TITLE: The Quality of Mercy
AUTHOR: ELG
CATEGORY: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst.
SPOILERS: Major spoilers for Jolinar's Memories/The Devil You Know. Minor Spoilers for other first, second, and third season episodes up to 'Jolinar's Memories' and 'The Devil You Know'.
SEASON / SEQUEL: Season 3, second half. Takes place after 'The Devil You Know'.
RATING: R
CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence. Language. Physical and emotional cruelty to SG-1. Attempted rape of a major character. Description of a medical procedure performed upon a major character. Mention of previous minor character(s) death(s). Some romantic implications in relationship between Sam and Martouf. Plus, Jack and Daniel hold a few rather dubious conversations. Basically every member of SG-1 is traumatized and/or physically damaged in some way during the course of this story. On the upside, Daniel is naked for one scene, and SG-1 do all briefly wear pyjamas.
SUMMARY: Daniel's ill treatment by the priests of Onuris causes Jack and Teal'c to forget their own compassion. Unable to escape from a hostile world, it becomes increasingly apparent that SG-1 is trapped within a self-fulfilling prophecy of which only they are ignorant. But will their attempts to evade the wrath of a vengeful Goa'uld, free the people from a false god, or only bring about their own deaths?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Many thanks to Cathy for pics, vidfiles, feedback, and editorial help; to the angelically patient Sue and Judy B for the medical beta (the medically correct bits are due to them, the mistakes are entirely my own work); to Anna, Bri, Cheryl, Joyce, Judy B, Judy M, Lisa D, Paula, Pen, Phee, and Sharon for their feedback and editorial help; to Holly who kept 'encouraging' me to finish it when I sneaked off to write other things; and to the lovely boys of the NG for advice on the way real men feel about glass-topped coffee tables (amongst many other useful pieces of information). Special thanks to Ranger Bob for the list of things we might find in SG-1's black vesty things. And, as always, particular thanks to my super-beta, and separated-at-birth-twin, Brenda, without whom my life would be so much poorer I don't even want to think about it, no story would ever get written at all, this one would still be a couple of chapters on my HDD.

Click to see collage created by Bri

Prologue

Colonel Jack O'Neill could feel faint vibrations from the old ship shivering through his injured leg as he breathed in deep draughts of air that smelt of metal, unwashed bodies, his own dried blood, and, most overpoweringly of all, relief. After so many hours in the noisome pit of Netu, a little honest human sweat smelt good to him right now, and even a thrumming pain in his staff-weapon seared leg just felt like fate's way of telling him the Goa'uld hadn't got them this time.

He felt he had good reason for celebration. They were all alive against all the odds. They'd completed their mission and more, and, anyway, how many men got to say they really had been to hell and back? This was definitely one for those memoirs he was never going to write that even if he did no one would ever be able to read.

The pain in his leg was lessening a little now too. Although the adrenalin of their escape had begun to ebb, the stuff he'd been given by Martouf's buddy was starting to kick in. So although he could still feel it, a wave of tingling that came in through the sole of his foot, traveled along his nerves and then flared at the wound before easing off again, it was growing fainter each time, like waves hitting a beach with less and less power as the tide receded.

O'Neill shifted, trying to get his leg more comfortable. Having first tended to Carter senior, Aldwin, the Tok'ra with the interesting bruise on his face, had given O'Neill something that he said had analgesic and restorative qualities, before wandering off a little dazedly to have another conversation with Teal'c. Teal'c really seemed to have impressed Aldwin, and not just with the power of his haymaker. O'Neill recognized the signs with a slight smile. He'd seen it so many times before.

Every now and then some other SG team asked to borrow Teal'c for a mission, and they always came back with that look on their faces; respect didn't really begin to cover it, it was more like embryonic hero-worship. O'Neill always got a kick out of how impressive Teal'c could be to the unsuspecting and then he got an extra kick because Teal'c was on his team. Now he came to think about it, people who saw Carter in action either in the field or when she got started on astrophysics tended to take a step back in amazement too, so he could get a little smug about having had the good sense to pick her for SG-1 as well. (And okay, he hadn't exactly 'picked' Carter, but nevertheless she was on his team now, and he was damned well taking the credit for it.)

As for the third member of his team, well, most of the other SG Teams didn't really 'get' Daniel. They liked him and respected him but they didn't really understand him and they seemed to be under the impression he'd be a lot of hard work to keep in one piece, and his team-leader might get a little tetchy if they allowed any harm to come to him. O'Neill couldn't think where anyone had got either of those ideas from, but as they prevented too many people putting in requests to borrow SG-1's anthropologist when they'd carelessly allowed something to happen to their own, he was quite happy for those unjustified rumors to stay in circulation.

At this moment, despite the dull ache in his injured leg and the sulfur fumes still coating the back of his throat, O'Neill was feeling particularly proud of SG-1. He was also starting to think that there were worse things than discovering he was redundant. Well, maybe not redundant, but discovering that sometimes his team could manage pretty well without him. He'd always had faith in his kids, of course, but all the same it was nice when they managed to surprise even him.

For instance he still had no idea how Teal'c had managed to outwit two gunships in a clapped-out tel'tak that could only run on half power, but the Jaffa seemed to have taken that in his stride. The same way he had taken shoving Aldwin into the cargo hold before maneuvering the ship into the exact position to save all their butts in his stride. The Tok'ra had come up with a feasible plan to blow Sokar straight to a hell that sadistic Goa'uld hadn't had custom-designed, and Aldwin had carried it out even in the teeth of Teal'c's quite formidable opposition – which, now it hadn't gotten them all killed after all, O'Neill was perfectly willing to be impressed by.

Carter had coped admirably with having a father dying in a place of eternal damnation while simultaneously juggling her own bad memories and someone else's, and had figured out a way to bust them out of jail free. No more than he'd expect of her, of course, but still nice to have it confirmed that when the chips were down his team could exceed even their ever-optimistic colonel's expectations. Then Martouf had managed to fake out Apophis very nicely – and that boy was full of surprises because up until then O'Neill hadn't thought the Tok'ra even knew how to cry.

Even Daniel, whom O'Neill would have half-expected to crumple from the strain of seeing Carter so upset, and Carter senior so clearly dying, and O'Neill having got shot right in front of him, and having the screams of the damned resounding in his ears for all those hours, had managed to hang on in there. He'd done a pretty good patch up job on his commanding officer's leg despite the fact his commanding officer had not been in the most co-operative of moods at the time. O'Neill had an idea he might have called Daniel a very bad word when the guy was binding up his leg. Still, what the hell, it had hurt and Daniel had pulled that damned tourniquet so tight and okay…he'd done it right and O'Neill had only snapped at him because he was pissed with himself for getting shot when they really all needed to be able-bodied if they were ever going to get out of there in one piece, but then, Daniel was a smart guy, O'Neill was sure he could work that out without needing an actual apology.

O'Neill was still a little surprised that Daniel hadn't started to lose it in that Pit because injured teammates and people being tortured all around him tended to eat into Daniel like an acid spill. And then, of course, having that confrontation with Apophis certainly couldn't have been easy for him, not to mention the little detail of having hallucinogenic glop poured down his throat so he could be made to relive an old memory…All in all, he would have half-expected Daniel to have been brought back to them pretty much a gibbering wreck. But the guy had managed to grab that communication device somehow, had helped him out of their dungeon and kept in touch with Teal'c so that their escape could be coordinated with the split second timing it needed, and hadn't even looked like falling apart.

In fact, thinking it over, the only member of SG-1 who had made no real contribution to their escape was Colonel Jack O'Neill himself. Although he had got himself first zapped by a ribbon device, and then shot by a staff weapon, with great efficiency, and had possibly stopped Daniel from losing it by making bad jokes at inappropriate moments to shock him back to the here and now, he hadn't done a lot else.

O'Neill closed his eyes and was immediately overwhelmed by a memory of the subterranean tunnels of Netu. Already coated with sweat, and the grime starting to settle on him like flies on a corpse; the stench of what was undeniably fire and brimstone in the air, chemicals clawing at his larynx, and that sudden emergence into a cavern like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Tiers of suffering stretching apparently up to infinity as the red dark gave way to a red light still very much the color of blood.

He wasn't expecting the Damned to be the most civilized people he'd ever encountered, that was why he'd insisted Martouf let him and Carter bring their sidearms, but even he hadn't been prepared for this. He looked up, saw how many men, and the kind of men, they were dealing with, and realized he hadn't brought enough bullets. He was very aware of Carter appearing to be the only woman who existed in this place as anything other than a disembodied scream and his heart started to sink like an elevator going down. Then he noticed some big ugly hairy guy with a whole bunch of big ugly hairy friends looking Daniel over like he was the dessert tray, and the elevator became a cable car in free fall. Nothing like enough bullets and how the hell had Martouf persuaded him to come down here without Teal'c?

He couldn't protect them. There were too many bad guys and only one of him. He didn't have enough bullets. And he couldn't protect them.

That was the moment of realization and even now, safe on the tel'tak knowing that every one of those denizens who'd looked at his teammates and liked what he was seeing was incinerated in the fireball the Tok'ra had made of Netu, memories of that moment could still chill him.

When, a minute after Carter and Daniel had been thoroughly ogled, Bynarr had blasted him with the ribbon device then ordered them to be thrown into the Pit, it had actually come as something of a relief.

From then on it had been a series of the kind of events he liked least: people coming and taking members of his team away, and him not being able to do a damned thing to stop it. There was one hell of an irony about Apophis having saved Carter's life like that. O'Neill and the Snake God could now be said to go way back and if their grudge match wasn't quite up to the one Apophis had going with Daniel, no one could have called them the best of chums. The fact Apophis had saved one of O'Neill's team-members from what could definitely be designated 'certain death' was something O'Neill was really going to get a kick out of…in a few months time maybe, when the thought of how near Carter had come to being ribboned to death by Bynarr had stopped scaring the shit out of him quite so much.

He looked across at his so-nearly-ex-teammate then, just to reassure himself that she was indeed alive and well. Alive anyway. He wasn't sure how well anyone could be after having to go through what Jolinar had endured, even second-hand. And the trouble was it didn't feel second-hand when you had one of those memory devices stuck into your brain; it felt like it was happening now and to you. And given what kind of stuff Jolinar had been put through after her capture, that added up to a whole lot of bad memories for Carter which she was now going to have to carry around with her as well as her own. Like some difficult stepchild you really didn't want to take responsibility for. (And why was that making him think of Daniel, he wondered?)

O'Neill gave his head a shake to clear it, glancing back across at Carter while trying not to seem too anxious. She looked tired and more than a little frail. And grubby. O'Neill hadn't noticed how dirty they all were until now and looked down at his arms in mild surprise. That certainly wasn't his usual skin color. Well, he was giving Carter ten minutes when they got back to base then it was his and Daniel's turn to hit the showers. Actually, knowing Carter she'd probably want to scrape some of this gunk off their skin and stick it under a test-tube just in case Sokar had managed to synthesize some really interesting nasty chemicals on his little hell-away-from-home. Still, it was probably just as well O'Neill had got himself shot in the leg because at least that gave him a good reason to ask General Hammond to stand them down for a few weeks; which would give Carter a chance to take that vacation with her father. Although he hoped Jacob had been kidding about Alaska because O'Neill had been there twice before and unless you were really into getting frostbite it definitely sucked.

Aldwin had given Jacob a whole load of something restorative for Selmac before packing him off to a bunk, and Carter and Martouf were talking quietly in the corner about things O'Neill certainly didn't want to overhear. He'd worked out what Jolinar had done with Bynarr to get out of Netu, and knowing how the memory device worked that meant Carter had probably experienced every detail. Not something he wanted to think about and…

There were so many things he didn't want to think about. He'd worried a little that if by some slim chance they survived this trip, he might have childhood fears of the Hereafter awoken. The burning fiery furnace and the worm in the eye playing through his dreams the way they had when he was eight years old, and his own belief system was still influenced by some lingering remnants of his grandmother's faith. But he supposed he should always have known the hell you carried around with you would be the one there waiting for you in Sokar's life-sized mock-up.

Hell, for him, was always going to be the game of catch he'd never got to play with his son. Angry words he couldn't call back now, however many times he willed them never to have been said. He didn't know if it made it better or worse than even with that Blood of Sokar stuff inside him to cloud his mind, he'd known Charlie was dead. But he'd been prepared to bargain with his ghost, was still seeking absolution from his shade even now. He'd thought it was Sara's forgiveness he'd needed, but she had forgiven him, looked him in the eye so he could read for himself how she didn't blame him, hadn't left him because their child was dead, but only because when their child had died he hadn't allowed them to be any help to one another, and what kind of a marriage was it where you weren't allowed to help each other? And because she still loved him, she'd even forgiven him that as well. He'd always known she was way too good for him but it had taken Sara twenty years of marriage to realize she deserved better than he could offer her.

But it was only after Sara had granted him the absolution he'd thought he was seeking that O'Neill had realized the truth: that he still had that hole inside him only someone else's forgiveness could ever fill. It was then he'd realized whose forgiveness it was he'd always needed. But Charlie had never regained consciousness. Never had and never now could forgive him. And perhaps Apophis had stumbled on his enemy's Achilles' heel by chance, but he'd got it terribly right all the same. There was almost nothing Jack O'Neill wouldn't have done to obtain that longed for absolution from his dead son.

His leg was hurting again, a spiteful throb, purring and jolting in time to the tel'tak. How come the good guys always got the worst equipment? How come Sokar had ships with cloaking devices and the Tok'ra couldn't even run to one that had suspension? And…

And Daniel had been very quiet since they'd got back to the ship. Like eerily quiet. And if he was asleep – which was perfectly possible – that was fine, but if he wasn't…O'Neill cleared his throat before saying quietly, "Daniel?"

There was a long pause before he heard that, "Yes?"

"Nothing. Just wondered if you were okay?"

"I'm okay."

Yeah, sounds like it, Daniel.

At least he knew where the guy was now. Daniel hadn't moved from where he'd put himself when they first got back; up and directly behind O'Neill where he couldn't possibly see him unless he taught his head how to revolve. But Daniel was clearly not okay because if he was he would be sitting here with him, fussing over his leg, and the only reason he wasn't sitting here with him, fussing over his leg, was because his hands were obviously shaking too much for him to want O'Neill to see them.

O'Neill sighed. Daniel being quiet was never a good sign; it meant he was thinking. And if he wasn't thinking about how terrible a place Netu was and how nearly they had all died and how all those people had died – which would be his first guess – then he was probably thinking about whatever memory Apophis had been tormenting him with when he'd questioned him.

Thinking back, O'Neill realized he must have been drifting in and out of consciousness a lot while his teammates were being interrogated. It hadn't just been the Blood of Sokar still fizzing through his veins, but also the pain and blood loss from when Apophis' thugs had decided to do a little impromptu doctoring of his injured leg. The combination of faintness and nausea kept overwhelming him and then darkness would intervene for a while. It had been very disconcerting.

Apophis' heavies would come along and drag someone away and he'd still be in the middle of worrying about them when he'd wake up from having passed out again and find that he or she had been returned – usually in slightly shabbier shape than when they'd been removed – and another of his teammates had been taken away instead. Carter had come back that first time thinking she'd condemned her father to death. Martouf had come back crying for crying out loud, crocodile tears as it turned out, but still very unnerving. And Daniel…He had no memory of Daniel being taken away, just a vague recollection of waking up to hear Martouf asking why, when he thought he knew the address of the Tok'ra resistance, Apophis wanted to question Daniel at all? And that was when it had clicked into place what Apophis was after: the boy. Amaunet's child, or Sha're's child, the Harsesis who he'd told Daniel they could go look for next mission out.

His guts had turned over in that moment because he'd realized Apophis had no reason to feel well-disposed towards Daniel. When Apophis was dying, Daniel had told him he'd never find the boy; and then Daniel had taunted him with Amaunet's death only a few short hours before…

That was the point at which he'd started to feel relieved Apophis had found the memory device on Carter. Terrible as it had been to see Charlie again and know it wasn't Charlie; even though it had been like having his heart ripped out slowly, he was still glad that this was the route Apophis had chosen to make them talk. Because O'Neill hadn't even wanted to think about what the Snake God might have done to Daniel if there hadn't been this method so invitingly to hand. 

Which wasn't to say Daniel might not have preferred to be conventionally tortured. At the time when he'd been having to say 'no' to his dead son all over again, O'Neill had thought being sawn in half slowly would have had to hurt less than this; but at least when they'd shoved Daniel back into the cell with them he'd been on his feet and not bleeding. He'd looked a little dazed but then Daniel sometimes looked dazed on a good day, and none of them had come back exactly firing on all cylinders after having their brains screwed with by Apophis. Of course, the really big surprise was that Daniel had managed to grab back that communications device; a feat so sneaky that O'Neill was still impressed by it even now.

There had been no time to ask Daniel anything then because O'Neill seemed to remember all hell really had started breaking loose right after that, and he'd had to concentrate all his efforts on trying not to slow Daniel down too much as the guy helped him hop his way back to those nifty little ring things that might or might not be sending them straight to Sokar. So, there hadn't really been a moment before now in which he could say, "So, Daniel, which bad memory did you get to play with?"

Going by those fragmented murmurings from Carter and Martouf, not to mention his own experience with the Blood of Sokar, Apophis had chosen a moment of great significance between the one he was questioning and the person they loved or trusted most. So Carter had been forced to relive the moment when she'd forgiven her father for his part in her mother's death, and O'Neill had seen Charlie again, so real and so alive it was impossible to believe that this was just a figment of his imagination, that this child he missed so much was just a tool through which Apophis was hoping to destroy the Asgard. And Daniel…

Well there really wasn't any need to ask the guy what Apophis had put him through because O'Neill would have laid any money it was something to do with Sha're. Apophis would have had Sha're come and ask Daniel to tell him where her son was – just about the last thing in the world Daniel needed to hear right now. And, God, Daniel hadn't told her – or rather Apophis – had he?

"Daniel…?"

"Yes, Jack?"

Daniel sounded so weary. Not just with him – although that too, which was a little worrying, O'Neill had used to talk to his father that way when the guy was being particularly wearing – but with everything.

"Come and talk to me."

That wasn't what he'd been intending to say at all, but it seemed to work better than a more considered statement. He heard the soft thud of Daniel's feet hitting the floor and then Daniel was crouching next to him, looking anxious. "Are you okay? Is it that Blood of Sokar stuff? Are you still getting flashbacks?"

"Are you?"

"What?" Daniel had his dazed face on again. O'Neill knew the archaeologist was a clever guy, but Daniel sure didn't look it when he was wearing that expression.

"Are you getting flashbacks? You've been very quiet."

"No." Daniel folded his arms protectively across his chest, but then had to unfold them almost straight away to put his right palm back against his clearly aching cheekbone. "Are you?"

"No." O'Neill squinted in the low light, peering at Daniel's face. "Did someone hit you?"

Daniel shifted uncomfortably and there was another memory he could have done without. Did someone hit you, Charlie? Is someone bullying you? What happened to your allowance? How did your coat get torn like that? Charlie never would tell him who it was. He'd fought his own battles. And maybe O'Neill had never been a match for a really determined ten year-old but he was damned if he was going to take that kind of crap from Daniel. "Who hit you? Was it Apophis?"

"What does it matter?"

He hadn't been prepared for that response. "What?"

"Well what are you going to do, Jack? Go back to Netu and yell at someone? They're all dead. Apophis is dead. Sokar's dead. Everyone's dead."

Sha're's dead. O'Neill moistened his cracked lips before saying carefully, "We're not, Daniel. We're all alive, thanks to you."

Daniel's turn to frown. "Thanks to me?"

"You got the communication device back. Without it we'd be dead."

"I lost the communication device, Jack."

"You didn't lose it. It was taken from you." You didn't lose Sha're, Daniel; she was taken from you.

"So now you're going to nitpick over semantics?"

"I didn't lose you and Carter when Apophis had his goons come and grab you, I had you taken from me. It really pissed me off, but it wasn't my fault. You see the difference?"

Daniel gave him one of those sideways looks O'Neill had learned to hate; this was the expression Daniel always wore just before he said 'Checkmate'. "And that would be why you don't feel bad about it at all, would it?"

O'Neill heaved his best long-suffering sigh. "Why did Apophis hit you?"

"Because he was pissed off with me because I wouldn't tell him where the boy was. The guard hit me because I hit him."

"And you hit him because…?"

"I needed him to hit me back."

"Okay. That makes perfect sense. When they were hitting you, was it with really big clubs, maybe? The kind that cause permanent brain damage?"

Once Daniel had unwillingly made him a proper explanation in his best I-really-shouldn't-need-to-tell-you-something-this-obvious mutter, O'Neill did agree that Daniel's plan had made some kind of sense. Not a lot of sense, but a small amount of it. And the fact they were all now alive instead of all now dead lent an extra bit of weight to Daniel's argument that it had actually been rather a good plan. But he did wonder why it was all Daniel's cunning plans always seemed to involve Daniel risking his neck or getting hurt.

Daniel briefly took his hand away from his face again and O'Neill winced at the bruise coming out across the younger man's right cheekbone. It was a dull reddish-purple at the moment but it was going to be spectacular. O'Neill was going to be hobbling around on crutches for weeks and Daniel was going to be sporting a cheekbone that looked like it had been danced on by the Bolshoi in hobnailed boots, and the one of them who had probably had the worst time, Carter, wasn't going to have a scratch. Which didn't mean she was going to shake this off overnight. Experiencing someone else's torture at what must have felt like first-hand wasn't something you probably got over in a hurry, whereas having to carry around a memory of having sex with Bynarr…

O'Neill shuddered. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his son again, and when he could wrestle that image away, he was back in that red-lit chamber with those men eyeing up Carter and Daniel and him knowing there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop them. And oh God, they would have made him and Martouf watch it, and it had all been too damned close…

"You okay, Jack?"

Daniel sat down next to him so they were shoulder to shoulder, the way they'd been down in that Pit, and now, as then, it was obscurely comforting. In a place like that he'd wanted Daniel under his eye, anyway, just so he knew he was safe, but it was probably the first time he'd also taken comfort from knowing that Daniel was close at hand to take care of him . He tried not to lean on Daniel too often in case the younger man couldn't take the weight, but it seemed to have done Daniel good to have O'Neill relying on him, had given him a focus, a way to keep his mind concentrated on something other than what a terrible place they were in and what terrible things were happening all around him. O'Neill wondered if he ought to lean on Daniel a little more often from here on in.

He almost said, 'I'm fine, Daniel,' the way he always did but then decided to be honest. "I don't suppose any of us are going to shake this one off in a hurry. Let's face it, this wasn't a fun trip."

He looked at Daniel to check his reaction and saw how upset he looked. Okay, perhaps Daniel hadn't been ready for quite that much honesty; perhaps a bad joke would have been a better idea. Daniel said tautly, "Jack, would you mind doing me a favor?"

"For you, Daniel? Anything." He said it with a grin, trying to lighten the atmosphere a little.

"Ask me where Sha're's son is."

"What?"

"Ask me where Sha're's son is."

"But you already told me. I know where he is. Daniel, I promise you, next trip out we're going to go and take a look at…"

"Jack!"

Daniel was all scrunched up inside, he could tell now he really looked at him, like his guts were clenched into a fist, trying to will the words out of him. Why ever it was Daniel needed this from him he obviously needed it badly, and ten minutes ago.

O'Neill said quickly, "Daniel, what's the name of the place where Sha're said Amaunet took the boy? She took him to a planet, right? Tell me where it is."

Daniel swallowed. "I already told you."

O'Neill frowned at him in perplexity. Daniel was gazing at him like a dog desperate to be taken for a walk and that fist was clearly still clenched in his viscera. Okay, so Daniel obviously still wanted something from him but he couldn't tell him what, O'Neill had to guess, and he was way too old for this shit, but…"Tell me again?" O'Neill pressed.

It was obviously the right thing to say because Daniel relaxed and said, "Kheb, Jack. Sha're said Amaunet took him to Kheb."

"Well thanks for reminding me. Can't think how I came to forget that." O'Neill looked at him curiously, itching to ask Daniel what the hell that was all about but knowing this wasn't the right moment. "You okay now?"

Daniel nodded and put a hand back to his face. O'Neill frowned and looked up as Aldwin came back into the bay. "You got any more of that painkiller stuff?"

He'd actually wanted the medicine for Daniel, but Daniel interpreted his request as the proof O'Neill was feverish and in pain and needed the dressing on his leg changed. By the time O'Neill had argued with him unsuccessfully on all those points, been forced to drink more Tok'ra glop, and then taught Daniel some brand new words as he was having his bandage changed, Daniel was looking a lot happier, as well as having had his vocabulary expanded, which, for a linguist, was probably always an extra bonus. O'Neill was also pleased to see an exhausted Carter had gone to sleep with her head on Martouf's shoulder, so that was two of his team in better shape than they'd been an hour before, and Teal'c was presumably happy as well, continuing to display his proficiency in flying tel'taks by taking them back to Vorash, where, hopefully, they could 'gate home and get back to the infirmary. He'd never thought he'd be glad to see the infirmary, but compared with Daniel after an Air Force First Aid refresher course, Janet Fraiser was Florence Nightingale.

"Will you stop with the fussing already, Daniel? I swear you are turning into my mother."

Daniel fastened the new bandage Aldwin had supplied with what was definitely over-finicky neatness and then sat back on his heels to look intently at his handiwork. "So Apophis is definitely dead, right?"

"Daniel, he transported up to Sokar's ship; a ship we saw get blown to pieces."

"There were transportation rings on the ship. He could have transported to Sokar's planet. He could still be alive."

O'Neill grimaced. It was difficult holding a conversation with someone who kept staring fixedly at your bandaged leg and having no expression to his voice while he was asking you if the person who had ruined his life forever was definitely dead this time. Even forty-eight hours before, he would have said, 'Trust me on this, Daniel, the guy is toast,' but for some reason he couldn't say that today.

"Well, let's look at it logically. Apophis went up to see Sokar armed with false information about the Tok'ra resistance. If Sokar bought that crock Marty sold Apophis, he may have made Apophis his representative on Netu, in which case, Apophis could have been free at the time the bomb hit Netu, and he could have made it to the transportation rings. If that happened – and presuming Sokar didn't do the same thing and really is dead – Apophis now has access to a sarcophagus and the remnants of Sokar's power base, in which case I'm sure the Tok'ra will hear about it very soon and pass it onto us. More likely, Sokar didn't believe him and was in the process of killing him when the bomb hit Netu in which case Apophis is now dead and we don't need to worry about him any more. Either way, sooner or later, I'm sure we'll find out. And if he didn't die this time, he'll die next time. But, personally, I think he's dead. I think we got him and I think he's dead."

Daniel was looking at him in surprise; clearly appreciating not being fobbed off with a platitude this time but equally clearly not too sure why he'd been given the grown-up treatment. O'Neill felt a twinge of guilt as he saw Daniel's expression. Did he usually treat him like a child then? No. Definitely not. An annoyingly smart kid brother, maybe, but not a child.

He had a sudden memory of Hadante. The four of them trapped in a prison with the scum of the galaxy prowling around on the lookout for fresh meat. There had been times when it had felt as if every eye and every erection in the place was turned in Daniel's direction. And what had O'Neill said to him? How had he clued Daniel in on their current situation and the specific danger he was in from these people? Oh, Danny…? You've got to trust me on this…Signs of weakness are not a good thing in prison…Well that had been clear and straightforward, hadn't it? Oh yes, and he'd taken Daniel's glasses off. Thereby making Daniel look so much less vulnerable, of course. It had probably stopped Daniel noticing the way all those guys with hard-ons were looking at him but other than that he didn't think it had done a whole lot of good.

Daniel said, "Thank you, Jack."

"You're welcome." He answered him automatically, not even sure what Daniel was thanking him for, brain still whirring in a way which said it didn't give a damn how tired the rest of him was it wasn't going to be shutting down any time soon.

Why hadn't he told Daniel the truth on Hadante? Why hadn't it occurred to him even for one second to just tell Daniel the real reason why they had to get the hell out of that place before he and Teal'c got so tired they had to sleep and so left him undefended?

Because you don't tell children about things like that. You protect them from finding out about things like that. You want them to hang onto their innocence for as long as possible.

That wasn't fair. Daniel being innocent was something everyone acknowledged. It was part of what made the guy special and he wasn't alone in wanting Daniel not to lose that aspect of his personality. It had nothing to do with him treating Daniel like a child. Which he didn't, in any case. And never had. After all, no one could accuse Teal'c of treating Daniel like a son substitute and Teal'c hadn't told Daniel what the guy had tried to grab him for on Hadante, had he? He'd just hauled the son-of-a-bitch off him and started squeezing his windpipe until his eyeballs popped.

No, because you'd made it clear you didn't want Daniel clued in, hadn't you?

And why the hell were those little voices in your head never on your side?

Anyway, if he had ever treated Daniel like a child, Daniel would have been sure to mention it. This was, after all, a guy who despite knowing twenty-three languages had never been able to grasp the concept of 'shut up' in any of them.

God, you never show me any respect!

And on a good day you can be a little…ignorant and condescending…

Okay. Okay. There had been the occasional complaint. But on both of those occasions Daniel had not been himself. And even then, with his brain screwed up by that damned sarcophagus or those stupid plants… I'm going to stick around and work on this quarantine thing with plant boy here...Okay, that had possibly been edging towards what could perhaps be called 'condescending' but the plants had been screwing with his head too. And the point was surely that even then Daniel had never actually said: 'Stop treating me like a surrogate son, Jack.'

He opened his mouth to say, "Daniel, have I ever treated you like a child?" but then closed it again. What if Daniel said yes?

When he tried to discern any year-old resentment on the younger man's still-grimy features he found Daniel oblivious of his concerns and looking across to where Carter was asleep. Daniel lowered his voice to murmur, "Do you think Sam's going to be okay?"

Sticking to his new policy of total honesty, O'Neill realized the truthful answer to that question was, 'I have no idea,' but he figured Daniel might have had enough honesty for one day and went for the kinder option instead. "She's going to be fine, Daniel. She and Jacob are going to go do some serious bonding while I'm hobbling around at home getting bored, and she is going to be fine."

Daniel took a last look at Carter then glanced back at the white bandage around O'Neill's leg as though it was some fascinating artifact in need of translating. "And are you going to be okay?"

"You already asked me that. Twice."

"You didn't answer me. Twice."

So Daniel had noticed that then? Damn. It was getting harder and harder to get things past the guy these days. "I'll let you know, Daniel," O'Neill said quietly. "I'll let you know."

***

"Jack…? Jack!"

Daniel was calling his name. They were holding Daniel down, shredding him, tearing into him; every now and then O'Neill would catch a glimpse of flesh, hear another blow, grunts of pleasure, thick laughter, while Daniel struggled desperately to no avail, screaming for help over and over, louder and louder. He was trying to get to Daniel, fighting to get loose and help him but that damned rope around his neck was squeezing the breath from his body…

"Damnit, Jack, wake up !"

He gasped into wakefulness to find Daniel using one hand to shake him with and the other to clasp across his mouth. The palm of Daniel's hand tasted salty – like you'd expect if he'd been rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes to stop tears. God, Daniel had been crying?

O'Neill stared intently up into Daniel's face. Daniel did look distressed, it was true, and his eyes were suspiciously bright but there were no tear tracks on his face so…O'Neill became aware of the pinched wet feel of his own skin, the sting of drying tears overlaid by new trails of dampness. Suddenly the expression in Daniel's eyes began to make sense. Daniel was overflowing with compassion, not sorrow.

The hand was taken from his mouth and the water bottle proffered instead. Daniel's hand was a little shaky O'Neill noted clinically; more surprisingly, so was his own.

Daniel said quietly, "I think you may have a fever, Jack. You keep having these…awful dreams."

O'Neill took a deep swig from the water bottle and then wiped his mouth. "I don't remember them."

Glancing up at Daniel as he handed him back the water, O'Neill read in those blue eyes that Daniel had overheard way too much; shared pain that hadn't eased O'Neill's burden one little bit but had just dumped a whole load of crap on Daniel.

Although on waking he had been vaguely aware of a jumble of images, those had gone now, all he could remember was the last one, the one he really hoped Daniel hadn't heard enough to understand, and oh boy, looking at his expression, Daniel had both overheard and understood.

"Martouf said you should take this." Daniel was putting something in his hand, a white tablet.

O'Neill took it, washing it down with more water – was he ever going to drink enough water to wash the sulfur burn of Netu out of his lungs? Daniel moved to sit next to him so their shoulders were touching again. He spoke in a low voice: "Jack, if anything should ever…happen to me on a mission, you know it wouldn't be your fault."

"It might me by my fault, Daniel. If I screwed up and took you into a situation where you got hurt or killed, that would be my fault."

He was aware of Daniel shooting him a worried sideways glance. The younger man had his arms wrapped around himself to keep the rest of the world out and some comfort in. He wondered why the hell Daniel kept using that trick when he must know damn well by now it never worked.

Daniel said quietly, "Then let's just say I wouldn't blame you. If something happens to me on a mission, whosever 'fault' you want to think it is, I don't blame you for it. I forgive you in advance, Jack. I am offering you unconditional absolution."

He'd been begging Charlie for his forgiveness, saying he'd play catch with him, answer him anything, if Charlie would just tell him he forgave him. Daniel must have soothed him back to sleep since then. Which was when the second lot of nightmares had started, the ones back in the Pit and oh boy…he must have been calling out to Daniel, telling those men to let him go, to stop before they killed him, threatening them, pleading with them, begging them…Oh Christ, he still didn't know how much Daniel knew about that kind of stuff. Back on Hadante Daniel had been almost scarily clueless. This time he wasn't so sure. There had been a moment on Netu when he'd thought Daniel had understood the look in that ogling bastard's eyes, but he'd hoped he was mistaken.

Why? Still want him to be innocent more than you want him to be safe, O'Neill?

How would Daniel knowing what they wanted to do to him have made him any safer? Those sort of people could smell fear half a mile off. All being scared gets you in a place like that is dead.

So does being ignorant.

O'Neill moistened his cracked lips, very aware of the tears drying on his face, of the realization Daniel had been trying to stem the flow of them with his hands while pleading with him to wake up and shut up before he woke the whole damned ship. He took another sip of water but it didn't help.

Daniel spoke again, "And even as I'm giving it to you. Even as I am giving you my unconditional absolution for anything that might happen to me while I am under your 'protection', I know it isn't going to help. Because the person you have to square it with is such a mean, grudging son-of-a-bitch who has never cut you an inch of slack since the day you were born."

O'Neill looked up in surprise. He had never said word one to Daniel about his father. Or was Daniel going cosmic on him here, was he talking about God?

Daniel turned and looked at him then, saying intently, "I'm talking about you, Jack. You were a wonderful father to Charlie and he loved you. He would have forgiven you in the blink of an eye and you've always known it. The person who can't forgive you for what happened to him was always called Jack O'Neill. And he's the same guy who won't give you any peace if anything happens to Sam or Teal'c or me, but we don't want him on your case because of us. We never have and we never will. We like you way more than he does and we know you'd never let any of us down. If we die then it'll be because there was nothing you could do to save us." Daniel averted his eyes then and ran a hand through his hair. He spoke so quietly O'Neill could hardly hear him. "You know the best peace you could probably give Charlie is to stop torturing the father he loved for something which was never his fault."

O'Neill wondered if there was anyone else he would have sat there and taken that from without lashing out. Even now, and even though this was Daniel, and a Daniel who was a breath away from crying just out of compassion for him, there was a part of him that wanted to hit the guy for even saying Charlie's name to him. What made it worse was that of course Daniel knew that and had known it before he ever opened his mouth and didn't even care if he hit him or not. Which was another reason, of course, why hitting Daniel wasn't an option, which made everything he'd just said that much more annoying.

O'Neill said softly, "Do you know what my last nightmare was about?"

"Yes."

"About what those guys were doing to you?"

"Yes, I got it. I expect everyone else got it too, but it still didn't happen." Daniel reached across and took the water bottle back from him, not quite a snatch, but as close as someone like Daniel probably ever came. He gulped down a mouthful quickly.

O'Neill waited until Daniel had finished swallowing, wanting him to hear what he had to say. And not just because he wanted to punish Daniel for what he'd said about Charlie – although maybe that was part of it as well – but also because he thought it was about time they both looked this possibility in the eye. Time to start treating him like a grown-up, right? "But it could have happened."

"But it didn't!"

O'Neill reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, digging his fingers in to make Daniel turn his head and look at him. He repeated the words carefully, "But it could have happened, Daniel."

"It still wouldn't have been your fault and I still wouldn't have blamed you for it, and I would still have wanted you to have a life afterwards."

"Even if you didn't? Even if yours ended there, like that, in that stinking pit, with a whole bunch of stinking men holding you down and…?"

"Yes, Jack. Even then. There is no way that anyone can kill me that I will blame you for it, okay? Sometimes people just die and it's nobody's fault. And I don't ever want you to wake up screaming because of me. I don't ever want to be part of the stuff you do to yourself. So, when you're totting up the list of Bad Things you have done that you deserve to suffer for, you can put any damned name on that list you like, however insane it might be, except mine. You have to promise me you'll never put my name on that list."

There was a long pause before O'Neill took the water bottle back from Daniel's hands and took another swig. "Don't die, Daniel," he said with a shrug. "Because that is the only way to keep off that list. Don't get yourself killed, or maimed, or tortured, or…whatevered and then I can't blame myself for it, can I?"

Daniel groaned and banged the back of his head gently against the embossed rim of the first tier of seating, gold hieroglyphs beating a faint tattoo onto the back of his skull. "You are such a stubborn unreasonable son-of-a-bitch sometimes."

O'Neill shrugged. "Sorry, Daniel, nice try but this one's on you. You don't want me to wake up screaming because of you, don't give me any cause to."

"Can't we just agree that if it happens, I won't blame you and you won't blame me?"

"But I will blame you, Daniel, and I'll blame me too, so don't let it happen and then I won't have to."

Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head. O'Neill smiled then because he didn't get to win arguments with Daniel very often but they both knew he'd won this one; which wasn't bad for a man wrestling with nightmares and fever and a staff weapon burn to his right leg. "Face it, Jackson, you are way out of your league here."

"But I'm right," Daniel protested faintly. "And we both know it."

O'Neill's smile got wider. "And since when has you being right ever made any difference to me? If I let a little detail like that start influencing me who knows where it would end?"

"Actually I was wrong once tonight," Daniel said conversationally. "You're a stubborn unreasonable son-of-a-bitch all the time."

"And you wouldn't want me any other way."

Daniel gave him a look that spoke volumes.

O'Neill shifted uncomfortably under that withering gaze. "Well, okay, maybe you would. But tough."

A proper little smile from Daniel at last. Good. He'd been thinking Daniel was never going to smile again. Daniel was dropping his head a little to try and hide it, not wanting to give O'Neill the satisfaction, but he'd seen it and he knew what it meant. Daniel was going to be okay. Carter was going to be okay. And Apophis might have bequeathed them a whole bunch of new bad memories as his parting gift to them, but hopefully that snake was finally dead this time, which had to help a whole hell of a lot, right?

O'Neill said quietly, "Yes, I am, Daniel."

Daniel gave a little jolt beside him and he wondered if the guy had just been drifting off. If he'd been keeping him up with his nightmares, he was probably tired, but still it had to be said.

"What?"

"You asked me if I was okay? Yes I am. We're all alive and I'm okay."

Daniel said drowsily, "Well I'm really tired, Jack, so shut up and let me get some sleep, will you?"

O'Neill realized that Daniel had managed to have the last word yet again. Then a heavy weight on his left shoulder told him Daniel had fallen asleep on him, which these days meant Daniel was feeling either very insecure, very protective, or was just so damned tired he didn't care where he was. Probably a mixture of all three in this instance. O'Neill looked around for a jacket to drape around him, realized there wasn't one within snagging range and so settled for putting his arm around his shoulders instead. Perhaps Daniel wasn't the only one feeling insecure and protective because he found it very comforting to have the guy under his hand like that. It had to be harder to have a nightmare about someone being dragged away from you and killed when you could feel his breath against your neck the whole time.

When he closed his eyes, he could still see Charlie standing there with that water-pistol in his hands, but he was damned if he was going to let Apophis hurt him with that image. His son hadn't been so very clear in his memory in a while now. He could actually remember the way his bangs had been cut so unevenly, that little overbite, the way he spoke, the fresh clean smell of him even, and that was a good thing, right? Because he sure as hell didn't ever want to forget one detail of the way his son had been. And the other stuff was just a combination of a slight fever and the after-effects of not having been able to protect Carter and Daniel; but actually Carter and Daniel had done fine without him, and Teal'c had done fine without him, and everything was okay. And what was more he'd decided that he now knew the definition of a successful mission for probably the first time in his life.

The fact they'd managed to save Carter's father, kill Apophis and blow Sokar out of the sky, well that was just the icing on the cake; that didn't make for a successful mission. The point was that they'd been to hell and come back from it, alive, in one piece, and pretty much the same people they'd been when they left, and maybe it was the age he'd got to now or maybe he'd just learned to expect less from life, but he now believed that any mission where he could check those three boxes could be counted as a success.

It was only as he drifted back to sleep that it occurred to O'Neill that whatever good they might do or aims they might accomplish, it also meant that any mission where he couldn't check those three boxes, would have to be counted as a failure.

***

Part One

As the Stargate dematerialized behind him, Daniel noticed what appeared to be a building a few hundred yards away up a short incline. There was a heavy mist rolling out from the trees which obscured much of the surrounding landscape, but the stark lines of the structure still emerged from wraiths of ground cloud, at once forbidding and magnetic. Cursing the mist, Daniel pulled out his binoculars. Even through the haze he could see the building was an odd mixture of pyramid and ziggurat, strongly suggestive of some cultural cross-pollination in the distant past. He adjusted the focus, trying to see if he could make out the markings on the walls but although there was clearly something inscribed upon the jointed blocks, with the mist still rolling in like a wolf pack, he couldn't tell if they were hieroglyphs proper or a cursive derivative.

It was two months since they'd escaped from Netu. Jack's leg was so well recovered there was only a faint pinkish-fawn line on his thigh where the staff weapon had burnt its reprimand into his skin, and he no longer had even the trace of a limp. But the memory of the moment when Apophis' henchman had just turned around and blasted Jack for no real reason; could have killed him as quickly and as pointlessly as that, was still an open wound in Daniel's memory. Sam had come so close to being murdered by Bynarr, and Jack had come so close to being killed right in front of his eyes. And if it hadn't been for Teal'c's superhuman determination to get them out of there, come what may, they would all have literally burned in hellfire when Netu erupted around them. Daniel wasn't sure that he was ever going to get over that.

As Jack had only been allowed out of the infirmary on condition he was given round-the-clock help and supervision, and as Daniel had felt Sam and Teal'c both really deserved a break after their recent exertions, Daniel had volunteered to be the one to spend a month as an unpaid home help to an injured Jack O'Neill.

