Body Image

by Jb

This story is set at the end of season 8, immediately post-'Threads'.
It contains major spoilers for and is dependent upon 'Reckoning'.

Studious procrastination was an art form Daniel had never been all that interested in. Right now, though, he was determined to master it, at least for the time being. He straightened his knees, stretched his legs out in front of him, and slouched back in the lawn chair. Someone else could help get dinner started. He wasn't going in there until he absolutely had to. Instead, he was going to study the fine art of wasting time.

Apprehensive, but morbidly curious enough to overcome the reluctance, he shifted slightly so that his jeans pulled tighter around his legs, in preparation for a close examination of the contour of his right thigh. He carefully skirted the danger area above his waist and started at the hip, then dropped his gaze to follow the curve of muscle extending down to his knee. He'd already identified the problem and had a working hypothesis, but he'd shied away from making observations and gathering any objective, concrete data. He was a bad scientist, a bad boy. He knew better. But that was just tough, wasn't it; he didn't feel like dealing those cards, so the Scientific Method would just have to go fish.

A slightly hysterical giggle escaped him. Go fish. Yeah, right. Let's all go fishing, do it together as a team, Jack had said as he'd gathered them all up. A team celebration for saving life, the universe, and everything. Daniel had agreed, had looked forward to relaxing and reconnecting with his team, his friends. Right up until three hours before they were scheduled to leave, he'd been more than eager to greet the cool, crisp, Minnesota air with his friends at his side, and go fishing in a pond that didn't have any fish. Silly him.

Observe. Analyse. Conclude. The difficulty in coming up with a conclusion was that he didn't have access to the necessary comparative data. He had a dependant variable - his physical body - and the means to collect as much objective information about the current state of that variable as he wanted, but he didn't have enough necessary data from before he was... from before it... okay, well, just from before. There simply wasn't enough of the right sort of information available, not to mention he had absolutely no control at all over the application of the independent variable. He wasn't even completely sure who or what had actually wielded that independent variable, the act of taking him from non-corporeal back to corporeal. Daniel snorted, the soft sound drifting out from him to be carried away across the pond on a light breeze. He'd been in his body, then he hadn't, then he had. Maybe, he amended. Maybe yes, maybe no.

Frankly, it was all so screwed up that any data he might collect wouldn't mean anything anyway. His hypothesis was shit, doomed to go around in everlasting circles; it was completely unprovable no matter what. So really, he mused, it was a waste of time to even try making any observations.

Which was just perfect.

Daniel nodded, pleased with the justification for what he was doing. This wasting time stuff was indeed an art, and, if he did say so himself, for such a rank beginner he was pretty good at it. He wasn't just a traumatised neurotic; he was an artist, suffering for his art. So, carry on, then.

Despite knowing any conclusions he might come to would be completely unreliable, Daniel tensed his quads and ran a hand down his leg. It did seem noticeably thinner than he remembered it having been, and the taut muscle under his fingers just didn't feel quite right. And his knee - it was knobby enough that if taken on its own it could easily be mistaken for one of the bulbous, rust-encrusted handles on the cabin's storage shed door.

A flash of worry prompted him to check out his other knee in the fear he'd - she'd - they'd - whoever'd - done something wrong with his right knee, given it bony cancerous growths or something. But no, under the denim fabric of his worn jeans his left knee looked and felt just like the right one. Okay, so if they were the same then there was probably nothing dire wrong with either or them, other than having a bad case of the uglies. But he couldn't really be sure of that right now, though, could he? He'd been x-rayed and MRI'd and DNA tested up the yin-yang at the SGC after his appearance in Jack's office, and given a clean bill of health and identity, but if his hypothesis was true that wouldn't matter. At this point there was no actual proof of his hypothesis to be had, though, right? Neurotic observations, maybe, but no objective proof. So it was probably safe to relax back into his steady state of rigidly suppressed latent horror.

But surely his knees hadn't always been like that? He would have known if they had - he would have been just as loath, before, as he felt now to let anything as gross as that be seen in public. However, he'd bared his legs without qualms, before, hadn't he, so... so there you go. Just one more bit of data possibly in support of his hypothesis. Not proof, not proof, the Scientific Method nagged at him, and he agreed with it like a good little scientist, that yes, it was subjective data, nothing more. And oh, look... there was another subjective observation hovering just below his belt. He sure seemed to recall the worn tears in the left upper thigh of his jeans being set lower than they were now. He stuck a few fingers into the hole, and felt them straightaway jab right into the crease of his groin. Yes, definitely different. He eyed the hems of his pants where they barely covered his ankles, confused for a moment over whether that indicated he might be taller, or shorter, than before.

Shorter. He was stretched out, and so his pants not coming down to cover the tops of his feet like he thought they should didn't mean anything. He could always stand up, of course, thereby accounting for the extraneous variable of positioning, but he really couldn't be bothered. It didn't matter enough to be worth moving for. His stomach clenched uncomfortably at the lie... or, oh God, was there something wrong there, with his stomach? Something... oh wait, maybe it was just hunger he was feeling. The sun was quite low, the sky turning all shades of amber and red; it had to be way past dinnertime by now. And way past time he was supposed to be inside helping Sam make their meal. Yay Daniel, what a quick study; he'd be an expert at this procrastination thing in no time at all.

Crap. He may be having some success as a newly practising procrastinator, but he wasn't nearly as good at lying to himself. He was hungry, sure, but that wasn't what had his stomach in such a knot. God damn that Thor. Daniel wished the Asgaard council had just left good enough alone. They hadn't, though, and as much as Daniel wanted to just overlook the whole thing, he couldn't. It was too late; he remembered stuff now, and there wasn't anything he could do about that other than get used to it. He rubbed his fingers along the bare skin under the torn jeans - get used to the differences. If there were in fact any differences in the first place, Daniel reminded himself. Shock and uncoalesced fear weren't exactly solid foundations for coming to any sorts of conclusions.

Unhappy with the emotional turn his attempt at wasting time was taking, Daniel shoved aside anything to do with the nasty experience Thor had subjected him to. He focused instead on counting the number of reedy bullrush shoots that rimmed the near shore of the pond. Only just visible in the red light of dusk, mosquitoes and dragonflies buzzed around the plants. The sight made him feel vaguely itchy, and he shoved his fingers in deeper to absently scratch at his groin through the rip. He heard the light swish of feet in the damp grass, but his fingers got stuck in amid the worn threads of the hole when he tried to yank them out. He ended up greeting Sam while trying to sit up in the chair with three fingers still stuck in the rip. That made it even harder to remove them, but as it happened Sam didn't notice the problem anyway. She didn't return his greeting, didn't even look at him, actually. She simply sank down to sit on the dock next to his chair, folded her legs under her, and stared out over the water.

Fine. Daniel slouched back again, and didn't bother extricating his fingers. He was still itchy. In fact, the itch seemed to be spreading. It felt like tiny ant-feet with impossibly sharp pin-pointed ends were walking all over his skin, everywhere. Hey, maybe they were alien ants. Maybe they'd been unknowingly imported by Jack from P-blah-X-blah-blah-etcetera. Yeah, yeah, that would certainly explain it. It might even explain the absence of fish in Jack's pond, too. Carnivorous alien ants. Warming to the fantasy as an explanation for his discomfort - one other than Sam's proximity, that is - Daniel closed his eyes to visualise the alien ants. At first he saw them as giant black creatures with long, twitching, searching antennae, huge incisors, and pointed, incredibly sharp legs bigger and thicker than the largest blade on his multi-tool, but then he realised that couldn't be. If that were the case, when they were walking on him their feet wouldn't be just prickle the surface of his skin, they'd actually - oh, crap. Scratch that thought. Move on.

They had to be smaller anyway, didn't they. Duh. Jack couldn't have brought them here unseen if they were huge like that. So they were smaller. They gathered in unpredictable swarms and were amazingly quick. They were of all different sorts of insectoid shapes, and they had various numbers of multi-jointed legs with the requisite pointed, sharp ends, and when they moved he could hear the tip-tap skittering sounds as their feet - shit! No. Stop.

"Daniel? Is something wrong?"

He felt Sam's hand land on his knee at the same time he heard her voice, and jumped. His leg jerked. Stomach lurched. The urge to get up and run away was huge, but that was silly, and she'd snatched her hand away the instant he'd reacted, anyway. So he stayed put and forced himself to actually look down into her eyes, her face even with his waist as she sat on the dock beside the chair. "No, no, everything's fine," he tried to cover up. But then he heard himself automatically tack on, "Why do you ask?" and wanted to kick himself from here to Timbuktu. God, he could be an idiot sometimes.

