Daughter of the Gods: DARK ILLUSIONS
by Lisa Beth Darling
Daniel Jackson
Stargate SG-1
Adult Fan Fiction

CHAPTER ONE

It’s lying out there
like a killer in the sun
and I know it’s late but
we can make it if we run

Thunder Road

Bruce Springsteen

"Oh, come on, General, you can't be serious." Colonel O'Neill groused loudly as he paced the General's office. “I need Daniel on this one.”

"I don't like it any more than you do, Colonel," the General frowned as he looked down at his desk. "Truth is, I don't have another choice."

"OK, first off, if this is about the No Ties Rule, Daniel doesn't have a wife . . . "

"Yeah, I do." Daniel stuttered from the hall as he entered the General's office. "I take it you've been discussing my position with SG1." He knew this conversation was going to come sooner or later and was already prepared for it. What it wasn't prepared for was just how vehemently Jack was going to oppose to the idea.

"No, you don't and yes we are." Colonel O’Neill retorted.

"OK, technically speaking there hasn't been a formal ceremony but . . . "

"But nothing! The rules say no spouses, no children. You don't have either. Calla‘s more like a live-in girlfriend, there aren‘t rules about that. Daniel stays. End of discussion . . . sir."

“She’s a little bit more than that, don’t you think, Jack?“ Daniel said through tight lips as he resisted the urge to stomp his foot on the ground.

“I need you on this next mission and you know it.” Jack insisted to Daniel and then turned his eyes back to General Hammond. “Since he isn’t married . . . ” a quick glance to Daniel “ . . . technically . . . ” back to the General “I insist Dr. Jackson remain an active member of SG1, sir.”

“You didn’t tell him.” Daniel stammered in the General’s direction.

“Colonel O’Neill didn’t give me the chance.” General Hammond explained.

“Tell me what?” Jack asked heatedly as he ran a hand through his short graying hair.

“It never occurred to you that I asked for this, did it?” Daniel shook his head and tossed his hands in the air as he turned and walked out of the General’s office with Jack hot on his heels.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jack demanded to know.

The tone of Jack's voice caused Daniel to stop in his tracks and look up at his commanding officer with something that sounded like a sigh escaping his lips. He had expected Jack to let his opinion be known on this subject, but Daniel was unprepared for just how staunchly he seemed to intend to stick to his guns about it. "You know, everyone else seems to regard Calla as my wife but you. Why is that, Jack?" Daniel didn't wait for an answer. "Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You're right, you do need me on this mission and that's why I'm going but she needs me here, at home. This is the last extended mission I'm going on for a while. I asked to be reassigned to a research position here at the SGC once this trade agreement is signed." Standing back for a moment, Daniel took in the astonished look on his friends' face. "You just don't get it, do you? Of all people, I would expect you to understand."

"I'm afraid it's not me that doesn't get it, Danny-boy." Jack paused more for effect than anything else as he tossed his head in Daniel's direction. "Have you discussed it with her?" Daniel pursed his lips and tucked his paper work under his arm but didn't answer. "I didn't think so. You and I both know that she’s never going to go for this. She'll feel like she's dragging you down and she'll dig in her heels over it. You’ll never get her to marry you that way. So, what are you going to tell her?"

The smug look on Colonel O'Neills' face said it all, not wanting to argue about it, Daniel turned away and began walking down the hall. Suddenly he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Any news on David?” Daniels’ voice took on a dark and serious tone.

“Nothing new.” Jack admitted in a sorrowful voice. The kindly person who had stopped to pick up the hitchhiker during the height of what had been called ’The Storm of the Century’ in New England, had been found dead the next afternoon. He had been a nice elderly gentleman by the name of Franklin Brunner. In return for his kindness, David Jackson slit the old man’s throat and dumped his body by the side of Route 12 in Preston, Connecticut. That was the last bit of information they had on Daniel’s brother, after that he vanished off the face of the Earth. With any luck at all, he’d never be heard from again. The mood between them grew heavy. "You'll let me know how that conversation turns out, won'cha?" Jack said with a light voice and watched as Daniel gave a half-hearted smile, raised a numb arm in response and then went on his way.