It had gone better than Daniel had anticipated in that neither of them had killed the other, which, given how fraying to the nerves they had both found their trip into the underworld, and how unbelievably crabby Jack was when convalescing, he thought was a minor achievement in itself. The mornings were the trickiest, but he'd found if he staggered out of bed three hours earlier than he wanted to in order to throw breakfast at the guy like he was a hungry mastiff, pretended not to hear anything Jack said for the first hour of the day, didn't read the newspaper before Jack did (Jack liked his paper un crumpled as he remembered from when he'd first come back from Abydos), reminded himself at least once a day that inappropriate sarcasm, although annoying, hurt no one and Jack was probably in pain, and doubled his own caffeine intake from the moment he opened his eyes, they could live together reasonably well without the need for bloodshed.

Jack had threatened to throw his crutches at Daniel on the occasion when a particularly heated debate about why someone with an only half-healed burn on his right leg couldn't drive himself to a hockey game had culminated in Daniel hiding the keys to Jack's jeep. But although Jack had looked as though he meant it and Daniel had actually been getting ready to duck, Jack had settled for hopping angrily into the kitchen and opening and shutting all the drawers as loudly as possible to vent his frustration that way.

The next day Daniel had accepted the bag of chocolate walnut cookies Jack had limped down to the imported groceries store to buy him in the spirit of apology in which they were meant. Jack hardly ever actually said he was sorry, even when he'd been unspeakable, but he would indicate he was sorry by suggesting they watch the Discovery Channel instead of ESPN, or pointing out that there was a lecture on Egyptian hieroglyphs being given by one of Daniel's old colleagues in Boston and they could fly over there and heckle him if Daniel liked.

Apart from the fact he and Jack were getting worryingly like an old married couple by the time the month was up, Daniel felt that the taking-care-of-Jack duty had gone pretty well all things considered, and had helped work off some of the debt he felt he owed him for all the taking-care-of-Daniel duty Jack had done in the past. Sam had come back from her vacation with her father looking a lot less tired and worn than when she'd left, while Jacob, thanks to Selmac, had made a complete recovery from his ordeal in Netu. The only downside to looking after Jack (apart from the actual looking-after-Jack part of having to look after Jack which had been a downside all by itself) was that Daniel hadn't had as many opportunities as he would have liked to sit down with Sam and discuss how she was bearing up since Jolinar's memories had been tripped in her mind like a particularly nasty set of landmines. They had talked about Netu, and Jolinar, and even a little about Martouf, but Bynarr had remained undiscussed, and Daniel hadn't had the heart to ask her if she was waking up remembering the dead Goa'uld's leering face.

Looking across at Sam now as she fiddled with the panel of the DHD, speaking rapidly to Teal'c about Goa'uld technology while the Jaffa gravely nodded his head, he was reminded of his first meeting with her; how it had been like another kind of homecoming to suddenly find himself talking to someone who understood what he was saying; whose own mind could follow the ellipses his was always making and could make sense of his conclusions. It was as though after years of believing himself to be an orphaned only child, he'd suddenly discovered he had a twin sister he'd never met until now.

He wondered what the Sam who knew how it felt to be a Tok'ra thought of the Sam who'd leapt so eagerly through the Stargate that first time out and almost lost her lunch on the other side of the wormhole. He thought Sam probably had more pity than contempt for her earlier self; but for himself there were days when he thought that if you put him a room with the man he'd used to be, they wouldn't have a single thing left to say to each other.

Except, of course, they had those two things in common that would never change: absolute love for Sha're; absolute trust in Jack O'Neill. Even though Sha're was dead and unreachable; someone he had failed to save rather than someone he believed he would one day save, his love for her hadn't altered. And there was still something he could do for her; he could find her child and deliver him from the Goa'uld; protect the Harsesis from the danger his hereditary knowledge placed him in…

And, damn, he was still getting flashbacks to that Blood of Sokar stuff. He didn't know how long he'd been waiting to hear those words from Jack. Logic told him that it couldn't be more than four years, and as he hadn't really known the guy well enough to care that much about his opinion on their first meeting, it was more likely three years, at the most; but it felt like a lifetime.

All the same, he'd never thought for an instant that Apophis would know to choose that scene to try and trick him. Having overheard what Sam had said about what the Blood of Sokar did to your mind he'd been braced for a memory of Sha're, for those beautiful eyes gazing into his; that mouth he so missed whispering in his ear how much she loved him and how much she wanted to see her child again, asking him to tell her where he'd been taken, please, my Daniel, please…

But, of course, Apophis was clever, and Daniel had been given three long years to accustom himself to the idea that Sha're wasn't always Sha're, that Sha're was more often Amaunet, and Amaunet couldn't be trusted. Jack, however, could always be trusted. Jack could be trusted absolutely. Jack would never lie to him.

And then Jack had lied to him. Had asked him so nicely where the boy was that Daniel couldn't believe it at first. The conversation hadn't gone quite like this last time; something was wrong but…then he'd realized what it was: Jack was asking him what Apophis wanted to know. Jack was doing Apophis' work. Jack was lying to him…

Even though he'd known this couldn't really be Jack, how could he refuse him anything after what the man had just given him? How could he say 'no' to Jack when Jack had just told him he believed in him? Saying 'no' to Jack in that moment had felt like the hardest thing in the world.

He was still getting nightmares. Even two months later. It was ridiculous and he knew it, but a Jack who lied to him frightened him more than any Unas; a Jack he couldn't trust, who looked like Jack and sounded like Jack, and was so much Jack in every way but told him things that weren't true; that was real horror; that was the bottom ripped out of his world.

Even now, standing on a grey-green planet fifty thousand light years from the smoldering remains of Netu, feeling the mist dampening his hair and glistening on his skin, a glimmer of that false memory could still chill him to the bone.

Daniel had just about got to the stage in his post-Netu recovery where he didn't feel he had to have one of his teammates within sight at all times or else he started panicking, but he still found himself doing a quick inventory now, just to see that, yes, there they all were, alive and well. Sam and Teal'c were still looking at the DHD with keen attention, Jack was pointedly looking at his watch and yawning because the conversation was obviously miles over his head and consequently boring him rigid, while Daniel could feel that temple tugging at his right eyeball, demanding that he turn and gave it another glance. So everything seemed to be pretty much back to normal.

And that temple really was calling to him now and he wondered if he could just go up there and take a quick look round before anyone…

The sound of the Stargate re-engaging made him glance around in shock, but to his relief he saw only that Sam appeared to be doing some kind of test dial. However, just in case they were planning to turn around and go straight home again, he thought he'd better just point out the temple to them first. "Guys?"

Sam and Teal'c were still deep in their clearly very technical discussion about the DHD. As the wormhole disengaged and disappeared for a second time, he heard Sam say, "So, okay, at least we know we can dial out, my worry is…" Mist rolling across between them muffled the rest of her sentence and remembering the DHD they had once found smashed and inoperative, Daniel felt a twinge of unease. He hurried back over to them, stumbling on the uneven ground.

He was in time to hear Teal'c say, "I concur, Major Carter. If that were the case then it would be better if we could disconnect it ourselves."

"Everything okay?"

As neither Teal'c nor Sam answered him, Daniel turned to Jack who shrugged expressively. "It seems this DHD has an extra gizmo we haven't seen before. Apparently it works fine, but Carter just isn't going to sleep at night if she can't find out what the extra component does."

"Well, sir, I'd just hate to think the Goa'uld had something we didn't."

Daniel could see that this was going to take a while. Sam was nothing if not tenacious and she clearly wasn't going to stop experimenting with the DHD until she'd cracked the mystery of the extra component, while Teal'c had the quiet persistence of water wearing its way into rock. Jack, by comparison, was obviously already cold, bored, and likely to be getting irritable any time soon. Daniel's first instinct was to just leave them to it and go have a quick look at the temple on the hillside before anyone thought up a good reason why he shouldn't. However, commonsense told him not to just head off without telling anyone, although not perhaps as loudly as curiosity was telling him that he should.

"Carter, are you going to try every possible combination on that thing?"

Daniel winced at the exasperation in Jack's voice, realizing that this was clearly one of those times where if he asked if it was all right for him to examine an ancient building of cultural significance Jack would just tell him irritably to stay put. He said tentatively, "Jack, there's a really interesting – "

"Don't want to hear it, Daniel, and whatever it is, the answer's no." Jack blew on his fingers pointedly, making Daniel wonder not for the first time why the man always wore fingerless gloves instead of the ones that actually kept his hands warm. But now would probably not be a good time to ask that question either. A supposition confirmed as Jack raised his voice to shout, "Teal'c! Carter! Just how long is this likely to take because some of us are ageing here?"

As casually as he could, and turning his head so that the mist would swallow most of his words, Daniel murmured, "Fascinating temple up on the hill there – looks like it could maybe be Mesopotamian. I'm just going to go take a look at it. Okay?" Then he backed up the hill, turning around after a few yards to hurry towards the temple.

***

Daniel pushed open the double doors tentatively and found himself in a huge echoing chamber. He took out his flashlight and tentatively shone it around the walls, the powerful beam immediately revealing an enormous statue of what was clearly a god flanked by two stone lions. The deity was depicted carrying a spear and wearing a headdress consisting of four long plumes.

Daniel murmured to himself, "Anhur, also called Onuris, derived from the Egyptian word anhuret 'he who brings the far near', also called Inhert; consort of the lioness-goddess Mehit. Let me think – yes, first attested in the Thinite region in Upper Egypt but by the Late Period associated with the delta site of Sebennytos where a temple was dedicated to Onuris-Shu by Nectanebo the Second. Sometimes associated with the Greek God Ares – interesting – does that mean we're talking one Goa'uld or two? Did the Goa'uld adapt to gain new worshippers, move in on each other's territory, or is this something to do with one host dying and being replaced? Anhur. Onuris. The champion of Egypt who hunted and slew the enemies of Ra. Called by some the Son of Ra – not good news for those of us who killed him if Anhur should drop in to see how his worshippers are doing – often portrayed as an avenger, called also the 'lord of the lance'. So – vengeful, warlike, and an ally of Ra. So far, so not so good."

He turned to look at the walls and found them pockmarked with an incalculable number of alcoves in which stood pottery jars the color of blood, most of them broken into three or more pieces. It took Daniel a moment to recognize the red clay as execration texts, pictures of bound captives inscribed with hieratic cursing rituals. Here and there were changes in the pattern – jars not yet broken, or, more disconcertingly still, texts inscribed on broken and unbroken human skulls. Fascinated and yet also a little taken aback by the number of enemies being cursed in the name of Anhur, Daniel took off his glasses, wiped them on a corner of his jacket and put them back on. He shone his torch onto the nearest skull. "Nine bows," he murmured aloud, "the figure nine representing three times three which was the plurality of pluralities thus designating the entirety of all enemies. Okay, total destruction being invoked for everyone who has ticked off Anhur ever, so we're definitely not talking about a benevolent deity here, and maybe it might be a good idea for me to leave now."

As he turned to go his eye was caught by more hieratic text inscribed upon a pillar. Daniel translated aloud, " ' May I be granted power over the waters, for I am he who crosses the sky, I am the Lion, I am the Slayer.' That's interesting, that's from the Book of the Dead except they've cut the references to Seth and Ra. Maybe in this culture Anhur is supposed to be Ra, and I wonder if the lions here are supposed to be some kind of tribute to Anhur's mate, Mehit, or if this Goa'uld's version of the Anhur cult actually borrowed from Aker?"

As Daniel went to make his way back to the open doors he found himself face to face with men who wore lion manes for hoods, carried long spears, and had inscribed upon their foreheads the four long plumes that represented Anhur. Before Daniel could open his mouth to explain who he was, something struck him so hard that he was wrapped in darkness before he even hit the floor.

***

The plaintive cry of that bird of prey circling overhead gave him an unwanted reminder of P8X-873. As Teal'c and Carter worked on the DHD, O'Neill blew on his fingers and tried not to remember how light Sha're had felt in his arms as he carried her corpse back to the 'gate. Only the metal jewelry had given her weight, just as it was the only thing about her that was truly cold, truly lifeless. Her skin had still been warm. Just like Charlie had still been warm. But with Sha're there hadn't been any blood; just that hole in her midriff where the staff blast had gone right through her. At such close range that was what a staff did to a human body, but despite the terrible wound she'd still looked so beautiful. Eerily peaceful too. So calm. So lovely. And, unfortunately, so dead.

The picture which kept coming into his mind as he picked her up from the floor of Amaunet's tent and carried her out into the daylight was of Daniel, also with a dead Sha're in his arms, gaze fixed upon him with such trust, saying 'Wait for me.' On Ra's ship, Daniel had put Sha're in a sarcophagus and saved her. This time there was no sarcophagus. And perhaps too there was no will to bring her back. Not to this. To life as a host to that snakebitch Amaunet; someone who had just taken so much pleasure in using Sha're's hand to wield the ribbon device that had damned near killed Daniel. Daniel had passed out only a few seconds after O'Neill had entered the tent but even though he'd headed straight for him, Teal'c had still got there first.

He glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself he was still breathing and saw the younger man's chest rise and fall. Teal'c was carrying him, not in the usual fireman's lift, but the way you carried children. Perhaps that was why Daniel looked so rag-doll limp and defenseless with his seared face nestling against the Jaffa's shoulder. Teal'c had told him three times now that Daniel was going to be okay, but he sure as hell didn't look too good. He'd seen Daniel after he'd been in the grip of ribbon devices twice before, but this time the burn on his forehead and the bridge of his nose was much worse than when Klorel had tried to kill him. Which meant Amaunet must have got dangerously close to turning her host into a widow before Teal'c had made Daniel a widower.

Daniel a widower. He still couldn't take it in. All this time, all this effort, all that hope, all that belief, in Daniel's case, that sooner or later they would be bound to get Sha're back, and now it was over. He'd had such mixed feelings about her for so long. The sweet girl he'd barely met on Abydos whom Daniel loved transformed into the Goa'uld Queen who'd just stood there when Apophis knocked Daniel across the room on Chulak, before making another transition into the friend's wife who'd given birth to another man's child. An unwilling adulteress and equally unwilling murderess transformed by an alien parasite into someone who might so easily bring disaster upon them all. To O'Neill, if not to Daniel, she'd been the enemy as well as someone they needed to save. Someone he wanted to rescue for Daniel's sake yet knew if they did it would probably cost them. If they were lucky it might only cost them Daniel leaving SG-1 to go back to Abydos, but there had always been the fear a glimpse of Sha're in the distance would be the bait which lured Daniel to his death.

O'Neill stepped carefully over a Jaffa corpse as the wind tugged at Sha're long dark hair, making it lap and coil against his arm like a caress. It was perfumed and the scent of it was maddeningly sweet; a velvety contrast to the sharp tang of carbide still tainting the air. He raised her up a little higher and it was hard to believe there really wasn't a heartbeat to listen for any longer and never would be again; her face showed such extraordinary peace. He was almost grateful for the savagery of that wound. Sha're had the look of someone who could be coaxed back from this death so easily, but that staff blast carried a blistering finality. There were no more possibilities left to them now. The quest might have ended in tragedy and failure but at least it had ended, and he was grateful for the closure. He'd never thought a part of him could be consoled by the smell of burnt flesh.

As he raised her awkwardly, the sunlight glinted off her red and gold headdress, momentarily dazzling him.  Amaunet's headdress with its serpent emblem. But this wasn't Amaunet. This was Daniel's wife. Kasuf's daughter. Skaara's sister. A citizen of Abydos by birth, and Earth by marriage, who shouldn't spend another second burdened by the weight of Apophis' love tokens. O'Neill wasn't a fanciful man but he felt certain Sha're spirit was chafing at these dead gold bands, unable to be free while they still burned her skin. He pulled off the headdress and threw it to the ground, disordering those dark coils still further. He couldn't manage the ribbon device but Carter came and helped him. She eased it off the dead woman's hand gently then removed the gold armlet as well. When O'Neill looked over his shoulder to see how Daniel was doing, he received a gentle nod of approval from Teal'c.

Despite the fact it was a weapon she could use, Carter threw away the ribbon device then very gently smoothed back Sha're's hair. He'd known she was seeing what he was seeing when she said quickly, "Maybe one of Amaunet's Jaffa might still be alive. She must have had a sarcophagus somewhere, or maybe the Tok'ra…" She trailed off as he shook his head.

"It's over, Major," he said it quietly. "She's gone."

"I know, sir, it's just…Daniel…"

He followed her anxious gaze and so saw the look on Teal'c's face. One he recognized and not just from the Cor-ai when Teal'c had practically demanded to be put to death for his past crimes. He'd seen that expression in the shaving mirror way too many times to forget.

He said, "You did the right thing, Teal'c."

"I do believe I took the only appropriate action to save the life of Daniel Jackson, and given the same circumstances I would do it again." The Jaffa raised his gaze from Daniel's burnt face and didn't attempt to hide the bleakness in his eyes. "But Sha're is still dead because of me."

O'Neill grimaced. There was no answer to that and they both knew it. So much depended on Daniel now. Absolution couldn't come for anyone but him. Daniel had demonstrated his generosity, his compassion, and his fair-mindedness so many times in the past, but maybe this would be too much for even Daniel to forgive.

Silently, they made their way across the battleground to where the Stargate was shimmering, the last of the Abydonians already escorted to safety by the other SG teams.

Tightening his grip on the dead woman in preparation for stepping into the liquid blue light, O'Neill looked back the way they'd come. Another battlefield. Another set of corpses. The dead of the SGC would receive proper burial with honors but Amaunet's Jaffa would be left to rot. There was neither the manpower nor the will to bury them. He could see the tent in which Sha're had met her death, blue and gold pennants flapping in the breeze, the corpses scattered across the sandy soil, their blood adding salt and iron to the earth. And overhead one perfect silhouette against the sun; the first of the buzzards beginning a slow circular glide as it assessed the banquet spread out beneath its wings…

"Colonel?"

O'Neill gave himself a mental shake, blinking as he found himself cold and bored in the rain of a different alien world once more. "What?"

Carter was looking up from the DHD, brow creased with concern. He wondered what the problem was with the damned technology this time but sincerely hoped she wasn't going to attempt to explain it to him because life was definitely too short.

She was looking around like she'd lost something, before turning back to him with a hint of anxiety in her eyes. "Sir, where's Daniel?"

"He's right – " O'Neill turned to where he thought the younger man was then spun full circle as he found only empty space beside him. "He was right here."

Teal'c was gazing into the mist. "There is a large building on the brow of the hill which appears to be of early Earth design. Daniel Jackson may have wished to examine it."

Turning to look at the looming temple, O'Neill said, "Yeah, and the sea may be a little on the wet side this time of year. Did anyone else hear me tell him 'No'?" He put his hand up to his earpiece and said quietly, "Daniel?" As the silence lengthened, he grimaced. "Daniel? Daniel, if you're there, answer me. Daniel? Damnit!"

He exchanged a glance with Carter who immediately tapped her own earpiece and called Daniel's name herself. She shook her head. "But if Daniel is actually inside the building, he might not be able to hear us. Some kinds of stone do block radio waves."

O'Neill gave her a humorless smile and nodded at the DHD. "Yeah. Okay, Carter, leave that for now, let's just go find him before something else does."

They headed up the hill with more resignation than annoyance. O'Neill knew Carter would be secretly sympathizing with Daniel's desire to learn about ancient civilizations, Teal'c was as imperturbable as ever, and even O'Neill himself wasn't exactly surprised the archaeologist had proven incapable of resisting the lure of yet another big block of stone with some interesting squiggles on it. There were times, though – and this was definitely one of them – when he did wonder if he should just take the direct approach with Daniel, and on the next occasion when the archaeologist did something particularly annoying or dangerous, instead of patiently explaining to him the folly of his action, he should just clout him smartly around the back of the head. After all he'd been patiently reasoning with Daniel for three years now to no noticeable effect, perhaps it was time for a change of strategy. "Anyone know if he had a weapon with him?" he enquired wearily. "Or did he leave his sidearm on the ramp like that time when he stopped to tie his bootlace at the last minute?"

"He definitely had it with him," Carter said reassuringly.

"But whether or not it would occur to Daniel Jackson to use it if danger threatened is a different question," Teal'c put in.

"True," said O'Neill. "I've met rocking chairs with faster reflexes."

Teal'c looked at him sideways. "I meant rather that Daniel Jackson would be more inclined to try and converse with those who threatened him even if their attitude was unfriendly."

"I know. Why do you think we're hurrying?"

"I definitely think Daniel's got a lot better at looking after himself over the last couple of years, sir."

"Well he could hardly have got much worse, really, could he, Major?"

He grimaced after he said it, feeling their disapproval radiating back at him. Okay. They never mentioned Daniel's less than razor sharp reflexes. They never mentioned the fact that he wasn't a soldier and needed a little bit of extra protection on missions. Dissing Daniel simply wasn't done on SG-1. Yeah, well sometimes, a guy had to vent. And when Daniel scared them all silly putting himself in harm's way for no good reason was definitely one of those times.

As they reached the huge arched doorway, Teal'c glanced impassively at the sign over the lintel. "This is a temple to Onuris – a vengeful and warlike Goa'uld believed by many to be the son of Ra."

"Well let's just hope the chip off the old block isn't home because I am frankly too cold and wet to want to tangle with any Goa'ulds today, and particularly not ones whose fathers I blew to hell with a nuclear bomb."

Carter was examining the temple with close attention, running some device that looked like a Geiger counter over the entrance. "This is a stone I've never seen before, sir. It contains small quantities of naqadah, some iridium, some other elements I don't recognize which could…"

"Is it blocking our transmitters?"

She sighed resignedly at the interruption. "Yes."

"Then I'd say that was pretty conclusive evidence Daniel is in here somewhere. Let's see if we can't retrieve him while he's still in one piece."

Although O'Neill's tone was deliberately easy, he had his finger poised over the trigger of his MP-5 as he pushed open the door. Seeing how dark it was, he cautiously switched on his flashlight, ready to extinguish it in an instant if anyone fired at them. The beam picked out a towering statue of what he presumed to be an Egyptian god in funny headgear, and walls stuffed with bits of broken crockery. The light from Carter and Teal'c's flashlights was also raking the walls and floor. "Daniel?" O'Neill hissed. As there was no reply, he said more loudly, "Daniel?" He wasn't worried yet, he told himself; there was a concern, yes, just enough unnecessary anxiety inflicted upon him that the prospect of giving the archaeologist a good hard shake still had some appeal, but not yet truly worried. "Daniel!"

It was Teal'c's beam that bounced off the broken glass and O'Neill felt the tempo of his pulse change in that instant because he knew at once what it was.

The three of them crouched by the wall in silence looking at the broken spectacles. One lens was badly cracked, the other smashed. The metal frames dangled from Teal'c's fingers reflecting tiny streamers of light, the sidepieces looking wire thin and unexpectedly delicate in the Jaffa's powerful hands. Teal'c said, "They appear to have been knocked across the room, breaking on impact with the wall."

O'Neill said tautly, "Pretty much what you'd expect if someone had just hit the guy who was wearing them really, really hard."

"Sir, I don't think we should jump to conclusions," Carter put in at once. But he could tell by the catch in her voice that she was arguing with him not because she disagreed with his analysis of the situation but because she wanted to go on hoping for something better for a little longer.

"I think we should find Daniel as quickly as possible." O'Neill was already on his feet and raking the walls with his flashlight, trying to think what would have attracted the archaeologist's attention first. Looking up he saw a balcony ran around the top of the temple, two stone staircases carved diagonally into the walls leading up to it. It reminded him of a tier in a theatre, suggesting somewhere from which people could view the proceedings.

He had a horrible suspicion of what kind of proceedings would have been viewed. "Spread out, let's take a look around…" He jabbed a finger at the far end of the temple, getting a nod in return from Carter, then headed in the opposite direction. He knew what he was looking for, he just really hoped he wasn't going to find it.

A few minute's inspection, told him this wasn't going to be his lucky day. Beyond the towering statue, he found what looked suspiciously like a sacrificial altar; the metal rings in each corner of the capstone providing all the proof he needed. But he was given more anyway. Way more than he wanted. Something had stained the stone a dull red and when he looked on the floor beneath it, he saw the flagstones showed a similar rusty tinge. A discreet gutter led to a small drain. Somehow O'Neill didn't think it was for rainwater from a leaking roof tile. Bending down quickly, he put his hand to the gutter. It was dry. That was the only good news they'd had so far.

He remembered Daniel telling him about the so-called Slaughter Stone at Stonehenge in England. The one that looked as though it was stained with blood because of some kind of iron ore in the rock. He usually managed to tune Daniel out when he started telling him about ancient monuments but for some reason that explanation had stuck. Perhaps he'd been in a good mood that day and decided to humor the archaeologist, or more likely they'd just got Daniel back from the dead by the skin of his teeth and O'Neill had been ready to put up with anything, he was just so damned relieved to see him back in one piece…

O'Neill looked back at the altar, the metal rings, the gutter, the drain. The blood stains. He shivered. Definitely afraid for Daniel now, he turned to the walls, pulling out his knife and running the blade between each set of stones in the hope of tripping some kind of locking device.

When he glanced across at his teammates he saw Teal'c was trying to find anything he could turn, a hieroglyph that moved beneath his fingers, some mechanism that would persuade these planed blocks of sandstone to show them the inner door he knew must be concealed somewhere in this cavernous chamber. At the other end of the temple, Carter was doing the same thing, running her fingers over the raised symbols in the hope of finding one that would show them a door.

Having unsuccessfully searched every inch of the far wall, O'Neill joined the others. "I think these people might be into human sacrifices."

Teal'c went to examine the altar and came back looking grim. "I think you are correct, O'Neill."

When he looked at Carter he wasn't surprised to see she'd gone very pale. He was feeling pretty green around the gills himself.

She rallied before he did and her words surprised him. "That might actually be a good thing, sir."

He stared at her in disbelief. "Please, do tell me how?"

"Well, if they sacrifice trespassers to Onuris they'll have to bring Daniel back here to kill him. If they found him wandering around in here looking at the artifacts – "

"Which is so incredibly likely I think we'll just take it as read."

"Well then he'll probably be condemned to death for sacrilege." She turned to look to Teal'c for confirmation and the Jaffa nodded. Carter continued with more confidence, "They'll have to prepare him for sacrifice and then bring him to the temple to be killed on the altar. As long as we stay here, we can rescue him."

"And what if they take him somewhere else completely?"

"Why would they? If they believe that Daniel offended their god they'll want their god to witness how vigilant they are about punishing unbelievers."

"I believe Major Carter is correct," Teal'c observed. "They are probably preparing Daniel Jackson for sacrifice even as we speak."

"And that involves what exactly?"

"It varies from cult to cult but usually the would-be victim is bathed, dressed in sacrificial robes, and his head shaven in readiness."

"Oh great, two members of SG-1 with no hair, how's that going to look?"

"Sir – "

"Okay, Carter, least of our worries right now, I agree." O'Neill looked at the stone staircases again. "Right, let's go over these walls again, see if we can find a way to open them."

***

They searched every inch of the temple, using knives and fingers to try and find a mechanism to make one of those massive blocks slide aside and show them the way Daniel had been taken. All of them had determinedly insisted that if anyone had brought him outside of the temple they would have noticed it, despite the mist. But as the hours rolled past without them making any progress and there being no sign of their teammate, O'Neill couldn't help wondering if perhaps Daniel was ten miles away by now, or even already dead.

He pulled off his gloves to go over the wall again, just in case the mechanism could only be triggered by bare skin, trying to will one of these impervious blocks of strange stone to yield up something. Behind him he was aware of Carter and Teal'c doing the same; Teal'c exploring every hieroglyph with a look of grim concentration on his face; Carter trying to hang onto logic and hope when despair was doing its best to distract her.

When he closed his eyes to try to feel every stone edge more clearly he saw Daniel lying on that crisp white pillow with that 'Y' shaped burn marring his face, like the mark of Cain falsely branded on an innocent. He'd spent way too many hours in the infirmary waiting for Daniel to wake up over the years and by that point the place was really starting to get to him. He'd felt like a dog who'd had one too many trips to the vet and there was a part of him which just wanted to dig in his toes and never cross that threshold again. But leaving Daniel to wake up alone was marginally worse even than having to spend another mind-numbing, soul-deadening session by his bedside, so he'd pulled up a chair and borne it. Not without complaint, certainly, but borne it all the same.

He hated the antiseptic smell of the infirmary. The sound of all those damned machines bleeping as they told the nurses what Daniel's insides were doing now; his heart-rate, his oxygen level, his brain activity, his kidneys, his glucose levels, his mineral levels. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the best equipment money could buy and not a single machine able to tell him squat about how Daniel was going to react when he woke up and found his wife was dead and Teal'c was the guy who'd killed her. O'Neill must have rehearsed a dozen different ways to tell him the bad news and in the end he hadn't needed any of them.

He thought he'd been prepared for anything. Confusion. Rage. Denial. Tears. He'd been ready to calm Daniel down, reason with him, or put his arms around him and let him sob out all his sorrow on his shoulder. What he hadn't been ready for was Daniel waking up and asking him to believe the impossible once again…

"Sir…?"

The warning hiss made him jump. O'Neill looked up to find Carter and Teal'c both listening intently, and then he heard it too. The tramp of footsteps on the ground. People approaching. Lots of people.

There were square pillars close to the walls, the space in between each one a welcome pocket of darkness and O'Neill gestured at Teal'c and Carter urgently, wanting it crystal clear. No engagement unless unavoidable. Find a shadow and blend into it. Keep within eyesight of everyone else. Stay close. Stay quiet. Stay afreakinlive, people. Pressing back against the wall, O'Neill could see Carter in the alcove to his right and Teal'c on his left, both of them trying as hard as he was to achieve invisibility.

O'Neill had his MP-5 raised in readiness as the double doors opened, spilling fading light and faded people into the temple. Hundreds of them, skin and hair color mostly middle-Eastern in appearance, although there were a few here and there with much lighter or darker hair and skin, all of them humming with the kind of suppressed excitement football crowds got before a really important game. He didn't speak the lingo but he could see the glitter in their eyes: even the air seemed electrified by the intensity of their anticipation. They were dressed in drab robes, and he could smell from a few feet away that these people didn't believe in soap and hot water. But they clearly took their pleasures seriously because they were packing the aisles here. He caught a glimpse of a lone blonde woman whose eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed. She alone seemed indifferent to the treat awaiting her. She looked the way Sara had in the weeks following Charlie's death. Existing in a waking nightmare where she operated on automatic pilot, hoping perhaps it was reality which was the dream. Someone jostled her as she went past the place where Carter was pressed into the shadows and she brushed the tip of Carter's MP-5 without even noticing she'd done so. Behind their pillars, O'Neill and Carter exchange an expressive glance. The crowd poured past their alcoves then seeped up the staircase like people finding their places in a theatre.

O'Neill winced as he realized the significance of that analogy. These people had turned up to see something. It was obviously nearly show time.

Right on cue, the stone wall on the far side of the temple from his hiding place slid back with the faintest grating noise, revealing a tunnel puddled with torchlight. MP-5 held in readiness, O'Neill wished vainly for a smoke canister to spread a little confusion when the moment came. He didn't like the idea of firing on probably unarmed priests but he liked the idea of Daniel being sacrificed to appease a vengeful Goa'uld even less. He could only hope that some way would present itself of their getting Daniel out of there without causing too much bloodshed.

As he stared intently at the place where the wall had opened up, he saw one priest with some fancy headgear followed by two priests without, and prayed for Daniel to be the next person he saw. When he was, his heart practically did a handstand with relief. That sensation stayed with him for approximately two and a half seconds before the anger set in as cold and bright as midwinter in Maine. "Damnit to hell," he said shortly.

"Oh my God," Carter breathed from the next alcove. "What have they done to him?"

Daniel still had all his hair, not to mention his own clothes, and there was just the one mark on his face presumably from the blow that had knocked his glasses across the room to smash against the wall; a bruise on his left cheekbone which was unsightly but clearly superficial. Apart from that the archaeologist didn't appear to have a scratch on him and yet his skin had gone past white to grey from some pain O'Neill didn't even want to guess at. Daniel seemed shocked almost to the point of death; someone at whom so much horror had been thrown that his mind had shut down. He staggered along between the priests, barely aware of his surroundings, apparently indifferent even to his imminent murder on the altar of Onuris, so stupefied by what had been done to him that death would clearly come only as a merciful release. When, at a nod from the one with the headdress, the two priests seized his arms to hold him still, Daniel didn't even seem to notice.

This was why these people had come to the temple, because they were eager to watch a blasphemer put to death on the altar, pouring eagerly into the chamber to witness the sacrifice to their God. There were more priests coming out of the same walls that had been so unyielding to their examination earlier, their skin also white and repulsively hairless. O'Neill thought they looked like maggots who lived perpetually underground. The one O'Neill took to be the High Priest, surveyed the assembly with evident satisfaction and shouted out a lot of words in Goa'uld the last of which was 'Shokmar!'

The crowd took up the High Priest's words, cheering and shouting, "Shokmar! Shokmar!"

"I thought you said this Goa'uld's name was 'Onuris'? And what the hell happened to Daniel?" O'Neill looked behind the pillar at Teal'c to see if he could throw any light upon Daniel's condition, and blanched. He'd thought himself as angry as it was possible for any sentient being to get until he glanced at the Jaffa and saw the expression in his eyes. This was a rage he had never seen before. For a second his friend almost frightened him. "Teal'c?"

"They have used Shokmar upon Daniel Jackson." Teal'c could barely speak for his fury.

O'Neill turned to Carter for enlightenment but she was staring in horror and pity at Daniel's pathetically dazed progress across the temple.

"What's Shokmar?" O'Neill demanded.

"The worst torture yet devised by the Goa'uld. The device for inflicting Shokmar was as yet unperfected when I was in the service of Apophis but I heard it spoken of many times. It was reputed to cause nerve pain like the blast from a zatnikatel but one that could be sustained for as long as the Goa'uld wished without killing the subject. Though the victim appears outwardly unharmed, every fiber of his being is left screaming in agony." Teal'c swung up his staff weapon and primed it.

Carter jerked her head round in disbelief. "You can't mean to kill these people in cold blood?"

"My blood is anything but cold, Major Carter."

"Teal'c, these people are slaves to the Goa'uld, they don't know what they’re doing."

"The priests of Onuris serve their master willingly for the wealth and power it brings them, just as they tortured one who had done them no harm for the advancement they hoped it would bring them. They are unfit to live."

"Sir?"

O'Neill wrenched his gaze away from Daniel with difficulty and saw Teal'c stride purposefully out from his alcove. Carter looked at him as Daniel had so often in the past: wanting him to make everything better without anyone getting hurt. Well Daniel had already been hurt. And it looked like he might have been hurt so badly they were never going to get him back. Whatever Teal'c had planned for the priests who'd done this to their teammate, O'Neill didn't think he was going to want to stop him.

He said flatly, "Keep up, Major," then followed Teal'c. And yes, Carter, I do mean with current events. When he glanced back over his shoulder to see if she was following, he saw her shoot another despairing look at Daniel as if she was hoping some miracle would have occurred to turn him back into the man they knew, before hurrying after him.

Teal'c was already advancing into the torch-lit center of the temple. As O'Neill caught up with him, Teal'c shouted, "Kree! Cravens of Onuris! You are worthy of the god you serve!"

The blast from the staff weapon hit the statue squarely in its massive chest, the stone head toppling from the broken shoulders as the body imploded beneath it with what seemed to be deliberate slowness, before shattering in several pieces on the ground. O'Neill hadn't realized the statue was holding up the ceiling until chunks of stone began to rain down around them.

Still firing with frightening calm, Teal's strode swiftly across the temple, the terrified priests scattering like flocking birds. Without their hands to hold him up, Daniel crumpled to the floor. Not even breaking stride, Teal'c dropped to one knee, hefted Daniel over his left shoulder and was back on his feet and firing again as he turned to come back, the last blast leaving the lower torso of Onuris rocking precariously on its stand.

"Teal'c!" O'Neill shouted the warning despairingly as the last of the statue crumbled and fell with a thunderous roar, the terrible object crushing several of its priests as it did so. The statue had torn a hole from the roof of the temple as it fell and the sky was visible, stones still raining down upon the worshippers of Onuris.

O'Neill flailed at the thick clouds of dust. "Teal'c!" he shouted hoarsely just as the Jaffa strode out of the chaos unscathed. A huge piece of stone rolled past him and chips of granite scattered about Carter and O'Neill like vicious hail, but Teal'c seemed indifferent to the destruction all around him. "Come, O'Neill," Teal'c said. "Let us take what remains of Daniel Jackson away from this place."

Carter hesitated again in the doorway, distress in her blue eyes. People were groaning and dying all around the chamber, the temple was a ruin, full of dust and the scent of blood. She gazed at O'Neill pleadingly. "Sir, we can't just leave them."

O'Neill looked at Daniel, slumped over Teal's broad shoulder, face so drained of color even his lips were grey. "Actually, I think we can." He followed Teal'c out into the mist.

***

As she dialed up, Carter was torn between her anxieties over Daniel – now so frighteningly still and pale over Teal'c's shoulder – and the people they'd left dead and dying in the ruined temple. She knew the Colonel couldn't really be as indifferent to the wounded as he was pretending, he was too compassionate for that. But this wasn't the first time she'd seen that shutter come down over his eyes, the one which said he was withdrawing all consideration from everyone and everything except his team. He'd done the same thing in Hadante. Horror had been happening all around them but all it had done was spur him into a more and more single-minded determination to get the four of them out of there, and to hell with everyone else. And in particular to get the four of them out of there before anything…untoward happened to Daniel.

Daniel. She hit the last symbol and waited for the blue light to flare. They'd get Daniel home. Janet would think of a way to coax him back from wherever this 'shokmar' had sent him. And as soon as Daniel was in the infirmary, was safe and being cared for, the Colonel's natural humanity would reassert itself. He would back her request for them to return to this world with a medical team to care for the wounded, she was sure of it.

It took her a few seconds to realize there was no event horizon. No 'waterspout'. No blue light. No wormhole. No way home.

"Major…?"

"I pressed the right symbols, sir," she assured him quickly, then dialed up again, each symbol lighting up as she touched it, that comforting heavy 'thunk' as the chevron was locked in place. It had taken her a while after they'd been thrown through the Antarctic gate to stop flinching in expectation of failure as she dialed the last chevron, half-expecting every 'gate to start acting the way that one had. But that was three years ago and she'd never encountered the problem since. Having got over the experience, she now confidently expected every 'gate to engage after the last symbol lit up. Still expected this 'gate to engage as she pressed down on the last chevron for the second time. It didn't.

The Colonel's voice told her all she needed to know about how frayed his nerves were: "Okay. Now put it back how it was."

She turned to look at him. "But I did, sir. It's exactly as it was when we arrived here."

"Except when we arrived here it worked." He darted a glance over his shoulder at the smoking temple. "We need to get Daniel out of here."

"I know." Carter was already pulling off the control panel to look at the crystals. "Sir, believe me, it should work."

Through what were all too plainly gritted teeth the Colonel said, "I want to believe you, Major, but the fact you're dialing and nothing's happening is starting to affect my trust."

Carter hastily checked the connections and then straightened back up; hitting the first six symbols quickly then offering a brief prayer before the last one. When she pressed the point of origin nothing happened.

The Colonel was gripping his MP-5 so tightly his knuckles were white. She could feel him willing her to make it work. And she would make it work. She had to. They needed to get off this world and get Daniel back to the infirmary. Except it should be working now and she couldn't find any immediate cause why it wasn't and what if she couldn't do it? What if it was like Antarctica and she just couldn't figure out what was wrong…?

So clearly it was as though he was standing by her shoulder, she remembered Martouf saying 'You have to.' She flinched now as she had then. It had come as such a shock when her mind was still half-wrapped in Jolinar's memories. She'd been feeling such tenderness for him, the realization of how much he and Jolinar had been in love still reverberating through her even as she recalled the sensation of their last kiss, the taste of his dry lips against hers, feeling so grateful for his silence, the tact he'd shown in not mentioning the danger which lay ahead of her…ahead of Jolinar…So difficult not to feel affection for someone a part of her had once loved, difficult also not to feel compassion for the man who'd loved Jolinar so very much. She'd felt a sudden rush of tenderness towards Martouf in that moment and even now she didn't know if it had come from Jolinar of Melkshur or Major Samantha Carter.

And then he'd been ordering her to remember, looking at her with eyes that saw only Samantha Carter, not Jolinar, his voice so brisk and impatient. It had felt as though he'd slapped her.

"Major…?"

It was the desperation in the Colonel's voice which sharpened her mind into focus and made her perceive the obvious. She wondered how she could have failed to notice that winking red light mocking her so spitefully. As she stared at the device on the DHD whose purpose she and Teal'c had not been able to fathom, her heart sank. "Sir, someone or some thing has activated the Goa'uld device."

"What?"

She pointed to it. "It’s the only thing that appears to be working."

"Well switch it off again."

"I'm not sure I – " Her eyes widened as she saw figures beginning to appear out of the ground cloud drifting across the grey hillside behind him. "People, sir, coming down from the temple."

As Teal'c raised his staff weapon, the Colonel caught his arm. "Let’s just get Daniel the hell out of sight."

A few scrubby trees and bushes so bent and gnarled it looked as though they spent their days in combat with the soil offered the only nearby cover and they ran for it, Teal'c effortlessly keeping pace with the Colonel's loping run despite the extra burden of weight he carried across his shoulder. Carter guarded their retreat, turning circles as she brought up the rear, hoping the mist would swallow them like bad memories before the wounded worshippers appeared.

As she slithered down into the undergrowth, the whip-thin twigs lashed at her face and she flinched. Thinking of that bruise on Daniel's face she dared a glance in his direction then flinched again. He looked the way her father had in Netu, chilled beyond the bone, death-white and stunned by the savagery of the pain he had been made to endure. She remembered how in the Pit Daniel had immediately taken off his jacket and given it to her for her father. How he'd looked so close to tears on their behalf: Jacob's suffering, her sorrow. When the Colonel had made some joke he'd been horrified, as though the man had tap-danced across a graveyard. She wondered if Daniel ever realized how much he needed the Colonel to make those jokes, to stop him getting so twisted up inside with the pain of others he couldn't even function.

Now she felt like she guessed he had in that moment. She would have given anything to have his pain transferred to her because anything was easier than standing there and watching him suffering. He looked so…null, as though there was barely enough of Daniel left inside for him to ever find his way back. She turned to Teal'c, trying to read something in those steady brown eyes that didn't speak of defeat. "How is he?"

"What's our situation?" the Colonel's question overlapped her own and drowned it.

Carter peered through the trailing stems of a thornbush to see a group of people gathering around the Stargate, grey silhouettes in the mist. They were all wailing and some of them were beating their breasts, crying out for what might well have been mercy.