"Well, it's just that you... you seem..." Sam paused, looking away from him, gnawing on her lower lip.

"Tense?" Daniel supplied, knowing going with the "fine, just fine" routine wouldn't wash. It wouldn't help him deal with the problem, and it wouldn't be fair to Sam. Besides, she already well knew he wasn't fine; his reaction to her touch screamed of "not fine", and he wasn't about to insult her intelligence. He figured she already had a prime assumption in mind about what was wrong, one that probably featured herself as co-star. She wouldn't be entirely wrong about that, but she wouldn't be entirely right, either.

"Daniel..." With one last big gnaw on her lip, Sam glanced at him and then stared down at her hands in her lap. "I can leave. Go back to Colorado." She looked back up at him, and there it was, written all over her face. He was right about her assumption. "It feels so uncomfortable, you avoiding me. If my being here bothers you, I could -"

"No." His interruption was sudden, maybe even a bit harsh, but he didn't regret the way it came out. Why couldn't she have come to him just out of concern for him? "Look, yes, okay? I admit things aren't exactly peachy for me right now. But it's not you, Sam."

She plucked at a wrinkle in her jeans and nodded, but it was obvious to Daniel even before she confirmed it verbally that she either hadn't actually heard him or didn't believe him. "Okay. Well, is there anything I can do to help you with it? I mean, I'm sure you know, intellectually, that it wasn't me, but I can see how it might be hard for you to be around me considering that she -"

"Sam, stop." He mercilessly interrupted again, frustrated and disappointed that she hadn't even listened past her own assumptions. "I just told you, it isn't you. My problem isn't you being the template for her, or her wearing your face and having your voice. Even if you do remind me of her, I can deal with that." He leaned over to bring his face closer to hers, and as gently as he could considering his frame of mind, emphasised each word carefully. "This is not about you."

He straightened up and leaned back in the chair again. Silence fell between them, silence and a mutual uneasiness so great it almost moved Daniel to tears. Jack had physically left the team, and even though Jack was still with them in spirit and friendship, it was a loss nonetheless; the thought that he and Sam might still be there together physically, but all the same, in other ways, be lost to one another was scary. He knew she was just as messed up as he was right now. They'd both suffered losses, and surely now was the time for rebuilding, wasn't it? That was what Jack had brought them here for in the first place - to reconnect and recover from their losses, as much as celebrate their victories.

Maybe while they were all here together he should tell Sam and Teal'c and Jack what had happened, instead of waiting. He hadn't wanted to ruin their vacation with his problems, but didn't withholding the truth from them fly in the face of why Jack had brought them here? Not that he was sure just what the full truth even was, though... and he was deathly afraid of what spilling his guts might lead to. What would happen if he told them about the encounter with Thor he'd had two days ago? His imagination supplied him with all sorts of reactions, some of which involved alterations in his relationship with them. And what would General Jack's superiors do if they knew about the Asgaard's interest, and about the things he now remembered courtesy of his Asgaard-sponsored field trip? What would happen to him?

A quiet noise out of place with the chirps of insects and gentle swish of water intruded into his thoughts. Daniel realised it was Sam, and looked over in the dying light to see her wiping her face with both hands, sniffing softly. She looked thoroughly miserable. He had a strong urge to commiserate, and to apologise to her - for his brusqueness, for his avoidance of her, for whatever else - but simply asked, "What?"

She changed position, drawing her knees up to her chest. "I was convinced you were really gone this time, you know. Absolutely certain." She wrapped her arms around her legs and shook her head. "I was convinced about a lot of things, and just as wrong."

He raised his eyebrows, tired interest stirring at her wry tone of voice. "Such as?"

"Oh, such as it was okay that my father died, because, after all, I'd had more time with him than I would've if he'd died of cancer instead of joining the Tok'ra."

Oh, ouch. Daniel missed Jacob, now knowing he was gone, and regretted the loss with an ache in his chest that he knew must be multiplied a hundredfold in Sam. This time he obeyed the urge to commiserate, willingly and without hesitation. "I'm sorry, Sam. God, I'm really sorry," he told her, daring to reach out and briefly touch her shoulder. And look at that: his hand didn't spontaneously combust. The prickly ant-feet tingles intensified, yes, but that was manageable. He took his hand away fairly promptly, though, chickening out early on. He'd have to work on that.

Sam frowned at him. "Okay... if you're handling it so well, then why can't you stand to touch me? I thought we were all right, back at the SGC, but I guess not."

"We are, we are," he hastened to correct her. "Really. It's not you, Sam. Something is troubling me, yes, but it isn't you." He tried a smile in the hope it might bolster his words as he tried to lighten the tone. "Look, don't worry about it. It's nothing worth fussing over. I can handle it," but his face felt rubbery and he wasn't sure how well it came off.

Wait - why did his face feel like that? He raised a hand to his cheek, and rubbed at it. Is that the way it felt in the... the way it felt before?

"What else is responsible for this, then, if it isn't that I remind you of her? You can't even stand to be near me."

Damn it. He didn't want to talk about this, even though he knew he probably should. He just wanted the horrible images in his head to go away. He wanted the memories they'd provoked to be lost to him, and he absolutely didn't want her to know that... that what? What, Daniel? That... aw God, that he was lying to her. Daniel dragged his hand through his hair and tipped his head back, face to the twilight sky, and closed his eyes. He knew he'd get used to this, and given a bit of time to sort out his perspective it wouldn't matter anymore; he'd just forge on ahead as he'd always done. But for now, in this tender time between what was, but actually wasn't, and what might, but might not be, he really was quite adrift. The realisation he was lying to both of them - that he absolutely, completely, unutterably could not handle it - washed over him and brought with it a flood of fear he couldn't sit still for.

He was up and out of the chair so abruptly that he accidentally knocked it over with considerable force. Sam made an unsuccessful lunge for it, but he just stood there not quite registering the sight, stupidly watching Jack's favourite lawn chair topple and then totter its way right off the dock into the marshy shore of the pond. When he did realise what he'd done, he continued to stand there just as stupidly frozen in place as Sam wordlessly retrieved it from the slimy depths. The much treasured seat cushion Jack's ex-wife had made for him many years before came out saturated with algae-ridden water, greenish-brown goop adhering to the entire length of one side. It hung off the edge of the cushion in long, tenacious, globby strings that swayed obscenely as Sam carried the chair over to the grass and set it down.

All that congealed-looking brownish... stuff. Redolent of impending decay. Clinging. Viscid. Wet and glistening, but still adherent, having partially thawed and then been captured in that state by the -

Daniel promptly turned away and tried to make it to the edge of the dock, but couldn't. Sharp pain choked him, the spasm of his gut so fierce that for a moment he actually thought it was that other pain. The contents of his stomach burned intensely as they made their way up and out. Too much, can't stand it, it's too much, he mourned to himself as he emptied his stomach onto the dock. He folded to all fours, heaved and heaved, and when it settled enough so he could actually take a decent breath he used that breath to cry out in frustration and pain, pounding the dock with his fist. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

He heard himself almost chanting his denials under his breath, no, no, damn it, damn it, the words keeping time with a slight rocking of his body that made his knees rub painfully against the wood of the dock. Was he really crying? Nooo, no, couldn't be. Didn't want to be. Underneath it all he was aware of Sam silently crouched next to him, no doubt confused, definitely hesitant to reach out to him. His embarrassment crept up ever closer to humiliation, and he struggled to regain control of himself, but the best he managed was to stop the rocking and its vocal accompaniment by collapsing down onto his side. He spat, grunted out the last of the pain, then rolled onto his back and covered his face with both hands. Waited for help.

Sam didn't let him down. "Is it all right if I touch you?" she asked with a shaky voice, and he nodded under his hands. Oh God yes, please do. If his fantasies did play out and he was speared through, or if he spontaneously combusted under her touch, well, so be it. He needed... needed... Sam folded over him, her arms firm against his sides, her breasts pressing against his forearms and her face, her cheek, soft against his temple. That! That. He needed that.

"What? What is it?" she asked him, tightening the hug. "Please, Daniel, please," she whispered into his ear. "Don't shut me out."

He wasn't sure if she was asking in response to her own distress or his, but all the same he found himself answering her. It just popped out, without thought or warning, riding on what to his dismay sounded and felt like a pitiful sob. "I'm dead, Sam. I'm really dead."

There was a pause, and then Sam raised up off him ever so slightly. "Well, I doubt he'll go that far over a seat cushion."

