Hades left a note before she broke out. "I can pick locks. Confusing night on Tollan. Be back soon. Hades."

Ensuing searches turned up nothing. Daniel felt useless. After a few initial questions about mythology and Hades' likely behavior the search efforts largely did not involve him. He was bored. He left at 7:00.

Driving home he turned his conversation with Hades over and over in his mind. It is a long and complicated story. I'm not answering that sober. Who was she?

Who was she?

On the outskirts of Colorado Springs there as a bar. A dive bar. He wasn't sure why he noticed it them of all times—he drove past it every day—but that night the dull glow of Captain Sam's neon sign caught his eye. He'd always found the nautical theme rather questionable in a city a thousand miles from the ocean.

I'm not answering that sober.

He turned into the parking lot. There was only one other car. The windows were frosted, but the lights were definitely on.

It was a gamble—a silly and far-fetched gamble—but no one would know. He'd just pop his head in and check.

Daniel got out of the car.

Who was she?

All he could see of Hades was her lank hair, but that was enough. There was no one else there. Not even a bartender.

A square bottle of brown liquor sat open on the table beside her. He couldn't see the label. He could see that Hades was not quite at the half-way point but well on her way to being there. That much was obvious in the level of liquid and the slump of her shoulders.

She barely turned when he finally spoke. "Is this a good time to finish that conversation?"

"An excellent time." She reached for the bottle and a shot glass. There were many to choose from. "Have a drink." Daniel caught a glimpse of the label as she began pouring. "I picked this up because it had your and Jack's names on it." She put the whiskey down and said in a voice just edging toward a slur. "It is very good."

Daniel grimaced and sat down. He did not touch the glass. "How did you pick it up?"

Hades craned her neck outward and looked just to his right, apparently playing her memories out on a screen only visible to her. "With the contents of…" She rummaged through the glasses and peanut shells on the table. She eventually found an old wallet beside the overflowing ash tray. She flipped it open and read out, "'Allen Herbert's' wallet." Her hand went limp and the empty leather slipped from her grasp. "And an explanation of my extraterrestrial origins. The proprietor seemed very keen on welcoming me to Earth." She flung her arm out and motioned to the empty room. "He gave me the bar with the bottle."

Daniel inhaled and frowned slightly. "Yeah. The base has had an effect on the local culture."

"I like it" Hades raised her glass. She settled it against her lips and closed her eyes. For a moment Daniel thought that maybe she'd forgotten about it. In one fluid movement she flung her head back and drained the glass. She did not mean to slam it on the table, but her coordination was going and her hand came down harder than expected. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Who was she?"

"You'll want to drink that." Hades glanced at his untouched shot. "Sip. To get the flavor. Perhaps consider a drop of water."

Daniel picked up the shot gingerly. "Why am I sipping while you—?"

"Down?" Hades smiled broadly. A fake smile. A bitter smile. "Because I am drowning my sorrows." The "s" of "sorrows" was still hanging in the air as she once more reached for the Jack Daniels.

Daniel waited until Hades was looking at him. He drank and replaced the empty glass on the table.

Hades was very still and very quiet. "Her name was Persephone."

"I thought you said that was a lie?"

Hades held up a finger. "Based on truth. All the best lies are." Her eyes wandered to the middle distance once more. "It was consensual…" Then wandered back, "You go first."

This shook Daniel. "Why?"

"It's a trade" Hades shrugged. "Why not? You got somewhere to be?"

"Turning you in."

Hades eyebrows lifted into her hair. "All the more reason."

Daniel took the whiskey and poured himself another, somewhat smaller, drink. "What do you want to know?"

"All of it." Her voice, normally low and tinged with sarcasm or pain, was totally sincere. "The feeling. The smell. All the little things we ignore, that in the end are all that matter."

He thought back through five years. To his favorite memory of Sha're. "She was very smart. And brave. She had courage for the both of us. And we'd talk. Really talk. She could listen the way no one else ever does. And she put up with my lectures, droning on and on. And told me when to stop." He swallowed. "And she was an optimist."

"Now those are annoying."

"No" Daniel raised his gaze to Hades once more. He wasn't sure why but convincing her of this had suddenly become the most important thing in his life. "Not like this. She—Abydos—went through so much. The universe beat them down so many times. But she was always ready for it to give her more. Ready with a smile." He finally put his finger on the right word. "Open."

He paused. Hades pretended not to see his face tighten. Daniel pretended not to be washing away the lump in his throat with whiskey. "Sometimes I wish—not wish. Wonder.—if Teal'c hadn't... If the hand device had just stayed on." His pressed his fingers harder into the shot glass. "Maybe that." He forced himself to look up. He would not make such a confession to the floor. "Is what was supposed to happen."

He lost his nerve. "It's not… You know. It's—"

"A sense of timing." She did know.

"You're turn."

Hades settled back in her chair. She watched the muted light of the room filter through the bottle, spraying a pattern of gold onto the table. "She was an actress. Persephone. I've never met anyone so full. Maybe it was her job, but it felt like very part of humanity—every part of being sentient—was in her." Hades snorted. "The night we met I wrote two plays. Just for her."

