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She cracked an eye and realized that she was not in her bedroll, and that she was using a gently rising and falling chest as a pillow. Her brain finally engaged and she smiled remembering the previous night.

When she had grabbed his hand it was almost as if the world had tilted and suddenly everything was lined up the way it should be. And that the last fifteen months had all been leading up to this moment.

At first he wouldn't turn and face her, so Candice moved in front of him and whispered, "Daniel?"

He wouldn't meet her eyes but in a hoarse voice replied, "Don't, Candice. Just let me go."

"Do you really want me to?" she challenged.

He whipped his head around to face her. And seeing the intensity in her face croaked out, "No."

Daniel reached up and gently stroked her cheek with a calloused thumb and she saw in the moonlight a softness in his eyes that she had never seen before. He bent his head and kissed her lightly, a chaste brush on the lips. Then he pulled back, "Candice, I have to tell you something."

"Okay." She replied lightly.

"I don't want you to think….well, I don't want you to think that this…" he gestured between the two of them, "is because we are stuck here. I've been, ah, attracted to you since I first saw you in the commissary. But then you were assigned to SG-1 and I had to put it aside so it wouldn't affect the team. But now, it's been just the two of us for so long I'm finding it harder and harder to hide it."

Candice placed a gentle hand on his chest, "Would it help if I told you that I a little disappointed to be assigned to SG-1 because I knew that it meant that you and I could never…and that I was and am very attracted to you too?"

"That helps a lot actually." He whispered and claimed her mouth feverishly. He pulled her to him so tightly she almost couldn't breath, not that she wanted to.

She found herself feeling like a precious artifact that he was studying as he undressed her. He studied her with his eyes, with his hands, and with his mouth. He was murmuring against her skin, in languages she didn't know. Every caress, every kiss, every whisper was fueling a growing ache in her and when he finally positioned himself over her and pressed himself into her, she couldn't do anything but cry out his name again and again.

The rest of the night was almost a blur of sensation. They touched and tasted each other to the point of exhaustion and finally fell asleep in each other's arms right there on a bed of soft moss near the bank of the river.

But now morning was breaking and Candice prayed that the daylight wouldn't bring awkwardness with it. She was trying to reach for her shirt without waking Daniel when she suddenly found her self rolled onto her back and a pair of blue eyes looking down at her, "Good morning," he said playfully and kissed her.

She couldn't help but giggle, "Well I guess that answers that question."

"What question?"

"Whether or not this morning was going to be awkward."

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Their lives were good. They each had a lifetime's worth of things to study. They had plenty to eat and a safe, comfortable place they called home. And they had each other. The year and a half they had spent alone together had started forming a bond between them that was hard to define.

Candice often bemoaned the fact that she had no head for languages and envied the ease at which Daniel could swap between any of the almost two dozen that he knew. He tried unsuccessfully to teach her but it was hopeless.

"It doesn't make any sense Daniel. I swear they just made up words." She was exasperated trying to learn rudimentary Italian.

He laughed, "Well, at some point in antiquity that is most likely what happened. Do you want to go back to French?"

She playfully scowled at him, "No. I give up. Maybe I will just make up my own language instead. I can't do any worse."

Later that night in bed Daniel tried a different teaching technique. He pinned Candice underneath him and started whispering deliciously dirty things in her ear, first in English then French and Italian and a host of other languages. Before he would move inside her, she had to repeat them and she would have never thought that her brain crazed with lust would retain anything but she did.

As they lay there holding each other trying to catch their breath, and slow their heart rate down, Candice teased, "That's it. I'm definitely making up my own language. Diamar."

Daniel chuckled, "Diamar?"

"My first word. You'll just have to study my new language as it evolves Professor Jackson, to find out what it means."

He laughed and pulled her on top of him, "God, I love you." They both stilled instantly at the words that just slipped out of his mouth.

"Now that I don't need a translation for. And I even know how to reply. I love you too." She said and kissed him soundly.

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"Colonel, why don't you go take a break. Take a walk, eat something. You've been sitting here for hours." Janet chided Jack.

He stood up with a heavy sigh, "You'll radio me if there is any change?"

"You know I will sir."

Jack walked out of the temple and headed towards the river. He was a little stiff from sitting on the stone floor of the temple. Candice and Daniel had been lying there for eight hours without any change. He scrubbed his face roughly with his hands and tried to stretch and work the kinks out.

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Candice and Daniel were sitting along the river as the stars started making their appearance. Both were quiet and a little contemplative. They both knew that the next day was the two year anniversary of their coming to this planet.

Daniel saw Candice lift her face to the sky and smile.

"What was that smile for?"

"I used to come out here and spend my time trying to figure out where home was, and I hated the sky, hated the stars themselves for not being familiar. So a while back I started making up my own constellations. Now after all this time, the stars are like old friends."

"It sounds like you've accepted this as being home."

"Nobody is coming for us Diamar. I had to make peace with that or go crazy. Didn't you?"

She knew he still hiked out to the gate every day to try the DHD. And although he never said anything she knew it bothered him that it did not appear that they would ever leave the planet.

He didn't say anything, and she didn't press. The seed had been planted in his mind though and he had to admit to himself that in all likelihood no one was coming for them. He had to force himself to accept that without feeling like he was giving in to pessimism. Maybe he had to look at what was right in front of him.

"What are your plans for tomorrow?" he asked quietly.

She made a little face, "Er, weeding the garden and starting the new seedlings. Why?"

"I was thinking we could pack up a couple days worth of supplies and go exploring." He knew she had been dying to do that for months. But he had been unwilling to be so far away from the gate. It was his way of telling her that he was willing to start accepting their situation for what it was.

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