Part I

It was probably the oddest thought he’d ever had, and Daniel Jackson had been known for some odd ones during his tenure in “respectable” archaeology. Like the notion that the Egyptian pyramids had been built 5000 years earlier than previously assumed, the one that had gotten him laughed out of his last lecture as an academic and started him on the most unexpected leg of his life’s journey. Nevertheless, once he was alert enough to really reflect on the thought he’d awoken with, he was pretty certain it surpassed them all for sheer strangeness: his bed was too comfortable.

Of course, as coherent thought began to return to him, the reason for that sank in, and his spirit sank with it.

He was no longer on Abydos. The bed underneath him belonged to the US Air Force, in an empty barracks room on base at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Earth. It had a real mattress, not the pile of fur and rough-woven rugs that he’d slowly grown accustomed to over the past year. The soft pressure of his wife’s body against his wasn’t missing because Sha’re had risen with the dawn to start their day, but because he was truly alone.

Jack O’Neill had offered Daniel the use of his guestroom, but he’d been too numb to accept. Somehow, going outside felt too permanent–if he looked up and saw the stars of his childhood littering the sky, what felt like a vague, unreal nightmare would suddenly become hideously, painfully real.

Sha’re was gone.

The thought almost choked him. It was a struggle to draw another breath; he was drowning in the memories that washed over him like high tide. Skaara, taken by the serpent guards who came through the Stargate, and Sha’re…

“Shhh, don’t try to talk…”

“Skaara…they took Skaara…I tried to stop them, but…”

His hands were trembling as much as the shoulders they cradled, and his voice even more so. “I know–Colonel O’Neill and his men will go after him–“

“No! You must find him, my Dani’el…promise me you will find him!”

“Sha’re, if you think I’m going to leave you–“

Her hand tightened on his arm and she let out a faint cry of pain as one of the soldiers Jack had brought with him tried to determine the severity of the staff wound in her side. “You must go,” Sha’re insisted. “You have to bring Skaara home…my father must not lose both his children…”

“He’s not going to lose you–“

“Promise me, Dani’el!”

He closed his eyes, still fighting to cling to his denial of the truth that was becoming more painfully obvious with each weakening breath she drew. “All right…I promise…”

He had lost her. They had both lost her. Oh, God…Sha’re…

And now here he was, back on Earth, with the only door back to the world that had been his home now shut for a year, until the day he’d promised to return with Skaara, or never at all. Promised to return because it had been the last thing she asked of him…to find her brother and bring him home.

Why, Sha’re? Why did you make me give you my word that I would find him? If only she’d saved her strength instead, maybe she could have survived–

Do you blame me then, my husband? Her troubled voice echoed in his mind as clearly as if she were lying beside him, instead of beneath the hot, desert soil of Abydos, worlds away.

No! No, I don’t blame you, Sha’re…God, I could never blame you…I blame myself…

He did, too–he blamed himself for her death, and with justification no one could dispute. He should never have unburied the Gate after they’d discovered the cartouche chamber. He should never have left Sha’re behind while he took the Colonel and Captain-Doctor Carter to see it. God, he should have evacuated the pyramid as soon as Jack told him that someone like Ra had come through the Gate on Earth…

Too many should haves and shouldn’t haves; between that and the mattress, it was no wonder sleep couldn’t hold him.

There was no clock in the room, but he didn’t really need one to know he hadn’t slept long. There were no clocks on Abydos either, after the battery in his watch finally gave out. He’d gradually learned to tell time by pure instinct, and right now his body was telling him that he’d only been asleep for an hour or two at most.

Unfortunately, his mind was telling him that chances of adding to that number were slim to none. Only pure exhaustion had driven him out of the waking world in the first place; now that he’d been reminded of the waking nightmare that was just waiting to haunt his dreams, even trying to go back to sleep seemed futile.

Daniel sighed and clambered out of the bed. If he couldn’t sleep, he needed to find something to occupy his mind until morning. Something other than the memory of his wife dying in his arms.

