What Dreams May Come - 18/21 & 19/21
So... this is where it starts getting a little confusing, maybe. And I completely and totally missed posting anything yesterday, and these are both really short... so I'm going to post these next two back-to-back.
Warnings and summary are here: Chapter One
The previous chapters can be found here: What Dreams May Come
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Chapter Eighteen
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They walked through the door and into the room, with its eerie shadows cast by the torches that illuminated it. It took a few seconds for Jack's eyes to adjust to the change in lighting, but when they did, what he saw made his breath catch in his throat.
He was across the room, standing against the wall, his arms straight out at his sides. His eyes were closed and there was a look of pain etched deeply in his face. He seemed to be held there by something that Jack couldn't see-no one that pale could be standing under his own power. The self-control that Jack had been fighting to maintain evaporated.
"Oh, God," he muttered.
The Daniel beside him saw the look on Jack's face, and knew immediately what the older man was thinking. "Jack, don't!" he warned quietly, but it was too late.
Jack was already running.
"Daniel!" he called out as he crossed the floor toward him. "Daniel!"
He skidded to a halt directly in front of the younger man against the wall, and he knew at once that this was his Daniel Jackson. The void had vanished. If that weren't enough, there were marks on his face, and visible through rips and tears in his shirt, that matched the ones that marred the body lying in the sanctuary.
"Damn it," Jack muttered gently. He reached out and carefully placed his right hand against Daniel's face. "Daniel, can you hear me? Daniel?"
Daniel's eyes fluttered briefly before opening. They darted around the room in wild confusion, glazed and unfocused. He tried to pull away from Jack's touch, and gasped out a terrified, "No!" that made Jack freeze in near horror.
"What did he do to you?" he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to continue.
"Daniel!" he said again, louder and more insistent. He forced himself to ignore Daniel's flinch and continued. "It's me. Daniel, it's Jack. Look at me."
Daniel turned his unfocused gaze toward Jack's voice, a look of desperate hope on his face.
"Jack?"
"Yeah, Daniel," Jack answered. "It's me. I'm here."
Daniel swallowed hard, and Jack could see the effort he was putting into concentrating.
"Real?"
Jack smiled softly. "Yeah, I'm real."
Jack expected happiness, or relief, possibly confusion, maybe even tears. He did not expect Daniel's face to harden or his eyes to turn cold and bitter.
"You left me!"
Jack's stomach jumped into his throat. "Hey, now …"
"I told you," Daniel continued, his voice still weak and shaky but the expression of betrayal clear on his face. "I told you … you wouldn't listen." The words were punctuated by Daniel's ragged gasps for breath and frantic shakes of his head. "But it … it happened, and you left me. I watched you … watched you leave, watched you go home … home, where it was safe. I yelled for you … to help, to stop, but Belos …"
"Daniel, calm down..."
"No! Belos grabbed me, but I … I couldn't get away, and I screamed, and you … you just left!"
"We couldn't see you, Daniel," Jack insisted.
"Couldn't see me? Belos grabbed me … pulled me away … like I told you …" Daniel gasped for breath and tried to lean forward, and Jack saw that his earlier assumption about invisible bonds around his wrists was correct. "I was right there … right in front of you. How could you not see me?"
Jack glanced around the room almost frantically, noticing that the other Daniel had disappeared and hoping that he would make an appearance and help him explain the situation. It was obvious that this Daniel had absolutely no idea what had actually happened to him, and having the other Daniel there as proof would go a long way toward helping him understand, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Damn it, Daniel," he muttered.
Jack drew a deep breath and turned back to face Daniel again. "Look, I don't have very long to explain, because Belos is around here somewhere, and we've got to get you out of here, but you need to know something."
"What?" Daniel croaked.
"You're not quite as … solid … as you think you are."
"What?" Daniel was exhausted, confused and in pain, and he slumped back against the wall, all thought of further protest dying before it reached his lips.
"Belos pulled you away, you said. You think he just pulled you off the stretcher?"
Daniel nodded slowly and closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut against the remembered pain that Jack saw written so plainly on his face.
"He did a little more than that, Daniel. When he pulled you away, he left your body where it was."
"My … what?" Daniel opened his eyes again and looked directly into Jack's. "My body?"
"See, what to you felt like Belos grabbing you and pulling you away, to us, Daniel … it looked like you were having a heart attack. We thought you were dead."
Confusion began making its way back onto Daniel's face, replacing some of the anger and betrayal. "Wait, I … I don't …"
Jack glanced around once more. The back of his neck was beginning to prickle at him, and he knew he was running out of time.
"Okay, here." Jack reached back out and grabbed Daniel's face between his hands. Daniel flinched almost immediately. "You feel that?"
"Yes," Daniel answered, his voice once again shaky and fearful. Jack realized immediately that he'd misinterpreted Daniel's recoil from his touch; Daniel hadn't been pulling back from him. He'd been flinching from a memory, a sense memory-Belos had been the only one who'd touched him since he'd been removed from his body. Daniel had thought Jack was Belos.
"What does it feel like to you?"
"Weird," Daniel answered slowly. "Kind of …"
"Muted, like? Sluggish? Like it feels when you touch something …"
"… in a dream," Daniel finished. "It feels like I'm dreaming, like it's not real." Daniel closed his eyes and shuddered. "That's what it felt like when Belos touched me too."
Jack had to smile, albeit only briefly, that he'd been right. "That's because he's no more corporeal than we are, Daniel. He's exactly like us. He doesn't have a body either."
Daniel's eyes flew open. "You don't have … He got you too!"
"No!" Jack denied. "No, he didn't get me. I left mine on purpose, to come get you."
"You can do that?"
Jack shrugged. "Well, I can right now. I don't know how much longer it's going to last, but …"
Jack turned away quickly, both seeing and feeling the dark shadow that had appeared in the corridor and was making its way slowly in their direction. "Oh, crap."
He spun back toward Daniel. "We're outta time here, buddy," he said. "Tell me how to get you off this wall, because we have got to get out of here."
Daniel looked from one wrist to the other quickly, Jack's obvious urgency having pushed most of his disorientation, and most of his questions, to the back of his mind. "I … I don't know. I never saw … I don't see anything."
"Okay," Jack said. "Okay, we'll figure it out somehow. We've just got to …" He looked back over his shoulder again. The shadow was still moving toward them, even more slowly than before, almost as if it were enjoying the desperation taking place in front of it.
"Damn you, not yet!" Jack yelled at the shadow. "You can't have him!"