Calla wasn't going to like this idea and she was going to dig her heels in over it, which was exactly the reason he had avoided the conversation up until this point. Daniel was still trying to think of something to tell her--other than the absolute truth, to which she would inevitably insist that they part company--something that would be plausible and even palatable to her. Try as he did, he just couldn't come up with such a reason. He felt like a cad, he had made her promise No More Secrets No More Lies and here was breaking the rule already.

Daniel pushed the thought away. If it weren't for that damn recurring dream, the one where Calla kept running for the oncoming train, he might feel worse about his decision to keep this secret. The dream bothered him, it was always hanging around him like flies on shit.

The door to his office swung open and in his mind, only for a moment, there she was. Then she was gone but the signs that she had been here were everywhere. Being mindful of his promise not to leave her alone again, after Janet first allowed Calla out of the infirmary--where she spent two weeks before coming home--, she had accompanied him to the base in the mornings and hung around while he worked. She wouldn’t hear of him taking any time-off, not even when he insisted that he had about a year of vacation time coming to him and he would be paid for the whole time he was out. Nope. Not her. As far as she was concerned life had to resume its normal course in as many ways as possible and as quickly as possible. Over the last month and a half he had been off-world several times on one mission or another, but his mind like his heart was constantly with her on Earth.

Typical of her, she was anything but useless to him while she was here. If he was on base working in his office she would bring him food and something to drink, she would keep him company or leave him be depending on what she thought the situation called for. During one of his off-world missions, one which had lasted two days, Calla had let herself into his office and cleaned it. She not only dusted and took out the trash but she took great care in arranging his books and papers in a very neat and easy to find order. Books were categorized and put on shelves, papers were neatly placed into colored folders, each one clearly marked with its contents and filed away. Although there was no sunlight on the base, sitting on his desk was very lively green ivy with dotted pink leaves.

It was during her cleaning sessions that she discovered the old text which had accompanied her back to Earth. Calla had translated the whole of the text from Shankuk to English for him, correcting the mistakes he'd made with as she went. Then she began to do the same with some of his other texts and translations. Calla hadn't understood why he didn't ask her to translate it for him to begin with, didn't he think she was capable of it? Didn't he understand that she could translate almost everything he was working on? No, he said, he hadn’t realized that and then explained that he hadn’t asked her to translate the Shankuk text because hadn’t wanted to upset her. However, from that point on, Daniel had helped himself to her knowledge whenever he needed it. Sometimes she didn’t understand what he was working on, but other times, well, other times, it was as though a blind man were seeing for the very first time! The seemingly foreign text would come into focus and suddenly she’d be rattling off its contents as though if she didn’t hurry up and-finish-it-right-now-it-was-all-just-going-to-go-away! Calla turned out to be the best damn research assistant he’d ever had, not only did she pick up the language and symbols quickly, she learned how to anticipate him, his wants, his needs, his next step with amazing speed and then, of course, being the Goddess that she is, Calla sailed right past him. It wasn’t long before Dr. Daniel Jackson found himself looking to her not just for assistance but for actual help. To him it seemed that it wasn't just the idea that was a quick study, most of the time it appeared that the knowledge was in her all along. Opening her up to new things and exposing her to new ideas was the key to unlocking the knowledge stored deep in her mind. It was just waiting for her to have need of it or realize that it was there at all.

In fact, it had been Calla who translated the Muzu language with him and therefore she was largely the reason that he was going off on this trip through the Stargate. Calla read Muzu almost as well as she read English, Greek, Spanish, French, Celtic, Ancient Egyptian and several more. The language turned out to be more complicated and complex that he imagined, Daniel was unable to teach it to anyone else but her and she had no interest in going through the Stargate. As a result he had to go and negotiate the trade agreement because he was only one who could speak with them.

