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Chapter Two: Daniel

// Sha'uri comes toward me...

Only...it isn't Sha'uri....

It's Amaunet. Smiling in a cruel bastardization of Sha'uri's sweet, giving expression...

The only thing this demon wants to give me is pain....

Pain like I've never known...

This isn't my first experience with the Goa'uld ribbon device, but it is by far the worst... I feel the gun I'll never know if I'd have used slip through my fingers, I hear Sha'uri's voice...calling to me, begging me to listen...but then there's only more pain... //

I come awake and try to stand...to run...all at once and feel my legs go out from under me, then Jack is there...holding me, helping me to sit down....saying ...something.

"I'm here...I've got you..." His voice sounds more worried than usual.

I guess I've given him good reason to worry this time...

I was kind of worried myself....

It would have been so easy to just give up...to let the darkness take the pain away....

*Promise me, Daniel.*

That promise is the only thing that kept me from making the mistakes I envisioned in my 'dream'..or whatever it was. I guess I'll always wonder if I would have given up on the SGC...on my friends...I would have never been able to consider forgiving Teal'c...

I still need to work on that....

I know they're my friends...I know that...but...

After all that stuff with MacKenzie...I trust them, I do...only....

How can I tell them that I have to keep a promise I made to my wife while I experienced this strange sort of projected reality inside my mind during a few brief moments that her Goa'uld parasite held me in the grips of a ribbon device? That somewhere out there is a child who may be our one best hope for eventually defeating the Goa'uld?

They'll lock me up all over again....

At the very least, Jack will give me that look and dismiss it out of hand as the ramblings of a grief-stricken husband trying to hold on to what's been lost...

"Daniel?"

Jack's starting to sound worried and I feel his hand on my forehead, checking for fever for the hundredth time since we've been here...Jack's gonna make somebody a wonderful mother....

I look up at him and see the worried expression that's become a constant with him lately...because of me....

I catch an exasperated twinge in Jack's eyes now, I must be looking apologetic or something...Jack can't stand it when I start 'jumping on my guilt trip'...I can't help it, it's a reflex from long ago...too ingrained to ignore....

Jack makes me look at him and gives me that deep appraisal that used to cause me to feel so inadequate...Now I know it's just Jack...if he didn't like me, he wouldn't put up with me...

Something Sha'uri's gift help me to see....

"I'm okay, Jack...."

His eyes say something unkind and it's obvious that he doesn't believe me...but I know he's just worried about me...and that's okay. There's nobody on this world...or any other now...that I'd let get away with it. If I weren't feeling so...out of it...I'd fight him a little more, but that would take more energy than I can spare right now...so I just let him.

I'm just so tired....

I never realized how much energy I'd applied to not thinking of Sha'uri. Now that she's ...gone...I can't seem to stop trying to remember every second....every moment... of the last vision I had of her. Whatever those 'dreams' were...they are as real to me now as all the other little moments of our lives on Abydos...and I feel like I have to commit each one of them to memory while I can...

Jack must see something in my eyes, because he nods at me and helps me up without a word.

Just there.

Just Jack...

How could I ever believe he'd be anything less...?

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