Daniel's eyes widened when he saw the shadow looming in the hallway over Jack's shoulder. "He's here," he whispered fearfully. He shrank back as far against the wall as he could. "Belos is here!"
"Daniel, I kinda need you here. Don't freak out on me."
"No!" Daniel came to life, struggling futilely against his invisible bonds. "Leave him alone! I
won't let you do this!"
The shadow laughed, and Jack spun back toward it just in time to see the two glowing circles where the thing's eyes would have been. "Oh, great," he muttered. "That's just what I needed to see right now."
"Jack!" Daniel's voice wasn't as frantic as it had been before, but it was insistent.
"What?"
"What?" Daniel asked, confusion and fear again evident in his voice. "I didn't … that wasn't … Jack, what's going on?"
Jack smiled and looked toward the ceiling. "There you are!" he said. "It's about time you decided to show back up."
"I had something to take care of," Daniel's voice answered.
"Jack?" Daniel asked softly. "What … who is that?"
Jack shrugged. "Well, Daniel, that's you. He's just not your you." Jack shook his head at the statement, and seeing no greater understanding on Daniel's face, decided not to push it any further. "He'll explain it. Daniel, can you get him free?"
"You cannot defeat me!" the shadow suddenly bellowed. "You pitiful, insignificant child! How dare you defy your god!"
"You're not a god!" Daniel's voice boomed back. "You're nothing but a God damned snake!"
Jack and Daniel both looked up toward the direction the voice seemed to be coming from, surprised to hear any Daniel Jackson speaking so harshly. Jack remembered something the other Daniel had said in the corridor; he'd said that Belos had used his body to kill his SG-1. One more glance at his own Daniel, still shaking in fear and pain, was enough to put any other questions to rest. If anything like what had happened to his Daniel had happened to the other one, then Belos deserved the hatred.
"You cannot hope to defeat me, child."
The air between Jack and Daniel shimmered slightly and then was split by a bright, blinding flash of light. Jack blinked it away and wasn't surprised to see the other Daniel Jackson standing there, fatigues replaced by simple robes, anger and determination on his face.
"Try me."
Belos roared in anger once more, and then the shadow disappeared through the wall.
Daniel blinked in astonishment at what stood in front of him-another Daniel Jackson, standing tall and defiant in the face of Belos' anger, repeating the words that he himself had spoken in his dream of the future.
"My dream," he whispered. "This is my dream or … or my nightmare."
"Funny you should say that …" Jack began.
"O'Neill!"
"Colonel!"
Sam's and Teal'c's voices echoed down the corridor and into the room. Jack rolled his eyes and sighed angrily. "I told them to stay put!"
"Yes," Daniel said with a smile. "But I told them not to."
"Why did you do that?" Jack demanded.
"You need back-up."
"I thought you were my back-up!"
"No," Daniel said with a crooked grin. "You were mine, remember? Besides, Teal'c was meditating when I got there, and Sam had already had Dr. Fraiser sedate her. They were coming anyway."
"Isn't anybody following my orders today?" Jack grumbled.
"No," Daniel answered simply.
Sam and Teal'c burst into the room. They both noticed the three men across the room immediately-Jack and Daniel and …
"Daniel?" Sam asked. "Sir?"
"No time to explain, Carter," Jack answered with a quick wave of his hand as he crossed the room toward them. "Bottom line-the one stuck to the wall is ours. We've got to figure out a way to get him out of here." He looked around the area where the shadow had been, tracing the path it had followed out of the room with his eyes. "Where'd he go, Daniel?"
"Sam and Teal'c surprised him; he's regrouping. He'll be back soon," Daniel answered. "You need to be ready when."
"Ready for what?" Sam asked.
Daniel tilted his head to the side slightly. "For all hell to break loose," he answered before turning away from them and toward their Daniel.
"O'Neill, what is our objective?"
Jack sighed. "I'm not really sure. I think Daniel wants us to keep Belos busy so him and … Daniel … okay, this is so not going to work. I'm going to confuse myself." He shook his head and continued. "I think the other Daniel wants us to keep Belos busy if he comes back. He's going to get our Daniel loose, and then I think they're going to do … something."
"What are they going to do?" Sam asked.
"How are we to keep Belos' attention diverted?" Teal'c asked at the same time.
"I don't know, and, um … we'll make it up as we go."
"Is that a real plan, sir?"
"No, Carter, it's not," Jack answered with a shrug. "But it's going to have to do, because it's all we've got."
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Chapter Nineteen
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Daniel looked at himself, through eyes narrowed in pain and suspicion. He'd have felt better if Jack had stayed beside him rather than going to talk with Sam and Teal'c. Actually, he'd have felt even better if all three of them were standing closer to him. He didn't want to seem weak and helpless by asking them to, but he could admit it to himself. He still didn't understand what was going on; he'd thought he'd simply been Belos' prisoner and Jack had come back to rescue him. Being told that only his consciousness had been captured, that his body was dead, that Jack-and apparently Sam and Teal'c-could leave their bodies at will, and that this person he was looking at-this person with his face and his voice that wasn't actually him-was another version of him … it was rapidly becoming too much for his weak and tired mind to process.
"You don't have to be afraid of me," the other him said.
Daniel straightened up as much as he could, which admittedly wasn't much, and stuck his chin out. "I'm not afraid of you."
The other him smiled. "Of course you are. I would be, in your place."
Daniel looked away from the other him, toward his friends, trying to draw as much strength as he could from the fact that they were simply there. "Yeah, well … you're not me."
The other him shook his head. "No, I'm not. But I was."
Daniel refused to answer him and did his best imitation of ignoring him entirely.
The other him sighed. "Look, Daniel, we really don't have time for this, okay? I know there's a lot going on right now, and you don't really understand any of it, but you have got to trust me."
Daniel blinked and turned toward the other him slowly. "The last person who tried to help me … Belos killed him right in front of me," he said softly.
"I know," the other him said with a slow, sad nod. "I felt him die."
Daniel closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall again. "I don't want that to happen to them," he said. "I won't let that happen to them."
"Then trust me," the other him said.
Daniel opened his eyes.
"Because that's the only way we're going to be able to prevent it."
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Sam saw the shadow first, moving across the ceiling slowly. "Colonel," she said, looking up.
Jack turned and looked up, too, and his shoulders sagged slightly. "Crap," he muttered. "Oh, Daniel!" he called out. "Time to move!"