He wasn't so far gone he couldn't appreciate the humour, and let out a snort of amusement, aware she full well knew he hadn't been referring to Jack. As he felt an answering snigger in her chest where she pressed against him, Daniel realised just what he'd blurted out, though, and it drove him up out of her embrace. He thrust his chest upward slightly, and she understood the signal, moving off him so he could roll over and then stand up. God, why did he say that?

Leaving Sam sitting on the dock, Daniel busied himself with getting the hose from under the back deck. Good grief; he'd just said he was dead. He pulled the coiled hose out from under and carried it over to the back wall of the cabin. Did he believe that? Could it have slipped out like that because it was what he really thought? Attaching the hose to the faucet at the back of the cabin, he crimped the line and then turned on the water. A small stream slipped past the obstruction to water his lower leg, and he tightened his hold on the crimp, squeezing the hose with a grip equal to the one squeezing the life out of his gut. Okay, so if he really, down deep, believed that, then he wasn't being as inconsistent as it first seemed. As unprofessional and biased as he'd known it to be, he'd formulated his hypothesis with a preconceived, express desire to disprove it, not to support it. So he was all right. It was okay he'd said that.

Relieved, he dragged the hose line across the lawn to the far side of the dock, past where Sam quietly sat watching him, and let go of the crimp. Her gaze was unnerving, as if she was studying him or something, which of course wasn't tolerable because his process of analysis certainly wouldn't stand up to scrutiny; he was practising bad science, his methodology far from well-organised. He hosed down the mess he'd made, his thumb angled over the end of the line to create a more forceful stream of water, and tried desperately not to think about inside bits being on the outside where they didn't belong.

"So what did you mean by that?" he heard Sam ask him, and winced. "You're obviously not dead, Daniel," she kindly reminded him, and while he appreciated the gentle support in her voice he really didn't want to try explaining it to her. He didn't answer, concentrating on doing a superb job of cleansing both the dock and his mind of outside-insides.

Unfortunately, she didn't let it go. "You told us in your debriefing that Oma interceded. That she gave you a choice, and death was one of the alternatives. But you didn't choose that. You came back, and you're you... you know who you are." She climbed to her feet and came over to stand right next to him, her continued pursuit of the subject starting to feel more like an interrogation than interest or support. It was all he could do to stop himself from turning the hose on her. "You were fine; you said you were fine, and you acted fine. What's changed, Daniel? You sure seemed comfortable enough telling us what you remembered. You didn't seem - Oh."

Aw crap. Daniel dropped the hose, not caring that it hit the dock with its flow aimed at his feet. Crap, crap, crap.

"You remembered something else. That's what this is. You've remembered more... something really bad." Sam's voice sounded as startled and hugely round as he imagined her eyes were. He wasn't about to look at her to check that out, though.

On the other hand, though, maybe it was time to face the music she was making. Enough with all this "didn't want to / knew he should / was afraid to" waffling about. Besides, if he didn't tell her what the problem really was she'd have no choice but to go to Jack with just her suspicions, and then he'd have to spill directly to Jack. He'd have to deal with Jack's immediate reaction face to face. No. Far better he tell her than Jack. Let Sam be the messenger of truth. Daniel'd just go hide somewhere and wait for the fallout to settle before showing his face.

He prodded the hose with his foot, working at angling it toward the edge of the dock, as he nodded in answer to her. Yes, okay? Yes, I've remembered more. He glanced at her to gauge her reaction, and wasn't in the least bit surprised to find her standing with her hand at her throat and her eyes every bit as large as he'd imagined. "What did she do to you? Oh, I'm so sorry, Daniel. I'm so sorry she even existed." Her voice was tinged with guilty horror. "She tortured you," she answered her own question. "I know she did. I knew she would. God, what did she do? How badly did she torture you?"

Oh, well, sure, Sam. Go right ahead, pick incessantly at the edge of that band-aid until you get enough of a grip to rip it off, and then have a really good go at the scab it's been desperately concealing. How very supportive. But she was barking up the wrong tree, in any case. Those memories were uncomfortable, yes, but they were only a small part of the problem.

Daniel sighed and told her once again, "It's not you. You aren't her, she wasn't you; I know that." And then, just before he realised he was shutting off his only avenue of escape should he decide he wanted one, he found himself reassuring her further, in greater detail. "Something happened the night before last. And yes, it made me remember more of what happened between me and her, but that's not the problem, Sam. It's not you. It's not even her."

Sam reached out to him, her fingers brushing against his arm, and he instinctively pulled away. She dropped her hand, hurt written large on her face. "What, then?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Please, don't leave it like this. I can't... I don't want..."

To lose anyone unless it's by my own decision, he wearily finished it for her in his mind. Right. He wasn't allowed to decide how he left it, because he couldn't be allowed the option of walking away from her of his own accord. No matter what he said here, no matter what had happened to him, it would still be about her? Need and hurt turned to frustration, and then to anger that he didn't have the energy to cope with. "Why did you come out here? To find out what's bothering me and offer to help, or to discuss your insecurities?"

Predictably, she was pole-axed. But she was obviously hurt, too, and the very small part of him that wasn't entirely handcuffed by what he was trying to deal with wanted to take the words back. They were true, though, and that little bit of him wasn't sure how to deny them without sounding like he was patronising her. He dragged a hand through his hair, and settled for a part-truth. "Damn it. That's just my mouth moving faster than my brain. I'm tired, that's all."

She was stiff as a board. "No, I don't think so." She turned her head for a moment, as if thinking it over, and then faced him again. "I don't think so," she repeated, with more force than before. "That wasn't fair. I think you owe me more than a lame explanation like that."

Right. An apology, no doubt suitably earnest in nature? Well, he didn't have it in him right now to try sincerely delivering what he didn't really feel all that sincere about. It was his fault she'd even ventured out here though; he was the one whose behaviour had all of a sudden changed, not her. He didn't need this, but he didn't need things to worsen between them either. Maybe if she were to grab a clue, to see what was going on here? "Okay, look. You came out here to see if there was something wrong, right? Because I've been... well, because. And I tell you there is, yes, there is something wrong, but what do we find ourselves talking about?"

A clue seemed to be the last thing she was going to grab. "We're talking about you, Daniel. About what's wrong. I just want to help."

There was a stubborn, surprisingly defiant set to her shoulders, though, that rubbed him entirely the wrong way. His stomach hurt. His brain hurt. His chest hurt. He just... hurt. "We - no, you, you talked about you being uncomfortable because I was uncomfortable with you. You talked about you feeling guilty, or something, about what the thing that looked like you did to me, while I did my best to tell you not to talk about it. Let's see, what else? You talked about you being convinced I was deader than I've ever been before. Oh, and yeah, you told me how guilty you feel about the way you rationalised away your dad's death."

Her eyes flashed, anger joining hurt in a flare of self-defense. "What? How dare you; you don't know anything about my dad's death, and it's none of your business."

Oh, God help both of them. He hung his head, his objection coming out in a low, demoralised mutter."You brought it up, Sam, not me. What are we going to talk about next? Pete?" Ah, oops. That one really was a matter of his mouth moving faster than his brain.

She stiffened even further. "Leave that alone, Daniel," she warned him. "That's really, really none of your business." She turned and marched off, and he wasn't sure if he was sorry to see her go or not. Okay, yes, yes he was. He wasn't handling this at all well. "Sam," he started to call her back.

Dead halt, turn, and, "How dare you." Her fists were clenched at her sides, and she was breathing hard. "You bastard. You may have ascended to some higher plane of existence, but don't forget that you fell just as far. Being able to thumb your nose at death doesn't mean you aren't full of shit." She turned and walked away, tossing over her shoulder a curt, "I didn't come out here so you could play God at my expense. Good night, Daniel."

Ow. Okay, so now he really couldn't leave it like that. Daniel spoke softly, knowing his words would carry in the evening's still air. "Wait, Sam. Please. Just think about the question in what you just said... just why did you come out here?" He realised an instant too late that his being on the verge of tears again was evident in his voice, and immediately regretted having opened his mouth. He should have just let her leave. As much as he wanted them to sort this out, he didn't want to deal with scorn or pity.

She stopped partway across the lawn and turned around. He couldn't see her face in the gathering darkness, but he didn't need to. There wasn't any scorn, nor pity, and he felt guilty at having even thought there might be as he heard and saw the hurt confusion that softened her resentment. "God, Daniel, why are you doing this? I came out here because I care. Because you're avoiding me, which means there's something wrong between us. Fixing it is important to me."

He scrubbed at his face with both hands, trying hard not to sound too pathetically needy as he asked her, "Why can't it just be because you care that there's something wrong with me? Why does it have to be because you care about how my problem affects you?"

