Better to Light a Candle

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* TITLE: Better to Light a Candle
* AUTHOR: Redbyrd
* EMAIL: redbyrd (at) mindspring (dot) com
* RATING: PG
* CATEGORY: drama, missing scene
* SUMMARY: Daniel wasn't ready to talk to his teammates about Shifu's dream- he needed some time to figure it out on his own. So a nice quiet archeological mission with SG-5 to solve the mysteries of an abandoned Goa'uld palace was just what he needed.
* SPOILERS: The Light
* AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is for mtee, who asked for more after 'Absolute'. I hadn't originally intended to write a sequel, but of course "The Light" is another one of those episodes that always seemed a little unfinished. I also hadn't intended to write so *much* more.. the sequel has turned out to be not just longer than the preceding story but vastly longer (over 28,000 words. Whew!).
* WARNINGS: Language. Daniel angst. More Daniel angst. But it has a kind of happy ending, I promise, or at least as happy as it gets in S4...
* DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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Daniel hefted the hardshelled case onto the FRED, and looked around for the members of SG-5. Barber was holding the controls for the cart. McClure and Howe were already standing on the ramp. McClure was carrying in the last case. Daniel reached out to take it from him, indicating the space he'd left for it.

"I've got it, doctor," McClure said a bit abruptly.

Daniel stepped back to give him better access, and checked off the last item on his list, tucking the notebook back into his pocket when he was done. "Ready to go, Major," he called.

Whitaker nodded with a trace of impatience from the foot of the ramp, then looked up to the control room, where both Hammond and Jack were watching. "Ready to move out, sir," he called to Hammond.

Hammond gave the order to dial, and the gate started turning. Daniel glanced up at Jack, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, judging by his posture, but he couldn't make out the colonel's expression from this distance. He hadn't been terribly happy with Daniel's reassignment for this mission, though he'd acquiesed with better grace than usual. Janet had told him Jack had haunted the infirmary for much of the time he'd spent in Shifu's teaching dream yesterday. Daniel was a little surprised Jack hadn't resisted more strenuously given his known tendency to worry about his team.

Whitaker turned back to his team plus one. "Let's hope they don't break the gate while we're gone," he said sourly, with a glance at Daniel.

Daniel half-smiled, though Whitaker's tone wasn't especially humorous. Whitaker had been second in command of SG-6 a couple of years ago when Daniel had been stranded with them for almost two weeks. The SGC had dialed into a gate that was being sucked into a black hole, and they were unable to disengage the gate. In retrospect, the trip had given him a bunch of extra time with an interesting set of ruins on a pleasant world. Even the weather had been good. At the time, however, they'd been worried sick, wondering if the Earth gate had been taken or buried- by accident or invasion.

His gaze stayed on Whitaker as the gate opened. SG-5 seemed a bit edgy and short-tempered, he thought. He hoped they weren't annoyed at being assigned to an archeological mission. The military teams often found them boring. Not that they were likely to be any worse than his own teammates. Daniel sighed and followed Whitaker up the ramp.

As Daniel stepped out of the gate, his gaze was drawn to the intricate screens, reminscent of Moorish designs. Sunlight slanted through them to lay mosaics of light and shadow across the room. "Oh, beautiful," he said, his gaze traveling slowly over the majestic columns, and ornate stonework.

"Isn't it?" McClure grinned at him.

Daniel looked around to see the whole team watching not the perimeter, but him, rather as if he were a favorite uncle they'd just brought to see their tree house and were waiting for his approval. "Fabulous," he smiled back, but his eye was drawn inexorably to the decorated pillars. "You weren't kidding when you said there was a lot of writing."

"Oh yeah," McClure said. "But you should see this first..." Any tenseness they'd displayed before seemed completely gone, as they talked over one another, trying to tell him what they'd found.

They led him, still grinning, into the most amazing room he had ever seen. Light fountained up from the center, flowing across the ceiling as it shifted spectrum. Daniel watched it for several minutes. "What is it?" he asked. McClure was staring at the light, mesmerized.

"McClure?" Daniel had to ask again.

"Oh," he said. "Not a clue. It seems to be a light matrix hologram. But we have no idea what its purpose was. Entertainment? Decoration? We don't even know what the power source is."

"I think it's a screen-saver, " Howe put in. "Who knows what cool stuff we'd see if we can figure out how to operate it?"

Daniel nodded and wondered if he could talk Sam into coming and taking a look at it. He walked with them through a bewildering number of rooms, climbed shallow elegant stairs and eventually finished the tour on a wide balcony overlooking the ocean. "Wow," Daniel said, smiling at Whitaker. "How do you do it? SG-1 gets the mind-altering alien technology, you find the abandoned beach resort."

"Exercise and clean living," Whitaker quipped. He turned crisply to Daniel. "So, what do you want us to do, doctor? I'll post a sensor perimeter, and we'll run a patrol or two, but otherwise, we're at your disposal."

Daniel managed not to do a double-take, it was a lot more help than he usually got. With assistance, even untrained assistance, he had a shot at actually documenting this place. He hurriedly revised his plans. "Well, Barber has civil engineering training, right?"

McClure nodded. "Yes, and you know McClure is our anthropologist, while Howe and I have blowing things up covered.

Daniel shook his head. "No blowing up my site, please. It happens often enough as it is. How are you two with video cameras?"

#

Daniel had to coach McClure and Howe on the finer points of filming the walls, but they proved both diligent and thorough, as well as willing to do the tedious work of downloading the imagery to his laptop and indexing it while Whitaker labeled the panel locations on Barber's meticulous floor plan.

Daniel was able to start straight away with working on translating the writing. Ironically, he was making the least progress of anyone, especially when you considered that this palace was probably a year's worth of work. He'd already asked Teal'c to take a look at the first set of pictures the team had brought back. By mid afternoon, he knew he was going to need more than just that.

"We need to send back the latest tapes to Teal'c," Daniel said as they gathered in the gate room. "Frankly, usually it's an advantage to be able to start the translation on site, but this is a new dialect to me. It may be that the best we can do is film everything and I'll work on it when we get back."

"We can certainly send someone back," Whitaker said.

"I think I'm done with everything Dr. Jackson needs for the plans," Barber volunteered.

Howe grinned at him. "Uh-huh! Like we didn't see that coming."

Barber grinned sheepishly, as the other men laughed. Howe turned to Daniel. "He's just got engaged. He hasn't finished a mission since she said 'yes'."

Barber said, "And was it my fault you got food poisoning on P6R-564? Nooo. Someone had to try everything on the buffet."

"You could instruct him to come straight back," McClure suggested mischievously.

"But we won't," Whitaker said, with a smile at the younger man. "The gate takes enough power to operate that we don't open it frivolously."

"Teal'c should be able to look over the material and give me his input within a day or so," Daniel suggested. "If Barber can wait and bring it back when he's done, that would be ideal."

"So ordered," Whitaker confirmed.

Howe grinned at the other lieutenant. "Tell Alicia we said 'hi'."

Daniel smiled. "When's the wedding?" he asked Barber.

"Nine months," Barber said, with a faintly dismayed look. "And she calls it hasty."

"Weddings take time," McClure said. "My wife planned ours for a year and a half."

Whitaker shook his head. "I eloped. Only way to go."

Howe said, "You're all nuts. A girl on every planet, that's what I look for."

That got another round of teasing from his teammates. Daniel chuckled. SG-5 was a 'happy' team despite being relatively new- they all got on well, and didn't take themselves too seriously. "So, what about you doc?" Howe asked.

"Hmm?" Daniel replied.

"Am I right? Is a girl on every planet the way to go?" he asked. Whitaker gave him a sideways frown that Howe didn't notice.

Daniel shook his head. "I wouldn't know, Howe. I got married on the first date."

Howe gave him a surprised look as the others laughed again. "Good one," he said.

They did as much filming as they could over the rest of the afternoon. That evening as they clustered around the camp stove, McClure asked, "So what's the verdict on the light, Doc? Goa'uld superweapon?"

Daniel's good humor ebbed as he thought of Shifu for the first time in hours. "Unlikely," he said. "What little I can make out on these panels are the names of various Goa'uld, mostly long out of power. But it could give us a better idea of the relationships of the various Goa'uld below System Lord level. Useful intelligence."

"Especially since we lost the harcesis," McClure said. "At least that's what the kid was, wasn't he, Daniel?"

Daniel wasn't altogether surprised that the subject had come up so soon. He'd been the subject of a lot of curious looks back at the base after Shifu had left. It was too much to hope that SG-5 wouldn't ask. At least it was only the four of them.. Daniel was kind of hoping the nine-days-wonder would have passed by the time he got back. "Yes, he was," Daniel replied evenly. "But there was never any chance that we'd get any information from him. He wouldn't have allowed it."

"Why did he even come to Earth, then?" Howe asked.

Daniel looked at him sharply, but man's expression was all honest curiosity. "He wanted to know about his mother," Daniel replied.

Howe looked even more puzzled. "His mother?" Whitaker nudged him hard and glared when he turned around, and McClure looked embarrassed. Barber was as puzzled as the younger man. Daniel remembered that Howe and Barber were both fairly new to the SGC as well as to this team.

Daniel sighed. "Shifu is my, uh, stepson, sort of. He was my wife's son. He was helped to ascend by Oma Desala." As the young men's faces got even more bewildered, Daniel explained further. "The ascended are beings who have discovered how to abandon their material bodies for forms of pure energy. We think that they used to be like us."

"Holy crap," Barber blurted, then blushed. "I mean, I read about the energy aliens in the reports, but.. "

Howe was frowning thoughtfully. "Wait a minute. A harcesis is-"

"The child of two Goa'uld hosts," Daniel said.

The man abruptly put rumor and fact together with the second, harder nudge from his CO and looked stricken. "I'm sorry," he said, his normal joking manner completely disappearing.

Daniel shrugged and looked back at his computer screen. "It's okay, Howe," he said.

Barber was obviously following a different train of thought. "But the boy, um, Shifu. He's now one of these energy beings? Like the one on the report from Kheb, that fried like a thousand Jaffa?"

"Close to two thousand," Daniel answered, absently returning to the mechanical task of checking Whitaker's indexing.

"Then-" Barber sounded a little nervous. "He could have taken out the whole SGC. And there's hardly anything we could have done to stop him, is there?"

"Probably not," Daniel said. He marked a long section of text to go back and recheck in person, as some of the figures looked a little fuzzy. He realized the silence had gone on a bit too long and looked up to see Barber staring at him. He replayed the last few sentences of the conversation. "Look, Barber. Would you consider us dangerous?"

Barber blinked at the change in subject. "No, I don't think so."

"Why not?" Daniel leaned over to tap the man's P90. "We're all armed."

"I say we are dangerous," Whitaker said. McClure nodded agreement.

"But we have rules," Barber said. "Ethics, morals. We wouldn't just shoot people indiscriminately."

"So the people we meet out here in the galaxy- " Daniel gestured around them- " shouldn't be worried about talking with us. Because we're civilized." He watched as Barber got the analogy. "It's the same for Oma and Shifu. We shouldn't automatically think they're hostile because they have the power to harm us. They aren't hostile, self-evidently."

"How self-evidently?" Barber asked.

"We're still alive," McClure put in sardonically.

"And what we've learned of their beliefs suggests that theirs were some of the fundamental ideals behind Buddhism," Daniel explained. "Which is a fairly peaceful philosophy. On Kheb, they made it clear that violence was forbidden. And when the first blow was struck, anyone holding a weapon paid the price." He shrugged. "An extreme form of judgment, but consistent. And everyone was warned. The Jaffa were the ones who didn't take the warning seriously."

"In retrospect, I'm a little surprised you got O'Neill to put down his weapon," Whitaker said thoughtfully.

Daniel grimaced. "Yeah, well, just between you and me, so am I." In fact, for a single horrible minute, he'd thought he was going to be the only survivor.

"So when you brought him back to the SGC, you knew he was safe?" Barber asked, still sounding dubious.

"It was a calculated risk," Daniel replied calmly.

Barber stared at him, looking disquieted. Howe whistled, "I think think I'm beginning to see what they mean when they say SG-1 is nuts. No offense intended."

Daniel asked, "As a matter of academic curiosity, who says that?"

"Everyone!" Howe, Barber and McClure chorused together.

Whitaker laughed at Daniel's rather disgruntled expression. "In a good way, Jackson."

After dinner, McClure dialed the gate and they sent Barber back. "No watches," Whitaker said. "We'll trust the sensors, I think." Daniel looked around the gate room, which was where they had most of the equipment.

"You don't have any set across the center of the room?" Daniel asked, looking for the small gray sensor units.

"The center?" Whitaker raised an eyebrow. "No, why?"

Daniel reached over to the wall panel, and tapped the activation key. It didn't show the blue light that would have indicated another set of rings in range, so the rings just leapt from the floor and moved a volume of air up to the roof.

Howe, McClure and Whitaker took an involuntary step back as the the device triggered, then all stared at him. "Rings," Daniel said after a moment. "They're more often than not found in Goa'uld facilities, and frequently adjacent to the stargate." It was straight out of Sam's tech briefing for new personnel in fact.

"Right," Whitaker said. "Howe, have we got another couple sets of sensors?"

"Yes, sir," Howe said.

"I should have spotted those," McClure looked embarrassed.

"The rings are sometimes concealed," Daniel said. "You should look for control panels as well as floor markers." He tapped the control panel, which was unobtrusive but not hidden.

When the sensors were all up, Daniel crawled into a sleeping bag, his mind turning over the symbols. Unfamiliar writing plus new dialect made things difficult because he was assigning phonemes based on what he knew. He'd identify a word and then try to sound out others using the elements he'd identified, but the pronunciations weren't quite what he expected. He wondered if Teal'c would be willing to do some more studying. He was already an enormous help, but with some formal linguistics training... he lost the thought in a giant yawn and dropped off to sleep.

Daniel handed off the bottle to one of his assistants as Jack refused the champagne a second time. Ah, Jack. You're going to be famous. "Come on, Jack, you're about to become an international hero."

Jack gave him a suspicious look. "How do you mean?"

"Well, now that we have a way of defending ourselves against the Goa'uld," Daniel explained, "The president is going to make the stargate's existence public knowledge."

"Dr. Jackson?" Chong, his right-hand minion, quietly indicated the monitor.

Daniel and Jack turned to the screen. "I'm Amy Jenson, live on Capital Hill. Speculation is running rampant as to the subject of the president's special report, though many believe it has something to do with the new 'cutting edge satellite communications network' launched this afternoon."

The screen switched abruptly to the presidential seal, and an announcer said, "And now, ladies and gentlement, the president of the United States of America."

Daniel turned to smile at Jack. "See? It's all going to be-"

Wait a minute- that was wrong.. Daniel turned to Jack, realizing he wasn't standing, he was sitting in his control chair. And that wasn't how it happened.. the president canceled. With a shock of dismay, he realized he must have dozed off, just for a second. The screen in front of him was still showing the shockwave spreading where Moscow used to be.

Jack turned back to him with a stricken look, the empty gun still in his hand. 'Ah, Jack, Jack,' Daniel thought. 'You never believed I had it in me, did you? Did you really think I didn't know what I was doing to Teal'c or Sam? Wrong again.' He watched the screen impassively as the hurt and disappointment on Jack's face grew.

His friend took a step toward him, "Daniel-" he said in a soft helpless tone.

That should have warned him. Jack was never helpless. In the next instant, the colonel was throwing his empty gun in Daniel's face and lunging for the chair. Not a bad idea, the shield wouldn't stop anything moving as slowly as a person. That was what the guards were for- the guards-

Daniel's eyes widened and he screamed , "NO!!" as his bodyguards fired on Jack. Red blossomed on his chest and shoulder-

"NO!" Daniel lunged frantically, and only succeeded in rolling over onto Howe while tangled in his sleeping bag.

"Umph!" the other man grunted. "What the hell?"

Whitaker turned on the lantern, and all three of them yawned, staring at Daniel who was drenched in sweat and gasping like he'd run a marathon. "Jackson? Something wrong?" McClure asked.

Daniel unzipped his sleeping bag with shaking hands. "S-sorry. Dreaming. It was nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Nothing? Christ," Howe flopped back on his sleeping bag, already yawning, while McClure buried his head in his pillow.

Whitaker turned out the light but followed Daniel out into the gate room. Daniel ignored him in favor of a visit to the facilities. He leaned against a wall until he'd mostly stopped shaking and looked at his watch. Four-thirty, or close enough to dawn he might as well just stay up. When he came back into the gate room, Whitaker had made coffee.

Daniel accepted a cup, and sipped, feeling the warmth burn its way down his throat.

"Careful," Whitaker said. "It's hot."

"By now I'm scar tissue all the way down," Daniel assured him. He preferred his coffee at a temperature that would raise blisters on most people. He wrapped both hands firmly around the cup, letting the heat soak into his chilled flesh

"I believe you," Whitaker said, and Daniel realized he'd taken the statement at more than face value. "But all the same, that sounded like a bad one. If you want to talk about it..."

"Thanks, Chris," Daniel said, with a wry smile. "But I'm fine, really."

Whitaker looked down into his own cup. "Daniel- sometimes I think you feel like you've got something to prove here. You don't. Even soldiers are afraid of dying, being hurt. And you've survived things that could have broken anyone."

Daniel drank some more coffee and wished for a campfire. It made something to stare at during these kinds of conversations. "It's not dying, Chris." He laughed dryly. "I think I'm uniquely qualified to say that dying doesn't bother me. It's kind of peaceful, really. My team dying- now that gives me nightmares." He raised an eyebrow, glanced at Chris. Whitaker was sipping his coffee and listening attentively.