The three of them watched as the other Daniel waved his hands across Daniel's arms, and suddenly he was free. Daniel pulled his arms away from the wall, looked down at his hands, and then looked back up at Jack with a weak smile.
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the floor.
"Daniel!" Jack yelled.
"No!" Sam cried out.
"Daniel Jackson!"
All three of them started forward, but the other Daniel held up his hand for them to stop. "You worry about Belos!" he called to them. "Let me worry about Daniel!"
"How about you worry about Belos?" Jack yelled back. "This whole thing was your idea, after all!"
"Jack!" the other Daniel shouted in anger.
Jack swallowed his protests when he realized that Belos' shadow had lowered itself to the ground in front of him and had changed shape. Instead of a formless shadow with glowing eyes, they were facing what had once been a Goa'ulded Unas, claws and all.
Jack glanced over his shoulder at Daniel's unmoving form on the floor, and realized there could be no question what exactly had caused those gashes.
"Claw marks," Jack whispered.
"O'Neill?" Teal'c asked.
"Those gashes - they're claw marks. Belos used him for some sort of scratching post." Jack's eyes narrowed in hatred as he turned to face Belos once more.
"Show time," Jack muttered. He looked at Teal'c and Sam, and he jerked his head in Belos' direction.
Teal'c charged forward with a roar and hit Belos straight on; Jack and Sam came at him from the sides. They fought as hard as they could, with everything that had, but it wasn't nearly enough. Belos raised his arms and all three of them flew in opposite directions, slamming into the walls, and found themselves pinned to them just as Daniel had been. The difference was that they were suspended by their invisible restraints three feet above the floor.
Belos snorted indignantly. "Insignificant little humans," he growled, and he started walking toward Daniel.
Jack saw and felt Sam and Teal'c struggling against their invisible bonds, and heard them both calling out Daniel's name in desperation.
Daniel was still lying where he'd fallen, and Belos was stalking toward him unimpeded. The other Daniel was nowhere to be seen-again. Whatever it was that he had planned, Jack somehow doubted that it involved the real Daniel lying on the floor, defenseless against Belos, while the rest of SG-1 hung from the walls, powerless to help him.
Jack drew a deep breath and did the only thing he could think of to postpone what seemed to be inevitable.
"You can't have him!" he cried out, letting his anger, fear, and frustration pour out of him. "He's ours, not yours!"
Belos laughed, the haunting sound echoing against the dull gray stone walls. "And if your god Belos were to humor you, O'Neill, what would you ask of me now? Ask your god, no, beg your god for that which you desire above all else."
"Daniel's life," Jack stated quietly.
"What is this life worth to you, human? Is he worth your pride? I would see you grovel at my feet."
"I don't do groveling," he returned with passion in his voice.
"You will," Belos answered evenly. "Or he will die."
Jack closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath. "You'll kill him anyway," he finally whispered without opening his eyes again. "You'll kill him, and then you'll kill me, and then you'll kill them. And then you'll steal one of our bodies and kill everyone else, and there's nothing we can do to stop you." Jack looked at the alien in front of him, his eyes hard and cold and filled with hatred. "But if you want to see me beg, snakehead, you're going to be waiting a real long time."
"I can wait, O'Neill." Belos stopped his forward progression, but never took his eyes from Daniel's still form. "Four thousand years I have waited for this one to arrive. Four thousand years I have been trapped here, with only that pitiful Aynad for company. You know nothing of my patience, O'Neill." Belos turned away from Daniel to narrow his eyes at Jack. "If I wish to wait another four thousand years, I will do so. But I see no reason to wait." He turned back to Daniel again. "Not when the one I have waited all this time for is waiting right there-for me."
Jack saw something from Daniel, just a hint of movement, but enough to give him hope. What he was hoping for, he didn't know. He, Sam and Teal'c together hadn't been strong enough to so much as phase Belos-what could Daniel do against him alone, particularly as weak and hurt as he was?
Belos turned his back on Daniel and approached Jack menacingly. "Did you truly think to take my prize from me so easily? Did you truly think you could save him at all?"
Daniel moved again. Jack knew he had seen it that time, and he concentrated on keeping Belos talking. As Daniel pulled his arms up underneath him and started pushing himself up from the floor, Jack looked Belos directly in the eyes and said, "You've kept him alive this long. Where's the fun in killing him now?"
"I have kept him alive to amuse me," Belos answered. "While I waited, patiently, for you to return my new body to me. I never doubted that you would be returning. The fact that the other left with you was all the proof I needed of that."
Daniel had his feet beneath him and was starting to stand, slowly and awkwardly, as though he were having trouble controlling his own limbs. Or as though … as though he was being controlled by something, or someone, that wasn't used to controlling him.
The other Daniel hadn't disappeared. He'd merged himself with theirs.
Jack had to hide the smile that threatened to creep across his face, and he glanced at Sam and Teal'c to make certain they were seeing what he was. The looks in their eyes convinced him that they were, and he turned back to Belos once more.
"That body doesn't belong to you," Jack said.
"Not yet," Belos answered. "But it has always been meant to, and it soon will."
"No," Daniel's voice argued. "It was never supposed to, and it never will again."
For the briefest of seconds, Belos' face showed his surprise, but he'd wiped it away and replaced it with a carefully constructed air of boredom before he'd turned to fully face a now upright, steady, and faintly glowing Daniel Jackson.
"You have tried this before, young one," Belos said with a smile. "It has never worked."
Daniel lifted his chin and stood straighter, his eyes hard and defiant. "Oh, but this time it will work, Belos, because I've got something the others never had. I know something that they never knew."
"What is that, little one?"
Daniel smiled back at Belos-a cold, calculating, malevolent smile that Jack thought he'd never see on that face.
"We have to do it together," Daniel answered. "Or we can't do it at all!"
As the last word crossed his lips, Daniel thrust his arms out to his sides with his palms facing up toward the ceiling. He threw his head back and closed his eyes.
And screamed.
A blinding flash of light filled the room. Jack, Sam and Teal'c closed their eyes and turned their heads away, but the brightness burned through their eyelids. It was less than a second before the flash had faded away, but it seemed to Jack that the room was still brighter than it had been before. He opened his eyes and blinked away the last remnants of the flash, and he saw why.
The room was filled with thousands of energy clouds, each burning with an intense white light. Jack, Sam and Teal'c looked on in awe as Daniel raised his arms above his head, and the clouds danced around him, seemingly at his command.
Belos roared in anger.
