Work Text:
Lines of white chalk scrawl across dusty black, etching out the word Stargate.
His translation complete, Daniel Jackson turns to face the room. "Well, so, why is the military so interested in five-thousand-year-old Egyptian tablets?" he asks, a little bemused.
"My report says ten thousand."
Daniel's head whips in the direction of the newcomer who spoke, his jaw going slack. If he had the presence of mind to take heed of anyone else's reaction to that, he'd probably guess the other miscellaneous experts in the room believe he's shocked by what this claim implies about the historical record. That revelation is certainly churning in the back of his mind, but it's not the most urgent thing he's contending with right now.
Ten thousand… years. This whole time, it had meant ten thousand years.
For as long as he can remember, those five words have been Daniel Jackson's most stalwart companion, printed on his wrist in stark black ink that he (usually) remembered to politely cover up each morning. My report says ten thousand. Those words had kept him up at night as he turned them around and around like a puzzle, wondering why that would be anyone's first words to him—what he might have said, to whom, to prompt them. Had he been the one to address the speaker first, or was he being interrupted? Had he quoted a figure wrong and gotten a correction, or was the 'report' wrong? Perhaps he'd even intentionally lied, and the speaker was calling him out for it. Was this sentence more likely to be said in an informative way or a surprised way or a combative way? What unit of measurement might that 'ten thousand' have been in? Feet? Meters? Population? Dollars? Gallons? If Daniel was being corrected, what number was the most likely for him to have said preceding this? Higher or lower? An order of magnitude different or fractionally so?
Daniel can't say for sure that those sleepless nights had been the root of his interest in linguistics, but it hadn't hurt.
'Ten thousand years' had been one of the possibilities that he'd long since discounted. Even light-years seemed more likely to be the culprit than that. The word 'report' implied some new and relevant information was being provided, but ten thousand years in the past was a ludicrous amount of time to be provided like a relevant piece of information with a brief little sentence like this, and ten thousand years in the future even more so. If the number on his arm had been five thousand—the age of the oldest recorded evidence of written language—then he would have been willing to consider the possibility that the speaker had meant 'years.'
Daniel Jackson himself had spoken of five thousand years just now. And the person he was always destined to meet one day, the person he's finally meeting right now, his soulmate, had said ten thousand.
Daniel doesn't know what he's feeling at the moment. Indignation, maybe? Bafflement? The military man with close-cropped hair had kept speaking in the moments that Daniel had been utterly at sea—to the others in the room, it seemed. He'd introduced himself, maybe? The only thing that had registered through the roaring in Daniel's ears was 'Jack'—surely this wasn't another Jackson?
His mouth opens. Ten thousand years. The report that's haunted his thoughts for decades was one that said this tablet was created ten thousand years ago. That was absurd. Unthinkable. Whoever had put that figure to paper was wrong—someone had royally fucked up during the excavation or in the lab or in the copyediting—and his soulmate has blindly put his faith in the information he'd been handed and very likely doesn't even realize there's anything staggeringly amiss with the claim.
"Ancient Egyptian culture didn't even exist—!" Daniel Jackson says, plaintively.
His own first words to his soulmate spill out of his mouth unconsidered. With the implied end to the sentence—the unfinished phrase that's dogged his every step, 'ten thousand years ago'—ringing in his ears, but left unspoken.
The friendly dark-haired woman standing next to him murmurs sympathetic agreement with his protesting words, nodding her head in the corner of his vision—she knows the timeline doesn't make a lick of sense. The guy in the sweater who'd flubbed the original translation puffs up again, looking pleased that Daniel is confused. And the military man… the colonel? Had someone said 'colonel'? The colonel, he's staring at Daniel now, his eyes bugged out and his face going ruddy with fury.
Daniel Jackson watches the man's hand fly under the cuff of his sleeve and yank at the bindings below so recklessly that the linen tears before it comes free. Daniel takes an instinctive step forward, but he hadn't needed to—the wrist he wanted to get a closer look at is shoved into his face, six words scrawled out in a hand that resembled his own.
Ancient Egyptian culture didn't even exist, it says. And, that's it. There's no ellipsis, no em-dash, nothing that would indicate there was meant to be any continuation to that sentence. All that it seems to be is a statement flatly denying the existence of ancient Egyptian culture. An… unorthodox conspiracy theory if ever there was one. And that coming from Daniel Jackson—he of 'are you implying the Great Pyramid of Giza was built by aliens' fame.
"You couldn't have finished your goddamn sentence?!" the colonel shouts, brandishing his wrist like a saber.
And, chagrined, Daniel Jackson is forced to admit that, of the two of them, his soulmate is definitely the one who's had to contend with the more puzzling mark…