*waves* Hi. First SG-1 fic (these challenge things? they're gooood. I write fic so much more easily when someone's doing the idea-making part for me) so be gentle etc. etc. You may more commonly find me over in Atlantis.

Title: Incongruence
Author: Frostfire
Rating: PG
Challenge: Off-duty
Notes: This is set in some nebulous spot during the first season. Daniel-centric. 470 words.

His apartment is dusty.

He didn’t notice it at first, walking in blind-tired and stupid. He blinks at the fine gray layer on his haniwa statue, and sneezes again.

He doesn’t think he owns a duster.

He keeps running into this, things he doesn’t have, chores he forgets to do, reflexes he’s lost. Jack bought him a lot of things at the beginning—dishes, sheets, bookshelves. A TV, movies, Air Force’s paying, Danny. No big deal, and he had stuff again.

But that doesn’t mean he remembers it all. He doesn’t think he’s dusted since he’s been back. And he doesn’t own anything that could do it other than dishcloths.

Way to be self-sufficient, Dr. Jackson.

It’s a recurring problem. He’s ground his own flour, but he can’t remember how long a microwave takes to reheat a cup of coffee. (A minute forty-five, after a couple of experiments; by the time he got it right, he’d burned the skin off his tongue.) Nothing quite fits together, yet. Not here, not in his head.

He stares at the dust and wonders if his unwillingness to turn his apartment into a home is symbolic of his need for the stay on Earth to be temporary. Probably.

He missed the haniwa, though. Japan has never been a major focus of his, but he’s studied a little and he loves what he knows. Abydos…surrounded by living Ancient Egypt, he sometimes thought longingly of Nepal and Peru, China and New Guinea. He thought he’d left them forever, and while he never regretted staying, he sometimes…wished he could visit.

And now here he is, and. Well.

He’s finally reached the point where he can enjoy himself without feeling guilty, sometimes. Seeing all these new civilizations—it’s like Abydos again, over and over and over. Mongols and Cretans and the Norse, alive, here, and he’s bowled over by how impossible, how awesome—in the old meaning, inspiring awe—

And he comes home, and he hasn’t dusted in months, and he stares at light bulbs until afterimages dance blue and green in front of his eyes, and he can’t be comfortable until he’s gone without a shower for a day, because you’re never that clean in the desert, never—

He sneezes again.

This apartment…amid the unbearable pain of knowing one of those snakes is inside his wife, right now, right this minute, and the adrenaline-laced awe when he hears a language he’s only ever seen written down, sounds matching themselves to symbols, accents adjusting themselves, so many words that if he worked through the night until his own language was dead, he could never catalogue them all—

Staying here requires a certain mental effort. He has a hard time handling it, sometimes.

Daniel steps out, remembers to lock the door behind him, and goes to buy a duster.

end