"Sometimes I think we've got some kind of bizarre game of one-upmanship going. Who can scare the rest of the team the worst." Daniel sighed, his mind going back to the conversation of the prior evening. "And it isn't always the missions when we get injured... Kheb was a bad one. Two thousand heavily armed Jaffa vs. SG-1 and Bra'tac. I was the only one unarmed- and ironically, the only one in no danger of being killed. I really thought I was coming back alone that time."

Whitaker looked away, his eyes haunted, "I know what you mean.. if I hadn't transferred off six when I did... but I got promoted and assigned to lead SG-5, and a month later.."

Daniel remembered. "They ran into something they couldn't handle." Those had been the aliens with the mimic devices. They'd infiltrated the base impersonating SG-6, but the real team had never returned. "We don't even know what happened."

"That's the worst," Whitaker said. "They could be dead- but what if they aren't? They must have given up hope by now..." He sighed. "And in the dead of night, you wonder.. was it the new guy who screwed up? If I'd been there would it have been different? Or would we all have been taken just the same?"

"Coulda, woulda, shoulda," Daniel said. "You can't play that game, Chris. The ones you were there for are bad enough. If you worry about the sins of omission too, you'll just drive yourself crazy." Daniel vividly recalled the nine days he and Hammond had waited for the gate to be repaired after Sam, Jack and Teal'c crashed the Asgard ship into the ocean. I feel like I should be up there-

"Good advice," Whitaker said with an ironic look. Daniel half-smiled, acknowledging the hit. Chris poured another cup of coffee, offered more to Daniel, who held his cup out to be refilled. "I've had my share of nightmares, that's for sure. Howe doesn't understand yet. He's too new."

Daniel shrugged. "He'll have his own collection in a few years."

"I could wish I didn't believe you," Whitaker shook his head. Neither of them said what they were thinking. Field teams were the most dangerous job in the SGC, in the Air Force, possibly in the world. You were guaranteed nightmares only if you lived long enough. "What's the plan for today, doctor?"

"Well, I'm going to be spending a lot more time banging my head on walls," Daniel said, gesturing to the writing on the nearest pillar. "I'm trying to figure out what the light room does."

"We're making good progress with the taping," Whitaker said. "If we can finish that in the morning, I'll take a patrol out along the beach in the afternoon, see what's out there."

"We had a UAV sweep, didn't we?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah, but you know they don't always spot everything that interests us," Whitaker said. "There's no substitute for being there."

Daniel said, "Beach, eh?"

Whitaker grinned. "If any stargates get sculpted in the sand, we won't know anything about it."

"As a kid, I always built pyramids," Daniel said. "Also known as piles of sand.. it wasn't good building sand."

"I insisted on the beach with good sand," Whitaker said. "Narragansett, Rhode Island. Best castle sand in the Northeast."

Daniel glanced at the window. There was a faint lightening behind the carved screen. "That balcony we saw yesterday- does it face east?" he asked.

"Yeah," Whitaker rose with alacrity and led the way back to the high balcony. The sky was lightening out over the water, streaks of gold creeping up from the horizon. "This reminds me of home," he said.

Daniel nodded. "Sunrise over the Atlantic.. " he caught Chris' sidelong glance. "I spent a few years on the east coast."

Whitaker nodded. They watched in silence as the gold and rose cooled into pale blue while the dark waters brightened. The open balcony felt like standing in the sky. A few birds wheeled in the distance. Daniel wondered what Whitaker would say if he told him the most disturbing thing about Kheb hadn't been the aliens or the Jaffa, but the satisfaction he'd felt at their death. 'Your hate will lead to the child's death,' the monk had told him. Shifu had shown him that his hate could lead to a lot more than that. Daniel traced a couple of faint half-circles in the sky. "I see two moons," he pointed them out to Chris.

"There doesn't seem to be much in the way of tides," Whitaker observed. "Probably doesn't have anything the size of Earth's moon." The side of his mouth curled up as they turned back indoors. "Isn't it a trip? Coming out here, standing where people from Earth haven't been in centuries if ever? Seeing all this?"

"Amazing," Daniel agreed. He still felt that way about the gate. Really. At least on the days when he wasn't struggling to find something worth saving.

He skipped breakfast and worked steadily through the day, joining Whitaker halfway through the daily report back to the SGC. "General Hammond," he said.

"Dr. Jackson, how are things going?" Hammond's voice responded.

"Slowly, sir. Any word from Teal'c?"

"He says he's still working on it, Daniel," Sam's voice cut in. "He hopes to have something for you by tomorrow."

"Okay, I'll keep plugging away here then. Sam, you should see this place. It's amazing. There's this incredible room with a device. We have no idea what it is, but it's still operating- the power must have been just left running for hundreds of years."

"That sounds interesting," Sam said. "I'm tied up here."

"We're scheduled to be here through the end of the week," Daniel reminded her. "You've got a couple of days coming."

"Downtime," Sam said.

"You said you didn't have plans," Daniel persuaded. "You'd love this place, I promise. Take a look at the pictures I sent Teal'c."

"I'll think about it," Sam said. "Really." Her voice got fainter for a moment, then stronger again. "I've got to run, Daniel. Bye."

"She'll think about what?" said a familiar suspicious voice. "Daniel?"

"Hi, Jack," Daniel smiled at the camera, reminding himself again that just because he couldn't see them didn't mean they couldn't see him. "I was just telling Sam she should come out and take a look at this place. You could join her."

"Daniel, she has downtime. You know.. that thing you get when you don't work?" Jack said sarcastically.

"She doesn't have plans," Daniel said. "And this would be fun. I bet she'll come."

"Oh?" Daniel could picture Jack's skeptical expression clearly, just from the tone of his voice. "How much will you bet?"

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Twenty?"

"You lack conviction. Forget it."

"Fifty says she will, even if you try to talk her out of it," Daniel said slyly. Especially if you try to talk her out of it.

"You're on," O'Neill said.

"If you gentlemen are quite through?" Hammond's exasperated voice came back on the line. Oops.

"Yes, sir," Daniel said contritely. The event horizon disintegrated with a pop and a sucking noise and the rather red-faced Whitaker, who'd moved out of view of the camera, finally let out a shout of laughter. Howe and McClure were in the doorway smiling as well.

"Daniel, you guys.." Whitaker grinned hugely. "Do you do that on purpose ?"

"Do what?" Daniel said.

"Drive the general out of his tree-" Whitaker started laughing again. "Jesus, Hammond's never going to be able to pretend he doesn't have a sense of humor with you guys around."

"Why would he want to?" Daniel said disingenuously. "I blame Jack, if you must know."

"Right," Whitaker shook his head. "He's a colonel, Jackson, and Hammond's a general. Don't they intimidate you at all?"

"No," Daniel said honestly. "We're all here to do a job, right? Why should they intimidate me?"

Howe's and McClure's eyes widened as Whitaker shook his head. "Daniel, sometimes you can be very...civilian."

"I am a civilian," Daniel pointed out mildly. "And what about the other times?"

McClure said seriously, "The other times, we forget you're not Air Force."

Daniel looked at him sharply, but he didn't seem to be joking. "Thanks, I think." His gaze went to the camera held loosely in his hand. "Finished with the taping?"

"Yes," McClure said, looking at Whitaker, who surrendered the other camera.

"Howe," Whitaker instructed. "You stay here and assist Dr. Jackson. McClure and I are going to do a recon along the beach."

"Yes, sir," Howe's professional expression couldn't entirely conceal his disappointment at not getting to explore.

"We're here for five more days," Whitaker said. "You'll go on the next one."

"Yes, sir," Howe repeated, with more enthusiasm.

They put on hats, refilled water bottles and packed up some supplies before going out. Howe watched them leave somewhat mournfully. "Lunch in half an hour?" Daniel suggested. The symptoms of bored soldierdom were extremely familiar.

"Sure, Dr. J.," Howe replied.

Daniel nodded and went back to thinking about phonemes. If this was a hard k-sound, could this phrase be 'kree shak'? But that would mean.. he shuffled symbols again and wished Teal'c were here. No, that didn't make sense either. It was some time before his stomach rumbled, and he looked at his watch. Half an hour had long since passed. "Howe?" he called, a little uncertainly. There was no answer.

He walked out toward the hall, but didn't have to go very far. Howe was in the light room, staring raptly at the hologram. "Howe?" The man didn't respond. Daniel went in and shook his arm gently. "Lieutenant Howe?" he said again.

Howe startled out of his abstraction and said, "Oh, hi, Doc."

"Lunch?" Daniel suggested.

Howe followed him back to the gate room readily enough. "I thought you said in half an hour."

"I did," Daniel said. "That was two hours ago."

Howe blinked and checked his watch. "That's .. uh. Sorry. I must have lost track of time."

"No problem," Daniel said with a faint smile. "Happens to me all the time."

Over MREs, he roused himself to make conversation. "So, Lieutenant, how many missions does this make for you?"

"Five," Howe said, grinning. "And I'm still having trouble believing it's all real, you know?"

"I know." Daniel smiled. "Whitaker was just saying something like that this morning. You never really lose the wonder."

"The seasoned teams don't act like it though," the young man looked at him a little sheepishly. "They just step through like they're getting on a bus."

"Humans have an astonishing capacity to make the familiar mundane," Daniel said. "But I assure you, we still think it's pretty amazing."

Howe's expression got more serious, "Sir, about last night..."

"Don't worry about it," Daniel advised briskly. "I don't expect everyone in the program to know my personal history. Even though," he wrinkled his nose, "they mostly do anyway. Gossip seems to travel faster than wormholes in the SGC." Funny, even six months ago he didn't think he could have joked about his screwed up personal life. It was getting easier to remember the good parts, and let the rest go.

"Thank you," Howe said. "You must- uh, I can't imagine."

In some ways it helped that he could talk about Abydos without choking up. It stopped other people stuttering into silence whenever his past was mentioned. Besides it was another milestone on the elusive road back to 'fine'. "Hey, I can't imagine it either, and I was there," Daniel said wryly. "I mean, some people say their inlaws are from another planet.. well, my inlaws.."

Howe sprayed crumbs as crackers on the way down met a chuckle on the way up and he choked. "Are really from another planet?" He asked after hastily swallowing some water. He gave Daniel a searching look. "How could you do it? Decide just like that to stay on another planet."

Daniel shrugged. "I was born in Egypt. Abydos was a lot more like home than Colorado or L.A. to me. And it wasn't like I had a lot to come back to." He decided he'd had as much plastic macaroni and cheese as he could take for one day and stuffed it in the trash sack, picking up his pad. "Back to the salt mines," he said jokingly.

"I always wondered," Howe said, bundling his own trash to be carted back through the gate with them. "Are there really salt mines?"

Daniel gave him a startled look. "Sure. Where did you think salt comes from?"

"I don't know," Howe said.

"There are salt mines in Louisiana. Some in the west, too, though they tend to produce more rock salt for roads than table salt. Salt is also produced from brine springs and by evaporating salt water," Daniel said. "Salt was used to preserve food for thousands of years before refrigeration." He realized he was lecturing and broke off abruptly. "Sorry, you triggered the automatic lecture mode."

"It's interesting, sir," Howe gestured to the door. "I'll just have a patrol around."

"Right," Daniel was vaguely aware that he left but didn't surface for a while.

"Dr. Jackson," Howe said.

"Hmm?" Daniel frowned intently at his notepad.

"Sir?" Howe said, "I found something."

Daniel looked up, then accepted the small device the lieutenant held out. "Where did you get this?" he asked, turning it over in his hands.

"It was in a niche just inside the door of the light room," Howe said. "I wondered if there was anything like a control panel hidden behind the light, so I was feeling around with my eyes closed."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "So you could accidently turn something on?"

"I was careful," Howe said. "What is it?"

Daniel blinked. "I have no idea." He pushed a button, and saw more of the same Goa'uld writing from the walls scrolling across the front of it.

"Whoa!" Howe said. "Are you sure you should do that?"

"No," Daniel said. "But how else am I going to figure out what it does?" He pushed a couple more buttons, and watched the display change. "It seems to be some kind of handheld computer."

"I didn't know they had those," Howe said.

"We've never seen one before," Daniel said. "At least not like this. The tablets seem to be just recording devices. There are computers on ships, of course."

Their speculations were interrupted by footsteps and loud voices outside as Whitaker and McClure returned. Both Daniel and Howe jerked around in surprise as they came in. The normally easygoing Whitaker sounded rather peeved. "Oh? And what's that supposed to mean, Lieutenant?"

"I mean , sir, that you can shove it up your-..!" McClure began to say angrily, then broke off. They slowed to a halt, and McClure flushed. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to say that."

Whitaker looked a bit confused. "It's okay, McClure. I don't know why it bothered me to begin with."

"Something wrong?" Daniel asked.

"No," Whitaker said. "It was nothing. How's the translation coming?"

"Not much progress," Daniel said. "But Howe found this," he showed them the device. "It seems to be some kind of computer. I think it may be the key to controlling the light." He passed it to McClure. "So how's the water?" he asked Whitaker.

"Cold enough to numb on contact," the major said. "But there are some enormous statues on the beach you should see." There was a clunk and a grinding noise as the gate started spinning. Whitaker looked at his watch. "It's not time for our report," he said.

Daniel brightened. "Barber, probably. Hopefully with some information from Teal'c."

The gate whooshed as Whitaker and Howe swung their weapons to ready position, just in case. Nothing came through the gate however. They waited in puzzlement. The event horizon just shimmered. Whitaker waved them back into cover, out of sight. Daniel drew his own gun and moved behind a pillar in obedience to his command, pointing the gun in the direction of the gate.

"Knock-knock," said Howe quietly.

Daniel suspected from the quelling look Chris directed his way that had Barber been there, he would have learned a few stargate knock-knock jokes. McClure said. "I think it's the SGC, sir. I'm getting the carrier wave they use to keep the gate open. Nothing's coming through though."

"We could radio," Daniel suggested.

"If it's not the SGC, I'd rather not advertise our presence," Whitaker said, shooting him a quick look that changed to satisfaction at seeing his hand was nowhere near the radio. After what was probably two minutes, but seemed longer, they heard a transmission issuing from the radios. "SG-5, this is Stargate Command. Come in."

Chris raised an eyebrow at Daniel, who shrugged. "That's Walter.. uh, Sergeant Harriman," he said.

Whitaker held down the send button on his radio. "Stargate Command, this is SG-5. What's going on?"

"Major, we've had an- incident. Please stand by."

There was a further wait of nearly a minute, then another familiar voice came on. "SGC, O'Neill here. Major, your team is recalled. Pack up and come home."

Whitaker gave the MALP a surprised look. "Acknowledged." The stargate closed.

"An incident?" Daniel said. "I wonder what happened?"

Whitaker shrugged. "You heard the man. Let's get packed up."

Daniel gave the gate an irritated look, and then moved to start packing his gear. "Just when we found this device, too. Oh, well. Maybe Teal'c can help me with it." He packed the computer in a padded box, which he planned to hand carry back to the SGC.

They were ready to go in a surprisingly short time. McClure dialed the gate, and they passed through. Daniel was glad to see Jack waiting on the ramp. "Jack, you've got to see this," he said, as SG-5 filed past.

Jack brushed it off. "Daniel. There's been an incident."

And if it was anything critical, they'd have been warned. Daniel replied, "Yeah, I know, but this is really important. There's this light..."

"Barber's dead," Jack said.

"What?" Daniel hadn't expected that.

"Come on," O'Neill said.

"What do you mean, he died?" Daniel asked on the way to the infirmary.

"He committed suicide, Daniel," O'Neill said, lowering his voice.

He hustled Daniel through the routine checks, and up to the briefing room. "Aren't we waiting for Whitaker?" Daniel asked.

"We'll be debriefing SG-5 when they've cleared medical," Hammond said. "I'd like to hear your impressions first, doctor. As an outsider, you might have observed something the others missed."

"I don't think there was anything to notice," Daniel said. "Jack said he committed suicide. How?"

"He ran into the wormhole as it was opening," Sam said, looking dismayed. "There was nothing left."

Nothing? He'd have had to have leaped in.. Daniel couldn't picture it. Barber? He'd seemed so cheerful.

Hammond asked. "Did Lieutenant Barber show any signs of depression while on the mission?"

"The opposite." Daniel said firmly. "He was fine." He was going to see his girlfriend. Could they have had a fight?

"How long had he been back?" Jack asked.

Carter answered. "Well he hadn't even been earthside for 48 hours."

"What was he doing?" Jack asked.

"Awaiting the results of a translation with which I was assisting Daniel Jackson," Teal'c replied.

Daniel shook his head. "If you're asking me if he was suicidal, he wasn't. He was better than fine. Didn't anyone talk to him or like notice anything?" If he was upset over something that had happened here, surely someone would have seen it?

"Nothing," Teal'c said.

"We were all taken by surprise," Carter said.

"Well so am I." Daniel said helplessly. "I don't even know what to say." Could it have something to do with the planet? But that was silly. Barber had been fine. True, the others had acted a bit odd.. the way Howe had zoned in the light room, and the uncharacteristic argument between Whitaker and McClure. But none of those were especially out-of-line behaviors. He was vaguely aware of Hammond and the others continuing to talk until he realized someone had said his name.

"-Dr Jackson?"

Daniel responded somewhat sheepishly. Speaking of zoning.. "Yes. Ahh sorry."

"Were there any signs of recent Goa'uld activity?" Teal'c asked.

Daniel shook off the unproductive speculations. "No. I'm pretty sure no one has been there for hundreds of years, but there was this room where there was this pedestal which projected this light matrix hologram onto the ceiling and it was absolutely stunning." The words nearly tumbled over one another as he remembered the fascinating colors.

