Chapter Text
Getting paged to interrogation room number three couldn’t be a good thing, and after spending a year living on a different planet under the pretense of being dead, Daniel Jackson had every reason to be nervous. Seeing General Hammond waiting for him outside the door didn’t make him feel any better. “Dr. Jackson,” General Hammond greeted him, and gestured for him to enter the room.
Waiting for them inside was a squat man whose haircut, glasses and something about the way he wore his dress uniform just screamed accountant. The man stood up and Hammond introduced him. “This is Capt. Goescher. He’s been assigned to your case.”
“Case?” Daniel asked.
“Yes,” Hammond continued, motioning for the two of them to sit. “You see, over a year ago Col. O’Neill returned from Abydos and stated you were dead. Consequently, the Air Force declared you dead. As far as the US government and the entire planet Earth is concerned, you are still dead.”
“Right…” He wondered where this was going.
“We have to declare you undead,” Capt. Goescher explained.
“Alive,” Gen. Hammond corrected.
“Right. Alive,” Capt. Goescher amended.
“So, what do I do?” Daniel asked.
“Well, I have the applicable paperwork here,” Goescher said, picking up the stack of papers in front of him and setting it down again in front of Daniel, who stared at it. “I’ll need you to fill all this out.”
“All of it?”
Goscher nodded. “Some of it might not be applicable because you weren’t military. But since you were a civilian contractor, there’s additional paperwork that needs to be filled out.”
“It seems Gen. West was not as thorough in making sure all the correct paperwork was filed before you left for Abydos. And since you ‘died’ on that mission anyway, he apparently didn’t see the point in filing it after the fact,” Gen. Hammond explained. “We need to post-facto hire you as a civilian contractor for the Air Force for a year ago as well as declare you alive again.”
“That would be these papers here.” Capt. Goescher removed about half the stack, “along with the necessary papers to ensure you get your backpay for that mission. The remainder of the papers are the ones to declare you alive. Just fill these out and we can get you sorted. If you have any questions,” he pushed a business card across the table, “this has my extension on it where you can reach me.”
The two men stood as Daniel struggled to pry the business card up off the table. He finally bent it in half, and it jumped into his hand. He restacked the papers into one pile and picked them up before following them out of the room.
&&&&
Daniel tried going through the files on base, but the whole place was a buzzing hive of Airmen running around, still organizing and setting everything up for the teams going through the stargate and the support staff remaining behind. He’d been promised his own office and provided its location. But when he arrived, the place was still nothing but a mess of partially assembled tables, boxes and Airmen who stared at him blankly when he asked if they had a chair somewhere he could sit and fill out some paperwork. He went to the mess instead, which, true to the idiom of armies marching on their stomach, was fully operational. It was also fully occupied. He opted for a late lunch instead, balancing the tray with his meal on it on top of his stack of papers.
An empty table was too much to ask for and during his search for an empty chair, a sole blonde head peeked out amongst the trays and BDUs. “Hey,” he greeted Sam Carter.
“Oh, hi,” she said, glancing up from the paperwork she was reading only briefly before returning to it. Her own meal was pushed to the side.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Go ahead. I can’t say I’m going to be great company, though. I’ve got this technical manual to go through to make sure the Airmen assembling the equipment for my lab do it right.”
“And let me guess: there’s no place for you to do it down there where you can supervise, so you’re stuck doing it here in the mess,” Daniel said.
“Yep. Though I did think it would be good to get some lunch, too.” She frowned and looked around before finding her food off to the side. She forked some into her mouth and gagged before swallowing.
“No good?” Daniel asked, eyeing the same food on his plate.
“No, no, as far as base food is concerned, it’s pretty palatable. At least when it’s hot.” She sighed. “Which it isn’t anymore.”
“Ah.” Daniel decided to eat first, and start the paperwork later, putting the stack to the side of him.
“What’s all that?”
“The paperwork to bring me back to life,” Daniel side, taking a bite.
“All that?” Her reaction was suspiciously similar to his own.
“A lot of it. The first half or third or so is the paperwork that should have been filed before I went to Abydos officially hiring me as a civilian consultant. I guess they cut a few corners.”