He got a few suspicious looks from various MPs and other personnel as he wandered aimlessly up and down corridors. Pity most of the staff had been hired after he stayed behind on Abydos–otherwise they would’ve gotten used to his late night ramblings back when he’d been struggling to decipher the cover stone. The difference being, this time he was questing for far more than coffee; he was searching for peace of mind.

Something he strongly suspected he wouldn’t find within the walls of this mountain, if he ever found it again at all.

He rounded another corner and was surprised to see a thin band of light seeping out from under a door further down the hall. Feeling foolishly insect-like, he gravitated slowly towards it. If inertia kept resting objects at rest then curiosity must surely be its antithesis, for it never failed to stir him to movement.

The door was shut, but only lightly, for the light pressure of his hand raised to knock had inadvertently swung it open to reveal the slightly disheveled form of Captain Carter hunched over a desk spread with black-and-white photographs. Stills from her videotape of the cartouche chamber, most likely.

Wide, startled blue eyes met his above a mouth open in surprise. “Dr. Jackson.”

“Ah, Captain Carter, I…I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I…the door was…ah…and the light…”

“No, it’s okay,” she interrupted his broken attempt at an explanation, fumbling to hide the pictures on the desk for a moment before giving up and offering him an awkward smile. “Come on in. Coffee?”

“Please.”

What the hell–as he’d already concluded, it wasn’t like he was going to be getting any more sleep tonight anyway. “So what’s your excuse?” he quipped dryly.

Carter blinked at him. “For what?”

“Still being awake.”

She flushed. “I guess I just…got caught up in what I was doing and lost track of time.”

Daniel couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Sounds familiar. When I was trying to figure out the cover stone, I did some of my best thinking at three in the morning.”

Captain Carter glanced at the clock and smiled. “Well, it’s 2:54 now, so pull up a stool.”

He moved immediately to obey the teasing command, startled by how much that simple phrase had lifted his spirits: Pull up a stool. Help me. I need you.

Okay, so he was probably overanalyzing–she didn’t need him; if she had, she would’ve come pounding on his door hours ago, not waited for insomnia to bring him to hers. Still…it was nice to feel useful. Since Sha’re had died in his arms only hours ago, he’d felt nothing but a helpless, raging grief. Helpless to save her, powerless to keep his promise to her. This–taking the abstract promise of that now-hated chamber and striving to make something real of it–was something he could do.

“What exactly are you working on?”

She straightened up a little on her stool. “I’m writing a program for the dialing computer, to compensate for stellar drift on the expanding universe model.”

“Oh.” So much for feeling useful. “Maybe I should just–”

“No, stay. Please.” Carter’s voice stopped him before he could climb off the stool and she smiled sheepishly. “This is just as much your project as it is mine–embarrassing as it is to admit, I probably never would’ve thought of this without you.”

Daniel grimaced, flashing back involuntarily to that moment of connection they’d shared in the cartouche chamber, heedless of the danger faced by those they’d left behind in the pyramid. It had been so long since he’d been able to converse with someone on an intellectual level that her “I knew I’d like you” had pleased him far, far more than it should have. Maybe that was why he’d lost Sha’re–maybe in some cruel way, Fate was punishing him for forming such an instant rapport with a woman other than his wife.

Reading his expression, the blonde Captain smiled ruefully and ducked her head in embarrassment. “I am sincerely sorry, Dr. Jackson…about Sha’re.” Her voice was quiet, her sympathy real and laced with regret.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“If we hadn’t re-established contact with Abydos–”

“–we wouldn’t have had any warning at all,” he insisted. “And if I’d just left the Gate buried like I was supposed to, you wouldn’t have been able to re-establish contact in the first place…and Abydos would be safe, but Earth would still be in danger,” he admitted finally.