"What were they." Daniel's words seemed to stick in his mouth, desperate not to be heard in case they disturbed the washed-up god across from him. Good memories could be hard to hold onto. Still, he was curious.

And Hades didn't seem to mind. "Crap. Compared to what she played. All the greats: Medea, Antigone, even Hector once." Hades straightened up. She held her hands out as if she could command the air to set her scene. It, of course, remained empty, and she was forced to rely on her imagination and Daniel upon her words. "I would watch from backstage. She'd finish to standing ovations and bouquets. And then we'd go home and…"

Daniel did not learn his lesson the first time. "What was your favorite? Play, I mean."

"Orpheus and Eurydice." She held the her glass to her mouth, then thought better of it. "I wrote it. That one was not crap. She and Aeson would switch off as the leads each night. They were spectacular. I remember in rehearsals…" Hades cut her laugh short. "Doesn't matter. Like Orpheus I wanted to spend every moment of our lives. Together." Anger crept into her voice as she fought with her own throat to continue. "It never occurred to me how short humans…"

"Was that it? Old age?" In the silence Daniel became acutely aware that he was on the edge of his seat. It was not the most comfortable of chairs, and the frame dug into his legs.

"If only." This time Hades showed no mercy to her shot. It stung, but it gave her the strength to carry on. "Turns out that… no matter how far you run politics" she spat out the word, "catches up to you. Ra was king, but he had a challenger—a very serious challenger—split the galaxy right down the middle—and this guy decides to go after dad. Through me." She was genuinely puzzled. "No idea why. We weren't on good terms even then."

She rolled the glass in her palm causing the rim to gleam. "I was out walking. I came back to… desolation. Buildings burning, corpses everywhere. I ran home. She wasn't there. I… ah… found our neighbor—a baker—bleeding out on the floor of her shop." Hades reached out toward nothing. Her fingers shook. "We bought breakfast there everyday." Water was pooling in the corners of Hades' eyes. She was just about ready to fly the white flag in the struggle against tears. But not just yet. "I tried to stop the…" Her hand fluttered in front of her abdomen, finishing the sentence in gesture. "And she kept saying 'He took her. He took her.'" Hades' breath whooshed out in a half sob. Her mouth hung open and her shoulders fell. "I remember walking into the street, feeling the mud on my knees, and crying." The tears came silently, but they came nonetheless.

Her mouth hardened and her eyes burned. "I found the lord that did it. No one even says his name anymore."

Hades fell went quiet again. It felt like the silence dragged on and on, but really it was only a few seconds. Daniel wanted to prompt her to finish. What happened to Persephone? But to say her name in front of Hades felt wrong. He imagined it was why people did not discuss Sha're in front of him.

Hades returned to reality. "Took me a week to find Persephone." She did not hesitate to say the name but the air seemed to change in its wake, like the moment after one touches a ruin. "I've never worked so hard for anything in my life. And I was late." Hades' breathe trembled. "When I got there she was almost dead. Almost. I held her." Her arms came out to cradle an invisible body. "I just wanted to see her eyes again. I couldn't hope for a good-bye, just… one last time." She glanced over to Daniel searching for understanding. She found it. Even with his life leaving him all Daniel had wanted to do was look into Sha're's eyes.

Her breath was on the brink of sobs, but she had to continue. The labor of control was etched into every muscle of her body. "Her mouth was open. I couldn't let go. I couldn't… So I jumped." Her eyes glazed over with water and memory. She forced out the last words. "It is so. Empty. In here."

Hades gave in and buried her head in her hands.

Daniel let her cry. It made sense. She was alone in her own head. She was a symbiote without a host fighting her, talking to her, adding to her. More alone than any human could ever imagine being, because, of course, they were desensitized. Humans were always alone.

And the grief. Never-ending. How could it? If the one she loved was always staring at her from reflections.

Hades pushed her hair back and sniffed. "Sometimes you get used to it—"

"But then you remember what it was like." He looked her in the eye again. As an absolute equal. For that was what she was. "What you had. And it all comes crashing down."

"And you wish there was some way. To make it stop."

"But it can't. They're not gone. There's a bit of them still there."

"And that. You can never let go of that. Because once you do—. That's when they're really gone."

They stared at each other for a long time. Knowing that once the moment broke they would be forced into the indifferent world again. Dealing with a loss no one truly understood.

It was Daniel who found the solution. The sweet in the bitter that makes such endings bearable. "In the good times it's a comfort. That they're not..."

"Yeah."

He filled the shots again and raised his aloft. "To the pieces."

Hades nodded. "To the pieces."

The glasses clinked.

The world and characters depicted in this story belong to Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, Jonathan Glassner, Brad Wright, and the Sci-Fi Channel. No profit is made off their use herein.

It should be noted that Colorado liquor laws essentially prohibit the existence of such establishments was the fictional Captain Sam's. In so far as this setting, the story is an AU.

One more very short chapter to go, but there won't be too much revealed. This is pretty much it. Please tell me what you think, be it a compliment or a tirade. I love to hear anything.