This was an idea I've had for a story since I was 12 and first introduced to Stargate. I can't begin to think of where this brainchild stemmed from, but if it hadn't been for one of the best shows out there, it never would've been born.

Prelude: All the Wrong Choices

It felt as though I was dead and life had been thrown at my body. What once was black was suddenly white as my eyes shot open and I arched off the bed in a fit of screams. Everything came spiraling around me as I transitioned from being completely comatose to as awake as physically possible, every one of my senses highly active and alert to too much. There was almost no end to the sea of noise or the piercing hospital lights above me, no release from the feeling of being trapped and touched by a thousand hands all at once. Nausea swept over me with the stench of iodine and rubber gloves, the sickening hospital smell triggering my gag reflex when my subconscious reminded me of all the blood I'd been privy to in a hospital once before. Nothing came out by dry heaves, but I wished then more than ever that I could spill my entire insides and slip into death like I had so desired.

This was purgatory, a place of retribution against the lost souls who committed a sin too many.

"He's going into shock—"

"—he can't handle being moved, anymore. You're killing him!"

"It's no different from what you were going to do to him."

The stab of a needle pierced my flesh and dug straight into my veins, igniting them with the strange drug known as adrenaline. I could feel the haze being pulled from my eyes and clarity suddenly settling over my sight, like replacing smoke with crystal. My heart hurt as it pounded in my chest, like a tiny fist beating against my breast. I wanted to clutch at it, force to stop, but my arms remained stuck at my sides, restrained by bonds that I couldn't see. Someone called for me to relax and just rest, but I could hardly see the logic in stillness when I couldn't tell what was happening.

"Please," I rasped at the gray ceiling, "Please…"

But there was no god to answer my call, no clairvoyant to soothe my troubles and cast aside my doubts for the future. There was only one person I could turn to—

—but it wasn't there.

Tears streamed down my face without permission, soaking the fabric around my shoulders and sliding down my skin in a slow paced manner that made my body twitch. Another voice hushed my violent sobs and a rubber glove dabbed at my tears with a folded piece of gauze, repeatedly reassuring me that I was safe and that no one would hurt me. I tore my face away from their touch, their lies. Too many people with gloves have told me it would be all right—too many of them have lied. I would never believe what they had to say for as long as I lived and I hoped that that would be a very brief time, indeed.

I wasn't sure I could handle not having a second mind any further than I already had.

"—get the restraints off him."

"—he'll just kill us all if he's set free! Don't do that!"

"Stop treating him like an animal! You set yourselves up for this the moment you put him up to job!"

More hands, more voices. Where were they all coming from? The tight lock around my wrists was released and I flexed my fingers. The weight tying my hips down was removed and I could move my legs. I didn't know what to do with my limbs, those foreign appendages which meant so little to me. But they were all I had anymore, my first body now limp with lack of soul to keep her alive. Burning tears suddenly slipped down my face once again as I realized that Jenath was dead and I was never getting her back and it was all my fault and I should've known that she would never be completely healed and—

"—can you hear me?"

A voice. A whisper. Was it a god, come to save me? Or was Hell, come to whisk me away?

The beam of light illuminating my face vanished as she leaned over me, the soft darkness obscuring her angel face like the womb of a mother obscuring the light of the outside world. Her mouth moved and she tried to smile at me, but my sorrow reached her ears all too clearly and even she couldn't get me to stop crying. She tried to take my hand and embrace the cold fingers in her warmth, but I pulled away, the contrast too much to withstand. With a shuddering moan I tried to roll onto my side and away from that face, her soft hands guiding me to lie still and tucking a blanket around my solid body. I clutched at my biceps as I wept, unable to do any more than that and utterly terrified of the fact.

Oh merciless gods, wherever you may be…please kill me now

"—won't be of any use right now. Just help him sleep."

I didn't want to sleep, I cried to whoever still cared. I wanted to die.

But I never got my wish. I merely slipped away into the gray, doomed to never remember what had just happened.

.o.

There were voices.

"—don't think that this was a good idea."

"Well, what else were we supposed to do, sir? We couldn't just leave him like that."

"And why not? He just like the rest of the snakes."

"Sir—"

"Jack, I think you're missing the bigger picture. As long as he's in that body, he's not in someone else's, drastically altering their life one decade at a time."

"I still don't think it's safe to be handing over something this powerful to those guys when we ourselves don't have a method of killing the damn things."