"You can defeat one of us," Daniel said. "But you cannot possibly defeat all of us. It's time for you to see the true power that you've been chasing for the past four thousand years-the power that you could never achieve for yourself, but that you gave to us."
Daniel let his arms fall to his sides, and the energy clouds flew toward Belos. They surrounded him and swarmed around him; lightning danced between them and arched out toward him. Belos roared again, this time in pain and frustration. Jack could see the small burn marks that appeared on Belos everywhere the clouds struck him with their energy. He began to believe, once again, that his team would survive.
He looked directly into Belos' eyes only to realize that the alien was staring back at him, with eyes narrowed in hatred. "Your words were truth, O'Neill. I will kill you all. But I will start with you!"
Jack felt an invisible hand wrap around his throat. He opened his mouth to yell out a protest, but before he could the invisible fingers had tightened, stealing his breath and his voice. His arms fought against the restraints that held him to the wall; he wanted nothing more than to pry those choking fingers away from his throat so he could breathe again, but his struggles were useless.
"Belos!" he heard Daniel cry out. "Leave him alone!"
Jack's vision was starting to darken around the edges. He was losing this battle, and he was losing it quickly. His ears were muffled, as though he were underwater. His lips were numb, his head felt as though it were going to explode, and his lungs were screaming for air. He struggled harder against the restraints, knowing that he was wasting what precious little oxygen he had left but too far gone to stop himself.
"Damn you!" Daniel screamed. "Not again!"
Jack didn't know if he'd actually seen what he thought he saw, or if his oxygen-starved brain was hallucinating, but he could have sworn that lightning flew out of Daniel's fingers.
The fingers around his throat disappeared, and Jack drew a ragged, heaving breath. His ears opened back up enough that he could hear Sam and Teal'c yelling his name, and he wondered how long they'd been doing that. From the hoarseness of their voices, it had been quite a long while.
Jack opened his eyes slowly and blinked at the scene before him. The multitudinous energy clouds had retreated to the corners of the ceiling, and Belos was lying sprawled on the floor with a positively livid Daniel Jackson standing over him. Daniel was breathing heavily, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly. His face was flushed with anger and exertion. Small bolts of lightning still danced randomly across the ends of his fingers.
"Let them go," Daniel ordered, his voice low and haggard. "Now!"
Jack barely had time to register the words before the invisible restraints vanished as quickly as the fingers had, and he found himself crashing to the floor. He bent his knees just before his feet landed on the stone and threw himself into a roll to absorb the brunt of the impact. He looked to his right quickly and saw Teal'c and Sam descending in much the same way.
"Sir, are you all right?" Sam was on her feet and heading toward him before he'd even gotten back to his knees; Teal'c was right on her heels.
"O'Neill?"
"Fi …" Jack was shocked at how weak his voice sounded. He took a deep breath, thrilled to be able to do so, and cleared his throat. "I'm fine," he replied. He was still a bit hoarse, but it was better than the alternative.
"Jack?" Daniel called across his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he answered. "You?"
In response, Daniel took two steps back from where he was standing. Sam gasped when she saw another Daniel, their Daniel, lying on the floor at his feet. At some point during the confusion, they had apparently separated again.
Jack was running forward before he ever realized he was moving, and Sam and Teal'c were right behind him. Jack fell to his knees at Daniel's side and rolled him over gently. Even if he hadn't known from across the room that this was their Daniel, the slashed face and chest would have made it obvious.
"What happened to him?" Jack demanded of the other Daniel, looking up.
The other Daniel looked back down at theirs sadly. "He took control when Belos threatened you. He shouldn't have been strong enough to do that, but I … I couldn't stop him. He was so weak to begin with, and attacking Belos like that …" he broke off and looked Jack directly in the eye. "It took everything he had left, Jack. I couldn't stop him."
"He did that for me?" Jack asked incredulously. He looked down once more at Daniel's battered face, and then up to Sam and Teal'c. "No … he did that for us. He saved us. All by himself. Didn't he?"
The other Daniel nodded. "He did the one thing that none of the rest of us have ever been able to do."
A moan pulled their attention back to their Daniel again. Jack leaned forward and placed his hand against the side of Daniel's face. He was completely focused on Daniel, but he couldn't help but notice how right the contact felt. How had he not realized that the Daniel they'd had at the SGC had felt completely wrong?
"Daniel?" he said quietly. "You with us?"
Daniel's eyes fluttered a few times before opening slowly. The blue eyes were cloudy and unfocused, and he blinked.
"We're right here, Daniel," Sam said as she knelt at his other side. She reached out and wrapped her hand around his upper arm, biting back the tears that she felt forming in her eyes. How long had it been since she'd been able to do something so simple, so ordinary, as touch Daniel's arm?
Teal'c looked down at his teammates on the floor. He saw that Jack and Sam were somehow affected by their ability to touch Daniel, but there was more to it than that. Daniel was drawing all of his strength from them. The other had said that Daniel had nothing left; the other was wrong.
Daniel had them.
Without another thought, Teal'c knelt beside Jack and grasped Daniel's hand firmly. "We are united, Daniel Jackson."
Daniel blinked once more, drew a ragged breath, and finally focused on the faces around him. "You're okay," he breathed.
"Thanks to you," Jack answered. "How'd you do that?"
Daniel looked from Jack to Sam to Teal'c, as though he were only just realizing that they were there. He couldn't help but smile at the feeling of safety and security that came over him. Belos hadn't killed them-the nightmare wasn't going to come true-and he wasn't alone any more.
"I don't … I don't know," he answered truthfully. "I just did it."
"Can you sit up, Daniel?" Sam asked.
"Um … yeah, I think so."
Daniel tried to lift himself up, but found that he didn't have to work very hard. Teal'c's grasp on his hand tightened, Sam's hands gripped his arms firmly, and Jack's arm was suddenly behind his shoulders. Together, they managed to lift him into a sitting position and then, slowly, back to his feet again.
Teal'c glanced back down at Belos, where he still lay on the floor, and saw the Unas' form begin to stir. "O'Neill!" he said urgently. "Belos appears to be waking. We must leave this place."
Jack turned to look behind him, and was not surprised to see the other Daniel had stepped between them and the fallen Goa'uld. The energy clouds had descended once more, hovering right above the other Daniel's shoulders.
"What do we do now?" Jack asked him.
The other Daniel didn't turn around, didn't move his head, didn't remove his attention from Belos.
"You take Daniel and run," he answered.
"What about you?" Jack asked.
Daniel turned his head, looked Jack straight in the eye, and spoke very slowly and very carefully. "Take Daniel and run."