"Any idea to its purpose?" Hammond asked.

Daniel opened the padded case and extracted the mystery device, "Ideas, yes, but I was hoping this might tell me more. It's kind of like a Goa'uld hand held computer. When it's turned on it displays this Goa'uld dialect I've never seen before and there are similar writings all over the pillars of the palace. I'm thinking or hoping, crossing my fingers actually, that there are instructions." He looked hopefully across the table.

Teal'c said solemnly, "I would be happy to provide further assistance with the translation Daniel Jackson."

Daniel smiled at him. "Thank you, I was counting on that."

He and Teal'c went back to his office where he downloaded the rest of the tapes for Teal'c to look at. As Teal'c started to review them, Daniel turned on the Goa'uld device. Nothing happened. "What the hell?" he said. He started methodically pushing buttons, trying to get the display to light up.

By the time Jack showed up, Daniel's patience was nearly at an end. Why hadn't he at least copied down some of the symbols the device displayed when he first turned it on? Nothing he did seemed to get them back. Teal'c and Jack were muttering distractingly at the other side of the room. If they wanted to talk, why didn't they go outside instead of bugging him? Daniel tried the original sequence of buttons for about the twentieth time, and the gadget still failed to come on. "What is wrong with this thing?" he demanded, slamming it down hard enough to dislodge a pile of papers. There was a sudden silence from the other end of the room and he looked up a bit sheepishly and lowered his voice to explain. "This thing isn't working."

"Have you checked the batteries?" Jack asked.

Hah. Very amusing. Daniel gave him an irritated look and said, "I need to go back to the planet and figure out what's going on."

Jack said, "Hammond suggested we do that tomorrow."

Daniel was feeling a strong desire to throw something. Why didn't Jack ever listen to him instead of just throwing up obstacles? "Well this thing isn't working and tomorrow isn't good enough."

"Yes it is," Jack said more authoritatively.

It was like talking to a wall.. thick and blank. Daniel said, "I'm going to talk to Hammond." He stalked out of the lab in the direction of the elevator.

The general's door was open, as it often was, and Daniel gave it only the most perfunctory rap before walking in. "Dr. Jackson?" Hammond said, looking up in mild surprise.

"General," Daniel said. "I need to go back to P4X-347."

"SG-1 is scheduled to go back at 0900--," Hammond said.

Daniel talked right over the top of him. "Now, general. I need to go now, not tomorrow, next week or next year." He heard a soft step behind him, which he ignored.

"Have you slept at all since you returned?" Hammond asked.

Daniel was ready to scream at the irrelevant question. "I fail to see what that has to do with anything."

Hammond said, "SG-1 has been hard at it for weeks. I'm not sending you anywhere until you've all had at least a night's sleep."

"I'm fine," Daniel said impatiently. What was it all of a sudden, first Jack and now the general trying to baby him?

"You're physically and mentally exhausted," Hammond contradicted.

Daniel sighed and resigned himself to being reasonable in the face of unreason. "I admit I may have been pushing myself a bit but this device could hold the key to everything about that entire place and I can't make any more progress on it here."

"You're scheduled to leave tomorrow morning, one more day isn't going to make a difference," Hammond said.

"I'm telling you it is," Daniel insisted, his temper finally coming to a boil.

Behind him, Jack said, "Thank you for your time, sir."

Daniel ignored his attempt to end the conversation. "You know it is beyond my comprehension how anybody like yourself who has so power can miss the point entirely." Didn't Hammond see how important this was? Why was he condemned to work with idiots? He flashed on Hammond patronizingly ignoring him to listen to Sam when they were briefing him on the Goa'uld weapons system.

"Hey knock it off!" Jack protested.

Hammond said coldly, "It's all right Colonel." He turned back to Daniel. "This letter is to Lieutenant Barber's family explaining that he died in the service of his country. I've spent the last two hours on it. I can't tell them anything about how he died or anything about the work he did here, only that he's gone. Do you get the point now?"

Daniel just stared at him. It wasn't going to stop him writing his precious letter if Daniel went back now instead of tomorrow. Why couldn't they just let him do his job? "Yes, sir, he got it." Jack said.

"Get him out of here," Hammond told Jack, like he was a child or embarrassing pet.

Daniel turned and walked out. What the hell did he have to do to get through to people? He skipped the elevator to take the stairs, meanly pleased to ignore Jack calling behind him. Jack tended to avoid the stairs when his knees were bothering him. Today Jack was only a few yards behind him and caught up with him on the first landing. "What the hell was that, Daniel?"

"That was me trying to do what I'm paid to do, which is translate stuff so we can make the advanced alien technology work." Daniel said. "And by the way, thanks so much for your support. It always gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to know I can count on you for help."

"Daniel, you do not talk like that to Hammond. Ever! What's wrong with you?" Jack demanded.

Daniel said, "What's wrong, colonel , is that everyone around here seems to have their head up their-"

"Including you, evidently," Jack said. "Go home, Daniel. Go home now. That's an order. Get some sleep before you piss off the rest of the base."

Daniel saluted sloppily. "Oh, yes, sir, colonel, sir. I can't wait to leave. Believe me." He left Jack standing open-mouthed on the landing as he went by his office only long enough to dump the handheld unit back in the padded case and then walked to the elevator without bothering to change.

He emerged from the mountain finding somewhat to his surprise it was full dark. He couldn't remember what time it had been on the planet, never mind how the length of its day related to Earth's and he didn't much care. He drove home faster than he normally would have, with a careless abstraction that twice caused other drivers to blow horns at him. He snarled at them bad-temperedly and was relieved when he finally pulled into the lot outside his apartment.

Bad enough that he hardly ever got to do anything archeological, when he did, he had to put up with this procedural crap. Barber was a nice kid and all that, but Daniel had had people die on digs before without shutting the whole thing down. And for that matter, Barber hadn't even died offworld. A part of his mind whispered that he ought to be feeling sorry for the young officer's family but his own frustration and sense of aggrieved injustice swamped it.

By the time he got home, the headache was worse. Dropping his jacket in a pile on the floor, Daniel took a double dose of Tylenol. It didn't seem to help. "Useless pills," he muttered. He knew he should probably eat something, but right now he wanted nothing more than to sleep it off. He stretched out on the bed and buried his head in the pillow.

For a blessing, he didn't dream. He didn't do anything except plummet into fathomless blackness. He still had the headache when he woke, though. His brain seemed dipped in treacle. He wanted nothing more than to sink back into oblivion, but there was this annoying ringing. He dragged himself out of bed and went to the door, finding no one there. The ringing continued and he turned away from the open door to pick up the phone. The ringing finally stopped and he set the receiver down beside the phone without lifting it to his ear. It would either be a telemarketer or Jack or the SGC. Someone wanting something he couldn't give them, wanting him to do things he didn't care about.

He went back to the bedroom and pulled on sweatpants and a shirt from the laundry basket against the chill. Despite the coolness of the apartment, it felt stuffy and stale. He opened the door onto the balcony to let some air in.

He wandered absently into the kitchen and picked up an apple from the bowl on the counter. He took a one bite and then discarded it. Why did he think food would help? Caffeine. That would cut through the fog in his brain. He reached for the coffee canister before remembering he was out. Tea, then. He put the kettle on, absently wiping a wet hand against the shirt he'd slept in. He should shower and dress, but it all seemed like too much effort. He went back out into the living room. Fresh air..

Cold drizzle was blowing into the open French doors, making the carpet damp under his bare feet. He walked out onto his tiny balcony. The day was gray and cloudy and the rail made it feel claustrophobically small. Not like back on P4X-347. The balcony there was free to the sky. Daniel stared out over the rainwashed streets and parking lots, feeling acutely the pointlessness of it all. The damp grayness filled his limbs with lead and his head with fog. Why did it matter? He'd go back and he'd film the walls and translate them, or maybe he wouldn't be able to in the time they'd allotted. Either way, they'd go into a file no one would ever read, and he'd go on to another planet.

Roll the dice; ruins, aliens, abandoned human civilization, Goa'uld. He'd still use his gun more often than his archeological tools, he'd still have the same pointless arguments with Jack and Hammond. Round and round and round. At the end of the day he'd still come back to an empty apartment and rattle around restlessly until he could go back to another pointless day at work where at least he'd be busy. A sparrow fluttered to a wire, perched for a moment and moved on. How much better it would be to have been born a bird.

Daniel swung himself over the rail and leaned out, needing air, holding onto the rail behind him. Only his hands chained him to this wheel of frustration and pain. Before him the sky waited and the wide ocean. He could almost smell the salt sea washing against the promotory that supported the palace. Somewhere, he heard his name.

"Daniel? What are you doing out here?" He supposed it was only a matter of time before he started hearing voices. What was the saying, it's not hearing voices, it's answering them that makes you crazy?

Not that he cared. "None of it means anything," he said aloud. He'd visited a hundred planets, and what did he have to show? Sha're was dead. Shifu was gone, and had never needed him anyway. Everything he reached for turned to dust. Everyone he'd ever loved would have been better off if they'd never known him.

"Daniel, why don't you come inside here." Ironic that his inner voice sounded like Jack. It hadn't always, had it? And Jack said he never listened.

"I tried. It just goes away," he explained softly, aching. Warmth stung his face. If he'd been capable of surprise, he'd have wondered at having any tears left. He remembered being happy. Feeling like he belonged. Never for very long, but just enough to keep him hoping. Oh, Sha're.

"Okay. Then we'll get it back." The inner voice was persistant and becoming annoying.

"You can't get it back," he said, his voice cracking slightly. Sha're was dead. Without her, Abydos was just another place. He could never go home. Home was a single shining year out of time, never to be seen again.

"Whatever's wrong, we'll fix it."

Fix it? There was nothing left to fix. He was ready to let go. Fall into endless space and never wake. Daniel dropped his head into his chest. "You don't even know what I'm talking about," Daniel said. Silly voice. From the moment he'd walked through the gate, he'd destroyed everything he touched.

"No. No, I don't. But come inside."

That was strange. Not that his inner voice didn't often sound like Jack but it seldom sounded so much like Jack. As if he were really here.. he blinked a little, surprised to see streets and buildings below him. Wasn't he on P4X-347? He turned his head, to catch a glimpse of O'Neill standing at the door leading into his apartment. "Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack took one long step across the narrow balcony and his hands clamped on Daniel's arm with bruising force.

Daniel looked around, realizing he was standing outside the railing. "W-what?" he stammered. "How did I get out here?" His head was pounding, and his arms were trembling where they were holding the rail. The only thing keeping him from plummeting to the ground, he realized.

Jack ignored the question in favor of more practical matters. "I've got you, Daniel. C'mon back here. Can you put one leg over the rail?" He tugged Daniel back insistently. He must be feverish, Daniel thought. His hands were so hot, they burned through Daniel's thin shirt. Or was he cold? Jack seemed to think he was cold. Once Daniel got back onto the right side of the railing, he pulled Daniel inside and over to the couch, fetching the comforter from the bed to wrap around him.

Daniel's headache was back and it was too much work to do more than stare stupidly as Jack patted his cheek. "Hey, Daniel, buddy, you in there?" After a brief pause, Jack muttered. "Crap," and forced his shoes and jacket on. Daniel let him. It was easier to go where he was pushed than to penetrate the fog enough to argue.

Finally, he was buckled into the front seat of Jack's truck and could lean back in the blast of the heat. Some faint instinct was trying to sound an alarm, there was something wrong. Jack had pulled out of the parking lot and was making a call on his cellphone, something he rarely did while driving. Daniel just put his head against the window and closed his eyes. Something was always wrong. And he was too tired, and what was the point anyway?

#

Daniel woke to someone shaking him slightly and patting his cheek. "...Damn it, Daniel. Let's go, come on. Carter. Teal'c!" The bellow for his teammates was near deafening at this proximity and Daniel would have moaned if he'd had the energy. Jack. Jack was trying to wake him, and his voice had the underlying urgency that was reserved for planet-wide disasters and times when one of his team members was in deadly peril. He could hear Jack talking to someone else, then saying his name again. "Daniel? Hey, Daniel. C'mon, buddy, wake up."

Daniel knew from long experience that Jack wasn't going to go away, but it was the undercurrent of anxiety that made him fight to get his eyes open. "W-what's wrong?" he asked, surprised by the breathless weakness of his voice, as Jack came into focus, or at least as much focus as he could expect since his glasses seemed to have been knocked off. "Sam? Teal'c?" His mouth was dry and tasted awful.

"Daniel," Jack sat back on his heels with a sigh of relief at Daniel's coherence. "They're here."

Daniel's gaze focused behind Jack's head on an ornately carved screen. Not the infirmary. P4X-347. "Wha-you came?" Daniel asked in confusion. Surely.. didn't he remember going back to the SGC? "N-no, I went back.. what are we doing here?" He realized he was lying sprawled flat on a cold hard surface, sucking in one painful breath after another. The vicious headache that had plagued him for days seemed to be finally abating, but in its place he had the sensation that all his muscles had been rolled out flat and beaten before being reattached to his body. He felt frighteningly weak.

"I had to bring you back, Daniel. You were sick," Jack said.

Sick? What? Surely he'd.. he'd.. If he was sick, why wasn't he in the infirmary? There was something badly wrong. The last thing he remembered was on Earth. The SGC..trying to get that remote to work. Losing his temper with Hammond- "-it is beyond my comprehension how anybody like yourself who has so power can miss the point entirely.' Daniel winced and started trying to sit up, more to distract himself than anything else.

"Hey," Jack said, with that quiet note in his voice that only came out for kids or one of his teammates when they were in a particularly fragile state. "You might want to just stay lying down."

"S'cold," Daniel said truthfully, but really he just wanted some control back. He was on the floor in front of the gate dias, he found. Jack helped him slide over to the steps so he could lever his torso off the chilly stone. He managed to get into a sitting position, but the effort made his head swim and stomach heave. He rested his folded arms on his knees and laid his head down on them, waiting for the floor to stop moving.

"How do you feel?" Jack asked.

"Uh. Think I just need to sit for a minute," Daniel mumbled, not trying to look up. 'Do not throw up,' he instructed his gut firmly. He could tell by the hollowness that he hadn't eaten in a while, and throwing up on an empty stomach sucked worse than.. well, than throwing up any other time.

"I'm going to go find Carter and Teal'c," Jack said. "Don't go anywhere."

Hah. Very funny. Daniel concentrated on breathing and trying to still the tremors that seemed to afflict every muscle he had. Jack was only gone a few minutes. Daniel heard him talking loudly and then several sets of footsteps returned.

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, in a tone of surprise.

Before Daniel could muster the energy to respond, Jack replied, seating himself beside Daniel, close enough that he could feel Jack's body heat. "Yep. Had to bring him back. It was the only thing that was gonna keep him alive." The only thing that would keep him alive? What the hell was going on?

"Sir, how long were you gone?" Sam asked.

"A few hours," Jack told her. "Hammond tried to contact you."

"He did not," Teal'c contradicted calmly.

"He did. I heard his voice," said someone in a tentative light tenor. Who was that? Daniel wondered. It sounded like a kid. He didn't recognize the voice.

"Where were we?" Sam asked in bewilderment.

"In there," the kid told her. Daniel still didn't feel up to looking, but he had a sinking feeling the kid was talking about the light room. He remembered having to shake Howe to get his attention, and the way he'd spent all his free time there, watching the play of color over the walls.

"I can't explain it Sir," Sam said.

"Fraiser thinks we're all addicted to something here that alters our brain chemistry. And dollars to doughnuts, it's that damn light," O'Neill said. Addicted? Damn. Daniel flashed vividly on his temper tantrum at the SGC. He'd known it was somehow familiar at the time, but he hadn't been thinking clearly enough to put it together. It was reminiscent of how he'd felt- and behaved- when he'd been coming off that damned sarcophagus.

"Oh I don't see how that's possible," Sam said. Daniel felt another of wave of exhaustion and disappointment. Why, Sam? Because we've never encountered mind-affecting technology before? Because we've never found anything you couldn't immediately explain? No, that wasn't fair, he reminded himself. She'd only just got here. Daniel should have seen this. He'd had days to observe SG-5's behavior around the light sculpture. And speaking of SG-5, where were they? If they'd brought him here to save his life, what about the others..? His heart sank. Barber was dead. And the others weren't here.. no, damn it. No.

Jack was saying, "Hey. You knew, didn't you?"

The young voice answered, sounding scared. "No." Who was he? Where had he come from?

O'Neill barked, "That's why you're not allowed in there."

The boy sounded scared. "M-my father said I was too young."

"Uh-huh." Jack sounded skeptical. Daniel wanted to tell him to ease off...he was using the tone that made airmen scatter from his path at the SGC, and they were full-grown adults. He lifted his head minutely from his arms, but the treacherous weakness of his limbs convinced him not to move just yet.

"Sir if it's the light itself then how did Daniel recover just by arriving on the planet?" Sam asked. Ah, at least the major has abandoned her disbelief long enough to actually analyze the idea, Daniel thought uncharitably. At least Jack was willing to admit that just because he didn't understand it, didn't mean it couldn't be possible. Then he felt ashamed. That wretched dream, he thought. He had to keep reminding himself it hadn't been real. The problem was he could still feel the sting of Sam's reflexive doubt. 'According to Daniel-' He swallowed hard as his stomach heaved. That was in the dream. It wasn't real. God, couldn't he even tell the difference anymore?

Jack replied, "I don't know, major, but I want you to find out. Otherwise we're stuck here indefinitely and that's just not acceptable." He rose to his feet. "Ahh screw it, we're shutting that thing off." Daniel returned to the present with a jolt, though he didn't quite dare raise his head yet. Huh? Shutting off the thing we're addicted to that's keeping me alive? Uh, Jack...

