CATEGORY: Missing scene, Gen.
PAIRING: Daniel/Female established relationship.
SPOILERS: Season 5, Menace
RATING: PG
NOTES: This is a stand-alone fic, though could part of either of my series of stories about Daniel and Antonia.
DEDICATION: Dedicated to those special people that still believe in me, when I don't believe in myself, my wonderful David and my dear friend Mac.
The cutting equipment completed its job and a section of the huge gateroom door fell away allowing Jack access, he fired directly at Reece on the Stargate ramp and she fell to the floor.
He quickly turned to rain more shots on the Replicator infested corridor but all he saw was a trail of components.
"What's happening in there?" Carter's voice demanded over the radio,
"The Replicators appear to have been disabled," Teal'c told her.
Hammond ordered the self-destruct to be aborted.
Jack crossed to Reece's inert body pressing the hidden switch in her neck and removed the chip then announced, "The Robot has been neutralised."
Meanwhile in the corridor, Antonia took off her protective glasses and put the safety back on her weapon, she'd fired many rounds at the range but this was the first time in a real situation. The scrambling Replicator spiders had shattered as her bullets hit and after a few shots; it felt as though she was living out some form of bizarre video game. All that was left now were the inanimate building blocks scattered along the hallways like Lego bricks across a child's bedroom floor.
Ahead of her, she could see the gaping hole in the gateroom door. The adrenaline rush of fighting the bugs turned to cold fear for Daniel, was he safe? Yes he was sitting on the floor and having some sort of exchange with Jack but she was too far away to hear what was being said. She wanted to go to him but she had to follow the other SGC personnel and return her gun to the armoury, by the time she was finished, Daniel had left the base.
***********
Stopping only to throw off his identifying SG-1 jacket and grab his car keys Daniel fled from the SGC. Part of him knew he should go to the infirmary to allow Janet to look at his wrist, but he wanted to be away from everyone and from the rules and the Military discipline. Even Toni was changing; his last image of her was in combats gunning down the Replicators with a machine gun.
Antonia found him back at the apartment they shared, lying on the bed, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling; his eyes fixed on a distant place. She hesitated, unsure how to approach him. She lay next to him taking the same position.
"Do you think that water stain could be a butterfly?" she said, referring to the patches caused by the leaky roof in the fall. The roof had been fixed but the decorating always seemed to be delayed by one mission or another.
Daniel didn't answer her.
An apartment in a city building was never completely quiet, noise from outside always filtered in at some level, even at night time. Antonia could hear the drone of the traffic, the Doppler effect of a siren in the distance, and the steady tick of the bedside clock and Daniel's breathing.
Antonia closed her eyes for a moment, she could quite easily fall asleep, she felt weary and drained, fighting the Replicators had been harder than the times she'd trained with the weapons, her arms ached from the recoil of the gun. But more than sleep she wanted to be held in the arms of the man beside her. Without looking at Daniel she reached over and took his hand in hers, he didn't move away.
"Jack was right," Daniel said softly. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, Antonia joined him, he slipped his arm around her shoulder then kissed her hair. "I called him a stupid son of a bitch"; he told her a trace of laughter in his voice.
"That would have gone down well!" Antonia smiled up at him.
"You could say that!"
Antonia felt some of the weariness lift, whatever had happened between Daniel and Jack at least Daniel was now really to talk about it.
"All I saw was the person, she was so child like…I thought if I could be her friend…"
"There's nothing wrong with that Danny."
He smiled, " no, not in an ideal situation, but she wasn't a person she was a machine and it nearly cost us the base and more."
"But it didn't, everything worked out OK in the end." she said
Daniel ignored her gesture of support, " Though I told her I was her friend, I also feel part of me wasn't sincere, part of me was saying that just to gain her confidence and my anger towards Jack was anger for myself as well."
"Ah…"
"My way didn't work, the military way was right, for the last five years I've been fighting against that, always pushing for the diplomatic solutions, for preserving the culture. Jack said that was the way it had to go down and he was right and... " he paused rubbing his eyes one finger each side of his nose pushing his glasses up over his eyebrows, " I nodded, I acknowledged what he said."
Antonia understood now what she had seen, too far away to hear the words exchange between him and Jack, but she had seen that nod.
"The Asguard may still be able to use Reece's body, there could be clues there to help them understand how the Replicators work."
"Yes," Daniel agreed.
He lay down again on the bed.
"Sorry Toni, but that stain just looks like a stain to me," he said.
"Yes," Antonia nodded, "but to me it's still a butterfly."
Daniel was silent for a second, his gaze on focused on the ceiling, but his thoughts much further away, " Then we are both right!"
"As are both you and Jack." She said softly.
Daniel considered this for a moment and for the second time that day, his only acknowledgement was a nod.
"I always have to remind myself, no matter how worked up I get, that I am not right and they are not wrong. That they are not stupid for not understanding. We are just on different sides of the glass. We are all on different paths here on this earth and at different points on those paths. Not until we reach the end will we be able to look back and see who was on the inside and who was on the outside. And that's assuming we ever make it to the end!"
Jennifer Dawn Crispin
© Katana July 2003