Spoilers for: Quest pt 2, The Shroud, Dominion.
"Please do not harm him," Levia cried.
Vala wanted to look around to see what her teammates reactions where but as she would need to turn around to see them she didn't, staring straight at Daniel weapon aimed squarely on him. His eyes darted back and forth, his hands raised in surrender. Cam moved forward to pull Levia out of harms way and Vala was glad to see that he too had his weapon ready to fire at Daniel.
"Daniel?" Sam almost whispered. Daniel did not react to his name so she repeated a little louder. When he didn't respond to that either Teal'c questioned him about his age, name and past.
"What is your name?"
"Domic."
"How old are you?"
"I don't know."
"Where is your home?"
"Another village. I was a teacher and I was brought here by a Prior to teach."
As Teal'c asked, Cam checked Daniel for weapons and after announcing he was unarmed both Sam and Teal'c lowered their guns. Vala hesitated before following their lead.
"Who are you?"
"Domic, this is Capricorn, Taurus..."
"Daniel, it's me, Sam. This is Cam, Teal'c and Vala." Sam spoke over Levia hoping that their real names would help him to remember.
Levia gasped. "I know those names."
"How?" Demanded Teal'c.
"Sometimes during his sleep he would call out those names." Levia stared at Daniel while he nervously looked around at everyone.
"I'm sorry, I don't know you. I don't recognize those names. You must have me mistaken for someone else."
"You are Daniel Jackson, once a member of our team," Teal'c stated in his deep voice.
"Once?"
"You died several months ago."
At this news Daniel's face paled a little before he began offering his condolences for the loss of their teammate while insisting that he was not who they believed him to be. It was Levia who began asking who this Daniel was and SG-1 gladly began to inform her, each telling a piece of the story starting with his participation in the Stargate program. They didn't go into detail as it would take too long, but skipped over their various battles with the Goa'uld and Replicators before beginning on the Ori. As Vala seemed reluctant to go into any detail about her and Daniel's trip to the Ori galaxy, Cam made light of it. It wasn't until the story reached where Daniel had Merlin's consciousness downloaded into his brain that they hesitated.
"Who is this Adria?" Asked Levia.
"Perhaps you would know her as the Orici. She captured Daniel Jackson and turned him into a Prior in an attempt to defeat the Ancients in our own galaxy."
Teal'c paused as he watched understanding flood Daniel's face before being replaced with the look of disbelief he'd been wearing so far. "So what happened then?"
Vala glanced over at Teal'c and he nodded his confirmation that he had seen a slight change in Daniel's expression too.
"Merlin put some kind of safeguard on you and when you de-priorized you also lost Merlin's consciousness and reverted into just being you again," Cam filled in not noticing the exchange of glances going on behind him. "Adria went back through the Supergate to this galaxy with the weapon armed and ready to go."
"Then what happened?" Levia was enthralled by the tale.
"Not much."
"What Cam means is that the weapon didn't have the effect we wanted it to. Adria returned to our galaxy where she eventually ascended, then regained her half human half Ori form and led the final push to convert our entire galaxy or kill us all." Sam heaved a sigh at the memories.
"So this Daniel was killed in the war?" Daniel asked and for the first time looked directly at Vala.
"No. The war was over, we'd won. It was during the cleanup after."
In the silence that followed Vala turned and walked away from the group needing to take her eyes of this man who looked just like her Daniel had. Sam followed her and asked her what she thought of the situation.
"It's a trick."
"A trick?"
"That is not our Daniel," Vala hissed pointing behind her as she spoke.
"Vala..."
"Sam, is it possible that after Adria ascended or when she returned she accessed the information from Ba'al and somehow cloned Daniel?"
"Uh, not too sure. It's possible but she would've needed Daniel for that and how did he get here? From what Levia has told us he's been here for a while, perhaps even from before Ba'al took Adria as a host."
"So you're saying it's not a clone?"
"Vala, I don't know what to think right now. It could be, but we wouldn't be able to do further tests until we got back to the SGC."