"No," the kid protested.

"You stay here," O'Neill said. Probably to the kid, but Daniel gave him a mental salute just in case. Yep, staying right here, colonel. It was about the only order he could follow at the moment. Footsteps receded in the direction of the light room. At least it was finally quiet.

Daniel sat huddled, his butt chilling from contact with the steps, but strength starting to seep back into his aching limbs. What the hell had he done that he couldn't remember? He frowned. He felt awful, but not bruised. More like he'd had the flu for days. Or maybe been zatted. He grimaced. Yeah, if he'd been as violent as the last time he'd gotten high on alien technology, chances were good Jack might have had to zat him. Actually, speaking of high and alien tech, this was similar to how he'd felt after the whole Atenik armband incident.

After a couple of false starts he raised his head from his arms and managed to look around. There was a kid, a boy of about Cassie's age, Daniel thought. Fifteen or so? He swallowed around the dryness in his throat. "Hi."

The boy glanced fearfully in the direction of the light room, then took a step closer. "Hi. You're Daniel."

"Yeah," Daniel said. His throat was paper-dry. "What's your name?" he asked hoarsely.

"Loren," the boy said. "I'm Loren."

Daniel looked at his wrist, realizing he didn't have his watch. What day was it? He'd gone back to Earth on what, Monday? No, Tuesday, he remembered. Shifu's visit had been Saturday. They'd come here on Sunday, scheduled for four days. He'd sent Barber back that evening with film for Teal'c. Barber died Tuesday morning and they'd been recalled early. He remembered the debrief, trying to get the remote to work, yelling at Hammond. After that.. his head had hurt. He'd gone home, hadn't he? Maybe not. What had happened? "Where are my friends?" he asked the boy.

The boy swallowed, his clear eyes filling with dread. "They went back to the light. They won't be back."

Daniel raised his eyebrows. That sounded..ominous. Remembering how they'd had to shake Howe to get his attention in there, he could see why. "Where did you come from, Loren? You said something earlier about your parents?"

"My parents are explorers, like you," Loren said. "They came to study this place. They aren't here now."

"Have you been here the whole time? When I was here before with the others?" he asked.

"Yes." Loren looked embarrassed. "I was hiding."

"Your parents left you here alone?" Daniel asked.

Loren ducked his head. "It's not so bad. I'm used to it here."

Boy, did that sound familiar. Daniel ached with empathy at the boy's defensively offhanded statement. "What do they study?" he asked. "Did they come to find resources- rocks and things they can use outside?"

Loren shook his head. "No, when we first came here, they read the walls, like you."

"So they're archeologists?" Daniel asked. The boy looked puzzled. "They study artifacts, old things, to learn about the way people used to be?"

"Yes, like that," Loren agreed.

"My parents were archeologists, too," Daniel offered. "They took me with them when they worked when I was a boy."

He was rewarded with a gleam of interest from Loren. Daniel glanced around at the walls. "Did your parents teach you how to read the writing here?" he asked.

"A little," Loren admitted. "Maybe I can help you?"

"Maybe you can," Daniel smiled at him cautiously. He looked around. SG-5 had packed back all their equipment, and as far as he could see, which wasn't far without glasses, SG-1 had only brought daypacks. "From the sound of things, we're going to be staying for a bit, until we figure things out. So I'm going to need a few things." He glanced over at the DHD, which looked about a mile distant, compared to his current energy level. He levered himself slowly upright, his head swimming alarmingly.

Loren flitted closer, nervously. "Daniel? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Daniel grunted, feeling cold sweat start on his brow. "Just a little dizzy," he added more honestly. Loren took gentle hold of his arm, with barely enough force to crush a butterfly. Daniel leaned on him a little and boy's grasp firmed up. Daniel locked his knees until the dizziness passed. "Okay, that's better." He looked down at the boy. "Loren, my friends are in the light room, right?"

"Yes.." the boy said hesitantly.

"And they probably aren't coming out on their own?" Loren nodded jerkily. "But it won't hurt if I don't get them out of there for a few more minutes?" Daniel asked.

"They won't come," the boy said mournfully.

Daniel thought wryly that boy had probably never met anyone as strong-willed as his teammates. They might take some pulling to get moving, but he had faith in their ability to resist the light once he did. "But they aren't going to die or get hurt just by standing there for a while."

"No.." the boy said.

"Did my team leave anything here?" Daniel asked.

"Leave anything?" Loren asked.

"Backpacks, vests?" he suggested.

"Vests?" Loren repeated.

"A sort of black thing with pockets?" Daniel explained.

"Like Jack was wearing? I think there's one over here," Loren said, leading him to a shadowed area beside a pillar. "And they had another box when they came, a small one, but they sent it back through the, uh, gate."

Probably samples for analysis, Daniel surmised. "Great." He took the vest, Sam's from the size, and fumbled out the radio.

"Okay then," Daniel shuffled more or less steadily to the DHD. "The next order of business is to phone home."

He dialed Earth's familiar address, grateful that the glyphs were large enough to see easily even without his glasses. A good thing he didn't need to go home since he was distinctly lacking a GDO. He moved to stand in front of the MALP's camera as the event horizon settled. Loren retreated toward the doorway.

He held down the button on the field radio, and laid his other hand on the MALP for balance. "Stargate Command, this is Daniel Jackson. Come in." He waited for the base to respond.

The voice came tinnily over the speakers. "This is Hammond." Evidently they were receiving him fine, because Hammond continued. "Glad to see you're alive and well, Dr. Jackson. We thought we'd lost you."

Daniel had guessed he must have passed out for them to have decided to return him here. He upgraded his theory to 'coma' after hearing the concern in the general's voice. "To be honest I don't really remember much after yelling at you, sorry about that by the way." Daniel figured that apologizing early and often was his best strategy. He hoped he hadn't actually pissed off too many people. Jack was certainly on the list, and Teal'c. He hoped that was the worst of it.

"That's all right," Hammond said. "Is there anything you need?"

Ah, the purpose of his call. "Glasses," he replied readily. "Supplies, it looks like we're not going anywhere for a while. And that little remote computer thing I couldn't make work before."

"I'll send it through immediately. Where's Colonel O'Neill?" Hammond asked.

Daniel glanced over his shoulder toward the light room, wondering exactly how to explain. "Um, he's around," Daniel said. "He and Sam and Teal'c went to try and find the thing they think is addicting, um, us."

He could picture Hammond frowning just from the tone of his voice. "They left you alone?"

"No," Daniel said. "Loren's right here."

"Dr. Fraiser wanted them to send vital signs when you got through," Hammond said.

Daniel shrugged and checked his pulse with two fingers to the side of his neck. "Seems normal to me. I think I woke up as soon as I got through the gate."

He wished he could see Hammond's face because there was a slight pause. Then Hammond said. "I'll have Dr. Fraiser send through some supplies and instructions as well."

"Yes, sir," Daniel said.

"And don't try to move them yourself," Hammond said. "Let your team do it. You're to take it easy."

Daniel gave the camera a puzzled look. That seemed like a fairly excessive amount of concern, given that he was standing up and all his limbs were in their usual places. "I'm fine, sir. Really," he insisted. Actually, he was feeling better, albeit hungry. Even an MRE would look good about now.

"That's an order, son," Hammond said. "Stargate Command out." The wormhole died with a sizzle and pop.

Daniel stared at the MALP for another second. "That was weird," he said. He checked his pockets. Nothing. Not even a pen, let alone a powerbar. Clue enough that he hadn't dressed himself. He might have to ask them to check his office for the normal collection of odds and ends he normally brought with him offworld. Like his tape recorder and archeological tools. Sam's vest yielded a set of small screwdrivers, a sensor that he recognized as a naquada detector, and an assortment of SGC standard issue items like sunscreen and safety glasses. Nothing to eat.

He contemplated going after his teammates, but really, it made more sense to wait. He didn't want to risk getting caught in that light-thing. Then there'd be no one to come to his rescue. He sat back down on the steps as the chevrons lit up again. "That was fast-" he said to Loren as he got up again. "They must have already had some supplies prepared." He still felt exhausted, but it was a quantum improvement on how he'd felt when he woke up.

After the gate whooshed, Daniel got Loren to help him shift crates far enough away as they came through that others could materialize. Loren stacked them neatly in front of the gate while Daniel fumbled through the first case, marked 'GLASSES' in large letters, and smiled as he slid on the missing accessory. Loren watched him in fascination. "They help me see," Daniel explained. "It's not the same without them.

Daniel skipped over the list of medical instructions attached to what looked like a field medical kit with a bunch of extras, and rapidly unearthed a military issue blanket. He passed over the MREs he was too impatient to heat up in favor of a couple of powerbars and a bottle of water. "Want one?" he offered a third to Loren.

The boy edged forward and took it, looking at Daniel to see how to open the packaging. "It's sweet," he said in surprise, after he tasted it.

"That's to cover up the rest of the taste, which is pretty bland," Daniel told him. The solid food in his stomach felt good, settling it almost instantly, and he wolfed the rest of the bar with more haste than enjoyment. The second one went down more slowly, washed with half a bottle of water. Daniel closed the bottle as Loren finished his snack. "Okay, now I need to see if I can figure out how this thing works." He turned on the device, a bit chagrined to see it light up immediately. It must draw power from a source in the palace.

He pulled out a pad and copied out a row of symbols. "See, I think these have something to do with the controls." He beckoned Loren over to see what he was doing. "But I'm not sure what these symbols mean. I thought it was 'verify', but that doesn't make sense."

"That means to make smaller," Loren offered. "Or at least that's what my father said."

Daniel blinked. He hadn't actually had high expectations for Loren's assistance, but he should have known better. He'd been able to read hieroglyphs fluently when he was quite a bit younger than Loren was now. "So that would mean 'decrease the effect'?"

"Decrease the power," Loren said. "Uh, 'sel cree mah'," he said, in creditable Goa'uld.

"Hmm," Daniel scribbled it down. "Can you read this line aloud?" he asked. The pronunciations the boy was using were different from the ones he'd gotten from Teal'c, but Teal'c admitted that he didn't really know this dialect, and in fact had only seen it rarely. The boy probably was modifying the language with a slight accent, but that would be something he'd picked up from his parents rather than an actual feature of the language.

Loren stumbled haltingly through several more passages, with Daniel frequently stopping him to take notes and make a rough chart of the phonemes. Then Daniel picked up with the next section, reading aloud with somewhat more confidence. Loren occasionally interrupting him to correct a mis-assigned sound. It was slow, but Daniel was making faster progress than he would have alone.

Finally, Daniel crossed out the last line, and wrote in a corrected version. "So if we've got this right, this" he pointed to a violet button on the top of the device "should shut off the light, so long as the other settings are right." He smiled at Loren. "You're an excellent assistant, Loren."

The boy blushed and smiled shyly back. Daniel got up and said. "So, let's go try it out." He walked to the light room, pleased that he was feeling quite steady on his feet again, "Guys I've figured out how to..." He stopped in dismay. Sam, Jack and Teal'c were staring mesmerized into the hologram. They hadn't reacted by so much as a twitch to his voice. He remembered Teal'c denying that Hammond had called while Jack had been on Earth and realized that talking wasn't going to reach them. He thumbed the violet button.

The light disappeared immediately, the room brightening as the hologram stopped blocking the outside light from reaching the room. All three of his teammates looked startled and turned to stare at him. "How did you do that?" Sam asked.

Daniel held up the computer, "Remote control."

"I thought that thing was broken," Jack said.

Daniel said, "Yeah, you were right, it was the batteries."

Jack looked gratified and rather surprised. "I was?"

"At least I think it draws power from something in the room itself, that's why I couldn't get it to work back on Earth," Daniel explained.

"How long were we standing here?" Jack asked.

Daniel shifted a bit guiltily. "I'm not sure. General Hammond sent some supplies and Loren and I figured out how to translate the writing on this thing, so.."

O'Neill looked at his watch. "That long?" Sam and Teal'c looked dismayed.

"Well perception of time is one of the first things to go when you're- high." Daniel said. Or translating something interesting. He was somewhat guiltily aware one of the reasons he hadn't come looking for them was so he could work on the translation without distraction. Okay, some of it was the way his knees had been wobbling and not wanting to get caught by the light himself. But mostly it was the translation. "From what I've been able to translate so far with Loren's help, the Goa'uld used to use this place as some sort of opium den. The only difference is the symbiote must have kept the host's mind chemically balanced once they left."

Teal'c immediately grasped the implication. "Then it is most likely I will be able to leave." The flicker of relief on Teal'c's face betrayed how much the situation was bothering the Jaffa. Of course, Daniel thought, Teal'c was accustomed to having a symbiote that could neutralize most intoxicants. For him to be trapped by the light as easily as his human friends must have been quite a shock.

"Oh how nice for you," Jack said sarcastically.

Sam asked, "Wait a minute, if you turned it off how come I'm not getting depressed?"

"Perhaps it will take some time to feel its effects," Teal'c suggested.

Jack was obviously restraining a sarcastic remark about little Murray Sunshine, and said only, "Let's take advantage of that time." He led the way back into the gate room, where Loren was still sitting huddled on the dias. "Loren."

"Jack," the boy replied. Daniel was mildly amused at the similarity to some of his own conversations with Jack.

"All right. Where did your parents actually go?" The colonel's voice had lost all semblence of good humor.

Loren looked afraid, but not as skittish as he'd been earlier. "Far, far away from here."

O'Neill pressed for details. "How far? Which direction?" Loren didn't answer. Jack turned to his team. "Kid's hiding something. Teal'c, Carter, with me."

He led them out through the light room, toward the front of the palace.

"Ookay-" Daniel drawled. "We'll just wait here." Loren gave him a confused look.

Actually Daniel was just as happy not to have to walk too far. Just standing up was making him tired. Daniel returned to the gate room, and picked up his pad. Thumbing past the dozen sheets he'd already filled, he started a fresh one and looked around. "Let's see. I think I was on the third pillar." He realized if he perched on the MALP he could see the writing better, with the added bonus that it wasn't as chilly as the stone steps. He began copying down the long rows of symbols. Loren walked around restlessly until Daniel forgot about him.

He was working through the translation when Loren wandered back in. Daniel noticed peripherally that he was holding some kind of gadget. He glanced up curiously. Loren held it out to him. "That's my mother and father there. That's me."

Daniel looked at the image of a man and a woman of about his own age. He frowned. He'd seen something like this before. "You were a lot younger there."

"Yeah, it's old," Loren said.

"Yeah, about that-" Daniel began.

Loren interrupted, "Hey, can I take an image of you?"

"Sure," Daniel said. He sat patiently still as Loren held up the device. It flashed like a camera would.

Loren smiled. "That's great." He proudly displayed the image. It was sharp and clear, himself sitting on the steps, arms crossed over his pad and eyebrows raised. Rather like a high-resolution digital image. "I'm sorry that you can't leave," Loren said.

Daniel found that dubious at best. "Are you?" he asked. He tried to soften his tone as the boy startled. "I mean it makes sense that you'd want some company. I'm just thinking that's the reason you didn't tell us how dangerous the light was."

"No," Loren flinched.

Daniel said calmly, "It's okay, I'm not mad."

Loren wavered on the brink of truth. "That's not why."

Daniel cursed the timing as the others' footsteps sounded in the hall. Jack leaned over and rubbed his head in the way that meant severe frustration or headache, and usually both. "What's wrong?" Daniel asked.

Jack groaned. "Oh we're going through that withdrawal thing again." Daniel looked at Sam, who also looked frazzled. Teal'c seemed unaffected.

That made no sense. Daniel said, "I felt fine the whole time you were gone."

Sam said thoughtfully, "Actually, sir, I'm starting to feel myself again."

O'Neill straightened with an arrested look. "Me too. What's going on?"

"Well something other than that light must be affecting us," Sam said.

"And we must stay in close proximity," Teal'c noted, using the 'we' of solidarity.

"So not only are we stuck here," Daniel said slowly. "We're stuck here."

"That doesn't sound like fun," Jack said pointedly. "So what? We're now looking for something completely different, only we have no idea what?"

"Whatever is producing the addicting effect, it's not something I can measure with my instruments, sir," Sam said.

"I think we have to start in the light room," Daniel said. All three of them looked at him, and Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "SG-5 and I went all over this place with a fine toothcomb, and the only power source we found was there," he said. "I'm assuming we can at least detect those.." he looked at Sam.

"Usually," she admitted. "We are dealing with alien technology. But you're right, it's a place to start."

They turned back to the light room. Even without the light, the central pillar was attractive, like a giant ornate sculpture. Daniel turned over the remote in his hands. He was pretty sure he could turn the light back on, but he didn't seem to have any controls that affected anything else.

"Well, it's sure not as much fun to look at with the light off," Jack said after several moments.

"I feel no compulsion to remain here," Teal'c observed.

Sam turned to the colonel, "Sir I think maybe you're on to something."

"How's that?" Jack asked.

"The light isn't what's affecting our minds," she said. "It's just something to take advantage of our altered brain chemistry."

Daniel nodded, "So.. entertainment?"

Sam said, "Probably more than that. The colour and light interaction with our optic nerve probably triggers the chemical responses but it's not the direct cause of the imbalance." Or in other words, entertainment. Just a little more interactive than you usually found outside of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Jack asked, "What is the cause?"

Sam said, "There must be a hidden device emitting some form of energy or radiation that we can't detect with our instruments."

O'Neill turned back to Loren. "All right, Loren. Why doesn't this room seem to affect you?"

Loren was looking nervous again. "Too young," he said.

"How do you know that?" O'Neill pressed.

"My father told me," Loren said.