"They don't appear to have seen us, sir, but we're cut off from the Stargate." Even saying the words chilled her. Cut off from the Stargate on any world was the one place none of them ever wanted to be.

Teal'c was about to lay Daniel down on the ground when O'Neill stopped him. "Wait, the grass is wet and we should probably try to keep him warm. I mean – he's in shock, right?" O'Neill pulled the emergency blanket from his vest and spread it out. Teal's placed the unconscious archaeologist on it as gently as though he was made of eggshell. O'Neill didn't want to see the look of sorrow on the Jaffa's face that told him there was no point in hoping, and he certainly didn't want to see Daniel like this, frail as paper, barely breathing; he could practically feel the younger man retreating further and further into himself, still trying to get away from the pain that had found its way to every cell. "Is he going to be okay?"

Teal'c's voice was grave. "I am sorry, O'Neill. I fear that very soon there will be only the husk of Daniel Jackson left to us. Shokmar destroys all those it touches and they say its flame, once ignited, goes on blazing for many hours."

"Like a third degree burn to the psyche." Carter's eyes were bright with pity and she looked very close to tears. "How could they do this?" she breathed, pulling the blanket from her own vest to place over him.

"Because they are evil," Teal'c returned flatly. He took off his jacket as he spoke and placed it under Daniel's head. "He will not return to consciousness until the pain recedes but that will not be for many hours, and by then it will be too late. His mind will have been dissolved by suffering."

He wasn't going to accept that. Daniel was not going to end up a vegetable. Daniel was going to get better. He'd got him through that sarcophagus withdrawal and he was going to get him through this. O'Neill said firmly, "Except if we can stop the pain there's got to be a good chance we can get him back fast enough to stop that stuff burning him out, right? I mean we're talking something like an electric current applied to the nervous system, aren't we? They zap every nerve in your body and they keep doing it until there's enough current inside you to keep the charge going by itself? And just the fact of being in that much pain for that amount of time, basically overloads your brain circuitry. Is that pretty much it?"

"That is correct."

"Okay. So we have to switch off the current – we have to stop the pain and let him heal."

"Even if that were possible, the trauma of undergoing Shokmar changes its victims out of all recognition. They become what you call vegetables."

"Not Daniel." O'Neill was going through his pack, desperately trying to remember what they'd brought this trip out and hoping to God he'd been given something stronger then Tylenol. "That is not going to happen to Daniel." He didn't care how many other people that damned Goa'uld device might have done for it was not going to destroy one of his team.

As Carter did the same, throwing packets and phials onto the ground in her haste to sort through her pack, she said, "Sir, I think we need to prepare ourselves for that. Even if we can stop the pain, we can't undo what was done to Daniel. We can't stop him remembering – "

And he wasn't listening to that for ten seconds so Carter might as well save her breath right now. "Yes, we can. If the only way Daniel's going to get over this is if it didn't happen, well then it didn't happen." When his fingers closed on the preloaded syringes he was looking for he could have kissed them. "Morphine."

Carter bit her lip. "It's worth a try."

"This could make a big difference," O'Neill assured the Jaffa but Teal'c only sighed sadly and shook his head. He ripped open the packaging, trying not to notice the way his fingers were shaking a little because Daniel wasn't Daniel any more and maybe he was never going to be Daniel again. He wasn't going to think that way. That wasn't going to happen. The tremor in his fingers was unmistakable now. He shoved the syringe at Carter.

"You do it. You're better at it than I am." He wasn't just making excuses. He could give a morphine shot if he had to, but they were tricky and she was better at it, could depress the plunger that slow way you were supposed to without bruising the surrounding muscle. He was always worried he was going to be heavy-handed and push in too much too quickly. This had nothing to do with the way his hands were shaking.

She twisted the plunger. "How much?"

"All of it."

He saw the flash of surprise in her eyes. "Ten milligrams? That's a big dose, sir."

He held her gaze. "Do it."

"It'll take a while to inject." He watched her depress the plunger to send a tiny droplet of the precious pain relief to the end of the needle. The droplet didn't even quiver and he could only admire the steadiness of her nerves. Maybe when he was her age his fingers wouldn't have been shaking either. Teal'c was tugging down Daniel's pants for her, exposing the thigh muscle.

O'Neill winced as the needle went in, that endless second's pause as they waited to see if the blood welled up, then the measured depression of the plunger, the liquid being pushed in with agonizing slowness.

Carter's hands were still as steady as a surgeon's and he felt a rush of gratitude to her for that. "That's two milligrams."

"His vitals are fine. Keep going." He checked his watch automatically, making the calculations, trying to work out how long it would be before the pain relief kicked in and started to do some good.

He remembered the way every muscle cramped with pain as you fought to stay in exactly the same position, hands perfectly still, just that tiny pressure on the plunger. Only the way the muscle in Carter's jaw was tensing betrayed the effort it was costing her to keep the morphine administration so perfectly controlled. "Four milligrams."

He checked Daniel's vitals again. "Keep going."

A trickle of moisture ran down the side of Carter's face and for a second he was shocked, thinking it was a teardrop. Then he realized it was sweat. "Six milligrams."

"Keep going."

"Janet usually gives him six."

"Keep going, Major."

It seemed to take an eternity to reach eight milligrams, and another to reach ten, but at last he heard her sigh with relief. "Ten milligrams." He automatically checked his watch again. She withdrew the needle carefully then sat back on her heels, effortlessly reading his mind, or perhaps just having the same thoughts. "Morphine generally works pretty fast, so Daniel should be getting some relief within quarter of an hour or so." She looked at O'Neill hesitantly. "If he does come round you need to remind him who he is, Colonel. You need to keep saying his name."

He heard what lay behind that hesitancy in her voice loud and clear. All the other things O'Neill needed to do if there was to be any chance at all of their ever getting their teammate back: holding Daniel, comforting him, making him feel safe, coaxing him back from the nightmare in which he'd been trapped for so many hours. The unspoken reminder he was the only one of them Daniel might listen to at this time, that his was the only voice and the only touch which would reach him through the horror of the Shokmar. Carter obviously didn't know if he was capable of providing Daniel with that kind of care. Neither did he, if he was honest. But what he did know was that he was willing to try anything to get Daniel back again.

Teal'c pulled Daniel's pants back up, then covered him with the blanket again. O'Neill saw the Jaffa's hand rest briefly on Daniel's hair. Carter was putting the empty syringe away very carefully, deliberately not looking at Daniel. O'Neill closed his eyes, putting a hand up to his forehead, but it didn't help, he could still see him in his mind's eye: white, and so limp. He wondered if they would be lucky. If Daniel would sleep until the morphine took effect, and then sleep away the following four hours until the next dose. And in the meantime they'd find a way to get the DHD working again, to get him home. To get them all home.

They sat there in silence, the faint sound of wailing muffled by the mist. O'Neill checked his watch again. And again. Ten minutes. Thirteen. Seventeen. How could time pass so slowly? He wanted Daniel to wake up and be himself again. He wanted him to stay asleep until he was safe. Twenty-one minutes. Twenty-four. Twenty –

Daniel jolted rather than drifted into consciousness, curling up like burning paper as he cried: "Jack! Please God help me! Jack…?"

"Daniel!" As the younger man flinched away from him in blind panic, O'Neill grabbed him, pulling Daniel into his chest and holding him close as he struggled like something snared. O'Neill said quickly, "I'm here, Daniel, I'm here." He could feel Daniel's heart pounding against his ribcage, the shudders going through him. Daniel was terrified out of his wits. O'Neill felt the anger flare up in him again, Christ, what did those sons-of bitches do to you…? But aloud he said only: "It's okay, Daniel. "

Daniel was twisting his head from side to side. "No, please…Stop it…Please, don't…Jack…? Help me, Jack…!"

"Daniel, I'm here damnit!" O'Neill took the younger man's head in his hands and forced him to look at him. "I'm here. And you're safe. You're safe now, Daniel. I swear."

Daniel stared at him blankly and then began to struggle again, but pitifully, with no real hope or expectation of freeing himself. "Please…please, stop this, please…Help me, Jack. Please help me…Jack…?"

O'Neill felt the younger man's hands pushing at him feebly, fingers twisting and tugging at his uniform without any strength in them. Daniel's eyes were terrified blue blanks and whatever they were seeing it certainly wasn't Jack O'Neill.

"Christ, don't do this to me, Daniel …" O'Neill took a moment to suck in a deep breath, rallying his energies, marshalling his thoughts. This was a problem, that was all, a problem that had to be solvable. There were plenty of options here and he just needed to work his way through them until he found one that worked: coaxing, ordering, yelling, whatever it took to get Daniel back, but one way or another he was getting Daniel back.

O'Neill gripped his teammate by the shoulders and shook him. "Daniel! You have to get through this. You have to wake up. It was just a bad dream, okay? You had a bad dream but it's over now and you're safe. Look at me, Daniel. Damnit, Daniel, I'm giving you an order here. Now you do as I tell you; focus your goddamned eyes and look at me!" He shouted the last three words and Daniel gasped with the shock of them, like someone electrified back to life on the operating table.

He stared at O'Neill with what seemed to be no glimmer of recognition, still shuddering violently. He darted a terrified glance over his shoulder as though he expected something to come for him out of the mist, then suddenly his fingers clutched at O'Neill's jacket, clinging on as though his life depended on it as he flung himself against the man's chest, apparently trying to burrow into him as though O'Neill was a dark corner in which he could hide. "Please don't…please…I don't understand…I don't know why you're doing this…please, you don't have to do this…don't do this to me any more…"

O'Neill swallowed quickly. So Daniel had reasoned and pleaded with them? And they'd gone ahead and kept torturing him anyway? For nothing? For no goddamned reason at all? He'd thought he'd never be angrier than when those sons-of-bitches had taken Teal'c away and tortured him out of some misguided fear of demons. But at least they'd had a reason. Even if it was a really stupid reason, they'd believed in the devil, and as Sokar had been terrorizing them for a thousand years perhaps it wasn't such a dumb thing to believe in after all. But these people seemed to have done this to Daniel just for the exercise.

He collected himself with a huge effort, forcing the words out, trying to keep them gentle when he was so consumed with fury he wanted to kill with his bare hands. "It didn't happen, Daniel. It was just a really, really bad dream but it's over now. You’re with us now. You're okay." O'Neill let Daniel scramble against him, hardly wincing as the younger man gripped hold of him so tightly, putting his left arm around Daniel to hold his shoulders then tentatively stroked his hair with his right hand, trying to make eye contact, trying to make the younger man see him and recognize that he was safe. "You're okay."

"I w-went to the temple – " Daniel was still convulsing with shock, teeth chattering so violently he could hardly speak. "Shouldn't have gone…to the temple…"

Resisting the urge to say Damned right you shouldn't have gone to the temple, Daniel! O'Neill tightened his grip on him, saying firmly, "You didn't go there. You didn't go to the temple. It didn't happen. Look at me, Daniel, will you please just look at me and listen to what I'm telling you?"

He couldn't get through to Daniel and he wasn't responding to his touch, it was like trying to warm marble with his hand. He hoped that if he kept saying Daniel's name often enough, the man might remember who he was, but at the moment Daniel was bearing only the most superficial resemblance to the man O'Neill knew.

Teal'c said, "Daniel Jackson, you are safe now."

"You're going to be fine, Daniel. See, we're all here with you?"

Carter couldn't tell if Daniel was even aware of her or Teal'c. He was still shuddering convulsively and clinging onto the Colonel as though the man was a life raft and Daniel someone adrift in a storm. He looked fit only for a padded cell, and as someone who had seen him in that situation once before, Carter felt she simply could not bear to watch him go through that again. She remembered him crying and hiding in the corner, and tried not to imagine what it would be like if this were to last forever, only worse this time because at least when he had been infected by Machello's virus he had recognized them. Now, although he kept twisting his head round to look over his shoulder, back towards the temple that was thankfully hidden by the mist, when his gaze passed across her there was only terror.

Daniel was one of the bravest, most stubborn, and most resilient people she'd ever met; someone who would face down Apophis when he was unarmed and on his knees in Hell. It made her feel sick inside to think how much they must have hurt Daniel to reduce him to this. She didn't even dare to look at Teal'c but when she exchanged a glance with Colonel O'Neill she realized he was thinking the same thing because the flicker of rage in his brown eyes was chilling. Then he was wrestling the anger under control to concentrate on soothing Daniel.

"Daniel, no one is going to hurt you, do you understand me? No one. You're going to get through this. I am ordering you to get through this. Okay?" Colonel O'Neill cupped his palm against the younger man's face as he spoke, his touch considerably gentler than his words. He stroked his thumb against Daniel's face. "Come on, Danny, give me a sign you're still in there."

Carter's heart twisted with sympathy for both of them. Daniel had always brought out the best in the Colonel. She knew what it would do to her commanding officer if Daniel stayed like this. Unfortunately, right now her common sense was telling her this time they really had lost a team-member for good. This time they weren't going to be getting Daniel back. Not ever.

Still hanging onto the older man, Daniel looked back over his shoulder. " Jack…? " His throat was so sore from what must have been hours of screaming that his voice cracked and Carter closed her eyes, wishing there was some way she could make none of this have happened. If only they'd noticed that he'd gone sooner, if only they'd…

Abruptly she was back on P8X 873, ears still ringing from the gunfire, the carbine drying her throat, bodies all around her, the wounded groaning and crying out for help. SG-6 had got the Abydonians back through the Stargate but Daniel was gone. So was Teal'c. No sign of them. She hadn't seen them go. Were they dead? God no, don't let them be dead – She'd thrown down the mortar and leapt to her feet, fear making her hoarse: "Sir! Daniel? Teal'c?"

The Colonel had been at her side in seconds, voice soothing despite the obvious worry in his eyes. "Amaunet stole the kid. Daniel went after her." As Carter's eyes must have betrayed her disbelief the man had let Daniel go alone, he added, " I sent Teal'c after him."

As they'd turned to go towards Amaunet's tent, its pennants still flapping defiantly in the breeze despite the way the area was now strewn with the corpses of her Jaffa, the Colonel had looked around the battlefield, his eyes so bleak it was hard to imagine ever seeing laughter in them again. She'd seen what he was seeing but she hadn't felt it. Amaunet's Jaffa were the enemy. They would have killed them if they hadn't been killed first. You did what you had to do in a situation like that, as quickly and as efficiently as possible. You didn't enjoy it – although there was an adrenalin rush when your weapon found its target and you knew that was another ally you'd probably saved, a staff blast that might have had a teammate's name on in which wouldn't now be fired – but you didn't hate it either. It was just something that came with the territory, part of the job. But as she'd followed him towards Amaunet's tent she'd been very aware the only real difference between them was that he had seen more battlefields than she had. He'd told her once that if killing people didn't get harder each time you had to do it, there was something wrong with you, and she'd given him her most neutral smile. The one which said she was hearing him but not necessarily agreeing with him. She didn't expect it to get easier but she saw no reason for it to get harder either. If it was the right thing to do, it was the right thing to do the first time and the hundred and fiftieth time, which meant you squeezed the trigger the same way and you felt the same indescribable mixture of elation, adrenalin, fear, and shame, when your bullet hit its target.

And then that night on the tel'tak Martouf had pulled up the floodgates and allowed Jolinar's memories to intermingle with her own, and in a matter of seconds she'd seen a hundred more battlefields than the Colonel had. Suddenly she'd understood exactly why he'd looked so very weary of having to witness death.

"…Jack…please help me, Jack…Jack…"

The panic and hopelessness in Daniel's voice made O'Neill feel sick inside. Daniel didn't seem to be able to connect the person right in front of him with the name he was saying. He didn't even look like Daniel. He was this white-faced wild-eyed kid who didn't even know who O'Neill was. The realization that Daniel must have been calling out for him for all those hours while he was being tortured made O'Neill wish that he'd killed every spectator and priest in the building. This was his nightmare from Netu come back to haunt him: men holding Daniel down and hurting him while he was powerless to save him. He should have listened to his own fears; should have kept a closer eye on him, should have…He collected himself with difficulty. "I'm right here, Daniel, and so are Teal'c and Carter. We're not going to leave you."

Daniel had never looked so young or so scared. "They wouldn't stop. Jack d-didn't come. Why didn't he come?"

O'Neill felt the knife of guilt and rage twist harder. "It didn't happen, Daniel. None of it happened. You never went to that goddamned temple. You never saw their goddamned god, and you sure as hell never got captured by those goddamned priests." O'Neill pulled Daniel's head in against his chest, wrapping his jacket around him as though he was an injured pet to shelter him in the dark warmth of it. "It was just a dream. Go to sleep, Daniel. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. You're safe now. I promise you, you're safe."

He rocked him in his arms, not even noticing he was doing so at first; it was just instinctive to try and soothe him to sleep with that comforting rhythm, just as it was instinctive to hold Daniel's head against his heart so that the beat of it would calm him. He didn't even know which one of them he was trying to convince as he murmured over and over, "You're going to be okay, believe me. You're going to be okay."

Even though every muscle in his own body seemed to be locked into the most uncomfortable position it could find, O'Neill waited until the morphine had done its work and Daniel was a dead weight in his arms before he dared move. He met Carter's sympathetic blue gaze. "Well, that wasn't the most fun I've ever had." He checked that the younger man was definitely unconscious then gently unclenched Daniel's fingers from his clothing, laying him carefully back down on the blanket, pushing Teal'c's folded jacket back under his head and covering him up once more. "I think that stuff's really kicking in now so hopefully he'll sleep for a while. I suggest we give him another shot in a couple of hours and see how it goes."

Carter shook her head. "God, I hate seeing him like this."

"He is not going to stay like this, Major. He is going to get better."

She opened her mouth to say that sometimes you couldn't make things go the way you wanted them to, that willing it wasn't enough, that there were days when you just had to face up to truths you really didn't want to, but seeing his face she didn't. She said, "Yes, sir."

The Colonel had his teeth gritted, and she could feel the impotent fury radiating from him because someone had dared to do this to one of his team, and not even to learn anything, not even for any purpose; had smashed Daniel's psyche into possibly irretrievable pieces just because they could.

She tried to find something positive to say – which she didn't find easy when someone she cared so much about had been reduced to a gibbering wreck right before her eyes – but in trying to console him did think of something that made her feel better as well. "Sir, Daniel obviously does still have his own memory as well because he remembered your name."

"Daniel Jackson remembers the name he was screaming when he was being tortured," Teal'c put in flatly. "He may not remember anything else about who that person was. His memory may now begin and end with the time of Shokmar."

The Colonel said tautly, "I don't want to hear that. And I don't believe it."

"O'Neill, I have never heard of anyone recovering from the effects of…"

"So you said. And I don't care, because Daniel is going to get over this. He is going to remember who he is and who I am and every other damn thing he ever knew. The only thing he is not going to remember is what those sons-of-bitches did to him. Now is everyone clear on that?"

There was a moment's awkward silence while Carter and Teal'c didn't meet his eye. The Jaffa was looking at Daniel, so pale and still on the blanket, and there was a depth of rage in his gaze that Carter noticed was mirrored in Colonel O'Neill's. She knew that these were good men, men of integrity and honor, but momentarily, she also knew that Teal'c and the Colonel were capable of doing things she couldn't even imagine. She wondered if she ought to point out that the last thing Daniel would want was for people to suffer or die because of him. That it might help them to feel better but it would be a very poor memorial to the man Daniel had been to shed more blood on his behalf.

The Colonel turned to Teal'c. "I'm glad you destroyed that goddamned statue and I'm glad some of them died. I'm not proud of feeling like that, but that's still how I feel. No one has the right to do to another living creature what those people did to Daniel."

"I still don't understand why they did it." Carter bent down to look at Daniel, and was it her imagination or was there the faintest tinge of color to his skin that had not been there before? She so wanted to believe it that perhaps she was imagining something that wasn't there. "Or how they could."

Teal'c had his fists clenched, and Carter wondered just how much self-control the Jaffa was having to exert not to go back to the that temple and rip the heads off the rest of the priests with his bare hands. "Onuris would have ordered them to experiment with the power of Shokmar. To find out how much the subject can bear before his mind snaps. There will have been many such experiments; many will have suffered unimaginable torment before they died."

The Colonel dug the point of his knife into the ground and twisted it. "You know round about now I'm thinking that this Onuris has kind of outstayed his welcome in this particular astral plane. Time to send him to Goa'uld hell, maybe."

She inched over to the thornbush which provided the best cover, MP-5 at the ready. There was a mottled brown moth impaled on one of the black thorns and a dew-soaked cobweb stretching silvery strands across a gap in the greenery, a black and yellow spotted ladybug still struggling futilely in its grasp. She told herself forcefully this was just what nature did; a seething world happening beneath their notice every day, strange, alien and cruel. They weren't that damned ladybug and they were going to get off this damned world. All the same, she couldn't resist reaching across and freeing the struggling insect, tearing the frail tendrils of the web as she deposited the bemused bug on a thornless leaf. Get a grip, Sam, she told herself firmly. But it was difficult not to feel trapped when one glance showed her even more people now clustering around the Stargate, a faint red wink of light mocking her rhythmically from the useless DHD.

She turned back to find Teal'c still telling the Colonel about Onuris.

"…Heru'ur has been trying to take over the territories of Onuris for many years, but although he is in retreat, Onuris is still a powerful and well-protected Goa'uld. He has worshippers on many worlds."

"Yeah well, a judiciously placed hand grenade and he's still chopped salami."

"Sir, we have another problem." Carter grimaced apologetically as she delivered the bad news. "At the moment there are about a hundred worshippers crying in front of the Stargate and more coming all the time."

The Colonel looked at Teal'c. "Any idea what the Tupperware party's about?"

"If you mean the assembling of the worshippers then no, O'Neill, I do not."

As she turned to take another look at the stumbling wounded still emerging from the mist, Carter tried to take some comfort from the fact the ladybug, having tentatively tested its wings, had now launched itself into flight.

***

O'Neill had been watching Daniel edge back towards consciousness for the past half an hour, noting the way the rapid eye movement was turning to head twisting and moaning, getting ready to catch Daniel as soon as he awoke. To tell him the same lies. Except just this once he had no compunction about lying to Daniel, was perfectly prepared to look him straight in the eye and tell him any damned thing he thought would save his sanity. He was determined that Daniel was going to get better. Maybe Teal'c didn't believe it and maybe Carter didn't believe it, but he knew that Doctor Daniel Jackson was not going to spend the rest of his days as some vegetable locked away in a mental institute. He was going to make him get better, even if he had to drag him back to the land of the sane by the scruff of his neck.

Daniel erupted into consciousness like someone held under water gasping their way back to the surface, crying, "Jack…!"

"Right here, buddy."

O'Neill grabbed him quickly; pulling Daniel tight against his chest so he couldn't thrash about and hurt himself. Daniel clung to him again; shuddering so hard O'Neill could feel the reverberations going through both of them. He wished he could convince himself Daniel knew who he was and was taking some comfort from the contact, but he didn't believe Daniel had any idea who or even what he was other than something he could hang onto when the priests came and tried to drag him back to the torture chamber. He'd held Daniel as close and as tight as this after the man had tried to kill him in that storeroom; had come so near to losing the person he knew to the monster Shyla had made of him and had managed to get Daniel back that time; he just had to do it again, that was all.

He had a sudden remembrance of Sara giving birth, getting so wrapped around with the pain of the contractions that she'd forgotten her breathing exercises. He'd been telling her to breathe but wasn't getting through; then the midwife had blown against her cheek to remind her of the respiratory rhythm she needed to get through the pain. A second before she had been trapped by the contractions, but then she was mastering them, dealing with them.

O'Neill put his head against the younger man's face, wanting Daniel to feel him as well as hear him and see him, blowing on his cheek before speaking clearly into his ear: "It's okay, Daniel. You're okay. We're all here and no one's going to hurt you." But even now he couldn't bring himself to say something at once so arrogant and sentimental as ' I'm here.'

"Pain…so much pain…please no…help me…Jack, please…help me…"

Feeling the younger man shaking violently in his arms, O'Neill gently eased Daniel's head up so that their eyes met. "No pain, Daniel. Just a bad dream. See? You're not in any pain, are you?" Even as he said it, he could only hope it was true. That the morphine was doing its job.

Finally O'Neill saw a flash of something that looked like recognition in Daniel's eyes. He was still pale, scared, and trembling, but he also seemed to focus on the man who held him for the first time. "D-dream…?"

O'Neill's pity for his friend was constantly warring with his anger at what had been done to him, but he tried to wrestle that rage from his face and voice and keep his tone brisk but kind. "A bad dream, Daniel. You had a bad dream. But we're all with you. You're not alone any more and we're not going to let anyone hurt you." And this time he did say it, knowing it was what Daniel needed to hear: " I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

Confusion washed over Daniel's face, the unbearably vivid memories of being tortured obviously warring with the quiet conviction in O'Neill's voice. Two realities it was impossible for him to reconcile.

O'Neill forged ahead firmly. "You ate some poisonous berries and they gave you this really – bad dream." He caught Carter's eye as he said it to see if she approved, and after a fractional hesitation she nodded. O'Neill pressed. "Daniel? Do you know who you are? Can you tell me your name?"

"Just a – dream?"

"Tell me your name, Daniel. Tell me who you are?"

Just a dream? It seemed impossible and yet the man holding him said it with such certainty. His brown eyes held not a tinge of doubt. Daniel was riddled with doubt. Everything was blurred and confused. He remembered terrible pain, and yet it was true that there was no pain now. He remembered cold stone and strange men with dead white skin tying him down, directing a stream of blue light to fry every nerve in his body while he screamed and screamed for someone who didn't come. Screamed for –

He knew this face. So familiar. Jack , he thought, this is Jack. It was the most comforting word he knew and now he knew the face it went with again. This was the person he'd been screaming for. So Jack had come for him? Except Jack was saying it had never happened, that he'd never been in need of rescuing; the priests, the stone, the blue light, the terrible, inescapable pain, all just a dream. That couldn't be true, could it? And yet Jack was here and real. He could feel Jack's arm holding him, feel the warmth from his body. Not his imagination. Not something he was believing because he wanted to believe it. Or was it? Perhaps none of this was real and he was still in the temple. He shuddered at the thought.

"Come on, Daniel, concentrate. You can do this. Doctor Daniel Jackson. Remember him? I'd really like to say hello to him, so, come on, see if you can't find him in there for me."

That definitely sounded like Jack although his voice was a bit strange because of the way he had his teeth gritted as he was talking. It certainly looked like Jack too, although Daniel didn't remember him being this anxious; all strung up like a marionette. If it was Jack then something bad had happened to him recently; something to put that look in his eyes. Daniel so wanted this man to be Jack. If this was Jack then he was safe.

Whoever he was, the man was looking frustrated now, pointing two fingers at himself and saying, "Daniel, do you know who I am? Come on, you're looking right at me, now who am I? Tell me my name."

If Jack was real then perhaps the temple wasn't. But was this Jack and was he real? He was asking Daniel something. Asking him his name. Yes, he knew that, he could answer that. Daniel murmured it tentatively, a question: "Jack…?"

"Yes!" Abruptly the man was hugging him, rocking him triumphantly, scrunching a fist tightly in his hair as he pulled his face in against the rough material of his jacket. "Yes, Dannyboy. I'm right here."

'Dannyboy'. Only Jack called him that. Only Jack had ever called him that. Then this was Jack. And Jack would never lie to him so what Jack was telling him had to be the truth. The bad memories receded a little, like a tide unwilling to go out. Not real then. The temple, the terror, the dreadful, inescapable pain those white-skinned men were so deliberately inflicting on him: none of it real. But Jack was real.

He twisted his head round to look the man in the eye. Yes, that was Jack. The way Jack looked, felt, smelt, everything. Jack. He said it with more certainty this time. "Jack?"

"Yes, Daniel. Yes!" Jack squeezed him so hard Daniel gasped as the breath was crushed out of him. He could feel his ribs creaking with the strain but he felt much better too. He knew nothing bad could happen to him as long as Jack was holding him so tightly. Jack's breath tickled his ear again, his stubble rough against Daniel's skin as he murmured, "Oh, Daniel, you gotta stop doing these things to me before you give me a goddamned heart attack."

Definitely Jack. Definitely real and definitely Jack, so the other memories were clearly just…wrong. Nightmares. Vivid and terrible, but not real. Daniel almost felt safe again but there was so much terror and pain still lapping at the edges of his memory he needed to hear again that it had never been real. Needed to hear it over and over. "A bad dream…?"

"Just a really bad dream, Daniel," Carter assured him, preparing the morphine shot as she spoke. She didn't know how the Colonel had done it but he did seem to have comforted and bullied Daniel back from the place that Shokmar had sent him. Daniel still looked scared but with relief glinting through it, like streamers of sunlight filtering into a dark wood. She saw Daniel gaze up at the man's face and there was definite recognition there now. She saw the relief in Daniel's eyes because whatever 'Jack' was telling him had to be true.

She winced, because they were lying to him, and she hated to lie to him even to save his life, but looking at the Colonel she could see that he didn't care, was perfectly happy to look Daniel right in the eye and tell him anything that would make him get over this. He was right, she knew. Not lying to Daniel was going to leave him trapped forever in the aftermath of Shokmar; lying was going to save his sanity. She repeated the lie again, trying to put as much conviction into it as she could: "You were hallucinating, Daniel. Delirious. The poison gave you some muscle cramps so you might feel a bit achy for a few days but we think it's pretty much gone from your system now. That's what gave you the bad dreams." There, she'd done it, looked him right in the eye and lied to him.

"But you are safe now, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c added. "You are with your friends again." Carter glanced at the Jaffa and saw that although he understood why they were lying to Daniel, could see the necessity, agreed with them even, he could not quite bring himself to frame the words. He would stick to the comfort the truth offered. "We are all with you."

She was more surprised than she liked to admit to see the Colonel hold out his hand for the syringe. Very relieved not to have to be the one to administer the injection for a second time, Carter handed it to him, while saying to Daniel, "This is going to stop the dream coming back, okay? It will help you sleep."

Sleep? He was very tired but he wasn't sure he wanted to go to sleep. Bad dreams. Terrible dreams. Blue light and the pain flaring. Those priests telling him to answer, answer…Too late. Jack was pulling his pants down. Why was he doing that? There was a breeze snaking across his bare skin. It was cold. He tried to tug his pants back up again, but Jack pushed his hand away. He could feel the man's fingers on his leg, a needle hurting his thigh.

"Stay still, Daniel," Jack said gently.

It hurt. He turned his head away but it didn't stop the pain of the needle in his leg. He closed his eyes up tightly, flinching as he remembered the blue light again. Just a dream. Jack had said it wasn't real. He heard a strange little whimpering noise as the pain of the needle got worse.

"Am I doing this right?"

"Yes, sir. You're doing fine. Wait two minutes and then give him another two…"

The voices sounded very distant and the pain wasn't so bad now. He opened his eyes to see the liquid going down very slowly, and a strange fuzziness flowing into him, but it seemed to be happening a long way off and to someone else. Every now and then Jack would say a number and Sam would fuss over him. Teal'c would rumble something. Sometimes Daniel would feel fingers brush his hair, or pressing against his neck. Closing his eyes was pointless because people kept tapping him on the cheek and telling him to look up, now look over here, Daniel. A couple of times Sam dazzled him with her flashlight before she went back to having some debate about amounts with Jack.

Apparently Jack wanted to give the 'whole dose'. He was saying something about better to be safe than sorry and no way in hell did they want that pain coming back again. Sam was talking about the dangers of an overdose and saying they didn't have any Naloxone to reverse things if Daniel got into respiratory problems. Daniel had no idea what either of them were talking about as he wasn't in pain and was breathing just fine. They seemed to reach a compromise because finally Jack was taking the needle out again and giving his thigh a brisk rub, shoving the syringe at Sam, pulling Daniel's pants back up, then hauling him up by the jacket so Daniel flopped limply against his chest. He could feel Jack's warmth against his back, his arms holding him, strong fingers taking his pulse at his neck, then his wrist apparently to make doubly sure that Daniel's heart really was still beating the way it was supposed to. Sam told him he'd eaten something he shouldn't – God, Jack was going to be mad at him for doing that, he was always telling him not to – except, no – Jack wasn't mad at him, he was holding him really tightly again and didn't seem to be mad at him at all. His voice was very gentle the way it went sometimes when you least expected it. When you thought he was going to be angry with you for switching off the control on the mirror and losing the connection; or when you pointed a gun at him and…

Jack was telling him he was safe. He still didn't seem to be angry even though Daniel had obviously done something terribly wrong to put that look in Jack's eyes. Jack had been badly frightened, that was obvious, and generally when he'd had a scare he started yelling. Usually at Daniel. Daniel didn't think he could cope with being yelled at right now. Jack had such a loud yell, and that nightmare had been so vivid...Daniel shivered then reminded himself that nothing bad had really happened to him. He was suddenly very tired but this time he felt safe enough to sleep. It had just been a bad dream, and Jack and Sam and Teal'c had been with him the whole time. He hadn't been alone after all.

He felt completely relaxed now, safe but very drowsy. Jack seemed to know that without him needing to tell him because he was lowering Daniel back down onto the blanket, saying, "Just close your eyes and go back to sleep. Everything's going to be okay. Okay?"

Yes, everything was going to be okay. Jack was here, and Sam was here, and Teal'c was here, and it had all just been a bad dream.

"Daniel? Did you hear what I said?"

Daniel gave a little start as Jack said that so sharply it penetrated even the multi-colored clouds wrapping themselves around his brain. He'd obviously forgotten to give Jack the reassurance he was looking for. Poor old Jack. Better tell him everything was going to be okay. Daniel managed to focus on the man long enough to murmur a sleepy, "Okay, Jack," before his eyes closed.

O'Neill let out his breath slowly. His heart rate was beginning to return to normal but he didn't even want to think about where his blood pressure must be at right now. That kind of suppressed rage and stress and fear couldn't be good for the system. And when they were home and safe and Janet Fraiser had checked Daniel out and could reassure him the guy wasn't going to suffer any lasting effects from what those sons-of-bitches had done to him, he was going to take Daniel down to the gym and give him the self defense lesson to end all self defense lessons for what he'd just put them all through. But for the moment, he was just going to cover him up again, sit down beside him and take a few deep breaths.

O'Neill put the back of his hand against the Daniel's cheek to see if his skin felt any warmer. It did. "I think he's definitely coming back to us."

"You were wonderful, sir."

Unused to such unequivocal praise, O'Neill looked at Carter in surprise. Despite the ominous sound from the crying worshippers and the difficulty of their situation, there was joy shining in Carter's face. "And I really think you've saved him."

"I concur with Major Carter," Teal'c nodded. "In which case Daniel Jackson will be the first person to ever survive Shokmar unscathed." There was a hint of surprise mixed in with his approval as he added, "You have done well, O'Neill. I know of no other man who could have brought Daniel Jackson back from such an ordeal."

"Well, without that morphine all the back-rubs in the world wouldn't have done zip." O'Neill got to his feet. "Teal'c, let's you and I go take a look at the situation around the Stargate. Carter, keep an eye on Daniel and if anyone comes near – "

"No one's getting within fifty feet of him, sir."

O'Neill nodded but as he turned away his face broke into a grin and he punched Teal'c on the arm. "He knew who I was. He looked right at me and he said my name. He's going to be okay."

"No thanks to the people of this planet, O'Neill."

Looking at the Jaffa, O'Neill thought as he had so many times in the past that Teal'c was definitely a man it was a million times better to have on your side. And as this appeared to be the only dimension in which he and Teal'c weren't enemies, all he could say was that this was definitely the right dimension to be in.

***

Carter was trying to build up the courage to speak to him; O'Neill knew it. She wasn't generally hesitant about voicing her opinion so it had to be something she was pretty sure he wasn't going to want to hear. Well, no prizes for guessing what that would be.

He'd sent Teal'c off to see if he could overhear any of the words from the frenzied worshippers that might throw some light on their distress. All that wailing, gnashing of teeth and breast-beating had to be about something. Their statue getting totaled? The dead in the temple? If that was the case you'd expect them to be up there trying to help the wounded not all converging around the Stargate like they were expecting a sign from God.

Well whatever she wanted to say to him he wasn't going to help her out.  Determinedly refusing to make eye contact, O'Neill busied himself with checking Daniel's pulse and skin color. "He's looking a lot better. Almost back to normal. In fact this probably is normal for him. How the hell did he manage to keep that fascinating pallor of his when he was living on Abydos, anyway?"

He pushed up the sleeves of Daniel's jacket; damn things were always too long in the sleeves for him. It didn't seem to matter what clothes you put Daniel in, somehow they never seemed to fit, always looked like hand-me-downs from a big brother. But right now that was a good thing because those bruises on Daniel's wrists where he'd been restrained by the priests were a dead giveaway. But thanks to the Air Force only having heard of 'large' and 'extra large' and having no truck with 'medium' with any luck Daniel wouldn't see them. If he did, O'Neill would have to tell him that he'd been thrashing around in his hallucinogenic-berry-induced delirium and he and Teal'c had been forced to restrain him. That might work.

Of course there was the blow to the head, Daniel was going to wake up feeling that, so, okay, better tell him he'd wandered off and some local had clobbered him. That would make sense and would also provide the perfect opportunity to give Daniel the 101-reasons-why-you-should-never-wander-off-on-a-mission-even-if-you-see-something-really-interesting speech. Tell Daniel…what? They hated off-worlders around here? The assailant was going to sell him into slavery? Well, no, just stick with the don't-know-why-he-hit-you-but-he-just-did story, that would probably work the best. If they got really lucky, Daniel might not remember the Shokmar at all so they could drop the poisonous berry motif and just go with the mean local who could have done anything to him if they hadn't arrived in time story. He'd like to edge away from the whole 'bad dream' thing if he could, make Daniel's torture not just something that hadn't happened for real, but that hadn't happened even in his imagination. Ideally, he wanted that whole scene completely obliterated from Daniel's memory. Damn though, if he dropped the berries, that screwed up the 'why you have bruised wrists' story. What was that nifty little homily about 'What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive'? Well, the smartass who'd thought that one up had obviously never had to coax a teammate back from the place where indescribable torture had sent him.

Okay. Daniel had wandered off – no one would have any trouble buying that – and been grabbed by a local who'd knocked him out and tied him up tightly enough to bruise his wrists. Probably a slave-dealer or something. They'd rescued him. End of story. There – simple, plausible and –

A big honkin' lie.

I don't care, he told himself savagely.

Daniel trusts you. He trusts you not to lie to him. Ever.

He trusts me to take care of him too, and that's what I'm doing. I'm making sure Daniel stays who he is. I'm making sure those bastards don't win.

And yes, he knew damned well that Carter wanted to talk and he damned well didn't want to. So, a lot of people had died, so what? They'd tortured Daniel. They could rot in hell for all he cared. No one did that to one of his team.

"Sir?"

"What, Carter?"

"You're not going to want to hear what I'm going to say."

Still not looking at her, O'Neill said easily, "Well don't say it then."

"I have to. Sir, what happened in the temple – "

"Before or after they dragged Daniel in there three-quarters dead from being tortured by them for who knows how many hours?"

"I'm not defending them, Colonel. I think what they did to Daniel was literally indefensible, but I'm not sure that what we did was much better, that's all. We left people dying in there. Human beings like us."

"Not like us, Carter," said O'Neill savagely. "I mean that's the point, isn't it? If they'd been like us there wouldn't have been a problem."

"The same species, sir."

"I'll take your word for it."

"I'd just like to go and see if there's anything I can do for the survivors – "

"Negative, Major." He did look at her then. "We can't afford to split our forces at the moment. I think we've pretty well established that this is a hostile planet, and given what we did to their god these people are probably just itching for a chance to get even. If you should get captured, they'll do the same to you as they did to Daniel and we don't have any morphine left to get you back. So, no, Major, permission denied."

***

He'd been dreaming of something unpleasant. Probably of Jack not believing in him. Waking up in the infirmary with his mind full of memories so vivid it was hard to believe none of them were real, knowing Sha're was dead and the familiar ache of her absence had been painfully intensified into the now open wound of her death. But mixed in with the sorrow had been peace as well. How could there not be when she was at peace? Free of Amaunet at last. Her message safely delivered. She had died knowing he would find her son and keep him safe. She had died telling him she loved him. Now he needed to be worthy of that love…

Daniel blinked and tried to take in his surroundings. Not the infirmary anyway, that was something. The sun was setting to his right, filtering through a thornbush to leave crimson splinters in his eyes. He went to sit up and felt the blood throb alarmingly in his temples. "Jack…?" He looked around for him, easing himself up more slowly as he did so. And yes, there was Jack, looking exactly the way he had in the infirmary. Tense as an overwound watch, eyes full of anxiety but trying to conceal it. Daniel wondered what Jack was worrying about this time. As he sat up he automatically held onto the blanket that was wrapped around his shoulders but looked at it in surprise. "Uh – what happened?"

"How are you doing, buddy?"

"Good, I think." He winced as he moved and pain throbbed in his thigh.

"Does it hurt?" The taut way Jack said it seemed all out of proportion to that minor ache in his leg. Daniel must have done something more than ordinarily stupid to get Jack in such a lather. Except usually when Jack got that look in his eye it was only too obvious what the cause was as soon as Daniel woke up. Usually a whole bunch of aches and pains woke up with him, and when they didn't it was only because he was pumped full of morphine in the infirmary. This time he hardly seemed to have a scratch.

Daniel absently rubbed his thigh. "My leg aches. Did somebody step on me while I was asleep? What happened?" He looked around for Sam, wondering why she had that tense look on her face as well. "Sam?"

"Nothing, Daniel. Nothing happened." Jack said it quickly, darting Sam a glance as he did so.

Sam's voice sounded oddly muffed. "That's right, Daniel. Nothing happened."

Daniel looked at the blanket on which he was lying, the jacket he had been given as a pillow, Teal'c wearing only a t-shirt despite the damp misty air, the other blanket so carefully draped around him. "You just all thought I really needed an afternoon nap?" He picked the jacket up and handed it to Teal'c, making it a question as he said, "Thanks – ?"

Jack reached across and touched Daniel's cheekbone. It hurt. "Ow!" Daniel protested.

"Okay, something happened. You wandered off, someone grabbed you, knocked you out and tied you up. We thought you might have concussion. Incidentally, do you want to tell me your name?"

Daniel frowned at him. "My name? Daniel Jackson."

He couldn't understand the wild flicker of relief in the other man's brown eyes but then Jack was speaking briskly, "Very good. Date of birth?"

"July 8 ^th 1965, but – "

"Excellent, Doctor Jackson. Glad to hear you still have a few brain cells left. Now how many fingers am I holding up?"

Only after he'd made Daniel count fingers, name the last three presidents, and demanded that he said 'No', 'Yes' and 'Death to the Goa'uld!' in seven dead languages of his choice was Jack willing to pronounce him more or less fit. Daniel decided that Jack was definitely getting twitchy in his old age and clearly needed a vacation.