They took Daniel and ran.
Warnings and summary are here: Chapter One
The previous chapters can be found here: What Dreams May Come
- = - = -
Chapter Eighteen
- = - = -
They walked through the door and into the room, with its eerie shadows cast by the torches that illuminated it. It took a few seconds for Jack's eyes to adjust to the change in lighting, but when they did, what he saw made his breath catch in his throat.
He was across the room, standing against the wall, his arms straight out at his sides. His eyes were closed and there was a look of pain etched deeply in his face. He seemed to be held there by something that Jack couldn't see-no one that pale could be standing under his own power. The self-control that Jack had been fighting to maintain evaporated.
"Oh, God," he muttered.
The Daniel beside him saw the look on Jack's face, and knew immediately what the older man was thinking. "Jack, don't!" he warned quietly, but it was too late.
Jack was already running.
"Daniel!" he called out as he crossed the floor toward him. "Daniel!"
He skidded to a halt directly in front of the younger man against the wall, and he knew at once that this was his Daniel Jackson. The void had vanished. If that weren't enough, there were marks on his face, and visible through rips and tears in his shirt, that matched the ones that marred the body lying in the sanctuary.
"Damn it," Jack muttered gently. He reached out and carefully placed his right hand against Daniel's face. "Daniel, can you hear me? Daniel?"
Daniel's eyes fluttered briefly before opening. They darted around the room in wild confusion, glazed and unfocused. He tried to pull away from Jack's touch, and gasped out a terrified, "No!" that made Jack freeze in near horror.
"What did he do to you?" he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to continue.
"Daniel!" he said again, louder and more insistent. He forced himself to ignore Daniel's flinch and continued. "It's me. Daniel, it's Jack. Look at me."
Daniel turned his unfocused gaze toward Jack's voice, a look of desperate hope on his face.
"Jack?"
"Yeah, Daniel," Jack answered. "It's me. I'm here."
Daniel swallowed hard, and Jack could see the effort he was putting into concentrating.
"Real?"
Jack smiled softly. "Yeah, I'm real."
Jack expected happiness, or relief, possibly confusion, maybe even tears. He did not expect Daniel's face to harden or his eyes to turn cold and bitter.
"You left me!"
Jack's stomach jumped into his throat. "Hey, now …"
"I told you," Daniel continued, his voice still weak and shaky but the expression of betrayal clear on his face. "I told you … you wouldn't listen." The words were punctuated by Daniel's ragged gasps for breath and frantic shakes of his head. "But it … it happened, and you left me. I watched you … watched you leave, watched you go home … home, where it was safe. I yelled for you … to help, to stop, but Belos …"
"Daniel, calm down..."
"No! Belos grabbed me, but I … I couldn't get away, and I screamed, and you … you just left!"
"We couldn't see you, Daniel," Jack insisted.
"Couldn't see me? Belos grabbed me … pulled me away … like I told you …" Daniel gasped for breath and tried to lean forward, and Jack saw that his earlier assumption about invisible bonds around his wrists was correct. "I was right there … right in front of you. How could you not see me?"
Jack glanced around the room almost frantically, noticing that the other Daniel had disappeared and hoping that he would make an appearance and help him explain the situation. It was obvious that this Daniel had absolutely no idea what had actually happened to him, and having the other Daniel there as proof would go a long way toward helping him understand, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Damn it, Daniel," he muttered.
Jack drew a deep breath and turned back to face Daniel again. "Look, I don't have very long to explain, because Belos is around here somewhere, and we've got to get you out of here, but you need to know something."
"What?" Daniel croaked.
"You're not quite as … solid … as you think you are."
"What?" Daniel was exhausted, confused and in pain, and he slumped back against the wall, all thought of further protest dying before it reached his lips.
"Belos pulled you away, you said. You think he just pulled you off the stretcher?"
Daniel nodded slowly and closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut against the remembered pain that Jack saw written so plainly on his face.
"He did a little more than that, Daniel. When he pulled you away, he left your body where it was."
"My … what?" Daniel opened his eyes again and looked directly into Jack's. "My body?"
"See, what to you felt like Belos grabbing you and pulling you away, to us, Daniel … it looked like you were having a heart attack. We thought you were dead."
Confusion began making its way back onto Daniel's face, replacing some of the anger and betrayal. "Wait, I … I don't …"
Jack glanced around once more. The back of his neck was beginning to prickle at him, and he knew he was running out of time.
"Okay, here." Jack reached back out and grabbed Daniel's face between his hands. Daniel flinched almost immediately. "You feel that?"
"Yes," Daniel answered, his voice once again shaky and fearful. Jack realized immediately that he'd misinterpreted Daniel's recoil from his touch; Daniel hadn't been pulling back from him. He'd been flinching from a memory, a sense memory-Belos had been the only one who'd touched him since he'd been removed from his body. Daniel had thought Jack was Belos.
"What does it feel like to you?"
"Weird," Daniel answered slowly. "Kind of …"
"Muted, like? Sluggish? Like it feels when you touch something …"
"… in a dream," Daniel finished. "It feels like I'm dreaming, like it's not real." Daniel closed his eyes and shuddered. "That's what it felt like when Belos touched me too."
Jack had to smile, albeit only briefly, that he'd been right. "That's because he's no more corporeal than we are, Daniel. He's exactly like us. He doesn't have a body either."
Daniel's eyes flew open. "You don't have … He got you too!"
"No!" Jack denied. "No, he didn't get me. I left mine on purpose, to come get you."
"You can do that?"
Jack shrugged. "Well, I can right now. I don't know how much longer it's going to last, but …"
Jack turned away quickly, both seeing and feeling the dark shadow that had appeared in the corridor and was making its way slowly in their direction. "Oh, crap."
He spun back toward Daniel. "We're outta time here, buddy," he said. "Tell me how to get you off this wall, because we have got to get out of here."
Daniel looked from one wrist to the other quickly, Jack's obvious urgency having pushed most of his disorientation, and most of his questions, to the back of his mind. "I … I don't know. I never saw … I don't see anything."
"Okay," Jack said. "Okay, we'll figure it out somehow. We've just got to …" He looked back over his shoulder again. The shadow was still moving toward them, even more slowly than before, almost as if it were enjoying the desperation taking place in front of it.
"Damn you, not yet!" Jack yelled at the shadow. "You can't have him!"
Daniel's eyes widened when he saw the shadow looming in the hallway over Jack's shoulder. "He's here," he whispered fearfully. He shrank back as far against the wall as he could. "Belos is here!"