She stood there, stock still, staring across the lawn at him. He wasn't sure if she was doing that because she did, or didn't, understand what he was trying to say without actually coming out and saying it. He couldn't come right out and say it, because it was too hurtful and he loved her regardless. And whoa, he suddenly realised, more importantly he didn't have the right to say it because he wasn't entirely innocent of the same thing himself. If he were, he'd accept her priorities without question and help her satisfy them, wouldn't he? They wouldn't even be having this difficult conversation, would they?

But in for a penny in for a pound now, so he tried to reinforce it in a way that hopefully wasn't overtly hurtful. "Maybe the reason you came out here is the same one that made you tell yourself it was okay that your father lost his life."

"No," she said, denying something, but he wasn't entirely sure what. She took a step backward and turned her head away. A slight gust of wind set the trees on the other side of the pond to whispering, and then they stilled again so that all he heard was the gurgle of the water from the hose as it flowed across the deck and over the edge. And Sam stood over there, more still than the trees, unable or unwilling to look at him as the last bits of red disappeared from the east. And he wanted to cry, and to scream, and to shut out the world, and he couldn't do any of it. All he could do was wait.

Stars reached out to prod at thin patches of light cloud cover, lit grey by the rising moon. Daniel tried to ignore what he knew the night sky really was, what he knew was really out there. He looked over at Sam, and unexpectedly he felt afraid. Afraid that this time she would turn to leave and not stop to reconsider, and he'd be left alone out here with all the terrible images and doubts in his mind. It was a bit of a revelation to him just how much he actually wanted her to stay. Pot, meet kettle, he derided himself, dismayed at what he'd done. Was the justification for putting her through this that he honestly felt she needed enlightening? Or was it really just because he needed something different from her than what he was getting... something different than what she needed from him?

It was too late, though. Too late to fix it. She was moving, heading the rest of the way across the lawn toward the cabin. Daniel wanted to go to her, to tell her he was sorry, that yes, he was a sorry bastard... but he didn't. He just stood there in indecision, partly relieved that he wasn't going to have to talk about what had happened the other night - at least, not right now - but mostly upset that he'd managed to take the previously insignificant, temporary wedge his memories had placed between them and so nicely widen it to possibly insurmountable proportions.

Still not looking in his direction at all, Sam walked across to where the faucet was mounted on the wall of the cabin, and turned it off. To Daniel's surprise, she unhooked the hose and started to gather it up, coiling it around her shoulder as she followed its snaky path across the lawn.

She stopped alongside him, staring down at the line of hose in her hand. "I was sure you were dead and gone for good. I decided that was all right, because we'd already won the bonus prize when we found you on Vis Uban." Then she had the courage to look him straight in the eye as she damned herself with the bald truth. "But you came back, and that annoyed me. You upset my apple cart, Daniel."

What could he say to that? There wasn't anything he could say, but he didn't need to anyway because she carried on, and he knew then that she understood better than he'd given her credit for. "That made me think: how would I feel if Dad came back? Would I be annoyed with him too?" She took a step away, gripping the hose tightly. "You're right. I came out here because I needed more control over this relationship than I have."

She went to move on, but he caught her by the arm. "Sam, please, wait."

She rebuffed him, though, pulling her arm away. "I'm trying, Daniel," she whispered. "Please give me more time. I'm trying." And then she carried on past, intent on her task.

He followed her, catching up in a few long strides. He took the coil of hose from her shoulder, silently telling her he understood, and that sure, yes, he could do that, could give her the time she needed to work things through. God knows she wasn't alone in needing that. They walked together and when they got to the base of the dock they stopped, reeled in the rest, and he dropped the whole thing on the ground.

They stood in silence, side by side, and he watched the moon inch its way higher, marking the passage of time. Give her more time, she'd asked. He should do a lot more than that, frankly, he thought, and was faintly startled to realise that he actually wanted to do it now. To trust her. To trust her enough to tell her and in the telling, trust her enough to come right out and ask for help.

"She killed me." He thrust his hands deep into his jeans pockets, and looked out across the now dark pond. At his side, Sam simply nodded; yes, he'd already told them in his debriefing that he'd been killed.

However, as he'd also told them, while he had information relating to his time with the replicator-Carter, and also with Oma, Anubis, and the Others, that knowledge was bereft of experience - it was a collection of rote facts, nothing more. It wasn't experiential; he had no memory of the actual experiences associated with the information - the settings, sights, smells, activities, and feelings weren't there. He knew stuff, yes, but he had no idea where that knowledge had come from. Or at least he hadn't at the time of the debriefing.

He knew the repli-Carter had wanted to uncover the knowledge hidden in his mind. He knew he'd died at her hand. What Anubis was; what Oma had not, and then had, done about it; what was happening on Dakara: this was all information he had. He knew a lot of things, and in the knowing of them was vaguely aware that he knew next to nothing.

That was all changed now. "No," he clarified for her. "I remember it happening. I remember her killing me."

He felt the tension rise and then fall as, beside him, she froze for a split second and then relaxed. She was cautious, very reserved and careful, in asking the question, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

All the nitty gritty, gory details? Not really, no. But would he? Probably. Actually, yes, he realised, it was a certainty now that he was going to do that. He was going to tell her not just all the gory details about that, but about everything, and hope she understood what he needed from her. Daniel felt himself slide into a disconnected calm as he finally made the decision irrevocable.

"A big, sharp, steely blade-thing, the size of your arm. She ran me through, right through the chest. It hurt, oh, a lot. I remember the pain."

He remembered a lot more than the pain. He could see it all now, taste it, smell it. Feel it. The effort involved in somehow gaining control. The strain of keeping it. The immense satisfaction. But then an abrupt shift in venue that both surprised and frightened him; cold, malicious triumph on her face as he moved forward to re-engage her; the instant of confusion, then shock; and the unimaginable pain.

"Okay, I see now why you said you were dead." Sam gently rubbed a hand up his arm. "The memories will fade, Daniel. You're alive, you're here. That's what real."

If he weren't so surrealistically disconnected, he thought, he might actually be angry with her for that. Maybe. He wasn't entirely sure. Maybe he'd just be patient with her, knowing this wasn't exactly her forte. She meant well. "No, that's not why I said that," he whispered, more to himself than her. Distorted torn flesh, bloated, discoloured. Half-melted glistening brownish - That's why. That's why, Sam.

Something she said suddenly registered with him, and he looked at her, searching her face for a truth that didn't exist as he asked a question he knew she couldn't answer. "How do you know what's real, Sam? How do you know, from one minute to the next, if what you accept as being real, really is?"

Even in the forested dark of evening, he could see the depth of her confusion written all over her face. She opened her mouth, sputtering as she searched for and couldn't find a response, and finally just asked him, "Daniel, what is this all about?"

He needed to sit down for this. Look: she was wearing black leather shoes. Who wears black leather shoes in the scummy backyard of an old cabin?

"Daniel?" She'd sat alongside him. That was good, because maybe it meant she wouldn't be talking down to him. More of "the memories will fade, Daniel" crap just wasn't going to cut it here.

"The Asgaard, they, they..." He ineptly tried to tell it to her, his chest on fire, burning away coherence. He was starting it in the wrong place, in the hardest place, and it wasn't working. "They sent Thor. They wanted... something. Maybe still want it, I'm not sure. That's the big problem: I'm not sure. But, but," he held up one finger as he remembered a bright spot in that. "I have a hypothesis."

"Okay..." She sounded like someone who was agreeing with a raving lunatic in the hopes it'd help keep them calm. It was his fault, though; he knew that. He wasn't telling it right. He wasn't actually sure there was any right way, but that didn't mean this wasn't absolutely the wrong way. "Maybe we should back up just a little," she suggested, and he didn't mind a bit if she took control of the start of this. "You said something bad happened. It has something to do with the Asgaard?"

Oh yeah. Yes, and wouldn't Jack give Thor an earful if he knew about this. Or at least Daniel would like to think Jack would do that. "Yes. It happened Friday night - I think. It could have been early Saturday morning. That doesn't matter. Well actually it matters a lot; it just doesn't matter... well, right this minute." Despite the blathering, Sam nodded encouragingly, and so he carried on from there, finding it easier now that he had an actual starting point. "I went to bed early, at about ten, and I'm sure I fell asleep right away. We were supposed to meet at the airfield at seven, Saturday morning, and I had to pick you up first." But he didn't; he just couldn't. Sam nudged his shoulder, though, silently telling him she wasn't so hurt about being stood up now that she knew something had gone dreadfully wrong for him.

