Title: Campfire Stories (Danya's Tale)
Series: consider this part of the backstory to the "Immortal
Underground" arc, but it's not necessary to have read that first. 
Author: akire
Email: akire@mailcity.com
Status: Complete/Unbetaed
Category: Crossover: Highlander/Stargate SG-1
Spoilers: umm, got a basic grasp of the Highlander universe?  Fine.  Oh
yeah, we're a Clan Denial fanfic.  Stargate,  a passing familiarity
with the series up to season 4 will suffice. 
Disclaimers:  D/P and Gecko really DO own them.  If you don't recognize
it, it's probably mine.  If it's silly or crazy, definitely is mine.
But if anyone sends the lawyers after me, I'm sending out the boys with
swords and staff weapons. ;)  Oh yeah, and imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery.  If you recognize a specific fanfic creation, it
belongs to its author (when this series is finished, I may tally them
up). 
Rating: PG, prob.  Hey, I'm not offended by much, if it should be rated
higher, tell me! 
Content Warning: purists beware.  Language may offend some readers. 
Summary: A quiet mission, a campfire and a melancholy Danya conspire to
give SG-1 an insight into their ancient friend.  A short interlude. 
Dedication:  the Danielites crew.  Its about time I dedicated something
to you lot!


That's long enough. On with the show!

~~##~~

The campfire on P4X 656 burnt a warm orange, spilling light and heat
out towards the four members of SG-1.  Sam poked the fire with a stick,
stirring the ashes for a moment before sitting back to bask in the
light.  Beside her, half in the shadows, Teal'c sat with his staff
weapon in easy reach, keeping an eye on the darkness outside the ring
of light.  This planet had been quiet, with no hint as to any hidden
perils.  He doubted they were in any danger, but kept watch over his
friend's safety anyway.  On Sam's left, Jack O'Neill wrapped his
fingers around a steaming enamel mug as he too contemplated the fire he
had built.  Normally not a taciturn person, his attention was focussed
on their fourth teammate.

Daniel had been unusually quiet and introspective all day.  True, there
were none of his rocks to keep his attention, but still Daniel managed
to infuse every mission with a sense of child-like wonder that belied
his four-figure age.  That enthusiasm had been absent today as the
Immortal scientist kept his own counsel.

The day was quite, the fire was cozy and Jack wasn't feeling the
slightest bit tired.  Time to get the good doctor talking,

"Daniel?"

"Yes, Jack?"  Tired, distracted.

"What's up?"

"Jack?"  

"You've been a thousand miles away since before we Gated in today."

"More like a thousand years, Jack" he murmured quietly.  Looking up
beyond the dancing flames, he saw three sets of eyes on him.  Those
eyes conveyed concern, warmth and friendship.  Before his normal
internal censors could clamp down, he found himself speaking.

"Do you know how many times I've died in my life?  I don't know how
many, but more than a few, and in a lot of different ways."  He studied
his fingernails for a moment.  "Do you know what it feels like to be
beaten to death?  It's almost a relief to die, for it to just be over. 
Death by suffocation is terror followed by a kind of floating
acceptance.  Stonings, well, you really don't feel anything other than
disbelief that its actually happening to you – the mob, the animal fear
in their eyes, it just blows your mind."  He snorted, his eyes focussed
on sights from a different time and place.  "Being shot is like having
sticks of fire shoved through your skin, and it's so damn impersonal.
Lonely.  Fire itself is bad.  You can smell..."  He shuddered slightly.
"It's one of the worst ways to die."  He stared into the fire for a
long while.  "There are other ways to go, of course.  Dehydration,
starvation, the neglect of the body's most basic needs.  But they're
not too bad, in comparison.  Humans are capable of such incredible
violence, even against people they claim as their own."

A hand reached over to rest on his knee.  "Daniel.  You okay?"

He flashed a bright and phoney smile at his best friend.  "Did I ever
tell you how I died the first time, Jack?  I was lynched."  He
continued on, the dam opened now and not likely to stop until it had
run itself out.  "I was found in Egypt, like so many of our kind from
that era.  A dark haired, blue-eyed child in Egypt, who had no parents,
who had just come into being.  You can imagine what it was like.  I was
used to accusations of being demon-spawn, used to all their petty
superstitions.  In the end, I took to wandering with the hunters.  I
could always navigate across the sands easily, and for this my presence
was tolerated.  But then the well that serviced our village ran dry,
and the accusations became louder, harder to ignore.  Water is life in
a desert, without it you are dead, or as good as.  The well, it just
ran out, like someone had pulled a plug.  The...you'd call him a
shaman, he said we had displeased the gods."  Even in the dark they
could hear the cruelly sarcastic twist to his words.  None of them had
believed in gods for a long time.  "I tried to run, but there were more
of them, they were faster.  They tied my hands behind my back, tightly,
with ropes of hemp.  They tied me to the well cap, left me there for
days.  It was just a few days before midsummer's, so hot, and the sand
was like shards of glass when the wind blew it across your burnt skin. 
At night, the sky was so clear and cold, you could see The Chariot pass
straight over you like it didn't care.  When they finally came back for
me, the well was still dry.  The shaman, he picked up this rock, and
just held it over my head.  I can still see his eyes, he was getting
off on this power trip, or maybe he thought he was doing some great and
holy deed, I don't know."  Daniel knew he was almost rambling, didn't
really care.  He had never told this story before, but it obviously
needed to be told.  "Anyway...he dropped the stone."  Daniel squeezed
his eyes closed.  His mouth was as dry as it had been in that desert
nearly four thousand years ago.  "To cut a long story short, I woke up
buried under sand in a rough linen shroud.  A shallow sand grave, easy
for me to dig myself out of."  He laughed without humour, his voice
rough.  "I must have wandered across every foot of sand between Memphis
and the Mediterranean before I finally got on board a boat outbound for
Greece.  Must have died of thirst or hunger a hundred times over before
that, though.  Fell off a cliff once.  I thought that perhaps I really
was a devil, or perhaps a djinn, a spirit cursed to haunt the desert
forever.  I think I was more than a little mad by that stage.  Perhaps
I thought it would end if I left the desert.  Anyway, I met up with
this guy, must have been as crazy as I was.  Told me that ‘there could
be only one.'  But for some reason he didn't kill me.  I think he took
pity on me."  Danya sighed.  "I haven't thought of those times in
centuries.  I don't know why it came back to me today."

