Title: Survival
Author's LJ/DWJ: somehowunbroken
Categories: character study, character: Daniel Jackson, character: Sarah Gardner, theme: awesome women, theme: getting snaked
Warnings: None
Author's Webpage/Fic list: Master List of Fics
Link to story: Survival
Why this should be read: At the end of 'Chimera,' canon gave Sarah Gardner a hug and abandoned her forever. This fic checks in to see how she's doing -- she's changed, and she's haunted, but she's OK, and she calls Daniel and tells him so -- and presents an affecting study of the quiet triumph of the good days over the bad.

870 words.

Sarah Gardner, the headline in the New York Times says. There are other things too, but the thing that captures her is her name, big and bold and italic, her name.

It frees something in her, seeing her name in the paper. She’d spent three long years trapped in her own head, watching as her hands and mouth and legs worked outside of her control, seeing the endless violence and hearing Osiris’ whispered thoughts in her mind, my last host served me for seven hundred years with the help of the sarcophagus, little one, how long will you last?

Now, the thoughts in her head are her own, and when she picks up her phone and dials the number that Daniel had given her, she knows it's her idea, her fingers doing the work, her voice replying when Daniel says hello.