"Thor took me. Up to his ship. I don't know when; I didn't ask for the time." The shakiness in his voice was the hard edge of reality, pushing at the disconnected bubble tenuously protecting him. Daniel closed his eyes for a few moments, using one of Teal'c's meditation mantras to help block out the images that lurked on the other side. "That was stupid, in retrospect. I should have asked. Then I'd know."

"Uhm... you'd know what time it was when you were beamed up?" Sam asked him, with a baffled "don't mind me; just trying to make sure I'm getting this right" edge to her voice.

No. Yes. Yes, but no. No, the answer was no. God, he was never going to take off his watch when he went to bed, ever again. "No. It's not that simple," he told her, and repeated the Jaffa mantra to himself as the experience circled his protective bubble, trying to find a way in. He imagined the skin of the bubble thickening with each repetition, so that the images he could hear and see outside were visible but distorted enough so that they weren't so real. So they couldn't get at him.

He concentrated on trying to succor a protective disconnection, and off in what seemed the distant background he heard his own voice do the telling of it. Telling her how, clad just in an old, torn pair of sweatpants, he'd suddenly woken to find himself lying on the cold floor of an Asgaard ship.

Thor stood and watched him, silent and as inscrutable as ever, for long enough that Daniel started to wonder if it even was, in fact, Thor. But then he was greeted, confirming it. "Daniel Jackson. Welcome, once again, to the Daniel Jackson."

Daniel tentatively responded, "Uh, hi," as he slowly climbed to his feet and looked around. The small room he'd been beamed into was empty save for a typical Asgaard control panel, a large bank of what seemed analogous to computer servers, and two horizontal chambers similar to the kind Thor had beamed Jack, and then one of the human replicators, into in the past. And of course then there was Thor. And himself. Which made it pretty crowded, actually.

"Just you and me?" he asked Thor, waving a hand to indicate the absence of anyone else, most notably Jack and SG1.

"The Asgaard council has charged me with this mission," Thor advised, and despite the typically-Asgaard, evenly modulated tone of voice, Daniel thought that sounded pretty darned ominous. "Please be aware I consider this a private matter involving only yourself, Daniel. O'Neill has not been contacted." Ooh. Even more ominous than just ominous.

"A private matter?" Daniel felt cold and wrapped his arms around his bare chest, not entirely sure that the chill was solely environmental in origin. He'd never been aware of an Asgaard sending out vibes before, but he was now. Bad vibes.

"Is there a problem?" Thor asked him, with a sudden, obvious concern so uncharacteristic of the Asgaard that Daniel's sense of danger skyrocketed. Then, "Oh. That is the posture by which humans indicate the ambient temperature is too low for comfort, is it not?" Thor didn't wait for an answer. "Within the context of your current condition, that does appear the most likely interpretation. I apologise for the inconvenience. I was unaware of your state of undress at the time I initiated the transfer. I regret I cannot alter the temperature in this room, as current power consumption needs preclude that option."

Was Thor actually babbling? Okay, this was so not good. "It's all right," Daniel told him. "I'll live. Why am I here?"

Thor inclined his head toward Daniel. "The Asgaard council wish me to convey to you their most sincere appreciation for the important role you played in helping destroy the human replicators in your galaxy."

"Well, that's very nice. I'd say you're welcome, but I don't know that I did... uhm, had... that. An important role, I mean. In doing that. Any role, actually." Okay, now he was babbling. "That is, what I mean is, I'm not sure I did anything to help."

Thor was staring at him with such open curiosity and interest that something even more unusual than usual just had to be going on, Daniel was sure of it, and it was unnerving. "You did not? Or, you are unsure that you did?" Thor asked, and Daniel raised both hands in the air in an unspoken, helpless "I don't know". Thor clearly understood the gesture. "That is interesting. I will convey that information to the Asgaard council, once you and I have concluded our business."

Which is...? Did he really want to know, though? Thor padded across the room over to the furthest of the two horizontal chambers, and then turned back to face Daniel. "You are the only being we have access to who has recently returned from a non-corporeal plane, Daniel. The council is interested in examining the body you currently inhabit. There are indications that such examination might aid in our attempt to overcome the difficulties with our cloning process."

Daniel ran his hands over his chest. This body? Why? Boy, he sure hoped the answer wasn't anything he wouldn't want to hear. But he'd been thoroughly - exhaustively and then some, actually - tested at the SGC. This was a normal human body. His body. His body, that'd been converted to an alternate state of matter and gone with him to Oma-land, and then had returned with him, with just a few ascendedly repairs to the matrix so that it came back healthy and alive rather than maimed and dead. Just like the last time.

He asked, even though he suspected he wasn't going to get an answer that'd actually explain it. "Why? How can that help you? All our tests show this is just a normal human body." Right?

Thor blinked at him. "Asgaard technology is capable of investigating the composition and status of matter far more comprehensively than is Earth technology."

See? No real explanation. But okay, sure. Whatever he could do to help. Daniel moved to join Thor at the chamber, relieved this was all there was to his being scooped up by the Asgaard. "Of course. If it will help, I'm pleased to do it." The domed cover over the pod was opaque, like heavily frosted glass, but Daniel assumed the inside of it was just like the one Jack had been in. "So," he tapped on the surface of the dome, and left his hand splayed out on its surface, "I just lie down in here and you take some readings, or something?"

Thor tilted his head and stared at Daniel. "You misunderstand," he said. "The investigations required are extensive." He waved one long finger over a small yellow symbol on the side of the chamber. The symbol glowed orange, changed shape, and the opaque frosting on the dome rippled and then dissolved away.

Whoa! Daniel snatched his hand back. Whaa... what the hell is that?

"The Asgaard council has a proposition for you, Daniel."

That's... that's - is that...? Oh. Oh God. Can't be. It's impossible. His stomach cramped. Bile rose, and Daniel bent double, gasping for breath. No. Unwilling to reach out to the chamber to support himself, he fell to his knees, and then onto all fours. No, he didn't see that. He was wrong. It was a trick of the light or something.

Traitorously, his head turned to look up and confirm his denial visually, but Thor waved a finger over another symbol and the dome frosted over again. Daniel stared at him open-mouthed, unable to believe this was happening. Thor stood over him, blinking rapidly. "Are you all right, Daniel? I regret you have had this reaction." In utter shock, Daniel looked from Thor to the pod, retched, and then looked back to Thor again. The blinking escalated.

Not true. That couldn't be... be... oh no. Daniel coughed out a spatter of bile-tinged saliva and cleared his throat, needing to know. "Is that...? Is it..." But he couldn't do it. Couldn't say it.

"The Asgaard vessel 'Ymir', under Commander Bragi, made the discovery six of your days ago." Thor indicated the pod. "A representative contacted O'Neill, but upon learning from O'Neill of your unexpected return immediately realised the implications, and quite rightly decided not to mention the matter. It was instead brought to the Asgaard council for consideration."

Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. It's okay. It's all right. No! No it isn't. God! Daniel retched again, and then with shaking hands grabbed the rim of the chamber below the dome and pulled himself upright. He managed to force out, "Why?" It wasn't all he wanted to say, but it was a start.

"Why?" Thor parroted, tipping his head one way and then the other.

Agh. Daniel squeezed his eyes closed, and swallowed the bitter bile lurking at the back of his throat... or tried to. It turned into a painful gag it took a moment to recover from, before he could elaborate. "Why; what do you want from me? Why am I here?"

"To which you do you refer?" Thor innocently and quite sincerely asked, gesturing toward Daniel and then toward the pod. Daniel very nearly vomited on him. Thor must have taken the gagging as some sort of comprehensible response, because he answered without Daniel having to clarify his question. "As I said, the Asgaard council has charged me with the task of presenting you their offer, and carrying out the exchange. The body you currently inhabit may prove of great value in our attempt to ensure the future longevity of the Asgaard race."

What? Oh please make this stop. Daniel became aware of a low hum and the subtle feel of some sort of energy radiating from the chamber. He jerked away from it, stumbling as he scuttled backward on his knees. "Carrying out the exchange?" he blurted out. "Exchange? You have to be kidding!" His eyes were drawn to the chamber despite himself, despite that Thor had made the dome opaque. This must be a nightmare or something. It couldn't really be happening, because it simply wasn't possible. "This is impossible," he heard his own voice choke out. "You've made a mistake. That can't be... it can't."

