Silence - Stargate SG1 Fanfiction

Disclaimers: Stargate SG-1, its characters and universe are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions and the Sci-Fi Channel. No copyright infringement is intended and I'm making no money from this. I have nothing but my own warped imagination and therefore I'm not worth suing. :)

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Silence
By Alyse

Warmth sank into him, soaking into his very bones. The water he floated in cushioned him, isolating him from the environment around him. From outside, from distraction, from the 'real world'. From everything that mattered.

He let his head slide underneath the surface, leaving only his face exposed to the cool night air. His ears filled, muffling the sounds around him, blanketing him from it all. The steady plink plink of the tap as it dripped into the bath. The groaning of the pipes. His own heartbeat. They were the only noises he could hear, and even then not clearly. Everything else was distant, drowned out by the silence.

He needed that.

He let his limbs float, heavy in the water, the feeling strangely disjointed. His eyes were tightly screwed shut. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd opened them, not really. He'd turned off the lights as soon as the door closed safely behind him and it was late now, very late, the only illumination coming through the small frosted window, dim and soothing. He was eight floors above the streetlights, and the sound of what little traffic there was at this hour was as dimmed by distance as anything else.

Soothing silence, blackness held him, cradled him as gently in its grasp as the water around him.

It should have left him terrified, fearing for his sanity, his very soul following recent events. That darkness shouldn't have been welcome - he should have craved the light, longed for it with the same intensity as he'd longed for other things in his life. Love, happiness, peace. He'd craved it once - an eternity ago. Before that eternity, when minutes, hours, days had stretched forever and he'd been lost. Isolated. Cut-off. So terribly, completely alone. Deaf, blind, numb - on the outside at least. The inside was different. He'd never been anything less than utterly petrified, silent screams echoing in the vaults of his own mind. Oh yes, this darkness should have left him with that same sense of fear.

It didn't. There was just enough of the real world intruding into this self-imposed isolation to ground him. The silence here was the simple absence of noise not the all-encompassing silence of ears that didn't hear or, in hearing, pass signals to the brain. Not that terrible void of nothing. This was a stillness of his own making, not one forced upon him. If he moved his legs now he could feel the water stirring around him. The water was cooling but even that slight chill was welcome. He could feel everything - the eddies his movement created, the way the water slid past his skin like silk, stirring the downy hairs. He could hear the slight splashing noise the passage of his limb left in its wake, felt it both through his ears and through the vibrations along his body.

He could hear his heartbeat, the sound of his own breathing. Feel the whisper of it against the damp skin of his chest. If he sat up again he could feel the way the water ran in rivulets down over his skin from his wet hair, sliding over his face, into his closed eyes and dropping to his lips. He could taste the droplets as they settled on his dry lips, inhale the scent of the bath salts Sam had given him for Christmas, something subtle and masculine.

If he opened his eyes he could see the dim outlines of the fittings around him, familiar even in this still hour. If he closed them again he could see swirls of lights behind his eyelids as nerve endings randomly fired.

If he strained his ears he could pick up the faint sound of traffic now, a lone car driving past far below. Somewhere else at the edges of his consciousness the siren of a police car started up, dim and distant but no less real for that. He sank further into this almost trance, now picking up other, familiar sounds. The faint echo of a radio from one of his neighbours' flats, turned down in consideration of the late hour. It was too low to make out the song playing but it was there, real and yet unreal at the same time. Muffled by distance and more. Somewhere else he thought he heard the TV starting up, canned laughter adding to that sense of unreality. Unreal because it was so normal and unremarked. Unnoticed until it was gone.

The squeaking of the loose floorboard in the hall on the other side of this bathroom door. He recognised that too, a sound that seemed to echo in the middle of the night when he got up, bladder full and eyes closed, the remnants of dreams still clinging to him as he staggered to the bathroom to empty out the coffee that had kept him awake until all hours.

He knew what caused the noise now, could close his eyes again and picture Jack standing there, still and quietly attentive, head cocked as he listened for sounds. He even knew what Jack would be listening for - for sounds of him, for sounds to let Jack know that he was still there, still safe. To reassure Jack that he was still alive and hale and whole and healing.

I'll let you know, Jack, he thought. I'll let you know that all of those things are true. As soon as I know whether they are.

It was the only thought he permitted himself, soon sinking back into the cooling water and that fugue state. After being alone with nothing but his thoughts it was a relief, almost a necessity to retreat from that to the absence of thought altogether, to fall back to somewhere where there was nothing but sensation.

The steady sound of the tap, the feel of the water against his skin. The aromatic steam rising from the bath water, damp and warm and scented.

The sound of his own breathing.

