraith device with Teyla's assistance through the Wraithgene, and they save Sam. Or something.