Disclaimer: A lot of the speech (okay MOST of) in this chapter is from the episode, I do not own it.

Author's Notes: Wow, I see this kinda hit off then? Well I would have started this next chapter soon had it not been for the fact I had to try and find an 'Unending Transcript' unsuccessfully I might add, so I spent my Sunday watching the episode again (I got it in tape) and writing it – it took about six hours including the hour I spent on Friday writing it!

Chapter 1: Charades

Kaylee should have been forty five today. Vala found herself thinking as she poked her food absently, Daniel looked at her and she smiled tensely and continued to eat when he smiled back briefly then looked away.

The commissary was silent and much as she would have loved to have said something, anything to break it she found she couldn't. Fifty years together there are no secrets, nothing hidden. You couldn't even have sex on the ship without at least one of the others giving a knowing look over breakfast, or at least that's how it had been so long ago. Now, now it was as if everyone had given up.

There were times when the silence was so loud it was deafening. If she'd thought Daniel didn't smile enough before this… adventure, she was certain he'd done more than he did these days. Cam no longer made silly jokes at every given opportunity, Sam seemed so depressed it was worrying at times, and Teal'c… Teal'c was as always; strong, silent, unmoving.

It was if everyone had grown weary of this life, their bodies ageing long before their time and their minds eager to follow suit because this ship, this place…

"When I said I wanted to get the team back together, work with you guys, learn from you, I did not mean every waking moment for the next fifty years." He took his seat next to Vala, his movements stiff even as he tried to hide it.

"You said that yesterday," Daniel said slowly.

"I did?" he seemed to be the least lifeless at the table.

"And the day before," Teal'c intoned gravely.

"And the day before that," Vala added.

"Oh. Sorry." He froze for a moment, the room was silent for another second "I'll just shut up now."

"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." Daniel apologised, it was impossible to tell whether it was sarcastic or sincere, not that it mattered.

And the silence reigned again. It was a ghost, a blanket that bathed the room. It was like sticking her fingers in her ears but worse, because instead of a chatter that was impossible to be rid off, it was an incessant buzz. It hadn't been so annoying fifty years ago. She hadn't liked it but it hadn't been like this.

There was chink of cutlery as Sam put down her knife and fork "I did it." She avoided looking at any one of them.

"You did what?" Cam asked when no one else did.

"I figured out how to reverse time in a localised field,"

Vala and Teal'c both put down the knives and forks simultaneously.

"What?" Daniel turned to face her, patience in his voice but his entire body was tense.

"What's the matter?" Vala pressed when Sam was silent.

"Maintaining the time dilation field for all this time has almost completely depleted the ZPM and the power source in the Asguard core,"

Cam sighed and slouched in his seat slightly but not enough for anyone who hadn't spent so long with him that they could tell his every movement just by the situation "we don't have enough power to make it work?"

"There's irony for ya huh?" Sam joked as Cam got to his feet and moved to stand by the window, seemingly in deep thought.

"I create the field to buy us more time, I finally figure out how to undo it all and that extra time is what makes it impossible,"

"Are you sure? I mean if you had some more time could you-" he realised only after he had said it how stupid that sounded in comparison to what she had just said.

"I'm sure,"

Cam suddenly spoke up, "hey Sam. Do you… Do you remember when we were stuck out of phase?"

"Which time?"

"When you got shot, and you thought you were gonna die and the Ori were gonna destroy that village,"

"Vaguely." Sam said sadly, memories of a time before… this. She'd thought she was good, not brilliant and she wasn't arrogant but she wasn't insanely modest either. She knew what she could and could not do. Or at least she thought she had.

"You had me use the power source from an Ori staff weapon power Merlin's device." His voice jerked her out her reverie of self-blame, she mentally kicked herself for it.

"We don't have anything even close to the power source that would be required to keep a reverse time field working for long enough."

"Really?" his tone of voice made her look at him, a small frown creasing her forehead as she tried to figure out where he was going, he walked over and took her hand and she let him lead her, unresisting to the window "come with me "what about that?" he pointed at the blast from the Ori ship, considerably closer than it had once been, but moving at such a slow pace they weren't in danger from it for a good thirty or forty years at least. They'd all be dead by then anyway, she mused.

"That… there's no way we…" her eyes widened. Was there?


"There's no way to absorb the blast and channel the energy into the Asguard core." Sam stated without pause, her expression serious, the lines at the corners of her eyes creasing further when a tiny frown creased her features.