He looked into his empty mug, then flipped it over to drain the muck
from the bottom.  "I'm gonna get some rest. Goodnight."  Before the
others could respond, he had pushed himself to his feet and was ducking
into his tent.

Jack exhaled a breath he hadn't even realised he was holding.  "Woah,"
he whispered.  "Where did that come from?"

Beside him, Sam flopped backwards to stare up at the stars. Her arms
spread wide, she breathed deeply a dozen times, calming her racing
mind, before pushing herself upright.  "Well, now we know why he was so
quite all day," she nearly whispered, well-aware how thin tent walls
were and how lightly Daniel slept.  Thinking, she added, "and why he's
almost paranoid about his sanity.  Remember Machello's device?  He was
so scared he was going crazy.  It must have brought back all those
memories."  Sam trailed off and fell silent.

"Wonder if Janet has a cure all for a melancholy Immortal?" Jack
wondered idly.

Teal'c voiced an opinion.  "Perhaps if we removed the reason why he is
recalling these memories?"

"But you heard him, Teal'c.  Even he doesn't know why he was
remembering it.  Hell, who knows why we remember what we do.  The
simplest thing can trigger the biggest memory."  Jack put his mug down
and ran his fingers through his hair.  He was speaking from painful
experience.

"The Chariot...midsummer..." Sam murmured, brow creased.  Suddenly, her
face cleared and she leapt up to rummage through her pack, returning
with the laptop.

"Major?"

"Just a minute sir, I've got a weird idea."  The two men watched in
silence as she tapped, read, then tapped the keys some more.  Her smile
was almost seductive in the firelight.  "Gotcha."

"Got what, Carter?"

She turned the screen around so they could read the display.  "Do you
know what tomorrow is, sir?" She whispered.  "Because I bet Daniel
doesn't."

  ~~##~~

"Welcome home, SG1.  Report to the Infirmary, debriefing in one hour." 
Hammond's voice over the PA drowned out the sucking noise of the
wormhole collapsing behind them.  The three mortal members of SG1
swapped secret looks as they led the still brooding Daniel down the
corridors towards the gear room and the Infirmary.  It was short work
to get Daniel checked out first and sent packing to the showers alone. 
So down was his mood he didn't even notice that his teammates had given
him the slip.

Debriefing was short and to the point.  "We came, we saw, we wished we
brought a deck of cards, sir."  

The hardest part of the day was pulling Daniel out of his office before
he took root.

"Jack, I don't feel hungry.  Besides, it's nearly Tuesday midnight
topside, no pizza place would be open now."

"We're not going for pizza, Danny-boy."  Jack's grasp was gentle but
firm as he steered Daniel through the seemingly endless corridor.

Daniel sighed.  He wished Jack would stop calling him that.  It had
been a very long time since he was a boy.  And he really wished that
they would just leave him alone.  It wasn't as if he was great company
at the moment anyway.  Passing a signpost, he realised they were in
fact heading away from both the surface lift and the refectory.  "Uh,
Jack? Where we going?"

"Down a corridor, Daniel.  Don't tell me you're going senile."

"Never tease a person who carries a sword, Jack," he almost snarled.
His patience was rapidly coming to an end.  "A very big, very sharp
sword."

"Very nice, Daniel.  If I didn't know that you were just a big
pussycat, I might even be scared," was the nonchalant reply.  "Now be a
good boy and come here."  They were at Sam's lab.  

Sighing to himself, he composed a particularly virulent curse for Jack
in Chinese and followed him into the lab.  Two steps in, he stopped
dead.  The door hissed close behind him, but he didn't notice, too busy
was he reading the hastily constructed banner on the far wall again.

"Happy First Death Day?" He asked out loud.

Sam and Janet blew little plastic party whistles they had gotten from
who knew where and tried not to giggle.  Teal'c just bowed regally.
Jack clapped him on the shoulder.  "Sure is.  Here, have some cake." In
fact, it was a cupcake from the refectory with a candle shoved into it.

Daniel took the cake without thinking.  "Umm, guys?  Care to explain?"

Sam flicked on a monitor and showed him her late-night handiwork.
"That story you told us.  Well, I calculated what year it was by the
estimated position of the constellation The Chariot.  After that, it
was easy to calculate the date, in the modern calendar, of your first
death.  And surprise!  Its today.  That's probably why you're
remembering it suddenly.  We've all been talking about the solstice at
the end of the week down here, in relation to that crazy theory Miller
has.  Combined with what your body was telling you about the season was
enough to trigger the memory."  She threw her hands up to indicate the
hastily arranged decorations.  "And we thought, well..."

"You thought you'd use my being bludgeoned to death with a great big
rock as an excuse for a party?"

"Replacing bad memories with good ones."  Jack shrugged, completely
unrepentant.  "At least, that's the theory."

Daniel stared at Jack a long time, not sure what to think.  Finally, he
smiled and took a bite of the cupcake.  "What, couldn't you guys at
least spring for catering?"  

~~##~~