"Daniel, I kinda need you here. Don't freak out on me."
"No!" Daniel came to life, struggling futilely against his invisible bonds. "Leave him alone! I
won't let you do this!"
The shadow laughed, and Jack spun back toward it just in time to see the two glowing circles where the thing's eyes would have been. "Oh, great," he muttered. "That's just what I needed to see right now."
"Jack!" Daniel's voice wasn't as frantic as it had been before, but it was insistent.
"What?"
"What?" Daniel asked, confusion and fear again evident in his voice. "I didn't … that wasn't … Jack, what's going on?"
Jack smiled and looked toward the ceiling. "There you are!" he said. "It's about time you decided to show back up."
"I had something to take care of," Daniel's voice answered.
"Jack?" Daniel asked softly. "What … who is that?"
Jack shrugged. "Well, Daniel, that's you. He's just not your you." Jack shook his head at the statement, and seeing no greater understanding on Daniel's face, decided not to push it any further. "He'll explain it. Daniel, can you get him free?"
"You cannot defeat me!" the shadow suddenly bellowed. "You pitiful, insignificant child! How dare you defy your god!"
"You're not a god!" Daniel's voice boomed back. "You're nothing but a God damned snake!"
Jack and Daniel both looked up toward the direction the voice seemed to be coming from, surprised to hear any Daniel Jackson speaking so harshly. Jack remembered something the other Daniel had said in the corridor; he'd said that Belos had used his body to kill his SG-1. One more glance at his own Daniel, still shaking in fear and pain, was enough to put any other questions to rest. If anything like what had happened to his Daniel had happened to the other one, then Belos deserved the hatred.
"You cannot hope to defeat me, child."
The air between Jack and Daniel shimmered slightly and then was split by a bright, blinding flash of light. Jack blinked it away and wasn't surprised to see the other Daniel Jackson standing there, fatigues replaced by simple robes, anger and determination on his face.
"Try me."
Belos roared in anger once more, and then the shadow disappeared through the wall.
Daniel blinked in astonishment at what stood in front of him-another Daniel Jackson, standing tall and defiant in the face of Belos' anger, repeating the words that he himself had spoken in his dream of the future.
"My dream," he whispered. "This is my dream or … or my nightmare."
"Funny you should say that …" Jack began.
"O'Neill!"
"Colonel!"
Sam's and Teal'c's voices echoed down the corridor and into the room. Jack rolled his eyes and sighed angrily. "I told them to stay put!"
"Yes," Daniel said with a smile. "But I told them not to."
"Why did you do that?" Jack demanded.
"You need back-up."
"I thought you were my back-up!"
"No," Daniel said with a crooked grin. "You were mine, remember? Besides, Teal'c was meditating when I got there, and Sam had already had Dr. Fraiser sedate her. They were coming anyway."
"Isn't anybody following my orders today?" Jack grumbled.
"No," Daniel answered simply.
Sam and Teal'c burst into the room. They both noticed the three men across the room immediately-Jack and Daniel and …
"Daniel?" Sam asked. "Sir?"
"No time to explain, Carter," Jack answered with a quick wave of his hand as he crossed the room toward them. "Bottom line-the one stuck to the wall is ours. We've got to figure out a way to get him out of here." He looked around the area where the shadow had been, tracing the path it had followed out of the room with his eyes. "Where'd he go, Daniel?"
"Sam and Teal'c surprised him; he's regrouping. He'll be back soon," Daniel answered. "You need to be ready when."
"Ready for what?" Sam asked.
Daniel tilted his head to the side slightly. "For all hell to break loose," he answered before turning away from them and toward their Daniel.
"O'Neill, what is our objective?"
Jack sighed. "I'm not really sure. I think Daniel wants us to keep Belos busy so him and … Daniel … okay, this is so not going to work. I'm going to confuse myself." He shook his head and continued. "I think the other Daniel wants us to keep Belos busy if he comes back. He's going to get our Daniel loose, and then I think they're going to do … something."
"What are they going to do?" Sam asked.
"How are we to keep Belos' attention diverted?" Teal'c asked at the same time.
"I don't know, and, um … we'll make it up as we go."
"Is that a real plan, sir?"
"No, Carter, it's not," Jack answered with a shrug. "But it's going to have to do, because it's all we've got."
- = - = -
Chapter Nineteen
- = - = -
Daniel looked at himself, through eyes narrowed in pain and suspicion. He'd have felt better if Jack had stayed beside him rather than going to talk with Sam and Teal'c. Actually, he'd have felt even better if all three of them were standing closer to him. He didn't want to seem weak and helpless by asking them to, but he could admit it to himself. He still didn't understand what was going on; he'd thought he'd simply been Belos' prisoner and Jack had come back to rescue him. Being told that only his consciousness had been captured, that his body was dead, that Jack-and apparently Sam and Teal'c-could leave their bodies at will, and that this person he was looking at-this person with his face and his voice that wasn't actually him-was another version of him … it was rapidly becoming too much for his weak and tired mind to process.
"You don't have to be afraid of me," the other him said.
Daniel straightened up as much as he could, which admittedly wasn't much, and stuck his chin out. "I'm not afraid of you."
The other him smiled. "Of course you are. I would be, in your place."
Daniel looked away from the other him, toward his friends, trying to draw as much strength as he could from the fact that they were simply there. "Yeah, well … you're not me."
The other him shook his head. "No, I'm not. But I was."
Daniel refused to answer him and did his best imitation of ignoring him entirely.
The other him sighed. "Look, Daniel, we really don't have time for this, okay? I know there's a lot going on right now, and you don't really understand any of it, but you have got to trust me."
Daniel blinked and turned toward the other him slowly. "The last person who tried to help me … Belos killed him right in front of me," he said softly.
"I know," the other him said with a slow, sad nod. "I felt him die."
Daniel closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall again. "I don't want that to happen to them," he said. "I won't let that happen to them."
"Then trust me," the other him said.
Daniel opened his eyes.
"Because that's the only way we're going to be able to prevent it."
- = - = -
Sam saw the shadow first, moving across the ceiling slowly. "Colonel," she said, looking up.
Jack turned and looked up, too, and his shoulders sagged slightly. "Crap," he muttered. "Oh, Daniel!" he called out. "Time to move!"
The three of them watched as the other Daniel waved his hands across Daniel's arms, and suddenly he was free. Daniel pulled his arms away from the wall, looked down at his hands, and then looked back up at Jack with a weak smile.