Determined to make her continue, Cam prompted "unless…"

She took a breath, unless, always an unless, always an if, a maybe a possibly… maybe if she'd tried that in the first place then they wouldn't still be here… she cleared her throat discreetly "unless we re-route the power conduits throughout the ship into the core and let the blast hit us."

Well that looked like an attractive scenario; suicide.

"The ship will explode." Vala whispered.

"Yes," Sam sounded slightly to okay with that for Vala's liking. "But hopefully enough energy from the blast will be channelled into the core to allow it to activate the reverse time field before everything is totally destroyed.

"But we'll all be dead." She muttered, she glanced at Daniel has he took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly, they shared a brief look before turning their attention back to Sam as she continued.

"If this works we'll only be dead for a few milliseconds and time within the bubble will reverse, and we won't be dead and the ship won't be destroyed."

"If this works?" he hadn't really meant to say it, he had faith in her, Sam would do it, she would fix this…

"Yes. I'm not promising anything."

"That's all right, it's a shot, and I say we take it." He put as much encouragement into his voice as he could muster because of all the things they had gained through their time on this ship, they had lost enough too. Kaylee, General Landry, and Sam seemed to have lost much of her confidence in herself.

Kaylee should have been forty eight today.

They could… if… was it possible? Kaylee, little Kaylee, blue eyes, silky curls and a smile that could light up a room, lying broken and bloody on an infirmary bed, as pale as the sheets she was lying on and as cold as the room itself.

She wasn't sure when morning came, it was impossible to tell. The only light was from the ship itself. There was no sun to rise, no stars to twinkle. Everything on this ship was fake, artificial; none of it was real. The oxygen they breathed, the food they ate, the gifts they gave and the clothes they wore. They could have anything they wanted and at the same time they had nothing at all.

It might never have been morning, it could have been days, it felt like years. She blinked and with the dry sting it brought she knew it had been a while since she had done it last. She didn't have to lift her head to see Daniel, he hadn't moved since she had last looked at him, whenever that had been, his lips were moving but no sound was coming out, his fingers stroking Kaylee's hand; it was stiff. And his eyes, instead of their usual sparkling blue, were grey and sad.

Vala jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder, raising her head she felt every muscle in her body protest but it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Kaylee was gone – no, no she wasn't. She was still there, she was still touching her, she was still… still. Kaylee was still, unmoving and cold in a world she had once been laughing and warm.

"You need to come with me," Cam's voice was harsh, even as he tried to keep it warm and quiet it seemed to be loud beyond all reason.

She shook her head as he pulled her to her feet, the chair toppled as she stumbled around it and it clattered against the floor. She didn't have the energy to fight him, her limbs were heavy, her head was filled with a fog that allowed nothing to escape and everything to ache.

"C'mon," he coaxed, pulling her a little harder and they left the room but she refused to go any further.

She watched as Sam called Daniel's name and he lifted his head wearily; the efforts that of a man who had long since given in to despair. She pried his fingers from Kaylee's hand and held both of his in hers, looking him straight in the eye for a moment.

"Kaylee?" she heard him whisper, his voice rough and croaking.

Sam didn't say anything, Vala could see her eyes fill with tears that she was stubbornly refusing to let fall, with Daniel still staring desperately at her Sam shook her head slowly. He sobbed then, just once, tears followed soon after and within seconds Sam's arms were around his shoulders.

Vala felt Cam pull her into a hug, and she heard someone else start crying also, noisy sobs and wails that took her a few moments to recognise as her own. They were barely muffled by his t-shirt as she twisted fistfuls of it into her hands. It was dark blue, almost black and generated by the matter-converter. Fake.

Everything had been fake.

Except Kaylee.

Kaylee had been real.

"How far back can we go?" she asked quietly, feeling Daniel's hand tighten around her own and she could sense him staring at her although she refused to acknowledge it.

"Only too the point where the time dilation field was created. We can't reverse time for the entire universe if we go back any further than that we are outside of normal time-space again and we create a paradox that the technology couldn't handle."

"Is that going to be good enough?" Daniel asked.

Sam hesitated then said slowly "I might be able to buy us a little more time. Maybe a minute but… one of us is going to have to stay old."

"Oh."

"Oh." Cam echoed.

"We're talking about reversing time within the field, everything, our age, our memories, will be undone."

"If this works, we'll be doomed to repeat history." He couldn't do that, not again, even if he wouldn't remember the 'first' time, he couldn't watch Kaylee die, or General Landry, couldn't watch time pass yet again, each second that passed waited through with that overwhelming sense of helplessness that had haunted them all for so long.