He hadn't known what real fear was until that sound had disappeared entirely. He'd been hurt, feared dying, had died and yet nothing was or could be as bad as the limbo he'd been in. No sound, no sight, no smell, no ability to taste, no sensation of touch. Nothing. A void. An emptiness that consumed him, swallowed him whole with only his own thoughts to keep him from the abyss.

He'd tried. Fought. Railed against the dying of the light, both figuratively and literally. He'd tried to hold himself together, to stop himself from shattering into a million pieces and being lost forever. It was easy at first, when he thought it would be minutes only and not the eternity it had become. Simple. How often did he get to be alone with his own thoughts, to sort through the impressions of the last few years? Wasn't he always complaining that running from place to place never gave him enough time to simply think? It was easy at first, keeping calm by remembering everything and anything, literally living in his own head. Reciting poems from civilizations long dead, epics of deeds barely remembered, of acts no one these days knew whether were founded in fact or in the imagination of bards long dead. Running glyphs through his head, putting images, the names of places to the addresses he recalled. Puzzling over translations that even then lay on his desk back at the SGC because he simply didn't have enough time to deal with them and there was no pressing military reason to move them up in priority. And when that failed to fill the silence completely he moved onto other things. Remembering the plot of every book he'd ever read, every film he'd ever seen. Reliving conversations over and over again. A thousand impressions from a hundred different places filled his mind. He told himself stories from his long-lost and all too brief childhood, made up stories now as he'd done to teach on Abydos. Told himself stories and tried to cling to them with the single mindedness of a child.

They'll come. Hold on. It won't be long.

Remembered faces; Sha're's, his parents'. Jack's. A smile, an expression, a glint in dark eyes. Looks that had been for him only, looks that had kept him going in his darkest hours.

No hours had been as dark as these, and those memories were not enough to hold back the panic, the fear, the encroaching insanity. He could feel it like a tangible entity, gibbering around those so dark corners of his mind.

The more he remembered, the more slipped away, trickling from him like the sands of Abydos had trickled through his fingers. The words left him, dissolved until his tired and frantic brain hadn't been able to summon any up at all and he was left speechless, even in his own mind. The faces had left him too, until he couldn't remember what Jack looked like, until he couldn't remember whether there had ever really been a Jack or whether he'd made Jack up so that he wouldn't have to be alone in this void. Until he couldn't differentiate fantasy from reality, separate the memories of things he had experienced from those he'd read about. Until he couldn't remember whether or not there was anyone to come for him at all or whether there had ever been more than this emptiness.

Until, by the end, the only thing left had been the fear, the sheer terror of being more alone than he had ever been, and this in someone for whom loneliness, aloneness was a more or less constant state of being. Until nothing was left but that void, that silence and emptiness and him nothing but a meaningless speck in it.

That's when his grip on sanity had started to slip too, he felt it go and, unlikely though he may have thought it before then, feeling it slipping through his fingers, as the memories had, increased the terror. Increased it until there was no room for anything else. He remembered all too well the last time this fear had gripped him, the fear of losing the one thing he could count on, the one thing he'd held on through while everything else was lost - parents, wife, love. Hope. The one thing he'd always been able rely upon, regardless of whether that reliance was a curse or a blessing. His mind. Until the Linvris. Until McKenzie. Until even that was taken from him, for a while, and even in being given back came back with another unwelcome passenger.

Doubt.

In the darkness that wasn't real darkness but simply the absence of anything else that doubt was back with a vengeance. Helpless, hopeless he teetered on that brink, unsure why he didn't just embrace it. Let go. Go insane. Let that slip through his fingers along with anything else that mattered. Stop fighting it. Sleep. He'd fought sleep at first as he'd fought the emptiness, because there was also the fear that if he went to sleep he'd never wake up again, not as himself. Or that he would, and still be as lost, adrift on nothingness.

And then finally, exhausted beyond measure, afraid, already half-insane and unable to fight anymore he simply let go. Felt himself unravelling and falling and felt that darkness claim him.

And woke to light, harsh, burning, hurting light, and to the sound of his own screams echoing in his ears.

They'd turned the lights down low when they realised they'd hurt him, kept their voices low too when they realised that he found the sounds equally distressing. Stopped touching him when he flinched and scrabbled away. Didn't ask him too many questions when they realised that talking was almost beyond him at that point.

Jack had rescued him from that too, from Janet's tender ministrations. Got him away from the too bright lights, the too loud sounds. Heroically kept himself from doing what Jack did best - hugs, pats on the back, the touches that right now made Daniel cringe.

From too little he'd gone to too much, and he couldn't cope.

