"Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run. "--Andrew Marvell
The house was old with tall ceilings and dark wooden floors that swirled the colors gold and brown in rich pecan heart timber. Daniel can't remember the neighborhood now; they've all mixed together. Middle class, he thinks. He remembers how shoes collected and bred on the snow porch and how kitchen always smelled like hot jasmine tea.
This wasn't a normal foster home; the couple only took severely abused kids, and then only for long enough get them better before Social Services decided what to do. Daniel doesn't think about the house he was in before that; he only remembers that the cigarette burns did not scar him and that his arm healed cleanly and that he did not die.
The man was a priest. An Episcopal priest. He was fat and bald and carried chocolates in his pocket that Daniel could take without asking. He would rock Daniel endlessly while he studied or read, even though Daniel was too big for rocking. When he read the New Testament in Koine Greek, he let Daniel translate. The Missus was tiny and bird-like, with some core of Bethlehem steel running through her that kept her from being willowy. Things that made other foster mothers angry, like messes and questions, made laughter bubble out of her and sent her arms flying around Daniel in a tangle of exasperated affection. Their names have deserted him, although he could probably remember if he wanted to.
When he came to their house, he slept in a little alcove off their bedroom. When the nightmares had dried up to once a week and he wasn't so scared he couldn't scream or run and knock on their door, he got his own room.
The Reverend and the Missus had adopted a little girl named Anya. From the moment Daniel met Anya, he knew something in her was irrevocably broken. For the first 5 years of Anya's life she'd been kept in a dog kennel with her father's Yellow Labs. The Retrievers had done their best because Anya was as sweet as the dogs must have been, but Anya had not learned human things.
Anya was 11 when Daniel came to the big old house; Daniel was 10. They would sit in the living room after school watching TV, and Anya's hands would touch Daniel's bandages, would pry at the hurt places. After a while, Daniel learned to just push Anya's hands away and distract her by messing with one of her hair ribbons.
Anya was a pretty little girl with dark auburn hair and bright green eyes who smiled easily and often. She liked to be held and to touch. Daniel was proud when his foster parents relaxed and knew he could be trusted to let Anya sit next to him, hip to hip, leg to leg, to hold Anya's hand while she rested her head on his shoulder or his chest.
He stayed nearly a year there, and he knew that his foster parents were thinking of adopting him. He heard the endless debates late at night when he was supposed to be sleeping. He tried to be as good as he could so they would keep him, and then he would ruin it fighting or tearing things up. He hated schools, even this school, a good private school attached to the Reverend's church, where he heard that "allowances" were made for his behavior. He hated the kids who were so happy and smug and drew trees and birds and families. And sometimes he felt sorry for himself.
But then there was Anya. And he was fine now: all the wounds had healed. He was alive and topping the curve in a class of rich kids who thought they were smarter than public school kids. Anya. Well, Anya would forever be a child, no matter how big she got. So he couldn't feel sorry for himself.
He wasn't supposed to, but he found the papers petitioning for his adoption that had been hidden away at the Reverend's office in the church.
One day, another child came, a painfully thin little girl, only 4, with cigarette burns and two broken fingers. Daniel saw her and fled to his bedroom, shaking, hiding in his closet, not understanding why he saw himself in her dark brown eyes. Anya found him and sat beside him, petting his hair and face, resting her head on his leg, trying to comfort him, until the Reverend rushed home and held him and told him the secret that Anya would be his sister once the final signature was on the forms.
One day the social worker was waiting for him at school and he screamed and he ran and kicked and would not be calm. He woke up in a hospital bed where a shrink tried to be nice and gentle with him and tried to pretend there were no reasons for Daniel's quiet and tears. Daniel knew his grandfather had not signed the papers and so the social workers would not let him stay, would not let him become "attached".
Daniel kept his own council, found his own peace. He remembered sweet, gentle Anya and the little girl with the big brown eyes. He chewed his lip and thought about Anya in a kennel eating dog food. He thought about the old house where he had been hurt. No matter how bad things are, no matter what horrible things happen, you're not the one who died. You're not damaged beyond repair. You can survive anything. Anything.
But he learned something else, something he kept holding his breath against, praying that it wasn't true, but for his whole life it would be: happiness is fleeting. When you are granted love reach out and grab it by both hands and hold on tight to it as long as you can because one day it will go away; it all goes away.
© May 2002. The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.