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the floor.
"Daniel!" Jack yelled.
"No!" Sam cried out.
"Daniel Jackson!"
All three of them started forward, but the other Daniel held up his hand for them to stop. "You worry about Belos!" he called to them. "Let me worry about Daniel!"
"How about you worry about Belos?" Jack yelled back. "This whole thing was your idea, after all!"
"Jack!" the other Daniel shouted in anger.
Jack swallowed his protests when he realized that Belos' shadow had lowered itself to the ground in front of him and had changed shape. Instead of a formless shadow with glowing eyes, they were facing what had once been a Goa'ulded Unas, claws and all.
Jack glanced over his shoulder at Daniel's unmoving form on the floor, and realized there could be no question what exactly had caused those gashes.
"Claw marks," Jack whispered.
"O'Neill?" Teal'c asked.
"Those gashes - they're claw marks. Belos used him for some sort of scratching post." Jack's eyes narrowed in hatred as he turned to face Belos once more.
"Show time," Jack muttered. He looked at Teal'c and Sam, and he jerked his head in Belos' direction.
Teal'c charged forward with a roar and hit Belos straight on; Jack and Sam came at him from the sides. They fought as hard as they could, with everything that had, but it wasn't nearly enough. Belos raised his arms and all three of them flew in opposite directions, slamming into the walls, and found themselves pinned to them just as Daniel had been. The difference was that they were suspended by their invisible restraints three feet above the floor.
Belos snorted indignantly. "Insignificant little humans," he growled, and he started walking toward Daniel.
Jack saw and felt Sam and Teal'c struggling against their invisible bonds, and heard them both calling out Daniel's name in desperation.
Daniel was still lying where he'd fallen, and Belos was stalking toward him unimpeded. The other Daniel was nowhere to be seen-again. Whatever it was that he had planned, Jack somehow doubted that it involved the real Daniel lying on the floor, defenseless against Belos, while the rest of SG-1 hung from the walls, powerless to help him.
Jack drew a deep breath and did the only thing he could think of to postpone what seemed to be inevitable.
"You can't have him!" he cried out, letting his anger, fear, and frustration pour out of him. "He's ours, not yours!"
Belos laughed, the haunting sound echoing against the dull gray stone walls. "And if your god Belos were to humor you, O'Neill, what would you ask of me now? Ask your god, no, beg your god for that which you desire above all else."
"Daniel's life," Jack stated quietly.
"What is this life worth to you, human? Is he worth your pride? I would see you grovel at my feet."
"I don't do groveling," he returned with passion in his voice.
"You will," Belos answered evenly. "Or he will die."
Jack closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath. "You'll kill him anyway," he finally whispered without opening his eyes again. "You'll kill him, and then you'll kill me, and then you'll kill them. And then you'll steal one of our bodies and kill everyone else, and there's nothing we can do to stop you." Jack looked at the alien in front of him, his eyes hard and cold and filled with hatred. "But if you want to see me beg, snakehead, you're going to be waiting a real long time."
"I can wait, O'Neill." Belos stopped his forward progression, but never took his eyes from Daniel's still form. "Four thousand years I have waited for this one to arrive. Four thousand years I have been trapped here, with only that pitiful Aynad for company. You know nothing of my patience, O'Neill." Belos turned away from Daniel to narrow his eyes at Jack. "If I wish to wait another four thousand years, I will do so. But I see no reason to wait." He turned back to Daniel again. "Not when the one I have waited all this time for is waiting right there-for me."
Jack saw something from Daniel, just a hint of movement, but enough to give him hope. What he was hoping for, he didn't know. He, Sam and Teal'c together hadn't been strong enough to so much as phase Belos-what could Daniel do against him alone, particularly as weak and hurt as he was?
Belos turned his back on Daniel and approached Jack menacingly. "Did you truly think to take my prize from me so easily? Did you truly think you could save him at all?"
Daniel moved again. Jack knew he had seen it that time, and he concentrated on keeping Belos talking. As Daniel pulled his arms up underneath him and started pushing himself up from the floor, Jack looked Belos directly in the eyes and said, "You've kept him alive this long. Where's the fun in killing him now?"
"I have kept him alive to amuse me," Belos answered. "While I waited, patiently, for you to return my new body to me. I never doubted that you would be returning. The fact that the other left with you was all the proof I needed of that."
Daniel had his feet beneath him and was starting to stand, slowly and awkwardly, as though he were having trouble controlling his own limbs. Or as though … as though he was being controlled by something, or someone, that wasn't used to controlling him.
The other Daniel hadn't disappeared. He'd merged himself with theirs.
Jack had to hide the smile that threatened to creep across his face, and he glanced at Sam and Teal'c to make certain they were seeing what he was. The looks in their eyes convinced him that they were, and he turned back to Belos once more.
"That body doesn't belong to you," Jack said.
"Not yet," Belos answered. "But it has always been meant to, and it soon will."
"No," Daniel's voice argued. "It was never supposed to, and it never will again."
For the briefest of seconds, Belos' face showed his surprise, but he'd wiped it away and replaced it with a carefully constructed air of boredom before he'd turned to fully face a now upright, steady, and faintly glowing Daniel Jackson.
"You have tried this before, young one," Belos said with a smile. "It has never worked."
Daniel lifted his chin and stood straighter, his eyes hard and defiant. "Oh, but this time it will work, Belos, because I've got something the others never had. I know something that they never knew."
"What is that, little one?"
Daniel smiled back at Belos-a cold, calculating, malevolent smile that Jack thought he'd never see on that face.
"We have to do it together," Daniel answered. "Or we can't do it at all!"
As the last word crossed his lips, Daniel thrust his arms out to his sides with his palms facing up toward the ceiling. He threw his head back and closed his eyes.
And screamed.
A blinding flash of light filled the room. Jack, Sam and Teal'c closed their eyes and turned their heads away, but the brightness burned through their eyelids. It was less than a second before the flash had faded away, but it seemed to Jack that the room was still brighter than it had been before. He opened his eyes and blinked away the last remnants of the flash, and he saw why.
The room was filled with thousands of energy clouds, each burning with an intense white light. Jack, Sam and Teal'c looked on in awe as Daniel raised his arms above his head, and the clouds danced around him, seemingly at his command.
Belos roared in anger.
"You can defeat one of us," Daniel said. "But you cannot possibly defeat all of us. It's time for you to see the true power that you've been chasing for the past four thousand years-the power that you could never achieve for yourself, but that you gave to us."