"It most assuredly is, Daniel. Why would you believe us to be mistaken?" Thor looked at the chamber, and then suddenly swivelled his head to regard Daniel. His eyes lit up with supposed new understanding, and once again he answered his own question on Daniel's behalf. "Ah, I see. The form is significantly damaged, and you have had only a moment of observation in which to confirm identification." He reached out toward the yellow symbol. "I will deactivate the -"

"No!" Daniel shouted, reaching out to intercept Thor's hand. "God, no."

Fortunately, Thor reacted by quickly withdrawing. Daniel held a shaking hand up to his mouth, mumbling, "No, don't, don't." The feel of his hand against his lips, the feel of his breath against his hand... his hand... his hand... his mind stuttered badly on the entire concept, and suddenly he couldn't stand the touch. He jerked the hand away, and stared at it. "This isn't right. What the hell is going on?" he moaned, seeing the palm and five fingers but not fully recognising what they were anymore.

This time Thor was at least on topic, even though he was on an entirely different page than Daniel affectively. "Yes. The mechanism by which a being achieved ascension has always been believed to include the integration of the transformed corporeal form with the consciousness. As you are aware, the ascended have the ability to manipulate the state of matter and energy."

Daniel slowly drew his gaze away from the hand to instead stare in disbelief at Thor, unable to fully process that Thor was so calmly and dispassionately rehashing a previously delivered educational dissertation at a time like this. "However," Thor blithely continued, apparently unaware of the incongruity Daniel was experiencing, "up until now the prevailing belief was that a primary matrix of an original was used as a template for all transformations of matter by the Ancients, and thus the ascended. Especially in the case of entities as complex as living beings such as us, Daniel, all transformations were assumed to rely on the presence of a pre-existing matrix which could then be manipulated, adapted, or reconstituted as desired."

Thor folded his hands in front of him, and, obviously assuming Daniel was right there with him on this, delivered what Daniel blurrily realised was intended as the coup de grace. "As I am sure you can imagine, the function of the weapon found at Dakara has had a massive impact on our thinking, Daniel. It implied that those theories may be incorrect, or at least incomplete, but in the absence of identifiable new constructions, those implications have been unexaminable."

Daniel was momentarily fixated on Thor's mouth. All that confirmation spewing out. This was impossible. "Yeah," he inanely contributed as there was a pause in Thor's recitation. Thor gravely nodded at him as if he'd said something actually sensible, and Daniel became aware that a ball of incipient hysteria was expanding somewhere inside him. But that was all right; he wouldn't explode or anything because it could just join that other stuff in escaping his chest through that honking big gory -

"Yes indeed. And the Asgaard scientists share your interest, Daniel. This discovery," Thor waved furst toward the chamber and then at Daniel, "presents us with an opportunity to examine a body which is apparently a such entirely new construction, created and assembled from previously unrelated constituent matter. It is fascinating."

Daniel tore his gaze off Thor and dropped back down onto his hands and knees. "Oh yeah, just fascinating," he mumbled to the floor, and crawled away. Fascinating. Right. No, Thor, try again, try a different word. Try shocking. Or disorienting. Or, no, here's one: horrifying. He made his way on hands and knees to the far wall, where he dropped onto his butt and leaned back, eyes closed, wanting nothing more than to open them again and see his bedroom. To see anything except what was in that chamber, actually. The Asgaard wanted him to...? God, it was inconceivable. He must be misunderstanding this. This had to be a miscommunication.

He wasn't certain how long he sat there, silently struggling to deny both the glimpse of what he'd seen in the chamber, and the worryingly irrational fear that there might be something not entirely human about the body he'd been walking around in. Thor didn't intrude on him for what seemed like a long time, but Daniel couldn't really be sure, because each and every second he sat there with those half-formed images poking at his sanity seemed like forever. And it wasn't solving anything, was it? He forced his eyes open, not at all surprised that he was actually disappointed when he saw the two chambers rather than his bedroom furniture. He was halfway to looneyland here; why shouldn't he have half-expected to have been in his bedroom?

He stomped on his runaway emotions, and cleared his throat. "What exactly are you asking me to do, Thor?" he asked for what felt like the millionth time, hoping that this time the answer would at least be more substantive than the seeming equivalent of "we are asking you to die".

Thor walked over to the control panel. "With the discovery of your original body, the one you currently possess becomes superfluous to your needs. The Asgaard council feels it is in everyone's best interests that an exchange take place."

Nope, stomping hadn't helped, evidently. "Into that?" Daniel leaped to his feet and shouted it, giving vent to his horror even though, underneath it all, he knew it wasn't as simple as all that. Thor would never do that to him. "That's - it's, it's dead, Thor," he pointed out the obvious.

"Yes," Thor agreed, studying the panel in front of him. "However, since its discovery our scientists have been preparing the programming required for an attempt to repair and revive it." He manipulated the control panel, and a complex series of diagrams and images appeared on the console's viewscreen. "It is an effort far in excess of what we have done in the past, but our scientists believe it may be successful enough for the body to accommodate you. It is conceivable, however, that the attempt may fail in providing sufficient health for a normal life. In that event, a clone of that body can be grown for your use."

Thor turned to Daniel, and blinked three times in rapid succession. "Of course," he added, "in such an event, for the time it would take for the clone to mature we would offer you the choice of remaining in the partially repaired body, or having your consciousness temporarily transferred to an alternate receptacle."

What? Daniel was still two pages behind. Repair that? And stick him back into it, even if there was something still...? Daniel felt dizzy, and a flush of uncomfortable warmth flooded through him. The possibility he might actually pass out if Thor continued talking about this occurred to him, and he raised a hand, stuttering, "Wait. Just wait. Stop. You, you... it's been... it was out there for..."

"Yes," Thor agreed with Daniel's words, completely missing the sentiment behind them. Instead of stopping, he carried on, providing information that Daniel definitely didn't want. "There is significant disruption, in addition to that which is normally expected due to prolonged exposure to the vacuum of space. As you must have noticed, the nature and position of the open wound have contributed, in that the expansion of gases in the gastrointestinal tract and the resultant pressure on the diaphragm have -"

"Stop!" Daniel felt the pressure in his gut, felt the slow shift inside him, and the wet flow and slither of things that should never see the light of day crowd at the hole in his chest. Oh please, stop. He refused to look down at himself, even though he really, really needed to. What if he saw not that it was false, was just his imagination, but that it was...

"I apologise, Daniel." It took a moment for Daniel to fully realise Thor was apologising for more than just the too-graphic description. At first, the truly miserable expression on Thor's face didn't register with Daniel - the mostly immobile features of the Asgaard often defied interpretation, and Daniel wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders right now, empathetically-speaking. But there it was, and as Daniel recognised it he realised something.

"You didn't want to do this, did you?" he asked Thor, certain of the answer. "That's why you put it that way, that they'd 'charged' you with carrying out this mission." Another thought occurred to him, and he had the strong but irrational urge to bolt, to just get up and run, as he voiced it. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to run to. "I don't have a choice in this, do I? They want this body, and if I decide I don't want to do this they've told you to just take it anyway, haven't they."

"To the contrary, it was my preference that I be given this assignment, Daniel," Thor told him. "Some members of the council are not pleased I am the one dealing with this matter. Please understand: it is important this be resolved to their satisfaction, as soon as possible."

Oh God. Now? "I need more time, Thor. I need time to think about this." Daniel pointed at the chamber that contained his ruined body. "Right now, I can't, until I have a chance to..." He trailed off. He was about to say that he couldn't make that choice until he at least had a day or so to think it over, maybe talk to Jack... but the moment the words "I can't" came out of his mouth Daniel knew there wasn't anything left to add. Right now and for the immediate foreseeable future, the answer had to be no. Maybe in a while, in a few weeks or months... or when they could show him an alive, unimpaired Daniel-body wearing his face and his everything else, and his mind didn't replace its intact flesh with the horror he'd just seen... maybe then. But not now.

Daniel didn't need to say it. Thor clearly already knew, and nodded solemnly, possibly regretfully. "I must report to the council, Daniel. I will return." He fussed with the control panel longer than need be, gave Daniel a long, slow blink, and then beamed himself out of the room, leaving Daniel alone.

Daniel passed time sitting in a collapsed huddle on the floor in the corner, hugging himself as he steadily stared at the multi-coloured winking lights on the servers. A tight hug to hold himself together. Pretty blinking lights, replacing other sights. Gotta keep the good stuff inside and the bad stuff outside, after all. He had two bodies, both existing at the same time; imagine that. One of them was altogether obscenely dead, mind you, but it existed all the same, and wasn't that just one of the biggest surprises he'd had in quite some time? Okay well no, he'd had some other pretty huge surprises lately as well, hadn't he, one of them being the experience of having been run right through the chest with a - Whoa!