Sam hypothesized, "It is possible that this place can only affect an adult physiology."

Jack replied, "Fraiser says he's just as addicted as we are."

Loren looked from one to the other, "She's right, the light didn't have any effect on me."

O'Neill asked, "Then what'd it do to your parents? We need to know what this thing does."

Bingo. Loren looked uneasy, then forced a smile. "When they get back, they'll explain."

Jack retorted, "They're not coming back! You know that."

"They are," Loren insisted. Daniel wondered if Jack knew Loren's parents were dead for sure, or was just guessing. He'd certainly suspected it when he heard Loren's story. He and the boy had a lot in common.

O'Neill said angrily, "Someone buried those bodies. Now how do you shut that thing off?"

Loren's face crumpled, and for a second, Daniel thought he would bolt. But instead he turned to the column and released a catch that slid the whole housing down, exposing a complex bank of controls. Then he ran from the room.

"Figure that thing out," O'Neill ordered. He turned and followed Loren as Carter acknowledged, "Yes, sir."

Sam and Daniel turned to the pillar. "Wow. He knew the whole time."

"He's been alone here for years, I think," Daniel said. "He has a picture of his parents, but in it he's at least three years younger, maybe as much as five."

Teal'c said, "He showed it to me as well."

"How did he survive?" Sam stared.

Daniel shrugged. "No idea."

Teal'c said, "It is likely there are edible plants. Such are often planted on Goa'uld worlds."

They fell silent for a long interval, while Daniel and Teal'c squinted at the tiny writing on the pedestal. "I think this is talking about power levels, Teal'c. What do you think?" Daniel pointed out the section, and they swapped places.

"It appears to indicate that there are several possible power settings, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c replied.

Sam probed the mechanism. "Well, there's the power source. And these look like power control crystals. So by process of elimination, I think this is the emitter." She sighed. "For all the good that does us." She looked at her teammates. "If there are several power settings-"

"Then we may reduce the power without turning the device off entirely," Teal'c said.

"That would make sense," Daniel said thoughtfully. "A goa'uld would want to bring human slaves to wait on him." He looked at the remote in his hand. "The remote is fine for turning the entertainment off and on, but they protected the controls on the emitter to keep someone from accidently killing off a bunch of slaves and inconveniencing them."

Sam was examining the column again. "So, these controls here?" she pointed and let Teal'c and Daniel check her, before turning the power down a notch.

They froze, trying to sense any change. Daniel smiled after a moment. "I think we all must look like we're constipated," he said. "But I don't feel anything."

"Nor I," Teal'c said and Sam shook her head.

They exchanged a relieved look. "So," Daniel said. "I wonder how long this whole withdrawal thing is going to last."

Teal'c bent down to the writing. "If I am translating this correctly, it will be a number of days before any human may leave."

"How many days?" Sam asked.

"Perhaps as few as fifteen, or as many as twenty-two," Teal'c said after a pause to calculate.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked, dismayed.

Daniel bent down to check him. "I'm afraid so.."

"What have you got?" Jack's voice came from behind them and they turned, seeing Loren beside him.

Daniel replied, "We think we can turn it off."

Loren immediately turned to Jack, "Don't let them." He looked back at Daniel and Sam. "You'll die like my parents." So Jack had been right. Daniel glanced sympathetically at the boy.

Sam explained, "If we shut if off cold turkey, Loren is right, we'll go into withdrawal again. But Teal'c and Daniel have translated some of the writing inside this thing, Sir, and we think it was designed to be turned down incrementally."

"The Goa'uld who used this place needed human slaves in order to tend to their needs while they were here," Daniel explained.

"We've already taken it down a notch without any harm," Sam said. The good news.

Teal'c added. "Within two or three weeks your brain chemistry will return to normal. You may then return home." The bad news.

Jack looked at them consideringly. "So three weeks in a palace by the beach?"

Put like that, it didn't sound so bad, Daniel decided. Actually, three weeks in a palace with walls covered with a new Goa'uld dialect. Not to mention writing that probably would have been low-priority due to its lack of strategic value. Not that Daniel wouldn't have argued that it was worth learning in case he encountered it again. For once Daniel was going to get to finish something he started.

Jack was continuing, "Teal'c, you don't have to hang around. Why don't you head back and let Hammond know what's going on?"

"Very well," Teal'c said, turning toward the gate room.

Loren spoke up, "And then you'll leave?" The bravely cheerful pleased-for-you tone was another all-too-familiar reminder of Daniel's past.

This was one of those situations where Jack was completely predictable. He didn't even hesitate, "I think we all will. Right?"

Sam said, "Yeah. He should return to normal with the rest of us."

"I can go with you?" Loren asked, barely believing.

Jack smiled at him. "Sure." Daniel turned with Sam to follow Teal'c. Behind him, he could hear Jack saying, "Come on. Let's go see Teal'c off. You like ice cream?" Daniel glanced back to see Jack put a hand on the boy's shoulder as they all walked toward the gate.

"What's ice cream?" Loren asked.

"It's something you eat," Jack said. "Trust me, you'll love it."

Ahead of them, Teal'c walked to the stack of boxes on the gate dias. "I believe we should move the supplies before we dial out," he said, reaching for one of the larger ones.

Sam frowned. "You couldn't have moved them away from the gate when they got here, Daniel?" she asked, taking one box from the top.

Daniel flushed. Actually, he'd only thought as far as finding his glasses, a snack and the goa'uld device. "Hammond told me not to," he said defensively.

"General Hammond told you not to move the supplies?" Teal'c said and gave Jack an unreadable look.

"Yeah, I thought he was being a little overcautious," Daniel said. "But I was a little more concerned with trying to figure out how to turn off the light and get you guys out of there."

Jack was wearing a carefully blank expression as he said, "Yeah, Daniel, he was probably thinking that since you coded in the gate room just before I brought you back, you probably ought to take it easy for a few."

"I what?" Daniel stared at him.

"Daniel coded?" Sam exclaimed, turning to her CO. Teal'c's gaze sharpened. "When were you going to tell us that, sir?"

Jack shifted uneasily. "Actually, the instant I got back. But you two were in staring at the light." Sam and Teal'c looked embarrassed. "Anyway, Daniel started breathing again as soon as I brought him through the gate."

Daniel said. "No wonder-" and stopped short. 'No wonder I felt like crap', he thought.

"No wonder what?" Jack asked.

"No wonder I need a shower," Daniel said, and got a skeptical look from the colonel, who seemed to have an infallible instinct for when he was bullshitting.

Sam had opened the top box and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Sir, these are medical instructions. According to this, Daniel's supposed to be lying down while we take his vital signs and send them back to Janet every couple of hours. There's an IV.."

"You think I'm going to let one of you start an IV?" Daniel said in alarm. "Um, no. In fact, hell, no. I'll drink enough water to drown myself from the inside out if Janet wants, but forget the IV."

"Why don't you at least sit down?" Jack suggested.

"I feel fine," Daniel said. Well, fine considering he died earlier today. Actually he was tired and his hands still had a tendency to tremble.

"Daniel," Jack said.

"There's not a lot of point in starting to coddle me now," Daniel said in his most reasonable tone. "I've been walking around and everything for hours."

"Daniel-" Sam said.

"If we don't move these boxes, General Hammond is eventually going to dial in to see what's going on," Daniel pointed out, walking toward them.

Not surprisingly, Sam, Teal'c and Jack grabbed them before he could get there, and they were shifted next to the MALP in short order. Daniel reached for one and said, "I wonder if they thought to send my laptop?"

"Daniel!" Jack barked. "Sit, damn it."

Daniel sat down on the steps with his pad. "I'm just saying, it will save time if we take a minute to look over this stuff and send a list back with Teal'c." He wrote 'ICE CREAM' at the top of the page and turned it around so Jack could see it. "For example..."

Jack gave him an exasperated look and Sam said, "That's a good idea, Daniel. There's some more instrumentation I wouldn't mind having."

Jack rolled his eyes, and said, "Okay, Teal'c. Five minutes for the science twins to make their Christmas lists."

It was closer to fifteen, and Daniel's list had as many things for Jack on it as it did for him, but they were finally ready to dial.

Jack hit his radio as soon as the event horizon settled. "Stargate Command, this is SG-1, Stargate Command come in." Simultaneously, Teal'c was hitting his GDO code, and at O'Neill's nod, stepping through the gate.

Hammond's voice came back so quickly he must have been already in the gate room, or have headed for it at the first turn of the gate. "Colonel O'Neill. It's good to hear from you. We were starting to get a little concerned."

"Yeah, well, we have everything under control." Jack said. "The good news is that we've figured out how to turn this thing off-"

"Is that wise, colonel?" Hammond asked.

"The bad news is that it has to be turned down a little at a time, so it's going to take two to three weeks to do it safely. But when we do, we'll be able to come back. And so will Loren." O'Neill said.

There was a brief pause. "That's good news, colonel," Hammond said.

"In the meantime, we'll be needing a few more supplies," O'Neill continued. "We've sent back a list with Teal'c. His symbiote will protect him from the effects of this thing."

"Understood," Hammond said. "Teal'c is here now."

"So," Jack said. "In the meantime, if you want us, you know where to find us."

"Actually, I have someone who'd like to talk to you now," Hammond said. "Doctor?"

Fraiser's voice came on the line. "How's Daniel, colonel?"

Daniel picked up Sam's radio from where he'd set it down earlier and moved in front of the camera. "I'm fine, Janet."

There was a pause and Daniel reminded himself that while he couldn't see her, she could certainly see him. He stood beside Jack and tried to look healthy. "You don't appear to be lying down, Dr. Jackson," she said dryly. "Have you followed any of my instructions?"

Daniel winced and threw Jack to the wolves, "Um, actually Sam just found your instructions. But I feel fine, really."

They kept the connection open while Sam took Daniel's pulse and blood pressure with the cuff Janet had included. The pulse was a little high and the blood pressure a bit low, but not surprisingly so. Janet reiterated her instructions for Daniel to rest, and Daniel talked her out of the IV.

He still found himself relegated to sit at the side of the room wrapped in a blanket while Sam and Jack heated up some MREs. He pulled out his pad as soon as they got busy and picked up where he left off. "Daniel," Sam protested. "Janet didn't say 'go back to work'."

"It's restful," Daniel said. "See, I'm just sitting?"

She shook her head, but let him be until the food was ready. For once he didn't feel the slightest reluctance to eat the MRE. The light was dying as they ate, and they turned on the electric lanterns halfway through the meal. Just as they were finishing, the gate turned again, and their supplementary supplies came through.

Jack and Sam insisted on unpacking them. They put two cots in the room closest to the gate and a third in the adjoining room. Daniel was just as happy to let them handle it. He was full, tired and since Sam and Jack had combined forces to deprive him of coffee, also undercaffeinated. He yawned. Jack saw it as he came back out for sleeping bags. "Two more minutes, Daniel, and you can lie down."

"I'm-" Daniel started and stopped as Jack came and loomed over him.

"Daniel, the next word out of your mouth better not be 'fine'," Jack said shortly. "This has been the longest damned day I've had in a while. I'm beat, and I know you must be too. So don't even bother."

Daniel shut his mouth, blinked and said experimentally, "Uh, I'm kind of sleepy, actually?"

Jack stared at him for a long moment, and got Daniel's blandest, most sincere look back. Finally he relaxed into something that might grow up to be a smile, if it lived long enough. "Better."

Daniel thought about pointing out that there were a bunch of rooms, and there was no real need for them to share. Then he decided to leave it alone. He and Jack had shared tents and quarters often enough that Jack should know what to expect from Daniel's occasional snoring. Daniel was a heavy sleeper most of the time, and the way he felt tonight, a Goa'uld invasion wouldn't wake him. If Jack maybe needed to know Daniel was around if he woke in the middle of the night; well, Daniel often found Jack's familiar nighttime presence reassuring as well.

After they finished setting up the bedding, and stacking supplies neatly in the gate room, Jack said, "Major, if you'll set up a sensor perimeter, Daniel and I will grab some sleep."

Carter gave him a surprised look and checked her watch. "It's only 2130, sir," she said. Nine-thirty in the evening, Daniel translated automatically.

"It's been a long day, Major," O'Neill told her.

Daniel hauled himself off the floor and draped the blanket over a box before following Jack into their temporary quarters. "I'm sorry," he said, as he unlaced his boots.

"For what?" Jack asked, finding a toothbrush.

"I was a real jerk yesterday," Daniel said. "And I gather I gave you quite a scare today."

Jack sat heavily on the other cot. "Yeah, you did. Both of them."

"Both?" Daniel asked, his hand on the zipper of the sleeping bag.

"At your place, and then when you coded," Jack said.

"What happened at my place?" Daniel asked.

Jack stared. "You don't remember?"

"The last thing I remember is yelling at Hammond," Daniel admitted. There was something hazy about Jack... "And then I think you hustled me out of his office and told me to go home? That's about when it all gets blurry."

"Ah," Jack said.

"Tell me," Daniel said, rather alarmed at his expression. "What did I do?"

"You went home," Jack said. "And overslept. Carter called you, you answered but didn't say anything. So I went down to your place to find out what was going on. I found you out on the balcony."

Daniel frowned. That didn't sound so bad. "Was I very rude?"

"No, you-" Jack looked like he was having trouble forcing the words out. "You were about to jump."

"Jump?" Daniel still didn't get it. Then he realized in a sickening rush. "Off the balcony?"

"It certainly looked like it," Jack said. "I didn't know what the fuck to say to you, Daniel, honest to god."

Daniel shook his head. "I can only imagine." He looked over at O'Neill. "That wasn't me, you know. I would never do that." Never in his darkest, most depressed times had he ever considered suicide. He couldn't even imagine himself standing on his balcony, thinking of jumping. "Did I say anything?"

"Some stuff," O'Neill said. "Nothing that made any sense. 'It all goes away'?" he shrugged.

It all goes away. That struck a chord somewhere, deep down, and Daniel shivered. "I'm sorry, Jack," he said again. "That must have been- you shouldn't have had to do that. Thank you."

"I didn't do anything," Jack said, shaking his head. "You snapped out of it on your own. Just for a minute. I got you over the rail and inside. You were out of it but walking after that. Then you passed out in my truck, and didn't wake up again until after I brought you back here."

"I see," Daniel was beginning to understand why Hammond and Fraiser had been so insistent on his taking it easy. "But everything's fine now, Jack. You did the right thing." He crawled into the sleeping bag and zipped himself snugly in, putting his glasses on the floor underneath the cot. He'd deal with brushing his teeth tomorrow. For right now, all he could think about was getting horizontal. He was falling asleep even as he closed his eyes, but he thought he could just hear Jack's voice as he dropped off.

"I sure hope so," Jack said quietly.

#

The next time Daniel opened his eyes, it was dark, with just the faintest hint of lightening at the window, and he badly needed to pee. He was also stiff from lying unmoving for- he checked his wrist where his watch ought to be and cursed under his breath. Hopefully they'd send his watch in the next supply run. Still, if it was almost dawn, it had to be at least fourteen hours. No wonder he was stiff. He found his toothbrush and a change of clothes before heading down to the palatial facilities.

"Hey," Jack said, seeing him come out. His gaze fell on the change of clothes. "Tell me you're not thinking of swimming," he said.

"I'm not thinking of swimming," Daniel repeated obediently. He wouldn't be thinking of swimming, either. The beach was nice, but the water was reportedly bloody cold. "I'm thinking of a hot bath."

"Dream on," Sam said wryly. "We've dug a latrine about twenty feet outside the door and off the path." Loren gave her a puzzled look.

Daniel managed to avoid laughing with an enormous effort. "Um, Sam? Palatial beach resort here?"

Sam said, "What?"

"There are seven, no eight, bathrooms," Daniel said. "And more, uh, rest rooms. The plumbing still works fine." He looked at Loren. "You didn't tell them?"

Loren looked bewildered. "Is that why they kept going outside?"

Sam gave them both an exasperated look, then started to giggle. "Serves me right for not asking."

Daniel smiled back. "Third door on the right is where I'll be." He considered the arrangements. "I'll leave my shoes outside to let you know which one to avoid."

"Okay," Sam said.

Daniel enjoyed a long soak and clean clothes before coming back out. He felt nearly normal. Sam was rustling in one of the adjacent rooms. "Bath's all yours-" he called, and nearly smiled at the enthusiasm in her brief acknowledgement. Clean hot water might just possibly edge out coffee on the list of things they most often missed offworld. And here they had both. He poured himself a cup, and took a stroll out into the dim hallway before either of his well-meaning teammates spotted him. His idle steps took him up to the balcony overlooking the ocean.

Tendrils of light crept out from the horizon and three moons crawled across the sky. Daniel remembered watching Chris Whitaker here, lost in the wonder of staring out at an alien sky. He wrapped his hands more firmly around the cooling cup. The faint tap of boots on stone warned him that one of his teammates was there before he spoke. "Daniel?"

"Hey, Jack," Daniel said, not bothering to look around.

"Daniel, what are you doing?" Jack asked, with an unexpected tension in his voice. Daniel felt a frisson of something half-remembered scamper down his spine. "Daniel? What are you doing out here?"

He glanced back with a puzzled frown. "It's a good place to watch the sun rise," he said. "Something wrong?"

"Why don't you just step back from the edge?" Jack said, unmoving, looking poised for some action.

Daniel shrugged and backed up a step. "It's perfectly stable, Jack," he said. "This place was built to last."

"It wasn't the balcony that-" Jack started to mutter and broke off.

The word balcony recalled to Daniel the conversation they'd had the night before, and the unspoken half of Jack's sentence stung unexpectedly. "What, it's not the stability of the balcony you're worried about?" Daniel demanded. "I told you that wasn't me, Jack."