The Muzu were a peaceful unassuming people who much preferred farming, planting, smoking and plain old partying to warring and pillaging. They also happened to be sitting on top of the largest supply of naquada anyone had ever seen and they neither wanted nor needed it. What they did need were medical supplies. Common curable diseases ran through their community like the black plague. It was going to be his job to see to it that the Muzu got all the medicines they needed and the SGC got all the naquada it wanted. But then that was it. After that he was home for a good long time and looking forward to it. Although she’d never tell him, Calla did need him here with her and here with her was where he wanted to be anyway so staying Earth Side should be the perfect solution for everyone.

Should be.

Maybe not. He never knew with her.

During some moments there was clarity. Times when Calla seemed perfectly clear and bright, as though nothing had ever been wrong a day in her life! Daniel didn’t let himself take any comfort in those moments, although he enjoyed seeing her smile and hear her laugh, usually it was fake. The smile just a little too forced, the laugh just a little too harsh. Then there was the Other Times, the more common times when he could see her just wandering around lost her in own world, lost inside her own mind. Those times her emerald eyes were blank and impassive, it tore at his heart to watch her struggle and fight her way through the blackness. Each day she tried a little harder than the day before and each day, to him it seemed, she slipped a little further away.

Daniel hadn’t slept (and I do mean sleep) with her since she returned home a month and a half ago, and he made no demands on her in that area. Instead, Daniel had taken to sleeping in the guest room down the hall from the bedroom he once shared with her. At first, Calla would lock her door at night. Daniel knew that because not only had he heard the lock turn, once when he did try to open it, (just to see if she was sleeping all right mind you) it didn’t give to the command of his hand. Rather than knock and risk waking her, he simply went about checking the house and then trotted off back to his lonely bed. A few nights later, as he wandered around in the dark checking the house, Daniel found Calla’s bedroom door was unlocked. A week after that she’d left it ajar. It took him a while to realize that she was testing her bounds with him, seeing what he would do now that David had come into their lives.

Letting out a little smirk and light toss of his sandy head, Daniel opened the door to his office. Yeah, the door, that was a nice inconspicuous little test on Calla’s part, now wasn't it?

A locked bedroom door. Would he bang on it? Demand to be let in?

An open bedroom door. Would he just let himself in and take advantage of the situation?

Calla was challenging. He had to give her that much and more. Keeping up with her zigzagging logic was definitely keeping his brain sharp these days. She needed something (or someone) to anchor her and bring her back. He wanted that something to be him but feared it couldn’t be.

Calla didn't talk. She didn’t cry openly. She did not get angry over what David had done. Nope, Calla didn't lay her problems out for anyone, professional or otherwise. Her private life, that Secret Garden Bruce once sang about, was her own and no one got in, not even him. The idea that he actually wanted to help seemed to make matters all the worse. No, working within the confines of Calla Logic, Daniel figured that she would undoubtedly consider talking to him to be rude. Instead she would just stuff it all down and tell herself that none of it mattered. Suffering in Silence was something Calla knew and was good at, hell to an extent she was probably even proud of her ability to shut her mouth and not complain. Kanan had taught her very well. Daniel didn’t know how to or even if he should approach her with the subject. He wanted her to know that he was here for her and that she could tell him anything but it didn’t seem that was what she wanted. From her perspective, Daniel knew all there was to know anyway, he’d been there while David raped in that cold asylum and watched the DVDs of her and David in their home. What was there to talk about? To discuss. That was probably her line of reasoning. More Calla Logic. The problem there was, he just didn’t know how to argue with it. He didn't know how to get her to open up to him without pushing her away. How to get her to understand that it all did very much matter. At this point, Calla would probably turn on her heels and walk--run--away from him as fast as she could rather than talk to him about of this. She would rather work it out in her own time, in her own way.