"Well, thanks for rescuing me...I think." Daniel frowned, trying to remember wandering off, being grabbed or being knocked out, but he was getting a big fat blank. The last thing he could remember was Jack bitching about how cold it was.

"You're welcome. Just don't do it again or I'll kill you myself."

Daniel went to smile at Jack's little joke and then saw that Jack wasn't joking. His eyes widened. "Did I screw up the mission?"

"No, Daniel, you didn't, you just got hurt – again. Plus, you scared the shit out of all of us, and it isn't like this was the first time. And – "

"Okay, I got you. And I'm sorry but I really don't remember anything. But whatever it was I did, I promise not to do it again. Except – how do you know it was my fault anyway? Maybe I was just standing there next to you while you complained about Sam and Teal'c looking at the DHD and the guy came up and grabbed me." He looked around at their surroundings for the first time and frowned. "Any particular reason why we're sitting in this – " Daniel pushed a stem of vegetation away from his face, "bramble bush?"

"That would be because the mission has been aborted but the unknown Goa'uld device on the DHD has kicked in, effectively locking out all other commands."

"Like a trip switch in a fuse box?" Daniel gratefully accepted the water bottle Teal'c put into his hand, running his tongue over his lips and wondering why the hell they felt so dry. "So – sorry to keep asking all the obvious questions – but why are we here instead of sitting around the DHD trying to fix it – or at least watching Sam try to fix it?"

"Because half the planet's population is camped around the Stargate."

Daniel pushed back the fronds so he could see for himself. "Oh. Any idea why?"

"None whatsoever."

Daniel handed the water back to Teal'c. "Want me to go see if I can talk to them?"

"No!" They all said it at once, so vehemently he jumped.

Jack said, "Damnit, Daniel, definitely not. This time just stay where you're put and don't wander off."

Daniel felt stung by the injustice. " 'This time'?"

"You're always wandering off. Every planet we arrive on, you wander off, that's all I'm saying, this time – don't."

Daniel thought about repeating his assertion that a) you could count the times when he had what Jack called 'wandered off' on the fingers of one hand, and that anyway there had always been a good reason for it, and that b) they had no evidence that he had wandered off on this trip, but decided to save his breath. When Jack was being this unreasonable there was really no point in arguing with him. Daniel shrugged resignedly. "Can I have my glasses?"

"They are broken." Teal'c handed them to him. "Only the frames were undamaged."

"Great, the part I can't see out of. The only thing worse than being stranded on an alien planet with no way of getting home is being stranded on an alien planet with no way of getting home and no way to get your glasses repaired."

Jack said quietly, "Daniel, take it from me, there are worse things."

Looking at Jack's shadowed eyes, Daniel felt slightly uneasy. As though things were being kept from him. But he still had all his arms and legs and no bits of him were hurting apart from that bruise on his thigh and the bang to his head so it was probably just his imagination. Jack was being a tad jumpy but that could be just the after-effects of Netu. They'd all been a little over-protective of each other since that trip and Daniel knew he'd been as guilty of that as anyone else. Also, Jack never liked any technology glitches because he couldn't repair them himself. He'd calm down in a little while, let Daniel go and talk to those people; Sam would fix the DHD; they'd all go home.

But when he looked across at Jack's haunted expression, Daniel found his optimism draining away. Something was wrong and he had a horrible feeling whatever was wrong might be his fault.

***

O'Neill got up as casually as he could and beckoned to Carter to come with him. "Let's go check out the wailing worshippers again, Major." The moment they were out of Daniel's earshot, O'Neill said, "I want to get him home and have him checked out by Doc Fraiser."

"I think he's fine, sir. Really. You did exactly the right thing. Those people did something to him that it was impossible for his mind – for anyone's mind – to deal with, but first you stopped the pain and then by telling him the torture hadn't happened you gave his subconscious a way to protect Daniel from what had been done to him. That memory will be walled up somewhere so inaccessible in his brain that it would probably take the deepest form of hypnosis to ever access it again. I'm not saying some dim memories of the Shokmar won't ever resurface in his nightmares but apart from that I really think he's going to be okay."

"Okay as long as we can get him the hell away from this place and back home before he starts asking too many difficult questions. As far as he's concerned he feels fine, so any minute he's probably going to suggest we go take a looksee at that damned temple."

"Maybe we should just keep him doped up?" Carter rifled through her vest pockets. "I've got a sedative."

"Keep who doped up?"

O'Neill jumped as Daniel appeared behind them. He was eating a granola bar that seemed to have been in his jacket for a considerable length of time. He offered Carter a bite, which she refused with an emphatic shake of the head. Swallowing, Daniel explained, "Actually these improve with age and for some reason I'm really hungry. Have we got any more food?"

"Blood sugar," Carter murmured to O'Neill. "It probably dropped with the shock. I should have thought of that."

O'Neill fished around in his own jacket and produced a PowerBar. "Here. Don't eat it all at once."

Daniel took it. "Thanks, but I was thinking more along the lines of that macaroni and cheese that tastes like chicken?"

"Daniel, you hate that stuff," Carter put in.

"Well, it's looking good to me right now. That's how hungry I am."

O'Neill looked at him in exasperation. "All the MREs – apart from the things you didn't throw out from the last mission which have been evolving into new life forms in your pockets – are with the equipment, by the DHD, with the wailing worshippers. Eat the PowerBar."

"You know, those people must eat something, they probably know where to get food. If I could just go talk to them – ?"

"No!"

Daniel's turn to jump as they both hissed it at him savagely. He stared at them in disbelief. "What is with you today?"

Idly, O'Neill wondered how he'd managed to go three years without picking Daniel up by the scruff of the neck and shaking him until his teeth rattled. Speaking as clearly as he could, he said, "Okay, Daniel, listen up, because I'm just saying this the once. These are Bad People. They worship a Bad God. They do Bad Things. If you go near them, they will hurt you. Do not go anywhere near them. Don't speak to them. In fact, don't even look at them. Is that understood?"

"You know, Jack, you really ought to get some treatment for that paranoia."

O'Neill turned to Carter. "Do we have any tranquillizer darts with us? Because right about now I'm thinking we should tranq either him or me before I do something I might regret."

Daniel backed up, unwrapping the PowerBar. "Fine. I can take a hint. You don't want me to talk to the locals. I'll just go sit back down with Teal'c and admire the – uh – mist."

Carter watched him go then shook her head. "I can't believe how back to normal he is. My nerves are still twanging like a guitar string. Great – Daniel gets tortured and the rest of us are the ones that need counseling. I swear he must be five eighths rubber ball."

"Well I swear I'm going to start bouncing him off something in a minute if he doesn't keep his head down." Seeing her expression, O'Neill protested, "Oh come on, Major. A kid runs across six lanes of freeway the first time you're just glad to see him make it to the other side in one piece; the second time you really don't appreciate him making you watch it all over again; by the third time you might still want him to dodge the traffic but you're also itching to give him a thick ear." O'Neill deliberately didn't meet her eye as he added quietly, "Look, Daniel may not remember it, but for the rest of my life I'm going to have live with the thought that he was calling out to me to help him while those sons of bitches were torturing him and I couldn't hear him. I didn't get there, Carter. I didn't save him."

"But, Colonel you did."

"Yeah, hours later when he was practically out of his mind. It should never have happened and if I'd ever made him realize that he has to do what he's damned well told, it wouldn't have happened. Well, it's never happening again. From now on Daniel is going to obey orders." Not wanting to discuss it further, he looked back through the binoculars. "Where are all these people coming from?"

"And why are they coming here?" Carter frowned, "It has to be something to do with that device being switched on. Maybe it's a call to arms? Maybe it's pitched at a level that we can't hear but these people can."

"Except these people look human to me."

"I'd really like to know what triggered that device." As he made no attempt to hide his thoughts, Carter said defensively, "Sir, it wasn't me."

"Of course not, Major, the fact it started working exactly six hours after you'd been fiddling about with it is obviously a complete coincidence."

Oh crap, he so knew that expression. It was the same one Daniel wore when he thought people – scratch people and make that him – were being unjust but he was just going to have to put up with it. Great. Now two of his teammates knew how to guilt-trip him.

Carter sighed in resignation. "Well maybe we should concentrate on what it does."

"Well given all the wailing and gnashing of teeth going on over there I'd say it's a big fat thermonuclear device and the Stargate's been locked out so that no one gets off this world alive, and those people know it." As Carter winced at his words, O'Neill looked at her. "Now is the point when you tell me that's not what it is."

"I wish I could, sir, but the truth is I just don't know."

"But you had a look at it, right? Did it look like a bomb to you?"

"Not a bomb as we know it, but with the Goa'uld technology who can tell?"

"Well what did it look like to you?"

"I don't want to speculate with no data – "

"Just this once, Major, indulge me."

"Well, then I thought it looked like a transmitter of some kind."

"Transmitting what? To whom? On this planet? Off World? This dimension? What?"

"I just don't know, sir."

"Jack?"

O'Neill's turn to jump again. He wished Daniel would stop doing that. He turned around to find Daniel halfway through the PowerBar and peering through a pair of binoculars up at the hill. O'Neill gritted his teeth. "What now, Daniel, because in case you hadn't noticed we are kind of busy here?"

"Did you know there's a building up there? It seems to have smoke coming out of it."

"Yeah, we know. It's a ruin."

"It doesn't look ruined. It looks like it could still be in use."

"Trust me on this, Daniel, it's a ruin. We know, we ruined it. Well, actually, Teal'c ruined it. Either way it's definitely ruined now."

"Teal'c razed a whole temple?"

"Well, actually he more kind of lowered it."

Daniel stared at him in evident disbelief before looking back through the binoculars, scanning the hillside. "But why? I mean there could have been worshippers nearby. Was anyone hurt?"

"Damnit, Daniel, don't you ever stop asking questions? Look, I am having a really bad day here and you are really not helping."

Daniel put down the binoculars in surprise. "I'm only asking."

"It's a Jaffa thing, okay? The people who worship that god do bad stuff to the people who worship Apophis. Teal'c was just having a little payback."

"That doesn't sound like Teal'c."

With his eyes closed and a hand pressed to his throbbing head, O'Neill said through gritted teeth, "Daniel, I swear to God if you don't can it I'm going to have to kill you. I don't want to do it and I'll try to do it humanely – smother you or something – but that is definitely what's going to happen if you aren't over there with Teal'c sitting down and shutting up in about thirty seconds flat."

Not offended but clearly a little concerned for him, Daniel gave O'Neill a puzzled frown and as he backed away said in the soothing tone of someone humoring a madman, "Right, I'm going all the way over there to sit with Teal'c – but Jack, have you ever thought you might need a vacation?"

As soon as Daniel was out of earshot, O'Neill opened his eyes. "Carter, any chance of your people solving time travel any time soon, because I would really like there to be a way for this day not to have happened?"

She made a face. "Sir, right now, I just think we're lucky we didn't come here before we went to P7J-989 or the Gamekeeper would probably have made us live this one out on a continuous loop."

Sitting down next to Teal'c, Daniel said, "Jack seems a bit edgy today. Do you think he's been over-doing things?"

Teal'c regarded him impassively, the sunset turning the gold emblem of Apophis on his forehead the color of bronze. "Colonel O'Neill has had much to try him of late. Night will fall soon and while the Stargate is surrounded by the people of this world it is impossible for either Major Carter or myself to attempt to override the Goa'uld device that is interfering with the DHD."

"See, that's exactly why I should go and talk to those people. They might know what that device actually does. They're obviously very frightened of something. If I explained to them that we might be able to help them – "

"Daniel Jackson, you must not do this."

"I just don't see what harm there is talking to them, I mean we've no evidence that they're unfriendly – "

Teal'c reached across and touched Daniel's bruised cheekbone. "Ow!" Daniel put a hand up to his face. "Fine, point taken, but I wish people would stop doing that."

Teal'c continued, "It seems likely that the device was triggered when Major Carter and myself were attempting to ascertain its function. If that is the case then we are to blame for the consequences of its activation. The attitude of the people suggests these consequences may be grave. Given those circumstances – "

"Okay, I get you. But if we're responsible for what's going to happen to these people don't we have some kind of obligation to put it right?" Daniel looked at him hopefully.

Teal'c turned away. "We owe these people nothing."

Daniel gazed at him in surprise. "Well, can you explain it to me? I mean what have they done that's so terrible?"

"They rejoice in the suffering of those who cannot defend themselves. Those who have done them no harm."

Daniel's brow creased with his effort to try to understand. "Do you mean like the arenas of ancient Rome where Christians were fed to lions and everyone came along to watch it like it was a wrestling match? They were different times and there was a different set of moral values in place. We have a very long and dishonorable history of turning out to watch our fellow men being murdered. Um, public hangings always drew a big crowd, so did witches being burnt, or adulteresses being stoned. You pick any era in history and you'll find evidence of the human race at its worst and its best. And we have done some terrible, terrible things to each other in our time, but you can't judge the whole of the twentieth century by the Holocaust, and you can't judge every man, woman and child on this planet on the evidence of – of – whatever it is you're judging them by."

"You do not understand."

"Well then help me to understand?"

"I cannot." Teal'c added impassively, "You should rest now. Give your wound time to heal."

"Wound?" Daniel frowned at him in perplexity, putting a hand up to his face. "You mean this? Teal'c, I've had worse injuries tripping over a curb. I'm perfectly okay. Now I really want to understand what it is these people have done that you think is so unforgivable."

Teal'c rose to his feet. He looked down at the archaeologist and said sternly, "Daniel Jackson, we will speak no more of this."

Feeling as though he had just been reprimanded by a usually benevolent older brother, Daniel gaped at the Jaffa, but Teal'c didn't soften. He walked over to where O'Neill and Carter were still deep in conversation leaving Daniel to shake his head in disbelief. "What is with everyone today?"

***

Daniel had borrowed Sam's night vision goggles to observe the people gathered around the Stargate. To him they looked similar to the people of Abydos, ones whose technology had not been allowed to develop so the vast chasm between their knowledge and that of the one posing as their god would not grow any less. It still enraged him to think of all the millions the Goa'uld had abducted and enslaved over the centuries. The people of Earth had overthrown Ra and won freedom from their parasitic masters, but on countless worlds across incalculable dimensions, the Goa'uld were still disfiguring the lives of billions.

Going by the mark these people had painted on their foreheads – that distinctive high plumed headdress – he guessed the Goa'uld they served must be Anhur, the Egyptian warrior and hunter god. The name seemed oddly familiar and yet he didn't remember having researched him recently. He wondered if Teal'c had mentioned him. That blow to the head was starting to have an effect now and he remembered from past experience how concussion could do that to you; those headaches that slanted in like a stiletto when you moved too fast or thought too much about anything. The thump behind his eyes was making him feel a little odd, dreamlike and disassociated, as though something momentous had occurred which, for some peculiar reason, he couldn't remember.

"Do we have any Tylenol?" he asked of no one in particular, half expecting everyone to jump down his throat again just for speaking out loud. He didn't know why everyone else was so edgy and short-tempered today. If it had just been Jack, he would have thought no more about it, but when even Teal'c started snapping at him he couldn't help feeling that something must be wrong.

When he closed his eyes against the pain in his head, he had a strange memory of hearing Jack's heartbeat, focusing on it as though his life depended on it while his fingers clutched the man's jacket so very tightly; feeling like a child scared of the dark and this the only thing left for him to hang onto. Daniel wondered where the hell that image came from? Perhaps he had a fever. Perhaps he was getting delirious. Perhaps he was getting cross-dimensional shift to some other Daniel Jackson's flashbacks. A Daniel Jackson who was clearly a needy little son-of-a-bitch going by that memory. He wondered if he ought to toss that bone to Jack next time the guy became inexplicably irritable with him – proof positive that a Jack O'Neill in a parallel plane was having an even worse time with his archaeologist than this Jack was with his – worth a try perhaps.

Daniel opened his eyes to find Jack crouched in front of him looking disproportionately anxious. "You okay, Daniel? Have you got a temperature? Where does it hurt?"

As Jack put his hand to Daniel's forehead to test for fever, Daniel said in surprise, "It's just a headache."

"Here, drink this."

It wasn't like Jack to fuss so blatantly, but he was definitely fussing now, mixing up some unspeakable concoction and demanding that he drink it down while Teal'c and Sam clustered around him anxiously. Sam pushed a bottle of Tylenol into his vest pocket, murmuring something about him keeping them 'just in case'. He felt like a baby surrounded by a set of particularly neurotic new parents.

"It's just a headache," Daniel repeated, bewildered by their attitude. He wondered if the others really needed a psych evaluation. Makepeace had told him more than once that his total inability to look after himself was probably giving the rest of SG-1 stomach ulcers. At the time he'd just thought Makepeace was being – well…Makepeace. He'd always thought of himself as someone who was reasonably good at looking after himself, just by a slightly different route from the one the others might have taken. Now he wondered if the marine had a point, and the strain of his lack of military skills was giving his teammates a nervous breakdown. He looked around at their anxious expressions. "Guys, really, it's a slight headache. In fact, it’s not even that bad now. I think it's going."

"You'd better go lie down again."

"Jack, please, I'm fine."

Daniel was too surprised to protest when he was unceremoniously shoved down and told to stay where he was put, get some sleep, and stop arguing for crying out loud. Daniel blinked in disbelief, saying mildly, "Are you sure you're okay?"

When Jack wheeled on him in what looked very like anger, Daniel almost flinched. Jack began, "Damnit, Daniel, I am just about ready to – "

"What?" He was really unnerved now. "What is it I'm supposed to have done? What are you angry about? Why are you being so unreasonable?"

" 'Unreasonable' ? Look, you wandered off, got yourself knocked out. You could have been killed because you wouldn't just do what you were told. You never do what you're damn well told!"

"Well in the real world 'doing what you're told' isn't something you expect to still be doing much after you go through puberty. I'm not in the military. I'm not used to obeying orders. I never went through – Basic Training or whatever it is you soldier-types do – I don't expect to – Good God what happened to those people?"

Daniel sat up, staring in dismay at the people straggling down from the smoking temple, the bloodstained robes of the wounded, the unnerving limpness of those being carried, the terrible pallor of shocked faces intersected by dried trails of red. It was like the aftermath of an earthquake he'd once witnessed in Egypt; only a minor tremor according to the reports, but enough to make houses crumple into crevices, taking their inhabitants with them.

He'd felt it ripple through the site, lazy as the swish of a Nile crocodile's tail, but the epicenter had hit two miles away across the shimmering sands; the town of baked white houses and spice-scented markets from which their workers had come. He remembered running and running through the burning sand to try and reach the survivors, the diggers beside him overtaking him and every one of them knowing it would already be too late, the deed already done, the dead already dead, as the echoes faded into that moment of terrible silence before the wailing started. So much blood. It was the first time he'd ever realized how much blood there was in the human body; how terrible was the sound of people scrabbling as they suffocated while you dug and dug like a madman but knew you weren't going to reach them before the air ran out…

When a hand closed on his arm like a manacle shutting fast he couldn't work out what it was; tugging against it blindly in his automatic desire to go forward and offer these poor people what help he could. It took him a moment to realize there was definite resistance, something physically holding him back, but he was still astonished when he turned to find that it was Jack's fingers gripping his arm so tightly his knuckles were white.

Daniel stared at him in disbelief. "Jack? We have to help these people."

He waited for Jack to sigh in exasperation and tell him that of course they had to help these people and they were going to but first they had to…something or other to do with military procedure, and he'd already decided he wasn't even going to argue it if that would get things moving faster, but instead Jack said, "No, we don't."

Daniel's eyes widened in disbelief. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we don't have to help these people."

Daniel made to pull his arm free but the fingers just tightened. Daniel winced in pained surprise; it was like having steel claws digging into his skin, what the hell was with Jack today? "Jack?" Another tug didn't loosen his grip either and Daniel realized with a sense of shock that Jack was hurting him; holding him so tightly he was actually hurting him.

O'Neill realized it in the same instant Daniel did. Although he could have argued against helping the people who had poured into that temple to rejoice in witnessing someone blameless first paraded as a tortured husk and then butchered at the altar; could have argued that no trouble at all, the shock in Daniel's blue eyes at being hurt by him dissolved his grip like boiling water on an ice sculpture.

As O'Neill abruptly released him, Daniel continued to stare at him, not just shocked now, incredulous as well. Daniel glanced back at the people and then looked from O'Neill to Teal'c, finally taking in their impassive faces, their determinedly defiant expressions. He backed up. "I don't know what's got into you, but we have to help these people. Sam?"

She shot O'Neill a beseeching glance and he caved, shrugging helplessly, "Oh for crying out loud, go with him if you want to."

And, of course, after what had happened earlier, there was no way he was letting Daniel move more than ten feet away from him, so if Daniel was going among these damned people that meant he and Teal'c were too, but one day soon he was going to teach Daniel to obey orders. Get Mackenzie to try some of that hypnotic suggestion against a background of mood music and see if that didn't work, or play Daniel a tape while he was asleep that told him everything Jack O'Neill said should be agreed with without question. There had to be some method by which Daniel could be persuaded to do what he was damned well told. Except, of course, he didn't want Daniel to obey him without question, he wanted Daniel to use that brain of his to come up with different strategies than this Air Force colonel could think of, but he also wanted Daniel not to keep coming up with plans that got Daniel hurt. And one day he was going to think of a method to get the benefit of the first without the disadvantage of the second. One day.

Even when the worshippers screamed and scattered like sheep surprised by a wolf as Teal'c strode amongst them, Daniel didn't manage to do the math. O'Neill knew he was going to, because although Daniel had moments of surprising denseness, he was generally way too clever for his own good. So Daniel was going to work out what these people were crying out; why they were throwing themselves on their knees in supplication or gathering up their wounded and trying to run away; but for the moment Daniel wasn't quite there yet, so the rest of them had a tiny respite in which to try and head off Daniel from colliding with a memory that could snap his mind like a frozen cobweb.

"No, it's all right. We won't hurt you…Teal'c isn't in the service of Apophis any longer, he's a good man…" Daniel turned to Carter and shrugged helplessly. "I can't seem to get through to anyone."

It looked like some chapter from the Bible had got up and walked. People in ragged blood-spattered robes holding up their hands in supplication to the Stargate, pleading for mercy they already knew they weren't going to receive. The mist swallowed the stragglers, putting damp jewels in everyone's hair, sucking color from the scene until everyone and everything came only in different shades of grey. Everywhere he looked O'Neill saw fear and suffering. These people were terrified and many of them were injured; the consequences of that moment when Teal'c had blasted the statue of Onuris so they could snatch Daniel back from his torturers revealed in every crushed limb and blood-weeping wound.

O'Neill wasn't sure he cared. He could still feel the anger inside him and right now it didn't feel like it was ever going to fade. Those priests had tortured Daniel for no reason, and these people would have rejoiced in watching him die even though he'd never done them even a second's harm. It was difficult to mourn the loss of men with that mentality. Hard not to feel the universe could probably spare them. At the moment he was much more worried about Daniel managing to communicate with these guys and what the consequences would be for his presumably very fragile psyche. The last thing he wanted was for Daniel to remember one second of what those sons-of-bitches had put him through, but if he found a way to talk to these people…

Looking across at Daniel, trying so gently to persuade one of the wounded to communicate with him, O'Neill felt a fist tighten around his heart. Daniel was doing that thing of putting a hand to his chest and saying his name so invitingly while smiling in a way that would surely banish anyone's fear. He was going to find a way to talk to one of the locals. It was what Daniel did.

Carter darted a quick glance at O'Neill. "Colonel…?"

Yes, Carter, reading you loud and clear. They were heading for inevitable disaster here and they all knew it, but what was the alternative? Daniel was a man with very clear ideas of his own, he wasn't going to walk away from a lot of wounded people just because O'Neill told him to, but sooner or later one of these wailing locals was going to mention the word 'Shokmar' and then…He grimaced. "I'm open to suggestions, Major."

Carter shrugged helplessly, clearly having nothing to suggest. When she looked enquiringly at the wounded, he sighed and waved a hand. Let her help them if she wanted to, at least that way she might be able to interrupt before Daniel learned something that would hurt him. With his MP-5 still tightly gripped in his arms, O'Neill watched Carter catch up with Daniel. She was trying to help him coax people back so they could help them while the injured screamed and wailed and made signs in the air to try to ward off the devils who had come to wreak their vengeance upon them.

It was getting harder and harder not to feel guilty. It was the Black Ops O'Neill who'd watched those priests get crushed beneath that fallen statue in the temple and felt hardly more than a twinge of remorse, and it was that O'Neill he wanted to be right now. He didn’t want to care that these people who would have sat there and watched Daniel have his throat cut or his heart torn out to appease their damned god, were wounded and frightened, that some of them were cradling loved ones who were dead or dying in their arms. He wanted to walk right past them all and not even give a damn.

He turned to look at Teal'c and saw the same misgivings in the Jaffa's eyes. Daniel had no idea what this was like. Daniel might think he'd done some bad things in his time, but Daniel didn't know what bad things were. Daniel's bad things came under the guise of being a little thoughtless, or making an unkind remark, or having a moment's selfish abstraction. Daniel didn't know the kind of memories he and Teal'c had to live with every day; the stuff they'd seen and done, and not prevented, or been a part of, however unwillingly. He certainly didn't know how it felt to think that there was a part of yourself you'd done with forever and then find it was alive and well within you still, just waiting for a chance to taste some more blood.

He knew Teal'c had done worse than he had, because the United States Military certainly wasn't up there with Apophis. Teal'c had served a monster so it was a fair bet to say he'd been a part of some fairly monstrous things, and now all their Halloweens were coming back to haunt them. And part of him really wanted to blame Daniel for this. And, oh Christ, don't tell him that was a child that woman was carrying, and what kind of woman would have taken a child to see a man murdered anyway? Their fault. Keep making it their fault, the people you'd wronged, it was the only way to get through something like this. Remind yourself that child might have grown up to be a priest who tortured innocents, that these people were the enemy, all of them, actual or potential, present, past, or future. And that guy's arm looked like it had been trapped in a meat-mincer, and there was so much blood around here. And how could anyone think with all this wailing and sobbing going on?

"O'Neill," Teal'c's hand closed on his arm. "Are you unwell?"

He collected himself. "I'm fine. Just worried about Daniel."

"What are you intending to tell him?"

"I have no idea."

Daniel was darting from person to person, attempting to comfort them. He had his medical kit open and was trying to persuade the wounded to let him look at their injuries. Carter was doing the same thing. They had nothing like enough medical equipment for this many wounded, but they were doing their best and Daniel was getting through to them. O'Neill had been afraid of that. No one could see the compassion spilling in those blue eyes, hear the gentleness of that tone, and think Daniel was an avenger. He was kneeling in the mud beside a man who'd been trying to drag himself across the ground to get away from him, but Daniel had managed to convince him that he only wanted to help, and –

Shit, shit, shit! They were communicating. A lot of sign language and Daniel repeating words then drawing pictures on the ground but they were definitely holding a kind of conversation, working out those variations of regional pronunciation so that they could have a full and frank exchange. Other people were daring to come back, edging toward Carter and Daniel. O'Neill raised his MP-5 in readiness in case anyone started getting nasty, but these people were more like incredulous, some of them tentatively reaching out to touch Daniel's jacket. The crying and wailing was turning into recognizable speech. Speech Daniel was trying to decipher. Speech containing the word 'Shokmar'. Teal'c and O'Neill exchanged a glance and then started running.

"Daniel – ! O'Neill slammed on the brakes breathlessly.

Daniel held up a hand. "Just a minute, Jack." He turned back to the man. "You said 'shokmar'? I don't know this word, what is 'shokmar'?"

But the injured man was gazing up at O'Neill and Teal'c in horror, raising his hands to ward them off. Daniel looked over his shoulder at them and sighed impatiently. "Jack, will you say something reassuring?"

O'Neill shrugged, keeping his face a careful blank. "What would be the point? They don't speak English."

Carter came over, wiping her hands, blood spattered on her uniform from tending to someone's wounds. "Have they told you anything, Daniel?" She kept her voice carefully non-committal.

Daniel sat back on his heels. "Well they keep calling Jack and Teal'c 'avengers' and they keep calling me 'one who has endured' or 'one who has survived' and then this 'shokmar' word that I don't know. I'm guessing it's something to do with 'gate travel, but I don't know why they're not applying it to all of us. I mean we're all dressed the same so I would have thought it was obvious we all got here the same way." He looked around at the Jaffa. "Teal'c, do you know this 'shokmar' word?"

Teal'c said carefully, "I doubt that it has anything to do with the Stargate. As you pointed out, that would apply to all of us."

A young woman came up, looked at Daniel and then clasped a hand to her mouth before sending up a cry of disbelief and astonishment. "Tew! Tew Setepen!"

Daniel frowned and turned to look up at her. She was beckoning frantically to others and those already clustered nearby were nodding and pointing at Daniel as well.

O'Neill said quietly to Teal'c, "Okay, what's happening now?"

"They are referring to Daniel Jackson as – "

Daniel was shaking his head in confusion. "Wait, I don't understand. 'The one who has been selected'? Selected for what? By whom?"

"Not the 'one who has been selected', Daniel Jackson," said Teal'c quietly. " 'The Chosen One.' "

"Chosen One?"

Daniel's astonishment was only matched by O'Neill's. Then the older man's fingers tightened around his MP-5 and he pulled Teal'c a little way out of earshot, whispering rapidly: "They're calling him that because Daniel was chosen for sacrifice? Because he was supposed to die in the temple?"

"No, O'Neill. The phrase they were repeating before was 'The One Who Has Survived Shokmar'. You must remember that to survive Shokmar and emerge unscathed is impossible – or at least in these people's culture it is considered to be impossible."

Carter appeared so quietly at his elbow that O'Neill jumped when she said thoughtfully, "So, to these people, Daniel walking among them unhurt and in his right mind is like a – miracle."

"Indeed."

"Just hold on a minute. You're saying that they're calling Daniel the 'Chosen One' like we might call someone a – god or something?"

"To these people, O'Neill, Daniel Jackson walking among them unscathed is comparable with the story in your Earth Bible which tells of Lazarus and his resurrection from death."

"This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?"

"Yes, but they're acting like this is a story they already know." Carter turned and looked at the people again. "I don't think Daniel just surviving Shokmar would cause this kind of reaction. They might be astounded but I think they'd also be hostile, wonder what kind of bad magic we'd used to get him back, but they're not – they're acting as if they were almost expecting this."

O'Neill looked across at his bewildered teammate, who was now surrounded by a growing group of locals who were tentatively reaching out to touch his hair or clothes. Oh great, this was like that scene on Abydos where the people had clustered around Daniel to bid him farewell. He didn't want to think of these people like Skaara and Kasuf. These were the enemy. These were bad people who hurt good people who'd done them no harm for no reason. Those were the men he and Teal'c had left groaning and bleeding in that temple, not these.

"Jack?"

He turned round to find Daniel looking at him with one of his little frowns denting his forehead.

"Yes?" O'Neill said wearily.

"You don't look so good."

"Just getting too old for this shit."

"What?"

Christ! Had he said that aloud? O'Neill collected himself quickly, "I mean – it's been a long, bad day, and it just seems to keep getting longer and badder."

"That's what they're calling it too. A herew bin." Daniel waved a hand to encompass the people still cradling their wounded, or plucking curiously at his clothes. "Which seems to be like what we might call a Dies irae or a Dies nefastus."

"Which would be what I would call – ?" O'Neill prompted.

"Um – a really bad day, Jack."

O'Neill closed his eyes, wishing everyone would just shut the hell up. Some of them were repeating the same thing over and over, about ten words, none of which he recognized; others had one phrase they kept saying; and at the same time 'Shokmar' kept being murmured but he couldn't work out which of them were whispering it, like something rustling in the grass you could never find even when you shone your flashlight right where it had been a second before. Like Mass; all those words in a language you didn't understand which nevertheless made you think of all your sins.

God, he hadn't been to Mass in so many years, decades even. He'd been dragged along there a couple of times when staying with his grandmother and had damned near died of boredom. So how come he could still remember the scent of incense, remember the rustling of prayer books, the smoke from candles burning for the departed? The sound of words he'd never known the meaning of; just something you said and kept saying and then suddenly, one day, no longer said, and thought that you'd forgotten. Dies irae, dies illa…

O'Neill sat down on a tump of grey stone and took off his cap, running a hand through his hair to feel something familiar against his fingers. He couldn't even remember now what color his hair had been ten years ago. He couldn't remember who he'd been ten years ago. Someone with a son and blood on his hands. Now he was someone without a son and with blood on his hands, but for a while there he'd felt clean again. Had Charlie's blood washed all the other blood away? He'd felt reborn when he came back from Abydos, to nothing and no one, to an empty house and an inexplicable optimism, a hope that came from knowing there was so much more Out There than he'd ever dreamed of. Perhaps that year he'd spent looking outward had given all the sores inside himself time to heal, because the next time he'd dared to look within himself it had felt like a cleaner better place than he remembered it.

" Dies irae, dies illa,

Solvet saeclum in favilla,

Teste David cum Sibylla."

"Jack?"

O'Neill gave himself a shake and jerked his head up to find Daniel looking at him anxiously. The sun was going down behind the hill, turning the temple the color of blood, gilding Daniel's hair so he had a nimbus of red-gold around him. Damnit. He didn't want Daniel looking like a saint. Saints were only saints because they'd died a horrible death for their faith. Daniel was looking really worried now. He couldn't read his mind, could he?

"What?" O'Neill demanded roughly.

"You were speaking Latin."

"Don't be silly, Daniel. I don't know any Latin."

Daniel bit his lip, blue eyes filled with concern. "That's why I'm worried. Is it the language of the Ancients coming back? Does your head hurt? Do you know who you are?"

No, Daniel, I have no idea who I am and neither do you… He had to start acting more like himself and quickly. Jack pulled his cap back on. "Just something from my – You never went to Mass on All Souls' Day?"

"No, I never – Wait – Dies irae, dies illa: 'That day, the day of wrath/Will turn the universe to ashes/As David foretells and the Sibyl also.' You were saying a prayer for the dead?"

O'Neill couldn't bring himself to meet the younger man's gaze. "What? I can't do that?"

"Is O'Neill unwell?"

"Daniel, is the colonel okay?"

Now Daniel was shielding him from Teal'c and Carter. He could hear him murmuring to them soothingly, "No, it's all right, it's just a tradition we have on this world, Teal'c. All Souls Day, it's the day following Halloween. It came about when a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land took refuge on an island during a storm. He met a hermit who told him that among the cliffs on the island was an opening to the infernal regions where one could see the flames ascending and hear the groans of the Damned. The pilgrim told what he'd heard and seen to Odilo of Cluny, an abbot, who appointed the day following All Hallow's Eve to be set aside for prayers for those souls in purgatory. Jack's fine. It's not the Ancients' language, it's just a – a prayer for the dead."

See, he hadn't known any of that. He hadn't even known what those words meant, he'd just known they were something you offered up for those who had sinned and were suffering. He hadn't even known if he was saying them for the people here or for himself. Maybe Daniel could tell him that as well.

"O'Neill does not generally say prayers."

"Yeah well, Jack doesn't usually have people waving their dead and dying in his face, Teal'c. Just – give him a minute."

It should have been him shielding Daniel from this; should have been Daniel sitting here with the nausea churning in his guts and O'Neill protecting him, telling Daniel it was going to be okay, everything was going to be okay. When had it happened that Daniel started protecting him ? Oh yes, that was right, from the beginning. From the moment Daniel had leapt in front of him and got himself killed…

O'Neill shivered and got to his feet. "I'm fine, Daniel."

"You sure?"

They were clustering around Daniel again. If he didn't stick close to him, they were going to enfold him and carry him off, but sticking close to Daniel meant being near to them and he hated that idea. Jack set his teeth as tentative hands reached out again, some of them had wounds on them, others had bloodstains. They were clutching at the edge of Daniel's jacket, tugging at his sleeves, a few of the braver ones reaching for his hands. Daniel was murmuring soothing things to them all, trying Egyptian and English: "I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not him…ne ne tew setepen…not the one chosen." Daniel looked to Teal'c for assistance. "They're speaking a variant dialect, Teal'c, and I'm having a lot of trouble with it. I'm trying to learn their vowel sounds but I'm not sure they're understanding what I'm saying."

As Teal'c came closer, the crowd gave off gasps and cries of fear. Daniel quickly reached out to touch the Jaffa on the shoulder. "Ne ne kheftey. Khenmes. Not an enemy. A friend." He patted Teal'c gently on the arm, "Khenmes." Out of the side of his mouth, Daniel murmured, "Jack, would you come over here and smile, please?"

O'Neill and Teal'c exchanged another glance and then O'Neill unwillingly took a step closer. Daniel reached across, caught him by the sleeve and towed him right into that morass of suffering and wounded, then touched him gently on the chest, saying, "Khenmes. Khenmes nefer."

"What did you just tell them I was?" O'Neill tried to repress another wave of nausea as he smelt unwashed bodies and fear much too close to him.

"Well, it's not a very exact language, and these people are speaking a variant of it I don't fully understand so I just told them you were a – a handsome friend, which is as close as I can get to saying you're a good man given the limited vocabulary I have to work with."

" 'Handsome friend' is probably more accurate. I can live with that."

Daniel shot him a withering look before patting O'Neill on the chest again and addressing the ragged wounded encouragingly: "Seshmewen. Seshmewen."

O'Neill frowned as the people backed up shaking their heads. "They didn't seem to like that so much."

"I told them you were our leader. At least I hope I did."

The wounded were going back to their muttering and wailing again and O'Neill glowered. "Damnit, Daniel, these people are giving me a headache."

He saw one man with a crushed hand scrabbling pitifully at Daniel, his broken fingers pawing at Daniel's leaving a crimson trail. "Don't!" O'Neill shuddered in revulsion, and pushed the man away. "Don't get blood on him."

"Jack?" He collected himself to find Daniel staring at him in bewilderment. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Carter coming over to them saved him having to answer and he was frankly glad of the reprieve. Daniel automatically pointed at Carter and murmured soothingly, "Khenemset. Friend."

As the people began their horrible chanting again, closing back in around Daniel like waves around a rock, O'Neill pulled back out of the crowd and turned to Teal'c. "Are you getting anything they're saying?"

"They think we are not human."

O'Neill's jaw tightened. "You mean 'inhuman'?"

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "No, O'Neill. They think we are avatars, come to avenge and protect the Chosen One from the wrath of the False God and his followers."

O'Neill stared at him blankly. "They – what? We – what? What?"

Daniel was saying, " 'Hunay-nadar?' I don't know this phrase…Wait, you mean hewet-nejer? The temple? Many – henay? Hedi? Hedi? Many – wounded? Met? Many dead? Tjen? Where? Up there? In the temple?" He pointed up the hill. "Hewet-nejer? Er-hur im? The temple? Up there? Hedi er-hur im?"

The wounded were all chattering at him like squirrel monkeys, waving their arms and telling him everything at once. How the hell did Daniel manage to make sense of it all? But he would, that was the problem, he would make sense of it eventually.

O'Neill had known this moment was coming and he needed a strategy to deal with it. Now. That was what he did, after all, found strategies to cope with difficult situations. That was all he did. He didn't understand how the 'gate worked that got them where they were going, and half the time he couldn't speak to the people they met when they got there. He didn't understand the mentality of the Goa'uld, or the science by which they maintained their show of divinity; but he was the leader because when a situation like this came along, he had a strategy ready with which to avert the crisis, to keep his team safe. Except he didn't. Not this time. All he had this time was the smell of blood in his nostrils, the memories of screams in his ears, and a lot of words he'd never believed in repeating in his mind like a child's lullaby playing over and over on a broken music box.

"We need to go to the temple."

Daniel was looking at him expectantly while someone's blood dried on the front of his jacket. And here was the moment when he needed to have that strategy ready. A convincing reason why Daniel shouldn't go and tend to the dead and dying he and Teal'c had left there under chunks of broken stone.

"Jack?" Daniel was getting impatient now. "There are people still trapped up there. I can't understand a lot of what they're saying because they keep saying 'tewet': that the 'tewet' brought down the other 'tewet' which I can't make any sense out of and then something about a False God. But there definitely seem to be people still trapped under the rubble so I think we need to get up there right away and see what we can do for the survivors."

"No." He didn't know where it had come from, and he'd been kind of hoping that when it arrived it might have a plausible reason accompanying it, the way hoodlums wrapped a note around a brick before they threw it through someone's window. But it was a start.

Daniel raised his eyebrows, evidently not quite trusting his ears. "I'm sorry – ? Did you say...?"

"I said 'no', Daniel. And I meant it." He hardly recognized his own voice. It was a flat, dead tone he'd certainly never used to Daniel before, but at least the words were coming now. "In case you've forgotten, we're trapped on an alien planet because in the time it took to go and get you back from where you'd let yourself get taken, the DHD stopped working. Now my first priority is to secure our escape and that means we don't go anywhere or do anything until Carter and Teal'c have managed to fix the DHD so we can get out of here."

And there had been a time, what, maybe two, certainly three years ago, when that might have done it: cold eyes, sharp tone, sound really definite, he'll flounce a bit but he'll probably cave. Not any more. This Daniel wasn't having any of it. This Daniel pursed up his mouth and then said, "That's fine, Jack. And while Sam and Teal'c are fixing the DHD, you and I can – "

"We can guard them while they work, Daniel, the way one does with one's teammates." Nasty. Below the belt. Imply that Daniel wasn't a team player. That would get to him because there had been a time when Daniel hadn't been a team player. And yes he was playing dirty but Daniel's sanity was hanging in the balance here. So was their friendship. But he could get that back as long as he went over to Daniel's place with a case of cookies, a six pack of really good beer, and did enough groveling. Told Daniel he was sorry about biting his head off but it had been his wedding anniversary or the wailing worshippers and their wounded had reminded him of something that happened back in Nicaragua or whatever. He'd throw himself on Daniel's mercy and Daniel would forgive him. What he couldn't get back with some fast talking, beer, and imported candy was Daniel's sanity if that temple took it from him a second time.

Anyone else would have probably said 'Screw you' and walked off but Daniel had an unshakeable conviction that reason worked better than either bullets or insults. He took a deep breath and then said, as reasonably as O'Neill had feared, "I understand that, Jack. But I'm sure Teal'c could guard Sam while she worked on the DHD, and in the meantime you and I could go up there and just see if there's anything we can do for the – "

"No, Daniel. That is not an option." He hated the sound of his own voice. How dead and angry it seemed. As though he didn't even like the person he was talking to. As though Daniel had never been and never would be anything other than a nuisance to him. He remembered the comforting warmth of Daniel's body against his in the tel'tak. Daniel telling O'Neill he granted him absolution for anything that might happen to him on a mission; remembered Daniel shouldering his weight in Netu. Remember him screaming your name as they tortured him and you didn't come for him. Yes. Daniel shuddering with terror and clinging to him like he was driftwood, and Daniel the last survivor from a shipwreck…

"I'm not arguing with you, Jack. You want to stay here, you go right ahead, and while you're doing it, I'm going to the temple."