"So, what are you doing up here?" Jack asked.

Daniel gave him a narrow-eyed look that said he knew Jack was being evasive. "Watching the sun rise," he repeated.

"Pretty," Jack agreed, finally stepping forward to stand beside him and look out over the water.

"I was here with Chris the other day," Daniel said, then remembered with a jolt that he didn't know where Chris was now. "He-what happened to SG-5, Jack?"

"They died, Daniel," Jack said, and Daniel's hands tightened around his cup. "Fraiser didn't know what was wrong. She only figured it out after we came out here. I brought the samples back and then started displaying the same symptoms."

"All of them?" It was nearly a squeak as Daniel turned sharply to look at him. A part of him had guessed, ever since Jack said they'd brought Daniel back to save his life, but he hadn't really let himself think about it.

"Yeah," Jack said heavily.

Daniel looked away. "Why me?"

Jack looked a bit surprised. "Daniel?"

"I mean," Daniel clarified. "Why am I still here? Is it just dumb luck I was the last one to die?"

"No," Jack said. "Fraiser said the longer you stay here, the worse the reaction when you leave. I guess it's cumulative.. SG-5 was here longer if you include the initial recon."

Oh. "And they were back on earth for less than twenty-four hours before we all came back," Daniel said. "The symptoms weren't bad enough that anyone realized.."

"Symptoms?" Jack said.

"Yeah, everyone was kind of short-fused the morning we left," Daniel said. "I didn't think anything of it. And they shook it off pretty much as soon as we got back. I should have realized something was wrong."

"How, Daniel?" Jack asked impatiently. "No one else did."

"But I saw it, I just didn't understand it. Howe got distracted in the light room, and lost track of time and I had to fetch him out. Whitaker and McClure scouted down the beach and they were at each other's throats when they came back, but it wore off as soon as they got inside the palace. Even they were puzzled. It wasn't natural."

"Daniel, people get annoyed all the time and it's not alien technology." Jack said sharply. "There was nothing you could have done."

"Maybe." Daniel said. "But it seems like that's been happening a lot."

"Like what?"

"There being nothing I can do." He looked down at his scuffed boots, shabby against the cut stone of the floor.

"Like what?" Jack asked, his voice an odd mixture of rough and gentle.

"Like standing around doing nothing while you're off helping Hammond when the NID were blackmailing him. Like standing around listening to you and Teal'c freeze to death in that glider. Like losing Sarah. Like-"

"You and Carter saved our butts in that glider, Daniel," Jack said.

"Jacob saved you. I was just baggage," Daniel said. He was starting to sense a difference between his own emotions and the artificial high of the light, he fancied. It wouldn't let him feel depressed, but it couldn't cover the increasing lack of purpose he'd been feeling.

"This is about the dream that kid gave you, isn't it?" Jack said tightly. "Your 'new path'."

"I don't know what I'm doing here, Jack," Daniel said softly.

"You told me you were watching the sun rise," he retorted.

"At the SGC," Daniel said. "Would it be so bad if I walked away?"

"How can you even ask that?" Jack demanded.

"You could get someone better," Daniel said, staring out over the water. "Someone who follows orders and doesn't get into trouble all the time."

"Someone like Chris Whitaker?" Jack said. "Or how about Henry Boyd? No, wait, I can't put them on SG-1. They're dead."

"I hadn't realized breathing was the only qualification required," Daniel said dryly.

"My point, Daniel, is that they were good men. But they're gone, and you're still here." Jack's gaze was fixed firmly on the horizon, but there was an underlying note of tension in his voice.

"That's just luck," Daniel said.

"Is it?" Jack said. "If you were anyone else, you'd have gone home, failed to report back, and no one would have found you until it was too late."

Daniel blinked. "Um, yeah, I did thank you for that, didn't I? I'm sure I.."

"Once is coincidence, twice is luck, three times is on purpose," Jack said. "How many times have you come back when we thought it was hopeless?"

"I thought three times was enemy action," Daniel said.

"You have a knack for surviving, Daniel. For..giving me another option. I can't just find someone else to do what you do." Jack rocked back on his heels, and Daniel could hear the strain in his voice.

Daniel blinked again. Was that a compliment? Weird enough that he and Jack were actually, well, talking. "Uh, thanks. I guess. I'll keep that in mind."

They walked back down to the gate room in silence, but Daniel couldn't help turning Jack's comments over and over in his mind. Jack didn't want him to leave. It surprised him, and then that surprised him even more. When did he stop taking it for granted that Jack wanted him on the team? They'd argued, they'd fought, they'd bickered, but there always was the bedrock certainty that they were teammates. Friends.

There'd been that whole string of missions Daniel hadn't been involved with. He'd been off doing other things. Having a ruptured appendix. The weeks of excavation on the Goa'uld homeworld, culminating in the loss of SG-11. The treaty with the Tok'ra, which had tied him up for weeks with Martouf, Davis and that shellshocked diplomat from the State Department. The time loop, which he didn't remember, but during which he'd managed to beat four hundred pages of Ancient text into Jack and Teal'c's memory. Even now, an inadvertent quote in Latin was enough to make them flinch.

And then the missions he had been there for- Euronda, the Enkarens, the memory stamps, Montana. Then a handful of routine SG-1 missions that had often consisted of all four of them waiting tensely for the other shoe to drop. No wonder Jack, who was normally bored out of his mind on quiet missions offworld, was ready to spend three weeks at the beach.

Daniel cleared his throat. "So, what actually happened to Loren's parents?"

Jack hesitated at the change in subject, then waved toward the beach. "Long walk on a short pier."

"They drowned?" Daniel said.

"Loren turned off the power in the light room. All of it. He was trying to help," Jack added unnecessarily.

"Oh, god," Daniel said softly. How horrible. He vividly remembered the years he'd spent wondering if there was anything he could have done to save his parents. How much worse it must have been to have inadvertantly killed them. "I'm surprised he's still alive."

"He turned on the light again when they ran away," Jack said. "But it was too late."

"Ah," Daniel nodded. "And with the addiction-beam going, he couldn't feel depressed himself."

Jack gave him a surprised look. "You know, I think you're right. I keep feeling- off- somehow, like I'm more cheerful than I ought to be."

"Alien uppers," Daniel said. "I wonder where they were from?"

"The alien uppers?" Jack asked.

"Loren and his parents," Daniel said. "I mean, Loren said they were explorers like us. And that camera thing he has is pretty high-tech..."

Jack's eyes widened and he turned back toward the palace. "Well, why don't we ask him?"

#

Loren gave them a puzzled look "We came through the gate," he said.

"Do you know the gate address of your homeworld?" Sam asked gently.

Loren looked worried. "I.. not really," he mumbled. He walked restlessly across the room then turned back. "I know you have supplies, but the fruit here is really good. Would you like to see where it grows?" he asked Sam.

The three Tau'ri exchanged glances and without saying a word agreed that they could afford to be patient on this one. "Sure, Loren, I'd love to," Sam said. "How about we check it out after breakfast?"

After breakfast Sam went off with Loren to gather fruit. On their return they settled into the pattern of activities that was to prevail for the next several days, Sam poking into the machinery in the light room with occasional breaks to explore, while Daniel worked on translating the text that covered the walls. Jack and Loren took long rambling walks around the palace and down to the beach. Jack improvised kites out of some bits and pieces Loren had lying around, and he was teaching the boy baseball.

On the third day, Sam came looking for Daniel with a cup of coffee. "Hi," she said.

"Thanks," Daniel accepted the cup eagerly. "I was just thinking of taking a break."

"You were not," she accused. "When Janet gets her hands on you-" Since Loren had helped Daniel crack the language, he'd been doing marathon stretches of translation and grumbling when they pulled him away to eat. Janet had thrown up her hands and said, 'fine, do whatever you like', after it became clear that her instructions were being only given lip service.

"By the time Janet gets her hands on me, it'll be several weeks from now, and she'll have had other things to think about," Daniel predicted optimistically, sipping the hot brew.

"She won't have forgotten," Sam said.

"But I'll be all recovered, so there won't be any point in yelling," Daniel said. "Well, much."

Sam looked at him curiously. "Do you remember what happened when you were back at base?"

Daniel cleared his throat and took a swallow of coffee. "Er, no, actually. But I'm not at all sure that's a bad thing. The parts I do remember are embarrassing enough. Now if I could just come down with amnesia about the Atenik armband incident...."

Sam laughed and sipped at her own coffee. "Daniel-" Sam said hesitantly after a brief silence. "The colonel says you're thinking of leaving SG-1."

He glanced at her face, all earnest blue eyes. The neat shorter haircut was flattering he thought absently. It made her eyes look enormous. "I don't know what I'm going to do," Daniel said truthfully. "It's not like I've been spending much time with you guys as it is."

"Every time we turn around, there's an excavation someone wants you to look at," Sam agreed. "But we need you on SG-1."

"You've managed fine without me," Daniel said. "Anyway, you've been busy too." He shifted around to sit crosslegged, while she sank down with her back against the wall.

"The colonel said I should ask you what Shifu's dream was about," Sam said.

Daniel stared at her then half-smiled. "Probably because I haven't told him either and he's dying to know."

She smiled. "Did Shifu try to convince you to leave?"

Daniel's gaze shifted past her face to focus on the wall behind her. "Shifu told me that the true nature of a man is determined in the battle between his conscious mind and the desires of his subconscious," Daniel said. "And then he showed me some of the things I've got lurking in my subconscious. It was...disturbing."

"Everyone has disturbing things in their subconscious," Sam said. "Isn't that the point? You have baggage, but you're a good person anyway."

"Am I?" Daniel said thoughtfully. "Sometimes I'm not so sure." He wrapped both hands around the warm cup, and looked down to see the coffee slosh gently.

Sam looked surprised. "Daniel, of course you are."

"So you think that if I had the same kind of power that the Goa'uld do, I wouldn't abuse it?" Daniel asked.

"No, of course not," Sam said. "Why would you even think that?"

"Because I did, Sam," Daniel told her in a low voice. "Shifu showed me. Not what someone else would do, not what the President or the Joint Chiefs would do. What I would do if I had that power. It...wasn't pretty."

"I don't believe it," Sam said.

"You don't believe anything that isn't part of your worldview," Daniel said in exasperation. "Or at least not until it's smacked you alongside the head a few times."

"What?" Sam said.

Daniel shook his head. "Never mind."

"No, I want to know what you mean," Sam said, laying tentative hand on his arm. "Daniel?"

Daniel shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, sometimes I have trouble remembering what was part of the dream and what was real."

"What was I like in the dream?" Sam asked, still looking at him intently.

He looked at her in surprise. "Like? You were just you."

"Did I do something to you?" She persisted.

"No, rather the-" Daniel broke off. "You didn't do anything to me."

"You did something to me?" she said, a hint of incredulity in her voice.

Daniel smiled wryly. "And even about this, you don't believe me."

"It's not that I don't believe you-" she began.

"-it's just that you don't believe me," Daniel finished. He set the cup aside to let his wrists dangle limply over his knees. Some things never change.

"When did I not believe you?" Sam asked, still rather puzzled.

Maybe it would be better to talk about this, Daniel thought. Confused fragments of Shifu's dream continued to plague his nights. Daniel looked down at the stone floor and said, "The stargate can't go other places. 'Daniel, it's not that we don't believe you', Cimmeria, the Linvris...." his voice trailed off. Kheb. Sam and Jack clutching their weapons stubbornly while Oma's leashed power hovered insistantly on the edge of his consciousness. Picking their way distastefully through thousands of blackened Jaffa corpses afterward, the scent of charred flesh heavy in the air. And thinking...this was almost Jack. That could have been Sam.

Sam flinched at the mention of the Linvris. "I'm sorry, I know...you said you understood."

"I do understand," Daniel said with a hint of weariness.

"What do you understand?" she asked, with a sudden narrowing of the eyes.

Daniel looked down and rubbed the back of his neck. "That all your training tells you to believe in science, the material universe. And then I come up with some off-the-wall theory and you-" don't believe me "have to see a convincing amount of data before you can consider it."

Sam took a deep breath, seeming torn between argument and her inherent sense of fairness. "I can't always throw out everything, foundations and all, to consider something new- it's not the way I think. Science is the incremental advance of knowledge, each new bit building on what came before."

"And I understand that," Daniel assured her. "I...do. Really."

Sam was staring at him intently enough that he almost squirmed. As easily as they worked together, as much as they sometimes talked, he didn't really discuss his feelings with Sam any more than he did with Jack. "But it still hurts?" she blinked and looked stricken. "Of course it does. All those times...."

"It doesn't really matter," Daniel said flatly. Lied, actually. Or why else would he dream of watching Sam in the cell he'd arranged for her, an oily sense of satisfaction curling around his spine? It was almost worse than the dreams of Jack being shot. At least Shifu hadn't made him watch when Teal'c was killed.

"Of course it matters," Sam said. "You were right, after all."

"Not always," Daniel said. "You learned the power to control fire?" Sam asked incredulously, staring at him as he stood barefoot in Oma's temple. And Daniel answered, "It's not just fire. All the instructions are here, on the walls. All you have to do is be willing to learn and believe." Daniel sighed. "I'm wrong as often as I am right. It's not a big deal. It's just...frustrating sometimes." And really, did he deserve for her to believe him? It wasn't like he hadn't made mistakes.

"I can try harder to keep an open mind," Sam offered. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. The understanding look on her face told him she guessed how much this had been bothering him, for him to bring it up at all.

Daniel shrugged uncomfortably. "I shouldn't have said anything. It's not like you haven't supported me. You could have been court-martialed for going AWOL that time."

Sam cocked her head sideways, following his train of thought easily, and said. "If we hadn't gone, there wouldn't have been much of a military left to do the court-martialling. I still don't really understand why you were so convinced an attack was imminent- but then you often see things that the rest of us miss. You did it even before you knew about the stargate."

Daniel shifted and refolded his legs to a different position, wanting to change the subject. "And it won me fame and fortune," Daniel said, then half-smiled. "Well, fame of a sort, anyway." He was thinking with his usual resigned irony about his last disastrous public lecture, but remembered Shifu's dream and the smile faded. He could swear up and down that he sought knowledge for its own sake, but there was a small, human part of him that wanted the respect and admiration of his peers.

Sam accepted his bid to lighten the discussion. "Ah, Earth," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Backwards pile of dirt. Who needs it? You're famous on hundreds of worlds, all around the galaxy. I bet there's no archeologist anywhere who is better known, in fact."

Daniel's eyebrows crinkled up as he gave her a bemused look. "Uh, Sam, I'm known because the Goa'uld system lords will pay an exorbitant price for my head, attachment to neck optional. Not for my scholarly achievements."

"There's no such thing as bad publicity?" she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, and then involuntarily chuckled. He'd have been fine except that she started giggling as well, and they both laughed until Daniel knocked over the dregs of Sam's coffee.

#

When they'd gotten the effects turned down enough that they could safely be out of range for a couple hours at a time, the party started to drift apart. Jack took a fishing pole down to the waterside, and spent hours there, sometimes with Loren, sometimes alone, returning damp and strangely peaceful.

Sam had imported pretty much the full range of SGC technical toys, but was still drawing a blank at measuring the strange radiation that kept them tethered to the palace.

Daniel had run out of meaningful translation work, and was mostly just puttering on the computer dotting i's and crossing t's as he wrote the formal linguistic report on the new dialect in between reading reports from the other teams. He was more than ready to take a break when Loren hovered in the doorway, looking hesitant.

"Hi, Loren," he said, sitting up and stretching. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Loren mumbled.

Daniel looked at him with more concern. The boy's hesitation and timidity had grown increasingly rare as he got to know them better. "Is something wrong?"

"I was just wondering.." Loren said.

Daniel set the laptop in powersave mode and closed the lid. He invited the boy to sit with a wave of the hand. "Wondering what, Loren? I'll tell you if I can."

"Well," Loren said slowly. "What's going to happen to me? When we get to your planet?"

That was something he and Sam and Jack had talked about a couple of times when Loren hadn't been around. "Well, it could be any one of several things," Daniel said. "And you'll have some choice. You could stay on our planet- you wouldn't be the first offworlder to live there. But it would have to be a secret."

"A secret?" Loren said.

"Yes, the gate is a military secret on our world. Most people don't know about it. So in order to live like a normal person on Earth, you'd have to learn to pretend you were from there. And you're too young to live on your own, so we'd have to find a family you could live with. And there would be school and things."

"Oh." Loren thought about that for a few minutes. Daniel waited patiently for him to process. "You said there were other choices?"

"There are other planets we've been to where you could live," Daniel said. He thought of the warm welcoming people in the Land of Light. "They're not as technologically advanced, but in some ways it would be easier, because everyone knows about the gate there. And there are other people who came there as strangers. Teal'c's son lives there, in fact."

"Teal'c has a son?" Loren said.

"Yes, he's about your age or a bit younger," Daniel said.

"Do you have a son, Daniel?" Loren asked.

Daniel caught his breath on a flash of baby Shifu, born into his hands in dusty cavern on Abydos. He'd clung to the image of a baby who needed him in the dark days after he lost Sha're. To meet the youthful but self-contained Shifu that Oma had raised had been another wrenching loss. "No," he said finally. "No, I don't have a son." Loren gave him an odd look for the rough tone. "I have a stepson," he explained carefully. "But he doesn't live with me."

"Oh," Loren looked puzzled. "And Jack and Sam?"

"Neither of them have children," Daniel said firmly, grateful that Loren had at least asked him this question and not Jack. "Our jobs don't really allow it."

"But you said your parents took you with them when they explored?" Loren asked.