The problem there was, Calla’s Own Way tended toward the self-destructive end of things. Other than the alcohol and pills she had treated herself to earlier, Daniel’s new evidence was in the form of a movie called Session 9.

Daniel was not a stranger in his own house, he knew she didn’t sleep very well or even very often any longer. On a good night, she would fall asleep in the small morning hours with one of his T-shirts clutched in her hands. Calla looked like Linus from the old Peanuts cartoon strip, while she watched a movie or read a book, much to Daniel's dismay, Stephen King had become her favorite author. Other nights nightmares kept her awake. Through the walls which separated them, sometimes he could hear her crying alone in the dark. Daniel wanted to go to her, to embrace her and hold her close, just to let her know that he was there and he still loved her. Daniel wasn’t sure that she would welcome his presence at those times. Knowing she was having nightmares about David, his face was probably one of the last ones she wanted to see at those moments.

On most nights, if she were lying in bed watching a movie she would do her best to keep the sound down low so that it didn’t disturb him while he slept in the next room but the DVD’s did get unexpectedly loud sometimes. Once he had been awakened by the sound of someone screaming, without thinking he had dashed into the bedroom to see what was happening and caught her watching an Indie movie called Session 9. It was the one and only time he had come close to flipping out on her. Calla fumbled frantically for the remote control as his mouth dropped open in disbelief and his hand snapped out from his side and turned off the television. “What the hell is that???” He had demanded as he made his way over to the bed she was laying in and grabbed the DVD case from the side of the bed. “Where did you get this?”

She hesitated to tell him not because she had bought in a bad place but because she had been to some ‘bad places’ and had yet to dump the cookies on her computer. Calla didn’t want him nosing around in it before she got the chance to do that but she finally admitted, “Online, dvds.com or something like that. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She stammered as she began to formulate a plan for creeping down the stairs after he‘d fallen asleep and take care of her little computer problem.

“Upset me??”

“Yes, can’t you see that you’re upset?” She began to back further into the mattress in a futile attempt to be away from him should he blow his top. “Daniel, it’s not upsetting me. In fact, it’s quite good.”

“GOOD?” He shook the hard plastic case at her. “Jesus Christ! What is this?” He shook it at her again but less violently this time. Her words about him being the one who was upset were beginning to sink in.

In a hushed voice Calla explained that she had become interested in the background and history of the Norwich State Hospital and that she was aware that such a thing might upset him. However, she had done some investigative work on the Internet and had come across the mention of Session 9 in her online travels. She further explained that although they looked very similar, the movie had not been shot at the Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut but rather at the Danvers Asylum in Danvers, Massachusetts. The design of the buildings was uncannily similar and the interiors were a dead ringer for each other, for that reason, Calla knew that her viewing such things would not be well tolerated by him, but in the end the viewing of such distasteful images was not upsetting to her and in that strange Calla Logic way, it was probably doing her more good than harm. By the time she finished explaining herself Daniel was sitting on the edge of the bed holding her hand and he was no longer looking at her with wild eyes. She reiterated her opinion that the movie itself really was quite good.

“I don’t think this good, I don’t think it’s healthy for you either but I’m not going to tell you what to do.” Daniel said in a quiet voice as he brushed the hair away from her face. “I don’t want to see it again, got it?” Calla had agreed that he would not have to witness the movie again--(well not until it showed up on IFC late one night but that wasn’t her fault. On that time, Daniel sat through about a half hour of it before he couldn’t take it any longer. That place, that goddamn, god awful, godforsaken, fucking place! The images of it haunted his nightmares, how could she take looking at it? As he picked up the remote control in the darkened house and began to change the channel, he thought that he would like to know what happens in the story, how it all turned out, the movie was quite good but he just couldn’t take looking at the scenery any longer.)