Daniel jerked upright, vivid images, sounds and smells, and feelings suddenly filling his consciousness. Things he'd known about but hadn't remembered actually experiencing, before this very moment. Her wrist held tightly in his hand - but it wasn't a wrist, it was a construction of discrete interlocking blocks; somehow, he could feel them, and see and follow their interconnections in his mind. Then the abrupt, massive wrench at his brain when she momentarily escaped him. But he still had control; he still had hold of the rest of them, and in another moment he'd have her back too.

The feel, sight, and sound of the blade entering him exploded in his mind. Its grinding push through; the squelch and tear of its reversal. Agh. The pain. A sheet of white agony. Daniel clutched at his chest, unable to breathe. She was killing him. He was dying. Worst of all, he knew he'd failed, as his eyes slid closed in death.

He moved, fruitlessly trying to flee the pain and returning memories. He crawled away, directionless except for the need to escape, only stopping when he ran right into an obstruction too big to find his way past with his eyes closed. He collapsed against it and rode out the storm, realising it was temporary. There was no point in trying to run away. He'd been through this before - the memories would take him for awhile, would take control of his mind and senses, but then they'd let go and he'd start the process of learning to cope with them. He knew that from direct experience, so he stopped fighting them.

When he could breathe freely again, and could feel his limbs and control them properly, and the images had faded enough so that he could see past them, Daniel opened his eyes and found himself curled up at the base of the chamber that held his corpse. He pulled himself to his feet, his eyes drawn to the frosted dome, part of him wanting to reach out and activate the yellow symbol, while the rest of him screamed in horror that no, he really didn't want to see that again. But how bad could it be, considering he'd just made it through experiencing his own violent, agonising, and vividly gruesome death? He stood beside it, morbid curiosity seeking a way past fear and abhorrence. Sam would want to see it. She'd be sickened by it, yes, but her scientific side would want to observe the damage and compare it to the current base of human knowledge on the subject.

But then the air beside the control panel shimmered into whiteness, and abruptly Thor was back to save him from his own pending masochistic tendencies.

Or... not.

The opaque coating of the dome rippled. Daniel stared at his own hands to confirm that no, he hadn't touched anything. "The Asgaard council would like to impress upon you the importance of their request, Daniel, and to offer you their reassurances." The dome cleared to full transparency, and Daniel quickly turned his head away. Not quite quickly enough. Nothing short of not having looked in that direction at all, in the first place, would be quickly enough. "To that end," Thor continued, "They ask that I demonstrate to you that it is indeed possible to return your previous body to an inhabitable state."

Uhh, no. That's not necessary, Daniel wanted to scream. No demonstrations, please. But his head turned of its own accord to bring him face to face with it. Bodily liquids boil, gases expand, cooling occurs over a variable period of time. Spilled blood congeals and freezes. Cells... cells... do that. Ah God. He felt light-headed and that uncomfortable flood of warmth swept through him again, only this time stronger, faster, without relief. His vision dimmed at the peripheries, and his knees turned to jelly. Daniel realised he was close to passing out. But he couldn't tear his eyes away from the grisly sight in front of him.

Somewhere under the low roar that started up in his head, he heard Thor talking. "The process is very complex, and the power consumption is enormous. I will only run the initial portion of the programming, and then pause the repair." Daniel jumped as something suddenly popped into existence on top of the chamber. A small, thin disc of some kind. The adrenaline that spiked in him at its abrupt appearance set the threatening faint back a pace, and Daniel locked his knees against its imminent recovery. He felt dreadful, and knew it was only a matter of time before he hit the deck.

"You may need this," Thor told him. "The power consumption required by the process may compromise life support on the ship. I will shut down the process prior to that becoming a threat to us, however should I advise you to do so, you must use that device." Daniel picked it up with shaking fingers, the damaged eyes of the body below seeming to watch his every movement. The disc, about the size of his palm, was pliable, with a slick, spongy consistency that dangerously heightened his nausea.

He was aware of Thor off to his left, working at the control panel. "It is a temporary emergency breathing device capable of sustaining the correct level of oxygen in your bloodstream for several minutes," Thor told him. "If required, place it over your mouth and nose. It will adjust in shape and size as necessary." Daniel looked at the disc in his hand, inadvertently seeing past it to what had become of him. The dizziness and heat and darkness swooped back down on him, and he clenched his fist around the disc, wondering why the hell he was even trying not to give in to it.

"Daniel." Then, again, "Daniel." Thor was calling him, Daniel realised, and he looked over to him, hearing the sudden, soft urgency in Thor's voice as he called to him yet again. "All will be well, Daniel Jackson," Thor told him when he knew Daniel was finally paying attention. Then, as he did something on the panel, Thor much more dispassionately advised, "The process begins."

The hum and sense of energy around the chamber heightened, and Daniel looked down at it. Looked inside it - saw what was happening inside. And that did it quite nicely.

He squeezed his fist tightly, feeling the pliable Asgaard disk try to conform to the shape of his hand even as it was being folded over on itself and crushed by his fingers. "I must have passed out," he said. "I passed out and when I woke up I was lying on the floor in my bedroom, and it was four in the morning."

Sam didn't say a word. Didn't even move. He waited too calmly, distant and safe behind the walls of his protective bubble, but nothing came from the darkness beside him other than the sound of heavy breathing. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and offered the disc to her. "I was still holding this. It was real. It did happen."

She didn't take it from him. She just moaned softly, a barely audible heartfelt sound, and he realised her lack of response hadn't been due to her not believing him. She did. She did believe it, even without the disc. The edges of his bubble thinned, and lulled into a false sense of security, he didn't try to shore them up. "And you have no idea what time it was when you were first beamed aboard," she said, and the bubble wobbled so unexpectedly and precariously that Daniel found himself actually physically reaching out into the dark as if to grab hold of it to stabilise it.

"My God." The bubble's cohesiveness balanced on the edge of Sam's astounded voice, and then abruptly burst as she said it out loud: "Oh my God, Daniel. You have no idea which body you're in."

Daniel pressed his fists against his chest and struggled to remain in control as the memory of a shaft of bright pain, impossible to ignore, speared through him. In the dark of night on the ground beside Jack's pond, his imagination replaced the feel of the t-shirt under his fists with that of obscenely ruined flesh, and showed him the gaping slash and the damaged tissue that had migrated to escape the pressure of the expanding gases in his ever so freshly dead body. It showed him the onset the Asgaard's repair programming, and no, no, he had no idea which body he was in. But! But, but... he raised one finger in the air, letting out a semi-hysterical laugh - he had a hypothesis.

"What?" she asked, and her voice was so full of concern and acceptance that the rest of the lurking hysterical laughter almost escaped as sobs. "Why the laugh?"

Because he was going irretrievably batty? Because coping was over-rated, only for other people whose body image didn't include the sorts of horrors he saw when he looked at himself? Or because it was just a couple of days on, and far too early yet for him to have sorted out which end was up? All that came out, though, was, "No reason."

"No, I'd say not," Sam agreed. She reached out to find his hand, and he let her curl her fingers around his, even though the alien ants protested the contact.

An uneasy silence fell between them. It lasted long enough that the feel of her fingers on his changed to the feel of something else entirely, and he felt ill. Faint and sick, and infinitely tired. He thought about Altarian robots and Goa'uld sarcophagi and Asgaard clones and consciousnesses transferred into computer systems, and wondered why in the world he was giving this whole thing any more than just a quick blink before moving on from it, and he wondered what would happen next. What would happen to him? He realised the answer to that last question partly rested in the definition of what he'd just called 'him', and the thought was both reassuring and terrifying. What he considered the essence of him would carry on no matter the shape it wore, but he wasn't naive nor facile enough to believe for even a split second that meant the body had no influence on the state and nature of that essence. A Daniel Jackson placed in the body of a three-toed sloth would, in time, become a very different Daniel Jackson from the Daniel Jackson he was now. Which meant - what? Nothing. It meant nothing. It didn't answer the question of what was going to happen next, and it didn't help answer the question of how to deal with this.

Nothing could help. Nothing, and no one. Not until he knew the answer to the big question. Don't look, don't want to know, there's no proof don't look for proof, part of him protested loudly, trying to drown out his own voice as he forced himself to break the silence by telling Sam, "I formulated a hypothesis."

She tightened her fingers around his ever so slightly. "You did?"

"Yeah. I identified the problem, came up with a hypothesis, and now all I have to do is gather enough data to come to a conclusion," he explained. "That's what I was doing when you came out here. Gathering relevant data."