"No, you're not!" He snapped it out and suddenly there was silence. No wailing, no chittering, no moaning, no crying. Hushed expectancy as the purple dusk fell around them, sucking the last of the color from the sky.

Daniel was half turned away from him but he saw the muscle in the younger man's jaw clench and tighten. Daniel didn't like arguments very much but he wasn't going to back down. He knew he was right and when Daniel knew he was right you couldn't shift him with anything less emphatic than a length of two by four around the back of the head, and even then it only worked for as long as he was unconscious. Not looking at him, Daniel said quietly but very precisely, "I'm going to the temple."

O'Neill caught Daniel by the shoulder and spun him around to face him. "If I have to lay you out I will, but you are not going up there."

Daniel stared back at him in exasperation. "There are people dying!"

"I don't care."

Daniel gritted his teeth. "You said it was Teal'c who destroyed the temple. Is that true? Did you do this when you were looking for me? Did you know there were people wounded up there and just leave them?"

"You're not going to that temple, Daniel." He said it as quietly and precisely as Daniel had done, giving each word a little more space around it than usual, like rain drops dripping into a tin mug.

"Jack, I don't even know who you are right now. I'm looking at you and I have no idea who I'm talking to."

"You're talking to someone who's not letting you go to that temple." O'Neill grabbed Daniel by the jacket and began to drag him back towards the DHD.

He was aware of Teal'c and Carter hovering and he knew their loyalties were split straight down the middle, that he couldn't rely on them to back him up here. They wanted Daniel kept safe as much as he did but he'd just crossed a line they wouldn't have. He couldn't think of any set of circumstances under which Teal'c would manhandle Daniel, and there was a big question mark over how long Teal'c would stand there and let him manhandle Daniel.

Daniel wrenched himself loose and faced him in angry confusion. "If you're going to hit me, you go right ahead. Knock me out. But when I wake up you're going to have to hit me again. And again. Because as soon as you stop hitting me I am going up there to try to help those people."

For one crowded second, O'Neill thought he could do it. His fingers tensed and his right hand formed the fist he was going to need to get this job done. He saw Daniel try not to flinch in readiness because Daniel had experienced a right hook from Jack O'Neill before and knew how much it hurt. But then O'Neill realized that whatever his hand might be doing about getting ready to hit Daniel there was no will to accompany it. Under the influence of the Touched virus he'd been capable of pounding Daniel senseless. Standing here in the mist with the sun going down and the echo of Daniel screaming his name still ringing in his ears, he just wasn't. He saw Daniel read it in his eyes, saw him sag a little in relief. Damn it – now they both knew he wasn't capable of carrying out his threat.

He wasn't quite ready to give up on his plan yet, though. O'Neill turned to his teammates, jerked a thumb at the linguist and said, "Teal'c – hit Daniel."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow and gave O'Neill a look that told him very plainly that hell would freeze over first.

O'Neill gave Carter a hopeful glance but she emphatically shook her head. "Not a chance, sir."

"You can shoot him instead if you like, I don't mind."

"No, sir."

Sighing, O'Neill let his hands fall to his sides, shrugging, defeated. "Okay, Daniel, you win. We'll all go."

The relief on his face unmistakable, Daniel just nodded. "Fine."

O'Neill had hoped they could shake off the wailing worshippers for this trip, but they all seemed to have decided that wherever Daniel went was the place they had to be. As they made their way back up the hillside towards the temple for the second time that day, SG-1 were escorted by a large group of the indigenous population. The same group who had made that trip to the temple to watch Daniel killed, now apparently all eagerness to see him return to the place of his torture for a reason O'Neill couldn't even guess at. But he couldn't pretend they seemed to mean Daniel any harm; they were looking at him with a mixture of hope and reverence that certainly contained no hostility. They were acting as though they'd been waiting for his arrival for a long time, but if that was the case then why had they been so happy to watch him murdered earlier? No one had uttered a word of protest when Daniel had been dragged in half-dead, yet they seemed genuinely pleased by his – resurrection. Even remembering these were people from a different culture and, as Daniel was always telling him, you had to make allowances for cultural differences, he still thought their actions and reactions made no sense whatsoever.

They were still murmuring something about 'Shokmar', and calling Daniel something which even he now recognized was their version of 'The Chosen One'. Many of them were injured, of course, so were struggling painfully after SG-1, while even the more able-bodied were clearly torn between the magnetic attraction Daniel seemed to hold for them, and the fear the sight of Teal'c and O'Neill caused them. Carter, by comparison, seemed to command a tender respect. The people were gazing at her with a kind of fond wonder. The way his grandmother had used to look at that statue of the Virgin Mary in that old Catholic Church. O'Neill cleared his throat and murmured to Teal'c, "Any idea what the hell is going on around here?"

Teal'c gave him an imperturbable sideways glance. "We are accompanying Daniel Jackson to the temple of Onuris to assist in the relief of the wounded, O'Neill."

O'Neill gave him a very narrow look in return. "And that's your way of telling me – what? I shouldn't have physically laid hands on Daniel because that wasn't 'respectful' enough? Or I shouldn't have given into him and agreed to let him come back here? Which is it? Either? Both? Because I don't remember getting a lot of back-up down there from either you or Carter."

"Sir, I just don’t think that yelling at Daniel – "

"I was not 'yelling' at him, okay? I may have raised my voice a fraction, but I was definitely not yelling at him. And you two do know what going back to that temple could do to him, don't you?"

"Even so, O'Neill – "

O'Neill held up a finger. "Don't 'even so' me, Teal'c. Yes, in a perfect world, I would treat Daniel with consideration at all times, I would never lay an angry hand upon him, I would never raise my voice to him, but this isn't a perfect world, and this especially isn't a perfect planet, and I'm damned certain this isn't a perfect situation. Now, I'm sorry if I got a little short with him but I think saving his life and his sanity might be just a hair more important than hurting his feelings."

Carter said quietly, "Except you did hurt his feelings, sir, and we're still going to the temple."

"Okay – you spotted the flaw in my plan."

Looking around he wondered where the torches had come from. SG-1 had their flashlights and there was something comforting about those clean slices of bluish-white light, but the locals had gone for the fire-on-a-stick approach and looked like they were off on a witch- hunt.

He caught up with Daniel; the locals moving away from him as though he and they were aligned to the same magnetic pole, leaving a path clear to his teammate. O'Neill fell into step beside Daniel and risked a sideways glance at the younger man's face.

Oh boy, O'Neill thought . That was not a happy expression. That was Daniel's best pursed-mouth-narrowed-eyes screw-you-Jack look. At least O'Neill always thought of it as his screw-you-Jack look because he'd certainly never seen it directed at anyone else. Daniel might be slow to anger and near impossible to provoke to violence but when Daniel was cold-shouldering you, iceboxes felt warmer than his company. It had taken Daniel a while to work out that this was the best way to get to him but unfortunately over the last year or so they'd both learned that being frozen out by Daniel was definitely the thing he hated most. He'd found that out after he and Daniel had disagreed over the Harsesis child of Amaunet's when Daniel had struck him right off his conversation list and could always find a good reason to be leaving a room he was entering. Having your best friend suddenly decide that you were about as welcome in his life as a leper had not been a fun experience, and no way in hell was he going through that again.

"Daniel?"

Still the screw-you-Jack look. "Yes?" And that wasn't exactly the most inviting tone he'd ever heard either.

"I'm sorry."

Daniel darted him a wary glance, tone crisp, unforgiving: "For what?"

"Um – yelling at you, grabbing you, threatening to hit you, telling Teal'c to hit you, asking Carter to shoot you. Did I miss anything out?"

"Acting like a total maniac from the minute I woke up?"

That hurt. The circumstances were definitely mitigating and Daniel was so damned sure he was right. Suck it up, O'Neill, if you don't do it now you'll only have to do it later and he'll be even sulkier then. He sighed. "I'm sorry. I thought we'd lost you. I got scared."

Well that had certainly got rid of the screw-you-Jack look; now Daniel looked like he had in Netu when he'd first seen Carter's father half-dead in the corner, like the world was dissolving slowly around his ears. Daniel darted him another sideways glance, trying to read if he was sincere. He evidently decided he was because he looked even more upset. "I'm sorry too then. I didn't mean to scare you. I just…" Daniel bit his lip. "I didn’t know who you were back there, Jack."

"I was who I used to be."

"What?"

Great now he had Daniel upset and confused. "Daniel, you have to know I did a lot of stuff before I met you that I'm not very proud of."

"I don't think you'd ever – "

"Believe it." Sometimes you had to be brutal and this was definitely one of those times. "I did some things for the United States Government that would have bought me a one-way trip to Netu even without the Rescue Carter's Father Special Package Tour. That's who I was. That means in a way it's also who I am."

"I don't believe that."

O'Neill sighed. No, Daniel wouldn't. Teal'c might have done Bad Things in the past, but he was a good guy now, and Jack was a good guy now, and they were all good guys now. "Oh, Daniel…" he sighed. Most of the time he wanted the guy to keep his innocence, but every now and then, just like on the tel'tak, he just wanted him to wise up, open his eyes, and smell the goddamned manure. "You think you know me pretty well, don't you?"

Daniel looked at him curiously but answered with absolute confidence. "Yes."

"Well you're wrong. Sometimes, Daniel, you don't know me at all." He couldn't help some of his previous anger with Daniel returning. This was all Daniel's stupid fault. If he hadn't wandered off none of this would have happened. He would never have been captured, or tortured, those priests and worshippers would still be alive and uninjured. All because Daniel always knew best about everything. Well not this time. It was Daniel's fault he'd started thinking of himself as a good man again; he'd let himself believe in the image of himself reflected back at him in those curious blue eyes. Daniel could look at him with all that trust and belief until the sun turned black and shriveled in the sky, he wasn't going to convince him this time.

Daniel said conversationally, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

As O'Neill opened his mouth to tell him exactly what that meant, Teal'c said, "O'Neill, we are approaching the temple."

He tensed up at once. All those different gates to hell he'd never known about until now. Not just a fiery freefall to Netu in a Tok'ra sardine can. Not just the stab of pain as a Goa'uld ripped its way inside you and you knew you'd just drawn your last human breath; the gunshot that took your child's life echoing endlessly through your nightmares; memories of bodies burning, people screaming, blood pouring from wounds your bullets had made; but this: a place where they brought back the friend you'd failed to keep safe turned into something else entirely. A place where you'd left the guilty and the innocent to stew in their own blood.

"Jack? Are you okay?"

Stop asking me that, damnit, Daniel! O'Neill carefully didn't look at him. He could only get through this if he stayed mad at Daniel and it always got so much harder to stay mad at Daniel when Daniel was brimming over with compassion and concern for him. "It's nothing."

"Sir?" He turned to Carter with something like relief but her eyes were also full of anxiety. She nodded her head towards Daniel and murmured, "Do you think maybe we should…?"

"It's too late for that. We'll just have to hope that band-aid his subconscious stuck over Daniel's bad memories is still holding good." He tried to sound a lot more confident than he felt but given how unhappy Carter still looked after he'd finished speaking he guessed he hadn't been too successful. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay. They'd fix these people up, she and Teal'c would dismantle the gizmo on the DHD, they'd all get the hell out of here and Daniel wouldn't suspect or remember a thing. But he couldn't. He had a very bad feeling about all of this and it was getting worse.

***

Part Two

The dust was still settling in the temple. If it hadn't been night and the sun could have found its way inside, there would have been thousands of motes dancing in those light-beams. As it was, they had to view the ruins by pitiless blue-white flashlight beams and the yellow-red flames of burning torches.

"Oh my God…" Daniel breathed it softly, looking around at the broken stones, the dead, the groaning wounded still trapped underneath the rubble, the blood.

Daniel turned to look over his shoulder at O'Neill, and he knew what Daniel needed to see: reassurance that they hadn't done this; that they were as appalled as he was; that the man who had been his friend for the past three years would come back from wherever he'd been hiding and act like himself again.

O'Neill made an instant decision about the way he was going to have to play this. They were here, after all. Daniel had walked into the temple and the bad memories didn't seem to have hit him. The best way to freak him out and start him remembering was probably to go on acting as weird as he had been for the past couple of hours. Time to give Daniel back the Jack O'Neill he knew. Time to give Daniel something to do to take his mind off things as well.

Closing his hand on Daniel's sleeve, he eased him a few paces into the temple and out of the way of the crowd that had spilled in around them. "We have limited medical supplies and multiple casualties. So we need to assess the injured and make decisions about who needs it the most. If we could use the 'gate we could send back for Doc Fraiser and a medical team, but we can't, so we're going to have to do the best we can with what we've got. Why don't you try to find out if these people have some kind of Healer of their own and then you can liaise with him or her while Carter and the rest of us do what we can, okay?"

Daniel was so obviously grateful to have him back it made him feel even worse. O'Neill saw that look of relief light up his face and quickly reached across and patted Daniel on the shoulder. "You going to be okay?"

Daniel nodded, clearly making an effort but hanging in there. "Yes."

"Do they have a word for doctor or something?"

"Sewnew or Sewenwet," Daniel answered him automatically. "But the vowel sounds are different here."

"Well you start yelling as close as you can get to it while Teal'c and I see what we can do about shifting some of the smaller stones. Then get Carter to help you set up some kind of pulley system for moving the bigger ones." He tightened his grip on Daniel's arm, giving it a little squeeze to be sure he had his attention. "Okay, Daniel?"

"Yes." Daniel looked better already just at being given something specific to concentrate on. He turned away and started speaking rapidly in Abydonian, making a lot of hand gestures to help with the explanation

As he nodded to Teal'c and the two of them went to start lifting stones from the injured, O'Neill was also aware of Daniel trying to get things organized. He was surprisingly good at it, and O'Neill remembered again that Daniel hadn't actually been the college kid he'd appeared on their first meeting but a proper grown-up archaeologist who had spent years in the field. He always thought of archaeology as careful digging with little implements and brushes, but he guessed that every now and then archaeology also involved hauling great big rocks around because Daniel was issuing orders about where to place the ropes, and how to pad the ropes and how to use that ceiling support as a pulley with surprising efficiency.

The no-longer-wailing worshippers were obeying Daniel unquestioningly, working together to lift shattered blocks of stone from the dead and injured; Daniel calling soft words of encouragement to them before hurrying to assess the wounded. Seeing the torchlight gild his hair, the gentle fingers feeling so carefully across bloodstained bodies to check for signs of life, it didn't seem so insane to O'Neill that these people were perceiving his teammate as some kind of deliverer.

Carter was helping him, her short blond hair burnished to red-gold by torchlight. Even though she couldn't speak the language, her clear voice was soothing both wounded and mourners. As he watched, she turned to assist with the placing of the ropes then turned back to see to those the concerted heaving had freed from the broken slabs, compassion and competence written in every line of her body.

As O'Neill and Teal'c put their hands on a broken lump of statue, other hands tentatively came to assist them. O'Neill deliberately didn't look at the people to his right and left, just saying quietly, "Teal'c tell them one-two-three or something, will you?"

Teal'c said something O'Neill didn't understand but then at a nod to him from Teal'c they were all lifting together, grunting with exertion as they moved the broken slab from off the body it was covering. O'Neill looked down and made a face. "Jeez…" The skull had been crushed but at least this one must have died outright. A priest going by the clothing and the hairless head and skin. He was glad Daniel hadn't seen this one. He'd learned to be stoic about having to shoot serpent guards, but he still flinched from the sight of corpses when they took him unawares. And anyway, O'Neill always kept in mind the fact that Daniel was a civilian. There were some things he thought civilians shouldn't have to get used to even when they were part of a military field unit. Still not making eye contact with their nervous assistants, he murmured to Teal'c, "Tell them to find somewhere to put the dead ones. Out of sight of the wounded."

As Teal'c passed on his orders, O'Neill turned away, wiping his hands on his jacket and trying not to think about that corpse they'd just uncovered.

"Jack?"

He went before he'd thought about whether or not he wanted to. This was one of his conditioned responses now. Like the one you developed when your child was crying or having nightmares, that had you propelled out of bed and stumbling into his bedroom to comfort him before you even realized you were awake. This one seemed to be almost as deeply ingrained: Daniel called his name and he started running. Well, walking briskly if anyone was watching. But he could no more have ignored that call than stopped his heart beating just by wanting it. He would have gone if Carter or Teal'c had called him, as well, of course, but perhaps not instinctively. There would have been some rationale in that response, a moment when his brain identified the call and the likely reason for it before he started responding even if it took less than a second for him to do so. But Daniel saying his name was apparently wired straight into his feet. Somedays it was like being on a goddamned invisible string.

Daniel was crouched at the base of a block of the broken statue of Onuris. There was a bloodstained hand visible where a puddle of torchlight fell. O'Neill tensed his jaw. Daniel shouldn't be looking at bits of bodies. Why the hell was he looking at bits of bodies anyway? A low moan gusted out from the shadow of the statue. Oh hell. Not dead. A crushed body with some breath left in it. Daniel said softly, "He's still alive. Do we have any morphine?"

The word was like a lightning bolt and O'Neill felt himself flinch. "Morphine?"

Daniel looked up at him and swallowed. "Something to stop the pain once we get this off him, Jack. His chest has been crushed. He must be in a lot of pain." He tried to say it matter-of-factly but O'Neill saw that haunted look come into Daniel's eyes which he'd seen way too much of on Netu, not to mention every battlefield he'd been forced to take him to. It was no surprise when as Daniel straightened up he wrapped his arms around his chest protectively.

It was the High Priest, O'Neill realized. He'd seen that section of the statue fall onto him. He'd assumed he'd been killed outright, but instead he'd been lying here all this time, probably in the kind of pain he didn't even want to think about. He tried to summon back some of that anger, to remind himself this was the guy who'd tortured Daniel…He could kindle a brief spark of that all-consuming fury, but it was doused immediately by the look in Daniel's eyes.

Daniel gestured at the groaning High Priest. "Will you and Teal'c help me to get this off him?"

Before O'Neill could answer, the worshippers were clustering around Daniel, tugging at him and shaking their heads as they gestured at the injured man while repeating the same words over and over.

Frowning Daniel said, "Hum-nadjar-tepi? I don't…?" His face cleared. "Hem-netjer-tepey? Servant-god-first. God's-servant first? Oh, right, god's First Servant – you mean he's the High Priest, yes? Of this temple?" He frowned again as they tried to pull him away, shaking their heads and making signs that even O'Neill could see spoke of danger, caution, flight.

Daniel dug in his toes, saying in the same even tone, "No, we must help this man…"

He was all but overwhelmed by a chorus of rapid chattering and head shaking, hands determinedly trying to pull him away.

O'Neill turned to Teal'c for assistance. "If they don't shut up…"

Teal'c strode forward, snapping out the word imperiously: "Ger!"

Silence fell at once. The Jaffa beckoned to one of those who had been the most insistent about Daniel not going near the priest while O'Neill smoothly intercepted Daniel as he went to join the discussion, saying, "Any word on that doctor? The kind of injuries that High Priest guy has we're not going to be able to treat."

His gaze straying to where Teal'c was questioning the local man, Daniel collected himself. "Um – apparently their physician was killed when the…ceiling collapsed but some of them have a little medical knowledge and they're helping with the wounded. Look, Jack, I don't really understand what happened here?"

"Daniel there's no time for explanations right now. You see about getting that pulley you've got rigged up moved to that chunk of statue and I'll check our packs, see what medical supplies we've got left. Did you have a field kit with you?"

"Yes, but I've already used most of it up. We need morphine."

"Well we'll do the best we can with what we've got." Seeing that Teal'c was about to come back over, O'Neill sent Daniel away with a reassuring little pat on the shoulder. "Go start on moving that pulley will you?"

"Colonel?"

He turned around to see Carter waiting to speak to him. She was also wiping her hands on her jacket.

"What's the situation, Major?"

She bit her lip. "A lot of dead and wounded, sir."

"Yeah, I got that."

"What were those people saying to Daniel?"

Teal'c heard the last question and replied gravely, "They say the High Priest of this temple does not believe in the Chosen One. He is a faithful follower of Onuris. He would betray Daniel Jackson to the Goa'uld as a false deliverer. They say Onuris is coming."

"What?" O'Neill whipped his head around to check the Jaffa wasn't just making a bad joke. "How? Why? He can't know what happened here. Can he?"

"They say he does. They say he is coming. They also say Daniel Jackson is in grave danger as long as he remains here."

O'Neill took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair. "Oh – peachy."

Carter shook her head. "Teal'c that doesn't make any sense. It must just be a superstition on these people's part."

"So I at first believed, Major Carter, but they are adamant that Onuris is coming here. That the Stargate is closed because he is coming here."

She looked around the temple as though seeking inspiration. "Well then there must be some kind of communication device one of the priests used to talk to him. Perhaps we could adapt it and get word through to General Hammond. Tell him to send through a naqadah reactor so we can dial up the gate manually."

Teal'c shook his head. "They say it is written on the Tablet of the Prophet that when Onuris is betrayed by his own, he will come to seek revenge upon the Chosen One who has attempted to usurp him. They tell it as though it is a story they already know."

"We have got to get Daniel off this damned planet," O'Neill said through his teeth.

Carter had a hand up to her forehead. "Sir, the only way we're going to be able to do that is if we understand the technology we're dealing with here. Now, someone or something must have contacted Onuris and told him about Daniel or else he wouldn't be coming. And they must have told him very quickly because by the time we got down from the temple the DHD was already locked out."

"Well there's your communicator, right there," O'Neill shrugged. "You said you thought it was transmitting. It's obviously transmitting to Onuris, telling him to come deal with his rival before people stop believing in him and start believing in this…Chosen One instead."

"Believing in Daniel," Carter said quietly.

O'Neill sighed and looked across at where Daniel was motioning to the men setting up the pulley system to take up the slack. "Well they could do a lot worse."

Carter wiped her hand across her forehead, leaving a trail of blood as she did so. "It still doesn't make any sense. What told the device on the DHD to start transmitting? Why are these people all acting like today's events were something they already knew about? As though Daniel was someone they've been waiting for?"

"I don't know, Major."

She gave him a level look. "Well I think we need to find out, sir. And quickly."

"Jack?"

There was that damned string again because he was ten feet across the temple before he knew it. "You okay?"

Daniel looked up from his position kneeling on the floor by the trapped High Priest to gaze at him curiously. "Why do you keep asking me that?"

O'Neill grimaced at his own stupidity. "You had a headache."

He knew it sounded lame and Daniel clearly agreed with him because he looked around at the groaning wounded with their crushed limbs before darting O'Neill another quizzical glance, opened his mouth, closed it again, then turned his attention back to the High Priest. "Jack, I don't think he's going to last much longer if we don't get this weight off his chest. And I can't get them to get the pulley hooked up over here. I don't understand why not. They just keep shaking their heads at me."

He appreciated the way Daniel had heroically resisted telling him he ought to get a sense of proportion there. He guessed he wasn't the only one who had to keep swallowing the snide remarks. O'Neill waved an arm at Teal'c. "You want to tell these people to get the pulley moved over here?"

As Teal'c began issuing a series of orders in a sharp bark of unfamiliar Goa'uld, O'Neill became aware of Daniel murmuring quietly to the injured man. The same way he had spoken so gently to Apophis' host when that bewildered scribe was dying in their infirmary. He had the man's bloodstained hand held in his and was speaking very softly in a tongue unrecognizable from those staccato commands of Teal'c's despite the fact that O'Neill knew this was more or less the same language.

Looking over his shoulder, O'Neill saw that Daniel's 'followers' were protesting to Teal'c, pointing at the High Priest and shaking their heads. He could guess what they were saying. They had his sympathy. But there was no way in hell he was going to look Daniel in the eye again and tell him they were just going to sit this one out and let a man die. As Teal'c looked across at him questioningly, O'Neill said flatly, "Just tell them to do it. Now."

The High Priest groaned again and his hand tightened on Daniel's. He was saying something over and over. O'Neill looked at Daniel. "You getting any of that?"

"Some of it. He's saying he is a faithful servant of the one true god. That he has always served the Great Lord Onuris and always shall. That others will give succor to the false deliverer but he shall receive no mercy from his hands."

O'Neill gritted his teeth. "Sounds like a nice guy."

Daniel gave him a reproachful look. "Teal'c used to believe Apophis was a god, Jack. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good man at heart. And you told me you did some bad things when you were in Special Forces, right?"

"Right."

"Well I do what you tell me. Does that make me culpable in what you might have done in the past?"

O'Neill regarded him levelly. "When, Daniel?"

"What?"

"When do you do what I tell you? Name me one instance – ever – where you have done what I tell you."

Daniel sighed at him impatiently and bent back over the injured priest, murmuring soft words of encouragement to him. The man began to struggle back to consciousness, eyelids flickering before he began to cough. O'Neill winced as the dark blood spattered over Daniel's hands. He jerked his head round and yelled, "Teal'c, I don't care what you have to tell them, just make them hook up the goddamned pulley!"

There was a confusion of activity, in the midst of which ropes were lashed and secured under Teal'c's direction. Then O'Neill was tugged away from the scene by the worshippers who, clearly emboldened by his concern for Daniel began to gesticulate and talk at him. As Teal'c and Carter gave out orders to the unwilling rescuers of the injured High Priest, O'Neill was pulled even further away from the fallen statue by the most insistent of them, a dozen protestors clearly telling him that the High Priest should not be saved for Daniel's sake. O'Neill held up his hands. "Look, I'm with you. I don't like the guy either. But you tell me a way to explain that to Daniel which doesn't involve reminding him of what happened here earlier."

"Jack?"

O'Neill practically leapt out of his skin as Daniel spoke right next to him. He wheeled around. "Christ, Daniel, stop creeping up on me like that!"

Daniel looked at him blankly. "Jack, you don't understand a word these people are saying to you and they don't understand a word you're saying to them. I was just offering to translate."

Before O'Neill could ask just how much Daniel had heard, more of the worshippers came forward, shouting and gesticulating and dragging with them two very frightened priests. Abruptly, O'Neill was back in that alcove, looking across the temple at the men who were pulling Daniel along between them; his teammate's skin grey with pain, eyes dulled, mind gone. His jaw tightened and he automatically raised his MP-5. Daniel had already gone forward and was asking what was wrong while the men holding the priests spoke to him rapidly.

O'Neill wasn't at all sure that he wanted Daniel to hear any of this, and hastened to interrupt, "What are they saying?"

Daniel gesticulated at him to be quiet and turned and spoke to the others rapidly in Abydonian. O'Neill thought again how soft and beguiling a language it sounded in Daniel's mouth, how harsh in that of the Goa'uld. When Daniel turned back to him he looked more bewildered than traumatized. "I don't think I'm getting what they're telling me. They keep saying these are bad priests who worship the False god and did harm to the Chosen One. And then there's a lot about that 'shokmar' word I still don't understand." He spoke sharply to the worshippers, before turning to the priests and murmuring something reassuring. He put his hand on O'Neill's chest as he did so and then nodded over at Teal'c and Carter before saying something else.

"What was that about?" O'Neill demanded.

"I told them they mustn't harm those men and I told the priests that we would let no harm come to them. I told them my companions were strong warriors who would protect them from unjust wrath."

"What about just wrath?"

"What?"

And there was Daniel with that dazed look on his face again. O'Neill said impatiently, "Damnit, Daniel, we have no idea what these people might have done. They could have been sacrificing everyone's first-born sons to the goddamned Goa'uld for all we know. Don't go signing me up to protect people I don't know."

"They're scared, Jack."

"Well maybe they have reason to be scared. Did you ever stop and think about that? Maybe they've done really bad things and don't deserve to be protected?"

At a concerted grunt of exertion from the men manning the pulley, Daniel turned to go back to the injured High Priest, but O'Neill caught his arm and held it. "Just wait a minute."

"Why?"

O'Neill wondered how, after all the shit he'd been through, Daniel could still look as confused and trusting as a ten year-old. He didn't know any more if he found it endearing or just downright exasperating; but it did always make him want to keep the younger man safe. He met Daniel's blue gaze with a level stare of his own. "Your family has a bad track record with big stones and pulleys. Just wait over there until they've put the damn thing down again."

Daniel gave him another of those hurt looks and O'Neill sighed, giving him a very gentle push as he did so. "Daniel – just do it for me, will you?"

Jack's propulsion sent Daniel toward the center of the temple and he kept going, walking between the rows of wounded, gazing up at the walls and feeling something stirring on the edges of his memory; a vague sense of déjà vu.  He tried to imagine what it would have been like when the statue was still intact. It would have dominated the chamber, the plumed headdress a pillar that held up the ceiling…and suddenly he could see it rear up so vividly that he flinched. Anhur. Onuris. Inhert. The statue was looming over him, flanked by two stone lions, carrying a spear…Daniel found he was gazing at a space where a statue wasn't, the ceiling billowing above him, the dusty air lapping around him like a cold sea in which he could very easily drown.

He remembered the people clutching at him in the shadow of the Stargate, crying that the 'tewet' had brought down the 'tewet' as though he should understand what they were telling him. Each word given a completely different inflection and stress as though it was another word altogether; like someone saying 'a jar' and 'ajar' in the same sentence. Abruptly a possible translation for 'tewet' came to him: "Statue."

There had been no statues on Abydos, of course, which was why the word was buried so much deeper than those he'd used every day. His vocabulary had a lot of gaps still even though he and Teal'c had been trading lessons since the Jaffa first joined their struggle against the Goa'uld: Daniel helping Teal'c to speak and write better English while Teal'c helped him to expand his vocabulary. Later they had both become advanced students: Teal'c teaching him different variants of Goa'uld while he explained the etymology of the English language to Teal'c. But his core vocabulary, those words he had spoken every day on Abydos remained much more easily accessible than the ones he had been taught later but rarely had a chance to use. He could remember swearwords Skaara had taught him after they'd tried out their unspeakable first attempt at moonshine better than many far more useful terms Teal'c had told him.

Abydonian bad language. A gust of memory, warm and welcome as the first cool gust of evening after a baking desert day. Daniel and Skaara giggling drunkenly at the way the stars were spinning as they lay out flat on top of a cold sand dune and passed their horrible homemade brew from hand to hand. Skaara teaching him the words, and Daniel repeating them, shouting them defiantly at the constellations and the lingering vapor trail that might be tiny specks of atomized Ra.

The next day, vision blurring from a hangover that felt as if it had poisoned every brain cell, he'd cut his finger chopping vegetables, tried out one of his new swearwords for size, and heard a gasp from the doorway. He'd turned to see Sha're staring at him in indignant disbelief. He'd given her a wincing apology for a smile then flinched as she advanced determinedly. The slap had been across his rump rather than the back of his head. Had he been her little brother instead of her husband he probably would have had his ear twisted in reproof, but he'd pleaded his hangover and begged for mercy. She'd had to struggle to force her face into an expression of sternness, her mouth twitching as she pointed to the floor. He'd fallen to his knees at her feet and held his hands together in a mock plea for absolution. She'd lifted her chin and tried to look implacable but when he'd bent and kissed her feet, he'd felt the giggles tremor through her. He'd kissed a trail to her ankles and then began to kiss the inside of her leg, up to her knee, along the satin warmth of her thigh…

Daniel put a hand up to his head and swallowed hard. What was the point in remembering any of that now? He'd knelt at Amaunet's feet since then, seen the cool satisfaction in her eyes as she aimed the ribbon device to cause him the maximum pain. Seen Amaunet die. Seen Sha're die. Hope die. You had to go forward. Just like Jack. One life ended, another began. This was his life now. He was part of SG-1, a member of a team, despite having no military qualifications, allowed to explore new worlds. Allowed even, through Jack's goodwill, to travel the universe in search of Sha're's son…

There was another unlooked for spasm of memory: that newborn baby kicking in his arms. A perfect human boy the Goa'uld would nevertheless hunt down and kill because of his race memory, and whom the SGC were happy for him to search out for the same reason. He'd been careful not to ask the other three what they were looking for just in case they told him it was a weapon against the Goa'uld. As long as they let him look with them he didn't care why. Just as long as no one minded that while they were searching for the Harsesis whose knowledge might help them defeat the Goa'uld, he was only trying to find his dead wife's child.

You must find the boy…

"I'm looking, Sha're, but he isn't here."

As Daniel walked towards the place where he'd imagined the statue soaring implacably, he saw the plinth and what remained of the stone lions. That was when he heard what sounded like the echo of his own voice in his mind: Anhur, also called Onuris, derived from the Egyptian word anhuret 'he who brings the far near', also called Inhert; consort of the lioness-goddess Mehit. Let me think – yes, first attested in the Thinite region in Upper Egypt but by the Late Period associated with the delta site of Sebennytos where a temple was dedicated to Onuris-Shu by Nectanebo the Second...

Just knowledge. Nothing to flinch from there. Nothing to make him feel that someone was walking over his grave. He averted his eyes from the headless lion statue, stumbled over a broken piece of stone and put out an arm to prevent himself from falling. When he grabbed hold of a pillar, he felt the inscription under his fingers. This time as he blinked and focused, the sense of doom was stronger, each word making a sound in his mind like ice water dripping slowly onto a tin plate: " ' May I be granted power over the waters, for I am he who crosses the sky, I am the Lion, I am the Slayer.'

"I know this." Daniel backed up, swallowing. "I've seen this before." He turned a slow circle, telling himself not to be stupid, of course he knew it, the inscription had been edited down from a longer one in the Book of the Dead. But why then did he think he'd said it here; exactly here; his voice striking the exact same note from these soaring stone pillars. Knew the nine bows were inscribed on those broken pieces of pottery, red clay jars, and human skulls he'd barely looked at yet? Because they're execration texts. You know what execration texts are. You're an Egyptologist. Get a grip, Daniel!

Pain lanced through his head so fast and so sharp he cried out before he could stop himself. Blue light flared. A voice snarled: " Wesheb! Wesheb!"

"Daniel…?"

The pain hit him again, a wave this time, engulfing, paralyzing, he crumpled and would have fallen to his knees except someone grabbed him and held him up. For a moment he felt like a kite tossed on a storm; the pain dragging him up into another gust while a thin string held him fastened to the earth.

"Daniel…? It's Jack. Talk to me. Daniel!"

He gasped and clutched, feeling material under his fingers; a jacket, a t-shirt; an arm went around his back, hauled him upright. "Daniel, answer me. Answer me!"

Wesheb! Wesheb!

"I don't know the answer!" He shouted it, eyes watering with the pain. "I don't know the answer!" The string snapped; he was thrown up into the darkness; swallowed by the storm.

***

It was too easy to play this part once more. Surveying the frightened people scuttling to do his will, Teal'c again experienced the power reflected upon a Jaffa because of these deluded slaves' belief the parasite he served was a god. As a Jaffa you were encouraged to see ordinary humans as cattle, and when he had fired upon the statue of Onuris, these people had meant nothing to him. His rage had been all-consuming. Because of Daniel Jackson? Because he had once again failed to keep his friend safe? Because he had been forced to murder Sha're to also murder Amaunet? Or was it a deeper rage still burning, because he too had once believed? Was his hatred for Apophis due to the evil that Goa'uld had done or because as Apophis' first prime, in his combined desire to avenge his father, and his conviction that Apophis truly was a god, Teal'c had helped him to commit some of that evil?

Like O'Neill, there were times when Teal'c did not know if he was a good man who had been forced by circumstances to do bad things; or a bad man who had fallen into good company. Sometimes he felt the restraints that kept him from cruelty were not strong enough to hold fast if temptation raised its head. Even as he rejoiced in the death of Apophis, a part of him felt cheated because the false god he had served for so many years had not been killed by his hand, while Apophis' death, if it had taken place when Netu exploded, would have been far quicker than he deserved. In the same way, had the Tok'ra sent word that Cronos had been slain in battle, he would have felt more regret than jubilation. He wanted to be the one to fire the fatal shot, to watch the light fade from those glowing eyes; to see that arrogance freeze into a death mask of disbelief.

He could hear the whispers from the people he was ordering to help their comrades. Some saw them as delivers, others, faithful to Onuris, saw them as evil acolytes of a false god. But all obeyed his commands because of the emblem on his forehead and the staff weapon in his hand. This was the blind conformity upon which the Goa'uld depended. How could he hope to wean his fellow Jaffa from a system which invested them with so much power? Which raised them above ordinary men, gave them the ability to heal from wounds which would have killed anyone else, made them the mouthpiece of a living god? Gave them beautiful wives, healthy children, and homes which set them apart from other, apparently lesser, men? How could he persuade Jaffa so enriched by their subordination to the Goa'uld that they were in truth only slaves?

"Teal'c?"

He turned to find Major Carter at his elbow. He saw the distress in her blue eyes although she was attempting to conceal it. He wondered if she blamed him for this. If she felt he should have retrieved Daniel Jackson by some other method. If she knew that at the time he had fired his staff weapon into the statue of Onuris, it was not that he had not known it held up the roof of the temple, but that he had not cared. As he bent his head to talk to her, he realized that behind the lingering traces of her own shampoo and soap scent, she now also smelt faintly of other men's blood.

"Major Carter?"

"Teal'c, I can't understand what this woman is saying to me, but I think she might have a child trapped under the rubble. She definitely said 'sa'. That's 'son' isn't it?"

He nodded. "Indeed." The word 'son' chilled and warmed him at the same time. He could lose Ry'ac in the time it took a staff weapon to flare and fire. Could lose Ry'ac in the eyeblink it had taken O'Neill to lose his son. Or he could be one of the lucky ones who lived to see his son grow up to manhood. Live to see the flesh of his flesh bring down the false gods who had enslaved his people. Fate had decided to make Daniel Jackson a widower, and Teal'c an instrument in its hands. Whether it decided to make Teal'c a proud father or a desolate one too often now seemed to be something over which he had no control.

The woman was sitting in one of the alcoves, her blonde hair a shock after so many dark heads. She was rocking herself quietly, a cut down one cheekbone weeping tiny rubies of blood. Major Carter poured water onto a cloth and very gently bathed the woman's face, while pointing at him with her other hand. "Can you tell my friend what you told me?"

The woman lifted her head to gaze at Teal'c, and her eyes widened in mingled recognition and alarm. As he crouched down in front of her to try to lessen her fear, the words tumbled from her, the inflection strange and the grammar different from the constructions he was used to, but he could understand the sense:

"… hi…khepet…sa…sheshepen…hem-netjer… Khas'ru…shenu…"

There was much more. How her husband had fought the priests who had made their decree, and how they had killed him before her eyes…How she no longer cared if she lived or died. Let the temple fall. Let the wrath of any god and his avatars descend upon her because without her child she was ash…

"Teal'c?"

He collected himself with an effort. "A sickness came here and many died. The priests blamed those who had not shown true faith, and decreed that an offering must be made to Onuris to appease his wrath. Her son was taken by the priests because of the color of his hair. It was ordained that he should be made one of the 'Khas'ru', the Banished Ones. He was sent from here through the rings of eternity. She says that without her husband and her son she has no reason to live. She wishes to wait here for Onuris' wrath to fall upon her so she can find the peace of death."

They exchanged a long glance and then Major Carter visibly gave herself a mental shake. Her voice was brisk, trying and failing to conceal the compassion underneath it. "Then her son isn't here and there's nothing we can do to help her. We'd better get back to the others and see if we can get that pulley working properly."

As Teal'c rose to his feet, the woman reached out and caught at his sleeve. There was the look in her eyes of one pleading for absolution. Once again the words spilled from her. He heard her out in silence and then placed his hand upon her head and smiled at her gently, telling her that it was not her fault, whatever the priests had told her. The sickness had not come from her child. Nor had Teal'c and his friends come here because of her son's banishment. Her son was not the herald of disaster the priests had spoken of. When Teal'c finished, she caught his hand and kissed at it. He felt like a hypocrite as he turned away.

Major Carter touched his arm. "What was that about?"

"Apparently it is written that the Death Child is the harbinger of all sorrows on this world. That he brings the Deliverer but he also brings destruction. I told her that Daniel Jackson was not the Deliverer and her son was therefore not the Death Child."

"Good." Major Carter nodded in relief. "She's had enough misery to contend with, poor woman."

Teal'c looked around the temple again, at the broken statue and the groaning wounded. "Except, I am almost certain that I lied."

Next to him Major Carter grimaced and he knew that she was also seeing the patterns here. The things that did not make sense. The evidence that was leading them both to an inescapable conclusion which neither one of them was yet quite ready to address. Her voice was husky with the dust in her throat. "Either way, I'm glad you did, Teal'c."

***

Daniel came around to find himself sitting huddled on the floor of the temple being rocked in someone's arms. Not his mother. Not Sha're. But someone who made him feel as safe as they had done. Someone whose right hand was resting on the back of his head, gently stroking his hair. He surfaced slowly to the sound of words he could follow like a beacon: "It's okay, Daniel…You're okay…It was just a bad dream…"

Jack. It was okay. He was with Jack. And Sam and Teal'c were probably nearby. He wasn't alone. He began to have an awareness of himself and his surroundings. The fingers of his right hand were clenched tight in the man's jacket; his left hand clutching at his t-shirt; the left side of his face was pressed against Jack's chest; tears had left stinging salt trails down his skin. He gasped with the shock of his return to full consciousness, feeling as if someone had been holding his head under water while he slept.

"Daniel?"

He raised his head and looked up at the so-familiar face. Idly he noticed the stubble on Jack's jaw. Jack could really do with a shave. That scar from where the Touched had tried to crack his skull open had never really faded. It bisected his left eyebrow, a thin white line. Jack must have come damned close to losing an eye back then…Jack looked scared. Jack never looked scared. Why the hell did Jack look so scared?

There was a hand cupping the side of his face. "Daniel? Do you know who I am?"

He swallowed hard. "What just happened?"

"Tell me your name?"

"Damn it, Jack, stop stalling. What happened?"

Great, now Jack looked relieved and he was scared, because none of this was making any sense.

"You had a blackout. Must have been from that crack on the head you had earlier. Concussion's like that sometimes."

"A blackout?" Daniel slowly opened his right hand, unclenching it from Jack's jacket. His fingertips were white, he'd been hanging on so tightly, and those creases looked like they were never coming out. "So why was I clinging onto you as if you were a cliff face and this floor was a – a big drop?"

"You were dizzy."

"Why were you holding me?" Daniel stared at him in confusion.

He saw Jack's gaze flicker, evade him before coming back to focus. A shrug. "You were dizzy."

"I've been dizzy before, Jack. You helped me lie down and put me in the recovery position. You didn't rock me in your arms like I was five years old and frightened of the dark."

"You were confused, Daniel."

"I was more than…confused." And then he remembered that other memory. Clinging to Jack like a terrified child, listening to Jack's heartbeat while he whimpered with fear. "It wasn't a dream, was it?"

"What?"