Daniel let his arms fall to his sides, and the energy clouds flew toward Belos. They surrounded him and swarmed around him; lightning danced between them and arched out toward him. Belos roared again, this time in pain and frustration. Jack could see the small burn marks that appeared on Belos everywhere the clouds struck him with their energy. He began to believe, once again, that his team would survive.
He looked directly into Belos' eyes only to realize that the alien was staring back at him, with eyes narrowed in hatred. "Your words were truth, O'Neill. I will kill you all. But I will start with you!"
Jack felt an invisible hand wrap around his throat. He opened his mouth to yell out a protest, but before he could the invisible fingers had tightened, stealing his breath and his voice. His arms fought against the restraints that held him to the wall; he wanted nothing more than to pry those choking fingers away from his throat so he could breathe again, but his struggles were useless.
"Belos!" he heard Daniel cry out. "Leave him alone!"
Jack's vision was starting to darken around the edges. He was losing this battle, and he was losing it quickly. His ears were muffled, as though he were underwater. His lips were numb, his head felt as though it were going to explode, and his lungs were screaming for air. He struggled harder against the restraints, knowing that he was wasting what precious little oxygen he had left but too far gone to stop himself.
"Damn you!" Daniel screamed. "Not again!"
Jack didn't know if he'd actually seen what he thought he saw, or if his oxygen-starved brain was hallucinating, but he could have sworn that lightning flew out of Daniel's fingers.
The fingers around his throat disappeared, and Jack drew a ragged, heaving breath. His ears opened back up enough that he could hear Sam and Teal'c yelling his name, and he wondered how long they'd been doing that. From the hoarseness of their voices, it had been quite a long while.
Jack opened his eyes slowly and blinked at the scene before him. The multitudinous energy clouds had retreated to the corners of the ceiling, and Belos was lying sprawled on the floor with a positively livid Daniel Jackson standing over him. Daniel was breathing heavily, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly. His face was flushed with anger and exertion. Small bolts of lightning still danced randomly across the ends of his fingers.
"Let them go," Daniel ordered, his voice low and haggard. "Now!"
Jack barely had time to register the words before the invisible restraints vanished as quickly as the fingers had, and he found himself crashing to the floor. He bent his knees just before his feet landed on the stone and threw himself into a roll to absorb the brunt of the impact. He looked to his right quickly and saw Teal'c and Sam descending in much the same way.
"Sir, are you all right?" Sam was on her feet and heading toward him before he'd even gotten back to his knees; Teal'c was right on her heels.
"O'Neill?"
"Fi …" Jack was shocked at how weak his voice sounded. He took a deep breath, thrilled to be able to do so, and cleared his throat. "I'm fine," he replied. He was still a bit hoarse, but it was better than the alternative.
"Jack?" Daniel called across his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he answered. "You?"
In response, Daniel took two steps back from where he was standing. Sam gasped when she saw another Daniel, their Daniel, lying on the floor at his feet. At some point during the confusion, they had apparently separated again.
Jack was running forward before he ever realized he was moving, and Sam and Teal'c were right behind him. Jack fell to his knees at Daniel's side and rolled him over gently. Even if he hadn't known from across the room that this was their Daniel, the slashed face and chest would have made it obvious.
"What happened to him?" Jack demanded of the other Daniel, looking up.
The other Daniel looked back down at theirs sadly. "He took control when Belos threatened you. He shouldn't have been strong enough to do that, but I … I couldn't stop him. He was so weak to begin with, and attacking Belos like that …" he broke off and looked Jack directly in the eye. "It took everything he had left, Jack. I couldn't stop him."
"He did that for me?" Jack asked incredulously. He looked down once more at Daniel's battered face, and then up to Sam and Teal'c. "No … he did that for us. He saved us. All by himself. Didn't he?"
The other Daniel nodded. "He did the one thing that none of the rest of us have ever been able to do."
A moan pulled their attention back to their Daniel again. Jack leaned forward and placed his hand against the side of Daniel's face. He was completely focused on Daniel, but he couldn't help but notice how right the contact felt. How had he not realized that the Daniel they'd had at the SGC had felt completely wrong?
"Daniel?" he said quietly. "You with us?"
Daniel's eyes fluttered a few times before opening slowly. The blue eyes were cloudy and unfocused, and he blinked.
"We're right here, Daniel," Sam said as she knelt at his other side. She reached out and wrapped her hand around his upper arm, biting back the tears that she felt forming in her eyes. How long had it been since she'd been able to do something so simple, so ordinary, as touch Daniel's arm?
Teal'c looked down at his teammates on the floor. He saw that Jack and Sam were somehow affected by their ability to touch Daniel, but there was more to it than that. Daniel was drawing all of his strength from them. The other had said that Daniel had nothing left; the other was wrong.
Daniel had them.
Without another thought, Teal'c knelt beside Jack and grasped Daniel's hand firmly. "We are united, Daniel Jackson."
Daniel blinked once more, drew a ragged breath, and finally focused on the faces around him. "You're okay," he breathed.
"Thanks to you," Jack answered. "How'd you do that?"
Daniel looked from Jack to Sam to Teal'c, as though he were only just realizing that they were there. He couldn't help but smile at the feeling of safety and security that came over him. Belos hadn't killed them-the nightmare wasn't going to come true-and he wasn't alone any more.
"I don't … I don't know," he answered truthfully. "I just did it."
"Can you sit up, Daniel?" Sam asked.
"Um … yeah, I think so."
Daniel tried to lift himself up, but found that he didn't have to work very hard. Teal'c's grasp on his hand tightened, Sam's hands gripped his arms firmly, and Jack's arm was suddenly behind his shoulders. Together, they managed to lift him into a sitting position and then, slowly, back to his feet again.
Teal'c glanced back down at Belos, where he still lay on the floor, and saw the Unas' form begin to stir. "O'Neill!" he said urgently. "Belos appears to be waking. We must leave this place."
Jack turned to look behind him, and was not surprised to see the other Daniel had stepped between them and the fallen Goa'uld. The energy clouds had descended once more, hovering right above the other Daniel's shoulders.
"What do we do now?" Jack asked him.
The other Daniel didn't turn around, didn't move his head, didn't remove his attention from Belos.
"You take Daniel and run," he answered.
"What about you?" Jack asked.
Daniel turned his head, looked Jack straight in the eye, and spoke very slowly and very carefully. "Take Daniel and run."
They took Daniel and ran.