Author Notes: Thanks reading this.All comments are welcome.

Morning Watch

With his broad back to the rising sun, he faced a layer of dew, of tiny diamond chips lying in a delicate veil over the face of the gentle ground contours in front of him. Flecks of moisture that caught the warming sun in a shower of dancing reflections across the landscape. It was sunrise a long way from home.

The low sun created long shadows and concealing spots of darkness. Any movement behind him would be displayed in a shadow; movement among the trees in the distance would be more difficult to detect. His own shadow, deformed by the staff weapon across his lap, created a darkness that reached across the open meadow half way to the trees.

This was the time of day he preferred. To be here, in the silence that introduced sunlight to a sleeping world, was to absorb the fullness of those quiet moments before daylight made incessant activity possible. He always volunteered for this watch. No one on the team ever contradicted his wish.

Watching the glittering dew shrink back into a dull dryness at the increasing brilliance of a demanding sun, he sat, alert for any movement, any sound or scent. These cautions were the essence of standing watch. Behind his vigilance, a gentle longing would take in the natural pattern of beauty - the sun, the sky, the land. In these quiet moments, he would absorb a sense of serene balance against the horror he might face before this day ended.

The others would be stirring soon, ending the quiet in a bustle of business.

O'Neill usually awoke first. He claimed his internal clock belonged to a Minnesota fisherman. Teal'c watched his commander flex the ache out of joints and warm the stiffness out of muscles. The human struggle against age was one of the things he'd come to admire about the free humans of Earth. They didn't give up in the face of what he saw as diminishing returns. In the time they had served together, the addition of years had come to his commander with a physical price that Teal'c knew was being paid from a limited purse. The fight for freedom might go on for years, but individual humans did not.

Teal'c had watched O'Neill's early stirring over the years and there was a pattern to it. Subtle to most but in the years they'd been together as a team, in the many morning watches he'd stood, he'd picked out the pattern and confirmed it repeatedly. His leader's routine was nothing if not a quest to have Samantha up and about without appearing to deliberately wake her. Once she was out of her tent or sleeping bag, O'Neill would settle down to business, focusing on the demands of the day. Not until.

There were women on Chulak who distinguished themselves in battle, who were equal to the task of command and who carried their beauty without concern, but there was something about this Air Force officer that moved her into a realm of her own. She had an intellectual gift and a mind schooled by diligence the way Jaffa trained their bodies.

Often, they had been rescued from slavery, imprisonment, natural disaster and, without doubt, death by her ability to focus her intellect. That her brilliance could be lost to a staff blast or an accident of the environment struck him as a wasteful risk. Without intending it, he'd often found himself protecting her. Not something she would easily have accepted; he kept this mission of his own design to himself.

With two people now shaking off sleep, tramping around making coffee, tending to the requirements of time and plans, Daniel would still have to be awakened. When O'Neill's familiar hand signal and shrug of resignation instructed him, the last act of Teal'c's watch would be to rob the archeologist of a dream and a cozy nest.

Daniel slept through noise and motion that others would tremble at. He was at peace with himself while at war with a world steeped in inhumanity. Maybe it was the part of Daniel that understood the past that made him stand before Teal'c as a wise man in youthful form. Teal'c knew that through his life and work, Daniel had learned first- and second-hand about the mistakes humans were capable of. He'd witnessed the young scientist's innate wisdom. Daniel knew that man didn't have to repeat his mistakes and he was passionate enough to stand by his convictions. Daniel Jackson was the only person Teal'c had ever met who instinctively held the lives of the innocent in such high regard that he felt his own life was forfeit for theirs. To Teal'c, the archeologist was a child-man, and maybe the human he most respected; but orders were orders, and the sun was up.

Called to gather for one last review of the day's plan, O'Neill would use these final quiet minutes as less of a review than an opportunity for airing last minute concerns and new insights.

A huddle, Teal'c thought, where the four of them would again confirm their commitment to the task and to each other.

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