The movie bothered him deeply. The cookie trail he found on her computer bothered him even more. Calla had been visiting some extreme hard core sex sites. No charges for the sites showed up on his credit card statement, Daniel figured she wasn’t going past the front door on the pay-per-clicks. Others were free, she hadn’t downloaded any of the images to her hard drive but from the time stamps on her cookies she spent several hours gazing at pornographic photographs. No moving pictures, no sound. Only still shots. They weren’t the kind of art photography one might find in, oh say, Playboy or anything remotely that tasteful. There were couples, threesomes and groups, most of the women were young, most of them were bound in one fashion or another. To his disgust he discovered that she’d gone looking for the site David created. She hadn’t found it, of course not, the Computer Techies had removed the site long before she went looking for its contents.

All around him she was breaking down and he was helpless to stop it. Without knowing what else to do to help Calla, Daniel asked Janet what she thought about the situation. Janet didn’t know either. She told him that Calla might be suffering from what she called hyper-sexuality...at least in so far as the pornography was concerned, the Session 9 movie she had no clue about. The condition was rarely talked about but was very common among survivors of long-term sexual abuse. Calla had become conditioned to accept such abuse as being normal occurrences in her life. Daniel didn’t ascribe to such things, in a twisted way she missed the abuse that she had become accustomed to enduring and which she had come to accept so readily. With Daniel not filling the Master role for her in the way she was used to, Calla had to find ways to punish herself. So, the computer porn had two sides. In the photographs–disgusting as they were to both them-- Calla was able to get the degraded feeling of punishment, but she also saw herself in them. She identified with the women she saw and the predicaments they were in. Some sources indicated that it could be healthy, it could be helping her deal with what happened. The images let her know that, among all of the things she was experiencing and feeling, ‘alone’ did not have to be one of them.

Janet was not an expert in the field and suggested, first to him and then to her alone, that she talk to someone else, someone more 'professional' about all of it. Calla staunchly yet politely refused. Passing him in the hall after her conversation with Janet, Calla looked up at Daniel wounded eyes and said nothing, she just continued on her way past him. Feeling betrayed, Calla shut down what little Connection there seemed left between them. She had not done it with any pomp or circumstance whatsoever, she had just quietly shut her part of it off, as though the heavy red drape in that ancient one-room movie theater in his mind had simply fallen for the last time. There was nothing left but stale popcorn and spilt soda-pop. Sooner or later even that would be gone, she'd come in when no one was looking and clean it up nice and neat. No one would ever know that movie theater had once played black and white images, with the sound down low, intimate images of what had been her life.

Two nights ago, Daniel discovered why she wasn’t watching moving pictures on her computer screen. As usual, he had been sitting in the La-Z-Boy by a roaring fire, working on the Muzu language with note pad and pencil in hand. Calla was sitting on the couch, under a warm blanket watching one of her movies on the television. Over the last few days she had begun to quietly complain that she didn't feel well, her stomach was upset and nothing seemed to calm it and that she having headaches. That night was supposed to be a quiet night at home but that's not the way it turned out.

Daniel hadn’t been paying any attention to what she was watching and God, he wished he had been. All of a sudden, from out of no where, she screamed for him. He was only four feet away from her and she was screaming at the top of her lungs for “Master Daniel!” He looked up from his work to see her scrambling up the back of the couch, the blanket on the floor, her back pressed to the wall, which he swore she was actually trying to climb. On the screen in front of him Jodie Foster was being held down on a pool table. “Oh, fuck,” he mumbled as the pencil dropped from his mouth and Daniel bolted from the chair to her side. He fumbled for the remote control to shut off The Accused. Calla was shaking and crying as he tried to put his arms around her. “Make them stop!” She uttered in a stuttering cry, “they’re going to hurt her!”

“It’s all right, it’s fake.” He said trying to keep his voice light and comforting. “You know that, it’s all make believe. They're actors, Calla, it's not real.” It took him fifteen minutes to get to come down off the back of the couch and another forty-five before she settled down completely. It was then that he understood, she didn’t watch moving pictures because they were just a little too real for her. A short while later, exhausted and still shaken, he tucked her into bed. "Cal, where did you get that movie? Online?"

