brainofck

This is a huge tease.

I really shouldn't start publishing this til I'm sure I can finish it. I know what I want to do. I have ideas to play with. But I have no idea exactly how I will end it, and it may well become one of those annoying WIPs that gets a good roll going and suddenly stops.

So, if you just can't stand it when an author does that, then you probably should not start this.

However, if you are willing to put up with me, I can promise several chapters of my usual standard, including much emotional stress and at least one good solid piece of porn - maybe even a couple of them.

But in good conscience, I just felt the need to warn you what you are getting into.

Love,
CK

Title: Serial Rediscovery, December 12
Author:

muck_a_luck, posting in

brainofck
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: PG for most parts, NC-17 eventually
Summary: Daniel has a run-in with the NID, and can't remember anything about the SGC, particularly not SG-1
Content/warnings: I feel a strong need to warn for amnesia!fic. Cause it is SOOOOO lame. But it's also fun. :)
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only.

muck_a_luck and

brainofck
The Matrix: The Matrix is located here. This one is Beginnings.

For my loyal

rugbytacklers, I have done a Stargate crash course located here.

December 12

"Daniel!"

Professor Daniel Jackson hesitated in his mad dash across the quad, turning to see who was calling him. Apparently it was a very attractive, very blond, leather-and-jean-clad woman just parking her motorcycle in the small bicycle lot by the sciences building. Daniel didn't recognize her. He turned and continued hurrying towards class. Some other Daniel on the quad, obviously.

"Daniel! Wait!"

Or maybe not. She had dashed after him and caught him by the shoulder. To his disgust, partially graded exams went flying and his books, precariously balanced under his arm, went crashing to the ground. The woman seemed not to notice. She flung her arms around him, squeezing him in a surprisingly tight hug, kissing him on the cheek. Through his irritation, he heard her excited babbling.

"Oh, God, it's really you! I can't believe it! We've been looking for you for months, Daniel! We've been so worried! I didn't even say anything to the Colonel, I didn't want to get his hopes up when I wasn't sure..."

It took her a few moments to notice that he was uncomfortably not returning her embrace. She let go and stepped back and he immediately began gathering up the drifting exam pages, thankful it was a calm day.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, suddenly flustered. She started helping him, moving quickly to capture the few exams that were actually moving farther away in the breeze.

"Do I know you?" he asked as they collected the pages.

He saw her hesitate, then grab the last set of pages. She brought her pile and handed it to him, neatly stacked. They would be, he thought, then wondered where that little voice in his head had come from. Now she was looking at him. A thoughtful, searching look that he felt he should be able to interpret.

"Do you?" she asked in reply. The burble of excitement in her voice had been replaced with something more matter-of-fact. It sounded flat, maybe disappointed. Daniel scowled.

"No, I don't think so," he said firmly, "And right now, I really don't have a second to spare. I've got seventy-five students taking an exam in..." he checked his watch, "...in three minutes." He knelt to pick up his books and continued across the campus, now nearly running. To his annoyance, she kept pace with him easily.

"Daniel, this can't wait!" she said, beginning to sound angry and frustrated.

"I'm very certain it can," he said testily. "I have office hours tomorrow. The department office can give you the details." He took the steps to the building two at a time.

He didn't turn around to see her stopped at the bottom behind him, lips pursed, thinking. She turned and walked slowly back to her bike.

Daniel thought about the encounter all through the exam as he graded the Arch 10 papers and kept an eye on his Comparative Linguistics students. He couldn't get past the feeling that he did know her, somehow. But he couldn't place her. He found himself hoping that she wasn't an old colleague from graduate school that he should have recognized and to whom he had just been unspeakably rude.

Daniel was happy these days, but his recent change of fates was still new and, frankly, after years of being a pariah in his field, hard to accept. But this opportunity had come at the ideal time, a small private university looking to build a stronger, better curriculum in Archaeology and Anthropology, who were willing to overlook his professional indiscretions in exchange for a new faculty member who could be the Archaeology department and take on Linguistics, too. Even teach miscellaneous languages in a pinch. A lot of bang for their limited buck for any school willing to hold their noses and ignore his past eccentricities.

After everything that had happened in the past several months, he was grateful for his recent good fortune, and the thought of having been hideously, personally insulting to anyone in the field, no matter how inconsequential that person might be, made him feel slightly ill.

He couldn't shake the feeling that what had happened there on the quad was wrong. He was still thinking about it long after he got back to his apartment that night. When he sat under the comforter with his journal, he spent much more time than he usually would on such an insignificant personal event.

"Maybe he was being surveilled."

"He didn't recognize me, sir. I'm sure of it. Daniel's never been that good an actor."

She could practically hear him thinking over the cellular connection.

"You're only about 10 hours from here. I'll rent a mini-van, throw the stuff in the back, and I'll be there in the morning."

Jack sat in the fading light thinking about the best strategy for approaching Daniel.

He set down the phone and went back to the bedroom. Reached under the other pillow and took out the book he had been reading and re-reading in the eight months since Daniel had disappeared. Budge. He smiled to himself.

They had cleared out Daniel's apartment. Not so much as a paper clip or a roll of toilet paper was left behind. But they must not have been particularly well connected in the SGC. They had hit Daniel's office, but apparently they had not been able to take everything, the way they could on the outside. They had taken his hard drive and all the loose electronic media. They had taken the notebooks that were open and in progress. Clearly, they had been targeting his current projects, and Jack had a good idea which one in particular.

But they obviously did not know how Daniel Jackson ticked. He kept his most precious belongings close to him, near his heart, and that was there, in his office, where he pursued the love of his life.

So among other ratty, grubby, many-times repaired volumes - every single book from the suitcase that went to Abydos, in fact - they had left Budge. All the white space in the text was filled with Daniel's notes and invective, including the very rare acknowledgement. The pages divided by little folded scraps of paper, with scribbles in various languages, most in Daniel's own writing, but many in other hands and scripts.

Jack had opened it initially because he could. He was pretty sure that Daniel didn't realize that Jack even knew of the book's existence. Jack suspected Daniel didn't want people to know that his Budge was one of his most treasured possessions. It was always tucked away in some dark corner of the office. Except those unusual moments when Jack would find it lying out, by some translation that was driving Daniel to his wits' end.

So when he had the book in hand, Jack had to look, and what he had found had been the horror that Daniel was lost to him, stolen, maybe forever, and he had touched Daniel's words in despairing anger, then slept with the book under the other pillow.

The Budge would convince Daniel. More than the pictures from missions, the commissary, the elevator. When Daniel saw Budge, he would understand.

December 13