Daniel stumbled unsteadily to his feet and Jack was there in an instant, offering him a hand. Daniel pulled away impatiently. "Something happened earlier. Something you're not telling me. I've been here before. I remember being here. Something happened." He frowned, putting a hand up to his aching head. "Something that scared me or hurt me so much I was…"

Again, there was that 'dream' image of himself being rocked in Jack's arms, soothed, comforted, told to go to sleep, because everything was okay and he was safe now. He met those brown eyes, reading in Jack's anxious expression how Jack was willing him not to remember. Didn't want him to have access to something, which, damnit, was part of his life. He saw at once there was no point in asking Jack what had happened because the man would never tell him, and he felt both hurt and betrayed. "You lied to me…" He couldn't conceal the surprise in his tone. He hadn't realized he was waiting for Jack to deny it – needing Jack to deny it – until he saw him wince. Daniel stared at him in disbelief. "You lied to me?"

"Calm down, Daniel."

A shout of mingled exertion and triumph, made them both turn their heads. The cry of pain that followed it reminded Daniel what was happening and he collected himself. "The High Priest." He could hardly bring himself to look at Jack, the sting of being misled, deliberately denied access to his own recent past, was too fresh and too painful. Determinedly looking six inches past Jack's ear, he held out a hand. "Morphine?"

"We don't have any."

Even that sounded like a lie to him. Without another word, he turned and walked towards the crowd clustered around their injured High Priest.

The High Priest was conscious and already waving a hand weakly, calling down imprecations against false deliverers, warning against the wrath of the One True God, the vengeance which would be visited upon the heads of those who denied His divinity. Daniel had thought his chest and lungs were crushed beyond repair but the fact the man could speak suggested there might be a faint hope for him.

Attempting to put those fragments of memory out of his mind, Daniel crouched by the injured man and tried to soothe him. But he winced as he saw his injuries. He didn't know how the High Priest could speak when his chest was crushed like that but there was clearly no hope for him. Just for a second he wondered if this was how he'd looked on P3R-636 after those rocks had fallen on him, if Jack been forced to see him like this…He gave his head a shake, not a line of thought he wanted to pursue right now, he was mad as hell with Jack and this time he was staying that way.

Daniel focused on the dying man lying by his knees. He wondered if he was going to have to say last rites for him and if the ones he knew would be appropriate for someone whose ancestors had been separated from Ancient Egypt for so many generations. The rituals would have evolved, altered…Then Daniel remembered those other two priests with relief: they would know the proper words to send their High Priest on his last journey. He looked up at the crowd around the injured man, seeking out the priests, wanting to ask them what rites would be appropriate, if there were any words that should be said now while the man was conscious so that his soul would be lightened on its journey. Both of them were staring between him and the High Priest and the expressions on their faces made no sense to him, mingled guilt and fear and disbelief. As he opened his mouth to ask them about their rituals, he saw their faces again, a blurry past image overlaying the present; these same men looming over him, chaining his wrists and ankles to a stone table while he struggled vainly to free himself, telling him that his blasphemy would be punished, his claim tested, that he would be made to answer the questions they asked in the name of Onuris, the one, the true, the only god…

Daniel shuddered and Sam started forward at once. "Daniel, are you all right?"

"Daniel Jackson? Is something wrong?"

Looking at the stone floor, at the blood trail trickling from the High Priest, Daniel ignored them to say, "He looks bad to me. The other priests should give him whatever he needs to make his peace with – Onuris." He put a hand to his head as the pain lanced through it again. Blue light. Pitiless. His own voice screaming. These faces unmoved by his suffering…

"Daniel…?"

"Keep away from me, Jack." He determinedly didn't look at him, not wanting Jack to see the hurt on his face or the betrayal he felt.

The High Priest's eyelids fluttered and the man turned his head. His and Daniel's eyes met and then the High Priest's widened in horror. " A'akhu! Baiu mitu!"

"What's that?" Jack demanded.

Daniel was still wincing from the hate in the High Priest's eyes. "He said I was a…damned soul."

The dying man raised a bloody hand and pointed an accusing finger at Daniel. When the man began to berate him, Daniel wished he didn't understand him, but the man's failing lungs and fading strength didn't dim the force of every savage word: You! You are the cause of this! You are the one they speak of! You are the one who brings doom upon us! You are the False Deliverer! Hear this well, for Shokmar shall yet prevail."

"Khen'ra!" Teal'c hissed it through his teeth.

"Let him speak if he wants to," Daniel swallowed hard.

"… There is but one god and he is Onuris. Even now he comes to avenge the true worshippers and punish all unbelievers. Even now he journeys here to destroy you. All suffering shall be yours. Death shall be yours. There will be no mercy shown you or those who follow you…"

Daniel turned his head away, the hate in the dying man's eyes still having the power to sear him, to look at the Jaffa. "Am I the cause of this?"

"No!" It was Jack who answered but Teal'c's silence told him more than the Jack's swift reply. When he looked at Sam she wouldn't meet his gaze.

Daniel turned to face Jack, wishing he could sound as cold and clear as he wanted to, wishing he didn't feel so damned close to crying right now. "Why should I believe you?"

"Daniel, these people…"

"These people are dead and dying because of me, aren't they? They – hurt me and you destroyed their temple in payment. While they were still in it. And then you – left them…?" Even now he couldn't quite believe it, couldn't help giving Jack a look that begged him not to make it true.

The High Priest was still calling down the wrath of Onuris upon him. Praying to the one god to destroy all False Deliverers, to make the blasphemer suffer, as he deserved to suffer…

Teal'c was translating for Jack and Sam. Sam was trying to catch his eye now, to tell him it wasn't as bad as it seemed, there had been mitigating…He didn't want to know. He couldn't look at them. He couldn't trust them. How could they have done this?

Daniel saw Jack shoot the two priests a venomous look, saying shortly, "You want to get your pal here to shut up before I decide to put him out of his misery with a bullet?"

Daniel got up and walked away, stumbling on the rubble, not even seeing where he was going. He could feel something terrible waiting in his memory, a dam about to crack. Jolinar's torture had been sitting in the back of Sam's mind all that time like a landmine no one had stepped on yet and none of them had ever realized it. He remembered jolting back to consciousness on the tel'tak to the sound of her screaming, "Shut it off! Shut it off !"

"Daniel?"

He pulled away from the man's hand impatiently. "Leave me alone."

"Damnit, Daniel!" Jack grabbed him by the shoulders, swung him around and made him face him.

He couldn't help flinching, nerves frayed, still having to fight to stop his eyes from watering with the shock of those memories. He hunched up his shoulders, trying to protect himself from Jack's gaze, not the anger, he didn't care if Jack was angry, he hoped he was, he hoped he yelled so damned loudly the rest of the ceiling fell down, and he could yell right back, but he couldn't deal with his compassion right now. But there was the look in those brown eyes he'd been dreading, the one that told him Jack was scared to death for him. "Don't…" He looked fixedly at the floor, swallowing hard.

Jack shook him again, gently, a tiny movement, just trying to get him to look up, look at him, talk to him. "Daniel, you have to trust me."

"How can I trust you!" At least one of them was yelling. That had to help. But Daniel knew his expression would be one of reproach, not anger, that his eyes were saying: How could you? There was so much he wanted to say, like 'I have always trusted you, you son-of-a-bitch. Always. There has never been one millisecond from the moment we first met when I haven't trusted you, and you know that. You're the one who doesn't trust me .'

He pulled loose from Jack's grip and wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to feel and look less like a child who'd just found out his dog was dead instead of living on a farm somewhere like Daddy had promised him. There were days when he could forgive Jack anything except making him feel as if he was eight years old. "You lied to me." It sounded so pathetic. He could hear how pathetic this sounded but his belief in Jack was more than half of everything he had, it was the keystone of this new life he'd been needing to cling to so damned hard since Sha're's death, and Jack had just smashed it.

"Daniel, listen to me – " Jack was moving him away from the others, away from the High Priest who was still telling him that he would die slowly at Onuris' hands, the frightened priests trying to soothe their leader, the wounded people who kept looking to him for something he couldn't possibly give them. Moving him away from anything that might possibly hurt or upset him, steering him gently while Daniel let him do it.

Still keeping his arms firmly wrapped around his chest, Daniel said tautly, "Tell me the truth. No more lies. Don't tell me it was a bad dream or it never happened or that I wandered off and someone hit me."

"Okay, the truth." Jack had successfully steered him into an alcove now, spun him round and pushed him back against the wall, wedged him in tight where he couldn't get away. It was like being back in the damned cell again with Mackenzie's aides looming over him. Jack's voice was clear and very precise. "You did wander off. You came here. We think the priests found you looking at the temple and knocked you unconscious. Then they tortured you with some Goa'uld device. For hours. We couldn't find you. We couldn't get the damned door to open to let us into the center of the temple so we were stuck in here while they – questioned you. When they brought you out again to sacrifice you, you weren't even you any more. You didn't know who you were, who they were, who I was. Anything. Teal'c fired at the statue of their damned god to create a diversion so we could grab you back, but it was holding up the ceiling and the whole place fell down around our ears. There wasn't time to help the people here because we had to – get you back before we lost you for good. You were in a lot of pain so we gave you the morphine, that's why we don't have any left, but even so it took a long time to…And, to be honest, given what these people had done to you, and how they were all happy to stand there and watch you be sacrificed, I didn't really give a damn whether there were people dead or dying in here or not. Neither did Teal'c. Carter did. She wanted to come back and check for survivors. I wouldn't let her. So, you want to be pissy with anyone, leave her out of it."

Daniel swallowed again, wanting to kick Jack so hard his shins bled and then kick himself just as hard, because he could read between the lines all too well here. Jack had saved him; that was what it boiled down to. He'd done something stupid, put them all through hell, and damned near died. And against all the odds, Jack had saved him. Again. "Then it is my fault these people are dead."

Jack rolled his eyes in disbelief. "I don't think you made them torture you, Daniel. I don't think you put out an invitation for them to show up and watch your heart cut out. All you did was look around their temple. The way they chose to react to it was really up to them. You can feel bad about disobeying my order and scaring the shit out of me if you want to, but that's as far as it goes."

"Why did you lie to me?"

"Because I was afraid if you remembered what they'd done to you, you'd go like…that again. It was a terrible thing they did to you, Daniel. Why would I want you to remember it?"

"Because it happened and I had a right to know it."

"Even if remembering it destroyed you?" Jack held up his finger and thumb a needle's-width apart. "We came this close to losing you. Forever. And I am still not very happy about it. And to be honest with you I would still like to put a bullet in the High Priest and his little helpmates. And if you keep pissing me off I still might, so, don't push me, okay? I don't have your near infinite capacity for forgiveness and I feel about these people pretty much like you feel about the Goa'uld. Now does that clarify things for you a little?"

Good, Jack was angry with him again, that was better. Jack overflowing with compassion for him always got under his defenses much too damned easily. He'd lost his parents too young, that was the trouble, and he knew it, but even knowing the cause of it couldn't stop it having an effect. He'd had a two decade gap when there hadn't been anyone who cared enough to tell him all the dumb annoying things people with parents took for granted, like he should take his head out of a book and go and get some fresh air, or there was no way in hell he was going outside without a sweater on a night like this . He'd thought he'd got past needing it and then Jack had turned up and started filling all these gaps inside him he hadn't even known he had: Do up your bootlaces before you break your neck, Daniel. Keep your head down , Daniel. When did you last eat? Coffee isn't food, that doesn't count. When was the last time you ate food ? How long have you been working on that damned report anyway? Well that is way too long. You see me switching this light off? That's kind of a hint it's time to go home now. What do you mean you never learned to play softball when you were a child? What kind of weird kid were you anyway? Okay, that's the plan for this weekend then: teach Daniel how to be normal…

Another of Jack's incredibly annoying traits. Being the stepfather/older brother/best friend he'd never had. Being goddamned indispensable. They were never going to be equals. What had ever made him think they could be equals? He was going to be Jack's surrogate son forever, Sam's kid brother, Teal'c's…Well actually, he couldn't fault Teal'c. Teal'c had always managed to make him feel safe without making him feel inadequate. Had always treated him like someone with a wisdom beyond his years who should be handled with respect. And Sam didn't really rub in the clever older sister thing at all. That was just how he felt around her sometimes, especially when she started talking astrophysics and he had no idea what she was telling him…And even Jack probably made huge efforts not to be condescending. A few hours under Makepeace's command had taught him how tactful Jack was by comparison. So it was probably just him. But God, he would have liked not to be the one who had to be rescued for a change. The one who did the rescu ing .

"Daniel…?"

Daniel collected himself. "Hmmm?"

Jack shook his head in disbelief. "Did you hear anything I just said to you? Were you even listening?"

Daniel said expressionlessly, "They tortured me. You rescued me. You didn't mean to kill these people and you only couldn't save them because you were too busy saving me. You couldn't come back here once I was awake because you didn't want me to remember what they'd done to me. And you couldn't take me home like you wanted to because the DHD wasn't working. And you've had a really bad day. And I'm sorry."

"No one is blaming you for anything that happened today."

Daniel turned and looked at the High Priest. "He is."

Jack's hands on his shoulders were unexpectedly rough. He flinched as he was pulled around to face him and winced again from the way Jack was speaking through gritted teeth. "He's a religious fanatic who believes in an alien parasite who thinks he's a god. He's someone who tortured you for hours and hours , for nothing, Daniel, for no goddamned reason at all, just because he thinks his freakin' god wanted him to. He is not someone you want to listen to."

"I'm on your list now, aren't I?" Daniel read the truth in the man's eyes. "Of the things you blame yourself for? The things you won't ever forgive yourself for? Because they tortured me and you couldn't stop it?"

Jack squeezed his shoulders before saying much more gently, "If you are then it's my decision, not yours."

Daniel gestured at the worshippers. "So, is this why they think I'm the Chosen One, because I wasn't sacrificed like I should have been?"

"You survived Shokmar."

It was such a shock to hear someone other than the four of them speaking English that Daniel couldn't help gaping at the man who had appeared at their side. He looked like all the other worshippers, slight and dark, skin dusty from the rubble, gaze and nervous smile apologetic, except that his eyes were unexpectedly a bright pale blue

Daniel stared at him in surprise. "You understand our speech?"

"Some. Yes. They think you are the Chosen One because you survived Shokmar. It is written that only the Chosen One shall survive Shokmar."

"Written where?"

"What is 'Shokmar'?"

The man looked between them apologetically and Daniel turned to Jack who sighed and waved a hand. "Answer him."

"Shokmar is what they did to you in the temple. It made you lose yourself. But now you have found yourself again. No one else has ever done this."

"Yes, well I very much doubt that anyone else the priests…shokmared had friends who would come and rescue him who happened to have medical kits full of morphine, not to mention someone as stubborn as Jack deciding that today wasn't a good day for Daniel to go back to the padded cell after all." He felt Jack wince next to him and presumed this one had been too close for comfort. He moistened his lips. "I'm Daniel Jackson. This is Jack O'Neill. We're…" Somehow the words 'peaceful travelers' didn't seem appropriate given the havoc they had wreaked on this world. "We're explorers."

"I am khenu."

"Okay, Khenu…" Jack began.

Daniel put a hand on Jack's arm. "No, that's not a name. That's what he is. He means he's an incomer." He met the man's pale blue gaze. "You're telling us you're not from this world? You're a visitor here, like us?"

"Yes. I am a…visitor. But I am a true believer. We have awaited your coming a long time."

Very aware of Jack's raised eyebrows, Daniel said quickly, "I really think you're mixing me up with someone else. There was nothing 'miraculous' about what happened to me. I was just lucky that my friends – " Which was when he remembered what else 'tewet' meant. "Oh my God – 'tewet' – 'avatar'. You think Jack, Sam and Teal'c are…avatars?"

He would have been more surprised if Jack hadn't immediately murmured in his ear, "What's an avatar?"

"It's from a Sanskrit word, avatara ,meaning 'descent'. In Hindu mythology it means the appearance on earth of a deity in a visible form. But in this context I think they're using it to mean – angels."

"Excuse me?" Jack stared at him blankly. "You're a god and we're your…angels?"

"Well, no, obviously not. But that seems to be the delusion these people are um, laboring under."

"Sir?"

Daniel turned to see Sam holding up a small greyish object. She had that look of mingled satisfaction and anxiety that told him at once she had solved a problem which had been annoying her but the answer wasn't helping them much.

"Yes, Major?"

"I found it." She put the object into Jack's hand and Daniel peered at it curiously. He'd seen a lot of Goa'uld technology over the years and there had been very little to like about any of it. This appeared to be no exception. Sam continued, "The transmitter. It was in the statue. I remembered what you said about being on Argos. How Pelops had – "

Daniel nodded. "Yes, of course. It's an obvious way for the Goa'uld to monitor the level of – devotion they're inspiring in the populace."

Sam was pointing out the circuitry to them. No doubt all those different colored crystals meant something to her but they just looked like very small Christmas tree lights to him. "This is the transmitter. I think there was some kind of beam set up within the statue, which was broken when – "

She hesitated and Daniel finished for her, " – When Teal'c fired his staff weapon into the statue of Onuris and smashed it to pieces."

He saw that quick questioning look she darted at Jack, his shrug. "I had to tell him, Carter. He was blaming himself for the whole damned mess."

"Can you not talk about me as if I'm not here?"

She bit her lip. "Daniel, we didn't want to lie to you, but we so nearly lost you…"

"I know. I know." Rub it in how damned lucky he was to be alive because Jack had worked another miracle, dragged him back from the dead yet again. Blue light flared in his memory once more and he flinched from it. Suddenly he heard his own voice screaming ' Jack…? ' Oh God, he'd been screaming for...Did Jack know? He darted a quick glance at Jack and winced at the expression in his eyes. Damn. He knew. Daniel still had nightmares about seeing that Goa'uld go into Jack but he'd never realized until they were on the tel'tak how Jack also had nightmares about him. He wrapped his arms tight around his chest, trying to keep out the chill of all those memories.

"Onuris is coming." The local man had sunk back into the shadows when Sam appeared and Daniel had almost forgotten he was there. He gave a little jump and saw the other give him an awestruck glance. "He is coming, just as it is written."

"Yeah, where is it written?" Jack demanded.

"I wanted to talk to you about that, sir," Sam took back the transmitter and Daniel noticed her gaze flicking professionally to the newcomer, assessing the threat he offered, the soldier in her deciding it was minimal, the scientist in her visibly making a mental note to ask him questions later. "The people keep telling Teal'c things about us that haven't happened yet, which is a little disconcerting to say the least. And they weren't in the temple because they wanted to see Daniel killed. They were hoping to see him rescued."

"What?"

Daniel saw all the color drain from Jack's face and caught his arm. "Jack? Are you okay? Do you want to sit down?"

Jack shook him off angrily and held up a warning finger. "I am fine, Daniel. Don't fuss." He turned back to Sam. "Explain."

She took off her cap and ran a hand through her hair, the glow from the flickering torchlight putting rippling streaks of red into the gold. "Well as Teal'c and I understand it, there seem to be two separate religions on this planet. One is the original cult of Onuris, which is what one could call the 'official' religion. The other is a secret cult of followers of the…Chosen One. They call him the Deliverer because according to their holy writing he's the one who delivers them from the False god, and they've been awaiting his coming for a while now. The priests of Onuris are aware of the other cult and ruthlessly persecute any off-worlders who arrive here without authority from Onuris by torturing them and then publicly putting them to death, partly to prove that they're not the Chosen One. But it’s written of the Chosen One that he would also be tortured by the priests and would appear to be 'lost to himself' but then he would miraculously be restored. That was what the people were hoping to see, and…" She sighed and waved a hand at Daniel.

Jack grimaced. "And Dannyboy fits the bill very nicely." He raised his eyebrows at Daniel. "Well, it isn't every day you get mistaken for a deity, is it? I hope you put on clean underwear this morning."

"Sir, Teal'c doesn't think it is a case of mistaken identity."

"What?"

"What?"

They both asked the question in unison. Sam shrugged. "I'm just repeating what he told me. He says that he thinks the Chosen One is Daniel."

Jack took a deep breath. "Look, I think Daniel's a wonderful human being too but I can't say I've ever noticed him walking on water or feeding the five thousand or parting the Red Sea or whatever the hell it is wannabe deities do."

"Sam, it doesn't make any sense. Teal'c knows I'm not a…god as well as you do. You must have misunderstood him."

"Daniel, who says their 'Chosen One' is a god? Onuris isn't. Apophis isn't. Thor isn't. You and I know better that anyone that sometimes a god isn't a god, he's just…"

Enlightenment hit him. "Someone in the right place at the right time."

They exchanged a long look. She nodded. "Exactly."

Daniel collected himself and turned and looked at the three priests. The High Priest was clearly fading, dying; the others were praying over him, saying some rite for the injured man Daniel didn't recognize. Odd, when that fragment from the Book of the Dead had remained so similar, and yet their rituals for preparing the soul on its way had changed so much. No funerary statue to capture the dying one's last breath, or perhaps in their confusion and fear, the lower order priests were forgetting important parts of the ritual, incapable of giving the comfort the man needed. It was instinctive to go towards them, to offer help…

Memories sliced through his mind, cold and sharp as an axe blade. Wesheb! Wesheb! The priests calling upon him to answer them, to tell him where he came from, who had sent him to deny their god, what demon he served. He'd only understood one word in ten, and hadn't understood at all from where their rage was coming, their hatred of him, their will to hurt him so badly for so long for a reason he couldn't begin to fathom. As though he had done them some great and terrible wrong. He was tugging at chains that wouldn't let him go, the blue light was coming closer. He read the malevolent satisfaction in the High Priest's eyes as the beam found his body again, seared his nerves, sent screaming white fire to every cell…

"It's okay, Daniel…it's okay…You're safe now."

The white glare dimmed; the blackness misted into grey and then a soft contrast of torchlight and shadow as Daniel cautiously opened his eyes to find that he was on his feet this time. He knew who he was and where he was too: in the temple of Onuris, recovering from a flashback to being…shokmared by fanatical priests. That was something. Still clinging to Jack though; his face pressed into his stubble-prickly neck, smelling the fresh sweat overlaying a faint memory of aftershave. Jack's arms were around him, holding him up, one hand gently patting Daniel's back, the other stroking his hair as before. This was getting to be rather an embarrassing habit.

Daniel disentangled his fingers from their panic grip, straightened up cautiously, and put a hand up to the tingling left side of his face. He risked a glance at the older man and muttered, "If we're going to keep doing this, you really need to shave."

Jack turned Daniel's head to the side to examine it. "Great. Now you have whisker burn. That could take some explaining."

Daniel darted him another sideways look but could see not a hint of embarrassment in those brown eyes. Concern, yes; discomfort, very emphatically no. He felt an unwilling rush of gratitude towards Jack. How many men of his age and background would have taken this in their stride the way Jack did? There were times when Jack was interrupting him before he was five words into even a simplified explanation of something when Daniel really wanted to point out that hugging his ignorance to himself like a security blanket was a pretty shallow reaction to new information. But then he would remember all those unexpected depths the man had. Ones you just didn't expect to find in an Air Force colonel, never mind someone who went out of his way to present himself as Mister Average. No way in hell, for instance, would Colonel Robert Makepeace have ever let Daniel take refuge from bad memories in his arms, even once. And, perhaps more importantly, Daniel would have pulled out all his own fingernails before he would have done so.

Daniel felt Jack's fingertips lightly touching his upper arms, a supporting grip just to steady him as he swayed a little. "That wasn't such a bad one," Jack said it as though Daniel having blackouts in his arms happened all the time. "You came round much faster that time."

"Are you okay, Daniel?"

Sam's blue eyes were full of concern and he had another flash of memory: Sam telling him he was hallucinating, delirious. He could remember the exact look on her face as she said it, the way she hadn't met his eye. She'd hated lying to him. Teal'c telling him he was with his friends again. All of them working so damned hard to get him back. Sometimes he really wondered why they bothered.

"I can't take him. I can't take him!"

It had never occurred to him until that moment he wouldn't be going to live with his grandfather. It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted his parents back, of course he did, but while you had a living relative, you knew you would at least be taken care of by someone with a few of the same references; someone who knew who you were without need for explanation. He had noticed the odd glances the women from Social Services had exchanged as they drove him to the dull brownstone building where the assessment meeting was going to take place. As much as he had presumed anything, he had presumed he would be leaving the meeting in his Grandfather's company. He'd been picturing himself in that dusty house with all its fascinating oddities. Not so different from the dusty apartment in Egypt where every flat surface was covered in artifacts. He hadn't really been listening to the conversation going on over his head, tuning it out like he'd been tuning out most things recently, sinking back into that comforting fantasy where he thought of all the ways it could be a mistake: His parents had been shipwrecked like Robinson Crusoe but had made a raft and a perfect sail and were coming home now; their plane had fallen from the sky but they were cutting their way through the green fronds of the jungle to get back to him, as indomitable and independent as he remembered them…But then the memory would intervene. The snapping chain. The falling coverstone. The screams. The blood.

He'd been jolted back into the present to find his Grandfather on his feet, refusing to look in Daniel's direction, panic in his accented voice. "I can't . I'm not suitable. I'm not responsible. I can't look after a boy of his age. I travel all over the world. I couldn't possibly take a child with me."

It had taken Daniel a little while to make sense of what he was hearing. That he wouldn't be going home with 'Nick'. That he didn't have a home to go to. The man didn't want him. He'd gasped with the shock of it. It had never occurred to him until that instant his grandfather might not take him. He'd thought Nick would grumble a little, maybe act like Daniel's father did sometimes when there was a lot to be done, the light was fading and Daniel had got bored with waiting for them to finish what they were doing and pay attention to him. He'd sometimes felt like a nuisance they didn't want under their feet for a few hours, just while his father was busy, but not unloved even then. All abandonments until this moment had been temporary. He was still getting used to the permanence of the way in which his parents had left him behind this time. But this was deliberate. This was a choice his grandfather was making. He didn't want Daniel.

It had come to him with a terrible sense of emptiness in that moment, that no one wanted Daniel. He had ceased to be someone people gave thanks for, kissed goodnight and murmured they loved, and become a problem strangers would now have to solve.

He'd stared at his grandfather in disbelief and seen the depth of his hurt and confusion; the pain of that revelation, reflected in the way the man flinched. Nick had said, "I am sorry…" like someone begging for absolution. "Daniel, I am sorry."

He'd gone on hoping Nick would change his mind right up until the door closed behind him, the footsteps had stopped their apologetic echo on the shiny linoleum floor. Sitting there with a chill that went so deep he felt he'd never be warm again, Daniel had realized he was now, for the first time in his life, utterly unwanted by anyone.

"Daniel…?"

He opened his eyes and found Jack looking at him with that carefully neutral expression he always used to hide near-panic-stricken concern with apparent calm.

"You okay?" The tone was conversational, but Jack's hands were curled into fists. Idly, Daniel noticed the way Jack jammed them into his pockets and rocked on his heels. "Daniel? You feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," he said it automatically. He realized he was very tired and wanted to go home. He didn't know which home, the SGC, his apartment, Abydos, or all the way back to Egypt, but somewhere that very emphatically wasn't here. He wanted to curl up in the dust, on the bloodstained stone and sleep for a week. He wanted to be back on the tel'tak with his head on Jack's shoulder and Sam where he could see her if he opened an eye, and if he craned his neck he could just see Teal'c's left elbow as the Jaffa operated the controls. Somewhere he knew they were all alive and well and couldn't be hurt.

"You kind of zoned out on me there, Danny."

'Danny'? Uh oh. Never a good sign. Jack only called him that when he was trying to soften a blow. Like when the Goa'uld you thought you were in love with apparently got burned to death in front of you, or Jack was trying to find a tactful way to tell you not to get yourself gang-raped by the scum of the galaxy, or someone slammed a door in your face one time too many and you realized how much ignorance, fear, and superstition you’d met with over the years and how damned weary of it you were. They must be in even deeper shit than he thought if Jack was calling him 'Danny'.

"I'm tired."

"You are all tired." It was the English-speaking native again. No, not a native. Someone from another planet, just like them. That placating smile. Weird eyes. He ought to ask the man's name but it felt like too much effort even to open his mouth. The nameless helpmate said, "You need food and somewhere to shelter."

"What we need is to get the damned DHD working and get the hell off this world."

Jack seemed to be talking from a long way off.

"Sir, I think Daniel needs to eat something and get some more sleep. He looks really…"

So did Sam.

"You heard the man, Carter, Onuris is coming here. Now, what the hell do you think he's going to do when he gets here? And to whom? I want you and Teal'c to go and work on the DHD. I don't care what it takes, get it working, find us a way off this damned world." Jack turned his head. "Teal'c!"

Something was hissing. He looked across at the High Priest and there was red wetness on the man's mouth. Although Daniel knew it was where he was coughing up blood from his crushed chest it gave the impression he had eaten something raw; ripped out Daniel's heart and swallowed it. He looked as though he wanted to. There was still that hate burning in his dark eyes; unquenchable; unchangeable; something he would carry with him into death: the way you looked at your murderer. The hissing was louder. It made him think of Apophis. The serpent god of the underworld who ruled the night. For years it had just been a name to him. A myth. Like Kheb. Kheb was a myth. Just a place in a book where Osiris had hidden from Seth. Perhaps none of it was true. Perhaps Jack had been right in his first reaction. Perhaps the child was gone forever and would never know Daniel had looked for him, wanted him; that he had been loved after all. And if Apophis was really dead this time, why was that snake still hissing so damned loudly…?

"Teal'c? You and Carter get working on that DHD. The wounded are going to have to do the best they can to help each other and the sooner we get the 'gate open the sooner we can send back medical assistance and – damn it to hell – Daniel!" 

Why was he back in Jack's arms again anyway? He hadn't seen the blue light this time. And why was Jack yelling his name from such a very long way away…?

***

O'Neill looked at his watch. Teal'c and Carter had been gone for two hours. Which meant Daniel had been unconscious for two hours. Carter had said she didn't think Daniel was relapsing; his body was still in physical shock from the trauma of shokmar – which was why when O'Neill had held him in his arms, Daniel had been trembling faintly the whole time – and his blood sugar was low; that was all. What he needed was rest, food, and warmth. Twelve hours sleep and he'd probably make a full recovery. The difficulty lay in trying to provide him with twelve hours sleep when they were trapped on an alien world, and if Carter and Teal'c couldn't fix the DHD were probably going to have to hightail it to the hills to hide out there.

Harun, the helpful native with the Siberian husky eyes, had promised to outline the local topography for him in case flight became unavoidable. If he couldn't quite manage a map apparently he was willing to act as a guide. In the meantime, Harun was offering them food and shelter, and as that was the nicest thing anyone had offered them since they'd set foot on this lousy world, O'Neill was accepting what was on offer with thanks.

If Harun hadn't offered them his hospitality he wasn't quite sure what he would have done because when he'd barely caught Daniel before he hit the temple floor, he'd been feeling pretty close to despair. Daniel had been frighteningly white, limp, and chilled, the only thing proving he was still alive that unnatural tremor vibrating through him. He and Teal'c had picked the unconscious Daniel up between them and then realized simultaneously they had nowhere to take him. When Harun had said, "Come with me," O'Neill had followed him without a word.

Harun's hut might be Spartan but it had given them somewhere warm and dry to lay Daniel down, and the hot broth he'd insisted they all swallow had definitely made O'Neill feel a lot stronger than he'd been feeling ten minutes before. He'd seen it put a spark of color back into Carter's pale cheek as well, and even Teal'c had looked restored by it. Their situation still sucked, of course, but at least they weren't as hungry and cold as they could have been. He just wished Daniel would wake up so he could shovel some food down him in readiness for the strategic withdrawing they were almost certainly going to have to be doing very soon.

***

Hear me, my Daniel…

She was lost and she was found. A corpse bled of color beneath a white sheet. Alive beside his bedside, her warm, soft hand against his cheek. She was part of the SGC. She was wrapped in a winding sheet and buried beneath a billion grains of sand. She was in bed beside him, his to touch and love again. He'd missed her body heat like a part of his own pulse; the way her hair brushed the bare skin of his chest when she kissed him. Missed the scent, feel and taste of her so very much and now he had it back again, but not to keep. Because Sha're was dead. Even as she gazed into his eyes and touched his face, she was dead. But it couldn't be the end, not like this. He had to have at least the hope of waking up beside her again, of turning his head to find her with that smile she saved just for him.

Promise me you will save the child!

"I promise." She was begging him as though she thought he would refuse but of course, he wouldn't refuse. She'd never asked him for anything before. Of course, he would find her child and make sure that he was safe. I promise, Sha're, I promise.

Except he didn't know where to look. Didn't have a single clue to follow up, and there was a whole galaxy out there full of worlds which might be Kheb. He'd never found his wife. He'd failed her when she'd been alive. Who was to say he wouldn't fail her after death as well. He knew Sha're's ghost was watching him, like Echo fading as Narcissus lost himself in his own reflection. Waiting for him to fulfill the promise he'd made her. Waiting for him to find her child so she could finally sleep in peace…

***

Teal'c read his own defeat in the blue eyes of Major Carter. They both knew there was not enough time. Once before they had examined a DHD which had failed to function and in that case they had managed to find a way to make it work without needing to repair the broken crystals. In this instance he had no doubt that given enough time, he and Major Carter could over-ride the Goa'uld transmitter and use the DHD to dial home. But he suspected they had very little time left, and nor could they be sure of the people clustering around the Stargate silently observing their actions. Some of those who had escaped from the temple undoubtedly were followers of the Chosen One who might be deemed hostile to the Goa'uld, but even they might not wish them to leave the planet, taking Daniel Jackson with them, when he was effectively their god.

They had spent some minutes transferring as many of their supplies as they could carry – something which would turn out to be a waste of time if they managed to get the DHD to work but which might save their lives if they were trapped on this world for any length of time.

"If I just understood the way the Goa'uld crystals work a little more clearly." Major Carter wiped a hand across her forehead before bending back over the DHD, her voice slightly muffled as she spoke from within the bowels of the device. "I've tried analyzing them under every piece of equipment in Cheyenne Mountain but there are irregularities in their structure which I've just never seen in any equivalent mineral on Earth."

Teal'c adjusted his flashlight so she could better see into the DHD. "Major Carter, when we were returning from Netu, the Tok'ra Aldwin told me they had recently found a far better means to remove even an unwilling Goa'uld without injuring the host."

"See, when I looked at it through a spectrograph – " Carter pulled her head out of the DHD, his non sequitur finally penetrating. She frowned and pushed her short hair back from her face with her arm. "That's good news, Teal'c. Skaara is still out there."

"But Sha're is dead." Teal'c held her gaze. Both Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill had tried to talk to him about his act. Had reassured him of its rightness. But their words had done nothing to ease the pain inside him. Only Daniel Jackson could offer him absolution and the young scholar had done so, as unhesitatingly on waking in the infirmary as he had when his wife was still dying from Teal'c's staff weapon blast. Those words had helped to dilute the guilt he felt for his part in Sha're's death considerably, but Aldwin's words had pierced him like a dagger. "Had I only shot to wound instead of to kill – "

"Then Daniel might be dead now." Major Carter was giving him all her attention now. Gaze fixed on him, unblinking and certain. "You said it yourself, Teal'c, even one more second would probably have killed him. And by the time you reached that tent you already had no choice. Perhaps if Daniel had put a bullet straight through Amaunet's left hand the second he walked in there things might have turned out differently, but once Amaunet had him in the grip of the ribbon device there was nothing any of the rest of us could do except kill the Goa'uld who was killing him. If you hadn't done it, the Colonel would have done, and if he hadn't, I would. Daniel was too close to being dead for any of us to do anything except shoot to kill because while there was a breath left in Amaunet's body we all know she would have used it to murder him."

"But Sha're could have been saved."

"Maybe she could. Maybe in another dimension we managed to knock her on the head and take her to Cimmeria and she survived Thor's Hammer while Amaunet died. Maybe in another dimension again Sha're managed to stop Amaunet killing Daniel. But in this dimension Sha're concentrated all her energies on telling Daniel what she wanted him to do and trusted in you to save his life. Which you did. She didn't mind dying, Teal'c. She accepted it. And what's more she told him to forgive you with just about the last breath in her body. Don't you think that also means you ought to forgive yourself? If Sha're didn't blame you then who else has the right to? Even you."

Teal'c looked at the blue-grey circle of the Stargate. "Major Carter, however many times I try to tell myself I did the right thing, an innocent woman is still dead because of me. Daniel Jackson is without a wife because of me. Kasuf is without a daughter, and Skaara, should we ever find him again, is without a sister, because of me."

Major Carter leant across and put a hand on his arm, squeezing it to get his attention until he turned his head and looked at her. "And Daniel's alive because of you, Teal'c, and I'm alive, and the Colonel's alive, and so are an awful lot of other people. You may have done some bad things in your life but saving Daniel from the Goa'uld who was killing him wasn't one of them. And sometimes you need to remind yourself about all the good things you've done as well."

The clunk of the first chevron lighting up took them both by surprise. Teal'c could barely identify the sound at first, despite its familiarity, his mind still fixed on that scene inside Amaunet's tent, Daniel Jackson lying on the ground with his hand outstretched to his dead wife. But as the second chevron engaged he realized what he was hearing. "Major Carter!"

"Way ahead of you, Teal'c." She was already snatching up their packs, pushing one into his hands. "Time to get out of sight."

***

Daniel awoke to warmth, flickering shadows, the red-gold glow of nearby firelight, the smell of broth cooking in a cauldron…Abydos? Was he on Abydos? He hadn't had that flicker of hope in a while. All a dream? Sha're never stolen…? But immediately there was a pang of loss to balance the relief, because that meant Teal'c and Sam weren't real and Jack had never come back for him…

He opened his eyes and saw Jack drawing lines in the dust of the floor he was sitting on. Regret and relief balanced each other out so that there was no discernible emotion except a vague feeling of…rightness. This wasn't the best possible life any Daniel Jackson could have had, but it was his life and he recognized it. For the first time it sunk in how he'd almost lost it today. He'd been so busy feeling aggrieved about having his sanity handed back to him, he hadn't taken any time out to be grateful. There was a lot to be said for not being a gibbering wreck, after all.

He blinked a few times, trying to get used to the light level, and realized he was in a one room dwelling with stone and clay walls, a dirt floor, woven bedding strips, a fire on which a cooking pot was hanging. There were a number of smells, hot food, stale sweat, feet that had been in their boots too long, spices he couldn't recognize, tallow fat that carried an unsavory boar taint. He watched in fascination as Jack sketched out mountains on the floor with his forefinger, leaving a trail of jagged ridges in the dirt.

Why was Jack drawing lines in the dust? That was usually Daniel's role. He was talking to the English-speaking local and they were mapping something together. Jack was working out the lie of the land, lines of retreat, hiding-places. Places to hide him.

His brain seemed to be working much better now because he was suddenly very aware of how dangerous he had become to everyone. If they couldn't get off this world before Onuris arrived, they were never getting off. The Goa'uld would send his Jaffa to guard the gate then demand retribution against the people who had destroyed his statue and temple, murdered his High Priest and undermined his believers' faith in him. And he would want the so-called Chosen One put to death where everyone could see it done. Daniel had become as dangerous as –

As Sha're's son. He flinched from that thought because he really didn't want to hear it. It kept trying to creep up on him and tap him on the shoulder. All those questions about what the hell was he going to do with the boy if he did find him? How could he possibly keep him safe from the System Lords? How could he put not just SG-1 and not just the SGC but the entire planet at such risk because of a promise he thought he'd made to his wife? Earth might be part of the Protected Planets' Treaty but he wondered how good that safeguard would hold if Earth was harboring a child who contained all the knowledge of the Goa'uld; all their secrets; all their weaknesses…

Plenty of time to worry about that when he'd found Kheb. He'd take the boy to the Nox world – except there was no way of reaching the Nox world, of course. Give him to the Tok'ra? He wasn't sure that he trusted the Tok'ra. Not to take care of a child. They would have killed all of them to destroy Sokar. Who was to say what they might do to a baby if they thought the knowledge was within him that would help them defeat the Goa'uld. The Asgard? They would never agree to take him and even if they did they weren't human. He was a human baby. He was Sha're's baby. He had so very nearly been Daniel's baby. Give him back to Kasuf who was at least his grandfather and who would love him when that might cause the System Lords to come in ships and wipe out everyone on Abydos?

What was that old black and white movie Jack had made him watch while the man was convalescing? 'Curse of the Demon' or something. From some M.R. James story about a piece of paper with a runic inscription that would cause the death of whoever received it. You had to pass it on to someone else so the demon would come and find him instead of you. If you didn't, wherever and whoever you were, it would hunt you down and destroy you. Jack had told him the movie was a classic and he had to watch it but Daniel had forgotten the director's name three minutes after Jack had told him it. He'd just followed the story, raptly, as transfixed as he had been by those stories of Egyptian mythology when he was a child. It was only when it was finished and Jack had hobbled into the kitchen to get them both a glass of whisky that Daniel had become aware of a growing unease. As Jack put the glass in his hand and said 'Cheers…' he'd realized Sha're's baby, the child he'd promised her he would find and protect, might as well be the piece of paper in the film. A demon in the fog might be more spine-chilling than the System Lords, but they were real and every bit as sure. He'd dropped the glass.

"…Okay, so North is a no-go, I'm really not a swamp-lover, and impenetrable mountains don't sound like a rest-cure but they'd be a good place to hide…"

It occurred to Daniel that Jack was planning for failure. But Jack never planned for failure. Jack didn't even admit the possibility of failure existed. This was Jack-there's-always-an-or-we're-not-dead-yet-O'Neill and if reality looked like it was going to rain on his parade well reality could go chase itself and in the meantime he was going to stare fixedly at his teammates until they come up with something clever because, damnit, that was their job.

That was another thing about Jack: unwavering belief Sam and Teal'c could solve anything if they put their minds to it. The last thing Daniel remembered, Jack had been sending Sam and Teal'c off to fix the DHD and now here was Jack planning for them not being able to fix the DHD? That made no sense whatsoever.

"Hey, Daniel."

He blinked as he realized Jack had noticed he was awake and was nodding at him. "You okay?"

"Yes."

"You passed out."

"Oh."

"On me."

"Sorry." Daniel sat up and ran a hand through his hair. "I heard something hissing."

"Yeah, that would have been all the blood in your brain going AWOL. Next time you hear that noise tell me before you fall over."

"You caught me." Not a question. When had Jack ever not caught him?

"This time."

Daniel realized they were going to have different perceptions of these events forever – supposing Onuris gave them more than a few hours to mull over the day's happenings. To him this was going to be a mission where he'd wandered off, got captured, got a lot of people killed and totally traumatized Jack, but where Jack had miraculously coaxed him back to the land of the sane, then looked after him far better than he deserved while he threw a hissy fit because the man had dared to raise his voice to him. To Jack it was going to be a mission where he'd failed to keep Daniel safe from harm, failed to save him from torture, got him back by the skin of his teeth but failed to get him off the planet before he had to tell Daniel what had really happened, and was now failing to keep him safe from Onuris' vengeance. This was not one they were ever going to agree on.