Sam let go of his hand and repositioned herself so she was facing him square-on. "Daniel, are you sure you want to do that? To depersonalise the situation like that?"

Oh, the irony. But he wasn't depersonalising it, anyway. To actually achieve that would be impossible, unfortunately for him. "I'm not," he objected. "I'm simply considering the problem from an objective point of view." In the hope it'd help prevent him puking all over her black leather shoes while they talked about this, because unless he was able to somehow remove himself from the words, they would be accompanied by all sorts of not-pretty pictures and dire implications for his future.

Moonlight filtered through the hazy cloud cover and lit enough of Sam for him to see the depth of the frown on her face. There was even a frown in her voice. "Okay. So, uhm, what's your hypothesis?"

Don't say it, his inner voice warned him. Don't say it out loud, or it'll come true. When you say stuff like that out loud, it always comes true. But that wasn't a very scientific, objective attitude, now was it, so he ignored the warning and said it anyway. "I presently reside in the body which was recovered from space."

By way of clarification - which shouldn't be necessary with any well-constructed hypothesis statement, by the way, he chided himself - he added, "Thor repaired the body recovered from space while I was unconscious, transferred my consciousness from the body I returned in to that body recovered from space, and then returned me, in that body, back to my bedroom, keeping the body I returned to the SGC in for Asgaard experimentation. All against my will." Oh God.

There was a long pause before Sam said anything. Then, "I see. I assume you also have a problem statement. So, did you arrive at that hypothesis by inductive or deductive means, and what -" She broke off abruptly, and startled him by just as abruptly slamming a fist into the ground. "Damn it. No. I won't do this. It isn't right." Her voice broke on the last word, and she swooped in on him to suddenly envelope him in a hug. "You use whatever approach helps keep the horrible images out of your head, Daniel," she whispered into his ear. "And I'll be right here, I promise. I want to help, but I won't treat you as an object of analysis. I won't. I refuse."

The ants were screaming, their pointed little feet burning thousands of holes into his skin. He extricated himself from her with a squirm and a shove, knowing the rejection would hurt her, but he couldn't help that. "Sam, I can't..." he started to explain, but didn't go any further, because the "I can't" really did say it all right now. But even as he thought that, he knew the operative words were the "right now" part; it was early on yet.

"It's all right. I understand," she assured him. "Daniel, I know this is probably going to sound trite and overly simplistic, but, well, I'd like to have it said right off the bat, anyway. You could be in, I don't know, the body of a hagfish, and I'd..."

A slime eel? Ew. He'd much rather be in a three-toed sloth. "I know, Sam. You don't have to say it." He took a big step in the right direction - damn the ants and full speed ahead - and reached for her hand. He intertwined his fingers with hers and told both her and himself, "You know this is just temporary, right? I'll work through it in time."

She nodded. "I'll help in whatever way I can."

A sudden noise and bright shaft of light from the back of the cabin cut through the evening. A yoo-hoo call followed, pinging out the open door and across the lawn. "Hey out there... Carter? Daniel? Almost bedtime, kiddies."

Daniel sighed and hung his head as Sam answered Jack. "Yes, Sir. It's not a school night, Sir."

The flippancy disappeared from Jack's voice as he replied, "No, it's not, Carter. You two aren't doing anything you shouldn't be doing out there in the dark, are you?" Daniel knew that what he was really asking was if she and Daniel were all right, if they were solving whatever had so obviously come between them.

"No, Sir."

"Okay. Well..." There was a pause, no doubt during which Jack was wondering if he ought to come out there and check on them. Daniel started a countdown: three, two, one... "You guys okay, then?" And yes, we have lift-off.

He turned and stared at Sam in alarm as she answered, "No, Sir." God, no, Sam, what are you doing? Don't bring him out here.

But she knew what she was doing, because Jack's voice lifted in obvious relief. "Ah, right. Good. That's good, then. Do you want some light out there?"

Daniel's "No, Jack," came out right on top of Sam's "No thank you, Sir," and then the outside floodlights promptly snapped on.

"Okey-dokey. Have fun, kids." The back door closed with a thud, and the floodlights stayed lit.

Sam sniggered slightly, but Daniel found nothing amusing in Jack's antics. The sudden light hurt his eyes, and he squeezed them closed. In fact, what Jack had done set his eyes to stinging so badly that he dropped Sam's hand and pressed the heels of both his hands into his eyes. Damn it. Oh God damn it, Jack, you insensitive bastard. Can't tell you anything; you never listen, you just hear what you want to hear and do what you want to do, and God, Jack, tell me what to do, tell me it's going to be all right.

"I have to tell him," he whispered into the night air, knowing and admitting it, despite being afraid of the consequences.

Sam rubbed his shoulder. "He won't let anyone take you from us. Not even the Asgaard."

That popped his eyes open. He laughed; it was a bitter, raw sound. "The Asgaard already have me."

Sam stopped the gentle massage and shook his shoulder, scolding him. "No, they don't. The Asgaard have a body. We don't know which one. We won't know what Thor did or didn't do until we ask him. You said he knew how you felt, and he told you everything would be all right... well, for all you know he destroyed the body they found." She placed a firm hand on his other shoulder as well, and turned him so that he was facing her. "No one has you, but us, Daniel. That's not going to change. We won't let it."

Sure, Sam. He nodded, because he was just too tired to do much more than that, and pulled away from her. Lying down on his stomach, he toyed with the coarse grass in front of him. Sam gave his back a light rub, and then stood up. The floodlights sent a distorted shadow of her stretching almost all the way across the pond. "Do you want me tell him for you?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"No. I'll do it. Just... not tonight. Not yet." Because the first thing Jack would do would be to boot it back to the SGC and try to contact Thor. And whether Thor responded right away or not, Daniel would be screwed, because really, he honestly didn't know if he was coming or going. He didn't think he could live without knowing, but he wasn't up to finding out the truth either. It was a sad state to be in, and it made him angry at himself. He ripped the grass he was toying with out by the roots. He was such a wimp.

"Okay. Whatever you think, Daniel. But when you do tell him, well, maybe I can help. If you want me to." Sam stood there and didn't seem to know what to say or do next, which Daniel could understand, because damn it, neither could he. "Are you coming?" she eventually asked him, gesturing toward the cabin, and he shook his head again. No, not yet.

She left him, a grotesque, growing shadow that ate up everything in its path following her across the lawn as she walked toward where the near floodlight was mounted by the back porch. He watched it with distaste that had nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with the darkness that was eating at him.

The shadow suddenly disappeared, and her voice came floating across to him. He turned his head to see her standing on the porch, past the light. "Daniel, I'm sorry. I have a question about all this... something I don't understand. Do you mind?"

Hell no. He could appreciate her dissatisfaction with not understanding - God knows he was experiencing enough of that himself right now. He probably wouldn't have an answer for her, though. In any case, he waved a hand in acquiescence, producing a grotesque moving shadow of his own. She saw it and left the porch, and when she was halfway between the cabin and him, she asked it. "You said before that Oma interceded when you died, taking you to some halfway house or something, right?"

"Yes. She said I had to choose between death or ascension," he confirmed for her. But of course there were more options than that, weren't there, Oma, he thought with a flash of anger. Ones he still didn't know about, because she "couldn't go into it". There had to have been, because he was here now, wasn't he?

"Okay, so... what do you suppose your body was doing floating out in space?"

Oh, not a heck of a lot, I bet, he facetiously thought, but answered her with all due seriousness despite the way she'd worded the question. And a damned good answer it was, too. "I have no idea," he told her, and rolled over onto his back to stare up at the stars. Dismissed, she left him alone, and just after she went inside the cabin the floodlights abruptly turned off. In gratitude for that bit of insight on her part, he felt an almost-smile touch his lips, and felt slightly heartened by that small sign of his own resilience.

Daniel stared up at the cold dark of space, where powerful beings with nothing better to do than trivialise life not within their inner circle did whatever the hell they did for whatever the hell obscure reasons they wanted. "I have no idea," he repeated, rolling the words around in his mouth, interested to discover that although they tasted a lot better than he thought they would, they weren't enough to fill his appetite. Not this time.

He'd talk to Jack. Whatever happened to him after that, well, he had no idea. After all, how deep is the river if you cannot see the bottom? That didn't matter, though, did it, Oma and the ascended and Thor and the Asgaard, and whoever-whatever else wanted to try taking a bite out of his ass. It didn't goddamn matter at all, because he was going to just keep on swimming.

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Within the context and limitations of the site Disclaimer, Any and All original characters, situations, story line, dialogue and narrative © May 10, 2005, the author