Daniel finally saw where this was going. "No, Loren. My parents never even knew about the gate. They took me with them to archeological digs when I was a child, yes, but that was on Earth. There were lots of other people there, even other children. You couldn't go offworld with SG-1 when we're working. A lot of the time, it's too dangerous."

"The Goa'uld?" Loren asked, staring up at the walls. Jack had regaled him with a few heavily edited tales of SG-1's adventures, so the boy wasn't completely ignorant.

"Yes, the goa'uld," Daniel said. "They're very dangerous."

"That's what the director tried to tell my father," Loren said. "But my father thought the goa'uld were extinct. That was why we only found abandoned places."

"The director was right," Daniel said. "The goa'uld are definitely not extinct. You were very lucky not to meet them in person."

"I don't think we were all that lucky to come here," Loren said, looking with loathing at the delicate carvings and ornately decorated pillars.

"Loren, as bad as it was...the goa'uld would have been worse," Daniel said, leaning forward to lay a gentle hand on his arm. "Believe me."

Loren looked up at him, reluctantly convinced by his sincerity. "Okay."

Daniel reflected ironically that some linguist was going to trace the SGCs movements through the galaxy by the spread of seductively appropos English slang. "Of course there's another option," he suggested quietly.

Loren met his eyes, then looked down at his hands. "You could send me h-back to my planet," he said.

"If you know where it is," Daniel said. "Or we could look for it if you didn't." He waited again as Loren sat silently. "Do you know if you have any other family there, Loren?" he asked finally.

"M-maybe," Loren said. "M'grandparents. I think." His voice sank to a whisper. "If they wanted me after... what I did."

"Loren," Daniel said. "I think they'd understand. But if they didn't.. we won't abandon you. We'll find a place for you to live."

"You don't understand," Loren said painfully, near tears. "You don't know."

"Know what, Loren? Jack told me how your parents died." Daniel said calmly. Loren's eyes jerked up to his. "And I lost my parents when I was very young. And there were no relatives to take care of me, so I lived with foster families until I was old enough to be on my own. It wasn't always fun, but people were kind to me, and I survived. And so will you," he promised.

"You don't know that," Loren said.

"Loren, you survived for several years all alone on this planet," Daniel said. "I don't say it will be easy, but I think you'll adapt."

Loren thought about that for a moment, then clumsily extracted a bundle from the bag he wore slung over his shoulder. "I think the address is in here," he said, handing it to Daniel.

"What is it?" Daniel said, as he began to unwrap it.

"My father's journal," Loren said.

Daniel carefully accepted the journal, and saved it to read after dinner. Accustomed to seeing him reading or writing in his own journal at that time of day, his teammates paid no attention. He climbed into his sleeping bag against the evening chill, and opened the worn cover. The writing was crabbed but clear, and the format hauntingly similar to the journals Daniel, his parents and even his grandfather had kept. He smiled to himself at the thought of an intergalactic brotherhood of archeology, unknowingly taking up the same practices, driven by the same forces... isolation, the robustness of the book format, and the burning need to record the discoveries they were making for posterity.

He turned the pages carefully, learning that Loren's parents had been members of something that sounded a bit like a cross between a guild and a research laboratory. Loren's mother seemed to have been a sort of archeological engineer, with experience working in the Goa'uld ruins of their homeworld. He noticed with a bit of irony that he was quickly able to deduce their tech level.. probably a bit behind Earth's, though they used some bastardizations of Goa'uld technology they really didn' t understand. Not unlike the people of Nyan's planet. His gaze lingered on a passage describing their initial exploration of the palace.

'...this Fountain is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I'm tempted to go straight back and bring a larger party to see it, but Lorelle wants us to study it first. After all the dangers and terrors the others predicted, it's almost an anticlimax to find the place abandoned for centuries, with only the innocent beauty of the Fountain to welcome us.'

Innocent.. more like deadly beauty, Daniel thought, leaning back against his pillow. The addiction itself would have killed them on their return, but the light had stolen their will, until only starvation could force them out to seek sustenance. His all too vivid imagination presented him with an image of the scene Jack had related from Loren's account- the two explorers, thin, filthy and unkempt, staggering out of the light to tear into food like beasts. No doubt in some other reality, that had been him and SG-5...

Daniel had risen to pace around the briefing room table nearly half an hour ago as he listened with increasing impatience to Major Paul Davis passing on NASA's excuses as to why their part of the project was proceeding so slowly. Useless bureaucrats.

The other officers and scientists were taking notes busily while keeping a wary eye on him. Hammond was long gone, of course. He'd been six months away from retirement when the project started. It was long since time for him to move on. He was a little surprised that Paul had lasted this long, but the Major had quickly recognized the shift in power and made sure to stay on Daniel's good side, even if the archeologist did occasionally detect a fleeting bewilderment in his eyes.

The speakers in the room were turned off, but he caught the motion as the gate spun and the first chevron lit. Looking out the window, he saw it was Jack, leaving on yet another naquadah retrieval mission. Even with the new teams and the complete abandonment of exploration, the naquadah required for the defense system was straining the resources of the SGC.

The gate whooshed below and Jack glanced back up toward the control room, then higher, to meet Daniel's eyes. Daniel lifted a hand in a friendly wave and Jack turned and strode up the ramp into the event horizon. He would spend some time on his assigned mission, Daniel knew, then make yet another unauthorized excursion to look for Teal'c. Whom he would never find, but then he didn't know that.

General Martin, the new commander of the SGC, had told him about the unauthorized missions weeks ago, and Daniel had given orders to leave Jack alone. Let him search. He wouldn't find anything, and those who knew it was only Daniel's influence that permitted the search to continue found his 'loyalty' to his old teammates touching.

The event horizon collapsed and Daniel turned back to the conversation he'd lazily been keeping track of despite his abstraction. "I tried to tell you," the monk from Kheb said from Daniel's seat at the end of the table. The Air Force officers were ignoring him as though he weren't there. "Your hatred will lead to their deaths."

Daniel raised his hand, clad now in a ribbon device, and sparks flew around the room, leaving only charred smoking bodies in their wake. Looking out the briefing room window, Daniel saw that everyone in the gate room was dead as well. He ran for the stairs, calling his friends, "Jack, Sam, Teal'c!" In the door of the control room was the body of a woman, but it was too badly burned to tell if it were Sam or not. Jack had gone through the gate, he remembered. At least he was safe. The wormhole still sparkled in the open gate and Daniel was confused. Hadn't it shut down? He stepped over a body to reach the communications console. Before he could touch it, it lit with Jack's face, contorted with fear. "Listen to me! We're not getting out of here! Blow it!"

"Jack!" Daniel yelled. To his horror, he could see Teal'c behind Jack, firing at replicators.

"Daniel, please!"

The raw desperation in Jack's voice tore at him. Daniel reached for the button that would blow up the gate and saw the ribbon device still on his hand. He paused to tear at the weapon, which would not come off.

"Daniel!!" "Daniel?"

Daniel gasped and thrashed once in Sam's grasp before his brain kicked in and he realized where he was. But the dream clung to him, and he had to remind himself that it was just a dream. The SGC couldn't blow up a gate at the push of a button. Ribbon devices didn't fry people to a crisp, and he couldn't use one anyway. No one at the SGC was dead. Jack and Teal'c were not being overwhelmed by a tide of mechanical bugs.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Sam asked again, looking concerned.

"Yeah, I'm- " God, not fine, "-awake," Daniel said finally. "Something wrong?"

"You tell me," Sam said. "You were tossing and mumbling."

"Oh." He sat up in the sleeping bag and fumbled for his glasses, which had slithered down beside him. The journal, he was relieved to see, lay safely under his cot. "Did I say anything interesting?"

"It was mostly in Goa'uld, I think." Sam said. "Don't you ever dream in English?"

"Sure," Daniel said, swallowing to wet a dry throat. "I'll dream in any language I've been using recently." He gestured at the walls. "Or in this case, reading." Jack wasn't in the room, he saw, looking over at the other bunk. "What time is it?"

Sam smiled. "Almost midmorning. I've got coffee on."

"I'm there-" Daniel said. "Just give me five." Sam left him to get out of his sleeping bag and he followed the smell of coffee into the other room. "Morning," he offered, taking the cup she handed him with murmured thanks. He sipped the brew gratefully; bitter as it was, it was strong and very hot. Loren was sitting on a crate munching a power bar and sipping hot chocolate, a drink he'd become instantly enamored of. Coffee he'd ignored after a single sip had made him scrunch up his face horribly before running to rinse out his mouth with water.

Sam smiled, "Good morning." The smile faded slightly as she got a look at him . "Did you get enough sleep? You still look kind of tired."

Daniel really didn't want to discuss the hot and cold running nightmares. "Fine." He intercepted a skeptical look at added defensively, "I've done nothing but sleep for the last two weeks, Sam."

"One would have thought you'd have caught up by now," Jack put in from the door, still towelling his gray hair vigorously. "But one would have to assume that you were actually resting instead of dreaming nonstop."

Daniel wondered if he'd been talking in his sleep while Jack was there too. "I'm fine," he insisted.

"Do you think it's some kind of side effect of the light?" Sam asked, biting her lip.

"No," Jack said curtly, still watching Daniel.

"Jack," Daniel said.

"Daniel, when are you going to tell us about the dream the kid gave you? It's obviously driving you crazy."

"It's not Shifu's dream," Daniel said. "Or at least not entirely. I just don't know what I'm going to do." He hunched over his coffee and said plaintively. "Can you at least hold the interrogation until I'm half-awake?"

Loren was looking from one to another with faint distress, as he often did when Jack and Daniel bickered. He leaned forward and held out a power bar. "Would you like something to eat?"

Daniel shuddered, "No."

Jack leaned over to intercept it. "I feel sure there was something in Janet's instructions about regular meals, Daniel." He tapped the power bar against Daniel's arm.

Daniel took it and stuffed it in his pocket. "Later, Jack." He glanced reassuringly at Loren. "We're not really fighting, Loren. Jack just worries about his team. It's his job."

Loren didn't look convinced.

"And some people give me more cause to worry than others," Jack said grumpily.

"It's not nice to talk about Teal'c behind his back, Jack," Daniel said reprovingly. He winked at Loren.

Jack mouth quirked humorously, and he poured himself some more coffee. "Like I'd say anything behind Teal'c's back I wouldn't to the big guy's face."

"See, they really like each other," Sam told Loren conspiratorially. Jack and Daniel both stopped and gave her an identical raised eyebrow. She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, "But don't say anything. It's a secret."

#

Teal'c came back at the end of the week with their usual biweekly load of supplies. They held the gate open for the databurst that Sam had rigged earlier in the week. "I can't believe you figured out how to get us email," Daniel said admiringly, watching the messages disappear from the out-box on his laptop and his in-box fill with new ones.

"Well, it only works twice a week, when we have the gate open," Sam said smiling. "Interplanetary internet is still a ways off."

Daniel said, "Not necessarily. If you had some of those Goa'uld teleballs-"

She blinked. Teal'c said, "Goa'uld communicators are not secure, Daniel Jackson."

"Neither are computers," Daniel said. "That's what encryption is for."

"The Goa'uld have much experience of codes and ciphers," Teal'c replied. He was stacking up the crates of garbage to be returned to Earth.

"No, they don't," Sam and Daniel responded in unison and then gave each other a startled look.

After a half-beat pause, Daniel continued. "Goa'uld knowledge of codes and ciphers is hundreds of years out of date by the evidence I've seen, Teal'c. The latest human codes are based on mathematical algorithms. The goa'uld aren't really into pure science."

Sam nodded agreement. "We have codes they can't break. And we've never seen them using anything of similar complexity. Although with Goa'uld computers...." her voice trailed off as she considered the possibilities inherent in using alien technology in code-breaking.

"What's going on?" Jack turned from where he had just finished checking off the list of supplies they had received.

"Sam's thinking of how to get us internet access," Daniel said.

"I don't think that's possible, at least right now," Sam said smiling. "But you have given me an idea, Daniel. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to encode text messages on our GDOs. I mean, how often do we run into something that doesn't fit one of the preset emergency codes?"

Daniel laughed. "About as often as we step through the gate. "

"Wouldn't that mean a redesign of the GDO?" Jack said at the same time as Teal'c suggested, "There are Goa'uld devices that do something similar. Perhaps your 'text-messaging system' should be compatible."

"Yes," Carter answered O'Neill and then turned to the Jaffa. "And that's a good idea, Teal'c. I'll have to ask my father for one of the Goa'uld devices the next time I see him."

"Sounds expensive," Jack said. They both looked at him, and he shrugged. "I'm just saying. Don't be surprised if it takes a couple of years to get it in the budget."

Sam smiled, "With all our other priorities, it may take us that long to get it designed, sir."

Teal'c sat down as the gate switched off. "Where is Loren?"

"Down on the beach," Jack said. "I told him to go fly a kite."

Teal'c's eyebrow went up and Daniel rolled his eyes. "That was after Jack built him that long dragon kite in the book you sent, Teal'c. If we're stuck here much longer, they're going to need something more complicated."

"But we won't be stuck here much longer, will we?" Jack's gaze shifted to Carter. "Will we, Carter?"

"I don't think so, sir," Sam replied, smiling. "Janet's been very pleased with our test results."

"I'm half expecting her to say we're anemic, with all the blood we've been losing," Jack grumbled.

"In any case, O'Neill, I have news of the boy's family," Teal'c drew his companions back to the subject with the long-suffering ease of much practice.

"Loren's family?" Jack said. "I thought we didn't know where they came from." He glanced at Carter.

"It's a mystery to me, sir," Sam said. She looked over at Daniel and Teal'c.

Daniel smiled a bit sheepishly. "I may have, uh, forgot to mention that Loren let me read his father's journal."

"I can see it's the sort of thing it wouldn't occur to you we'd be interested in knowing," Jack said sardonically.

Daniel shrugged. "I wanted to find out whether there was any chance of Loren going home before I got anyone's hopes up."

Teal'c picked up the narrative. "So when Daniel Jackson found the coordinates for Loren's homeworld, he told me so the SGC could contact them and ascertain the situation."

"And you found..?" Jack prompted impatiently. "Spit it out, Teal'c."

A gleam of humor told them that the Jaffa was thinking of indulging in a digression to dissect the Tau'ri idiom, but he relented and continued with the story. "We sent a MALP through to the coordinates discovered by Daniel Jackson. There we found that the gate was in the hands of the world's military. Apparently they had taken over possession from a private institution, much like a Tau'ri research laboratory.

"We were allowed to send a party through to negotiate with them. I went through the gate in the company of SG-7."

"Why did Hammond send Ferretti and not Kovachek?" Jack asked, frowning.

"I believe that Major Kovachek was still engaged in negotiations on P95-3476," Teal'c said.

"What, still?" Sam asked.

"The natives there don't like to be hurried," Daniel had just read the latest reports from SG-9 a couple of days ago. "The more important the treaty, the more time they allot it."

"Good grief," O'Neill shook his head. "At this rate, their grandchildren will be doing the actual signing. So, Ferretti?"

"Major Ferretti is the most experienced person at first contact after yourself and Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "And General Hammond felt that he might be able to relate well to the military authorities on the planet."

"Unless he got in a pissing match with them," O'Neill muttered.

"In fact, Major Ferretti dealt with them quite competently," Teal'c said. "He persuaded them to call in the director of the research group that had previously operated the stargate."

"Loren mentioned a director," Daniel said. "Apparently he tried to talk Loren's father out of coming here."

"Indeed," Teal'c said, and cast a quelling glance at his teammates. "If I may continue?"

"Sorry, Teal'c," Daniel apologized.

Teal'c nodded and continued. "To make as O'Neill would say, a long story short, we were able to talk with Loren's family. Apparently he has two sets of grandparents and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom are anxious to offer him a home. I believe his maternal grandparents were on their way to outmaneuvering the other relatives by various social strategems. They were aided by the director, who was very insistent that someone come out here to look after Loren. They were only dissuaded by considerable effort. In fact General Hammond invited them to visit Earth and meet you there on their return. They will want to take Loren with them immediately."

"Wow," Sam said smiling. "That's great."

Daniel smiled quietly. "That's good news, Teal'c."

Jack gave Daniel a rather disgruntled look. "So, how come he told you about the journal?"

Daniel said, "He was pretty afraid they'd reject him, I think, Jack. And he didn't want to admit he was afraid to you. He admires you."

"Oh," Jack said. "Well. Um, good news, then, isn't it? I must admit, I was rather wondering where we'd find a family for him. I mean, one of these days, we're going to say, 'General, he followed us home, can we keep him?' and Hammond is gonna say 'No!' "

There was a shuffle of feet in the doorway, "The general says I can't come back with you?" Loren was looking at them in horror.

"No, no, Loren, not at all," Sam hastened to say. "Actually, we've got good news." She glanced uncertainly at Daniel and Teal'c.

Jack drew the boy forward, and sat him down between himself and Teal'c. "See, Loren, Teal'c just got back from your homeworld-"

#

Daniel jerked awake after yet another dream of death and destruction. This time it was Sha're who stood before him, pleading with him to listen, stop, but Daniel held the ribbon device on her without mercy.. he shuddered. "Where the crap does my subconscious come up with this stuff?" he muttered, staggering out of his bunk in search of coffee.

"Oh, I dunno Daniel, maybe it has something to do with having your brain fried by glowy alien kid?" Jack suggested sarcastically. He'd all but stopped asking about the dream, but was increasingly given to sharp comments as the peaceful beach vacation had extended past the borders of restful into boring.