"Where are Sam and Teal'c?"

"Trying to fix the DHD."

And that wasn't right either. ' Trying to fix the DHD'? Surely that should be ' Fixing the DHD.' It occurred to Daniel that this mission coming after their joyride through Netu must have taken a hell of a toll on Jack's confidence. He'd sometimes found the man's illogical optimism irritating but he was missing it now; hadn't realized what security they all took from Jack's certainty until the man started to have doubts. It didn't seem fair to say, 'Stop having doubts, Jack. That's our job!' but that was how he felt.

"You must eat." The English-speaker again, putting a bowl in his hands so like the earthenware he'd always eaten from on Abydos he felt a spasm of mingled recognition and loss. Then the man was ladling some broth into it which smelt like the stew Sha're had made him when he was recovering from fever. He'd had a lot of fevers, immunity obviously a little weakened by different water and new variants of germs to which he had less resistance than the local people. Sha're had always been so patient about nursing him back to health, tempting his sluggish appetite with special delicacies, collecting herbs to grind for cordials, spoon-feeding him medicine…Skaara had accused her good-naturedly of wanting to turn Daniel into her child. Had told his sister it was high time she had a baby of her own so she could fuss over him and got on with scolding, neglecting and ignoring her husband the way proper wives did. It seemed such a tragedy a woman who would have made such a wonderful mother had never got the chance to be one, even to her own son. Sha're had died not even knowing her baby's name.

"Hey…"

He looked up in surprise to find Jack sitting next to him. The man tapped his finger on the bowl in Daniel's hands. "Don't just look at it, Daniel, eat it. Please?"

That one word told Daniel all the things Jack wasn't saying about how they couldn't afford to have Daniel slowing them down or passing out every five minutes. That it seemed likely they were going to be fugitives so they were all going to need their strength. There could be no weak links in this particular chain.

"Sorry." He ate the food, quickly and mechanically, trying not to wince as some of the vegetables burnt his mouth. He felt a little sick but that was probably just hunger. Either way the broth had to be consumed.

Jack rested a hand lightly on his shoulder. "You feeling okay?"

He nodded, gaze on the pulses floating in a reddish sea of stew. "I'm fine." He swallowed quickly as his tongue was burnt again then felt the mouthful sear him all the way down to his stomach. It smelt better than it tasted, the vegetables had a bitter aftertaste and there was a faint greasiness to the gravy that spoke of old fat stock which had been reheated too many times, but he could still feel warmth and strength returning with every bite.

"I don't know what that stuff is but we all ate it and we're still breathing."

Daniel glanced up at him. "Pity about those purple blotches all over your skin though."

He saw a flicker of relief in the other man's eyes. Jack made to slap him lightly around the back of the head but even that obviously seemed too brutal to him in his sense of heightened protectiveness because the hand came back to rest on his shoulder again. "Just eat the damned food, will you?"

"Can we have home cooking on every mission from now on?"

Good. Jack was looking a lot happier. The jokes might be lame but that didn't matter. Screwed up shokmar victims clearly didn't make jokes, even bad ones. Relatively sane people did. The man shrugged. "Sure, if you want to be responsible for it."

"Uh, Jack, don't you remember you said you'd rather eat dog food than my cooking?"

The man scratched his jaw. "Well, I was feeling irritable, you wouldn't let me go and watch the game."

"You had a third degree burn on your leg." Only a couple of spoonfuls to go now, he could do this and he could keep it down.

Jack held up a finger. "See, you were so damned picky, it was just one thing after another with you. And, incidentally, you are a lousy cook, Daniel."

He swept the last spoonful into his mouth and swallowed hard. Too hot. Nasty aftertaste. He still felt sick. Didn't matter. It was now inside him and it would make him stronger. He dropped the spoon into the empty bowl triumphantly. "Actually, I'm a damned good cook, I just knew if I burnt enough packets of noodles you'd spring for take-out." He gave a little smile as he felt Jack unwinding a fraction. "And, of course, you wouldn't let me cook anything I like."

"Well call me old-fashioned but I didn't feel like spending six weeks eating food that went out with Tutankhamun. Good Americans eat pizza."

"Pizza's Italian."

"Whatever."

Daniel noticed Jack look at his watch and immediately the moment of lightness evaporated. "How long have Sam and Teal'c been gone?"

The way Jack's jaw tightened told him 'too long' better than a telegram. Daniel said, "We should go find…"

"They'll be fine."

There was a warning in Jack's tone, a hint of nerves a little closer to the surface than usual. Daniel recognized the situation: Jack being pulled in two different directions at once and not much enjoying the experience. Time to tread carefully or he was going to get his head bitten off. "Have you tried calling them?"

The look Jack gave him told him teaching his grandmother to suck eggs was not what Daniel should be doing right now. "I was only asking."

"Apparently the – " Jack waved a weary hand in the direction of the open doorway; a treated skin which seemed to constitute the front door flapped idly showing Daniel unfamiliar stars, "temple place blocks the signal."

"They could be in trouble. If I came with you, we could…"

"No."

No one could have been more emphatic. It was practically a bark. Daniel moistened his lips, unsure how to proceed but very aware that Jack needed careful handling right now. "I'm just saying – "

Jack turned and looked at him. "Daniel, either they're still working on the DHD – about which you and I know squat and so can't help them – or Onuris has turned up in one hell of a snit and they're keeping their heads down. Either way you and me waltzing in there isn't going to help them any."

"What if Onuris has come through the Stargate and caught them?"

"I don't think Carter and Teal'c would just stand there while the 'gate was lighting up, do you? Just, settle down. Try to get some rest. They'll be back."

Jack sounded so much more like himself that Daniel decided not to take offence at being spoken to as though he was six. In fact, if it would stop Jack putting out the welcome mat for Mister Doubt, Daniel wasn't going to object if the man ruffled his hair, called him 'Dannyboy' and asked him if his bootlaces were tied. For the first time it occurred to Daniel that perhaps Jack wasn't a natural optimist. Perhaps it was just something he put on to make the rest of them feel better. After all, it did make them feel better even if it only united them in rolling their eyes at each other about Jack's unrealistic optimism. And some of that positive thinking did tend to stick. Even when one part of Daniel's brain was telling him Jack had no more idea how they were going to get out of here than anyone else, the way the man always hit the ground running while insisting bad stuff was not going to happen to his team, even when it was already in the process of doing so, did usually make him feel more cheerful.

Daniel wondered how Jack was doing right now. He wasn't sure how long they'd been on the planet but he reckoned the bit at the beginning where Jack had been blowing on his fingers and getting very bored while Sam and Teal'c were examining the DHD would have been the highlight of his day. It had all been downhill from then on. Thanks to Daniel.

Daniel winced and Jack said, "You okay? No more flashbacks? Headaches? Weird hissing noises?"

"I'm fine, Jack. I'm just sorry I…"

Jack raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"It's kind of a long list. How are you anyway?"

"Bored and irritable last time I checked."

"Well at least one of us is back to normal then."

Jack gave him an assessing look. "You know who'll be taking care of you next time you get injured and are signed out of the infirmary, don't you, Daniel?"

"Sam or Teal'c?" he said it hopefully.

"Me. It's my duty as your C.O. and I would never shrink from it."

"Well I'm not actually planning to get injured ever again but if I did I'm sure Teal'c wouldn't mind. And he says meditation is a very positive tool in physical recovery."

Jack was giving him his best level stare. "When you have a snake inside you it probably is. Normal people have to drink beer and watch hockey."

"I don't like beer. Or hockey."

"Time you learned to then, isn't it?"

"Teal'c's very patient. So is Sam."

"See and that's what makes me a much better person to take care of you when you get hurt. They'd be so damned nice to you you'd probably go out and hurt yourself again just to be taken care of that well. Now, six weeks at my place – "

"Uh, Jack, when you were convalescing, I stayed at your house, remember?"

"Six weeks at my place learning how to not just like hockey but answer long and difficult questions about it while being tested on your ability to tell imported beer brands apart in blind tastings will soon teach you the merits of taking much better care of yourself. You know I'm actually quite looking forward to it, so you want to get yourself hurt again: be my guest."

Daniel scratched his jaw. "If this is your incredibly subtle reverse psychology approach to persuading me not to get caught by Onuris when he arrives, it's working."

"That's what I like about people with PhDs: they're quick."

Before Daniel had even fully identified that quiet noise as the sound of approaching footsteps, Jack was on his feet, across the hut and pressed against the wall with his MP-5 raised. Daniel stayed where he was and hoped the sight of him would distract whoever was coming for long enough that Jack could knock them out before they killed him. When the hide door was pushed back, he tensed in readiness then felt relief flood through him as Teal'c stopped just outside of the door. Without moving, the Jaffa said, "O'Neill, it is I."

Jack relaxed, lowered his gun and exhaled. "You took your time."

Daniel gazed at them hopefully as Sam and Teal'c stepped into the hut but the sag of Sam's shoulders told him at a glance what the answer to Jack's question would be even before he'd asked it.

"So…?"

"No." Teal'c's disappointment was clear in his voice.

"Is Onuris…?"

"Yes."

"Hell!"

Jack said it so savagely Daniel realized his nerves were still pretty close to the surface after all. His fault. He wrapped his arms around his chest. This really was all his fault. Why hadn't he just done what Jack asked? Why hadn't he waited like Jack had told him to? Why the hell had he ever gone to that temple in the first place? He watched Jack take off his cap and run a hand through his hair, the silver streaks looking bronze in the firelight. Jack hadn't had any grey hairs when they'd first met. Daniel always tried to tell himself it was Charlie's death that had turned Jack grey but the uncomfortable fact remained Jack hadn't had a grey hair when he'd come back to Abydos either. Not one. He remembered when they'd been in the Tok'ra tunnels after escaping from Hathor. Makepeace had thrown Daniel down the corridor, then grabbed him by the jacket again and started hauling him after him while Daniel swore a protest as too much weight was put on his injured leg. Makepeace had looked at him and shaken his head, muttering, "Christ, no wonder O'Neill's going grey, Jackson. I'm just amazed they haven’t had to fit the guy for a goddamned pacemaker with you on his team."

Jack put his cap back on. "Okay, how many…?"

"A couple of hundred, sir. And there could be more arriving. He's obviously anticipating resistance and has come prepared for a fight."

Daniel thought of all those injured people in the temple. "Jack, shouldn't we – ?" He broke off as Jack glared at him, those expressive brown eyes saying 'Don't even think about it!' so sharply Daniel damned near jumped.

As Daniel swallowed the end of his sentence, Jack said crisply, "The word you didn't quite get to there had better have been 'hide', Daniel."

Daniel picked his words carefully: "I was just wondering what you thought we should do next."

"Wondering? Not suggesting?"

"Definitely just wondering."

Sam had been collecting up their packs ready for departure, but now she looked up from her place by Daniel's feet, brow creased with concern. "Sir, where's Harun?"

Jack glanced around and then shrugged. "I don't know – moving in a mysterious way, I expect, or no, that would be Daniel, wouldn't it? As he's on our side, I don't really care."

Daniel winced. Jack really hated situations he wasn't in control of and they always frayed his temper faster than a razorblade through silk. Which meant any minute now he was going to start biting off more heads than a fox in a hencoop.

Sam said steadily, " Is he on our side, sir?"

"Well he fed us and hid us and he seems very keen on Daniel being the Chosen One which I presume puts him on our side. I think I can go out on a limb and say the pissed off Goa'uld with a couple of hundred Jaffa at his heels is probably more of a threat right now."

Teal'c rumbled quietly, "These people want Daniel Jackson to deliver them from Onuris, O'Neill. They wish their prophecy to come to pass. They did not try to save Daniel Jackson from torture because according to their mythology, their Chosen One was tortured. Nor would they have averted his death because according to their mythology that was the task of his avatars. It may be that according to their mythology Daniel Jackson has to die to save them. In which case they will not try to avert that either and may even assist in his death."

Jack glared at the Jaffa. "Why?"

Sam sighed. "Teal'c's right, sir. The whole of the Christian faith is based on Jesus Christ dying to save Mankind. If he hadn't died then according to the New Testament we wouldn't have been saved. If someone had sent a copy of the Bible back to Ancient Judea via a time anomaly so the followers of Christ were waiting for him before he arrived, they still probably wouldn't have tried to save him because they needed him to die to save them. Judas would still have betrayed him because without the betrayal there could be no crucifixion, no resurrection, and effectively no salvation. You see where I'm going with this?"

"Not really, no."

Daniel looked up. "What Sam and Teal'c are saying, Jack, is that these people don't necessarily like me or want me – or my 'avatars' – to stay in one piece. They need certain events to take place to deliver them from Onuris but if nailing me to a cross is what it takes to get the job done, they'll probably be happy to supply the nails."

Sam nodded. "Exactly."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "That sucks."

"That's pretty much the way religions work, Jack. People don't worship deities without expecting to get something back: 'I'll slaughter this bull in your name if you give me a son.' It's always been a reciprocal deal."

"See I knew there was a good reason why I always hated the damned Church."

Daniel moistened his lips. "It helps a lot of people as well, Jack."

"Well it never did squat for me."

"He comes."

They all started and turned to see Harun standing just inside the doorway, licking his lips nervously. "The False god comes."

"So we heard." Jack picked up his pack and Daniel hastily got to his feet. Jack nodded to the man. "So long, thanks for the meal and the place to rest, we have to go hide the – Messiah here now."

"I will hide him."

"Uh – no."

"I know a place of safety."

"Sorry, call me Mister Particular but I really didn't like what your people did to Daniel last time we let him out to play by himself, so he stays with us from now on."

Harun hesitated. "What I must show him is only for the eyes of the Chosen One."

"See, when people say stuff like that it makes me even less inclined to want to let Daniel run off and play with them. And if you've got any puppies you want to show him you're out of luck there as well."

"Jack…" The protest was faint but Daniel did still feel it should be registered. He would put up with being treated like a child when Jack was in this mood because it was just part of what made Jack – Jack, but he did want to utter a small objection about it being done in front of other people.

Jack gave him one of those glares that told him he was brooking no argument right now but Daniel retaliated by giving him another reproachful look, this time at a sideways slant and from under his eyelashes. He didn't, as Janet Fraiser had once suggested, actually practice his reproachful look in front of the bathroom mirror, but he had learned how to adjust it for maximum effectiveness and this was full beam. Jack held out for almost two seconds before wilting, sighing, then saying more reasonably, "Look – Harun, I know you're only trying to help but it's important that we stay together, so either you show us somewhere we can all hide from Onuris or else thanks for everything but we're out of here."

Sam had the door-skin held back and was peering through the gap, MP-5 at the ready. "Sir, we need to go now."

Harun looked unhappy. "It is written that only the – "

Jack held up a warning finger. "Uh-huh – read my lips – don't care – we all go or no go. Take it or leave it because in ten seconds we're all out of here and you don't ever get to see your…Chosen One again." As the man hesitated Jack raised his eyebrows, "Come on, once in a lifetime chance to watch Dannyboy totally fail to turn water into wine, going, going, very nearly gone…"

"Jack…"

This time Jack was ready for him and just held up an admonishing finger without making eye contact. Daniel subsided and looked at Harun. The silence stretched. Jack shifted, moving his weight from his toes to his heels. Harun had one more second Daniel calculated and then Jack was going to be striding out of that doorway, taking the rest of them with him by sheer force of will. As Jack opened his mouth to say, "Time's up!" Harun said, "All of you then. Come with me. I will hide you from the False god."

***

The chill glitter of unfamiliar constellations as they struggled up the mountain path reminded Daniel he'd never got around to showing Kira the stars. She'd wanted to see more of their world and all he'd ever shown her was the inside of grey-painted rooms. Earth would probably always be a concrete bunker to her. But perhaps, even if he'd been able to take her up to the surface, there would have been an unwillingness to share something with her he'd never got the chance to show to Sha're. He liked to think that now but perhaps he was mistaken. Infatuations were like yesterday's fire. It was so hard to remember how that heat felt once it had burned out.

They'd reached an impasse. He'd wanted Jack to believe what Sha're had told him and Jack just couldn't. He'd watched Jack struggle with it, the way he'd struggled with so many things Daniel had told him over the years, and then, with a heart sinking faster than leadshot in a lake Daniel had realized that Jack just couldn't get his head around this one. He'd been so angry with him, so sick with disappointment that after all this time, Jack couldn't take his word for it. And, okay, it sounded crazy; and okay, he couldn't prove it, and okay it probably did seem like wish fulfillment but he knew that it was true; and it should have been enough for Jack that he believed it. After all this time, and all they'd been through together, it should have been enough.

It had made him brittle as papyrus and Kira had arrived in the middle of what he now looked back on as a terrible time; surrounded by people who were so desperate to help him through his grief and yet wouldn't give him the one thing he needed most. He'd felt like someone dying of thirst while his closest friends mopped his brow, held his hand, told him how sorry they were but wouldn't just reach across and hand him that damned glass of water on the windowsill. There had been a brief flame of happiness when Kira had kissed him. A flicker of something that wasn't just endless grief and frustration and anger and misery because how could Jack do this to him? How could he not believe him again ? And then it had all faded; the attraction to Kira had died away so fast as soon as he knew she was Linea, but at least it had given him something to do, trying to get the justice for Kira, who shouldn't be blamed for what the demon within her had made her do in another life, he hadn't managed to obtain for Sha're…

And then she'd gone and he was ashamed that he'd been relieved to see her go, because their flirtation now felt like a form of temporary insanity. But he'd been left there at the bottom of the ramp realizing that he couldn't go on like this; sulking like a furious teenager because no one would believe him. They were all he had and they cared about him and they were worried sick about him; and it wasn't as though they hadn't tried to believe him. So, he'd given in. At least, that was how he'd seen it at the time; a form of capitulation that nevertheless felt like the right thing to do. He'd stopped freezing Jack out – what had he been thinking, that if he shut the guy out for long enough it would somehow persuade him to believe what Daniel had told him in the infirmary? Apologized to Teal'c for being thoughtless in that meeting. Told Sam he was sorry he'd been acting so off with everyone. He had a vague recollection of being patted like he was an elderly spaniel that couldn't take more than the gentlest pressure; of being reassured that he hadn't behaved badly at all; but the sick feeling in his stomach had stayed; and he'd still been able to taste the bitterness of that disappointment because Jack couldn't just take his word for it, couldn't bring himself to trust his judgment, and obviously never, ever would.

And then the very next day Jack had walked into his office as he was looking through that box of Sha're's things and given him what he'd wanted. More than he'd ever hoped for. Just like that.

The weirdest thing was that he didn't think Jack had any idea how much it had meant to him. Jack had come to tell him that looking for Sha're's son was now an official SG-1 priority, that they were going to get out there and search for Kheb or die trying. Jack had probably thought that was the part Daniel was so pleased about; but good as that was, it was the moment when Jack had told him he believed in him that had filled that hole inside him.

Daniel stumbled on the path, momentarily disorientated by finding himself out in the starry coldness of an alien night when for a second there he'd thought he was back in the SGC. He was afraid he might have been literally sleepwalking for the last ten minutes. His concentration had certainly lapsed and it was so damned dark on this mountain he really couldn't afford to start wool-gathering. If he sprained an ankle he was going to slow everyone up. And besides, he was the one who knew about Onuris, the Egyptian god, even if Teal'c was the one who knew about Onuris the Goa'uld. He needed to get his brain working. He needed to think of a way to get them all out of the mess he had got them all into. If only he wasn't so damned tired…

Looking at the Colonel's face, Carter thought, you would never have guessed how far out of his depth he was. This was everything he hated most in one big untidy parcel: Goa'uld, Jaffa, religious fanaticism, no way off a hostile planet, and one of his team already having been injured once and still in serious peril. But other than the way he was treating Daniel as though he was six, he was hiding his anxieties quite efficiently. Although, of course, the way Daniel was just sighing resignedly and putting up with being treated as though he was six was a clear pointer to the Colonel's mood too. Carter knew her commanding officer pretty well after all this time but even she didn't pretend to know him as well as Daniel. And when Daniel decided that the Colonel needed to be cut this amount of slack, the man was clearly having an even worse time than she'd realized.

Both Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill had been adamant that Onuris would go to the temple. He might look for his rival later, but first he would go to the temple and see the destruction of his statue for himself, commune with his High Priests, and learn what had taken place. She hated to think what he would do to the wounded there and she knew Daniel shared her fears, but although they'd exchanged a glance, one look at the Colonel's face had made them both swallow what they'd been about to say.

She just hoped the woman with the sick baby had managed to get out of there in time. Her foot had been trapped under rubble which Carter had managed to clear. It was only after she'd got the woman free and bandaged her crushed foot that Carter had realized the woman was carrying an infant in her arms. Carter had held the child for a few minutes while the woman climbed awkwardly to her feet. The baby's skin had been so hot to the touch it had felt as though it was burning her hand. He'd coughed at her, too weak even to cry. She'd put her ear to his chest and heard the rasp of infection; his breathing so labored it seemed unlikely he would survive even a few hours. She'd remembered the illness the blonde woman had spoken of and reached for the antibiotics at once, saying, "He's sick. I have something that will help him – "

But the woman had snatched the infant back from her, saying, "No. It is not written."

"But I can help him." Carter held out the penicillin. "This should make his fever go away. He'll be able to breathe more easily. Please, let me – "

The woman had shaken her head, tears in her eyes as she said again, "It is not written."

As the baby coughed again, those harsh rasps sounding much too violent for such a tiny figure, Carter had felt the tears sting her own eyes. "Please, let me help him."

"No. No!" The woman had backed away. Carter hadn't been able to understand the expression on her face. Pleading mixed with guilt. As though the woman had done Carter a wrong instead of the other way around.

Thinking of all those wounded people, she opened her mouth to make a protest to the Colonel and then closed it again. The Colonel knew about the situation as well as she did. He'd made a decision. Called it as he saw it and as he was her CO and she was his 2IC, it was her job to back him up and not make his already incredibly difficult job any harder.

She could tell Daniel had also decided his first priority was not to make his best friend's task any more difficult than it already was, and she knew without needing to check with Teal'c and the Colonel they had long since decided their first priority was to keep Daniel safe and the hell away from Onuris, whatever it took. As far as Teal'c and the Colonel were concerned if Onuris killed the worshippers who had forsaken him then that was a tragedy, but one that wasn't going to influence their actions in any way whatsoever. She knew that just as she had the picture burned into her mind of those people dying under the falling rubble so the picture in Colonel O'Neill's mind was of those people craning their necks in apparent excitement to watch Daniel dragged in half-dead and damned near lost to them forever.

Harun had led them away from the dwellings now. The temple was still a looming shadow to the east, looking as though someone had torn a triangle from the sky leaving it empty of stars. Carter automatically checked to see how Daniel was doing and saw Teal'c also sending an assessing glance in his direction. The Colonel was determinedly not looking around, the way he did sometimes, as if he could make Daniel keep up and keep safe just by marching very straight and true to show him how to do it. Daniel was trying to watch his feet. He'd spent years looking up and tripping over fallen logs and tree roots but had recently discovered that looking down was also an option which meant he tripped less often but there was now a danger of him walking straight into whatever was in front of him. As the Colonel stopped to look back at the temple he became the thing right in front of Daniel.

Carter darted forward but was just too slow. She winced as Daniel murmured, "Sorry," and received a glare for his pains. He rubbed his forehead while looking at the Colonel dolefully. Carter would have been far more surprised if the Colonel had not then given him an apologetic grimace and murmured, "You okay?" Daniel nodded.

Carter noticed Harun moving ahead of them, a few paces was enough for him to melt into the darkness. "Sir…"

The Colonel caught up with the man in a few swift strides, his long legs as sure as Daniel's were uncoordinated. Daniel was alternating between looking down and looking up now, but between the darkness and his lack of glasses she wasn't sure he was doing anything more effective than making himself dizzy. She was aware of Teal'c behind them in the most dangerous position, footsteps near silent on the rocky path despite his size, ready to protect them from the staff weapon blasts of Onuris' Jaffa with his life if necessary. She wondered if he had any idea of the comfort they all took from his presence, how very alone they'd felt without him on Netu. She would have liked Teal'c to have heard the unflinching faith in the Colonel's voice when he'd said, 'Teal'c said he'd be there.' She knew with both Daniel and the Colonel their belief in Teal'c was instinctive rather than reasoned. Daniel just felt safer when Teal'c was around while the Colonel trusted his judgment in a way she doubted he'd ever trusted any other man's. His trust in Teal'c, after all, was not compromised by it constantly fighting his need to keep him safe as it was with Daniel.

She knew he trusted her as well; unlike Daniel she wasn't riddled with irrational insecurities about how others perceived her, and she knew the Colonel had unquestioning faith in her. Of course there were times when she would have exchanged all of that unquestioning faith for one intelligent question proving he had some idea what she was talking about, but she was resigned to the unquestioning faith now. She was very well aware that both Daniel and the Colonel had no idea of the limits of her expertise. In fact they didn't seem to think there were any limits to her expertise. If it was even vaguely connected with either astrophysics or the Stargate it was just expected that she would be able to figure it out somehow. And perhaps their certainty was contagious because she felt a terrible sense of failure that she'd been unable to get the DHD working. It was like the time in Antarctica where she'd had to watch the Colonel fading while she failed him. Daniel had saved them that time. They couldn't rely on him to do it this time. They had to keep him safe.

She felt fear tighten, the beginning of panic, and forced herself to breathe evenly. They would keep him safe. The Colonel would never let any harm come to Daniel if he could prevent it. There was something in Daniel that reminded the Colonel of the son he'd lost and there was nothing he wouldn't do to keep Daniel safe. Except she knew he would have been like that with his son, as well. That there was nothing he wouldn't have done to keep Charlie safe, and Charlie was still dead.

Carter reminded herself this had been a very long and very stressful day and she was tired. Her feet slipped on the shale and she automatically reached for her flashlight then withdrew her hand again. They couldn't risk any light, of course; they weren't struggling through the shadows like this for the fun of it, but it was an eerie feeling to be hunted. Daniel stumbled in front of her and she grimaced. He'd been looking paler and more exhausted since he woke up. The rest and food had probably helped a little but it was impossible to estimate how long it would take to recover from the kind of experience he'd undergone in the temple. She thought of Jolinar's stay in Sokar's palace and shuddered.

She'd spent the last two months reminding herself that Sokar was dead. The other Goa'uld might be evil but as far as she knew none of them reveled in the suffering of others as he had done. She still had nightmares about Netu; of the moment when she'd found her father, seen for herself what Sokar's torture had done to him when the memory of Jolinar's interrogation was still reverberating through her. She'd known that if they all died in that pit it would be because of her. Daniel and the Colonel had come on that trip for her sake, not to fight Sokar, or to assist the Tok'ra, but because her father was in need of rescuing. None of them had hesitated even for an instant. They had literally gone through hell for her. It was hard to know how to thank someone for that so she hadn't tried. She knew that in any case they would have told her that was what being part of a team was about; you helped each other, whatever that might take. And she would have done the same for any of them as unhesitatingly and as wholeheartedly, but it was still something she wasn't going to forget in a hurry.

She'd woken with a jolt on the tel'tak to hear the Colonel crying out his son's name, Daniel soothing him, murmuring words too low for her to hear before saying, "Go back to sleep, Jack. Don't dream…Don't dream..."

They all had too many nightmares now. She knew the Colonel dreamed about being a Goa'uld, the feeling as it slithered inside him, the fear of what he would do to them when it had blended with him. Teal'c had witnessed things even the Colonel had never had to contend with. She'd seen things herself that…

Carter grimaced. She hated it when that happened. Not that she hated the memories of Jolinar, they were part of her now; nothing like the way Teal'c felt about the larval Goa'uld within him. To be a Tok'ra, however temporarily, was to have glimpsed true symbiosis, something without which you were now not properly whole. She would have fought to hold onto Jolinar's memories, even the worst ones, but she needed to keep the distinction between the dead Tok'ra's mind and her own; the things that she had lived and seen and the things which had happened only to Jolinar. So Jolinar had seen things in Sokar's palace that were seared into her mind as well now. The Colonel had all those years of Black Ops, and Teal'c had all those years of serving Apophis, and she knew how it felt to have suffered torment at the hands of torturers she had never even met.

Perhaps because their minds seemed so full of dark matter they had to wall up or at least close themselves off from to exist day by day, they had all been united in trying to keep Daniel away from horror. She had been working with him for over a year before she realized there was dark matter in Daniel's mind too.

There was so much of the child he had once been left in Daniel that it was impossible not to care about what that child had undergone. She couldn't bear to think of an eight year-old Daniel watching his parents killed right in front of him. But she had stood by his shoulder and watched it happen. She knew what that little boy had witnessed in every detail. She knew how his parents' screams had sounded, how long the echoes of them had lasted. The exact noise those stones had made as they collapsed and crushed human bones. The way his father had tried to protect his mother. The way Daniel's mother's hair had been the exact same shade as her son's…

She sometimes wondered if the Colonel saw it as his task to try and undo all the wrongs done to Daniel by fate over the years: the dead wife, dead parents, the years of being fostered…

Carter couldn't help wondering what Daniel's foster parents had been like. He'd never spoken of them and she'd never liked to ask because it seemed such a conversational minefield. Why hadn't they adopted him? She vaguely remembered him telling her he had a grandfather alive somewhere with whom he'd had a disagreement and so didn't visit any more. Why hadn't his grandfather taken him in? Why had he let him be raised by strangers? Did Daniel have foster brothers or foster sisters or had he grown up an only child? His foster parents had clearly given him the space to develop that incredible mind, for which she could only be grateful to them, whoever they might be, but she couldn't help feeling there must have been a lot of things they'd left undone. Every time Daniel wrapped his arms around his chest, she couldn't help seeing a child no one was remembering to hug. And every time Daniel blamed himself for something that wasn't his fault she wondered who had taught him to be so insecure.

Even now, after three years, she wasn't certain he understood how much the Colonel respected his judgment. If Daniel had told the Colonel to go stick a fork in a light socket, the man would have done it at once on the understanding that Daniel must know what he was talking about. The only thing the Colonel didn't trust Daniel to do was look after himself properly, but she was never sure if Daniel had really grasped that distinction. If he'd ever realized that every time the Colonel hesitated before following through on some apparently irrational scheme of Daniel's, the hesitation was because the Colonel was having to factor in the missing part of Daniel's equation. The Colonel might not be able to understand the rest of what Daniel was telling him, but he didn't need to, he would just assume Daniel had everything right. The Colonel's job was to assess the danger to Daniel and if it was at an acceptable level, because he knew that would be the one thing Daniel had forgotten to take into account. But she knew that wasn't how Daniel read that inevitable hesitation. She'd see the hurt in Daniel's eyes, the light dim a little, the resignation or resentment show itself because as far as he was concerned this was just another proof Jack O'Neill didn't believe in him and never would. It apparently seemed natural to Daniel that people whose opinion he respected, and whose respect he needed, would not believe in him, trust him, or have any faith in his judgment.

She remembered how Daniel had blamed himself for what they'd then thought was his schizophrenia. Apologizing for being such a 'headcase'. She'd nearly started crying right there and then because it was so unfair that Daniel should do this to himself but there didn't seem any way to undo whatever it was that caused it. She'd never quite been able to work out how someone who could make so many people do what he wanted just because he wanted it could still perceive himself as fundamentally unlovable.

Because the Colonel had access to Daniel's personal files while she didn't she'd always been wary of discussing Daniel with him in case it looked as though she was fishing for information. But once after Daniel misinterpreted something the Colonel had said, the hurt look had come into his eyes and he'd retreated, automatically wrapping his arms around his chest again, she couldn't resist murmuring to the Colonel, "You know, sometimes, when you see how Daniel's turned out, it really makes you want to hit someone, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," the Colonel was looking at the younger man in exasperation, "usually Daniel." As he marched towards the linguist she could hear him saying, "Daniel I am not saying we're not going to P3Xwhatever the hell it was, I'm just saying that some more information would be nice. And I am thrilled that the Huttites –

"Hittites."

"Whatever – seem to have built an interesting pyramid – "

"Citadel."

"Whatever – there, but that doesn't mean we should just go waltzing in there without…"

Daniel and the Colonel had been having variations on that argument for three years now, both of them coming from the position that the other one was willfully misunderstanding them for no good reason either of them could think of. She suspected it might be an irreconcilable difference they were all just going to have to live with.

As she stumbled on the shale she felt a supporting hand close on her elbow and looked around in surprise. As always it was comforting to see Teal'c. She sometimes wondered if Teal'c had anything as comforting in his life as the rest of them found him . He said quietly, "You are fatigued, Major Carter."

"It's been a long day, Teal'c."

"And it is not yet over."

She glanced up at Daniel and saw he was proceeding with dogged determination, head down, feet thumping heavily on the path, the way children walked when they were very tired and should have been in bed an hour ago. And he'd had two hours more sleep than the rest of them. She had a feeling this was going to be a long night as well.

"We are here." Harun's voice was soft in the stillness.

She saw the shadow that was the Colonel turn and look round before saying pointedly: "We're halfway up a mountain in the middle of what looks suspiciously like nowhere to me."

"Jack…" It was a muted protest from Daniel. A whole speech about respecting other people's cultures and customs, not to mention showing some manners, compressed into one weary murmur.

"Daniel." The Colonel's admonishing tone took the place of a long retort about there being a time and a place for respecting other people's cultures, and this definitely not being it. The Colonel looked interrogatively at their guide. "Harun?"

"This way." Harun walked into what appeared to be the mountain until Carter realized that he had ducked behind an overhang of rock and gone into a crevice. She waited for the Colonel to follow him and heard the man say quietly, "Watch your head, Daniel," closely followed by a sigh of resignation from Daniel, followed even more closely by a bumping sound and a stifled exclamation of pain. She ducked under the overhang and winced from the sudden flare of light as Harun held up a burning torch. The Colonel was saying, "I told you to watch your head."

Daniel rubbed his forehead and gave his CO another reproachful look. "I did."

The Colonel shook his head then turned to her and Teal'c, beckoning them on in. "Apparently these caves go a long way back into the hills and provide plenty of places to hide but if anyone's claustrophobic, now might be a good time to mention it." He looked around them all and then turned back to Daniel. "Daniel…?"

Daniel blinked at him mildly. "Jack…?"

"Didn't you once tell me all archaeologists are claustrophobic?"

"No, I once told you claustrophobia was an occupational hazard. A lot of archaeologists have had isolated panic attacks when finding themselves at the end of a long tunnel in a windowless burial chamber under several thousand tons of stone, that doesn't mean we're all claustrophobics, it just means we more regularly find ourselves in places where claustrophobia is a – reasonable response to the situation."

"Well does it seem like a reasonable response to you right now?"

Daniel moistened his lips and Carter wondered how much patience Daniel had packed for this trip and how much he'd used up so far. He said conversationally, "Actually, Jack, moving after the only guy who knows his way through the catacombs seems like a reasonable response to me right now."

The Colonel gave Daniel a quelling glance but she noticed he also took off after Harun at a fair pace, allowing Daniel to slip back into step behind him. Behind her the beam from Teal'c's flashlight was throwing a bluish white patina across the dark rock. She pulled out her own flashlight and shone it onto the other side of the cavern. She couldn't recognize the rock at a glance, it was dark but not the glassy black of obsidian, the wrong texture for granite. There were red veins in it here and there, iron deposits perhaps, or some chemical they hadn't come across before. This was a different stone from that of the temple walls. She wondered if it was local. If she wanted to take Daniel's mind off things later, she would ask him about the likelihood of the stone having been imported specially for the temple's construction so he could give her one of his lectures about Common Myths About The Pyramids and Why They're All Wrong.

Daniel had told her more than once that contrary to popular misconception most of the pyramids had been built from local stone by local workforces, and Orion had played no part in their placement. Apart from the ones built by the Goa'uld, of course, which were effectively landing sites for alien spaceships.

General Hammond wasn't usually any better than the Colonel at saying no to Daniel but he'd been very adamant from the beginning that Daniel could not go and look at the pyramids again in light of their new information about the Goa'uld. The general had insisted the sight of an archaeologist who had previously published theories about the pyramids being the proof of alien intervention in the cross-pollination of ancient cultures, being accompanied by US Air Force personnel to the pyramids at Giza would be just the kind of bait no self-respecting investigative reporter could resist. So Daniel was pretty much banned from visiting Egypt for the moment, even with a false passport, a false moustache, and a false reason for being there, and he complained about it regularly. Usually, Carter had noticed with some amusement, when he was angling for something else. So, as Daniel, often mentioned, he couldn't prove which pyramids had been built by the Goa'uld and which had been constructed later as tributes to those earlier monuments, but he was pretty certain he was right about which was which and she had no reason to doubt him. But, the non-Goa'uld constructed pyramids had been made from local stone, Daniel insisted, and there was nothing very complicated about where they had been built or why. There were sound geological reasons for where they were to do with the ground being able to bear the weight of so much stone and the pyramids having a clear line of sight to the north.

He'd also told her most large monuments were built from local materials and the reason why there were no rock quarries near most of the pyramid sites was because they had been quarried out building the pyramids and anyone who said otherwise was an ass. For someone who had been laughed out of academia for his own way-out theories, Daniel was surprisingly intolerant of other people's. She had learned to like his contradictions.

She could hear the sound of water dripping but there weren't any stalactites or stalagmites so clearly not limestone –

"Major Carter, it appears to be growing warmer."

She turned to look at the Jaffa. "If it’s the same as on Earth it should be about ten degrees, Teal'c. Caves are places with a very regular temperature." She put a hand up to her throat as she spoke. It was feeling sore, a burning sensation in the back of it. Probably from all that dust they'd been inhaling in the temple.

Teal'c leant across and ran his finger up the wall then licked it speculatively. "And the water supply appears to be fresh and unpolluted."

They exchanged a glance, neither one of them needing to state aloud the obvious truth that they might be able to wait out Onuris' Jaffa in these caves, retreating further to keep out of their reach and yet be able to remain reasonably warm and have access to clean water. Food would be the only problem but she and Teal'c had salvaged what they could from the MALP in the way of MREs and they could ration themselves.

Carter became aware that Daniel was talking up ahead of them. He seemed to be telling the Colonel about the early Christians building the catacombs so as to have somewhere to bury their dead without attracting the attention of their Roman oppressors. She doubted the Colonel was finding much to interest him in the recital but that had never been known to stop Daniel yet. She and Teal'c exchanged another glance, of amusement this time, and moved after the others.

"…Yes that's fascinating, Daniel, but probably not what we need to be focusing on right now. Perhaps a little less emphasis on the history lesson and a little more emphasis on not getting dead might be appropriate here?"

Carter hoped Daniel whammied the Colonel with one of his best reproachful looks because she really felt he deserved one right now. Youch! She winced in sympathy all the same. That was a reproachful look with teeth. The Colonel grimaced. "I'm not saying what you're telling me isn't interesting, Daniel, I'm just – questioning its relevance to our current situation."

"There's a popular misconception the Christians actually lived in the catacombs – they didn't. The catacombs were a…a necropolis, not a hiding place; it would have been like camping out in a crypt; but the Christians did spend long periods of time down there painting on the walls and burying their dead. There were thousands and thousands of bodies down there, miles of tunnels. That's a lot of excavation, a lot of people digging, a lot of funeral services, all taking place under the noses of the Romans without them even noticing, Jack, even though the Romans persecuted the Christians with as much hostility as Onuris would probably like to persecute us."

And so now at least three of them were all on the same page even if they had come at it from different directions. That was another thing she had learned to like about Daniel, the way he could surprise her even after all this time. Just when she was convinced he'd completely what the Colonel called 'wandered off to la-la land' he'd come up with the solution to a problem she hadn't even known he was aware of, or would make a suggestion that made perfect sense and none of the rest of them had thought of.

"I got you," the Colonel looked around at their surroundings with more interest. "Well I suppose a lick of paint, some drapes…"

"This way."

They all turned to see Harun beckoning them forward eagerly. He pointed to an arched opening in the wall and said, "This is the Cavern of the Tablet. This is what I must show the Chosen One."

***

O'Neill had never been happy around people whose mindset he couldn't understand. And religious fanatics definitely came under the category of people he could not relate to. For instance, he'd never quite been able to work out why, when most deities were supposed to be benevolent and merciful, the people who worshipped them spent so much of their time torturing and killing each other.

Of course, since coming across the Goa'uld, he'd had a whole new outlook on gods. As half the ones that had ever been worshipped on Earth now seemed to have been aliens only pretending to be gods he wasn't holding out a lot of hope for the others. While Kinsey's God Will Protect America Come What May attitude hadn't made him feel that fond even of 'God' God, never mind the ones that other cultures worshipped. He'd always felt his grandmother's Catholicism was just a habit she'd fallen into, a way of not having to think about anything too hard because some priest would do it for her; a means not to have to ever formulate her own opinion about anything because why bother when someone in a cassock could tell you what you were meant to be thinking? He knew it was in him to be like that too – hell he was in the forces, wasn't he? But he liked to think he'd got to be a Colonel in the US Air Force, not to mention team leader of SG-1, because of the initiative he'd shown rather than because he'd inherited his grandmother's ability to follow orders.

All the same, he knew his Grandmother's religion was one of the reasons he liked having Daniel around. Daniel made him think even when he didn't want to; Daniel made him question things he might otherwise not have thought about. He needed someone like Daniel to keep him asking those questions, thinking about those issues; annoying though it could be, it was also healthy and necessary. There were times when you were the man with his finger on the trigger, when you needed not to be thinking. Not about how it felt to be the enemy, or the rights and wrongs of the conflict you'd signed up for, or the moral implications of the action you were about to take; but there still always had to be a voice inside you somewhere reminding you there were lines you wouldn't cross come what may. Or at least – he had to be honest here, because those lines didn't run straight as train tracks your whole life in the services, you did things when you were twenty-eight you couldn't have done when you were eighteen and then found at thirty-eight you couldn't do again and wondered how you ever could – when you did cross them, there was a voice reminding you of the fact, making you think about what you'd done so hard you wouldn't take that step again if the same set of circumstances came up. You learned from your mistakes, yes, but sometimes other people died because of them, so the fewer mistakes you made the better. And sometimes the more questions you asked the better as well. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the wrong side in another My Lai.

Perhaps other people had gods they could look to for guidance when tricky situations came up, but he'd never been a believer and so that route had always been denied to him. He'd spent years painfully carving out a moral code for himself he could live with and still get the job done, but it was ragged in places and he suspected some of his ethics had become a little blunted over time. That was why he needed Daniel, Teal'c, and Carter to sharpen them up for him. He believed in his companions' moral code in a way he'd never been able to believe in a lot of Latin words he didn't understand, the censor swinging slowly from side to side leaving its incense trail, and all those different colored vestments for different-colored prayers. The Catholic Church – hell, any church – had always been too intangible for him.