"What about it's memory loss? Could it have something to do with the Others? Didn't they do this to Daniel once?" Vala fired off the questions rapidly as Sam ran her hands through her hair before responding quietly.
"Daniel was returned to human form by the Others after he ascended and broke their rules. They wiped his memory clean and it came back thankfully but Daniel didn't ascend this time, he died and we buried him. It's possible that the Others might've had something to do with this but I doubt it. He ended up here, in the Ori galaxy and the Others wouldn't have come here interfering."
"What's the plan then?" Cam snuck up behind them making them both jump.
"I can't figure this out here, we need to find a way back home. Once we're there we can figure out what happened to Daniel."
"Fine. What do we do about it until then?" If anyone noticed Vala's refusal to call him by name no one commented.
"We drop it, the whole thing. Tell 'em we want to go home and leave it at that. This Daniel seems pretty spooked by this whole thing and I doubt he's going to run anywhere as there's nowhere close by to run to. If we back off we won't have to find out how much knowledge this Daniel has of survival skills."
Sam nodded as Cam spoke as Vala stared stoically ahead.
During the journey back to the village everyone fell silent as they sank deep into their own thoughts. The crease in Cam's forehead, the way Sam's eyes darted back and forth while she seemed not to be seeing anything, the way the muscles in Teal's face contracted as he set his jaw. Vala watched her teammates knowing at some point they'd begin to do the same to her and by then she wondered if she would have a clue as to what she was thinking about this situation.
Back at Levia's house SG-1 sat at the table and Cam asked the question they'd all been wondering about the answer for.
"So that was Daniel right?"
"Domic does appear to be Daniel Jackson yet they can not be the same."
"Teal'c's right. Our Daniel was Daniel otherwise Dr. Lam would've noticed something."
"Well, there was that whole Prior thing. Maybe that did something to him." Cam stated while watching Vala out of the corner of his eye.
"We can't be sure of anything until we get him back to the SGC." Sam rested her head in her hands.
"No," Vala almost shouted, startling the others. "Adria has something to do with this and that's exactly what she'd expect us to do. Take it back and..."
"I thought of that. We'd need to get Daniel, I mean Domic, to the SGC and do some tests to determine if he really is Daniel." Vala watched as Sam frowned and focused on the table.
"Well it's good that we've got some ideas for that but lets solve the whole going home thing first otherwise we aren't going to have to worry about taking Daniel back."
"Back?" Levia had been standing in the shadow of the doorway and no one had seen her there.
"Levia, we think that Domic is the same as our Daniel but we need to take him home with us to prove it."
"You can't take him. The Prior will return and be angry that we disobeyed him," Levia pleaded with Sam.
Vala felt her anger stirring up inside. The moment she had recognized Daniel there had been a moment of shock quickly followed by anger. Why that emotion she wasn't able to figure out yet, but had pushed it aside hoping to have a few moments to herself later to figure it out. Now the events of the past two days, with the arrival in the Ori village to see some poor woman go through what she had then to see someone whom she assumed she'd never see again, forced all her anger, sadness and stress to the surface.
"Don't you understand? The Ori are gone. They were never gods, just powerful beings who pretended they were." Vala stood abruptly, her legs catching on the table as she did, and turned back to her teammates. "That thing isn't Daniel. In case you forgot, he died. He didn't ascend, we buried him. This is some kind of horrible trick of Adria's that she probably had for me or to get inside the SGC or something. We can't take it back as we'll be risking our lives or maybe the entire planet. For now he's stuck here with no memory and I suggest we keep it that way."
She didn't need to turn around to know that Cam and Sam were staring at her retreating back, mouths agape while Teal'c would be sitting straight his ever watchful eyes taking in the reactions of everyone. Once in the room she was sharing with Sam she sank onto the low bed and lowered her head into her arms. When she closed her eyes the image of Domic staring at her while she aimed her weapon at him burned into her mind.