A brief flash of what Daniel could have sworn was jealousy flashed across her face. “I guess so.”
“Since I ‘died,’ they never saw the point in getting around to it. But now that I’m not dead and working for the SGC again, it needs to be completed.”
“Makes sense.” She took another bite and a long drink of water.
“There was also mention of backpay, which would be nice. I’d like to not trespass on Jack’s generosity any longer than I have to.”
“Excuse me? You mean Col. O’Neill?”
“Yeah, he’s, uh, letting me live with him until I can get my own place, so I’m not stuck on base the whole time.”
“That’s nice of him,” her voice belayed her statement.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, it’s just usually team leaders don’t…socialize so much with their subordinates. Or live with them.”
“Oh, but I’m not military. I don’t think that applies. Besides, it makes it easier to accept…things.” He didn’t go into detail and turned his attention back to the food. Being around the stargate all the time, knowing that Sha’re was out there somewhere, a dialing address away, if only he knew the right address, got to be too much sometimes. Putting distance between him and it was good. Necessary.
She nodded. “I feel sorry for Teal’c, stuck here on base all the time. At least he isn’t locked in the brig anymore. But still. He gave up his entire life when he saved us on Chulak, and the best I can do to repay him is convince them to wheel a TV into his room.”
“They consented to allow him onto SG-1. That’s something. Otherwise, he’d just be stuck on base, period,” Daniel argued.
“True.” She turned her attention back to her papers, dropping their conversation. Daniel finished his food and cleared their trays before starting on his own. It was a miserable task. Most questions he didn’t know the answers to or had somehow forgotten them during his sojourn on Abydos. To be fair, he didn’t really think he’d need his social security number once he’d decided to stay behind. Mother’s maiden name? When’s the last time he’d even thought of that?
He pushed that paper to the back of the stack and read through the next one. Next of kin. Recovery of estate. He wanted to laugh. What assets? When he’d been declared dead, all he’d had to his name were two suitcases, an overdrawn bank account, and two overdue, maxed out credit cards. God, when’s the last time he’d ever even thought of making a payment on one of those? It was just as well he didn’t have any kin to disburse his “estate” to. They’d have tired of the endless calls from creditors before the ink was dry on his ill-gotten death certificate.
Somone knocked on the table and Daniel and Sam both jumped at the interruption. Sam jumped further into a standing position when she realized it was Col. O’Neil, and he waved her down. “What are you guys doing paperwork in the mess for?” Jack scolded. “Didn’t they give you offices?”
“Yes, but they haven’t finished putting them together yet. Right now, the mess hall is the only place on base with assembled chairs and tables besides the briefing room,” Daniel replied.
“But you both filed your reports for the Chulak mission and the whole…Kawalski incident. What paperwork could you possibly have?”
“Technical manual for my lab equipment,” Sam said.
“Re-aliving forms,” Daniel added.
Jack stared.
“Actually, I think I’ve read through enough of this to be able to check up the Airmen’s progress,” Sam said, closing her manual as she stood up. Jack stuck his arm out. “Just a minute, Captain. I wanted to let you guys know we’ll be heading out to Peterson for some team training starting tomorrow.”
“Team training?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah. I’d like to get some idea of my team’s capabilities and how we work together before we spend too much time in the field. We’ll do some of the obstacle courses, run some strategic training scenarios, maybe some firearms and hand-to-hand training and then an overnight hike up a mountain.” Daniel could feel his cheeks warming at the mention of firearm and hand-to-hand training. He had little of the former and none of the latter, and no one had told him specifically he needed either.
“Will Teal’c be joining us, sir?” Sam asked.
“Yep. I got permission from General Hammond himself. We’ll meet tomorrow at Peterson at 0800.”
“Right, sir. If I could--?”
“Right. Yes. Dismissed, Captain.” He scooted out of her way, but his eyes followed her out of the mess hall. “You think you can finish that stuff up at my place?” He asked Daniel once she had disappeared.
“Finish? You’re optimistic. I don’t even know the answers to half these questions.”
“Great. Let’s head out. I’ve had about five too many meetings today and I’d like to beat it before some random Important Person drags me into another one. Meet me up top in an hour?”
Daniel agreed.