Morality was what Teal'c had done, taken a stand for no reason other than because he thought it was right. Given up a position of comparative wealth and power, given up his wife and son, given up everything, fired on men he'd trained, earned the undying enmity of the System Lords, because he wasn't prepared to kill a couple of hundred unarmed strangers even though his god had told him to. Morality was Carter going back down into a concrete bunker to be with that little girl who had a bomb inside her so the kid wouldn't die alone. Morality was Daniel giving last rites to Apophis' dying host even though this was the face and the body of the Goa'uld who had stolen and raped and impregnated Daniel's wife. That was a moral code he could recognize and be impressed by. That was a moral code that made people's lives better. That was a moral code you could set your watch by and know it was keeping perfect time.

What Harun was displaying though, was just faith.

O'Neill could recognize faith as well. That was also something he had in his teammates. He didn't doubt for a minute if there was anything humanly possible any one of the others could do to keep him and each other alive, they would do it. If Daniel said he could translate something, O'Neill didn't experience even a millisecond of doubt he could translate it. If a Stargate didn't work, Carter could make it work. If Teal'c said he could fly a ship he'd never so much as seen before, then Teal'c could fly it. That was what he called faith. It was not wasting your time having doubts about things you had no reason to doubt to leave yourself plenty of energy for the doubting you ought to be doing. And that brought him straight back to those questions he liked people to keep asking. Liked Daniel to keep asking in particular even when it drove him nuts.

That was also why he needed Daniel to remain untouched enough by the shittier things of life that the man still had enough inner fire left to power a conscience. The day Daniel could walk through a battlefield without flinching would be the day O'Neill knew he'd done something indefensible, allowed something to happen he should have prevented, and in the process lost something that would cost not just Daniel, but everyone in the end. From the first day he'd met him, he'd decided the world needed people like Daniel even more than it needed people like him. And when he thought about some of the things he'd done over the years it seemed as though people like him were the reason why the world needed people like Daniel. But he had been trying very hard for a long time now not to be part of the problem and to at least try to be part of the solution, and ever since he'd commanded SG-1 he'd felt like he was succeeding. Perhaps for the first time in what was a pretty long career now, he felt the US Military was allowing him to do some good for the whole planet rather than just the bit of it that spoke English and ate apple pie.

So he could understand someone believing in Daniel – he believed in Daniel himself. And he could understand someone having faith in Daniel – he had faith in Daniel himself. But he had belief and faith in Daniel because he knew the guy and had been working with him for the past three years; had seen him tested and knew he always came up true. Harun didn't know squat about Daniel except he matched the requirements of some made-up deity the man was convinced would save him and his people from a different false god. That wasn't a faith or a belief O'Neill considered healthy. In fact he thought it was downright dangerous. Especially for Daniel.

Sighing, he looked around at their surroundings. The cavern Harun had been so eager to show them was huge. Twice the size of the 'gateroom, the single arched entrance in the long south wall only added to the cathedral feel of the place. It was made from some dark rock streaked with dull red powder, like the walls had old wounds that hadn't healed yet. Their voices echoed in here even more than the other caves although Harun's was hushed with reverence as he pulled aside a cloth to reveal the tablet set into the wall. Daniel was asking questions again. The guy never stopped asking questions. His voice was quiet and soothing but the echoes picked it up and turned it ghostly. Three caverns away it probably sounded like Daniel was already dead.

O'Neill glanced around the cavern again; the floor looked liquid, a black sea of stone; the type of floor that magnified every sound and fed it to the echoes. You'd be able to hear the clunk-clunk-clunk of metalshod Jaffa from way off, certainly, but they wouldn't be able to make an exactly silent escape themselves. Water trickling down one wall. Good if you were thirsty, less good if you didn't want to get pneumonia. He was never sure if Daniel's allergies made him a more likely candidate for chest infections than the rest of them but it seemed likely. And shock always lowered the immune system, making Daniel more susceptible to illnesses right now anyway. Pneumonia was probably what would do for most of the wounded they'd left behind in the temple. There were worse ways to go. Worse way for strangers to go anyway, a friend going that way was still going to hurt like hell.

And yes, he felt bad about those people, of course he did. Most of them were probably dead by now and it was only Daniel's current crushing sense of guilt that had stopped the guy insisting they go back there and give themselves up to save them. That was why O'Neill had jumped on him straight away before he could voice the suggestion. Sometimes that was all you could do with Daniel; the guy had an annoying habit of being right all the time, and anyway he was a lot smarter than O'Neill would ever be so he couldn't really argue with him, but sometimes he could get in first and shut him up in time. He never felt good about doing that, it was too much like kicking a puppy, but sometimes it was the only route to take. And okay, those people were probably being killed by Onuris round about now and he was sorry for that, and Daniel would be feeling lousy about it, so would Carter; he wasn't feeling too happy about it himself; but Daniel and Carter were still alive and not yet prisoners of Onuris. At the moment his main priority was keeping them that way.

O'Neill put a hand to the back of his neck and tried to crick his head into a position where it didn't send an ache all the way down his spine. He hated this damned cold, miserable, mist-drenched planet. He hated these damned caves and he particularly hated this damned cavern, but he still figured he'd better go over there and find out what Daniel and Harun were talking about.

The tablet was also black and shiny with lots of raised lettering he couldn't understand. A weird mixture of hieroglyph variants and something called cuneiform which apparently even Daniel was having a little trouble deciphering. He didn't know whether to be glad or sorry Daniel's experience in the temple had still left him with an insatiable curiosity for new variations on old languages. With Harun's torch sending shadows of flame across the inscription and Carter and Teal'c both adding circles of blue white light from their flashlights, Daniel was running his fingers across the glyphs like a blind man reading Braille, murmuring to himself as he got ready to give them the news from the faithful.

O'Neill shouldered his MP-5. "What does it say? Have you got it figured out yet?"

Daniel didn't take his gaze from the lettering. "More or less but there are still a lot of words I don't know. Basically it seems to be saying: 'The Chosen One came disguised as a' – I'm not sure about this – 'defenseless?' No, a 'frail mortal to the temple of the False god, without any appearance of – "

" 'Even basic competence'?" O'Neill suggested.

" '…his divinity' – thank you, Jack -  'to test the faith of the priests. But the priests knew him not and followed the tenets of the False god. They seized the Chosen One and took him to the place of '– something like - 'the place of torment. The Chosen One feigned great suffering that he might reach their hearts and save them from the tenets of the False god, yet this moved them not and still they did the False god's will. They tortured the Chosen One until his mind appeared to snap asunder like a rotten bough, and then they dragged him to the place where the False god stood in' – what? Oh I get it - ' stood in stone', - I think they mean where the statue of the False god stood – 'there to sacrifice him to the Cruel One. And there gathered those who would see the Chosen One put to death, those whose eyes were blind to his – nefrew?'" Daniel frowned as he tried to work out the context and then blushed. "Um – to his um – "

O'Neill shook his head. "It says 'beauty' doesn't it? God, I hate this planet."

Carter said soothingly, "Go on, Daniel, this is fascinating. This is exactly what happened."

After a quick glance at O'Neill, Daniel continued, "' Yet, with the Chosen One came his…tewet…um, his avatars, which numbered three; and the first was more beautiful than the moon; the second, more terrible than the sun; the third, more cunning than the wolf that hunts in winter.' " Daniel looked over his shoulder. "I guess that's the three of you."

"Ya think?"

" 'The first was Compassion; the second Wrath; the third Guile. Wrath struck down the False god with his staff of fire and the False god did split asunder like' – something or other, not sure about that word – 'and the temple fell with a sound like thunder and first among the priests was he whom history shall despise for all eternity; and he the False god crushed. And terrible were the woes and lamentations of those who had come to watch the Chosen One put to death, and their blood did overflow like the river after rain, and their bones were turned to powder, and their sufferings terrible to behold. Yet all this did they deserve for they would have watched the Chosen One put to death and lifted not a hand to help him.' " Daniel looked up with a frown. "This is a very judgmental text for what's supposed to be a benevolent deity."

"Oh just get on with it, Daniel."

"Please continue, Daniel Jackson."

Daniel moistened his lips. "Okay. Right. 'And the avatars were filled with sorrow, for the Chosen One appeared as one separated' – something like - 'separated from himself for all eternity. And Compassion wept tears that turned to sapphires, and Wrath wept tears that turned to rubies, and Guile wept tears that became as diamonds upon the ground to think that the Chosen One was lost to them. Yet the Chosen One had only feigned his' – don't know this word but in the context think it must be something like 'condition…feigned his condition… And his avatars did raise him up again with their love, and he was untouched, for he was the Chosen One whom no man can injure.' Wouldn't it be nice if that were true?"

"Daniel."

" '…And when the people saw the image of their False god split asunder they were loud in their lamentations and greatly feared the coming of the False god to wreak his vengeance upon them. They gathered at the Shenu…' Shenu…? Oh, 'Ring of Eternity' – that must be the Stargate – 'but lo the Chosen One walked amongst them all unscathed, and spoke to them in' – not riddles, metaphors, something like that – "

" 'Parables'?" Carter suggested.

Daniel winced. "Let's stick with metaphors. '…spoke to them in metaphors that their weak minds could not yet grasp.' "

"I can't believe that every half-baked piece of nonsense Daniel's come out with on this stupid planet is going to be commemorated for all eternity on a…tablet thing."

"Already is commemorated for all eternity, sir," Carter reminded him. "I think there's definitely been some kind of rip in the space time continuum at some point in this planet's history."

Daniel peered myopically at the inscription. " 'But then the Chosen One and his disciples' – I'm just reading what it says here, I didn't write this stuff – '…his disciples did disagree, for Wrath and Guile were angered with those who had worshipped the False god, and Guile proclaimed that they should be left to…' can't work this out at all, but it seems to be something like '…stew in their own blood'."

"I never said that," O'Neill protested.

" 'But the Chosen One won them to his cause with his great –' look let's just skip along here, shall we? - '…and Wrath laid down his staff of fire and raised the great stone from off the body of the hem-netjer-tepey – hem-netjer-tepey? Oh right, I keep forgetting, that's the High Priest – they didn't have a religious structure on Abydos that involved an actual hierarchy which I also found very…Okay, Jack, I'm reading it: '…raised the great stone from the body of the High Priest though no man of mortal flesh could lift it, and the Chosen One did lay hands upon the priest who would have killed him and…' Oh great, and now I'm raising people from the dead!"

"There's just no end to your talents, is there, Dannyboy?"

"Look, this is insane," Daniel turned to Harun. "The only people who performed a miracle here were my friends. The only reason I survived this Shokmar thing was because they saved me. They are all much greater than I  – "

Harun beamed and pointed to a section of the text that came much lower down. " 'And then spake the Chosen One and he told the sinners of the False god that the magic lay all with his avatars for it was they who had saved him from the horror of Shokmar, and it was they who were most worthy of praise.' "

"Do the words 'self-fulfilling prophecy' keep coming to anybody else's mind?" O'Neill enquired.

Daniel turned to Carter. "Sam, what the hell's going on here?"

"I think we're dealing with a time anomaly here. Someone from the future must have traveled back to the past, taking these tablets with them. They described a past event which in the deeper past appeared to be a prophecy."

"Except this isn't a past event, it's a present one, and it's happening now, and it is really freaking me out." Daniel ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think I should translate any more of this."

"I agree," Carter said thoughtfully. "If we read on we're going to try and change events that could be said to have already taken place."

There was a cold draught coming in through the arched doorway. O'Neill waved a hand at the back of his neck, as though the breeze was a bat he could frighten away. He hated the way everyone's words sounded so thin and hollow in here and raised his voice to try to foil the whispering echoes. "Except they haven't taken place, Major, and if one of the things recorded here is us all getting killed I'd really like to avoid it."

"The point is, sir, that we can't avoid it. It's already happened."

O'Neill looked down at himself pointedly. "Not to me."

"Major Carter is right," Teal'c put in thoughtfully. "It is clear from these writings that the people of this planet threw off the shackles of their slavery to the Goa'uld only because of our coming to this world. If we attempt to alter events in any way, we may undo the good we could be said to have already done: Onuris may then triumph and these people remain his worshippers."

"I can live with that." O'Neill looked around at the others. "Hell of a lot of worlds out there. Seems kind of greedy not to let the Goa'uld have some of them. Is there anyone here who can't live with that?"

"Jack," Daniel sighed. "I think we're in the hands of fate here and Sam's right, we should stop reading what happens and just – "

And he could see where this was going and no way was he allowing it to go there. Time to start spelling things out for people. "And just what, Daniel? In case you've forgotten, you're not actually a god, you're an archaeologist-slash-anthropologist-slash-Egyptologist-slash linguist-slash- major -pain in the butt who has already been caught and tortured once in the – " O'Neill checked his watch, "let me see – twenty hours we have been on this miserable planet. And if Onuris catches us he's going to kill all of us but he'll probably kill you in a particularly messy and spectacular fashion because you're now his main rival in the deity stakes. Now, although I'm starting to think that wouldn't even be such a bad thing, there's just this tiny lingering part of me that would rather not have to watch you get dismembered or buried alive or fed to wild dogs or whatever."

Daniel shrugged and held up a hand to the tablet. "You want to read this by yourself, go right ahead, but I'm not translating any more of it."

"Daniel, do you have any idea how close I am to hitting you right now?"

Teal'c took Daniel by the arm and moved him back so that the Jaffa was between Daniel and O'Neill. Daniel said reassuringly, "It's okay, Teal'c, Jack's joking."

O'Neill and Teal'c exchanged a look that was entirely sympathetic. O'Neill said, "Keep doing what you're doing, Teal'c."

Daniel said soothingly, "Jack, don't get mad."

"Too late, I already did."

Looking at Jack, Daniel could see he wasn't kidding. Jack was mad as hell with him. "I just don't want us to do the wrong thing."

"Well you know what I want, Daniel? I want to get my team off this planet alive and, if possible, unhurt. Now, I expect the Goa'uld to make that task harder, what I don't expect is for the people whose lives I am trying to save to make that task harder. And right now I'm looking at you."

"Sir, I'm with Daniel on this. I don't think we can read what happened without changing past and future events."

Daniel appreciated Sam distracting the man because Jack looked exactly like someone who wanted to swat him hard around the back of the head, but all the same he thought she was waving a red flag at a bull right now.

Jack said tautly, "Major, I don't care if we change past and future events on a planet we're never going to visit again. This isn't Earth. This isn't us going back and ending up marrying our own grandmothers or whatever or stopping ourselves being born. This is a different world with a belief system that is based on two lies. I don't see their lives are so damned wonderful it makes any difference if their past or future gets changed anyway. And if this – " he waved a hand at the black tablet, "writing stuff tells us what happened to the 'Chosen One' and his little band of angels, and gives us the jump on Onuris I think it's a legitimate tactical advantage we ought to make use of."

Daniel decided there was a time to be conciliatory and there was a time to put his foot down. They could stay here and argue until the sun went supernova, he was not changing these people's history just to get them out of a tight situation. Sam knew more about this kind of thing than they did and she agreed with him, and so did Teal'c, that meant a majority of three to one in favor of him being right. Jack was trying to bully him into doing something they both knew to be wrong and he was damned if he was going to do it. Wrapping his arms around his chest, Daniel said firmly, "I'm not translating it."

He'd never really grasped how swift Teal'c's reflexes were, until the Jaffa shoved him behind him even faster than Jack could grab him. When he recovered his breath, Teal'c had placed a restraining hand on Jack's chest and was holding him at arm's length, the two men looking at each other without hostility. Jack said conversationally, "I have to hit Daniel, Teal'c. If I don't the top of my head is going to explode. There's going to be grey matter sprayed all over this damned cavern."

"Striking Daniel Jackson will not help, O'Neill."

"It'll make me feel a hell of a lot better."

"Even harming Daniel Jackson severely will not persuade him to translate the tablet for you."

Daniel murmured, "Um – probably better not to be put that idea in Jack's head right now, Teal'c."

Teal'c continued imperturbably, "And if Onuris' Jaffa pursue us, our chances of escape would be much higher if we were all uninjured."

Not even attempting to pretend he wasn't hiding behind the Jaffa right now, Daniel nodded. "That's a good argument, Teal'c, stick with that one."

"Sir, this really isn't achieving anything." Sam was checking her MP-5 as she spoke, jiggling a reload mechanism that was threatening to stick. "Beating up Daniel isn't going to help us get off this planet."

"No, but it would make me feel really good right now." Jack gave Daniel a blood-freezing glare but did back up. "Okay, I won't hurt him this minute but if we should ever get back to base he's dead meat."

Daniel winced at the look in his eyes – Jack really wasn't kidding on this. "Well given how remote the chances of us getting back to base look at the moment, I guess I can live with that." Deciding he really should stop hiding behind Teal'c now, he took a tentative step forward. When Jack didn't hit him, he shuffled a bit further away from Teal'c's protection.

Teal'c said calmly, "If we successfully return to base, O'Neill, Daniel Jackson will no longer be in danger from Onuris and you will consequently no longer be angry with him."

Jack held up a warning finger to the Jaffa. "You know your problem, Teal'c? You talk too much." He turned on Daniel and Daniel couldn't help blanching a little from the burn in those brown eyes. Whatever Teal'c might say, Jack was not going to get over this in a hurry. Jack said with deceptive calm, "So, Daniel, would you like to tell us why this is not a good place to spend the rest of the night?"

For a minute Daniel just stared at him open-mouthed because Jack never did this. He never asked him military-type questions and expected to get a real answer. He had never once demanded that Daniel know things soldiers knew. He just expected him to know the things an archaeologist would know. It was one of Jack's more lovable traits. Was Jack going to ask him to take apart an MP-5, clean it, and put it back together again, or set a line of those – explosive thingies Sam knew how to play around with? What the hell was this about anyway?

As Jack continued to stare at him, unblinking and unrelenting, Daniel realized what this was about. This was a reminder Jack did the military stuff and Daniel didn't; and right now Daniel's pesky ethics were interfering with Jack's ability to keep them all safe. Which was no doubt why he was reminding Daniel how, despite all his undoubted intelligence, Daniel knew zip about military strategy. Well, very subtle, Jack, and didn't that tell him, but he still wasn't translating the damned tablet. So there.

"Daniel…?" Jack had his best I-can-wait-all-night expression on and Daniel supposed he should be grateful Jack had never done this to him before. He could have had three years of Jack saying: And what's this weapon called, Daniel? And how does that one work? Just a little reminder of what kind of a C.O. Jack could have been. And yes, Daniel was very appreciative of Jack never having treated him like this, and although he'd never stated it directly, he'd thought he'd made it pretty damned obvious from the way he put up with all Jack's crap when the man was being crabby for no apparent reason. Or all those times in the past when Jack had treated him like he was a difficult child who needed to be humored. Not to mention the way Daniel damned near had a coronary every time Jack got injured. But no, apparently not. Apparently Jack was feeling misunderstood and unappreciated today and also seemed a hair away from pointing out that he was a Colonel in the Goddamned United States Air Force and it would make a nice change if the people Under His Command occasionally did what they were Damned Well Told.

Playing along with Jack's bruised ego seemed the best way of averting both the speech and the temper tantrum that seemed to be looming. Sighing, Daniel looked around at the cavern. It was huge, echoing, imposing and made him think of the Maya his grandfather had studied in Belize. Made him remember how it was to be a child being told scary stories by Nick while his mother said indulgently, "Really, Dad, don't you think Danny's a little young to hear…"

His parents had argued after every trip to Nick's house. And it was true he'd always had nightmares but he'd still been eager to go back. Nick had told him the Maya believed the caves were places were evil spirits lived, where a man would be tested by demons if he dared to venture into the darkness. All those miles and miles of caves, rainwater sculpturing the limestone into folds of rock that looked like melted candle wax. Nick had described it to him so many times. The subterranean pools. The bats. How he'd had to swim through the darkness in places. How he'd found abandoned cooking pots that made it seem as though the Maya had left only days ago. And then as he went deeper and deeper into the caves, there had been other proofs of darker rituals. An obsidian knife. A human skull. And finally the calcified skeleton of a teenage girl who'd been ritually sacrificed by Mayan priests…

Hearing the sound of Jack's foot tapping impatiently, Daniel collected his thoughts. A lecture on the ancient Maya probably wasn't what Jack was looking for right now. Okay. Concentrate on this cavern and why it wouldn't be a good place to stay the night. Well there were striations on the walls, evidence of some iron or copper deposits in the rock. And it was quite warm. And there was water, which seemed to be fresh. And…nothing was really coming to mind and Jack was getting seriously irritable now. He really didn't want to make Jack madder than he was already but all he could think of was reasons why this would be a good place to spend the night. He was suddenly aware of Sam behind him, murmuring: "Only one entrance."

Damn, he'd known that, Jack just had him flummoxed. Daniel said quickly, "It's a trap. Only the one way in or out. So, we probably shouldn't stay here much longer…?"

"Very good." Jack shot Sam a suspicious glance but Daniel tried to look as innocent as possible and he knew Sam would be keeping her face carefully unreadable as well.

Sam said, "Daniel's right, Colonel, this isn't a good place for us to hang around."

"Ya think?"

Daniel winced again. He really didn't like pissing Jack off, whatever the guy seemed to think. He said gently, "Jack, I just really need you to…"

Jack turned on him and held up his finger. "Daniel, are you going to translate what's on that tablet or not?"

Daniel sighed but returned his gaze levelly. "Not."

"Then I don't want to hear what you have to say right now."

Jack turned away and Daniel tried not to mind quite as much as he did. Being angry would definitely have helped but he seemed to have lost the knack of being angry with Jack at the moment. Probably something to do with the little matter of the man having rescued him from insanity and certain death at the hands of the priests of Onuris. The ones Daniel had later berated him for having left to die under a pile of rubble. Something Jack would never have had to do if Daniel had done as he asked him in the first place and never gone to the temple. Perhaps those were some of the reasons he was finding it a little difficult to feel angry with Jack right now.

Looking at Daniel Jackson with his arms wrapped around his upper body as though they could shield him from enemy fire, Teal'c thought again how difficult was the relationship between the young scholar and the older warrior. They were usually so in tune with one another that when they could not agree it troubled them greatly and was even occasionally interpreted as a form of betrayal by the other. He had seen this behavior in family members before now, or married couples, where each expected the other to agree with them, even if they were wrong, simply because of their close connection.

He had observed this reaction from Daniel Jackson and O'Neill in the past when they been unable to agree on something fundamental. Last time it had been O'Neill's inability to believe in the message Sha're had transmitted to Daniel Jackson through the ribbon device; something that had spilled into the untidy matter of Daniel Jackson's brief relationship with the woman who had once been Linea. Daniel Jackson had been so unlike himself during that time that Teal'c had been gravely concerned for him, feeling unhappy if the scholar was out of his sight for more than a few minutes. He had feared the younger man might even be suicidal, although he was expressing his grief through anger and by closing himself off from the rest of them.

It had been a great relief to him – and he suspected also to Major Carter – when O'Neill had gone to see Daniel Jackson and agreed to search for the child. He suspected O'Neill had chosen his words carefully for once, for Daniel Jackson had been transformed by whatever O'Neill had said to him in that meeting. After his discussion with O'Neill even his grief had appeared to be more bearable to him and the two men had been on the best possible terms. But Teal'c sometimes wondered if O'Neill was aware of just how important was his good opinion to Daniel Jackson. Or how utterly it would destroy the younger man if he ever thought that he had lost it. There were times when he feared O'Neill was so busy telling himself how much more intelligent his companions were than himself that he forgot how necessary he was to the rest of them, and to Daniel Jackson in particular.

He did know O'Neill was aware how sensitive Daniel Jackson was, how easily his self-confidence could be crushed, how quickly he could be persuaded any set of circumstances were his fault. Teal'c had realized from the outset the young scholar needed to be treated with even more respect and consideration than a warrior. Even if he acted unwisely, or thoughtlessly, or with no apparent care for his own safety, Teal'c felt it should not be mentioned as it might do him emotional harm. Although he, O'Neill, and Major Carter had never discussed this aspect of Daniel Jackson's personality directly, he noticed that his two companions were always careful not to undermine the younger man's confidence as well.

Having grown up on Chulak where scholars served only their god, and women were never required to be warriors, he felt himself to be more aware than O'Neill of how great was the courage shown by Major Carter and Daniel Jackson. On other worlds, less was asked of people of their position and gender. Men of learning were not also expected to act as soldiers, nor were even women of the great intelligence and skill of Major Carter expected to risk their lives on the battlefield. Warriors like himself and O'Neill were expected to defend people like them, never be defended by them, and yet on several occasions now he or O'Neill had owed their lives to the bravery and intelligence of these two younger members of SG-1.

On more than one occasion he felt that O'Neill had been guilty of taking for granted Major Carter's brilliance as a scientist. Her understanding of Goa'uld technology was unparalleled in Teal'c's experience, while her skill in battle surpassed that of most of the warriors he had known. Even when she was presented with technology that was entirely new to her, she could usually make it work or understand how it was constructed, and he often felt O'Neill did not fully comprehend how hard were the tasks set for her and how well she overcame them. O'Neill was unstinting in the confidence he displayed in all of them, but his lack of understanding of their individual fields of expertise sometimes made Teal'c feel that he did not always appreciate how very fortunate he was to have two such minds as those of Major Carter and Daniel Jackson at his disposal.

He was never certain either if O'Neill realized how unusual were Daniel Jackson's talents. To meet a man who had amassed such knowledge at such a very young age had been a revelation to Teal'c. In his experience scholars were old men, men too whose interests were usually narrow, whereas Daniel Jackson's were wide-ranging. More, he was still curious about everything they encountered, had not allowed his mind to become closed-off to new experiences the way so many men had on Chulak. And there were other things about Daniel Jackson that were unique and deserved to be protected and nurtured. Teal'c knew of very few people who would have accepted as a friend the man who had been responsible for the loss of his wife, but if Daniel Jackson had ever blamed Teal'c, it had never shown in his actions, speech, or even expression, when he addressed him.

And, of course, these special qualities of Daniel Jackson made one want to keep him safe. He knew that O'Neill wanted to keep him safe as much – if not more – than any of them. His current anger only came from his feeling Daniel Jackson had once again unnecessarily exposed himself to harm and was now frustrating O'Neill's efforts to protect him. Teal'c could understand how exasperating O'Neill might find this, but he also felt O'Neill should remember it was not only Daniel Jackson's body that was in need of their protection. His mind and spirit were equally as vulnerable to harm, and in his determination to keep the younger man physically whole, O'Neill was in danger of bruising his fragile inner self.

Teal'c first checked to ensure that Major Carter was safeguarding their retreat and then caught up with O'Neill in a few strides. He glanced at Daniel Jackson as he passed him and saw the younger man was biting his lip, gaze fixed on the back of O'Neill's head as he led the way out of the chamber, blue eyes at once pleading and a little resentful. Teal'c could almost feel Daniel Jackson willing O'Neill to understand his reasons and at least try to understand them. Teal'c did not feel this was an unreasonable wish on Daniel Jackson's part. But nor did he think it was one likely to be granted any time soon.

As he caught up with O'Neill the man said tersely, "I don't want to hear it."

"Do not want to hear what, O'Neill?"

"Why we shouldn't go around changing history. Half of the stuff on that tablet isn't even true. The little detail about Daniel being a god, for instance, and raising people from the dead. And I notice that when you were setting down your 'staff of fire' to pull rocks off the damned priests no one mentioned you were using a pulley system."

"Nevertheless, their prophecy is clearly based on fact, and we ourselves have experienced the reality of traveling to a different time. It may also have been dangerous to us to read on. Our survival on this planet may depend on our ignorance of the immediate future."

O'Neill gave him a suspicious glance. "How do you work that one out?"

"Had you known that you would be captured by Apophis if you traveled to Chulak, would you still have done so?"

O'Neill shrugged. "Probably not."

"Then I would still be First Prime of Apophis, and many more people would be dead. Sometimes to know a little of one's future and try to avoid it might be to do both oneself and others incalculable harm."

"You know, just once, I would like you and Carter to back me up instead of Daniel."

Teal'c gave O'Neill a level look. "If I thought Daniel Jackson was wrong on this matter, you can be sure I would have said so."

O'Neill opened his mouth to retort, then looked around and frowned. "Where's Harun?"

"He was…" Daniel turned in a circle, "…right here."

"Well now he isn't."

They exchanged a glance and Daniel thought how tired Jack looked. He felt unbelievably tired himself, as if someone had opened a vein without him noticing, some razorblade slash to the back of his ankle which had left a blood trail all the way back to the temple for Onuris' Jaffa to follow. And he'd had a lot more sleep than the others. Not to mention all the stress he hadn't had because it wasn't his teammate who'd managed to get himself captured and tortured. There was still that hard look in Jack's eyes when the man's gaze passed over him but Daniel knew Jack too well to be fooled by it now; he could see what lay behind it and that expression showed nothing but concern for him.

He said conversationally, "You know, Jack, if Onuris does get me, you have to admit it really will be entirely my own fault. I mean I know I ask you to work miracles just about once a month but I got us into this one all by myself, and I really don't expect you to get us out of it."

"Yeah, that's going to be a terrific consolation when he's feeding us all to his pet alligators."

"More likely to be lions actually. His consort was the lion goddess, Mehit. Which brings us back to the Early Christians again and…you really don't want to hear any of this right now, do you?"

Jack said evenly, "However did you guess?"

"Come…"

Daniel turned to see Harun beckoning to them impatiently. He forced a weary smile. "We thought you'd gone."

"No, no. You must follow me. The caves are very treacherous. Men have been lost here for many days. Sometimes forever. You must stay with me."

Daniel looked over his shoulder and saw Sam moving up behind him and Teal'c falling into position behind her. Jack, of course, was ahead of him. He was in the middle; as protected as they could keep him. He closed his eyes and stumbled after Jack, exhaustion leadening every limb. Death was starting to seem welcome, as at least it would give him some rest. He was getting flashes of the blue light again, Shokmar emerging from the place in his memory where Jack had wanted it walled up forever. Wesheb… Wesheb… Questions to which there never had been answers. Like the ones the Inquisition asked or Witchfinders already determined to find you guilty of something. He kept seeing the High Priest's face, malevolent, triumphant, overlaid by the face of that dying man suffering under the stone. People crushed by falling stones. Such a terrible way to die. They'd told him it was quick. A few seconds of fear followed by instantaneous death. He'd known there would have been pain, but only an eye blink and then there would have been darkness, silence, whatever came later.

As a child he'd thought in terms of later: heaven, angels singing, something better. People had told him his parents had gone to a better place, thinking it would console him, but it had made it sound as though they'd chosen to leave him behind. Now he wondered if it had been instantaneous after all. Perhaps they'd lain there dying slowly, minute by minute by minute by…

"Daniel…?"

Jack was mad with him. Mad as hell with him. He couldn't have it all ways, couldn't have Jack be the parents he'd lost when he needed him to be and treat him with perfect equality as well. Sooner of later he was going to have to choose what he needed Jack to be: big brother, stepfather, or friend. He couldn't be glad of those times when Jack took him home with him, fed him, and tucked him up on the couch to catch up on his sleep, and then resent it when the guy turned around and told him they were doing things his way today. Sometimes Jack wasn't the only one who found their friendship exhausting; who wondered when it had all got so – intense. Some days it seemed as though everything Jack said to him just mattered too damned much.

"Daniel?"

Their footsteps sounded hollow, as if they were made of tin. This was a straight section of tunnel. Good. He could close his eyes for a few paces. Listen to where Jack's feet were landing and place his own feet where the echoes were still lying on the stone like puddles. When he opened his eyes there was the eerie blackness of the caves, their shadows separating as they were spiked by different points of light; Harun's torch sending up grey wisps of smoke from a hissing red flame; Jack's flashlight dissecting the darkness in a shaft of blue light. Blue light. Wesheb…Wesheb… Not again. The same circle over and over. A damned uroboros of memory forever swallowing its own tail.

"Daniel!"

Daniel opened his eyes and blinked. He was propped against the wall of a cavern. Jack was steadying him, hands on his upper arms holding him up but was half-turned away, speaking over his shoulder. "Look, he's out on his feet here. You said you were going to take us to a place of safety. How much further is it?"

"Sorry." Daniel pushed himself off the wall. "Sorry. Don't know why I'm so tired…You must be even…You look...I'm the only one who's had any sleep…"

"Your body had a bad shock, Daniel." He saw Sam's face swim in front of him, a pale oval with two bright points of blue looking at him compassionately. "An experience like that was bound to take it out of you." Her hand felt hot against his forehead. Her voice was indistinct as she turned her head away, "Sir, he's very cold."

"I know." So quiet an admission you could hardly hear it, then Jack was saying tersely, "Look, Harun, I'm not dragging him through these damned caves for no good reason. Can Onuris' Jaffa find us here or not?"

"It would be safer if we were further in."

"Well Daniel's pretty much had it and none of us are going to be fit for anything if we don't get some rest soon."

"I'm going to get us all killed, aren't I?" Daniel was surprised by how calm his voice sounded when he felt so sick inside.

"Daniel Jackson…" Something soft and comforting. A silver blanket and Teal'c guiding him towards it. The floor looked very inviting. Even without the blanket it would have been something he could lie on that would hardly move at all, with the blanket it was irresistible. Then he was lying down with the cave floor lapping gently all around him. Teal'c's palm warm against his face, a brief contact. "You must rest." He always found Teal'c's voice soothing, even when the Jaffa was telling them they were going to die there was still a kind of comforting certainty to it which gave you something solid to hang onto.

Jack was questioning Harun: "You've read that damned tablet-thing, right? You know what happens? Is this a good place for us to rest for the night or should Teal'c and I pick Daniel up and carry him further into the caves? Is there a reason why we shouldn't stay here?"

Harun was a blur but when you were near-sighted you became skilled at reading body language and Harun's was full of hesitancy. The man was caught in two minds about something. Like someone experiencing doubt for the first time in a long while. Daniel could feel sleep tugging at him, something he could slip into, somewhere dark and still and comforting as death, but he needed to stay awake long enough to hear Harun's answer.

Harun spoke quietly, "It is written that Chosen One rested that night surrounded by his avatars."

"And they were okay? Nothing bad happened to him or his – avatars?"

"Sir…" Sam sounded uneasy. "He might not be comfortable sharing that knowledge with you."

"Major, I don't give a rat's ass."

"You should rest." Harun's response was soothing but not very informative. "All of you should rest. I can keep watch."

"That isn't what I asked."

Just before Daniel's eyelids pressed down, he read evasion in every blur of Harun's body. As he drifted into sleep, he realized the man was poised on the brink of lying.

O'Neill glanced across at Daniel and saw that he was asleep. It wasn't exactly sleeping peacefully, more like comatose. There were none of those little stirrings and murmurings you usually observed in someone dreaming, Daniel was just limp, white, and still. It was all O'Neill could do not to go over there and check he was still breathing. The firelight spat and glowed, smoke filtering up to find cracks in the ceiling, Daniel's pale face flickering between light and shadow as the flames danced. He suspected Daniel's nerve-endings were still vibrating faintly, his body only slowly emerging from the shock into which all those hours of pain would have put it. When he'd held Daniel earlier, he'd felt a tremor like a road being dug up four blocks away, and in the hut Harun had taken them to Daniel's hands had been too shaky to tie his laces. Carter had done it for him. Daniel hadn't even noticed. God, he just wanted to get him home. He just wanted to get all of them home.

Glancing across at Carter, he saw the bruised shadows beneath her eyes. She'd looked like this on Netu, dead on her feet but still functioning, still thinking, blue eyes huge with exhaustion but the intelligence in them undimmed. The last thing to shut down on these two was always their minds, and when they were tired she and Daniel could have been twins.

After assuring them they would be safe here, Harun had busied himself with seeing to the fire, fussing over them unobtrusively and tactfully, deferential but not obsequious. It didn't help. He couldn't really like the guy. He couldn't get past the fact these people had known. Known and not done anything to stop it. None of this had needed to happen. People always said what a wonderful thing hindsight was, and Harun had been given it, just for these events. He'd known someone who'd never willingly hurt another human being was going to wander up to that temple to be captured and tortured for hours. He could have saved Daniel and he hadn't. He'd just – let it happen.

"Neb? Sewer? Wenem?"

"What?" O'Neill was jolted out of his reverie to find Harun tentatively offering him something in a dish. With its vermilion coloring and those bits of herbs floating on it, the stuff looked like cheap punch. He sniffed at it and then wrinkled his nose. "No, thanks."

Harun turned to Carter, speaking even more gently to her. "You should eat? Drink?"

She glanced across at him for his permission first and he shrugged, leaving it up to her. His instinct was to tell Harun where to shove his food and drink but the guy had helped them so far and Carter certainly looked like she needed the sustenance. In fact she looked a breath away from total collapse and he frowned in concern. She took the shallow dish and sipped the hot red juice gingerly. He watched her swallow the stuff down and she looked so pale in the firelight he half-expected to be able to see the dark juice showing through the thin skin of her throat. When she wiped her mouth afterwards, the drink left a red streak across the back of her hand. He blinked as the smoke stung his eyes and focused again to find her looking at him compassionately. "You should have some, sir, it's very…reviving."

"Actually I'm trying to give it up."

He saw Harun putting some twisted bread-type stuff into her hand and noticed the effort it cost her even to chew. This wasn't good. He could feel exhaustion leadening his own limbs; Daniel was out for a very long count and Carter didn't look far behind him. This was not the kind of shape they needed to be in to outwit and outflank a vengeful Goa'uld and a couple of hundred Jaffa. Only Teal'c seemed to be in reasonable condition, and even he wasn't happy. He was out prowling the corridors suspiciously. O'Neill was with him on that. If ever a place smelt like a trap to him, it was here. He would have liked every entrance and exit alarmed and defended but you couldn't set up a line of claymores in a cavern unless you wanted to bring the ceiling down on yourself when the enemy turned up.

When Harun offered him some of the bread stuff, he shook his head, pulling an MRE out of his pocket and holding it up instead. It already felt like a lifetime ago he'd given that PowerBar bar to Daniel. "No thanks. We have our own." He looked at the pouch he was holding. Carter and Teal'c had ripped half a dozen MRE pouches open and distributed the contents as evenly as they could manage it, but he just bet he'd ended up with the damned macaroni and cheese again while everyone else had the chicken with salsa or beef stew.

O'Neill looked down at the pack he was holding. Yes, macaroni and cheese, well no way in hell was he eating that straight out of the pack, he didn't care how many times the Air Force told him this was a hot or cold option. He pushed it back into his vest pocket and felt around for something else. The next pack was a chocolate cookie. Air Force 'cookies' always tasted like a graham cracker dipped in chocolate to him but it was still better than that macaroni and cheese. He bit into it as though he liked it and discovered he was still so hungry it tasted pretty good to him.

Harun was looking at him curiously, as if he was a Rubik's cube that kept coming out wrong. He wondered if Daniel knew what a Rubik's cube was. The guy had shocking holes in his general knowledge. Could tell you the names of a whole bunch of dead Ancient Sumerian tyrants but hadn’t known who Luke Skywalker was until O'Neill had made him watch all those Star Wars videos. Way too many years grave-robbing on archaeological digs in Third World countries and not enough years just hanging out getting in touch with the late twentieth century. They were almost into the twenty first century, damnit, and Daniel still spent most of his head-time in 3000 BC.

Mind you, there were compensations, like the way Daniel was with TV. Not sports, unfortunately, they seemed to leave Daniel cold however many times you explained the rules to him and the names of the teams he should be rooting for, but movies. The only other person he'd ever known who watched movies on TV like Daniel, was Charlie. Like it was simultaneously real and magic, completely absorbed in whatever story was being told. Daniel never noticed ropey special effects or wobbling scenery, the same way children never noticed, he just believed it.

It was after the business with that…crystal replica of himself that Sara had given him all of Charlie's videos. Apparently she'd started dismantling his bedroom, preparing for the fact he really never was coming back. She'd said she could never watch those movies again herself but she couldn't bear to give them away either. She'd handed them to him and then walked away. She wouldn't come in for coffee. When he'd called after her, she wouldn't look round. And as she'd backed her car out of the drive he'd seen the tears glinting on her cheeks. She'd driven off and left him with a cardboard box full of videos and the realization his marriage was finally and irrevocably over.

Up until then he'd thought they would get back together at some point. How could two people who loved each other that much and who had all that shared history not get back together at some point? But that was when he'd realized the thing that connected them so finally and irrevocably had become a dead child. All the time they'd spent together before Charlie's birth had somehow been cancelled out by the years since. At some point Charlie had obviously become the mortar which held their marriage together; their shared point of reference; the best thing about their relationship. In becoming two people with a child they both loved, they had somehow lost the knack of being two people who just loved each other, and they couldn't get back there again. The love hadn't gone, but those two people had. They weren't who they had been and they never would be again. From here on he and Sara could only be Charlie's parents with one another, which meant they couldn't be in a room together and Charlie's ghost not be in the room with them as well. He couldn't forget when he was with Sara. And perhaps Sara couldn't forgive when she was with him.

It hadn't been very long after that he thought he'd lost Daniel too. Bubbles rising. Flames engulfing. Daniel screaming. Even now, the memory of an event which had never taken place could chill him to the core. When they'd got Daniel back from the sea there had been no question where he would be convalescing from that damned memory device. Not in the infirmary after the first night because Daniel had given him his best begging look and O'Neill hadn't been in a state to withstand it. And not Daniel's apartment because it was full of cardboard boxes. A bare, chilly place tasting of their despair. Not anywhere, in fact, where O'Neill couldn't go and reassure himself Daniel was alive at regular intervals.

As his spare room was still waiting to be reclaimed from being a storage facility, Daniel had been installed on his couch again, although this time the semi-patient had become temporarily nocturnal. Having slept through a night and a day in the infirmary recovering from Nem's memory device, Daniel couldn't get his circadian rhythms back on track straight away. The first few days the headaches has been frightening but they'd receded. Daniel had stopped getting flashbacks to 2000 BC. O'Neill had stopped flinching every time he poured himself a glass of beer and the foam frothed up too fast.

The first night he'd sat up with Daniel and they'd talked more than they'd managed since the day he'd brought Daniel back from Abydos. About Sha're. About Sara. About their shared hope of getting Skaara back. It had probably been what women would call a 'bonding' experience but back then he hadn't learned to be completely comfortable with Daniel's unconscious ability to make him spill his guts. Particularly not so soon after he'd had it brought home to him how damned much Daniel now meant to him and there was always the danger he might admit it in an unguarded moment. Couldn't have Daniel knowing he mattered to him now, could he? Christ, the guy had been considering himself unwanted and unlovable pretty much full-time since the age of eight. Well he'd had that one year off for good behavior on Abydos when even Daniel couldn't fail to notice he was loved and needed by the entire population, but apart from that, no, Daniel knew no one could really miss him or care about him. O'Neill certainly didn't want to change that now, did he?

So he'd been uncomfortable whenever he and Daniel got to talking; always ending up giving away so much more than he intended and then regretting it later. The next day he was always twitchy. He'