"No," she said in a small voice, "Michael lent it to me."

"Michael Blood?" He watched as she nodded her head. "Why did you ask him for it?"

"I didn't!" She swiped her hand across her eyes as though she were still trying to remove the images from them. "He lent me The Dead Zone, you know, Stephen King. I don't know what that is, Daniel, please I don't want to watch it anymore."

"You don't have to." Daniel sat with her thinking about it. "Didn't you realize it wasn't The Dead Zone? I know you read the book."

She nodded again. "I didn't know it would be that."

"I'm going to bring you a cup of tea, all right. Just stay right there." Daniel got up and left the bedroom. Walking into the living room, making sure the doors and windows were locked tight on his way from settling the tea kettle to boil in the kitchen, he saw the DVD cover laying on the table. Sure enough, it was a cover for The Dead Zone, complete with images of Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. When he popped the DVD out of the machine there was no label on it, it was a bootleg copy of The Accused. Bringing a cup of chamomile tea to her in the bedroom, he opened the door, Calla was sitting the exact position in which he left her. Daniel wondered for a moment if she’d bothered to breathe while he was away. Daniel stayed with her for a long time that night, watched her drink the tea and handed over his t-shirt to her. He held her hand until she fell asleep.

When he woke the next morning, he found her laying on the floor by his bed in the guest room. Once on the base later in the morning he had a long conversation with Michael Blood who swore up and down that he never meant to give her that movie and the DVDs must have gotten mixed up somehow. Michael Blood apologized profusely to him and Calla. To Daniel’s ears something about it wasn't right, he could swear that Michael did mean to give her that movie. But why? What was the point in it?

“Daniel?” Colonel O’Neill said as he open the door and walked into Daniel’s office.

“Sure, Jack, just come on in, make yourself at home.” Daniel said sarcastically as he motioned for the Colonel to sit. “What can I do for you?”

“Look, I know you love Calla and I think you two are great together. She loves you, can‘t get luckier than that.” Colonel O’Neill began to explain. “And, yeah, Daniel, I do get it, ok?” The quiet explanation began to take on a quietly whining tone. “What am I gonna do without you? Whose gonna tell me not to blow people up and mind my manners?”

Daniel let out a small laugh. “I don’t know, but I’m sure you’ll find someone for the job. It’s not like I’m leaving, I’ll still be here.” Jack was going to miss him, was that what was at the bottom of the hostility? Yep, seemed so. Not that Colonel would openly admit to such a thing. “If you need me to, I don’t know, pull your ass out of the fire at some point,” he sighed, “I’ll be here for that too.”

“Yeah, I know.” He admitted in a hapless sigh. “So, when do you think we’ll be going to that wedding?”

“Not for a while but not too long either, I hope.” It was Daniel’s turn to sigh. He had lightly broached the subject just once and was promptly shot down by her.

“Well, you just let me know and I’ll be there with bells on.” Jack smiled a bit as he rose, he would miss Daniel and SG1 would suffer from the loss. Nevertheless, they would go on and it was about time Daniel planted his feet in the Earth. “You know, if I do get a lead on David, you’ll be the first to know. I haven‘t stopped looking for him.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

Unable to concentrate, Daniel pushed himself away from the desk and the lap top. He turned around to give the ivy a drink of water and looking around he realized he missed her. He wasn’t aware of how accustomed he’d become to having her near him so much. She was home today, she hadn’t been looking as though she felt very well this morning. Calla was pale and warm to the touch, maybe she was catching a cold. However, she was probably not curled warm in the bed as he’d said, but she was safe and he’d call her in an hour or so just to make sure.

End Daughter of the Gods: Dark Illusions
Chapter One
Continue to
Chapter Two

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