Daniel glowered at him, and reached for the coffeepot, only to find it empty. He suppressed an urge to swear and turned on O'Neill. "You want to know what the dream was about, Jack? Fine. In the dream, Shifu gave me all the knowledge of the Goa'uld. And I used it to take over the world. You and Sam and Teal'c tried to stop me. I blew up Moscow. And I had Teal'c killed, Sam slung in prison, and you stuck in a dead-end job you hated. Happy now?"

Jack was staring at him in disbelief. "You're kidding?"

"Actually, no," Daniel said, fighting the urge to break eye contact and go hide.

O'Neill let out an explosive crack of laughter. Okay, put like that, it did sound a little silly. "And this is what worries you, Daniel? It could never happen. It's just not you."

"That was the point, Jack. That no one is safe. The evil in Shifu's subconscious is too strong to resist. The only way to win.."

"..is to deny it battle. I got that. But you would deny it battle, Daniel," Jack said.

"But I didn't, Jack." Daniel turned sharply and paced along the wall before turning back. "I asked Shifu to remember. And if he'd listened, I'd have got a lot of people killed. Again."

Jack stared at him. "Daniel-"

"Don't say it, Jack," Daniel dismissed his objection unborn with a weary flap of his hand. "This is something I have to figure out for myself."

#

Daniel took his mood and went for a walk on the beach, only acknowledging Jack's automatic warning not to stay out too long with a grunt. The truth was, it probably wouldn't kill them to leave even now, but they weren't willing to risk it when it was likely to be just a couple more days until they could turn the generator completely off.

It was cloudy and damp, and the wind had a definite bite. He kicked at the tough grass that bordered the rough path leading down from the palace to the beach. There was a paved stairway on the other side, but this was closer and shorter. Shifu had told him that he must release his burden before he could find his own way.

His own way? Just what was that? Once it had been archeology. But going back to academia in his own field would be virtually impossible. There were always far more people who wanted jobs in archeology than could get them. And they'd go to people with current qualifications. People who hadn't put forward dubious theories and then disappeared from the field for five years doing things they couldn't discuss.

The impossibility of finding a job aside, could he even do it? Go back to Earthbound archeology or teaching, knowing what he knew now? He wasn't at all sure he could, even if the Air Force- and god help him- the NID- would allow him to.

Daniel stopped pacing back and forth on the beach and squatted to sift sand through his fingers. Coarse and pebbly, he thought. No good for castles. The birds wheeled over the vast emptiness of the ocean and the chill breeze tugged at Daniel's hat.

"Daniel Jackson," a familiar bass rumble intoned his name.

Daniel glanced up in surprise. "Teal'c?" He stood, brushing sand from his hands. "I wasn't expecting you back so soon."

"I am in fact on downtime," Teal'c said. "General Hammond has given me permission to remain here until you return tomorrow." He turned to look out over the water. "Also, I believe my presence makes the director nervous."

Daniel smiled ironically. "Unusual to find a world with no recent contact so scared of the goa'uld. More common that they don't believe us."

"I believe they may have had recent contact," Teal'c said.

Daniel looked at him sharply, "Oh?"

"It is my theory, shared by Major Ferretti, that one of their research teams visited a Goa'uld world. They escaped without detection, but it led to the abrupt termination of their explorations and the transfer of control of the gate to their military." Teal'c explained.

"And that's why no one ever came looking for Loren and his parents?" Daniel asked. He looked over toward the mountains. Jack had wanted to explore them, he knew, but they hadn't dared risk going that far from the palace. And now they would be leaving, the mountains unknown and undiscovered

"Just so," Teal'c said. The big Jaffa regarded him steadily.

Daniel thrust his hands into his pockets and scuffed the sand. "So...did you just come down to pass on the news, or is there something you need me for, Teal'c?"

"I believe it was I who came to offer my assistance," Teal'c said.

Daniel was well past feeling crowded by his friends and teammates, and approaching hunted. "Thank you, Teal'c. I appreciate the thought. Really. But-"

"You feel at loose ends since finding the boy does not need you," Teal'c said.

Daniel blinked, feeling rather uncannily like Teal'c was reading his mind. Actually, was it possible that Jaffa-? 'Focus, Jackson,' he told himself. "It's probably a good thing," he said rather feebly. "God knows what I'd do with a child."

Teal'c ignored the lame remark. "But SG-1- we- still need you, Daniel Jackson."

Daniel couldn't stop the melting sensation in his chest. He was incredibly touched that Teal'c would speak like this. "I don't want to leave, Teal'c," Daniel said in a low voice. "But I don't know what I'm doing here any more. I'm not accomplishing anything."

"We attempt great feats, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c told him. "Sometimes I despair of ever seeing my brethren free. But that we have not yet succeeded is no reason to stop trying. Indeed, I learned that from you."

Daniel hunched against the wind, but Teal'c's words cut through him even more sharply than the chill breeze. He remembered a lonely late night at the SGC, staring down at the gate and talking with Teal'c about faith. Was that the time Sam and Jack had been lost in Antartica? No, it was when Jack was stranded on Edora. It humbled him that his casual words had made such an impresson on his friend. "I'm tired of losing. And when we do manage to accomplish something, it's only small victories."

Teal'c's mouth curved up slightly, and he glanced back at the bulk of the palace, looming on the point. "After Major Carter saved the Asgard world of Othalla, Commander Thor told her it was only a small victory, in a galaxy overrun by the Replicators. And yet I cannot but believe it was important to the people she saved."

Daniel smiled, "I'm sure it was." What was the saying Robert's mother had liked? 'Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.' And Robert and his sister would tease her that she couldn't be Jewish if she couldn't get the punchline right. Robert. Another loss. He suppressed a sigh, and saw Teal'c glance up at the palace. "Why don't you head back, Teal'c?" he suggested. "I'll just be a few more minutes."

Teal'c nodded regally, and turned back toward the others.

None of them wanted him to go, it seemed. Not Sam, not Teal'c, not Jack. Not even Daniel, to tell the truth. He just needed a reason to go on. 'You can't give up, Daniel, ' Jack's remembered voice said. Daniel had replied wryly, "How about now?" with his eyes stinging and his hands gentle on the wedding cup he'd shared with Sha're. 'Especially not now,' Jack said. And then he'd encouraged Daniel to look for Shifu.. "Well, I found him," Daniel said to the empty beach. "So now what? Fight the Goa'uld because that's all I have left?"

The restless noise of the sea crashed in random counterpoint to the wind, and not even a bird call answered Daniel's question. For the possibly the first time in his life, he wasn't rushing somewhere, toward or away from something. He just stood. What was there left to do? They'd found Sha're, Skaara, Shifu.. he'd traveled the galaxy and seen things others could only imagine. "What if I'm wrong? What if I'm doing this for the wrong reasons? " he asked aloud. He had a sense he was at last moving closer to asking the right questions.

The restless motion of the waves kept pace with his meandering footsteps along the beach. Was he doing the wrong things? Or the right things for the wrong reasons? Shifu told him, If the instrument is broken the music will be sour. Maybe it wasn't possible to do right things for wrong reasons. Perhaps the intention colored the act so that any course conceived in hate would lead to more death and destruction. You certainly couldn't disprove it by Daniel's experience.

Was the reverse true? If he acted for the right reasons, would the intention redeem the act? Even Oma had killed, after all. He had to try and let go of his hate. Even his dreams were telling him that. But there were more reasons than hate to step through the stargate. There were still other cultures to meet. There were still chances.. like this had been.. to study ancient cultures. There were times when his contribution still counted. Hell, if he'd been less distracted when they arrived here, perhaps he would have figured out the light before SG-5 died.

But if he turned this into a guilt trip for failing to save Whitaker and the others, it was only another way of punishing himself The ones you were there for are bad enough. If you worry about the sins of omission too, you'll just drive yourself crazy. Wasn't that what Jack had tried to tell him? There really hadn't been enough evidence to figure out what was going on before anyone died. It had taken Janet four deaths and access to all the medical records to figure it out. Daniel had never had a chance to win this one. So, let it go, and prepare for the next battle. If he'd learned anything about the universe, it was that the challenges would keep coming. He couldn't win them all.. but perhaps he could still save something. The trick was not to despair, not to let the darkness win. Better to light a candle...

Against all the odds, despite all the close calls, SG-1 was still intact. Daniel was still alive. They still had the chance to go out and try to change the things that were wrong. Daniel could still learn to let go, give up hatred, keep trying to be a man Sha're would be proud of. Shifu was wrong about him, Daniel thought achingly. But perhaps someday he wouldn't be.

He drew in a deep breath of salt air. In a work of fiction, the clouds would have parted to let the sun warm him. Instead it started raining, a cold soaking drizzle. But Daniel was feeling warmer. Hope. That was a feeble ray of hope, soaking into his weary soul. He'd missed it. He turned his path back toward the palace, his step fractionally lighter than it had been. His feet found the path unhesitatingly as he climbed back up toward the palace.

As he pushed open the door, shedding his wet outerwear, his breathing was still easy, and he realized that the last of the weakness had finally faded from limbs weighted down by his latest near brush with death. In the gate room, Sam was sitting with a computer on her lap, scanning the latest materials from the SGC. "Sam," Daniel said. "Anything interesting in the latest batch of MALP reports?" he asked. Jack and Loren had their heads together over some modification to their latest elaborate kite, and Loren was explaining it to Teal'c with eager enthusiasm.

"Actually," Sam said. "General Hammond asked if you'd take a look at these pictures SG-11 sent back." She picked up the envelope and held it out to him. There was something vaguely apprehensive about the look she cast in Jack's direction.

Daniel pulled the sheaf of prints out and started leafing through them. "Hmm. This is P92-471, isn't it? The ruins are better preserved than they looked."

"Yes, they've asked if you can join them there once we get through, ah, decompressing," Sam said.

"Oh, no you don't," Jack said from across the room, his gaze fastened on the sheaf of pictures in Daniel's hands. He jumped up from the box he was sitting on and walked swiftly over to Daniel and Sam. "Carter?!"

"General Hammond wanted Daniel's opinion, sir," she said.

"Jack, what's wrong with looking at pictures?" Daniel asked in exasperation. The edge of earlier in the week was gone though, and he was finding it hard to get too annoyed with Jack , even when he snatched the file from Daniel's hands and held it out of reach.

"It always starts with pictures," Jack grumbled. "Then you just want to go and see it for yourself, and the next thing that happens, the place is crawling with Jaffa, or there's some mysterious alien device..."

"Jack, General Hammond wants me to go. What, am I supposed to do, say no?" Daniel asked.

"You don't want to say no," Jack said.

Daniel gave the sheaf of photos a wistful glance. "Well, no. Anyway, I don't always get into trouble. You were the ones who dialed a black hole while I was away on a dig."

"And you let an alien kid hypnotize you into thinking you were Dr. Evil," Jack riposted without missing a beat. "Also at the SGC."

"You got shot with an arrow, standing in the control room," Daniel reminded him, not giving an inch. He winced internally, and hoped that the details of the incident with Shifu never got out. The 'Dr. Evil' nickname was the kind of thing that would stick.

"You were the one who got zapped by that crystal skull," Jack said, his volume creeping up.

"So? You got an alien database downloaded into your mind. Besides, I wasn't off with another team then." Daniel retorted, standing up so Jack couldn't continue to loom over him.

"One word, Daniel. Unas." Jack barked as they faced off.

As Daniel groped for an appropriate rebuttal, they heard Loren softly asking Sam. "I thought you said they liked each other?"

Jack and Daniel immediately broke off the argument to turn to Loren and say "We do," simultaneously. They exchanged a surprised glance and then grinned.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Tell you what, I'll stay out of trouble if you will?"

"I'll do what I can, but you know how T gets," Jack said. An expressive Jaffa eyebrow arched up on the other side of the room.

Daniel made a quick grab for the mission photos and said, "I'm sure there was a mysterious alien device in here somewhere.."

"Oh, all right," Jack said, relinquishing them. He tapped the photos, "But I've already checked. Nothing but boring old stuff here. Right up your alley."

Daniel smiled fleetingly. "So, to get back to my original question... What have we got coming up for SG-1?"

"For SG-1?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Daniel said. "I can't imagine General Hammond not having a lot of work for us to do when we've been cooling our heels at the beach for three weeks." Teal'c gave him a tiny nod from his place beside Loren, then asked the boy a question about his kite.

Sam smiled at him brilliantly. "There's a couple of options," she said. "I'll be doing some teaching at the Academy while you're off with SG-11, but there are several worlds waiting for someone to go look at them." She pulled up a file on her laptop. "For example, the MALP footage from P2H-157 shows indications of an indigenous culture descended from-uh, where is it-" As Sam pulled up the file, Daniel glanced over her head at Jack, a bit uncertainly.

Jack was going back to Loren, Teal'c and the kite, but stopped long enough to give Daniel a faintly approving look. Daniel looked back down at the screen, warmed and comforted all out of proportion to the gesture. He still wasn't entirely certain what his path even was. But for the time being, it still led through the stargate in the company of his friends.

Epilogue:

"Are you going to be okay?" Jack asked Loren, as the young man stood in the gate room, staring wide eyed at the bustle of activity. Loren's grandparents hadn't come to meet him after all, but the director had, accompanied by a bodyguard of two competent-looking soldiers. She was a spare dignified woman who cast a disapproving look at SG-1 but unbent enough to tell Loren in a kindly tone that he had a strong look of his father.

"I-" Loren stuttered to a halt. "I think so." He smiled at Jack, "I remember staying with my grandparents. When I was little."

"Did you have fun?" Daniel asked quietly. He was standing a step behind Jack, cravenly keeping the colonel and Teal'c between him and the doorway. Not that he could avoid Janet forever, but the longer he could put off drawing her attention, the better he'd like it.

"There were other kids who lived across the park," Loren remembered, "We used to dig on the beach.. not a beach like, you know, there," he said. "It was a sandy spot by the stream. And my grandmother would make cobbers, sort of like muffins." He sounded a bit more confident. "I think it will be fine." Behind him Harriman was announcing the first chevron and the gate began to turn.

"We'll leave a transmitter with the authorities on your planet," Sam said. "Maybe we'll be able to talk sometime." Her faintly troubled look did not escape Daniel. Loren's world was understandably paranoid about the galaxy beyond the gate. It was unlikely they'd hear from him again.

"I'll try," Loren promised. "I know about the writing, so they'll have to at least talk to me." He patted the thick package of his parents' journals and the photographs and translations of the palace walls. He turned to Jack, a bit hesitantly.

Jack didn't hesitate at all. He grabbed Loren in a firm hug. "Take care of yourself, Loren," he said.

"I will," he said, a bit muffled as Sam hugged him as well, smiling through a shimmer of tears.

"We'll miss you," she said and ruffled his hair.

Teal'c brought a wrapped package out from behind him. "Happy birthday, Loren."

Loren set down his bundle and took the package carefully, "It's not my birthday, Teal'c."

"But when it is your birthday, you will be gone," Teal'c said. He nodded to the gaily wrapped box. "The decorative covering is a Tau'ri custom. You rip it off to see what is inside. It is supposed to be a surprise."

Loren tugged off the paper, looking to his friends for approval that he was doing it right. Inside the box were two gaily-colored weapons. Loren grinned and pulled the trigger on one. Nothing happened. He looked at Teal'c.

"You fill them with water," Teal'c explained. "And shoot them at someone similarly armed." He gestured to the matched pair of water pistols. "I have included a second weapon so you may also arm your opponent."

"Your willing opponent.." Daniel put in dryly, with a pointed glance at Teal'c. He remembered the Jaffa and water pistols. In fact from the wistful look Jack was casting at the devices, he supposed he should be grateful that Teal'c hadn't given them a set while they were stranded at the palace.

Loren grinned, "Thank you, Teal'c. It is a surprise!"

The Jaffa nodded gravely, smiling at the boy.

Loren set down the box next to his bundle to collect his last hug from Daniel. "Thanks, Daniel," he said quietly.

"You're welcome, Loren." Daniel smiled at him. "You will be fine, you know."

Loren buried his head in Daniel's shoulder for a moment, then turned to director. "I'm ready," he said.

The stern-faced woman's expression had relaxed somewhat as she watched him affectionately bidding goodbye to SG-1. "Our gratitude for taking care of young Loren," she said. "Perhaps in time our government will give its approval for further exchanges."

She and Loren walked up to the shimmering surface of the wormhole, and Loren turned back one last time to wave before he stepped through. The wormhole evaporated with a pop and a wisp of steam that quickly disappeared.

"Welcome home, SG-1," Hammond said from the foot of the ramp. "As I already have your written reports, debriefing can be waived, I think."

"Yeah, you're probably still trying to get through Daniel's," O'Neill said irrepressibly.

"It's not that long, Jack," Daniel said.

"However, you won't be able to skip all the formalities," Hammond smiled beneficently at them. "Report to the infirmary."

"Oh, god," Daniel muttered.

"Dr. Jackson, I believe Dr. Fraiser has expressed a desire to see you first. She's been waiting rather a long time," Hammond said.

"I'm doomed," Daniel Jackson cast a pleading look at his teammates. "Help?"

"I believe there is no help for you, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "Dr. Fraiser is quite irritated, both with your failure to follow her instructions and O'Neill's and Major Carter's inability to persuade you to do so." He gave the colonel a faintly malicious gaze. "She has several times mentioned your neglect of her instructions immediately upon returning to the planet, O'Neill."

The colonel winced. "Make that, 'we're doomed', Daniel." He glanced plaintively at the gate. "Where's an alien invasion when you need one?"

"Virulent plague?" Daniel said hopefully.

"PTA meeting," Sam suggested more moderately.

As they trooped out of the gate room toward certain doom, Daniel was almost positive he heard a soft snort as Major General George Hammond chuckled in a very ungenerallike fashion at the antics of his flagship team.

*end

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