'Acclimatisation', Janet had rationalised it, her voice still pitched low as though Daniel was still interested, as though Daniel didn't have his hands clapped over his ears to filter out those too loud sounds. As though Daniel wasn't sitting there, shivering violently because the air moved around by the air conditioners this far underground wasn't too cold, too icily frigid against skin that hadn't felt anything for so long. Her eyes were worried, her hands gentle as she examined him and it was still too much.

'Observation' was another word that had spilled out of her too red mouth along with 'counselling' and 'trauma'. If she'd mentioned 'psychiatric assessment' he would have started screaming again and not stopped, no matter how raw his throat was.

She didn't though, the tension in her face showing it was a close run thing but that he wasn't the only one who'd been reliving memories, and instead he managed to squeeze out the first words he'd said, or at least heard himself say, in an eternity.

Please. I want to go home.

Jack. Yes, Jack had been there and his face scorched itself back into Daniel's memory. He grasped hold of that image, hard, never ever wanting to be in a situation when he couldn't remember what his best friend looked like. Held onto Jack's face in his mind with a desperation that at any other time would have scared him. Jack had been there, Jack had come for him and even now Jack was saving him. Jack was real and not something he'd conjured up to fill the void. Jack was real and Jack had taken Janet aside, murmured to her words that Daniel hadn't wanted to listen to but couldn't tune out entirely. Words he'd let wash over him while he closed his eyes and pressed his face into the threadbare infirmary pillow to muffle out the world. The sheets he lay on were scratchy underneath his skin. Even the dim lights were too bright and he was too cold, too lost.

Too scared.

Jack had won. Jack had taken him home - to his apartment, not Jack's place, somehow knowing that Daniel needed to be among familiar things.

And Daniel had retreated here, to the bathroom, in the dark in spite of Jack's protests, Jack's doubt.

Daniel knew what he was doing, why he was so insistent without saying a word, simply looking at Jack with pleading eyes while part of his brain concentrated on capturing, processing Jack's face, storing the look of it for another eternity. He was doing what he always did - coping.

Almost.

The water was cold now, and he lifted his arm, the limb heavy with exhaustion and the chill surrounding him. His fingertips were rough as he rubbed them together, made prune-like by his immersion. His bladder was full, almost uncomfortably so and a small part of him welcomed that discomfort. It was real. He was real.

Hours they said, not the days he'd imagined. Not even a full day, not quite although it had been close and long enough, apparently, for Janet to start despairing at his non-responsive state. Even his sense of time had been skewed completely by his ordeal. A simple mission, a pillar and Daniel had stepped too close, got caught in some kind of energy beam.

Tortured for standing on sacred ground. Trapped in unrelenting darkness and fear until his team brought him home and the effects had faded. And if they hadn't risked themselves, if he'd been alone in that place when caught? The idea skittered away from him - he wasn't up to facing it yet, maybe he never would be.

Hours and that was all his tenuous hold on sanity was worth. It had taken mere hours to divorce him from himself once he was cut-off from all external stimuli and trapped in his own head with nothing but his own thoughts for company.

Scary place, Jack had joked before the sheer terror in Daniel's eyes had cut the lame attempt at humour dead and concern replaced it. Daniel hadn't explained.

Instead Jack had filled the awkward silence, tried to both explain and soothe, mutterings about 'sensory deprivation' and its place in the world Jack had inhabited before the Stargate came along, some vain reassurance that Daniel had done well to survive it. Daniel had tuned him out, craving the sound of Jack's voice but not wanting to know what Jack was talking about. Not wanting any reminder of the darkness that existed in others that enabled them to think up this kind of torture, punishment and in thinking of it being able to inflict it on the unwary. Instead he'd just let the cadences of Jack's voice wash over him, low and soft, letting it say 'home' to him not 'horror' until slowly Jack's voice trailed off and left him alone in the silence that was bearable simply because it wasn't empty. No, Daniel hadn't explained that fear, that feeling to Jack.

Hours and he'd been lost.

The floorboard creaked again, and if he listened hard enough he could almost hear Jack breathing on the other side of the door.

The water sloshed around him as he brought his knees up to his chest, sitting up to rest his chin on them, rubbing his face over them, relishing the feel of that damp skin against his cheek, the feel of his stubble against his legs. Savouring the gentle lapping of the water against his lower body, the rasp of his waterlogged fingers against his calves.

He was cold now, shivering slightly but the towels were over the radiator where Jack had put them and would be warm, soft, feel good against his chilled skin. He could smell the scent of the fabric conditioner he used, released as the towels warmed, a homely, comforting scent that spoke of laundry day, of chores and most of all reality.

The floorboard creaked again.

Daniel hadn't explained. But he would.

The End