The Asguard Knowledge Base had been interesting, intriguing beyond anything he could have hoped for and it had confirmed old beliefs, started knew ones and enhanced open everything he already knew and in fifty years he had barely even scratched the surface. But it had still never been able to drive away that guilty feeling that he should have been able to do something.

They had all tried to help Sam, even Mitchell. They had all spent the equivalent of weeks in that lab but it never worked, Sam would smile encouragingly every few hours, tell them they were a great help but they all knew the truth; none of them could help her, even she had struggled to understand some of it.

"Unless we can exclude someone from the field who can steer events in another direction." Sam's words were said slowly and well pronounced, traces of trepidation in her voice.

"You created the time dilation field to prevent us from being hit by that blast in the first place, you had no choice." Cam assured her.

"Right," she agreed with him "we have to severe the Asguard core from the hyper drive controls or else the Ori will be able to follow us when we make the jump into hyperspace," she paused before continuing, "a long time ago, in the event that I ever did solve the time issue, I created a program that would achieve that very quickly. I'll load it onto a crystal. That way it will only take me few seconds to shut down the core and make the jump into hyperspace."

"Who says it's gonna be you?"

"It makes sense that it be me."

Cam sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I will do it." Teal'c spoke.

Everyone turned to face him.

"Teal'c you've lost as many years as the rest of us." Daniel said.

"What are you? A hundred and thirty now?" Cam teased.

"I don't know, he doesn't look a day over one-twenty to me," she flashed the Colonel a tiny smile that he returned, both looking back at Teal'c when he continued.

" I have many more years to live. I am the only logical choice."

"Teal'c?" Sam seemed uncertain of what else to say, it was hardly sufficient but what he was offering to give up, to do for them…

"I have but one question; if this should not work…" he left his question hanging, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Then the shields will fail… and you will die along with the rest of us."

Teal'c nodded serenely, leaving no possible room for argument.

"Kaylee," Vala spoke softly after a few minutes, the name a whisper and the effect of such a simple word was instantaneous.

The uncomfortable silence that followed was accompanied by Daniel letting go of her hand, she suppressed a flinch when in the corner of her eye she saw Daniel tense.

"What about Kaylee?" Sam asked nervously.

Vala looked her straight in the eye "we can save her,"

Sam opened her mouth and closed it again several times, unsure of what to say.

"We can save her," Vala said firmly, her jaw set, and her expression firm.

"I… I don't… Vala…"

Daniel looked up then "can you do it?" he challenged, raw emotion flickering to life in his eyes but other than that he remained perfectly calm.

"I… Teal'c would be going back to the time of the…" she swallowed "accident, I don't know how accurate that would be. Jumping back to when the time dilation field was formed is easier because it's already programmed. It would mean..." she looked at the jaffa stood in the corner "Teal'c going back to that time and picking up Kaylee. I'd have to make a new crystal with another programme on it that would allow the me in that time to jump back to the time when the field was made."

"What's to stop the her… you," Cam corrected himself "from using it for them… us, to go back then?"

Sam pulled a face "that's a problem…"

"We could just write them a note," Vala offered.

"Would you listen?" Cam looked at her "if, forty odd years ago Teal'c walked into the room and said 'your daughter's going to die' would you let him take her back in time knowing full well you would never see her again? Or would you want to go with him?"

"If the choice was to watch her die then yes," Vala replied stubbornly, glowering at him in a way that once looked petulant, but the sheer severity of both their situation and topic of conversation made it nothing more than a plea.

"I will convince the SG-1 of that time that for me to go alone would be the most prudent course of action," Teal'c stated.

"How?" Cam challenged.

"That is not of your concern Colonel Mitchell,"

Slightly thrown Cam tuned back to Vala "you'll have her again anyway," off Sam's look "won't they?"

"By Teal'c going back he's not so much altering this timeline but making a new one. In that one Kaylee may never be born,"

"Can you save her?" Daniel asked again, needing a definitive answer.

Sam waited, catching Cam's eyes for a second "yes,"

"Then it is settled."

Author's Notes: Yep, there's another chapter :) I saw three episodes of 'Firefly' at the weekend and have since watched 'Serenity' for a second time (makes much more sense now – almost funny to remember the first time I was watching it Jess was pointing out some things that seem so obvious now) - I now seem to be unable to stop watching MalInara fanvids or listening to the songs they were made too :P