Now there was a question for the Universe–if he could go back and save his wife, knowing it might be at the expense of the planet of his birth…could he still do it? Daniel shivered, not really wanting to know the answer.

“We’ll find him,” she promised. “The bastard who did this…as soon as Feretti’s awake enough to give us those symbols–”

“If he saw them. I know.” He flashed her a genuinely grateful smile. “Now I just have to figure out how to convince General Hammond to let me on that team.”

“Well, I don’t know if my recommendation counts for anything,” she offered with a small smile. “But I think you proved on the first Abydos mission what a valuable asset you could be to an off-world team.”

Daniel blushed. “Proved it by virtue of what, exactly? Lying about being certain I could get us home? Inadvertently convincing Kasuf that we were gods and getting myself a wife in the process? Bringing down the wrath of Ra on the people for taking in his enemies, or lulling them into a false sense of safety after Ra’s death?” His tone was wry and self-deprecating.

“You didn’t really lie about getting the team home, because you did get them home. And you also found a way to eliminate the threat from Ra without having to kill the people of Abydos,” the Captain argued in counterpoint. “I’d say that definitely made you an asset to the team–if that bomb had been detonated on the surface, we would’ve killed all those people for nothing. This ‘Ra-lookalike’ still would’ve come here, and we wouldn’t have any way to fight him because we’d still be looking in the wrong place.”

There was a long pause while they both considered the other’s words. Then…

“Getting yourself a wife in the process?”

The light pink tinge in his cheeks not only returned, but also deepened several shades. “Ah…Sha’re was sort of a…a gift, I guess you’d say. From the elders of Abydos.”

All of a sudden, all the camaraderie faded from her eyes, replaced by indignation. “A gift? And you accepted??”

“No!” he protested, quickly amending it with, “Not at first. I…um…only pretended to.”

“Doctor Jackson–!”

“You have to understand, in their culture, for a leader such as Kasuf to offer his daughter as a gift to a visiting dignitary is a sign of great respect and honor. To refuse would have been an insult of the first magnitude–”

Captain Carter was not appeased. “So? She’s still a person, not a…a puppy to be given away as soon as it’s old enough to be separated from its mother!”

“Captain-Doctor, you saw Sha’re and me together–do you honestly believe that I considered her no more than property?” he stated quietly.

That took a little of the fight out of her one-woman picket line. She sighed. “No.”

“It was for her sake that I pretended in the first place, to protect her from being punished for failing to please me. But what you don’t realize…what I forgot too…is that Sha’re didn’t understand my apparent rejection any more than her father would have. She thought I didn’t want her. That I didn’t think she was the bravest, most beautiful–”

He stopped, his throat too tight to continue.

“I’m sorry,” Carter almost whispered. “I didn’t know.”

Daniel smiled weakly. “My parents were Egyptologists. After they died…I guess you could say Ancient Egypt itself became sort of my surrogate family, at least in my mind. It was my one surviving connection to them. Going to Abydos…meeting Sha’re…it was like that imaginary family I’d created for myself, made up of people who had been dead and buried for thousands of years, suddenly just…came to life.”

That brought a faint smile to the Captain’s lips as well.

“Many cultures in that part of the world today still practice arranged marriages. And to many people who grow up in that environment, it doesn’t matter that they didn’t fall in love with their spouse before they married them–often they fall in love afterwards. Love is a choice, Captain-Doctor, not just a feeling. It’s what you choose to make of that feeling. That’s what Sha’re taught me…”

His voice trailed off as he stared at the door without seeing it. He was seeing through it: through the door and the maze of hallways, through the Stargate to the other side of the universe…

“Doctor Jackson…that’s…poetic.” The words could’ve been mocking. Probably would’ve been if it were Jack O’Neill saying them rather than Samantha Carter. Instead, they were spoken in a tone of quiet awe.

He flushed again, though not as darkly this time, and tried to hide it behind his cup of coffee. “Ah…yes. Well, I guess waxing poetic is one more thing I do well at three in the morning.”