I eventually recognized the voice as the ever-sarcastic Colonel's. His doubt was not at all unexpected, but I couldn't figure out why he'd fear me going back with my own kind. It wasn't like I was—

All eyes were on me as I sat up, uncaring of the brief disorientation of moving too quickly. The thin blankets pooled around my waist, but I barely felt them through the black suit that clothed my skin or the armor that padded my thighs. All I was aware of was my harsh breathing, sustained only by tubes and filters already built in to the all-encompassing helmet that separated me from the rest of the world. My little heart beat angrily, strained beyond its normal limits with the building rage in my chest and the lumbering size of my body.

She was the first one I saw, the first one I locked on to. She drifted towards me without my prompt—a huge mistake—her voice calm but stressed with worry. I let her come close and made no indications of my anger, still playing off the surprised look. She rested one hand on the bed besides my hand, a mockery of concern. "Hey. How are you feeling?"

I looked down into her eyes, searching for an answer, a reason, for while she'd do something so cruel to me. But I couldn't find one. "S-Sam…"

I could see the others moving about in my peripheral vision, my sight all the better now that I inhabited an animal. A hunter, for all intents and purposes. The Colonel came around to stand near her, an unassuming bodyguard to his subordinate. The Jaffa kept a reasonable distance and held his hands behind his back in his usual relaxed manner, while the archeologist said largely out of my sight, somewhere behind me. I could see all of this, and yet my gaze never strayed from the woman before me.

"I imagine everything feels a little disorienting right now." she said apologetically. I nodded minutely, if only to appease her and keep suspicion at bay. "How do you feel?"

"Like…" I couldn't bring myself to say it. Couldn't find the words that would have any equivalence to what I was feeling. I would destroy my vocal cords if I attempted to restrain such violent passion with words—tear the muscles and vomit blood. I shook my head again. "Like…"

Her hand felt so crushable in mine. "Hey, take it easy. You've been through a lot."

"Sam…"

How could you do this to me?

The archeologist left to fetch a nurse at her request, and the other males started to relax into more at ease postures, like they felt the threat was almost over. They couldn't have been more wrong.

I raised my other hand to collarbone, feeling the soft bones that lay just beneath her paper flesh. She was no more than a doll to me, a weak plaything that could shatter at any moment. Humans had never felt so soft before, so breakable. The hunter in me clawed at my mind, urging me to snap that collarbone and crush her skull. It would be so easy, too…

She glanced at my wandering hand and then back at me, doubt in her eyes as to what I was doing and my intentions. She had every right to be scared.

In one, single flowing movement, I was standing before her while she lay across the bed, my fist around her neck while her frail hands clutched at my own. Begging, crying, pleading for me to let go. Hands at my back alerted me to the Colonel's presence, but I easily knocked him away, using him as a shield against the Jaffa when he attempted to intervene. A nurse shouted somewhere and the heavy voices of the armed guards flooded the room, their weapons aimed at me and all my midnight glory.

But they wouldn't fire.

"Why?" I asked of her. "Why would you do this to me?"

"I'm sorry…" she gasped. I tightened my grip, squeezing tears from her eyes. Her wonderfully blue eyes.

"I asked you why!"

Her face was turning all sorts of colors now. Her eyes shone bright with their tears. "P-Please…"

She was going to die, I realized. I was killing her and she was going to die by my hand. I fell to the floor, dragging her with me and off the bed. Her fragile form molded to my hard body, my twisted, robotic body. She coughed as air found its way back into her lungs, the shock of having no air and then suddenly too much troublesome on her weak body. I fisted a hand in her hair, pulling her as close to me as our physiology would allow, rocking back and forth like a demented child while I whispered over and over, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"

The panic in the room did not die immediately, and everyone stood tense with anticipation. When Dr. Frasier thought that I no longer posed a threat she kneeled besides me and asked me to let go of the Major, helping me to untangle our limbs like I had forgotten how to move. When she was safely out of my reach, Dr. Frasier returned, quietly asking me if I would go to sleep again. I struggled to organize her words in my head, the room slowly spinning into one huge blur that was making me dizzy. I couldn't recall how I got back up on the bed or when my sleeve had been pulled up to insert the needle. I couldn't feel any of my extremities, or tell where up and down fell. The last thing that I was aware of was my reflection in the distance window, a shield for those in the observation room. The reflection of my dark helmet, and the body of Anubis's Kull Warriors.

.o.

Right now I'm just trying this out to see what kind of reviews it gets. I'll post more if you guys are interested.