TITLE: Haunting Memories
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Aug. 15, 2004
SUMMARY: Memory or something more?
NOTES: So much apocathreesome going around. This? As close as I expect to get.
DISCLAIMER: Read
The morning after, Daniel wakes up already tense and gasping out Jack's name.
It's only a memory, Sam says against his cheek as she lifts up and reaches over him to tuck his blindly groping hand back into his chest. Someone fusses over a baby somewhere behind them, the high and thin coughing such a different sound from that of air leaking past shaking hands and ripped cloth. So it was just something he made up to keep from breaking down again, Daniel realizes, squeezing his eyes closed. That's...not very encouraging.
Sam presses up against his back again, but he can feel the chill where the dawn air swept across his shoulder blade and touched a small moist spot that hadn't been there when his mind let him sleep. His t-shirt catches there when he shifts and Sam releases his hand to shimmy away just enough so that he can slide flat onto their borrowed mat. She re-settles, curled around his left arm, now. The new position and the small hitch in her breathing each do their part to distract him, at least a little, from how he no longer has anyone solid at his front.
They stay like that for while, just lying there. Daniel listens to the whispered conversations rise and fall around them without trying to understand, though he automatically picks out Italian to the right, Mandarin in the far corner.
It was barely a month, he says. Sam jerks, but he doesn't stop. After all the time that we were scattered across hell he found me, we found you, and... Daniel loses the words, which is just as overwhelming as the reason why. Sam turns her head so her nose is pressing hard behind his ear, making him suck in a deep breath; it doesn't really help, not when that little move was Jack's move, his way of holding onto control when one or both of them had him on the edge. Sam is silent, not gasping or groaning, but her shuddering translates itself to him and Daniel's right hand clutches at absolutely nothing on the gritty floor.
This isn't funny, he says resentfully when they're both still again and the sounds of tins and grumpy children tell of the room truly coming to life. Joking about haunting us isn't funny when he actually does it, Daniel protests, fighting back a laugh; it turns into a hiccup that's probably not a sob.
His eyes are still shut tight when a weightless warmth settles on his chest -- off-center, right where dogtags would rest -- while Sam strokes his hair off his forehead and she chokes out that of course it's not funny.
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